After the Wall Came Down: Soldiering through the Transformation of the British Army, 1990–2020

Covers the changing role of women in the army, racism in the army, and the lifting of the ban on homosexuals in the army and the changing of attitudes since.

The generation of young men and women who joined the British Army during the mid to late 1980s would serve their country during an unprecedented period of history. Unlike the two world war generations, they would never face total war - there was never any declaration of war and there was no one single country to defeat. In fact, it was supposed to have been the end of war, a time of peace and stability. Politicians started to use the term, Peace Dividend, with government officials even planning on how and where it should be spent.

But for those in the military, the two decades following the end of the Cold War would not be a time of peace. Government spending and the size of the military was reduced but the Army’s commitments increased exponentially. Those serving not only faced continuous deployment in overseas operations, they would also be involved in immense upheavals that took place within the army. When the Berlin Wall came down, the British Army had not changed for decades.

The ending of the Cold War, combined with a technological revolution, a changing society at home, and new global threats mean that the Army of the second decade of the twentieth-first century - the army this generation of soldiers is now retiring from - is unrecognizable from the one they joined in the late 1980s. This is the story of the soldiers who served in the British Army in those tumultuous decades.

Table of Contents

1. Growing up in Thatcher's Britain
2. Tear Down the Wall
3 Train hard, Fight easy
4. The Short Peace
5. The Peace Dividend and Options for Change
6. Racism and the ECHR Ruling - No Option but Change
7. The Balkans
8. Model Military Intervention - Kosovo and Sierra Leone
9. Women in the Army
10. The Home Front
11. Northern Ireland the Good Friday Agreement
12. 9/11
13. The invasion of Iraq
14. Afghanistan
15. Terrorism, Security, the Olympic Games and Royal Wootton Bassett
The Aftermath