No Glory – No More War
4 August, 6.30-8.30pm, Parliament Square, London
The No Glory in War campaign will stage an event on the evening of August 4th in Parliament Square – the 100th anniversary of Britain’s declaration of war on Germany.
David Cameron has called for ‘truly national commemorations’ which, like the Diamond Jubilee, stress our ‘national spirit’.
No Glory will instead remember all of the dead from all nations who were forced into an imperialist war – the aftermath of which has impacted so terribly on today’s geo-politics. We believe that a clear-sighted appraisal of the First World War is crucial to understanding the dynamics that lead to current war-making.
Speakers and performers at the event include actor Samuel West, also of the Wilfred Owen Association, Kika Markham, Jeremy Corbyn MP (who will evoke Keir Hardie’s anti-war speech of 1914), writer AL Kennedy (reading Carol Ann Duffy’s Last Post in honour of Harry Patch as well as her ‘letter to an Unknown Soldier’) and Normandy veteran Jim Radford.
Other speakers represent the breadth of the No Glory campaign, including Kate Hudson of CND, Hannah Brock of the Quakers and Lindsey German of Stop the War.
Historians Neil Faulkner, author of No Glory the Real History of the First World War and Juliane Haubold-Stolle, German curator of the current WWI exhibition in Berlin (attending in a personal capacity) will also speak.
Singers include Sean Taylor and Turkish performer Gunes Cerit – poets Shareefa Energy and I-sis will evoke and remember the Indian and African dead of this terrible imperialist war.
For more information on the campaign, and our open letter see www.noglory.org
For further information on 4th August contact cultural coordinator Jan Woolf on 07967 161 291 or janwoolf63@gmail.com.