𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Defence of the realm is about more than money, canned food and bottled water. It needs leadership and public consensus, and a population that knows how to behave in a crisis.

Until today we were hopeful that the decade-long farce around properly funding our armed forces might be about to end. But the Chancellor’s budget statement today means the farce continues for at least another year, until the spending review in 2027 (the date for which has not yet been set).

This stops in its tracks the guarded optimism born of comments two weeks ago from General Sir Roky Walker, Chief of the General Staff, who reportedly said to his troops that “very soon” our political leaders would have a “frank conversation” with ordinary citizens.

The frank conversation consisted of no more than being told to stock up on Spam, bottled water and wind-up radios, and all because of possible disruption to our daily lives from climate change, cyber-attack and the US/Iran conflict, and possible Russian meddling. Maybe Government thinks the people could not deal with the elephant in the room – “war”; and to hear that word would drive even more people onto sickness benefits.

Meanwhile, the Prime Minister, head in the sand and face on Gogglebox, continues to talk about matters other than defence.

Top political leadership on defence is still absent and until the Prime Minister leads on this matter, talk of defence is just that, talk. Verbal commitments to increase defence expenditure sometime next year and speeches at international meetings about meeting commitments are pointless unless backed up by explaining how we are going to get there and what that means for the people – hard choices in other words.

Retired military officers have made the case for the military. Serving senior officers have been unusually blunt in their comment. Former Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Sir Tony Radakin and his successor Sir Richard Knighton have spoken plainly, but to what effect? Prior to that General Sir Partick Saunders warned of the need to mobilise society which spin maestros in Government re-framed to mean conscription. This was not what he was getting at, but the Government wanted nothing of it. Lord Robertson, one of our few remaining statesmen, and globally respected in defence matters, called for an honest national conversation by effectively communicating the threats facing Britain. The response from the very top of government to all of this was silence.

Then, in the dying weeks of the Starmer government, two highly respected ministers resigned on principle over the lack of defence investment; one now is the Chancellor who today has not delivered the goods he said back then were vital. He clearly understands the issue, as Healey told Parliament today his son, a member of the British Army Reserve told him four years ago “there was no kit and no bullets to fire”.

Leadership on this matter needs to come from the top. Agreement will need to be found across the political divide. Beyond that, a consensus will be needed from the people themselves but are the people ready?

We have been here before.

When Churchill became Prime Minister, the Government and senior politicians of all parties remained against involvement in the war, even as Dunkirk fell.

In the 2017 film Darkest Hour, on the tube amongst ordinary Londoners, Churchill finds the resolve to face down his enemies in Government. He goes back to Cabinet and demands that Britain fight. The “people” were resolute. He had just spoken with them. He knew that they were ready and they understood the risks.

This Tube journey probably never took place. But the film portrays a fact that is true, if not widely recognised: The population had been prepared for war. They understood the consequences and were prepared to face them. Importantly they understood how to behave in a crisis. This conditioning of the people, today we call “rolling the pitch” had been a conscious act, but not by Government.

Throughout the 1930s cinema going was one of the main social activities. People went to the cinema every week; it was as much part of the routine of life as social media is today.

Then the staple fare of the movies was “derring-do”. The hero of the film would be a man, typically English (by accent or character) who in 90 minutes of adventure would face a crisis, be confronted with a choice to do “the right thing”, leave behind his family, risk life and limb, and “save the day”.

The plots were the time-honoured values of duty, self-sacrifice, love of country, commitment to family, all within an arcadian picture of a society that may only have existed in the director’s eye but was no less powerful for that. The story lines were often laced with nostalgia and sentiment. But they were of their time, and they served a purpose; and they were not there by happenstance.

Behind these films was a community playing their part in alerting the population to the “coming storm” (the name of both a book and a film). These people did not seek the limelight – far from it. Many were emigres from Europe who saw the storm that was coming. Fleeing their homelands for Britain they found a population with a strong sense of who they were, and of what was right and what was not right. They knew what it was to fight as they did this every day to survive. They had little to lose but their freedom, and freedom they held dear and were prepared to fight for it.

Then as now foreign policy was a parlour game reserved for the political elite, something kept well away from real people. Yet the ordinary people were acutely aware that failure in foreign policy would touch them more than “their betters”.

Today, some of these films can offend modern sensibilities, and our cynicism stops us accepting overly sentimental themes.

But these films served a purpose. The mass media of its day, film alerted the population to the coming storm. Film embedded at the deepest and most powerful level in both the conscious and the subconscious the rules of how to behave in a crisis. By and large this can be seen to have worked. Otherwise, how could Churchill have turned the country on a sixpence to face the realities of war? The Tube scene in Darkest Hour is both prescient and accurate in that it shows a population ahead of the Government.

And who were making these films? Some were conflicted such as civil servant Sir Robert Vansittart who was so opposed to German appeasement he became actively involved in film, where he could at arms-length influence opinion. Others you could identify by their names were not British. Film producer Sir Alexander Korda a Hungarian; Conrad Veidt one of Germany’s leading film stars. Others you would not know from their name or indeed their characters were not British – such as Leslie Howard, on the surface the quintessential English gentleman, was in fact born to a Hungarian father; and producer Michael Balcon, born in Birmingham but from an immigrant family.

Today there is no single mass media as in the 1930s. There is no national sense of common identity. It is not clear how a common purpose will be found but it will be essential for this country to confront the challenges it faces.

Maybe in his eventual intervention the Prime Minister will just give the facts and tells the truth, plain and simple; and hopefully he will treat the people as the grown-ups that they are. Then, armed with the truth, it will be up to the people. It is after all their country and their future.

Speaking through his recent book, “Auslander,” Sir Michel Moritz reminds us of the consequences of avoiding the truth. The generation who lived through the second world war are no longer here to guide us from folly, and by their example show us how to behave.

Where does that leave us? We could do worse than watch the films our grandparents watched on streaming services. Settle down, suspend our cynicism, and let ourselves be taken back in time. That may be a good place to start.

Nigel Szembel MBE TD was an executive producer on the film Hurricane that told the true story of the RAF’s Polish 303 Squadron in the Battle of Britain. He is an adviser to international business, the son of a Polish Army WWII immigrant, a retired Reserve Forces officer.