The Old Gaffer

When I was young, in the 20s and 30s, working class and middle-class districts were in fact villages within a town. Slowly but surely, with the advent of the motor car, followed by world travel, and a more ebullient lifestyle; people seem to have become more insular, and they can live in one street for years, and hardly know any of their neighbours. Now we have the computer age, which to some extent is increasing that insularity on a parochial basis, while at the same time broadening the outlook and the communication between people living miles or even countries apart. So with respect to the proposition, the electorate is now more likely to have a wider audience and the ability to source opinions as widely. The one thing about the proposition was that the individual was not consulted in any way before going to war. Indeed, the individual is consulted on practically nothing. There is a fudge at the time of an election, when the parties bring out their manifesto, which in my view are so carefully constructed, that they give licence to do anything they choose, without consultation.

I find it incredible how many people are talking to each other on a regular basis on the Internet. It would therefore seem logical that people are now discussing their views on the behaviour of the politicians within a wider circle. I personally have found that my friend in Holland is fully aware on what is going on in Westminster, and finds the same pattern in the Hague. People in Europe whom I have never met, for example, read this blog. It would therefore seem possible that in the future politicians will have to be more open, and responsible, because they will be required to justify decisions on some form of website. At the same time the electorate will have its own website making comments, suggestions and objections on the decisions being made in government. It is quite possible therefore, that if this situation arises in Britain, and more likely in America, it will probably be common across the world. In consequence then, if something like the Iraq situation was to rise again, where a high proportion of the electorate was against the war, it would take more than one person, either here or in any other country, to make such a devastating decision and carry it through. Whether it’s true or not, there have been occasions where the press has suggested that certain governments went to war as a distraction from some unpleasant matters which were embarrassing and likely to bring down the government

It is one thing for two of three people to moan to one another about the conduct of either their government or one abroad, but when negative opinions are widely broached on websites on the Internet both here and abroad, it is more likely that this will bring enough pressure on those responsible to think twice.

Time will tell!

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I gave part one to two friends who had been senior officers in the army and had served in war situations. I asked each of them for their responses. The first one didn’t approve at all because he said there was no assurance that a given country could not be attacked by another country. The second person thought the idea had some merit, but this was tempered by what should be done when the country behaved as Germany did with mass genocide, or some other criminal conception
In the first case my assumption was that all the nations belonged to an agreed organisation similar to the EU or the UN. Also, that the general public in these nations, for their own peace of mind and security, agreed with the principle and only under exceptional circumstances, approved of by the overriding organisation, would allow themselves to be conscripted. The basic principle of the system is that all the countries who have signed up to this proposal contribute volunteer individuals to join a common police force, with equipment necessary, provided by the organisation and maintained by it, to combat any situation, that might arise. In the second case, internal genocide, this was obviously an internal matter, but as all the countries had signed up to an agreement which included unconstitutional acts being deemed criminal, then the common police force would be used to quell such acts and take proceedings against any person or persons who was instituting or proposing such acts.

I find it interesting to use the likes of Northern Ireland politics to show that it is a microcosm of what I’m suggesting. Assume the four Nations, England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and Eire as representing a wider case. A large element of Eire and the smaller element in Northern Ireland have for historical reasons, always intended that Ireland will be ruled from Dublin. It is an avowed policy of the IRA that they would work in whatever manner they sought, to achieve this end. Some of their actions have patently been criminal and pure terrorism. Added to that, there has been a strong element of political manoeuvring to achieve the same end, ably assisted in both cases by outside influences from people who would join the fray in mind, if not in fact, and provide succour in various forms while the so-called war is in progress. Soldiers have been brought into this fray in a policing role to back up what was the regular police force. At no time was there ever a face-to-face encounter of any size, as in conventional warfare.

I therefore suggest that with the way in which information is now hacked from computer terminals, any form of political or criminal uprising would be discovered when in its infancy, and so become, like Northern Ireland, a matter for the police, long before it becomes an all-out war. If we take the rise of Hitler as an example, of the way in which the populace can be brainwashed, which then in turn grows like a cancer to the point where those responsible for initiating the concept, are able by threat and criminal acts to achieve their ends, would be able to be stopped by international condemnation and through legal channels, possibly backed by the international police force, to a state where the indigenous population can see the error of its ways. In Northern Ireland it has taken a long time, but the level of political apathy which has resulted, and the total disruption of our government system by the infighting that has gone on between the various parties, is an indication, in my view, that something along the lines of the proposition I suggest, is not as stupid, or harebrained as one might suppose at first sight.

Part one, war as it affects the individual I wish to apologise to those serving in the armed forces, their families, and the families of those who have died or been severely injured, for any hurt this essay might give them. When you read on you will find that I have been there, done it, and got the bruises, in many forms of service. The position is that you and I are nothing more than cannon fodder. Somebody with influence and a personal agenda, can very easily send us to be killed and maimed, where the outcome will be far worse than the conditions before it all started. Over the Christmas period television was constantly giving instances of war from as far back as the Trojan War right up to today, and in my view these films were a celebration of war, so-called heroism, but beneath it there was a clear message that war for any reason denigrated both the individual, the family and the condition of life generally.

My father was a pacifist, but had nonetheless joined up in 1914, along with all his friends, in that initial wartime hysteria, that affects young men, so that they take on a life totally foreign to them, while blind to what that life will be, and the outcome. In my case I had the same hysteria to the point when I returned from evacuation to have a year of the London Blitz, before I was old enough to go into the services. During that year I and my friends sought danger and excitement by going out at night, with white-hot shrapnel falling round us, and revelling in it. My war service caused me to lose the pleasure of a teenage education at university, nine years of pension, five years of promotion in my peace- time job, because others had replaced me while I was away. My period at university was highly pressurised because the government ex-service grant gave you only one chance.

The people who instigate a war, our so-called leaders, are not the ones who are expected to suffer the tensions, the incredible conditions, and the total change of perspective, with injury and death just around the corner, something which we generally ignore. A large proportion of the time spent by servicemen is totally wasted, and often a ploy, a psychological interpretation, rather than a necessity. In ‘39 I was in Sussex just behind Brighton, and enrolled in the Local Defence Volunteers, LDV, the forerunner of the Home Guard, where we, some with shotguns, others with pitch forks, stood on the Downs waiting for the German parachutists. The fact that we didn’t realise the absurdity shows the level of brainwashing that takes place during a war. Later I joined the Westminster Battalion of the Home Guard and did guard duty in blockhouses, with the Grenadiers, in Westminster. In retrospect there was no way that we were going to be attacked, paratroops couldn’t land there, an army would have landed miles away, and government buildings had security guards inside them. The whole thing was for show, but I believe I and the regulars never thought to work that out for ourselves. At sea, I was bolted down in the bowels of the ship, and the men I was supposed to be fighting were similarly bolted down in their Sub. It was purely tit-for-tat. At the height of the troubles in Belfast, in the 70s, I was so incensed when a young woman, was killed by being shot in the back, by some young gunmen, because she was dressed in army uniform and carrying a piece of paper. Similarly, old men, augmenting their pensions by acting as cleaners in police stations in army barracks, were considered by the IRA, to use that disgusting phrase, ‘ a legitimate target’. In disgust I joined the police as a part-timer, and spent many an evening, into the night, guarding the house of a judge, chasing shadows in a Land Rover, or standing at the gate of the police barracks, vetting what came in and went out, conscious that I was an easy target from the top of a block of flats about half a mile away.

No war would mean no armed services, no paraphernalia that costs billions, but our infrastructure, which varies in quality, almost directly with the cast of the paraphernalia, for no return, would steadily improve. We are not only the cannon fodder and the source of the money for war games, we are the ones who suffer, we are the ones who pay financially, with our quality of life, our lives or our futures through injury. The question I can’t understand is, accepting the initial hysteria, why the populaces across the world, allow themselves to go to war, when it makes no sense, when the outcome is worse than before it started ? Why do we stand for it? The atomic bomb is the only thing that has reduced large wars encompassing the whole world from breaking out. A hideous anomaly!

Part two is the opinions of others as to why we should go to war in spite of all that I have a said.

A happy new year
My regular readers will have observed that I did not write a Christmas letter this year, this was due to lack of time and lack of energy. I am now unable to leave the house without someone taking over my duties, and as there are so few someones, I am now having to exercise by walking up and down the hall to keep my legs in shape. I have discovered that it has not affected me psychologically, but I believe that in time it could. The local Trust are kind enough to supply me, as I have mentioned before, with a sitter, to allow me to do the essential shopping. So when I wish you a happy New Year, I’m looking for one for myself, and my Sophie.

Out-takes
For those who have never heard the phrase, Out-takes is TV-speak for those bits of film shots as part of sitcom or a play, where somebody has had the fit of the giggles, because someone else has boobed. The entertainment world is so insular, and so introspective, that while it thinks these errors are amusing and worth cobbling together to make a cheap programme, some of us, and I suspect a high proportion of us, find them just boring, yet over Christmas offer them as entertainment to fill up the schedule. They must be aware that we are voting with our remote controls, but it suits them to ignore the fact.

Mass murder, mass manslaughter
In my current domestic condition I am forced to look at television as an alternative to reading in the evenings, with the result I have mentioned before, that I have been looking at what are mostly American films where cars in vast numbers crash up, hundreds of bullets are fired, ordinary pedestrians mangled by cars mounting a footpath, and dead people are everywhere, in the search for an acceptable medium of entertainment. It is impossible to take these films seriously, because we are adults, and if we don’t like it we switch off, and if we do like it, I think there is something wrong with having a selection of what purports to be a serious subject, that has little or no commendable reason for its being, as it is neither a fairytale, or one of these outer space stories where anything goes. My serious worry is that this crap is being watched by young, impressionable children, without any guidance really, if the behaviour of children today is anything to go by. We learn by touch, sight and sound, and I believe that it is not a coincidence that so many children, indeed any children, could be walking into a school with a Kalashnikov and shooting down teachers and fellow students, without having witnessed it in some form before.

The Magic Roundabout
When my daughters were growing up, we, Sophie and I, would sit with them and their friends in the early evenings watching the Magic Roundabout. It was innovative, highly amusing and even the adults couldn’t wait for the next episode. I was appalled over the Christmas period to see the new version of the Magic roundabout which had all the elements of bad taste, ugly drawings, and an inner thrust of mayhem and aggression, which were the things that the original Roundabout had avoided.

It seems to me that today aggression, hurt and injury, death and destruction is being used as a substitute for a good story which can be even more entertaining, equally exciting, but making more sense in a logical manner to our everyday condition, and occasionally and subtly, pointing up the pointlessness of aggression. The change that has taken place since my childhood more than 80 years ago, in the rise and fall pattern in quality and taste, has been partly due to the arrival of the radio, television, until you reach the heights of incredible quality, but with the advent of the computer which permits people to rapidly illustrate anything they choose, at much less cost, the quality and a lot of what is put out, especially in advertisements, is on the downgrade. You only had to look at the adverts over Christmas, which was almost impossible to avoid, where people screamed at you, and noise was the dominating factor rather than quality. I rest my case.