For King and Country

‘This House will under no circumstances fight for its King and country’

Motion to Oxford Union Society, 9 February 1933, passed 275 votes to 153.

In 1914 Oxford students had enthusiastically signed up for war only for a few to return. So many of them died that Harold Macmillan (Prime Minister 1957-1963), who had been badly wounded at the Somme, could not face returning to finish his degree. Oxford was a ‘city of ghosts.’ This experience perhaps makes it unsurprising that 15 years after the war in a debate at the Union that soon gained notoriety, a new generation signalled their reluctance to take up arms even under the most extreme provocation. It turned out to be a poor signal, providing no clues as to how those students would respond when the crunch came in 1939. They did fight for King and Country.

This debate has been regularly referenced in the furore over the finding of a YouGov poll which, on a somewhat more representative sample than the Oxford undergraduates of ninety years ago, showed that;

38% of under-40s say they would refuse to serve in the armed forces in the event of a new world war, and 30% say they would not serve even if Britain was facing imminent invasion.

This finding has led to a variety of worries being expressed about the patriotism and softness of the nation’s youth, in the context of concerns about the consequences of Russia gaining the upper hand in Ukraine and continuing problems in the armed forces when it comes to reaching even their current modest recruitment targets.

The possibility that at some point after the war with Ukraine concludes Putin could come back for more is now taken seriously, particularly in countries in Russia’s neighbourhood. The current militarisation of the Russian economy and society means that it will be able to rebuild its armed forces quickly. By contrast, NATO countries, especially those in Europe and despite their far greater wealth, are left well behind, many not even meeting the alliance’s 2 percent of GDP target. And should Trump return as president, Europeans may well be on their own in the future.

Adding to the concern, since the end of the Cold War the British Army has halved in size, including a 28% reduction since the financial crisis. It is now down to 73,000. General Sir Patrick Sanders, Chief of the General Staff wants us to start thinking about an army of 120,000, including reserves. In the light of growing concerns about a Russian threat, he wants the country to be put more on a war-footing. While avoiding the ‘C-word’ (conscription) he observed:

‘We will not be immune and as the pre-war generation we must similarly prepare - and that is a whole-of-nation undertaking. Ukraine brutally illustrates that regular armies start wars; citizen armies win them.’

The big underlying question is whether there really is a risk of a wider war with Russia, because there is a difference between asking hypothetical questions about a speculative future and a clear and present danger. There is also a question about the value of an emergency expansion of the armed forces in these circumstances. To explore the issue I first consider what the YouGov poll says, and then return to the King and Country debate of 1933, taking in the anti-war protests of the 1960s, before returning to the current questions of the danger of war and conscription.