CSM EDITORIAL
On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day, the nation will fall silent. The Cenotaph will be wreathed in wreaths, and the political class will stand shoulder to shoulder, poppies pinned to their lapels. They will bow their heads and intone, with practiced sincerity, “We will remember them.”
And then they will return to Westminster and continue the quiet persecution of the living.
Last week, as the country prepared for Remembrance Sunday, a 72-year-old former SAS veteran named George Simm broke a silence of nearly fifty years. In interviews with various media organisations and the BBC, Mr Simm—who commanded the SAS at the Drumnakilly ambush in 1988—spoke of a betrayal so profound that it renders the annual poppy ritual not merely hollow, but actively offensive.
“We’ve completely lost any form of trust in the people who are constitutionally, professionally, legally bound to protect us,” he said. “That’s all gone now, and we’ve suddenly realised we’re exposed.”
This is not the complaint of a man who fears accountability. Mr Simm invites the authorities to “produce your evidence, and make a charge, and we’ll go on to a court.” What he objects to is the Kafkaesque alternative: a perpetual cycle of inquests, inquiries, and judicial reviews designed to “wear people down”—a process that carries “an inference of guilt but without any evidence.”
The Labour government has decided that the way to heal the wounds of Northern Ireland is to hound septuagenarian soldiers through the courts while pursuing a legacy bill that satisfies no one. The result, as Mr Simm says, is a system that demoralises the very people who were sent to keep the peace.
Let us be clear about what he actually did. He joined the Army at fifteen, passed a selection process that reduced 200 applicants to a dozen, and served in Bosnia, Colombia, and Oman. He estimates his work indirectly saved tens of thousands of lives. At Drumnakilly, he posed as a coal lorry driver, was fired upon at close range by men with Kalashnikovs, and survived an ambush that lasted “three or four seconds.”
For this, campaigners insist his “feelings” must not be prioritised over the trauma of survivors. But Mr Simm was questioned at an inquest. He has nothing to hide. What he objects to is the endless repetition of the same questions, the same insinuations, decade after decade—while the politicians who sent him there retire on generous pensions and the paramilitaries who fought the war receive de facto amnesties.
The hypocrisy is staggering. The same government that sports poppies in November presides over a legal system that treats soldiers as suspects and terrorists as victims. “If our capability is diminished, that affects national security,” Mr Simm warns. He is right. The message to every young man and woman considering a career in the armed forces is unmistakable: if you do your job, if you make split-second decisions under fire, if you survive—we will come for you. Not with a medal, but with a subpoena.
Mr Simm describes the British Army as “absolutely restrained” in Northern Ireland, and argues that if the Americans had faced the IRA, “there would have been thousands of bodies.” He notes his unit “arrested far more than we killed.” This is not a man who needs to be taught about human rights. This is a man who understands that rights without responsibilities are merely a weapon to be wielded against one’s enemies.
So here is the question that should haunt every poppy-wearing politician this day: how can you stand at the Cenotaph and honour the dead while you persecute the living? How can you claim to “remember them” when you have made it clear you will never let them forget?
George Simm is 72. He should be at home with his dogs and his grandchildren. Instead, he is travelling the country, warning that the Army’s capability is being diminished by a legal process that treats heroism as a crime. “I don’t do it with any glee,” he says. “But it’s necessary.”
It is necessary because the alternative is silence. And silence, in the face of injustice, is complicity.
Today at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day, spare a thought for those not at the Cenotaph—the ones in courtrooms, or in despair. They served their country. Their country has betrayed them. No amount of November silence can drown out that shame.
Lest we forget? We have already forgotten that a nation which prosecutes its defenders is a nation that has lost its soul.