Morbid, Grand, Supreme: The Tomb of the Unknown Warrior's Place in History

Article by Liz Goodwin. Edited by Tessa Chynoweth. Additional research by Liz Goodwin.

Of four unidentified bodies unearthed at the French front in 1920, one British soldier was returned across the Channel. The symbolic and ceremonial procession which led his coffin to rest at Westminster Abbey was described by contemporary writer Ronald Blythe as ‘morbid, but grandly and supremely so.’ The inscription on the marble gravestone identified the soldier as ‘a British Warrior Unknown by Name or Rank.’ The grave attracted huge public interest; within only a few weeks over a million people had visited the site. The Unknown Warrior reflected the universalism of individual loss and mourning that had engulfed post-1918 Britain; pervading boundaries of social class, military rank and regional difference, this commemoration implicitly suggested equality amongst the living, as well as the dead. The suggestion, in the 1922 editorial of the Burlington Magazine that the grave should appeal to all, as it was ‘[the] People to whom this memorial in the strictest sense belongs’ is indicative of this sense of democratisation. 

Ritualistic memorials and the minute’s silence on Armistice Day marks our collective remembrance of the Great War. Even after the death of the last combat veteran in 2010, the events and effects of 1914-1918 remain imbedded in our national consciousness and forms a part of our national identity. For contemporaries, The Tomb of the Unknown Warrior became the focal point of remembrance and mourning. The Tomb made manifest, in a public and material form, the nation’s collective memory of the horror and the loss of WWI. 

In the immediate aftermath of a war that had taken the lives of more Britons than any before it, and had relied for the first time on the conscription of ordinary civilians, there arose a huge public need to recognise the ‘Million Dead.’ Through the individual sacrifices recognised in the national War Office lists, an all-encompassing narrative of war was constructed as the public came together in grief. The burial of the Unknown Soldier provided a similar opportunity; the loss of one individual merged with a collective bereavement to form an intensely personal yet national monument. This site of memory provided a symbolic point of closure and a place to grieve for the entire nation, whilst appealing personally to the consciousness of individuals. The Tomb of the Unknown Warrior was to provide a huge service to those living with grief as visiting became a cathartic way to ‘actively [manage the] painful experiences from the past.’ 

Bob Bushaway argues that the sacrifice of these men came to take on a ‘sacred character’ for the bereaved, as religious imagery and the idea of a ‘higher purpose’ replaced the heroic Edwardian ‘exuberance of blood.’ Across Europe, this was reflected in the burials of these unidentified soldiers ‘known unto God,’ laid to rest in graves placed at the centre of religious and national identity. The British warrior lies at the ceremonial heart of Britain at Westminster Abbey; his French counterpart beneath the Arc de Triomph, the monument to triumphant egalitarianism and liberty in Paris. The horrendous fatalities of the war on the continent became tangible at home through public memorials erected on the landscape. The Tomb of the Unknown Warrior did more than this – it provided the ultimate monument to equality in death. 

Whilst the significance of the sale of poppies, and the minute’s silence on Remembrance Day now encompasses remembrance for all national wars and all of those sacrificed fighting for their country, the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior remains exclusively a monument to the fallen of 1914-18. The specificity of the monument, and the ‘label of finality’ which is ascribed to it, mean its resonance for twenty-first century conflict is limited. Yet the Tomb stands for something far greater than the individual sacrifices of the Great War. For modern day visitors, whose remembrance of WWI does not centre on the raw personal experiences of grief, the Tomb remains indicative of the cultural and political repercussions of 1914-18. The Unknown Soldier is symbolic less of the personal losses of great-great-grandfathers, than representative of the huge cultural and political changes that occurred in the wake of the battles waged in the fields and trenches of Europe and the world. The appeal of the Unknown Warrior lies in its universalism; it is its role as a symbol of equality and democracy in death that today holds such relevance. 

The ideological and political implications of WWI should not be ignored here. The Representation of the People Act of 1918 was passed mere months after Armistice Day, abolishing house-holding income voting in order to establish universal suffrage for men over eighteen. It was the first time that a woman, even if she had to be twelve years older than her male counterpart, could take to the poll. The sacrifice the men and women of Britain had made in the name of the country made a mockery of disenfranchisement. Just as men from all backgrounds fought and died in the name of the country, so men and women from all backgrounds were now able to influence national politics. Just as with the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior, name and rank were unimportant. Our twenty-first-century understanding of the journey to full universal suffrage is shaped through collective memory of these land-mark moments, and the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior is a physical manifestation of such democratisation in practise. It is a hugely symbolic landmark of an event, and of a moment.

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