(from Phil’s Blog on 23rd May 2016): One month from The Referendum on UK membership of the EU: What a sad situation! The EU has shortcomings of course (haven’t all human institutions), but broadly, it is the complete and effective answer to the thirty-years ‘War to End All Wars’ (1914 - 1945), and keeps faith with the millions who died in that greatest act of folly the world has ever known. How sad that those who want to quit are happy to align with anti-immigration right-wing nationalists - exactly those who attended the mass rallies in 1930s Germany - and against whom the youth of this country pitted itself in the 1910s and 1940s:
DULCE ET DECORUM EST
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.
Wilfred Owen
Thought to have been written between 8 October 1917 and March, 1918
The EU has done wonderful things that matter, in the field of human rights, climate-change, environmental protection and much more, never mind banishing war from Europe after centuries of unending conflict, and has enormous financial benefits and clout that even the dictator Putin has to give-way to. and we are asked to vote on whether to be a member of such a club. It’s like being asked if, instead of thinking for yourself, you would prefer to align yourself with UKIP or the BNP or (in the same vein but the past-tense) the Mosleyists, or be a follower of Franco or Mussolini or Berlusconi, not to mention Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ party. Those people think/thought in the way that Brexit people think. Instead of remembering others, especially the disadvantaged, and this beautiful green world, it’s all ‘Haul up the ladder Jack!’ and ‘Forget the Golden Rule’. And if Brexit wins the referendum, they will be in the ascendancy. It’s a ghastly thought. Boris Johnson in charge, with Gove and Lawson and their ilk. If I were younger I would consider emigrating to France.
(Below): Uppingham Market Square, Saturday about 11.45 am on 11th June 2016: Andrew Brown (farmer of Caldecott, Rutland [**]), Phil Archer, Sam Asplin (Rutland County Councillor-retired).[**]=who had an EU flag flying at his farm - how I wish I had had one to fly at ‘Somersday’, where we live!
And when they ask you “What did great-grandfather Phil do in the referendum?”, show them this photo and say, well, he did his best, though there was a species of madness abroad, which caught a public mood, and made many otherwise sane people say they were minded to throw away the results of 42 years of work on one of the world’s best projects: nations working together for peace and prosperity.
(Added 21.6.2016 - two days before the referendum):
Today’s Guardian leader says it all: click here and here and here:
“The EU embodies the best of us as a free people in a peaceful Europe. Vote this week. Vote for a united country that reaches out to the world. Vote against a divided nation that turns inwards.”
Friday 1st July 2016 at 1719hrs:
100 years from Ist July 1916 - Opening of the Battle of the Somme:
100 years ago this very day, 40,000 British soldiers died in one morning, as they walked slowly (according to strict orders) across no-man’s land and were cut-down by a veritable storm of machine gun and rifle fire from the German trenches. All life in the German trenches was supposed to have been wiped out by the week-long barrage from the British artillery (which made a transparently-clear statement that a large attack would be launched when it lifted). But the Germans had made deep dug-outs in the earth, which withstood the barrage. Nothing special about that. Quite simple pick-and-shovel dug-outs, but deep enough and wood-reinforced-enough to stand up to the shells. But no one in the British Army had thought of that, although we had been engaged in trench-warfare for well over a year.. And that ignorance was a major factor in the loss of those 40,000 lives. Whole streets of young men in the Pals Battalions. A generation lost. Brilliant stuff! That’s what we can do when we figure it out for ourselves. No need for any input from ‘The Bosch’. We know how to put the kibosh on the Kaiser. Lions led by donkeys.
And now we’ve done it again. Completely forgotten the lessons to be learned from all that. Not one word about it in the political debate about the EU referendum. You would think that two world wars had never happened. Those young men died in vain. None of those involved in actually running the country apparently gave them a single thought, nor appeared to be aware that the entire concept of the EU is the eradication of war between nations by a progressive merger of their economies. The entire referendum debate was about economics and immigrants. Pictures of immigrants queing 20-deep to come into Britain. Turkish immigrants. Foreign immigrants. EU immigrants. And Michael Gove is proud (and so are plenty of his Tory friends) that that image and concept is what won the referendum for the Brexit side. He revels in being on the same side as all the right-wing leaders in recent history. How shameful is that. What a disgrace. How I abhor that man. And he aims to be Prime Minister. I am ashamed that my country has allowed itself to be betrayed by a man of his stature. He is the man who, as Education Minister, tried to introduce a history syllabus based on jingoistic simplistic concepts of British military triumphs betraying a complete lack of awareness of facts like the presence at the battle of Waterloo of far more German than British troops, and their decisive action when the battle was swinging in Napoleon’s favour.
Heard this morning on the ‘Today’ programme on Radio 4: an interview with the Archbishop of Canterbury at the Thiépval Memorial. Question: Archbishop, what comes to mind when you survey a structure like this memorial? Answer: That we should find ways to avoid having to build memorials like this. And that we need strong ethical and spiritual values to achieve this. Which in turn means a need for wise national leadership. Our leaders need a cause and a vision of how they can make the world a better place.
How heartily I endorse the archbishop’s sentiments. Ways to avoid the need for memorials by strong ethical and spiritual values exemplified by wise leadership with a vision of a better world. We already had in-place exactly that in the EU’s structures, to which the UK had contributed so much wisdom and leadership towards (and achieved it) a Europe that has been free of war for 70 years. Ah me. It will not be rectified in my lifetime. What utter foolishness.
PS: that (disputed) £350Million per week that was alleged to be sent to the EU for our membership is:
1) £350M x 52 = £18,200M per annum = £18Billion, £200Million
2) But UK government expenditure per annum is approx £1trillion = £1,000 Billion = £1,000 x 1,000M; so
3) that (disputed) membership fee amounts to (as a percentage of government spending) is:
£18200M/£1,000,000M x 100%
= 1,820,000/1,000,000
= 1.82% of UK annual spending
So, compared with a family on an annual income of £50,000 per annum, and assuming that they spend it all, that is a membership fee of £910 per annum, that gives you membership of a club that keeps you out of wars (that in the 1914-1945 wars bancrupted the entire British Empire) and makes you part of a trading group larger than China, whereby people like Putin can be put in their place. QED.
Sunday 11.7.2016 at 2220hrs:
The best that the establishment (Old Etonians such as Cameron, Johnson et al), not to mention Blair from Fettes, has been able to do is to allow a transparently trivial shallow trickster like Farage to push the whole country over a cliff that will be impossible to recover from. It is totally unbelievable that such idiocy can be treated as anything other than naked incompetence. And yet so many nominally ‘thinking people’ are taken-in by the barrage of words that such people spray over all questions.
Membership of the EU was the result of decades of effort and was the best hope this former imperial power had of a common sense way ahead in the world that would offset the centuries of extortion-racket operation that was the British empire, and allowed us to be part of an honourable family of European nations that could stand up to the US and to Russia and to China. My generation apparently did it. The old farts voted for Brexit. What madness. I am ashamed of it. It is a total disgrace. Just as mad as WW1 and WW2 were - in their different ways. The human race has endemic madness. I give up. It’s too late to undo any of this. I apologise for my generation to the young. We are a disgrace. The Germans now have so many of the things that actually matter, so right.
Friday 28.8.2016 at 2144hrs, watching “The World at War” on ‘Yesterday’ chanel:
Vivid illustration of the aspect of human nature which enjoys destroying things. Pictures of villages being destroyed. Oradour sur Glane (go to Wikipedia for information. Or click here). A soldier comes up to a cottage and breaks a window and chucks-in a bomb. A moment later the cottage and its inhabitant family are engulfed in flames. And elsewhere….a corporal is ordered to separate the women and children of a village from the men - who are to be shot. This is real. This footage is of actual people who were within minutes of dying. Saying goodbye to their wives and children. And so it goes on…..55 million deaths in WWII in all the nations involved. The holocaust. This this this is the origin and purpose of the EU(***) - today’s voters seem not to have thle faintest idea about it. It WASN’T EVEN MENTIONED IN THE CAMPAIGNING! And the destructive instinct has triumphed now, slightly over 70 years later. Farage did it. And Gove and Johnson. Little men. Inward-looking. Narrow. Limited in their thinking. No ‘vision’ at all. Destroying. Laughing as they did it. So easy to destroy things and lives. A rifle-butt through a window followed by an incendiary. A misleading slogan in a referendum. And it all goes up in flames. What fun! So trivially easy compared with building up lives, and educating people to be outward-looking and linking peoples and nations. Oh my God! Heaven help the human race. If they can’t remember WW1 and 2.
(***): The concept: that it is much harder to wage war against someone or a nation who/which is part of your family cf: family/marriage/partnership/and so on. How much ‘integration’to be ‘part of the family? Answer: the amount corresponding to some commonality of governance and legislation - the amount provided by a common parliament of Europe, dealing with legislation on issues relating to cross-border problems like international criminality and tax-evasion.
Analysis of the referendum suggests that the ‘Remain’ campaign lacked any emotional appeal to correspond with the ‘Take back control’ slogan of the ‘Leave’ camp. Well indeed. The arguments were just: money, money, money, How useless is that? What might have done it was: “Keep faith with great Uncle Percy who died on the Somme: vote ‘Remain for a peaceful strong Europe’.
Thursday 08.09.2016 at 1449hrs:
An answer to the despair arising from the Brexit result, and something which feels right and goes to the heart of the matter with an underlying sense of wisdom, came to me the other day via the Leicester Great Meeting website’s Autumnal Newsletter (to which and to whose editor, compiler, and minister, as well as to Andy Phillips himself, my full acknowledgement and gratitude go), in which there is reproduced a prayer originating from my friend, co-member, nay leader of, the Great Meeting Engagement Group way back in 2006, Andy Phillips, who recently led a service there, which I attended, and in which, apparently, this same prayer featured, but I believe I must have missed it by being delayed in entering the service after Ruth (who did hear it) because I was attending to our dog, Mac:
Click here for the first page and introduction to the prayer by Tony Fletcher;
Click here for the second page of the prayer.
Myth-busting: (click-here to go to a page on the nonsense of Gove’s ‘Little Britain’ view of European history.
Informing my MP of the monumental folly of the Brexit policy that he is supporting:
Email dated 22.3.2017 at 17.39hrs to alan.duncan.mp@parliament.uk
Attention: Harriet Baker, Parliamentary Assistant to Sir Alan Duncan:
Dear Sir Alan,
I am writing as a constituent and as a matter of what I see as a public duty to inform you about the opinion of this constituent at a time when The Commons has committed itself, and you, as my representative, have fully supported The Commons in so doing, to a so-called ‘Brexit’ policy of such monumental folly and denial that it is difficult to find words to convey to you the enormity of the potential harm to the world and to your country, that you are set on perpetrating. I write also to challenge the denial of the peace-loss implications which are implicit in the Brexit policy.
And I believe that you are well aware that the Brexit policy is foolish, but, for whatever reasons, have not seen fit to make a principled stand like Kenneth Clarke, the Lib Dems and the Greens, or (on a different subject but likewise being a matter of principle), John Bercow. The result of the Brexit policy is that this country is rightly the laughing-stock of Europe, and the world, except for the likes of Le Pen, Wilders, Trump, Putin and their acolytes, with obvious implications for the validity of such a course.
This letter is definitively not about the financial and related implications of the Brexit policy which have been debated ad nauseam, but about the peace-loss and related inter-national aspects of disengagement from Europe.
In simple terms, you and your parliamentary colleagues have clearly stated that you intend to set aside the lessons so painfully learned by Europe in two world wars. Those wars were so bad that they became ‘the wars to end war’. And the European Project was specifically designed to put an end to such wars, by integrating government of the the nations, so that war became impossible. And it did. Wonderfully successfully. Despite the languages. Despite the differences in a thousand ways. It worked. A thousand years of war brought to and end. Including the hatreds between the combatants. And not only that. A parliament of the European people was created, elected fairly by those people, which legislated while being less or not at all subject to the lobbying and related financial and media pressures that deny such fairness and rationality in national politics. And hence the hatred of it by certain media and financial and political groups opposed to Europe’s clean air, clean water, human-rights and climate-change legislation. Hence also the mendacity of the slogans on ‘that bus’ in the referendum campaign.
For the reasons explained above, the votes to support Brexit which you have recently put your name to are a betrayal of each and every one of those who died in those ‘wars to end war’ of 1914 to 1945. Arguably 60 millions just in the 1939-1945 conflict. These including the combatants, the civilians, the holocaust victims including those of the gas chambers, the massacred inhabitants of Oradour sur Glane. The nuclear bombs of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. And the man dying from chlorine gas in Wilfred Owen’s poem, ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’:
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori
And the parroted them that ’The Brexit Plan’ is the will of the people is just so much more of the same folly because that plan is no more than “The Emperor’s New Clothes’ in Andersen’s children’s fable. It doesn’t exist and never has. It has the same relationship to reality as the NHS funding slogan painted on ‘that bus’ by Gove and Johnson. No one takes responsibility for it, any more than they do for the sayings of Trump and Farage. Yet our nation’s future and that of my grandchildren finds itself aligned with the aspirations of those men.
I end with a plea. I believe you know that the EU embodies the best of us as a free people in a peaceful Europe, a united country that reaches out to the world, rather than a divided nation turning inwards in a repeat of the mistakes of the past. Therefore, please, Sir Alan, join those making a principled stand against the repetition of the mistakes of the past in this Brexit plan, and even at this late hour seek to do what you can to minimise the trouble it will make for all our futures.
Yours sincerely,
Philip B Archer.
(Constituency address and telephone No. quoted).
No reply received, nor any expected.
26.4.2017:
Wikipedia text pasted today on ‘Operation Gomorrah’ against Hamburg in July 1943 by the RAF and USAF. This is what ‘war’ actually meant in that year, never mind now, and this is what the Brexit people evidently think is quite worthwhile accepting in exchange for being able (so it is claimed) to control immigration in times of peace:
The attack during the last week of July 1943, Operation Gomorrah, created one of the largest firestorms raised by the Royal Air Force and United States Army Air Forces in World War II,[2] killing 42,600 civilians and wounding 37,000 in Hamburg and virtually destroying most of the city.[3] Before the development of the firestorm in Hamburg there had been no rain for some time and everything was very dry.[4] The unusually warm weather and good conditions meant that the bombing was highly concentrated around the intended targets and also created a vortex and whirling updraft of super-heated air which created a 460 meter high tornado of fire, a totally unexpected effect. Various other previously used techniques and devices were instrumental as well, such as area bombing, Pathfinders, and H2S radar, which came together to work with particular effectiveness. An early form of chaff, code named 'Window', was successfully used for the first time by the RAF – clouds of tinfoil strips dropped by Pathfinders as well as the initial bomber stream – in order to completely cloud German radar. The raids inflicted severe damage to German armaments production in Hamburg.
Indeed war is treated as so acceptable that it is not even worth discussing in the Brexit context, as no one (but me) ever mentions it. What depths of stupidity can the human race plumb? There are no limits whatever.
On Farage: (14.9.17): Saw a piece in a Rutland magazine today about Titus Oates, the ‘Popish Plot’ perpetrator in the time of Charles II. So many similarities to Farage. Took in so many influential people. Will provide a (link here) in due course to Wikipedia’s information on Oates for reference purposes. The main points are:
1) Farage is simply a very skillful confidence trickster who relies on disclosing things about the EU which he knows will upset people (such as dishonesty) or corruptiion or other improper conduct, or examples of wasteful spending, and which are at least partly true; and
2) he uses these skillfully to discredit the EU, and in this he is backed by the entire rightwing press ie The Mail, The Express, The Daily Telegraph, The Times, ie Murdoch and Dacre and their cronies because they have a permanent vendetta against the EU because IT CANNOT BE BOUGHT OR LOBBIED OR INFLUENCED LIKE THE TORIES;
But the truth is that:
1) the EU was founded on the idea that IF NATIONS SHARED THE THINGS THAT THEY GO TO WAR FOR THEY WOULD NOT GO TO WAR. Hence the EU system started with the Iron and Steel Community; and
2) It worked - there has been no major war in Europe for 70 years - which is success beyond the wildest dreams fo the founders. It is success of a kind that mankiond has never acheived before; nations working togehter in harmony via a parliament of so many lanquages and nationalities as to be unbelievable; and
3) The size of the budget handled by the EU and the cost of war makes all the little ‘trickster’ items relied on by Farage very obviously ‘de minimis’ ie so small as to be totally minuscule and (though large in themselves) of no significance compared with the ENORMOUS benefits of freedom from war and the availability of funds to deal with problems very quickly and effectively eg I say yesterday the EU parliament voting in seconds for funds to be devoted to needs of member states. Of course Farage and his supporters never ask for such funds so they rarely go the UK and will never do so in future.
Summary:
Farage’s hate of the EU + The Mail’s hate of being unable to influence the EU + a daily diet of simplistic one-sided tricksterism fed to the Mail’s customers in the UK + much underlying dis-satisfaction with life caused by the Tories’ austerity programme cause the Brexit vote.
So it is all based on tricking good peope into thinking they are being ‘done’ by the EU when in fact they are being ‘done’ by the Daily Mail and Farage, and they will be the ones who will suffer in the end when the entire sorry charaged unravels. (14.9.17). Farage and the UKIP party shoud by called ‘Titus Farage and the Europopish plot’.
Another summary (15.9.17):
1. (Motive for deception [inabilitiy to control/bribe/‘buy’/otherwise influence the European Parliament]) + Ignorance (in the relevant part of the UK electorate) of how the European system works = opportunity to ‘blame’ the EP for all sorts of perceived ‘wrongs’ which have nothing to do with the EP;
2. Item 1. above is just as in previous times (for example) the Jews in Germany were blamed for the hyper-inflation of the 1920s, when in fact it was caused by the excessive reparations inflicted by the victorious powers at the Versailles Peace Conference of 1919, this leading to the persecution of Jews and, eventually, to the holocaust, but, as in the present times, it was not easy to find a way to defeat such propaganda, because the cause of hyper-inflation is not easy to identify and lots of people were looking for a scapegoat, just as they are now for the perceived (and in many cases actual) injustices and inequalities in their lives. A right wing party in Germany used, many years later, in the 1930s, supplies of the enormously-high denominations of banknotes from the times of hyper-inflation as propaganda-material by overprinting them with anti-semitic images and text, blaminng the Jews for the hyper-inflation and other ‘crimes’. These notes correspond in many ways with ‘that bus message’ which, effectively, blamed the EU for under-funding the NHS, when in fact it was the Tory government’s austerity policy which did it;
“Lots of people in this country aren’t doing so well. That’s why a majority voted for change. To have voted to remain in the EU would have been a vote for more of the same”: (01.11.2017):
Thatis a quote from a letter from Phil Harrison of Whitehaven in Cumbria, in (approx) 26th October’s Guardian:
So,at last, the reasoning is crystal-clear: Not doing so well, therefore blame it on the EU, and vote for change, in case it improves things. The possibility that change might cause things to become worse rather than better does not seem to have occurred to the writer.
(Saturday 4.11.17): from a friend who voted for Brexit. The purpose was to ‘create confusion’ because ‘we shall never leave the Single Market, it just won’t happen, because there will be a second referendum when the people see what confusion lies ahead, and there will be an opportunity for political change!’.
Not sure I understand the reasoning. And why risk damaging something that is working so perfectly for its intended purpose (of preventing war), I asked. Answer: because there was so much waste! I worked for the UN in Europe and saw so much waste: ‘Enormous copying machines being used to provide mountains of copies for everyone in all the relevant languages. Not to mention all those lunches!’. So vote Brexit to produce confusion and to stop (relatively) minuscule wastage, and to enable political change.
And another Brexit approach. Nathan Gill,EFDD-party MEP for Wales speaking on the European Parliament online video about the EP’s President Juncker’s speech in September/October 2017: Mr Gill lambasted the speech as being ‘Out of the book of Chairman Mao’. And showing the EP to be ‘in a right state’. No attention to current issues - just ‘dreams about the future’. Nothing about jobs or immigration, which are what concern people. It was all ‘forward vision. And ‘Thank goodness for Brexit’ and for getting away from ‘more and more European powers, federalisation, an EU ‘FBI’ and ‘army’ and ‘blue card’. And so on.
Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. Will they never understand? “The purpose of the EU is to deal with questions and principles and purposes THAT ARE BETTER DONE INTERNATIONALLY THAN NATIONALLY. Such as avoiding war. Such as dealing with international crime. Such as dealing with international tax-avoidance. Such as dealing wtih dictators like Putin. And yes, such as controlling immigration. That is why the European Parliament does what it does. Mr Gill cannot seem to understand that.
Sunday 19.11.17:
The English Revolution of 2016! That’s what Brexit is.227 years later. Our answer to The French Revolution of 1789. They actually got rid of their governing élite, we were thinking in 1819 (The Peterloo Massacre) that the French had shown the way for the masses to throw off their chains, and it might be possible for us, in a way that had never been achieved in the Civil War (of the 1640s). But all that happened was that the magistrates panicked and sent in the cavalry and many lives were lost and nothing happened politically apart from John Turner beginning the work that resulted in the foundation of the Manchester Guardian in 1821. But in 2016, Mr David Cameron (PM) gave the masses just the chance that they had been waiting so long for - and in combination with an austerity programme which made it SO easy to want to vote “UP YOURS”. And they did. They thought they were punishing the élite. But they weren’t. they were punishing themselves.The rich never suffer. As soon as Brexit is secure, it will the The Night of the Long Knives and Krystallenacht combined - to get rid of those not wanted (just as always happens in revolutiions). And it will actually be the voters who voted for Brexit that will suffer. The lowest paid. The rich never suffer. They don’t care. They will be quite happy to turn England into a Banana Republic.
Thursday 01.02.2018:
Values:
Neil MacGregor’s book “Germany, Memories of a Nation” is a representative example of all the values that I hold dear and which are disregarded and trampled-on by the Brexit movement in our country.
Here is an example. The Victory Gate (Siegestor) in Munich. Built in 1840 to celebrate military valour in the Napoleonic and Revolutionary wars. And whereas the Arc de Triomphe in Paris and the Wellington Arch in London, do thus celebrate military successes, the Munich arch has inscribed on its blank reverse side (see above): “Dedicated to victory, destroyed by war, urging peace”. MacGregor explains more fully in his own text - see below.
And here is that text: “…the past offers lessons that must be used to shape the future”.
Sunday 18.2.18: (after watching an episode of Tolstoy’s ‘War and Peace’ on Netflix): perhaps this country’s present madness parallels the madness of Germany in the 1930s onwards, and from which that country has so wonderfully emerged (in the 1990s onwards) into a historically-aware, reasoning, outward-looking, modern democracy that has acknowledged the unspeakableness of aspects of its history in many open and admirable ways. So perhaps when the madness of the UK’s current majority thinking has worked its way through the system, and perhaps, sadly, after many terrible outcomes have wreaked their havoc, and long long after Ruth and I are departed and forgotten, then, perhaps, with luck, this country may emulate what has already been achieved in Germany, and properly come to terms with the awfulness of what we are currently doing by attacking the one institution in the world of its kind where former warring nations have come together in a wonderfully-effective parliamentary integration system that banishes war, and will re-apply for full and proper membership of Europe, and acknowledge the awfulness of the British Empire in terms of its exploitation of native peoples, incliuding the slaughter to extinction of the native american people, the slave-trade, and the blood-money paid to slave owners to compensate them for giving up their slaves. One happy day. Long long ahead. Sadly sadly sadly.
Tuesday 10.4.18: prompted by today's US hearings on the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica scandal, and its implications for modern values:
Britain in its post-WW2 heydays, shall we say the latter-five decades of the 20th century, had miraculously achieved an unbelievable outcome of its 3 centuries of empire and exploitation by joining the EEC, which is/was a grouping of nations committed to peace and human rights and fighting climate-change by means of parliamentary procedures - ALL THE THINGS THAT REALLY MATTER FOR A FUTURE WITH ANY HOPE IN IT.. In this way Britain had achieved a wonderful way forward from an awful colonial past. BUT: it was too good to last, though it was true for much of those 20th century decades.
The problem was that THINGS HAD GOT OUT OF CONTROL! The decomcatic systems of the EEC really were controlled BY THE PEOPLE ELECTED IN THE European elections AND NOT BY DACRE NOR BY MURDOCH and nor were they controllable by this country's rigged voting system with its Jerrymandered constituency outlines and its first-past-the-post vote-counting and its totally inequitable rules about party-funding. Hence the slogan 'BRING BACK CONTROL!'. Yes indeed that is what the ruling class wanted: bring back control to where money can skew the result.
How to do it? Easy: just make up lies about the EEC. No one will know whether they are lies or not. Or if some of them do, there won;'t be enough of them to count. And if the lies are big enough and 'catchy' enough, it won't matter anyway. And if Facebook data can be added into the toxic mix, so much the better.
And so it was. The Bullingdon Club approach. Boris Johnson's approach. An archetypal 'Bulingdon Boy'. Trash the place first (in this case with lies about the EEC). And then offer wads and wads of cash (the NHS promises) which 'make the lies OK anyway'. And which was never going to be paid anyway. Just like the 19th century 'Ending Slavery Money' which the ruling class has been congratuilating itself about (for such selfless generosity) ever since. How wonderful! We ended slavery. By paying ourselves a fortune. And doing the absolute minimum for the slaves themselves. The Bullingdon system again: trash the world first (centuries of slavery) and then throw money at it, and preferably make sure most or all of it comes to you or your friends. What a lovely system! How the ruling class stays on top!
And what is the 'litmus' test for the veraci of the above? Simple. Brexit was supported by: MURDOCH/DACRE/TRUMP/JOHNSON//GOVE/FARAGE/LE PEN/WILDERS. If anyone can support a policy that unites that clique, it tells you something very interesting about them..
AND THE IMMIGRATION ARGUMENT IS A TOTAL SCAM!
WHY? BECAUSE THE EU LAW ON ‘FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT’ PROVIDES FOR TOTAL CONTROL OF IMMIGRATION’
HOW CAN THAT BE SO?
BECAUSE AUSTRIA AND OTHER EU COUNTRIES DO IT;
SO, WHY DON’T WE DO IT? BECAUSE OUR UK GOVERNMENTS CHOSE NOT TO DO SO;
(27.4.18): EU law on freedom of movement allows only three months access to an EU country, and even that can be subject to controls such as registration; and after that the person in question can be repatriated or required to have found employment. Austria and others have made these requirements. We have chosen not to do so. Why not? Perhaps to fuel the present situation;
AND: in early April, Amber Rudd admitted in response to a freedom of information request that 600,000 persons who had arrived in UK (period not specified) had been ‘Lost in the system’. Yes, six-hundred thousand!! And we don’t know where they are. Here? Gone home? That tells you so much about the TOTAL NONSENSE THAT IS SPOUTED ABOUT THE EU. And that is why we are in this ghastly Brexit situation.
ONE BRIGHT SPOT ON THE HORIZON? Yes. UK is and will be such a laughing stock, that it will do the EU a world of good for the whole world to see what is happening to us. And it may do the green world some good as our economy slows down too.(27.4.18).
A DEEP HUMAN NEED: Brexit speaks to a deep human need for tribal conflict. Whereby one's own tribal identity is reinforced. Has existed for countless millennia. Hence the EU's prime and founding purpose of preventing conflict, runs counter to all that, and is unacceptable to a significant proportion of the human race (who have forgotten or never knew about WW1 and 2). Hence relatively trivial concerns about immigration whipped-up (as ever) by the likes of Trump and Farage, and Dacre, and Murdoch, and Le Pen, and Wilders, and their counterparts in Italy and elsewhere, easily catch-fire and turn into forest fires. Hence the decline and fall of organisations dedicated to the betterment of mankind (via PEACE/HUMAN RIGHTS/CLIMATE JUSTICE), because mankind has this built-in 'death-wish'. (05.07.2018). 'If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken, twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools......then yours is the world and alll's that's in it, and, which is more, you'll be a man my friend.'
9th November 2018: Two days before the 100th Anniversary of the end of The Great War of 1914-1918:
Email to Sir Alan Duncan, MP for Rutland and Melton constituency, sent at 0009hrs on 09.11.2018 to "alan.duncan.mp@parliament.uk
Dear Sir Alan,
It will be 11th November 2018 in a few days.
100 years from the end of The Great War.
Which many historians count as the greatest act of folly by humankind since the world began.
And led to the Second World War.
But which led also to the setting up of the European Iron and Steel Community.
And so on, to the European Union, which has effectively abolished war in Europe after at least 1000 years of intermittent wars.
Those wars included the gassing of individuals like Wilfred Owen's fellow-soldier:
"...Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me guttering, choking, drowning".
And the 3,000 bombers of Operation "Gomorrah" sent to Hamburg in one raid. And Belsen. And Auschwitz.
That is what European war means, and that has all been abolished.
Completely and utterly by the EU.
And yet you count it nothing.
You ignore it.
You never even acknowledge it or mention it in the debates on Brexit.
Because you cannot see the utter hypocrisy of wearing a red poppy yet spending all your days and effort and public money and speeches and publicity supporting the taking of this country out of the treaty that made peace and what the soldiers were fighting-for a permanent reality.
And doing this at the behest of scoundrels and tricksters like Farage, Trump, Dacre, Murdoch, Gove, Johnson, and their ilk.
Who took advantage (supported by your complicit silence) of total public ignorance of the fact that it was the UK Government (not the EU) that chose to provide total Freedom of Movement plus immediate benefits, to attract migrants, when the EU treaty and rules allow both to be under complete control. "The emperor's new clothes" fits exactly. Outwitted by the rhetoric of tricksters. Duped. A complete rout. And the government complicit.
This letter is a matter of putting that on record for my family.
We did not do nothing at this madness. We marched on 20th October with 750,000 others against it.
We did not 'just go along' with the lunacy of this shameful time.
We did not forget 'Mr No-Nose' who frightened the life out of my mother with his WW1 wounds when she was a tiny child in post-war Brighton in the 1910s and 1920s.
We put it on public record that our MP was supporting this lunacy, this time of shameful exploitation of ignorance.
And was thereby betraying the sacrifice of each and every person who lost their lives in those wars, while hypocritically pretending reverently to commemorate those deaths by wearing a poppy and attending services of commemoration.
Philip B Archer
33 Main Street, Lyddington, Oakham, Rutland LE15 9LR
Telephone: 01572 821 399
Mobile: 07512 252 182 (posted 31.12.18)
31.12.18: Further thoughts: the text below relates to a Radio 4 programme I heard this morning by Neil MacGregor, which seemed so full of sense and wisdom and my values on this subject:
As others see us (title of programme):
A new BBC Radio 4 series written and presented by the former British Museum director Neil MacGregor finds other nations dismayed and distressed by Britain’s “incomprehensible” decision to leave the EU.
In As Others See Us, MacGregor talks to people from Nigeria, Canada, Egypt, Germany and India, some of whom are shocked at the public discourse around Brexit in the UK.
“Because the rest of the world sees the EU as such a positive force, our language about it as the enemy, our comparing it with Nazi Germany, is not only seen as incomprehensible but also unacceptable,” he said.
Neil MacGregor: ‘Britain forgets its past. Germany confronts it’
“The rest of the world do not understand any rhetoric about Europe as a repressive, dominant, constraining force. They see it as an enabling phenomenon that has been achieved at great effort and which is also a model for the rest of the world.”
A comparison to Nazi Germany was made by Boris Johnson, who said in 2016 that EU bureaucrats were trying to unite Europe under a single authority, as Adolf Hitler attempted to do.
MacGregor was impelled to make the series partly through his experience of viewing the UK from Germany, where he has spent much of his timeas founding director of the Humboldt Forum in Berlin since leaving the British Museum in 2015.
“Following the debate from Germany, it became so obvious that what was being said in the UK was incomprehensible. Either it was historically untrue or else it was a misreading of the EU as it actually is,” he said.
“There is growing bewilderment at the language used, at the desire to cast the EU as the enemy, which brave little Britain alone was resisting.”
The five countries were selected partly because their history and politics have been shaped through historical engagement with Britain. Not one of his interlocutors, chosen to represent different generations and regions of their countries, thought Brexit was a good idea.
Interviewees included the Indian businesswoman Shobana Kamineni, the Nigerian artist Femi Kuti, the German politician Wolfgang Schäuble and the Canadian-Chinese novelist Madeleine Thien.
“Particularly in Nigeria, Egypt and India, I said surely you must understand the desire to be independent, why the idea of being in control is so appealing,” MacGregor said. But they did not.
The Egyptian writer Ahdaf Soueif, for example, pointed out the EU “is not occupation” and Brexit “is not to be compared with independence in the colonial sense”. The EU, in her view, was more like a marriage.
MacGregor said he was surprised at the fondness expressed towards the UK, even by those from countries formerly ruled or occupied by Britain. “We haven’t properly understood what it is about us that people like about Britain and want to see flourish,” he said.
“It’s not the caricature of traditional Britain – it’s not the Beefeaters, as it were. It is, of course, Shakespeare, but it is also the openness, the parliamentary tradition, the humour – the lovely thing is how much our humour is everywhere admired, and how absent it seemed from the Brexit debate.”
All MacGregor’s interlocutors viewed Britain with affection. “That’s the first thing that struck me – the warmth,” he said. “Someone like [the Nigerian playwright] Wole Soyinka talked about coming to London in the 1950s, how welcome he felt, how wonderful it was.”
His interviewees valued the openness of Britain, especially in London. “I was really struck that whether I was talking to Madeleine Thien or to Yasmine Shihata, the editor of the Egyptian magazine Enigma, they both said that when you come to London, you feel you are a Londoner,” MacGregor said. “All of them felt that was under threat, that the Brexit decision was a turn away from that openness.”
Brexit Britain is an island nation, but it’s never been alone
Will Hutton and Andrew Adonis
Saturday 7th December 2019 - 5 days before the general election of 12.12.19:
Today is 11 months and 7 days since my last entry on this page (and probably the same for all pages) of this website. Too much 'health stuff' (for me and Ruth) going on to be able to do anything of the sort. But it has not been for lack of interest. We have been, every day, horrified by what has been going on in our previously (relatively) civilised country.
So what to say, on almost 'the eve of the election'?
Answer: it is all like a bad dream. Like parents with a beautiful daughter finding that their child has become infatuated with someone who is obviously a charlatan and a trickster, and she refuses to understand or even listen-to the views of those whose life-experience tells them that the man obviously only wants to marry her in order to defraud and abandon her.
Or alternatively, it is all about values and integrity. If Mr Johnson wins a working majority, which seems entirey possible, the country will be run by a man whose values have been shown by his many actions in the past, to be unscrupulous about mendacity, who consorts with men of the calibre of Trump and Farage and Le Pen, and Wilders, and whose past record is so consistent with all this, that, as I say the prospect is like a bad dream. And in truth, though I regret to resort to such 'less-than-reason-based arguments, you can see these things written all over Mr Johnson's face when he is caught unawares in unposed photographs: not the lineaments of a man of integrity.
No one talks in the pre-election debates about 'Nations working together for peace' or anything of that sort. The substance discussed never touches on this founding principle of the EU. For me, nothing else matters, because, in accordance with the 'balance of risk' equation, nothing else has any weight or substance compared with the infinite gravity and importance of avoiding war and working with the rest of Europe to defeat climate-change, and to reverse the challenge of increasing use of hydrocarbon fuels. Indeed, the Tory party has so many climate-change deniers, like Nigel Lawson, that it refuses, itself, to commit to that first-principle in any way. And it continues to support companies committed to increasing the use of hydrocarbon fuels. AND SO ON AD INFINITUM!
Or, on Channel IV tonight there was a documentary revealing that the sinking of the White Star liner: Titanic, was probaby seriously aggravated and made much sooner (whereby the rescue ships were too late), if not caused by, a fire in the vessel's coal-bunkers which had been burning for about 2-3 weeks before the voyage began and serously damaged the water-tight compartments of the vessel, whereby they collapsed on impact with the iceberg and allowed the 'unsinkable' vessel to sink. The fire was known to the owners and also caused (in combin ation with a miners' strike) the vessle to be steaming at full speed towards the iceberg. THERE ARE SO MANY PARALLELS BETWEEN UK NOW AND THE TITANIC STEAMING AT FULL SPEED INTO A (KNOWN) FIELD OF ICEBERGS WITH ITS WATERTIGHT STRUCTURE GLOWING RED-HOT FROM A FIRE IN ITS COAL SUPPLY THAT WAS IGNORED BY THE MANAGEMENT AND BY THE ENQUIRY AFTERWARDS. Other parallels exist to the American Civil War, which caused such infinite damage to the Confederate States and their black slaves, right up to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and even to today. So much foolishness. So much ignorance and folly. Oh dear. The human race. I am part of it. Its me too. I claim no rights or cleverness. I just tremble at our folly. What can we do? Folly, folly, folly.
Wednesday 29th January 2020: two days before the 31st January deadline for leaving the EU:
I paste below an email dated 16th January from Bill Newton Dunn MEP, who is my MEP, for East Midlands, and who was for a long time the longest continuously-serving member of the European Parliament. It represents all the values I cherish in this part of life:
"My last ever week in Strasbourg, probably, was dominated by Brexit, but not entirely.
The EP debated and voted on one of the unfinished parts of the Withdrawal Agreement - which is Citizens Rights. Three and a half million EU citizens live in the UK but are not being given the guarantees of Rights which were promised by Boris Johnson in the 2016 referendum. Boris gives himself right unilaterally to abolish the UK Board which will oversee the granting of rights. We must see how this problem works out during the next two weeks. On 29th MEPs, if they are satisfied, are scheduled to vote on Brexit or not.
Continental MEPs say “The new Withdrawal Agreement is a terrible “deal” for the UK. But if the UK wants it, that is okay.”
The EU is basically trusting the UK to keep its word...on rights for a million UK Citizens living in EU and 3.5 million living in UK “to live in the host country as they have chosen to do”. The WA given comprehensive guarantees for as long as they want. The UK must implement them. But there are still cases that have not been given papers and other are confused or have not yet applied despite having lived in the UK for forty years or more. We need a guarantee that the independent Monitoring Authority will be truly independent. The EU will monitor this closely. After the Transition the UK will be a Third Country and will have to negotiate a new way forward. Brussels sees a lack of long term guarantees by the UK government. If individual rights are guaranteed that will give a better basis for ongoing negotiations.
The EU says “A physical document is necessary, London says an email with a pdf is enough. The Independent Monitoring Authority must be truly independent but Johnson has given himself powers to weaken it.
If and when Brexit happens, then there will be negotiations about trade with the EU. If the UK says it wants zero tariffs and zero barriers to trade, in return Brussels will say that there must be zero dumping and therefore very close alignment on social legislation. The EU wants a level playing field and no drain on skills.
Maybe Brexit is a necessary trauma. Because of huge insularity at Westminster which is still uninformed about how the EU and international cooperation work. And the UK’s constitution which is no longer fit for purpose. A German said to me : “Brexit is the last act of the British Empire, when the British blow themselves up.”
The UK system is broken. As another continental asked me before the general election : “How is it possible in the UK that a prime minister who is unelected can advise a head of state who is also unelected to suspend a parliament which is only half-unelected?”
Other high-lights of the week:
Breakfast with Commission vice-president Dombrovskis, for Economy and Employment. A Latvian, he was re-appointed and is very experienced in financial affairs. He said that the European economy is facing major transformations due to Climate Change, digitalisation, and its age-ing profile. Europe has had seven years of uninterrupted growth and unemployment is at record low levels, but there are still inequalities, the nature of jobs is changing, and the Green transformation.
The six-month Presidency of the Council of Ministers chaired by Croatia began. Its prime minister, speaking in the chamber, revealed he started his political career as a trainee in the European Parliament. In July Germany will take over from Croatia.
Climate Change. It looks increasingly that the planet is near its Tipping Point. Next year the fires in Australia, Brazil, Siberia and California will be bigger because the planet’s temperature is rising and we are still pumping more and more gases into the atmosphere.
"What we're talking about is a point of no return, when we might actually lose control of this system, and there is a significant risk that we're going to do this," said Will Steffen, a climate researcher with the Australian National University and co-author of the commentary. "It's not going to be the same conditions with just a bit more heat or a bit more rainfall. It's a cascading process that gets out of control."
Two Leaders of Catalan independence arrived to take their seats as MEPs, having been elected last July but delayed by exile and court hearings in Madrid and the Europe’s Supreme Court.
As UK MEPs leave at the end of January, 73 seats will be up for grabs: 27 of those seats will be re-distributed among 14 member states.
The new parliament will have an overall total of 705 MEPs (with one Catalan MEP not having yet taken his seat). The remaining 46 seats will be available for potential EU enlargements and for any possible future creation of transnational lists.
My forecast for the future?
Boris will find himself torn between being at heart a European and his right-wing who will give him a horrible time. And it will serve him right. He is a softie, caring only about being loved for himself. The far-right never give up, Boris will eventually lose and be reviled as a failure.
It feels tragic that UK is closing itself off, cutting itself off outside decision-making and opportunities. Tragic for our young people.
Best wishes, Bill “.
And my thoughts? Well, as Bill says, it is tragic for our young people. This includes our grandchildren in Tyne and Wear, and in Auckland New Zealand. We are walking away from the only truly successful multi-national working partnership of nations dedicated to ending the centuries of European wars by outward-looking parliamentary co-operation. Tragic.
Tuesday 9th June 2020:
Where are we? Coming through the Covid-19 crisis, with the UK right at the back of the pack, sharing the ignominy with the likes of Trump and Bolsonaro. The other day I saw figures showing that on a recent day the UK deaths from the virus figure IN ONE DAY was greater than the AGGREGATE for the whole of the EU 27 countries for that day. That’s where our government has got us. And THE BRITISH PEOPLE. They voted for Johnson by an overwhelming majority. Well you voted for him and now you have got him and you had better get on with it and make the best of it. He may well be the death of me of course, at the age of 78. Very vulnerable. I accept that. Just as I accept the idiocy of this country’s Brexit policy. Totally in-line with its xenophobic past, its imperial past, its slavery past, its tribalistic attitude to Ireland and Roman Catholicism, and all the related policies. There are times when a nation loses its head. That’s where we are now. And when the unemployment and poverty which the Covid-19 is causing reaches enough of the people, heaven knows what idiotic political ideas may emerge which will seem worth following, with heaven knows what consequences.
And in NZ? How are things there? A world away. How many deaths? Twenty-two (the other day). You mean 22,000 don’t you? No. I mean 22 deaths in total. From Covid-19. cf about 50,000 to 60,000 in UK overall. To-date. That is a measure of the UK government and people’s competence and wisdom (in electing such a government with an enormous majority).
Sunday 13th December 2020:
Johnson is posturing with gunboats in the channel. Today is decison day. Doesn't that tell you so much about all this. And it looks as though we will leave with no agreement. And that is exactly what TRUMP AND PUTIN AND LE PEN AND FARAGE and other shallow and cheap and worthless, climate-change-denying leaders have recommended. Well, so be it. Even good. Let Johnson stew in his own juice and see how he likes it. Just as he has mismanaged the covid crisis. And as for those who voted for him: the same applies. If you can't see from his face and actions how duplicitous he is, then there's no help for you.
And as for "Get Brexit Done" and "Take Back Control" and similar slogans, they all mean "Going Tribal" and back to the lowest common denominator of human behaviour, which has led to war over thousands of years. The EU was a way out of all that: anti-tribalism. Nations working together for peace.. Just as the core of JC's message in the New Testament was anti-tribal: Jews and Samaritans were at war, but the Good Samaritan had compassion on his half-dead Jewish fellow traveller.
Tuesday 12th January:
My email to Commissioner Barnier:
From: Philip Archer
Sent: Thursday, October 1, 2020 6:48 PM
To: BARNIER Michel (UKTF)
Subject: A message of support.
Dear Commissioner Barnier,
A brief message of support from an ordinary British citizen.
The EU is a 'beacon of hope' for the human race. 27 nations successfully working together for many decades, maintaining peace after 1,000 years of war, is beyond one's wildest dreams based on the usual standards of human behaviour. For this to have come out of WW1+2 gives those cataclysmic conflicts a new dimension.
Therefore I am dismayed utterly by the UK's departure from the EU, and by a return to its xenophobic bad old ways, that go back to the days of Empire.
I wish you well in all you are doing to defend and maintain that wonderful inclusive parliamentary institution, the EEC. Long may it maintain the peace of Europe. I dream that Britain may one day return to its senses and to its proper relationship with the rest of Europe, and rejoin.
With my sincerest good wishes,
Philip B Archer
33 Main Street, Lyddington, Oakham, Rutland LE15 9LR
(T): 01572 821 399
(M): 07512 252 182
www: phils-pba-hstry.com
Commissioner Barnier’s reply received today:
Dear Mr Archer,
Michel Barnier thanks you for your email. Please accept our apologies for taking so long to get back to you. We receive hundreds of letters every week and take the time to reply to each of them.
The UK left the European Union on 31 January 2020 and chose to no longer participate in the EU Single Market and Customs Union as of 1 January 2021. This is a decision that the EU has always regretted, but respected.
After intensive negotiations, the EU and the UK reached agreement on a new Trade and Cooperation Agreement that ensures free and fair trade between them, and continued cooperation in areas of mutual interest, including the security of citizens. This was the right and responsible thing to do for both sides.
You can find all information regarding the agreement here: https://ec.europa.eu/info/relations-united-kingdom
As stated by President von der Leyen in her remarks at the press conference on the outcome of the EU-UK negotiations on 24 December 2020:
“The UK remains a trusted partner.
We are long standing allies.
We share the same values and interests. Whether it be the COP26 summit in Glasgow or the upcoming UK G7 and Italian G20 presidencies:
The European Union and the United Kingdom will stand shoulder to shoulder to deliver on our common global goals”.
Yours sincerely,
European Commission
Task Force for Relations with the United Kingdom (GDR)
B-1049 Brussels/Belgium
"