A welcome and solemn silence will again fall on Whitehall and Westminster and across the airwaves of the nation at 11 o’clock this morning. Yesterday, two minutes of calm stilled, briefly, the sharp arguments about war and peace, protest and prejudice that dominated the political week – which had created a largely false impression that clashes over Remembrance can tear us apart.
The 11 November 1918 armistice was officially only a ceasefire. So formal celebrations of peace had to await the 1919 treaty of Versailles, marked by Peace Day that summer, with a temporary wood and plaster cenotaph as a centrepiece. There was no particular plan to mark the anniversary of the November armistice too, until the two-minute silence at 11am was proposed by the King and cabinet with a week to go.
