The treatment of Lord Bramall is a national disgrace
He is tough, this old soldier – but nothing had prepared him for what happened
‘Iam not a bad chap, am I?” That was the sad question 95-year-old Lord Bramall recently asked his son, Nicolas. Let the record state that Edwin Noel Westby Bramall is the opposite of a bad chap. In 1944, aged 21, he led a platoon onto the Normandy beaches. Throughout his Army career, he served with distinction before becoming Chief of the General Staff. He has the highest awards his country could bestow upon him, from Knight of the Garter to the Military Cross.
He is tough, this old soldier – but nothing had prepared him for what happened when there was a knock on the door of his Hampshire home on March 4 2015. Lord Bramall was eating breakfast with his wife, Avril, who suffered from Alzheimer’s, when a busload of police started tearing the place apart. He assumed it was a security matter, but it soon became clear that officers actually thought the veteran had been part of a paedophile ring that had raped and murdered children between 1975 and 1984. Others investigated by Operation Midland included Ted Heath, Lord Brittan, Harvey Proctor and Lord Janner.
The whole thing – a £2.5million investigation over 16 months – was
triggered by one man: Carl Beech, aka “Nick”. This former NHS manager, accused Lord Bramall of raping him in his office and at Armistice Day parties where boys had poppies pinned to their bare chests. There was no evidence to support this grotesque tale. But that didn’t stop the “abusers” being identified, or the Met’s Det Supt Kenny Mcdonald disgracefully announcing that “Nick has been spoken to by experienced officers... they believe what he is saying is credible and true”.
Nor did it deter Tom Watson, now Labour’s deputy leader, from a witch hunt – writing personally to Alison Saunders, then director of public prosecutions. Just days after Lord Brittan’s death, Watson quoted an alleged “survivor of abuse” who said the Tory peer was “as close to evil as any human being could get”.
Turns out, the man who really deserves that description is Carl Beech. Watson’s warped and malicious informer has just been convicted of 12 counts of perverting the course of justice and one count of fraud.
In a twist worthy of a thriller, it is Beech himself who was the devious paedophile. Late in the day, when police finally did their job and looked into the credibility of their prize accuser, they found that this amoral sociopath was in possession of the worst possible child pornography.
What does this disgraceful chapter in the history of policing tell us? How could Beech’s lies ever have been hailed as “credible”? I regret to say that Lord Bramall and the others fell foul of institutionalised confirmation bias. They may have suffered a heinous miscarriage of justice, but they were the wrong kind of victims. Police took forever to pursue the fiends who groomed white working-class girls in Rochdale and elsewhere because they were mainly of Pakistani origin. (The wrong kind of abusers, see?) Yet, they lost no time in pouncing on white, elderly, male establishment figures.
After Jimmy Savile, police needed to be seen to be doing something about historic child abuse, even if that meant trashing the reputations of the innocent. Under Saunders, a “you will be believed” cult flourished, so “survivors” like Beech were welcomed instead of interrogated. According to Simon Warr, author of
Presumed Guilty, vile individuals like Beech thrive because this philosophy and “compensation culture, feeds the bogus sexual abuse industry by rewarding the most outrageous fraudsters with large cash payouts”.
To a soldier, such malevolence is incomprehensible. That’s why it’s painful to watch Lord Bramall’s police interview. His training has taught him to expect a chain of command with accountability for one’s actions. “Please report to your superiors and say there is no evidence,” he asks. In vain, he objects to the fact officers “thought it was sufficient to get a warrant with uncorroborated evidence”.
Only once does he show signs of losing it – when he is forced to utter the awful words “torture of children”. “I find it quite incredible that anyone would believe someone of my standing and integrity would be capable of these things. It is unbelievable.”
It was unbelievable. Yet those who questioned “Nick” were damned as “paedophile apologists”.
Scotland Yard insists that its officers behaved “in good faith” and none is facing misconduct proceedings. That is an outrage. Operation Midland saw innocent men go to their graves under a shadow. Det Supt Mcdonald and others don’t deserve their comfortable early retirement. They should be named and shamed and their pensions confiscated. Let them be a warning to any serving officers who behave with such incompetence.
The case for granting anonymity to the accused is surely unarguable. Carl Beech will be sentenced on Friday. Long as he is put away for – and let it be as long as possible – his punishment will be as naught compared to what his victims have suffered. Lord Bramall says it has left him “more wounded” than anything in his military career.
So, if the police won’t apologise, if Watson won’t apologise, let’s do it for them.
We are sorry, Lord Bramall, that a life dedicated to the freedom of this country ended with you being treated like you live in a totalitarian state. We are sorry that the police behaved like an absolute shower. We are sorry for the witch hunt which is so contrary to the values you were prepared to lay down your life for.
It is not your reputation which is damaged, it is that of your ignorant persecutors. Field Marshal Lord Bramall, Sir, we salute you.