The son of Field Marshal Douglas Haig, commander of British forces in World War I, has attacked the Blair government's decision to seek a pardon for soldiers shot for desertion or cowardice.
"Basically, one can't rewrite history," Haig said during a telephone interview on Monday. "My father took a lot of trouble anxiously going into these cases late into the night. The majority were not shot. Courts martial were carefully done."
The second Earl Haig, 88, said his father had taken advice before signing execution warrants.
"He did not just sign on the dotted line. It was a terribly sad situation and some of these soldiers were genuinely shell-shocked. But many were rogues, persistent deserters and criminals, or they were guilty of cowardice," he said.
UK Defense Secretary Des Browne announced last month that he believed all 306 British World War I soldiers executed for desertion or cowardice should be pardoned. All of them were victims of the war, he said. Whatever the specific legal considerations, it was a moral issue which had stigmatized the families for more than a generation.
The pardons will require a decision by Parliament, and Browne is likely to append it to the Armed Forces Bill on what could be a free vote.
The current earl disagrees.
"If I was still in the House of Lords, I would vote against it. I think public opinion on World War I is not always sound" and may be "ill-informed," he said.
Labour Member of Parliament Andrew Mackinlay, who has campaigned for the pardons, was quick to respond to Haig's comments.
"I'm astonished [the earl's] got the audacity to put his head above the parapet on this one," he said. "These men did not get a fair trial ... And their death warrants were signed, without possibility of appeal, by this man's father."
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