Birmingham Commonwealth Games and Shooting
Julian Lewis Excerpts(6 years, 1 month ago)
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Jim Shannon
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his kind comments. I am just pleased to see a goodly crowd here to support an important issue and a sport at which we excel.
Target shooting has a real place in our community, and the skills of those who play deserve recognition. This is a sport in which we are recognised. The connotations of gun violence must be removed from this discussion, because these are legitimate, law-abiding, licence-holding people who have the opportunity to shoot. Those who wish to use a gun for nefarious reasons are not target shooters; they do not follow the rigorous legalities that come with owning and shooting a gun; they are the ones who buy through the back door, instead of coming with a licence through the front door, and that should be said at the outset.
I wish to thank all those organisations and individuals who contacted me and sent me information on this subject, including the Countryside Alliance, the British Association for Shooting and Conservation and the sports societies. The following information was provided by the British Shooting, which covers a range of shooting sports and offers varying levels of support and expertise. I spoke to the Minister before the debate to say I believed there was something we could do, and I look to her now with genuine hope that she will take this in the direction we want. The following are the facts of the case: the 2022 games were originally awarded to Durban, South Africa, with a sports programme that embraced all the shooting sports—shotgun, rifle and pistol, airgun and full-bore rifle. The Durban organising committee was unable to obtain satisfactory financial guarantees from the South African Government, however, and unfortunately had no option other than to relinquish responsibility for the games.
The Commonwealth Games Federation sought alternative hosts, and a bidding process was opened. In England, the cities of Birmingham and Liverpool put forward outline bids. The Liverpool bid included shooting, after constructive dialogue with British Shooting and others. Birmingham’s bid team did not engage with British Shooting or, it appears, any other shooting body—that was very disappointing, and I do not think the procedure was followed correctly—and did not include shooting in its bid. It should have done so. The Birmingham bid was put forward to the CGF, and it was ultimately awarded the right to host the games.
Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for introducing the debate, and I am very concerned by the suggestion that there may have been an ulterior motive behind the exclusion of shooting from the Commonwealth games on this occasion that is being dressed up as a logistical problem—the problem that Bisley is too far away from the location. Has the hon. Gentleman any specific indication that the people who are hosting the games this time are in some way ideologically opposed to target shooting?
Jim Shannon
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for making that point. As you know, Madam Deputy Speaker, I am always very wary about what I say, and I would rather put the facts of the case and let the right hon. Gentleman draw his own conclusions, but yes, some people would say that that is something that may be lingering in the background. When the Commonwealth games took place in Manchester, Bisley was used as a location. Why not use it this time, given that it is closer to Birmingham than to Manchester? That seems perfectly logical to me.
I am very pleased that Birmingham’s bid was successful, and, indeed, I supported it. By extension, it has benefited the whole United Kingdom. The Commonwealth games should benefit everyone, not just those in one particular place. To host games of this calibre is a feather in our cap, and well worth the money that it entails. I welcome Birmingham’s contribution and its efforts. In normal circumstances, however, the decision to award the games to a host city and a Commonwealth games association is made at a CGF general assembly, even when there is only one bidder. That usually takes place some seven years before the games.
Following the late withdrawal of South Africa, the CGF executive dealt directly with the decision to find a replacement, which meant that Birmingham’s bid and, significantly, its proposed sports programme were not subject to debate by the 72 member nations of the CGF that would be normal practice. I suggest that in this case normal practice was not followed and that it should have been. What I am asking, in so far as it is within the remit of the Minister’s responsibilities, is for that normal procedure to be followed.
Dr Julian Lewis
I encourage the hon. Gentleman to come to Bisley every year with the Commons rifle team, where we have the privilege of shooting against the Lords team. In passing, may I pay tribute to a now retired member of the House of Commons staff, Mr Gary Howard, who worked in the Vote Office for many years? For a long period he gave freely of his lunchtimes—week in, week out, and month in, month out—to tutor Members of both Houses of Parliament in shooting skills and was rightly rewarded with the British empire medal when he retired for his long service in the House, his service to shooting and his service to young people.
Jim Shannon
When my hon. Friend the Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) and I were elected in 2010 we joined the House of Commons rifle club; we really enjoyed getting the badge, to tell the truth, because we wanted to show everybody we were in it. We particularly enjoyed going down and shooting at lunchtimes, and I suspect that many other Members have also enjoyed those lunchtime engagements.
As I have said, in the Manchester games Bisley was a venue, and it can be again. Shooting is a traditional Commonwealth sport, and for many of the smaller Commonwealth nations shooting sports are among the very few sports in the programme that they can realistically select athletes for and therefore play a part in the games. Some of the countries that excel at shooting sports perhaps do not excel at any other sports, and I will name some of them, as I think that is important: Jersey, Gibraltar, the Isle of Man, Guyana, Norfolk Island and the Falkland Islands. Shooting sports are crucial to their meaningful participation in the games and to their way of life as well.
For larger nations such as India, Malaysia and Australia, the absence of shooting sports has a major impact on their team size and their medal winning. Closer to home, the teams of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland all regularly secure a significant medal haul from the sport. Information I received from the Countryside Alliance states:
“Shooting contributed 15 medals to England’s medal tally at the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, and England has won a total of 168 shooting medals in all previous Commonwealth Games—more than any other competing nation and over 20 per cent of the medals available.”
That is even more than Northern Ireland!
Jim Shannon
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention.
The 2018 Commonwealth games in the Gold Coast, Australia, which were mentioned earlier, will include four shooting disciplines: full bore, pistol, rifle and shotgun. The shooting programme will be held at the Belmont shooting centre in Brisbane, where 20 athletes from Team England—the mother country—will compete in 19 separate events. There needs to be a commitment not only for Birmingham in 2022; I am seeking a commitment from the Commonwealth Games Federation to include shooting in the 2026 games. We need to look forward and ensure that what has happened this time does not happen again. The Minister referred to David Calvert in her intervention. He will shortly be competing in Brisbane, and my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) was inspired by him many years ago. I am sure that many other young boys and girls were inspired by him as well. That is why I am raising this issue today.
Two key international bodies oversee the shooting sports that appear in the Commonwealth games: the International Shooting Sport Federation and the International Confederation of Fullbore Rifle Associations. Both have indicated a willingness to work with the CGF to find a solution to keep shooting sports in the games and on the 2022 programme. Both are willing to do more than most, and representatives met the CGF president in February this year. This is about finding solutions. When people come to me with problems, it is not about the problem; it is about the solution. We bring the issue to the Floor of the House to seek a solution, and we hope that that solution will be forthcoming. At Olympic level, the ISSF represents a category C sport, recognising its growing and significant contribution to the Olympic ideals and family.
Having four disciplines, shooting sports can be delivered flexibly, both in terms of which disciplines appear and in terms of location. The preferred position is, naturally, to embrace all four disciplines, and I would encourage that. That option could be delivered at Bisley, as was the case for the successful hosting of the 2002 Manchester games. Bisley has the capacity to do that. It is not unusual for some sports to be outsourced remotely in that way, with examples including shooting in Malaysia in 1998, shooting in Manchester in 2002, shooting in Glasgow in 2014 and track cycling and shooting in Brisbane in 2018. All those events involved shooting, yet we have a big void at the 2022 Birmingham Commonwealth games. As London’s Olympic and Paralympic games and Glasgow’s Commonwealth games all showed, the UK is the world leader in providing low-cost temporary facilities to ISSF standards. It can be done, and it should be done; there are many out there who want it to happen. Equally, some shooting sports could be accommodated easily in Birmingham in the many existing arenas that the city is home to. I encourage the sporting authorities to consider that.
I have been reliably informed that the ISSF, the ICFRA and British Shooting are all willing, ready and able to engage in a meaningful dialogue with the CGF and the host city to accommodate the sport in the 2022 games. Many organisations, individuals and right hon. and hon. Members are keen to add their support. I urge that the matter be considered and acted upon while we have the time to do so, and I look to the Minister to bring that about.
I did not intend to speak for the full two hours, and I am sure that everyone in the House is thinking, “Thank the Lord for that.” I will conclude with this point. My granddaughter Katie is nine years old, and I took my son Jamie shooting when he was younger than that and introduced him to a sport in which he is now fairly proficient and much better than his dad. My granddaughter Katie has started to go hunting with her dad and me. It is a family tradition, and if the tradition continues, perhaps the child will better the father. My son is a better shot than I am, and perhaps my granddaughter will be a better shot than my son.
Dr Lewis
This is positively the last intervention that I will make on the hon. Gentleman. In support of the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Wyre Forest (Mark Garnier) about the sport being gender-neutral, I should have declared an interest as the president of the Colbury rifle and pistol club in the New Forest, where the champion shooter is a young lady called Molly. I think she is still in her teens, and she has on more than one occasion shot 100 out of 100, something I have never managed to do and I fear I never will manage to do.
Jim Shannon
There is still hope—you just never know—but I think my days of shooting as accurately as that are a long time gone. We have a couple of young ladies at the Comber Rifle Club, and both are holding their own at that level against the men, which is good stuff.
Russian Interference in UK Politics
Julian Lewis Excerpts(6 years, 4 months ago)
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Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
In the light of what you have said, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will not take any interventions.
I wish to ask whether any hon. Member in the Chamber—other than perhaps the hon. Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes) and the right hon. Member for Warley (John Spellar)—feels a flicker of recognition when they hear the names of the following organisations: the World Federation of Trade Unions, the International Union of Students, the World Federation of Scientific Workers, the World Federation of Democratic Youth, and —above all—the World Peace Council. Those were part of a magnificent array of Soviet international propaganda front organisations that plied their disreputable trade through half a century from the end of the 1940s right up until the downfall of the Soviet Union. They were well funded, very active and almost wholly—at least as far as the United Kingdom was concerned—ineffective, because they were clunky and did not really understand the way that British people and parliamentarians think and operate.
I have heard something in every speech and intervention made today with which I agreed. We are all on the same page. We all understand that Russia is not a modern constitutional democracy and that it will do everything within its power to promote its messages and undermine the messages of those whom it perceives to be its adversaries. I always hesitate to cite one of the most evil men who ever walked the face of the earth—Dr Joseph Goebbels—but he knew a thing or two about propaganda, and one of his central tenets was that the purpose of propaganda is not to change people’s minds; it is to find out what they already believe, and reinforce it.
There is a very good reason for that. Except when dealing with young minds that have not had a chance to form their value systems and opinions—that is a big and important exception—I have come to the conclusion, through working in this field for a long time before I first entered the House, that people are much more resistant to the effect of propaganda than they are given credit for when it comes to changing their minds. The effect of barrages of propaganda might be to dishearten them, but it will not generally convert them unless they are impressionable, and most people are not.
Dr Lewis
I said that I would not give way, and I am afraid that I will not out of consideration for others.
Let me follow up the argument that was developed by the hon. Member for Ilford South when he spoke about different stages in society. I think that, apart from failed states, there are three main types of society: totalitarian extremism, ruthless authoritarianism, and constitutional democracy. Sometimes, we have the choice between only the first and the second, because the third takes time to evolve.
The reason why the Russia of today, although dangerous, is not nearly as dangerous as the Soviet Union of yesterday is that it has moved largely from totalitarian extremism to ruthless kleptocratic authoritarianism.
The reason why totalitarian extremism is more dangerous is that it has an ideology that finds resonance in the target societies—for example, the ideology of the workers’ paradise. There are no fifth columnists of young British people who are bowled over by the masculinity, alleged or real, of Vladimir Putin, but there were plenty who were fooled by the concept of a workers’ paradise.
So by all means be careful and by all means recognise that Twitter can affect young impressionable minds, but remember one thing: to defend ourselves properly we need to defend ourselves in the field of cyber against cyber-attack on our infrastructure, rather than worrying too much about ineffective propaganda measures.
Passchendaele
Julian Lewis Excerpts(6 years, 10 months ago)
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John Glen
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that contribution. He makes a wise point with his customary eloquence, and I am sure it will be echoed across the House.
The battle was infamous not only for the terrible conditions but for the sheer scale of the losses. In the region of 250,000 allied soldiers and around the same number of German soldiers, a total of some 500,000 men from both sides, were wounded, killed or missing. Those are quite frankly unbelievable numbers. Fought between 31 July and 10 November 1917, the battle saw the British Army attempt to break out of the notorious Ypres Salient and put intolerable pressure on the German defences. Troops from across Britain and Ireland took part, along with significant numbers from today’s Commonwealth, particularly from Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa. Allied air forces played an important role, providing vital reconnaissance for the ground forces and fighting deadly dogfights with their German counterparts in the skies above the trenches. The battle was conceived, in part, as a means of influencing the struggle against German submarines, and the Royal Naval Division served on Passchendaele’s battlefield alongside other soldiers. Many others contributed during the battle and in the fighting around Ypres during the conflict, including servicemen from India and the West Indies, labourers from China and, of course, the nurses and medical staff who worked behind the lines to treat the wounded.
For all those who fought in that small corner of Flanders in the late summer and autumn of 1917, including those in the Belgian, French and German armies, it would prove to be one of the most gruelling experiences of the conflict. Much of the first world war’s enduring photography, poetry and artwork was inspired by the desolate landscape, which became a featureless quagmire over the course of the battle. After periods of intense rain, the mud became so bad that men and animals could be swallowed up in the swamp. Images, such as the photography of Frank Hurley or the evocative paintings of Paul Nash, are a harrowing reflection of the utter devastation that was wrought.
Many families, villages and towns were touched by the fighting. In Wales, the battle is partly remembered for the loss of the renowned poet Ellis Evans—better known by his bardic name Hedd Wyn—who died on Pilckem Ridge on the opening day of the battle.
Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
I apologise to the Minister because I have to be briefly absent for part of the debate, but I will return at the earliest opportunity. I know that props are not always welcome in the Chamber, but in the light of what he said about photographs, may I share with him a pair of photographs? They show Passchendaele village in June 1917 and in December 1917, and it is possible even from a distance to see how entirely the landscape was obliterated by the bombardment.
Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
There has been a remarkable series of speeches in this debate so far, not least the one we have just heard from the hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts), and I will not usurp the role of the Minister in singling any of them out for special mention, other than to say in respect of the maiden speech we heard that the pride that the hon. Member for Bedford (Mohammad Yasin) takes in his town will no doubt incentivise him to be sure that Bedford will be proud of him by the way he conducts himself in this place.
As other more knowledgeable speakers have already explained, a century after the appalling losses on the western front historians still debate whether any alternatives existed. Some blame political intrigue and poor generalship, others emphasise technology, with the battlefield dominated by interlocking fields of fire. This ensured that slowly advancing troops would be mown down by machine guns before making any worthwhile inroads into the enemy’s trenches. Minor advances, occasionally achieved, were usually reversed by counter-attacks or simply absorbed into a new, static confrontation a short distance from the original one.
A book called “Forgotten Victory” is a study of the western front battles that rightly draws attention to the 100 days campaign in which the allied coalition won a sequence of decisive victories between mid-July and early November 1918. Its author, Professor Gary Sheffield, regrets the extent to which the British success in those battles at the end of the first world war has been disregarded. For example, he says:
“The burden of fighting the German Army fell mainly to the French and Russians in the first two and a half years of the war, but in 1918 it was the turn of the BEF.”
That is, the British Expeditionary Force.
“Between them, the French, Americans and Belgians took 196,700 prisoners and 3,775 guns between 18 July and the end of the war. With a smaller army than the French, Haig’s forces captured 188,700 prisoners and 2,840 guns in the same period. This was, by far, the greatest military victory in British history.”
So it is absolutely right that, as well as commemorating all the disasters of world war one, one of which we are commemorating today, we will next year recognise the triumph of the battle of Amiens in August 1918. Like others who have spoken in the debate, I pay the warmest tribute to my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison) for all the great work he has done on this rolling series of commemorations of the events, failures and successes of the first world war.
Professor Sheffield, whom I mentioned a moment ago, takes his thesis a bit further than I feel able to go. He suggests that the catastrophic offensives prior to 1918 were in some way needed to enable the allied generals to learn the lessons they eventually applied to the successful campaign at the end of the war. I feel, however, that one should not have to waste the lives of legions of soldiers in the relentless repetition of unsuccessful tactics. Time and again, those tactics failed to break the stalemate, or to be exploited when, occasionally, they managed to achieve surprise.
After the catastrophe on the Somme in 1916, there was really no reason to believe that a breakthrough could be made and exploited with the available technology of the day, yet this was attempted not once but twice in 1917. First came the battle of Arras, which was the second of the three huge attritional offensives waged by the British Army in 1916-17. On the first day of the Arras attack—9 April 1917—the British Third Army took 5,600 prisoners, and the Canadians, who captured most of Vimy Ridge, took a further 3,400. This has been called the greatest success of the British Expeditionary Force since the beginning of trench warfare. However, the British advance soon ran out of steam as German reinforcements arrived, and the British Fifth Army had little to show for the heavy losses it sustained. Further major efforts on 23 April and 3 May 1917, partly intended to tie down forces that might otherwise be used against the French, simply added to the butchery on both sides.
In the spring of 1917, Russia was in revolution, albeit not yet a Bolshevik one, while unrestricted submarine warfare and the diplomatic disaster—from the German point of view—of the Zimmerman telegram had goaded the United States into entering the war on 6 April 1917. So did Britain and France really have to squander so many lives so fruitlessly after that date? Why risk the colossal price of failure when the balance of forces at the strategic level was shifting so dramatically? The German leadership fully understood the significance of American belligerency. They therefore gambled everything in the spring of 1918 to exploit the collapse of Russia before the United States could make a real difference. It was therefore folly for the British and French to wear themselves out in 1917 given that the balance of forces would change in their favour once the Americans arrived. Claiming that the Germans could stand the rate of attrition less than the British was no justification at the time, as we have heard already, and it is equally indefensible now.
After the Arras offensives of April and May came the unprecedented use of giant subterranean mines in a successful attempt to break the deadlock. Nineteen mines were exploded under Messines ridge on 7 June with a force that could be felt on the far side of the English channel. Although surprise was achieved, strategic gain was once again lacking. Nevertheless, on the last day of July 1917, the crowning effort of the BEF was made. The third battle of Ypres would endure until 10 November and imprint itself on the British psyche to an extent matched only by the Somme disaster of the previous year. The focus was on the Passchendaele-Staden ridge, and the main thrust was delivered by General Sir Hubert Gough’s Fifth Army along a 7.5 mile front. The flanks were defended by the British Second Army on the right and the French First Army on the left.
Having overrun some of the outer German defences on the first day, the British commander-in-chief, Sir Douglas Haig, then discovered that the weather was an even more formidable opponent than the enemy. The official history of the air war quotes Haig’s dispatch as follows:
“The low-lying, clayey soil, torn by shells and sodden with rain, turned to a succession of vast muddy pools. The valleys of the choked and overflowing streams were speedily transformed into long stretches of bog, impassable except by a few well-defined tracks, which became marks for the enemy’s artillery. To leave these tracks was to risk death by drowning… In these conditions operations of any magnitude became impossible, and the resumption of our offensive was necessarily postponed until a period of fine weather should allow the ground to recover.”
Thus it was that the second phase of the attack, known as the battle of Langemarck and lasting from 16 to 18 August, lacked any element of surprise. The Germans showed no sign of giving way. Next came the battle of the Menin Road ridge, beginning on 20 September and lasting for five days. Its aim was to capture objectives at a distance of between 1,000 yards and one mile, and that was largely achieved. The pattern was then the same in the fourth phase, known as the battle of Polygon Wood, which took place from 26 September to 3 October 1917, with the objective of securing a jumping-off place from which to attack the main Passchendaele ridge.
Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)
I thank my right hon. Friend for giving way; I had hoped to speak in this debate, but unfortunately I have been off site. He mentioned the battle of Polygon Wood, and I was going to mention that my great-grandfather, who had been in France since August 1914, was wounded there on 30 September and won the Military Medal. I wanted to mention that not only because I am very proud, but because it demonstrates how the war was fought by ordinary folk from normal backgrounds, who then went back to their ordinary lives—my great-grandfather was a postman in east Yorkshire. That is what was going on behind much of the conflict.
Andrew Percy
Whose name I wanted to get into Hansard but completely forgot to mention—John William Feasey.
Dr Lewis
The award of the Military Medal to John William Feasey is now well and truly, and most justifiably, recorded.
The next assault was planned for 4 October, and was persevered with despite a great deterioration in the weather. It was originally hoped that success at Ypres would drive the Germans away from the channel ports, as my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) said, and an amphibious force to help achieve that had already been assembled. The reality, in the words of the official history, was very different.
Alec Shelbrooke
My right hon. Friend is rightly describing the sea battle and what was happening at sea, which brought the Americans into the war. Does he agree that, when people ask whether we had to go into the war, the reality is that we could well have been starved out if we had not taken those actions?
Dr Lewis
Yes and no. We certainly had to resist German aggression, but that does not mean there was any justification, when faced with a stalemate, to keep repeating tactics and strategies that were wholly unsuccessful and counterproductive. The concept of the “big push” might have had something to recommend it, despite the obvious imbalance between the technology of the machine gun, on the one hand, and the lack of armoured vehicles to override it, on the other, in the earlier phases of the war. That might have justified a big push on the Somme in 1916, but it did not justify repeating the same lethal strategic nonsense a year later.
This is what the official history has to say about what happened after the outbreak of terrible weather:
“The British line had now been advanced along the main ridge for 9,000 yards… The year was already far spent and the prospect of driving the enemy from the Belgian coast had long since disappeared. The continuous delays in the advance as a result of the weather and its effect on the state of the ground, had given the enemy time, after each attack, to bring up reinforcements and to reorganise his defences. Although General Headquarters now recognised that the major objectives of the Flanders operations were impossible of attainment, they were still anxious to continue the operations with a view to the capture of the remainder of the Passchendaele Ridge before winter set in. The weather was entirely unfavourable but there were hopes that it would improve, hopes based on the somewhat slender foundation that the abnormal rainfall of the summer presaged a normal, perhaps even a dry, autumn.”
Instead of remaining a means to an end, the offensive had become an end in itself. At 5.20 am on 9 October, after two days of continuous heavy rain, the attack was renewed on a six-mile front. Sir Douglas Haig had decided that Passchendaele must be captured, so captured it would be. The cycle was repeated on 12 October in the hope of helping to prevent German forces from being switched to meet the impending French offensive on the River Aisne. Some ground was gained east of Poelcappelle and on the southern edge of Houthulst forest on 22 October, with fighter pilots doing everything they could to attack German infantry in trenches and shell holes, on the roads and in villages.
And so it went on and on—a little progress here, a forced withdrawal there, and the final taking of Passchendaele village on 6 November by the Canadians who, with British assistance, extended their gains on the main ridge four days later. According to the official air historian, Passchendaele was
“the most sombre and bloodiest of all the battlefields of the war”.
One of the pilots who lived through it, and later reached the highest rank in the RAF, was Lord Douglas of Kirtleside, who, as Sholto Douglas, commanded 84 Squadron’s SE5 fighters when he returned to the western front in September 1917. He, too, regarded third Ypres as
“the most terrible of all the battles of the Great War”.
He wrote the following:
“The Somme of the year before had been bad enough, and after that it was felt that the lesson of the futility of mass attacks must surely have been learnt. But it was not learnt, and less than a year later our Army was called upon to embark on an offensive that in so many ways was even more terrible than the Somme”.
He continued by saying that Passchendaele
“was the beginning of what was to become for those on the ground a long and indescribable misery…all the drainage systems were smashed in the opening bombardment, and eventually the whole area became clogged with mud. Over this devastated area, which had been reduced to the state of a quagmire, attack after attack was launched...For communication there were only the rough tracks which wound their way almost aimlessly across the mire, and wandering off them led to drowning. The Germans welcomed the rain as ‘our strongest ally’.”
Many of the pilots in the third battles of Ypres were tasked to carry out low-level attacks against enemy concentrations on the ground. As Sholto Douglas later recalled:
“In this job there was very little fighting in the air, and since we were flying at heights of only two or three hundred feet we were supposed to be able to see plenty of what was going on below us. What I saw was nothing short of horrifying. The ground over which our infantry and light artillery were fighting was one vast sea of churned-up muck and mud, and everywhere, lip to lip, there were shell holes full of water. These low-flying attacks that we had to make, for which most of my young pilots were quite untrained, were a wretched and dangerous business, and also pretty useless. It was very difficult for us to pick out our targets in the morass because everything on the ground, including the troops, was the same colour as that dreadful mud...it was quite obvious to anyone viewing from the air this dreadful battleground...that any chance of a major advance or a break-through was quite out of the question.”
We can see from Douglas’s memoirs that it was not just fashionable post-war opinion which came to damn the strategy of attritional offensives. The ordering of more and more attacks in such an appalling “morass” was seen at the time, by him and his comrades, as “the grossest of blunders”. They recognised the need to relieve pressure on the French by keeping the Germans fully stretched, but he said that
“as I watched from the air what was happening on the ground there were presented to me some terrible questions. Why did we have to press on so blindly day after day and week after week in this one desolate area and under such dreadful conditions? Why was there not some variety in our strategy and tactics? The questions that I asked then are the questions that have continued to be asked ever since; and the answers to them have never ceased to be most painful ones.”
As I said at the outset, I remain completely unconvinced by the argument, which some people deploy even to this day, that it was necessary to undergo the catastrophic failures of the Somme and Passchendaele offensives in order to learn the lessons necessary for victory in 1918. There is testimony enough from senior military figures in the second world war, writing of their experiences as junior officers in the first, spelling out the futility of relentlessly sacrificing huge numbers of British troops in fighting unwinnable battles. One does not have to explore every military cul-de-sac over and over again, in order to stumble across a strategy that might actually succeed.
Let us not forget that each one of these tragedies involved an individual personality, and I close with a quote from a young Welshman, Second Lieutenant Glyn Morgan, who wrote this to his father at the start of the Passchendaele offensive:
“You, I know, my dear Dad, will bear the shock as bravely as you have always borne the strain of my being out here; yet I should like, if possible, to help you to carry on”—
this was a letter that would be sent only in the event of his death—
“with as stout a heart as I hope to ‘jump the bags’…My one regret is that the opportunity has been denied me to repay you to the best of my ability for the lavish kindness and devotedness which you have always shown me...however, it may be that I have done so in the struggle between Life and Death, between England and Germany, Liberty and Slavery. In any case, I shall have done my duty in my little way...
Your affectionate son and brother, Glyn”.
Glyn Morgan, who joined the Army straight from school, was killed on 1 August 1917. He was recommended for a posthumous Victoria Cross, and he was just 21 when he died.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
To make his maiden speech, I call Paul Sweeney.