Brexit: echoes of Arnhem

By Pete North - January 25, 2021

At the beginning of January we saw the passing of, perhaps, Britain’s greatest ever civil servant, Brian Urquhart. I’d never heard of him until it was pointed out that he was officer named Fuller in A Bridge Too Far. The young intelligence officer who warned General Browning of the 9th SS Panzer Division stationed at Arnhem – which was to be the undoing of the entire operation.

His passing inspired me to read his memoirs as a career bureaucrat. Even in his army days he essentially served as a civil servant to his aristocratic bosses. His book, A Life in Peace and War, tells of his anger and frustration that he was unable to prevent such an appalling tragedy.

One can’t help feeling a certain kinship having spent much of the last few years campaing to avert the unfolding mess Brexit is turning into. He remarks that:

“Once a group of people have made up their minds on something, it develops a life of its own which is almost impervious to reason or argument. This is particularly true when personal ambitions and bravado are involved. In this case even an appeal to fear of ridicule or historical condemnation would not have worked. The decision had been taken at the highest level and a vast military machine had been set in motion. The opinions of a young intelligence officer were not going to stop it”.

That certainly brings some comfort in that I , a lowly blogger with a Twitter account, was unlikely to influence anything either way. There were times when there were traces that we were influencing the debate, but not nearly enough. But Urquhart seemingly never forgave himself for his failure.

“It was, of course, inconceivable that the opinion of one person, a young and inexperience officer, at that, could change a vast military plan approved by the President of the United States, the Prime Minister of Britain, and all the military top brass, but it seemed to me that I could have gone about it more effectively. I believed then, as most conceited young peope do, that a strong rational argument will carry the day if sufficiently well supported by substantiated facts. This, of course, is nonsense”.

He was right then and it continues to be the case. Though he later remarks on unrelated matters how he cringed with embarrassment at his younger self, for his attempts to advise his civilian superiors. “The words of FM Cornford in his Microcosmographica Academia are exactly right: You think (do you not?) that you only have to state a reasonable case, and people must listen to reason and act upon it at once. It is just this conviction that makes you so unpleasant”.

I grappled with this many times over the course of the referendum. I am legendarily unpleasant in the Twittersphere – but not without good reason. Most of the time. I think this is perhaps because I knew what Urquhart came to learn. Facts, reason and substantiated argument were not going to work and I loathed those on both sides who were not receptive to such.

The echoes of Arnhem, and my personal connection with Urquhart are quite profound. Operation Market Garden, was quite obviously a flawed prospectus. The presence of tanks at Arnhem wasn’t the only problem with it. Expecting a corps of medium tanks to traverse a narrow road through dense woodland, and later raised banks above waterlogged enclosures, was somewhat overoptimistic – especially with a looming deadline. I shall not, however, rehearse all the issues.

The issue for Urquart was that his opinion did not carry weight because it lacked prestige. That was the problem then and that is the problem now. That is the central malfunction in British society. The aristocracy then forges ahead will a brain-meltingly stupid idea, disregarding even their own good sense, largely in the comfort of knowing that they will not be held to account.

Urquhart notes that the failure of Market Garden was largely underplayed by the media, and late a half-hearted attempt was made to attribute the failure to a betrayal by a Dutch double agent. This was, as Urquhart remarks “self-serving nonsense”.

The fact was that “an unrealistic , foolish plan had been dictated by motives which should have played no part in a military operation that put so many lives and the early ending of the war at risk”. He concludes his remarks on Market Garden by saying “Never again could I be convinced that great enterprises would go as planned or turn out well, or that wisdom and principle were a match for vanity and ambition”.

Not because of Brexit, but because of the faulty ideas behind our mode of departure, Britain now faces a calamity of a greater magnitude – and for all the same reasons. In this instance, not only were the flaws and ambushes known well in advance, they were actively broadcast by the other side. One then imagines Market Garden might still have gone ahead even if Lord Haw-Haw himself had read out the licence plates of every tank north of the Nederrijn.

But then one might also say that Market Garden was as much like like our accession in 72. An ill-fated, ill-advised thrust into the heart of Europe that could never be sustained in the face of the actual terrain. Common Market Garden, if you like. Our departure then resembles the hasty evacuation by night, severely bloodied and cut down in size. As with Market Garden, it failed to bring hostilities to an end in the way it was supposed to at an unimaginable cost. Prince Bernhard later remarked that “My country can never again afford the luxury of another Montgomery success”. We might well say the same of our own top brass.