End of Page | The New British Empire | Site Map | Overview Page |
Sandline and the Corps of Commissionaires appear to be very similar outfits: Both are based in London. Both draw exclusively from the military and police establishments of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth. Both have Special Air Service (SAS) veterans in their employ. Both take on work for foreign governments and multinational corporations.
The substantial difference that puts the Corps higher on the pecking order, is that it lists the Queen of England as its official patron and honorary chair. It has substantial sister organizations in Canada and Australia, two countries which are still under the direct sovereign control of the House of Windsor; the Queen is their patron and honorary chair, as well.
A spokesman for the Queen, in a moment of royal indiscretion, admitted to EIR, that Queen Elizabeth II serves as head of the various Corps of Commissionaires, as part of her official duties as Commander-in-Chief of all military forces of the Empire. In short, the Corps is an integral part of the military structure of the Crown--albeit a usually ``invisible'' part.
Given the Corps' royal sponsorship and direction, it should come as no surprise that the British Corps' Board of Governors is dominated by retired senior officers, who have held positions within the Royal Household. Many board members belong to the Order of the Bath, the only chivalric order, which honors military officers who made extraordinary contributions to the Crown. The Order of the Bath was founded, in the eighteenth century, by King George|I, in the early days of the Hanoverian-Windsor dynasty.
The scale of operations of the Corps of Commissionaires is staggering, particularly in light of the spokesman's veiled admission that it can provide mercenary services.
The Canadian Corps is the largest of the organizations, with over 13,000 Commissionaires presently on the payroll. By comparison, the Canadian Army, which has forces deployed in United Nations ``blue helmet'' peacekeeping missions all around the globe, has only 20,000 men and women. Although organized as a not-for-profit private company, the Corps is the official uniformed security service for the Canadian government. Commissionaires can be seen at all Canadian federal facilities. Its chief patron is Canadian Governor General Romeo Leblanc, who holds this position as the official appointee and representative of the Queen. Leblanc is himself a member of the Privy Council.
The Corps of Commissionaires sister organizations in Australian have expanded its role well beyond the traditional. They have established subsidiaries outside of Australia. One of these is P.N.G. Corps Ltd., located in Papua New Guinea.
An Australian spokesmen assured EIR that the Corps, as a private company can ``supply customers with a wide range of services.... We will do anything that's legal. Our men have a wide range of military skills and these can be put to good use in the private sector in areas of security, crowd control, or whatever, as required by our clients.'' Among their 700 clients are the country's major banks and corporations, including, for example, ANZ Banking Group Ltd., Westpac Banking, Commonwealth Bank, Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corp., and National Australia Bank.
Among the industrial firms which employ the Corps are: Imperial Chemical Industries, Unilever, and British General Electric Company. The insurance giant Australian Mutual Provident (the largest insurance company in the country), as well as the nation's most important stock-brokerage, Potter Warburg, both contract with the Corps. Among Australia's largest mining and oil companies, the Corps' clients include: Shell Corp. of Australia, Western Mining Corp., British Petroleum, and Caltex Oil.
As in the case of Canada, the chief patrons of the Corps of Commissionaires in Australia, which are organized by state, are the state governors, who are directly answerable to the Queen. Their directors are drawn not only from retired senior officers, but from the highest level of the Australian establishment which is closest to the Crown.
But, make no mistake. The Corps is not some kind of benevolent society for war veterans, or even a simple uniformed security guard service. It was organized as an integral part of the imperial military system, as evidenced by the Queen's role, to this day.
In the nineteenth century, the Corps of Commissionaires was established in Australia, Canada, East Africa, New Zealand, and South Africa, after a series of resettlement agencies helped relocate a sizable number of British military veterans and their families to the far corners of the Empire, where they also assumed prominent posts within the local military and intelligence establishments.
The Corps was founded by Sir Edward Walter, a retired captain in the Royal Army, whose family also founded the Times of London, which has always served as the mouthpiece of the British Establishment.
The official history of the Corps, Our Sergeant, writes of Sir Edward's motivation for founding the Corps: ``He believed they [Army veterans] could demonstrate, through their military qualities, the essence of their employability to the City of London, the world's financial and commercial capital, the country as a whole, and indeed to the Empire beyond. The City would surely come rapidly to appreciate representatives on the doors of head offices, who embodied discipline and loyalty, men who could guard banks and store houses, men of trust who could carry sensitive valuable items between branches of companies and between companies themselves.'' On where their loyalties lay, the same book reports that the Corps of Commissionaires' ``very existence relied on the establishment, on protecting the property of financial houses, the professions and the major industrial concerns.''
The role of the Corps of Commissionaires was substantially upgraded when Margaret Thatcher was elected prime minister in 1979, and the radical ``free market'' policies of the Mont Pelerin Society were unleashed on the world with new force. In 1984, following a reorganization, drafted by Peter Loyd, executive director of the British Institute of Management, the Corps of Commissionaires moved to expand way beyond its role in the City. Its uniformed security service was converted into a separate division, within the Corps, and new divisions were created to provide ``specialist security functions.'' At the same time, the Corps began recruiting personnel from a broader range of military, paramilitary, and police agencies. The scope of its operational capabilities expanded tremendously, as the use of privatized counterinsurgency forces, suited to operate in zones of instability, became a crucial part of the British bag of tricks.
In 1986, to commemorate this reorganization, a special reception was held at Buckingham Palace in honor of the Corps.
Top of Page | The New British Empire | Site Map | Overview Page |
EIR Special Report: The Fall of the House of Windsor, special price -- $25.00.
EIR Issue: The Sun Never Sets on the New British Empire, $10.00.
Readings from the American Almanac. Contact us at: american_almanac@yahoo.com.