On Friday September 8th, 1972, 47 year-old James Jones hung himself in the bedroom of his home in Warrenhouse Road, Kirby, Liverpool. Very few papers reported his death; it did not appear to be important.
In fact, it was the first sign of the major problem faced by the British Army as it enters 1973.
Mr. Jones' 18 year-old son Jimmy had just become the one-hundredth officially admitted fatal casualty of the British Army during its latest war of repression in reland.
Exactly a week after this death, Angus Macpherson, Defence Correspondent of the Daily Mail, was boasting of a record number of recruits joining the British Army that month.
The figures for October 1972, the last month for which figures are available, in fact show a drop of practically 25 per cent over those for the previous year.
UNPOPULARITY There is a direct connection between this fall in recruiting fig ures and the suicide of Mr.
Jones - it is the increasing unpopularity of the Irish war amongst the British working class, which in turn is reflected in the tremendous fall in morale of the Baitish Army. To complete SUBSCRIBE.
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Money Orders to Red Mole, 182 Pentonville Road, London N.I. equally affected by the rising death roll of the rate, which increases the unpopularity of the war. English hospitals to give a standard of medical When Operation Motorman was launched in August 1972, British morale was at its all time high. The guerillas they were fighting were ill-equipped, and no matter how brave, could offer rare and mainly token resistance gainst heavily armoured vehicles and sand-bagged army posts.
All this has changed, and changed utterly: changed by, amongst other things, the RTG-7 TOCKCLS.
No longer does the cream of the British Army feel safe in its sand-bagged military posts; no longer are the armoured cars impregnable; no longer can the British parage heavy Armoured Fighting Vehicles through the streets of Belfast in shows of strength.
In stead, frightened, demoralised, and in some cases terrified British soldiers now count the days until they can get out of Ireland, or if they are out of reland, dread the day when they of 50 per cent to maintain its middle-level will be sent back.
DEEPER CAUSES In fact, although the arrival of the RTG-7 coincided with a drastic fall in morale, the causec во исорок:
FOREIGN SUBS: Asia/Africa/Australia/N. &-S. America: £6 per year (airmail); £4 per year (ordinary). Western Europe: £4 per year, the British government has been taking advantage British Army, and the continually rising casualty of the proximity of the battlefield to the advanced treatment to the British Army which has never existed before. The result of this, as a recent British television programme showed, is to keep alive casualties who are little more than human vegetables.
Visits to the wounded and the maimed of the British Army by parents, wives and relatives have little effect on the morale of these wouded, but a devastating effect on the morale of the visitors, which in turn is spread like a virus through the married quarters and hometowns from which they have come. This again is reflected, on the one hand in the increasing numbers of serving soldiers who buy themsleves out of the Army, and on the other in the decline in re-enlistment figures. These last have dropped even lower than recruiting figures - by approximayely 34 per cent, and this in an army which depends on a re-enlistment ratio of a minimum cadre. This further affects the morale of those who remain in the Army.
TIP OF THE ICEBERG Conscious that an admission of this state of affairs would turn the civilian population further against the war, which would then have a feedback effect on morale inside the army, the British government and mass media have attempted to play down the low morale. Nevertheless, what has appeared in print in the British mass media itself, when considered as the tip of an iceberg, casts some light on the actual situation.
In early December, less than two months after the boasting article by their Defence Correspondent had appeared, the Daily Mail was reporting "exclusively" the attempt by just under 30 paratroopers to buy themselves out of the Army. There was more in this story than meets the eye. The reporting of it was in itself an attempt to paper over an evenmore serious crisis in another regiment.
In November, an "over-tired" member of the Labour Front Bench was confessing in the bars Army had just faced its first mutiny over the present Irish war, when a unit in Germany had refused point-blank to contemplate a return to Ireland. The Labour Front Bencher mentioned no names, but Republican sources claim that th units concerned were the Second Battalion, The Light Infantry, and the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers.
Shortly afterwards, we had an admission, carrie in most English newspapers, that large numbers of soldiers at Colchester in Essex, where the British Army carries out Bull and Drill "Cold Turkey", to dry out soldiers returned from Ireland, had been arrested on drugs charges. Only the Daily Mirror, on December 9th, and that in a short one paragraph piece, reported the much more significant story of the week that British troops in Colchester had opened fire on the Admin block of the Barracks. DESPERATE So desperate indeed is the morale situation in the Army, that a bitter battle is raging inside the British Establishment at the moment betwe those who want to go for bust, and commit the name of the royal family to a campaign to resti credibility to the British Army, and those who oppose this move on the grounds of the damag it would do to the "impartiality" of the monar In November, both the Queen Mother and Prin Anne were taken on tours of Army hospitals. was expected to culminate in a pre-Christmas visit from Her Nibs herself, but this was vetoed by Heath. As compensation, the military wing of the Establishment had to make do with a visit to one military hospital by Edward Heath an invitation to lunch with the Queen for Gene Kitson on Wednesday 13th December, and a series of articles in the newspapers suggesting that, if the IRA rocket launchers were modern the rockets being fired were duds.
That this modern version of the ludicrous Black Propaganda story about the German Army's "cardboard tanks" was resorted to in a desperate attempt to boost the sagging mora of the British Army, is itself the clearest indication of how seriously the British Army High Command views the situation.