UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak pledges to bring in National Service for 18-year-olds
Robert Stevens, WSWS, May 26 2024
Britain’s Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has said he would introduce National Service for 18-year-olds if elected in the Jul 4 General Election. The plan, which would be the first stage of the conscription of the wider UK population into the Armed Forces, confirms the warning by the Socialist Equality Party that this is a war election. Britain is heavily involved in the NATO war against Russia and backing Israel’s war of genocide against the Palestinians. Sunak is focussing his election campaign on militarism and national security. He went back to his constituency Saturday and made his first campaign outing a meeting with a group of armed forces veterans in Yorkshire. Launching his military conscription pledge, Sunak said:
The world is more dangerous and challenging than it has been in decades. There’s China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. These things aren’t just happening far away, they impact us here at home.
Under the plan, national service would be mandatory for 18-year-olds, who must either join the armed forces on a 12-month placement or carry out community work one weekend every month. The plan will cost £2.5b/yr, with £1.5b to be seized from the UK Shared Prosperity Fund, a package to support charities and community groups. If the Tories are re-elected a Royal Commission will finalise the details, with a pilot starting next year and a National Service Act bringing it into effect in Sep 2025. The Times reported:
There will be sanctions for teenagers who do not take part.
Sunak launched the policy with a social media video and an article published in the Mail on Sunday, with the newspaper revealing that the scheme was meticulously hatched in secret before being aired for the Tories’ manifesto. It revealed:
The plan to reintroduce National Service was drawn up in secret, with only Mr Sunak’s close advisers, understood to include former Tory leader William Hague, privy to the details. In their confidential 40-page plan, the advisers argued that the growing international threats posed by countries such as Russia and China needed to be addressed by beefing up our Armed Forces, as did the listlessness of many young adults. Nearly 750k 18 to 24-year-olds are currently out of work, and this age group is disproportionately represented in the criminal justice system.
Wrapping himself in the Union Jack, Sunak wrote:
Those who choose to do military service, and pass the test, will be able to take a 12-month, full-time placement in our Armed Forces. This rite of passage will create a shared sense of purpose among our young people and a renewed sense of pride in our country. This is a great country, but generations of young people have not had the opportunities or experience they deserve and there are forces trying to divide our society in this increasingly uncertain world. To those who complain that making it mandatory is unreasonable, I say: citizenship brings with it obligations as well as rights. Being British is about more than just the queue you join at passport control.
It is reported that the Tories estimate around 10% of 18-year-olds will do a stint in the Armed Forces. However, such is the hostility of the younger generation to war that Sunak felt it necessary to write:
To be clear, our new National Service is not conscription. The vast majority of those who do it will not serve in our Armed Forces. Only those who choose to, and come through the tough entrance tests, will do that.
On Sunday, Home Secretary James Cleverly was obliged to promise that those who refused to join up would not be sent to prison. But everyone knows that the policy must lead to wider conscription and break a consensus that has been in place since 1960 when National Service was ended in Britain. Sunak’s announcement made the front pages of every national paper, with the Tory media frothing enthusiastically. The Daily Mail crowed, “Now the election battle REALLY begins!” The Sunday Telegraph wrote that the policy was necessary to inculcate “shared national values” and not just to bolster Armed Forces now, but for other wars ahead:
The anti-Israel hate marches have exposed the extent to which extremist views have already taken root. This is all happening at a time of huge international insecurity, and warnings of new military conflicts to come.
Tory backbencher Miriam Cates linked the call-up of 18-year-olds with the destruction of Gaza, saying the scheme should “emulate” military service in Israel. Sunak’s national service policy has backing from Tory MPs close to the military including Tobias Ellwood, a former veteran and defence minister, who said in an interview with the right-wing TalkTV:
I was one of those who pushed this from the very start. Our world is more contested than any time since 1945. Europe is at war, once again. The UK is involved, whether we like it or not, in supporting Ukraine. As soon as you’re outweighed by your adversaries, then a failure to address that means war is inevitable. We have moved into a new era of insecurity on a world scale.
The announcement follows the comment in January of General Sir Patrick Sanders, head of the British Army, that the UK’s “prewar generation” had to prepare for the possibility of future conflict and this needed to be a “whole-of-nation undertaking.” Defending the policy, the Tories and the media pointed out that National Service and conscription policies are widespread in Europe, amid talk that NATO forces will have to be placed directly into the warzone to avoid Ukraine being defeated by Russia. Nations recently introducing forms of National Service are Sweden, Norway and Denmark. Macron has announced Service National Universel, which will begin as a one-month residential placement for all 16-year-olds, followed by three months’ part-time voluntary service. This will become mandatory when fully rolled out. Moves are far advanced for conscription in Germany, with a defence ministry internal paper leaked in April stating there were plans to “present options for a German military service model”. These would be “scalable in the short term in line with threats” and ensure “overall national resilience.” A decision is to be made within a year. The Labour Party, expected to win the general election, said of Sunak’s call:
This is not a plan. It’s a review which could cost billions and is only needed because the Tories hollowed out the armed forces to their smallest size since Napoleon.
Shadow pensions secretary Liz Kendall was careful not to oppose the policy outright, saying on Sky News’s Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips:
This is an unfunded commitment, a headline-grabbing gimmick, it is not a proper plan to deliver it.
This is the same sort of denunciation Labour made of Sunak’s anti-immigration Rwanda deportation policy, advocating its own brutal deportation policy as more effective and efficient. ‘Sir’ Keir Starmer’s Labour is the self-declared “party of NATO” and it will introduce National Service and conscription whenever this is demanded by the ruling class. It was the post-war Atlee Labour government that introduced National Service in 1947, coming into force in Jan 1949. All physically fit males between the ages of 17 and 21 had to serve in one of the armed forces for an 18-month period and had to stay on the reserve list for another four years. The purpose of the mobilisation was to ensure that British imperialism, after the devastation of WW2, remained able to operate globally in the wars to come. Following the Chinese Revolution in 1949, British forces were thrown into battle in Korea in 1950 and in various military operations in Malaya, Cyprus and to repress the anti-colonial uprising in Kenya. In 1950, during the Korean War, another National Service Act under Atlee lengthened the period of service to two years. Between 1949 and 1963, more than 2 million men were conscripted to the British Army, Royal Navy or Royal Air Force.
UK Labour’s filthy manoeuvre over the ICC’s arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant
Jean Shaoul, Chris Marsden, WSWS, May 26 2024
The British Labour Party’s Shadow Foreign Secretary David Lammy, a vociferous apologist for Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, is attempting to posture as a defender of the international rule of law. Speaking in the parliament on May 20, Lammy supported the possible arrest of Netanyahu and Gallant should the International Criminal Court issue a warrant. Lammy declared that the UK and all governments that have signed up to the Rome Statute underpinning the ICC “have a legal obligation” to comply with its warrants and “Democracies who believe in the rule of law must submit themselves to it.” International Criminal Court chief prosecutor Karim Khan is requesting the arrest warrants as he has “reasonable grounds to believe” that Netanyahu and Gallant “bear criminal responsibility” for crimes committed since Oct 8, including using starvation as a weapon of war, murder, intentionally attacking civilians, extermination, persecution and other crimes against humanity. But a decision on the request by the ICC is expected to take around two months, after the Jul 4 general election. And Lammy stressed:
Arrest warrants are not a conviction or determination of guilt, but they do reflect the evidence and judgment of the prosecutor about the grounds for individual criminal responsibility.
It should also be noted that should the judges agree to issue arrest warrants, neither Netanyahu nor Gallant face any immediate risk of arrest, since neither Israel nor the US has signed up to the Rome Statute. Nevertheless, Lammy’s remarks are out of step with the Biden administration which, like Israel, does not recognize the authority of the ICC and denounced the arrest warrants as outrageous. Members of the US Congress, supported by Blinken, said they would seek to impose sanctions on the ICC if it issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu. Sunak likewise refused to recognise the ICC’s jurisdiction in the war and would not confirm whether his government would comply with a warrant should one be issued. Lammy’s statement was therefore denounced by the right-wing Tory press, with Retired Army commander Colonel Hamish de Bretton-Gordon writing in the Daily Mail:
If Labour intends to pigeonhole Hamas, a terror group proscribed by the UK government, with the Israeli government which is democratically elected, then their judgement is very questionable. This is something the British people should understand and contemplate before the coming election.
The Telegraph demanded:
Labour must sack David Lammy for backing this absurd ICC warrant. Keir Starmer’s sensible stance on Israel risks being undone if he does not think about what is right and in Britain’s interests.
Despite such rhetoric, there is not one iota of principled content to Lammy’s remarks. They express only tactical disagreements between war criminals and defenders of genocide.
Firstly, the fact that Labour has felt obligated to support the ICC highlights the crisis within the party provoked by its support for Israel. Leader Starmer has insisted that Labour is “the party of NATO” and of Zionism. He has given his full support to Israel’s genocidal war on the Palestinians, which is part of a broader effort by US imperialism, backed by the UK, to redivide the world and its resources by waging war against Iran and its allies in the Middle East, Russia in Ukraine, and preparing to take on China. A barrister specialising in human rights and a former Director of Public Prosecutions, Starmer has endorsed Israel’s savagery under the mantra of “Israel’s right to defend itself,” which he knows has absolutely no legitimacy under international law. This has provoked a storm of opposition among millions of workers and youth, so that in local elections earlier this month Labour lost a third of its vote in areas with a Muslim majority and could face a similar backlash in the July 4 snap general election. On Tuesday May 21, pro-Palestine protesters heckled Lammy as he tried to speak at an anti-corruption event hosted by the Institute for Public Policy Research, a pro-Labour think tank. They interrupted continuously for 10 minutes as he sought to defend Labour’s position on the slaughter in Gaza.
Secondly, and of perhaps greater long-term significance than a belated and transparent attempt to placate popular opposition, Lammy’s response mirrors those of France and Germany, whose leaders likewise have given their full support to Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinians throughout the last seven and a half months. The Labour Party has joined them because it fears that to openly defy international law and dismiss a priori a possible arrest warrant against a head of government it supports would damage the authority of a court that hitherto has been a useful instrument in reinforcing British imperialism’s pretensions to uphold international humanitarian law, used as a pretext for war. Lammy stressed last Monday:
The Labour Party supports the ICC as a cornerstone of the international legal system, whether it is in Ukraine, Sudan, Syria or Gaza.
The last significant arrest warrant issued by the ICC, this time with enthusiastic US backing, was for Putin and his commissioner for children’s rights, on Mar 17 last year. They were charged with the unlawful transfer of population (children) from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation, to further the demonisation and attempted isolation of Russia by the NATO powers. Labour, like France and Germany, has framed its “support” for the ICC as carefully as possible, making clear it has not endorsed an arrest of Netanyahu and Gallant, only the right of the ICC to do so. Each of them has decried the announcement of recommended arrest warrants alongside those for three leaders of Hamas, for suggesting an equivalence between “democratic” Israel and “terrorists.” For four days Starmer himself remained silent on the issue, until a May 24 appearance in Glasgow. He was asked by reporters:
If the International Criminal Court issues an arrest warrant for Netanyahu, would you honour it?
The National reported his evasive response as:
That’s completely hypothetical because you know the procedure in the court, which is: the prosecutor asks or seeks the warrant; the court in due course, or a chamber within the court in due course, will make its decision. So, we’ll wait and see.
However, irrespective of Labour’s cynical manoeuvring, Lammy and Starmer are playing with fire. In a May 22 perspective, the WSWS noted the comments of arch-reactionary Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who, when advocating sanctions against the ICC, warned:
If they do this to Israel, we will be next.
Graham has every reason to make such a warning. The broad mass of the world’s population are absolutely clear that what is taking place in Gaza is a crime against humanity, whose perpetrators and their accomplices, including Britain’s Labour leaders, must all end up in the dock, like the Nazi criminals at Nuremburg.
Niqnaq 