Veterans who were dismissed from the armed forces because of their sexuality have criticised the government for the inadequacy of its compensation scheme. With a fund capped at £50 million and potentially as many as 4,000 eligible to seek redress, the average payment would be only £12,500. Military charities have dismissed this as ‘inadequate and unacceptably low’, lacking ‘the sense of justice these veterans deserve’.
This is not an issue from the distant past. When I was young, it was taken as read that openly gay people did not serve in the military. That was not to say we thought the armed forces were 100 per cent heterosexual – the first gay kiss on British television, in BBC Two’s 1974 drama Girl, was between Alison Steadman and Myra Frances playing female soldiers. But there was a formal prohibition on gay people being sailors, soldiers and airmen.
It is more likely that what Lord Etherton intended was a symbolic gesture
The ban was vaguely justified on grounds of discipline, unit cohesion and preserving the chain of command.
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