So here goes with my first ever blog and there’s nothing like revealing an Army past to endear yourself to an arts audience, so I’ll start there.  Two more to follow shortly: one on the Norwich Live Lit scene and the other on displacement.

I left school at 15 and joined the Army in 1973 after a turbulent childhood, a fairly common route.  The Army was the perfect receptacle for an angry boy to pour his difficult past into, with plenty to kick against.

I enjoyed the notoriety of being a rebel, but inside wanted promotion and acceptance more than anything.  I eventually got over myself and whilst I did not exactly fully surrender to its rough embrace, we struck up a mutually satisfactory relationship and I worked my way up to major.

The Army I began photographing in 1993 was very different to the Army I joined.  The British Army, like all public institutions built on tradition, was struggling to come to terms with social change. Soldiers had more mobility in their personal lives and were no longer stuck in remote barracks protected from the permissive society.  Possibly related to this,  the Army going through a period, of difficult public relations and was in the middle of re-organisation, with redundancies.  My own corps, the Royal Army Pay Corps  – not the most heroic perhaps – was renamed the Adjutant General’s Corp (AGC) or All Girls Corps as quickly became known, having become the new home for most of the female soldiers (lumpy jumpers as we called them) that were integrated to the rest of the Army from their own Women’s Royal Army Corps.  They threatened promotion opportunities and more importantly perhaps our masculinity, in a Corps already low on the testosterone ladder, made up as we were of computer programmers, accountants and clerks.  Male spaces suddenly had a female presence

even traditional male roles were not exempt.

The sense of threatened masculinity was a strong motif in many of the images I made.

Racism was a more difficult issue to deal with visually.  I tried the same device that I used with gender, but the pictures re-enforced, rather than challenged stereotypes.  In the end it became a matter of using a lack of visibility to make the point, the fact that I have to point it out, probably means I was not entirely successful.  Statistically the one black person in the book, tucked away in the corner of this image, is over represented.

The issue of sexuality was only beginning to be considered and would be even more problematic.  My ten year old son had a better grasp of sexual issues than many senior officers.  There was none of the ironic awareness of homophobia as seen in the TV series Generation Kill.  The moustaches, rugby club like excesses of drinking sessions that resulted in naked dancing in an exclusively male environment rang no bells.  Homosexuality was known to be a part of the Army, but had its compartment/closet, ironically, in the oldest and most traditional regiments.

To be a soldier you need to justify it to yourself, that God, or at least good is on your side, that you are serving something bigger than yourself, your country.

For some time the notion of patriotism had been problematic and in multi-cultural Britain, the idea of Empire had become to be seen in a negative way.

Yet for the Army patriotism and Empire where the most visible signs of the values underpinning what we did.  Flags, regimental silver, plaques, trophies were everywhere with their motifs of glory and conquest.  The Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton.

At the time the British Army was engaged in peace-keeping, a positive role to be proud of – ignoring all the complexities.  Yet somehow, it didn’t seem to quite cut it, the reason being, I think, a lack of glory.  I attended regimental dinners where our old Corps march was played.  Never mind the old Corps didn’t exist anymore, we weren’t going to let that stop us thumping the table with our fists and raising our glasses.  We were accountants, programmers and clerk marching back victorious from the Battle of Waterloo to the stirring sound of Imperial Echoes.

As I write this blog, things have changed.  Gays are allowed to serve in the Army, although I doubt they have an easy time of it.  Women are integrated, black people can really serve in the Guards, again I imagine this is not an easy place for them to be.  Very young soldiers are dying in Afghanistan which has given rise to much public support for our armed forces and politicians are aligning themselves with ‘our boys’.  On the other hand there is a Public Inquiry into abuse of Iraqi prisoners by British soldiers.  Whether we should be in Afghanistan is questioned, there is a loss of trust since the debacle of the second Gulf War and not just from the usual places.  The world is more complex place, it is no longer as simple as defending the White Cliffs of Dover.

The photographs are from This Mans Army (Dewi Lewis Publishing).