No Defence

Simon Mundy

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When Gordon Brown encouraged British servicemen and women to wear their uniforms in public, he must have had at least an inkling of what would follow. Sure enough, Friday saw the revelation that staff at RAF Wittering had been instructed to venture out only in civilian attire after months of harassment at the hands of local thugs. The announcement surprised few who read of the treatment of wounded servicemen at a public swimming pool in November: in an astounding display of callousness, a group of soldiers undergoing rehabilitation were humiliated and verbally abused by a group of mothers, who complained that the men’s serious injuries were unsettling their children.

It’s a fair bet that these women would have kept their mouths shut if their kids had elder siblings serving overseas. Indeed, the fact that so many of us have no personal connection with those fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan is a major factor in the widespread public indifference towards their efforts. The conspicuously greater level of attention given to soldiers in the United States can be explained partly by the fact that there are currently 173,000 American soldiers stationed in the Middle East, compared to 12,300 from the UK: proportional to the sizes of the countries’ populations, there are nearly three times as many American families anxiously awaiting the daily war bulletins.

This lack of personal involvement has enabled political campaigners to propagate a one-dimensionally negative vision of British efforts in the Middle East as an abstract abomination that should be viewed with uniform disgust. Those who marched in 2003 against the invasion of Iraq have been vindicated by subsequent events: the American and British governments’ decision to remove Saddam Hussein unleashed a wave of bloodshed that has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. Yet the actions of those protestors should be distinguished from the belligerent efforts of some “anti-war” campaigners to vilify soldiers engaged in what has long been a peace-keeping mission: to pin the blame for a horrific situation on those risking their lives to ameliorate it is intellectual laziness of the worst kind.

In this, however, as in so many other matters, the government’s attitude is deceptively influential in setting the public tone. As the Financial Times’ Philip Stephens recently noted, “Mr Brown’s government has yet to make up its mind” on how to approach military matters. This is a hesitation which has cost lives: among the most infuriating obituaries are those of soldiers who have died because funding cutbacks result in there being too little basic equipment to go round, and a token rise of 1.5 per cent in the defence budget will do little to address the huge financial problems faced by our military. The prime minister is quite right to assert that this country’s troops deserve the “respect and gratitude of the British people.” But they also deserve the respect and gratitude of the government. Gleefully accused by David Cameron of “dithering and delaying,” Mr Brown is fast developing a reputation for procrastination: he has everything to gain from putting his money where his mouth is and giving our armed forces the support they merit.

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