The Royal British Legion has dropped the News of the World as its campaigning partner, it revealed this morning.
In a statement it said that ‘as the nation’s leading Armed Forces charity representing bereaved military families’it expressed ‘revulsion’at allegations the newspaper hacked phones belonging to the relatives of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Legion has now suspended all relations with the newspaper ‘pending a resolution of the allegations”.
‘We can’t with any conscience campaign alongside News of the World on behalf of Armed Forces families while it stands accused of preying on these same families in the lowest depths of their misery,’said a charity spokesman.
‘The hacking allegations have shocked us to the core.’
The charity said it was also reviewing its advertising budget with News International. It takes advertising space in the NoW sister title The Sun and on the Sun’s Forces Channel online.
The charity has in the past partnered the newspaper in campaigning on Military Covenant issues – and was about to tie up with the paper in another campaign to save the Chief Coroner’s Office from being abolished.
‘Clearly, it would make a mockery of that campaign to go hand-in-hand with News of the World,’the spokesman added. ‘We think we’ll do better without them.’
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