|
|
|||||||
|
|
|||||||
|
News Search
|
|
October 26, 2004, Tuesday FIGHTING ON BLAIR'S ORDERS BUT FACING THE AXE Gethin Chamberlain Defence Correspondent AS THE Black Watch begin the move that will take them into the heart of Iraq's Sunni triangle, they do so against a backdrop of cuts and amalgamations that could have a more devastating effect on the future of the regiment than all of the bombs and bullets the insurgents will hurl at them in the coming weeks. By the time the Black Watch come home, those of them who do come home, the final decision may already have been taken to consign them to oblivion. The Government appears intent on rubber-stamping the army's decision to merge two of the six Scottish regiments and to bring the survivors under the umbrella of one single "super-regiment." The Black Watch, as a regiment in its own right, will be no more. And it is against that backdrop that The Scotsman today launches a campaign to save not just the Black Watch, but every one of the six Scottish regiments that have emerged from or survived the previous cuts. To sign up to the campaign fill in the form below and send in the coupon or you can log on to The Scotsman website at www.thescotsman.co.uk/regiments/ Until now, the ineffectual Defence Secretary, Geoff Hoon, has seemed incapable of defending those he represents from the axe. Under pressure from the Treasury, which despite its protestations to the contrary has placed a stranglehold on the defence budget, Mr Hoon has indicated his intent to push through the cuts, whatever the political cost. But what he, and the rest of the government, do not appear to have taken into consideration is the sentimental attachment of the British people to their regiments. There may have been a feeling among many, probably the majority, in Britain, that the war in Iraq was a mistake. But it is a foolish government which ignores the natural instincts of the British people to rally round their troops. Over the past few months, it is clear that there has been an anger growing among people in Scotland, and the rest of Britain, a feeling that the government has not played fair with the army which so readily does its bidding. But it is not just a question of sentiment. There are good military reasons, too, for retaining the infantry at its present strength, and for retaining the regimental structure. British forces are committed on the ground in Iraq, in Kosovo, in Afghanistan and in numerous other locations around the globe. The tasks they are being asked to undertake, in Iraq in particular, are ones for which the British infantry is uniquely suited. If the coalition is to succeed in aiding the new Iraqi government to introduce democracy, it will be due in no small part to the role played by those infantry soldiers. If Iraq has delivered any lessons, it is that there is no substitute for boots on the ground, and there are too few of those to go around. The redeployment of the Black Watch to Iraq only a year after it fought there during the war demonstrates that point only too well. The gap between tours of duty continues to be eroded; if that continues, it can only have an adverse effect on the training and combat-readiness of British forces. The defence review appears to have ignored this lesson, the Ministry of Defence preferring to put its faith in new high-tech weaponry which it must pay for by making cuts elsewhere. Senior officers have come forward to point out the dangers. Others, in private, confess to being aghast at the prospect. Yet the MoD does not allow public dissent and the Treasury has refused to bend. As for the regimental structure, it is the envy of the world. Some of those same senior officers who publicly talk about the need for restructuring and modernisation will also privately concede that there is something about a British regiment that gives it an extra edge in combat. There is a pride in the regiment, a sense of family, a rivalry with other regiments that drives the soldiers on, and that is hard to replicate in a larger, more faceless, entity. That is the same whether it is in the Black Watch or the other Scottish regiments, the Royal Highland Fusiliers, the Kings Own Scottish Borderers, the Royal Scots, the Highlanders and the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. But if the regiments are to be saved and the cuts reversed, it will be because the weight of public opinion demands it. Yesterday came the first sign that the government might blink. Tony Blair, a far more astute political operator than his feckless defence minister, appeared to have sensed he was swimming against the flow of public opinion. Having committed the Black Watch to a far more dangerous situation than any yet faced by British troops in Iraq, he would know that the sympathy with those facing that danger could only increase. No final decision had been taken, he said, well aware of the strength of feeling about the Scottish regiments. The question Mr Blair now needs to address is how to extricate himself from this position. There are two problems. First, there is the decision, taken as part of the armed forces review published as a white paper last year, that four infantry battalions (in effect, four one-battalion regiments) should be axed, including one in Scotland. This is the easier of the two. The cost of maintaining a regiment is about GBP 17 million a year; peanuts in terms of the overall defence budget. An announcement that, for good military reasons and in the light of new developments, the army has decided it needs those additional soldiers would deal with that problem. The second problem is the regimental structure. This is trickier: the army is determined to do away with the practice of moving regiments around every few years. It is costly and there is an argument that it is disruptive. The answer, it says, is for regiments to have a permanent home. It argues that this is made easier by a large regimental structure, hence the amalgamation of the Scottish regiments. The answer to that may lie in semantics and a deft political touch. Call the single large regiment a division, allow it to retain its constituent regiments, fiddle with the administrative side, but, by whatever means, retain the regiments as individual entities. This is not beyond the political abilities of Mr Blair: what must be seen now is whether he accepts the electoral necessity to bite that bullet.
|
|
||||
|
................................................................................................................. Copyright ©2004 Gethin Chamberlain. All rights reserved. |
|||||||
