Another Milestone On The Road To Conscription?

Gordon Brown's obsession with persuading more school children to join the armed forces has taken another turn.

Controversial plans for pupils in comprehensive schools to sign up for military drills and weapons training are being backed by Gordon Brown in an attempt to improve the relationship between the public and the armed forces.

I didn't think the relationship between the public and the armed forces was in particularly dire need of improving. A recent poll found that 87% of those questioned supported British soldiers. The recent faux outrage over the ban on military servicemen wearing their uniforms in Peterborough when off-duty turned out to be a bit of a damp squib when no incidents of actual serious abuse came to light. Like Justin, I think the idea of military personnel being intimidated by a bit of name-calling is ridiculous. It would seem there is another agenda at work, and that would be the thorny issue of allowing military recruiters into schools to find more cannon fodder. The military deny that they go into schools to recruit and that their aim is to raise "the general awareness of their armed forces in society, not to recruit". Believe that and you'll believe anything.

What makes Brown's agenda so transparent is the milestones we've already passed to get to the point of drill and weapons training for school children. First we have his enthusiasm for jingoism which plumed new depths when he announced plans for school children to swear allegiance to the Queen and salute the flag; then we have the outrage at the National Union of Teachers for daring to suggest that military recruitment campaigns employ "misleading propaganda" in schools and should be boycotted - more from Justin (they don't recruit, remember); more 'fury' when students at a University voted to ban all military personnel including cadets; then we have the revelation that pupils are being given a biased view of Iraq in Ministry of Defence teaching materials.

He [National Union of Teachers general secretary Steve Sinnott] warned that some of its assertions, presented as facts, would be disputed by most teachers. There were no estimates of the numbers of people killed, wounded or made homeless by the military action, he said. The material therefore risked breaching the part of the 1996 Education Act concerned with balanced teaching of political issues, he added.

So if these plans are allowed to go ahead unchallenged, how long will it be before a call for the return of National Service gets louder? Once recruiting general awareness raising officers have done the rounds of the poor and deprived areas of the country to recruit raise general awareness of the infantry and there is still a shortage of troops for America's failing imperial adventures, I suspect a call for conscription won't be far off.