It
has been a busy week-and-two-days in the old Holme Valley
There
is still no sign of the squirrels, but I daresay they’ll be round when the
weather gets colder, and the food gets scarcer. After all, they don’t
hibernate, or so I hear. Matilda,
though, has been practising her own version of hibernation; she only goes out these days first thing in
the morning and last thing at night, spending the rest of the time snoozing in
either the green armchair, Debbie’s recliner next to the stove, or the bundled
up duvet out of the camper, in the front room.
Matilda
is generally undeterred by the fireworks. I wish I could say the same about
Misty. Clearly she is distressed by the
continuous fireworks, and nothing we can do can make it better for her. She’s
got the thunder-shirt, and we put Canicalm in her food, but it doesn’t really
help, to be honest. So, we carry on as best we can, and she goes for her walks
on a lead, securely attached to her harness, and every time she hears a
firework she stops dead, or pulls, or both. No fun for her, or for Deb, who has
to drag her back home.
I’m
sorry for the people who like fireworks. I have no wish to limit anyone’s
enjoyment, but I think your enjoyment stops when it starts causing suffering to
another creature. Anyway, I’ve written
so much about fireworks in the past few years that I’m sure the only people who
now don’t know what I think about the
issue are remote bushmen living under stones in the Kalahari
desert .
Actually,
given the news this week, living under a stone in the Kalahari
desert is beginning to look like a viable alternative. Brexit has once more dominated the news,
particularly in the spectacular display of xenophobic froth that followed the
decision by three senior law officers that the process of triggering Article 50
should be debated by parliament.
Before
we unpack it in detail, maybe we should look at a few actual facts. The
decision was not, for a start, an attempt to reverse Brexit. Those who want
Brexit will still get Brexit. The point
at issue was what sort of Brexit, and
when, and who decides those two crucial issues.
Theresa
May, anxious to appease the people for whom UKIP is now pointless (as opposed
to those of us who thought UKIP was always pointless) and to stop her own back
benchers growing hair on the back of their hands, would like to trigger article
50 on 31 March 2017 and then leave as soon as possible after that, on the worst
terms possible, just to get the damn thing over and done with. Those people who sort of care about the
economy, and the value of the pound, and whether people will have jobs in years
to come and whether their children will have jobs and be able to buy houses and
boring shit like that, would rather that Brexit happened in a more considered,
measured, fashion, weighing the pros and cons. Until this week, the government
was all set to take that decision on its own, without further reference, until
three judges decided that parliament should have a voice in that process.
That
is actually all that has happened. And, of course, the government is appealing
(but not to me, I don’t find them in the least attractive). To listen to the media this week, though, you
would be forgiven for thinking that Remainers had been caught sacrificing
kittens on an altar dedicated to Jacques Delors while singing “The
Internationale” aloud.
“Enemies
of the People!” screamed the Daily Mail headline,
going on to point out that one of the judges was an “openly gay ex-Olympic
fencer”. Obviously, this had been a
crucial factor in their collective decision to stymie Brexit. Not that they
did. Basically the Daily Heil was
reprising Nazi propaganda from the 1930s, so there was nothing particularly new
there, but despite that, I do think
there is a substantial case for the Daily Heil to be prosecuted for contempt of
court, and I shall be devoting some of what is laughably called my spare time
to looking into it. It’s always frowned
upon when anyone invokes what has become known as Godwin’s Law, the
introduction of a direct comparison to the Nazis into any modern political
argument, but quite frankly, there comes a point where the likeness is so
marked that it simply cannot be ignored any longer. If it walks like a duck and
quacks like a duck, it’s a duck. If it steps like a goose, and sings the Horst Wessel Lied, it’s a Nazi.
Meanwhile,
Nigel Farage (remember him? Sadly yes, so do I) has once more, for some
unaccountable reason, since he is no longer the de jure leader of UKIP and in any case UKIP have now fallen off the
far edge of the lunatic fringe, been given space in the UK Cable Street
Mr
Farage is very clever. He publishes a disingenuous poster about floods of
refugees and, that very morning, Jo Cox
is killed. He threatens riots, putting the idea into the heads of the loup-garou tendency in his membership,
and when riots then happen, because he suggested that they might, he will deny
all knowledge and say, “I told you so.” If he carries out his threat to march on the
Supreme Court on the day of the appeal verdict, presumably complete with
pitchforks and flaming torches, and it descends into a shambles, and people are
hurt, or worse, then he will stand on the sidelines, looking wide-eyed, and say
“I told you so”. Basically what this
means is “I set up a situation that could go pear-shaped in order to keep up my
profile and that of my party in order to promote, foster and foment race
hatred, and if anyone got hurt, that’s too bad.” That is Nigel Farage.
In
fairness to Nigel Farage, which is a sentence you definitely won’t see again,
so definitely make the most of it, he is
rattled this week. As several people were quick to point out, when Farage
started binding on about the legal judgement over parliament having their say
on Brexit, that this was a British court exercising its judgement over issues
of British sovereignty which is exactly what the Brexiteers spent several
tedious weeks saying was precisely the thing they wanted to see. Now they’ve
seen it, they don’t like it!
Once
again, it’s been a week which has shown up the complete paucity and lack of
planning in the process of Brexit. In the wake of the legal decision, the
government has dropped hints simultaneously that it might use the Royal
Prerogative anyway, or it might have to introduce a Brexit Bill, or whatever.
In other words, they have not got a Scooby.
I take no pleasure in pointing this out. For whatever combination of
cockeyed reasons, we are stuck with Brexit, and the best thing to do now is to
try and make the best of it, and with a bit of luck, and ten or twenty years of
hardship, and a set of negotiators who have more skill than Davies Fox and
Johnson (which wouldn’t be hard) we might eventually end up in a slightly worse
position than we were on June 23rd. If we’re lucky. Meanwhile, Boris Johnson, speaking at an
event hosted by The Spectator, trumpeted that we were going to make a “Titanic”
success of Brexit. Watch out for that
iceberg, Boris.
I
must admit, one of the more entertaining aspects of Brexit has been that –
regrettable as the meathead bigot tendency has been since it felt legitimised
by the result – the
vote has also fumigated out some of the more exotic bedbugs in society’s
wardrobe. One such is Andrew Rosindell, the (Tory, naturally) MP for Romford, who has been making a name for
himself (I’d never heard of him, in common, I suppose, with many others) by
suggesting that the BBC should resume playing the National Anthem at the end of
each day’s broadcasting “in honour of Brexit”.
I’m not quite sure how this works – are the people who are going to lose
their houses, jobs and livelihoods if we can no longer export to the single
market on favourable terms still going to stand to attention and do up their
tie, for instance. I mean, I am sure it
will be a great comfort to them (except they probably won’t get to watch much
TV, unless the doorway they are sleeping in belongs to Argos
Anyway,
Mr Rosindell’s dumb idea was given the Bronx cheer it deserved, but that only
served to enrage him even more, especially when BBC2’s Newsnight played out with the Sex Pistols’ version of God Save The Queen. He just doesn’t seem to get it. The pound is at its lowest level since
Neolithic times; food bank usage is off the scale; people have been committing
suicide over the Bedroom Tax, and unaccompanied children were left without food
and water in the burning wreckage of The Jungle while the Home Office coughed
apologetically and shuffled the papers from one in-tray to another. Basically, there are other, much more
pressing, much more important issues than whether or not the BBC plays the
National sodding Anthem.
It’s
that time of year, though, sadly. As regular as fireworks, every November, in
the run-up to Remembrance Sunday, you get the usual outbreak of compulsory
patriotism, manifested in whether or not to wear the poppy. It was bad when we were fighting in Iraq and
Afghanistan, and there was always the implication that by not wearing a poppy
and refusing to take part in the baggage, the automatic endorsement of military
adventurism that the government were trying to graft onto it, you were somehow
letting the side down, that it was being disrespectful. Add to that the way in which unscrupulous
fascist organisations, the very type of people who my father spent five years
fighting, 1939-45, were attempting to appropriate Remembrance Day for their own
ends, and it’s no wonder that people (well, some people) were more than
willing, as I am/was to forego wearing a poppy at all.
People
will say that this is disrespectful. In previous years, up till last year, I
have worn both a red poppy and a white peace poppy. The Peace Pledge Union no longer do white
poppies, because they as an organisation
were also concerned with the politicisation of the poppy symbol, and I won’t be
wearing a red poppy this year. I do
admire the work of the British Legion, though, and I may well send them a small
anonymous donation. I also think, though, that the government (successive governments,
in fact) have been very guilty of skimping on the welfare of veterans and
instead letting charity (British Legion, Help For Heroes, BLESMA, et al) take up the slack instead. I do however feel frustrated at the British
Legion’s inaction in failing, year after year, to take on organisations such as
Britain First and Lionheart GB, who peddle their own poppy-themed merchandise
and try to pretend that they are supporting veterans in some way, when in fact
none of the income goes to any of the charities concerned.
There
was also the purple poppy, as promoted by Animal Aid, which aims to raise
awareness of the many animal victims of war – not only the innocent domestic
and farm animals caught up in fighting, but also the many working animals, the
war horses, the dogs that sniff out mines,
and the like. As a follower on Social Media of the cat man of Aleppo, who has
devoted himself to caring for the many cats abandoned in the city because of
the Russian and Syrian bombing, this is
of especial interest to me, but again, Animal Aid has abandoned issuing them,
because of politicisation of the symbol.
The
poppy issue has been thrown into especially sharp focus this year because England and Scotland
I
happen to think FIFA have a point (one of the very few points FIFA actually do have) although
the situation is slightly muddled by the fact that they have previously allowed
England to wear poppies on armbands before, so they might as well do so again. If
a German team wanted to wear Iron Cross symbols on their shirts in remembrance
of their fallen war dead, would we be happy? The Sun (proprietor Rupert Murdoch, Australian/American tax dodger)
would be up in arms. Or what if Italy
What
are we actually trying to achieve in an act of remembrance, wearing a poppy
anyway? For a start, I would say that the symbol only has any meaning if it’s
worn voluntarily. Having to wear a
poppy, in order to be a team member, renders it meaningless. Yet it’s almost a metaphor for the way the
poppy is treated generally, this idea of the whole team having to wear one.
It’s the same peer pressure that exists at large in society. Another aspect though, is even if you do wear
a poppy, of any colour, is the issue of what your own reason is for wearing the
poppy. There’s a very big difference between wearing a poppy as a gesture of
support for illegal wars in the Middle East begun by adventurist politicians
eager to fight to the last drop of someone else’s blood, which I would never
do, notwithstanding my admiration for the professionalism of our armed forces,
and wearing one in memory of a family member or loved one who died in one of
the two major conflicts in the 20th century.
We
should perhaps also note the difference between first and second world war.
Those in favour of compulsory patriotism, doing up your tie, and singing the
national anthem before bed each night tend to lump the dead of both wars
together in one homogeneous act of “remembrance” but I believe that there are
clear historical differences. Also we should bear in mind that when the poppy
appeal first started, and the British Legion was formed in 1921, the second
world war hadn’t actually happened.
Anyway, and this may upset some people, I am afraid that the First World
War, as far as I can see was a total waste of life on all sides, and had
nothing to do with our freedom.
Those
that died in that conflict died for the idea of Empire – either
ours, or the Germans’ – and the
ones that survived were cheated out of their homes fit for heroes. Actually,
that’s not quite true – there
was a slow and halting movement towards better housing and conditions throughout the 1920s and
1930s, but subject to the fluctuations of international capitalism, and ultimately
stalled by the second world war. Plus,
of course, the onerous conditions placed by the victors in the great War upon
the conquered Germany
You
could argue – and I have done so – that
the second world war was a different matter, and that Hitler and his Axis powers had to be stopped, by
whatever means – Dresden,
Hiroshima, whatever. Although we must continue to struggle with the moral
outfall of – for instance,
in this country – our area bombing of German cities. It
is not enough to merely mark that they did it first and we were only
retaliating, although that observation should not take away anything from the
bravery of the bomber crews who did it. Because I may well have a German
half-brother, although I have never succeeded in tracing him, I have spent some
time in trying to see both wars from the German side. I’m not alone in this – Siegfried Sassoon
wrote:
O German mother dreaming by the fire
While you are knitting socks to send your
son
His face is trodden deeper in the mud
In any war, in fact
in any conflict, you will always find individuals on all sides who are drawn to
killing like proverbial moths to the proverbial flame. They get off on it. War gives their lives a legitimacy and purpose
beside which all else pales in comparison. But you will also get, again on all
sides, the people who just somehow got caught up in the machinery of it, with
disastrous results, and were then spat out of the other end of the war machine.
I’ve written before about travelling to France
in 1996 to see the grave of Harry Fenwick in the British Cemetery Belgium
But the Germans were evil, I hear you cry – they started both
wars, and in the second world war they were fascists. My point is, though, that those three men
I’ve just listed no more started the First World War than I did. The conflict
had numerous causes, all coming together in a perfect storm, initiated by the
lightning bolt that was the assassination of the Archduke in Sarajevo Germany Germany
Now you are in a fascist state, and everyone is watching
everyone else. Loyalty to the “shared”
ideals of the party and the leader is everything. You don’t want to be seen to
be slacking, or going easy on persecution, in case someone denounces you. In fact,
it’s always better to err on the side of caution. You shot two partisans
yesterday, today, let’s round up a village and execute them all. And so it
goes, on and on, ending up with the rail tracks into Auschwitz .
Hitler did not kill six million Jews. Not on his own. He facilitated a system
and a mindset that made it possible, based on ascending levels of enforceable
terror and responsibility. One of the
worst features of fascism is that ultimately, it becomes self perpetuating and
grows out of control, out of the control of even the people who started it in
the first place. Though they are still responsible for its outcomes.
Speaking
of fascism, one cannot ignore, however ( even though in my case, God alone knows I have tried to, and to focus
mentally instead on oak leaves and cannon and poppies and cenotaphs) the
American presidential election. We finally reached the day when the nation
voted and decided between Mrs Nasty and Mr Catastrophe. What a choice, America America
Today
has felt very like a bereavement. There have been several days in recent years
that felt like this the two election defeats in 2010 and 2015, and the day
after the referendum disaster. But this is worse, if anything. I know quite a
few people who live in the US
Trump
has threatened or promised, whichever way you look at it, to borrow heavily to
build new infrastructure, which will at least
provide some of the jobs he has said he will create. In that respect, it’s
nothing different from FDR and the new deal – or at least those parts of it
that set people to work on much needed feats of civil engineering. But Trump sets it in an entirely different
context, and it remains to be seen anyway whether he can pull it off. In the
meantime, though, set against that, there is his avowed isolationism, not
wanting to be part of NATO for instance, or to get involved any more in the Middle East . Yet, paradoxically, he wants to bomb the
shit out of ISIS . No wonder Putin was rubbing his hands in glee.
Clinton would have been much more of an obstacle
to his plans to meddle in the adjoining countries and rebuild the former empire
of the USSR
He
also appears to be a completely awful human being. He mocks the disabled, he is
openly hostile and misogynistic towards women, he’s homophobic, and
anti-abortion, he wants to target and scapegoat Muslims, and begin a massive
programme of deportations. He may well be a crook, and there is still the
unresolved issue of whether Bolivian Marching Powder was involved in his
performance in the candidates’ debate. He has threatened to prosecute Hillary
Clinton, and constantly vilified her throughout the campaign as someone who was
evil and corrupt. (Something which was
significantly – and hypocritically – missing from his acceptance speech).
Part
of the problem could well be that he’ll be forced to do some of these things, whether he wants to or not. He’s whipped
the mob into a frenzy of expectation, and if they don’t have their anger
appeased by seeing the Muslims being forced to wear a badge, by the wall being
built, and by a more prosperous life and better prospects, they are likely to
turn on him and rend him. I would shed
no tears over that, provided that no innocent people suffer in the process. The problem is that history shows they are more than likely to. There have been many comparisons over the
last 24 hours with Brexit, some of which hold true (the neglected white working
class deciding to give the supposed political elite a kicking, by voting in,
er, a rich businessman, who many argue is part of that very elite) and some of
which don’t.
There is one comparison
that I can already see happening, though.
The fact that, exactly as has happened in the UK since the Brexit vote,
every racist, fascist, misogynist, xenophobic bigot feels its OK to abuse
migrants and refugees, beat up immigrants in the street, tear off the hijab in
the street, and denounce anyone who doesn’t join in the compulsory patriotism,
or who voices concerns about the economic future, as a traitor. The chilling news footage of his rallies crammed with people chanting "USA! USA!" and "Lock Her Up! Lock Her Up!" are confirmation enough, that about half the population of the USA seems to share Trump's odious beliefs - at least enough to vote for him
There
is obviously much more detailed analysis to be done on who thought they were
voting for what in the US
But
what these people failed to appreciate is that, if ever there was an election to ditch your “principles” and vote
tactically, with the overwhelming aim of stopping Trump by any means possible,
even though the result might have been Clinton
The
other thing I can’t understand is why the very people who Trump hates, people who
know they are very people who Trump
hates, still voted for him. Yes, if you voted for Trump at all, or if you had a
hissy fit and stayed home over Bernie Sanders, you should be ashamed of
yourself, but if you are a woman, or a black, or a black woman, and you still voted for Trump, well, what can I
say? I’ll let W H Auden speak for me:
The stars are not
wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
While
all of the Brexit furore and the US Bradford .
Oh, and a few hundred more refugees drowned off the coast of Libya
So,
tomorrow is Armistice Day. We’re back to poppies again.
On Remembrance Day the bands
all played, the bells pealed through the park
And you lay there by the Do Not signs, and shamed them with your spark
Now winter moans in old men's bones as the day falls into dark
So it's goodbye to my lady of the islands
And you lay there by the Do Not signs, and shamed them with your spark
Now winter moans in old men's bones as the day falls into dark
So it's goodbye to my lady of the islands
As
Al Stewart once sang. I find myself thinking, increasingly these days, that if
you could bring them back, would the war dead be happy with the word we have
made out of their sacrifice? Would Harry Fenwick, gassed in 1917, or William
Evans, died of wounds 1915, or James Ross, died January 6th 1942
when his Hawker Hurricane plunged into the Irish Sea, be happy with what we
have done with their sacrifice? Would Karl Bürkle, Günther Gräf, and Paul Mauk?
Would
they be happy with the food banks, with the climate of fear, with the rise of
mob rule and fascist anarchy? Would they be happy with the scapegoating of refugees?
Would they be happy that a new “endarkenment” – to use a word coined by
Jonathan Freedland, a wave of post-fact retrograde stupidity, seems to have
taken a grip in every country we once thought “civilized”, intent on setting
the clock back in some cases to the 1950s and in some cases to the 1450s? Would
they be happy with a society where wearing a poppy, doing up your tie, and
singing the National Anthem seems to be compulsory these days, and if you don’t
do these things, someone is likely to hand you a white feather in the street?
Auden again, but from a different poem, this time:
Accurate
scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.
But what can we do about it. What can we do about
the fact that somehow there seems to be a collective short-circuit in society
that is causing anger against a perceived elite to manifest itself in fascism?
Matthew Arnold, in his poem Dover Beach
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor
light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and
flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
All
I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.
Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.
Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.
We must love one another, or die. If I had to take
one message away from this Remembrance Day, that would probably be it. All of the things which we hold so dear, our
families, our pets, our personal relationships, our homes, our ordered and just
society under the rule of law, our peace, our hard-won freedoms of thought and
speech, all of these things are very fragile, and there are people, bad people,
out there who want to take them away, directly or indirectly. How fragile we are, like it says in the song.
The things that are important, the things that matter, will need to be
safeguarded against the impending onslaught. If we can get through the process
of Brexit however long it takes, and the four years of Trumpery from President
Fart, and still have these things intact
at the end of it, that will be a considerable achievement. I have to say, this
morning, I’m not that hopeful we’ll be able to pull it off. Not at all hopeful.
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