Earlier in 2023, a Newport East constituent – Mr Mike Hermanis –  joined me at a constituent surgery in St Julians to ask for my help.

A veteran of the Falklands War, Mike was just 19 when the ship he was on, with other Welsh Guards, was blown up by the Argentinian army.  The decimation of that ship – The Sir Galahad –  resulted in 56 deaths and 150 injured personnel – and was the bloodiest attack of the conflict.

An inquiry at the time concluded that the tragedy was down to the “simple chances of war”, but recently released documents and an incredible book by Crispin Black, seem to shed a different light on the events of June 8th 1982.

This new testimony, has led Mike, and the other veterans, including the incredible Simon Weston, to renew their campaign to get to the bottom of what happened that day. What went wrong?

Currently there are huge swathes of redacted and missing documents from the inqiury that aren’t available, and won’t be until 2065, and so this week the veterans and bereaved family members renewed their calls to the U.K. Government to release all of the witness testimony that was used as part of the inquiry.

On Monday, Mike and others joined me and a group of cross-party MPs in the House of Commons to discuss just that.

“All we ask for is the right to know the truth,” Mike told everyone in the room.

You can read more about the meeting here 

As a group, we are working on an action plan to come together to do whatever we can to ensure the documents are released so that these men, and their families, can get the closure they’re seeking.

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