Pathologising 'Refusal': Prison, Health and Conscientious Objectors during the First World War.

This article examines the extent to which the refusals of British conscientious objectors (COs) to fight during the First World War were pathologised through the lens of physical and mental health, and the ways in which such a pathology impacted their treatment in penal establishments. It argues that the government compromised the physical the mental health of absolutist COs. The article also analyses the effects of the state's pathologising efforts upon objectors, and the methods through which the physical bodies of COs were utilised against, or annexed by, the authorities.

'If I Ever Have to Go to Prison, I Hope it's a Russian Prison': British Labour, Social Democracy and Soviet Communism, 1919-25.

Through the inter-war period, the USSR became an example of 'socialism in action' that the British labour movement could both look towards and define itself against. British visitors both criticized and acclaimed aspects of the new Soviet state between 1919 and 1925, but a consistently exceptional finding was the Soviet prison. Analysing the visits and reports of British guests to Soviet prisons, the aims of this article are threefold.