Remembrance, UK Armed Forces and Society

Baroness Laing of Elderslie Excerpts

Wednesday 11th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[James Heappey]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman’s constituent on the longevity of her service and remark on what an amazing lifetime of commitment that is, with all the moments for her family, within her community and for her friends that she missed because she put her service of our country first. It is a quite extraordinary commitment, and I commend the hon. Gentleman for raising it in the House this afternoon.

Over the last few months, I have had the opportunity to see fast jet pilots serving in different corners of the European theatre, going out on missions where split-second decisions can be the difference between mission success and catastrophe. I visited helicopter crews in Mali operating in austere conditions, where it is dusty and dangerous and it is pretty hard to keep the Chinooks flying. I have seen air transport squadrons flying day after day and night after night to maintain the extraordinary efforts of our nation’s armed forces around the globe. I have seen troops operating in Estonia, Iraq and Afghanistan, and others on Salisbury plain preparing for a new deployment to Mali next month. I have seen training teams, big and small, working with our partners around the world.

The Royal Navy has had ships recently in the Barents sea, the Black sea, the eastern Mediterranean, the Caribbean, the Atlantic, the Gulf and the Indian ocean. Our sailors and Royal Marines right now are responding to the humanitarian disaster that has followed in the wake of recent hurricanes in the Caribbean. We are rebuilding our sovereign carrier strike capability, and yesterday, I had the enormous honour of seeing the awe-inspiring work of Her Majesty’s Submarine Service, who keep our continuous at-sea deterrent hidden from view—silent but utterly deadly, and non-stop for 51 years.

That would just be business as usual for Defence, but this year, there has been an extraordinary contribution in supporting the Government’s response to covid as well. As we emerge from the covid crisis, there is an expectation that instability will follow in its wake, so our armed forces can look forward to even more activity in even more uncertain parts of the world, reassuring our allies, deterring our adversaries, demonstrating our resolve to uphold a rules-based international system and destroying those who mean us harm when they have to.

There are also a vast number of people who have served in our nation’s armed forces and who we must now look after as veterans. I pay tribute to the Minister for Defence People and Veterans, my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Johnny Mercer), for all the work that he does in that regard. Our veterans community matters enormously. They are an important part of the moral component of fighting power. If you are serving in the armed forces now, your confidence to act decisively on behalf of the nation is motivated by how you see the nation supporting its veterans back at home at that time. You want to know that if you get hurt, or take a decision, the Government and the nation will stand behind you for the rest of your life, and that is a commitment that this Government are proud to make.

Finally, sacrifice. Last week I was in Egypt visiting HMS Albion, which was in Alexandria after a successful deployment to the eastern Mediterranean. While I was up on the north coast of Egypt, I went to the cemetery at El Alamein. Like all Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemeteries, it was immaculately maintained. It was vast, and all over it were grouped graves, which I understand is symptomatic of an armoured battle where entire tank crews or armoured personnel carrier crews died in one go. Very often their remains were almost impossible to separate, so they were buried with four or five headstones immediately adjacent to one another. That makes one pause and reflect on the horror of a battle of that intensity.

Then, as in so many other Commonwealth war graves cemeteries around the world, there were the unmarked graves of those who we will never know exactly who they were and who lie now underneath foreign soil to be remembered anonymously for all time. Then there were the Commonwealth graves, thousands of them, reminding us that this was an effort not just from all corners of the United Kingdom but from all corners of the Commonwealth. It was pleasing, therefore, to see that in Commonwealth war graves cemeteries around the world and in our embassies and high commissions on Sunday, there were moments of remembrance to reflect on the sacrifice of so many from other countries in the defence of our great nation.

This year, marking 75 years since the end of the second world war, has been a great opportunity for us to reflect not only on victory in Europe but on victory in Japan. That Pacific campaign is so often the one that is spoken about less, yet the acts of heroism and derring-do were no less important. Indeed, in many of the stories I have heard, the deprivation was far greater because of the environment in which the forces were operating. Since then, brave servicemen and women from the United Kingdom have given their lives in Korea, the Falklands, Northern Ireland, the Balkans, Sierra Leone, Iraq and Afghanistan. It is on those last two conflicts that I have my own personal reflections.

When you join up, you know there is a risk that the moment might come when you have to put yourself in a position where you might lose your life. When you stand there at Sandhurst, Dartmouth, Cranwell, Catterick or HMS Raleigh and the flag is there and the Queen is on the wall and the Bible is put in your hand, you are filled with confidence that you are on a career path that is worthy and great, but when you are behind a wall and the rounds are hitting the other side or an improvised explosive device has just gone off and you know that you have to stand up close with the enemy and do your duty, that is a moment when you realise a lot about yourself. It is also a moment, sadly, from which people do not always return, and their loss is something that I feel keenly every time I pause and reflect on my experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I know that for the entire veterans community there will be a face that is in their minds when the Last Post is blown and the two minutes’ silence is followed. In communities across the country, there will be people who are remembered because they were there one month and then, six months later when their friends and comrades returned, there were no longer there. They were just a name on a war memorial. Those names are lives cut down in their prime and as we pause, over Remembrance Weekend and on Armistice Day today, let us never forget that they turned up at a recruiting office and embarked on their military careers, believing that what they were going to do would make a difference for our country and protect our freedom. They knew in the back of their mind that perhaps they might be called upon to give their life, but they hoped and even expected that it would never be them. Hundreds of thousands have answered our nation’s call and given their lives in doing so. We will remember them.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Before I call the spokesman for the Opposition, I thank the Minister for his brevity in his opening speech. It will be obvious that there are over 50 colleagues trying to catch my eye, and that we have only three hours for this debate. I therefore have to start with a time limit on Back Bench speeches of six minutes. That will be reduced later in the debate, and people who are further down the list must recognise the reality that they are unlikely to be called, but I am happy to call John Healey.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.