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Conscription during the First World War began when the British Parliament passed the Military Service Act in January 1916. The Act specified that single men aged 18 to 40 years old were liable to be called up for military service unless they were widowed with children, or were ministers of a religion.
It remains the only period of peacetime conscription in UK history, apart from the periods immediately before and after World War II. The majority of National Servicemen went into the Army and, by 1951, National Servicemen made up half the force, leading to a reduced level of voluntary recruitment to the regular army.
The Conscription Crisis of 1918 occurred when the British Government tried to impose conscription on Ireland. Sinn Féin was publicly perceived to be the key instigator of anti-conscription feeling, and on 17 May the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland , Lord French , claiming there was a treasonable plot between Sinn Féin and the Germans , ordered the ...
The Oxford History of the British Army. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-285333-3. Edmonds, J. E. (1993) [1932]. Military Operations France and Belgium, 1916: Sir Douglas Haig's Command to the 1st July: Battle of the Somme. History of the Great War Based on Official Documents by Direction of the Historical Section of the Committee of Imperial ...
Conscription, also known as the draft in American English, is the practice in which the compulsory enlistment in a national service, mainly a military service, is enforced by law. [1] Conscription dates back to antiquity and it continues in some countries to the present day under various names.
However, 38% of single men and 54% of married men had resisted the mass orchestrated pressure to enlist in the war, so the British Government, determined to ensure a supply of replacements for the mounting casualties overseas, had to pass the Military Service Act 1916, which authorized conscription, on 27 January 1916. [8]
The highly controversial introduction, in January 1916, of conscription for the first time in British history followed the raising of one of the largest all-volunteer armies in history, known as Kitchener's Army, of more than 2,000,000 men. [1]: 504 The outbreak of war was a socially unifying event. [2]
Establishment and Strength of the British Army (excluding Indian native troops stationed in India) prior to August, 1914. By the First World War, the British military forces (i.e., those raised in British territory, whether in the British Isles or colonies, and also those raised in the Channel Islands, but not the British Indian Army, the military forces of the Dominions, or those of British ...