Eric Joyce began his political career by attacking the armed forces, his then employer, as ‘racist, sexist and discriminatory’ in a Fabian Society pamphlet. He ended it yesterday by defending the armed forces and attacking the Labour government, his current employer, in a letter to the prime minister.
Any resignation from a government is significant. It is not Eric Joyce’s high office that makes it so. As commentators are so fond of saying, being PPS is the lowest rung on the government ladder, unpaid and unsung. Such is the enthusiasm for the government at the moment amongst Labour MPs, that several PPS posts remain unfilled, with no-one wanting to spend the next few months carrying bags for some soon-to-be-ex minister. It will be interesting to see who replaces him.
Eric Joyce’s resignation is significant because the point of friction is Afghanistan, and his letter is no splenetic or hastily-penned outburst. It contains a critique of Britain and America’s role in Afghanistan which can be seized upon by the media and by opponents of the military intervention in that country. It may also find some resonance with the public, who are becoming increasingly restless at the British Army’s role in Helmand, and increasingly sceptical about the Kharzi Government. Evidence of Zimbabwe-style vote rigging doesn’t help.
Joyce’s decision carries some extra weight not only because Joyce has hitherto enjoyed a reputation as an uber-loyalist, holding the line on Newsnight with the heroic zeal of the defenders at Rorke’s Drift. It is also because Joyce, uniquely amongst Labour MPs, has recent experience as a serving army officer. By last night, Glen Oglaza on Sky News had promoted him to a major in the Black Watch. I am pretty sure that whilst Eric Joyce served as a private in the Black Watch, his commission was not in any infantry regiment.
Today’s Labour government has the least direct military experience of any in our history. One of Bob Ainsworth’s predecessors as defence secretary, Denis Healey, was the beach-master at the Anzio landings in WW2. The last Labour prime minister-but-one served in the wartime navy. Tony Crosland was a paratrooper. Even as late as the 1970s Labour government there were plenty of Labour MPs and ministers who had served in the armed forces in wartime, or in Britain’s post-war conflicts. Since then, our parliament has become demilitarized. We’ve seen the decline of the soldiers and sailors, and the rise of the researchers and special advisers.
One of Eric Joyce’s most stinging criticisms is that Labour doesn’t ‘get’ the army. He claims that ministers briefed against senior soldiers to journalists. His letter reinforces the idea, widely held, that Labour has used the armed forces as a tool of politics, and given them near-impossible assignments with ropey equipment and too few troops.
The prime minister today is setting out the arguments for our continuing involvement in this hellish conflict. He will make the case for tackling the Taliban, the most reactionary and repugnant military forces to take to the field since the SS. He will talk about the need to destroy the opium poppies, and change the system of agriculture and drugs manufacture which makes them so profitable. He will praise the efforts to build civil society, to establish democracy instead of despotism, to send little Afghan girls to school and allow women into hospitals, and to build a self-sustaining peaceful nation. At the core of the case will be the idea that Britain is safer if Afghanistan is stable, and if the Taliban and other Islamist forces are subdued.
It’s a compelling case. But public opinion is not static. Unlike the Falklands conflict, this is not a clear case of defending Britain’s sovereign territory. Unlike the war with the IRA, this isn’t close to home, nor being fought out on our cities’ streets. Unlike Iraq, there’s no sense of an end in sight. It is testament to the training and professionalism of the army that British casualties are relatively low. Each one of the 200-plus deaths is a terrible tragedy, and we grieve for each young soldier’s life lost. But compared to other conflicts, the army has managed to keep most of its soldiers safe. However, the public’s appetite for mounting casualties is limited. During the Normandy campaign in 1944, thousands of British soldiers were killed or wounded by the Americans bombing the wrong targets. The British public were kept in the dark.
Today, every death is reported, the return of the bodies is televised, and the pictures of those young men appear in the papers and haunt us over our breakfasts. As the election gets nearer, and the public feel that a change of ministers is on the way, it is likely that British opinion will harden against an open-ended military involvement in the dust and heat of Afghanistan. Gordon Brown and Bob Ainsworth will need every ounce of their considerable skills of persuasion to keep the public onboard. If they falter, Eric Joyce’s resignation will be more than a one-day wonder. It will be the start of a serious and significant campaign leading up to the general election to bring the troops home.