Forgotten: A Pathway to Remembrance

As the season of Remembrance approaches, Tom Blackmore, grandson of British ECHR artisan David Maxwell Fyfe, describes how in remembering the sacrifice of those who fought, the values they fought for, later enshrined in ECHR, are forgotten and how David’s family are re-awakening these values in music.

While my grandfather David Maxwell Fyfe was prosecuting at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials in 1946, his wife, Sylvia, who had visited him there wrote to him :

It seems most necessary to get some anti-Nazi propaganda about. Everyone seems to have forgotten and to have come fresh from its surroundings as I have done, I cannot believe people can forget so fast. We must never look the other way again.

Sylvia made this observation only a year after VE Day. Reflecting on his experience in December 1947 David saw it like this:

In the world of the atomic bomb mankind is at the crossroads that leads either to sanity or destruction. In one sense Nuremberg did express a triumph of the human spirit – to the extent that it stated what humanity could not tolerate and more gropingly some things for which humanity stands. Yet I am haunted by some words from a song to which we used to listen in more carefree days : ‘On fait des serments, et simplement, on les oublie’  Having propounded high ideals in defeated Germany I feel the responsibility for doing my part to see that they are not forgotten by the victors.

David had a considerable facility to remember both poems and song lyrics. His letters, speeches and other personal papers are littered with literary and lyrical references. Even when tackling huge subjects in speeches to exalted audiences he would rely on the treasure trove stored in his memory.

We followed his lead when telling his story for the stage in Dreams of Peace & Freedom, weaving his words with musical settings of the words that inspired him. But the popular song that he quotes in this speech eluded us until, as song cycle composer Sue Casson has written:

By the miracle of YouTube a download of the original 78 record appeared online for the first time in 2016. At last we had found the last piece in our musical jigsaw. It opens the show, and sets the scene.

Promises are made – and simply forgotten. Once the barbarity of war has passed, the promises made at its close, mindful of a need to stop it ever recurring, become less pressing as the memory fades.

Freedom is a very hard sell. Like fresh air, clean water, and the passing seasons we take it for granted. We resist the idea that these elemental foundations of our lives are in jeopardy. The passion of a few and the uncomfortable whispering of reason will not disrupt our complacency.

As with death, freedom has become taboo. No longer valued, freedoms are forgotten. We forget the natural freedoms of the centuries, the abuses of freedom littered through history now in part retrieved by recent progress. And silence is the sound of the forgetting.

Music and musical words are a way of filling the silence, smashing the taboo and tackling complacency. It’s a way of selling freedom.

President Zelenskyy knows the sound of that silence and how important music is in filling the void. Two years ago at the Grammy’s he told musicians :

Fill the silence with your music. Fill it today to tell our story. Tell the truth about this war. Support us, in any way you can. Any – but not silence. And then peace will come. What is more opposite to music? The silence of ruined cities and killed people. Our musicians wear body armours instead of tuxedos. They sing to the wounded in hospitals. Even to those who can’t hear them. But the music will break through anyway. We defend our freedom. To live. To love. To sound.

Two years on the silence has returned as the world forgets what is going on in Ukraine.

After the Second World War the world forgot fast, as Sylvia observed. But a few remembered and established the foundations of our modern world which have led to our enjoying unparalleled peace, security and prosperity. In Dreams of Peace & Freedom we tell how David’s year prosecuting the leading Nazis at Nuremberg led him to champion and draft the European Convention on Human Rights. Seventy-five years on we retain the nuclear threat that was so fresh to David and Sylvia, but it is now fuelled by a tsunami of digital weaponry. Humanity is once again becoming tested as to what it can tolerate and is now really challenged as to what humanity stands for.

We stand at the same crossroads that leads either to sanity or destruction. But at present we stand there in silence.

As we approach Remembrance Day we reverently and properly stand quietly in the face of the sacrifice of those who fought and died for us. But where is the lively debate that should follow the two minutes, the debate that should tackle why they fought and the freedoms that they protected and the job we are doing to protect those freedoms? And should we not also remember and salute the heroism of the Ukrainians still fighting to defend those same freedoms? There is no debate and no salute. Only silence. We perform Dreams of Peace & Freedom in the build up to Remembrance to fill the silence.