This is an entry in a year-long project to post-blog the demobilisation experience for British servicemen at the end of the Second World War. See here for an introduction to the project and here for a brief overview of the demobilisation process.
A Times reporter in Basingstoke reports on an interesting perceived split in the voting preferences of the services. "One finds a widespread belief that the Royal Air Force will back Labour, mainly, while the Navy will support the government and the Army vote will be split amongst all parties ... most service voters have a better developed political instinct than the average civilian voter ... housing and whether he will find a job in 'civvy street' are the things to which the service voter pays most attention, and as far as one can learn he is not dissatisfied with the government's proposals for dealing with these questions." As the Times notes, support from servicemen might prove critical in some constituencies: the Forces vote in the south "is large enough virtually to decide the result."
A 'famous' county regiment? That's got to hurt all the obscure county regiments. I am interested by the "RAF votes Labour" thing. I can see where it comes from, but just how different is the RAF demographic from the navy, in reality as opposed to cliche?
Posted by: Erik Lund | Saturday, 04 July 2009 at 01:50 PM
Well, there is that apocryphal story about Churchill asking 'Bomber' Harris how his men will vote. 'Ninety per cent will support Labour,' says Harris. Oh well, responds Churchill; at least I've got the remaining ten per cent. No, says Harris, they won't bother to vote at all.
The RAF was vaguely associated with 'progressively' minded men, which was one of the reasons why Evelyn Waugh disliked it so much (airmen are always malign figures in the Sword of Honour trilogy).
But the significance of the service vote in 1945 was greatly overstated. IIRC only about half of all eligible servicemen bothered to fill in the paperwork to register to vote, and of those who did fewer than half actually voted in the end.
Posted by: Alan Allport | Saturday, 04 July 2009 at 02:14 PM
So here is where I'm coming from, with the apology in advance that I'm taking off from a book on armoured warfare by one of J. F. C. Fuller's acolytes, written just before the war.
(Sheppard) is arguing that the army should buy more light tanks instead of imitating the humungous French Char-B. The choice, he says, comes down to maintenance. A light tank is like an automobile, while a heavy tank is like a locomotive.
A future Britain can be a place of suburbs and service stations,that is, a union-free middle-class place where professional gentlemen fix their own autos, or a country of great heavy machinery shops. The army's choice will direct society as a whole.
The RAF is the epitome of a machine-shop armed forces. The largest number of RAF votes won't come from pilots, however progressive or not, but from highly trained ground crew. And it's one of those interesting (hah! I slay me!) facts that the RAF had arranged with the TUC that its ground crew would receive trade tickets upon separation. The RAF's training and operational structure perpetuated the "aristocracy of labour."
So that's why I can see the whole "RAF votes Labour." The thing is that focussing on this might obscure the way that the RAF just followed the older services in this. The _real_ army and navy, if you will, as opposed to the cliche, are machine shop services. The Chief is at the heart of Galactica, not Starbuck.
Posted by: Erik Lund | Sunday, 05 July 2009 at 02:03 PM