The mishandling of the hostages is causing serious unrest across the Royal Navy, says robert fox |
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The Royal Navy used to enjoy its rather stuffy image, and the notion that the 'silent service' never spoke to the 'yellow press'. Just 25 years ago, the Navy refused to take any journalists to the Falklands: it was only on the insistence of Mrs Thatcher and Bernard Ingham that 32 of us were embarked with the Task Force.
So how is it that Nelson's service has now entered the world of the Big Brother house? Why did it allow its former captives to blab to the media? The decision – now temporarily reversed by the Ministry of Defence - was apparently taken by Vice Admiral Adrian Johns, the Second Sea Lord and as such head of personnel in the Navy.
The Navy did not see fit to inform fellow chiefs of the RAF and Army, despite the momentous reversal of all previous policy and regulations. General Sir Richard Dannatt,
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| There are rumours of petitions for a vote of no confidence in the Navy Board, which includes Admiral Jonathon Band (above) |
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head of the Army, immediately sent a message saying there would be no change in the rules for his 100,000 or so soldiers.
This whole affair has done huge damage to the Navy. According to the MoD, Admiral Johns took the decision because the sailors were being offered "life-changing sums" by the media. He felt that unless the rules were changed, the sailors might leave the service and then be out of control.
The fact that a senior officer would consider his sailors quitting at all, never mind on these grounds, speaks volumes. From the very opening scene, when the boats and crews from HMS Cornwall were seized by Iranian swarm boats, there have been signs of serious institutional failures in command and conduct. Like a shaft of unearthed lightning, this has run through the Navy as a service, the MoD and the Government.
This morning I received an email from a Royal Navy friend which says: "There has been a collapse of command of enormous proportion... It appears to me that we have come from the sailor with the HMS Hero 
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