Debbie Hicks: Presentation on WW3

From Real Left’s Conference ‘Critical Fronts of the Class War in 2026’ on 3 October

Transcript

Chair: Right then, welcome back to the last session of the day. I’m very pleased to welcome to speak to you all, Debbie Hicks, who is going to talk about street activism and awareness raising on World War III and forced conscription. Just a few words about Debbie. She studied political science at an MA in Localisation, Development and Transition at university, and then worked in the Westminster Political Jungle and quickly found she wasn’t capable of getting along with the dog eat dog culture and moved on to teach Political and Social Science.

As a lively activist, Debbie was thrown into the spotlight during the lockdown in 2020 for her arrest for filming an empty hospital. In recent years, she’s campaigned against digitalisation to keep cash and against war and conscription. So welcome, Debbie.

Debbie: Thank you so much. Can you hear me okay? Is that okay? Yeah. Wow. What a week we have just had, everybody. Flag, what should I say? False flag. I think I’m all false flagged out. What about you? I’ will come to that at a moment, actually, but I think it’s really interesting what’s going on.

Because I don’t know about you, but when I read anything in the newspapers, the first thing that I do – because I want to go to public opinion, not the public opinion that they tell us but what people actually think -the first thing I do is I go to the comments and I look at what people are saying. And I look at the emojis, you know, the ups and the downs. So I’m going to come back to that in a moment because I’m seeing a real change and it’s really interesting. But anyway, thank you for that introduction.

So yeah, my life’s been an interesting one. I started out studying politics at university and after university I went to work in Westminster. I worked for a short time for an MP, and I quickly found it just really wasn’t for me. I really thought it would be, that I could be that kind of person, and I quickly learned that it wasn’t about who you are, your worth, wanting to change things, it was about whose backsides you could be up. It just wasn’t for me.

And I moved on when I was a teacher. I used to teach A Levels. I used to teach undergraduate studies in colleges and universities. And I did that for about 25 years. So I’ve always, always had a passion for politics and analysing what’s going on in the world.

I was all, for a long, long time, I was a member of the Labour Party. And when Jeremy Corbyn came along, your brother Piers, when Jeremy came along, I finally thought that, hey, we’ve got a chance to change this. We’ve got a man, you know, who’s got a vision, a radical vision: To change the country.

And I became very involved locally where I used to live in Stroud I was very active. I used to organise all sorts of stuff in the community. And then, I think it was the Manchester Arena bombing, which is a bit of an overlap with the last gentleman that was speaking, because I think somebody called Richard Hall spoke up about the Manchester bombing. I made a comment about the Manchester bombing and I said at the time, isn’t that good timing for Theresa May? Ha ha ha. It was a bit sarcastic. And within hours my phone went absolutely mad and I had an email from the Labour head office saying you’ve got to resign. I was the vice-chair of the Labour Party where I lived. And a witch hunt ensued. I was witch hunted. I was ostracised by the Labour Party. All the people that I thought were my friends and my allies and my comrades. And that was, what, 2019 I think that was.

And I resigned from the Labour Party. And I started working on my own with a few other people in the local area. I started becoming active locally on issues that mattered to me. And one of those was homelessness. And then the election came. And I still wanted Jeremy to win. Of course I did. But I still helped.

And I went up to Derby and I helped Chris Williamson to try and get re-elected in Derby. But as I just said to somebody earlier that I was talking to, that night it was pouring with rain. I remember Elleanne, I remember talking to you about this. It was pouring with rain.

We’d been out on every doorstop in Derby. We were soaked through. There was this doom and this gloom and this terror that came over me. I knew that we’d lost the election. I knew. In fact, I knew before we even started we were going to lose. But I still… Still went ahead.

And do you know what that terror was? I drove home in the pouring rain, back to Gloucester, in tears, because I knew in my heart and my soul that in the coming months something awful was going to happen. I just knew. And what happened is history that we’ve talked about today. And I think it was February 2020,

I think we were starting to see all the reports, the so-called reports from China about this lockdown. And again, the rest is history. I quickly became involved. I quickly became active. I felt I desperately had to do something. I no longer have these Labour party ties around my neck, this noose around my neck.

I could speak freely for freedom and for our rights from a socialist perspective. Because that’s what it was, to speak up. Was to be a socialist and to be a socialist that believes in people’s rights. Yeah, that is real socialism. So anyway, the rest was history. But the reason I’m talking about all this, this kind of trajectory for the last few years, is because, it was mad, wasn’t it? 2020 was insane. It was like watching some mad film. It was like watching from above almost, this madness that was happening. And I couldn’t quite figure out what it was really all about. Did you feel that way?

I couldn’t quite figure out what’s it they’re really trying to do. Why is it they want to lock us down, get us going around in crazy hoops, not allowing us to speak to each other, not allowing us to go to the park, not allowing us to travel. Introducing tiers around the country where we couldn’t really…

I couldn’t quite… I didn’t have the scope to think about it, to be honest, but I couldn’t quite work out why they were doing all this. And it came to me about two years ago. That understanding I have from being a politics student when I was younger and teaching it for so many years.

It all kind of came together.

They were preparing us for war. It was a practice run. It was a dry run. It was a pilot for war in this country. They’ve been planning it for years. And that is the horrible truth that we have to face. Of course there are other agendas. Of course it was about Big Pharma, making money, seeing enough how they could go with people and controlling people. Of course there was all that. But the bigger agenda was seeing what they could do with us. How they could control our freedom of movement. How they could control where we went socially. Whether we could go to work. Whether we could buy or sell.

What we could or couldn’t sell on social media. Whether we could travel abroad. Whether we could spend money on certain products or items. Do you remember the toilet rolls thing? It was certainly a test run. And it made sense. About two years ago I started to feel really passionate about this.

I’ve got to tell people we’ve got to talk about this. About the fact that we are going to war in this country. And I started looking into it even further. They haven’t been hiding it from us, if we’re listening. So last year, 2025, the government put together something called the National Security Strategy.

Any of you heard of this? It’s worth having a look at. It’s on the government website. It’s not hidden from you. It’s basically the blueprint for war in this country. A preparation for war. And it talks about, if you look into it, it talks about the need for conscription in this country.

And this has certainly escalated in the last year. And this is some of the things that are being talked about that we must face. If we face it, we can talk about how we resist. So they talk about the need for a national register for volunteers to start with. And Ed Davey, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, has talked about this, I think, about a week ago in fact, he was talking about this. Talking about conscription from the age of 18 to 65 in this country, male and female. They’re talking about using employers, educational providers, local councils to conduct national service. So the idea will be that employers will make your employment contingent -to go together – with the idea of either conscription or national service. They’re also talking about taking away young people’s driving licenses to coerce them into conscription. There has been some talk about medical exemptions. They’ve talked about the fact that people with diseases, debilitating disorders may be exempt. So, when we start to put the picture together, it starts to make a lot more sense of what it could look like, what war might actually look like in this country. It’s very likely that digital ID that is rolling out and being phased out in different ways is going to be used to coerce people into conscription or international service. And as you know, at the moment they’re planning to introduce digital ID for young people, I think from next year, to access social media, which means all of us are going to have to use digital ID if you want to use computers or digital ID. And also to buy alcohol as well.

So it’s been rolled out incrementally to build up this digital infrastructure that they can use. It’s very likely that digital ID will be used for rations, for your access to food, for fuel. That’s the one that’s coming down the line. Watch the news very carefully. They keep talking about the fact that they might ration fuel.

This idea that we’ve got a fuel crisis. We know that this is fiction and it’s all being… twisted, but they’re suggesting we’re going to have the fuel prices. Fuel is becoming so expensive so they’re going to have to ration fuel or give us limits according to whether you’re an emergency service worker, essential worker and so on.

15 Minute Cities. I’d ask you to think again about what 15 Minute Cities might be really about. It’s again not something that I’ve really thought about until recently. But perhaps 15 Minute Cities are more about evacuation zones and areas for people during a war. One of the best things we can do to understand what’s happening is look to World War II in terms of the legislation that was passed. In World War II, there was something called the Emergency Powers Act, 1939. And this was the act that allowed the government to take control of almost everything. It was almost like The Corona Act, yeah? They could do whatever they wanted with it.

So they could manage Russians, they could manage the blackouts in power, infrastructure, highways, they could seize property. With the Emergency Powers Act, they could seize control of property. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Andy Burnham is talking about changing property, the laws around local councils using property. Did you all hear that the other day?

I can assure you it’s not about helping the homeless. There’s too much money to be made from homelessness. It is about getting ready for war, being able to take control of property and do it much more easily. I think it used to be two years, it’s six months it’s going to be from now on.

In 1939 there was also something called the National Service Act and it made conscription compulsory for men from age 18 to 41. Jury service was frozen in World War II. Again, they want to stop jury service in this country. These are all the same things that they did before. They mandated ID cards in World War II.

Every man, woman and child had an ID card if they wanted their rations, if they wanted to travel, if they had to go through checkpoints, if they wanted to go to school, go to work, everything. Single men were conscripted to start with, and then married men were conscripted up until 1941.

Women aged 20 to 30 were conscripted in 1941. There was protest. There was protest in WWII too. My grandfather, God bless his soul, when he was alive, was a conscientious objector. He, yeah, big up my grandfather. And all of those amazing conscientious objectors who said no. They said no to war.

They said no to national, sorry, to conscription. But the truth is there were 60,000 men that said no. 6,000 of them were put into prison, the rest, and this is the horrible truth, were coerced into national service, where many of them still lost their lives in combat and were forced onto the front lines.

Only 6,000 stood up and said no when they were pushed and ended up in prison. In Ireland, there was mass protest and resistance. We take what Iain said about resistance. They put up huge resistance in Ireland. And Ireland did not force anybody into conscription. And they did not take a part in that. So there is hope.

If we can say no to conscription and National Service, there is hope. We need it to be huge numbers in this country of people that say no. At the moment, public opinion shows that people are against it. But my fear is that there is a big false flag event, something on the size of Pearl Harbor, like a big attack, that people might change their mind. So it’s down to you. It’s down to us to get out there and talk to as many people as possible, whether it’s the person sat beside you, your family, somebody at the bus stop. Talk to them about this horrible truth that we face. Talk to them.

Tell them what’s happening. Tell them. Tell them how they can resist. Tell them how their children should say no. Because that’s the most we can do. I’m going to be really honest here. We can’t stop war. I’m going to be honest. We can’t stop it. We can’t stop the bombs. It’s already in motion.

World War 3 is already in motion. It’s happening. We can’t stop it.

But if we resist conscription and National Service enough, we’re going to make it damn well hard for them to involve us all in it.