National Spitfire Project

George Kerevan Excerpts

Tuesday 28th March 2017 Westminster Hall

[George Kerevan (East Lothian) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies—and may I assure you that I am at least one of your Twitter followers who does not hate you?

I declare my interest in this subject. Both my parents were in the Royal Air Force during world war two—indeed, they met there, which is why I am here now. My father was an engineer. He maintained the Merlin engines on the Spitfires, Hurricanes, Lancasters and Mosquitos. He always said thereafter that he got very bored when jet engines came along, because the Merlin was such a beautiful and sophisticated engine to maintain, whereas jet engines were too simple for him.

In an iconic fashion, the Spitfire represents the common endeavour of these islands in their crusade against evil. With a nod back to last week, that is something that we should always remember. In expressing my interest in the subject, and as a member of the Scottish National party, I want to say that the Spitfire represented something for all these islands and for all the people of these islands—for the common people, for working people and for members of the services. The importance of the prospective Spitfire monument embraces not just the aircraft, but the human endeavour that lies behind it. I think we could all agree on that, which is why I am so serious that we must finish the project. As most people here know, the project has been a long time in gestation—far too long—and it is time that we make sure that next year, the 100th anniversary of the RAF, is the year that it actually happens.

[Karl MᶜCartney (Lincoln) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way, and also you, Mr Davies, for your chairmanship. It is a pleasure to serve under you. I also love you on Twitter—and everywhere else too.

It is great to hear a member of the SNP being so positive about something. That is something of a revelation to me, sitting on this side of the Chamber. I hope the Minister is taking notice of the cross-party support at this point for the memorial. I was involved in the Sir Keith Park memorial campaign, as were others here, and I was helped by some of those who my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Royston Smith) mentioned. It is great to see the project finally coming to fruition, but it does now need the Government to step up to the plate.

[George Kerevan]

I am happy to reinforce the sentiment to the Minister that the support comes from all over the islands. I want to underpin that with a little bit of extra history on the Spitfire, which I think all of us will do this afternoon.

The Merlin engines were largely manufactured at the Rolls-Royce shadow factory at Hillington, just outside Glasgow. Some 160,000 people worked at that factory and it provided the engines not just for the Spitfires, but for many of the other aircraft that served the RAF. That was part of what happened in world war two, and people did that selflessly. However, there is an interesting side to the Hillington experience of building the Merlin, because large numbers of the people making the engines were women. Initially, they were not paid the same as men; they were not even paid the same as the ordinary labouring workers were. That led to a lot of industrial unrest and, in 1943, to a major strike. Of course, that was a very difficult thing to contemplate in the middle of world war two. The feeling in the factory was that we were not just fighting against evil, but fighting for a new, democratic society, so they took industrial action—very regrettably, but they took it. The result was that for the first time in these islands a major engineering factory granted equal pay to men and women. We should weave into the Spitfire story the fact that the fight for equal pay began with the Spitfire, strange as it may seem.

I will not keep Members long, but I want to add another couple of Scottish contributions. I do so not to be sectarian, but to underline the fact that this would be a common monument and would represent all of these islands.

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman is making a powerful speech. His parents worked on the Spitfire, as did my grandparents. Does he agree that, without the combined resources and ingenuity of all the nations of the United Kingdom, the Spitfire would surely have never flown, and that the Spitfire is a powerful reminder to us today that we truly are stronger together?

[George Kerevan]

It is self-evident that we have to defend these islands together. What divides us at the moment and in times past is how we organise our democracy, and I think we are mature enough to have that discussion. What the SNP bring, and have always brought, to the table is the idea that we will share the common defence of these islands. That has never been in question. Indeed—my hon. Friend the Member for Argyll and Bute (Brendan O’Hara) might say this in a brief moment—we often have discussions about defence issues because we do not think the Government protect these islands adequately, but that is a debate that we can have elsewhere. Our division on how we organise our democracy in these islands should not get in the way of the fact that we have a common interest in defending them. The history of the Spitfire and the second world war is an exemplar of that.

I will be very brief, as other Members want to speak. There is one other person who needs to be mentioned today with respect to the Spitfire and the battle of Britain: the man who was the head of Fighter Command, Hugh Dowding. We have all seen the film “The Battle of Britain”, which, for all its faults, I still love—when the music comes up I still get excited—and we have all seen Laurence Olivier play Hugh Dowding. There is just one slight problem—it is the same problem I had when Laurence Olivier played Earl Haig in “Oh! What a Lovely War”. Earl Haig was a crusty Scot, with a deep Scottish accent, which Laurence Olivier definitely did not have, and Hugh Dowding happened to be born in Moffat in Dumfries and Galloway. His father was a teacher at Fettes school in Edinburgh. The unity of these islands in the Spitfire story goes all the way to Hugh Dowding from Moffat, who was head of Fighter Command in those dark days. There is a large and very simple, but I think poignant, monument to Hugh Dowding, head of Fighter Command, in his home town of Moffat. That underlines the fact that the Spitfire monument in Southampton has been a long time coming.

I will finish with this. My wife was born and bred in Southampton—I know it well—and her image of the city is the bombed-out Southampton of the 1950s, so these islands are interconnected. We can have a serious debate about how we do our democracy. I grant no ground on that—Scotland will be independent—but we will all stand together in tough times. We share these islands; we will defend these islands together.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)]

I rise briefly to support the hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Royston Smith) in his debate this afternoon, which I congratulate him on securing. I also congratulate him on his tenacity in pursuing this aim of a national monument for the Spitfire in Southampton. The bottom line of what we are talking about today is a request for money. We need the money—ideally from the Government. The hon. Gentleman’s suggestion for where that money might come from would be an appropriate source for the rest of the funds. Many people have already contributed small and varying amounts to the fund to secure the aim of a memorial for the Spitfire on Southampton Water.

Why is the memorial so important? There are three things we might say along with all the other things that have been said about the Spitfire. In this context, I want to offer the story of my father, who was an aeronautical engineer with the Fleet Air Arm. He spent most of the war repairing aircraft, never leaving these shores. Unfortunately, the story does not neatly end with Spitfires, because he worked on Swordfish. As some hon. Members may know, Swordfish were in service at the same time as the Spitfire, but they looked like a completely different generation of aircraft. They were held together with bits of string, sealing wax and various other things. Although they did a good job, if we put the Spitfire next to the Swordfish, the Spitfire design appears to have been from the future and an imagination from I do not know where. They brought this amazing aircraft into being at a time when those aircraft were the staple—

[George Kerevan]

On that point, it is worth remembering that R. J. Mitchell also designed the Walrus biplane seaplane, which picked up so many downed RAF pilots. It looked as antediluvian as the Swordfish, but equally it was very efficient.

[Dr Whitehead]

Indeed. That underlines what I was about to say: R. J. Mitchell designed a plane that was never equalled throughout the whole of the second world war. Not only did the Spitfire save our bacon during the Battle of Britain but it went on to play all sorts of other roles across Europe and the world as the second world war progressed, due to its unique capacities and design and the way it stood head and shoulders above any other aircraft. Later in the war it was not only employed in a fighting capacity but was the first effective reconnaissance aircraft for the RAF. It could fly high at speed and take reconnaissance photographs. Indeed, it got the first reconnaissance photograph of German radar, the first photographs of the Peenemünde works for the V-1 rockets, and was instrumental as the war progressed in all sorts of other fields as well as in the battle of Britain.

Secondly, hon. Members have paid tribute today to the few who fought in the battle of Britain and the fact that they were an international cohort of pilots. Hon. Members have mentioned the large number of Polish pilots: 15% or so of the total number of pilots. They not only made a great contribution, but I understand that the particular way in which they flew the Spitfires was unlike anybody else’s, and they tested the aircraft to destruction. It did not get destroyed, it still flew, and the things they could do with that plane, as was proved throughout the war, is another tribute to the genius of the aircraft design.

Thirdly, for all those reasons, Southampton as a city is proud of its heritage as the progenitor and manufacturer of the Spitfire. As the hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen has said, the Spitfire was not only manufactured at the Supermarine works in Woolston. There was a remarkable arrangement subsequently whereby shops, factories and sheds produced that amazing aircraft literally in people’s back gardens in and around Southampton. The people from the city worked so hard to get the aircraft in the air and doing the job that they knew it could do.

So Southampton has an indelible and deep bond with the Spitfire. It is therefore absolutely appropriate that the site that has been chosen for the memorial faces out to Southampton Water, exactly under the path where the Spitfire pilots flew the planes from Southampton—or Eastleigh—airport, depending on your point of view. They flew over Southampton Water, absolutely at the centre of everything that happened that was part of the Spitfire legacy. The idea of a monument with a Spitfire soaring above Southampton Water seems absolutely the right use for the money that I hope will come in for that monument.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen on his efforts to make sure that the money comes our way. I am confident that his further efforts and hopefully those of the Members gathered here today will nudge the Government in the direction of making sure the money is available and will lead to an early and successful conclusion to this project. I will be first to applaud the successful completion of a long mission to get a monument to provide the recognition for the Spitfire that we in Southampton know is absolutely deserved, which can then go to a wider world.