A message for Remembrance Sunday 2020

Hello. To commemorate the 75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War ,we wanted to create a permanent memorial here at South Cambridgeshire Hall. Because of the lockdown that will not be possible just now though we shall do so as soon as we can. Meanwhile I want to take this opportunity to acknowledge the great debt we owe to all those who fought and all those who supported them during the grim years of War. I wear a 1917 poppy to commemorate my own uncle who died as a very young man in 1917. We don’t know where he is buried. And we too are living in a grim time. I know many of you will be in real anguish as we face at least a month of further restriction and privation.

Perhaps thinking back to the War years may help you towards a new perspective, 01:00 - a determination to see this through. So I hope you will stop in your own home at 11am on Sunday morning. There may be a live stream of a local act of remembrance as there will be in my own village of Girton. There will of course be a screening of the wreath laying at the Cenotaph. Remember those who gave their lives for our freedom and democracy and remember those who now fight daily to help and heal those caught up in the covid-19 pandemic.

01:37 - May I end with a slight modification of the words of a memorial in North East India, the Kohima Epitaph. While in your home, tell them of us and say for your tomorrow we gave our today. I would now like to hand over to my Vice Chair, Councillor Anna Bradnam, to read something which means a great deal to her. Anna… In 1945 my mother Audrey was fourteen and when her grammar school proposed an evening of celebrations, she asked her daddy what poem she should recite. Granddad was a gardener at a manor house in Wiltshire, and as an essential food provider with flat feet was not called up for active service.

Mum says she had been largely unaware 02:36 - of rationing because he had fed his family so well from his own garden throughout the war. He suggested she recited the glory of the garden by Rudyard Kipling which was written in 1911. In the poem, England is described as a garden with stately views but also as a place where people work hard and whatever their ability can make a useful contribution to the productivity and beauty of the garden. There is another twist here. The manor house where grandad worked had been requisitioned by the MOD in 1942 and converted into the David Bruce laboratory for production of vaccines against typhoid fever. An immunization scheme had long been key to maintaining the health of the British army overseas.

The laboratory continued to manufacture 03:30 - vaccines and distribute them to our armed forces overseas until 1990, when the mod left the site. So as we give thanks for the end of World War 2 in 1945, I’d like to remember all those people who have sadly died during this pandemic and to give thanks for all those teams who are right now working to develop vaccines against Covid-19. I also want to thank everyone in this District Council who’s continued to deliver our services, but from their dining room table or spare bedroom, or turn their hand to a new task, or gone the extra mile to ensure that people in South Cambridgeshire are safe and provided for. Thank you. So, the poem that my mum recited in 1945 The glory of the garden by Rudyard Kipling Our England is a garden that is full of stately views of borders, beds and shrubberies, and lawns and avenues with state statues on the terraces and peacocks strutting by. But the glory of the garden lies in more than meets the eye.

For where the thick laurels grow along the thin red wall, you’ll 05:01 - find the tool and potting sheds which are the heart of all the cold frames, and the hot houses the dung pits, and the tanks the rollers, carts and drain pipes with the barrows and the planks. And there you’ll see the gardeners, the men and apprentice boys told off, to do as they are bid and do it without noise. For except when seeds are planted and we shout to scare the birds the glory of the garden, it abideth not in words. And some can pot begonias and some can bud the rose, and some are hardly fit to trust with anything that grows. But they can roll and trim the lawns and sift the sand and know for the glory of the garden occupies all who come.

05:53 - Our England is a garden, and such gardens are not made by singing oh how beautiful and sitting in the shade, while better men than we go out and start their working lives. At grubbing weeds from gravel paths with broken dinner knives. There’s not a pair of legs so thin, there’s not a head so thick, there’s not a hand so weak and white nor yet a heart so sick, but it can find some needful job that’s crying to be done. For the glory of the garden glorifieth everyone. Then seek your job with thankfulness and work till further orders. If it’s only netting strawberries or killing bugs on borders, sorry slugs on borders, and when your back stops aching and your hands begin to harden you’ll find yourself a partner in the glory of the garden.

Oh Adam was a 06:51 - gardener and God who made him sees that half a proper gardener’s work is done upon his knees. So when your work is finished, you can wash your hands and pray for the glory of the garden, that it may not pass away. For the glory of the garden that it may not pass away. Thank you .