Ring of Red: respectful or mawkish?
We're hearing that a large number of bikers gathered yesterday (10th November 2013) on the 117-mile M25 London orbital ring road to pay respects to the dead of two world wars, plus the dead of all the other conflicts waged over the past century including Korea, Viertnam, The Falklands Campaign, Iraq and Afghanistan.
The number 20,000 has been mooted, which is almost certainly a gross exaggeration. Our experience is that once you get more than a few hundred motorcycles in one spot, it looks like the entire planet is crawling with them.
But if it really was 20,000 bikers, then the £2,348.64 raised purely in charitable donations (according to the organisers) was a pitiful display of philanthropy and works out at around 12 pence per head (and pales into insignificance against the tens of thousands of pounds spent on petrol just getting to the shindig)
Nevertheless, the so-called "Ring of Red" (designed to resemble, from the air, a giant poppy and formed by riders wearing red T-shirts and scarves, etc) was said to be a "very large gathering" and provoked a mostly positive response from the general public who enjoyed the mobile spectacle and voiced their approval.
But underlying the presumed good intentions of the organisers and participants alike, there's the ever present danger that the country—and even the planet as a whole—is continuing to slide into a maudlin, mawkish and even ghoulish obsession with "celebrating" (for want of a better word) the huge loss of life caused by one hundred years of military conflict.
▲ Above: Julia Stevenson, organiser of the "Ring of Red". No one's doubting her sincerity, but have we simply made a spectacle out of remembrance?
Don't get us wrong. Remembrance Sunday is one of the few traditions in the UK worth retaining, and as a nation it's right and proper to remind ourselves of the sacrifices made by millions of combatants and non-combatants alike. "Lest we forget" is a message that we need to keep on the right side of.
But there is a point when the celebration becomes a little too much like a day at the seaside rather than a genuine moment of retrospect for the fallen, and if we haven't yet crossed that line, then we're certainly standing right on it.
Already, we train our children to wave the flags and lay the flowers and turn on the tears for whoever happens to be the dead celebrity of the day, or the tragic victim, or simply to help bolster the celebration of the moment.
Condolence books, once reserved almost exclusively for kings and queens and heads of state, barely need to be dusted before the next public gathering of grieving souls all but agonising over the passing of people who they barely noticed in life, and often forget as soon as the fireworks fizzle out.
And we're not convinced that forming ourselves into tribal groups of bikers, or hot rodders or musicians or hiking groups is the appropriate way to pay respects.
Remembrance Sunday isn't about us. It's about them. The dead. And whenever we put ourselves centre stage, we risk shifting the focus and sidelining those who made "the ultimate sacrifice".
We hope that people continue to remember the war dead. We hope that Remembrance Sunday continues until God pulls the plug. But we hope too that we keep our emotions in check and avoid wallowing in what has become fashionable grief and popular misery.
Life is also about living and keeping a sense proportion and knowing when to dignify the dead with private and personal reflection.
Lest we forget that.
— Dexxion
Royal Enfield Bullet:
"Ride The World" T-shirt
Copyright Sump Publishing 2013