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Extracts from a speech made by Geoff Hoon, Defence Secretary
October 2003
Planning ahead, reading the future and being ready for changes before they happen is one of the most crucial jobs the Ministry of Defence does. Many of its staff are engaged in trying to produce accurate and insightful predictions of the future - both from a military and political perspective and in terms of social and economic change across the world. All of these issues affect the defence policies we choose.
Our Army, Royal Navy and Royal Air Force are not massed around the coastline of the United Kingdom, pointing outwards. Far from it. The Armed Forces are spread across the globe, undertaking a myriad of tasks.
Sometimes they are providing security for UK citizens, such as in the Falkland Islands. Sometimes they are helping other nations to build forces to ease their own journey into democracy, such as in Sierra Leone.
But is this still defending Britain? Does an MOD civil servant sitting in Freetown, trying to teach local commanders that people must be able to see local soldiers as their servants, not their enemies, still defend you and me?
You can argue that he is as crucial to the defence of the UK today as the concrete emplacements we see scattered around our coastline were sixty years ago.
We work closely with colleagues in the Foreign Office and the Department for International Development, as well as organisations such as the United Nations, to help promote change in such nations. We also provide advice and training to help other nations to build the capable, democratically accountable Armed Forces which we in the UK are so fortunate to take for granted.
Remember my comment earlier about the MOD civil servant sitting in Freetown? Well, he was there. His name was Robert Foot and, sadly, he died of an illness almost a year ago today at the age of only 33. He was rightly decorated by both the UK and Sierra Leonian governments for his work, and his example led to the formation of a charity after his death, for which many MOD staff work hard today.
While the British military defeated the rebels in Sierra Leone who had carried out atrocities I shan't describe here today, and trained the new democracy's army, Robert did something just as important, in equally dangerous and difficult circumstances. He helped the new government to understand why, whenever people saw soldiers, even their own, they fled. He helped it to understand that without building fairness, and justice, into the way their military was run, people would never regard it as their own.
Today, despite the physical and emotional scars of years of brutal fighting, Sierra Leonians are proud of their new army, and their new soldiers are proud to be part of it. Being a soldier in that country today is seen as an honourable profession, not an excuse for banditry, and the new army is quick to weed out the bad apples which might ruin its deserved reputation.
There are many men and women like Robert working for the government around the world. They have never fired a gun, or flown an aircraft, but in the security environment we face today their efforts are in many ways as vital in keeping us safe in our cities as the military's actions in defeating our enemies. They are working to turn anger and frustration into hope.
Whatever the structures, the threats and the policies which affect our Armed Forces, we must remember that it is men and women we ask to do these jobs who ultimately matter.
As a politician you might expect me to praise them, you probably hear it all the time, but I can tell you that I have never, and will never, work with a finer body of men and women.
Extracts reproduced with the kind permission from the Ministry Of Defence.
