Category Archives: Posts

In the run up to Armed Forces Day a video exposing the brutal potential outcomes of armed service has become a viral hit online.

Action Man: Battlefield Casualties, a Veterans For Peace UK film has been viewed over 300,000 times in just 36 hours. The series of dark, satirical adverts showing three toy soldiers complete with anti-depressants, wheelchairs and bodybags has received wide praise from veterans and civilians alike, who have commented on its brutal honesty.

The film, written by artist Darren Cullen and directed by Price James, has been released this week to counter Armed Forces Day, a marketing push by the Ministry of Defence focused on children and their parents. Cullen said “Armed Forces Day is designed to capture the imagination of children, with face painting, marches and military vehicles. But the flag waving and grinning photo opportunities conceal the brutal possible outcomes of military service. Our film is intended to counter the recruitment propaganda of Armed Forces Day”.

The former head of the Army’s recruitment strategy Colonel David Allfrey has said that, “Our new model is about raising awareness, and that takes a ten-year span. It starts with a seven-year-old boy seeing a parachutist at an air-show and thinking, “That looks great” From then the army is trying to build interest by drip, drip, drip.”

Veterans For Peace UK are using the film to build support for the campaign to raise the recruitment age of the British Army. “The UK is one of only nineteen countries worldwide still recruiting 16 year olds into the Army” said John Boulton, who joined the army at 16 and went on to serve in Afghanistan. “The UK stands alongside Iran and North Korea in continuing to recruit children into its armed forces. We want to put pressure on the government to bring UK recruitment policy into line with the rest of the world.”

The Army website states “If you’re under 18, you’ll need parental consent to join”, but Kieran Devlin, who joined the British Army at 15 and served in the Gulf War said, “The recruitment adverts conceal the deadly possibilities of military service from children and their parents. It is official Army policy to funnel the youngest recruits into the most dangerous jobs. Those enlisting on their sixteenth birthday can only join combat arms such as the infantry. Those who enlisted at 16 and completed training were twice as likely to be killed in Afghanistan as those who joined at 18 or over.”

The Army has repeatedly claimed that it doesn’t recruit in schools but their own document Engagement with UK Schools states that their overall rationale for engaging with schools is to “provide an environment which raises awareness of the MoD and Armed Forces among young people and to enable recruiters to access the school environments.” While Colonel Allfrey has boasted that “army careers advisers who operate in schools are skilled salesmen.”

Veterans For Peace are calling for the recruitment age in the UK to be raised to 18 in line with most countries worldwide. The video as well as details about the campaign are on their website: www.battlefieldcasualties.co.uk

How the establishment fight their Enemy Without and their Enemy Within.

Many centuries ago in England, the early Norman monarchs had ruled with a curia regis (royal court), but in the 13th century the barons’ Magna Carta had demanded that the king’s rule be subject to the ‘common council’ of the realm. The Tudors, who ruled through a coterie of royal appointed advisors and administrators, then set England on the road to a centralised – and London, the merchant capital, dominated – strong state. Parliament, which gradually evolved with a House of Lords and the House of Commons in the Palace of Westminster, was at first only called to gain public support for the monarch’s will on matters of national importance.

As it evolved, however, parliament threatened to become an alternative form of rule and its victory in the English Civil War opened the way for the domination of nascent capitalism, backed by Cromwell and other landed gentry. Cromwell’s semi-revolution had broken ‘the divine right of kings’, but his following suppression of the Levellers ensured that a new elite dominated the triumphant parliament. The Levellers, who had fought with Cromwell, had attempted to bring real democracy to England and among their aims and aspirations was to see a broadly based government elected annually on democratic principles.

The Levellers had also wanted Parliament to become a debating and decision-making forum for all the people. Their defeat, by Cromwell, ensured that Westminster instead became a chamber where new establishment factions, with their vested interests, ironed out their differences and then took decisions and made laws that maintained their control and increased their wealth. After Cromwell’s death, these forces made an accommodation with the defeated monarchy and aristocracy – forming a ruling elite who have controlled the life of the nation ever since.

Before the English Civil War, the church and monarchy had determined most people’s lives and afterwards the state gradually assumed the pre-eminent role. The constitutional monarchy, which emerged from 1688, had little to do with democracy and everything to do with keeping power in the hands of the merchants, financiers, land owners and the aristocracy.

Towards the end of the 18th century the ruling class faced revolutions abroad and unrest at home, which proved the greatest threat to their power since the Levellers. They’d faced a colonial revolt in America, which would result in the loss of that colony. In 1781, as an army band played ‘The World Turned Upside Down,’ defeated British solders had marched out of their Yorktown encampment in Virginia and surrendered their weapons. Some of the victorious Americans thought that many of the soldiers were probably drunk, because they ‘were disorderly and unsoldierly’ and ‘their step was irregular and their ranks frequently broken.’

Eight years later the Bastille was stormed and the French Revolution of 1789 with its slogans, ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,’ inspired a rapid spread of democratic ideas throughout Europe and the world. William Wordsworth, who had lived in France at the start of the Revolution, recollected the mood of those times in these lines from his poem The Prelude:

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,

But to be young was very heaven.

Rights of Man

Tom Paine, who had supported America in its fight for independence from Britain and the upsurge in France, wrote ‘Rights of Man’ in support of the two revolutions:

‘Never did so great an opportunity offer itself to England, and to all Europe, as is produced by the two Revolutions of America and France. By the former, freedom has a national champion in the western world; and by the latter, in Europe. When another Nation shall join France, despotism and bad Government will scarcely dare to appear. To use a trite expression, the iron is becoming hot all over Europe. … The present age will hereafter merit to be called the Age of Reason, and the present generation will appear to the future as the Adam of the new world.’ [Rights of Man, by Thomas Paine,
London 1791].

Paine, who had also condemned England for cruelty towards East Indians, American Indians and African slaves, championed national independence, popular rights and revolutionary war. In Rights of Man he stated:

‘When the Governments of Europe shall be established on the representative system, Nations will become acquainted, and the animosities and the prejudices fomented by the intrigue and artifice of Courts will cease. The oppressed soldier will become a freeman; and the tortured sailor, no longer dragged along the streets like a felon, will pursue his mercantile voyage in safety.’ [Rights of Man, by Thomas Paine,
London 1791].

The French Revolution had shown that the old order could be overthrown. Paine’s writings, in the tradition of the Levellers, supported this sentiment. In England, he was condemned for ‘treason’ and his book was promptly banned:

‘Paine was not writing academic exercises: he was calling the dispossessed to action. The Levellers had proclaimed the rights of man in the English Revolution, and were promptly suppressed. Paine wrote in a situation little less revolutionary, and potentially far more dangerous to the ruling class. The most enthusiastic response to the French Revolution came from the victims of the industrial revolution, the small craftsmen and the uprooted countrymen – just those classes among whom the tradition of lost rights lingered longest. To them the rights of man furnished a telling criticism of the constitution from which they were excluded. The tramp of their feet and the mutterings of their illegal discussions is the essential background to Paine’s writings. Despite savage repression, although men were sent to jail for selling it, 200,000 copies of Rights of Man were distributed: a circulation beyond the Levellers’ wildest dreams.’ [Puritanism and Revolution, by Christopher Hill,
Panther History 1968].

The apprehensive authorities in London then set about constructing an efficient spying network. The Home Office’s Alien Office, originally set up to keep tabs on refugees from revolutionary France, gradually expanded until it was running agents across Europe, including in Britain and Ireland. Information from spies, informers, Bow Street Runners, watchmen, the Customs and the Post Office opening of mail was systematically collected  – and regularly used to launch state repression and the activities of agent provocateurs.

The Great Mutiny

In 1795, six years after the storming of the Bastille in Paris, crowds in London mobbed King George III in his carriage as he rode down Whitehall. This was no show of affection, as his coach was stoned and rocked, the king heard the crowd chanting ‘Peace!’ ‘Bread!’ ‘No War!’ ‘No King!’ A shot was also fired at the king’s coach and some windows of the prime minister’s house in Downing Street broken. William Pitt’s Tory government then extended the treason laws to include the articulation of republican philosophy and banned mass meetings.

Two years later, in 1797, Royal Navy ships at anchor at Spithead and the Nore hoisted blood red flags. This was normally the signal that ships were about to engage the enemy – but in this case indicated a mutiny that included almost the entire fleet. Their revolt was not surprising as many seamen were forced into service by press-gangs and treated like prisoners once on board a ship. Under savage discipline, they endured abominable conditions and were often owed large sums of back pay. Many of the sailors who died during the war against revolutionary France, lost their lives from disease or accidents on the large but cramped warships.

The delegates from the mutiny ships produced a statement to explain their predicament and their subsequent actions to their ‘Fellow-subjects’:

‘Countrymen, it is to you particularly that we owe an explanation of our conduct. His Majesty’s Ministers too well know our intentions, which are founded on the laws of humanity, honour and national safety – long since tramped underfoot by those who ought to have been friends to us – the sole protectors of your laws and property.

The public prints teem with falsehoods and misrepresentations to induce you to credit things as far from our design as the conduct of those at the helm of national affairs is from honesty or common decorum.

Shall we who have endured the toils of a tedious, disgraceful war, be the victims of tyranny and oppression which vile, gilded, pampered knaves, wallowing in the lap of luxury, choose to load us with?

Shall we, who amid the rage of the tempest and the war or jarring elements, undaunted climb the unsteady cordage and totter on the top-mast’s dreadful height, suffer ourselves to be treated worse than the dogs on London Streets?

Shall we, who in the battle’s sanguinary rage, confound, terrify and subdue your proudest foe, guard your coasts from invasion, your children from slaughter, and your lands from pillage – be the footballs and shuttlecocks of a set of tyrants who derives from us alone their honours, their titles and their fortunes?

No, the age of Reason has at length revolved. Long have we been endeavouring to find ourselves men. We now find ourselves so. We will be treated as such.

… You cannot, countrymen, form the most distant idea of the slavery under which we have for many years laboured. Rome had her Neros and Caligulas, but how many characters of their description might we not mention in the British Fleet – men without the least tincture of humanity, without the faintest spark of virtue, education or abilities, exercising the most wanton acts of cruelty over those whom dire misfortune or patriotic zeal may have placed in their power – basking in the sunshine of prosperity, whilst we (need we repeat who we are?) labour under every distress which the breast of inhumanity can suggest …’ [The Great Mutiny, by James Dugan, A Mayflower Paperback 1970].

This communication was intercepted by the Admiralty and kept secret from the public. The mutiny was put down, the ‘ringleaders’ hanged and many other seamen flogged or jailed. But afterwards, pay and conditions for sailors were improved. This became the authorities formula for handling soldiers and sailor’s unrest – savage repression followed by a few limited concessions.

The United Irishmen

In Ireland, by 1798, the numbers of British forces had risen in a few years from around 14,000 to over 80,000, many in yeomanry and militia units. The reason for this expansion of troops was the emergence of the United Irishmen, who were known to have links with revolutionary France and to be intent on uniting the Irish people and creating a free and independent Ireland.

Many of the Scottish settlers who had flooded into the north east of Ireland from 1609 were Presbyterians. They had also suffered from oppressive landlords and experienced religious discrimination under the Anglican establishment. Some Presbyterians formed their own secret societies to fight back, but they did enjoy some privileges over the native Irish, with their land rights protected by the ‘Ulster Custom’ system of tenure. A linen industry was also allowed to develop, which gave rise to a prosperous business class. These descendants of the settlers, who had now been in Ireland for generations and regarded themselves as Irish, had developed their own cultural and economic interests, which were different not only from the native Irish but from the English establishment also.

Extensive numbers of Presbyterians had already moved on from Ireland to America, where many had volunteered to join with other colonists to declare, then fight and win, their independence from Britain. Protestant United Irishmen similarly wanted to be rid of British imposed economic restrictions and corrupt political rule. The movement’s leader, Theobald Wolfe Tone, stated that his aims were:

‘To subvert the tyranny of our execrable government, to break the connection with England, the never-failing source of all our political evils and to assert the independence of my country – these were my objects. To unite the whole people of Ireland, to abolish the memory of all past dissensions and to substitute the common name of Irishmen in place of the denominations of Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter – these were my means.’

Many Presbyterians and Dissenters (non-conformist Protestants with a strong anti-authoritarian tradition) now supported the United Irishmen. This situation, however, created a dilemma for many of the descendants of the settlers in Ireland, who had been planted in the country to keep it safe for English rule. Tone wanted to resolve their contradictions in a progressive direction and gain Ireland’s independence by uniting them with the native Irish. For a short period, Belfast became a revolutionary centre. On the streets, enthusiastic supporters of the French Revolution had celebrated the fall of the Bastille with parades and flags.

As support for the United Irishmen grew, the city became a haven of enlightenment and religious toleration. Thomas McCabe, a United Irishman who was also a Belfast jeweller, persuaded local businessmen to give up the chance to take part in the slave trade:

‘In 1786, some of Belfast’s richest merchants met to discuss ways in which to become involved in the lucrative British slave trade. As they prepared to sign a document forming a slave-trade company, they were interrupted by McCabe: “May God wither the hand and consign the name to eternal infamy of the man who will sign that document.” The threat worked. Unlike Bristol and Liverpool, Belfast was not drawn into the slave trade.’ [The New Internationalist, No. 255 / May 1994, Article ‘The Riotous and the Righteous,’  by Bill Rolston].

General Lake, the commander of the British forces, said: ‘Belfast ought to be proclaimed and punished most severely as it is plain every act of sedition originates in this town.’

Repression

The British authorities then took steps to curb the United Irishmen, closing their papers the Press and the Northern Star, and declaring such publications ‘illegal’. Martial Law, under the 1797 Insurrection Act, was enacted in Ulster and British troops were used to attempt to pacify the country and suppress the United Irishmen:

‘As early as March 1793, General Richard Whyte encouraged his troops, his “charming boys” as he called them, to go on the rampage through Belfast attacking the homes and business premises of known radicals and beating anyone who got in the way. “There are no lives lost” reported Whyte, “but many marks of the sharp edge of their sabres.” [Indiscipline and Disaffection in the armed forces in Ireland in the 1790s, An article by Thomas Bartlett In Radicals, Rebels and Establishments, by Appletree Press, 1985].

Many ‘troublemakers’ were arrested and deported to the colonies or forced to join the Royal Navy. During the protest actions at Spithead and the Nore some 15,000 sailors were Irish – many were former United Irishmen, impressed into the navy, who enthusiastically joined in the mutiny.

In Scotland, the Friends of the People Society and later United Scotsmen societies, organised radical opposition to the establishment status-quo. But the leaders, including Thomas Muir of Huntershill, were often arrested and tried for ‘sedition’ or ‘high treason.’ Muir was sentenced to fourteen years’ transportation to Australia. Robert Burns, meanwhile, tried to keep the radical tradition alive through poems like: ‘The Tree of Liberty’ and ‘A Man’s a Man for a’ That.’ In ‘Thanksgiving For a National Victory’ he expressed sentiments that could have been about wars in our own time:

Ye hypocrites!  are these your pranks?

To murder men, and give God thanks?

Desist, for shame!  Proceed no further:

God won’t accept your thanks for Murther!

There was close contact between revolutionary organisations in Britain and those in Ireland. Muir was made an honorary member of the United Irishmen and, in 1792, the Address of the United Irishmen of Dublin to the English Society of the Friends of the People suggested how the future relationship between Britain and Ireland could be created:

‘As to any union between the two islands, believe us when we assert that our union rests upon our mutual independence. We shall love each other if we be left to ourselves. It is the union of the mind that ought to bind these nations together.’

In Ireland, the military authorities were becoming concerned about the increasing evidence of support among the militias for the United Irishmen. At Blaris barracks, near Lisburn, County Antrim, four men from the Monaghan militia were shot after a court martial. The men, Daniel Gillan, Owen McCanna, William McCanna and Peter McCarron were alleged to have made contact with the United Irishmen and to have organised a secret officer structure within their unit. The rest of the soldiers were ordered to witness the executions and to march past the bodies afterwards.

Britain’s rulers had found that holding onto empire often proved more difficult than conquering it in the first place. Gradually strategies, that later would become known as counter-insurgency, were developed. One of these was to harass freedom movements and force them into premature rebellion, which could then be crushed by the superior state forces. Another was the old favourite – divide and rule – and so, in Ireland, the sparks of segregation lit during the plantations were now used by the establishment in attempts to ignite the smouldering animosities between the native Catholics and the descendants of the Protestant settlers.

Predominately Protestant militias were used against Catholic areas, which supported the United Irishmen, and vice versa. The anti-Catholic Orange Order was formed in 1795 and General John Knox, an Ulster landlord who like Lake advocated taking a hard-line, said that his military operations were designed ‘to increase the animosity between the Orangemen and the United Irishmen … Upon that animosity depends the safety of the centre counties of the North.’

The authorities then helped to arm the Orange Order and encouraged its members to join the state forces. Local ‘loyal’ armed forces of Yeomanry were formed and used to attack the United Irishmen.

In Britain similar units were formed to protect the rich and suppress the poor:

‘The Yeomanry, a mounted force drawn from the upper and middle classes, were created at the beginning of the French wars. Quite useless from a military point of view, the yeomanry was, and was intended to be, a class body with the suppression of “Jacobinism” as its main objective. This objective they pursued with an enthusiasm and an unfailing brutality which earned them universal hatred.’ [A Peoples History of England, by A. L. Morton, Seven Seas Books 1965].

In Ireland, the Yeomanry quickly earned a reputation for cruelty and barbarism against the United Irishmen and the population of areas thought to be supporting them.

Rebellion and Defeat

In early 1798 Ireland stood on the edge of rebellion, waiting for Wolfe Tone to arrive with French troops. British attempts to crush the United Irishmen intensified, with hangings, floggings, pitch-cappings, incarcerations and killings becoming commonplace. The authorities were determined to cow the movement into submission – or force it into an early rebellion before the French arrived:

‘In March 1798 the British authorities extended the repression southwards to the province of Leinster. They first arrested the United leaders, then unleashed a systematic terror against the peasantry, burning houses and farms, aiming to terrify them into giving up their weapons. Unable to wait any longer for the French to arrive, and facing a choice of rebellion or being destroyed, some 100,000 people rose in revolt in May and early June 1798.

They rose first in the midlands and southwest, and were followed by the Presbyterians of Antrim and Down. In some places it was as if the whole countryside was on the move. … But within weeks the rebellion began to collapse, overcome by the lack of central organisation, the failure of the French to arrive, and the superior military force of the opposition. At the end of August 1,000 French troops led by General Humbert … landed in Killala, County Mayo. They won some initial victories … but they were too few and too late. The peasantry in much of the country were already crushed.’ [The Cause of Ireland, by Liz Curtis, Beyond the Pale Publications 1994].

Another wave of savage repression followed the defeat of the United Irishmen. Tone was captured and died in prison, with his throat cut, while awaiting public execution.

In the American Revolution the radicals, who had helped initiate it, were marginalized and revolutionary principals – like ‘all men are created equal’ and that the purpose of government was to safeguard these rights – while still being voiced, were never to be fully implemented. Instead, those representing land and business interests took control and under George Washington, a major landowner, the fight was then fuelled by land hunger and the business opportunities it was thought would accrue if British rule, taxation and restrictive laws were removed. Afterwards, the exploitation of black slaves persisted and the extermination of Native American Indians – and the taking of their land – continued apace.

Like the revolutions in America, France and in the English Civil War, the United Irishmen were composed of a variety of forces with differing motives. The radicals wanted all of Irish society to be reorganised in a democratic way, but others were motivated by hoped for business opportunities. The latter were often inclined to give up in the face of repression and some even changed sides, while the former were inclined to fight to the bitter end and often paid the supreme sacrifice for their temerity.

In 1803, a second rising was launched in Dublin but was soon crushed. The rebel leaders were executed, including Robert Emmet and Thomas Russell, a former British soldier and close friend of Tone, known as the ‘man from God-knows-where.’

The Industrial Revolution

Also in 1803, seven months before Emmet and Russell were hanged, Colonel Edward Despard and 6 guardsmen were executed in London, after being found guilty of ‘high treason.’ A government spy later claimed that at one time 200 armed soldiers had been ready to launch a coup in the capital. Despard had been a member of the London Corresponding Society (LCS), which in 1798 had appealed to soldiers in Ireland to refuse to act as ‘Agents of enslaving Ireland.’ The LCS went on to say that they sympathized with Irish suffering and stated that:

‘When a People once permits Government to violate the genuine Principles of Liberty, Encroachment will be grafted upon Encroachment; Evil will grow upon Evil; Violation will follow Violation, and Power will engender Power, till the Liberties of ALL will be held at despotic command …’

Ireland had proved a productive laboratory for the development of colonial tactics and repressive methods. The subsequent process of conquest and colonisation around the world made fortunes for those who promoted and controlled it, by plundering natural resources and exploiting native work forces. Those who profited also ensured that laws were enacted back home that allowed British workers to be exploited in a similar way:

‘The great power of the state and the employing class was brought to bear against any attempt by working men to organise to protect their position. In 1719 workmen (but not inventors) were forbidden to take their skills into another country. By an act of 1726 combinations of workers were severely repressed: fourteen years transportation for using violence in labour disputes, death for wilful machine-breaking. But employers had the right to combine, “with the utmost silence and secrecy,” says Adam Smith, to “sink the wages of labour”. … In 1719, when the keelmen of Newcastle struck for higher wages, a regiment of soldiers and a man-of-war were sent to answer them.’ [Reformation to Industrial Revolution, by Christopher Hill, Weidenfeld and Nicolson 1967].

As the army fought rebellion in Ireland and the French in Europe, the Industrial Revolution, bankrolled by money made from slavery, was to provide a new internal role for the troops. As wool earned huge profits, landowners started turning tenants off the land to make way for sheep and new laws were allowing more and more sections of ‘common land’ to be enclosed.

This greatly increased poverty in the countryside and farm workers joined handicrafts people, who had lost their livelihood to the new methods of production, and others fleeing starvation, including Irish emigrants, to crowd into the disease-ridden industrial towns. There, they were exploited mercilessly by the new captains of industry, who required a plentiful supply of cheap labour for their mines, mills and factories. On starvation wages adults worked long hours in terrible conditions. Children, male and female and as young as seven, were even cheaper to hire and were forced to labour a 15-hour-day.

When efforts were made to better conditions Pitt’s Tory Government brought in the ‘Combinations Laws’, which banned workers from forming trade unions. Inevitably, food riots, machine wrecking and strikes became widespread and by 1812 there were 12,000 soldiers in the disturbed counties of Nottinghamshire, Lancashire and Yorkshire:

‘For weeks whole districts on the Lancashire-Yorkshire border were virtually under martial law. And one military command, in particular, established a reign of terror, with arbitrary arrests, searches, brutal questioning, and threats, for which we must turn to Irish history in search of a comparison.’ [The Making of the English Working Class, by E. P. Thompson].

Barracks

Soldier often sided with the people and government agents repeatedly told of links between soldiers and sailors and revolutionary organisations. In 1795, soldiers were reported to be ‘abettors of food rioters’ in Devonshire and in 1800 the Oxfordshire Blues were thanked by the people of Nottingham for their sympathy for the rioters. In 1816 a Home Office informant said he heard a soldier tell his friends in a pub in Rowley about a letter from his unemployed father who was starving with his family: ‘Charging him if any riot took place in this country for want of work not to hurt none of them. But if compelled to fire, either to fire over their heads, or to shoot the Tyger that gave the order, and to persuade all his comrades to do the same.’

Until 1793, when Britain joined the war against revolutionary France, soldiers stationed in England were billeted among the people in houses and inns. The only barracks were in garrison towns and fortresses. Pitt, the Tory Prime Minister, arguing for a policy of covering the manufacturing districts with barracks, said:

‘The circumstances of the country, coupled with the general state of affairs, rendered it advisable to provide barracks in other parts of the kingdom. A spirit has appeared in some of the manufacturing towns which made it necessary that troops should be kept near them.’ [Parl. Debates, House of Commons, Feb. 22nd, 1793].

In another debate, a few years later, the building of barracks was defended as a means of isolating the soldiers from the people:

‘The Government should act on the maxim of the French comedian: “If I cannot make him [the people] dumb, I will make you [the soldiers] deaf”.’ [Parl. Debates, House of Commons, April 8th, 1796, speaker W. Windham].

One hundred and fifty-five barracks had been built by 1815. They were damp and cold with overcrowded living conditions for the soldiers. Life for recruits was to be as harsh and brutish as the buildings in which they were billeted:

‘Once he had taken the Queen’s shilling, the recruit was tamed and cowed into submission by savage drill and remorseless bullying by non-commissioned officers, and the process of “breaking” men, often of poor physique and low health standards, coupled with unhealthy living conditions, gave the army a death-rate many times higher than that of the civilian population.

… The common punishment for even the smallest misdemeanour was “pack-drill,” often imposed so ferociously and for so long that the victim was reduced to a state of complete exhaustion. … Deserters were flogged and then branded with gunpowder massaged into the flesh to ensure that the letter ‘D’ remained indelible.’ [Colonial Small Wars 1837-1901, by Donald Featherstone, David and Charles 1973].

The use of barracks, coupled with the cruel discipline and indoctrination, helped to separate soldiers from the feelings of the population. The Army now proved to be an effective instrument for the suppression of popular movements at home. The historian, Professor George Rudé, looked at over a century of popular protests and their suppression by the state forces:

‘From my (no doubt) incomplete and imperfect record of the twenty odd riots and disturbances taking place in Britain between the Edinburgh Porteous Riots of 1736 and the Great Chartist demonstration of April 1848, I totted up the following score: the crowds killed a dozen at most; while, on the other side, the courts hanged 118 and 630 were shot dead by troops.’ [Paris and London in the Eighteenth Century, by G. Rudé, London 1970].

Waterloo and Peterloo

In France, the revolution had swept away the monarchy, feudal oppression and fiscal mismanagement – and helped spread democratic ideas across the world. But from the start it had been beset by outside opposition and internal factionalism, which descended into large-scale bloodletting – the terror. Towards the end of the 18th century, the revolutionary leaders, seeking to stem the chaos and terror, began to rely on the army for a measure of stability. Taking advantage of this situation, Napoleon Bonaparte, then an army general, seized power in a coup d’état.

Bonaparte then set France on 15 years of military rule and led the French Army on a course of aggressive imperialism that would see it win many battles and come to dominate much of continental Europe. Britain had been prominent in the opposition to the French revolution and continued that stance against Bonaparte and his French forces, fighting them on land and at sea. The decisive battle of the Napoleonic Wars occurred on 18th June 1815, as the armies of the two competing imperial powers met at Waterloo. The defeated Bonaparte was captured and exiled on the remote island of Saint Helena, in the southern Atlantic Ocean. He died there at the age of 52 on May 5, 1821. 

As an 18-year-old, John Lees had been one of the British Army ‘heroes’ who had fought at Waterloo, but then left the army and returned to Oldham in Lancashire and his old job as a cotton spinner. The industrial revolution was transforming manufacturing, but also producing a slum living environment and inhumane working conditions in the new mills and factories. Fewer than 4% of the population had the vote and, up and down the country, there was occurring mass popular meeting calling for parliamentary reform.

In 1819, four years after the battle that defeated Napoleon, Lees joined a crowd of 80,000 people who gathered at St Peter’s Field in Manchester to hear reforming speeches from Henry ‘Orator’ Hunt and other speakers. Three local magistrates, two of whom were Clerics, ordered the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry Cavalry to arrest the speakers. These civilian troopers, backed by the regular army 15th Hussars, drew their sabres and charged the crowd, leaving 11 dead and some 500 injured. Samuel Bamford, the weaver-poet, had taken part in the protest and told what he had seen:

‘Sabres were plied to hew a way through naked held-up hands and defenceless heads; and then chopped limbs and wound-gaping skulls were seen and groans and cries were mingled with the din of that horrid confusion.’ [Chronicle of Britain, Chronicle Communications Ltd 1992].

Waterloo veteran John Lees died three weeks later from the injuries he sustained at St Peter’s Field. Ironically, it is probable that his mortal wounds had been inflicted by his former comrades in arms, the 15th Hussars, who were proudly wearing their Waterloo medals as they charged the crowd:

‘Before he died John Lees said he was never in such danger at Waterloo as he was at the meeting, for at Waterloo it was man to man but at Manchester it was downright murder. He was not alone in that assessment. Other people seized upon the presence of Waterloo veterans such as himself in the unarmed crowds, and upon the actions of the 15th Hussars … [and] the savage sobriquet “Peterloo” was bestowed.’ [The Peterloo Massacre, by Joyce Marlow, Panther Books Ltd 1971].

Although there was mass public outrage at the massacre, including sympathy expressed for the victims in some papers, the Tory Government backed the magistrates by implementing new legislation giving them even greater powers. Under the Six Acts, magistrates could: Summarily convict political suspects; Prevent arms training; Search anywhere and Ban meetings. An increased tax was also put on newspapers and radical journals faced drastic penalties for ‘blasphemy and sedition.’

The following year, in April 1820, there occurred a radical revolt in Scotland, when members of Workers’ Union Societies and Radical Committees armed themselves and issued the proclamation of a ‘provisional government’ in Glasgow. The rising was put down and three of its leaders executed. Two of them, Andrew Hardie and John Baird, were ex-soldiers, who had organised a band of armed followers and led them into battle against Yeomanry and 10th Hussars cavalry at Bonnymuir.

The Struggle Today

In 1815 at Waterloo the British establishment had finally defeated their greatest external enemy on the continent of Europe and four years later, in 1819, had attacked their enemy within at Peterloo. The ruling class had survived the revolutionary period at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries by utilising all the means at their disposal. To maintain their dominance and control, they unleashed a wave of repression, augmented with draconian laws, spies, informers and agent provocateurs. Police forces in Ireland and Britain were initiated and the army and navy reorganised, with establishment control over all the state forces strengthened.

In Britain, in 1824, the Vagrancy Act was decreed to: ‘act for the punishment of idle and disorderly persons, and rogues and vagabonds.’

Actually, it was enacted mainly to deal with the problems that were occurring in England following the Napoleonic Wars, as large numbers of soldiers were discharged on to the streets with no job and no accommodation. The Act, which made it an offence to sleep on the streets or to beg, is still in force – although, it has been amended several times by later legislation. 

In our own time, in 1982, Britain, again fighting a war in Northern Ireland, also defeated an Argentine invasion force on the Falklands. And many homeless veterans were again on the streets, liable to be prosecuted under the Vagrancy Act. This has happened down the centuries, as youngsters are recruited, then trained and indoctrinated and sent to fight in wars overseas. Afterwards, often suffering from physical and mental wounds, they are left to fend for themselves in Civvy Street – as abandoned cannon fodder.

In 1994, a study by CRISIS into homeless people in London found that: ‘Around one-quarter of all single homeless people have served in the forces.’ Twenty-nine per cent of the ex-service people interviewed said they were suffering from nerves, depression and stress. Forty-one per cent of them had spent time in prison. [Falling Out – A Research of Homeless Ex-service People, CRISIS 1994].

These were mainly veterans of Northern Ireland and the Falklands, with a few from the Second World War, Malaya, Korea, Kenya, Cyprus and Aden. Veterans from the Gulf War, Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan have now joined them on the streets.

Until the Falklands War, opinion polls had shown Margaret Thatcher to be one of the most unpopular Prime Ministers ever. After the victory of the British forces, her popularity soared, allowing her to call a general election in 1983, which she won by a landslide. The next year, 1984, the Tories then inveigled a fight against the strongest section of their enemy within – the miners.

Today, the media, predominately controlled by the state or owned by moguls, still plays a key role in maintaining the status quo and in ensuring that only those who are friendly to the interests of big business will get near to the seat of power. We, however, are faced with the presentation of a more sophisticated deception of social equality. On the surface it would appear that we live in a much more democratic society, but we still have a long way to go before we can claim that we live in a true democracy – even some of the demands made by the Levellers in the mid-17th century have still to be achieved.

Vested interests still prevail and Tony Benn, when a Labour MP, explained how the system still controls us today:

‘The British Constitution works in a very subtle way to keep us in our place … And guarantee that the privileges of the powerful are protected from any challenge … The Crown, the Lords, the Honours List and all the paraphernalia of state power play an important part in preserving the status quo.

… We are not citizens, but subjects, for everyone in authority must, by law, swear an oath of allegiance to the monarch before taking up a position. MPs, Cabinet Ministers, peers, judges, police chiefs, and even arch-bishops and bishops, have to swear their homage to the Crown before they can be enthroned. All those in high office got there by an elaborate system of patronage, all done in the name of the Queen. The actual decision in every case is made by the Prime Minister or other Ministers, giving them immense and unaccountable political power.

The power to go to war is a Royal prerogative and Parliament does not even have to be consulted. … Compare a British subject with an American, French, German or Irish citizen and you will find they elect their head of state and both houses of their own parliaments. We are only allowed to elect one house of our Parliament while the Throne and the Lords are occupied by hereditary right of patronage …’ [Sunday Mail (Scotland), 21st April 1996].

Nowadays, the establishment still battles to maintain their control and fight against their enemies without and within. And we find our lives are increasingly dominated by the neoliberal economic agenda, multinational companies and the US led ‘New World Order.’ With Westminster Governments subserviently backing this new market-led imperialism, passing acts and laws to placate the corporations’ requirements and sending our armed forces to fight their wars.

Behind a facade of bourgeois democracy – which gives the illusion of democracy but none of its substance – the ruling class still maintain their dominance by controlling the state apparatus, including the two parliaments at the Palace of Westminster, as well as their forces of repression.

A story of Crossmaglen, war, propaganda and the need for peace.

Often the bad things that happen in wars have their beginning in a combination of inflicted circumstances and other more mundane happenings. This story, for example, depicts a backfiring van and a lovable little dog, but also the partition of a country and a village alienated from the soldiers occupying it. It could have been set in Iraq, Afghanistan or a fort on the Hindu Kush in the 1840s. Instead, it all happened in the UK in the latter half of the last century, in a village in Northern Ireland called Crossmaglen.

Throughout the world, the history of partition being imposed on countries has had few successes. If we think of Palestine, Vietnam and Korea we can see that partition is often imposed by powerful nations on weaker ones and, rather than solving issues, often creates further and deeper difficulties. Often inflicted due to expediency and short-term interests, partition can end up creating intense long-term problems. In the worst-case scenarios, borders inflicted by partition can become open wounds, causing pain and suffering to all those who have to live with them. This became the case in an Ireland cut into two parts, with a unionist – mainly Protestant – majority in the north and a nationalist – mainly Catholic – majority in the south.

During ‘the Troubles’ in Northern Ireland, at border posts travellers were met by British troops with guns at the ready, overlooked by other soldiers manning machine guns from slits in concrete block-houses. These fortifications, reminiscent of the First World War, were covered in corrugated iron, barbed wire and draped with camouflage and anti-mortar nets. Enormous sums of taxpayer’s money were spent by Westminster trying to make the border between the parts of Ireland ‘terrorist proof’ – including the construction of a series of high-tech watch-towers along the high ground overlooking the frontier.

The border quickly became one of the most militarised in Europe, equal in many ways to the one then dividing Germany. But both parts of Ireland – the North, as a part of the UK, and the South – were members of the European Union. So we all lived in a Europe with increasing moves towards unity and the subsequent lessening of borders between nations, while the artificially created border between the two parts of Ireland stood out as a stark exception.

The Partition of Ireland

During the implementation of Partition in Ireland in the 1920s, the border was drawn around six of the original nine counties of Ulster.

It was opposed not only by Irish Nationalists, but also by Sir Edward Carson, the Ulster Unionist leader. Carson, a Dublin barrister who became famous after destroying the reputation of Oscar Wilde in an infamous trial, was strongly against the Irish Home Rule bill, put forward by the Liberal Government at Westminster. But he also opposed partition, viewing it as a failed measure. When it was being imposed, Carson resigned as the leader of the Ulster Unionists in 1921. He attacked the ‘Tory intrigues’ that had led him on the course that would partition Ireland, and stated: ‘what a fool I was! I was only a puppet, and so was Ulster, and so was Ireland, in the political game that was to get the Conservative Party into Power.’

Partition was ordered by Westminster and the border, concocted by British civil servants, was not based on considerations of history, geography – or emerged from consultations with the local population. Instead, it enclosed an area in which there would be a permanent majority of unionists, while still being large enough to be economically viable. Ireland’s most industrialised areas were thus retained within the United Kingdom, whilst many border towns were isolated from their natural hinterland.

Some farms – and even buildings – were divided: ‘The meandering 280-mile boundary confirmed in 1925 cross-cut 1,400 agricultural holdings, approximately 180 roads and 20 railway lines. It bisected villages and, in some cases, private houses. It is this boundary which still divides the border region today…’ [Whither the Irish Border? Sovereignty, Democracy and Economic Integration in Ireland, 
by Liam O’Dowd, 
Centre for Research and Documentation 1994].

One of the reasons that had caused Carson to oppose Home Rule, was because he feared that Protestants would be discriminated against in what he saw as a Catholic Ireland – freed from British rule. But after Northern Ireland was created by partition, he warned the Ulster Unionist leaders repeatedly that they must not alienate the Catholics, as this would make the new state unstable. He stated: ‘We used to say that we could not trust an Irish parliament in Dublin to do justice to the Protestant minority. Let us take care that that reproach can no longer be made against your parliament, and from the outset let them see that the Catholic minority have nothing to fear from a Protestant majority.’ Unfortunately, Carson’s warnings were in vain and Catholics in Northern Ireland were often to be refused work on religious grounds. Carson later he said: ‘I fought to keep Ulster part of the United Kingdom, but Stormont is turning her into a second-class Dominion.’

Far from resolving the problems between nationalists and unionists, partition ensured that the issues that divided them were now concentrated explosively at, and within, the boundaries of the new entity. Inside Northern Ireland, over a third of the population identified with the aspiration for a united Ireland. They considered themselves part of the native Irish majority in Ireland as a whole, and resented partition. Trapped inside an artificially created Northern Ireland, nationalists felt apprehensive and isolated and no effort was made to win their loyalty, as Carson had suggested. Instead, they were subjected to discrimination, coercion and a lack of civil rights – which added further to their alienation.

South Armagh

In 2007, the Irish author and journalist, Danny Morrison, wrote a review of a new book about the South Armagh area, which through interviews had outlined the local people’s view of the conflict:

‘Two days before the introduction of internment on 9th August 1971 the British army shot dead the driver of a van which was passing Springfield Road barracks in West Belfast, dragged the passenger from the vehicle and brought him into the barracks where he received a vicious beating.

In a statement the British army said that two shots had been fired at them from the vehicle, whereas, in fact, it had backfired. The British army were never to apologise and at the inquest two months later unidentified soldiers were still insisting that they had seen what looked like a weapon protruding from the open driver’s window, heard two shots and saw smoke. That killing and their lies, repeated hundreds more times after controversial killings, represent the nationalist experience of law, order and justice.

The dead man was 28-year-old Harry Thornton from Crossmaglen, a quiet village in South Armagh.

Although South Armagh had not been untouched by the various conflicts that have peppered Irish history, it had no great tradition of physical-force republicanism. … Subsequently [after partition] finding itself cut off from its natural hinterland of Louth and Monaghan and stranded in a sectarian northern statelet … If few had heard of Crossmaglen before 7th August 1971, they certainly were to become familiar thereafter for its association with the most professional of the IRA’s battalions and its rural guerrilla warfare.

… South Armagh is an area fifteen miles by ten miles with a population of 23,000 people. It is believed that there are over 3,000 British soldiers and RUC personnel assigned to the area. A former Secretary of State, Merlyn Rees, dubbed it “Bandit Country” in 1975, and the British media (and some Irish) enthusiastically embraced the demonisation of the people.

A book published just this week, “The Chosen Fews” by Irish journalist Darach MacDonald (Mercier Press), at last does justice to the warm and proud people of this underdeveloped scenic area and explodes the media myths that have been perpetuated. In a series of interviews with people, many of whose voices have not been heard before, MacDonald paints a picture of a vibrant community, which desperately wants peace so that it can reach its full potential.

… This timely book is a tribute to a people who yearn for normality. Unfortunately, the Sandhurst boys have never grasped the equation that military presence and political vacuum equals armed resistance and alienation.’

Crossmaglen

British soldiers became the direct upholders of Northern Ireland from August 1969, after soldiers of the First Battalion of the Prince of Wales’ Own Regiment of Yorkshire had been sent out onto the Streets of Derry to ‘aid the civil power.’ Some of these troops came from the local Ebrington barracks, but most had arrived from the troopship Sir Tristram.

Afterwards, many places along the border became too dangerous for the RUC to patrol, and soldiers became the front line. In 1973, an Irish journalist described a visit to Crossmaglen, a village close to the border created by Westminster’s partition:

‘This is a town of about 1,400 inhabitants, where a soldier wouldn’t get a drink in any of the twelve pubs, a cup of water from any house, or a light for a cigarette from people in the street. There are no stones pelted at them – just the sound of silence.

There is only one Protestant business in the town and only three non-Catholic families in the immediate area. There has been no sectarian troubles here; and the only riots took place on the night Harry Thornton [a local man] was killed by soldiers in Belfast [his van backfired as it passed an army fort and he was shot by a sentry] and on the night of internment.

High over the courthouse, on the town square, the Tricolour unfurls in a gentle breeze. Army helicopters hover over the flagpole, at times, and lasso the emblem from its position. Next morning another Tricolour is put in its place. The forces have dropped some acid substance on the flag on occasions. It disintegrates into ribbons. Next morning, another Tricolour is hoisted. And so on.

No soldiers patrolled the streets of the town while we were there. The people said they rarely came out from the heavily fortified police barracks. One woman in a shop said that all troop movements were by helicopter now. “It’s like Heathrow airport here,” she said. “The copters fly in and out from five in the morning till about midnight – non stop.” The RUC barracks was turned over to the military in 1920. There has not been a policeman on patrol in the town since.’ [Sunday Press, 17th June 1973, by Michael Hand].

Seven years later, in army jargon Crossmaglen had become ‘XMG’ and was the most dangerous posting in Northern Ireland for British soldiers. By now all movements of men and equipment to the base was by helicopter, because of the high attrition rate of army vehicles to mines and ambushes. The heliport at Bessbrook, that supplied ‘XMG’ and other forts along the border, was now one of the most heavily used in Western Europe. A journalist from the New Society magazine described visiting the base with an Army unit:

‘Flying low over the hills of South Armagh, the helicopter sheers upwards to avoid some electricity pylons and then drops like a stone the other side. The squaddie I’m lurching back and forth next to is from Liverpool. He must have been about eight when the first troops arrived on the streets of Derry in August 1969. Now he’s on his way back to base in Crossmaglen – XMG as they call it in the acronym-crazy army.

You run off the helipad at Crossmaglen. Helicopters are flying in and out 24 hours a day, but they never stop longer than the twenty seconds it takes for one cargo of soldiers to run off and another lot to run on. They have to fly the rubbish out by helicopter here … From up in the watch-tower you can see some of the bullet holes in the 20 foot corrugated iron which rings this tiny base. “That’s where everyone gets shot,” Lieutenant Sexton says, pointing to the main square of Crossmaglen, 150 yards down the street. The Saturday before, Private John Bateman of the King’s Own Border Regiment was shot dead there, by a sniper hidden in the graveyard of St Patrick’s church. Bateman was 18 from Cumbria, one of the 100 infantrymen here. [New Society, 24th April 1980,
 by Ian Walker].

Crossmaglen has a large square in the centre of which stands a statue, like the war monuments in many British towns and cities. Local people raised the money to purchase the memorial, which depicts a figure rising phoenix-like from flames. Underneath is written in Irish and English: ‘For those who have suffered for Irish Freedom.’

Rats the Dog Soldier

In Crossmaglen the Westminster politicians could not claim that the Army was keeping the peace between rival factions, since the population was overwhelmingly nationalist. In a scene reminiscent of past days of Empire, the soldiers in their fort kept the Union Jack flying over hostile territory. The colonial role of British troops was starkly obvious, but the British mass media was unable, or unwilling, to explain the contradictions inherent in this situation. Thus, some concentrated, almost exclusively, on ‘Rats – the dog soldier’ – one of the most bizarre ‘heroes’ that the conflict had thrown up:

‘The army’s biggest PR coup of the seventies was undoubtedly Rats, described by one pro-military author as “the dog star” of BBC television’s Nationwide. Given the famous British predilection for animals, Rats was an army propagandist’s dream. A Crossmaglen stray who had been adopted by the military, Rats first starred on Nationwide in 1979 … “Rats,” Nationwide reporter Glyn Worsnip solemnly explained, “as number D7/777 is the longest serving member of the British army in South Armagh.”

… A ceremony to honour Rats was arranged for Nationwide’s cameras. As bagpipes wailed and Rats howled along with them, an NCO presented him with a medal with the words, “we are gathered here this afternoon to pay homage and tribute to this small mighty dog, our one and only friend in the Crossmaglen area.” An officer gave the game away to the perspicacious by saying that among the soldiers “you’ll see a certain amount of friendship towards this animal, when there isn’t that sort of friendship towards the local inhabitants of the town”.’ [Ireland: The Propaganda War,
 by Liz Curtis,
 Pluto Press 1984].

Soon, other articles about Rats began to appear in the media, as stories about the dog became an easy way to introduce a pro-British angle. As Liz Curtis indicated:

‘The Rats story ran and ran. The Daily Express featured him as “DOG OF WAR,” running gallantly alongside a foot patrol, with a text that began, “EYES BRIGHT! Here comes action dog with a regulation shine to his nose after breakfasting in the officers’ mess”. The Express told its readers that Rats, “twice wounded in action,” was soon to be awarded a gold medal by the canine charity Pro Dogs. The award ceremony provided an excuse for another appearance on Nationwide.

That the publicity had struck a chord in the British psyche was demonstrated at Christmas 1979, when thousands of letters addressed to the dog, along with food parcels and toys, arrived at the Crossmaglen barracks: so many that a special department had to be set up to deal with them … October 1981 saw the publication of a biography, illustrated with pictures provided by Express Newspapers, titled Rats: The Story of a Dog Soldier.’ [Ireland: The Propaganda War,
 by Liz Curtis,
 Pluto Press 1984]

The Reality

The stories, like those of Rats the Dog Soldier and many others, were clearly used to mystify and distract from the reality of the situation on the ground. And they sought to gain popular support, back in Britain, for the role the soldiers were playing. So, while the media wallowed in the Rats fantasy, the local people and the British troops had to face the reality. In South Armagh, 124 soldiers and 58 members of the RUC were killed during ‘the Troubles,’ many while serving at the Crossmaglen base. As tours of duty come around again and again, many squaddies become cynical and alienated about the war – that couldn’t even be called a war – and where ‘Rats the dog soldier’ became a hero, but dead squaddies’ names were quickly forgotten.

For soldiers a tour of duty in Crossmaglen, or any of the bases along the border area, was regarded as the toughest and most dangerous – as veteran Dave Roche explained:

‘Almost all transport to camp is made by helicopter, morale is a big problem there. Crossmaglen was the most miserable and depressing part of my life. Overcrowded quarters, damp, suffocating, artificial bunker light, living underground in steel armoured concrete holes. The smell of wet clothes and cooking. Never any let up; 24 hour border patrol, four hours rest, four hour village patrol, eight hours rest, and up again for patrol. My mind and body were wrecked, I would shake uncontrollably, and everyone drinks.

The stress is incredible, some mates were wounded, two were killed. South Armagh is bomb and booby-trap country. The thought of walking past a car and getting blasted to bits was terrifying, worse than bullets in Belfast or Derry. There were days when you only had one thing on your mind – “Not today! Shoot me next week, or next month, but not today. Please give me these last three days before I can leave for home …”

Some people go mad. Some pretend to go mad just to get out. One time we were landing by helicopter, it was freezing with snow on the ground. We saw one of our men running naked around the field. We thought it was a crazy bet of some sort. We waved and he waved back, “All right lads,” he shouted. But later he took his clothes and a gun and made for the village. We were sent out to search for him, we had orders to shoot him if he caused any trouble. Luckily, he was found sleeping in an empty house. Another soldier started shooting sheep while out on patrol. He was locked up. We all thought he was just pretending to be crazy, but they weren’t taking any risks.

I never felt like I was going mad, but we all felt exhausted. After 14 hours in a damp wet ditch; and nobody knows how much longer it is going to take, you have to bite your lips to prevent yourself from crying. You knew tomorrow and the next day would be just the same. It was a tunnel with no light, but you knew you had to go through it. Moaning did not help. I was not sitting at home on my settee, I was here in this mess and nothing or nobody could change that. That’s the way I spoke to myself, it was no solution, but the thoughts did help. Of course, I also thought of the day I would be sitting in the pub with a pint. The only thing the army offers you is a Padre, who would pass through once a month and say “Everything all right boys?” Any tour in Northern Ireland is mentally and physically exhausting. That’s why they don’t exceed 4 to 5 months and then they leave you for a couple of years.’ [Humo, 10th Aug. and 17th Aug. 1989,
 ex-soldier Dave Roche interviewed by Jan Hertoghs].

Towards Peace and Reconciliation

While some British journalists ignored the contradictions that could clearly be seen on the ground and wrote instead about Rats and other distractions, there were some British media people who were responsible and who honestly reported what they felt and saw. For instance, in 1972, the Sunday Times Insight Team wrote the following about Northern Ireland:

‘The border was itself the first and biggest gerrymander: the six counties it enclosed, the new province of Ulster, had no point or meaning except as the largest area which the Protestant tribe could hold against the Catholic. Protestant supremacy was the only reason why the State existed. As such, the State was an immoral concept. It therefore had to be maintained from the first by immoral means – the fiddling of internal boundaries too, the steady pressure on Catholics to emigrate by making it hard for them to live and work, the police bullying … And in the end the Army on the streets, internment, “deep interrogation.” For the British, the tragedy was that – through historical obligation, and then through sloth and lack of perception – they became involved in the defence of a morally indefensible entity. For the Northern Ireland Catholics, the tragedy was that the British defence prolonged that entity’s existence a few more [sic], painful years. Nothing was more certain than that Catholics would continue to struggle against the State. They knew the evil in which it had been born and reared. And since evil begets evil, they were prepared to see their own struggle carried on by evil means.’ [Ulster, 
by The Sunday Times Insight Team, 
a Penguin Special 1972].

During the conflict, successive opinion polls in Britain showed a majority of the people favoured the withdrawal of their troops. So what the Insight Team wrote was actually fairly representative of the views many people in Britain held about Northern Ireland and the use of their soldiers there. Clearly talks could and should have taken place between all those involved and a solution worked out. Sadly, Westminster ignored this and three decades of violence ensued, before discussions eventually began and a Peace Process later implemented. The agreement reached, which for many years Westminster had claimed to be impossible, suggests that many of the conflicts around the world can be halted through discussions and compromise.

The Irish Peace Process is fragile and needs to be worked on constantly to ensure its continuation. Unfortunately, there have been many times lately when Westminster’s on-going commitment to the Peace Process is open to question. Veterans For Peace believes that it is crucial that peace prevails and that this is also what the overwhelming majority of the people in both Ireland and Britain want. Earlier this year, 2015, a number of Northern Ireland veterans from VFP visited Belfast, Derry and Crossmaglen and met people from the communities where they had once served – including former IRA members: [http://veteransforpeace.org.uk/2015/road-to-reconciliation-ex-ira-members-and-british-soldiers-come-face-to-face/]

All the participants in these meetings want the peace to prevail and believe that reconciliation can play a crucial part in ensuring this. So VFP views this work as a valuable part of our goal of ensuring that talking / discussion / compromise replaces war / conflict / fighting as the way to solve problems across the world.

Aly Renwick served in the British Army and is a member of VFP UK

Lord Dannatt is the former head of the army. Now retired, with both political and corporate aspersions, He has connections to multi million pound contracts for the MOD. In October 2012 Dannatt, along with several other retired senior officers was the subject of a sting operation by journalists. According to The Guardian, Dannatt offered to lobby Bernard Gray, chief of defence materiel. Dannatt was quoted as saying he had engineered a seat at a formal dinner with the Ministry of Defence’s new permanent secretary, Jon Thompson, to help another company, Capita Symonds, which was bidding for a contract to manage MoD estates. According to The Independent, Dannatt acknowledged that he had offered to assist in facilitating conversations, but stated that he had rejected an offer of an £8,000 per month fee to lobby on behalf of the organisation and that he had “no inclination” to contravene the rules on lobbying. He is also a military consultant to the shadow cabinet.

Recently he called on the government to “Think the unthinkable” and send ground troops into Iraq and Syria to fight the group calling itself ISIS.

As an Iraq veteran I feel I can offer a unique perspective on this situation. Only an idiot would argue against the statement that Islamic state is a consequence of the actions of the American lead coalition. That is to say if we had not fabricated intelligence to justify the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003 ISIS would not exist.

It took about a year of lies after 9/11 to whip the western public into a frenzy over Saddam Hussein enough for a clear majority to support the invasion of Iraq. This decision was made even more justifiable by false intelligence leading us to believe the WMD possessed by Iraq were a credible threat. Last year It took only a month of propaganda to bring public support for attacking ISIS up to the same level. In other words, in 2002-2003 the coalitions PR machine took a year to do something it only took a month to do recently. If you ask me the invasion of Iraq was always an inevitability. So much so that In his 2003 report in to Iraqi WMD Lt Col LAWRENCE S. REED, USAF stated that 9/11 “provided new opportunities for action.”

You can read his report here: http://www.dtic.mil/get-tr-doc/pdf?AD=ADA441647

To understand the situation fully, we need to look at the difference in the times. Before the invasion the western public (especially Americans) were still quivering with bloodlust over 9/11. Until Islamic State was created (more accurately, until the news chose to begin reporting about ISIS), which was only a few months ago, self proclaimed experts and scholars were writing about the allies war-weariness, warning them not to fall into the supposed trap of isolationism, But now all this is going out the window, the hunger and bloodlust for war has returned. The participation of western troops in this conflict will only serve one purpose, to widen it. The far right and the media manipulate the facts to suit the agenda of the government. The armed forces then find themselves in an impossible situation, for as so long as we “support the troops”, whichever administration is in charge of the country has a blank moral cheque for military action, up to and including war. Have we become so indoctrinated we can be manipulated like puppets to support any foreign-policy initiative our rulers devise?

The fact of the matter is, No matter how well trained or how elite, soldiers can’t fight a roadside bomb. All that will happen if we send troops tithe Middle East again is that after a brief period of conventional warfare, we will become an occupation force, push the terrorists underground and be forced to fight yet another insurgency. It has been proven that even with the seemingly unlimited military and financial resources of the coalition that this endeavour will prove unsuccessful. Take it from a veteran of multiple tours of Iraq, including the 2003 invasion. We didn’t win then and we won’t win now.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/11626896/Lord-Dannatt-We-must-consider-sending-British-troops-to-fight-Islamic-State.ht

Steve Brown served with the British Army in Iraq, he is a member of Veterans For Peace UK

This article written by Steve Bell originally appeared on the Stop The War Coalition website

VETERANS FOR PEACE is an organisation of former members of the British armed forces who have committed themselves to the “war against war”. Their work represents a unique and irreplaceable contribution to the wider peace and anti-war movement in Britain.

At their Annual General Meeting this year they held a public session with a remarkable panel, composed of veterans who had served in Northern Ireland alongside former IRA volunteers.

This followed a visit made by eight Veterans to Northern Ireland meeting people and organisations from communities which they had previously been deployed against as soldiers.

At the AGM the panel was composed of Pat Magee, former IRA volunteer responsible for the bombing of the Grand Hotel, Brighton; S’eanna Walsh, former IRA volunteer who read the statement in 2005 that ended the armed campaign; Lee Lavis, former infantry soldier in the British Army, who completed two operational tours in Northern Ireland; and Kieran Devlin, former member of the Royal Engineers who served in Iraq and Northern Ireland.

The dialogue from the platform was from very different viewpoints. The former IRA volunteers retained their commitment to the struggle for Irish freedom. Pat Magee said, “I was a witness to violence against my country but it didn’t come naturally to me to join the resistance to the oppression of my country”. The former British Army soldiers felt they were involved in a struggle they didn’t understand. Lee Lavis said, “We were never given context for the conflict. My mind-set was such that I was part of a killing machine”.

Yet it became clear that there was much the soldiers from both sides had in common. Pat Magee said, “I, too, laboured under a reduced view of those we were in struggle with. When I listened to their stories I could identify with the Veterans”.

Kieran Devlin said, “The work of Coiste (Irish republican prisoners’ organisation) and the Veterans is streets ahead of what the politicians are doing”. Lee Lavis said, “By speaking together we can use our experience of the conflict to challenge its glamourous portrayal”.

Changes in perception also came from very different experiences. S’eanna Walsh said, “Talking to the ANC/MK delegation to Long Kesh convinced me there was a political way out”. Kieran Devlin said, “As a soldier I only knew of the violence what the BBC told us. I started to get disillusioned with the army, which led to drinking and violence”.

Yet there was evidently a common sense of hope, and the possibility of change in the dialogue. S’eanna Walsh said, “My responsibility is to ensure the life that I led is not the future for my children”. Lee Lavis said, “Hate cannot survive proximity. I believe this work contributes to creating that proximity”.

https://embed.theguardian.com/embed/video/uk-news/video/2015/mar/04/veterans-peace-former-british-soldiers-meet-former-ira-video

There were also some extraordinary contributions from the floor. Fiona Gallagher, from Derry, lost her brother when he was killed by the British army. She said that at one time “I hated the sound of the English accent”, yet here she was, speaking with former British soldiers about the need for dialogue. Jo Berry, lost her father in the Brighton bombing. She has founded a charity, Building Bridges for Peace, dedicated to peace and conflict transformation. She has often spoken in public alongside Pat Magee, demonstrating that reconciliation may be difficult, but it is necessary.

The Irish Peace Process is often understood as a process internal to Ireland, and even sometimes as just internal to Northern Ireland. Yet it is also in large part a new engagement between Irish and British societies. Unfortunately, too often British governments have been prepared to downplay it, or even put it at risk, for some supposed short term imperative in British domestic politics.

In this light the initiative of the Veterans for Peace becomes much more significant. This is part of British society coming to terms with what has been done to Ireland in its name, or by its hand. The pioneering work of the Veterans is stepping up to the mark set by the Irish republicans in creating the Irish Peace Process.
Motivating this move by the Veterans is the discovery of one’s real enemies and friends as described by Joe Glenton, veteran of the war in Afghanistan, is his terrific book Soldier Box,

“It’s a weird world when the man shooting rockets or bullets at you is not your worst enemy. He’s just angry you’re in his country – he’s seen this all before. It’s the people behind you that should be a concern – especially the ones a long way behind you. In fact, how far behind you they are could be directly proportional to the threat they pose to you. The enemy is all the way back there – probably in the direction your plane came from, back over all this sand, rock and earth.” (p166)

The uncomfortable and inspiring conversation between the Veterans and the Irish republicans warrants the support of the whole anti-war movement.

Source: Stop the War Coalition

Lessons Learned and Not Learned by W. D. Ehrhart

This article first appeared on the LA PROGRESSIVE blog

On Memorial Day 2012, standing in front of the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, DC, President Barack Obama gave a speech announcing the 50th Anniversary Commemoration of the Vietnam War. The entire speech is far too long to repeat here, but let me give you a few key passages:

“One of the most painful chapters in our history was Vietnam—most particularly how we treated our troops who served there. You were often blamed for a war you didn’t start, when you should have been commended for serving your country with valor. You were sometimes blamed for the misdeeds of the few, when the honorable service of the many should have been praised. You came home and sometimes were denigrated, when you should have been celebrated. It was a national shame, a disgrace that should have never happened.

“And so a central part of this 50th anniversary will be to tell your story as it should have been told all along. It’s another chance to set the record straight.

“Because history will honor your service, and your names will join a story of service that stretches back two centuries.

“Finally, we might begin to see the true legacy of Vietnam. Because of Vietnam and our veterans, we now use American power smarter, we honor our military more, we take care of our veterans better. Because of the hard lessons of Vietnam, because of you, America is even stronger than before.”

These are only a few short excerpts from the president’s speech, yet even this little bit is so riddled with errors, distortions, and outright falsehoods that it is hard to know just how and where to begin.

Let me start by telling you that I am a veteran of the American War in Vietnam. I was not drafted. I volunteered for the US Marine Corps when I was 17 years old, went to Vietnam when I was 18 years old, and earned the rank of sergeant by the time I was 19 & ½ years old. I was wounded in combat, and eventually received the Good Conduct Medal and an Honorable Discharge.

I also joined the antiwar movement after I finished my time in the Marines, joining my fellow students—none of them military veterans—at Swarthmore College in various antiwar activities and becoming active in Vietnam Veterans Against the War. I know something about how soldiers and veterans were treated when we came home, so let me start there.

I returned to the United States from Vietnam in March 1968, passing through San Francisco Airport and Philadelphia Airport in full military uniform. I repeated the same trip in June 1969 when I returned from my last posting—in Japan, as it happens—before I was released from active duty. On neither occasion was I confronted by civilians out to denigrate and abuse me. No one called me “baby killer” or spit on me. When I later became active in the antiwar movement, I never once saw or heard any antiwar demonstrator blame the soldiers for the war, let alone act out verbally or physically toward soldiers or veterans.

As Vietnam War veteran Jerry Lembcke documents in his book The Spitting Image, the myth of the spat-upon veteran is exactly that: a myth. There is not a single documented contemporary account of such behavior. All of these stories begin to emerge only after 1975, only after the end of the war, when many veterans began to claim, “This happened to me back then.” But memory is, at best, unreliable, and psychology readily demonstrates that people can convince themselves of things that never actually happened to them. For the most part, veterans came home to silence, returning not to grand victory parades and tickertape as their fathers had done after World War II, but one at a time to hometowns and cities that had hardly been touched by the events that had changed these veterans’ lives forever. It was isolating and lonely and without closure. But that is not the same as being vilified and abused and blamed.

A Noble Cause

But powerful people saw in the veterans’ pain and festering unhappiness an opportunity. It was an opportunity that Republican candidate for president Ronald Reagan seized upon in a campaign speech in September 1980 when he said, “It is time we recognized that ours was, in truth, a noble cause.” In the post-Vietnam War, post-Watergate era, both trust in the US government and belief in the justice of American military might as an instrument of foreign policy were badly shaken. Morale and discipline in the armed forces, as documented by Colonel Robert J. Heinl, Jr., in “The Collapse of the Armed Forces,” were at an all-time low, and very few young Americans were eager to serve in a discredited military. When the US attempt to rescue American hostages being held in the US embassy in Tehran by Iranian revolutionaries ended in humiliating disaster, the US foreign policy elite became determined to restore the luster of American arms and the legitimacy of American military intervention.

This is the context in which Reagan gave his “noble cause” speech, and he was elected in a landslide victory by the millions of Americans who did not want to believe what they had witnessed and lived through during the Vietnam War: the world’s most powerful nation pounding into rubble an agrarian people who plowed their fields with water buffalo and wanted nothing more than to be left alone. A war of aggression foisted upon the Vietnamese by arrogant men who thought they could bend the world into whatever shape they desired.

The “national shame, the disgrace,” was the war itself, not the way returning veterans were treated. But this was a reality that few Americans including many veterans of the war, could bring themselves to come to terms with. Haven’t Americans always been on the side of right and justice? Doesn’t the United States only fight wars as a last resort and only when forced to do so by aggressor nations led by evil leaders? How could a nation built upon “Give me liberty or give me death,” “all men are created equal,” and “of the people, by the people, for the people” have ended up waging a shameful, disgraceful war against a people who had done us no harm nor ever would or could?

So when Reagan declared that “ours was, in truth, a noble cause,” millions and millions of Americans eagerly embraced this vision of the American War in Vietnam. This was reinforced over the next decade by the dedication of the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington and hundreds of other similar memorials erected in state capitals, cities large and small, and local communities all over the US along with “Welcome Home” parades belatedly honoring Vietnam veterans; by Hollywood movies such as The Deer Hunter, Missing in Action, Born on the 4th of July, and Rambo; the vilification of the antiwar movement as a bunch of dope-smoking hippie traitors; and the transformation of the American soldier from the instrument of a failed, unrealizable, even criminal foreign policy into an unappreciated and much-abused victim.

The first of the Welcome Home parades took place in New York City on May 7th, 1985. I watched part of it on television, and later wrote this poem titled “Parade”:

Parade

Ten years after the last rooftop
chopper out of Saigon.

Ten, fifteen, twenty years
too late for kids not twenty
years old and dead in ricefields;
brain-dead, soul-dead, half-dead
in wheelchairs. Even the unmarked
forever Absent Without Leave.

You’d think that any self-respecting
vet would give the middle finger
to the folks who thought of it
ten years and more too late—

yet there they were: the sad
survivors, balding, overweight
and full of beer, weeping, grateful
for their hour come round at last.

I saw one man in camouflaged utilities;
a boy, his son, dressed like dad;
both proudly marching.

How many wounded generations,
touched with fire, have offered up
their children to the gods of fire?
Even now, new flames are burning,
and the gods of fire call for more,
and the new recruits keep coming.

What fire will burn that small
boy marching with his father?
What parade will heal
his father’s wounds?

I found it all pathetic and sad, but apparently many of my fellow veterans were more than happy to accept these accolades, however belated and cynical.

For while this transformation of the veteran from unwitting perpetrator to American hero was taking place, US policymakers were slowly but surely reasserting US military intervention as a legitimate and necessary instrument of foreign policy. Reagan’s intervention in Lebanon ended in disaster when hundreds of American Marines died in a suicide bombing, but Reagan was smart enough to cut his losses, and quickly displaced that setback with his successful invasion of the tiny Caribbean island of Grenada, claiming falsely that the Cubans were building an airfield for Russian bombers and that the lives of American medical school students were in jeopardy. This ridiculously lopsided affair was hailed in the halls of power and touted to the American people as a great victory, even though our “enemy” had a military force with the size and firepower of the Providence, Rhode Island, police department, and our military was so unprepared that soldiers had to use tourist maps of the island and call the Pentagon on a pay telephone to ask for naval support.

By the time George H. W. Bush invaded Panama in 1989, few Americans questioned what Bush and Washington had named “Operation Just Cause.” And when Bush committed over 500,000 US military personnel to put the Emir of Kuwait back on his gold-plated toilet, most Americans didn’t bother to ask why the US ambassador to Iraq had said to Saddam Hussein in August 1990 that the US had “no opinion in your Arab-Arab disputes.” Or if Saddam’s claims were true that the Kuwaitis were slant drilling and stealing Iraqi oil. Or why the US had supported and protected Saddam all through the 1980s if he was such a tyrant. Operation Desert Storm might more accurately be called Operation Desert Stomp, so lopsided was this brief little war, but it was celebrated with a massive victory parade in Washington, DC, and demonstrated for all the world to see that US military might was once again a force to be reckoned with. As Bush triumphantly declared, “By God, we’ve kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all.” Sadly enough, as the 2nd Gulf War, our endless war in Afghanistan, and our interventions in Somalia, Libya, Yemen, Pakistan, and elsewhere make clear, Bush seems to have been right.

This rehabilitation of American military legitimacy was, as I said, dependent upon rehabilitating the image of military service and the American serviceman (and now woman, too). By the late 1960s and early 1970s, as detailed by Heinl and in such powerful documentaries as Sir! No, Sir!, the junior ranks of the US military were in something close to full revolt against the Vietnam War and those who were ordering them to fight and die in a war that could no longer be explained as anything other than hopelessly wrongheaded and perhaps even criminally insane. What Americans saw on television in the late 1960s and early 1970s was not returning veterans being spat upon and denigrated, but thousands of veterans in the streets protesting the war they had fought, challenging the falsehoods foisted upon them and the American people, even hurling their medals onto the steps of the US Congress.

The draft, by this time, had been thoroughly discredited as grossly unfair, and within the military leadership itself, a large portion of the blame for the breakdown of the military was attributed to the draft and the number of young men who were in the military and sent to Vietnam against their will.

The solution to this problem—the lesson learned, if you will— by the military and the foreign policy establishment was to get rid of the draft and replace it with an all-volunteer army. It took a decade and a half to build a new, more loyal and unquestioning military, but in conjunction with other efforts such as the rehabilitation of the Vietnam veteran as noble hero and the recasting of the Vietnam War as noble cause, the effort succeeded. The US now has a relatively small military made up of a high percentage of careerists whose loyalty is to their armed service, whose ethos is defined by their unit identity and sense of comradeship, and who have minimal contact with the civilian society on whose behalf they are supposedly serving. Moreover, a high percentage of these soldiers are drawn from the lower economic strata, those groups with the least voice and the least clout in the American political system.

Captains of Industry

I teach high school at an elite private boys school that costs $22,000 just for a year of kindergarten; by the time the boys get to high school, their parents are paying $35,000 a year—and this is for a day school and does not include the cost of school lunch. While some of our boys do receive scholarship aid, the majority of their families range from financially well off to fabulously wealthy, and even our scholarship kids, by virtue of graduating from my school, have gained a distinct advantage in life.

I teach the children of the powerful and the influential, people with clout: captains of industry, political leaders, prominent citizens. And in my fourteen years at this school, not one of my students—now numbering in the hundreds after so many years—has chosen to forego college and enlist in the US military instead. Except for a very few who attend one of the service academies each year and will eventually serve as officers, not one student I have taught here will ever serve a day in uniform, let alone be required to serve against his will or because he has no better options available to him.

Why should the parents of the boys I teach care what the US government is doing in the world in our names and with our tax dollars? They and their children will never have to pay the blood price, which is now borne by less than one percent of the American people—mostly people the parents of my students will never meet or know or care about. Indeed, not a few of these parents and alumni benefit financially, directly or indirectly, from the system as it now operates. Where do you think their wealth comes from?

Toward the end of the American War in Vietnam, policymakers discovered that most Americans didn’t really care about the death and destruction of others so long as it was not American kids who were doing the dying. The lesson was learned too late to apply it on a large scale in Vietnam, but the Reagan administration applied the principle to its wars in Central America, spending millions of dollars a day to crush popular revolutions in El Salvador and Nicaragua with only a tiny handful of American lives lost in the process.

And now we have the modern miracle of drone warfare and Hellfire missiles, enabling us to kill anywhere in the world without having to put US soldiers’ lives in jeopardy or do anything more than, quite literally, lift a finger. Thanks to the lessons of the Vietnam War, the US government has learned how to wage war with minimal domestic political opposition. Is this what Obama meant when he boasted that “the true legacy of Vietnam” is that “we now use American power smarter”?

Obama also bragged that “we honor our military more and take care of our veterans better.” What does this mean? Every NASCAR auto race begins with a color guard and military flyover. Every baseball game and basketball game and even high school lacrosse match begins with the Star-Spangled Banner. At every Philadelphia Flyers ice hockey game, a serviceman or woman is ceremoniously given a Flyers team jersey with his or her name on it, and everyone in the arena stands and applauds. What are soldiers and veterans supposed to do with a Flyers jersey or a military flyover? Eat it? Put it in the bank? Pay the mortgage with it? As the saying goes, “Talk’s cheap.”

I call those empty displays “crocodile patriotism,” meaningless posturing designed to make us all feel good about ourselves, less guilty about letting others bear the entire blood price of our government’s military adventurism. Meanwhile, our servicemen and women and our veterans are committing suicide at the rate of 22 per day, according to the Veterans Administration, which also admits to a current backlog of 161,000 unadjudicated claims along with an additional 287,000 claims being appealed by veterans who believe their cases were not fairly settled.

Moreover, private organizations such as the Wounded Warrior Project and Vet2Vet routinely ask for donations from the American public in order to provide care and services to our veterans. If, as Obama claimed, “because of Vietnam and our [Vietnam] veterans . . . we [now] “take care of our veterans better,” why do these private organizations need to exist? Isn’t this what my tax dollars are supposed to be doing by way of the Veterans Administration? The US government has enough money to own over 9,000 Abrams main battle tanks costing $4.3 million each. Enough money to own 10 aircraft carrier battle groups with a whole new and larger class of carriers costing three times as much now under construction, 79 submarines, 363 drone aircraft, but private organizations have to beg for money from the US public because the government doesn’t have enough money to adequately care for the veterans our president insists we honor and care for?

To my amazement and dismay, few of my fellow citizens seem to be asking themselves these questions. I think it is because they have been gulled into accepting and internalizing a version of history that is largely fiction. Indeed, if one goes to the Vietnam War Commemoration website itself, prepared and sponsored by the US Department of Defense, one will find that the timeline for the Vietnam War begins only with Ho Chi Minh’s declaration of Vietnamese independence on September 2nd, 1945. There is nothing about the 80 years of brutal and exploitative French colonial rule. Nothing about Ho’s attempt to meet with Woodrow Wilson in 1919. Nothing about US support of and collaboration with Ho during the latter stages of the Pacific War against Japan. Nor about Ho’s letters to President Harry Truman in 1945 and 1946. Nor about the French naval bombardment of Hai Phong in November 1946.

A search of the Department of Defense website for references to Martin Luther King, Jr., and his landmark 1967 speech “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence” turns up nothing. A search for Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers turns up nothing. The most powerful antiwar movement in the history of our nation is all but invisible in the government’s official commemoration of the Vietnam War, as if it had never even existed.
The entire website is riddled with such oversights as well as distortions, misrepresentations, and falsehoods. The mass murders at My Lai show up on the timeline, but it is not called a massacre; it also reports that only one man—Lt. William Calley—was convicted of murder, saying that he was sentenced to life in prison, but neglecting to add that he served just three years under house arrest before being pardoned by President Richard Nixon. Meanwhile, the timeline includes the name of every American who received the Medal of Honor. Each Medal of Honor winner gets a multi-page entry describing in detail his heroism while the entry on My Lai receives three short sentences and Ho’s declaration of independence is covered in two sentences.

The whole point, of course, is to whitewash what actually happened in Vietnam—what the US did to the Vietnamese—and focus only on the nobility and heroism and sacrifice of America’s Vietnam War veterans, who, as Obama says in his speech, “did your job. You served with honor. You made us proud.” The official flag of the Commemoration says, “Service, Valor, Sacrifice,” and “A Grateful Nation Thanks and Honors You.”

You Made Us Proud?

During my thirteen months in Vietnam, I regularly witnessed and participated in the destruction of civilian homes, the most brutal interrogations of civilians, and the routine killing of men, women, and children along with their crops and livestock. The people we were supposedly defending in fact hated us because we destroyed their forests with chemical defoliants, burned their fields with napalm, flattened their villages with 500-pound bombs, and called them gooks, chinks, slopes, dinks, and zipperheads, turning their sons into shoeshine boys and their daughters into whores. Is this what the president meant when he said, “You made us proud”?

But the new version of the American War in Vietnam does not contain any of these facts. It contains very few facts at all. Consider again the Department of Defense’s 50th Anniversary Commemoration. Fiftieth anniversary of what? Apparently, the official version of the war does not begin until 1965 when the Marines first landed at Danang. Not when French soldiers returned to Vietnam aboard US-flagged ships in 1945. Not when the US began to pay the cost of the French War in 1950. Not when the US plucked Ngo Dinh Diem from a Maryknoll seminary in New Jersey and installed him as head of a “nation” the US created, hailing him as “the Winston Churchill of Asia.” Not when John Kennedy sent “advisors” and air squadrons to Vietnam. Not when the US backed a coup against Diem, nor when the US Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution after being deliberately lied to about what had happened in the Gulf of Tonkin and why.

But this is very much in keeping with Obama’s insistence that “history will honor [Vietnam veterans’] service, and your names will join a story of service that stretches back two centuries.” For the story Obama refers to is mythology, not actual history. It does not include 283 years of almost continuous warfare against the native peoples who were living in North America when Europeans first arrived and who needed to be removed and ultimately exterminated in order to make room for John Winthrop’s City Upon a Hill and the Manifest Destiny of white Anglo-Americans. It does not mention that those gallant Texans at the Alamo were fighting for the freedom to keep their Black slaves. It does not mention that President James Polk deliberately provoked a war with Mexico in order to steal half of Mexico’s land. It does not mention that wealthy American sugar planter Sanford Dole used the US Marines to depose Queen Liliuokalani and steal Hawaii from the Hawaiians. It does not mention that Theodore Roosevelt and his powerful friends provoked a war with Spain in order to embark on the creation of an American overseas empire, then betrayed both the Cubans and the Filipinos. It does not mention that for much of the 20th century, the US government used the Marines in Central America and the Caribbean to create a favorable business climate and collect debts for Big Business, Wall Street, and American bankers. The words of Marine Major General Smedley Butler, two-time Medal of Honor winner, are worth repeating here:

“I spent 33 years and 4 months in the Marine Corps. And during that period I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism. Thus I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers 1909-12. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras “right” for American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.”

You won’t find any mention of Butler in most US high school history textbooks. Nor that US financiers stood to lose vast fortunes if Germany had won the First World War. Nor that the Pacific War in World War Two was mostly a matter of multiple empires competing for the same geographical territory. Nor that by the mid-1950s the US had the Soviet Union ringed with nuclear missiles, all of them pointed at Moscow.

There is a great deal that seldom gets mentioned about American history. My students are continually amazed by what they have never heard before in their lives. Most Americans have never heard the history of their country, a history that includes much to be proud of, but equally as much to be ashamed of. The great American poet Walt Whitman once said, “The real war will never get in the books.” He was referring to the American Civil War, but it pertains equally to just about any and every American war. And as James Loewen makes clear in his book Lies My Teacher Told Me, real American history will never get in the books, either. At least not in the books that most Americans read and accept as fact.

Thus, most Americans, if they think about the Vietnam War at all these many years later, are content to accept the fallacy that it was a noble cause fought by valorous young men who sacrificed for the greater cause of freedom against an evil communist enemy hellbent on conquest, and who were unfairly abused and unappreciated by unpatriotic cowards when they returned home. Meanwhile, the wrong people learned that by removing most Americans from any responsibility for or consequences of US foreign policy, by placing the entire blood burden of US foreign policy on the shoulders of a small segment of the American population—and that segment with the least voice in public affairs—the American military industrial complex that President Dwight Eisenhower warned against, but did nothing to stop or change, can do whatever it wants to do in the world without fear of domestic political consequences.

Meanwhile, the one lesson that no one in power in Washington seems to have learned is that no amount of military might can achieve goals that are unrealistic and incompatible with the beliefs, desires, and cultures of those at the other end of the rifle barrels and Hellfire missiles, and thus unachievable. If the Vietnam War did not drive home that lesson, certainly subsequent US forays into Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan, Libya, and now Syria should have made that lesson clear. But there really is such a phenomenon as “the arrogance of power,” and we are watching it in action on a daily basis.

W. D. Ehrhart

Last year in mid 2014 nearly four hundred years of industrialised coal mining came to an end on a twenty five mile seam of anthracite, known as the Warwickshire thick. Roughly half way along the seam lies my home town of Nuneaton close by to Daw Mill colliery, the last of the deep mines to work the Warwickshire thick. Daw Mill Colliery had been owned by the private company UK Coal since the end of the miners strike of 1985. Following a devastating underground fire in 2013 it was decided that Daw Mill should cease operations even though there are millions of tons still left below surface.

As a lad growing up in Nuneaton the rhythm of the day revolved around the four pit heads I could see from my bedroom window. Miners going to work, shift hooters signalling the start of another underground day, shift end hooters, miners coming home and the dreaded accident siren rarely heard, then miners going out at night to such pubs and clubs as the Jolly Colliers, the Miners Arms and the Griff Colliery Sports and welfare club. My father started at one of these Colleries in 1939 aged fourteen as a draft door boy before moving onto face work some years later after returning from service in WW2. Three of my great uncles left associated collieries along the thick to head for France during WW1, never to return.

So with no surprise coal mining and its history in the area stretching back to Roman times is very intrinsic to who I am. With this in mind I joined the campaign to save the winding gear as a lasting memorial to the many thousands who had worked and died underground along the thick, during its turbulent and fraught history, the worst being 32 dead in an underground gas explosion. However, we lost the campaign, down came the winding gear for a few lousy pounds of scrap metal and gone is any trace of hundreds of years of coal mining endeavour. No help from the government, no pseudo celebrities joining the cause, no newspaper coverage and no funding from the lottery fund despite intensive lobbying from the local population.

All well and good you may say until I explain the next chapter in this story. Some eight years ago the Ghurkha signal regiment moved to Gamecock barracks at Bramcote on the outskirts of Nuneaton. As you can imagine their contribution to the life and history of Nuneaton is relatively new and apart from a Nepalese restaurant, fairly insignificant. But up popped another phase of the militarisation of our communities. The suggestion was for a memorial to the Ghurkhas to immortalise their valuable service to the crown. Every local newspaper ran endless adverts to raise funds for a memorial to these in media jargon “tenacious likeable men from Nepal”, there were Gala charity fund raising nights, street collections and BBC TV news reports. So on the 29th of April this year hundreds turned out for a huge parade to dedicate the new Ghurkha memorial in the centre of the town at the entrance to Riversley Park, the most prominent position in the town. If this blatant militarisation of another bloody memorial hasn’t disgusted you yet then there is more, for we had a notable visitor to this memorial for mercenaries in this small ex mining town, and it came in no other guise than the Prime Minister himself David Cameron

So the industrial heritage of Britain and the millions who toiled tirelessly for workers rights, a decent living wage and safe working conditions are slowly being erased from our towns in favour of yet more bloody military memorials dedicated to a violent and imperialistic past. The next generation of young men and women will no doubt walk past these monolithic sepulchres in some deluded but conditioned belief that there is something noble and glorious in the business of war. Perhaps just one last poignant thought to end this short article. On the bottom of the memorial are the words “BETTER TO DIE THAN BE A COWARD” but to today I would say “I WOULD RATHER BE A COWARD THAN SERVE YOUR LIES” Peace and happiness to everyone who reads this.

Gus Hales served with the British Army in N Ireland and the Falklands War. He is now a member of Veterans For Peace UK.

Corby Trades and Labour Club, 19th May 2015

This play by Shout Theatre company (an inter-generational company) was about War from WW1 to the present day.

Gus Hales and Angela came along to see the play.

George Hill and Spike Pike were asked by the director and peace campaigner Paula Bolton to take part.

Towards the end of the performance George laid a white wreath and then read from the VFP Statement of Purpose:

We, having dutifully having served our nation, do hereby affirm our greater responsibility to serve the cause of world peace.

Spike read his poem: War Machine and the whole cast and audience sang: Where have all the flowers gone.

There was a discussion on war after the Play and this was an opportunity for interaction with the cast and audience and to give some background on Veterans For Peace UK.

Gus mentioned that Veterans For Peace UK are working on visits to schools and that anyone interested should get in touch.

By Joe Glenton of Veterans For Peace UK

The Independent, Tuesday 19 May 2015

When my belief in the capacity of powerful institutions to exercise basic good sense simply overflows, I read Ministry of Defence press releases to keep myself in check. Indeed, few things can trim my faith in the human intellect like the supercilious ramblings of some nameless, faceless “MoD spokesperson.”

While the full facts of the case are cloudy, this was certainly true of the Royal Navy’s bitter sounding suggestion that Able Seaman William McNeilly was only a “very junior sailor” expressing, “subjective and unsubstantiated personal views” when he brought to the public’s attention his professional concerns over what he felt were severe security and safety risks on British nuclear subs.

While his claims are yet to receive the full and public inquiry they deserve, we do know that ad hominem has become the automatic response by the state to those who expose the truth these days.

If it isn’t pulling rank as in the case of McNeilly, the questions will be about the individual’s mental state or whether or not they hold some deranged or simmering grievance.

Besides those options there is always the preposterous framing by the media of an issue of straight forward bean-spilling or resistance to dangerous institutional stupidity using the lame “Hero or Traitor?” or “Hero or Coward?” templates.

Expect all these to come soon in the case of McNeilly.

While facts are yet to come to light fully, we do know that NcNeilly, who after a brief period of absence without leave has handed himself in as promised, is a highly trained, highly paid engineer trusted by the Royal Navy to operate on an advanced WMD-carrying submarine.

Junior or not, safety is a central part of his job – as it is of any submariner’s role. His investigation – if the Senior Service can bear to read it – even logs the extensive training they themselves gave him to that precise end.

Unless the Navy are saying their own teaching methods and personnel are inadequate, that same training goes a long way to substantiating his view and, let us be frank, it seems unlikely McNeilly wrote an 18 page report on the potential for a nuclear disaster, all the while knowing he could face prison, on a passing whim.

As a veteran I can attest that the average matelot, like the low-ranked soldier, is a practical woman or man and is far less subject to delusions of command than his or her superiors. Commanders who, we should recall, can count Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya among their more recent shining achievements.

The fact that NcNeilly’s view is one from the bottom up – from the coalface of our bloated, sagging nuclear program – does not diminish the strength of his arguments: it is far more likely to multiply them.

Which countries have nuclear weapons?

Further, there is nothing in his 18-page report which suggests he wrote it in a fugue or fit of immaturity. Most criticisms so far extend to his grammar and occasional rambling, though there are good clear reasons he did not file his report to a sub-editor.

My first impression is that this is a man trying to improve the world, not break ranks over a personal opinion. If his investigation exudes anything at all it seems to be a commitment to the public good, which makes him worth any 10 corporate journalists in my book.

His investigation, titled The Secret Nuclear Threat, also shows that McNeilly knows what he risks and that he feels he must take a stand anyway.

His claims have also since been backed by another former sailor who worked on nuclear submarines.

Why, some will ask, did he run?

His full rationale is unclear at this time, but I suspect we need look no further than the treatment meted out to other defence and security whistle-blowers: Manning, Snowden, Vananu, Kiriakou and so on.

Given the vile treatment truth-tellers receive, especially when it comes to exposing the excesses of the military and intelligence services, who can blame such a person for wanting a few more gasps of free air before their trials truly begin.

After all, unless you are named General David Petraeus and therefore pretty much guaranteed a free pass if you leak damaging military secrets, exposing the West’s military-security complex from within has become the great apostasy of our time.

The Secret Nuclear Threat

My name is William McNeilly. I am an Engineering Technician Submariner for the UK’s Trident II D5 Strategic Weapons System. I sent this report on the 05/05/15 to every major newspaper, freelance journalists, and whistle-blower I could find. Almost all my email accounts have now been blocked, I need your help informing the public and the government. I don’t know how many laws I’ve broken along the way; I doubt men live long enough to serve the sentence they’ll give me. There’s still a small chance of a pardon one day. The good news is the report has been acknowledged; the killing me option is no longer beneficial for them. They will now try to down play the information in this report, but anyone who reads the report will understand: my information comes from good sources, I have no reason to lie and they will understand if change isn’t made a nuclear catastrophe almost certainly will happen. The people who still serve Trident will continue to put their uniform on, collect their pay checks, try to cover this up and pretend they serve you, but we all die one day and when that day comes I will know I wasn’t a slave to money or fear.

I could’ve kept a good paying career or I could’ve gotten rich from selling the information, but in this fight I’ve always chosen the best path for the people I swore to protect. Choosing the best path every time has left me alone in foreign land, spitting out blood, spending my life savings, knowing I may never see my family and friends again, knowing my life and freedom could be over at any minute…. I will continue to walk down the best path for my people; my concerns don’t belong to money or fear.

This is more like David vs Superman than David vs Goliath, I might not win the fight but it’s not just about winning; it’s about turning with everything you’ve got to protect your people. You the people are the kryptonite; I have faith that one day you will be enlightened, you will awaken and remove this threat. If you want to help me remove this threat, you will need to download this before it is removed; then distribute it.

You don’t have to sacrifice everything to spread this report. There are ways to do it without appearing on the radar:
 Obtain a 2nd hand laptop – You might need an alias because some shops require your details for the sale of laptops. Memorize a name and address with a postcode that matches the address.
 Download the Tor Engine to access the deep web
 Use public wifi that doesn’t require you to enter your details.
 Alternatively you could go down the hardware route. Buy and post memory sticks to news agencies and whistle-blowers etc.

This is document will enlighten you to the shockingly extreme conditions that our nuclear weapons system is in right now, and has been in the past. It describes events that have happened and events that are highly likely to happen; each one individually should raise maximum concern. I need you to publish this document or send it to someone who will; please, for the sake of the people and land for generations to come.

This will jump between things like food hygiene and a flooded toilets, till describing the complete lack of security, floods, forced diving, crashes, N2 leaks, how the system can’t pass tests to show it could’ve launched, fires such as the blazing inferno in the Missile Compartment… Much more. My aim is to paint an overall picture of what I’ve seen, and to break down the false images of a perfect system that most people envisage exists.

I gathered the information by: Infiltrating O Group meetings, reading documents, conversation, briefs, listening in to conversations and seeing with my own eyes. O Group meetings are meetings that discuss the incidents onboard and plan all boat evolutions. They are held in the Navigation centre, which is a Top Secret compartment. My Top Secret clearance is only in the pending position. I shouldn’t have been able to gain entrance to that compartment, but part of my job is Strategic Weapon System navigation, so they gave me access for training purposes. At the beginning of patrol I was kicked out of the Navigation centre when O Group were about to begin, but I found a way to stay. There’s a computer down the back that I worked on. Out of sight, out of mind. I could hear everything, and no-one told me to leave when I was there.

This contains references to CB8890: The instructions for the safety and security of the Trident II D5 strategic weapon system. I’m sure all the Strategic Weapon System (SWS) personnel are scratching their heads and wondering how I’m writing this on my personnel laptop and referencing a book, which is contained within a safe in the Missile Control Centre (MCC). The MCC is the compartment used to control the launch of the nuclear missiles. It can only be accessed by people on the access list, and no personnel electronics are allowed. I was on the access list but how could I have gotten a copy of every single chapter on to my phone? A hidden camera? No. Smuggled the book out then filmed it? No. What I did was walk into a room were no recording devices are allowed. I sat down; took my Samsung Galaxy SII (white) out of my pocket, and recorded the entire book word for word. I held the phone still, about a foot in front of my face and anyone who looked at the screen or used common sense, would’ve seen I was recording. There were other SWS personnel in the room; in the video you can see a SWS JR about 3 feet in front of me talking to another SWS JR sitting right beside me. You probably think that’s impossible but I’ve got the evidence to prove it. The complete lack of concern for security worries me. The fact is it would’ve been even easier for me to cause a nuclear catastrophe than to gather that information, and gathering that information was actually quite simple, due to the amount of ignorance.

We are at war, with a new kind of enemy. The terrorists have infiltrated every nation on our planet. Our nuclear weapons are a target that’s wide open to attack. You don’t have to be Alexander the Great to see we must adapt our strategies. The cold war is over; are we still in situation where we must invest billions upon billions into a system that puts our citizens at risk? NO! We must adapt to the evolving world in order to survive!

Here’s an example of how little people outside of the Trident Program know about the Trident Program: I was part of a squad that had went through basic training, and had almost finished our phase 2 weapons engineering training before we knew we would be joining the SWS department (Strategic Weapons System). We came into contact with a lot of instructors and there was only one person who knew anything besides the names of the Vanguard class submarines (Trident). The only reason he knew was because he served on them. There is a strict need to know policy for the HMS Vanguard class submarines; Regardless of military rank or political authority.

I had envisioned a system with strict security and safety. I didn’t see how wrong I was until I arrived at HMS Neptune, (Faslane) and started doing the dry phase of the submarine qualification (SMQ Dry). My class sat in a room that overlooked the submarines. We all looked at the defences and contemplated how any enemy might take one out. We thought of multiple ways that one could be taking out but they all required military grade equipment. I still thought it was as safe as it gets; no alarms bells were ringing in my head until the first boat visit.

In the classroom we were told to take all electronic devices out of our pockets, and warned that we might be searched. We headed down to the final access gate to the Green Area; the last security check point. Unless you count the Quarter Masters; (QM) I’ve walked past them so many times without showing ID that I don’t consider them a line of defence. I’ll explain those situations later on. At the gate the guard barely looked at my pass, which was a paper sticker with my face on it; mounted onto a piece cardboard. The whole group throw their passes into the security office without the security officer examining them or even showing an interest in having a look to see if their faces matched the pictures. It’s harder to get into most nightclubs than it is to get into the Green Area. There’s still the pin code system to get through the gate! Oh wait, No there’s not, it’s broke, and anyone standing there that has thrown their security pass in or NOT, will get buzzed through. If you have a Green area pass or any old green card you can just show it to them from about 3 metres away (if the boat’s on the first berths; if not 1 metre) then get Buzzed Through!! That’s the toughest part of the security!! There are some security guards that will expect you to put the pass to the window so they can inspect it, however the vast majority of them don’t.

We approached the QM’s box to get our security brief then headed down the boat. No search at all. It wasn’t because we’re Royal Navy personnel, it was because that’s the standard procedures. 100’s of contractors go down the boat when it’s alongside. Their equipment isn’t searched and they are not pat down. All it takes is someone to bring a bomb onboard to commit the worst terrorist attack the UK and the world has ever seen. A perfect example of how pure the security is, is when I first got my Green Area Pass I was assigned to a boat which was in the ship lift. It was a rainy dark winter’s morning. The bus took us down to the gate and about 10 people were about to gain access to the Green Area at once. We All throw our Green Area North (GAN) passes into a pile in the box; without showing any ID. Then we all got buzzed through. Anyone without an ID or a GAN pass could’ve easily gotten through in the group. This was not a onetime occurrence, it happens every morning. Sometimes when it was windy and raining I kept my face looking in the complete opposite direction from the guard so they couldn’t see my face; I was still buzzed through. Anyone can catch that bus from the Yellow Area (normal base area/ area before Red Area). IDs are checked on the way into the Red Area (Area before Green Area) on the bus; by a guy who just walks up and down barely looking. I’ve gotten through a few times by just showing my pale white room key; looks nothing like a Green Area Pass. Also if you just walk into the Red Area from the Yellow area most of the time they will look at in your ID from about 4 metres away then till you to go on through the road part (especially if it’s raining).

At a Base security brief we were told that thousands of Royal Navy IDs go missing every year. A terrorist can use them, or create counterfeits with them and easily gain access down the submarine. Considering most of the guards barely look at them from a few metres (couple of feet if they’re the rare ones) away the fakes wouldn’t have to be too perfect. I’ve shown a room card or nothing, at least once at every check point.

I had gotten into the Green Area in a cluster of about 10 people and then I found out I needed to go to the boat that’s in the ship lift. I was in a group of six personnel that was going to do BSS on the boat. Which is basically walking around every compartment onboard learning about the boat. We went through the ship lift, past the QM, down to MC (Missile Compartment) 2 deck, set our bags just feet away from the missiles and no-one had stopped us. Keep in mind, this was our first time on the boat. No-one in the crew knew who we were but they still didn’t stop us. I done the same thing every morning, for the next four days. I went through into the Red Area without my ID being checked for facial resemblance, through into the Green Area in a cluster of people, then walked straight down to MC 2 deck and sat my unchecked bag beside the missile. I done it for almost a week before we a QM stopped me to see if I was on the access list. He told me that I should be handing my ID into the QMs box so they know who’s on board if there’s an emergency. One QM for one night done his job, all the whole time I was there. Accessing a boat which isn’t in the ship lift is just as easy. People very rarely get stopped by the QMs unless they’re in groups or look like their lost.

You can carry anything through the security check points without it being checked! When I helped with storing ship; I brought things of all shapes through and none of it was checked. Before sailing I brought my own stuff onboard in a huge grip bad; it wasn’t checked. There were 31 BSQ’s + ships staff + civilians = over 180 people bringing huge unchecked bags onboard.

If you’ve been through airport security after 9/11 you’ll have seen how thorough the security is nowadays. If airport security and Nuclear weapon security were both compared to prisons, the airport would be Alcatraz and Base security would be house arrest.

Jumping back to my first time down the boat (SMQ Dry). I was far from impressed with the security and I was about to be extremely disappointed in the conditions of the equipment. We went to the control room; the instructor said don’t touch anything. A crew member responded by saying “it doesn’t matter none of it works anyway, you can touch what you want.” Everyone laughed. They also complained in the Missile Control Centre (MCC) about how their equipment is “F**KED!”. There were a lot of red tags on equipment in most of the compartments we went into. I highly suspected a lot of them were for defect rectification, rather than standard maintenance Tagouts. Seeing the condition of the security and equipment made me more than concerned, for the safety of the people. It was at that point I realised I needed to gather as much safety and security information as I could. My intentions at that point were to make the changes by reporting through the chain of command.

In SMQ dry I learnt that HMS Vanguard is in the worst of the worst condition. Countless times it tried to sail but had to come back in; forcing the other boats to do extended patrols. In one of the lessons the instructor mentioned they found a problem with one of the nuclear reactors on one of the boats. He said all boats might need to get their reactors replaced. The instructor didn’t give away much information. I knew I had to get assigned to a boat and go on patrol as soon as possible in order to gather this information. Fast Track to a Leading Engineer was the answer. If I got fast tracked I would be on the first available boat after training. I worked hard day and night, and at the end of the 10 week course I had the achieved the highest test result on average out of a 20plus people on the SMQ course. At the end of SMQ dry training No-one received fast track. However the achievement went onto my JPA record. There was just one course left, one last shot.. The Trident Training Facility (TTF). At the end the course I was told I had more SWS (Strategic Weapons System) knowledge than most of the supervisors onboard. It was a nice compliment but I doubt it. I was awarded Fast Track to Leading Engineering Technician and received an award for best student.

Just weeks after passing out of training I had a draft for HMS Victorious. My work mates started calling me a terrorist robot because I remembered everything and I have a Northern Ireland accent. This reputation would have undoubtedly made it difficult for me to gather information. I needed to create distance between them, and create a new persona; I aimed for mixture of dumbness and eagerness to learn for simple curios reasons. Within days of being on patrol I was no longer the terrorist robot, soaking up all the information for terrorist reasons. Playing dumb came easy for me, I’ve been doing it and been it most of life. It makes people open up and explain a lot more. If someone assumes you know something they might leave that part out of the conversation, meaning you’ve just lost information which might have been valuable. It also helps with getting out of certain situations. I watched a lot of Columbo when I was a kid.

Stores Ship – The crew was getting ready to sail; I was assisting with storing the supplies on the boat. This day gave a good indication as to how the patrol was going to be; disorganised and a risk to health. Nobody took charge of storing ship. Most of the crew that was supposed to be helping us left early, there was food on the ground, food thrown in skip/bin, with wrappers busted and people throwing food at personnel on the casing and a lot of food to still waiting to get brought onboard. We had started in the morning and it wasn’t until the night that the PO came out to take charge. He ordered us to bring onboard the meat which was laying on the floor and in the bin for a good part of the day. There was meat which had dirt on it because the wrapper was busted; it was still brought onboard for us to eat on patrol. The firefighting equipment was brought on broad at the last minute and stowed away in a rush by BSQs (non-submarine qualified personnel); most of them didn’t know where to put the gear. If the suits were stored incorrectly it could dramatically affect the response time to an incident. I also don’t like the idea of removing a lot of the firefighting equipment from the submarine whilst in harbour. Their reasoning is, it’s for re-entering the submarine from the casing if there’s a fire. How about having sets onboard and sets at the fire dump for re-entry, so the other PPI Gold teams have the option of getting dressed anywhere onboard or from the casing. I said that to a PO and his response was “it’s a good point, they probably don’t do it for money reasons.” Considering the Billions that’s poured into these submarines, I doubt and hope it’s not for money reasons.

Day one of patrol – It was a dark, rainy and windy morning I made it through the Gate to the Red Area with my helmet on and looking down so the guard couldn’t see my face; he never asked me to look up. I made it through the Green Area checkpoint by keeping my face away from the guards, I didn’t show my ID, and I never handed any ID in. I got buzzed straight through with the others. A roll call was done for the BSQ’s (Basic Submarine Qualification). It turns out there were too many people onboard and a bunch of people weren’t actually supposed to be there. A few of them got asked to leave but they still kept too many. Which meant there would always be two people sharing one bed (Hot Bunking) because they didn’t have the space. They also set up new beds, one of which blocked a major hydraulic isolation and another two blocked the Port & Starboard DC switch boards. Three things that we need to gain access to in an emergency. The risk was recognised after about a week , and two the beds at the switchboards were taken down. There were 31 BSQs on the boat. 31 extra people to get in the way of the damage control teams in an emergency. 31 people to distract watch keepers with their task books.

Initial dive – On the first dive there was loud continuous bang being heard by everyone. It was down the forward starboard side. The next day in the junior rates mess, I heard people complaining amongst themselves about it being ignored. After all patrol objective No.1 is to remain undetected except by forces allocated in direct support. They suspected it might have been the fore-planes. The fore-planes is a control surface that is used to alter the depth of the submarine. There were jokes about the fore-planes being defective throughout the entire submarine. They joked about getting them stuck in dive mode. The aft-planes on full rise would compensate, if that did happen. However would you feel safe having a plane fly over our cities that had a problem with getting stuck in dive mode? When the boat was on index they shut off from diving and stayed on the surface for safety concerns due to the fore-planes. We need to dive whilst on patrol to remain undetected; the safety concerns were as always, dismissed. We are down to two boats that are available for patrol. Both of which have major defects. Question is what does it take for us to stop the Continuous At Sea Deterrent CASD? CASD forces there to be one submarine at sea on patrol all time.

A problem occurred with the Main Hydraulic Plant. I stood at the laundry where the mechanical engineers (ME’s) hangout; to gather information. Somehow sea water was getting into it. The amount of actual hydraulic oil in the plant had fallen to 35% the rest was sea water. An ET ME SM called the officers plans to deal with the situation “stupid”. Weeks had past and the problem was still there. I then heard a Leading ME say there’s an estimated 4-5 hundred Litres of sea water in the main hydraulic rep tank. The problem was there until the end of the patrol. Hydraulics is used to open the muzzle hatches. This defect stopped them from doing a Battle Readiness Test (BRT) which proves that the muzzle hatches could have opened whilst on patrol, and that if we needed to we could’ve launched.

Throughout the patrol there were constant problems with both distillers. One distiller didn’t work at all; the other one would produce half of the recommended output until it would also stop working, at random times. The distillers are used to turn sea water into freshwater. You would expect one of the “most advanced submarines on the planet” to be able to provide fresh water.

I could sometimes here alarms on the missiles Control and Monitoring Position (CAMP) while lying in bed. I later found out that I would’ve been hearing them more frequently if they didn’t mute the console; just to avoid listening to the alarms. This is the position that monitors the condition of the missiles, and they muted the alarms. One of the watch keepers told me and laughed about how they would deal with any issues; they would deviate from set procedures because the procedures can be “long and winding.” He said “sometimes you just know that you can adjust a valve slightly and that would solve the problem. Following the procedures might take you down a long and winding path.” You might think that’s no big deal, just an engineer using his engineering skills; if he was caught doing this kind of action on an American submarine it would cost him his job and possibly his freedom. If you work on the Strategic Weapon System you must follow the procedures, mistakes can be catastrophic.

CAMP for obvious reasons is a position that requires constant manning. This is another rule that isn’t followed. This time it’s not always the CAMP watch keepers fault. During the captains rounds period for example, they’re forced to clean a massive compartment. This draws them away from the monitoring screen and if the alarms have been muted … Most of the time they sit talking in a tea area; the screens aren’t visible from this position. Sometimes the MC patrol and CAMP watch keeper completely disregard the rule of constant manning. I was in the Missile Control Centre when I heard a pipe saying “could the CAMP watch keeper please report to CAMP.” They got caught out that time.

There were 31 BSQs (Unqualified submariners) running around and distracting people that are in these crucial monitoring positions such as the nuclear reactors Main Control Desk (MCD), the nuclear missiles Control and Monitoring Position (CAMP), the control room Panel etc. These are positions which require permanent manning and permanent attention. However those rules aren’t followed. When I was doing my BSQ I could see the lack of attention they were paying. It was only a matter of time before a mistake was made, and of course a mistake was made.

A mistake was made on the Panel in the control room. A small mistake from this position can cause a disaster. The fixed firefighting system Weapon Stowage Compartment (WSC) fog spray was accidentally activated by the control room panel operator. None of the electrical isolations that are required to be made were made; creating a high risk of fire in a compartment which contains torpedoes. It sprayed seawater over everything in the compartment; torpedoes, lights, torpedo monitoring panel; everything. I was called down to help with the clean up by the coxswain; the place was flooded. Lucky there was no fire, this time. The coxswain exclaimed “I wonder why anyone wants to work here, everything is dangerous; one little thing and we’re all f**ked!” He also expressed concern about water spraying on electrics. Someone then said “lucky it’s your last patrol then.” We all laughed. The general consensus is there’s no set person for senior survivor. However the coxswain in an emergency sub sunk situation is the expert in escape, and I’ve read documentation that says he is the senior survivor. Hearing those words come from his mouth means a lot. As far as I know the control room panel operator got away with it. People were saying things like “we all make mistakes” and “he’s completely shaken up about it”. It confuses me how someone could make an almost disastrous mistake and get away with it that easily. Anyone who turns up late for a shift gets a MAA and a day’s wages deducted. Almost kill everyone and its aww poor guy he’s shaken up.

That wasn’t the only mistake made by the control room panel operator during my patrol. The panel also accidentally shutdown the hydraulic pumps. Momentarily we lost all main hydraulics before the emergency pump kicked in. There may have been all incidents that I didn’t hear about. All it takes is for them press one wrong button in that position to cause a disaster.

A Fire Control Supervisor seen my interest in submarine disasters, so he gave me a book that contained detailed information about Submarine accidents. A lot of submarines have been lost due to simple accidents. If one simple mistake is made it can be all other. You can find some of the information online but most of it is covered up. It’s only a matter of time before one of the Trident submarines are lost. HMS Vanguard a Trident submarine makes an appearance in the book for the deep depth incident. The submarine exceeded 300 meters (safe depth is 65meters). They under estimated the weight of the submarine and didn’t have enough speed for the Aft-planes to create raise. The further the submarine descended the more the weight of the submarine increased due to pressure. The rate of weight increase was greater than the rate that they were pumping out water. The submarine was extremely close to being lost.

There was another incident on HMS Vanguard that did not appear in this book. Possibly due to the date of the book or the fact the tried to cover it up, but everyone who serves on the Trident submarines knows that it was HMS Vanguard that crashed into the French submarine. I was talking to a Chief who was on the submarine at the time. He said they told him if he told anybody about it he’d faced a prison sentence. However there was an atmosphere in the room were people felt like telling their stories of near misses, plus he knew that we knew it was HMS Vanguard. He said “We thought, this it we’re all going to die. I was laughing my ass at the time; I think it must have been the nerves.” He went on to explain what happened. The French submarine had took a massive chunk out of the front of HMS Vanguard and grazed down the side of the boat. The High Pressured Air (HPA) bottle groups were hanging off and banging against the pressure hull. They had to return to base port slowly, because if one of HPA bottle groups exploded it would’ve created a chain reaction and sent the submarine plummeting to the bottom. Luckily the boat made it back safely for repair. There was a massive cover up of the incident. For the first time the no personal electronic devices with a camera rule was enforced.

The HMS Vanguard crash didn’t appear in that submarine disaster book but there’s a book it will be in. I was talking to a SWS Navigation supervisor. He told that HMS Vanguard has had so many crazy incidents that they’ve got their own book filled with them. He said he’s read it himself, and some of the of things that’s happened on that boat are insane. A lot of people think the boat is cursed and try to avoid being drafted to it, but maybe it’s blessed, after all It has survived all of these incidents and yet somehow it’s still classed as operational. It won’t be long now before HMS Vanguard makes its way to America.

In another conversation with the SWS Navigation Supervisor, I got him to tell me about his experiences onboard. He has experienced 4 floods and fires onboard. He told me the worst was a flood in the DC equipment space. The whole back section was submerged in electrified water, from the 10 kW motor generators. He said they were lucky they didn’t follow the normal emergency operating procedure for that incident. Due to where the flood was coming from if they had followed the normal procedure the submarine would’ve been lost. He also explained in detail the time he was the attack BA for a fire back aft. When he got back Aft he couldn’t see a thing yet the fire was just a small one that was out before he got there. He explained how the new safety culture has created a relaxation of heaves; we no longer have heaves/drills with a blind folded EBS. This means most people aren’t prepared to be blinded by smoke, which is what happens in a real incident on a submarine.

Fire in the Missile compartment, in harbour – One morning I standing in the Missile Control Centre waiting for a heave/drill. The fire control chief started to tell everyone about the time they had a scheduled heave for 10am and a real incident happened before the safeguard rule pipe was made (SGRIF). After the safeguard rule is enforced the pipe’s for fires etc, so they don’t have to say “for exercise”; it injects realism. The pipe for the fire on Missile Compartment 4 Deck was made. Everyone was waiting on the safeguard rule so they assumed the person making the pipe had
forgotten to make the safeguard pipe first. They thought it was an exercise and he laughed at how they were “tabs out” and in no real concern. He said once they arrived there they shit themselves. 4 deck was filled with smoke. There were reports of smoke on 1 deck before it reached 2 deck and 3 deck because the smoke was so thick it had created a smoke cloud that travelled up sides then down through those decks. The chief said if it had been at sea there would’ve been about 50 dead bodies on 3 deck because of the amount of people struggling to find an EBS coupling in order to breath. There were then jokes about how people struggle and fight to find an EBS coupling during a heave/drill let alone a disaster with no ability to see. Plus take into account there were 31 BSQ’s on this patrol, getting in the way. Some of the BSQs would’ve been useful but most of the BSQs have never experienced it before and undoubtedly would have gotten in the way. They would’ve been using EBS couplings and blocking the path of experienced personnel; this happened a lot during heaves/drills. The chief said they used all the SFU 90 fire extinguishers that could reach the fire, and they were running out a portable extinguishers. The fire control junior rate said “did you not consider using N2 drench?” The chief replied “we were less than minutes away from N2 drenching the compartment.” He said they finally got the fire out after using almost every portable extinguisher onboard.

The fire was caused by the ships toilet roll being stacked from deck to deck-head they whole way along 4 deck (right beside the missiles and firing units). They reckon it was the heat from the cables that caused the fire. Now a days due to environmental concerns we don’t ditch gash/rubbish at sea. In numerous compartments on the boat you’ll find plastic bags filled with rubbish sitting on top, underneath and beside electrical cables and equipment that generates heat. I made my concerns clear to a leading hand, a chief and a warrant officer. I said “There’s Plastic bags filled with cardboard touching cables and equipment that generate heat.” I reminded them of the time the toilet rolls went on fire. The first responded by agreeing then laughing because I said plastic and cardboard are both great materials for starting a fire. The second agreed but said there’s nothing we can do about. The third one agreed but then explained the operational advantage of not ditching rubbish; the enemy might find our rubbish on the seabed. Well.. It’s not funny, I can at least try to do something about it, and I think a fire on a nuclear submarine is a bigger threat to the safety of the people, than some Russian boat detecting our rubbish. It’s only a matter of time before they cause a fire. Most people that I talked to who were leading hand and above had experienced a fire of some kind on board. The Warrant Officer had experienced multiple fires. A few times he mentioned how the belts in the fan room are just waiting for a fire. He said we’ll all shit ourselves when the submarine fills with smoke in a matter of seconds. He’s probably the hardest working most switched on guy I’ve ever meet, but even he can’t stop the inevitability of a fire.

CB8890 (0214) – If the HE charge is exposed to excessive heat without burning, it may become more sensitive and could cook to (non-nuclear) detonation, releasing radioactive materials and aerosols over a wide area.

(0219) – The chief potential hazard associated with a live missile is the accidental ignition of the first, second or third stage rocket motor propellant. If this were to happen in the missile tube with the muzzle hatch shut and locked., the pressure hull and bulkheads of the MC would burst within a matter of seconds. In addition the missile contains a number of subsidiary propulsive and ordnance items that could cause damage to the missile and/or release toxic gases into the MC if initiated prematurely. In some cases, this could also result in ignition or detonation of one of the rocket motors.

There was a leak coming through the roof in the junior rates mess beside electrics. I asked them “are you going to isolate it?” They replied “It’s happened before, we didn’t make any isolations last time and there was no fire.” Even though water was travelling through the lights they didn’t feel it was necessary. It took over 8 hours to stop the leak. It then returned on a few other occasions.

In the riders mess there was an extension cable attached to an extension cable, with clothes touching them and sometimes wet towels were hung above them. Anyone who has passed out of nursery can spot that hazard straight away. All personal electronic devices needed to be PAT Tested to see if it was safe for use. This rule was never properly enforced. There was only one guy onboard who PAT Tested the equipment. Two people in my mess got caught on week 7. I personally never got mine PAT Tested so I could see how sloppy their enforcement was. I never got caught the whole patrol, even though I’d sit in the JRs mess with an unmarked plug on display for all of them to see.

CAMP isn’t the only place where alarms are ignored. In the Missile Control Centre there is a CAMP Fault alarm that appears quite frequently. Due to it appearing frequently if the alarm is sounded most of the time people won’t even bother looking at the screen because they assume it’s that same fault. I heard there was a problem with the Starboard TG. I then found a letter in the bin telling the Aft engineers “Starboard TG combined emergency trip stop valve. Don’t follow standard operating procedures (SOPs). Open it a little instead of fully so that indications are correct on the Propulsion Service Panel (PSP).” Basically they avoided the standard operating procedures so they didn’t have any alarms on their panel. There was a problem with one of the TGs. We only have two TGs onboard. We need them to generate electricity from the reactor. If we lost both TGs we would’ve been down to using the battery. Problem with that is there was also a problem with one of the MGs (motor generators). One MG was dysfunctional. They had problems with it before and when it went faulty instead getting a new one, they “fixed it” and sent the same one back. Which obviously hasn’t been fixed properly. There was a lot of problems of the electrical generation equipment. Losing power could result in losing the submarine.

A good communication system is said to be the most important thing onboard. Yet we have an old speaker system that no one understands most of the time. Take into consideration that during most emergences they talk through a breathing mask and you have a disaster waiting to happen.

If you’ve never seen a missile compartment before you probably have a picture of a glistening high tech piece of equipment in your head. Before Captains rounds or a VIP visit it is pretty glistening but during most of the patrol it’s far from it. Missile Compartment 4 deck turns into a gym. There are people sweating their asses of between the missiles, people rowing between a blanket of s**t because the sewage system is defective, sometimes the s**t sprays onto the fwd starboard missile tubes and there’s also a lot of rubbish stored near the missile tubes. Not an image you would expect of the “most advanced weapon system on the planet”.

There were a few incidents of people in the gym dropping weights near the nuclear weapon’s firing units. I heard one person joke about how he accidentally throw a weight and it nearly hit a missiles firing unit. A person was caught using a Bluetooth speaker to play music on MC 4 deck. The captain found out and a warning issued over Full Main Broadcast (FMB) all personal electronics would be banned if anyone else was caught using Bluetooth in the Missile Compartment.

This is a quote from CB8890 (0430) – With live missiles embarked, the only portable radios authorised for use in the MC / AMS 2 are Cromwell Radios and Fire Fighter helmets with built in communications (FFHBC).

E. Electronic equipment in the MC other than that required for safety and security must not
be operating.

Personnel Electronics should be banned yet the policy isn’t enforced. You can bring whatever electronic devices you want onboard: laptops, phones, pads etc. Almost everyone onboard sleeps on a level of the Missile Compartment. They use their own personal electronics right beside the
missiles.

Simple rules like no e-cigs and no shaving are also not obeyed. With the ventilation constantly circulating air around the submarine it is possible for the hairs to be picked up and cause short circuits. In the Missile Control Centre a Power Alert Alarm kept appearing and disappearing. A possible cause is something like dust or hair creating a short.

I was working in the senior rates mess for a week. I heard them complain about the atmosphere not being in spec. For a while everyone was sleepy and then there were times people couldn’t sleep. Too high or to low O2 or CO2 levels can cause this. Around the time of Captains rounds people were complaining about being sleepy all the time. It could’ve been because of the extra work but a lot of people were saying it was the atmosphere. Most people onboard were using a cleaning solution which was supposed to be banned onboard. People were also mixing the cleaning agents together to create a super cleaning agent. Someone told me they made a cocktail of cleaning products which evaporated instantly when they added hot water. I had a headache that lasted for the whole cleaning period; it went away shortly afterwards. We had to start cleaning again for the VIP visit. The person I was cleaning with brought a bucket which had the banned substance in it, and within a few minutes my headache was back. I told him it was banned but he just cracked on. The product had a distinct smell, and it didn’t take long before it was picked up. The medical assistant walked past and recognised the smell. He said “said that smells like Terry’s chocolate orange, you know that’s banned.” then walked off. Yet again the rules weren’t being followed.

I was in the Navigation centre listening in to a conversation between the Navigation supervisor and a Sub LT. They started talking and joking about how there’s a complete lack of concern for Top Secret information. They shared their experiences; the Sub Lt talked about someone she knew who’d just leave Top Secret information laying on his bed for anyone to see. When the guys in the Navigation centre got used to seeing me, they let me see Top Secret information such as: PBNZs and the current location. There were also times were the Navigation supervisor and the JR would leave the compartment. One time the supervisor was of somewhere and the JR was cleaning the outside the compartment; I was only in the compartment for about 5 minutes with the PBNZ folder and Top Secret laptop nearby. It would’ve been easy for me to gather the PBNZ information. To the right buyer this information would sell for millions. However I wasn’t interested in it. Releasing that information would show the positions the submarine would travel to on patrol. Any enemy could use it to help them find the submarine. It is possible for a foreign enemy to eliminate one of our submarines and get away with it. The information I have released in this document has been carefully selected. I would never release information that I haven’t considered the implications of. An idiot may say that releasing information about how open to attack we are will invite terrorism and create an increased risk to security. The truth is the threat already exists. I can sit on my ass hoping they don’t find out about how ridiculous the security is or I can let our Government and people know so they can make a change. I tried to make the changes from within. I expressed my concerns too many times without any action being taking.

The reason the Navigation supervisor let me see the information was they knew there was a chance that I would come back as a Navigation supervisor on my next patrol. However I don’t have that level of security clearance yet. There was another incident more disturbing. I was with seven other new SWS personnel on that patrol. None of us have DV security clearance, none of us had our bags checked, all us got to see inside the missile and a few of us got to climb inside a nuclear missile which could have had up to 12 nuclear warheads on it. At the end of patrol we remove the missile inverters. In order to get parts of our task books signed of we had to witness the removal. After the removal was complete I was asked “do you want to have a look inside?” I climbed the ladder, put half my body inside the missile and had a look around. They pointed out explosives and said “when you’re doing this procedure don’t touch them.” If any of us were terrorist we would’ve been given

the perfect opportunity to send nuclear warheads crashing down on the UK. A Vanguard class submarine can carry up 12 warheads on each missile and has 16 missile tubes which means there could be up to 192 nuclear warheads on a single boat at one time. Due to Nuclear agreements the number would most likely be around 48 nuclear warheads; still enough to poison our atmosphere.

CB8890 (0215) – If RB containment is breached, several radioactive and/or toxic materials may be exposed to the atmosphere. These include plutonium, uranium, lithium compounds, tritium gas and beryllium. If mixed with water, fumes or toxic gases will be generated. When installed in a Trident II D5 missile, RBs clustered around the Third Stage Rocket Motor are at risk from a rocket motor propellant fire.

(0216) – The RB could become physically damaged due to collision or fire in peacetime and in war could be subjected to splinter attack or the effects of detonation from enemy projectiles. This type of damage could also result from a successful terrorist attack.

(0217) – An accident or enemy action may cause rupture of the RB, burning or possible detonation of the HE and release of radioactive contamination.

The port team removing the inverters from inside the missile, had removed them at almost twice the speed of the starboard team. When the port team started to work on the starboard missiles, the starboard team called them cowboys, they laughed about how much of a rushed job they done. I didn’t get to observe how the port team removed them so fast, but I did get to observe the starboard team for two missiles. Even the starboard team wasn’t following the correct procedures. Normal reader worker routine was completely ignored; the worker carried out the operation from memory instead of doing it by the book. They also joked about how the Americans do it. They said the Americans lay on top of each other and if one hand goes out of site from the other person there will be a lot of shouting their head off. I think that’s better than letting a bunch of non-security cleared people climb inside for nosey.

luckily none of us were terrorists. However the rate at which people are getting pushed through the system because of man power shortages is scary. SWS is so short on man power it’s unbelievable and people are getting pushed through at an alarming rate. There are leading hands doing the jobs chiefs used to do. There is a SWS leading hand who still hasn’t got his DV clearance and he’s in the position of a launcher supervisor. If I ignored the threat and stuck with my job I’d be on course to be a leader in the SWS department with a matter of months. 30% of my entire SWS task book got signed of inside 10 minutes without me talking over or performing any of it. This is a task book that has a limit of 18months, 12 months for fast track. A guy that was in my squad completed his task book alongside in less than three months. He is now fully qualified to watch-keeper who may have to carry out emergency operating procedures in the MCC as a fire-control JR even though he has never been on a patrol, and hasn’t even completed BSS or BSQ. BSS being the complete basic understanding of the boat. It’s just a matter of time before we’re infiltrated by a psychopath or a terrorist; with this amount of people getting pushed through.

Some of the personalities onboard are already alarming. Probably the most worrying is the SWS Junior Rate whose hobby is killing small animals. He also expressed his interest in watching dark porn, like crush porn. Which is basically women stomping kittens to death while a guy masturbates. I have no idea how that guy isn’t mentally discharged.
There’s other people onboard that should be raising suspicion in people’s minds, especially after that guy went on a shooting rampage on the A-Boat. One guy specifically. I don’t want to name any names in this report, so for now I’ll just refer to him as pole. During the morning of captains rounds pole physically attacked someone because they started cleaning too early. It happened in front of my bunk. The poor guy was verbally assaulted by pole, and when he asked pole “Who do you think you’re talking too?” Pole jumped out of his bed and attacked the guy. After the fight pole threatened to kill the guy. I witness Pole get aggressive with five different people; he threatened to kill two of them. I was one of the people, but he never lived up to his promises of attacking me.

Pole also snapped at a leading hand on the last day of patrol. Pole was promised early departure on the first boat transfer because of his situation at home, but command decided his situation at home wasn’t as demanding of early release as some of the other guys in the crew. Pole took a position in the queue for food ahead of the personnel who were next on watch. A SWS leading hand said to him “you’re not even next on, get behind me.” Pole snapped at a leading hand in the dinner line, he called him a “F**KING C**T”, then stood behind him like a demented pit bull ready to attack. The leading hand said “what’s your problem? Get to the f**king back, now!” but Pole didn’t move until one of the JRs escorted him to the back. After my breakfast I went up to see what the leading hands response would be. With my usual dumb curious look I asked him “What happened in the dinner line”. He responded “He tried to get in front of me, even though he’s not even next on watch”. I said “He shouted at you, didn’t he?” His reaction was “he’s just on edge because he never got the boat transfer”. That was that. If threatening everyone, attacking someone and calling a leader a F**KING C**T whilst looking at them like your about to kill him, doesn’t make you a suspected as a threat to other personnel then I really don’t know what does.

It appeared most people had breaking points at some point on patrol. There was one guy who presented a prime example of how someone could go from saying things like “back to back patrols won’t bother me” and “patrols aren’t that bad.” Till completely losing it over a missed placed pair of flip flops. This guy smoked electric cigarettes which are banned onboard. His supply ran low and that’s when he became aggressive. After losing his flip flops he went berserk, he was throwing things everywhere, looking for them. He shouted “everyone on this boat is a bunch of f**king re***ds.” he punched lockers and went on shouting and banging for over ten minutes. Not once did the CAMP watch keeper come over to see what the banging on his compartment was. When someone trying to sleep said “what’s your problem?” he responded by verbally assaulting him. He told him “get back in your f**king bed now you…” If this is how people react to a lost flip flop after a tiny adjustment to their nicotine intake, then what else are people capable of doing once the electric cigarette ban is properly enforced? If the Captain was to catch anyone with electrical cigarettes he would have most likely enforced the ban.

I heard the Launcher and Fire-control Supervisors whispering to each other in the MCC. The Fire-control supervisor spilled coffee on the missiles Data entry subsystem keyboard. It set of an alarm. That’s all the information I gathered on that incident because they were trying to cover it up so the Weapons Engineering Officer (WEO) wouldn’t find out what happened.

One of the BSQ’s told me he was contemplating leaving after his first patrol. He went to see the coxswain; the coxswain took him into his office. The coxswain recommended he should leave; he said “it doesn’t get any better. You might as well leave now before you waste your life here.”

A hydraulic leak was found on a missile’s valve.

During a battery clean the BSQ’s were sent down to help out. Afterwards one of them was complaining about how his fingers went numb, but little sympathy was felt by everyone because he nearly blinded someone by throwing a rag at his face. The rag just missed his eye, but that was enough to irritate it enough for him to require medical assistance from the doctor. This incident highlights the lack of concern for safety. There was no safety brief, the appropriate PPE wasn’t worn and a careless action was performed.

When to raise a nuclear weapons safety for a radiation alarm – The SWS Navigation Supervisor role during a missile radiation alarm is, Command Advisor. In order to learn what I need to as Command Advisor the Navigation Supervisor asked me to watch him during a heave/drill. One thing I picked up on was people I different ideas of when the nuclear weapon safety alert should be raised. Most people think you alert inboard straight away; whilst some people think you don’t alert inboard until the radiation alarm has been confirmed as an actual leak and not a faulty alarm.

On my BSQ board I was asked “what would you do if The Sun or someone like that got your number, and asked about the problems with the reactors or humidity, stuff like that.” I told them “I would just hang up.” The reactor situation is something I’ve been trying to gather information on for over a year now, but nobody wants to talk about it. If I pushed too hard for information people would’ve become very suspicious; which they probably already were since they asked me that question on a BSQ board. I felt I couldn’t say “So what’s the problem with the reactors then?” I did ask them about the humidity problem though, because I had seen how bad it was. Forward dome and 1 deck WT flat were the worst; there was water dripping from the roof onto all sorts of electrics. They told me that there’s a problem with the system and the condensation levels are 15% higher than they should be at. I then told them “There’s a pump in AMS1 that sprays water on an electrical distribution box.” One of them said “that’s a bit of a design flaw.” They laughed and changed the subject.

At one point on my board I was told the best way to take down a submarine. He said “nobody ever things of it, but if they targeted that it would take out the whole submarine.” I’m not going say how on here, that’s information nobody should talk about. A lot of people have had conversations with me about how easy it would be to take down the submarine. It’s disturbing to know that the people serving on these boats are aware of many ways to destroy them from within. One of the biggest threats we face is suicidal attack from within. There have been suicides onboard, and on an A-boat we had a shooter kill his own work colleagues. There were some people that I served with on that patrol, who showed clear psychopathic tendencies. The odds favour destruction, if no action is taking.

N2 bottle group pressures dropped below 3625 psi, the stated required minimum. N2 drench is used to extinguish fires in the missile tube or in a compartment:

CB8890 (0438) – In the event of a fire within the MC or AMS 2 that cannot be brought under control by conventional firefighting methods, the MC/AMS2 can be nitrogen drenched using the procedures contained in DC documentation.

(0441) – Nitrogen bottle group pressures must be maintained above a minimum of 3625 psi in order to safeguard the nitrogen drench facility.

The reaction to the N2 drench falling below these levels was, there’s nothing we can do whilst we’re the on patrol SSBN. The cause of the leakage was still unknown when we got back from patrol. The last time I seen the pressure it was over 100 psi below the ordered minimum. I listened in to a conversation between the port and starboard crew CAMP watch keepers. The Starboard crew Camp watch keeper said “We had a problem with ours on Vanguard, and they found a massive hole on the back of one of the Missile Gas reducing stations.”

I went to Camp to learn about their EOP (Emergency Operating Procedure) actions for a missile emergency. Two Camp watch keepers and a MC patrol were in the tea area, near CAMP. They wanted to know what I knew about their EOPs for a missile emergency. I told them what the book says they do. They disagreed with me; they were all convinced that it doesn’t say in the (EOP) book for a missile emergency in harbour, they need to check the Tam 73 fixed radiation monitor. One of them said “I bet it doesn’t say that, we never do that.” I said “Okay £20 it says that.” I could see in his eyes he started to worry that he might be wrong, but that didn’t last for long and he accepted the bet. I got the book out, and proved them wrong. Maybe they don’t check it but this was about what their EOP book says they do for a missile emergency. This is a book they should know word for word. Their list of actions isn’t even that long. It was shocking how none of them new what the book said.

There were 2 prank 999 phone calls whilst on patrol. A 999 phone call sets of an alarm in the control and the whole boat has to carry out phase 1 damage control checks.

A CB8890 exam was coming up; to test people’s knowledge on the safety and security of SWS. I was asked “Have you read CB8890?” Instead of saying yes, I have read it twice and I have a copy of it on my phone.” I said “I read through it quickly once and I skipped the annexes.” Playing dumb worked out again. One of them began to tell me how to read the book. He said “no one fully reads the book, they just know which parts are going to be questions, and they learn them.” I Launcher supervisor disagreed, he said “everyone should know that book, especially SWS.” I agree with the Launcher supervisor; it’s a book containing information about the safety and security of SWS and we’re SWS. The exam was a totally farce. They told everyone most of the answers, and any answers people didn’t know they just copied from the person beside them. I was in the MCC and I seen the launcher supervisor ringing up people who had missed the exam. He asked them “pick a number between 27 and 30.” The number they picked was their test result.

I could’ve got the code for the WEO’s trigger safe. I was standing just a couple of metres behind him when he opened the safe. I didn’t pay attention to the combination but the point is they seem to forget I’m not DV security cleared.

After I was asked “what do you do if you find the Firing Unit or Jettison Panel key?” They told me the correct procedure and what they actually do. They told me about a few occasions where this has happened. If someone gets their hand on both keys, they can jettison a missile. Jettisoning without following the proper procedure to list the boat or turning off power to the Variable Energy Eject Panel (VEEP) would send the missile out of the tube at full force and it will fall back down onto the submarine. What they actually did when they found the key was they handed them back to the person who left it laying around. The normal reporting routine was aborted.

There was an excessive amount of Trouble Failure Report’s (TFRs) being filed in SWS department; due to operator and defective equipment. An example of one of the operator errors: They allowed a trainee to carry out a procedure he had never seen done before. It was a simple procedure, all he had to do was click Yes when he was told to click Yes, but he clicked No.

CB8890 (0207) – Authorised personnel work to carefully controlled and documented working practices.

There’s a board with a list of SWS defects on it in the MCC. It is very close to being full.

When we were passing in as a fully qualified submariners they told us we couldn’t drink the shot of Rum with the dolphin metal/badge in the glass. Considering everything that was happening around us it made me feel like Harry Houdini getting forced to wear an extra pair of socks encase his feet get cold during a stunt.

The other crews WEO came on our boat after the patrol. People mocked him behind his back; they didn’t like him because he showed keenness to do his job properly. There’s an attitude common to most people onboard; they show hostility to anyone who works too hard.

Final tests – At the end of a patrol tests are done to see if the weapons system could have performed a successful launch. These tests let us know if we really were providing the UKs strategic nuclear deterrent / CASD. It had reached the end of my three month patrol. It was time to do WP 186 missile compensation test. The test was carried out 3 times and it failed, 3 times. Basically the test showed that the missile compensation system wouldn’t have compensated for the changes in weight of the submarine during missile launches. Which means the missiles would’ve been launched on an unstable platform, if they decided to launch. Another test was the Battle Readiness Test (BRT) which proves that the muzzle hatches could’ve opened whilst on patrol; if they needed to launch, they could’ve launched. The BRT was cancelled due to the main hydraulic system containing mostly sea water instead of actual hydraulic oil. Basically they’re endangering the public and spending Billions upon Billions of tax payers money for a system so broken it can’t even do the tests that prove it works.

Five minutes before leaving the boat for leave I walked into the JRs toilets; the whole deck was flooded in a couple inches of brown water. I tried the senior rates and it was the same. This summed the system up.

A Back aft ME told me he was going to tell his family about everything that happens onboard. I said “like what?” He said he was going tell them about how everything onboard is nothing like you expect it to be, everything is broken. He was on the exact same wave length as me. We’d both witnessed a lot, but the amount events we didn’t see is what’s scary. I know most people know the Trident programme is a disaster waiting to happen, but they never tell the public. I’ve heard of people getting caught selling information and people writing stuff on Facebook, but I’ve never heard of anybody trying to alert the public.

A lot to lose – One of the main reasons nobody tries to talk about it is they’ve a lot to lose. A SWS submariner in the Royal Navy gets paid quite a lot of money. They’re handing out £50,000 bonuses, to keep people in the job. It’s a good career for education and work experience. There’s been more than a few people go into 6 figure jobs afterwards. There’s a lot of stories about people getting caught talking about information. People have been caught and punished for putting information of Facebook, so there is a general feeling that you wouldn’t get to say much before being silenced.

You’re guaranteed to lose everything, if you talk. Career, money, everything you own, your freedom, possibly your life, contact with family and friends. It’s a lot to lose especially if you think there’s a good chance you won’t get much information if any out before your caught, and of course there’s good chance any information you do get out will be covered up.

After rising from the depths I knew I had gained enough information to eliminate the biggest threat the UK faces. I also gained the knowledge that my desire to serve the people no matter what, wasn’t some fantasy. I have sacrificed everything: a good career, a chance to be a millionaire by selling the information, my life savings, my freedom, time with family and friends, possibly my life… The decision to release this information was the easiest yet most painful decision of life.

If I die it wasn’t suicide. I’m willing to sacrifice everything, but I would never use my own hand to take my life. If I’m killed and this report is made public, there will be a high chance of a violent revolution. I’m not seeking or promoting violence.

There’s still a chance of me receiving a pardon from the Prime minister. I only released selected information, I’m not selling the information to the paper or a foreign government, I will be handing myself in to the police and my desires to serve the people are same as the Prime Ministers (hopefully). I also believe it’s in the Prime Ministers best interest to release me. Prosecuting someone for alerting the people and the Government to a major threat isn’t a good image for any government.

I’m releasing this information in this way because it’s the only way I can to be sure it gets out. I raised my concerns about the safety and security of the weapon system through the chain of command on multiple occasions. My concern couldn’t have been any clearer. Multiple times I complained to people of various ranks about being able to walk straight down to the Missile Compartment with a bag on my back which wasn’t checked. With the only security being lazy security guards that don’t check IDs properly. Another example: I mentioned to a Leading Hand, a Chief and a Warrant officer about how storing rubbish in plastic bags next equipment and wiring that generates heat will cause a repeat of the blazing inferno on 4 deck. I raised concerns for a lot of things, and not once did someone even attempt to make a change. I seen two paths in front of me. Ignore the threat or risk everything I have to inform the Government and the people.

I was listening in to a conversation in the senior rates mess about the VIPs we get on board at the end of patrol. One of the Chiefs brought up the time he meet the Prime minister, David Cameron. He was treated like every other VIP that comes onboard in the sense he was kept in the dark. Every time a VIP comes on board the boat becomes a Ghost town, all off watch personnel are to be out of site. No-one can say anything bad about Trident. The focus is always maintained on why we need Trident.

I believe that the Prime Minister and most people that defended Trident had no idea about how dire the situation is. This is not the time to judge on what they did when they didn’t know; it’s about what they do now that they know.

British, Americans, Chinese, Indians, Russians… We are all the same; most people all across the globe just want to live in peace. That peace can no longer be maintained by nuclear weapons (Fear) anyone who reads this report will see that. The world is constantly evolving. We face a new threat now. Every great nation on this planet has been infiltrated by terrorists; even the systems have come extremely close to causing a catastrophe themselves, on numerous covered up occasions. You don’t have to be Alexander the Great to see the lack strategy in keeping these systems that our tremendously destructive and extremely open to attack, on our homeland. It’s time to end this world order of fear, and create a new world order through peace and unity.

George Hill and Spike Pike of Veterans For Peace UK will perform and speak at “Letters Home” In Corby

Tuesday 19 May

1930hrs

Corby Trades and Labour Club
Stuart Road
Corby

Winter is setting in here in Brisbane. There is a cold wind blowing and the temperature is down to around 12C. Almost as warm as an Irish summer, but my old bones make me feel it is cold here.

We have just gone through the centenary of the Anzacs tragedy at Gallipoli.  Thankfully, I managed to avoid most of the TV coverage.  There is something terribly obscene about politicians taking advantage of a disaster caused by politicians.

I am old enough to recall clearly the 50th anniversary of WW1 and how that time was marked by very strong pacifist sentiment and hostility towards the generals.  All that has faded now and thousands and thousands turned out at the ceremonies and marches – to do what I wonder?

By and large, the creation of Gallipoli as a sacred event has been very successful.  I think though that  Badiou would regard that manoeuvre as an evil in the sense that it forces the viewpoint that what merely appears to be an event is a true event.

The Achilles Heel critique of the Gallipoli as an event, would point out that it has no universal quality. It is addressed solely to Australians (with New Zealanders tossed in as an afterthought). Nor does Gallipoli as an event bring in the new. Rather it reinforces the status quo, the willingness of Australian governments to send troops to support Imperial adventures.  The fact that Australian soldiers were taking part in the invasion of another country is conveniently swept under the carpet.

Likewise the contemporary narrative which is carved in stone on the War Memorial here in Brisbane receives now no attention. Yet, to the ages it says that the soldiers died “For King, God and Empire”. There is a truth, then, in that narrative which defies the celebration of Gallipoli as an event.

Finally, I am old enough to recall sometime in 1947 or 48 (I would have been five or six years old) a party in my home, a gathering of the veterans of WW1.  My father had fought at the Somme and was wounded there all at the age of 15. I recall now the men, all ex-soldiers, sitting around and drinking. It must have been Remembrance Day. One of the men, a Mr Johnson, a Protestant who lived in a Catholic Street but who was totally welcomed by the Catholic veterans, began to cry.  He had been at Gallipoli, someone must have explained to me.  For I knew somehow that for the men there his experience was a special exercise in horror. I still recall now and it still brings tears to my eyes all these long years later, the other men including my father attempting to comfort him.  But he was beyond comfort and could only keep repeating “Fuck Churchill”, Fuck Churchill”.

I did not know then who Churchill was.  I know now and he was one of the political class for whom men like Mr Johnson were mere pawns to be moved around the Imperial board in search of what Churchill called “glittering prizes”.

So I do my own little act of remembrance every time the politicians strut out to celebrate the Event which gave rise to the “birth” of Australia. I recall Mr Johnson.  And I also call to mind the one story my mother told me of my father’s war time experiences, for he never spoke about the war. She said that he once told her that the officers would fill the soldiers up with rum before an attack, and then stand behind them and beat them with canes to make them go over the top.

Finally, finally, a note of sadness creeps in.  On the 50th anniversary in 1964 it was fashionable to quote Sassoon and Owen’s and others’ poetry about the war, and my teaching practice lessons were full of their work.

Again I recall a lesson where I taught the following Robert Graves’ poem to some 15 year olds (What was I thinking about?)

To you who’d read my songs of War
And only hear of blood and fame,
I’ll say (you’ve heard it said before)
”War’s Hell!” and if you doubt the same,
Today I found in Mametz Wood
A certain cure for lust of blood:
Where, propped against a shattered trunk,
In a great mess of things unclean,
Sat a dead Boche; he scowled and stunk
With clothes and face a sodden green,
Big-bellied, spectacled, crop-haired,
Dribbling black blood from nose and beard.

A good friend who was on teaching practice with me, pointed out that my lessons were full of the kind of horror that would bring nightmares to adolescents. I can only say in my defense, I meant well and the glorification of war is much worse. In any case, all that pacifism has, alas, been all drowned in the tide of jingoism.

Comradely

Gary

Gary MacLennan originally from Omagh, has been an educator based in Brisbane for the past four decades.  He presently works in education with isolated aboriginal communities.

Having been profoundly disturbed by recent figures suggesting that 1 in 10 prisoners in the UK prison system is an ex-soldier, disturbed by the amount of homeless people that come from an ex-service background and disturbed by how many of our ex-service men and women are cast adrift suffering post-traumatic stress after they leave the military, I was keen to see what mechanisms the Armed Forces had in place to remedy these issues. So, on Saturday 25th April I took myself off to the Armed Forces trades fair (Recruitment Day) in Belfast, to engage with serving personnel and the families of potential recruits. I decided that as well as quizzing the camouflaged salesmen, I would also approach the Mums and Dads with a view to informing them of the less appealing side of life as an Army recruit.

Bearing in mind the threat from those opposed to the peace process in Northern Ireland, security at the recruitment day was very visible. This ranged from Police, walkthrough and handheld metal detectors. There was however, no way my back pocket full of VFP literature was going to be picked up by any of these counter measures.

Once inside I did a quick walk round to survey my surroundings before approaching some of the soldiers, both Regular and TA. I spoke with serving representatives from various Regiments and Corps and I was very interested, although not surprised to hear, that the mechanisms the Army employ to those returning from combat have changed little from when I left the Army in 1993. The Soldiers spoke of a decompression period upon leaving the battlefield, which was basically a process of handing in weapons and going on a two week adventure training/beer drinking exercise in Cyprus. This was followed by a period of leave and then back into uniform. I pressed on the issue of combat stress and were there any manifestations of this whenever the men/women returned to duty. As expected there were tales of certain lads that had been arrested for fighting and even stories of men who had failed to return at all.

Everyone in uniform I spoke to knew of someone that had ‘Gone of the rails’ or someone who’s ‘Spring had come out’, directly as a result of their time in service. I was heartened to hear that none of the junior ranks were swallowing the ‘For Queen and Country’ line and most definitely, no one enjoyed the badge of hero that was being bestowed upon them by the war hungry media. I was very concerned at the amount of children that were being enthusiastically shown rifles and heavy machine guns, being encouraged to look through the sights and fire off the action and I felt it very irresponsible of Army not to also include details of what happens at the receiving end of these weapons. Then again like any rogue, second hand car salesman, you’re never going to get the whole story.

Despite the generally warm reception from the soldiers I spoke to, there is always an exception to any rule and this came in the form of an early twenties TA Officer who when I offered some VFP material to, went like an obedient puppy to his superiors which promptly caused a bit of a comical furore and I was confronted by no less than six security personnel of varying sorts that confiscated my VFP material. I was informed that if I handed out anymore literature I would be asked to leave.

From this point onward I was closely followed by a mixture of PSNI Officers, civilian security and Military Police. Every time I stopped to talk to the military personnel I was surrounded by several of my new, close friends. This continued for a few more occasions until I was asked to leave for being a disruptive influence.

So, out I went in a polite and dignified fashion after demanding that my VFP material was handed back, which it was. However, I wasn’t finished yet. Outside there were a number of families leaving the event with bags of camouflage tat, posters and Oath’s of Allegiances (One imagines), so I decided to stop them and let them know that I was a veteran who had served in Iraq and up the road in Antrim. I explained that what they had heard inside was the best case of sugar coating they were ever likely to hear. I explained about the Army’s ingrained system of bullying, collective punishment and general brainwashing of minors. I informed them of the way in which the Army casts their soldiers adrift like a rudderless boat once their time had been served and I furnished them with the statistics of homelessness and incarceration. Most Mums and Dads were aware of the damage our Nation had caused through our military intervention in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, and I encouraged them to think very carefully about allowing their Sons and Daughters to become the next in a very long line of victims that our Government will use as war capital on Remembrance Sunday.

I will never be able to measure what, if anything, good at all came of my intervention at the Army recruitment fair, but if I have gotten into the minds of just one potential recruit or his parents, then it was a good day’s work.

Kieran Devlin served with the British Army in Iraq (Gulf War) and N Ireland, he is active with VFP Belfast 

AGM

The Statement of Purpose was read out by John Boulton and the Steering Group introduced themselves to the membership. Ben Griffin and Joe Glenton stood down as Agitators in March to leave two spaces available. George Hill and Gus Hales were elected unopposed. Agitators are elected to the Steering Group for three years. Kathryn Piquette pointed out that given the increase in female members this year it would be appropriate for a woman to be elected to the Steering Group in the near future. The Agitators decided that they will discuss the appointments of Chairman, Treasurer and Secretary at the next Steering Group meeting which is on Monday 4 May.

John Bourton gave an oversight of the wide range of activities carried out by Veterans For Peace UK members since the last Annual Conference.

A minutes silence was held in memory of Veteran For Peace Kev Donaghue who was killed in a motorbike accident earlier this year. In his short time with the organisation he attended the 2014 Remembrance Sunday Ceremony carrying the Never Again banner at the front of our formation. Kev also initiated the formation of VFP Manchester. He will be sorely missed.

Bye Law Ammendments

ARTICLE VIII. ELECTIONS

Section 1. Nomination of Agitators

(a) No later than April November 1 of each year nominations for election to the Steering Group may be made by petition. Nominating petitions shall name the nominee, be signed by at least five (5) members, and be submitted to the Secretary.

ARTICLE XI. MEMBERSHIP MEETING

Ben Griffin proposed that we move our Annual Conference from April to November. This will mean fewer trips to London for the membership. We will be able to combine our Annual Conference on the Saturday with the Remembrance Ceremony at The Cenotaph on the Sunday hopefully increasing attendance for both. We will be able to put on a social event for the Saturday evening and will look into cheap accommodation for members for Saturday night. Kathryn Piquette asked if this meant there would not be an AGM until November 2016. The Steering Group stated that there was no reason an EGM could not be held in November 2015 to cover the intervening period

In order to facilitate the move of the Annual Conference to November the following Bye Law amendments needed to be made. The membership voted unanimously in favour of amending these Bye Laws.

Section 1. Annual Conference.

(a) The Annual Conference of the members of Veterans For Peace UK shall be held between April 1 and April 30, each year, the date to be designated by the Steering Group. on the Saturday before Remembrance Sunday each year.

Ben Griffin stated that when our Bye Laws were drafted and agreed at the 2014 Annual Conference a mistake was made in that we set our financial year to be from January to December. The financial year in the United Kingdom runs April through to March and our Bye Laws need to be amended to comply with this.

The membership voted unanimously in favour of amending the following Bye Law.

ARTICLE XII. FINANCIAL REVIEW AND FISCAL YEAR

Section 3. Fiscal year
The fiscal year of Veterans For Peace UK shall be from January April 1 through December March 31 of the same next year.

The amended Bye Laws can be viewed here.

USAID

The Steering Group has already carried out the action stated in this letter in response to the VFP National Board (USA) decision regarding USAID and Project Renew. The membership was asked to ratify the action already taken and to empower the Steering Group to take further action if required.

Aly Renwick said that the actions of USAID should be viewed in the context of the “Pivot to Asia” being carried out by the United States Government and that we should not have anything to to with USAID.

Stephen Mann said our independence would be compromised by any relationship with USAID, making it more difficult to reach out reach out to communities that have a negative perception of the US Government.

Ben Griffin said that a relationship with USAID contravenes one of the key principles of the Statement of Purpose, “To restrain our government from intervening, overtly and covertly, in the internal affairs of other nations”.

Jim Radford spoke about how numerous voluntary organisations started in the UK in the 1960’s had been co-opted by government money and become professional organisations divorced from their membership and original ideals. He said that this was a similar situation and that any relationship with USAID should be opposed.

Scott Albrecht spoke about how the organisation he ran for homeless refugees refused to apply for government funding or apply for charitable status because this would compromise their work (which recognises the malign influence of the state in creating the refugee crisis) and restrict his organisations freedom of action. He said that the same was true for VFPUK.

John Bourton pointed out that whilst he too opposes a relationship with USAID, those defending the decision in the USA think that it complies with another of our key principles, “To seek justice for veterans and victims of war”. John also suggested that the Steering Group look into whether we should change our own Bye Laws to prevent our organisation from accepting government money or employing paid workers.

Daniel Campbell pointed out that the decision of the VFP National Board (USA) could contravene the principle “to seek justice for veterans and victims of war” because when aid is conflated with militaries and governments there is blurring of the line between aid workers and combatants. This puts the lives of aid workers in general at risk from attack and creates a reluctance for communities to accept aid. The outcome is a reduction in real help for the victims of war.

Ben Griffin said that the Steering Group has acknowledged that the decision taken by the VFP Board of Directors (USA) was democratic and that a large proportion of VFP members in the USA support the Board decision. The VFPUK Steering Group had been careful to make sure our position had been defended whilst not damaging our long-term relationship with Veterans For Peace in the USA and that the action taken was proportionate and considered.

Lee Lavis praised the Steering Group for the way in which the situation has been handled.

The membership voted unanimously to ratify the action already taken and to empower the Steering Group to take further action if required.

Schools Workshop Presentation

John Boulton gave an excellent presentation explaining the structure of our Schools Workshop and demonstrating the workshop to the membership.

If anyone is interested in getting involved with our Schools Education work or you would like a visit to your school please email coord@vfpuk.org

Armed Forces Day Workshop

Darren Cullen gave us an update on the progress of the Actionman: Battlefield Casualties adverts that are currently in production. The launch date is Tuesday 23 June in Shoreditch. We are looking for younger veterans to be our spokespeople for the launch.

Duncan Parker explained how under pressure from the Military Plymouth County Council have denied us a stall at the Armed Forces Day event there. Duncan talked through the possibilities for participation in some other way.

Les Gibbons talked about the plans for Armed Forces Day in Southampton and the involvement of other groups down there.

Ben Griffin spoke about the planned action in London involving the return of medals during the run up to Armed Forces Day.

Anyone wishing to volunteer for any of the above please email coord@vfpuk.org and your message will be passed on to the relevant person.

Veterans For Peace in N Ireland

The afternoon began with a montage of clips taken from films made by Reelnews about VFP work in N Ireland.

This was followed by an extraordinary panel;

Lee Lavis was an infantry soldier in the British Army. He completed 2 operational tours of Northern Ireland during the early 1990s. After leaving the army he settled in Belfast from where he now volunteers alongside former opposing combatants as part of school, youth and community projects that seek to address the reality and legacy of conflict.

Séanna Walsh read the statement on July 28th 2005 which ended the IRAs armed campaign. During that campaign Seanna spent 21 years in prison. This included the period of the ‘Blanket Protest’ and 1981 Hunger Strike. He later played a vital role in the 1998 Good Friday Agreement negotiations and now works as the Coiste legacy and engagement officer.

Kieran Devlin was born and raised in Northern Ireland and joined the Royal Engineers straight from school. He served in Iraq during the first Gulf War and later in NI as part of a construction squadron based in Antrim. He left the Army in 1993 and now resides in North Down with his family and is heavily involved in community work.

Pat Magee was arrested and convicted of planting the 1984 bomb at the Grand Hotel Brighton. Since his release following ratification of the Good Friday Agreement  Pat has worked nationally and internationally on conflict resolution projects that aim ‘tobreak down differences’ through ‘engagement’. This has included numerous public interactions with Jo Berry whose father was killed in the Grand Hotel.

All four panelists spoke at length about their own experiences and opinions on the current situation in N Ireland. There were some excellent questions and interventions from the floor. Fiona Gallagher talked at length about her brother, who was shot dead by the British Army. She also gave an insight into growing up in Derry during the conflict. Jo Berry, who’s father was killed by Patrick Magee was present and spoke about her own journey.

Social Evening

A good number of veterans and friends headed over to Drummond Street for a vegetarian curry! It was great to see  conversations continued and friendships cemented.

Corrections

Please email any corrections or extra information to coord@vfpuk.org

Not to Ask the Reason Why – The Recruitment and Conditioning of British Soldiers

From the end of the Second World War National Service had filled Britain’s Armed Forces with young recruits, but many had not wanted to be there. The military command were also unhappy with conscription – to them it had meant ‘short term soldiers’ who were often prone to ‘indiscipline’, ‘a lack of commitment’ and having ‘educated agitators stirring things up.’ National Service was phased out in the early 1960s and the army was returned to a non-conscript, elite ‘professional’ force.

In 1974, Billy Connolly released his ‘Cop Yer Whack for This’ Album, which included the track ‘I’m Asking You Sergeant, Where’s Mine’ – later shortened to ‘Sergeant, Where’s Mine?’ Connolly had spent some time in the territorial army and the song was inspired by the conflict in Northern Ireland – being told from the point of view of a wounded soldier and makes ironic reference to British Army recruitment advertisements of the era that showed recruits having a grand time in exotic places and enjoying sporting activities like skiing. [Listen to the song: http://veteransforpeace.org.uk/culture/music/sergeant-wheres-mine/]

A few years earlier the first soldier fatalities in Northern Ireland had featured prominently on the front pages of British papers, while later soldiers’ deaths were relegated to a few lines on an inside page. At the end of 1972, the magazine New Society did a survey of the 100 British soldiers killed in the north of Ireland between January and November of that year: ‘77 were privates, of whom 47 were twenty-two years or under when killed. Only six came from the seven largest cities of Britain, whilst most were from market towns in the West Country, the Fens, or small industrial centres in Lancashire, Tyneside, Scotland or Wales. On average it was the less educated boy who has to leave home to have a hope of employment who joins the British Army.’ [New Society, Dec. 1972].

In the recruitment ads these soldiers were called ‘The Professionals.’ Recruiting from deprived areas – what could be called a de facto economic conscription – now enabled army commanders to target their choice of potential soldiers like Frank Gilchrist: ‘He was born in Pilton, Edinburgh, and grew up on a working-class housing estate that was ‘a bit like the Gaza Strip.’ School held few attractions for him and after several bouts of truancy the 14-year-old Gilchrist was sent to a ‘special school’ that was ‘one step away from borstal.’ Frank’s career prospects were not exactly bright. He left without taking ‘O’ levels and opted for the job of trainee milkman, aged 16. “Then I saw an advert on television – join the army and see the world. It seemed great”.’[Morning Star, 14th Feb. 1989].

Eager to recruit school-leavers with little or no experience of civilian life, the recruiting sergeants hooked potential soldiers with themes like ‘Adventure,’ ‘Sport’ and ‘Travel.’ Chris Byrne, an ex-Royal Marine veteran, said: ‘I joined up because I had no education or qualifications, and where I lived in Essex there wasn’t much work available. I knew others who had joined up, so I decided to follow them. I joined up as a Junior Marine when I was sixteen. I wanted a bit of excitement, a bit of travel, to be tough, to be something – rather than just be nothing outside.’[Ex-Royal Marine Commando Chris Byrne, British Soldiers Speak Out on Ireland, Information on Ireland 1978].

Youths from a low educational background were targeted for recruitment, because they were easier to mould into the type of soldiers the officers required. They were unlikely to question their training or orders, and those who did become disaffected had difficulty articulating their grievances or organising protests. Many recruits had racist, sexist and homophobic prejudices then current in society, which were often encouraged in subtle – and sometimes not so subtle – ways, during training. Some were attracted to the army by the macho image that many regiments like to portray: ‘The image of the services, “disciplined,” “tough and professional,” was very attractive. … It’s a very masculine atmosphere … you get a lot of crap about how they are going to separate the men from the boys … The pressure is on you to stick it out and get through the training because you want to prove yourself to your mates.’ [Ex-Royal Marine Commando Chris Byrne].

Once recruited, ordinary soldiers were tied to binding contracts, which were often many years in length. Basic training, as experienced NCOs hammer the recruits into line, has altered little over the years: ‘The shock of the first couple of days was intentionally brutal. The new recruits would usually be met at the station, given food reasonably soon after arrival at the camp, and provided with the means to write and say they had arrived safely. But these were virtually the last kindly acts for eight to twelve weeks in a system of basic training designed to suppress individuality, restrict freedom in every possible way, install instinctive obedience without questions of any kind, increase physical fitness, and generally so depress the conscript into a common mould that he would instantly serve the force’s purposes in anything that it asked him to do: to the point of killing fellow human beings, or of offering himself to be killed. The forces had learnt how to train men quickly and intensively in the Second World War; the absolute necessity of training them to this zombie-like state had been taught in the trenches of the First, when an order over the top to almost certain death had to be obeyed instinctively or it would not have been obeyed at all.’ [All Bull: The National Servicemen, from the introduction by B S Johnson, Quartet Books 1973].

Indoctrination

In the old days soldiers had been flogged to keep them in line. Now, with this type of corporal punishment no longer an option, officers ensured that increasing emphasis was given to the indoctrination of recruits. Training is designed to mould squaddies into the Army’s way of thinking and sense of purpose and to ensure they bond with their fellow soldiers. Surgeon Commander Morgan O’Connell, then a Navy psychiatrist just back from the Falklands War, explained the process to journalist Polly Toynbee: ‘Yes we indoctrinate them in the forces. Otherwise they wouldn’t fight. That’s why we cut their hair the same, make them wear the same uniform, make the same salute, and march together. We indoctrinate them in order to enhance group cohesiveness. That’s how you get people to fight.’ [Guardian, 1st Nov. 1982].

A feature of this training is the crude verbal taunts, often sexual in nature, directed at the newcomers. At first, recruits are intimidated and shocked by the physical training and the bawling out by the NCOs, but later will start to use such terms themselves and giggle when this treatment is dished out to others. Not all recruits take easily to this type of military life, and the first casualties of these methods often occurred inside the training units themselves: ‘A bullying corporal made life hell for army recruits, it was claimed yesterday … At barracks where three young soldiers have died in the last three months … The incidents are alleged to have taken place at Shorncliffe Barracks, Kent, last summer. At the barracks in December, 17-year-old soldier Nicholas Burnup apparently shot dead a corporal and turned the gun on himself. A month later another 17-year-old, Jeffrey Singh, was found hanging dead.’ [Daily Record, 5th March 1987]. The inquest into the death of private Jeffrey Singh heard allegations of bullying and that he had been called a ‘black bastard.’ [Independent, 12th Oct. 1987].

Any veteran who has experienced basic training will know that sometimes things will happen that have the potential to get out of control. At Deepcut Barracks in Surrey there were allegations of sexual harassment, including rape, of female recruits and the deaths of 4 recruits – 3 male and 1 female. The army declared that all the deaths, which occurred between 1995 and 2002, were suicides – but later shut down the barracks and released the land for housing development. The families of the four who died at Deepcut, thought that the recruits had been murdered and they led a campaign calling for a public inquiry into these deaths and also any more like these across all the army. The Labour MP, Kevin McNamara, asked questions in parliament about Deepcut and also wanted to know the extent of any other such events in the army? He was told that across the army there were more than 100 deaths a year being caused by non-combatant and natural causes.

Those recruits that survived basic training were then posted to a unit within their designated regiment. The army regimental system binds soldiers to their particular unit and promotes competition within the army structure. It is also used to promote values that encourage ‘loyalty’: ‘Individual soldiers identify with this unit of 500 or 650 men [armoured regiment or infantry battalion] as their tribe or clan (tribe, clan and family are all words frequently used by the Army to describe its regiments) … units generally have an affiliation with a specific part of the United Kingdom (especially for recruitment purposes). … There is a corpus of sacred history, a hoard of sacred possessions (e.g. the paintings and silver of the officers’ mess), a special dress code (e.g. the scarlet tunics and bearskins of the Guards), a totem (usually called the colours), and a rigid hierarchy within which an individual’s place is clearly known to himself and others. … The individual, commissioned or not, enters the regiment after the rite of passage of training and must then undergo a period of semi-official apprenticeship or probation … the origins of hierarchy are often perceived as feudal, with all members being categorised as officers, non-commissioned officers or other ranks (similar classification being applied to their dependents as well), and with the social organisation and practice of the regiment generally mirroring that of “Old England” (or Scotland or Ireland), an attractive mythical land to which a living link is maintained through the person of the sovereign.’ [A New Model Army, by Michael Yardley and Dennis Sewell, WH Allen and Co 1989].

Once in their regiment, recruits are still at risk from their fellow soldiers during unofficial initiation ceremonies, called ‘beastings,’ to which the officers turn a blind eye: ‘A young soldier told yesterday of his ordeal during a “beasting.” A nightmare initiation ceremony for recruits to the King’s Own Scottish Borderers … The 20-year-old recruit told the court (martial) that after an evening’s drinking in a pub in Colchester, where the First Battalion was based until March, he had gone back to his room to sleep. … He was wakened by [soldiers A and B], who put a motorcycle helmet on his head and told him to mark time naked beside his bed. “I didn’t do it fast enough, so I was hit on the head,” said Private Guthrie. He was marched naked to another room where, before a group of privates who included the accused, the initiation began. … Guthrie said [soldier C] tied a string round his private parts, and attached it to his right ankle. Then he was forced to mark time, despite intense pain, until the string snapped. Next, said Guthrie, he was indecently assaulted with a broom handle as he bent over a table. And then, he claimed, he was burned three times on the private parts by [C] using a hand-made flamethrower – an aerosol can and a cigarette lighter … Next, Guthrie told the court, he was forced to perform a sex act while colour photographs were taken. And finally he was put into a mattress cover, punched and kicked, and dropped through a window about 20 feet to the ground, where he was forced to crawl through the snow.’ [Daily Record, 28th Oct. 1987].

Beastings are unofficially encouraged and condoned by the military command because these practices are thought to toughen-up newcomers and be character forming and helpful in creating bonds between the soldiers. Officers were also known to have indulged in similar activity within their own ranks.

Real Men

Most recruits who stayed the course and qualified as ‘professionals’ become distanced from their old life and society outside. Prevalent military culture encourages the soldiers to see themselves as ‘real’ men. This macho ideology often leads squaddies into increasingly sexist views, which become a part of their army life: ‘Walk into any British military barracks and often there exists a culture of sexism fuelled by an under-ground market of hard-core pornography. Porn may not have the approval of senior officers but in trouble spots like Bosnia and Ulster, where virile young soldiers are often confined to barracks because of the hostility of locals, it is regarded as acceptable entertainment … The seeds of female debasement are sown at an early stage in a serviceman’s career. Recruits undergoing training are sometimes encouraged, if not ordered, to produce salacious pictures of girlfriends for inclusion on so-called grot boards. A grot is military-speak for a woman, and the grot boards are hung in the barrack room. The recruit who produces a picture of his girlfriend indulging in the most lurid sexual act wins a prize…’ [Express, 11th Oct. 1997, article by Sean Rayment].

A Para veteran, Michael Asher, wrote that after a night’s drinking in Aldershot off-duty paras would perform the ‘Dance of the Flaming Arseholes: ’ A soldier would clamber onto a table and strip off while his mates sang ‘The Zulu Warrior.’ When naked, a rolled-up piece of newspaper was thrust into his anus and then lit. A man showed his bottle by allowing the flames to get right up to his anus before removing what was left of the paper. Paras also held ‘grot contests’ that consisted of seeing which soldier could pick up the ‘most nauseatingly ugly girl.’ The women would be brought back to a certain pub at a certain time and ‘the grot’ of the evening would be judged: ‘The crowning act of utter obscenity was to obtain a woman’s hand-bag under some pretext and defecate into it.’ [Shoot to Kill – A Soldier’s Journey Through Violence, by Michael Asher, Penguin Books 1991].

Marilyn French, in her book The War Against Women, describes how males are conditioned and their subsequent behaviour: ‘From boyhood, males are bombarded with the message that “real” men dominate women, which means they control women’s behaviour and may abuse them verbally and physically … To justify abusive treatment of women in their own minds (after all, most men love some women), men must view them as a separate species, like pigs or dogs or cows (terms often applied to women).’ [The War Against Women, by Marilyn French, Penguin Books 1993].

Lance Corporal Vincent Bramley wrote a book called Excursion To Hell about his experiences with the Third Battalion of the Parachute Regiment in the Falklands War. Aboard the SS Canberra sailing to the islands he tells about the letters of support the soldiers received: ‘At home, the massive support had produced in hundreds of females a sudden liking for both the Army and Navy and they all wanted penfriends. This amused us very much. The daily sackfuls of letters were dumped in our rooms and we picked out the ones we fancied.’ Bramley continued:
‘The whole platoon would gather in one room, grab armfuls of letters and retreat to our cabins. There we would first feel an envelope to see if there was a photo in it, then gather around the growing pile of snaps and pick the best lookers. Some of the lads, even myself, found some right beauties, though writing back to hundreds of women was out of the question … Naturally, not all the photos were of beauties, and the platoons took to keeping personal ‘grot boards.’ You could visit another platoon to view their board for the ‘Ugly Pig Contest.’ Some of the pictures that found their way on to the boards made you wonder if England had anything worthy of Miss World. You would hear a scream of delight when someone found a ‘grot’ photo, and this would bring the rest of the platoon crashing into the cabin to look, making comments like, ‘Fuck me, who’d love that beast?’ or, ‘Pig in knickers!’ [Excursion To Hell – The Battle for Mount Longdon, by Vincent Bramley, Pan Books 1992].

There is probably no stronger ‘real’ men’s club in Britain than that of a regiment in the British Army. Marilyn French points out the characteristics of such organisations: ‘Men seem unable to feel equal to women: they must be superior or they are inferior. They seek a centre in other men, in male solidarity through male cults (in simple societies), priesthoods, military or paramilitary groups, academies, professions, teams, religious brotherhoods, or the new male cults.’ French continued: ‘All of these exalt not men-as-a-caste but group members, posited as superior to most other men and all women. All such priesthoods teach xenophobia – hatred of strangers – and bigotry; all exalt some form of self-denial – austerity in living, denial of feeling or need – and all worship aggression and violence because all worship domination. Only the ability to dominate others makes them superior to women. And superiority to women is the very foundation of this kind of male identity.’ [The War Against Women, by Marilyn French, Penguin Books 1993].

To Do or Die

Getting out of the army proved to be a problem for many soldiers, as the military did not readily want to lose experienced men. Obtaining a discharge, especially on conscientious grounds, was a long and hard process. Even for an officer, as ex-captain Mike Biggs discovered: ‘There is a means whereby you can get out of the army on grounds of conscience, but the army doesn’t go parading that around. They never told me I could get out on grounds of conscience, even though I was asking to go out because of Northern Ireland and because of my values.’ Biggs continued: ‘It was only by going to an external source that I found out that the army had a means whereby conscientious objectors could go out. I was charged for refusing to do my work on grounds of conscience. They delayed a decision on my case. They employed all the normal psychological things that they do employ when someone tries to go out on grounds of conscience. Obviously it’s not very good publicity for a soldier or officer to go out on grounds of conscience. Far better if he buys himself out, or he goes out because he goes AWOL, or deserts.’ [BRM Radio, Birmingham. The interview was broadcast on 9th Aug. 1979 – the tenth anniversary of the conflict in Northern Ireland].

Ordinary soldiers could expect an even harder time, many just gritted their teeth and soldiered on. There was often a large increase in charges for petty offences before and after a tour of duty in Northern Ireland. Royal Marine Chris Byrne, who was sent to an army prison for being absent without leave, said: ‘After Northern Ireland I was beginning to develop pacifist and anti-military views and my tour in Cyprus when I saw that we were not there to protect human lives but only British military interests and NATO missiles trained on Russia strengthened this. I finally decided I had to get out. I went home to London without leave to think things out and, when I was picked up and charged with being AWOL, I was slung in jail and court-martialled for desertion … I spent three and a half months in Colchester prison and it was an interesting experience looking back on it. The type of people I met in Colchester were, much to my surprise, mostly people who were not in fact criminals. The reasons why they were in Colchester were things that in civilian terms were not criminal offences; absences, refusing to obey certain orders and things like that. One of the surprising things was the amount of people actually in Colchester for desertions and absences and the way the prison population had increased over the period that the British Army had been in Northern Ireland. I concluded from that that sending soldiers continually back to Northern Ireland has obviously some effect on this and I think that a lot of dissatisfaction with service in Northern Ireland is manifested by drunkenness, petty offences, absences and desertions and things like that and I think this is one of the reasons the prison population went up.’ [British Soldiers Speak Out on Ireland, Information on Ireland 1978, by ex-Royal Marine Commando Chris Byrne].

The soldiers who did get out were usually those who had questioned the actions they were asked to carry out. This tended to leave a more hard-core element, including some who considered themselves to be ‘real’ men – who had few qualms about dishing out the aggro. In his book, Shoot To Kill, Michael Asher outlines his experiences in the Parachute Regiment. In graphic detail Asher tells about his training and his tours of duty in Northern Ireland. He describes the tension and the fights that break out between soldiers in this situation. He then describes the extremes that training, conditioning and alienation can bring out in some soldiers: ‘One group of soldiers would hold so-called “gunge” contests. They sat round in a circle and tried to outdo each other in acts of gross obscenity, like eating shit and drinking urine. During house searches they vented their anger on their victims, smashing down doors and breaking up furniture, kicking and rifle-butting anyone who resisted, making lewd suggestions to the women of the house and threatening the children … The circumstances of our training, coupled with the peculiar nature of our existence in Northern Ireland – a blend of boredom, frustration and occasional terror – turned us into savages. We begged and prayed for a chance to fight, to smash, to kill, to destroy: we were fire-eating berserkers, a hurricane of human brutality ready to burst forth on anyone or anything that stood in our way. We were unreligious, apolitical and remorseless, a caste of warrior-janizaries who worshipped at the high-altar of violence and wanted nothing more.’ [Shoot to Kill – A soldier’s journey through violence, by Michael Asher, Penguin Books 1991].

After deploying their soldiers on the streets in the north of Ireland in 1969, Westminster politicians were always talking about the ‘peacekeeping role of the army in Ulster’ – and the British media were saying ‘what a jolly good job our boys are doing in Northern Ireland.’ The army, however, gradually embarked on a series of aggressive operations. These actions, which included the Falls Curfew 1970, Internment 1971, Bloody Sunday 1972 and Operation Motorman 1972, quickly turned Northern Ireland into a zone of on-going conflict. These hostile acts, however, did not cow the Nationalist section of the population – and instead only bred a violent resistance. At the time of the Falls Curfew it was estimated that IRA activists were less than a hundred, but by the end of Operation Motorman they numbered in their thousands. Since then British troops have been deployed in various other places around the world, often with similar results.

Brigadier Frank Kitson, who was an army commander in Belfast during those aggressive operations in the early 70s, ironically pointed out that: ‘It might be of interest to recall that when the regular army was first raised in the seventeenth century, “Suppression of the Irish” was coupled with “Defence of the Protestant Religion” as two of the main reasons for its existence.’ [Brigadier Frank Kitson, Low Intensity Operations, 1971]

An army – the name is taken from the Latin ‘arma’ (arms or weapons) and old French ‘armée’ (armed) – is usually known as the land-based fighting force of a nation or state. Britain’s ‘professional’ army of today can be traced back to Comwell’s New Model Army that emerged during the English Civil War. Fighting for a more democratic England, many Leveller supporting regiments in the New Model Army elected rank and file delegates, called Agitators, who attended the army council with the Grandees (senior officers). After winning the Civil War, Cromwell and the other Grandees then set out to invade Ireland. This was opposed by many Agitators and Levellers, which in turn led to them being supressed and demolished by Cromwell. That was the only time that the rank and file have had a voice, or any say, in the British Army. [To read ‘Agitators and the New Model Army’:
http://veteransforpeace.org.uk/2014/agitators/]

Now, in civvy street, if conflict is being promoted by our politicians, lots of people will quite rightly ask about the reasons put forward for going to war – and question – are they right? Or are they wrong? But, when it comes to soldiers, concerns like these are kept out of the equation – and soldiers’ thoughts on this, unless gung-ho, are usually not welcomed.

While it is British taxpayers who fund our armed forces, our military is directed by ‘professional’ politicians, is organised and controlled by an officer class and is used to further the interests of not only our own establishment – but also the powers that be in the US and multinational banks and corporations. Military personnel swear allegiance to the reigning monarch and experts have claimed that after training our soldiers will fight:

1) For themselves – combative instincts / manly pride / survival.
2) For their mates – bonding / fear of letting the side down.
3) For the regiment – tribal loyalty.
4) For national reasons – Queen and country.

The rights or wrongs of wars and conflicts do not enter the equation.

So, training, as well as building recruits physically and developing combat skills, is also used to strengthen the soldiers’ reasons and will to fight. This is then expanded within the regiment, especially before tours of duty, as the officers try to ensure that their soldiers have lost their last vestiges of individuality and have become cogs in the army machine. Ready to do or die – and not to ask the reason why.

Aly Renwick served with the British Army in SE Asia during the American war in Vietnam, he is a member of Veteran For Peace UK.

Tuesday 28 April

18:30 – 20:30

Mary Barbour Suite in the Pearce Institute,
840-860 Govan Road,
Glasgow
G51 3UU

https://www.facebook.com/events/637351813064390/

We are reaching new levels of militarisation of youth in the UK and Scotland. The Ministry of Defence have ramped up their recruitment efforts in the last few years. The most recent overall figures show that the military made 11,000 visits to schools in the UK in the academic year 2011-12, as opposed to just 1000 in 2008; more recent regional data show that a far higher proportion of state schools are visited than private schools, some receiving over 20 visits in a two-year period, and schools in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland are visited disproportionately more than schools in England, based on population.

There has also been a surge in the number of state school Combined Cadet Forces, as part of the Department for Education’s Military Ethos in Schools programme. Most recently, the Prime Minister’s Office and MOD have created ‘The British Armed Forces: Learning Resource 2014’, an extremely biased document targeting 5-16 year olds, which the Department for Education promoted in an email to every school in the country. The armed forces do not just ‘engage’ with schools and colleges to recruit children and young adults; the other main rationale is to ‘provide positive information to influence future opinion formers’.

This is an invitation to an event exploring the military’s engagement with young people in Scotland. It will feature:

Owen Everett, Education Campaign worker at ForcesWatch* giving a report on armed forces visits to schools in Scotland;

Ben Griffin, ex-SAS soldier from Veterans For Peace UK** speaking on Recruitment and the Militarisation of Youth;

There will also be a screening of the short film ‘Engage: the military and young people’, which was made by teenagers.

The UK military spends millions of pounds each year on its ‘youth engagement’ programme, including around 11,000 armed forces visits to state secondary schools and colleges, and huge Cadet Forces. These initiatives concern many people, particularly given that the two main aims of them are recruitment into the armed forces – which carries much higher risks for the youngest, most disadvantaged recruits (the UK is the only country in the EU that recruits 16 year-olds into the armed forces) – and to give children a positive view towards the armed forces that they will carry into adulthood.

On April 29th we will host a workshop to discuss what action we can take forward on these issues! 6:30pm. Destination TBC. For more details please contact resistmilitarism@gmail.com.

*ForcesWatch is a small not-for-profit organisation based in London that critically scrutinises the ethical basis of the recruitment of young people into the UK armed forces, and the growing presence and influence of the military and military approaches in different areas of UK society (especially the education system), raising concerns as to whose best interests these are really in.

**Veterans For Peace UK is an anti-war ex-services organisation that;
1. Educates on the true nature of military service and war.
2. Resists war and militarism through nonviolent action.
3. Stands in solidarity with people affected by militarism and war.
Their ultimate aim is the abolition of war as an instrument of foreign policy.

The event is FREE, but please book a place at
https://eventbrite.co.uk/event/16176103160/

These workshops are organised by Resist Militarism Network, with the support of the Centre for Human Ecology, Forces Watch and Veterans For Peace.

Forces Watch Report: http://forceswatch.net/sites/default/files/ForcesWatch_response_British_Armed_Forces_Learning_Resource.pdf

The British Armed Forces Learning Resource 2014 can be viewed in full at: http://www.armedforceslearningresources.co.uk/

This is the picture of the infamous ditch at the My Lai Massacre site that I took when I and three other Vietnam veterans went back to Vietnam in March of 1994. This ditch is where American soldiers herded close to 100 Vietnamese civilians, and executed them at point-blank range with automatic weapons. Now, imagine this village being one of a thousand villages that were bombed or received artillery rounds throughout the Vietnam War. One was done by air, My Lai was done with troops on the ground. The ones that were done by air strikes or artillery rounds are what I call My Lais from the skies. They may not have been 504 murdered, but they were atrocities, and many times far exceeded 504 with major B-52 carpet bombing. They happened every day during the Vietnam War. You do not bring the enemy to the peace table by just killing military combatants. You ultimately bring the enemy to the peace table by killing innocent civilians. They are military targets. This strategy is as old as warfare itself. The U.S. Government lied about this in Vietnam, because lying is the most powerful weapon in war. If one were to emotionally absorb this statement about killing innocent civilians because they are military targets, you can imagine what it did to hundreds of thousands of Vietnam veterans when they came home and had their core beliefs destroyed. That is why denial is a sacrament. The greatest lie of the Vietnam War is unspeakable.

I was in a military unit that had three fire bases that had heavy artillery, and tanks that had 90mm guns. God only knows how many rounds were fired by those weapons during the lifetime that those weapons were in Vietnam. You wonder how many innocent Vietnamese were killed while the U.S. exercised the insane policy of free-fire-zones. Deciding to remain on their ancestral homeland was no excuse as far as the U.S. military was concerned. You have personality disorders, and you have barbaric personality disorders. It’s all so neat and orderly. And, it all starts in the, “Orderly Room.”Some people call it the Pentagon.

I just got through listening to Seymour Hersh testify on “Democracy Now,” about the My Lai massacre. What he said was extremely powerful, to say the least. I have such a vivid memory of the day I spent four hours at the My Lai Massacre site with my fellow vets. As we drove up to the massacre site, three was a Viet-namese woman who worked at the massacre site who had to leave on a bicycle, because she could not be present when American veterans came to visit. The whole time I was there my gut was in my throat. I think I felt the same way when I was at the Dachau Concentration Camp in 1954, when I was nine-years-old. The over powering feeling I had at My Lai that day was absolute shame. Guilt, is I have done something bad, Shame, is I am bad. My national shame was who I was. My father was a career Army officer, a WWII veteran, so I was born in the U.S. military before Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I lived in Japan from 1947 to 1949.

After a couple of hours at the My Lai Massacre site, the four of us went into a separate building that had a statue of Ho Chi Minh. There was a guest book there, so we signed it. After awhile, I left the building because I wanted to go through the massacre site again to take more pictures. It was during that time that a tour bus showed up, and out stepped about 45 Vietnamese people, many of them small children. When that happened, and they saw me, I felt like a murderer. The shame inside of me was over whelming. I took a picture of all of them standing by the large monument depicting the massacre, with Vietnamese holding dead children. I hurried to take more pictures, so I could get away from this bus load of people, the so-called “gooks” that my country referred to. I had my head down, as I was headed back to the building where I last saw my other vet friends. While I was doing this, I was stopped by a Vietnamese man who was on the bus. He looked to be a man who had fought against the Americans. He stuck his hand out and we shook hands, followed by him saying something in Vietnamese that I perceived was very kind, and compassionate, as I could see it in his face. I will remember that moment the rest of my life.

Mike Hastie was a US Army Medic in Vietnam he is now a member of Veterans For Peace

My Lai Revisited: 47 Years Later, Seymour Hersh Travels to Vietnam Site of U.S. Massacre He Exposed

Britain, Australia, the United States and Agent Orange in the Indochina Wars:
Re-defining Chemical-Biological Warfare

“Only We Can Prevent Food”

Introduction – is there a Problem?

This article re-examines the sanitised history of Agent Orange and other defoliants used in the Indochina War between 1961 and 1974. It begins by reviewing the incomplete and misleading narratives regarding the use of these chemicals, which have occupied and confused the public imagination and the official record. For this purpose, I highlight the Australian public narrative notable for its disinformation and insufficient appreciation of these chemicals in historical context. The anomalous assumptions of the public record merited renewed inter-disciplinary scholarly examination.

Defoliants were an instrument of imperial power, sophisticated chemical technology applied to peasant societies without risk of retaliation. Given global censure of chemical warfare from World War I forward, they necessitated a distancing of decision-makers from responsibility for ‘others’ who were the weapon’s anticipated target. They were both defoliants for jungle clearing and herbicides, an instrument of food denial; but they could also be used as a toxic chemical weapon. I begin with some of the inaccuracies and omissions in the public record There was the unmentioned intention of crop destruction; the forgotten British Origin of these chemicals; and the actuality that Agent Orange was not the only chemical to be problematic for its persistence, toxicity and teratogenicity. Governments and contracting manufacturers claimed that they did not know the chemicals were toxic. It was falsely claimed that the use of defoliants was legal under international law. Several government inquiries concluded that Australians were only incidentally involved with Agent Orange use. This included the unsustainable claim that Phước Tuy Province, Việt Nam had not been sprayed, in spite of official records, maps and veterans’ accounts showing that the province was the first to be used in a trial, then repeatedly sprayed.

Defoliants originated in British laboratories during World War II and were first used in Malaya from 1952 till 1954, as illustrated by this December 1951 Memorandum to Cabinet on Malaya by Oliver Lyttelton.[1] US forces are alleged in a May 2011 South Korean newspaper article to have used them in 1955 on the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) [2] These chemicals were then employed in huge volumes in Indochina between 1961 and 1971. . In spite of mounting evidence of harm, continued use was made of some of the existing stocks in Laos and in other locations. This included the spraying of illegal poppy crops belonging to the USA’s Hmong allies in 1971. This operation was described by Grant Evans on page 152, continued till 1973:

“In 1971, under pressure from the US government, the RLG declared opium illegal. Suddenly the Hmong poppy growers who had been assisted in their trade by Air America and had helped line the pockets of the corrupt lowland Lao elite, found themselves on the other side of the law.” [3]

Former US Master Sergeant, Kurt Priessman also documented this continued use around the perimeters of US bases in Thailand, which continued after the ban had been ordered. [4]  Jon Mitchell and others have progressively revealed the storage, testing and dumping of defoliants in Okinawa, Japan.[5-9]

Video – “Weed Killer Knocks out VC’s Riverbank Ambush Sites, South Vietnam”

1. Crop destruction

The primary narrative is that defoliants were principally used to clear forests in order to reveal the disposition of the opposing forces and for clearing fire-base perimeters for line of sight. In fact, defoliants were found, in the case of preventing road-side ambushes, to have done this less well than bulldozing with a rome plow. [10] This was partly true and was justified by military strategists on the grounds that defoliation saved the lives of US and allied soldiers. The principal purpose of defoliants, however, was crop destruction, and that was seldom mentioned. As Wil D. Verwey explains in his very detailed 1977 account, a conscious high-level decision was made at an early point in the defoliation programme to de-emphasise crop destruction and focus attention on forest cover. In fact, from the beginning in 1961-62, crop destruction was a major priority. Verwey sets out in pages 110-116 how anti crop spraying in Việt Nam were concealed from the US and world publics from 1962 till 1965. He also details how acreages, regions, types of crop, which defoliant was used, spray concentrations, spray drift and duplications. [10]

On page 113, Verwey quotes Seymour Hersh, who observes that:

“…by the end of 1966 more than half of the C-123 missions were admittedly targeted for crops and it is probable that any effort at a trebling of capacity in 1967 was aimed not at the jungles of South Vietnam but at its arable cropland.” [10]

US military spokesman, Major General Davison, stated in 1966 that areas where crops were destroyed were remote and said that “great care has been taken to select areas in which most harm would be done to the Viet Cong and least harm to the local population.” This was not borne out by statistical evidence. [10]

As a 1967 contracted research team from Rand Corporation discovered, however, destruction of crops allegedly intended for feeding the Viet Cong were actually producing famine in the Việt Nam countryside whilst the guerrillas remained well-fed. [11] The official US narrative that only Viet Cong food was being destroyed was untrue. The real intention was to coerce the population to flee, and thus create ‘free-fire’ zones. Forcing the rural population to evacuate their traditional farms by means of food denial was a military objective. Peasants would then be re-located to what were termed ‘protected villages’ and made entirely dependent on US-supplied rations. [10]

An early assessment of the agricultural destruction in Indochina was carried out by Japanese researchers. Howard Edenberg et al., scientists from the Stanford Biology Study Group reported, “…a 1967 report of the Agronomy section of the Japan Science Council claimed that “… anti-crop attacks have ruined 3,800,000 acres of arable land in South Vietnam … Because of official U.S. secrecy, the true figures are not known.” The authors listed the crops that had been destroyed, which, in addition to rice, included “Sugar cane, manioc, tomato, beans, papaya, coconut, sweet potato, fig, cassava and mango . . .  all sensitive to the herbicides and the various yields have decreased from 10 to 40 per cent.” They also mentioned the destruction of valuable commercial rubber plantations. “In 1959, South Vietnam – the “Rice Bowl” of Asia – exported 246,000 tons of rice. In 1968, 850,000 tons had to be imported, over 90 per cent of it from the United States.” [12] These statistics did not include the use of defoliants over large tracts of Cambodia and in Laos, targeted mainly along the Hồ Chí Minh Trail.

This strategy of attrition through food denial minimally affected the fighters of the opposing forces, but mainly led to civilian food deprivation due to significantly diminished crop yields with the likelihood of prolonged hardship, as poisoned soils could not sustain a crop for at least the next growing season. The results include the raising of stunted children, who in time become weak and sickly adults. These long-term effects proved to be serious, together with other teratogenic effects on health and the unborn, as described below. The Rand Corporation Memorandum reported exactly this in 1967:

(xii)… “destroying a farmer’s source of sustenance is not a way to make friends” … (xiii) “the crop destruction effort may be counterproductive. The VC continue to feed themselves while the peasant bears the brunt of the deprivation, and he doesn’t like it.” [11]

Australians were engaged in crop destruction, as demonstrated by the Australian War Memorial’s photographic evidence, preserved on two Australian government web sites. Several 1968 images show an Australian Iroquois helicopter in flight over what is unquestionably agricultural land, “… A spray boom for defoliant extends from the helicopter beneath the machine gunner, who is on the right of the image. Defoliant was loaded onto helicopters in 30-gallon tanks… [A M P01733.006]”[13]

Paul Ham quoted former Australian soldier, Fred Ball, who disclosed that Australians were required to perform the same type of work as their allies with the same purpose: “We sprayed the bloody place with Agent Orange … It wasn’t just the bloody jungles; it was used on bloody paddy fields. It killed everything, not only the vegetation; it killed animals … Defoliation was simply a routine part of the war”. [14]

2. British Origin

The second narrative makes no mention of the decades of research and development of these chemicals, which originated in British laboratories. In the public imagination these substances simply arrived in Indochina without provenance. Judith Perera and Andy Thomas in New scientist on 18 April 1985 set out the full chronology of Britain’s role in the development of herbicides and defoliants. They established from archival documents that herbicides “…would also be useful “for purposes of internal security within the Empire”, namely, “for the destruction of food supplies of dissident tribes”.” Most of the specifics referred to in this article were verified by this author from documents in the British National Archives at Kew, formerly the Public Records Office. [15]

The history of modern defoliants, termed “Midspectrum Anticrop Agents” began during the 1930s, as explained on page 221 of a study by Simon Whitby in Anti-Crop Biological Weapons Programmes, when it was discovered that, “chemical plant growth regulators, which mimic the effect of plant hormones” could be mass-produced and could have military applications, as Perera and Thomas documented. [15, 16] “From collaborative arrangements between the UK and the US in the early 1940s” grew the widespread use of these chemicals in counterinsurgency warfare in South East Asia during the 1960s, following successful earlier British tests in Malaya and at Camp Drum, New York, USA in 1958. [1, 17, 18] 1959, using Agent Purple. [19]

Perera and Thomas further documented that between 1927 and 1935, Geoffrey Emett Blackman, and his botany section at Jealott’s Hill Research Station, UK, made the early scientific breakthroughs for Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI). In the course of World War II further work was done in Britain, with isopropyl phenyl carbamate (code-named 1313), which was being identified as a possible weed killer.  The chemical destruction of crops in Germany and later in Japan were considered but not prioritised at the time. Winston Churchill, then British Prime Minister, defunded the research and field trials in September 1942, believing that it was too expensive and that the time-line to manufacture was too long. [15] By this time Blackman was receiving funds from Britain’s Agricultural Research Council (ARC). Scientists from ICI, ARC and Ministry of Agriculture met at Rothamsted experimental station where field trials were conducted, establishing that “2,4-D (dichlorophenoxyacietic acid, code named 1414B) and MCPA (2-methyl 4-chlorophenoxyacietic acid, code-named 1414A) … [were] potential anti-crop weapons.” [15]

As Perera and Thomas detailed, “The formal channels of cooperation were the Inter-Service Chemical Warfare Committees in Washington and London” and research outcomes on 1313 and 1414 were shared across the Atlantic, “with flowsheets and designs for production plants drawn up by ICI”, and suggestions as to how it could be used on Japan’s rice crops. [15] “The US began full-scale production of 2,4-D and would have used it against Japan in 1946 if the war had continued.” “Britain had passed on details of 300 other potential anti-crop agents, leaving the US to do most of the testing, development and production.” [15] Forerunners of Agent Orange and similar defoliants were developed soon after 1945, “Chemically, the product was a 50/50 mix of two herbicides, 2,4,-D (2,4,dichlorophenoxyacetic acid) and 2,4,5-T (2,4,5 trichlorophenoxyacetic acid).” Much of the scientific work and product development was also carried out in Britain, and as these authors noted, “…without early British research and testing, there might have been no Agent Orange ready for use in Vietnam.” This research was shared with US colleagues. [15]

In 1950 Blackman, then heading the Weed Research Organisation, Oxford University, arranged for scientific agricultural officers throughout the British colonies, notably in all tropical areas, to test a range of defoliation agents on a wide range of local plants and crops. One of the experiments was designed to test the effectiveness of these agents in the destruction of crops, which, as discussed with military advisors, would be useful in fighting an insurgency war in a tropical location. [20]

These events were also documented by Perera and Thomas. In the same year, some of the British government’s own agricultural scientists in overseas colonial posts replied to Blackman saying that they were puzzled as to why they were asked to conduct these tests. Their letters were also on file in Kew. These scientists were probably unaware of Blackman’s links with Britain´s chemical weapons experimentation centre at Porton Down, Wiltshire. Blackman, meanwhile, was commenting on the toxicity of these defoliants, making comparisons with Mustard Gas and Lewisite, which were found to be toxic to human beings but not crops. [20] There was US collaboration in the tests too, as mentioned above. [2] The archival record confirmed that defoliants were intended to cause starvation. It is significant for victims of these weapons that the toxic effects of dioxins and other ingredients were also known to science at this time. [20]

To quote from this 1950 archival literature, in “Informal Notes for feasibility study on defoliation”, AWH Wardrop wrote:

“The U.S. are, in fact, spending two million dollars on defoliation, of which $30,000 goes to their “in house” programme … This is just the sort of work at which British scientists excel, and would be a much better start for us than an ad hoc screening programme, trivial in its output as compared with the U.S. effort, and somewhat unimaginative in outlook”. [20]

A Memorandum was presented to the British Cabinet with a long list of recommendations for conducting the Malayan Emergency, dated 21 December 1951. It was authored by Secretary of State for the Colonies, Oliver Lyttelton, who became 1st Viscount Chandos of Aldershot in 1954. Appendix VII to this document, entitled Chemical Defoliation of Roadside Jungle detailed the development of the military use of defoliants and the various tasks that could most effectively be accomplished with its use. Cost was a major consideration and defoliants were found to be significantly less expensive and longer-lasting than manual slashing of vegetation.

Paragraph 2 described the chemicals as “recently discovered hormone weed killers (2,4-D and 2,4,5-T) with Sodium trichloracetate in various combinations.” This was effectively a forerunner of Agent Orange and its siblings. Paragraph 7 (c) referred to the “destruction of crops grown by, or for, the bandits in remote jungle areas.” The use of the qualifying term “remote jungle areas” was not defined, though the submission described most of Malaya as dense jungle and therefore remote. More specific detail would not have concerned members of Cabinet. This was a politically palatable account of operations in the field. [1]

Reference was also made in this section to the use of Auster light aircraft, which would open many other possibilities for defoliant use. The spray rigs were at an early stage of development in coping with the viscosity of the product, which tended to emulsify in the tropical climate. The chemical supplier was ICI (Malaya) Ltd, with further testing and development by ICI Ltd and Plant Protection Ltd in Britain. Delivery by air was planned to take place in February or March 1952. [1]

Food denial and induced hunger were also used against compulsorily resettled ethnic Chinese villagers, of whom there were eventually around 500,000 detained in camps, and others to ensure their cooperation with British authorities or to punish them for suspected food supply to the Min Yuen (Communist) guerrillas. As Herbert A. Friedman explained, [British High Commissioner in Malaya, General Sir Gerald] “Templer immediately punished the nearest town. He imposed a 22-hour curfew, cut the rice ration in half and closed the schools.” [21] This was achievable because his forces had effective control over food supplies and had the capacity to apply pressure by denial of food, having created the situation in which they could not grow their own food and were entirely dependent on British supplies. Neither David Ucko nor Gavin Bulloch mentioned defoliants in their scholarly writings on counterinsurgency warfare in the Malayan Emergency. [22, 23] However, Colonel JP Cross, who served as a British officer in Malaya, used the term “crop spraying” to describe the use of herbicides during the Malayan Emergency, stating forthrightly that the intent of the spraying was the destruction of food. [24]

By 1963 the plan to use defoliants as weapons of war had been established in Britain’s War Office, and in 1965 it was formulated into General Staff Target (GST) 3138: defoliant system.  [25-28] By 1968 defoliant use had become a “defoliant system” and an issue of interest for Naval, Ground and Air Staff Target (NGAST) 3138: requirement for defoliant; study by the Weed Research Organisation, Oxford, which was the division in which Blackman and his colleagues worked. [29]

The Harvard molecular biologist, Matthew Meselson wrote in 1990 in respect to Malaya:

“The first time that Agent Orange was used in war was in Malaya by British forces mainly to destroy food crops being grown by peasants for their own consumption but which were being taken by Communist insurgents.” [30]

Whitby conclusively situated this argument in the title of his chapter, Anti-Crop Biological Weapons Programmes. On page 213, he stated that “the development of plant pathogens as weapons… certain chemical anticrop plant growth regulators… [were] an integral and important component of North Atlantic collaboration between the UK and US in the postwar period.” The Anglosphere collaboration on chemical weapons can be traced back to 1917. The agreement included Canada from 1947 and included Australia after 1964. [16]

Their use commenced in South Việt Nam in December 1961 “under a Directive issued by President Kennedy”. As Whitby stated on page 223, “Approximately 84 percent of agents were disseminated for defoliation and approximately 14 percent for use in the destruction of food crops.” [16] This ratio varied in different regions of the country and may have reflected the extensive range of dense forests and the repetitive clearing of fire-base perimeters, but nevertheless represent significant crop destruction.Verwey, however, documents the Pentagon´s contradictory and misleading statistics (page 106), showing the crop destruction component to be far higher than this. [10]

As Whitby explained the structure of the US Army’s crop destruction programme:

“US Army Chemical Corps anticrop warfare activities were organized under the four constituent parts of the Crops Division: the Chemistry Branch, the Biology Branch, the Plant Physiology Branch, and the Operational Requirements Branch. The remit of the Chemistry Branch centered on the development of a universal anticrop chemical…effective in reducing the yields of both narrow- and broad-leafed crops. ” [16]

On 27 January 1966, the British Labour MP for Barking, Tom Driberg, wrote to the then Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Michael Stewart, seeking an explanation from the Minister for the actions of US forces in Việt Nam and Indochina, as the “American are spraying  the rice-fields – presumably with poison – in order to create starvation”. The Minister tabled this letter and his own explanatory letter of reply in the Parliament on 28 February.

Stewart’s reply read in part:

“I understand that measures are taken to destroy rice crops or rice stores which are known to support the Viet Cong in South Vietnam. The aim is certainly not to create starvation amongst the people, but to cut off the supplies which sustain the Viet Cong guerrillas. I understand too that the spray is designed to kill the rice but is not poisonous: it is equivalent to burning or blowing up a store of rice once collected and held for Viet Cong supplies”. (Hansard, 1965-66, Volume 725, 28 February 1966, Written Answers 175-176)

An opinion could be formed that, Michael Stewart’s advisors, who crafted that letter, may have known, and should have known, that nothing in this Minister’s statement was factually correct. Ultimately, under the Westminster system of government, the Minister is responsible for words spoken in Parliament.

3. Agent Orange was the only problem

Often Agent Orange has been discussed without mention of the several other similar agents that are referred to here as ‘siblings’.  A sound scientific explanation was written in 1971 by Edenberg et al. This study discussed only the three most-used of seven herbicides, Agents Orange, White, and Blue. An abridged description, it mentioned that all of these chemicals were toxicologically problematic, not only Agent Orange.

Agent Orange “…is a mixture of 2,4-D (n-butyl-dichlorophenoxyacetate) and 2,4,5-T (n-butyl-2,3,4-trichlorophenoxyacetate).” (This study will say much more about 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin, known as TCCD, the most toxic form of dioxin, and its intergenerational teratogenic effects); Agent White … “primarily used near populated areas … is, however, soluble in water… [It contains] Picloram, a major component… [which] has been called “the most active herbicide yet discovered.” (This study notes the persistent toxic effects, but does not go into further detail); and Agent Blue “… more toxic to grasses than to broad-leaved plants and is mainly used to destroy rice crops. Cacodylic acid, a major component of Blue, is 54 per cent arsenic… [and] may pose a long-term danger.” (This study notes the persistent toxic effects, but does not go into further detail) [12]

4. They didn’t know it was toxic

This particular misconception has clouded the issues of claims for veterans’ compensation for health problems and has prevented legal claims and health assistance for civilian forestry, agricultural and local government workers and most severely affected Indochinese peasants.

Government scientists in Britain and the US who worked closely with one another within the programme from the mid-1930s onward, understood the toxicity of the chemicals they were handling, especially after the discovery of 2,3,7,8-Tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD) at the time they began work on defoliants and that establishments like Porton Down had instituted procedures for the safe production, storage and handling of these substances was described in RM Oliver’s 1975 paper describing the “trivial” exposure of three British scientists which resulted in severe chloracne. [31]

The scientists and process workers took precautions, used fume cupboards, protective clothing and respirators when handling these materials, unlike the poorly-informed soldiers who stood shirtless and without breathing apparatus in tropical conditions spraying as though putting out a fire. US soldiers applied defoliants with their faces, arms, torsos, and legs splashed and sprayed by each gust of wind. Government agencies had a duty of care to notify military end-users, the contracting manufacturers as suppliers of these materials at the time of their appointment. Government specifications for product quality would have been strictly adhered to, except when these companies found it quicker and cheaper to manufacture at higher temperatures, which produced greater TCCD dioxin contamination in the finished product. This is explained below via correspondence between Dow and German competitors, C.H. Boehringer Sohn. [32, 33]

Workplace accidents were inevitable and occurred in a number of locations and in various companies. When these incidents occurred, they caused a range of injuries and led to an assortment of company responses. There were efforts to reduce the TCDD contamination; but also efforts to prevent news of dioxin’s toxicity reaching the US government’s health officials and the media and public. Christopher Joyce wrote two articles for New Scientist published on 4 August 1983. [32, 33] In the first of these he detailed a number of memos and items of correspondence that had been made available to the New York Eastern District Court through a veterans’ class action case against the chemical companies. His findings were based on discovered documents, proving the authenticity of both the existence and contents of these documents. The documents also captured Dow referring to TCDD in a letter to their Canadian plant stating that “this material is exceptionally toxic, it has tremendous potential for producing chloracne and systemic injury.” [32, 34]

Dow produced “… an article published in 1941 by V.K. Rowe, Dow’s expert on the dioxin problem. It describes Rowe’s work in detecting acne-forming “exciters” that contaminate chlorophenol chemicals used in making herbicides”. The toxicity of dioxin was known at least as early as 1941 and “… in 1944 a laboratory worker at Dow contracted a severe case of chloracne from trichloro-phenol, a chemical involved in the process.” Another accident occurred at Monsanto’s plant in Nitro, West Virginia in 1949, when “…an explosion rocked the company’s plant … and dozens of workers contracted the ailment…Chloracne… [and suffered] other symptoms, such as tiredness, nausea and listlessness.” This study did not include an examination of legal records pertaining to these incidents. [32]

A 1957 accident at the German company, C.H. Boehringer Sohn at Ingelheim am Rhein, injured a number of workers. The Germans wrote to all of their competitors warning of the toxicity problem and recommending a process that they pioneered designed to reduce TCDD contamination. Letters produced in court showed a letter from Boehringer referring to “…”our 1955 correspondence” on the subject. It offered detailed instructions on how to minimise contamination of 2,4,5-T with dioxin… Dow replied with a letter of thanks. The letter notes that on 27 January, 1955, Dow wrote to Boehringer describing “the hazards due to toxicity and precautions for safe handling and use of 2,4,5-T…”” Boehringer recommended they work at a lower temperature. All of these parties were discussing a matter with which they were mutually familiar; it was integral to their business. Joyce further described that, “In 1964 …an accident at Dow … [affected] some 60 workers [who] contracted chloracne. Dow then began to take the lead in what the veterans’ lawyers call the “conspiracy of silence”.” [32] Further details regarding the 1964 incident at Dow were available from a 2005 article by David L. Linhardt. [35]

Peter H Schuck provided the definitive account about the progress of the veterans’ class action case, begun in 1978, against the major defoliant manufacturers, principally Dow and Monsanto, but others too, explaining that (page 87) “…the German firm from which Dow had obtained its dioxin testing process for only $35,000. It thus had an important stake in distancing itself from laggard competitors.” On page 99, Schuck explained that the awareness of toxicity included the US government, thereby revealing their complicity in using claims of ignorance regarding toxicity to deny compensation and benefits to US and allied veterans and Vietnamese citizens:

“… the government’s relative knowledge: notably, its knowledge of the chloracne outbreaks during the 1950s, among German workers exposed to TCP, a precursor chemical of 2,4,5-T; the 1959 Hoffman Report, containing “startling information” about dioxin’s toxicity; testing at Edgewood Arsenal during the early 1960s….” [36]

Robert Baughman and Matthew Meselson published an article in September 1973, explained the lethal dose (LD50) in parts per trillion (ppt) for various small rodents and primates; described it as “… an extraordinarily toxic substance…” Since TCDD was found to be lipophilic, they developed a methodology for its detection in samples of fish tissue (mainly oily-fleshed, bottom-feeding fish like carp and catfish reared in ponds by peasants), human adipose tissue and breast-milk from Việt Nam. In their conclusions, these authors notably stated that, “TCDD seems to be particularly toxic to proliferating tissues, as suggested by its effects on spermatogenesis and hematopoiesis and its apparent toxicity to the intestinal epithelium…” [37]

In Joyce’s second New Scientist article of 4 August 1983 he reported on a panel of world experts that met in Cincinnati under the auspices of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Their conclusions dispelled any remaining doubts that “Dioxin probably causes cancer in humans, according to 34 of the world’s experts on the chemical.” These experts categorised TCDD as:

“… the third most toxic substance known to man …no completely safe “threshold” … even minute exposure over long periods raises potentially new risks… 100 million times as potent as vinyl chloride …” [whilst] “… noting that: “because TCDD is almost always found in association with other materials (e.g. chlorophenols, combustion products, etc.), it may never be possible to evaluate the carcinogenicity of TCDD by itself in humans”. [33]

The crucial research into possible toxic and teratogenic effects proved to be alarming and the results were withheld from publication till 1969, when “Matthew Meselson, a Harvard scientist and opponent of the defoliation program” leaked the report and “persuaded Lee Alvin DuBridge, President Nixon’s science advisor…” to expedite the ending of the defoliant programme, as Schuck explained:

“In 1965 the National Cancer Institute had contracted with the Bionetics Research Laboratories to study the possible toxicity of a number of herbicides and pesticides, including 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T. Somewhat unexpectedly, a preliminary report on the research in 1966 had indicated that 2,4,5-T caused many birth defects in mice and rats whose mothers had been exposed to relatively high levels (up to 30ppm) of dioxin and that 2,4-D was also potentially teratogenic.” [36]

Howard Edenberg expressed his concern more vehemently than some other authors:

“During the time the report was inexplicably suppressed by our government, millions of pounds of 2,4,5-T were used in Vietnam – and, incidentally, in the United States as well.” [12]

Edenberg and colleagues visited Việt Nam and reported that:

“In late 1967… Saigon newspapers began carrying front-page stories of a novel and increasingly common birth defect described as “egg-bundle-like fetus. Some newspapers … questioned whether the defoliation might be causing this. These papers were closed by the Thieu government.” (Nguyễn Văn Thiệu) [12]

The Australian War Memorial stated that, “…the first reports of birth defects in children born in areas subject to aerial spray began appearing in 1965.”[13] Other accounts documented Agent Orange babies with confronting deformities that began to emerge in 1967 and continue to the time of writing. The work of Vietnamese artist, Dinh Q Lê, best illustrated the long-term intergenerational effects of these products with his 1999 work Lotusland, which depicted in porcelain co-joined siblings, two-headed babies and a range of knitted baby garments with disturbing features like four arms, and there were many images on the internet.[38] The poignant black and white images by photographer, Philip Jones Griffiths gave public expression to this unsettling reality. [39]

Importantly, toxicity was known during the British research period of the 1930s and the proven dangers were apparent in Việt Nam by 1965-67 in areas accessed by Australian and US forces. No excuse could suffice for the expressed profession of ignorance in the Australian Parliament on 27 March 1980, by then Minister for Defence, James Killen, answered Labor MP, Mr Kerin with these words that fuelled rage among veterans:

“I asked my Department what toxic herbicides were used. It was a simple question, and this is the answer I was given: reglone, grammoxone, tordone and hyva [correct spelling is hyvar] (sic). I do not wish to be disrespectful to the honourable gentleman or indeed the House; but, as far as I personally am concerned in the field of qualifications, they could be four horses running at Rosehill on Saturday”. Defence Minister James Killen, 27 March 1980, “Parliamentary Debates (Hansard)”, House of Representatives 1980, Vol. H of R 117, pp.1311-12

5. The use of defoliants was legal – wasn’t it?

Many historians have failed to address the issue of human consequences of toxic spraying. The British government was a signatory to the 1925 Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or other Gases and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare, also called the Geneva Protocol. As collaborators with the US in the development of these weapons, they were also cognisant of their ally’s refusal to ratify this treaty and the US’s indulgent interpretation of its provisions. As Grant Evans pointed out on page 183 of his 1983 book, this was “largely because of effective agitation against it [ratification] by the already powerful US Chemical Warfare Service”. The majority of signatory nations, excepting General Salazar’s fascist Portugal and Australia, regarded both defoliants and riot-control gases as prohibited by the Convention. Australia was also using these chemicals in Việt Nam, as Evans pointed out. [3]

In 1966, United Nations Secretary General, U Thant tried to institute a Protocol under which defoliants would be banned, but his efforts were blocked by the United States and other powerful members of the UN Security Council. On page 49, Mario Rossi described U Thant’s efforts to have defoliant weapons banned in his article, U Thant and Vietnam: The Untold Story. [40] Peter Schuck outlined the pressure that was applied in the UN on page 19 of his book:

“In the United Nations, resolutions were introduced as early as 1966 charging the United States with violations of the 1925 Geneva Protocol limiting the use of chemical and biological weapons. Although the United States was able to defeat most of these resolutions, the General Assembly, over strong American opposition and the abstention of many allies, adopted a resolution in December 1969 that clearly defined the United States’ defoliation program as a violation of the protocol.” [36]

This vote in the UN General Assembly in 1969 resulted in thirty-six abstentions, but eighty nations voted for the motion and just three against. However, the use of defoliants continued and its use was greatly expanded.[12]

On 16 December 1969, Harold Wilson tabled a document to his Cabinet entitled, The Geneva Protocol and the use of riot control agents in war Note by Prime Minister. This note was prompted by the anomaly of British use of riot-control agents in Northern Ireland in a context in which the US government was obliged to seek legal clarification regarding their use of these agents in their war in Indochina. This clarification was necessitated by British development and sale of these gases to the US government.

Predictably, Harold Wilson his Cabinet colleagues arrived at a recommendation which would provide some respectability to the trade in which they were already engaged:

“On the other hand, it can be maintained that chemical agents, whether regarded as lethal or incapacitating (including harassing materials) are all toxic agents. The terms “lethal” and “incapacitating” agents are not absolute terms but imply statistical probabilities of response… Up to now it has been possible to avoid making any statement of Her Majesty’s Government’s present interpretation of the Protocol… To reaffirm our 1930 statement, but to explain that the use in war of recently developed riot control agents such as CS, which we did not regard as significantly harmful, was not in our view covered by the Protocol”. [41]

Yet, as the Stanford scientists pointed out in their 1971 article, the Charter of the International Military Tribunal at Nürnberg “…defined “murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhuman acts committed against any civilian population” as “crimes against humanity” and “wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages not justified by military necessity” as war crimes.” [12]

6. Australians were only incidentally involved with Agent Orange use

There were signs of sickness among the returning US, Australian and New Zealand veterans, which were manifest in a bewildering range of symptoms. This led to demands for a full investigation of the chemicals used in the war in the US, Australia and New Zealand. Governments attempted to avoid responsibility and tried to falsify these investigations by manipulating their terms of reference to produce predetermined negative findings.

Both Australia and New Zealand veterans were rebuffed in their governments’ attempts to claim benefits based on harm to their health caused by defoliants. The two allied governments made the untenable claim that Phước Tuy Province, Việt Nam, where New Zealanders and Australians served, had not been sprayed. This in spite of US official records, maps and veterans’ accounts. These demonstrated that the province had been the first province used in a trial, then repeatedly sprayed, as veteran, Lachlan Irvine explained in his thesis.[42]

There were numerous examples of defoliant use in which Australian military planners adhered to the strategies of their US counterparts. Australian Veterans returned to a nation that preferred to forget the war and a government that was determined to pay as little attention as possible to the health problems of veterans. In his account of the 1985 Australian Inquiry into the toxicity of Agent Orange under Justice Phillip Evatt, Ham concluded that the Inquiry was a fraud. The conclusions of the inquiry contained statements like: “The suggestion that chemical defoliants had caused birth defects was ‘fanciful’. The government had no case to answer”. [14]Yet, as Ham explained:

“The commission had simply lifted large chunks of its conclusions from the submission by Monsanto … Evatt adopted 70% of his materials [in the section on cancer] from Monsanto’s submission”. [14]

According to Thair Shaikh, expert witness at the inquiry, epidemiologist, Sir Richard Doll worked as a consultant for Monsanto and for the Chemical Manufacturers’ Association, whose members included Dow Chemicals and ICI. Doll, “was receiving a consultancy fee of $1,500 a day in the mid-1980s from Monsanto” and stated to the Australian Royal Commission that “there was no evidence that the chemical caused cancer”. [43]

In spite of its shortcomings and this obvious conflict of interest, the outcome of the 1985 Australian Inquiry continues to be defended by historians, including those working at the Australian War Memorial. On 27 April 2011 an article by journalist, David Ellery in The Canberra Times article, Vietnam veterans at war with historians described the tension between academics and veterans. [44] Australian veterans, Ambrose Crowe, Lachlan Irvine and Graham Walker have all written academic papers and theses describing their experience of dealing with government and produced very similar conclusions. [45-47]

In spite of denials and inconclusive scientific and epidemiological studies, dioxin’s toxicity was known to science from the mid-1930s or as late as the 1940s. It’s discovered teratogenic properties were concealed from 1966 till 1969, enabling continued use with devastating costs both to the target communities and to US and allied combatants. But the toxicological evidence demonstrated that there is a risk that children can be born with life-threatening deformities. For Western veterans it has meant a painful struggle with governments to gain recognition of harm and appropriate compensation; the Indochinese this has resulted in a form of inter-generational collective punishment.

Conclusions

In this paper fresh challenges have been issued against some of the disinformation and omissions surrounding the use of Agent Orange, that has beset Australian society to varying degrees since the Indochina War; has clouded public perception, government transparency, infected the official history and inflicted hurtful insults to the injured memories of Australian veterans, imposing conformity and silence on the nation’s narrative, to which Ellery drew attention.

Yet evidence was available regarding the purpose of defoliant warfare and its devastating consequences. Its early development and its use in the very earliest stages of the Indochina conflict have been fully documented. To date, in Australia a sanitised history has displaced a more accurate appreciation of the great harm that Agent Orange and its siblings inflicted on the peoples of Indochina, especially in the southern regions of Việt Nam, and secondarily on many of the Australian, New Zealand and American soldiers who used the weapon. This is indeed a toxic recipe overdue for scholarly revision.

Whether or not civilians were specifically targeted, the use of chemicals known to be toxic against opposing forces constitutes the intentional use of chemical warfare agents against combatants, which was beyond the original stated purpose of defoliants and would have contravened Geneva Conventions and long-standing conventions against the use of chemical weapons.

(Gutman and Rieff: 2007)

What has happened to civilians is infinitely more reprehensible.

Surely, the last word goes to the ‘father’ of Agent Orange:

In 1974, Geoffrey E. Blackman carried out a study in South Việt Nam and Los Baños in the Philippines for the US National Academy of Sciences – National Research Council,  as lead author: Geoffrey E. Blackman,  John D. Fryer,  Anton Lang and Michael Newton

The Effects of Herbicides in South Vietnam Part B: Working Papers

Persistence and Disappearance of Herbicides in Tropical Soils

Page 56-58

General Conclusions

“6. Claims that the herbicides as they were used during the war have rendered the soil “sterile.” permanently or at least for prolonged periods, are without any foundation. It should be noted that these claims were contrary to all existing information for the herbicides in question”.  (Blackman et al: 1974)

… As he commented on his own life’s work.

Birth defects were not mentioned. That question was beyond the ‘Scope of Work’.

Willy Bach is a member of Veterans For Peace UK, he served with the British Army in Thailand during the Vietnam war. He is now a Post Graduate Research student at University of Queensland. 

References

1. Lyttelton, O., Memorandum – Malaya, Cabinet, Editor. 1951, British government. p. 61.
2. Sang-ho, S. (2011) U.S. Army sprayed defoliant over DMZ in 1955: ex-soldier. decorcravings.com Volume,
3. Evans, G., The Yellow Rainmakers are chemical weapons being used in S.E. Asia? Verso Editions 15 Greek Street, London W1, UK ed. Verso. 1983, London, UK: Verso. 204.

4. Priessman, K., Herbicide Use In Thailand – The Relationship To The Rules Of Engagement (ROE) And Use In Vietnam And Laos, in The Vietnam Center Texas Tech University. 1994, The Vietnam Center and Archives Texas Tech University Lubbock, Texas 79409-1045: Lubbock, TX 79409-1041, USA. p. 25.

5. Mitchell, J., US Military Defoliants on Okinawa: Agent Orange. The Asia-Pacific Journal 2011. 9(37 No 5).
6. Mitchell, J., Evidence for Agent Orange on Okinawa, in The Japan Times. 2011: Tokyo, Japan.
7. Mitchell, J., Agent Orange on Okinawa – New Evidence. The Asia-Pacific Journal, 2011. 9(48 No 1).

8. Mitchell, J., Agent Orange buried at beach strip?, in The Japan Times. 2011: Tokyo.
9. Mitchell, J., Agent Orange buried on Okinawa, vet says, in The Japan Times. 2011: Tokyo, Japan.
10. Verwey, W.D., Riot Control and Herbicides in War: Their Humanitarian, Toxicological, Ecological, Military, Polemological, and Legal Aspects. 1977, Amsterdam, Netherlands: A W Sijthoff. 377.
11. Denton, R.B.a.F., Memorandum RM-5446-1-ISA/ARPA An Evaluation of Chemical Crop Destruction in Vietnam. 1967, RAND Corporation: Santa Monica, CA, USA.
12. Howard Edenberg, P.M., Bruce Bartholomew, Lawrence Gilbert, Edward Merrell, Peter Cohen, Matthew Bradley, Patrice Caldorota, Paul Grobstein, Donald Kennedy and Pittendrigh, The Destruction of Indochina: A Legacy of Our Presence. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 1971: p. 4.
13. Affairs, D.o.V. Aftermath Agent Orange. Australia and the Vietnam War [electronic] 2011 2011 [cited 2011 1 August 2011]; Available from: http://vietnam-war.commemoration.gov.au/aftermath/agent-orange.php
14. Ham, P., Vietnam: the Australian War. 2007: HarperCollins Publishers.
15. Thomas, J.P.a.A., This horrible natural experiment, in New Scientist 1985. p. 34-37.
16. Whitby, S., Anti-Crop Biological Weapons Programmes in Deadly cultures: biological weapons since 1945 L.R. Mark Wheelis, and Malcolm Dando, editors, Editor. 2006, Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Mass, USA. p. 479.
17. Arison, H.L. (1995) Executive Summary The Herbicidal Warfare Program In Vietnam, 1961 – 1971 Volume,
18. Buckingham, W.A., Operation Ranch Hand: Herbicides In Southeast Asia. Air University Review, 1983.
19. Stellman, J.M., Steven D. Stellman, Richard Christian, Tracy Weber & Carrie Tomasallo, The extent and patterns of usage of Agent Orange and other herbicides in Vietnam. Nature, 2003. 422: p. 6.
20. Office, W., Attack on crops and livestock: General Staff Target for a defoliant system (GST 3138)1950 Feb 01 – 1966 Feb 28, W. Office, Editor. 1950, British government.
21. Friedman, H.A. Psychological Warfare of the Malayan Emergency, 1948-1960 [electronic] 2008 [cited 2009 15 January 2009]; Available from: http://www.psywar.org/malaya.php
22. Bulloch, G., Military Doctrine and Counterinsurgency: A British Perspective Parameters, 1996(Summer 1996): p. 12.

23. Ucko, D., Network Centric Operations (NCO) Case Study. The British Approach to Low-Intensity Operations: Part II – Case Study 1 – The Malayan Emergency (1948-1960) The British Approach to Low-Intensity Operations: Part II U.M.o. Defense, Editor. 2007, US Government. p. 254.

24. Cross, J., Jungle Warfare Experiences and Encounters. 1989, London: Arms and A|rmour. 207.
25. Office, C., Use of herbicides, arboricides and defoliants in Colonial territories 1949-1950, C. Office, Editor. 1950, British government.
26. Office, C., Use of herbicides, aboricides and defoliants in colonial territories 1950, C. Office, Editor. 1950, British government.
27. Office, C., Use of herbicides, aboricides and defoliants in colonial territories 1952, C. Office, Editor. 1952, British government.
28. Office, F., Chemical warfare: use of defoliants 1963, F. Office, Editor. 1963, British government.
29. Office, W., Naval, Ground and Air Staff Target (NGAST) 3138: requirement for defoliant; study by the Weed Research Organisation, Oxford, 1968 Nov 01 – 1974 Jul 31, W. Office, Editor. 1968, British government.
30. Francis D Doris, J.F.K., Matthew Meselson, Tod Ensign, Lennart Hardell, Maureen Hatch, Erwin R Parson, Shelia Hoar Zahm, Arnold Schecter, Peter Schuck, Peter Kahn, Paul Atwood, Joseph Bangert, Robert H Baughman, Paul R Camacho, Robert Diefenbach, Paul L Atwood ed, Agent Orange: Medical, Scientific, Legal, Political and Psychological Issues 1990, William Joiner Center for the study of War and Social ConsequencesUniversity of Massachusetts at Boston, Ma, USA.

31. Oliver, R., Toxic effects of 2,3,7,8 tetrachlorodibenzo 1,4 dioxin in laboratory workers. British Journal ofIndustrial Medicine, 1975. 32(49-53): p. 6.
32. Joyce, C., Lawyers reveal conspiracy of silence on dioxin, in New Scientist. 1983.
33. Joyce, C., Dioxin probably carcinogenic – official, in New Scientist. 1983. p. 343.
34. In Re “Agent Orange” Prod. Liab. Litig., in United States District Court For The Eastern DIistrict Of New York. 1983, Findacase: New York, USA.
35. Linhardt, D.L. (2005) Dow Chemical’s Chloracne “Incident”. Volume, 15
36. Schuck, P.H., Agent Orange on trial: mass toxic disasters in the courts. 1988, Cambridge, Mass, USA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. 376.
37. Meselson, R.B.a.M., An Analytical Method for Detecting TCDD (Dioxin): Levels of TCDD in Samples from Vietnam. Environmental Health Perspectives, 1973: p. 9.
38. Lê, D.Q., The Farmers And The Helicopters 2006, APT5: Brisbane.
39. Griffiths, P.J. Agent Orange: “Collateral Damage” in Viet Nam. [electronic] 2003 January 2003 [cited 2011 18 June 2011]; Available from: http://digitaljournalist.org/issue0401/griffiths.html
40. Rossi, M., U Thant and Vietnam: The Untold Story. New York Review of Books, 1966. 7(8).
41. Wilson, H., The Geneva Protocol and the use of riot control agents in war Note by Prime Minister Cabinet, Editor. 1969, British government.
42. Irvine, L. (tbn) Agent Orange A History Of Deception New Zealand Vietnam Veterans and

the McLeod Report.  Volume,

43. Shaikh, T., Scientist who gave Agent Orange the nod worked for its maker, in The Times. 2006: London, UK.
44. Ellery, D., Vietnam veterans at war with historians, in The Canberra Times. 2011: Canberra, ACT, Australia.
45. Crowe, A., The Battle After the War: The Story of Australia’s Vietnam Veterans. 1999: Allen & Unwin. 210.
46. Irvine, L. (tbn) Lies, Damned Lies and History: a response to F.B. Smith’s “Agent Orange: the Australian aftermath”, Part IV of Brendan OKeefe, Medicine at War: Medical aspects of Australia’s involvement in Southeast Asia 1950-1972. Volume,
47. Walker, G., The Official History’s Agent Orange Account: The veterans’ perspective in War Wounds-Medicine and the Trauma of Conflict. 2009, Australian War Memorial: Australian War Memorial.

Long time friend of Veterans For Peace UK David Wilson has pledged to donate a portion of the profit from his soon to be published book Left Field to Veterans For Peace UK.

” I have been a friend of ex-SAS trooper, Ben Griffin, ever since I attended the High Court to witness his being silenced by the British government for telling the truth about his experiences in Iraq. Today he is an ambulanceman and a leading member of Veterans for Peace UK. He reminds me of ex-soldiers I know from the Bosnian war & who I write about in “Left Field’. Like them he has become a truth-teller, whose voice needs to be heard if we are ever to get over our addiction to war. If ‘Left Field’ goes into profit, and with your help it will, I’ll hand over a portion of them to Veterans for Peace. If we don’t make a profit, I will send them some money anyway.”

To buy a copy of David’s book and support VFP UK at the same time please follow the link.

http://unbound.co.uk/books/left-field

Breaking the Silence is an organisation of Israeli military veterans who served since the start of the Second Intifada (September 2000), and have taken upon themselves the imperative to expose the Israeli public to everyday life in the Occupied Territories, a reality which is rarely reflected in the media. Breaking the Silence was founded in June 2004, and has since acquired a special standing in the eyes of both the Israeli and international public and media for its unique role in making heard the voices of soldiers who had previously remained silent.

I contacted Ben earlier in the week with regards to a tour of Hebron with the Breaking the Silence (BtS) group. I informed him I was going on it and if I could use the opportunity to align VfPs solidarity with that of BtS and the overall Occupation of the West Bank. He gave me the green light and asked me if I would write a short report on my personal experience of my time here.

One of my main motivations to travel alone for a few months was not only to learn a significant amount about myself but hopefully more about everyone I encounter on my journey whilst simultaneously promoting a universal message of ‘Peace’. You can learn a lot about the world through a myriad of mediums but nothing can substitute that of first hand experience and the observations that come with it.

After three weeks in Jordan I headed west to Israel. My platform for exploration for the week was the city of Jerusalem. After one hundred and one questions at King Hussein/Allenby bridge crossing about my motives for visiting Israel, I manged to make it through.

The first thing that hits you about Israel is the sense of ‘militarisation’. The fences, checkpoints, roadblocks, barbed wire, groups of teenagers wandering in packs of 4 all armed with assault rifles and i-Phones. This was highlighted perfectly by the immigration clerks sheer shock and surprise at why I left the military. Whilst I thought this was a great opportunity to promote our stance on the military and war in general, I didn’t think it was going to aid my entrance into the country, so I settled for the ‘To travel the world’ through gritted teeth response.

I spent the first half of the week visiting Ramallah and Bethlehem. This was my first real introduction to ‘The Wall’. This monolithic monstrosity that separates Israel and the West Bank. Is it a ‘Security fence’, ‘Separation fence’ or an ‘Apartheid Wall’? Depending on who you speak too will determine the title of this great looming divider. One thing for sure is it’s not bringing those lined either side of it any closer together or finding a resolution for the ongoing Occupation and Annexation of the West Bank. This acts as not only a physical barrier between those on both sides but as a mental one. Could you imagine growing up as a child, on either side and trying to understand the reasons behind it and then attempting to overcome this division?

I briefly visited Aida Refugee Camp, situated 2km’s north of Bethlehem. Aida Refugee Camp was established in 1950, following the “Nakba” (“catastrophe”) of 1948. Initially, Palestinian refugees were promised the right of return to their original homes by UN Resolution 194. At first Palestinians in Aida Camp lived in tents and then small single-room containers set up by UNRWA. Over 60 years later, Palestinian refugees now live in houses which they have built for themselves. There are approximately over 5,000 refugees residing in Aida Camp, more than half of whom are children. As Aida’s population continues to grow, the physical size of the camp remains constant and it is now enclosed on two sides by the Israeli apartheid wall. Many problems faced by residents today are regular invasions by the Israeli occupation forces, severe water shortages, lack of medical facilities, overcrowding and no open spaces.

This was my first experience in a refugee camp and whilst I had a different expectation of it, the conditions that these people live in, or should I say, struggle through isn’t something that I will forget very soon.

Leaving Israel and entering the West Bank is generally a painless task. It’s only on the return journey where things get a little more complicated. At the checkpoints back into Israel, all Palestinians are made to vacate the bus and go through a security turn style. Depending on the time of day, there could be hundreds of people going through this process and you can imagine the time delays and toll it takes. This is an every day thing for them to have to go through. Thankfully when we arrived there was only one bus and it’s passengers to go through. 15 minutes later we were on the road again.

It was on this journey when I met a young Palestinian girl named Jamila. She was 23 and a student at university and was looking forward to graduating this year as a teacher in Arabic education. We spoke about a number of different topics but primarily about the Occupation and the Wall. It was extremely refreshing to hear someone who has grown up surrounded by so much conflict, division and violence to not only wear a smile upon her face but also to harbour no animosity, hatred or vengeance onto anyone for the environment she lives in. She told me it’s bigger than Arabs/Jews or Palestinians and Israelis. She said the change has to come from all those involved and she hopes to be a component in that by making a change starting with educating the future generations.

I signed up for the tour of Hebron on Wednesday and I really couldn’t wait for Friday 13th to arrive. Luckily enough I’m not superstitious.

Upon arrival at the location of departure I was greeted by Avner, one of the guides of the tour and also an ex-IDF soldier. He served as a paratrooper in Nablus, Jenin and Hebron. It was towards the end of his service that he started to really question not only his role in the IDF but also that of the Occupation. He decided to learn more about the situation and this was when he booked himself on a BtS tour. He went along on the tour and visited one of the local villages and he came face to face with someone that he had arrested as a soldier and this was the turning point for him.

We all boarded the buses and headed for Hebron. The guide we were appointed for the day was Yehuda. Imagine an Israeli ‘James Gandolfini’ with a huge beard and that’s Yehuda. Yehuda was also ex-IDF and he served as an infantry combat soldier and then as a commander between 2001-2004, which was a particularly tense period in the West Bank because of the 2nd Intifada (2000-2005). He served 14 months in Hebron so he was well experienced with the area and the history of it. It was also towards the end of his service and the transition towards life as a civilian that he really started questioning the part he played in the IDF and in the West Bank. He said that he grouped together a number of his men and he told them he how he felt about everything and that was when he realised that they all felt the same.”Those that send us into the occupied territories have little to no understanding of what we do” he said.

“They were happy to send us from Tel-Aviv to Hebron, so we decided to take Hebron to Tel-Aviv”. He finished his service in March 2004 and in June 2004 along with 64 troop testimonies, they created an exhibit in Tel-Aviv which was visited by over 7,000 people. This was the inception of BtS and he was one of the original founders of it.

By this time we had made it to Hebron, it took just over an hour and he explained the history and the local geography of the surrounding area along the way.

Hebron is the second largest city in the West Bank and the only one which has an Israeli settlement inside it. The tour explores the results of the principle of separation and the military control in the city. It’s more commonly known as the ‘Ghost Town’. This is somewhat surprising considering it’s inhabited by approximately 190,000 Palestinians, 850 settlers and 650 IDF soldiers.

The tour included the following itinerary;

• The Cave of the Patriarchs
• The grave of Baruch Goldstein in Kiryat Arba
• Shuhada Street
• The wholesale market
• The four neighborhoods of Jewish settlement in Hebron
• The Tel Rumeida neighborhood
• A visit to a Palestinian family in Tel Rumeida
• The new settler house on the ‘Path of the Worshippers’ (‘House of Peace’/’Contested House’/’Hot House’)

It was apparent from the beginning that the term ‘Ghost Town’ was applicable here. It felt like the old wild west just before a showdown, it was devoid of any activity and the only presence to be seen was that of the IDF which were providing us with protection for the day just incase the settlers decided be violent towards us.

Yehuda told our group about his experience during his time in the IDF but highlighted various reasons as to how and why Hebron is the way it is today. Hebron is the only Palestinian city in the West Bank with a Jewish settlement in its centre. For years, the army has implemented a policy of separation and discrimination between Israeli settlers and the Palestinian majority. Citing the protection of a few hundred settlers living in the heart of the city, the army severely restricts the movement of tens of thousands of Palestinian residents. These restrictions have led to destruction of the commercial centre and to mass abandonement of the area by its residents. Hundreds of shops have closed, thousands of people have been left without a livelihood, and many hundreds of families have been forced to leave their homes. The city centre has become a ghost town, where only Jews are allowed to move about freely.

They’ve managed to do this via a number of different techniques. One of those techniques is ‘Sterilisation’. This is the method of preventing Palestinians from using certain roads and routes around the city. To the point that if you live on the street or road you have to find an alternative method of transit. One of those roads in particular is that of Shuhada St. The occupants had their front doors welded shut whilst occupying the properties and then had to climb out of the windows and over the rooftops to get out. The locals applied for permits to use the road and this continued for 6 years before the government had realised they’d made a mistake. Two days later the ruling was overturned and re-instated.

Welcome to the home of Mohammad Hamed Abu Asiha in the heart of the Old City of Hebron. He has owned the land here for over fifty years but now, it is surrounded by illegal Israeli settlements, Beit Hadassah and Beit Romano and above that by an Israeli military base, wall-to-wall with their home. Steel bars surround the home, not only sliding down the windows, but all over the place, covering it from every side and corner, covering its doors, covering its external yard and topping its walls, making it look like a box, at first you might it is a big cage for birds, and maybe some animals, but if you look closer, you will find 15 members of Abu Aisha family living there, in their home, that was transformed into a prison due to illegal settlement activities, and extremist, fundamentalist Israeli settlers.
Reema Abu Asiha said that nobody is able to visit them, her parents, brothers, sisters, relatives, nobody is allowed to visit them; nobody can.

“When my sons and daughters got married, nobody was allowed to come, we had to move the wedding reception to the houses of their uncles”, Reema added, “Even when we need to fix our home, we have to apply for a special permit from the military, yet, we are not allowed to bring construction materials in”. “Heading home or leaving it requires a permit, a permit from an army that occupies the city, an army that is not there to protect, but to oppress you. This special permit is only required because they can’t climb out the windows, onto the rooftops and out of the back because there’s a military outpost there.

She continues, with tears flowing down her cheeks; her eyes glossing and her lips moving in pain, “I lost two fetuses in the past, one in 1988, when the ambulance could not enter the area, and I had to walk to hospital while in labor.

A year later I became pregnant again, twins this time, we filed all needed documents, coordinated with the Red Cross one month before my due date, yet, when I was in labor, my husband called the ambulance, but due to Israeli restrictions it took them more than two and a half hours to arrive, by then, my twins were dead”.

‘Sterilisation’ is the perfect term to illustrate this kind of behaviour towards the Palestinians still residing within Hebron.

One of the other tactics used is that of curfews. They were used predominantly during the Second Intifada (2000-2005). There were over 377 full days of curfew and over 500 of night curfews. The day curfews last just over a week, you’re then allowed out for a couple of hours to buy supplies then have to return back home. I can only draw a comparison to that of being in prison. Released for time in the yard dictated to by the prison guards.

The other main reason for the disintegration of this once bustling city full of people living harmoniously is that of settler violence. One of the things I found astounding about Hebron is that whilst the Palestinian populace is under ‘Military law’, the same can’t be said of the settlers, who fall under that of ‘Civilian law’. This is one of the clear distinctions for life in the West Bank for the Palestinians. If we look back to the Goldstein Massacre of 1994 in the Cave of Patriarchs, where he killed 29 people and injured another 125 we can find evidence of this distinction. Over 10 officers went on record and said that even if they were present when the massacre took place they would have been prevented from intervening due to their rules of engagement. They would have had to wait until his weapon had jammed or ran out of ammunition and then be taken down non-lethally. The level of protection granted to the settlers is clear for all to see compared to that of the indigenous population.

Would that same tolerance be shown towards someone of Palestinian origin? I will leave you to formulate your own conclusion on that.

Overlooking the city of Hebron from atop a hill is a military base. Yehuda tells us that the ‘Mission Statement’ of the base is inscribed on the wall on the inside. From one of the testimonials they’ve received from a soldier who served there, it reads as ‘To distrupt the day to day activities within the neighbourhood’.

As we closed in on the end of the tour we stopped at the Youth Against Settlements centre where we had the pleasure and equal disgust at hearing testimonies from a local family. Their accounts of violence at the hands of the settlers was difficult to listen too.

One of those accounts was from a young girl named Sundaz. Now 21 years old with the strength and determination of someone who’s overcome a lifetimes supply of adversity. At the time, she was 16 years old, her younger brother was 10. He was attacked by a settler and they were both arrested. She said she felt lucky for getting arrested because this was the first time that she had been able to travel down Suhada St in her life albeit in the back of a IDF vehicle.

BtSs overall message according to Yehuda is that “Military should be an instrument of defence and not of occupation, we aren’t pacifists, we just believe that every country should have the right to govern itself. What are our moral boundaries and what are our redlines? At what stage do we stop standing behind our military?”.

Something Yehuda had said to me about the occupation earlier had stuck in my mind. He said “It’s not about building 1000 houses, it’s about every single millimetre. The systematic procurement of land over time. That’s what this is about”. I find it extremely difficult to find a counter argument to his point. Regardless of the attempts of the IDF/Government to state otherwise, you can see this land fracturing over time and then occupied by settlers. I’ve tried to look at this situation as neutrally and un-biased as possibly but having spent time in the West Bank, it’s hard not to take sides.

I met a guy called Liam Grant on the bus journey back from Ramallah earlier this week. He’s a volunteer from Australia with a Swiss organisation called EAPPI. He’s been out here just over 2 and a half months where he’s been working in the West Bank, he’s coming towards the end of his 3 month program. Rather than try and capture the essence of what I’ve experienced this week, I’d rather finish this report with a poem he’s recently wrote about his time in Palestine.

Peace

For the Girl Who Has Never Seen the Ocean

Cumulus clouds expand and contract in the sky’s loom.
She stares them down. She stares them down and the mountains
They swoon before her innocence,
before her dark eyes that pierce and gleam like sun off a fetid pool.
She sits upon her throne, a school
now merely twisted lumps of metal and concrete,
a wound from the earth, a place to plant her feet
and watch valley walls rise to a sapphire roof.
What is this thing in the grown, that must own or despise the innocence of youth?
Destroy passion and compromise hope. These pour off kids like grace, like joy off of starlings
weaving between golden shafts of light. This dark, grown-up thing covers her sight,
covers here future in apathy and disillusion.

This fierce Bedouin, barefoot upon her school in ruin. In her valley
which has swallowed a thousand graves in its rich soil
who’s tents have seen a thousand births and caves that hold a thousand stories.
Her father tries to tell her some, but she has now only worries of what her life
And her children’s lives will become.
But late at night, as she lies curled on her mat, between mother and sisters
The wind whispers through the tent flaps, the smell of ocean on its tail
She dreams of climbing these valley walls, like her father and uncle used to.
She dreams white sails of distant ships skimming upon the sea she has never seen
She hears the foam capped waves whip the rocky shoreline
as gulls wheel and spin and dive dissolute into the murky brine.

This chaos makes sense.
This uncontrollable thing, so deep and dense,
Smothers many lives under its surface, but nurtures many more.
It cannot be tamed, not even by the shore that holds it.
The ideologies of the grown own, occupy and oppress. They devour the girl’s youth.
They bind her to these valley walls. But truth, like the ocean cannot be bound,
only found in chaos and ever-shifting waters.
And justice, like water, always flows downwards.
Finding the lowest places to lay – and oh, this valley lays low.
Sitting in the unjust low, the still-point of the broken world, she waits
with the patience of the oppressed. The chaos of wild things
churning in her chest, burning in her fierce eyes
This girl, who has never seen the ocean.

Daniel Lenham served in the Royal Air Force, he is now a member of Veterans For Peace UK.

This article by Ian Cobain appeared first in The Guardian

Wednesday 4 March 2015

With handshakes, smiles and four civil words, a small group of men came together in Northern Ireland last month in an attempt to overcome a formidable barrier that remains long after the decades of conflict came to an end.

“Do you take milk?” asked one. And with the tea dispensed, four former members of the British army and four former members of the Irish Republican Army commenced a meeting that was intended to start a process of reconciliation among men who had once been the most implacable of enemies.

In an encounter that was both undramatic but remarkable nonetheless, the men talked about the reasons they had taken up arms, the consequences of their decisions and their hopes of making a contribution to a lasting peace.

It was an all-too rare meeting: while ex-members of the IRA have met former police officers and prison officers as part of the peace process, and former republican and loyalist paramilitaries have reached out to each other over the divide, ex-members of the IRA and the British military have rarely encountered each other since the 1998 Good Friday agreement brought to an end 30 years of violence that had claimed more than 3,700 lives.

The Guardian has agreed not to identify the former IRA members or the location of the meeting it was invited to witness, other than to say that it happened in Derry. This was the city of Bloody Sunday, and the republicans who took part would face severe criticism from some local people – including dissident republicans – for agreeing to take tea with former British soldiers.

For their part, some of the former soldiers were clearly apprehensive when travelling to republican strongholds. For some, it was the first time they had visited such areas since leaving the army.

Both sides agreed that such face-to-face encounters remained an important part of a peace process that is ongoing; that it was important that they should “rehumanise” the people who had once been their enemies.

“It was never personal: we were always targeting the man in the uniform, in order to send a message to Whitehall,” said one of the former IRA men.

This man had been in Derry when members of the Parachute Regiment shot 26 unarmed demonstrators on Bloody Sunday in January 1972, killing 14 men and boys, yet insisted that he bore no animosity towards individual soldiers, “even the ones who I saw carrying out atrocities”.

He said: “It’s very important that we should do this. We should try to learn from what happened here, in order to help to promote peace in the future.”

Another added: “Sometimes it is important to walk in someone else’s shoes for understanding in order to bring about reconciliation.

“I feel lessons can be learned from the past conflict here in Ireland, by talking and engaging in an open and honest way, lessons which could be useful in other parts of the world.

“We made mistakes in dealing with conflict. These mistakes should now never be repeated anywhere in the world: that’s why I welcome this engagement between former enemies.”

Sometimes it is important to walk in someone else’s shoes for understanding to bring about reconciliation

The meeting was one of a series organised by Veterans For Peace UK, the British branch of a US anti-war organisation for former members of the military, and Coiste na n-Iarchimí, a Belfast-based support group for republican ex-prisoners.

In some senses, the eight men had a great deal in common: all were white working-class men in their 40s and 50s with experience being in a disciplined organisation, handling weapons, and of conflict.

But the differences were also clear. While the former British soldiers are now anti-war, with regrets about the way in which they performed some of their duties in Northern Ireland – harassing some civilians, for example, or failing to understand how intimidating their presence could be when they were on patrol in nationalist areas – all but one of the former IRA men insisted they had no regrets about anything they had done.

There were differences, too, in the way in which they become involved in the conflict. None of the former soldiers had joined up in order to serve in Northern Ireland. Ben Griffin, who served for eight years in the Parachute Regiment and the Special Air Service, described himself as having been an “an ideological recruit” to the army. “I thought it was the finest institution in the world.”

Lee Lavis said he joined the Staffordshire Regiment after leaving school as “an economic recruit” because the nearby coal mines had closed down and the local brewing industry was being mechanised.

Kieran Devlin, who grew up in a Unionist area of Northern Ireland, joined the Royal Engineers after his father, an Englishman and former soldier, persuaded him that he would have a great time. He left the army after serving in the Gulf war in 1991 and a period of heavy drinking, imprisonment and involvement in far-right politics followed.

Michael Pike joined the Scots Guards at 20 to escape a life of drug-taking and petty crime. “It was either the heroin or the army. The British army saved me.”

The accounts of the former IRA men, on the other hand, suggested that none saw himself as having gone to war; rather, they believe the war came to them. Each spoke about having witnessed Bloody Sunday, or the fighting between nationalists and the police in the summer of 1969 that is known as the Battle of the Bogside.

One said simply that he first joined the youth wing of the IRA in the early 70s, “and when you were 16 you went into the army”. His former comrades all nodded. All four had spent time in jail – although they spoke not of being arrested, but of being “captured during an operation” – and are now involved with a local ex-prisoners’ support group, Tar Abhaile. Two of the four men served very long sentences.

After talking for about two hours, the eight men who met in Derry agreed that they should meet again and continue to tell their stories in an attempt to build a more trusting relationship.

As well as meeting former IRA men in Derry, the former soldiers met others in Belfast and South Armagh last month as well as other members of the nationalist community in Northern Ireland.

The purpose of the trip, Griffin said, was to “reach out to people to try and gain some understanding of what led them to join the IRA and participate in armed conflict”, while helping former members of the IRA to understand why young men had joined the British army, and how they came to be in Northern Ireland.

Their story is not much different from our story as soldiers. The key to reconciliation is listening

Kieran Devlin“I think it’s important for enemies and communities that see each other as enemies to come together and try and humanise each other, to meet the real person, rather than seeing them as ‘the other’.”

Griffin said he believed that learning why people joined the IRA could lead to a greater understanding of the reason people have resisted the western military in places such as Iraq and Afghanistan. “It might help us to understand current conflicts and also to challenge our governments on those current conflicts.”

Lavis, who settled in Belfast after leaving the army, and made the initial contact with former members of the IRA, said he was keen to promote understanding, rather than judgement. “I’m not interested in sack cloth and ashes.”

Devlin said he had been fearful of travelling to republican areas of Northern Ireland, and has since faced criticism from unionist neighbours, some condemning him as a traitor.

“There was an element of fear there and, I have to be honest, a bit of mistrust,” he said. “I had never met a republican before except when I was on operational duties with the army, which is quite shocking really.

“I was taken aback by their hospitality and, for want of a better word, their normality, and they weren’t aggressive to me. They had a good point to make which was easily understood once I sat and listened: why they were involved in the armed conflict.

“Initially, I didn’t tell them very much. I was guarded. But it didn’t take long to come around. Their story is not really much different from our story as soldiers. I think the key to the reconciliation process is listening.”

Séanna Walsh, a former IRA prisoner who helped to organise the meetings, said: “I think all engagement is very useful and important. People can get an understanding … you can see beyond the uniforms and the rifles and helmets and the armoured cars, and you can see the real people.

“It’s important to listen to their stories, to get an understanding of what they were actually going through and also the effect that the conflict has had upon them.”

Through such contacts, Walsh believes, it is possible to build relationships with former enemies. Moreover, he said, people who were involved in the conflict “have a responsibility to attempt to rebuild society, to ensure that our children’s future is not our past”.

This report explains why the British Armed Forces Learning Resource (published in September 2014 by the Prime Minister’s Office) is a poor quality educational resource, and exposes the resource as a politically-driven attempt to promote recruitment into the armed forces and “military values” in schools.

The document is framed as a History, English and Citizenship resource for children and teenagers from as young as 5 years old. Endorsed and promoted to all schools by the Department for Education, its stated aim is to ‘to educate children about the work of the UK armed forces’.

The critique includes responses from a number of educationalists worried about Government and the armed forces producing materials for schools inappropriate for use in education. Don Rowe, Citizenship Education consultant and former Director of Curriculum Resources at the Citizenship Foundation, stated that the Resource is ‘demonstrably biased’ and has called for its withdrawal. He says;

Culturally, this is the kind of resource one gets in countries with less-than-democratic structures where civic education is used by governments to manipulate citizens into an uncritical attitude towards the state. In the UK we used to have a system of education which was ‘at one remove’ from the government and one of the reasons for this was precisely to prevent the possibility of authoritarianism through control of the education system.

The critique also accuses the government of overblown rhetoric to promote the military in classrooms, glorifying “military values” and sanitising war. Michael Fallon, Secretary of State for Defence, claims in the Resource that, ‘The military ethos is a golden thread that can be an example of what is best about our nation and helps it improve everything it touches.’

The report concludes that the educational and ethical concerns strongly indicate that:

The ‘British Armed Forces: Learning Resource 2014’ should not be used in schools as a learning resource, or should only be used in conjunction with alternative materials, and it should not be promoted as a learning resource by third parties.

Furthermore, we consider that the document amounts to political interference in children’s education. The Department of Education is failing in its legal duty, under the Education Act of 1996, to safeguard children from the promotion of partisan political views within schools and to offer a balanced presentation of opposing views; local authorities that promote the resource, and schools that use it as it stands without presenting alternative viewpoints, would be doing the same.

Key concerns:

• The resource was initiated by the Office of the Prime Minister and has key sections written by government ministers including the Prime Minister. Other sections are written by current or former high-ranking military personnel. Its content is politically-driven, seeking to generate public acceptance of government policy and the use of military intervention, and it presents personal and political opinions as fact.
• It is poorly conceived as a tool for learning. For example, the language it uses and the complexity of the subject matter make it unsuitable for many of those it is aimed at. Many of the questions that it asks are introduced in a leading way and the material that would be required to explore them fully is not provided.
• The resource makes a one-sided case for the existence of the armed forces and the arms industry and provides no room for debate on alternatives to armed conflict. It presents a sanitised view of war and glorifies “military values”.The resource includes material that promotes recruitment to the armed forces and champions the government policy of promoting military-led activities in schools.
• It presents a partial and uncritical history of British involvement in war, ignoring debate over the morality and legacy of such conflicts.

Download the report A critical response to ‘The British Armed Forces: Learning Resource 2014’. 

Read the press release: Government accused of military propaganda in the classroom

The British Armed Forces Learning Resource 2014 can be viewed in full here.

Tom Paxton was born in Chicago in1937. After a six months stint in the US Army reserves, when he started to write songs using his army typewriter, he became a regular in New York’s Greenwich Village music scene in the early 60s. His music career has spanned 55 years and a huge range of artists including Bob Dylan, Harry Belafonte, Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson and Pete Seeger have recorded his songs.

Seeger said about his friend: ‘Tom’s songs have a way of sneaking up on you. You find yourself humming them, whistling them, and singing a verse to a friend. Like the songs of Woody Guthrie, they’re becoming part of America.’
When Seeger died early last year, Paxton sang and dedicated one of his early songs, Peace Will Come, to the memory of his friend, and folk singer and peace activist, Pete Seeger.

Peace Will Come

Peace
Peace will
Peace will come
And let it begin with me
We
We need
We need peace
And let it begin with me
Oh, my own life is all I can hope to control.
Oh, let my life be lived for the good,
Good of my soul.
Let it bring peace
Sweet peace
Peace will come
And let it begin with me

Paxton said the song was: ‘Written while on tour with Mary Hopkin in Australia/New Zealand in the 70s. … I had been noodling the guitar riff for a few weeks when suddenly, in the cab ride from the airport to the hotel in Dunedin, N.Z., I wrote out the lyric. When we reached the hotel and I was able to get out the guitar I realized that the riff was not to be the tune, but the accompaniment, so I wrote another tune to carry the lyric – and it worked. [Notes ‘The Very Best of Tom Paxton’]

One of the Tom Paxton songs that Pete Seeger regularly sang was What Did You Learn in School Today, which mocks the way school children are often told lies, or selected versions of events – especially about wars and conflicts. This version was recorded in black and white, because Seeger was singing the song in 1964 – yet the content could easily relate to the present-day.

Veterans For Peace UK have a number of veterans who are able to visit schools and universities. The focus of the visits is to give an insight into military life and the true nature of warfare. We are able to give workshops, assemblies and presentations to pupils, students, teachers and parents. We are in the process of expanding this program to enable more veterans to visit more schools. For more information and to book a visit email veteransforpeaceuk@gmail.com

When the First World War – a conflict over trade, territory and empire between Europe’s strongest nations – broke out, Ireland was a united country, but ruled by Britain as a part of the United Kingdom. At this time there were some 70,000 Irish soldiers serving in the British Army. At Westminster, the Liberal Government put their Home Rule bill for Ireland in abeyance, as the establishment concentrated all their efforts on the war with Germany. Desperate to increase their armed forces with Irish recruits they sent separate promises to the two different sections of the Irish population.

Unionists in the north were urged to fight by Sir Edward Carson, telling them it would help stop Home Rule – and the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) was incorporated into the British Army as the 36th Ulster Division. Elsewhere in Ireland Nationalists were persuaded to fight by the leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party at Westminster, John Redmond, who told them this could guarantee Home Rule.

Recruitment posters in Ireland were cynically tailored for each community. George Gilmore, who was a protestant republican and socialist activist, told how he had seen in Belfast a recruiting poster which said ‘Fight Catholic Austria’. He carefully removed it, then took it to Dublin where he pasted it up again, next to another recruitment poster which said ‘Save Catholic Belgium.’

Across Ireland about 150,000 men enlisted in the British Army, to join the other Irish soldiers already serving – some 35,000 were destined never to return. By the end of 1915, the 10th and 16th Irish Divisions and the 36th Ulster Division had joined other British Army units in the conflict. Many were to die in the great battles, like the Somme or at Gallipoli.

The Freikorps

At the end of the First World War, Europe was full of demobbed veterans who had served at the front and many of these men were left traumatised and brutalised by their experiences. In London in 1922, on the anniversary of Armistice Day, 25,000 unemployed First World War veterans marched past the Cenotaph in remembrance of the dead. To protest about their own plight, many pinned pawn tickets beside their medals. Ex-soldier George Coppard recalled: ‘Lloyd George and company had been full of big talk about making the country fit for heroes to live in, but it was just so much hot air. No practical steps were taken to rehabilitate the broad mass of de-mobbed men.’

Because the politicians’ promises to the fighting men had not materialised, the veterans were left to cope on their own. As Coppard explained: ‘I joined the queues for jobs as messengers, window cleaners and scullions … Single men picked up twenty-nine shillings per week unemployment pay as a special concession, but there was no jobs for the “heroes” who haunted the billiard halls as I did. The government never kept their promises.’

In Germany, some similar disillusioned veterans were recruited into the anti-revolutionary Freikorps (Free Corps):
‘There was no doubt a ruthlessness, a feeling of desperation, about some of these men who were unable to formulate effective political goals and who rightly or wrongly thought themselves abandoned by the nation whose cause they championed. The suppression of revolution in Berlin or Munich was accompanied by brutal murders, and such murders continued even after the Free Corps had been disbanded, most often committed by former members of the corps. … The 324 political assassinations committed by the political Right between 1919 and 1923 (as against twenty-two committed by the extreme Left) were, for the most part, executed by former soldiers at the command of their one-time officers…’
[Fallen Soldiers – Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars, by George L Mosse, Oxford University Press 1990].

These veteran ‘new men’ saw themselves as continuing the comradeship established among the fighting men at the front. It was mainly their former officers, who now used these veterans to help crush the political Left, who had recruited them into the Freikorps. One member, Ernst von Salomon, wrote that: ‘We were cut off from the world of bourgeois norms … the bonds were broken and we were freed … We were a band of fighters drunk with all the passion of the world; full of lust, exultant in action.’

After a failed uprising in Berlin, revolutionary leaders Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg were tracked down and captured by the Freikorps. They were taken to the headquarters of the Cavalry Guards Division, and then murdered by some of the officers. Many Freikorps members later became the shock troops for the Nazi Party, which was led by an ex-corporal veteran of the First World War – Adolf Hitler.

War in Ireland

In 1916, British Army firing squads had been busy in Ireland after frustrated Nationalists in Dublin had rebelled against British rule. Martial law was declared, the Easter Rising was crushed and military courts-martial sentenced 15 of the leaders, including Pearse and Connolly, to be shot. Many of the other prisoners were deported to Britain and confined in special prison camps.

After 1918, in India and Ireland, the mass of the population had become increasingly hostile to British rule. [For details of India see The First World War and the Amritsar Massacre at: http://veteransforpeace.org.uk/2014/amritsar-massacre/%5D
After the end of the First World War, there was a general election in Britain and Ireland. The Sinn Féin party won by a landslide in Ireland and started to set up a republican administration. This was banned by the British and many of the new Sinn Féin MPs were arrested and jailed.

The Irish Republican Army (IRA) then began a campaign of armed resistance. Republicans, however, knew they could not defeat Britain’s forces in battle – but set out to make the country un-governable instead. Michael Collins, using information from a network of agents inside the colonial administration, directed a ruthless and highly efficient campaign of guerrilla warfare – that proved difficult for the British forces to defeat.

As the conflict attracted international attention Britain realised that it was in danger of losing the propaganda battle, especially after the ‘Great War’ in which they had claimed to fight for ‘the rights of small nations.’ So, Britain refused to recognise the conflict as a war and, in an attempt to criminalise the freedom struggle, the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) was increasingly used as the front-line force – with British soldiers, except in areas of high IRA activity, kept in the background.

The Irish Constabulary had been initiated by Sir Robert Peel in the early part of the 19th century and in 1867 Queen Victoria had granted that the prefix ‘Royal’ be added to the name in recognition of the part the force had played in suppressing the Fenian movement. The RIC were recruited from areas outside of the populace they patrolled and they had more than double the numbers of personnel, for the density of population, than any police force in England. Operating from fortifications and under strict central control, the RIC were an armed coercive force furnishing the public face of colonial authority – and they were the prototype for the militia style of police used throughout the Empire:

‘The RIC was from its outset to be controlled by Irish Protestants. It was responsible to the Irish authorities in Dublin who were Protestants or Anglo-Irish. Presumed to be the RIC’s chief challengers were Irish nationalists – mostly (though eventually not exclusively) Catholic – that is, not criminals but political militants. By making control of Irish nationalism a police rather than a military affair, officials in Dublin and London could relegate the nationalists to the category of mere ‘bandits’. The challenge to state security could thus be understated. The use of “bandits” to describe insurgents so long as they were a matter for the police, became conventional in many British colonies which adopted the RIC model…’
[Ethnic Soldiers, by Cynthia H Enloe, Penguin Books 1980].

In Ireland non-cooperation, coupled with small acts of sabotage, took place on a daily basis. Ireland became an armed camp and Dublin and other cities were patrolled by troops with fixed bayonets. Many of the soldiers had fought in the ‘Great War’ and some said that service in Ireland caused greater stress than life in the trenches. But within the RIC there were signs of even greater strain, both from moral pressure and the armed IRA attacks, which had caused heavy police casualties – 400 RIC men had been killed by the end of 1921, compared to 160 soldiers.

The Black and Tans

The British Government then decided to augment the RIC with units of more ruthless men. So, like with the Freikorps in Germany, many British unemployed veterans were recruited by their establishment and were then trained and sent to Ireland in an attempt to crush Irish nationalists. Ex-officers joined an elite force called the Auxiliaries, while ex-rank and file soldiers, desperate for work and adventure, were signed-up and sent to Ireland as the Black and Tans.

In his book Out of the Lion’s Paw Constantine Fitzgibbon described this infamous unit: ‘The Black and Tans derived their nickname from the hounds of the Limerick hunt which are that colour: they were dressed in uniform, some wearing the black jackets of the RIC over the khaki trousers of the British soldier, others vice versa. This sartorial inelegance was symptomatic of the whole corps which was neither a military force – it was not subject to army discipline – nor a police force in any meaningful sense.’ Fitzgibbon continued:

‘All over Europe, in 1920, there were young men who had gone straight from school into the trenches and who knew no life save that of soldiers. This pathetic human debris from a most terrible war provided the men who marched on Rome with Mussolini, fought on the German frontiers with the Freikorps and later became the nucleus of the Nazi Party, served on both sides in the Russian Civil War. In Britain some of them joined the Black and Tans, created to supplement the dwindling forces of the RIC, while a number of their officers joined a somewhat more formidable force, the Auxiliaries, intended to terrorise more selectively and effectively.’
[Out of the Lion’s Paw – Ireland wins her Freedom, by Constantine Fitzgibbon, Macdonald and Co Ltd 1969].

The Auxiliaries and the Black and Tans, once recruited and trained, were shipped to Ireland and billeted in RIC barracks – to provide a cutting-edge for repressive operations. The RIC Divisional Commissioner for Munster, Gerald Bryce Ferguson Smyth, called his men to a meeting at the Listowel police barracks and told them that the British Government had instructed him to implement a new policy, which he enthusiastically outlined:

• I am getting 7,000 police from England.
• If a police barracks is burned, the best house in the locality is to be commandeered.
• The police are to lie in ambush and to shoot suspects.
• The more you shoot the better I will like you … No policeman will get into trouble for shooting any man.
• Hunger strikers will be allowed to die in jail – the more the merrier.
• We want your assistance in carrying out this scheme and wiping out Sinn Féin.

Some policemen were against the presence of the Black and Tans and this new aggressive policy. About 500 RIC men tendered their resignations and some walked out after incidents in their barracks. Daniel Francis Crowley, who served in the RIC from 1914 to 1920, explained what happened at the Listowel barracks after Commissioner Smyth had given his men their new orders:
‘Sergeant Sullivan spoke immediately and said that they could tell Colonel Smyth must be an Englishman by his talk, and that they would not obey such orders; and he took off his coat and cap and belt and laid them on the table. Colonel Smyth and the Inspector, O’Shea, ordered him to be arrested for causing dissatisfaction in the force, but nineteen of them stood up and said if a man touched him, the room would run red with blood. The soldiers whom Colonel Smyth had with him came in, but the constables got their loaded rifles off the racks, and Colonel Smyth and the soldiers went back to Cork. The very next day they [the RIC men] all put on civilian clothes and left the barracks.’
[The Irish Police by Séamus Breathnact, Anvil Books 1974].

Many of those resigning were intimidated, threatened and some were even whipped by the Black and Tans. Crowley, who resigned ‘because of the misgovernment of the English in Ireland’, fled the country under Black and Tan threats after his friend Constable Fahey was shot by them. Despite the disaffection within the RIC the ‘new policy’ was quickly put into operation and aggressive actions were launched against the Irish people, and ‘martial law’ declared in areas, thought to be sympathetic to the IRA and Sinn Féin:

‘Perhaps the biggest single act of vandalism committed in Ireland by British forces, including the police, took place on 11-12 December 1920, when Cork city’s centre was sacked and burned … Cork, of course, was only one of many areas to suffer under the policies which motivated police and military excesses. Florence O’Donoghue noted that in ‘one month these “forces of law and order” had burned and partially destroyed twenty-four towns; in one week they had shot up and sacked Balbriggan, Ennistymon, Mallow, Miltown-Malbay, Lahinch and Trim…’
[The Irish Police by Séamus Breathnact, Anvil Books 1974].

The Connaught Rangers Mutiny

In India in 1920, the 1st Battalion of the Connaught Rangers were serving at Wellington Barracks at Jullundur in the Punjab. Most men of this Irish regiment of the British Army were First World War veterans and some became disturbed by accounts of the Anglo / Irish conflict back home. The activities of the Black and Tans and Auxiliaries, reported by family and friends, were especially resented. These feelings came to a head when a number of the troops refused to ‘soldier on’ till the Black and Tans were removed from Ireland.

The colonel called a parade and made an emotional appeal to the mutineers, recounting the many battle honours won by the regiment, who were nicknamed the ‘Devil’s Own.’ At the end of his speech Private Joseph Hawes stepped forward and spoke: ‘All the honours on the Colours of the Connaught Rangers are for England. There is none for Ireland, but there is going to be one today, and it will be the greatest honour of all.’

It was just over a year since the Amritsar massacre and some of the men were sympathetic to the Indian independence movement. They felt that they were being used to do in India what other British forces were doing in Ireland. To ensure that their protest would be noticed, the men took control of their barracks. Some wore Sinn Féin rosettes on their army uniforms and the Union Jack was lowered and an Irish tricolour, made from cloth some soldiers had purchased from the local bazaar, was flown instead. The first time the flag of the Irish Republic had been raised abroad.

The Connaught Rangers’ mutiny was put down when the men were surrounded by other army units, arrested and then court-martialled. During
the trial Sergeant Woods from England, who had joined in with the men, was asked why events in Ireland should have affected him. Woods, who had won the DCM in France, replied, ‘These boys fought for England with me, and I was ready to fight for Ireland with them.’

Sixty-one men were convicted of mutiny and fourteen were sentenced to death – only one was executed, however. On 2nd November 1920, 22 year-old Private James Daly, who had led an unsuccessful assault on the armoury at Solon in which two of his comrades had been killed, was shot by an army firing squad. The sixty other soldiers received long terms of penal servitude. Some were savagely beaten by NCOs of the Military Provost Staff Corps while in military prison in India. Then, handcuffed and in leg-irons, they were sent by train to the coast, to await a ship to England where they were expected to complete their sentences. As they boarded a troopship: ‘A curious crowd of both Indians and Europeans watched their embarkation from the quay side, and to these, the men of The Rangers addressed ironic shouts of “Freedom for small nations?” and “See what you get for fighting for England”!’
[Mutiny for the Cause, by Sam Pollock, Leo Cooper Ltd 1969].

For the British authorities, the policy of using the Black and Tans and Auxiliaries was killing two birds with one stone. On the one hand it rid British society of a possible source of trouble – disaffected veterans – and on the other, pitched them into direct conflict with another more pressing problem – the rebellious Irish. Their aggressive actions in Ireland, however, had greatly increased IRA support, rather than lessoning it. In the end these units were pulled out of Ireland in ignominy as the war ended in stalemate and compromise.

Britain was forced to withdraw from most of Ireland, but held on to six of the nine counties of Ulster – by partitioning Ireland and creating Northern Ireland. In which, after 1969, several new decades of ‘The Troubles’ were to reoccur. The use of the Auxiliaries and the Black and Tans in Ireland was an early example, in the modern age, of an imperial powers using special units, outside of the usual command structure, in an attempt to intimidate a population. Foolishly, rather than learn the lesson from Ireland – that oppression often breeds resistance – this practice, of using special units to carry out state terrorism, would be used more and more in future conflicts.

In June 1922, the Connaught Rangers and three other Irish British Army regiments, recruited from areas that were now part of the new Irish Free State, were disbanded. The mutineers were released from jail a year later.
Joseph Hawes, a Connaught Rangers veteran, who was one of those imprisoned for mutiny, had witnessed the actions of the Black and Tans in Ireland. He later said:
‘When I joined the British Army in 1914, they told us we were going out to fight for the liberation of small nations. But when the war was over, and I went home to Ireland, I found that, so far as one small nation was concerned – my own – these were just words.’

VETERANS FOR PEACE UK ANNUAL CONFERENCE

Saturday 18 April 2015

1000 to 1700 hrs

The Small Hall
Friends House
Euston
London

Outline for the day;

1000 to 1300hrs – VFP UK Annual Meeting

1000 – Business Meeting

1100 – Schools Workshop

1200 – Armed Forces Day Workshop

1300 to 1700hrs – Public Event – Veterans For Peace in N Ireland

1330 – A Different Kind of Tour – Film by Reel News

1430 – Panel Discussion + Q&A featuring former IRA Volunteers and Veterans For Peace:

Pat Magee was arrested and convicted of planting the 1984 bomb at the Grand Hotel Brighton. Since his release following ratification of the Good Friday Agreement  Pat has worked nationally and internationally on conflict resolution projects that aim ‘to break down differences’ through ‘engagement’. This has included numerous public interactions with Jo Berry whose father was killed in the Grand Hotel.

Séanna Walsh read the statement on July 28th 2005 which ended the IRAs armed campaign. During that campaign Seanna spent 21 years in prison. This included the period of the ‘Blanket Protest’ and 1981 Hunger Strike. He later played a vital role in the 1998 Good Friday Agreement negotiations and now works as the Coiste legacy and engagement officer.

Lee Lavis was an infantry soldier in the British Army. He completed 2 operational tours of Northern Ireland during the early 1990s. After leaving the army he settled in Belfast from where he now volunteers alongside former opposing combatants as part of school, youth and community projects that seek to address the reality and legacy of conflict.

Kieran Devlin was born and raised in Northern Ireland and joined the Royal Engineers straight from school. He served in Iraq during the first Gulf War and later in NI as part of a construction squadron based in Antrim. He left the Army in 1993 and now resides in North Down with his family and is heavily involved in community work.

1600 – 1700 Time for end of conference discussions and networking as we pack up.

Stalls – VFP, Reelnews, Darren Cullen,

Rail – Euston

Tube – Euston

Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/events/1566880983559926/

As events and commemorations continue to mark the centenary of the First World War, it’s often hard to keep track of them all. Some are tasteful, others perhaps less so but a lot of what passes as memorial is down to personal taste. I think that a more pertinent reminder of the horror of war would be images of the dead of that conflict, beamed onto public buildings such as the Houses of Parliament.

Or perhaps that awful blue cockerel currently residing on the fourth plinth on Trafalgar Square, could be replaced with a statue of a paraplegic squaddie – or mourning mother, to illustrate a more fitting reminder of war’s effects. Or a wider exhibit of those haunting Henry Tonks’ works, depicting the disfigurement of WW1 veterans, cheek and jaw bones torn apart, leaving only caverns of isolation.

But any such efforts would undoubtedly become blasé. After an initial shock, those images would be normalised. Just as photos of war from Syria, Iraq and Ukraine now share space on social media with Miley Cyrus and Kim Kardashian, so those scenes of horror become completely standard. And after all, it’s nothing the public haven’t seen in films or computer games.

However, a break from timelines and Facebook nonsense is needed so that as many people may see a musical that premiered in the 1960s and provides an insight into how great British satire once was. “Oh What A Lovely War!” is currently touring theatres across the country and in a production of boundless energy and dynamism, the Joan Littlewood musical is a welcome excursion from not only our phones, but also the sentimental and hackneyed version that so much war drama often throws up.

It mixes revelry with the shocking – just as a saucy dance hall act entices men to join up, with the underlying promise of a good fuck as recompense, so statistics pound away at our minds. “800,000 Germans starve to death as a result of British blockade”, “60,000 British dead in three hours at the Somme”.

As the audience applauds a song, another grip statistic captures our eyeballs. This is in turn a wise tool but also discomforting, placing the audience into conflicting emotions and genuinely challenging all notions that may provide comfort.

Those profiteers of war are derided as callous goons; bemoaning any likelihood of a ceasefire while making patriotic parrot cries. Whilst grouse shooting they fire into the skies at defenceless birds as the armaments they make and sell maim, kill and blind the poor lads at the Front.

Special ire is reserved for the loathsome Field Marshall Haig, who, delusional enough to believe he was being guided by divine assistance, sends division after division into the paths of German machine gunners. The world he inhabited with his fellow high-ranking officers, full of pomposity and lacking all charm and wisdom, is brilliantly shown as a self-serving clique, with only personal gain being their overriding interest.

The casts’ performances are dextrous, intelligent and authentic while the production moves seamlessly from 101 different settings with absolutely no harm done to its seamless trajectory.

Pulling no punches and never attempting to dilute its overall message of the grotesqueness of war, it’s a fitting tribute to those who never came home from the war that was meant to end all wars.

Thomas Paul served in N Ireland with The Anglian Regiment he is now a member of Veterans For Peace UK

‘Veterans For Peace UK’ will be at the ‘Wrap up Trident’ demonstration at Westminster this Saturday, January 24th. The mass rally is being organised by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and Action AWE, who plan to surround Parliament and the Ministry of Defence, with thousands of demonstrators from all backgrounds, to demand an end to the wasteful obscenity of Britain’s so called nuclear deterrent.

The fast growing ex-service Peace group, which includes men and women who have served in almost every theatre of war since World War 2, will meet at 11.30 outside the Ministry of Defence in Horseguards Avenue. Former SAS soldier and Veterans For Peace UK Coordinator Ben Griffin will be speaking at the demo. D-Day Veteran Jim Radford, said “Getting rid of the wasteful obscenity of Trident is our top priority in the run up to the General election. Most members of Veterans for Peace, have witnessed the cruelty and injustice of conventional conflict, that is why they have joined the Peace movement! It is abundantly clear to everyone and especially to our military commanders, that Nuclear weapons do not deter terrorists or protect us from any of the threats we currently face. No sane and decent human being can rationally support or condone the use of nuclear weapons in any circumstances. In the run up to the General Election we will make it clear to every MP and every candidate, that we will not support or vote for anyone who supports the renewal or retention of Trident Nuclear Weapons.”

ENDS

For further comment email;

veteransforpeaceuk@gmail.com

For further information about Veterans for Peace;

veteransforpeace.org.uk
veteransforpeaceuk@gmail.com
07866559312

Serving the crown is a concept familiar both to convicts and soldiers. The former, for their sins, serve time at Her Majesty’s Pleasure; the latter put their lives on the line in the defence of others. For some former armed forces members, the future on civvy street can be as bleak, if not more so, than for those leaving prison. For former servicemen, especially those who have seen combat, the gunfire may have long since ceased but, out on the streets, their battle is only just beginning. According to a recent ForcesWatch study, post-traumatic stress disorder and alcohol misuse are three times as common among Iraq and Afghanistan veterans than in the general population, while other mental disorders – such as depression – are 90 per cent higher.

The question of how to respond to the horrors wrought by modern conflict is one that a former SAS trooper, Ben Griffin, has been grappling with ever since he left the military in 2005.

After a childhood defined by Commando comics and the Army Cadets, Griffin joined the Parachute Regiment, aged 19. “I went into the military as an ideological recruit,” he recalls. “A true believer… I saw going to war and being a British soldier as the highest ideal one could achieve.”

Throughout most of his career – he served in Northern Ireland, Macedonia and Afghanistan – he saw little to contradict this. It was only when he was deployed to Iraq, having survived the elite SAS’s gruelling selection process, that his faith in the military began to be seriously challenged.

As part of a Special Forces snatch squad tasked with picking up suspected insurgents and handing them over to the Americans, he began to worry about the legality of the war and the missions he was sent on.

After eight years of exemplary service, Griffin hung up his boots. He risked court martial doing so but, as he revealed shortly before he was silenced on the subject by a High Court injunction, he could no longer bring himself to carry out missions which were making Britain complicit in acts of “brutal interrogation” and “torture”.

Like many other veterans, Griffin – who is now more happily employed in the ambulance service – has suffered the afterburn of the battlefield. Although he doesn’t find the term “post-traumatic stress disorder” useful, referring to its symptoms instead as a “natural human reaction” to the horrors of war, he has his demons. But rather than allow himself to be consumed by them, he has harnessed them.

With the help of Veterans for Peace UK, Griffin has been turning his SAS-honed tactical skills to the task of educating the public about the true nature of war. With 142 veterans, whose experiences of conflict range from D-Day to Iraq and Afghanistan, standing alongside him, his organisation’s perspective crosses continents and spans decades. This unique insight has left Griffin with few doubts about some of the costs of military service.

“Just being in a system where you’ve got hierarchy, peer pressure and a set of values completely at odds with the rest of society – it’s psychologically difficult both to enter and to leave. Just as it’s psychologically difficult to enter and leave prison.

“Add the chaos, the irrationality and the immorality of warfare on top, and people are going to be affected by what’s happened.

“You can do or witness terrible things in the military and they can almost be laughed off – they often are – but when a soldier leaves the military the hierarchy is instantly removed. And, over time, the peer pressure and the indoctrination start to drop away too. Then you start to look back on the things that you were involved in with different eyes.

“I’ve often thought since I got back from Iraq about the effect we had on the people we came into contact with. And not just the men that we dragged off to prison, but the younger boys who would have been there watching us, who would have been watching their family members being brutalised and dragged out – and maybe never saw them again, or didn’t see them for months or years.”

In 2008, he said: “I have no doubt that non-combatants I personally detained were handed over to the Americans and subsequently tortured. The information I have released is the tip of the iceberg.”

At the time, within 24 hours the Ministry of Defence served him with a permanent injunction, banning him from revealing any more. “I’ve often wondered how many of the people we traumatised went on to join Isis,” he muses.

This cycle of political and psychological violence, with its repercussions for both the British soldier and the communities he is deployed against, is one Griffin is determined to break. The nation’s classrooms are a key battleground in this fight for peace.

“Ask a child what it’s like to be in a war,” says Griffin, “and they’ll tell you what it’s like to be a soldier in a war. ‘You might see your friend be killed.’ ‘You might be killed.’ ‘You might have to kill someone.’ But none of the kids in the workshops I run ever – or at least very rarely – answer the question as if they were a civilian in a war, or think about what it might be like to have their country invaded. Our children are definitely thinking about warfare in terms of what it would be like to be in the military.

“One of the purposes of our workshops is to get children to think about what it might be like to be on the end of British or American military power, to take them out of that zone where they’re thinking purely in terms of our own military and think about what it must be like to be on the end of that. And that’s what we are trying to achieve – to get people to think outside of nationalistic terms.

“Think of it like climate change. If we stopped burning petrol tomorrow the world would still heat up for 20 or 30 years. But just because it might take a few decades is no reason not to do it. We need to look at militarism and war in the same way.

“If we stop interfering in the Middle East, there is still going to be a time period where we are going to experience the repercussions of the actions that we’ve already taken.

“It will take time, but eventually the effects of the pollution we’ve released will disappear.”

This article written by Charlie Gilmour first appeared in The Independent;

Saturday 24 January 2015

1200-1500hrs

MOD
Horseguards Avenue,
London

https://www.facebook.com/events/332734286918172

Sunday 25 January
1800hrs
Housmans Books

American folk singer Ryan Harvey will be performing with RAAST and Shireen at at this event organised by Veterans For Peace UK

VFP UK update to be given and merchandise for sale.

Facebook Event Page https://www.facebook.com/events/646620852113426/

Here is a video of Ryan performing at a similar VFP UK event in 2013.

RYAN HARVEY – “Songs from the Global Uprisings,” U.S.

http://www.ryanharveymusic.com

Blending song and story, Ryan Harvey has been performing in social justice activist circles for nearly ten years, sharing the stage with many underground and mainstream performers. In the last few years he has performed in 21 countries, from Ireland to Egypt, Poland to Portugal. A member of the Riot-Folk Collective, Ryan uses his songs and energy to support various grassroots efforts for radical social change.

RAAST – English/Arabic Protest Dabke-Folk Fusion, London

http://www.soundcloud.com/raast

Raast are a multi cultural music collective based in London performing songs of love and resisitance, blending different sounds of the world using their unique combination of traditional and contemporary instrumentation. Raast collaborate with artists from all over the world and perform songs in Arabic, English, Spanish and Portuguese.

SHIREEN – Crisis Folk, Netherlands

“I made up the name ‘Crisis Folk’ to give a name to the type of songs that I like to sing. Many crises manifest themselves in the traditional folk-songs that I like to borrow, like excessive drinking, poverty and violence. Alongside these songs, I sing about other, more contemporary crises. About Europe becoming more and more like a fortress with the ever increasing border controls and violent repression of the ‘sans-papiers’ and ‘no border’ activists. Or the damage that is done to ecosystems in search of profit. Of course these are love songs too. As you cannot fight without loving.”

Date: Tuesday 27th January 2015
Time: 2000hrs (8p.m.)
Location: Cheese and Grain, Market Yard, Frome, BA1 1BE

The UK is once again taking military action in Iraq. Ben Griffin, a former SAS solider, tells why he no longer fights for “Queen and Country”, at the January Frome Stop Wars Campaign event.

Ben served with The Parachute Regiment in Northern Ireland, Macedonia and Afghanistan, before joining the SAS. He deployed to Baghdad in January 2005, serving alongside American forces in operations to detain “high value targets” but became morally disillusioned with the war in Iraq and his role in it.

After three months in Baghdad he returned to the UK on leave and refused to return to Iraq or serve under American command.  Ben has been active in the anti-war movement since leaving the army, speaking in schools, public meetings and at protests. In 2011 he founded Veterans For Peace UK, an organisation of former servicemen/women who campaign against war and militarism to build a more peaceful future.

Tickets available on the door (£5) Proceeds to Veterans For Peace UK

Contact Cheese and Grain for details: 01373 455 420

Cartoons by Dave Lupton of Veterans For Peace UK. You can see more of his work at http://www.crippencartoons.co.uk

As classic anti-war dance anthem All Together Now is re-released, Nick Megoran says why commemorating the 1914 Christmas truces is so important.

Britain seems to have gone truce-mad. This year’s Sainsbury’s Christmas TV advert is a hugely-expensive and carefully produced film about British and German soldiers sharing friendship and chocolate in December 1914. The Premier and Football Leagues, with the encouragement of Prince William, have been holding truces themed-matches and photoshoots.

The unofficial truces that spontaneously took place at Christmas 1914 were amongst the most poignant moments of World War 1. Up to 100,000 men the length of the western front found themselves singing the same carols which led to them meeting up, exchanging gifts, and burying their dead. Some stopped to worship or play football together.

‘It was an extraordinary and most wonderful sight,’ recorded 19 year-old Arthur Pelham-Burn, 6th Gordons, of a bilingual Christmas worship service held in no man’s land. ‘One has given me his address to write to him after the war,’ a soldier from Gateshead wrote home about a German he befreinded. ‘They were quite a decent lot of fellows, I can tell you… I am sure if it were left to the men there would be no war.’

Needless to say, it wasn’t left to the men. The high commands of all sides were enraged, and crushed the truces with orders backed by threats, and by replacing men on the front line by those ‘untainted’ with the truces.

The use of these truces by supermarkets and sports franchises has sparked outrage. Historian Neil Faulkner argues that ‘when big corporate organisations like the Premier League and Sainsbury’s talk about the Christmas Truce, they trivialise it. We should condemn their hypocrisy.’ Instead, Faulkner welcomed as ‘excellent news’ the re-release this week of classic pop song about the truces, All Together Now.

A host of music stars under the banner of ‘The Peace Collective have come together to re-record The Farm’s 1990 hit. Originally written by lead vocalist Peter Hooton and guitarist Steve Grimes, the song interprets the truces as a rejection of war – then and now. Going head-to-head with an X Factor creation for the Christmas number 1 slot, with proceeds going to the Red Cross rather than Simon Cowell, the re-release is surely something the peace movement should champion.

Not convinced

But not everyone is convinced. Activist [and VFP UK member. Ed.] Bruce Kent thinks that, ‘The 1914 Christmas Truce is getting a bit overplayed.’ He describes the truces commemorations as ‘Good heartwarming stuff,’ but complains that they leave out bigger questions such as why the war occurred, why there were relatively so few conscientious objectors, and why we are still pushing ahead with the Trident weapons replacement programme at a time of crippling national debt.

Kent has a point. Like the poet-soldiers often revered by the peace movement, the men who took part in the truces didn’t renounce war. However reluctantly, they were fighting again hours or days later, and 15 million people would perish before the mass slaughter was finally brought to a halt by strikes, mutinies, and US armed forces flooding into Europe.

Mark Perryman, of Philosophy Football, has similar concerns. He welcomes the re-release of the song as ‘Anything that celebrates the cause of peace rather than cheers for war has to be good,’ especially when ‘done in the spaces of popular culture rather than on planet placard.’ However he worries that in the process of being supported by the Premier League, ‘it seems to have lost that cutting edge,’ becoming ‘more a celebration than a questioning – and that’s a pity.’

So is All Together Now still radical after all these years?

All Together Now was born as anti-war song. Originally entitled ‘No Man’s Land’, its six verses described the outbreak of the truces, the political embarrassment they caused at home, and the high command’s efforts to crush them and prevent them recurring. When recording it in 1990 for the album Spartacus, four of the original verses were excised, and a chorus added based on Johann Pachelbel’s haunting Canon in D Major. A third verse, beginning ‘Same old story again / nothing learnt and nothing gained… let’s go home’ was added as a searing attack on the upcoming US-led war on Iraq. This was historically-informed, anti-war popular culture at its best: recalling a deeply subversive moment of the past to critically reflect on violence in the present.

Although an anti-war song, its very popularity as a dance anthem led to its radical political message being watered down. The low point of this was its 2006 re-recording by Atomic Kitten for the football World Cup. A computer-animated version featuring Goleo and Pille, the ‘official mascots’ of the corporate jamboree run by corrupt and unaccountable FIFA, removed all references to the First World War and the truces. Worse still, Atomic Kitten’s own video version entirely depoliticised the song, transforming it into a sordid eroticisation of the female body.

Political edge

The 2014 re-recording recaptures the original political edge: not only the name Peace Collective, but also its donation of profits to the Red Cross makes this intention clear. Peter Hooton explained that initially, ‘there was talk of doing it with the British Legion, but we wanted a non-political, humanitarian organisation doing work in conflict zones around the world to help victims of war. The Red Cross has a historic link to the First World War, helping all sides.’

Hooton is scathing of the Sainsbury’s advert. ‘The First World War was about market share – the rise of German industry. Sainsbury’s is worried about losing market share to German companies – Lidl and Aldi. It is ironic that the ad uses the Christmas truce in a sentimental way to protect market share against German companies today.’ The advert, he admits, ‘is brilliantly produced, but it doesn’t put anything in context.’ In contrast, as the opening words of the song insist, in thinking about the truces it is vital to ‘remember (boys) that your forefathers died/ lost in millions for their country’s pride.’

This is ultimately why commemorating the truces is so important – memory. The way we remember the past is not neutral, but informs how we understand the present. The military-political establishment has colonised so much of civilian space. Innumerable monuments in town and village centres, and countless plaques in hospitals, universities and churches, confuse sacrifice for slaughter and hide mass murder behind memorials.

There is nothing innocent about the government’s programme of funding or encouraging World War 1 commemorations, from local schools researching the names on war memorials to the ‘Tower of London Remembers’ poppy-fest. David Cameron indicated the political intent here when in 2012 he unveiled massive funding plans for the commemorations, saying he wanted ‘A commemoration that captures our national spirit in every corner of the country… like the Diamond Jubilee.’

Why remember

That’s why it is important to remember the truces, because – if only temporarily – ordinary men recognised their common humanity and implicitly rejected the nationalistic belligerence of their superiors. ‘We were cursing the generals to hell,’ wrote Sergeant George Ashurst of the Lancashire Fusiliers about the officers who restarted the fighting. He was infuriated that people in Britain were sanctimoniously condemning him and his comrades for fraternising: ‘…We want them here in front of us instead of Jerry so we could shoot them down,’ he stormed.

And that is also why the Christmas truces in particular are worth marking. In spite of the capture of the season by corporations producing drinks and toys, the basic Christian festival of Christmas contains images and messages that the military-political establishment find deeply unsettling.

Welcoming the release of the song, Dr John Heathershaw, a politics lecturer at Exeter University and a leader of Pinhoe Road Baptist Church, which is marking the truces this year, said, ‘The Christmas truces give us hope that the senseless violence that is perpetrated by all governments, including our own, can be ended if we recognise Christ’s call to love God and one another, not worship our nations.… Those who either valorise or sentimentalise war today do so in the vain hope that it makes us safe. Jesus told us that was nonsense and his birth, death and resurrection mean that our hope lies in living without violence.”

Likewise, Jill Segger, of progressive Christian think tank Ekklesia, said that All Together Now reminds us that the Christmas Truces ‘face us with uncomfortable facts – that officers on both sides had to force the men back to their guns, as high commands were terrified that fraternisation made them ‘more aware that [in the words of the WW1 socialist slogan] “A bayonet is a weapon with a working man at each end of it.” No wonder the military has found it hard to colonise Christmas.

We should commemorate the truces. They were a brief moment of sanity amidst the horrors of the industrialised slaughter of trench warfare, and enraged the elites who benefitted politically and financially from the war’s continuation.

If the schools, churches, and football teams in our locality have overlooked them, encourage them to mark them next year or at any other Christmas during the centennial commemorations. Free resources such as those created by the Martin Luther King Peace Committee make this easy. But The Farm’s original admonition in the song is vital: only do so if we are prepared to change the way we live now.

Ben Griffin, of Veterans for Peace, welcomes the re-release of the song and puts its challenge well: ‘It is important to remember the truces today only if we are willing to foster in the present the spirit of those who on Christmas Day 1914 put down their weapons and walked out to meet the enemy.’

So regardless of where you shop for your Christmas goodies, buy All Together Now and after a year marked by the sinister glorification of the war, this Christmas let’s really celebrate something worthwhile – peace. Even if that peace only lasted a few hours.

This article first appeared on the NO GLORY website.

On Thursday the 11th of December myself (Gus Hales) and Vince Chittock made our way to the Royal Shakespeare Theatre to pre performance leaflet the RSC’s  production of the now enshrined events of the 1914 Christmas Truce. We had been offered two free tickets by the producer who, following email exchanges, made it known that he valued our work. The cynic in me expected a couple of rear view seats with an accompanying strong pair of binoculars, however, the reality being that we were given two press tickets valued at £57:50 per ticket. Perhaps an indication of the producers intention not only to our organisation but to the moral message of his play.

Outside pre performance we were accompanied by an ardent supporter Martin Newell who made the journey by bus all the way from Birmingham to join us in handing out our postcard leaflets to anyone heading in the direction of the theatre. Overall there was a positive response from the public and we distributed some 200 to 300 leaflets in the half hour leading up to the curtain raise. Because it was a matinee there were schools in attendance and we were able to canvass some teachers regarding school visits. The intention was to repeat the exercise for the evening performance, but due to a fierce Tempest(no pun intended) we decided this was not a good idea but all agreed to repeat the exercise sometime in the new year.

The play itself was a brilliant exposition of the events of Christmas 1914 and a poignant reminder of the futility of war and how the price is always paid by those with nothing to gain but everything to lose. With this in mind, some forty miles away at the National Memorial Arboretum, Prince William was opening a bronze relief sculptor comprising of a handshake enclosed in a wire football, commemorating the events surrounding the soccer match in no mans land. However, who was he representing during this unveiling? was it the men from both sides who laid down their arms or was it the officer class, his class, who ordered the men back into the trenches to continue the slaughter.

The story of the truce was a “message of hope and humanity”, the prince said, but wasn’t it his great great grandfather George V who stated in 1917 that the war must go on in fear of a Russian style revolution  arriving in Britain. Wasn’t it our hero Harry Patch who said “WW1 was a family row between the royal houses of Europe, irrespective of the uniforms we wore, we were all victims of these people. But then again nothing new here. Hasn’t Royalty and the establishment always taken the peace and goodness of the ordinary man, exploited it and given it back as some kind of gift. On March 26th this year the bones of Richard III will be taken around Bosworth on his final journey, but at least he died on the battlefield leading from the front, a far cry from today’s royal hero’s who brag about their exploits while sitting in the front of an Apache helicopter.

So this was a very rewarding and productive day, where the message of Veterans for Peace reached out and extended its influence on a stage befitting our cause, and as a bonus we got to see the play for free from the best seats. All’s well that ends well as the Bard himself said.

Gus Hales served with the British Army in Northern Ireland and the Falklands War. He is a member of VFP UK

Wednesday 17 December 2014

1430hrs

St Martin-in-the-Fields,
Trafalgar Square,
London

Chelsea Manning is 27 years old on this day. Formerly known as Bradley, she is the US soldier who leaked hundreds of thousands of documents to Wikileaks exposing the true nature of modern warfare. Imprisoned in 2010 and held for months under torturous conditions, she was sentenced to 35 years imprisonment in August 2013.

Please join with Veterans For Peace and other organisations as we hold a silent vigil for Chelsea on her birthday.

Update – Picture of VFP London Contingent at the vigil

This song, written and performed by the English musician Jona Lewie, was released by Stiff Records in 1980. It was the song’s blend of anti-war protest and brass band arrangements that helped make it a Christmas radio standard in Britain. The song is set at the Front during the Great War, where a soldier in a trench wishes he was home for Christmas. Lewie said about his song:

‘The first lyric line I had for this number was “Can you end the gallantry?” which led me to think of “Can you stop the cavalry,” and then I was thinking about the Charge Of The Light Brigade in the Crimean War in 1854 where the English army charged gallantly towards the Russians: but also towards their deaths.

The lyric mushroomed from there to include various war time scenarios and predicaments but its main concern was from the point of view of just one soldier who would be cold and hungry on the war front, say for example, in France in the trenches in the Great War of 1914-18, while the men who started the war, the leaders of the countries etc, were eating great food back home and sitting near their warm coal fires.

It’s an instant in time where the solitary soldier daydreams to himself that if there were ever an Office for all the Presidencies of the entire World, he would stand for that office and if he won the election he would make sure that he himself would end the gallantry and STOP all the guys in the cavalry in all future wars from ever charging to their deaths again.’

Stop The Cavalry Lyrics

Hey, Mr. Churchill comes over here to say we’re doing splendidly
But it’s very cold up here in the snow, marching to win from the enemy
Oh I say it’s tough, I have had enough, can you stop the cavalry.

I have had to fight, almost ev’ry night, down throughout the centuries
That is when I say, oh yes, yet again, can you stop the cavalry.
Mary Bradley waits at home, in the nuclear fall-out zone.
Wish I could be dancing now in the arms of the girl I love.

Dub a dub a dum dum, dub a dub a dum
Dub a dum dum dub a dum, dub a dub a dum
Dub a dub a dum dum, dub a dub a dum
Dub a dum dum dub a dub, dub a dub a dum
Wish I was at home for Christmas.

Bang! That’s another bomb on another town
While the czar and Jim have tea.
If I get home, live to tell the tale, I’ll run for all presidencies.
If I get elected I’ll stop, I will stop the cavalry.

Dub a dub a dum dum, dub a dub a dum
Dub a dum dum dub a dum, dub a dub a dum
Dub a dub a dum dum, dub a dub a dum
Dub a dum dum dub a dub, dub a dub a dum
Wish I was at home for Christmas.

Wish I could be dancing now in the arms of the girl I love.
Mary Bradley waits at home, she’s been waiting two years long.
Wish I was at home for Christmas.

Lewie said that the song was never intended as a Christmas hit, and that it was a protest song. However, the line ‘Wish I was at home for Christmas’ as well as the brass band arrangements made it an appropriately styled song to play around Christmas time.

The song peaked at number three in the UK Singles Chart in December 1980, at one point only being kept from number one by two re-issued songs by John Lennon, who had been murdered on 8 December. It topped the charts in several European countries and became popular in the US and Australia as a Christmas song.

The song’s promotional video is set in the trenches of the First World War. The lyrics of the song mention cavalry and Churchill (who served as the First Lord of the Admiralty in the first year of the war, prior to serving in the trenches himself), however it breaks with the First World War theme with references to nuclear fallout and the line ‘I have had to fight, almost every night, down throughout these centuries.’ Lewie described the song’s soldier as being: ‘A bit like the eternal soldier at the Arc de Triomphe.’

This song was chosen by Aly Renwick who served with the Royal Engineers in Thailand and is a member of Veterans For Peace.