'All Together Now' by Andy Edwards
Western Front, Belgium December 2014
It’s an attention grabbing headline and one that sits very comfortably with the interest area of this particular website. The headline appearing on the BBC News online read ‘Can Lemmy save his hometown from beyond the grave?’ Appearing on 28th December 2025, the purpose of the article was two-fold. Firstly, the srticle was timed to coincide with the tenth anniversary of Ian ‘Lemmy’ Kilminster’s death and secondly it was a fantastic time to highlight the fact that Lemmy’s hometown of Burslem (part of the Stoke-on-Trent conurbation) has experienced something of an upturn in its fortunes since the unveiling of a statue to Motorhead’s iconic bass player and vocalist. In fact the statue was one of a number of Lemmy related commemoration plans in the town now being name checked by some as ‘Burslemmy’! Plans for restoration of the vacant Queen’s Theatre to a venue and café going by the name of ‘Kilminster Halls’ is moving forward. All these Lemmy related projects are offering a financial lifeline to Burslem that the ailing pottery industry in the town can no longer do.
… but actually, this post has nothing whatsoever to do with Lemmy. A Christmas Eve post on Facebook commented on the famous truce that occurred in Flanders on that night in 1914, a spontaneous outbreak of peace that was repeated in many sectors along the Western Front. The post was accompanied by a photograph of a memorial statue that I was unfamiliar with.
And the link between Lemmy, resplendent on his plinth in Burslem, and the figures of two enemy soldiers shaking hands over a football in ‘No Man’s Land’ (‘No Man’s Land being in Liverpool for the purposes of this story) is one Andy Edward’s, the Stoke born sculptor responsible for both pieces of art. Best known for his lifesize representations of cultural figures, particularly from the fields of music and sport, I have unknowingly stumbled across some of his work when on visits to Liverpool (Cilla Black, Brian Epstein and …. er… The Beatles).
The piece that came to my attention last week goes by the name of ‘All Together Now’, the title being inspired jointly by the subject matter and the song of the same name by Liverpool band The Farm, written by a young Peter Hooten about the Christmas Truce of The Great War.
The brief cessation of hostilities, starting in the Ploegsteert sector in Belgium, generally referred to as the Christmas Truce is perhaps one of the most enduring episodes of The Great War, a counterpoint to the violence and slaughter over four years of fighting. Occuring over the first Christmas of the war, after months of bloody battle, it is believed that up to 100,000 troops from both sides of the conflict stopped the fighting. The duration of these strictly unofficial agreements varied across the front, lasting from hours to days. The periods during which the guns stopped were used to gather and bury the recently killed, in addition, joint services were held and soldiers of all ranks met in ‘No Man’s Land’ where gifts were exchanged, food and drink, as well as buttons, caps and other bits of military kit.
There is a huge volume of information and accounts of the truce, but this one I feel sums events up quite nicely.
Captain Robert Miles, King's Shropshire Light Infantry, who was attached to the Royal Irish Rifles, recalled in an edited letter that was published in the Daily Mail and the Wellington Journal & Shrewsbury News in January 1915, following his death in action on 30 December 1914:
‘Friday (Christmas Day). We are having the most extraordinary Christmas Day imaginable. A sort of unarranged and quite unauthorized but perfectly understood and scrupulously observed truce exists between us and our friends in front. The funny thing is it only seems to exist in this part of the battle line – on our right and left we can all hear them firing away as cheerfully as ever. The thing started last night – a bitter cold night, with white frost – soon after dusk when the Germans started shouting 'Merry Christmas, Englishmen' to us. Of course our fellows shouted back and presently large numbers of both sides had left their trenches, unarmed, and met in the debatable, shot-riddled, no man's land between the lines. Here the agreement – all on their own – came to be made that we should not fire at each other until after midnight tonight. The men were all fraternizing in the middle (we naturally did not allow them too close to our line) and swapped cigarettes and lies in the utmost good fellowship. Not a shot was fired all night.’
On learning of these unofficial truces and of the extent of fraternisation involved , General Staffs were outraged and ordered that offensive actions should resume without delay. So that was the end of the short, unexpected peace amidst ‘the war to end all wars’. In the Christmas periods of subsequent years of the war agreed ceasefires occurred to a degree, but nothing on the scale of the 1914 truce was repeated. Maybe the war from 1915 onwards was just too brutal and bitter for such events to reoccur.
The consistent emphasis on the part that football played in the truce is still a matter of debate 111 years after the event. Rather than a formally organised match taking place (something that would be quite difficult given the condition of the No Man’s Land ‘pitch’), it does perhaps seem more probable that in some areas, young soldiers with a keen interest in football kicked a ball backwards and forwards and from this the story evolved. Whatever the truth of the matter, a loose kick about or a full blown international, football goes hand in hand with any telling of the events of the Christmas truce.
This is certainly true of Andy Edwards’ ‘All Together Now’ statue and football is wholly intertwined with its story. As the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War neared, an idea evolved to mark the Christmas Truce 1914. Andy Edwards was approached by the Football Association to create a suitable memorial for the centenary to commemorate the footballers who fought in the war. The ultimate plan was to include the memorial in the National Arboretum in Tamworth, Staffordshire. To this end in 2012, a maquette (a quarter size copy) was cast in bronze and installed at the FA’s St George's Park National Football Centre in Burton-upon-Trent.
The project then lost momentum and so with the big anniversary fast approaching a decision was made to self fund the memorial going forwards. A copy of the full scale statue was cast in light-weight resin which was originally installed in the grounds of St Luke’s in Liverpool. This Church is otherwise known as ‘The Bombed Out Church’ having been destroyed in the Liverpool blitz of May 1941. The siting of the ‘All Together Now’ memorial within the grounds of a memorial to another war provided added poignancy.
St Luke's Church, Liverpool
The cast of the statue has endured a punishing touring schedule as part of efforts to raise funds for the final casting of the piece in bronze.
Perhaps most movingly on Christmas Eve 2014, exactly one hundred years on from the events that it represents the cast was present at Ploegsteert where the drama originally unfolded. It was also located in Messines and at the Menin Gate in Ypres where the names of the missing from the fighting in the Ypres salient are memorialised. Many of the men named on the walls of the gate would no doubt have borne witness to the events that occurred over Christmas 1914.
Closer to home, the statue graced the Liverpool Echo’s Christmas Carol Concert at the city’s Anglican Cathedral in December 2019 where the truce was additionally marked by a performance of ‘All Together Now’ by The Farm, the song that provided the original inspiration for the project. The memorial has also been displayed in the National Football Museum in Manchester.
As of November 2020, ‘All Together Now’ is once again in the grounds of St Luke’s and the story peters out, online at least. I will follow this up in terms of what has happened with the project in the intervening five years. It appears that the intention was to raise sufficient money to pay for the bronze casting of three memorials, one of which was promised to the town of Messines (the nearest town to the Ploegsteert location), whilst the other two were intended for suitable sites in the UK and in Germany.
St Luke's Church, Liverpool
(November 2020)
I am a great fan of war memorials of this kind. There is no glorification of the conflict in this work. Rather it is a very human reflection on the futility of war depicted through a common interest in football. By the end of 1914 it was apparent that the fighting would not be over by Christmas and the fact that both sides were now dug in deep made it clear to all that the fight was becoming one of attrition that would last many more months if not years. The feeling held by the troops in those hours and days of the truce seemed to be ‘Why on Earth are we here amongst this filth killing each other and when can we go home?’
This artwork interests me also because of its Staffordshire connections. As indicated in the following video, ‘All Together Now’ was a creation that came out of the Sculptor’s Studio of the Wedgewood factory in Stoke before work continued on it in Liverpool. Soldiers of one of the Staffordshire Regiments were the inspiration for the figure of the ‘Tommy’. In my family, there were five brothers in one family who served at the same time. Two of those brothers , Joseph Shuker and William Shuker were killed whilst fighting with the North Staffordshire Regiment at Loos in 1915 and Grandcourt 1916 respectively. Both signed up before the start of hostilities and as such were early arrivals to the frontline in France and Belgium, so it may be the case that they could have participated in the events of the Christmas truce (I have more research to do on my great-great uncles). Both men are commemorated on the way memorial at the Holy Trinity Church, Hartshill, Stone-on-Trent.
I will update this post if I am able to find out any more.
‘All Together Now’ by The Farm.
Remember boy that your forefathers died
Lost in millions for a country's pride
But they never mention the trenches of Belgium
When they stopped fighting and they were one
A spirit stronger than war was at work that night
December 1914 cold, clear and bright
Countries' borders were right out of sight
When they joined together and decided not to fight
All together now
All together now
All together now
In no man's land, together.
Here are a couple of short Youtube videos.
The making of the ‘All Together Now’ memorial - here.
A short piece by the Sentinel (Stoke’s evening paper) including a short interview with Andy Edwards - here.
A link to the sculptures homepage - here.
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