Scandal of war widows who lost out on pensions

Some stripped of £10k a year

DAVID Cameron was yesterday accused of ‘demeaning’ the sacrifice of war heroes as their widows lost their pensions.

The war widows said they had been left with ‘no honour’ after the Ministry of Defence stripped them of as a much as £10,000 a year after they found new love.

Under previous rules, those who sacrificed their careers because of their husband’s work had their pensions stopped if they remarried.

In 2014, Mr Cameron said it was ‘absolutely wrong’ they had to choose between finding new love and financial stability. He said 4,000 would be entitled to the pension for life.

But the rule did not apply to about 300 women who lost loved ones between 1973 and 2005 and remarried before April last year, when the new scheme came into force.

Linda McHugh, 63, of Skye, was among a dozen women who protested outside Parliament in London yesterday. She had been married for a year when her husband, Trooper John Gibbons, was deployed to Northern Ireland. In 1973, he died aged 21 in an IRA bomb attack, leaving behind a three-month old son.

Mrs McHugh remarried in 1977 and had his military pension taken away.

She said: ‘I feel I have to do this for John because his sacrifice is as important as the sacrifice of others. All war widows should be treated equally; all their men paid the same price.’

Weeping, she added: ‘John was so proud to be a soldier and would have expected his family to have been provided for. He would not believe we had to stand on the street like this.’

Chrissy Fraser, 67, whose husband Lieutenant-Colonel Clive Fraser served for 30 years, said: ‘There is no honour for these women. There is no respect for the Army wives.’

She said the MoD had seized her £900 monthly military pension after she found a new partner and she had to start a new job two years ago.

Margaret Allen, 57, had been married for only two weeks when her husband, Able Seaman Iain Boldy, was killed by a bomb blast on HMS Argonaut during the Falklands War.

His body was never repatriated and she suffered PTSD as a result, which cost her her nursing career. She said: ‘This is worse than discrimination because there’s a real lack of respect for my husband’s sacrifice.’

Maureen Jarvis, 61, whose husband, Alan Campbell, 34, was killed in an air crash in 1990 after serving for 11 years in the RAF, said it was an ‘injustice’.

They had been married for 14 years and he left behind two daughters, aged 3 and six. Mrs Jarvis, of Moray, remarried in May 2014, six months before the announcement which would have meant she could keep her husband’s pension.

She said: ‘It isn’t about the money. We are the only group of war widows that don’t get their husband’s pensions for life. It is the injustice of it all. My husband would be disgusted.’

Kenny Donaldson of Innocent Victims United said: ‘The Government demeaned the human life that was lost for this country.’

Lib Dem MP Greg Mulholland said: ‘We owe it to those who die serving our country to take care of their loved ones.’

The average war widow pension is around £6,500 per year.

‘All their men paid the same price’