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from Daily
Mirror Thursday 31 August 2000
 Insult
to the Fallen
by Paul Routledge
YOU can judge a nation
by the way it honours its war dead.
Generally speaking, the
United Kingdom is exemplary in this respect.
No town square or village
green is complete without a solemn memorial to our fallen in two World Wars.
Every year, they are remembered.
That’s why it is a
scandal that the Ministry of Defence wants to cut back on the loving care
given to British war graves on the continent.
To save a few measly
quid, they plan to reduce allowances to those who tend these monuments to
sacrifice, and phase out the old soldiers.
This is the same
Whitehall ministry that pleaded guilty a couple of weeks ago to overspending
£3billion on the ordering of military equipment.
I cannot believe that
Labour ministers are behind this penny-pinching exercise. It must be the
work of MoD pen-pushers trying to please their masters by shaving a few bob
off the War Graves Commission budget.
Their actions will not
impress the British people.
The MoD’s Operation
Scrooge will hit hardest the low-paid and those with children of school age.
Many of these men earn as little as £10,000
a year. They rely on their living allowances to make ends meet. it is not
acceptable that wage cuts should be imposed in this way.
Defence Secretary Geoff
Noon and his sidekick John Spellar should immediately countermand this
disgraceful proposal.
Fewer than a hundred men
are involved. But their contribution is inestimable. Not only do they tend
the graves of our war dead, they often act as unofficial counsellors to
Britons seeking out the last resting place of their loved ones’ memory.
They offer comfort and a
kind English word to relatives who travel hundreds of miles to pay their
respects.
It is unthinkable that
these men should suffer cuts in their allowances of up to £300 a month —
not when Britain is spending hundreds of millions of pounds a year propping
up corrupt regimes in Sierra Leone and Kosovo.
In an era of greater
leisure and wider recognition of the sacrifice
of the war dead, more and more
people want to see where their fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers
are commemorated.
The recent spate of
television shows about the two wars has also rekindled interest, and the MoD
has a duty to satisfy that renewed curiosity. Not by slashing the height of
rose trees, and uprooting flowers. But by showing more understanding. And
another thing.
The plight of these men
only came to light because they complained
to Transport and General Workers Union.
Not so long ago, the
unions were portrayed by Tories as "the
enemy within." Now we see who the real patriots are.
The graves of our war
dead are corner of a foreign field that is forever British.
We have a duty to their
memory to keep it that way.
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