“Lest We Forget” - Rudyard Kipling
Remembrance Day is one of my earliest memories. I grew up in 1950s Brighton and in those days the two-minutes’ silence was held on 11th November irrespective of what day of the week it fell. Shortly before 11am the traffic came to a standstill, shoppers paused what they were doing, and the radio stations tuned into Big Ben striking 11. In those days there were just two BBC radio stations; the Home Service and the Light Programme and no daytime television.
The trolley buses would stop and drivers would alight and detach the power poles from the overhead cables. Drivers, conductors and passengers would leave their vehicles. There were more public clocks in those days and as they reached 11am the town would fall silent, heads would bow and all that could be heard was the waves washing up and down the pebble beach. After two minutes the driver would re-attach the power poles; the passengers would re-embark, and life would return to 1950s normal. There was no flag waving, no singing of Rule Britannia and certainly no glorification of war. What people thought about during the two minutes remained a secret.
My Mother would take my brother and I to buy poppies. They were sold from trays held by ex-service men usually with a missing limb with a trouser leg or jacket arm pinned to the rest of the garment.
My parent’s generation were formed by two world wars. Something I have come to understand better as I have grown older. I use to think the 1950s was a very boring decade but given what my parents had experienced in the 1920s, 30s and 40s I am pretty sure they much appreciated a bit of routine and general peace and quiet.
My parents lived out the war in London although they did not meet until afterwards. My father was in a reserved occupation and spent his nights fire watching over north London. My mother, a few miles away in Deptford, spent her days working in an armaments factory and nights sheltering in Underground stations away from the air raids. They rarely talked about the war and when they did it was in terms of sorrow at the loss of family and friends and the daily fear of death or homelessness and constant shortages. They certainly never saw it as period of national triumph. They never spoke of Germany or Japan and a celebration of triumph. I now understand the sense of death and struggle was all consuming and the end of fighting and the return to some sense of normality was more than enough.
I had several uncles and aunts old enough to serve and, therefore, worked either as nurses or fought in various theatres around the world. Two uncles landed in Normandy. They rarely spoke about what they experienced apart from describing the sea as red with body parts floating in it as the front of landing craft came down. An uncle was one of first soldiers to reach Bergen-Belsen. He never spoke of what he witnessed. My first father-in-law was at Dunkirk. He too rarely spoke about what he experienced but when he did, he described it as a terrible, humiliating defeat marked by poor organisation. He certainly never saw it as a heroic retreat. He witnessed the death of a close friend who put his head up from the beach sand in which they were sheltering only to be hit by shrapnel.
Looking back now certain things strike me as consistent. Nobody I knew who experienced World War II saw it in terms of a glorious national victory. They never reflected on a great triumph over Germany and Japan. They did not see what happened through a prism of English exceptionalism or Empire glory.
Their reflections were more personal relating to what happened to them and their nearest and dearest. There was an overwhelming sense of relief it was all over and pleasure in a life that returned to a sense of normality. What was celebrated was loved ones coming home and some of the certainties of life returning.
I wonder if the private reflections in 1950s’ periods of silence were dominated by remembrance of loss both human and material and thankfulness they had survived. And simply that the whole terrifying experience was over.
As the years passed so Remembrance Day changed. It was moved to the nearest Sunday to 11th November, but it slowly but surely became less of a focal event. I recall talk of it perhaps disappearing as survivors from the two world wars dwindled in number. Thankfully, the Royal British Legion were alert to this and began promoting themselves as an organisation there to support all those who had served in the armed forces plus their families irrespective of when and where they served. So today Remembrance Day is, in many ways, as big a national event as it was 100 years ago. However, I do see one change that is less desirable.
There is evidence that Remembrance Day is being dragged into the culture wars that are beginning to bedevil today’s politics. Whilst I am sure for the British Legion and the majority of those who participate in its events, remembrance is pretty much about what it was for their parents’ generation. However, for some it has become entangled with the growing trend towards xenophobia, racism, anti-Europeanism and nostalgia porn.
At the height of the Black Lives Matter protests back in the Spring what did Boris Johnson do? He could have issued a message establishing his support for the Movement and what his action plan looked like. Instead he worked on half-a-dozen Tweets praising Churchill and promoting the importance of statues. Unsurprisingly he garnered supporters who took up post in Parliament Square to defend Churchill’s statue. Likewise around the country guards appeared at various war memorials.
He did this deliberately to create a toxic link between statues, a sanitized view of the past, English nationalism, English superiority and dislike of foreigners. It was a dog whistle and ended up with a man being interviewed live on television in Parliament Square calling the Mayor of London a traitor and setting out the punishment he should receive. It is not a gigantic leap from nuanced informed debate to nationalism and unchallenged love of country. Boris Johnson sees political advantage in taking it.
According to a study reported in last Sunday’s Observer “the desire to fight a “culture war” is the preserve of a small group on the political extremes that does not represent most British voters.” It rather begs the question why the Prime Minister should think it so important to speak directly to this particular audience.
The research suggested that the Covid-19 crisis had prompted an outburst of social solidarity which, of course, is the antithesis of the ‘you are with us or against us’ evidence-free, beliefs-driven politics of the populists that Johnson was dabbling in.
The research suggests that the risk of a link being established between the act of Remembrance and unfettered nationalism is perhaps receding. It would be good at this November 11th if we could see a reinforcement of the growing trend towards “we look after each other” exposed by the study. Inclusive social solidarity becoming trendy once again.
It would be good this year also to see less of the social media poppy police attacking anybody appearing on television without a poppy or one of right size. It really is not an action worthy of punishment in the Tower to appear on Strictly Come Dancing without wearing a poppy a foot wide. Plus let us also have less of the military images which appear to promote conflict and glorify war. One of my social media accounts has already received a picture of two Spitfires flying over the cliffs of Dover. We are not fighting the Germans anymore despite what some Brexiteers think. There is a bit of me that hope the planes are piloted by the many Poles and Czechs who escaped across Europe to join the RAF.
My parents respected Churchill as a war time leader but had little time for him otherwise. They would not have bought into links connecting Churchill, the glorification of war, statues and somehow the British being better than everybody else. They were honest enough to admit that without American support WWII would have had a very different outcome. My mother had tales to tell of life with American soldiers on leave in London. My father sometimes talked to me about how close a call it was going to war in the first place given there were many, including in the Cabinet, who would have sued for peace with Germany in 1939. Johnson does not Tweet about that!
So let us preserve the Remembrance Day of my parents and quietly celebrate a sense of relief that war time deprivations are behind us. Let us display a deep gratitude to be free from the fear that the threat of death and injury are not a reality of each and every dawn. Those feelings should belong to, and be shared by, us all and not be the domain of those who wish to sanitize and glorify the past and recreate a nation that only ever really existed the pages of childhood comics.
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