Week 27 2014

Tendring Topics……..on line

A democratic choice?

         Democracy;  rule by the people;  is such a wonderful idea and so obviously (to us) a very desirable form of government.  It is said to have originated in ancient Greece, where every individual city claimed to be a democracy. They weren’t democratic by our standards. It never even occurred to anyone that women should have a vote, and there was a large slave population who were excluded from any role in decision making, though they did all the hard work that made those city-states habitable.

            In Europe, including of course the United Kingdom, democracy as we know it today has a fairly short history.  Even the Chartists, the ‘loony lefties’ of the 19^th century only demanded universal male suffrage*. It wasn’t until  the twentieth century (within my lifetime!) that, in this country, all women over 21 had the same voting rights as men.  Most people alive today can remember the voting age being reduced from 21 to 18 – and there are those nowadays who campaign for the voting age to be further reduced to 16.  There are also those (and I am among them!) who believe that we should change our ‘first past the post’ voting system, which makes it possible for a candidate to be elected even if his votes were less than the total received by other candidates, to ‘proportional representation’ by which the number of candidates elected is proportional to the number of votes cast for his or her party.  That would mean that every vote would count, smaller parties would be likely to get some representation in parliament, and it would be impossible for a party to form a government despite having a minority of votes in the country. This has happened in the past.

            One of the criticisms constantly levelled against the European Union is that it is ‘undemocratic’.  Decisions are made by the European Commission, the members of which haven’t been elected by anybody, and by the Council of Ministers – all senior Ministers of the member states of the EU.  Well, they have all been elected as MPs, but were elected to seniority only by members of their own party and are members of the Council of Ministers simply by reason of their office – hardly democratically put there by the European electorate.

            There is one European institution whose members are unquestionably democratically elected – and that is the European Parliament.  It was more democratically elected than our Parliament in Westminster since a system of proportional representation was used in the election.  The UKs representatives pretty accurately reflect changes in our national political thinking.  The Lib.Dems. once a force to be reckoned with, have all but disappeared;  the Ukippers (who want to see the end of the institution to which they have been elected!) have increased in numbers and so have the members of the Green Party – it’s true only from two to three but, of course, they’ll strengthen the voice of other European Greens on relevant issues.

            Now comes the question of who is to be President of the all-powerful European Commission.   The largest single political grouping in the European Parliament is that of the ‘Centre-Right’ – hardly the grouping that I’d normally be keen to support, but I’d have thought they’d be just the lot that would appeal to David Cameron, George Osborne and Co.  Not on this occasion as it happens.  The Centre-Right (and therefore the European Parliament’s) preferred candidate is Mr Jean Claude Juncker. A former Prime Minister of Luxemburg, Mr Juncker is ‘a federalist’ who believes that the EU’s best way forward lies in closer political union.  As such he is anathema to our Prime Minister Mr Cameron who is hoping to achieve the reverse, a looser union. He is trying hard, without much success, to gain support for his insistence that the democratic way forward is to ignore the expressed opinion of the democratically elected parliament, and to leave the appointment of the Commission’s President to the Political Heads of the EU member states.

            I don’t think he’ll succeed but, if he does, I’m inclined think that his fellow top politicians will make the same choice of Mr Juncker!  And so they did - when those top politicians voted on 27th June. David Cameron found just one supporter. Europe's best future does lie in closer integration.  If the UK doesn't think so it'll probably be better for Europe if we left the EU - but I think it will prove disastrous for us!

* It is interesting to note that all but one of the Chartists demands, considered dangerously revolutionary during the 19^th century, have since been met without the dire consequences predicted.  The one exception was the demand for annual Parliaments.  Thank goodness that wasn’t met – who nowadays would want all the hassle, all the false promises and all the lies of a General Election every year?

Almost, some Good News

            It isn’t very often that I have the opportunity to comment on a piece of unequivocally good news.  This isn’t because plenty of good things, resulting from the kindness of good and compassionate people, aren’t happening all around us every day.  But it is the bad things, the cruel, selfish, greedy and stupid actions of a minority of us that make the headlines.  Never forget that It’s the exception that makes the news. 

Meriem with her toddler son                                           

           

I really thought though that this week I'd be able to comment on the unquestionably good news that Meriem Ibrahim about whom I wrote the week before last, had been freed by North Sudan's Court of Appeal. She would, I thought, shortly be going home with her American husband, her toddler son, and her new baby daughter, born in a prison cell. You'll recall that she had been sentenced to be flogged and hanged after being wrongly convicted of adultery and apostasy.The report of her home-going  was too good to be true.  She was released, rejoined her family and was at Khartoum.Airport en route for the USA, when she was re-arrested for attempting to travel on a false passport and is currently, I believe, languishing in a police cell.

It appears that she had only a South Sudanese passport.  It was surely the sort of problem that, given good will, could have been solved within hours - but the good will wasn't there.  The Sudanese Police? Religious Authorities? were no doubt angry that their chosen victim had escaped from their clutches. They might not be able to flog and hang her but they could prevent her going home.

Meriem mustn't be forgotten.  The governments, and the thousands of those who petitioned for her release, must keep up the pressure until this latter-day Christian martyr is free to go home with her family.

The WAR CRY!

          Have you ever had a copy of ‘The War Cry’ thrust at you in the street by an eager individual wearing Salvation Army uniform.  If so, it’s quite possible that you fumbled in pockets or handbag for some small change and took the proffered magazine, quite intending to deposit it in a litter bin at the earliest opportunity.

            If you did that recently, you made a sad mistake.  Today’s War Cry is an attractive, ecumenical and very readable journal far removed from the fundamentalist, evangelical and sectarian publication I remember from the distant past.  I have the 14^th June issue in front of me.  The cover is a ‘still’ from a recently released historical film ‘Belle’ while inside, on page 3, is a review of the film that left me  eager to see it!    There’s also a well-written article about ‘People Trafficking’ a modern scourge with which the Salvation Army is particularly concerned, in which young people (particularly young girls seeking a better life) are tricked into what amounts to modern slavery

             Nor is today’s War Cry narrowly sectarian.  There’s a news story about the Archbishop of Canterbury’s recent visit to Nigeria in which he prayed with Nigeria’s President and expressed his sympathy and concern about the recent terrorist attacks to which Nigeria has been subjected.  There’s also news of the Methodist Church of Sierre Leone’s campaign against Ebola, a deadly infectious disease that has recently reached theirea from Guinea.

            The Salvation Army has been active in the provision and management of Food Banks (our local Clacton-on-Sea Food Bank is run by them) and War Cry reports on the findings on this subject of Oxfam and Christian-based groups ‘Church Action on Poverty’ and the Trussell Trust.

            Food Banks and food aid charities gave more than 20 million meals to the needy last year and there was a 54 percent increase in the number of people seeking food help.  It was pointed out that food prices rose by 43.5 percent in the eight years prior to July 2013 and during the same period household energy prices rose by 37 percent.  Meanwhile, ‘low and stagnant wages and insecure and zero-hour contracts mean that for many low-income households the income is less every month than their essential outgoings’

            It was good to see that the Salvation Army continues its success in finding people who had lost touch with their relatives.  During May 2014 The Salvation Army’s Tracing Service found 121 such people.  Over the course of the month the service concluded 134 cases, with a 90 percent success rate.

Note to Blog readers.  I have a problem with sending and receiving emails and my laptop will be with a computer specialist till Monday at the earliest.  I am therefore publishing this blog two days early.   I hope to be back to normal next week.   Ernest Hall

Week 26 2014

Tendring Topics……..on line

Middle East Maelstrom

          A recent email from a regular blog reader sums up the current situation relating to Islam and its neighbours in the Middle East, a considerable part of central Africa and the Indian sub-continent:

Well, I said the militant Islam thing was going to come to a head, and almost immediately the Pakistan Taliban come very close to capturing Karachi main airport, and ISIS are getting close to taking Baghdad. And still the Nigerian school girls haven't been returned.  The day surely cannot be far away when they succeed in overthrowing the government of a major country, or carve out a completely new country by annexing bits of other countries.  Would have been better to have left Saddam Hussain in Iraq, but I see Tony Blair is very sensitive to that obvious criticism and has tried to pre-empt it. Likewise, it is crystal clear the west should have given no support to those trying to overthrow Assad. These dictators may be bad and use their powers arbitrarily and brutally, but an ultra orthodox religious regime is ten times worse because it so deeply affects the lives of ordinary people; especially women, who make up 50% of the population and gays who make up 7%, and anyone else of a different religion, or of a more moderate version of Islam.

I couldn’t have put it better or more succinctly myself – though he’s missed out the second batch of schoolgirls who have been abducted by jihadist militants in Nigeria, or the massacres that have recently taken place there.  Nor did he mention the atrocities that have taken place after ISIS victories.  Perhaps, as a former POW, I am particularly affected by tv images of Iraqi soldiers being cold-bloodedly shot en masse by these ‘religious zealots’ after capture. In North Africa in 1941/’42 we on one side and the Germans and Italians on the other tried to kill each other – but we did all adhere to ‘the rules of war’.  Many years later, when my family and I were on holiday in Austria, we encountered a German family remarkably similar to ourselves.  We discovered that the father, like me, had been taken prisoner in Tobruk in 1942 – I, by Rommel in June, and he by ‘Monty’ in November!  Because, all those years ago, both sides had adhered to those rules, we had both survived to look each-other in the face and shake hands as friends.

I was fascinated by Tony Blair’ attempts to suggest that the current conflict has nothing to do with the invasion of Iraq into which he and George Bush lured us.   It is, so he says, the clear result of our failure to intervene in the Syrian Civil War. On which side does he think we should have intervened?  It is possible that, early in the conflict, many of the rebels did seek a more democratic Syria.  It has for some time though been clear that the current rebellion is led and dominated by Islamist zealots of the same breed as those who perpetrated 9/11, were responsible for the subsequent bomb outrages in London, who kidnapped those Nigerian teenagers, and who are now fighting their murderous way through Iraq.  Does Tony Blair really suggest that we should have helped them overthrow Hassad?

When David Cameron expresses concern about British radicalised Muslims returning from Syria to the UK after learning the terrorist arts he doesn’t, for one moment, imagine that they’ll have learned those arts from President Hassad’s supporters. Their teachers will have been those anti-Hassad activists that we have been supporting but, according to Tony Blair, not supporting strongly enough!

I suppose that one good thing that can be said to have come out of the present crisis is a more friendly relationship with Iran.  I heard a Conservative MP in the House of Commons warning the government that this might damage relations between ourselves and our present Middle East allies.  Could he possibly have been referring to such ‘allies’ as Saudi Arabia and Qatar?  These countries, to which we blithely sell arms, are the source of the jihadists bloodthirsty inspiration.  They are the patrons and supporters of Sunni Muslims as Iran is the inspiration, patron and supporter of the Shia.   I have little doubt that these wonderful Middle East allies of ours have been supplying the Syrian rebels with arms (probably some that we have sold them!) and funds to keep them going.  I wouldn’t wish to live either in Saudi Arabia or Iran but, if I were compelled to make a choice, I would certainly settle for Iran, as being the less restrictive and the lesser offender against what I (and I think, Messrs Cameron, Clegg and Miliband) regard as inalienable human rights.  But, of course, human rights are all very well - but business is business! And the manufacture and sale of the weapons of war (the instruments of death) is very big business indeed.

Now we, with the Americans as our ‘senior partners’, are considering intervention to halt the progress of ISIS and prevent the downfall of the present Iraqi government.  We’re not going to put troops on the ground, but we’ll possibly bomb ISIS troop concentrations and so on.  Unmanned ‘drones’ may be used to ‘take out’ some of the ISIS commanders and political leaders.   Inevitably, in doing so innocent civilians – men, women and children will be killed and maimed.  Whatever might be the conclusion of the current fighting it will certainly result with Middle Eastern Muslims – Sunni and Shia alike – uniting in their hatred of the western infidels who inflicted even more death and destruction on their benighted countries. History demonstrates that foreign intervention in civil conflicts always makes them bloodier and more protracted

Twenty-five years ago Christians were a tolerated minority in many Muslim majority countries though not, of course, in Saudi Arabia. In Iraq and Syria in particular there were thriving and long-established Christian Communities.  They set an example of tolerance in an increasingly intolerant world. Today, Christians have been a target of extremists in both those countries.  Christian lives are in daily danger throughout the Middle East and those who can get out have done so.  Our Christian faith is in danger of becoming extinct in the very area of the world in which it was born.

That is the true and lasting legacy of the policies of George W. Bush junior and Tony Blair.  I wonder if they’re proud of it?

Spoiling for a fight?

I have just been listening to an interview with the Secretary-General of NATO about Iraq and the state of the world generally. Perhaps we need reminding that NATO was created during the Cold War specifically to deal with the perceived military threat from the Soviet Union.  The United Kingdom is a member and, unlike our membership of the European Union, joining NATO was taken on quite arbitrarily by the government without any referendum or consultation with the British people.  It is now concerning itself with matters far beyond its original purpose.

The Afghan war for example, is now coming to a less-than-victorious end, after a decade long struggle.  It was a war in which, theoretically at least, NATO was attempting to combat jihadist terrorism at its source.  This was considered to be in Afghanistan, where Al Qaida was protected by the fundamentalist Taliban Government.  All that has happened is that Al Qaida has moved its bases elsewhere, what has been portrayed as ‘western aggression’ has gained recruits for the terrorists, and the Taliban remain undefeated. Meanwhile the conflict has cost the UK and, of course, the USA hundreds of lives and millions of pounds and dollars.  The best place to combat terrorism is in the western countries in which acts of terrorism are threatened or are taking place.  The only role that NATO should take is ensuring the dissemination of intelligence about terrorist groups, and experience of foiling their activities – a field in which, if official sources are to be believed, the UK has been very successful.

That however is not the way Anders Rasmussen. NATO’s Secretary General sees it.   In his Radio interview  he gave the impression of a man spoiling for a fight.  ISIS aggression against Iraq, he averred, was a threat to all of us – it was imperative that firm action be taken against them.  Fortunately for us all, American President Barak Obama (without whose OK, NATO certainly won’t act!) is a great deal more cautious.  He has reinforced the defence of the US Embassy in Baghdad and is sending 300 ‘advisers’ to help organise defence against ISIS but not to get directly involved in conflict.  He doesn’t rule out air strikes against carefully selected targets, but they are not to be taken for granted.  He does not want ‘mission creep’ dragging the USA deeper and deeper into the conflict. 

Mr Rasmussen hasn’t forgotten the Ukraine.  There’s Russia’s virtually bloodless ‘annexation’ of the Crimea, to the satisfaction of the overwhelming majority of its inhabitants! There’s the ‘provocation’ of military exercises near Ukraine’s borders, and Mr Rasmussen is sure that Russia is encouraging the armed separatists in Eastern Ukraine. I’d have thought that much more provocative were NATO’s naval exercises in the Baltic and Black Sea and the reinforcement of NATO troops in Poland and the Baltic states.  As for encouraging the armed separatists, we do know that they have asked Russia to send troops over the border to assist them – and that Russia has declined.  Russia has had more experience than any other country at opposing jihadist terrorism. They were fighting it in Afghanistan when we and the Americans were supporting the fathers and grandfathers of today's Taliban fighters. Instead of thinking up more and stronger sanctions – which affect us as much as they do them – we should be co-operating with them in combating this world-wide scourge.  Goodness knows, we were happy enough to co-operate with a much less amiable Russia to defeat Hitler and the Nazis.  But, of course, neither Mr Rasmussen nor any of the world’s statesmen are old enough to remember that!

week 25, 2014

Tendring Topics…….on line

A Modern Martyr

          Folk of my generation were brought up in the belief that in our wonderful 20^th Century, the age of Christian martyrs, like the ‘age of miracles’ was over.  Martyrs were those who were ‘butchered to make a Roman holiday – thrown to the lions in the arena in the reign of the Emperor Nero or slaughtered in some other agonising way for their refusal to renounce their Christian faith. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the protestant half of Christendom honoured as saints and martyrs their co-religionists who were tortured and burned alive by zealous Catholic monarchs like Queen Mary Tudor (‘bloody Mary’),.  The Catholic half gave similar honour (observed in the Church of Rome to this day) to recusant priests hung, drawn and quartered by her half-sister Queen Elizabeth I.

            There have, of course, been martyrs since those days – in the wake of the French and Russian revolutions for instance, though much of the anti-clericalism of those times resulted from the perceived support of the established churches for the tyrannical former regimes in those countries, and the contrast between the splendour and riches of the ‘princes’ of the Church and the abject poverty and squalor of the people.  The fate of the Jews in the Nazi regime was different (and worse) than martyrdom. Martyrs could often save themselves by repudiating their faith. In the holocaust the victims were condemned not by their faith but by their ethnicity.  None of us can change or repudiate that.

Suicide bombers, unlike their victims, are not martyrs.  They are cold-blooded murderers who compound their crime by killing themselves as well, thereby evading human retribution for their crime.

Meriem Ibrahim (an attractive 21^st century young woman threatened with a medieval punishment. She could be ‘that friendly and helpful young woman next door’ to you – or me)

A modern martyr (who may yet be saved from martyrdom) is Meriam Ibrahim of North Sudan.  She had a Muslim father, who deserted the family, and a Christian mother who brought her up as a Christian.  She married an American Christian man and has a young son and a daughter, the latter born in prison while she was shackled to the floor of her cell.  She has been condemned to death for having converted from Islam to Christianity and, before being hanged, is to be flogged with one hundred lashes for her ‘adultery’.

She is deemed to have been a Muslim because her father was Muslim. Sharia Law as interpreted in Sudan declares that death is the punishment for conversion from Islam to atheism or any other faith.  Since that same law also forbids a Muslim woman to marry a Christian man, her relationship with her Christian husband is ‘adulteus’; hence the flogging before the hanging!

‘Humanely’ (well, Islam does claim to be compassionate and merciful) they won’t hang her for two years (presumably to allow the new baby to become less dependent on her mother) and they won’t hang her at all, if only she’ll repudiate her Christian faith and return to Islam.  This she refuses to do.  She can’t in any case ‘return’ to a faith that she has never embraced.

Baby Maya, Meriam’s daughter born in prison to a mother condemned to death.  Her name is the same (though spelt differently) as that of my little German ‘adopted niece’ who was featured in this blog two weeks ago.

Meriam’s case is so outrageous to western minds that it has attracted world-wide condemnation.  Barak Obama (Meriam is married to a US citizen and that baby, born to a mother in shackles, and her brother, are half Americans) has expressed his outrage, as have David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband.  A petition, of which I am one of the 800,000 (so far) signatories, is to be presented to the Sudanese authorities.

Sadly, I have heard nothing of British Muslims making their voices heard, yet apart from Meriam and her family, it is they who are likely to suffer most from Meriam’s martyrdom.  Incidents such as these, and the wholesale murder and abduction of Christians by militant Islamists in Nigeria, lend fuel to the intolerance and prejudice of such neo-fascist and anti-Islamic  groups as the English Defence League, the BNP and at least a minority of the Ukippers.

            I very much hope that the Sudanese government will bend to world-wide anger and release Meriam and her children unscathed to join her husband, the children’s father, in the USA.  Already one Sudanese government spokesman has said that she would be released within a few days – but that was quickly denied.  Sadly, those who are convinced that Meriam was convicted in accordance with a law laid down directly by God to his prophet nearly a millennium and a half ago, are unlikely to be impressed by an appeal to ‘Universal Human Rights’ in 2014.

Better or Worse? – or just Different?

          Writing about Islam and Sharia law has brought to my mind the fuss that there has been about the accusation that the governing bodies of a number of Birmingham Schools had been infiltrated by Muslim extremists who were changing the schools’ characters and possibly using them to ‘radicalise’ the younger generation and possibly make them recruits for terrorism.   I think that we’ll probably hear a lot more about this in the days to come. 

My knowledge of the situation has been gained entirely from tv news bulletins and broadcast interviews with parents, governors and – of course - national politicians.   It must be said that Muslim parents seemed for the most part to be thoroughly approving of the very schools that have been causing most concern. Some of the practices of these schools reminded me of my own schooldays – now some eighty years ago!

Our school day began with an assembly and an act of worship; Christian worship of course.  Throughout my eleven years (5 to 16) of full-time education I never even met anyone with any other religious faith.  There was a hymn, a prayer and a reading from the New Testament. The handful of Roman Catholic pupils were excused this part of the assembly.  They joined us to hear the Head Master give out any notices and dismiss us to our classes.

In the 1930s.  Boys’ School on the right, Girls’ School on the left.  Utility block, shared but at different times, in the middle.  Note the fence between the two playing fields.

There was a Boys’ School and Girls’ School.  Ours were adjacent but quite separate.  There were separate playing fields with a high wooden fence separating them.  There was even a ‘trip wire’ a few feet from the fence over which we were forbidden to tread - to stop our watching the girls play hockey through the occasional ‘knot hole’!

There were no ‘sex education classes’ and certainly no contraceptive advice!  There were a few co-educational secondary schools.  As a schoolgirl my wife went to one, but they were the same in that respect. The very thought of mixed classes in such subjects would have provoked embarrassed shock and horror among even the most ‘progressive’ parents!   I am sorry that my school wasn’t co-educational.   It would probably have made me less agonisingly shy and ill-at-ease with the opposite sex than I was during my late teenage years.  I’m not so sure about the sex and contraceptive classes though – I really don’t believe that teaching these things to ever younger children is the best way to reduce premature sexual activity and teenage pregnancies.

            I am sure that there are lots of things about educating children and fitting them for the world of the 21 century that Muslims can and should learn from the ‘western world’ – but we shouldn’t be so reluctant to admit that there are one or two things that we can learn from them. 

           

           

             

Week 24 2014

Tendring Topics……on line

No matter what – they’ve won!

          Commenting on the results of the recent local government, and in particular, European Parliament elections, a despairing blog reader wote to me.  ‘No matter what happens in the Newark by-election and next year’s General Election, the pernicious ideas of Nigel Farage and his Ukippers have won. Terrified by the result of the EU Parliament elections, the top politicians of the main political parties are vying with each other in demonstrating their Euroscepticism and promising to “get tough with immigrants”, in an attempt to outflank a triumphant Ukip. At future elections our choice is likely to be between different degrees of ukippery’

            I very much hope that my pessimistic reader will be proved wrong.   His words though, demonstrated the fundamental difference in British politics that has occurred between the days in the late-1930s when I first took a serious interest in them, and today.  In the 1930s, throughout World War II and for a decade or so afterwards, political parties in Britain had definite, clear policies with which every one was familiar.  The Conservatives stood, as their name suggests, for keeping the current order of things – the public sector, the armed forces, the civil service and local authorities had their own spheres of activity and though changes would undoubtedly take place, they should be peripheral and gradual.  The Labour Party on the other hand was the party of change.  Labour supporters’ main concern was the welfare of working people.  They believed that the Britain should be a fairer, more equal country than it was, and thought that this aim could best be obtained by most, if not all, industry and commerce coming under public ownership and control. 

            Rather uneasily between the two were the dwindling Liberals and on the extreme left and right were the Communists and the Fascists.  I remember attending a meeting in Ipswich’s public hall addressed by a black-shirted Sir Oswald Mosley leader of the BUF (British Union of Fascists and National Socialists).  His ideas were poisonous but he had a charismatic personality.  When he entered the hall twenty or thirty members of the audience leapt to their feet giving the outstretched arm fascist salute! My serious interest in politics dates from that public meeting – in 1937 or possibly ’38.   I wasn’t at that time quite sure what I was for but I did know what I was against; Fascism and Nazism!   Had I been a couple of years older I would probably have volunteered to join the International Brigade fighting Franco and his Fascists in Spain.  As it was, early in 1939 and at the age of 17, I enlisted in the Territorial Army having little doubt that we would be at war with Hitler’s Germany within months.

            In those pre-war pre-tv days there was a clear demarcation between the political parties.  People actually attended public political meetings – and were influenced by what they heard at them.  And we read too!  I was a great admirer of  George Bernard Shaw.  I read most of his plays – and his prefaces to them, which were often almost as long as the plays themselves.  I remember being held – and deeply influenced – by his ‘Intelligent woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism’. I came across a copy a year or two ago, dipped into it and have to confess that I was bored out of my mind!  In those days everybody took politics very seriously.  Politicians went to great lengths to try to convert the electorate to their point of view.

            The development of tv and the internet giving instant virtual contact with Party leaders and a surfeit of what G.K.Chesterton described as ‘The easy speeches that comfort cruel men’,  has something to do with  today’s cynicism and distrust of all professional politicians.  ‘How can you tell when a politician is lying?’ – ‘When you can see his lips moving!’   ‘An honest politician is a politician who, when he’s bought – stays bought!’   ‘If voting really changed anything, they’d ban it!’   And of course, politicians themselves encourage us to think like that with their ‘cash for questions’ their fiddled expenses, their free meals and cheap booze.  I think though, that it is the opinion poll that has been the greatest influence in the corruption of politicians. Now we can see, almost day by day, which policies are popular and which otherwise.   It is usually much easier to delete unpopular proposals from a political programme, no matter how much they are part of the party’s reason for existence, than it is to convert sufficient people to reverse an opinion poll result.

            Thus the Labour Party changed its policy on Britain’s ‘independent nuclear deterrent,’ not because that policy had been proved to be wrong, but simply ‘to make the Party electable’. Clause 4 of Labour’s constitution, which aimed at wholesale nationalisation of private enterprise, clearly needed amendment. Instead, in order to make Labour electable, it was abolished – thereby opening the door to wholesale privatisation of public services that should never have been taken from public democratic control.   It’s no wonder that during ten years of New Labour rule the gap between the rich and the poor actually widened, the UK became a haven for wealthy foreign tax-dodgers, and billions of pounds were squandered on an independent ‘ultimate deterrent’ that isn't independent and doesn’t deter. Today our national sovereignty is being threatened, not by the EU as Nigel Farage and his Ukippers insist, but by our ‘special relationship’ with the USA and our membership of NATO that is expanding its activities far beyond those originally intended.

            Government by opinion poll may, on the surface, appear to be a kind of democratic control - by the people and for the people.  But what is it that moulds public opinion? It is surely the radio, tv and national newspapers.  They rarely attempt to do so by direct lies, but by giving front page treatment to news items and expressed opinions that endorse the views of the owners and publishers, and relegating to the back pages and small print, or ignoring altogether, items and opinions that oppose them. Day after day, week after week, words do have their effect upon human minds – and on the opinion polls.  The BBC does its best to be impartial – and is constantly under critical attack as a result.

The owners and editors of the news media continually stress the value of a ‘free press’, by which they mean a press free from the influence of ruling politicians.  Well – I too would hate our press to be under political control.  But we can, at least, sack our politicians and change that control.   I think that, on the whole, I’d rather have a press influenced by a democratically elected government than, as it is at present, owned and controlled by cosmopolitan billionaires who owe no loyalty to our country, its traditions and its culture.  Possibly we need a New Party – NUKIP perhaps - to oppose these foreign influences, rather than those of the EU in which we have at least as much voice as any other European country.

Qatar

          I was astonished when the row blew up about Qatar having allegedly bribed its way into hosting a future World Cup.  This was not because I had imagined they were incapable of such a thing.  On the contrary, I had never doubted for one moment that they had ‘bought’ the privilege.   They couldn’t possibly have been chosen because they were known as a great footballing nation, or because their desert land was particularly suitable for the game, or because the climate of Qatar in the height of summer provided just the measure of temperature and humidity that enables footballers to give of their best.

            I thought that they had probably found a legal way of using their undoubted wealth to secure the World Cup competition. And perhaps they have.  They’ll certainly be able to hire the very best lawyers to state their case.  If, as I fully expect, they’re found to be not guilty, I shall look forward with confidence to their making a successful bid to host a future Winter Olympics!

D-Day Commemoration

          I remember 6^th June 1944 very well.  I was a POW in eastern Germany and was one of a party of four or five of us who were marching from our ‘Lager’ (our accommodation) to Zittau’s railway sidings to unload a couple of wagons of coal.  Some French POWs, who had better access to radio than we had, shouted to us from the other side of the road that the allied invasion in France had begun.  We had no doubt then that within a matter of months the war would be over and we would be going home!  I’m glad that there has been blanket coverage of the commemoration of that event in Normandy 70 years ago and that there has been homage paid to those who fought, and those who died, there.  Before being taken prisoner at Tobruk, I had been under enemy fire on many occasions, and had survived.  Never though had I been required to charge up an open beach that was being shelled and, at the same time, being raked by machine-gun fire!

            It isn’t in any way denigrating the courage and resolve of those who did charge up those open beaches, to say I regret that there was no mention made of the part played by the Soviet army in Hitler’s downfall.  Had the Red (mostly Russian) Army not decisively defeated the Germans a year earlier in enormous and bloody tank battles on the Russian steppe near Kursk, and had also forced the surrender of the Nazi 7^th Army in Stalingrad, it is most unlikely that the D-Day landings could have taken place.  It is more likely that in June 1944 we’d have been trying to repel a German invasion!

            Counting ‘scalps’ is a distasteful occupation but ‘killing the enemy’ rather than ‘sacrificing one’s life for one's country is, and always has been, really what war is all about.  The fact that 80 percent of fatal casualties in the German army occurred on the Eastern Front gives an indication of the magnitude of the contribution of the Soviet forces to victory.  The Soviet achievements were not without sacrifice. Their human losses have been estimated to amount to over 20 million men women and children!  If we owe a debt of gratitude to those who fought and died on the Normandy beaches, we owe at least an equal debt to those Soviet forces who were our allies, and to the Soviet civilians who suffered and died under Nazi occupation.

           

           

             

           

           

               

Week 23 2014

Tendring Topics……on line

‘The Lights are going out all over Europe………’

          So said Lord Grey, Britain’s Foreign Secretary, as World War I broke out.  I had much the same sinking feeling and presage of doom as the results of the recent European Parliamentary Elections became known.  The voters of practically every one of the EU’s member states had expressed at the polling booths their dissatisfaction at the performance and progress of the institution from which some of us had hoped for so much.

            Extremism triumphed.  Mostly, as in the UK and in France, it was right-wing extremism reminiscent of the nationalism that spawned Fascism and Nazism in Europe in the 1930s.  Nigel Farage took over a small fringe political party and, by finding appropriate scapegoats and urging immediate extreme action to deal with one or two issues that were causing public concern, he transformed it into a political force that seems unstoppable.  It reminded me of Hitler’s takeover of the well-meaning but slightly batty National Socialist German Workers Party and transforming it into the brown shirted,  jack-booted, ruthless and all-conquering Nazis.

            Hitler’s scapegoats for Germany’s defeat in World War I and all the country’s post-war problems were ‘The Jews’ and ‘the Bolsheviks’.  Nigel Farage’s scapegoats for all the UKs 21^st Century problems are ‘the European Union’ and ‘the immigrants’.  Nigel Farage has an advantage over Hitler in that he has an engaging man-of-the-people personality.   He enjoys a pint and a fag and he doesn’t 'talk posh' in meaningless platitudes like most other politicians.  On the surface he‘s ‘one of us’ – an ordinary bloke who believes in straight talking and calling a spade a spade even if it’s sometimes not ‘politically correct’; a politician for those who thought they detested all politicians!

            Well, I have come to distrust all politicians. I am sure that David Cameron and George Osborne do what they believe is best for the country – which means to them best for the seriously wealthy.   ‘If they’re getting richer the whole country’s getting richer.  Prosperity ‘trickles down’ to the lower classes’. I did fall for Nick Clegg’s rhetoric before the last general election; never again!  As for Ed Miliband – surely the Daily Mail’s dubbing him ‘Red Ed’ must be ironic. The 19^th and 20^th century pioneers of the Labour Movement would see him as about as ‘red’ as a pale pink blancmange!

            Perhaps things aren’t quite as hopeless as I fear. UKIP made little progress in the north-east and in Scotland, and actually lost ground in London.  Essex – my county – is where they did best.  The only two policies on which all Ukippers are agreed is getting out of the EU (Why bother with a referendum? – We know what ‘the people’ want!) and drastically cutting immigration.

 Funny thing – Ukippers don’t seem to be bothered by the fact that the progress of privatisation of public services means that more and more of them are coming under the control of foreign shareholders, nor about the fact that popular and influential newspapers and radio and tv services, moulders of public opinion, are owned and controlled by wealthy, often foreign, individuals.  I’d have expected that to be anathema to people who really valued the UKs independence.  What about NATO and the ‘special relationship’? Ukippers worry themselves to death about trivial decisions taken in Brussels.  Decisions costing us billions of pounds and hundreds of British lives are similarly taken in Washington.

Sometime between now and the next General Election UKIP will have to make up its mind about its policy on a great many issues other than ‘Europe’ and ‘immigration’ – education, the health service, social services, tax policy and so on.  As they reveal their position on these issue some, perhaps a great deal, of their support is likely to fade away.  Their deputy leader, for instance, would like to see more of the NHS privatised.   There’s talk of a flat-rate tax; another 'poll tax'?  Such hard-right measures such as these will surely alienate Labour, Lib. Dem and at least some of the Conservative voters who have defected to UKIP. 

It wasn’t only UKIP that came well out of the European Parliamentary Election.  I supported – and urged others to support – the Green Party as an alternative to the traditional parties. The Greens offered the promise of a better country, and a better Europe for all, not just for a wealthy minority.  They are a small party without the funds of UKIP who, in this area, managed to leaflet the electorate both at the beginning of the election campaign to catch the postal voters and, at the last minute, to catch the undecided.  UKIP was the only party to do that.

The Greens are still a small Party but they have one MP at Westminster (which is one more than UKIP has!) and, while they previously had only one member from the UK in the European Parliament they now have three!  There, they will join Green EMPs from other EU countries to make sure that the Green Voice is heard, and join in alliance with other parties over matters of mutual concern.   The Greens were, for example, active in the campaign to limit the bonuses paid to bankers within the EU.  Considering the general outrage within the UK about these bonuses, it seems almost incredible that our government opposed that measure. But they did!

Say not ‘the struggle naught availeth

The labour and the wounds are vain;

The enemy faints not, nor faileth,

And as things have been, they remain’

If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars,

Perhaps by yonder smoke concealed,

Your comrades chase e’en now the fliers,

And but for you, possess the field!

For though the tired waves, vainly breaking,

Seem here no painful inch to gain;

Far back, through creek and inlet making,

Comes silent, flooding in, the main

                                                                            Arthur Clough (mid-Victorian poet)

 An Insane Law?

‘INSANE LAW’  To boot mum from the UK says headline in the ‘Clacton Gazette’  ‘Please don’t take me away from my family’, pleads Clacton housewife fearing deportation.

          Thirty-two year old Mrs Christine North was born in Germany of a German mother and an English service-man father.  She moved with her mum into a British Army base when she was just six months old, attended an English School on the base and moved to England with her mum and step-dad, another British soldier, when she was seven years old.

She grew up, married an English husband, has two children and has lived in Clacton-on-Sea for a quarter of a century!  She has a National Insurance number, has twice served on a jury (that’s something I have never done!) and claims to have voted in every election since she was eighteen.  Her ‘Britishness’ has never been questioned and probably never would have been had she and her family not decided last year to take a holiday in France.  When she applied for a passport it was discovered that her German mother’s name was on her birth certificate but not that of her British father.

Technically, so it seemed, she was not British but German.  Could she be deported and separated from her family?   Was it possible that she could be prosecuted for claiming this, that or the other benefit to which only British citizens are entitled. Somebody has clearly warned her that this could happen  MP Douglas Carswell has taken up her case and says that he has written to Home Secretary Teresa May ‘in the strongest terms possible’  but received, only ‘flat bureaucratic replies saying rules are rules’.

I don’t believe that there is the least danger of her being deported and separated from her family.  Even convicted terrorists are able to avoid deportation by claiming their ‘human right’ to a normal family life.  What’s more, EU rules (that Mr Carswell would like to abolish!) give Germans, as citizens of the European Union, every right to live in Britain if they wish to do so.  As for prosecution; clearly Mrs North had no fraudulent intention and I don’t believe for one moment that she would be prosecuted.

As Teresa May is alleged to have said rules are rules. The obvious solution is for Mrs North now to apply for British Citizenship for which she certainly has an overwhelming case, for our MP to use every ounce of whatever influence he may possess to expedite the process, and for those who wish Mrs North well to assist with whatever cost this may involve.

          This is surely a saga that can- and will – have a happy ending.