FRONTLINE officers have set up the military’s first staff federation because they feel let down by service chiefs and politicians over the treatment of troops in Iraq.

The British Armed Forces Federation’s leadership is meeting in private today in Wiltshire to discuss how to recruit thousands of members across the armed forces.

The body will provide legal and moral support to soldiers in dispute with their commanders and lobby for better equipment and medical back-up for those in the front line. However, like the Police Federation, it will not take its members out on strike.

The federation faces opposition from chiefs of staff and some officers, who argue it will undermine the authority of commanders and compromise Britain’s military capability. The Ministry of Defence (MoD) admits it cannot stop the plans going ahead.

The idea has gained the backing of some middle-ranking officers from the army and the Royal Air Force. Naval representatives are being sought.

Members are expected to be troops from the rank of lieutenant colonel down, who believe defence chiefs are no longer able to represent the best interests of service personnel.

Richard Holmes, the television historian and colonel of the Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment, which has a battalion in Iraq, said increased pressure from politicians to present a united front prevented senior commanders from fighting on behalf of their men.

“Politicians control what senior officers say more than they did in the past,” said Holmes. “They simply can’t say what the problems might be. Someone has to do that. I am an unlikely rebel — I served 36 years — but I do think there is a vacuum and it needs filling in a responsible way.”

Many service members believe comrades accused of war crimes in Iraq, who were later found not guilty, were “hung out to dry” by the government. Their anger is fuelled by the failure to provide adequate equipment, including chemical and biological filters for tanks deployed in the expectation of facing weapons of mass destruction.

The federation’s founders are also angered by attempts to force soldiers to give up early pension rights and the alleged poor treatment of reservists, which left many suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

The British Army Rumour Service internet forum provides evidence of mounting support for a federation. While the federation says it will not take industrial action, it will “thump tables” to ensure military commanders and politicians treat their members properly.

Douglas Young, the chairman of the federation, says in an interview with Channel 4’s Dispatches programme, to be broadcast tomorrow night. “[We would not] want to be too cosy because we wouldn’t be giving the MoD the right picture. There has to be some means of conveying views and warnings and problems.”

The identities of serving personnel are obscured in the Dispatches film for fear of reprisals from senior commanders. Young is anxious to persuade the MoD and defence chiefs that they have nothing to fear from the federation. But other members of the steering group, which includes officers and other ranks, are more blunt.

Richard Bartle, a former colonel in the Adjutant General’s Corps and editor of Military Unionism in the Post-Cold War Era, said: “If you look at what’s been happening over a longish period, relationships between those at the top and the ordinary soldier have broken down. Soldiers have been put in an impossible situation in Iraq particularly in regard to the courts martial. Many of them have been hung out to dry.”

Military Unionism in the Post-Cold War Era
Edited by Lindy Heinecken and Richard Bartle
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