Pacifist or conscientious objector? The story doesn't end there!!
I was fifteen years old and an eleven plus examination draftee into a minor public school. (the photograph above is of the cricket Ist Eleven taken two years later in 1955--my final year at the school.)
Looking forward to returning to fitness and some kind of normality following major knee surgery, I discovered that membership of the school CCF (combined cadet force) was now compulsory. I confess to being unimpressed by the imposition and that I indicated as much to the master who informed me I'd be expected to enrol. I explained that I'd be happy to volunteer for service should the need to defend Britain arise, but not intending to enter the army as a career, could see no good reason to play at soldiers on the school field when there were so many more important and constructive things to do with my time.
He asked derisively if I was some kind of pacifist or concientious objector, a ridiculous question to pose to a teen-age schoolboy, but they were different times, the second world war still fresh in the mind.
My father thought my approach was wrong. I should apologize to the master, explain that while I withdrew nothing of what I'd said, if membership was to become one of the conditions of attending the school I understood that I was obliged to comply. He further suggested that I should do this with good grace and apply myself to the process of becoming a good cadet. (as soon as my recovering leg permitted.) He explained that it was the duty of each of us to properly abide by the rules of the Society in which we live, even when disagreeing with them. He went on to say, however, that should I take exception to this particular imposition so strongly that I felt obliged, as a matter of principle, to continue the argument, then that was my right as an individual, but I should do so as an active cadet, fully prepared to face the consequences of my actions.
The story doesn't end there. Towards the end of that term I was presented with an invoice requesting payment of seven shillings and sixpence for use of the uniform. I remember my astonishment as if it were yesterday. I couldn't believe it. So, remembering everything my father had said, I went over it again and again on the evening bus home, finding it impossible to come to terms with being charged for something I'd been compelled to accept; finally deciding that payment was out of the question. I was not going to pay.
My father accepted my decision, but said I should fully appreciate the probable implications of the school's likely reacton to my refusal. They'd almost certainly see me in a different light; no longer considering me the 'right sort of chap.' Failing to 'toe the Party line' and carry out instructions without question couldn't be tolerated within a system where conforming was the 'done thing.' I'd be further pressed to pay and labelled an 'unsound chap.' Indeed, the situation might very well show me that acting on principle was a painful process with justice rarely done. Was I ready for that?
One afternoon at the end of the penultimate week of term, the master in question said to me in front of the whole Form: "You haven't paid your Corps bill, Boy."
Trying to avoid sounding insolent, which wasn't easy, I gritted my teeth and said that I would not be doing so. He repeated: "You will pay." I remained adamant that I would not.
A few days later, when I'd begun to hope the matter might have been forgotten, I was summoned to the Headmaster's study. I remember my trepidation as he kept me waiting outside his door. He talked about discipline and the good of the school, carefully avoiding the subject of money and actually saying surprisingly little. The tone of his approach and general attitude towards me, however, were precisely as my father had predicted. I can't begin to describe the tangled senses of release and achievement I experienced when the interview was at an end and he allowed me to go.
I was the only A stream, leading athletics and cricket colour going through the sixth form during my time at the school who never became a Monitor--not even a House Monitor, which was even more significant given that anyone with any status at all gained that distinction.
However, I did what I believe to this day was right, which to say the very least seemed daunting at the time, and the school never forgave me for it. It cited my sporting achievements as its own as it occasionally does even today almost sixty years later, while effectively rejecting me as a person.
How many times has such British Establishment behaviour been experienced, I wonder, and by just how many??
