Week 39 2013

Tendring Topics……….on line

The Kindness of Strangers

          The newspapers and the radio and tv news bulletins are full of stories of human folly and wickedness; of senseless slaughter in the Middle East (can either side of the conflict in Syria really believe that any possible ending will be worth the death, destruction and human misery that is taking place daily in that unhappy country?) of robbery, fraud, neglect and abuse of children and of the old and disabled. They record the triumph of selfishness and greed. It is easy for very old people like me to despair of humanity and to fear the future; not for ourselves but for our grandchildren and their grandchildren.

            I try to tell myself that it is the exception that makes the news; that the time to get really worried is when acts of kindness and generosity are so rare that they make the headlines in the press and the ‘lead story’ on the tv news bulletins. Just occasionally though, something happens that makes me realize that, despite the gloomy headlines and the news stories of violence, cruelty and greed, most people are not a bit like that.  They’re kind and helpful and generous.  They really do try to treat other people as they themselves would like to be treated. .

            I had such a moment on Monday of last week.  I had written a letter to a friend of mine in Brussels.  There were a couple of enclosures to go with it and I had no idea what it would cost to send.  The days when I could stroll along to the Post Office are long past.  Supported by my stick I took the half dozen steps to my shed, mounted my mobility scooter (my ‘Iron Horse’!) and drove the few hundred yards from my home to Magdalene Green Post Office.  There I dismounted, retrieved my stick from its holster and stepped inside.  I had forgotten that Monday was ‘benefits day’.   There was a queue.  I took my place and slowly shuffled forward.  The queue was being dealt with very efficiently and I don’t suppose that I had queued for longer than fifteen minutes before I realized that I had stood for as long as I was able to. I had to sit down or collapse! There was a chair nearby and three people ahead of me in the queue; a youngish woman with a toddler, a middle-aged man with several parcels and an elderly lady who was, I thought, probably drawing her pension.  I told them that I wasn’t trying to jump the queue but would they mind if I sat in the chair until it was my turn to be served? They agreed and I thought it likely that I’d have about another ten or fifteen minutes to wait.

I was totally astonished when the counter clerk became available and called for the next customer.  All three of those who were before me in the queue urged me to take their place and go first. My business at the counter took no more than two minutes. It had been a spontaneous act of kindness and thoughtfulness towards an old man with walking stick whom none of them knew – but it really was deeply appreciated.   There were tears in my eyes as I thanked them for their kindness.

We humans aren’t just half-trained animals, motivated only by greed and self-interest as politicians seem to imagine.   There really is – as we Quakers maintain – a divine spark deep within the personality of each one of us, just waiting to be transformed into a warm, friendly and generous flame.

‘Out of the Tax system?’

I don’t grudge Nick Clegg his minor triumph over the provision of free school meals for all children in the first three classes of primary schools.

It was only to be expected that some would complain about having to help pay to feed other people’s kids – many of those other people being much better off than they are.  Young people, struggling to bring up a family, might equally complain about having to pay for the benefits enjoyed by well-off pensioners.  I can see the difficulties and injustices that would arise if every benefit were to be means-tested.  Pride would prevent some needy folk from applying.  Poor children getting free school meals would be stigmatised by their fellows. Children can be cruel to each other. But there is one ‘means test’ to which we are all subjected – our income tax assessment.  The state retirement pension is taxable. Those pensioners who, like me, have a supplementary pension from former employment, or some other source of income, know that the state retirement pension is added to it and becomes taxable income.

I can see no reason why all universal benefits – children’s allowance, job seekers’ allowance, winter fuel allowance, free tv licence, housing benefit, attendance allowance and so on, should not be similarly taxable.  The really poor would continue to get their full benefit.  The better off would pay back some of it in tax and the really wealthy would pay the highest rate of tax on it.  Even with our tax system as it is at present it would bring some welcome cash back into the Treasury (to help with that deficit!)  It would be fairer than the current system and no-one would suffer real hardship. Income tax has never yet made anyone hungry or homeless. I am surprised that this idea hasn’t already been embraced by our cash-hungry chancellor.

If, of course, the income tax system were to be reformed so that we all – rich and poor alike – paid an equal percentage of our gross income (before thousands are siphoned off into charitable trusts, tax havens and the like!) as income tax or – as I prefer to think of it – as our annual membership fee for British citizenship, the system would be fairer still.  What’s more, I believe that the indirect taxes (VAT, customs duties and so on) that disproportionately penalise the less-well-off could be reduced or even eliminated.  

I very much deplore Nick Clegg’s claiming that the coalition government has benefited low earners by raising the level of income at which income tax becomes payable ‘and taking millions out of the tax system altogether!’ This perpetuates - or tries to perpetuate – the myth, fostered by much of the press, that the only really burdensome tax is income tax.  It divides society into two antagonistic classes – the taxpayers, whose hard work and enterprise keep a parasitic underclass of non-taxpayers in comfort and, in many cases so they claim, in idleness.

Raising the level at which income tax is payable is often presented as helping only the very poorest in society. It isn’t. Raising that level affects and benefits every income tax payer from those who only just become liable for income tax, to the seriously wealthy with an income (I hesitate to say ‘earnings’!) of a million pounds or more a year.  Nor is it true that those who are not liable for income tax pay no taxes to the government.  Since the Thatcher years there has been a shift from direct taxation (income tax, death duties and so on) to indirect taxes such as VAT and customs duties.  The tax is the same for rich and poor alike but the VAT payable on, for instance, a repair to the family car or essential maintenance to the home, makes a far greater dent in the budget of someone with a low income than it does on those of the wealthy.

There’s one source of revenue for the government that comes almost exclusively from the poor.  That is the quite small amount that goes with the purchase of every lottery ticket and every scratch card.  Lots and lots of tiny payments come to a very considerable sum of money.  Even the very poor feel able, as I once heard a Government Minister put it, ‘to have fun on the lottery’.  It is their one, albeit very very remote, chance of gaining a fortune and escaping from grinding poverty.  You’ll look in vain for stockbrokers, merchant bankers or payday money lenders in the queue for lottery tickets and scratch cards.  They prefer to gamble much more profitably and preferably with other people’s money, on the stock exchange!

I wait, probably in vain, for one of the political parties to include in their programme the reform of the income tax system to ensure that every adult citizen, rich and poor alike, pays the same percentage of his of her income to the Inland Revenue as their annual  membership fee as British citizens.  This reform would be the first step towards narrowing the vast gap that at present exists between the incomes of the very rich and the very poor and the transformation of the United Kingdom into a United Common Wealth in the future of which every citizen would have a stake and a responsibility.

'I shall not cease from mental fight,

Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,

Till I have built Jerusalem

In England's green and pleasant land'.

Lord Hanningfield’s Legacy

          When the Police decided to take no other action with regard to Lord Hanningfield’s use of his County Council credit card to spend nearly £300,000 on business trips abroad, expensive meals and hospitality, I commented in this blog that there must have been sighs of relief from some of his colleagues at County Hall. .  Certainly his downfall seems to have heralded a new era of thrift there.

            The daily Gazette reports that Ms. Joanna Killian, the County Council’s Chief Executive appointed in 2006, spent £4,700 on her County Council credit card including a team-building exercise for five members of the council’s staff that included a trip to Colchester Zoo, various expenses during a weeklong trip to Jamestown, Virginia where she and a number of councillors took part in their 400^th anniversary celebrations.  These included ‘a meal for 23 at the Old Original Bookbinders Restaurant that set taxpayers back £1,152.16 and a four-night stay for seven at Jamestown’s Berkeley Hotel that cost £3,436.59’   The purpose of the transatlantic excursion was to ‘create new trade and business links between Essex and Virginia’ ;. and did it, I wonder?   For Christmas 2007 Ms Killian paid Kingsmead Publications £331.35 for personalised corporate Christmas cards.

            That was then.  Now, we have a somewhat different story.  Since 2010 Ms Killian has used the card only seven times – six times for train journeys and once for the renewal of a subscription to the Local Government Chronicle. In 2011 her expenses amounted to just £259.   It seems that we have at least something for which to be grateful for Lord Hanningfield’s example!

Week 38 2013

Tendring Topics…….on Line

Thoughts on an anniversary

            I am typing these words on the twelfth Anniversary of the ‘9/11’ terrorist attack on the ‘Twin Towers’ of New York, a terrorist attack that was one of the pretexts for the invasion of Iraq and the reason for the bombing and invasion of Afghanistan. I consulted ‘Google’ to check my memories of the event (I remember that when we first switched on the tv during the afternoon of 11^th September 2001 my wife and I imagined we were watching a preview of a sci.fi. disaster movie!)

            I did learn from Google that the CIA had published the names and nationalities of nineteen terrorists who had played leading roles in the outrage.  They were all members of Al Qaeda  To my surprise I found that fifteen of them were from Saudi-Arabia, two from the United Arab Emirates, one from Egypt and one from Lebanon.  There was not a single terrorist from Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan or Syria.   Yet those are supposed to be the ‘rogue states’ that harbour and encourage terrorists and must be brought to heel by the ‘free world’, while Saudi-Arabia and the U.A.E. are trusted allies.

 Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E are the main supporters and suppliers of arms to the rebel forces trying to topple the present Assad government in Syria.  They are now expressing their anger and dismay at the fact that the USA has at least postponed its  punitive missile attacks on the Syrian government while it pursues the possibility of that government handing over its store of chemical weapons to the ‘international community’. Prominent among those rebel forces in Syria is Al Qaeda, the organisation that undoubtedly was responsible for 9/11.  We, the Americans and the French are currently giving them moral support and helping to supply them with all their needs short of actual weaponry!

            The British and American governments are said to have ‘compelling evidence’ that the Assad government was responsible for the chemical attack that undoubtedly killed a very large number of Syrian civilians a fortnight ago.  We haven’t yet  been allowed to see that ‘compelling evidence’.  Is it, I wonder, as irrefutable as the evidence for Saddam Hussein’s possession of weapons of mass destruction that lured us into the invasion of Iraq?

 Intelligence Services are made up of fallible humans, with human strengths and human weaknesses. They receive and analyse scores of often-contradictory reports daily.  It would be surprising if they didn’t emphasise the importance of evidence that their political paymasters want to hear, and minimise or discard that which they don’t.  Evidence from Saudi Arabia is very likely to be biased against the Assad Government. Assad is the wrong sort of Muslim! So, I fear is evidence from Mossad, Israel’s secret service.   We know that Israel doesn’t like the present Syrian government, if only because of its ties of friendship with Iran.  We also know that Mossad is utterly ruthless in defence of what it considers to be Israel’s interests.  It has carried out assassinations, kidnappings and forgery (of British Passports, for example, to make it possible for assassins to get closer to their target).   I do not think that, if they considered it to be in Israel’s interest, they’d have any problem with bearing false witness.

            I hope that the current initiative for peace does succeed.  I wonder if the prayers of millions of people world-wide inspired by the Pope’s appeal to all  humanity have been heard – and answered.  I think that armed interference by foreigners like ourselves on behalf of either side can only add to the death and destruction.

            What is needed is for all foreign fighters, on both sides, to go back to their homelands.  Then, free of foreign interference, for the Syrians on both side of the conflict to lay down their arms and get on with the task of rebuilding their lives and their shattered country.   I am quite sure that they would receive generous help in doing so from well-wishing, peace-loving, folk world-wide. ‘Blessed are the peacemakers…..’

Pots and Kettles!

            I am sometimes embarrassed by the patronising ‘holier than thou’ attitude of our top politicians and those of the USA with regard to the sins of other governments. We don’t mistreat prisoners of war, bomb harmless civilians, threaten others with nuclear weapons and so on – and on.   All fine – until we are stopped in our tracks by allegations of the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners by British soldiers, the torture and killing of terrorist suspects during the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya and, going back a little, the blanket fire raids on civilian centres like Dresden in World War II.  Going back even further it comes as something of a shock to learn that it was  neither Hitler nor Stalin but we Brits. who invented Concentration Camps.  The very first of these was built by the British for the confinement of Boer Families during the South African War

         When we hear politicians on both sides of the Atlantic threatening dire consequences if this, that or the other regime manages to acquire a nuclear weapon, it is worth remembering that the only country that has ever used these dreadful weapons to kill fellow human beings (men, women and children 'in one red burial blent') was the USA when, with full British approval, they dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945!  

.      I am amazed that the Americans have the gall to lecture others on the wickedness of Chemical Weapons when there are something like half a million Vietnamese children with serious physical or mental defects as a result of the use by the USA of Agent Orange as a defoliant during the Vietnam War. About three million were affected altogether.

       The reason why some 20 million gallons of  herbicides and defoliants were poured onto the forests of Vietnam was not primarily to kill or maim little children but to get rid of the trees and bushes that provided cover for the Vietcong – but kill and maim the  innocent they certainly did.  It was, at the very best, recklessly irresponsible.  In 2010 a joint U.S.A /Vietnam Commission recommended .that the U.S. should pay $300 million in compensation for the victims and towards the repair of the ecosystem. To date the USA has paid nothing.

Then, of course, there was the use of Napalm, a particularly unpleasant chemical weapon – a burning gel that adheres to the body or clothes of its victims causing intense agony and death.  One of the most striking news pictures of that dreadful war was of the little nine year old girl who had torn off her burning clothing and was running naked with other refugees from a Vietnamese village concealed by smoke and consumed by flame..   A South Vietnam Air Force plane had committed  that particular war crime – but their US allies had supplied the Napalm, and had used it themselves often enough in Vietnam..

That naked and terrified little girl, although badly burnt, survived and currently lives in Canada.   Here is a message that she sends to all humankind.  If only we all heeded it!

‘Forgiveness made me free from hatred. I still have many scars on my body and severe pain most days but my heart is cleansed. Napalm is very powerful, but faith, forgiveness, and love are much more powerful. We would not have war at all if everyone could learn how to live with true love, hope, and forgiveness. If that little girl in the picture can do it, ask yourself: Can you?’ 

Well, can you?

Clacton Quakers

The interior, Clacton Quaker Meeting House

     Regular readers of this blog will know that I am a Quaker (a member of the Religious Society of Friends).  My wife Heather and I joined the Quakers in Ipswich in 1948 and became members of Clacton-on-Sea  Quaker Meeting in 1955 when we moved to this area.   We celebrated and gave thanks for our silver, ruby, golden and diamond wedding anniversaries in the Clacton Quaker Meeting House, and the Meeting House was full when we gave thanks for Heather's life at a Memorial Meeting for Worship there on 30th July 2006.

Our golden wedding celebration 1996

       I still try to get to our Sunday morning Quaker Meeting for Worship every week.

       We Clacton Quakers now have our own web site.  If you'd like to know more about the faith that inspires me to write 'Tendring Topics....on line' each week, click onto www.quaker.org.uk (that's the official national Quaker website) but if you'd like to know more about the Quaker Meeting of which I have been a member for over half a century click onto www.clactonquakers.org. 

Week 37 2013

Tendring Topics…….on Line

Syria – Pope Francis’ plea to all humanity.

The following message from Pope Francis, addressed to all humanity, believers and nonbelievers alike, was sent to all Roman Catholic Churches throughout the world declaring 7^th September to be a day of fasting and prayer for peace in Syria, for Roman Catholics worldwide.  ‘Churches Together’ in Clacton circulated the message to all the town’s Christian churches.  It was read and welcomed at our Quaker Meeting for Worship on Sunday 8^th September, and Syria was indeed especially in our thoughts and prayers  on that morning, and has been subsequently.

           

I appeal strongly for peace, an appeal which arises from deep within me.

How much suffering, how much devastation, how much pain has the use of arms carried in its wake in that martyred country, especially among civilians and the unarmed!  Never has the use of violence brought peace in its wake. War begets war, violence begets violence.

I make a forceful and urgent call to the entire Catholic Church, and also to every Christian of other confessions, as well as to followers of every religion  and to those brothers and sisters who do not believe: peace is a good which overcomes every barrier, because it belongs to all of humanity!

I repeat forcefully: it is neither a culture of confrontation nor a culture of conflict which builds harmony within and between peoples, but rather a culture of encounter and a culture of dialogue; this is the only way to peace.  To this end, brothers and sisters, I have decided to proclaim for the whole Church on 7 September next, a day of fasting and prayer for peace in Syria, the Middle East, and throughout the world.

On 7 September, in Saint Peter’s Square, here, from 19:00 until 24:00, we will gather in prayer and in a spirit of penance, invoking God’s great gift of peace upon the beloved nation of Syria and upon each situation of conflict and violence around the world.

Humanity needs to see these gestures of peace and to hear words of hope and peace!

I ask all the local churches, in addition to fasting, that they gather to pray for this intention.

Pope Francis,

           

Changing the Image.

          Clacton has had some pretty bad publicity recently.  Readers of the sensational press may know it as the town that reverses the national, and indeed the Essex, trend of steadily reducing rates of crime!  Robberies have increased here of late and there have been one or two well publicised murders, including one of an off-duty policeman.  It is also a town to which economic migrants make their way with the result that its centre is a ‘benefits ghetto’. Clacton-on-Sea (with Hastings and Blackpool) is one of those run-down seaside resorts that the government is trying hard to revive, and and the Brooklands Estate in Jaywick, its western suburb, is officially the United Kingdom’s most deprived area.   It conjures up an image of a town to be avoided at all costs, full of thieves and beggars, where the natives are probably surly and rude, the shops that are still open are the prey of thieves and vandals, and from which visitors are lucky to escape with their goods intact, perhaps even lucky to escape with their lives!

            We natives and the thousands of people who actually visit our town every year know that Clacton  isn’t in reality a bit like that.  We know that Clacton is one of the most attractive towns in south-east England in which to live or to visit.  My childhood home was in Ipswich and I used to look forward to occasional trips (Sunday school outings and the like!) to Clacton’s pier and sandy beaches as the highlight of my summer holidays in the late 1920s and the ‘30s.  I have lived here, in the same bungalow in Clacton’s Dudley Road since 1956.  I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.

            For bathers or paddlers Clacton’s beaches are sandy and gently sloping – far better and safer for instance than those at either Hastings or Brighton or, in the other direction, Felixstowe. There are beautiful cliff-top gardens and a range of lively attractions on the pier – and there’s certainly no shortage of cafés, restaurants and seaside pubs.  Clacton is now the only holiday resort on the East Anglian Coast that has an annual air show.  It brings thousands of visitors to the town’.  It is likely that not one of them will have seen any evidence of either deprivation or criminal activity.

            Clacton, and the nearby resorts of Dovercourt, Frinton, Walton-on-the-Naze and Brightlingsea are also blest with the lowest average rainfall in the United Kingdom.   The actual driest spot in the whole country is said to be the historic village of St. Osyth about three miles as the crow flies from my front door!  When I was a keen gardener that was a somewhat mixed blessing but nowadays I’m happy to enjoy the summer sunshine as I listen to the low hum of the solar-activated electric pump supplying me with free hot water from the solar panel on my bungalow’s roof!

            Clacton does have problems due to the closure in recent years of businesses employing local people (Butlins Holiday Camp, the Empire Synthetic Rubber Company in Clacton and BX Plastics in nearby Manningtree for instance) and the arrival of ‘economic refugees’ from London driven here by the soaring rental charged for  even the most basic homes in the capital. This, coupled with the government’s ‘bedroom tax’ and ‘benefit ceiling’, makes it impossible for low earners to live in London. Our relatively close proximity to the capital, that encourages Londoners to come here  for sun, sea and fun, also means that others can come here seeking cheap housing accommodation in substandard properties intended for summer holiday use only, or in former holiday guest houses converted into single room ‘lodgings’ for the poor.

            What Clacton really needs is some positive publicity, aimed at instilling in the mind of the public Clacton as a very desirable holiday and day-trip destination and a wonderful town to live in – which it is. It is sad that over the years the Tendring District Council has systematically nibbled away at Clacton Publicity in order to save money, cut the Council Tax, and please the government.

            In the late 1950s and 1960s when I was a Public Health Inspector, Clacton council had a weather observation centre with its main feature an enclosure on the green in front of the Martello Tower near Clacton Hospital.  There was a ‘Stevenson Screen’ within the enclosure with maximum and minimum, and dry and wet bulb thermometers.  In the grass nearby was a rain gauge and on the roof of the Martello Tower was a sunshine recorder giving the number of hours of bright sunshine every day.

            We three Public Health Inspectors and the Council’s cleansing superintendent  took turns, one week on, three weeks off, at recording the readings evening and morning for 365 days of the year, and phoning the figures on in the evening to an anonymous voice at the Air Ministry.   Most national dailies carry a list of weather reports from holiday resorts each day.  A typical Clacton report in July would be ten hours of sunshine, clear skies, no rainfall and a maximum temperature of 75 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade.  Not a lot, but it must have built up in many readers’ minds the fact that Clacton was a holiday destination with low rainfall and lots of sunshine.

            Nowadays you’ll look in vain for a Clacton weather report in the press.  Similarly, Clacton was very proud, and with reason, of its parks and gardens department responsible for those lovely cliff-top gardens.   The department used to exhibit in all the agricultural shows in East Anglia – and come away with the top prizes.  But that was another piece of positive publicity that got the axe soon after local government reorganisation in 1974 when Clacton Council ceased to exist and was merged with Frinton-and-Walton, Brightlingsea, Harwich and Tendring Rural District into the new Tendring District Council

            My elder son Pete, who founded his own IT consultancy serving local and other public authorities nationwide and who is a member by invitation of the Institute of Directors, feels that his home town should ‘blow its own trumpet’ a lot more loudly and a lot more widely. He says that there were once adverts for Clacton in the London ‘Evening Standard’ and on Stratford Railway Station.   The Evening Standard is now a free newspaper with a much bigger circulation than before and Stratford is an international interchange and ten times busier than in the past – but neither carries Clacton Adverts!  He urges that we should aim at the mainland European market. ‘You know from your own recent experience’ he emailed me, ‘what a good impression Clacton made on two German teenage girls who had never previously seen the sea’

            He also thinks that Clacton-on-Sea has great unrealised potential as a commuter town.  He says that, ‘Enfield Council actually pay the rail company to run extra trains, stopping at minor stations. Tendring Council could do the reverse to produce the same effect.  Why don’t they negotiate with the Railway Company for some express trains to stop only at Colchester and Clacton.  This would reduce journey time to just over an hour with which commuters would be happy.  Then get a developer to build some luxury apartments within walking distance of both the station and the beach.  People commuting to the city have money to spend and they would spend it in local restaurants and fashion shops if they were up to standard.

            Well, the government is handing a few million pounds to deprived seaside resorts like Clacton, Blackpool and Hastings. Tendring’s Council Leader Peter Halliday says he is going to do his hardest to get Clacton its fair share.  And, if they get it, what will the Council spend it on?   They could do a lot worse than follow some of the suggestions above to restore Clacton-on-Sea’s image to the one it enjoyed in the not-so-distant past.

Week 36 2013

Tendring Topics……..on line

SURELY NOT AGAIN!

Britain’s involvement with the Islamic Middle East and North Africa

          For more than two centuries the United Kingdom has again and again been involved in armed conflict in North Africa and the Middle East. Empire building during the 19^th century we twice tried, and failed, to occupy and subdue Afghanistan by force.  In that same century we were involved with Egypt and the Sudan as well as with southern Africa.  During World War I, since Turkey was an ally of Germany, we were involved with the whole of the Near and Middle East from the Balkans and Egypt to what was then called Mesopotamia (now Iraq).  Conflict during World War II involved both the whole of the Middle East and the whole of North Africa.  During that war I was a gunner in the Royal Artillery and was in action in the frontier area of Egypt and Libya throughout the winter, spring and early summer of 1941 and 1942.  My active military career came to an abrupt end when Tobruk in Libya fell to Rommel’s Afrikakorps on 21^st June 1942!

            In recent years the pace has accelerated.   To our shame the UK and the USA supported the ‘gallant Afghan Mojihadin’ in their armed resistance to Soviet occupation in the 1980s – thereby financing, training and encouraging the ‘terrorist extremists’, still killing ‘our boys’ in Afghanistan who for the past ten years have been engaged in a mission similar to that of the Soviets in an earlier decade.   All British and other NATO troops are to be withdrawn in the near future.  My guess is that, after an initial blood-bath of Afghans who are considered to have helped the NATO forces, within a year Afghanistan will be as it was before either the Soviet or the NATO interventions.

The Gulf Wars and Iraq’s ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’

            In the meantime the UK has been involved in two Iraq or ‘Gulf’ wars.  We became a combatant in the second bloodier one as a result of false claims that the Iraqi government had been somehow involved in the 9/11 terrorist attack, and that they possessed concealed ‘weapons of mass destruction’ threatening the peace of the region and of the whole world.  What nonsense!  And I believe that those who deceived Parliament and much of the Press into supporting the invasion of Iraq were well aware that both claims were nonsense!   On the eve of the invasion millions of Brits protested – in vain!  I am proud of the fact that both my sons and daughters in law, and my grandchildren (by then, children no more!) were among the protesters.

            Could it be said that the end has justified the means?  Our invasion gained hundreds of recruits for El Qaeda, who had been responsible for the 9/11 terrorist attack and who had hardly had a foothold in Iraq prior to our action there! Nowadays scarcely a week goes by without news of a terrorist bomb attack by one or other of the country’s warring factions killing scores of innocent Iraqi civilians.  The Iraqi Christian community, once an influential and tolerated minority, has been subject to constant attacks by Islamist zealots.  Those of them who can get out of the country have done so.   It would surprise me if today there are not thousands of Iraqis who look back on the rule of Saddam Hussein as a golden age!   There’s certainly no sign of any benefit that might have arisen from that ill-considered and illegal invasion.

‘The Arab Spring’ – in Libya and Egypt

            Next came Libya.  Our involvement started innocently enough with the enforcement of a ‘no fly zone’ to prevent Colonel Gaddafi’s forces from bombing innocent civilians.   Soon we were offering every kind of help short of of troops on the ground, to the rebels. Any bombing of innocent civilians was being done by us! The government forces were defeated and Colonel Gaddafi murdered.  At least that prevented him from telling the world at his trial all about Tony Blair and the other dear friends in ‘the west’ who had supported him while it had suited them to do so!

It is now over a year since Gaddafi was overthrown and the elected government hasn’t yet managed to rule and control the country effectively.  Corruption is rife.  Benghazi, where the rebellion against Gaddafi began, is said to be ruled by armed militia and militant Islamists.  Cemeteries of our dead from World War II have been vandalised and desecrated, and Libya isn’t considered to be a safe destination for British travellers.  It is hardly the outcome for which Cameron, Haig and Co did battle from their comfortable Whitehall armchairs!

Then there’s Egypt.   There, many people in Britain who wished the Egyptians well had high hopes.   A bloodless revolution of ordinary people overthrew an unpopular autocratic President and democratic elections were held. The new elected President represented the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s largest single political party but by no means representative of the majority of the Egyptian people.  A great many Egyptians  (in particular Egypt’s Coptic Christians, long established - longer than Islam in fact - and ten percent of the total population) feared the outcome.

They did so with good reason. Just like Hitler (who also was democratically elected in the first instance) Morsi, the new President, began to appoint members of his own party, the Muslim Brotherhood, into positions of power and influence and to transform Egypt from a tolerant liberal multi-faith democracy into an Islamic State, introducing the Muslim Brotherhood’s version of Sharia law.  Attacks on Christian Churches and individuals increased, though the British Church Times records that other Muslims, not members or supporters of the Brotherhood, attempted to defend their Christian neighbours against these attacks.

This was emphatically not what those tens of thousands of Egyptians who had toppled the Mubarak regime had wanted.  They gathered once again in their thousands to protest at the democratically elected President whom they believed was abusing his position of power.  At the same time there were mass demonstrations supporting President Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood.  The Egyptian Army came down on the side of those opposing a Muslim Brotherhood takeover.  They arrested President Morsi and created a new interim Government.  Demonstration sit-downs by thousands of Muslim Brotherhood supporters threatened to bring life in Cairo to a stand-still..  The army claims, probably truthfully, that they tried to persuade the demonstrators to disperse peacefully – and failed.  They then resorted to what armies are best at – the use of force! They opened fire on the demonstrators, killing or wounding hundreds of them.  The demonstrators were dispersed.  They had achieved their objectives though.  Scores – perhaps hundreds – of innocent victims were proclaimed to be ‘martyrs’. The Muslim Brotherhood gained the sympathy and verbal support of the Western World.

And that’s where the situation remains today. I can’t see any solution.  I am sure that supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood will refuse to accept the result of any new election producing a non-Brotherhood President, and they are sufficiently numerous and resolute to sabotage any attempt to liberalise Egypt into a freedom-loving parliamentary democracy.  Fortunately there has so far been no suggestion that the UK, the USA, or NATO should intervene in this conflict.

SYRIA

I am delighted that Britain will not now be joining the USA and France in bringing even more death and destruction to unhappy Syria in the guise of ‘punishing a war crime’.   Thursday 29^th August 2013 will surely go into the history books as the day when, through their elected MPs in the House of Commons, the British public made it clear that the UK had meddled militarily in Middle East politics long enough.  Since the beginning of the armed rebellion against the Syrian government our government has been giving moral and practical support to the rebels, despite the fact that among them are committed terrorists including members of El Qaeda. Would the revelation, on our tv screens, of a particularly horrifying incident in which scores of civilians – men, women and little children - had died in agony as a result of what appeared to be a ‘chemical weapons attack’ provide justification for British military intervention together with the USA and France?.

The Prime Minister recalled MPs from their summer holidays to consider the issue. At first he had hoped to get, on 29^th August, approval from parliament for immediate military action.  That was modified so as to delay a final decision until after the report of the United Nations’ Inspectors, currently investigating the incident, had been received.  Our Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary were quite sure that a chemical attack had taken place and that the Assad government was responsible.  Many others were far less certain.  Yet others believed that, even if all the allegations were true, our military intervention would be more likely to add to the toll of slaughtered innocent civilians than to stop the killing.

Was the Syrian government responsible for that particular atrocity?  I don’t know.  It is difficult to believe though that, at the precise moment when UN weapons inspectors had arrived in Damascus to investigate alleged chemical attacks, the Syrian Government would launch a very conspicuous and well-publicised attack of the very kind the inspectors were investigating.  As George Galloway, Respect MP, said at the debate – President Assad may be bad but he’s surely not mad! Even if the Syrian government was wicked enough to launch such an attack upon civilians, can they possibly have been so stupid as to provoke the righteous anger of the whole world without gaining any discernible military advantage?

 Certainly it is the rebels who have benefited from the attack.  It seems probable that the USA and France – even without the UK – will launch punishing blows on their enemies, possibly altering the course of the war and bringing defeat on the Syrian government..  It has been said that it couldn’t possibly have been the rebels who used the lethal substances because they don’t possess the capability of manufacturing or buying them and, in any case, they would surely not use them against civilians who may have been their supporters.

Perhaps they couldn’t have bought or manufactured those materials themselves, but they undoubtedly have powerful and wealthy friends and allies (Saudi Arabia for instance and other of the Gulf States) who could have obtained them and smuggled them into Syria.  I don’t think they’d have been deterred by the thought of causing a few score – or even a few hundred – civilian deaths.  They would be just collateral damage on the way to final victory – and in any case, they’d all be martyrs and, as such, assured of a place in Heaven.

Much has been made of the claim that prior to the latest most serious attack there had been 14 other incidents in which chemical weapons had been used by government forces.  Did those alleged incidents occur before or after President Obama and Prime Minister Cameron had publicly declared that the use of chemical weapons would change their whole attitude towards the conflict?   If after then the rebels are clearly suspect.

  In the end the debate back-fired spectacularly onto the government. Parliament didn’t decide to postpone a final decision until the weapons inspectors had made their report.  They made a decision there and then that they didn’t want military action – and the Prime Minister, however reluctantly, has accepted that decision.

Will the UKs decision not to join with the USA in a punitive action against the Syrian government reduce Britain’s status in the world and harm the ‘special relationship’.  It is surely more important to do what is right – and refrain from doing what is clearly wrong, than to gain international popularity. As for the ‘special relationship’ it has always surely been understood that the USA and the UK do not necessarily always have identical objectives and priorities.

 Despite the ‘special relationship’ Britain did not join with the USA in its campaign in Vietnam.  In Harold Wilson we had a Prime Minister with sufficient strength of character to refuse Britain’s support for what proved to be a disastrous American adventure. Neither did the USA support Britain in the Falklands.  In October 1983 (almost exactly twenty years ago) the USA led an unprovoked invasion of the Caribbean island state of Grenada to unseat an elected socialist government that was in danger of setting a good/bad (delete as preferred) example to its south and central American neighbours.  The USA President (Ronald Regan) didn’t even bother to notify Grenada’s Head of State of his intention to invade that island and enforce a ‘regime change’. Grenada was part of the British Commonwealth and its Head of State was our Queen, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.  Mrs Thatcher was her Prime Minister.  She seems to have been more of a ’tinfoil’ than an ‘iron lady’ on that occasion!

Since those incidents don’t appear to have damaged transatlantic friendship I  don’t see why our present disinclination to join with the USA in its ‘punishment’ of the Syrian Government should do so.