This isn’t Britain’s 1937 moment. It’s far worse than that
Last week the new head of the Army, General Sir Patrick Sanders, delivered a timely and necessary warning to the Government about our current defence requirements, the realities of which ministers largely ignore.
Speaking at the Royal United Services Institute’s annual conference, and with an audience including Ben Wallace, the Defence Secretary, Sir Patrick said that Britain, with its Nato partners, must prepare to wage war against Russia.
He called the situation in which we find ourselves our “1937 moment”, a reference to Montgomery of El Alamein’s observation that year that “there is no need to continue doing a thing merely because it has been done in the Army for the last 30 or 40 years – if this is the only reason for doing it, then it is high time we changed and did something else.”
For Sir Patrick, “something else” means forgetting that history supposedly ended after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the defeat of communism, and building up our defences to reflect the dangerous threat Putin’s Russia poses to the Nato powers.
The Government has boasted about the capability it has put into waging cyberwarfare: something at which our adversaries are unquestionably adept. However, Sir Patrick pointed out that robots won’t cross a river to take on enemy troops: what the Army needs are more soldiers.
The Prime Minister, with familiar bluster, responded that the Army (scheduled to lose 9,000 men from its establishment) has the right number of soldiers. Presumably that is what his beleaguered spin doctors, who know even less about defence than he does, have told him to say.
The media – and perhaps Sir Patrick intended this – have interpreted the “1937” remark as a reference to what people think happened during the period of appeasement before the Second World War: when, as the anti-Chamberlain myth has it, we were barely armed at all despite the obvious threat posed by Hitler.
The Armed Forces were certainly not as strong as they should have been, a consequence of the two prime ministers who preceded Chamberlain: Ramsay MacDonald, a pacifist, and Stanley Baldwin, who feared rearming in case it upset public opinion. But when Chamberlain took over in May 1937, he inherited forces of a size and scope we can only dream of today.
The three Armed Forces had 352,400 regular servicemen; there are now 148,000, and we no longer have the Indian and Dominion forces to call upon either. Britain then spent 3.66 per cent of GDP on defence; we now spend 2.2 per cent, though the Prime Minister has promised 2.5 per cent by
When Chamberlain took over in May 1937, he inherited forces of a size we can only dream of today
the end of the decade, as if Russia will simply go away in the meantime.
Today, the Royal Navy has 74 commissioned ships (one of which is HMS Victory, launched in 1765) and 34,130 active personnel. Of those ships there are two aircraft carriers, nine submarines, six destroyers and 12 frigates. In 1937 the Navy had 82 destroyers and frigates alone, and well over 1,000 vessels in total. The 1937 naval construction programme promised an additional three capital ships, two carriers, seven cruisers, 16 destroyers, seven submarines, two escort vessels, four minesweepers and three patrol vessels, and 36 miscellaneous vessels, including 10 motor torpedo boats.
Today, the RAF has 33,200 active personnel and, out of a total of 479 aircraft, just 133 are attack aircraft. In July 1936 it had greatly expanded into four commands – Coastal, Training, Fighter and Bomber. In early 1937 it had 1,040 planes in home-based squadrons, with the Spitfire and Hurricane building programmes just under way, thanks not least to decisions by Chamberlain, who was then Chancellor, to fund them.
Today, the Army claims to have 80,976 full-time personnel, but the actual number is probably 77,000, and it is planned it will soon be 72,000, smaller than at any time since the Napoleonic Wars. In April 1937 a home Army of around 200,000 men was being re-equipped. Defence spending in 1936 had risen by 50 per cent over 1935, and would rise by nearly 40 per cent in 1937, the highest since the Great War. Leslie Hore-Belisha, the War Secretary, boosted the Territorial Army, which had already expanded in the 12 months to January 1937 by 15,295 men and 861 officers.
By early 1938 there were 2,000 men a month enlisting. Belisha improved the terms of service for regulars, inspiring 3,000 veterans to rejoin within a fortnight. An Officers Emergency Reserve was formed for those between 31 and 55, and spending on munitions quintupled between 1935 and 1937.
Sir Patrick would doubtless kill for such Armed Forces as we had in 1937. It is a terrible indictment of British defence policy that, with Russia posing so grave a threat, our military strength is less than in an era considered the nadir of our national defence capabilities.
Today’s Britain must not only rearm, but expand the personnel of its Navy, Army and Air Force. The Royal Navy’s motto is si vis pacem, para bellum. The Prime Minister boasts of his prowess in Latin, and will know it means, “If you wish for peace, prepare for war.”
For a time, we must spend on warfare, not welfare. The costs of not doing so would be far worse than a mere political humiliation.