Remembrance Day

I drove past the village war memorial yesterday on the way to pick up the Sunday papers and it was resplendent in swathes of poppy wreaths. This got me thinking; has Remembrance Day had its day? A contentious subject, perhaps.

Remembrance Day was instituted in commemoration of the dead in WWI and was then extended to those who died in WWII. Since then it had been modified again to include all the dead in all wars, but it nevertheless remains rooted in WWI - the war to end all wars, which didn't

YouGov did a poll a short while ago concerning whether people participate in any way in Remembrance Day and I was surprised to discover that almost 2/3rd of the UK population don't participate at all. Given there's no past figures, it's hard to say whether it's a declining institution.

Many say it helps us remember our history and prevents us making the same mistakes, which is clearly tosh - we learn nothing from history and continually repeat our mistakes. We are taking into wars by politicians and for a variety of reasons, some of which have to do with cementing their own names in history.

I don't personally know anyone who died in any war, and I'm 62. I would guess that goes for the majority of people alive today in the UK and that's reflected in the YouGov poll. Yes, there will be people alive today who lost comrades or fathers in WWII, but they're a fast declining number.

We don't commemorate the deaths in the Wars of the Roses, the English Civil War, the Napoleonic Wars, the Crimean War or any war prior to 1914 - they've simply left the folk memory due to the distance in time and the fact (with the exception of the aristocracy) that we don't even know whether any of our ancestors took part in them. Yes, we have Waterloo Day and Trafalgar Day, but they're events that are generally restricted to the Army and Navy, are regimental and celebrate victory, as opposed to remembrance of the dead. There's also the fact that many who participate in Remembrance Day, especially from the right, undeniably use it as a form of triumphalism, which was not the original intention.

Then there's the fact that Remembrance Day is not exactly ecumenical, despite the large number of Empire troops who died in both world wars. The cenotaph was designed by Edwin Lutyens to commemorate all Empire dead and is devoid of any religious iconography; however, the CofE appropriated it and Remembrance Day has ever since been an affair with heavy CofE overtones. Recently some poor vicar tried to make his church's Remembrance Day event ecumenical, but was howled down by more vocal members of the British Legion.

I can't help feeling that, within 20 years or so, Remembrance Day may die out - unless we have yet another massive war. We already have the relatively new institution of Armed Forces Day, which honours living servicemen and women - perhaps it will become amalgamated with that at some stage.