news & articles

latest news

26/01/2012 BBC

The first UK school whose teachers have all served in the armed forces is actively recruiting prospective pupils with a view to opening in 2013.

09/01/2012 Press Association

Military-style cadet forces could be introduced to all secondary schools in a Government bid to boost standards and discipline.

cadets
08/01/2012 The Telegraph

All secondary schools should have a military cadet force in the drive to raise standards, according to a senior Government education official.

cadets
14/11/2011 British Forces News

Surface-to-air missiles could be used to protect the skies over London during the Olympics, Defence Secretary Philip Hammond said today as he insisted "all necessary measures" will be taken to ensure security.

12/11/2011 Ekklesia

"The growing compulsion to wear a red poppy and to acquiesce in the remodelling of its purpose has diverted our attention from the more enduring and demanding aspects of remembering the destruction, personal, collective and environmental, which is the outcome of military action."

remembrance
12/11/2011 Daily Mail

"We can best pay tribute to their sacrifices by ensuring that in the future no British sailor, soldier, Marine or airman is asked to lay down their life except for the most urgent and honourable of causes."

11/11/2011 Ekklesia

"There may well be a boom in poppy sales, but the act of Remembrance itself has been cheapened by a failure to back up words with action, particularly when it comes to successive governments' care for victims of war, but equally in terms of the appalling the lack of resources put into peacebuilding."

remembrance
10/11/2011 Child Soliders International

The MoD is criticised for lowering standards since WW1 and despite thousands of planned redundancies, it still recruiting children at twice the cost of adults.

recruitment age
09/11/2011 The Guardian

Whatever one's stance on poppy-wearing, let us also not forget the ex-servicemen who survive – but only just

remembrance
04/11/2011 The Telegraph

Up to 6,000 troops could be drafted in as security guards at the 2012 Olympics in London, as officials reassess the manpower needed to cover next year's Games, it has emerged.

other useful articles

01/09/2011 A ForcesWatch report

In July ForcesWatch launched the Military Out of Schools campaign. Speakers Oskar Castro, a US activist in countering military recruitment, and Ben Griffin, ex-forces and the founder of fledgling Veterans for Peace UK, discussed how young people are militarised and what can be done about it.

01/05/2010 Peace News

This article looks at the challenges posed by new military recruitment strategies including the “army showroom” concept and the “Start Thinking Soldier” internet and TV advertising campaign – both “initiatives which utilise the language and tools of computer games and simulation, which young people immediately relate to, and desire.”

04/04/2010 Sunday Times
Michael Clohessy returned from Iraq with a distinguished war record — and ended up in prison. Our jails are swollen with former soldiers. Why can’t they stay out of trouble?
16/11/2008 The Independent

A decade after Deepcut, MoD reports reveal failure to tackle problem affecting hundreds of trainees.

28/09/2008 Telegraph

Service men and women will go into schools to mentor young tearaways, while troops will receive free teacher training and university tuition, the Conservatives will pledge. 

01/06/2008 Peace News

Controversial plans to radically expand military cadet corps in English state secondary schools are being pushed forward by Ed Balls, the Children’s Secretary, apparently backed by No 10. The plans were the idea of Quentin Davies, a Labour MP who defected from the Tories last year, and come on the back of a government-commissioned review of “civil and military relations”.

08/04/2008 The Guardian

Controversial plans for pupils in comprehensive schools to sign up for military drills and weapons training are being backed by Gordon Brown in an attempt to improve the relationship between the public and the armed forces.

07/02/2007 New Statesman

“Stricken by Iraq and low morale, the British army is on a desperate recruitment drive. Its new targets? Poorly educated teenagers and young schoolchildren.” This article looks at new recruitment techniques such as the Camoflage scheme, which includes a magazine and website designed for those as young as 13, MoD school presentation teams and various forms of ‘outreach’. “Our new model is about raising awareness, and that takes a ten-year span. It starts with a seven-year-old boy seeing a parachutist at an air show and thinking, 'That looks great.' From then the army is trying to build interest by drip, drip, drip."

10/11/2006 BBC

An editor at the BBC explains how they have no policy that presenters have to wear a poppy but that they do give 'guidance' on wearing them,

28/05/2006 BBC

More than 1,000 members of the British military have deserted since the start of the Iraq war, the BBC has learned.