Opinion: The Shameful Betrayal of a Military Family Still Grieving the Guildford Bombings

Published on: 2 Sep, 2019
Updated on: 4 Sep, 2019

The Horse and Groom pub after the bombing.

By Martin Giles

A terrorist bomb is a terrible, indiscriminate weapon. The results are sickening. Anyone who has witnessed the result, as I have, knows that horrible reality. And the aftermath lingers.

Nearly 45 years ago, Guildford suffered IRA bombings. Five young lives were snuffed out and more than 60 people injured. Some still have to live with the consequences.

Where does that leave the parents of 19-year-old Private Ann Hamilton, killed in the Horse and Groom atrocity in October 1974? As if the loss of their daughter was not enough, the police and the British justice system let them down through a botched investigation and wrongful convictions. The real killers remain unpunished.

The memorial in Quaker’s Acre opposite the site of the Horse & Groom dedicated to the five who died including Ann Hamilton.

Do we not owe a special debt to Pte Hamilton, her family, and all our other soldiers, sailors and airmen, past and present, those who do, or have put their lives on the danger line to defend this country, to keep you safe?

And if we do have a debt should that not include the grant of legal aid for the bereaved to be properly represented at the resumed inquest, on a date yet to be announced?

Every nation owes a debt to those who serve. In Britain, we have the official Armed Forces Covenant. This is a formal pledge from the nation that those who serve or have served in the Armed Forces, and their families, are treated fairly.

The two main principles are:

• The Armed Forces community should not face disadvantage compared to other citizens in the provision of public and commercial services; and
• Special consideration is appropriate in some cases, especially for those who have given most, such as the injured and the bereaved.

At the resumed inquest, the Surrey Police and the Ministry of Defence will have legal counsel paid by us, the taxpayers. Pte Hamilton’s family have been refused legal aid, an act the family has branded a “betrayal”.

Is that fair? Is that “special consideration”?

In earlier decades, those with military experience of the world wars, numerous smaller conflicts, and National Service were widespread. Now, with dwindled numbers in the Armed Forces, such experience is rare.

Very few have experienced armed conflict up close. Most have not been in the line of fire nor known the fear of facing danger and the sense of a soldier’s duty. Very few experience that stark reality, the true cost of defending our freedom.

And so few of the politicians and civil servants who are the masters of our Armed Forces have any experience of military life.

In the Seventies and Eighties I was a regular soldier. We who served in Northern Ireland during The Troubles knew better than to expect to be feted as heroes. There was no significant show of public support. Perhaps it was the nature of that grubby conflict and the divided loyalties that spread to the UK mainland.

In those days, the thinking of the student-protest Sixties still held sway. Military service was unfashionable. Many seemed to look down on us, regarding us as “dim squaddies”.

Of course, inconsistent treatment of the soldier is nothing new but now, in 2019, the very least we can do to respect the sacrifice of Pte Ann Hamilton, to thank her for volunteering to defend us, and grant her still-grieving family fair treatment by paying the legal aid to ensure they are decently and properly represented.

Surely that is not too much to ask? Surely, if the Armed Forces Covenant means anything, that is fair.

The closing verse of Rudyard Kipling’s Tommy

You talk o’ better food for us, an’ schools, an’ fires, an’ all:
We’ll wait for extry rations if you treat us rational.
Don’t mess about the cook-room slops, but prove it to our face
The Widow’s Uniform is not the soldier-man’s disgrace.
For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Chuck him out, the brute!”
But it’s “Saviour of ‘is country” when the guns begin to shoot;
An’ it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ anything you please;
An’ Tommy ain’t a bloomin’ fool – you bet that Tommy sees!

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