BY DAVID EYLES

Yesterday’s Times and Sun carried the grim warning that “Top SAS veterans have warned the elite regiment is under attack from European human rights laws — and could cease to exist as we know it.” This is a copy of the veterans’ letter to the Times:

Their letter is a characteristic understatement of the problem, but is no less powerful for all that. And yet they, and other servicemen, are continuously hounded by lawyers, often many years after an incident in which they were involved, and long after the dust of gunfire has settled.

How easy it is to find fault from the comfort of a lawyer’s chambers. How easy it is to unravel the intricacies of law, when not being shot at, or under artillery fire, or risking IEDs every time you set foot on the street.

How easy it is to calculate fee income when you and your colleagues are not being blown apart in your air-conditioned offices.

How easy it is to pose in the majesty of a courtroom as a righteous upholder of law and precedent, when your position is not in danger of being overrun by an enemy intent on killing you and desecrating your corpse.

But this is the terrain upon which HR lawyers ply their trade of sanctimonious condemnation of those who have done their duty.

The ECHR is used to legitimise this lawfare, for which British taxpayers are paying, and for which the lawyers receive the benefit of fee income.

Recruitment into the armed forces is becoming rapidly more and more difficult. This dishonourable and cowardly legalistic pursuit of soldiers is one of the main reasons why young people are very sensibly giving up on the military as a career choice.

And who can blame them?

On top of continual cuts in military spending, the inability of the armed forces to defend our nation because of manpower shortages is leaving the country defenceless.

Recruitment, spending on hardware, welfare of serving personnel, and welfare of veterans are all part of the covenant of trust between the military, with its coercive power, and the people who have none.

For the military to serve the people, from whom it draws its ranks, it must be given the means to return that trust.

But in return, the government and the people must also give the military the moral, legal and financial support they need. The military covenant works both ways.

Human Rights law, in some form, is an honourably intended outcome of the horrors of the Second World War.

But the current vexatious application of the Human Rights Act is giving human rights lawyers a reputation for venal treachery and betrayal.

Successive governments have failed to understand that the primary duty of any government is to protect its people. That failure & its concomitant genuflection to a tribe of its lawyerly mates, has brought us to where we are now.

It is time to put a stop to this disgusting running sore.

This sordid lawyers’ trade of profiting from the harassment of honest servicemen and women must stop.

It is time to get out of the ECHR as a first step in correcting the excesses of Human Rights laws.

David Eyles is a retired livestock farmer from Cornwall. More of David’s writing can be found here.