Yer (Gran)da sells the Army

National service

So this week a poll by the very official sounding YOUGOV , which despite the title isn't in any way part of GOVT , says that 74% of pensioners polled would like to subject our youth , thats their own grand-kids or great grand-kids to national service , and the irony is that MOST of them NEVER actually did national service themselves.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/vast-majority-pensioners-think-britain-12033830

This is on the back of President Macrone of France saying he too is desiring a return to national service.

So I got to thinking as a socialist pacifist , and ironically someone who kinda agrees in part , where would such a thing be best served , pardon the pun , in either UK or an indy Scotland.

First we need to look at the desire and reasoning , then history , and then whether countries still have such a thing already – then perhaps offer alternatives.

NS desire , reason , history.

Todays pensioners are a demographic that believe the EU are the enemy, its a lie they eagerly swallowed. Data doesn't Lie – and they are the largest voting demographic too.

Successive UK neoliberal govts are OUR enemy, ones we have elected along with those pensioners. Govts that have decimated industry , housing , privatisations , and the NHS lining their own pockets as they did so– with the aid of the billionaire tax avoiding media moguls that fed YOU AND I on a daily diet of bent bananas , the immigrants are coming and so on.

The UK govt never invested into infrastructure , schools , hospitals , housing , jobs – the EU as it turns out did , and never told UK to do the same , or not to.

The UK never used the EU legislation tools on FREE MOVEMENT , benefits and NHS tourism – thats not EU failure is it?

The UK govt decimated industry choosing an economy housed in the South of England based on EU and Global Banking/services, a housing bubble, non dom oiligarch housing, and privatisations selling off what the tax payer owned – back to them, as well as to a discounts to their friends in the city. Not one bit of which can be attributed to the EU.

Pensioners in the UK have the WORST state pension in the whole of Europe , that too is no result of the EU , but for EXPATS they can thank the EU WHILE they get inflationary increases until brexit.

They are deliberately kept fearful so long as they ARE the largest voting demographic – so much so that they then become, as seen with this National service poll, scared of anything and everything "alien" also.

Pensioners in the UK are seeing WASPI , thats women born in the 50's denied retirement until later, where their parents might well have been the last to see NATIONAL SERVICE, older ladies whom are now told by the TORIES to take adult apprenticeships when they should be retiring , or indeed work the very fields that young and fit EU nationals once worked until the loom of brexit.

National Service though is something that came of WAR, to keep a ready army, hardly surprising though considering that EUROPE had 2 relatively right after the other, one on such patriotism seen rising today, the other as a result of the economic impact of the first one – where the right rose.

Today we are seeing the rise of the right again , from brexit to racism , not in EUROPE – but in the very place that now rejects EUROPE , the very country that stopped similar fascism one before.

Well if truth be told only England and Wales of the UK voted to do brexit , Scotland and NI chose to remain – and are being dragged out on a democratic deficit, one that might well see the break up of the United Kingdom itself.

We should then be very fearful of the largest demographic desiring this form of National Service , fascism can result from it – history tells us that.

Other countries that still have national service.

OF the 27 EU countries most of those that had a NS have decided to remove it , thats progress.

Good article here from 2010 http://www.dw.com/en/eu-nations-continue-to-phase-out-military-conscription/a-5749541

I have known people that have grown up in countries in the EU with national service , of varied ages.

One of which was/is Swedish.

I haven't asked him at the time of writing so will not use his name, but he doesn't want to return to Sweden, loves Scotland – personally I consider him Scots.

His family are Scots, his practice, his life investment is Scots. He is around the same age as me, but as for brexit he doesn't want to leave and return to Sweden unless its a FORCED retirement. His kids though are learning their fathers profession in Sweden too – with the added handicap of Swedish as a second language rarely spoken in the household.

When he did his NS it paid for his FURTHER education after completion = no tuition fee debt of probably in today's money close to 100k with 5/7 years of study were it done in England or Wales – but not in Scotland were tuition is free.

Two kinds of other non EU countries still have a form of national service though , those on the right , and those on the hard left. That should be a warning - not a fucking desire for it.

But why am I a pacifist and Socialist PRO National Service?

The easiest answer I can give is that there can be alternatives to a MILITARIST National Service – one that aids OUR LOCAL communities, OUR nation, then onward to other poorer nations and indeed where those that SIGN up for it as willing contributors, not instead drafted in.

For example lets take housing for a moment.

We have supposedly a national shortage of the RIGHT kind of housing, from council to bought.

How about that NS is by creating factory flat pack housing, through nationalisation, to remove the council waiting lists, then onward to shared ownership, and affordable housing?

In one fell swoop we address the problems that this very generation will face , housing , as a result of those demanding today national service that created if not aided that very problem in the first place.

Then theres roads , falling apart around the country for repair. Or flood defences.

Or of course reducing the NHS costs by catering and cleaning being outsourced not to private companies , but the govt itself – where tax isnt avoided and offshored.

Final thought.

There is plenty of scope , plenty of areas where successive long term govt failure to invest could be redressed as a social not military benefit , ones which have led to the very backlash of the EU and immigrants – through a form of civic national service.

Then of course once we sort out our own shit we can then offer those 18-24 year olds working holidays to install housing, roads, and water into countries we STILL have a debt to in Africa – and bringing them into the 20th Century that we denied them of as colonists that never needed national service to fill the rank and file.

Cheers , NaeMairMaisters.