February 2015

Tendring Topics……..on line

Tendring Topics……..on line

The tragedy of Ukraine

            Regular blog readers will know that I have a personal concern about the conflict in Eastern Ukraine because of the thought that those engaged on both sides in that conflict may be that grandchildren of the Russian and Ukrainian conscripted ‘slave workers’ who were my good friends and comrades in Germany from 1943 till 1945 when I was an ‘other rank’ British POW also compelled to work there.

            I was delighted when the political leaders of France and Germany, having had talks with the President of the Kiev Ukrainian government, discussed with Vladimir Putin, the Russian President, their plans for an immediate cease-fire leading to a permanent peace   I had hoped that these talks would be successful though I was not convinced that either the Ukrainian President had absolute control of the government forces (there are, I believe, a number of private ‘militia’ groups supporting the Kiev government)  or Vladimir Putin control of the rebels..

            There have now been over 5,000 fatal casualties in this unnecessary civil war.  Although we don’t know who these casualties are I’d be very surprised if the majority of them are not civilians and victims of the relentless shelling by the government forces of towns and villages under rebel control.  Certainly most of the thousands of  refugees whose homes have been destroyed and who are seeking refuge in Russia, are from rebel-held areas under constant attack.

             It wasn’t really surprising that that first peace initiative failed. It was never likely that an agreement that had been welcomed by the Ukrainian President could possibly be immediately acceptable to the rebels.  Both sides needed to compromise if there were to be a lasting cease-fire.  A few weeks ago there had been hope as the prisoner of war exchange agreed in Minsk in September took place.  Since then the fighting has flared up again.  It is assumed by our press and the BBC that the rebels were responsible – but were they?  It really does take two to make a quarrel – or a war.

            After the failure of the German and French peace initiative, hopes of a cease-fire flickered but were not totally extinguished.  Fortunately, neither Angela Merkel or her French counterpart were prepared to take ‘no’ for an answer.  They arranged a meeting on 11^th February, this time with both Vladimir Putin and Barak Obama, Presidents of the Russian Federation and of the USA, taking part. Once again there were no representatives of Russian speaking East Ukraine present.  This was not because no representative of the rebels was prepared to come, nor yet because President Putin had advised them against coming; but simply because the representatives of the Kiev government refused to speak to them!

It must have been a strange peace conference that barred one of the combatants from participation.  However it permitted the Kiev government to persist in the fiction that the rebels were under the direct command of Russia, and effectively prevented them from publicising their reasons for armed resistance to a government take-over.

           

            Discussions went on throughout the night.  With the dawn came news of a hard-won agreement that German Chancellor Angela Merkel said gave ‘just a glimmer’ of hope.  There is to be a complete cease-fire effective from midnight on Saturday 14^th February.  Both sides are then to withdraw their forces to leave a ‘peace corridor’ between them.  Prisoners are to be exchanged and talks to begin about the degree of autonomy that is to be accorded to East Ukraine.

            The Foreign Minister of the Kiev Government has already said publicly that the plan will fail and, of course, his government has the power to make sure that it does so – and to put the blame squarely onto the rebels!

            The only way to ensure that the peace plan has any chance of succeeding is for the cease-fire to be rigorously policed by a considerable number of neutral observers from France and Germany.  They might, at the same time, see if there is evidence of the Russian Army Units that ‘the west’ seems to be quite certain are now fighting in Eastern Ukraine.  On the BBC tv news recently we have had several reports from correspondents behind the rebel lines in Eastern Ukraine. None of them has mentioned the presence of Russian Military Units.

            My own guess is that the Russian government probably has given the rebels some artillery because we have recently heard of the rebels shelling government army positions.  Previously it was the government troops doing all the shelling.  I think too, that it is probable that Russian Army volunteers have been granted leave to allow them to support their brethren across the frontier.  Had the Russians sent an armoured division in to help the rebels – as has been claimed by the Ukrainian President – I believe that the Russian flag would now be hoisted over the Kiev Parliament!

            I believe that by far the best solution would be for both sides in Ukraine to be disarmed and for Ukraine’s neutrality to be guaranteed by both NATO and the Russian Federation.  Further I believe that both the Russian and Ukrainian languages (are they really very different?) should be made official languages in Ukraine and given equal status, and that Ukraine should be given free trading access to both the EU and the Russian Federation.

             Without the financial burden of defence spending, with easy access to the world’s markets, and with the financial help needed to rebuild their shattered country provided by their fellow Europeans both in the EU and in Russia, Ukraine’s recovery could be spectacular, and a model for other defence-burdened countries to follow. No – of course I know it isn’t going to happen.  It would spell the end of civilisation as we know it.  Think of all the jobs that would be lost in the ‘defence industries’ (not to mention the loss of dividends to share holders!) if it did!

            Late News – I have just (13^th February) heard that if the cease-fire to begin at midnight on the 14th is broken, further sanctions will be imposed on Russia by the EU.   Don’t those blinkered idiots even consider the possibility that the cease-fire might be broken by Ukrainian government forces?

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Week 34 2014

Tendring Topics……on line

Sleep Walking…….into war!

           Just before 5 p.m on every day from 28^th June 1914, the centenary of the assassination of the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife in Sarajevo, until  4^th August,  the centenary of the date on which the UK declared war on Germany,  BBC’s Radio 4 gave listeners a brief account of that day’s events one hundred years earlier, as recorded in contemporary newspapers and official documents.

            I found the account fascinating. It seems clear that it was several weeks before it occurred to anyone in Britain that that assassination could possibly have anything to do with us.  ‘An assassination in Sarajevo, where’s that? In the Balkans? That’s the sort of thing that they do there isn’t it? An Archduke?  I thought they were to be found only in comic operas. These foreigners!  There’s really no accounting for their ways.

            Besides, there were lots of much more worrying things happening nearer home; in Ireland for instance.  Ireland was an important part of the British Empire. There was a serious and imminent risk of civil war there over the question of Home Rule.  Most Irish people were Roman Catholics and wanted Home Rule but in the north there was a Protestant majority who would resist any move in that direction. Ulster will fight – and Ulster will be right! was a slogan of the day.

            Then there were the militant suffragettes; women demanding the right to vote in elections and breaking windows, chaining themselves to railings and throwing themselves in front of race horses to draw attention to their cause.  Arrested, they refused to eat and were cruelly force-fed. 

            There was also labour unrest and the threat of a general strike.  There were plenty of things to worry about at home without having to give thought to foreigners murdering each other in, to quote a more recent Prime Minister, ‘a faraway country of which we know very little’.

            Meanwhile, the ripples from that murder began to spread.  It had occurred in Bosnia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  The perpetrator was a Serb who wanted Bosnia, many of whose population were ethnic Serbs, to be free of Austrian rule.  The Austrian government, which would have liked to add Serbia to its empire, was quite convinced (or convinced itself) that the Serbian government had orchestrated the assassination.  They presented Serbia with a very strongly worded ultimatum that would, in effect, have robbed the Serbs of their national sovereignty.

            Serbia however, had a very powerful ally in Imperial Russia. Austria-Hungary also had a very powerful ally in Germany, and Russia had another powerful ally in France.  Just outside this system of alliances was the United Kingdom and its great Empire.  Close friends though we were with France and Russia, we had no treaty obligations to join with them in case of conflict.

            The Serbs agreed to all but one clause of the Austro-Hungarian ultimatum.  That wasn’t enough for the Austro-Hungarians.  They declared war on Serbia and ordered their army to invade and attack Belgrade.  Like falling dominoes, the alliances came into effect.   Serbia asked for Russian support.  Austria then asked Germany and Russia asked France to honour their treaty obligations.   We don’t generally think of the German Kaiser as a peace-maker but, perhaps sensing what was to come, he asked his cousin, the Tsar of Russia, to cease mobilisation of his army.  It was too late.  The major powers of Europe were at war with each other.

            Only the UK remained at peace – and there was a strong peace movement in Britain.  We might well have remained neutral had the German High Command not decided that they must avoid a war on two fronts. They could best achieve this by quickly defeating France and then turning, with all their strength, on Russia.  This, they thought, could be done by attacking France through Belgium.   And that brought Britain into the war.  We were bound, by a treaty dating back almost to the Battle of Waterloo, to defend the neutrality of Belgium.   Thus began World War I. In the 1920s and ‘30s we called it ‘The Great War’.  Millions were killed, millions more were maimed.  It was supposed to be ‘the war to end wars’ but, in fact, the peace treaty imposed by the victors made World War II, just 21 years later, inevitable.

 All of this would have been solely of historical interest were it not for the fact that some events today are uncomfortably similar to those in 1914.  We have a rebellious faction in Eastern Ukraine who have taken up arms against a new government in Kiev.  The ‘west’ is quite sure that the rebels are supported and provided with arms by Russia – just as the Austro-Hungarians were quite sure that the rebels in Bosnia who were responsible for the assassination of their Arch-Duke were puppets of the Serbian Government.

            Ukrainian Government Forces are mercilessly shelling and bombing towns and villages in the rebel held areas, killing civilians on a similar scale to the much-more-publicised shelling and bombing of the Palestinians in Gaza, and preventing the proper inspection of the wreck of the air-liner that the rebels are accused of shooting down.   To help the victims of this bombing and shelling the Russian Government is, with the knowledge of the International Red Cross, sending a convoy of lorries bringing humanitarian aid. The President of the Kiev Ukrainian Government says that this convoy will be refused admission to Ukraine.  What will happen then?  If his troops attempt to stop the convoy by force does he really think that NATO will support him – and risk a third world war?  If so, I sincerely hope he is wrong.

            This possibility though, does illustrate the dangers of ringing Russia with small potentially hostile, NATO states – and declaring that an attack on any one of them is an attack on NATO, which will respond appropriately.  It was a system of military alliances that led to World War I.  I hope (though I’m far from confident!) that the world’s governments are not so stupid as to allow a similar system to lead them into World War III.

Recent and still breaking news

            The news about that Russian convoy of lorries bearing humanitarian aid to the homeless and shell-shocked folk of Eastern Ukraine is mixed.  A solution to the problem of the delivery of that aid appears to have been solved in an extremely sensible manner, and one that is a credit to both the Russian and the Ukrainian negotiators.  The contents of each vehicle are to be inspected by  Ukrainian Government officials and then driven, by their Russian drivers to a destination in eastern Ukraine. There the humanitarian aid will be distributed by representatives of the International Red Cross.  That should quell Ukrainian fears that the lorries might prove to be ‘Trojan horses’ loaded with weaponry for rebel fighters. TV cameras have brought to viewers images of the contents of two lorries, selected at random. They were filled with food for  the hungry and tents for the homeless.

            Rather more worrying is the fact that reliable witnesses have seen one or more Russian armoured vehicles crossing the border from Russia to Ukraine.  This, needless to say, is causing David Cameron ‘serious concern’ and making him talk threateningly about ‘further consequences’.   It should, I think, be remembered that the areas each side of that particular part of the frontier are populated by the same ethnically Russian people, many of them probably related, and all on the Russian side shocked by the way rebel cities and towns are being ruthlessly shelled by the Ukrainian army.  The rebels, for all their small-arms and captured tanks and armoured vehicles, have no artillery with which to respond to that relentless bombardment and no air force with which to attack their enemies. I don’t think it would need the prompting of Vladimir Putin, hundreds of miles away in Moscow, to make some of those on the Russian side of the border decide to go to the assistance of their embattled brethren. 

              More encouraging is the news that Russians, Ukrainians and representatives of the Ukrainian rebels are meeting in Berlin in a day or two's time to try to find a peaceful solution to this terrible civil war.  I hope they succeed.

The latest news - this morning 18th August.

I do not believe that a single aid vehicle has yet been allowed to enter east Ukraine.  The Kiev Government insists that they are carrying arms, despite the fact that their officials have been invited to inspect them.  I really believe that the Kiev government is deliberately provoking Russia in the hope that their reaction will bring NATO to the rescue! 

 ‘This is today’s news…….

          One day last week IS (Islamic State) terrorists had driven thousands of Christian and other non-Muslims from their homes in northern Iraq and compelled them to seek temporary shelter in barren mountains – devoid of water, food or shelter.  The USA had carried out air strikes on IS forces that were claimed to have slowed down (but not halted) their advance.  There was an uneasy truce in the Holy Land between Israel and the people of the Yemen.  The World Health Organisation had authorised the use of drugs that have not yet been rigorously tested, in a last-ditch attempt to stem the pandemic of Ebola that was currently rampant in parts of West Africa.  Ebola in a potentially fatal infectious disease for which there is, so far, no vaccination and no effective treatment.  Which of these, I wondered, would be the lead story on BBC tv’s news bulletin at 6.00 pm?

No, it was nothing to do with any of the above.  The lead story, that took up at least one third of the half-hour news bulletin, was about an American entertainer, an alcoholic and a drug addict, who had taken his own life during a period of depression.  We had a résumé of his life, his film and other successes, comments on his struggle with drink, drugs and depression and a few words of adulation from Barak Obama President of the USA.

There's no doubt that Robbie Williams was a very gifted entertainer with fans world-wide  – but I would have expected his decease to have deserved a mention only towards the end of a British news bulletin on a day in which nothing much else was happening either in the UK or the world!

Week 13 2014

Tendring Topics……..on line

‘The paths of glory………’

          Last week in this blog I discussed the approaching referendum on the future of Scotland.  All residents in Scotland over the age of sixteen (now that is a revolutionary change in electoral law!) will be given the opportunity to declare whether they want their country to remain part of the United Kingdom or become an independent sovereign nation-state.  The UK government has stated that the majority decision will be accepted and acted upon, whatever it may be.

            Just over a week ago a rather similar referendum was taking place in the Crimea about the future of that peninsula.  Crimea is a federal state of the Ukraine and voters were invited to declare whether they wished to remain part of the Ukraine or to become part of the Russian Federation.  That was certainly not an option that they were given in 1954 when Nikita Khrushchev’s Soviet Government had decided, presumably on the grounds of administrative convenience, that Crimea would no longer be part of Russia as it had been from the days of the Tsar, but of the Ukraine.  It had made little difference then, because both Russia and the Ukraine were constituent republics of the USSR.

             The referendum has been declared by Barak Obama to be ‘illegal’ (it may have been 'invalid', but how can establishing whether voters would prefer to be Russian or Ukrainian possibly be against any law?), William Hague, our verbally belligerent Foreign Minister described it as ‘a travesty of democracy’, and our Prime Minister has declared colourfully, but with no evidence whatsoever, that the result was obtained 'under the barrel of a Kalashnikov!'  I have seen no reports of ballot-rigging, multiple voting, or bullying of potential voters, as there have been after elections in Afghanistan and countries in the Middle East and Africa. We can be quite sure that any such reports would have been given full publicity by the Russo-sceptic press. The pro-Russian majority of 96 percent established what had already been made obvious  The way in which the Crimeans had welcomed Russian troops and had voluntarily displayed Russian flags; provided ample evidence that the population of Crimea preferred a future with Russia rather than Ukraine.    Since ethnic Russians are said to comprise only some 58 percent of the population of Crimea, that enormous majority suggests that quite a few ethnic Ukrainians and Tatars also voted for the Russian option.

            It would be that sort of majority we would expect to get if the inhabitants of Gibraltar were asked if they wanted to be citizens of the United Kingdom or of Spain  – and for much the same reason.

            Russia’s subsequent ‘annexation’ of the Ukraine has been described as an illegal ‘land-grab’. Perhaps it was, but it was surely unique in the fact that the overwhelming majority of the inhabitants of the land that was ‘grabbed’ had wanted it to happen. It has also been unique in the fact that so far (even, it seems, after the forceful Russian take-over of the Ukrainian naval base reported this, Monday 24th March morning)  has been achieved with remarkably little bloodshed – less bloodshed, in fact, than in the violent demonstrations in Kiev that had preceded the Russian action.

            I recall that when it was decided to support the separatists in Kosovo (where I doubt very much if a referendum would have revealed over 90 percent of inhabitants wanted to break away from Serbia) the campaign included the RAF's bombardment of Serbia’s capital, the City of Belgrade.  When the UK government, after deceiving parliament and the British public about Iraq’s ‘weapons of mass destruction’, decided to join the USA in enforcing a regime-change in Iraq, the campaign began by inducing ‘shock and awe’ with terror air-raids on Baghdad.  As a direct result of that illegal invasion thousands of innocent lives were lost. Iraq is still a divided country in which terrorism flourishes; the same terrorism that perpetrated 9/11 and had been unknown in Iraq prior to our invasion.  I really don’t think that Crimea faces a remotely similar future.   I have referred in earlier blogs to the USA’s illegal blockade of Cuban ports, the use of chemical weapons in the Vietnam War and the totally unprovoked invasion of Grenada in the West Indies (then part of the British Commonwealth!)

            No doubt Russia has broken international rules by recovering its lost Crimean province without having first attempted negotiation, but ‘Let he who is without sin among you cast the first stone!’

            I was not impressed with Vladimir Putin’s triumphal announcement of Russia’s recovery of Crimea in the Russian Parliament. Painstakingly staged, it resembled too closely George Bush’s premature announcement of victory in Iraq from the bridge of a US aircraft carrier.  All power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Successful leaders surround themselves with flatterers who feed their egos and lead them on into folly. To suggest that Putin is another Stalin is ridiculous, but I do think that he may see himself as ‘Vladimir the Great’, a worthy successor of the Romanov Tsars.

            He has promised ‘to put the glory back into Russia’. I can only hope and pray that the eight million Russian dead of World War II remind him that the paths of glory lead but to the grave.  The rest of the world's leaders, every one of whom is too young to have personal memories of World War II, also need to remember it.

The Budget

          I once would have described myself as a ‘democratic socialist’. I was for a short while a member of the Labour Party and was, in fact, accepted as a Labour candidate for a county council election.  How glad I am now that I withdrew my candidature, believing that I could do more for the causes that I support in my weekly Tendring Topics column in a local newspaper, than in the Council Chamber at Chelmsford, where I’d have been expected to toe the party line.

            One of those causes (regular blog readers will probably be all too familiar with some of the others!) arises from my conviction that many, perhaps most, of Britain’s problems arise from the enormous and ever-widening gap between the richest and the poorest in our society.  To the New Labour Party’s shame that gap widened during their ten years in office and has continued to widen ever since.   I think that I am well qualified to comment on this subject because my own income and possessions are sufficient for my life style. At 92 the opportunities for extravagant living become somewhat limited! I have no desire for more than I already possess – and I certainly wouldn’t be happy with much less.  I now describe myself, not as a socialist but as an egalitarian and I don’t much concern myself with how greater equality could best be achieved. In some fields public ownership (either national or local) would probably be the best way forward, but co-operative ownership and employer/employee partnerships may also have a valuable part to play.  I support – very modestly – the Equality Trust www.equalitytrust.org.uk  that works toward that end.

 My idea of a ‘good Budget’ is one that narrows the gap between rich and poor and a ‘bad Budget’ is one that widens it.  It follows that it is many years since I have seen a ‘good Budget’ and I despair of ever seeing one produced either by our present government or any currently conceivable successor.

Both parties in the coalition government are eager to claim the credit for taking ‘millions of low paid workers out of the tax system altogether’ by raising the personal allowance (the level at which income tax becomes payable) from £10,000 to £10,500 a year.  It does, of course, help low earners but it also helps everyone who pays income tax (including me!) right up to those on £100,000 or more a year.  What’s more it perpetuates the false idea that there’s a hard-working group of ‘tax payers’ whose labours subsidise an underclass of non-taxpayers.  It’s not true.   The non income-tax payer pays tax (VAT) every time he has his car, or his bike or his house repaired.  He pays tax every time he buys himself a pint, fills up the petrol tank of his car or motor bike, or is foolish enough to buy a lottery ticket or scratch card, to put a few bob on a horse, or to play commercial bingo!   He probably pays a higher proportion of his income in tax than bankers or stock brokers with their inflated salaries and bonuses! 

Regular blog readers will know that I believe that every adult citizen, from the poorest to the wealthiest, should pay the same percentage of his or her gross income in income tax as their annual membership fee as a citizen of the UK – and that those who go abroad to escape that responsibility should automatically forfeit that citizenship.

A somewhat controversial feature of the budget would permit those who are saving for a pension on retirement to withdraw all or part of that ‘pension pot’ without financial penalty, at any time.  Fears have been expressed that ‘live-for-the-day’ fifty-year olds might draw out the lot and spend it all on a cruise to the Caribbean or a glorious boozy party, rather than leave it to  mature for a meagre pension that they may never live to enjoy!  I think there’s a much greater danger that responsible middle-aged people faced with a domestic crisis, might draw out a smallish sum from the ‘pension pot’ to deal with it, rather than go to a payday loan firm – or a loan shark.  No-one would criticise them for doing so -  but it wouldn’t take many such crises to empty that ‘pot’! 

I don’t think Mr Osborne and his colleagues realize how their policies have brought so many families to the edge of a financial precipice – and how little it could take to render them jobless,  homeless and relying on the local food bank for their survival.  But then I don’t suppose that the members of a government of millionaires who spend much of their time with fellow-millionaires can be expected to know much about the struggles and the anxieties of the less well off.