EVERY year, since I have been elected, I have written about the Remembrance Day services.

Each year I rotate through our three towns. It is tricky when we have so many services throughout the district and just one of me to cover them all.

This year I went to Bewdley, and as is always the case I was struck by how much people care about the sacrifices that have been made to maintain our freedom, our freedom of choices, our freedom of press and expression, and so many other important freedoms.

It is, of course ironic that the war to end all wars was at the beginning of a period of fairly intense and bloody conflict, continuing today with the appalling problems in the Middle East. This culminates in the threat that presents itself to us through suicidal terrorists – something even those of us who lived through the IRA atrocities cannot fully imagine.

I was invited to a play put on by Shindig, an organisation that brings professional actors to community halls throughout the county. This is View from Westminster an incredible gift to the community by actors who want nothing more than to spread their art.

Shindig brought a group of actors to Heightington village hall to put on an extraordinarily moving play, highlighting the true horrors of the First World War and bringing it to a modern perspective through the eyes of a tourist visiting the northern France and Flanders battlefields.

I am (officially?) the world’s worst theatre critic so I will not try to pass judgement on the play, save to say that it, as with many people in the audience, brought to life the true horrors that our forbearers went through. My grandfather’s brother was killed, aged 25, in 1916 in Mesopotamia with the Gloucesters, but I doubt there is a person alive in this country who cannot trace a relative that has not been a casualty of the first war.

A hundred years since the war started, it has just as much resonance in people’s minds today as it ever did. The poppy field in the moat of the Tower of London bears evidence of that. In four years Armistice Day will have a real relevance – exactly 100 years since the First World War ended.

CONTACT YOUR MP

  • Email: mark.garnier.mp@parliament.uk
  • Telephone: 020 7219 7198 or 01562 746771
  • Write: 9a Lower Mill Street, Kidderminster, DY11 6UU, or House of Commons, Westminster, London