Military conscription

Yes I don’t understand why young people who haven’t had the chance to live their lives protect the people who will be dead in a couple of years anyway. They need to be the ones left

It was destroyed by the Tories. They decimated all that was good: the NHS, education and social services.
Labour are trying to fix it but the Tories did so much damage it will take a long time to reverse.

I wouldn’t want to, I don’t see myself being much use, I’m a middle aged unfit woman and a pacifist. But if in some
hellscape reality I had to do it then I guess I would have to go. Putin is mass kidnapping children. Trump has gangs of masked thugs roaming the country, is openly talking about cancelling elections and surrounds himself with people with disturbing ideas such as disenfranchisement of women. I hope WW3 isn’t happening ever or not in any of our lifetimes but I guess if that’s wrong and the only choices are surrender to that or conscription alongside allies with a hope of winning, I do think this country is worth fighting for.

Yes that and also because he wanted a warm water port. Not everything is quite as it seems - there are geo political elements at play with him as well .

I’d just tell them I’m a bit loopy and seeing things. I’ll serve days at most in the cuckoo’s nest before the mushroom clouds clear it all up

While I support the idea that politicians - having failed to convince people to volunteer to fight - should put their ideals where they are putting other people's lives, but I wouldn't include their families/children in this. Plenty of people disagree with their family members, and I wouldn't trust this with how some politicians treat their family members...

If we end up having to face Russia and the government brings conscription back in, a large part of that will be because Russia is already using conscripts.

So without conscription in WW2 you'd be typing this in German. All Jewish people in Europe would have been killed, ditto gay people, gypsies, disabled people.... just let that sink in for a mo.

Without conscripts, there wouldn't have been a WW2 - over 95% of German forces were conscripted. Nazi Germany made military service mandatory and expanded that criteria as they churned through people. German use of conscripts is what made the war and the vast majority of those deaths possible.

There also wouldn't have been a WW1 either without conscripts, which means the conditions that lead to WW2 wouldn't have happened either

So no, we wouldn't be typing in German and far far fewer people would have died if governments couldn't force people to kill for them during either World War and had to actually persuade people that course of action was worthwhile.

Sometimes governments put forced labour into their military because of a grab for power, because of ideology, and sometimes because others are already using forced labour against us. We can recognise the latter is a horrible position to be in without ignoring why that position comes about.

@Elbowpatch

I don't think Ukraine's history with Russia is comparable to life in the UK?

I imagine Ukraine in 2022 was a completely different place to what it was in the 1940s.

Young people still went off to war.

How would a mass of conscripted soldiers help combat cyber-attacks and drones? By the time a land invasion reached our borders, we’d be well-advised to surrender.

Of course it’s easier to say I’ll do some work and be put to use over being targeted by drones. The latter doesn’t take much, as horrendous as it is. Anyone could do it.

Not happily, no.

Would you happily live under Putin if it came to it?

I'd hazard a guess that most young people today are not going to go off to war even if conscripted, so it's a non-starter. Britain today is completely different from the 40's.

No one will be too old, but many will be too old to actively fight, instead they will be put to doing useful work instead. But it's the ones that are saying they will just refuse, or they don't want to fight for the current government that are truly naïve, the first lot at least recognise that people will need to fight

During WW2, I'm told that most of my male relatives tried hard to enlist, prior to conscription. They lied about their ages and their occupation.

All but one was refused. They all worked in the Pits. And coal was needed to fire the furnaces for the Steel Workers who made the armaments. So workers in these industries were exempt from conscription.

Nevertheless, they lied because they understood the need for sacrifice.

There surely comes a point for most people, where doing the right thing, not the safe thing, is more important?

Do I think those with money and influence maybe used that to safeguard their own children during the last war? Probably.

Would it happen again if another war happened? Probably.

Do I think that's the right thing to do? Absolutely not. Trumps father got his vile son medically excused from conscription during America's war with Vietnam. And look how he's turned out.

I'm not at all sure that conscription would be required if a war were declared between, for example, America, Russia, China or any of the Middle Eastern States.

I fear we'd all be dead by then.

Also, if conscription is so great, then why did Argentina manage to lose a war on home territory to an invading force a fraction it's size ?

I'm going to presume you are talking about the Falklands Conflict here and not the Cisplantine War since combatant strength in the latter was roughly equal. If so, then the Falklands was not by any stretch "home territory" for Argentina.

Argentina could not reliably maintain, supply, or support any significant force on the Falkland Islands from the moment the UK decided it was going to actually defend them. Due to the presence of UK submarine patrols, it could not send any significant seaborne resupply, could not defend the sea around the Falklands, could not deny harbour to the RN and the UK's merchant marine aside from attacking it by air using it's very limited supply of missiles, which it almost fully exhausted in any case, and bombs which were frequently improperly fused and failed to detonate. The Falklands may as well have been thousands of miles from the Argentinian mainland as far as its actual ground troops were concerned.

The troops it did deposit on the islands were poorly equipped and supplied, lacking in morale and motivation, as soon as the blockade was established, pretty much ignored by Argentinian high command and left to fend entirely for themselves. They did not even have adequate cold weather clothing. Go look at the Argentinian surrender and you can see for yourself what a ragtag, sorry looking bunch they truly were. At no point, even prior to the arrival of the UK expeditionary force, did Argentina truly establish air superiority over the islands either. They could not employ any sort of lingering picket to deter raids, they had nothing with which to intercept or repel the series of RAF Black Buck raids.

The professional pilots of the FAA acquitted themselves well, as did the professional soldiers in the Argentine Marine units, but the conscripted soldiers were enormously failed by the Junta even before they got to the Falklands. Whether they had been conscripts or otherwise is largely immaterial because there was no real prospect of Argentina successfully holding the islands in the longer term unless the FAA completely destroyed the UK expeditionary force, and Argentina didn't really have the means to achieve that anyway.

I should also point out that all of the major players in the victorious nations in both World Wars employed significant conscript forces, so there is not necessarily anything inherently flawed with the concept of small standing armed forces supplemented by civilian conscription. If you conscript a whole load of demotivated civilians, then fail to adequately train, equip, or supply them, then of course results are likely to be poor.

Hmmm..naive is an interesting word, so are "human rights", in a world where over 15,000 people die each day from hunger, where their bodies literally shut down and cease to function. If we cared so much about human life, a relatively easy problem to solve right??

It's rarely about human...rights.

It appears that too many people have a degree, but don't understand the purpose of education.

Putin is a dictator, who has manipulated the Russian electoral system to stay in power all these years and has mercilessly gone after all political adversaries. Having said that, Russia I don't think he has any territorial ambitions. He attacked Ukraine because it did not want another (potential) NATO country on its border.

Putin has zero interest in a small country like Britain, but sadly too many armchair generals remember the good 'ole days when we ruled the seven seas.

One change since WW2 is that women play a much more active part in the armed forces. My DM was in the WAAF during WW2 and one of her roles was sitting on the edge of the airfield counting the aircraft in and out. With the advent of technology that role would now be obsolete. Women would very much be on the frontline and fighting.

During the Falkland War my friends were very concerned about what they would do if things escalated, would there be conscription. I decided I would be a Conscientious Objector as I was so frightened of the alternative. If the UK introduced conscription I am now too old to be any use to anyone but would think of the futures of my cousins children and grandchildren with the same sense of fear.

I don't know what the answer is but I do understand completely peoples fears. For those saying they wouldn't fight for Kier Starmer the Falklands was in the days of the much hated Margaret Thatcher.

Isn’t that a fair few posts on here? Posters saying they’re too old but someone else will deal with it for them.

Yup. Some people are just very naïve and think they can just ignore war and nothing will happen to them, someone else will deal with it for them. Hopefully they never have to discover the reality in person, but instead learn from what's currently happening in the world, like in Ukraine.