With other Members of the House, I welcome the hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) to his place. I knew his predecessor well and often heard his views on defence. We did not always agree, but more often than not, we did. I should apologise, because family commitments meant that I am one of the Members who has not visited his constituency lately. I therefore found it particularly interesting to hear his description, which may explain why so many Members flocked there. I recognise his hope that there will be no more by-elections for Newark and that we will now enter a period of stability.
If the hon. Gentleman is right and the view he takes in this House is one of “investment, investment, investment”, particularly in services, I think he will get a great deal of support from across the House. Investment in schools, educational standards and skills for young people is something that many Members agree on.
Today is a difficult day on which to make a maiden speech, because we have already heard some stunning speeches from Members on both sides of the House. It is interesting to see the hon. Gentleman at the heart of parliamentary unity, surrounded by Conservative Members. I hope that he continues to occupy such a harmonious place with members of his party.
I must admit to some shenanigans on my part. On Sunday, I attended a church service in Kenfig Hill, celebrating a week of community activities in Kenfig Hill
alongside a commemoration of the first world war. In the service, the address was led by the Venerable Philip Morris, archdeacon of Margam and priest in charge at the parish of Ewenny and St Brides Major. When we came out of the church, I sidled up to the archdeacon and said, “Great sermon! Can I borrow it?” As a result, much that the House will hear today the archdeacon helped me write.
It is only appropriate that I commemorate the archdeacon’s part in this speech, because I too wanted to talk about how people in our local communities and the surrounding area played a part in the British war effort, in the trenches and at home. Many of the youngsters who went to war came from farm labouring jobs and had a very limited understanding of the wider world. For most of them, going as far as the large town of Bridgend would have been a huge achievement; to get as far as Cardiff would have been beyond their belief; and crossing the Severn into England would have been viewed with dread. Yet many joined the Glamorgan Yeomanry, headquartered in Bridgend, and on 9 August boarded a troopship—the SS Arcadian, which sailed from Devonport—for the front.
Instead of arriving at “the front”, the Glamorgan Yeomanry, knowing only the wet and the cold of the Welsh countryside, arrived in Alexandria in Egypt. We need to remember that the front was not just in France and Belgium. Instead of wet and rainy, the place they arrived at was hot and dusty. On the first day in camp, there was a sandstorm in which many of their tents were blown away, never to be recovered. They fought the Germans in Libya and Egypt, and the Turks in Palestine, and eventually they were taken to Marseilles to participate in the last big push in France. Four hundred and fifty-three officers and 7,661 other ranks of the Glamorgan Yeomanry were killed or wounded.
For many children, the war years are remembered in the lines of Dylan Thomas, whose 100th anniversary is also this year. He wrote of his childhood in the “ugly, lovely town” of Swansea,
“This sea town was my world…and…beyond that...a country called ‘The Front’ from which many of our neighbours never came back. At the beginning, the only ‘front’ I knew was the little lobby before our front door; I could not understand how so many people never returned from there”.
That would have echoed with many children in the Britain of 1914-18, though many were deeply involved in the war effort. Boy scouts were used to watch for invasion along the coast; they helped farmers on the land, because farm workers were going to the front. They helped during harvest; they acted as messengers for Government Departments and as orderlies in hospitals, helping those who had been injured at the front and brought home to hospitals in the country. Girl guides worked on vegetable patches and, like the scouts, on farms, digging and weeding, and they harvested fruit. Scouts and guides carried important messages and delivered milk. They parcelled up clothing such as knitwear to be sent to soldiers, and they learned first aid so that they could help the injured.
There is a great story, in what others have remarked is the wonderful BBC coverage, about how the scouts contributed to the war effort by helping to collect conkers. The collection was described as
“invaluable war work and…very urgent. Please encourage it.”
The scouts and children were never told exactly why the Government needed conkers, but they collected them with energy. So successful were their efforts that more conkers were collected than could be transported, and piles rotted at railway stations, but 3,000 tonnes of conkers made it to their destination, the Synthetic Products Company of King’s Lynn, where they were used to produce acetone, needed for the manufacture of cordite, which was the propellant for shells and bullets.
The scheme had been created by the Ministry of Munitions, run by that great Welshman, David Lloyd George. The programme was kept secret until after the war for fear that the Germans would learn of the idea. The wartime Government refused to disclose the purpose of the collection of conkers and, rather oddly, the Ministry of Defence, when questioned, was not clear in its answer, stating only that the conkers were needed for “certain purposes”. That sounds like the sort of answer we get even today.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Tynemouth (Mr Campbell) said he thought his great-uncle would have been proud to know that 100 years later my right hon. Friend would be a Member of the House. My grandfather, Driver A.E. Ironside, 17785, would have been amazed that women had the vote, and even more amazed that we were allowed into this House. He was called up at the start of the war and left on a troopship on 14 August from Limerick. His first nine days at the front were peaceful, if rather damp, but from 23 August he and his compatriots were under constant fire, often running to abandoned positions and seeing many wounded, as he saw action at the battles of Le Cateau and Mons.
My grandfather’s diary for 5 September records:
“We arrived in Monthyon stayed here for the night properly knocked out both horses and men. We found this place upside down with people. The houses its terrible to see the poor people on the road in a large cart and they don’t know where to go for safety, its heart breaking.”
One of the places such people went was Porthcawl in my constituency. The hon. Member for Broadland (Mr Simpson) said that we should remember the Belgians. Well, in Porthcawl we do remember the Belgians, because in my local museum, where we are commemorating Porthcawl’s engagement in the first world war, there is a large display about the Belgians—about how 4,500 who came to Wales found a welcoming place, and how people in Porthcawl took them in and helped them find their feet.
According to the local paper, Porthcawl had
“done better than any place in the country, having regard to population and other circumstances.”
The same paper, the Porthcawl News, ran a Flemish glossary and a Belgian column in order to aid the interaction between the Welsh people and the Belgians. The Porthcawl Belgian refugee committee, run by councillors and citizens, organised the assimilation of the refugees into the community, managed donations to the refugee fund, found accommodation and employment for the refugees and placed Belgian children in local schools. Although the majority of the Belgians returned home after the war, in 1921 Britain had double the Belgian population. We must remember the efforts of those Welsh men, women and children at home, who opposed the Germans peacefully while the military gave their lives.
I urge Members not to go to by-elections but instead to come to Porthcawl, where there is not going to be a by-election, on 2 and 3 August to see and hear illustrated 30-minute talks about Porthcawl during the war. They can join the Glamorgan Family History Society, which will help them to find members of their family who took part in the great war. There will be a recruiting sergeant, period street events, and a Lions club vintage fair, and the Rotary club will have a vintage car display. We will end, appropriately, with a service of reflection at All Saints church, just as we will all be reflecting throughout today.
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