In The Navy

Many years ago my wife and I had dinner with a very senior and once prominent civil servant and his wife. The civil servant was seeing his days out in the House of Lords. They were charming and interesting company, indiscreet even. When talking about our respective families, it transpired that their daughter was an officer in the Royal Navy. Imagining a life of sailing on the high seas visiting far off and romantic places, we were soon pulled up by her mother who said that she served on an aircraft carrier in Plymouth and had spent years there. They Navy could not afford the fuel to run it.

That was nearly twenty years ago, and things have not improved much. It is all very well having advanced weaponry and ammunition, but if you are unable to get anywhere you can’t fire them off at a suitable target. Our much fêted aircraft carrier, rather like the man it was named after, HMS Prince of Wales, was a disaster. It never sailed beyond the horizon and broke down so often that it was decommissioned within a couple of years of launch, and is now being dismantled for scrap.

But I mentioned targets and there are targets that the Royal Navy, along with the junior services are trying to hit: diversity, equality and inclusion targets. Now the Royal Navy has its own scheme whereby all officers must undertake mandatory training on climate change. One cannot but conclude that our senior service is right royally holed below the waterline. This has dismayed senior military officers across the three services and, moreover, is not helping any of the services to meet their recruitment targets. Ironically, now that we have a genuine chance of being engaged in a major war, one where our own country may come under attack, people are not finding military service such an attraction.

That and the fact that many young people with an interest in the military must question exactly what it is they would be fighting for. We cannot even keep our borders free from attack by assorted international scroungers, who see the UK as an easy touch financially and our young women an easy touch once you have organised yourself into a grooming gang.

However, here at The New Conservative we are ‘solutions focused’. Not the ‘low hanging fruit’ for us; we deal with real world problems, and we have decided to lend our weight to solving the recruitment crisis faced by our armed services. So, ‘moving forward’ we have reworked an old classic naval recruitment song in the hope that it will motivate more young people to call round at the local recruitment office.

To the tune of In the Navy by The Village people:

Where can you find pleasure
Search the world for treasure
Mince around and take the knee
Where can you begin
To make your dreams all come true
On the land or on the sea

Where can you learn to fly
Play in sports and skin dive
Study oceanography
Sign up for the big band
Or sit in the grandstand
When your team and others meet

In the navy
Where the hell’s our bloody boat?
In the navy
We can barely stay afloat
In the navy
Come on people take a stand
In the navy, in the navy
We are staying on dry land

In the navy
Reduce you carbon footprint now
In the navy
Declared your pronouns? Take a bow
In the navy
Come on people, and make a stand
In the navy, in the navy, in the navy

They want you, they want you
They want you as a black recruit
They want you, they want you
If you’re white you will get the boot

In the navy
We all love diversity
In the navy
We are all LGBT
In the navy
Come on people take a stand
In the navy, in the navy
We are staying on dry land

In the navy
You can self-identify
In the navy
Or kiss your genitals goodbye
In the navy
Come on people, and make a stand
In the navy, in the navy, in the navy

They want you, they want you
They want you as a black recruit
They want you, they want you
If you’re white you will get the boot

In the navy
We can call a he a she
In the navy
We get offended easily
In the navy
Come on people take a stand
In the navy, in the navy
We are staying on dry land

In the navy
If your Islamic come aboard
In the navy
If your Christian go ashore
In the navy
Come on people, and make a stand
In the navy, in the navy, in the navy

They want you, they want you
They want you as a black recruit
They want you, they want you
If you’re white you will get the boot

…repeat…fade…

Roger Watson is a retired academic, editor and writer. He is a columnist with Unity News Network and writes regularly for a range of conservative journals including The Salisbury Review and The European Conservative. He has travelled and worked extensively in the Far East and the Middle East. He lives in Kingston upon Hull, UK.

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