War Graves Week

Diana Johnson Excerpts

Tuesday 14th May 2024 Commons Chamber

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

I pay tribute to the Chair of the Defence Committee, the right hon. Member for Horsham (Sir Jeremy Quin), for the speech that he has just made. I agree with every word he said, and I thought he put it incredibly eloquently. I thank the Government for finding time for this debate, and I thank the Defence Secretary, who is obviously a very busy man, for opening the debate this afternoon.

I have the enormous privilege of representing Parliament on the commission, along with the right hon. Member for Ludlow (Philip Dunne), whom I commend him for his excellent speech. I note that earlier we had in the Chamber one of the previous representatives on the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, my right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones), although he is not in his place at the moment. I know that he was incredibly well respected and still plays an important role on the Commonwealth War Graves Foundation, which is the charitable arm of the commission.

I am very keen to talk about the outstanding work that the commission does and the dedicated people around the world who work, on our behalf, on commemoration every day. As we know, this debate is all the more timely as we approach the 80th anniversary of the D-day landings, and with the commission’s Legacy of Liberation 80 campaign. We have already heard that the commission was established by royal charter in 1917. It is a global organisation caring for war graves and memorials at 23,000 locations in 153 countries and territories, including some of the most war-torn areas of the world—Gaza at the moment, unfortunately, as well as Libya, Somalia and many other places.

The Defence Secretary is the chair of the commission, and among the other commissioners are the high commissioners from Canada, Australia, India, New Zealand and South Africa. They all help to oversee and, importantly, fund the organisation, and I think everyone is grateful for the funding settlement agreed in recent months by all the member Governments. I would also like to pay tribute to our current vice-chair, Peter Hudson, to the director general, Claire Horton, and to the president of the commission, Her Royal Highness the Princess Royal.

The commission commemorates almost 1.7 million individuals, ensuring that Commonwealth men and women who died during the two world wars are commemorated in a manner befitting all that they gave to secure our freedom and our very survival. Of course, this history is personal to all of us who had family serving in these campaigns. I think back to my dad, Eric Johnson, who served in world war two in the Royal Navy on HMS Begum; my father-in-law, Victor Morton, who served on HMS Ramillies as it shelled enemy positions at 5.30 am on D-day to help make the landings possible; my mother, Ruth Johnson, who worked in a munitions factory in Cheshire; and my mother-in-law, Joyce Morton, who served in the WAAF at Bentley Priory in Stanmore—or, as it was better known at that time, Fighter Command. Thankfully, they all survived the second world war, but so many did not, and that is why it is so important for their families that we commemorate all those who lost their lives.

I represent a Hull constituency in East Yorkshire, an area that historically has made a great contribution to our armed forces, as I am reminded every time I walk along those ranks of Portland stone graves and see so many from the Yorkshire regiments. Of course, Hull’s civilian population was also on the frontline in the total war of world war two. Commemoration is important to me, to my constituents and, of course, to the nation. When I visited the Runnymede Air Forces Memorial, I was really moved to see the name of Hull’s own Amy Johnson. First Officer Amy Johnson was, as we all know, the first woman pilot to fly alone from Britain to Australia. She went missing in 1941 when flying on a mission over the Thames estuary for the Air Transport Auxiliary. Her body was never found, but her name is on that memorial at Runnymede.

I have been to many of the sites around the UK and Europe over the years, but I want to say a few words about a visit that I paid just last week while on a trip to Singapore with the Home Affairs Committee. In the heat of the afternoon, along with other MPs on the delegation I visited the Kranji war cemetery, where the commission’s regional manager, Dennis Shim, and his team do exemplary work. We laid a wreath and remembered the fallen. I want to pay tribute to Dennis and his team because during covid there were very strict regulations about access to the cemetery and it was unfortunately in quite a state when the gardeners were allowed back in to do their work. I have to say that it looked absolutely wonderful last week. It was a real tribute to the hard work of the gardeners and the commission.

We know that 4,461 Commonwealth casualties of the second world war are buried at Kranji, plus some from world war one, and the Singapore memorial at the site bears the names of 24,000 Commonwealth casualties who have no known grave. This of course includes a number of the prisoners of war involved in the construction of the notorious Burma-Thailand railway, known as the death railway. While our attention will be on Normandy this June, those who were involved in the far east campaign should of course be in our thoughts too. Kranji is just one example of the work of the commission, which has a global estate run by a multinational and multilingual workforce of about 1,300, the vast majority of whom are gardeners and stonemasons. They are incredibly skilled men and women. The gardeners I met in Kranji last week came from India and Bangladesh.

Since the commission’s establishment, we have constructed 2,500 war cemeteries and plots, erected headstones over graves and, where the remains are missing, inscribed the names of the dead on permanent memorials. More than 1 million burials are now commemorated at military and civil sites around the world, from Canada, Belgium and France to Ukraine, Georgia and Papua New Guinea. The workforce looks after these sites with dedication, and it is therefore only fitting that we look after the workforce with similar care. I was very relieved to hear of the safe evacuation to Egypt of the team working in Gaza, for which I again thank the Defence Secretary. Of course, many other commission sites face dangers from current conflicts around the world, and we need to have the commission’s staff in our mind and prayers.

The commission’s work has developed in recent years, as we focus on amending records, searching for missing names, building new memorials and addressing historical inequalities and injustices in commemoration. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard), I pay tribute to the work of my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) and Professor Michèle Barrett, who brought the commission’s attention to some of the ways in which we have not commemorated as we should have done. A key principle, as the Chair of the Defence Committee said, is that all who fell must be remembered equally.

When we ask the public about the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, they will of course talk about the cemeteries in northern France, Belgium or Italy, but we have an important job to do of commemorating those who fought but have not yet been properly acknowledged. As part of our non-commemorations work, we have, for example, recently begun construction of a memorial in Cape Town to honour some 1,700 black South Africans who fell while serving in Africa in world war one, and who have until now not been commemorated. Other parts of our non-commemorations work focuses on west Africa, Kenya, Egypt and India.

We also have a duty to ensure that our sites remain well visited, so that remembrance of the war dead continues, by creating information centres, volunteering opportunities and education programmes designed to engage and educate generations to come. I saw today that the Prime Minister handed the torch of liberation to veteran Peter Kent. The torch will now travel around the United Kingdom before travelling on to Normandy in time for the D-day events in France.

The commission’s Legacy of Liberation campaign presents a momentous opportunity to commemorate the 80th anniversary of pivotal world war two events, with a special emphasis on D-day and the momentous events that laid the foundations for a free Europe. The commission aims to create a renewed emphasis on the act of commemoration and the important work of bridging the past and present, ensuring that the stories of those who fell are passed on to younger generations. The public can also access interactive tours online of the commission’s key cemeteries, featuring stories from those in the battles, details of commission events and much more.

This debate takes place in War Graves Week, an annual event in May to draw attention to the commission’s work. The commission is organising 277 events and tours in over 160 locations across 15 countries worldwide, and I hope that Members will get involved in those in their constituency. Just like the work of the Royal British Legion and Help for Heroes, the commission’s work continues all year round, every year. That is why I encourage Members across the House, and of course the new Members sitting on these Benches within the next six months, to take an interest in the upkeep and the incredible history of the war graves in their constituency. They will find so many valuable lessons for the future, and much to be proud of.