Talk:National service

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Dr Ray Edwards BA (Oxon) MA LLM PhD If National Service was simply a "one year" period and not a period of conscripted military service, pray tell me what the hell I was doing serving in No1 Para for just over two years in Malaya chasing Chinese Communist insurgents around IPOH and other regions of the Northern Malayan jungle together with thousands of other British National Servicemen. Oh, and by the way, Tommy Steele ducked out of his duty to his country first by taking up employment as a seaman which kept him out of reach of conscription. I was in Aldershot when Tommy Steele was reprted by the press to have hiiden crying in his managers car because he did not want to leave home, more likley did not want to give up the lucrative gravy train he got himself on - just like John Prescott Deputy Prime Minister of Britain, he preferred working as a steward at sea in the Med and Bahamas in stead of serving his country. For pities sake, sack the researcher who wrote this tripe about National Service and apologise for the insult WIKIPEDIA has handed down to the hundreds of thousands of British National SErvicemen who fought in Malaya, Cyprus, Korea many of whom died and have foriegn graves.

Regarding Silverback's addition. Actually, I meant to move it to an article on 'national service' in the civilian sense. I didn't realize that there was a draft article named this. Why are Singapore & Britain covered in one article anyway? Is it just because of the common name? Seems to me some re-organization of the various draft & any civilian national service articles might be in order. Wolfman 04:31, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I didn't know compulsory boot camp had anything resembling a civilian sense. Chris 04:16, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Why categorized as military in UK

As it include description about national service implementation in other countries such as Singapore? Squallwc 08:05, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Maybe we can add in the other two categorisations where appriopriate. Meanwhile, I am thinking of having full articles for each of those countries eventually--Huaiwei 19:33, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Sounds great. Squallwc 05:46, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Phrase: 'in Great Britain (but not Northern Ireland)'

The phrase 'in Great Britain (but not Northern Ireland)' does not make sense. Northern Ireland is not part of Great Britain. The article is attempting to inform readers that a particular nation (UK) had National Service with an exception for one of its regions (NI). Bobblewik  (talk) 13:13, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I think it makes sense. A reasonable alternative would be "In the UK, except for Northern Ireland", but the first form is correct as well. It is just saying "in one place, but not another related place". An equivalent would be "In the Continental United States, but not Hawaii". What would be incorrect would be to say "In Great Britain, except for Northern Ireland", or "In the UK, but not Northern Ireland". (Arwel is correct in saying the formal name of the country is "The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland"). -- User: Wardog

The full name of Britain is United Kingdom of England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. is it not? The fact that some people, in Northern Ireland seek independence from Britain, affirms the fact that the northern counties are part of the United Kingdom (was Ireland ever a Kingdom?), while at some time in future history, this reality may change. AlMac|^(talk) 17:30, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

No it's not. It's the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. "Great Britain" is the name of the 8th largest island in the world, upon which you find England, Scotland, and Wales. And yes, there was a Kingdom of Ireland between 1541 and 1800, which happened to have the same king as England. -- Arwel (talk) 01:11, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

They're quite correct. 'Great Britain' only refers to mainland England, Wales and Scotland. This in now way reduces the fact that NI is a part of the UK, both of which are different entities.

Categories

Bevin Boys should be included under National Service, but shoulkd also be shown as a separate site. EVBThere have been several requests to try to organize Category Military since it has over 50 articles and over 50 sub-categories. I am trying to help out, by adding a new sub-category Politics of Military, which will include this, and other articles, where there is sometimes some controversy, such as the topic of very young children being made into child soldiers, also issues of gender, different religions side by side, conscientious objector and so forth. Category Military is a sub-category of War. We do not need to list all articles in the whole hierarchy, do we? AlMac|^(talk) 17:15, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

Well, Politics of Military doesn't make sense as a category. For a start, it should be Politics of the Military, with an article. Second, it should be Politics of the military with a lower case 'm'. Wouldn't 'Military politics' be better? And also, Conscription is already a category of Military. -- Necrothesp 17:44, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

"Politics within the Military" is a topic for which I have not seen many articles here. Also there is the topic of Base Closings, and redeploying forces stationed in foreign lands, such as US bases moved out of France and Germany to the new democracies of Central Europe.

It is evident that there is a great debate in Wiki, and in other places, between people who believe in a strong national defense, and the means to attain it, and people who are squeamish about some of the measures taken to achieve it. Most of us fall on a political spectrum where we agree certain actions needed when our national defense is threatened, yet not approve of some military action where our nation does not appear to be threatened, and there are no obvious humanitarian reasons to launch a rescue operation. Even when we support the military decisions, some of us do not support the way in which some things are done. Thus I proposed this category to encompass this category that is dominated by this recurring political debate. I ended up calling it Politics about Military. AlMac|^(talk) 01:09, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

You're still using upper case and no article. -- Necrothesp 21:37, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

Am I missing something?

"National Service was the name given to the system of military conscription employed in Great Britain between 1949 and 1960 (although the system of wartime conscription used between 1939 and 1949 was also officially called National Service)." - so wouldn't it be better to say "National Service was the name given to the system of military conscription employed in Great Britain between 1939 and 1960." and have done with it? DavidFarmbrough 12:25, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

The term National Service is usually taken to refer to the post-war system of conscription. If someone talks about "national service" then that is usually what they mean. It was actually the official term for the system from 1939, but is rarely used outside formal documents for wartime conscription (which was usually referred to as "war service"). -- Necrothesp 19:03, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Yeah. The parenthesised bit should be noted in a way like "the term is usually used to refer to the post-war period, as during the war National Service was generally referred to as conscription" or the like. Chris Cunningham 23:46, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

PoV

"However, many transferred from National Service to voluntary military service and carved themselves an honourable career within the British Armed Forces." Is honourable really appropriate? We could go into a huge argument about the benefits of pacifism and being part of an army, but there's really no need for an adjective at all...except maybe 'successful', which is what was probably intended.

Page name

Through the article and talk page, 'National Service' is always title case, yet the article name isn't... going to fix! Mauls 21:12, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Actually, not... this is (nominally) a general article. Going to fix the intro paragraph instead. Mauls 21:13, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Beyond military

Just a heads-up that I will be adding a section on non-military community-building national service activities in Germany, Israel, Nigeria, Sweden and the United States soon. - Freechild 22:43, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Shouldn't this be two articles?

Does anyone else think it feels a bit unbalanced having most of the article devoted to National Service in the United Kingdom? This being an international encyclopaedia, wouldn't it make more sense to have separate articles for each country, and this as a general article? garik 11:30, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree for the sake of countering systemic bias.--Huaiwei 12:07, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Were this a particularly long or detailed look at the subject I'd agree, but I'm opposed to premature splitting. Chris Cunningham 12:19, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Copyright violations

For the section marked as a copyright violation from http://www.nationalserviceact.org/16.html, the contributor is also the author of the source web site and is releasing the content under the GFDL. {{ConfirmationOTRS|id=https://secure.wikimedia.org/otrs/index.pl?Action=AgentTicketZoom&TicketID=1393487|license=GFDL|source=http://www.nationalserviceact.org/16.html}} howcheng {chat} 22:22, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

new section needs NPOV corrections

Given its source, it's no surprise that the new section on America has a pro-national-service bias. The section needs to be changed to be from a neutral POV.--Cybercobra (talk) 02:49, 10 March 2008 (UTC) I second that and i have propsed changes on the page as well as improving certain sections of the aricle. obama=osama(Yomamma22) (talk) 04:01, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

National service in the United Kingdom: SPLIT

Resolved

As per the page wiki page on Recruitment to the British Army during World War I, I propose a seperate page on recruiting WWII, should be created from the section relating to `National service in the United Kingdom during WWII` OR a page dedicated to `National Service in the United Kingdom`. Does anyone have any thoughts on splitting this ?--Rockybiggs (talk) 14:41, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

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National service in United States article-Vietnam War pro-conscription bias

In the article of National Service in the United States, the main paragraph in the Vietnam War section shows clear bias towards national service when it says that the reason that the military dropped it was in order to shield criticism of its strategy. It also cites the "military-industrial complex" as fosterine the "technical all-volunteer army". The discssion board directed me to this board so this is why it is here instead of in the National service in United States discussion. I suggest that the section be rewritten to a neutral POV or show the other side of opposition to conscirption in the United States (economists, peace movement, etc). obama=osama(Yomamma22) (talk) 03:46, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

National Service and Female Conscription

Nogt sure about the statement that Israel was the only country to conscript women in the twentieth century. The article Women in Libya mentions female conscription there in the 1980s onward, and I believe other countries had conscription for males and females as well. Zagubov (talk) 12:54, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

Duration

The article is confusing. Is it about conscription generally (which duplicates another article), or about British national service? If the latter why include references to other countries? If the former, it should be merged with conscription. Royalcourtier (talk) 07:45, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

Royalcourtier, I think the article must have gotten overly chopped up along the way, but I'm too tired to look through the history at the moment. I just tried to rearrange the intro a bit and I put the one quote in the section after it in blockquote tags to highlight there's really in there but a quote! Well, you do what you can do, you know? —Geekdiva (talk) 05:54, 2 August 2018 (UTC)