First World War: Commemorations

Lord Gardiner of Kimble Excerpts

Wednesday 26th November 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble (Con)]

My Lords, I, too, express my gratitude to my noble friend for securing this debate; indeed, I thank all your Lordships. This has been a most moving debate. The Government are commemorating this historic centenary with a rich and varied programme of national ceremonial events, education and learning opportunities and community-based projects. It is clear that, even at this early stage of the four-year centenary period, the nation has taken these commemorations to its heart and people are connecting with them in a deeply personal way.

Properly recognising the extraordinary output of musicians, artists, poets and writers to which the war gave rise is an integral part of these commemorations. It ranges from the poems of Rupert Brooke and Charlotte Mew to the memoirs of Robert Graves—indeed, the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, mentioned Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth. It ranges from the artistic brilliance of Paul Nash and Stanley Spencer to the musical inspiration of Ivor Gurney and the Scottish composer Cecil Coles, and they—noble Lords have recorded many more—are being commemorated.

My noble friend Lord Lexden mentioned Ireland and the artists Orpen and Lavery, so well represented at the Imperial War Museum. It was extremely encouraging and absolutely right that a representative from the Republic of Ireland was at the Cenotaph service this year. Culture can touch people as meaningfully and as poignantly as our services of remembrance. You have only to look at the millions of people whose imagination was so powerfully captured by the poppies at the Tower of London.

It is for this very reason that the Government established the 14-18 NOW programme of artistic commissions for the centenary. Contemporary artists are being inspired to participate, in part because they know how potent the work of their predecessors has been. The success of the 14-18 NOW programme this year demonstrates the public’s strong desire to participate in the centenary in a number of different ways. A thousand public buildings and nearly 17 million people in every part of the United Kingdom, many of them in their own homes, darkened their lights between 10 pm and 11 pm on 4 August as part of the national Lights Out programme. Well over 21,000 people wrote a letter to the statue of the unknown soldier at Paddington station. The noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, mentioned all that is going on in Yorkshire. A million people in Liverpool saw “Memories of Giants”, commemorating the Liverpool Pals battalions through giant puppets. My noble friend Lord Thomas of Gresford spoke of the Battle of Murmansk, and the production by the National Theatre of Wales recalling the lead up to that battle. Countless people were enthused by dazzle ships in London and Liverpool.

There will be creative programmes in 2016 and 2018 which will seek to move and engage even bigger audiences. I shall very much take back all four points made by my noble friend Lord Shipley. I know that work is being done to look into archives for material to commemorate the Battle of the Somme. It was very helpful to receive my noble friend’s points. The Government are delighted that two parts of the poppies at the Tower, the weeping window and the wave, will be presented at a number of locations throughout the country as part of those programmes.

The First World War was the first conflict to spawn a wealth of artistic output from those who fought on its battlefields. The Somme alone saw more writers take part than any other battle in history—Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves, JRR Tolkien and Edmund Blunden, to name but a few. Some were killed in action, bright lights of their generation, including Wilfred Owen, who wrote the powerful poem read by the noble Lord, Lord Jones, the composer George Butterworth, a Somme casualty mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley of Knighton, and Robert Sterling, whom my noble friend Lord Jopling mentioned. Those creative promises would never be fulfilled.