There's a sensible argument as to why the Police should reflect the communities they serve. But less so in the case of the Armed Forces.
Quantity has a quality all of its own.”
Stalin’s apocryphal quote about the Red Army has long since become an adage in common usage, but it is also an observation of military power that is a true today as it was in the Second World War.
The speech by the British Army’s Chief of the General Staff, General Sir Patrick Sanders, at the RUSI Land Warfare Conference this week, critical that the Army was too small, that “Mass is indispensable” shows that despite all the technological advances made in the past few decades, there is still no substitute for boots-on-the-ground. It comes as no surprise that these comments by the current CGS are now comments made by the outgoing CGS. General Sanders will leave his post in order to make way for his planned successor.
Conversely this week has also seen the new head of the Royal Air Force, Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton issue an apology for the RAF’s ongoing diversity recruitment psychodrama during his first month in the RAF’s top job, accepting that “some [white] men were discriminated against” and that the RAF believed the accelerated recruitment of women and ethnic minorities to be “acceptable, positive action”.
Forget identity politics, our Armed Forces are having somewhat of an identity crisis of their own. Shorn of the operational focus they had during Iraq and Afghanistan the Armed Forces sorely need to make a decision on whether they want an effective fighting force or the plaudits of being a diverse employer. Last year Armed Forces recruitment fell by a precipitous 23.6%.
Mass is indispensable, the old adage that you can’t hold ground without infantry is as true now as it has been at any point in the history of warfare. The idea of an Army of AI drones loitering menacingly in overwatch is still the preserve of science-fiction and whilst that nightmarish future battlefield reality is closer than its ever been, its still more than a generation away and it isn’t unreasonable to suggest that the Army will become embroiled in a conflict between now and then.
Our Armed Forces need people and the people it needs are some of those who could benefit most from a career in the Armed Forces. The obsession with meeting quotas for women and ethnic minorities belies the nature of the career they are being recruited for. At its sharpest the Armed Forces represents dirty, dangerous and difficult work.
The issue that rarely seems to be addressed is why the Armed Forces are such perennially poor recruiters? The Armed Forces has always done a poor job of selling itself to potential recruits. It rarely blows its own bugle, it does little to sell the idea of what a career could entail beyond an idea of camaraderie or being the best version of yourself, and given the pay and conditions are unlikely to be a lure it really should put more effort into championing the non-financial benefits.
Take London, by some distance the largest metropolitan area in the country. Inside the M25 there is one main Armed Forces Career Office, tucked away, out-of-sight on Handel Street in central London, an area with little footfall. How does the RAF hope to recruit people it isn’t even prepared to engage with via a recognisable presence in a city where the only visibility the RAF have is the occasional Battle of Britain flypast (weather permitting)? Is it really a surprise that young people from ethnic minority populations have little awareness of the opportunities on offer?
But representation in the Army is a comparatively moot point. There is a sensible argument as to why our Police forces should better reflect the communities they police; the collapse in public confidence of their competence and trustworthiness is testament to how badly awry things can go once the rot sets in. The Armed Forces are not a public facing organisation in the same way.
All three Armed Forces should be striving to recruit the very best people they can, from as wide a range of demographics as they can muster. They should rightfully be making efforts to recruit from those demographics that are underrepresented but only to ensure that it has the broadest range of recruits to select from in order to take the very best people from all backgrounds into its ranks.
The message now, as before, seems to be that our Armed Forces will happily take those who have always wanted a military career, and those that feel they have no other option. Given the benefits and the life skills the Armed Forces have to offer it is a travesty that the opportunity is allowed to pass everyone else by.
Mass is indispensable, but it applies to potential recruits as much as it does to the size of the Army.
