A duty to be different
A good deal of the citizen’s ambivalence about the soldier has gone. A recent survey discovered that the armed forces enjoyed more public esteem than politicians, the church, the civil service or the press.
'... [the army] will need to persuade teachers and parents alike that soldiers are not ‘brutal and licentious’ ...'
However, as the army has shrunk, and the threat posed by terrorism has turned its barracks into no-go areas and made soldiers in uniform an unfamiliar sight, so the level of public understanding of the army has diminished. It will need to justify some of its practices, like its formalised hierarchy and code of law, to an increasingly pluralistic and non-deferential society.
As educational levels increase and demographic pressures diminish the pool from which the army recruits, it will need to persuade teachers and parents alike that soldiers are not ‘brutal and licentious’, as the 18th century might have argued, but professionals whose skills are valued and valuable.
Yet if it moves to meet social change in some respects, in others it must continue to emphasise that much of what it does is wholly unlike anything in civilian society. And here it has not simply a right, but a duty to be different.
About the author
Richard Holmes is professor of military and security studies at Cranfield University. His books include The Little Field Marshal: Sir John French and Riding the Retreat, and he is general editor of The Oxford Companion to Military History. He enlisted into the Territorial Army in 1965 and rose to the rank of brigadier. He was the first reservist to hold the post of Director of Reserve Forces and Cadets in the Ministry of Defence, until he retired in 2000.
Published: 2005-02-28
