Tendring Topics…….on Line
‘It
wasn’t your fault – Someone else was to blame!’
That’s
the message that we all like to hear when catastrophe strikes, whether it
affects us alone or a whole community. It’s a principle that makes the fortunes
of the ambulance chasing lawyers whose no win/no pay adverts fund day-time
commercial tv. When such a catastrophe or a series of catastrophes affect a
whole nation, astute politicians make certain that we hear it. They can usually
find someone else, a convenient scapegoat, to take the blame.
Thus
it was in Germany
in the 1920s and ‘30s. Defeat in World War I had been followed by the
world-wide ‘flu epidemic that claimed more victims than had the recent conflict. The German Empire had collapsed, the Kaiser
had abdicated and fled into exile, politically the country was in chaos, and
economically in ruin. There was
uncontrolled inflation, widespread unemployment, homelessness and starvation.
Folk were totally disillusioned by the apparent impotence of the government and
the traditional political parties.
There
was just one rising politician who gave the German people a message of hope. Germany ’s intellectual élite
thought that Adolf Hitler, the posturing little Austrian painter with his
Charlie Chaplin moustache, was just a joke and his followers nothing but
‘fruitcakes’ (or the German equivalent).
The country’s leading businessmen helped finance him. Their fortunes
were threatened by the revolt of the common people. They believed that they
could control him and that he and his followers could defeat the socialists and
communists whom they saw as their principal enemies.
Hitler
told the German people what they wanted to hear. They
were in no way to blame for the mess in which they found themselves. Their brave soldiers hadn’t really been
defeated in the Great War. They had
been betrayed; stabbed in the back by Germany
Enough Germans
believed that message to give the Nazis a majority in the Reichstag – and,
having gained power, they made sure (or so they thought) of securing it ‘for a thousand years’. The rest is history, in which I and
millions of others played tiny and insignificant roles.
There
are parallels between Germany
in the 1920s and ‘30s and the UK
today. We haven’t been defeated in war
but military adventures in the Middle East
have impoverished and weakened us. Our
economic and political situations are nothing like as dire as those of between-the-wars
Germany . They are serious though. We have narrowly missed an unprecedented
‘triple dip’ recession. Our credit-worthiness has been down-graded. There are
two and a half million unemployed, and the number of homeless people sleeping
rough in the streets is rising, as is the number of families relying on charity
hand-outs from ‘Food Banks’ to keep their families alive.. We are all, except for the very rich, feeling
the pinch.
Most
significant of all, we have lost faith in our traditional politicians and in
their political parties. We don’t really
think that the present millionaire-friendly government is going to solve
Britain’s problems (their continual bleat about the terrible mess they
inherited is beginning to wear a little thin as the months and years pass) and
we very much doubt if New Labour would do much – or even any – better. There was a time when Labour’s objectives
were pretty clear; the creation of a classless democratic socialist society in
which poverty and homelessness had been abolished and the gap between rich and
poor narrowed. After ten years of New Labour rule in which the gap between rich
and poor widened it has become clear that their only real objective is now much the same as that of their opponents – to
get elected and to hang on to power at all costs.
But
now – just as in Germany in the ‘30s - we have an anti-politics political party
with a charismatic leader who reaches above the heads of more conventional
politicians to their disillusioned former supporters; and to those who have
never before taken any interest in politics.
Nigel Farage, leader of Ukip (United Kingdom Independence Party) has a
very English charisma. He’s that very likeable - and very persuasive – fellow
that one might meet in a well-run pub. He is always ready to explain complex
economic and political issues in plain language that anyone can
understand. He’s ‘one of us’, enjoying a
pint and a fag, and having no time at all for those who claim to know better
than we do, how we should live our lives.
What’s more, he’s
found foreign scapegoats who, so he claims, are responsible for all the UK's
political and economic ills. Brussels is the hub of a web of evil called the EU whose
sole purpose is to ruin the UK
and everything in which we true Brits believe.
No-one, listening to Nigel Farage or any other spokesperson of Ukip
would imagine for a moment that the European Union is an organisation of which
the United Kingdom
is an influential member and that it has a democratically elected Parliament in
which there are Ukip members.
The other
factor contributing to the UKs downfall is, according to Ukip, the thousands of
foreign immigrants who pour into this country from Europe
and every other part of the world taking our
jobs and our houses and enjoying our social and health services. Withdraw from the evil EU and stop all
immigration, in the first instance for five years (Oh yes, and allow smoking
again in pubs, stop building wind farms and scrap all that ‘health and safety’
nonsense) and all Britain’s problems
will be solved.
I
think that, like Hitler, Nigel Farage has found a recipe for electoral success. I am glad that I am most unlikely to see and experience its outcome, and be able to say, I told you so!’ Being very old isn’t all loss!
‘
PS I note that Nigel Farage’s
magic doesn’t work in Scotland England England
Some birthdays!
I
have had some somewhat mixed experience of birthdays in the past. My 20th birthday, for instance,
was spent on guard duty in Montreal
Park
Twentieth birthday – a break from guard
duty.
My 21st was spent in
the Libyan Desert waiting for Rommel’s Afrikakorps to attack, and the next two,
which I prefer to forget, were spent as a PoW in Italy
and Germany . My 24th birthday (on 18th
May 1945) was a very happy one though I received not a single birthday card or
present. It was the day, just ten days
after the end of World War II in Europe, on which I stepped through the front door
of my home in Kensington Road ,
Ipswich after having been overseas for four
years and a PoW for three of them.
Regular blog readers will know
that my 90th birthday was a very special one. I went with members of
my immediate family to celebrate it in Zittau, the small town in eastern
Germany where I had once been a PoW but now had good friends .We were given a
civic welcome and a champagne reception by Mayor Arnd Voight, treated to a
special performance of a local piano-accordian orchestra and I hosted a celebratory evening meal to
which my family and I invited our German friends and the Mayor and his wife and other local
notables.
.JPG)
90th birthday; Here is the Piano-accordian orchestra. I am on the left in the shadow. In the background on the right can be seen the Lenten Veil in the history of which I played a tiny part
As
my 92nd birthday loomed ahead it seemed that there was a
distinct possibility (I will put it no stronger) that it might be my last. I thought that I would like, on my birthday,
to thank and express my appreciation to those who have helped and supported me
since my wife’s death seven years ago.
There were my two sons and daughters-in-law, Pete and Arlene and Andy
and Marilyn. There were my
grandchildren; Chris living and working in Taiwan ,
Nick, living mostly in Brussels and his Belgian
girl-friend Romy, and granddaughter Jo, working as a social worker attached to the Renal Unit
of a large Sheffield
Hospital Clacton friends who had been a great
support and help to me. I invited them all to a celebratory lunch at the Bowling Green Restaurant and pub at
Weeley a few miles from Clacton , at 1.00 p.m.
on Saturday 18th May. My sister-in-law Margaret and Dr and Mrs
Dudeck were already committed elsewhere but the others all accepted.
The Bowling Green
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| The 'oldies' - Fortyish to ninetytwo |
It
was a very successful occasion. There
was a wide á la carte menu. The cooking
was excellent and the service efficient and friendly. Ingrid had arranged for members of her family
and others who knew me, to record their birthday good wishes on a tape that we
played on a tv screen provided for us.
The few words of Ingrid’s 101 years old grandma and her little nephew (aged
5) and niece (aged 7), were particularly moving. She had also obtained a message from Fritz Michel who in 1944 had manned the telephone of
the Hitler Jugend headquarters next to our PoW barrack room. A clandestine swap (of which I don’t think
either Hitler or Churchill would have approved!) of some of our jazz records
with some of the Hitler Youth members’ German folk and dance records had been arranged!
Ingrid’s English partner Ray, played a guitar, and Ingrid a recorder to accompany sixteen year old Austrian Jenny singing Lili Marlene, equally
popular with both British and German forces in North Aftrica, and Regen Tropfen, die am dein Fenster klopfen (raindrops that fall on your window) a popular
German Tango of 1935 that had been one of the records we received in exchange
from the Hitler Jugend way back in 1944.
It was a wonderful birthday celebration enjoyed equally by the British,
Belgian, German and Austrian participants; a great pity some of the Europhobes
of Ukip weren’t there to share the experience.!
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| The young'uns - sweet sixteen to thirtytwo |
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