I’m going to war? For Rishi Sunak? Give yer’ ‘ead a wobble! I’ve got things to do!” So said 23-year-old TikToker Charley Marlowe in a widely shared video she posted to the platform over the weekend. “I’m gay,” she continued, with her Mancunian lilt. “I’m Northern — I will play them cards!”
You can’t help but laugh. If anyone is going to make a joke about the potentiality of an impending world war, it’s Gen Z. Marlowe is not the only one — 26-year-old content creator Ayamé P uploaded a similar video. “I’m sitting here naked, eating a bowl of yoghurt,” she begins, “reading about how we might have to go to war? They want to send me, a little girl … to the frontline?”
All of this conscription chatter started last week when General Sir Patrick Sanders, chief of the general staff, warned that Army reserves were so depleted that we “may have no choice” but to conscript as the country remains “absolutely not ready” to ward off a threat from Russia.
For my generation the army is simply no longer seen as a moral endeavour
The Government has since said that conscription is not actually on the cards, but the idea of Gen Z being rounded up and sent to the frontlines had already prompted both horror and excitement (largely from condescending boomers) in equal measure.
But why are my generation so reluctant to don khaki and buzzcuts for King and country? It is certainly borne out in the stats: Army recruitment numbers have been down for years, going from 100,000 members in 2010 to only 74,000 now. In fact, according to a new poll, only 14 per cent of Britons aged 18 to 24 would willingly fight for the UK if conscripted for a third world war.
Of course, some people think they know the answer. Young people are “easily offended” and they “lack motivation”, Major-General Chip Chapman told GB News. Do these stereotypes really explain such a huge generational shift in military attitudes? I don’t think so.
More important is that, for my generation, the Army is simply no longer seen as a moral endeavour. As a 24-year-old, the last war in my living memory was not a barnstorming defeat of the Nazis, but rather a series of wars and invasions in the Middle East, exposed as failures and widely thought to be based on lies. The belief held by older generations that the British Army is solely a force for good in the world does not stand up anymore. As Gen Z would put it: the military propaganda is not propaganda-ing.
As social infrastructure like the NHS falls apart at the seams, the economy declines and the Government pursues increasingly extreme policies, there is far less to be patriotic about.
Can you really blame Gen Z for wondering just what exactly would we be dying for?
