Coalition torpedoes Arctic Star for convoy veterans

While in opposition, both the Conservatives and the Lib Dems pledged that an Arctic Star would be created for veterans of the Russian convoys if they came to power.

However, a recommendation that has been sent to David Cameron's office from the Ministry of Defence, part of a wider review into medals, has said an Arctic Star should not be created.

It means that the vital campaign remains the only Second World War campaign to not be properly recognised.

The recommendation is a blow because in Prime Minister's Questions earlier this year, Mr Cameron appeared to suggest that the government would be prepared to recognise the veterans with a medal.

Mr Cameron, who also pledged his support for an Arctic medal seven years ago, said in January: said: "There is a case for saying they have missed out. Many of them are coming to (the] end of their lives and it would be good if we could do something more to recognise what they have done."

Almost all the defence ministerial team backed the medal campaign while they were in opposition.

But a recommendation from an MoD review now says that a medal should not be created because the Russian convoys were included in the provisions for the Atlantic Star and an Arctic Emblem was created in 2006.

However, the emblem was never given official status and veterans point out that the Atlantic Star celebrated a different campaign and had a unique minimum qualification period of six months, which meant that most of the Arctic veterans did not receive it.

They are convinced they were snubbed after the war because the Soviet Union had become the enemy in the Cold War and there was no appetite to recognise those who had helped Stalin's forces.

Medal campaign leader Cdr Eddie Grenfell, originally from Peterhead, who spent time in a Russian field hospital after his ship was blown up on one of the convoys, described the recommendation as "unacceptable" and "outrageous".

He said: "A promise is a promise and the Conservatives and their partners the Lib Dems both said they would create a medal and now they are breaking their word. There was no need for a review, Mr Cameron could have just instructed that a medal was created."

The rejection by the coalition government echoes a promise made by Labour before it won in 1997 which was dropped.

In contrast, the Russians have treated the Arctic veterans as heroes.They have awarded three medals and include the convoys in school history curricula.

Jock Dempster, chairman of the Arctic Convoy Club in Scotland, who was 16 when he sailed to Russia with the Merchant Navy in 1944, said: "I guess we represent the greatest act of friendship between the two countries in the last century, and the Russians have always been grateful for that.

"Unfortunately, the British government would rather forget us altogether."

The cold reality of war at sea

In 1941, the first Arctic convoys sailed from Loch Ewe in north-west Scotland to take essential supplies to Britain's new ally, Josef Stalin's Soviet Union.

The journeys to the sea ports of Archangel and Murmansk involved sailing through air, submarine and battleship attack in temperatures which plunged to minus 60C at times.

The conditions became so cold that if a sailor's bare hand touched the outside of the ship, his skin and flesh were torn away. The conditions and the constant attacks accounted for the lives of around 3,000 merchant and Royal Navy sailors, around 9 per cent of all those who sailed, the highest casualty rate of any of the sea campaigns

The ships sailed the line of Arctic ice in an effort to minimise the threat of air attack, but this did not stop dive bombers.