BBC Scotland’s latest World War One At Home stories feature Edinburgh powerhouses Arthur Woodburn and James Connolly
BBC Scotland’s World War One At Home series concentrates on some colourful figures in its latest run: a conscientious objector who later rose to high office and two Scots radicals who were key figures in Dublin’s 1916 Easter Rising.
Published: 23 March 2016
I wrote to the military to say they mustn’t assume from the fact that I was not eligible for the war that I approved of it. So they immediately started a campaign to teach me some different manner.
Arthur Woodburn (pictured) was despised by society when, at 25, he became one of thousands of men jailed for conscientious objection during World War One.
His job as a foundry clerk, seen as vital to the war effort, could have seen him excused from conscription. But his post also gave him insight to how the arms trade worked at the time, and - appalled at the profit being made from war - he refused to get involved.
In an interview before his death in 1978, he said: “I wrote to the military to say they mustn’t assume from the fact that I was not eligible for the war that I approved of it. So they immediately started a campaign to teach me some different manner.”
His appeals fell on deaf ears and he served the majority of a three year, hard labour term at Calton Jail - the site of St Andrew’s House and his headquarters when he took office in Clement Attlee’s Labour Government in 1947.
According to great nephew Ken Duffy, speaking to BBC Scotland Political Editor Brian Taylor, the irony of his government office being built on top of the old jail was not lost on him. Speaking of his great uncle’s imprisonment, Duffy said: “There was no co-operation from him whatsoever. He was uncompromising.”
The landmark World War One At Home project, which began in 2014 and is being broadcast in phases, features 1,400 fascinating, powerful and moving stories linked to places across the UK and Ireland. BBC Scotland is producing 100 stories over the four years of the project. Also featured in this latest round of historical recollections is Edinburgh-born James Connolly, one of the key figures in the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin.
Journalist Sean Bell, son of the late Ian Bell, speaks to Louise Yeoman about Connolly, his great great uncle. The Edinburgh-born revolutionary was a ringleader in the doomed rebellion against British rule that resulted in the occupation of key Dublin buildings, including the General Post Office, on Easter Monday 1916.
It’s now seen as a founding moment for today’s Irish Republic, but at the time, the uprising seemed like an unpopular and reckless failure.
When the rebels finally surrendered, the badly-injured Connolly was taken prisoner and killed shortly after by firing squad in Kilmainham Gaol on 12 May, 1916.
The late Ian Bell of the Herald told his son Sean about being brought as a child in 1968 to the site of Connolly’s birth in Edinburgh’s Cowgate to see a plaque erected in his memory.
Kirsty Lusk of Glasgow University, who studies the Rising, says: “Connolly saw the Easter Rising as a first step towards a socialist revolution. He bound together ideas of national identity and socialism, suggesting that socialism was the original national state of the Irish people, while capitalism was brought in by an alien government. He thought that through national liberation there would be also liberation for the working classes.”
This key event in the story of the Irish Republic is also reflected in the story of Margaret Skinnider, a teacher from Coatbridge, Lanarkshire, who was the only woman volunteer fighter to be severely injured in the combat.
By tapping into the World War One At Home online archive resource, audiences can enter either their county, hometown or postcode to find stories near them, bringing the stories of the war right to their doorstep. Stories by location are available at www.bbc.co.uk/ww1/
• James Connolly’s story is told on BBC Radio Scotland on 28 March, with Margaret Skinnider’s story airing the following day and Arthur Woodburn’s story on 30 March, all on Good Morning Scotland from 6-9.00am. They will then be available online.
