Support for extreme political groups among ex-armed forces folk is high – worrying when you consider some of them apparently predict violent conflict between different groups in our society
Today's media is full of scary images and stories about violent, generally ill-educated, young men, about girls and (yesterday was International Women's Day) young women who are at risk. In Nigeria construction worker Chris McManus was killed by such men. In Uganda the murderous Lord's Resistance Army, target of the global viral film hit Kony 2012, is full of them. But, look carefully and it's also a lot closer to home.
Somewhere in his vast output (Heartbreak House?) that old rascal, George Bernard Shaw, wrote: "Do you believe the laws of God will be suspended for England because you were born in it?" Writing almost a century ago after two decades of social turbulence and war, I think he meant "don't think it might not happen here too?"
Oh really, where? Well, the Guardian carries warm tributes to the six young Englishmen, soldiers serving in Afghanistan, who were killed by a roadside bomb this week. It is a dreadful loss for which grieving friends and family struggle, often not very successfully, to create meaning about events in a distant country where reform usually seems negligible – or worse.
It's not all gloom. James Meikle writes a very cheerful piece about sports training being provided to disadvantaged kids on inner city estates – so-called neets, not in employment, education or training between 16 and 24 - some of them with troubled pasts, in what's called "pint-sized" versions of cricket, rugby and football. Excellent.
There again, the paper's Olympic coverage, triggered by the public accounts committee's (PAC) report on looming overspend on the £9.3bn budget, contains sidebars on one source of that extra cost – the mounting security needs, both against Islamist terrorism and urban riot. "We'll be ready," says the Met and the security services (let's not forget G4S, their private sector contractors), but we – and they – know no one can cover all contingencies that might disrupt the Games.
Neither terrorism nor riots are the exclusive domain of young men, but they tend to be dominant in such movement, planned or spontaneous: all that energy and testosterone and insufficient constructive outlets – the foot soldiers likely to be neets without training, college or a job – into which to channel it. For some of them, hanging around in shopping malls, on the sofa at home or out on streets isn't enough. Young women joining them are few – one British suspect is on the run in Kenya – and today's highlight of the plight of exploited child brides is much more real.
For some young men joining the army is one solution: most of this week's slain soldiers came from tough Yorkshire towns. In today's media their CO, Lieutenant Colonel Zac Stenning praises each of them, their attributes and skills, it's clear he knows his squaddies personally. Whenever I get near the army as an institution – not very often – I'm struck by how much it (navy, air force too) feels like family. It looks after its own.
A pity and a shame to us all then that it does not do enough to look after its soldiers – all ranks, but especially the lower ranks when they leave the service. That's where this thread is taking us. Too many ex-service personnel end up unemployed, divorced, with drink, drugs and other service-related psychological problems, in prison too.
So how surprising is it that ex-service folk are well represented in the ranks of extreme groups on the British political fringe? Tucked in today's Guardian home news run is a report that 20% of BNP supporters and 25% of Ukip voters are ex-service, though I disapproved of the adjoining survey's lumping Ukip in with the English Defence League (EDL) and the BNP for research purposes, even if it was to provide a statistical control group with which to compare the serious heavies in fringe rivals.
Always curious to know more about such groups, I attended Ukip's spring conference in Skegness last weekend – here's my report – and noted that the primary concerns of speakers were economic and political, about bureaucracy weighing down small business, about EU interference and red tape, about Eastern European immigrants in the area who, the local candidate assured them, are taking jobs at lower wages – and avoiding their taxes too.
Cultural issues – including Islam and the wider world – were conspicuously absent from anything I heard. So were sexual morals and behaviour (unless we count a joke about Nick Clegg's handbag), though to demonstrate how laddish and un-PC they are several speakers boasted about how much beer, wine and spirits they'd tucked away in the course of Ukip duties. It was cheerily good-natured in an ex-servicemen's club sort of way and the only heated exchanges I heard was over the threat to the cohesion of the UK posed by SNP-led Scotland. Perhaps everyone was on their best behaviour, but I heard little I would call nasty.
According to Matthew Taylor's Guardian account, most of those 21,152 people (a respectably large sample) surveyed by YouGov for "From Voting to Violence : Rightwing Extremism in Modern Britain" - the report launched at the Chatham House thinktank last night – are men without a good education. They are dissatisfied with their lives and concerned about what they see as the problem – immigration, lack of jobs, certainly decent jobs and in particular about perceived threats from Muslims and Islam.
That fits with other research which suggests that people who most identify with Englishness – and feel the English are the one very large group in British society that no one listens to – are those most dissatisfied with their lives. Or vice versa. I've underestimated this feeling in the past because it puzzles me but am coming to accept that it's very real for many.
It is surprising that such people predict violent conflict between different groups in our society and some think that arming themselves for such an eventuality is justified. A few have already been jailed. There may not be many but – as with the Olympic preparations or the Continuity IRA, let alone the real one – it doesn't take many to cause serious trouble in any society.
When you think of young men coming home from service in Afghanistan, troubled by their collective sacrifice, back to an uncertain economic future, a fast-changing society and other worries, it's wise to assume that not all will be sustained by loving families and warm communities. A few, trained in violence to serve the state, may look to other outlets. Unless we do more to address unemployment issues, we will be storing up trouble for the future.