The ongoing rail strikes are having “a massive mental impact” on injured veterans who fear that they will be unable to attend an annual charity event this weekend – seen as vital for their wellbeing.
With the long-running dispute over pay, conditions and job security showing no sign of a breakthrough, staff at 14 train operators are taking RMT industrial action on Saturday, after the train drivers’ union Aslef staged strikes on Friday.
Among the millions affected are those planning to attend the summer gathering of the Style for Soldiers charity, organised by King Charles’ shirtmaker, which hosts the UK’s largest reunions for injured service personnel and their families.
Ben Roberts, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan with the Royal Anglian Regiment, described the events as a “safety net” which have helped him “immensely”, having been diagnosed with PTSD in 2010.
“When veterans come together, we’re all safe around each other because we all know what we’ve gone through,” the 42-year-old told The Independent.
“Many other veterans have PTSD and they were blown up, lost limbs and so forth, and when we come together there’s no one judging us. We’re all in the same boat.”
But with trains “very few and far between” on Saturday, Mr Roberts does not know whether he and many others can get to the Gloucester event, and warned that the mental blow of missing it could put some into a downward spiral.
“So many veterans now have been let down because of the strikes. They were looking forward to it and now they’re just disheartened because they can’t get there,” he said, warning of the “massive mental impact on all the veterans”.
“Even myself, I was worrying, thinking: ‘how am I going to get there?’ It’s two or three hours by train, [or] it’s seven by coach,” he said. “It is stressful, the uncertainty.
“I understand the train strikes, but they need to know what harm it can do.”
There are typically three such veterans’ reunions each year and previous speakers include King Charles.
Emma Willis, a boutique shirtmaker for the King, founded the charity in 2008 after she began making shirts and walking sticks for veterans at the leading rehabilitation centre, Headley Court.
“It’s just such a shame,” Ms Willis, who organises the events with the help of staff at her store in London, said of the disruption, which has delayed her own journey to Gloucester to set up the dinner.
“Looking forward to these events is what, for some, is playing a really vital role in their mental wellbeing,” she said, adding that some attendees have told her the reunions have “been more helpful to them than any other form of therapy”.
“The travel, for a lot of the [attendees], can be quite off-putting enough anyway,” she said. “I’ve had several times when I’ve had messages from the station saying, ‘Emma, I’m so sorry, I’ve bottled out, I just can’t do this’, and I’ve encouraged them.”
“So when you have problems with the travel as well that’s going to be even more likely.”
Ms Willis said around 10 of the 120 attendees had told her in the past week they would struggle to make the event, at which Game of Thrones actor Charles Dance is due to speak.
“For me, it’s just an example, and there will be so many others, of how [the strikes] are just affecting negatively the very people that I’m sure the strikers wouldn’t want to be impacting.”
Accusing ministers of “just sitting on their hands” as the disputes roll on, Mr Roberts – who served in Iraq in 2005 and Helmand province in 2007, following a previous Afghanistan tour in 2002 – said: “The government needs to sit down properly.
“It seems they want to take people’s rights away, working rights. It’s too draconian. People have had enough, they just don’t want to be treated like this.”
While the RMT briefly considered an offer from rail companies last month, it ultimately rejected the offer.
Announcing further strikes on 27 April, the RMT’s general-secretary Mick Lynch said the union “had no choice but to go ahead” after rail companies “reneged on their original proposals and torpedoed these negotiations”.
