War memorials deserve special protection

Few actions are calculated to cause greater offence than the desecration of a war memorial. The "guard of dishonour" formed by Army veterans outside a courthouse for Wendy Lewis, who urinated on a memorial in Blackpool, was a fitting show of national disgust for her actions – such an exquisite humiliation that it should, one trusts, haunt the culprit for the rest of her life. Perhaps that is punishment enough. But should we go further and have a specific crime of defacing a war memorial that better reflects the strength of public revulsion and which carries a condign penalty?

David Burrowes, the Tory MP for Enfield Southgate, thinks we should. He has written to Cabinet ministers arguing that existing laws are insufficiently robust for this particular offence. If a war memorial is damaged, it receives no greater protection than any other edifice: the cost is assessed purely in financial terms, not for what the monument symbolises. Unless the bill for repairs exceeds £5,000, the maximum sentence that the magistrates court can hand down is three months in prison.

Mr Burrowes wants desecrating a war memorial to be a specific crime carrying a prison term of up to 10 years.

"We must increase the protection of war memorials by ensuring there is proper punishment when we catch the culprits," he said. "This is vandalism against the memories of this country. There needs to be immediate action to address this gap in the law."

Instinctively, I am opposed to the creation of yet another criminal offence on top of the 3,000 or so new ones we have seen since 1997. Furthermore, why should a war memorial be given greater protection than a church or a gravestone? There is also motive to take into account. The desecration carried out by Lewis was the result of excessive drinking and says more about the booze culture among a section of our society than it does about their disdain for the sacrifices of our war dead.

This was once a crime that was simply unheard of yet there have been four cases before the courts in just a year. Lewis was so drunk she could not remember anything about the incident. Neither could Phillip Laing, the Sheffield student pictured urinating on a war memorial during an organised pub crawl. They were charged with offending public decency and sentenced to lengthy terms of community service, which on balance seems the right punishment given the stigma attached to what they have done. They should be required to help in the upkeep of war memorials.

However, there is another type of desecration that is pre-meditated and more worryingly provocative than the grotesque antics of a few drunken morons – memorials are being defaced with politically or religiously motivated graffiti. Last year, Tohseef Shah, daubed a war memorial with graffiti glorifying Osama bin Laden and proclaiming "Islam will dominate the world". He received a conditional discharge from magistrates after admitting criminal damage, a penalty seen by many as far too lenient.

Since the last government went to great lengths to create religiously aggravated offences carrying substantial penalties, it is hard to understand why Shah was not charged with the more serious crime. The religious hatred law is a seriously bad piece of legislation; but since it is on the statute book would it not be better to use it rather than pass yet another? There are also crimes of incitement that could be used to punish attacks intended to stir up trouble.

But there is a wider point here, too. If we are to take umbrage at the way some people, for whatever reason, treat our war memorials then we should make sure they are looked after. It is not even clear how many there are – some estimates suggest 100,000 – and no formal register exists, though the War Memorials Trust hopes to complete one in time for the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the Great War in 2014. Because most of Britain's war memorials were built through local fund-raising, there is no central body responsible for their maintenance. Some are owned by local authorities, churches and schools, while the ownership of others is uncertain.

Although many memorials are well looked after, others are in a state of disrepair. When buildings are demolished to make way for new developments, or schools move from one site to another, the plaques in memory of former employees or pupils who fell in battle are often lost. Others are stolen, usually for scrap: Mr Burrowes was prompted to start campaigning when the bronze plaques bearing the names of war dead were removed from the memorial in his constituency.

Even if a specific offence of desecration is judged unnecessary and is eventually ruled out, there might still be a case for defining all war memorials in statute in order to afford them extra protection from reckless development or neglect.

Notwithstanding the disgusting antics of a few drunks, as the centenary of the start of the Great War approaches, we need to ensure that they retain their special place in our national story.