First World War Commemoration

Damian Collins Excerpts

Tuesday 11th June 2013 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Riordan, and it is a pleasure to follow the fascinating contributions of the Members who have spoken in this debate. I particularly congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Broadland (Mr Simpson) on securing this debate and on his fascinating introduction.

We are surrounded by the first world war in the Palace of Westminster, in every community in the country and in Whitehall, which is dominated by the Cenotaph. People cannot escape from the first world war, and in remembering it as we draw closer to the centenary of its outbreak we must remember, as many hon. Members have pointed out in this debate, the incredible change it brought to the lives of almost everyone in the country. We must remember that the first world war touched their lives, and the political consequences of that war affect our lives today, too. We must remember that it was of a scale unimaginable to people before the war. We must remember the stories that came from the war in the history books, the poems and the diaries, which tell of a conflict that cannot be recognised in terms of warfare today. The lives and experiences of the people who went through it are almost impossible for people in a contemporary setting to imagine.

Philip Sassoon, who was Member of Parliament for Hythe during the first world war, visited the site of the battle of Waterloo in 1920. His recollection was that it was “Lilliputian” compared with the western front and that the battle of Waterloo, great and defining as it was, had more in common with the battles of ancient Greece than it had with Neuve-Chapelle or the battle of the Somme. The first world war was something totally new and of an incredible order.

The first world war affected fighting men from across the world who came to Britain to fight on behalf of the empire as British subjects under the King. We must, therefore, consider not only what the significant sites of the first world war meant to the whole country, but to the broader fighting community across the world. My interest has been drawn specifically to the Step Short project in Folkestone, of which I have been chairman for the past six years and which commemorates the role the town played during the first world war.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Broadland mentioned, it was not tens of thousands of men who came through Folkestone during the first world war but tens of millions. Nearly 10 million men came through Folkestone, which was the main port of embarkation to the western front not just for British soldiers but for soldiers from across the world who came to serve. That can be seen marked in the graves at Shorncliffe military cemetery, which is one of the Commonwealth war graves, stationed next to Shorncliffe barracks just outside Folkestone, which was home to tens of thousands of Canadian servicemen. The graves of members of the Chinese Labour Corps who died in the first world war can also be found there. Folkestone, similar to Norfolk, was also home to tens of thousands of Belgian émigrés who came to Britain to escape the advancing German army in the early days of the war in the summer of 1914, so it has an international significance, too.

For me, the important thing about Folkestone is that it touches the experiences of probably almost every fighting family in the country. At some point, their ancestor was in Folkestone during the war, and it is a site that can mean something to people across the country as they consider the centenary of the first world war.

The House of Commons must consider an appropriate way to recognise the sacrifices of families across the country during the war. We must consider where we can create places in the United Kingdom for them to go to try to gain some insight on the life and experience of their ancestors. That is why there is still an incredible, enduring interest in the first world war battlefields in western Europe. The tour operators say that more people make the journeys now than for decades. On any night at the Menin gate at Ypres, one can see large numbers of people gathering to stand and hear the “Last Post” played. Schoolchildren still make battlefield tours of the great cemeteries, such as Tyne Cot and the memorial at Thiepval, to understand what went on.

We should create more opportunities within this country for people to visit similar sites with broad significance. In Folkestone, we have embraced that idea by creating a memorial walk tracing the last steps of the men as they marched from the town down to the harbour where the boats waited to take them to France, and we are raising money to create a new memorial arch to stand over that route, or close to the site where a memorial arch was put up between the wars to mark the silver jubilee of King George V and the coronation of King George VI. It bore the simple message “In our rejoicing, we still remember them.” The road down which the men marched was rededicated after the war as the road of remembrance. As other hon. Members have mentioned, there are physical war memorials listing the names of men who fought, but there are also other memorials that recognise the symbolism of and people’s emotional attachment to significant sites in this country during the first world war.

In Folkestone, as my hon. Friend the Member for Broadland mentioned, we also have air raid sites. The first major air raid on the civilian population carried out by German aircraft in this country was at Folkestone in 1917, on Tontine street. It killed 71 people out of a clear blue sky. There were no air raid sirens and no warnings; it was not something that anyone expected. Many people lived through it, and many have family members who were victims of that attack. The site in Tontine street means something to them.

We can help create memorials, and we can support events as Members of the House of Commons. Folkestone seeks to do so by creating a new memorial arch and a memorial march commemorating the journey to war on the anniversary of the start of the war next August. On 4 August 2014, a series of centenaries will start that will run through the period of the first world war, touching the anniversaries of the major conflicts and battles and building up to the centenary of the armistice.

The major museums are doing a great deal of work to support the first world war centenary, particularly the Imperial War museum, which is creating online resources that anyone in the country can use to pass on the stories of people in their community. I also thank the National Army museum, which has agreed to bring part of its first world war collection out of London to Folkestone for 10 months in 2014-15 while its galleries are being refurbished, and to create an exhibition with the people of Folkestone to tell part of the story of the town during the war, as well as the story of men as they made the journey to war.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Broadland for securing this debate. It is the third debate on the first world war centenary in which I have participated during the past couple of years; I am sure that there will be many more opportunities to discuss it as we get closer to that time. It will be an important series of anniversaries and commemorations, starting on 4 August next year, and will mean a great deal to people across the country.