When I was 18, I got a job on a military base (the prior Military Hospital at Headley Court), working between the kitchens, cafe and bar area. I grew up around this type of infrastructure and so found it easy talking to people and sharing experiences. There is a barrier of jargon between forces personnel and “civvies” as they call them. It can be hard to understand the cultural references, talking points and hierarchies of those structures without having been embedded in it.
Part of this embedding took place throughout my childhood, growing up inside of and around the infrastructure of military bases, both in the UK and outside of it. But this also came about through my own reckoning with my place inside of it. At 14, I was sent to a military boarding school as part of the Continuity of Education allowance. A structure that provides large subsidies to forces personnel sending their children to one of these schools, ostensibly to allow for a more stable upbringing. In reality, it seems more of a somewhat self serving exercise in carrying on the British tradition of the “military family”. Where service is passed from generation to generation and provides candidates already indoctrinated and primed with an understanding of its social intricacies.
While at this school I had a crisis of faith, feeling pushed to take seriously the implications of a proposed military career that had been pushed on me from an early age. I became fascinated with the Iraq War and its ripple effects. Part of that helped me understand that I couldn’t bring myself to find peace with a life that involved killing (or adjacency to it). It terrified me (and still does). Through that, I became interested in alternative structures and social models, leading to an early identification with anarchism, but thats irrelevant to this story. Beyond the fear, I honestly don’t know what helped me make that choice. It worries me that I don’t know, but I am grateful to my past self for making that choice.
Recently, I’ve been considering my placement along this political borderline. Raised in the military’s strange form of socialist-fascism (with its co-operative stores, general community centred structure and politics of mutual aid) and my current identity as a anarcho-socialist with strong left leaning beliefs. I still know some people adjacent to the military. I still love some people despite that adjacency. But I’m struggling with that love and how to express care and love, while feeling a deep requirement to beg for them to understand the harm their adjacency enables.
I felt inspired recently by the work of the Avant-garde artists of the 1960s-70s in their attempts at trying to reach and converse with soldiers carrying out colonial wars. Their attempts to use empathy to explain how they were also suffering through the horror they were being shipped off to carry out. Their convictions in trying to speak to those in our society so desperate that they turn to power and killing to make a living. How do you tell them that there is another way. That there must be another path forward. That the community they seek can exist outside of these boundaries.
While I worked the bar at Headley Court, I spoke often to soldiers who were awaiting discharge, both from the hospital and the military in general. Their safety net had burst. Most of them hadn’t even seen active conflict, simply had an accident while carrying out their day-to-day and were now facing their entire life structures crumbling around them. They felt abandoned and scared. They had come to the military as a place to escape poverty, provide a stable income and find a sense of belonging and community. Now all of that had gone, many seemed to realise how unrealistic that promise was in the first place. I couldn’t help but feel their grief with them.
I particularly remember two guys who were there almost everyday. They’d met through the hospital but had a care for one another that was touching. One man’s foot had been crushed while working in a supplies warehouse and through that, could no longer serve in the military. If I remember right, he had never once seen active conflict. I don’t know how the other man had sustained his injuries but they were more sever. He had a persistent tremor that had led to him needing crutches to walk, but also meant he could barely hold a drink without it spilling and struggled to speak. Both men were sweet and while one needed more help physically, the other clearly found a deep emotional comfort in their friendship. Coping with the anger and grief of his life collapsing due to an accident of his own making.
I don’t think a socialist revolution without a place for these people is truly socialist. We can’t simply convince or force people to conform to a model that we think will make the world a better place. To paraphrase Paulo Freire, socialism cannot (when carried out authentically) embody the dynamics of oppressor - oppressed that pressure freedom. So what of these peoples freedom. How do we work with and reach people in these systems, to collectively dismantle them? The horrors of the Iraq War linger in UK politics and despite anti-war efforts of the past 100 years (and longer!), there has been little shift in dismantling the military industrial complex. However, this does not mean there has been no victories in this fight. We don’t often get to hear of them but they are there. I had the lucky opportunity last summer to hear of the organising happening within BAE systems factories. Headway is being made, but slowly.
So how do we translate this to an actionable resistance against war. As observed by David Graeber and David Wengrow “Revolutions are rarely won in open combat. When revolutionaries win, it’s usually because the bulk of those sent to crush them refuse to shoot, or just go home”. The potential of this quote wells within me a deep desire for it to be true. I don’t believe in there being forgiveness for all acts, let alone the atrocities committed by soldiers working on behalf of their government. But part of me deeply wants there to be. Maybe selfishly, as part of my own entanglements. But also as an end to a cycle within which someone feels trapped by the horrors they commit. A hope that they can find a place outside of the shame and self hatred that conjures. Maybe socialism can try offer a place for this. Somewhere to find a sense of community away from the trauma bonding of a system that pushes you towards murder as a way of earning economic and social stability.
Often we can be quick to call for an abandonment of such people to the fates they have chosen. We all have a choice after all. But I think many haven’t truly held the weight of that decision. Felt the social pressures of being told that there is an easier route. On a day when I am less angry, I can feel some compassion and sadness for those that chose the other side. I don’t think they are truly happy with their choice either. At least, the statistics regarding mental health issues and suicide for those coming out of the armed forces don’t paint a picture of happiness and fulfilment. Doing some research around this, I came across the Veterans For Peace organisation. I want to direct people there for those looking to see good work being done in the space of de-militarisation.
In writing this, I’m not looking for or proposing a simple solution to this. It’s easy for me to advocate a position of extending compassion to those working as agents of fascist regimes (let’s be honest, that is what we are currently existing within) and be done with it. Their actions often don’t directly impact the quality of my life. It’s not my home they are bombing. But I also see a way forward in still trying to extend empathy and trying to reach those who fell into a darker path in life. If we want to end war, we have to imagine a place for those who took that path and must then come back from it. We have to help them come back from it. We have to care, even if it’s hard.
10.01.2026 - speaking to the soldiers