The drive to promote more black officers is going backwards

The armed forces will be that much more effective if they properly reflect the country they serve

Sunday 24 January 2016 23:33 GMT
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Defence Secretary Michael Fallon
Defence Secretary Michael Fallon

Just over six months ago, the Defence Secretary, Michael Fallon, told the armed forces that they needed to speed up the promotion of members of ethnic minorities. The campaign does not seem to have got far.

New data show that as Britain becomes ethnically ever more diverse, the officer class is going in the opposite direction. The number of non-whites in senior posts has fallen from 750 in 2009 to 630, with no sign of the promised about-turn. The proportion of non-white officers in the Army, Navy and Air Force combined stands at an embarrassing 2.3 per cent, down from 2.5 per cent in 2009.

To be fair to Mr Fallon, he has laid down that by 2020 at least 10 per cent of all new joiners must come from a non-white background.

The problem is that recruitment of non-whites has been neglected for so long that it could be years before the pool of ethnic minority troops is large enough to make it practical to promote more of them. The Army is least at fault here; about 9.4 per cent of its personnel come from ethnic minorities. But matters are very different in the still lily-white Royal Navy and Royal Air Force, where the figures are 3.4 and 2.1 per cent respectively.

Possibly, members of some communities feel averse to joining the military and will not sign up however welcome they are made. Britain’s military interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria have all been unpopular among British Muslims and may well have created an antipathy to the armed forces among many who would not otherwise see themselves as radical. Such barriers will be hard to overcome, but the effort must be made. The armed forces will be that much more effective if they properly reflect the country they serve.

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