Why so many Diggers voted ‘no’ to conscription in WWI

Democracy as we know is under siege. The US is tumbling towards a constitutional crisis and some developing countries are abandoning democracy. What once appeared as a gradual democratic recession has become tidal.

Australia is lucky to have so far avoided the worst of anti-democratic sentiments, such as the increasing polarisation of views and violence seen elsewhere. That fact should be recognised and celebrated. It was, at least in part, what the Diggers fought for. As prime minister at the time Billy Hughes stated, “We fight not for material wealth, not for aggrandisement of Empire, but for the right of every nation, small as well as large, to live its own life in its own way. We fight for those institutions upon which democratic government rests.”

Members of the 44th Battalion cast their ballots in the 1917 conscription referendum on the Western Front.Credit: Australian War Memorial

The strength of our democracy and its institutions is worth celebrating this Anzac Day by remembering the Australian Diggers who took part in that great democratic tool, a referendum, during World War I.

In 1916 and 1917, Australia’s servicemen and women were asked to vote on military conscription: could the Australian government force men to enlist and serve in war overseas? Hughes himself campaigned for a Yes vote. The vote ultimately failed, with a 51 per cent majority for No in 1916 and a similar 53 per cent majority in 1917. Uniquely, the vote was extended to the 330,000 servicemen and women of the Australian Imperial Force.

From the hospitals of England, to the deserts of Palestine and the trenches of continental Europe, soldiers expressed their voice on this turbulent question. How would those who were currently serving vote? How would those who had seen what they had seen vote? They bore the sufferings of war, the boredom, the mistreatment and the blinding conflict. Would they force others to come and experience what they had?

An immense 45 per cent (in 1916) and 48 per cent (in 1917) of soldiers voted “no” to conscription. These numbers stand in stark contrast to the images of men who just two years earlier, had fervently lined the streets to enlist. What had changed their tone so decidedly?

The prime minister, Billy Hughes, speaks for the cause of conscription in 1916.Credit: Australian War Memorial

A collection of more than 500 personal diaries at the State Library of NSW provides some insights.

Captain Arthur Smith from Castlemaine, Victoria wrote: “Personally, I don’t want to be reinforced by the type that will be brought to light [by the vote].” Similarly, Private Gordon Edwards objected to being “reinforced with conscripts, the majority of whom would not be too willing to fight”.

Another, Private Arthur Giles stated forcibly that “if they don’t come of their own free will, let them stay away … the majority would only let us down when in a tight corner” and simply “wouldn’t [be] the same class of men at all”.

These entries reveal the “stigma of conscription”, a known phenomenon that occurred in countries that introduced compulsory military service, such as England and New Zealand. These comments played into concerns for the quality and calibre of conscripted men, whose motivation, discipline and military effectiveness would be supposedly less than those who had come voluntarily.

Other reasons that emerge in the soldiers’ diaries is a distinct resentment towards military authorities. The Australian history curriculum teaches well-known, but mythologised accounts of the Digger as a larrikin who had a natural distrust of authority.

The accounts in the diaries do not support that narrative, but are related. They are littered with frustrating accounts of soldiers being used in ways that created palpable anger. Sergeant Major Eric Clarke of Fairfield wrote: “We were all told to stand fast and record our votes for conscription … we were kept on parade in torrents of rain and a bitterly cold wind for five hours to record our vote, what is only for the result of same to be. In speaking of it afterwards we found that 90 per cent voted NO in [our] division”.

Similarly, Private Cameron Robertson of Rozelle wrote “if men in Australia knew what they would have to put up with ‘on active service’ … they would see the authorities in hell before they came away. Yet they want conscription in Australia!! Hell! What a fallacy?!!”

The vote among the soldiers was every bit as charged and divisive as it was on the home front. Historian Gerald Kristianson remarked that those who voted “no” on the home front were “viewed akin to traitors” while those who voted “yes” “seemed close to being murderers”.

Digger Peter Turnbull gives us a sense of the intensity of the vote to the soldiers. “We vote tomorrow for or against conscription, only two in our hut out of 12 are for it & we have been arguing all day, in fact nearly fighting,” he wrote.

Private Frank Molony, an architect from Petersham, wrote furiously of “the rumour about that conscription has so far in the counting failed… Oh God make this a lie… if the country we love denies us. The Dead will give us more honour than our living.”

The vote extended to the many faces of Australia’s wartime commitment, including women who made up more than one per cent of the Australian Imperial Force as nurses. Nurse ‘Queenie’ Avenell was not put off by the “156 dressings to do, about 30 one-armed men … [who] are going back to Australia and are all just shattered wrecks really”. Queenie interestingly “voted for it. We have got to win the war by men”.

The very fact Australia and Australian soldiers were afforded the opportunity to vote on this important question is significant historically. The reasons behind how the Diggers voted were deeply personal and provide a glimpse into the divisiveness of the issue and how split the nation was on the proposal.

The results of the two referendums were honoured. No young men were conscripted to serve. Democratic norms were observed and the very freedoms for which the Diggers fought and died were preserved. Now that’s worth celebrating.

Oliver Sinclair is a lawyer and is studying a Masters of International Relations at the Australian National University.

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