Martin Kettle
By Martin Kettle
Last autumn David Cameron went to London’s Imperial War Museum and announced plans for “a truly national commemoration” of the centenary of the First World War. There would be, he said, four years of events and activity at a cost of more than £50 million, starting with the centenary of the outbreak of war in August 2014 until the centenary of the Armistice in November 2018. The speech was personal. Cameron talked about his family experience of war. He said how Robert Graves’s war memoir, Goodbye to All That, was “my favourite book”. He spoke of the great impression — “one of the most powerful things I’ve ever seen” — made on him by a visit to the Turkish memorial at Gallipoli. That memorial’s inscription — “there is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us, where they lie, side by side, in this country of ours” — managed to capture “so much of what this is all about”, Cameron said.
What is this 1914-18 commemoration all about? This is a government with a prejudice in favour of history — good — but deep prejudices about history — bad. Cameron said that the purpose was “to honour those who served; to remember those who died; and to ensure that the lessons learned live with us for ever”. But he did not attempt the hard bit — spelling out what those lessons are.
This is not surprising because the lessons of the First World War are not a settled question in modern Britain. That the war should be commemorated ought not to be an issue. It is a living part of the shared past. But how it should be marked cannot help but be a source of argument. A traditional sequence of parades and services fails to come close to what is required.
Nearly a million British soldiers died between 1914 and 1918. There had never been a collective national and community trauma like it. Most soldiers probably set out thinking they were fighting for king and country against an aggressive German foe. But not all of them did. Many of those who returned did so with more complex, more conflicted and much darker feelings and experiences.
Unless all these things are properly reflected at the official level, the commemoration is a deliberate deception, a lie. This commemoration will be happening in a country whose shared national narrative is fraying before our eyes. The most important lesson of the European wars of the 20th century is that most of Europe has now opted for peace and co-operation. But is a Britain that bridles at European cooperation and struggles to be at ease with anything except the old imperial identity a country that embraces that lesson? Can a Britain divided by today’s wars be a Britain at ease with those of yesteryear?
A fuller programme for commemorations has not yet been announced. A planned re-enactment of the 1914 Christmas truce football game on the western front might be harmless as long as it isn’t oversold as a truly representative event of a conflict characterised by carnage not games. A rumoured Anglo-German religious service at a military cemetery near Mons is promising, though a bit minimal. Shamefully, Cameron made no reference to shared events with Germany, or the importance of reconciliation, so perhaps there has been some rethinking. There is talk of a statement by the Culture Secretary, Maria Miller, in June.
Characteristically, Alex Salmond hit a more confident note when he announced Scotland’s separate plans last week. The commemorations were “in no sense a celebration of this devastating conflict”, he said. Commemorative plans in Ireland are nuanced. But Conservatives cannot bring themselves to use subtle or new language to describe the First World War and are blighting the possibility of a credible, modern, UK-wide commemoration.
In 2012, Cameron appointed Andrew Murrison, MP, a former naval doctor and now a junior minister at the ministry of defence, as his “special representative” on the panel drawing up the anniversary programme. But if his views represent those of Cameron, it should set alarm bells ringing, especially among those who bridle at the insouciant use, by Cameron, Murrison and others, of the term great war.
In March, Murrison addressed a conference on schools and the centenary at Wellington public school. The most striking line in his speech was his endorsement of the 1914-18 conflict as “a just war”. After sneering at those who, “equipped with your wonderful retrospectoscope” see the war as “a cataclysmic political failure”, he said that “to dismiss the centenary of the war to end all wars would in my view breach the military covenant”. The commemorations, he said, “would bring us together as a nation, and especially the Commonwealth”.
This was the speech of a man out of his depth. Or, of someone who cannot think about British history outside the box of the imperial military past. This is a past in which war and the soldiery unite the nation under its rulers. But we do not inhabit such a Britain today. Probably a majority think our soldiers are heroes. Some think the language of heroism has become cheap and indiscriminate. A few believe our soldiers are committing crimes against Islam. Others fear they are too often guilty of human rights abuses. In the Britain of 2013 it is absurd to pretend that our armed forces fight just wars in which they invariably behave heroically against evil enemies in actions for which they deserve undivided honour. It is not like that today. It was not like that in the First World War either, with far more catastrophic consequences. It is pathetic to pretend. Those who deceive themselves about the present also deceive themselves about the past. The Guardian
By Martin Kettle
Last autumn David Cameron went to London’s Imperial War Museum and announced plans for “a truly national commemoration” of the centenary of the First World War. There would be, he said, four years of events and activity at a cost of more than £50 million, starting with the centenary of the outbreak of war in August 2014 until the centenary of the Armistice in November 2018. The speech was personal. Cameron talked about his family experience of war. He said how Robert Graves’s war memoir, Goodbye to All That, was “my favourite book”. He spoke of the great impression — “one of the most powerful things I’ve ever seen” — made on him by a visit to the Turkish memorial at Gallipoli. That memorial’s inscription — “there is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us, where they lie, side by side, in this country of ours” — managed to capture “so much of what this is all about”, Cameron said.
What is this 1914-18 commemoration all about? This is a government with a prejudice in favour of history — good — but deep prejudices about history — bad. Cameron said that the purpose was “to honour those who served; to remember those who died; and to ensure that the lessons learned live with us for ever”. But he did not attempt the hard bit — spelling out what those lessons are.
This is not surprising because the lessons of the First World War are not a settled question in modern Britain. That the war should be commemorated ought not to be an issue. It is a living part of the shared past. But how it should be marked cannot help but be a source of argument. A traditional sequence of parades and services fails to come close to what is required.
Nearly a million British soldiers died between 1914 and 1918. There had never been a collective national and community trauma like it. Most soldiers probably set out thinking they were fighting for king and country against an aggressive German foe. But not all of them did. Many of those who returned did so with more complex, more conflicted and much darker feelings and experiences.
Unless all these things are properly reflected at the official level, the commemoration is a deliberate deception, a lie. This commemoration will be happening in a country whose shared national narrative is fraying before our eyes. The most important lesson of the European wars of the 20th century is that most of Europe has now opted for peace and co-operation. But is a Britain that bridles at European cooperation and struggles to be at ease with anything except the old imperial identity a country that embraces that lesson? Can a Britain divided by today’s wars be a Britain at ease with those of yesteryear?
A fuller programme for commemorations has not yet been announced. A planned re-enactment of the 1914 Christmas truce football game on the western front might be harmless as long as it isn’t oversold as a truly representative event of a conflict characterised by carnage not games. A rumoured Anglo-German religious service at a military cemetery near Mons is promising, though a bit minimal. Shamefully, Cameron made no reference to shared events with Germany, or the importance of reconciliation, so perhaps there has been some rethinking. There is talk of a statement by the Culture Secretary, Maria Miller, in June.
Characteristically, Alex Salmond hit a more confident note when he announced Scotland’s separate plans last week. The commemorations were “in no sense a celebration of this devastating conflict”, he said. Commemorative plans in Ireland are nuanced. But Conservatives cannot bring themselves to use subtle or new language to describe the First World War and are blighting the possibility of a credible, modern, UK-wide commemoration.
In 2012, Cameron appointed Andrew Murrison, MP, a former naval doctor and now a junior minister at the ministry of defence, as his “special representative” on the panel drawing up the anniversary programme. But if his views represent those of Cameron, it should set alarm bells ringing, especially among those who bridle at the insouciant use, by Cameron, Murrison and others, of the term great war.
In March, Murrison addressed a conference on schools and the centenary at Wellington public school. The most striking line in his speech was his endorsement of the 1914-18 conflict as “a just war”. After sneering at those who, “equipped with your wonderful retrospectoscope” see the war as “a cataclysmic political failure”, he said that “to dismiss the centenary of the war to end all wars would in my view breach the military covenant”. The commemorations, he said, “would bring us together as a nation, and especially the Commonwealth”.
This was the speech of a man out of his depth. Or, of someone who cannot think about British history outside the box of the imperial military past. This is a past in which war and the soldiery unite the nation under its rulers. But we do not inhabit such a Britain today. Probably a majority think our soldiers are heroes. Some think the language of heroism has become cheap and indiscriminate. A few believe our soldiers are committing crimes against Islam. Others fear they are too often guilty of human rights abuses. In the Britain of 2013 it is absurd to pretend that our armed forces fight just wars in which they invariably behave heroically against evil enemies in actions for which they deserve undivided honour. It is not like that today. It was not like that in the First World War either, with far more catastrophic consequences. It is pathetic to pretend. Those who deceive themselves about the present also deceive themselves about the past. The Guardian
