LEFT! LEFT! LEFT, RIGHT, LEFT!

Justin Healy

The supporters of National Service are not, usually, the most attractive of people. We imagine gout-ridden men drowning in nostalgia, mournfully yearning for the sepia-stained utopia of the 1950s. Fanned by copies of the Daily Mail, they wallow in sentimentalist orgies of despair at the modern world. They believe the feckless masses can be instilled with ‘respect’ and ‘values’ through compulsory National Service. It is with these flaccid monoliths of moral outrage that I align myself, for I too believe that National Service could be a good thing.

For many people, National Service conjures up images of a corpulent corporal screaming at pasty youths in a muddy field. They believe that the quasi-militaristic setting would benefit some kids but alienate far more, that physical punishment and verbal bullying is no way to treat young adults. For such people, it is clear that there can be no place for National Service in a modern society.

However, contrarily to popular belief, National Service does not have to be a year of military work. In Germany there is the option to do civil service where people volunteer in hospitals, schools, ambulance services for a year. Some people are able to join international development organisations and spend two years working in a developing country. This notion, the idea of serving society or working for a community, is a good one and it is one that we should embrace today.

It is a cliché that no man is an island, that all our lives are somehow interconnected, that my actions affect those around me and theirs affect me. However, this idea has been steadily crushed by incessant parades of individualism. Today’s pervading dogma is one of personal choice, of self-improvement, of individual aspiration. I am an individual island adrift in a sea of humanity. In the beginning was the word and the word was me. This is not, inherently, a bad thing. It’s great that I can do or buy what I want – people who say otherwise are generally twits. However, something has been lost along the way and that is the idea that we have an obligation to the people around us. Not just an obligation to pay taxes or to refrain from petrol bombing irritating neighbours but rather an obligation to be involved in a community and to look after other members of our community. We have lost a sense of civic responsibility and this is not such a good thing.

National Service alone can’t fix all those problems but it can start to create a sense of duty to society. A sense that personal lives are not solely about personal achievement but that they should also be about what can be done for wider society, for the betterment of everyone, needs to be generated; a sense that we are citizens, not just consumers. It may sound terribly pompous, but an obsession with self-interest leads to irresponsible bankers and a society that doesn’t care who it leaves behind.

National Service has plenty of benefits beyond these theoretical, social gains. A year of service before adult life could instil a work ethic and a sense of maturity that is often missing in teenagers and young adults. It also has the potential to, for a year at least, radically mix-up social classes so we would never again be faced with a potential Prime Minister whose life has never taken him beyond privilege and prosperity. However, the fundamental benefit of National Service is that it would reconnect individuals with the society in which they live.

It might be a terrible thought but those sherry-stained letters of the Daily Mail that screech for a return to National Service may well have a point.