The Sword and the Covenant

‘Covenants without the sword are just words’. Thomas Hobbes The Sword And The Covenant Defining Britain’s Ancient and Modern Military-Covenants for the Twenty-First Century By Lt Col. Mark Rynehart, RDG 1 Acknowledgements Friends and colleagues wonder why one would subject oneself to completing a PhD part time? My response has always been that it is a hobby that got out of hand. The curiosity of a certain generation of officers is not so easily dispelled and so to these I remark that I have taken my professional interest in the moral component to another level. At the heart of the military-covenant is the fair treatment of soldiers and their families in return for the sacrifices they make on behalf of the nation. This work is part of the endeavour to keep the bargain of the covenant a permanent feature of Defence policy so that our people are always looked after. In times of austerity, in the lull before the next major military campaign, this message is even more prescient. I would like to thank Maj. Gen Mike Riddell-Webster and Col. Nick Freeman whose support carried my initial rough and ready ideas over the start line at the Defence Academy. To Dr Jonathan Powell also thanks - his more recent trail blazing in the PhD stakes kept my enthusiasm levels up when the ‘day job’ prevented progress. My gratitude also goes to the senior officers who granted me the time necessary to complete the task. Without their goodwill the considerable time that it took to complete the work would have become practically glacial. These include: Maj. Gen Nick Pope, Air Cdre. Chris Jones and Col. John Matthews. For the firm handling that cavalry officers especially need for intellectual tasks, I doff my cap to Dr. Peter Caddick-Adams, Dr. Teri McConville, Mr. David Turns and Dr Matt Qvortrup who all displayed consummate patience as I got up to speed. An enormous thank you is due to Ms. Anne Harbour, without whom communication with my globetrotting supervisor would have been impossible. To the Members of Parliament, Charity Heads and journalists who gave me their valuable time my sincere thanks - their contributions to the research were invaluable. Finally to Dr. Laura Cleary my supervisor a great debt of gratitude is owed. She believed in the project from the start and offered me practical advice in bite size chunks which she knew I could cope with. Laura was also in the habit of buying lunch after my year on year assessments. After all these years that is a lot of lunch. Making the whole process bearable and human, even though her work kept her abroad for long periods, Laura kept me sane. Without such support defining the military-covenant would have been a distant dream. M.R. April 2015 2 List of contents Title Page Page 1. Acknowledgements Page 2. List of Contents Page 3. List of Abbreviations Page 4. Foreword Page 5. Chapter One Part 1 – Introduction & value Page 14. Chapter One Part 2 – Methodology Page 32. Chapter Two – Literature Review Page 55. Chapter Three – Origins & Evolution Page 88. Chapter Four – Defining the military-covenant Page 133. Chapter Five Part 1 – Analysis of themes, news articles 2002-2010 Page 157. Chapter Five Part 2 – Analysis of themes, interviews 2014 Page 238. Chapter Six – Analysis & Findings Page 278. Chapter Seven – Conclusion Page 291. Bibliography Page 300. 3 List of Abbreviations AFC Armed Forces Covenant AFF Army Families Federation ADP Army Doctrine Publication BBC British Broadcasting Corporation BFG British Forces Germany BMD British Military Doctrine CDS Chief of the Defence Staff C-IED Counter Improvised Explosive Device CGS Chief of the General Staff DCDC Development Concept & Doctrine Centre DGD&D Director General Doctrine & Development DSG Defence Strategic Guidance MoD Ministry of Defence Min AF Minister Armed Forces PSB Public Sector Bargaining PUS Permanent Under Secretary RBL Royal British Legion SDSR Strategic Defence & Security Review 4 Foreword If one takes the definition of a social contract to be: ‘an implicit agreement among the members of a society to cooperate for social benefits, for example by sacrificing some individual freedom for state protection,’ 1 then the military-covenant is distinctive on three counts. Firstly a military-covenant is explicit and exists not simply in an implied sense but is a legal artefact of public record.2 The creation of the Armed Forces Covenant in 2011 turned what had hitherto been an article of formal British military doctrine onto the statute books of Parliament. Secondly members of the Armed Forces which the military-covenant seeks to ‘protect’ do not only sacrifice ‘some individual freedoms’ in defence of the nation, they sacrifice (or are required to be prepared to sacrifice) the ultimate freedom: the right to life; along with several other significant freedoms such as freedom of speech and freedom of association. These are significant individual freedoms that arguably distinguish the social status of the military citizen from the civilian citizen. Social justice is at risk if the equities between the two realms of citizenship are allowed to become out of balance or the political framework to manage the civil-military gap (a term used to help explain the differences between the military and the civilian realms) collapses or becomes ineffective. The civil- military gap is also a term which is thought by many3 to show how the Armed Forces attempt to preserve military identity and military effectiveness,4 such that the ‘protection’ which civilians enjoy, is militarily attainable for the State to extend, at least from the military point of view. In Britain today the ‘implicit civil social contract’ which might otherwise have been thought to extend to military citizens but which has arguably in recent times seen decline, has in any case been augmented by ‘an explicit and military social compact’ designed to rebalance the perceived social inequity between military and civilian citizens. The ‘story’ of the rise of the modern military-covenant in recent years (2006-2011) is an important one but it is not the only one. For when one looks back into the earliest periods of British military endeavour a much older story of the covenant is surfaced, one in which explicit and formal 1 Oxford Dictionaries Online: ‘Social Contract’. http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/social-contract. 2 The Armed Forces Covenant, Statute Law 2011. 3 See for example Strachan, H. ‘The Civil-military ‘gap’ in Britian’. Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol 26, 2003. 4 See Hackett, General Sir John’.The Profession of Arms’. Sedgewick & Jackson. London, 1983. Pp 72,73. 5 social military compacts are found to be in existence and which played their part in British life, both in times of war and in times of peace. It is the author’s purpose to bring the more ancient story of the military-covenant’s rise to prominence to light. For if military practitioners, policy makers and academics fail to take a wider and deeper view of the origins of the military-covenant there is a risk that the principles underpinning it might be arbitrarily removed in the future, rejected without debate or added to without critical appreciation. As articles of military doctrine, if the modern versions of the military-covenants contain the received wisdom from all previous British conflicts then there is surely a wealth of material from the early modern and modern periods which contain important discussion on the origins of the modern covenant. Certainly some discussion on those key events in the seventeenth, through to nineteenth centuries is critical to the overall discussion on the origins of the covenant and these appear in the literature review of chapter two. Nevertheless discussion of the origins of the covenant covering the entire gambit of British military history is impractical and weighting has been given to the very ancient periods of history where practically nil consideration has been given before and where research is most wanting. Consideration has also been given to the modern story of the covenant at its point of inception, where discussion of the ancient context of covenants becomes critical to foundational understanding of the enduring and cultural aspects where current analyses of the subject is limited. Thus the historical dimension of the covenant becomes hugely important if a full and complete definition of the covenant is to be established. The word ‘covenant’ is derived from the Latin verb ‘convenir’ 5 meaning to convene, to come together. It has religious connotations being associated with the Biblical traditions concerning the Ark of the Covenant 6 and Christ’s new covenant.7 In the religious sense the term covenant pertains to the moral bargain between God and man. It is therefore not surprising and surely not a case of accident that the author of the modern ‘military-covenant’ Sebastian Roberts in 5 Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology. ‘Covenant: mutual agreement; divine contract with mankind , XIII century. Legal agreement, XIV century’. 2003. Pg 2. 6 i.e. as contained in The Bible Old Testament (Book of Exodus) in which the Ark contained God’s Ten Commandments written in stone. 7 i.e. as contained in The Bible of the New Testament (Gospel of Mathew) in which God’s New Covenant is written in blood. 6 2000 and Richard Dannatt, its chief advocate from 2006 are Christian. Indeed Roberts8 and Dannatt9 are cited for their moral and religious motivations. In this way, whilst the military- covenant is arguably another example of the more commonly termed and expressly modern ‘civil-military compact’10 it remains distinctive as a term and as a concept because its modern Christian influences as evidenced by its authorship and proponency over the period 2000- 2006 is importantly anticipated and underpinned by much earlier Christian11 and military doctrinal influences and artefacts.

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