Thoughts About Remembrance Sunday

bristol | protests | news report Tuesday November 13, 2012 11:24 by Bristol Anarchist Federation

this is a bristol indymedia story

“War is nothing like a John Wayne movie. There is nothing heroic about being blown up in a vehicle, there is nothing heroic about being shot in an ambush and there is nothing heroic about the deaths of countless civilians.

Calling our soldiers heroes is an attempt to stifle criticism of the wars we are fighting in.

It leads us to that most subtle piece of propaganda: You might not support the war but you must support our heroes, ergo you support the war.
It is revealing that those who send our forces to war and those that spread war propaganda are the ones who choose to wear poppies weeks in advance of Armistice Day.” – Ben Griffin, Ex-SAS Soldier, 2010, Wales online

“War is organised murder and nothing else. Politicians who took us to war should have been given the guns and told to settle their differences themselves, instead of organising nothing better than legalised mass murder.”
-Harry Patch, the last WWI Veteran in europe (1989-2009)

Patch had no time for the Act of Remembrance on 11 November, an event he described as “just show business”.

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In the three years before the British government responded to the fascist threat in Europe in the late 1930s, between two and four thousand antifascists, anarchists, socialists, communists and trade unionists from Great Britain and Ireland fought as volunteers to the 16th British Battalion of the International Brigades, alongside volunteers from 53 nations across the world, against Franco’s fascist regime in Spain.

On February 27th 1939, the British government officially recognised the legitimacy of Franco’s government.

Remember also then, today, the people that fought and died with the International Brigades, and who are afforded little place in the official histories of the Second World War.

Always Antifascist.