Many will view the announcement of mandatory national service for eighteen-year-olds as the election politics of the ‘wild west’. Two days into an election campaign, it certainly looks like that. It would take a significant conservative majority in parliament to get such a scheme through. Instead, this is likely to be a wild swing as it heads west in policy terms. But if real, then it’s a crude and cynical attempt at ‘social engineering’ to divide young people against each other. It is potentially very dangerous.
But what if it’s a real plan?
Laura Kuenssberg hit the nail on the head when she put it to the home secretary James Cleverley earlier today as looking like ‘Social engineering’ ( Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg – National Service and Labours Tax Policy).
The plan has dominated the Sunday media with a variety of takes. The possibility of some form of voluntary national service has been around for a while but making it mandatory is a step too far. The forces have recently debated the possibility of ‘conscription’ to meet the possibility of a conflict in Europe. After all this has happened in the past. It ran after World War 2 from 1949 till 1960.
However, in 2024 the government denied this was being planned at the time. As recently as March military national service was debated in the House of Lords. The Minister of State for Defence, Gilbert Timothy George Lariston Elliot-Murray-Kynynmound (aka The 7th Earl of Minto) responded for the government with,
“My Lords, the Government have no plans to reintroduce national service or any form of conscription”.
But it might be worth noting that those with experience in military national service would be first to be called up and sent to the Russian front in any future conflict.
Dividing the nation.
The first thing of consider is how such a scheme would go down across the UK. It would meet with a potentially violent backlash in Northern Ireland. With no history of compulsory conscription, Northern Ireland would surely be an exception that proves the rule. Next on the list would be Scotland and then Wales and it would be likely to boost their independence campaigns. Perhaps that’s the idea.
The next and obvious observation is that it provides two options that are hardly equivalent.
First is a full twelve months of military service. Second is twenty-five days (about one weekend per month) of non-military volunteering with organisations such as the fire service, the police, and the NHS.
The second ‘option’ would be popular amongst those going to university with financial support from their parents. They would have the time to join this if they had no part time jobs to depend upon. Others would find the loss of time hard to take.
The first ‘option’ would be the only one for those who find an added burden of time lost. They would join the many others less fortunate and who could become the ‘cannon fodder’ of the future. The division between the well off and the least well off would become stark and wider.
Social engineering.
The scheme as announced is light on detail despite plans to start in the summer of 2025. It is unclear if students will be exempt and could defer the service while studying. Let’s assume for now this is not the case and includes all genders.
TEFS has pointed out that the Conservative government has been promoting class division through its education policies (TEFS 16th August 2022 ‘With exam results looming, the government is promoting T-levels as ‘Social Engineering’). The introduction of T-levels and phasing out of BTECs is a good example.
The stark choice between T-levels or A-levels at age sixteen sets a course for either university or a technical career. BTECs offered flexibility since they could be taken alongside A-levels and were accepted by many universities. T-levels do not do this. It comes as no surprise that the remaining BTECs remain popular this year whereas the take up of T-levels is faltering. Only 16,000 started a T-level this academic year, according to government figures, and many have been dropping out. Lower than expected GCSE grades affected recruitment and colleges dropped some courses.
Since BTECs will be phased out in favour of T-levels, this will propel the recipients into military service for a year. They will join those with no or few qualifications on the same path.
Popularity.
Last September, YouGov polled all ages asking the question ‘Do Britons want to bring back national service?’. Generally, the clear majority opposed any form of compulsory service with,
“Young Britons are less likely to support any form of national service than their elders, but especially compulsory ones”.
As seen in Figure 1.
But there are dangers in treating young, reluctant and disgruntled people in this way, assuming they pass the basic fitness requirements. Those of us who debated as teenagers what we would do if the UK entered the Vietnam war, and there was conscription, sort of know the dangers. It might make sense to some but rounding them up and providing them with automatic weapons during initial training might seem reckless to others.
Some earlier conscripts might remember the training as ‘naming of parts’.
“Today we have naming of parts. Yesterday,
We had daily cleaning. And tomorrow morning,
We shall have what to do after firing. But today,
Today we have naming of parts. Japonica
Glistens like coral in all of the neighbouring gardens,
And today we have naming of parts”.
Naming of Parts. Henry Reed 1942
The author, Mike Larkin, retired from Queen’s University Belfast after 37 years teaching Microbiology, Biochemistry and Genetics.