Groups back our campaign
perfectly legitimate to cut it from the foreign aid budget.
“I’m sure the vast majority of the public would be happy to see the money going to war widows of those who’ve fallen in service to this country.”
Shadow treasury minister and Labour MP David Hanson said: “I am delighted to back the Daily Express’s campaign to rectify this anomaly. It is grossly unfair not to allow this pension for those whose spouses died in the service of their country but remarried.” John Pitt-Brooke, chief executive of the Forces Pension Society and a former Ministry of Defence official, also supported our campaign.
He said: “How can it be right that if you were remarried on 1 April you could retain your pension but if you remarried on 31 March you had to give it up?”
The Daily Express dates its support for the War Widows’ Association to 1971 and was pivotal in its formation.
We reported how Laura Connelly had returned to live in the UK from Australia and had a dispute over paying tax on her War Widow’s Pension.
Our story led to reader Jill Gee and 13 other women launching an advocacy group.
The first meeting was at the Lyons Corner House in London’s Strand. Their first campaign to have tax removed from War Widow’s Pensions was achieved in 1979. WWA chairman Mary Moreland said: “We’re just ordinary people aged between 103 and the mid-20s.
“There’s so much we’ve had to fight for and we shouldn’t have to fight.” one daughter. Suddenly three [daughters].
“Three weddings for starters, and now treble the grandkids he expected, although this to him has never been a problem.”
She added the situation would have shocked her first husband. “It’s a farce really,” she said.
“Ken would have loved to be paying for things for his daughters and his grandchildren, but he can’t because I lost that pension.”
Mrs Holt married Ken in 1966 when she was 20, having met him while working as a barmaid at the Royal Navy’s HMS Collingwood base in Fareham, Hants, in 1962.
He had joined the Navy as a radio he had electrical artificer at Torpoint, Cornwall, in 1960, before progressing up the ranks to warrant officer for Dartmouth training squadron.
Over his 28 years of service, he worked onboard HMS Zulu, HMS Scarborough and HMS Tenby. He fell ill after his 40th birthday, complaining of pain in his back, and was diagnosed with leukaemia in 1986.
He had more than two years of treatment in Haslar Hospital and St Mary’s Hospital, Portsmouth, before he died on September 13, 1988. He was just 44.
Another of the 300 widows being penalised, Linda McHugh, has also urged the centenary of Armistice Day should be the catalyst for change.
Mrs McHugh is the widow of trooper John Gibbons, who was murdered at 22 by an IRA boobytrap bomb in South Armagh in Northern Ireland in 1973.
She said: “Life was lonely as a young woman with a baby and over time I missed my son having a father and the friendship of a husband.
“After years alone I was blessed with a second chance of happiness but felt sad my pension would be withdrawn on remarriage.
“I felt this action demeaned John’s sacrifice.
“When going through the process of having my widow’s pension revoked an official told me, ‘Not to worry, another man will now look after you’. I was heartbroken.”
The UK currently has more than 15,800 war widows and widowers.
The Armed Forces Covenant states that personnel and veterans as well as their families should be “sustained and rewarded”.