AS this November 11t will be the 100th anniversary of the ending of World War One, there is a danger that the ceremonies that accompany it will be used to endorse the militaristic culture in which we are still enmeshed.
We in Bolton Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament / Stop the War try to counter this culture by laying a wreath of white poppies on the war memorial on November 11.
This a practice was begun by Bertie Lewis,who had been in the RAF in World War Two and became a doughty peace campaigner after it. He was honoured for his peace activities by an official ground plaque unveiled by the then Mayor a year or two ago.
I have some personal connection with World War One. My father volunteered in 1914 and managed to stay alive: his brother, my uncle Percy was not so lucky and was killed in the closing months of the war My father never forgave the war for depriving him of his beloved older brother, whom he looked up to as a role model.
In consequence he never, so far as I was aware, ever wore a poppy or attended Remembrance Sunday ceremonies. And then there was my uncle by marriage Alfred, a Roman Catholic Piano Tuner, who became a Conscientious Objector and would have been shot if the then Prime Minister had not countermanded Earl Haig's sentence at the last minute.
The War caused immense waste and suffering at the time and subsequently and, because of the harsh terms imposed on Germany, led directly to the Second World War, which in its turn led to the Cold War and a variety of regional wars (eg Iraq) with the loss of millions of lives, and to the militaristic culture, which is eating up scarce resources so that the real needs of our ciitizens can't be met as sufficient resources are not available
If people knew their history rather better than I think they do, they would know that in World War One, Germany had no intention of invading Britain, though the false claim that it had such an intention is frequently assumed as a way of justifying that war
Malcolm Pittock
St James Avenue
Bolton
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