story-type: article

Not just waving poppies, but drowning thought

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“There may well be a boom in poppy sales, but the act of Remembrance itself has been cheapened by a failure to back up words with action, particularly when it comes to successive governments’ care for victims of war, but equally in terms of the appalling the lack of resources put into peacebuilding.”

Simon Barrow

When politicians rush to claim that something is ‘non-political’ (as has been happening around Remembrance Day over the past week or so), you know that some healthy suspicion and careful examination is due.

The unfortunate reality is that, at present, the national ceremonies in the UK that (rightly) show respect to those who have died in war are also drenched in militaristic assumptions and symbols – ones which it is hard to say have no political content or bias.

The Prime Minister has also recently stressed the association of red poppy wearing with tub-thumping “national pride”, as my colleague Jonathan Bartley pointed out in an interesting exchange about ‘the politics of poppies’ on BBC2’s Newnight (11/11/11 – see iPlayer) with Gordon Corrigan, author of Mud, Blood and Poppycock: Britain and the Great War (Cassell Military Paperbacks), a revisionary account of the First World War.

Questions about the rightness or wrongness of armed conflict, concerns about particular wars (like the recent ones prosecuted in the Middle East); attempts to highlight alternatives forms of conflict resolution; the need to remember enemies, civilians and objectors, as well as soldiers… these and many other serious issues are all-too-easily swept away as the media and politicians encourage a frenzy of ‘patriotic’ poppy waving, while objecting to any attempt to consider or reflect on different perspectives.… Read more

The red poppy: a compromised symbol?

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“The growing compulsion to wear a red poppy and to acquiesce in the remodelling of its purpose has diverted our attention from the more enduring and demanding aspects of remembering the destruction, personal, collective and environmental, which is the outcome of military action.”

Jill Segger

To be a child in the 50s and 60s was to be familiar with the sight of men, still young, who had been lamed or disfigured by war. Many more – my father among them – carried wounds in their psyches which were impediments to their becoming the husbands and fathers they would have wished to be.

My father frequently said “ war makes men mad” and from both him and my grandfather, who had, at least physically, survived the Somme, I absorbed the concept that those who had not “been there” could easily be led into falsity when speaking or writing of war and remembrance.

Combined with a religious and cultural unease over ‘outward forms’, this has given me a lifelong disquiet about Remembrance Day, and, in recent years, of its red poppy symbol. Even in childhood, I shrank from the marches, flag-bearing and official solemnity. I have never doubted the need to ‘remember’ but I am grateful to have been taught by the then unfashionable and unpopular witness of my parents that it was our calling to remember the dead of both sides and all the victims of war who never wore uniforms or bore arms.

… Read more

How soldiers deal with the job of killing

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“We talk about destroying, engaging, dropping, bagging – you don’t hear the word killing”. This article explores the effect of killing on people in the military, how many are unable to kill and others live with the effects of having killed for the rest of their lives. Also see The Kill Factor radio broadcasts.

When soldiers kills someone at close quarters, how does it affect them? This most challenging and traumatic part of a soldier’s job is often wholly overlooked.

Soldiers kill. It goes with the job, and they do it on our behalf.

But it’s an aspect of their work which is widely ignored – even by the soldiers themselves – and this can cause them great psychological difficulty, experts say.

“A central part of what we do with our careers is we kill the enemies of our country,” said Lt Col Pete Kilner, a serving officer in the US Army who has done tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“So it’s very important that we understand why, and under what conditions it’s the morally right thing to do to kill another human being.”

Lt Col Kilner also lectures at the West Point Military Academy. He calls himself a “soldier ethicist” and has talked with countless fellow soldiers about their experience of “intimate killing” – taking the life of someone up close, who they can see.… Read more

Back in the trenches?

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Within the same week, the UK conscientious objector Michael Lyons was detained for 7 months and a landmark ruling in favour of conscientious objection was made by the European Court of Human Rights.

Derek Brett went to the Michael Lyons court-martial

Last Thursday will go down in the history books as a milestone in the history of conscientious objection. After sixty years, the European Court of Human Rights at last ruled unequivocally that the right of conscientious objection to military service is protected under the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.

In the case of Bayatyan v Armenia, it found that the imprisonment of Vahan Bayatyan, a Jehovah’s Witness, for his refusal to perform military service at a time when no civilian alternative was available, was a violation of his freedom of thought, conscience and religion.

Sadly, two days earlier in Portsmouth had been enacted a court-martial that might have taken place when conscientious objectors first came forward during the first world war. Michael Lyons was stripped of his rank as leading medical assistant and dismissed from the service with effect from the end of a seven-month ‘detention in a military correction establishment’ for ‘wilful disobedience of a lawful order’.… Read more

The big red cross

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Lillian Lyons, wife of imprisoned conscientious objector Michael Lyons, describes why he refused the “learning to kill” course.

It is important for both Michael and myself to let you know how much we appreciate your support whilst my husband is locked up in military prison. Every message, letter and show of face means the world to us and is really helping us to get through this crazy time in our lives.

I am sure most of you know why Michael has been punished by the royal navy so I won’t waste your time regurgitating the details of his case, the intimidating court martials or the legality of his defence. Instead I will tell you a bit about how Michael’s conscience led him to a incredibly unjust sentence.

Mike has served as a medic in the submarine service for nearly seven years. It sounds clichéd but he really did join up because he thought he could help people. In fact he saw an advert on TV of a navy medic jumping out of a helicopter giving humanitarian aid in an unnamed war zone. The medic wasn’t carrying any weapons, just a box with a big red cross on it. He was sold.… Read more

Hey sergeant, leave them kids alone

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In July ForcesWatch launched the Military Out of Schools campaign. Speakers Oskar Castro, a US activist in countering military recruitment, and Ben Griffin, ex-forces and the founder of fledgling Veterans for Peace UK, discussed how young people are militarised and what can be done about it.

US counter-recruitment has developed over the last 10 years to many thousands of individuals and hundreds of organisations. The terms “truth and recruitment” or “alternatives to the military” are increasingly used and recently the National Network Opposing Militarization of Youth was formed to reflect a wider understanding of the problem as one of militarism permeating society and associating values and ideas to it which affect the choices young people make in their lives. As Oskar said, “militarism does not just show up in the classroom when the military recruiter comes, its shows up on your TV, in Hollywood, in your book, magazine, internet, football field.” Through these channels, young people are “turned on to the military in a non-critical way” which the recruiters utilise.

Ben illustrated the significant impact of his early experience of militarism “One of my first memories of my granddad was him bouncing me on his knee showing me his medals from WW2.… Read more

Britain’s own child soldiers

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A third of army recruits are under 18. Is it right to target the young and the underachieving poor?

What first attracted Michael Lyons to a career in the armed forces was an advertisement he spotted as a teenager, depicting the Royal Navy delivering humanitarian aid. Lyons, now 25, is beginning a seven-month term in military detention after being found guilty earlier this week of wilful disobedience of a lawful order. He was also demoted and dismissed from the navy, where he had served since 2005 as a medical assistant submariner.

After refusing rifle training because of moral objections to his deployment in Afghanistan, Lyons’s case was the first to be heard on grounds of conscientious objection in over a decade. Because his concerns were broadly political – stemming, he said, from the WikiLeaks revelations – rather than religious, there was minimal precedent for the decision. (There was, of course, a well-established tradition of conscientious objectors in the last two world wars, with thousands of British men, including my own Quaker grandfather, granted exemptions on condition of “alternative service”.)

Perhaps it was simply the case that Lyons, who enlisted at 19, grew up. He is not the first, nor will he be the last, young man to enter the forces with a naive or partial view of all this commitment entails and then suffer the consequences.

… Read more

Cadet school

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Controversial plans to radically expand military cadet corps in English state secondary schools are being pushed forward by Ed Balls, the Children’s Secretary, apparently backed by No 10. The plans were the idea of Quentin Davies, a Labour MP who defected from the Tories last year, and come on the back of a government-commissioned review of “civil and military relations”.

Learning military drill and shooting are two of the core elements of the cadet programme. But anti-gun campaigners say that teaching teenagers to shoot would simply exacerbate the growing problem of gun crime among young people.

The government has been repeatedly claiming that it is “getting tough” on guns and youth crime, but how can this be consistent with encouraging weapons training in schools?

At the moment, just 60 of the school-based Combined Cadet Force (CCF) are based in comprehensive schools, with 200 forces currently in private and grammar schools; this is despite these being just 10% of schools in England. Under the new proposals, state schools that do not set up a cadet system will encourage pupils to attend a community cadet force instead. There are currently over 130, 000 young people involved in the cadet forces, between the ages of 12 and 18.… Read more

Poppy Appeal is a political tool to support current wars

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The true meaning of the poppy is being forgotten as it becomes a political tool to support current wars, a former elite soldier has claimed. Ben Griffin, the first SAS soldier to refuse to go into combat, also said the use of the word “hero” to describe soldiers glorified war and was an “attempt to stifle criticism” of conflicts the UK is currently fighting.

The true meaning of the poppy is being forgotten as it becomes a political tool to support current wars, a former elite soldier has claimed.

Ben Griffin, the first SAS soldier to refuse to go into combat, also said the use of the word “hero” to describe soldiers glorified war and was an “attempt to stifle criticism” of conflicts the UK is currently fighting.

Mr Griffin’s claims echo an increasing body of opinion that the Royal British Legion’s Poppy Appeal’s promotion by key political and cultural figures is undermining the true message of Remembrance Day.

The Royal British Legion began using the poppy as a symbol for fundraising in the 1920s. Money used goes to help wounded servicemen past and serving and their families.

It also marks Remembrance Day, held on the second Sunday in November, which is usually the Sunday nearest to November 11, the date in 1918 on which World War I ended.… Read more

Britain’s child army

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“Stricken by Iraq and low morale, the British army is on a desperate recruitment drive. Its new targets? Poorly educated teenagers and young schoolchildren.”

This article looks at new recruitment techniques such as the Camoflage scheme, which includes a magazine and website designed for those as young as 13, MoD school presentation teams and various forms of ‘outreach’.

“Our new model is about raising awareness, and that takes a ten-year span. It starts with a seven-year-old boy seeing a parachutist at an air show and thinking, ‘That looks great.’ From then the army is trying to build interest by drip, drip, drip.”… Read more