NEW CLAUSE.—(Amendment of Army Act, s. 180 (2).) (Hansard, 5 April 1922)

§ Sir C. YATE
I beg to move, "That the Clause be read a Second time."
Sub-section (2, d) of Section 180 of the Army Act is as follows: An officer belonging to His Majesty's Indian forces who thinks himself wronged by his commanding officer, and on due application made to him does not receive the redress to which he may consider himself entitled, may complain to the Governor-General of India, who shall cause his complaint to be inquired into, and if so desired by the officer, make a report through a Secretary of State to His Majesty in order to receive the directions of His Majesty thereon. The Amendment which I propose is to insert the words "by an independent tribunal" after the words "inquired into" in that Sub-section. Many officers in the Army feel very much aggrieved, and when they bring their case forward very often they have to appeal to the very officer who, they think, has treated them badly. That report of an officer goes up to headquarters, and if there is an appeal to the Governor-General, surely it is only right that the complaint should be inquired into by some independent tribunal and not through the very officer against whom the officer in question is complaining. We all of us know of the very many cases that have happened and are brought to our notice from time to time, and it is one of the saddest things when a man in the Army fails to get any redress. He is soured for life. He is a disappointed and discontented man for the rest of his life simply from the fact that he has not had a proper tribunal before which he could state his case. I do not want to enlarge upon this subject, because I have spoken on it on previous occasions, but there is one case I have brought forward which struck me as a very curious one. It is the case of an officer who was relieved of the command of his regiment. We have all heard of such cases, and we have all heard of many men being relieved 2328 of the command of their regiment by the Brigadier-General or General over them and that identical General being relieved of his command a few days afterwards, because he was considered to be incompetent. Yet there was never any redress for the first unfortunate man. I remember quoting a case last year of an officer during the War who was relieved of his command. Fortunately for himself, he came under the command of another General, and he was again appointed to the command of a battalion. He went through the War, won the D.S.O., and I do not know how many honours came to him, but afterwards, when the War was over, he went to Ireland and was there assassinated. The mother wrote to me that she could not possibly have believed that any man could have suffered in the terrible way in which her son had suffered if it had not been that she had had the reading of his diary afterwards. That sort of thing brings it home to us how men suffer when they are compelled to be silent and to submit to injustice, and for that reason I ask the Under-Secretary of State for War, who is in charge of this Bill, to accept this new Clause. I hope these cases will be able to be submitted to a perfectly independent tribunal.

Lieut-Colonel WARD
What kind of tribunal?

§ Sir C. YATE
An independent tribunal. I leave the tribunal to the Commander-in-Chief of the Indian Army, and I do not limit the tribunal in any way. All I say is that an officer's case should not be judged merely on the report of the general officer, or whoever it is, against whom he is aggrieved.

§ Lieut.-Colonel HURST
I desire to support the Amendment, and I only wish it applied to a wider orbit than India and covered all Army officers in every part of the world. The law, as it stands at present, provides that an officer in these circumstances should have a right to have an inquiry made before a tribunal, and surely, if there is this legal right, it ought to follow as a matter of justice that the tribunal should be the most perfect that human ingenuity can devise; that it should be judicially minded and absolutely detached from all predisposition or prejudice in favour either of the superior authority or of the officer complaining. At the present time that is not 2329 the case. The present machinery is not perfect. It is only human nature that one military authority will stand a little in awe of another and superior military authority. There is always the liability, which those of us who served in the War know perfectly well, of a military tribunal being overawed by the superior authority of some General at a distance who might have an interest in the case. The result of that is undoubtedly that many men's careers have been wrecked, without their having had a fair trial. It did not matter to those of us who were amateur soldiers during the War, because we were simply in temporarily, and it was not a career for us that was at stake, but when a man embarks upon a soldier's career, whether in India or elsewhere, it is the hardest thing in the world that that career should be absolutely terminated without his having had a perfectly fair trial by a tribunal detached from all predisposition and predilection. That is the ideal scheme. The hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Stoke (Lieut.-Colonel Ward) asked the Mover of this Amendment what tribunal he would suggest. All that the Amendment says is "an independent tribunal," and that means a tribunal which is independent of the military authorities who are concerned in the particular case. It is very easy to imagine tribunals of that character composed partly of military officers who know nothing about the matter at issue, and partly of a lay element, lawyers for preference, who would have some knowledge of the rules of evidence. A tribunal of that sort would be absolutely independent and would avoid the suspicion and the allegation which are so commonly made that a man's career has been blasted, because he has not had a fair trial.

Lieut.-Colonel WARD
I am not quite so sure whether I can follow the two gallant Colonels in reference to this independent tribunal. I dare say it would work all right in peace time, but is it intended also that there shall be independent individuals travelling about from the headquarters of an Army, or that in the case of a campaign there should be these people to be called upon immediately to decide any grievance that an officer might have about his commanding officer, whether a commanding officer of a 2330 battalion or a Brigadier, or whoever it might be? I am doubtful as to whether there should not be some limit in regard to the independent tribunal. The Army is after all the best thing to maintain its own discipline, and I am not so certain about the independent tribunal. If, for instance, it was composed of officers out of another command I could understand it. I think that would be the best way, if there was any intention of adopting this Amendment. I have only to mention my own case, where, without any charge of military incapacity or anything of that kind, but only on the ground of the social class to which I belonged, it had to go at last to the Cabinet. If it had not been that I held a position in the public life of the country and that those above me could not break me, and that there was in that case the Cabinet at last to appeal to, I should never have had any military career in the Army, not even during the War, badly as men were wanted. There was actually a Cabinet Minute that kept me in the Army, or else the old-fashioned officers would have had me out and never given me the ghost of a chance, not for any reason whatever of the position of my command or my competency, but solely on the ground of the social class from which I came.
Therefore I assume that if there were such antagonism in the case of men who were trained in the Army, who went through Camberley, or Woolwich, or any of the other military training colleges, no doubt they would be accepted in the profession and treated with the respect due to their position and ability, but I can quite understand the Territorial officer and the others, who look upon this thing from an entirely different point of view from the ordinary professional soldier. I hope there is no harm done by my reference to myself, but I remember that my own career depended absolutely upon an independent tribunal once. At the same time, after another five or six years, in the Army—and under peculiar circumstances—I must say that if in every solitary case the one above, the superior officer, could not sometimes deal with an officer summarily and at once, it would be a hopeless position for the commanding officer. It would be a hopeless position, I am certain, for the effective purpose for which the Army might be operating at the time, unless there be contained in the Army Command itself, power to deal [...] 2331 a recalcitrant, or an undisciplined, or an incompetent officer. I take my own case as being exceptional, knowing that that could not occur, naturally, in the Regular Army, and in ordinary peace times, but could only occur when, as my hon. and gallant Friend suggests, the necessity of the State demanded the services of amateur soldiers. Therefore, I do not put it forward as a case that could possibly occur under normal conditions in the Army, and I am extremely doubtful, having been in the Service, and liking the Service, and admiring the way in which it performs its duty to the State, and the wonderful service that it renders to the community, which has a remarkable aptitude for immediately forgetting that service afterwards—remembering all that, I say I should be extremely doubtful as to whether you must not continue, as it were, to depend upon the Army itself for its own discipline, both for officers and men.

§ Sir R. SANDERS
I need not dwell long on this proposed new Clause, because it has been introduced so often before, and I think really the strongest thing against it is that it has never found favour with more than a very small number of Members of the House. Under any circumstances, I do not think we could put in an Act of Parliament the words "independent tribunal," and leave it at that. After all, the appeal in the cases to which my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Melton (Sir C. Yate) referred, is to the Viceroy of India, and corresponds to the appeal to the Army Council and the King in the case of an English officer. The Viceroy, I presume, in considering that appeal, has power to consult anyone he likes. I have not understood quite whether my hon. and gallant Friend means that the appeal should be to a military Court or to a civil Court, or to a mixed Court. In any case, it is not clear to me, although I bow to his superior knowledge of the Indian Army, that the Viceroy at the present moment has not power to set up an independent tribunal if he thinks it necessary. But, in the first place, we could not put these words into an Act of Parliament; and, in the second place, I very much doubt whether any tribunal you could set up would give more satisfaction to the officers of the Army than 2332 the present system does. There must always be, I suppose, a certain number of hard cases. There must be a certain number of men who consider themselves aggrieved, but I do not think that, taking it as a whole, it can be said that it is too easy to get rid of incompetent officers.