So, Charles, thank you very much for joining me in Studio 2 for a
discussion about the military. This is going to be fairly
loose, I think, but over quite a few months, you and I have had a
number of discussions where we've said we've really ought to
get together to talk about the military.
And today's the day. I think there's so much to cover
that we'll just do as as much as we can in today's conversation.
And then we'll we'll look to do another episode or maybe or
maybe some more episodes. So what counts here?
I think I'm going to pull, I'm going to pull the rank by virtue
of my age. And I, I think I'll start off by
just saying, tell me a little bit about your career because I,
I know, I know quite a few things about you, but it would
be great to hear you tell us a little bit more about yourself.
And I'm sure the, I'm sure the audience would like to know
that. And once you've done that all, I
will reply with a bit about my ancient heritage in the Royal
Navy. Not, not, not that ancient.
Well, in the grand scheme, if. Well, maybe.
But yeah, I think, I think this will be part of a, an evolving
conversation. I mean, not least because of the
speed with which not just the armed forces are evolving, but
the way that they're being treated, dealt with by their
political masters, but also by the society that's puts them
forward. And I think there's a huge
amount to talk. I always like to say we, we,
we've spoken a lot leading up to this discussion about the sorts
of things that we do need to talk about.
Whether or not we'll get to into much of that today, I can't be
quite certain. But I think what I'd like to do
is, is sort of talk, of course we, we will, I'm sure, talk
about things that might not make that much sense to people that
perhaps haven't been in the armed forces.
So what I'd like to do is, is try to make a particular point
about speaking as though somebody listening has no idea
what it might be like to be in the armed forces either then or
now. And the reason I say that is
that I think one of the things that has changed in actually fun
enough in both directions in the period of time that I've been
sort of within the military orbit is, is how people are
conditioned via various propaganda exercises to either
regard the military as friend or foe.
And I, I, I've seen this sort of ebb and flow over the years.
Now for myself, my first sort of engagement with the armed forces
was back in the mid 90s whilst still at school.
And that was a period of quite high turbulence after the
Options for Change programme. That had been a lot, I'm sorry,
I should qualify that I'm specifically talking about the
Army, whereas you're going to be primarily talking about the
Navy. And I think that's a distinction
worth making. But at that point the with, with
the collapse with the Soviet Union and all the fallout from
that, the, the army specifically was put in a position where
things were being made to change.
Definitely not in a way that people were universally happy
with. There were a lot of very uneasy
regimental amalgamations which to put that in the sort of silly
speak is I suppose a form of a merger or or indeed could be
perceived as an acquisition between two different entities
and therefore personnel inevitably have to disappear.
There's a sort of rebranding exercise and if it's not managed
correctly, there are a lot of upside down smiles because
people are left in some way bereft of what they regard as
their identity. And I think this is a, a thing
that's really worth talking about.
We, we joked before recording that we're both wearing checked
shirts. So I said, well, there's a,
there's a, there's a, there's a conversation about uniform.
And I don't, and I mean that partially glibly, but actually
there is a serious point because I think again, to look at it
from the outside in, for a lot of people, looking at the armed
forces creates a sort of sense of revulsion at the idea of
being told what to do, being a tiny cog in a machine, of not
having any control over your own destiny and all this, all this
sort of thing with which I I sympathize and understand why
people say that. That's not my perspective at
all. My view of it is that you go
into one of these systems in order to hone your skills in a
particular job. That means you are going to be
used, OK, fair enough, use to the very best of your ability.
And you actually do exert a huge amount of control over the way
in which you do do that. And the uniform part is really
significant in that by making everybody look the same, you're
creating a sense of compassion. You're, you're creating a sort
of family situation in which people are subconsciously at
least, if not consciously feeling like they're all part of
1 body and therefore they will go above and beyond to look
after and protect those people around them.
And, and a uniform is absolutely critical to that as our
standards of behaviour and all the rest of it.
And that's something that I think has has slipped
dramatically. So I don't, I don't want to be a
too far off point, but but, but yes, in my, my sort of first
engagement was, was mid 90s and with, you know, sort of school
and university and whatnot. It wasn't actually until the
2000s that I then went to the wrong Military Academy,
Sandhurst, which is where the officer training has happened
for many years. It's now the only place that
officer training happens for, for the Army.
It's a year long course. It is.
It is very, very physically demanding.
It's also supposed to be intellectually demanding and
it's supposed to put you at the other side where you're in a
position to be able to manage for the responsibility of
looking after, if you're an infanteer, like I was around 30
soldiers. And, and that's it's, it's
largely a welfare job, but specifically as a, as a, as an
officer, as a commander, you're supposed to have the capability
to plan and plan in such a way that you're going to achieve
success on the battlefield. And that again is ultimately a
welfare consideration because you're talking about not losing
life now, talking about the mid 90s and all change there in the
mid 2000s. And Mike and Patrick have just
had an amazing discussion on the 20 years since the 77 events in
London in 2005. Now that I would say my
perspective both at the time and now is how that was yet another
manipulation in the narrative in order to change what it was that
the country, the politicians were going to do with the armed
forces. And it was very, very
interesting. If you go back and you look at
what was being said by the Ministry of Defence, because of
course we were already four years into an operational, an
active operational theatre in Afghanistan, which had
supposedly started, you know, John Reed's words, without a
shot being fired, which of course was never realistic.
And then Iraq starting in 2003. So we had we had two medium
sized operations going on and the suggestion was never
anything other than, you know, K the goal posts always move or
whether it was regime change or stability to the region or any
of those sorts of things. And then in 2005 it changed and
up for me the touchdown that what it was that triggered that
was comments both made by Richard Dannison, Mike Jackson,
who were who were successive heads of the Army and Cronty is
not quite right there because then it was later.
But there there was this suggestion that the armed forces
weren't sort of getting to do what they wanted to do.
They weren't they were underemployed.
And there was, there was reported to have been a
conversation with Tony Blair, then Prime Minister who, who,
who but basically didn't take to this idea very well.
And, and the result of that combined with the, the sort of
this spectre of terrorism and then it being good sort of going
live in London, was the idea that somehow operations in
Afghanistan and Iraq had a bearing on our security in the
UK. And it was this idea that that
we would then have to protect the UK and to keep our streets
safe, which had just come from nowhere.
There was, that was never, ever part of the, the sort of the
operational plan or, or indeed the messaging around it.
So it's a very, very interesting transition.
And I think if you look at what's happening the, the, the
sort of succeeding 20 years, then it, it does explain an
awful lot about how we've got to, to where we've got now.
But, but, but to, to return to the point, I mean, I, I
therefore, because of those operations, it meant that the
pace of life, the tempo in the Army was different from what it
had been say, for, for the 20 years prior where there was a
lot of time in sort of Garrison context where there'd be a lot
of training activity, but but nothing then perhaps after that.
So people were by and large in the same place doing sort of
similar, perhaps slightly repetitive things.
I, however, spent a period of time where that wasn't the case
at all. There was massive uncertainty.
There was a huge, well, mismanagement, let's say, of
resources. So there was a lot of areas in
which funding was cut to to, you know, access to training,
training areas and all sorts of things that should make an Army
career sort of interesting, exciting and rewarding for
everybody was was being threatened to.
And then that led inevitably and sort of later towards and yet
another panic, which is right. Well, these, these operations
aren't going to last forever. What are we going to do next?
And that's, that's both thrown without and within because you
know, as much as one might think that the military does to a
large extent control what it does, the reality is actually
very different. That's, that's not at all what I
saw happening. And to, to, to try to engineer
the system so that you are going to be doing something is
different. I mean, I, I personally ended up
in East Africa. Well, I suppose I should say
Eastern Africa based in Kenya. And it was fascinating then to
see how there was a sort of, there was really a scramble for
jobs and, and, you know, people being called off to, to hold
this idea of Somali piracy and, and, and all sorts of other
things. So, you know, it was a real
period of flux, but also it was the beginning.
I don't want to jump ahead and, and I'll absolutely hand over in
a second, but it was also the beginning of the period of time
where the, this idea that veterans were a sort of
protected species started to come in.
And I think we'll go on perhaps later or at another time to talk
about how that's been hugely manipulated.
But, but that was what I saw. And, and I think, you know,
during that period, for all the reasons that I've given, there
was there was an enormous transition which has absolutely
not corrected itself. And, and, and the trend, you
know, as reported many, many times on, on UK column If funds
to if, if, if you're to strip away all the, the control
elements and the, the appalling situations in which the armed
forces do get put, let's say, politically or strategically in
terms of messing up other people's countries.
If you just take the organization itself and the, the
way in which there has been a deterioration and A and a loss
of of sort of quality and numbers that was absolutely
already happening then. And it, and it looked, you know,
to, to use your sort of language, it looked very
deliberate the way in which it was being done.
But I can go on to prevent more of that later.
But anyway, now that let's say that's a little bit of.
Well, Charles, that was not there.
And yeah, I was thinking as you're going through, you know,
there's so many points and where do I start from that?
I think I just want to ask you one more question before I
respond. And that's that's you joined.
You did join the army. Why did you do that?
Yeah, that's a very good question.
And actually in the first instance, it was almost by
accident, which a lot of people have said over the years very
specifically, and this is, this is an initiative of somebody
who's sort of good at their job. When I was at school, there was
a that's sadly defunct. Well, I would say sad because I
thought it did actually it worked well.
They ran a program called an Army Scholarship, which meant
that you could, as a 16 year old, you could go forward to the
regimental selection board and go basically go through the
officer's selection as a schoolboy and get a, get a place
at Sandhurst for whenever it was you wanted to take it up.
And I had been informed of this, so I went along to speak to the
visiting careers officer or whatever he was called.
And my idea was that I was getting along just for him to
explain a little bit about it, which is how I came away from
the conversation only to get a letter in the post about two
days later saying how, you know, delighted to meet you, so glad
you've decided to go forward for this thing.
And he had entered me into the process.
So, so that that was how it sort of took over that that's, that's
a sort of slightly silly detail. I, my my family have a have a
strong military background, which is not absolutely not been
a defining factor, but it did mean and, and as I said, going
back to the beginning about trying to civilianize this talk,
it gave me an idea of the sorts of things that military life,
army life in particular entailed.
And it wasn't the idea of sort of rigid discipline and being
told what to do. It was actually totally the
obverse, which was being able to be fit and do exciting
adventurous stuff and be paid for it and, and use your brain
at the same time. And I, I couldn't really at that
age or stage imagine anything better.
It was, it was a huge appeal. I, I, I didn't really consider
that there was any other professional out there that was
offering in any way that kind of thing, as well as the enormous
responsibility and privilege of helping other people run their
lives in, in a command sentence. And that, that was absolutely
borne out by getting to my first platoon and having a, a bunch of
in the main, absolutely unbelievable individuals to, to
look after if they want to a better term.
And, and I think it's a huge shame that that that I'm talking
about the perspective of an officer, but this is not
exclusively the preserve of an officer because everybody has
this sort of welfare responsibility.
And for people not to understand that that is such a huge part of
it. I think it's really regrettable.
And I think it's also deliberate because it does sort of
desensitize the whole issue and it, and it enables when
expedient for people in the armed forces to be sort of
othered to, you know, they're not high casts.
They're, they're, they're different.
And I think again, that's a, that's a, that's a great shame.
But that, but that was, that was a huge, huge part of it.
And I, the reason I make that point is that I, what I would
like to say is it as a really distinct issue is that I was not
at all drawn to the idea of guns and ammo.
I just, that was, that's going to be part of it.
But I was not one of those people who just wanted to, you
know, get on the ranges and fire off loads of ammunition or, or
indeed go into a theatre of conflict in order to kill
people. That was never ever any of my
motivation at all. But that was because naively
Queen and country even then still to me meant something.
And and and this is the problem. But we can come back to that.
But say, yeah, that was that was the motivation.
But. Charles, I'm glad I asked you
the question because I also got a scholarship and at the age of
16, and this came about because my father had had done wartime
service in the Navy. He'd originally worked in the
dockyard here in Devonport and in a particular year, I think it
was the very beginning of 42, a small number of people from
protected industries in the dockyard was one of them were
actually called up. And I can't remember how many
went from Devonport Dockyard. Several, 100.
Not on the scale of the thousands that worked there.
It wasn't very many, but anyway, it resulted in my father
spending the Second World War in, in the Navy.
And he he, he ended up chief shipwright, chief Petty Officer
and he saw some things which, you know, deeply upset him, but
it was clear that, that he enjoyed a lot of his service
time. But at the end of the war, he'd
met my mum, which is probably a good thing.
And he, he decided that he was going to come out, even though
the Navy offered him the opportunity to stay on a full
time career. And they didn't do that with
many people. So that was a, a feather in his
cap. But when sort of I, I was a
teenager and you, you start thinking about what your career
is, I was pretty uncertain. And then 11 week, my father
announced that on the Wednesday he was going to be taking me
into, it was called HMS Flying Fox.
It was a little ship that was alongside in Bristol.
And this was just to have a chat.
It's a parallel just to have a chat.
And so one very misty cold morning I was my dad and I drove
down into Bristol and I go on board HMS Flying Fox and I meet
her. Well, he seemed quite old to me,
but I suspect he was, he was quite a young Lieutenant.
And the next minute I was asked a whole load of questions about
this and that which I quite enjoyed and I didn't find it
particularly difficult. And the next thing was a letter
in the post inviting me for a full week assessment which was
in Portsmouth. And as a result of doing that,
I, I got a scholarship, which meant all I had to do was get 2A
levels and then I would be able to go to Dartmouth, which is
still the Royal Navy's officer training location.
So that's what happened. I got my got my A levels and the
next minute I was just 18. Only a couple of weeks into
being 18I arrived at Dartmouth. I'm not going to say a lot of it
for me was was absolute fascination and curiosity
because immediately you were exposed to a very different sort
of lifestyle. But also very quickly it was to
do with boats. You were on the river Darts and
you you were learning about boats and warships and being
able to sail and mess around in boats.
And much as you're saying, I found this very enjoyable and
I'll add. I was fascinated at that time by
the number of people that bailed out the training and I found
this astonishing because some people decided after two weeks
that they'd had enough and I couldn't understand why they
would leave at that point because I thought you haven't
seen enough. But they did on subsequent as
the calls progressed and faces got blacked out on the
photographs. And until, you know, we passed
out and that's the terminology we qualified.
And it was about that time that the Navy suddenly announced that
it was looking for people to go to university.
And I'd made a specific decision in my head that I wanted to join
the military. I didn't want to go to
university. And suddenly here was the Navy
pushing and pushing and pushing for these newly qualified
midshipmen to go to university. And I ended up sort of asking
some advice from, from some of the staff and they all said,
well, you know, it's an incredible opportunity because
you're going to be in, in London, you're going to be paid
and you get a degree and this can't be bad.
So in the end, I, I took it. And that meant that I went from
from the traditional training route through to university, got
the degree, had a lot of fun, got the degree, just came back
into the Navy then to start the training properly and
eventually, you know, you join the fleet at sea.
So even my training periods, there were these big changes
happening because prior to that you'd had the system of young
boys, 12 through till 12 through to probably 17, doing a sort of
cadet ship with, with the Navy, and then they would become
midshipmen. And then at that stage they go
to Dartmouth. And so that was a very, a very
long introduction to a career in the military.
And many of those young men that did it, you know, we were going
to the, let's say, up, up and into the 1930s came from
military families where their parents been in the military for
a long time. So you had this inherent
understanding of what the military was about.
And when I got to Dartmouth, I'd come to a grammar school.
But when I got to Dartmouth, that was a very different system
of training. But previously you had
youngsters had gone through a system and they were very
knowledgeable by the time they got to Dartmouth.
So what am I trying to describe? I'm trying to describe that
looking back, I can see that I already joined the system where
the strength of families being involved with the military and
people getting engaged with the military at a young age, that
was being pushed aside. And to me, I couldn't, I could
easily see that this was depriving the military of a lot
of inherent strength from, from the amount of time that people
had spent training. It was ingrained in them.
And this is very powerful thing. This is what makes good troops.
When it's not, They're just there for a career.
It's something they really want to do.
They're very knowledgeable on the subject.
So I find that very interesting that you also did a scholarship
like that. Yeah, I mean, well, this is it.
I think. You know, you're right, the way
which these things have changed and and you know, the view.
Therefore from the outside, I mean, I think you know, going
back to the the type of people that that are drawn towards this
or do do this. I'm actually very interested to
hear about the number of people that dropped out that that was
not maybe exceptions. That certainly wasn't the case
in my era at Santos. There were, there were there
were very small number of people who decided not to.
Some people physically weren't up to it and therefore left.
But by and large people stayed. And and actually just to just to
again further qualify the the situation with the sort of the
people element, which I think is so important.
I, I well, remember the opening address that we had from what
Well, Sant has this split up on what would I suppose be a
regimental basis, but they're, they're colleges say, well, you
start off in old college and therefore you have a commander
who is a sort of seasoned Lieutenant Colonel.
So it's kind of chief executive role, I guess.
And I, I remember David Hill, he was who spoke to us and said the
first thing he said was, was welcome.
You have joined that group of society that picks up other
people's rubbish. And it was, it was very good.
And I know the word integrity has, has, has difficult
connotations for, for UK column because of the integrity
initiative. But, but if we forget that for
one minute, it wasn't him that said it.
But it was always said that because, because you know, this
old idea of ethos and all that kind of thing, but integrity was
always the big one. And to, to put out that theme a
little further, integrity is, was always described as being,
picking up other people's rubbish when no one's watching.
And, and, and I think it is a point worth making because there
are two elements to it. 1 Is this idea that the the military
shapes the person as opposed to the person having the aptitude,
all that system and therefore fitting into it well, adapting
to it and getting the most out of it.
There will always be debate on that, but my view is that
predominantly people of a certain bent, of a certain
character will be drawn towards a particular organization and I
think the military expressly because ultimately it might lead
to your death. So you have to be quite sure
about whether or not you want to do it.
So that's one side of it. The other side of it is that
there is AI can totally understand why, but but there is
a regard that people once they've joined the armed forces,
they are in effect trained killers.
That's really all they're about which yes, OK, that is true
because you're not really going to be of much use in an armed
force if you're not doing that bit or able to do that bit.
That is part and parcel of it. But that absolutely goes
alongside the, the litter picking bit in that the, the
system simply doesn't work if people don't behave with
terrific respect for one another.
And, and any, any breach in that, any failure of that is, is
catastrophic. And, and you know, it's always
the, the, the service test was always the, the, the determining
factor in, in how the situation was looked at, which was does
it, does the, the situation, if there's been a breakdown in
communications or discipline or whatever, does it fail the
service test, which is, does it, does it compromise your
operational effectiveness? And, and I, I think there are
two don't get dragged too much down the kind of military ball
thing, but there are so many really, really positive sort of
universal elements from the way those systems were managed
between people that could, I think could and should be
transposed in a, in a completely non military sense, but into the
civilian environment. And you know, this goes back to
what you're talking about where, where that there is this sort of
intentional breakdown and that the idea of the sort of the
service family thing being stopped and, and all that.
And I totally agree. And I think I think the
consequence for society as a whole has been terrific.
And and actually, if I may just use one anecdote, I can remember
about 15 years ago, there was a very, very cold winter.
It was the winter 2010 eleven. Climate change obviously hasn't
started by that stage. So there was terrific, terrific
guys at the time, I was living in a village that had a Ford in
the road that went out of the village.
So, so you went down a relatively steep descend through
the Ford, not the other side, but because nobody had bothered,
there was a huge amount of ice high side of it.
Basically people couldn't get in and out.
And, and I, I, you know, OK, it wasn't something that I'd
actually need to do for those reasons.
But when it did become necessary to be able to clear that ice, I
went down, you know, it was, it was -10 outside.
And I started sorting the, the tracks and smashing it away with
a, with a shovel and whatnot. Was one other bloke who arrived
more or less at exactly the same time.
And he was a private soldier from the Parachute Regiment.
He'd just been shot in the leg and was recovering.
He'd been through heading court. There was some rehabilitation
thing and there we were, stripped down T-shirts, pouring
this sweat and -10 clearing the path for this village.
I don't say that. So why?
You know how amazing? But the point is that it was
that it was two people who were, who were both active servicemen
who just decided to do something that a village of, I don't know,
300 people hadn't, hadn't thought to do.
And neither of us. Sorry.
The point is that we were both sort of visitors.
Neither of us was actually living there full time.
So I mean, it just. Yeah.
And if you if you stop the system from working properly,
then society doesn't have that sort of dividend as it were
returned to it. Yeah, it's a very interesting
area and for me, very well. You saw this very quickly on
board a ship because the ship does not function if people are
not working together and you have all sorts of risks around
you. So that, you know, that could be
fire or it could be flood or it could be the explosion Ship is,
is a, is a pretty dangerous mix of things because you've got
people in a steel box with fuel and explosive in large
quantities. And so there's an inherent need
for people to be professional and reliable and trustworthy in
order to survive in that environment.
And you add to it, you know, if a ship goes to sea in very rough
weather, it requires that ship to work properly and to be
sufficiently robust that you're going to come out the other side
of, of the storm. And so you've got this, this
wonderful environment of people who have been, who were very
well trained. And also they were, they'd built
up a camaraderie together where people could rely on each other.
They'd looked out for each other and on top of that, the thing I
remember of of the Navy was a very quiet working environment.
Most people were asked if they would do something.
Occasionally they were told, but generally it was put across in a
very soft way. And I always laughed when I
started to see some of the BBC documentaries about the Navy and
certainly if I saw BBC documentaries about the holding,
because people were always shouting at each other.
And this was something I'd never, I'd never encountered,
you know, maybe once or twice in a serious situation where
somebody needed to shout because we're in the open air and you
needed to get water across. The rest of the time it happened
in a very quiet, measured way. And the interesting thing is, is
and I, I think it is still the same today, but if you, if you
then went to the submarine service where the danger was
even greater because you're in a steel box with fuel and
explosive nuclear radiation and you're under the water,
everybody has to know what they're doing.
And yet the working environment is even quieter and the
relationship much softer between offices and and the normal
ranks. And why was it like that?
Because everything was running very smoothly.
And, and the other bit so bad to it is, is conversations that I
remember and usually the best conversations in the Navy always
do during the night watches. Because if you were officer of
the watch, you're up on the bridge and you, you had two or
three the ship's company with you as lookouts or steering.
And you would have conversations, very normal
conversations about families and holidays and cars and whatever
it was always with a sense of humour.
And and so this idea that, as you say, that the military is
just this way of ingraining in people that they're, they're
going to become trained killers, that was absolutely not what I
saw. Were you expected to do your
job? Which ultimately, you know, if
we were at war that does involve killing people, But the but the
actual day-to-day Society of the military was, was very relaxed
and personable and it was based on people skills.
Yeah, I mean, I mean, I totally agree.
I, I, I agree with you, in fact, trying to find a documentary
about the army in which anyone actually speaks rather than
shouts, It's it's difficult. And, and having been
specifically having been a Guardsman where you spent quite
a lot of your time shouting on a parade.
Yeah, it's, it's extraordinary. And of course, again, being
infantry, most of what you're doing outside in an active sense
involves shouting because of the the notes.
But, but clearly there is another element to that.
No, I mean my, my, my memory of, you know, all services behave
differently for, for different reasons, but no, my memory was
exactly the same that think things were conducted in in a,
in a calm and rational manner. And, and actually this is this,
this I think is such an interesting.
It's not exactly a paradox, but but it these these two things
that are very closely related, that we have this system in
which people know their job absolutely inside out and can
depend with their life upon the persons on either side of them.
That's the only way in which it works.
And we were talking recently about how different this can be
in the civilian environment. And I and my own experience is
subsequent to leaving the Army in terms of having spent any
time either working within or in close proximity to large
corporations. I have seen the exact opposite.
I have seen the vast majority of people with no real idea of
where the job begins and ends and what indeed they are
supposed to do in that role. And actually, if the pressure
increased, they would collapse because they don't get it.
And there are lots of reasons why that might be the case.
But ultimately, they're not going to die or get injured if
they don't get it right. And yet we talk about the
humanity, the, the human side of, of the armed forces.
But we cannot get away from the fact that ultimately, if they
are exercised in the way that that they are currently and have
been for hundreds of years, lives are lost.
And what I'd be very interested in, in your perspective, is that
in retrospect, obviously I, I don't believe there was any
merit in any of the foreign interventions that were being
conducted during the period of time that I spent in the Army.
Quite the opposite. I think they were really
disgraceful engagement. But but the difficulty is that
people like me are still getting to want to belong to those sorts
of organisations because of all the sorts of things that we're
talking about. Do you remember how you felt
about the sorts of operational theatres that were either being
entered into or that were likely or, or you know, your point of
view on whatever one calls it sort of foreign intervention?
Because I because I find it's it's a very difficult thing to
to be absolute about because of all the other it won't be
positive attributes. It's, it's very interesting.
This is a very interesting subject.
I think I would have to say that for the first instance during my
career, the the overwhelming thing was this was Cold War
time. And so if everything was focused
around the Cold War scenario, we still have the British Army of
the Rhine. There was still major exercises
taking place in in Germany, and that was all on the basis, of
course, of the Soviet Union in invading the West and at sea.
All of the exercises effectively were based on scenarios around
for me locating and and tracking and ultimately destroying
Russian submarines, Soviet submarines and the major
exercises at sea used to be called the teamwork series.
And they were based on first of all the American carrier groups
moving across from from the United States principally into
the North Atlantic and also up into the Norwegian Sea to
project so projects US air power across Norway and protecting the
northern flank and deterring the Soviet Air Force from moving
down into the Norwegian Sea. the US carrier groups were the first
role for the Royal Navy because we were to be part of the anti
submarine screen for those units.
And I think we did a pretty good job.
But of course, the carriers were the full front of the supply
ships coming across because nothing has changed from the
Second World War. In order for a major war to be
fought in Europe, the American industrial complex had to
produce the munitions and the food and fuel and everything
else. And that had to be transported
in convoy across the North Atlantic.
So for me, during the bulk of my time, it was it was clearly the
Cold War and. I didn't really pay attention to
specific deployments overseas, although I did, I did do one
particularly boring patrol out in the Gulf when it, it, it's,
it was getting a little bit serious out there.
But none of that was a sort of major deployment for the, for
the Royal Navy. The big thing for me was the
Falklands and that was particularly of great
significance to me because I just started my warfare
training. The career in the, in my career
in the Navy was that initially you work to train in basic
navigation skills and then you work to get your bridge watch
keeping ticket, which means you can, you are capable of holding
a watch on the bridge on your own day and night.
And then when you've got those skills then they start to move
you forward to the warfare training.
And so I went to HMS Dryad in Portsmouth to start that warfare
training. And we were only a few weeks in
when the Falklands started. And what came to the surface
very quickly was that there was not enough warfare people at
sea. And so I was, I can't remember
how many of us there were, but they were, there was a
relatively small number of us that were pulled off the course
early, put on a ship and then sent down to the Falklands.
So I didn't even go through the full warfare training course
because the Falklands started and rapidly there was this major
escalation and they were desperately short of certain
people, including the warfare ones.
So I was on board a frigate and sent off to the Falklands and I
have to say I was very lucky because we got down there two
days after the Armistice was signed and I then did a very
well. Some of it was interesting.
I was going to say very boring patrol down there and of course
you were there having missed all the glory.
So anybody you encountered had, who had been there was very keen
to say what they've been doing, etcetera, etcetera.
But we got down there after the fighting had stopped.
So I have to be very thankful that I, I wasn't put in harm's
way. Some of the people that I joined
the Navy with died in the, in the Falklands.
And a couple of them I only discovered recently when I was
doing a bit of research and I was looking through the names of
the, the deceased across the armed forces and I suddenly
thought, Oh my goodness, I didn't realize he, he died.
So, but the preparations for the full Falklands obviously were
taken very seriously. And yes, I, I got the experience
of gearing up for war. And then of course, you know,
we, we started here, the reports of the, of the hits on the other
ships, HMS Sheffield and Coventry and, and the Type 21
frigates that were hit. And so as we were on our way
down, we, we knew that if, you know, it was serious stuff and
people were dying and, and being killed.
So that, that was a pretty unique experience for me.
And then after that I, I specialized in anti submarine
warfare and that was, that was tracking the, the Russian
nuclear submarines and bombers as they came out into the
Atlantic. That was very good because it it
was real. It wasn't that we were on a
training exercise. We were, we were finding the
real, the real deal, the Russian submarines.
And that was a very enjoyable time because I got a lot of
satisfaction about that work. And I would also add, we had
huge respect for the Russian submariners because they were
very capable people. And to answer your point, it was
after that that I eventually ended up in the Fishery
Protection Squadron where I had command one of the fishery
protection vessels, HMS Orkney. And that is when I really
started to think about what we were doing, because it quickly
became apparent to me that though the role of the Fishery
Protection Squadron had been to protect, at least with a very
small P, British fishing boats at sea, what we were actually
doing was imposing the European fisheries policy on those
fishing. And the story that I've told in
a lot of life talks over the years is that one very dark
winter's night we boarded a Scottish fisherman of more or
less the entrance to the Firth of 4th.
And he he was breaking the rules for the size of his net.
We weren't able to make a decision on the spot.
We always had to refer to Ministry of Agricultural
Fisheries as it was then. So there was a dedicated team
and they told us very clearly that we were to come to
confiscate his net. And the Scottish captain of that
boat talked to me in some pretty colourful language that I was
destroying his effing livelihood.
And I knew that that was exactly true.
And I also knew that when I was travelling around the the North
Sea or up around the Shetlands and Falkland Islands doing the
fishery patrols, we were seeing EU funded fishing boats for the
French and the Spanish and the Germans in particular.
Brand new boats paid for with European money that was simply
wiping the oceans of fish and destroying the livelihoods of
the British fishermen. And I started to feel deeply
uncomfortable about that. And it was actually that
experience that made me get to a point where I thought this is
not for me. And and so I left.
So, you know, ironically, it wasn't a military style
requirement to the armed forces that that brought that home to
me. I never experienced A
deployment, you know, where we were operating in the waters of
some foreign country where I thought, are we doing the right
thing? It for me it was the fishery
protection where I knew it was not the right thing.
Yeah, I mean, I think, I think it's fascinating and, and again
to the, well actually both military and civilian audience,
I think, I think it's, you know, one of the things is that, that
I prefer to quite a number of times on the news.
And I think it's, it's safe worth bringing out, which is
that all, all, all activities are governed by rules of
engagement. You know, any, any, any
operational deployment whatever that there are, there are set
conditions under which you may or may not use force or you
know, you return far or far upon.
And, and I think it's, it is certainly understood and it's
certainly not it, it was fairly confident.
It was never expressly said in any of the laws of our conflict
training that I undertook. But when you look at when you
look at how it's written down, which is in joint services
publication JSP 398 and you and you read what it says about
rules of engagement, that the rules of engagement are the use
of force as a political expression.
It, it, it does just make you think about everything in a
completely different way. Because in within that
environment, whether it doesn't matter where you are, whether
you know that there are for every situation, there are rules
of engagement. They do, they do get changed,
but you're always led to believe that that has come from within
your command structure. And as they there is an
appraisal of the situation and appraisal of what would be
regarded as, you know, risk or threats or or whatever.
But but actually that's not where it comes from.
All of this is, is a political expression, a political fact.
And this, this is, you know, where the, the difficulty lies.
And that's why I thought, you know, find it so interesting to
listen to you talk about these periods.
But the only thing I was going to ask as a follow up is do you
remember either at the time or afterwards, anybody ever
questioning either what happened in the lead up to or in the
Falklands or indeed in the activities concerning, you know,
the the sort of monitoring of the great Soviet bear?
Was there the sense that, you know, it was not quite as it was
being? Sold, I'd say, I'd say not in
this in the Soviet time. But then I'm going to say my
perception of what was going on was, you know, I was very young
and you're doing a particular job, doing a particular job.
And just, you know, something that comes into my mind during
the Cold War, one of the things that the the Soviets did, you
know, the Soviet military exercises, they always talked
with real place names. Whereas if NATO, when it's a
size usually, well usually inevitably we, we would be
running to some exercise scenario.
And if there was a country defined or a power block, the
breadth power block, you were talking about targets that were
always given code names, no great code names.
But when the Soviets were doing their exercises, they would be
talking about advancing, you know, 30 miles further into West
Germany and they will be talking about the the names of the
places that they were going to be taking.
Now, was that a bit of propaganda to put, put the West
under pressure? Absolutely.
But of course that that did make you think that their intent was
real. So.
So I'm going to say that Cold War period people were very
heavily focused and there was there was a lot of deep concern
about Soviet capability and of course strength in numbers
because they had very big military and certainly very big
submarine fleet. And so there was an inherent,
I'll say fear with a small F about the bear.
But no, I didn't, I didn't get any pushback.
Don't see any better pushback about that period.
The Falklands was mainly the push back actually was against,
you know, UK because people knew very early on that we'd run into
major problems in the Falklands because we hadn't got the ships
or equipment. And very often it was clear that
within the war Navy people had been warning and complaining
about this for a long time. I mean, one of the key things is
that ships started to appear, new design ships started to
appear during the Cold War that had very few weapon systems on
them. And, and the moment the Falcons
blew up, everybody said, well, you're going to be facing
fighter ground attack aircraft close to coastal areas.
We need traditional weapons, we need 20 millimetre, 30
millimetre guns and the ships didn't have them.
So what then transpired was this rapid retrofitting of ships with
anything they could find. And the frigate that I was on
board HMS Sirius, which had four Exocet missiles.
It had sea cap surface to air missiles which although old,
proved that that missile system proved pretty capable.
In the Falklands we had a couple of single 20 millimetres and
they ended up fitting a twin 20 millimetre on the bridge.
But that 2020 millimetre was not a modern weapon.
It was it was a relic from the Second World War and so so ships
went down there many of them I'll equipped for the battle
that the Argentinians could bring you know again against the
British and and we paid the price for that.
And when, when you look back at good military analysis of the
Falklands, we were very, very lucky.
And the bombs not exploding in Borne Alley, when the
Argentinian, the pilots dropped bombs and they, they didn't own
properly, that was that was just unbelievable luck for the fleet.
So I quickly saw from my my, my Falklands experience that the
military power that was was looking after, sorry, the
political power that was looking after the military was
absolutely failing to provide what the military needed.
And every year that I served, we were being, we were being told
there were going to be further cuts in manpower and ships and
training. That was one of the things that
happened. And the other thing that
happened with increasing frequency was some form of
reorganization. And this might be the renaming
of, of, of professional tasks within the military.
It could be to do with absolutely stupid changes to the
uniforms, it changes to the badges.
So in in an organization, which I would say when it's working
properly, there's inherent stability and people know not
only the organizational structure, they they know what
the systems and they know the training everyone's had that
that became ever more turbulent and you could see the effects.
So initially you just put it down to the people who who kick
started these changes lacked common sense.
That's what you mind told, told you.
But later I started to come to the conclusion that these, these
damaging changes were not a lack of common sense, they were
orchestrated. And that's when, OK, that was
before my time with the with the Fishery Protection Squadron.
But that's why I started to think there's something
malevolent at work. Yeah, and Ian, I think that's
totally fascinating. And Julian Assange's words
spring to mind with The Forever War.
You know, the, the, the goal is not to have a successful war,
but a but an endless 1. And it's fascinating and I, you
know, although a sort of a different period, but this is
exactly what I saw. You know, I was my point.
Naomi coincided with two in terms of tech 2 significant
changes. One was the digitization of all
radio comms from the Klansman system, which was absolutely
brilliant because it worked absolutely everywhere.
It didn't matter how many bogs and puddles and whatever you
dropped it in, it still worked to Boatman, which was, I don't
know whether people consider that it works now, but it was
absolutely hopeless at the start.
And would the the all comms would drop all the time and it
took forever to to reinitialize. And you can imagine in a yeah,
battlefield context that is that is just not workable.
So that so those two things were changed.
Oh, sorry, that one thing was changed and that had a, you
know, I would say a very detrimental effect, not least
because in actual fact, the other thing was that it required
considerable skill to understand how to use that technology.
So it wasn't that was there was not a universality in that in
the way there was. And just just to explain to
people that it's sort of the difference between a push button
and a smartphone. The push button thing, you kind
of know what what it's going to do in the way that the log radio
thing just was a radio with dials and you just clicked a
battery onto it. There were lots of different
types as opposed to it all being digital and having to have
complicated process attached. And the other thing was supposed
personnel management system. All personnel stuff was running
from Glasgow and they went on to a system JPA, it was called
joint personnel administration, I think.
And again, it just didn't work and and and going back to
Assange's thing and and exactly what we're describing in the
Falklands. If the armed forces capability
and I and I say this with all the we don't even NATO summit,
recent NATO summit in mind, defence review and all this kind
of stuff. But if it if it can absolutely
do what it is supposed to do. And we are to to imagine that
there is a sort of justifiable conflict and we really were able
to deliver the effects that we promise it would be over within.
By hampering the capability, it means that it can be extended to
the enormous benefit of the war industry.
And we need look at the security, sorry, the strategic
defensive review and the national security strategy to
see that that is nothing more than a business plan for these
industries. And when you do start to think
about it like that, so much more of it makes sense, you know, to,
to sort of keep the system going, but continually hamstring
it in order that you get your forever wars.
I know that might seem like a terribly cynical way to look at
it, but I think when you've gone through the system, it's very
hard to consider it in another way.
Because I saw exactly the same thing with, let's say with Iraq,
but Afghanistan in particular, the the the advent of what we're
called urgent operational requirements, which was the sort
of the ven process of, you know, just fixing the 30 mil cannon to
to the front. It wasn't, but it was just
buying off the shelf kit that wasn't in the budget that no one
had training on. I mean, it was, it was chaos.
It was absolutely chaos. And and therefore it meant that
the effect on the ground was not what it should have been because
of it. And, you know, don't tell me
that no one could have seen that coming.
And then, you know, we go back to well, things.
Yeah, my experience was people did see these.
Things coming and they were constantly talking about it.
And we, we could go a strategic scale, we could go very small
scale. But for a strategic thing, there
was the announcement, whatever year it was that they're going
to get rid of Royal Navy's aircraft carriers.
And everybody said, you know what, what are you talking
about? Because those aircraft carriers,
apart from anything else, invariably formed the task group
that that the Royal Navy. Produced in order to integrate
with the American carrier battle groups we, we were part of the
outer screen and and our carriers carrying anti submarine
helicopters or ASW planes were part of that outer screen.
So, so people started to, you know, question this decision and
of course it trickled down through the the Navy structure
and there was a sufficient backlash that they were known as
the through deck cruisers. This was a new proposal design
and people worked hard enough to say, well, actually the through
deck cruiser should be trying to changed to make it aircraft
carrier life. And I think we were, we were
grateful that we did get these new small aircraft carriers, but
of course they didn't have an angled flight deck, they didn't
have a catapult system and therefore they were very limited
in the aircraft they could carry.
They could carry the Harrier. The Harrier did very well during
the Falklands. But if we had had carrier
launched airborne early warning aircraft, which of course the
Americans had, and we had previously with the old
carriers, a lot of the damage in the Falklands wouldn't have
happened. But somebody made a decision
that we were going to get rid of carriers.
Then when the new carriers came in, there was a gap.
And that means you're losing the training, of course.
And this was something you you saw happening time and time
again. And the other one I'll just
mention was that that at one stage when I got a lot of
experience in the particular sonar systems that we were using
to track the Russians, this is a long toad array.
So it's like a hose pipe full of microphones and you're listening
to sounds in the water and you can detect the sounds of vessels
and submarines. But we had a particular sonar,
it was produced by by Marconi. They were very excited when they
produced it was taken to sea for tests and it's performance was
outstanding. Nobody had ever seen anything
like it. And so eventually this
particular signal set was fitted in the frigate squadron that
that I was part of. And then we very quickly started
to go to sea on on these real life detection trips to find the
Russian nuclear submarines. Well, eventually we were told
that the Admiralty Research Department was going to create
an update of this sonar system. And because computer technology
had moved on the cabinets for it instead of being the size I'll
say if you if you know the size of a double door fridge, an
American double door fridge. The cabinet to drive my sonar
system was three of those side by side.
And the Admiralty Research Organization said they could
produce computer that would do the same job about the size of
your average domestic fridge, big domestic fridge.
When the new sonar system was fitted, it very quickly became
apparent it it wasn't as good or it wasn't as performing well.
And eventually I was sent to sea with two ships, one with one
system, one with the other system where we did a controlled
trial to, you know, see what was going on.
Was was it the equipment of fault or was it the training of
the operators? And it quickly became apparent
that the old system was better than the new one.
So what did they do? They took out all the old
systems and replaced it with a with a new signal.
And it was at that point that I realized that whoever was
controlling the operation was not interested in in you doing
the the job or in your lives. Because if they're giving you
deaf equipment, they don't care what happens to you.
And so that was my one of my key examples of realising that the
machinery driving the military wasn't everything we thought it
was. And I and I, I think anyone.
Anyone. Listening to who has any
military experience will, I'm sure, have have an example of
exactly that just brings to mind, yeah.
As to completely commonplace, I think we might be nearly out of
time. But what I would say is that
there's so much more to talk about that I think we should
definitely do this again because I think we need to sort of bring
ourselves into the the more recent present day.
Yeah, I think so. So we should drop the.
Agenda for It's been an interesting experiment because.
You know, there is a big difference in our time frames
for serving in the military because I left in 93 so well
before you joined. But it hasn't been difficult to
have a a conversation where we know what we're talking about,
even though you're from an Army background and I'm from a Navy
background. And I find that I find that very
interesting. Yeah, I said, well, and I think
and I think that's that. Absolutely.
It's a generational thing. I mean, always think, you know,
to, for again, for, for the sort of civilian audience I've always
taken enormous pleasure in talking to, to the old and bold
as we fondly refer to them. But you know, regimental
gathering, speaking to people of previous generations by some
margin. And, and finally, you absolutely
speak the same language in that case across services as well.
And I think that's, I think that is absolutely fantastic.
But it but it is, you know, it's, it's not a surprise, but
to find that there is that much common ground between our
experiences. It's still sort of amazing until
you start to consider that that absolutely these things are all
done with intent and and those people making these decisions
are are by and large doing doing that for the same set of
reasons. Just just a final comment from
me. And perhaps this shouldn't come
up from, but there was no planned structure to this, so
so. Very, very unmilitary.
Several so I think I think. It's much better because we've
weaved around we wouldn't have done that exactly structure.
But I just wanted to say that we're having a conversation
where we are starting to get a bit critical about matters to do
with the difference in the military.
And I think it's important to say that I and I know for you,
we still have great respect for the people who are are serving.
And I think it's such a huge shame that many of the people
serving today are doing so within the system, which is
rapidly being exposed as a lie. I think that's the best way I
can get it. And I won't add to that.
I think that's a very good. Note to the bottom which to end
and we will go back and revisit exactly that theme.
Yeah, brilliant. Thank you very much, Charles.