‘Sing, Choirs of Angels’
Have you watched that extraordinary choirmaster Gareth Malone on tv, creating award-winning choirs from the most unpromising material? We first saw him produce a choir from a very ordinary comprehensive school that proved itself capable of competing internationally in Beijing,. Then came a choir from a tough rugger-playing school where pupils and staff were convinced that singing was a leisure occupation for girls only. He persuaded not only the pupils but the very macho sports master, to take part. The climax was a performance at the Albert Hall!
Next he produced a choir from the residents in a new town on London’s outskirts populated by folk from London’s East End. I am quite sure that not one of his choristers had previously had even a passing acquaintance with Latin or Greek.. Yet the climax of Gareth’s efforts saw them singing the Agnus Dei (O Lamb of God) prayer extremely creditably in Latin at St. Alban’s (I think) Cathedral.
His latest exploit has been to produce a choir in a small garrison town from the wives and girlfriends left behind there while the troops were doing a six months stint in Afghanistan. Once again he worked a miracle and created a choir that performed in the open air in Plymouth for Armed Forces Day and at the Albert Hall for the British Legion’s Festival of Remembrance. While doing so he managed to weld these waiting-and-worrying women into a close self-supportive community.
Those programmes, transmitted over the Remembrance Day period, brought vividly to my mind the anxiety that mothers, wives and girlfriends must have experienced during World War II. We temporary soldiers went overseas, not for a fixed period of six months but ‘for the duration’. There was no home leave from North Africa or the Far East. Separated wives today know where their husbands are serving and roughly what they are doing. There is postal and internet communication and there are regular phone calls. Our wives, mothers and girlfriends didn’t even know for sure in which country we were serving. Our mail was addressed to Middle East Forces. When I was captured with the fall of Tobruk to the Germans, my mother was simply informed that I was ‘missing’. She imagined the worst (I realize that I am very like her in some respects!) and it was several weeks before she learned from a friendly Roman Catholic neighbour that my name had been among those broadcast over the Vatican Radio as being a Prisoner of War in Italy.
Our wives and girlfriends weren’t able just to wait and worry. They were part of the conflict. My girlfriend Heather Gilbert worked in central London (near the British Museum) in the office of a printer. One morning she arrived at the office to find that it had disappeared. There had been a overnight air raid and it was now just a pile of rubble. Nor did Ilford, where she lived with her parents, escape the Luftwaffe’s attention. She lived through the blitz, the pilotless ‘doodlebugs’ and the V2 rocket attacks. Her life in the early 1940s was scarcely less perilous than my own.
After my return to England I had to spend almost another year in the Army. We were married just four days after I had shed my khaki uniform for good!
That was another big difference between us and the soldiers and their wives of today. They are professional soldiers, who chose the life and everything that goes with it. We were citizen soldiers, civilians in uniform, who had volunteered for the army because our country was threatened by Nazism and Fascism, evils that we believed could only be eradicated by force of arms. We were not prepared stand by and let others get on with it. When it was over though, we couldn’t wait to get back into civvies!
We served the guns and did our duty as soldiers but most of us detested the spit-and-polish, the parades, the rifle drill and the barked orders that are an inescapable part of army life. We had a word for it that I prefer not to repeat in this blog.
Those of ‘The fallen’ whom I knew best shared my distaste. It is for that reason that I have reservations about attending British Legion ceremonies of remembrance. I don’t care for the quasi military berets worn by many Legionnaires, the clipped words of command, the ceremonial raising and lowering of the flags. I do appreciate the two minutes shared silence though and – irrationally perhaps – I am always deeply moved by the sounding of the Last Post before the silence and of Reveille with its message of hope, at its end.
The Murdoch Empire
Hardly had the enquiry into the dubious activities of our national press opened than there were fresh revelations. Phone hacking was by no means limited to the News of the World. It would have been astonishing if it had been. I confidently expect to hear more scandalous revelations – phone hacking, surveillance of celebrities to the point of harassment, bribery of the police and threats to whistle-blowers.
What concerns me most will probably not even get a mention. It is certainly not illegal and I really don’t see any way in which it could easily be made so. Yet it surely poses a real threat to our national sovereignty; a far more dangerous threat than that posed by ‘Brussels’, the pet hate of the Europhobes!
It is the way in which millionaire newspaper owners can influence and bend our political leaders to their will. Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and David Cameron all made a point of friendship with Rupert Murdoch, head of News International. I have no doubt at all that Tony Blair created ‘New Labour’ to obtain the approval of the News International Empire and thus to gain the support of the Sun. Thus he could, and did, make his ‘reformed’ Party ‘electable’ – though, in my opinion, not worth electing! I have no idea to what extent the other Prime Ministers may have changed their Party’s policies to bring them in line with Mr Murdoch’s ideas – but I am sure that they certainly wouldn’t have taken any steps that they knew might antagonise him. It is worth noting that the takeover of the whole of BSkyB by News International was destined to be approved on the nod – until the phone hacking story broke.
If we are to have a truly free press then we must somehow deprive wealthy and powerful men and women of their power to influence the will of the electorate. There is nothing new about this malign influence. Who can say how much damage to our preparedness to resist Hitler was done by the confident Daily Express headline in 1938 and early 1939, ‘There will be no war this year – or next year either!’ I was reminded of this a week or so ago when I watched on tv a wartime cinema classic, 'In which we Serve'. As a British vessel sank under submarine attack, a copy of the Daily Express with that infamous headline came floating by!
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In particular, I believe that we must never allow the British press, a powerful moulder of public opinion, to be controlled by those who are not British citizens and owe no loyalty to our country. This, I believe, should apply to American billionaires as much as to Russian oligarchs!
Black Clouds and Silver Linings!
Very often in my life, circumstances that have seemed to be totally disastrous have turned out instead to be well-disguised blessings. As a POW in Italy in 1943 I well remember my dismay and dejection when, after the collapse of the Italian Fascist government and the surrender of its successor to the Allies, German tanks surrounded our POW camp. We found ourselves locked into cattle trucks (just like the transports to the death camps!) on our way to further captivity in Germany.
To my surprise I found that at a small working camp in Germany conditions were far better than they had been in a large PoW camp in Italy. That was not everyone’s experience but it was mine. What is more, my quite unknowing and involuntary role as a PoW, in the ‘rescue’ of a nearly six centuries old priceless linen artefact (Zittau’s ‘Lenten Veil’) has assured me a welcome in the town where I was once a prisoner, and has provided me with an interest and a purpose in my old age.
I was bitterly disappointed when, as Clacton’s Housing Manager, I failed to secure the post of Director of Housing to the new Tendring District after 1974’s local government reorganisation. However, because of my experience as a spare-time writer and public speaker, I was appointed as the new authority’s first Public Relations Officer – an even more satisfying, though less well paid, job. I was again very apprehensive when, after seven years service as PRO, an internal reorganisation introduced by the Council’s new Chief Executive, meant that if I were to retain my self-respect I had no option but to seek early retirement. I knew that my wife and I would have had to struggle to survive on my far from gold-plated pension, and at 59 I was too old to find other congenial employment. My early retirement though, led to a far more satisfying second career as a freelance author and journalist, a profession that I was to follow for over twenty more years!
Nationally, sad to say, we seem to have lately been experiencing a reverse effect – directly a promised silver lining appears on the horizon a big black cloud pops up in front of it! That Royal Wedding for instance at the end of April; it was supposed to be going to bring us wealth from visitors to Britain eager to share in the pomp and ceremony of the occasion, and extra economic activity from the sale of souvenirs and the like. To untutored minds like mine that all sounded very reasonable. Ultimately though, the Royal Wedding was one of the causes put forward by the government as a reason for a disappointing economic performance during that period. Could it have been because it involved an extra public holiday when those fortunate enough to have jobs stopped their feverish ‘wealth creation’ for an extra twenty-four hours? Next year’s Olympic Games were also supposed to be bringing a great influx of visitors eager to spend their money in Britain. Perhaps they will – eventually. Right now though, 2012’s bookings for holiday and tourist accommodation are fewer than those for previous years. Potential visitors prefer to avoid the Olympics crush!
Locally, Tendring Council’s ‘Tourism boss’ (Councillor Mayzes) seems determined to wreck Tendring District’s development as a leading holiday resort area.
Our Coastal Academy School Governors were astute enough, during the school holiday period, to secure the interest of the Caravan and Camping Club of Great Britain, the largest and most prestigious holiday leisure club in the UK. For the first time ever, their members held a brief rally on the school’s spacious playing fields, patronising local businesses and clearing up the site meticulously on their departure. Was Councillor Mayzes delighted? Not a bit of it. He was furious that caravans should violate ‘a school playground’ (some playground!) and sought to invoke the planning laws to prevent it happening! Then again, after a largely disappointing summer season, we had a couple of weeks of ‘Indian summer’ towards the end of September and into October. Our holiday coast enjoyed a belated boom as visitors poured in from Colchester, Ipswich and London to enjoy the last of the late summer sunshine. What did they find? No safety patrols on the beaches and Tourist Enquiry offices closed. Tendring’s ‘Tourism Boss’ had decided that the summer season had ended on 31 August and (no doubt congratulating himself of having saved the council a few pounds) had closed these facilities down.
Christmas is coming – a time when many retail businesses in Clacton hope to make sufficient profit to help them through to the holiday season again. Don’t tell me that the Government is going to blame the Christmas and New Year holidays if there is disappointing economic activity in that period!
The Government has already blamed their predecessors for our financial predicament. They have blamed the EU and, in particular, the Eurozone. They have blamed ‘Public Sector’ pensions and they have blamed ‘benefit cheats’. Could they be about to add Santa Claus to the list?
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