Lord Graham of Edmonton
Main Page: Lord Graham of Edmonton (Labour - Life peer)
Lord Graham of Edmonton (Lab)
My Lords, it is a privilege to take part in this debate. We are all very privileged to reflect on what the words mean. I have been humble and proud to say to myself, “Wasn’t it marvellous to be here to listen to people talking about their reflections and experiences?”.
My contribution goes something like this: 10 or 12 years ago we had a debate in the House of Lords in the Labour group. I was the Chief Whip and I said to my colleagues at the time, “I want you to be here next Tuesday about 8.30 when we are going to have an ambush. Keep out of sight. Come in when the Division Bell goes.”. A little chap at the back, called Charlie Leatherland, who was the instigator of Essex University, got to his feet and said, “Ted, you know I’ve got a bad leg. I can’t be here at half-past eight. Do you know where I got this bad leg?”. I said, “No, Charlie”, and he said, “I got it on the Somme”. Another voice at the back said, “Yes, Charlie, but you weren’t at Passchendaele, were you?”.
The hairs stood on the back of my neck. Charlie Leatherland was about 4 foot 10 and Douglas Houghton was the other spokesman who said, “You weren’t at Passchendaele.” He was a little bit taller—possibly up to five feet. Here were two men who had fought for us in the Great War and survived, and were making a marvellous contribution. When Douglas was dying I went to see him in hospital and said, “Douglas, tell me about Passchendaele”. He said, “It’s all in one word—mud”. He lay back on his pillow—he died two days later. The tears ran down his face and I said, “Douglas, don’t upset yourself. I’m here. I’m your loving friend”.
He said that he wanted to tell me what Passchendaele was like. He said that the night before the great attack they were lined up on their side of no-man’s land and the sergeant said that in front of them was a sea of mud that they had to cross and get to the other side. They had to dive into a shell hole and wait for orders. During the night, men had been out and laid duckboards across the mud. If they stuck to the duckboards they would survive. If they fell in the mud they were told, “You can’t be saved; you’ll be dead”. He said, “So we went off and after about 50 yards, a strangled cry came from another line, and my dear friend, Percy, was in the mud trying to survive. The sergeant drove us on and I landed up in a shell hole for three days and three nights and cried my eyes out”.
In 1924 he was standing at a bus stop in the Strand and along came a bus. The conductor on the bus was Percy. He said, “Percy is that you?” He said, “Yes. Is it Douglas?”. By then the Strand was at a standstill. Everyone had heard the tale. I asked whether they met again and he said, “Only once. We had a good drink”. That was the way it was. Douglas had thought he had lost his dearest friend and was under severe stress. He became a Member of the Cabinet. I am looking across at my good and noble friend Lady Williams who knew Douglas better than most. He was a great man.
I come to this debate with two or three strands; I mention this to my good friend from Newcastle upon Tyne, Clayton Street in Newcastle—Woolworths, as it was then. I used to stand there trying to sell carrier bags to the shoppers to earn a copper or two to take home to Mam. Every time I stood there, half a dozen people playing musical instruments would go by in the gutter—they were not on the pavement, they were in the gutter. I said to Mam and Dad one day, “What are those men doing?”. She said they were from the war. I said, “They were heroes”. Dad said, “Yes, they were heroes”. My tuppenceworth in this debate is that I deeply respect what the Government have done and are doing. They have done a marvellous job on preparation and, like other noble Lords, I only hope to be here when we celebrate the end of the First World War, not the beginning of it.
When one reflects on what happened in the Second World War after the Great War—the war to end all wars—20 years earlier, it beggars belief that we cannot find a better system for looking after people in this world. When people are driven, as they have been, into an internal war within a country, it is very sad. The horrors that one sees on television and reads about, and what is happening to families and communities in the name of whatever you like to call it, is madness and we have to do something to stop it. I have always been a full supporter of what was called the Common Market. The reason I supported it then and now is that you could conceive the possibility that if all of the nations that got together—six and now 28—were linked in some way, that would be a good contribution to make.
Noble Lords will be pleased to know that I have almost come to the end of what I want to say. I congratulate the Minister on what he has said and for telling us a great deal about what we did not know in general. I am sure that millions of people in this country will be thankful to him and his colleagues for sparing the cash, the time and the effort for the commemoration on 4 August
Finally, I stand as a man who was badly wounded during the war. I finished up on a hillside with my guts in my hands—I had been shot through the back, bullets had entered my back and come out of my abdomen into my leg—and I was almost dead. I thought I was dead. There was difficulty in finding a doctor. However, one was finally found and he saved my life. The nurse said to me, “The doctor who saved your life is coming round this afternoon”. I said, “Can I meet him?”. The nurse said, “Yes”. I said, “Doctor, I am told you saved my life and I am very grateful”. He said, “Well, let me put it like this: if I had got to you 20 minutes later you would have been dead”. Here I am, 70 years later, and very grateful to be here.
Lord Faulkner of Worcester (Lab)
My Lords, it is a privilege to follow that very moving speech by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin of Roding. He gave us all cause for thought, as indeed did my noble friend Lord Graham of Edmonton just a few moments ago. I do not think I have heard a speech of that power from such a senior Member of your Lordships’ House for a very long time and I certainly look forward to him being able to be with us in 2018, when I think he will be just 93, to regale us some more.
Lord Faulkner of Worcester
It is a promise. I congratulate the Minister not just on his excellent opening speech but on the part he played in persuading the usual channels that we should have this debate today. The number of speakers indicates how much interest there is in your Lordships’ House in the centenary of the outbreak of World War I.
This interest is reflected in the country as a whole, where the range of events, initiatives and projects is truly impressive. I shall speak about some of those in a moment but, first, I express my appreciation to the Government and particularly to the Prime Minister’s special representative, Dr Andrew Murrison, for getting the programme up and running after it was first thought about in 2011. It was then that I was asked by the War Heritage All-Party Group, which I chair, to write to the Prime Minister because we were a little concerned that there seemed to be some lack of preparedness in the UK for the centenary, compared with what was being planned in other Commonwealth countries and in France and Flanders. That letter seemed to have some effect because, very soon after, I got a reply from Mr Cameron and Dr Murrison was appointed. Quite soon after that, the Government’s advisory board on the World War I centenary commemoration was established and I am very proud to be serving on it.
It is very much to Dr Murrison’s credit that the tone and content of the programme is correctly nuanced. That was very much reflected in the Minister’s speech this afternoon. It would be so easy to get this wrong but I do not think that we have. The theme of commemoration—not celebration—is absolutely right, as is the determination to combine traditional acts of remembrance with new initiatives to engage as much of the population as possible.
It is not possible in a debate like this to do justice to everything that is going on, so I shall mention just a few events. The Minister has rightly drawn attention to the major national programme of events that starts in August—the services at Glasgow Cathedral, Westminster Abbey, St Symphorien and others. The school battlefields visit programme is hugely significant, and I commend the Department for Education and the Department for Communities and Local Government on managing to find £5.3 million to send two pupils and one teacher from every maintained secondary school in England to make a four-day tour of the battlefields and take part in remembrance ceremonies on the Western Front. Despite having been present at it numerous times, I still find the Last Post ceremony at the Menin Gate in Ypres extraordinarily moving, particularly when a young person from one of our British schools says the exhortation from Laurence Binyon’s poem “For the Fallen”.
Another initiative that I commend to your Lordships is the one in which my all-party group has played a major part. I am referring to the efforts of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and the In From The Cold voluntary organisation to map war graves in each parliamentary constituency in the United Kingdom. Between us, we have been encouraging local MPs and Peers not only to visit them but to engage with the local community and schools so that they understand the significance of these graves, the impact of world wars and the continuing importance of remembrance.
There are CWGC graves and memorials in 13,000 locations across this country, and more than 300,000 Commonwealth men and women who died in both world wars are commemorated in the UK, more than half of them casualties of the Great War. Up to the end of last week 144 visits for MPs had been organised, and a further 76 are planned for the summer and the autumn. I visited three sites in Worcester last Friday with the local MP, Robin Walker. We were guided impressively by the CWGC’s Andrew Crompton, and I thank him on the record for what he did for us then. I reinforce the Minister’s praise for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission for what it does not just in this country but all over the world; we owe it a huge debt of gratitude.
I am pleased that there is a cultural programme alongside everything else that is going on. I was very moved by what the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Crosby, said about the World War I poets. Yesterday I played a part in a very special event in the Cotswolds. A special train was chartered from Oxford, stopping at the site of Adlestrop station. It was exactly 100 years to the day, and almost to the hour, after the train carrying the World War I poet Edward Thomas stopped, as he put it, “unwontedly” and provided the inspiration for his much loved poem “Adlestrop”. He of course joined up the following year, in 1915, and was killed at Arras in 1917. I had the privilege of reading the poem on the train’s public address system.
If your Lordships will allow me to stay in my own county of Worcester for a moment, I would like to commend what is known as the Worcestershire World War One Hundred project, which was one of the very first to attract a major Heritage Lottery Fund grant of £353,000 towards a total cost of £675,000. This is being led by Dr Adrian Gregson, head of the county’s archive and archaeology service and Worcester city councillor. The project has brought together the widest range of local organisations, including all the major museums, the University of Worcester, the cathedral, the Worcestershire regimental associations and many more. Its purpose is to tell the story of Worcestershire’s experience of the Great War and its legacy through exhibitions, trails and school and community activities, on both the home and battle fronts.
We are also celebrating the lives of two individuals who contributed hugely in different ways, both with very strong Worcester connections: the music hall artiste, Vesta Tilley, who was born in Worcester and eventually married a Conservative MP—well, no one is perfect—and the Reverend Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy, better known as Woodbine Willie. He will have a special place in a service in Worcester Cathedral.
Tomorrow, local residents are being invited to come to a bell tent at the Commandery in Worcester to share, donate or loan artefacts, memorabilia and stories that show how the war touched everyone’s lives. The bell tent will later go on tour around the county.
I shall finish by referring to one of the first commemoration events we will have this year, on 31 October, which is the centenary of the stand by the 2nd Battalion The Worcestershire Regiment at the Battle of Gheluvelt. Military historians more knowledgeable than I say that this was a crucial engagement as the Worcesters and the South Wales Borderers held the line against a German advance in the very early weeks of the war.
Not just in Worcestershire, but all over the country there will be exhibitions, parades, concerts, church services and remembrance events over the next four years. I am confident that the tone will be right and that the programmes will be imaginative, appropriate and, above all, non-partisan. I thank the Minister for the opportunity to talk about some of these events today and to play some modest part in the programme in the future.