Welcome to our July update,
It would be unusual for us to not have a busy month and the past four weeks have been no exception for the whole team, especially in June when Pride Month and Armed Forces Week met. As well as catching up with so many of you in this period, the opportunities to raise awareness through talks, briefs, meetings, conferences, workshops, webinars, prides and other events during Pride Month were incredible, and the number of new veterans and organisations connecting with us demonstrated the value of these important openings.
With June culminating in Pride in London on Armed Forces Day, it seemed to put a spring in our step, as hundreds of serving personnel and 34 veterans, together with MOD personnel, allies and members of the cadet forces, all strode to the tunes of the Band of the RAF Regiment. In the evening we were hosted so well again at the Phoenix Arts Club for a night of cabaret, and only weeks before, fellow veteran and owner of the PAC, Ken Wright, had so deservedly won the Business Leader of the Year Award (SME) at the British Ex-Forces in Business Awards. The welcome provided by the PAC team is second to none and if you are ever looking for an evening of wonderful entertainment in London, do pay a visit.
Message from Ed (Chair of FWP). “It’s been a very busy first few months as your new chair, and I am pleased to say that I’m beginning to get my feet under the table! I was honoured to host my first FWP event as host and speaker, which was the launch of the Review and Directory 2024. This is an amazing publication, with contact details of over 200 PiVS organisations: these are places that LGBT+ veterans can be confident they will find a helpful and friendly welcome, and include a wide range of help and support services. Please see the following newsletter article for more details, including on downloading a copy.
The publication also contains 25 personal stories from veterans, and we are making sure that one gets into the hands of every MP as we press forward with the campaign on reparations. We are all of the view that the recommendation for a reparations fund of £50M is not enough, but we have some challenges to overcome to improve on that. The first is that the government has changed right in the middle of the process, the second is that there are now lots of MPs with no experience of knowledge of the issues, and finally, the pressure we all feel to reach a conclusion where those of us who were dismissed and suffered as a consequence receive an equitable settlement.
As I said in our last Town Hall, it is my understanding from conversations with many lawyers over the last 25 years, that the time for bringing legal cases related to dismissals has long gone. I also said that if anyone has a legal representative who feels differently, please bring them to the table! Of course, that situation doesn’t apply to any criminal cases, which can be reported through legal recourse at any time.
What we need more than anything now is for veterans to lobby for a better settlement. This isn’t formal legal compensation, it is a political decision to try to address an historic wrong, and it will only be political pressure that changes this. We need to sing with one voice, and try to avoid division and confusion in our aims. Any sense of an LGBT+ veterans’ community divided will enable those in government looking at the independent recommendation of £50M to leave it there, unchanged.
FWP is lobbying hard to change this. We have succeeded in getting many other veterans organisations to support that goal, including Help For Heroes and the RBL. What we need is for everyone who feels able to, to get in touch with their MP, or ministers, and tell their story and make the case that £50M is not enough. We can’t do that on our own (although Craig is writing to all 650 MPs this week enclosing a Review and Directory), we need to do it together.
I know there has been some frustration about the confidential nature of some of the work Craig and the team do, but the reality is that negotiating with ministers and civil servants doesn’t succeed if they know the content of meetings is shared publicly. That’s true for all lobbying, and if you want your team to get access to the right people and lobby the right ears, sometimes they have to be able to do that quietly: it was no different in the 1990s, or for other campaigns like the Age of Consent. Much of the amazing work done back then by Duncan and Patrick and Robert and Elaine and many others was done quietly, in the background.
Finally, I hope lots of you will consider coming to Blackpool in September, I’d love to meet you, and you can question me in person about all of this as much as you like! Ed”
As mentioned, as we go to press with this newsletter, 650 letters are arriving into the post boxes of all members of the UK Parliament, over half of which are new to Parliament. We need them all to know what happened during the years of the ban and of the enduring impact. Over the summer Craig and the team will be pushing into the diaries of MPs and Ministers across the UK to win their support. The majority of our veterans have new MPs, so please if you can, write to them or ask to see them. You can mention us and our letter to them, which is being sent with a copy of the Fighting With Pride Review and Directory 2024.
Sometimes in a campaign it can feel like resolution is never quite on the horizon. We can tell you that the Ministry of Defence is working hard to put in place mechanisms to assess claims and make payments – we expect them to announce this soon. We also know that they are working to open the scheme in 2024. We welcome this, but your MPs and Ministers must know why £50M is totally unacceptable. Funding for Financial Reparations Payments must bring a sense of justice and the comfort and security in later life that is enshrined in the principles of the Armed Forces Covenant.
In the coming weeks FWP will launch Operation Crescendo, a range of actions to help our message win through. We will seek your help and the help of our supporters. Stick together as we work to push this over the line and when asked to do so, if you can, please ‘grab a pitchfork and a bin lid’! Even if your MP has given you a deaf ear in the past, please give it a go, and there’s nothing wrong with asking to meet your MP with others.
If you have ideas, or connections or want help with a letter, or support with a meeting with an MP please contact: craig.jones@fightingwithpride.org.uk
At the start of July, we were delighted to welcome Ellie Howell (they/them) on board as our newest team member. Ellie is the Veterans Community Worker (VCW) for the SW of England region, funded by Invictus Games Foundation through the Armed Forces Covenant Fund Trust. They have already been really busy catching up with veterans and organisations in the SW, you can read about some of that in the regional reports section, and Ellie’s bio is available on our website. Sadly, as Ellie joins us, we say farewell to Gemma, our VCW for the Midlands. Gemma has been a brilliant asset to the FWP family and we know many of you will miss her as much as we will. She’s not going too far away though as she is stepping into the role of Programme Manager for the new Midlands Veterans Places, Pathways and People Portfolio. Gem, we wish you and family every success in the future, and add our huge thanks for your outstanding contribution to the work of FWP, and beyond, including Op Sterling, and where you have made such an incredibly positive difference to so many lives. Thank you!
We still have plenty of Prides coming up over the summer, so please do check out our regional briefs in this newsletter for where you can see us, and if we don’t see you at Pride, we hope to see you in Blackpool, or at Remembrance.
With best wishes,
Caroline and Ed
You can read the full FWP July Newsletter HERE
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