Quote from: Kirkhill on Yesterday at 17:39:51
The whole argument that is going on in Britain right now about disbandment of Regiments is all about distinctness and tribal identities. It is why the British Army could effectively combine Royalist (Guards Regiments) and Government (County Regiments), English, Welsh, Scots Lowlanders and Scots Highlanders and even Gurkhas. It is why the also incorporate and operate with Sikhs, Pathans, Pushtuns, Punjabis, Gujarattis, Persians and even Omani and Jordanian Arabs.
Kirkhill: I think I know what you're driving at, but I'm not sure that the recent amalgamations in the British Army are quite as sweeping as all that. I do not know of any case in which a Household unit (Foot Guards or Household Cavalry) have been merged with a County unit, nor English units with Scots, nor Gurkha with anybody else. Do you mean merger or just different units serving alongside each other? As for the Indian tribes you listed, I think that in the British Army they were kept fairly well segregated by tribe. To a certain extent this remains the case in the armies of the sub-continent today.
Poorly explained on my part pbi. In one sense you are correct, the Household Regiments are not being amalgamated with the Counties, nor English with Scots. No the "tribalism" I was referring to was Edinburgh's Royal Scots being pitted against the Kings Own Scottish Borderers for example. The recruiting pools for these two regiments are adjacent to each other and Edinburgh is only about 50 miles from the English Border that the KOSB's were raised to guard. Unfortunately the locals can recognize folks from the adjacent recruitment area because they talk differently. Different dialects - different tribes. That's the tribalism I was talking about. The same problem exists in England. Devonshire isn't Cornwall much less Northumberland.
The Regiments have traditionally allowed local regional and county identities to flourish. In Scotland the intention is to create one Regiment (possibly even called the Royal Scots) but the current 1 Bn regiments will become subordinate to the Regiment and most critically could be filled by bodies from any place in Scotland. Strangely enough it seems that Fijians are better accepted in an Edinburgh regiment than Glaswegians (folks from Glasgow).
The suggestion with respect to the Household Division is similar, they are all to become battalions in a Household Regiment it seems, and in that case you might, horror of horrors, find an Englishman in the Scots Guards. Actually I believe there are some there already but its the principle of the thing.
As to your point about keeping the peoples of the sub-continent segregated, that is actually the point I was trying to make. Keep in mind that the "quaint" regimental characteristics so often found in Canadian regiments, especially the Militia originated in British regiments. Those British Regiments reflected the regional characteristics of their personnel . Often those Regiments were incorporated into the British Army after some rebellion or civil war or other. It was a means of keeping all those warlike impulses in line. The Highlanders rebel? Recruit them into the Black Watch and the Fraser Highlanders and send them off to North America to die fighting the French and the Indians.
The Regimental system allowed the British Army to manage "diversity"
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Uniformity of purpose and command doesn't have to mean sameness, nor even blandness. It might be useful and instructive if Canada did field a Sikh Unit or a Muslim unit where the membership was one of choice and not exclusion. ie anybody could join, regardless of background, just because they liked the Regimental "Culture". Hence we have Chinese in Scots Regiments because the like the kilt, the pipes, Robert Burns and haggis.....OK maybe the haggis stretching a point.
The trouble with the first two examples is that they are not merely "ethnic" but are actually very distinct religious groups as well. You could not separate the religious aspect from the units or the designation would be meaningless. Unfortunately, forming units alomg these lines would be equivalent to having "Roman Catholic" or "Anglican" -designated units: a non-starter. The Highland, Scots and Irish regimental traditions seem to be flexible enough that anybody can feel a comfortable part of the Regt: my Portuguese-Canadian cousin is in the 48th Highlanders, for example. I agree with your contention that a unit (especially a unit Mess) should feel like a "home" and not just a "job", but I think we might want to stress the "family" rather than the "tribe" aspect. Cheers.
Actually, it was only after the World War 2 that religious affiliation wasn't a consideration in Scottish Regiments. Lowland Regiments were almost uniformly Church of Scotland (Presbyterian) while some of the Highland Regiments were predominantly RC. And those distinctions mattered. The still matter - just ask the Celtic (RC) and Rangers (Presbyterian) fans. In fact the Cameronians, (not to be confused with the Cameron Highlanders) were raised during Scotland's religious wars specifically to defend the oppressed Presbyterians in the Southwest . They were oppressed by "Bonnie Dundee" of pipe tune fame. In my neck of the woods he was known as "Bloody Claverhouse"
I agree that Regiments need to be open and that we should stress family over tribe. My point was that Regiments were a method of managing tribalism until the rough edges could be smoothed off and the Regiment started thinking of themselves as being related to the people in another Regiment with whom they had been feuding for centuries. In some cases that smoothing process has taken centuries and fighting together in a number of wars against others - non Brits.. Despite that I am sure the Black Watch (raised by the Campbell's) could still find a reason for a punch up with the Highlanders or the Dukes.
The Regiments are, or were, individual entities that still feel discrete despite the fact that they are all Army and all Brits and quite willing to support each other when fighting together.
IMHO.
Waters thoroughly muddied now...?
Cheers pbi.
