A faltering thin red line of 'eroes
By Ronan Thomas
LONDON - Read British history and it won't be long before a battle will figure.
Military traditions in the British Isles are a long and bloody story,
stretching back to the nation's ancient Celtic origins. Forged over millennia
by aggressive inhabitants and led by warriors from Queen Boudicca to Winston
Churchill by way of Henry V, British soldiers have won some of the most famous
battles in world history.
Looming defeats have also often been turned - by the alchemy of inspirational
military leadership - into stunning victories. Consider Agincourt, Waterloo and
the British record in two world wars. Even if current British political
commitment to operations in Iraq and Afghanistan finds plenty of opposition at
home, historically
the British public has always supported the professionalism and courage of the
fighting soldiers themselves. For centuries, the close relationship of the
British military to wider British society has been as natural as a sword's
relationship with its scabbard.
This can no longer be taken for granted, according to Britain's Labour
government. It says that Britain's civil-military relationship has hit the
rocks over recent years - exacerbated by operations in the Middle East - and is
badly in need of marriage guidance. A report recently released by Labour member
of parliament Quentin Davies - sponsored and wholeheartedly endorsed by Prime
Minister Gordon Brown - claims that the British military's role in the life of
the nation has become misunderstood and may be producing a dangerous
military-civil disconnect.
"The military ... have become increasingly separated from civilian life and
consciousness," the report contends. With British forces heavily committed in
Afghanistan and Iraq - the latest total is 273 British soldiers and airmen lost
on operations since 2001 - the report suggests more must be done to increase
public understanding and appreciation of Britain's armed forces.
It's a powerful message of political support for Britain's armed forces at a
time when Britain's open-ended commitment to Middle East operations faces
ongoing media, military and human-rights criticism at home and abroad. First,
senior military voices within the US Army, whilst admiring the Brits in
Afghanistan, have recently questioned the current effectiveness of the
4,100-strong British garrison in Iraq. It has been confined - for the most part
- to Basra Airport since September 2007.
Second, the British government last month decided to reopen the investigation
into the death of a 26-year-old Iraqi civilian, Baha Musa. Musa died after
interrogation in British custody in Basra in September 2003. In 2007, six
British solders faced trial and were cleared; one was sentenced to a year in
prison. With the case now revived, the British army's reputation will again
come under the microscope in coming months.
Third, in January 2008, a British army report concluded - after a three-year
investigation - that while the army had not in any way carried out "systematic"
abuse of Iraqi detainees, it admitted that there were "individual instances
where people behaved disgracefully", including beatings and the use of banned
interrogation techniques. Ever since, the British army says it has accepted
that there were isolated abuses by untrained and overworked soldiers in 2003/4
but vigorously denies it has a systemic problem.
Hence the Davies report is a breath of fresh air for the British army. It
recommends that British military achievements should be trumpeted loud and
clear at home and their virtues exported to wider sections of British society.
In 40 recommendations, the report proposes a new Armed Forces Day complete with
military parades and recommends new televised national pageants and local
events. Soldiers will be encouraged to wear uniforms in public. Local
authorities will receive extra funding to hold more homecoming parades.
Uniformed veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan will take pride of place at national
sporting events. Discrimination or abuse against those in military uniform
should be made a criminal offence. New school cadet forces will be introduced
across the British state school sector.
Some of the proposals will close badly defined policy gaps relating to the
wearing of uniforms and the public treatment of returning veterans from the
Middle East. Others, particularly the expansion of cadet forces across the
British secondary education system, are also of intrinsic value to address
unhappily high levels of violence at home as issues of growing youth crime
levels in British society have taken center stage in the national media.
Take uniforms. Since the Troubles - the period of conflict involving Britain's
counter-insurgency operations in Northern Ireland from 1969-1998 - British
military personnel were actively discouraged from wearing uniforms in public on
grounds of security. They offered obvious terrorist targets. This customary
practice, like the removal of all litter bins from British railway stations due
to their potential for being hiding places for bombs, lost its immediate
rationale after peace came to Northern Ireland, but persisted at the discretion
of individual unit commanders.
In recent years - with wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - the wearing of uniforms
has returned as an issue of public concern and the previous policy clearly is
no longer fit for purpose. In March 2008, Royal Air Force personnel were
ordered by their station commander not to wear uniforms in public after an
incident of verbal abuse in the English town of Peterborough. Ordure was heaped
on this decision by the British tabloid press.
At the same time, British soldiers arriving home from the Middle East at
Edinburgh and Birmingham airports followed precedent after they were ordered by
superiors to change out of uniform. Blogs by military veterans and the public
alike showed many were not impressed. Farce appeared to follow farce in
November 2006 following the decision by London's world-famous department store,
Harrods, to refuse entry to a uniformed British army officer on the grounds
that company policy banned all military attire. The profile and treatment of
returning Iraq/Afghanistan veterans out of uniform was also highlighted by an
unpleasant incident in 2007 when several badly wounded soldiers undergoing
therapy at a swimming pool at Leatherhead, Surrey, were verbally abused by
members of the public.
Meanwhile, the British public say in polls that they have had enough of their
military being calumnised. A clear majority of British citizens say they have
nothing against the wearing of British uniforms in public. After all, plaudits
rained down on Prince Harry - third in line to the British throne - for serving
with coalition forces in Afghanistan during 2007-2008. His uniformed presence -
firing on Taliban positions - was flashed across international media screens in
March.
The new proposal to make abuse of uniformed military a criminal offence will
find popular appeal. Likewise, the number of Middle East homecoming parades,
with wounded soldiers prominently featured, are already more evident on British
TV screens and are obviously right. Recently, a highly decorated veteran stood
guard over the Football Association Cup at the well-publicized opening of the
British soccer final in London last month. The proposal for a new Armed Forces
Day is perhaps less arguable, given that Britain holds a highly successful and
well-attended Remembrance Day service - akin to the US Veterans Day - in
London's Whitehall on November 11 each year.
Proposals to export military virtues in the form of new cadet forces
established in British state schools are also promoted in the report, even if
they will find many powerful left-of-center critics. Already, British school
teaching unions have criticized any new roll-out of cadet forces on the grounds
that they represent a recruiting technique that will target disadvantaged
pupils.
But the need for action on youth gun and knife crime is pressing. In 2007, the
British Home Office recorded 10,182 firearms offences in Britain - a 4% rise on
the previous year. Youth crime - in which victim and assailant are under 18 -
has risen from 12 murders in 2005 to 37 by 2007. The BBC also reports this year
that a shocking 68 people aged under 25 have been murdered in Britain since
January 2007.
Social and family fragmentation has become a marked and unwanted feature of
modern British life. Lack of discipline issues remain high on the agenda of
inner city school head teachers who fear their pupils may end up in gangs.
Government anti-social behavior legislation - particularly in the form of
drinking, excessive noise and verbal abuse - has also failed to make much
headway. The question asked by many in Britain and which the Labour government
has so far failed to address effectively is: how can Britain give its youth an
example of self-boundaries, instill discipline and bestow a sense of national
community?
Here, cadet forces have much to offer troubled youth. Once the sole preserve of
some 200 British public (private) schools, they have many positive lessons for
the wider British school system. Since 1908, generations of British
schoolchildren have learnt how to cope with discipline through adventure
training, in the process acquiring self-reliance and a sense of achievement.
Undergoing military weapons instruction they can gain a respect for, not
fascination with, firearms. And, as avowedly civilian youth organizations
imbued with military virtues and leadership principles, today's British school
cadet forces are hardly the unhappy institutions as depicted in films such as If
(1968) or The Lords of Discipline (1983). Rather they are voluntary
options that develop leadership in a positive environment.
Overall, Brown - lagging badly in opinion polls and in big trouble politically
elsewhere - just got one policy right among a slew of other nagging failures.
Perhaps he has been reading Rudyard Kipling, one of the British Empire's
greatest chroniclers of the civil-military nexus, particularly in the Middle
East and in Asia.
In his eulogy to the British fighting soldier, the poem Tommy (1892), he
recognized that while the public's relationship with the military can be
misunderstood, the British public will nevertheless always back them up once
their boots actually hit the ground. He wrote: "It's Tommy this, an' Tommy
that, an' 'Tommy 'ow's yer soul?' But it's 'Thin red line of 'eroes when the
drums begin to roll.'"
Ronan Thomas is a British correspondent.
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