First World War Commemoration

Debate between Damian Collins and David Burrowes

Thursday 8th July 2010 Commons Chamber

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

I am grateful to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for allowing me this Adjournment debate, whose theme is the forthcoming centenary of the outbreak of the first world war, which will fall in August 2014. It may feel as if that centenary is a little way off, but this debate is timely because today the Imperial War museum has hosted a national conference bringing together representatives of voluntary and community groups from across the country to discuss the work they can do in preparing for that centenary.

In 1964, on the 50th anniversary of the outbreak of the first world war, similar co-ordination of activity and events around the country took place. In my constituency, there was an exhibition of war paintings at the Metropole art gallery, which was hosted in conjunction with the Imperial War museum. Co-ordination also took place for the Last Night of the Proms, with music by Vaughan Williams and Britten acting as a musical commemoration of the war. Many organisations would seek a similar level of co-ordination for this forthcoming centenary between groups involved in heritage and the arts, community groups across the country and the Government.

[Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this timely debate and on mentioning the work that the Imperial War museum does. Will he also pay tribute to the work that it does to build up a national inventory of war memorials? Does he share the concern about the fact that many a war memorial is, sadly, the victim of either neglect or vandalism? Will he join me in the campaign by the War Memorials Trust to have all war memorials registered by the time of the commemoration?

[Damian Collins]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention, and I am happy to support that very worthwhile project. The television series produced by Ian Hislop, “Not Forgotten”, was a good demonstration of the power of memorials, some of which had fallen into abeyance and loss. In two local projects in the villages of Lyminge and Sandgate, in my constituency, local people have decoded the war memorials, using new online materials to look up the stories of the servicemen who served in their own communities, for example, Walter Tull. He is named on the Folkestone war memorial and was the first person who was not a European white male to be commissioned into the British Army—he was commissioned in the field as a second lieutenant during the first world war. He also had the distinction of being the first black man to play in an outfield position in the English football leagues, and his story was really uncovered by a project run by the Dover War Memorial Project. It would be a wonderful way to mark the centenary of the outbreak of the war if similar projects could be launched across the country, perhaps supported by the Imperial War museum and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, to give people toolkits to understand where their memorials are and the stories of the men that lie beyond them.

We are all familiar with the fact that although the men who served in that war have passed—indeed, many of their children are probably no longer with us—their stories remain. Part of the Chamber in which we sit today is, in some ways, a memorial to the 20 Members of this House who lost their lives on active service during that war and the many others who saw active service. One of my predecessors as the Member of Parliament for the Folkestone and Hythe area, Sir Philip Sassoon, was on active service as an officer of the East Kent Regiment, which was known as “the Buffs” during the war, and he also led a lot of the local recruitment. Many other distinguished Members of this House served in that war too. As Members of Parliament, we too can think of a fitting commemoration for that centenary.

Today’s conference at the Imperial War museum is also being attended by Ann Berry, a former mayor of Folkestone, who has worked closely with me on our own project in Folkestone, Step Short. It seeks to mark the recognition of Folkestone’s role during the war. I wish to talk a little about that, because it is important to think of the centenary in terms not only of the sacrifices made by allied servicemen in the trenches on the western front and around the world, but of sites of significance in this country. Such sites were well understood in the years after the first world war, but, of course, memory has been lost.

My friend, Professor Nick Bosanquet, who has kindly joined us in the Public Gallery this evening, has, aside from his duties at Imperial college and with the Reform think-tank, also done work on the significance of UK sites—particularly Folkestone, which was the major port of embarkation and disembarkation for about 9 million men during the war, as well as sites in Gretna and Liverpool and of major munitions production as well as other sites around the country. It is important that those stories are not forgotten.

The anniversary of 1914 is in many ways the start of an important series of anniversaries: the outbreak of the first world war in 1914; for many in the Commonwealth and the UK, Gallipoli in 1915; the battle of the Somme in 1916; Passchendaele in 1917; and, of course, the Armistice in 1918. That theme was picked up by the Irish Taoiseach, Brian Cowen, in a recent speech he made to the institute for British-Irish studies. He said that in 2016 in particular—a significant date for Ireland—

“the centenary of the Somme will be commemorated here in Dublin, as in Belfast, to honour the heroism of those who fought and died there, Protestant and Catholic, side by side.”

The centenary gives us a chance to remember and reflect. The significance of the first world war is great, not only because of the enormous loss of life on all sides but because that war shaped, in many ways, the politics of the 20th century and so much of the world in which we live today.

The centenary is a good way of uncovering the human story. I was very moved last week to attend a service at Shorncliffe military cemetery in my constituency on 1 July, which is Canada day. The Canadians had many thousands of men stationed in Folkestone during the war, 296 of whom are buried in the cemetery. After the war, the people of the town promised Canada that they would look after and maintain those graves. Every year, 296 schoolchildren from the constituency sit by individual graves with individual presentations of flowers that they make to the graves as part of a service of memorial. That links the town not only to the story of the first world war but to the lives of individual servicemen, too. That is a fitting act of memorial.

On the harbour arm of Folkestone harbour, there was a canteen maintained by Florence and Margaret Jeffrey. They ran the harbour canteen, dispensing free cups of tea and refreshments to men before the troops boarded. In the case of most people who have an ancestor who served in the first world war, that person would probably have passed through Folkestone in one way or another during that time. There is a record of 40,000 names collected in the visitors’ books from those of general servicemen to those of people such as Field Marshall Haig, David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill who passed through the town. With the support of Kent county council, we have started a project to create a digital record of those names and to scan each of the pages of those books. We are looking to raise funds to have that as a resource that can be accessed online by people around the world who want to search for stories of their ancestors. It will record them as being in Folkestone on a particular time, place and day during that war.

Most of the men who were in Folkestone during the war would have assembled on the Leas, outside the Grand, which was a great society hotel in the period before the war. It was also the place where Wilfred Owen, the war poet, spent his last night in England. They would have been assembled and marched along the Leas, down a road that during the war was known as the Slope road, to the harbour before they embarked for the trenches of Belgium and France. For many of them, that would have been their last journey in England before they went to the trenches, not to return.

That is the significance of the UK sites. Hundreds and thousands of people every year make that pilgrimage themselves to walk in the footsteps of their ancestors in the battlefields. As a schoolboy doing my GCSE studies, I made that same journey, as many people studying history as part of the national curriculum and their GCSE courses will do today. To continue shamelessly to plug my constituency’s heritage links, people can start those journeys and see part of them in this country, too, without making the trip to France. They can walk, as many men did, down the Leas in Folkestone and down the road that, after the war, was renamed the Road of Remembrance as a national memorial to the sacrifices made by those men—a walk down which many people could go, retracing their steps. There are elements of our heritage, particularly as regards the first world war, that have been lost and forgotten and anything that we can do to use the centenary to reconnect people with those stories and the sacrifices that so many millions of people made during that war would be excellent.

Will the Minister consider what support the Government could give? It need not necessarily be financial support, but could be support in co-ordinating a national day of remembrance to mark the centenary, perhaps with a national programme of events. They could work with the major galleries and museums and the regimental museums, particularly at sites with a strong interest, and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes) has said, work in support of the memorials themselves. That would be a particularly fitting memorial.

I should also like to know whether the Government will consider marking a national day of remembrance, potentially in the form of a bank holiday or a part-bank holiday on the day of the centenary of the outbreak of the war. Might they consider having a permanent national bank holiday of remembrance, perhaps on Armistice day or a day of the week near to it, as other countries do? Australia and New Zealand have Anzac day as a national memorial day, and there are national memorial days in other countries, such as the United States. Perhaps it is time for us to consider making such a move, and the centenary of the first world war would be a fitting time to introduce such a national holiday or day of remembrance. If it could not be an additional holiday, perhaps there could be discussions about it replacing another bank holiday, as it might be a more fitting to have a bank holiday on that day.

So, although Adjournment debates involve closing the proceedings of the House, my intention was to start a debate among our colleagues and people around the country who have a great interest in the historical and community significance of the first world war about how we in the country and in the House should lead the country in marking that centenary.