Chamber and committees

Thank you for your question. You will see that I am not here by myself today; I am joined by people from veterans groups, veterans charities and friends of war memorial groups, who feel very passionately about the issue. They do not want to see any more war memorials in Scotland being desecrated. The aim of my bill is to create a deterrent and to make sure that people are aware that if, under the definition that I have set out in the bill, they desecrate a war memorial, there will be consequences for it.

Looking at the community impact of desecration of a war memorial, I think that it is interesting that every area that members of the committee represent—whether it is a region or a constituency—has had a war memorial in it desecrated. That shows that the desecration of war memorials is not limited to an isolated area but is widespread throughout the country.

As I refer to in paragraph 15 of the policy memorandum, the research that I carried out in the process of putting the bill together showed that

“there had been 66 ‘attacks’ on war memorials”

reported since 1996 and that

“70% of these had occurred since 2014.”

That shows that there has been a spike in the past 10 years. I thought that 10 years was an appropriate timeframe to look at in relation to where we are and where there could be further desecration of war memorials in the future.

Regarding the community impact, there is an average of about four or five attacks each year. That might not seem like a lot, but the impact that an attack has on the community is stark. In 2019, pro-fascist graffiti was daubed on the Duchess of Hamilton park war memorial in Motherwell, which is in my region, and in 2018 the war memorial at Alexandra park was petrol bombed even before it was meant to be unveiled. It was a relatively new war memorial, but it still suffered desecration at the hands of vandals.

I refer back to the desecration of the Duchess of Hamilton park war memorial, which committee members and I were rightly forthright in condemning. What was written on that war memorial? I cannot put into words how disgusting it was. The word “rats” was etched into the stone, “scum of the earth” was written in a permanent marker and “cowards” was written above the names of armed forces personnel who died serving our country. That will have had such an impact not only on the families whose ancestors’ names are etched on to those stones, but on the armed forces personnel who regularly gather at such memorials throughout the year for different events.

That particular incident was rightly called out by the veterans community. Rose Gentle, who I am sure needs no introduction, given the campaigning work that she has done for her son, Gordon Gentle, through her justice 4 Gordon Gentle campaign, said at the time:

“No matter what you are or what you believe in, there is no need for this.”

Cammy MacLeod of the veterans charity Who Dares Cares said:

“For someone to go out and do this days after the D-Day commemorations is an utter disgrace.”

The question that I am putting to committee members is this: do you believe that desecration of a war memorial deserves a potentially higher sentence? Do you believe that it deserves a higher status, so that there are further protections? I know in my heart, given what has happened to communities and how they have felt on the back of war memorials in their areas being desecrated, that the answer is yes.

I would consider that. Proposed new section 52A(2) of the 1995 act provides that desecration

“includes but is not limited to spitting, urinating or defecating upon, or otherwise defacing (whether temporarily or permanently) a war memorial.”

Urinating will not permanently damage a war memorial, but what matters is the intent behind it—the reason why someone feels the need to go and do it and the emotional impact that it will have on communities thereafter.

I believe—we all believe—in the right to protest. However, a protest that involves deliberately defacing or damaging a war memorial that is of significant importance not only to our armed forces community veterans but to the wider community is not acceptable. Therefore, it would be for the courts to decide, through the sentencing process, what the correct penalties would be. I am giving the courts additional levers, so that, if they believe that the desecration has enough severity, they will have the mechanisms in place to pass tougher sentences than they can at present.

You raise a fair point about rurality being an issue. I hope to create a deterrent with the bill; I do not want to cause a backlog in our courts system. My bill is strong enough to create the deterrent that we need in Scotland to ensure that we do not see the number of desecrations of war memorials that we have seen in recent years. That is my primary objective, and I hope that members can see that that is what I hope to achieve with my bill.

I understand that, depending on how severe the desecration of a war memorial is, one or two cases would end in a higher sentence. However, my financial memorandum estimates the cost of the bill to be low, which shows that I do not envisage there being a huge impact on our courts system. I hope that that gives some comfort to the committee.

The approach that I have taken is primarily one of deterrence. I have referenced that a lot today, because I believe that that is what the bill could achieve—people would think twice about desecrating war memorials, given their significant importance to our communities.

You have raised an interesting concept. I am not entirely sure that that would be the right fit for war memorials, but such discussions could be broadened if the bill reaches stage 2. That could make the offence similar to those that are dealt with in the High Court. Right now, the offence fits under the sheriff court level, and I do not want to change that, because it is important that we use the right levers of our court system to ensure that, if a sentence is necessary and fits the crime, it is handed out proportionately.

We have to look at all the issues—I am not saying that those discussions should not be had. Indeed, if the committee wished to, it could explore that idea. However, I believe that what I am setting out in the bill is the best course of action not just to raise the importance and significance of war memorials, but to highlight the impact of the crimes on communities, on veterans and on our armed forces.

I am talking about war memorials and about people who fought and died for our country in wars. Of course—

I understand exactly where you are coming from. To go back to the definition that I have set out, it relates to armed conflict—I have specified that in the bill. I have tried to make the bill as concise and clear as possible. I have tried not to expand on definitions too broadly, because we could get into a debate on that. I have tried to make the bill as targeted as possible, given the issues that have been brought to me by community groups and veterans who have spoken to me and who are deeply concerned about the number of war memorials being desecrated.

Should the principle of the bill be agreed to at stage 1, we can certainly have discussions on that issue at stage 2. It is important to reflect on the evidence today, which I certainly will do—I will take that away. However, I go back to the definitions that I set out in my opening statement and what I have said to members this morning.

The fact that the 10 years provision is in the bill means that it is a possibility, and it is not outwith the realms of possibility. If it is the case that lesser penalties are imposed, they would still be greater than what we are presently seeing in relation to convictions for desecrating war memorials.

We have to look at the issue in the round. It is not only about looking at the worst-case scenario or the most severe penalty; it is about looking at the issue in the justice system and ensuring that people who have committed such egregious crimes that cause our communities trauma actually get sentences that are equal to the harm that they have caused. That is my bill’s purpose: to ensure that penalties are there to reflect the crimes that have been committed and to ensure that that deterrence is there, because if one or two people are convicted, others would think again.

What I do not want to do is put anyone into a box. It would be very unfair to automatically say that, if a war memorial is desecrated, a younger person or someone in a certain age bracket will have done it. I think that that would be wholly unfair because, as we have seen in many different examples, we are talking about people of all ages and all backgrounds. Therefore, as I have said, I do not want to put people into a box.

Having looked at certain instances in my research, I think that it is clear that there are certain reasons why people decide to desecrate a war memorial. You have to look at these things in isolation and on a case-by-case basis; this is not something where you can say, in a blanket way, “You have desecrated that war memorial, so you are a terrible person.” It could come down to a lack of education, as we have just been discussing, or there could be mental health issues. There could be lots of reasons encompassing someone’s desecration of a war memorial.

Therefore, you have to look at this as a whole, which is why I talked about there being a neutral impact. These things usually happen in a silo, but, as I have said, they also seem to happen at heightened points in our society. We have seen that in recent times—in 2019, there was the beginning of the pandemic and, in 2021, we were still in that space. War memorials seem to be desecrated more frequently at certain times.

I am trying to raise the status of war memorials and make sure that we have a robust court process, should we believe that the level of the crime is sufficient for that.

As I said in my opening statement, destroying, damaging or desecrating war memorials has an impact not only financially on local authorities, which have to look after, maintain and restore war memorials, but on armed forces communities, veterans and the wider communities, who know of and are very fond of war memorials in their areas for obvious reasons, given that we are talking about people who have served and died for the freedoms that we enjoy today.

When I embarked on the bill process, back in 2021, there were six attacks in that year alone. In April 2021, the Carronshore war memorial and the Boer war memorial in Glasgow were attacked; in June 2021, the Spanish civil war memorial in Motherwell was attacked; in September 2021, the Kirkcaldy war memorial was attacked; and, in October 2021, the Cowdenbeath and Prestonpans war memorials were attacked. That shows that, even when I was embarking on this piece of legislation, a pattern of events was happening. I am not saying that it happens every year—it seems to be when there are particular acts of civil unrest or when something else is happening in Scotland—but it shows how many attacks can happen on war memorials in the one place in a short space of time.

I fully believe that, when the friends of Dennistoun war memorial brought their petition to the Scottish Parliament, they had identified a gap in the legislation. With this legislation, I aim to escalate and raise the status of war memorials so that vandalism of them is not akin to vandalism of a lamp post or a telephone box and so that they are of a higher status, given not only their cultural importance but their importance to communities and the emotional impact that people feel whenever a war memorial is desecrated.

I believe that the law should recognise that damaging a war memorial has consequences beyond the littering and vandalism aspects—I hope that we will be able to get into that subject later—and that it causes significant trauma to communities that are impacted when they see a war memorial being desecrated. Going back to the statutory offence that is now in force in England and Wales, in many respects, with this bill I am trying to bring the situation into line with what is happening in other areas of the UK.

I want to ensure that we look at the issue at hand, which is the desecration of war memorials. That is the issue that has been presented to me by the friends of Dennistoun war memorial and others who are very concerned about the number of war memorials that are being desecrated. I want to ensure that my bill is as direct as possible and that there is no room for other interpretations of it. I want to ensure that the bill is fixed on meeting my aims and objectives, which are to give courts more levers and to provide a deterrent so that people do not continue to deface and desecrate our war memorials.