DefenceSynergia (DS) is pleased to publish ‘Party Before Country’ – The Repeating Rhymes of History’ a short paper by Mr Fred Dupuy the Chairman of Defence UK –https://defenceuk.weebly.com/
DS fully concurs with the approach taken. Indeed, it has been the position of DS since before the 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review that Defence of the Realm is not only the first priority of Government but a cross party responsibility requiring a National Strategy to underpin government policy and to provide guidance for the Chiefs of Staff to develop cohesive Military Strategy and meaningful Defence Planning Assumptions (DPA).
Sadly, without a cross party consensus and lacking a National Strategy all UK parties favour rhetoric over substance when it comes to Defence spending. Hence the parlous state of HM Armed Forces today whilst the UK and its NATO allies face the greatest threat to their existence since WW2.
In 1940 we had Churchill leading the Nation, today we have the hollow laissez-faire utterances of various governmental PR departments talking of increased Defence funding whilst in actuality preferring Welfare over Armed Forces ‘critical mass’. Meanwhile, the Russians, Chinese and Iranians band together in a new Axis power bloc, as demonstrated so alarmingly in the parade held in Beijing on September 3rd 2025 which was reminiscent of parades held in pre WW2 Germany.
All of which Fred Dupuy eloquently exposes in his essay below:
Party before Country - The Repeating Rhymes of History
In 1933 with the UK’s economy still in the throws of the Great Depression, and alarmed voices being raised about the threat from German re-armament in contravention of the Treaty of Versailles, students at the Oxford Union, followed by those at Manchester and Glasgow Universities, passed motions saying that they would not fight for King and Country. Those motions echoed a general anti-war feeling throughout the country, which was carried forward into government by the pacifistic policies of both the Liberal and Labour parties. The Labour leader George Lansbury was for disbanding the army, dismissing the air force and daring the world to do its worst. At the Labour party conference, in October of that year, delegates voted in favour of total disarmament and a general strike in the event of war to cripple the economy and bring down the Conservative dominated National Coalition Government. Also, in that month the Fulham East by-election turned a 15,000 Conservative majority into one of 5,000 for Labour, where the victorious candidate, John Wilmot, had campaigned on the twin issues of disarmament and pacifism.
The subsequent general election, in 1935, resulted in another Conservative led coalition at which time the government did in fact decide to increase defence spending and belatedly attempt to match the rapidly increasing German military might. The following year the then Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, addressed a group of 13 Conservative MP’s and 5 Lords, who were questioning why the government had left it so long before starting to re-arm and why the process was taking so long. He told them that with the result of the Fulham East by-election in mind and considering the general pacific feeling within the country, he feared that if he had announced a general re-armament when the need for such had become apparent there was a good chance that they, the Conservatives, would have lost the following general election. In his memoirs, Winston Churchill later noted that Baldwin’s appalling frankness was a statement without parallel in our Parliamentary history of putting Party before Country. Baldwin went on to say that because of a dearth of military orders through the 1920’s and into the 30’s the factories had closed and the work force dissipated, thus re-armament had to start from scratch with the rebuilding of those factories and training of the work force.
Fast forward 90 years and here we are again! The country’s economy is again in dire straits. This time largely due to run-away welfare spending that the government seems unable, or unwilling, to control. The industrial capacity that would have allowed a rapid re-armament has largely disappeared, again in part through a lack of military orders during the years of the peace dividend, but also because of commercial forces encouraging manufacturing to move abroad. As in the 1930’s we are faced with two dictators holding territorial ambitions, Mussolini and Hitler then, Putin and Jinping now. Echoing that period we are again trying to appease them by largely turning a blind eye to their small land grabs and offering large tracts of other people’s countries in the forlorn hope that it will satisfy their territorial avarice. As in the 1930’s when the principle of collective security enshrined in the League of Nation’s memorandums fell apart, the rules based order and international law, which has been the bedrock of the present United Nations Charter is proving impotent in the face of aggressive state actors who ignore such niceties, even though they have signed up to them.
In order to meet the rising threats many voices are again calling for the rebuilding of the UK’s much depleted armed forces and the government’s recently published Strategic Defence Review (SDR) has laid out what is required for that to happen. The government therefore is fully aware of the problem but their SDR is so heavily caveated with comments of when fiscal conditions allow, and that it will take 10 years to complete the program that one academic has commented it might as well have gone straight to the shredder instead of the printer! Money is tight and for the ambitions of the SDR to be realised a massive rise in defence spending is required; a requirement that, despite statements to the contrary and much rhetoric, does not look like happening any time soon.
The most basic fiscal rule of all is that when your income and borrowing are maxed out but you are continuing to slide into debt, if you want to arrest that fall you have to stop spending. The biggest spenders, by a large margin, are the social programmes and the government establishment. Common sense dictates that they are the ones to be cut back but many of the governing party’s back benchers are acutely aware that their small constituency majorities are vulnerable and this coupled with their natural socialist and, for some, pacifist tendencies has led them to rebel against a plan to cut back on social spending at the expense of funds for defence. Their cry is Welfare not Warfare!
The often repeated statement that, Defence of the Realm is the First Responsibility of Government, sounds very hollow when reality indicates that ‘Staying in Government’ appears to be their most important consideration. In their quest to stay in power, the government have, to the detriment of the Defence of the Realm, caved in to their back benchers and they are now guilty of putting Party before Country!
In his book, The Life of Reason (1905), the Spanish-American Philosopher George Santayana stated that ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it’.
Take note - We have been here before!
Fred Dupuy
Chairman of Defence UK.
