Nick Megoran 17 December 2014. Posted in News
As classic
anti-war anthem All Together Now is re-released, Nick Megoran says why
remembering the 1914 Christmas truces is so important.
BRITAIN SEEMS to have gone truce-mad. This
year's Sainsbury's Christmas TV advert is a hugely-expensive and carefully
produced film about British and German soldiers sharing friendship and
chocolate in December 1914. The Premier and Football Leagues, with the
encouragement of Prince William, have been holding truces themed-matches and
photoshoots.
The
unofficial truces that spontaneously took place at Christmas 1914 were amongst
the most poignant moments of World War 1. Up to 100,000 men the length of the
western front found themselves singing the same carols which led to them
meeting up, exchanging gifts, and burying their dead. Some stopped to worship
or play football together.
'It was an
extraordinary and most wonderful sight,' recorded 19 year-old Arthur
Pelham-Burn, 6th Gordons, of a bilingual Christmas worship service held in no
man's land. 'One has given me his address to write to him after the war,' a
soldier from Gateshead wrote home about a German he befreinded. 'They were
quite a decent lot of fellows, I can tell you… I am sure if it were left to the
men there would be no war.'
Needless
to say, it wasn't left to the men. The high commands of all sides were enraged,
and crushed the truces with orders backed by threats, and by replacing men on
the front line by those 'untainted' with the truces.
The use of
these truces by supermarkets and sports franchises has sparked outrage.
Historian Neil Faulkner argues that 'when big corporate organisations like the
Premier League and Sainsbury's talk about the Christmas Truce, they trivialise
it. We should condemn their hypocrisy.' Instead, Faulkner welcomed as
'excellent news' the re-release this week of classic pop song about the truces,
All Together Now.
A host of
music stars under the banner of 'The Peace Collective have come together to
re-record The Farm's 1990 hit. Originally written by lead vocalist Peter Hooton
and guitarist Steve Grimes, the song interprets the truces as a rejection of
war – then and now. Going head-to-head with an X Factor creation for the
Christmas number 1 slot, with proceeds going to the Red Cross rather than Simon
Cowell, the re-release is surely something the peace movement should champion.
Not convinced
But not
everyone is convinced. Activist Bruce Kent thinks that, 'The 1914 Christmas
Truce is getting a bit overplayed.' He describes the truces commemorations as
'Good heartwarming stuff,' but complains that they leave out bigger questions
such as why the war occurred, why there were relatively so few conscientious
objectors, and why we are still pushing ahead with the Trident weapons
replacement programme at a time of crippling national debt.
Kent has a
point. Like the poet-soldiers often revered by the peace movement, the men who
took part in the truces didn't renounce war. However reluctantly, they were
fighting again hours or days later, and 15 million people would perish before
the mass slaughter was finally brought to a halt by strikes, mutinies, and US
armed forces flooding into Europe.
Mark
Perryman, of Philosophy Football, has similar concerns. He welcomes the
re-release of the song as 'Anything that celebrates the cause of peace rather
than cheers for war has to be good,' especially when 'done in the spaces of
popular culture rather than on planet placard.' However he worries that in the
process of being supported by the Premier League, 'it seems to have lost that
cutting edge,' becoming 'more a celebration than a questioning - and that's a
pity.'
So is All
Together Now still radical after all these years?
All
Together Now was born as anti-war song. Originally entitled 'No Man's Land',
its six verses described the outbreak of the truces, the political
embarrassment they caused at home, and the high command's efforts to crush them
and prevent them recurring. When recording it in 1990 for the album Spartacus,
four of the original verses were excised, and a chorus added based on Johann
Pachelbel's haunting Canon in D Major. A third verse, beginning 'Same old story
again / nothing learnt and nothing gained… let's go home' was added as a
searing attack on the upcoming US-led war on Iraq. This was
historically-informed, anti-war popular culture at its best: recalling a deeply
subversive moment of the past to critically reflect on violence in the present.
Although
an anti-war song, its very popularity as a dance anthem led to its radical
political message being watered down. The low point of this was its 2006
re-recording by Atomic Kitten for the football World Cup. A computer-animated
version featuring Goleo and Pille, the 'official mascots' of the corporate
jamboree run by corrupt and unaccountable FIFA, removed all references to the
First World War and the truces. Worse still, Atomic Kitten's own video version
entirely depoliticised the song, transforming it into a sordid eroticisation of
the female body.
Political
edge
The 2014
re-recording recaptures the original political edge: not only the name Peace
Collective, but also its donation of profits to the Red Cross makes this
intention clear. Peter Hooton explained that initially, 'there was talk of
doing it with the British Legion, but we wanted a non-political, humanitarian
organisation doing work in conflict zones around the world to help victims of
war. The Red Cross has a historic link to the First World War, helping all
sides.'
Hooton is
scathing of the Sainsbury's advert. 'The First World War was about market share
– the rise of German industry. Sainsbury's is worried about losing market share
to German companies – Lidl and Aldi. It is ironic that the ad uses the
Christmas truce in a sentimental way to protect market share against German
companies today.' The advert, he admits, 'is brilliantly produced, but it
doesn't put anything in context.' In contrast, as the opening words of the song
insist, in thinking about the truces it is vital to 'remember (boys) that your
forefathers died/ lost in millions for their country's pride.'
This is
ultimately why commemorating the truces is so important – memory. The way we
remember the past is not neutral, but informs how we understand the present.
The military-political establishment has colonised so much of civilian space.
Innumerable monuments in town and village centres, and countless plaques in
hospitals, universities and churches, confuse sacrifice for slaughter and hide
mass murder behind memorials.
There is
nothing innocent about the government's programme of funding or encouraging
World War 1 commemorations, from local schools researching the names on war
memorials to the 'Tower of London Remembers' poppy-fest. David Cameron
indicated the political intent here when in 2012 he unveiled massive funding
plans for the commemorations, saying he wanted 'A commemoration that captures
our national spirit in every corner of the country... like the Diamond
Jubilee.'
Why
remember
That's why
it is important to remember the truces, because - if only temporarily -
ordinary men recognised their common humanity and implicitly rejected the
nationalistic belligerence of their superiors. 'We were cursing the generals to
hell,' wrote Sergeant George Ashurst of the Lancashire Fusiliers about the
officers who restarted the fighting. He was infuriated that people in Britain
were sanctimoniously condemning him and his comrades for fraternising: '…We
want them here in front of us instead of Jerry so we could shoot them down,' he
stormed.
And that
is also why the Christmas truces in particular are worth marking. In spite of
the capture of the season by corporations producing drinks and toys, the basic
Christian festival of Christmas contains images and messages that the military-political
establishment find deeply unsettling.
Welcoming
the release of the song, Dr John Heathershaw, a politics lecturer at Exeter
University and a leader of Pinhoe Road Baptist Church, which is marking the
truces this year, said, 'The Christmas truces give us hope that the senseless
violence that is perpetrated by all governments, including our own, can be
ended if we recognise Christ's call to love God and one another, not worship
our nations.… Those who either valorise or sentimentalise war today do so in
the vain hope that it makes us safe. Jesus told us that was nonsense and his
birth, death and resurrection mean that our hope lies in living without
violence."
Likewise,
Jill Segger, of progressive Christian think tank Ekklesia, said that All
Together Now reminds us that the Christmas Truces 'face us with uncomfortable
facts - that officers on both sides had to force the men back to their guns, as
high commands were terrified that fraternisation made them 'more aware that [in
the words of the WW1 socialist slogan] "A bayonet is a weapon with a
working man at each end of it." No wonder the military has found it hard
to colonise Christmas.
We should
commemorate the truces. They were a brief moment of sanity amidst the horrors
of the industrialised slaughter of trench warfare, and enraged the elites who
benefitted politically and financially from the war's continuation.
If the
schools, churches, and football teams in our locality have overlooked them,
encourage them to mark them next year or at any other Christmas during the
centennial commemorations. Free resources such as those created by the Martin
Luther King Peace Committee make this easy. But The Farm's original admonition
in the song is vital: only do so if we are prepared to change the way we live
now.
Ben
Griffin, of Veterans for Peace, welcomes the re-release of the song and puts
its challenge well: 'It is important to remember the truces today only if we
are willing to foster in the present the spirit of those who on Christmas Day
1914 put down their weapons and walked out to meet the enemy.'
So
regardless of where you shop for your Christmas goodies, buy All Together Now
and after a year marked by the sinister glorification of the war, this
Christmas let's really celebrate something worthwhile - peace. Even if that
peace only lasted a few hours.
The Peace
Collective sing the anti-war classic All Together Now
Nick
Megoran is a political geography lecturer and chaplain at Newcastle University,
and Co-Convenor of the Northumbria and Newcastle Universities Martin Luther
King Peace Committee (www.mlkpc.org).
Source: No
Glory in War
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