Politicians keep on blundering
ON November 11, major broadcasting companies will be broadcasting the commemorations of the centenary of the Armistice, and the BBC in their own inimitable style will be concentrating on the attendees, namely the English Royal Family, and hypocritical Westminster politicians. They will occasionally mention in their sycophantic narrative, that everyone who fought in the war fought for King and Country.
In the 1918 general election campaign, David Lloyd George promised a “country fit for heroes to live in”. The reality was very different. He did nothing for the soldiers returning from the Great War, or for the families of the men who died. He did nothing to help the war veterans when they had their pensions taken away. He was the architect of the government deferring the responsibility of the physical and mental health and welfare of war veterans to charitable organisations, and every government has adopted this cowardly policy ever since.
I urge everyone to support the Royal British Legion’s Poppy Appeal because without these organisations veteran soldiers will have nothing. No member of the Royal Family was anywhere near the front line of the Western Front between 1914 & 1918. We do not want a repeat of the embarrassment of 2008 when the President of France along with Prince Charles forgot about the contribution of the Welsh to the First World War.
My maternal grandfather enlisted on the promise that Ireland would be granted Home Rule, which was fully reneged on by the Westminster government in 1918. My paternal grandfather, like many Welsh miners, enlisted to fight on behalf of the small country of Belgium which had been overrun by its imperialistic neighbours. In my many years of research of the Great War recruiters never used King and Country in Wales, they used “The spirit of Glyndwr” to encourage Welshmen to enlist. In fact it can be said that these recruits and the Welsh Army were the original “Meibion Glyndwr”.
On November 11 ignore the BBC and the insignificant people who will be attending these commemorations and think of the soldiers, sailors, airmen, stretcher bearers, nurses, doctors et al who served in the Great War, and contemplate over the dignified silence that their heroic and brave service in “the War to end all Wars” was all in vain because stupid politicians and heads of state perpetuated a state of war again, again, again and again in the last 100 years and will continue to do so in the future.