We had a lot of fun making this parody, in response to the big policy pledge unveiled by Rishi Sunak for the upcoming July 4th UK General Election, announcing that a compulsory form of National Service for eighteen-year-olds is to be reintroduced – having been abandoned in the UK in 1960 (when we still had the remnants of an empire). Lots of countries have obligatory national service for those in their late teens, and some of them work well. That’s usually because they have been carefully planned, tested, and funded, and are embedded alongside other structures that encourage volunteering, education, and the development of skills and social cohesion. That’s not what this policy looks like (or what we know about it).
It was the kids that wanted to address the topic – maybe cos some of them are trying to avoid revision for exams, or because this one was super-relevant to their actual life prospects (given their ages: 12, 14, 16, 17).

We explain what we think of the policy in the song, which ended up quite a mammoth task. We recorded the singing in one take, and decided not to cut away to other instruments (Alfie on piano, Tom on drums, Ella on cornet, Ben on other stuff) – but we got as close as we could to the original Billy Joel song, “Goodnight Saigon”, released in 1982 about the US Marines sent to Vietnam (from the album The Nylon Curtain). It’s been parodied before, by Will Ferrell in an SNL sketch in 2009. We thought carefully about contexts – a verse was excluded that addressed the heartbreaking realities of kids fighting in Ukraine and beyond. But the aim here was to expose the holes in the claims about National Service and what young people need in the UK, and the fact that they feel a lot of ‘camaraderie’ in pushing back against it – and have good reasons to do so.

More on the politics if you are interested here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c...

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LYRICS:

They made a “bold” pledge, as fears heightened
Dreamed up in think tanks or some asylum
Scared of Farage. And Richard Tice!
Sunak’s proposing we should weigh down our lives

Undemocratic, they’re gonna force us
To get our butts kicked in national service
The news came fast. The detail light.
He sent James Cleverly, to put us to rights

It’s quite an insult from such a soft bloke
Winchester Head Boy, money for old rope
To say that WE should have to fight
And claim our sacrifice will help us unite

They’ve closed the libraries, and screwed the landscapes
They’ve scrapped the youth clubs, and other escapes
Now we must work! Must work or fight!
While those who couldn’t be bothered
Deliver us lectures
Hypocrisy dressed up as pride

And we will all go down together
They say we’ll all go down together
Yes we must ‘volunteer’ together

Remember COVID? Remember Brexit?
They wrecked our childhoods, or hampered prospects
Free movement gone! Can’t get a start!
An education system falling apart

We get no pay
Or a stingy stipend
They do alright –
As they try
To appeal to over 60s
Whose dads did service
Though not the real kind - just months on Cyprus
And it was scrapped, never revived
Until your scramble for voters
Your fag-packet quotas
To burden the Army arrived

And we will all go down together
They say we’ll all go down together
Yes, we must ‘volunteer’ together


We’re not all lazy. We’re not all snowflakes.
We love our country, just not your piss-takes.
There’s nothing wrong with giving back
It’s not the values or the will that we lack

It’s all the funding that has been squandered
More frontline forces. More first responders.
We want careers. Less rent, or debts
You raid the levelling up fund
Give tax breaks to pensions
And tell us to join the cadets

And we will all go down together
They say we’ll all go down together
Yes, we will ‘volunteer’ together

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