SASless,
It was a result of slavish adherence to Check Lists by former Military Pilots and others whose employers who demanded use of Check Lists as part of every action by Crews.
I assume your comment isn't aimed at UK military pilots? The current ethos (and has been for some time) applied to emergency handling is very much to fly the aircraft as a first priority, diagnose the fault and only then refer to the FRCs. Immediate actions are done from memory thus negating the urge to reach for the cards and freeing capacity to achieve a safe flight configuration.