Redsky Homes Group marks 21 years in property development

Why do traditions get invented? It often happens when there are identity gaps to fill. As the guns of the First World War fell silent, new rituals of public mourning were needed. The first national two-minute silence in November 1919 became known as the “great stillness”: everyone, everywhere seemed to stop. That moment struck such a public chord that it shaped a tradition of Remembrance that we continue a century later.

Yet silence was chosen back then partly because the Britain of 1919 was such a noisy, divided and fractious country. Luton Town Hall was burned down by veterans angry at the ticket prices for the Peace Day dinner inside, and the lack of jobs that made them unaffordable. A protest rally ahead of the first anniversary of the armistice opposed the government’s decision to leave the million dead buried in foreign fields, so that only the symbolic remains of the Unknown Warrior were brought home.