Richard Foord

It is an honour to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Twigg. I am grateful to the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith). I am reminded that it was only last month that we heard him pay tribute to the courage of his father in the battle of Britain. It is in the same spirit that we reflect on the Korean war, 75 years ago. Seventy-five years on from the outbreak of the Korean war, we commemorate a conflict that is sometimes called the forgotten war. It is probably called that because it is in the shadow of world war two, which of course was so far-reaching that it affects everybody’s memory—it is very much in our memory today and will be next month, as we go into the period of remembrance. However, the Korean war is never forgotten by families who lost loves ones or by communities like those I represent, who sent their family members to serve. Today’s debate marks the anniversary of the service of British forces who fought under the UN flag from 1950 to 1953. We remember it in particular because it was one of the first occasions when the newly constituted United Nations deployed a force under chapter 7 of the UN charter, which states that the UN can respond to “any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression”. It was the absence of the Soviet Union at the UN Security Council that made it possible to deploy a force under the UN flag, consistent with the intention of the authors of the UN charter. What a pity it is that we now have a representative of Russia on the UN Security Council vetoing the rational motions that the UK seeks to pass. For east Devon, the history of this conflict is personal. In Sidmouth, there is a plaque at St Giles and St Nicholas church that remembers Private David Hamson, who fell in Korea aged just 20. His name anchors that distant war in Sidmouth’s own story, given that the plaque stands alongside those of fallen soldiers from the first and second world wars. David Hamson was born in Sidmouth in 1932. He was called up for national service and joined the Devonshire Regiment, which was first deployed in Malaya to combat the communist insurgency that was taking place there in the 1950s. Soon afterwards, volunteers were sought to reinforce the British operation in Korea, and David stepped forward. He was transferred to the Gloucestershire Regiment. In April 1951, his battalion took up positions in the hills outside Seoul, in the battle that has been reflected on several times this afternoon. He was facing China’s 63rd army, about 27,000 strong, as it sought to capture the South Korean capital. The Glosters, numbering just 652 men, held their ground for four days and nights, buying crucial time for the defence of Seoul. One can only imagine what that experience must have been like.