Week 22 2014

Tendring Topics…..on line

A Personal Story

            Those who regularly read this blog hoping to find a solution to the World’s problems, the problems of the United Kingdom, or even those just of Clacton-on-Sea, will do so today in vain.  This week’s blog is a personal story that began in Germany during the closing months of World War II.  Last Saturday, 17^th May,  the Bowling Green pub/restaurant a few miles outside Clacton-on-Sea saw the latest, perhaps its final, chapter.

            I spent the last eighteen months of the war in a ‘working camp’ (Arbeitskommando) of British other-rank PoWs in the small German town of Zittau.  It has about 30,000 inhabitants and is now the Federal Republic of Germany’s most easterly town, just on the German side of the point at which the frontiers of Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic coincide.  There were only thirty of us PoWs.  Our accommodation (a dormitory and barrack room within what was left of the town theatre that had been badly damaged by fire) was luxurious by PoW standards.  These rooms were on the first floor and the guards lived immediately below us on the ground floor.   The guards were neither the sadistic bullies nor mindless morons of popular fiction.  They were, in fact, remarkably like us.  Most had seen active service on the Eastern Front and had been wounded and/or badly frost bitten.  Their sole ambition was to keep their heads down and survive the war.  Ours was the same! Our rations were better than they had been in the concentration camp in which we had been incarcerated  in Italy. The Red Cross food parcels arrived regularly – and we were often working with food, in railway trucks, warehouses and wholesalers’ premises.  We rarely went hungry.  I have spoken to many other ex-PoWs about their experiences and ours were far better than most!

            Our work, which was heavy, for up to ten hours a day and with only one ‘rest day’ in three weeks nearly killed us at first after idleness, boredom and semi-starvation in Italy. We soon got used to it though – and it did make the time pass quickly. The work was mostly loading and unloading trucks on railway sidings in and around Zittau.  We also did any other manual work that was needed – digging graves in the cemetery, sweeping the streets, moving furniture, delivering coal, potatoes and other vegetables from wholesaler to retailer and so on.  We worked in parties of two to six, sometimes with a guard but often with an unarmed civilian with an arm band denoting that he was in charge.  We quickly picked up enough basic and very ungrammatical German to make it possible for us to chat with German civilians and other POWs and forced-workers mostly from Russia and Ukraine, who worked with us.  We really had an astonishing amount of freedom while we were working. It would have been easy to escape – but where to?  Take a look at a map of central Europe!

            One day in mid February 1945 a few days after the fire-bombing of Dresden by the RAF and US airforce on 13^th and 14^th of that month (in my opinion a war crime if there ever was one) we were sent with a guard to Zittau civic museum.  I remember that the incessant thunder of gunfire from the east was getting louder every day as the eastern front moved inexorably nearer and nearer to Zittau.   It was obvious to our guards, the local civilians and foreign workers and to us that the Third Reich was collapsing and that within a few months – perhaps weeks – the war would be over.  Our job was to load large and heavy cases onto a lorry, climb onto the lorry and unload them at our destination.  This proved to be some ancient ruins near the summit of a mountain (Mount Oybin) a few miles from Zittau.  It was, in fact, a ruined monastery and we unloaded the lorry and put the cases in the crypt.  We were told that they contained ‘treasure’ from the museum and they were taken there for safety from the kind of air raids that had devastated Dresden – only some sixty miles away.  It was ‘just another job'.  It was sixty years before I gave it another thought!

            The war in Europe ended on 8^th May. A free man again, I walked through the front door of my home in Ipswich on 18^th May (by a happy coincidence my 24^th birthday!). How, in the turmoil at the end of World War II, I managed to get home from the Soviet occupied, most easterly part of Germany, in just ten days, is another story.

            Sixty years, almost a lifetime later, my wife and I had two adult sons and we were beginning to think about our diamond wedding celebration.  I was a freelance writer and had an article about some of my experiences as a POW published in The Friend, a Quaker weekly journal.  In the article I wrote positively of the time I spent in Zittau, although I thought it unlikely that any reader of ‘The Friend would have heard of the town.  I was wrong.  The family of Jasper Kay, a Quaker and Friend reader living at Cottenham near Cambridge, had originated in Zittau.  He was in regular correspondence with a Zittau family and would be paying his first visit to the town in a few weeks time.  Was there anything I would like brought back from there?

The Kulke family in 2008  Left to right – Ingrid, Maja (born 2006), Frau Ingrid Kulke, Kornelia (Konni), Andreas.  Tomas was not yet born but was imminently expected!

I replied, telling him where I had lived and where I had worked while I was a PoW there.  I would very much appreciate post cards or photos of the town.  Thus began my friendship with the remarkable Kulke family.  Daughter Ingrid had a knowledge of English.  She had been Jasper’s correspondent and became mine too.  She translated my original article and my letter into German for her family.  Her mother, another Ingrid, and her brother Andreas, cycled round Zittau and district taking photos of all the places I had remembered.  Frau Kulke also obtained for me a facsimile of the local newspaper Der Zittauer Nachrichten, for 18^th May 1944 – my 23^rd birthday that I had spent in the town.  My wife and I felt that we had become members of the Kulke family.  When Andreas married Kornelia (Konni) we were told all about it – and I received an excited card when their first child, a little girl whom they christened Maja, was born.  During the course of my email correspondence with Ingrid I mentioned that one of the more unusual jobs that I had done while I was working in her home town had been to help transport those heavy boxes of ‘treasure’ from Zittau Museum to the crypt of the ruined monastery on Mount Oybin. To my astonishment this caused great excitement.  It seemed that I had, quite accidentally and inadvertently, played a minor role in the 550 year history of the Zittau Great Lenten Veil (or ‘Fastentuch’) an enormous textile artefact that was, and is, the town’s pride and joy.

                                                     Zittau’s Great Lenten Veil on       display    

During the Middle Ages it had been the practice to screen off the sanctuary and choir of churches with a linen veil during the season of Lent – to impose a spiritual as well as a material fast on the congregation.   Zittau’s Great Lenten Veil was unique in that it had 90 pictures, 45 of scenes from the Old Testament and 45 from the New, painted upon it.  When the war ended it was found to be missing from its home in the Zittau Museum.  Months later it was discovered on Mount Oybin where it had been found by Russian soldiers, cut into four pieces and used to line the walls of an improvised sauna!  It was rescued and, after German reunification, lovingly restored and returned to its home in Zittau.  It is now permanently on display in a controlled atmosphere and lighting in the redundant church of the Holy Cross.  Here it attracts thousands of visitors every year.  No-one in post-war Zittau had known how or when the town’s famous artefact had been transported from the town museum to Oybin – until I sent that email to Ingrid!

Meanwhile my wife had become increasingly reliant upon me and, for two years, I could think of little except her care.  Sadly, on 12^th July 2006, just three months after we had celebrated our Diamond (60 years) Wedding Anniversary, her life came to an end.  It left a gaping and aching space in my life that even today, nearly eight years later, has not wholly healed.

 My interest in Zittau helped to fill that gap. I managed, with the support of my family, to visit Zittau four times between 2006 and 2011. I met Frau Kulke and her family.  Little Maja acquired a young brother Tomas.  They are my ‘honorary niece and nephew’ and I try never to forget them at Christmas and on their birthdays!  I met Dr Volker Dudeck who had been Direktor of Zittau Town Museum. Now retired, he devoted his life to the care and publicising of the Great Lenten Veil.  I visited Mount Oybin and saw the crypt to which I had helped take those cases in 1945.  My last visit (and it will be my final visit I feel sure) was on the occasion of my 90^th birthday (18^th May 2011) and I was accompanied by members of my immediate family.  There were nine of us in all.  We were given a champagne welcome and reception in the Town Hall by Mayor Herr Voigt, there was a special VIP showing of the famous Great Lenten Veil in its permanent home, and a ‘command performance’ by a local piano-accordion orchestra beginning with ‘When the saints come marching in’ as they marched in, followed by the European Anthem Schiller's Ode to Joy, and other folk and light classical music, and concluding with Happy Birthday to you’ performed with great gusto and enthusiasm.  On our last evening in Zittau I hosted a dinner party for the members of my family and all my German friends including Dr Dudeck and his wife and the Mayor of Zittau and his.  It was a birthday never to be forgotten.

            And the event at the Bowling Green on 17^th May this year?   Well, I had had a  birthday celebration lunch last year but I had left it rather late and several folk both in England and in Germany who would have liked to be present  had prior commitments.  I could also feel that my body and mind were wearing out (I can’t think of a better way of putting it!).  It wasn’t being morbid or pessimistic, but just realistic to feel that this year I might have my last opportunity to see some of my friends, particularly those from Germany.

 

Left to right - Frau Julia Dudeck, Dr. Volker Dudeck, me, Maja Kulke

In the end twenty-two of us sat down to that birthday celebration lunch on 17^th May.  I was particularly pleased, and humbled, by the fact that Dr Volker Dudeck of Zittau, a distinguished historian and a ‘cultural senator’ of the Federal State of Saxony had, with his wife Julia, driven 1000 Km. from the most easterly town in Germany to be with me.   I had four totally unexpected guests.  I hadn’t invited them because I hadn’t for one moment thought they’d be able to come – but I was delighted when they did!  They were my ‘honorary nephew and niece’, Tom and Maja, now five and seven respectively, but shortly to be six and eight!  With them were their mum and dad, Konni and Andreas.  Their presence made the event perfect.  There were seven Germans (all originally from Zittau), two Austrians (Ingrid’s god-daughter Jenny and her boy-friend Sebastian), one Belgian (my grandson’s partner Romy) and the rest of us were Brits.  Most, but not all, of the German speakers also spoke English but we were extremely fortunate in having a waitress who could understand and speak German!

Maja and Tom with their mum, Konni Kulke

The lunch, with friendly conversation, a delightful short speech by Jenny and Sebastian and a brief display of folk dancing by Ingrid and her English partner Ray, lasted till 4.30. Then I said farewell to my guests and was driven home for a much-needed rest, while the younger of my guests made their way to the sea front to sample the delights of Clacton’s sandy beaches and lively pier.  It was the first time that Maja and Tom had seen the sea and I’m told that they really enjoyed it. 

 That celebration lunch was, I think, my swan-song.  Even if I survive until this time next year, I will certainly not be capable, physically or mentally, of hosting another similar event. It was a wonderful way to celebrate my 93^rd birthday and I like to think that the friendship that has developed between members of my family and people of Zittau has been a tiny step towards Anglo-German friendship and thus towards world peace

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Week 10 2014

Tendring Topics……..on line

Birds of a Feather………

          HRH the Prince of Wales referred to them as ‘headless chicken’. Writing recently in the Church Times (not a publication likely to be accused of sensationalism or scare mongering)  Paul Vallely, Senior Research Fellow at the Brooks World Poverty Institute at Manchester University, prefers to call climate change deniers 'ostriches'. That’s rather more appropriate because ostriches are popularly believed to bury their heads in the sand rather than observe, and do something about, scary things going on around them.

            Paul Vallely quotes a geography professor who told him that if the floods and gales of this winter are the beginning of climate change (and most intelligent observers are now convinced that they are) then there is nothing that we can do about it.  What seems to us now to be ‘extreme weather’ will be the norm for at least twenty years.  However he tempered that apocalyptic message by adding that ‘all we can do now is to stop it getting worse’.

            ‘Climate change deniers’, says Paul Vallely, ‘always insist that you cannot prove a causal link between one spell of extreme weather and global warming. That is true, just as you cannot link one specific cigarette to a smoker’s developing lung cancer.  Trends though, are another matter’.

            Lord Stone, a punctilious and naturally cautious man with a great concern for academic accuracy, is a friend and former colleague of Paul Vallely.  He wrote a seminal report on climate change in 2006 and recently noted that four of the five wettest years ever recorded in the UK have occurred since 2,000 – and so have the seven warmest!  Elsewhere in the world Australia has just had its hottest year on record. North America has been gripped by a polar vortex.  Bangladesh has had two ‘once-in-lifetime’ cyclones in three years.  The Philippines have had their worst-ever cyclone.

            It might have been thought that global warming would make the weather warmer here in Britain.  That though, is not the case.  Scientists warned years ago that the first change the UK could expect would be more rain and wind, since a warmer atmosphere holds more water and energy, meaning more floods – and thus it has happened!

            Looking back, Lord Stern says that his verdict back in 2006 should have been harsher than it was.  ‘Since then, annual greenhouse-gas emissions have increased steeply, and some of the impacts, such as the decline of Arctic sea ice, have started to happen much more quickly’

            Paul Vallely notes that recently our Prime Minister advised the folk of flood-stricken Upton-on-Severn to speak to ‘the man upstairs’ about the floods.  Paul comments that prayer is not a sufficient answer and that, as his grandmother used to say, God helps those who help themselves.   To expect God miraculously to remedy the harm that we humans have done to our environment is almost as stupid as believing that the floods are God’s punishment for our approving same-sex marriages!

            The God in whom I believe, created the Universe and everything in it using evolution and natural selection as his tools.  That God is present, both throughout the Universe and as an 'inward light' within the souls of every man, woman and child in the world.  He listens to and answers our prayers but, as St. Theresa has declared, ‘In this world God has no hands but ours to do his work; no feet but ours to run his errands’ and he (I could with equal accuracy have said ‘she’ or ‘it’) has given us free will.

            We humans have chosen to follow the paths of greed, covetousness and relentless competition with each other for wealth and worldly possessions, rather than those of co-operation, compassion and sharing the earth’s riches with our fellow men and women. We have squandered the world’s finite resources and as greenhouse gases accelerate climate change, we are rendering our planet uninhabitable.  God does not punish us for folly and selfishness. We punish ourselves.

            Here is the final paragraph of Paul Vallely’s article:   If what we are seeing around us is the result of a two-degree rise in global temperatures, what can we expect from the four degrees rise that many scientists say is inevitable unless we cut carbon emissions?  Lord Stern suggests mass migrations, conflict and war.  The last time the global temperature was five degrees different from today, the earth was gripped by an ice age.  We cannot say that we have not been warned

……..flock together.

            

            I have been following the reports of the trial of Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson – both were senior employees of Ruper Murdoch's News International  and both were close friends and confidantes of Prime Ministers and other top politicians of both the main political parties. Andy Coulson was for some time David Cameron’s personal spin doctor.  Now they are both on trial in connection with alleged phone hacking and attempts to pervert the course of justice while they were employed by News International.  I was particularly interested to note that Tony Blair, former Prime Minister and creator of New Labour had offered Rebekah Brooks his support and told her that he would similarly help and advise Rupert Murdoch, who owns and heads News International.

           

          Pioneers of the Labour Party – Keir Hardie, George Lansbury, Sir Stafford Cripps, Clem Attlee, Jenny Lee and Nye Bevan must surely be turning in their graves. Rupert Murdoch, his  lieutenants, and his News International stand for everything that the Labour Movement was created to oppose.

  

 The Ukrainian Tragedy

 Seventy years ago – when I was a PoW at a small Arbeitskommando (working camp) in Eastern Germany we regularly worked and (when we had learned a little basic German) chatted with civilian fellow-workers who were clearly not German and who wore a distinguishing badge OST sewn onto their jackets. We soon learned that the OST was short for Ostarbeiter (worker from the east) and that they were conscripted ‘slave workers’ from German occupied areas of Russia and the Ukraine.

There were men and women. We got to know them very well both as fellow forced-workers and as friends. There is nothing like having a common enemy to bring people together, and all we foreign conscripted workers, PoWs and civilians, were good friends.  Much more recently I have learned about the rift between western and eastern Ukraine. Is the Ukrainian language very different from Russian?  That's certainly not the impression that I gained - but perhaps the Ukrainians that I knew all came from the Eastern Ukraine.  They were certainly friendly enough with their Russian fellow 'Ostarbeiters'.  In Russian ‘Ukraine’ means ‘the Outlands’, a province in the south of the former Tsarist Empire acting as a buffer zone against the always threatening Turks.

Many 'Ostarbeiters', Russians and Ukrainians alike, had seen their parents and their village elders killed in cold blood by German SS units.  Some, particularly the girls, had themselves had horrific experiences before being rounded up and deported to Germany.  They were invariably friendly, cheerful and patient.  Many of them were genuinely interested in our lives in Britain.   Daily we heard the thunder of gunfire from the Eastern Front grow louder and louder as the Soviet Armies advanced through Poland and into Germany.   We learned a few words and phrases in Russian from our Ukrainian and Russian friends and fellow-workers. These proved immensely valuable to me when the war came to an end and a mate and I were hitch-hiking our way through Soviet occupied Czechoslovakia on our way home to England!

Now the children and grandchildren of those warm-hearted and friendly young men and women have been killing each other in the streets of Kiev and other Ukrainian cities, and all the major powers can do is ‘take sides’ – the Russian Government supporting the ousted Ukrainian President, and the UK, USA and EU supporting the rebels (just as in the Syrian blood-bath!)  At the heart of the quarrel between the two Ukrainian factions seems to be whether Ukraine should seek the friendship and support of the EU or of Russia. 

 For goodness sake!   The cold war is over and the ‘iron curtain’ drawn aside.  Is it really impossible for Ukraine to enjoy the friendship of both – and to enter into military alliance with neither;  perhaps even to serve as a friendly bridge between us and our Russian former allies?   Have we forgotten already the contribution that the Soviet Army (mostly Russians and Ukrainians) made towards the defeat of the Nazis?  Winston Churchill said that it was the Red Army that ‘tore the guts out of the Nazi War Machine’ and I have no doubt at all that had it not been for their efforts and their sacrifice (8 million dead!) I would, at the best, have remained a prisoner for at least another two or three years. It is much more likely though that I would never have come home at all. I now have good friends in Germany and, in particular, in the small town where I spent the last eighteen months of World War II as a PoW – but I have always remembered with gratitude those to whom I owe my life and my liberty.

Late News

I wrote the above three days ago (on 28th February) and things have moved swiftly since then. Russian troops have moved into the Crimea where they appear to have been welcomed by the civilian population. They have, in effect, confined troops of the interim Ukrainian Government to their own bases.  I can only hope and pray that the world's rulers will keep their heads cool and their eyes on world peace rather than on scoring points or losing 'face'.  Is it not just possible that the presence of a considerable Russian force in  the Crimean peninsula will deter the current provisional government from attempting to force their ideas and their culture on their compatriots in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, thus provoking another civil conflict?

I do find the holier-than-thou attitude of the government of the USA somewhat surprising.  Some of us still remember the USA's backing of the disastrous 'Bay of Pigs' attempted invasion of Cuba, the USA's illegal blockade of Cuban ports endangering international shipping and - almost exactly thirty years ago - the completely unprovoked USA led invasion of the  Caribbean island of Grenada  for no purpose other than regime change.  This was condemned by the United Nations General Assembly as an act of unprovoked aggression though the UK's government, then headed by 'iron lady' Margaret Thatcher was strangely silent, despite the fact that Grenada was then part of the British Commonwealth and its head of state was our Queen.

‘First cast the plank out of your own eye, and you will see more clearly how to deal with the mote in the eye of your brother’   St. Matthew Chapter 7 verse 5

 

             

           

           

Week 6 2014

Tendring Topics……..on Line

 

'Oh - What a Lovely War!'

This was the title of a satirical musical stage play and film of the 1960s that made it abundantly clear that  'the Great War' of 1914 - 1918 was anything but lovely.  This year sees the 100th anniversary of its outbreak and the news media is making the most of it.  The picture of General Kitchener urging  members of the civilian public to 'join up' because ‘Your Country needs You to which I referred in last week’s blog,  inspired the cover of this week’s Radio Times.  The threat of war breaking out is affecting the plot-line of ITV’s popular Sunday evening serial ‘Mr Selfridge’ and on Monday evenings on BBC tv, Jeremy Paxman is presenting a fascinating four-part series on the effect of the ‘Great War’ on ordinary people.  I’m sure there will be many similar to come.

       I generally enjoy programmes presented by Jeremy Paxman though I don’t think I would care to be the subject of his somewhat acid wit.  Enjoyment isn’t how I would describe my reaction to the first episode in the present series though it certainly held my attention throughout.  I was struck by the fact that some members of the Government had at least an inkling of the horrors that were to come.  Sir Edward Grey, Foreign Minister’s best remembered remark as ‘the Great War’ began was ‘The lights are going out all over Europe.  They will not be lit again in our time’.  Bearing in mind that the terms of the Peace Treaty that ended World War  made World War II inevitable within less than twenty years, it was not a wholly inaccurate forecast.  Sir Edward, it seems, was only one of the stiff-upper-lipped English gentleman in the government to be moved to tears by a vision of Europe’s future.  What a tragedy it was for the world that they were unable – or perhaps unwilling – to do more to change that vision.

      I was shocked to learn (I read it in the Radio Times before seeing the programme)  that in the second episode of his series Jeremy Paxman refers to conscientious objectors as ‘cranks’ and states his belief that World War I, although terrible, had to be fought ‘to prevent Europe becoming a German colony’.  Conchies, as they were disparagingly called, may have been cranks but they were certainly heroic ones.  When I was seventeen I volunteered for the Territorial Army because I thought it was the right thing to do. I was not in the least dismayed when - only a few months later – I was called up for full-time service in the army to ‘do my bit’ in World War II.  Fortunately perhaps for my peace of mind, it never even occurred to me at that time that killing or trying to kill fellow humans, for whatever cause, was wrong.

      Had it done so I really doubt if I would have had the moral courage to swim against the overwhelming tide of public opinion, and register as a Conscientious Objector.   And that was in 1939 when the right to conscientious objection was legally recognised. The chances are that I would have been drafted to work on the land or something similar and would have had to face nothing worse that the contemptuous looks of former friends.   The situation was very different in Wotld War I.  Then there was a very real possibility of being forced into uniform, taken to the front line and shot for ‘cowardly’ refusing to obey a lawful order.

      Nor do I think that the Kaiser, arrogant and foolish as he certainly was, had any ambition to rule the whole of Europe.  He wasn’t Adolf Hitler.   I have little doubt that he was thinking in terms of the European wars of the late 19^th Century; the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 and the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, both of which had been won by the armies of his forbears. In those wars rival armies had fought each other in one or two battles and/or sieges.  The side that had lost had sued for peace and the winners had returned home covered in glory and the spoils of war.   The losers lost two or three provinces and a lot of national pride to the victors, and that was that – until the next time. Not even Napoleon had tried to rule from Paris all the countries whose armies he had defeated..  

      The ‘Great War’ developed quite differently from those earlier armed conflicts. Neither the Kaiser and his generals nor the British government and theirs, had imagined for one moment that their armies would be bogged down for years in defensive trenches extending from the English Channel to the Swiss border, and that hundreds of thousands of men would die horribly, and many more be mutilated, in vain attempts to break through the defences of the other side.

              There was an extraordinary spontaneous Christmas truce in 1914 when soldiers of the opposing armies temporarily laid down their arms and fraternised with their enemies. They showed each other treasured photos of their families in London or Berlin, Manchester or Munich, Darlington or Dresden.   They played a friendly football match between the trenches; and sang carols of the advent of the Prince of Peace.  It was almost as though God, or Fate, or the Evolutionary Instinct for Survival (whichever you prefer) had given humankind a final opportunity to change its mind – a last chance.

         It was an opportunity that the rulers of humankind didn’t take. Next day it was ‘business as usual’. The slaughter was to continue and intensify, with no further truces of any kind, for three more years!

 

‘January brings the snow, makes our face and fingers glow.

February brings the rain,  thaws the frozen lake again’

 So insisted the first two lines of a nursery rhyme with which as children in the 1920s and ‘30s we were all familiar. I imagine that they had been well-known to generations of children long before that.  

This year though, there was no snow (and very little frost) in January.  No lakes have frozen - but there are 25 square miles of lake in Somerset where once there was farmland and scattered villages and hamlets.  Those who live on Somerset Levels are accustomed to occasional flooding – but not to flooding of the whole area for a whole month.  Last week a representative of the government visited and announced that he’d produce ‘a plan’ ‘in six weeks.    Six weeks! and just 'a plan'!   The Levels have already been flooded for over a month, and more rain is forecast.

 I am writing these words on the first day of February. January was a month in which southern England had the heaviest rainfall ever recorded! Who knows what shocks ‘February fill-dyke’ will bring us? Throughout the southern half of Britain the dykes (ditches) and rivers are already full and overflowing, the subsoil is saturated – and more heavy rain is forecast.

          When, as in this case, everything else has failed, the government’s immediate reaction is to call on the normally much-maligned public services to save the situation.  The army and police were called when a private sector firm proved to be incapable of providing the security promised for the 2012 Olympics.   The army has been summoned to help with the present flooding situation. It appears though that there is nothing they can do at present and another public service, the Fire Service, is doing what it can to help by pumping thousands of gallons of flood water from the Levels into the Severn estuary when low tide makes this possible.

 Meanwhile it has been pointed out that the Norfolk Broads are geographically very similar to the Somerset Levels.  They too are a considerable area of largely reclaimed land at or below normal sea level.  Norfolk’s annual rainfall is lower than Somerset’s but this winter Norfolk too has had far more than its usual quota of rain.  The subsoil there is soaked – but there has been no serious flooding.

 Locals claim that the principal reason for this is that the waterways through the Norfolk Broads are regularly and thoroughly dredged (we saw on tv a dredger currently in action there) while flood victims in Somerset claim that their waterways haven’t been dredged for over twenty years!   Dredging is, of course, one of the not-very-glamorous activities carried out by the public sector – the sector that has been, and is being, systematically kept short of essential funding by central government.

 I believe that the public services; the armed forces, the police, the NHS and the many local government services, are the essential supports of civilised society. They are rather like the foundations of a great cathedral or other splendid and much-loved building.  You can chip away at those foundations, probably for many years, without any visible effect whatsoever.  There may well be warning signs, but they can be ignored.  There will come a point though at which the creaks and groans from the building become a thunderous roar – and the whole structure will collapse in ruin. Could  the world's governments' reluctance to tackle the threat of global warming and our government's apparent inability to counter its increasingly disastrous effects, be early signs of just such a collapse?

Pete Seager

  Pete Seager, American folk singer and peace campaigner was two years older than me.   News of his death took me back in memory to the ‘60s and to the days of CND demos and the Aldermaston Marches.  I was never a marcher but for several years I went with my two sons (when they were old enough to appreciate the meaning of ‘Ban the Bomb!) to Trafalgar Square to welcome them at their destination.  What rallies they were!   How full we all were of hope and of enthusiasm!  At their heart were Pete Seager’s songs.   Their tunes are running through my head as I type; ‘We will overcome – one day!’, ‘We shall not be moved’, ‘Where have all the flowers gone……when will they ever learn?’

 Well, they still haven’t learned. The Cold War is over but the world is as far from peace as it ever was and is scarcely less dangerous, and the gap between the rich and the poor, both in the United Kingdom and the USA, is even wider than it was in Pete Seager’s prime!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Week 48 2012

Tendring Topics.......on line

Essex leads again?

            A low turn-out for he recent elections of Crime and Police Commissioners to oversee the work of Britain’s Police Forces had been expected.   Few people though imagined that it would break all records as the lowest turn-out in any British election ever!  And this was despite the fact that a great many electors didn’t have to actually ‘turn out’ in order to vote!  I didn’t have to.  I vote by post and my voting paper and voting instructions were sent to me a week before the poll, for me to complete and post back at my leisure. 

            The average turn-out nationally was a miserable 14 percent but Essex ‘led’ (or should it be ‘dragged along behind’?) all the rest with the nation’s lowest turn-out of 12.81 percent.  Was it the result of apathy and lack-of-interest or of a conviction that it was an expensive and unnecessary poll, a negation of democracy and localism, and a means of giving one individual in each police authority unprecedented power – and a high salary to match it!   The Home Secretary claimed after the election that November’s short, dark and rainy days were a major cause of the low turn-out.  This hardly affected postal voters and, in any case, the date of the election was chosen by her government, not by us electors.   I reckon that if the ballot paper had included one further question; Do we need an elected Police and Crime Commissioner to oversee the County Police Force? folk would have been queuing up at the polling stations!

            I voted for Independent Linda Belgrove who lives within the Tendring District and who had been a member of the Police Authority that is being replaced by the new post of Commissioner.  She came fourth out of six candidates, but I notice that she was a runner-up in Tendring, Colchester, Chelmsford, Brentwood and Uttlesford which suggests to me that the locality in which each candidate lives had, as one would expect, some effect on the result.  However an even greater effect was that of having the support of a political party machine and it was Conservative Candidate Nick Alston who was successful, though only after electors’ second preferences had been taken into consideration.  He topped the poll in ten of Essex’s fourteen districts and came first with 51,235 votes.  Second came Mick Thwaites, Independent, a former police officer, with 40,132 votes.  The other candidates trailed well behind.

            A bold headline on the front page of the local Daily Gazette, in the same issue that reported the result of the election, highlighted a major problem to which the new Crime and Police Commissioner will need to give his attention; HALF OF CRIMES ARE NOT SOLVED.  The headline relates to Colchester where 449 crimes were reported in the town during September but 208 of them were marked for no further action by the end of the month. There were similar figures for August and those for October were not yet available.

            Discussion about crime deterrence usually focuses on the severity of the punishment for offenders, but I believe that the likelihood or otherwise of being detected is far more important.  Career criminals don’t worry about the punishment when they are confident that they will get away with the crime! The novels of Dickens and his contemporaries suggest that in the days when you could be hanged for stealing a sheep and transported to Australia for petty crime, more sheep were stolen and there was more petty crime per capita than there is today.  When hanging, drawing and quartering was the accepted penalty for treason (a fate comparable in horror only with burning alive for heresy!) there were certainly more plots aiming at the violent overthrow of the monarchy and the government, than there have been in these more humane and enlightened times.

            Get the crime detection rate up to 75 percent or higher and I have no doubt that, whatever penalty is suffered by those convicted, the crime rate will drop like a stone.  No – I have no idea how that can be achieved, but then I wasn’t among those aspiring to be Crime and Police Commissioner.

Economic Family Planning

          I sometimes wonder if the members of David Cameron’s coalition government (with its heavy concentration of millionaires) live in the same world as the rest of us.  Do they ever actually meet ordinary people except, of course, when they want their votes?

Take, for example, Iain Duncan-Smith, the work and pensions secretary.  He has decided that the United Kingdom can no longer afford to pay all the children’s benefits to which large families become entitled.  He has suggested therefore that child allowances should be paid for the first two children of every family but nothing at all for subsequent offspring. He is, I believe, a Roman Catholic. Can he possibly have never met and mixed with the parents of eight, nine or ten children?

He would find that they come in two, quite separate, categories though it is possible for a family to belong to both of them.  One category consists of a single parent or of parents who are feckless and irresponsible. They may have learning difficulties.  One or other, or both, of them may have a drink or a drugs problem (though they probably won’t admit to it).  Their home is likely to be squalid, smelly and poverty-stricken and their children neglected.  It may be that with patient one-to-one education from a dedicated Social Worker or Health Visitor they could, in time, adopt a more responsible life-style – but they certainly won’t think far enough ahead to ask themselves how they are going to feed a third, fourth, fifth or sixth child with no children’s benefit.

The other category consists of those who believe that to limit the family by ‘artificial’ means is in defiance of the will of God.   They may be devout Roman Catholics or describe themselves as fundamentalist Evangelical ‘Bible Christians’.  They may be ultra-orthodox Jews or fundamentalist Muslims.   They are most unlikely to yield to threats to limit child benefit to the first two children.  To do so, they believe, would bring them eternal punishment.

Paying children’s allowance only to the first two children of such families would do little or nothing to limit or reduce their size. It would increase child poverty and child neglect – and would probably increase the number of abortions.  I can’t believe that that is really what Iain Duncan-Smith wants?

An Honour Denied!

          It seems almost incredible that our government should refuse to allow surviving Royal Navy personnel who, in World War II, protected the Arctic convoys conveying vital war materials to our Soviet allies, to accept a medal from the Russian government in appreciation of their services.  To sail round the northern tip of Norway to the Russian port of Archangel  under constant threat of air attack from the Luftwaffe bases along the Norwegian coast and from German U-boats patrolling the North Atlantic, was one of the most perilous and physically demanding tasks undertaken in World War II.  Hundreds of vessels and some 3,000 men were lost in those Arctic waters.  In refusing to permit Clacton octogenarian Fred Henley and some 200 other Naval survivors of the Arctic Convoys accept this thank-you from the Russian government, our government has displayed a meanness of spirit unique among the World War II allies. American, Canadian, Australian and New Zealand veterans of those convoys have already received their Russian medals.  A typically smooth explanation of Britain’s refusal comes from a spokesman for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office:  

‘We very much appreciate the Russian Government’s wish to recognise the brave and valuable service given by veterans of the Arctic Convoys. However the rules on the acceptance of foreign awards clearly state that in order for permission to be given for an award to be accepted, there has to have been specific service to the country concerned and that that service should have taken place within the previous five years.

            The spokesman goes on to say that the award is also ruled out because the veterans concerned had been eligible for a British award for the same service; the World War II ‘Atlantic Star’.  In 2006 an official lapel badge, the ‘Arctic Emblem’ had also been introduced and some 10,000 had been issued   That settles it then.  ‘The rules’ make it quite impossible for these old men, all in their late eighties or nineties, to receive an official thank-you from a grateful Russian government for their part in one of the most arduous and dangerous exercises in World War II.    I hope that I am not being unduly cynical in suggesting that had the USA (or Saudi Arabia for that matter) wished to make a similar gesture for a similar reason, the government would have either changed those ‘rules’ or found some way of getting round them.

            I suspect that the real reason is that our top politicians are old enough to remember the cold war but not the real war of 1939 to 1945. They are reluctant to admit the enormous contribution that the then USSR made to the downfall of the Nazis (80 percent of all German army casualties in World War II were on the Eastern Front!) or the appalling suffering of the Soviet people during the Nazi occupation of much of their country.  Perhaps, of course, some of them don’t even realize that the Russians were our valued allies during those dark years. Old Etonians seem to have gaps in their knowledge of recent history. It’s not so long ago that our Prime Minister imagined that in 1940 we were junior partners of the USA in the struggle against Hitler!   It is no exaggeration to suggest that the outcome of the war against Nazi Germany was finally decided in a great tank battle that raged on the Russian steppe near Kursk in July and August 1943.  It ended in a defeat from which the Nazis never recovered.  The men of the Arctic Convoys ensured that the Soviet Army had the equipment needed to achieve that decisive victory – and to press on to Berlin!

A Church Divided

A somewhat time-worn certificate in my possession declares that Ernest George Hall born on 18^th May 1921, the son of Regimental Sergeant-Major Frederick Charles Hall, was baptised at St. Michael’s Garrison Church, Tidworth on 26^th May 1921. Thus, I have been a member of the Church of England for over 91 years! I certainly can’t claim to have been an active church member for the whole, or even for the greater part, of that time. However I have never formally rejected the Church and, even in the days when I would have described myself as an agnostic, I regarded the Church of England with affection and respect, recalling nostalgically the days when first as a choirboy and later as a server, I had used and loved the liturgies of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer.

For well over a decade I have been an occasional attender and communicant at my local Church of England Church, and six years ago I renewed and revived my active membership (well, as active as is possible in my late eighties and early nineties!).  I had never, of course, actually ceased to be a member.

            All of that probably accounts for the deep sadness that I feel about the way in which, in recent years, the Church of England has been torn by controversy, first about the ordination of women priests and, only last week, about the creation of women bishops.  How strange that at that latest Synod, the Bishops, who might have been expected to take a conservative stance, overwhelmingly welcomed the idea of committed women joining their ranks, the clergy accepted it and it was the laity who opposed and – by a majority of just a handful of votes vetoed it!

             Since 1948 I have also been a Quaker. I would certainly never abandon the Christian tradition that, in the silence of its expectant and prayerful Meetings for Worship, brought me back from my sterile agnosticism (I suppose that today it would have been called non-theism) to George Fox’s affirmation, on which the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) is founded, that there is one even Christ Jesus who can speak to thy condition. Consequently I am in dual membership; an unusual but not unique position. Canon Oestreicher of Coventry Cathedral and Terry Waite, Archbishop Runcie’s envoy to the Middle East, who spent several years in captivity as a hostage, are two other – much more distinguished – dual members.

            Quakers do not have a separated professional priesthood and the idea of settling controversial issues by means of a majority vote is alien to the Quaker tradition. We have no fixed liturgy, prayer book or hymn book. We do though have a published booklet of Advices and Queries, revised from time to time, that provides us with a guide, but not a fixed rule, to advise and support us both in worship and in our daily lives.

One of these advices is, I think, particularly relevant to those who hold strong views on either side in the current controversy within the Church of England.

Consider the possibility that you may be mistaken.

I would add that this should be done prayerfully and in the light of the teaching and example of Jesus Christ, rather than that of any other authority.

           

           

             

           

           

           

             

Week 29 2012

Tendring Topics.......on line

An Ageing Population!

          As a nonagenarian I have a direct interest in the government’s plans to meet the needs of an ageing population.  I don’t really feel that I have so far been a very great burden on the state or the local authority.  I have cavity wall infilling to my bungalow, double glazing, a solar panel to augment my gas hot water and central heating system and an electric mobility scooter to give me mobility, all at my own expense.  I did take advantage of a government grant to have my roof space properly insulated and Essex County Council Social Services have provided me with a handrail to help me make my way safely from my front door to my front garden path.

            My age and disabilities have obtained for me the lower rate of attendance allowance which helps with cleaning the bungalow, keeping the garden tidy and keeping my mobility scooter ‘on the road’.  And that is about it.  I am thankful that I have as yet needed neither domiciliary care nor residential care in a care home – and I very much hope that I never need either.

            That kind of care is expensive and the great debate among the politicians is how much they can expect old people to pay towards its cost.  Currently they have produced a plan for the future that could justifiably be called Much ado about Nothing, or at least about very little!  There must, so they are agreed, be a ‘ceiling’ to the amount the old person receiving care can be expected to pay towards its cost – but it’ll be another couple of years (just after the next General Election perhaps?) before they decide where that ‘ceiling’ should be.  Well, I am 91 and it doesn’t seem very likely that they’ll make up their minds in time for me to cheer……or otherwise!  

            One thing that has been resented by many old and disabled people has been the need to sell the family home, into which a lifetime’s savings may have been poured, to meet the cost of residential care.   The government has come up with a brilliant (well, they clearly think so) ground-breaking scheme to make this unnecessary.   Local authorities will now be required to make loans of the cost of care to care-home residents who apply for them.  These loans, plus reasonable interest, will be repayable only after the borrower’s death, and will be a charge on his or her estate.  Thus, say the government, care home residents will no longer need to sell their homes to pay the cost of care.

             I can see how the government and the care homes might benefit from such a scheme.  The money for care starts to come in directly the loan is approved without any tedious and uncertain business of selling the family home.  For the life of me though, I can’t see any advantage whatsoever for the old person involved.

            Why is it that most of us are so reluctant to sell our homes even when it is quite obvious that we’ll never be able to live in them independently again?  It is because those homes represent the greater part of our life’s savings.  We’d like to be able to pass them on to our heirs when the time comes.  This may be a thoroughly unreasonable, antisocial and irresponsible desire but it is surely a very natural and understandable one.

It is a desire that the government’s scheme does nothing to satisfy.  Our homes will still have to be sold when we die to repay those loans and – in addition - our heirs will have the extra burden of the interest payments that have accrued in the meantime.  They will be worse off than they would have been if the family home had been sold directly the old person had entered the care home.

            Finally – and I have only just learned this – like so many of the government’s brilliant new initiatives, there’s nothing new or ground-breaking about it.  Such a scheme already exists with just one difference; it provides that loans made by local authorities to pay care home fees and repayable only on the death of the home resident are interest free!

And the rest of us!

          The rest of us oldies – the ones who have managed to keep out of care homes and don’t need social services care in our homes – needn’t think that we are going to escape the attention of those posh boys who don’t know the price of milk. Perhaps it is fortunate that in the nature of things, none of us will have to put up with that attention for very long!

            A Conservative MP, and I’d be surprised if he is alone in this, has drawn attention to the benefits that we get for no other reason than the date on our birth certificates.  Free bus passes, free prescriptions, cut price (though not by much!) rail fares, generous winter fuel allowances; they should all be abolished or means tested.  In an ideal world, he says, it would be wonderful to be able to have all these universal benefits but, in the present economic climate, the country simply can’t afford them.   Funny thing though – he didn’t explain how it is that we can afford to cut the level of income tax for the wealthiest members of our society, those with incomes in excess of £150,000 a year!

            We don’t live in an ideal world.  We never have done so and we never will – but that shouldn’t deter us from striving for one.  Even in an imperfect world it is astonishing what can be afforded when it is really needed.  In 1939, for example, the world was even less perfect than it is today.  Yet the government managed to afford millions of pounds every week for six years, in pursuit of the war.  Thousands of young men and women couldn’t afford to interrupt their early careers for six or seven years to help destroy Nazism and Fascism.  Yet we managed it.  Is it so unreasonable to expect that those of us who have survived and have paid (without either evasion or avoidance!) our taxes for over half a century and are still paying them, but  are now very old, should expect a share of the comforts of civilised life without having first to prove that we are desperately poor and in dire need?

            MPs who seek to means-test or withdraw the benefits of the old should remember that there is one privilege enjoyed by everyone over the age of eighteen and by rich and poor alike.  That is the right to vote in parliamentary and local elections.  Statistics indicate that we oldies are far more likely to exercise that right than those in younger age groups – and universally permitted postal voting now makes it easy for even the most disabled of us to do so.  If I were an ambitious member of parliament, or hoped to become one, I would think twice, and then again, before provoking the wrath of a large, and growing, number of electors!                                          

           

 What the Council costs us!

            Leafing through the back pages of a copy of the daily Gazette a few weeks ago I found, among the adverts for used cars and lonely hearts, an official notice from Tendring Council ‘Members’ Allowances 2012/2013’ setting out the annual cash allowances received by each councillor.   It made fascinating reading.

            Every councillor gets a basic allowance of £4,962 a year.  On top of that the Council Chairman gets £6,070 and Vice-Chairman £2,140.  That’s reasonable enough.  They both have ceremonial and hospitality responsibilities and need a bit extra.

            Then we get the political (or, as they put it, ‘Special Responsibility’) allowances, all in addition to the basic allowance.  The Leader of the Council (the leader of the majority political grouping; much more important nowadays than the mere Chairman) gets an extra £17,862 and his deputy £10,494.  Cabinet Members (that’s the little clique of members of the majority group who actually make all the executive decisions) also each get an extra £10,494.  Opposition Group Leaders get a lump sum allowance of £1,473 plus £174 for each member of their group.

            Then come the Chairmen of the eight committees.  The Chairmen of the Planning Committee and of the Licensing Committee each get £6,072, the Chairman of the Audit Committee £4,467, the Chairmen of the Corporate Management; the Community, Leadership and Partnership Committee; the Service Development and Delivery Committee; and the Human Resources Committee each get £3,573.  Then there’s the Vice-Chairman of the Planning Committee and the Chairman of Licensing Sub-Committees.  They each get £1,965.

            A footnote explains that, ‘in addition to the above, a Dependent and Childcare Allowance continues to be made available to those members who are eligible.’   

            Local government has changed a great deal since my early years in the service when, certainly in the smaller authorities, party membership was simply an indication of a councillor’s general political outlook – not an expectation that, on every issue, there would be a ‘party line’ that all members were expected to follow.  Those were the days when councillors were motivated solely by public spirit and received no payment beyond their out-of-pocket expenses. 

            It seems to me that we are getting into the era of the ‘career local politician’ in a local government that has adopted (or had forced upon it) most of the nastier features of that lot at Westminster!