Independent Labour Party Quotes

Conscription would amount to the sacrifice of nine-tenths of our moral case in this war. It would not only amount to an admission—wholly unjustified—that the heart of the country is not in the war…. It will change the basis of our participation. It will no longer be the war of the British people; it will be the war of the British governing classes.

The only way to have a volunteer army is to draft them.

Because conscription appeals to essentially no one, the United States has lived with the All-Volunteer Force since the end of the Vietnam War.

To enable our country to organize more effectively its military resources in the present great struggle for the cause of civilization, I have, acting on the advice of my Ministers, deemed it necessary to enroll every able-bodied man between the ages of eighteen and forty-one

Your King and Country need you.

Conscription may have been good for the country, but it damned near killed the country.

The bottom line is that we have a more representative sample of middle America in the volunteer force in 1990 than can be achieved in any draft.

They talk about conscription as being a democratic institution. Yes; so is a cemetery.

All able bodied male citizens … are hereby declared to be the National Forces.

It is not believed that a force of more than 400,000 can be secured or maintained by voluntary enlistments. An increase beyond that number would necessitate the simultaneous enactment of a selective service act.

With respect to where we are now, we have a voluntary army. And if we ever go back to conscription I hope that at time it will be the kind of conscription that was put in at the end of the Vietnam War. And that is, everybody is equally liable to be called to serve the nation in time of conflict.

The ruling classes today nourish the conviction that national hatreds and rivalries are inevitable.

Since January 2003, at the height of the debate on the possible unilateral strike against Iraq, I have advocated for a reinstatement of the military draft to ensure a more equitable representation of people making sacrifices in wars in which the United States is engaged.

I am one of the million or more male residents of the United Kingdom, who a year ago had no special yearning towards military life, but who joined the army after war was declared.

New Yorkers should know that no one in the Administration, at the Department of Defense, or at the Selective Service System is advocating the reinstatement of the mandatory draft in any form.

Conscription if necessary, but not necessarily conscription.

It is the duty of our men to enroll themselves in the national services. We need all our manpower for defence. For the military and... we need a quarter of a million men.

In England we only make films about the working class or the aristocracy.

From twenty years old and upward, all that are able to go forth to war in Israel: thou and Aaron shall number them by their armies

I was honestly willing to accept compulsory military service, provided that the voluntary system had first been tried out, and had failed to supply the men needed and who could still be spared from industry, and were numerically worth troubling about.

The government has the right to the military service of all its able-bodied citizens.

Capitalist wars for capitalist conquest and capitalist plunder must be fought by the capitalists themselves so far as I am concerned.

No worker has any business to enlist in the capitalist class war (World War I) or fight a capitalist class battle. It is our duty to enlist in our own war and fight our own battle.

I succeeded in staying out of the military during the Vietnam War, and I would never assume the right to tell others to do a “duty” that I shirked.

A political movement is that in which the proletarians as a class exert pressure against the ruling classes.