Centenary of the Battle of the Somme

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Wednesday 29th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison) and my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) on securing this important debate on the centenary of one of the most tragic events in Europe’s history, and on their very fine and moving speeches. I also congratulate all hon. Members on their equally fine speeches. We have heard not just very moving words, but interesting speeches from people who know a lot about what happened in those terrible times during the first world war.

I wish to pay my personal tribute to those who fought and died on the Somme in the weeks that followed 1 July 100 years ago. Controversy has raged for decades about why such suffering of hundreds of thousands of men should have been first initiated and then tolerated, even as an act of war. The particular role of General, later Field Marshal, Haig, has been considered controversial, but perhaps that is a debate for another day. It is the men who died and were wounded on the Somme that must be and are uppermost in our thoughts today. Their incredible bravery and dreadful suffering are what we commemorate and are discussing. I hope I speak for all my party colleagues when I pay tribute to those men in this debate.

The Somme has come to symbolise the terrible nature of war at its most devastating and tragic. We must salute and remember all those who were killed and wounded on the Somme, and ensure that they are never forgotten. The first world war, and the Somme in particular, seem very close to me and are far from distant in my thoughts. I am older than the great majority of hon. Members in this House, and I have some personal associations with those events.

My maternal grandfather, Arthur Frost, was wounded early in the war, and could not return to the trenches. Instead—perhaps fortunately—he was employed as a chauffeur to a general, which is surely the reason he survived. My mother was born shortly after the war, and I would not be here today if my grandfather had not come through. I remember him telling me about his experiences in the war when I was seven and he was just 60—14 years younger than I am now. I, too, was lucky to survive the second world war. We lived in south London in Norwood in 1943, and my mother insisted that my brother and I were evacuated with her to my grandparents in Leicester, shortly before a V1 destroyed our house.

I have always been very conscious of war and its dangers and tragedies, but I have a particular association with the Somme. My wife Pat’s grandfather, Private Arthur Thomas Langley, died on the Somme, and my late father-in-law was raised by his mother and his aunt, whose fiancé had also been killed. I remember Nan and Aunty Sis, as they were known in the early 1960s—two dignified and kindly women who had both suffered tragedy in their lives but retained an amazing serenity. They, too, were a good deal younger than I am now. I knew several such women in those years, and there were hundreds of thousands of them, together with mothers, sisters, fathers, brothers and children.

I have brought with me the posthumous medals that were awarded to Private Langley and later posted to my wife’s Nan. We even have the registered envelope in which they were delivered nearly 100 years ago. My wife and I were the first members of her family to find out through the internet where Arthur was buried, and to make a journey to visit his grave. He lies in a war cemetery called Caterpillar Valley, alongside hundreds of his comrades. We took those medals with us and photographed them on his headstone as we paid our respects. We shall not forget him, nor the sight of the vast numbers of white headstones in one of many such cemeteries across the Somme. Each year we drive to see friends in Burgundy, crossing the Somme near Saint-Quentin, and we give more thought to those who died 100 years ago. The land around there is now calm, undulating and mostly grassy, and it is difficult to imagine the horror and slaughter that took place in those times.

I also remember the poems of Rupert Brooke, Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, which we read at school—some of that has been referred to today. Those men were there, and they put into moving and eloquent language their thoughts on that war, and the death and destruction that they saw, and that two of them were later to suffer themselves. Their words are perhaps more telling than anything we might say today—moving though many of today’s words have been—and they will live on.

We should also remember all those from other lands, about which much has been said today, who fought on the Somme on both sides. My constituency contains the largest Irish community in the eastern region of England, and, as we have heard, many thousands of Irish soldiers died on the Somme—indeed, last Saturday I was at the annual general meeting of the Luton Irish Forum, and mention was made of that. I also represent many communities from across the Commonwealth who suffered great losses in the war. It is astonishing to think that they came from all over the world to fight and die in what was essentially a European war, and we should not forget that. I have many thousands of constituents from south Asia. They know that their parents and grandparents were associated with and involved in those wars, and we remember and pay tribute to them.

It has been a privilege and an honour to make my first speech from the Dispatch Box in this most significant, honourable, and heartfelt debate.