Week 48.09

Tendring Topics……….on Line

Apologies all round!

I am sure that the Australian Government was right to apologise to all those who, as children, had been transported from Britain in the middle of the last century with the promise of a ‘new life down-under’. They were to discover that all their links with home had been severed and that for many of them, the promised new life would be one of exploitation and drudgery. It was surely a shameful episode in Australia’s history – as there have been shameful episodes in the history of all nations.

I am not quite so happy about the forecast that our Prime Minister would also apologise for the same episode ‘sometime in the New Year’. The essence of a sincere apology is that it should be spontaneous and made as soon after the offence as possible. I don’t think either that our guilt is in quite the same category as that of the Australians. It was shameful that the children were cut off from all contact with friends and relatives, in some instances being wrongly informed that their parents had died. Our government should too have followed up the fate of the transported children. That surely would have been a useful task for the ‘Intelligence Services’ to undertake!

I think it likely that most, if not all, of those in Britain who organised the transports really did believe that these children were being given the chance of a better life. Had those ‘disadvantaged children’ remained in England their lives might well not have been materially different from that in Australia. If you have watched the first episode of Andrew Marr’s 'Making of Modern Britain' you’ll know that, for the poor, life in Edwardian Britain was by no means a bowl of cherries!

I can testify that it wasn’t in the 1930s either. At 49 my father, a Territorial Army Permanent Staff Instructor was made redundant (though in those days it was just called ‘getting the sack’) in 1931 when the TA was downsized, rationalised or whatever it was then called. His former commanding officer found him a very poorly paid job with his veterinary practice. That, with the small pension that he received for his 21 years service (non-commissioned of course) in ‘the Regulars’, kept our heads just above the poverty line. The ‘20s and ‘30s, when most of those exiled children were growing up, were years of mass unemployment, of the hunger marches, the Means Test…..and the rise of political extremism.

There had been other, very successful migrations to ‘the colonies’. In the early 1900s an uncle and an aunt of mine, both then teenagers, had emigrated quite separately from Britain to Canada ‘for a new life’. Had they remained in England, the destiny for my uncle would have been that of farm labourer and for my aunt domestic service. In the event they certainly prospered better in the New World than their siblings did in England. My uncle, after serving in the Canadian Army in World War I, became a prosperous farmer. My aunt had a happy marriage and was a comfortably off widow at the end of her life.

The 21st Century seems to have become an age of apology. The Archbishop of Canterbury has, quite absurdly in my opinion, apologised for the Church’s initial reaction to Darwinism. The Australian government has apologised to the Aborigines. Our government has apologised for the slave trade. Yes, of course it was shameful and appalling – but, while they are at it, shouldn’t they also be apologising to Britain’s working people for the appalling working and living conditions they endured during the industrial revolution in this country. Freedom is always to be preferred to slavery, but I have no doubt that at least some African slaves in the New World, were better housed and fed than many ‘free’ British factory labourers. The slave-owner had a vested interest in keeping ‘his property’, alive and fit enough to work. The British factory owner could always tell his wage slaves: ‘There are plenty more where you came from’.

That was when Thomas Hood had put into the mouth of his overworked and underpaid seamstress in ‘The Song of the Shirt’.

Oh, to be a slave, along with the barbarous Turk,
(Where a woman has never a soul to save)
If this be Christian work!

It is in any case impossible to judge those who lived in the 19th or early 20th century by the standards of the 21st. They did lots of things and had lots of attitudes that we today find profoundly shocking. Believe me, they would be at least equally shocked and disgusted by attitudes and actions that we consider acceptable or even admirable today. My own formative years were in the mid-twentieth century so I don’t have to read that in history books. I know!

Nor do I think that there is anything very meaningful in apologising for the actions of ones predecessors. To say that you profoundly regret what they did is one thing. To make an apology is another. That implies an admission of guilt, something that only those who are guilty need feel. Politicians in particular, should limit their apologising to their own errors and misjudgements. Most of them would find that that gave them plenty of scope for contrition, without their having to worry about the sins of past generations

Out of Sight……….Out of mind.

Bradwell’s now-closed nuclear power station is not actually quite out of our sight. From the sea front in Jaywick or St. Osyth its unlovely buildings can be seen in the distance across the wide Colne estuary. It cost millions of pounds to build and it leaves behind a poisonous residue that will take millennia to decompose. Its useful life though spanned only a few decades. I well remember its being built and, of course, we all remember its being closed down – an event at which many of us breathed a huge sigh of relief.

Now though, it seems likely that another nuclear power station will be built on the site, which is one of thirty-one that the government considers to be suitable for that purpose.

I have no doubt at all that additional and alternative sources of energy are urgently needed if we are to halt the inexorable progress of climate change, and to cope with the demands of industry and our ever-growing population. I don’t believe though that nuclear energy is the only or best alternative and, even if it were, that Bradwell would be a suitable site for a nuclear power station.

Nuclear energy production is vastly expensive, highly dangerous and leaves a residue that remains lethal for millennia. No one has yet discovered any way of detoxifying it or even of storing it safely. Wherever in the world and however deeply you may bury it, it is impossible to find a spot where you can say with certainty that the buried materials won’t be disturbed by natural disaster or the folly of humankind during the next – say 2,000 years.

Why is Bradwell a particularly unsuitable site? Apart from accidents due to human error (remember Windscale, remember Chernobyl!) the biggest threats to nuclear power stations come from terrorists and from natural flooding. Rising sea levels and the extreme weather conditions that can be expected as a result of climatic change increase the risk of flooding. As was demonstrated in 1953 the flat Essex coastal plain (nowhere many feet above sea level) is particularly at risk from flooding from the sea.

The Essex coast with its inlets from the sea, and many sparsely populated coastal areas could also be particularly vulnerable to a well-funded, well-planned and resolute terrorist attack launched from an apparently harmless private yacht or fishing vessel moored off-shore. How good would the defences of a nuclear power station at Bradwell be against a suicidal and well-armed landing party? The ease with which determined anti-nuclear campaigners have managed to gain access to such power stations for propaganda purposes, suggests to me that they would be unlikely to be adequate.

The government has indicated that the planning processes may be streamlined to ensure the rapid approval of the new proposed power stations. That means that our right to protest will be limited. Bradwell is, as the crow flies or the nuclear fallout cloud drifts, just a few miles to the windward of Clacton. I hope therefore that our protests will be at least as well orchestrated and well publicised as those made recently about the proposed provision of a few perfectly harmless on-shore wind turbines!

Our MP

Our MP, Mr Douglas Carswell, certainly has a knack for getting himself into the news. When the MPs expenses scandal first broke he was a leader of the pack demanding the resignation of the speaker. His image as a latter-day St. George was slightly dimmed by the, mostly good-humoured, amusement that was evoked by the revelation that his own expenses had included a ‘love seat’ settee for his second home.

Last week in this blog I commented on his independent spirit in going it alone, against majority political and scientific opinion, in declaring his conviction that concern about mankind’s role in the climatic change that is painfully obviously going on all around us, is ‘all hot air’.

This week a letter from a Dave Bolton of Park Road, Clacton, in the Clacton and Frinton Gazette reveals that on 5th November Mr Carswell broadcast on the BBC World Service his intention of campaigning for a referendum on the UK remaining part of the European Union, despite David Cameron' assurance that such a referendum would be pointless.

He argued that the former referendum was now invalid because those ‘over 52 years of age’ (either he, Mr Bolton, or the Gazette subeditor, must have got that wrong; he surely meant under 52) had not had a chance to choose through the ballot box. Mr Bolton points out that neither had those under 52 seen the devastation caused by a European war, the prevention of which was one of the purposes of the formation of the Union. It has certainly achieved that. War between members of the EU is now surely quite unimaginable.

Mr Carswell might have also pointed out that many of those who voted in that now-distant referendum may well have changed their minds since then. I certainly have. I voted NO to what was then the EEC on that occasion, but would most certainly vote YES to membership (preferably of a more closely integrated EU) in any future referendum.

Global Warming is just hot air, the slightly tarnished sword of righteousness against self-seeking MPs, a new referendum on EU-membership……! I wonder if Mr Carswell has ever considered the possibility that he might be a member of the wrong political party? Careerwise, this could be a good time to switch. I have just heard on BBC evening news that UKIP is looking for a dynamic new leader.

Two Postscripts

Last week in this blog I expressed my contempt for the Sun newspaper’s blatant exploitation of the grief and anger that had prompted Mrs Janes, the mother of a soldier killed in Afghanistan, to complain about her name being wrongly spelt in a letter of condolence sent her by the Prime Minister. My younger son tells me that, on its website, the Sun also spelt her name wrongly in exactly the same way as the Prime Minister! The Sun celebrated its fortieth birthday last week. I suppose we may hope that one day it will grow up.

My suggestion that there should be a White Poppy Day, on which white poppies (sold in aid of civilian victims of war) might be worn world-wide on an internationally agreed date of remembrance and repentance for the civilian victims of war in every time and place, also provoked comment. I was reminded that white poppies, sold by the Peace Pledge Union, are already worn by many people on and around Remembrance Sunday as a sign of their commitment to peace.

The commitment to world peace of my wife and myself was, I think, no less than theirs. For several years we each wore a white poppy as well as a red one under the impression that the proceeds from their sale went to some charity supporting wounded civilians. They don’t. They go to the Peace Pledge Union, a worthy cause and one that I support in other ways. On Remembrance Day though, I want to remember my fallen comrades. I don’t like its use (as has happened in the past!) for recruitment to the armed forces – but I don’t like its use for peace propaganda either!