When will money be ‘set aside’ for good?

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There is growing social unrest and hardship for so many in Britain, chaos has been caused by our foreign policies in Iraq/Afghanistan – and war with Iran is ‘not ruled out’.

Today we read that more serving British soldiers and veterans took their own lives in 2012 than died fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan over the same period.

Despite all this, the ongoing propaganda campaign promoting war is to be intensified. Not content with quietly giving multimillion subsidies to prop up the arms industries, David Cameron has decided to ‘set aside’ £50m to celebrate the centenary of the 1914-18 war.

Patrick Wintour notes Cameron’s studious avoidance of the morality of that war and of the contribution of Conservative historians, including Niall Ferguson and Andrew Roberts, who have “condemned the war as a catastrophic failure by a political and military elite – the conscripted lions notoriously led by the callous and unthinking donkeys dining behind the trenches”.

Why is there so much talk of bravery and heroism but none of the needless suffering and destruction?

It conditions the younger generation and most of their families to believe that engaging in warfare is a great calling – encouraging the young to enlist to kill and destroy people and homes in other countries. A veil will be drawn over any facts showing that war is a matter of killing and broken limbs and minds.

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“War is a matter of old men’s pride, and young people’s lives.”

Confirming the implication of the US peace sign (left), a UNICEF UK consultation  based on an online survey and a series of workshops held in conjunction with the British Youth Council found that children and young people had a ‘clear concern’ for world leaders to prioritise world peace.

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The blindfold celebration of the 1914-18 war should be balanced by a clear-sighted account of the desire for a peaceful world

David Cameron said, in a speech at London’s Imperial War Museum, that funding will be found for a new £4.5million permanent exhibition at the Imperial War Museum in south London.

Could he at least be even-handed and set aside the same sum to further develop the displays at the Peace Museum in Bradford – then both could ‘help secondary schools explore the Great War and its vast consequences’?.

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The Bradford-based co-ordinator of the International Network of Museums for Peace advocates a lively, interactive slant on museum work – akin to that of Eureka, the children’s museum in Halifax. 

As he said to a gathering in Birmingham last week: “If only 1% of the money spent on weapons – or even a tenth of that – were devoted to promoting peace  we could do so much.”