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A thread on a British Gendarmerie @thinkdefence @nicholadrummond @wavellroom @TotherChris @thepagey @Barney065 et al please chip in.
Thinking of comments I have seen ref Civil Defence and the UK Forces support to the COVID pandemic, and the upcoming security review 1/
Thinking of comments I have seen ref Civil Defence and the UK Forces support to the COVID pandemic, and the upcoming security review 1/
We have lots of Police and Security forces: Royal Military Police (RMP), RAF Police, MOD Police, Civil Nuclear Constabulary, Military Guard Force, and probably others I don’t know about! Does consolidation bring any fiscal or operational benefits?? 2/
RMP is the biggest and would seem to be the logical home “Military and Paramilitary” police and security services - yes I know we don’t like Red Caps, but it is logical! If we add all those other services together and the different roles they play it is starting to look like..3/
A Gendarmerie of sorts. A Military Arm with a Civil Para-Military arm, and potentially its own reserves. I seem to remember in Cold War times there was a “Dads Army” of too old for TA Infantry, ex-regulars who were for UK key point security force? Today would this be a reserve 4/
A reserve component of the Military Guard Service? Basically TA who are not to be deployed abroad, but can be called up for all sorts of “peace time assistance to the civil power missions” as well “war time homeland defence” missions. Not sure what we would call this... 5/
I am sure we can come up with a snappy title that sounds less “Euro” than Gendarmerie :-) however is putting all these disparate forces and agencies under a single chain of command, under Land Command, Adjutant Generals Corps a good idea? Potential for savings & efficiency? 6/
And potential for taking on a civil defence role too. Take a look at Poland’s setup https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_Gendarmerie_(Poland) as well as the more well known example of France, Spain’s Guardia Civil and Italy’s Carabineri.
Thoughts.....? 7/
Thoughts.....? 7/
