Compulsory national community service could become a genuine exemplar of the ‘big society’, by Robert Williams
Calls for national service have been a constant theme ever since the last national serviceman put away his boots in 1963. Twenty years ago there were also calls for a national community service programme. The debate was fractured between those that advocated some level of compulsion and those arguing for purely voluntary participation. We still have that division today.
First, let me be clear. I am not advocating compulsory military service or conscription. What we need to look very carefully at, however, is compulsory civic duties for all young people, both men and women and across social classes.
Volunteering is about free choice. National community service is quite another thing and, though it may involve some choice, it should not easily be avoided. Compulsory national community service would genuinely offer opportunity for many, even all, not the few.
I advocate a period of between one year and 18 months, where young people are compelled to work, to receive training, to engage with their peers and where there is an element of discipline and respect for authority. There should be an element of choice within the compulsory framework, a recognition that people have different skills, interests and abilities, and also may have existing obligations – looking after family members, for example.
This should include – and this is not an exhaustive list – working on environmental projects to clean up public spaces, parks, canal banks, working as hospital porters (an ideal job for aspiring doctors, seeing life at the coalface), or helping to deliver care to the elderly and long-term sick.
One scenario would offer three broad options, based in the local area, elsewhere in the UK, or overseas. Exceptionally talented individuals may have the chance to spend time overseas, rather than permitting gap years abroad to be the exclusive preserve of the middle classes.
Compulsion is not a negative concept: we have to pay our taxes, and children must be in full-time education to the age of 16. Young people actually need boundaries and they need direction. One of the troubles of a certain type of liberal thinking that we have endured for many years is that setting limits is somehow wrong, that we interfere with the ‘rights’ of the individual. The outcomes are certainly not liberal and have failed to understand what civil society actually means and requires.
So learning that with rights go responsibilities is a fundamental reason to introduce compulsory national community service. This is part of the positive basis for the introduction of such a scheme. Increasing political concern with citizenship and community involvement are both in their own right good enough reasons for introducing a scheme.
The notion of ‘rights and responsibilities’ is a far more positive concept than that of simple ‘duty’. Surely the opportunities of training, practical qualifications and chances to travel either in the UK or elsewhere more than justify an obligation to ‘serve’ the community, which is, or should be, a good thing in any case.
But there is also an equally urgent, though more ‘negative’, rationale for discussion: the increasing division in society between the included and the excluded and between different ethnic groups. There are no longer any common reference points between more privileged young people and those who are more disadvantaged.
National community service should be a common rite of passage shared by all young people. National community service could become a genuine exemplar of the ‘big society’. An open, public debate around the themes of a compulsory national community service programme is urgently needed.
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Robert Williams works in public affairs and as a journalist
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“Doth God exact day-labour,light denied?”/…… /Who best/Bear his mild yoke,they serve him best .His state/
……/They also serve who only stand and wait.” (Milton) So, some more “light” for the people please ! to cheer them on their jolly community spirited way thanks ! And as the FT (!) was kindly pointing out this weekend “One of James Keir Hardie’s few successes as an MP was to make the case that unemployment was structural ,not exclusively self-inflicted ” so less of that lazy bones stuff from the Tories.
Great article – couldn’t argee more with it!
I am all in favour of compulsory civil service for all young people, but we should not confuse that with voluntary service, as this article seems to do by mentioning “the Big Society”.
The Big Society is another of David Cameron’s lame efforts (and now completely discredited) and one very obviously aimed at everyone but Cameron and his clique (how many of the Cabinet have ever had any association with a charity other than as patron?). However, the idea was based on a laudable ambition – the encouragement of voluntary work of various kinds. To link that with some form of compulsory voluntary service is a contradiction, which seems not to have occured to the writer, but also discredits the idea of voluntary work by associating with something one does unwillingly.
So what volunteering do you do? Seeing as you are so keen to volunteer others.
Tom, I used the phrase “Big Society” because it could be something much better than what Cameron has been suggesting. And i am not confusing volunteering with complusion. I am quite clear on my point which is that we need to introduce a scheme in which every young person has to undertake some sort of community work placement, with some sort of training attached. The choice element is about what they do, and where.
I am not advocating young people working for Tesco’s. I want them to have a chance to work with Social Services departments with the elderly, or disabled. i want them to work in Parks departments and National Parks, with VSO and as hospital porters. They should be paid a small salary, provided with accommodation if necessary (foyers in France, for example).
In Germany, which has now abolished cpmpulsory military service, half of the young men drafted each year used to opt out in favor of noncombat military work, civilian service or foreign development. Hospitals and charities that rely on conscripts defeated a government proposal in 2004 to end the draft. I think Austria and Denmark also offer this option.
My main point is that without compulsion, schemes fail those who would gain most. Young people in inner cities have not be reached by either Gordon Brown’s Year of the Volunteer (remember that idea?) nor by David Cameron’s Big Society. The Left is so terrified of making anyone do anything, that they prefer to have half hearted schemes that fail. Compulsion is not a dirty word.
may as well vote Tory then seeing as labour agree with so much it has done.
I hardly think compulsory National Service would meet the notion of age equality. Surely everyone should have to do it whatever age. Why only the young. What are they being punished for?