Air Force (Constitution) Act 1917

Robert Jenrick Excerpts

Thursday 23rd November 2017 Westminster Hall

[Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Robert Courts) for organising it. I grew up a few miles from RAF Cosford in Shropshire. My childhood was spent looking up to the Shropshire skies and seeing the aircraft training, and visiting the wonderful museum that the RAF created at Cosford.

I have the privilege of representing Newark, a border town between Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire. In our part of the world, although we do not have the hills of the Welsh marches, we have big skies—“big skies and big hearts”, as local people say in Lincolnshire. When we look up to those skies today, we see all sorts of aircraft representing the full history of the Royal Air Force, from the battle of Britain memorial flight that visits our fairs and fetes in every village over the summer, to the Red Arrows down the road at Scampton, to training flights from RAF Syerston in my constituency and Cranwell—one of the homes of the Royal Air Force. Typhoons and Tornadoes train at RAF Coningsby but are also on active service, keeping the United Kingdom safe.

Newark has been at the heart of the RAF story from its very beginnings. When T. E. Lawrence was a young trainee officer down the road at Cranwell, he would come cycling for a good night out in Newark. There is an excellent exhibition at Newark Civil War Centre at the moment, where people can see the motorbike on which he cycled into the town. He used to give money to a local lady—Ruby Bryant—for looking after him and his various love interests in the town. Over the years, things have not changed. Officers, cadets and members of the Royal Air Force over in Lincolnshire like to come a few miles down the road for a good night out, which Newark continues to offer.

Today, we have RAF Syerston—a station operating Wellington, Manchester and Lancaster bombers—which was once part of Bomber Command. Thanks to a £15 million fund from the Ministry of Defence, it will be the hub for training air cadets throughout the United Kingdom. Newark, like many other towns, has a proud tradition of air cadets: they were out on parade only the other day for Remembrance Sunday.

During the second world war, we had many RAF bases—at Balderton, Newark, Ossington, Newton and Winthorpe. Some of them remain; some are merely part of our rich local history. Winthorpe is now an excellent air museum, which I thoroughly recommend for anybody who happens to be in the Newark area.

Newark today is also the home of the national Polish airmen’s memorial. Anyone who comes to Newark cemetery, which has been beautifully preserved by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, will find the graves of 397 brave Polish airmen. Also buried there for many years was General Sikorski, who was the general in charge of the Polish forces and, of course, one of the great heroes of the Polish people. He died in 1943 and was buried in Newark. His return in state to Poland in 1993 after the fall of the Berlin wall was one of the great occasions marking Poland’s return after an era of sad decline under communist rule. We retain those connections and the close links with the Polish community.

For us in Newark, with such a large Polish community, that war graves cemetery—only the other day we celebrated the annual All Souls’ Day service there—is a living memorial of the ties that will always bind the United Kingdom and Poland. In my constituency we will always maintain—I hope—good relations between the two integrated and respectful communities.

We have also heard today about Johnny Johnson, who was for many years a teacher in Newark and is often still seen at the Collingham agricultural show on his buggy, whizzing around and getting as much excitement and applause as the battle of Britain memorial flight always does at the end of the show. Only a couple of years ago it was my privilege to meet Johnny when Lord Hague was in Newark promoting his excellent book. I was delighted to see on 7 November that Johnny received his perhaps belatedly awarded MBE.

The community in Newark has always supported the RAF and has borne costs for doing so, such as bombings during the second world war. On 7 March 1941 a bomb was dropped on the giant Ransome & Marles factory in Beacon Hill, killing 41 local people, mostly women working in the munitions factory and producing parts for the RAF, and injuring 165 others. That was a big blow to what was then a small agricultural town.

Today hundreds if not thousands of my constituents are veterans, people who worked on the many RAF bases in Lincolnshire, loved our area and came back to settle. Many of the doors I knock on belong to people who were in the RAF—a veteran, perhaps the widow of someone who served in the RAF or a young couple, one of whom is working in the RAF.

I am in this debate on behalf of the people of Newark to salute the people and the serving men and women of the Royal Air Force. I say to the gents who prop up the bar of the Royal Air Force Association club in Newark, the memories cast of T. E. Lawrence and the servicemen and women of the past, the young cadets who are the lifeblood and future of the RAF and, above all, the thousands of men and women serving today who call my constituency their home or spent parts of their lives in it: we salute you, we thank you for your service and we wish you another 100 years to come.