50 Violet Tillard, letter to NCF members, 1916

It was Lilla Brockway who prompted her husband Fenner Brockway to place a letter in the Labour Leader in November 1914 calling for replies from men of enlistment age who would refuse to be combatants. The initial 300 replies led to the formation of the No-Conscription Fellowship. Later in the War, as NCF officials were sent to prison, many of their places were taken by women supporters. Some of these women had been part of the suffrage movement, were skilled organisers, and familiar with police tactics. Violet Tillard had been part of a protest in the House of Commons by the Women’s Freedom League in 1908. She was put on trial May 1918 due to her work with the NCF, when she refused to name the printers of the March 1918 edition of the No-Conscription Fellowship News, she was sent to Holloway Prison for 61 days.