Is the World Turning Upside Down?*

Other Half and I have just arrived back in the South East after spending a month with friends and family in the South West. As many of you know, when in the South West we are usually perched on a cliff, overlooking the Bristol Channel. Broadband signal comes and go, 'phone signals disappear mid-conversation and often I [deliberately] go a few days without hearing or reading the news.

So when I do hear/catch up with upto date news it can sometimes seem far more stark and frightening than when in usual, everyday 'real life' mode when we hear new bulletins seemingly all day long. One morning Other Half woke me up by saying 'The Elephants are taking over'. Once we had sorted out that I hadn't got my hearing aids in place and he had actually said 'The Militants are taking over' and discussed sensibly what he had meant, we both agreed that the idea of Elephants taking over was a preferable option. By 'the Militants' he was ironically referring to speeches by Barack Obama and other 'World Leaders' calling for military intervention in various trouble spots world wide. In the month that 'celebrates' [rather than commemorates] the start of World War One this is truly ironical. We noticed too how the Israeli aggression against Gaza seemed to drop rapidly out of the news, to be replaced by stories of violence in Syria. Coincidence?

During the month we also heard that British citizens who leave the country to fight with the Jihadis in Syria and Iraq would not be allowed back into this country. Whilst having no sympathy with their views, I thought this was a dangerous decision for the government to take because it seemed to be the top of a slippery slope: once this move had been allowed for Jihadist sympathisers would it spread to others who did not agree with the government for other reasons? Nineteen Eighty Four and the thought police come to mind. The news later in the week that it is against international law to deny a country's citizens entry to that country was slightly reassuring.....

The news that parents who had taken a terminally ill child from the hospital which had been treating him to another country in the hope that there would be one more procedure which could help him, had been arrested and separated from their child, appalled us. The UK hospital, who had sadly done all they could to help the little boy, claim that he is now in danger and British police felt it had no other option but to issue a European arrest warrant. As it turns out when the little boy was taken from the hospital by his parents it appears they were not breaking the law and as he only has a few months to live the whole situation seems horrendous. Politicians are now saying the child and his parents should be reunited and such is the cynicism with which politicos are now viewed in this country it has been suggested that these are vote catching comments. How sad.
for the family's sake I hope this is resolved soon.*

* Since this was typed it has been announced that the European arrest warrant has been withdrawn by the Crown Prosecution Service.

Returning from the South West on Sunday the amount of police vehicles - motor bikes, people wagons, patrol cars [any unmarked cars could not, of course, be seen!] - travelling West on the other carriageway was remarkable. Presumably on the way to Newport for the NATO summit which opens later this week. Cordons are of course already in place in Newport [where a peace camp has already been set up] and Cardiff [where summit dinners are to take place]

Whilst the NATO summit is looming, another 'World Event' is also on the September calendar. The referendum on whether Scotland should be an independent country will take place on September 18th and the two sides seem to be rather nastier to each other than one would have expected. A good friend is in the 'No' camp and I have to say that the amount of insults he receives compared to the good sense of his comments would have me voting 'no' if I had  a vote, although I already sympathise with the 'no' campaign anyway!] Since the Act of Union in 1707 was deemed to benefit both England [including Wales] and Scotland at the time there are obviously issues to be discussed after 300+ years - anomalies maybe seen on both sides like that fact that Scottish MPs can vote on English problems but not vice versa and the fact that the Scottish and English/Welsh legal systems are separate. But some of the screaming arguments that have taken place are surely counter-productive to the sort of reasoned logic that would be appreciated by the interested but unresolved voter? And the answer to whether or not Scotland can be included in the European community seems to differ according to which leader is questioned...... thus including this as a 'European community', if not a 'World' event. 

This government has provided its citizens with many u-turns but this week a welcome one for dwellers along the Thames Estuary is the news that another of Boris Johnson's pipe dreams seems to be failing. This is of course his plans for an island airport for London in the Thames Estuary. Those of us who have lived along the estuary for any length of time [and in my case that adds up to more than 60 years] knew from the beginning that - excuse the pun - these ideas would not fly and you can read about my fears here . I daresay that Boris in his role as Mayor of London is annoyed about the upset to his plans, but as in another apparent volte face he has announced lately that he will stand for Parliament in the next election perhaps he will manage to get over his disappointment.

Catching up with facebook I was surprised - and pleased - at the number of people who were taking up the ice bucket challenge to raise money and awareness for various charities, mainly ALS/MND [see my effort here ] But underlining that is the feeling - as when there is any large charity push for money - that it should not be down to the kindness of strangers to pay for the things which governments, who seem to be able to find the money for weapons with which to wage war, claim they have not enough funds to pay.

The world may not have turned upside down in the past few weeks, but there have been times when it shivered a little on its axis. The Super Moon could be viewed in the second week of August and we saw it when travelling back from Swansea to Somerset with one of our grandsons in the back of our car. He was awed by the sight of the apparently massive moon travelling along the motorway next to us, its size and brightness giving off an aura of peace which our world badly needs.

I don't suppose it will surprise any of you that the photograph above is taken at Glastonbury Tor, Somerset. Photograph: Matt Cardy/Getty Images 

Blog title: Some of my reasons for parodying the quote: 'The World Turned Upside Down'
The World Turned Upside Down was originally a ballad written in the 1640s and for more information visit here.
The wonderful and talented Leon Rosselson wrote a song with the same title about the story of the Digger Commune of 1649. You can hear Billy Bragg singing it here or Roy Bailey here.

Marxist Historian Christopher Hill wrote a seminal book about the English Civil War in 1972 with this title.

Lest THEY* forget

Honouring all those who have died or have been injured in all conflicts, anywhere, at any time. Rest gently and peacefully.

4th August 2014

National History Museum

St Fagans, Glamorgan, S.Wales

These two young people are stood in front of the war memorial at the St Fagans Museum in S.Wales. They just so happen to be two of our grandchildren and because we were visiting the museum of the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of World War One, we all wanted to spend a few minutes remembering ALL who have died in ALL conflicts worldwide, civilians and military personnel.

On the trip to the museum we had listened on the car radio to various memorial speeches and sadly too many glorified the war and referred to the 'brave soldiers' who had 'sacrificed their lives'. No mention was made of the fact that the young men [including the great, great grandparents of the children above] were sold a dream of fighting for their country when the truth was that Great Britain were fighting due to a historic set of alliances between countries which tumbled like a pack of cards after months/years of unrest culminating in the assination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria in Sarajevo [There are far better explanations of the events leading to the outbreak of World War One extant, do search google; Jeremy Paxman's book Great Britain's Great War is pretty good. But do remember the old saying'History is written by the survivors' and is not always written from an objective point of view] And those soldiers who died did not willingly sacrifice their lives and perhaps we should more properly say that the governments of the countries involved sacrificed their soldiers lives......

We must never forget the dreadful human results of war. So as a family we agreed that the best way to commemorate those who died would be by putting an end to all conflicts. If no-one was prepared to bear arms then the leaders would have to solve their differences another way. A big hope perhaps, but one to which we can all aspire and work toward in our own small ways.

A few links for those interested in joining us in working for peace:

Amnesty International

Peace Pledge Union

Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament

Hope Not Hate

*They who must not forget are they who have the powers to start wars and conflicts. 

Whose history of World War One will you believe?/ How I became a pacifist

This is the headline and photograph on the BBC news website this morning. Click on the headline to read the whole story. My blog & comments are on this page underneath.

Blackadder star Sir Tony Robinson in Michael Gove WW1 row

Sir Tony Robinson (centre) played Baldrick in Blackadder Goes Forth

And now for my blog!:

Its only the 6th of January 2014 and I didn't want to add so soon to the debate about how or whether the commemorations/celebrations of the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of World War One should be enacted. After all on this day alone I have many other subjects upon which I could be commenting: 

• Should 'perks' for 'wealthy pensioners' be removed/means tested [no - they are already means tested by something called the tax system]
• Descriptive and historical look at our trip around London yesterday
• Doesn't the house look clean and freshly decorated now that the Christmas trimmings have been removed

Oh well, that's covered that lot then.. So on with the debate....

On reading the news item shown above, the old hackles immediately rose.

Gove should and surely does understand that 'official' histories of the First World War were challenged long before 'Oh What a Lovely War'/'Black Adder'. The War Poets like Sassoon and Owen and more explained to many what was happening at the time; the war autobiographies of Robert Graves, Vera Brittain, Sasson again and more in the years between the armistice and the outbreak of  World War Two gave poignant memoirs and the testament of all the returned military personnel from the ranks to their families convinced so many that War could never be the answer. Gove has a BA in English from Oxford Uni and depending which area he studied he may have come across some of the authors and poets previously mentioned.

I was born, admittedly a few years before Gove!, into a 1950s household where my parents had been conscientious objectors in World War Two. As I grew older I understood what this meant, my father had had to appear in front of a tribunal where his plea was rejected as he refused to condemn all wars, allowing for a just war. His brothers fought in the war as his father had fought [and been very badly injured] in World War One. My mother's brother fought in World War Two as her father and Uncles had fought in World War One. So I suppose I subconsciously absorbed their views and classed myself as a conscientious objector two. That is until I went to University and in my English studies read some of the works of the war poets and 'war authors'. And didn't stop at the works on the reading lists but kept on reading other memoirs, histories backwards and forwards in time. I realised too that I could not reconcile any Christian view of a 'Just War' and had to change my alliances to a form of Christianity which would accomodate and reinforce my own views.

So gradually, when filling in biographical forms and talking I found myself declaring my beliefs to be 'Pacifist'. Many years later I overheard one of my children saying that my pacifism was one of my most important defining features, a proud moment, but one which I wish I could completely live up to, i.e. I still have too much of a temper to feel completely pacifistic! And of course in a situation where mine or my family's lives were threatened of course I would retaliate. I am all too human and frail.

Back to World War One. Many, many years ago I watched a documentary where soldiers who had survived the first world war were  interviewed and asked how they felt prior to and at the time of enlisting. One man who had been a trade unionist before war broke out said that men such as he had never believed that working men from one country would fight against working men from another country. Sadly it would appear that he discounted the power of patriotism. Many of those who enlisted on any side did so for their 'King and Country' - not being aware of/understanding the complex set of alliances between sovereign countries which came into play once the assasination of the Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand happened was the cause of the need for their call to arms.

In his biography [third volume] Siegfried Sassoon also suggests that a large part of the raison d'etre for the war was financial and cites the British Forces capturing Baghdad in 1917 to ensure oil supplies. Remembering this as the Kuwait Oilfields blazed during the Gulf War over eighty years later gave one a sense of deja vue.

One of the last soldiers to die from WW1, Harry Patch, said many wise things about the war. 

Strange Meeting BY WILFRED OWEN

It seemed that out of the battle I escapedDown some profound dull tunnel, long since scoopedThrough granites which Titanic wars had groined.Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and staredWith piteous recognition in fixed eyes,Lifting distressful hands as if to bless.And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall;By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.With a thousand fears that vision's face was grained;Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground,And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan."Strange,friend," I said, "Here is no cause to mourn.""None," said the other, "Save the undone years,The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,Was my life also; I went hunting wildAfter the wildest beauty in the world,Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair,But mocks the steady running of the hour,And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here.For by my glee might many men have laughed,And of my weeping something has been left,Which must die now. I mean the truth untold,The pity of war, the pity war distilled.Now men will go content with what we spoiled.Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled.They will be swift with swiftness of the tigress,None will break ranks, though nations trek from progress.Courage was mine, and I had mystery;Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery;To miss the march of this retreating worldInto vain citadels that are not walled.Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot-wheelsI would go up and wash them from sweet wells,Even with truths that lie too deep for taint.I would have poured my spirit without stintBut not through wounds; not on the cess of war.Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were.I am the enemy you killed, my friend.
I knew you in this dark; for so you frowned
Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.
I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.
Let us sleep now. . . ."

Suggested Booklist:

Autobiographies/Biographies:

Goodbye to All That: Robert Graves

Testament of Youth: Vera Brittain

Siegfried's Journey: Siegfried Sassoon

The Last Fighting Tommy: The Life of Harry Patch, The Oldest Surviving Veteran of the Trenches :  Harry Patch and Richard Van Emden


Fiction:
All Quiet on the Western Front: Erich Maria Remarque
Regeneration Trilogy: Pat Barker

Non-Fiction:

Great Britain's Great War: Jeremy Paxman
The First World War: An Illustrated History: A.J.P. Taylor
The Great War and Modern Memory: Paul Fussell

Poetry:
Poems of the Great War: 1914-1918 (Penguin Twentieth Century Classics) 

When were we ever all in it together?

 

I will leave the commenting on the Autumn Statement to all those with better analytical powers than I [I rely on Paul Lewis to put me straight] But of course any change in the financial system in the country and the way that it is arranged and distributed between those who have and those who have not causes more far reaching discussions than just the monetary aspect.

So have we [citizens of this country] ever truly 'been in it together' - and what is this vaunted 'togetherness' anyway?

Look back over history, maybe only as far as the late 18th and 19th century, for examples of this 'togetherness'. What about the too many workers in the Industrial Revolution living in poor conditions around the mills, factories, foundries, mines and their employers living away from the areas in the better air and countryside? What about the agricultural workers thrown off the land they had worked for generations during the enclsures whilst the owners 'ploughed' greater profits into their own bank accounts. The Highland Clearances were another example of 'them and us' when 'them' did NOT want to be in it with 'us'. The Tolpuddle Martyrs were deported for Swearing an Oath which was very similar to that sworn by Freemasons yet none of the latter found themselves shackled and in a boat to Australia with the former.

In the twentieth century, are we thinking about the togetherness that sent ordinary, conscripted, working men who did not understand the reasons for the First World War into the hell of enemy fire at the front line whilst the Generals sat and planned those advances way behind the trenches? [Siegfried Sassoon  above wrote rather a good poem about this * below] And when the men who were lucky enough to return from that war needed jobs, decent homes to live in or care for their injuries did they get it in the same way that medals were handed out to those same Generals and Officers? The togetherness that meant hundreds of men and women from different parts of the UK in the 1930s found it necessary to band together and march to London to illustrate to the 'other half' of the country just how deep was the plight of the unemployed?

The twentieth century also saw a hope of 'togetherness' that was snatched away. Those  of us born after the second world war had the hope that we could become equal wherever we happened to be born - whether in a Castle or a Cottage. The introduction of the Welfare State, the National Health Service, Education that did not have to be paid for so that a child whose parents could not afford school fees could eventually get a university degree - it was a wonderful time to be young. We got our university degrees, we got good jobs and paid a lot of tax and National Insurance. Our old age was secure - we had the State Pension to which we could look forward, the company pension to which we had contributed [thus our life savings] and the National Health Service would mean that we would not finish our lives in the sort of pain and suffering and anxiety our grandparents had suffered. Of course there was still the inequality of those who started out with a lot more money than us - but so what, we would be OK.... and if we were unlucky enough to fall ill or unemployed, we had paid in all those years, that was what the tax and insurance was for, wasn't it?

Come forward into the 21st century and look at our present situation. University education is now so costly that many poorer students are deterred from even applying to university. The sort of interrogation [and I use that word in its true sense] that many have to undergo to receive disability payments is shaming in a so called civilised society. Whilst waiting for the decision to be reached if an individual is entitled to 'welfare' payments, many are quite literally going without food. Education and health provision can be better or worse according to the 'post code lottery' of where one happens to live - in other words richer areas fare better than poorer ones. Look at  the way the Remploy factories have been closed. [Minutes ago closure of the rest of the factories has been announced] Very many ordinary hard working individuals who have all their lives invested in either private or company pension schemes have in the past few years been defrauded when those schemes have failed for different reasons. [You can read about one here ] Those living on a State Pension are finding it increasingly difficult to manage - and yesterdays comments that those on welfare benefits should share in the hardships of the rest of the country and therefore not get much of an increase over the next three years has a very hollow ring.

Then look at this coalition government  with its millionaires and public school educated individuals. Can they really understand the problems  of those living on welfare benefits - of course not but the real question is do they want to? Are they interested and are they asking the right questions of those who know and can advise them? Do they care enough about the tax avoidance and evasion of big companies and richer individuals as much as they seem to fear that just possibily someone somewhere might be getting a pound or two more than they are entitled to on welfare payments? Because believe me, all those that I know who are on welfare benefits have a hard enough job getting that to which they are entitled, with out any extras.

This is a miserable rant, I know. Anyone with a cheerful take on it all, please write on a Charity Christmas Card and post to keep the postmen and women in work.

*The General

‘Good-morning; good-morning!’ the General said
When we met him last week on our way to the line.
Now the soldiers he smiled at are most of ’em dead,
And we’re cursing his staff for incompetent swine.
‘He’s a cheery old card,’ grunted Harry to Jack
As they slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack.

. . . .
But he did for them both by his plan of attack.

Siegfried Sassoon