A former soldier who appeared on recruitment posters for the British Army was subject to repeated racist and sexist abuse.
Kerry-Ann Knight, who served in Germany with the 26 Regiment Royal Artillery, has received a settlement and an apology after taking her case to an employment tribunal, which in February 2024 found it did have jurisdiction over the case.
In 2019, Knight was featured on a recruitment poster above the words “Your army needs you and your self-belief”.
She said that initially, around the time she appeared in the recruitment material, she had hoped that she was helping to change things. “But when I turned up to the unit, that wasn’t my lived experience”, she added.
In her witness statement to the Leeds tribunal she said: “I had to serve alongside people that claimed to support the KKK, Britain First and/or the English Defence League. One evening I returned to my room to see someone had drawn images of huge black penises all over the wardrobes in my room.”
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She had joined the army in 2011 and reached the rank of corporal. In 2021, she was posted to the Army Foundation College in Harrogate where she had hoped the culture might have been better.
However, she immediately did not feel welcome. In her witness statement she detailed how colleagues “took it in turns to shout out ‘watermelooooon!’ anytime I walked into the room”.
She said: “Every time they did this the others would laugh.”
One soldier said he would put her in a “hot box” – a reference to a scene in the film Django Unchained in which a black female slave is buried underground.
The Harrogate centre has been the centre of several incidents. North Yorkshire Police looked into 13 separate sexual offences there last year.
One of the college instructors Knight complained about was later discharged from the army for having had sex with a 16-year-old female junior soldier.
She also claimed another officer “did not correct my peers whenever he witnessed them being bullies by making or acting in a sexist, homophobic or racist way towards me … but instead would join in or encourage them to do so.” She said she was also accused of using her skin colour to secure promotions.
Removed from role
When she submitted a service complaint about her treatment at Harrogate she was removed from her role training junior soldiers, because her “mental or emotional state [was] sufficiently at risk of deterioration that she should not be in a [junior soldier]-facing role at this time”.
Around this time, Knight told the tribunal, she began secretly recording conversations – including one where laughter could be heard after a white male soldier said “just [expletive] tar and feather her, it’s what they used to do in the old days”.
Knight told the tribunal that a regular pattern of verbal abuse had led to her leaving the army.
She said: “I think when it got to that stage, that’s when I just realised that the army is institutionally racist,” Knight said. “And they would go above and beyond in order to discredit me as an individual, in order to protect the army image, to portray that racism doesn’t exist, even though it was there in black and white.”
In December 2022, Knight sought legal advice. Her case, brought by the Centre for Military Justice, was supported by the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
‘Dreadfully familiar’
Emma Norton, from the Centre for Military Justice, said: “It is all dreadfully familiar and shows again that, in the British Army, it’s worse to accuse someone of racism than it is to be racist.”
Baroness Kishwer Falkner, chair of the EHRC, said: “As one of the UK’s largest employers, and a public authority under the Equality Act, the British Army should be a standard bearer when it comes to protecting their employees from discrimination.”
She settled with the MoD before a full hearing was held after the Army agreed to make a public apology.
It said it “accepts that Mrs Knight had to work in an unacceptable organisational environment where she experienced racist and sexist harassment”.
However, the MoD said this week it had settled the claim in June with no admission of liability.
Major General SL Humphris MBE, on behalf of the British Army, said in an apology sent to Kerry-Ann Knight: “As Director Personnel (Army) and a member of the Army Board, I sincerely apologise on behalf of the Ministry of Defence.
“The Army accepts that you had to work in an unacceptable organisational environment where you experienced racist and sexist harassment. There was a failure within the Army in not responding properly to that environment or your complaints about it. The Army wishes to apologise for the treatment you received. Your loss is a matter of regret.”
Knight said: “I have been absolutely devastated by my treatment by the British Army. I was so determined to make it work and help make the British Army a better place for women and black people, and so for everyone. But my experience eventually showed me that no matter what I did, I would never be accepted.”
Legal comment
Hannah Swarbrick, senior associate in the military claims team at Bolt Burdon Kemp, told Personnel Today that the case was an example of the racist and sexist attitudes “that have been allowed to grow and fester in the Armed Forces”.
She said that while many high ranking officials in the MoD have recently made positive steps to tackle these issues, “simply acknowledging them isn’t good enough – concrete action is needed.
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“As a military claims lawyer, I have come across service personnel being treated differently due to their race or gender time and again. Some pockets of the armed forces have worrying attitudes, and what is even more concerning is that the MoD is clearly aware of this. More needs to be done to address this problem.”
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