Prof Carl Chinn: full speech from Westside BID’s Armed Forces Day event

Thank you Honorary Alderman John Lines, president of SSAFA Armed Forces Greater Birmingham. Thanks also to the standard bearers of the Federation of Birmingham Ex-Service Associations, who conducted the Raising of the Flag Ceremony in Centenary Square on Monday to launch Armed Services Week, and our appreciation to all veterans and serving military personnel, their families and representatives, and to all cadets.

Armed Forces Day is an opportunity to show our support for the men and women who make up the Armed Forces community, whoever they are and wherever they’re from, and we must remember that this community embraces those serving and their families, as well as cadets and veterans and their families.

Given that Birmingham City Council is not putting on anything officially for Armed Forces Day, we are grateful for today’s event to the team at Westside BID, Kay Cadman and her team at Brindleyplace, and SSAFA Armed Forces Greater Birmingham, which is staffed entirely by volunteers and which older folk like me will recall as the Soldiers’, Sailors’ and Airmen’s Families’ Association.

The Armed Forces Covenant

An Enduring Covenant Between the People of the United Kingdom, His Majesty’s Government and All those who serve or have served in the Armed Forces of the Crown And their Families.

The first duty of Government is the defence of the realm. Our Armed Forces fulfil that responsibility on behalf of the Government, sacrificing some civilian freedoms, facing danger and, sometimes, suffering serious injury or death as a result of their duty. Families also play a vital role in supporting the operational effectiveness of our Armed Forces. In return, the whole nation has a moral obligation to the members of the Naval Service, the Army and the Royal Air Force, together with their families. They deserve our respect and support, and fair treatment.

Those who serve in the Armed Forces, whether Regular or Reserve, those who have served in the past, and their families, should face no disadvantage compared to other citizens in the provision of public and commercial services. Special consideration is appropriate in some cases, especially for those who have given most such as the injured and the bereaved.

This obligation involves the whole of society: it includes voluntary and charitable bodies, private organisations, and the actions of individuals in supporting the Armed Forces. Recognising those who have performed military duty unites the country and demonstrates the value of their contribution.

This Covenant is an informal understanding and though not enshrined in law or by contract it is something of great seriousness. The term and the idea were coined in a Ministry of Defence booklet published in 2000 called Soldiering – The Military Covenant (booklet), UK.

Whether governments and society keep their obligations to support members of the armed forces is a moot point, but Armed Services Day is an opportunity to honour our armed services and to highlight the importance of the Armed Services Covenant.

The Armed Services

What then are the British Armed Forces, or His Majesty’s Armed Forces.

They are the military forces responsible for the defence of the United Kingdom, its Overseas Territories and the Crown Dependencies and also promote the UK’s wider interests, support international peacekeeping efforts, and provide humanitarian aid.

The British Armed Forces were formed in 1707 through the union of England with Scotland in the Kingdom of Great Britain. In 1800, the Act of Union with the kingdom of Ireland formed the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Following the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1921, the name of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland was officially adopted through the Royal and Parliamentary Titles Act 1927. With the last independent Welsh kingdom conquered in 1284, officially Wales became a principality and de facto attached to England in the various acts of union.

The British Armed Forces are acknowledged as amongst the leading military forces in the world, having fought in the French and Napoleonic wars, the Crimean War, the First World War, the Second World War, the Korean War,  the Falklands War, the Iraq wars, and in various other theatres of operation.

The British Armed Forces include standing forces, the Regular Reserve, Volunteer Reserves, and Sponsored Reserves and it consists of the three main elements:

The Royal Navy, a blue water navy capable of operating globally across the deep waters of open oceans with it fleet, together with the Royal Marines, a highly specialised amphibious light infantry force;

The British Army, the United Kingdom’s land army; The Royal Air Force, a technologically sophisticated force with an operational fleet including fixed-wing and rotary aircraft.

The Oath of Allegiance

His Majesty Charles III is the Head of the British Armed Forces.  On enlistment, the Army and Air Force Acts require members of the Army, Royal Air Force, and Royal Marines to take an oath of allegiance to the Monarch.

“I swear by almighty God that I will be faithful, and bear true allegiance to his Majesty King Charles III, his heirs, and successors, and that I will as in duty bound, honestly and faithfully defend his Majesty, his heirs, and successors in person, crown and dignity, against all enemies, and will observe and obey all orders of His Majesty, his heirs, and successors and the generals and officers set over me.”

There is a version for those with beliefs other than Christian:

“I do solemnly, sincerely and truly declare and affirm that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, her heirs and successors and that I will as in duty bound honestly and faithfully defend her Majesty, her heirs and successors in person, crown and dignity against all enemies and will observe and obey all orders of her Majesty, her heirs and successors and of the generals and officers set over me.”

Both oaths make plain a commitment to serve whenever and wherever they are needed, whatever the difficulties or dangers may be. Such commitment imposes certain limitations on individual freedom and requires a degree of self-sacrifice. Ultimately it may require those who have taken the oath to lay down their lives. Implicitly it requires those in positions of authority to discharge in full their moral responsibilities to subordinates.

Selfless commitment is reflected in the wording of the Oath of Allegiance. Personal interests are subordinate to those of the unit, Army and Nation, as represented by the Crown. Personal commitment is the foundation of military service and the needs of the mission and of the team always come first.

No oath of allegiance is sworn by members of the Royal Navy, which is not maintained under an Act of Parliament but by the royal prerogative, so that loyalty to the monarch was taken as given.

Executive authority over the Armed Forces is exercised by the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Defence.

The Senior Service: The Royal Navy

His Majesty’s Naval Service consists of the Royal Navy, Royal Marines, Royal Fleet Auxiliary, Royal Naval Reserve, Royal Marines Reserve, and Naval Careers Service

Commissioned in 1994 on Whale Island, Portsmouth, HMS King Alfred is the Royal Naval Reserve unit associated with the city and is one of the largest units in the country. Of course, it is named after King Alfred the Great who is credited with founded the Navy. However, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle noted an engagement in 851 involving King Æthelstan of Kent who reputedly defeated a Viking force near Sandwich. This is the first known instance of a victory for an English fleet as the first recorded naval engagement of Alfred’s reign was a generation later with an attack on a fleet of seven Viking ships in 875.

In the succeeding centuries, England didn’t have a dedicated fleet of warships, but during the Hundred Years War, kings had merchant ships converted for war by building forecastles, after castles and crows nests, and supplemented their crews with archers and men-at-arms to grapple with and board enemy ships. However, under King Edward III, the Cinque Ports provided vessels for a period each year for royal military purposes in return for trading privileges. And it was under Edward III that the English won a great naval battle at Sluys in 1340, defeating the French and their Genoese and Castilian allies.

Under Henry V’s plans to invade France, four ‘great ships’ were constructed between 1413 and 1420 to eliminate French sea power so that his transport ships could safely land troops in France. Two of them were involved in the Battle of the Seine in 1416 when a fleet of English defeated and scattered a Franco-Genoese naval force blockading the recently conquered port of Harfleur. This was one of the few naval battles fought by an English fleet in the medieval period. 

After the destructive Wars of the Roses, Henry VII commanded the building of warships for a navy, which was continued by his son, Henry VII, known as the ‘father’ of the Royal Navy,, who built up a standing fleet known as the Navy Royal. Because of this, the Royal Navy is the senior service of the British Armed Forces. One of Henry’s ‘great ships’ was the Mary Rose, named after his favourite sister and the Tudor emblem. It carried much heavier cannon which could fire a ‘broadside’ through ‘gunports’, but it was sunk in 1545, the Mary Rose sank during an engagement with a French invasion fleet close to Portsmouth Harbour.

By Henry’s death, the Navy Royal consisted of over 40 ships with its own dockyard at Portsmouth, ship builders, and administration, which became the Navy Board and Office of the Admiralty. Under Elizabeth 1, the Navy Royal was strengthened by the Sea Dogs, privateers under the command of men like Sir Francis Drake authorised to attack Spanish shipping – and of course, the Sea Dogs played a pivotal role in the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588.

Neither James I nor Charles 1 were willing or able to invest in the building up of a stronger navy and it became so weak that it couldn’t protect the Channel coast from Barbary Pirates. in North Africa. After the execution of Charles I, the Commonwealth government, led by Oliver Cromwell, realised the urgent need to stop the decline in Britain’s navy and strong measures were taken to build it up and improve it. This programme was helped by experienced sea commanders, such as the brilliant Admiral Blake, who improved naval tactics and led the English fleet to victory in the First Anglo–Dutch War (1652–54).

In 1660, with the Restoration, King Charles II inherited a huge fleet of 154 ships. During his reign it became the Royal Navy and began to change from a corrupt and inefficient service into a powerful fighting force thanks largely to Samuel Pepys. Better known as the famous 17th century British diarist, he became secretary to the Admiralty in 1673. Often praised as ‘the father of the modern Royal Navy’, he instituted a series of major reforms laying the foundations for a professional naval service and improving discipline, training and conditions.

Britain was now establishing itself as a major naval power but faced stiff competition from first the Dutch and then the French. However, remarkable successes in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars ensured the domination of the Royal Navy, with Lord Nelson’s famous victory at Trafalgar in 1805 effectively ending any further contest at sea.

For the rest of the 19th century, the Royal Navy helped enforce the Pax Britannica, the long period of relative peace arising from a balance of power between the major European states depending on British maritime supremacy. The Royal Navy remained the world’s most powerful navy until the Second World War, and its supremacy in the Atlantic was pivotal to the success of allied amphibious operations.

Today, in size and importance it is behind only the USA , China, and Russia. Operating from Portsmouth, Clyde and Devonport, the largest operational naval base in Western Europe, as well as two naval air stations, it is essential to the defence of the |United Kingdom.

The Royal Marines

Formed in Charles II’s reign of in 1664 as the Duke of York and Albany’s Maritime Regiment of Foot (or Admiral’s Regiment), the name Marines first appeared in the records in 1672 and from 1802 they were titled the Royal Marines by King George III. 

Royal Marines captured the mole in Gibralter in 1704, were involved in the Battle of Trafalgar, captured Washington in the War of 1812 and burnt it, and protected Europeans in Peking during the Boxer Rebellion of 1900.

 In 1914, they helped to protect Ostend and Antwerp, where at their side was Winston Churchill, the First Lord of the Admiralty. During the Second World War the Infantry Battalions of the Royal Marine Division were re-organised as Commandos, joining the British Army Commandos. The Division command structure became a Special Service Brigade command. The support troops became landing craft crew and saw extensive action on D-Day in June 1944.

Since then, the Royal Marines were crucial in the Falklands War and have also been involved in humanitarian work delivering aid and support.

The Army

One of the great traits of the British Army is its doggedness in adversity. Another is determination not to buckle before superior forces, no matter how mighty. Yet another is the resolve to stay loyal to comrades. Those characteristics are deeply rooted and are at the heart of an epic Anglo-Saxon poem recounting The Battle of Maldon in 991.

England was but a new nation, having been hammered into being over the previous century upon the anvil of conflict between Anglo Saxons and Vikings. Now, renewed Viking raids threatened the independence of England, ruled as it was by a weak king, Ethelred the Unready.

But if he was prepared to pay off the invaders with Danegeld, his people were not so feeble, as were shown by the men of Essex. Led by their ealdorman, they faced up to a mightier Viking force atthe River Blackwater. The valiant earl ordered his men to drive away their horses, ensuring that there could be no retreat, and deaf to the threats of the Danes and their demands to be paid off, he placed three strong warriors on the causeway across the river to hold off the enemy.

Fair even in the midst of bloody conflict, Byrhtnoth harked to the Viking’s calls for them to be allowed across the river to join full combat and gave up his defensive strongpoint. Fierce battle was joined and at last the earl was felled. A few of his men fled, but the greater part vowed to fight to the death and so they did.

In the Anglo-Saxon age, kings, earls, and thanes were protected by their house carls, professional warriors. There was no standing army. Nor was there under the Normans, whose armies were raised through the feudal obligations of greater and lesser lords and their knights. Such a system continued until the Tudors, when local raised part-time militia were supplemented by mercenaries in wars with France and Scotland.

During the English Civil War, Parliament established a New Model Army in 1645 – the country’s first that was permanent, well-trained, well-disciplined, well-drilled and able to fight anywhere. It was the decisive force in the wars, from its first win at Naseby (1645) to its final victory at Worcester (1651).

In battle, the New Model Army adopted effective ‘all arms’ methods which had been filtering into England from the Continent and involved co-ordinating infantry, artillery and cavalry in rapid, flexible warfare.

At his restoration, Charles II recognised the advantages of a standing army, not least to his own survival of his regime. n 1660-61, Charles raised a force of 5,000 men known as the ‘King’s Guards and Garrisons’. On 26 January 1661, he issued the warrant creating the English Army.

Financed by a new Parliament, it included Royalist units from his exile – like the King’s Troop of Horse Guards, later The Life Guards, and old regiments from the New Model Army which were disbanded and quickly re-mustered – such as Monck’s Regiment, later The Coldstream Guards.

The ‘Guards and Garrisons’ were based in London and at coastal fortifications and represent the beginning of the British Army tradition. In 1689 the existence of the army and its loyalty and discipline were regulated by the first Mutiny Act; a new act had to be passed by Parliament each subsequent year, thereby ensuring that the army was controlled by the law of the land.

Charles was also the king of Ireland and Scotland, so their parliaments paid for units as well. By the mid-1660s, the Irish Army numbered around 5,000 infantry and 2,500 cavalry. Its Scottish counterpart had about 3,000 men.

The English Army was supplemented by local militia and crushed Monmouth’s rebellion at Sedgemoor in 1685 but in 1688, it did not fight for King James II who was forced to flee following the landing of William of Orange and his wife Mary, James’s sister.

In 1689, the Bill of Rights stated that a standing army was illegal without Parliament’s consent, and that Parliament had the right to vote funds for its maintenance. The Mutiny Act was also passed, effectively giving Parliament a veto over the very existence of an army. To this day, the British Army’s continuation depends on Parliamentary consent.

The English Army went on to serve in Europe, America, the West Indies, and India, and in 1707 with the Act of Union and during the War of the Spanish Succession, the English and Scottish armies were officially merged forming the British Army.

During that war, the troops gained a fearsome reputation. As part of a coalition commanded by John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, they inflicted a series of defeats on the supposedly ‘invincible’ French armies of Louis XIV, the Sun King.

During the 18th and 19th centuries, the army grew in size with the expansion of the British Empire and it developed as an effective fighting force, emphasised by victories in the Napoleonic Wars. In the early 20^th century reforms introduced the British Expeditionary Force and Territorial Army.  Conscription in the First and Second World Wars increased its size, and the British Army was crucial to the defeat of Germany in 1918 and Nazi Germany in 1945.

In 1960 conscription was ended and an all-volunteer army again created. Today, though much reduced in numbers, the British Army is a highly professional and effective force.

The Royal Air Force

Theyoungest of the three British armed services, the Royal Air Force is charged with the air defence of the United Kingdom and the fulfilment of international defence commitments. It is the world’s oldest independent air force.

In February 1911 the Admiralty allowed four naval officers to take a course of flying instruction on airplanes and in December first naval flying school was formed. Then in 1912, a combined Royal Flying Corps was formed with naval and military wings and a Central Flying School.

However, in 1914, the specialised aviation requirements of the Royal Navy led to the naval wing of the RFC becoming the Royal Naval Air Service, with the land-based wing retaining the title Royal Flying Corps.

During the First World War, specialised aircraft were produced for fighting, bombing, reconnaissance, and aerial photography. The growth and versatility of the air forces showed that air power had a separate and essential role to play in modern warfare, independent of, but in closest cooperation with, the older services. This was recognised on 1 April 1918 when the RNAS and RFC were absorbed into the newly-created RAF, which took its place beside the Royal Navy and British Army as a separate service with its own ministry under a secretary of state for air.

The RAF carried out its first independent operations during the closing months of the war in a series of strategic bombardments of targets in France and Germany by a specialized force of heavy bombers in support of ground forces. It was also effective in Palestine attack, destroying the retreating Turkish Seventh Army at Wadi el Fara. T. E. Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia, wrote: “It was the RAF that converted the retreat into a rout, which had abolished their telephone and telegraph connections, had blocked their lorry columns and scattered their infantry units”

The new RAF was the most powerful air force in the world with more than 290,000 personnel and nearly 23,000 aircraft. The renowned South African general, Jan Christian Smuts said of Air Power: ‘There is absolutely no limit to the scale of its future independent war use’.

In 1925, the Auxiliary Service was formed, later gaining the prefix royal because the success of its squadrons in the Second World War. Of course, after the Fall of France, the RAF saved Britain from invasion in the summer of 1940 when it defeated the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain, in which the Spitfire fighter plane was so effective. As Churchill declared, ‘Never in the field of human endeavour has so much been owed by so many to so few’. But the pilots and bomber crews could never have won that battle without the radar scientists; the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force; volunteers of the Royal Observer Corps; plotters; tellers; controllers; telephone engineers; production workers in our aircraft factories; airfield ground crews; and the Commanders. Many of those pilots were from what is now the Commonwealth and Ireland, others were Czechs and Poles, and later 5,000 ground crew were volunteers from the West Indies.

The RAF Regiment was formed in 1942. It secures air fields and provides forward air control personnel to British Army and Royal Marine ground forces.

Now a smaller, more focused force, the RAF remains a potent instrument for projecting British influence across the globe and upon his accession in 2022, King Charles III became its Air Commodore-in-Chief.

Women and the Armed Services

The Women’s Royal Naval Service was formed in 1917 during the First World War. On 10 October 1918, nineteen-year-old Josephine Carr from Cork became the first Wren to die on active service, when her ship was torpedoed. By the end of the war the WRNS had 5,500 members

Disbanded in 1919, the service was revived in 1939 at the beginning of the Second World War. WRNS included cooks, clerks, wireless telegraphists, radar plotters, weapons analysts, range assessors, electricians and air mechanics.  At its peak in 1944 it had 75,000 active servicewomen -102 were killed in action and 22 wounded in action. One of the slogans used in recruitment posters was “Join the Wrens and free a man for the Fleet”. The WRNS remained active until integrated into the Royal Navy in 1993 when women were allowed to serve on board navy vessels as full members of the crew.

The Women’s Royal Air Force existed from 1918-20 and then in 1949, it was revived when the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, which had been founded in 1939, was re-established on a regular footing as the Women’s Royal Air Force. The WRAF and the RAF grew closer over the following decades, with increasing numbers of trades opened to women, and the two services formally merged in 1994, marking the full assimilation of women into the British forces and the end of the Women’s Royal Air Force.

The Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps  formed in 1917 as a voluntary service, its members serving as clerks, cooks, telephonists, and waitresses. Disbanded in 1921, in 1938 it was succeeded by the Auxiliary Territorial Service. Servicewomen performed important tasks operating searchlight equipment and radars, and forming part of the crews of signallers and anti-aircraft guns. By 1945, the ATS numbered 190,000 servicewomen, including Mary Churchill, youngest daughter of the prime minister, Winston Churchill, and Princess Elizabeth, our late Queen Elizabeth II, who trained as a lorry driver, ambulance driver and mechanic.

The ATS was succeeded by the Women’s Royal Army Corps which included all women in the British Army from 1949 to 1992 – all that is except medical, dental and veterinary officers and chaplains, who belonged to the same corps as the men; the Ulster Defence Regiment, which recruited women from 1973, and nurses, who belonged to Queen Alexandra’s Royal Army Nursing Corps. We should also mention the Queen Alexandra’s Royal Naval Nursing Service.

In October 1990, WRAC officers employed with other corps were transferred to those corps and in April 1992 the WRAC was disbanded and its remaining members transferred to the Corps they served with.

Gurkhas

Since 1817, Gurkhas have fought with the British Armed Forces and between both World Wars over 238,000 enlisted into the Gurkha Brigade. Following the partition of India in 1947, a Brigade of Gurkhas remained in the British Army. Since then they have served loyally in the Malayan Emergency, Borneo, Hong Kong, Falklands, Kosovo, South Sudan, Poland, Estonia, and Afghanistan but have not always been appreciated by politicians.

In upholding the claim of six Gurkha soldiers for the right to settle in Britain at the end of their service, Mr Justice Blake’s judgment in September 2008 recited the Military Covenant before observing that granting them residence in Britain “would, in my judgment, be a vindication and an enhancement of this covenant”.

ENDS