What use would the MoD’s 93 ‘diversity networks’ be in a deadly attack? NOT A JOT

As Armed Forces spend millions on woke policies

OF ALL the ceremonies that bind the British people to their past, none is more emotive than Remembrance Sunday.

Powerful and enduring, it pays tribute to the millions of ordinary people who made the ultimate sacrifice.

Of course, some on the Left — who fail to understand that our Armed Forces protect us all — have long sought to do away with this time-honoured communion with the nation’s fallen and the poppies that symbolise our attachment to it, wrongly seeing the ceremony as a jingoistic sham.

Thankfully, our men and women in uniform still enjoy widespread support, so any such move has always been impossible to implement. Yet now there is a new attempt to undermine the central role of the military — and, shockingly, it has come from within our Armed Forces.

Pandering

According to an Army document that came to light this month, ‘Policy, Guidance And Instructions On Inclusive Behaviours’, soldiers are now ordered to avoid ‘ religious elements’ in Remembrance Day services. ‘Acts of Remembrance should be agnostic,’ this bizarre text declares.

The good news is that Defence Secretary Grant Shapps, who is Jewish, is said to be ‘ furious’. ‘ He is not offended one bit by Christian remembrance services. In fact, he believes it’s at the core of our nation’s history and who we are,’ it has been reported.

Shapps, of course, is right to appreciate the central importance of Remembrance Day, but it is by no means the only target the woke warriors have in their sights.

The current fad for ‘diversity’ and ‘inclusion’ is one of the most effective weapons in the hands of those who would seek to undermine our military.

On Monday, it emerged that the Armed Forces’ spending on personnel devoted to these causes has doubled to nearly £2 million over the past five years.

The emphasis on these modern virtues — which may have their own merits in certain settings — is actively preventing the Armed Forces from recruiting the very people who have traditionally filled its ranks: white males.

The phenomenon first came to light in 2022 when Sky News revealed that the RAF’s head of recruitment had quit in protest at what she deemed to be an ‘unlawful’ order to put female and ethnic minority candidates onto training courses ahead of white men.

The top brass evidently felt that it was more important to increase the percentage of Air Force personnel who were women or from non-white backgrounds than to select the candidates best suited to carry out their duties.

Meanwhile, white male servicemen are increasingly being made to feel deeply unwelcome by being drilled in ‘ unconscious bias’ on courses which convey the unspoken message that they are inherently racist, sexist and homophobic.

Again, nobody wants senior personnel to be sexists, racists or bigots. But when our national security is at stake, pandering to the woke mob should not be the priority.

Shapps has again bemoaned this practice — seen in all three services — as an attempted takeover by activists with ‘a political agenda’.

On Sunday, he held crisis talks with military chiefs to address the ‘extremist culture’ that promotes diversity and inclusion at the expense of our national security.

And, perversely, there is already evidence that this approach is having a damaging and entirely counterproductive effect on recruitment.

Despite the fact that the Army has been cut from 100,000 soldiers in 2010 to a planned complement of 73,000 today, it has been unable to find enough recruits to meet even this diminished total.

Worse still, so many servicemen and women are not fit for duty because of injury or other issues that the overall muster at any one time is little more than 50 per cent of the desired figure. This means that we no longer have an Army capable of protecting the nation.

The same is true of the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. The £3 billion aircraft carrier HMS Prince of Wales departed for a major Nato exercise this week, but only after an embarrassing last- minute delay. Its sister ship HMS Queen Elizabeth is still in port with a broken propeller.

We are also decommissioning ships, even ones recently refurbished at great expense, because so many servicemen and women are leaving. It is scandalous. More than that, it is dangerous.

If the primary role of the military is to provide an inclusive experience for people of different genders and religious persuasions, then it neglects its duty of care to the nation.

If it devotes more energy to ensuring soldiers, sailors and air crew feel comfortable expressing their sexuality than defending our shores, it is simply not fit for purpose.

Rigour

And what will the MoD’s 93 diversity networks — including seven concerned with LGBT issues, 14 with race and ten with gender — avail us in the event of a deadly attack? Not a jot.

Tolerance is one of the great strengths of British society — and, of course, I am proud that women, gay people and ethnic minorities serve their country in uniform.

China, Russia, Iran, North Korea and other despotisms are all intolerant. But this great British value must not be used against us.

In an effort to increase ethnic minority representation in its officer corps, the British Army last March issued a ‘Race Action Plan’.

Yet, while the ends may have been reasonable, the means were not. The document advocated reducing the level of vetting for officers from Commonwealth countries.

Security-clearance vetting, it claimed, was ‘ the primary barrier to non-UK personnel gaining a commission in the Army’. Military rigour is therefore forced to give way.

I have first-hand experience of where that can lead. In March 2003, at the start of the invasion of Iraq, I was with my men in Kuwait.

A series of explosions shook the air, as an Islamist renegade soldier in the U.S. 101st Airborne Division threw four hand grenades into tents where his comrades were sleeping, and then opened fire with a rifle. Two men were killed and 14 others wounded.

Infiltrate

Traitors within the ranks who evade security checks are an ever-present danger.

On Saturday in Mogadishu, Somalia, four soldiers from the United Arab Emirates and one from Bahrain were killed — murdered by the very recruits whom they were training to protect civilians from terrorist attacks.

How had members of the AlShabab terror group managed to infiltrate the camp? Because the level of security checks had been reduced — exactly what is being suggested for our own Armed Forces. Inclusivity should never trump common sense.

Overwhelmingly, the young people who are eager to sign up and serve in His Majesty’s forces are white and male. Some will be from backgrounds where a life in the Forces is a family tradition.

Others have grown up in an education system that penalises them for being white, male and working-class. They want the chance of adventure, comradeship and travel.

Britain needs these young men. If we reject them because they fail to fit the military’s vision of inclusion and diversity, we will soon have no protection against our enemies.

No amount of rainbow flags will save us then.