Should National Service be mandatory ?

mosssideblue said:
As you know though, there aren't enough volunteering anymore
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I'm not sure that is true, I expect many that do aren't wanted, or are rejected for a hundred reasons. As @TonyM says, some form of "service" might prepare many of those better, so when they do volunteer they'd pass muster, but equally many go through eduction to be useful members of society, so they don't need to be part of it.

My son wanted to join the army in his late teens, and at uni, we did everything we could to persuade him not to (we were sending people to die in places that were nothing really to the UK), happily it worked, and he now runs a businees providing work for others, and gets very well paid for it, more than I've ever earned anyway, and has a great young family, without our persuasion he might have joined and we/he might never had that chance.
 
cleavers said:
I'm not sure that is true, I expect many that do aren't wanted, or are rejected for a hundred reasons. As @TonyM says, some form of "service" might prepare many of those better, so when they do volunteer they'd pass muster, but equally many go through eduction to be useful members of society, so they don't need to be part of it.

My son wanted to join the army in his late teens, and at uni, we did everything we could to persuade him not to (we were sending people to die in places that were nothing really to the UK), happily it worked, and he now runs a businees providing work for others, and gets very well paid for it, more than I've ever earned anyway, and has a great young family, without our persuasion he might have joined and we/he might never had that chance.
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Certainly for the Navy it is true and the recruitment drive on TV for Marines and Army is still ever present. As you say though, many may be being rejected or one reason or another. I do think tough if things start to look even more grim, then the joining criteria may be relaxed
 
mosssideblue said:
I do think tough if things start to look even more grim, then the joining criteria may be relaxed
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It may have to be, but I think the bar right now is pretty high for good reason. One thing we could do with though is a much larger, but well trained reserve (for all branches), some of my colleagues (civilian) are reservists, and they have to do quite a bit of training over the year, and are part of various excercises and operations on a short term basis (it causes us a lot of headaches from a staffing point of view).
 
AlexWilliamsGloves said:
If only we had a construct where those nearest and dearest to us could instill such traits...or in those unfortunate situations where such a thing doesnt exist or isnt as strong as one would hope, we could then rely on a place that children and young people could attend every day where trained professionals could also instill such traits....i mean, they could even test them after a period of time to see how well they did.
Id even let the kids have a really long holiday over the summer

:-)
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If only in such a place they though them to left a fuckin cup instead of learning the squareroot of feckin natin.
 
Imagine the amount of crockery that could be elevated if our youth only knew how.

This is probably where China excels.
 
threespires said:
I've wandered what conscription would look like now and how it might work, or not as the case may be. YouGov did some follow up polling last year on 18-40 year olds after a previous poll identified that more people would refuse to serve than would volunteer or accept conscription. I'm paraphrasing but the single biggest reason given for saying they would refuse was they would not fight for people who didn't give a toss about them.

What was interesting was there were two sides to this view, those who cited wealth concentration and inequality and those who cited mass immigration etc. Either way people across the political spectrum were saying they weren't going to die for 'elites'.

I don't know how that compares to attitudes prior to the two WWs but society has changed markedly since those times. Not only is there much less deference now but you can reasonably say that a sense of duty permeated all levels of society so there was a sense of everyone shouldering the burden whether equally or not. It's reasonable to say that the upper/middle classes didn't insulate themselves from the effects of war, certainly not in WW1 at least. Now I suspect most people would assume that the wealthy's response to conflict would be to absolutely try to insulate themselves. What rising inequality and the concentration of wealth in a tiny proportion of the population has done is create a sense of unfairmess that I think will continue to feed a refusal to serve.

I've wondered if whether a very clear and present existential threat to our way of life will change people's minds and they'd serve even with their misgivings but I suspect it might take more than that. Without an ostentatious show that the burden will be shouldered 'fairly', conscription could be an absolute shit show. What form that ostentatious show takes I don't know but it would also have to be something genuine and profound for it to wash. Maybe the offspring of the wealthiest will have to be drafted in at scale into some of the most dangerous roles; maybe some sort of post-war societal reset covenant agreed upfront; maybe significant portions of the super rich's wealth will have to be coopted for the war effort with no return provided for it. All sounds a bit pie in the sky but the post-war social consensus has long since died on its arse and, without some sort of renewal, getting people to fight for a society they don't feel they have a stake in is going to be a tall order I suspect.
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Really thought provoking post . Thank you.
In regards to the historical context,in between the wars there was similar concern. With the First World War still fresh in the memory there was a strong pacifist movement operating with the backdrop of widespread poverty exacerbated by the economic conditions wrought by the Great Depression of the 30's and even starker disparity of wealth than today. A now famous debate was held at the Oxford Union which captured the mood...
Screenshot 2025-02-19 at 21.27.21.png

Of course now we know what actually happened when the country did face an existential threat.
I would like to think that the young generation of today would perhaps surprise us as they have did back then and now in Ukraine.
Though when I think about it they have as you say plenty of reasons not to.
Back then we had a strong sense of nationhood and pride in our history. For the last 25 years our elites have done their best to dilute and our sense of nationhood and taught our children to be ashamed of our history. It is going to sound a bit rich to now ask them to die for it.The greatest irony will be that it will be white working class males who will be expected to step up in the greatest numbers to make the greatest sacrifice (The British army is overwhelmingly white), the most reviled group in Britain, those with their St Georges flags so despised by the likes of Emily Thornberry and her ilk in the Labour Party. Should it come to conscription I think Thornberry should be put in charge of that the programme. It would be interesting to see how far she would get with " Diversity is our Strength" I suspect that diversity would not be our strength in respect of our ability to recruit an army and fight a war. That said it has become a bit of a mantra on the right to claim that multiculturalism has failed , I wouldn't go that far, but it may be failing and maybe an existential threat as we may face might save it, if our armed forces are supported by all the cultures in our country.

In regard to stepping up to support the current wealth status quo. Usually after a war some effort is made towards improving the lot of the lower classes, usually due to fear of what these returning men who are now soldiers might be capable of.However I am not optimistic given recent history.....
2008 Financial crisis - Caused by super rich bankers - Being paid for by all of us.
Covid - Remember how grateful we all were for our nurses and care workers? didn't Johnson and his crew promise that when it was all over we would " Build back better" and elevate the status and pay of these key workers ?
What happened - nothing !

So I would agree , there are lots of good reasons for our young people to refuse conscription or National service. However, when it comes to it I think many would accept the call and if it happened it may be an opportunity for our country to rediscover its values and unity -But our leaders will have their work cut out !
 
Hertzblue said:
Really thought provoking post . Thank you.
In regards to the historical context,in between the wars there was similar concern. With the First World War still fresh in the memory there was a strong pacifist movement operating with the backdrop of widespread poverty exacerbated by the economic conditions wrought by the Great Depression of the 30's and even starker disparity of wealth than today. A now famous debate was held at the Oxford Union which captured the mood...
View attachment 147373

Of course now we know what actually happened when the country did face an existential threat.
I would like to think that the young generation of today would perhaps surprise us as they have did back then and now in Ukraine.
Though when I think about it they have as you say plenty of reasons not to.
Back then we had a strong sense of nationhood and pride in our history. For the last 25 years our elites have done their best to dilute and our sense of nationhood and taught our children to be ashamed of our history. It is going to sound a bit rich to now ask them to die for it.The greatest irony will be that it will be white working class males who will be expected to step up in the greatest numbers to make the greatest sacrifice (The British army is overwhelmingly white), the most reviled group in Britain, those with their St Georges flags so despised by the likes of Emily Thornberry and her ilk in the Labour Party. Should it come to conscription I think Thornberry should be put in charge of that the programme. It would be interesting to see how far she would get with " Diversity is our Strength" I suspect that diversity would not be our strength in respect of our ability to recruit an army and fight a war. That said it has become a bit of a mantra on the right to claim that multiculturalism has failed , I wouldn't go that far, but it may be failing and maybe an existential threat as we may face might save it, if our armed forces are supported by all the cultures in our country.

In regard to stepping up to support the current wealth status quo. Usually after a war some effort is made towards improving the lot of the lower classes, usually due to fear of what these returning men who are now soldiers might be capable of.However I am not optimistic given recent history.....
2008 Financial crisis - Caused by super rich bankers - Being paid for by all of us.
Covid - Remember how grateful we all were for our nurses and care workers? didn't Johnson and his crew promise that when it was all over we would " Build back better" and elevate the status and pay of these key workers ?
What happened - nothing !

So I would agree , there are lots of good reasons for our young people to refuse conscription or National service. However, when it comes to it I think many would accept the call and if it happened it may be an opportunity for our country to rediscover its values and unity -But our leaders will have their work cut out !
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I think the key phrase there is 'existential threat.' If Russia were sweeping across Europe, threatening to invade the UK, then it would be different than talk of national service on the basis of some vague threat that a war might kick off at some point. After all, when in history hasn't that been the case? People probably were more patriotic during WW1 and WW2, but I suspect if you tried to conscript people in the preceding centuries to help 'protect' far flung parts of the British Empire, there would be far less patriotism, and far more "What's this got to do with me?"

We have a generation who, if they remember the UK going to war at all, remember it as a few rather dubious campaigns in far flung parts of the world. I'd argue that that's potentially one of the reasons why they struggle to get people to sign up these days.
 
hcblue95 said:
Maybe the people of target age aren't too keen to put their lives on the line to protect people who think so little of them, such as yourself?
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hcblue95 said:
Maybe the people of target age aren't too keen to put their lives on the line to protect people who think so little of them, such as yourself?
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did my 12 years and know exactly what it takes and this lot could not fight their way out of a tissue paper bag and as I said it's irrelevant as the next war will be just a matter of mopping up after the global factory reset button is pressed...
 
threespires said:
I've wandered what conscription would look like now and how it might work, or not as the case may be. YouGov did some follow up polling last year on 18-40 year olds after a previous poll identified that more people would refuse to serve than would volunteer or accept conscription.
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Yes, under 40 it would be very much a minority of probably working-middle lads from various pockets of Britain and Gurkhas.

LBC did a phone in and other orgs did interviews at the time. Essentially those who have recently arrived here would head back to their homeland if it broke out. A lot of people arising from those who have been here a while are either pissed off with the establishment from either a right or left perspective, or just not mentally or physically fit, especially for high stress combat.

Personally I have very little to fight for here at this point. I see where this country is heading, so why bother.

I'm also not going to Iran (why the media feels more jingoistic like before Iraq).
 
I've come around to the idea of a national service for 2-3 years before 25 but in a range of initiatives that serve the national good - providing care in the community services, working on maintaining the public realm, etc.

Military service would be one option, but I think there would be big benefits from including people in the investment and maintenance of society early on
 
I think we could be heading for a proper war if Trump pulls the plug, lots in Europe have reintroduced national service or working towards less do the further from Russia you get. There could be a wake up call for a few youngsters if we have to go down this route.
 
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