A land fit for…?

What sort of nation imposes a charge on servicemen and women wishing to honour the memory of their fallen comrades?

Horwich, five miles north west of Bolton in Greater Manchester is a town that’s probably unheard of except by ramblers who favour the West Pennine moors. According to it’s [sic] town council website there is ‘a strong community spirit within the locality and it is becoming an increasingly desirable place to both live and work.’

It boasts – I think that’s the right word for it – its own branch of the Royal British Legion. Every year since 1945 the Legion has held a small parade on Remembrance Day to honour its local residents who have died in the defence of their country…

In two world wars, and also in forgotten wars like India, Palestine, Malaya, Korea, the Suez Canal Zone, Kenya, Cyprus, Suez again, Borneo, Vietnam, Aden, Radfan, Oman, Dhofar, Bosnia, Kosovo, Sierra Leone and many others, often virtually unreported, all since 1945. And also in Northern Ireland, the Falklands War, the Gulf War, and currently in Iraq and Afghanistan, which are the only ones most people will remember.

But according to the Daily Mail [link below] the parade is unlikely to take place this year because the local authority – the one that flaunts its own strong community spirit – wants to charge the organisers up to ₤18,000 for the privilege of remembering.

That’s a hell of a lot of poppy sales in a population that (including bits of neighbouring Lostock) was 19,312 at last count.

The council wants ‘a team of marshals’ to man the route at a cost of about ₤50 each. What does that work out at, as an hourly rate for the time taken to march to a war memorial? And why do they need marshals in the first place – in case parading pensioners (the only members of the community who have any understanding of discipline) become unruly before 11 in the morning on a Sunday in November?
The council also imposes a charge for closing roads. The more roads that need closing while the parade passes, the greater the price. What, in God’s name, does it cost to close a road for maybe an hour?

The Mail quotes Bernard McCartin, 65, of the British Legion’s Horwich branch, as warning that the cost of imposing so-called safety measures could affect parades across the country. Mr McCartin, who served with the Royal Observer Corps says: ‘This is very disappointing, but there is not a lot we can do.’

That sadly, is the mind-set into which a once proud nation – one that could take on the Boche, the Hun, the Arabs, the Wogs, the communists, the terrorists, the rebels, insurgents and revolutionaries, in steaming jungle, desert plains, rain-soaked hills and scorching bush – has fallen.

An old soldier saying ‘there’s not a lot we can do.’

That’s because the ‘British Way’ these days, is to find out what people want to do, and then – totally spitefully, because there is no logical reason for virtually any of this – impose wholly unnecessary rules to ensure that they can’t do it.

Well, here’s a suggestion about what the would-be marchers can do.

The Royal British Legion can tell the councillors of Horwich that it is not actually requesting permission to mark Armistice Day with a small parade, but is declaring its intention so to do.

It is not going to pay for that privilege because it has already paid, in blood and lives, and the free citizens of Horwich are still heavily in debt to its members and to their fallen comrades. On the balance sheet of reality the cost of raw material – human lives – for a Remembrance Day parade will never be settled.

All that they are demanding is the right once a year to proceed in orderly fashion to the town’s war memorial and lay a wreath or two in memory of their fallen comrades.

Is that too much to ask?

In Horwich, at this moment of writing, it apparently is. If those old soldiers, sailors and airmen died in the belief that they were defending a free country – with freedom from oppression, freedom of speech and peaceful protest – they died in vain.

Here are two diary dates:

Monday 13 August 7.30pm at Horwich Public Hall. Meeting of Horwich Town Council Finance & General Purposes Committee
Thursday 23 August in the Public Hall, Horwich. Meeting of Horwich Town Council at 7.15pm followed by the Planning Committee at 7.30pm.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=470581&in_page_id=1770
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