Conscience versus duty in the British armed forces (From York Press)

Conscience versus duty in the British armed forces

9:08am Friday 5th March 2010 in

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JOE Glenton had always wanted to be in the Army. And when he decided to sign up, his mother Sue fully supported him. He joined in 2004, and couldn’t have been happier, she said.

“He loved it,” she told The Press. “He had always been interested in the services, and it looked as if he was going to go far. They were talking about putting him through university, and stuff like that.”

Then, in 2006, came the tour of duty in Afghanistan which was to change everything.

In the run-up to his sentencing at Colchester Military Court today for going absent without leave, the married 27-year-old Lance Corporal from New Earswick has been prevented from speaking to the media.

But in July of last year, he talked about how a Nimrod crash during his tour of duty which killed 14 men was the key to his disillusion with the war in Afghanistan.

“Carrying coffins from where they were stored by forklift truck down to the medical centre, that’s certainly something that has stayed with me,” he said then.

“I don’t believe our cause is just. I think it’s adversely affecting the Afghan people as well as the British Army and their families. I think it has become part of the problem rather than the solution.”

L/Cpl Glenton, whose teenage years were spent in Ryedale, went AWOL from the Army in 2007 because he did not want to return for a second tour of duty in Afghanistan.

He handed himself in more than two years later – but not before issuing a letter to Prime Minister Gordon Brown in which he called for an end to Britain’s involvement in the Afghan war, claiming it was “doomed to fail”.

He later led hundreds of campaigners on a protest march through London calling for British troops to be brought home from the war-ravaged country, and addressed a crowd of more than 5,000 people.

It was a very public statement – and thought to be the first time a serving soldier had been involved in such an event.

His behaviour divided opinion. Anti-war campaigners saluted his courage at standing up to the Army, and marched in protest at his arrest. Others criticised him – and said that he had let down his colleagues and his country.

Not surprisingly, his mother Sue stands fiercely and protectively behind him.

She was determined to be in court in Colchester for his sentencing hearing today. Speaking to The Press yesterday, she said: “He believes in the British armed forces. He’s not a pacifist. But he feels he’s been let down. He believes there is no benefit, to the Afghans or the British, of us being there. He thinks we are doing more harm than good.”

His decision to go AWOL was not an easy one, she said, for he did not want to let down his army colleagues. “But he was very reluctant to go back to Afghanistan. It was not what he had been told it was.”

Going AWOL is one thing. For a serving soldier to make a highly public statement in the way he did is quite another. Was he justified in doing that?

Of course, Mrs Glenton said. British soldiers are taught the difference between right and wrong. “They are taught a specific moral and ethical code.” So soldiers have a duty to speak up if they feel something is not right, she said.

But wasn’t his real duty to follow orders?

“It has not been as simple as that since Nuremberg,” she said.

There were those who had accused her son of cowardice for going AWOL, Mrs Glenton said. The opposite was true. At one point, when he had been charged with desertion, he faced up to ten years in jail.

“It takes a lot of guts to speak up and say something when you don’t know what the consequences will be. I’m proud of him. It takes some courage to speak against the Government and the MoD.”

John Heawood, of York Against The War, which this week held a demonstration in support of L/Cpl Glenton in York city centre, agreed.

What L/Cpl Glenton had done took a special kind of courage, he said. “There are thousands of people in the British armed forces who have bravely confronted the enemy. But Joe Glenton has confronted the whole British Army on his own, and said, ‘I don’t agree’.”

Courageous it may have been in its way, admitted retired Army Lieutenant Colonel Ian Foxley, now a consultant living in Sheriff Hutton. But it was also wrong.

Lt Col Foxley, who commanded a Royal Signals unit in Bosnia, said if L/Cpl Glenton had concerns about the ethics of the war in Afghanistan, he had every right to speak about them in private with his commanding officer or Army chaplain.

And if he felt so strongly that the war was wrong that he no longer wanted to serve, he could have applied for premature voluntary release, he said. Once no longer in the Army, there would have been nothing to stop him speaking out.

But to go AWOL and then speak out the way he did while still a serving soldier was not right.

Lt Col Foxley himself believes the Government has misused the Army for its own political ends. There may have been a case for going into Afghanistan, he said, but not for invading Iraq. “That was using the soldiers and the military for political ends.”

But what L/Cpl Glenton did was little better, he said. Servicemen should retire first, and then speak out. “But if you are a serving soldier, I don’t think it is conducive to loyalty to your fellow soldiers to represent your own political views. The military is apolitical. He was making a political point.”

For Mr Heawood, however, that is precisely the point.

L/Cpl Glenton could have applied for early release, he said. But by speaking out while still a member of the armed forces, he has made a much bigger point. “He has made a statement that carried with it a risk of imprisonment. That does lend weight to his protest.”

The background...

JOE Glenton, who was due to appear for sentencing at 10am today at Colchester Military Court Centre, was at one point charged with desertion and a string of other offences, after going absent without leave and then taking part in an anti-war rally in London.

Those charges could in theory have carried a sentence of up to ten years in jail.

L/Cpl Glenton, who married his wife Clare in May last year, was held for a while at the Army’s military corrective training centre in Colchester. He was later released while awaiting court martial, and was then diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

The desertion charge was dropped after he admitted the lesser charge of going absent without leave, for which the maximum sentence is two years in jail.

In a statement to The Press last October his wife, Clare, admitted their relationship had been “tested to its limits” by the situation.

“But the experience has only strengthened our convictions, particularly with the astonishing amount of support we have received from all over the world – both inside and outside the military,” she said.

• Joe Glenton was due to be sentenced at Colchester Military Court at 10am today.

‘No need’ says Army

THERE should be no need for any serving member of the British armed forces to go absent without leave, the MoD says.

Any serviceman who changes his or her mind about being in the forces can apply for premature voluntary release, or PVR, an MoD spokesman said.

In theory, servicemen applying for PVR should have served for at least three years, he said. And it could take up to a year to come through.

But in practice, the military was not going to try to hold on to a soldier, sailor or airman who was desperate to leave.

The British armed forces were a voluntary professional army, he said. “We don’t really want people who don’t want to be there.”

Recruitment levels to the armed forces are very high at the moment, the spokesman added. “So there is absolutely no reason for someone to be kept in if they wish to go. Nobody is going to hold them against their will.”