It's that time of year again when we solemnly remember the war dead
by dressing our children up as giant poppies,
cosplaying as first world war soldiers,
decorating our gardens with mannequins
made up to look like soldiers who died in the trenches.
To me it's like a symbol of obedience
and remembrance is a kind of carnival obedience, military obedience.
There is a problem when arms firms big death are making money out of wars,
and yet they're pushing a bit of money into aftercare for veterans.
BAE Systems and Lockheed they're big contributors to these charities
and there has to be somewhere in there an ethical question.
I guess it's kind of like greenwashing but it's like war washing patriotism washing.
Where they feel that they can kind of wash away some of their sins somehow
giving money to charities which help wounded and mentally ill and old soldiers.
Many of whom of course have been injured in wars
from which those big corporations have directly benefited.
we need to examine that.
Particularly when I talk to older veterans WW2 veterans.
Who unlike millennial veterans and maybe still quite attached to the poppy,
because their dads were in the trenches and it has a very different meaning.
And I think at some point back in the mists of history,
the red poppy symbolised almost insurgent grief and sadness.
It's probably the only sense in which I'm a conservative
is I kind of want remembrance to be serious again to go back to some previous
maybe mythologized version of remembrance when it was actually a serious occasion.
To honour the war dead and respect the war dead
we try and keep their numbers to an absolute minimum,
I think that's the way.
No happy clappy remembrance, no poppy fascism,
no virtue signalling or veteran signalling.
We try and respect the dead by keeping their numbers to a minimum,
and that soldiers and civilians throughout the world.
I joined the military probably for the same reasons most of my cohort did
i'm from a working class background i was poor i wanted opportunities to some extent there was
the ideological stuff i had an idea because of the way we think about the military in this country
and because what the army tells recruits about itself that you can go and do something of value
you can contribute something to the world the arguments about helping women in afghanistan
getting rid of tyrants are all very appealing and in a way you should want to go and do those
things it's just that as it turns out that is not what the british military does i joined went to
afghanistan decided i didn't agree with the war based on my experiences there and was initially
charged with awol it was later raised to desertion then we used my court martial to indict them
saying i wasn't obliged to go to the wars because the wars in iraq and afghanistan were illegal and
unjustified at that moment they dropped all the charges for speaking to the media and
the desertion down to the awol which i couldn't deny i wasn't there i never denied being able in
the first place so eventually eventually ended up getting nine months in colchester military prison
loads of people there were equally angry had also been stitched up by the military institution
loads of guys with ptsd who'd come back from tour damaged had been let down by the military the army
markets itself quite cleverly as kind of like one team which is almost egalitarian everyone's
on the same side this is absolute rubbish the contradictions which exist in society the class
divisions exist even more in the army but they exist with even more absolute power because
there's no trade unions there's no democracy there are officers the posh blokes the middle class
sergeants and staff sergeants and color sergeants the petty bourgeoisie reviled the corporals and so
on and then down at the bottom you have the workforce every army is a reflection of the
society it's drawn from and those contradictions are apparent there as well there is a perception
that if you've been in the military or around the military you can only ever be a small sea tory
or basically a fascist and i think that's kind of reinforcing our media narratives in our culture
and actually it's as far from the truth as you can get there is a long and proud radical
military tradition of dissent and mutiny all the way back to 1647 the new model army when soldiers
and officers presented a democratic constitution to the generals of the army oliver cromwell and
people like that it's the basis of our politics today peter lou is a really good example
protesting the corn laws in manchester hundreds of people were massacred by the local yeomanry
and among them was a young former british soldier being a drama boy john lease at waterloo he died
of his wounds shortly afterwards and then you can follow that through to the histories of descent
and rebellion by serving soldiers the mutant is at a tap through the first world war immediately
after those wars military veterans were involved in all kinds of radicalism all the way through to
the second world war where you see things like the cairo parliaments where a bunch of soldiers
started voting to do things like nationalise the bank of england bring in full education
decolonize egypt after the second world war you see things like the 43 group
a group of jewish anti-fascist veterans who fought the fascists who still existed in here
oswald mosley was still kicking after the second world war and it carries on all the way through
to resistance movements and individual resistance against iraq afghanistan the falklands the first
gulf war so these are real things and that's not to say people don't spend time in the institution
which is right wing which is conservative that is what the military is and they aren't shaped
by it i mean that's absolutely true those people clearly exist but there's another story there to
be told sometimes it's difficult i think because people have these preconceived notions of what
you are and what you think if you're a veteran because they don't know the history so i've had
occasions where people have assumed i'm some kind of imperialist murderer that i'm
a psychopath and that's why i joined the army and i suspect that's partly because i was a soldier
but also partly it reflects a broader contempt for working class people among sections of the
left and i don't give a [ __ ] what they think in the same way i don't give a [ __ ] what officers
think those people are irrelevant to me there is a tendency for middle-class leftists i think
just to want to write loads of working-class people off because they haven't read all the books
and they don't sound as polished and they didn't go to oxford and their name isn't jonty and that
is not me people from the worst backgrounds who are very often the people end up in the army
going to that institution they're often brutalized in different ways they're trained
and indoctrinated but they still resist some of them still resist sometimes war can radicalize
people in the right direction towards something better okay it's a complex and nuanced story
and i think that's something redeeming about the human character that you can go through all that
and still end up on the right side military people veterans soldiers sailors airmen have a role to
play in society which is positive which isn't just turning up every year and prancing around
in your poppy and dressing your kids up as a giant poppy that something good can come from
the bad but something positive can come from the military experience and the veteran experience
we're not all locked into just being sad old men moaning about shamima begum on facebook
and jeremy corbyn on facebook forever something good can come from it veteran hood raging hope
in british ex military life out the 9th of october if you want to understand military culture if you
understand the military you want to understand veterans you need to get it and if you want
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