John Battley

John Rose Battley, JP FRSA (26 November 1880 – 1 November 1952) was a British printer, company director and Labour Party politician. He served on the London County Council and was Member of Parliament for Clapham for a single five-year term. He was a notable pacifist and conscientious objector.

John Rose Battley was born on 26 November 1880 to Adah Elizabeth Battley (née Maderson), a seamstress, and George Battley, a labourer who later opened a grocer's shop. His mother died in 1887 (in JRB's words) "due to working as a sempstress at her treadle sewing machine night after night into the early hours of the morning in order to help my father, who was a casual labourer, to provide their children with a fair share of bread and dripping for breakfast and tea, and boiled rice for dinner."

Battley attended the Basnett Road Elementary School, leaving aged 13 to become a printer's apprentice. He found this experience quite distressing, describing the "mischief done to my mind and soul as a lad" but later set up his own printing firm with his brother George in 1905. At a time when a week's paid holiday was standard in the printing trade, Battley Brothers offered a fortnight. In addition, they offered their employees a Sick & Funeral Fund, Endowment Fund, Hospital Savings Association, Study Circle, Staff Samaritans Fund, the firm's sports teams, pay higher than the trade union standard, Christmas boxes, a silver spoon for every baby born to an employee, as well as contributing half the cost of employees' overalls and their laundering.

Battley became a pacifist during the Boer War. In the First World War, Battley's Baptist beliefs and membership of the Fellowship of Reconciliation bade him to declare his conscientious objection. The Battersea Military Service Tribunal granted him exemption only from combatant military service; he appealed to the London county appeal tribunal, and was granted exemption from all military service conditional upon working as a market gardener.

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