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Thursday, June 28, 2018 –
3:49pm
Emmanuel Macron’s decision to reintroduce national
service for French 16-year-olds has reignited the debate over
whether it should also return to Britain.
Between 1947 and 1960, more than two million British
men aged 18 to 30 were called up to spend 18 months in the armed
forces. It was phased out from 1957, following complaints from the
Army that the sheer number of conscripts had become a burden, says
the National Army Museum.
A sense of belonging
Macron made national service part of his electoral
platform, claiming that it “would inspire patriotism and social
cohesion”, The Independent reports.
This line of thought dates back to ancient times.
Plutarch describes how Rome’s consuls conscripted the
city’s young men at a time of political tension, “that they might
not have leisure for revolutionary plottings, but that when they
were all gathered together, rich and poor, patrician and plebeian
alike, to share in the common dangers of a camp, they might learn
to regard one another with less hatred and ill-will”.
Similar arguments continue to resurface in modern
Britain. In 2009, Michael Caine, who served in the Korean War as a
conscript, said bringing back national service would
alleviate social problems by giving young people “a sense of
belonging rather than a sense of violence”.
In February, a YouGov poll revealed that a plurality of Brits
would support the reintroduction of national service, with
Conservative or UKIP voters and the over-50s most firmly in
favour.
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The problem is the would-be draftees themselves. The same YouGov
poll showed that 18-24-year-olds opposed the idea by a margin of
62% to 28% (with the remaining 10% unsure).
Opponents of mandatory national service say that
training and housing hundreds of thousands of working-age people
represents a massive expense for taxpayers and puts an unreasonable
demand on young people during a crucial period for their education,
career and personal development.
“Many friends of mine have had to abandon jobs and
sometimes serious relationships in order to serve nine meaningless
months in the army,” Greek journalist Yiannis Baboulias wrote in
The Daily Telegraph.
“Under any amount of scrutiny [national service]
appears for what it is: unpractical, socially destructive and
costly,” he writes, suggesting that the money would be better used
funding a year of travel for school leavers.
A national service for the 21st
century
While a handful of developed countries,
including Israel, Greece and South Korea, still require young
people to serve a period in the military, most nations with a
national service programme now provide options for civilian
volunteering.
Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Switzerland are
among the countries where young people can opt to spend their
national service in the armed forces or performing social or civic
work.
The French government’s plan is a potential
model for what a “softer and gentler” 21st-century national service
could look like.
Students will be required to serve a month-long
placement in areas such as “voluntary teaching and working with
charities, alongside traditional military training with the army,
police or fire service”, says the Independent.
Those who wanted to continue their service could
then opt to join a second placement of between three months and a
year, with a heavier emphasis on the military or the defence
sector.
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