High Street, Oxford: Challenging Conscription

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Oxford is one of the few places in the country where the records of the local military service tribunal hearings still exist. The tribunals heard appeals against conscription - which was brought in in 1916 – they were charged with balancing the army's needs while keeping their local economies functioning. Men could appeal on grounds of domestic or business hardship, and local businesses often represented their employees. The City of Oxford Electric Tramways had lost many of their employees to military service. They only trained new drivers who were already exempt. They had taken on women conductors but struggled to keep services running as more and more of their workforce was called up. Jim McDermott, who studied the tribunals, for his PHD, explains how Oxford's panel would have responded to this sort of representation. He recounts other strategies which were regularly used to gain exemption. These included pleas from bakers that their wives wouldn't stand for women working in the bakery in the early hours with their husbands stripped to the waist at their ovens! But he also argues that people's attitudes to conscription were not those we would necessarily hold today and that for the most part it was accepted as a necessary evil. Location: 90 High Street, Oxford OX1 4BJ Image: Oxford Local Military Tribunals record book, courtesy of Oxford Archive Presented by Jane Markham, Podcats Productions