Remembrance Day

Lord Parekh Excerpts

Thursday 10th November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parekh]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Selkirk of Douglas, for securing this debate and introducing it in a most moving and inspirational manner. We are debating,

“the debt which our nation owes to all those who have sacrificed their lives in defence of the realm”.

This subject raises two questions. First, does the nation really owe a debt to those who have sacrificed their lives in defence of the realm? Secondly, how should that debt be repaid? I shall take these two questions in turn.

The first question looks simple, and its answer appears self-evident: of course we do. This is the assumption made in almost all the speeches that have been made so far. This is also the assumption which underlies the report of the task force on the military covenant, and the review by the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Boyce, of the Armed Forces Compensation Scheme.

Imagine how somebody might argue against this. In the standard neoliberal fashion, it might be argued that, unless the Armed Force are conscripted—in which case, of course, a different moral logic applies—they are volunteers. They know what they are doing when they join the Armed Forces. They accept a job for which they are paid. It is a contract of employment that is voluntarily entered into, and is no different from any other. If people therefore lose their lives or limbs it is part of their contract, and the nation owes no debt. This is a standard neoliberal argument made in the 18th and 19th centuries, and is also to be found in many current writings by neoliberals.

It might also be argued that sacrifice of lives and limbs is not unique to the Armed Forces. The police, miners and firemen all risk their lives: why should we single out the Armed Forces? When we do, are we treating them in some privileged manner which is founded on emotions or romantic glorification of war rather than on solid rational grounds? I suggest that there are solid rational grounds for privileging the Armed Forces, and these are fourfold.

First, they are the only group who explicitly commit themselves to the sacrifice of their lives. Unlike firemen and miners, or even the police, they are not employed to do other things which incidentally might involve loss of lives; rather, willingness to risk the loss of life is the very raison d’être of the job.

Secondly, the Armed Forces incur loss or temporary surrender of basic democratic and civil freedoms that no other occupation shares. Members of the Armed Forces may not join a trade union, they may not openly dissent from or criticise the Government and they may not question operational decisions made by their superiors. The standard democratic freedom that every other employee enjoys is denied to members of the Armed Forces.

Thirdly, the Armed Forces act on behalf of the nation in a way that no other occupation does. They swear their loyalty to the nation, place their well-being in the nation’s charge and render the most essential service of preserving the integrity of the country.

Finally, the fourth reason why there is good moral logic in privileging the Armed Forces over other occupations is that very high—indeed higher—professional ethics is required of them. Greater mutual loyalty is required of them; greater courage and bravery as well as a greater willingness to risk their lives for the sake of their comrades. They are also expected to show greater commitment to the collective ethos and to subordinate their personal security to the security of the country at large.

My answer to the first question is that yes, of course, there is every reason to argue that the nation owes a debt to the Armed Forces. That raises the next question: what form should the repayment of that debt take? Since the Armed Forces have offered to risk and lay down their lives on behalf of and in the interests of the country, the country obviously incurs several obligations. I want to mention three, only one of which has been heavily emphasised in the debate so far.

First, the nation has an obligation to remember them with gratitude, and honour their memory in appropriate ways. No financial compensation can adequately measure up to the way of remembering and cherishing people and fulfilling the dreams that their sadly truncated lives have not been able to realise. We remember, honour and cherish their memories by constructing memorials, national Remembrance Day and telling stories about their deeds in our text-books. In telling those stories and constructing memorials, we not only redeem the tragic dimension of their death but build bonds of unity among our own people. It is worth remembering that Remembrance Day is only common to five or six out of 185 countries. India has no remembrance day. France does not. Germany—for obvious reasons—does not. Even in the United States, it appears in a very unusual form. It might be worth looking not only at the history of Remembrance Day—is it a response to the Crimean War or the First World War?—but at the changes it has undergone over the years and why it is, in some sense, relatively unique to our country.

The second obligation we have is to look after the dependants of those who have died and to attend to the needs of those who have suffered grave injuries and disabilities. This calls for generous compensation schemes, pensions, rehabilitation, integration into normal life and other forms of support. The task force on the military covenant and the Boyce report make excellent suggestions and I wholeheartedly endorse them.

However, there is a third obligation, which is in danger of being neglected. The nation incurs a profound obligation to ensure that the wars in which the Armed Forces are engaged and in which they may have to sacrifice their lives are fully justified, either in terms of the interests of the country or in the wider interests of humanity at large. Since the Armed Forces are expected to obey the civilian authorities and are politically neutral, the civil authorities that decide for them often have a tendency to take them for granted and to think that the military machine can be deployed for any purposes that their masters choose. Wars are therefore declared sometimes without much forethought, because they distract attention from domestic problems or because they are politically convenient and give the halo of glory to otherwise mediocre politicians. It is precisely because the Armed Forces are expected to be uncritically loyal that the Government must think 10 times before sending them to an almost certain death. Iraq and Afghanistan do not meet this test, as I have argued before your Lordships in the past; nor, I think, did Suez or Vietnam. It becomes morally hypocritical to send young people with promising lives to ill conceived deaths and to compensate them with offers of payments, as if a promising life is worth a lump sum of so much money.

Every death is a tragedy. It should be an occasion for critical national self-reflection on how to improve the way in which we take momentous decisions involving war. The Armed Forces trust the nation to value their lives and to demand sacrifices only when they are fully justified. The nation must prove itself worthy of the trust that the Armed Forces put in it.