This morning’s discussion on “The Big Questions” (BBC) got me thinking about the First World War. This is no great achievement since I would imagine that not a day goes by without my thinking of that awful conflict. The Big Question at issue was “Is Britain a better place today because of the First World War?” and, as you can imagine, the discussion was “lively”. Strong arguments were made on both sides, and both sides appeared to me to have arguments of equal merit but I have to say that, interesting though the discussion was, no point was made that hasn’t at one time or another crossed my mind. In that respect, it was a little frustrating.
But one of the things it confirmed for me was my own tendency to side with the iconoclast.
I grew up in the sixties and was most decidedly against nuclear weapons, the Vietnam War and all forms of autocratic government, sham democracies, corporate capitalism and injustice: I still am. Had anyone asked me, I would also have said that I was a pacifist but I wasn’t: not really. Anti-war? Of course. Pro peace? Naturally. Willing to turn the other cheek; to stand idly by and watch others suffer? Absolutely and most decidedly, not.
I had some difficulty in reconciling these two sides of my character throughout my early adult life. It seemed that the more culture I absorbed, the more I sympathised with the notion that peace was all-important: from Siegfried Sassoon to Jim Kirk – warriors both – my influences taught me that rational discussion, compromise and the repression of ego were the things that would make the world a better place. Unfortunately, the more history I studied, the more apparent it became to me that this is fine so long as others think the same way. I recall that Kirk, when push came to shove, would resort to the legendary two-handed slam on the neck of some costumed stunt-man and even Sassoon performed his job of blowing up German trenches and their occupants with a great deal more relish than readers of his poetry might have imagined.
Pacifism was an ideal that was diminishing in life’s rear-view mirror with every passing day. Add to this a growing understanding that the world-view of people of the past was perhaps not quite the same as those of the 1970s and I could quite confidently deride as naive the assertion of Michael Foot (a politician for whom I have a long standing admiration) that he was an “inveterate peacemonger” . Indeed, I began to realise that popular culture has always endowed historical figures – famed or otherwise – with the sensibilities of the era in which their stories were written. One of the reasons that we find ourselves censoring, bowdlerising or even banning those works that contain words and ideas we now deem offensive.
I saw “Oh What A Lovely War” and seethed with anger at the waste of life and the cavalier attitudes of the ruling class; I admired “Dr Strangelove”, “M.A.S.H.”, “Catch 22”, “Slaughterhouse 5” and “Born on the Fourth of July”. I bought into it and so did a lot of people; many of whom, I’m willing to bet, are part of the “No Glory” group, which opposes the Tory government’s desire to capitalise on the 100 year anniversary of the start of the Great War and, as they would have it, “reclaim” it from the “peacemongers”. In this, I applaud them. Turning commemoration into celebration is as immoral as it is distasteful and I await with interest the calls for “thanksgiving” ceremonies come 2018. However, there is a danger that they overstate their case and come across as… well… naïve. And worse, they hold, I believe, the majority view. It is a view that has been formed by decades of seeing the conflict as a huge waste of life and potential: it wasn’t. It was an expenditure of life and potential – a view, which I may attempt to justify in a later post.
And ironically, it wasn’t merely poppies, which the violence and carnage caused to bloom in Flanders’ fields. Broadcast along with them, were the seeds that would germinate into the anti-war sensibilities that characterise much of the thinking that “No Glory” reflects today.
But one of the things it confirmed for me was my own tendency to side with the iconoclast.
I grew up in the sixties and was most decidedly against nuclear weapons, the Vietnam War and all forms of autocratic government, sham democracies, corporate capitalism and injustice: I still am. Had anyone asked me, I would also have said that I was a pacifist but I wasn’t: not really. Anti-war? Of course. Pro peace? Naturally. Willing to turn the other cheek; to stand idly by and watch others suffer? Absolutely and most decidedly, not.
I had some difficulty in reconciling these two sides of my character throughout my early adult life. It seemed that the more culture I absorbed, the more I sympathised with the notion that peace was all-important: from Siegfried Sassoon to Jim Kirk – warriors both – my influences taught me that rational discussion, compromise and the repression of ego were the things that would make the world a better place. Unfortunately, the more history I studied, the more apparent it became to me that this is fine so long as others think the same way. I recall that Kirk, when push came to shove, would resort to the legendary two-handed slam on the neck of some costumed stunt-man and even Sassoon performed his job of blowing up German trenches and their occupants with a great deal more relish than readers of his poetry might have imagined.
Pacifism was an ideal that was diminishing in life’s rear-view mirror with every passing day. Add to this a growing understanding that the world-view of people of the past was perhaps not quite the same as those of the 1970s and I could quite confidently deride as naive the assertion of Michael Foot (a politician for whom I have a long standing admiration) that he was an “inveterate peacemonger” . Indeed, I began to realise that popular culture has always endowed historical figures – famed or otherwise – with the sensibilities of the era in which their stories were written. One of the reasons that we find ourselves censoring, bowdlerising or even banning those works that contain words and ideas we now deem offensive.
I saw “Oh What A Lovely War” and seethed with anger at the waste of life and the cavalier attitudes of the ruling class; I admired “Dr Strangelove”, “M.A.S.H.”, “Catch 22”, “Slaughterhouse 5” and “Born on the Fourth of July”. I bought into it and so did a lot of people; many of whom, I’m willing to bet, are part of the “No Glory” group, which opposes the Tory government’s desire to capitalise on the 100 year anniversary of the start of the Great War and, as they would have it, “reclaim” it from the “peacemongers”. In this, I applaud them. Turning commemoration into celebration is as immoral as it is distasteful and I await with interest the calls for “thanksgiving” ceremonies come 2018. However, there is a danger that they overstate their case and come across as… well… naïve. And worse, they hold, I believe, the majority view. It is a view that has been formed by decades of seeing the conflict as a huge waste of life and potential: it wasn’t. It was an expenditure of life and potential – a view, which I may attempt to justify in a later post.
And ironically, it wasn’t merely poppies, which the violence and carnage caused to bloom in Flanders’ fields. Broadcast along with them, were the seeds that would germinate into the anti-war sensibilities that characterise much of the thinking that “No Glory” reflects today.
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