Why Does Everything in Britain End Up Like An Episode Of Dad’s Army?
Why does almost nothing get done properly in Britain? We all moan, and it doesn’t take much surreptitious conversation to discover how much ill-feeling there is towards the state, corporations, lawyers, or indeed almost any organisation or profession believed to be interested only in skinning us alive without doing anything for it.
There’s a new bypass being built near us. It’s been going on for a decade. It still won’t be finished for another year. Of course it won’t be. Why would it? This is Britain, after all. It involves a bridge that was designed far too short for the river valley it’s supposed to cross (apparently the valley is wetter than expected), and then it turned out that the bridge was incorrectly designed for the location and it’s had to be modified.
That’s just one feeble example and it’s all too typical. Meanwhile, the Chinese have built the world’s tallest bridge in less time than Britain would need for a planning enquiry. And probably for less money too.
The reason is easy to explain. There are plenty of natural laws, but here’s one unique to Britain:
Every organisation, committee, scenario, initiative and government-backed and corporate project in Britain will inevitably degenerate into a scene from Dad’s Army.
That of course is the celebrated sitcom Dad’s Army, based on the world of Britain’s Home Guard in the Second World War, which ran for nine series in the 1970s. Every character is caricature, and sometimes not even as much as that.
Just think about it. Captain Mainwaring, the prickly bank manager and obsessed with status – the ultimate incompetent management figure, forever frustrated by his own paltry military service in the Great War and now strutting around like a dumpy cockerel as commanding officer of the platoon.
Sgt Wilson, a complacent, dozy and lazy member of the establishment, effortlessly imbued with a sense of privilege and world-weary detachment. Persistently given to undermining Mainwaring.
Lance-Corporal Jones, the panic-stricken jobsworth stifling initiative at every turn and floundering haplessly around to demolish every project with his matchless ability to overcomplicate anything and everything. He has a special skill for wasting inordinate amounts of time with ludicrously impenetrable explanations, usually based on fantasy.
Private Frazer, the miserable doom-laden pessimist and undertaker, forever raining down scorn and stirring up opposition and discontent in the ranks, his own ambitions in the platoon thwarted.
Private Walker, the skiving skimmer who dodged regular military service. Forever on the take but essentially harmless and even with some good characteristics.
Private Godfrey, the embodiment of the well-intentioned but largely hopeless pensioner whose presence relies usually on everyone else. Constantly called away to relieve himself.
Private Pike, the idiotic mummy’s body excused military service. Today he would have a certificate excusing him from any form of employment for anxiety, ADHD and anything else his mother or the system could come up with.
Then there’s the ARP Warden Hodges, whose sole purpose in life is feuding with Mainwaring, finding fault with the platoon’s men and triumphantly announcing their infractions. Hodges is the confrontational and dispute-loving trade union leader to Mainwaring’s shambolic management. His only mission in life is to create conflict and throw his weight about.
To these we can add various other characters, all comic figures (like the vicar and the verger) but essential props that amplify the authenticity.
The reason the sitcom lasted so long is very simple. Every single organisation in Britain is in home to some of or all these personality types, whether it’s the parish council, a local arts society, a corporation or the government.
Almost every problem the Home Guard platoon is confronted with results in bickering, chaos and wasted time, based mostly on posturing, obstinacy, incompetence, obsession with status and a lack of foresight, common sense and lateral thought. If the outcome is a good one, it’s invariably the result of chance.
Sounds familiar? It doesn’t matter what you think about the boats, climate change, the welfare state or the NHS. Every one of Britain’s current problems is being dealt with as if each was an episode of Dad’s Army.
I’d almost forgotten. The swaggering insolent U-boat commander in the episode The Deadly Attachment (1973) who so famously ran rings around Mainwaring. He is the nemesis of all Britons: the swarthy and unreliable foreigner who even has the temerity to complain about the fish and chips the Germans are served. In the end he is thwarted but only by chance.
Is there a plus to all this? Well, sort of. At least we can laugh at ourselves. I can’t see any other country making so piercing and galling a home-grown equivalent satire.
The best thing is to assume that whatever chaos or incompetence you’re reading about or watching in Britain today, just think of Dad’s Army and suddenly it will all make sense. Trust me. It won’t make any difference but instead of a grimace it might bring a smile to your face.
P.S. In the rare event of Dad’s Army not helping you to understand something that’s happening, then advance no further than Fawlty Towers, which will clarify matters.
Guy de la Bédoyère is a historian and writer. Born in London 12 years after the war, his experience of being an RAF cadet in the 1970s, and a range of jobs from the BBC to the civil service and teaching, as well as lecturing to a variety of societies, has taught him all he needs to know about Britain and Dad’s Army. His latest book is The Confessions of Samuel Pepys. His Private Revelations (Abacus 2025).
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Don’t tell him Pike.
I would still rather live here than in China and believe that in the unlikely event we rid ourselves of the corrosion of socialism we could have the best of both worlds.
Good question.
I read (I think in the Spectator) that the number of people on the public payroll has increased by 700,000 since the pandemic.
What do these people do?
vote for those who gave them jobs
“jobs”, you mean
Maybe because the script writers knew what they were talking about! Quite a few “comedy” productions get away with telling the truth in a subtle way that would not be tolerated if (say) a politician tried to dish it out.
True. Truth expressed as “comedy” must be laughed at by the politburo. If they didn’t laugh, they would reveal that it’s all TRUE!
Yes, Minister.
Yes, Prime Minister.
Can’t bring myself to watch either now
Too many bureaucrats striving to secure their position on the bureaucrats’ greasy pole. Their typical reflex is not to shrink the number of bureaucrats but to increase the number of greasy poles.
The swaggering insolent U-boat commander in the episode The Deadly Attachment (1973) who so famously ran rings around Mainwaring.
I think we ought to consider that the finale of the episode is Mainwaring facing down the U Boat Captain, each with a pistol pointed at the other. Only when the U Boat Captain has capitulated, and it is discovered that he had no ammunition, that Mainwaring admits that his pistol is empty too. I thought that that was an act of incredible courage and stoicism, and summed up for me some the bravery shown by ordinary men and women who are suddenly in a life and death choice. All hail Capt Mainwaring, a pompous fool is how he may have been characterised, but the bravest pompous fool when it really mattered.
All of the characters of Dad’s Army could be incredibly brave when it came down to it, even though they were blatantly incompetent at other times. Godfrey saved Mainwaring’s life once, and Frazer saved Godfrey’s cottage, despite having nothing good to say about the man at any other time. I think the bottom line of the series is that we can all rise to do the right thing when the hour comes.
In many ways, rising to do the right thing when the hour comes is a very British trait.
As an aside. Pvt Godfrey, played by Arnold Ridley epitomises that. Arnold was in the Battle of the Somme in WW1, sustained a bayonet to the groin and a rifle butt to the head, yet survived. He was in constant pain and a left hand that barely worked. His carrying of the first aid kit was because he couldn’t carry a rifle. Despite all that he wrote ‘The Ghost Train’, the most famous film version with Arthur Askey, and had tremendous success in the West End and as an actor. . Another understated hero…
I remember reading that many of the Home Guard had fought in the WWI and that they were competent soldiers and knew how to use weapons therefore they were not really a joke nor incompetent.
Hear, hear! Dad’s Army and the Land Girls and millions of others made sure that the troops had somewhere to come home to after the end of that terrible war.
And it was Dad’s Army that made sure that girls and women could walk safely anywhere even at night during the blackouts, as one elderly lady said of her own wartime experience of Bristol. Impossible now, in Bristol and cities all over the West, because of Mass Third World Invasion.
Wherever you have central planning you have waste, incompetence and chaos.
Except China!
The wrong people always end up in charge, they tend to be insecure empire builders and bullies and strive to keep the most efficient and useful in their ranks down.
Command economies always look successful because absent profit motive or price system or safety concerns, they just keep shovelling resources at any project until it’s finished in record time to meet the political,imperative so the goons in charge don’t lose face.
Then whatever it is collapses, or blows up.
Perhaps that’s the reason the establishment has conspired to let in so many foreigners to come and live in Britain in the last couple of decades.
If the Chinese had built HS2 it would have been finished 10 years ago for half the price.
It may have been finished 10 years ago, but nobody would know the cost. Communism does not use the capitalist market system with pricing.
When West German automakers went to the East after unification to see about modernising car plants there, they discovered the cost of input to make a Trabant far exceeded the value of the finished product.
If command economies were so successful, the USSR would not have collapsed. China will too… give it time.
At least Dad’s Army was funny.
In China, the factories are often run by one single individual who takes full responsibility for “success”. If they don’t succeed, they are “removed” or remove themselves, permanently, as it were. The problem is that that individual may stop at nothing to ensure that success, including serious abuse of those under him.
The problem with this is that encountering such situations in real life instead of in a TV show is decidedly unfunny.
Correct. Looking at things in hindsight through the lens of humour is very funny. But when you’re living through it, using the lens of humour can best be described as a coping mechanism.
To quote myself: A sense of (gallows) humour is the only thing which keeps us from going completely mad.
In my next life, I plan to become a tall simpleton with no talents except yelling at others and no interest in anything which can’t either be eaten, drunk or shagged. That ought to become a really enjoyable plain sailing then.
Too many environmental and lingering EU regulations, allowing every idiot anti-whatever group to hold up projects and bankrupt developers with legal fees and provisions ”to save the bat”, and too many university graduates who got to “uni” via a debauched education system, and devalued exam process, who aren’t up to the job.
In the Victorian era, it was engineers, people with no formal education, and of course lack of Government intrusion, that built Britain.
Don’t agree with the premise or the comparison. They (Home Guard and the rest) were the heroic generation, even if they muddled through at times. We are the clowns who have let them down.
Thank you, Wilson. I was wondering when somoeone was going to point that out.
Insofar members of this generation acted heroically, this happened because they were forced to by external circumstances. One could also, more positively, claim that they had the opportunity to do so while we largely don’t.
To paraphrase Ernst Jünger: Never judge a man until you have seen him under fire.
Well said!
Your bio states you were ‘born 12 years after the war’ and I’m thinking – gosh, that’s old! Wait….(does the maths)….so was I 😱
Britain is failing because the Left have taken over. Every public body from the NHS to the Charity Commission, and definitely the Judiciary have been taken over by left-leaning quangocrats and activists. As our government demonstrate in their every action, every single day, if your only intent and abilities are dragging the nation against its will, further and further to the left, actually doing your day job effectively is an irrelevance. I worked for a number of years and no one gave a toss whether or not you actually delivered the services the public wanted. They were considered almost an irrelevant irritant, phoning up and asking for stuff like safer streets and bin collections. Virtue signalling and delivering pointless objectives were the priorities for our hugely overpaid, Guardian reading masters. And those objectives? Utterly pointless nonsense chosen because they were easy to measure, not because the public wanted them. To make matters worse all the time the system moved further away from listening to what our core consumers wanted using web portals and hiding behind complex call centres and their endless menus designed to frustrate the public so they’ll hang up in frustration, allowing staff to spend more time embracing… Read more »
Yes these days don’t even think of trying to phone them up. No phone number supplied, you have to register (provide all your details) on their customer services account and then pick the subject you want to talk about from a range of options like
and you find that if your topic doesn’t fall under any of those then you are referred back to their xxxing website again in a constant loop of frustration
If you resort to going to the offices, be it your council, or the courts, or other state or quasi-state organisation….there’s nobody there as they are all ‘working’ from home
Captain Mainwaring may have been a pompous and incompetent bank manager …. but at least he loved his country and tried to protect it.
Two-Tier hates this country and is doing everything he possibly can to undermine it. Our only hope is that because he’s so effing useless, he’ll even fail at that.
You left out Private Walker the consummate spiv taking the mickey out of all and sundry whilst adding to the chaos with his black marketing. Played beautifully by James Beck.
‘The best thing is to assume that whatever chaos or incompetence you’re reading about or watching in Britain today, just think of Dad’s Army and suddenly it will all make sense.’ The byline of this article suggests its author is not natively qualified to appreciate Dad’s Army. The long success of the programme was not in the fact that its characters were pompous, useless, pretentious, languid, crafty, lugubrious, or ineffectual. You need a sadistic sneering element in your national character to find such things funny for long. The platoon showed the English to themselves and made them smile. Not only because it stumbled and fluffed and fell over its own feet, but because (in extremis) it found a way to come together, be fond of one another, work as a unit, and get the job done. Each character is risible in his own way, but each is also fair-minded, self deprecatory and determined not to bow to cruelty and bullying. Above all each has a sense of humour. That is us, the English. Mainwaring cannot be acquitted of pomposity, but his management style is a model for a knowledge environment, where the manager’s job is to get the best ideas from everyone.… Read more »
That’s an insult to Dad’s Army