Heathrow Harry has a point about members of racial minorities simply not wanting to apply for commissions because they can do better elsewhere. I recall chatting with an Indian engineering officer from St Mawgan who became a regular customer of mine for a while. I talked about the scarcity of Asian officers in the service, and he said that in his own case he had met with resistance from his family who thought that he should be able to do a lot better with an engineering degree than join the armed forces, which were perceived as very much a third rate career choice. If you think of the stereotype Asian mother ("my son the lawyer/accountant/doctor, etc") then "my son the RAF officer" carries with it little kudos, which may have some bearing on why so few talented Asians are entering the service.

TTN, indeed, as a Rotarian I was asked by an Indian Doctor from another club to talk with them and his son who wanted to become an engineer. They wanted him to become a doctor.

Re the OP: DC garnering the ethnic vote for future use?

The stats posted by Coff tell a story; the problem is more with the RN and RAF than the Army; it seems there are 3-4x the proportion in the Army than the other two. It is further influenced by the F&C recruitment initiative. There are plenty of Fijians in the British Army, for example. Most of these will be ORs though, as the stats point out.

I would think the problem (if one accepts that there IS a problem) is that what the AOSB/AIB/OASC are looking for is simply not how these kids are brought up, due to differing cultural influences. The kids probably know/suspect this, and so don't apply in the same numbers. If you're brought up on a south London housing estate and go to the local comp, you probably don't read a broadsheet nor could you draw a sketch map of the Middle East, pointing out the salient cities and influences. I can't speak for the RN or RAF, but you're unlikely to pass AOSB if that's the case.

I suspect if you drew a map of where BAME people are concentrated, and overlaid it with a map of where officers lived before joining, you would see some degree of (reverse) correlation.

I do think that Dave has got this one wrong. You want the most suitable staff in all positions in HMF, not ones that fit racial profiles in representative percentages. If that ends up being that all the officers are black and all the ORs are white, so be it. Or the other way around.

Perhaps the answer is to get more of the BAME population to read newspapers, in-depth news reports etc with the aim of getting more of their kids to fit the profile that HMF require.

And quite a few Nepalese, which probably skews the Army % a little.

Whilst I accept that he has recently retired we shouldn't forget the last Director RAF Medical Services A**** M*******r who retired as a 2* "general".

Ahhhh but he was a Doctor and therefore was able to meet family ambitions too! :E

the other issue is that UK born minorities have little or no family experience of the Armed Forces - certainly not at Officer level

I'm sure the Armed Forces get a better than average intake due to the fact that for many cadets it's "in the family" - this still applies in the Sub-Continent etc but they join their own armed forces not ours

Most minorities know little or nothing about the UK armed forces

We have managed to gradually increase the number of Women Officers - the same effort needs to be put into recruiting minority group graduates

Jumping Jack
 

I too was surprised at Ken Scott's assertion re Trev. My son shared a house with him at Colt' 92/3 and they remain great friends to this day and I've never heard any mention of what Ken claimed re him losing his toes. Trev doesn't mention it in his book, 'Average' ( shameless plug again Trev' ! ), although maybe he is just too nice to say so, if he was the subject of such overt racism.

I always wanted him to be my son-in-law but No1 son said, 'No way am I inflicting my sister on any of my Jag Mates' - smiley needed but I can't make it work!

Chugalug

Do you remember the co-pilot ( public school educated Pete Milward ) and nav ( British Asian Joe Amin ) on 30 Sqn 68-70, who ran a mobile disco' with the name " Black & White Disco "? Joe was one of several non-white Navs and pilots on the Herc in the early years.

Indeed I do, B48N. Joe was about as non-PC as you could imagine, famously winding up Works and Bricks to find out what process was called for in order that they might erect a temple in his South Cerney OMQ garden. On another occasion they delivered a mirror, wall, tall, only to be asked if they could fix it on the ceiling over the marital bed (though that might well have been a genuine request...) :O

Seem to remember a black Herc F/O, though not on 30? Do you remember him? I wonder if he got a command? Think he was married in OMQs at Hullavington.

I'm really pleased to see that having raised the topic the PM is leading by example and has promoted numerous BME MPs to his cabinet. Oh wait a sec no he hasn't. There are Asian cabinet ministers, Priti Patel and Savid Javid , in fact women are also conspicuous by their low representation as well.

People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

Chugalug
 

Harry Apiafi springs to mind - I left late '73 so not sure if he got his command, but he has been mentioned before on Prune so someone will know. I can recall at least 2 black ALMs in our time.

I think Haraka has hit the nail on the head with his suggestion that 25 years or so ago there may have been fewer people from ethnic minorities being recruited.

The same demographic is often mentioned in football - 'Why are there so few managers and top coaches from the ethnic minorities ? '. If you go back to the 70s there were only 2 or 3 black players with leading clubs, more in the 80s and then an avalanche since the 90s, yet curiously I can recall hardly any British Asian players. Surely in the future there will be more non-whites at the top of the services and football.

I find the "couldn't be a nicer bloke etc etc" that is being used to highlight some Non white officers to be a little bit patronising.

Not everyone would have liked n'officer and calling someone a total Tosser, irrespective of the colour is perfectly acceptable.

Now some of said mentioned people were probably nice blokes .............

As for Call Me Dave........................ Eton Rich Boy pandering to media, my opinion of him is that he was always an Idiot, one day maybe will be prove wrong.................. I doubt it though.

B48N, yes of course, Harry Apiafi! Thank you, the relays in the memory circuits take ever longer to operate these days, often failing completely.

I'll remind Mrs Chug, as they were on the same Hullavington patch as us, and the wives would get together when their o/h's were away down route. We went back there years later on our way to a wedding rehearsal. With a bit of time in hand we parked briefly outside our first home. The front door opened and a Ghurkha officer emerged, asking if he could be of help? Despite our protestations we were ushered inside their immaculate home. Large rooms suddenly became smaller and vice versa, as reality replaced memory. What had changed was that the kitchen solid fuel stove for hot water, and the lounge coal fire with a back boiler for the main bedroom radiator (the only one), had been replaced by a modern central heating and hot water boiler. Similarly the Crittall windows were gone, replaced with modern double glazed units. We exchanged Christmas cards for a few years, until they were posted elsewhere and we lost touch. Another kind gesture on their behalf, given that I suspect it was not a festival that they celebrated.

Jumping Jack, Brian 48nav: that was the story as related to me at the time when TE arrived at Colt, it might even have come from him but it was a long time ago so I can't honestly say. You might say it is 'utter boleaux' & I'm glad to be corrected - the Regt instructors weren't racist, they would've welcomed him with open arms but they treated everyone, black & white, with equal disdain that resulted in him suffering irreversible injury in a training exercise although it was his fault really for having poor circulation. Happy to be put right.

From that classic PPRuNe thread 'I Wish I Hadn't Said That....' of about 15 years ago:

Service humour, ShotOne, in case you're reading...:hmm:

I'm outraged, BEgle. You just called all non-White people 'bearers' and they are not! I'm wasting more key-strokes!

Having had a think about this, I'll happily toss the grenade back in the Govt's direction and say this is actually their fault - not just the Tories, it's both major parties - but neither have done anything constructive to resolve the issue, if indeed there is one. And I don't include positive discrimination and quotas in the sense of doing something constructive, they are all too often just toxic political reactions.

I'm going to base my claim by looking at another aspect of social mobility - education - and argue they have done similar stupid things there to effectively discourage social mobility, but now have the front to whinge about it. I grew up in a single parent family 'ooop north' but rather than settle for life in the factories my mum recognised early on that education was the key to my future. The local comps were pretty shocking (I remember one maths teacher on an open day being proud his class of 13yr olds we're learning fractions, the same fractions my mum taught me to do when I was about 7 or 8), so mum decided a local independent school was the only way ahead. However, the only way she could afford to send me there was thanks to the Assisted Places Scheme that enabled talented and intelligent children (it's been down hill since peaking at 11!) to go to such schools with fees partly or fully paid for. Had the APS not existed I'd have been at the local comp doing fractions again at 13. A couple of decades later, and well, I'm not doing too badly in life, pretty much the principle of social mobility in action.

Fast forward to 1997 and Blair's mob. One of the first things they did was to abolish the APS on the grounds it was elitist and wasn't fair. Everybody should be equal in their eyes - equally sh1t that is. The Tories have done the square root of sod all to reinvigorate the programme and consequently, we now have discussions over a lack of social mobility amongst the poorer sections of society. Well who'd have seen that coming on the back of a piece of crass educational vandalism?!

I'd argue the situation is exactly the same in terms of diversity. I'm not aware of a single positive thing either of them have done to legitimately encourage diversity other than preaching quotas and trying or bring everyone down to the same common denominators. And guess what, the same types of questions about why coloured individuals are getting the rough end of the wedge. Quotas are not the answer; they just breed cynicism and contempt of the entire process and those unfortunate enough to qualify under a quota spend their life under constant suspicion that they got there as part of some lefty box ticking exercise, even if they are good operators. If I ruled the world, I'd ban politicians from reading newspapers or watching the news and then they might stop bloody headline chasing and do the job properly.

"Bearer my gun" was used by an SAS Sgt captured by the ARG in West Falklands after the officer had been killed. The ARG was quite prepared to believe white officers had black porters to carry their kit.

Good call, Melchett.

Maybe we should sub-contract recruitment to ISIS. They seem to have a good handle on it these days.....