Appealing Conscription: Revisiting Ivor Slocombe’s Pioneering Study

This video is part of the national collaborative project "Grounds for Appeal: First World War Military Service Appeal Tribunals in Great Britain 1916-1918" made possible by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, led by the Wiltshire & Swindon History Centre. Dr Angus Wallace interviews Ivor Slocombe: In 2000, Ivor Slocombe published a groundbreaking article in The Local Historian that changed how historians understood conscription in the First World War (you can find the article here). Focusing on the Military Service Tribunal in Calne, Wiltshire, his research revealed that appealing against conscription was not unusual or exceptional, but a normal part of how many men responded to being called up. A former Chief Education Officer for Wiltshire, Ivor came across the surviving tribunal records almost by chance. While most tribunal papers had been deliberately destroyed after the war, the records from Calne survived because, as Ivor later put it, the council seemed to have a habit of never throwing anything away. What Ivor uncovered challenged long-held assumptions about conscription in Britain. By comparing tribunal applications with the 1911 census, he found that more than 29 per cent of eligible men in the Calne district appealed against their call-up papers. Far from being passive recipients of conscription, these men actively negotiated their service through the tribunal system. Most were not conscientious objectors. Instead, they were farmers, labourers, skilled workers, and men whose families and communities depended upon the work they did at home. Ivor’s work helped transform the historiography of the tribunals and became the benchmark for later studies, including Angus' own research into the North Riding Appeal Tribunal. Angus spoke to Ivor and his wife Pam about that pioneering research.