WI: No 1957 White Paper on Defence

As conscription would probably be maintained, that would butterfly the future plans of many a famous British musician of the 60s...

National Service had to end because of demographics, the whole point was that it was nearly universal but the first post-war born baby boomers were about to arrive in '63 and each cohort was larger than the previous one thanks to high birth rates in the late 40's. Everyone agreed that Britain had too many people doing non-jobs and the forces couldn't use the numbers that national service was bringing in, the last thing anyone wanted was to make the army bigger and ending the universal aspect and moving towards an American style "birthday lottery" would be politically poisonous.
Even absent the other decisions on the future make up and role of the British Armed Forces National service was going to end roughly around OTL.
 
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