Will we be found wanting inthedefence of freedom?

AMID ALL our troubles we have the opportunity today to reflect on our good fortune, and what we need to do to maintain it, as we approach the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month.

Our annual act of remembrance for those who perished in two world wars and lesser conflicts such as Korea, Iraq and Afghanistan enables us formally to recognise what we owe to the fallen.

It is quite simply our priceless freedom, now temporarily and reluctantly curbed by a pandemic.

Without their sacrifice we would be living under the jackboot that Russian and Chinese communism, along with militant Islam, now want to impose on us. The cause of freedom is unending.

The big issue today is whether, 75 years after the last world conflict, we are in a fit state to defend it.

Have we grown too soft on rising prosperity or too ready to believe it is a secure, natural condition of life in this Sceptr’d Isle?

Just over a century ago wars were seen as the fate of mankind. How else can we explain the courage and fortitude in the trenches and the stoicism at home?

Would we now accept the carnage on the Somme and at Ypres and Passchendaele, to name but a few First World War battles in which three sons of my wider family were blown to bits?

It robbed us of the cream of our manhood and condemned vast numbers of young women to spinsterhood.

Twenty or so years on it was still, though to a lesser extent, the price of freedom until Hiroshima and Nagasaki forced us to contemplate wholesale destruction of the planet.

We have had a sort of world peace or Cold War since then, if you discount terrorism and the more localised ideological conflicts and ‘ tin pot’ dictators flexing their muscles.

We now count the social cost in the thousands fleeing these conflicts for penury, and their exploitation by ruthless thugs of their desire to reach our shores because they believe our hearts are soft and streets paved with gold.

Both are no doubt true compared with where they come from.

Which brings me back to our good fortune. Over the past 75 years we have had a steady improvement in our living conditions and wealth in spite of staving off the bankruptcy from the Second World War, occasional market setbacks and all the damage the unions did to the economy up to 1985.

Until Covid- 19 came along, we had never had it so good, as Harold Macmillan, demonstrating our steadily rising prosperity, legitimately claimed in 1959.

Much of it has been down to technology which is advancing at such a rapid rate that a vaccine against a virus unknown a year ago seems likely soon.

The pace of technological change is perhaps tellingly illustrated by the fact that, for the 11 years I was the Prime Minister’s spokesman, I had neither a mobile phone nor a computer, and we had never heard of the internet.

Now they seem to rule our lives. Why, people no longer practice the basic safety measure ( or courtesy) of looking where they are going so absorbed as they are by their iPads and iPhones.

At the same time the anti- social media, permitting any Tom, Dick or Harry to threaten, abuse or corrupt individuals, is already a tool in the hands of enemies of our society. Certainly our youngsters are under siege by the very Devil himself. This is a gross abuse of our precious freedom.

But it is also being attacked by a myriad single issue pressure groups whose entire agenda is to limit freedom of speech and expression – so much so that life for old has- beens like me would be hazardous if I did not view these thought police with contempt.

And now we are in the throes of a pandemic which, in shattering the economy, will provide a stern test this winter of our determination to defend freedom from all those who would limit or abolish it.

This brings me back to the big issue of the day: after years of relatively soft living are we resolved – as were our people in two world wars – to fight for the freedom that is vital if we are to recover and prosper again?

As Lord Kitchener pointedly said a century ago: “Your country needs you.” The next few years are not going to be easy.

Let us take a leaf out of our glorious ancestors’ book. They were not found wanting in defence of freedom.

Duty calls.