Remember This

This weekend BBC News 24, in particular, went overboard in its coverage of the Remembrance Day celebrations. Every hour for several hours we were treated to about 25 minutes of the same footage repeated over and over again, with ten miniutes of actual News squeezed in between. Its not just Remembrance Day that gets such treatment, of course, whenever some live event is occurring 24 hour News means we get endless loops of the same video interspersed with reporters trying to think of saying to say to cover the fact that actually nothing is happening, and we could be getting some News of something else. There seems to be no thought of the fact that a 24 hours news Channel could actually deal with issues IN DEPTH to use the vast amount of time available rather than simply repeating the same superficialities every 15 minutes.

Of course, the overriding message of the remembrance Day celebrations was that we should all be grateful for the sacrifices millions of brave soldiers made for “our” freedom. Of course, its all bunk. In the First World War, in particular, there was no threat to British freedom, Britain joined in ostensibly not because of a threat to it, but in defence of its allies. Well its not entirely true to say that there was no threat to British freedom. There was a threat to the freedom of British bosses and bankers to continue oppressing and exploiting millions of people in the British Empire. In large part that was what the War was all about, Germany wanted a share of those colonies for itself. But, the interests of British workers lay not with their bosses in maintaining those colonies, but with those millions of people living in them who were oppressed by the same British ruling class. The other freedom at stake was the freedom of those same bosses and bankers to have a privileged position in the world’s markets based on British gunboat diplomacy, and the role of the Pound as reserve world currency. Similar in fact, to the position the United States holds now.

And, of course, the celebrations we are told are not to glorify war or to gloat about the fact that “our” side won. Oh no. No, they are to remind us of the tragedy of war, and what we should avoid it in future. In that case, of course, it has failed because Britain has had troops fighting somewhere in the World every year since the end of WWII. And if that is the real message, then why is it that so many of the people taking part turn up in their MEDALS. After all, those medals by and large were handed out precisely for being more efficient at killing people. That doesn’t seem to be a signal of a desire for peace to me.

Better actually, were the words cited in one of the episodes of the Documentary 1914-18, of Russian soldiers to their German counterparts in 1917. Having overthrown
The Tsar the soldiers called out across the trenches “We’ve got rid of our Tsar. Get rid of your Kaiser, and then we can all go home.”

There were, in fact two better commentaries on War last week one factual the other a piece of fiction. Michael Palin’s “The last Day of World War I” on BBC told the story of all those poor soldiers who died on the last day even after it was known that the Armistice was to come into effect, and where therefore there was no need for further fighting. Soldiers like those under the American General Pershing who continued his offensive because he wanted to ensure that as much German territory was taken before the Armistice came into effect, or of the three hundred soldiers who lost their lives because their commanding officer sent them in to attack a town, for the simple reason that he had heard there were bathing facilities there. That is the lack of concern that Capitalism shows for human life when it is the lives of workers at stake, the same concern it has shown in the millions of workers lives lost in industry over the last 200 years turning a profit for the bosses.

The second was in the concluding part of the latest production of “Sharpe” about the life of a rank and file soldier at the beginning of the 19th century who worked his way up the ranks of the Essex Rifles. In Sharpe’s peril Sharpe is asked about the men he has killed. “They must have deserved it? It was a just cause.”

To which Sharpe replies, “Most of them were just me like me doing what they were told to do. Wars are the business of Kings and Governments, and whatever the reasons they give for them in the end the reason always comes down to the same thing, loot.”

Marxists might want to take issue to some extent. There are some wars that Marxists would support Wars to free an oppressed nation from the clutches of an imperialist nation for instance. But, Sharpe’s comments in relation to imperialist wars like WWI and II is spot on.

Of course, no socialist can be dismissive of the millions of ordinary working men of all nations who died, but we should not let our rulers and their media get away with the idea that they died for US. They didn’t they died protecting the interests of their respective ruling classes. To paraphrase the comments of the American socialist James Cannon speaking about the loss of life of Finnish workers we might say, “If we could we would summon their spirits from the grave and bring them back to life. But, having done so our suggestion to them now should be what it was of socialists to them back then. Turn your guns on your real enemy, your own ruling classes.”