Squad

Squad (pronounced skwod)

(1) In modern military use, a small number of soldiers (typically between 4-10), under the authority of a corporal or staff sergeant, usually a sub-set of a platoon and the smallest operational unit recognized by the military.

(2) In law enforcement, a group of police officers or other officials, especially one organized to deal with a particular area of law enforcement or a particular event or situation.

(3) Any small group or party of persons engaged in a common enterprise.

(4) In sport, group of players from which a team is selected.

(5) In slang, any group of people with some identifiable connection (especially one’s friends, taken collectively).

(6) In zoology, an (informal) collective noun for a group of squid.

(7) To form into squads (rare except in technical use).

(8) To assign to a squad (rare except in technical use).

(9) In some dialects (UK, dating from the mid-seventeenth century), sloppy mud, of uncertain origin.

1640–1650: From the French escouade, from the Old French esquade, an alteration of esquadre, from the Italian squadra (battalion, literally “square” (from which French gained escadre), from the Spanish escuadra (square (so called from square shape of the formation)), from the Old Spanish, from escuadrar (to square (from the square formations used)), from the from Vulgar Latin exquadra (to square), from the Latin  squadra (a square), the construct being ex- (out) + quadrare (make square), from quadrus (a square), from the primitive Indo-European root kwetwer- (four).  Squad is a noun & verb, squaddie & squadron are nouns and squadded & squadding are verbs; the noun plural is squads.

Before advances in ballistics extended the range of firepower, infantry troops tended to fight in a square formation because it was the most effective to repel cavalry or superior forces. And from this came the idea of the squad as a basic military formation, the Latin squadra meaning “square” although that doesn’t imply Roman squads could number as few as four (as is the modern practice, reflected in the slang term for private soldiers (the army’s lowest rank (technically non-ranked)) in some armies being “squaddie”.  In historic (army) use, a squadron was a body of cavalry comprising two companies or troops, averaging from one hundred and twenty to two hundred soldiers.  Probably the best known military squad is the firing squad, a traditional method of military execution and regarded as among the most honorable forms of dispatch.  By the early nineteenth century the word was extended to any small party or group of persons and the use in sports is traced to 1902.  With the evolution of sporting competitions to become professional, larger groups of players were needed to be on stand-by for selection (to cover injury, illness etc) and these groups came to be called squads.

The use by police forces as both standing institutions dedicated to certain duties (drug squad, dog squad, vice squad, bomb squad et al) and ad hoc formations for a one-off purpose (essentially task forces: royal visit squad, test match squad et al) appears to have begun in 1905 and is now institutionalized.  In police use “squad car” can probably has been applied to any vehicle but is most associated with a marked patrol car.  God squad is a casual terms for those spreading the word of God and is usually reserved for especially devoted lay members of a church.  A cheer squad can either be a formal group of attractive young women employed (cheerleaders) to dance and wave pom-poms in support of sporting teams (their numbers diminishing as attitudes to this and that change) or a description of those who (in a usually unorganized fashion) offer unquestioning and often vocal support to someone (Donald Trump, crooked Hillary Clinton et al) or some idea or institution.  In recent US political use, “The Squad” is the collective term for nine (originally four bolshie women of color) Democrat Party members of the US House of Representatives who self-identify as “progressive” and are labeled by Fox News etc as “socialist” or worse.  It was one of the squad members who coined the term “The Squad” although it’s not believed the inspiration was the Irish Republican Army (IRA) of the same name which was tasked with the assassination of political opponents but that’s probably crossed the mind of many of the old, white men who have dominated US politics for centuries.

Some of "the squad", who seem often angry about something, House of Representatives, Washington DC.

Navies in the 1580s picked up the idea of the squadron (from the Italian squadrone, from the Latin squadra (a square) but that does not imply naval squadrons were either originally or even typically of four ships.  The squadron was simply analogous with the army’s platoon / company / regiment / brigade / division arrangements whereby several squadrons made up a flotilla and several flotillas a fleet (confusingly, several fleets could be assembled into a fleet so to make things clearer tags like “home fleet”, grand fleet” et al emerged and squadrons also attracted specific designations such as “China squadron”, “East Africa squadron et al.  Air forces by 1912 began to use the squadron as the basic formation upon which organizational arrangements pivoted.  Over the years the number varied greatly but classically a squadron consisted of twelve aircraft, made up of four “flights” of three.  Squadrons were organized into “wings”, a collection of which was a “group” and beyond that point the arrangements and naming conventions varied.   In the US military’s recently constituted Space Force, multiple squadrons make up an operations delta or a support garrison.

Suicide Squads

HH Asquith (1852-1928) and his young friend Venetia Stanley (1887–1948).

Although few were quite as vituperative as Paul Keating (b 1944; Prime Minister of Australia 1991-1996) who once describes the members of the Australian Senate as "unrepresentative swill", governments in the twentieth century often found upper houses to be such a nuisance they schemed and plotted ways to curb their powers or, preferably, do away with them entirely.  As the electoral franchise was extended, governments were sometimes elected with what they considered a mandate to pursue liberal or progressive policies while upper houses, by virtue of their composition and tenure (some with life-time appointments) often acted as an obstruction, rejecting legislation or imposing interminable delays by sending proposed laws to be “discussed to death” in committees from which “nothing ever emerged”.  This was the situation which confronted the glittering Liberal Party cabinet of HH Asquith (1852–1928; UK prime minister 1908-1916) which in 1909 found the Lords, in defiance of long established convention, blocking passage of the budget.  The Lords was wholly unelected, its membership mostly inherited, sometimes by virtue of some service (virtuous or otherwise) by an ancestor hundreds of years before.  Successive elections didn’t resolve the crisis and Asquith resolved to pursue the only lawful mechanism available: the creation of as many peers as would be necessary (in the hundreds) to secure the passage of his legislation.

That of course required royal ascent and the newly enthroned George V (1865–1936; King of the United Kingdom & Emperor of India 1910-1936), while making his reservations clear, proved a good constitutional monarch and made it known he would follow the advice of his prime-minister.  As it turned out, the “suicide squad” wasn’t required, their Lordships, while not at all approving of the government, were more appalled still at the thought of their exclusive club being swamped with “jumped-up grocers” in “bad hats” and allowed the legislation to pass.  Actually, “castration squad” might have been a more accurate description because while the Lords survived, Asquith ensured it would be less of an obstacle, substituting the road block of its power of veto with a speed-bump, a right to impose a two-year delay (in 1949 reduced to six months).  The New Labour administration (1997-2010) introduced further reforms which were designed eventually to remove from the Lords all those who held seats by virtue of descent and even the Tories later moved in that direction although the efforts have stalled and a few of the hereditary peers remain.  As things now stand, the last remaining absolute veto the Lords retain is to stop an attempt by a government to extend a parliament's life beyond five years. 

The preserved Legislative Council Chamber in the Queensland Parliament.

Some upper house assassins however truly were a suicide squad.  In Australia, the state of Queensland followed the usual convention whereby the sub-national parliaments were bicameral, the Legislative Council the upper house and like the others, it was a bastion of what might now be called "those representing the interests of the 1%" and a classic example of white privilege.  Actually, at the time, the lower houses were also places of white privilege but the Australian Labor Party (ALP) had long regarded the non-elected Legislative Council (and upper houses in general) as undemocratic and reactionary so in 1915, after securing a majority in the Legislative Assembly (the lower house) which permitted the party to form government, they sought abolition.  The Legislative Council predictably rejected the bills passed by the government in 1915 & 1916 and a referendum conducted in 1917 decisively was lost; undeterred, in 1920, the government requested the governor appoint sufficient additional ALP members to the chamber to provide an abolitionist majority.  In this, the ALP followed the example of the Liberal Party in the UK which in 1911 prevailed upon the king to appoint as many new peers as might be needed for their legislation to pass unimpeded through an otherwise unsympathetic House of Lords.  That wasn’t needed as things transpired but in Queensland, the new members of the Legislative Council duly took their places and on 26 October 1921, the upper house voted in favor of abolition, the new appointees known forever as "the suicide squad".  Despite the success, the trend didn't spread and the Commonwealth parliament and those of the other five states remain bicameral although the two recent creations, established when limited self-government was granted to the Northern Territory (NT) and Australian Capital Territory (ACT), both had unicameral assemblies.

Lindsay Lohan in costume as Suicide Squad’s Harley Quinn (a comic book character created by DC Comics), "Halloween bash", Albert's Club, South Kensington, London, October 2016.

Across the Tasman Sea, the New Zealand upper house lasted another three decades but it’s eventual demise came about not because of conflict but because the institution was increasing viewed as comatose, rejecting nothing, contributing little and rarely inclined even to criticize.  Unlike in England and Queensland, in New Zealand the abolition movement enjoyed cross-party support, left and right (although the latter in those days were pretty leftist), united in their bored disdain.  One practical impediment was the New Zealand parliament couldn’t amend the country’s constitution because no government had ever bothered to adopt the Statute of Westminster (1931) by which the Imperial Parliament had granted effective independence to the Dominions but in 1947 this was done.  Despite that, the Labour Party didn’t act and after prevailing in the 1950 general election, it was a National Party administration which passed the Legislative Council Abolition Act, its passage assured after a twenty-member “suicide squad” was appointed and the upper house’s meeting of 1 December 1950 proved its last.  Opposition from within the chamber had actually been muted, presumably because to sweeten the deal, the government used some of the money saved to pay some generous “retirement benefits” for the displaced politicians.  New Zealand since has continued as a unitary state with a unicameral legislature.