"Absolute nonsense!" Nigel Farage debunks revisionist history on WW1 - BQ #4

well it shows you what human beings can achieve and it shows you that actually in the end i believe good triumphs over evil to get brexit make america great again no no no hello i'm stephen edgington for the sun and today i'm interviewing nigel farage now recently the film 1917 came out it's all about world war one and you what you may know about nigeria is that he's big on brexit but you may not know that he's massive on world war one he's a huge history buff so we're going to be talking about 1917 but more generally about world war one and why it's so important today nigel farage thank you very much for joining us so the reason i wanted to bring you here today is because you are such a big history buff and i know specifically world war one is your thing um recently last week the film 1917 was released i thought it was fantastic i watched it last weekend um but in recent years we've also seen a few other films about world war one we've seen warhorse uh they shall not grow old journeys end um and i know another example of this is a video game battlefield one sold 15 million copies worldwide there is real interest in this war why it's a funny one so when i was working here in the mid 80s i started to become really interested in first world war veterans like you'd pick up the newspapers and you'd read somebody had died at age 94 who'd you know held a pill box for 12 days on his own on hill 60 and eep or whatever and i said to a group of hats in the office have you ever been a visited northern france you've ever been to the western front they all said no i hadn't been well let's go so off we went four of us in the car and we visited some of the battlefields some of the cemeteries some of the big sites and i remember most of the rest of the office and my local pub said well what do you want to do that for as if it was a really odd weird thing to do and it was a subject in families that wasn't talked about you know kids would ask their grandparents about the war and the grandmother said shut up we don't talk about that it was as if we tried to bury it it was so awful so ghastly we don't talk about it and then as the years went on towards the millennium i think everyone realized that there were only a few hundred people left you know all at or around 100 years old and if we're going to get testimony of where they've been and what they've done now was the time and that's when the interest really started that's when people started visiting the western front that's when the schools i mean all my kids have been with you know on-school trips and i i went back to tynecott which is the biggest british military cemetery in the world just outside eep and i remember in the mid 80s there was a parking bay at the front for about six cars i went back about 18 months ago there's a coach park now there's a coach park i went to vimy ridge to do some photography a little bit of filming and that's run by the canadian government it was the site of a big canadian battle and i said to the lady representing the canadian government i was always busy here today yes she said seven hundred thousand people visited last year so we're visiting these places in huge numbers it's on the school curriculum um and he and i thought mistakenly that when the last veteran died as harry patch died getting on for a decade ago i thought once the human side had gone the interest would diminish but it hasn't and i tell you what it is i think firstly it's the pivot between the old world and the new world you know end of the first world war the ottoman empire falls the kaiser goes the tsar goes women get the vote uh we get a labour government not very long after it so it clearly is the pivot between the old world of a new world also there's so much film photography that these people that fought are recognizably us how do we relate to men at the battle of waterloo or or or those on nelson's warships it's too difficult but because we've got so much testimony so much photography um and you know they had airplanes and they had tanks and they had cars and kind of all right modern warfare technology has moved on but kind of the basics of warfare haven't in a sense changed that much so i think firstly it's the pivotal world in the new world but here's the real reason we're interested all through our history our wars have been fought and they're still fought by a very small number of professional trained soldiers and over the years we've used mass and risen all sorts of people the first world war is the first time it becomes a citizen's army where in ordinary families you know the bloke who's the local butcher volunteers or at the end of the war the last two years becomes conscripted so it's because ordinary citizens are suddenly put into the most extraordinary circumstances and i think we're i think we're fascinated by the sheer ghastliness of what the western front represented and i think if you're a bloke i mean there's more than women if you're a bloke young bloke i think it's almost impossible to go and watch 1917 and not think to yourself what would i have done i think that really interests particularly young men because they see gosh that could have been me so it's a citizen's army it's the sheer horror of it um and i'll tell you what it does make for good films too exactly and i want to talk about that 1917 it was all filmed in one shot i mean it was beautifully done but it wasn't the the beauty of it that really got to me it was the sheer horror and it really wasn't an it wasn't a comfortable film to watch for me i mean you're on you're on the edge of your seat what did you think of it well let's just be absolutely straight about it i mean in terms of the in terms of a piece of cinema it's off the charts i'm absolutely off the charts there are moments watching it when you sort of hold your breath because you're waiting to see what happens next there's one moment of real shock i won't spoil it for those who haven't seen it but there is one moment where you literally and you are shocked uh by the sheer nastiness horror of what happens um so yeah in terms of in terms of the shots uh yeah fantastic uh particularly i thought i thought the first two thirds of the film was outstanding i thought some of the stuff at the end was a little maybe even over dramatised but what i did like in terms of accuracy was the way they portrayed communication trenches the way they portrayed dugouts the way they showed a jump off position for an attack all of that i thought looked tremendous um i like the i like the the banter of the office of the officers and men you know there's a young officer in the line and clearly under great stress and you know he's sort of talking to his men and god you and i blooming use sort of because i see all of that um i found there were a couple of inaccuracies that i found um so i went i went with my family and he can shut up dad but i mean you know but one one error is it starts off and it says on the screen the 6th of april 1917 and there's two lads asleep on the edge of a field and i can see what they're doing they're contrasting how lovely the french countryside is with what the front lines like a few miles away so the grass is growing but there was cow parsley they're lying in a field with cow parsley well i'm sorry not on the 6th of april that that wasn't right i also happen to know that that weekend uh because the 9th of april 17 was when we launched the big arris offensive and it snowed that day so i don't think they quite got the weather right um the only other thing was um as they go across no man's land um there's a there's a smashed up tank and i don't think a smashed up tank would have been there in april 17. oh by november 17 lots of smashed up tanks so i took slight issue with that but these are very minor things these are very very minor things i take my only criticism of it so sam mendez's grandfather had been a messenger a runner sam mendes being the director being a director and his grandfather he was trinidadian originally because we forget this you know this wasn't just people from big northern cities you know this was the british empire um and it's a fact that very few people know is that our contribution in two world wars 40 of it came from the empire from the commonwealth and they were all volunteers remarkable remarkable thing yeah sure the bigger countries like canada australia india sent people but equally you know little jamaican islands you know you know jamaica the west indies places like that were all involved um so sameness's grandfather was a runner at the battle of passchendaele and got awarded a military medal for what he did and so the film is based on that the film is based on a message that needs to get through to stop an attack that's going to be costly because they've misread what the germans are doing so there was the basis of truth in the story but the story itself was actually an invention of what might have happened on the western front and i just thought myself there were so many amazing true stories i'd almost rather they'd done it about a true story but i'm not trying to nitpick uh i would say i would say to people go and watch this film uh you will i say enjoy it you won't enjoy all of it because you'll find it a bit challenging but the thought that a couple of ordinary lads you know who've not really been in the army very long go off and do their duty with the most incredible bravery and it's clearly one of the things that worries the most is they want to show people that they are brave they want to show people they will do their duty and and again that fascinates us you know we're living in a world without with a lot of choices um it's much easier to say no today than perhaps it was then i remember an interview with a fellow called arthur barracloff who lived to 107 and he went over the top six times on the western front and he was asked at the end of his life how did he feel you know when the whistles blew when he was told to go over having done it six times and knowing that his odds were considered a big attack you had a 50 chance of being killed or he's got his wounded lives yeah i mean yeah and he was asked how did he feel going over the top what did he do before he went over the top and he said i said a little prayer i prayed to god and said help me behave like a man. and that you know it is quite difficult for us uh to understand or even believe that people did it i think bravery does fascinate us you know i mean here we are here we are at london bridge you know where we've seen just a few weeks ago you know a dangerous armed person who's murdered two people and actually ordinary civilians did whatever they could to subdue him and i think that i mean because there was the horror of the deaths but i think the country was but it was all over the sun's front pages i mean the country was inspired so courage fascinates us so yeah go and see this film i think the as i say you you get a real idea of what the trench system was like what no man's land was like what the sheer the waste the litter the mud the rats that but not the whole horror of it's there and it really is working and that's that's why i think people should watch i mean i know despite the inaccuracies it gives you a kind of rounded view the inaccuracies are small right you're a tough critic i know i mean i'm being very tough but i'm not i've not committed a territory pieces i i i think it is yeah as you say get a real sense of what it was about and that's for me you know walking out of that the cinema it you just it just couldn't get out of my mind what those men went through and you there's nothing quite like going watching watching and seeing that film now what's interesting about uh world war one is that it's still debated today um about you know it's so controversial it's even a left right issue in some senses and i want to talk about stick on 1917 and we'll get on to that in a minute yeah so the writer of 1917 i don't know if you've seen this controversy that she said this is a quote from from the writer the first world war was the stupidest thing humanity ever did to each other but although it was misguided those men talking about the germans were also fighting for a free and united europe what do you think about that well there have been lots of attempts over the years to dominate europe and take control of it look i mean let's be clear germany germany used a conflict in the balkans and a war that was sparked involving austria-hungary russia serbia i mean you know that conflagration happened and the germans used that as an excuse to try and capture belgium and france and i've no doubt if they'd succeeded they would have gone on and forged a military empire and i don't think we had any choice i don't actually think we had any choice you know we had an absolute commitment to defend the neutrality of belgium and if we'd done nothing if we'd done nothing the germans would have smashed france to pieces would have imposed a really nasty form of military rule it's all too easy to think oh the nazis were horrible but the germans were loving you know the germans behaved appallingly in the first world war so look i i i in retrospect uh it was expensive it was awful uh it but it ruined this country financially i mean if you if you look at the two world wars the biggest loser of the two world wars was the united kingdom in many many ways but i don't think we have much choice and i i also think that the other argument that we've had rolling since the 1960s is you know lions led by donkeys that you know the british generals were all red-faced back at the chateau drinking port um for them the worst part of the war was that it was their gout and it was a class issue people argue you know it's these posh english aristocrats sending the working classes yeah it's absolute rubbish 48 generals killed in world war one in world war ii two generals killed you know actually actually the biggest toll on any group in this country were young public school boys people who went to eaton or my school dollar college and the class system did make them junior officers yes but they took by far the highest casualty rate so you know some of this left right stuff that people try to bring into this is absolute nonsense and if you look at the other armies many of them were far worse led than the british army and arguably arguably what you see in 1917 and certainly at the end of that year is you see us developing tanks you see us developing what later become became known as blitzkrieg um and you can criticize us for being slow to learn but remember this what the british army achieved on the western front in 1918 in beating the cream of the german army and driving them back and during the last 100 days day after day was i think in military terms probably our greatest ever achievement as a nation so i think it's uh i think this a lot of this revisionism makes me very angry and it's really interesting i'm reading a book on church at the moment and there's a picture of these of him at harrow and when he's a kid and it's got 30 or so school children in and it says 11 of these people died in world war one many of which were of churchill's friends you know sending these people onto the front lines and and they did get killed so it wasn't a class and churchill himself served on the western front absolutely very few people know this so he was first lord of the admiralty he was in charge of the gallipoli campaign the dardanelles campaign down in turkey complete fiasco total disaster and winston resigns and is in disgrace and he goes off to the western front and he commands a battalion in the front line he's out at night engaged in raids in no man's land leaving wiring parties he more than did his bit and he writes back to clementine he says and this is referring to times out of the line he says my darling we must be very rich i'm drinking champagne all the time so i said no churchill more than did his bet and clement atlee and again you talk about left right you know clement atlee who of course was the labour prime minister from 1945 you know right to the end of his time on his door his title was major atlea so proud was he of what he done as an officer in the first world war and of course you know the labour party that big huge bulk vote that labour got in 1945 came from very patriotic service men and service women and it's kind of you look at the labour party today and you could argue well one of corbyn's problems was it that he wasn't seen to be particularly patriotic but the labour party after those wars certainly was well just look at those labour leadership candidates you've got people talking about progressive patriotism and then even that's too controversial they don't believe in the country absolutely so let's talk about um sam mendes and he made a similar remark um but it's slightly slightly different to the writer he said people who are attached to some sort of nostalgic vision treat these wars retrospectively as triumphs in hijacking our shared cultural memories and pride is very subtle and very easy to do at the moment it happens all the time we're going back to being our own again this is what the spirit of the two world wars was that's what we're lumbered with now that's what he would probably say to you nigel that you're being feeling basically being jingoistic no i don't think so at all i think we're remembering something we're remembering something and now in much larger numbers than we ever did before uh where nearly all of us in some way have have a direct family connection with these events and that naturally would interest us um i don't think there's anything particularly gingivistic about it i think it's you know what if if studying these wars serves as a reminder just how broad across the globe our relationships are with all of those countries that were in our empire and are now in our commonwealth and if it gives us a sense of how we fit in into a wider context in the world i think that's rather a good thing do you think we should be ashamed of our history because i think a lot of people today maybe jeremy corbyn's one of them um and a lot of history teachers in state schools etc would probably say that we've got a terrible past of colonism and famines in india and terrible atrocities that we've committed through our empire should we be ashamed of it well you could equally bring that to the first world war yeah the 306 british soldiers that were shot at dumb shot for desertion mainly um some shot because they committed uh some pretty serious offenses some shot because they clearly had suffered mental breakdowns shell shock whatever it was and we are kind of we're horrified we're horrified that we shot some of our own people the french shot tens of thousands we're always doing ourselves down so two things to say about all of this whether it's the amritsar massacre or whatever it is you cannot judge events of the past by today's set of moral standards there are things that we think and believe today that our grandchildren will say oh weren't they awful because that's just the way things are things change that's the first thing to say the second thing to say is just look at the way the rest of the world has behaved over over the years towards their own people and you find there's not much to be ashamed about now i i really i think this constant apologies for slavery or whatever whatever else it is is not the way to look at history i think we look at history we judge history we judge whether we got things right or wrong and there are certain things i mean i don't think the invention of concentration camps but the british and the boer war is a proud chapter in our history but it is part of our history um and i think to constantly apologize for the past uh i think sends all the wrong signals i think you know i'll be honest with you i think there's british empire stuff i mean i think actually we brought education uh we brought medicine uh we a lot of things we bought to many of those countries and far from the empire uh us raping and pillaging all these countries in fact in the end the empire cost us money every year it didn't make us money every year so i no let's stop being apologetic in this way it's almost um shameful today for people to come out and say well i'm proud of my country i'm proud of my history i'm proud of our culture i mean that in britain there is so much to be proud of our arts our literature the things that we invented even dare i say it the wars that we fought i mean world war ii we put our nation on the line to save the rest of europe from fascism i'm proud of that we should share that with you without any shadow of a doubt um yeah i think i think 1940 is a particularly interesting period um yeah look i think i think it's a it's a it's an absolutely extraordinary country with an amazing history and i think there's a lot of there's a lot of good news to take from our past let's talk about wobble one again um why is it relevant to today well it's relevant because they're the same human beings uh that we are they're a little bit shorter than us their teeth are slightly worse than ours but they are in terms of any read the you know the poetry they wrote or the letters home they are the same as us in every way um and you kind of can't avoid it can you i mean a couple hundred yards down borough high street there's a magnificent world war one memorial i mean it's everywhere you every little village you go to you see it so it is all around us um and i think i think unavoidably uh this subject it will never go away and i think go watch 1917 but i would also say to people if you haven't been it's not very difficult to get across to france in a car and you get this time of year it's not even that expensive to go across to france in a car and go and visit some of these first world war sites and battlefields they are the most extraordinarily evocative and powerful places and it's a reminder this is why it's really important it's a reminder why whatever my criticisms at the moment of europe may be but it's a reminder why people are living in freedom liberty and democracy and not living on a totalitarian dictatorship that is why it's important those millions of men who went out there and died and risked their lives obviously we should remember them we remember them every year in november what was it about that their sacrifice that is so pertinent i mean there's so been so many wars throughout british history so many wars throughout world history but we don't go out there on the 11th of november every year or and talk about you know let's say the falklands war or even world war two well no i don't agree actually i don't agree actually i think that remembrance sunday and armistice day um i think that because we've had quite a lot of recent wars i mean the falklands is now a long time ago but you know through the balkans and iraq and afghanistan and you can question whether we should have been in those wars but that's not the debate we're having today but i think because we've had wars we've been losing people within living memory i think remembrance day has in fact for a younger generation been brought more up to date and it's noticeable that the turnouts particularly on those sunday mornings are far bigger than they were 20 or 30 years ago um and the even 11 o'clock on the 11th of november itself is recognized in quite a lot of factories and railway stations and places like that well that hadn't happened since the 1930s so i think we are taking this very seriously and i mean let's not forget uh the poppies in the moat um down at um at the tower i mean it was just the most extraordinary thing that called people's imagination so i think remembrance sunday particularly has become not just about the first and second world wars it's become something much bigger it's become about people in public service we think of it in the military connection but i think actually i think actually people in remembrance sunday think about you know police officers who get killed in the line of duty fire fighters i i think it's broadened i think it's become a bigger thing i must hear a nice story about this a nice story so the last two or three years i've done a remembrance sunday radio show which which i've played out over the 11 o'clock period and i asked for callers a couple of years ago two years ago and i said just tell me what does remembrance sunday mean to you chat rings it he says this is in 2017. he says oh he says um for me remembrance sunday will always be about my mother she was on cue bridge in 1921 with the first official british legion sale of poppies poppies have been around but it's the first time the british legion picked them up was selling them directly for money so she was out there in 1921 with her mother when she was a child selling poppies and that it will always mean my mother he said she's still out this year selling puppies i said i'm sorry yes he said she's 103. so this was amazing and i said well but has she been recognized as a direct result of that phone call and newspaper articles on the back of it she got the mbe um in the in the new year's honors she died shortly afterwards but i did feel that just a little bit of good had come out of it let's turn this around what does it mean to you as nigel farage do you have family members who i do yeah i mean my my my father's father said my paternal grandfather uh was working in the city of london um volunteered immediately in august 1914 he was a stock brokers clerk volunteer i mean literally in august volunteered uh because you know i guess he was 24 or whatever he was and it was a big very exciting adventure and that's what people thought and he went out to the western front he was out there quite early actually uh went over the top twice and the second time was shot and badly wounded and spent a long time recuperating um and so yeah direct personal family involvement in and i knew him and he died when i was 11 or 12 years old so did he ever speak about it no it wasn't talked about you weren't allowed to talk about you weren't allowed to talk about it this was you know this was i did try as young boys naturally would but no no this wasn't discussed too horrible too awful we bury this and we sort of hope it goes away and it's very interesting i mean you know after my grandparents died you know i realized that my father and my uncle both of whom have been army officers knew very little they knew anecdotes about incidents but they knew very little about where their father had been or what he'd done so i went down to the as it was then the public records office at queue you know went through the files and i i managed to piece you know looking at war diaries of the regiment whatever to peace out where he'd been and when he'd been there um and yeah and i and i did find out you know i mean my grandmother said all your you know your grandfather's corporal won the victoria cross and you know you get all these stories and families actually i checked it all out it was entirely true um it was entirely true um he was he fought with the 24th londons the lambeth and southern volunteers here we are in southern today with a cathedral just down next to us so i did do a lot of research on that now now of course if people are really interested in what happened a few generations back in their families i mean there's so much available online you haven't got to go down the queue to the public records office and people are doing this you know people are doing this and taking a real interest and even today you even have a bit of world war one i do with you i do so i was i was out um politically campaigning last year and i got a note that a woman wanted it to meet me and that they had a gift for me um and you know people could be very nice and very generous i mean normally a gift you know cut the bottles of beer or you know whatever because i think a lot of people think i drink beer all day i don't um it's a nice idea though um so anyway it was danny maidstone in kent and i met the woman and her daughter and she said she said my grandfather had fought through the battle of the somme and had carried in his pocket a good luck charm the good luck challenge i mean people going off you know their families gave them good luck charms and i want you to have it well i said to you know the soldier's granddaughter and great-granddaughter so i just i can't how can i possibly take this i said i i i said please show me what idea but i can't and this is it and it is if you can see a thumbs up you can push you can push his thumbs up and they were quite popular late victorian good luck charms that people kept on little chain or kept in their pockets and they insisted that i had it um i tried not to it was very sweet of them and i thought well if it brought that if it brought that loud domicile good luck they came and had a family um see if it brings me good luck and i carry it in my pocket every single day it was a very it's funny in politics you get you get quite a lot of abuse from people uh you get quite a lot of love from other people but that's one of the most touching things that anyone's done so i carry it every day i think it has brought you luck as well well i tell you what i think i have been quite lucky in many ways in many many ways um finally on world war one yeah when those soldiers returned home to britain talk about the response from those who hadn't gone out i was reading i do you know i was sent because because i'm really involved in this i mean in the last week i've been looking at a metal auction that's on next week and i'm going to put a couple of bids in um and i i do collect medals but the trouble is so many other people do now the price has gone up a lot but i was actually sent this week a poem written by an old contemptible and the old contemptibles were the original british expeditionary force of 1914 and they got their own medal they got the 1914 star and if they were under fire before november the 22nd 2014 there was a bar to it and it was a poem that had been written the english wasn't brilliant but it kind of finished up saying you know if you see me walking down the street wearing my 1914 bar star with bar please give me a job and it was almost like a cry for help written by this bloke in in sometime in the early 1920s out of a truth if it is i mean the truth of it is that in 1918 britain there were one and three-quarter million seriously wounded people you know and that means a leg missing or blind or i mean you know difficult you know in a country with a population of 30 million so the sheer level of physical deformity was must have been just astonishing let alone the numbers with very very serious mental problems and you know people dealt with these things as best they possibly could but even i mean even i'm you know even i can remember in the 60s as a kid you'd be told well just oh bill be a bit because he's a bit because i mean you know even i can remember people being very badly mentally maladjusted and for those that came for those that were able-bodied and wanted to work you know they've been promised by the prime minister lloyd george a land fit for heroes and it was anything but it was pretty blooming awful um and the twenties the roaring twenties yeah if you had money that was great if you didn't have money it was pretty bleak um and i i've read a lot of people i've read a lot of a lot of biographies written by men about their great war experiences but written much later you know written in the 1960s 70s 80s about their time and their reflections on life and yeah i've read a lot of real bitterness you know people having more than done their bet and coming back to nothing um funny isn't it i mean in germany it was the it was the servicemen returning from the front to hyperinflation to 7 million unemployed at the peak of german unemployment that led directly to the rise of hitler it was the ex-serviceman community that voted because they just felt completely betrayed and that was the narrative and much of this happened much of this fascist wave that swept europe in in the late 20s and 30s happened because of this and the remarkable thing is it didn't happen here i mean if ever there was a time when a communist party or a you know a fascist party um had suddenly leapt into a very powerful position that was the time for it to happen and yet it didn't which i think must say something about our national character do you know what despite all that horror the bitterness which is completely understandable you know watching that film and going to the the sites it does fill you with hope and it fills you with kind of inspiration in a way well it shows you what human beings can achieve and it shows you that actually in the end i believe good triumphs over evil the other thing of course to think about those who came home was that we could never even get a grip on is the sense of camaraderie that existed between it's why the british legion club sprung up all over the country because they felt the only people they could talk to were wrecked servicemen many of them didn't even tell their wives what they'd been through they didn't want them to know they thought they'd be too shocked too horrified by it but no those that that sense of camaraderie that those people had and i i saw a bit of it a different war but i saw a bit of it um a couple of times i've been to events with the parachute regiment um and they're thinning out now of course in numbers but you know when you're with those guys um and these are the blokes that you know jumped into normally on d-day at three o'clock in the morning or went into arnhem or you know places like that and took pretty heavy casualties but what i've seen those guys in london and in france together i've watched them drinking talking chatting uh i you think to yourself you know there's a bond between these people that none of us can even understand thank you very much

Channel: The Sun

Views: 656,510

Keywords: The Sun, news, breaking news, nigel farage, nigel, farage, ww1, world war one, sam mendes, 1917, 1917 film, brexit party, united europe, the great war, war stories, ukip leader, poppy appeal, extraord

Id: ZXAy_AEPZrU

Length: 39min 9sec (2349 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 17 2020