Cassilis

It’s unlikely anyone who supported yesterday’s ridiculous motion at the NUT conference calling for a halt to military recruitment in schools will be persuaded by Magnus Linklater’s rebuke in today’s Times. Stirring talk of ‘defending the realm’, ‘saving the nation’ or ‘army values of courage, discipline and respect for order’ is just the sort of stiff-upper lip, typically British conceit for our armed forces that always inflames the passions of the militant left. That’s a shame because for all his bluster Magnus is on the right side of the argument.

The NUT position is basically their blunt, adolescent and wrong-headed response to the more nuanced and valid criticisms in last month’s Joseph Rowntree report – “Informed Choice? Armed forces recruitment practice in the United Kingdom” [PDF]. It highlighted a number of ‘ethical shortcomings in armed forces recruitment practice’ including:

“failing to inform potential recruits sufficiently about the risks associated with a forces career; failing to inform potential recruits about vital rights and privileges; severely curtailing recruits’ right to withdraw consent from their employment; depending upon those who are socially and economically vulnerable to enlist for negative reasons; and recruiting minors without adequate safeguards.”

The report says is should be “possible to move towards an ethical recruitment policy without detriment to staffing levels by making a number of progressive changes to recruitment and retention policy and practice”. Whatever those changes include it’s certainly not the banning of recruitment in schools as called for yesterday in Manchester. In passing the motion the NUT is guilty of the very thing it’s accusing the MOD of doing – presenting a partisan view of war. Whatever members views on Iraq or Afghanistan the fact is they have absolutely no place in a discussion about recruitment to the armed forces – no more than their personal views about lawyers, doctors or politicians should have any bearing on how they support students interested in those professions.

Nobody is denying the difficulties here – it’s not easy to properly characterise a career that could include everything from storming an Afghani rebel stronghold to wearing silly hats at Buckingham Palace – that those doing so tend to downplay the negatives and talk up the positives is hardly news. But there’s no evidence the gap between the reality and the sell in the armed forces context is any greater than in other professions. The NUT’s readiness to dismiss anyone who joins up as either a victim of propaganda or stupid is evidence of the middle-class condescension the left often have for the working class – the ‘they know not what they do’ sort of attitude. It’s perfectly possible to make a politically neutral case for joining the armed forces – if the NUT can’t make the distinction between that and political differences then they are failing the students they teach.