A special day of commemoration is to be held in order to remember those servicemen and servicewomen from the British Commonwealth who died in service of the British Empire during the twentieth century, a recent feature on BBC Radio 4 declared.

Such an event is necessary, and it throws into relief the inadequacy of the existing remembrance ceremonies on Armistice Day for such a purpose. The November celebrations tend to focus on exclusively British cultural tropes. The centrality of the Royal Family, British political leaders, the Anglican Church and patriotic songs such as Rule, Britannia! root the act of remembrance in British culture and tradition. The subconscious result is to create an inherently British and Anglocentric memory of the global conflicts which engulfed the twentieth century. This is not only inappropriate because of the global nature of these wars, but because Britain so actively drew upon its colonial manpower and resources.

In the Second World War, for example, the British Indian Army numbered over 2.5 million volunteers and contributed to every theatre of the conflict. However, the image of both World Wars which persists in popular memory is almost entirely Anglocentric. There are annual celebrations of events to which the British made a considerable contribution, such as the Somme, the Battle of Britain and D-Day, but there is effective public amnesia when it comes to the campaigns in Africa and the Middle East during the First World War or to the non-American activity in the Pacific during the Second.

A narrow conception of these conflicts has emerged which grossly exaggerates the relative contribution of Britain compared with the wider British Empire. The presentation of these wars in popular histories and war films inevitably seems to focus on the plight of the British Tommy or the heroic exploits of the chisel-jawed Spitfire pilot, but it is too simplistic to blame popular culture for what is ultimately a shortfall in education. History, as it is taught in primary and secondary schools, completely omits the wider involvement and implications of both World Wars; unless children take history to A Level, their knowledge of the conflicts will essentially revolve around Britain. This seems to be more the re-affirmation of a nationalistic myth than a true historical reality, an arrogantly blinkered view of Britain’s past being used to inform an insular projection of the present.

The purpose of education is to expand minds and advance knowledge, and education reform should seek to redress the inherent flaws in understanding which arise from the limitations of the current education system. The rhetoric surrounding former education secretary Michael Gove’s education reforms, carried on by his successor Nicky Morgan, would suggest precisely the opposite. Gove announced that the primary and secondary school national curricula would be restructured, and that the study of English authors such as Byron, Keats, Austen, Dickens and Hardy would be reinstated in English lessons. Historian Simon Schama was to give advice to the government ensuring that pupils learnt Britain’s “island story“.

In his article for the Daily Mail, Gove attacked so-called ‘left-wing historians’ who promote the 'Blackadder' view of the First World War, claiming it to be a futile and meaningless conflict prosecuted by elites at the expense of the common man. He wrote, “our understanding of the war has been overlaid by misunderstandings, and misrepresentations which reflect an, at best, an ambiguous attitude to this country and, at worst, an unhappy compulsion on the part of some to denigrate virtues such as patriotism, honour and courage.” The vision of Britain which Gove’s reforms consequently project is of a proud, honourable and heroic island nation – the 'scepter’d isle' of Shakespeare’s Richard II.

This is a warped and distinctly Anglocentric manipulation of history, intended to inspire patriotic nationalism amongst the next generation. The object of Gove’s education reforms fails to expand the minds and deductive capacities of its students. It teaches them nothing of the subjectivity and contingency of literature, history and the arts more generally, and it demonstrates continuing insularity of British education and culture, and a conception of ourselves and our place in the world which is inherently fictitious.

It is time to come out from behind our cocoon of Anglocentrism and face the truth: there is a world beyond our borders with which the people of this island have interacted for thousands of years, influencing it and being influenced in turn. Future Armistice Days should dispense with the trappings of Britishness and create ceremonies truly reflective of the global involvement in the wars of the twentieth century, and future generations of schoolchildren should be taught about the campaign for Jerusalem alongside the Battle of the Somme.

@UKOnTrial