Hugh Muir
The Guardian
Heads up, Muslims - the army needs you! Figures released last week show that fewer than 1% of people in the UK armed forces are Muslim, compared with 4.4% of the UK as a whole. This isn’t ideal, but then many Muslims appear deterred by the notion of fighting as part of the British forces in Muslim countries. Talk about the Tebbit test. All Norman asked for was more minority support for English cricket.
There are just 480 Muslims in the army, out of a total of 88,500. The figure was 300 in 2008; in a way, given the pace of societal advance in other spheres, things have gone from bad to worse.
The army has always been a lightning rod in this respect. The act of serving Queen and country seems the ultimate embrace of the nation and of establishment traditions. The flip side is that the outrage is greater when a minority soldier is found to have been abused or exploited within the services. The betrayal of one who agrees to put their life and limb on the line seems all the more egregious, as does the failure to maintain the duty of care.
The army has tried to address the issue of how it welcomes and integrates soldiers from different backgrounds, but there is still, it seems, some way to go. The latest estimates suggest just 9,110 soldiers are from ethnic minorities, and many of these come from Commonwealth countries, rather than communities in the UK.
Some minorities are celebrated openly, such as Johnson Beharry, who won the Victoria Cross for twice saving members of his unit in Iraq. I take my hat off to them. But the soldiers I always think about in this regard are the clutch I met early in my career: Stephen Anderson, who raised the alarm about discrimination in the Devonshire and Dorset Regiment; Anthony Evans, who suffered in the 1st battalion, the Royal Regiment of Wales; and Geoff McKay, who blew the whistle about abuses in the Queen’s Royal Irish Hussars. Army life didn’t end so well for them, but minorities who thrive now do so in part because of the bravery of that trio, and others.
McKay is the one I remember particularly fondly. When the MoD raided his house, hoping to arrest him, a colleague and I hid him in a wardrobe. We then smuggled him past them in the back of our car.
There are just 480 Muslims in the army, out of a total of 88,500. The figure was 300 in 2008; in a way, given the pace of societal advance in other spheres, things have gone from bad to worse.
The army has always been a lightning rod in this respect. The act of serving Queen and country seems the ultimate embrace of the nation and of establishment traditions. The flip side is that the outrage is greater when a minority soldier is found to have been abused or exploited within the services. The betrayal of one who agrees to put their life and limb on the line seems all the more egregious, as does the failure to maintain the duty of care.
The army has tried to address the issue of how it welcomes and integrates soldiers from different backgrounds, but there is still, it seems, some way to go. The latest estimates suggest just 9,110 soldiers are from ethnic minorities, and many of these come from Commonwealth countries, rather than communities in the UK.
Some minorities are celebrated openly, such as Johnson Beharry, who won the Victoria Cross for twice saving members of his unit in Iraq. I take my hat off to them. But the soldiers I always think about in this regard are the clutch I met early in my career: Stephen Anderson, who raised the alarm about discrimination in the Devonshire and Dorset Regiment; Anthony Evans, who suffered in the 1st battalion, the Royal Regiment of Wales; and Geoff McKay, who blew the whistle about abuses in the Queen’s Royal Irish Hussars. Army life didn’t end so well for them, but minorities who thrive now do so in part because of the bravery of that trio, and others.
McKay is the one I remember particularly fondly. When the MoD raided his house, hoping to arrest him, a colleague and I hid him in a wardrobe. We then smuggled him past them in the back of our car.
