My father, the Conscientious Objector

I was born in 1951 in London to parents of different faiths. My mother was of Jewish descent, her parents having emigrated to England in 1911 from Germany, while my father (John Allen Benstead) was the only child of staunchly Christian parents.

My parents married after the end of WW2, once they had completed their university studies. They were both undergraduates at King's College London, my father reading English Literature and my mother languages. As was the practice during WW2, as students, they were moved out of London to continue their studies and my father (who was born in 1919 and therefore of conscription age) declared himself a conscientious objector. We believe, though we have no way of confirming this, that his grounds for refusing to go to war were based on his religious beliefs. The reason this confuses us (my sisters and myself) is that, in later life, our father became a Humanist and would argue vehemently with anyone who promoted any religious faith or following.

My parents were relocated to Bristol, where my father, as a conscientious objector, was put on fire watch. Considering that Bristol was, at that time, a major port and was heavily bombed by the Luftwaffe between June 1940 and May 1944, being on fire watch (presumably, on the roofs of buildings) would have been a perilous occupation!

Sadly, as is the case for so many of us in life, I failed to have any detailed conversations with my father about his/their time in Bristol (he died in 1998) and so have only scant information to offer. I have, however, discovered that some 60,000 British men (and many British women) declared themselves conscientious objectors in WW2 and were not roundly vilified and declared cowards (or shot!), as happened in WW1.

My father's father was invalided out of WW1 and subsequently became a barber and ladies hairdresser and (as family stories have it) was barber to army officers - possibly working for a while at Sandhurst. But - that's a whole other story!