This Sunday in Carfax, organised by the Royal Air Force Association and Horsham District Council, serving and former members of the RAF will be remembered on “Battle of Britain Sunday”. Veterans will be there but also the 1015 (Horsham) Squadron of the Air Cadet Corps. The purpose of the Air Cadets is not, as it is often assumed to be, a "recruiting tool". The Corps provides a great experience in its own right to a great many young people whether interested in an RAF career or not. However among them no doubt there will be cadets who in due course will go on to join the services.
Part of the role of our armed services, and a critical one, is to provide humanitarian support and also to assist the United Nations in peacekeeping operations. (The UK is of course one of the five Permanent Members of the UN Security Council). For over 60 years the UN Peacekeepers’ blue helmets have played a vital role keeping often precarious peace by holding the line between formerly warring parties. Last week, defence ministers from 80 countries gathered in London to discuss how best to make UN Peacekeeping ready for the challenges and opportunities of the modern world. More effective peacekeeping means more stability, more lives saved and fewer ungoverned spaces where extremism can flourish. While planning for the future continues the current challenges are very real – the UK’s has recently for example committed to deploy more personnel to UN peacekeeping work in South Sudan enabling the provision of a new field hospital.
Unfortunately, it tends to be those conflicts which are most intractable where it is hardest to secure the support on the ground and internationally that makes UN participation viable. Syria is the saddest and very apparent case in point. The ceasefire between the forces of President Assad and non-ISIL opposition forces brokered on Monday, at the time of writing, still holds. It is very early days and the conflict has been bitter. However any reduction in the horrific bloodshed in Syria would I know be celebrated well beyond Damascus and Aleppo.