About the process

Barry Mills, a member of Northern Friends Peace Board, began collating data about Conscientious Objectors (COs) from the Second World War during the Covid pandemic. Although there are many records of COs held by organisations like the Peace Pledge Union, and an extensive database of WWI COs compiled by Cyril Pearce, there is no single consolidated database of WWII conscientious objectors. 

Barry scours online sources and visits libraries and archives to find records. One rich source of information is press archives, since tribunals were often reported in local newspapers. Barry has recorded the source of the data for every record that you see on this website.

Information on each CO traced is added to a searchable database and, where addresses are available, onto maps based on the location of the tribunal attended by the CO.

Mapping the data is a challenge as we now have 20,000 records. For this reason we have split them into regional maps which should be simple to search.