The Truth Behind World War One
1 comment
One response to “The Truth Behind World War One”
Left Unity is active in movements and campaigns across the left, working to create an alternative to the main political parties.
About Left Unity
Read our manifesto
Left Unity is a member of the European Left Party. 
Read the European Left Manifesto
ACTIVIST CALENDAR
Events and protests from around the movement, and local Left Unity meetings.
More events »
GET UPDATES
Sign up to the Left Unity email newsletter.
CAMPAIGNING MATERIALS
Get the latest Left Unity resources.
I’ve just listened to the radio 4 programme on the First World War fronted by that most lovable of Tories, Michael Portillo, and how refreshing it was compared to Paxman’s, bringing in proper historians who know this subject well and were able to explain why the war’s interpretation differed so much between the contending nations over the succeeding decades. In particular, it clarified, in a way I had not heard before, that while contention about war guilt lasted a very long time on a continent where political borders and economic depression reflected a) where the battlefields were and b) the treaty of Versailles, Britain instead became enthralled with a much more humanistic emphasis, focused on the actual horrors of war, as exposed by the war poets and the drama produced decades afterwards by those who read those poets at school.
Gove’s campaign started with polemics against ‘O what a lovely war!’ and ‘Blackadder’ – for a reason, therefore: he wants specifically to eliminate this humanitarian understanding of war, which was reflected in school curricula during the post-World War II period through a study of the war poets. His description of this as ‘fiction’ is true only at a very technical level – what he represents politically is a determination to kill off future recruits to the humanitarian pacifism in this country that can be traced back to the war poets and which was seen most recently in the 1.5 million who marched against Blair’s Iraq war and in the surge in anti-war feeling that caused the British government last year to suddenly retreat from bombing Syria. This was such a defeat for the Tory right that was it really a coincidence that Gove moved to criticise ‘Blackadder’ in its aftermatch?