And I guess that’s why they call it the blues
Time on my hands could be time spent with you
Elton John
My sweetheart is a soldier as handsome as can be
But suddenly they sent him away across the sea
So patiently I waited until his leave was due
Then wrote and said, my darling,
I’ll tell you what to do:
Come to the station, jump from the train
March at the double down lover’s lane
Then in the glen where the roses entwine
Lay down your arms
And surrender to mine
Geoff Downes, John Payne and Gregory Hart
Not long after the unfortunate and former British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak appeared to be pandering to older voters by campaigning to bring back national service for Britain’s youth, an article appeared in the e-zine Unherd entitled “National values … grasping for something that doesn’t exist” by regular columnist Terry Eagleton. He wrote:
“Right-wingers … have a disreputable history of picking on that particular cohort. The young, and not just those of Muslim persuasion, are more likely to question the conventional mores of the time than the middle-aged, which is why they make a lot of conservatives uneasy. Maybe national service will get them to shape up. This is really quite a smart idea from a Tory standpoint, since many of the values which young people in Britain are wary of are military in origin … they are cultural traits rather than basic moral values. Loyalty, team-spirit, toughness, honour, character, valour, austerity, self-discipline, leadership, physical prowess: the nation divides between those like the present monarch who consider these values utterly vital, and those who think they have their origin in a tiny, unrepresentative sector of society (the officer class, public schools, Boy Scouts and so on), and stem ultimately from Britain’s repressive colonial history”.
Sunak’s call triggered some sympathetic martial bugles here DownUnder. There were letters to the editor aplenty in Australian newspapers, including our own Coffs Harbour News of the Area (an actual printed newspaper too). I couldn’t resist writing a response – and it was actually published:
“There’s been a couple of letters recently suggesting that national service would be a suitable panacea for the problems of delinquent youth, and another by Bellingen’s Warren Tindall (an old pal of mine, by the bye) on the “perils of national service”, reminding us that whingeing about the younger generation is timeless and generational. The notion appears to appeal to folk of a certain age who lament the lack of respect, discipline and Australian values (whatever that means) amongst Australian youth – the “knock some sense into them” law and order types who would like disorderly young folk to be “out of sight and out of mind”, and effectively, someone else’s problem. They naively believe that the induction of potentially underage and recalcitrant youths would somehow contribute to our defense manpower shortfalls and bolster our military preparedness. On the contrary, the conscription of unwilling and probably unfit recruits, and the time, effort and money needed to render them of use in any military capacity is are the last things a proficient defense force needs.
In countries culturally and politically unaccustomed to national service, conscription has historically been considered a burden on the forces. In western countries with national service – most notably the Scandinavian and Baltics, and Israel – young people grow up with the expectation of service and the national duty that implies, and are culturally and temperamentally prepared for it by the time they come of age. It is not a military trainer’s job or even skill set to “instil a sense of purpose”, teach “physical and mental coping skills” or “positive career paths” or “train responsible human beings”, whilst “reducing our prison population” seems like something like Vladimir Putin would do”.
All this brings me to British author Richard Vinen’s enthralling book National Service in Britain 1945-1963. It charts the institution’s origins, administration, and social consequences, painting a vivid picture of postwar Britain negotiating the uneasy transition from empire to welfare state, revealing how conscription shaped not only military efficiency but the habits, ambitions, and identities of an entire generation – a cultural imprint whose echoes still surface in debates about civic duty, and national identity.
Reading it a while back, I recalled the promotional video for the Elton John song quoted above with its nostalgic visual narrative of young lovers separated by a call to duty, including footage of young army conscripts and of the early British rock ‘n roll era. I also recalled the BBC serial Lipstick on Your Collar – a particular favourite of mine; A romantic pop song Lay down your arms featured in its finale. [More on Potter’s story below] Both dramatise a decade and more of British social history that few recall today when over two million young men were conscripted to serve in the armed forces for up to two years, and sometimes more, at a critical time in their social, intellectual and emotional development.
We republish below a comprehensive overview by Davenport-Hines But first, here are a some of my own recollections, and themes explored by Vinen that are not covered therein.
A grave new world
After the Second World War (1939-45), the young men of Britain were called upon to meet new challenges facing the country in a rapidly changing world – the Cold War between the USA and its European allies, and the Soviet Union.
The post-war world was a tenuous time for the old empires. Whilst old King Canute demonstrated his inability to control the tides, when Britain faced emergent and powerful nationalist movements, it sought to reassert its control in de facto colonies as far-flung as Egypt and Palestine, Cyprus and Kenya; and together with France and the Netherlands, actually fought to reclaim and hold on to their “possessions” (a term that reflected a mindset as much as political reality) that had fallen to the Japanese. Portugal, Spain and Belgium likewise fought to prevent their subject peoples breaking loose. Few outposts of empire endure today.
The decision to repurpose wartime conscription in 1947 was a response to these challenges and also to the threats presented by the Soviet Union and a multitude of communist-inspired and Soviet-nourished national liberation movements. And yet, only a very small proportion of conscripts served overseas – and most who did were stationed in what was then West Germany and isolated and divided Berlin.
To meet the military manpower needs of this grave new world, the National Service, a standardised form of peacetime conscription, was introduced in 1947 for all able-bodied men between the ages of 18 and 21. Nowadays, when all sorts of evasion, dodges, and exceptions are common in society at large, it is hard to imagine a nationwide system in which all were actually deemed eligible, lord or landless, toff or tough, brains or bozo, had to serve. endured and was endured for over a decade; its abolition was announced in 1957 but continued until 1960, and the last conscripts were not demobbed until 1963. Every fortnight some 6,000 youths were conscripted, with a total of 2,301,000 called up over the sixteen years.
And then it was over, not with a bang but with a series of whimpers, stuttering indecisively to a close, leaving few traces on the cultural topography of late twentieth century Britain. Whilst many soon to be famous authors, playwrights, producers and musicians served, only a few wrote of their experiences. Nor did many other conscripts, although Woodfield Publishing carries a range of memoirs by ordinary men who resolved to record their experiences for posterity. The most important films and television programs about National service were comedies. Carry on Sergeant, which appeared in 1958 was the first and the most innocent of the long “carry on“ series. It was filmed at a real army camp.
There was no tangible ‘outcome’ to National service. There was no single conflict that ended in victory or defeat. There were none of the collective events – bonfires, parties, mutinies – that marked the end of the two world wars. It was ‘ending’ almost soon as it began because individual men were demobilized every two weeks. They went back to work – in the tight labor market of 1950s some of them started jobs on the Monday after they were demobilized – and to marriage and families in the dour but brightening fifties. It was not until they retired in the 1990s that most of the former servicemen had much time to reflect on their youth – which is why national service was so little discussed in the three decades after it ended.
Setting a date for the end of conscription was awkward. No one wanted to be the last conscript. There was a danger that the whole system might come to an end in “a most ragged and unsatisfactory manner” if men knew the precise day on which was ceased to operate, especially since as officials recognized, they would not have the resources to track down and prosecute evaders once the machinery of National service had been put into mothballs.
Though the last years of national service were uncomfortable for many conscripts, in someways, they were even worse for regulars particular, particularly for regular officers in the army. The tone of civil-military relations changed. when the first peace time conscripts had been called up, the army still had some of the prestige that went with victory in the second world war and with the military traditions of the Empire …
Those who regarded themselves as defenders of the interest of the army, had implied that peace time. conscription was a burden for the forces and look forward to the day when a well trained well paid and dedicated professionals were combined comprise a lean flexible and hard, hitting army. At least, in the short term this did not happen, and the end of conscription went with an undignified period when middle-aged officers scrambled to hold onto their jobs.
In one sense conscription was just one aspect of a British illusion of great power status, an illusion few people outside Britain, and perhaps a few people outside the British governing classes, believed or cared about
As Vinen reminds us in his enthralling story, the public’s historical memory of the institution imperceptibly faded from the national consciousness once it had ended, once parents no longer fretted about their sons being called up and once young men no longer needed to be anxious about interrupting or postponing careers and higher education. High rates of employment, rising incomes and standards of living during the fifties and early sixties, the attractions of consumerism and new forms of mass entertainment, and the lowering of Cold War tensions with the death of Josef Stalin, gave rise to fresh and less war-like circumstances and expectations.
The end of national service coincided with the beginning of the cultural era now known as the sixties (which actually lasted from about 1963 until about 1973). Changes in British society in the 1960s would have made it increasingly difficult to call men up even if the government wished to do so. It was a time remembered for self-consciously irreverent attitudes towards the British establishment, the class system, the almost casual racism of the past, and indeed history itself. It manifested the in theatrical reviews of the early sixties like Beyond the Fringe and the scatological and iconoclastic Private Eye magazine, and also the so-called youth culture which revolved about fashion and pop music.
In 1964, a year after National Service finally ended, a British band called the Barron Knights recorded an awful parody medley called Call Up The Groups which imagined many popular British groups being conscripted. It was hammy and cringeworthy then and it has not aged well, but when listened to sixty years on, it seems like an irreverent dated relic of Britain’s stuttering “farewell to arms”.
The very last line of Vinen’s book says it all: the culture in which national service existed belongs to a different age. To repurpose LP Hartley’s well used line, the past was another country where people thought and did things differently.
Descent from Glory
As noted in our introduction, present day advocates of conscription – or “national service”, which soothes the sting of compulsion – argue that it would encourage young people to “shape up”, to inculcate in them those treasured values that many of a certain age believe have been lost in the tide of modernity – to reiterate, like patriotism, loyalty, respect, honour, character, valour, leadership, toughness, self-discipline and physical prowess. And yet, the society that existed in those postwar years, and the values it espoused and revered, are long gone. The historical, political, social and cultural conditions that rendered national service universally acceptable no longer exist.
The British Empire had created a political culture that took greatness for granted and victory in the Second World War had reinforced this, even as it eroded the resources with which great power might be supported. The leaders of both political parties shared this culture as did most of the officials who advised them; and during the early years of National Service, most people of all classes accepted the shared obligation to serve, and with the memory of the war years still fresh and the Soviet and communist “threat” manifest, the populace as a whole were onboard with what could be described as official patriotism.
Most national servicemen had grown up in a period when there were no great ideological divisions in Britain. At least they were mostly young and the forces provided them with little in the way of political education. Of the small number who were actually posted overseas, many went without having much idea of what they were being sent to defend, and rarely understood what they were doing. In farflung outposts like Cyprus and Palestine, Kenya and the Far East, they were fighting people with whom they were not at war and often, as in Korea and later, in Egypt, countries that were not British possessions. The army didn’t get down to the politics what it was all about, and some national servicemen appear to have thought about the political significance of their actions at Suez, or in Malaya only years after the event.
Regular Army officers introducing themselves to conscripts would advise to tell them that the British preferred the term national service to conscription, because, to quote Vinen, “that is what it is “a service to the nation, each national serviceman contributes towards giving the nation, strong and efficient army”. Judged on an international perspective, however, the most striking thing about national service is, that was not actually very national
And yet, the military authorities never tried to instill patriotism.
Often, particularly in new states many ethnicities and religious affiliations and little social cohesion, military service is regarded as a “school of nation” inculcating presumptive national loyalty, values, interests. This was not the intent of the designers of national service. It was not intended to inculcate patriotic feelings. Nor was it really designed to foster manly martial virtues. Service for most conscripts was monotonous and seemingly pointless, whilst stories of bullying and mistreatment were common. One serviceman, Peter Burns, noted in a memoir years later: “In the old phrase, I went in a boy and came out a man, but not a very nice man”. He did not elaborate further.
It was manpower first and foremost, “boots on the ground” and potentially, on the battlefield – though technological innovation was rendering “serried ranks” redundant. Military authorities, determined to make things easier for themselves, were reluctant to call up, as a War Office report put it “a social group that is poorly integrated in the nation. For example, barrow boys, gypsies, the racing community, Liverpool Irish, foreign communities in London, the Glasgow community from which the gangs are recruited, etcetera … “. Indeed, the forces were probably glad to be rid of some of their potential and actual delinquent conscripts.
Conscription was never applied in the part of the United Kingdom where the largest number of people was likely not to feel themselves British: Northern Ireland. In Scotland and Wales, there was a small amount of overtly nationalist opposition to fighting for a ‘foreign’ government. more important was the general sense that conscription did not fit with the social structure of either Wales or Scotland. The Welsh dislike of the armed forces, rooted in chapel going respectability, was very different from the antipathy to army discipline that was associated with some working-class Scotsman. Sometimes the single word that aroused most terror in the war office was Glasgow”.
National service did not create a more homogenous and disciplined society – on the contrary, it worked partly because Britain, mainland Britain at least, was already homogenous and disciplined.
But there were the outliers. As Vinen writes: “Would that substantial group of men of Irish origin living in mainland Britain have been called up during the northern Irish troubles? What would the forces have done about non-white immigrants? Black Britons were not excluded from national service, but given how rare such men were, it is significant that they were quite common amongst those that officers regarded as ‘difficult’. The British army recruited 2000 West Indians in 1960, partly to make the shortfall that sprang from the imminent end of national service. However, the authorities decided that coloured soldiers should not make up more than 2% of the strength of any corps”.
Lipstick on your collar … national service through Potter’s prism
Lipstick on Your Collar is a 1993 British TV serial written by the late socialist playwright Dennis Potter, acclaimed for his television dramas The Singing Detective, Karaoke and Cold Lazarus. He also wrote the brilliant screenplay for the film adaption of Martin Cruz-Smith’s most excellent novel Gorky Park, itself, in my opinion, one of the best ever film adaptations of a novel.
Potter was a national service conscript along with many soon to be well-known British politicians, sportsmen, authors, poets, playwrights and performing artists – including Rolling Stones bass player, former RAF private, Bill Wyman, iconic actor and national treasure Michael Caine, late actors Sean Connery and Michael Gambon, onetime Conservative Party firebrand Michael Heseltine, and the ‘Angry Young Men’ of letters Allan Sillitoe, John Braine, Arnold Wesker and Joe Orton.
The story is for the most part set in a British Military Intelligence Office in Whitehall during 1956. A small group of foreign affairs analysts find their quiet existence is disrupted by the Suez Crisis. A young conscript is completing his national service as a translator of Russian documents, but bored with his job, he passes time in fantasy daydreams in which his very straight colleagues break into contemporary hit songs. The character is portrayed by a young Ewan McGregor went on to movie fame in Star Wars and other major films. His fellow language clerk is a clumsy Welsh intellectual and admirer Russian poets and playwrights – Pushkin and Chekov in particular- whose academic career has been interrupted by his call up. collar.
The subtext is the conflict between the old order, as represented by the middle-aged and-patriotic regular army officers, the conscripted ‘other ranks’ as portrayed by the two privates, and the new ‘rock ‘n roll’ generation, illustrated her by dance halls, coffee bars, and ‘fifties American popular music.
Denis Potter studied at Ministry of Defence’s Russian Language School. Apparently, those few conscripts who graduated as interpreters and translators were regarded as the crême de la crême of conscripts. Often, trainees would put on concerts of Russian songs and plays for their own amusement. A natural linguist, he’d learned Russian whilst undergoing compulsory national service in the fifties. One such graduate was Tom Springfield, the elder brother of diva Dusty Springfield. He borrowed the melody of The Seeker’s timeless song The Carnival is Over from Stenka Razin a traditional Russian folk tune that told the tale of a drunken seventeenth century Cossack rebel who threw his Persian bride of one night over the side of his boat into the Volga River when his men accused him of going soft. Tom changed the story entirely though he retained a nautical riff and cast the star-crossed lovers as the theatre characters Pierrot and Columbine rather than casting them overboard. See “High above the dawn is waiting” … the unlikely origin of a pop song
Boomers born at the right time
For the sake of this story, let’s jump back to 1945, the year a six year long worldwide war ended. As an early piece in In That Howlng Infinite wrote:
“And what a year that was! With peacetime restored, the British electorate immediately voted out its esteemed and beloved war leader, Winston Churchill, and bought Labour’s promise of a democratic socialism. In his excellent documentary The Spirit of ‘45, film maker Ken Loach describes the nationalisation of public services and industries and their subsequent privatization three decades later. His interviewees provide poignant anecdotes about the poverty of the 1930s, the dangerous and exploitative working conditions, poor housing, and abysmal health care, and the renewed sense of purpose and optimism a the end of the war and Labour’s landslide victory. He recounts the subsequent expansion of the welfare state, with its free to all medical service and the nationalization of significant parts of the British economy, most notably, electricity, the railways, and the mines. The Attlee government was elected due to a general belief that nothing would or could be as it had been before. Britain had pulled together to win the war; now, it would transform the peace.
But for ordinary folk, life in the immediate postwar years wasn’t that rosy. Britain emerged from the war victorious and though brave, physically battered and financially broke, its towns and factories in disrepair, and it’s people coming to terms with a not so brave new world of disappointed expectations and ongoing privation. Rationing, introduced early in the war on most foodstuffs and consumer items, remained in place and was only gradually lifted until its end in 1954.”
If we’re born in forties and early fifties, and look back, to our childhoods or to contemporary photographs and films, there is a patina of austerity and drabness. It was mirrored in how people dressed and in the fashions of the time. During the conflict and long after, clothing and colour were rationed due to the shortage of fabrics and of dyes as industry and manufacturing were directed to “essential industries” contributing to the war effort. This is why images of the time look so monochrome, or when colourized all blacks, browns and greys. Until the technicolor explosion that is now synonymous with the “swinging sixties”, enabled by the invention of new, often synthetic fabrics and an insurrectionist generation of designers, artists, and entrepreneurs.
I was born at the right time in the right place. I missed the Second World War, and arrived to be blessed with the benefits of the National Health Service – launched by Labour health minister Aneurin Bevan on 5th July 1948 – which had had at its heart three core principles: that it met the needs of everyone, that it be free at the point of delivery, and that it be based on clinical need, not ability to pay – and The Education Act , or ‘Butler Act’, of 1944 which promised and then delivered ‘secondary education for all’. I was too young to do National Service in the fifties, and caught the wondrous wave of the sixties in all its freewheeling, rumbustious glory, whilst Harold Wilson kept us potentially eligible conscripts out of America’s Asian war in Vietnam.
When I was a nipper, the Second World War was tangible. I born less than four years after the fighting finished. It was nearer than Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and even Northern Ireland are today. We just called it “The War”. We had family, friends and relations who had lived through it, fought in it, and died in it, as had many of the schoolmasters who taught us. Many wore scars and infirmities from the war, and some bore invisible wounds.
We played war-games on bombed-out “wasteland”. Rationing continued into the fifties, so it constrained our lifestyles. War stories were ubiquitous, on the screen and in print; James Bond had served in the war, as had George Smiley. In the boys’ comics, gallant British Tommies invariably overcame superior numbers of Germans, who were portrayed as mindless automatons and referred to contemptuously as ‘Krauts’ or ‘Jerries’. In the sixties, we built Airfix warplanes, battleships and fighting vehicles.
Conscription was reintroduced in 1948 to maintain what remained of Britain’s imperial dream; young men in uniform were always around whilst older cousins and friends’ big brothers had to do their national service. Little wonder that the war’s echoes reverberated through our imaginations, pastimes and preoccupations.
My own memories of National Service are are just fleeting images of young relatives in army uniforms and of school pals mentioning that their brothers or uncles were doing their bit. To us children, it was relatively unobtrusive and taken for granted. I commenced grammar school in September 1960 at a time when many grammar schools imitated the practise of public schools with a military training outfit called the CCF or Combined Cadet Force. Once a week, toy soldiers would strut about school in khaki attire. Prefects, another practise borrowed from public schools (along with the term “fags” for first and second formers – though none the servile duties immortalised in that fabulous movie If) were naturally officer-cadets. And they would march up and down the square with real guns! No ammo, but. I was already a Boy Scout by then and that was enough of matters martial and patriotic for me. And my Irish folks said “No!”
Whether by design or coincidence, by 1963, conscription and our school CCF were no more. And I did not notice the passing of either.
We were taught and accepted the narrative that wartime prime minister Winston Churchill had promulgated: that the period after the fall of France, when Britain had stood alone against the Axis powers, had been our finest hour and that the eventual defeat of Nazi Germany made all the sacrifices worthwhile. We also accepted His word for his pivotal role in it. “History will be kind to me”, he famously wrote, “for I shall write it”. And we were inculcated with the values that he fostered and indeed, personified: courage, duty, obedience, self-denial, reticence, restraint – the qualities that had won the war, or at least had enabled Britons to survive it. This is what being a man meant, then.
The are not values that resonate today. By the beginning of the sixties, “the times were a’changin’”, slowly but surely. Changes in British society in the 1960s would have made it increasingly difficult to call men up even if the government wished to do so. Rising levels of education, and also, of affluence wrought changes in attitudes and ambitions. The fifties gave rise to the phenomenon of “the teenager”, an American concept that took off in drab Britain as rationing came gradually to an end and as life in general took on more colour and excitement – young people were less accepting of authority, discipline, and ageing and anachronistic concepts of Queen and Country – and as the songs at the head if this post illustrate, love was always in the air …
Rather than keeping a stiff upper lip, we are encouraged to show our emotions; rather than keeping it in, we are supposed to let it all out. Like most of us today, I share these modern, peacetime values; yet I retain a respect for the men of my father’s generation. Without them, our lives would have been very different.
The world was much smaller then
In those days, young people did not travel too much, and accordingly, did not move far from their economic and social circles. Vinen notes that schools and later, universities, were for many, the most important gatehouses on the social frontiers. Until then, few folk got close enough to see the middle class or conversely, the working class closeup. The eleven plus was the border crossing where children who’d come through primary school together were filtered off onto different paths.
My recollections concur totally regional differences were less pronounced in primary school where children were drawn from a particular locality, where even Scottish, Welsh and Irish accents were to a degree diluted and normalized by schoolmates. My Roman Catholic primary school in Yardley Wood in south Birmingham was located between middle- and working-class neighbourhoods, the former on the eastern side of Trittiford Road, the latter on the west and south, so we were a socially mixed bunch. But Catholics all. Of Irish parentage, went through primary school without mixing socially with non-Catholics. Secondary schools drawing on a wider yet still local catchment saw more familiarization with differences accents, often of a social character. But it was in tertiary education that young people came into continued contact with contemporaries and teachers from all over the country and even from abroad.
Conscription in the Anglosphere post 1945
The following is a brief overview of postwar conscription in Australia and the United Sates, particularly with reference to its introduction in the light of these countries’ controversial involvement in the Vietnam War. Britain sat this one out – to the great relief of myself and my peers, who were all of conscription age and had no inclination to take part in America’s Asian war – although US President Lyndon B Johnson endeavoured unsuccessfully to strongarm and indeed blackmail British Prime Minister Harold Wilson into committing British troops to the conflict. A more comprehensive overview of conscription in the Eastern and Western blocs during and after the Cold War is provided in an addendum at the end of this post.
Britain had done away with military service in 1963; Belgium did so in 1992. France in 1997 and Germany 2011, between 2004 and 2011, a vast swathe of Europe did away with national service. Only Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Cyprus, Greece, Austria and Switzerland have never abandoned conscription.
In Australia, I’d meet veterans who’d been conscripted for the Vietnam War through the notorious, discriminatory birthday ballot – a method actually rejected by the British government as inequitable, unfair, and contrary to the notion of universal obligation.
It was introduced in April 1964 primarily to meet the challenges if of the Indonesian “confrontasi” and the emerging threats from communism in Asia and Australia’s overseas commitment to Cold War allies. Tensions were increasing between North and South Vietnam by May 1965, and as an ally of the US, Australia agreed to allow national servicemen to be sent overseas to Vietnam.
Australia sent over 60,000 military personnel to Indochina between 1962 and 1972, including large combat units and conscripts under the National Service Scheme. Most 20-year-old Australian men had to register for national service between 1965 and 1972, and 15,300 ‘nashos’ as they were called were conscripted into. More than 200 died and at least 1,200 were wounded on active duty.
Conscription was generally supported by Australians. Polls showed widespread support for the policy. Parents saw it as a way of instilling discipline in their sons, as well as teaching valuable life skills. At the time, the Australian media portrayed conscription in a positive way. Army life and national service were generally praised. The army was not so enthusiastic. Instead, it argued the need for skilled tradesmen and officers and not what it considered a ragtag selection of semi trained men. Public support waned after the first conscripts were killed, stirring the anti-war movement. Australia’s last combat troops came home from Vietnam in March 1972, and the national service scheme ended that December after the election of the Whitlam Labor government.
Like Britain, Canada did not enter the Vietnam War. New Zealand, the last of the ”Five Eyes” allies did, for similar geopolitical reasons to Australia’s.There was domestic opposition, but never on the scale or intensity of Australia’s anti-Vietnam movement. New Zealand’s total deployment was around 3,500 personnel over the whole war, but all of them were volunteers. There was no conscription in NZ and therefore not the same resentment about people being forced into service – major driver of Australian protests. The protest narrative focused on the morality and legitimacy of the war, not the injustice of conscription.
While in both countries, the conservative governments framed Vietnam as part of the Cold War “forward defence” strategy and alliance obligations (SEATO, ANZUS). the scale and visibility of the commitment in NZ were smaller, and the government carefully emphasised the limited nature of the force.
Early in the war, like in Australia, public opinion was more favourable toward involvement, partly due to alliance loyalties and the perception of a communist threat in Asia. Opposition grew in the late 1960s and early 1970s, particularly among students, churches, and parts of the Labour Party – but large street protests only became common toward the end, especially around 1970–72. There was no equivalent of the huge moratorium marches across the Tasman. NZ began winding down combat deployments earlier than Australia; the infantry company was withdrawn in late 1971, with only a small training team remaining until 1972. The Labour government elected in 1972 (Norman Kirk) quickly ended remaining involvement. It never became the same national political crisis that it did in Australia, but it did, help cement a more independent foreign policy during the 1970s–80s, culminating in the nuclear-free policy and tensions with the US.
America’s Vietnam conscription experience was combustible and cathartic. Between 1964 and 1973, the U.S. military drafted 2.2 million American men out of an eligible pool of 27 million. All men of draft age (born January 1, 1944, to December 31, 1950) who shared a birthday would be called to serve at once.
Although only 25 percent of the military force in the combat zones were draftees, the system of conscription caused many young American men to volunteer for the armed forces in order to have more of a choice of which division in the military they would serve. While many soldiers did support the war, at least initially, to others the draft seemed like a death sentence: being sent to a war and fight for a cause that they did not believe in. Some sought refuge in college or parental deferments; others intentionally failed aptitude tests or otherwise evaded; thousands fled to Canada; the politically connected sought refuge in the National Guard; and a growing number engaged in direct resistance. Antiwar activists viewed the draft as immoral and the only means for the government to continue the war with fresh soldiers. Ironically, as the draft continued to fuel the war effort, it also intensified the antiwar cause. Although the Selective Service’s deferment system meant that men of lower socioeconomic standing were most likely to be sent to the front lines, no one was completely safe from the draft. Almost every American was either eligible to go to war or knew someone who was.
© Paul Hemphill 2024. All rights reserved
Global areas of operation for National Servicemen, 1947-63
National Service: Conscription in Britain 1945-1963
Fifty years ago, at the dawn of the cultural revolution of the 60s, there had never been so many ex-soldiers and ex-sailors in British history. Mods and peaceniks were reacting against generations that had been mobilised during two world wars. Yet the militarisation of British society was not just the outcome of war. Under the National Service Act, introduced in 1947, healthy males aged 18 or over were obliged to serve in the armed forces for 18 months. After the outbreak of the Korean war in 1950, the length of service was raised to two years – more onerous than elsewhere in Europe. In practice national service was a catch-all for men born between 1927 and 1939 whose childhoods had already been overcast by economic depression, wartime bombing and evacuation. Although its abolition was announced in 1957, it continued until 1960, and the last conscripts were not demobbed until 1963.
Every fortnight some 6,000 youths were conscripted, with a total of 2,301,000 called up over this period. The army took 1,132,872 and the RAF much of the rest, leaving relatively few sailors. After discharge, conscripts remained on the reserve force for another four years, and were liable to recall in the event of an emergency. Many drilled men became conformist and respectful of authority, but others reacted to their experiences with a lifetime of insubordination and resentment. National service did not cause the upheaval or leave the distressed aftermath of the US draft in the Vietnam war, but the significance of the forgotten militarisation of mid-20th century Britain is enduring.
National Servicemen relax in the NAAFI canteen at Weybourne Camp, April 1954
In an era when it was hard to recruit enough regular soldiers to meet Britain’s commitments in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia, conscripts trained to police regions occupied by the British after the war, to provide a reserve of troops who could be called up in any future major conflict, and they were available for immediate deployment, notably in the decolonisation wars in Malaya, Kenya and Cyprus. Most of them were not yet old enough to vote (voting age was only lowered from 21 to 18 in 1970) and felt disempowered. They had scant pay, and provided a cut-price way for Britain to maintain its illusory great power status. But withdrawing this number of fit youngsters from the economy at a time of labour shortage harmed British post-war reconstruction.
Vinen admits that he could write a whole chapter on a Conservative MP’s claim that he was offered a commission because an officer spotted that he was circumcised and concluded that he must be a public school boy. In turn, a reviewer could write a monograph on Vinen’s book, which is chock-a-block with important themes, provocative ideas, arresting stories, heartbreak and good jokes.
Nowadays we commemorate the launch of the National Health Service as promoting a historically unprecedented mentality whereby a benign state provided its citizens with social benefits rather than treating them as subjects serving the needs of the nation. The National Service Act was the negative counterpart of the NHS, whereby civilians were dragooned into compliance with the demands of the state. Its chief proponent was Field Marshal Montgomery, the posturing bully who was in a permanent panic of denial about his repressed homosexuality, and hoped to use military service to mould national character towards chaste combative virility. For many conscripts their sense of the state was not the benign NHS but the bullying of national service square-bashing.
Generally, though, national service was not intended as an instrument of social discipline. It was disliked not only by antimilitarists and left-wingers, but by middle-of-the-road people because it disrupted the lives of their sons in a period when there was full employment for the working classes. Welsh chapel-going traditions were hostile to conscription. Working-class Scotsmen fought army discipline. As Vinen writes, “Sometimes the single word that aroused most terror in the War Office was ‘Glasgow’.” Regular army officers resented national service, especially during its early years, because the need to train a constantly renewed stream of conscripts was dull, repetitive and diminished “real soldiering”.
The Church of England, unlike the nonconformists and the Catholics, encouraged its clergy to undertake national service. Anglicanism and “manly morality” were promoted together by the military authorities. An army guide of 1947 declared, “the sexual appetite was implanted in man for the lawful use in Wedlock”. Yet Christian morality had minimal influence on the sex lives of conscripts. Rather, says Vinen, national servicemen, as opposed to regular soldiers, believed in “that greatest of all postwar virtues: deferred gratification”. His findings support Claire Langhamer’s wonderful study The English in Love (2013) in showing how strongly young men of the 1950s were romantics who believed in love at first sight, idealised virginity and had sweet dreams of domestic bliss within the institution of marriage. The discomfort and violence of military life, the lack of privacy and the mindless rules imposed without consent produced a generation that cherished intimacy and non-confrontation. Most conscripts came from families where defiance of the law was inconceivable. Yet the armed forces gave innumerable opportunities for non-commissioned officers and clerks to exploit conscripts, pilfer stores and make dodgy deals. Many conscripts learned how to duck and dive, to break rules and subvert authority. One RAF clerk issued instructions that officers must count the number of flies stuck to flypapers at all bases. Such experiences chipped away at the law-abiding, respectful traditions of Britain before peacetime conscription.
Vinen depicts “the hellish chaos of basic training”: its violence, verbal savagery, the dumb misery of military drills, the horrors of bayonet practice. Several young men killed themselves during training – usually by hanging from a lavatory cistern, because “the shithouse” was the only place that gave a moment’s privacy – but suicide statistics seem to have been doctored by officials. Sergeants with booming voices and curling moustaches were fabled figures, but it was corporals who gave the orders in training – many were malevolent, sadistic figures. Vinen gives numerous instances of cruelty, both in training and in combat. These include the massacre in 1948 by a Scots Guards patrol – mainly national servicemen – of 24 Chinese labourers on a Malaysian rubber plantation, killings and mutilations in Kenya and a rampage by troops in Cyprus after two British servicemen’s wives were shot. A serviceman described: “wholesale rape and looting and murder”, including “a 13 year old girl raped and killed in a cage”.
Royal Engineers homeward bound from Suez on the SS ‘Dilwara’, 1954
National Service may prove to be the most original social history book of 2014. It is written with cool, elegant lucidity and there are neither ideological tricks nor obscure jargon. The book is bigger than its ostensible subject, embracing class, masculinity, sexuality, compliance, rebellion, combat atrocities, petty crime, notions of national identity, group solidarity, the fallibility of memory and what it means to be a man.
How National Service introduced in 1949 saw more than two million young men take up military roles
- Males aged between 17 and 21 were conscripted between 1949 and 1960
- Initially recruits had to serve for 18 months, but this was extended to two years
- Did YOU do National Service? Email harry.s.howard@mailonline.co.uk
Harry Howard, History Correspondent, Daily Mail, 31st August 2023
Between 1949 and 1960, more than two million men aged between 17 and 21 were conscripted into the armed forces as part of National Service.
Among them were acting legend Michael Caine, boxing champion Henry Cooper and former Conservative leadership contender Michael Heseltine.
This week, Commons Leader and former Defense SecretaryPenny Mordaunt backed a National Service-style scheme that could see every 16-year-old in Britain sign up.
The proposals – mooted by think-tank Onward – would not be compulsory, but youths would have to opt out if they did not want to join. As many as 600,000 youngsters could be involved.
Ministers also wanted to re-establish British influence in the world, including in the Middle East.
Further manpower demands were imposed by the Cold War with the Soviet Union, whilst Indian independence in 1947 meant Britain no longer had the huge Indian Army to call upon.
Those who were conscripted as part of National Service would have to sleep 20 to a room in ramshackle barracks, with little heating, primitive toilets and poor washing facilities.
They would be woken at 5.30am and spent hours marching on the parade ground, with afternoons taken up by field or rifle training, ten-mile runs and obstacle courses.
Recruits spent their evenings cleaning the barracks, their kit and their rifles in a routine that was known as ‘the bull’.
Former boxing champion Sir Henry Cooper (pictured left with his twin brother George), who died in 2011, spent two years in the Army after representing Great Britain at the 1952 Olympic Games
Sir Henry Cooper (left) is seen on a training jog with other recruits during his National Service
Former Conservative minister Michael Heseltine, was called up but served for just nine months before obtaining leave to stand as a Tory candidate in the 1959 election: (middle row, fifth from right) with fellow conscripts at Caterham Guards Depot in 1959
National Servicemen at a depot in Kingston upon Thames enjoy a smoke as a comrade examines his rifle in 1953
National Servicemen are seen marching at a depot in Kingston upon Thames
National Servicemen training with the Royal Air Force at RAF Booker in Buckinghamshire in 1951
Punishments for any slip in standards included being confined to barracks, washing latrines or peeling potatoes.
Recruits also had little chance to see their families. They were given just 14 days’ leave for every eight months of service.
Basic pay in 1949 was 28 shillings (£1.40) a week, much less than the average weekly wage of around £8.
But the men still had to buy all their own razor blades, shaving soap, boot polish, haircuts, dusters and Brasso for polishing any buckles and badges.
If any kit was lost, recruits would have to pay for it twice. Once to replace it and once as a fine.
After finishing basic training, conscripts were posted to regiments both at home and abroad. Overseas postings included Germany, Cyprus and the Middle East.
Other National Servicemen who went on to become household names include Oliver Reed, Tony Hancock, and Bill Wyman of the Rolling Stones
Around 125,000 National Servicemen were deployed to war zones such as the conflict in Korea and 395 lost their lives in combat.
Others saw action in Malaya and during the Suez Crisis in 1956.
Although for some the experience of serving was a negative one, many National Service veterans look back fondly on the period.
They often formed bonds that have stayed with them ever since.
During his stint in the Royal Fusiliers, which began in 1952, Sir Michael, now 90, served in the Korean War.
He recalled his experiences in an interview with the Daily Mail in 1987.
Commenting on the tactics employed by the enemy, he told of ‘attack after attack, you would find their bodies in groups of four’.
‘We heard them talking and we knew they had sussed us…Our officer shouted run and by chance we ran towards the Chinese. Which is what saved us; in the dark we lost each other,’ he added.
Lord Heseltine, 90, served for just nine months before obtaining leave to stand as a Tory candidate in the 1959 election and then getting his solicitor to persuade the War Office that he did not need to return to the barracks.
Sir Bobby, 85, combined his football career at Manchester United with a stint in the Army in the mid 1950s.
He served with the Royal Army Ordnance Corps in Shrewsbury, meaning he could still play football at the weekend.
Former boxing champion Sir Henry Cooper, who died in 2011, spent two years in the Army after representing Great Britain at the 1952 Olympic Games in Helsinki.
Eighteen-year-old conscripts on parade at the Royal West Kent Depot , November 1955
Teenagers line up at the Royal West Kent Depot in Maidstone forinoculations in November 1954
Major General Sir Reginald Laurence Scoones of the British Army takes the salute at the passing-out parade of 32 National Service and regular recruits from the depot of the Royal Fusiliers (City of London Regiment) at the Tower of London, October 17, 1958
National Service recruits lined up in 1952
He joined up with his twin brother George. Recalling his first day, Sir Henry previously said: ‘Well, it’s all a bit nerve-wracking because we didn’t know what to expect.
‘We went to Blackdown where we did our basic training.
‘We had to have medicals, strip off in front of doctors, put our arms up and they stuck a needle, one in our shoulder, one in our arm, and we wondered what was going on.’
He added: ‘They were hard on you in those days. Thank God we were a little bit better than a lot of the ordinary guys.
‘We were very fit because we’d been training as amateur boxers so the physical fitness side didn’t bother us at all.’
Sir Henry was crowned Army Boxing Association champion two years’ running and went on to win the Imperial Services Boxing Association title.
In the late 1950s it was decided to bring National Service to an end, in part because of the burden it placed on the Army and the fact that workers were being drained from the economy.
Rifleman E Akid showing National Service recruits a captured Korean flag at the Royal Ulster Rifles Depot in Ballymena, County Antrim, Northern Ireland
A group of national servicemen in the canteen at their barracks, November 1954
The last recruits entered the armed forces in November 1960, with their service coming to an end in 1963.
The last man to be discharged was Second Lieutenant Richard Vaughan of the Royal Army Pay Corps, who departed on June 14, 1963.
Ms Mordaunt enthusiastically endorsed the blueprint for the new National Service-style scheme yesterday in an article for the Telegraph, saying it would foster the ‘goodwill and community spirit, energy and imagination’ of teens.
She also insisted it could promote ‘good mental health and resilience’ after the upheaval of the Covid crisis.
Addendum – Around the World
Britain 1945–1962
- Name: National Service (post‑WWII call‑up)
- Period: Men born from 1927–1939 were called; effective peacetime service formally ran 1947 to 1960 for new call‑ups, with final discharges in 1963 (legal end often cited as 1960–62 depending on measure). (Double‑check exact administrative end dates for your footnote.)
- Age at call‑up: typically around 18–20 (varied).
- Length of service: initially 18 months (later raised to 2 years during Korean War era, then cut back to 18 months by the 1950s).
- Exemptions/deferrals: students, those in reserved occupations, medical unfitness, and conscientious objectors (who faced tribunals and could receive civilian or non‑combatant service).
- Context: early Cold War, Korean War, decolonisation operations; political consensus for a peacetime force to meet global commitments. Abolished as Britain moved to a smaller professional army and as political pressure mounted against peacetime conscription.
Comparative snapshot: selected Western & allied countries (1945 → present)
Note: “Present” means status as of mid‑2024 unless otherwise noted. Please ask if you want this converted into a formal table with citations.
France
- Post‑1945 pattern: Mandatory service re‑established after WWII; heavily used during the Indochina and Algerian wars.
- Length: historically 18–28 months at various times.
- End/suspension: Standing conscription ended in 1996 (President Chirac suspended the appel). France shifted to a professional army; short mandatory civic training (Journée Défense et Citoyenneté) remains.
- Notes: Algeria and decolonisation had big effects on French policy and public debate.
Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) / GDR (East Germany)
- West Germany (FRG): Introduced conscription in 1956 (Bundeswehr). Length and rules changed over decades. Suspended in 2011 (modern Bundeswehr since then volunteer‑based; conscription remains in law but de facto suspended). Alternative civilian service existed.
- East Germany (GDR): Conscription existed until German reunification in 1990.
- Notes: Reunification led to integration and later suspension in unified Germany.
Italy
- Post‑1945: Universal conscription throughout Cold War.
- End/suspension: 2005 (Italy moved to an all‑volunteer force).
- Notes: Length and structure varied; alternative civilian service for conscientious objectors established in the 1970s.
Spain
- Post‑Franco transition: Conscription continued during Francoist era and into the transition.
- End/suspension: Abolished in the early 2000s (commonly cited as 2001), moving to a professional force.
Netherlands
- Post‑1945: Conscription kept for Cold War.
- Status: Compulsory service suspended in 1996 (military became professional; registration obligations remain in law).
- Notes: Like many NATO states, transitioned in the 1990s.
Sweden
- Post‑1945: Long tradition of universal conscription.
- Suspension and reintroduction: Suspended in 2010, reintroduced in 2017 (partial, gender‑neutral selective conscription) in response to regional security concerns.
- Notes: Good example of 21st‑century reintroduction.
Norway
- Status: Conscription continued after WWII and remains active; Norway extended recruitment to women (practical gender‑neutral service).
- Notes: Nordic model with broad reserve obligations.
Finland
- Status: Conscription has been continuous since WWII and remains active; long service and comprehensive reserves are central to defence doctrine.
- Notes: Key example of a small state with universal conscription for territorial defence.
Switzerland
- Status: Active conscription for men with militia model; long tradition dating well before 1945 and continuing to present.
- Notes: Extensive reserve system; alternative service exists.
Greece
- Status: Conscription has persisted; length and requirements have varied but it remains active (security focus with Turkey as contextual factor).
- Notes: Frequently among the longer service lengths in Europe.
Turkey
- Status: Mandatory military service continues; important political and social role.
- Notes: One of the larger countries with longstanding conscription.
Israel
- Status: Conscription active and central to society (included here though not in “Western Europe”).
- Notes: Universal for men and women; unique labour/defence mix.
United States
- Post‑1945: Draft (Selective Service) used during Korea and Vietnam (peacetime draft active through early 1970s).
- End/suspension: All‑volunteer force established in 1973; Selective Service registration remains mandatory for men (no draft since 1973).
- Notes: US is important precedent for transition to volunteerism.
Canada
- Post‑1945: Canada did not maintain peacetime conscription after WWII (it had conscription in WWII and limited measures in WWI). No peacetime universal conscription for most of the Cold War.
- Notes: Canada used volunteers and reserves; National Service not used after WWII.
Australia
- Pattern: Australia used selective/periodic national service schemes post‑1945: e.g. conscription for Korean War era? (there were early 1950s programmes) and notably 1964–1972 conscription for the Vietnam War (National Service Scheme) — abolished in 1972.
- Status today: All‑volunteer force.
- Notes: Australia shows intermittent use tied to specific conflicts and governments.
New Zealand
- New Zealand’s post-1945 conscription story is short and quite different from Britain’s or Australia’s. Compulsory military training (CMT) existed during the war; at the end of WWII, conscription was wound down but not entirely abandoned.
- In 1949, New Zealand reintroduced Compulsory Military Training for men aged 18–26. This wasn’t the same as Britain’s two-year full-time National Service — instead, recruits did a few months’ full-time training (initially 14 weeks), followed by years in the reserves with annual camps. New Zealand’s 1949–1958 scheme was short-term training + reserves rather than Britain
- Korean War period: CMT supplied trained reservists but no direct mass call-up for the Korean front; active service was still voluntary.
- Abolition: The peacetime CMT scheme was abolished in 1958 by the Labour government (Walter Nash PM), in part due to cost and a belief that a small professional army plus reserves would suffice.
- Later conscription: No peacetime conscription after 1958. During the Vietnam War, New Zealand’s forces were all-volunteer (unlike Australia’s mixed volunteer/conscription model).
- Current status: No conscription; military is all-volunteer.
Cross‑cutting themes & political context
- Cold War & immediate post‑war security environment — NATO, Warsaw Pact, and decolonisation shaped demand for mass armies in 1940s–1960s.
- Colonial wars and conscription politics — France (Indochina/Algeria) and Britain (Malayan Emergency, Suez, later emergencies) faced public controversy and political consequences.
- Economic costs vs. professionalisation — By the 1990s many democracies shifted to volunteer forces to improve quality, reduce political resistance, and cut costs; the end of the Cold War accelerated this.
- Social effects & demographics — Education deferments, social class effects, and the experience of the working class vs. middle class; conscription often politicised by student movements (e.g., US/Vietnam).
- Conscientious objection & alternatives — Growth of legal alternatives, tribunals, civilian service provisions from the 1950s–1980s onward.
- Reserves, mobilization policy & territorial defence — Nordic and Swiss models retained conscription because of territorial defence doctrines; small states with perceived existential threats (Finland, Israel, Greece, Turkey) kept universal systems.
- Gender & conscription — Mostly male‑only until the 21st century; some states (e.g., Norway) expanded to gender‑neutral service in recent years.
- Legal suspension vs. abolition — Some countries (Netherlands, Germany) suspended conscription or kept the law on the books; others formally abolished it.
The USSR and the Warsaw Bloc (1945–1991)
The Soviet bloc had a very different conscription story to that of Western democracies, both in duration and in the political role of the draft. Here’s a condensed but detailed overview for the USSR, post-Soviet Russia, and Eastern Europe from 1945 to present:
- Status: Universal male conscription was a central feature of Soviet defence. It had existed since before WWII and continued uninterrupted until the USSR dissolved in 1991.
- Length:
- Immediately after WWII: usually 3 years in the army, longer in the navy.
- Reduced slightly in the late 1950s–60s (Khrushchev era) to about 2 years army / 3 years navy, which remained the basic Cold War standard.
- Scope: All able-bodied men aged roughly 18–27; women could be drafted in wartime but were not subject to peacetime call-up.
- Exemptions: Health grounds, some students (especially in priority fields), certain ethnic minority exemptions in early post-war years.
- Role:
- Central to the USSR’s massive standing force, supporting Warsaw Pact commitments.
- Ideological as well as military — military service was seen as a key Soviet citizenship duty.
- Notes: Discipline was often harsh, with hazing (dedovshchina) a chronic problem; conscripts served both in domestic garrisons and abroad (e.g., Eastern Europe, Afghanistan).
Post-Soviet Russia (1991–present)
- 1990s: Conscription continued under the Russian Federation; legal term reduced in the 2000s from 2 years to 1 year (army) under reforms completed around 2008.
- Exemptions/avoidance: Student deferments remain; draft evasion became common in the 1990s/2000s due to unpopular wars (Chechnya).
- Current status: Conscription still active (as of 2024); men aged 18–30 serve 1 year. In wartime (e.g., Ukraine 2022–), the Kremlin has also mobilised reservists and in some cases extended service.
- Differences from USSR: Smaller total force, more reliance on contract soldiers (kontraktniki), but conscription is still a key manpower source.
Eastern Europe – Warsaw Pact members (1945–1991)
- General pattern: Every Warsaw Pact state maintained conscription for men during the Cold War; service length typically 18–36 months.
- Common features:
- Universal or near-universal male service, with medical and limited educational exemptions.
- Conscripts formed the backbone of armed forces aligned with the USSR.
- Political indoctrination part of military training.
- Examples:
- Poland: 2–3 years service until 1980s; some reductions late in the Cold War.
- East Germany (GDR): Introduced conscription in 1962 (before that it was nominally voluntary); 18 months army service; alternative service existed from 1964 (construction units for conscientious objectors).
- Czechoslovakia: 2 years for most of the Cold War; universal male service.
- Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania: 18–24 months typical; service deeply integrated into socialist “citizen duty” ideology.
Post-1991 – Eastern Europe after communism
Ended or suspended conscription (most NATO-aligned former Warsaw Pact states)
- Poland: Suspended 2009 (professional force; registration remains).
- Czech Republic: Suspended 2005.
- Slovakia: Suspended 2006.
- Hungary: Suspended 2004.
- Romania: Suspended 2007.
- Bulgaria: Suspended 2008.
Retained or reintroduced conscription
- Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania:
- Lithuania suspended in 2008, reintroduced in 2015 due to Russian aggression in Ukraine/Crimea.
- Estonia and Latvia have maintained or reintroduced forms of conscription (Latvia restarted in 2023).
- Belarus: Maintained continuous conscription (close Russian ally).
- Ukraine: Maintained conscription post-1991; partially suspended in 2013, reinstated in 2014 after Crimea; now fully mobilised for war.
Key contrasts with Western Europe/Britain
- Longevity: USSR and its satellites kept conscription far longer, with no 1960s/70s abolition wave seen in Western Europe.
- Purpose: In the East, conscription was linked not just to military manpower but to political indoctrination and socialist identity.
- Transition after 1991: Most former Warsaw Pact states that joined NATO abolished conscription by the late 2000s, while Russia and some post-Soviet states retained it.
- Resurgence: Some Eastern states (Baltics, Ukraine) have reintroduced or strengthened conscription due to perceived Russian threat — a trend not mirrored in Western Europe except in Sweden.
Key comparative themes
- Duration & timing: Britain’s National Service was a comparatively short post‑war peacetime draft (roughly late‑1940s → early‑1960s) vs. the Soviet bloc’s continuous Cold War conscription and the patchwork Western transition to volunteerism from the 1970s–2000s.
- Purpose & doctrine: Western shifts towards professional forces were driven by expeditionary/NATO interoperability, cost/quality debates and changing public opinion; Eastern conscription prioritized territorial mass, political control and bloc commitments.
- Colonial/operational effects: Colonial wars (France, Britain) made conscription politically salient; in contrast, Moscow used conscripts for garrisoning client states.
- Political contestation & social impact: Student movements, anti‑war activism (Vietnam, Algeria, late‑1960s), and changing labour/economic expectations shaped abolitionist pressure in the West; in the East, conscription was harder to contest publicly under single‑party regimes.
- Resurgence & selective reintroduction: Recent security shocks (Russia’s actions 2014–present) have prompted reintroduction or reinforcement of conscription in parts of Eastern Europe; Sweden’s 2017 reintroduction demonstrates the flexible, security‑driven character of modern conscription policy.
- Legal suspension vs formal abolition: Some countries suspended conscription (kept the law on the books) while others formally abolished it — an important distinction when discussing future reintroduction.
In That Howling Infinite 