National Service returning to the UK?

[TheQuirkyMaker]

Due to the threat of Russian aggression and US indifference, Europe is having to re-arm. France is going to re-introduce national service (compulsory conscription of youngsters into the armed forces for 2 years). Am I right in thinking UK young people won't accept this?

The military services have a good track record in identifying things like dyslexia and teaching literacy and numeracy to young people who have been failed by the education system.
They offer plenty of educational opportunities and training, particularly in IT, engineering and cyber security. Maybe there could be some sort of programme in place around that. It all comes down to funding though.

You should leave then

I agree. If it was packaged as learning an expensive skill, such as driving or a trade, I think there'd be quite a lot of demand. Maybe not "national service" as such, but an expansion of recruitment/opportunities for the armed services, with maybe shorter minimum time periods.

We've got a few friends who joined the armed services solely to learn a trade or profession, one being a dentist and another being a dental hygienist! Also a neighbour who is a long distance lorry driver got his HGV licence in the army.

It works in Finland, why wouldn't it would in the UK, with proper organisation? There are many options for civilian service, someone in DD's DnD group is doing his in her school, working as a teaching assistant for the year and according to her he's doing very well (he's been teaching in her class several times). My brother did well at his research lab placement and ended up staying after his time finished to work some more there.

It's always amazing that these ideas are suggested by people who would be too old to do national service, isn't it.

There would be a big fuss if it suddenly became law starting from next weekend, but if it were introduced then it would be preceded by months of propaganda (and some threats about the consequence of not doing it) such that it would be seen as socially unacceptable not to 'do your part' - just like every other time.

The people of the UK 'wouldn't accept' lockdown either, except when they did....

All I can say to the people enforcing it is good luck with that! So many young people today have an attitude of 'you can't make me',I suspect it would be a massive battle for the powers-that-be. Many years ago when National Service was compulsory for young people (men?) they were much more compliant and usually did as they were told by the authorities. I cannot imagine that today,with all the human rights laws that it would work.

Because Finland has a land border with a country that invades its neighbours on a fairly regular basis. That's what forms the basis for the pro national service mentality there, even in cases where people do something else. We don't have that in the UK because the threat isn't the same. But even if we did, Finland isn't an example of a society that has national service based primarily on something other than the need for defence.

@BestZebbie thats a bad example because enough of the public actually wanted lockdown, in a way that the government of the time didnt. Lockdown is a policy that doesn't happen without public consent. If anything the pressure was the other way round!

That doesn't explain how the civilian service concept works though - it works because people wanted it to work, so put the effort in to make it work. That's something that can be copied anywhere, regardless of borders.

There are so many things wrong with this argument.

One, Finland's national service model is majority military based. You don't even know whether Finland as it is now could pull off what you're suggesting for the UK. It's guesswork.

Two, you've not explained how people in the UK would be made to want it to work, particularly those who would have to actually do it. It's particularly complex here because we have a constituent country containing a population who don't actually identify as British or in many cases recognise it as the UK. I lived in Belfast for a while, got some roots there, and it is just not something that would fly. There'd have to be an exemption, as the UK government had sense enough to realise in the past, and you can't stop people from internally relocating.

And three, even if for the sake of argument we agree with your guess that the Finnish civilian service could work in a hypothetical Finland that didn't have Russia as a neighbour and was thus running a mostly non-military model, why would that be the relevant comparison for the UK rather than all the countries in the world that don't have it?

My son isn't allowed to join the army because he attempted suicide several years ago. Would he be exempt or have to do his national service for something like the NHS instead?

I’m being picky BUT how much would National Service cost? Housing, feeding and training all 19year olds (say) is going to be expensive, even if they do useful things.

If you are going to put money into National Service,and find civilian jobs for a proportion of those young people then why are you not just investing money into recruiting more people who want to be there into the services, and investing a decent amount into decent training programmes for other young people?
Why does acquiring those skills have to be hung on to " National Service"?

And it would be a good riddance to you, sooner the better.

Probably because a significant portion of the UK population still love a jingoistic nostalgia-wank, so it panders to them.

If the government thought they could get away with sending troops to Ukraine, they could do it. It's political suicide, so it's not going to happen.

Conscription will also result in many millions leaving the country, and let's be honest, nobody wants to fight for this country, not even the patriotic ones. You can be proud of your roots, but the government is universally hated, even on the world stage, nobody will fight for or on behalf of this festering hovel.

I expect they’d be made to take out loans to cover their tuition fees, rent and other living expenses, if recent experience is anything to go by!

Lmao Russia isn't invading the UK. Cop on.

You said why would any of those sectors welcome or be able to accommodate 19 year olds coming to do service. I explained that it is quite possible for these sectors to do that because they do in my country, its just a matter of will and organisation. That is not dependent on geography or history and there's no logical reason why it couldn't be started now. That is what I addressed in my post. Making Brits want to do it is another thing but Brits have been made to do many things before, why not this?

With respect, Finland and the UK are not alike at all.

"Will", yes fundamentally important, otherwise all you are doing is compelling a bunch of unwilling, demotivated people to do something against their will, which is not going to be conducive to the young people getting anything out of it, or the service they are supposed to be a functional part of fulfilling it's role.

The UK is a political State comprising four constituent nations. It didn't exist prior to 1707, and didn't exist in it's current form until 1801. People from the UK might describe themselves as "United Kingdomites", but in reality it isn't a nationality and the UK is not a "country" in the typical sense. For quite a while now Independence from the UK has been the preference for at least half of Scots, with that preference even more strident among Scottish people below the age of 24. How do you propose to motivate Scots youngsters to perform "National Service" for a State that the majority of them wish to see the back of? Do you think Republicans in Northern Ireland are going to willingly oblige?

There has to be some sort of feeling of ownership and participation before people will gladly think about sacrifice for the State, and for a large proportion of people in the UK, the UK prompts no such feelings.

Would I actively defend the place I live from a hostile invader? Of course, but for the simple reason I'd like to protect my family, my friends, and my compatriots. Couldn't care less about protecting the UK State though, and similarly, if it tried to compel me to participate in any form of NS, I'd opt for the prison cell at the UK State's expense instead.

You did indeed say that. But it was wrong because Finnish national service is different to the model being discussed in the post you replied to, as it's majority military and I was talking about something else. And you also didn't explain why something being the case in Finland (even though it isn't) would make it possible in a totally different country. It would be a bad argument even if you were talking about something that actually happens in Finland.

With 'will' I was referring to the will of the sectors and the authorities to make things work, not the will of the young people to do the service.

Finland is not one homogenous group of people either. There are 3 distinct groups, Finnish speaking Finns, Swedish speaking Finns, and the Sami, who were historically oppressed by the rest, with their children being forced into residential schools and language use restricted, giving them a very good reason not to want to serve the country. Also, Finland had a brutal civil war last century, which divided the country sharply into two sides - Reds and Whites, with repercussions that lasted long beyond the war. Do you know what united the country again after that? Reds and Whites having to serve together in the military in the Winter war and the Continuation war.

Agree though that the UK does not prompt much feeling of ownership and participation in many Brits. I was discussing the logistics of organising civilian service though rather than whether its socially possible in the UK.

But with half going to uni, we're already funding half of them for their tuition fees, living costs, etc via student loans. A decent proportion of them may well prefer to learn a profession through a national service scheme, so costs would be mitigated by saving the thousands spent on their loans.

If profession = getting splattered by cluster bombs, no, I doubt many of them would prefer that.

The armed services don't work like that. The likes of dental hygienists for example aren't on the front line, most will never even get close to a war zone. My friend who's a dental hygienist never went near any active battlefields. Yes, she went abroad, but was based dozens/hundreds of miles from the front line, basically just doing routine dental checks/scales&polishes etc to the soldiers and other support staff in a "pop up" dental clinic working alongside dental nurses and dentists, who likewise never went anywhere near danger zones.

My FIL spent a couple of decades working in logistics for the RAF. Again, never anywhere near active fighting. He ran various warehouses, again miles away from the front lines, organising the supplies, organising ordering of supplies, issuing supplies, etc. When he came out of the RAF he had no problem walking into a job as store manager for one of the UK's largest car manufactures, running one of their huge warehouses, which he did for the last couple of decades of his working life. He often said it was one of the safest jobs in the military as the stores/warehouses were heavily guarded and protected!

There must be several "background/support" staff for every front line soldier when you think of the medical support, logistics, catering, administration, etc.