When we think about the people who opposed the First World War, if we think about them at all, it is usually about the 20,000 young men who refused to fight, the men we call Conscientious Objectors. However, from the outset of the war, many women across the country challenged militarism and continued their links with European women, forged in pre-war suffrage alliances: anti-war women from suffrage, socialism and progressive movements regrouped, and then re-organised into anti-war campaigns. Exploring local resistance and dissent in cities like Huddersfield and Manchester, often highlights the role of ‘invisible’ women, whose family life often disrupted their activism. Indeed, opposing the war was not an exclusively male preserve. It involved women from across British society and it was women who sustained the broader campaign against the war when its men were in prison or work camps. Many of these dissenting sisters had learnt their lessons in resistance in the pre-war Women’s suffrage campaigns and were well represented in greater Manchester and in Huddersfield. This talk will explore the work of some of these women, like Huddersfield’s Constance Crosland, whose anti-war networks connected both sides of the Pennines.
Alison Ronan is a retired lecturer who has a background in youth work and conflict resolution. Her interest is in the involvement and influence of women in Manchester, and the North West more generally, in the anti-war movement in WW1.
Cyril Pearce is a retired university lecturer, born and bred in Slaithwaite, living in exile in Golcar. He has been researching and writing about Britain’s 1914-1918 war resisters for more than twenty years.
Books for sale on the night:
Cyril Pearce, Comrades in Conscience: The Story of an English Community’s opposition to the Great War (2014, Discount price £10) The anti-war movement in Huddersfield.
Cyril Pearce, Communities of Resistance: Conscience and Dissent in Britain during the First World War. (2020, Discount price £20) The national picture.
Recommended reading:
Jill Liddington, The Long Road to Greenham: Feminism and Anti-Militarism in Britain since 1820 (Virago, 1989)
Jo Vellacott, Pacifists, Patriots and the Vote: The Erosion of Democratic Suffragism in Britain During the First World War (Palgrave, MacMillan, 2007)
