Remembrance and Veterans

Richard Holden Excerpts

Monday 28th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Lincoln Jopp (Spelthorne) (Con)]

May I start by joining others in wishing the Royal Marines a very happy 360th birthday today? It is a superb unit with a proud and distinguished history, albeit slightly shorter than my own regiment’s. They call us “Pongos” and we call them “Bootnecks” and it is an honour to share this House with so many distinguished Royal Marines—my hon. Friend the Member for Exmouth and Exeter East (David Reed) and the Minister for Veterans and People, the hon. Member for Birmingham Selly Oak (Al Carns) among their number.

When I was 14 my English master, Mr Smale, gave us a poem to read and it annoyed me very much. It was written by Philip Larkin, and it ends like this:

“Crowds, colourless and careworn

Had made my taxi late,

Yet not till I was airborne

Did I recall the date—

The day when Queen and Minister

And Band of Guards and all

Still act their solemn-sinister

Wreath-rubbish in Whitehall.

It used to make me throw up,

These mawkish, nursery games:

O When will England grow up?

—But I out soar the Thames,

And dwindle off down Auster

To greet Professor Lal

(He once met Morgan Forster),

My contact and my pal.”

I think what got to me then was the soaring, sneering cynicism of the persona that the poet had created of the travelling academic looking down both metaphorically and literally on the Cenotaph service here in Westminster. I think it offended my sense of fairness. Soldiers by and large have little choice in what they are called to do. Equally, they have little choice in the way in which the nation subsequently remembers them. They just do what they are called to do.

[Mr Richard Holden (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

This year marks 80 years since D-day and one of my constituents, Don Sheppard, who died aged 104 this year, was a veteran of both D-day and Arnhem. On the point my hon. Friend is making, Don’s quote was, “The lads that didn’t make it back, those are the other ones we need to remember.” Does my hon. and gallant Friend agree on that point?

[Lincoln Jopp]

My right hon. Friend makes a powerful point and places on the record distinguished veterans and their contributions to national life, and I thank him for it.

As a former soldier who has lost men, let me get one thing straight: these men and women died for us all to be free—free to do whatever the laws of the land permit us to do; to wear a poppy; not to wear a poppy; to remember; not to remember. It is our freedom. It is our choice, and on days like Remembrance Sunday there is not a soldier, sailor, airman or Royal Marine for whom that question could matter less. They are in another place: they are seeing the faces of lost friends; they are feeling guilty for having survived when their friends have not; they are trying to hold it together long enough for opening time to come at the pub. If I may say, on their behalf: “Thank you. Thank you for being here in this debate today and at the constituency gardens of remembrance earlier. Thank you for the respect. Thank you for your thank you.”

The act of remembrance is a little like going to church: some people go to church once a year, some once a week. For remembrance, it could be two minutes’ silence once a year for some, or just finding two minutes’ peace in a day from the awfulness of the loss of a son or a daughter for another. Regardless, here today we will remember them and we will honour our fallen.