Michael Chant pays tribute on behalf of RCPB(ML) at the Act of Remembrance ceremony, November 14, 2021

Soon after a tawdry gaggle of decadent Royals, war-criminal current and ex-Prime Ministers, war-mongering service chiefs, went through their fraudulent rituals at the Cenotaph on November 14, Remembrance Sunday, attempting among others to justify and glorify the slaughterhouse of 1914-18 as well as all of Britain's criminal military interventions since 1945 - Greece, Malaya, Korea, Kenya, Ireland, Malvinas, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria to name the most glaring - a smaller, almost entirely unpublicised ceremony took place at the Soviet War Memorial in Geraldine Mary Harmsworth Park, by the Imperial War Museum, albeit correctly attended by British army representatives and former diplomats. The Memorial commemorates the 27 million Soviet citizens and service men and women who died for the Allied Victory in World War II.

This ceremony honoured those who had made the supreme sacrifice in the defeat of fascism in the Second World War, in particular those of our allies the glorious Soviet Red Army, who played the main role in the defeat of Nazi Germany, and stood in the very forefront of the forces of the democratic countries and the brave partisans of the world who all played their part in overcoming fascism. In the ceremony, wreaths and flowers were laid by representatives of Southwark, in whose London borough the memorial stands, representatives of embassies and military attachés, veterans' organisations, and other political parties and organisations who pay tribute to the still unfolding world-shaking legacy of the Soviet Union. The act of remembrance was conducted by Philip Wilkinson, Vice Chair of the Soviet War Memorial Trust.

The contrast in ceremonies, it must be said, did bring to mind that the governing circles in Britain, in particular, did much to encourage the rise of fascism in Germany in the 30s, hoping thereby to destroy the new workers' state, the Soviet Union, refusing that state's proposal for collective resistance to fascism, instead signing the Munich Agreement with Nazi Germany and fascist Italy which opened the way for war. It must be said also, that even as the great documents of Yalta and Potsdam were being signed, the UN Charter and Nuremberg Judgements adopted following the end of the Second World War, the Labour government of Attlee and Truman's US administration were rejecting the possibility of a new world of peace, democracy and the well-being of the peoples, turning back to the rabid anti-communism and opposition to the peoples' liberation struggles of the '30s, which had contributed to the outbreak of devastating war in the first place, leading as it has to disaster after disaster for the world's peoples.

Such ceremonies, however, indicate that the glorious struggles are not forgotten, and never will be. They serve as an inspiration, as the peoples forces gather their strength yet again, in equally dark times, to build the New, a new world fit for humans.

For more information on the Soviet War Memorial in London, visit: www.sovietwarmemorialtrust.com

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