Malingerer

Like many people, I don’t usually really think much about Remembrance Sunday and Armistice Day.  I observed the ritual and the silence but without actually thinking about war, commitment and sacrifice.  Today’s two minute silence was different.

Recently I uncovered a document of my maternal grandfather’s service in the British Army during the Second World War, particularly that covering an inquiry into his health and subsequent medical discharge.  The document gives a profound insight into the officer class, and their opinion on the men for whom they had responsibility.

Shortly after the outbreak of war, my granddad was conscripted as a sapper, a class of soldier whose jobs could range from digging ditches or breaking enemy things for tactical reasons.  He was in his early thirties.  He spent some time breaking things before he received a chest wound in action.  After treatment for his wounds, rather than being discharged he was sent to work as a manual labourer at a depot at Scapa Flow.  Here the conditions for ordinary servicemen were tough.  My granddad, who had grown up barefoot on the banks of the Tyne in the worst area of Tyne Dock was used to tough, but while living in an unheated tin shed at Scapa Flow he contracted tuberculosis.  He faced more treatment, losing some lung function in the process.

After a break to visit his family in South Shields, he was again returned to Scapa Flow.  Despite the time away, he found that living conditions had not improved, and whilst working on moving provisions discovered that officers enjoyed a very different and better life.  Feeling his health again deteriorate in the cold and wet living conditions, my granddad then committed a terrible crime.
He complained.

A board of officers reviewed his complaint and an inquiry was held.  Statements from officers and doctors were collected and entered onto the document.  One doctor defined my grandad in his statement as a ‘borderline malingerer’.  One of his officers, who my granddad barely knew, classified him as a ‘barrack room lawyer’.

The board found that as no other men had complained there was no case to answer, but rather than censure my granddad recommended that he be discharged on medical grounds.  After several weeks of light duty with a different squad he was sent home to his family for good.

My grandad never spoke about this.  He never considered himself or his war service as anything special.  When he was asked if he wanted to become a Chelsea Pensioner he turned it down.  The uniform life was not for him.  What he was left with was the feeling that justice demanded that ordinary people deserve better lives, in a society where everyone helps each other, not reliant on doffing a cap to a patronising elite for charity.  He was no socialist, but like many others he voted for his aspirations for a better Britain, and helped usher in one of the greatest governments this country has ever seen.  A post-war government that went to war on poverty, sickness and ignorance.

On Sunday I saw David Cameron at the Cenotaph do his solemn look for the cameras.  Cameron and his peers are from the same strata of society as those officers who looked down on my grandad and considered this rough-talking tough northern man as little more than an awkward oik.  I thought about that solemn look in the two minute silence today.  On the face of a man who is doing everything he can to undo what my grandad and his generation helped build.

No mock solemnity, no matter how well acted, can hide that David Cameron and the Tories are betraying the memories of those, like my granda, who came back from war, and with their families, rebuilt Britain.

Labour values: ‘We can’t help everyone’

Emma Lewell-Buck just can’t help it. In today’s Shields Gazette she decried the emptiness of David Cameron’s tough words on the Calais migrants issue, without any suggestion of what she or Labour would do to resolve the problem.

Presumably no one has told her yet.

What irked me most was that the article showed a complete lack of empathy; not just in her own words, but in the visitor comments below the article.  The people in Calais are hoping for a better life; a job, opportunity, a chance for freedom, or a haven from persecution, violence or death.

So I commented:

It says everything about the pathetic state of Labour that the South Shields MP jumps on the anti immigrant bandwagon to keep the Labour leadership happy and at the same time attempt to appeal to BNP and UKIP voters. It is reassuring though that people like Emma Lewell-Buck and most of the commenters below are in the minority (particularly the charming den ‘final solution’ patton) and that most British people are actually decent, empathetic human beings.

To put it in perspective, we have a population of over 60 million, but there are around 3,000 migrants in Calais. We are also one of the wealthiest countries in the world so not only can we afford to support these people in difficulty, we should. Sadly Emma Lewell-Buck is part of a political-economic system which prefers to maintain the status quo which makes the poor poorer and the rich richer, and rather use these people in trouble as an opportunity for cheap political point scoring rather than actually improving lives.

Maybe we can’t help everyone. But we should try, and for an MP, it should embody the reason they went for the job in the first place: to help people. 

Anything else is a betrayal to Labour voters, and what were once Labour principles.

Our MP wants to save the NHS

Over at the Shields Gazette, South Shields MP Emma Lewell-Buck slaps herself on the back for courageously voting for whatever lobby fodder are told to vote for. And what could be more core Labour voter friendly than a soft soap early day motion that makes all the right NHS noises?

The Tories and Lib Dems may be holding the axe to the neck of the NHS, but Labour brought it to its knees. Before the Tory reorganisation, Labour saddled the NHS with its very own reorganisation, the Private Finance Initiative. PFI has landed NHS trusts with decades long debts worth billions. On top of that, Labour obligated trusts to offer services to private providers, even if the NHS services were better value for money. Even without the Con-Dem slashing, a Labour government would have meant cuts to NHS services.

Labour put profits before people.

If Labour is serious about saving the NHS, then cancellation of PFI debt must be at the top of the wish list. Next would be to put the NHS at the heart of a British constitution to stop future governments using the NHS as a political and profit football.

But it won’t happen. Labour is as wedded to dismantling public services and handing them to the circling privatisation vultures as the Tories, Lib Dems and Ukip.

Together

So the family of nations of the UK will remain together.  For now.  We have been handed an opportunity to build a new, better UK – for all of us.  Cameron’s offer of pseudo devo city regions should be ignored as a cynical attempt to silence calls for regional and national devolution under a federal government, with a model which will pit city against city, each competing for scraps from Westminster’s table.

Scotland has lead the way and the debate has shown there is a desire for a better, fairer and more representative democracy.  This isn’t the end of Scottish independence, it should be seen as an opportunity for all the parts of the UK to campaign together for more local democratic self determination.

Despite the inevitable posturing over the result, Westminster is running scared.  They know we have the power to make changes for the better.  After yesterday, we know it too.

And that’s why we need to keep them worried.

Where next?

I had prepared a blog post on what next after today’s Scottish Independence Referendum, whichever way the vote goes. But Caroline Lucas has pretty much hit the nailed it at Left Foot Forward with her open letter to the three party leaders – I recommend reading it.

Whoever wins (I hope by a significant majority) there is some optimism to take away from the campaigns in the run up to the referendum. Not from the party leaders or the celebrity political names like Sheridan and Galloway, but from people on the street engaged with their politics, other people, and their own future. If you’ve visited Scotland in the last few months you can’t have missed the Yes and No posters on walls, in house windows, on fences in fields and by the road. People have been talking to each other. True, there has been some negativity from both sides and I have witnessed naked nationalism and outright dishonesty, but in the main people have been good natured, and most importantly, positive and with a real optimism for the future.

For too long optimism has been missing from political discourse, hidden behind cynicism and the personal ambitions of lobby fodder polticians. In the referendum battle we’ve seen people take politics back into their own hands, and they’ve made their way to the polling booths in unprecedented numbers. And the politicians are scared.

I hope this optimism and drive for self determination catches on, and heads south of the border. In a country dominated by political parties that put people before profit, we’ll need it.

Good luck Scotland.

God’s own country

No loaves and fishes from Cameron

After alienating the fundamentalist Church of England wing of the Conservative Party with his support of equal marriage, David Cameron has decided to play to them and place down the Christian card in the run up to the annual celebration of the torture and execution of a literary character.  In a vile twisted perception of reality, Cameron pines in the pages of the Church Times for good old Christian values, but moans:

“I sometimes feel not enough is made of our efforts to tackle poverty.”

I don’t quite know what to make of this.  Tory ‘efforts to tackle poverty’ have been a naked war on the poor, making poverty worse.  The coalition government has been instrumental in making life worse for people on the poverty line, the introduction of the ‘bedroom tax’, punitive welfare sanctions, the vicious cutting of welfare budgets.  This has led to a massive increase in food banks, and the emergence of people being admitted into hospital with malnutrition.

Malnutrition; in the 21st Century; in one of the wealthiest nations in the world; in what Cameron considers a ‘Christian country’.

Well, this is the guy who said that “Jesus invented the Big Society 2,000 years ago.”  If Jesus invented Cameron’s Big Society, then Dracula invented blood transfusions.

It is true that religious organisations are stepping in to help where they can.  The Trussell Trust has reported a massive growth in requests for emergency food:

Cameron is grateful to Christian organisations though:

“I welcome the efforts of all those who help to feed, clothe, and house the poorest in our society. For generations, much of this work has been done by Christians…”

This is because he and his chums are dismantling the welfare state, the fair, secular solution.

 

Not a Christian country

Cameron said Britain should be “more confident about our status as a Christian country”.  This is a myth that is regularly resurrected, and it seems appropriate that Cameron’s done it in the run up to the celebration of the Christian resurrection myth.  True, our unelected head of state is also the head of the Church of England.  Unelected bishops sit in the House of Lords.  For over a thousand years Christianity of one flavour or another has been the dominant religion in Britain, owned massive swathes of land and property, and held power over the lives, deaths and afterlife of British people.

But that doesn’t mean that Britain is a Christian country.  Our laws are secular.  Our electoral system is secular.  Our state machinery is secular.  Despite having a state sanctioned church, it’s largely a ceremonial relationship and the UK is probably one of the most secular states in the world.

Religiously, the UK is diverse.  For the Prime Minister to suggest that Britain is a Christian country, it implies that any citizen of any religion that isn’t Christian (or of no religion) is somehow not properly British.  This attitude skirts the bigotry of the EDL and UKIP, with the sinister finger-pointing of the zealot, who lives in a paranoid world where the non-Christian is an outsider whose is ‘not one of us’.  We can see where that kind of thinking can lead today in the Central African Republic, where Muslims are being butchered by the thousands.  By Christians.  We can see it in Muslim countries where being un-Islamic can put an innocent person in prison or their head on the chopping block.  Closer to home, sectarianism in Northern Ireland has kept communities fractured for generations.  There are still many in North Ireland who believe that being Protestantism is a core component of Britishness.

Defining a country and it’s citizens by a religious belief is at best pernicious; at worst, murderous.

This is why Britain being a secular country is a good thing.  No matter what religious baggage our history brings, a country with secular values ignores arbitrary ‘morals’ born out of iron age superstition and medieval ignorance, and treats everyone equally, irrespective of their religious beliefs.

Letting people down

Three weeks after voting in support of the Coalition government’s ‘annual welfare cap’, South Shields MP Emma Lewell-Buck rails at the government’s poor performance in administering the Personal Independence Payment, or PIP for short.  Our MP raised in Parliament the plight of constituent Sue Martin, who has myalgic encephalomyelitis and has been waiting since July last year to find out if she qualifies for support through PIP to help with her illness.  In most scenarios, I would say job well done to our MP.

Sadly, Ms Martin is not alone in struggling with PIP and Disability Living Allowance claims, and will likely be joined in future by many other people struck by debilitating illness, frustrated with an inhumane bureaucratic system and a capped welfare budget pot.  This capped welfare budget will mean that different departments within the welfare system will compete with each other for a share of the budget.  If one welfare function is over budget, then funds can be taken from one department to top up the other department’s failing budget.  It doesn’t sound so bad, until you realise that people’s lives will depend on the political whims of ministers courting media attention and the competing interests of internal party political warfare.

Despite Emma Lewell-Buck’s plea over over PIP and her criticism of the government for ‘letting people down’, she voted for the very bill that could make life worse for people like Sue Martin, and other people who are unfortunate enough to need the safety net of the welfare system.

The EU Debate – a broken down metaphor

If the EU was a broken down car, Nick Clegg would sit there in it, on the hard shoulder, thinking everything was just peachy.  On the other hand,  Nige Farage would flounce away in an extravagant pique, abandoning the vehicle on the side of the road.

Perhaps the grown up approach is to work together to try and find a way to fix the car?

Running up the white flag to the Tories

“I’m going to be a different sort of MP“, she said.  When she was campaigning to replace David Miliband as South Shields’ MP, she played on the fact that she was local born and bred, with a deep Tyneside family history, and a social worker who knew the needs of and the difficulties facing the people of South Shields.

After safely winning the South Shields seat, Emma Lewell-Buck pluckily threw down the gauntlet to David Cameron, saying that he might need a lifeboat “after sailing HMS Coalition straight into the rocks, aided by his captain, George Osborne, and his cabin boy, Nick Clegg”.  Well, our South Shields MP has joined the crew of the not-so-good ship HMS Coalition.  Today, she voted with the Labour whip in support of the Coalition’s Charter for Budget Responsibility, otherwise known as the ‘annual welfare cap’, a cap on the overall level of spending in the welfare budget, excepting pensions and some jobseekers benefits.

It’s a nasty piece of legislation, another broadside in the Coalition’s dirty media war against those in receipt of benefits, and it seems, a war in which Labour wants to see some frontline action.  Unfortunately, Labour chose not to fight against the Coalition, but instead chose the easy target in a hunt for the middle England vote – against those in our society who are most in need, the poor and the unwell.  If Labour MPs wanted to distance themselves from the values of the creators of the NHS and the welfare state, they couldn’t have picked a more treacherous flag to run up their mast.

So is ensign Lewell-Buck a ‘different sort of MP’ for South Shields?  What better benchmark could we find than the late Tony Benn, whom she claimed for her was “an inspiring figure… because of his absolute dedication to his principles and his belief in the rights of working people.”  I find it difficult to believe that Tony Benn would ever vote for such a divisive policy, which in this time of savage austerity further victimises the poorest and most unfortunate in society, whilst the rich get richer.  If Lewell-Buck is a ‘different sort of MP’, it’s one that’s hugely different from Tony Benn, but remarkably similar to South Shields’ previous parliamentary disappointments, David Clark and David Miliband.

South Shields could as well have voted a Tory in, for all the difference it would have made.

A tale of two islands

The awkward war of words over Gibraltar between Spain and the UK has been escalating from strong words to fishing-boat broadsides to bureaucratic barrages.  There’s even been reports of real gunfire.  It’s not hard to see why the Spanish government has upped the ante after the issue has been smouldering quietly in the background for years.  When a nation’s economy is struggling, nationalism has always been a useful distraction for a populace facing tough times.  Directing hate and fear at a manufactured threat is a sleight of hand trick that has been used by unscrupulous politicians since, well, forever.  Here in the UK all of the main political parties regularly deploy hate propaganda as a tool to attain their goals.  New (relatively so) kid on the block UKIP has learned that lesson particularly well, and has made xenophobia their war cry, albeit dressed up in a spiffing suit and tie.

It’s a sad personality trait of our species that the instinctual tug of tribalism can motivate people more than compassion and rational discourse.

So why is the UK so keen to keep Gibraltar out of Spanish hands?  Is it because of the tactical location of Gibraltar, where the Atlantic meets the Mediterranean, is an ideal position for the UK to continue to project a last vestige of military power to protect UK interests abroad?  Could it be because Gibraltar is home to some UK firms who wish to benefit from Gibraltar’s flexible tax regime?  Or is it because some Gibraltarian residents have access to the highest levels of power?  Or could it be, like David Cameron has claimed, to “stand up for the people of Gibraltar”?

If you are a Chagossian from the Chagos islands, this claim will leave a bitter taste.

The Chagos islands are a string of small atolls in the Indian Ocean, south of India, halfway between Africa and Indonesia.  These little dots of green are part of the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT).  But the Queen won’t visit these islands to be showered with petals and receive flowers from excited children waving flags.  No proud British citizens will greet the Queen here with praise and gifts.

Because the people of the Chagos islands aren’t there.

The Chagossians were ‘displaced’ from the islands in the late 1960s and early 1970s by the UK government to make way for a huge US military base on the largest of the Chagos Islands, Diego Garcia.  The location of the islands in the middle of the Indian Ocean makes it a nice launching point for military adventures in the Middle East and Asia.  You may remember Diego Garcia from such japes as extraordinary rendition (i.e. kidnap), torture and bombing raids.

The US military personnel stationed on the island call it ‘Fantasy Island’, such is it’s beauty, surrounded by a warm blue Indian Ocean teeming with marine life.  The UK government has classified it as uninhabitable.

I used the word ‘displaced’ above.  It’s one of those bureaucratic euphemisms that doesn’t really convey what happened, as euphemisms are meant to do.  Not even the word ‘evicted’ does what happened any justice.  It doesn’t paint a picture of people rounded up, taken from their homes with only what they could carry and dumped in foreign lands with no support.  Their livestock and pets killed.  Their homes and boats destroyed.  It doesn’t tell the story of the anguish, pain and tears of losing everything, having a huge part of your identity and culture taken away, a casualty of the continuing great game between nations.  It turns human beings subsequently blighted by poverty, addiction and suicides into un-people.  Such is the cruel reality of an empire which treats other people’s homes as its own assets to take and sell as it pleases.

Many of the Chagos people want to go home.  However, successive British governments, Labour and Conservative, have sought to continue this injustice and refused their return using the courts, Royal Prerogative and even the cynical establishment of a marine protection zone around the islands to ensure that any return would be unsustainable.  Even South Shields’ last MP, David Miliband, couldn’t dredge an ounce of humanity to allow these people back home to rebuild their communities when he served as Foreign Secretary.

The theft of the home of the Chagossians was a crime against humanity, and one of the most shameful episodes in recent British colonial history, along with the abandonment of the Palestinian people to the UN-sanctioned Israel land-grab.  The lease to the Chagos Archipelago ends in 2016, and if the US wants to extend the lease an agreement must be made by the end of 2014.  If David Cameron was really sincere about standing up for people, like those on Gibraltar and the Falklands, then he should be similarly passionate about standing up for the Chagos people, and return them to their home.