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 6th 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 7th 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.
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