Thought for the Week: Shooting stars
Jonathan Doering wonders whether memory is enough
I watch the night sky and my eye catches a shooting star, a streamer of light drawn across the face of oblivion. As it dies, it throws out its brightest light. A doomed, beautiful, inspiring image in my mind’s eye. Is that image enough? Is a memory enough?
In late June Lancaster bombers dropped thousands of red poppies over Green Park in central London to commemorate Bomber Command’s still controversial campaign against German civilian targets during world war two. I have also been involved in a lively debate over whether or not donations should be sent to the Friends Ambulance Unit Memorial in the National Arboretum – should we spend money on memorialising good work in the past, or spend it on more good work in the present?
Memorials can be fleeting, powerful and contentious. Yet humans have an urge to remember even though memory itself can be a protean, unstable force. There is a scene in the film The History Boys when an ambitious young teacher takes his bright charges to a war memorial, commenting on what a brilliant diversionary tactic they can be: ‘The best way to hide something is to memorialise it.’ Governments may choose to focus on the decency, grace under fire and camaraderie of troops (or civilians) in a war, rather than the stench of fear in a trench, tsunamis of bombs and the daily horror of a war of attrition. So, the positive aspects of war are preserved in the common memory. Does this mean that they are all, necessarily, a con trick? Might there be worthwhile alternative memorials?
It is the Easter holidays and, on the suggestion of our friend Wendrie Heywood, my wife and I are visiting ‘The Memorial to Heroic Self Sacrifice’, tucked away in the centre of London. An awning runs along one side of the green space, sheltering a wall bearing a series of beautiful tiles commemorating civilians who gave their lives to save others.
The Memorial was the brainchild of George Frederic Watts, a Victorian artist and philanthropist who suggested it as part of Victoria’s golden jubilee celebrations, arguing: ‘The material prosperity of a nation is not its abiding possession; the deeds of its people are.’ Watts twice refused a baronetcy but, in other ways, was a hearty Victorian gentleman with an earnest belief in good examples, a sentiment echoed by Mandell Creighton, then bishop of London, during the Memorial’s inauguration in 1900: ‘It was a good thing that the multitude… should have some great thoughts on which to fix their hearts…’
Great thoughts. A stewardess hands her life belt to a passenger and goes down with the sinking ship; a schoolboy dies attempting to rescue his two friends in difficulty in a pool; a local government clerk saves the life of a stranger in Ostend. As I read, I feel as if I’m watching dying star after dying star blaze through an endless night. Would I make such a sacrifice? Could I?
I’m grateful to Wendrie for her suggestion: it is good to think that there is at least one such memorial to self-sacrifice. It strikes me as apposite this year, as Elizabeth Windsor celebrates a diamond jubilee – and when unpaid volunteers providing security for those celebrations have been expected to sleep under a bridge – to reflect on service and self-sacrifice.
I’m still not yet sure what my view of memorials is. But this one makes me think that I should work towards a world that venerates the parent who covers their child’s head against a bomb blast, rather than those who order or perpetrate such attacks.
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