Category Archives: Blog

People Power, magic – and bad video!

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The link above takes you to a page of interviews recorded by volunteers at the Perspectives exhibition on London’s South Bank. They clearly aren’t done by professionals – although hats off to the team who have been inviting viewers of Tom Stoddart’s pictures to comment in this unusual way.


OK, I’m not impartial – I’ve been involved in this project from the outset, but something amazing (and I don’t often used that word!) has been taking place in the cathedral-like atmosphere of the Perspectives area. It may be outdoor, just yards away from  City Hall (‘London House’) and the giant screen on Potter’s Field – but it is a space apart. People looking at the pictures fall silent and often stand in front of a single image for many minutes. Some shake their heads in disbelief. Some cry or are visibly moved. Some get angry.


The curious intimacy of this place has another effect. People talk to one another. Within the first week I met Mohamed, the man who was shot 10 times in a racially-motivated street shooting in Amsterdam in the ’90s. My colleague Sha discovered that John Hamilton, the man looking at the picture of the famous Barlinnie jail rooftop protest was one of the people who took part in it . . . now a friend of one of the prison officers whom he was throwing slates at. Both men have been on personal journeys of pain and reconciliation. Both were deeply moved by particular pictures.


Time telescopes in this temple-like area; I’ve uploaded video interviews of people from all over the world. When it is over on 11 September I will start to count them . . . right now I can hardly keep up with the mail, the filming and daily photography requirement, the website and video updates.


This exhibition had no corporate support, agency staff or team of ‘creatives’ working on it. It happened because a few people believed in it ( they know who they are )  and with the participation of the International Committee for the Red Cross it became a reality that we could all be proud of.


Each day those of us who mingle with the crowds – Tom included – find people taken back in time to places and events that have personal resonance for them. It is emotional for us as well.


Yesterday I met an Iraqi doctor, educated in Russian and now resident in Britain. I have recalled the awful years of the Balkans conflict and Siege of Sarajevo with people who lived through it, seen visitors from the DRC, Burma, Somaliland, Sudan and Albania state at pictures that bring their pasts to life. 


On day three a child asked her father why the girl in Tom’s recent South Sudan picture was digging for water in the earth. “Can’t she get it from the tap?” she asked. “Sweetheart, there are no taps where she lives . . ” he began to explain.


More to follow.

Veterans Aid – Frontline support when and where it’s needed.

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Written by Glyn Strong

First published in  ‘THE CORMORANT’ 2011

  
*Since this was written Veterans Aid has championed the cause of at least 100 Foreign and Commonwealth ex-servicemen and women who through bad advice or legal anomalies have faced deportation and/or acute hardship. (See post below)
One veterans charity is much like another right? They all mean well, have the same objectives and operate to the same exacting standards.
If you agree with this statement, it’s likely that you think all veterans are the same. Hardly likely given that there are around 4 million of them! 
According to the Charity Commission there are nearly 3,000 organisations registered with the aim of supporting ex-Servicemen and women. Some have been operating for more than a century – others for a matter of weeks. Few have the pragmatic approach of Veterans Aid, its range of expertise or its commitment to delivering help to those in difficulty at point of need.
Those who know about ‘VA’ often ask why it doesn’t have a higher profile in the Service community – one answer is that its remit is to help ‘Veterans in Crisis’ and, media scare stories notwithstanding, there simply aren’t that many. Another explanation is that it doesn’t assume that the words ‘veteran’ and ‘hero’ are interchangeable. “The most heroic thing many of those who come to us have done is put up their hand to ask for help,” says former RAF officer and CEO Dr Hugh Milroy.
Last year VA provided 20,000 nights of accommodation, took around 2,000 calls for help from all over the world, put an average of 4 people per month into alcohol or substance rehab facilities and enabled 150 formerly homeless veterans to move into homes of their own. And all this on an annual budget of just over £1million.
But that’s not the real story. VA’s achievements aren’t about quantity – they’re about quality and a philosophy of treating everyone who seeks its help as unique.
“The men and women who come to us are individuals in crisis; in the last 12 months we’ve helped Guards officers, TA soldiers, single mothers, training failures, veterans  of  WW2, Bosnia, Northern Ireland, Gulf 1 &2, the Falklands, Iraq – and even one or two from Afghanistan. Virtually none have experienced PTSD or claimed a link between military service and their subsequent problems” says Milroy.
“If there’s a ‘common factor’ in post-discharge crisis, it’s life! Poverty, debt, relationship breakdown, mental illness (like one in four of the population) and drink or substance abuse. Veterans are not immune to the problems that affect everyone else, and although most (about 94 per cent) transit seamlessly to ‘civvy street’ a few do end up facing issues that threaten to overwhelm them.”
Milroy, who is Senior Visiting Research Fellow in the Department of War Studies at Kings College, speaks from a position of some authority. A PhD researching the reasons for street homelessness,  tri-Service operational experience and many years association with Veterans Aid have positioned him as a voice to be reckoned with.  A straight talking iconoclast he  is unequivocal about the scale and nature of the perceived problems – and courted as an expert by overseas governments and academics.
“It is wrong to perpetuate myths that raise expectations of failure,” he repeatedly tells journalists. “The streets of Britain are NOT littered with homeless ex-Servicemen for whom nothing is done. You are ‘citizen plus’ if you are a veteran as those who come to us discover.
“The ‘hero stereotype’ may help to raise funds, but the things we need money for are pretty prosaic. We address people’s most basic needs – provision of food, new clothes, footwear and shelter – having confirmed that they are bona fide veterans we start the ‘unpacking’ process that gets to the root of their problem. You would not believe some of the things that we’ve done or paid for to help people put their lives  back together – a ticket to Katmandu, a DNA test and a set of oil paints, to name but three!”
VA presently operates from a 58-bedroom hostel in London’s East End and an HQ/Drop-in centre in Victoria. The latter straddles three floors and features a motley selection of second-hand furniture.  Milroy’s office doubles as a store-room and on a busy day staff perch with laptops on the staircase or take clients to the café next door .
A familiar thread of service humour colours the daily banter; the ‘veteran helping veteran’ philosophy permeates every aspect of the help process. “Our aim is to act immediately delivering a message that conveys feelings of safety and hope,” reflects Milroy. “It’s hard to  give people the privacy and dignity they need in our current premises, but we have some wonderful friends and supporters and with their help we will one day be able to migrate our team of experts to a centre that is more suitable.
“We already operate virtually – helping UK veterans from all over the world and utilising links with all the established Service charities (e.g. SSAFA, the RBL, ABF/Soldiers Charity, RN and RAF benevolent Funds, Combat Stress and St Dunstan’s). We already have an ‘A&E’ service staffed by a barrister, psychiatrist, social worker, case workers and substance abuse specialists. This is a thoroughly post-modern organisation – an agile, responsive powerhouse of expertise committed to Churchill’s exhortation to ‘Action This Day’.
All we need is the financial support to do what we’ve been doing for nearly 80 years that bit better”


Tom Stoddart Exhibition – A different perspective

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We knew that this exhibition would look good but after three years of planning, shooting, dreaming and discussing it has become a reality. The  words announcing  TOM STODDART’S PERSPECTIVES displayed on 9ft  structures opposite the Tower of London are a statement of arrival. Even during the build this set of moving, disturbing and celebratory images remind a city ‘en fete’ that some freedoms are hard won – and others never won at all.

Day One of the build.


Two-tier justice for Commonwealth soldiers?

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/9417871/Commonwealth-soldier-kicked-in-the-teeth-by-Britain.html


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/9417867/Commonwealth-soldiers-face-deportation.html 

THIRTEEN years service, five operational tours, four medals – and a fifth offered alongside news from the Home Office that he has to leave the UK. 


Bale and Kim Baleiwai came to the charity Veterans Aid in despair – and help to bring their plight to public attention. The Sunday Telegraph, BBC Radio 4 and Channel 4 News took up their case. They are a close, happy family who have made personal sacrifices during Bale’s distinguished Army career. And all because a misdemeanour in the Army that was dealt with summarily in a 10-minute meeting with his CO has translated into a criminal record. This migration of transgression applies only to Foreign and Commonwealth service personnel. 


Discriminatory? Undoubtedly. 


We live in an odd world when a drunken Army veteran who happens to be an MP starts a punch-up in the Commons bar and doesn’t even lose his seat, while a former Fijian Lance Corporal provoked into a short scuffle faces separation from his wife and children with only days to prepare. The so-called ‘military covenant’ has a way to go in terms of meaningful provision for those it purports to protect.


For more see:


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2105180/Eric-Joyce-Labour-MP-arrested-bar-brawl-inside-House-Commons.html


http://www.channel4.com/news/should-f-c-soldiers-whove-been-disciplined-be-deported


http://www.veterans-aid.net

78 Perspectives by Tom Stoddart

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South Sudan – (c) Tom Stoddart 2012

Perspectives Photographic Exhibition

(For more information email me directly on glyn@78perspectives.com – and if you want to upload Smartphone or iPad media directly go to http://78perspectives.com/my-perspectives/ – where we will post YOUR perspectives on TOM’S perspectives! – Glyn)

Perspectives, an exhibition of images by award-winning photographer Tom Stoddart (www.tomstoddart.com), will be held at one of London’s prime South Bank sites from 25 July – 11 September, throughout the Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Seventy-eight of Stoddart’s signature black and white pictures will form a free, open-air display at More London Riverside, between City Hall and HMS Belfast.
During his distinguished career Stoddart has travelled to more than 50 countries and documented such historic events as the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Siege of Sarajevo and the election of Nelson Mandela as South Africa’s first black president.
His acclaimed in-depth work on the HIV/AIDS pandemic blighting sub-Saharan Africa won the POY World Understanding Award in 2003. In the same year his pictures of British Royal Marines in combat, during hostilities in Iraq, was awarded the Larry Burrows Award for Exceptional War Photography. A year later his book iWITNESS was honoured as the best photography book published in the USA.
Now established as one of the world’s most respected photojournalists, Stoddart works closely with Getty Images to produce features on serious world issues.
He said,
”The world’s nations will soon be joined together in a wonderful sporting festival whose motto is ‘swifter, higher, stronger’. I hope that people visiting the exhibition will leave with a greater determination to understand and help those with little access to clean water, food and medicines who, through no fault of their own, cannot run more swiftly, jump higher or be stronger”.
Perspectives has been created with the participation of the International Committee of the Red Cross ICRC, featuring photographs taken by Tom Stoddart for the Health Care in Danger campaign.

www.78perspectives.com

A Really Crappy Job?

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OK – this is from Wiki and may be a crock of the proverbial, but it is SO worth a read!

For all those who like getting their hands dirty Op TAMARISK must have represented the ultimate challenge.

“Operation Tamarisk was a Cold War-era operation run by the military intelligence services of the US, UK and France through their military liaison missions in East Germany, that gathered discarded paper, letters, and rubbish from Soviet trash bins and military maneuvers, including used toilet paper.

As described in The Hidden Hand by Richard Aldrich on page 414, it involved starving the Soviets of loo paper. This led them to use official documents as a ‘substitute’.

The US, UK and the French then used their spies to retrieve the documents as the paper was not soluble and was put into bins.

The spies actually complained to their handlers that they had to go through the bins that contained fecal matter and even amputated limbs in the case of hospital rubbish bins. When the spies told their handlers this, the handlers immediately asked them to bring back the limbs as well so they could study what type of shrapnel the Soviets were using.

According to Tony Geraghty, ‘to tamarisk’ was BRIXMIS jargon for “sifting through the detritus of military exercises”. This included extracting shrapnel from tissue disposal sites at hospitals and salvaging documents used as toilet paper where no actual toilet paper had been issued, but also less disgusting finds such as a discarded personal notebook containing technical drawings.

Apparently Tamarisk has been described as ‘one of the most successful espionage operations in the entire cold war.’

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Tamarisk

From Rock to Clock

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The 30-year-old soldier sitting opposite me is not homeless. He has no alcohol or drug problems. He is not in debt and he enjoys physical and mental health. He didn’t come to the charity Veterans Aid to seek help, but to offer it.
Captain Edouard ‘Ed’ Plunkett (Queens Royal Lancers) – is an Army officer who has served in Cyprus, Canada, Iraq and Afghanistan.  As a Troop leader and Squadron 2IC he has had responsibility for men’s lives and wellbeing. As a soon-to-be civilian he knows that a few will struggle without the structure of the service family to support them. A few more will struggle for other reasons.
Plunkett is matter of fact about what the Armed Forces offer and what frontline service in particular involves. As Second in Command, Brigade Reconnaissance Force (QRL) he has had responsibility for the career management and training of 105 officers, senior NCOs and men. Plunkett and his troop spearheaded a major offensive against the Taliban over a seven-month period. In that time he witnessed first hand the effects of IEDs, losing limbs or having them mangled beyond use. He knows how long the physical rehabilitation process takes, the seemingly endless operations, hours of physio and subsequent shuttling between medical facilities at Headley Court and Selly Oak hospital, following friends and colleagues through their recovery
Military service is not for life. At some point all servicemen and women – injured or not – find themselves out of the Armed Forces and re-branded as ‘veterans’, a label they will wear until they die. In this capacity responsibility for their wellbeing passes into the hands of the Welfare State and the 3,000 charities that offer help and support to those who have served. At the cutting edge of these is Veterans Aid.
On 31 January Plunkett plans to embark on a venture to raise fund for what he describes as ‘the welfare model for life after the Army’. At the beginning of February he will cycle from Gibraltar to Hereford, covering 1,583 miles through Spain, over the snow laden Pyrenees, up through France and more snow. He plans to take the ferry from St Malo to Portsmouth and finish at the memorial clock in 22 SAS Camp outside Hereford, in March.
So why Veterans Aid?
“It’s just the nature of the charity” says Plunkett. “The work it does is lost on most people. They think about the ‘here and now’, see the casualties of current conflicts, not the welfare of the individuals’ long term in life after service. There is publicity about PTSD – and it is a problem for some people – but case by case everyone who leaves the Army is different.”
CEO of VA Dr Hugh Milroy points out that there are more than 5 million veterans in the UK, men and women of all ages. “Most transit seamlessly from service to civilian life, but a small minority, for a variety of prosaic reasons, end up in crisis. And it’s a myth that military service actually causes subsequent misfortune.
“Life in Britain today is hard – for everyone. Veterans are not a  ‘protected’ species, but they are a resilient breed with a  very family ethos. And that’s what this charity is about – veteran helping veteran; with debt, relationship breakdown, mental and physical health problems, and addictions. Whatever the problem, we are here to help.”
The charity survives and flourishes because of its supporters, from ‘official’ funders like ABF-The Soldiers Charity to individuals like Ed Plunkett who learn about its work and are inspired to do something personal to contribute to it.
Plunkett’s team will include his future brother in law Rob Kendall – a civvy – and, at some stage, fitness permitting, one or two of the lower limb amputees from his unit.
“ They are still receiving treatment so we’re keeping a watching brief at the moment. The current plan is for them to join us when we cross the Channel and complete the last phase of the cycle ride to Hereford. It’s a colossal challenge but our aim is to raise £10,000 for Veterans Aid. 
“On 9 May 2010 in Helmand province Sergeant Andrew ‘Mandy’ Carlton was involved in a PPIED (Pressure Plate Improvised Explosive Device) incident in which two servicemen received critical injuries.  He lost his left leg below the knee and suffered extensive damage to his remaining leg.  He has since taken every opportunity to overcome his disability and I would maintain that he is almost as agile as he was before his loss! We really hope he can join us.
 “We think Veterans Aid is a fantastic and inspirational charity. It supports ex-servicemen and women who have fallen on hard times, and are in dire need of food, shelter, clothing, psychological support and/or stability.”
Although a fit individual, Plunkett has only recently taken up cycling and the area around his current base (Catterick, North Yorkshire) has provided excellent training facilities.  “However much we train I expect the first week will be hard; that’s when we will really cut our teeth, develop sores, aches and pains. The Pyrenees will be the real challenge and it’s the obstacle that we’re most psyched up for”.
There will be no ‘soft landings’ after that though – the two men plan to camp rather than waste money on hotels, putting Plunkett’s experience as expedition leader through the Jebel Akhdar and the Wahiba Sands of Oman to good effect. “We will make the occasional ‘wash stop’ to clean up our kit though!”
His Just Giving page (http://www.justgiving.com/rocktoclock) has already attracted donations of more than £1,300 and words of encouragement from supporters.
And Plunkett’s fiancé Henrietta “Well, she’s not over the moon about this, just six weeks before the wedding, but she understands why I am doing it,” he laughs.
*Veterans Aid plans to keep in touch with Ed and Rob via email as they cover the 1,583-mile route, blogging on BFBS (http://www.bfbs.com/news/blogs/veterans-aid%E2%80%99s-blog-20133.html) and posting pictures of the pair at various stages of their journey. You can also follow their journey on Facebook and Twitter.
Donations to their Just Giving site can be made at any time. Media interviews arranged through media@veterans-aid.net or by calling Glyn Strong on 07806 920087.
A video appeal from Ed and Rob can be seen on (*To follow)