Tag Archives: World War 2

VE Day: is anyone else feeling queasy?

A kiss on a letter

This VE Day, the phrase “mixed feelings” doesn’t touch how I feel with the world situation right now – here’s why my chat with a BBC cameraman made me queasy.

Some years ago I found a collection of WW2 letters in a junk shop. Portsmouth-based sweethearts wrote to each other throughout the whole war and kept an extraordinary record of their lives. While she was bombed out of her home in the Portsmouth Blitz, he went on to fight in North Africa and advance through Italy, all the while writing home. Unusually, there are both sides of the exchanges at least for the early part of the war. It’s not a small collection. To date I have scanned 3743 individual leaves. There are more to go. It is a story of determination and love, duty and dedication spanning the entire war. Hence the BBC interview: to share what I’d learned of the couple, and help commemorate the end of the war in Europe against fascism.

The interview went well enough. As we packed up, I commented in an offhand way how strange it seems to be reading these letters while a major war wages in mainland Europe, and the US reinvents itself as a fascist power. My sense of unreality about a nation, even a continent celebrating the end of that war against the backdrop of gains made by the far right in the USA and Europe, and the destruction of the post-war consensus epitomised my cognitive dissonance.

It was then the cameraman objected. At first his line was simply: “well, I’m reserving judgement and waiting to see what happens. We can’t know what effect Trump will have.” This was his response to my listing of systematic human rights abuses, kidnapping of citizens by ICE agents refusing to identify themselves or show warrants, suspension of habeas corpus – which American friends tell me is a central tenet of the US experiment taught in school – and is a defining difference between tyranny and democracy.

He did not acknowledge these well-documented realities. He ignored them and countered with: “But I suppose you were all right with Biden being in power?”

Surprised by the deflection, and at the moment not having got my range on him, I answered that I have no strong opinion about Biden. Though I’m not a devotee, it is true to say I heaved a sigh of relief when he was first elected. The Orange Menace would no longer dominate the headlines with increasingly insane rhetoric, which was a definite upside. And besides, at no point had Biden incited his followers to overthrow democracy. So there is that.

The cameraman went on to explain that Biden had been deeply mentally impaired from the moment he took office. He went on (as if this were a killer argument): “if you are so worried about democracy why were you not asking who was really in charge when the mentally impaired Biden was in power? I’ll tell you who it was: Obama.”

And at that moment of racially-undertoned conspiracy theory, I realised I was dealing with a MAGAt. A true, British-grown MAGAt, making tv programmes for the BBC, and clearly not only an apologist for Trump, but a supporter. Of course, this is why he was ignoring what is happening now in the USA and repeating far right propaganda points about Biden, who for all his faults was a President who gave up office voluntarily and did not seek to hold power longer than he was wanted.

When I told him that Biden hadn’t threatened to invade Greenland to take it from Denmark or annex Canada, he laughed.

“Oh, Trump isn’t going to do that. He doesn’t want that.”

Now, if there’s anything I’ve learned watching the news cycle closely in the US over the last 9 years with a growing sense of horror, it’s that Trump tells you exactly who he is all the time. If he says he wants to annex somewhere, he means it. If he sits down and talks with the PM of Canada and tells him he wants his country to be the US’s 51st State, and says “never say neverwhen Carney replies it won’t ever happen, then you have to take him seriously. But nope. According to BBC MAGAt, this is just somehow part of Trump owning the libs.

And so it went on. Where he could not deflect, he denied, where he could not deny, he mocked. I realised that we lived in completely different worlds. Having also paid close attention to the historical rise of fascism in Europe – how it advanced through a process of disinformation by weaponising the media and decrying those trying to give objective accounts as socialists or “lying Press“, I saw the same process here – the unwillingness to acknowledge that events had even happened: here, in England, in a BBC building, the same process that led to the rise of fascism in the 1930s was unfolding, right in front of me.

I left that meeting with a sense of deep disquiet. Queasy? Maybe sick was a better word. I had been invited to talk about one couple’s experience of life 80 years ago against a background of fighting a fascism that found its voice thanks to a megalomaniacal and charismatic leader. There is no doubt Hitler’s behaviour is being emulated by another megalomaniacal charismatic leader today. That was the first cause of the cognitive dissonance I felt. But the second was seeing how with no irony the cameraman who had filmed the interview was happy to wilfully ignore the lessons of history. Indeed he appeared to be unaware that they were being repeated. And to be clear, there is no doubt Hitler’s spiritual heirs are Trump, Farage and all their fellow travellers.

That’s why this VE Day, our national commemoration feels deeply uncomfortable. While Trump demands businesses and cities around the world that want to trade with the US obey its pro-discrimination rules and while at home he dismantles democracy to advance corporate feudalism that will enrich himself and his chosen “in” group, while stealing rights from the “out” group… while his regime treats human rights with disdain, detaining, locking up and disappearing people, leaving them to languish in foreign prisons with no hope of release after kidnapping them from the streets of America without cause… while he actively suppresses the Press and while his followers attempt to suppress 65,000 votes in a North Carolina Supreme Court election, while seeking to intimidate judges upholding the rule of law, yes, we should certainly look back at history – but we mustn’t treat it indulgently or fondly, as if it is a confused old man who had important things to say once but these days mutters irrelevant things into his beer in a pub corner about a world long vanished. Instead, we need to start applying the lessons it teaches us.

Fascism didn’t die 80 years ago. It changed. And as the generation who fought it the last time disappears, it has returned as the elephant in the room painted with GOP in big red letters on one side of the Pond, and Reform in turquoise letters on the other.

And though some can see it, others are doing their best to make sure it is isn’t spoken about at all – even while celebrations of fascism’s defeat dull our nation’s senses and entice our patriots to forget today while dreaming of another generation’s heroic past.

How the Tory re-election dishonours our VE Day heroes.

It’s a bitter irony that a Tory government intent on dismantling and privatising the NHS and making education increasingly expensive should be re-elected on the 7oth anniversary of VE Day.

In World War 2, the country’s victory was the result of a contract between the men and woman who served, fought and died, and those who ruled.

The landslide victory of the Labour government in 1945 was the delivery on that contract. The victory had been predicted for years beforehand by writers such as J B Priestley, who voiced the soldier’s claim that he should receive his just desserts for the sacrifice he gave. He demanded no less than a New World, in which war was no longer necessary and social inequality was reduced forever.

In 1945 Tory party Treasurer Lord Marchwood acknowledged in the Picture Post that “young people and servicemen are Left-minded” but was “certain that Mr Churchill’s appeals will have had the effect he desired.”

But the Tories didn’t understand the selflessness born of war. Hints of how military life had affected young servicemen and women appeared early in the war. On 28th July 1940, J B Priestley wrote of a letter he’d received from the father of an airman, who said of his son and comrades:

“Don’t insult them by thinking they don’t care what sort of a world they’re fighting for. All the evidence contradicts that.”

He went on to quote his son, who had been a salesman before he enlisted:

“I shall never go back to the old business life – that life of what I call the survival of the slickest; I now know a better way. Our lads in the R.A.F. would, and do, willingly give their lives for each other; the whole outlook of the force is one of ‘give’, not one of ‘get’. If tomorrow the war ended and I returned to business, I would need to sneak, cheat and pry in order to get hold of orders which otherwise would have gone to one of my R.A.F. friends if one of them returned to commercial life with a competing firm. Instead of co-operating as we do in war, we would each use all the craft we possessed with which to confound each other. I will never do it.”

VE Day wasn’t a win for Churchill. It wasn’t a win for vested interest or corporations. It was a victory for the ordinary man who came home to build a fairer, more just Britain.

He didn’t want anything exceptional by today’s standards. Only what most of us nowadays take for granted as we grow up.

It included simple things. No more disfigurement or death from easily preventable diseases; no more dying in agony because you couldn’t afford to pay the surgeon; no more being held back because the education system excluded intelligent pupils because they were poor.

It also included provision that those left disabled, blind and limbless thanks to their heroic efforts should be treated with dignity. That’s why Remploy factories were opened – to give those heroes a sense of purpose and a future.

That’s what the returning servicemen got, until this government made the most concerted effort yet to dismantle that covenant with the people, by beginning the privatisation of health services and education. No surprise either, that the current administration closed the Remploy factories.

This weekend, tens of thousands of people will mark the 70-year VE Day commemoration.

Bizarrely, my experience is that – not all – but many of them will be primarily of the right. Fuelled by a mixture of English nationalism and nostalgic Conservatism they will inadvertently mock the extraordinary heroism of the war. Up and down the country, sadly muddled Little England flagwavers will conflate fighting for freedom with Toryism because Churchill was in power at the time of the victory.

It is strange that nowadays war anniversaries are often the natural playground of uniform-renting stockbrokers co-opting the heroism of courageous men and women who made the extraordinary victory possible. As if they laid down their lives to create a world in which the disabled kill themselves after being refused state aid and the poor live on charitable food hand-outs while the wealthy gamble away the country’s money and get off Scott free.

So, whether you are a pacifist or not, remember VE Day. It was a genuine moment of hope in history. It was the moment when the State was taken by the nose and for a while at least made to care for its citizens.

Remember, whatever you do this weekend. Remember how much you owe to those selfless individuals who fought not only for your freedom, but for your education, your health and your welfare.

Remember, too, that 70 years on, vested interests have set themselves the task of rolling back the good work of those heroes, for the sake of a corrupt ideology which makes the rich richer while the poor are oppressed.

If ever there was a time for fair-minded people to regroup, it is now. It is time to think on what has happened – on the day on which much of the good work done 70 years ago is due to be undone.

Remember the wartime spirit of hope and reconstruction. And remember, if you are of the left, you are the heirs of those heroes who fought for future generations to be protected, to be educated, to be treated with fairness and be given the opportunities denied to their parents.

Remember too, the fight must go on. VE Day or no.

Sing Sing Sing with The Three Belles – Nearly Sold Out – Rehearsal Piccies…

Another fascinating day with The Three Belles, Joe Bishop and Will Keel-Stocker today. Full rehearsal this time, with props and full stage layout.  The next time we work this, it will be at The New Theatre Royal in rehearsals on Saturday.

Here are some shots I snapped today:

Gail Prepares for the worst....
Gail Prepares for the worst….

 

Will and Anneka Dance Dance Dance while Izzie looks on.
Will and Anneka Dance Dance Dance while Izzie looks on.

It has been quite an experience. I’ve never written like this before – in a pragmatic and collaborative way, and it opens up whole new possibilities.  Fascinating stuff.

My thoughts?

How hard everyone has worked!  From Chloe, the sound and lights woman closely annotating the script, through the Belles learning lines, working the staging, perfecting their characters and applying themselves to selling tickets – through Joe Bishop working up his character, and how he has managed to arrange a surprise guest appearance, to Will Keel-Stocker making the music happen, arranging the scores and in between times learning his lines, too.  I suppose I have worked on it, too, but this has been such a positive experience it hasn’t felt like work.

Latest news is the Dress Circle is sold out, the stalls are nearly full and the theatre has now opened the Upper Circle.

You can get your tickets for Sing Sing Sing from the New Theatre Royal, here.  The show will be on Saturday 2nd February, at 7.30 pm.

A Farmhouse Somewhere In Northern France… (French Resistance)

The Three Belles - fond memories...

The scene: somewhere in Northern France British troops have pushed the Germans back towards Berlin and secured the perimeter. As the dust settles and a semblance of normality returns to the countryside a woman in the French Resistance comes out to greet the British.

Normandie, Aout 1944. French Resistance member.
Normandie, Aout 1944. French Resistance member.

A photographer attached to the regiment is on hand to capture the moment as she stands demurely with gun in hand, sleeves rolled up as if ready to do a job of work, no matter how unpalatable that work might be. She smiles enigmatically to the camera.  Is it a grin, a look of satisfaction, an expression that says that such young eyes have seen too much? Is it the  blatant confident flirtation of a young woman pleased to see the soldiers she has been waiting for?

Perhaps it is all these. It is a triumphal picture – the moment in history in which a young French woman is at last free to show her face again after the Normandy landings, and a moment in which she begins to transform into being a civilian once more. There is, no doubt, a degree of showing off in it, too. The moment is captured.

The picture, captioned only “Normandie, Aout 1944” is a little blurred, grainy and discoloured, but speaks plenty of the world to come when Europe is at peace again.

Find this interesting? For a longer view of how the modern world is connected to the  events of 1945,  come to Sing Sing Sing The Three Belles’ stage show on Saturday 2nd February at The New Theatre Royal, Portsmouth.