Afternoon:
15°c
It was predictable that in response to the recent rampagings in the streets the idea of reviving National Service would be raised - yet again. It haunts the national memory and even David Cameron has been inspired by it to devise a National Citizen Service, which he relaunched this week with the aim of extending it to every adolescent of 16.
But I doubt if it will prove attractive to the teenage plunderers of Tottenham and Croydon.
Such schemes need compulsion, but how is that to be applied? I can imagine our middle-class children joining the National Citizen Service and marching to Hampstead Heath and Wimbledon Common to clear away dead wood and undergrowth, or hauling shopping trolleys from rivers and canals.
Of this their parents might approve, but only until the first casualty, and then there would be uproar and lawsuits and demands for compensation.
But would any bolshie boy from Tottenham join in? Is the work to be voluntary or paid at the minimum rate? What part do health and safety regulations play? And if the adolescents do not much care for the conditions of their toil, how are their noses to be kept to the grindstone?
Middle-class boys, particularly from minor public schools, are probably most amenable to such a scheme - but they are not the boys about whom we must be worried. It is in the minds of those who have no sense of responsibility to society that the concept of service must be developed. But I doubt if this is possible.
National Service - the original National Service of the 15 years or so after the end of the Second World War - was in the Army, Navy or Air Force, in every case compulsory and a frightening phenomenon of discipline and punishment.
I doubt if more than a very few boys did it willingly, but it had to be done, and it was done against a background of political and economic exhaustion and the strong sense of loyalty to king and country engendered by six years of war. In peace it was supported by the presence everywhere of so many who had fought in it. We genuinely believed in something mystical about the monarchy and the preciousness of the part of the country from which we came, fiercely defensive of Stoke-on-Trent, Newcastle or Billericay.
Whether this was the tattered remnant of medieval chivalry or the relic of a false Victorian ideal does not matter - it was there, embodied in the history and traditions of every regiment and corps, and raw squaddies, at first bullied into it but later willing, embraced it with their loyalty.
It is this that old fogeys remember; it is this that haunts young fogeys like David Cameron, who have never polished a boot or fixed a bayonet. But to the young of Tottenham it is the far and distant past of an alien culture that was never theirs.
That is part of the problem now. Citizenship no longer means king and country. The royal family is to many nothing, not even an irrelevance, and the United Kingdom is merely the place where the young happen to be, the choice of parents or grandparents for whom they have scant respect, the source of welfare, to which they will contribute nothing, and of an education in which they have no interest.
They may speak of culture but with no concept of what culture is, ruffians both white and black mistake their ethnic origin for national history, tradition, law, religion and all the arts that reflect these things.
The National Service of more than half a century ago might well redeem them, but it is no longer possible, for the sheer number of bloody-minded absentees would overwhelm any force attempting to impose the old compulsions of the military police and its dreadful gaol in Colchester (a threat that turned my generation white with fear).
National Service took every young man at some point between 18 and 26 into its maw, jumbled them together, paid them £1.20 a week, and taught them loyalty to themselves, each other, the platoon, the company and the battalion. We learned that none of us in a group was stronger than the weakest and, exchanging our strengths, we made it as strong as we could.
We were taught trades as well as soldiering, and not one of us - unless we were cussedly rebellious - left without some sort of skill that might lead to useful work in civilian life.
The most important thing we learned was that every one of us is part of a society that should be mutually supportive, giving as much as taking, and I am convinced that it made Britain a much better place in which to live. The discomforts, discipline and punishments on which it depended are now unthinkable. It cannot be revived.
It may be that we have on our hands a lost generation who cannot be redeemed, for whom prison and punishment will only confirm these characteristics. We must ensure we never have another.
Blame lies almost wholly with a system of education that does not educate the unwilling, that after a decade of schooling has failed to teach too many of the young to read and write, has instilled no moral values or social discipline, has encouraged no sense of achievement or self-worth, and in which too many teachers are themselves not educated in any worthwhile sense.
Educational theorists began interfering with the old system of grammar schools and technical colleges when I was still at school. I thought then, and now believe, that all this country had to do to educate its children, and rid itself of a stultifying sense of class, was to mould every school on the public school - not on its risible arcane rituals, but on its teaching. This can still be done: if, on a whim, we can find the money to bomb Libya, we can find it to educate our deprived young as though they were at Eton.
Then we would have true equality of opportunity. Then we would have neither sink schools nor sink universities. Then the looters and arsonists of Tottenham and Croydon would have no slippery excuses for their behaviour.
Reader views (13)
Compulsory National Service WOULD work, IF the government had the WILL to establish it.
Any soldier/sailor/airman ordered to do something would eventually do exactly what was required, their training would see to that. Of course there would be rebelious ones, but even they could be brought to heel. There are many, many, ways to skin a cat! Locked up in confined cell and fed bread and water until they 'cracked', and they would eventually, even the so-called tough nuts, they are all 'breakable'..
Those not quite so rebellious would also soon get their act together and behave in a well disciplined fashion, because minor punishments for even trivial misdemenours, like carry out 20 press ups on demand, spit and polish boots until the Sgts and Cpls can see their own smiles in the mirror like shine, endless periods cleaning and scrubbing floors, etc, in fact the list is endless, and eventually you have a population of good citizens!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I know military discipline works, I broke many rebellious types in my time, as I never tolerated nonsense from anybody whatsoever!
- ExRAF, UK, 20/08/2011 21:30
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The strength of National Service is that it was compulsory for all young men from the highest to the humblest.
The Americans went wrong by allowing students to be exempt from the draft.
- Jonathan Begg, London W2 4RD, 20/08/2011 14:51
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@ John, your suggestions have been tried and tested - in Nazi Germany.
National Service is a joke- we've seen what gangs can do already. Imagine the effects of teaching young people the "benefits" of military discipline and how to handle weapons.
- Arfur Towcrate, Waddon, actually, 20/08/2011 09:43
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Spot on, with the exception of the question of where to employ the people in the middle ie the trades. But then the unions destroyed British Industry . The Germans who lost the war are still way up there in manufacturing, so what happened to Britain?
- Rudolph Camillo, Edgecliff Australia, 20/08/2011 05:12
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Before National Service I feel the High Schools should introduce the Cadet System. It was very popular here in Australia.
Society today has crumbled in giving the youth a path to follow, they reach the age of 12 and are asked 'what do you want to do as a career'.
The education system both in Australia and Britian has no guide lines, that is what the youth both male and female need. They are wandering in society and only sport seems to have filled that gap, but not everyone loves sports! Not everyone is athletic, so they join gangs to wander looking for something to do. Society needs structure like it used to have.
- Nana, Perth, Western Australia, 20/08/2011 02:36
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Absolutely correct, by one who did three years (in order to avoid the Iniskilling Fusileers (because that's where all the male 18-year-olds went in my district). Also correct on the view that this 'solution' is widely held by those who have never been involved in it as I was. I really don't know what the real answer is - unlike politicians (you know, those with a continuous unblemished record of failure in everything they meddle in), I don't know and I don't know because we have absolutely no 'success' on which to base these wild guesses have we?
We do, however, know what doesn't work and that is 'talking to people, reasoning with those hell bent on criminality, 'initiatives' like those continually taking place every time a new Education Secretary is appointed. We should by now, be approaching the time of ceasing to allow political experiment, of trusting Civil Servant 'solutions', of the equally dopey business of trying what is alleged to have succeeded in some other country - if it worked there, then all comparative science tells you it won't work here - never does. Our situation is NEVER NEVER exactly the same, or even mainly the same. As I said, I don't know what the answer is, but then, it is blindly apparent - nor do you.
You are dead right Mr.Sewell.
- Norman Speight, London UK, 19/08/2011 20:56
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No National Civil Service Certificate - no benefits - no social housing - no driving licence - no tick - no nothing! Simples!!
- Gatedweller, People's Republic of Newham, 19/08/2011 20:08
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Yes, it COULD work, if one needed a National Service Completion Certificate before being able to access higher education and benefits.
- Whitgifter, Croydon, UK, 19/08/2011 17:23
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Finally someone has got to the bottom of the problem. National service or not, quality education is at the root of any successful society. And when we know how widely media-fed youngsters are, quality media is just as necessary. Unfortunately, not everyone was lucky enough to have good parenting but growing in a society with high standards and being given quality education could save any child.
- Miu, London, UK, 19/08/2011 15:44
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I disagree with you Mr Sewell. I believe such an idea could succeed, in that it would benefit a significant proportion of those young people taking part.
It is about meeting the needs of young people and showing them that it is possible to achieve a better lifestyle. All of this could be achieved if it is made compulsory for those leaving school without a particular set of qualifications, and voluntary for those age up to 20 who may wish to join. Run along the same lines as a former young people’s regiment based near Rhyl, North Wales, it would provide the opportunity to learn relevant trades (the economy is not going to remain in the doldrums forever) and to take part in popular and interesting hobbies.
- Franklin, Thornton Heath, 19/08/2011 15:35
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I make you right Sir. After more than 60 years of limp wristed pinky socialist policies the chickens are coming home to roost. How to change things? Well, for the longer term let's start by having a compulsory flag raising ceremony in every school every day where the national anthem is sung. No exceptions, you attend and you sing or you get expelled. Be expelled more than twice and the parents go to jail. Compulsory after school activities in, e.g., Scouts, Guides, Boys Brigade, Cadet Corps etc. Once again, the parents pay the price if their children do not join in wholeheartedly. Let's start instilling some respect into people.
- John, Battersea, 19/08/2011 15:16
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Mr Sewell,
I find myself in complete agreement with you, -apart from one major stumbling block.
They may well teach boys trades, but where would they apply them?
The era of mass employment of labour has gone.
I just missed Nat Service by a few years, but in those days the streets of places like Glasgow and Clydebank absolutely swarmed with cloth-capped shipyard workers, -and legions of others, like my father, worked in engineering factories or heavy industry, or the mines.
All this has gone, -and can never be replaced, -and most of these boys you would educate, I wouldn't think capable of gaining the high standards required for good employment prospects nowadays.
- Huggy, Cumbernauld Scotland, 19/08/2011 14:20
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Mr Sewell, you've just destroyed your argument that National Service wouldn't work by stating the wonderful observation that, I quote: "We were taught trades as well as soldiering, and not one of us - unless we were cussedly rebellious - left without some sort of skill that might lead to useful work in civilian life.
The most important thing we learned was that every one of us is part of a society that should be mutually supportive, giving as much as taking, and I am convinced that it made Britain a much better place in which to live."
Surely that is worth the attempt to revive National Service? I would have thought that a lot of our disenfranchised youth would welcome the chance to learn a trade that would stand them in good stead a coup[le of years down the line...
I think your view is too jaundiced and too cynical. Modern youth, for all its "faults" is more robust than that.
- Baron von Richtofen, Biggin Hill, 19/08/2011 13:11
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