If Britain could do the present and the future as well as it does the past, wouldn’t it be a better place? On Sunday 12th November 2023, our country remembered those who gave everything so we could all be free and it seemed, for a brief moment in time, we were all united in purpose and looking to build on the peace handed down to us by those who went before.
I watched today’s proceedings on television, as I usually do, and, I’m not ashamed or embarrassed to say, did so through teary eyes. We get so much wrong in this country and yet, on this most important occasion, we get it oh so right.
Yet, it was less than a day ago when the hard right agitator Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, who calls himself Tommy Robinson, was leading large groups of drunken, coked-up, mainly middle aged thugs to attack police officers and break through to the Cenotaph. On Armistice Day. A more crass insult to the memories of those who fought and died fighting Hitler’s fascists I could not imagine.
I took it very personally, given that my own father, Anthony Johansen, at 15 years of age, bravely served his country on the Liberty Ships in World War Two, dodging U boats in order to bring desperate supplies to hungry British people. My dad’s heroism, and I do not use the word lightly, stands in direct contrast to the actions of Yaxley-Lennon’s toytown nazis who do not know the meaning of Remembrance. I know who I will remember on Remembrance Day and on all the days in between.
‘Lest we forget’, we say as we approach Remembrance, yet some have plainly forgotten. Not just Yaxley-Lennon’s yobs, but the significant minority on the pro Palestine march who chanted in support of the islamic fascists of Hamas and called for the destruction of Israel. Few, if any, of those marching and rioting yesterday were born until after the war.
I am no historian, but I know about World War Two, I know about the Holocaust. I know about the death and suffering and am always moved, sometimes to tears, by the loss of life, the terrible injuries suffered by so many and the heroism of everyone who fought. And I know why they fought.
When the war was over, people vowed it would never happen again, that they and their children would live in a brighter, better world and one way we would help that come about would be by way of Remembrance.
Tomorrow is another day and real life will resume. And, sadly I fear, Remembrance will slip back to the depths of our consciousness for another year. I just hope, as we watch line upon line of heroes march past the Cenotaph just what it was they fought and died for. These men and women are and were the very best of us. We stand on the shoulders of giants.
