Ben Wallace has warned ‘you don’t get your message across by desecrating anything’
The ‘idiots’ who desecrate war memorials should be sentenced to spend time with serving personnel and veterans in order to “learn what sacrifice is really about”, the Defence Secretary has said.
In response to plans being considered by ministers to implement a 10-year prison sentence for demonstrators who vandalise historic monuments, Ben Wallace said he felt “pretty angry that people think the problems of the world are because of statues”.
“You don’t get your message across by desecrating anything. In fact, you look like an idiot,” he said.
Mr Wallace’s predecessor, Penny Mordaunt, recently wrote to Robert Buckland, the Justice Secretary, urging that those caught desecrating memorials spend time with service personnel, “perhaps at a battle camp”.
“That might give them a new appreciation of just what these people go through for their sakes. They are their armed forces. They should be respected and treasured,” she said.
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It comes after the Metropolitan Police confirmed that a 20-year-old woman who allegedly tried to set fire to a flag on the Cenotaph in Whitehall has been arrested.
The Daily Telegraph understands that the Ministry of Defence is keen to move away from misconceptions that the military is “pale, male and stale”, and instead educate the wider public about the sacrifices members of the Armed Forces make on a daily basis.
A defence source told this newspaper that disrespectful acts against the Cenotaph, a monument dedicated to the millions of lives lost during the First World War, emphasised the lack of understanding around the military.
“The vast majority of those called to serve were civilians, not a small exclusive clique. These are people who sacrificed their civilian lives for their country. It is a memorial to British society for responding to that threat.”
The source added that while the coronavirus pandemic had done much to raise awareness around what nurses in hospitals and social care do, the Armed Forces were “more removed”.
“If people knew more about what it meant to serve, and the sacrifices involved, then they would be less inclined to desecrate war memorials.”
Mr Wallace added that, as a former soldier, what “makes us great as a country is not just statues, and it’s not just medals – it’s our values”.
“And it’s valuing the living as much as the dead, if not more. The dead are dead,” he told the House Magazine.
“I’d love to see this department remember that the greatest asset we have is not our tanks or our aeroplanes, it’s people. They are the greatest asset in defence.”
This Post was originally published on telegraph.co.uk