Events

Guest Speaker: Andrew Williams, Warwick Law School

Title: 'The Perverse Institution of the British Military'

Abstract: Stories of both illicit, and thoroughly legal, violence and abuse of those within the military and outside it, have dogged the British military’s contemporary history. Particularly troubling cases have been exposed recently. State processes of accountability and redress tend to individualise and isolate these scandals as exceptions which can be addressed through inquiry, prosecution, and reform of processes. Critical scholars have instead identified these offences (both in the UK and other Global North militaries), as a product of the systemic heteronormative, hegemonic, or ‘martial’ masculinity, that is institutionalised within the military. They have also drawn attention to the militarisation of society that enables these cultures to persist. This article argues that a socio-psychological perspective offers a potentially more useful account of the persistent wrong-doing with the purpose of attaining greater accountability for the military and the legal/state structures that support it. Bringing together analysis of two seemingly disparate examples (the abuse and persecution of LGBTQ+ personnel enabled by the ‘ban’ on homosexuality in the late twentieth century, and the ill-treatment of detainees evident in the Iraq occupation) we illustrate that such acts and behaviours are better understood as symptomatic of the British military as a ‘perverse organisation’ (Long 2008). Recurring elements reveal the perversity: individual and group pleasure in the infliction of sexualised violence and humiliation, ignoring the rights or even existence of others; a warped relationship with reality that both sees and refuses to see such behaviour; turning a blind-eye to the abuse as it is happening; and enlisting as accomplices the British state, and the law, to hide, ignore, excuse, and legitimise the abuse. Failure to appreciate this perversity undermines institutional attempts to prevent these recurrent wrongs.