First World War: Commemorations

Lord Parekh Excerpts

Thursday 20th June 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Parekh]

My Lords, I begin by thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Hornsey, for introducing this debate. I am sure that noble Lords have seen the mural in the Royal Gallery by Daniel Maclise. In the mural a black man is pointing to one of the marines who shot the great admiral. Only a few inches away is an Arab gentleman on Nelson’s ship. This is simply to point out that blacks, Asians and Caribbeans played an important role not only in the First World War and the Second World War, but in the Napoleonic wars. I cannot produce the facts and figures, not because they are not available, but because this is not the time. The history pre and post the Napoleonic wars shows that the role played by Africans and Indians was very considerable. This would seem to suggest that the liberty and democracy that this country rightly enjoys are things to which other communities have contributed.

During the two world wars, which is what we are here to discuss, some 5 million Indians, Caribbeans and Africans participated. More than 130,000 people died, and 42 of them fought so gallantly that they were awarded the Victoria Cross. As my good and noble friend Lord Desai pointed out, it was not just a question of people dying, it was a question of how money was raised and loans were made, as well as the ambulance corps and voluntary groups to which Indians contributed in large numbers, including Mahatma Gandhi. He was opposed to war, but because he had benefited from the British empire, he felt an obligation to help in any non-violent way he could. Let us not forget that.

In the light of all that, I want to raise three questions. What are we commemorating? Why are we commemorating, and how should we do it? I am not entirely sure that we are clear about our answers to any of these three questions either today or through the monuments that we have built. Let us take the First World War, whose centenary falls next year, and to which the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London rightly referred. In my view and that of many historians, the First World War was unwise in its conception, incompetent in its conduct—ordinary soldiers said that it was like lions being led by donkeys—and the post-war settlement was brutal, leading to the Treaty of Versailles and what happened after that.

It shook the European consciousness so deeply that it discredited Europe in the eyes of lots of people, including those in India and elsewhere. They thought, “If Europeans can engage in that kind of brutality and that kind of war, they are not entitled to talk of European civilisation”. It also disillusioned large numbers of people within Europe about the kind of society that they had created and led to interwar movements that paved the way for the Second World War.

What are we commemorating? In my view, we should be commemorating the fact that war is not the answer to many of our intractable problems; that it should not be romanticised, because it involves an enormous amount of suffering; that, wherever possible, there has to be an alternative way than violence of dealing with conflicts; and, equally importantly, that our political leaders can be extremely incompetent and are not always to be trusted. A recent example is that it has taken them 10 years to realise that the Americans should be talking to the Taliban. Hundreds and thousands of lives could have been saved if something that many of us have been talking about had been realised earlier. Just because this happens to be a life on the other side of the world, they think that they can gamble, take things for granted and continue to make mistakes.

For me, the most important message of the First World War is that our leaders are not as bright as they think they are. They are capable of more stupidity than ordinary human beings. In fact, if any manager of a company had handled his affairs in the same way as some of our Prime Ministers and presidents have handled the great affairs of their countries, they would have been sacked a long time ago. That, to me, is one of the important lessons of the First World War, along with many others.

So why should we be commemorating those things? It is for three reasons. First, so that we can do justice to the victims; secondly, so that we do not repeat the mistake and so that these things are burnt into the consciousness of ordinary human beings; and, thirdly, that we recognise the solidarity of the Commonwealth because it has contributed substantially to the exercise.

How should we commemorate? I am not entirely keen on statues, monuments and memorials. We walk by statues. What do they tell us? Statues are mute and do not tell the story. The story has to be told. Therefore, I should have thought that the commemoration could take a form such as a national day of reflection on what happened and why, and which we should get our schoolchildren to recognise through the school syllabus. There could be an annual televised lecture which becomes a national event, where people talk about these things in their hearths and homes. There could be an essay competition in schools. As the right reverend Prelate rightly said, we should help to construct a new national narrative in which the Commonwealth contribution is fully appreciated. More importantly, for me, as we are talking about the Commonwealth contribution, how can we link up with other Commonwealth countries to commemorate this? It is not just about commemorating what they did for us but, rather, doing it jointly.

Finally, I recognise that six out of seven speakers so far this afternoon are from within the Commonwealth and only one is British, in the colour sense—that is, white. That tells us something. If we value the Commonwealth contribution, I should have thought that people in equal proportion across the colour boundaries would have joined in, but it is only one versus six. Therefore, it is important that we take the subject far more seriously than we seem to have done.