18th January 2015

Tendring Topics……….on line

The Parliamentary General Election

          There was a time when political parties existed to promote specific policies – the Conservative Party on retaining the status quo and, in general, observing the sage advice, ‘If it ain’t bust, don’t fix it’.  They were naturally the party of the ‘haves’ rather than the ‘have nots’.  The Labour Party on the other hand, was the party of change.  They wanted a fairer, more equal Britain, a Britain without nuclear weapons and without imperial pretensions or ambitions.  They argued that these objectives could best be achieved if most or all public services were owned and run by the public.   They were the party of the ‘have nots’.  Both parties tried to persuade a majority of the electorate to support them.

            Now both main parties, and what’s left of the Liberals, claim to serve the interests of the whole country.  In reality they all have just one overriding policy. It’s the same policy; to win elections, gain political power – and keep it.  To this end the Conservatives under Mrs Thatcher became a party of revolutionary change; among other things selling off most public services to private enterprise and compelling local authorities, who had built houses to rid their districts of overcrowding and homelessness, to sell them to sitting tenants at bargain basement prices; thus very cleverly buying votes with other people’s money.

            New Labour, ‘to make itself electable’, sold its own soul by going along with the retention of a nuclear ‘deterrent’, accepting the revolutionary changes that had been introduced by Mrs Thatcher and erasing ‘Clause 4’ from its own constitution.  I have little doubt that many party members voted for the removal of Clause 4 imagining that they were simply acknowledging that some activities were best carried out by private enterprise.  If fact they were accepting the wholesale privatisation of every public service.  In addition, they allowed our country to become the puppet of the most reactionary American president in living memory.  This resulted in our engagement in two ‘colonial’ wars – one illegal and the other unwinnable – resulting in the loss of billions of pounds and the sacrifice of hundreds of British lives

            Party policies are decided nowadays, not by principles or by the exercise of reason and compassion, but by the findings of the latest opinion polls.  And influencing opinion polls is the popular press, owned largely by foreign billionaires who owe no loyalty to the United Kingdom and care only about ‘circulation and profit’. I don’t find it in the least surprising that thousands of electors are now disillusioned with the traditional political parties.  It is upon the way that they react to that disillusion that the future of our country depends.

Don’t bother to vote

            Probably the commonest reaction is to decline to vote.  What’s the point?  They’re all the same – feathering their own nests.  If voting changed anything they’d ban it. Our first-past-the-post electoral system makes sure that the voice of those who can’t bring themselves to vote for any of the main parties, is never heard. The Chartists of the nineteenth and the Suffragettes of the twentieth century must be turning in their graves.  They suffered and died to make sure that everyone had a vote – and they really believed that universal suffrage would change the world.

           

Those who don’t bother to vote have no right to complain when they find themselves represented by someone whose views they thoroughly detest.  Those who can’t bring themselves to vote for any of the candidates must surely be able to select one of them whose policies and attitudes they detest more than those of the others. Vote for the candidate most likely to defeat him or her.  For the much-publicised recent Clacton-on-Sea by-election I voted Conservative for the first (and probably only) time of my life.  Although I disliked the Conservative candidate’s policies, he seemed to be a nice enough chap and I thought he was the candidate most likely to defeat Douglas Carswell who had defected to UKIP (United Kingdom Independence Party).   He didn’t do so and Clacton had the dubious honour of returning the very first UKIP MP to Westminster!  Still – I did my best. 

Vote for one of the ‘minority’ candidates

            We don’t yet know how many candidates there will be for our own constituencies in next May’s General Election. In every English constituency there will certainly be representatives of the Conservative, Labour and Liberal-Democrat Party.  There will almost certainly be a Ukipper (in my Clacton constituency he’ll be the sitting MP) and a Green Party Candidate.  Also there’s likely to be a variety of fringe party and special-interest candidates ranging from the Official Raving Loony Party to those eager to publicise local or special concerns like ‘saving a hospital from closure’, ‘building a new bypass’ or, as we had for the Clacton by-election, a lady who wanted to raise the status and ensure the safety of ‘sex workers’.   

            My guess (and you can’t exaggerate how much I’d like to be proved wrong!) is that in the Clacton-on-Sea Constituency Douglas Carswell (the sitting UKIP MP) will retain his seat though with a smaller majority, The Conservative Candidate will come next but with only a few more votes than  his Labour opponent, followed by the Green, the Lib.Dem. the Official Raving Loony Candidate and the various ‘special interest’ candidates who will get only a tiny handful of votes each.

UKIP versus GREEN

            In my constituency (Clacton-on-Sea) our sitting MP is a Ukipper.  That is true of only one other constituency in the United Kingdom.  In most other constituencies there will be a Conservative, Labour or Liberal Democrat MP who will be looking nervously over his or her shoulder at the UKIP contestant and wondering what effect this new and apparently growing party will have on the election result.

            UKIP and its leader Nigel Farage, remind me uncomfortably of the NAZI party and its leader, Adolf Hitler, in Germany in the 1920s and early ‘30s.   There too, the electorate was disillusioned and tired of the old political parties and their failing policies.  In Adolf Hitler they found someone who was a fervent German nationalist, just as Nigel Farage is a fervent British Nationalist, who disliked the ‘old politics’ and offered a new path for Germany of action rather than talk.  What’s more he assured the Germans that they weren’t to blame for their country’s problems – it was all the fault of ‘the Jews’.  At first most Germans thought that he was a bit of a joke,  Then the wealthy thought they could manipulate him for their own purposes.   One morning though they woke up to discover that he and his brown-shirted followers had taken over their country. – Hitler’s Third Reich had arrived.

            Nigel Farage also assures us that outside forces – the European Union (demonised as ‘Brussels’) and all those foreign immigrants for which the EU, so he says, was largely responsible – were the cause of Britain’s problems.  Shake off the European yoke and get rid of all those foreigners, and Britain would be great again!  At first everyone thought that Nigel Farage – usually seen holding ‘a fag and a pint’ to assure those who saw him that he was ‘one of us’ - was a bit of a joke.  Then, as with Hitler, the wealthy and powerful thought they could use him for their purposes. They have poured their spare thousands of pounds into his party’s coffers. The story is on-going……….. UKIP is essentially a ‘one-objective party’.   The EU and immigrants are its main target.  Other causes are taken up as seems opportune, but generally UKIP policies are those of the extreme right of the Conservative Party.  Abolish ‘green taxes’ and cease subsidising solar and wind power schemes.  Encourage ‘fracking’ for cheap oil and gas.  Ignore the warnings about climate change and global warming.  It either isn’t happening or, if it is, it’s got nothing to do with human activities so there’s nothing to be done about it.  Vote for UKIP and cheaper fuel oil!  I have little doubt that thousands will be short-sighted enough to do so.

            The Green Party is almost the exact opposite of UKIP.  Below is a brief account of their policies and intentions.

We live in unsettling times. Many of the securities that our parents and grandparents fought for – a functioning National Health Service, free education, and an affordable home – now look out of reach for most of us. Coupled with this, climate change is bringing unpredictable and threatening weather patterns. People feel let down by politicians, and yet there has been an explosion in political activism. People want to do things differently and aren’t afraid to be bold and challenging.

We believe that public services should be for the benefit of the public, not sold off in bits; we believe that education is worth investing in and not something that should mean a lifetime of debt; we believe in leaving behind a better world for our children and grandchildren. This is the only world we have and its welfare, above all things, should be the highest priority for us all.

Politics should work for the benefit of all, not just those who shout the loudest or have the deepest pockets.  We believe in “The Common Good”. A vote for the Green Party is a vote for The Common Good.

            Like UKIP, the Green Party is growing.   They have just one MP – in Brighton – but in the European Parliament elections and in recent by-elections (including that in Clacton) Green candidates received more votes than the Liberal Democrats. Currently there is controversy as to whether The Green Party’s President is to join with the leaders of the Conservative Party, Liberal-Democratic Party, Labour Party and UKIP in public televised debate before next May’s general election.  David Cameron is refusing to take part in the debate unless the Greens are also invited.  He is probably wise to do so.   Green arguments, persuasively presented, are far more likely to draw voters from Labour, Liberal Democrat, and even UKIP than they are from the Conservatives.

            If (and it’s quite a big ‘if’) I’m still around in May, I shall vote for the Green Candidate.  I hope that a great many other people will do the same.    

           

27th October 2014

Tendring Topics……..on line

The EU isn’t some hostile foreign alliance!

          …….but sadly, that’s how some newspapers and some politicians behave as though it were.  The European Union is a political and economic association of European States that Britain joined for its own advantage.  Over its policies and activities we have as much power and influence as any other member.   What’s more, it is the only international association of which the UK is a member and of which we – the members of the public - have already been asked in a referendum whether or not we wished for membership.

            The Scots have recently been able to say whether or not they wished to be part of the United Kingdom – but neither the English, the Welsh nor the Northern Irish, nor any of our ancestors have ever been asked in a referendum whether we want to be part of it.  Probably there’s little doubt that most of us would vote ‘yes’ to continued membership – but a resounding ‘yes’ is much less certain about our continued membership of the United Nations or of NATO, or our ‘special relationship’ with the USA.  I would not have voted yes to the last two of those.  I think it’s quite likely that they have cost us more in pounds and pence (keeping that Trident submarine fleet active for instance) than the EU ever has and they have certainly cost us much more in British lives.   They have dragged us into an illegal war in Iraq that has made us thousands of implacable enemies world-wide and has certainly not made Iraq a happier, more peaceful and more tolerant country in which to live; and into an unwinnable war in Afghanistan from which we are now withdrawing if not in defeat, certainly not victoriously.  When the Falklands were invaded and we could have done with some help from the ‘allies’ we support so loyally, we received none.

            Freedom of movement of goods, capital and people was an important feature of the European Union when we joined and for some years no-one objected.  We wanted a ‘level playing field’ for our exporters and importers so there naturally had to be union-wide labour and health and safety regulation.  The membership, when the UK joined, was of nations with similar economies and public services.  There was no influx of workers into Britain from Germany, or the Netherlands or Denmark or any of the ‘old EU’ member countries.  If anything the flow of migrants was in the other direction.  The popular tv comedy series Auf Wiedersehen Pet was, at least in the first instance, about a group of British building workers who found employment in Germany.  My grandson, an international Tourism Publicity Consultant, lives in Brussels but commutes to his office in Ashford in Kent (near the Eurostar station).   His business takes him to every part of Europe and indeed the world but, thanks to Britain’s membership of the EU, travelling in most of Europe is much simpler than it once was.

Some years ago the then existing members considered making their union a united political and economic bloc capable of co-operating and where appropriate competing on equal terms with the USA and China, or expanding to include former members of the Soviet bloc like Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania and Bulgaria.  Tony Blair, then Britain’s prime minister, was one of the keenest and most determined of European leaders to draw these countries into the EU fold.  The problems that this could lead to were fairly obvious. Their economies and public services were in no way comparable with those of existing members.  The uncharitable thought crossed my mind that his enthusiasm for expansion could have been to ensure that Europe would never unite into a strong federal political force – a United States of Europe – that might not please his bosom friend across the Atlantic, George W. Bush.

            Well, the expansionists got their way, and provided Nigel Farage and his Ukippers with some ammunition, though hardly as much as they had hoped for. Do you remember the imaginary coach-loads of eager immigrants from Romania and Bulgaria who, according to the popular press, were just waiting for the gates to open so that they could flood in, swamping us poor natives and taking our homes and jobs?   Some turned up – mostly those who had jobs waiting for them, but in a trickle rather than a flood.  The swarm of migrants who now seem to be permanently camped near Calais waiting for an illegal opportunity to enter the UK are not from EU countries.

            The strange thing is that the worry about immigrants from the EU seems, at least from a casual glance, to be in inverse proportion to the number of EU immigrants in the area.  We clearly have some Polish immigrants here in Clacton because I note that there is now a shop here dealing with Polish delicacies. Perhaps if I were a Roman Catholic and going to mass at Our Lady of Light Roman Catholic church, I would meet some of them - and be pleased to do so.  As it is, I don’t think I have ever encountered a Pole in this town, though a Polish worker was one of the team from Enfield that very efficiently, insulated my roof space a year or two ago.  As a former public health inspector I have met Greek and Italian restaurant owners – but they were here before we were EU members!

            Clacton’s immigration problems are mostly home-grown and all-British. They relate to the fact that we are within easy reach of London, have generally dry weather (a help for those in b. and b. or sleeping rough!) and that cheap accommodation of a sort can usually be found on the Brooklands Estate, Jaywick or elsewhere in the area.  None of this has anything to do with the European Union – yet Essex’s seaside holiday coast is real Ukip country, with many of its residents worried to death about EU immigration and the fact that 70 percent of our laws are now ‘made in Brussels! – a blatant lie that Ukippers accept as a fact.

            Ukippers have convinced themselves that if there is a simple IN or OUT referendum  on EU membership, there will be an overwhelming OUT majority.   They may well be surprised at the result.  I voted NO to EU membership in that earlier referendum because I had a romantic notion that the Commonwealth could be moulded into a viable political and economic unit.  It was a stupid idea that I have outgrown.  In any future referendum I shall vote for continued membership, hoping that the EU will become more politically and economically united and that there will be fewer UK opt-outs.

Nor would I be alone. Recent MORI and Ugov public opinion polls, publicised in the London Evening Standard, indicate that nationwide, despite the rise of Ukip and although there is a big worry about immigration, a comfortable majority favour retaining EU membership and that this majority is even larger in the London area.

A Boost for the Ukippers

          The shock was considerable.  The timing calculated to bring maximum joy into the hearts of Nigel Farage and his motley band of followers.  If I were a believer in ‘conspiracies’ I’d be considering the possibility that an under-cover Ukipper had   penetrated the inner defences of Brussels and, just when Europhiles were rejoicing at opinion polls showing that most Brits would prefer to stay within the EU, arranged for ’Brussels’ to send the UK a peremptory demand for the almost immediate payment of the eye-watering sum of £1.7 billion pounds!  And, adding insult to injury, they were proposing to give substantial cash hand-outs to France and Germany.

            Rarely has there been such agreement between British political leaders.   They were unanimous.  We weren’t going to pay it and we asked our Prime Minister to make that clear to other European leaders.  No one, it seems, even considered the fact that the criteria that decided whether EU members were to get a hand out or a demand had been agreed by our representative as well as that of other members. Nor was much said about other countries who had received demands that seemed at least as ridiculous as ours.  The Netherlands is probably as well able to pay as we are, but are scarcely likely to be any more eager than us to do so.  How about Greece?  We haven’t heard much about the Greeks recently but not long ago many of them were literally starving.  Then there was Cyprus and the Irish Republic. All three have received similar demands and all three are poverty-stricken compared with either France or Germany.

            The decision to demand payment from us is at least partly because of our much-trumpeted economic recovery and growth. It had been more than expected.   The anger of the public, reflected in that of the top politicians, has been strengthened by the fact that very few of us have noticed any improvement whatsoever in our daily lives as a result of George Osborne’s economic triumph.  Inflation is low but wage rises are even lower – in the case of thousands of public servants – non-existent.  Due to ridiculously low interest rates, thousands of life savings, mine included, are steadily losing their value in Bank or Building Society savings accounts.

            Only the very wealthy have benefited from that recovery and there has, so far, been no sign of that wealth ‘trickling down’ to the rest of us.  I have no doubt that somehow some kind of an agreement will be reached in connection with the EU’s wealth redistribution.  I wish I felt equally sure that the anomaly that working people on low wages pay a much bigger proportion of their income to the government in taxes, VAT and customs duties than the bankers with their telephone number salaries and bonuses, the big property owners, financial fiddlers and tax evaders, will also be put right.

Blog readers

     Only last week I wrote that I would not, in the future, be able to write so long a blog, nor would I be able to publish it every Monday - yet here I am, with a blog that is every bit as long as usual, and is published on Monday morning!

      I did say though that I would write and publish it 'as and when' the situation might demand.  Last week there were two news items in quick succession that seemed to me to demand immediate comment; the two pro-EU opinion polls, and the demand from the EU that the UK should pay up £1.7 billion pounds -  so I duly commented.  I could have published my comments on Saturday 25th October, but decided to wait to see if there were any new developments over the weekend.

         Next week?  Who knows?

           

      

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.