HC Deb 03 December 1945 vol 416 cc2027-36

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."—[Mr. Mathers.]

9.14 p.m.

Mr. Mikardo (Reading)

It is with some diffidence that I raise this evening, the matter of unnecessary drills and routines in the Army because, in some respects, I am among the least qualified to do so. [Hon. Members: "Hear hear."] I should have much preferred—and so, indeed, would the hon. Gentlemen opposite who cheer—that it had been raised by any one of the hon. and gallant Gentlemen in all parts of the House who have had a long, wide and distinguished experience in the Service, rather than by one like myself—and this will give hon. Gentlemen opposite another opportunity to cheer—whose only uniformed experience was in the Home Guard in which, as the result of several years blind devotion to duty and unquestioning obedience to my officers, I rose to the rank of private. I make bold to raise this matter because I have had a great deal of experience of men at work in other fields and in-other organisations, and of their reactions to different types of work and instructions. It is my view, which the cheering hon. Gentlemen opposite may not share, that the reaction of a citizen to work and instructions is the same whether he happens to be in uniform or not.

It being a Quarter past Nine o'Clock, the Motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."—[Mr. Mathers.]

Mr. Mikardo

I raise this question because some weeks ago I directed a Question to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for War, in which I asked about this matter, and he gave me a reply which I thought was somewhat evasive, and, indeed, disingenuous. I asked my right hon. Friend whether he proposed to take any steps with regard to men who were awaiting demobilisation to ensure that the remaining time they had to spend in the Service was not needlessly taken up with useless drills and routines. To this my right hon. Friend began by replying that he did not understand what I was getting at. I would like to suggest to him with the deep respect I feel towards him, that if he wants to know about unnecessary drills and routines in the Army, and if he will go into the nearest public bar in which four or five soldiers happen to be foregathered, he will find out very quickly what I was getting at, and will do so in short sharp words of one or two syllables, which will probably include the word "spit," the word "polish," the word "parade" and the word "fatigue." My right hon. Friend went on to say in his reply that he was concerned with tasks involving the maintenance of cleanliness in and around barracks, the clearing of battle areas, and necessary tasks of a similar nature. I am sure he realised that the point I was making was not at all concerned with tasks of that sort.

Those Members who have had the experience I have had of talking to Army audiences and of engaging in casual conversation with soldiers in trains and elsewhere, will know there is a widespread and deep resentment in the Army about fatigues, drills and parades which are not at all concerned with the maintenance of cleanliness in and around barracks, the clearing of battle areas, and tasks of that nature. In my experience soldiers, like other men, do not object, or, at any rate, do not object very fiercely, to any tasks, however distasteful, so long as they are useful, or at least appear to be useful. I would underline those last few words "useful or appear to be useful. "Lawyers tell us that it is not enough that justice should be done; it must also appear to be done. In the same way it is necessary that when men get orders they should appear to them, as well as be, sensible and intelligent orders.

People do not work well—and this is true, I am sure, of the Services as well as of factories and elsewhere—for people are thinking beings and do not stop thinking when they put on uniforms—unless they are told not merely what to do, but, unless the reason is self-evident, why they are to do it. I understand that some of our most successful field commanders in the late war ascribe their success, at least in part, to the fact that they have abandoned the Crimea War tradition: Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do or die, and instead have tried to make their plans and ideas intelligible to the men in their command. This is a highly desirable thing, but one feels that this break with tradition has not penetrated to officers and non-commissioned officers at lower levels. One feels that there are many people in responsible positions in the Army who have not understood the changes implicit in the fact that our soldiers are no longer drawn from the limited and restricted class from which they were formerly drawn, and that they are now a cross-section of the whole population who do not put their thinking caps off when they put their Army caps on. But in case—and it may well be so—it is still not understood what point I am making, I would like to quote from three letters I have had from constituents. The first is from a letter from a constituent in C.M.F. who asks, referring to the Secretary of State for War: Would he claim that lour hours a day on elementary rifle and foot drill provides valuable instruction and occupation? This happens every day to men who have been in the army five or six years. This happens to men who are going out on release the following day. Here is a further letter I have had from another constituent in C.M.F. who seems to be peeved, and so should I be in his place, at the fact that he has not only to apply blanco to his kit but to pay for it out of his own pocket and to pay for it in a manner which appears to be irregular: I have this day on orders of the CO. been to the Q.M. stores and paid 10 lire for a quarter-pint of white blanco. We have to provide our own containers and orders are that all belts and anklets will be dressed with this preparation bought from the stores. Having served in the Army almost six years, of which four have been spent abroad, I am at a loss as to why this procedure has been adopted and I wonder if you can find out for me if there are any orders whereby a C.O. of the unit is authorised to have loose money paid over the counter for which, I might add, a receipt was refused. I am inclined to share my constituent's astonishment at this procedure, which appears to me in more than one respect to be highly irregular. I could quote many other examples which have come into my hands, examples in which I have fully discounted any exaggeration and any drills and routines which appear to be necessary, but there is a residuum which appeared inexplicable, or at last which were not explained to the men concerned. I would quote just one more from a constituent in a unit on the Baltic coast: Parade at 8.15 a.m. and 9.15 a.m. Nothing to do, so it is pick up papers, clean windows every day because of the spray, and above all, keep the beach clean and tidy such as picking up wood and seaweed. Beach cleaning, picking up leaves, etc., 12 p.m.; the R.S.M. inspected the beach and saw a piece of seaweed and threatened to put the chap on a charge for not doing his duty. I suppose he did not have the mentality to know that waves bring it in and also that the leaves do not stop falling even for the Eleventh Armoured Division.

Major Guy Lloyd (Renfrew, Eastern) rose—

Mr. Mikardo

This graphic and amazing picture of British soldiers on an alien strand struggling in vain with the forces of nature represented by falling Autumn leaves and oncoming tides, makes one wonder if the officer concerned was not a lineal descendant of King Canute who sat on the beach and bade the waves go back.

I have tried hard not to overstate this case—indeed if my object were purely a critical one instead of trying to alleviate the lot of some of our soldiers I could have put it very much more strongly. What I am asking is not that there should be any relaxation of duties necessary, for discipline, order and cleanliness, but that we should start treating workers in uniform in the way we are treating workers not in uniform, as sensible human beings. In particular, I would like to direct the attention of the Minister who is going to reply to the case of men awaiting demobilisation. Those men who spent the first months of their service in training most of which must have been arduous and repetitive, and which I am sure they welcomed because they knew it would stand them in good stead, as indeed it has done. But it is a different thing when you have a man who, for the last few months or few weeks or even few days of his service is learning jobs which he knows are of no use to him at the time and will be of no use to him when he is demobilised. Making him do that sort of thing does nothing but add to his impatience with which he is waiting to be demobilised. The Minister may say that the progress of orderly demobilisation makes it inevitable that there should be some idle time and that it may be necessary to occupy the men while they are waiting for the Educational and Training Scheme to get under way, or even for such periods as are not covered by the Educational and Training Scheme, but I hope the War Office are not going to contend that any employment, useful or otherwise, is better than having men idle. That sort of doctrine may make sense when applied to children, though even there I doubt whether child psychologists would agree, but it does not make sense when applied to grown and sensible men.

It is highly desirable that the time of these men should be occupied with training schemes, lectures, informal discussions, sports, recreations and amusements of all sorts, but even outside all that and the time that they spend on their normal and necessary duties, there will often be a residuum of time, and I suggest that it is in the best interests of the men and of their morale that where there is such time they should be given some discretion in how to spend it instead of being put on to fatigues, parades and obviously useless tasks which to them represent no more than digging ditches and filling them in again. When my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for War undertook that long and arduous journey to the South-East Asia Command, he showed that he has a real sense of the value of the, personal and human approach to our soldiers and their problems. I am hoping that he will go further and will try, as one of the revolutions which this Government are going to carry out, to instil into the Army a new and intelligent approach to the psychological reactions of the men, and a new spirit as a result of which they are treated not as numbers but as human beings.

9.28 p.m.

Major Guy Lloyd (Renfrew, Eastern)

I have no wish to detain the House for more than a moment or two, because we are anxious to hear the reply of the Minister, whom we are very pleased to see back in his seat. As the hon. Member for Reading (Mr. Mikardo) would not let me interrupt for a moment, I cannot help making the remark that I would have asked him to answer. It seems to me that what he has been saying is an admirable example of the fact that vast numbers of our Servicemen are, in fact, in a state of camouflaged unemployment. It is because they have nothing to do that something has to be found for them to do. I do not doubt that here and there a unit is unwise in what it finds the men to do, but I have never heard a stronger or more eloquently expressed indictment of the lack of gumption and drive in our demobilisation schemes. It is nice to find somebody with such a vast experience of what the Services are doing today, which bears out so completely the point of view which this side of the House have been putting for so long.

9.30 p.m.

Lieutenant Herbert Hughes (Wolver-hampton, West)

I should like to reply to the speech of the hon. and gallant Member for East Renfrew (Major Lloyd). I have suffered from precisely the kind of thing which my hon. Friend the Member for Reading (Mr. Mikardo) has described, at the time when there was no question of demobilisation at all. I speak as one who has had perhaps equal experience of life in the ranks of His Majesty's Army as hon. Members who sit opposite. I well remember my first few weeks experience in the Army when there was no question of demobilisation. I was put to work, in Army time, cutting lawns, not with lawn mowers and not with shears, but with an open penknift. I remember a similar experience of a friend of mine whose first duty on joining His Majesty's Forces was to remove pieces of paper covering blacking tins in order to polish the tops of blacking tins for the weekly parade. It is no use hon. Members trying to get away with the pretence that this is new, and arises out of delayed demobilisation. Hon. Members who have served in the Forces know that this kind of thing has gone on for a good deal of time.

I would in particular draw the Minister's attention to the experience of prisoners of war with long service in His Majesty's Forces, who, after coming back to this country and spending their requisite period of leave, are taken back into His Majesty's Forces and put through the most elementary routine of rifle drill and spit and polish by N.C.Os. many years their junior in age and in Army experience. I support my hon. Friend the Member for Reading in saying that the citizens who are in our Forces today are not fed up with military life for no reason. If they can be given work to do for which they can see the justification they accept it in an admirable spirit, but it is all this nonsense introduced by many of the old type of Army officer, simply because they will not take the trouble to give their men constructive work in education, that has caused so much of the "browned-off ness"—to use an Army term—in the Service. Any Member who has served knows what my hon. Friend the Member for Reading is referring to. I would correct him on one point. If he went to the local pub he would not hear "spit" or "polish"; he would hear one single word which would much more graphically describe what he meant.

9.33 p.m.

The Financial Secretary to the War Office (Mr. Bellenger)

Both the Secretary of State for War and I have served in the ranks in our time. We are fully aware that from time immemorial—in fact, I think, Shakespeare even referred to it in some of his writings—the soldier has not liked fatigues. He does not like spit and polish, and I cannot say I liked those two very necessary parts of Army life any more than does the modern soldier. The point of the speech made by my hon. Friend the Member for Reading (Mr. Mikardo) was not directed so much against spit and polish, as against excessive spit and polish, and there I am in agreement with him. When I was in the ranks I always felt that I wanted to be a smart soldier. I believe that any soldier who is a good soldier, wants, and especially the soldier who has done years of fighting, when he has finished the fighting and has come out of the trenches, to smarten himself up.

Therefore, I am not in disagreement with those commanding officers who insist on as high a standard of smartness among their troops as possible. Of course, it is idle for me to deny that commanding officers vary just as much as Members of Parliament, and I should not be at all surprised if some of them were not so good in man management as others. That would possibly account for the fact that in some units, isolated I think, and by no means general in the Army, there is not so much attention paid to thinking out desirable exercises and training as there is in others. Certain units, very small in number say, in the orders of the day, "Give 'em a route march," or "Put 'em on the square." At the War Office we do not defend that sort of thing. I can assure my hon. Friend that if he has cases such as he has specified today of excessive drill, and elementary drill in particular for soldiers who are trained, we will look into those cases.

At the War Office we are constantly urging that the commanding officers, especially in times like these when we know that the men have only got one thought, and that is to get home, should vary the training of the men as much as they possibly can. Indeed, we at the War Office have done quite a lot of which we hear so little. It is much easier to throw into prominence such letters as, these in which my hon. Friend has taken such a delight than the hundreds which we are receiving thanking us for the educational facilities that we are putting at the disposal of the troops nowadays, and the pre-vocational training such as many of them are getting. I speak from my own experience because I have recently visited B.A.O.R. and have seen the men at work there. I can assure the House that B.A.O.R. had plenty to do besides fatigue and elementary training, and I saw some of our men working in the general workshops undergoing training for their return to civil life, training in building, light engineering and even in art designing and I know how grateful the men are for these facilities. As they say, the more they can get the more they welcome it. We are doing as much as we possibly can to afford these facilities to the troops.

My hon. Friend spoke of what is known as spit and polish. I have my own ideas and have said quite a lot about spit and polish. I think a good deal of spit and polish, as such, entirely unnecessary. For instance, I have not hesitated to say when I was in a less responsible position than I am now, that I see no reason why there should be so much metalwork in the soldier's equipment. The fact is that even in these days of battle dress, when the metal part of the uniform has been reduced as much as possible, there still is the webbing equipment which has to be polished, although we know only too well that the whole art of war is to camouflage as much as possible. The Rifle Regiments do not have to clean their buttons because they are black. The Navy has lacquered buttons and so has the American Army. I am not hiding any feelings when I say that I hope the time will come when even our Army can do away with a considerable amount of spit and polish, but, make no mistake about it, we shall always insist on a high standard of smartness as long as we have soldiers. That and the elementary training they have had conduce to some of the finest exploits that our soldiers have performed in battle. The soldier understands his job, especially the modern soldier who is much more educated than his forbear of 50 years ago, and, in addition, he knows the reason for many of the elementary exercises he has had to perform.

With regard to the charge to the soldier for his spit and polish, I wonder if my hon. Friend knows that the soldier gets 5½d. a week towards the maintenance of his kit and towards the purchase of his polish kit. I feel, and I have said so many times in the past, that spit and polish should be a free issue. When my right hon. Friend has got the time to spare to attend to what after all are the small things in the Army—and he has so many big things to consider at present—I hope that it will be possible to make this a free issue. If this is done, then perhaps we shall see a little less variation than we see at the present moment in the colour of the spit and polish. You can now see some equipment in which the blanco is nearly white, some which is a very high canary colour, and some which is green. As in these matters I believe in uniformity I would be in favour of making this a free issue. Nevertheless, the soldier gets 5½d. at the present time, so it is not true to say that the cost of all his "spit and polish" comes out of his own pocket. As to the specific cases to which my hon. Friend referred, if I thought the British Army was engaged in cleaning beaches and picking up pieces of seaweed, I should have either to alter it or to resign my position at the War Office, for that would be making a laughing stock of the British Army.

Mr. C. S. Taylor (Eastbourne)

It has been said by an hon. Member that he was engaged in cutting grass with a penknife. There is a specific instance, and I challenge the hon. Member to give particulars to the Financial Secretary to the War Office so that he can look into the case. I do not believe it possible.

Mr. Bellenger

All I can say in that respect is, that if there are any cases like this, which seem to me to be fantastic, but which I am prepared to take from my hon. Friends, the least that they can do is to give me an opportunity of investigating them.

Lieutenant Hughes

I am willing to give all details to the Minister, and I would like to ask you, Mr. Speaker, whether it is in Order for the hon. Member opposite to impute falsehoods in regard to my speech.

Mr. Speaker

The hon. Member was not imputing falsehoods but asking for details.

Mr. Bellenger

It seems to be stretching the point a little, but, if my hon. Friend could give me evidence of that, I will certainly look into it. I can assure him that it is not by any means general in the Army, although the House might be interested to know that, when I joined up in 1914—it was in the early days of the rush of many young men to volunteer for their King and country—for my first two or three weeks I ate my food with my fingers and a pair of pocket scissors. But that is a long time ago. We hope that today the instance which my hon. Friend has given is a rarity. I would only say to my hon. Friend the Member for Reading (Mr. Mikardo) that, unfortunately, he has not given us an opportunity of investigating those individual cases which he has mentioned tonight, but if he wishes them to be investigated, we will certainly do so.

I can assure him that both my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and I are concerned with making the Army as attractive as we possibly can to those who have to serve in it, in war or in peace. We are now engaged in drawing up our plans so as to make the Army a career well worth while for any educated man. We believe that when we announce this plan, as we will shortly, we shall be able to attract well-educated recruits to the Army who will not think it beneath them to join the Army and make it a career. I can only say to my hon. Friend that we are very much concerned to see that this browning-off period, which we know only too well, is alleviated as much as possible. We are taking the necessary steps, as many hon. Members know, to put that fully into effect, and we have already received many grateful thanks from soldiers who have benefited by it.

Brigadier Low (Blackpool, North)

Will the Financial Secretary to the War Office or the hon. Member for Reading (Mr. Mikardo) let us know now, or as soon as possible, which is the unit against whom the charges have been made tonight of fatigues on the beach? I belong to a small deputation from this House who have recently been among the units who might be on the Baltic and did not find any such spirit among those men.

It being a quarter to Ten o'Clock, MR. SPEAKER adjourned the House, without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.