Eh? These people are mental. Do they really have nothing better to do?
"British "unconscious bias" may have influenced the choice of a white soldier as the Unknown Warrior, National Army Museum research has suggested
Troops from across the British Empire and Dominions fought and died on the Western Front and were officially eligible to become the Unknown Warrior, whose secretly chosen remains were interred at Westminster Abbey in 1920.
But research by the National Army Museum in London suggests that some level of “unconscious bias” may have influenced the selection of the body, which is likely to be that of a white British soldier of low rank.
Curator Justin Saddington’s research into the selection process on which body was chosen to be buried among kings at Westminster has suggested the focus of those involved was to secure a “British” body.
After the idea was originally proposed by Chaplain David Railton, Herbert Ryle, Dean of Westminster, approached both King George V and the Prime Minister, David Lloyd-George with the idea.
In mid-October a government committee was formed to plan the scheme and orders were issued to the Army commander in France to select an anonymous body to be brought to the United Kingdom for burial on Armistice day, just three weeks later.
Minutes of meetings of the Memorial Committee tasked with creating the first ever “tomb of the unknown soldier”, Mr Saddington has found, show that Indian and other soldiers were not mentioned.
The more ingrained racial biases of the time may have had a bearing on how the dead were commemorated, the research suggests.
He told The Daily Telegraph: “That should be taken as evidence of unconscious bias really, that fact that they’re not discussed
“This is a time 100 years ago when racism was much more ingrained, there was in fact a colour bar for black officers
“There are wider issues with race, and this boils over into commemoration as well.”
It has been suggested that Westminster Abbey’s probably ignored stipulation that the Unknown Warrior be a soldier from 1914, before the influx of soldiers from around the world, betrayed evidence of racial bias
But Mr Saddington has made clear that he does not believe outright racism played a part.
Instead those involved in selecting the unidentifiable body would have been subtly led to find a UK soldier by official demands for “British” remains.
He said: “There is the initial planning of the Committee, which refers only to a British fighting man. Then it’s carried out by the army in France. At all levels Indian and Dominion soldiers appear to be excluded.”
He has suggested that the use of the word British could have been seen as encompassing the whole Empire, which could account for this exclusion in the records, but such a term would not fit for all soldiers.
Mr Saddington, who has curated a new exhibition on the Warrior at the National Army Museum, speculated that exclusion of certain remains may have adhered to burial protocol, to avoid placing a non-Christian body in an Anglican abbey.
Peter Francis of the Commonwealth war Graves Commission has said that the process of selecting soldiers from “unknown graves”, then having their coffins to be blindly picked by Brigadier L.J. Wyatt in a French chapel, would make prejudice hard to practice.
He said: “It is difficult to see how one can inject any conscious or subconscious bias in the selection of the Unknown Warrior.”
Mr Francis has also said that the recurring term “British” in documents may not have excluded foregin troops.
He added: “We have to remember that the ‘British’ armed forces, if we use that term, were made up of units, and indeed individuals, from far and wide.”
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/10/24/unknown-warrior-likely-white-solider-bias-research-suggests/
