After 30-year fight: Four ministers to meet Chinook crash families

The Chinook crashed on the Mull of Kintyre on June 2, 1994 (Chris Bacon/PA) Chris Bacon

Four defence ministers have agreed to meet families of victims from the 1994 RAF Chinook helicopter crash. The meeting, scheduled for December 16 at the Ministry of Defence, marks a potential breakthrough in the families' decades-long fight for answers.

Twenty-nine people died when the helicopter crashed on the Mull of Kintyre on June 2, 1994 – 25 intelligence experts and four special forces crew. The aircraft was travelling from RAF Aldergrove in Northern Ireland to Fort George near Inverness.

The incident was initially blamed on pilot error. This verdict was overturned in 2011, but families say critical questions remain unanswered.

Relatives delivered a handwritten letter to Downing Street last month, seeking a personal meeting with Prime Minister Keir Starmer. He rejected their calls for a judge-led inquiry. The families responded by saying they would "see the UK Government in court".

Four ministers to attend

Three Ministry of Defence ministers – Lord Coaker, Al Carns, and Louise Sandher-Jones – will attend the December meeting. Victims minister Alex Davies-Jones will also be present.

Nicola Rawcliffe, whose brother Chris died in the crash, said: "The actions of the MoD and the Government continue, daily, to cause not just emotional and psychological distress but intellectual distress as well."

She added: "So far, they have made out that we families are stupid and should go away. All of this adds to the ambiguous nature of our loss and is an unacceptable abuse of power from a Government committed to candour."

Rawcliffe described the ministers' decision to meet as progress. "Perhaps now they have deigned to meet us – not just one minister but four of them – we are getting somewhere. We will see," she said.

Living with 'ambiguous loss'

Two experts say the relatives suffer from a unique form of unresolved grief. US family psychologist Dr Pauline Boss describes it as "ambiguous loss".

"There is no such thing as closure. We have to live with loss, clear or ambiguous. So, clarity is the goal," Boss said. "But with ambiguous loss, people feel their power has been taken away because there are unanswered questions."

She explained that giving survivors as much information as possible helps them cope. "If there's no meaning to what's happened, then people are frozen. These families are stuck, and that's a terrible place to be," Boss said.

Dr Simon Robins, a social scientist and research adviser to the International Committee of the Red Cross, wrote a paper for the Chinook Justice Campaign. He states: "The search for truth – ongoing despite the pilots being formally cleared in 2011 – has meant that families live with contradictory realities: their loved ones are gone, yet the truth about what happened remains contested and incomplete."

Robins adds that this "lack of recognition, and apparent dismissal of the loss of the families, prolongs suffering, complicating efforts to reconcile emotions with reality".

The Chinook Justice Campaign has launched a petition calling for a public inquiry. More than 51,000 people have signed it.

The Ministry of Defence has been asked for comment.

Note: This article was created with Artificial Intelligence (AI).