Yesterday, the mean-spirited minister of “foreigner bashing“, Phil Woolas, added dishonour and disloyalty to his notorious list of talents. His outrageous display of lip-service to retired Ghurkhas demonstrates his total lack of moral fibre. He is a disgrace to Britain and Jacqui Smith and Gordon Brown, his bosses, are cowards for hiding behind him.
I doubt any one of them would offer their lives up for this country, but thousands of Gurkhas have for a fraction of the pay, limited medical aid, slave-wage pensions and no post-service security whatsoever. It is estimated that over 45,000 Nepalese Gurkhas have died in British campaigns and hundreds of thousands have been injured.
Not one soldier in the world would deny the bravery and loyalty of the Gurkhas. Yet the British government, who have the opportunity to show some decency after the wilful disrespect of Thatcher, Major, Blair and other governments before them has come up with a scheme so blatantly designed to exclude the maximum number of Gurkha families from the right to settle here that it beggars belief.

The criteria to claim the right to remain in Britain have to include one of the following…

  • Gurkhas who retired before 1997 must have served 20 years. Only officers can stay in the brigade for 20 years so clearly squaddies are not good enough to be British eh, Woolas?
  • Gurkhas who retired before 1997 must have won a level 1-3 bravery medal, such as the Victoria Cross. Being shot at in the Falklands for weeks on end isn’t brave enough eh, Smith?
  • Gurkhas who retired before 1997 must prove they have been resident in Britain for an unbroken period of three years. But they’re not allowed to earn a living so how do they support themselves for three years, Woolas? And what happens if they go home to see their families, eh Brown?
  • Gurkhas who retired before 1997 must have close family living in the UK. That should keep the numbers down eh, Woolas?
  • Gurkhas who retired before 1997 must suffer a chronic illness or disability caused or aggravated while on active duty for the British Army. So that writes off Gulf War Syndrome, which the government refuses to accept, and probably a host of other excuses.

OR they have to meet two out of the following…

  • 10 years service or a campaign medal.
  • Having been awarded an MoD disability pension but no longer having a chronic condition.
  • Having been mentioned in dispatches.

The Government’s excuse? We’ll be overrun by 100,000 Gurkhas and their families. Well, we won’t but even if we were, if we’re not prepared to look after these incredible men and their families, we shouldn’t have expected them to step into harms way for us in the first place.

Basically, what Woolas and Smith are saying is if you’re Nepalese and fight for the British Forces, you have to get hit, be so brave/reckless you should have been hit and have been seen doing so bravely to warrant the gratitude of the British people.

Even Gurkhas who were in service after 1997 have to be in the Army one year longer than any Commonwealth citizen who fights for us before they can apply for residency. This is discrimination and there is no way it can be described otherwise.

Labour, hang your heads in shame! Phil Woolas, these great men have fought for 200 years to save Britain from people like you. You must be stupid to think that anyone would fail to see through the tricks you are playing with this document. You are so scared of the public mood towards immigration that you’re willing to exclude the one group British people would happily accept. You are a disgrace to Britain and everything that it stands for.

Please join the Gurkha Justice Campaign and help Joanna Lumley, who’s father fought with and was saved by the Gurkhas to show that the British are not the dishonourable and racist nation Phil Woolas would have us seen to be.

http://www.gurkhajustice.org.uk/

Neville Farmer

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