Archibald Baxter
Archibald McColl Learmond Baxter (13 December 1881 – 10 August 1970) was a New Zealand socialist, pacifist and conscientious objector.
Baxter also heard Keir Hardie speak during his 1908 visit to New Zealand and concluded that war would not solve problems.
With the introduction of conscription under the Military Service Act 1916, Baxter and his brothers refused to register on the grounds that all war is wrong, futile, and destructive alike to victor and vanquished.
[3]The Act did not recognise their stand, as the only grounds for a man to claim conscientious objection were: That he was on the fourth day of August, nineteen hundred and fourteen, and has since continuously been a member of a religious body the tenets and doctrines of which religious body declare the bearing of arms and the performance of any combatant service to be contrary to Divine revelation, and also that according to his own conscientious religious belief the bearing of arms and the performance of any combatant service is unlawful by reason of being contrary to Divine revelation.
[4] The Act also required all eligible males to enroll in the Expeditionary Force Reserve or face up to 3 months imprisonment or a fine of £50.
[4][5] Baxter and two of his brothers – Alexander and John – were arrested by civilian police in mid March 1917 for failing to enroll under the Act and were first imprisoned in The Terrace Gaol, Wellington.
[6] The four were sentenced to 84 days imprisonment with hard labour, served at both the Terrace Gaol and Mount Cook Prison.
[8] Back at Trentham after release, Archibald Baxter continued to refuse orders and was sentenced to 28 days detention.
In 1917 the Minister of Defence, Sir James Allen, decided that all men claiming to be conscientious objectors but not accepted as such should be sent to the Western Front.
[9] Accordingly, orders were given by Colonel H R Potter, Trentham Camp Commandant, that he along with 13 other conscientious objectors – his two brothers, William Little (Hikurangi), Frederick Adin (Foxton), Garth Carsley Ballantyne (Wellington), Mark Briggs (politician), David Robert Gray (Hinds.
Canterbury), Thomas Percy Harland (Roslyn, Dunedin), Lawrence Joseph Kirwan (Hokitika), Daniel Maguire (Foxton), Lewis Edward Penwright (Geeverton, Tasmania), Henry Patton (Cobden Greymouth) and Albert Ernest Sanderson (Babylori, North Wairoa)[10] – were to be shipped out.
On 24 July they were embarked on the troopship Waitemata[11] en voyage to Cape Town, where a measles epidemic on board caused the ship to stop.
[12][13] After recovery, Archibald and the other two COs were taken on the civilian liner Llanstephan Castle, arriving at Plymouth, Devon, on 26 December.
[16] He was placed under Lt Col George Mitchell, 3rd Otago Reserve Battalion, who investigated his case, questioning him about his beliefs, but ultimately finding that he was considered a soldier by the New Zealand Government.
After further abusive treatment including starvation, he suffered a complete physical and mental breakdown, and was sent to hospital in England about May 1918.
[21] Godley gave orders that if Baxter and the others failed to comply, they were to be "summarily punished or dealt with at reinforcement camps, where they are now, and that they are not to be sent up to the front."
[22] Concern about the fate of Baxter and the others sent to France began to be raised by the Dunedin branch of the Women's International League.
In February 1918 the National Peace Council of New Zealand, wrote to the Minister of Defence, James Allen, expressing concern about the treatment of Baxter and the others.
Regulation 21 (2) required the person objecting to prove they held ".. a genuine belief that it is wrong to engage in warfare in any circumstances."
[37]During the 1950s–60s the Baxters also took a keen interest in botany, discovering on a trip to Dunstan a new plant species now known as Gingidia baxterae.
The Trust hoped to unveil the memorial on the centenary of the Battle of Passchendaele in 2017,[41] however resource consent was not granted until July 2018.
Construction of the memorial, which is estimated to cost $300,000,[46] commenced in April 2021 at a site on the corner of George and Albany Streets, Dunedin and was officially opened on 29 October 2021.
