‘Championing all those who served is the true meaning of remembrance day’

This time of year is an emotive one. Many in our communities have family connections to service. Added to this, veterans like me have deeply personal relationships and memories shaped by conflict and sacrifice. Last week, while in Australia with the Defence Select Committee, I was honoured with the opportunity to lay a poppy on the book of remembrance for my friend and comrade Paul Pardoel – Pards – who was killed in action in Iraq in 2005. 

As a constituency MP, Remembrance is not just personal. I must represent all my constituents at our local memorial services, and in doing so I am buoyed up – particularly by our young people, including our cadets, who are so impressive in their engagement with this challenging topic. 

Those young people are enthused by the opportunity to learn more about our shared history and the values our armed forces represent. This is all the more important at a time when the far right are distorting our history and parading an utterly pernicious fake patriotism. Every political step forward for the far right comes at the cost of excluding and intimidating our diverse communities, and at the cost of serving members of the armed forces, who are experiencing open racist abuse in a way that hasn’t been seen for decades. 

READ MORE: ‘The true meaning of our flag? Unity, decency and determination’

This is something I find truly depressing. Racism is not unfamiliar – I grew up on the streets of south-east London at the time of Stephen Lawrence’s murder and BNP power in Welling. Later in life, becoming Chair of the RAF’s Ethnic Minorities Network made me equally aware of pockets of racist abusers in the forces. 

But not for decades have we seen explicitly racist attitudes and actions displayed so flagrantly and so frequently in our country. This goes far beyond the open sewer of social media – the poison is spreading to hate crime on our streets and racist narratives and policies from the likes of Sarah Pochin, Robert Jenrick, and Katie Lam. 

Put simply, this is a betrayal of millions of people, connected to every one of our British ethnic minority communities, who have fought and died for Britain. It comes from a wilful ignorance of our history. And it represents a direct attack on the ethnic minority personnel serving to protect us today, because they too are bearing the brunt of the resulting upsurge in racism. 

I have been thinking about my friend Anthony Downing, a mixed race man like me, who served with me in Afghanistan as a linguist and RAF Squadron Leader. Anthony was killed by a roadside bomb during an operational detachment doing a job he loved, in a country he loved, with people he loved. Whilst Ant and I shared many loves – running, the outdoors, and cycling, more than anything we loved our country and the RAF. Those two things bound us and gave us a shared view of the world. Maybe for that reason, we never spoke about our ethnicity. We didn’t think about what we were, instead we dreamt of what we could be.

But now this reflection has become unavoidable. Why do some people think that my service to Britain is worth less because I’m Black? Would they say the same about Anthony’s sacrifice? How dare they question our Britishness – even our right to remain in the country we fought for? 

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It is so welcome that our Labour Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister and figures all across our party are standing up forcefully for our shared British values against the mobilisation of the far right. 

I believe this goes beyond a stronger narrative, to policy change too. We have a powerful governing agenda that supports the Armed Forces Community in all its diversity, and we must shout louder about this. It ranges from the 10.5% pay increase we’ve delivered for service people since last year; includes a much-needed £9 billion investment in defence housing; through to our delivery of a new Armed Forces Commissioner. 

But there is one area of change that would be seismic in drawing a dividing line between the decent many and the racist few. In our manifesto, we committed to scrap visa fees for non-UK veterans who have served for four or more years, and their dependents. We must do this, but we can also go further.  

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There is cross-party support for a change so that non-UK recruits – Gurkha, Irish, or Commonwealth – can automatically gain citizenship once they’ve completed their service. No confusing visa processes to mar their transition into civilian life, no jumping through bureaucratic hoops and no room for expensive administrative errors. Just a clear recognition that they – like so many before from across the globe – deserve the right to become an integral part of us, because they have served us. 

What matters is that we have a message that speaks to the decent majority in this country, based on our true history. It is vitally important to be loud and proud in remembering the service of people from every background, and particularly those who have made the ultimate sacrifice in defence of the values we hold. 

Call it ‘punchy progressivism’ if you want. I’d just call it ‘patriotism’. 

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