story-type: ForcesWatch comment

The Armed Forces Bill: lost opportunities and some dubious proposals

Every five years, new legislation concerning the armed forces, and amendments to existing laws, are put forward under an Armed Forces Bill. This is an opportunity for civil society to raise concerns in parliament about how the UK’s military institutions operate. ForcesWatch and our partner organisations have usually focused on fomenting debate about raising the age of enlistment and the terms of service for young recruits.

The current Armed Forces Bill also proposes important changes to the military justice system, will make civil society obligations under the Armed Forces Covenant a legal duty, and has provided an opportunity for MPs who support establishing a representative body for serving personnel to further their cause.

The Armed Forces Bill reached Committee stage at the end of March. Whilst the Bill still has to go through a Third Reading in the Commons and is yet to pass through the Lords, the process thus far suggests it is likely to pass into law in its current form such is the size of the Conservative majority. Here we review the discussions that took place when the Commons Select Committee on the Armed Forces Bill conducted its line-by-line review of the Bill and look as some concerns both with the legislation and the Committee process.… Read more

The Integrated Review: enmeshing and strengthening the military

The government’s Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy was published on 16th March to considerable clamour. Following close on its heels, the publication of a Defence Command Paper announces a series of additional measures relating to the future of the armed forces.

The Integrated Review includes a pledge to increase the number of nuclear weapons, new approaches to state rivals like China and Russia, an expansion of cyber operations, and a general foreign policy reset for the post-Brexit Age. The Command Paper reduces the size of the armed forces in favour of the development and use of high-tech equipment and weaponry, and increases the size and use of special forces across the world.

Launched by Boris Johnson with familiar rhetoric of making ‘the United Kingdom stronger, safer and more prosperous while standing up for our values’, the Review puts forward a vision for the country’s relationship with the rest of the world which is often contradictory and ill-thought through in terms of translating rhetoric into reality; the document feels more like a manifesto than a plan.  Its title recycles a popular policy trope and combines it with a sense of renewed belligerence: Global Britain in a competitive age.… Read more

A tough year but business as usual

Covid

As a vaccine is being rolled out, the UK has in effect entered a third lockdown. Over 69,000 deaths and around 2 million cases are estimated to have occurred in the UK. The crisis has been militarised in some significant practical and cultural ways. From the high-visibility use of the army for crisis response and building Nightingale Hospitals, to the rise of Captain Tom Moore, the 100 year old WW2 veteran who has become an establishment-approved cause célèbre after he raised over £30 million for the NHS. Now knighted, he has also been appointed honorary colonel of the Army Foundation College, the military training establishment for under 18 year olds. While the armed forces have used Covid response as a recruiting tool, the British Legion conflated it with remembrance.

One positive response to the pandemic was the UN Secretary-General’s dialogue around the need for a global ceasefire. The 75th Anniversary of VE Day in May also provided an opportunity for reflection on what we can learn from the ideals and hope that flourished after the Second World War for a post-Covid world:

‘It may appear that the hopes and ideals held by those who 75 years ago wanted war to be limited by law, wanted broader access to healthcare, who preferred dialogue to armed force, have been lost to history.… Read more

Creating barriers to justice

The Overseas Operations Bill is going into its third reading in the House of Commons this week. Though much of the criticism of these far-reaching proposals has surfaced only as the Bill was first debated in Parliament in September, it has since been vociferous.

The committee charged with scrutinizing the bill has heard evidence from military, legal and charitable sectors and received written evidence from a range of others. Despite expert analysis on the fundamental flaws of the proposals, even from natural allies, the Tory majority committee, whose members include the Minister responsible for the bill, did not put forward any amendments. 

Contrast this with the damning words last week from the Joint Committee on Human Rights, led by Labour MP and QC Harriet Harmen, who also called for evidence as part of their routine legislative scrutiny process. Their report (see notes) strongly challenges the purpose of the legislation, and its detail and potential consequences: “The Bill does nothing to address the issue of inadequate, repeated investigations and instead risks breaching human rights obligations by introducing further barriers to providing justice for victims and preventing prosecutions for serious offences such as torture, war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.”

These divergent conclusions are indicative of the divisive nature of this legislation.… Read more

The Overseas Operations Bill: A Tale Of Two Militarisms? 

The Overseas Operations Bill, which will be introduced to Parliament in September, has finally become a cause of contention between the major political parties. For a number of years the Conservatives had dominated the terrain upon which the legislation and the issues it is meant to address has been debated. Plans to introduce a presumption against guilt in any claims of wartime criminality more than five years old also became 2019 Conservative Manifesto pledge. 

ForcesWatch examined myths and realities of these “legacy” allegations, which pertain to the conduct of personnel in Iraq, Afghanistan and Northern Ireland, in a piece which can be read here. It was then-Prime Minister Theresa May who most clearly framed her party’s position, telling the 2016 party conference in an explicitly populist tone: ‘We will never again in any future conflict let those activist left-wing human rights lawyers harangue and harass the bravest of the brave, the men and women of our armed forces.’

The bill has been championed by every Tory prime minister since 2010 and framed by a number of key figures in the party – prominently, army officer-turned-veterans affairs minister Johnny Mercer – as a patriotic defence of UK military personnel and veterans from so-called “vexatious claims”.… Read more

The UK military admits it has a racism problem, but can it be decolonised?

This June an unusual admission emerged from the highest levels of the UK military: Both the head of the military and the Defence Secretary conceded that there is a racism problem in their organisations, and, in the case of the minister, Ben Wallace, that the response had been “woeful”. By July, during an appearance before the Defence Select committee, General Carter appeared to have back-pedalled slightly, framing prejudice in the military as an issue of ‘laddish culture’.

Wallace contributed an article to the Telegraph in which the disparity between woke optics and colonial apologia was writ large. Titled “Increasing diversity is crucial for the future of Britain’s Armed Forces”, yet opening with a reference to the “21 valiant Sikhs taking on 10,000 tribesmen at the Battle of Saragarhi at the end of the 19th century”, the piece seemed to capture the contradictions of reconciling modern military identity with colonial history.

The piece seemed to capture the contradictions of reconciling modern military identity with colonial history.

It seems clear that the military’s statements on diversity are partly, perhaps entirely, about optics and the question of how military institutions wish to be perceived by public opinion. But it is also an unusually frank response.… Read more

High ideals: VE Day, Covid and an anti-militarist future

The 75th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day, better known as VE Day, falls on Friday. It commemorates the acceptance by the Allies, on 8 May 1945, of the Nazi surrender and the bringing to a close of a global total war which cost somewhere between 70 and 85 million lives.

The anniversary falls at a strange moment. Official events had been planned around the UK to mark the event, replete with a now-familiar patriotic tone, will not now occur due to the crisis. Yet Covid, particularly the state response to the pandemic, is perhaps itself being militarised with endless sepia-toned comparisons to the Second World War and the phenomenon of Captain Tom Moore, whose efforts to fundraise for the NHS appear to have been quickly captured by the defence establishment,

Yet as people around the world consider what the post-Covid world might look like, the unexpected collision of these two historic moments is a good time to reflect on the ideas and hopes that emerged in the wake of the Second World War, the degree to which these were realised and how they have endured or been chipped away in the intervening seven and a half decades.

Any serious vision for a post-pandemic world should build upon the same ideals which animated people to push for a more just, safer, healthier and more peaceful world after 1945.… Read more

Militarising the crisis?

The military continues to render aid to civil authorities as part of the Covid Support Force. Early in that process we pulled together a short analysis of what the military were doing, and the Ministry of Defence provide a regularly updated summary of their contribution to the coronavirus response.

More recently however, we have observed that the military seem to be utilising opportunities provided by the crisis for promoting the armed forces and the ‘defence’ sector. At the same time, the crisis has helped create the possibility of a global ceasefire and fast-forwarded debate about what human, rather than state, security actually looks like. 

Recruiting opportunities

We are concerned that the military may see the Covid-19 crisis as a chance to recruit. This seems to be happening at a number of levels. For example, the head of the Royal Marines, individual infantry regiments and serving Ministry of Defence ministers have all linked the pandemic with calls for people to join/re-join. The ethical implications of this should be obvious, not least at a time when many people are concerned about their jobs and about a potential recession.  

The language of war

It is hard not to notice how the embedding of military language in the political and media vocabulary, which has taken place over the last 20 years of the War on Terror, has also become commonplace in discussion of the crisis.… Read more

Covid-19 and the UK Military

Given the emerging crisis and its implications for public services which are already severely strained after ten years of austerity, it seemed very likely from the outset that if the Covid-19 pandemic reached Britain it would require state intervention, including by the military. ForcesWatch is monitoring the military’s activities during the pandemic. These activities will come under a number of military ‘operations’, which are worth explaining for the sake of clarity.

Operation Rescript

Rescript is the operational name for domestic military anti-Covid operations which include the placing on standby of thousands of troops, the use of military personnel to deliver oxygen and other equipment, and the embedding of forces medics in the UK health system.

Operation Broadshare

Broadshare is the operational name for international military anti-Covid operations such as the rescue of UK nationals and relief operations outside the UK.

Military Aid to Civil Authority (MACA)

This is the broad term for military resources being reallocated by the state to support civilian aims. We have seen this carried out as part of the state responses to flooding, the fire strikes and, now, the pandemic. If you can get past the Ministry of Defence gloss, the department’s Medium blogging page contains useful breakdowns of what different parts of the military (air support, logistics, medical) might end up doing to support the state response. … Read more

Army dreaming

At the risk of becoming repetitive, the Army have once again launched a new-year advertising campaign with a ‘controversial’ edge and much media coverage.

A narrative advert forms the centrepiece of the campaign, with additional shorter ads showing moments of Army life, and a series of eye-catching posters. This is only the latest of the expensive, highly stratified and sophisticated marketing campaigns that the armed forces regularly put out. They use extensive research and top ‘creative’ companies to target key audiences, not only to enlist new recruits but also to generate wider social debate and public awareness about the military. Karmarama, the agency behind the Army’s marketing in recent years, talks of a strategy to create a ‘shift in perceptions’ about an Army career but also to result in ‘people reappraising the Army generally’.(1)

Pushing out a provocative campaign on a slow news day to coincide with the January blues and new year’s resolutions, helps to gain traction. The campaign particularly targets audiences from low-income households and areas with higher levels of deprivation. It utilises a wealth of broadcast, social media and other channels and blurs the distinction between entertainment and advertising, an effective way to create a positive perception of life in the forces.… Read more