By Dr Liam Markey, University of Liverpool
This blog post will explore the immediate legacies of the First World War centenary in Britain, looking towards the culmination of the ongoing commemoration of the Second World War’s 80th anniversary, with VE and VJ day being commemorated in May and August of this year respectively. It describes how discourse surrounding both world wars has shaped British attitudes and behaviours concerning conflict and military service over the last century, and how changing demographics may serve to consolidate these beliefs in the coming century. Special attention is paid to mixed media texts collected and held by the British Library, demonstrating the significance of the UK Web Archive (UKWA) in particular as a repository of counter-culture discourse in the context of British militarism.
A Second Century of Remembrance
As a response to the centenary of the First World War, between 2018 and 2023 I undertook a PhD at the University of Liverpool in collaboration with the British Library. My research cast a critical gaze upon the act of remembrance in Britain since the end of the First World War, with special attention paid to the concept of ‘military victimhood’ and its potential to mediate militaristic modes of thinking. The project was embarked upon in the wake of the national commemoration of the centenary of the First World War, a watershed moment in Britain which prompted the production of a myriad of state-funded cultural and educational events.
As David Cameron announced in 2012, British commemoration of the centenary would serve to,
“provide the foundations upon which to build an enduring cultural and educational legacy, to put young people front and centre in our commemoration and to ensure that the sacrifice and service of a hundred years ago is still remembered in a hundred years’ time.”
While such an important historical moment arguably provides an invaluable opportunity for critical reflection, my research ascertained that, largely, the centenary instead engendered a consolidation of, and recommitment to, traditional forms of remembrance. Ultimately, the foundations that the centenary provided were not ground-breaking, rather they had already been established during, and enacted since, the end of the First World War itself. This next century of commemoration, as envisioned by Cameron, would be cast in the image of the last, anchored upon the rituals and practices of what is referred to as the ‘1919 model’.
This in and of itself can be regarded as potentially problematic, as my research, and the work of many other scholars, demonstrates the proclivity of such forms of commemoration to perpetuate the core tenets of a militaristic ideology; seeing war glorified, justified, and normalised. This is largely achieved through the sanitisation of war’s power to victimise, with emphasis placed on an idealised vision of warfare and military service. ‘Official’ or ‘dominant’ narratives of commemoration also emphasise the unifying power the rituals of the 1919 model, such as the two-minute silence or the wearing of a poppy, have among the British population and the positive effect enactment has in relation to British victims of war. Commemorative discourse overwhelmingly emphasises notions of debt that the public are duty-bound to fulfil, while avoiding direct reference to war’s inherent violence and propensity to produce victims.
This depiction of warfare present in commemorative practices was chosen to serve a very specific purpose, as a way of alleviating the suffering of the bereaved by acknowledging that their loved ones died in service of a noble ideal. However, with much, if not all, of those for whom the 1919 model was created having now passed from the British population, sentiments of military service as being inherently glorious, core to dominant commemorative narratives, serve to sanitise war for generations of individuals with no personal experience of war’s traumatic reality.
Alongside overt references to war as glorious and necessary within dominant commemorative narratives, my research also uncovered the role of the ‘commemorative deviant’. These are individuals who choose to commemorate war in a manner outside of the official purview, and as such are vilified in the national mainstream media, encouraging others to condemn rather than replicate such behaviours. The majority of such depictions come from print texts taken from three mainstream British newspapers: The Daily Mail, The Daily Mirror, and The Times, collected for analysis from the British Library’s Newsroom. These newspaper texts serve to reinforce specific beliefs and behaviours concerning remembrance over the last century that ultimately perpetuate, rather than challenge, militaristic notions.
Mainstream narratives purport that since the end of the First World War commemoration has been static, with its enactment based on a general consensus, and those rare deviant individuals represent an anomaly rather than a pattern of behaviour visible throughout the last century. However, through access to the UKWA, and close collaboration with the UKWA team, I was able to create a unique digital dataset which challenged such notions and provided a far more expansive view of commemoration as enacted in Britain since 1918. Beyond official black and white narratives of morally righteous consensus and villainous deviance, digital texts demonstrated the complexity of British remembrance. They provided an insight into ‘ground-up’ commemorative initiatives, uncovering attitudes more often than not absent from the mainstream media due to their potential to undermine notions key to the proliferation of dominant commemorative narratives.
Websites collected by the UKWA demonstrated the rich variety of methods by which war has been commemorated in Britain since the First World War, with many serving to challenge and deprivilege assumptions inherent within dominant narratives. These ‘counter’-narratives illustrated the vastness of the category of military victims, many of whom, such as civilians or enemy soldiers, are absent from mainstream commemorative discourse, and whose existence serve to undermine notions of militarism. Many instances of ‘deviancy’ in mainstream thought became in this context simply an alternative perspective, which ultimately facilitated the broadening of knowledge concerning the enactment of British remembrance over the last century.
Take for instance the existence of the white poppy, a symbol denigrated by newspaper texts in the sample as disrespectful and a direct contributor to the suffering of military victims, such as disabled ex-servicemen or the bereaved. Digital texts provide expansive contextual information, highlighting that the white poppy was itself incepted by ex-servicemen and relatives of the war dead as a commitment to peace, remembrance of all victims of war, and as a direct challenge to a militaristic ideology. Digital texts also highlight the existence of otherwise marginalised individuals, such as dissenting ex-servicemen, conscientious objectors, soldiers ‘shot at dawn’, or soldiers severely disfigured as a result of their military service.
Alongside an expanded purview regarding representation of military victims, the digital texts collected from the UKWA also provided access to the thoughts and feelings of the average British citizen, many of which clash with mainstream declarations of consensus and unity. Message boards and amateur websites serve as a medium for dissenting viewpoints, exhibiting the democratising power of the internet. Ultimately, the UKWA provided a much fuller picture of remembrance than the one evident in mainstream media, providing a platform for individuals who have not featured at the forefront of commemoration over the last century, but are nevertheless integral components in wider British narratives of war.
Second World War 80th Anniversary
Seven years on from the centenary of the First World War, we now find ourselves approaching the culmination of the first decade of the second century of British remembrance, and at the apex of the Second World War’s 80th anniversary, concluding in the commemoration of the victories in Europe and Japan; VE Day on 8th May, and VJ Day on 15th August respectively. Preceding the commemoration of victory in 1945, we have also seen other major historical moments of the Second World War commemorated since 2019, such as the Battle of Britain and the D-Day landings.
Thus far, these tentpole national commemorative events have largely been celebrations of victory rather than meditations on the destructive nature of war. Unlike the First, which has largely been portrayed in popular culture as a futile endeavour, the Second World War stands apart as a just war, a struggle between good and evil. In recent years, it is through the lens of the Second World War that official narratives of war in Britain have been constructed, providing a useful template with which previous and later conflicts can be created in the guise of. Such a foregrounding of a single war in mainstream narratives can result in the depoliticising and decontextualising of conflict, providing an ahistorical view of war as a natural and inevitable continuum. While responses to the First World War during its centenary did in part deal with the ambiguous nature of its necessity in being fought, the Second World War is far more widely accepted as entirely justified, as a national struggle for survival. While there is no doubt that defeat of fascism is a cause worthy of celebration, it must not serve to enable a sanitisation of war’s reality by colouring our perception of conflict overall.
The 80th anniversary of the Second World War may well enable dominant narratives of war to become further entrenched in the national psyche, particularly as more and more individuals with first-hand experience of total war pass from the population. For a new generation of Britons, whose primary connection to war is through the mass media, and indeed commemorative events, there is a real danger that a sanitised and depoliticised view of warfare will become the norm, especially through an ever more celebratory depiction adopted by mainstream commemorative initiatives.
As with the First World War centenary, this is where the vital role of repositories such as the UKWA can come into play, providing alternative viewpoints upon the topic of war and ensuring that a wide variety of voices are heard, rather than obscured by the fanfare of national enterprises. In light of the 80th anniversaries of VE and VJ day, the UKWA will curate a special collection documenting events and activities relating to the end of the Second World War, and invite the public to directly submit relevant websites by emailing [email protected].
Through the creation of such a collection, the UKWA will secure an invaluable repository of digital texts, which will not only serve as a preservation of an important historical event, but also as a vital resource for future scholars. Provided will be a unique insight into national forms of commemoration alongside those enacted by individuals and local communities. Digital texts held in the UKWA collections were central to my own research, offering a window into otherwise marginalised and unseen discourses, demonstrating the vast breadth of public responses to and enactments of remembrance in Britain since the end of the First World War. I hope that, moving forwards into this second century of commemoration, the UKWA’s important work will continue, facilitating significant reflection on remembrance for future generations.
Dr Liam Markey is a Research Associate at the University of Liverpool’s Department of Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology. He completed his PhD in collaboration with the British Library in 2023 and is currently working on a British Academy funded project exploring ethical digital public histories of prisoners and the legacy of enslavement in Georgia, USA.
[email protected]
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