In France it is a holiday for the armistice
That was it's purpose here, originally.
When I first came to the UK in the mid 60s, that was certainly the sentiment. It was around 1969 that calls were made to have another day for WW2 and even Korea! I particularly remember because the peace movement was in full swing. It was then that the then government announced that it was to remember fallen soldiers for all conflicts.
That resulted in the later inclusion of soldiers killed in N Ireland. Though how what was supposed to be a policing operation in the UK came to be a military operation for the purposes of Remembrance Sunday is something we can all ponder. I know I will.
But it was Thatcher who really politicised the whole thing when, in the post Falkland's War jingoism, the right wing press started calling for special memorials to a great victory. (A bunch of boisterous, overly exuberance, 16 year old boys being 'arrested' by a few insane Britons and badly treated in an overcrowded Island jail. A bunch of poorly trained adults sent to rescue them being met by one of the most powerful military forces in the world, complete with gunships and nuclear submarines!) Thatcher announced that the Falklands conflict would naturally be added to the roll call of military honours remembered on Remembrance Sunday.
Don't forget, this is the UK, we can't have the working types having too many holidays or they might get the idea they are like their betters! But of much greater importance was the terminology. No longer rembering the fallen troops, now it is remembering the conflict in which they fell.
Frankly the whole thing is a disgusting celebration of a century of politically motivated mass murder, from WW1 to Iraq and Syria.
The troops did their duty. They acted as good troops always do, everywhere, with bravery determination and heroism.
But in any shape of form commemorating the orders to callous murder WW1, WW2, Korea, Ireland, Iraq, Afghanistan, and now the whole of the ME?
Forget it.
