Centenary of the Battle of the Somme

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Wednesday 29th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the centenary of the Battle of the Somme.

The motion was tabled in my name and that of the hon. Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis).

On 12 August 1916, a young German officer called Friedrich Steinbrecher wrote home, saying:

“Somme. The whole history of the world cannot contain a more ghastly word.”

Somme is seared into the national consciousness like no other battle before or since.

On Friday, in Manchester, at Thiepval, in London and across the country, we will unite to mark the first day of the centenary of the Somme. Soldiers are often glorious, but war never is—and anyone saying otherwise is a complete fool. War is sheer, bloody reeking hell on earth, and we politicians must do everything in our power to avoid it. More than 1 million men lost their lives during the 141 days of the Somme offensive, many of them reduced to unrecognisable scraps of flesh and bits of gristle. Most, of course, survived but so many were left with physical and mental scars that they would take with them to the grave.

For the record, I should declare an interest: since November 2011, I have been the Prime Minister’s special representative for the commemoration of the centenary of the Great War and thus involved with the national arrangements that I suspect my right hon. Friend the Minister will shortly discuss. All I will say, sparing his departmental blushes, is that his officials and the associated arm’s-length bodies have done a truly fantastic job, and continue to attract admiration from our international partners. I would also like to pay particular tribute to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, the Royal British Legion and the Imperial War Museum, which have all worked tirelessly, and to the BBC whose coverage has been in the very best traditions of public service broadcasting.

I think we have had a pretty divisive few weeks. Now is the time for unity, as we come together to remember one of the bloodiest battles in our history—a battle that touched everyone from Lerwick to Londonderry to Land’s End. In all our communities, it still casts a long shadow. If a battle divides, its centenary has the power to unite. That was vividly shown last month when we marked the centenary of the Battle of Jutland, shoulder to shoulder with Germany in the grand panorama of Scapa Flow and on the Jutland Bank.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

The Somme was obviously the major battle of the first world war, but we should not forget all the other battles of that war, in which so many men lost their lives or were badly maimed. My grandfather, for example, was badly wounded at the battle of Loos.

[Dr Murrison]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, and I suspect he will have closely followed the programme over the past two years and will continue to monitor it closely over the next two years, leading up to armistice in 2018.

As I was gazing over Scapa Flow a few weeks ago, I wondered how many seamen in Jellicoe’s grand fleet, or in Scheer’s high seas fleet, would have guessed that their countrymen would be spending most of the ensuing 100 years as the closest of allies, united in the most powerful alliance that the world has ever seen. On Friday, we will be standing shoulder to shoulder with another friend and ally at a very special Anglo-French place, the Thiepval monument on the Somme, in the lee of which there are 300 French and 300 British graves. It is a special place; a haunting place. It was Lutyens’s great triumph—a monument to the missing, but more than that: an enduring monument to the unity, I think, of Europeans, and particularly our unity with our closest continental neighbours.

At this time of historic opportunity and risk, let us make the centenary’s legacy one of amity and concord in our European neighbourhood. Here at home, too, we are desperately in need of a coming-together moment. The Somme vigil on Thursday night, and the silence at 7.30 on Friday morning, will, I hope, facilitate such moments of quiet reflection.