National Service

National Service is a system of either compulsory or voluntary government service, usually military service. In the UK, national service was a compulsory military service between 1947 and 1960. Previous compulsory UK military service was used between the first and second world wars. National Service, peacetime conscription, was introduced in for all able-bodied men between the ages of 18 and 30. They initially served for 18 months. But in 1950, during the Korean War (1950-53), this was increased to two years. The blind and mentally ill, clergymen, and men in overseas government positions were all officially exempt from National Service. Unofficially, it was also decided not to conscript black and Asian British men. Despite high levels of immigration in the mid-1950s, the bar on black and Asian soldiers continued throughout the years of National Service. To avoid possible civil unrest, Northern Ireland was also excluded from conscription.
==Links To Peel==
Peel was one of the last conscripts of compulsory national service in the UK (had he been born just over a month later, he would not have had to do it). Talking to Time Out magazine in 1988Nick Coleman, "Resounding Peel", Time Out No. 948, October 19-26 1988; 20th anniversary supplement, pp. 13-14., he described how he coped with the experience:
"I've always been a loner. I've always been quite capable of enjoying whatever it is I'm doing. Even in the army, because there was no prospect of anybody shooting at you, or more importantly, that you'd have to shoot anybody else. It developed your natural cunning, so the things I learned on National Service were petty theft and how to avoid doing any work. I became highly skilled in the latter".
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In a BBC1 documentary, Army Of Innocents, broadcast in 1997, to celebrate 50 years of National Service, Peel described his finest hour in national service came when a general, inspecting the toilets it was Peel's duty to clean, praised him for keeping the most spotless lavatory in any barracks on the Royal Artillery camp at Ty Croes, Anglesey, Wales. Gunner Ravenscroft (Peel's real name) did not let on that this had only been achieved by padlocking the door and refusing entry for months to even the most desperate of soldiers.
Perhaps surprisingly, in the documentary Peel said he had enjoyed a lot of his National Service, including the endless drill:
"There was a certain amount of satisfaction to be derived from being a cog in such a machine. It's the same sort of thrill you get from something like synchronised swimming or ballroom dancing. I occasionally reproduce some of my finer moves for my children. You never lose it; it's like riding a bicycle."
Peel went on to describe what he learnt during national service:
"The best aspect of it, the one thing that I think would be useful for people today, was that it did compel you actually to think about other people's needs. You all had to work together - even if it was just in things like petty theft and evasion, which were the two things I really learned during National Service."
Peel gave a short summary of the 1950s in the programme, suggesting that young people were so unused to having any choice in their lives that few questioned the need to do National Service:
"Life just seemed pre-destined. I put up with stuff both at school and in the Army which if I'd tried to inflict something similar on our children they'd tell me to get stuffed, and quite rightly so."
After Peel finished his national service, he then later on travelled to America, where he started his radio career. As he had served in the British Army, he was able to live in the US without being liable to be drafted into the US armed forces and sent to Vietnam - a threat which reportedly caused his future Radio 1 colleague Tommy Vance (less than a year younger than Peel, but young enough to avoid national service) to abandon his American radio career and return to Britain. Peel also wrote the introduction to National Service in Trevor Royle's book, National Service: The Best Years of Their Lives, published in 2002.
Peel took particular pride in the fact that he served in the ranks, unlike most privately-educated servicemen in the heavily class-ridden forces. This was a pride he shared with his contemporary at Shrewsbury School, Willie Rushton, who also served in the ranks and who also appeared in 'Army of Innocents' (one of the last things he recorded; it was not shown until several months after his death).
== See Also ==
* War
== References ==
==External Links==
*Wikipedia
*National Army Museum
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