Why most veterans’ charities do not express anti-war sentiment
Dr Colin Alexander, Senior Lecturer in Political Communications at Nottingham Trent University
It is a peculiar and interesting anomaly that most veterans’ charities in the UK do not position themselves as anti-war. As non-profit organisations offering post-conflict physical and psychological care, assistance and support, they witness first-hand the damage that war has upon the human body and mind. This makes them obvious and well-placed candidates to enter the debate about the continuing role of armed conflict in modern global society and the barbarity that warfare remains a legitimate instrument of national policy.
According to the Charity Commission, there are approximately 1,300 organisations offering some form of assistance to serving military personnel or veterans at any one time. These range from national charities receiving revenues in the millions like the Royal British Legion, Help for Heroes and SSAFA to small local groups up and down the country that may raise only a few thousand pounds each year. Almost none positions themselves as anti-war though. That is left to campaign groups that sit outside of the ‘military-cultural complex’ like MAW.
Part of my research into the charity sector has been to uncover why this anomalous situation exists among veterans’ charities and I conclude that it can be explained through the following ten factors.
• A crisis of imagination that a world without war is possible among charity executives and other key decision-makers within the organisations.
• Most veterans’ charities have signed the Armed Forces Covenant and are thereby loyal to the concept of militarism.
• A focus upon expanding the charity and increasing revenues, and a broad understanding that anti-war positions would be perceived as controversial and thereby represent risk to the organisation’s ambitions.
• The reality that an organisation expressing anti-war positions would be less likely to win tenders from the state, to be given funding from the military itself or be in line for corporate funding (particularly funding from the arms industry, which many of these organisations accept).
• A perception that those members of the public most likely to donate to veterans’ charities or fundraise for them are pro-military.
• A wider trend within the charity sector to move away from political statements and political influence work, partly on account of the difficulty of fundraising for it in comparison to funding for care provision.
• Legal restrictions placed upon registered charities around political campaign work.
• The precedent that the few veterans’ charities that have articulated anti-war positions have closed because of lack of funds and support.
• A desire to not be seen as judgemental, invalidating or questioning of the life choices of veterans who come to them for help.
• Concerns around negative media coverage or no media coverage at all if they were to articulate an anti-war position.
There are two key conclusions to draw from this situation. The first involves the relationship between veterans’ charities and the wider ‘military-cultural complex’. The term ‘military cultural complex’ has achieved significant awareness during the 21st century following its initial use by the cultural theorist Henry Giroux in 2006. Giroux described a post 9/11 world in which technological advances in image and screen-based media have played an important role in the encouragement of fear of unknown others, the glamorisation and glorification of wars and military personnel, and the polarisation of publics around perceived martial threats.
Thus, while Dwight Eisenhower’s concept of the ‘military-industrial complex’ referred to the triangular relationship between politics, the military and arms companies, the military-cultural complex focuses on the aspects of strategic communications, propaganda and public persuasion that helps perpetuate the notion of war as legitimate and soldiering as gallant, brave, heroic, necessary, unavoidable and worthy of emulation and praise. In turn, publics then support the funding of the military and arms deals through their taxation monies.
The public communications of most veterans’ charities should thereby be added to the array of strategies used by the military-cultural complex that encourages the cultural acceptance of war as normal and which marginalises the image of the peace advocate as ‘radical’ thought. When veterans’ charities promote highly emotive testimony videos from survivors without an anti-war argument, they become complicit with the military-industrial complex’s news media influence operations and military recruitment videos. They exist in a similar cultural space to movies, popular music and other forms of entertainment that encourage militarism, war, weapons and violence as acceptable, noble or even cool.
More broadly, the non-committal of most veterans’ charities to a world without war calls into question their claim to being a ‘good cause’. Of course, many offer help and care to people in need and thereby fulfil a social need that the state appears unwilling to fully fund. However, an organisation that – through their public communications – explicitly and/or implicitly helps to maintain or even hasten the conveyor belt of mainly young men being injured and traumatised by armed conflict is arguably not acting for public benefit. They certainly aren’t raising public awareness of the barbarity of war and its deeply unnatural affliction upon humankind.