Woke has watered down our military

NATIONAL pride and courage have usually been seen as timeless virtues that are essential to military success.

- Leo McKinstry

But that view is challenged by modern woke ideology, which likes to subvert traditional morality and authority. In an essay published in 2019 in a military aviation journal, RAF officer Group Captain Louise Henton warned that patriotism and bravery were “personality traits” that could encourage “overt masculine” and “undesirable” behaviour, leading to the isolation of some recruits and a fall in standards.

Her commentary, which sounded in places like a report from the women’s committee of a north London Labour Council, is typical of the obsession with equality that has gripped the Armed Forces.

By 2022, for instance, the RAF had taken the extraordinary and ultimately illegal step of banning applications from white men in order to boost diversity. But Group Captain Henton’s article is all the more significant, given she is in command of RAF Brize Norton, which was targeted last week by politically motivated vandals from the extreme group Palestine Action, whose attacks have caused £55million-worth of damage.