Ritual and Remembrance: the Church of Scotland And
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RITUAL AND REMEMBRANCE: THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND AND NATIONAL SERVICES OF THANKSGIVING AND REMEMBRANCE AFTER FOUR WARS IN THE TWENTIETH'CENTURY Fiona Carol Douglas A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Edinburgh 1996 .tr~>".·.-;:·,\·. ~>".'~ ~- , ' ABSTRACT Over recent years scholars have become increasingly interested in the nature and development of the rituals of remembrance after war. Little research, however, has been conducted into these matters in relation to Scotland, and the Church of Scotland in particular, and this thesis attempts to fill this gap. During the course of the twentieth century the people of Scotland have on many occasions been united in a bond of bereavement after war as they grieved for their dead and sought to come to terms with their losses. The principal objective of this thesis is to assess the extent to which the national services of thanksgiving and remembrance after four major wars - the First World War, the Second World War, the Falklands War and the Gulf War - served to meet the needs of the Scottish people. In order to achieve this each of the four national services have been examined in turn, focusing firstly on the ritual context, then the ritual act and finally the functions of the ritual. In this way it is hoped that the extent to which the services were able to give comfort to the bereaved will be illustrated, and that some insights will also be given into the development of remembrance rituals in Scotland during the twentieth century. Research has shown that in the services after the First and Second World Wars the political function of the ritual was dominant, but that in the services after the Falkland and Gulf Wars the pastoral function was prevalent. In this sense it can be argued that the national services have increasingly come to meet the needs of the Scottish people. ii DECLARATION OF ORIGINALITY I hereby declare that this thesis, and the research recorded in it, is the work of the author. Fiona C. Douglas iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to take this opportunity to thank the staffs of New College Library, Edinburgh University Library, the National Library of Scotland, the Scottish United Services Museum, the Scottish Record Office, Edinburgh City Chambers, the Church of Scotland Head Office, st. Giles' Cathedral, the Imperial War Museum, the Tom Harrisson Mass-Observation Archive and st. Paul's Cathedral, for their unfailing courtesy and helpfulness. I would also like to thank the following for their advice, comments and information at various stages of the thesis: Professor Stewart Brown, Dr Jeremy Crang, the Very Rev. Professor Robert Davidson, Dr Adrian Gregory, the Very Rev. James Harkness, Archbishop John Habgood, Sir Arthur Hockaday, the Rev. Ronald Ferguson, Tom Fleming, the Rev. Dr Kenneth G. Greet, the Rev. Dr David Lyall, the Rev. Norman McCrae, the Rev. Dr Ian McDonald, the Very Rev. Professor John McIntyre, the Very Rev. William Morris, Brigadier R. W. Riddle, Colonel Ian Shepherd, the Very Rev. James Weatherhead, the Very Rev. Alan Webster, the Rev. lain Whyte, Dr Jay Winter, and the Very Rev. Dr Ronald Selby Wright. My thanks are further due to my principal supervisor, the Rev. Professor Duncan Forrester for his advice, encouragement and patience, and to the Faculty of Divinity, the University of Edinburgh, and the Miss Elizabeth Drummond Trust for awarding me grants to undertake this thesis. iv CONTENTS Abstract ............................................ ii Declaration of Originality .......................... iii Acknow 1 edgemen t s . .. i v Contents. v 1. INTRODUCTION..................................... 1 2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK........... ........... ...... 3 3. THE NATIONAL SERVICE OF THANKSGIVING AND REMEMBRANCE AFTER THE FIRST WORLD WAR ............ 16 4. THE NATIONAL SERVICE OF THANKSGIVING AND REMEMBRANCE AFTER THE SECOND WORLD WAR. .. 58 5. THE NATIONAL SERVICE OF THANKSGIVING AND REMEMBRANCE AFTER THE FALKLANDS WAR......... .. 104 6. THE NATIONAL SERVICE OF THANKSGIVING AND REMEMBRANCE AFTER THE GULF WAR ................... 171 7. CONCLUSION ....................................... 229 APPENDIX 1: 'ST. GILES' CATHEDRAL. ORDER OF DIVINE SERVICE ON THURSDAY 21st NOVEMBER 1918 ATTENDED BY THEIR MAJESTIES THE KING AND QUEEN' ................. 237 APPENDIX 2: 'ST GILES' CATHEDRAL. SOLEMN THANKSGIVING TO ALMIGHTY GOD FOR VICTORY IN EUROPE. WEDNESDAY, 16th MAY 1945'........................... 241 APPENDIX 3: 'ST PAUL'S CATHEDRAL. THE FALKLAND ISLANDS SERVICE. MONDAY 26 JULY 1982' ............... 251 APPENDIX 4: ' ST. MUNGO'S CATHEDRAL GLASGOW. THE GULF SERVICE OF REMEMBRANCE AND THANKSGIVING. SATURDAY, 4th MAY 1991'............................. 270 Bibliography ........................................ 290 v To my Mother and Father, with love and thanks 1. INTRODUCTION The ritual of remembrance after war is today an important part of our national life and culture. The annual Remembrance Sunday is a national institution and a potent reminder of the grievous losses that this nation has suffered as a result of wars in the twentieth century, as well as being one of the most sensitive religious services conducted by ministers in the Christian year. Over recent years, we have been given new insights into the nature and development of remembrance rituals after war by such writers as Adrian Gregory, Jay Winter, David Cannadine, Owen Chadwick, Alan Wilkinson, Robert Bocock and Andrew Jones. 1 Little research, however, has been conducted into these matters in relation to Scotland, and the Church of Scotland in particular, and this thesis attempts to fill this gap. During the course of the twentieth century the people of Scotland have on many occasions been united in a bond of bereavement after war as they grieved for their dead and sought to come to terms with their losses. The principal 'Adrian Gregory, The Silence of Memory. Armistice Day 1919-1946 (Oxford: Berg, 1994); Jay Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning. The Great War in European Cui tural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); David Cannadine, 'War and Death, Grief and Mourning in Modern Britain,' in Mirrors of Mortality: Studies in the Social History of Death, ed. Joachim Whaley (London: Europa, 1981); Owen Chadwick, 'Armistice Day,' Theology 77 (1976); Alan Wilkinson, The Church of England and the First World War (London: SPCK, 1978); Robert Bocock, Ritual in Industrial Society: A Sociological Analysis of Ritualism in Modern England (London: Allen & Unwin, 1974); Andrew K. Jones, Remembrance Sunday (Nottingham: Grove Books, 1987). 1 objective of this thesis is to assess the extent to which the national services of thanksgiving and remembrance after four major wars - the First World War, the Second World War, the Falklands War and the Gulf War - served to meet the needs of the Scottish people. In order to achieve this each of the four national services will be examined in turn, focusing firstly on the ritual context, then the ritual act and finally the functions of the ritual. In this way it is hoped that the extent to which the services were able to give comfort to the bereaved will be illustrated, and that some insights will also be given into the development of remembrance rituals in Scotland during the twentieth century. However, in order to understand the extent to which the national services were able to sustain the Scottish people, it is first necessary to say something about the theoretical background to the study of these rituals. 2 2. A THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK Most people daily pass by at least one war memorial. They are to be found in every town and almost every village in the country; in great cities such as Edinburgh and London they exist in profusion. After the First World War these memorials served various purposes and their meaning would change for different people in subsequent decades. In her research for the Imperial War Museum, Catherine Moriarty states that at the time of the unveiling of these memorials their primary function was one of consolation of the bereaved. 'AS an aid to coping with grief,' she writes, 'they were intended to record neither the actualities of war nor the experience of it. They are, rather, visual documents of how the bereaved came to terms with and bestowed meaning on the war'.' After each of the four wars that are featured in this thesis - the First World War, the Second World War, the Falklands War and the Gulf War this need for consolation also manifested itself in a national service of thanksgiving and remembrance. In order to understand the extent to which these services met the needs of the Scottish people, it is necessary to establish a theoretical framework which can be used to examine these rituals and it to this matter that this chapter is addressed. 'Catherine Moriarty, 'Christian Iconography and First World War Memorials,' Imperial War Museum Review 6 (1991), p. 63. 3 1. The Ritual Context In order to help establish the extent to which the national services served the needs of the Scottish people, each chapter will begin with an outline of the ritual context. Although there are some commentators, such as Bryan Wilson, who have argued that rituals have declined in importance in modern, industrial society, 2 most observers, notably David Martin, Robert Bocock, Eric Hobsbawm, Terence Ranger and Milton Singer, stress that people continue to participate in many rituals and indeed 'invent' them. 3 There are many different definitions of ritual, ranging from J. G. Davies's view that ritual refers to the prescribed form of words which constitute an act of worship,4 to Edmund Leach's view that ritual can be seen as all culturally defined sets of behaviour. s 2B. R. Wilson, Religion in a Secular Society (London: C. A. Watts, 1966), pp. 221-233. 3David Martin, The Religious and the Secular (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970), pp. 114-136; Robert Bocock, Ritual in Industrial Society: A Sociological Analysis of Ritualism in Modern England (London: Allen & Unwin, 1974), pp.