Brace Committee

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This committee, chaired by William Brace MP, was set up in August 1916 to supervise the Home Office Scheme to deal with the problem of conscientious objectors whose claims were refused by a Military Service Tribunal, and were forcibly enlisted in the Army, resulting in them being court-martialled and clogging up civil prisons.

The Central Tribunal was given a new function under the Home Office Scheme, whereby, sitting in prison, it interviewed CO prisoners to assess whether, despite previous rejection of CO status by local or Appeal Tribunals, they were, after all, “genuine” COs, and therefore qualified for an offer on the Scheme. Refusal to accept the Scheme meant remaining in prison to complete the sentence, then returning to the Army, where renewed disobedience would entail another court-martial and another prison sentence.

A number of Work Centres were set up all over the country, often remote geographically. Men on the Home Office Scheme were not prisoners, but they were worked extremely hard, doing back-breaking, and often pointless, tasks. They could leave the centres after a day’s work, and they could meet together on Sunday afternoons. Otherwise conditions were often similar to being in prison. The most notorious centre of all was Dyce Camp, near Aberdeen, where conditions were so bad that, the death of a CO, and the negative publicity it received caused it to be closed down in November 1916. Other centres were set in old or disused prison buildings, Dartmoor became Princeton Work Centre, similarly the Home Office Scheme used Warwick, Wakefield and Knutsford prisons.

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