Week 44 15.11.11

Tendring Topics……..on Line


‘We will remember them!’

Next Friday, 11th November, is what we once called call Armistice Day, the anniversary of the day on which at 11.00 a.m. (the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month) in 1918, the guns of World War I fell silent and the daily carnage on the Western Front ceased. Next Sunday will be Remembrance Day on which Remembrance Services and Parades will be held throughout the UK. The fallen of two world wars, of the Falklands, of Iraq and Afghanistan will be honoured with a two minutes silence, the sounding of the Last Post and the recitation of a verse from Laurence Binyon’s poem '’To the Fallen’:

                                                             They shall not grow old as we who are left grow old,

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun, and in the morning,
We will remember them!............We will remember them!

In Clacton (and I have no doubt in many other towns and villages) the British Legion continues also to commemorate the war dead on that original Armistice anniversary, 11th November at 11.00 a.m. on the Town Square.

I too have war dead to remember – 100 out of an artillery regiment of about 700. Some were killed in battle, others died in PoW camps in Italy or Germany. Fifty young men of about my age were killed by ‘friendly fire’. They were drowned in November 1942 when the Italian steamer that was transporting them to a PoW Camp in Italy, was torpedoed and sunk by a British submarine. One other, whose death I personally remember, was a young man accidentally killed while working as a PoW on the railway sidings of Zittau. I was less than three feet away from him at the time. It could have been me. The fifty have no grave save the waters of the Mediterranean Sea. The one who died on the railway sidings was given a German military funeral. We, his fellow PoWs, slow-marched to the cemetery, We threw sprigs of yew onto his coffin in the open grave. A firing squad from the local Wehrmacht barracks then smartly ‘presented arms’ and fired a volley over the grave. It was a salute from those who were no longer his enemies. I think that we all found it a very moving occasion.

I am not a member of the British Legion but next Friday I intend to climb onto my mobility scooter (my iron horse) and make my way down to the Town Square where I shall stand in silence, observe the two minutes silence and listen, probably on the brink of tears, to the sounding of ‘The last Post’.

‘Wear your poppy with pride!’ says the British Legion. I shall wear mine with sorrow – and perhaps just a little bitterness – at the loss of young lives and good friends,

Is the Pope, ‘Some kind of a Commie’?

Surely not – but recent pronouncements from the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace and statements from the Pope himself have made right-wing American Republicans (supporters of Sarah Palin’s Tea Party Movement and the like) think that he, and the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church, may be heading in that direction.

Writing in the Church Times, Paul Vallely, associate editor of The Independent, says that the Pope’s opposition to abortion and gay marriage had made right wing Republicans imagine that the Pope, ‘was one of us’. To discover that he took a radical stance on economics came as an unpleasant shock.

The Pontifical Council, supporting the aims of the hundreds of thousands of people world-wide (not just the handful camped outside St Pauls Cathedral) protesting against the inequalities and injustices arising from unfettered Capitalism, called for a more ethical approach to finance, the redistribution of wealth, an end to rampant speculation, the establishment of a global central bank to which national banks would have to cede power. This statement, says, Paul Vallely has been branded quasi-Marxist on Wall Street! The Pope himself calls ‘for everyone, individuals and peoples, to examine in depth the principles and the cultural moral values at the basis of social coexistence’.

Paul Vallely says that this call is valid and timely. He adds that those who say it is impossible to constrain a free market are as wrong as those who say that if we don’t sell our arms to oppressive regimes, someone else will. ‘The continued ruthless arrogance of the bankers, who with their effective state guarantee against failure, are still paying themselves obscene bonuses, shows that the system has learned nothing’.

I am reminded of a time (I can’t be sure whether it was in the 1930s before World War II or in the early 1950s after it) a number of prominent Anglican clergy were both very High Church and very left-wing. It was said of them as a jibe that the Church of England was The Conservative Party at Prayer – except, of course, for the Anglo-Catholics, who were the Communist Party at Mass!’

Nowadays, I think that throughout the Christian Church – Roman Catholic, Anglican, Non-conformist and Quaker, there is a growing realization of the evils of our current economic system (the Rule of Mammon) together with a firm rejection of Marxism as a possible remedy for them. A poster displayed by the St. Paul’s protesters reads WHAT WOULD JESUS SAY? I think it possible that he would say, as he said 2,000 years ago: 'Treat other people exactly as you would like them to treat you. This sums up the whole of the moral teaching of the Scriptures.

If we all, as individuals, as communities and as nations, really strove to obey that commandment, there would be no wars, no arms trade, no inequalities and injustices – and no budget deficit!


They’re at it again!


The more the Government insists that its aim is to divest central government of power and responsibility and to pass these over to ‘local communities’, the more its actions have the precise opposite effect. I wouldn’t suggest that this is necessarily always a bad thing. We are all keen on local people deciding local issues - until it affects us personally! However, when one street has a fortnightly refuse collection and the adjoining one, that happens to be within the area of a different local authority, has a weekly one, it is hardly surprising that the residents in the former street begin to complain about a ‘post-code lottery’!


The extent to which adults receiving social care are expected to contribute to its cost, is currently decided by the local welfare authority, usually the County Council or Unitary Authority where there is one. The Government is said to be considering making these charges uniform throughout the country and imposing a cap, possibly at about £30,000, on the total sum that recipients can be required to pay. Thus, folk needing expensive care who have to sell a home that they have bought with a lifetime of hard work and saving, would be able to retain at least a proportion of the fruit of their labours. It seems eminently sensible and humane that this should apply nationwide.


Very different, I think, is the government’s determination to dictate the conditions of the tenancy of Social Housing, the erosion of Local Authority control over primary and secondary education (nominally to give them more independence but actually they’ll be controlled by Whitehall, who will hold the purse-strings), and the weakening of local planning control leaving, as a correspondent to the Clacton Gazette put it, local communities with the power to say YES but not to say NO!


The latest field into which the Central Government’s ‘Nanny knows best dear’ policy has strayed, is that of Child Adoption. This, like adult social care, is currently the responsibility of the County Council or, where there is one, of the Unitary Authority. The Government believes that adopting a child should take no more than 12 months and has decided to name and shame authorities who consistently take a good deal longer than that to arrange this.

Two authorities that have earned the government’s disapproval are the London Boroughs of Hackney and Brent. I know nothing about Brent but both my sons worked at one time in Hackney’s Housing Department and one of them lived in the Borough. I do know therefore, if only at second-hand, a little about that corner of London’s East End.

I know for instance that it probably has as thorough a racial, cultural and religious mix as any in England. The political correctness of social workers who block the adoption of a black or mixed race children by a loving all-white families has been much derided. It is, of course, absurd to refuse adoption simply on the grounds of skin colour. I could well understand though, objection to the adoption into a practising Christian family of a child of Muslim or Jewish parents. I would be sorry to see the adoption of a child from a Christian background (whatever might be the colour of the child’s skin) into a devout Muslim family or, for that matter, into a family of proselytising atheists – disciples of Professor Dawkins.

Ultimately, of course, adoption – or refusal – should be made in the interests of the child, not of the prospective parents, or of the local authority - or even of a government at Westminster eager to be able to claim credit for speeding things up. A wise decision cannot and should not be hurried.

‘A child is for Life – not just for Christmas!’ Rather than naming and shaming local authorities who take their time about making adoption decisions, they should name and shame those where, due to hasty action, there has been the greatest number of failed adoptions within five years of them taking place.

Week 45.09

Tendring Topics………on line

Remembrance Sunday

Next Sunday (8th November) is Remembrance Sunday. It is, I think, a commemoration that towards the end of the last century was beginning to lose significance as the World Wars and their victims began to fade from contemporary memory and to take their place in the history books.

Born as I was in 1921, I can remember during my childhood the continuing desolation of the bereaved of World War I; the grieving mothers, the young widows, the attractive girls destined to become old maids because the love of their life was buried ‘in some corner of a foreign field’. Throughout my pre-teen years there were always women, in tears, wearing their Flanders poppies on black garments at Remembrance Services on what we then called ‘Armistice Day’. At tens of thousands of such services it was affirmed that, ‘They shall not grow old as we who are left grow old. Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun, and in the morning, we will remember them’.

But those who remembered them best wished so fervently that they had had the opportunity to grow old; the opportunity to be wearied by age and to endure (and enjoy!) those inexorably passing years.

I doubt if since 1945 there has ever been a single day in which the whole world has been at peace. At least though, we in Western Europe have been at peace with each other, and, for the most part, only marginally affected by conflicts raging elsewhere in the world. The ‘Cold War’ remained mercifully cold.

Then came the Falklands War and, after a relatively short gap, the first and second Gulf Wars, the invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. Once again we have parents, proud of their dead hero sons and bravely keeping a stiff upper lip, weeping widows and orphans, and desolated girl friends……. not, of course, anything like as many as there were in the wake of the two world wars, but their grief is every bit as painful and as profound.

It will almost certainly be in the prayerful silence of our Quaker Meeting for Worship that on Remembrance Day I shall remember my fallen comrades from World War II. In my Territorial Medium Artillery Regiment (6in howitzers for those interested in such things) we were mostly in our late teens and early twenties, young men from Ipswich and other East Suffolk towns and villages, who had volunteered for the TA at the beginning of 1939 when we had had realized that war with Nazi Germany was inevitable.

From 1939 till July 1941 we were part of Britain’s defences against invasion. In 1941 we sailed to North Africa and, during the winter of 1941/1942 we helped to secure the surrender of Bardia and Wadi Halfaya (Hellfire Pass) from the combined German and Italian Forces. When Rommel counter-attacked in the New Year we were for several months in almost continuous action in the Gazala Line, west of Tobruk. Eventually we became part of the Tobruk Garrison and were overrun by Rommel’s Afrikakorps on 21st June 1942.

There were 100 fatal casualties among the 700 or so men in my regiment.. That was a quite a heavy death-toll for a Medium Artillery regiment serving in North Africa in World War II. What I find particularly appalling is that, while there were obviously some deaths in battle, the overwhelming number occurred after Tobruk had fallen and we had been taken prisoner.

There were deaths when a diphtheria epidemic raged through the large transit POW camp in Benghazi, Libya. There were deaths in Italian prison camps from starvation-related afflictions. I watched Jock McGregor, a Scotsman and a good friend of mine, simply take to his bunk and die of hunger and cold in a camp in northern Italy. A few lost the will to live after receiving ‘Dear John’ letters telling them that their girlfriends or wives had found new ‘true loves’. ‘Who is he?’ ‘I don’t know; some smooth s….. in a reserved occupation or b……. overpaid Yank I suppose’.

In Germany there were deaths on the long trek in the icy conditions of northern Europe during the winter of 1944/1945 as POW camps in Poland and East Prussia were evacuated to avoid prisoners being liberated by the advancing Red Army. By far the greatest number of fatal casualties from my regiment were though from ‘friendly fire’. Fifty young men whom I had known personally, drowned like rats in a trap on 14th November 1942, when a British submarine torpedoed the Italian SS Scillin, the prison ship transporting them from Tripoli to Italy. The commander of the submarine had thought that he was attacking an Italian troop ship.

Myself on my return to England from captivity in Germany and below Heather Gilbert, the girl who had waited for me for four years.

I received no battle injuries, escaped the epidemic in Benghazi, sailed earlier and uneventfully from Libya to Italy, and survived semi-starvation in Italy. On VE Day I liberated myself from German captivity (with a great deal of help from the Soviet Red Army!) and arrived home in Ipswich, safe and sound, just ten days later on 18th May, my 24th birthday! My girlfriend Heather Gilbert was waiting for me, having successfully resisted the attractions of both our American allies and those in reserved occupations during the four years that I had been overseas.

I was, as I have so often been, extremely lucky. On Sunday I shall remember with sadness the tragically wasted lives of friends and comrades who didn’t enjoy that same good luck.

Flanders’ Poppies

This morning (26th October) I heard a ‘what the papers say’ report on the radio that a letter in the Daily Telegraph, from a Lieut. Col. (retired) complained bitterly about tv news announcers wearing their poppies prematurely. ‘Poppies’, the good Colonel insisted, ‘should be worn only after 1st November’.

Who on earth says so? That sounds to me like one of those stupid Regimental Orders that used to appear on our Battery Notice Board insisting that ‘From 0800 hrs. 1st October, great coats will be worn on parade’, never mind the fact that 1st October might well be in the middle of an Indian Summer heat wave.

With Christmas catalogues in the post before the end of August, and Easter eggs and hot cross buns on sale the minute the Christmas decorations come down, it’s sad if we can’t wear our Flanders Poppies a week or so early!

In any case tv news announcers are not alone in having never heard of (or of ignoring) this prohibition.. No politician hoping to be returned to Westminster in next year’s General Election has been seen without a poppy for almost a week. Lots of ordinary people in the street, myself among them, are wearing them too.

I think that everybody who wishes the Poppy campaign well, should be very pleased that this year the poppies were on sale in good time and that people were already wearing them well before the end of October.

Pride cometh before a fall!

So says the proverb, and mine certainly did. On Saturday 24th October, my son Andy and daughter-in-law Marilyn, came to Clacton to visit me. After lunch at the Bowling Green we wondered what to do next. It was a damp and miserable day. ‘Let’s try the Martello Tower at Jaywick’, I suggested, ‘often there’s an art exhibition there’.

That Saturday was ‘between Exhibitions’ but Andy and Marilyn thought they’d like to see the view from the top. They looked at me doubtfully, ‘Anywhere you two can go, I can go too’, I said with eighty-eight year old pride, ‘I can climb those two flights of stairs. No problem!’

And so I could, holding on firmly to the hand-rail and pulling myself up. Andy and Marilyn followed behind, ready to try to break my fall if I had been over-optimistic. I reached the top safely. Here there was no hand-rail. I took two steps forward, lost my balance, and fell heavily on my front. Pride had indeed come before a fall!

No, I didn’t suffer any permanent injury. I broke the frame of my glasses and scratched the left lens (over my one ‘good’ eye!). The frame dug into my face and caused cuts that, at the time, bled profusely. I think though that my glasses probably saved my eye from more serious injury. Andy and Marilyn found some tissues to staunch my bleed and Andy dialled 999 for a paramedic to check me over. I made my way slowly and carefully to the ground floor (on the way up I had quoted Sir Thomas More’s piece of black humour as he mounted the scaffold to have his head cut off: ‘Would you be kind enough to help me up please. I’ll make my own way down!)

On the ground floor there was a comfortable settee on which I sat and waited for the Paramedic. He arrived in a very few minutes, applied plaster dressings to my ‘wounds’, told me that I had a lovely black eye developing and urged me to phone my doctor if during the next 24 hours I experienced sickness, faintness, serious headaches or dizziness. I had none of those symptoms and have been left with nothing worse than a still-lingering black eye and the need (that will soon be met) for a new pair of glasses.

I’m not surprised though that ‘Pride’ is listed as one of the seven deadly sins though, in my case, I am glad to be able to say that it proved to be a good deal less than ‘deadly!’

Tony Blair for EU President ………I think not!

Speaking as a Europhile (by fairly recent convincement!) and firm believer in closer European integration, I think that Tony Blair is the very last person who should be considered for the Presidency of the European Union. For one thing he would represent a country that is only a half-hearted member.

Even if our European partners were prepared to accept a British President, Tony Blair would be among the last names that would come to my mind. I think that, with his ever-ready smile and persuasive tongue, he would probably use his presidency to try to create a New-EU on the lines of New Labour, an organisation for which I feel minimal enthusiasm..

I have little doubt that his appointment would be welcomed by the CIA and by the Far Right in the USA who, judging him by past perfomance, would see him as ‘Our man in Brussels’. I can only hope that if by some mischance Tony Blair were elected President, he would prove them to be wrong.