Remembrance Day – what are we forgetting?
JVL Introduction
On this Remembrance Day, as on all days, it is important to remember the horrors of wars past and present and to remember and mourn those who were killed. In both world wars, the UK needed soldiers from the colonies to fight with them. Especially in World War Two, the war was seen as a battle for freedom, to oppose fascism. The hypocrisy of fighting for freedom for the UK but opposing it for those living in British colonies is rarely addressed. As this writer concludes, failure to do so will deepen division between how people in the UK and in former colonies understand history. This is also true beyond the UK and its colonial history. Those in the Global South will inevitably see the world from a different perspective than “western countries” (perhaps with the honourable exception of Ireland – which is, of course, also a former colony of Britain). We can see this in terms of the different views on what is happening to Palestinians and Lebanese people as well as the scant attention paid to what is happening, for example, in Sudan, Congo and Myanmar.
So yes let us remember the soldiers who were killed, remember the towns that were destroyed, the citizens displaced and also remember that freedom and dignity is something all people deserve and they too will fight for that.
LL
This article was originally published by The Guardian on Sun 10 Nov 2024. Read the original here.
The great remembrance divide: Britain fought for freedom in Europe, but against it in the colonies
While war raged against Hitler, people in places such as India were brutalised – despite their own sacrifices to the cause
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“Countries such as the UK, France, Belgium and the Netherlands considered their colonies to be dependencies whose resources were available to the “democracies”, but whose “coloured inhabitants” lacked “the right to vote”.”
Remind anyone of anywhere in the news a lot right now?
It is very useful to be reminded of this.
At the weekend I wrote to the Guardian stating the following sermon by Reverent Victor Tanner’s during the battle of
Passchendaele, 1917, should be the foundation of what the poppy should mean. Given the manner now in which the poppy is weaponised by racists such as “Tommy Robinson”, Lawrence Fox, GB News and Talk TV, my conclusion is that they would exclude knowledge of Rev. Tanner as they would of other ethnicities serving in the trenches.
“If God spares us to return home it must be our resolve to build a new England on the principles of
righteousness, justice and brotherhood.let those who want to see those things removed from our
national life which have in the past brought dishonour on the fair name of England -social
injustice, luxury on the one hand and grinding poverty, immorality, class hatred and the like – band
themselves together and say ” These things need not be. These things shall not be.”