This week’s comment Column in the daily Plymouth Herald (6.5.25), uncharacteristically offering a personal memory in pursuit of a wider general point. Being against imperialist war is not a pacifist stance necessarily – it is a recognition of class society. Workers are sent to die for the ambitions and profits of the ruling class. And the Second World War was, above all, an imperialist war. We need to build working class resistance to oppose the drive towards the third world war, urgently.

The full text:

“Those who celebrate war have never seen it”. The words of my father, who fought through the entire 6 years of the Second World War. A skilled sailor, a gunner on the convoys, steering a landing craft on D-Day, he never spoke of his experiences until in his late seventies, and then seemed unable to stop recounting the horror.
My mother lost her first husband in ‘41. He was a bomber pilot. She, a young widow, then served as a fire warden, spotting the bombs to warn the emergency services. My parents married on VE Day +1, a date later to become their granddaughter’s birthday. The wedding was brief and a celebratory act, Dad about to finish his training at Turnchapel to captain an assault craft for the ground invasion of Japan.
Victory in Europe didn’t mean the war had finished. Their hasty marriage reflected fear as well as happiness, and the war experience infected the rest of their long but haunted lives.
There has been more war ever since, the competition between imperialist powers continuing to today, with a war in Europe and clamour for more war in the Middle East and against China.
Eighty Years on there are few who remember the impacts of war at home as well as abroad, even if the emotions are handed down the generations. I’ll never forget my old man’s eyes, glaring through his memories as he described the killing, his friends on fire as the ship began listing from the explosions, enemy planes strafing the deck, him seeing the face of his foe in the cockpit as he shot him down.
The trauma doesn’t go away when the fighting stops. War doesn’t ever stop once it’s in your head.
And yet this week, service men and women will be in school classrooms exalting military service. Infant and Primary School teachers, and even nursery staff will be encouraging the glorification of wearing uniform and dying for your country.
Teachers’ trade unions are warning against the militarisation of the curriculum. Whole classrooms will empty to learn the rudiments of marching on Plymouth Hoe, waving union jacks and singing the national anthem. Are pupils being brainwashed into this generation’s cannon fodder? Tax money for armaments has been taken from education budgets – mistaken priorities, surely?
Don’t tell me we’re not being prepared for war. Don’t pretend this week is a commemoration of a horror never to be repeated. The horror is continuing today in the Middle East, Europe and Africa and the messaging is towards the glorification of War, not a celebration of Peace.
Prime Minister Starmer, joining at Plymouth, slept a night onboard aircraft carrier HMS Prince of Wales a fortnight ago, addressing the deployment of young sailors from HMS Drake and elsewhere in battle fatigues reminiscent of Thatcher’s photos as a tank commander. Hurried rearmament was his message.
Starmer’s sending forces to the South China Seas via the Mediterranean, targeting Gaza, threatening Iran, bombing Yemen, and trying to deploy “troops on the ground” in war zones. Prime Ministers all want to command a war as their legacy. Remembering Blair he’d be advised to be careful what to wish for.
The week Starmer’s government announced an additional £5bn for the armed forces he also announced £5bn in cuts to disabilities allowances and PiP. War costs. He’s now spending £10bn a year on Trident nuclear weaponry that can never be used. Basic rate tax is bound to rise.
My MP, the Armed Forces Minister Luke Pollard, has developed a keenness for war preparations, raising spending to 2.5% of GDP and not stopping there, despite 1 in 4 of our children living in poverty amidst crumbling infrastructure and Austerity Mark II.
Plymouth’s former Royal Marines officer, Fred Thomas MP, might regret the rising rate of homelessness of veterans but his government is cutting public services for all. At the same time, the far-Right scream for the return of National Service if not conscription.
Raising military spending to 3% or even the 5% wished-for by President Trump is a target in the Government’s eye, a preparation for war. Deterring war requires detente and diplomacy, not militarism. Let our children study Peace.
We are being prepared. Wall-to-wall glorification of war, promotion of illegal weapons of mass-destruction both chemical and nuclear, plastic-doll cuddling of soldiers in uniform, ultra-nationalism being required as standard, the identification of all “others” as threats and potential enemies. Hatred of the “sub-humans”. Call of Duty 1-6. Militarism is a tool for authoritarian control, jingoism and subjugation.
I shall commemorate the dead and campaign for Peace in their memory. Welfare not Warfare!