All too often you hear people call for the return of National Service. A two year stint in the Armed Forces that will apparently cure all ills.
The reasoning I suppose is sound, but the reality something completely different. Let’s look at the reasons why these calls are made in the first place.
If you believe the tabloid papers, we are a society on the brink of complete meltdown. Our youth are left to run feral, they are a delinquent generation of vandalising, abusive, drug taking scum that are the complete opposite of those proud men who served so heroically during World War II, storming the beaches and giving us the life we are accustomed to. Now, I don’t doubt for one second the heroics of those men. I honour them and respect their sacrifice as much as anyone, maybe more so having served for nearly sixteen years in the RAF. I know what they did was not only brave but also necessary.
However, history often allows a rather warped view on events. Not everyone who was fit and able to fight did so, in fact there was a significant proportion who did everything they could to avoid fighting during World War II. So that ‘golden generation’ was really not that golden, it just had a lot of people who DID stand up to be counted. Should events unfold that bring about a necessity for this generation to take up arms and fight, the ratio of those who would compared with back then would only vary by a couple of per cent, if that.
Heroes can only be made if there is a requirement for somebody to fill that role. I have worked with many over the years but their actions do not hit the newspapers every day, as the battles they fight are taking place not 22 miles from mainland Britain, or in the skies above the Eastern and Southern counties but thousands of miles away. That the same characteristics that so many want from our youth today don’t exist in abundance is both assumed by many with no thought of the reasoning behind it.
Events will shape a person and allow them to show the depth of their character, without those events there is no proving ground to display those traits or even a need to bring them to the fore. I personally would much rather no heroes than a world that requires them. You would think with the rose tinted spectacles worn by some, that war time Britain was a safe haven for those left at home, blitz spirit seeing neighbours helping each other out and everyone singing ‘Knees up mother Brown’ as the bombs fell. The reality I am sorry to say was entirely different.
Spivs made a fortune selling rationed goods on the black market, women were having affairs as their husbands served overseas and the looting of bombed out shops and stores was commonplace. Why wouldn’t it be? Life continues. I am not saying that this was the norm, but I am not naive enough to think it didn’t happen, and in no different ratio than it does today. Propaganda is not a recent invention. It has been going on for millennia and will continue to do so. It is a clever tool of manipulation that can mould a society to believe in a certain viewpoint, a certain political leaning or to justify actions that to an educated mind seem unreasonable. So the call for National Service to instil a sense of worth and value in the ranks of today’s youngsters is both misplaced in terms of what it would achieve and ignorant to the fact that things are really no different today than they were back then.
Myopic reminiscing is no justification for the implementation of something that would simply not work. National Service was not brought in to ensure our young lads held open doors for women, spoke with respect or to help the elderly across the road. It was brought in as a means of supplying troops to fight a war. We were taking the youth and those fit enough to fight and sending them to kill or be killed. “The National Service (Armed Forces) Act 1939 was enacted immediately by the Parliament of the United Kingdom on the day the United Kingdom declared war on Germany on 3 September 1939, at the start of the Second World War. It superseded the Military Training Act 1939 passed in May that year and enforced full conscription on all males between 18 and 41 resident in the UK. It was continued in a modified form in peacetime by the National Service Act 1948“. National Service ended when the threat of all out nuclear war seemed far more likely than a requirement for armies numbering millions to shoot each other on fields, beaches and hills.
So, you see, I don’t agree with the introduction of National Service on principle alone, but there are other reasons why it shouldn’t be introduced and very valid reasons why it wouldn’t work. We live in a society that should be moving away from the need to militarise everything. The thought of a huge world war is as distant as it has ever been. Should one occur, the UK are now reduced in capacity to such an extent that rather than be leaders of a free world, we would serve as allies to those who sought to further their own means. This is no reflection on our Forces, they are, person for person, amongst the very elite in the world, but with numbers dwindling yearly we cannot ever hope to be a major player again nor should we. There are countries with far larger military might than ours and frankly, good luck to them.
We have closed down so many military installations, made redundant so many personnel that the logistics of making this happen would be not a stumbling block but a huge, immovable object. The idea of rebuilding the infrastructure to the level needed simply cannot be met. Some people talk of the benefits to a community should a super camp be built near them, one of several in the country. Folly. In any garrison town the locals bemoan the squaddies stationed there for if you put large groups of testosterone filled men in one place and impose the harshest of discipline on them, when the reins are released there is a tendency for excess in all areas. A super camp would just lead to super-sized problems and a distrust of the military as opposed to the rampant love in that currently exits within media circles.
There was a reason to why discipline worked back in the forties and fifties within the confines of National Service. If you stepped out of line it was very likely a grizzled war veteran would break your jaw. Nowadays, rightly or wrongly is a whole topic on itself, this simply could not be allowed to happen. With a lessening of punishment comes a reduction in the effectiveness of instilling discipline.
This is an age of lawyers and ambulance chasing solicitors who ensure that their pockets are lined. In the 16 years I served in the RAF I saw a huge weakening in the way personnel could be trained, with the soft and gentle, hearts and minds approach becoming ever more prominent. Again, whether this is right or wrong is debatable in itself, but the causal affect was a lessening of standards and commitment. Those who joined the military as disciplined young people remained so and championed the old ideals and values, the more free thinking and ‘rebellious’ saw it entirely as a load of tired old bullshit they had to endure to earn their wage.
We also now have more university places open to people than ever before. Education is mooted as a realistic opportunity and aspiration to all, and rightly so. However, remove the propaganda sheen and see it for what it is. A load of young people going on the lash for three years and getting a degree in Cheese Studies or the like. There is a requirement for learning true enough, but also a need for plumbers, electricians, carpenters and construction workers. We are pandering to the whim of the politically pleasing vote winning edicts of successive governments, rather than seeing how and why our country must be shaped. We teach our children to be non-competitive, we teach them that finishing last is acceptable and that winning should be frowned upon. It shouldn’t, in either case. If your best only allows you to finish last then so be it, you are not a loser, you are someone who has given their all, a winner in my eyes. It is the people in the middle that are happy to coast, to never push themselves that are the issue, and these are the people who would ensure the collapse of any means of discipline through National Service.
Then there is another reality that few consider. By enlisting in the National Service ideal, you are training an army. Should a war break out the idea that these people will look back and thank the lord for their new-found persona is a farce. They will be the first ones on the front line, the fodder to be expended whilst the professional troops do the real work and fight the real war. Very few people who currently serve will be wanting to train the youth of today. Training is both demanding and exhausting, physical and mentally. Our current strength is so reduced that there is simply no scope to set up training regiments and camps beyond those that exist.
There is also an argument put forward that it would dilute the quality of those still serving, they are right to hold this view. It is no coincidence that those who clamour the loudest for a return to the halcyon days of National Service are those that have absolutely no understanding of the realities of military life. To discipline effectively is no different to training. You need, though not necessarily in equal measure, both the carrot and the stick.
Today’s society will not tolerate the stick and the carrot is seen as something everyone can have. It isn’t. This is not a Utopian novel from the 1960’s, it is a stark reality call that life is neither easy, nor is it fair. Rather than expect a two year stint within an organisation that is trained to kill your enemy while you sleep at home, more focus should be placed on the compulsory sixteen year moral contract parents have as educators. Discipline begins at home. It is a parents responsibility to teach a child, not just discipline, but respect, honour, integrity and compassion. If these lessons cannot be learned at home where love is a component of the teaching, do not expect a stranger to instil those values in your children twenty years later. It is not the youth of today that have let us down with their behaviour, rather us who have let them down with our own failings as parents ad infinitum. If you relinquish your own responsibility to your child, it is not the duty of others to pick up those pieces.
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