Armistice Day: Centenary

Lord Clark of Windermere Excerpts

Monday 5th November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Clark of Windermere (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as Member of this House elected to the Joint Committee on commemorating World War 1.

On 3 March five years ago, I had the privilege of leading a debate on how we in this House felt that the commemoration should go. I must say at the outset that I am full of admiration for the way in which the Government have handled the issue. It could have been tricky; there could have been jingoism or celebration. We do not think of those things now, but five years ago it was a concern for all of us—so I gladly congratulate the Government on the way they have handled this. To follow these sentiments, we must work out a way of continuing to pursue some of the problems that have been outlined in the last five years.

I will also single out and pay particular tribute to Dr Andrew Murrison MP, the Prime Minister’s special representative on the centenary of World War I. He has worked amazingly hard. He has been inclusive, brought people in and achieved a consensus. We all owe him a great deal for his efforts. He is in the House today and I thank him for all the work he has done.

Over the past few years, I have certainly learned a great deal about World War I. I thought I knew a bit —but, clearly, I missed many of the critical things. I am very proud to wear the khadi poppy today, because I had not fully appreciated that lesson in 2013. I appreciate it now and we owe a deep debt of gratitude to those brave souls from India who came in those days and fought.

One thing I have learned is that it/this is quite amazing when we look at history—even crudely and not in a sophisticated way. We see the recruits and volunteers from Australia, New Zealand and Canada who flocked to come and fight for the old country—the mother country. Then you stop and think: most of these people—these Australians, New Zealanders and Canadians—had not been born in Australia, New Zealand or Canada. They had been born in Britain and left this country because they were fed up with the social class system, which they felt held them back. In 1914, the federal Government and every single state government in Australia was run by the Labour Party. I make that not as a party point but to substantiate my point that these were the rebels. But when the call came to fight for the mother country, they flocked to come—and if it had not been mishandled by the federal Labour Government, they might even have got conscription through. But they were not able to do so. I thought it was a very significant point: why the heck should they come back and fight for us when they felt as they did? But they did.

We can see the success of the past four years and all the work by the various bodies that have assisted the Government. We think of the Heritage Lottery Fund, which invested almost £100 million in over 2,000 initiatives, most of them at local level, to ensure that we discovered more history—more facts about how World War I affected people at local level. We look at the British Legion and the wonderful work it has done over the century since it was formed, and especially over the past four years. I look at how supportive the National Archives at Kew have been; I also look at local archives, which are under great financial pressure, as was alluded to from the Liberal Benches earlier today. It has been a great strain on those archivists to try to satisfy the demands of people trying to find out about what happened to their ancestors in World War I. I pay tribute to the teachers who have done so much work, not only in taking pupils across to see the battlefields under the Government’s adventurous scheme, which I fully support. They have done a wonderful job, but it has taken a lot of time, as it has with local archives.

There are historical lessons that perhaps we ought to think about. A number of people, including the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, have quite rightly made the point that in a sense this is unfinished business. Looking at the global picture, that is absolutely right—but we could act now on more immediate issues, which would perhaps help us in learning about the past and preparing for the future. We are beginning to appreciate how important freedom of information is; it is an intrinsic part of our democracy. I fully understand that you cannot be completely open when you are waging war, but I wonder whether the obsessive secrecy that still pervades a lot of activity in World War I, and even more so in World War II, stops us from learning what went on.

I mentioned schoolchildren, and much of the disappointment of schoolchildren has come when they have tried to look back at the records of their ancestors. Bearing in mind that the overwhelming majority of their ancestors were ordinary squaddies, ordinary fighting non-commissioned men, almost all the records affecting those individuals were destroyed during World War II. They were bombed because they had not been put in a safe place. The records of all the officers are safe, but not of the ordinary squaddies. So there are a lot of questions we have to look at, which makes things very difficult.

I am not a pacifist, but I have done a lot of work with people who were conscientious objectors. I have seen a plus and a minus in that. I have to give credit to the establishment in Britain, especially the parliamentary establishment, which recognised that there were good conscientious reasons why certain people were not prepared to fight. We made arrangements so those people could be excused—whereas in many other countries there was no such finesse. If they disagreed, they were sent to the front and shot. We were much more civilised—but only barely, because anybody who was judged to be objecting but not conscientiously suffered greatly.

I interviewed people like Willie Brooke, in the Huddersfield area at the time. He was a conscientious objector. He was an active member of the Independent Labour Party and a practising and active member of the Baptist Church—and he was not prepared to fight. He went all the way. Eventually he was sentenced to two years’ hard labour, much of it in solitary confinement, in Wormwood Scrubs. It was better than being shot—but, at times, I bet he had his doubts.

We must give credit where credit is due. As Dr Murrison said the other day, we are the envy of many other countries. But it is not only that people are full of envy for us: as I said to him, they are full of admiration for us. But we must not forget the lessons and must try to move forward with much more openness and information available.