Gain The Coward: Conscience On Trial Conceived By Tom Wall Shown As Softcover

wasnt a suitable beach read, but Ive never been one for holiday books as a genre.
For me holidays provide a golden space in which to read the books Ive been waiting to read, no matter how heavy, gritty, raw or bleak.
The Coward is all of the above, It provided an important reminder of the political reality behind the bright beach veneer where I was, in Greece, or back home in Britain where Jeremy Corbyn was striding forward as the unexpected face of change while his party quaked, grumbled and spat out warnings of a Labour split in his wake.


Gateshead, preWorld War Two, Bill is a young teen struggling his way through financial hardship, bullying and the abuse of his father who is mentally scarred from fighting in the First World War.
Bill latches on to Len Weaver, an outsider whos called “TattieBoggle” at school because of his unconventional family leftwing intellectuals and Quakers.
Bill finds solace in the welcoming milieu of the Weaver family, and begins to embrace their politics.
They are members of the Independent Labour Party, described by Len as “for the real gutsy socialists, not the timid buggers in the Labour Party” Bill joins them, and it is their rhetoric that provides him with the conviction not to sign up to fight in the war.
He believes that its a war between imperialists and rich men, and that those who will pay are the poor of all nations.
He refuses to join in, and ends up paying the ultimate sacrifice,

I would have unquestioningly labelled Bill a conscientious objector, But Walls novel reveals that what constituted a conscientious objector was not by any means cut and dried.
Bill is made to attend a tribunal, and it becomes clear that the establishment has a narrow conception of what conscience is.


This important aspect of war and moral debate is told poignantly through the complex characters of Bill, his family, friends, comrades and lover.
Difficult clashes of opinion and emotion are carefully explored, and we are left to put our own conscience on trial regarding the rights and wrongs of the stance we take on war.

'The Coward' is a very moving, compelling and wellwritten book that gives a great insight into working class life in the north of England in thes ands.


The politics are interesting and complicated: the main character conscientiously objects to service in the Second World War, on the basis that it is an imperialist war, fought by poor men on behalf of rich men.
Whilst such an assessment would be relatively uncontroversial in relation to the First World War, the Second World War had the added dimension of being a war against German/Italian/Japanese fascism and, from

the left's point of view, a war to defend the Soviet Union.
But just how contentious that topic was can be measured by the fact that Harry Pollitt had to resign his position as General Secretary of the Communist Party of Great Britain on account of his support for the British declaration of war in.


All in all, a really good read, thoroughly recommended, Frail and disillusioned, Bill Rowe languishes in a prison cell, As the Luftwaffe pass overhead, he relives his journey from a basement in Gateshead to a tribunal in London tasked with examining and judging that most private and intimate of things: conscience.
But will he die a coward or will he find the strength to confront his past,