My Tory colleagues have actively whitewashed Remembrance Sunday to fuel their dreams of a hard Brexit

Remembrance Sunday is the most important United Kingdom national ceremony. Unchanged in the lifetime of most British citizens, it symbolises British heroism and British sacrifice – the struggles and victories that the British achieved, alone, in two world wars and since.

Except that we were never alone. Even in the darkest months of World War Two, during the Battle of Britain which has come to encapsulate the image of a free and sovereign Britain defending liberty against a hostile European continent, we were sustained by others: the Polish and Belgian pilots in the RAF, the Indian forces fighting in Egypt, the food and raw materials from the Commonwealth and Empire, and above all the armaments and other supplies flowing from the USA. All of these have since been written out of our national story. The forces at the Cenotaph are solely British. The Commonwealth’s contribution is dimly recalled in the wreaths quickly laid by groups of High Commissioners, usually without any comment on radio or TV about the roles any of those countries played in either world war.

Commemoration of World War One has also supported this image of Britain alone. And not by accident: as a Liberal Democrat minister in the coalition government, I remember one early memo to David Cameron as Prime Minister included the warning that “we must ensure that our commemoration does not give any support to the myth that European integration was the result of the two World Wars.” Even the American contribution has been downgraded. The French marked the American entry into World War One with American forces and aircraft in the centre of Paris, with President Trump as an official guest; the British will be holding a small ceremony in 2018 on Islay, the Scottish island where two US troopships were wrecked. There is also to be a modest event to mark the point at which British troops came under overall French command, in front of the statue of Marshal Foch outside Victoria station. No official attempt has been made to remind the British public of the contribution of the Indian Army, in France, Palestine and Mesopotamia.

The contrast with French attitudes and public education is sharp. In 2004 the band of the Royal Marines was invited to lead the 14 July parade, with contingents of the Household Cavalry and Grenadier Guards following, to mark the centenary of the Entente Cordiale – the third occasion since 1919 that British troops had been invited to take part. The most that British protocol allows is for occasional regiments from colonial territories and those Commonwealth countries which still have the Queen as their head of state to take turns in guard duty outside Buckingham Palace; the Gibraltar regiment took its turn some years ago. The French, again, marked the centenary of the outbreak of war in 1914 with an outdoor exhibition along the Champs Elysees that pictured English, Scottish and Indian soldiers in the trenches alongside French and French colonial forces, following a parade which included colour guards from 69 other countries involved in the war.

Conservative ministers have determinedly resisted giving publicity to British military cooperation. Liam Fox suppressed information on the extent of Franco-British defence joint operations, and would not invite the media to visit the British-led headquarters of the EU’s anti-piracy operations in Northwood. Philip Hammond, his successor as defence secretary, swept aside a suggestion that the withdrawal of British forces from bases in Germany which they had occupied for nearly 70 years might merit a celebration and a joint parade; “the Germans are very transactional”, he remarked. What was unspoken was that it would have angered the Eurosceptics in his own party, the guardians of Britain’s exceptionalist national myth.

Radek Sikorski, when Polish foreign minister, attempted to interest the British government in presenting a Spitfire to Warsaw’s national museum, to commemorate the role of Polish pilots in the last war; but Conservative ministers paid no attention to what would have been a goodwill gesture. Since then the Spitfire Heritage Trust has nevertheless provided a replica aircraft to Lesotho.

So on Remembrance Sunday the same military contingents will play the same tunes as ever, as we rightly remember the sacrifices British people made in successive conflicts, while ignoring the contributions made by others. And the public will go home or switch off their televisions, secure in their beliefs that Poles are taking our jobs, Belgians have never fought for anything, the French left us alone in 1940, and Indians are unwelcome immigrants – and that none of them have played a positive part in Britain’s island story. No wonder that popular euroscepticism, and belief in the uniqueness of British sovereignty, are so entrenched. That’s the message that our unchanging national ceremony conveys.

William Wallace is a Liberal Democrat member of the House of Lords