Conscription in Britain? Don't Make Me Laugh

As deranged centre right politicians and politicised generals tout a possible return to conscription, everyone else thinks they are mad.

To start with we need to look at the numbers in the British armed services.

Britain has 144,000 people total in all three branches of service. That's 80% of the size of the US Marine Corps, the smallest of the USA’s four branches.

That number is currently going down about 6,000 a year. That’s probably a mix of age and demographics, constant overstretch and planned decline.

During the mid 70s, peak cold war, we had around 340-350k men under arms and there were still around 300k at the end of the Cold War in 1990.

By 2000 it was down to 208k. Unlike American, there was never a post 9/11 boost to numbers here, we dropped below 200k for the first time in well over a century in 2006.

Now this isn’t necessarily a negative - It's an adequate number for defending a small island off the coast of Europe. It's inadequate for running around the world chasing the USA like a lost dog. Sadly British policy has been indistinguishable from American policy in most regards since the 1940s. There’s a reason Britain is always gleeful to commit to pointless wars in Asia, and it’s not because it serves the interests of the British population. Russia isn’t a realistic opponent for Britain - not being a neighbour, being 100% predictable and generally responding to 30 years of creeping western interference in their own sphere of influence. People can cry that their not entitled to that sphere, but imagine the ruckus if there was a Russian backed coup in Ireland or Mexico. On a personal level, I’ve only really seen people over 50 particularly on the anti-Putin bandwagon and the Ukrainian flag badges, flags and stickers only come up in the most affluent areas. American adventures in the middle east, especially support for Israel, are now openly opposed by the majority of British people for a wide mix of reasons; immigration, left wing politics, a dislike for Israeli policy and 40+ years of failed interventions all spring to mind.

Another problem is we can't make any equipment or munitions here any more. The last large steel works was recently announced as being partially closed and much reduced in capacity, and has long been owned by foreign companies. Each successive generation of Challenger tanks is essentially a rebuilding of the previous one, no new hulls can be made. So even if Britain could conscript a million soldiers, they couldn’t equip them. In recent years, even the recruitment of soldiers has been outsourced to recruitment company Capita - the results were laughably bad so the contract got extended and the company got more money - failing upwards anyone?

Add to that the problem of military procurement being an exercise in lining pockets and a lack of accountability it’s not really a shock that every improvement project costs billions and takes decades. To be fair though, this problem isn’t unique to Britain and we’re still very amateur compared to the US military-industrial complex.

Like many countries, who would they draft? One reason for falling numbers, aside from the fact that society openly hates young men, is that the army has often been a career of last resort for English people - maybe a little better for the Celtic nations as they've historically bee poorer and had fewer other opportunities. That bottom strata of society can no longer get in the army - too unfit, drugged, criminal, lazy, and uneducated. It means they're looking at the next rung up the ladder, and those people can do basic maths and have many options. And to be brutally honest, the armed forces don’t really compete well with Tesco.

Privates, after basic, get £24k a year. The absolute minimum full time pay in any job, for a standard 37.5 hour week, comes to £20.5k. Considering the army owns you 24/7, you can rarely take holiday, pensions are a long way off when you are 18-25 and there's a bigger chance of getting killed than working in a supermarket - why would anyone join? We don't have as many families with multi-generational service here as the US does - it's more of an officer thing. It's partly due to the low-ish status and partly due to the ever decreasing numbers in service. The breaking up of ancient regiments and their traditions has also severed some of these links, as everyone knew it would.

Add to that that a huge amount of the backup military services - like most of the medical and hospital staff - are reserves and it's obvious that British forces aren't cut out for much more than policing actions. If we went with the defence policy most people would vote for - defending Britain - we'd be fine. Following an Atlantacist and American foreign policy, without the resources, budget, national support or numbers has long been a disaster. It's just been a slow collapse though.

The saddest indictment of all though is that for the average young man in Britain, there’s little worth fighting for.