Perhaps the leaders of PDFORRA, in the odd moment or two when they are not processing Army deafness claims, might take a trip down to the Custom House docks area and look for dockers. They will seek in vain. They might make similar trips to Liverpool docks and the East End of London, and they will find all manner of things there: restaurants, coffeeshops, art galleries and macrame workshops. But, apart from the odd symbolic heritage-industry theme-park model of a dock, they will see neither dock nor docker. All three ex-docklands are a testimony to what happens when unions decide to strangle the goose to get at the gold.
Within a couple of years, if proposals to reduce the Army to three battalions are implemented after next's White paper, it will become a mere theme-park militia discharging no worthwhile military function and attracting few capable volunteers. The goose will then be cooked.
Army morale
There are reasons for this. The PDFORRA-backed deafness claims have gravely hurt both the Army's morale and the political good will which the Army has enjoyed down the decades. This litigiousness might well be a symptom of an Army with a seriously damaged esprit de corps; certainly, some soldiers have told me that they felt the Army had become a club for the officers.
Maybe. But that is an argument for reform, not for the reduction of the Army to below critical mass: and three battalions is well below critical mass, for not merely would such an Army be able only to field at best one battalion of infantry, it is unlikely that it would attract the human materiel which any modern army absolutely must have: the brave, the bright, the obedient, the decisive, the bold.
But there are no external threats to us, and the North is quietly subsiding; so why not have a three-battalion Army? Why not reduce our military expenditure in proportion with existing threats? Better still, why not disband the Army altogether, and arm a section of the Garda Siochana for internal security duties? Good questions, and the last is the best and the most relevant.
There is something deeply dishonest and immoral about having an army which merely appears to be an army, costing a great deal of money but unable to discharge any serious military functions. It is more decent simply to disband the Army altogether. But that effectively would mean the closure of the Department of Defence; and whatever governments do, they do not cut the Civil Service. The very reason for the existence of this State is to give jobs to the public service, is it not?
Political nerve
That is why the Army will not be disbanded. It must appear to exist, and not just because no politician has the nerve to get rid of it entirely. So we get the three-battalion compromise, probably aided by a ludicrous bolt-on Civil Defence, which will neither be civil, nor a defence, but a weekend diversion for youngsters with time on their hands. But surely, it might be argued, this keeps everybody happy in this best of all possible worlds, in which we no longer face a threat of any kind, internal or external? For the same reason, we might have a fire brigade which can cope only with house-fires because all our public utilities attend to the fire regulations. There is a one-word answer to that, and it is Stardust.
We do not know the future. We have not the least idea what the consequence of the collapse of Russia, or of Japan, or New York, might be. States must have at their disposal bodies of armed and trained men and women who are so dedicated and admired that many of the best in a society will be drawn to their ranks to do the duty the state prescribes for them. That might well involve incapacitating armour in a foreign city or shooting down an aeroplane; it might require the storming of an airliner held by terrorists. It will require those skilled in the arts of soldiering, the oldest profession of them all.
The best soldiers are ambitious soldiers, and ambitious soldiers do not join the Vatican Guard; nor will they join the Army of this Republic unless it is perceived to be a professional organisation.
Martial impulses
A unit such as the Rangers can exist only if it can draw on a pool of dedicated and skilled soldiers, and such men (and women too) are more and more likely to look to the profession of soldiering abroad if the Army here cannot satisfy their martial impulses. The French Foreign Legion beckons; and now that the Northern troubles are over, so too does the British army, which has been grooming the Royal Irish Regiment sedulously against the day which has now arrived.
It is not the duty of this State to give jobs to people just because they want to be soldiers. But it is its duty to have a standing army able to perform a number of complex tasks obediently - not least to stand in line with our fellow Europeans when the obligation arises, in Albania or wherever. We have traditions of peace-keeping which are indispensable within the EU; and peace-keeping cannot be done with social workers. It is time the Army was returned to what it once was, a proud armed servant of this State, and not just an employer of disgruntled PDFORRA members.