Thoughts on Repatriation, and how the Government Really Views the Deaths of Soldiers

So what do the government really think about the public demonstrations of grief and respect, when the coffins of returning soldiers are driven out of RAF bases?

 

The BBC website is currently reporting (as a follow-up to a ‘Guardian’ exclusive on Friday morning) :

 

‘The Ministry of Defence has said it has "no plans" to downplay repatriation ceremonies for fallen personnel, after a claim that it was considering ways to make war more palatable to the public.

 

The idea to "reduce the profile" of such military services was proposed by an MoD think tank as a possible way to handle "casualty averse" opinion.

 

The paper was obtained by the Guardian under the Freedom of Information Act.( http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/sep/26/mod-study-sell-wars-public )

 

But the MoD said it was not meant to outline government policy.

 

In the four years up to 2011, the town of Wootton Bassett in Wiltshire gained fame for repatriations, as the bodies of 345 military personnel killed in conflicts were brought back to the RAF base at Lyneham and driven through its streets - which were lined by thousands of mourners.

 

 

“It is entirely right that we publicly honour those who have made the ultimate sacrifice and there are no plans to change the way in which repatriation ceremonies are conducted”

 

 

 The last cortege passed through the town in August, after which RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire became the landing site for planes returning from conflict zones.’

 

 

In July 2011 I began to criticise the government’s plans for bringing the war dead home through RAF Brize Norton. It was not the change to Brize Norton from RAF Lyneham that worried me -that was the consequence of an unconnected  change in RAF organisation. It was the way in which the repatriation processions were to be routed. I wrote:

 

‘HERE'S the truth about the Government's decision to route the hearses of soldiers killed in its various stupid wars away from any of the nation's High Streets.

 

This comes into effect very soon, when the bodies of the dead start to arrive at RAF Brize Norton, next to the Oxfordshire town of Carterton.

 

Junior Defence Minister Andrew Robathan stumbled a bit trying to deal with this in Parliament on Monday.

 

First, he disclosed that the back gate of the RAF base, through which the hearses will pass, is to be renamed the Britannia Gate. Who thinks of these things? The Downing Street cat? Were I to rename the back door of my house the Britannia Door, it would still be the back door.

 

Then he said that the route through Carterton was unsuitable for corteges because it has speed bumps. So does the bypass route that the processions will actually take, as Mr Robathan ought to know.

 

He added that Carterton's streets were 'very narrow'. I doubt that they are narrower than those of Wootton Bassett, and plan to check them myself, unless anyone has measurements to hand.

 

But he was rescued from his confusion by a fellow Unconservative, the North Wiltshire MP James Gray.

 

Mr Gray asked: 'Does the Minister agree that it might not be possible, nor indeed quite right, to seek to replicate the Wootton Bassett effect elsewhere, as that was a chapter in our history? I am not sure we necessarily want to see it repeated elsewhere.' Mr Robathan eagerly responded, saying Mr Gray had made 'a very good point'. Really? What was so good about it? I wonder who Mr Gray means when he says that 'we' do not want to see Wootton Bassett's spontaneous, unofficial, genuine expression of respect for courage, discipline and loyalty to be repeated. He certainly doesn't speak for me.’

 

A few days later I bicycled up to Carterton with my trusty measuring tape (Yards, feet and inches only) and recorded :‘I HAVE now measured the road that Defence Minister Andrew Robathan says is 'very narrow', too narrow, apparently, for the hearses containing dead soldiers from Afghanistan.

 

I went to Carterton, the small town on the doorstep of RAF Brize Norton where the honoured dead will arrive after September. And I measured the Burford Road, just outside the Church of St John the Evangelist, along which the cortege could pass on its way to Oxford, if the authorities had not chosen another route, which carefully avoids the only major High Street nearby.

 

The road at this point is 22ft wide, which doesn't strike me as specially narrow. Two-way traffic was getting through pretty briskly.

 

What is more, Carterton, a strikingly modern town with exactly the same population as Wootton Bassett, has plenty of broad pavements on which people might - if they wished - assemble to pay their respects to those who did their duty to the utmost.

 

Of course, the Prime Minister and his shadowy, rich backers (not all Murdoch employees) dwell just round the corner in the cosy hills above Witney and Chipping Norton. I do wonder what contacts they may have had with the Tory-controlled Oxfordshire County Council that has selected the route. The whole thing is increasingly suspicious.’

 

And in September I wrote again:

 

‘THE Government did not like the scenes at Wootton Bassett as the dead came home, and wants to make sure that nothing of the kind ever grows up again in any other place. It wants to be free to conduct more stupid, unwanted wars, without being reminded of the true cost of them.

 

From now on, the bodies of those soldiers killed in the Afghan conflict will be flown home to RAF Brize Norton, and will no longer pass through Wootton Bassett.

 

There are acceptable reasons for that. But there is no acceptable reason for what happens next. They will no longer go through the centre of any town, being routed through suburbs and along fast main roads and bypasses where no crowds are likely to gather. They could go a different way. Brize Norton is on the edge of the town of Carterton, with a similar population to that of Wootton Bassett. There is also a perfectly good and rather beautiful route that would take the cortege to the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford through the large and lovely village of Bampton.

 

I have heard the various official explanations for this curious routing, including the shameful, pitiful claim that the roads of Carterton, 22ft wide, are 'too narrow'. I think the time has come to say that these explanations are so much tripe, the sort of thing dictators and despots say.

 

In a free country, the Government should suffer for its lies.’

 

I am glad to say that the people of Carterton turned out in splendid numbers, and went to the inconvenient spot which was the only place from which they could salute the returning dead. But it was of course entirely different from the response in Wootton Bassett, where the procession used to pass the church and the shops and the people going about their business. All those parts of Carterton were avoided. The cortege was then driven as I had warned, along fast roads to Oxford, roads along which it was very difficult for people to gather in any numbers.

 

Now, the document obtained by the Guardian dates from November 2012 and is a recommendation for the future, so it cannot be linked to events before then. And, thank heaven, the number of casualties in Afghanistan has greatly diminished, and involvement in Syria now seems unlikely (though the government can take no credit for the latter) . But we are still entitled to wonder, rather sceptically, about the use of the ‘Britannia Gate’, and what it really means.  

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