Brainwashing

Closely related to this argument are the claims that basic training leads to brainwashing and the implantation of a constricting and dehumanising military ethos. The soldier is led to a rejection of personal identity; he submits to the organisation and accepts values alien to his previous experience — values applicable to military ends rather than the individuals. This, we are told, is completely at odds with our "democratic principles".

All this tells us is that the processes are similar to those workers undergo in factories. No wonder then that people who face a lifetime of wage-slavery are a little bemused when the likes of Michael Thomas Murphy solemnly pronounce that "after due consideration of the National Military Service Act of 1961, I have come to the conclusion that the Act is illegal because it deprives the New Zealand citizen of his basic right, which is freedom of choice" (Salient, April, 1972); and when Michael Patrick McCashin reveals in the Wellington Evening Post (15 April, 1972) that "in the army he found that the minds of men were changed. Trainees are in a closed situation in which people can get hold of their minds for twelve weeks and change them."

OHMS also makes an appeal to those "who feel that training conscripts is not the most efficient way of spending the defence vote." This particular plea, an OHMS spokesman informed the National Antiwar Conference in April, was designed especially to appeal to the RSA! So OHMS wants to lead a common movement of radicals, pacifists and reactionary militarists.

There is already a significant opposition in the army and Defence Ministry to national service on the grounds of inefficiency. These hawks will be arguing that the state should give in to OHMS, thereby making a more efficient army and demonstrating how democratic New Zealand really is. Add to this a period of high unemployment (which is likely), and national service could be replaced by greater regular force recruitment. Since it is frequently the most resourceful of the unemployed workers who seek alternative employment in the army, the danger from worker unrest would be allayed by thus siphoning off some of the least docile workers and, of course, at the same time strengthening the army.