International Conscientious Objectors Day 15 May

International Conscientious Objectors Day is marked around the world every 15 th May
and Hereford Peace Council will be commemorating the day with a short vigil between
12.30 hours and 13.30 hours in the Walled Garden, Ledbury.

Conscientious objectors are opposed to war and killing for a variety of reasons - some
moral, some religious, some political.

In the First World War there were some 20,000 men in the UK who objected to war and
resisted the propaganda, the peer pressure, and the full and sometimes brutal force of
the state. They refused to take part in war: the killing of strangers - of men like
themselves. These men and their supporters, women and men, are the forerunners of
today’s non-violent resistance movements.

Today, thousands of conscientious objectors around the world are currently imprisoned
for their beliefs with little or no recourse to Human Rights legislation.
Local Herefordshire records are hard to find but it is thanks to people like Cyril Pearce,
who compiled the Pearce CO Register, that there is some information regarding 34 local
Herefordshire war resisters during the First World War. It is known that there were two
teachers, Harold Watkins and Rendel Wyatt who faced Ledbury Military Service Tribunal
in March 1916. Two other men from Ledbury, a farmer, Robert Fitzpatrick and Hubert
Warren, a clerk, also resisted but little seems to be known and recorded about them.
The short vigil will start and end in silence and stillness to remember those past and
present who resisted killing others and faced persecution and imprisonment. Short
appropriate readings of poetry and prose will also be chosen. Everyone is invited to
attend including local families who may wish to offer brief narratives of their relatives’
story of conscientious objection and war resistance during the vigil.

The vigil is open to people of all faiths and those with none. If anyone would like to be
involved or take part the link person, on behalf of Hereford Peace Council, is David
Chapman who can be reached by email: davidchapman781@btinternet.com
The Walled Garden can be found opposite St. Michael’s Church in Church Lane,
Ledbury, HR8 1PJ

As President John Kennedy observed: “War will exist until that distant day when
the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the
warrior does today.”