by Unity

On last night’s Question Time, Nick Griffin twice made the claim that his father, former Conservative councillor Edgar Griffin, had served in the RAF during World War II.

Griffin’s exact comments were:

Finally my father was in the RAF during the second World War while Mr Straw’s father was in prison for refusing to fight Adolf Hitler. “Mr Straw was attacking me and I’ve been relentlessly attacked over the last few days, my father was in the RAF during the second World War, I am not a Nazi. I never have been.”

However, yesterday’s Suffolk Evening Star carried an interview with Griffin’s father in which its stated that:

Mr Griffin, who moved to Suffolk shortly after Nick was born in Hertfordshire in 1959, joined the Conservative Party when he returned from two years national service with the RAF in India.

Although the reintroduction of conscription into the armed forces was reintroduced, in 1939, by the National Service (Armed Forces) Act service during World War II, and in any armed conflict, is always referred to as either ‘War Service’ or ‘Military Service’.

The term ‘National Service’ did not come into use until 1948, three years after the end of World War II and ceased to be used, at all, with the end of conscription in 1960.

If, as the Evening Star’s article suggests, Griffin’s father undertook National Service, rather than War Service or Military Service, then he cannot have served in the RAF in World War II.

UPDATE – THE PLOT THICKENS

First things first – we can rule out the suggestion that Griffin’s father served in the RAF in India under, specifically, National Service (i.e. later than 1947)

The one concrete fact that I have been able to establish is Edgar Griffin was in the UK on 13 May 1947, the date on which he was invested a Freemason in Barnet.

Given that RAF AHQ India was disbanded on 15 August 1947, this would preclude Edgar Griffin serving in India during the period of National Service, which would indicate that he was in India at some point during the period from 1945-47.

As far as wartime RAF activity in India, by the beginning of 1945 the majority of RAF India squadrons were operating from forward bases in Burma, but for two squadrons based on Cox’s Bazaar and one base at Kumira, near Chittagong in what is, today Bangladesh.

What we also have, via Cath in comments, is a 2001 article from the Independent which gives this description of Edgar Griffin’s time in the RAF.

Edgar Griffin served in the dying days of the British Raj in India, in charge of 20 local aircraft mechanics. “I got on very well with them,” he says. “The Indian ladies also used to invite us to tea and were most kind to us.” How, he asks, could he possibly be racist with such a splendid record of racial integration?

On the basis of that description, if Griffin was in India with the RAF before the end of WWII (August 1945) then its highly unlikely that he was stationed with any of the RAF squadrons that played an active part in the final stages of the Burma Campaign.

The brief picture that the Indy paints is, however, consistent with the ‘Indianisation’ of those elements of RAF AHQ India that were due to be transferred to the Royal Indian Air Force on India becoming an independent state in August 1947., during which British personnel trained their Indian counterparts to take over control of the airforce.

Now it gets very interesting because this helps us to date Griffin’s service in the RAF in India specifically to 1946 – before that things remain uncertain – which could place Griffin’s father into some very interesting historical events.

Churchill, as is well known, was implacably opposed to Indian independence and even after the 1945 General Election, the new Attlee government resisted moves towards independence.

This stance began to change in January 1946, when RAF servicemen stationed in India mutinied – they actually went on strike – in protest at the slow pace of demobilisation and the use of British shipping facilities for transporting American G.I.s, although papers released later, under the 30 year rule indicate that the government were deliberately keeping troops in India to control civil unrest should this break out in connection with the independence movement.

This mutiny/strike helped to precipitate the Bombay Mutiny of February 1946 which, in turn, led to the British Cabinet Mission 0f 1946 and to an agreement that India would become an independent state in 1947.

The Indianisation of the facilities and aircraft of RAF AHQ India could therefore not have started until May 1946.

That leaves a couple of sizeable but as yet unanswered questions.

Edgar Griffin was born in 1922, and would have been 17 years old at the start of WWII and ordinarily would have been eligible for conscription at the age of 18 unless he declared himself a conscientious objector, as Jack Straw’s father did, entered a reserved occupation – and many conscientious objectors took that route out of military service to avoid the stigma of being openly labelled a ‘conshie’ – became a clergyman, or was deemed medically or mentally unfit for service.

By 1942, when he would have been 21, he would have been eligible not only for conscription but for a posting overseas.

Yet, it would appear that Edgar Griffin may no have entered military service until 1945 – so what exactly was he doing during the other five years of the war when he could easily have been called up?

Then there’s business of his actual service history, where Griffin claims to have served for two years but was also definitely back in England by May 1947 and could, therefore, have left India no later than April 1947 in order to make the four week journey, by sea, via the Suez canal.

If we take this two years as accurate, then Edgar Griffin must have been in India by April 1945 at the latest (which means that he did manage to serve in the RAF for all of four months of WWII) but also that he must have been stationed in India in January 1946, during the time of the RAF mutiny, which began at an base near Karachi but, according to a Channel 4 Secret History documentary broadcast in 1996, spread to 60 bases, including bases in Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Burma and Singapore – the Air Ministry, however, only ever admitted to 22 bases having gone on strike.

So was Edgar Griffin, perhaps, one of the RAF mutineers?

Right now, we can’t be sure because we lack access to the kind of military records that would enable us to fill in the blanks although what we can say is that Griffin’s my dad was in the RAF jibe at Jack Straw looks likely to be considerably less impressive, once the facts are known, than Nick Griffin would like us to believe.

Edgar Griffin was certainly not a pilot, does not appear to have seen service anywhere near the front-line, even if he was stationed in India while the Burma campaign was still under way and may even have taken part in the second largest mutiny in the history of the British Armed Forces, one topped only by the Indian rebellion of 1857.

NATIONAL SERVICE

To reiterate the point about the date on which National Service began the British Armed Force and National Service website notes that:

The requirement for a peacetime force larger than that made possible by purely voluntary recruitment led the post-war Labour Government to move towards establishing a national service system in 1946. The National Service Act was passed in July 1947 after considerable opposition from some Labour and Liberal politicians. The Act was to come into force at the beginning of 1949. The Act initially required a period of one year to be served in the Armed Forces followed by a liability for a possible five years in the Reserve. Financial crises, the advent of the Cold War and the Malaya emergency led to the National Service Amendment Act in December 1948, increasing the period of service to 18 months. This enabled National Servicemen to be used more efficiently and effectively, particularly overseas. The demands of the Korean War (1950-1953) led to the length of service being extended to two years, surpassing even the Service Chiefs’ original wishes. Liability to further service in the Reserve was reduced with each of these extensions. The period of service remained at two years until the end of National Service.

So the earliest date at which Griffin’s father could have joined the RAF under National Service, and served two years, was around 1950.