Free Joe Glenton!
Whilst the war criminal Tony
Blair walks free, having suffered not so much as a slapped wrist from the joke
Chilcott Commission, the truly heroic Joe Glenton remains banged up for nine
months at a prison camp in Colchester, a judgement that was confirmed on 21
April when his appeal was rejected. His crime? Refusing to fight a war in Afghanistan which he had come to realise was both illegal and immoral.
The judge at his court martial, one Emma Peters,
waxed lyrical over the unfairness of some other unfortunate having to be sent
to the front to take Glenton’s place, all because he refused to do his “duty”.
However, as was established by more competent judges at the Nuremberg Tribunal,
the plea that one was “just following orders” and doing one’s “duty”
is no justification in international law for participating in the commission of
war crimes. The cowards are the politicians, military leaders and judges who
conspire to send soldiers to kill and be killed in genocidal wars of
aggression. The heroes are those who, like Joe Glenton, are prepared to
sacrifice their own freedom sooner than lend their assistance to these crimes
against humanity. By throwing down his gun and marching boldly at the head of
the last national demonstration against the war in Afghanistan, Glenton was
acting in the real interests of British workers – not least those in uniform.
Every day that Glenton spends in a prison cell is
an affront to natural justice and international law, and the campaign to free
him deserves the support of all decent people. The state’s sensitivity to the
impact upon public opinion of such principled defiance of its warmongering can
perhaps be judged by the fact that the much more serious charge of desertion
was quietly dropped in favour of the lesser charge of going absent without
leave. We can assume that this softly-softly approach derived less from a
tender regard for Glenton’s welfare than from an understandable reluctance to
risk the trial developing into a public critique of the legality of the war
itself.
It is not the first time
that a British soldier has found himself up on a charge for refusing to fire at
his brothers, nor is it the first time in such a case that a charge of
desertion has been softened to one of going AWOL for fear of triggering a
public backlash. Back in the railway strike of 1911, when Churchill sent in the
troops to regain control of Llanelli station from the strikers and over a
thousand of their supporters, Private Harold Spiers found himself called upon
to “act in the assistance of the civil power”, i.e. turn his gun on his
fellow workers. As part of their efforts to close the line down the workers
had managed to halt a scab-driven train just outside the station. The army
under a Major Brownlow Stuart was guarding the train while the working people
of Llanelli kept a close and hostile watch from the embankments on either side
of the track. Some stones were thrown, in response to which the riot act was
read and then the order to fire was given. Two men who had been observing
events from a back garden were shot dead, one a highly regarded local rugby
player and the other a railway labourer who had interrupted his shaving to see
what the fuss was about. The murders resulted in an outburst of popular rage
and further tragic loss of life.
In the middle of all this, Private Harold Spiers
took a stand. He refused Major Stuart’s order to fire and was arrested and
held as a prisoner. Later he contrived to escape in the confusion.
Apprehended and charged with desertion, he was at once embraced by the workers
as a hero. Mirroring the general sentiment, the Independent Labour Party (ILP)
at Penygraig declared
“We appreciate and record our admiration for
Private Spiers for refusing to shoot when ordered at Llanelly, and in our
opinion the courage displayed by him on that occasion deserves the highest
praise that can be bestowed upon him, and we demand his immediate release”. (Killing
No Murder, Robert Griffiths, p.60)
And a poem written by Rose Sharland and published
in the Clarion depicted the stand-off between Major and Private in terms
which could apply equally to that between Judge and Lance Corporal at Glenton’s
court-martial.
“You hear me?” roared he, “Do your duty!
Protect England’s wealth from their greed,
Her statesmen, her power and her beauty
Will praise you for serving her need;
So shoot for old England, your mother,
Deserters the world will deride”.
He answered “I shoot not my brother”,
And stood with his gun at his side.
(ibid, p.61)
Scared by this mutinous popular response, the
military did all they could to muddy the waters and undermine Spiers’
credibility. They fed the press the tale that Spiers had not personally been
ordered to shoot, had not actually refused, possibly had not even been present
at the time! But when various dubious witnesses tried to testify in support of
this version, their accounts all contradicted one another.
Churchill’s under-secretary of state relayed the
Home Secretary’s view to the War office. Churchill, he reported, “has
noticed in the newspapers the case of a private soldier who is reported to have
refused to fire at Llanelly on the occasion of the recent riot and who
subsequently deserted… in his opinion if the alleged incident actually took
place, it would be contrary to the public interest to make the case a cause
celebre by holding a sensational court martial, and thus investing it with an
unnecessary and extremely undesirable importance. Mr Churchill hopes that the
course will be adopted which will most effectively avoid any undesirable
publicity.” (ibid, p.64)
With the authorities under instruction from the
highest levels to drop this hot potato as fast as possible, the desertion
charge against Spiers was dropped and (does this sound familiar?) replaced by
the lesser charge of going AWOL. Spiers stayed a mere two weeks in the glass
house and two months later bought his release from service.
Despite the campaign of misinformation about the
Spiers case, the “undesirable publicity” continued to serve as an
inspiration to the working class in revolt against capitalism, an inspiration
which neither propaganda nor brute force was able to extinguish. At the
beginning of 1912, a railway worker was arrested for publishing a leaflet which
exhorted soldiers not to be brutalised into acting as a tool of repression
against workers’ resistance:
“When WE kick, they order YOU to MURDER us.
When YOU kick, YOU get court martialled and cells. YOUR fight is OUR fight.
Instead of fighting AGAINST each other, WE should be fighting with each other.”
(ibid, p.66)
And when in turn Tom Mann reprinted the
leaflet in his paper, The Industrial Syndicalist, he was charged with
incitement to mutiny and sentenced to a six month stretch – but got out after
seven weeks thanks to some serious campaigning in the labour movement. Let us
see what can be achieved today by the campaign to free Joe Glenton!
Because the ruling class is not mistaken in fearing
the power of a good example, today no less than a hundred years ago. The
criminal war against Afghanistan cannot be waged without the daily practical
support of workers, whether in or out of uniform. As the recent Proletarian
article concluded, Glenton “has set an example to all those British workers
and soldiers who are connected with the illegal war effort, whether it be
making and moving arms or supplies, fighting, or writing and broadcasting the
propaganda.”
Free
Joe Glenton!
Follow
his example!