Address by Leonard Cheshire at Battle of Britain service RAF Wattisham
Title
Address by Leonard Cheshire at Battle of Britain service RAF Wattisham
Description
Service in a hangar. Talks about first national act of remembrance in 1919. Lists and explains what made Battle of Britain stand out in national memory. Then puts battle in context of the whole of the war. Introduces some Christian context. Introduces some ideas for the future and the concept of peace and threats to it. Submitted with caption 'Side 1: Battle of Britain Service at RAF Wattisham
Side 2: Leonard Cheshire's opening talk at the International conference of the Leonard Cheshire Foundation on 25th June'.
Side 2: Leonard Cheshire's opening talk at the International conference of the Leonard Cheshire Foundation on 25th June'.
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Temporal Coverage
Coverage
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Audio recording 00:21:25
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This content is property of the Leonard Cheshire Archive which has kindly granted the International Bomber Command Centre Digital Archive a royalty-free permission to publish it. Please note that it was digitised by a third-party which used technical specifications that may differ from those used by International Bomber Command Centre Digital Archive. It has been published here ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre.
Identifier
SCheshireGL72021v20013-0001, SCheshireGL72021v20013-0001-Transcript
Transcription
Leonard Cheshire Resonate Project
File Title: Address by GLC at Battle of Britain Service at RAF Wattisham.
Duration: 21.27 mins
Transcription Date: 19th July 2020
Archive Number: AV_S 223
Start of Transcription
00.24 I would like to say what a very great privilege I count it to have been invited to share with you today this Battle of Britain service and to give the address.
Particularly, as it is taking place in a hangar. With all the memories that, that brings back for me personally.
01:00 The first time I’ve known a service of this kind in a hangar. And I can’t think of a more imaginative setting for it. And what I would like to do is to look at the Battle of Britain ask ourselves why is it that we have assembled here this morning to remember it? And in what direction should our thoughts be tending. But by way of introduction, I would like for a moment to recall a moment of history. For a reason that will become apparent later on. The moment of history I would like to recall, is the observance by the entire nation formerly of the two-minute silence on Remembrance Day. In 1919,a year after the end of the Great War, when the first National Act of Remembrance was held in front of a hastily built temporary cenotaph, it was decided to ask the whole nation to join in a two minute silence. Now nobody quite knew what was going to happen, whether people would observe it. But in fact, they did. And every year, until I think some time in the late 50’s the whole nation on the eleventh day of the eleventh month observed a two minute silence people stopped in the streets, in factories, everywhere. And suddenly the whole nation was united in a bond of silence Remembering the debt that we owed.
03:42 Well now today we’re remembering the Battle of Britain. And I have asked myself-” What is it about the Battle of Britain, that makes it stand out as it does, in our national memory”? - Firstly of course, it turned the tide of war. It didn’t win the war, but it prevented the invasion of Britain. It gave a breathing space, with which to draw our forces and begin to think how we could turn immanent defeat into victory. Secondly, it was a battle between two air forces, it was not a Battle basically,
That involved civilian loss of life. Not at any rate, on our side. It was rather like a battle between the “Knights of Old”. And so then none of the complication attached to it, that attach should we say to the bomber command offensive or other offensives. Thirdly, it was fought by so few people, so few stood as it were a David, on behalf of the nation facing a Goliath. And fourthly, those that took part were so young. You’ve only to walk around any of the cemeteries the war cemeteries, throughout the world...whether they’re in the Far East, in Europe, in Eastern Europe and look at the tombstones. And look at their ages. 17, you’ll see frequently there. 21, is almost quite old. It was a young person’s battle. And so quite rightly, those who fought that battle will live on in our memory, as supreme examples of a great sacrifice by a few people on behalf of the nation. And then we can truly say after those immortal words when you go home tell them that, “for their tomorrow we gave our today”. But we’ve come not just to remember the Battle of Britain in word and thought. That memory, needs to be turned into positive concrete action or it means nothing.
07:13 And so first, let us take the battle and put if first in the context of the whole war. What was the totality of that war, World War 2, that cost 55 million lives in all, and that and ushered in the nuclear age. What are the chief lessons that it has to tell us, of which the Battle of Britain was won?
07:03 I think firstly, it taught us that in order to achieve anything great, you need an ideal. I know we went to war against aggression, to save freedom, to save our own lives. But I didn’t believe, that men and women could fight such a long war, against such difficulties, without a noble ideal. And the ideal, however naive it may have been was peace. We believed what we told that once the war was won, there would be lasting peace.
08:52 Secondly, it taught how interdependent we all are, one upon another. I don’t believe that in war, there really is such a thing as individual achievement, that there appears to be. Some people are picked out and put in the limelight and given special honour. But they know only too well, that the achievement they’ve achieved is the achievement of the team to which they belong. We all form part of a chain that embraces not just our particular fighting unit, but reaches right across the nation. To the person who cleans the hangar floor, the factory floor. To everybody who’s involved in keeping life going. Not only that stretches back into the past to those former members of our fighting unit, who by their actions and sacrifice gave it a tradition. You can almost in wartime feel that tradition. It is there beside you, encouraging you, giving you strength. But also it extends to other countries. We have a habit of saying that we Britain, stood alone. But that isn’t really true.
10:47 For one thing there was the whole Commonwealth, ready and waiting to come to our help. To give us a base outside Britain from which to fight.
10:58 There were the peoples of occupied Europe doing everything in their power to impede the German war machine. And soon there was America, to come into the battle.
11:18 And finally, it showed us what men and women can achieve when they are united in a common purpose. When they have a goal that they know that whatever happens, they have got to achieve. When there is a feeling of being all in the same boat. A knowledge that is either sink or swim. And that is a symbol, of the basic unity, the organic unity of the entire human family.
12:00 When history has finally had it’s say and all is done, we will find that we are all on the same side. A unity that, is our eternal destiny decreed by God. You may remember those beautiful lines in Ephesians in which St Paul tells us of Gods plan for man. That mysterious plan hidden from former generations but now revealed. Gods plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth. And so, our task in life is unity.... and we shall all to the best of our ability be working for unity.
13:16 Now what of today? Here and now. What is it that we should be doing in a concrete way? In order to achieve anything great, anything worthwhile, we need a vision. We need a dream. A vision should be the ultimate unity in a real and meaningful way of the whole human family. The dream should be the contribution that each of us in our little way can make towards obtaining that goal. In other words, we should be working for peace. But now the question is, “what is peace”? We talk about peace, we sing about peace, we demonstrate about peace. But how often do we think, “what is peace”? Peace is not the absence of armed confrontation or war. Neither is living under a tyrannical dictator. Peace is the result if you like, of justice. If there is no justice, no freedom there is no peace. What are the threats to peace? Broadly speaking, there are two. One the threat of an aggressor, of another Hitler. Now throughout the whole recorded history of man,7,000 years of it there is always emerged an aggressor nation. So, it would be naive, to think that that, can never happen again. A man is entitled to say “better an aggressor overruns us, than we fight back”. But no man is entitled to say that there will never be an aggressor again. And one thing that is common to all aggressors is, that they feed on weakness. So, whether we like it or not, we have a duty as a nation, to possess a strength, and to summon a selective will, to make it clear that if any aggressor wants to march we will not let him.
16:35 But that is not the main point I wanted to make today. The main point I want to make is, directed at the other threat to peace. And that is the threat that arises from injustice. Injustice beyond a certain point is in fact, the first violence. And from many different sources and from many different people, the world over. We’re being warned that the world is in danger of falling into chaos of mass starvation, economic disasters, and terrorism. This is a challenge that we have to meet. In order to meet it, we need to know that it is a danger that confronts us. We need to understand that so long as a major part of the world is living in intense poverty, while we are not, we cannot expect peace. We must stand up and do something as in the 1930’s, when we refused to face the challenge of Hitler, when we could easily have stopped him right up and until Munich but didn’t. And therefore, in a sense, contributed to that war. So today, we are not as a nation facing up to our duty to the poorer developing world and if we don’t face up to it, we will be the losers. So, two things, I want to suggest today are needed. The main thing is that we summon the selective will to do something. To do something each of us as an individual, and to do something as a nation. We must make our voices heard otherwise; we risk losing everything.
19:15 Secondly and finally I would like to suggest that one small step to summoning that selective will, would be to bring back that two-minute silence. That when the Queen and everybody else around the cenotaph, no longer the eleventh of November, but the nearest Sunday, that when they keep their two-minute silence, we do too. You may ask “well how are we going to do that”? Certainly we have no hope of persuading Whitehall. Whitehall isn’t easily persuaded by anyone to do anything. But we could make a start ourselves in our house, in our communities, in our churches, anywhere where there are groups of likeminded people are together. And what we should be thinking about during those two minutes is firstly those in the past so young who gave their lives in the cause of freedom. And also, those throughout the whole world today who are dying, because there is nobody to give them the means of living. So, both of those two groups of people I think we can apply those immortal words when you go home tell them “that for their tomorrow, we gave our today”.
21:19 Thank you.
21:20 End of Speech
[21:20 - 21:27 Muffled sound]
21:27 End of Recording
End of Transcription.
File Title: Address by GLC at Battle of Britain Service at RAF Wattisham.
Duration: 21.27 mins
Transcription Date: 19th July 2020
Archive Number: AV_S 223
Start of Transcription
00.24 I would like to say what a very great privilege I count it to have been invited to share with you today this Battle of Britain service and to give the address.
Particularly, as it is taking place in a hangar. With all the memories that, that brings back for me personally.
01:00 The first time I’ve known a service of this kind in a hangar. And I can’t think of a more imaginative setting for it. And what I would like to do is to look at the Battle of Britain ask ourselves why is it that we have assembled here this morning to remember it? And in what direction should our thoughts be tending. But by way of introduction, I would like for a moment to recall a moment of history. For a reason that will become apparent later on. The moment of history I would like to recall, is the observance by the entire nation formerly of the two-minute silence on Remembrance Day. In 1919,a year after the end of the Great War, when the first National Act of Remembrance was held in front of a hastily built temporary cenotaph, it was decided to ask the whole nation to join in a two minute silence. Now nobody quite knew what was going to happen, whether people would observe it. But in fact, they did. And every year, until I think some time in the late 50’s the whole nation on the eleventh day of the eleventh month observed a two minute silence people stopped in the streets, in factories, everywhere. And suddenly the whole nation was united in a bond of silence Remembering the debt that we owed.
03:42 Well now today we’re remembering the Battle of Britain. And I have asked myself-” What is it about the Battle of Britain, that makes it stand out as it does, in our national memory”? - Firstly of course, it turned the tide of war. It didn’t win the war, but it prevented the invasion of Britain. It gave a breathing space, with which to draw our forces and begin to think how we could turn immanent defeat into victory. Secondly, it was a battle between two air forces, it was not a Battle basically,
That involved civilian loss of life. Not at any rate, on our side. It was rather like a battle between the “Knights of Old”. And so then none of the complication attached to it, that attach should we say to the bomber command offensive or other offensives. Thirdly, it was fought by so few people, so few stood as it were a David, on behalf of the nation facing a Goliath. And fourthly, those that took part were so young. You’ve only to walk around any of the cemeteries the war cemeteries, throughout the world...whether they’re in the Far East, in Europe, in Eastern Europe and look at the tombstones. And look at their ages. 17, you’ll see frequently there. 21, is almost quite old. It was a young person’s battle. And so quite rightly, those who fought that battle will live on in our memory, as supreme examples of a great sacrifice by a few people on behalf of the nation. And then we can truly say after those immortal words when you go home tell them that, “for their tomorrow we gave our today”. But we’ve come not just to remember the Battle of Britain in word and thought. That memory, needs to be turned into positive concrete action or it means nothing.
07:13 And so first, let us take the battle and put if first in the context of the whole war. What was the totality of that war, World War 2, that cost 55 million lives in all, and that and ushered in the nuclear age. What are the chief lessons that it has to tell us, of which the Battle of Britain was won?
07:03 I think firstly, it taught us that in order to achieve anything great, you need an ideal. I know we went to war against aggression, to save freedom, to save our own lives. But I didn’t believe, that men and women could fight such a long war, against such difficulties, without a noble ideal. And the ideal, however naive it may have been was peace. We believed what we told that once the war was won, there would be lasting peace.
08:52 Secondly, it taught how interdependent we all are, one upon another. I don’t believe that in war, there really is such a thing as individual achievement, that there appears to be. Some people are picked out and put in the limelight and given special honour. But they know only too well, that the achievement they’ve achieved is the achievement of the team to which they belong. We all form part of a chain that embraces not just our particular fighting unit, but reaches right across the nation. To the person who cleans the hangar floor, the factory floor. To everybody who’s involved in keeping life going. Not only that stretches back into the past to those former members of our fighting unit, who by their actions and sacrifice gave it a tradition. You can almost in wartime feel that tradition. It is there beside you, encouraging you, giving you strength. But also it extends to other countries. We have a habit of saying that we Britain, stood alone. But that isn’t really true.
10:47 For one thing there was the whole Commonwealth, ready and waiting to come to our help. To give us a base outside Britain from which to fight.
10:58 There were the peoples of occupied Europe doing everything in their power to impede the German war machine. And soon there was America, to come into the battle.
11:18 And finally, it showed us what men and women can achieve when they are united in a common purpose. When they have a goal that they know that whatever happens, they have got to achieve. When there is a feeling of being all in the same boat. A knowledge that is either sink or swim. And that is a symbol, of the basic unity, the organic unity of the entire human family.
12:00 When history has finally had it’s say and all is done, we will find that we are all on the same side. A unity that, is our eternal destiny decreed by God. You may remember those beautiful lines in Ephesians in which St Paul tells us of Gods plan for man. That mysterious plan hidden from former generations but now revealed. Gods plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth. And so, our task in life is unity.... and we shall all to the best of our ability be working for unity.
13:16 Now what of today? Here and now. What is it that we should be doing in a concrete way? In order to achieve anything great, anything worthwhile, we need a vision. We need a dream. A vision should be the ultimate unity in a real and meaningful way of the whole human family. The dream should be the contribution that each of us in our little way can make towards obtaining that goal. In other words, we should be working for peace. But now the question is, “what is peace”? We talk about peace, we sing about peace, we demonstrate about peace. But how often do we think, “what is peace”? Peace is not the absence of armed confrontation or war. Neither is living under a tyrannical dictator. Peace is the result if you like, of justice. If there is no justice, no freedom there is no peace. What are the threats to peace? Broadly speaking, there are two. One the threat of an aggressor, of another Hitler. Now throughout the whole recorded history of man,7,000 years of it there is always emerged an aggressor nation. So, it would be naive, to think that that, can never happen again. A man is entitled to say “better an aggressor overruns us, than we fight back”. But no man is entitled to say that there will never be an aggressor again. And one thing that is common to all aggressors is, that they feed on weakness. So, whether we like it or not, we have a duty as a nation, to possess a strength, and to summon a selective will, to make it clear that if any aggressor wants to march we will not let him.
16:35 But that is not the main point I wanted to make today. The main point I want to make is, directed at the other threat to peace. And that is the threat that arises from injustice. Injustice beyond a certain point is in fact, the first violence. And from many different sources and from many different people, the world over. We’re being warned that the world is in danger of falling into chaos of mass starvation, economic disasters, and terrorism. This is a challenge that we have to meet. In order to meet it, we need to know that it is a danger that confronts us. We need to understand that so long as a major part of the world is living in intense poverty, while we are not, we cannot expect peace. We must stand up and do something as in the 1930’s, when we refused to face the challenge of Hitler, when we could easily have stopped him right up and until Munich but didn’t. And therefore, in a sense, contributed to that war. So today, we are not as a nation facing up to our duty to the poorer developing world and if we don’t face up to it, we will be the losers. So, two things, I want to suggest today are needed. The main thing is that we summon the selective will to do something. To do something each of us as an individual, and to do something as a nation. We must make our voices heard otherwise; we risk losing everything.
19:15 Secondly and finally I would like to suggest that one small step to summoning that selective will, would be to bring back that two-minute silence. That when the Queen and everybody else around the cenotaph, no longer the eleventh of November, but the nearest Sunday, that when they keep their two-minute silence, we do too. You may ask “well how are we going to do that”? Certainly we have no hope of persuading Whitehall. Whitehall isn’t easily persuaded by anyone to do anything. But we could make a start ourselves in our house, in our communities, in our churches, anywhere where there are groups of likeminded people are together. And what we should be thinking about during those two minutes is firstly those in the past so young who gave their lives in the cause of freedom. And also, those throughout the whole world today who are dying, because there is nobody to give them the means of living. So, both of those two groups of people I think we can apply those immortal words when you go home tell them “that for their tomorrow, we gave our today”.
21:19 Thank you.
21:20 End of Speech
[21:20 - 21:27 Muffled sound]
21:27 End of Recording
End of Transcription.
Collection
Citation
G L Cheshire, “Address by Leonard Cheshire at Battle of Britain service RAF Wattisham,” IBCC Digital Archive, accessed June 14, 2025, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/collections/document/40151.
Item Relations
| This Item | dcterms:relation | Item: Leonard Cheshire Norwich Cathedral - Battle of Britain Address |