took a big step forward when, on October 16, 1934, a letter appeared in the
Manchester Guardian< calling on people to write a postcard stating that
they
would "renounce war and never again support another".
Written by the Rev Richard Shepphard, canon of St Paul's Cathedral, the
letter drew a huge response and catalysed the founding of the Peace Pledge
Union (PPU). Shepphard had been an army chaplain during the First World War
and by the 1930s he was increasingly alarmed at the failure of the great
powers to agree to international disarmament.
The response to his letter was immediate. Within a few weeks around 30,000
people had pledged their
support, and by the time Sheppard died three years
later there were 100,000 members of the PPU. They formed a focus for
peaceful resistance to war. Crucially, they now included significant
literary, political and religious figures, from Siegfried Sassoon and Aldous
Huxley to Bertrand Russell and George Lansbury.
By the Second World War the question of conscientious objection had become
primarily one of individual response rather than group religious belief. The
composers Benjamin Britten and Michael Tippett, who were to go on to become
two of the defining influences of post-war classical composition, were both
resolute objectors to the "just war" of 1939-1945. Both
cited their connection with PPU in presenting their case.
When the inevitable call-up came, Tippett's letter to the review board
outlined a nascent political philosophy. He wrote:
"My first political act was to attend an International Congress of Youth
at
Brussels in 1922 called by Jeunesse Suisse Romande to discuss methods of
raising money to send victims of the Great War to sanatoria in the Swiss
mountains. I was 17 years old. It is not now possible for me to be at war
with what amounts to those same children. Our present day pacifism holds that
the present horrors and evil results of modern total war are far greater than
the evils which the wars hope to