A former soldier who appeared on recruitment posters for the British army has received a settlement and an apology after taking it to an employment tribunal over the racist and sexist abuse she was subjected to during her career.
While still in training, Kerry-Ann Knight was pictured on a recruitment poster above the words “Your army needs you and your self-belief”, confidently looking over her shoulder.
Knight, 33, thought the army would offer stability, a type of family and the chance of a fantastic career. She had a “bright hope” she could pave the way for other young, Black women.
Now, after 12 years of service, her hopes are in tatters. After enduring more than a decade of racist and sexist abuse, she was forced out of the role she loved.
Knight joined 26 Regiment Royal Artillery (26 RA) after enlisting at the age of 20 following training, and was posted to Germany.
“I had to serve alongside people that claimed to support the KKK, Britain First and/or the English Defence League,” she said in her witness statement provided to the tribunal. She said male soldiers would call her a “black bitch” but say: “I’d still shag you though.”
“One evening I returned to my room to see someone had drawn images of huge black penises all over the wardrobes in my room,” the statement said.
When Knight appeared on the recruitment poster she thought she had been asked because of her achievements in training. “I didn’t know it was because I was going to be the only Black woman in that regiment,” she told the Guardian. “I didn’t know what I was in for.”
When she signed up for the campaign, Knight said, she had “this bright hope that I’m helping to change things”. In promotional materials, she looks happy and excited – “but when I turned up to the unit, that wasn’t my lived experience”, she said.
“There was a lot of sexism. However, when you put race into play, as well, for me, it just felt like it was multiplied by 10.”
After she accepted a post as an instructor at the Army Foundation College in Harrogate in 2021, Knight hoped things would be different. Her role was to train new recruits, who enlist at 16 and 17.
But from the outset, she said, she did not feel welcome. In her witness statement she detailed how colleagues “took it in turns to shout out ‘watermelooooon!’ anytime I walked into the room. Every time they did this the others would laugh,” she said, adding that she “felt humiliated and mocked”.
She heard colleagues talking about her “getting lynched” and being “tarred and feathered”. One said he would put her in a “hot box” – a reference to a scene in the film Django Unchained in which a black female slave is tortured by being locked inside a wooden coffin-type box.
In her statement, Knight said the Tarantino film “was regularly played by my colleagues – seemingly on repeat”.
Over several years, Knight tried to raise complaints about the racism and misogyny, informally at first and then formally, through Service Complaints, the grievance scheme for members of the armed forces. She backed up her complaints with evidence, including WhatsApp screenshots and audio recordings.
However, after submitting a service complaint about her treatment at AFC Harrogate she was removed from her role training junior soldiers, on the basis that her “mental or emotional state [was] sufficiently at risk of deterioration that she should not be in a [junior soldier-]facing role at this time”.
“I think when it got to that stage, that’s when I just realised that the army is institutionally racist,” Knight said. “And they would go above and beyond in order to discredit me as an individual, in order to protect the army image, to portray that racism doesn’t exist, even though it was there in black and white.”
In December 2022, Knight sought legal advice. Her case, brought by the Centre for Military Justice, was supported by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC).
Her solicitor, Emma Norton, from the Centre for Military Justice, said: “For the army, it was not the racists that needed to be dealt with it, it was Kerry-Ann, because she’d had the audacity to complain about racism and misogyny. It is all dreadfully familiar and shows again that, in the British army, it’s worse to accuse someone of racism than it is to be racist.”
Kishwer Falkner, the chair of the EHRC, said: “As one of the UK’s largest employers, and a public authority under the Equality Act, the British army should be a standard bearer when it comes to protecting their employees from discrimination.
“Many of the most recent recruits in the army today will have joined after seeing Ms Knight’s face in a recruitment campaign. Like everyone else in the country, they have the legal right to be treated fairly regardless of who they are or what they look like.”
It is in part her face on recruitment posters that motivated Knight to bring her case. “I wanted my story to help change the lived experience of others in the army,” Knight said. “Me being their campaign girl I’d say falsely helped to recruit individuals, under false pretence, to say the army’s all-inclusive.
“I really wanted to try and make an effective change. So this is why I wanted the army to acknowledge that there was wrong, and try and change the policies in some way.”
In last month’s apology the army said: “The army accepts that you had to work in an unacceptable organisational environment where you experienced racist and sexist harassment. There was a failure within the army in not responding properly to that environment or your complaints about it.”
An MoD spokesperson said: “We do not tolerate abuse, bullying or discrimination of any kind and encourage any personnel who believe they have experienced or witnessed unacceptable behaviour to report it. All allegations of unacceptable behaviour are taken extremely seriously and are thoroughly investigated. If proven, swift action will be taken.
“The MoD settled this claim with Kerry-Ann Knight in June, with no admission of liability.”
