Yesterday morning BBC television went back to its Reithian roots.
For people my age hearing David Dimbleby’s measured and respectful commentary at The Cenotaph was a continuum of his family’s distinguished service in radio and television journalism. The live broadcast ran for more than two hours. It was sometimes very moving and I blubbed a bit as I sipped a small glass of sherry. You probably did not see the programme as you were commemorating Remembrance Sunday in your own church or in your own time zone.
When I was in Dublin recently I suggested Ireland should rejoin the Commonwealth. Politically impossible was the mood of the meeting. You will remember that Ireland remained in the Commonwealth until 1949. After Brexit I believe rejoining the Commonwealth would strengthen the bonds between Ireland and the United Kingdom.
I’m a Kremlinologist – you remember in the Cold War conclusions were drawn by looking at the men on the grandstand in fur hats at military parades in Red Square, or those who were missing. Yesterday the Commonwealth High Commissioners processed out of the Foreign Office led by the Irish Ambassador. A straw in the wind. Furthermore Dimbleby emphasised that the Irish men who died in the two Great Wars were volunteers. There were volunteers from almost all the other Commonwealth countries but he made a point.
Unless you have the curiosity of a goldfish with dementia you will wonder about the diminutive woman walking ahead of His Excellency, the Irish Ambassador. She is Ms Roshan Khanal, Chargé d´Affaires at the Embassy of Nepal; a small country that has been a steadfast ally of the United Kingdom, officially since 1816.
Thank you for those thoughts Christopher. I took part in the march, for the first time, yesterday. And it was an extraordinarily moving experience. I was with the Chindits, with whom my father served on both expeditions in northern Burma, in 1943 and 1944. Two of the Chindits on the march yesterday stopped their wheelchairs when they reached the Cenotaph and then walked past unaided. One of them was 101, the other 98. The Chindit spirit, forged during their exploits behind enemy lines in deepest Burma all those years ago, remains undiminished.
Thank you for raising the old subject of Ireland and the Commonwealth. The fact is that your companions are correct, it would be both politically impossible and undesirable. Politically impossible because the axis is about the shift in the republic towards a Sinn Fein government, any move towards rejoining the Commonwealth would further accentuate that tilt. Most Irish people see the Commonwealth as a vestige and reminder of Empire, a strange amalgam of far away nations. Much and all as the Irish and the English are considered to be close cousins by most here, the fact is that Ireland found its feet and modernity within the EU and for the moment remains happily within that entity.