The real reason for sailors changing the guard
The Royal Navy changed the guard at Buckingham Palace yesterday for the first time ever. No doubt the Queen will be loyally guarded by Jolly Jack (and Jill) Tars, who will be proud to do it. But is this the best use of their skills? A sailor is trained to sail ships. A soldier is trained on his feet, with a rifle.
The Ministry of Defence has decided, apparently, that 2017 is “The Year of the Navy”. The new role is supposed to draw attention to this. One is tempted to reply that a sailor is not just for Christmas. Currently, there is a shortage of sailors and of working ships. The problem won’t be remedied by getting 86 of the former to march down the Mall. Perhaps the new International Development Secretary, Penny Mordaunt, who is a Royal Navy reservist, should join them to encourage the others.
There is a reason for the tradition that the palace is usually guarded by the Foot Guards. Since the 17th century, they, with the Household Cavalry, have been the sovereign’s personal guard. When the Queen was young enough to lead the Trooping of the Colour on horseback, she always wore the uniform of whichever Foot Guard regiment was performing the trooping.
Unlike many royal or presidential guards, the British ones have always been fully operational within the wider army. The Foot Guards are not actors in uniforms, but actual, fighting soldiers. The Guards Division War Memorial in Horse Guards Road is a reminder of what that fact can mean. The problem now is that there are only five battalions of Foot Guards, one for each regiment. There are not enough men in red. That is the real, not very glorious reason for having to bring in sailors.
No offence to the Royal Navy but, with the anti-monarchist Jeremy Corbyn waiting in the wings, it seems a bad time to show the world that the sovereign’s own troops are shrinking.
There are worrying levels of suicide at universities. In some cases, it is alleged that university authorities are failing in pastoral care. This may well be true – numbers of students are often unmanageably high: individual contact between them and university staff can be minimal.
Parents are naturally anxious. There is one difficult fact to think about. You may see your 18-year-old child as young and vulnerable, but the law sees him or her as an adult. This means that parents, seeking information from the university about their children, cannot be given it. Parents have no legal right to know about the mental, physical or even academic health of their offspring, even if it is a matter of life and death. Their children were safer before the 1970s, when the legal age of majority was 21. It might better reflect reality if students had to wait three more years before being grown-up. Last week, I heard a charming talk at 10 Downing Street. It was given by Jane Williams, who was Winston Churchill’s personal secretary there during his peacetime premiership from 1951 to 1955.
Lady Williams (who is the mother of the present Archbishop of Canterbury) disarmingly told the story of her recruitment. It took place when Churchill was Leader of the Opposition. The then 19-year-old Jane was living with her uncle, the leading Conservative politician, Rabutler, and doing a secretarial course.
One day, RAB told her that Churchill needed someone to take dictation of his war memoirs. He packed her off, protesting her inadequacy, to an interview with the great man. Churchill met her, shook her hand without saying a word, walked round her once in a circle, shook her hand again, and departed, again without speaking. She was then told she had got the job. When Churchill’s Conservatives won the 1951 election two years later, she transferred with him to No10.
If Churchill had recruited a young woman in this way today, he would have been accused of nepotism (quite justly) and of sexual harassment (quite unjustly – he seems to have been entirely free of this vice). There would be the most fearful rumpus about why the post had not been advertised and the application process subjected to a “diversity” audit.
While Prime Minister, in 1953, Churchill suffered a stroke which was concealed from the public. For three days, Lady Williams recalled, they thought he would die. But although he could not move or speak properly, he found he could read, and was soon devouring Anthony Trollope’s Palliser novels. Because of his paralysed arms, the young Jane sat beside him, and turned the page when he nodded at her to do so. She counted such unusual duties as some of the greatest privileges of her life.
It is in many ways right that nowadays we insist that the world of work be subject to stricter procedures. But something undoubtedly gets lost in this rules-bound culture, something which, for many people, makes work, whether grand or humble, worthwhile – personal devotion to a great leader, enterprise or cause.
The country now called Zimbabwe was founded by Cecil Rhodes and, until 1980, named after him. The name Rhodesia was understandably abolished when the country became independent of Britain in 1980. “Independent” however, has become a sadly misleading word to apply to the nation which Robert Mugabe forced into destitution. It seems that the new regime there is dependent – as Mugabe gradually became – on the rising colonial power in Africa, China. How long before the country is renamed Jinpingia?