In just a few weeks we will mark the one hundredth anniversary of the guns falling silent on the Western Front – the Armistice. The official end of the First World War would not come until the following year, in 1919, but the shooting and killing came to an end.
The Great War casts a long shadow across every corner of our country. On some estimates, Britain lost up to 2% of its entire population to the war effort. Thousands of memorials in every city, town and village are a settled feature of our national landscape. Churches, town and village halls, schools, government departments, local authority offices and, often enough for it not to be uncommon, high up on a hill in the middle of some remote rural spot can be found a memorial to the fallen. Even in that most remote corner of the Hebrides, the island of Lewis, one in five men fought in Europe. On them barely twenty-five years later would be carved the names of those who fell during the years of the Second War. Remembrance is seared into our national consciousness.
The First World War, as war often does, drove profound change in industry, production, society, technology, politics (Asquith out and Lloyd George in), and the nature of British government and politics itself. After their pivotal war work at home and in nursing the wounded the call for women to be able to vote became irresistible. On taking office as Prime Minister Lloyd George established the Cabinet Office and the position of Secretary of the Cabinet in a bid to bring greater efficiency to the conduct of the war. A hundred years on the Cabinet Office remains the most important centre of power in the UK government.
For the first years of the First as well as the Second War, the United States remained neutral. Britain and her allies stood alone in the struggle to liberate and defend continental Europe from domination and tyranny. Both periods marked extraordinary moments of resilience, principle and courage. In June 1940 as France battled for its very existence Winston Churchill made one of his most important and famous speeches in attempt to boost British morale: “Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves, that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, “This was their finest hour.” It was stirring stuff in a desperate hour of need and nearly eighty years on its power still rings true.
Today Britain is not engaged in an existential struggle against tyranny and evil. Our future and liberty as a country is not threatened in the way it was one hundred years ago. In our time we have different challenges, and different opportunities.
The Brexit referendum and its result have sharpened national division and divided political parties. To some this has come as a shock after the Blair/Cameron/coalition years. During these years an unspoken consensus dominated. It entrenched the political establishment and excluded, and more damagingly alienated, those outside the charmed circles of Islington and Notting Hill.
Now our politics is changing once again. The establishment settlement has been rejected. Our politics is cutting free and moving on, but what next? For now, uncertainty prevails, the national direction not clear, but our history shows the way forward – our stable democracy, independent legal system, free press, our innovative and enterprising culture, and outward looking instincts. Our love of fairness and instinct for liberty have made us the destination of choice for those fleeing persecution. We must be proud of our particular history, our particular values that are appreciated the world over.
We have an ability to refresh our purpose whilst relishing our traditions. We must reaffirm our sense of national mission, across generations and communities, country and city, class and religion, so that we can feel sure that our finest hour has not passed by but lies ahead.