Week 30.09

Tendring Topics……….on Line

The Covers are off!

The plastic covers and the scaffolding that for months have masked the façade of the converted building in Jackson Road that is to become Clacton’s Travelodge Hotel have been removed. We can now see what the hotel will look like from the outside. No doubt internal work has been simultaneously carried out and, as promised, Clacton’s latest hotel will be open and ready for business by the end of July, less than a fortnight from the posting of this blog.

The new Travelodge Hotel, opposite the ‘Clacton Gazette’ office in Clacton’s Jackson Road is nearing completion.

Everyone knows that it is what happens in August, during the school holidays, that really determines whether or not our holiday trade has a good season. The augurs are promising. While the weather has so far been a bit mixed, we have certainly already had more warm and sunny days than we had in either 2007 or 2008. We have had rain and thunderstorms but, as usual, rather less than practically anywhere else. Even when the skies have been cloudy, it has usually been warm.

Visitor numbers during those three successive spring public holidays suggest that many may be on the way, and that we may have more than the usual number of overseas visitors taking advantage of the weakness of the pound. Despite all the criticism in the correspondence columns of the Clacton Gazette, I believe that most visitors will be attracted by our town’s newly laid-out centre and will be encouraged to come again. I have been telling my German friends (who live nearly 700 miles from their nearest seaside beach!) about the Essex holiday coast’s low rainfall, welcoming piers, colourful public gardens, and miles of tide-washed sandy beaches, not to mention the proximity of historic Colchester and the lovely Stour Valley; just as I tell my English friends about the mountains and lakes, the hotels and pubs, the ancient towns and villages and the low prices, of the three-country-corner land where the frontiers (which happily no longer exist!) of Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic come together.

‘Some corner of a foreign field…….’

Nowadays, the bodies of soldiers killed in action are brought home for burial and thus do not become, as claimed in Rupert Brooke’s poem 'The Soldier', ‘some corner of a foreign field that is for ever England’. Plenty of British blood has watered Afghan furrows though, from our two disastrous adventures there in the 19th century. It has, no doubt, mingled with the Russian blood that was shed there just a few short years before our own latest campaign began.

I am writing these words on Tuesday 14th July, the day that eight bodies were flown home together, after one of the worst weeks for the British army since the Falklands War. I sometimes wonder how many British and American, not to mention Russian and Afghan, lives might have been spared had our politicians refrained from encouraging and giving covert support to those to whom we then referred as ‘the gallant Mojihadin’ but who are now the fanatical insurgents exacting a bloody daily toll from among our young soldiers. It is quite possible that British or American agents taught them how to make those simple roadside bombs currently causing so much death and destruction.

Can the present war be won? Top British and American politicians insist that it must be – but then I have little doubt that British politicians said much the same thing in 1850 and 1882, and that the same claim was made in Moscow just a few years ago. Events proved otherwise then and I very much fear that they will do the same this time….after even more lives have been lost.
I have no doubt that NATO Forces (what on earth has Afghanistan to do with the North Atlantic?) can subdue the Taliban and its allies, possibly even succeeding in eliminating all their strongholds and hiding places. But ideas (even thoroughly bad ones!) can’t be destroyed by force. I don’t believe that we can establish an Afghan government with either the inclination or the strength to eliminate in Afghanistan the pernicious doctrines of the Taliban – opposition to democracy and to freedom of speech and religion; opposition to girls receiving any education beyond religious instruction, and relegation of women to the status of personal property; slavish adherence to the most intolerant and restrictive interpretation of the Islamic Faith – the equivalent of that of the Christian iconoclasts, witch-hunters and heretic-burners of past centuries.

Opinion polls suggest that almost half of British people feel that we should pull our forces out of Afghanistan. My own instinctive feeling is the same, but I realize that that too could have disastrous consequences. After the Soviet withdrawal (‘Afghanistan is free again!’, our newspapers and politicians proclaimed) there was a not-widely-publicised bloodbath in Kabul and other Afghan cities. Those who had co-operated with the Soviet-approved regime were hunted down and slaughtered and Afghan women and girls (who had enjoyed more freedom under the Soviets than they had ever before known!) were again reduced to the status of chattels and house slaves.

Does anyone imagine that the situation would be any different if we were to withdraw our troops? Red, and Red-White-and-Blue flags look remarkably similar to Taliban zealots. They believe that both are flown by Godless infidels intent on attacking their religion and destroying their centuries old customs and culture. The conviction that God is on their side can inspire men and women to great heights of heroism – but it can also license deeds of almost unbelievable cruelty and inhumanity.

We cannot with clear consciences withdraw our forces from Afghanistan before we have found a way protecting, or evacuating, those Afghans who have embraced the ideals of freedom, equality, and self-government towards which we have urged them.

We ‘ignorant pensioners’?

Is the ‘Tendring Pensioner’ destined to replace the ‘Essex girl’ as an iconic symbol of human ignorance? It seems that the Tendring District is an area of ‘low educational achievement’ with 22 percent (about 9,500 people) having no qualifications, compared with a mere 12.5 percent across the East of England.

It’s OK though. It isn’t the up-and-coming young and middle-aged who’re ignorant. The survey has been ‘skewed’ by the large number of over-65s living in the district and, of course, they didn’t have the educational advantages that the young enjoy today! The Clacton Gazette tries, in its understanding-the-elderly way, to be helpful. ‘It is never too late for learning’ announces its ‘Comment’ column. It assures us that, ‘for those that do commit to learning later in life, they are much the richer for it and education is one of the few things in the world which, if it were universally available and availed of, can be seen as a panacea for most of the ills that infect us at home or abroad. If, at eighty-eight, I wanted to express such patronising rubbish I would certainly manage to do so rather more succinctly and literately than that!

Doesn’t it occur to whoever conducted the survey, and to those who pontificate in the columns of the press, that lack of ‘paper qualifications’ could simply mean that education authorities of fifty, sixty or (in my case) over seventy years ago didn’t distribute these qualifications quite as freely as they do today?

A class of nine-year old boys at Springfield Council School, Kitchener Road, Ipswich in 1930. I am the anxious looking little boy with glasses sitting just by the knee of the Headmaster (A Mr Offord , ‘old Pip Offord’ to us kids – behind his back, of course). I was admitted to the Northgate Grammar School a year later.

In the 1930s I was one of a minority who attended a secondary school and stayed on at school until I was sixteen. The vast majority of my contemporaries received only a primary (we called it an elementary) education and left school at 14. For them there was no ‘school leaving certificate’ but that did not mean that they were totally ignorant. Very few boys and girls in those days left school at 14 unable to read, write and do as much arithmetic as they were likely to need in later life. They also had a sketchy idea of Britain’s history and of the geography of the world, and at least some acquaintance with English classical poetry and prose including, of course, the Bible. Today’s sixteen-year-old school leavers who knew as much would certainly get some kind of a certificate.

At my secondary school we studied for the London University ‘General Schools Certificate’ which, for those who obtained high enough marks, conferred exemption from the Matriculation (minimum entrance requirement) of London University. For that reason the exam was often known simply as ‘the Matric’. To obtain the certificate we had to study and reach the pass standard in at least five subjects including English (language and literature), Mathematics (arithmetic including logarithms and stocks and-shares, algebra, geometry and trigonometry), a foreign language (at my school only French was on offer), a science, and at least one, of either history, geography or another science (general physics, chemistry, biology and, I think, a more advanced physics, were on offer). To obtain matric. exemption you had to achieve ‘credit’ level in all of those five subjects.

It will be obvious that many pupils who took the exam failed in just one or two subjects and left school without any kind of certificate. It would be absurd though to claim that, because of that, they were less well-educated than someone who left school last year with a couple of mediocre GCSEs.

I sat the exam in English, Maths, French, history, geography and ‘general physics’ (guaranteed to be about principles only, with no mathematical questions!) and passed with Matric Exemption, though only because the examiners were allowed a little latitude. They considered that my ‘Distinction’ in English outweighed my ‘lower than Credit standard’ in French! I didn’t, of course, go to London University. In 1937 that wasn’t really an option for working class pupils, but the Matric did help me to get a better job!

Oh yes, along the way to eighty-eighty I have picked up two or three other professional qualifications, including a certificate qualifying me to teach in one of those adult educational colleges so warmly recommended to us poor ignorant old pensioners by the Clacton Gazette!

Swine ‘Flu

Swine ‘Flu is in the news again. It is spreading rapidly…..and there have been some deaths. These are obviously a tragedy for the relatives and friends of the victims. For most people though, Swine ‘Flu remains a mild affliction, less serious than the ‘seasonal ‘flu’ that occurs every winter and which also always claims some deaths.

Generally with epidemics it is the very young and the very old who are most at risk. This time, although the very young are in danger the very old, like me, appear to be immune. This is, I suppose, most likely to be for the rather boring reason that we have already encountered and beaten off every possible mutation of the ‘flu virus.

I prefer to think though that on this, Charles Darwin’s anniversary year, we are being given a demonstration that ‘survival of the fittest’ is not a universal rule. We oldies, with no possible evolutionary justification for our continued existence, manage to resist swine ‘flu better than our still-young, active and virile contemporaries!

Tendring Topics……on Line

Some Pictorial Memories

It was just as I was posting last week’s blog on the internet that my grandson Nick’s photographs from our trip to Zittau arrived by email. They were far better than mine (well, he did get a B.A. Honours degree in photography at Westminster University) and really revived my memories of that very happy and action-packed weekend.

There was the picture of the high-speed train pulling into Frankfurt Airport station where we changed trains on the way home. Its streamlined glass-fronted driver’s cab reminded me that on our outward journey we had been in a carriage just behind the cab. It was possible for us to move forward so as to be just behind the driver, able through the glass windscreen to have a driver’s-eye view of the rail-track ahead.

Then there were the pictures taken on the summit of Mount Oybin: the arched doorway to the crypt through which, in February 1945, we had carried those heavy cases that we now know contained the historic Great Zittau Lenten Veil, and the nave of the monastic church with its soaring stone walls and windows. How on earth, we wondered, had those medieval builders managed to create such a magnificent and beautiful structure at the summit of a mountain? While we were there, concealed loud-speakers brought us the sound of plainsong chant from an invisible monastic choir; very spooky!

The following day had been the celebration of the restoration of the Lenten Veil and tenth anniversary of its installation in the museum/church of the Holy Cross. Speeches in German, most of which neither Nick nor I could understand, were punctuated by captivating performances by a Polish choral group, two violinists, two guitarists and four singers (though the musicians also sang). The lyrics, some in German some in Polish, all so we were told, had their origins in the Bible. The music was arranged by one of the choir members and had been inspired by traditional folk music of Polish, gypsy and Jewish origin. It was just the kind of light-classical/folk music that I, and it was obvious the German audience, enjoyed.

Among the speakers was my friend Dr Volker Dudeck, retired director of the Zittau Museum, who referred to the contribution that ‘the Englishman, Ernest Hall’ had made to the history of the Lenten Veil and how honoured they were that he and his grandson were with them on this occasion!

When the speeches were over, but before we repaired to a posh mayoral reception at the Town Hall, Dr Dudeck presented me with three copies of a glossy, illustrated booklet entitled, in German, ‘Return to Zittau’ by Ernest Hall. It was a German translation of the long, nearly 8,000 words, article that I had written after my visit to Zittau two years earlier, illustrated by local pictures and pictures taken from my Flickr site. It came as a complete, and very pleasant, surprise. The photograph shows my friend Ingrid and myself each holding one of the booklets.

But, of course, the photos also recorded something of the friendship that has developed between my family and the Kulke family of Zittau. There was Ingrid’s little niece Maja, who will be three in September and, at about the same time, will have a new brother or sister. Her mum and dad, Ingrid’s brother and sister-in-law Andreas and Kornelia, and Ingrid and Andreas’ mother Frau Ingrid Kulke who has always been so friendly and hospitable. And, of course, Ingrid herself, who now lives in Bayreuth in Bavaria but who made the long car journey to Zittau to see us.

Nick and I are on the photograph too. My eyes are shut and my mouth open (I hope I wasn’t snoring!) and I appear to be asleep. Perhaps I was! It was at the end of three very busy and tiring days and, as I constantly need to remind myself, I am eighty-eight!

‘Forty years on…….’

No, I wasn’t at either Eton or Harrow. Nor, as far as I know, have I ever met anyone who was. However I have always had an ear for a good lyric and the opening lines of the Harrow School Song have stuck in my mind.

Forty years on, when afar and asunder
Parted are those who are singing today…….

It was forty years ago, on 12th July 1969, that our then-new Quaker Meeting House was officially opened by George Gorman, Secretary of the Quaker Home Service Committee, in effect, though I doubt if its members would have cared for the description, the Quaker home mission organisation.

Clacton Quaker Meeting House as it looked when first opened. We have more recently added an extension to provide a toilet with wheelchair access

I was the Clerk (secretary, chairman and general dogsbody) of the Clacton Quaker Meeting at the time, so I had been deeply involved in the fund raising, the building and furnishing, and the official opening. We had invited members of every Christian tradition to attend. I am not sure if all sent representatives, but many did, and I know that there were, among others, Roman Catholics, Anglicans and Salvationists present. With Clacton Quakers and others from Colchester and Sudbury, the Meeting House was full and those present overflowed into the entrance lobby. Luckily we didn’t, in those days, take ‘health and safety’ quite so seriously as we do today.

The interior of the Quaker Meeting House today. The central table and the stacking chairs were there for the opening but many of the chairs have since been reupholstered.

We didn’t do any singing at the official opening. That’s not the Quaker tradition. However, those who were present on that occasion certainly are scattered ‘afar and asunder’ and many have departed from this world. I was shocked to realize that I would be the only Clacton Quaker who remembered that official opening and who would be able to attend our Meeting for Worship on Sunday morning 12th July and the Area Business Meeting (with Quakers from all over north-east Essex and from Sudbury in Suffolk) in the afternoon. At both these Meetings our Meeting House’s fortieth birthday would be remembered with thanksgiving.

And so it was. The paragraphs above were written before 12th July and it is now the day after. What I haven’t so far mentioned is that that date was not only the 40th Anniversary of the Meeting House’s official opening, but was also the third anniversary of the death of Heather, my wife for sixty years.

The last fifty years of her life had been inextricably intertwined with that of the Quaker Meeting. We had attended Meeting for Worship most Sundays, for the last year or so with Heather in a wheelchair friendly taxi. In the 1960s and ‘70s she had run a successful Quaker Children’s Class. Until disability overcame her in 2004 she had visited the sick and disabled and written long and chatty letters to absent Friends. She had often provided the flowers for the Meeting Room table and served tea for an after-meeting chat. For thirty years she had organised the letting of the rooms at the Meeting House to local organisations, and had made firm friends of some of their secretaries. It was in the Meeting House that we had held meetings of celebration and thanksgiving to mark our silver, ruby, golden and diamond wedding anniversaries. It was in the Meeting House that, three months after our Diamond Wedding Celebration, we held a Memorial Meeting of Worship to give thanks for the Grace of God made evident in Heather’s life. All our F/friends and family were present and I was very pleased that the vicar of St. James’ Anglican Church and the Christ Church URC Church Minister were both there.

At 0ur Golden Wedding celebration at the Quaker Meeting House on 27th April 1996. Heather and I were still in our early '70s (well, I was almost 75) and we were both still pretty fit.

At the Sunday morning Meeting for Worship on 12th July, sitting where Heather and I had so often sat together on Sunday mornings, it was difficult to accept that she was not still sitting there beside me. I rose and spoke about her, as I felt impelled to do, with only the greatest difficulty.

I had promised to talk about Clacton Meeting and the official opening of the Meeting House for about thirty minutes at the end of the afternoon’s business meeting. Remembering how I had felt in the morning I wondered if I would manage to do so. I needn’t have worried. There’s nothing like a Quaker Business Meeting (or I imagine the business meeting of any church!) to dampen the emotions and restore calm to the mind. I managed to give my thirty minute talk and I think that Friends found it acceptable. At least nobody fell asleep; nobody got up and walked out; nobody came quietly up to me later and said, ‘I wish Friend, that you hadn’t felt called upon to say this, that or the other’, and several did thank me.

Afterwards I, and I think everybody else, thoroughly enjoyed the tea that a few untiring and unseen Clacton Friends had provided for us.

It had been, I thought, a good celebration of forty years of Quaker service to God and to the local community, and of the service that Heather had rendered to the Quaker Meeting.

Week 28.09

Tendring Topics………on Line

The Magic has gone!

Someone has turned on the tap! Clacton’s controversial water feature is in full operation…….though with a temporary barrier round it to prevent its being a danger to the public health. I still cannot understand why our water feature should be a health risk while others, apparently identical, are OK. Surely it can’t be that our Council having spent tens of thousands of pounds on the installation decided to save a few thousand by skimping on the purification plant!

I don’t like the barrier and was glad to learn that it is temporary and that ways are being explored to permit it to be removed. In my picture even the seagull is looking away from it!

Like so many things in this ‘brave new world’ of the third millennium (New-Labour, New theology, Politically correct New-Speak, Expurgated lists of MPs’ expenses) the restored water feature resembles the original but has had all the magic painlessly extracted

The Right to Choose?

I don’t think that one needs to be either a devout Roman Catholic or a Fundamentalist Evangelical, or indeed to have any religious faith, to be profoundly shocked by the recently revealed fact that 5,438 pregnancies in Essex were terminated surgically (aborted) in 2008. 645 of them were of girls under the age of eighteen and of these, 110 were under sixteen. We in the Tendring District may take some comfort from the fact that there were many more abortions in south Essex (Southend-on-Sea, the Rochford area, Basildon, Thurrock and Brentwood) than here in the north of the county.

Leaving aside questions of morality, abortion is the very least cost-effective means of birth control, and diverts time, skills and resources from saving life, which should surely be the prime purpose of the NHS, to destroying it. Abortion is a surgical procedure and is not without its risks.
Even those loudest in their demand that women should have the right to choose, in effect that there should be ‘abortion on demand’, view with concern the steadily growing number of terminations. Their preferred remedy is earlier and more comprehensive sex education. I am quite sure that that is part of the problem rather than its solution.

I recently watched on tv a very moving documentary about a young girl living in a pleasant south coast holiday resort who was pregnant at 13 and had her baby at 14. She, to her credit, opted to keep her baby and with the help of supportive parents was managing to do so. She was one of a number of teenage mums from the same school, a modern one that had been commended for the comprehensive nature of its sex education and, in particular, for its drop-in centre where school children could find the answer to all their sexual and relationship problems, details of means of contraception and, naturally, facilities for terminating unwanted pregnancies.

I am a little hesitant about recounting any of my own experience in this context. However, I can say that when, at eighteen, I was first called up into the army in September 1939 I found myself in the company of single young men from 18 to about 23 from every walk of life, but all coming from Ipswich and the nearby towns and villages. Conversation among what Kipling described as ‘single men in barracks’ was, as you may imagine, fairly uninhibited. Romantic experiences tended be exaggerated rather than played down. Yet I am quite sure that at least three quarters of those young single men had had no more than peripheral sexual experience and were, in fact, virgins.

Leslie Thomas, in his Virgin Soldiers novels, set in the conscript army during and immediately after World War II says much the same thing. Many of his young soldiers were terrified that they’d be killed, or worse still mutilated, without ever losing their virginity. Well yes, now and again that thought did pass through my mind! Today, I suspect, we would all have been regarded as freaks!

Was anyone the worse for the fact that in those between-the-wars days the overwhelming majority of children left school without sexual experience and that, in many cases and for both sexes, this remained the case until they were married or, at the very least, engaged to be married?

I don’t think so. I don’t recall there being more cases of sexual assault, rape and child molestation in the immediate post-war years than there are today. The ‘baby boom’ of those years certainly doesn’t suggest that our libido was affected by years of abstinence. Nor were post-war marriages more fragile than those today. My own endured for sixty years and ended only with my wife's sad death. Our marriage was by no means ‘roses all the way’ but there isn’t one of those sixty years that I wouldn’t gladly relive if only that were possible. We were by no means unique.

I would hate to see a return to the days when a girl who ‘got herself into trouble’ was treated as a pariah and her ‘illegitimate’ child as a second-class citizen. Yet we do need to foster a climate of opinion in which casual promiscuity and juvenile sexual activity are at the very least considered irresponsible and antisocial……….just as drink-driving is now considered to be. Something that is a serious criminal offence if one of those involved is under and one over the age of sixteen surely doesn’t become perfectly all right if both individuals are juveniles. If I were to say that it is just plain wrong I’m sure that I’d be accused of being judgmental and antediluvian!

My visit to Germany

I am just back from my brief visit to Germany to attend the tenth anniversary of the restoration of the Great Zittau Fastentuch (Lenten Veil) and its installation in the Museum Church of the Holy Cross in that small German town.

I enjoyed every minute of it. I was seen onto Eurostar at St. Pancras international station by my son and daughter-in-law and travelled on my own to Brussels where I was met by grandson Nick. After spending the night in Nick’s flat we caught the 7.30 am train to Dresden the next day, changing trains only once at Frankfurt. Nick, who is an expert on economic trans-European travel, had booked our journey well in advance on specific trains, As a result we travelled First Class at Second Class prices! It really was a comfortable journey and I can’t speak too highly of the German rail transport system.

Our seats were recliners and had comfortable head and foot rests. A pull-down table had a rest in which a cup of coffee, or a glass of beer, could safely be put down while the train was at speed. There was a mini tv screen in front of each seat and there were facilities for my grandson to access the internet on his laptop! Passengers were supplied with a printed plan of the journey. The time, place and duration of all stops on the journey were clearly shown and the connections that could be made from each indicated. What was more the plan had the time and platform of departure of each connecting train. In Liverpool Street passengers never know the platform they have to go to until about ten minutes before departure!

Every station through which our train passed was neat, clean and appeared to have been recently refurbished. There was no peeling paintwork, no litter and no graffiti.

This, I think, clearly demonstrates the merits of a state owned and centrally controlled railway system compared with a privatised one in which the tracks are owned and run by one private firm and the rolling stock by half a dozen or more others, all concerned more for the bank balances of their shareholders than the comfort and convenience of their passengers.

Nick picked up without trouble the hired car, from a depot just a couple of hundred yards from Dresden’s main railway station. We were soon speeding along the motorway the sixty or so miles to the Haus am See Hotel just outside Zittau. On our arrival we found, to our total astonishment, that some of our German friends (Frau Ingrid Kulke, her son Andreas, daughter-in-law Kornelia, and their little two-year old daughter Maja. Frau Kulke's daughter Ingrid, an email friend of mine for several years was to join us the next day) were already there to welcome us and had booked a table for us all in the hotel dining room.

The hotel offered us every comfort and convenience. As its name indicates, the hotel, which was also a health spa offering sauna and various fitness treatments, was on the shores of a lake with low mountains in the distance (the picture shows the view from my bedroom window!) Our rooms had en suite bathrooms and were equipped with tv and radio.

The celebration of the Fastentuch was on Saturday. Friday was free. Nick drove me to Mount Oybin, five or six miles away, to the summit of which I had, in February 1945, helped transport the cases believed to have contained the Fastentuch.

On two previous occasions I had tried to climb to the top but had succeeded only in getting as far as the gift shop, still a hundred or more (mostly vertical!) yards from the summit. This time I took a rest at the gift shop, carried on, and got there! I was able to see the actual gothic style doorway of the ancient monastery, through which we had taken those cases and deposited them for safety. Standing there I felt like Hilary on the summit of Everest in 1953!

The View from the summit of Oybin. In the far distance- swathed in mist – is the town of Zittau

The following day we went to the celebration in the Church of the Holy Cross and to the reception in the Town Hall afterwards, and I had another very pleasant surprise. My long article, ‘Return to Zittau’, about my return as a free man over sixty years after I had been a POW there, had been translated into German and published with local photos and photos from my life, as ‘Rueckkehr nach Zittau’ as a glossy and well-produced booklet. It is to be stocked by local gift and souvenir shops and any profits will go towards the upkeep of the Fastentuch.

I was delighted. It was a fitting climax to my third and – I think most likely – last visit to the town in which I spent the final 18 months of World War II and where I now feel ‘at home’ and have made firm and lasting friendships.

Week No 27.09

Tendring Topics……..on Line

Zittau’s Lenten Veils......the story so far

I have been invited to Zittau in Germany for the tenth anniversary celebration, on 4th July, of the restoration and display in its own museum/church of the Zittau Great Lenten Veil or ‘Fastentuch’. This is a unique textile artifact that attracts visitors from all over the world and in the history of which I am believed to have played a tiny part. With the help of Grandson Nick I am hoping to be present for this celebration. I thought that I would use this blog, to be posted a day early, to tell ‘the story so far’ of my involvement Next week’s blog? Well, that remains to be seen. I won’t be back in Clacton before the 6th or 7th July and the blog may be a day or two – or possibly a week – late.

On the left of the picture is the great Fastentuch or Lenten Veil. You can get an idea of its size from the group of people looking at it. The Smaller Fastentuch (presumably used to screen off a Lady Chapel) is next to it. the descriptions are difficult to read. White on gold is not a very good idea!

This is how it all happened:

It was once the practice in parts of Austria and Germany to screen off the sanctuaries of their churches during the season of Lent. The reason for this, so I have been told, was to impose a spiritual, as well as a physical, fast on the faithful during that period. This screen, called a Fastentuch (or Lenten Veil), was originally a plain piece of linen but it later became the practice to decorate it in various ways. The great Lenten Veil of Zittau, the small East German town in which I spent the last eighteen months of World War II as part of a working party (Arbeitskommando) of thirty ‘other rank’ British prisoners of war, was unique in Germany. It was 8.2 metres high by 6.8 metres wide. It was seven centuries old and had painted on it 90 Biblical pictures. 45 from the Old Testament and 45 from the New. It was the town’s pride and joy.

At the end of World War II it was found to be missing from its home in the Zittau Town Museum and was eventually found on the slopes of Mount Oybin (a spectacular peak several miles from the town). It was in four pieces and was being used by some Russian soldiers to line the walls of a sauna! It was recovered and, after German reunification, was lovingly restored and put on permanent display in the redundant Church of the Holy Cross that has been adapted and provided with controlled lighting and a controlled atmosphere to ensure its preservation.

Mount Oybin, where the Great Fastentuch was found, and to the summit of which I had helped transport heavy cases from Zittau Museum in February 1945

No-one knew quite how this enormous textile artifact had found its way from the museum to Mount Oybin. This mystery was solved quite accidentally during the course of correspondence between myself and an email pen-friend (Ingrid Zeibig) in Zittau when I mentioned, quite casually, one of the odder jobs that I had had while doing ‘hard labour’ in her town between September 1943 and May 1945. It had been towards the end of February 1945, after the terrible British and American fire-bomb raids of the 13th and 14th of that month on the city of Dresden (about 60 miles from Zittau). The thunder of artillery from the eastern front was becoming daily louder. The end of the war was clearly in sight. I had been one of a party of half a dozen or so POWs who helped transport for safety some very heavy cases of ‘treasures’ from the town museum to what I thought was a ruined ‘Dracula type’ castle (I discovered later that it was actually a ruined monastery) on the summit of Mount Oybin.

Ingrid immediately thought of the Fastentuch and took it up with the scholarly Dr Volker Dudeck, Direktor (we would call him the curator, I think) of the Zittau Museum, who agreed with her. Thus, I became unwittingly one of the ‘rescuers’ of one of the town’s most valued possessions. This ensured for me a little local celebrity when in March 2007, my son and grandson (I certainly couldn’t have done it on my own!) accompanied me on my revisit to Zittau as a free man after over 60 years. We were able to meet and be welcomed by my correspondent and her family – and by Dr, Dudeck, who speaks perfect English.

We were given a free VIP showing of the Fastentuch displayed in all its glory together with a commentary in English on each of its 90 pictures. I found myself astonished by its immense size and by the comprehensive nature of the pictures on it. I couldn’t think of a single familiar bible story that wasn’t illustrated. Afterwards we were interviewed by a friendly, and fortunately bilingual local newspaper reporter (my German is of the tv ‘ ‘Allo, Allo’’ variety) and a photo of my son, grandson and myself appeared, together with a very friendly article, on the front page of the following issue of Zittauer Zeitung (Zittau Times).

That was not the end of my involvement with Zittau and its Fastentuch. I continued my correspondence with Ingrid Zeibig. Dr Dudeck and I became friends and we too corresponded by email. During my visit Ingrid, knowing that I was an author and journalist, asked me if when I returned to England, I would write an article about my impressions on returning to Zittau as a free man after over sixty years. She would translate it into German primarily for her own family but perhaps also for a wider readership.

I sat down at my lap-top intending to write about 1,000, perhaps 1,500 words. However, once I had written the first few sentences I became carried away. I explained why I had wanted to return to Zittau and how, when I was in my eighties, this had become possible. It finished as a considerable piece of autobiography of nearly 8,000 words. It was certainly much too long for any publication in this country. Nevertheless I duly dispatched copies by email to Volker Dudeck (we were on Quakerly first-name terms by this time) and to Ingrid.

Both were enthusiastic about it but Ingrid must surely have been daunted by the thought of translating it as well as holding down a full-time job and caring for a teenage daughter! Fortunately, she didn’t have to. Volker, having read it, passed it on to Frau Schubert, a colleague whose knowledge of English was even better than his own, to translate. He sent me a copy of the result – ‘Rückkehr nach Zittau’ and also told me that it would be published in full in a future issue of the Zittauer Geschicktsblätter , a glossy regional cultural publication.

This led to yet another development. Three Christian traditions in Zittau (Roman Catholic, Lutheran and Methodist) united in 2008 to hold ‘Meditations’ on the Fastentuch once a month on Wednesday evenings. These mediations were accompanied by readings, pictures (from a projector onto a screen) and music. The readings for the September session were to be from the German translation of ‘Return to Zittau’ and I was cordially invited at attend. I was asked if I had any pictures of myself that could be used and I told them that they were very welcome to help themselves to anything useful on my Flickr site on the internet www.flickr.com/ernestbythesea/photos which holds over 350 pictures mostly of myself and my family and friends, including a few wartime and immediately postwar pictures. I didn’t really think that I would be able to accept the invitation but my elder son Pete and daughter-in-law Arlene made it possible and we all attended this event.

The museum/church of the Holy Cross, where the Fastentuch is displayed was almost full and to my astonishment they read practically the whole of the German version of Return to Zittau. I was so pleased to hear laughter at appropriate places and no less pleased when afterwards a lady told me that bits of it had moved her to tears. During the reading there was first martial and then funereal music while on the screen they showed pictures from both the German and British archives of the fighting in and around Tobruk (where I had been captured in 1942). They then showed pictures of my life, taken from the Flickr web site, and recent photographs of places in and around Zittau that I had mentioned in my article!

The very first picture in the ‘picture show’. Myself, as I was in 1945, superimposed on part of the Great Fastentuch

Afterwards I was presented with a bouquet of flowers and was invited to say a few words. I said just a few in German and then spoke a greater length through an interpreter. I said that I had been in their town as POW and was so happy to have now been welcomed as a friend. I was happy and proud to have played a tiny part in the history of their precious Fastentuch. There was a very enthusiastic response and I felt that I had made a tiny contribution to Anglo-German friendship.


We were also invited to the Town Hall where the Oberburgomeister (Mayor) presented me with a silver cross and ring, symbols of the Great and Little Fastentuch.

And that is the story so far. After 4th July I may be able to add a few more paragraphs.

Week 26.09

Tendring Topics……..on Line

Incompetence...or Deliberate Deception?

How very reluctant politicians are to face up to their past errors and to say, as though they really meant it, ‘We’re sorry. We got it wrong’!

The fire-bombing of Dresden in February 1945 (I was only some sixty miles away), and the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the same year were among the factors that made me become a not-very-active member of the post-war Peace Movement. In the ‘60s and early ‘70s I used to go up to London with my two young sons on Easter Monday to join the good-natured crowds welcoming the Aldermaston CND Marchers to Trafalgar Square. My days of even such marginal public protest have long been over. I was pleased though that my sons and grandchildren, with their wives and girlfriends, were among the nearly a million protesters who flocked to London on the eve of the Anglo-American bombing and invasion of Iraq to try, in vain, to stop the blood-bath to which we knew this would lead.

We now know that the reasons for which we believed we went to war with Iraq were false. The Iraqi government had no connection with El Quaida and was in no way involved in the 9/11 outrage in New York. Nor, as we now know, did Iraq possess any ‘weapons of mass destruction’. It is true that Iraq had a cruel and undemocratic government with no respect for human rights. Saudi Arabia is much the same, and a number of its citizens were involved in 9/11 – yet, far from invading - we welcome the King of Saudi Arabia ostentatiously as an honoured guest!

Both of the main political parties had supported the war, though it must be said that in both parties there were those who were prepared to swim publicly against the tide and oppose it.

The war cost, and is still costing, billions of pounds. It resulted in thousands of men, women and children, mostly innocent civilians, being killed or maimed. It caused the destruction of Iraq’s infrastructure. It proved to be an effective recruiting motive for the terrorism that it was supposed to be combating. By-products have been a murderous feud between Sunni and Shia Muslims, and Iraqi Christians, who had practised their faith freely under Saddam Hussein, are no longer able do so safely!

For years there has been public demand for the causes of the war and its conduct to be the subject of an impartial public enquiry. The government was sympathetic and regretful. There would be such an enquiry, but not while our troops were in Iraq. Understandable enough; when I was a gunner in North Africa in 1941/1942 it wouldn’t have done my morale much good had we been told that we were there, at best, as a result of a bad mistake or, at worst, because of a deliberate lie.

Now though, final departure of British troops from Iraq is imminent, and the government has promised the full impartial public enquiry that had been demanded. However the conditions that the government has imposed will rob it of much of its value. The government is appointing those who will conduct the enquiry. No-one, I think, will question the impartiality of those selected, but it would surely have been a good idea to have first consulted the opposition about these appointments, particularly the Liberal Democrats who, to their credit, opposed the Iraq adventure from its very beginning.

Then, the evidence was to be heard in secret. This simply wasn’t good enough. When the conclusions of the enquiry are announced, we want to know the evidence on which they are based. It is claimed that some of the evidence might endanger national security if made public? Perhaps so, but it should surely be the responsibility of whoever chairs the enquiry to decide what is the small amount of evidence that cannot safely be revealed to the public. A little late in the day and in the face of a public outcry, the government has announced that that is what will take place. It is a welcome, if humiliating U-turn.

Finally, the enquiry will not be allowed to apportion blame. I think that they should be able to; not so that those guilty can be either pilloried or punished. Their own consciences should see to that. Rather, so that we may know when there was an honest mistake and when a deliberate deception.

For instance, in the weeks preceding the invasion there was a relatively slow build-up of allied forces in Kuwait so that, at zero hour, the British and American armoured columns could advance decisively into Iraq. If Saddam Hussein had possessed weapons of mass destruction, even merely ‘battlefield’ ones, he would surely have monitored that build-up and, when he considered the time right, unleashed these weapons onto his enemies, disposing of their invading armies in one lethal stroke.

Did Messrs Bush and Blair genuinely believe that Saddam had these dreadful means of mass destruction? If so they were surely irresponsibly putting their armies in appalling and unnecessary peril in Kuwait. Or did they know perfectly well that he had none? In which case we were being deliberately deceived.

This is just one of the things that we are surely entitled to know.

Ashamed of being British!

As far as I am aware, I have never actually met a Romanian though, in one way or another, I have encountered citizens of virtually every other European country in my time. However, a few years ago one of my much-travelled grandsons made friends with a Romanian girl and was invited to visit her home and family.

Their home is on the outskirts of Bucharest and, when he arrived back in England again, he was full of praise and gratitude for the warm welcome, friendship and hospitality that he had found there. ‘They were poor’, he said, ‘but what little they had, they were eager to share with me’. He returned home with a higher view of humanity than he had had when he departed.

My memories of his story of his reception in Bucharest made me feel doubly ashamed of the fact that young people in Belfast who would, no doubt, claim to be proud to be British, had made the lives of 100 Romanian immigrants (including a young baby) so miserable that they had fled from their homes, even though they had nowhere to go.

It is such incidents as this that make me alarmed when I see the BNP gaining ground in British politics, both locally and nationally and remember that the recent elections revealed them to have at least 2,000 sympathisers in Clacton.

There is just one cheering aspect of this deeply depressing affair. In their distress the refugees from hooliganism sought the help of the nearest Christian Church. They, I think will have been members of either the Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox Church. The Belfast church from which they sought help was a Protestant one……..but its Pastor and congregation responded instantly, giving them overnight shelter in their church hall.

Long may every tradition of the Universal Church of Christ be prepared to offer sanctuary and shelter to victims of bullying and violence!

‘The more things change………………..’

Most references to the years immediately following World War II depict them as years of deprivation, with continuing rationing and shortages. Those judgements are usually made by people who weren’t there at the time. I was…..and I remember them as years of hope and promise!

We had a new Labour, as distinct from a New-Labour, government that my fiancée and I (we married in 1946) had helped to elect. We trusted our politicians. How strange that seems in 2009! We, and thousands of others, looked forward to a new order of justice, shared wealth and prosperity in Britain, and of our country leading the world into an era of peace and international co-operation.

27th April 1946. We looked forward to the future with hope

Little did I imagine that there could possibly come a day when, in a disagreement between the Governor of the Bank of England and a ‘Labour’ Chancellor of the Exchequer I would find myself unhesitatingly on the side of the Governor; when, in financial policy, I would wish that our ‘Labour’ government would follow more closely the example of the USA.

It is generally agreed that the current financial crisis, which has made thousands homeless and millions unemployed, was precipitated by the greed and irresponsibility of those running our banks and financial services. This had been made possible by the Conservative government of the 1980s, ‘freeing the banking services from the shackles of control’ and giving them a free hand to create wealth or (as actually happened) lose it. The New-Labour governments of the turn of the century, dazzled I suppose by the glittering promises of ‘big business’, cheered them on. I am reminded of the biblical story of the Gadarene swine!

To prevent the total collapse of our economic system, our government has poured millions of pounds of our money into the banking system. The American government has done the same thing on an even bigger scale. That government, under its new President, is determined that this should never again. Strict regulations are to be imposed on their banks to ensure that the irresponsible behaviour of the past few decades cannot be repeated. In Britain the Governor of the Bank of England, who has been given the task of overseeing the future behaviour of our financial institutions, has asked for ‘the tools to enable him to do the job’; firm legally enforced regulations to which those institutions would be required to comply.

The answer from our Chancellor of the Exchequer, was ‘no’. Perhaps it will make little difference in the long run. Similar regulations and restrictions were imposed on American banks after the great slump of the early 1930s. ‘Freedom loving’ presidents removed them, with the results that we are experiencing. I have no doubt that were such regulations to be imposed in this country today we would, perhaps in forty or fifty years time have Prime Ministers of the calibre of Lady Thatcher and Mr Blair……..and history would repeat itself.

Talking about banking…….

……….did you see that Sir Fred Goodwin, who settled for early retirement at the age of fifty after having presided over the collapse of the Royal Bank of Scotland, is voluntarily giving up a substantial part of his pension.

It was very good of him, and his well-wishers (I’m sure that there must be a few) will be relieved to learn that he isn’t likely to be a future drain on either our charity or on state welfare. He will still have a pension of over £350,000 a year (that’s rather a large sum to visualise. It works out at about £6,730 a week), plus a tax-free lump sum of about £2 million. I wonder how much he would have received if he had proved to be a success?

No wonder there’s a national pensions crisis if there are many pay-outs like that! Somehow it makes the daytime tv adverts about the government’s determination to catch all those ‘benefit cheats’ ring a little hollow.

The Blacked-out Whitewash!

Was there ever such an anticlimax as the long-awaited but heavily censored ‘full publication’ of MPs’ expenses. Among the blacked-out portions were the locations of MPs’ homes, sometimes far from both their constituency and Westminster, where moats had been cleaned out and duck islands, plasma tvs and, of course, ‘love seats’ had been provided. The black-outs were in the interests of ‘security’. Is it seriously imagined that anyone determined to do so would have much difficulty in locating MPs’ first homes, second homes and, for those who have them, third homes? The Daily Telegraph had, in any case, revealed where they were and, surprisingly perhaps, none have yet been blown up by either terrorists or angry constituents!

The black-spattered images took me back to World War II when as a POW, I received regular letters from my girlfriend, Heather Gilbert, always a prolific but not always discreet correspondent. Between the ‘My dear Ernest’ and the ‘lots and lots of love, Heather’, sentences, paragraphs and, on one occasion, the whole letter, would be obliterated by the British censors, with identical ‘black-outs’ to those that punctuate the official ‘revelations’ of MPs’ expenses.

Heather Gilbert (subsequently Heather Hall), aged 19 in 1943, a prolific, but not always discreet. letter writer. Note the miniature RA badge worn as a brooch. This proudly announced to the world; ‘hands off! My boyfriend’s a gunner!’

I suppose that had those letters been passed uncensored, the Gestapo might have been mildly interested in such information as the fact that two bombs had been dropped on Woodville Gardens, Ilford, during the previous Thursday night but that the Gilbert household had escaped unscathed, or that the young man next door had been issued with tropical kit and had departed for an unknown destination. Today’s censors haven’t even got that excuse.

Thank goodness for the Daily Telegraph which gave us the unexpurgated version!

Week 25.09

Tendring Topics…….on Line

Jaywick's Brooklands Estate……. a Centre for the Arts?

On the face of it, the idea is ridiculous. Jaywick is said to be the third most deprived council ward in the country. Where are the two even less privileged ones, I wonder? Driving along the road behind the sea wall and glancing down those roads, little more than wide alleyways all named after famous makes of car, gives an impression of deprivation, squalor and ugliness, rather than of beauty or indeed of anything that might attract the attention of an artist.

Yet it seems that there are those who are determined to make Brooklands a great centre for the visual arts. Up to date their efforts have hardly been outstandingly successful. Last year we had that extraordinary timber 'sculpture' by Nathan Coley that looked to me like an unfinished poultry shed. Although costing £40,000, it was (fortunately perhaps) only a temporary structure. I had quite imagined that the timber was to go up in smoke and flame on 5th November, but not so. It is coming back to Jaywick as seating. That sounds like a good idea, provided of course that nobody decides that the seats must be fashioned into modern art….instead of being simply objects to be sat on.

Not that Nathan Coley's masterpiece was without its fans. For those who think that all publicity is good publicity, it succeeded brilliantly. Jaywick's work of art certainly captured the attention of the news media!

Now though, we have a new and different art project in sight. £60,000 is to be spent on developing Brooklands Gardens into 'a creativity centre; a focal point for artistic endeavour'. How exactly this is to be done has yet to be revealed, but work is expected to begin in October of this year and to take about six months to complete.

It seems that this £60,000 is a windfall grant specifically earmarked for arts and heritage. There's no hope of its being diverted to the provision of things that Brooklands Estate really needs, such as properly surfaced roads and street lighting. If it were not spent in Jaywick it would have to be spent on a similar project elsewhere.

That being the case, I think that Jaywick residents should welcome it. It can't possibly do any harm. Its creation will undoubtedly provide badly needed work for a few, and it may, just possibly, bring some welcome visitors to Jaywick.


The money is being dispensed by Essex County Council. Essex County Council is also the highways and street lighting authority. Perhaps Lord Hanningfield, the County Council's by-no-means-publicity-shy leader might be persuaded to come along to inspect the work (whatever it is) in progress. The opportunity could then be taken to invite him to stroll along some of those unpaved, unlit, and often under water, avenues. Perhaps he would decline to do so. Either way it would make a good story on tv and in the press.


Who is to run elections?

Shock horror headlines on the front page of the Clacton Gazette on 11th June announced the startling news that 68 members of Tendring Council's staff had been employed as Presiding Officers, Poll Clerks and as vote counters in the previous week's county and European elections. They were paid for this work on top of their salaries and they weren't even expected to take a day off their holiday entitlement.

What's more, that didn't just happen in our own district but nationwide. Matthew Elliot, chief executive of the Taxpayers Alliance in London said, 'It's shocking that council employees receive their full salary for days when they were working in the polling booths. They were handsomely rewarded for their election work, so effectively taxpayers have been paying twice. Their job is to serve the local community, they were not able to fulfil that duty when they were working somewhere else and should have taken a day's leave'.

Well, if that is considered shocking by members of the Taxpayers Alliance they must have a very low shock threshold. They overlook the fact that working on the election is serving the local community and that the hours of work at a polling station are from 6.30 a.m. till 10.00 p.m. for poll clerks and rather longer for presiding officers. That is a thirteen and a half hour day with no lunch break – almost twice the seven-hour day of most office workers. 'The count' can take all night, especially if it is a close-run thing and there are one or more recounts. I have done all three jobs, presiding officer, poll clerk and vote counter, in my time. Once I remember, for a parish council election in a remote rural parish I was the Acting Returning Officer, announcing the result to a 'cheering crowd' of at least half a dozen voters. Believe me, I earned that extra money!

The work doesn't have to be done by council officials and I recall one election (I think it was while I was working with the former Tendring Rural District Council) that took place in school holiday time, and most of the jobs were given to teachers. Presiding officers, poll clerks and counters need not be either Einsteins or saints, but they do need to have had a certain amount of office experience, together with intelligence and integrity. The Returning Officer, who is responsible for the proper running of the election, is always a senior local government officer and wisely picks his electoral staff from among those he knows are capable of performing their duties honestly and efficiently.

Contrary to popular belief, most local government employees are not in receipt of enormous salaries. They do not enjoy the bonuses and the perks that go with many similar jobs in private enterprise. I know that, in my time, I was always grateful for the few extra pounds than an election job brought in. As a matter of fact, I wouldn't have minded losing a day's holiday entitlement, though I would probably have resented the council requiring it. I always kept two or three days in reserve in case of a domestic crisis.

Today, retired, I am a council-tax payer and an income-tax payer……..and I don't grudge today's council staff the extra money that some of them get when an election comes round.

Towards a United Europe

A fortnight ago I posted on this blog the copy of a letter that my elder son had written to the Prime Minister on the subject of MPs false claims for 'expenses'. I was astonished at the feed-back that I received. That letter really seemed to strike a chord with blog readers.

There is, I fear, unlikely to be similar enthusiasm this week about a letter that I wrote to the 'postbag' of the Daily Gazette and that was published by the Gazette last Friday, 12th June. I haven't always been a Europhile. I once had a romantic idea that an effective political and economic unit could be forged out of the Commonwealth. It was in that hope that I voted NO in that famous referendum on membership

That idea, never very likely, is now quite clearly impossible. Since I voted NO in that referendum I have seen the disastrous results of our country slavishly supporting American foreign and defence policy and following American economic examples. I made many visits to mainland Europe in the '60s and '70s and have returned there several times during the past three years. I have seen the tremendous progress that has been made during the past three decades and, though I hate having to say so, how many things are now done better there than they are here.


I now firmly believe that Britain's best future lies within a united and integrated Europe. How can we hope to achieve a 'level playing field' for the sale of our goods and services in Europe without Europe-wide legislation? How can we hope to make our voice heard on vital issues like the climatic change without the amplification offered by a United Europe? I think that we need a new national cross-party pressure group to promote European integration.

Here anyway is a copy of my letter published in the Daily Gazette in response to their editorial comments a few days earlier:

I can't agree that the votes of the Europhobes indicated that they were 'interested in Europe'. I suggest that it meant the reverse! Two parties that are interested in a United Europe, the Lib.Dems and the Greens, also did well in the elections.

In Colchester, the Lib-Dems' successes were not 'bucking the trend' as your headline on Gazette Letters (June 9) suggests. Nationwide, they increased their share of the popular vote, while the share of both Conservatives and Labour fell.

It is time that those of us who believe that Britain's best future lies in playing an active part in a politically and economically united Europe, spoke up as enthusiastically (I won't say as stridently!) as those who oppose it. It is not a case of 'Europe and us'. Geographically, historically and culturally we are part of Europe and it is in ever-closer fellowship with the mainland Europeans that our destiny lies.

I know that we 'stood alone' in 1940 (I should know, I was there – and in khaki!) but we might not have done so for long had Hitler not made the fatal errors of invading the Soviet Union and declaring war on the USA.

In today's world we cannot stand alone. We can only co-operate and, on occasion, compete with today's superpowers, China and the USA, and those of tomorrow, Russia and India, on equal terms, as part of a truly united Europe in which we are playing a leading role.

The alternative is to become a satellite, a protectorate, of the USA.

Is that what we really want?

A Truly British Invention

I was very pleased to hear recently on the tv news that the Hovercraft, a truly British invention, was celebrating its fiftieth birthday, that hovercraft are still being manufactured and that there is a steady demand for them.

Summer 1971 – our hovercraft arrives on the beach at Calais to take us home.
In the 1970s my family and I took a number of camping holidays in Switzerland, Austria and the Italian Alps (living in the flattest part of England we always headed for the mountains!). We crossed the Channel from Ramsgate to Calais by the HOVERLLOYD hovercraft service. We found it fast, efficient and comfortable…though I do remember one return crossing when the huge hovercraft was tossed about like a cork on a heavy swell!


The service was discontinued and I had imagined that it was because they were found to be uneconomic or unseaworthy. It appears that this is not the case. Smaller hovercraft…..the only form of transport that can travel at speed over sea, land and marsh are still in demand both by the armed forces and by those exploring or developing areas remote from civilisation. The heavy car and passenger carrying hovercraft are no longer manufactured because there isn't sufficient demand to justify their manufacture. I suppose that the Channel Tunnel will have dealt them a final blow!


Anyway, I wish this British invention 'Many Happy returns of the Day'!

Week 24.09

Tendring Topics…..on Line

A 'Change of Horses'


'Never change horses in mid-stream', insists the proverb. But that is precisely what Tendring Council has done. Circumstances having little or nothing to do with democratic choice have resulted in a tiny majority in the Council Chamber of the 'Tendring First' Coalition (Labour, Lib.Dems and others) councillors being replaced by an equally tiny majority of Conservatives. The next 'general election' of Tendring District councillors will be early in May 2011, so we are almost exactly in mid-stream.

In the 'bad old days' when, at least in most provincial authorities, political party labels meant no more than an indication of councillors' general political philosophy, this would have made very little difference. The composition of the committees and their chairmen might have changed but there would have been a general continuity of Council policy. Members would have been horrified at the thought of being required to vote at all times in accordance with local party policy rather than as common sense and conscience dictated.

All that has, of course, changed with the introduction of parliamentary style party politics into the Council Chamber. Now we have a local 'government' and 'opposition'. There is a 'cabinet' consisting of members of the majority party. These are each given responsibility for various aspects of the Council' functions. ''Cabinet Ministers' would be just a little too pretentious a designation even for 2009 AD, so they are called 'Portfolio Holders'. Needless to say, 'the Opposition' then has to have 'Shadow Portfolio Holders'. What pretentious nonsense it all is!
It is in the meetings of this 'cabinet' (a small minority of the full council whom we vote into office) that real decisions are taken. Party members on the Council are expected to support them loyally. Those who fail to do so 'have the party whip withdrawn'. This has, in fact, happened to members of both main parties.

Authority is thus concentrated in the hands of a very small group. This makes for efficiency and speed in decision-making, which was presumably the purpose of the change. It doesn't make it any more likely that the right decisions will be made. It also means that a tiny change in the Council's composition can result in an immediate reversal of policy.

Tendring Council's new administration can hardly have anticipated and made plans for their future in power. For the first time ever, I feel quite relieved that since World War II successive governments have progressively limited the scope of local authorities' freedom of action!

The Best of Intentions

Our MP, Mr Douglas Carswell, once commented that the out-going Tendring District Administration, 'couldn't run a bath'. It was an effective and memorable sound-bite, but it came ill from a member of an organisation so badly run it that has proved to be incapable of preventing many of its members from feathering their own nests at our expense*.

Tendring Council did and does, in fact, run a number of public services extremely efficiently. Its once-weekly refuse and recyclables collection, for instance, sets an example for other authorities to follow. There have been a few very serious mistakes and misjudgements though.

There was a bad slip-up over the ill-fated water feature in the town square. I still haven't heard an explanation of how it is that our water feature is a danger to health, while those (apparently identical) in other towns are considered to be safe. There's no sign as yet of that protective fence that was supposed to be erected round it. Could that be an idea that has been dropped by the new administration?

I think though that the very worst decision that the 'Tendring First' Council made was in creating a separate, privately-run regeneration company InTend, financing it with thousands of pounds of our money, and eventually seconding to it the Council's own regeneration staff. A recent issue of the Daily Gazette succinctly defines what was considered to be InTend's purpose; It would access grants the council could not, would be far removed from the humdrum business of emptying bins and other menial matters, and would recruit specialised staff.

It is a definition that underlines InTend's pointlessness. Councils have always employed highly professional specialised staff. When I was employed by the Tendring Council there was a barrister, two solicitors, an engineer and surveyor, accountants, environmental health experts, planning experts and, of course, one journalist (myself!). How many of those were ever required to concern themselves with the humdrum business of emptying bins and other menial matters? As for accessing grants that are not available to local authorities, I don't believe that there are any such grants. We know that InTend has made a number of applications but we haven't yet heard of any being successful.

I think that in deciding to create InTend the Council had simply swallowed whole the idea, taken by some politicians to be a universally acknowledged fact, that anything a public body can do, a private firm can do better and more economically. This simply isn't true, as the expensive failure of many put-out-to-tender services has amply demonstrated.

InTend's 'specialist staff' may not have been very good at raising money…..but they have been very good at raising expectations. While some of them were seeking funding, so far in vain, others were busying themselves working on ways in which, once the money was available, it could be spent on bringing currently dormant parts of our district back to a new life, regenerated in fact. £7 million would be spent in Brightlingsea, giving the Cinque Port town a revamped western promenade, converting the open-air swimming pool into a 'children's water park', providing a new sea water pool near Bateman's Tower, building a town museum and so on! Harwich's master-plan included pedestrianising the quayside, redeveloping Navyyard Wharf to include flats, and bringing the town's railway station up to date.

It now seems possible that the days of InTend, the author of these utopian visions, are numbered. Four of its nine directors have been removed from their posts by Tendring Council's new bosses, who have made it clear that they believe that InTend is a waste of tax-payers' money. If InTend is wound up what, ask the citizens of Harwich and Brightlingsea, is to come of those plans that offered their towns such a dazzling future?
The Daily Gazette thinks it has the answer. 'InTend may end, but work cannot', urges its headline. 'We don't care who regenerates the area. We just want someone to ensure urgent projects, such as the regeneration of Jaywick, Harwich and Brightlingsea, take place'. And so say all of us.

But the fulfilment of those more-than-ambitious regeneration plans depended upon InTend obtaining the grants that were claimed to be inaccessible to mere local authorities. So far there has been no sign of them, and I don't think that there ever will be. However, I could be wrong. I hope that before winding InTend down, the new Conservative administration will make absolutely sure that there isn't one or more unexpectedly in the pipeline.

Having done that, they will be in a position to assure the people of Brightlingsea, Harwich and elsewhere that their areas' regeneration plans are at least as likely to come to fruition as a result of direct action by the Council as they would have been by InTend………but that they will have to take their place in the queue of other council commitments funded by grants that are available to local authorities, by ever-more-meagre central government support, and by Council Tax.

'InTend', I have no doubt, was a clever play on words evoking both 'in Tendring' and firm 'Intention'. Perhaps its creators should have remembered that, 'the road to hell is paved with good intentions'.

*The Pot and the Kettles!

While Mr Douglas Carswell, our MP, has been loud in his denunciations of other Honourable Gentlemen (and Ladies) making hay, at our expense, while the sun shone, it seems that he himself isn't totally beyond question, though I am quite sure that he hasn't stepped a millimetre outside those remarkable rules that our legislators have made for themselves.

Some though may question why, for the performance of his parliamentary duties, he found it necessary to rent a second home in Thorpe-le-Soken at a cost (to us of course) of £1,250 a month. Possibly he needed a home base within his constituency and that was all that was available.

In that case he will have been delighted to read in the Daily Gazette that they have found a recently built vacant apartment that would be eminently suitable for his purpose. It is a two bedroom first-floor flat overlooking the sea in Southcliff Hall, Marine Parade East (definitely an up-market area of Clacton), with a lounge, kitchen, bathroom, gas central heating, double glazing and car parking. The rent is only £535 a month, less than half the rent for his Thorpe home. If he moved there now it would be a pity about the £32,000 that he has spent (and claimed back as expenses) on refurbishing the Thorpe-le-Soken house to make it suitable for him to live in. However he would presumably be able to take with him some of his purchases; the 'love seat' easy-chair (the imagination boggles!) for instance, together with bed, mattress and bedding, chairs, sofa, fridge freezer, washing machine, radio, tv, vacuum cleaner, electric iron and tv set.

Mr Carswell told The Gazette that he doesn't feel the need to pay back any of the money he has claimed. 'Every single time I have claimed for money I always think whether I can justify it to the editor and readers of the Gazette'. It is nice to know that we are in his thoughts on those occasions!

His Lordship is right!

It isn't very often that I find myself in total agreement with Lord Hanningfield, leader of Essex County Council, whose party has just been returned to power at Chelmsford with an increased majority. I do though share his views entirely on the subject of the BNP. The day after the election, the East Anglian Daily Times quoted him as saying, 'The most disturbing thing about this election has been the BNP getting a sizeable percentage of the result. It's very depressing just knowing people vote for them. People who vote for them are not in favour of the value of the individual. The expenses row is one thing, but the BNP is the least genuine of all the parties.

Many people did, in fact, vote for them…..not least within our own Tendring District. In the eight county council wards in our district a total of 3,974 electors put their cross against the names of BNP candidates, 1,883 (almost half) within Clacton's three wards.

I would perhaps be rather less concerned about this had I not just watched the two part drama documentary on tv Channel 4 'The Birth of Evil; Adolf Hitler'. This graphically demonstrated how in Germany in the late 1920s and early '30s, in economic turmoil and disillusion not unlike that which prevails in Britain today, the young Adolf Hitler (a brilliant orator 'with a vision'!) joined a struggling minority political party. In it he managed to supplant its leader, change its policies into something resembling those of the BNP today and eventually bring the whole of Germany under his fanatical rule.

At least the voters did keep the BNP out of the Council Chamber at Chelmsford and increased the number of representatives of the Lib.Dems. for whose party I had voted. They're still a small minority though.

The same cannot be said for the European elections. The BNP has secured representation there for the first time, and UKIP has increased its strength both in Europe and throughout the UK. Britain now has increased the number of its representatives in the European parliament who firmly believe that that parliament should be abolished and that we should leave the EU!

I shall probably return to this matter next week when I have had an opportunity to look at the election results more closely. In the meantime I derive just a little comfort from the fact that the total turn-out was very low and that UKIP achieved its result with only a tiny increase in its share of the national vote.