First World War (Commemoration)

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Thursday 26th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Dr Andrew Murrison)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the programme of commemoration for the First World War.

One hundred years ago, a poor scrap of a man who was already dying of tuberculosis fired two shots into Archduke Franz Ferdinand, his wife Sophie, and their unborn child. Meanwhile back here, the following afternoon a debate on foreign affairs happened to be scheduled, although Hansard records that hon. Members were well into proceedings before anybody mentioned Sarajevo. Eventually, an obscure Liberal, Sir Joseph Walton, raised in passing reports of an assassination he had read about in the morning papers. By the time Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey got to his feet shortly before 7 o’clock, lazy summer ears appeared to be pricking at a city that then, as now, few Britons could accurately place on the map. Although next day the assassination got Asquith to the Dispatch Box, he was there to eulogise not to debate the geopolitical consequences of Gavrilo Princip’s chaotic street corner encounter with a man who, had he lived or died that day, was fated to change the course of history.

From 28 June to 4 August is 37 days. To overplay contemporary events on a similar time frame is to remind people in positions such as ours, and in significant countries such as this, of the solemn responsibility they hold. The first lesson I draw is the frightening speed with which peace, civilisation and a functioning rules-based system can descend into chaos.

I am privileged to lead our second debate on this subject. By common consent, the first debate on 7 November was of high quality, as was their lordships’ debate on this subject yesterday. From the luminaries seeking to catch your eye, Madam Deputy Speaker, I look forward to further such debate today. This debate is well timed since the 100th anniversary of the Archduke’s assassination this weekend falls on Armed Forces day, when right hon. and hon. Members will celebrate the men and women of today’s armed forces. I am delighted that this year that celebration will be centred on the great and historic city of Stirling.

I underscore “celebration” to contrast with commemoration, and let it be understood that the great war is cause for the latter, and assuredly not cause for the former. The Government pegged out the centenary in 2012 when the Prime Minister announced the UK’s approach in October that year at the Imperial War museum. The guiding lights are remembrance, youth and education, with the Government creating a framework for a national conversation about the war within which people can explore its causes, conduct and consequences for themselves. Linked to that, the public will not have an official narrative foisted on them. We should not confuse the role of historians and pedagogues with that of politicians. The job of government is to spark the national conversation, not dictate its terms. Historians have a responsibility to rigorously and dispassionately examine the facts, contest the evidence, and offer interpretation. Through open challenge and debate, the credibility of that interpretation is tested, and we glimpse the truth.

I know that the hon. Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis), who will speak for the Opposition, agrees with that because he told me last week that he was about to speak about the great war to the well-respected Labour History Group. I took the precaution of securing a copy of his speech, and I hope I will not embarrass or disadvantage him too much by saying what a very good speech it is. He is right to say that politicians probably should not do history, but I am sure he would be the first to say that we should all have an opinion on such an important matter. The Prime Minister has an opinion, I have mine—fortunately for me, it is somewhat similar to his—you, Madam Deputy Speaker, will have your opinion, and each right hon. and hon. Member in this most opinionated of places will have theirs.

Perhaps I may put my cards on the table. Like most Members present, I suspect that I would have supported Herbert Asquith in the summer of 1914, but it would have been through a veil of ignorance that obscured the full horror of what was about to be unleashed, not least from Asquith himself, whose brilliant son Raymond was killed two years later on the Somme and is listed No. 7 on the Palace of Westminster’s own village war memorial at the top of Westminster Hall, between Archdale and Balfour.

In my view, Britain’s entry into the great war fulfilled the Augustinian precepts for a just war, and we should be grateful that our predecessors in uniform and on the home front ultimately triumphed against the Kaiser—a militaristic aggressor, general disturber of the peace and, in 1914, surely Europe’s public enemy No. 1. There is nothing jingoistic or triumphalist in the view that this country has a tradition of reluctant, sober and purposeful military intervention as a last resort on the part of oppressed people, particularly in continental Europe, and where the well-being and liberty of her own citizens is threatened. The men and women we will celebrate on Armed Forces day in Stirling and across the country this weekend uphold that proud tradition.

Most people’s experience of the centenary will be through broadcast and social media, and the BBC is playing a central role in that in its best Reithian tradition. I am not always the Beeb’s greatest fan, but I have been bowled over by the quality and scope of its TV and radio offerings, which constitute the biggest and most ambitious pan-BBC season ever undertaken. The corporation’s stated intention is to bring the nation together in order to create a national conversation about the great war. Well, it is hitting the spot, and has viewer figures and feedback to prove not only the success of its programming, but the sheer scale of public interest in the centenary.

[Mr Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

The Minister is making a thoughtful speech and I commend him on his work on mental health in the services, which has great relevance to this debate. Does he agree that not the least of the strengths of what the BBC has been doing is its coverage of life on the home front, and also the extraordinary outpouring of the arts, particularly music, resurrecting many of the semi-forgotten composers from the first world war?

[Dr Murrison]

I certainly agree. The BBC has a difficult balance to strike. In my view, it is doing that extremely well. I particularly commend its efforts to shine a light on some of the perhaps least well explored elements of the great war. We all know about the mud and the trenches. We know rather less about the home front. I hope that, as we proceed through the four-year centenary, we will have a more holistic view of what it meant to be alive between 1914 and 1918.

The UK’s commemoration will begin on Monday 4 August in Glasgow, where the JoyFest of the Commonwealth games will be replaced by the solemnity of Glasgow cathedral and remembrance in George square. In the evening, the evocative Commonwealth War Graves Commission site at St Symphorien near Mons has been chosen for an event based on reconciliation, which we know the public want and expect to see. German and Belgian representatives will join us, as will Heads of State and Government and the families of those interred, irrespective of nationality.

On the same day, the Step Short project in Folkestone will unveil its memorial arch over the road of remembrance, down which troops marched to embarkation. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins) on bringing that important project to maturity. It is a flagship for thousands of independent projects up and down the country that have been inspired by the centenary.

[Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his kind words about the Step Short project. Does he agree that the debate is timely because the memorial arch is being erected today in Folkestone?

[Dr Murrison]

I am pleased to hear my hon. Friend’s news. I have been watching the project with much interest. I know that it will be an important part of our commemoration. As I said in response to the hon. Member for Blackpool South (Mr Marsden), it is important to commemorate all elements of the centenary. The magic of Folkestone is the ability to plot the course of that final trip for so many thousands of servicemen as they embarked for France. Many, of course, never returned but many did—the majority did. Folkestone in those years held a particular place in the hearts of the service community, either because it was the point of embarkation or because, more happily, it was the point of return.

At 11 o’clock, the hour at which Britain entered the war on 4 August, the day will be closed with a vigil centred on Westminster abbey, which will run in parallel with similar services at St Anne’s cathedral in Belfast, Llandaff cathedral in Cardiff and other churches and faith communities across the country. At the same time, public buildings, workplaces and homes will be encouraged to participate in Lights Out to refer to the observation by Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey on the eve of war that the lamps were going out across Europe and they would not be lit again in his time. As part of that, the Royal British Legion plans to sell a million candles to remember a million fallen, each one extinguished at 11 pm. Here is the clever bit. In the darkness, a single lamp will be left burning, since hope never dies, and it never did.

The centenary is a marathon, not a sprint. Following 4 August, we have the 2014 season of remembrance, Gallipoli in April next year, Jutland and the Somme in 2016 and Passchendaele in 2017. In 2018, Amiens to Armistice will mark the last 100 days of the war. Interspersed will be myriad anniversaries from Coronel to Cambrai marking the waypoints of war, each commemorated appropriately with international participants and national units and their successors.

Big anniversaries, with their attendant large-scale national events, are pegs on which to hang the clothes of the centenary. The richness will come from 1,000 projects, from the flagship rebirth of the Imperial War museum on 19 July, to the Woodland Trust centenary forests to be planted in each of the four nations, to the small local initiatives that I heard about a week ago in Norfolk, as the guest of my hon. Friend the Member for Broadland (Mr Simpson). Many of those are funded from the £56 million already allocated by the Heritage Lottery Fund. Many are part of the First World War Centenary Partnership, which now has 3,000 member organisations in 50 countries, and many already have the active involvement of constituency MPs.

The 14-18 Now cultural programme will add granularity and texture to the centenary and bring it alive. May I pick out its letter to an unknown soldier project, a literary memorial centred on the enigmatic statue of a soldier reading a letter on platform 1 at Paddington station? The statue makes us wonder what is in the soldier’s letter. Members of the public are now invited to write that letter. All sorts of celebrities have already done so, and MPs certainly should.

I recently sent a note to all right hon. and hon. Members about the centenary poppy campaign, which is a great way for MPs to get involved locally and in the process both proliferate wild flowers and raise money to help the Royal British Legion to support today’s service community. I urge colleagues to take up the Commonwealth War Graves Commission offer to visit its sites in this country. There is most likely to be at least one such site in or close to each UK constituency. There are at least two Commonwealth War Graves Commission commissioners in the House today. I know that they will underscore that point. It is a revelation to many of us how many Commonwealth War Graves Commission sites there are in this country. They are not by any manner of means all on the western front.

[Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

I pay tribute to the way in which my hon. Friend is laying out the plans for this great year. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission recently took me around several of the war graves in my constituency. I have set about visiting all 55 churchyards with Commonwealth war graves in my constituency, 209 graves in total. Whether I will achieve that, we will have to see. I am taking with me children from local primary and secondary schools that are near those graves. That may be an initiative that others want to follow.

[Dr Murrison]

I commend my hon. Friend’s project. Other hon. Members will wish to emulate it. Like me, he has a large number of Commonwealth war graves in his constituency. I know that primary schools in particular in my constituency are keen to honour the fallen. Several of those schools have similar projects. The centenary will be an occasion when our minds will be focused closely on the subject. I suspect that, over the four years, interest will increase, particularly in schools. I hope that MPs will be able to take the lead in promoting that, as my hon. Friend has done in his constituency. It is important that parliamentarians apply leadership in such matters. I am confident, given the interest among colleagues, that they will do precisely that.

It is important also to ensure that our war memorials are in a fit state. A centenary is surely an opportunity to ensure that we revisit those extraordinary monuments that lie at the heart of most of our communities. I am pleased to say that over £5 million has been made available from Government to ensure that local war memorials are in good order. For details of that and the extensive work being done by Government Departments and agencies, I recommend the Government centenary webpage.

My hope is that the centenary of the first world war will provoke a wider interest in history and that it will enrich the teaching and study of the discipline more generally. It is not just about educating young people. I learnt about the wars of the 20th century from my parents and grandparents, who were contemporary witnesses. Young children these days do not have that advantage. In a curious reversal, to our surprise and delight, we have found that children participating in the £5.3 million battlefields project have been inculcating awareness of the great war among their parents, so it is bottom-up replacing top-down.

The Government intend to continue to work with the 60 or so countries worldwide who have a direct interest in the centenary. In Ireland the great war centenary falls within a decade of commemoration. It is an opportunity for reflection and conversation facilitated by the Queen’s historic visit in 2011, and it is set to mature further and strengthen one of the most important relationships for both countries.

This year a Commonwealth War Graves Commission cross of sacrifice is being erected in Dublin’s incredibly important Glasnevin cemetery, which I had the great privilege of visiting recently. Given the history, the significance of such a monument in the shadow of Daniel O’Connell’s tomb is very clear. History is often complex and nuanced, but no good is served by finessing its inconveniences.

[Mr Julian Brazier (Canterbury) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. On the Commonwealth, I was privileged last night to entertain Corporal Mark Donaldson VC from Australia, and is this not an appropriate moment to remember just how much this country owes our cousins in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the troops who came from India and all over what was then the Empire and is now the Commonwealth, without whom we probably could not have seen through either of the world wars in the way that we did?

[Dr Murrison]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. We have been working very closely with the Governments of all the countries he has cited and more, as he would expect. The high commissioners, particularly in London, have been very keen to engage. Indeed, several of those high commissioners serve as trustees of the Imperial War museum, which is absolutely front and centre, and appropriately so, of our centenary commemoration.

This is an opportunity to bring us closer together. It is, however, important to understand that there are very often complexities in the relationship, and we need to be prepared to address them without prevarication. My hon. Friend knows that in Australia in particular the “lions led by donkeys” mythology is prevalent in some quarters, and it is important to be able to address those concerns without attempting to avoid or sidestep them, because in so doing we come to a better understanding and much closer to the truth. We will be working particularly closely with our Anzac cousins, as my hon. Friend would expect, as our history runs long and deep. This centenary is a wonderful opportunity to make sure we are not seen to be taking that relationship for granted, but that we broaden and deepen it, and I am very confident, having visited Gallipoli this year, that that is on not only our agenda, but the agendas particularly of our Australian and New Zealand friends.

I have to say that the complexities I have cited in our relationships with other countries have not all been in predictable places. In the main they really have not been with Germany, Austria and Turkey; they have been in some unhappy corners of relationships with allies. We have discussed already where some of those may lie, but we must in particular respect and acknowledge attitudes of the sort that are prevalent in South Africa to events that are deeply troubling, such as the sinking of the troopship Mendi in 1917 and the treatment of non-European participants in the war effort. All of this has to be part of our centenary commemoration, and we must do nothing to avoid it, airbrush it or finesse it.

On the very cusp of the centenary of the war to end all war, our first duty has to be remembrance, but the measure of our success will be the extent to which we lift our understanding of the conflicts, causes, conduct and consequences, and the advancement of relations with today’s close friends and partners from both sides of the great war’s great divide.