Attitudes in Britain Towards Its Armed Forces and War 1960-2000
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CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk Provided by University of Birmingham Research Archive, E-theses Repository ATTITUDES IN BRITAIN TOWARDS ITS ARMED FORCES AND WAR 1960-2000 by AIR VICE-MARSHAL JON LAMONTE BSc MA CMath CDir FCMI FIMA FIOD FRAeS FRIN CDipAF DipIOD RAF A thesis submitted to The University of Birmingham For the degree of PhD IN HISTORY Department of History College of Arts and Law The University of Birmingham October 2010 1 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. ABSTRACT From the aftermath of Suez to the Kosovo campaign, Britain lost most of its colonies and ended up taking a moral interventionist stance on the world stage with the US its major ally. Against that contextual background, this thesis considers the attitudes in Britain towards its Armed Forces and war from 1960 to 2000. Using a range of lenses, the paper highlights the complexity of change. Homosexuality was a scandalous issue for society in the 1960s, such that the 1967 Act which decriminalised it was not really widely accepted. For the Armed Forces, searches for homosexuals increased on grounds of security. The Act of Remembrance, as recorded in churches, shows the mixed approach of the clergy to war, particularly dependent on their own experience, and also the change in mood from a religious service to a secular one. In the notable campaigns that did take place over the period, Borneo, the Falklands, Bosnia, Kosovo and the Gulf War, a methodical view is taken of opinion polls, press coverage, and letters pages to establish trends at the political, elite and public levels. The media has been used as a reference throughout the thesis as a measure of opinion, but here is analysed for its own biases and approaches, since it has a clear effect on people’s opinions, both from fiction and fact. Overall, the thesis paints a complex web of declining interest in defence issues, greater self-interest amongst many, increasing secularisation, and greater tolerance, yet conversely, points to underlying themes of pride in individual servicemen and the institution of the Armed Forces. 2 CONTENTS Chapter Page 1. Introduction 1 2. From ‘Never had it so good’ to ‘Things will never get better’ 17 3. Homosexuality 34 4. The Church and Society 69 5. Northern Ireland 128 6. Borneo to Kosovo 159 7. The Media and Popular Culture 254 8. Conclusion 324 Bibliography 346 Appendices 1. The concept of a mass grouping 342 2. 2001 Census results: Religion in Britain [not available in the digital version of this thesis] 344 3. Text of Nationwide May 1983 [not available in the digital version of this thesis] 345 3 LIST OF TABLES Page 1.1 Ceadal’s Theoretical Attitudes to War 7 4.1 Religious activity 70 4.2 Active Church membership 1970-1990 71 4.3 Religious adherence 1975-1995 73 5.1 Daily Express/MORI Poll 1987 139 6.1 MORI Polls March-May 1999 237 7.1 Newspaper circulation 260 4 CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION AND CONTEXT The relationship between the British public and its Armed Forces is complex and has changed over time e.g. the period of National Service in the 1950s probably brought public and Armed Forces closer than at any time since. The Clausewitzian trinity of government, armed forces and people achieves the most success when all three work as one; but as popular attitudes change, so the potential arises for the three elements to be disunited; the purpose of this thesis is to look at the attitudinal changes over this complex period1. Most researchers focus on the political level or the commanders; few attempt to understand the people’s view, yet through their ability to vote and influence political decision-making they actually provide underpinning legitimacy for action and can shape the course of events2. Research Questions and Definitions The primary research questions addressed in this thesis are: to what extent have cultural changes affected British attitudes to warfare, and how has the way British forces (and their opponents) conducted themselves on a range of operations changed public opinion? Moreover, how has the Church influenced public opinion on warfare, and what has been the impact of the media on public opinion, in relation to warfare? 1 Clausewitz, K von, On War; Michael Howard and Peter Paret (eds/trans) (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976, revised 1984). 2 Personal military service from the Falklands, former Yugoslavia and Iraq has given the author a specialist interest over and above that of an historian. 1 Before considering the changes in British attitudes to war, it is necessary to define some key terms. The notion of ‘Britishness’ changed in the forty-year period under discussion, in part because of mass migration to the UK.3 It has been argued that ‘the idea of Britain as a nation or Britishness as an identity is a little out of date’4. Richard Weight has argued that national identity is rather more than Benedict Anderson’s concept of ‘imagined communities’5, but is concerned with how people define themselves in accordance with the nation (be that state or not) to which they feel they belong. His central argument is that Britain, as an amalgam of ‘states’ has preserved national cultural differences. He characterizes the growth of Britain as being marked by conceit of superiority in Empire, leading to racialism and bigotry, despite a perception of fairness and benevolence in running an Empire covering a quarter of the globe. He suggests that it sought to create wealth, preserve class and promote the Protestant religion, but from 1940 to 2000, the industrial and financial advantages that kept the Scots and the Welsh loyal to the Union started to weaken; secularization weakened religious links; migration and demographics changed the nature of the country; and that class divisions eroded. Above all else, the notion that being English was broadly synonymous with being British increasingly rankled with Scotland and Wales. The advent of the European Union also brought into question what Britishness meant. The end of the century saw the British 3 Emigration exceeded immigration in every year to 1985, and even then immigration was broadly in step with emigration until 1995 when immigration increased dramatically: Schenk, C R; in Carnevali F and Strange J-M, (eds.) 20th Century Britain; (Harlow: Pearson Educational 2007). This thesis will not, for reasons of space, consider the different attitudes of minorities (e.g. Muslims) towards war and Britain’s armed forces. But there is relevance here, to the debate in the Armed Forces over diversity, and the desire to gain increased numbers from ethnic minorities to better ‘reflect’ British society – a theme explore by Chris Dandeker and David Mason in ‘Diversifying the Uniform? The Participation of Minority Ethnic Personnel in the British Armed Services’ Armed Forces and Society 2003; Vol 29; pp. 481-507 4 Cosmo Landesman quoted in Peschiera, R, ‘After Hours’, Summer 2007 Institute of Directors. For a summary of scholarly debates see Weight, Richard, Patriots: National Identity in Britain 1940-2000 (London: Macmillan 2002) pp. 16-19. 5 Anderson, B, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (London: 1991 Verso) pp. 5-7 2 redefine themselves as Scots, Welsh, English and Northern Irish, who happened to live in Britain.6 Thus ‘British attitudes’ are not monolithic. Moreover, cultural changes in this period have affected attitudes to warfare. Arguably views on risk-taking changed in the 1980s, as a desire for greater wealth and an apparent greater opportunity for success led people to be more adventurous. In the 1990s, changes in the international, technical and societal environment profoundly changed societies’ relationships with their armed forces across Europe in particular7. Dandeker described these as the ‘New Times’, a period of radical change8. However, in 2000, one scholar was still asserting that public opinion has acted a constraint on the extent to which Britain has been able to intervene in what he describes as ‘civil wars’9. The two definitions of ‘attitudes’ of most use are ‘the stance that individuals take on a subject that predisposes them to act and react in certain ways’10 and ‘a complex mental state involving beliefs and feelings and values and dispositions to act in certain ways’11. The element most worthy of note is taking of a particular position on a topic. However, many people do not routinely take a stance on defence issues, which thus requires some 6 Weight, Patriots,pp. 665-680 7 Forster A, Armed Forces and Society in Europe, (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2006) pp. 6-7 and Dandeker C, ‘On “The Need to be Different”: Recent Trends in Military Culture’ in Strachan H (ed) The British Army: Manpower and Society into the Twenty-First Century (London: Franck Cass 2000) p.173-187 8 Dandeker, C ‘New Times for the Military: Some Sociological Remarks on the Changing Role and Structure of the Armed Forces of the Advanced Societies’ The British Journal of Sociology Vol 45 No 4 (December 1994) pp637-654 9 Dixon P, ‘Britain’s ‘Vietnam Syndrome’? Public Opinion and British military intervention from Palestine to Yugoslavia’ in Review of International Studies (2000) Vol 26 p.