Chair of Humanist Society Scotland leads University of Strathclyde Remembrance Service
November 11, 2025
To mark Armistice Day today (11 November), our Chair, Jennifer Buchan, who is also the University of Strathclyde’s Humanist Chaplain, led the University’s annual Remembrance Service.
Her speech reflected on the enduring importance of remembrance, truth, and shared humanity. She honoured those who served and died in war, emphasising that they were ordinary people who sacrificed their lives in the hope of creating a freer, fairer, and more peaceful world. Drawing on poetry and reflection, she linked past conflicts to the present, warning of the dangers of misinformation and the “post-truth” era, where distortion can erode democracy and justice.
Jennifer also urged the audience to question information, value knowledge, and uphold the truth as a way of honouring those who fought for freedom. She connected humanist principles to remembrance, stressing dignity, equality, kindness, and respect for all people as the foundation of peace.
Families and communities were devastated at… the loss of young lives who died terrified on foreign soil, and the young men who did return home, changed, and for some of whom, the fear did not leave, even when they were physically safe in their homeland. Those people had left home to fight because they were told that their essential contribution would bring peace to Europe. Every single one had a service number, but more importantly, every one of them had a name – they were people like you and I, who lived under the same sky, who walked the same streets, and we cannot forget them.
You can read the full text of Jennifer’s 2025 ceremony below:
“The Great War, 1914 to 1918, was a war that was photographed and filmed, a
war that was reported on, and the news brought home and sold to those waiting
for any information, a war that brought people, desperate for word of their loved
ones, cramming around their radio sets. The people at home felt starved of
information because communication was so difficult, it was delayed, and for so
much of the time, it didn’t happen at all.
1914-it feels like just a number, because it was such a long time ago. The
recordings of the war, which remain, are quiet and scratchy, the photographs are
torn and faded, and the films are slow and worn. The events of a war, which
began one hundred and eleven years ago, can no longer be recalled by anyone
who was there, but we all live with the legacy that those people left behind.
The poem “Last Post” was commissioned in 2009, to mark the deaths of Harry
Patch and Henry Allingham, two of the last First World War veterans-two men
who returned home, who were able to tell their own stories, and the stories of
the friends they lost.
“Last Post” was written by the former Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy. The poem
references vivid and violent battle imagery, reminiscent of the war poems
written by those who faced the reality, and horror of conflict. Duffy tells an
alternative story where time runs backwards, where the soldiers leave the
trenches, escape the violence, drop their guns and they return home. But, we
know that that story of life, and of love was not to be, for so many, because their
real life, their real story, cannot be rewound.
Carol Ann Duffy’s “Last Post” shall be read for us, by our principal, Professor
Stephen McArthur.
Last Post (2009)
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If poetry could tell it backwards, true, begin
That moment shrapnel scythed you to the stinking mud…
But you get up, amazed, watch bled bad blood
Run upwards from the slim into it’s wounds;
see lines and lines of British boys rewind
Back to their trenches, kiss the photographs from home-
Mothers, sweethearts, sisters, younger brothers
Not entering the story now
to die and die and die.
Dulce-No-Decorum-No-Pro patria mori.
You walk away.
You walk away; drop your gun (fixed bayonet)
like all your mates do too-
Harry, Tommy, Wilfred, Edward, Bert-
and light a cigarette.
There’s coffee in the square,
warm French bread
and all those thousands dead
are shaking dried mud from their hair
and queuing up for home, Freshly alive,
a lad plays Tipperary to the crowd, released
from History; the glistening, healthy horses fit for heroes, kings,
You lean against a wall
your several million lives still possible
and crammed with love, work, children, talent, English beer, good food
You see the poet tuck away his pocket-book and smile.
If poetry could tell it backwards,
then it would.
The First World War was talked about as the war to end all wars, but, just twenty
years later, because of the threat to our way of life in this country, conscription
started all over again. The recordings of the Second World War are clearer, the
photographs are less faded, and there are a few people remaining, who can give
their own account of a war that ended eighty years ago.
The number of casualties between 1914 and 1918, and then between 1939 and
1945, was at the time quite unbelievable. In Britain, there was no city, town or
village that was unaffected by grief and loss, because so many people were called
up to fight. Looking back at the sheer numbers of military personnel who died or
went missing, and those who returned home, broken, some who recovered, and
others who did not, it is shocking and sickening.
Families and communities were devastated at their loss- the loss of young lives who died terrified on foreign soil, and the young men who did return home, changed, and for some of whom, the fear did not leave, even when they were physically safe in their homeland. Those people had left home to fight because they were told that their essential contribution would bring peace to Europe. Every single one had a service number, but more importantly, every one of them had a name-they were people like you and I, who lived under the same sky, who walked the same streets, and we cannot forget them.
So, every year, we gather to remember, and to pay our respects to our fellow
human beings who have been injured and those whose lives were lost, in service
to this country-individuals who have served since 1914, in every branch of the
United Kingdom Armed Forces, and the Merchant Navy.
We are remembering people, who hoped that their efforts would benefit the
people of their own country, and those living overseas. They were fighting
against regimes, which persecuted individuals, whole communities, and fighting
against ideologies that dismissed freedom, equality and democracy.
Those people fought, so that we could live in a society where we could vote for
change, so that our rights could be considered and improved, and so that we
could live in safety, and without fear.
Since 1921, we have worn poppies, inspired by the John McCrae poem, “On
Flanders Fields” as we remember…
“We are the dead
Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn,
Saw sunset glow.
Loved and were loved.
And now we lie
In Flanders fields.”
So, we have remembered, and we find ourselves here in 2025-it is a much
changed world since 1914, or 1945 or even 2005-a world overflowing with
information, twenty four hour news coverage, a world where we carry
computers with us, as part of every day life. We can find out facts and figures about any subject we can possibly imagine, and we can have that information, at
our fingertips, absolutely immediately. However, what is that information now?
As a global society, we are going through a period of upheaval and change, and
have been told that the world in which we all live, has entered a time where we
can have “alternative facts” and it is a “post truth” era. For reasonable and
rational people, this is just not reasonable or rational, and we must always
understand and consider why others do not prioritise the truth.
What information are we being fed? How are we receiving that information and
what are we being encouraged to do with it? We have to have, and retain the
ability to question everything, we must teach our children how to think, explain
to them how to ask where information is coming from, who benefits from the
spread of certain information, and what those people’s agendas actually are.
Because when “alternative facts” start to settle in to every day language and
information, then untruths become more difficult to spot. Misinformation can
start to be spread about individuals, or groups of people, creating mistrust,
division, and fear. It can get to a point where truth and lies become facts and
alternative facts, and where actual truth seems to be less important.
No matter which decade or century we happen to be born into, or live in, when
we dismiss the truth, dismiss facts, we are dismissing knowledge and that causes
a distortion of how we view life, and the people in it. We do not have to look very
far into the history books to see how misinformation becomes propaganda, and
how that leads to persecution-democracy can take a back seat.
So, the very least we owe to the people who have died in service to this country,
is to pay attention. Misinformation leads to the erosion of freedom, justice and
peace within our world.
I believe that peace comes back to the inherent dignity, and the equal, and
inalienable rights, of all members of the human family, as laid out in the United
Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, first set down three years after
the end of the second world war, in 1948.
As a Chaplain, the two most significant words in that sentence are “human
family.” As an entire race, each one of us has the right to live a safe, dignified life,
no matter who we are, or where we have come from. When we are born, we are
not born into a world of equality, and as a Humanist, I believe that everything
that can be done, should be done, to level the playing field.
Each individual, no matter their gender, nationality, culture, language, colour,
sexuality, belief system, condition or impairment, should be treated with
kindness, tolerance and respect, and encouraged to live fulfilling and useful lives.
And, nowhere can that sentiment resonate more strongly, than where we are
right now. When he founded this university, John Anderson wanted this to be a
place specialising in practical subjects, “for the good of mankind, and the
improvement of science, a place of useful learning.”
The Nobel Prize winning writer, Doris Lessing explains how, as people, as
populations, being comfortable, and losing our ability to learn, question and
analyse, creates conditions for inequality and division. Her words shall be shared
with us by Student President, Fraser Brown.
“So a war begins.
Into a peace-time life, comes an announcement, a threat.
A bomb drops somewhere, potential traitors are whisked off quietly to prison.
And for some time, days, months, a year perhaps,
life has a peace-time quality, into which war-like events intrude.
But when a war has been going on for a long time,
life is all war, every event has the quality of war, nothing of peace remains.
Events and the life in which they are embedded have the same quality.
But since it is not possible that events are not part of the life they occur in-
it is not possible that a bomb should explode into a texture of life foreign to it-
all that means is that one has not understood, one has not been watching.”
So as we remember those who have died, we have to remember our
responsibilities that those deaths have left us with-we have to prioritise
knowledge and truth.
We have a responsibility to lead dignified lives, and to live each day as best we
can-to be respectful, tolerant and kind. We have to think at the end of each day,
“What have I done well? How can I do better tomorrow?”
And, we will remember those who have given us a better tomorrow.
“At the going down of the sun,
And in the morning,
We will remember them.”
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