The project hopes to encourage more people to come forward to claim reparations
BY ELLA GAUCI, IMAGES BY FIONA FREUND
Fighting With Pride, the Armed Forces LGBTQ+ Charity, is preserving the stories of veterans and today’s serving personnel through a powerful heritage project called True Colours. This comes just under a month before applications for the LGBT Financial Recognition Scheme close on 12 December at 11:59 pm.
Until 2000, it was illegal to be gay in the HM Armed Forces, even though homosexuality had been decriminalised in England and Wales since 1967. During this time, LGBTQIA+ people were discharged, dismissed, interrogated, imprisoned and lost their careers. In 2024, it was announced that veterans who were dismissed from the armed forces under the military ban will receive up to £70,000 in compensation as financial recognition for “historic wrongs” they experienced.
Now, Fighting With Pride is urging people to apply for reparations, offering those impacted the chance to gain “the recognition and reparations that you are entitled to”. Applicants can also receive non-financial restorative actions such as the return of berets, medals and ranks.
The charity’s new heritage project is hoping to capture the diversity of LGBTQIA+ veterans, and encourage more people to come forward to apply. There are already plans for the material collected to be put into an exhibition to tour the country.
Some of the stories captured in the project include Olympian Dame Kelly Holmes. Speaking about her experience in the Army, Kelly wrote, “At the age of 23, I experienced what we would now describe as a witch hunt. At the time, I was a respected corporal, having recently been promoted and posted to a new unit. The invasion of my privacy and the trauma of that experience stayed with me for decades. It left scars that affected me for more than 30 years.”
Another story included in the True Colours project is Colonel Leona Barr-Jones DL, who served as an officer in the British Army for 36 years. “Like many others, I lived with the constant pressure of knowing that my private life could end the career I had worked so hard to build,” Leona said. “I was investigated under the policy on two occasions. Both were experiences that were deeply challenging and personal. To have my integrity and suitability to serve questioned because of who I was, rather than how I performed, was difficult to reconcile with the values of fairness, courage and respect that the Army sought to uphold.”
For more: Government scheme information
Find support: Fighting With Pride
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