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War Memorials

I thank Mr. Speaker for allowing me to address the House on the subject of the nation’s war memorials on the day after the launch of the annual poppy appeal. My interest in war memorials began some time ago. My late father served 25 years in the armed forces, and one of his postings was to NATO headquarters in Belgium. My father organised family outings to visit the war memorials in that part of Belgium and northern France to seek out names of members of my family who had died in the first world war. By a quirk of fate, I attended a Canadian school at NATO headquarters in Belgium. The school took us on outings to Vimy ridge, where many Canadians lost their lives in the first world war. I was a teenager at the time, and seeing those cemeteries left a lasting impression on me—the symmetry of the white headstones, the stillness and quiet. But what stuck in my mind was the age of so many of the men—young boys really—who died when just a few years older than me. When the family returned to Britain, I started to notice the village war memorials, big war memorials in towns, rolls of honour in churches, memorial plaques and many other forms of remembrance, not just from the first world war but from other conflicts. I got a sense that without graves at which to mourn, there had been a great upwelling of feeling in this country at the end of the first world war. Public subscriptions enabled memorials to be erected so that people had somewhere to go and grieve, and to remember the people whom they had lost in the Great War. That was not just for families; it was for communities. It was, in fact, for society. It was to ensure that none of us would ever forget those who had lost their lives in that conflict—as, indeed, none of us should ever forget those who are currently fighting for our country. Every Remembrance day when, attending the main ceremony, I lay a wreath in Cleethorpes outside St. Peter’s church, I remember the cemeteries in France and Belgium. I remember the lives cut short. I think of all who are serving now, and of all who have lost their lives in more recent conflicts in Northern Ireland, the Falklands, Iraq and, now, Afghanistan. I remember that when I had just been elected—it was one of those bitterly cold November days—standing with all the civil dignitaries, ready to lay my wreath, and thinking "This is not the only memorial in the constituency; there are many, many others. There are small village memorials, and there are memorials in other churches." I made a little promise to myself that I would do my best to visit each and every memorial in my constituency. That has led me, over the past decade, to begin to record the names of the people commemorated on those memorials, and also to explore a little about their family backgrounds and the lives that they led. The period that I am discussing was one of great social change in Britain, certainly in the area that I represent. Because of the growth in the fishing industry, it was a time when thousands of people flocked to Grimsby and Cleethorpes to earn money. The whole social history is absolutely fascinating. One of the memorials that I visited during my exploration of the constituency was in a very small village in the Lincolnshire wolds called Wold Newton. The names on the memorial cross had faded and almost vanished, but I took a photograph and put it on the computer. Having used all sorts of effects, I eventually managed to transcribe the names of four who died in the first world war and one who died in the Boer war, but I think that by now, because of increased weathering, those names have probably faded completely. That was when I really began to think about the problem of memorials that have been weathered and memorials that are neglected. We must face the fact that although most memorials are well loved, not all of them are. I want to make people aware that those memorials exist. Although the families who raised money for them obviously wanted the names to be there for ever more, the names have faded. That is why I feel so passionately that we must restore the war memorials in this country. It is not just about memorials that have faded or have been neglected; there is also the issue of development. Some memorials are threatened by demolition and road-building schemes, for instance. I know that there are memorials in many factories, workplaces and schools.