First World War: Centenary

Baroness Flather Excerpts

Monday 4th March 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Flather]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Clark of Windermere, for giving me this opportunity to say a few personal words about 1914. When I was Mayor of Windsor, I had to lay a wreath on Remembrance Sunday. On that occasion, I was asked by a councillor, “Does Remembrance Sunday mean anything to you?”. That is my point: there are still educated people in this country who do not realise how much we Indians did in the First World War.

It was a horrible shock to me because my father was a student in Ireland at that time; he was at King’s Inns. Gandhiji said that Indian students could help the war effort, but should not kill. So he joined up—he volunteered—as a stretcher-bearer, and there I was being asked if Remembrance Sunday meant anything to me. It was a heart-rending moment to think that all those sacrifices and all those people who had come here had got lost in the mists of time. Nobody had remembered them.

It is also a good time to remember that Britain did not have a standing army when the war started. It was the British Expeditionary Force that went to France and it was a standing army of 150,000 from India that came over in ships to help in France. They came in clothing that was suitable for warm climates, not for the November climate in France. Indians had a very hard time in the First World War. They had a hard time with the food; they had a hard time with clothing and they had a hard time with the climate, but they were still, as has already been said, 1.5 million volunteers. We must always remember that they were volunteers.

I have tried my very best—without success—to get something about the Indian efforts in the two world wars into the curriculum. I hope that next year, with the help of your Lordships, we will have that in the curriculum. After all, this is why so many people from the subcontinent are here; it is because of the time that so many of their ancestors spent in the two world wars. I hope that something important will happen and that we will get some general acknowledgment—not just acknowledgment from those who know, but acknowledgment from those who do not know and do not wish to know—that yes, the Indians were there and fought bravely. My father, who was a student, was a stretcher bearer, which is a horrible job because you are always under fire. We need to remember everyone. Indians comprised the second largest number of war dead by nationality in the two world wars.