Other news stories

Military home page

Angela Gobin, a miner's daughter from a Northumberland council estate, said she was told by a senior officer: "Soldiers are from the North and officers from the South." 

She was thrown out last month, she said, after being accused of lying about having a sore throat to get out of training. But she alleges that she was the victim of snobbish bullying from the start of her course at the college. 

She is now consulting lawyers over legal action for unfair dismissal. 

A spokesman for the Ministry of Defence said: "No one is discharged from the Army without very good reason. It is not in our interests to lose people lightly. If Miss Gobin does take legal action, there will be an immediate investigation." 

Miss Gobin, 26, from Bedlington, Northumberland, said: "I was treated as an outcast because I was a Geordie and not middle-class. It was unbelievable class prejudice." 

She went to Sandhurst in 1998 after taking a BA Honours in accountancy at Northumbria University. "Because I spoke differently they thought I was thick; but I am far from that. I had always wanted to be in the Army and I was going to join at 18, but my mother persuaded me to go to university. At the time I didn't think my background would count against me. I had no idea what was lying in wait." 

A spokesman for the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst said yesterday: "To suggest that she was thrown out because of her background is a calumny against the soldiers of such illustrious units as the Tyne-Tees Division, the Durham Light Infantry and the Northumberland Fusiliers. 

"The days when Colonel Blimps held sway and an accent mattered have long gone from the British Army." 

Miss Gobin said: "I went through a very rigorous set of tests, interviews and boards and came out of them all with very good marks. 

"But I was told I would have to attend the pre-Sandhurst course which is usually for people who fail some aspect of their maths and English. I didn't fail either but I was still sent there to be cultured." 

The Sandhurst spokesman said: "Miss Gobin's behaviour was inconsistent with that expected of an officer cadet or even an ordinary soldier. She was held back a term in order to redeem herself last October, but there was no improvement." 

Miss Gobin said that she had been told not to wear her own clothes and had been taken to Marks & Spencer and told which suit to buy. "My instructor told me to stop saying like at the end of sentences because it sounded too Geordie. I got into trouble for using the word knackered and was told to say pooped instead." 

She was given lessons in etiquette and table manners and told to stop going to the gym because she looked too muscular. She was also told to let her hair grow so that it looked more feminine. 

"I found it all very strange and it left me hurt, angry and humiliated. For the first time in my life, I felt a deep-seated inferiority to the girls around me with nicely honed middle-class accents. I had good times, but much of it was dreadful. 

"Some of the other recruits thought it was funny to taunt me with 'Whey aye man'. It wouldn't have bothered me at one time but my confidence had been undermined. The Army was my life but they made it a misery." When a £100 cheque for her mess bill bounced she was given a formal warning. Then, she claims, she was accused of dealing in drugs. "I was investigated because I explained to another girl how Beecham's flu powders worked. I explained that the ephedrine worked rather like amphetamines and that if you didn't have flu a high dose would probably keep you up all night. I have never dealt or been involved in drugs." 

She was also allegedly accused of being lesbian after spending two evenings talking to a known lesbian.