ALL AT SEA: DODGING NATIONAL SERVICE IN THE 1950’S.

‘Half the scum of England are going into the Merchant Navy to escape National Service’ (1) pronounced Judge Ewen Montagu, a hard-line Law Lord, way back in 1955.An ex-military officer, Montagu’s reactionary opinions seemed to reflect the nation’s mood of the day insofar as conscription was considered to be a duty. Anyway and to the point, arraigned in his court was a merchant seaman although records aren’t clear what the guy was accused of.

Being drunk and disorderly after months away on a bad ship in a god-forsaken place such as Abadan or Khorramshahr, perhaps?As we don’t know the seafarer’s crime, then we also don’t know the verdict either, although it sounds as though Judge Montagu wasn’t a soft touch.But half the scum of England? Exaggeration surely for a learned judge, you might say.Nonetheless, his comments sparked controversy which even reached Parliament.

For in 1955 a Commons debate led by a Lord Glyn suggested that certain men were by-passing conscription by joining the MN as (quote) ‘cabin boys and mess-room waiters’ thereby abusing the privilege of exemption.’The Lord Glyn was firmly put in his place by other House speakers who corrected him in stating that such ‘dodgers’ would have to be registered seaman, and in any case ‘two years in the MN is not counted as two years equivalent in the military, the call-up would be suspended until the man was twenty-six years old. After such eight years the call-up would be cancelled.’ (2)

In today’s world Judge Montagu would have to concede that not only was conscription abolished sixty years ago in place of an all-volunteer army, but also there is scarcely a Merchant Navy left – no matter what he might have said, both conscription and a Merchant Service provided training, further education, perspective and travel which is now severely limited.

Call-up papers for eighteen year-olds to join the Army ceased in 1960 however; the debate against conscription centred upon evidence that the sheer number of troops was a burden – furthermore that this legislation was out of step with Britain’s diminished empire.As for me, I joined the MN in 1972 – well after 1960, of course – and sailed with some crew members who had actually been in the Army. Some who had been conscripted whilst others were volunteers – but I did know is that in the 1950’s the three main occupations which exempted men from conscription were farming, mining….. and the Merchant Navy.But whilst in this year 2021, no Briton under 80 years old has been required to spend two years of their life in the military, instead there has been much comment akin to ‘bringing back National Service to do youth some good’ – not only letters to right-wing newspapers such as The Times and Telegraph – but I also read recently that over 50% of the UK population would like to see some kind of National Service ( such as community and charity work, etc, not solely the military).

So I was interested in a newspaper report commissioned by the Ministry of Defence and published in April 2020 that the UK should consider ‘reintroducing National Service.’The report was written by the academic Professor Hew Strachan who suggests that such service would combat (quote) ‘a lack of mature public engagement.’ (3)In everyday speak I take this weighty phrase of his to mean calling upon youth to grow up and take responsibility for their lives. But that’s the Professor’s view, not necessarily mine.Professor Strachan – a military historian – is in his sixties so he would definitely not have been conscripted. Maybe his views accord resonance with some (especially the 50% pro-conscription people surveyed), but I don’t know much else about the guy apart from what’s on Google. 

By the way, I don’t think this story was widely publicised either – indeed maybe in the midst of last year’s pandemic the media chose quietly to bury it.Anyway, I was more interested in the supposition that MN volunteers had evaded the Army, rather than get into a debate about National Service and values – as is inferred, the journalist ‘warriors’ of the tabloids advocating Army life have usually never been there. Returning to the MN though, and during the 50’s the Red Ensign sailed to some great places with lots of port time.

But in contrast anyone who has spent months at sea on a ship they hated; who sailed in some of the worst seas imaginable; had signed on twelve-month articles with poor food and conditions and no prospect of getting home (which occurred frequently up until the 1970’s) would be inclined to think that two years in the military might have been a better option.

So on the back of this story I reflected upon previous crew members of the 1970’s era who, if they had been ‘dodgers’ would then have been around thirty years old.I did sail with numerous engineers when after completing a shipyard apprenticeship came away to sea, but this seemed a natural progression of advancing their marine engineering career.But I couldn’t recall anyone at all saying that they’d joined the MN to escape the Army.Of course, it could be argued that they were concealing this fact, but I reasoned that after twelve years (1960 to ‘72) had such guys been dodging conscription they were now subsumed into a job and career in the Merchant Navy, I.e. they liked it – so why should they have been stigmatised after all those years?On the other hand, I sailed with more people who had completed two years’ Army call-up only to enlist in the MN afterwards.

They relished the freedoms, but respected the MN discipline at the same time.But I remember one comment from an ex-soldier who did his National Service during the 1956 Suez Crisis summed it up: ‘ Whilst there guarding a water filtration plant, I watched the merchant ships steam through the Canal on their way to places like the Cape, Australia and New Zealand. I got fed-up of the desert, the flies and unsanitary conditions and so forth. Some of the crew would be sun-bathing and drinking bottles of beer on deck and I thought that would be a great job to do’.

And such ex-military usually made good workers and shipmates once they’d got to sea. It wasn’t just the sun and beer, but rather the freedom of being in a marginalised industry like the Army – one in which there’s travel and hard work, but happy times too.Finally, I did meet one or two former-seafarers who openly told me that, yes, they did sign ship’s articles to avoid the Army. 

However, this was ashore in a pub somewhere in the 1970’s and not aboard ship – they disclosed that they went to sea in 1959 figuring that abolition of National Service was imminent meaning they would only have to complete a few trips and be free of the military’s clutches. They soon bailed out of the MN though – a few trips over to Montreal in the North Atlantic winter are hard enough for experienced seafarers, let alone chancers.So some (a few) did dodge. It was the opportunism that MP’s of 1955 were at pains to draw public attention to.

But by this time this was the early seventies and most of the UK nation wanted to put the whole memory of National Service and Empire to bed, so to speak. Nonetheless, I wasn’t too impressed by the seafarers’ reasons for avoidance which seemed to rest upon flimsy arguments as ‘universal peace’ or ‘let someone else do it.’ Even a committed conscientious objector wouldn’t have been so crass as that.

Or the other one seemed to be the half-baked theory that: ‘if everyone together refused army service, there would be no wars.’‘Yeah, right!’, I said. What nonsense, is what I really thought.Our oppo seafarers in the Royal Navy would reply to that with their stock phrase for dubious statements: ‘go tell it to the Marines.’But even the Marines would say that no-one gets peace by taking guns away from one side, but not the other.Still, in conclusion I think that the suggestion that many eighteen year-olds evaded National Service by joining the MN was a wild exaggeration (half the scum of England? – hmm!).

The problem is that when such exaggeration reaches the seat of power such as the Houses of Parliament and is subsequently picked up by the media, journalists will respond in a negative way.Add the jingoism and patriotic mood of the fifties and there was an excellent mix for public outrage; anyway, we have a well-motivated volunteer army now. Isn’t that better?

REFERENCES:

1) Macintyre, B. (2014), Operation Mincemeat, p.334, Bloomsbury

2) https://Hansard.Parliament.uk (05.07.1955), National Service Exemption, (accessed 14.04.2021)

3) the week.co.uk (March 2021) pros and cons of National Service (accessed 12.04.2021)