On 3 May 2000, the Speaker informed the House that he had received a letter from the Minister of Veteran's Affairs advising him that, with the permission of the member in charge, the Government had adopted the Pardon for Soldiers of the Great War Bill, pursuant to Standing Order 264 (Parliamentary Bulletin 2000.09 8 May 2000) In September 2000, the Bill received its third and final reading and was overwhelmingly approved by Parliament. Five soldiers, two of whom were originally of Australian descent, were granted a pardon. Mark Peck MP, Labour member for Invercargill, was the driving force in New Zealand. When it was debated in July, this is what he poignantly said to Parliament.
MARK PECK (NZ Labour—Invercargill):
“I am delighted to be able to speak on the report back of this bill. New members, in their time in this House, will have issues that come to their attention that they feel strongly about and that they will wish to deal with by way of members' bills. It is a difficult thing to do. Putting a bill together is not easy, particularly when one does not have the resources of the State at one's disposal.
Dealing with something of this nature takes its own toll. Let me tell the House that this issue found me; I did not go looking for it. It found me by virtue of the families in my electorate who are mentioned in the bill. I have with me tonight a rose that was given to me by my colleague David Benson-Pope, and I thank him for it. The significance of the rose is that it is a Braithwaite rose. I understand—and maybe Mr. Benson-Pope can elaborate on this at some time—that it was developed for the Braithwaite family, in which case it is even more significant to this debate.
I want to congratulate the select committee on the work it has done on the bill. The bill as introduced was very simple. It sought a free pardon and it sought to remove the stigma of the punishment that those soldiers suffered during the conflict. I think the committee got to grips with some very difficult issues.
I am even going to pause for a moment to thank Sir Edward Somers for the work he did. People might have got the impression that when his report was announced just before the election, I was a bit disappointed with it. Well, I felt that Sir Edward Somers had got quite a long way down the track to identifying the issues that had given rise to the bill but that he had not quite got there. My concern with the report was that Parliament should not lose its nerve as a result of that.
His recommendation was that the House should apologise for the executions that had occurred—essentially what happened in Britain with the election of the Blair Government. That in itself, I suppose, was something that could have been done but that fell short of what should have been done. In my view, it was up to Parliament to take the step a bit further, because, as Doug Kidd said in his speech, it is interesting to note that two of the soldiers who were executed came from Australia.
We all know that Australia refused to submit to British authority over their soldiers when it came to matters of discipline. In one case in particular, the Braithwaite case—the name of the rose—it was with tragic consequences, because the story about the mutiny is an absolutely tragic story as far as Braithwaite is concerned. Five people were court-martialled for mutiny, yet the report to Haig showed that the evidence supported the accused's version of the events. However, because Haig could not shoot the Australian soldiers, he made an example of Braithwaite.
It is poetic justice that at this date, working in Tony Blair's office, is Julian Braithwaite, the great-great nephew of Jack Braithwaite. He is following this bill with interest, as is another Labour Member of Parliament in Britain, Andrew McKinlay, who sought pardons for 350 people executed in Britain and got the apology. He is very interested in what this Parliament is doing tonight, and I am advised he will reinstate his campaign once this Parliament has dealt with the issue.
The other thing I want to say to members is that when one takes on something like this, one takes on the battles of many—one takes on the prejudices of many, as well. One issue I want to recite in the House tonight is that I arrived in my office, after the first flush of publicity about this matter, to find a white feather on my desk. There was no name indicating from whom it came and no address to contact. The white feather, people will understand, is the sign of cowardice. I say to the person who sent me it that he or she should at least have had the wit to leave me contact details so we could have discussed the matter.
Also, one gets some fascinating letters from people who are concerned. I want to share a couple with the House. The first is from an M J Hughes, whose father was "Uncle Frank's" brother. He was with them at the time and made to be present at the execution. Another person I want to talk about is Sweeney. Sweeney's father committed suicide 11 years after Sweeney's execution because the execution was made public. I have a letter from the Sweeney family wishing us well. The letter, from C P Sweeney, said: "I will say nothing more on this delicate subject, Mark, but to wish you, and your friend Mark Winter, the very best of Aussie luck."
This issue touches the lives of the families who live with it year after year. I refer to the stories of Jack Braithwaite and Victor Manson Spencer. Victor Manson Spencer was 18 when he volunteered to go and fight in Gallipoli, and when he got blown up in Armentieres by a Minenwerfer, he started the process of cracking.
These families have lived with that every Anzac Day. As I go around the Anzac Day services it absolutely drives me to ensure that this bill gets passed, so that those families can put the issue to bed, knowing their predecessors were brave men.
I supplied the committee with a couple of bits of information that I thought would help it in its deliberations. The first was a report from the British House of Commons in 1922 on shell shock. I knew when I gave that report to the committee that the majority of the British House of Commons in 1922 had resolved that shell shock was not a significant matter, but the minority had gone through it and had come up with a different opinion. They did so on the evidence received by the committee after 2 years of careful study.
I presented the select committee with the postscript from a book written by Judge Anthony Babbington, For the Sake of Example. I have been accused of being an expert after reading a couple of books. I do not claim to be an expert; I just claim to want to learn the lessons of history so that we do not relive it. I thought it important to share exactly what it means.
The postscript was written by a guy called Frank Richardson, a doctor in the British military. He describes the way that brave men break in this way, from a book written by Lord Moran, the Anatomy of Courage. He talks about a human being like a car battery. We have a level of bravery within us that gets tested under conflict. On each occasion after it gets tested, when we are sent back to the conflict again it gets tested again and the charge is less. It is like charging a battery. Finally, one can fire the battery to full charge and it will not hold it. That is why brave soldiers who had served for a decade with the army before going to war would snap. They could finally no longer take the pounding of the big guns, the close hand-to-hand combat with the bayonets, or the gas.
They snapped, and for the pain of snapping they did not get the dignity of a hospital bed, a warm meal, and the ability to recover. They got a bullet. Worse, the bullet was delivered by their own, and their own were made to watch for the sake of example. There are a whole bunch of reasons those men were made to watch for the sake of example, but it was wrong, and this Parliament tonight says it was wrong. I want to thank the committee for its work.”
