Armistice Day: Centenary

Lord Faulkner of Worcester Excerpts

Monday 5th November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester (Lab)]

My Lords, we are now almost at the end of this commemorative journey. I start by saying how proud I have been to serve on the Government’s World War I advisory board, along with other speakers in this debate. At meeting after meeting, I have been impressed by the diversity and dignity of the events that have been organised in all parts of the United Kingdom, in Ireland, and in France and Belgium. Others have spoken of the brilliance of the DCMS team, and I pay particular tribute to David Thompson and Jennifer Shaw for keeping the show on the road so brilliantly.

In preparing for today, I looked back at what was said in your Lordships’ House in June 2014, on the eve of the centenary of the start of the conflict. I commented in that debate that a great deal of preparation had been put in place and hoped that it would capture the imagination of as many people as possible. I also, perhaps slightly prematurely, paid tribute to the work of Dr Andrew Murrison MP, the Prime Minister’s special representative for the centenary commemoration, and I am delighted to be able to do so again, four years on, as have other speakers in this debate. Since the summer of 2011, there have been no fewer than seven Secretaries of State at the head of DCMS but, fortunately, there has been only one Dr Murrison. It is greatly to his credit that the tone and content of the commemoration programme has been correctly nuanced. It would have been so easy to get this wrong, but that has not happened. The theme of commemoration not celebration is right, as is the determination to combine the traditional act of remembrance with new initiatives to engage as much of the population as possible, especially young people. In such a fractured and divided world, it is great that the commemoration programme has succeeded in bringing us together—members of all races and ethnic groups, young and old particularly.

My involvement in the commemoration came about almost by accident. Towards the end of 2001, when I was still a relatively new Member here, I received a letter from a Belgian senator who warned me that the Flanders Government planned to extend the A19 motorway across Pilckem Ridge, the scene of some of the fiercest fighting in the Ypres Salient—a road which would have cut the battlefield in two. I was sufficiently intrigued by this to pay a visit to Pilckem Ridge during that Christmas Recess. I found that it remained largely untouched by development.

Pre-1915 photographs show the same farm buildings and the same field layout. The landscape has acquired more than a dozen Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemeteries, places of peace and tranquillity, visited by more than 150,000 people from the United Kingdom every year. It was where John McCrae, sitting in the back of a field ambulance close to what became the Essex Farm Cemetery, wrote “In Flanders Fields”, quoted by my noble friend Lady Crawley so movingly earlier. Below the fields of Pilckem Ridge, outside the cemetery, lie the remains of countless soldiers—perhaps as many as 200,000. The undeveloped farming area provides a peaceful last resting place for them, although fresh remains are found every time the fields are ploughed.

When I returned to the UK, I tabled an Oral Question in this House which led to many Members saying that they wanted to support the campaign to stop the motorway and preserve the Pilckem Ridge battlefield. As a result, we established the All-Party Parliamentary War Heritage Group, which continues to this day, with the remit of promoting and supporting the protection, conservation and interpretation of war graves, war memorials and battlefield sites. Two distinguished academics—Peter Barton and Professor Peter Doyle—volunteered to become involved having heard about my visit to Ypres, and Professor Doyle is still the group’s secretary. I continue to serve as co-chair, alongside Sir Jeffrey Donaldson MP, a fellow member of the Government’s World War I advisory board.

As a group, we engaged with the Flanders Government and, to their great credit, they abandoned the plans for the motorway extension. Now, each year, they organise impressive commemoration events around 11 November. This year, for example, they are having as their 15th “Flanders Remembers” event a concert in St Paul’s Cathedral on 8 November.

So much has been going on in the past four years that it is impossible in a single speech to cover more than a few examples. I hope, therefore, that the House will allow me to concentrate on just two areas where I have some personal involvement.

The first is the Worcestershire World War 100 programme. This is a partnership led by the Worcestershire Archive and Archaeology Service under the inspired leadership of Dr Adrian Gregson, deputy leader of Worcester City Council, and directed from The Hive, Europe’s first joint university and public library. The 2011 to 2019 programme includes council and independent museums, archives, the university, the cathedral, regimental associations, Army museums, trusts, local libraries, charities, the Western Front Association, the Royal British Legion and armed services’ benevolent funds. The project cost was £674,000, which attracted a Heritage Lottery Fund grant of £353,000.

Examples of what has been done include a people’s collection—material loaned or deposited and collected by local people in towns all over the county. The World War I bell tent has had 40 outings at shows, weekend events, schools, libraries and community groups—including in urban and rural schools in more deprived areas and with local ethnic communities—with re-enactors and other activities including poetry and poppy making. There have been displays marking specific centenary events involving Worcestershire regiments—such as the battles of Gheluvelt, Gallipoli, Qatia, Passchendaele and the spring offensive—plus longer-term exhibitions on the theme of “Back in Blighty” and the paintings of Benjamin Williams Leader.

The programme has organised heritage trails and exhibitions on the lives of Worcestershire’s very own Vesta Tilley and Studdert Kennedy—Woodbine Willie—as well as a war memorials bike ride. The “Fields of Battle: Lands of Peace” outdoor photographic exhibition by Mike Shiel, which many of your Lordships may have seen elsewhere, has been seen by 400,000 people. The South Eastern and Chatham Railway carriage which brought back the bodies of Edith Cavell and the unknown warrior came to the Severn Valley Railway on loan this summer. I should declare an interest as president of the Heritage Railway Association. Worcester will play its part in the Victoria Cross paving stone programme and is organising a military parade of the Mercian Regiment in honour of Fred Dancox VC.

The story is the same the length and breadth of the country. There has scarcely been a town or village which has not held its own commemoration. In my last few seconds, I pay a special tribute to the International Guild of Battlefield Guides; I have the honour to be its patron. It advises me that 1,800 schools have taken part in the battlefield tours programme and 6,500 teachers and students have been on a battlefield tour, many guided by guild members. They bring the former battlefields to life for the teachers and students. Guild guides have also played a key role in special school tours which commemorated a range of battles, including Loos, the Somme, Arras, Vimy Ridge, third Ypres and the spring offensive. The international programme was part of the Amiens 100 commemorations.

The evidence across the battlefield guiding industry is that bookings for 2019 are higher this year than was evident 12 months ago. That is interesting, and flies in the face of the accepted wisdom that the end of the centenary would mean a huge fall in battlefield tourism, and perhaps in remembrance. That is not so, and numbers are higher due to a wider percentage of the UK population being aware of the Western Front battlefields as a result of the centenary and the successful way in which it is being commemorated. That is a really positive legacy.