SPECIAL SERIES: The secret origins of WW I – part 1 – Lies, Damned Lies And Commemorations

Politicians lie to us, frequently. Nowadays that is accepted as fact, but in 1914 an overwhelming majority considered their political leaders truthful, honourable men, and would have dismissed the suggestion as outrageous. They were very mistaken.

by Gerry Docherty and Jim Macgregor

published here in cooperation with the authors
first published on their blog 13 June 2014

Politicians lie to us, frequently. Nowadays that is accepted as fact, but in 1914 an overwhelming majority considered their political leaders truthful, honourable men, and would have dismissed the suggestion as outrageous. They were very mistaken. In Hidden History, The Secret Origins of The First World War we present overwhelming evidence which proves that a small group of imperialist zealots within the British government, acting on behalf of a secret cabal of extremely rich and powerful bankers and industrialists, lied repeatedly to parliament and the people to conceal their plans for a war to destroy Germany. On the fateful day of 3 August 1914, the mendacious Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, again lied repeatedly to the House of Commons. Then, despite assuring members of parliament that they would decide if Britain went to war or remained neutral, he stirred the House with jingoism and anti-German rhetoric before undermining the democratic process and rail-roading Britain into the conflict. There was no vote. There was no democratic consent for war.

Immediately the war ended the secret cabal concealed, destroyed or falsified documents and reports which incriminated them. Thereafter, they packed the peace talks at Versailles with their carefully selected placemen and were able to distort facts, manipulate the truth and conceal their guilt. In an Orwellian reversal of truth it was held that Germany had deliberately planned the war and rejected all Allied proposals for conciliation and mediation. The few German delegates permitted into Versailles protested vehemently and with absolute justification that Germany was not responsible. Their protests were in vain. The officially approved version of blame for the war centred on German militarism, German expansionism and the Kaiser’s tyrannical ambitions, malicious lies that have been regurgitated ever since by the British Establishment’s carefully selected historians.

As the war’s centenary approaches, the British government is preparing to spend some £50 million to further cement the lies, limit our understanding of what really happened and confound future generations. The Guardian, one of Britain’s top liberal daily newspapers, asked, ‘How will Britain commemorate the greatest mistake of the 20th century, the butcher’s bill of 1914-18, the slaughter of 743,000 Britons and a further 192,000 from the empire?’ Announcing the project in 2012, Prime Minister David Cameron studiously avoided discussing the issue of historic responsibility or the morality of the catastrophe. His ambition for the August 2014 centenary was a ‘truly national commemoration’ that captured the ‘British national spirit’ in every corner of the country ‘like the Queen’s diamond jubilee celebrations.’ [1]

For those of you living elsewhere than England we should explain that those diamond jubilee celebrations in 2012 comprised four days of street parties with feasting, drinking and dancing in every village and town in England. The streets were bedecked with bunting and Union Jack flags, and wild outbursts of patriotic fervour filled every corner of the land. Even the pouring rain did nothing to dampen the public’s lively and noisy celebrations. In answer to The Guardian’s poignant question, it appears that the prime minister believes such a ‘capturing of the national spirit’ to be an eminently suitable way for Britain to commemorate the centenary of the opening days of the barbaric slaughter of the First World War.

Mr Cameron appointed Minister for International Security Strategy, ex Surgeon Commander and Iraq War veteran, Dr Andrew Murrison, to lead the commemorations committee. It comprises, amongst others, senior military men, ex defence secretaries and historians with a firm view of German guilt for the First World War. In November 2013, in a House of Commons debate on war commemorations, Murrison stated:

“I shall underscore the importance of focusing on the personal and parochial in this commemoration, as that is the link that people have with that period. Using war memorials as the starting point is something I would encourage. …The great war may be the keystone of our times but our understanding of it is not very good. …Improvement of our grasp of the causes, conduct and consequences of the first world war must be at the heart of the centenary that is about to break upon us. … the history is untweaked by the Government and will remain so. …Opinion is already stretched between those who hold that the war was a futile wasteful tragedy and those who believe it was entirely necessary… that victory was as important in 1918 as it was in 1945. …Anyone familiar with the doctrines of St Thomas Aquinas and St Augustine would have said—and I agree—that our countrymen were marching or sailing to a just war…the bulk of Britain’s political class, under a Liberal Prime Minister, were confident that resisting a militaristic aggressor in the way proposed satisfied the moral preconditions laid out for a just war. I doubt whether those who stood here in 1914 deserve their reputation as the willing consigners of other men’s sons to hideous death.“[2]

Andrew Murrison stated that it was ‘emphatically not the place of Government in our 21st century liberal democracy to be handing down approved versions of history’, yet in the same speech did exactly that. The war, he maintained, was moral, just and necessary against the militaristic aggression of Germany. His political predecessors, he believed, had been correct in taking the country to war, and the centenary now presented ‘an opportunity to balance the Oh! What a Lovely War/Blackadder take on history that, sadly, has been in the ascendant for the past 50 years.’ [3] It was not the place of government to interfere in historical interpretations of the war, but the commemorations were an opportunity to counter stage, screen and television productions which correctly portrayed it as a pointless, evil and insane vulgarity.

Murrison added that the public should engage less with the big questions, that is, the cause of the war, and focus on the local parochial history and war memorials etc. A Guardian article [4] stated that the government seemed frightened by the prospect of people asking deeper questions about the war. It is indeed frightened by that, and is desperately trying to avoid the truth surfacing. Despite the fine words and dissembling in parliament, the British government is dictating how the war should be viewed and encouraging the public not to think about the true reason why it happened, but to wallow in patriotic sentiment. A Guardian correspondent wrote,

‘The government’s programme is designed as a con trick to blind us to the reality. …The ploy is to make 2014 a year of carefully measured militaristic glorification, bolstered by the gullibility of those local and family historians who provide stories of heroism and “band of brothers” nostalgia that neatly camouflages the fact that the 887,000 British dead did not sacrifice themselves, but were sacrificed. This distinction is what Cameron wants to conceal.’ [5]

Sir Hew Strachan, the man chosen by the government to oversee historical interpretations of the war commemorations, is the leading military historian at Oxford University and a Fellow of All Souls College. In Hidden History we reveal how Oxford, All Souls in particular, was the spiritual home of the secret cabal responsible for the war, and the academic crucible for their fabrication of the history of the war. The Guardian reported, ‘Hew Strachan, Oxford’s Chichele professor of history of war, says that “the country went to war for good reasons” and “the outcome must be seen as victory”’. [6] And so, like Murrison, Strachan set the historical tone from the start. Gallant Britain had fought for good reasons, and the war ended in victory, against German tyranny one presumes. But there is almost a desperation in his words. ‘The outcome must be seen as victory’. The outcome was tragedy and loss on a world wide scale, the like of which had never been seen before.

Education Secretary Michael Gove likewise betrayed the government’s true agenda when he hit out at TV programmes and historians who depicted the war as a ‘misbegotten shambles.’ Is he really asking us to believe that it was a carefully planned and well ordered war? In an article in the Daily Mail, Gove stated that ‘left-wing myths’ about the First World War peddled by Blackadder belittle Britain and absolve Germany of blame. The education secretary had little time for the view that war commemorations should not lay fault at Germany’s door. It was, in his eyes, clearly a ‘just war’ to combat German aggression. Mr Gove, who has rewritten the English school history curriculum, said, ‘it’s important that we don’t succumb to some of the myths which have grown up about the conflict in the last 70 or so years.’ He turned his fire on ‘Left-wing academics all too happy to feed those myths by attacking Britain’s role in the conflict’. He singled out Richard Evans, Regius Professor of History at Cambridge University, who said those who enlisted in 1914 were wrong to think they were fighting to defend freedom. Gove added: ‘Richard Evans may hold a professorship, but these arguments, like the interpretations of Oh! What a Lovely War and Blackadder, are more reflective of the attitude of an undergraduate cynic playing to the gallery in a Cambridge Footlights revue than a sober academic contributing to a proper historical debate.’ [7] Mr Gove, it would seem, wants to rewrite not just the school curriculum, but history itself.

In an article ‘Blackadder – your country needs you’, the Guardian commented, ‘there is something in the satire-loving, myth-deflating, bloody-mindedly ignorant British temperament that Gove can’t abide, the poor love. The education secretary argued that the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War should be about ‘battling left-wing myths’ that belittle Britain, and denounces historians who ‘denigrate patriotism’. Gove won’t have any of this ‘insurrectionary stuff.’ The Guardian added that he wants English children to be taught that Britain’s sacrifice was necessary and the cause of ‘fighting for European freedom against Teutonic tyranny’, noble. He trusted historians such as Margaret Macmillan who ‘demonstrated how those who fought were not dupes but conscious believers in king and country, committed to defending the western liberal order’. To which, sceptics might retort: “There’s a western liberal order?” Labour’s shadow education secretary, the historian Tristram Hunt, retorted that Gove’s argument was shocking and his use of history for politicking ‘tawdry’. ‘The government’ he said ‘was using what should be a moment for national reflection and respectful debate to rewrite the historical record and sow political division.’ [8]

The government, some members of the opposition and mainstream British newspapers are turning the commemorations into the charade of the political left versus the political right. You should be aware that left and right are two wings of the same bird of prey, and this false left-right paradigm is set up to get us fighting endlessly over meaningless arguments. It is a distraction from the truth, from deep, searching questions as to why the war happened and who was responsible. One hundred years ago it was deliberately brought about by a secret cabal within the British Establishment, and today that same Establishment is reinforcing the old lies and battening down the truth.

Throughout the centenary years of 2014-18 we will vigorously challenge the received history of the First World War, and the plethora of newspaper articles and television programmes cobbled together and repackaged by the establishment media to complement that history. We will unmask the lies and present hard factual evidence that clearly demonstrates how the secret cabal of elites in Britain deliberately brought about war in 1914 and unnecessarily prolonged it beyond 1915. Be warned, it is evidence that will shock you and disturb you. Official versions of the war’s history as taught to the present day are fatally flawed and soaked in lies. Lies that have penetrated so deeply into the psyche that your first reaction might be to discount our thesis because it challenges your every assumption. You may be content to live with the lies. If not, we ask that you accept our challenge, examine the evidence we will be laying before you, and let your open-mindedness be the judge. Our only motive is disseminating truth about the First World War. Our research material is made freely available to all, and interested readers are invited to share it widely. We understand that it may sound ridiculous to speak of history as a deliberately concocted lie, or of documents and reports being falsified to cover-up the truth and protect the British Establishment. After all, if you studied the First World War at school or university, such a bold claim in an exam would have been immediately dismissed and marked down. In the next blog we explain how matters might have remained that way had it not been for the intervention in the middle of the last century of a well-respected and academically gifted American historian and political commentator, Professor Carroll Quigley.

[1] The Guardian 11 Oct 2012.
[2] Hansard, 7 Nov 2013.
[3] Hansard, 7 Nov 2013.
[4] The Guardian 12 August 2013.’The Government seems intent on avoiding any serious debate about the war and its causes’.
[5] The Guardian online.
[6] The Guardian, 13 July 2013.
[7] Mail Online: 2 Jan 2014.
[8] The Guardian, 6 January 2014.

The book is available at leading bookshops and can also be purchased on the internet at Amazon, Alibris, etc.

About the authors:
Gerry Docherty was born in 1948.  He graduated from Edinburgh University in 1971 and was a secondary school teacher by profession.  He taught economics and modern studies, developed a keen interest in the theatre and has written a number of plays with a historical theme including Czechmate in 1982, Montrose in 1993, and Lie of the Land in 2008.  The last of these plays was the powerful story of two cousins from his home town of Tillicoultry who were both awarded the Victoria Cross at the Battle of Loos in 1915.  Energised by the research he had undertaken to write this play, he was intrigued by Jim Macgregor’s work on the First World War, and their mutual interest developed into a passion to discover the truth amongst the lies and deceptions that the official records contained.
Jim Macgregor was born in Glasgow in 1947 and raised in a cottage in the grounds of Erskine Hospital for war disabled.  He witnessed there the aftermath of war on a daily basis and, profoundly affected by what he saw, developed a life-long interest in war and the origins of global conflict.  Leaving school at fifteen he worked in jobs as diverse as farm labourer, animal husbandry and medical research before graduating as a medical doctor in 1978.  Jim left medical practice in 2001 to devote his energies full-time to researching the political failures in averting war.  His numerous articles have been published on subjects such as miscarriages of justice, the Iraq War, global poverty, and the rise of fascism in the United States.  His powerful anti-war novel The Iboga Visions was published to critical acclaim in 2009.

The authors encourage the reposting of this series for non-profit, educational purposes on non-commercial or communal websites provided full credit is given, a clickable link to the original posting is included and all links remain intact. For shortened versions or the reposting of parts please contact the authors via [email protected]

Disclaimer: The contents of this article are of sole responsibility of the authors(s). News Beacon Ireland will not be responsible for any inaccurate or incorrect in this article. News Beacon Ireland grants permission to cross-post original News Beacon Ireland articles on community internet sites as long as the text & title are not modified. The source and the author’s copyright must be displayed. For publication of News Beacon Ireland articles in print or other forms including commercial internet sites, contact: [email protected]
www.news-beacon-ireland.info may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to our readers under the provisions of “fair use” in an effort to advance a better understanding of political, economic, cultural, scientific, spiritual and social issues. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material for purposes other than “fair use” you must request permission from the copyright owner.