The institution of the medal, along with the Bomber Command Clasp, was the end result of a 16-year-long campaign by Commander Eddie Grenfell, Lieutenant Commander Dick Dykes and Merchant Navy veteran Jock Dempster, who stressed that service in the arctic convoys north of the Arctic Circle was entirely different from that in the Atlantic, for which the Atlantic Star had been awarded, with different aims and different conditions which had been described by Winston Churchill as "the worst journey in the world".