Key historic events are remembered
World War I and fall of Berlin Wall
This week saw the coincidence of two key events in European history, one poignant and one joyful.
November 11 was of course the anniversary of the Armistice ending the First World War.
On Remembrance Sunday, Rutherglen and Cambuslang joined other communities across the United Kingdom in remembering that war and the countless deaths and injuryies sustained in the Second World War too, as well as the conflicts which followed.
Veterans joined dignitaries, locals and schoolchildren to lay wraths at Rutherglen’s Cenotaph in one of several services in the area to remember all those who lost their lives in battle.
Just two days earlier, November 9 marked the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall .
The Wall was the potent symbol of the oppression inflicted for nearly 50 years by the Communist governments of Eastern Europe in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, the Baltic states and East Germany.
I visited West Berlin a decade before the fall of the Wall as part of a Young Liberal delegation.
West Berlin was in effect an island surrounded by Communist East Germany, but it felt free and vibrant while a sense of fear and gloom seemed to come from the east of the city. As well it might – around 3.5 million people fled from East Germany to the West before the Wall was built .
More than 200 died thereafter in failed attempts to escape.
We in Britain are fortunate to live on an island which has not suffered foreign invasion for many centuries.
But imagine if there was a dividing wall down Mill Street which left Spittal,
Bankhead and the West End occupied by a foreign power with gun towers every 100 yards.
There are many countries in the world which are divided in this way – Palestine, Syria, Cyprus and Ukraine.
So the freedom and democracy we take for granted has been hard won – and not always given to other countries.
The institutions we have built – the United Nations, the European Union, the Commonwealth or NATO – and the United Kingdom itself, have all played their part in protecting freedom, particularly in Europe.
We are a free country – and the spirit of a free people means reasoned debate and respect for other people’s views, for Parliament and our democratic institutions.
That spirit should guide us through the vital controversies which challenge us today.