I felt an unbreakable bond with these soldiers – I had been through these things too, I knew what they were like. I hadn’t suffered in the same ways; I was lucky. I went running and spent days at a time outside on the moor to cope. But these people should be provided for. They were wounded too – you couldn’t see it, they weren’t missing limbs, but they should be looked after as much as anyone who had a physical injury. But the Army and state provision simply was not there, nor was there much interest in improving the situation.
In the late 2000s, seeing the endless conveyor belt of physical and mental trauma arriving back on our shores, the charitable sector filled the gap. The charities brought the public with them, and so followed an explosion not just in levels of donations, but in the number of service charities set up. This was helping a great deal of service men and women, and their families, cope with some dark times both personally and professionally; our nation will owe them a debt of gratitude for some time to come.
But this sector was proving wildly inconsistent. Some of the charities did not get along. Some relied on evidence-based, proven treatments; others on the whims of their directors, usually a retired senior military officer. There was no regulation beyond the Charity Commission’s extremely light touch, and some sad cases materialized.
In 2010, we all wore the wristbands to support the ‘Afghan Heroes’ charity, set up by Denise Harris after her son Lee was killed in Nad-e Ali a year before I was there, in that terrible summer of 2009. The Charity Commission had opened an inquiry in 2013 after it was discovered that Afghan Heroes had raised over half a million pounds, but spent just 3 per cent of it on veterans. Some charity founders, in another case, went to jail.
The landscape was a mess and it needed sorting out. And the Lance Sergeant Collinses of this world, along with thousands who had stopped short of his tragic point of no return, were paying the price. They were my mates – my soldiers – and they were the best of us. I had seen these young men and women conduct themselves with such unfathomably deep wells of courage that one feels truly humbled to be in the presence of them, both then and now. They are not the loudest and they are not the intellectual giants or fame-seeking characters that usually dominate our newspapers. Sometimes they fuck around; sometimes they get carried away in the pub. But they truly are our finest product; special people in a dangerous world fixated upon self-promotion and selfish desires. And they deserved so much better.
Their Britishness runs deep; their compassion, their teamwork, their ability to operate under the most extreme pressure because it is ‘their duty’. It’s something I have been privileged to witness and will carry with me throughout my life. Not once in my operational service – whether it was the lad being sick in the ditch before we advanced to combat or the sergeant major who had been shot in the neck – did I see someone begrudge their service. (I saw plenty of people moan about being in the Army while stood on a wet, piss-soaked range in Sennybridge or elsewhere, but that is another issue!)
But herein is the crux; they sign up knowing that some things are – or should be – a given. That they will be well led; that they will be equipped correctly; that they will not be asked to conduct immoral wars founded on things that aren’t actually real; and that they will be looked after both during and after their service by the nation, if required.
This contract was simply not being honoured by the nation. People were trying – the charitable sector were over-performing. But when it came to post-combat care specifically, I felt strongly that the government had singularly failed our service men and women. It was not something I could let lie.
This thought process coalesced with another in my mind. I remembered being part of the briefing team for British ministers while on tour in Afghanistan in 2008. I had been extremely impressed by the discipline and focus of the unit I was working for, tactically and strategically. But I was also struck by the supremacy of the political command system that ultimately made things happen, or not happen, as in the case of veterans’ care.
And when it came to foreign policy, you had to look pretty hard at what was going on to find a strategy. British foreign policy was based on one thing only – the British election timetable. How on earth could senior officers really achieve results on the ground if political leaders were so naive as to specify when wars would end, to appease a domestic audience?
And the equipment with which we were asking people to do this?
All this left me with a desire, one day, to be at the level where I could make decisions and have a deliberate and direct effect on these things. Ultimately, I was and remain a patriot. I had personally fought to protect our country’s freedoms. Back at home we just had a nasty habit of forgetting how hard-won these freedoms were; the commitment, sacrifices and courage required.
In 2012, when the idea first dawned on me, it seemed ridiculous. I knew nothing about politics, and I didn’t want to know anything either. I had never voted before, and still couldn’t quite work out what a ‘hung parliament’ was. I regarded some politicians as a rather inept breed – more in love with the trappings of office than dedicated to delivering for their men and women. Like some Army officers could be, admittedly.
But it was not always thus. This ‘career politician’ thing was become a relatively new phenomenon. In the 1950s, most MPs had seen military service of some sort. Parliament’s timings were specifically set so that one could keep up another job while doing the job of governance in the evenings or at weekends. Some genuinely saw it as I saw it – simply as a vehicle for getting things done that needed to be done, rather than a career. It gave you a position, a reach, a platform. It looked like an enormous privilege.
If I really wanted to change things, could I try and be an MP? I did genuinely feel that I could change things for people who needed it. I believed in the system of parliament, and I believed in some core causes. Veterans’ care and Defence were undoubtedly my key drivers but, drawing on my experience of training soldiers, I also felt this bond with kids from tougher backgrounds who didn’t have the friends I’d had, or the breaks I’d had, to help them grow up. For some, life’s path, through no fault of their own, was an interminable struggle, and I wanted to help them. And I wanted to help end the unacceptable stigma and lack of genuine commitment to mental health.
My mind was made up. I was going to leave the Army and become an MP. Plymouth was the place to do it. I had grown up here; made my mistakes; spent many nights in the bars and clubs of the town; loved, lost and grown up. Now I wanted to help define the future of the city I called home, where I had settled with my family, and where I had so many wonderful friends.
I broke the news to Felicity. I was going to leave the Army. She was unashamedly happy, right up until I told her I was leaving to go into politics.
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I resigned and would be leaving the Army at Christmas 2013.
I had no idea where to start in terms of becoming an MP, but had heard of Bob Stewart, who had made the transition from the Army into politics. I wrote to him, and he invited me to come to London and see him.
He showed me around the House of Commons as we chatted about why I was doing this. He advised me to work out which party I wanted to be in, as independents do not get elected. He thought I would stand a better chance standing for Labour – they were not stuffed with ex-military types, and could do with the expertise. After lunch, Bob gathered a small group of Labour and Conservative MPs on the terrace, as we sat outside and had some afternoon tea. We talked about the Labour Party; I respected them and we had similar broad ideas, but there were slight differences in our views on the military and foreign policy, and very different views on tackling poverty. I’d done some research and been surprised to learn that I could leave the Army and, with my particular domestic set-up, walk into a life on state welfare receiving 50 per cent more income than I would if I had got up and gone to work every day for the average wage in Plymouth. I didn’t think that endlessly pouring more money into the welfare
state was particularly fair, either on the recipients or wider society. The Labour MPs just kept talking about these welfare cuts, while I sat there thinking that it was about time we cut some of these welfare payments down, and focused them more on people who really needed them, or on services that were woeful, such as mental health provision.
On the train back to Plymouth, my gut was telling me to join the Conservative Party. Accepting I knew very little about it, and was basing my decision on a brief meeting with some MPs, I thought hard about my beliefs. I didn’t dislike other parties’ values, I just felt more broadly at home with the Conservatives. It was not a Damascene conversion, or anything like a cut-and-dried decision; I was never going to be a rabid loyalist. But if I wanted to change things I would have to be elected; independents never get elected. I had to go to my nearest home, and that would be the Conservative Party.
I joined Plymouth Moor View Conservatives, expanding their association numbers from fourteen to fifteen in the process. The chairman, John, seemed a very nice chap, as was Jack, the treasurer, but after our first Conservative Association meeting, Felicity and I had sat in the car in silence. For the first time, I wondered whether or not I was making the correct decision. The members of the association were terrific; older, resilient and determined Conservatives. But they were definitely at a different stage of life to me; there was no one there under the age of seventy.
Leaving the Army is undoubtedly a tricky transition. Leaving the Army and going straight into politics was going to be a challenge. The local association – the vehicle from which one launches oneself at parliament – had been decimated by years of infighting. Jack had just about brought it out of special measures, but it was not the well-oiled machine that would make my campaign easier. Still, I got the feeling everyone in the association wanted me to succeed, even if they had no idea how I was going to do it, and mostly thought I was mad.
I saw out my last few months in the military under a sympathetic CO in Plymouth, who entirely got what I was doing. Some others didn’t, which was good practice for me. It tested my belief in myself and what I wanted to do, and showed me I had the ability to withstand detractors.
The transition was one that I had to manage closely. And by manage, I mean lie about.
I was not, under service law, allowed to be involved in politics until I had finished my period of resettlement and left the armed forces. But sticking to the rules meant I would miss the dates for the 2015 General Election candidate selection for Plymouth. I also wanted to sit my Parliamentary Assessment Board before I left so that, should it all go pear-shaped, I could bail out of politics and stay in the Army.
My CO was extremely good, but I had learnt a few things in the Army – chiefly about asking forgiveness rather than seeking permission. So, in the end, I faked a family commitment on a Friday and Saturday in September 2013 to attend a Parliamentary Assessment Board in Cambridgeshire.
The assessment was a two-day event held in a hotel, designed to discover whether or not one had the elusive and as yet unquantifiable qualities required to be a Member of Parliament for the Conservative Party. I was grouped with a broad mix of candidates. Most were quite clearly more qualified than me. It was a strange atmosphere, as though we were all competing against each other.
I was having to change as a person to excel at things like this. Naturally quiet, and happy to keep myself to myself, in politics this behaviour would be interpreted as unfriendly or bad-mannered. After attending a few events with the association, by now I was getting better at judging the mood of these sorts of occasions. At the assessment, I forced myself to be more outgoing during the general meet and greet stage, but kept myself to myself as I went around the various stands, where the candidates were interviewed, did presentations and group exercises, and even sorted a mock MP’s post bag.
It wasn’t testing in the slightest – it seemed as though a lot of the candidates had had a rather long run-up to this event, and had over-complicated it in their minds a great deal. I just took it as I found it, and didn’t know whether to expect success or failure. I got the train home without much feel for it, having no metric to judge it against.
My journey home that day was more eventful than the Assessment Board itself.
Knowing that from January we’d be surviving on my paltry savings, Felicity and I were committed to living a financially austere ‘good life’ on the moor. I had sold our cars, which were becoming old and expensive, and bought a battered motorcycle for £550 and a Peugeot 205 for £700 cash, in the hope that it would prove to be one of those magic cars that just kept going. It was not to be, and on the way home from dropping me off at the station that morning, it had broken down on Felicity. Fortunately, she had been able to thumb a lift back to the cottage, and had called to assure me that the car was left in a very safe and inconspicuous place for me to sort out when I got back.
I was therefore a little surprised in the taxi home from the station to be violently thrown from side to side as the driver cursed a Peugeot 205 that had been left abandoned in the middle of the road – the straightest, darkest part of the road across the moor.
The police had taped it off, and it was clear that it was going to cause an accident. I got home at about 10.30 p.m., and without any other transport available, jumped on my motorbike in my suit to go and move it. I got to the car and rolled it into the obvious layby, some fifteen feet back from its original position, and removed the police tape so that they didn’t tow it away in the night. I was resigned to picking it up the next day with one of my friends from the village.
As I remounted my motorbike for my second trip home, I was cursing Felicity, feeling unreasonably and disproportionately cross about the fact that I had to ride across the moors on a wet and cold night to move a car that my soon-to-be wife had abandoned in the middle of the road.
So cross, in fact, that I missed a turning and got catapulted off my motorbike and through a hedge, landing in a field, face first. I had not at that stage bought myself a proper helmet, and had one that protected my head but not my face. (I had for some months been driving around in a parachutist issue helmet and goggles from the Army.)
I laughed at myself, face-down in the undergrowth. Then I limped back to the road, on which no cars had been seen for a few minutes. My motorbike was largely OK, except for a smashed front light and some bent handlebars. I straightened the handlebars, but then was left with the option of returning home across the moor with no lights.
I managed to get the thing restarted, and arrived back at my village at kicking-out time. The crowd leaving the pub went rather quiet as I passed them, grass and hedge still clinging to me and my bike, before howling with laughter as I disappeared further down the lane to mine. When I got home I had the imprint from the handlebars on one leg, in the shape of heavy bruising. I could even read the name of the manufacturer for a few months afterwards.
After a long day trying to act like an MP, I cracked open an ale with Felicity and we toasted our combined stupidity at leaving the security of the Army to take on this mad new life in politics.
Later that weekend, I received an email saying that I had passed the Assessment Board and that I was welcome to apply for seats all over the country.
36
Being on the candidates list, while talked up by many, essentially meant very little. I did ask how many were on the list, but was told this was ‘top secret’ information. To me top secret information meant details of live national security operations or similar; not who was on a list of possible but unlikely MPs.
In the end, it transpired that the selection dates for the Plymouth seat that I wanted had not been confirmed yet, and as such I had to wait. The Plymouth Moor View Association was still recovering from ‘special measures’ and enduring a particularly difficult time.
I was a little deflated; I had given my notice in the military and, while I accepted that my strategy of becoming a member of parliament carried a heavy degree of risk, I did not feel lik
e stretching the plan out indefinitely.
I was advised by the local party agent to put in for selection to another local seat, North Cornwall, for the ‘experience’. They already had someone they wanted who had been lined up two years previously – a strong local lad – but for some reason I needed the experience of losing.
I didn’t agree.
As the selection for North Cornwall was only two weeks away, I eventually caved in and agreed to do it while keeping my eye firmly on the Plymouth selection, which now seemed likely to be in the New Year.
I received the papers for the North Cornwall selection meeting but didn’t really understand what was required; I was asked to go and speak for five minutes and take questions for fifteen. The subject was deliberately not mentioned, so I telephoned the local Conservative Party staff member to find out more.
‘What’s the talk supposed to be on?’ I asked.
‘You’ll have to work that out, Johnny,’ he replied.
‘No, seriously, can you just give me a guide as to how these things have run in the past?’
‘I can’t really do that, I’m afraid; it’s for you to work out and we’ll see what you come up with.’
How very cryptic.
I drove over to Wadebridge on a wet and windy Cornish winter’s evening and went to my first ever full Conservative Association event. It was an experience.
I was kept downstairs by myself when I went in, so I bought a stale half pint of ale to keep me company. Largely left alone with my thoughts, I wondered what the hell I was doing. I knew nothing about politics, the Conservative Party or why there seemed to be so many people here introducing themselves by their title and not their name (deputy political secretary; deputy chairman political; secretary general; membership chairman). I wondered if I should refer to them by their title instead of their name.
We Were Warriors Page 25