James Scott Duckers

[9][10] He was known as a Wesleyan Methodist;[11] and he gave pro bono legal advice, as a volunteer with the mission and social work of the Baptist ministers F. B. Meyer and Thomas Phillips (1868–1936).

[15] He was a supporter of Home Rule for Ireland, and member of the Eighty Club, and was invited in the same month to stand as the Liberal Party candidate for Brentford.

Duckers in his wartime memoirs recalled that in late July and early August 1914 the National Liberal Club, where he resided, became "a sort of whirlpool of jingoism".

[21] At this point Duckers himself belonged to the ILP, and the Union of Democratic Control, as well as being a leading figure in the NCF, and was the target of police attention.

[11] It was a small fish among the pacifist organisations, overlapping the larger NCF in membership, with a mission statement to "demand that Britain's part in the war shall be brought to an immediate, honourable and righteous end.

"[24] In December 1915 Duckers represented Norman and the SWC in a case arising from a police raid on an ILP office in Salford.

[25][26] The Labour Leader published on 2 March 2016 his article "A Courageous Woman: A Sentence of Six Months" on the imprisonment of Nellie Best, secretary of the Women's Anti-Conscription League.

[33] On 21 August 1916, Thomas Richardson asked of the War Office minister Henry Forster in parliament," whether Mr. Scott Duckers, who has served his term of imprisonment [...] has since been sent back to the Army, and is now stationed at Sheerness; and whether it is the intention of the Government to keep up this system of persecution by forcing men to go through the same process time after time?"

Forster did not accept the term "persecution", applied to an "insubordinate soldier"; and explained that on 8 August Duckers had appeared before the Central Tribunal, and would have nothing to do with it.

[9][32] He was one of a group of noted "absolutist", non-cooperating conscientious objectors there, with Clifford Allen, Fenner Brockway and Herbert Runham Brown.

[42] Scott Duckers & Thompson defended James Winstone in a September 1919 libel action brought by Sir Eric Geddes.

[43] In 1920 Duckers was retained to defend John Frederick Hedley of the Socialist Labour Party, charged under the Defence of the Realm Act 1914.

[46] The firm defended a libel action in April 1921, brought in the wake of the Black Friday crisis by J. H. Thomas against the printers of The Communist, the National Labour Press, and its editor, Francis Meynell.

[54] He became a Liberal Party candidate, standing in the March 1924 Westminster Abbey by-election, chosen on 26 February conditional on Winston Churchill's candidacy.

After running a skeleton campaign, he came bottom of the poll, with only 1.9% of the vote, one of the lowest on record for a major party, and behind Fenner Brockway in third, with Churchill placed second.