For King and Country: should the British Army accept more Commonwealth recruits?
A leaked memo to Downing Street proposes a tiny increase in the cap on Commonwealth recruits; it will not be transformative but can prompt other thoughts
On Tuesday, Larisa Brown, Defence Editor of The Times, reported on a leaked memorandum drafted for Number 10 Downing Street concerning recruitment to the British Army. In short, the memorandum proposed a modest technical change: current rules allow up to 15 per cent of the trained strength of the Army (currently 70,800) to be recruited from Commonwealth countries, but by applying that limit instead to the target strength (73,000) a slightly larger number of Commonwealth citizens, an additional 330, could be admitted.
To put this into context, the most recent available figures from the Ministry of Defence’s UK Armed Forces Biannual Diversity Statistics show that in October 2024, the trained strength of the Regular Army was 71,330, of whom 65,650 were UK citizens, 5,770 were from the Republic of Ireland or the Commonwealth and 750 were Nepalese citizens (but note that in this case the Regular Army does not include the Brigade of Gurkhas, recruited exclusively from Nepal and more than 4,000 strong). Roughly speaking, the Army’s trained strength including Gurkhas was about 75,000, and about 65,000 of those were UK citizens.
Why is this important?
The Army has for some years struggled to recruit the number of new entrants it needs, until last year failing to meet its targets every year since 2010. The shortage is particularly acute among Other Ranks, and overall the armed forces are losing more personnel than they are able to enlist. It is now a commonplace that the Army is at its smallest size since the Napoleonic Wars. However, the level of applications from Commonwealth citizens is much more buoyant than that for UK citizens: in 2023 alone, 16,990 applied to join the British Army, although of those 7,880 were rejected for a range of reasons including unmet eligibility criteria, medical or fitness standards and failure to obtain security clearance, and 1,360 were subsequently withdrawn, often because of the length and complexity of the application process.
On the face if it, then, this may seem like an obvious solution. If Commonwealth citizens are applying to join the Army in substantially greater numbers than UK citizens, which they are, and if the Army has an urgent recruitment crisis, which it does, this is surely a marriage of problem and solution. The memorandum explains:
This will support efforts to recruit and retain additional people in our armed forces and ensure better preparedness and readiness whilst remaining within the overall limit of 1,350 new Commonwealth entrants across the services per annum.
In any event, there is nothing new about Commonwealth citizens serving in the armed forces. According to its website, “Commonwealth Soldiers are, and always will be, an important and valued part of the fabric of the British Army”.
The analogy is not perfect, predating as it does the Commonwealth in its modern and recognisable form, but during the Second World War, the United Kingdom saw 383,700 military deaths from all causes, but that figure includes losses suffered by the Crown colonies. In addition, of the Dominions, Australia lost 39,700 dead, Canada lost 42,000, New Zealand 11,700 and South Africa 11,900, India lost 87,000 and 5,000 Irish volunteers with the British armed forces were killed. Going back further to the First World War, over the whole of the conflict more than 1.3 million Indians volunteered for service, of whom a million served overseas, at that point the largest all-volunteer army in history; 74,187 were killed. However romantic and old-fashioned it may seem in the second quarter of the 21st century, there is a long tradition of shared military endeavour.
The memorandum reiterates the reason for a cap on the number of Commonwealth recruits. Its purpose “has always been to reduce the operational risk of over-reliance on personnel who are not fully under the control of the UK government should their country of origin object to where those personnel are deployed”, which seems a relatively sensible if cautious consideration in today’s polarised and sensitive geopolitical atmosphere. Moreover, the Ministry of Defence has “also borne in mind the importance of ensuring that the armed forces continue to be representative of the UK”.
My view is that relaxing the limit on Commonwealth recruitment in the way that is seemingly proposed will be slightly beneficial but is so small a matter as to be hardly worth mentioning. We are talking about an additional 330 soldiers at most, less than half a battalion. Indeed, I would be relaxed about going further and admitting multiples of that number if there are willing applicants who meet all the necessary criteria, including physical fitness and security vetting. There are three main reasons, and each, I hope, will anticipate a potential objection.
This is not breaking new ground
As I set out above, the British Army already has nearly 6,000 Irish and Commonwealth citizens serving in its ranks. The memorandum proposes at most increasing this by around five per cent. It does not suggest altering the criteria for recruitment or changing standards in any way, merely using a different figure to calculate the cap on numbers.
There is a perceptible underlying unease about the proportion of UK armed forces personnel who are not UK citizens: this raises atavistic questions of loyalty, patriotism and reliability, and somehow invokes the spectre of a contracted mercenary army of the sort common in the early modern period. This, by extension, is seen as somehow shameful and exploitative, as well as short-sighted, ignoring the part played in military service by a sense of emotional attachment and obligation. In principle, I am sympathetic to this unease and do not dismiss it. Last August, when there was agitation to recruit former members of the Afghan security forces into the British Army, I opposed the idea in The Spectator, and that idea of loyalty was one of my concerns.
There is a deeper issue, however, which is one of commitment, loyalty and identity. Over the past centuries, states have in general turned away from recruiting foreign soldiers and have developed standing national armies drawn from their own populations.
However, it was not my only concern. I pointed out great uncertainty about who these former Afghan soldiers were and how many of them there were, and observed that effectiveness was also a major concern.
Without casting aspersions on the resolution or valour of individual Afghan soldiers, the combat record of the Afghan National Army against the Taliban was dismal, exacerbated by widespread inefficiency, corruption and desertion. The fall of Kabul in 2021 was so shockingly sudden in part because the Afghan National Security Forces simply collapsed when deprived of coalition support and firepower.
These reservations, however, are not engaged in terms of recruiting a few hundred additional Commonwealth citizens. As I said above, there has been, so far as I’m aware, no suggestion whatever that entry criteria will be altered at all. It is the very fact that there are so many Commonwealth applicants for each position which would allow the Army to maintain its fastidious and exacting standards. These people want to come and fight for us, we are not having to persuade them to overcome any innate reluctance. Again, we already have nearly 6,000 Commonwealth citizens in the British Army. If one subscribes to the belief that they are inherently or even probably sub-standard or unreliable, then the priority would be not so much stopping further recruitment but purging those already in position. But no-one is suggesting that would necessary.
Much less is it a criticism levelled at the Brigade of Gurkhas. While the Nepalese do join the British Army in part for financial reasons—few of us have the luxury of being able to work for free—and while Nepal was never part of the British Empire nor a member of the Commonwealth, Gurkhas have served the British Crown continually since 1815, which is considerably longer than many Commonwealth countries have existed. They have also proved to be among our finest and most tenacious soldiers, with the Victoria Cross being awarded to Gurkhas or to British officers serving with Gurkha units on 26 occasions, half to British officers and half to Nepalese soldiers. Gurkhas have also won two George Crosses for bravery displayed other than in combat.
It seems, then, to be approaching the wrong end of the telescope to accept the presence of 6,000 Irish and Commonwealth citizens and 4,000 Nepalese Gurkhas in the British Army but to image that the admission of a further 300 Commonwealth citizens would somehow change the calculus. Equally, if you do not support the existing recruitment of Irish and Commonwealth citizens and Gurkhas, then taking your stand on 300 additional soldiers is an illogical departure point. In short, we already do this.
Intermezzo: The Irish experience
Perhaps it is worth saying a few words on the particular circumstances of Irish citizens serving in the British Army. Until 1922, of course, all of Ireland came under the British Crown, and large numbers of Irishmen had served in the British Army for centuries. During the First World War, more than 200,000 Irishmen fought and as many as 50,000 may have died; they came from both sides of the religious divide, and in Ulster as many Catholics joined up as did Protestants, though the recruitment rate of Protestants was higher in Leinster, Munster and Connaught. All were volunteers: the Military Service Act 1916 and subsequent measures which introduced conscription applied only to Great Britain, not to Ireland, and a plan to introduce a Military Service Bill for Ireland in early 1918, clumsily linked by the Prime Minister David Lloyd George with implementation of Home Rule after the war, was met with such furious opposition that it was eventually abandoned.
When the Irish Free State came into being in 1922 under the provisions of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, six regiments which had traditionally recruited in the “non-Ulster” counties of Ireland were disbanded: the Royal Irish Regiment, the Connaught Rangers, the Prince of Wales’s Leinster Regiment (Royal Canadians), the Royal Munster Fusiliers, the Royal Dublin Fusiliers and the South Irish Horse. Two infantry regiments, the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers and the Royal Irish Fusiliers (Princess Victoria’s) were saved from the cull; meanwhile the Royal Irish Rifles had been renamed as the Royal Ulster Rifles in 1921. The Irish Guards, added to the Brigade of Guards in 1900, were unaffected.
Two Irish cavalry regiments preserved their history through merging with other regiments as the Army was reduced in size: the 4th (Royal Irish) Dragoon Guards amalgamated with the 7th Dragoon Guards (Princess Royal’s) to form the 4th/7th Dragoon Guards; and the Inniskillings (6th Dragoons) amalgamated with the 5th (Princess Charlotte of Wales’s) Dragoon Guards to form the 5th/6th Dragoons. The 8th King’s Royal Irish Hussars, which had only acquired the “Irish” element of their title in 1921, also survived.
During the Second World War, in which Ireland pursued a policy of neutrality and referred to the conflict as “the Emergency”, an estimated 70,000-80,000 men and women from Ireland (and 50,000 from Northern Ireland) served in the British armed forces, 3,600 were killed. Shamefully, many returning veterans were ostracised and discriminated against for decades afterwards, but in April 1995, Taoiseach John Bruton gave a speech at the Irish National War Memorial Gardens in Islandbridge in which he acknowledged the service of Irish men and women who had fought with the British.
Representing the nation
I take enormous issue with one part of the leaked memorandum, when the author seeks to reassure the audience that “we have also borne in mind the importance of ensuring that the armed forces continue to be representative of the UK”. This sounds platitudinous and unimportant but it is the tip of an iceberg which needs to be addressed methodically and sensibly.
“Diversity” in its broadest sense is a fiercely contentious subject in contemporary politics, here and, even more so, in the United States, as well as elsewhere. There are those who will be reduced to speechless, apoplectic fury by the words on “Diversity and inclusion” section of the Army’s careers website:
Every unit in the British Army has a trained D&I advisor who ensures that their unit has an inclusive culture and assists the commanding officer in supporting those who are treated unacceptably, they lead on informal resolution and signpost the many organisations that are there to support our soldiers including the Speakout confidential helpline and the army mediation service.
In America, of course, the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, has used the issue of what is known in the United States as DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) to justify in part his dismissal of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Charles Q. Brown Jr, in February this year. Before taking office, Hegseth had said in a radio interview:
First of all, you’ve got to fire the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Any general that was involved, general, admiral, or whatever, that was involved in any of that DEI woke shit has got to go. Either you’re in for the warfighting, and that’s it. That’s the only litmus test we care about.
Hegseth had also raised the question of whether Brown had been appointed because of his ethnicity. In his book The War On Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free, published last summer, he wrote:
Was it because of his skin color? Or his skill? We’ll never know, but always doubt—which on its face seems unfair to CQ [General Brown]. But since he has made the race card one of his biggest calling cards, it doesn’t really much matter.
He also removed the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to serve on the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Commandant of the United States Coast Guard, Admiral Linda Fagan, was relieved of her duties in January, in part because of her “excessive focus on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion policies including at the US Coast Guard Academy, diverting resources and attention from operational imperatives”, according to an unnamed senior official at the Department of Homeland Security.
This is a fight for another day. The extent to which “diversity and inclusion” is harmfully distorting the armed forces of the United Kingdom is disputed. I do think that the armed forces should collect diversity statistics on personnel, the biannual compendium of which I referred to above. However, the purpose of collecting these statistics should be to enable the military leadership to identify any areas where there are problems with or obstacles to recruiting from minorities of any kind, and eliminating those obstacles. By doing that, the armed forces can hope to recruit from the widest pool of talent possible, and those who might make a valuable contribution are not lost to the military.
I absolutely reject, however, the idea that the armed forces should “be representative of the United Kingdom”, in the sense of hoping broadly to mirror the population in terms of ethnic origin, religious faith, sexual preference or any other individual marker. To begin with, this is obviously impossible. The armed forces will always be unrepresentative, in that they will overwhelmingly consist of those aged between 17 and 60 and those who are physically fit and active; in addition, although women have been eligible to serve in any role in the armed forces since October 2018, it is likely that the services will for many years to come be disproportionately male (women currently make up 12 per cent of the regular forces, although there is currently a female Vice-Chief of the Defence Staff, General Dame Sharon Nesmith, one of 25 women currently serving and ranked one-star and above).
The objective of representativeness is therefore already impossible. In any case, apart from, as I said above, making sure there are no barriers to joining the armed forces, why should they “be representative of the United Kingdom”? At best it is a nice-to-have but very far down the list, and it is not what they are for. The armed forces exist to provide defence of the realm and to protect and advance British interests around the world, and to do that they need the best men and women available. However you choose to carve up the population into different identities, it is extremely unlikely that every group will have the same enthusiasm for a career in the military; there are different geographical traditions, for example, and young men and women from Portsmouth or Plymouth may be considerably more likely to consider service in the Royal Navy than their counterparts from, say, Derby or Tamworth. So long as each has the same opportunity to pursue a career if he or she wishes, that is all that matters.
To be less mealy-mouthed for a moment, when people talk about “diversity” in the armed forces, they are often talking about ethnic minorities. Non-white people tend to be underrepresented in the military compared to their percentage of the UK population overall, and that tends to be especially true among officers. In particular, very few Muslims tend to seek careers in the armed forces (there are only about 450 Muslims serving as regular personnel in the British Army, about 0.6 per cent of the total, while they make up 6.5 per cent of the population as a whole). But we cannot force people to join the armed forces (save by introducing conscription, a different debate entirely), and if, for example, Muslims choose not to volunteer, then the armed forces will continue to be “unrepresentative”. But that is not a first-order concern.
However, to be quite cynical for a moment, when we talk about “Commonwealth citizens” joining the British Army, the people in question tend not to be white but from countries like Fiji, Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, India and Sri Lanka. If it is a priority to make the armed forces less dominated by white Britons, then Commonwealth recruitment probably addresses that issue considerably more effectively than trying to attract non-white British citizens who seem, for whatever reason, to have no great enthusiasm for careers in the military. There is an element of legerdemain about this perspective but it is worth noting.
“The great privilege belonging to our place in the world-wide commonwealth”
There is a broader argument which I think is relevant here. The Commonwealth of Nations consists of 56 independent countries in every continent on the planet. Their combined population is 2.7 billion, almost exactly a third of humanity. The organisation’s values are enshrined in the Commonwealth Charter: democracy, human rights, peace and security, the rule of law, good governance, sustainable economic development, environmental protection, access to healthcare and so on. The head of the Commonwealth is, of course, HM King Charles III, but he does not hold the position by right of heredity, despite succeeding his mother, Elizabeth II, in September 2022; the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) agreed in April 2018 that the then-Prince of Wales would be the next head of the Commonwealth on the death of the Queen, and those leaders will choose future heads.
Most Commonwealth countries are either still ruled formally by the King, who is individually head of state of 15 Commonwealth realms including the United Kingdom, or were at one point part of the British Empire. However, four member states—Mozambique, Rwanda, Gabon and Togo—have never had any constitutional or colonial links to the United Kingdom, being former possessions of Portugal, Belgium and France respectively. Any country can apply for membership of the Commonwealth provided it meets certain criteria, and Gabon and Togo became members as recently as June 2022. Burundi has applied for observer status with a view to full membership, while the unrecognised Republic of Somaliland would also like to join the Commonwealth. Zimbabwe is seeking to rejoin, having withdrawn in 2003 after it was suspended for human rights violations, and South Sudan and Suriname are reported to have begun the application process. It has also been suggested that Algeria and Kuwait have at least an interest in examining the possibility of membership. The Cook Islands, currently in free association with the Realm of New Zealand which is responsible for their defence and foreign affairs, are seeking full constitutional and legal independence and admission to the United Nations, at which point they might also apply for Commonwealth membership, but their sovereignty is currently only recognised by the United States.
It is impossible to deny that the roots of the Commonwealth are in Empire. It was created as the British Commonwealth of Nations by the Balfour Declaration (not the more famous 1917 document bearing the same name) issued at the Imperial Conference held in London in October-November 1926, describing the group of dominions and “autonomous communities within the British Empire”. Its status was formalised by the Statute of Westminster 1931, which stipulated that its members were “united by a common allegiance to the Crown”. That changed with the agreement of the London Declaration in April 1949, when India indicated that, while it was renouncing the authority of the British Crown to become a republic, it wished to remain full member of the Commonwealth. It therefore no longer shared the “common allegiance to the Crown” laid down in the Statute of Westminster but acknowledged King George VI’s role in the Commonwealth “as the symbol of the free association of its independent member nations and as such the Head of the Commonwealth”. Although at the time it was intended that India would be an exceptional case, in fact the London Declaration set a sufficiently clear precedent that the nature of membership of the Commonwealth was substantially altered. The word “British” was also omitted from the Commonwealth’s name. Of the current 56 member states, 15 are Commonwealth realms, five are independent monarchies (Malaysia, Lesotho, Eswatini, Tonga and Brunei) and the remaining 36 are republics.
It is perfectly possible to argue that, as the role of the United Kingdom has become less and less dominant, the Commonwealth is no longer essentially a modified version of what the then-Princess Elizabeth called in 1947 “our great imperial family to which we all belong”. That being the case, what is its purpose, what is it for? Again, the case against the Commonwealth is one for another day but it is an important and necessary one; see, for example, Philip Cunliffe’s 2024 article in UnHerd which argues that the UK should leave the Commonwealth.
On the other hand, let us suppose for a moment that you support the continued existence of the Commonwealth in some form and the close and friendly relations between its members. That proposition must partially rest, I think, on the historical roots of the Commonwealth; the membership of Mozambique, Rwanda, Gabon and Togo notwithstanding, the organisation would be a rather random and disparate collection of polities without the former ties to the British Crown. It is hard to see, for example, where the interests of the Dominion of Canada and the Republic of Fiji overlap and what common challenges they face, or the Kingdom of Eswatini and the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. The Commonwealth’s existence must to an extent rely on sentiment.
This is not unique to the Commonwealth, or even unusual. Political units are always to some degree creations of thought: they exist because a sufficient number of people agree that they should. In 1969’s Freedom and Reality, Enoch Powell said that “the life of nations no less than that of men is lived largely in the imagination”, while Roger Scruton talked of an individual’s identification with “some arrangement to which he may not attach a name, but which he recognizes instinctively as home”. As with nations, so with alliances of nations like the Commonwealth.
If you believe any of this—and I am keeping my powder dry for the moment—if you believe in an entity called the Commonwealth which represents some emotional, in some cases familial, historically derived bond between independent nations which continues to serve a purpose and have a value beyond mere nostalgia, then allowing Commonwealth citizens to serve in the British Army (which was the point from which I began: I hadn’t forgotten) must surely be a natural part of that relationship. It is part of a long-standing association: there are around 14,000 older people from Commonwealth or former Commonwealth countries who served in the UK armed forces prior to their countries gaining independence, and we maintain a relationship with them. In 2018, then-International Development Secretary Penny Mordaunt announced a scheme to provide aid and assistance to more than 7,000 of those veterans, administered through the Royal Commonwealth Ex-Services League. It was created, she said, “because of the sacrifices the Commonwealth veterans have made and because of the debt of gratitude we owe to them”.
Conclusion
I come back to the point of the proposal in the leaked memorandum being nothing new. We already have Commonwealth citizens serving in the British Army, and our public stance is that they are “an important and valued part of [its] fabric”. This service dates back to the Second World War and before, echoing the service given by personnel from across the Empire in the First World War, and it has been reflected in an ongoing relationship of support for Commonwealth and ex-Commonwealth veterans. It also has a clear counterpart in the 210 years and counting of service by Nepalese citizens in the Brigade of Gurkhas.
We are not alone in this kind of arrangement. The French Foreign Legion was established in 1831 and currently numbers around 9,000 personnel from 140 countries. It is open to recruits from any country in the world and its training and selection maintain its status as a highly effective and elite unit, representing seven or eight per cent of the strength of the French Land Army, and 11 per cent of its Commandement de la Force et des Opérations Terrestres, the command overseeing its operational units.
The least defensible response to this leaked memo, I think, is to be concerned about some fundamental shift in the role, nature or composition of the British Army. That is not happening. That leaves two choices: either regard it within strict limitations as the minor administrative modification it is, with consequences which will be almost imperceptible outside the Ministry of Defence’s Military Strategic Headquarters; or the opportunity to look more widely at our relationship with the Commonwealth, especially through the prism of defence and security. Either is valid. But let us see things for what they are.