IS BRITAIN RUNNING UP THE WHITE FLAG?
AT ARMY Headquarters in Andover, General Sir Nick Carter, then Chief of the General Staff, sat down with the executive committee of the Army Board to discuss a pressing issue. Why, despite its illustrious pedigree, was the British Army in the middle of its worst manpower crisis for decades?
Was it the dilapidated accommodation that senior MPs publicly labelled ‘disgraceful’? The modest pay, which General Carter once privately admitted to junior officers was ‘crap’ and had fallen every year in real terms since 2010?
Could they blame Capita, the company which had made such a mess of its lucrative contract to boost recruitment that many wouldbe soldiers just gave up in disgust?
What about the cost- cutting canning of overseas training exercises in Canada and Belize, a career highlight for many soldiers? Replacing these foreign adventures with Xbox-style simulations hardly made the job more attractive.
The bright sparks on the board scratched their heads and hit on another explanation: the Army’s image, which they concluded did not appeal to a generation of young people with diverse religious backgrounds, gender identities and sexualities.
Old advertisements, like those from 1976, in which a soldier says ‘I wondered if I’d ever get through those first few weeks... I ached in places I didn’t know I could ache’, were deemed unfit for the modern world in which some youngsters are less physically fit and emotionally robust than others. As usual the Army was strapped for cash but, digging deep, the board found just under £2 million to commission a campaign that would emphasise ‘belonging and team-building’.
Inside the Ministry of Defence, everyone involved seemed happy with the finished product: a series of touchy-feely videos to pump out on social media which stressed that, in the modern Army, it was ‘OK to cry’ and there was ‘always someone to talk to’.
Those with wobbly bellies instead of six-packs were assured they didn’t have ‘to be a Superman to join the Army’.
Had the board left it at that, they would probably have got away with it. But they went further, ditching the ‘Be the Best’ slogan that had served the Army well since 1993. It was dismissed it as ‘dated, elitist and non-inclusive’.
When Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson, who had been in post for just under two months, heard about the plan, all hell broke loose. It would not happen on his watch.
He demanded the slogan stay — but the damage had been done. Questions were being raised about the culture in the Armed Forces today and the suggestion that a sense of belonging was more important than the ultimate mission — to engage and destroy the Queen’s enemies.
One tattooed, no-nonsense army sergeant took to Twitter to suggest his men were being misrepresented: ‘Not much crying going on.’
The thinking behind the controversial recruitment campaign was well-intentioned, just like the edict to hoist the rainbow- coloured LGBT flag on parade grounds to mark Gay Pride month.
This made some in the Armed