The people of Iran are being terrorised as they experience the simultaneous power of states to inflict crushing violence on two separate fronts. We must show solidarity with their struggle against military and political violence and for their liberation, justice, peace and human rights.

Mass bombardment of civilians

The US-Israeli mass bombardment of Iran has unleashed hellish scenes across much of the country and has inflicted incalculable suffering on Iran’s population. In addition to the brutalisation of Iranian civil society by the US and Israel, Iranians had endured extreme violent repression in the weeks preceding the war by government forces in response to mass civil protests.

Iranian civilians have paid the overwhelming price of this war of choice. At least 1,330 Iranian civilians, including over 200 children, have been killed and a further 17,000 wounded since the US and Israel launched their war on 28 February. Reportedly, the youngest of those killed so far by US-Israeli forces was an 8-month-old girl.… Read more

This was the feedback one school shared on their website after their year 7 class was visited by BAE System’s STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Maths) education roadshow in April of last year. The class had taken part in an AI workshop, created their own music video and even played with a robotic dog called Lexi.

The STEM roadshow, which has partnered with the RAF from 2008 and the Royal Navy from 2015, has been running for 20 years. During this time it has become a fixture in the calendars of at least 500 schools across the country.

BAE Systems claim the event’s ‘awe inspiring assemblies’ on topics such as electricity, space travel and robotics have played ‘an important role in inspiring the next generation of innovators, aviators and engineers’.

Who are BAE Systems and what is their involvement in education?

With around 35,000 staff and now making record profits exceeding £3 billion last year, BAE Systems is Britain’s largest defence contractor but also operates globally.… Read more

Summary

In August the government announced £70m of new funding for the UK’s military cadet forces. The pledge to increase the number of cadets by 30%, or over 40,000, by 2030 was made in June’s Strategic Defence Review. The review also stated that a further increase would see cadet numbers rising to 250,000 ‘in the longer term’.

Much of this expansion will be in school-based cadet forces. Since 2012 it has been government policy to increase the number of armed forces cadet units in state-funded secondary schools. To back up the expansion the Ministry of Defence commissioned the University of Northampton to produce a series of evaluation reports to demonstrate the social impact and value of cadet forces.

The first of these reports came out in 2017 and the most recent in April this year, with a report published almost every year in between. The reports have provided the government with a string of similarly highly positive findings and made claims about huge financial benefits to the country. They have been used to generate press releases, media coverage and parliamentary debates, and provided justification for the spending on cadets – estimated to be £210m a year.… Read more

There are some interesting parallels here with the first Tony Blair administration. As we found in our first investigation into the Scheme, Labour very quickly decided to expand the number of MPs taking part in the Scheme when they came to power in 1997. Whilst significant at the time, it was merely a stepping stone to the ever increasing rise to the size of participation today.

Other changes have occurred since the 2024 election, chiefly that Conservative MP James Gray, the long time Chair of the Scheme and its sibling the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for the Armed Forces, lost his Wiltshire seat due to constituency boundary changes. Whilst this means he can no longer take part in the APPG, the charitable status of the Armed Forces Parliamentary Trust, and its dual position of being both inside and outside Parliament, allows him to stay actively involved in the Scheme.… Read more

We reflect on the two strategy reports, what other critics have highlighted and what they tell us about a narrative of ‘militarist realism’ at this moment.

Contents

• New strategies, with extra politics
• The rise of centring ‘Defence’
• Militarist Realism
  • Militarism: the dominance and state subsidy of the (US) military industrial complex
  • Realism: the pervasive atmosphere of permanent war
• No escape from reality….we are not there yet

New strategies, with extra politics

The Strategic Defence Review (SDR) was published in early June with a fanfare. The high rhetoric was matched by the staging of the launch at BAE Systems in Glasgow and a quarrel in Parliament when some in the defence industry – as well as journalists – were given access to the review before MPs. In contrast, the publication of the National Security Strategy (NSS) was hardly registered by the media.… Read more

Inaccurate, partial and unevidenced claims were made in the press about a decision to not have military equipment present at York Armed Forces Day (AFD). For example, it was suggested by The Independent that ‘fear’ about potential protests influenced the council’s decision. The Daily Mail carried quotes from a military ‘expert’ incorrectly linking recently proscribed group Palestine Action to protests in York. But a statement from the Leader of City of York Council suggests that the decision was not a result of some nebulous ‘fear’, but of a democratic process of consultation which directly involved the army and local residents. This key detail, and others, were missing from several stories in the national papers.

As a result, a degree of moral panic was generated. If a few key, publicly available, details had been included in the coverage stories they would have clarified the matter.… Read more

A record number of demonstrations and other actions to challenge Armed Forces Day are taking place in towns and cities across the UK this weekend.

Protest organisers have reported a three-fold increase compared with 2024, with demonstrations, vigils, stalls and flyering planned in over fifty locations this year.

Celebrations to mark Armed Forces Day will take place throughout the UK on 28th June featuring military parades, flyovers and displays of military vehicles. The occasion has long drawn criticism for its uncritical portrayal of the armed forces and warfare.

This year Armed Forces Day events will include vintage displays, 1940s-style tea parties and Spitfire flyovers to mark the 80th anniversary of VE Day, as well as many activities aimed at children such as bouncy castles and rides.

Peace campaigners have accused such events of “rebranding militarism as entertainment”. They say the rapidly growing protests reflect public outrage at the UK’s support for Israel actions in Gaza and Iran, as well as opposition to the deepening militarism in the UK in the wake of the government’s Strategic Defence Review, National Security Strategy and huge increases in military spending.

The protests follow the recent No Kings protests in the US against the US Army 250th Anniversary Parade, which raised similar concerns about the glorification of militarism and a dangerous culture of military obedience.… Read more

‘Great drama joined in those months with a luminous insanity.’ 

Writing in the week of VE Day 2025 – the 80th anniversary of the defeat of 20th century fascism in Europe – is an odd feeling. Far away from Halifax bombers, royal pomp and nostalgic street parties to commemorate the end of a devastating war, another outbreak of mass human conflict threatens. There is great drama, and it seems like only a matter of time before it cross-contaminates with a luminous insanity. Or perhaps it already has.

In Ukraine, there is grinding trench warfare which wouldn’t look out of place in 1916. Israel, with material and political support from the UK and others, has just announced the latest phase of its genocidal assault on Gaza. And now (nuclear-armed) India has bombed numerous targets in (nuclear-armed) Pakistan and Kashmir. For those of us who closely observe war and militarism, there is a sensation of being unseen and unheard; a feeling that the world is ploughing towards a third global conflagration despite everything we’ve said and done, often over long, thankless decades.… Read more

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Summary

Fuelled by war-footing narratives, the long-standing recruitment shortfall in the armed forces has developed into a ‘recruitment crisis’ in the media. Changing attitudes of young people towards enlistment, and conscription, often get blame for the failure of the military to meet recruiting targets. However, the figures show that large number of applications to join up continue to be made but, for various reasons, these have not translated into new recruits. This suggests that, in constantly pushing for more recruits, the armed forces are actually demanding more suitable recruits, rejecting in one way or another the majority of those that do apply.

Ministry of Defence statistics show that the high net outflow of the last few years – which has caused such alarm – is now decreasing. It is likely to be partly a consequence of the high net intake in the previous period, which was a response to very prominent recruitment marketing in the years leading up to and during the Covid pandemic.… Read more

Formed after the general election that gave us the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for the Armed Forces was, according to its long-time chairman James Gray, the largest APPG in Parliament during its early years, with a membership of more than 300 MPs and Peers. It was formed by the merger of previously separate APPGs for the Royal Navy, Army, RAF and Royal Marines, entities we know little about due to the lack of historical records on APPGs.

Whilst Gray was among the Conservatives MPs who lost their seat in July 2024, his legacy – which also includes over a decade at the helm of the Armed Forces Parliamentary Trust – it is clear his influence was huge, even if, as we outline, much of the APPG’s work remains shrouded in secrecy.… Read more