How can fascism be opposed in any other way than by force of arms? — A meditation for Remembrance Sunday

Rev Dudley Eric Richards BA, BD (1911-2007) fifth from the right (at the very back)

 

A short “thought for the day” offered to the Cambridge Unitarian Church as part of the Sunday Service of Mindful Meditation.

(Click on this link to hear a recorded version of the following piece)

—o0o—

 

 

RICHARDS Dudley Eric. B 12 July 1911 in Liverpool. Educated at Cambridge, Manchester, Manchester College Oxford (MCO). BA, BD. Ministry 1947-1977, from 1974 Vice Principal and Senior Tutor MCO. Died 2 November 2007 at Oxford. (Obituary in The Inquirer: 17 Nov 2007, p 11 and GA Dir 2008/2009, p 77-78.)

Between 1997-2000, during my training for the ministry, I was taught Latin by a well-respected Unitarian minister and the former Vice-Principal and Senior Tutor of Manchester College in Oxford, the Rev Dudley E Richards, MA, BD. By this time he was 86 years old and long retired, but despite his age he remained completely compos mentis and actively involved in supporting the education of prospective Unitarian ministers at the college.

It became our custom to conclude the tutorial with a cup of tea, some cake and an often lengthy conversation about things ministerial and Unitarian. I learnt many things from Dudley during these tutorials, but one thing stands out that deserves to be told on this particular Remembrance Sunday. I have never spoken about it before, but the result of the US election and the fact that John Kelly, the retired Marine general who was Donald Trump’s White House chief of staff between 2017 and 2019, has made it clear the president elect fits “into the general definition of fascist” and “certainly prefers the dictator approach to government,” impels me to speak about it today.
 
Dudley was born in 1911 so was too young to serve in WWI. However, for various reasons, in the post-WWI period he became an admirer of the conscientious objectors who had refused to fight what had seemed to them — and, indeed, to Dudley — to have been a brutal and pointless war. This led to Dudley becoming involved in the Peace Movement himself and I recall him telling me he signed the Peace Pledge Union’s well-known statement:

“War is a crime against humanity. I renounce war, and am therefore determined not to support any kind of war. I am also determined to work for the removal of all causes of war.”

Since I was, and to a great extent remain, influenced by the religious thinking of the novelist, Christian Anarchist and pacifist, Leo Tolstoy — something Dudley knew about me — I was positively moved by this part of his story, not least of all because I felt I was being personally inducted into a radical, liberal and free religious, pacifist tradition that I had long admired.

I still think I was right to feel that this is what he was doing. However, like every truly great teacher, Dudley was not going to give me an easy ride. I realised this when his story suddenly took an unexpected turn as he began to reflect on his personal experience of WWII. Listening to him was a profound moment that powerfully challenged, and still powerfully challenges, my own natural, and sometimes still too simplistically expressed, pacifist tendencies. 

At the start of the conflict in 1939, Dudley was 28 and the recently passed National Service (Armed Forces) Act meant he was conscripted along with all males aged between 18 and 41. As you have already heard, by this time Dudley was a committed pacifist, and so on a point of principle and with WWI as his foundational example, he became one of the only 60,000 British men and 900 women who attested a conscientious objection during WWII. I recall that Dudley told me me about this in words that were close to those used by another WWII conscientious objector, author and broadcaster, Edward Blishen, whilst being interviewed for the Imperial War Museum’s oral history project:

“I looked at things very simply in those days. Pacifism had seemed to be the air we all breathed when we were in the grammar school together … We all read Remarque and Barbusse and Toller, and our views had always appeared so beautifully clear [black and white]. War was black. Any war was black.”

Dudley’s brave and principled decision meant he had to appear before a tribunal to argue his reasons for refusing to join-up. As someone on his way to training for the ministry of the General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches, his proffered reasons were, naturally, religious ones — as were, apparently, the majority of reasons given by conscientious objectors in WWII. However, as the war unfolded over the next five years, and it began to become ever more clear about just how evil the Nazi regime was, Dudley told me he began more and more seriously to doubt his decision not to take up arms. Alas, I didn’t write down Dudley’s own words about this, but once again, Edward Blishen’s words come close enough to my general recollection of the tenor of Dudley’s own, for me to quote them here:

“I wondered, had I been motivated simply by the dread of being killed or maimed? … Wasn’t it true that through five years of universal agony, I had hidden away in despicable refuge? Had I even been a good pacifist? I had shuffled, hummed and hawed — put off all painful decisions. There it was, nearly over, and I was ashamed of myself.”

Sitting in my college room, a full fifty years after the ending of WW2, although he remained wholly commited to the ways of non-violence and the cause of peace, it was painfully clear to me just how heavily his decision not to fight in that war continued to weigh upon him, and that he still felt some kind of shame about that.

And so today, twenty-seven years further on, in the week when an individual who clearly fits the definition of a fascist and who revels in expressions of violence has become leader of the most powerful nation in the world, I find myself recalling Dudley’s story and the challenge he left me; a challenge which was succinctly summed up by another WWII consciencious objector, John Corsellis, who served with a Friends’ Ambulance Unit:

“I was well aware of the very great and extreme evil of Nazism, and conscious that the pacifist had only a very thin answer indeed as to how Nazism could be opposed in any other way than by force of arms.”

I truly wish it were not so, but today this hard question is firmly back on our generation’s table, and our answers to it cannot afford to be thin:

How can fascism be opposed in any other way than by force of arms?

—o0o—

Following my address for Remembrance Sunday at this morning’s Service of Mindful Meditation, Music and Conversation I added the following questions posed by the poet, writer and pacifist, William Stafford (1914-1993) which were found in his notes for a high-school class discussion of pacifism. If invited, he would volunteer to visit classes to discuss writing, the creative process, and a life of witness.

(From Every War Has Two Losers: William Stafford on Peace and War, Milkwood Editions, 2005, p. 141)

GANDHI QUESTIONS, CITIZEN QUESTIONS, TRENDS OF THOUGHT

• Can a good person be a good citizen in a bad country? Is there such a thing?
• Can a good person be a good friend of a bad person?
• Can you speak truth to power?
• How loud do you have to say no to an evil command? Can you safely say yes? 
• They give you a flag and watch to see how hard you wave it. 
• Should your effort be to overcome those who oppose the good as you see it? — or should you try to redeem them? No matter who...