With the UK's election campaign underway after the announcement by the prime minister of a 4 July date for voting, the proposal by the Tories to introduce National Service has drawn widespread comment and garnered headlines – as this political ploy and troubling pronouncement should.
“Every 18-year-old will be required by law to sign up for a year of National Service under plans unveiled by the Conservatives this weekend,” <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/tories-want-all-18-year-olds-to-do-mandatory-national-service-xglndxs73"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">reports</mark></a> <em>The Sunday Times</em>. “Rishi Sunak’s first manifesto commitment would see youngsters given the choice between a full-time course or spending one weekend a month volunteering in their community.”<br><br><em>The Times</em> explains that “there will be sanctions for teenagers who do not take part”, while up to 30,000 full-time positions will be created either in the armed forces or in cybersecurity training, alongside weekend placements that could be with the fire or police services, the NHS or “charities tackling loneliness and supporting older, isolated people”.
The themes involved of patriotism, service, giving back to others and visiting the old and the sick might at first blush have serious <a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/a-vote-for-life-some-things-to-keep-in-mind-as-the-uk-general-election-approaches/"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">appeal to a Catholic voter</mark></a>. But there is something latently wrong and indeed confusing about “forced volunteering”.
Currently many objections to the proposed scheme involve costs, but there are more fundamental problems at the heart of this.
Christians will be familiar with the corporal works of mercy: feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, visit the imprisoned, shelter the homeless, visit the sick and bury the dead. But if these works are <a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/you-cant-police-belief-but-state-still-tries-to-control-our-thoughts-and-values/?swcfpc=1"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">compelled by the State</mark></a>, they would lose their charitable nature.<br><br>There is also an unfairness in foisting this burden on a generation that is just starting out in their adult lives, while their much wealthier grandparents can often be found enjoying a month-long cruise. The youth of today will already have to carry a huge financial debt burden by attending university. This is something that their time- and housing-rich grandparents did not have to endure.
Then there is how there is a real danger that a form of National Service, foisted on this rising generation, will be anti-Catholic through unintended consequences (one at least hopes they are unintended).
A year-long obligation to the State is bound to have unforeseen consequences for young Catholic adults and their families. First, there are thousands of young people who already volunteer their time to charities. Also, if these young people are part of a Catholic family with many children, they may also have financial and caring obligations within the family.
A young Catholic woman will often be the elder sister to many siblings and her mother will rely on her to care for those siblings, at least some of the time. An older brother or sister in a large Catholic family is more likely to have weekend employment obligations – an income that is critical to the larger family or indeed to the young persons themselves.
A Catholic 18-year-old – with a group of siblings – often cannot rely on the “bank of mum and dad” as much as their friends who are only children or one of two children to a couple, so they must take a weekend job. They would be unable to do so if this scheme for National Service was put in place.
Furthermore, young Catholic adults may well be thinking about getting married earlier than their secular friends. And although getting married under 25, even in Catholic families, would be rare nowadays, to ask a young woman to surrender a year of her fertility to the State seems disproportionate compared to any <em>benefit</em> she might get from a year of “forced volunteering”.
Another aspect to the problem can be seen if we consider cities such as London, where young women from ultra-Orthodox Jewish families and some conservative Muslim communities might well get married as young as 18 and have a child. No doubt they would have be exempt from National Service, and rightly so. But, if after a few years some communities are seen as securing more exemptions than others, then the aim of unifying a diverse group of young people behind the flag and nation will be seriously undermined, and might well actually succeed in causing more division instead.
Ultimately, the fact that the Conservatives believe there is a need for compulsory National Service is a sad sign of the times. Our politics is bitterly divided and the social fabric is fraying. The appeal to self-sacrifice and reliance on the common good too often falls on deaf ears – and arguably more so among adults rather than young people, who often still have hearts open to the common good, whether they are Catholic or not.
Young people should be looking ahead to their lives in hope. But, instead, in general young people already <a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/permacrisis-since-2020-offers-unparalleled-opportunity-to-bring-meaning-to-our-lives/?swcfpc=1"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">feel they get a raw deal from the State</mark></a> and hence are losing faith in our democratic system. Being compelled to surrender their time is unlikely to improve matters.
Any Catholic adult raised in a Catholic family should already be aware of his obligations to his family, neighbours, community and country. If we lived in a more Christian society there would be no need for this call to arms.
But given how the <a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/an-exorcist-is-needed-to-sort-out-eurovision-2024-and-irelands-troubled-contestant/?swcfpc=1"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">cult of the individual</mark> </a>has dominated for decades, both in politics and the culture, it should come as no surprise that we live in such an atomised society where it is every man or woman for himself or herself.
Only a return to a Christian understanding of loving thy neighbour and of the corporal works of mercy will see a national revival in the UK.
But I fear it is very unlikely that we will witness this kind of <a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/englands-christian-inheritance-at-stake-in-uk-general-election/"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">call for a more Christian type of arms</mark></a> during the forthcoming election campaign.<br><br><em>Photo: First World War recruitment posters including Lord Kitchener's "Wants You" recruiting poster from 1914 seen during an auction in the Blandford Forum, England, 8 July 2014. (Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images.)</em>
