General Sir Patrick Sanders got nowhere with his idea aired this week for a ‘citizen army’, yet the fact is the British state has reason to cast around for more ‘capability’ in a more warlike, uncertain world, writes Mark Rowe.
The state has always drawn on private industry – no-one is proposing that the state has factories to make its own paper clips (if such things are still called for) or crockery or office water coolers. Historically, when the state has to (usually without much warning) enter a state of war, it finds itself short of everything, so that its Army carrying its baggage and troops in bakery vans and private buses (as in France in 1914) or faces scandal about the lack of medical services for the wounded and sick, and is bailed out (the nurse Florence Nightingale and other well-wishers in the Crimean War of 1854-6). Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the British state – having withdrawn from Germany after the fall of Communism in the early 1990s – is now having to contemplate deploying an armoured division to what it coyly terms ‘central Europe’.
To be blunter, if Russia’s aggression widens and it attacks a NATO ally such as the Baltic countries or Poland, Britain would face a repeat of the Crimean War. Bright colonels at the Ministry of Defence were by last year at work on plans. Besides the logistics of how to get troops and equipment across the Continent, it begs homeland defence questions; how safe from sabotage would Britain’s ports and airports be, or power stations and other CNI (critical national infrastructure)? Or indeed the armed forces’ bases left behind by those thousands on an ‘article five’ deployment – to explain the jargon, under the NATO treaty, where members will come to the aid of any member under attack (as invoked after the 9-11 terror attack on the United States, when Britain and other NATO countries went into Afghanistan with the US)?
It’s hardly giving away any state secrets to say that all those CNI places – while needing more security during a state of alert or actual war – would hardly be able to draw on the armed forces busy on operations. That’s been an emergency option (to give only three examples) during floods, or the pandemic, or even the London Olympics, when weeks short of the opening in summer 2012 the security contractor G4S had to embarrassingly admit it could not provide all the officers required, and uniformed troops staffed venue entrances to carry out searches of ticket-holders.
It’s no criticism of the British state that it would run out of uniformed, trained people quickly: it did in the two world wars; hence (in both wars) ‘home guards’ and special constables were widely recruited. While the Security Industry Authority’s badging of contract security officers was a visible staging post on private security’s road to respectability, arguably more important was the separate work begun in the City of London around Project Griffin where (as yet unbadged) security officers were trained for deploying on cordons in the event of a 7-7-like incident, to release police for other work in the emergency.
If a major incident happened in the City, security officers would be well placed to share info with the police, besides evacuating or locking down people in their own buildings. The City Security Council, a group of guarding companies, and police know each other, to pick up the phone to one another. But in that broader scenario of the British state wanting to metaphorically pick up the phone to the UK private security sector, for the security industry to take on public-facing tasks to ‘back-fill’ if the armed forces were going abroad, who would the state ring? The largest guarding firms; or the corporates that hire guards, that presumably would be procuring extra guarding for their foyers in a state of near or actual war?
We can better answer what might be the serious enough scenarios to require such extraordinary action. The official national risk register lays out what the UK might face, such as ‘severe space weather’ that knocks out telecoms; a widespread electricity failure; or chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) attack, whether by a ‘hostile state’ or terrorists. The UK Government resilience framework, published in December 2022, speaks of the military as ‘an ultimate guarantor of national security and resilience in emergencies’. As for the private sector and resilience, the document speaks of ‘a joint endeavour’, and the UK Government proposes to do more, ‘through consultation with businesses, to set standards, and share guidance and information’. Going back further to the Integrated Review of defence and security, published in spring 2021, it advocated a ‘whole of society’ response to resilience, and promised that ‘we will combine hard and soft power, harness the public and private sector, and deploy British expertise from inside and outside government in pursuit of national objectives’.
For all these fine words about strategy, in case of various risks that might well stretch the state and private industry alike, what of the no longer unthinkable possibility that UK armed forces might deploy on the Continent, among other things including reservists, some whose day jobs are in private security? Isn’t the private security sector of about half a million an obvious place for the state to turn? The British state’s most recent expeditions to Iraq and Afghanistan saw much use of the ‘private military’ sector, largely staffed by former military people, whether training local troops, guarding embassies, or providing close protection to diplomats. Also, non-security civilians did, or at least assisted with, tasks that troops might otherwise have to do, such as drive lorries or erect bases. Even though the state was shy of using contractors, the sheer need for more hands than the military could provide meant work for the likes of Control Risks, Gardaworld and G4S. Where western states have the edge over the likes of Al-Qaeda and Islamic State is in tech; again, states have to draw on private industry for night-sights (hardware), and intelligence-gathering tools (software).
Towards the end of his book, The Changing of the Guard, Simon Akam noted a further factor that makes for more calls on private industry by the state; that gone are the days when Army officers (as in the police) sign up for 20 years’ service, as a life choice. Instead after university the Army may be somewhere you serve for three or six years, and then you enter private industry, to earn more.
That not only means the state is bleeding expertise and has to work harder on training, and maintaining institutional memory; but that the private sector gains from those incomers (who come with ready-made skills, practical, and a roll-up-your-sleeves attitude not always shown by the young, that may fret when their mobile phone charge goes low). Much of the UK’s CNI is run by and protected by the private sector already; an exception being the 100pc armed Civil Nuclear Constabulary. On the cyber side of security in particular, the state acknowledges that it cannot afford to match private sector pay; which implies that the state would have to draw on private cyber firms, for example for OSINT (open source intelligence). In an April 2023 speech, Cabinet Office minister Oliver Dowden told the annual CyberUK event, in Belfast:
people who work for Government will always be motivated by public service.
But a cyber specialist knows they can earn five to seven times, if not more, for the same role in the private sector.
And the government needs to break through its own glass ceiling …
So I am also examining what more we can do to improve salaries and other parts of our offer, so that we can continue to attract the very best cyber experts into the civil service.
These are people protecting the systems and public services that millions of people across the country rely on every day, so we should want the very best people in charge of them.
Two separate sorts of conversations are implied. At the moment of crisis, as during the pandemic, the state at extremely short notice looking to procure ‘capability’ – during covid, for example, consultancy for scoping security of vaccination centres, and security officers to protect vaccines; if the Army was deploying abroad, maybe a ‘surge capacity’ of private security alongside Border Force. But ideally earlier should come discussions over policy, so that private security can understand what the state wants, and can inform the state what a tender ought to read like (and what price is sensible). Rather than as during the outbreak of the covid pandemic in 2020, or in May 1940 when the front in France collapsed, when hurried decisions can be downright bad or lead to more cost (in money and lives) than need have been.
The state’s servants still have a residual suspicion of the private sector in general. Besides civil servants and the Army (with good manners) telling private industry that they know best, the state’s agents will understandably be shy of engaging with business people due to a fear of being seen to favour one over another, which might lead to accusations of corruption. At any tender by the state for security services, all but the successful bidder will not get the work; disappointment (or a stronger reaction) is inevitable.
Even if a non-commercial representative of the industry or a member of the umbrella group the Security Commonwealth seeks to influence policy (and they have, only to be knocked back), who’s the right person to speak to? A minister, or civil servant, or SPAD (special political adviser)? Even if industry does find the right one, they may well move department, or the SPAD and their minister may be out of office next year, and the work of building a relationship has to start again. Besides, government is siloed – the Home Office, Ministry of Defence and the security service MI5 each have something to do with protective security, and face the same difficulty in keeping up relationships, even within their own departments, let alone beyond.
Better Backfill, Sir Patrick, part one, on this link.
Photo by Mark Rowe: Rye Castle, Kent, January morning.
