Privatise in peace
NEITHER Peter Simple nor John Keegan has told us, but I think the Royal Army Tailoring Corps has its headquarters mess in a colossal country house near Harro- gate. The Georgian saloons (built by Carr of York, 1760, requisitioned by the War Office, 1939) where the top brass dines as the band strikes up 'Thimbles Away' must not be confused with the regimental head- quarters, amply established at Port Said Barracks, East Ardsley Junction. By now Ratcorps must be the richest landowner in the West Riding. It still has to keep up with the Royal Army Education Corps, which messes in a palace at Eltham, is headquar- tered amid rolling parkland at Beacons- field, and, unlike Ratcorps, does, in its way, exist. The point is made (and Mr Keegan must have been crossed off a hundred mess guest lists for making it) that the Forces have a vast property empire which, like the British Empire itself, was acquired in a fit of absence of mind — and, now that we are looking for the spoils of peace, this is where to start. There is precious little peace dividend to be had from merging the 15/32nd Hussars (The Gilt Edges) with the 3.14159 Dragoons (Pi's Own) or Raecorps with Ratcorps. There is everything to gain from setting the valuers and privatisers loose on all the stone frigates, space airfields, converted hotels and the half-million-acre estate that supports them. It should also be Neil Kinnock's trump card. The next time an interviewer asks him how he would pay for his programme, he need only grin and say: `Privatise.'
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