Honour our war heroes by finding a brighter future

Does there, I wonder, come a time when we stop harking back to key anniversaries in both world wars?

We are soon to be blanketed in coverage to mark the 80th anniversary of D-day. And it wasn’t all that long ago we marked a century since the Great War ended its brutal bloodshed. Before you all scream ‘sacrilege’ at me, I’m not necessarily advocating we do but I do think we need to ponder what purpose it serves in this day and age. For my generation, we grew up reminded of Winston Churchill’s famous quote: “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” But as the years passed and those with memories of living through the wars passed on, collectively we have seemed to turn our back on Churchill’s warning. We may outwardly continue to stand against such forces, but internally we are in trouble. For all the war anniversaries we have marked over the decades, all the history lessons in our classrooms, we seem blind to the troubling mindset many have adopted. Politicians of great influence blame immigration for the nation’s woes; we fight among ourselves and distrust our neighbours; we reject union with our European neighbours and revel in mocking them and wonder why our influence has so dramatically declined on the world stage.

Britain remains great but for very different reasons than it has done in the past. And making a huge song and dance for every war anniversary isn’t going to heal our divisions. Surely better now, in a world in desperate need of stability, that our focus moves on to healing the divide in our society. Perhaps, instead of focusing on commemorating battles or campaigns which will mean little to the younger generation, we hold days to celebrate our diversity and our desire to remember the lessons of the past, not just to revel in the jingoism of a brutal and bloody time confined to the history books.

Surely that is what those who fought in those wars would prefer?

‘Britain remains great but for very different reasons than it has done in the past...’