First World War Commemoration

Eric Ollerenshaw Excerpts

Thursday 7th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Eric Ollerenshaw (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn). For once, I agree with him, given what he says about commemoration. I add my congratulations to the Minister who, as the shadow Minister said, has shown such dedication in getting us to this stage. He has dealt with many sensitivities, and we are genuinely grateful for his work.

We are commemorating something that is, in a sense, still alive. As the hon. Member for Islington North made clear, for the middle east, the Sykes-Picot agreement and the Balfour declaration are still live issues. The issues of the war became more personal for me four years ago when, along with my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood), I visited Bosnia and Herzegovina to work with Bosniac refugees. I recall being sat down in the biggest mosque in Sarajevo to meet the grand mufti, the head of the Muslim faith in Bosnia and Herzegovina. I remember him saying in really good English, “The last time this country was run properly was under the Habsburg monarchy, and we still call this mosque the Emperor mosque because the Emperor Franz Joseph restored it.” We should think about what has happened in Bosnia and Herzegovina since that time, which suggests that there is an element of truth in that. We are officially to start our national commemorations on 4 August, but we should not forget 28 June 1914, when the Archduke was shot, and what happened subsequently. We still have responsibility to mend those terrible events that happened in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

As someone who was a history teacher, I was a little perturbed by the Minister’s comment about how few people knew much about the first world war and who fought it. Given that I taught for 28 years, I hope that none of those people were in my classes. If the Minister has names, I would like to see them.

Much of the first world war is still with us, so that must be a key aspect of understanding and education. As my hon. Friends the Members for Wolverhampton South West (Paul Uppal) and for Reading West (Alok Sharma) pointed out, imperial troops made an unbelievable contribution to the war. There is a Sikh memorial in Belgium. The Indian memorial at Neuve Chapelle commemorates 4,742 Indian troops of no known grave. I saw Jewish graves at Lijssenthoek military cemetery, and I have seen Muslim graves organised in line with Mecca. I have seen a grave for seven people from a Chinese labour battalion who died in the first world war.

Given the diversity of people who live in Britain, we have an opportunity. As a teacher in Tottenham in 1972, I faced the question of how to teach the first world war to classes of pupils from different religious backgrounds and ethnicities. Of course, such teaching could be done, because a huge number of the grandfathers of such pupils would have been there. It has been calculated that about 1.2 million non-white soldiers fought across the first world war theatre. We therefore have an opportunity to use these commemorations to bring people together in a practical way, as people realise that their family histories of the war might not be much different from those of families who live next door.

I pay tribute to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission for all the work it has done. Incredibly, I was able to discover my great uncle, William Ollerenshaw of the Lancashire Fusiliers, who died on 27 June 1916. I was also impressed by the commission’s recent work on the “In From The Cold” project. It has sent me a chart showing that, in Lancaster and Fleetwood alone, there are 161 war graves scattered across different churchyards. For instance, two soldiers are buried in Glasson churchyard, three in Pilling churchyard, and 38 in Fleetwood cemetery, and they will be remembered. I am extremely grateful for all that detailed work, of which the commission should be proud.

There is still a memorial village in Lancaster and Fleetwood, and Fleetwood has a memorial park, which has just received money so that it can be maintained and brought back into use. That will not be forgotten in the constituency.

I am grateful for the debate, but I am particularly grateful for the hard work done by the Minister over a number of years. I hope that he is proud of where he has got to as a result.