Armed Forces Bill

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Harry Cohen); we are used to hearing his lengthy speeches. I salute the modesty with which the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) spoke and the due deference that he paid to the members of his family who have served in the armed forces. He approaches the amendment with a great deal of principle and thought. However, I think that I speak as the only person in here who has commanded a battalion, faced the prospect of operations, disciplined soldiers, and encouraged them to go on operations and, indeed, to face the enemy. I do not wish to come the barrack-room lawyer, but there is a degree of confusion about the points that we are addressing. Desertion is an extremely serious charge, and if you do not mind, Mrs. Heal, I shall address most of my comments to my personal experience in the Army, which are equally applicable to the Navy, the Royal Air Force and the Royal Marines. As a lieutenant-colonel commanding a battalion of infantry, it was my job to deal with soldiers under the Army Act 1955. I had to deal with the charge of desertion, under the auspices of the 1955 Act, once in my two-and-a-half years commanding the largest battalion in the British Army, and twice on operations. I had to deal with absence daily. Some of the soldiers serving in Tidworth, where I had 950 soldiers mainly drawn—lucky devils—from the counties of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, would frequently ““go abo””, as the vernacular has it. In other words, they would go absent. They would exercise their personal freedom and choice, and, by golly, they paid for it. They were charged, if necessary, under the 1955 Act, and they were dealt with under various sections, but usually section 69. For periods of absence, they were dealt with by means of anything from a serious telling off, to a fine, to a period of imprisonment not exceeding 14 days. Such a period of imprisonment was the only one that I could regularly impose. From time to time, soldiers would absent themselves—go absent—and go, usually, to the large conurbations. I, as a furious commanding officer with a furious adjutant, would say, ““Charge this man with desertion.”” The advice that we received was, ““Absolutely not. Do you realise what desertion means?”” Having had 20-odd years experience as an infantry officer, I knew precisely what it meant. The guideline was that a soldier had to have been absent for more than 112 days and to have destroyed his identity card. That was the rule of thumb that we used before that soldier would appear in front of me to be remanded for trial by court martial. It was not a case in which a humble lieutenant-colonel could have become involved. The charge of desertion was extremely serious, and very serious penalties went with it. I say to the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington that unless one has served in a battalion, or on a warship or an air station, one does not understand the problem that officers face in trying to deal with soldiers, airmen or sailors daily. They are a rumbustious and difficult lot. They decide from time to time that they are going to exercise their personal freedom and drink too much, fight, go absent and so on. However, in my experience, things change enormously when that battalion is warned for operations. Soldiers will absent themselves before a battalion goes on operations. In my experience, not many absent themselves for reasons of cowardice. Many absent themselves—I continue to use that phrase, rather than ““desert””—because they cannot get their heads round the difficulty of being abroad for six months, the potential dangers or domestic problems. Only once on operations did I have a soldier who absented himself in the face of the enemy, and he was not charged with desertion. Flight-Lieutenant Kendall-Smith was not charged with desertion: he was charged, I believe, with being absent, or with a similar charge within those parameters. He did not desert. Trooper Griffin behaved with much courage and probity. He had reached the rank of corporal in his parent regiment and then gone through the selection process for the Special Air Service—