5th February 2015

Tendring Topics……..on line

 Eye to Eye with ‘Private Eye’

           

On 24^th January I wrote critically  in this blog about the Westminster Abbey authorities flying our national flag at half-mast in mourning for the death of the King of Saudi Arabia, and of the Prime Minister and the Prince of Wales, a future Defender of the Faith (our Faith!) flying to that benighted country to present their condolences.  I asked if we really needed oil – and arms sales – so desperately that we were prepared to take as an ally a country whose ethos is the exact opposite of the ‘British values’ that our Prime Minister claims to be so keen to promote.

            I have just read the copy of Private Eye published on 23^rd January, just the day before I published that blog, in which they gave their view of the United Kingdom’s relationship with Saudi Arabia.  Here it is:

            While David Cameron stands shoulder to shoulder with world leaders protesting at extremist assaults on freedom of expression on the streets of Paris, his government continues to ignore such intolerance when practised by a government with which the UK wants to do business.

            As ‘Charlie Hebdo’ was attacked, Saudi Arabia was meeting out the first of 1,000 lashes to blogger Raif Madawi.  Yet so keen is Cameron to cultivate the despots in Riyadh that, not only did he not denounce the flogging, but his government continues to cover up the corruption that sustains the barbaric regime there.

            ‘Private Eye’ is currently engaged in a freedom of information battle with the Ministry of Defence for details of its complicity in corruption on a £2 billion defence contract.  The government refuses to provide it on the grounds that exposing such dirty secrets would harm relations with Saudi Arabia.

            Given that the oppressive state spawned the group that claims responsibility for the Paris attacks (not to mention the 9/11 bombers) al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, perhaps the ‘relations’ so highly valued by the British government would be better served by exposing the Saudi regime rather than covering up for it.

          
                King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia died on 23^rd January, the day that Private Eye went on sale. In that issue it commented on the jihadist murders in Paris and on the world-wide demonstrations – led by the western world’s political leaders - supporting ‘free speech’.  It was unable though to comment in that issue on the obsequious haste with which some of those same leaders flew to Saudi Arabia to offer their condolences on the loss of the leader of a country that prohibits free speech, bans the practice of any religious faith other than its own fundamentalist version  of Islam, inflicts cruel and  barbarous punishments on it own people, holds democracy and human rights in contempt, and generally makes Saddam Husseins's Iraq, Colonel Gadafi's Libya and President Assad's Syria, seem by comparison to have been earthly paradises of liberty and tolerance.

          In view of this, the cover of the Private Eye of 23^rd January shown above, was remarkably prophetic. The  'speech bubble' shown emanating from the world's leaders is surely more accurate than 'Je suis Charlie', the slogan of the 'free speech' protesters!

‘Man’s inhumanity to man!’

            I can’t imagine a crime more heinous than that of IS (Islamic State) in burning alive, in a cage, the unfortunate Jordanian airman who fell into their hands.  The wickedness of the action was made worse by IS’ pretence of negotiating his release in exchange for a captured failed suicide bomber.   These ‘negotiations’ ensured IS the publicity for which they had hoped, and gave false hope to the victim and his friends and relatives.  I have little doubt that his fate was sealed from the moment of capture.

            The airman’s dreadful death brought to my mind another shameful incident almost exactly seventy years ago.  I was a prisoner of war at a ‘working camp’ in Zittau in eastern Germany.  Throughout the bitterly cold winter of 1944/’45 we had watched civilian refugees from the inexorably approaching Eastern Front pass through the town; old men, women and little children. Many were trudging through the snow pulling little carts with all their belongings.  They were making for Dresden, 60 or 70 miles to the west where they’d be sorted out by the German Red Cross and sent to relatively safe areas for refuge.  It was obvious to all that Germany was defeated and World War II coming to an end.

            On the night of 13^th February 1945 Dresden was flattened by high explosive and incendiary bombs dropped by hundreds of RAF bombers.  The centre of the town – not the railways and factories on the outskirts – was the bombers’ target and it was crowded with hapless refugees. The RAF bombers departed before the dawn but bombers from the USA continued during the following day. The number of dead is estimated to have been between 22,000 and 25,000.  Many of them were killed by collapsing buildings, others were asphyxiated by smoke.  They were the lucky ones.  A substantial number, men, women and little children will have been burnt alive – just like that unfortunate Jordanian airman.

            The crews of the RAF and American bombers were ‘just obeying orders’.  They didn’t know on whom their bombs were falling and anyway, the Germans had done much more dreadful things.  The bombing of Dresden took place just a few days after the Soviet Army had liberated the Auschwitz death camp in Poland and had told the world of the horrors they had discovered there.   Those aircrews were quite different from the killers of IS who had allowed their victim to hope for release and had then murdered him in the cruellest way that they could devise – a way that was guaranteed to torture not only their victim but those who loved him.

            Those aircrews were quite different from the cold-blooded torturers and murderers of IS. But their victims, whose bodies were found among the still smouldering ruins of Dresden, suffered exactly the same agonies as that Jordanian airman. I didn’t realize it at the time, but the events of that February night almost exactly 70 years ago set my mind on a course that ended with my repudiating all acts of violence and, just three years later, joining the religious Society of Friends (Quakers) and embracing the Quaker testimony against all wars.

Late Note.  The action of the Jordanian Government in hanging two jihadist prisoners (including the woman whom the government had been prepared to exchange for that airman) was understandable but regrettable.  It is only by breaking the cycle of vengeance that we can hope to achieve peace.

           

6th December 2014

Tendring Topics………on line

‘The time draws near the birth of Christ………’

          We are in the Christian season of ‘Advent’, the few weeks before Christmas when it was customary for Christians to prepare for the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ ‘In a lowly cattle shed’ in Bethlehem some two thousand years ago.

            Sadly, except in churches and chapels, there’s little evidence of the celebration of one of the most important events of the Christian year, though there are plenty of reindeer, toboggans, Christmas Trees, Christmas fairies and Santas to be found.  It is though, difficult to find unequivocally Christian greetings cards in the shops. News bulletins on tv and radio tell us that primary school children nowadays perform in ‘mid-winter festival’ plays at Christmas time instead of the traditional Nativity Plays that have been part of the pre-Christmas life of primary schools for generations. Ask at any post office for Christmas stamps and you’ll be shown the, admittedly very attractive, secular ones.  You have to make a special request for some of the ‘Madonna and Child’ first or second class stamps that are now available every year.  They’ll be found for you, though it may be made clear that it’s an unusual request.

            It is said that the female partner (at one time I’d have said ‘the wife’) of a young couple on a pre-Christmas shopping trip was attracted to a particularly bright display in a shop window.  She returned disgusted to her partner, ‘D’you know; over there, they’re even trying to drag religion into Christmas!’   All of this is said to be because we are a multi-faith and multicultural society and public celebration of a Christian festival might cause offence to those of other or no faith.  I’m convinced that that is total nonsense.   It’s a strange religion that takes offence at the story of a young woman who takes shelter in a cattle-shed to have her baby on a cold winter’s night in Palestine.   In any case we don’t mind Jews, Muslims and Hindus observing their holy days.  It is surely patronising and insulting to suggest that we Christians respect the faith of others and they do not.

            The real enemy of the Christmas story is the spirit of consumerism and greed which does its best to replace the real Christmas with an artificial one of greed, selfishness, gluttony and booze – one in which folk of any faith (but preferable of none!) can take part wholeheartedly.  I find it useful to personify that anti-faith spirit as the great god Mammon, manifest to us mortals in his unholy trinity of productivity, profitability and cost effectiveness.  Mammon’s Christless festival is centred on 25^th December but its true unholy days are appropriately named Black Friday the last Friday in November, and the week following 25^th December, when devotees queue for hours, then riot and quarrel with each-other in their eagerness to acquire the very latest consumer-desirables a little cheaper than they could get them at any other time of the year. Meanwhile the thousands rejected by Mammon (he is quite arbitrary in his choice of favourites) have to queue at Food Banks to keep themselves and their families from starvation and, as they shiver in the December winds, have to choose daily  between eating and heating.

             Sixty years ago former Poet Laureate the late Sir John Betjeman wrote a satirical poem Advent 1955 about the commercialisation of Christmas in those days. Here are a few lines from it:

We raise the price of things in shops,
We give plain boxes fancy tops
And lines which traders cannot sell
Thus parcell'd go extremely well
We dole out bribes we call a present
To those to whom we must be pleasant
For business reasons. Our defence is
These bribes are charged against expenses
And bring relief in Income Tax

 The devotees of Mammon have learned a trick or two since those days.  They no longer ‘raise the price of things in shops’.  They temporarily reduce them and call it a pre-Christmas Sale.   There’s more profit on lots of things sold at a lower price than on just a few things sold at a higher one!  And those who manage to persuade potential customers that there’s a special, ‘pile ‘em high and sell ‘em cheap, day called ‘Black Friday’ are on their way to becoming  millionaires.

Chancellors of the Exchequer have also learned a trick or two!   I began spare-time freelance writing in the early ‘50s and by the end of the decade had acquired several regular clients. In those days editors would send regular contributors a bottle of single-malt whisky, or something equally worth-while, as a Christmas present.   When such presents became no longer ‘tax deductable’ those annual editorial offerings dwindled to ‘a really nice Christmas card’ or perhaps ‘a useful commercial calendar’!   Sir John finished his poem with a rhyming verse that has stuck in my memory as summing up, not only the real meaning of Christmas, but what it is that is unique – and very special – to the Christian faith:

The time draws near the birth of Christ,

A present that can not be priced,

 Given two thousand years ago.

And if God had not given so,

He still would be a distant stranger

And not the baby in a manger.

Our God is not a distant stranger.  He is still to be found in the baby in the manger and in the suffering man upon a cross - and today, in those who serve and love their fellow men and women, who prefer co-operation to competition, and who make peace not war.  We Quakers believe that everyone in the world of whatever race, colour or creed, has ‘that of God’, a divine spark, within his or her soul.  It is that within us that leads us towards kindliness, forgiveness and peace and away from anger, vengeance and greed. That divine spark is, says St. John in his Gospel, ‘the true light of God’ that shines in the darkness and cannot be overwhelmed by it.

Week 35 2014

Tendring Topics……..on line

Family Friendly?

          I am sick of hearing top (and lower rank) politicians going on and on about supporting ‘the family’ and hoping thereby to get a few more votes at forthcoming elections. Politicians (of both main parties) carry the primary responsibility for the creation of a society that is thoroughly Family Unfriendly and unlikely to be anything else unless there is a revolutionary change in society’s outlook.

            I have probably written in this blog before (one of the characteristics of old age is a tendency to repeat oneself!) that I quite often feel like a time traveller, a ‘poor man’s Dr Who' perhaps.  I  am an early twentieth century man, born in 1921, who finds himself in the twenty-first century and (although I fully appreciate, and take every advantage of, the many benefits the present century offers)  still isn’t quite comfortable with some of the twenty-first century’s practices and attitudes.  This is never more so than when I contrast pre and post World War II attitudes towards marriage and bringing up children.

            The 1920s and ‘30s were not a poor-people-friendly time. My mum and dad were poor though that isn’t how they would have described themselves.  There were plenty poorer.  My dad was never unemployed and I was always adequately fed and clothed.  In fact, I was one of the privileged minority, who went to a secondary school and, unlike most of my contemporaries who were thrown onto the labour market at 14, I didn’t leave school till I was sixteen. Then, armed with my ‘matric’, I went straight to a ‘white collar job’.  It was a struggle though and my parents had to watch every penny.  They were proud of the fact that they never had to ‘ask for charity’ and never owed anyone anything.

            It was a family-friendly time though.  My dad went to work and earned enough, with his army pension just enough, to keep us in what I think the Prayer Book Catechism describes as, ‘that state of life into which it has pleased God to call us’.  My Mum stayed at home, kept the home clean and welcoming, cooked the meals and ‘made do and mended’ as all housewives were exhorted to do during World War II.  Before marriage she had been a cook in an Edwardian household and knew how to cook and how to pickle and preserve!    She was always at home with a welcoming smile and something on the table when my dad and I arrived home from work and school.  We were a small and a united family.

            In those days young men ‘courted’ their girl-friends and didn’t ‘ask for their hand in marriage’ (now there’s a couple of old-fashioned phrases you don’t hear nowadays!) until they were earning enough to support both of them.  Once married their roles were clear.  The husband was ‘the breadwinner’ and went out to work every day to earn sufficient to keep them both.  The young wife stayed at home, cooked the meals and – in due course – had children.  They were a family, and a great many of them were quite content with their lot.  My dad, who had been a Regimental Sergeant-Major in the army – and the senior non-commissioned officer in the small garrison town in which I was born was – I  think – disappointed with his lowly job as clerk, dispenser, veterinary nurse and general dogsbody in a local veterinary practice.  My mum had married my dad ‘for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health’ and was, I am pretty certain, content with her lot.  They were both very proud of me and hoped I would ‘better’ myself.  I suppose that I have, though I doubt very much if I’ve ever been any happier than they were.

            When I married in 1946, it never even occurred to either of us that my new wife – who had been secretary to the Managing Director of a large firm of printers – would continue to work.  I was the ‘bread winner’ and she was the ‘home maker.’  Throughout our sixty years of marriage I always managed, though it was sometimes a struggle, to ‘win enough bread’ to keep my wife and, in due course, our two sons in modest comfort though certainly never in luxury.  She was always at home, ready to listen to their stories of school and play, and prepared to give an experienced hand with their homework, when our sons came home from school. She was always ready, with a meal on the table, when I came home from work.  We lived and brought up our two sons in ‘family friendly’ times.

            I really think that ours was the last generation able to do so.  First of all came the idea that in order ‘to keep up with the Jones’s’ young wives should continue in work until the first baby arrived.  Then it became quite acceptable for a young wife to carry on working after children were born.  I think this dated from the time when – eager for custom – banks and building societies decided that they would loan money for home purchase on the basis of a multiple of the family’s total income, and not just the income of ‘the breadwinner’,. Proper arrangements were needed, of course, for child care.  This helped some working couples to ‘get their feet on the home ownership ladder’ but, since it increased the demand for home purchase without increasing the number of houses for sale, inevitably pushed up the price of houses. That was a trend which – with a pause during the period of recession – continues to this day.

The joy of motherhood.  My wife Heather, with our first-born son, in 1953.

         
 Imperceptibly  (I think it gathered momentum during the years of Thatcher rule  in the 1980s) it became not only acceptable – but expected – that young mothers should get back to work ‘to help create wealth’ as soon as possible after the birth of a baby.  It has become increasingly difficult for a family to survive on one income alone.  How can family life hope to flourish when parents both come home weary from a day’s work and see their children, if they’re at home when the parents return, only for a few hours in each evening?  This system, I believe, is responsible not only for the break-up of family life, but for gang culture, juvenile crime and anti-social behaviour, and teenage pregnancies.

            No, I’m not suggesting that we should return to the ways of the 1930s where women were regarded as inferior to men and virtually barred from some professions. I believe that women can excel in any job or profession that demands something more than brute force and blind obedience.  We will soon have women bishops.  One day I hope we’ll have a woman Archbishop of Canterbury! Women are uniquely child-bearers though and I believe that many, though by no means all, women do find home making and bringing up children a thoroughly satisfying and fulfilling career. They too are helping to make Britain a better country in which to live. This should be recognised and made financially possible.  Only policies that work toward this end can properly be described as ‘family friendly’.

The Shadow of a Doubt?

          A recent email from a blog reader says that the activities of IS (Islamic State terrorists) in Iraq must surely present problems to Quakers like myself who look for a non-violent solution to every difficult situation and believe that no-one is one hundred percent evil.

            I wouldn’t pretend that it doesn’t.  Central to my, admittedly sometimes shaky, Quaker faith is the conviction that we all, every man, woman and child in the world, rich and poor alike and whatever our race, colour or creed, have a divine spark (early Quakers called it the ‘inward light of Christ’) within us.  St. John refers to it in the first chapter of his gospel as ‘the true light’ that enlightens everyone who comes into the world.  It shines in the darkness of the world and the darkness cannot overwhelm it.  It is the instinct that urges us to compassion, friendship, generosity, and forgiveness, and away from hatred, violence, greed and vengeance.

            During my long life, in the army and as a civilian; as a prisoner of war and as a free man, I have become acquainted with folk of every religion and none, and of every nationality – Germans, Italians, Russians, Serbs, Arabs, Turks, Chinese, Indians and Pakistanis, black and white Africans and North and South Americans.  Not all of them I would particularly like to meet again – but neither did any of them persuade me that the Quaker conviction that every one of them had ‘that of God’ within them was false.

            I have only met members of IS on a tv screen and that was quite near enough. War is defiling.  Every nation at war, at some time or another, performs acts that are clearly, I can’t think of a better word, ‘sinful’.  We could, no doubt, all list the ‘crimes against humanity’ of the Germans, the Russians, the Chinese and Japanese – but how about the blanket bombing of German cities, full of civilians, towards the end of World War II by the British and Americans?  What about the dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima by the Americans with British approval and support – and, after seeing the devastation wrought by that atom bomb, dropping another such bomb on Nagasaki? Those who have committed these crimes against humanity know full well they have done so and either deny their guilt or try to justify it.  ‘Our blanket bombing of Germany and the two atom bombs on Japan hastened the war’s end and may have saved untold numbers of lives’.  They may have!

            Members of IS though are unique among war criminals.  They not only commit unspeakable atrocities but glory in having done so – posting pictures of themselves on the internet with the broken bodies and severed heads of their victims.  And they claim that their actions will earn them God's approval.. I can think of nothing more likely to provoke God's wrath! They are surely uniquely evil - and among them are believed to be some 500 young men born, brought up and educated in the UK!

            I like to think that the inward light of God does still smoulder deep within the hearts of these evil men – and can somehow be rekindled.  Meanwhile their activities must be halted, and their victims protected and helped back to normal life. I can't bring myself to criticise those who resort to  violent means to achieve this, but I have observed that such violent means rarely, if ever, achieve their objectives.  I applaud those who bring humanitarian aid to the victims and I give as generously as I can to those who do this work.  Otherwise, and at my age, all I can do is to pray.  And, who knows?  Perhaps that is the most effective thing I could do.

           

Week 29 2014

Tendring Topics……on Line

First – the Bad News

            For years the UK has had nuclear Trident submarines roaming the world’s oceans as a so-called Independent Ultimate Deterrent to aggressors. Like NATO it is a relic of the cold war and of the ‘defence policy’ aptly described as Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD); ‘You dare to threaten me with your nuclear missiles – and I’ll threaten you with mine. If you dare to attack me with them, then I’ll attack you.  We’ll both be totally destroyed and (it's unfortunate about the collateral damage) large areas, perhaps the whole, of planet Earth will be made uninhabitable.

            Well, neither the Soviet Union nor NATO were stupid enough to use nuclear weapons.  The ‘cold war’ ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union.  The UK ran down its full-time professional army, navy and air force in response to our economic situation – but Trident remained sacrosanct, untouchable.  In the meantime acts of aggression took place and it became abundantly clear that our ‘ultimate deterrent’ deterred no-one at all in the real world.  It didn’t deter Argentina from invading the Falklands.  It didn’t deter Turkey from invading Cyprus.  It didn’t deter the USA and its Caribbean allies from invading Grenada.  When, quite recently, Russia annexed and recovered its lost province of Crimea ‘the west’ blustered and threatened but – thanks to God and common sense – nobody even mentioned that ‘ultimate deterrent’.

            In the meantime the real threat to us all comes not from aggressive sovereign nations but from terrorists who have been inspired by a perversion of Islam to believe that they’re fighting God’s battles for him on earth.  They don’t yet possess nuclear weapons but the danger of their acquiring them is a natural consequence (or perhaps God’s punishment!) for our continuing to develop them, instead of banning their manufacture world-wide and destroying every single exiting nuclear weapon.  We have learned recently that chemical weapons can and have been banned world-wide.  It must be possible to do the same with nuclear weapons.

  I believe that much more dangerous than the possibility that Iran may develop a nuclear armoury, is the very real possibility that the nuclear weapons that we know Pakistan possesses should fall into the hands of terrorists.  NATO sent forces to Afghanistan to destroy the bases of Al Qaeda that had been protected by the Taliban government.   All they succeeded in doing was persuading Al Qaeda to move its bases elsewhere, notably the tribal areas of northern Pakistan, and Yemen in the Arabian peninsula. In those tribal areas of Pakistan, Al Qaeda, the Taliban and those who sympathise with them, are a considerable force possibly with a ‘fifth column’ in the Pakistan armed forces.  It is by no means impossible that they may one day overthrow the present Pakistani Government, acquire those nuclear weapons and threaten to use them

            Would our ‘independent ultimate deterrent’ then reveal its true value?  I doubt it.  Are people who tie explosives round their bodies and blow themselves up in crowded market places in the conviction that thereby they’ll go straight to Heaven as holy martyrs, likely to be deterred by the possibility that the victims of their nuclear weapon may respond in kind?

            And the bad news?  The independent cross-party Trident Commission, set up by the British American Security Information Council, has decided that there is no credible alternative to Trident.  I’m glad to note that British Quakers – but there are so few of us – are opposing this decision.  Here’s a copy of a report in The Friend, an independent Quaker weekly:

 The assertion that ‘these are weapons of mass destruction……….which have proved to be a poor deterrent against acts of terror or against recent political events’ must be an example of Quaker fear of making exaggerated statements.  They haven’t proved to be a poor deterrent, but have been no deterrent whatsoever!

…..and the not-quite-so-bad news!

          When I first heard it, in fact, I had thought that it was really good news.  It all began a few months ago when we learned that, to commemorate the centenary of the outbreak of World War I, the Royal Mint was going to strike a memorial £2.00 coin with an image of Lord Kitchener on it.  The image was taken from an army recruiting poster in which the general (the hero of Corporal Jones in Dad's Army!) was assuring anyone viewing the poster that  Your Country needs YOU!

            I was one of thousands who felt that a war that had cost millions of British, French, Russian, Austrian and German lives, fought for reasons that were far from clear, and which had led to another bloody world-wide conflict  only twenty-one years later, was not best remembered by an image of a  luxuriously   moustached General urging young men to become cannon-fodder.  We petitioned the Royal Mint and the government to use instead an image of Nurse Edith Cavell.  The daughter of a Norfolk parson, she had been nursing the wounded of every country in a hospital in German-occupied Belgium.  She also helped two hundred wounded and captured British service-men escape to neutral Holland.  She was detected and arrested by the Germans, court-martialled and shot.

            In 1947 I worked briefly as a Public Health Inspector for the city of Westminster.  Quite near the office was a statue of Edith Cavell.  It bore the words for which she is best remembered.  ‘Patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone’, which she said to the pastor who visited and prayed with her on the eve of her execution.    She was obviously a much more appropriate image for a memorial coin than that of a past-his-best general beckoning other men to their deaths.

            Last week I was elated when I learned that there would be a Nurse Edith Cavell coin struck in commemoration of the World War I centenary.  We had won!   Or so I thought until I read the ‘small print’ of the news item.   The Nurse Cavell coin is not to be struck instead of, but as well as, the Lord Kitchener one.   What’s more the Kitchener coin is to be a £2.00 one for general use – apart from the image it’ll be exactly like the £2.00 coins in use today.  The Nurse Cavell coin, on the other hand, will have a nominal value of £5.00 and is intended for coin collectors.  Unlike the Kitchener coin, they won't be in daily use.  Most of us will probably never see one.

             

                                                           

 Here are enlarged pictures of the two coins.  It is likely to be all that most of us will ever see of the Nurse Edith Cavell coin!

                                                                          

Week 52 2013

                   Tendring Topics……..on line

The Grandparents of Jesus

Some twelve years ago my wife Heather and I wrote ten monologues purporting to be by witnesses of the birth of Jesus and its aftermath.  Since then they have been used in church and Quaker events and some of them have been published in The Friend, the Quaker weekly journal. Sadly Heather died in 2006.  She and I had been married for sixty years and had grandchildren of our own.

Below are our ideas of the recollections of Jesus’ grandparents which I thought might be appropriate for the ‘Christmas Edition’ of Tendring Topics….on line to be published on the internet on Christmas Eve 2013. I wish a Happy Christmas and a New Year of Peace and Hope to all blog readers!

                                                                                        

                                                         Heather and I

The Grandmother’s Tale
                          

There is no mention of Mary’s parents in the four Gospels.  Tradition, and at least one apocryphal gospel, name them as Joachim and Anne or Hanna, so that is what Heather and I did.


 'Joachim, that’s my husband, always insists that sufficient faith, hope and love will see you through any crisis.  That may well be so.  Neither of us has ever been short of love but I do know that we have needed every ounce of all the faith and hope that we could muster to see us through the last six years.

We never did see that angelic visitor!  Our Mary saw the angel all right. I have no doubt about that now.  So did Joseph, thank God. Mary tells us that the angel also appeared to some shepherds in the hills above Bethlehem when the baby was born, and later warned her and Joseph to flee to Egypt with baby Jesus to escape that wicked King Herod’s wrath.

 If only that angel had called on us – how much heartache, mistrust and desperate worry we would have been spared!  Joachim says that we may have been left out to test our faith.  It certainly did that!


 Can you imagine how we felt when Mary – then just sixteen! – calmly announced that she was pregnant.  What’s more, she insisted that her fiancé Joseph wasn’t responsible (if he had been, it would have saddened us, but would at least have been understandable).  Her son, so she said, would be the child of God’s Holy Spirit, and would prove to be the long-awaited Messiah, the salvation of Israel.


 Well, Mary had always been a thoroughly truthful girl, but we simply didn’t believe her.  If she had been your teenage daughter, would you have?  We knew, of course, that God’s holy messengers did sometimes visit humankind, but surely not to an ordinary Galilean girl like Mary; certainly not to a small out-of-the-way place like Nazareth.


  Despite Mary’s assurances I suspected Joseph.  We sent for him right away but it was quite obvious from his astonishment and dismay that he was entirely innocent.  He was broken-hearted poor chap.  He’d have liked to have believed Mary’s story but – like us – he just couldn’t.  He was keen though to save her from shame and disgrace.  Would it be possible, he wondered, for her to be sent off to a distant relative to have her baby?  We’d all have to sleep on it.


  Sleep!  Neither Joachim nor I had much sleep that night – nor, I imagine, did poor Mary sent off to her room in disgrace.  I’m ashamed to say that my first thought was how I’d manage to face Naomi, Rebecca, straight-laced Susannah, and my other friends and neighbours when they knew.  Goodness knows, I’d had sneers enough over the fact that I had been able to give Joachim only one child – but I had managed to hold my head high over that.  This would be far, far worse.


 I was inclined to blame poor Joachim for our troubles.  He’d always been something of a radical and had given Mary a lot of ideas that I thought were quite unsuitable for a young girl in her station in life.  He remained silent, utterly dejected. I knew that he could hardly believe that our Mary was capable of wrong-doing.


  We dozed off just before dawn but were awakened by a hammering on the outer door.  It was Joseph – a transformed Joseph.  He wanted to beg Mary’s forgiveness for not having believed her.  He too had had an angelic visitation in the night which had left him in no doubt about her virtue and truthfulness.  When could he and Mary be married?


That changed the situation entirely!  I was still inclined to be a bit suspicious.  Joachim though had no doubts whatsoever and was absolutely delighted.  He was looking forward to his grandson – the Messiah – raising a mighty army and freeing Israel from foreign bondage.


  We held a family council and decided that the best thing that could be done would be to send Mary off to stay with her cousin Elizabeth.  She too was preparing for an unexpected baby but, of course, she had been married, and childless, for years.   While there, she and Joseph would be quietly married (not the kind of wedding that I had hoped for, but that couldn’t be helped) and, in due course, they would return to Nazareth as a married couple.


   And that’s what happened.  There may have been a few sideways looks from some of the neighbours when Joseph and Mary returned as man and wife – but no-one made any open comment.

  Then, of course, came the next bombshell.  Caesar declared that everyone must return to his hometown to be counted for tax purposes.  Joachim was furious.  Rome interfering again with our way of life! Nazareth was our home but Joseph had originally come from Bethlehem – way down south near Jerusalem – and that’s where he and Mary, now heavily pregnant, had to go.

  We watched them, with their donkey, trudge down the south road towards Jerusalem until they were dots on the horizon and finally vanished from our sight.   And that was the last we were to see of them for five long years.


 

  Yes, for five long years we had no firm news of Joseph and our Mary.  We didn’t even know whether they were alive or dead or whether Mary had had her baby.  If only that angel had called to reassure us during that dreadful time!


 There were lots of rumours, of course.  A neighbour who had to go to Jerusalem to be counted said that he had heard that Mary had had a fine baby boy – and that the birth had taken place in a cattle shed of all places. I didn’t believe that for one minute. There were stories of heavenly visions being seen near Bethlehem at the time that we knew the baby was due.  Then we heard the dreadful news that that wicked Herod (he was worse than the Romans!) had sent his soldiers to slaughter all young babies born in and around Bethlehem.  Some though, it was said, had escaped. We clung to our hope.


 A travelling carpet seller from Egypt said that he had seen, and had spoken to, a Jewish refugee couple about Mary and Joseph’s age with a young child.  He couldn’t remember their names but his story raised our spirits.


 Then came the news of Herod’s death and finally, just two months ago, trudging down that same road along which they had departed, came Joseph with our Mary  and our new five-year old grandson Jesus.  They had prospered in Egypt and all three were fine and well.


  Words can’t express our relief and delight that they had been returned to us safe and sound.  Every day we thank God for his great mercy towards us.  All grandparents dote on their grandchildren but, however many we may have, Jesus will always be very special to us.


  Joachim is quite convinced that he’ll grow up to be a great military leader who’ll sweep away the Romans and restore the land of Israel to its people.  Somehow though – I doubt it.  I think that God may have other plans for him.



The Grandfather’s Tale

Joachim’s experience of the Nativity of Christ was, of course, exactly the same as Anne’s.  However, Heather and I were grandparents ourselves and we felt that the reactions of the grandfather might well be very different from those of the grandmother.  And so, as you’ll read, they were. 

    If you have ever had a teenage daughter, and especially if she is or was a well-loved only child, you’ll have an inkling of what Anne and I felt when we learned that our sixteen year old daughter Mary was pregnant – and that the father wasn’t Joseph, to whom she was engaged to be married.  It will only be an inkling though unless, of course, you too live in a society in which stoning to death is the statutory penalty for what would have been called adultery.


 We were devastated – and so was Joseph, the prosperous local builder to whom she had been betrothed.  The few minutes in which we broke the news to him seemed to add twenty years to his age.  He genuinely loved our Mary and didn’t want to see her publicly shamed, let alone punished with death.  We just couldn’t accept Mary’s story that she was guiltless; that one of God’s holy angels had told her that her child was to be the long-awaited Messiah, the saviour of Israel. I even wondered for a moment if it could be a cruel joke aimed particularly at me – everyone knew how I longed for the coming of the Messiah to free us from Roman rule.         


The next morning saw our despair change to elation.  Mary’s story had been true.  Joseph too, had been visited by the angel, who had told him the same story.   He had been commissioned by the Almighty to guard and watch over the young mother with her holy child.

  

Anne was still a bit doubtful, but for me everything clicked into place.  I realized why it was that our Mary had been chosen for this honour.  As she was our only child and it had seemed unlikely that Anne would have another, I had tried to educate her and bring her up as though she were a boy.  Mary had all the womanly skills of course – Anne had seen to that –but I had also given her a thorough grounding in the Holy Scriptures and in the literature, history and aspirations of the people of Israel.



 She was even something of a poet herself. Have you read the poem that she wrote to thank God for the great honour he had conferred on her by choosing her to give birth to the Messiah:  ‘My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my saviour’? I’ve no doubt at all that it was I who inspired those bits about putting down the mighty from their seat and exalting the humble and meek; filling the hungry with good things and sending the rich empty away. She was obviously the right girl – the only possible girl in the whole land of Israel – to bear and bring up the Messiah we all awaited.


 We bundled her off to her cousin Elizabeth and she and Joseph were quietly married.  Then they settled down again in Nazareth where they prepared for the coming of Mary’s holy child.


I might have guessed that Rome would put its oar in and try to wreck everything!  In order to wring our hard-earned money out of us more efficiently, they decided to hold a census.  Everyone had to return to his home town to be registered.  Anne and I come of families that have lived in Nazareth for generations but Joseph, poor fellow, came from Bethlehem, way down in the south.  It was there, together with our Mary, that he had to go to register.


 I railed against the wickedness of Rome and swore that my grandson would avenge this affront to his parents – but it was all no good.  They had to go. When Anne and I watched them head southwards, little did we dream that we wouldn’t see them again for over five long years.


 Those years seemed to be unending.  Hope and love kept Anne going but I had a firm conviction that God would never let his chosen one suffer permanent ill.  Against all the odds I remained firm in my faith that one day they would come home again, safe and sound.


 And, as you know, my faith was justified.  Mary and Joseph came home safely with Jesus, our new grandson – the child destined to be the hope of Israel.  They have shared all their adventures with us.  We know how our grandson, God’s Messiah, was born in a stable of all places.  We were told of the homage of the shepherds and of the Magi with their wonderful gifts.  We shuddered when we heard of Herod’s treachery (the puppets of Rome are even worse than Rome itself!) and of the headlong flight into Egypt where, thanks to God, they prospered until news of Herod’s death had meant that they could safely return to their own land.


 Our grandson Jesus is now nearly six years old – strong, active and intelligent.  He has a great future. Mary and Anne don’t agree with me – and Joseph is inclined to take their side – but I have no doubt that in fifteen or perhaps even ten years time (how old was David when he slew Goliath?) he’ll raise a great army, sweep the Romans from our shores and punish the miserable collaborators who have supported them.  I’m looking forward to seeing him, ‘put down the mighty from their seat, and exalt the humble and meek’

.

Week 11 2013

Tendring Topics………on Line

‘Onward Christian soldiers……..

            The Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), of which I have been a member for over sixty years, is perhaps best known for its Peace Testimony, its practical peace-making, and its opposition to all wars.  This didn’t stop George Fox, founder of the Society, and other early Friends from using military imagery in proclaiming the truth of the Christian Gospel as they saw it.  Many of those early Friends were disillusioned ex-servicemen from Cromwell’s army. They declared that, using peaceful means, they were fighting The Lamb’s War against the forces of evil.  This thought was in my mind while I was composing last week’s blog.  I was delighted that our fellow-Christians in the Salvation Army had organised a Food Bank to help Clacton’s poor and that we Quakers were supporting it as individuals and as a Meeting.   I was glad that this palliative action was being taken by Christians of every tradition, nation-wide.

            On the other hand, I had been pleased to read in the Church Times that, in the House of Lords, the Bishop of Leicester had expressed concern that these Food Banks were becoming accepted as a normal part of the ‘welfare state’ – not simply as a timely and temporary remedy in an emergency.  The welfare of its citizens should be the concern and responsibility of the state, not left to the charity of its better-off citizens.

            Last week the Church Times recorded efforts by Christians of very different traditions to encourage the government to bear in mind the causes of ‘the western world’s’ current economic crisis and not to make scapegoats of the very people who are already suffering most as a result of it.

            Archbishop Welby, the new Archbishop of Canterbury and head of the Anglican Church world-wide, urged Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne to tackle the big banks whose irresponsibility and incompetence had been the primary cause of our problems.  As a member of the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards the Archbishop (whose knowledge and experience of the commercial world is at least equal to that of the Chancellor!) declared that, ‘Big complex banks are not only too big to fail; they’re too big to manage’. He went on to say that the Chancellor was, ‘continuing to defend the idea of a small group of absolutely colossal banks’, and asked, ‘if this lack of will to break them up and reduce them to a size that eliminated risk to the economy is not simply a recipe for a repetition of the disasters we’ve seen in the last few years?’

             Much more recently the Archbishop has endorsed the strongly worded protest of over forty Church of England Bishops at the government’s attempt to solve the country’s economic problems by capping benefit payment increases at one percent, less than half the current rate of inflation. This, the Bishops said, would bring some 200,000 children into poverty. They asserted that at times of national financial crisis the vulnerable need extra – not less – help.

            Because of the Church of England’s ‘established church’ status Prime Ministers are closely involved with the filling of any Bishopric or Archbishopric that becomes vacant during their term of office. Could it be that David Cameron furthered the appointment of Justin Welby as Archbishop of Canterbury because of his Eton education and his wide and successful experience in the world of business before becoming an Anglican priest?  Had he imagined that that background made him ‘one of us’ and that he could be depended upon to support a government of millionaires, by millionaires and for millionaires?  It would have been understandable enough.  Some nine hundred years earlier King Henry II had made exactly the same mistake when he appointed his former close friend Thomas a Becket to that same post.

           I can well imagine the Prime Minister or the Chancellor of the Exchequer rhetorically  asking, in exasperation,  'will no-one rid me of this turbulent priest?'  Fortunately there is little risk of Archbishop Welby suffering the same fate as his martyred medieval predecessor.

            Meanwhile a coalition of nonconformist Churches – The Baptist Union, the Church of Scotland, the Methodist Church and the United Reformed Church – have produced and published a report The Lies We Tell Ourselves challenging ideas about poverty that are spread by the Government and some sections of the news media.

            The report says that statistics have been manipulated by politicians and the media to support a comfortable but dangerous story: that the poor deserve the cuts that they are facing. ‘The poorest 120,000 families in Britain have been scapegoated, labelled as troubled and blamed for a large proportion of the problems in society’. Researchers had found that the common factor in the 120,000 families was not criminality or addiction, but the mothers’ mental health problems and that, ‘the figures used by the government were statistically flawed and highly misleading’.   Other ‘myths’ about poverty that the report claims to expose include the suggestion that child poverty is due to the parents’ not wanting to work.  It was found that, in-work poverty is now more common than out-of-work poverty’.   The report is being sent to every MP in the United Kingdom and to every Member of the Scottish Parliament.

              I am reminded of a verse of a hymn ‘O God of Earth and Altar’ written by G.K.Chesterton, author of, among many other things, the Father Brown detective stories.   In the hymn he asks God to defend us from:

Lies of tongue and pen,

And from the easy speeches

That comfort cruel men.

            The mother of Jesus Christ declared that the God whom we Christians worship ‘Scatters the proud in the imagination of their hearts, puts down the mighty from their seats and exalts the humble and meek’.  Moreover he has ‘filled the hungry with good things and the rich he has sent empty away’.

            Does that declaration have any relevance for those of us today who are neither proud and mighty nor poor and hungry?   I think so.  St Theresa told us that, ‘In this world God has no feet but our feet to run his errands, no hands but our hands to do his work’.    Christians, of every tradition, are called upon to live ‘in the imitation of Christ’ and to work towards the fulfilment of the prayer: Thy Kingdom come.  Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven!’  

            ‘Onward Christian soldiers……..’ carrying the banner of truth and armed only with love and compassion for our fellow men and women, whatever their colour, race or creed!

The Debt Time-bomb!

          I have written before in this blog about the way in which the government, while penalising us all as it tries to reduce the nation’s debt, is actively encouraging individual indebtedness.  Student loans can leave graduates owing tens of thousands of pounds, and perpetuating the idea of ‘home ownership for all’ while insisting that no-one can expect to have a ‘job for life’ leaves no-one confident of being able to pay off the mortgage debt that makes home purchase possible.

            The government’s policies of cutting social service benefits and public servants’ income while food and fuel prices increase, drive those existing on a subsistence income into debt whenever their households are struck by a sudden and unexpected financial crisis – an expensive repair to a car needed for work, the irreparable breakdown of a cooker, fridge, freezer or washing machine, the illness of a major contributor to the family income, and so on.   In the first instance the sum that has been borrowed may seem small but if it is not repaid promptly (and how can it be by those already on a just-get-by income?) the accruing interest will soon take on astronomical proportions.    It isn’t surprising that Clacton-on-Sea and the Tendring District generally, with its high and growing unemployment, its deprived areas and its impoverished families and elderly residents, should be among the first to experience the wave of indebtedness among its inhabitants

The Clacton Gazette records that almost half of the 7,000 local people who sought the help and advice of the Clacton Citizens Advice Bureau last year had serious money problems, with about 60 new cases turning up each month. CAB adviser Lee Fraser told a Gazette reporter, most people sought help only as a last resort when they were already thousands of pounds in debt.   The average debt had been almost £10,000 and one client had total debts, including his mortgage, of over a million pounds!   ‘By the time they come to us, said Mr Fraser, ‘They are fully into the debt spiral.  Usually we see them when it has got to the stage when they are being plagued by phone calls from creditors and they are no longer opening any letters they receive…….people with council tax arrears have bailiffs knocking at the door’. Studies have revealed that one in eight people in serious debt has contemplated suicide.   CAB say that they can’t work miracles.  They can only help and advise.  However the fact that last year they helped to prevent 400 people within the Tendring District from losing their homes, and succeeded in getting £4.5 million of debt written off, seems pretty miraculous to me!

This year the benefit cuts, so-called bedroom tax and changes in liability to pay Council Tax, all of which will take effect within the next few weeks, will put further pressure on the finances of the poor, just when those with incomes in excess of £150,000 a year are having their income tax liability reduced! This, in turn, will increase pressure on the CABs throughout the UK, at the same time  as many of them, including Clacton CAB, are having to reduce the number of their specialist advisers (the only people employed in ‘financial services’ who are serving the community!) because of official spending cuts.

The Adverts Tell the Story

            From 2004 to 2006 (the last two years of my wife’s life) when I was her full-time carer, she and I watched a great deal of daytime commercial television.   It seemed to me at the time that the programmes were financed largely by adverts from firms of ‘ambulance chasing’ no-win no-fee lawyers encouraging those involved in an accident to sue, and by money-lenders eager to lend large sums of money often to people who, in their own interests, should never have been encouraged to borrow a penny.  Never mind, they insisted, if you are already deeply in debt, are old, out of work, have a bad credit rating, or have been refused by other lenders, get in touch with us.  We may well be able to help you.  They had a special message for those who already had multiple debts.  We’ll put them all together and pay them off.  Then we’ll be your sole creditor – and there may even be enough slack for you to enjoy some of the  really important things in life, like a holiday in Bermuda or a second car.

            Since 2006, increasing mobility problems have meant that I still watch daytime commercial tv from time to time. As  the national economic crisis deepened I noted that those public benefactors offering loans to all and sundry had changed their tone.  They were no longer eager to help one and all, but concentrated on those who had a reliable income but were sometimes faced with a sudden expensive emergency, just a week or two before payday.  'A small, perhaps £500, ‘payday loan’ would solve your problem.  Just say the word, and it will be in your bank account within hours'.

            Now that payday loans have been exposed as the potential debt-trap that they are, there are fewer of those adverts and those that still exist are less strident.   There are still plenty of ambulance chasing lawyers on the scene though, and the moneylenders’ adverts have been largely replaced by those of the gamblers.  There’s at least half a dozen on-line bingo games –Sun, Robin Hood, Foxy and so on – plus on-line roulette for the serious gambler and, of course, the National Lottery.

            It is as though members of the tv-watching public have come to realize that they’ll never escape from poverty by hard work and saving (with interest rates below the level of inflation saved money is likely to be steadily losing, instead of increasing, its value) and borrowing offers only a temporary and illusory escape.   The only chances of escaping from poverty to wealth are of suing somebody (preferably a public body or a rich corporation) for injuries you have suffered in an accident that was ‘their fault’, or by successfully gambling with the few pounds that you still have in your pocket or handbag.  You’re ‘in it to win it – somebody has got to be a winner and it could be YOU’.  

           Here's a bit of of 'tax avoidance' advice of which even the poorest (perhaps particularly the poorest)  of us can take advantage.  Don't gamble.  Don't buy National Lottery tickets and don't buy scratch-cards.   Don’t be fooled – you are far more likely to be struck by lightning than become a lottery millionaire!  The only sure winners, week after week, are those who run the gamble and the government which taxes your folly!  

Week 48 2012

Tendring Topics.......on line

Essex leads again?

            A low turn-out for he recent elections of Crime and Police Commissioners to oversee the work of Britain’s Police Forces had been expected.   Few people though imagined that it would break all records as the lowest turn-out in any British election ever!  And this was despite the fact that a great many electors didn’t have to actually ‘turn out’ in order to vote!  I didn’t have to.  I vote by post and my voting paper and voting instructions were sent to me a week before the poll, for me to complete and post back at my leisure. 

            The average turn-out nationally was a miserable 14 percent but Essex ‘led’ (or should it be ‘dragged along behind’?) all the rest with the nation’s lowest turn-out of 12.81 percent.  Was it the result of apathy and lack-of-interest or of a conviction that it was an expensive and unnecessary poll, a negation of democracy and localism, and a means of giving one individual in each police authority unprecedented power – and a high salary to match it!   The Home Secretary claimed after the election that November’s short, dark and rainy days were a major cause of the low turn-out.  This hardly affected postal voters and, in any case, the date of the election was chosen by her government, not by us electors.   I reckon that if the ballot paper had included one further question; Do we need an elected Police and Crime Commissioner to oversee the County Police Force? folk would have been queuing up at the polling stations!

            I voted for Independent Linda Belgrove who lives within the Tendring District and who had been a member of the Police Authority that is being replaced by the new post of Commissioner.  She came fourth out of six candidates, but I notice that she was a runner-up in Tendring, Colchester, Chelmsford, Brentwood and Uttlesford which suggests to me that the locality in which each candidate lives had, as one would expect, some effect on the result.  However an even greater effect was that of having the support of a political party machine and it was Conservative Candidate Nick Alston who was successful, though only after electors’ second preferences had been taken into consideration.  He topped the poll in ten of Essex’s fourteen districts and came first with 51,235 votes.  Second came Mick Thwaites, Independent, a former police officer, with 40,132 votes.  The other candidates trailed well behind.

            A bold headline on the front page of the local Daily Gazette, in the same issue that reported the result of the election, highlighted a major problem to which the new Crime and Police Commissioner will need to give his attention; HALF OF CRIMES ARE NOT SOLVED.  The headline relates to Colchester where 449 crimes were reported in the town during September but 208 of them were marked for no further action by the end of the month. There were similar figures for August and those for October were not yet available.

            Discussion about crime deterrence usually focuses on the severity of the punishment for offenders, but I believe that the likelihood or otherwise of being detected is far more important.  Career criminals don’t worry about the punishment when they are confident that they will get away with the crime! The novels of Dickens and his contemporaries suggest that in the days when you could be hanged for stealing a sheep and transported to Australia for petty crime, more sheep were stolen and there was more petty crime per capita than there is today.  When hanging, drawing and quartering was the accepted penalty for treason (a fate comparable in horror only with burning alive for heresy!) there were certainly more plots aiming at the violent overthrow of the monarchy and the government, than there have been in these more humane and enlightened times.

            Get the crime detection rate up to 75 percent or higher and I have no doubt that, whatever penalty is suffered by those convicted, the crime rate will drop like a stone.  No – I have no idea how that can be achieved, but then I wasn’t among those aspiring to be Crime and Police Commissioner.

Economic Family Planning

          I sometimes wonder if the members of David Cameron’s coalition government (with its heavy concentration of millionaires) live in the same world as the rest of us.  Do they ever actually meet ordinary people except, of course, when they want their votes?

Take, for example, Iain Duncan-Smith, the work and pensions secretary.  He has decided that the United Kingdom can no longer afford to pay all the children’s benefits to which large families become entitled.  He has suggested therefore that child allowances should be paid for the first two children of every family but nothing at all for subsequent offspring. He is, I believe, a Roman Catholic. Can he possibly have never met and mixed with the parents of eight, nine or ten children?

He would find that they come in two, quite separate, categories though it is possible for a family to belong to both of them.  One category consists of a single parent or of parents who are feckless and irresponsible. They may have learning difficulties.  One or other, or both, of them may have a drink or a drugs problem (though they probably won’t admit to it).  Their home is likely to be squalid, smelly and poverty-stricken and their children neglected.  It may be that with patient one-to-one education from a dedicated Social Worker or Health Visitor they could, in time, adopt a more responsible life-style – but they certainly won’t think far enough ahead to ask themselves how they are going to feed a third, fourth, fifth or sixth child with no children’s benefit.

The other category consists of those who believe that to limit the family by ‘artificial’ means is in defiance of the will of God.   They may be devout Roman Catholics or describe themselves as fundamentalist Evangelical ‘Bible Christians’.  They may be ultra-orthodox Jews or fundamentalist Muslims.   They are most unlikely to yield to threats to limit child benefit to the first two children.  To do so, they believe, would bring them eternal punishment.

Paying children’s allowance only to the first two children of such families would do little or nothing to limit or reduce their size. It would increase child poverty and child neglect – and would probably increase the number of abortions.  I can’t believe that that is really what Iain Duncan-Smith wants?

An Honour Denied!

          It seems almost incredible that our government should refuse to allow surviving Royal Navy personnel who, in World War II, protected the Arctic convoys conveying vital war materials to our Soviet allies, to accept a medal from the Russian government in appreciation of their services.  To sail round the northern tip of Norway to the Russian port of Archangel  under constant threat of air attack from the Luftwaffe bases along the Norwegian coast and from German U-boats patrolling the North Atlantic, was one of the most perilous and physically demanding tasks undertaken in World War II.  Hundreds of vessels and some 3,000 men were lost in those Arctic waters.  In refusing to permit Clacton octogenarian Fred Henley and some 200 other Naval survivors of the Arctic Convoys accept this thank-you from the Russian government, our government has displayed a meanness of spirit unique among the World War II allies. American, Canadian, Australian and New Zealand veterans of those convoys have already received their Russian medals.  A typically smooth explanation of Britain’s refusal comes from a spokesman for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office:  

‘We very much appreciate the Russian Government’s wish to recognise the brave and valuable service given by veterans of the Arctic Convoys. However the rules on the acceptance of foreign awards clearly state that in order for permission to be given for an award to be accepted, there has to have been specific service to the country concerned and that that service should have taken place within the previous five years.

            The spokesman goes on to say that the award is also ruled out because the veterans concerned had been eligible for a British award for the same service; the World War II ‘Atlantic Star’.  In 2006 an official lapel badge, the ‘Arctic Emblem’ had also been introduced and some 10,000 had been issued   That settles it then.  ‘The rules’ make it quite impossible for these old men, all in their late eighties or nineties, to receive an official thank-you from a grateful Russian government for their part in one of the most arduous and dangerous exercises in World War II.    I hope that I am not being unduly cynical in suggesting that had the USA (or Saudi Arabia for that matter) wished to make a similar gesture for a similar reason, the government would have either changed those ‘rules’ or found some way of getting round them.

            I suspect that the real reason is that our top politicians are old enough to remember the cold war but not the real war of 1939 to 1945. They are reluctant to admit the enormous contribution that the then USSR made to the downfall of the Nazis (80 percent of all German army casualties in World War II were on the Eastern Front!) or the appalling suffering of the Soviet people during the Nazi occupation of much of their country.  Perhaps, of course, some of them don’t even realize that the Russians were our valued allies during those dark years. Old Etonians seem to have gaps in their knowledge of recent history. It’s not so long ago that our Prime Minister imagined that in 1940 we were junior partners of the USA in the struggle against Hitler!   It is no exaggeration to suggest that the outcome of the war against Nazi Germany was finally decided in a great tank battle that raged on the Russian steppe near Kursk in July and August 1943.  It ended in a defeat from which the Nazis never recovered.  The men of the Arctic Convoys ensured that the Soviet Army had the equipment needed to achieve that decisive victory – and to press on to Berlin!

A Church Divided

A somewhat time-worn certificate in my possession declares that Ernest George Hall born on 18^th May 1921, the son of Regimental Sergeant-Major Frederick Charles Hall, was baptised at St. Michael’s Garrison Church, Tidworth on 26^th May 1921. Thus, I have been a member of the Church of England for over 91 years! I certainly can’t claim to have been an active church member for the whole, or even for the greater part, of that time. However I have never formally rejected the Church and, even in the days when I would have described myself as an agnostic, I regarded the Church of England with affection and respect, recalling nostalgically the days when first as a choirboy and later as a server, I had used and loved the liturgies of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer.

For well over a decade I have been an occasional attender and communicant at my local Church of England Church, and six years ago I renewed and revived my active membership (well, as active as is possible in my late eighties and early nineties!).  I had never, of course, actually ceased to be a member.

            All of that probably accounts for the deep sadness that I feel about the way in which, in recent years, the Church of England has been torn by controversy, first about the ordination of women priests and, only last week, about the creation of women bishops.  How strange that at that latest Synod, the Bishops, who might have been expected to take a conservative stance, overwhelmingly welcomed the idea of committed women joining their ranks, the clergy accepted it and it was the laity who opposed and – by a majority of just a handful of votes vetoed it!

             Since 1948 I have also been a Quaker. I would certainly never abandon the Christian tradition that, in the silence of its expectant and prayerful Meetings for Worship, brought me back from my sterile agnosticism (I suppose that today it would have been called non-theism) to George Fox’s affirmation, on which the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) is founded, that there is one even Christ Jesus who can speak to thy condition. Consequently I am in dual membership; an unusual but not unique position. Canon Oestreicher of Coventry Cathedral and Terry Waite, Archbishop Runcie’s envoy to the Middle East, who spent several years in captivity as a hostage, are two other – much more distinguished – dual members.

            Quakers do not have a separated professional priesthood and the idea of settling controversial issues by means of a majority vote is alien to the Quaker tradition. We have no fixed liturgy, prayer book or hymn book. We do though have a published booklet of Advices and Queries, revised from time to time, that provides us with a guide, but not a fixed rule, to advise and support us both in worship and in our daily lives.

One of these advices is, I think, particularly relevant to those who hold strong views on either side in the current controversy within the Church of England.

Consider the possibility that you may be mistaken.

I would add that this should be done prayerfully and in the light of the teaching and example of Jesus Christ, rather than that of any other authority.