TV presenter Dan Snow is ill informed

TV presenter and self-styled ‘historian’ Dan Snow, whose goggle-box rise to presenter stardom surely owes nothing to his more famous C4 newsreader father, thinks religion should play no part in our annual act of remembrance at the Cenotaph, or in hundreds of other, local acts of remembrance. 

This morning we will see the Bishop of London process with the head of the Catholic church in England, the Chief Rabbi, the convenor of the Church of Scotland, the president of the Methodists, the Chief Imam and so on. He will say a  few very Anglican words that will have none of the other clerics storming off in a hissy-fit of doctrinal difference. A song of the hymn variety will be sung and even the non-Christians will mouth the words along with everyone else. 

What young Mr Snow fails to twig either from ignorance or lack of learning is that this is the British way of inclusive compromise; his own suggestion to ban it all is the sectarian, bigoted and divisive one, distinctly un-British and unknown to our caucus of public ceremonial. 

Already in some planning office in Whitehall you can be sure they are discussing dropping the Convenor of the Wee Wee Frees (down to just 76 members after the latest schism) and inviting the National Secretary of the Secular Society in his place.

Unlike either the Germans or the Americans, who use particular religious symbols on the national gravemarkers of their war dead, our CWGC headstones are as inclusive as one could wish, covering Christians (nominally the vast majority) Jews, Hindus, Moslems, Daoists, African polytheists and yes, even atheists with equal honour.