SORCHA EASTWOOD: The victims and families of the Chinook tragedy deserve a new inquiry. Not just more lies from the 'Ministry of Deceit'...

Published: 20:23, 10 June 2026 | Updated: 20:29, 10 June 2026 It was June 2, 1994. Four Weddings and a Funeral was the summer blockbuster. Wet Wet Wet were No.1. John Major was in Downing Street. Not much internet, no smartphones.  The last days of the old world, and the last ordinary day for the families of 29 people who boarded a Chinook helicopter at RAF Aldergrove that Thursday afternoon. At 5.42pm, flight ZD576 departed for Scotland. Minutes later, it crashed into the Mull of Kintyre. There were no survivors. Those who lost their lives were among the UK’s most senior intelligence and security personnel in Northern Ireland, and four Special Forces crew. People who devoted their lives to serving their country. In the weeks that followed, fathers were buried in churchyards across Northern Ireland and England. Desks lay empty in primary schools in Lisburn. Families packed their lives into boxes at Thiepval Barracks. For many wives, there was an added cruelty. Their lives had revolved around their husbands and their postings. Suddenly, in the depths of grief, they were forced to decide where and how to rebuild their lives. And the Ministry of Defence repaid them with 32 years of lies. The official verdict was pilot error. Gross negligence by Flight Lieutenants Rick Cook and Jonathan Tapper. The wreckage of the RAF Chinook helicopter, which crashed on the Mull of Kintyre on June 2, 1994 Two dead men, who could not defend themselves, blamed for their own deaths by the institution they had honourably served. It took their families 17 years of relentless campaigning to get that verdict overturned. The vindication came in 2011. The shame has never gone away. But even that was not the whole truth. It wasn’t until a BBC documentary made by Northern Ireland filmmakers aired in early 2024 that the true extent of the cover-up became clear. I watched it and felt the pain of those families viscerally: the hurt, the anger, the exhaustion, as well as the deep, enduring love for their husbands and fathers. Little did I know that months later I would be elected as the MP for Lagan Valley, sent to the very place at the heart of this establishment cover-up. Soon after, a constituent contacted me saying his father had been killed in the crash and introduced me to the Chinook Justice Campaign. Together, we secured the families’ first ever ministerial meeting. Unwittingly, I had already been working on the Hillsborough Law, which would place a legal duty of candour on public bodies. The principle is simple: if the state causes harm, it must tell the truth. We have seen what happens when it does not, from Hillsborough and infected blood to Grenfell and sodium valproate. Families are left to fight alone against institutions determined to protect themselves. The Chinook case is exactly what this legislation is designed to prevent. I love these families. They are tough, tougher than anyone should have to be. They have been lied to systematically for decades by an institution that has never once put their grief above its own interests. Sir Liam Fox commissioned the 2011 review that cleared the pilots They have taken to calling it the Ministry of Deceit. After everything I have seen, I cannot find it in me to disagree. Now, on this 32nd anniversary, something has shifted, and it is seismic. Sir Liam Fox, the former defence secretary who commissioned the 2011 review that cleared the pilots, has written to the Prime Minister with a stark warning: he and his review team may have been misled by the MoD. The Chinook Mk2, it now appears, was known by the MoD to be unairworthy. Its software had been described by MoD engineers as ‘positively dangerous’. Days before the crash, the aircraft had been formally classed as ‘not to be relied upon in any way whatsoever’. Twenty-nine people were put on it anyway. That information wasn’t disclosed to Sir Liam. It wasn’t disclosed to previous investigations. A member of his own review team has since confirmed that critical facts about airworthiness were withheld from the very people tasked with finding the truth. Sir Malcolm Rifkind, another former defence secretary, has acknowledged that key information was withheld from him too. Two defence secretaries. Misled by their own department. And Sir Liam has gone further still. Asked by BBC Radio Somerset whether the RAF or the Ministry of Defence had deliberately tried to cover up the truth, he gave an answer that should send shockwaves through Whitehall. ‘I have a strong enough belief to raise that with the Prime Minister,’ he said. Those words matter. A former defence secretary is saying that evidence is now so serious that the possibility of a cover-up must be put before the Prime Minister himself. After 32 years, the question is no longer whether families are justified in seeking answers, but why those answers have been denied for so long. When challenged, the Government’s standard response has been to point to previous inquiries. It is one of the most dishonest arguments I have encountered in politics. Those inquiries never examined why an aircraft the MoD’s own engineers had declared unfit to fly was permitted to carry 29 people. Why procurement and commercial pressures appear to have overridden safety. Or why senior figures appear to have worked to suppress airworthiness concerns. The central question has never been answered. To claim otherwise is a continuation of the cover-up. Sir Liam has called for a fresh review. I welcome his intervention unreservedly. But the form matters. Any process overseen by the same institution that falsely blamed two innocent pilots and withheld information from ministers, Parliament and previous investigations would be a whitewash with better stationery. What is needed is a new inquiry, fully independent of the MoD, with unrestricted access to documents and witnesses, and a remit extending beyond the cause of the crash to the full truth: the airworthiness, the decisions and the decades of concealment. The families have demanded nothing more and nothing less for 32 years. They are not asking for the impossible. They are simply asking for what is rightly owed to them. The Hillsborough Law, which would make the duty of candour so outrageously absent here a legal requirement, is before Parliament – delayed and threatened by attempts to carve out exemptions for the very institutions this law exists to hold accountable. This case proves why it matters and why those exemptions cannot stand. Recently, I stood in the memorial garden at Thiepval Barracks, where a fragment of the helicopter from the Mull of Kintyre crash is kept. Colleagues who served alongside the dead were there. So too was the knowledge that, after 32 years, the truth is closer than it has ever been. These men and women served their country with their lives – just as those who so tragically died in last week’s terrible Royal Navy helicopter crash in Devon. My heart goes out to the families of Lt Cdr Chris Gayson, Lt Lily-Mae Fisher and Petty Officer Owen Green. For the Chinook families, a fresh inquiry into the loss of their loved ones is the least, the very least, the Government owes them. No comments have so far been submitted. Why not be the first to send us your thoughts, or debate this issue live on our message boards. By posting your comment you agree to our house rules. Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? 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