Memorials and Monuments : Then and Now
World War One was the first global conflict. It spread from Europe to the Middle East then into Africa and the Pacific. The consequences of this re-drawing of so many maps reverberate today in many parts of the world. Nowhere more than in the turmoil that has engulfed Iraq, Syria, Libya and Tunisia.
Like it or not we are involved in another world war. It is not being fought by massed ranks of soldiers on foreign fields but by highly motivated ‘fundamentalists’, or more accurately ‘guerrillas’. Their aspiration is to obliterate any social order but that decreed by themselves. They use social media and the internet to great effect undermining our concepts and recruiting adherents.
There is perhaps a parallel between their call to arms and the WW1 recruitment posters. The Conscription Act in March 1915, a military imperative, became transmuted post-war as being necessary to defend a land fit for heroes. The fundamentalists offer a world where its followers have certainty in their faith. The dialogue is much the same. In the end, as history shows, the promise is rarely delivered.
...the State has moved in to manage the way we memorialise
Our response to ‘then and now’ is worthy of comment. The 9 Sons memorial in Kempley, and ongoing research in Dymock and the Leadon villages by The Moment Centenary Project provide us with a local context in time and place. This is both appropriate and progressive creating a 21st century perspective on the lasting effects of international conflict.
The 1914 / 2014 memorial events brought our local families’ social history into round focus highlighting the fate of the average 22 year old from this rural enclave.
In the trauma and mourning that followed WW1, communities across the land felt the same need. Memorials were built by public subscription. In many cases many months and even years elapsed between the idea and its realisation. The point for them, as perhaps it should be for us now, is to share as a community the pain and the commemoration. In those distant days there was no instant news and the channels through which that news travelled were few and narrow.
Today we live in the age of instant communication. We knew within minutes of those poor people murdered on a Tunisian beach. This is also the age of instant reaction. Within hours mounds of flowers, tables full of candles and impromptu gatherings created physical manifestations of our grief. Pause to think that this war will garner many more victims, and so we move on again to instant, perhaps as quickly forgotten, grief.
There is another trend, the State has moved in to manage the way we memorialise and into building the memorials.
We had the powerful poppies art installation at the Tower of London – speaking volumes about peace and sacrifice. As with the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire in 2014 ‘commemoration’ was sufficiently personal and familial to feel the consequences wrought by that first global armed conflict.
In July we had the reminder of the horrific 7/7 bombings.
Now it is suggested that there is an Exchequer funded memorial to those who died in Tunisia.
...it is the communities they come from who will best remember those lives
Another pause for thought might make us wonder about unintended consequences. Is the State not in some way legitimising the perpetrators? Difficult as it might be to see into the minds of those who seek to destroy us it is possible that they will see this as a monument to their success.
The most poignant and powerful expressions are those mounds of flowers and tables of candles. They are personal and real in just the same way as those memorials that can be found in almost every town and village up and down the land.
Let us be wary of the State’s attempt to capture the memories. The war we are embroiled in will have many more victims and it is the communities they come from who will best remember those lives in the most personal and appropriate way. When we lose that connection we are the poorer. No one said it better than John Donne “No man is an Island”. Our island will outlast this current threat and it is the strength of our communities that will overcome that threat.
John O'Keefe, Chris Bligh
Author’s bio….
Comments
You must be logged in to post a comment.