"I shall always be the war widow of Alan," says Maureen Jarvis, whose RAF navigator husband died in a plane crash in 1990. She is speaking about a rule that she says discriminates against people like her – and robs her of a war widow pension.
Maureen, from Moray in Scotland, like scores of other military widows and widowers who remarried or formed a civil partnership before 2015, had her payments removed. Now, she has made an Armistice Day appeal to restore the pension.
She says she is discriminated against because widows and widowers whose late spouse or civil partner left service before March 31, 1973 or remarried after 2015 still receive their payments. Her first husband Alan Campbell, a Tactical Coordinator in the RAF, was one of 10 killed when an aircraft crashed into the hill of Maodal, on the Isle of Harris on April 30, 1990.
In an open letter, Ms Jarvis spoke of her devastation in 2014 when faced with the option of keeping her pension payments or losing them when she married her second husband. She described her “darkest days of grief”, adding how it is “impossible to explain to those who have not experienced such loss”.
Ms Jarvis said she was not strong or brave but “just survived” after her husband’s death at the age of 36, leaving behind not just her but their children. “I wish you knew how overwhelmed I am with hurt for our children, they lost their daddy when they were just three and six years old,” she wrote.
“No daddy to see their momentous occasions, not to mention, we now have a granddaughter. The pain never goes away; it is always there. I wish you knew how life-altering it all was.”
She wrote that people are irreplaceable and a new relationship does not mean forgetting or stopping loving her first husband. “I had given up my career, and having re-joined the workplace only a matter of a few months before my husband’s fatal air crash, I again had to give up my career dreams and aspirations due to debilitating bouts of depression, later this would be classed as PTSD, and wanting to provide the best life for our sons,” she wrote.
“Being able to work became intermittent and I flitted in and out, and between jobs. I did not have the luxury of building up my own pension pot.”
She described being faced with the choice of remaining financially independent but incredibly lonely, or choosing happiness with another man but forced to surrender her war widow’s compensation payments. “It is a great joy to us that, in the future, widow(er)s will never have to make this cruel decision,” she wrote.
“I wish you knew how discriminatory it is to differentiate between military widows. I wish you knew that I may be the wife of Graham, but I shall always be the war widow of Alan.”
Elizabeth Morris from Co Tyrone was widowed in 1983 when her husband Ronnie Finlay, a part-time member of the UDR, was shot dead by the PIRA. He was 32, and the couple had had three young children.
Ms Morris received a war widow’s pension but it stopped when she remarried. She described it as “disgraceful”.
“My husband gave his life serving his country, and for them to turn round because I found someone else and stop the payments, I still think about him every day, we go to the grave, we leave flowers,” she said. "I think it’s a disgrace.
“We feel like we’re being punished, we’re not supported because we remarried, for us to be treated like that. It makes us really angry. I’m not getting younger, I’ll be 70 on my next birthday, next year my husband will be 40 years dead."
Kenny Donaldson, of the victims group the South East Fermanagh Foundation (SEFF) said it is a “travesty” that an estimated 270 war widows and widowers who remarried are still without their payments. “As each year passes the number of widows(ers) impacted by this policy of discrimination are decreasing; they are dying and they are leaving this life without ever receiving justice or acknowledgement from the State, this is not tolerable and ministers should be moving heaven and earth to get this matter expedited without further delay,” he said.
“The group of people we are talking about are special people, they are special because they had their spouse ripped away from them, that spouse was serving the UK state and its’ people and the very least that should happen is that they and their families would be adequately provided for. On this being Armistice Day, we implore the respective Government ministers and Treasury to redouble efforts to get this matter done."
A Ministry of Defence spokesperson responded: “The Government recognises the unique commitment that service families make to our country and remains sympathetic to the circumstances of those who remarried and cohabited before 1 April 2015. Successive Governments have had a policy against retrospective reinstatement.
“As previously stated by the Defence Secretary in the House, the Department is examining alternative methods to see whether we can mitigate the impact of these changes, this is in consultation with the Chair of the War Widows Association, and these are being actively discussed with HM Treasury.”
