Des Browne: very unusual retiral statement from a former Defence Secretary

Des Browne, the Westminster politician who represents Kilmarnock and Loudoun has announced that he is standing down at the next General Election.

Browne is the man who found himself carrying a double brief at cabinet level: Secretary of State for Defence and Secretary of State for Scotland.

Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, came under heavy criticism for the obvious uninterest in Scotland that this batched portfolio revealed.

In standing down Browne has given as his reason that he wants to ‘spend more time working towards multilateral disarmament and conflict resolution’.

Now that’s a Secretary of State for Defence for the 21st Century – but it won’t be happening now.

Des Browne, in office at Defence, distinguished himself in 2007 by appearing more open to an honest official evaluation of the Argyll-related case that created a gross injustice enacted by the Ministry of Defence.

This was the famous incident in 1994 where an RAF Chinook crashed in fog into the hillside on the Mull of Kintyre, above the Lighthouse. All 27 aboard, which, apart from the flight crew, Jonathan Tapper and Rick Cook, were a group of  high level intelligence and police personnel on their way to a security conference in Inverness. All onboard died.

It has been generally recognised within the RAF that the cause of the accident was a system known to be unreliable – Full Authority Digital Engine Control (FADEC)- which, unfortunately was very germane to flying conditions on the day.

In 1995, an RAF board of inquiry found that there was no conclusive evidence to determine the cause of the crash. However, two Air Marshals, on reviewing the evidence, found the two pilots guilty of Gross Negligence in flying too fast and low in thick fog.

This ruling proved highly controversial. A subsequent Fatal Accident inquiry in 1996, a House of Commons Defence Committee report in 2000a and a Commons Public Accounts Committee report have all at least left open the question of blame or openly challenged the original conclusion.

There remains a body of influential people, the families of the two pilots and a significant number of people in Kintyre and across Argyll whowill not rest inti the obvious injustice inflicted upon the reputations of the pilots who died has been reversed.

Des Browne, in agreeing in 1997 to look again a the evidence and at new evidence presented by campaigners, offered hope from a man recognised to be pretty straightforward for a politician.

However, when John Hutton replaced him as Secretary of State for Defence and became responsible for reporting on his assessment of the evidence on the Machrihanish crash, he dismissed it out of and and left the juegemnt standing.

The words ‘straightforward’ and ‘John Hutton’ never did coexist in harmony and no self-interested and ambitious politician is going to annoy the Ministry of Defence establishment and the American makers of the FADEC system for the sake of irrelevancies like justice and the good names of two dead pilots.