Imperial War Museum launches its ‘Lives of the First World War’ and International Conscientious Objector Day
In what appears to be the most unlikely coincidence the Imperial War Museum has chosen (Monday 12th May) to announce the launch of its ‘Lives of the First World War’ digital platform in the same week as the celebration of the International Conscientious Objector Day, the 15th May. The platform when fully operational later this year will create an on-line portal through which researchers of all kinds can access First World War digital archives from across the world. Whether searching for a family history or exploring war-related themes of a more academic kind ‘Lives of the First World War’ promises to be an invaluable resource. More than that, the platform will invite people to post their own research and family history data. In that process it is hoped that by the end of the WW1 centenary commemorative period, ‘Lives of the First World War’ will have become a rich, diverse and popular place to record real memories of that great catastrophe.
The Leeds University connection with this IWM project is strong. Professor Alison Fell has served on its Academic Advisory Group from the outset. Retired Leeds and Bretton Hall Senior Lecturer, Cyril Pearce, has also been involved. His Register of British Conscientious Objectors, the product of more than ten years detailed research, will be included in the platform later in the year. This compilation of the stories of more than 17,000 individual Conscientious Objectors from the whole of Britain is the culmination of work which began with his book, Comrades in Conscience: an English community’s opposition to the Great War, first published in 2001. That study was a detailed account of the anti-war movement in Huddersfield. A new and much-revised edition of the book is to be launched in London on the 15th May together with the new ‘centenary’ edition of David Boulton’s classic Objection Overruled. The Huddersfield launch will be it the Town Hall at 7.00 on Friday the 23rd May.