Gordon Brown: Under siege over letter to soldier's family, he speaks of his own grief

Mourning: Guardsman Janes' family at his funeral in Hove, East Sussex, last month


List of dialogue between the mom and Prime Minister Gordon.


Gordon Brown failed to bow after he laid his wreath at the Cenotaph on Sunday (left). Grenadier Guard Jamie Janes, 20, (right) was killed in an explosion in southern Afghanistan last month



Letter of condolence full of mistakes.


PM Gordon also lost a child, a daughter of ten days old.



Angry: Jacqui Janes this week (L) and (R) with her son Guardsman Jamie



Gordon Brown spoke of his personal grief at losing a child as he responded to criticism of his handwritten letter of condolence to a dead soldier's mother.

The Prime Minister suggested the awful experience of his daughter Jennifer Jane dying at just ten days old meant he understood the pain of bereavement.

He had already apologised to the distraught mother of Grenadier Guard Jamie Janes, 20, after she berated him for apparently misspelling her son's name and other words in his note of sympathy.

Yesterday he reiterated his sorrow for her loss and said: 'The last thing on my mind was to cause any offence.'

He made his unusually personal remarks as the bodies of six British troops killed in Afghanistan - including five slaughtered by a 'rogue' local policeman - were flown home.

A shaken-looking Mr Brown was forced to defend his treatment of the war dead - and again try to explain the purpose of the Afghan mission - during his monthly press conference.
He revealed he had asked for a full investigation into the circumstances of Guardsman Janes's death. An inquest has not yet been held.

Jacqui Janes, 47, later said she was 'satisfied' with Mr Brown's apology - but said she hoped he had 'sleepless nights' when he read reports into how her son died.

Yesterday The Sun newspaper published an extraordinary 13-minute tape recording of Mr Brown phoning Mrs Janes, of Portslade, East Sussex, on Sunday night to apologise for upsetting her with his letter.
During the sometimes heated conversation, she challenged the Prime Minister about kit shortages and claimed her son - killed in a roadside explosion on October 5 - would not have died if a helicopter had been available to airlift him from the battlefield.

'I know every injury my child sustained that day. I know that my son could have survived but my son bled to death,' she told Mr Brown.

'How would you like it if one of your children, God forbid, went to a war doing something that he thought... where he was helping protect his Queen and country... and because of lack of helicopters, lack of equipment, your child bled to death and then you had the coroner have to tell you his every injury?'

'My son had no legs from the knee down. My son lost his right hand. My son had to have his face reconstructed. Do you understand Mr Brown?'

She described his error-riddled letter as a 'hastily-scrawled insult'.

But sympathy was growing for Mr Brown yesterday amid accusations of a 'politically-motivated' and 'highly personal' attack on him.

Mr Brown's allies were dismayed that an apparently private conversation had been recorded and published by a tabloid newspaper.

They said the Prime Minister should expect such private discussions to remain private.

Today Lord Mandelson accused The Sun newspaper of 'bad taste and crude politicking' over its coverage of the row.

The First Secretary of State claimed that the tabloid newspaper had entered into a 'bargain' with the Tories for which News International, its parent company, would be rewarded under a Conservative government.

Asked today what lessons the Government needed to learn from the furore, Lord Mandelson claimed emails sent to news organisations showed that the public did not approve of The Sun.

'They've clearly made up their own mind about The Sun's mixture of bad taste and crude politicking,' he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

'They've seen through it, they don't like it and they've said so.'

In a sign of Downing Street's irritation, broadcasters were asked not to play the recording of Mr Brown's voice.

Yesterday, without referring directly to the death of his newborn daughter Jennifer Jane in 2001, a visibly moved Mr Brown gave a remarkably personal account of his own experience as a parent coping with loss.

'I'm a parent who understands the feelings when something goes terribly, terribly wrong, and I understand also how long it takes for people to handle and deal with the grief we have all experienced,' he told his Downing Street press conference.

'I wanted to say during that conversation with her, but thought I could not really do so because I do not know her, that when there is a personal loss as deep and immediate as she has experienced it takes time to recover.

'That loss can never be replaced, you have got to take every day at a time...

'Over time, comfort comes from understanding that your son has played an important role in the security of our country and died in such a courageous and brave way that nobody will ever forget it.'
The Prime Minister was also defended by the family of the most highly decorated soldier to have died in Afghanistan.

Military Cross holder Acting Sergeant Michael Lockett, 29, of 2nd Battalion The Mercian Regiment, was killed by a Taliban bomb while on patrol in September.

His mother April said she had also received a letter from the Prime Minister.

'He sent me a three-page letter and, yes, there were mistakes but that does not matter. The fact is it came from his heart.

'It was the fact that the poor man sat down and wrote it. When you're full of grief can you spell properly?

'He has had to write to a lot of families and he is only human.'

Tory MP Adam Holloway praised Mr Brown's 'extremely good intentions' in sending letters to bereaved families of soldiers but added: 'It's sort of an allegory for the whole thing - very good intentions but the problem has been in the execution.'

'We can't write a letter correctly, we can't get the right equipment and as far as I'm concerned, we don't have the right strategy.'

Labour minister Phil Woolas accused the Sun newspaper, which recently switched its support from Labour to the Conservatives, of leading a politically-motivated attack on the Prime Minister.

'Nobody can doubt there is a political motive behind The Sun's coverage. It is a highly personalised attack,' he said.
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