The Army’s “Policy, Guidance and Instructions on Inclusive Behaviours” states that “Acts of Remembrance, on Armistice Day and others, should be inclusive and seek to avoid being conducted as a wholly religious event”. (Telegraph source - Paywall)
Fair enough, but there's more than a touch of the straw man there. Remembrance absolutely shouldn't be a wholly religious event, but it never has been.
Then the guidance then goes on to say
Acts of Remembrance should be agnostic of religious elements and separated from Remembrance Services. This may be achieved by holding a religious service after the Act of Remembrance.
But the familiar Act of Remembrance is a non-religious ceremony which involves:
- The verse from Laurence Binyon's For the Fallen - 'They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old'
- The Last Post (and/or 'Flowers o' the Forest', especially in Scotland)
- The Two Minute Silence
- Reveille
- The Kohima Epitaph (optional) - 'When you go home...'
That's it. Public remembrance ceremonies across the country often include a short religious - sometimes a multi-faith - element, but the central Act of Remembrance is always non-religious, as above.
It's hard to tell whether that part of the policy was written out of ignorance, or distaste for such outmoded, militaristic manifestations.
Forces personnel have the same basic right as any other citizen to practice their own faith or none. There are debates to be had but it isn't, in the opinion of this BAFF member, a great hardship to be asked to remain present during a short religious element of a largely non-religious event.
Since any religious element of remembrance ceremonies is already separate from the Act of Remembrance and always has been, the policy appears to be calling for something different in future. It will certainly be interpreted as such.
Who wrote this policy, and who authorised its issue as an instruction?
