Quentin Davies Fires Blanks
The problem with Quentin Davies…
No. I’ll start again.
One of the many problems with Quentin Davies, the merchant banking Tory-turned-Socialist MP for Grantham and Stamford, is that he’s never had to build a bridge over a stream using only a bit of frayed rope, a bald tractor tyre, a punctured oil drum and a handful of underdeveloped 13-year-old boys. If he had, he wouldn’t be wishing the Combined Cadet Force on our state schools.
I can see the thinking, though. It goes like this:
1. The Labour Party has decided that dropping cadet forces into state schools will boost its electoral fortunes.
2. The MoD is pretty much the only arm of the state that doesn’t have lots of New Labour types running the show.
3. The military top brass particularly loathe the Secretary of State for War Defence.
4. The only person who will have the credibility to push the job through has to be a… [former] Tory.
And as Quentin (unlike Shaun Woodward) looks like the sort of chap who might - conceivably - have been bumped up to Brigadier a few months before he was told to retire, he got to carry the can.
So far, so good. But what no-one has yet questioned is Quentin’s actual suitability for the job.
He may wear Savile Row suits. His father may have been in the army. But the fact is that Quentin went to the Quaker - and thus pacifist - Leighton Park School. So, unless he was learning how to prime grenades in some secret, militant chapter of the Woodcraft Folk, he will never have picked up first hand knowledge of how the Combined Cadet Force actually works.
Which means he’s probably an idealist.
So, to help cure him of his fantasies, I’m going to compare the commonly-believed virtues of CCF life with the reality - as experienced by me between 1987-1990 (in the RAF and RN sections) at a school in the heart of Quentin’s own constituency (as pictured above, a decade or two before my time).
Integrity
There’s nothing like the threat of hard work to make sure you - and those with whom you are temporarily saddled - devise an honest and foolproof plan to get out of it. In Cumbria, back in 1989, such a wheeze ensured that my little group of miniature soldiers, sailors and airmen got up at dawn, packed up the tents without a sound, and pissed off - via bus - to drink beer (underage) in Penrith; thereby avoiding a 20+ mile trek and giving everyone time to learn their lines about “missing you in the fog on the peak, sir” before they rolled up at the appointed campsite. An excellent day’s work, which most of my companions claimed as part of their silver or gold Duke of Edinburgh Award.
*
Compassion
“Oi, Needsmith. Your roll mat’s fallen out of your rucksack.”
Needsmith looks round to see said object rolling about 400 feet down the hill face.
“Go and fetch it Needsmith. Everyone else, we’re stopping here till he’s got it.”
Half an hour later, as Needsmith ascends, panting with his lost bedding: “Right, here he comes. Let’s go.”
“Can I take a break too?”
“Fuck off Needsmith,” says the great chief, who only half an hour led us up the wrong hill. “It’s your fault for dropping your stuff. Only another 15 miles to go.”
*
Safe use of firearms
“Needsmith,” says the shooting master to the idiot lying on the point with a .22 in his hands.
“Yes Sir?” asks Needsmith, turning full circle with his loaded weapon and pointing it at the officer’s desk.
Voice from under desk: “Put. That. Fucking. Thing. Down. And. Step. Outside.”
*
Observational skills
Master to NCO: “So, what I want you to do in this drill…”
A pause as he examines another, smaller boy standing next to him.
“What the hell do you want? Sit down with the others, boy.’
Smaller boy, blushing and pointing to the stripe on his shoulder: “I’m a Junior Corporal, Sir.”
“Oh. Why didn’t you say so before?”
*
Smartness
“Fucking hell. Look at his boots - they’re like mirrors.”
“Fucking ginger keeno. Let’s stamp on them.”
“Great idea. That’ll teach him.”
*
Equal Opportunities
“Jesus Christ. What’s Stumpy doing up there with all the top brass? He’s a bloody cripple.”
“His dad’s the Major General.”
“No way! Then he ought to tell his son to get a haircut. Permy twat. No wonder he ended up teaching.”
*
Tact
“Ah, Locker. This is the Air Commodore.”
“Oh.”
Then, in the plane: “So, Locker. Are you a day boy or a boarder?”
“A day boy, sir”.
Air Commodore, immediately dropping the plane a few hundred feet: “Ah. Do you want to join the RAF when you leave school?”
“No. I want to join the Navy.”
Plane lands 13 minutes after take-off.
*
Anyway, I’m sure you get the idea. Davies with his pacifist upbringing probably thinks the whole wheeze is about gentlemanly behaviour, playing the game, and possibly cutting a dash in the Queen’s uniform (not her personal uniform, but you see what I mean).
He’s wrong, and he can take it from Leading Seaman Benjamin Locker, CCF (RN Ret’d).
Sure: there were some excellent cadets, who were cut out for the experience. But the fact was that most of us were in the thing because the alternative was a somewhat stigmatised afternoon of community service (otherwise known as “granny bashing”). And I can’t help thinking that a lot of the boys who spent their Friday afternoons running round Springfields with massive logs, or square bashing in the Dell, could usefully have been improved by a bit of regular, selfless work for other people.
So, Quentin, go ahead: but whatever else you do, don’t make the CCF an expected part - whether implicitly or explicitly - of secondary education. You’ll only undermine the good you’re setting out to do.
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All too true. If only someone would put this sort of thing in succinct and amusing book form.
As for Davis, ever Simon Heffer has conceded that describing New Labour as Socialist is pushing things rather. It strikes me that he’s trying desperately to find something to validate his political career now that he is a turncoat, and a turncoat with disastrous judgement and a lamentably poor sense of timing. So he’s come up with a sort of wistful Tory bollocks mixed with New Labour worthiness.
The fact that MPs have fantasies about what they could with “frayed rope, a bald tractor tyre, a punctured oil drum and a handful of underdeveloped 13-year-old boys” is indication enough that this is a bad idea.
Comment by bill — 29th May, 2008 @ 12:20 am
Oh, and is that Arthur Scargill in the front row (to the right of the drum)? That puts a different complexion on matters.
Comment by bill — 29th May, 2008 @ 12:21 am
True: though ‘Socialist’ is fun to use as it’s a label Nu-Lab types are embarrassed by, but should be proud of. And it’s such a misnomer when applied to Quentin Davies.
I actually haven’t a clue who any of the people in the photo are. All far too early for me. If it’s of the slightest interest I can identify the steps for you. No? I thought not.
Book form? What a good idea. It’s not as though I’ve adapted any of these stories for use elsewhere.
Actually, I can see cadet training being excellent for some. I simply think there’s danger of turning it into a semi-compulsory chore with no realistic, or useful alternatives.
Comment by Ben — 29th May, 2008 @ 9:06 am
Ben, you remind me of why I didn’t join the CCF, although I had to run in pitch darkness on Tuesday evenings instead. Bastards. I now visit a friend in the army and am glad I didn’t - regular life is not hugely different to school in general count me out.
Still, as I now find myself working for the a national newspaper which happens to have its offices on Kensington High St (oh the shame of it) perhaps being shot dead by our American allies would be preferable. Fewer people would shy away from me at parties…
Mortdecai
Comment by Mortdecai — 31st May, 2008 @ 12:51 am
Great piece, Locker. Did I say that my mother was in the Woodcraft Folk?
At my school the alternative to granny bashing was not the CCF, but Religious Studies GCSE. Did me the world of good (even if the textbook blatantly lied to assert the liberal protestant prejudices of the authors).
Comment by Venichka — 5th June, 2008 @ 12:12 pm