99 years on

99 years on the nation prepares for Centenary of outbreak of the Great War

After the nation remembers the catastrophe of 1914-18 this coming Remembrance Sunday we shall shortly enter the centenary year of the beginning of the war, which will see the first events of a four year programme of national remembrance of the most significant aspects of the war.

On 4^th August, 2014 the Queen will open a commemorative programme to be managed by the Imperial War Museum and the Department for Culture Media and Sport that will be focussed on five themes; the opening of the war; the Battle of Loos (September 1915; the battle of the Somme (July – November 1916); the 3^rd Battle of Ypres (July – November 1917 – commonly referred to as the Passchendaele campaign); and culminating in the final events around November 2018, to mark the Armistice that brought to a halt the bloodshed of more than four years. The programme content has aroused some criticism for apparently overlooking the Gallipoli campaign (1915) and the final 100 days of the Battle of Amiens (from 8^th August 1918) and the advance of the allied armies, claimed by many to be the greatest achievement of British forces of all time ( see Forgotten Victory – by Gary Sheffield). Professor Sheffield is the speaker (8^th March, 2014) in one of our winter programme of lectures at Northumbria University – see our website for details of all the lectures.

In advance of the 4^th of August, 2014 and the formal events we can expect a tidal wave of new books and publications (latest estimate more than 1000) seeking to re-tell the story of the war and individual participants from what will be claimed to be ‘ a new angle’. Whether these will actually cast any new light on a subject that has attracted probably more writing in the last 100 years than any other aspect of human history is open to doubt. All the records appertaining to the war have been in the public domain for many years and all the participants in the war have now passed away so no new insights or revelations are likely.

What is now apparent however is the rising number of groups seeking to tell the story of the war and family loss in the context of their own communities. The Tynemouth project began work three years ago but in the last 12 months a significant number of new groups have been formed in the NE region to research their own stories. All these projects will have a vital role to play in supporting the creation of an enormous national biographical record which the Imperial War Museum will launch in February 2014, aiming to build a database to tell the story of as many as possible of the 8 million men and women reckoned to have been directly involved in the war as fighting troops or as workers on the home front in munitions factories, shipyards and other vital sectors of the economy (e.g. mines and engineering).

Any readers of this blog who have materials of interest in respect of anyone who served in the war, whether from the Tynemouth borough area or elsewhere will be able to offer that information for inclusion in the national database. 

We will provide further details of this initiative when it is launched.