» 100 years of Labour governments and the military: MacDonald to Starmer University of Southampton Blogs

Last Saturday – 27 January – I gave a paper in Cambridge at the conference organised by the Labour History Research Unit at Anglia Ruskin University’s Labour History Research Unit: How Labour Governs: A Conference to mark 100 years of Labour Governments. The following summarises my remarks on Labour governments and the defence establishment from 1924 through to 2024 and the prospect of a Starmer administration following the next general election:

Labour and the military: dealing with the chiefs of staff

In office Ramsay MacDonald sought to neutralise the service chiefs’ antipathy towards a party in which so many senior figures, not least the PM, had opposed the Great War. In 1924 and again in 1929 he appointed proven patriots from the trade union movement to the War Office, and an ennobled ex-colonel to the Air Ministry. Remarkably, a former Viceroy served as First Lord of the Admiralty in 1924; but his successor five years later – A.V. Alexander – forged a lasting relationship with the Royal Navy, and as such became a role model for service ministers in later Labour governments. Reappointed as Secretary of State for Air in 1929, Lord Thomson promoted Labour’s claim to be a party of modernity and enterprise. That claim disappeared with Thomson’s death in the R101 airship disaster and the Treasury’s refusal to fund the RAF’s defence of the Schneider Trophy [see H.C. Gwynne’s 2023 His Majesty’s Airship The Life and Tragic Death of the World’s Largest Flying Machine which combines a history of the R101 and a biography of Thomson, whose importance to and unlikely close friendship with MacDonald has been overlooked for far too long]. Opponents insisted Labour was pacifistic and hostile to the armed forces, citing deep cuts in service spending; and that reputation was reinforced for much of the 1930s. The Churchill Coalition saw a recasting of Labour’s image, but only Attlee, when sitting in for the Prime Minister, and Albert Alexander back at the Admiralty had regular contact with the chiefs of staff. Like MacDonald in 1924 Attlee as PM had to deal with service chiefs who were national heroes: Alanbrooke, Portal and Cunningham. Uniquely he began and ended his premiership heading a war cabinet. A veteran company commander instinctively suspicious of the top brass, Attlee won over a sceptical Alanbrooke, and later replaced Montgomery as CIGS with Bill Slim, a general much in the same mould as the Labour leader. Never slow to exercise his considerable powers of command and control Attlee nevertheless backed down when Bevin and the Chiefs of Staff Committee made his 1946 proposal to quit the Canal Zone a resignation issue.

Attlee created a template for Labour prime ministers’ dealings with the service chiefs, initiating the long process of reorganisation that ultimately saw power consolidated in the Chief of the Defence Staff and the Secretary of State for Defence. Harold Wilson recognised the full implications of Macmillan’s reforms, and the need for a heavyweight to complete the creation of today’s MOD, and to push through radical changes in strategic priorities, service reform and procurement: Denis Healey remains the model Defence Secretary for both major parties – a formidable presence in cabinet unafraid to make and support tough decisions, an intellectual bruiser, an ex-officer with frontline experience, a minister with a bank of relevant knowledge, a grounded politician with a reputation for emotional engagement and approachability, and above all, a departmental minister ready to remain in situ for as long as it took to see through significant change. Wilson and Healey accommodated Mountbatten their high profile CDS by compromising over Polaris; and later they convinced a sceptical COSC of the need to redeploy service ministers to cross-departmental roles, and crucially, of the case for ending the UK’s military presence east of Suez.

The 1974-9 governments drew on ministers’ earlier experience, helped by Healey’s presence at the Treasury and Callaghan’s wartime service in the Royal Navy (seen to good advantage in 1977 when thwarting Argentinian ambitions in the South Atlantic). A criticism of the Wilson/Callaghan governments is that they rarely questioned successive Chiefs of the General Staff regarding the Army’s counterterrorism and policing operations in Northern Ireland, witness a hardline Roy Mason’s 1976 move from Defence Secretary to the NI portfolio. That general criticism would be applied even more forcibly to the Blair and Brown administrations with regard to Iraq and Afghanistan; the former visibly more relaxed in dealing with the military than the latter. Labour’s personal connections with the armed forces had long since gone, reinforcing Blair’s need in 1997 for a strong personality at the MOD who could quickly master his brief: George Robertson was Defence Secretary at a time when western military intervention in Africa and the Balkans appeared to work, and the services’ begrudging respect helped secure his appointment as Secretary-General of NATO. Geoff Hoon’s role over Iraq and its related controversies effectively destroyed his reputation (‘Blair’s poodle’), and John Reid was not at the MOD long enough to have any impact. After that, a succession of short-lived mediocrities set a pattern for serial secretaries of state under Cameron and his successors. A key aspect of ‘New Labour’ was the politicisation of Blair’s dealings with the CDS and COCS, with less discretion in Whitehall and chiefs of staff more visible in the mainstream media. This left a lasting legacy, with inter-service tensions and personality clashes ever more visible over the following decade.

Labour’s previous experience provides Keir Starmer and his shadow defence secretary John Healey with a clear indication as to how they should approach matters of national security – and crucially the processes and procedures of defence management. What should be the incoming Prime Minister’s priorities?

appoint a Defence Secretary whose competence is proven, has intellectual muscle, and who really knows the military [read Rory Stewart, The Edge of Politics, pp. 90-1!];
signal to your heavyweight appointment that Denis Healey is an obvious role model;
reassure the COSC that this is a senior member of the Cabinet who will be at the MOD long-term;
the MOD structure is unique so appoint exceptional junior ministers;
establish a close working and personal relationship with the CDS, but not to the exclusion of the Secretary of State, and address present high visible tensions within the COSC;
reassure the COSC that the emphasis will be on continuity and stability (defence spending in line with NATO’s basic 2.5% GDP), with inclusive decision making and no false promises re resourcing (especially procurement, and recruitment with the Army as small as 73K, and RN and RAF respectively 5% and 9% below target recruitment);
be always fully briefed by the Chiefs, but retain a healthy scepticism (no carriers in the South China Sea, and keep the Marines’ capacity for amphibious operations courtesy of Albion and Bulwark) [again, read The Edge of Politics re decision-making and Afghanistan], and if necessary don’t back down (the same for all NSC ministers): command and control;
agree early on a clear post-Trident nuclear strategy, with an update estimate of £31 billion demonstrably far too low;
respect the unglamorous: basic kit and not expensive, over-engineered projects with no overseas sales potential;
particularly in the context of the Russian threat focus on the Western Approaches and European defence cooperation i.e. play to [very limited] strengths.