Plymouth Navy veteran arrested for being gay gets apology almost 40 years later

Martyn Hammond speaks to ITV West Country about his 40-year battle for an apology after being dismissed from the Royal Navy.

A Navy veteran who says he was arrested, detained and thrown out of the military for being gay has received an official apology almost 40 years later.

Martyn Hammond joined the Royal Navy in 1981 at the age of 17, when being gay in the armed forces was forbidden.

Five years later, after serving in Cornwall and Hampshire as a Navy cook, Martyn's sexuality was exposed.

Speaking to ITV News West Country at his home in Plymouth, Martyn said: "I was good at my job. Very good at my job. I had an exemplary record.

"I kept my private life very private, I didn't involve it in my work at all. But the military police came to arrest me.

"They did the Mr Nice and Mr Nasty routine on me - you've got one person saying 'If you co-operate...' and another being quite direct. In the end I did cave and say, 'Yeah, I am gay.'"

Martyn says he was arrested, court-martialled and held in detention quarters at the Portsmouth Naval Barracks, then sent to a corrective training camp for 40 days.

He was dismissed from the Navy and suffered a mental breakdown. "It's the worst feeling in the world," he said.

"Your whole life is going to implode. The Navy was my life at the time and that was about to be ripped away from me. I lost my pension, I lost my dignity. I went through a lot of mental health stress.

"I still do struggle with it, I do get incredibly emotional about it because it was my life, and to think they could just throw somebody away like that and treat somebody like that - yeah, devastating really."

Last year, a review found that treatment of LGBT personnel and veterans in the Armed Forces was 'completely unacceptable' and 'highly regrettable'.

Lord Etherton’s report found that investigations in an individual’s sexuality were intrusive, invasive, and for some caused long-lasting and severe impacts to the lives of veterans and their families.

Then Prime Minister Rishi Sunak described the ban, which was lifted in the year 2000, as an "appalling failure".

This week, Martyn finally received a personal letter of apology and a specially-made badge."It means that the government realises now that this shouldn't have happened," he said.

"There's a lot of people who aren't here today who were kicked out of the military. Some people have taken their lives. People have lost pensions, struggled financially, struggled with mental health.

"So the fact it's now been acknowledged properly, it's a start, it's a start to try to make amends a little bit really."

Martyn, who is now 60, is also planning to apply for compensation. But he says no amount of money will make up for what he went through."It's always made me feel not good enough," he said.

"Being gay in the Navy, you're constantly looking over your shoulder. You did your best, you did your job, you did what everybody asked. But you always felt that because you couldn't be you, you never felt good enough.

"Even now, I've always struggled with jobs. I feel I've just had to work that much harder in anything I've done. And I've carried that all my life."Martyn's MP Luke Pollard, who is himself gay and was recently appointed as Armed Forces minister, says the apology is an important step forward.The Government will open a scheme allowing people to apply for compensation in January.