Battle of the Somme: 110th Anniversary

John Cooper Excerpts

Thursday 12th November 2026 Commons Chamber

[John Cooper (Dumfries and Galloway) (Con)]

It is my solemn duty to break to right hon. and hon. Members that “Blackadder Goes Forth” is not a documentary. As we recall the charnel house that was the first day of the Somme, we must consider the reality and not the fiction that today surrounds the generation who suffered and sacrificed so much in the great war. To truly understand what our forefathers went through, we should look to great works such as “Tommy: The British Soldier on the Western Front” by the late Professor Richard Holmes. I was lucky enough to meet the professor, famous for his “War Walks” television series, during my own minor attempts to study military history. He told me that the two biggest barriers to earnest study of the first world war were the war poets—although he conceded that their testimony was valid, since they served—and “Blackadder Goes Forth”.

Those final frames of “Blackadder” captured the awful reality of death on an industrial scale—but showing every private soldier to be an economic conscript, every officer a public school toff and every general ensconced in a chateau far behind the lines? It simply was not like that. Take every public schoolboy and there still would not be enough numbers to officer the giant British Army on the western front alone. While

“‘Forward!’ he cried from the rear

And the front rank died”

is a lovely line from Pink Floyd, the “lions led by donkeys” narrative, which is set in stone today, is really a canard from the 1970s.

The creeping barrage on the first day of the Somme campaign, with the shells falling just ahead of our advancing infantry, was a failure. There is no disguising it, but it was a genuine attempt to change the tactics of a war of attrition and to give advancing infantrymen the edge in an era where technology had outpaced tactics. Our troops moved more slowly than expected, and co-ordination with the artillery in the infancy of battlefield radio communications was difficult. As we have heard, the shells failed to cut the wire in front of the German trenches, whose deep dugouts proved devastatingly effective.

General Douglas Haig would carry the can for the failure of the Somme to deliver the hoped-for decisive breakthrough, yet “the Chief”, as he was known, remained popular with his men. The reality is that the British were hard-pressed for experienced troops and matériel. Haig’s strained relationships with David Lloyd George meant that his reputation was tarnished, perhaps deliberately, as Lloyd George sought to insulate himself from blame for the Somme’s failure and the awful toll of dead and wounded. The two men observed an uneasy truce in the immediate aftermath of the armistice, and it was only after Haig’s death that Lloyd George launched his political assassination in his multi-volume war memoirs. He accused Haig of a lack of vision and flexibility, and blamed him for the “ghastly slaughter”. It was odd, though, that the Welsh wizard kept his counsel and did not depose Haig at the material time as the war raged.

None of that takes away from the huge sacrifice of British and empire troops throughout a war that spanned the globe. Perhaps the saddest aspect is that today we seem unable to answer the question of what it was all for. Ask the French. Ask the Belgians. They were invaded, and there is no whitewashing the atrocities committed against civilians by the Germans in 1914. The great war was then a war of liberation.

I leave the final word not to British generals, but to one American and one Prussian. William Sherman’s march to the sea in the American civil war saw him unleash total war on civilians. He said, “War is all hell, boys”, and, “you cannot refine it.” That is a truism echoing through human history, but what of the hellish Somme? General Erich Ludendorff, whose doctrine of an elastic, flexible defence cost us so very dear, said in his autobiography, “My War Memories”:

“As a result, we were completely exhausted on the Western Front”.

We paid a high price in blood and treasure, and while not a victory, the Somme did pave the way to ultimate triumph.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Scott Arthur (Edinburgh South West) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Member for South West Devon (Rebecca Smith), both for securing this debate and for the way in which she introduced it.

In Edinburgh South West, we have the Heart of Midlothian memorial clock, something that defines Haymarket. If Members do not know, Heart of Midlothian is perhaps Scotland’s finest football team—or even the UK’s. [Laughter.] Sorry, I should not have laughed there. Every year, former Hearts players gather at the memorial clock alongside club staff, fans from across the city and local Gorgie residents to remember the incredible sacrifice that Hearts players and fans made on the frontline.

For those who are not familiar with the story, Hearts players led by example when Sir George McCrae, a popular Edinburgh figure and former MP—he was in this place between 1899 and 1909—announced that he would raise a battalion to fight in the war, the 16th (Service) Battalion of the Royal Scots. In November 1914, Hearts comfortably led the first division, having started the 1914-15 season with eight straight victories, including a thumping defeat of the reigning champions Celtic—even in a time-limited debate, I had to mention that. That streak coincided with the beginning of world war one and a debate about whether or not football should be taking place at all. Sixteen Hearts players signed up, along with players from Hibernian, Raith Rovers, Falkirk, Dunfermline Athletic, East Fife and St Bernard’s. McCrae’s was the first of the so-called footballers’ pals battalions to be raised during the war. Some 500 Hearts supporters and ticket holders enlisted, alongside 150 from Hibs, rugby players, cricketers, swimmers, hockey players, golfers and even a bodybuilder.

Then came the Somme. None could have expected that McCrae’s battalion would suffer 229 dead or missing on the first day, with a further 347 wounded. That was a small part of the tens of thousands who were killed or wounded on that first day, but the toll on Hearts and the wider Edinburgh community was immense. Many bodies were never recovered, including the remains of Harry Wattie, a Hearts striker and arguably the best inside forward in Scotland at the time.

[John Cooper]

The hon. Member is making a very eloquent speech about the sacrifice of Scottish football. Did he share my disappointment at the weekend when the two-minute silence at Celtic was interrupted after only 13 seconds?

[Dr Arthur]

I thank the hon. Member for that intervention. I heard that news from someone in this place who had also heard about it—somebody who does not live in Scotland—and I was absolutely ashamed to hear it.

The 16th Royal Scots made great inroads into the German line, more than any other British battalion, but that was little comfort to the families who lost their sons. The losses of McCrae’s battalion were a small but significant component of the 1 million casualties in the 141 days of that battle. When Hearts unveiled the memorial clock at Haymarket in 1922, a crowd of 65,000 people gathered to honour that remarkable sacrifice. They were told that the nation owed a debt of gratitude to Hearts that could never be repaid. At the weekend, I was proud to attend a service at the memorial clock alongside hundreds of other people. Many of them were Hearts supporters—Jambos—but many of them were people who just live locally and wanted to take part in an act of remembrance.

I was proud to be at that remembrance service, but I was even more proud to see pupils from Tynecastle high school, Balerno high school and George Watson’s college take part in it. A few days before, I attended another remembrance service at Firrhill high school in Edinburgh South West, which was entirely led by the young people there, apart from a small introduction by the headmaster. What is special about that school is that it is directly across the road from Redford infantry barracks. The young people who led the service read out the names of people who had died on that day, 6 November, during the first world war. All the names were of people who were 17, 18 or 19 years old, some of them perhaps even younger than the pupils who were reading out the names, and most of them just a few months or years older.

Taking part in that service and being so close to the barracks was a real reminder of the impact of war. We talk about conflict, perhaps within 1,000 days, but I would hate for any of those young people to have to take part in a war. It was a reminder to me that in this place, we should always focus on peace, not war.