Commonwealth War Graves Commission: Historical Inequalities Report — House of Lords, 2021-04-26
Topic: Public Lands
Julie Smith (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, I have a few questions This report is clearly very serious and raises issues that need to be explored, perhaps in a wider context. The work of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission in the 2020s is hugely important and valuable. I have visited certain Commonwealth war graves that are exclusively linked to World War II in Europe, so I suspect that the memorialisation I saw was a fairly accurate reflection of what had happened. However, if the intention of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission is to reflect everybody’s contribution equally, regardless of rank, nationality or faith, it is absolutely crucial that the war graves actually do that. In particular, if one visits war graves and assumes that what one is seeing gives a full picture of the loss of life that was incurred during the First or Second World War but we then find that that is not the case, it is a problem not just for those who were lost and their families but for everybody seeking to understand the contribution made, particularly in the First World War, by citizens of the Empire There is often a tendency to talk about the United Kingdom, or Britain, winning the war; that is, a tendency to talk about British history as if it is about servicemen—it was essentially men in those days—who came from the United Kingdom or mainland Britain losing their lives. However, many hundreds of thousands from across the Empire and the countries that are now part of the Commonwealth gave their lives. It is crucial that they are remembered Like the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, I welcome the Secretary of State’s apology and this report. However, I also want to know what the Government are planning to do to ensure that the Commonwealth War Graves Commission has the resources to try to rectify some of these inequalities. It goes beyond simply saying, "Have we managed to identify people or are we just going to put up another plaque saying ‘Plus 10,000 others, identities unknown’?" Will the Government help the commission to look for ways of being more creative about how we understand the past, how we acknowledge the gaps in our history and our understanding of history, and how we understand the debt that we owe to so many Commonwealth countries The reasons why so many people were not named and not commemorated are particularly shocking. As the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, pointed out, when you get into the depths of the report, it is not 54,000 or 170,000: it is potentially another 350,000 people. If we did not know who they were—if people had been buried in mass graves, for example—that is one thing, but if there was simply a sense that, somehow, some lives mattered less, that is another. Perhaps that was the view 100 years ago but it absolutely should not be the view now We need to look for ways to ensure that history, as it is taught in 2021, can be understood in its global context. Can the Minister tell us what the MoD plans to do? There are 10 recommendations, including going beyond statues and stone memorials to film and other things. Have the Government begun to think about how we can look again at our history and ensure that we pay honour to all those who gave their lives, regardless of their creed, colour, country of origin or rank in society? All those lives—all the fallen—matter equally.