As Britain honours War Dead on Remembrance Day, we see their contribution belittled by the staff of The Royal British Legion Scotland who thought wrongly it was acceptable to change their name to ‘Legion Scotland’, an utter disgrace to servicemen and women past and present

Dear All

Sometimes organisations change their name, in the case of the Glasgow Herald, it was changed to Herald Scotland in order to boost its sales.

In the case of the Police due to the restructuring, it was changed to Police Scotland. In general, some organisations benefit from a name change, the Herald did it to boost sales as I pointed out; the Police did it because of the mergers of 8 forces into a single body.

You can see the argument for this; that said, there is no argument which stands up regarding Legion Scotland being changed from what it was previously known as The Royal British Legion Scotland.

The Royal British Legion Scotland has undergone an extraordinary ill judged change; this new name change doesn’t reflect and shouldn’t reflect the new political situation of post 18^th September. I was formerly a member of the British Armed Forces; I have fond memories of that time, the people I met and things which were taught to me.

Whoever it was who had the idea for Legion Scotland has no understanding of the anger that has been caused, and the name change should be reversed as quickly as possible!

Social media sites have been rather savage and right full of criticism of the move. This has led to the newly branded body suspended or "disabled, all comments and reviews on its website.

Unsurprisingly, it is said that Legion Scotland had comments banned on its website, "during this period of remembrance, out of respect for those people who have given their lives for our country, due to their negative and abusive nature".

I thought it was to do with silencing free speech.

You would think that an organisation such as the Royal British Legion Scotland would cherish their links with both the Royal family and Britain given the tremendous amount of work that the Royals do on supporting service charities.

The “official reason” for the change is explained as being an attempt to differentiate the Scottish veterans' organisation from The Royal British Legion group of charities, which are completely separate from the charity that is active in Scotland.

I would like to venture an opinion regarding that statement….utter rubbish.

I would also note that despite the new political situation in Scotland at present, we should remember a few details. Firstly Scotland is still part of the UK, secondly, the Nationalists lost the referendum; thirdly their support for the British Armed Forces is at best lukewarm.

If you care to do the research, you can discovery some other interesting things about the Nationalist cause, for example, some prominent Nationalists supported the Nazis during World War 2. Fast forward to the present day and you would find people in the Nationalist ranks which I previously dubbed the ‘Sein Fein lite’ brigade who aren’t Nationalists at all but use the SNP to spread their brand of anti British hatred which stems from Irish republicanism.

This begs the question, are Legion Scotland pandering to these people?

Also, if they are this is the equivalent of spitting in the faces of Scottish servicemen and women who did military service and put their lives on the line in the defence of democracy, some people paid the ultimate price for the freedoms we enjoy today.

Legion Scotland has soiled their memory.

I would personally remove the individual or individuals who did this name change, some things change, but others aren’t open to change at all; they are a statement of our values, our history and our beliefs.

I found this quote which sums what I believe many people who look at this know:

“Who we are, is who we were”.

As I understand it, Scotland’s ‘jolly fat man’ currently the soon to be ex First Minister of Scotland is said to be wearing a poppy in conjunction with a Saltire. This reminds me of the ‘Scolympians’ nonsense, when Salmond and the entire SNP Cabinet sent good wishes only to the Scots who were in Team Great Britain during the Olympics. That episode was a PR shambles because Salmond couldn’t bring himself to wish the entire Team GB good luck.

My view on Alex Salmond is that he is a petty little stupid man in every sense of the word, and someone really should have a go at him with gloves off politically to show him up for what he is on TV.   

   

My suggestion to those responsible for Legion Scotland to go setup a Nationalist Scottish version and remove themselves from The Royal British Legion Scotland as soon as possible.

In what must be the weakest defence of their extraordinary ill judged move, they said:

"Royal British Legion Scotland is still our legal name, and one of which we are very proud and we do all that we can to help all Scottish ex-service personnel and those with a Scottish connection."

So proud, that their name change completely writes out ‘Royal’ and ‘British’, it rather gives the impression of crawling to the Nationalists whose supporters don’t support them anyway.

Finally, it said that the staff at "Legion Scotland" are fed up explaining themselves, they said:

"We have answered the query surrounding the name 'Legion Scotland' on our website. However if anyone has any further questions we suggest that you get in touch using the contact form on our website or by letter. Unfortunately due to this being a very busy time for the charity it may take a week or so to respond to your query."

Perhaps it is time to talk about the removal of those responsible as soon as possible so that they can find more suitable employment working in a less historic place such as Poundland or Tesco.

That way they can play at rebranding exercises to their hearts content!

It’s a disgrace, but not a word from the Nationalist leadership because they really don’t give a hoot about British servicemen and women unless it is about troop displacement supporting the local economy in Scotland.

That is the extent of their patriotism.

Yours sincerely

George Laird

The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University