The interviewees in your Vox Pop column about the danger of glorifying world war one repeated many of the usual clichés about the Great War.
David Cameron’s Imperial War Museum speech and the 1914 website also suggests a tired litany of Somme, Jutland, Passchendaele, mud and trenches with little attention to its long-term effects.
As the most important world event since the industrial revolution, the Great War is far too important to be left just to the military museums, military historians and the armed forces. The war impacted on all aspects of British society with reverberations that are still with us a century later.
Concentrating on military events will downplay the conflict’s importance in major issues such as growth of the state and its impact on production, welfare and conscription, the adoption of mass democracy with the enfranchisement of women and working-class men, and massive changes in Britain’s politics with the rise of the Labour party and the decline of the liberals.
Culture and technology at all levels were transformed and maps redrawn in the UK and worldwide.
Those given the task of marking the centenary would find enormous goodwill from other organisations and a willingness to lend collections that would enable these wider stories to be told. We shall see if they dare take up that challenge or remain in their comfort zone.
Nick Mansfield, senior lecturer, University of Central Lancashire
David Cameron’s Imperial War Museum speech and the 1914 website also suggests a tired litany of Somme, Jutland, Passchendaele, mud and trenches with little attention to its long-term effects.
As the most important world event since the industrial revolution, the Great War is far too important to be left just to the military museums, military historians and the armed forces. The war impacted on all aspects of British society with reverberations that are still with us a century later.
Concentrating on military events will downplay the conflict’s importance in major issues such as growth of the state and its impact on production, welfare and conscription, the adoption of mass democracy with the enfranchisement of women and working-class men, and massive changes in Britain’s politics with the rise of the Labour party and the decline of the liberals.
Culture and technology at all levels were transformed and maps redrawn in the UK and worldwide.
Those given the task of marking the centenary would find enormous goodwill from other organisations and a willingness to lend collections that would enable these wider stories to be told. We shall see if they dare take up that challenge or remain in their comfort zone.
Nick Mansfield, senior lecturer, University of Central Lancashire
