Military Service Tribunals - the process?

[Phil Wood]

I am prompted to post this by an item in a local paper reporting on a Tribunal case in which the applicant was granted 1 week's exemption, which in practice means 2 months.

I would like some idea of how a 1 week exemption extended automatically to 2 months. My guess is that there was some sort of timetable where, for instance a week's delay meant the next monthly meeting would be missed, so this chap's paperwork wouldn't go forward until the next monthly meeting after which he would be given a month's notice to turn up at the training depot or whatever. Perhaps the timescale for an appeal to the county tribunal is included? Pure guesswork, and probably wrong!

Can anyone enlighten me as to the real process?

[Magnumbellum]

A temporary exemption of one week was effectively the minimum that was worth ordering, but I have never seen a journalistic comment that in practice it would mean two months.

Such a short exemption would normally be for one of two reasons:

A: For the tribunal itself, or the applicant, to make enquiries about some matter and report back. In such a case, the tribunal would set as a date for reporting a date on which it was due to sit. Only at the very end of the conscription period, 1919, would a tribunal be likely to sit as rarely as monthly, let alone once in two months.

B: To enable a man or an employer claiming particular circumstances of hardship to make alternative arrangements to obviate the hardship in question.

The effect on the call-up process would be different in the two cases.

All applications had the effect of suspending call-up until the application was resolved, so:

In A there was no resolution by the end of the hearing on the date in question, and it would be for the tribunal on receiving the requested information at the adjourned hearing to decide whether to extend the temporary period, or to grant indefinite exemption, or to refuse any further exemption.

In B the Army would be notified that the applicant would be available for call-up from the date of expiry of the temporary exemption.

It needs to be understand that the function of a tribunal was to decide whether a man was to be exempted, temporarily or permanently, from availability for cal-up. Once an applicant had effectively been declared available for call-up by refusal of exemption or the expiry of a temporary exemption, the tribunal had no responsibility for the call-up process itself, which was a matter for the Army recruitment authorities.

I suppose it is possible that in some particular place a journalist had observed that it seemed to take the military authorities some two months to get round to calling up a man once he had been freed for call-up, but this certainly was not general, at least in the early days. There were several notorious cases of the Army notifying the police to arrest a man for failing to respond to a call-up notice at a time when his application had not yet completed the tribunal process.

[alanlw]

I also have a question re the tribunal process. I have reports from the Cheshire War Agricultural Committee which concerned itself with the call up of agricultural labourers and farmers. To quote:

"In June 1917 the Labour Sub-Committee (of the Agricultural Committee) “became responsible for the vouching or otherwise of the men of the land and which men were not to be taken by the military authorities without the consent of the Committee.” (Ref: CRO CCC 1/4/1/1/1 pp10-12). So whilst the actual Military Tribunal reports have in most cases not been preserved (in fact, they were deliberately destroyed) we are fortunate in Cheshire in having some records for the Labour Sub-Committee which list the men who applied for exemption from June 1917 onwards."

The case I am interested in concerns a certain Wincle Farmer, P N Hooley. The first time his name comes up for exemption was in July 1917. He is listed under a heading 'Under Recent Instructions'. I would like to know what that means? Does it mean he had already been called up and was being trained for the army? If so, how come it had got that far when exemption was being applied for?

Despite the Agricultural Committee granting exemption from service in July 1917, 7 months later, in Feb 1918, he applies to be released from the army. He is already a gunner in France. So again, how come he ended up in the army having been exempted? Was the committee simply overruled? Or perhaps the Tribunal disagreed with the Committee?

Any insights welcome. Thank you. Excerpts from minutes below.

[Magnumbellum]

I referred in post 2 to cases where the Army pre-empted the conclusion of the tribunal process by sending call-up notices (with threat of arrest for failure to comply).

My interpretation of the account of P N Hooley is that this is what happened in his case. I have not previously come across the phraseology "Under Recent Instructions", but I would interpret it as meaning that a notice of call-up had been sent, but he had not yet actually reported for training. Exactly what happened with his application after that is not clear, except that he ended up in the Army and posted to France.

I can only comment that the Army's obsession with recruitment was such that if it meant overriding any concept of civil liberty or due administrative or legal process, then "tough".

The source of the paragraph cited in quotation marks in post 3 is not stated, but it contains a serious error in referring to "Military Tribunal reports". "Military Tribunal" means, as in the USA and in some European continental countries, a tribunal comprising military personnel. Fortunately, the UK has been free of such excrescences. The tribunals ordained by the Military Service Act 1916 and subsequent legislation were Military Service Tribunals, comprising civilians, and a misnomer can serve only to create confusion.

[alanlw]

Thanks for that.