First World War Commemoration

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Thursday 7th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Dr Murrison]

I suspect that that is a matter for Mr Speaker rather than for me, but I suspect that Mr Speaker will have noted the contribution of the hon. Gentleman. I know that the House itself is working hard to determine what it will do to mark the centenary of the great war and no doubt the hon. Gentleman will be able to reinforce his point with the appropriate authority.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

I was pleased to hear the Minister say that the Government will not dictate how we should commemorate the tragedy of the first world war. I hope that, in the promotion of serious discussion on the subject, he will recall the soldiers who died in all theatres of conflict, be they German, Russian, French or British. I also hope that he will recall the significant degree of opposition to the war on both sides, in Germany and in Britain. That, too, is part of our shared history and should be commemorated and discussed.

[Dr Murrison]

It is rare for me to agree with the hon. Gentleman, but I agree with him on that point. I note that the Heritage Lottery Fund, which has been at the centre of all this through providing a great deal of the underpinning finance, has recognised that and been making grants accordingly. I hope that the hon. Gentleman approves of that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

This Sunday, like many colleagues, I shall be at my borough’s annual presentation of wreaths at the war memorial. Our memorial is a circle on Islington green. It was designed to show how people can come together after conflict, not in a spirit of victory but through a desire for no more war to take place. Later that day, we will lay wreaths at the site of the casualty department of the former Royal Northern hospital. To commemorate the thousands of local people who lost their lives in world war one, there was a public collection that resulted in the building of an accident and emergency department there, on the basis of a need for something tangible that people could live from, rather than die from. It is a very appropriate memorial.

When we look at the war memorials—and when we remember the Pals regiments that colleagues have mentioned—we see dozens of names from the same family. We see how one generation was completely wiped out, with many brothers dying alongside each other. I recall looking at a huge war memorial in Sospel in southern France. It commemorated the people of that town, and it was clear that many members of the same families had died in the Franco-Prussian war, the first world war and the second world war. That series of wars wiped out generations.

As a child growing up in a small village in Wiltshire, I recall talking to old men who breathed with enormous difficulty. They told me that they had suffered “the gas” in the first world war. We have to remember those who suffered and those who died. We remember them with poetry and with hope. Many brilliant poems have been written about the first world war, as well as brilliant pieces of music such as Ralph Vaughan Williams’s “The Lark Ascending”, which he dreamed up in the trenches. In the lull between the fighting, he could see the larks above the fields; their song was drowned out as the guns started up again. Nigel Kennedy played it brilliantly at the last night of the Proms earlier this year.

In commemorating all those who died, we must remember that there were also many who opposed the war, as my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly (Wayne David) pointed out. There were massive anti-war meetings in Finsbury Park in my constituency well into the first world war. The international women’s conference against the war and in favour of peace took place in The Hague in 1915. It obviously did not stop the war, but it did influence President Woodrow Wilson and the 14 points that he later produced.

The first world war was a culmination of the rivalry between nations and empires; it was a commercial war in many ways. It was envisaged in J. A. Hobson’s brilliant work on imperialism in 1902, in which he predicted that there would be a war between the European nations because the tension and the arms expenditure were so great. There are serious lessons to be learned from that.

The map of the middle east was drawn as a result of the first world war. The Sykes-Picot agreement, which was revealed during the war, after the Russian revolution, showed the intention of Britain and France to carve up the middle east for themselves. The League of Nations was unsuccessful, but it represented an attempt at the end of the first world war to work out an international order that would prevent the same level of carnage from befalling another generation. In many ways, the League of Nations was doomed before it even started, because of the behaviour of the powers at the negotiations that resulted in the treaty of Versailles. Instead of bringing about a peace, those powers sought to impose a victors’ justice so, for example, the people of New Guinea stopped being subjects of the German empire and became a mandated people under the power of Australia, while the people of the middle east came to live under mandated territories of Britain and France. Many of the problems that the world saw later arose from the first world war.

During the years of discussion about the war, let us try to ensure that, in memory of them, we talk about those who opposed it and those who died in it. Above all, we should bring up our children to try to look for a world of peace—a world where we can settle grievances and differences, rather than feeding an arms race all around the world that can lead only to another war, such as the tragedies of the Congo, Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. Let us try to look to a world of peace and hope, not another war.