William Wallace and All That

Allan Burnett

Allan Burnett was a Scottish anarchist activist. He was a member of the Glasgow Anarchist Federation in his youth. When, in 1943, he resisted conscription to the British forces during the Second World War, he was sent to Glasgow's Barlinnie Prison and later to Slateford Prison, Edinburgh as one of 61.000 British conscientious objectors. At his trial at Glasgow Sheriff Court he said that “I refuse to be pitchforked or led into slaughter, like so much human manure, or to be duped into the lunatic butchery of my comrades and fellow workers of other geographical spheres who are like-wise enslaved in a system of organized misery imposed on them by their respective ruling classes.”