‘The Army thinks sexism has gone away... but it hasn’t’
Lieutenant Colonel Diane Allen tells Joe Shute why she’s lifting the lid on the Forces’ ‘toxic’ culture
On a September morning in 1983, Lt Col Diane Allen reported for duty at Sandhurst. At 18, she was the second youngest member of the first group of women ever accepted into the elite officer training academy. A male commandant delivered an opening address to the 38 raw recruits, their hair pinned behind their ears and their Army boots stuffed with extra pairs of socks as the smallest size available was a seven.
“He told us we were making history and to show them what women can do,” the now 55-year-old recalls. “We felt like pioneers, blazing the route for later generations.”
She embarked on a career that saw her serve in Northern Ireland, promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel and given an OBE in 2018 in recognition for her work as a reservist in the Intelligence Corps – yet that was to prove her final day in uniform.
This February, after years of failing to secure a promotion, Lt Col Allen resigned her commission. Now she has written a new book, Forewarned, detailing allegations of decades of entrenched and, on occasion, terrifying sexist abuse and calling for the Army to face up to its own Metoo moment.
The book (published in July) was made available for pre-order last week and in recent days she has been inundated by more than 100 emails from current and former servicewomen, detailing allegations ranging from the Seventies to the present, including rape and sexual assault.
Speaking to The Daily Telegraph from the Gloucestershire home she shares with her long-term partner, Newall, himself an Army reservist, she says: “A common thread is senior ranks covered things up and colluded in the cover-up.”
She is storing the emails on a secure server and passing any she believes to be of immediate concern on to service charities to provide support. She is also working with a lawyer to provide free advice to anyone seeking to report criminal allegations.
Her book, which describes the culture within the Army as rife with sexism and overseen by a “toxic cohort of senior, misogynistic, white, middle-class males” comes at a time of growing criticism. Last year, a major report by Air Chief Marshal Mike Wigston, investigating allegations of sexual harassment in the military, concluded a “pack mentality” had developed “of white middle-aged men, especially in positions of influence whose behaviours are shaped by the Armed Forces of 20 years ago”. In response, the Ministry of Defence pledged to address the concerns raised.
“The military narrative is this is a historic problem and it’s all gone away now,” says Lt Col Allen
(who in civilian life runs a London-based think tank and still works as a defence contractor). “That certainly isn’t what I’ve seen from having stood up.”
As a captain in the early Nineties she was posted for a brief spell to a military base in the North, where one night a group of soldiers kicked her bedroom door off its hinges to get inside. Anticipating trouble after she declined to join them in a bar, she had secretly switched rooms and watched silently from a window as they broke in.
The following morning, after being summoned to explain the damage, she was asked to let it go as “just high jinks”. She complied. “From a female perspective in the Army, you’re indoctrinated to think that nothing happened,” she says.
Lt Col Allen wasn’t cut from the same cloth as many of Sandhurst’s public school recruits. The middle child of five siblings, she attended the local comprehensive in Cheltenham. Money was tight and she worked in holiday jobs from the age of 11. Her father walked out when she was 16. The rigid structures of military life instinctively appealed. After Sandhurst she was posted to a Signals unit as a WRAC officer. The acronym stands for Women’s Royal Army Corps but some soldiers, she writes in the book, pronounced it as “rack” and
One night, a group of soldiers kicked her bedroom door off its hinges to get inside
defined it as “something you screwed up against a wall”. Casual sexism and groping was an everyday occurrence. What proved more damaging, she says, was the realisation that in every new role she was assigned to, she was automatically assumed to be incompetent until she proved otherwise. After serving in Northern Ireland for two years, she left in 1988 to study physiotherapy at Nottingham University.
Later she joined the Army reserves, where she combined her work in the NHS with a second military career climbing the ranks of the Intelligence Corps. Here, she says the overt and on occasion menacing misogyny of the barracks was replaced by something more ingrained. Society was changing, she says, but the Army wasn’t.
Even as a senior officer, she didn’t feel emboldened to speak out for fear of being deemed a troublemaker. One exception aside: when she was at a military base in Cyprus in 2015 and a history lecturer gave an address to the troops containing numerous misogynistic comments, including repeated use of the phrase “women in comfortable shoes” (a derogatory term used against lesbians). Afterwards, she complained it was “inappropriate”. Early that same year she had been recommended – and accepted – for promotion to colonel, but due to being a reservist was required to seek out a job, rather than being granted one automatically.
It is here where the story grows complicated, even more so due to a complaint lodged against her by a junior officer for allegations including bullying and inappropriate use of a military vehicle, which she successfully challenged and were not upheld. Lt Col Allen has since lodged her own counter-complaint against the MOD over its handling of the allegations, which is waiting to be heard by the Service Complaints Ombudsman for the Armed Forces.
After years of being rejected for jobs by various boards, without a reason why, she left without one in 2017, but continued to apply for others, until finally giving up this year.
There are various explanations for this abrupt end to her career. One – as she was told by an officer dealing with her case – is that she was not good enough. This she rejects. After all, why had she been recommended for promotion in the first place?
Another is the long-standing antipathy between regulars and reservists in the Army, with the latter seen as part-timers. And the third is, just as with those oversized Army boots she was given at Sandhurst, she was deemed the wrong fit. “It’s this subtle, casual sexism,” she says. “When you speak up, you’re not heard as much, or your voice is dismissed. That stuff hurts.”
She accepts now, for her, there is no going back. But she hopes speaking out can change things for other women. “I’m not trying to fix my career anymore,” she says, “but the careers of the next generation.”
Forewarned: Tales of a Woman at War by Diane Allen available to pre-order now for £12.99 at books.telegraph.co.uk or call 0844 871 1514