Remembrance, UK Armed Forces and Society

Diana Johnson Excerpts

Wednesday 11th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate, and a particular pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis).

I represent a seat in the city of Hull, which has a strong, proud and long association with our armed forces. We were also among the hardest hit during the blitz. But today I want to speak as a commissioner of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. I am very pleased indeed that the Minister, in his opening remarks, talked about the commission, which commemorates 1.7 million Commonwealth servicemen and women from the United Kingdom and all over the Commonwealth who died during the two world wars.

As hon. Members will know, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission was founded as the Imperial War Graves Commission by royal charter on 21 May 1917, and was renamed the Commonwealth War Graves Commission in March 1960. In March this year, the Duke of Kent celebrated 50 years of unstinting service as the commission’s president. I also pay tribute to our last director general, Victoria Wallace, who left the commission in the summer.

The commission cares for the graves and memorials at 23,000 locations in more than 150 countries and territories—on every continent except Antarctica. The commission also commemorates more than 68,000 civilians who died during the second world war, by maintaining and restoring sites such as the Tower Hill memorial. Funded by six partner Governments—the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and India—the Commonwealth War Graves Commission is the largest gardening organisation in the world, with a total workforce of 1,300. The vast majority—more than 850—are gardeners, who between them look after the equivalent of almost 1,000 football pitches.

Our war dead deserve the highest standards, and hon. Members will know the quality of the Portland stone graves and the monuments that the commission oversees, as well as the beautifully tended cemeteries, such as the largest commission cemetery in the world at Tyne Cot in Belgium, with almost 12,000 graves, 8,300 of which are classed as “unknown”. I encourage all hon. Members, in their own constituencies and when travelling around the country or the world, to take the opportunity to visit commission sites. Encouraging the public to visit these graves also supplements the efforts of the excellent commission staff and the trained volunteers from the commission’s Eyes On, Hands On project, helping to report on and countering the effects of weather, wear and tear and, sadly, sometimes vandalism.

One restoration project I want to mention is at Runnymede. It is the Air Forces memorial, where the commission’s new charitable arm, the Commonwealth War Graves Foundation, marked International Women’s Day by launching a new interactive way to explore the story of the remarkable Noor Inayat Khan, a British woman spy whose code name was “Madeleine”. She was the first female wireless operator to be sent to occupied France in the second world war to aid the French resistance.

The commission also maintains an extensive and accessible archive of all the Commonwealth war dead on its website, and in recent years the commission has opened a new award-winning visitor centre as its French HQ near Arras. However, for this 11 November—an Armistice Day like no other, as many have said—the commission is urging the public to join with it in paying tribute to the 1.7 million Commonwealth war dead through a unique act of remembrance. We encourage everyone to take a moment at 7 pm tonight to step outside, look at the stars and remember the fallen. In a few key locations, such as Plymouth, Cardiff and Edinburgh, searchlights will beam light into the night sky.

I want to salute the work of many other organisations, including the Royal British Legion and Help for Heroes, in remembering our war dead and supporting veterans from many conflicts. Can I take a moment to express eternal gratitude to the veterans of all our allies across the Commonwealth and beyond, who ensured that we did not stand alone for long, particularly in 1940? They sacrificed so much, as together we liberated Europe and the world from what Prime Minister Churchill described as sinking

“into the abyss of a new dark age”.—[Official Report, 18 June 1940; Vol. 362, c. 60.]

The United States, too, was shoulder to shoulder with us on those Normandy beaches and through the decades since—the years of the cold war and the more recent challenges of terrorism, especially since 9/11—and leading by the “power of our example”, as President-elect Biden said just this week.

To conclude, remembrance is both deeply embedded in our national consciousness and personal to all of us who had parents or grandparents in the greatest generation. We remember those who did not come back. We also remember those who did come back and helped to win the peace. I remember my dad, Eric Johnson, who joined the Navy, and my mum, Ruth, who worked in a munitions factory during world war two. In my experience, they rarely talked about what they did and what they went through as young men and women, and in enjoying peace, freedom and progress, we will always owe them everything.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

After the next speaker, the limit will be reduced to five minutes, but with six minutes, I call Colonel Bob Stewart.