No, General Shirreff—I Will Not Die for Your NATO Daydreams

General Sir Richard Shirreff, a former NATO commander, joined growing calls for the UK to look at re-introducing conscription which would mean all young people are required to spend a period in military service. — Daily Express, 4 April 2024

And here we go again. Another retired general with a hard-on for conscription, demanding that young people be handed over to the State for a bit of “character-building.” It’s General “Sir” Richard Shirreff this time, formerly of NATO, now of the increasingly loud and uniformly deranged chorus calling for National Service.

This isn’t about defence. No one believes the UK is under threat of invasion. The Russians are busy in Ukraine. The Chinese have trade deals to sign. The French can barely invade their own suburbs. The real threat to Britain isn’t tanks across the Channel—it’s the people running this country into the ground and demanding more power while they do it.

But that hasn’t stopped the calls. Germany wants conscription back, and so the usual British fossils—Shirreff, Dannatt, and the rest of the polished skull collection—see a chance to play catch-up. If young people aren’t terrified of war yet, then they soon will be. Because nothing screams “freedom” like being forced to march up and down a parade ground for six months while some deranged corporal screams about punctuality and gender-neutral latrine etiquette.

It’s always the same play. They start with “national unity” and “resilience.” Then they move on to “Russia might invade,” and before you know it, they’re drafting legislation to stick me in a uniform and fly me to Estonia so I can die for a country that can’t even secure its own borders or deliver a GP appointment in under three weeks.

No thanks.

I’m nearly of age to be conscripted. I’m the demographic target for their nation-building experiment. And I have a simple reply:

Fuck off!

If General Shirreff wants to “serve” some more, he is welcome to grab a rifle and jog his way to the Donbas. I wish him the best of luck. But I will not be turned into cannon fodder for a State that has never once acted in my interests and never will.

The British Army does not exist to defend Britain. It hasn’t for decades. It exists to act as the enforcement arm of a regime that bombs weddings abroad and lectures its own people about hate speech at home. It exists to serve a ruling class that is “British” only insofar as their mansions are located within the M25 and their children still affect public-school accents between internships at Goldman Sachs.

This is the same regime that locked us down, printed money until the economy imploded, and then blamed us for not working hard enough. Now it wants our bodies.

They’ll say conscription is good for discipline. Good for skills. Good for social cohesion. But what they really mean is that they’ve run out of willing fools, and need a fresh supply of unwilling ones.

They say we must “defend our values.” What values are those, exactly? The right to be spied on, silenced, and taxed until dead? The value of never apologising for a war, no matter how catastrophic? The value of obeying orders from the EU, NATO, and whichever American neo-con happens to be visiting?

Call me unpatriotic. I call myself sane.

So yes, I will be staying out of your “resilience corps.” I will not train to kill strangers on behalf of investment funds and focus groups. I will not carry a rifle for a country that has already sold its soul and is now after its children.

Your war is not my war. Your State is not my State. Your uniforms do not fit me.