TWENTY years ago today, the liberation of Kuwait — as Ronald Reagan’s press secretary famously called it — was in full swing. While the ground war did not commence until the final week of February 1991, bombers operated by the US and its allies were already blasting Baghdad and other Iraqi cities, in an attempt to persuade Saddam Hussein to leave the small but legally independent state his troops had occupied the previous August.
As ever in conflicts that involve the British armed forces, the UK merchant fleet played a vital role, as much by simply carrying on with world trade as by ensuring the continued supply of provisions and matériel to combatants. Their efforts substantially aided the eventual success of Operation Desert Storm — and their contribution was often at no small risk to their persons.
British politicians of all parties were full of praise for “the fourth arm of defence” and spoke of this country’s “strategic defence need” to maintain both its seafarers and flagships.
Indeed, Lloyd’s List reported foreign shipowners with Ministry of Defence charters were “trying desperately” to recruit British crews to replace third world officers and ratings who had no desire to enter the war zone and were signing themselves off in droves.
Yet, oddly enough, Britons serving on the merchant fleet enjoyed few perks as a reward for their heroism.
There was, for instance, controversy over their liability to pay the poll tax, predecessor to today’s council tax. Anomalies abounded. Royal Navy seafarers were deemed exempt, but Royal Fleet Auxiliary seafarers were not. UK seafarers serving on ships chartered by the MoD did not have to pay, while UK seafarers serving on tankers in exactly the same waters did.
Gas masks were ultimately issued to crews on both British-flagged and British-owned vessels as a precaution against chemical gas attack — albeit not without a spat between the government and the General Council of British Shipping over who should foot the bill. The GCBS eventually coughed up, but it was only charged cost price.
Fast-forward two decades and at least the Red Ensign is clearly in better shape than it was in the early 1990s, in terms of numbers of ships. But British national seafarers are scarcer still. Even the future of the RFA is a subject of political discussion.
It may be in today’s incentive-driven and globalised world, patriotism is irrelevant — and in future hostilities, officers and ratings from maritime labour supply nations will be willing to step in, as long as the price is right. But imagine how catastrophic it would be if that assumption proved incorrect.
Censorship can’t beat the tweet, so why not join it?
HAVING been invited to attend an e-navigation conference, I was particularly heartened to be invited to engage in a bit of tweeting by the organiser (a self-confessed Twitter fan).
Now for those of us that are reading this in the printed version of our esteemed paper and not on the blog site, tweeting is not the name of a London suburb.
This is the act of sending short, opinionated messages and information through a social network known as Twitter. One responds, forwards and generally engages in short, sharp discussion on the themes brought up, and that is the point of it. It offers an opportunity for instant debate. It is not an essay on decorum and precision.
I also thought there is a great relationship between the use of a modern communication tool and the discussions of how to use modern communication and navigation tools in shipping.
How wrong I was, and this perhaps sums up some of the problems we could have in shipping circles.
There are too many shipping organisations and companies that like to hide behind curtains of diplomacy and obfuscation. Tweeting from a conference aimed at being ‘forward thinking’ about technology was leading to things being “taken out of context”, apparently.
I was not told this by someone responding to a tweet (one tweets rather than twitters), but by a company spokesperson who stood up and addressed the audience about concerns regarding Twitter being used in the conference (which was a success in my opinion, in that it drew up some good points of direction for e-navigation to progress).
It seems some people in the audience did not want to use social media to tell the world what it wants to know; and probably just as many agreed that there was enough other forms of existing media available to disseminate opinion, news and observations.
However, what did happen after that was the number of people following me started to climb steadily, notably by people in the conference as much as elsewhere. So complaining about it has the effect of increasing its popularity.
Blogging, tweeting and the other growing professional network with a comment option, Linked-in, are growing in popularity.
My advice to people who do not like it is to get an account and start following the discussions, otherwise you will never know what people are saying about you, and you’ll not be able to reply and have your opinion known.