Week 42 2014

Tendring Topics…….on line

Some thoughts on the ‘world wide Jihad’

          A regular blog-reader and correspondent also always watches the Andy Marr programme on BBC tv on Sunday mornings, in which matters of general importance to us all are discussed.  A recent programme inspired him to give serious thought to what is an increasingly important and urgent world problem.  Below, unedited, is the greater part of an email that he sent me.  There’s certainly ‘naught for your comfort’ in it: 

There was a lot of debate also about ISIS and about a major piece of investigation in the Sunday Times about the huge sums of money that wealthy and influential people in Qatar and Saudi Arabia are giving to ISIS.   It really is terrifyingly clear that no one knows what to do about “the problem” which is not really an ”ISIS problem” but is a global problem of Islamic militancy which is definitely a movement, not a single state or a single organisation or a single person.  No amount of decapitating the leaders, blowing up their hardware from the air or rhetoric at the UN is going to make any difference.  Almost any military action only serves to help them recruit more followers, and make it more likely that people already living in western countries will conduct mindless acts of suicidal terrorism.  Their total contempt for the western way of life – and by association all westerners – makes them very dangerous. It means that nothing is out of bounds, no rules of warfare will be respected, all civilians are legitimate targets and as they don’t seek personal gain (not in this world at any rate), then any attack could be suicidal and would be contemplated, even if the chance of “success” were very low.

Somehow, I think we need to go back to first principles and ask how two cultures have become so far apart in their fundamental thinking about the way society should be organised.  I think that many of the views Muslims have today, would have been much closer to the views of our Victorian ancestors.  There is a big issue about the role of women in society. Perhaps we should be more concerned than we are about the overt sexualisation of women in just about every walk of western life, in your face on TV, in music, in advertising.  The reaction to all of this in the Muslim world seems to be to go in the opposite direction – “protecting their girls” – from what, I suspect, even moderate Muslims regard as evil.

Did you read about the girl who has been turned down by Camden High School for Girls for wanting to wear a full face veil in class?  The school (it is a 6^th form college) has no uniform policy, but felt that this was “inappropriate clothing”. Naturally, she felt her human rights had been abused (having been taught all about the virtues of freedom of expression and tolerance in a Western Society) and commented that many girls were wearing “inappropriate clothing” at that school such as “very short shorts” and no one minded that. It is – to me at least – ridiculous for any girl to wear a veil at school, but is it any more ridiculous than girls wearing erotic clothing – as I have seen at local schools in London for myself?  In our local school here, which is very mixed race, all the Muslim girls come wearing the hijab over their heads, and modest clothing – generally trousers. Indian girls also dress modestly while the others, particularly White and Afro Caribbean girls wear the shortest skirts they can get away with to complement their designer handbags, and during the holidays are generally seen wearing beach-ware in the local park.  Funnily enough the boys – of all races and religions – mainly take a delight in showing their contempt for authority, by wearing their Uniform in as dishevelled a manner as they can get away with.

Well, I said there was naught for your comfort.   I have to say that if I were a teacher I wouldn’t want to teach anyone whose face I couldn’t see – and I probably wouldn’t even notice the short shorts. (well, perhaps I would if I were half a century younger!)  Come to that, if I were to be attended by a checkout lady at a supermarket or a receptionist at any office, whose face was veiled, it would be the last time I would go there.  That’s not Islamophobia.   I have no objection whatsoever to the headscarf, but I do like to see the expression on the face of whoever is addressing me or to whom I am talking. 

My correspondent’s comments about opposing values and outlooks explain how it is that the jihadists gain recruits from ‘western countries’ but doesn’t suggest any easy – or even difficult - remedies.

It did occur to me how very important it is that the jihadists should never get their hands on any of the nuclear weapons that we know Pakistan possesses.  Those ‘ultimate deterrents’ on our Trident submarines aren’t going to deter those who regard their own death while killing infidels as providing them with a first-class ticket to a Muslim Paradise!

Sunny Clacton-on-Sea makes the headlines!

It is an unfortunate fact that if ever Clacton-on-Sea features in the headlines of the popular press and is referred to in a television news programme, it won’t be about our town’s holiday attractions – our usually dry and sunny weather, our safe and sandy beaches, our colourful public gardens and our lively pier.  It’ll be about something that the Council, and all who wish our town well, would prefer remained unpublicised.  

From 1973 to 1980 I was Tendring District Council’s first Public Relations Office (Spin Doctor) and on several occasions since then I have been thankful that I have now been retired from that post for over thirty years; never more so than a week or so ago when the illustration,and comment below appeared on the front page of the local daily Gazette.

It seems that ‘Banksy’, undoubtedly the world’s best known graffiti artist had visited Clacton, no doubt listened to Clactonian chatter in shops and pubs, and had left a souvenir of his visit on the wall of a public building.   It is a powerful satire depicting five indignant pigeons bearing anti-immigrant and racist posters (the sort associated with the BNP and English Defence League) directed at a solitary African swallow.

Now ‘Banksy’ originals are extremely valuable possessions.  It might have been expected that the Council would have been delighted to have found it and would have explored ways of making the most of it.  I would have suggested finding some way of protecting it from vandals and then advertising it as one of Clacton’s tourist attractions:   Come to Clacton-on-Sea for sand, sea and sun – and an original ‘Banksy’ art work!   And under that satirical cartoon have the Council’s own comments.  How about: but that’s for bird-brains. Clacton-on-Sea welcomes holiday visitors from all over the world!

But the Council didn’t do anything like that.  Someone reported that a picture with ‘racist’ words had been painted on Council property and with what, under practically any other circumstances would have been commendable alacrity, the order was given that it should be erased – and erased it was.  I defy any spin-doctor to put a ‘positive spin’ on that particular news story!  Perhaps the Council should be pleased that the by-election, with its Ukip victory, drove the story out of the news bulletins – though the uncharitable thought did enter my head that the bird-brains had won – and now had their own representative at Westminster.

An Uncertain Future

            I had thought it likely that Douglas Carswell would win the Clacton-on-Sea by-election – if only because the Ukip election campaign made those of the other candidates look like the products of well-meaning but bungling amateurs.  I had at least twelve printed communications from Ukip, each full of confidence and enthusiasm, plus a door-step canvasser and an eager phone call.  From the others I received one or two lack-lustre leaflets, and that was all.  I dislike Ukips attitudes and policies so much that I cannot bring myself to say that they deserved to win – but all the others certainly deserved to lose.

            A few weeks ago I considered in this blog the then remote possibility of a Ukip/Conservative coalition government after the General Election – with Ukip gradually controlling the coalition.    What then was a fanciful idea now seems a distinct possibility.  I am reminded, once again, of the progress of the Nazi Party in Germany in the thirties. The NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers’ Party) began by being a smallish party of ‘fruitcakes’ but with a charismatic leader, then they were a growing force that could be controlled and manipulated – and who finally, almost overnight so it must have seemed, took over and ruled with a rod of iron.    Don’t let it happen here.