Incidents have been reported of discrimination against soldiers of the armed forces of the United Kingdom, comprising the Royal Navy, the British Army and the Royal Air Force.[1]
In December 2007, the British Prime Minister requested a report to evaluate the relationship between "our Armed Forces and the rest of society".[2]: 3 The report details the following incidents:[2]: 39–40
Other incidents of discrimination and harassment against soldiers reported in the media were not detailed in the report as they had not been corroborated.[2]: 40
On 4 September 2008, the Metro Hotel in Woking refused a wounded soldier a room, forcing him to spend the night in his car.[3]
There were incidents of public houses banning soldiers in 2002.[4]
Concerning the case of the Metro Hotel, legal experts confirmed that it was not against the law for hotel staff to turn away a potential customer because of his or her job.[5] The report to the Prime Minister states that "It is quite intolerable that those who wear the Queen’s uniform should be denied access to public or commercial services as a result, but there is no legal protection for the targets of such discrimination."[2]: 17
Proposals to improve the situation are limited to the "legal protection of the uniform".[2]: 6 Thus a hotel could presumably still refuse an officer who did not wear his uniform.[original research?] For example, the Metro Hotel refused the non-uniformed soldier when he presented his Army identification card.[3] Some members of the public have taken matters into their own hands. Metro Hotel had to call the police as their lines were flooded with angry, abusive and threatening calls.[3] Mr Kai Graf von der Pahlen and Mr Taha Idris of the Swansea Bay Racial Equality Council published research on "soldier discrimination"[6] that raises the question whether such discrimination could constitute unlawful indirect gender discrimination. The research shows that male soldiers may have a case for unlawful gender discrimination because most of the soldiers of the UK Armed Forces are male. The discriminator is thus effectively excluding a predominantly (approximately 90%) male group of people, which is classed as "indirect gender discrimination" under the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 and therefore unlawful.[6]