Remembrance, UK Armed Forces and Society

John Lamont Excerpts

Wednesday 11th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[John Lamont (Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the moving and powerful speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Robbie Moore).

I live in the town of Coldstream on the banks of the River Tweed. It was there in 1650 that General Monck formed a regiment to march south and restore Charles II to the thrones of Scotland and England. When Monck died in 1670, his regiment took as its name the Coldstream Regiment of Foot Guards. Today it is the oldest continuously serving regiment in the British Army.

Members will be accustomed to seeing the Coldstream Guards in their red coats and bearskins at trooping the colour, but that image is misleading. They are a true fighting force. They captured New York city during the American war of independence, fought Napoleon in Egypt and Portugal and were in the Crimea. They fought on the western front in the first world war. In the second world war, they fought in France, the middle east and north Africa. They were sent to Malaya, Aden, Northern Ireland, the Gulf, Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq. Their history is the history of British warfare.

People in the Scottish Borders are proud of our link to the Coldstream Guards. It is when we discover a link to past that the pages of history come alive. We all have war memorials in our constituencies. The cenotaph at Jedburgh Abbey, the statue of victory in Wilton Lodge Park in Hawick and the stone cross towering above Ettrick Terrace in Selkirk are just three of the scores to be found across the Scottish Borders. They are landmarks that we have known since childhood. But it is when we go up to them and read the names inscribed on them that the real significance hits us—when we see two or even three men with the same surname, and imagine what the impact of that loss must have been on that family.

The people who erected these memorials were not commemorating historical events; they were honouring their sons and grandsons, brothers and fathers, friends and neighbours. They were making the memory of their sacrifices permanent landmarks. In today’s debate, and in services and events held around the country, we are playing our part in keeping the memory of those sacrifices alive.

The pandemic has undoubtedly disrupted our acts of remembrance. It is harder to come together as we usually do, but in time we will be able to come together again and to enjoy our lives as before. We will be able to see our friends and families, and enjoy going to the pub, to a restaurant, on holiday or to the cinema. We have all taken these freedoms for granted all our lives. They are freedoms that were won for us in battles against tyranny by young men whose names are inscribed on war memorials, and they are freedoms and pleasures that those young men were never able to know again, after they left their homes and families behind to go to war. When we are once again able to go out, live our lives and enjoy our freedoms, it will be as appropriate a time as any to pause for a moment and to say with feeling, “We will remember them.”