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First World War Soldiers (Pardons)

I repeat the congratulations that I have already offered to the hon. Member for Mid-Norfolk on having obtained the debate at what he rightly says is an important time, on the manner in which he has expressed his interest in it, and on the measured way in which he set out the position as he sees it. The broad sweep of the historian was very much in evidence, and I hope that the narrow focus of the law will not muck it all up. I disagree with the hon. Gentleman on only one or two small things. One is his reaction on having the privilege of interviewing first world war soldiers to some of them saying, in effect, ““I put up with it; I served well. They ran away, why shouldn't they have suffered punishment?”” even if they did not necessarily say that the others should have been executed. One does not necessarily want the state to have that reaction. It is a similar argument to that of those who say that they accept that 60 per cent. of criminals are from poor backgrounds, and that they have had problems with their parents, but that a lot of people have had that and they do not go to the wrong. That is a natural human reaction, but the state has to consider the justice of the case of each individual who was killed. This is an issue of justice. That is why I, as somebody who no doubt perpetrated many injustices in my former career as a lawyer, have an interest in it. I cannot go any further without speaking of my comrade-in-arms on this issue, the hon. Member for Thurrock (Andrew Mackinlay), who has a proud history of fighting on the subject. When I looked back—I had only a brief opportunity to do so—to prepare for the debate, I found that it is over a decade since he started to argue this case. He argues it with ferocity and diligence, and with a great deal of strength. He is very sorry not to be here for the debate. He is, as the hon. Member for Mid-Norfolk said, obliged to be on parliamentary duties elsewhere. My hon. Friend and I had a short conversation about the matter and if I had a message to pass on from him it would be that he has not changed his mind. That is pretty manifest in that as recently last December, on Second Reading of the Armed Forces Bill, he again put forward the case for an outright pardon. Those who were executed were, by and large, executed for offences such as cowardice, desertion and sleeping at their posts. These days, such allegations would always be looked at through the prism of a better understanding of psychiatry and psychology and the impact on people of trauma than could possibly have existed then. My attention was brought to the issue in 2001, shortly after I was elected to represent Redcar, by a Middlesbrough family who include an elderly lady who is, I think, the great-niece of a man who was shot at dawn for just such an offence. I had the privilege of meeting John Hipkin, who has for a very long time run a campaign called ““Shot at Dawn””. He is now well into his 70s, but is nevertheless present on every occasion on which he thinks he can have an influence and, like my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock, he is very loyal to his cause. I met the woman and came down to London to walk with ““Shot at Dawn”” in the Armistice day parade on 11 November 2002. I talked to her about why she was still troubled by what seemed like an old injury to a family, most of whom were now dead. She said that, when young, her relative—hon. Members will have to excuse me for not remembering whether it was her aunt, her great-aunt or her mother—had been completely shunned by her contemporaries because her father, or uncle, had been executed as a traitor. The family were in disgrace; they were not to rear their heads and were not entitled to have an opinion or any share in the community on account of that event. It was clear that the relative had passed on to her descendent the recollection of that experience. I cannot possibly bring it to life, but most people with a grain of imagination will be able to work out what it must have been like for her. The hon. Member for Mid-Norfolk spoke of ““Oh! What a Lovely War””. One of my earliest visits to London was as a teenager to see the film—I am not so old that I go back to the time of Joan Littlewood's production. It was a notable film and made the point that the first world war was, in a sense, a war of vaudeville patriotism. Patriotism was at a great emotional height then. People encouraged their young men to sign up as an act of gallantry. We have all seen the poster that says ““Your Country Needs You.”” It would have been a great source of pride to people to be able to say, ““My son is a soldier”” or ““My boyfriend is joining up.”” In that context, one can understand how it must have impacted on families to hear that those people had been shot at dawn, apparently for treacherous offences. I accept that it is pretty unlikely that all 306 soldiers were simply suffering from trauma. There might well have been wrongdoing and a mixed bag of circumstances, but the fear that there has been injustice persists. Many, many people who heard of the events—I looked at some cutting overnight—talked about those who had been shot and knew that they were not cowards and that they must have been traumatised. There is an account of a village—Fulstow, near Louth in Lincolnshire, which is not on my patch—that has finally decided to mark Armistice day. Because Private Charles Kirman was shot at dawn for cowardice and the whole village would not put his name on the war memorial, they would not allow any reference to be made to the first world war in the village hall—which was built in memory of second world war veterans—and would not hold any kind of Armistice day event until it was agreed that his name should go on to the war memorial. Indeed, descendents of his mates who had been killed in action would not support the honouring of the names of their fathers or uncles until Private Kirman's name was honoured too. There are clearly some powerful cases that require a strong examination—and a stronger examination than that which has already been carried out. I do not speak for ““Shot at Dawn””. I readily appreciate—the hon. Member for Mid-Norfolk has also made the point—that there are likely to be good and bad cases among this group of men. However, granted the lack of understanding of psychiatric matters; granted the haste in which the cases were held; granted that there was no appeal against verdicts that were brought about in the field at courts martial; and granted that it is asserted repeatedly by the campaign that even the right to appeal to the King for clemency was not an effective right, it is almost inevitable that injustices occurred. It is a painful sense of injustice to relatives and it is not right that we should tolerate them. I do not want to use emotive language, but they are something of a stain on our justice system. Let me turn to what I know a bit about: the way in which the law generally deals with old cases that it considers to have been unjustly tried. Some years ago, I was involved in the Ashley King case in the Court of Appeal and that set down the parameters. The rule is that even if the law was correctly applied as it stood on the day on which the trial occurred, if the way in which we have moved on, reinterpreted justice and improved on things throws the light of injustice on how the law worked in the old days, we should view those old facts through the better prism of justice that has subsequently evolved. If we were to do that, which is merely the ordinary civil law way of going on, some of the surviving people would be relieved of their pain by understanding what happened. If they were to find that their forebears had behaved in the way alleged, in a way they would not be any worse off, as they have already suffered pain. On the other hand, there will be people who have wrongly suffered that pain and who deserve to have matters put right before their lives end. I admire, respect and have a huge amount of time for the Secretary of State for Defence, who diligently carried out a review of these cases as well as he possibly could as recently as 1997, which ran into 1998. Of course, that has not stopped the campaign, put an end to the pain or stopped the air of secrecy that surrounds this whole area, and it never will as long as it is done by a member of the Government, however well disposed and well intentioned it is. It is a judicial rather than an Executive function to consider how cases were tried and whether they should be overturned. That is the huge flaw in the way in which the matter has been tackled so far. I wonder whether the right way forward is to see whether the Criminal Cases Review Commission is an appropriate body to deal with these matters. The CCRC was set up in 1995 to take over from a Home Office department that had been, frankly, discredited because it was intended to look at miscarriages of justice that were alleged still to exist after final appeals had been exhausted, but it was perceived as being part of the Home Office and terribly close to the police and so not at all impartial. It did not refer many cases, and when it did it was many years later. The CCRC is a completely independent, non-departmental public body set up to review such cases. It reviews them on an application basis. When someone says that they are not guilty even though the Court of Appeal says that they are, and even if they have been to the House of Lords and had no satisfaction, the CCRC can take on and consider such cases or reject them; whichever it thinks fit. If it takes on a case and sends it back to the Court of Appeal, the case must be heard by a court to determine whether there was an injustice and whether the verdict should be overturned. It sounds cumbersome, but it produces reasonable justice in the end. I wonder if that is not the right tribunal to consider these cases at first instance. I value highly what the Secretary of State said about there being scant evidence about what happened in some cases. That point was reflected in what the hon. Member for Mid-Norfolk said. However, there will have been rules about the way in which the courts martial should have been run. There are certain questions to ask in an appellant system. Do the facts justify the outcome? Would there be a psychiatric defence now and can we sense whether that is right? Were the procedures followed properly? Even if they were, were they just enough when we look at them through the prism of justice as it is now? Even in a case in which there is only a little bit of documentation, experts might discern something from it. If the CCRC were to consider all such cases, there might come a tipping point at which it became fairly clear that procedures were not being followed in the way in which campaigners have always alleged that they never were. We might then be in a position to look for a holistic pardon for the entire group. My guess is that there is a reservation about whether the CCRC has the power to consider the decisions of old courts martial. If it does not, that is not necessarily an insurmountable problem. Perhaps it could consider these cases if someone from this House, or possibly a cross-party group, makes an application for it to do so. If there is a need for a minor change in the law so that it can review such cases, there is an omnibus, Christmas-tree Home Office Bill coming soon that could easily accommodate a short clause, which need not necessarily be controversial, to permit that change. The hon. Member for Mid-Norfolk talked about the issue being raised in the other place recently. It was raised by my noble Friend Lord Dubs, who talked about New Zealand having passed an Act to permit such convictions to be overturned. Lord Drayson, speaking on behalf of my Government, I suppose, replied:"““the House will recognise that we have looked thoroughly for a legal solution to this matter, and we have not found such a legal solution to provide a pardon.””—[Official Report, House of Lords, 9 January 2006; Vol. 677, c. 6.]" It sounds as though the political will is present in the Government to take the issue on a bit more. If there is no legal solution of the type that I have outlined, it is not a matter of major difficulty to bring one about by a short and simple change in the law. I urge the Government to reconsider this matter and to acknowledge the hard work put in by the Secretary of State and that this is a judicial issue, which should be tackled roughly in the way in which I suggest.