The past and present war: political cartoons and the memory of the First World War in Britain

This article examines the use of the First World War as an illustrative reference amongst British political cartoonists as a means of perpetuating the memory of a conflict fought at the outset of the twentieth century. Through the application of a critical discourse analysis on examples of comic art within newspapers in Britain, this study will reveal how a distinct vision of the war is maintained for the purposes of social commentary and critique. This assessment will reveal how it is the image of the battlefields, trenches and suffering soldiers of the war that is recalled to ensure that it can be mobilised to address issues of contemporary concern. Therefore, this study will demonstrate how cartoonist and audiences return to ‘the trenches’ to make a past war appear present.

It is like the eternal place of gnashing of teeth; the Slough of Despond could be contained in one of its crater-holes; the fires of Sodom and Gomorrah could not light a candle to it...it is pock-marked like a body of foulest disease and its odour is the breath of cancer... 5 Similarly, Sassoon described the shattered bodies and minds of those soldiers who inhabited the battlefields in his well-known work 'Suicide in the Trenches': In winter trenches, cowed and glum, With crumps and lice and lack of rum, He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him again. 6 Graves also recounted the suffering that he witnessed along the Western Front which was caused by the effects of industrialised war but also the apparent insensitivity and uncaring response towards the ordinary soldier from the higher echelons of the British Army: ...when a staff-officer came by in a Rolls-Royce and cursed us for bad marchdiscipline, I felt like throwing something at him. Trench soldiers hate the staff and the staff know it. The principal disagreement seems to be about the extent to which trench conditions should modify discipline. 7 In these accounts, all largely published after the cessation of hostilities during the 1920s and 1930s, when disillusioned accounts of wartime experience found a receptive audience during 5  national and moral. 15 The image of the suffering soldier in the trenches has been used to mobilise political identities, as left-wing elements have drawn upon the notion of incompetent upper-class officers sending wave after wave of working-class men to their deaths in a pointless attack to highlight abuses of power and the neglect of society by authorities.
Conversely, right-wing elements in Britain extol the virtues of the generation that endured the horrors of industrialised war stoically and heroically. This vision of the conflict is also of increasing significance for regional and national identity within Britain as Scottish, Welsh and regional English identities have all used the conflict to express concepts of place and belonging. The conflict is also used to advocate a nostalgic sense of tradition, as evocations of 'Blighty', the soldiers' vernacular term for Britain, appears to emphasise the stoicism and dedication of the troops as part of a wider British national identity. Finally, the conflict also possesses relevance for a moral and ethical stance as the image of brutalised troops experiencing the horrors of industrialised war exercises a sense of injustice and activism. Therefore, understanding the effect of the war's remembrance within society reveals how the conflict is drawn upon for contemporary agendas. Whilst the popular memory has been the object of debate and a target for revision, commentators have overlooked the function and utility of this remembrance.
This purpose is especially significant in the consideration of the persistence of this popular memory. Despite the attempts of scholars to challenge the widely held perceptions of the war in Britain, it is the image of 'mud, blood, rats and gas' that still dominates.
Remembering the battlefields of the First World War as a devastated war landscape formed through the effects of industrialised conflict where individuals suffered unimaginable torments caused by artillery, gas, machine guns and the policies of the military and political elite has endured. Therefore, rather than seeking to challenge the well-held popular memory, 15 See Cultural Heritage of the Great War, 12. the issue of examination should be why there is a focus on the trauma of the war through a variety of different media. In this regard the cultural representations are vital components in understanding how this popular memory works and its effects. 16 Whilst novels, film, television programmes and other media have been assessed as the source of memory, this assessment neglects a close reading of the material for the values, identities and perspectives it reflects. 17 This dismisses the potential study of cultural forms for how they structure remembrance. An analysis of the way in which comic art and political cartoons have been used as frames through which the war has been remembered provides a new agenda in this field. 18 Examining the uses of remembrance through these representations of conflict demonstrates how certain images of the war are elevated above others because they are presumed to be better reflections of the 'truth' of the war. This truth is not born out of historical accuracy and close statistical analysis; rather it is formed through how individuals, groups and communities regard the conflict and its place and value within society. Therefore, the appearance of such references indicates a far more complex use of the image of the First World War within British popular culture. Politics, power, place and identity are all mobilised with the references made in political cartoons to the war of 1914-1918 and these sentiments have been drawn upon to create frames of reference to understand present concerns. 19 These frames of reference, represented by the work of cartoonists, can be regarded as the product of the social and political relations which can indicate the values and ideals of wider society. 20 These relations can be identified through the application of a critical discourse analysis (CDA); an approach that has been developed to identify the structure of 16  discourse within the political, media and public sphere. 21 Essentially, CDA can expose how society is organised through the way in which text and images are employed. CDA, as a methodology, analyses the discourses used within institutions and groups, focusing on the 'work' that language does, how it unifies, divides and identifies peoples and values. CDA provides a means to understand how representation through a variety of media, filtered through various systems of power can structure experience. 22 This approach is based upon the identification of the function and value of communication. 23 Rather than assuming that discourse is merely a reflection of power, CDA recognises that the application of discourse is purposeful and possesses social and political effect. Therefore, the analysis of discourse, whether visual or textual, forms a means of identifying values and perceptions within a group, community or society. It also demonstrates how the interaction that occurs between representation and consumption is not merely a simplistic, linear model. Rather, it is a recursive relationship, which reflects how discourses serve as a means of mobilising identity and ideals. With the agenda defined by CDA, the discourses used within any media do not represent a prescriptive demand upon society to view an issue in a particular manner but a means through which society negotiates and defines itself. Therefore, the application of CDA to political cartoons presents a particularly valuable subject of study. These illustrations have traditionally occupied a unique place within cultural life; they are frequently both the site of authority but also political dissidence. Despite the relevance of this methodology with political cartoons, the use of CDA to examine 'comic art' more generally has been largely 21  restricted to the study of the graphic novel. 24 This follows the development of a sophisticated assessment of the graphic novel as a rigorous, academic pursuit. 25 Building upon this development within graphic novel studies, political cartoons can be examined as significant frames through which to view historical events and current concerns. 26 CDA can be applied to this material to examine the way in which it functions within society, not solely as an instructional framework or as a reflection of wider issues but as the product of a set of complex social and political relations. 27 To clarify the approach taken with CDA, Fairclough and Wodak highlighted a series of fundamental tenets to describe and guide the application of the technique: • CDA addresses social problems In this approach, CDA examines discourse, verbal, textual or visual, as emerging within specific socio-political contexts that define a particular historical era. Therefore, by examining how a community represents issues, the language used, the imagery that is drawn or the subtext that is present, an insight into how that community assesses the significance of an event or concern can be stated. At the centre of these debates is the operation of power within society through discourse; the ability to control and organise discourse evidences a high degree of authority but it also ensures that discourse itself becomes a site of resistance to that authority. Through the framing, position and identification within discourses the operation of power can be evidenced and challenged. 29 Indeed, by defining phrases, allusions, references and motifs, CDA demonstrates the latent, hegemonic structures of control within society as well as revealing the dissonant voices that emerge through that same mode of representation.
Drawing upon this approach, political cartoons can be used to demonstrate how they have functioned within British society as they reference the conflict of 1914-1918. The analysis of this material will focus on the historical development of the political cartoon during the war itself and then into the post-war era. 30 This will establish how the conflict becomes reused for wider agendas and becomes part of a wider socio-cultural discourse. The analysis will then examine how political cartoons have mobilised aspects of the war in the recent era between 1998 and 2013 to examine concerns regarding military action but also far broader topics that are connected to issues of leadership, competence and responsibility. Three elements will be focused upon throughout this assessment; the desolated battlefields, the trenches and the

The past war made present
The place of the First World War within political cartoons since the 1990s has taken on an increasing significance as it is used to convey both incompetency and ineffectual leadership but has also been utilised as a means by which a damning indictment of official policies can be communicated. Whilst the battlefield landscape is still a feature of this work, it is the figure of the soldier, suffering and enduring life in the trenches which becomes increasingly prominent in this regard. This shift has been noted by commentators as representing an alternative remembrance, one which focuses on victimhood and the brutality of the war, thereby sentimentalising those who experienced the conflict. 55 Indeed, such was the outpouring of grief and commemoration expressed across a variety of media during the commemoration of the eightieth anniversary of the Armistice in 1998 that some scholars were moved to remind the wider public that the war was actually over. 56  Oh lucky man, oh soldier, how dignified thou art! How meaningful they suffering, how great thy English heart! How tawdry this old peace is, how compromised its fruits! I envy thee thy lot in life -shell shock! Never shell suits!! 58 The same theme is continued in the cartoonist Tom Johnston's work for the Daily Mirror also in November 1998 which illustrates a statue of an ordinary soldier, equipped to face the weather and the enemy, looking mournfully downwards as in the backdrop a war-ravaged landscape can be observed. The pedestal on which the statue is mounted reveals that the soldier commemorates the artist's grandfather who died during the Battle of the Somme discourse through which politics, power and identity are constructed and maintained. Political cartoons are not the product of popular memory nor do they structure that remembrance, rather they demonstrate how the past is mobilised in the present for current issues.

Conclusions
Political cartoons and comic art in Britain have served as a means of mobilising opinion, values, and ideals from the outbreak of the First World War to its centenary. Indeed, in the years after the cessation of hostilities cartoonists working across a number of national newspapers have frequently returned to the subject to the extent that it can be classified as a regular motif of political cartoons within Britain. However, the medium has been neglected in assessments of how the remembrance of the conflict has been structured and performed. In recent years the way in which the First World War has been remembered in Britain has been the subject of criticism. Historians have highlighted that the 'popular memory' of the conflict is the result of a clichéd image of the war, reducible to 'rats, gas, mud and blood'. In this assessment, 'history', in the form of a war that was supported by the majority within society, fought with a high level of morale by the solders and brought to a successful conclusion by the military and political leaders, has been supplanted by 'memory', which takes the form of Political cartoons are a highly valuable source of evidence for this assessment as they function as both a means of reinforcing norms and stability but also constitute a locale of resistance and dissent. Their neglect by scholars in assessing how the war has been represented through a variety of media constitutes a significant oversight as they reveal the function of remembrance within Britain. By using a critical discourse analysis, the political cartoons from the 1920s onwards are observed to be structured by common elements that enable them to be mobilised to frame current concerns. Depictions of war-torn battlefields, dangerous trenches or suffering soldiers serve as way in which current concerns and issues can be framed and comprehended. Frequently, this operates as a means by which the policies of government or the actions of politicians can be critiqued. The reuse of images and details from the conflict to illustrate current debates, therefore, demonstrates that the popular memory of the conflict is not born out of a simplistic acceptance of media images. Rather, it operates as a discourse within society which can expose failings, highlight abuses of power and condemn lapses in responsibility. Political cartoons that reference the First World War to explain events and issues beyond the confines of 1914-1918 do not simply perpetuate the popular memory of the war, they demonstrate how the conflict functions within British society and how cartoons serve as frameworks that can be utilised to reveal concerns and mobilise opinion. In that sense, despite the passing of over a century since the war, British political cartoonists will continue to return to 'the trenches'.