‘Matter of principle’ drove push for army widow’s one-off pension payment

Newly-wed Susan Rimmer was only 19 in 1972 when husband Private Jim Lee’s armoured car was attacked with an IRA landmine, which also claimed the life of Lance Corporal Terence Graham from Middlesborough.

She lost her pension when she married current husband Dave Rimmer in 1989.

Although the government changed the rules in April 2015, the new criteria denied the pension to anyone who remarried prior to 2005.

Fighting on what she describes as a “matter of principle,” Mrs Rimmer, from Otley in West Yorkshire, campaigned to have the pension restored for up to 400 war widows and widowers.

Since April 2015, the Ministry of Defence has accepted that the spouses of military personnel killed as a result of their service are entitled to a pension for life, even if they “remarry, cohabit or form a civil partnership”.

Announcing the new one-off payment of £87,500, the government said: “The application window, open later this year, will remain open for two years with support for applicants provided by the Veterans UK Call Centre, and welfare support available through the Veterans Welfare Service”.

Tory frontbench peer Lord Harlech has told Parliament that the money will be taxed.

Speaking to the News Letter, Mrs Rimmer said: “It wasn’t actually the money, it was the principle with me… we shouldn’t have had to fight for it.

"I could have divorced Dave six years ago and got my pension back, and then got married again, but I’m not willing to do that.”

Mrs Rimmer said she won’t be convinced the payments will be made until the money is in her bank account.

"I won’t be convinced until I’ve got it officially,” she said.

"It’s going in the bank for my old age,” she added.

Kenny Donaldson of victims’ group SEFF said: “Today’s development is as a result of the individual war widows who first stood outside Parliament with banners representing themselves, their mistreatment and their legitimate rights. Susan Rimmer from Otley, Linda McHugh from the Isle of Skye and several others. We were honoured to stand with these widows when they were crying in the wilderness, when the establishment was tone deaf to them”.