Downloaded from YTS.MX
Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX
Slow march!
When we join the Armed Forces, it's not just a job.
It's a way of life.
(HORN SOUNDS)
You felt part of something bigger than yourself.
I was prepared to give my life for my queen and country.
We lived and worked in the same place.
Everybody looking out for everybody else.
I served in Northern Ireland during the years of the Troubles.
I've served in the Falklands.
We were the first ship to take any attack from the enemy.
I was flying during the Cold War.
Then Gulf War One and then during the Bosnian War.
I believed in our peace and our freedoms in the United Kingdom.
I didn't quite realise or understand at the time that I would be
protecting peace and freedoms that I would be denied myself,
simply because I was gay.
(MACHINE-GUNFIRE)
Homosexuality and its practices are simply not compatible with
service life in the British Armed Forces.
Most red-blooded males are repelled by the physical genital
activities of these people.
We will not have homosexuals in our midst,
and if we find some have got in, we will get rid of them.
A review has been launched into the treatment
of LGBTQ-plus veterans.
Thousands were dismissed for their sexuality
or had to hide who they really were.
How did they know about my secrets?
I was constantly thinking, "What if I make a mistake?"
"What if someone finds out?"
And they've been without incomes, lost their jobs.
They've lost pensions...
I was destroyed.
It was a complete violation.
The witch hunt was shocking.
They were casting a net to haul in other people,
to seek out and destroy.
REPORTER: They've waited 22 years for the chance to tell their story.
The odds were absolutely stacked against us.
But there was this last-gasp battle that we can fight.
The moment that I knew I wanted to join the Army
was also the moment I suddenly realised
that I was attracted to girls.
I was 13, I was at home with my mum and grandmother.
I have no idea why, but they let me sit up
and watch a programme with them.
(UPBEAT POP MUSIC)
They preceded it with a warning about
"the content of this programme",
and I was immediately, like, "Ooh, hello."
Well? Ex-Private Smithers.
It was set in a women's Royal Army Corps training barracks.
Well, Corporal Harvey?
Two women soldiers are talking
and one of them puts a record on the record player.
Top of the gay girls' hit parade.
And it was Dionne Warwick, This Girl's In Love With You.
(RECORD PLAYING) # I've heard some talk...
And Alison Steadman starts dancing towards this corporal.
And then she kissed her.
(ON RECORD) # I need your love...
Full on the mouth.
I was like, "Oh, my God," you know.
And I was blushing because I was just so shocked by it.
I'd never even thought that women could dance together,
let along that they could kiss one another.
And then they kissed again.
# I need your love...
And I was just blown away.
Because I knew the way I was responding to it was,
"Oh, my God, I like this."
So that was the exact moment I thought joining the Army
might be an opportunity to explore who I was.
And to find out a bit more about my sexuality.
ADVERT VOICEOVER: Suppose she's set upon a career in nursing
and yet wishes to combine it with the active
and communal atmosphere of service life.
# NENA: 99 Luftballons
March '82 I joined Queen Alexandra's Royal Army Nursing Corps,
colloquially known as the QAs.
I was posted to Germany.
The last front line in defence
against the Cold War enemies.
With East Germany and Russia just on the doorstep.
So it was quite nerve-wracking, but also exciting.
You could get trips through East Germany to Berlin
in the days of Checkpoint Charlie, and this incredible atmosphere.
We were always doing themed nights, German night, Hawaiian night,
pizza night.
We'd work hard but we played hard.
You know, we were all just living the dream.
(ON CASSETTE PLAYER) # DIONNE WARWICK: I Need Your Love
As the weeks went on,
I noticed this person in my intake, Sadie.
There was something very lovely about her.
She'd a very cheeky sort of look, twinkly eyes,
just always looked a bit naughty.
One evening the girls that we shared with were out,
we had the cassette player on,
and we got talking about attractions and what attracts you to people.
And she said, "Have you ever been involved with a woman?"
And I was like, "Oh, no. No, no, no."
And she said, "Well, have you ever kissed another woman?"
And I was like, "No!"
And an erotic tension just built and built.
We had a bit of paper between us and I wrote,
"I'm too scared to move."
She took it and she wrote,
"Move your elbow six inches towards me."
And she came towards me and kissed me.
# I need our love
# I want your love...
It was beautiful. It was erotic, it was moving,
it was explosive.
And in terms of me understanding who I absolutely was,
that was the moment.
(SONG ENDS)
But then, just after the elation... (CASSETTE PLAYER CLICKS OFF)
..Sadie was basically telling me,
"But listen, we've got to keep this secret.
You can't tell anyone, you do know that, don't you?"
She says, "In the Army you're literally deemed a criminal
merely for being gay.
You can be tried in a military court."
And I thought, "Oh, my God, I could go to prison for this."
If it comes out to the wrong people,
you know, that's it. You could be...
Well, you could be out.
It was like popping a beautiful, gorgeous, colourful balloon,
just "Pff!"
That was the first time I understood, it's illegal.
And that was a huge, huge shock.
After that first kiss, we were posted apart.
But we used to write to one another.
It was just this connection to her.
After Sadie, I was well and truly in the closet.
Doing everything I could to present a straight Elaine to the world.
I ended up going back out with guys,
you know, very seriously. I got engaged to one guy.
And I tried to convince myself that him loving me was enough,
and it would be OK.
But I knew deep down it wouldn't.
I knew that the only way I was ever going to be able
to keep doing the job I loved was to keep my sexuality a secret.
It was nearly five years before
anything happened with another woman.
But it was very discrete, just a couple of minor involvements.
That was to have consequences later.
Mentally, having to hide the real me, it was...
difficult because you're constantly trying
to make sure you don't slip up.
There was always a sense of don't be obvious,
be careful what you wear, be careful who you talk to.
Everybody joked about gays in the Armed Forces.
I just played along with it.
It was the best way of keeping your nose clean
and making it not come in your direction.
We were scrambling at all times, day and night,
intercepting Soviet aircraft.
And all the time I was doing that I was having to hide who I was.
The consequences of being outed meant that I would lose
not just my job and therefore my income
and therefore my accommodation,
but I knew I'd lose my family as well.
There was a paranoia that we all felt.
I didn't want to stand anywhere near anything that was gay.
Because that could incriminate me.
Turn! Left, right...
You'd have to careful what you say, what you do, where you go,
because there was always somebody watching.
I was born in South-East London, near Crystal Palace Park.
And I became hooked on ceremonial stuff
from the early age of about five.
One day there was a military band on the bandstand in the park.
I remember sitting hypnotised, watching it.
That one visionary picture has stuck with me
through the whole of my life, actually.
I had trained as an Army bandmaster.
I was fortunate enough to get into the Household Cavalry,
where the pinnacle of my career
was a Trooping the Colour in front of the Queen.
(MILITARY BAND PLAYING)
It was everything...
that I'd spent my life living for.
But at the same time, I had a terrible secret.
I knew from a very early age that
I wasn't interested in the female form.
I didn't know what to do about it.
None of my family knew, none of my friends knew.
Back then, you could be charged and you know go to prison.
For many of us, this is revolting - men dancing with men.
These men must lead a secret, dark existence.
Homosexuals in this country today break the law.
Fire! (GUNFIRE)
When I joined up at the end of 1966,
it was illegal to be gay in any profession.
It wasn't just the Army.
And then in 1967, the rules changed in England and Wales,
where it was no longer illegal to be gay.
But it was still illegal in the Armed Forces.
They maintained the status quo and kept the ban.
So I internalised it.
I'd always wanted a relationship,
but the first person I ever got really close to,
it felt very unsafe and I'd have a panic attack.
Perhaps the authorities were coming too close, you know,
and I was really worried about telephone calls and letters.
So I ended that relationship,
and it was very, very painful to break up.
After that, I totally devoted myself into my career.
The emotional part of me would lock itself down
so that I didn't get too involved again.
It was like tucking something away in one part of my body
that nobody else had ever seen.
So, as far as I knew, almost nobody knew about it.
(RADIO ON)
I'd been in the Army just over 18 years.
I was packing to go away on tour with my band,
and there was a knock at my door.
There were two gentlemen stood there in suits.
Members of the Military Police.
I said, "So what's the problem?"
And they said, "We have reason to believe
you've been involved in homosexual activity."
And I thought, "Oh, my God, what do I do?"
How did they know about my secret?
I felt like the whole world had just stopped.
(OFFICER BARKS ORDER)
The Red Caps, as we called them,
you didn't really want to get in their pathway.
They could do what they liked, say what they liked.
You were always in fear of the Military Police
when you were serving, because you didn't know where they were
or what they were doing.
There was a team of Special Investigation Branch policemen
who did nothing but look for LGBTQ-plus service personnel.
One of the sailors literally disappeared overnight.
Led away by the Military Police.
It certainly created and enhanced the fear for me
that that's what lay ahead for me if I got caught.
ELAINE: By the summer of 1987, I was an officer.
(PHONE RINGING)
I was on duty and the phone rang.
"Good afternoon, Lt Chambers speaking."
It was Matron sounding absolutely furious.
(OVER PHONE) "This is very uncomfortable,
but allegations have been made.
Unwanted advances on two female nurses.
What have you got to say?"
I cannot tell you, I was just so dumbfounded.
I was utterly shocked.
Some things had gone on with other women.
They were certainly not unwanted advances,
and they were certainly not even initiated by me.
So I just said to her, "That's not true."
She said, "As you're denying this,
we'll need to make further investigations."
(PHONE HANGS UP)
And it was the word "investigation," I was like, "Ding!"
I was like, "Oh, my God, this this is not good."
So I go racing back to my room.
My head is just like... (MAKES BUZZING SOUND)
"What's going on? Oh, my God, my God!"
Obviously, these allegations weren't true,
but they were so scary, cos they were saying,
"You're a lesbian."
I thought, I need to get rid of anything in my room
that paints me with a Sapphic brush.
Letters, diaries, photos, videos.
But then I thought, "What am I going to do with this evidence?"
This is where I made my first massive mistake.
She's mentioned investigation.
It's gonna be the Royal Military Police.
But it's Friday afternoon.
They won't come on a Friday.
I decided, "Well, I'll put these items into bags
and decide what to do with them later."
I had no notion of what was about to happen.
I had no idea it was going to get a million times worse.
ROBERT: I knew full well that if Military Police were at my house,
the chances are they would be looking for evidence
of my sexual orientation.
And if they found anything like that,
my career was almost certainly finished.
They said, "We need to search your property."
And then I started to panic.
I'd just recently bought a copy of Gay Times.
Usually, I'd made sure I'd destroyed them,
but I suddenly remembered it was tucked away in a drawer
in the same room they were searching.
I'm stood there, my heart thumping, trying not to show shock.
I didn't know how they'd found out.
I didn't know who had dropped me in it.
And thinking, "Please don't look in this drawer."
I started to think that I'd got away with it
and I had a huge sense of relief.
But then, as they were leaving,
one of them opened the drawer,
and I thought, "Jesus, what do I do?"
It was devastating.
My whole body was shaking inside.
They then informed me that I'd got to go to their headquarters
for interrogation.
I was so used to hiding my emotions,
they wouldn't have seen any change in my outward appearance.
Inside was turmoil.
I'd been back literally only about 25, maybe 30 minutes.
I'm in the office and again, the phone rings.
(PHONE RINGING)
(OVER PHONE) "Come round to my office immediately."
(KNOCK ON DOOR)
There's two other people with her.
They said, "We are from the Special Investigation Branch."
I just remember thinking, "Oh, my God, this is serious.
This is really serious."
The SIB officer handed me a printed paper,
"Noticed to Suspect".
And I thought, "What the fuck? 'Suspect?!' 'Suspect?!'
Oh, my God!"
Then he said "Due to the lateness of the hour,
we're not going to question you now.
But we would like to now go and search your room."
And I was like, "Oh, no. No, no, no."
My heart was just absolutely pounding.
My palms were sweating.
My mouth was dry, cos I thought,
"I've got all this evidence in these bags just sitting on the bed."
Gold dust.
So we go into my room and they put on latex gloves.
And I just felt ashamed.
It was like they don't want to touch anything associated
with a possible lesbian, a possible homosexual,
a possible criminal pervert.
They flicked through every book, pulled out my photographs,
saying, "Who's this?" "Who's this?"
Went through the pockets in all of my jackets and trousers,
literally going through my dirty linen basket.
But I'm just acutely aware of these two bags sitting on the bed.
He finally got to the bags, and I thought,
"Oh, Christ, this is it. Game over."
They then gathered the evidence
and labelled them and they were called "exhibits".
That's when it got terrifying.
I just remember thinking, "God, what's going to happen?"
ROBERT: The Military Police took me to their headquarters
for a number of, erm, interrogations.
It was very nerve-wracking.
The first thing that went onto the table
was the copy of the Gay Times they'd found.
They asked why had I got that in my house.
Then they started asking me lots of invasive questions.
What did I know about anal sex and what did I know about oral sex?
I'd never, ever discussed anything like that in my life.
There was no way I could answer those questions.
Then they started saying,
"You've got a dog, you must sleep with it."
"You've got brothers, you must have slept with them."
It was very traumatic.
But then they amplified their interrogation.
They brought out a letter.
My heart sank because it was my handwriting.
It was this letter to another musician in the Army
who was gay as well.
And one of the few people who knew about my sexual orientation.
In that letter, I'd opened up about loneliness
because I couldn't come out,
and it was a chance to explore those sorts of feelings
with somebody who understood.
But he must have kept it.
It never occurred to me that that letter would turn up
on a table in a military investigation.
Suddenly, that was all being used against me.
"What did you mean by loneliness? What did you mean by secrets?"
It felt like they could see inside me.
I felt betrayed by myself for putting these things into writing.
And I thought, "Yes, you've got me. I can't get out of this."
I knew I was innocent.
I knew I hadn't done these things that I was being accused of,
these unwanted advances.
I felt a horrible mix of fear,
incredulity, frustration,
anger, everything.
It was just a mix of really, really scary emotions.
The warrant officer that was leading the investigation said to me,
"We've now got to begin to question you,
because these allegations have been made against you."
I'd had a phone call from a military legal adviser,
who'd said the ramifications were massive.
"Your main way to deal with this is just to be completely honest.
Just tell them what happened."
I genuinely believe I was there
to defend myself against these allegations.
So I said, "OK, things happened between us,
consensually, and, actually, at their invitation,"
not at all the way it was being portrayed.
I was saying this over and over again.
He realised it wasn't as clear-cut as they expected.
But then the focus just moved completely.
And all they were interested in was the tagged and bagged exhibits,
my own diaries.
contact lists from this lesbian pen pal club
and some letters that Sadie had written to me
that I'd kept over the years.
And they began to start joining dots together
and making a link between me and her.
And I just thought, "What?! What's going on? Hang on a minute."
At this stage, I'd been in the interrogation for 15 hours.
15 hours.
I have no idea of whether that was a deliberate tactic to wear me down.
I was terrified. Absolutely terrified.
He was pushing me more and more about the relationship with Sadie,
and the questioning taking the hours and hours that it took
just meant that I really stupidly ended up telling him that
yes, we had been briefly involved.
I suddenly thought, "Oh, Christ, what have I done?
Oh, my God, what have I done?"
I'd given her up to them.
When the questioning finished,
I raced off to the payphone and rang Sadie.
I was so scared. I thought, "Oh, my God," you know,
"they're going to go to her place now, I just know it."
I just had to warn her.
She was very angry with me, basically saying,
"You fucking idiot!"
It was breaking my heart.
By the end of the call...
Sorry. By the end of the call...
..she was like, "Be careful."
"Look after yourself."
And, you know, she knew...
..she knew by the end of the call I would never do anything
to hurt her deliberately because I loved her.
Once the investigation was concluded,
there were absolutely no charges brought against me
and the allegations had been dropped or disproved.
But they had enough evidence
of what they deemed as "unnatural conduct"
because of my "homosexual proclivities".
I was told, "You have to resign."
I didn't want to accept that.
I did not want my career... I'm going to get upset now.
I did not want my career to be over for that.
Why should it be?
I was a bloody good nurse.
And I honestly thought, "Why would they do that?
Why would they get rid of me?"
Suddenly, I was back out in the world.
That's when it really, really hit home.
I was living with my mum and dad. I've been outed to my entire family.
I felt I've lost everything that I've worked so hard to get.
I was just left completely wrung out, empty.
It's the only thing that ever happened to me in my life
that seriously made me contemplate killing myself.
That's how seriously bad it was.
I was just so angry with what had happened,
and this absolute sense that it was so unjust.
And I wanted to change that.
It took me ten years of writing, harassing and refusing to let go
before I was able to get hold of the full records of my investigation.
I mean, it's hundreds of pages.
This language is just incredible.
"Aberrant behaviour", "homosexual proclivities",
"unnatural conduct".
It's very strange just to see
one's life dissected in this way.
But also, there's stuff in here I wasn't expecting to see.
I honestly thought it was just about me,
and then Sadie was inadvertently involved.
But it had gone way beyond just us two.
There were seven people in total whose lives were affected by this.
When I found that out, of course, I felt guilty,
because it was my diaries and my letters
that led to other people being dragged in.
That's... That's horrific.
The witch hunt that followed was shocking, just awful.
The Military Police were looking for anybody they could get.
People had been hunted down like vermin.
They were casting a net and they were trying to haul in other people
that might be homosexual to seek out and destroy.
I was a Military Policewoman,
a member of the Special Investigation Branch,
investigating people for being alleged homosexual.
The scale of operation involved in tracking down homosexuality
was surprisingly vast.
We had a database called the Lesbian Index.
Drawers full of cards that had people's names on.
They could come from tip-offs or an accusation,
or, following a search, you might have found the evidence yourself
through reading someone's letter and then linking that to another person.
Or maybe even it was just a suspicion about someone.
It could be short hair or having a boyish nickname like "Charlie",
or the way you walked or putting your hands in your pockets,
the way you stood.
Even the way you smoked or held a cigarette.
Once we had a name,
the lengths that we'd go to, to entrap people,
waiting outside gay bars,
seeing if someone would buy you a drink.
It would be a team of operatives following people
and surveilling people, taking pictures.
The investigations were a huge amount of man hours,
a huge amount of detail.
So we'd drag them in,
and then bully people during interviews.
A lot of it was about getting names.
So it wasn't enough to have that one person in the hot seat.
They would then be trying to capture as many other people,
hence the phrase "witch hunt".
The Special Investigation Branch
were completely and utterly despicable.
Absolutely despicable. What they put people through.
That night the Military Police in excessive numbers raided the block.
The humiliation of being dragged out of my room, barefoot, in a T-shirt,
that's when the trauma hit me.
I was on antidepressants for, like, pretty much
the last 18 months of my career.
And so I handed in my notice.
The captain told me that I'd be discharged
because disgusting people such as myself,
there was no place for us in a civilised society.
My long service and good conduct medal was cut off my tunic,
with the biggest set of scissors you could ever see.
That was it. My time was up.
There was just no preparation for us.
You were just basically throwing him on the street to be homeless
with no package to help.
All of a sudden I didn't have a future,
and I didn't know where I was going to go.
I had no job. I had nowhere to live.
And so I'd spend the days just walking the streets of Bristol.
My military career was over and I found my nursing career was over.
I was very, very shell-shocked.
I actually went through a complete nervous breakdown
and I felt really let down. Very, very let down.
ROBERT: After my interrogation,
I was administratively dismissed because of my sexual orientation.
"Services no longer required".
I actually burst out in tears because it was so painful.
I'd devoted the last 18 years to the Armed Forces,
and then, suddenly, it all crashed around me
and I had no concept of the outside world.
I had to sell my house and I was living out of my car.
So I felt very, very isolated, very lonely,
and I had no idea who I could talk to.
And so I put a letter into the gay press,
which included my phone number,
for anybody that had been through similar circumstances.
(PHONE RINGING)
A couple of weeks later, I was just about to go to bed
and my phone rang.
And it was a lady's voice.
She introduced herself as Elaine.
We were on the phone, I think probably for about two hours
on that first call, because neither of us had ever spoken
to anyone else about it.
You know, it was like, "Wow!"
Suddenly this weight suddenly started lifting off my shoulders.
It suddenly felt, "Oh, thank God,
I'm not the only one."
I arranged to come up to London for a weekend
and I ended up staying with Elaine.
I felt like she was somebody I'd known half of my life, you know?
And it just felt comfortable.
# JOY DIVISION: Love Will Tear Us Apart
Speaking to Robert was astounding.
And helped me come out, properly come out to myself.
I thought, "I want to go out and find other gay people
and see what it's like and see if I feel at home."
And that's when Robert and I said, "This is wrong.
We need to do something about this ban
and support people like ourselves,"
and get the fact of the ban's existence out
into the public domain,
because we knew most people didn't know about it.
Eventually, others started to get in touch,
so we decided we ought to formalise it a bit more.
I suggested, "Why don't we call ourselves 'Rank Outsiders',
and let's hope one day it will be 'Insiders'."
Not at that moment in time, for one minute,
thinking that anything was going to change.
We were actually now getting news and information
and being joined by people who'd in many ways
been treated even worse than we had.
And that was when we met Mike.
I was 16 and a half when I joined.
My grandfather, my father,
they had all served time in the Royal Air Force.
And I just felt I wanted to continue that family tradition.
But then when I was probably about 17 and a half, coming up 18,
I realised I was attracted to men.
It was quite confusing.
But I thought, "I can manage this.
I can keep the two lives separate."
# SNAP: Rhythm Is A Dancer
So I used to jump on the train down to London.
And go to gay clubs.
I needed to explore where these feelings were taking me.
There was some great gay clubs at the time.
We used to go dancing all night and just had a damn good time.
# It's a passion, oh-oh...
But then, returning back to the base,
through the gates...
back into that different character.
At ease!
Straight, masculine.
And I thought it was working.
But I suspect that I was being watched.
Because they knew everything.
And it was the 17th of March, 1992,
I was coming up to 21,
when the Special Investigators said, "We are arresting you."
That moment, I knew it was game up.
My whole life had just crashed in around me.
I have here a tape that's not been played in over 30 years,
but it's actually the tape of my Military Police interview.
(ON TAPE)
Thirty years may have passed,
but I can remember every detail as clear as it happened yesterday.
I thought I could be clever and talk my way out of this
and say it was just a phase I was going through
and I'm really straight,
with the hope that I could salvage my career.
Looking back, I just wanted to get out of that room at all costs.
And I thought.... (SIGHS)
.."I'll just tell him what he wants to hear,"
thinking that would suffice.
But the questions kept coming...
and they kept coming.
He wanted me to say that I'd stuck this guy's penis in my mouth.
I was destroyed.
It was a complete violation.
I thought he'd finished.
And then he says, "Tell me about the next time."
And I said, "Like I've just said."
And he wasn't happy with that answer.
He wanted me to go through the intimate detail
again and again and again.
I was at breaking point, you know?
After the interview,
I was summoned to the medical officer.
He explained that he had to conduct an examination
to check for evidence of anal penetration.
I'd already admitted that I was gay.
It was just another notch to make me feel humiliated.
But I was a junior rank
addressing an order from a senior officer.
So you didn't question it.
He told you what to do and you did it.
He told me to drop my trousers and my underwear,
and he conducted an anal examination.
I just shut my eyes and completely blanked myself out.
It feels like they're raping me.
Now, looking back...
..it...
could be classed as a sexual assault, definitely.
Some years later, I discovered there's a document
that lays down specific instruction to medical officers
how to conduct examinations.
And I quote,
"They are to examine the anus for appearance
of bruising and inflammation,
for size and elasticity."
Basically, evidence that you've been penetrated.
If people thought my case was an isolated case,
then, clearly, it's not because it's written down in black and white
that these are the guidelines they have to follow.
And using such language!
So after the physical examination, I was awarded 60 days' detention.
It felt like just another kick in the teeth.
Before you could even take breath,
the drill sergeant was there yelling at you,
"Get off, Get out!"
I was processed and then the daily beastings kicked in.
But I was subjected to...
..special treatment because I was gay.
I was taken to the latrines by this drill sergeant.
And he stood over me and he said,
You like eating shit, so..."
And he made me clean the toilet with my toothbrush.
And then...
..I was made to clean my teeth.
And this went on for 60 days.
That was the end of my military career.
2nd of November, 1992.
The day I was released,
I didn't know where to go, what to do.
I had nowhere to live.
The first couple of days I was sleeping rough.
There was depression,
more depression, drinking.
Suicide thoughts.
And then I was put in contact with a group called Rank Outsiders.
And they said would I like to come down and meet up with them
and share my experiences with them?
So when I first met Robert and Elaine,
just being able to know I was not the only one,
it meant quite a lot and got me through some difficult times.
And, eventually, I started to give more time to the group.
And to rebuild my life.
ELAINE: In our initial meetings, we were talking very excitably
about what were we going to be? Were we going to be an organisation?
Were we going to be a support group?
Were we going to be activists? What was the aim?
We thought it would be great if we could offer some sort of
contact number where people could phone us
and we could give them advice and support.
We created our own leaflets and information.
It was all advertised widely in all the gay press.
We decided we would man it once a week on a Wednesday
for a couple of hours between 7:00 and 9:00
Outside of that time, there was an answerphone.
And so there we were, the first Wednesday.
(CHUCKLES) It was all set up, ready to go.
We sat there at seven o'clock and we thought,
"The phone's going to ring."
7:30, "No, the phone's going to ring."
Eight o'clock...
nine o'clock...
nothing.
Nobody called.
And we felt a bit deflated.
So we packed up and went home.
But the following week, we came back,
the light was flashing on the answerphone.
I couldn't believe it. The answerphone was full.
(LINE RINGING)
When I was dismissed, I was so depressed,
I went into a dark bubble.
I decided that I was going to the Tamar Bridge
and was going to chuck myself off.
But then I phoned Rank Outsiders organisation
and they said, "You're not on your own."
This is what we do. We're a support organisation."
And I thought, "Right, there is," you know,
"there are people out here just like me."
Rank Outsiders certainly saved my life.
Yeah, it did.
I saw a lot of stuff in the Pink Paper about them,
and, more importantly, I was able to pass that information
onto isolated friends and colleagues.
Rank Outsiders was a huge support.
They were there for me from the very beginning.
And to actually speak to somebody on the end of the phone, even,
that's been through what you've been through,
I don't think without them I would have managed.
Occasionally, I would phone the Rank Outsiders helpline,
but I was absolutely petrified about phoning it.
But also desperate for information. I wanted to know what was going on.
I wanted to know if there was hope.
But I'd never phone them from a telephone within the military dockyard.
I never told them who I was and I'd never stay on the telephone
for longer than three or four minutes.
(PHONE RINGING)
ROBERT: I was conscious in the back of my mind that
that somebody might be listening in
to what was being said on those phones.
We did, frequently, get calls from people pretending to be gay.
We knew, just from the nature of the conversation,
that they were SIB.
They were on a fishing trip,
trying to find more victims so they could go on a witch hunt.
Across the military, there were hundreds of people involved
in these investigations.
Tapping phones, intercepting mail and secretly filming people.
Such an extraordinary amount of resource being thrown at it.
I just began to find the whole experience
of the witch hunts deeply disturbing.
Because, whilst I was investigating gay people,
I was hiding a secret.
I was living a double life.
I realised I'm a lesbian.
I just felt like walking on a knife's edge,
because I was in turmoil.
I really thought I was losing my mind.
I was paranoid.
But eventually, the whole thing caught up with me,
despite my best intentions at keeping everything secret.
My room was searched and I was then taken to the interrogation room.
Just as I'd done to other people.
Well, I was dishonourably discharged.
And the shame and the stigma was overwhelming.
But the biggest thing was the guilt,
the guilt, and that that's with me still.
When I look back, it is hard to justify being a part of that.
And I was naive, and I see that with hindsight.
And all I can say is I was a cog within a machine
that is chewing up gay people.
We're here, we're queer, get used to it.
(CHEERING) # ERASURE: A Little Respect
# I try to discover
# A little something to make me sweeter... #
ELAINE: After a couple of years as Rank Outsiders,
we decided we needed publicity to get the ban's existence
out into the public domain,
because most people didn't know about it.
MIKE: Gay Pride 1993,
we produced, at great expense, our very own Rank Outsiders banner.
And it gave us an opportunity to be visual.
I didn't know what to expect.
But then gay military personnel were coming up
and they'd be talking to us.
Some were still serving. Some paraded in uniform.
Some just wore berets.
And that's how we all met Ed.
I was a young naval officer,
and I was sacked because I told the Navy I was gay.
I couldn't cope with living this really strange,
complicated double life anymore.
I was jobless.
Hadn't come out to my family.
Was in a complete mess with what I was going to do with my life.
And it was also something I was still very angry about.
And I started thinking, "So let's try and understand where this ban came from.
"Did someone sit down one day and say, 'Let's ban it?'"
Because common sense tells me that you shouldn't be sacking people
because of who they sleep with.
The ban on gays serving in the military wasn't just a policy.
It was in law, in the Armed Forces Discipline Acts.
And so I started doing a lot of research,
and I discovered that it was backed up by pages and pages
of confidential and restricted documents.
They say things like,
"The removal of homosexuals is of vital importance."
They even used phrases like "sexual deviance"
and words like "disgusting", "infamous" and "immoral".
And also that gay people were particular targets
for espionage and could be blackmailed.
But the reason people could be blackmailed is because of the ban.
If they're outed, they risk ruin,
they risk prison, they risk being sacked.
It's very clear from the arguments
that these views were held at the very top of the Armed Forces.
And so once I met Rank Outsiders,
I thought that what we needed to do was fight to change the law.
ELAINE: Ed had an utter conviction we could mount a legal challenge.
But to dare to challenge the Ministry of Defence is massive.
How are we even going to chip into that? Where do we begin?
We were amateurs. We had no idea how to change the law.
We had no budget. We had nothing.
And we knew that we had to create this massive legal campaign.
But we couldn't do it alone. We needed help and support.
And the obvious way to do that was to win over Stonewall.
When I first met with Rank Outsiders,
I was horrified by the stories that I heard.
It was just incredible to me that a state institution
that was there to defend us was behaving in that sort of way.
Stonewall had become the first high-profile
lesbian and gay rights lobbying organisation in the UK.
And so I asked, "How do we take this to court?"
Mounting a big legal campaign, normally,
would cost hundreds and hundreds of thousands of pounds.
But Stonewall was powerful because
we had lots of allies in the legal profession
who believed in the cause.
The claimants came to see me.
They wanted to know whether they had a case,
and I thought we had a very strong argument.
You were dismissed because of your sexual orientation,
even though that had no impact whatsoever
on your performance of your job.
I thought, personally, this was outrageous.
David Pannick was the greatest human rights lawyer that we had.
And so he was making a big statement
that he felt this case was important and he wanted to change things.
David Pannick thought we had a very strong case,
but also he said taking the government to court
is really difficult.
You can't just go on your own to court and argue,
"I was sacked, it was unfair."
So what we needed to do was present four test cases
who were human beings, who had stories to tell.
This isn't just about a piece of dry law.
This is about people's lives.
It was vital that in each of these cases,
nothing could be said to establish
that their sexual orientation had had any effect
upon their military career, upon their record.
I got a phone call from Angela Mason from Stonewall
to say that I was actually going to be the first test case
to go through the courts.
I just didn't want anybody else to have to go through
what I went through.
I was really quite excited, but also terrified.
ED: Eventually, we settled on Jeanette Smith,
who'd been an nurse,
John Beckett, who'd been a young Royal Navy sailor,
Graham Grady, who'd served in the RAF and in intelligence roles,
and the final test case was Duncan Lustig-Prean,
the young naval officer who was destined,
according to all his reports, to much higher things,
but again, job lost because he was gay.
Duncan was probably the most senior person
that we'd been involved with. A large, impressive figure.
I joined the Navy in 1979.
I joined as an ordinary sailor and ended up as a lieutenant commander.
Most of my career was spent on board frigates and destroyers at sea.
It was at the height of the Cold War,
so we were chasing Soviet submarines in British waters.
I was responsible for clearing mines in the Falkland Islands.
The job we were doing was important and valuable.
But I found myself in this sort of awful position.
Because I was gay.
I knew that if I was caught,
I would be arrested and questioned and investigated.
I was constantly thinking, "What if I make a mistake?
"What if someone finds out?"
(HORN SOUNDS)
When we sailed for the Falkland Islands,
all the families gathered on Portsmouth Harbour,
but my boyfriend would be hidden,
and I would just discreetly wave to him and he would wave to me.
At sea I would write letters addressed to "Dear P"
or "Dear Phil", or, more often, "Dear Phyllis".
Instead of saying, "I love you,"
I'd sign it, "I'm on extension 143".
"I love you".
So I'd served for 15 years,
and even though I was leading a double life,
I saw nothing else but to stay in the Navy.
But then it all changed.
There was a knock on the door and there was a message.
"Someone has been calling repeatedly
asking for you to ring them,
but not from the ship."
And this was really unusual.
I left the dockyard.
And I made a phone call from a phone box.
He answered very quickly, told him who I was.
And he said... (OVER PHONE) .."I want to meet you."
"Why? Who are you? I don't know who you are."
"I want to meet you."
"What's all this about?"
I don't go driving around the country
meeting people I've never met before.
"It's about your double life."
I knew what that was about.
You know, everything that I'd feared.
I drove out of Portsmouth and I got to London.
And at 12:30, I arrived in the meeting point.
And I asked him, "What do you want?"
He said, "I know that you're gay."
"If you make it worth my while, I'll keep quiet about it."
Inside, my heart was pounding
and my hands were clammy and I was scared.
But this was something I had rehearsed
in my mind over and over again.
"What if I was caught out?" "What if someone discovered it?"
"What if someone tried to blackmail me?"
Although I'd loved my career,
there was no way that I was going to be blackmailed.
And I said to him...
.."You can fuck off."
"Because before you get anywhere near the Military Police,
I will have told them about this conversation."
In the morning I walked into Special Investigation Branch
and the person I spoke to, actually, someone I knew.
It was, "Duncan, great to hear from you!"
How are you, mate? How can I help you? What's wrong?"
"Someone's trying to blackmail me."
"Give me the bugger's name. We'll sort him out for you.
Why is he trying to blackmail you?"
And I took a deep breath and I said, "Because I'm gay."
And there was this long pause, and he...
the smile just vanished from his face.
"Well, in that case, you're not obliged to say anything,
but anything you do say may be taken down in evidence."
Opposite his office was an interview room.
And we started that taped interview.
Although I tried to say, "Yes, I have told you that I'm gay,
that's all you need to know,"
they seemed to be more interested in asking questions
about anyone else in the forces who's gay.
Well, I wasn't going to go there for them.
They also asked about the blackmailer.
He, apparently, had gone to them several times
and outed people to them.
If I blackmailed someone, I'd go to prison.
But no, he was useful to the military.
He outed gay people.
And so nothing ever happened to him.
I was discharged. I was trembling.
It was goodbye.
It was goodbye to the Navy.
It had been a fabulous job. Erm...
It was over.
It was the beginning of 1995 when I was finally dismissed
and at the same time Rank Outsiders selected me as a test case.
The purpose of the test cases was to get the strongest arguments
in front of the court, to get the ban lifted.
But it was very clear that the Ministry of Defence
was already campaigning quite vociferously against us.
The overwhelming majority of members of the Armed Forces
do not want to have active homosexuals in their ranks...
ANGELA: The establishment, I felt, were against us.
It was something of a David-and-Goliath situation.
(OFFICER BARKS ORDERS)
As one of the four test cases, it got more and more intimidating
and a lot more scary the closer we got.
We were taking on the state, so the stakes were incredibly high,
but so were the costs to the victims of this policy.
So this was a huge moment for all of us.
REPORTER: The three men and a woman
bringing this landmark legal challenge
all automatically lost their jobs
once their homosexuality became known...
I remember the day we arrived at the High Court,
thinking, "Oh, I need to pinch myself.
Is this real? We're now actually fighting our battle."
ROBERT: Going to the High Court was a strange experience.
You're even worried if your shoes squeak.
DUNCAN: The case started and in came the judges.
The Ministry of Defence had numerous barristers, solicitors.
We just had a tiny team and very meagre resources.
We were really fighting against the odds.
To win our case in court we had to prove
that what the Government was doing was irrational.
Not just that it wasn't fair, but that it's bonkers.
Our main arguments were very simple,
that the policy was wrong, that it was unfair,
that it was unjust.
This was really a disguised, or not very disguised,
form of prejudice.
This is extraordinary in the 1990s.
We're not talking about the 1890s.
DUNCAN: The Ministry of Defence then argued
gay people in the Armed Forces could be blackmailed,
thus everybody who was gay was a security risk.
But David Pannick was like a tiger. He jumped on every point.
He started talking about me and he asked the question,
"Why is he a security risk,
if the moment a blackmailer approaches him, he reports it?"
"The only reason he's a security risk is because you make him one."
When the judges retired,
it was extraordinary to realise that it's just these three men
that are going to make a decision whether we've won or lost.
There was this slimmest of possibilities
that these law lords would see sense and go,
"Ban over. Problem solved." Wow!
So I was really optimistic.
And I thought, based on what I'd heard,
that we had to win.
Lawyers representing three former servicemen and one woman
who were sacked because they were gay
accused the military authorities
of pandering to irrational prejudice and intolerance.
The MOD argues that homosexuality is incompatible with service life.
So once we learn that the judgment's ready,
we all troop back into the courtroom.
Lord Justice Simon Brown began by saying that Lawrence of Arabia,
who, of course, was gay,
would not be welcome in the Armed Forces of today.
And that signalled to us that he found this
an extraordinary policy.
It was unbelievable in the way that it attacked the Ministry.
I was really optimistic.
I thought, based on what I had heard,
that we had to win.
Lord Justice Simon Brown ended by expressing the view
that the tide of history was against such a policy.
ELAINE: It sounded like they might have made the right decision to say,
"You know what? We're going to stop this."
But he said "with regret,
and he made it clear it was with regret,
that he couldn't do anything about it.
And I was just...
I couldn't believe it.
I sat there devastated.
After what the judge had to say in the judgment,
which gave us so much hope,
it was, of course, crushing for the whole team.
(PRESS CLAMOURING)
REPORTER: They left court disappointed.
Jeanette Smith, Graham Brady, John Beckett and Duncan Lustig-Prean
lost their case when the judge said there was no contravention
of European or domestic law.
The law was not on our side.
We would have to fight another day.
We increasingly felt that as normal people in normal society moved on
and got to see lesbians and gay men,
got to see characters in soap operas and the like,
in the forces, that was still a world apart.
So people were still forced to live a secret life...
..or to chuck their career in.
We were not going to give up.
We were going to make sure that as many people as possible
would know about it.
And we were going to get that story out there.
REPORTER: Elaine Chambers lost her job as an Army nurse
after an investigation into her sexuality.
For no reason that affects our work,
our sexuality is considered enough to absolutely ruin our lives
and just take everything away from us.
From small acorns grow mighty oaks.
And by the mid-'90s,
there was a big media campaign around us.
That guy has just lost his career and his job for being gay.
REPORTER: Edmond Hall was dismissed from the Navy
after revealing he was homosexual.
If we could keep this on the front pages
and as a big news story,
we can win over public opinion by putting pressure on the Government.
But it became really obvious that the Ministry of Defence
was going to fight this at every stage, tooth and nail.
We are not, I repeat, not prepared
to allow the effectiveness and fighting power of our Armed Forces
who YOU expect to go out and lay their lives on the line
on a pretty regular basis
in the interests of this country to be compromised in any way.
Put all these things together, and, quite candidly,
homosexuality is incompatible with good military discipline
and a cohesive unit...
On some of these programmes, the team set us up against people
with total opposite views to ours.
But sometimes I found myself becoming very, very angry.
I served nearly 20 years. I spent five days under arrest.
I was interviewed by the SIB in great depth.
I still suffer mentally from that torture now.
HOST: Henry? I have no comment on this.
There were a lot of high-ranking people who believed
that "the rank and file would not tolerate these people
and they would all leave if you made them serve with them."
I think most red-blooded males, and I count myself among them,
are repelled by the physical genital activities of these people.
It was put very well to me by a Royal Marine not very long ago,
who summed it up by saying that men don't like taking showers
with men who like taking showers with men.
The bigotry in the homophobic remarks that these...
..generals and air chief marshals were making,
it was disgusting.
ED: And then we started to hear about
another thing that was happening.
The Ministry of Defence was working on its own secret weapon.
There's a report coming out tomorrow,
and I think I can tell you in advance
that it will show that the vast majority
of the Armed Forces believe that it would not be good
for their discipline or their fighting power.
In 1996 I was asked to undertake
an investigation into the military case
for retaining the ban on homosexuals,
and the team was called
the Homosexuality Policy Assessment Team,
or "H-PAT".
We were military practitioners from all three services,
plus a psychologist.
We sat down trying to come up with the clearest questions
which would get to the underlying issues.
Questions about accommodation, living on top of each other,
sharing sleeping bags and showers and things.
So we sent out questionnaires.
We conducted hundreds or maybe thousands of interviews.
We ran focus groups.
And when the results came back, I was somewhat surprised by that.
I didn't expect opinions to be so unified and so decisive.
Senior officers, junior officers, service people at all ranks
felt that the introduction to openly acknowledge homosexuals
would be divisive and polarising
and would create problems for discipline and cohesion.
That was a major concern.
So the conclusion was the vast majority of servicemen and women
did not want the ban to change.
This document is page after page of adverse comment.
The report highlighted undoubtedly
attitudes that were prevalent in the Armed Forces at the time,
which we felt was just hostility and homophobia.
And yet those comments appear in this report unchallenged
because the Ministry of Defence wanted to use them
as evidence to justify this policy.
The report also contains some of the methods
with which homosexuals could be attacked.
"Premeditated attacks while sleeping".
"Striking sleepers with hard objects in towels".
"Blows with Samson bars".
It's shocking to think that the Ministry of Defence
produced a report that says
I shouldn't be able to serve in the Navy
because if I do, colleagues in the Navy will try and beat me up.
These are things that are produced as evidence in this report
to explain why gays shouldn't be able to serve, for their own good.
Well, as I say, I was surprised.
Shocked, a bit.
But remember, we were talking only about hypothetical violence.
But it was an indicator of a level of dislike and detestation
that should be registered.
I can't be indifferent to the human costs of that policy.
Which we mentioned in the report and we knew
ruined the careers of entirely decent people.
But it was a reasonable expectation that a defence ministry
in a democratic country could ask
for this kind of investigation to be done.
The purpose of that report, as far as I'm concerned,
was simply to provide a modicum of justification,
a fig leaf, if you like, for this ridiculous ban.
Following this report,
the Ministry of Defence were hoping and hoping
that perhaps we'd give up the fight.
We weren't going to.
We decided to open our second battle front
and take the action to Parliament.
REPORTER: Every five years, Parliament gets the chance
to inspect the services when it considers a new Armed Forces Bill.
This year's review of the military has been dominated by the row
over the right of homosexuals to serve in the forces.
The Armed Forces have different laws to everyone else.
They have the Armed Forces Discipline Act,
and every five years they get renewed.
So the House of Commons Select Committee was going to meet
in 1996 and decide what needed to be updated.
We were all fingers crossed that the MPs were going to say
Ministry of Defence is out of date. It's time for this to change.
I was just thinking parliament, MPs, the Select Committee,
just do what you need to do. Just do it.
Bite the bullet, sort this out and it will be over,
and we'll be out of your hair and you can get on with your lives
and we can get on with ours.
Introduce yourself and your team. My name is Angela Mason.
I'm the executive director of Stonewall.
It was quite nerve-wracking.
There was all the government officials and military officials
and parliamentary officials and the press.
I mean, it was another big theatrical occasion.
The members of the committee have talked to scores of servicemen,
and we've formed our own view made in this report,
which is that servicemen are overwhelmingly
opposed to homosexuality. Are you saying that's not correct?
To our horror, the Select Committee gave particular prominence
to the H-PAT report and to all the negative arguments.
This, clearly, may well have a morale impact on the Armed Forces.
It very quickly became clear that the machinery of government,
the Ministry of Defence, was determined that we wouldn't win.
I believe that the military are not seeking to discriminate against you.
But on the other hand, it seems that perhaps
you expect positive discrimination in your favour.
Do you accept the right of a woman to refuse to shower with a lesbian?
I felt the MPs on the committee weren't all that sympathetic.
The theatre of it was kind of rigged against us.
I just wonder if your organisation recognises
that some people regard homosexual acts as immoral
or whether you recognise that some people feel that way.
They were just absolutely convinced that homosexuality would affect
the security of the Armed Forces,
the fighting capability of the Armed Forces.
It is quite difficult to manage the time...
I thought the MPs were pretty appalling, to be honest.
Thank you very much for coming.
They went off to vote, and within the week we had the result.
REPORTER: A special Commons committee set up to examine the bill
decided to back the Ministry of Defence's
current ban on gays and lesbians.
This is a clear analysis that the admission of homosexuals
to the Armed Forces would undermine the cohesion,
the morale and the fighting power of our Armed Forces,
which are a unique asset.
The House of Commons Select Committee
was another one of those moments when the ban could have been lifted,
and, sadly, they didn't.
I remember feelings of enormous disappointment
that our parliamentary system had failed.
We felt that we were being left behind by the bigotry
and the homophobia that the establishment
was still showing towards us.
Quite a few of the campaigners like me,
who'd been there at the beginning, began to run out of steam.
DUNCAN: But we had to keep going. We had to keep going for others
because there were a lot of people getting hurt.
In April 1997, I was asked to go to the RAF police.
And they just asked me, "SSE Austin, do you have homosexual tendencies?"
Literally burst into tears,
I answered the question for them,
and within minutes, seconds probably,
they'd already explained to me that I was no longer fit for purpose
and I was incompatible to service life.
I had exemplary service.
I'd been mentioned in the Queen's Birthday honours list in 1996
with the Commander in Chief's commendation,
but I was kicked out for being gay.
I could have gone to military prison.
That was the same year when Tony Blair came to power
with New Labour.
Princess Diana died. It's not that long ago.
We knew that we couldn't go any further in the UK law courts.
It had gone as far as it could go, but we were not going to give up.
We had one last throw of the dice.
And that was to follow the cases all the way
to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
REPORTER: Former service personnel sacked for being gay
have been going to the British courts for years
to try to have the ban overturned.
But because it's an issue of human rights,
it's the European courts that will eventually decide.
By the time we got to the European Court of Human Rights,
we'd been fighting this for years.
We were all exhausted.
But there was this last-gasp battle that we can fight.
On the day, we have 30 minutes to present our oral argument,
and that's not a long period of time.
It's a very short hearing, and it was not a foregone conclusion
because former Soviet Union countries
had joined that court,
that they were going to be more conservative attitudes
than we'd seen before.
I declare open the present hearing
before the European Court of Human Rights.
One judge looked very unhappy during my presentation,
and he said to me,
"Well, what would happen if one of your clients was on manoeuvres
and they had to go up a mountain
and they all had to huddle together for warmth? What then?"
And my co-counsel whispered to me,
"Tell him that if it was that cold,
the last thing they want to do was get their dick out."
And I gave the judges an expurgated version of that answer.
And then it was over, and we waited for their judgment.
You never know what the dynamics of the court are going to be
and until you get the judgment,
there's always a sense of danger, jeopardy.
I, like a number of people, had gone to Stonewall's offices.
We'd been told that the verdict
was going to come through later that day.
We were all stood around the fax machine,
cos we knew it was going to come in on the fax.
And I remember feeling very, very stressed.
ED: I'm always an optimist,
but based on what had happened before,
the odds were absolutely stacked against us.
DUNCAN: Slowly, these pages came through.
Lots and lots of legal preamble.
ELAINE: My heart was pounding, guts churning.
Because of the horrors of what we'd all been through,
this moment was so massive.
MIKE: It was eight years to get to this point.
We'd been used to being rejected time and time again.
You know, dare we believe in hope?
Somebody picked it up and read it out to everybody,
otherwise it would have been torn to pieces.
And it was almost the last page that made it clear,
there was this moment of disbelief.
And then finally...
Bang! "We've got it!"
The judges had ruled in our favour.
I just went, "Whoa-ho-ho!
It's happened at last! They've bloody well done it!
I can't believe it!"
REPORTER: Joy among gay rights campaigners
as the news comes through to the London headquarters of Stonewall.
It was the unanimous verdict that Britain's ban on gays serving
was discriminatory and illegal...
We just thought, "God, we did it! We did it. This thing, it's gone."
No one was ever, ever going to go through...
Oh, here I go again! ..what we'd been through.
And I remember turning round to Elaine and saying,
"So we can change it to 'Rank Insiders' now?" (CHUCKLES)
REPORTER: There are many within the armed forces
who are horrified by today's decisions.
Generals have actively lobbied ministers for years
to keep gays out of the military,
but these judges have said it is nothing but prejudice.
The Government cannot enforce this ban,
given this very clear and damning judgement.
REPORTER: Within two hours, the Defence Secretary declared
Britain would accept the verdict and immediately halted
all disciplinary proceedings based on sexuality.
DUNCAN: This was the proudest moment of my life.
We had taken on the Government and the Ministry of Defence
and we won.
We made history. We made history, that team.
It had an impact not just on us and the armed forces,
but upon every single employer in Europe,
because at last there was a piece of legislation
that said you may not discriminate against someone
just because they're lesbian or gay.
(RADIO) The Government has just announced an independent review
with careers destroyed overnight. The losses were huge.
The Government hopes the review will go some way
to righting the wrongs of the past.
LGBTQ-plus veterans say the damage can never be fully repaired.
After a great deal of work campaigning,
the independent review was announced in January 2022.
Over a thousand people stepped forward to give evidence.
What the independent review, I hope, succeeds in doing
is pulling out the reality now
of what really happened in the Government's name with that ban.
You know, what it did to people, the damage it did that's lifelong.
People lost their homes. People lost their pensions.
People went to prison.
It's had a big impact on me psychologically.
A lot of mental scars and flashbacks.
It has a lot to answer for.
If I'm honest, I would say it took me years
to rebuild my life after discharge.
We have a gross injustice which we need to undo,
and there are people out there still hurting.
I loved being in the Army,
and it was taken away and it's never been replaced.
From that point of view, my life is empty and remains empty.
ELAINE: It's 23 years after the ban was lifted.
I'm in my 60s and I'm still battling
for some form of proper apology and recompense.
I don't think I'll ever fully get over it.
The best and most wonderful moments of my life
mixed in with the most hideous.
And there's still this anger.
I don't think I can move on from it, even if I want to.
No, I... Yeah, it'll always be there.
AccessibleCustomerService@sky.uk