FIGHTING WITH PRIDE
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Mission Statement
Vision Statement The United Kingdom will become the best place in the world to be an LGBT+ Veteran. FWP will support LGBT+ Veterans, serving personnel and their families. Mission Statement FWP will be a beacon for LGBT+ Veterans, serving personnel and their families, supporting them to live their best lives. We will do this by encouraging those who have a duty to uphold the covenant to remember them and help. We will signpost them to organisations that can support their return to the protections of the military family. We will ensure that the challenges faced by LGBT+ Veterans in their service lives and beyond are recognised, respected and understood by those who have a duty to support them
About This Cause
Until the law was changed in January 2000, it was illegal for people who were homosexual to serve in the UK Armed Forces, though the ban was enacted on all members of the LGBT+ community. Between 1955 and 2000 several thousand LGBT+ personnel were dishonourably discharged or forced from the UK Armed Forces, causing great distress and negatively impacting their lives. They faced arrest, interrogation, degrading medical inspections, Court Martial, prison sentences, sexual offence convictions, and were ‘Dismissed in Disgrace’ or for ‘Conduct Prejudicial’, making future employment difficult. Operational medals and good conduct badges were ripped from their uniforms, their names were erased from the retired lists of their Service as though they had never existed, and as they were cast out of the Armed Forces family, they were ’outed’ to their own family and friends too. Any pride or identity of being a Veteran was stolen from them. Losing their homes and their financial stability, they were left unsupported, isolated, and shunned by military charities, as not deserving of Veteran status, with many suffer enduring mental health consequences. Until FWP formed, nothing had previously been done to find these Veterans, to support them, or to recover them to the promises of the AF Covenant. We were formed as a charity in January 2020, to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the complete lifting of the ban on the open service of LGBT+ personnel. We represent an Armed Forces community who were treated shamefully in their service lives and beyond and we are leading a pan sector change programme to deliver better health and welfare for our beneficiaries who are LGBT+ Veterans. 5. We were registered with the Charity Commission in October 2020 and approval is pending with the Office for the Scottish Charity Regulator (OSCR). Our Executive Team (consisting of 2 Joint CEOs) are supported by 8 trustees, each of whom are respected community leaders spanning 40 years of the ban, with every service, rank, rate and characteristic represented. Our launch partners were The Royal British Legion (TRBL), SSAFA, Stonewall and NHS England. Lieutenant General Sir Andrew Gregory KBE CB DL (Controller SSAFA) is our Patron. 6. Even at this early stage of our existence, and with very limited resources, we are already changing outcomes for some of our LGBT+ Veterans and offering support and hope. Activities Our activities are the things we do day-to-day, and which are within our control. They are as follows: Advice, signposting and outreach. We will directly help and support members of the LGBT+ community who contact us. We will do this by providing advice, and/or by signposting them to other sources of support, as well as delivering outreach to Veterans in England initially, but also in Scotland and Wales in due course. Seeking remedy. We will seek intrinsic value and non-intrinsic remedy for Veterans most affected by the ‘gay ban’, building on the positive partnerships developed in 2021 with Government agencies who are best placed to help. Research. We will commission and support research appropriate to the LGBT+ community, and to help ensure our activities and desired outcomes are underpinned by a robust evidence base. Community building. We will build LGBT+ Veterans communities, enabling befriending, networks of mutual support and opportunities to celebrate the service and achievements of LGBT+ Veterans. We will build a mutually supportive regional network of Veteran groups focussed upon key LGBT+ population centres. The groups will provide befriending opportunities and a mechanism through which opportunities for community get togethers can be offered. o Recordinghistory.Wewillensurethatthehistoriesofthe‘gayban’arerecordedandthat awareness is raised among a broad range of audiences of the experiences of LGBT+ Veterans. We will ensure that the achievements of individuals and organisations of the ‘ban’ era are recognised. We will continue the work begun in 2021 with the Imperial War Museum (IWM) London, to record, archive and present the history of the ban, through the capture of lived-experience, historical documents and media. Communication activity. Several of our activities relate to communications as follows: • Website and social media. We will develop our web and social media presence including development of the quality and content of the website e.g. dedicated specialist resources for social media, web hosting, website development and news media. This will also include use of the Madison Chatbot on our website. • We will develop opportunities for audio and visual recordings of lived-experience LGBT+ Veteran histories through radio and tv broadcast opportunities. • We will build a database of individuals who wish to be kept informed of our work. This will enable us to keep them apprised of our policy work with Office for Veterans Affairs for example.