Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee 04 September 2025
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.
09:15I 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.