David Hewitt shares his reflections on a local strike with lasting impact
I have already written about “Joseph”—the man from Thornton, near Blackpool, who was sent to fight in the Great War by the Central Tribunal (NLJ, 20 January 2017, p 22).
That tribunal sat in Westminster and was chaired by the fourth Marquess of Salisbury, and he and his colleagues decided that Joseph was simply a hawker of fruit and veg. But their decision was controversial, because Joseph said he was actually a market gardener and a committee of councillors in Thornton had taken him at his word.
The Thornton councillors made up a “local tribunal”, of which there were more than two thousand during the war, and after conscription was introduced, in early 1916, it fell to them to decide whether men might be given an exemption from military service.
It wasn’t that Joseph didn’t want to fight—he had, in fact, already enlisted for military service—he just didn’t want to fight right now. He had a wife, and two children who were little more than
