Search

This chapter examines the current integration of female soldiers into ground combat roles following the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. The chapter argues that professionalization has opened a space in which competent women may be able to take up their place in the combat arms and, above all, the infantry but it also notes the severe limitations of this accession. Successful women can be defined as honorary men and accepted as equals. However, the category of honorary man is very narrow and it is very easy for women to be reclassified by male soldiers in what remains a masculine culture. Accordingly, they are constantly in danger of being dismissed and denigrated in sexual terms.

By the end of 2014, European nations will have all withdrawn their combat troops from Afghanistan. In many cases, a small number of troops from Europe will remain to perform the role of mentors and trainers and Special Forces will presumably continue to operate as part of the US’s Operation Enduring Freedom, killing and capturing terrorists. However, European and, indeed, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) troops will no longer be involved in fighting the campaign against the Taliban. As the 2014 deadlines approach, it is perhaps worth considering what the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) mission in Afghanistan has taught European member states and their armed forces about military intervention in the twenty-first century, for the operation has been the most unexpected, contentious and difficult in which Europe has been involved since the end of the Cold War. This chapter intends to draw some conclusions not only about the prospects for European peace operations but also for European military capability more generally during the post-Afghan decade.

In his celebrated article, ‘Post-heroic Warfare’, Edward Luttwak explored a potential contradiction between western concepts of warfare and the reality of post-Cold War conflicts in the 1990s.1 Clausewitzian warfare prioritizes decisive victories by conventional military means; the central purpose of the armed forces is to defeat the forces of other states thereby forcing them into a political settlement. Luttwak notes that the possibility of such deci- sive victories and even of fighting in a conventional military had become remote by the 1990s. The West was confronted by a series of ‘new wars’ in the Balkans and Africa. In place of decisive military action, Luttwak recom- mended that the old Roman tactic of the siege in the form of trade embargos and limited military action might be resurrected as a strategy to ameliorate but not resolve complex crises.2 Such a strategy would overcome the perni- cious casualty aversion, which in the 1990s had infected all western powers and especially the United States. Precisely because the armed forces only valued decisive conflict, they could not see the point of risking casualties in minor operations for less than crystalline political gains. Luttwak advocated a more nuanced ‘post-heroic’ strategy of small interventions with less to gain but also less to lose.

The outlook for the Conservatives in the months immediately after October 1959 could hardly have been more buoyant. The party had just won its third successive electoral victory, and had a leader whose standing with the public showed every sign of continuing to rise. The economy was expanding rapidly and, despite the summit debacle of May 1961, Britain continued to exert substantial influence in world affairs. The 1959 intake of new Conservative M.P.s included many able younger men whose presence on the back benches boded well for the future. By contrast, the Labour party — divided, demoralised and increasingly absorbed in abstruse questions of party doctrine — seemed bent on self-destruction. It was in this mood that Mr. Macleod addressed the 1960 Conservative conference: ‘The Socialists can scheme their schemes and the Liberals can dream their dreams; but we at least have work to do.’

It used to be called the ‘secret garden of British politics’, and a few years ago an American commentator claimed that the garden remained secret partly because our political parties deliberately kept the gates locked — and even patrolled the walls to keep outsiders from peering over. What was in the garden was the way the parties went about selecting their parliamentary candidates. Elections, yes, they were public, and everybody knew about them. But selections — oh no — they were a private matter to be decided by the political parties internally, by themselves, away from the public gaze.

In the early years of the 1959 Parliament, few in the Labour party contemplated the future with confidence. Not only was the party divided internally; the conditions which had made possible the great Conservative victory of 1959 seemed likely to persist indefinitely. Lecturing to the Fabian Society within weeks of polling day, Mr. Richard Crossman argued that ultimately competition from the Communist bloc would cause capitalism to founder. In the meantime, Labour could do little but maintain itself in readiness to take advantage of the capitalist crisis when it came: ‘Those who assert that the sole object or even the main object of the Labour party today should be to regain office seem to me to misconceive not merely the nature of British socialism but the workings of British democracy.’1

Parliament isn’t only a talking-shop, as we’ve tried to show in some of the programmes in this series, but it is at least a talking-shop. After all, the word Parliament itself — ‘Parlement’ in French — originally meant speaking or talking or conversing. And most people, when they think of Parliament, probably have mainly in mind the debates that go on there.

Even before Labour’s victory in 1964, Mr. Wilson had been acutely conscious of the advantages accruing to any government simply from the fact of its being in power. The personal authority of the Prime Minister of the day usually far exceeds that of the Leader of the Opposition. He alone determines the date of the election. Because the Prime Minister and his colleagues control the parliamentary timetable and the timing of official announcements, their power to command public attention is almost unlimited. By contrast, the opposition is seldom in a position to do much more than respond to government initiatives. Whereas the government can perform, the opposition can only promise. It will have difficulty communicating its policies to the public. It is always in danger of appearing negative and carping, particularly since a party out of power is deprived of all access to official information and the advice of the civil service.

In ‘The Case of Flora Ginetio’ we described in some detail how an individual Member of Parliament handled a typical constituency case: how it came to him, the government departments he got in touch with, and how eventually he got what was for him and the people who’d come to him a satisfactory outcome. In that particular case the Member of Parliament was always confident he’d get the right answer in the end — and he did.

At the first Liberal assembly which Mr. Grimond addressed as leader, in the autumn of 1957, he asserted that the party had passed the point of no return: “In the next ten years, it is a question of get on or get out. Let us make it get on.”

This programme in the ‘Talking Politics’ series is actually more about talking than about politics. We are going to spend some time considering that new twentieth-century art form: the political interview on radio or television. We aren’t going quite to turn the tables on political interviewers — we haven’t invited politicians into the studio to interview the interviewers — but to discuss the art we have with us three very experienced practitioners: George Ffitch, who appears regularly on Independent Television as well as being Deputy Editor of The Economist; Ian Trethowan, a political journalist who presented programmes on television before becoming Managing Director of Radio in the B.B.C.; and Robin Day.

The most remarkable thing about the 1964 parliament was that it lasted as long as it did. Harold Wilson had been asked on becoming leader of the Labour party what he would do if Labour had only a tiny majority after the next election. ‘Oh,’ he had replied, ‘we don’t discuss nightmares like that,’ Later, as the results were coming in, a future cabinet minister maintained on television that, short of a coalition, no government could survive for long with a majority of less than about a dozen. In the event, however, Labour succeeded in governing for fully seventeen months with a majority over the Conservatives and Liberals that fluctuated between five and only one. And when the 1964 parliament was dissolved on March 10th, 1966, it was at a time entirely of the Prime Minister’s own choosing.

In this programme we are going to talk about an unpopular group of men — a group of men who believe that what they do is seriously misunderstood by the public at large and even by some of their own colleagues — the two dozen or so party Whips in the House of Commons. We are going to look at them both as they seem to themselves — we talked to the Chief Whips of both of the major parties — and as they seem to those they whip — we talked to two backbench M.P.s who on occasion have defied their parties.

This programme, for a change, is not about politicians, but about the people who write about politics: the hundred or so journalists who cover Westminster and Downing Street, the lobby correspondents. The Lobby produces practically all the political news we all consume, yet almost nothing is known by the general public about how it actually works. And even among journalists there are profoundly divergent views about whether the Lobby in its present form is a good thing or not. Anthony Howard, the Editor of the New Statesman, who for years has been the scourge of the Lobby

At 4 p.m. on September 15th, after the Prime Minister had paid a flying visit to the Queen at Balmoral, it was announced from 10 Downing Street that Parliament would be dissolved on September 25th and that polling day would be Thursday, October 15th. In giving 30 days notice, Sir Alec was following exactly the timetable set by Mr. Macmillan in 1959. But this time the announcement had been even more fully anticipated. The last legally available Thursday for polling day was November 5th and it had long been assumed that it would be a few weeks earlier. October 1st was not considered because 330,000 ‘Y’ voters would only come on the register on October 2nd. October 8th (the date in 1959) was unsuitable because the Queen would be away on her long promised visit to Quebec. October 15th had, therefore, been confidently tipped ever since the spring. Indeed, in early September there was almost more speculation on when the announcement would be made than on what it would be.

Until very recently, a lot of people undoubtedly thought of the House of Commons as pretty much a rubber-stamp, at least as far as legislation was concerned. The Government introduced a Bill, it then used its majority to make sure the Bill was passed, and that was that. Parliament has been made to seem a good deal more powerful by Labour’s troubles with its Industrial Relations Bill three years ago, and in 1971–72 by the present Government’s narrow escapes over the Common Market. But, even so, most people are probably unaware of just what the role of the House of Commons is in the passage of a major piece of legislation, and probably tend to underestimate the impact the House can have.

‘Sir,’ said Samuel Johnson in the middle of the eighteenth century, ‘a woman’s preaching is like a dog’s walking on his hinder legs. It is not done well, but you are surprised to find it done at all.’ And that, even in the middle of the twentieth century, is still the view sometimes held about women as politicians. Women don’t make good politicians, it’s said, and even if they did they don’t really belong in politics. Now we’re not going to spend time disputing this view, we‘re simply going to ignore it. It seems to us too obvious to be worth arguing about that women are in politics, to stay, that many of them are very good at it, and that a woman’s place is just as much in politics as in any other occupation requiring qualities, ideally, of intelligence, honesty and courage.

We are going to be dealing in this programme with one of the least-publicised, least party-political, but by no means least important aspects of the work of the House of Commons: the work of select committees. It’s a pity that the term ‘select committee’ is so off-putting. It suggests a board-room full of elderly gentlemen deliberating ponderously on some rather dreary matter, whereas, in fact, select committees often attract younger Members of the House and deal with matters of self-evident importance. Here, for instance, we are going to be looking particularly at the work done by one select committee on the subject of family planning and Britain’s population.

So far this book has been concerned with what politicians, pollsters and newsmen did at the national level. But Britain had 36 million people of voting age — and over 27 million of them voted. There were 1,757 candidates in the 630 constituencies, most of whom at the very least made some speeches and sent literature to every home in their area. They all had agents (nearly half of them full-time professionals) and they had active supporters ranging from a score to several hundred, who filled envelopes and canvassed and drove cars. It is not possible to chronicle all that went on in the constituencies. Even to provide a rough estimate of the volume and nature — let alone the effectiveness — of local party activities is very difficult.

Because elections are plainly decided more over the long haul than by any short term events, politicians and writers sometimes fall victim to the extreme assertion ‘Campaigns don’t change votes’. But when one party fails by 11 seats to retain power, another fails by a smaller amount to get a reasonably comfortable working majority, and a third needs only three more seats to hold a balancing position, it is inevitable that the actual campaign should be scrutinised again and again for those critical errors of judgment or faults in organisation that could have been decisive. Publicly politicians can be oddly fatalistic. In a BBC post-mortem on the election Mr. Maudling said ‘I never myself believe that the events that happened during the campaign had a decisive effect. I think the shift of popular voting between the beginning and the end of any general election campaign is likely to be pretty small.’

In the two years before the 1964 election the Labour party constructed an elaborate apparatus for the making of electoral strategy. It included the campaign committee, which remained continuously in being from 1962, the National Executive and its various subcommittees, and the publicity organisation under John Harris. This apparatus linked together the permanent staff at Transport House under the NEC, and the party in parliament. It had a single purpose: to win the coming election. The party leader, whether Hugh Gaitskell or Mr. Wilson, was the most powerful single person involved — no major decision could be taken against his will or without his being consulted — but to some extent the apparatus had a life of its own. Certain procedures were developed, and certain constitutional proprieties had to be observed. Even the leader had to work in harness with others.

The years between 1959 and 1964 witnessed a dramatic reversal in the fortunes of the two major parties — the decline of the Conservatives who had dominated British politics since 1951, and the resurgence of the Labour party. On October 10th, 1959, two days after polling in the general election, a leading article in the New Statesman began: ‘Whatever the outcome of the poll, the 1959 election campaign has been a signal and significant success for Labour.’ But the paper had gone to press before the results were known, and a week later the offending sentence appeared in its ironical ‘This England’ column.

By late February it was clear to all three parties that polling day would come towards the end of March. Everyone had expected an election some time in 1966, but there had been so many false alarms that when it finally came it took almost everyone by surprise. The Conservatives, in particular, had persuaded themselves that Mr. Wilson would hold off till the autumn. Quite late in February leading Conservatives still seemed convinced that rumours of an early election were unfounded. Even Labour was caught somewhat off balance; the Prime Minister conveyed his decision to only a limited circle at first, and Transport House could not make overt preparations for fear of alerting the Con-servatives. In all three parties election planning began in earnest during the second or third week in February and had been all but completed by the end of the month.

Some years ago a Cabinet minister was driving in a remote part of the country with the Permanent Secretary in his department. It was a foggy night and eventually they realised they were lost. ‘Where are we?’, they asked a farm labourer who happened to come along the road. He looked at them, a bit puzzled. ‘In a motor-car,’ he said. The Permanent Secretary turned to the Cabinet minister: ‘That’, he commented, ‘was the perfect answer to a Parliamentary Question. It was true, it was short, and it gave away no information that was not previously available.’

In the early eighteenth century, a particularly obstreperous Member of Parliament replied in these terms to some constituents who had written to him asking him to vote against the Budget. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘I have received your letter about the excise and I am surprised at your insolence in writing to me at all. You know, and I know, that I bought this constituency. You know, and I know, that I am now determined to sell it, and you know what you think I don’t know, that you are now looking out for another buyer, and I know what you certainly don’t know, that I have now found another constituency to buy. About what you say about the excise. May God’s curse light upon you all and may it make your homes as open and free to the excise officer as your wives and daughters have always been to me while I have represented your rascally constituency.’