Remembrance Day: Honouring all who died in wars

On this day, at 11 minutes past the 11th hour of the 11th month, 103 years ago, the guns fell silent (or were supposed to) on the killing fields of World War 1, one of the most bloody and pointless in history.

The day was commemorated by many countries as Armistice Day, but has now come to mean a day of remembrance for all those who have died in wars, wherever they are.

Today is a day to consider the lies of the politicians and the wealthy elite who, over centuries have been happy to send other mothers’ children to their deaths, safe in the knowledge they and their families would benefit from the profits of arms production.

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Not all wars were pointless: Humankind would have been much less noble had it allowed fascism to run unchecked across Europe.

Other, oppressed, peoples fought for their freedom… a term much debated and misused, too, over the years.

Ultimately, it is the dead we should remember.

In the words of British poet Robert Laurence Binyon: “They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old: Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning We will remember them.”

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