Women: Special Operations Executive

Viscount Slim Excerpts

Monday 6th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Slim]

My Lords, I thank the House for allowing me to talk briefly in the gap.

As a past president of the Special Forces Club, which was formed by the SOE, I speak of the feeling among those who survived and who live on that there should be an SOE memorial. It was built for that reason. Those of us from Special Forces who have served since World War 2 and joined the club consider it our job to perpetuate the name of the SOE. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Crawley, for raising this subject. It is right that we name certain brave and very gallant women, but the feeling inside the SOE was that they thought of themselves as a family and they liked to be talked of as a whole. One must remember that there were many women in the SOE helping in training, signalling, communications, administration and preparing agents to go about their jobs.

The club helps in two ways. We have a very fine historical committee. Its task is to research the history, stories, tactics and everything that the SOE did. We work closely with the Imperial War Museum and raised money for certain things in the museum such as the Special Forces section. Another trust, funded by the great generosity of Sir Paul Getty, has the purpose of helping with the history of the SOE—of course, women come into this—alerting the youth of Britain not to forget what their forebears did, and getting in young students who are keen on history and want to write and learn, and who will continue to perpetuate the name of the SOE.

On our historical committee, no one has given us more help than the great author, Michael Foot, who is a member of the club by virtue of his wartime service in Special Operations. There is a memorial, but perhaps the Government should think about whether they, too, should do something.