From D-Day to Peace/ the stories of the two Harrys

We should all honour all those of all nations who fought and died on D- Day. But we should also remember all the combatants AND civilians from all nations who have fought, died and been affected by any conflicts before and since. And the best way to honour them is by ensuring that no-one suffers in this way ever again. We should all work for world peace.

No, it is not easy. But if we all start in a small way, join together and teach our children that peace is the way and aggression is wrong - we will get there one day. To those who scoff at my avowed Pacifism I can only say if everyone did the same as I and all my fellow pacifists - who would have fired the cannons, who would now shoot the guns or drop the bombs? The many thousands amongst whom I marched on the Stop the War marches in the 2000s, numbers that were repeated world wide showed the willingness to try to solve problems without warfare.

A comment that has stuck in my mind for so many years was made by a soldier who fought in the First World War in a TV programe which I watched about thirty years ago. Before that war, he had been a trade unionist and he said that he and his fellow trade unionists had never believed that such a war would happen because working men from one country would never take arms agains working men from another country. Sadly that proved not to be true and the speaker found himself fighting against men exactly like himself, just born in a different country and speaking a different language who were carrying out the consequences of their leaders failure to agree. There are so many books and TV programmes about the causes of the First World War available in this one hundredth anniversary year, yet how many fighting under any flag duing 1914 - 1918 really understood the breakdown of the causes: the house of cards that fell due to the intricate alliances between countries that meant that more and more were 'sucked' into the conflagration that gradually was named 'The Great War' and after 1945 'The First World War'?

Two Harrys who served in World War One should be consulted on their feelings about the effect of wars and their aftermath to both soldiers and civilians : 

The first Harry is Harry Patch who died in 2011- often referred to as the 'last fighting Tommy' because he lived until he was 111 and was the last man alive to have fought in the trenches. Here is a quote from him:

"When the war ended, I don't know if I was more relieved that we'd won or that I didn't have to go back. Passchendaele was a disastrous battle – thousands and thousands of young lives were lost. It makes me angry. Earlier this year, I went back to Ypres to shake the hand of Charles Kuentz, Germany's only surviving veteran from the war. It was emotional. He is 107. We've had 87 years to think what war is. To me, it's a licence to go out and murder. Why should the British government call me up and take me out to a battlefield to shoot a man I never knew, whose language I couldn't speak? All those lives lost for a war finished over a table. Now what is the sense in that?"  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Patch 

There is a book available written by Harry Patch, The Last Fighting Tommy


The next Harry is: Harry Leslie Smith - who is aged ninety one. He is a veteran of the second world war, when he was a fighter pilot. His latest book: 

Harry's Last Stand: How the world my generation built is falling down, and what we can do to save it  looks at the world he and others believed they fought the war to achieve and how it is being eroded by present day politicians like Nigel Farage and the coalition government. A quote from this Harry:

‘As one of the last remaining survivors of the Great Depression and the Second World War, I will not go gently into that good night. I want to tell you what the world looks like through my eyes, so that you can help change it…’

 [I will not go gently into that good night is a reference to the Dylan Thomas poem Do not go gentle into that Good Night*. Very apt as it is Thomas' centenary this year too]

Lastly two quotes from the Old and New Testaments. It doesn't matter what religion or none one holds, the Ten Commandments and the Beatitudes are pretty good guides for life, I always think!


Thou shalt not kill                      6th Commandment, Exodus 20:13

Blessed are the Peacemakers      Matthew 5:9


and one from Albert Einstein

Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding


A few ideas for us all!





*http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/do-not-go-gentle-into-that-good-night/

The place where I live/the joy of communities

For Edna



A friend posed the question on social media, to make all of us 'correspondents' less anonymous to one and other, to describe the place where we live. I sent my little contribution, but being known for 'inane rambling' [I loved the insult that was levelled at me some time ago so much that I can't help using it as a good descriptive tag] found that I wanted to expand upon where I live and where I have lived. So read on...

I live on the Essex side of the Thames Estuary, just about where Compeyson was drowned by Magwitch if anyone is a 'Great Expectations' fan and not far from the spot where the boat is moored in the opening scene in 'The Heart of Darkness' [can you tell I used to teach English Lit?] I was born further upriver and have nearly always lived within sight of water although ironically I am scared about actually being *in* water! Probably because I am a Leo birth sign [Fire!] 

The town on the Thames Estuary where I spent my first ten years was in a part of Essex which is now included within the London Boroughs 'system'. The community then meant the children could play in the street with so few cars and someone always watching, we and our Mums all walked to school together. There were not too many 'fridges and no freezers in our homes so when we went on holiday our Mums would leave a shopping list with the next door neighbour who would get in the shopping which would greet us on the kitchen table on the day when we arrived home. When anyone fell ill all the usual 'help' was employed if there were no family back up: shopping, taking little ones to school etc etc. Those lucky enough to have a telephone would take messages for those without 'phones.

The Hippy communities of the 1960s/1970s thought the world could be changed with peace and love. Some of us still feel that way, although some of us also feel that we have to be more politically pro active at the same time and demonstrate [peacefully but vocally!] against what we perceive to be the injustices and prejudices of many government policies. Sadly this Coalition Government has given us too many reasons to become vocal, many of which I have 'celebrated' in these pages.

'Here' is a nice enough place to live, good neighbours and a strong feeling of community. We came here for a while and have stayed 36 years so far. We have grown old[er] alongside many of our neighbours, having walked our children to school together and now swapping pictures of our grandchildren and going to each others' retirement parties. We no longer need our neighbours to get our shopping in when we return from our holidays but any other 'help' is always on hand. I have picked up from the floor the lovely nonagerian opposite several times and waited until either the ambulance or her family arrived; her ninety six year old next door neighbour offered to get her shopping after one of her falls; another neighbour often welds up bits of yet another construction Other Half has made; someone knocked on our door last night to see if we could print something as his printer wouldn't!; online shopping now means that we all take in parcels for one and other rather than actually go to the shops for one and other! Last week, knowing our next door neighbours were on holiday, Other Half nearly choked on his dinner [not due to my cooking this time] because he saw someone entering their house. He hadn't realised they had arrived home and was thus relieved he didn't have to confront anyone....

I also spend quite a lot of the year in West Somerset, again within sight of water, this time the Bristol Channel, amongst another community of friends and family. This community has grown from mutual interests and again, without realising it. We all help one and other out, swapping clothes for growing children, knitting for one and other and bringing items spotted for others' strange hobbies! We look across to the 'land of my fathers' both figuratively and literally. My father was born in S.Wales and if one takes a hike out of his birth village and stands high up on the Bwlch [mountain] above the village one can look across the Bristol Channel from there toward the West Somerset coast. So sometimes at night when I look over to Wales and see the lights twinkling I imagine that some of those lights are on cars going down the road to 'our' village. Obviously that is a stretch of the imagination... But from the stories my father would tell about his life in that village before coming to England, there was always a strong sense of family and community to which I loved to listen.

Other Half and I and our older children briefly lived in what was then the 'Temporary Capital of W.Germany': Bonn, and again very near water - the River Rhine. A beautiful part of the world and the only time and place in the 1970s when we did not have any money worries! But despite that and the wonderful friends we had in the wider area, it was never 'home' for lots of reasons - we knew we would be moving on and there was no sense of community in the immediate vicinity. We would wish our next door neighbours 'Guten tag' and that was it.

Reading back through this post, I realise that the strongest part of the memories of places where I have lived is mixed with the sense of community. All these communities were formed long before David Cameron 'floated' the idea of the 'Big Society'. And these communities have existed for hundreds of years wherever peoples have lived in close proximity to one and other: in Welsh mining villages, on estates of houses whether privately owned or rented.

So what has made me write so passionately about all these various communities? Well this weekend would have been the birthdays of various of my immediate ancestors. And it has been on mind how much they relied upon one and other and their friends to get themselves through the bad days of two world wars and the depression, by sharing everything - good and bad. And how, if the 'Bedroom Tax' had existed then communities would have been shattered when the elderly would have had to move away. Those elderly who looked after their grandchildren whilst their mother's worked to supplement family income, and cooked the meals that sustained that family. And how Austerity was the way that so many lived all the time - and how so many joined Trade Unions and left wing Political parties to allieviate the suffering and ensure their children and grandchildren would lead better lives. And how communities in S.Wales and the North of England 'sponsored' with food, boots, the little money they could spare and communities en route to Westminster 'donated' bed space to the Hunger Marchers like my father who felt they had to march to show the uncaring MPs in Parliament what it was like to be unemployed.

And I wonder about the world that my grandchildren will inherit. Will it be the one that my parents and grandparents fought for? Will it be the world that we thought possible in the 1960s? Or will it be the world that this Government and the thoughts of UKIP seem likely to impose? I sincerely hope it is the former and not the latter.




The photograph above shows the mining village in South Wales where my father was born and good eyesight and a magnifying glass shows the house where he was born and the houses where many of our family lived and still live.

Weeping in Heaven

Jobseekers queue outside a Jobcentre Plus branch at London Bridge. Photograph: Oli Scarff/Getty Images

One hundred years ago and more my English Great Grandfather used to stand with crowds of other unemployed men at the dock gates in the East End, waiting to see who would be picked for a day's casual labour. Those were the 'bad old days' which my grandparents and parents worked in political parties and trade unions to change and told me about as I was growning up in post World War Two Britain. They said those sort of days would never return. They also said it was not necessary for me to be so radical and left wing in my own politics, no government would ever allow that sort of thing to happen again. My Great Grandparents, Grandparents & Parents along with innovative social reformers, trade union and labour leaders like Keir Hardie, Nye Bevan, Clem Attlee, Jack Jones, Fenner Brockway and many, many more are probably weeping in heaven when stories like the above reach them.

                                                          *

We the voters and citizens of this country are frequently told by this Coalition Government that there is not enough money in the public coffers to support the weak, the ill, the unemployed, the elderly,  the unfortunate. Yet there seems enough money to support threats of military intervention, maintain nuclear weapons, plough on with projects like HS2 which will probably be out of date by the time it is finished, help out failing banks - not to save  clerical jobs but to preserve high officials bonuses and too much more. 'Money saving' schemes like the student loans to repay the high fees that have been instituted, we are now told will probably never repay the original debt - so instead of the student fees saving money the process will actually cost the country money.

Job seekers are being demonised, news that they will have to sign on everyday as a 'punishment' for being unemployed for over two years broke  last week. Apart from the logistical nightmare of getting that many individuals in and out of job centres every day, the length of time attending and travelling to and from job centres will leave individuals lots of time to find non-existent jobs [sarcasm alert]


'Everyone' professes to know 'someone' who is claiming 'Thousands off benefit'. Oddly not many can put an address on that 'someone'. More realistic are the stories like that of the young man in our local supermarket who travels nearly 30 miles a day by public transport [definitely not cheap!] to a low waged job, has applied for over 150 better paid positions in the past year - many of which have not replied and has had one interview. He is acknowledged to be a very hard worker and would like to learn to drive to enable him to seek a job further afield/better paid but cannot afford to on his present wage. We often have a little political debate behind the vegetable section and he is knowledgable and well spoken. The job centre are not able to help him with courses etc because he is already employed..........

I am not as depressed as I sound. Whilst their are still those of us who are asking questions, blogging, annoying the politicians we can still turn things around. My grandparents and parents did it, my children and grandchildren can do it. But make it soon - please!!


*The engraving 'At the Dock Gates' is borrowed with humility from the website CANNING TOWN FOLK which is really worth visiting. The section  Social Reform & the Settlements describes the sort of situation I describe above. Canning Town was very near to where my Gret Grandfather lived and may even have been one of the dock gates at which he stood.



NB
Elizannie has been missing from the airways for some weeks. A campaign on which she & Other Half have been working for some years has all but reached its culmination and requires an awful lot of legal work and confidentiality. Other Half & Elizannie are communicating with each other mostly by means of lap tops in their different rooms, and mostly about important things like what is for dinner and who is going to buy/make it. Those who have enjoyed the peace be warned that Elizannie hopes to be back annoying you full time in the very near future. Some may notice that various posts are missing from the archives of this blog, this is a temporary 'blip' and can be 'got at' via me if there is a need!

Are we returning to the world of 'A Christmas Carol'?

• Marley in his pigtail, usual waistcoat, tights, and boots; the tassels on the latter bristling, like his pigtail, and his coat-skirts, and the hair upon his head. The chain he drew was clasped about his middle. It was long, and wound about him like a tail; and it was made (for Scrooge observed it closely) of cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses wrought in steel.       A Christmas Carol

Many of you know that I am a bit of a geek when it comes to Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. I have taught/lectured on it from both the English Literature and the Popular Culture 'angles'. I collect different editions of the book  and interesting ornaments/memorabilia. I have blogged on it and written political parodies on it. So when my latest acquisition - Marley's Ghost - arrived today, I was pretty excited.

As always, when reading/teaching 19thC literature, it is frightening how close we are to returning to the mores of Victorian society under this present government. The notion of the 'deserving and undeserving poor' [which had actually been around since Tudor times] played a big part in the distribution of charity in Victorian patriarchal hierarchy.

When Scrooge in A Christmas Carol early in Chapter One asks the two gentleman who are seeking charitable donations to help the poor: 

'Are there no prisons?' asked Scrooge.'Plenty of prisons,' said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.'And the Union workhouses?' demanded Scrooge. 'Are they still in operation?''They are. Still,' returned the gentleman,  'I wish I could say they were not.''The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?' said Scrooge.'Both very busy, sir.''Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course,' said Scrooge. 'I'm very glad to hear it.'

it is somewhat similar to Iain Duncan-Smith's shameful comment this week: 

'I am happy for people to visit food banks. I don't have a problem with them'. 

The story of Marley's Ghost is that he, the late partner of Scrooge, visits the latter on Christmas Eve to warn him that unless Scrooge changes his ways he is doomed to become a restless spirit like Marley:

'I wear the chain I forged in life,' replied the Ghost. 'I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it. Is its pattern strange to you?'Scrooge trembled more and more.'Or would you know,' pursued the Ghost, 'the weight and length of the strong coil you bear yourself? It was full as heavy and as long as this, seven Christmas Eves ago. You have laboured on it, since. It is a ponderous chain!'

Scrooge tries to argue that he is only doing what a good Victorian should be doing, making and reinvesting his profits - see the Protestant Work Ethic :

'But you were always a good man of business, Jacob,' faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself.'Business!'' cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. 'Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!'

This is to me one of the most important statements in the book. It resembles the biblical quote, parallels of which can be found in all the great religions: 

For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?      Mark 8:36

Another important statement occurs when the Ghost of Christmas Present shows Scrooge the figures under his robe. This ornament of mine shows a sanitised pair, illustrations from the book show a more frightening pair:

From the foldings of its robe, it brought two children; wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable. They knelt down at its feet, and clung upon the outside of its garment.'Oh, Man! look here. Look, look, down here!'exclaimed the Ghost.They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread.Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him in this way, he tried to say they were fine children, but the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a lie of such enormous magnitude.'Spirit! are they yours?'Scrooge could say no more.'They are Man's,' said the Spirit, looking down upon them. 'And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!' cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. 'Slander those who tell it ye! Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse! And bide the end!''Have they no refuge or resource?' cried Scrooge.'Are there no prisons?' said the Spirit, turning on him for the last time with his own words. 'Are there no workhouses?'

 The John Leech original illustration

The last 'comparison' with the present day/Victorian times I will make is using the 'metaphor' of Tiny Tim. He is presented in the book as a fragile, sickly child who, although his father is in regular employment, it is not possible for the family to afford the good food and medical treatment that he needs for what is a curable condition without which he will die.

We have seen under this present government an erosion in both confidence and financial support for the NHS, despite David Cameron's electioneering promise that the Conservative Party was 'the Party of the NHS' [January 2010] We have learnt how many working people, including parents of course, cannot exist solely on their wages but have to rely on welfare benefits and/or food banks to feed themselves/ their families. When the cry goes up that we are in a period of austerity and cuts have to be made one remembers the quote of the late Tony Benn: 

If we can find the money to kill people, we can find the money to help people.

In other words, no military campaign has ever been put aside because we are in a period of austerity......

Are we getting close to returning to the sort of society and times that Dickens wrote about in 1843? Please think about this and when listening to the pleas and excuses of the government in the forthcoming election campaign perhaps it will help to decide where we go next.

New Tory Party Anthem

We'll never live like common people
We'll never do what common people do
We'll never fail like common people
We'll never watch our life slide out of view, because we are the favoured few
Because we have plenty to do. 
We despise the common people, sing along and this might just all come true.
We’ll sneer at the common people
Patronise them even when they're trying hard, we think the things they do 
Are stupid. We think that poor is poo. 
We don’t want to live with common people, we dislike the common people. 

with apologies to Pulp: Common People

Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life; define yourself

Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life; define yourself. Robert Frost

Its been a funny few days. Good: we had a few days recuperation 'at home' in the South West after my bout of bronchitis and the weather was really kind to us. Not so good: the residue of the weather not having been so kind this winter was evident everywhere. Driving across the Somerset Levels and seeing how Muchelney is still cut off by the floods, huge 'lakes' of standing water, sodden fields etc. Talking to a friend from Burrowbridge who had been flooded and comparing our experiences of the floods in Chertsey. Our cliff top dwelling campsite is now smaller than it was as a large area has fallen into the sea. Most unexpected, but then so were the wild waves which reached the height of the cliff top.

It was good as always to catch up with friends and family, but not so good to receive an email from a friend of nearly 40 years standing to say that she couldn't put up with my inane ramblings [ramblings I admit to, inane seemed a little harsh] any longer and our friendship is over. I suspect that my political opinions which differ to hers, never discussed face to face but which I air [ you may have noticed dear reader] on the world wide web annoy her. Since I have friends from all sides of the political spectrum, different faiths and ethnicity and - you may have noticed - enjoy a good discussion on all sorts of issues, I find this rather sad but am not about to change my ways.

And then, for holiday reading, I have been re-reading the late Tony Benn's Dare to Be A Daniel which kind of says the same thing as the Robert Frost quote of the blog title. Except I somehow feel Tony Benn was better at putting it across than I.

The Robert Frost quote was sent by a cousin this morning and is quite humbling really. It reminds one of just why and how people like Tony Benn stood up for their principles and could do it for a lifetime. I hope I can do the same, and remember why I am a political activist.



P.S.   Talking about principles, I am so disgusted and offended by the Grant Schapps post budget 'Bingo & Booze' 'infographic' I can't reproduce it on my blog, but it can be seen here. However I will show the satire of it tweeted by David Schneider this morning: 

For Duncan xx

Tony & Bob

Due to a combination of the floods and  unwellness [is that even a word?] February and early March has been a wash out in the Elizannie/Other Half household and we are actually off on a bit of a recuperation for a few days later today. But how could I leave without paying a tribute to two of our political heroes, one whom I knew and one I would have liked to have known.

The announcement of the death of Bob Crow on Tuesday this week came as a complete shock. A man of very strong principles - and I may not have agreed with all of them! - but someone who looked after his union members, stood up for justice for so many other causes such as Football against Racism. I remember listening to Boris Johnson blustering and puffing on a radio station before the last scheduled train strike when Bob Crow 'phoned in because that was the only way that he could get Boris to talk to him. Pure Genius. He will be sadly missed and the photograph below of the tribute to him by his members at Convent Garden Tube station says it all:

Tony Benn's death was not so unexpected but still very sad for those who had loved and maybe also known him for so many years. I was furious when I found out some years ago that he used to visit my father's house when I was a child tucked up in bed! - but made up for it by meeting him later in life. There are many wonderful obits out there so I will just say that when I awoke to the very sad news of the passing of Tony yesterday I realised that we had all lost a true Socialist, a Gentleman in all senses of the word.

The last time we saw him was at Kings Place theatre in March 2013 where he was due to appear in his 'Writing on the Wall' show which he shared with Roy Bailey. Unfortunately at the last minute Tony had to cancel due to his poor health and Roy carried on on his own. Just toward the end of the evening, Roy was called off stage and returned with a very frail Tony who had not wanted to let his audience down. Roy was crying and Tony got a standing ovation. He looked so frail but when he spoke his voice and words had all his usual strength and conviction. So many of us had tears streaming down our faces that night. 

Thank you Tony for so many things - you will be sadly missed but you have left us all with great memories and many good quotes.

Tony & I at a peace rally in Trafalgar Square.

I had just given him a great smacking kiss 

and he laughed and said 'That was very nice'!