First World War Commemoration

Paul Maynard Excerpts

Tuesday 11th June 2013 Westminster Hall

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Riordan. I will try to be brief. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Broadland (Mr Simpson) on his wide-ranging, informative and certainly thought-provoking contribution. I was attracted to participating in the debate because it refers specifically to how Parliament commemorates world war one.

When I sit in the main Commons Chamber, I always listen with razor-like attention to my colleagues’ eloquent and devastating rhetoric and argument. Rarely does my attention wander, but if my eyes occasionally stray upwards—I hope they do not do so often—they spot the crests that surround the Chamber. I wonder how often we notice that they are there, and how often we think about what they represent, or, more importantly, about the stories of the people that lie behind them. When I am rushing to a Committee meeting or a dining room and I scurry through the Lower Waiting Hall, I do not tend to stop by the book of remembrance, which is often concealed by a policeman. Therein alone is treasure trove of stories. How often, as I dash off to Millbank through Members’ Entrance, do my eyes look up to the war memorial there, and the names on it?

As Members of the House, it is vital that part of our commemoration is of Members themselves and, indeed, of staff, who lost their lives. What links this debate with the Minister’s previous focus is last year’s Olympics. I recall some excellent exhibitions in the House on the connection between the House and the Olympics, on great Olympians who were also Members of the House. A book was even published, which detailed their lives and their contributions. I sincerely hope that Parliament comes up with something similar, to allow us an insight into the lives of Members and staff who lost their lives. My hon. Friend the Member for Broadland gave the example of the waiter in the restaurant.

My second observation draws partly on what the hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) said about the legacy of world war one. It is all too easy to think that the legacy issue ended in 1939, but I argue that every time we stand up and discuss Syria in the House we are doing so as a consequence of the 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement, which demarcated the middle east and created an explosive cocktail that rumbles on to this day. I believe that the legacy is in the here and now, and I suspect that it has affected many of the great decisions that have been made in this Parliament down the years, including on pioneering social legislation, and the attitudes towards appeasement and what occurred in the lead-up to world war two.

Possibly the most important thing we can do in Parliament to commemorate world war one is not just to base the contributions we stand up to make in the Chamber on the here and now, on what we have read in today’s or yesterday’s newspapers—the fish and chip wrappers of tomorrow; we should also be open to the long perspectives, and at each moment of our lives be open to thinking about what brought us here and the wider issues we are debating. If we do that, our contributions might be more meaningful than they all too often are and my attention might not stray to the many crests that surround the Chamber and could instead be focused more intently on what other Members are saying.