Week 46 2012

Tendring Topic.....on line

‘They shall not grow old………..’

A Lifetime ago ……….. The last voyage of the SS Scillin

            The SS Scillin was an Italian cargo ship, built in 1903, of some 1,600 tons.  Just seventy years ago, on 13^th November 1942, she was in Tripoli Harbour being loaded with a living cargo of allied prisoners of war to be transported from camps in Libya across the Mediterranean to Italy.  814 prisoners were ordered into her hold which is reported as having been suitable for no more than 300.   There would have been a further 195 but for the vehement protests about the severe overcrowding and insanitary conditions of the prisoners’ accommodation, made by Captain Gilbert a British medical officer

Among the 814 were 50 members of my own regiment, the 67^th Medium Regiment RA. Most of them, like me, were from Ipswich or East Suffolk, were in their early twenties, and had volunteered for the Territorial Army early in 1939.    We had been in action in the Egyptian/Libyan border area since the previous November.  By the end of 1941 we had been involved in a number of successful assaults against German and Italian garrisons in Bardia, Sollum and Wadi Halfaya (Hellfire Pass). In the spring and early summer of 1942 we found ourselves in defensive actions in the desert south and west of Tobruk.  Finally we became part of the Tobruk garrison and were overwhelmed and taken prisoner by Rommel’s Afrikakorps on 21^st June.  My own transportation to POW camps in Italy had been from Benghazi in July on the SS Ravello.  The voyage across the Med. to Taranto had been uneventful and the fact that, after 70 years, I can remember little about it suggests that it can’t have been too awful an experience.

            That of my 50 former comrades in the Scillin was vastly different.  What happened to them, and to all but a handful of the rest of the 814 prisoners crammed into its noisome hold, remained a secret for more than half a century. It was not until 1996 that persistent enquiries by historians and by relatives (among them friends of mine in Ipswich researching the lives of their fathers who had been in my regiment) forced a full revelation from the Ministry of Defence. 

            It transpired that during the night of 14^th November the Scillin was intercepted by the British submarine HMS Sahib.  The submarine surfaced and fired 12 rounds from its 3in deck gun at this unarmed Italian merchant vessel. Ten of these rounds found their target and brought the Scillin to a standstill.   The Sahib then closed to within 750 yards and fired a torpedo at the Scillin’s engine room.  The torpedo did, in fact, explode in the hold and the Scillin sank almost immediately. Only 27 of those 814 prisoners, plus the Scillin’s captain and crew, survived and were picked up by the Sahib.

            At an enquiry the Sahib’s commander (Lt. John Bromage) was cleared of culpability.  He claimed that the Scillin had no lights, had not responded to his initial shelling and had appeared to be heading for Africa.  He had believed it to be carrying Italian troops.

Nor was the Scillin the only Italian vessel to be similarly attacked.  Five other vessels carrying PoWs were attacked by British submarines during 1941 and 1942. These attacks resulted in the deaths from ‘friendly fire’ of a total of 2,000 British and allied PoWs.  It was particularly in  memory of those forgotten 2,000, fifty of whom had been from my regiment and some of whom had been my friends, that I wore my scarlet Flanders poppy on Remembrance Sunday.

A Triumph for Democracy?

          It is said that a somewhat taciturn Scotsman, who had just attended a service at a local church that had a new Minister, was asked what the sermon had been about.  ‘Sin’, he replied.  ‘And what did the Minister have to say about it?’   ‘He was agin it!’

            I feel somewhat like that questioner with regard to the six candidates for the post of Police and Crime Commissioner to the Essex Constabulary, for whom we are all invited to cast our vote on 15^th November. I have already received my ballot paper as I vote by post. I assume that all six applicants are ‘agin’ crime or they’d hardly be standing.   I know their names.  I know that four of them are standing as representatives of political parties (Conservative, Labour, UK Independence Party and English Democrats) and two are Independents.   Apart from what appears to be a political party slogan ‘More Police – Catching Criminals’* after the name of the political party (English Democrats) that candidate Robin  Tilbrook is representing, we know nothing about the candidates other than what we may have seen in the press or on the internet.

            I’m not really blaming the candidates for this.  I daren’t think what delivering an election address to every household in Essex would cost – and the candidates have already had to find £5,000 deposit!  No doubt the government, always ready to save money, declined to go to the expense of a free mail-shot for each candidate!

            To pretend that this election is an exercise in democracy, much less an exercise in the ‘localism’ for which the government claims to be so enthusiastic, is quite ridiculous.  How can one man, or one woman, possibly be able to respond to the needs of residents of a Police Authority Area as large, as populous, and as diverse as Essex?   How can the election of just one person in charge of its police force be, in any sense of the word, ‘democratic’?

            No doubt the old Police Authorities were less than perfect, though I don’t recall hearing very many complaints about them.  There were surely better ways of replacing them than with a single all-powerful individual.  

There was a simple, democratic solution to their replacement that would have empowered local people while saving the government the very considerable expense of this ridiculous election.  Police Authority boundaries coincide with those of County or Unitary Authority.  Why not make the existing democratically elected local authority the Police Authority?  It could perhaps be stipulated that the authority should appoint a Police and Crime Committee of say ten members, representative not of the political parties comprising the council but of the geographical parts of the council’s area?   Then, all voters would have their own member of the Police Committee whom they could contact with regard to policing problems.  Such a system would also have facilitated co-operation between the police and other local authority activities – education and social services for instance.

But we are afflicted with a government convinced that what is best for those living on the other side of the Atlantic must necessarily be best for us. Possibilities other than that of having a single elected commissioner overseeing each constabulary had not, as far as I know, even been considered.  All of this presented me with a dilemma.  If I voted in the election would I be giving support to a process that I believed to be a ridiculously expensive and unnecessary waste of time and money; a cynical negation of the principle of representative democratic control of our Police Services?

 

  My first inclination was to ignore it – or perhaps deliberately spoil my voting paper before posting it back.  Then I realized that although I didn’t know much about the individual candidates, I did know something about the parties that four of them stood for.  Was it just possible that my failure to vote would allow the UKIP candidate, representative of a Party with policies to which I am strongly opposed, to head our Essex Police Force?

            That possibility made me decide that I must vote!  My first choice will be Linda Belgrove, Independent.  She lives in Alresford and is therefore more-or-less local. She was vice-chairman of the Essex Police Authority that is being replaced, so she at least knows what the job is all about.   She has worked for solicitors and has served on the parish council so she is acquainted with the workings of the law and of problems in our area.  She is not the representative of any political party and (this was probably the deciding factor!) on the photographs that I have seen of her in the local press, she has a friendly smile!  I don’t suppose for a moment that she’ll get elected, but I wish her well. 

And my other vote, my second choice in case whoever gets most votes doesn’t get a clear overall majority? I haven’t yet decided.  Perhaps I won’t use it……. or perhaps I will.  I’ll make up my mind just before I slip my voting paper into the envelope provided and post it.

* I'm rather surprised that that was permitted.

Making the most of the Sunshine

            I have no doubt at all that Britain’s best interests lie in developing alternative renewable sources of energy to reduce, and ultimately replace, our reliance on such fossil fuels as coal, gas and oil.  I believe, and the recent great storm affecting North America has strengthened that belief, that neither Middle East terrorism nor ‘the deficit’ but steadily accelerating climate change, is the biggest and most urgent threat to Britain and to the rest of the world of the 21^st century.  The use of fossil fuels, particularly coal, increases that threat.  What’s more, our oil and gas supplies come from notoriously unstable parts of the world and are, in any case, finite.  They will one day – perhaps a few decades, perhaps a century or more ahead – begin to run out and as they do so their price will escalate.

            The production of nuclear energy, although favoured by the government, is – as we have seen in at Chernobyl and, more recently, in Japan – potentially dangerous. Moreover it produces a waste product that remains lethal for centuries, and for which no-one has yet discovered a safe and permanent means of either disposal or storage.

            Safe and infinitely renewable sources of power available to an island nation such as ours lie in the waves that break upon our shores, in the inexorable ebb and flow of the tides, in the wind and in the rays of the sun.  I believe that the power of the waves and of the tides has yet to be fully exploited, but that of the wind and of the sun is currently being harnessed and has infinite further potential for exploitation.

            I am delighted to see the still growing regiment of wind turbines off our north-east Essex coast and have little patience with those who complain they are spoiling the view.  Consider what climatic change, strengthened and accelerated by mankind’s profligate use of fossil fuels, has done for the view of the east coast of the USA!

            A proposal to build on-shore wind turbines never fails to produce local outrage.   They are, and will always be, either too near to people’s homes or alternatively, destroying hitherto unspoilt countryside and a threat to wild life. There was certainly a storm of protest about the proposed provision of wind turbines between Clacton and St Osyth.  Yet now that they are actually in position and operating we hear little about them.  Could it be that they haven’t proved to be quite the noisy, unsightly and health-threatening monsters that protesters had been led to expect?

            Then there’s sunshine – and this really is the Essex Sunshine Coast!   Solar panels have no moving parts so they can’t be noisy. They are effective.  My single solar panel, from which water heated by the sun is circulated in a sealed circuit through my hot water storage cylinder by a pump activated by two small photo-electric cells, supplies nearly all my hot water needs during the summer months.  Winter sunshine preheats the water in the cylinder before it is brought to the required temperature by my gas boiler, and therefore saves money all the year round.

            More ambitious schemes involve virtually covering the sun-side slope of the roof with solar panels that are, in fact, photo-electric cells and convert the sun’s light, rather than its heat, into electric power to be fed back into the national grid, making the householder an actual supplier of electricity.

            I was delighted when I learned that there are plans to provide no less than 40,000 power generating solar panels locally on fields at Chisbon Heath between Great Bentley and St Osyth, and 15,000 at Sladbury’s farm between Holland-on-Sea and Great Holland.  The south-facing solar panels would be no more than three metres off the ground and would be screened from public view by trees and bushes. Together they are expected to produce sufficient electricity to power 4,750 homes.

            There are similar plans further inland.  A £20 million pound solar scheme in Kelvedon will involve 60,000 solar panels and is expected to provide enough power for 7,200 homes.  Wind power we have and solar power is on its way.  If only some practical and economic way can be found to harness the power of the waves that crash on our beaches, Southern East Anglia could be among the leaders of the development of safe and carbon-free means of energy supply.