How high is morale among British troops? There have been several revelations recently about how bad housing is for British soldiers' families, with pictures of damp, mould infested accommodation. There has also been a lot of debate about the low level of compensation for soldiers who suffer severe disabling injuries.
The government has tried to make up for all this by promising speedy action to remedy the quality of housing and increases in compensation payouts. But that doesn't change the fact that many soldiers are having to risk their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan and many have already died.
We have already reported on the fact that soldiers' families have been complaining about the length of missions and their frequency. Now a recent Ministry of Defence survey has found that almost half (47%) of British soldiers regularly consider leaving the army. This comes on top of a fall in the number of new soldiers signing up.
The report found that soldiers are concerned about the quality of equipment; they are unhappy with wage levels and they continue to view missions as too frequent. In the same survey, 72 percent of Royal Air Force personnel stated that morale was either "low or very low".
Army chief Richard Dannatt, had previously explained that British soldiers need to be promised a life after death to give meaning to what they are being asked to do. Seeing that doesn't seem to have the desired effect, he has come round to the idea that what is required is a life before death! Dannatt has complained that troops are paid less than traffic wardens, prompting Gordon Brown to say the government would do "everything it could". What that will be we have to wait and see!
In the meantime British Army chiefs keep reminding the government that maintaining a war effort in both Iraq and Afghanistan is stretching the military to its limits. Chief of the Defence Staff Jock Stirrup has warned that: "We are not structured to do two of these things [Iraq and Afghanistan] on this scale on an enduring basis but we have been doing it on an enduring basis for years." And added that, "Until we get to the stage when one of them comes down to small-scale, we will be stretched beyond the capabilities we have."
In simple language what they mean is that you can't keep sending ordinary working class youth to their deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan without this having serious repercussions on the ability of the British Army to operate at maximum efficiency. The media tells us that the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan are being won. Those who actually have to do the fighting on the ground clearly have another understanding.
