Labour’s assault on the Armed Forces, a reckless gamble with Britain’s security
CP
Labour is being warned, in the strongest possible terms, that it is on course to cripple Britain’s most effective military capability.
The warning does not come from political opponents or anonymous critics, but from some of the most senior and experienced figures ever to command Britain’s SAS forces.
Their message is simple and devastating: Labour’s legal agenda risks breaking the special forces, demoralising those who serve, and handing a strategic advantage to Britain’s enemies.
A group of former SAS leaders, including two former commanding officers of 22 SAS and several senior squadron commanders, have intervened publicly to condemn Labour’s approach to Northern Ireland legacy cases. These men spent their careers operating at the sharpest end of national defence. They planned missions where failure meant death, political catastrophe, or both. They are now united in warning that Labour’s policies amount to self inflicted damage to national security.
At the heart of the dispute is Labour’s determination to dismantle the previous legal framework governing Troubles related cases and replace it with new investigatory mechanisms. In theory, this is presented as a quest for justice. In reality, according to the former commanders, it opens the door to endless reinvestigations, legal harassment, and public inquiries that drag elderly veterans back into courtrooms decades after events have already been scrutinised.
The commanders are explicit that they do not seek immunity from the law. Crimes, they say, must be investigated and prosecuted where evidence genuinely exists. But Labour’s approach ignores the reality of combat and replaces it with peacetime legal standards that were never designed for war. Split second decisions made under lethal threat are being judged years later by lawyers, campaigners and politicians who have never faced such conditions and bear no responsibility for the consequences.
The most damaging effect, the former SAS leaders warn, is what this does to today’s soldiers, not just yesterday’s. When troops see their predecessors hounded through courts and smeared through leaks and selective disclosures, the lesson is clear: the state will not stand behind you. Commanders become cautious, soldiers hesitate, and operational boldness, often the difference between success and disaster, is steadily eroded.
This is not an abstract moral argument. The former commanders argue that risk aversion costs lives. Operations take longer, enemies escape, conflicts drag on, and more blood is spilled as a result. Far from making war more humane, Labour’s legal obsession risks making it longer and deadlier.
Even worse, they say, Labour is playing directly into the hands of hostile states. Britain’s adversaries understand that they cannot defeat the SAS in combat. Instead, they exploit courts, media narratives and political weakness to undermine confidence and credibility. Every public inquiry that exposes tactics, every leak that hints at criminality before facts are established, becomes propaganda for Moscow, Tehran and Beijing. In this sense, Labour’s policy is not merely naive, it is actively harmful.
The backlash from within the military establishment has been extraordinary. Retired chiefs at the very top of the Armed Forces have described the new legal direction as a national security threat. They warn that soldiers now deploy knowing they face not just the enemy in front of them, but lawyers waiting years later. Trust in the system, they say, has collapsed.
Labour’s response has been depressingly predictable. Ministers insist they support veterans while pressing ahead with legislation that convinces those veterans of the opposite. Warm words are offered, while legal structures are built that expose soldiers to precisely the dangers they fear. It is the worst kind of political cowardice, moral posturing combined with a refusal to accept responsibility for the consequences.
The essence of the former SAS commanders’ letter is not complicated. War is brutal, chaotic and morally difficult. It cannot be reduced to tidy legal theories without doing serious harm. Accountability matters, but it must be rooted in the realities of combat, not civilian fantasy. Operational secrecy is not a convenience, it is a matter of life and death. And a democracy that repeatedly sacrifices its warriors to satisfy lawyers and activists will eventually find itself without warriors willing to serve.
Labour has been told all of this by men who have carried the weight of command and the cost of failure. If it chooses to ignore them, it will not just be turning its back on veterans. It will be weakening Britain at a moment of growing global danger, and doing precisely what the commanders accuse it of doing, undermining the country from within while its enemies look on with satisfaction.
The SAS commanders’ letter
Grey-zone warfare is not new. It lets enemies gain ground without firing a shot. Through lawfare, leaks, and disinformation, it erodes trust in Britain’s military and paralyses its leaders – achieving what hostile states cannot on the battlefield.
Key defence and intelligence figures, including Sir Richard Knighton, Chief of the Defence Staff, and MI6’s Blaise Metreweli, warn of daily grey-zone assaults: cyber strikes, sabotage, and propaganda targeting cables, infrastructure, and social cohesion.
Russia and others exploit our weaknesses, aiming to divide societies, not crush armies. Today, the front-line cuts through courts, media, and Parliament as sharply as any trench.
Special forces operate at the centre of this contest. They are not asking for immunity; they simply want fair procedures and decisive political leadership. They seek protection from legal ambiguity, not evasion of responsibility.
No serious nation excuses soldierly crimes. Rigorous investigations and prosecutions, where warranted, underpin the moral authority to deploy lethal force.
Accountability is no luxury – it binds allies, agents, and partners to our cause.
There’s a gulf between justice and the circus of premature leaks, innuendo, and selective disclosures. Inquiries that spill operational secrets before concluding give adversaries a narrative of lawless troops and treacherous leaders.
Grey-zone actors weaponise courts, NGOs and media for bloodless coercion. Mishandled probes create gaping vulnerabilities, endangering lives and alliances. The Afghan data breach, exposing special forces details, showed the lethal cost.
Commanders now hesitate, fearing years of litigation. Troops feel abandoned. The public smells cover-ups. Allies question our secrecy and reliability. This self-sabotage needs no foreign hand. Our politics, media incentives, and judicial overreach do the job, gifting opportunities to Moscow’s narrative warriors. In this Troubles Bill, the Government is complicit in this war on our Armed Forces.
Knighton is right. Readiness spans society and industry, not just ships and jets. Lord Glasman, the political conscience of the Labour Party, sees the need to rebuild industrial muscle, lost through political neglect. Legal and information resilience demand the same. Control inquiry leaks with iron sanctions. Separate transparent findings from protected tradecraft: identities, methods, capabilities.
The rule is stark: lawful force defensible; unlawful prosecutable; operational security non-negotiable. Turn elite units into media fodder, and you hand victory to those who can’t beat them in combat.
Tom Tugendhat, former Conservative minister and military veteran, is right to argue that war can’t be sanitised into clean, bloodless moral theatre. Soldiers aren’t saints or villains – they’re humans in fog, fear and split-second peril, judged by good faith, not hindsight perfection.
Combat isn’t policing. The Geneva Conventions get this, balancing necessity and proportionality in chaos. Peacetime human rights regimes, shoehorned into battle, commit a category error. They scapegoat the front line while politicians who willed the war claim clean hands – “Tommy this and Tommy that”.
The fallout is grim. Commanders turn risk-averse, soldiers hesitate where boldness saves lives, wars drag on, spilling more blood and costing more lives. Power doesn’t vanish; it flows to ruthless foes unbound by such fetters.
True accountability applies war’s law to war’s reality. It means owning costs from the cabinet to the foxhole. Standing with the SAS rejects scapegoating, not scrutiny. Where war crimes evidence holds, prosecute. But do so under frameworks that understand combat, not civilian certainties.
Britain’s special forces are small, discreet, uniquely lethal – prime grey-zone targets. Their humiliation rewards Moscow, Tehran, and Beijing. In an era of Gerasimov-style probes on cables and cohesion, our handling of allegations is national security, not a sideshow.
Defend our defenders fairly, firmly, eyes open to war’s moral mess – or keep doing the enemy’s work, one leak, one inquiry, one broken soldier at a time. A democracy that won’t back its warriors won’t long endure.
Signed:
Aldwin Wight, Welsh Guards, Commanding Officer 22 SAS, 1992-94.
George Simm, Coldstream Guards, Regimental Sergeant Major 22 SAS, 1992-94.
Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton, Irish Guards, Squadron Commander 22 SAS, 1991-94.
Bob Parr, Royal Marines, Warrant Officer First Class 22 SAS, 1993-99.
David Maddan, Grenadier Guards, Squadron Commander 22 SAS, 1994-96.
Richard Williams, Parachute Regiment, Commanding Officer 22 SAS, 2005-07.
Nick Kitson, The Rifles, Squadron Commander 22 SAS, 2002-04.
This article (Labour’s assault on the Armed Forces, a reckless gamble with Britain’s security) was created and published by Conservative Post and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author CP
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