A powerful instinct
Once again there were more people than ever attending Remembrance Sunday services in my constituency – in this instance in Mildenhall and Haverhill. I can’t help but feel it is something to do with the fact that each month our soldiers are being killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Also people are aware of the terrorist threat to our society.
It is very moving to hear the roll of honour: the same families tragically suffering losses in both world wars. My children’s great-grandfather was the ninth son and fourteenth child and inherited the family farm in Suffolk. Another great-grandfather was gassed and was never quite the same again. My own father’s heart was weakened in war; he was reluctant to have children, and sure enough he died when I was only nine. Another uncle acquired some sort of untreatable virus which meant that about once a year he had to spend time bed ridden with a high temperature. My father’s sister never recovered from a bomb blast in the West End of London, and died shortly after the war ended. In other words, although belonging to a generation never directly impacted by war, no family escaped its consequences.
People in this country have a real sense of their own personal freedom. Some people today would like to destroy our way of life, not by conventional warfare. They will not succeed because the instincts of all those people who turned out yesterday will ensure that it will never happen.