When Remembrance of the Past becomes Militarism for the Future

This was something that struck me then I saw it picked up by 'The Guardian' editorial last Saturday too.  I rarely agree with the editorials even if I do find journalists in that newspaper I share a viewpoint with.  However, it did seem to capture the unease that has been growing within me around the regimentation of remembrance.  Having been someone who in his youth argued for more remembrance, I am bitter now that I have come to feel that recent changes have taken things too far and it now needs reining in.

In the UK up until the mid-1990s remembrance was associated almost exclusively with Remembrance Sunday, the nearest Sunday to 11th November.  There would be sales of poppies by the British Legion and especially children and the elderly would buy them and the funds would go to help the wounded and their families and families who had lost husbands/fathers in war.  Of course, the iconography of the poppy is strongly related with the First World War, but though there is often a direct association with that conflict Remembrance Sunday is supposed to be about all conflicts.  Apparently since 1945 Britain has had deaths of service personnel in conflict every year except 1968 and I certainly know that growing up in the 1970s reports of deaths and maimings of soldiers in Northern Ireland were as regular as they are now from Afghanistan.  A friend of mine lost her brother in the Falklands conflict in 1982 too.  Despite the way we portray Britain, it is a very militaristic country, we have constantly been involved in conflicts in a way many neighbouring states have not, certainly since the end of the colonial empires in the 1960s-70s, now 30-40 years ago.  Much of this involvement I have disagreed with, but this does not stop me admiring those people who fight and are wounded or die and to raise funds for them, I feel is vital.

As someone always involved in history, in the 1970s and 1980s I felt too much was being forgotten about what earlier generations had experienced.  I still think this is the case especially when I hear that 'oh, the Holocaust, it was so long ago' despite the fact that survivors are still with us.  In that period aside from perhaps buying a poppy only those with a direct connection with the military or those who were regular church attenders tended to reflect much about what was being marked, even if just about the First World War, let alone any subsequent wars.  I felt we should move to what happens in France, where even now you can still see the marks of wars in so many parts of the country, but particularly the North which I have spent most time in.  From the Belgian border deep into Normandy you walk in the foosteps of millions of soldiers and almost every town is one that features in history books.  My view was that we should have Remembrance Day, i.e. have a bank holiday on 11th November no matter which day of the week that fell and have all the shops closed and all kinds of memorial activities, secular as well as religious.  People forget that many Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus and Jews died fighting for the British Army in the First World War and subsequent conflicts.  Britain still has Gurkha forces.  Of course, some people felt that remembrance was an element of the past and anticipated that in time it would fade as an activity.  Apparently the government considered dropping it after the Second World War.  However, to a large extent remembrance has always been driven by the public, from the building of the Cenotaph to local war memorials and events, it has been a public force of will not necessarily something officials have been able to control.

Having been driving through rural Devon, Somerset, Wiltshire and Dorset in the past couple of weeks I constantly see memorials in even the tiniest villages.  War has impacted on all locations in Britain.  For me remembrance is about remembering that the people who die in wars are generally not heroes, they are simply ordinary people sent to fight by people who are not at risk.  This was brought home sharply to me in the early 1990s when I was in the Imperial War Museum, a large section of which is dedicated to the First World War and where they now have a database of war memorials.  A woman, a little younger than me, this was 1992 so I would have been 25, said, standing among all the materials about the First World War, 'I don't really know what all the fuss is about the First World War; none of my family suffered in it'.  I was rather stunned by that, especially as she was there with a school party and was apparently training to be a history teacher!  My mother's father and uncle both fought in that war and survived into the 1980s, due to a generational slip, my father's grandfather also fought in that war and died in the 1920s as a result of gas poisoning he had suffered during the war.  They experienced horrors, but I do not engage in remembrance for the specific personal connection, but more broadly because I mourn that young people were sent often to be slaughtered in futile actions.  I asked her what was the lowest rank that her ancestors in the war had been, and she answered colonel.  One of her living relatives was a serving brigadier.  In that instant I felt as much distance between her (though socially I have climbed far higher than my grandparents and great-grandparents) and me as I feel my ancestors would have done. 

My father's grandfather had served in the Boer War and had been decorated.  He was called up in 1914 and served an 18-month tour of duty.  He was a sergeant but was demoted twice for hitting silly officers commanding suicidal missions.  He was lucky not to have been executed.  He ended the war back as sergeant because all those above him were killed.  He was big man, a prime target, so you wonder if he was trying to stay alive.  However, I think that given his proven bravery, he was not afraid of facing the bullets but what he, as a very experienced soldier, was not going to let amateurs from a social class that had not seen hardship (40% of volunteers in 1914 were turned away on the grounds they were malnourished) and were willing to toss away lives.  To some degree, you might feel wrongly, this has left a rather class-orientated angle for me regarding remembrance.  I see it as a reminder to the elites that they should value life and not waste it as they too often do.  People from the upper classes do die in wars too and the elites of 1914 were stripped of many of their best and brightest as much as the working and middle classes were.  My referencing social class aspects in my remembrance is probably a bad step on my behalf because it politicises remembrance and that is at the root of the current difficulties.

What began to happen in the mid-1990s was partly what I had hoped for in the preceding decades.  Whilst shops did not close on 11th November, suddenly, primarily driven by tabloid newspapers there was a two-minute silence (up from one minute) and not only on Remembrance Sunday but on 11th November too.  I remember the first time when travelling on an underground train and people were invited to be silent at 11 o'clock; a couple of years later I was in a shop.  I used the minutes to reflect on people I knew had died in the First World War whose records I had seen at the National Archives (only 40% remain as the rest were burnt as a result of bombing in the Second World War).  This seemed the right way: remembrance now was impacting on everyday lives for the bulk of the population. 

Fifteen or so years on, things may now beginning to go too far.  Remembrance is now being very mixed up in political issues.  I commented earlier in the year about how the leader of the British National Party, Nick Griffin had been asked not to wear a poppy outside of the remembrance period, because he seemed to be trying to associate it with his racist views.  Military leaders attacked his used of particular imagery because they are aware he does not see many British service people as legitimate, despite the fact that the British military has always had a range of ethnicities and religions.  This trend of the BNP would be easier to contain if there was not a parallel pressure from the tabloid media.  I am not accusing them of backing the BNP but they certainly are seeking the regimentation of remembrance.  There have been demands that footballers should wear embroidered poppies on their kits.  A lot of this stems from an attitude that a 'real' man backs the military and is in line with other things such as a Veterans' Day.  These trends seek to move away from a sombre, sober remembrance of conflict to something more celebratory of the military.  The rise of the charity Help for Heroes, is not a bad thing in itself and they do good work, but that more exclamatory title as opposed to the calmer, British Legion, unfortunately is being hijacked by those who feel that we should all be compelled to celebrate the military.  It is interesting the shift in the British Legion's poppy campaign this year to using more of the current photographs that Help for Heroes does.

The issue is particularly poignant at present because every week British soldiers are dying.  Things are reducing in Iraq but Afghanistan is dragging on as a British soldier from the 1840s or a Soviet one from the 1980s could have told you it would.  The Retreat from Kabul in 1842 may be seen as a shameful action on the British Army's part but it did prevent thousands of men dying there in subsequent years.  The mixing up of remembrance with celebration of the current military now is almost becoming, if you do not support the current battles then somehow you are shaming the previous dead.  This is a difficult leverage to contest and it was particularly notable that in pictures of parliament not a single MP was not wearing a poppy and absolutely everyone on television wears one.  It has been a uniform that everyone in the public eye must wear or face being challenged that they do not care about Britain's military; not even that they do not remember previous sacrifices. It has been great for the British Legion who have sold record numbers of poppies and the funds are useful for those soldiers coming back wounded from Britain's various current wars, but to some degree, the whole thing is becoming regimented even mechanised.

Politicians feel pressured by the media as they know that any one of them who has no poppy will be ridiculed or severely attacked in the press.  Any complaints around militarism and certainly initiatives like the white poppy movement which arose in the 1980s are now excluded from debate.  As was noted in 'The Guardian' civilian casualties of war are ignored entirely in this process, partly, I imagine because of the resentment against asylum seekers who are blamed for so much, but of course, in many cases are fleeing from the wars that the tabloids want to celebrate.

Militarism now dominates the media; it is a baseline assumption for so much of what we are presented.  Of course, while I was hoping for for greater attention to remembrance, the right-wing has been more successful in using remembrance to leverage participation in militaristic attitudes.  Some generals are seeking to separate out these different approaches, but these are subtle things that the bulk of the population does not have the time or inclination to work on.  Alongside the assumption that immigration is wrong, that racism is acceptable, that the EU (or insert whichever international body you favour) only does Britain harm, that the death penalty is naturally right, we now have the assumption that militarism is good, it makes Britain strong and anyone who does not support that line is weak and a traitor.  Such characteristics are seen in all authoritarian and Fascist states.

Remembrance has been taken by the popular media and those people who run it to promote militarism and this trend has stepped up a gear in 2009.  This creates fertile ground for extremism.  It also betrays the bulk of the people who have died fighting for Britain.  The bulk of them never went to war to defend an ideal of a militarised Britain, they went because they had to or at least because they felt it made their families safer.  Many of the people who died fighting for Britain were not white and were not Christian but they still died fighting for a country that seems increasingly likely to deny their right to be acknowledged as Britons.  We need vigorous steps to depoliticise remembrance, to bring militarism out into the open and keep it away from the proper remembering of those who sacrificed so much.  Otherwise this trend will simply create a country eager for a larger military and even more battles across the world which will lead to even more mutilated and dead service people and civilians.

How 'They' Have Been Killing the Government

Following what seems to have been a very successful speech by prime minister Gordon Brown at the Labour Party conference this week it is interesting to note that the incessant campaign in the media which has dogged him since he became prime minister in June 2007 has slowed a little. I lived through the last days of the John Major governments especially the period 1996-7 when his slim majority was slipping away from him. Major, of course, had replaced Margaret Thatcher as prime minister in November 1990, as Brown did Tony Blair, without a general election until April 1992, more than 16 months after he attained office (Brown has been prime minister for 27 months). This time Brown retains a majority and though there have been some divisions among his MPs he is not as under siege as Major was; he seems to have ridden the scandals over MPs' expenses far better than Major handled the 'sleaze' cases of his terms of office. Brown has come out of the recession pretty well too, being a leading light in the international response and overseeing a stimulus package which may not have achieved all that was hoped for but is certainly immensely better for the average person than the Conservatives 'we can do nothing; it's global economics' approach.

Despite these aspects, there has been an assumption in the media from the moment Brown came into office that he would not remain there long. This is one reason why David Cameron shrieked repeatedly for a general election, even though the example from his own party's history (aside from Thatcher/Major, Harold Macmillan took over after Sir Anthony Eden resigned as prime minister in January 1957 and there was no election until October 1959) showed such an election was 'constitutionally' not necessary, no matter what Conservative supporters argued. Brown had been commended throughout his period as Chancellor of the Exchequer 1997-2007, the longest person in that role since the 1820s, yet he was seen as reined in by Tony Blair so 'safe'. The change when Brown (and he is in fact Dr. Brown, having a PhD from the University of Edinburgh, but unlike in Germany it is seen as bad for politicians to have doctorates and as distancing them from the public) came to power was that the super-rich got nervous.

The very wealthy realised that whilst Blair was Christian Democrat in outlook, with authoritarian tendencies and in fact I have argued nothing more than a Blairist (in the Peronist and Gaullist styles), Brown was a Social Democrat and that seemed to spell an end (or least greater restriction) for their freedom to exploit the British public. Consequently, in their eyes, he had to go. This attitude is summed up by the coverage of the Rupert Murdoch-run, 'The Sun' newspaper saying it had stopped backing Brown, as if it ever really had. The power of 'The Sun' is taken as a given as its campaign against Neil Kinnock and the Labour Party during the 1992 election is seen as being instrumental in leading to their defeat just when it seemed they would be victorious, something they achieved by making repeated spurious claims about Labour's taxation plans that began to be accepted as true even by traditionally Labour supporters.

This time, it has not simply been the tabloid press, but also quality newspapers that have been speaking constantly as if it is fixed that Brown will lose the next election. In fact this easy assumption has done the Conservatives a disfavour because it has meant they have not had to put forward a raft of policies and months after I noted that they seemed to lack any clear policies very few seem to have appeared. It is clear that head of the Conservatives, David Cameron, assumes he will simply win by default and so has no need really to come up with anything distinctive.

Particularly critical is the lack of any policy on how a Conservative government will respond to the recession. This is partly because the Conservative policy going back to the 1920s is simply to do nothing in such circumstances. We may lack the tools for true Keynesian economics but at least Brown as offered things that will stimulate the economy and keep up demand and production and there are local initiatives as I have noted such as in Wales. The Conservatives have paid some lip service to reining in the bankers, but given that a lot of their support and funds come from that sector they are not going to properly restrain those people. Brown has found it near impossible to rein in the utility companies and bankers can we expect the Conservatives for whom these people are lead supporters to even try to be strict?

What policies could we expect from a Conservative government? Well, as I observed, some of them are being acted out in London where Conservative Mayor Boris Johnson has sought to politicise the police force. Aside from that we have seen him lose deputy mayor after deputy mayor due to allegations of corruption and we have seen moronic policies such as scrapping of 'bendy' buses which do nothing for the public but attract media attention. So, with Cameron in Number 10 we are likely to see a focus on headline grabbing policies which do nothing substantial (very similar to many of John Major's policies, remember the Patients' Charter and the Traffic Cones Hotline?) but which cover up some more serious political manoeuvring which takes Blair's steps towards authoritarianism to a further level and will see the police service become increasingly less independent and more directly under party political control.

I hope that the electorate can see through the constant grumbling in the media about Brown and note that Cameron offers nothing which will help people facing unemployment and repossessions. The media that have been peddling the line that Brown is ineffectual can offer no real alternative; many are just toeing the line of their millionaire owners rather than addressing general concerns of the public. Some in the media seem to have worked themselves up into witch hunt mode against 'the others'. I noted the 'Daily Express' headline last week claiming that no more immigrants could enter Britain because it was 'full up'. On that basis we should be compelling property owners to rent out the thousands of empty properties in the UK and stop families from assuming that 'three [children] is the new two' as is constantly stated. Lies about immigrants are now so widespread that it could almost be funny.

A taxi driver in Manchester the other day talking to me about housing started with 'Well, of course, all council housing goes to immigrants and then students...' before he even begun on his racist diatribe. The assumptions of these people is somehow that all councils are filled with liberal people prejudiced in favour of people from abroad and from outside the town, whereas in fact almost every council in the UK is full of conservative (and often Conservative) business people, as bigoted as the average taxi driver. Students are becoming the new pariahs in many towns, but immigrants remain the favourite. No student will get council housing unless they are a person already in a council house going back into study. The waiting lists are so long no student would be processed in the time it takes to study the average degree. The council 'housing' given to asylum seekers is often a detention centre and that to immigrants is usually a dingy bed & breakfast hotel room for a whole family, not a house. However, these assumptions run so deep that even council data will not shake these attitudes.

I honestly hope that the sustained, petty whining campaign against Brown fails. He is not superhuman but I can see that the alternative would be a lot worse. People make an assumption that a Cameron government would be much the same as Brown's, simply a little more glamorous. There is an argument that even if Tony Blair was standing as Labour leader now he would score few votes as at 56 (two years younger than Brown) in 2009 he would not have the appeal he had at 44 in 1997. Reference is made to Brown only having one eye as if that somehow makes him a poor leader. Yet, Winston Churchill, who suffered severe depression throughout his life has never been challenged for his fitness to be prime minister; Lord Halifax who almost became prime minister in 1940 had one hand and Franklin Roosevelt, US President 1933-45 could not stand or walk. In our jobs we cannot be prejudiced against any disability but it seems it is alright to be so in our political choices. I would rather have a leader who has suffered and triumphed than one like Cameron who has been privileged throughout his life. Most of us have never been privileged but so many feel we should have the people running our state to be from very privileged backgrounds. They are not born with any particular ability because of their social status and in fact it distances them from what the bulk of us experience in our lives.

I hope that when we look back on the period 2007-10 we do not see it as the protracted killing of a reforming government simply to install one which is far friendlier to the very rich. I make no predictions for the outcome of the next general election, as anyone who has looked at the 1970, the two 1974 and the 1992 elections will know, those who are confident of victory in British general elections are usually disappointed. However, I believe this media sapping of the Brown administration simply because his political slant is not entirely in line with the super-rich and because he looks the age he is, damages British democracy and quite possibly be leading us into a much more unpleasant civil society.