Peter Rhodes on counting crowds, watching Iceland and fearing for our war memorials
According to an ancient journalistic maxim I just made up: consider Korea, ponder Palestine and ruminate on Russia. Just don't take your eyes off Iceland.
In an age of CCTV, drones, GPS and AI, you'd think we'd at least be able to count the number of people on the streets of our capital. Estimates of those attending the Armistice Day march and demos in London ranged from “almost 200,000” (Metro) to “more than 800,000” (Socialist Worker). Creative counting?
Meanwhile, I fear for the safety of the UK's war memorials. There are about 70,000 of them scattered the length and breadth of the country. Mercifully, the rate of vandalism is low but they are unguarded and vulnerable and, as we saw at the Cenotaph and in Rochdale, they can become targets in Britain's culture wars.
To some ignorant or uneducated people let down by our battered education system, war memorials are simply a symbol of olden days. And as children are taught in school, on telly or online that everything Britain did in past centuries was wicked, the war memorials may come to be seen as symbols of oppression. In the battle to protect our memorials and preserve their true message of courage, sacrifice, thankfulness and hope, the real villains are not the desecrators but the educators.
I referred a few days ago to the fabricated sequence in the movie Darkest Hour when Churchill mixes with Tube passengers to gauge the national mood. Supposing Churchill had consulted the public in 1940, as the German army prepared to invade these shores, would he have found them in such a fearless and defiant mood? I'm reminded of a wonderful moment in that great BBC comedy Till Death Us Do Part when Alf Garnett in full British Bulldog style, is boasting about London's heroism during the Blitz: “Did we give in, eh? Did we surrender?” In one of television comedy's greatest put-downs, his wife (Dandy Nicholls) quietly recalls: “You wanted to.” Unreliable memories can make heroes of us all.
Farewell, Suella. Farewell, Rwanda . . ?
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