On this day
On April 11, 1986 (40 years ago), I was with my good friend Gary Ling at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst following the Sovereign’s Parade.
As The Times reports today, the Parade marks the end of 44 weeks of training for cadets who go on to become army officers. Gary, who I met at university in Aberdeen, subsequently spent three years in the army, serving predominantly in Northern Ireland.
I visited him in the autumn of 1986, flying to Belfast and staying on an army base just outside the city. Security levels were high and when we drove to Giant’s Causeway (one of the main tourist attractions) we were in an unmarked car and under strict instructions to stick to the tourist route, a large part of the province being out of bounds to off duty soldiers.
One of the reasons Gary joined the army is because he wanted to stand for Parliament and having spent his high school years in America (his father worked for IBM) he thought it might help his chances of being selected as a Conservative candidate if he added the British army to his CV.
In part it worked because after he left the army he was selected as the Tory candidate for the admittedly safe Labour seat of Eccles near Manchester in the 1992 General Election. Although he lost, he subsequently came second in the selection process for two ‘safe’ Conservative seats (one of them being Christchurch in Dorset).
Sadly, that was as close as he got to fighting the 1997 election as a candidate. Instead he came up to Edinburgh, where I was living, and worked for the Scottish Conservatives during the election campaign, his principal achievement being the employment of the party’s secret weapon, the Tory Tartan Chicken.
He later became a Conservative councillor in his home town of Watford but in the last 15 years, disillusioned with the party over Europe and other issues, he joined Ukip, the Brexit Party, and is now an active member of Reform. (Sadly, his best idea - an Enterprise Party that would promote free enterprise and less regulation - never got off the ground.)
He is currently in Africa, working on his latest project, but my wife and I are visiting his wife Helen today and on this, the 40th anniversary of his passing out parade, I shall be raising a glass to one of my oldest friends.
