Remembering Remembrance The Origins of our Commemorative Day

and thank you so much for joining me this evening for my remembering remembrance talk um i just really wanted to take a look at like the origins of our commemorative day in this country um and since it is you know today is the day and it is the 11th of the 11th today and it's 102 years since armistice day first uh you know since it occurred and 101 years since the first remembrance day events took place on this day but this year particularly marks the centenary of the unveiling of the permanent structure of the cenotaph and the burial of the unknown warrior in westminster abbey so in the first slide i've just included this picture of the cenotaph and those of you that came to my first talk on remembrance will remember this image and uh like recognize it and remember that i spoke about its unveiling and explored like the structure in a little bit more depth and went over the inscriptions and um so i won't go into too much detail about that today but you know as a bit of shameless self-promotion you can go back and have a look at that talk on youtube as michael did mention um i think what i wanted to kind of capture with this image again is just the kind of idea of how we see today we see remembrance day as quite a solemn experience but immediately after the war there were quite a few criticisms that were leveled members of society about the form that people chose to remember and a lot of people felt that the post-war commemorative activities were really too celebratory and that includes you know even the king was accused of being too celebratory in his um well celebration of the end of the war with like banquets and like extravagant parties and it was just you know considering the amount of people that had lost so many people in the war and families that are in mourning and communities and you know places that were devastated across the world even it was seen to be a little bit you know a little bit insensitive and i think that's quite interesting when you're thinking about how we experience a remembrance day today and how very different those kind of two experiences would be um another thing i wanted to come back to in this picture is the hearse that you can see in front of the center you can see there's a funeral kind of uh corsa or you know uh procession that's kind of been laid out and in that coffin is the remains of the unknown warrior and i wanted to talk about that a little bit more today because it is a centenary but also because i feel like generally it's something that is not so visible to very many people around um the time of remembrance and i think some of that kind of stems from the fact that it is in westminster abbey is you know for those of you that have been and know where it is it will you'll know that it is you have to pay to get in and in this slide it's it's quite you know quite captivating images that you can see of this the first one of the the warrior beginning is journey from dover to whitehall and then in the one on the right hand side just before his final burial in the abbey where he still lies today and it's a really fascinating kind of concept the idea of this unknown warrior being kind of plucked from obscurity and that he is an every man of the wall and i think i'm right from the research i've done i think i'm right in saying that it is the first example of an unknown warrior in this sense being kind of commemorated on a national scale in this sense the idea was conceived in 1916 by the reverend david railton who came across the grave of an unknown soldier in his movements around the front as an army chaplain and he saw this uh you know makeshift grave was just the inscription an unknown british soldier and that really kind of got his you know captured his imagination and got him thinking about the family of this man and the experience of you know knowing that you'd lost someone but not knowing where or how or why that loss had occurred and in 1920 with the help of the dean of westminster and the prime minister his idea was finally realized he managed to kind of encourage this idea of an unknown warrior being kind of commemorated on a national scale and the kind of form that it took four unidentified bodies were taken from the major battlegrounds on the western front so that's the aene the somme ara and eep and the general officer in charge of troops in france and belgium were then taken into the chapel where these unidentified bodies were laid out and just selected one without knowing from which front or battleground or whoever they were he had no idea the others were then reburied and the one that he selected was placed in a coffin and became the unknown warrior the reverend david railton then took a a union flag that he had carried throughout his time at the front and used as an altar cloth the entire time he'd served and he covered the coffin with this flag and this flag still hangs in westminster abbey today so this procession then made its way from the continent to london and it was present for the unveiling of the cenotaph the permanent structure of the cenotaph and then taken to westminster abbey where he was re-buried in soil from france under a black belgian marble stone and this stone if you have been to westminster abbey you'll know that it's very um central in the in the abbey itself and bears quite a lengthy inscription which i'll just quickly read for you now it says beneath the stone rests the body of a british warrior unknown by neymar rank bought from france to lie among the most illustrious of the land and buried here on armistice day 11th of november 1920 in the presence of his majesty king george v his ministers of state the chiefs of his forces and a vast concourse of the nation thus i commemorated the many multitudes who died during the great war of 1914-1918 gave the most that man can give life itself for god for king and country for loved ones home and empire for the sacred cause of justice and the freedom of the world they buried him among the kings because he had done good towards god and towards his house so i think that inscription kind of just captures the idea of reverence we give to those that have given their lives for their country or it's and especially at the time of which it was um undertaken in 1920 it would have been you know this this man was upheld as the kind of ideal of duty to king to country to empire and to god it was you know it was a it was a i don't want to use the word marketing ploy but it's a very kind of powerful um image of what was expected of members of the nation but i think like if we step away from that kind of idea for the moment and just think about the kind of personal link that this unknown warrior would have meant to people and one of the most kind of interesting uh accounts of this is actually uh elizabeth leon the queen mother on her wedding day on the 26th of april 1923 so you know quite a few years after he was buried on her wedding day she laid her bouquet at the tome on her way into the abbey to get married and it was a tribute to her brother who had died in 1915 and since then royal brides that married at the abbey have laid their bouquets on the tomb the day after their wedding day and it's that kind of personal connection that i think is really like profound and a very important part to kind of remember in remembrance day commemorative events you know many soldiers at the end of the first world war were still missing you know there was no many of them still have no known graves or no record of their death or you know or their final resting places so in in a sense this unknown warrior kind of serves a purpose of hope that the soldier buried could be your son father brother husband to the multitude of mourners that were you know experiencing such loss and such grief at the end of the war and i think this is kind of really evident in how once the warrior was being taken to his final resting place tens of thousands of people lined the streets so it's you know clearly captured people's imagination so just using that kind of idea of grief on like a a large scale and collective grief i think it's important to kind of consider the idea of a two of the two minutes silence as well and in this next slide we can see um a street shine shrine that had been set up to in in a local area to kind of help members of the community deal with the loss that they were facing but it wasn't until you know 1919 that national collective remembrance events uh began but the origins of the two-minute silence actually came from south africa where the cape town mayor harry hans started this kind of um reflective silence upon learning about the death of his son and it was observed every day for a full year in cape town from the 14th of may 1918 to 1919 and it was known as the two-minute silent cause of remembrance and it commenced at the firing of the noonday gun so at 12 o'clock every day that would be two minutes where everyone would just stop pause and reflect over the war and similar acts have been taking place sporadically around the city's churches since 1916 but it was in uh 1918 upon the death of the summit the mayor kind of made this a more a city-wide collective act of mourning in remembrance and the first minute was dedicated to give thanks for the soldiers that had returned from the war and the second um yeah and the second minute was to remember those that had died so a definite kind of split in what was kind of expected like between thanksgiving and remembrance um members of the south african kind of local government at the time really wanted this to be something that was observed all over the empire and there was a little bit of pushback actually from british british officials but in october of 1919 bearing in mind the first kind of remembrance day was observed in november 1919 the king had made a statement saying that this two-minute silence was going to go ahead at the anniversary of the signing of the armistice so 11am and with this uh official remembrance beginning in kind of 1919 there was already kind of an expectation of what it was going to be like as you know and as you can see from this picture from 1916 many families and communities had found different ways of mourning collectively already and especially when you consider in working class communities pals battalions as well you know where there had been a really tight-knit set of men that had gone out there would usually be in if they were all put in the same place in the line and that was a very a very bad area of fighting it would decimate communities and there would be a huge amount of specific like areas of the uk that experience targeted loss and while of course that is absolutely unimaginable to live with that kind of um grief in any sense it was particularly kind of destructive to me to these communities that really focused on heavy labor industries or dock industries you know it would have really not just affected you know the um emotional well-being of these communities but also was very worrying in an economic sense as well so when you kind of consider how collective memory in communities had become a very kind of personal experience people that are experi were going through these moments of loss when we take it back up to a more national level of remembering collectively at the seat balls cemetery um in the eep area of what many of you know about the western front they play the last post every day and it is a very very uh you know remembrance is very key to the kind of identity of that area and as many of you know if you've visited that area as well the deep fall cemetery is also where the the memorial to the missing is and every um every year on the first of july they have a remembrance event for the battle of the song as well so we can see there's a really kind of um i guess personal and um deeply felt and held notion that remembering specifically on a on a very visual scale it seems to be quite important in these in these cases and it's that kind of visual idea of commemorative acts that i want to like explore a little bit more and i think the best way to do that is with the poppy which everyone knows very widely that poppy is a a symbol of remembrance and this particular image is so very interesting because it's obviously a an earlier poppy and the label reads um earl hague's appeal for ex-servicemen of all ranks of their descendants like silk poppies were obviously handmade um and actually it was a quite a a worldwide affair and um interestingly poppies were a feature of both the western front and the gallipoli campaign and these are both culturally significant features in the memory of the war in any case but what's kind of really awful and horrible about the western front is that the more deaths that occurred and the more the chemicals from yemen from the ammunition fertilize the soil the more the poppies grew so it created this really visually evocative feeling that these like blood red flowers were growing from the bodies of fallen soldiers and it's very noticeable in accounts from the front and letters that men wrote home at the time it was a very common [Music] common practice to express yourself through nature and the link of mortality and nature and those of you that have like looked at some of the war poets you'll see there's that kind of link between the natural world and um you know pathetic fallacy and the feeling of an environment that matched your experiences so i think you know to and to experience that kind of feeling between these flowers growing out of dead men all around you must have been pretty um yeah it must have been a pretty awful thought while you were serving at the front um the poppy also is really kind of memorable through the poem in flanders fields which was written by the canadian doctor john mccrae he served at the front and he wrote this poem after witnessing the death of his friend in 1915. um he actually went on to die himself at the front in january 1918. so this kind of loss and sacrifice rhetoric is really bound up in the notion of the poppy and an american woman moana michael she volunteered for the american ymca um overseas war secretaries organization was so inspired by mccrae's poem in tribute she vowed to always wear a red poppy as a symbol of remembrance for those who fought in and assisted with the war and this kind of came parallel to the work of a french woman called anna gurin who worked after the war in america raising money for french war widows and children by selling silk poppies for donations and she began a multi-national campaign to kind of raise awareness and to raise money for war widows and veterans and she came to britain in 1921 where in on the 11th of november alongside remembrance events it also became the first poppy day um and you know still is today and from 1922 onwards british veterans made remembrance poppies at the poppy factory for um earl hague's fun 4x servicemen as you can see from the labels and still today that is the case and it's the royal british legion who uses these proceeds to support veterans and their family families i should say but i think the poppy has more recently uh become a little bit controversial and is still kind of um kind of a talking point on controversy the idea that it's a political symbol is you know still quite a a hot one it's a hot topic at the minute and i think when you bring the idea like the idea of the war and the aims of the war and the kind of cultural and social setting that the first world wars experience within and then you place it against you know the experiences of other countries and their relationship with imperial britain such as ireland or you know the commonwealth countries or just other countries around the world that have you know had to face colonial oppression over the years we can see where that tension will arise from and i think to kind of build from that there is a there's a another uh channel of thought that the expectation to wear a puppy by public figures is a little overbearing and that not wearing one is a sign of anti-british sentiment but i think it's important to remember that not wearing or wearing a poppy is a personal choice and all of as is the same with wearing any kind of charitable badge and i think there's been a instance in the past with an itv news presenter who made it made the case that she as she could not wear badges for her other charities that she supports she felt that it was unfair that she could only single that one out so you know it's it's really important to remember there is a personal choice and that there are a multitude of different reasons why people do and do not choose to wear coffees i think as well it's also quite an interesting thing to consider the other flowers of remembrance that have come out of the first world war and um these can be the blue de france which is a french cornflower which is sometimes worn in france and the forget-me-not is quite a popular um flower of remembrance in canada um in america for a time a daisy was a flower of remembrance and then of course there are other poppies other colors of poppies that people wear as a kind of remembrance act you've got the purple poppies for the animals that served and died in in warfare and then you have the white poppy of peace which is quite an interesting um case historically because it was first worn by women of the cooperative women's guild in 1933 and it was pretty um pretty shocking at the time as well some of the women that wore these puppies lost their jobs and were really treated quite badly for wearing a poppy of peace which is a little strange because the red poppy is also meant to be a poppy of peace and i believe the royal british legion also says that it's very you know it's completely fine to wear both the red and white poppy or just a white poppy or like i say you can wear none at all it's completely down to the discretion of the individual but i think it's interesting that at one point there was an attempt to combine the message of the white puppy more substantially with that of the red and the little black dot in the middle of the red poppies um there was meant to be an inscription at one point that said no more war so it's interesting to think that that hasn't been included or you know the kind of whether or not this visual representation of remembrance is meant to stand for peace and peace alone so it's just something to consider on that as we kind of move to my final thoughts on the subject and this last image is just a um this one i wanted to leave you with of a makeshift cemetery uh on the on the western front and i thought this was a very interesting and like personal image and it shows like the real personal connections people have with loss and grief and the lengths which people went to to show you know to mourn i have to remember that a lot of the families after the war they couldn't travel to the places that their loved ones had died and a lot of them didn't even know where that would have been and if you think about this war as a kind of global campaign it might have just not even been possible so when you think about that kind of personal connection and then you consider the fact that remembrance day is used to commemorate all wars since the first world war you can see that really kind of um intimate link that people have with individual acts of remembrance and commemoration but what i always think is that it always comes back to the first world war and the visual legacy that this this war has left on our idea of what remembrance and commemoration is as a nation and as a collective and as a culture this symbolism is so strong that it marks every act of remembrance since then and i just think that's something really interesting and important to kind of leave you with and thank you for listening well thank you louise for that fantastic talk if you've got a question guys please do put it in the care box i'm happy to ask it on your behalf and to ask it to louise and we can go from there um but before i i i asking your questions i've got a microphone so i'm going to ask my first question because i'm evil no um my first question louise really goes we guess locally um i wanna ask a question as as in how did colchester commemorate um the first world war um well um as a colchester local as well michael who um and for those of you that know colchester we have a war memorial that is placed on coach's high street and interestingly it's uh actually the place that it takes up in the high street is very um looks very different to how it did before they decided to erect a monument for the war and um again for those of you that are familiar with it you will know that the high street moves to the towards the end there is the war memorial then the road continues onto east street but those houses actually used to continue and there was no kind of thoroughfare towards the castle so in order to build the war memorial they actually demolished a good section of housing to place the war memorial in a really visually aesthetic and appealing spot in front of the castle i think it's you know if you haven't seen it it's really worth having a look and seeing if you can see the link between the uh buildings and an interesting choice by the local local community to place it there it it is it's a very bizarre uh one because i mean their debate for a long time where to put it where do you put this in oils it's a big discussion goes on they decide mainly because it's actually uh done by a few people um the high student colchester for example is very much involved that and he gives money and say look yeah you know have the houses demolish them and bullish memorial it's it's very interesting how they decided um but why louise why there do you think what was so important about that site in particular i think it has to do with placing the wall and the war memorial as part of a historical narrative in the town and i think what i mean by that is that you know coaches castle is very um very visually dominant and it's very quite um it's quite uh standard of what you'd expect a castle to look like i know it sounds a bit silly but like it's yeah it's a very uh you know appealing castle shape so i think when you kind of place in that context and draw that visual link between um cultures medieval past and at the time it would have been the the contemporary environment in which the war memorial was built it shows that kind of link of almost like authenticity that i think was what they were trying to trying to evoke from the placing of that um war memorial in such a kind of in such a kind of visually um specific setting yeah exactly and it links very much and it's starting the story isn't there a link into that english story which is such an important part of colchester um we we got a question here it says you know that motion oils were raised by public funding um and as it says that um they just eventually won in this person's village as they didn't have one for like 94 years and i think that that is absolutely fascinating as as a concept i i know caucus that is the funding comes really from um the highest heuried and a few other people but i mean were they generally generally probably probably funded with memorials i think it really was a mixture all over the country and i think there really was um you know it and it just goes back to that collective feeling that this war needed to be memorialized in a way and um you know you can see it as well with um especially in some churches um they had specific uh uh chapels dedicated to first world war you know the people that died in the first world war that were erected very shortly afterwards and i think it comes back to what i kind of discussed in my first uh talk the idea that um you know there was no there was no graveside for a lot of these families to mourn at and where can you direct that grief it has to go somewhere and i think that when there's a visual and kind of widely understood and appreciated place to direct grief especially when it's you know as i said a little earlier i think it was not just the loss of of lives that were experienced in this war but also a kind of you know it's quite a surprise that the war had been so destructive i think to people at the time you know how industrial it was how admired it became and how very um desperate the situation in britain and in germany was at the end of towards the end of 1918. i think it was a real shock for all communities involved and i think that there needed to be a somewhere to focus that feeling yeah there's um i think it's just too much of very quick again briefly very quickly i think codderson was also very unique as well as that it's just a monument with no names on it um it's just a monument to colchester corpus is dead i mean you find different memorials locomotives in parishes for example half like that on there don't you like parishes are very much more localized um i think about back to my hometown in in kent there's a for the back then it'll be a hamlet or a face small village and there's a little with all the names of everyone and the other ones have been definitely being publicly funded those ones yeah the big more big more uh what we're looking for elaborate ones would have been ones that would have been for bigger figures i think yeah i mean i can't remember specifically if i just completely can't off the top of my head remember if colchester's does have any names on it but on that kind of note it's interesting how many schools have memorials to old uh students as well and i think that's you know always interesting to see it's usually in the hall and you see how many names are on there that kind of local aspect that kind of collective that ownership over the grief is a really interesting um idea something i really want to delve into a little bit more do i agree someone's just said again that um again i think the same village uh that was mentioned beforehand um that five mothers traveled on the tractor trailers seven miles or tens eleven and eleven every year as i could remember their own times in the unknown village so they went somewhere so they where they could come in where it could remember because such it meant so much to them they got a sense of grief and loss which would do wouldn't that mean definitely we've got other questions so we'll go to them um so do you think we should commemorate fallen soldiers from both sides of the war instead of a nationalistic approach and do you think people are more willing to commemorate soldiers on both sides remembering world one while then world war ii because of the origins of the conflict okay um so how about we we should these yeah i think i think it's um an interesting idea but i think that the very notion of memory is so bound up in nationalism that it will be so very hard to separate the two and i think recently they've actually made a very good go of it and i'm sinking to the uh 75 the 75 anniversary of d-day and i think where obviously you know i think they did a um an event at portsmouth or southampton where they were commemorating the day landings and they brought all of the world leaders there and invited them to kind of come and take part and they invited obviously um anglia merkel from germany across and obviously historically germany was on the wrong side of that wall but i think it was it's that kind of i thought it was a really interesting and great thing to do because it's kind of bringing you know using that kind of peace process as a as a unifying thing even 75 years later and i think it's important to kind of realize that you know if we think between the first world war and the second world war and the the attitudes that came about from the end of the first world war and how very um uh difficult those feelings were with the uh treaty of versailles and the stab in the back myth and all of those kind of feelings of blame and those nationalistic nationalistic elements that you know are mentioned there were so very unhelpful but i think that unfortunately they're tied together in the way we experience memory is i think i completely agree i think it's very hard to kind of tear apart the only thing i think where maybe we see a different approach i think i think the obamacare memorial in london where they mention this is to the lives of fifty five thousand command but and also to those who died in what the weights as in civilians yeah there's almost i i attempt an attempt to reconcile yeah i don't think it's always that easy but there's attempt to do it and i think there have been cases of that in the past like um i think i can't remember the specific name of the exhibition but the enola gay exhibition that was about the i think it was in washington i could be wrong but um obviously the you know gay was the plane that dropped the um atomic bombs on japan and there were so many kind of issues that came about that exhibition and how veterans were some veterans found it quite upsetting that there was a bit of a um you know there's almost blame placed on americans for committing this act because they felt that at the time they were given no choice in their actions by you know the government you know the american government making them go to serve or you know the feelings that they had that they were doing the right thing and serving in this war but obviously you know the atomic bombs were catastrophic and awfully damaging to the people of japan so it's there's always i think going to be a really difficult relationship between reconciling um memory to the present day experience of you know the world yeah a hundred percent um i think i mean i think as well i think in terms of commemorating the conflict i think that as you said i've been tempted as well to try to do it i mean you think of that national documentaries now and keep doing countries try to look at the other side occasionally as well which is which is which is which is quite nice i was in just one side of the view of war but i think in terms of memory he said it it's all down to the nation state and especially especially state members events yeah and when we think about member state is still very much geared towards a state remembering yeah and so it's going to link to the nation isn't it and it's going to be that way in claims and i think that's why there are some issues with it because it is a political act in a sense you know if you look at the people that are very you know front and center at these events they are politicians and i think that's where people find it more difficult to kind of reconcile that idea of personal remembrance with a broader sense of national identity and remembrance is the most weirdest kind of thing because it's got this state uh membrane but also you've got the personal together and it's kind of linking the two to the government it's the only thing i know like it it's very unique in that regard one more question though for you so um did we have a membrane service sunday before the memorial was erected um with no television presumably all the events in london were sorted by newspapers that doesn't mean that local communities were encouraged to make their own memorials and remembrances yeah definitely and i think that um so with the erecting of the permanent structure in uh 1920. i oh wait no think about yeah no 1920 that's right coming years right that's good before that in 1919 there was um a temporary structure of the cenotaph and that was made out of wood and plasterboard and it was very similar to the design that we see today but it wasn't expected to be a permanent structure it was really like public pressure that made sure that that you know remained remained to be seen as we do today um but i think that and i think like the national commemorative events kind of centered around that and in other um in other areas of the country you had as i showed that picture from i think it was agnes church in london with that street shrine and it was very kind of personal um community driven remembrance act of remembrance and i think that you know when we think about the context of war memorials like local war memorials that are set up and how it really was um fundraised for in the local communities and then like local councils and politicians kind of all kind of got involved with the erection of these things that's where people were able to center their grief and then hold these um these remembrance events on the on the 11th of november but before before the um armistice obviously the 11th of november was just uh another day so acts of remembrance would have happened probably on maybe the first day of the song or you know it would have buried from community to community because it would have been where that loss was keenly felt i would have thought yeah i mean i know for everyone who's according to resident in in this some bottoms ruins they held services in there um and they are they're the movement actual remembrances they still hold people's grief and sorrow and anxiety were placed in the local area and they held their own local things to help them deal with situations i'm saying a local aspect of this is huge um i think yeah i mean i could go keep talking myself but i won't do because i'll i i i'll take too much time but it's so interesting local element is fascinating and um definitely something that needs to be explored more i think yeah definitely because it really underpins the national doesn't it yeah well it's always there all the local uh remembrance acts were almost a they're all played into an english narrative still yeah um which is very interesting yeah um it tells us actually sometimes that these things don't always start from the top down but not from the bottom up sometimes another question you refer to how to became a symbol is it a myth that copies grew in the fields after war no it was not a myth um i think i might have touched upon it in my talk but the um with the amount of deaths that occurred on the western fronts it really fertilized the soil and it seemed that you know after battles or very um you know very um lots of loss of life there were it seemed to be that these poppies were growing exponentially because of the fertilization of the soil so um it seems that it wasn't a myth and that it was actually widely seen but i think um it would have been something that was experienced throughout the war i mean obviously we know we've seen images and pictures of the war and the land being absolutely decimated so it would have been something that also i think plays into that symbolism these poppies kept coming back you know it wasn't something that just occurred once and they kept regrowing after the land had been destroyed so and i think you know playing into that kind of there's a real idea of um romanticism and and rural nationalism that is at play during the war and a lot of um war poets play upon it and if you look at a lot of the war diaries you can see through there so it would have been really really powerful to people at the front to engage with their natural environment in such a way and see it kind of respond to the actions that were being taken upon 100 um we've got vane i think i think it's a great question this one um how do you think rembrandt's events will change once there are no more living veterans of the world wars oh that's a meaty question i like it thank you whoever did that one i think um we've seen we have seen it a little bit already obviously with the first world war we have um no more living participants i think the last participant was harry patch and he was known as like the last tommy and he died a few years ago now and i think that there has been a real effort to keep memory of the first world war kind of relevant and i think that's where things such as um you know centenaries come into play because you know going back to the idea that um remembrance day is actually a political event as well it serves the government that is in control to to use national feelings of well events of national feeling to for for a as a means to an end really and i think that if you look specifically at the centenary of the first world war there was a real um attempt to create something very um culturally unifying out of it which on the surface seems a little a little odd but um i think using memory as a way to foster identity is something that is very useful for politicians and i think it will continue to be used after um you know veterans have passed away but it would be interesting uh it will be interesting to see the form of which i'll take and i think that's where um using remembrance day as a focus to remember all wars is quite a quite an interesting thought so it'll be interesting to see how that kind of plays out only time will tell yeah exactly yeah i mean i'll just go back to my research because i can but you know how think about how about civil war like he's after very important to commemorate and but eventually it does die out maybe a century maybe two centuries maybe you need to half centuries but eventually this importance does die out but what's interesting about is he said louise the fact that they almost reimagined it in terms of all war now and much more so they've almost kind of almost seen uh the issue coming ahead and they've almost kind of already kind of um uh we interpreted it um which i think is an interesting way of looking at it okay another question why do you think that farts in belgium have a national day on 11th well britain does not and we have on a nearest sunday hmm good question i think that um actually it's more of a a two two-pronged issue here because i think that we do have remembrance events happen on the 11th but i think that the nearest sunday means that there is um proper attention can be given to like a national act of remembrance which we see in whitehall every year and because of the um how the days move in the months 11th can fall on any day of the week so i think having a very specific sunday i think it's the second sunday um of november there is always going to be an act or a service of remembrance i think is quite um quite useful but i think um you know just using that kind of idea of focus you know it's not always something that is useful for some people i mean i've been reading some uh some work recently about the memoirs of an australian soldier who had a really difficult relationship with anzac day and you know how he felt that anzac day was a state state-mandated event to kind of encourage veterans of the war to feel like they had done something useful and not question the kind of realities and realistic attitudes behind it and i think that moving from a national day which for you know using anzac day as an example there and actually tying up ideas of in this example australian and new zealand identity which you know it's a very kind of multi-faceted identity that we see because um you know australian and new zealand experience of the war was very had a very um gendered attitude to it there was aspects of mateship and how um men were meant to be kind of chippy and just get the job done you know no matter the cost and you know the emotional and traumatic aspects of experiences weren't really you know explored so when you kind of think about that identity that is expected of these men and tie into a national day you can see there are some kind of um you know oversights that are being taken so rather than tie up in a nationalistic like identification act maybe it was thought to be a better idea to do it as more of like a service of remembrance but then again you know i think it could just be the a lot but you know even in this very instance there are a lot of men that felt very proud about the service that they did and wanted to kind of show their worth in this regard so i think it's it's really something that i'd love to explore more and yeah i think it'll be a really interesting topic to kind of delve into a little bit more yeah i i i just got a i thought um maybe maybe it's always completely wrong but also the fact as well why it's sunday as well in england perhaps as well is the fact that the link between church and state is still quite strong but she has to fuss a war uh in advance that link is it's very different isn't it and i wonder if that has any influence on it as well um and why it was big sunday as as you know because of the church and state thing is still quite strong but i'm not i don't i don't know but i know so this idea i thought i'd just throw out there and see where it lands nowhere but why not um i think that's mainly our questions um oh no we've got questions we've got questions here we've got some comments which i'll let louise read by her by by by herself um um oh louise you you've been invited to talk to the scouts next next next next year so yeah better brush up um but i think we'll leave it down those are your comments i'll i will um i think we've got here uh another comment here actually um you can tell me i think yes someone's talking about you know someone's asking a comment really about you know the particular grassroots aspect of of the um of it all um and that when it was even when people in i think it was in seven sixty eight seventy four since the sixties seventies when people suggested that they might get rid of almost this day those cover grassroots outgoing about it yeah yeah i i think i think i think what we're trying to say is that um there's this kind of also this there is this popular personal aspect to a mistake as well as political day as well isn't it there's there's two things going on i think that's something that really needs to be remembered as well like there are you know very many critics of like days of national remembrance and i think that while some of those you know points may be valid points to listen to i think that what it really needs to you know what this came from and what it still is today for many people and you know because it's now used for many different wars and conflicts since the end of the first world war it's it's such a personal a personal feeling of grief that has been tied up in this national day and so i think that while there are political aspects to it it's so very personal for so very many people and it's such a focus for a lot of communities to relate and to understand their own feelings of loss and grief and you know especially i think was it the 60s or 70s that you were that was mentioned there yeah um sorry i can't see the question so um you know i think bearing that in mind as well you know there would have been very many veterans still alive at that point and espe and you know the second world war veterans and remembrance day would have been used to remember that experience as well so you know using this kind of rolling time of remembrance for wars since is really powerful and it kind of ties them all in together so it'll always have a kind of relevance a personal relevance to people that feel the connection to it and i think yeah it's important to remember that

Channel: History-Indoors

Views: 120

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Armistice Day, 1918, Commemoration, Remembering, HistoryIndoors

Id: fCM7ozxXBLk

Length: 54min 2sec (3242 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 12 2020