I congratulate the Minister and the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis), on two excellent speeches setting the tone of the debate. As has been said, this is the second debate that we have had on the subject, and we have not yet started the four years of commemoration of the great war. I suspect there will be more debates to come. I, too, pay tribute to everybody who has been involved in preparing the ground, notably the Imperial War museum and the BBC. Both those organisations are keen, as are the Government and Members across the House, that those should be commemorations, not celebrations, and that wherever possible they should be local commemorations.
I am delighted to say that in Colchester, local military historian Jess Jephcott has set up a Facebook page for this purpose with just one line: “Colchester Remembers 1914-1918”. On other webpages he kindly mentions a public meeting that I convened in March this year
“to explore ways in which Colchester could commemorate the centenary of the First World War. Those persons who attended gave a positive response and comprised members from the armed forces, the Royal British Legion, youth organisations and private individuals. It was agreed that a vigil should be held on the evening of the centenary of the first day of war being declared”,
so at 7 pm on 4 August, just a few hours before the midnight deadline in Berlin was reached, we will gather for a few minutes for a silent vigil—no banners, no great speeches, just a silent vigil—because, of course, it was all going to be over by Christmas.
We anticipate that there will be further commemorative events over the next four years, culminating in a celebration to mark the end of hostilities on 7 November 1918. There are those who believe that the war ended in 1919, as I mentioned in the previous debate; some communities believe that the war ended with the treaty of Versailles in 1919, which is the date one sometimes sees on war memorials. The aim of the Colchester group is to welcome others to join them in creating appropriate events to commemorate the various happenings, and to link up with others who are planning similar events within the town and the local community. The idea is not to have a formal committee or a big group, but to bring in individuals and groups such as the scouts, the guides or the Royal British Legion to organise their own events, using a central webpage in the hope of avoiding clashes. The opening page concludes:
“Does your locality’s war memorial need sprucing up? Has anybody done a transcription of your war memorial? Do you have pictures of these men and women who served during WW1 and stories to go with them?”
In the summer of 2001, I had the great honour of visiting the battlefields when I accompanied the Colchester sea cadet band, which played at the great ceremony that
takes place every night at dusk at the Menin Gate. The next day at Tyne Cot cemetery, I made a point of going to look at the names of the fallen of the 1st Battalion the Essex Regiment, to see whether there were any with the name of Russell. There was Private J. Russell. A few months earlier, my first grandson, Joseph Russell, had been born. Following on from what the shadow Minister said, it was a poignant moment to see on a war memorial the name of my first grandson. Joseph Russell, who will shortly be 13, will go later this year to the fields where so much loss of life occurred, on a battlefields tour for students.
It is important that we bring to today’s generation what happened 100 years ago. I am delighted that the women of the war are to be featured. The poppy fields is an excellent addition, which I hope will be featured. We had a bombing raid in Colchester in the great war, which needs to be recognised and remembered. There are photographs showing the damage.
On 5 and 6 July, the Colchester military festival will take place, in aid of ABF The Soldiers Charity—formerly the Army Benevolent Fund. Although the aim is to show how important our armed forces are in the 21st century, particularly in the garrison town of Colchester, I think that it will set the scene for what happens from 4 August onwards. In the autumn, Colchester Military Wives Choir will sing in the town’s Mercury theatre. Again, that is not a direct first world war commemoration, but there is clearly a link.
It is also worth mentioning that on 19 July the transformed Imperial War museum in London will reopen to the public, revealing its brand-new first world war galleries, which will be free to the public. They will allow audiences young and old to explore what the first world war was like, and to learn how terrible it was for the hundreds of thousands of young men who came from around the world to fight. I am delighted that the hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr Brazier) mentioned some of the countries that sent their young people to fight. One of them was Canada. The Imperial War museum features an exhibit on the Canadian expeditionary force.
We are talking today about a war that commenced 100 years ago; 100 years ago, it was the 100th anniversary of another war—one that has been airbrushed out of this nation’s history. Those Members who have read yesterday’s Hansard will have seen that yesterday I had a debate in Westminster Hall—it begins at column 88—on “History Curriculum: North American War, 1812-14”. Had the Americans won that war—we won it—Canada would not have existed, and there would have been no Canadian expeditionary force in 1914, because the United States did not join the war until 1917. Who knows whether the war would still have been raging in 1917 had it not been for the Canadians and others from the empire who took part?
I welcome this debate. It is important that we remember the history of 100 years ago, but we must also remember history prior to that.
2.2 pm