Britain’s dirty little secret has been exposed
This week we have exposed what is fast becoming Britain’s dirty little secret. I sat down with one of the lawyers representing over 200 servicemen and women who have had to turn to the private sector for legal and pastoral support which should have been provided, with bells on, by the MoD.
She cannot breach client confidentiality; I will not pressure anyone I know going through this hell to speak out. So I asked her for some themes from her statements.
Some I knew. Threatening arrest, no cautions given, interviewing current colleagues of whom many were not in the Army at the time of the incidents, let alone served in Iraq.
Then there were the ones I didn’t. Witness statements being changed; interviews in car parks; orders to not inform wives and families. One individual was asked to meet investigators in a shopping centre where he was then taken to a waiting car and asked if he would be willing to be a paid informant for the Ihat team. Worryingly this was confirmed by an unconnected second source later in the week.
Then on Thursday evening another soldier spoke to me.
He sounded a broken man. “I have kept this from my family and loved ones for 13 years. At no stage has the Army offered to help me in that time. I feel embittered. I cannot believe it has come up again. The impact has been devastating. I have had to go and see the doctor; he referred me to the Departments of Community Mental Health. That alone petrifies me; I don’t want to be labelled as ‘mental’ but I know I need help.”
I sat on the sofa with my head in my hands. It comes with the rank slide, the shared sacrifice, the brotherhood.
This betrayal simply has to end. The Prime Minister is a strong advocate for our Armed Forces. In the domestic counter-terrorism world in her previous job as home secretary she was deeply admired and respected for her attitude to looking after those doing these difficult jobs.
But she needs to grasp that our attitude towards looking after this Afghanistan/Iraq generation of servicemen and women will define this nation’s relationship with its military for the next 50 years.
We must not emasculate our Armed Forces on operations by asking our fighting troops to adhere to European human rights law, designed in good faith for civilian life in Europe. To continue to do so belies a fundamental, deep and profound misunderstanding of combat; it creates a gaping chasm between those who serve and their political masters. It looks incompetent; and it is.
We cannot be content with platitudes from the Dispatch Box about looking after our people when the evidence is so strong for the contrary – it again profoundly divides those who serve and their political masters, and looks incompetent.
Instead of endlessly talking about what we are putting into this subject, we need to listen to our people about how it feels for them. Our loyalty should be first and foremost to our people, not our personal reputations.
‘We cannot ask our fighting troops to adhere to European human rights law, which was designed in good faith for civilian life in Europe’
We are a sovereign state; we can protect our men and women from these claims. We can establish a department for veterans’ affairs to co-ordinate services for veterans, including those going through this process. We can create a minister’s role with an independent budget, a seat at the Cabinet table and crossdepartmental authority to ensure the military covenant is adhered to. In a survey for SSAFA, the military charity, in June, almost half of our Armed Forces hadn’t heard of the covenant, despite it being law for five years.
And that would say to our Armed Forces and veterans we “get it”. Among the complexities of Brexit, the cruel and turbulent world we live in, and an ever-surprising political scene, “we get it”.
Freedom is not free. We have a precious country, one which some of us were only too keen to defend in the traditions of the immense sacrifices of our forefathers. We owe our servicemen and women for their service, their sacrifice.