Is there an alternative to having militarism as the organising principle of government?

Perhaps unintentionally, the Strategic Defence Review (SDR) offers a valuable insight into what Starmer’s government thinks a state can accomplish.

Its focus on well-established policy areas, such as its relish for nukes and Nato, is hardly illustrative of forward-thinking. However, the scale of its spending commitments and its conviction in being able to change national mindsets implies that the government accepts it is possible to use the apparatus of the state as a vehicle for change.

It is just a shame that Starmer has decided to make militarism and warmongering “the fundamental organising principle of government” rather than the promotion of people’s health and wellbeing.

If the government is able to find the billions of pounds it has allocated for investment in the military, despite its self-imposed fiscal rules, then it can surely have instead used this money to fix our broken NHS or education system.

Both sectors are not only more socially useful but far more “jobs-rich” than defence. Insultingly, many of the problems the SDR identifies as an impediment to working in the military also apply to being a junior doctor or an early career teacher.

To take education, as an example, there has been a “recruitment and retention crisis” festering away for years now.  

The SDR claims that: “Young people today want different things from their employers, including more flexibility and hybrid working.” It goes onto suggest that young people expect to “to change jobs multiple times throughout their careers.”

This is a misrepresentation, because it implies that young people expect to change jobs out of choice rather than because increasingly insecure, precarious working conditions have made it very difficult to hold down a job for any significant length of time.

Regardless, its aim to take a “more modern, accommodating approach” to what is expected from service personnel includes measures that would greatly alleviate the pressures on working in other areas of the public sector.

Across schools and colleges in Britain, an exceptionally high number of teachers report expecting to leave the education sector within one-to-five years.

Increasing workloads have been overwhelmingly cited as the reason why teachers feel unable to stay in the profession. The demands placed on teachers will also only increase over time, because, as more members of staff resign, those who remain in post will be left with even less resources. Teachers have also reported struggling to pay bills, as pay has failed to keep up with the pressures exerted by the escalating cost-of-living.

The National Education Union (NEU) successfully convinced the government to offer teachers a 4 per cent pay rise. Yet, this has only been promised on the basis that the money for the pay rise is taken out of existing school budgets.

The government’s refusal to properly fund the pay rise, or the education sector more broadly, speaks to how confused they are in their priorities. If the measures and money that have been promised to the military were diverted to the education sector, then this would go a long way to solving some of these issues.  

Egregiously, the SDR argues that the military plays a role in “advancing social mobility.” If lifting children out of poverty and improving life chances was truly part of the government’s legislative agenda, then they would surely instead guarantee free school meals for all, consider more targeted forms of wealth redistribution and solve the funding crisis in education.

Likewise, rather than chasing an elusive “defence dividend,” fixing the UK’s collapsing higher education sector would be a much less risky way to secure economic growth. As it stands, at least one in four universities are currently pushing through staff redundancies with whole degree-courses and subject areas being closed down as a result.

The SDR contends that there “should be greater focus within the cadets on developing Stem (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) skills.” As it stands, the scale of the higher education funding crisis means that Stem subjects are almost just as much at risk as the arts and humanities. Developing Stem within universities, rather than the military, may also ensure that scientists produce breakthroughs that are beneficial to humanity rather than destructive of life.

Clearly, for example, Stem skills should be put to use trying to find ways to alleviate the climate catastrophe unfolding around the planet rather than experimenting with new forms of AI-controlled drone warfare.

It would also be misguided to assume that the arts and humanities should not be nurtured alongside STEM. Investment in the arts and humanities could bring about cultural innovation and prosperity through artistic exports.

However, it is likely that improvements in the military and improvements in the arts and humanities would act as countervailing forces in society. One of the goals of a humanities education is to help students to develop independent, critical thinking. These are probably not personal attributes prized by a government intent on mass military recruitment.

Is it “sweet and proper” for our children and young people to die in Starmer’s wars?

The arts have also played an important role in keeping alive our memory of the horrors and futility of war.

As schoolchildren, many of our generation first encountered the world wars of the 20th century through poetry, plays, novels and films.

Although there has been a tendency to glorify these wars, there has been an equally strong push to remind us that global warfare should be avoided at all costs. It is literature and history, for instance, that help us to remember the hundreds of thousands of young people who died during the Battle of the Somme, only to win a narrow strip of land.

Starmer and his government ministers would do well to reflect on Wilfred Owen’s account of serving on the front lines of the first world war.

If brought face to face with the disfigured corpses on the battlefield, Owen writes, 
“you would not tell with such high zest 
To children ardent for some desperate glory, 
the old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori” 
(it is sweet and proper to die for one’s country).

First published online with www.labouroutlook.org. Read part 1 of the article here.