When my grandfather went to war in 1939, he didn’t hesitate. Today, only 35% of Brits would do the same. What has changed in our national psyche?
The stakes have not been higher for decades and our friends and enemies are responding. (Image: Getty)
My grandfather didn’t agonise over the decision. When war came in 1939, he simply went. He became a tank driver, helped turn back Rommel at El Alamein and fought the Nazis through Sicily and Italy before pushing into the horrors of the German heartland itself. After the war, like so many of his brave generation, he completed his national service before being demobbed – never questioning the extraordinary sacrifice being asked of him, or pausing to consider what lay on the other side.
That generation did not consult a poll. They did not weigh up the inconvenience. They simply went. Now look at us.
A widely reported Ipsos survey found only 35% of Brits would fight for the nation today. A staggering 48% said there were no circumstances in which they would do so – including full-scale invasion. A further 38% of those under 40 described themselves as conscientious objectors. These figures make for uncomfortable reading when set against our European neighbours: in Poland, where the Russian threat is felt most acutely, public willingness to defend the nation runs significantly higher at up to 56% of men – a gap that reflects not just geography but a culture of preparedness Britain has allowed to atrophy.
And yet the world has never in living memory seemed closer to a third world war.
With Trump threatening war with Iran, Israel and the UK ready to join if needed, Taiwan remaining a potential WW3 flashpoint between the West and China, and the continuous threat from Putin – still engaged in his war against Ukraine – the question of what Britain would actually do if called upon has never been more urgent.
Serious concerns over the size of the UK army, navy and air force have been raised by former and serving military chiefs, politicians and officials in government. NATO allies across Europe, in particular Germany, France and the Scandinavian nations, have all expanded their troop numbers by increasing national service.
The stakes have not been higher for decades and our friends and enemies are responding. Yet Britain so far has not taken action. The question of conscripting the UK population now lies at our doorstep.
These statistics could well change. If the reality of an invasion by Russia, for example, were to be brought to our doorsteps in the way it already has for Ukraine, support for conscription would be expected to increase.
However, it is undeniable that right now a return to national service is a hard sell to large portions of the British public.
Is there another way?
Defence columnist and author Peter Apps has outlined one compelling answer – and it is one worth taking seriously.
Writing for The i, he outlines an approach already adopted by others that may be the key to unlocking a “whole-of-society” model of national defence. Some call it the “weekend warrior” approach – a term that does the concept a disservice. What Apps is actually describing is something far older and more honourable: the citizen soldier.
“Warsaw is simply offering anyone who wants it immediate military training, following Ukraine in recruiting older volunteers – not just the teenagers often lazily assumed to be the first on the front line.
“But building a much larger culture of part-time military service might require incentives, from tax breaks for training to a slightly cheaper mortgage for 10 years of ongoing part-time commitment. Such personnel could also support vital homeland resilience – also currently hugely under-resourced. Such expansion, though, would require fast and broad reform.
“At the moment, it still takes individuals months and sometimes even years to join the regular or reserve, and cutting down such paperwork delays has proved a surprising challenge.”
This is not idealism – it is strategy. And it is one that military historians believe Britain urgently needs to embrace.
UK troops on a training exercise in Norway (Image: Getty)
Express’ Conor Wilson assesses the state of the British Army
This is not simply an expansion of the existing Army Reserve – a model that, for all its merits, demands significant commitment and navigates a bureaucratic joining process so lengthy that Apps himself notes it can take years.
The citizen soldier programme is something fundamentally different: lower barriers, wider reach, and a focus on building mass national resilience rather than producing a smaller cohort of part-time professionals.
Where the Reserve asks civilians to become soldiers, the citizen soldier programme asks something simpler but no less vital – that ordinary British people remain ready to defend the country they live in.
Historian Sir Hew Strachan told the Defence Committee the UK needed to “move beyond talking to doing” on national resilience.
He said Britain had failed to build on lessons learned during the Covid-19 pandemic, when local communities showed they could respond collectively to crisis.
While there was a genuine community response during the pandemic, Strachan said it was “generated from the bottom up, not from the top down,” and that government had not managed to capture or replicate that model for other national security challenges.
Strachan is a strong advocate of a return to some form of national service. Turning to defence planning, he warned that despite extensive discussion about technology, the UK remained “nowhere near having any concept” of how it would generate mass or replace its armed forces in a prolonged war. Casualty rates seen in Ukraine, he said, raised questions Britain had not seriously addressed.
Political reluctance to discuss conscription meant the UK was instead “going round the houses looking at other alternatives,” most of which still depended on some form of voluntary engagement, Strachan warned.
Critics will argue that Britain’s professional army remains among the finest in the world and that quality will always outweigh quantity on the modern battlefield.
But the casualty rates grinding through the fields of eastern Ukraine tell a different story – and so does our own experience of WW2 – one where mass participation, indefatigable endurance and iron national will matter as much as precision weapons and elite training. A professional army without the reserves to sustain it is not a deterrent. It is an invitation.
The Britain that produced my grandfather still exists. But it will not rediscover itself by accident. It needs to be given the opportunity – and the invitation – to do so. The citizen soldier programme is that invitation.
The citizen soldier model – part-time military service that keeps civilians trained, ready and connected to national defence – is already working across Europe in Finland, Israel and Switzerland. Britain simply needs the will to adopt it.
Britain has been here before. It did not wait until Dunkirk to begin preparing – but it came perilously close. We cannot afford to make that mistake again.
