Clichés are usually truths which have somewhat lost their impact through repetition. That repetition takes place because the truths concerned were originally mordantly appropriate.
Clichés are usually truths which have somewhat lost their impact through repetition. That repetition takes place because the truths concerned were originally mordantly appropriate. Try out ‘If war is the answer, what is the question?’ and ‘ if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail’.
These are both salient truths when considering the creeping militarisation of society – particularly in our schools – and the part played in this by Armed Forces Day.
The displays which take place on this day, though ostensibly about showing support for members of the armed forces, have more to do with boosting recruitment and entrenching an uncritical and unquestioning attitude in the public mind. Indeed, try suggesting that displays of military hardware and pageantry which present armed conflict as family entertainment might leave something to be desired, and you are likely to be met with indignant opposition and a refusal to entertain the idea that there might be a darker underlay to all the excitement. Sentiment has been corrupted into a sentimentality which is marginalising questioning voices.
The spectacle of military ceremonial and the excitement of being offered the opportunity to sit in a helicopter gunship or handle an assault rifle deflects the attention away from the horrors of armed conflict and its life deforming aftermath. Adolescent boys, who may be struggling with a model of masculinity very much predicated on power and strength, are particularly vulnerable to such seductive messages and presentations. And this is where we need to remind ourselves that the British Army – alone in the European Union – still recruits 16 year-olds into its ranks.
Around £45 million has been spent by the Department for Education in funding the ‘military ethos’ for schools over the last three years. The Ministry of Defence puts £180 million into running the Combined Cadet Force in schools and during the past year, the DfE has promoted the ‘British Armed Forces Learning Resource’ to every school. Educationalists have criticised this for what they describe as poor quality learning materials and biased, politically motivated content. School resources are also provided for Armed Forces Day and are described by Forces Watch as displaying “a wholly sanitised image of military activity”.
Veterans for Peace (VFP), an educational organisation of former military personnel dedicated to increasing public awareness of the costs of war, says: “The army look to the youngest recruits (from age 16) to fill the most dangerous jobs in the armed forces because these jobs tend to be under-recruited. The Ministry of Defence says that enlisting from such a young age allows the army to make up for recruitment shortfalls, ‘particularly for the infantry’”. VFP also point to a 2013 study carried out by ForcesWatch and Child Soldiers International, which looked at British army fatalities in Afghanistan and found that soldiers who enlisted aged 16 and completed their training were approximately twice as likely as adult recruits to die or be injured in conflict.
A video released by Veterans for Peace earlier this week – Action Man: Battlefield Casualties (http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/21827) portrays a more realistic view of the outcomes of war and armed conflict on young bodies and minds. VFP describe it as being “intended to counter the recruitment propaganda of Armed Forces Day”. Perhaps the voice of men and women who have been there, done that and bear the wounds, may have an impact beyond that of the ‘usual suspects’.
A group of those suspects – Bury St Edmunds Quakers – gathered on this afternoon of Armed Forces Day (27 June) in the garden of our Meeting House in a silent vigil for peace. There were just 14 of us. It is easy to dismiss such actions as pointless – indeed, we may have our own occasional doubts when we see the power and influence arrayed against peace. But because we have other instruments in our world-view than the metaphorical hammer, we believe that we – and others who work for peace – have a vision wider than that ‘nail’ of projecting force as the solution to international problems. We believe that vision has the capacity to be transformative.
If an amount of money equal to the budget for influencing the young towards militarism was to be invested in peacemaking, conflict resolution, nation building and dialogue, ‘unarmed forces’ could become central to political, educational and diplomatic thinking.
By persisting in quiet questioning of the populist propaganda which the government is so eager to spread, while remaining steadfast in respect for men and women of the armed forces, we will gradually get across the message that support for their courage and sacrifice is not to be conflated with support for the futility which is war.
We must never lose faith in our “small circles and quiet processes.”
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© Jill Segger is an Associate Director of Ekklesia with particular involvement in editorial issues. She is a freelance writer who contributes to the Church Times, Catholic Herald, Tribune, Reform and The Friend, among other publications. Jill is an active Quaker. See: http://www.journalistdirectory.com/journalist/TQig/Jill-Segger You can follow Jill on Twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/quakerpen