Why it's vital that our children understand what was fought for in WWI

In the year of the centenary of the start of the First World War we did not have to wait until August until the opening shots were fired as Education Secretary Michael Gove took to the media to start the academic debate on the origins, aims and conduct of the war, writes UKIP Leader Nigel Farage.

Mr Gove is essentially right in his analysis of how the previous decades have sought to paint WW1 as the brave Tommy being ordered to his slaughter by an out of touch elite. The left have indeed pushed this view and with Blackadder being used in some areas as a study tool; the foolish officers back at the Chateau, hiding from the front line and resplendent in their incompetence. However Blackadder is a satire not a documentary and that representation is certainly not true.

Field Marshall Haig, most amusingly played by Geoffrey Palmer, is viewed as a 'butcher'. It is true that he was a hard-headed 'Westerner' who believed that only on the Western Front, ghastly though it was, could the war be won. For this he needed men and machines and he had countless battles with Prime Minister Lloyd George to get the next draft of 18 year olds to the front.

It may be fashionable to knock Haig but from the 9th August 1914 to the 11th November 1918 he led what is arguably the most successful feat of arms in the history of the British Army. It was the Allies who won the Second World War: it was Britain who defeated the Germans in 1918.

During the war 47 British divisional commanders were killed compared to two in the Second World War and as the deaths from recent conflicts show, we are only used to the names of the young officers and soldiers of the PBI (and those in combat support roles) being inscribed onto the memorial at the National Memorial Arboretum. Quite simply, they were not all back at the chateau pretending they'd rather be 'going over the top' than drinking their Chateau Lafite and eating Filets Mignons with Bearnaise sauce.

This is the most ignored part of the debate on the war which I hope we can correct over the next four and a half years. What has been forgotten was that Haig was a highly respected figure by veterans after the war and he in turn showed them great concern. The Poppy Appeal was originally the Earl Haig fund, established in 1921; Haig Homes in 1928 and The Royal British Legion's new headquarters are at Haig House. This is hardly the memorial the British Armed Forces would provide for 'a butcher' and in reality he was a heroic figure for some veterans.

Instead we must look to the post war consensus after 1945 to understand the revisionist view which we are still seeing today and which Mr Gove attributes to the left. But it was the Tory politician Alan Clark MP who wrote one of the defining books of the revisionist era, 'The Donkeys' . The title drew on the propaganda from the German Army at the time that British Army were 'Lions led by Donkeys', an adaptation of an old Arabic saying and a phrase which again cropped up during the Crimean War.

Was it all pointless slaughter? Were the British especially bad? Was Haig a harsh man?

Compared to the French, probably not, who showed little innovation and made repeated and costly mistakes which resulted in the mass mutinies in April 1917 after the Nivelle Champagne offensive. To quell disorder it has been alleged that they literally decimated battalions whilst Haig commuted nearly 2000 death penalties. With hindsight it is easy to criticise the military tactics on the first day of the Somme and it is fair to be critical of Haig for pursuing the Passchendaele offensive longer than he should which showed a slightly obsessive zeal.

But he led an army that were innovators in warfare with tanks, creeping barrage and, from August of 1918, the beginning of the tactics later known as Blitzkrieg and employed to astonishing effect by Hitler until 1941.

He also oversaw the massive underground mining operations leading to the spectacular success on the Messines Ridge in the summer of 1917.

I have visited the Western Front at least 100 times and in no way do I want to glorify the conflict which saw huge suffering and loss of life. But I do want British children to learn and understand what we and others fought for in this war.

The reasons for the First World War is often contested and certainly not simple. But we cannot deny the German Empire building and militarisation as a key reason for Britain and her Treaty allies taking up arms. We were actually rather better at this than people give us credit for and this view of failure should be aimed not at the military but at the politicians who negotiated the Treaty of Versailles which left the Germans – who finished the war in enemy territory – feeling as though the rest of the world was against them, creating an inward looking view and allowing disasters such as the Ruhr occupation to happen.