Editorial Comment
The Herald
July 26 2005
DECISIONS which could wipe out more than 300 years of Scotland's military heritage and harm recruitment north of the border for a generation are being taken behind closed doors by a handful of senior Army officers without the constraints of public or even meaningful internal consultation.
If the serving and retired generals who purport to represent the six existing Scottish infantry units as the council of honorary colonels continue to do the bidding of Whitehall accountants via a compliant top brass in the Ministry of Defence, then the unique traditions and bonds which have sustained Scotland's soldiers through centuries of war and peacekeeping will be lost forever.
The honorary colonels are now squabbling over the crumbs from the table of reorganisation announced by the Army's executive board in December. Their quarrel, which, ironically, may yet delay the formation of the new Royal Regiment of Scotland on the iconic date of St Andrew's Day this year, is focused on what insignia and apparel will be left to them after the amalgamation of their formations into an amorphous mass of Scottish infantry wearing a common tartan and sporting a common capbadge.
Their fight is about trews versus kilts and the survival of hackles and feathers, the so-called Golden Thread of continuity they were promised when General Sir Mike Jackson, the chief of the general staff, bowed to political pressure and financial expediency last year.
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The colonels' concern is a dangerous diversion from the real issue. Insignia matters to the extent that it acknowledges the individuality of the regimental family. The survival of that family or families should have been the real subject of debate, not only at the closed sessions of the honorary council at Craigiehall, but in the wider Scottish community from which the ranks of the regiments are drawn.
The Army is not, and never can be, a democracy. But when so-called "reform" threatens to undo irrevocably the complex social weave between the men and women in uniform and their tribal heartlands, then it becomes a matter of legitimate public concern. It should also be of concern to the general staff.
When the Gordon Highlanders and the Queen's Own Highlanders were forced to undergo a cutback-induced shotgun wedding in the early 1990s, local tribal loyalty was such that it was a decade before the first volunteer came forward from the Gordons' formerly fertile recruitment area to enlist in the new formation.
Scotland's regiments are clannish. Despite falling recruitment across the Army, the rifle companies of the King's Own Scottish Borderers and the Black Watch are still filled with sets of brothers. All six Scottish regiments can trace back the service of great-grandfathers, grandfathers, fathers and sons from the same families. Their descendants want to follow in their footsteps rather than become "GI Jock" in some anonymous, US-style unit.
The alternative, in a world where the Army is expected to shoulder ever-increasing commitments, is that they may not join at all.
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