Tendring Topics.......on line
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
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
18th May 1921, the son of Regimental Sergeant-Major Frederick
Charles Hall, was baptised at St. Michael’s Garrison Church, Tidworth on 26th
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.
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