Remembrance Day

Lord Walker of Aldringham Excerpts

Thursday 10th November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Walker of Aldringham]

My Lords, I, too, thank and congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Selkirk, on giving us this opportunity to reflect on the eve of our remembrance commemorations. It is gratifying, too, to behold the degree of regard in which our society holds our Armed Forces across the country and which so powerfully helps to sustain our men and women when they are serving overseas. However, that regard—as the noble Lord, Lord King, has already said—cannot be taken for granted. In the 1990s, we saw that our people were less willing to make sacrifices on behalf of our Armed Forces. The funds raised for our people after the war in the Falkland Islands amounted to more than £25 million; the funds raised for the last Iraq war were less than 2 per cent of that. The involvement in Iraq, clearly, was the reason for that unpopularity, but it seemed at that stage that the British affinity between the people of the nation and our Armed Forces was at a low-ish point.

That gave rise to clarion calls from all sorts of people —not least the Chiefs of Staff—raising the profile of the issue. They raised the issues, as we have heard, about equipment, medical treatment, accommodation, medals, education, pay and allowances, and homecoming parades. That was not only to bring pressure to bear on the Government but to bring to the notice of our society as a whole that they needed to help make this new covenant manifest.

Your Lordships will know that our society has changed dramatically over the last 50 years. We have been able to live in peace and go about our daily business without much concern for our own safety or that of our families, even though of course there have been some pretty appalling terrorist incidents. As a society, we have very little understanding of the horrors of war. At the same time, we are increasingly affluent, middle class and liberal, with high expectations of rewards and gains. We exhibit increasing educational standards but a lower level of physical fitness. We seek greater variety and choice and have an interest in leisure risk but not real risk. We have changing organisational structures, increasing public accountability and transparency, and fluctuating economies. We are a litigious society and seek compensation at every turn. We demand flexibility in a high-tech world and often give minority groups more face time than the silent majority. The trouble is that our enemies—the terrorists, the dictators and the ethnic cleansers—are not suffering from mid-life crises and taking court action. They are out there, and if anything, they are consistent.

Those 16,000 names on the national memorial at Alrewas, listing those who have died in service since the end of the Second World War, bear witness of the extent to which we as a nation have used our Armed Forces in that time. It is not just those who make the sacrifice, as we have already heard. All who serve on operations put their lives at risk, whether they die or whether they are injured. Countless numbers have been wounded, while many others have been psychologically damaged, which comes out only later in their lives. Behind every one of those names on the war memorial there are wives, husbands, partners, parents, children and colleagues who loved them and who live with the pain and consequences of their loss every day.

How are we doing as a society, looking after this thing called a covenant? Are we playing our several parts? The charities, in my view, are doing well, although their window of opportunity may close as we pull out of Afghanistan and come off the headlines. The services-related charities have managed to hold up well in terms of donations from the public, and I pay tribute to Help for Heroes for the way in which it helped raise the profile of the services’ needs to their current level.

Our people are doing well, too, from small groups of determined men and women undertaking amazing physical feats to the generosity of individual donations on the one hand, through the warmness of the welcomes received at homecoming parades to the compassion and respect demonstrated at events such as those held at Royal Wootton Bassett on the other. I feel genuinely that the majority of our citizens recognise the price that has been paid, and continues to be paid, by our soldiers to enable them to enjoy the freedoms that they have.

One area in which I do not think we are doing as well is in the Government's implementation of the covenant, although I recognise that much work has gone into it. We must remember that this is a contract under which, in return for the sacrifice made by those in the forces, the Government will ensure they are equipped properly, trained, given the best possible care if they become casualties, and are treated fairly.

Although I believe there are several areas in which we are failing to meet this fundamental requirement for fairness, I will mention only three. Before I identify them, I should remind your Lordships of what our service men and women do for all of us. I spent some time last week talking to one of the brigade commanders, who was, in the distant past, my military assistant. I asked him how he was finding it there. He replied, “I follow the policy of reverse vertigo”. I said, “What is that?”. He said, “I dare not look up. If I look down, it is fine; when I look up, it is not”. Although I talked about a changing society earlier, perhaps the one constant that we would all recognise is the soldier himself. He is a remarkable individual who never ceases to amaze all of us with his achievements. Henry Kissinger once said that the Brits are the only people left on earth who love to fight. Well, we have certainly kept our eye in, and we should be thankful for it.

These are young men and women called upon to put the needs of the nation before their own and who, as we have already heard, forgo some of the rights enjoyed by those outside the Armed Forces. We ask them to operate along the roughest edges of humanity while observing the civilised norms of the society from which they are drawn. That is not an easy task. They face an unprecedented degree of public scrutiny and analysis. Of course, they still live in a hard, frightening and dangerous world. The miracles of modern transport do not absolve them from moving great distances on their feet carrying heavy loads. Snazzy new kit does not stop the bullet from killing them or the bomb from maiming them. The state of their digestion is a matter of public interest. The days are still hot and the nights dark and cold. While there may come a time when technology transforms the world, we are not there yet. So it is down to these young men and women, in their fragile human form, to defend our freedoms. We must not forget that they find themselves in these circumstances because of the decisions taken by our political masters.

I will now speak about the three areas in which I believe we are failing them and which it would be perfectly possible to put right and affordable even in the current economic climate, given due priority. First, as I have said before, I do not believe that the third sector should be exploited to fund men and women who are still serving in the forces. That is the irrefutable responsibility of the Government. Charitable money is desperately needed to support those who have left the services. Every pound that the charities commit to those in service denies help to deserving veterans and their families elsewhere.

Secondly, as others have said far more eloquently than I, there is a compelling case for the retention of the chief coroner. We owe this much to all bereaved families, whether in the services or not. For those who have lost a soldier son, father, mother or daughter in some far-off and unimaginable war, the ramifications of not retaining such a post are extreme.

Thirdly, in no way is it morally defensible to make compulsorily redundant those who have so recently fought for their country. We are not talking about a situation of demobilisation after a major war, as the circumstances are entirely different; nor are we talking about large numbers. As it is likely that the majority of the redundancies from the Armed Forces following the SDSR will be voluntary, we are probably talking about a few thousand being made compulsorily redundant. It is difficult to imagine how these people will feel, having volunteered to fight for their country and having been sent to do so, often several times. Having survived life-threatening battles with their enemies, they return home, keen to remain in service, only to find that an ungrateful Government are kicking them out. This is not the way to show that the nation values such people.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I draw the noble and gallant Lord’s attention to the time.

[Lord Walker of Aldringham]

I will finish by saying that the Prime Minister has said that the military covenant has been put at the heart of our national life. Because the principles of the covenant are now part of the law of our land, we have not only an opportunity at this time of remembrance to put these matters right but, I believe, a duty to do so.