OUR church here in the City of London houses the chapel to the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers and I am their chaplain. I am proud to wear the regiment's insignia on my clerical scarf.

On Remembrance Sunday I shall walk the quarter of a mile along Holborn Viaduct from the church to the war memorial. It is always a highly-charged occasion. There are the young cadets alongside the veterans wearing their campaign medals. The CO will declaim: "They shall not grow old... we will remember them." The Last Post will sound and I shall stand there in the two minutes silence, my surplice stirred by the breeze.

Remembrance Day parades have been a feature of British life since the end of the Great War in 1919. Their purpose is to recall with gratitude those soldiers who gave their lives for their country - for us. It is hard to imagine one could be occupied in a more fitting and innocent activity. But this year we learn there are obstacles being put in the way of these traditional parades.

In Rainham, Essex, Leonard Long, an 82-year-old former soldier who is also a town councillor, asked the council office permission to use the photocopier to print some posters advertising the Remembrance Sunday parade. They refused, saying that the council photocopier is not for private use. Leonard suspects political skulduggery - though the council denies this. Anyhow, Leonard's use of the copier would not be private in any sense: the parade is for the benefit of the whole community, an opportunity for everyone to turn out and express their thanks to those brave soldiers killed in the wars.

I see also that Osmotherley council has threatened to charge veterans £54 an hour to clean up litter after their parade. Leaving aside the fact that veterans are from an era when people didn't leave litter in the street, this is a nasty, small-minded attitude on the council's part and, if they haven't done so already, they should withdraw their threat.

Other local councils are demanding that veterans run risk assessment programmes before their parades to conform to the health and safety regulations. One of my Fusiliers commented: "We didn't do no risk assessments before we took on Jerry on the Normandy beaches."

These mean-spirited attitudes towards the Remembrance Day parades are deplorable and those individuals and councils putting obstacles in the way of the veterans should - to put it politely - shut up and go away. Really, their troublemaking is only the latest desecration by those who have always hated any commemoration of anything to do with the military: such as the white poppies of the "pacifists" which are an insult to the soldiers.

Soldiers could not allow themselves the squalid luxury of pacifism when the country was under attack. In my sermon on November 11 I shall quote another Fusilier who told me last year: "War is hell, padre, and soldiers know that more than anyone. But there are worse things than war, worse things than dying for your country - and that is to stand by and watch the country defeated by evil."

We will remember them.

* Peter Mullen is Rector of St Michael's, Cornhill, in the City of London, and Chaplain to the Stock Exchange.