Conscientious objectors in Letchworth during the First World War

 

White feathers were often given to conscientious objectors as a symbol of cowardice.

In Letchworth of course there was quite a strong movement against the war. There were quite a lot of conscientious objectors and they were really run down by the people who were supposed to be patriotic. After all you can’t help how you feel about a thing can you? And to be a conscientious objector in those days you had to be a lot stronger than actually going with the flow. It was like a dirty word.

I can remember being in the same class as Christine Sunderland and from time to time we had to write an essay on a member of our family. I can remember being ever so shocked because Christine put “My father is a conscientious objector.” Well she couldn’t spell very well so she actually put “my father is a CO.”

I didn’t know what a Co was at that time but, oh she was very proud of the fact, and her mother was allowed to take them about once a month I think, to the prison. I think it was Wormwood Scrubbs he was held at.

All I know is that years later when Mr Sunderland had a house built on Cashio Lane,it was a very ordinary looking door on it, and in that area quite a lot of those houses and cottages had had thatched roofs and they had big doors. I happened to say how I liked the oak doors, and Mr Sunderland said to me that if you’d been behind oak doors, for I think, four years, you’d never want to see an oak door again. Yes he suffered.

I don’t think my mother was very sympathetic to conscientious objectors because she had members of her family in the fighting forces. Her brother-in–law and his sons got killed and her own favourite brother got killed. And it’s when things happen to oneself that you do not have a lot of sympathy with people who think like that… I mean actually, I should say that as far as Mr Sunderland went he suffered a lot of privation in prison, for his conscience. But other people, they thought, well, he was shirking.