Week 30. 10

Tendring Topics……on Line

‘£1.2 million to Save the Naze for 50 years’

In the interests of accuracy, the above headline from the Coastal Daily Gazette
ought really to be ‘£l.2 million to postpone the loss of part of the Naze for 50 years’. A fortnight ago, commenting on the fact that, despite savage cuts elsewhere, the funding for both the Crag Walk at Walton’s Naze and the redevelopment of Clacton’s Pier Avenue was said to be safe, I pointed out that desirable as the construction of the Crag Walk might be, it certainly wouldn’t Save the Naze.

In earlier blogs I have explained that the erosion of the cliffs of the Naze arises primarily from surface water penetrating the subsoil and the stratum of permeable red crag beneath it. Then as it drains away over the impermeable layer of clay beneath them, it destabilises these upper strata, causing the cliff edge to break away and fall onto the beach below. The sea washes away the fallen material, and the process continues. It will continue to do this until the subsoil and the red crag stratum are properly drained and a revetment is provided at the foot of the Naze cliffs for the whole of their length.

A scheme to do this was prepared by the Tendring District Council soon after it took over the whole of the Tendring District in 1974. After a Public Enquiry it was approved by the Government’s inspector but was then vetoed by the government on economic grounds. ‘The time wasn’t right’. I don’t think it ever will be!

The Crag Walk Scheme may prevent (postpone would be a better word) the erosion of 110 metres of the cliff immediately in front of the Naze Tower. 1,200 tons of bedding rock and 13,305 tons of armour stone are to be used to protect that length of cliff. They will also provide the foundation of the Crag Walk, which will form a viewing platform in front of the fossil-rich red crag cliffs.

I wouldn’t care to predict whether this work will endure for 50 years or for a longer or shorter time. It is obvious to me though that the sea will continue to nibble away at the cliff on each side of the protected area. This will, after a few years become a roughly 150 yards wide projecting peninsula or salient. A feature of a salient, as old soldiers will confirm, is that the enemy can attack it from both sides as well as from the front – and there is no enemy more implacable than the sea!

In any case, will the proposed crag walk really attract the anticipated ‘wave of tourists’? I‘m a bit doubtful. The cliffs are indeed ‘fossil rich’. I remember many years ago, my two then pre-teenage sons arriving home from cycle excursions to Walton with fossil shells in their pockets and red sandstone dust inextricably permeating their clothes and their hair. I think it unlikely though that those fossils will be visible from the Crag Walk viewing platform and I hardly imagine that visitors will be encouraged to attack the cliff face with clasp knives or similar implements to find them.

Lies, dam’ lies……and Prime Ministerial Pronouncements!

For several weeks we hadn’t heard very much from the Chilcot Enquiry into the Iraq war. There simply hadn’t been any revelations of the kind that make front-page news.

Lady Eliza Manningham-Buller, a grande dame if there ever was one, and Head of MI5 before and during the Iraq War, certainly put that right. Her evidence to the Enquiry was in complete contradiction of statements made by Prime Minister Tony Blair and, of course, his American puppet-master George W. Bush junior.

They, for instance, claimed that Iraq was involved with al-Qaida and thus, indirectly, with the ‘nine-eleven’ outrage. Lady Manningham-Buller said in evidence, ‘There was no credible evidence to support that connection and that was the judgement, I may say, of the CIA’

On weapons of mass destruction, Mr Blair assured the House of Commons that our Intelligence Service had concluded that Saddam Hussein had chemical and biological weapons, that he had military plans for the use of these weapons which could be activated within 45 minutes, and that he was actively trying to acquire nuclear weapons capability. Lady Manningham-Buller said ‘We regarded the direct threat from Iraq as low….we didn’t believe Saddam Hussein had the capability to do anything in the UK. And ‘We were asked to put low-grade, small intelligence into it (the report later known as ‘the dodgy dossier’) and we refused because we didn’t think it was reliable (So had MI5 not refused to publish questionable material, the dodgy dossier would have been even dodgier!)

Mr Blair claimed that as a result of the war ‘I believe we are safer, more secure, that Iraq is better, that our security is better, I believe we are. The world is safer as a result'. He denied repeatedly that the war had acted as a stimulus to the recruitment of terrorists.

Lady Manningham-Butler told the Enquiry, ‘our involvement in Iraq radicalised a generation of young people, who saw it and our involvement in Afghanistan, as an attack on Islam. We in MI5 were swamped with intelligence on a broad scale that was pretty well more than we could cope with in terms of plots, leads to plots and things we needed to pursue. We gave Osama bin Laden his Iraqi jihad, so that he was able to move into Iraq in a way that he was not able to before’. Perhaps the most telling evidence that the danger of terrorism in the UK had increased with the onset of the Iraq war (and that Tony Blair was well aware of this) is that in 2003 Lady Manningham-Butler found it necessary to ask the Prime Minister for a doubling of MI5’s Budget, and the Prime Minister agreed!

I am more than ever proud that my two sons and my grandchildren, with their wives and girlfriends, were among the nearly a million protesters who marched - in vain - through London on the eve of the war, while New Labour MPs trooped like sheep into the ‘Aye Lobby’ to endorse it. Nor can today’s Conservatives congratulate themselves. With one or two honourable exceptions they too supported a course of action that was justified only by deceit, deception and downright lies, that cost, and is still costing, tens of thousands of lives. ‘A plague o’ both your houses!’


Repealing ‘The right to buy’

There was what I believe to have been a highly significant news item on BBC tv’s Breakfast programme this (21st July) morning that the BBC clearly didn’t consider sufficiently important to be repeated on the 6.00 pm national news bulletin. I am sure though that it must have been on the Welsh Regional News.

This was that the Welsh Assembly had passed a law, that was to be given the Queen’s assent at once, permitting Welsh local authorities to rescind the requirements of the ‘Right to Buy’ Act passed by the Thatcher Government in 1980. This Act might more accurately have been described as the ‘Compel to Sell Act’. It compelled local authorities to sell to sitting tenants, at a fraction of their market price, houses that had been built by their far-sighted predecessors to facilitate slum clearance, alleviate overcrowding and generally improve the housing of the working classes.

A great many tenants, naturally enough, took advantage of this generous offer made at other people’s expense. Many elderly folk were helped to ‘own their own homes’ by sons or daughters hoping to benefit under their wills and thus find their own way to home ownership. After ten years (when you’re my age you realize what a short period that is!) the home, bought on the cheap, could be sold at the market price. With, in the ‘80s and ‘90s, constantly rising house prices, this offered a quick way to a fortune.

The best homes were quickly sold off, many in attractive locations, as second homes or as rural bases from which comfortably-off commuters could get to their city offices each day. House prices rose. Banks were happy to finance the purchase of Council Houses, often to those who could ill-afford the repayments. Unsold Council properties degenerated into slums. Homes in rural villages were unaffordable to working people. Since there were now no Council houses to let, many young families whose ancestors had been villagers for generations were compelled to emigrate from the country to the city.

Repealing right to buy is an obviously needed reform that no government has had the courage to make. Thank goodness the Welsh Assembly has taken the first step in the right direction. I hope that others will follow.

A Matter of History

Can David Cameron, our Prime Minister, really have said publicly that in 1940, we British were the junior partners of the USA in the war against Hitler?

What do they teach the kids at Eton these days? Throughout 1940, and for almost the whole of 1941, the USA was neutral, and there were powerful voices in the States urging that it should remain so. It was a country with large ethnic Irish and German populations. While I am quite sure that the overwhelming majority of them had no time at all for Hitler and the Nazis, neither did they feel any great urge to support Britain. As Winston Churchill said, from the time of the fall of France in the spring of 1940, until June 1941, ‘We stood alone’ against the Nazis.

Called up with the Territorial Army at the beginning of September 1939, the Medium Artillery Battery of which I was a member was dug in, heavily camouflaged, near the village of Elmdon in north-west Essex throughout the anxious Battle of Britain summer of 1940. Our 6in howitzers were kept in constant readiness to shell Duxford Aerodrome and blow it to smithereens immediately German airborne troops swarmed in - an event that was expected hourly.

Britain and the Commonwealth stood alone until 21st June 1941 when Hitler’s forces invaded the Soviet Union and we acquired our first powerful ally. On 7th December of the same year the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour and the USA declared war on Japan. Hitler then declared war on the USA in support of his Japanese ally. Would the USA have declared war on Germany at that time had Hitler not moved first? Probably not; there was no treaty obligation to do so. Powerful, and not unreasonable, voices within the USA would undoubtedly have claimed that the American first priority was to defeat the Japanese. They would not have wished to enter an alliance that included the USSR and they would have pointed out to Anglophiles that, in concentrating on Japan, they were supporting the British by easing the Japanese pressure on our forces in India and the Indo-Chinese peninsula. Once they had defeated the Japanese, there would be plenty of time to consider whether or not to confront Hitler.

Hitler made up their minds for them!

In 1941, Hitler’s failure to learn the lessons of history led him to two decisions that made Germany's defeat a certainty. He invaded Russia, ignoring the lessons of Napoleon’s catastrophic experience when he had attempted the same thing in 1812. Then he declared war on the USA, ignoring the much more recent lesson of the effect of the late entry of the USA into World War I, which tipped the balance on the western front decisively in favour of the French and British allies.

Has our Prime Minister forgotten (or perhaps has never learned) the lessons of the fairly recent history of Afghanistan and the Indian sub-Continent? In the 19th Century there was an ignominious defeat of our first attempt (1839 – ’42) to occupy Afghanistan and add it to our Empire, and a not very glorious withdrawal after the second (1878 – 1880). A much more recent attempt on the same lines by the Soviet Union was similarly defeated. On that occasion, today’s Taliban insurgents (then hailed by us as gallant freedom-loving Mojihadin) had enjoyed the covert help of the British and American governments.

There have been four occasions (one very recent) during the present campaign on which members of the Afghan armed forces being trained by British or American troops, have murdered their trainers and fled to join the Taliban. These incidents should surely make us ask whether there may be lessons to be learnt from the Indian Mutiny of 1857/58? Then, native troops whose discipline and loyalty had seemed beyond question, had turned on their British officers, slaughtering them and their families before going on to incite other garrisons to mutiny. Thanks to their British army training, they enjoyed considerable success before the Mutiny was, very bloodily, put down.

There really are lessons to be learned from history, for those who don't imagine that they already 'know it all'!