In these times of covid, we are made to forget – for our own good!

 

Today is a jubilee: Remembrance Sunday has been observed for 100 years. Thanks to covid and to government ‘guidance’, for the first time in its 100-year history members of the public will be barred from the Cenotaph wreath-laying, while community Royal British Legion parades throughout the UK have been cancelled. Only ‘small organised events’ will be permitted to take place. The Cenotaph service will be limited to a small number of armed forces veterans, members of the Royal Family, and political leaders.

There’s a sad picture of The Queen laying a replica of her wedding bouquet on the grave of the Unknown Soldier in Westminster Abbey (see e.g. here). That is all she was able to do. She stands for all of us who are also only allowed to pay our respects in ‘small groups’, not larger than two. 

Why does this matter? Isn’t it right and proper that ‘the vulnerable’ be shielded, especially the elderly? Shouldn’t “we” show compassion and keep all those surviving veterans of military conflicts wrapped in cotton wool? They are someone’s granddads, after all! And shouldn’t grief be private anyway? Hasn’t government’s covid guidance already made family funerals into a ceremony where our dead can no longer be mourned by friends and acquaintances who’ve accompanied them through their lives? “We” have complied, haven’t we – so clearly “we” don’t need huge public ceremonies to remember our war dead!

Let’s look back two years – surely a time span even our collective MSM ‘editors’ and the woke generation can manage! Remember the stunning images of the stream of poppies surrounding the Tower of London in 2018, to commemorate the end of WWI? Seen from today it’s as if this was such a huge emotional effort that our Nation – or rather, those who always claim to represent us – could not possibly be expected to keep this up, certainly not in the times of covid lockdowns where nearly 50,000 have died of, with or from that virus! That’s covid deaths since March 2020. Here’s a bit of a perspective: on the first day of the battle of the Somme there were 57,470 British casualties with 19,240 deaths. That was on one day alone. We remember that the dying went on. And on. And was repeated in the next war which started 25 years later. 

Those who ‘rule us’ – yes, it’s that unholy alliance of faceless, unelected ‘senior sources’ and their counterparts in the MSM – have decreed that Remembrance should no longer have a place in our society. Moreover, remembering the fallen in the wars since 1914 might lead us to put the covid deaths into perspective. It might lead us to ask what ‘sacrifice’ actually means. It might lead us to ask if that campaign started by The Mirror in October (link), for us to step out of our front doors for two minutes’ silence today, isn’t actually a way to cheapen Remembrance Sunday by the inevitable comparison with the weeks of that clapathon for the ‘Heroes of Our Sacred Cow’. 

In the eyes of that generation which was woke even before that label was coined, this is all good. There’s an entity called the ’Peace Pledge Union’. They’ve worked hard to to influence teachers in our schools to stop what they call the ‘glamourising of war’. It’s that union which sells those white poppies and they’ve created ‘packs’ for teachers to use in their classes. Inevitably, they had to jump on the BLM bandwagon:

“White poppy sales have quadrupled in schools in the past year amid claims that the Black Lives Matter movement has led to an interest in “the good and bad bits of history”. […] “I think there has been a lot more discussion about the nature of British history recently, including controversies over statues,” said the organisation’s Symon Hill. “Whatever view you take, it has clearly got people talking about the good and bad bits of history, what we should mourn and what we should celebrate and what it means to remember the past.” (paywalled link)

No! This should beg the question of who determines which ‘bits of history’ are good and which are bad! Those ‘woke elites’? Who do they think they are? Oh – we can guess: all those self-appointed promoters of “white guilt”, those who wail about “white privilege” but never mention the “white privilege” of dying in WWI trenches or on WWII beaches! Those are the ones who try to make us abolish Remembrance Sunday. ‘Covid Guidance’ and our compliance is a welcome instrument in that endeavour.

Yesterday we wrote about the ‘reply’ to the government’s covid ‘guidance’ (here) by bishops of the CofE and by the Royal British Legion who have bent their figurative knee to the covid government. They’ve accepted that services in churches, even those made ‘covid safe’, should not go ahead. They’ve accepted that the service at the Cenotaph will be so much reduced in scope that it might as well not happen.

“We”, the plebs, the peasants, are not even allowed to watch the ‘small’ local events on this Remembrance Sunday – a day which is about our local communities coming together. We’re not permitted to show our solidarity with those veterans still surviving, never mind with those from wars later than WWII nor with the local people still serving in the Armed Forces. But isn’t this all meant to ‘protect’ those veterans, and to ‘protect’ us peasants from that virus?

No – it is in fact another attack on the fabric of our society, hidden behind that ‘compassionate’ veil of ‘caring’. By preventing us from coming together, at big and small services on this Remembrance Sunday, another strand of our collective history is being severed. That brings us to one of the pillars on which our society rests: the Armed Forces. They only ever get some space in the national, MSM-dictated public discourse when it’s about ‘saving money’ by cutting their budget. There has been much talk about the Armed Forces Covenant in recent years. Here’s a wiki on this – you’ll notice that this talk became urgent thanks to the war in Afghanistan. You’ll also notice that the peacocks in the HoC have been reluctant for decades to do something about it because it ‘would cost’.

Thus the connection between the Armed Forces and us is being cut, veiled by that pious cloak of ‘saving’ us from covid. I wonder if the Whitehall civil serpents haven’t been waiting for years to do this. The educational establishment certainly has, given the increased sale of ‘White Poppy Packs’ to schools. I wonder if one reason for the feeble protest by the current Navy, Army and RAF chiefs is that  they’ve recognised the sign of the woke times, that they perhaps believe that, actually, it’s better to wind everything down: why would any sane person want to sacrifice their lives for a country whose ‘leaders’, in church or in parliament, clearly think this country is only worth saving from covid.

Yes, I’m feeling grim and it saddens me that despite all our, the peoples’ efforts, those who govern us are riding roughshod over the institutions which have made our country into what it once was. Remembering that, remembering our history, warts and all but never ‘woke’, remembering our fallen – that, in they eyes of our governing ‘elite’, might take place in private but must no longer become public. ‘Out of the public eye’ means, for them, that it’ll be out of our collective memory.

No. Today, while I remember the war dead ‘in private’ and while I also remember those who still sacrifice themselves in service to this country, I vow that, today and in the days to come,  I will never forget those who are destroying all that for which previous generations have fought, sacrificed and died over the centuries, not just during the past 100 years. 

 

Print Friendly, PDF & Email