jgale | 
10 November 2009 at 18:25 | 293 views
Last weekend was a time for remembrance and reflection. Remembrance for all those who have died in the service of their country. And reflection on the current conflict in Afghanistan, and the many lives being lost.
On Sunday morning, I attended the Laying of Wreaths at the War Memorial in the Borough, Yeovil, where I met the new commander of RNAS Yeovilton, Brigadier Mark Noble – the first marine officer to have command at the base.
I then went on to the Service of Remembrance at St. John’s Church in Yeovil. The Service was conducted by Revs James Dudley-Smith, Edward Bangay and Howard Davenport. One of the Hymns was a particularly appropriate choice – it had been written by Timothy Dudley-Smith, James’ father, on the theme of remembrance.
After the Yeovil service, I travelled to the village of Dowlish Wake, near Ilminster, where a new Remembrance Stone has been laid and blessed, just outside St. Andrew’s Church. Brigadier Andrew Morgan, a local resident, was kind enough to meet me and tell me about this initiative. The stone carries the words “Remember those who died for this country”, and it commemorates not only those from the village, but all those who have died serving this country. Brigadier Morgan commanded a battalion of Gurkhas in the Falklands conflict in 1982, so he has good reason to reflect on all of those who have lost their lives to defend our freedoms – including those who were not even born in this country.
In the afternoon, I attended the Service of Remembrance in Ilminster. Ilminster is not a large town, but my goodness it has a wonderful civic pride, and it organises occasions of this kind with an efficiency and on a scale which defy its modest resources.
The Minster was packed – standing room only – and I cannot remember quite as many people attending in previous years. Lt-Col John Robson organised us all with his usual military efficiency, and Rev Alastair Wallace delivered a sermon which captured very much the nature of people’s thoughts at the current time – by placing Remembrance Day in its current context of the conflict in Afghanistan.
Over the 11 years since I first laid a wreath on behalf of the people of our area, Remembrance Day has been transformed from feeling like a backward looking remembrance of lives lost in past conflicts, to feeling like a very contemporary reflection on our present troubles.
There is no greater responsibility for a Member of Parliament than the decisions we take about the deployment of our troops. At the moment, many of us are looking closely at the losses in Afghanistan and the implications for our strategy. Certainly we must ensure that our troops have the equipment they need to do the job. Undoubtedly we need to rapidly build up the Afghan Army and police. Probably we need a new military and political strategy which reduces the risk to our servicemen and women, while devolving more powers down to local areas from the corrupt Government in Kabul.
But the big issue is how long our troops need to stay in the country. By 2011, we will have had troops deployed in Afghanistan for almost a decade. Is that not long enough? Few people want to simply “cut and run”, leaving Afghanistan once again as a safe haven for Al Quaeda to plot its atrocities against the west. But what we now need is an exit strategy which can bring our troops home on a sensible timescale, while leaving behind a country which may be far short of the working democracy we once aspired to, but which is stable and strong enough to resist the return of the Taliban. Delivering this will not be easy. But it is surely now the challenge.
Alongside these huge challenges is the ongoing, depressing, coverage of the MPs expenses issue. Ignore the whinging and whining of some MPs. Last week, Sir Christopher Kelly produced his independent report proposing a huge shake-up of the existing system. This is exactly the type of rational and rigorous new system which Parliament itself should have produced many years ago – and it MUST be implemented.
Parliament must restore its own credibility so we can get on with addressing the issues that matter most – and first amongst these must be Afghanistan.
David.