So the Royal Scots and the King’s Own Scottish Borderers are to be merged, to form one battalion in the new “super-regiment”. No doubt the new formation will be given some suitably emollient name, such as the 5th Battalion (The Royal Scots Borderers), The Scottish Regiment.
The organiser of the Save the Scottish Regiments campaign, Jeff Duncan, dismisses assurances that the former regiments will retain their identities as nothing but spin, and writes: “If this ill-conceived and hastily prepared money-saving exercise is carried through it will be the end of the famous Scottish regiments. Three years into a “super-regiment” and nobody except ex-soldiers will remember the name of the Black Watch or the KOSB. The Ministry of Defence (MoD) will cut and restructure at will, until a barely recognisable Scottish army exists.”
When the Defence Review was announced in the summer, I disputed its rationale, pointing out that to cut infantry numbers made little sense at a time when demands for the use of British soldiers in peacekeeping roles were becoming more frequent. I argued that we needed more infantry battalions, not fewer. Nothing that has since come from defence chiefs and defence ministers has countered that argument. The case against infantry cuts remains powerful. However, the responses of politicians to the cuts and merger, and re-structuring have made an interesting study.
At last week’s Tory Conference, in Bournemouth, the party tied itself in knots over the issue. Michael Howard pledged that if any Scottish regiment were cut, a Tory Government would reverse the decision. The next day his defence spokesman, Nicholas Soames, seemed to back-track. Once an amalgamation had taken place he said, you couldn’t “dismalgamate”. Quite why isn’t clear: businesses do this sort of thing frequently.
The only Scottish Tory MP, Peter Duncan, intervened to clarify matters. If the Tories won the next election, he said, they would reverse the decision, since amalgamation would not yet have taken place. If a Labour government was returned and the new “super-regiment” was created, then “physical reinstatement becomes more difficult” — though not, I should have thought, impossible.
“Labour,” Mr Duncan said, “will not save our regiments, and the SNP cannot save them, as it cannot form the United Kingdom government.” The last point is evidently true. The SNP opposes the defence cuts with vigour, but is on weak ground when defence questions are debated. It’s far from clear what the SNP would consider the defence requirements of an independent Scotland to be. Given the ferocity of Alex Salmond’s opposition to foreign adventures in Kosovo (“unpardonable folly”) and Iraq (“Blair has blood on his hands”) we might make do with a ceremonial guard for Holyrood and a couple of territorial battalions.
There’s something hypocritical about SNP huffing-and-puffing on defence issues.
More interestingly, this week Jack McConnell let it be known, by way of a spokesman, that he “thinks the identity of the six Scottish battalions is important, both to local communities and to Scotland, and those identities should be protected within any new structure. He does not think that the suggestion to merge the Royal Scots with the KOSB serves that view.”
As opposition to the defence secretary Geoff Hoon’s plans go, this is a bit timid and lukewarm. Perhaps more importantly, how much weight will Mr McConnell’s response to MoD plans have in Whitehall? Lieutenant General Sir John MacMillan, the former General Officer Commanding, Scotland, thought it “nice of Jack McConnell to put his oar in” but didn’t know “how much ice he cuts with Whitehall”. However, he added, “It would be embarrassing for someone so conspicuous north of the border going against a policy which has been dictated to the army.”
Nicola Sturgeon, Alex Salmond’s vicar in Holyrood, says the first minister “is trying to pull a fast one, in typical Jack style.” His support for the threatened regiments is “meaningless” because Scotland doesn’t have the power to take decisions about our soldiers. True enough, though power is not identical with influence.
Meanwhile, there is another actor who has been silent: Alastair Darling. Remember him? He’s the secretary of state for Scotland, or at least he is in the few moments that he can spare from being Britain’s secretary of state for transport.
Inasmuch as the secretary of state for Scotland still has a role in these post-devolution days, it is surely as a spokesman for Scottish interests in those areas of government which the Scotland Act has declared reserved to Westminster. Defence is such a reserved matter. The secretary of state for Scotland has properly an interest in defence policy and decisions when these affect Scotland. He represents the British government in Scotland, but he is also Scotland’s man in the Cabinet.
Before devolution, any secretary of state, Tory or Labour, would have been actively concerned with such a matter as the re-organisation of Scottish regiments. He would have alerted the cabinet to the strength of Scottish feeling, and would have made private representations to the defence minister. He would have let journalists know how fiercely he was fighting the proposals. He would have given warning to the cabinet that to allow the MoD’s plans to go forward was offering a gift to opposition parties. He might have muttered about — even threatened — resignation. In short, he would have thumped the Scottish card onto the table.
The Scottish card might not have always taken the trick, but it often did. But has Darling been active in this matter? Not visibly. Since being appointed Scottish secretary, he has been well nigh the invisible man. It might be of course that in the new Blairite order, matters such as defence reviews are no longer brought before the cabinet. It might be that Darling has been active behind the scenes, putting pressure on Geoff Hoon. If so, that pressure has not told. He might even have taken the matter to the prime minister himself. But if so, he would seem to have been given the brush-off. It makes one wonder what the secretary of state is for — or at least what Darling is for — if he can’t even play the Scottish card.
Some may argue that devolution has so weakened the influence of Scotland within the United Kingdom’s government that the Scottish card will no longer take a trick. This may be so; it was always a possible consequence of going for devolution. Yet, it still seems likely that a combined operation carried out by the secretary of state and the first minister would be effective. But will Darling oblige? If he doesn’t, then the time-honoured warning so often issued by Scottish secretaries of state might prove good: Hoon and the MoD of defence are offering a gift to the opposition parties in Scotland, one of which, the Tories, is well placed to use it.
