SOS Campaign to Save our Scampton - Tony Cunnane's Life and Times

The announcement prompted the Lincolnshire Echo newspaper to start a remarkable media campaign which they called the ‘Save Our Scampton’ campaign, or 'SOS Campaign' for short - a brilliant title. Almost every working day for the next 12 months or so Julie Wetton, a charming and persistent reporter at the Lincolnshire Echo, called me with the latest rumours and snippets she had gathered and every day I faxed a summary of our conversation to the MoD and Command HQ. I enjoyed my daily but time-consuming chats with Julie and I listened to all her stories and questions with great interest. She knew I would never tell her anything that I was not supposed to but she also knew I would report all her stories and rumours to the MoD.

Barely two weeks later, on 28 July 1994, I sent a fax to the MoD giving a run down of the rumours that were already circulating about the new home for the Red Arrows. Here are just some of them.

An expert in Sleaford, who preferred to remain anonymous but who regularly provided the Sleaford Standard with stories, confidently announced that the Red Arrows would be moving to Barkston Heath, the relief landing ground (RLG) about five miles south of Cranwell. Several Red Arrows’ self-styled experts telephoned various Oxfordshire media to report that the Team would be moving to RAF Brize Norton. A newspaper in Cirencester telephoned to ask me to comment on a report that the Team would be moving to RAF Fairford, where they started out in 1965. BBC Radio York and a couple of north Yorkshire newspapers reported that we would be moving to RAF Leeming, while a reporter on the Western Daily Post rang me to say that the Chairman and members of the Newquay Council were very unhappy to learn that the Red Arrows would be moving to Newquay Airport, formerly RAF St Mawgan, because we would seriously interfere with their civil aircraft movements. Would I please comment and also explain why the Newquay Council had not been involved in consultations about the move. The Marketing Manager for Exeter Airport called me to say that their management were willing to provide a home for the Red Arrows and asking to whom he should write to make a firm offer. At the other end of the UK a newspaper in Elgin asked me if I could confirm that the Team would be moving to RAF Lossiemouth.

The facts of the matter are that a formal study was initiated and every RAF airfield was considered as a base for the Red Arrows. It could have been news of this study leaking out that led to the many wild assumptions. It was highly desirable, but not essential, that the chosen base should be part of Personnel and Training Command and not Strike Command so that there would be no command and control difficulties. Account had to be taken of the Red Arrows’ need for six 30-minute training slots every working day in the winter months and that would mean barring the airfield to all other movements for three hours a day. Not a single airfield was willing to accept that limitation without a fight. Many airfields were ruled out because of their location at the extremities of the UK. The Red Arrows need to be based reasonably close to the major air display locations otherwise there will be a lot of transit flying, expensive in terms of fuel and wear and tear on aircraft. In that respect Brize Norton or Fairford might have been ideal since the majority of air displays were south of Birmingham. For the same reason bases in Scotland were non-starters. Taking everything into consideration, we were not surprised to learn that the study concluded that for one reason or another there was no airfield in the whole of the UK more suitable than Scampton.

The SOS campaign quickly gained a lot of support from local councils and institutions. Quite early on I advised Julie at the Echo that they were making a mistake basing their campaign on nostalgia about the Dam Busters. I reminded her that many historic airfields had been closed in recent years. If the SOS campaign were to have any hope of success, I told her, it would have to be based on economic grounds. It is worth making the point here that, with few exceptions, RAF personnel have no particular attachment to an RAF station so most of the Service personnel at Scampton watched the campaign with little more than passing interest. The closure was of far more importance to the civilian staff who would be out of a job when the station closed.

In October 1994 Air Vice-Marshal Johnnie Johnson, the World War 2 fighter ace and one of my childhood heroes, joined the fray.

"I think the mandarins in Whitehall, and by that I mean the Treasury and not the Royal Air Force, take no notice of history or of the feelings of people. Scampton should be saved. The base has a long and illustrious history. I would have thought that if they wanted to reduce the number of operational bases there are many which are far less worthy than Scampton."

It was nice to have his support but on this occasion the Air Marshal's logic was flawed and, in one memorable telephone conversation I actually plucked up courage to tell him so. He was not convinced!.

The Lincolnshire Echo then came up with an alarming story, ‘Pollution Scare at threatened base’, claiming that the land at Scampton could be contaminated with chemicals. The report claimed that MoD had already confirmed that the base was formerly the home ‘to the nuclear missiles carried by the Vulcan aircraft’ and that large amounts of fuel and chemicals were still stored at Scampton. An MoD spokesman added, rather unwisely in my opinion, "There is no truth in allegations that widespread radioactivity contamination exists at RAF Scampton". That statement implied perhaps not widespread but some radioactivity contamination? Surely any radioactive contamination is a cause for concern and the campaigners quickly latched onto to this lapse. The SOS campaigners got hold of an environmental expert who reckoned that it would cost between £2 and £3 million to clean up 220 cubic feet of contaminated land and went on to point out that Scampton airfield covered 889 acres, but left it to the readers to work out how many cubic feet there are to an acre!!

The Gainsborough and Horncastle MP, Edward Leigh, said he would demand answers from the then Armed Forces Minister, Nicholas Soames. ‘If the MoD offloads Scampton and it does need decontaminating, it makes closing the base totally uneconomic. We are not talking tens of thousands but rather tens of millions.’ Then, mixing his metaphors he added, ‘It would be outrageous if the MoD washed its hands of Scampton once it was closed.’ We knew what he meant.

Soon the Echo raised the stakes and introduced the transatlantic factor. Details of Whitehall’s proposals to close Scampton were faxed to American defence experts in Washington prior to a meeting between them and the Chief Executive of the Lincolnshire Training and Enterprise Council. The Chief Executive was quoted as saying that he had learned that at a meeting of American veterans, 20% of them had signed the Echo’s SOS petition – they were the ones who remembered Scampton and the Dam Busters and knew of the Red Arrows being based there.

The SOS campaign was brilliantly run but really it had been doomed to failure from the outset. The MoD had apparently made its mind up that Scampton would close. The Echo printed a bitter editorial on 24 March (reproduced by permission of the Editor).

"Local clubs and organisations were actually told the date that facilities would close. Servicemen from another RAF base started to move into Scampton’s married quarters. We asked the Ministry of Defence for assurances that the decision had not been made. But we were told everything that was happening was forward planning in case of closure."

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