T
The Byre
- Original Poster
- #1
As a child, I was taken to post-war Germany and nothing could prepare you for the shock of seeing people with little or nothing to eat. Old women were injured as they tried to steal coal from passing goods trains, children had to take a few sticks of firewood to school, so that the classrooms were heated. Those children did not have books, paper, pens and pencils at school, but slates and hard chalk sticks.
Just ten short years earlier, Germany had emerged from total destruction and complete anarchy. Historian Keith Lowe described it, “Imagine a world without institutions. No governments. No school or universities. No access to any information. No banks. Money no longer has any worth. There are no shops, because no one has anything to sell. Law and order are virtually non-existent because there is no police force and no judiciary. Men with weapons roam the streets taking what they want. Women of all classes and ages prostitute themselves for food and protection.”
Those memories of total destitution and misery are burnt upon the psyche of mainland Europeans. Two world wars tore their lands apart, dictators like Franco, Mussolini and Hitler brought dread and hatred to their countries and the wholesale slaughter of their own countrymen. Communism brought a permanent state of fear and poverty to the whole of Eastern Europe, turning their states into little better than open prisons, where your dissention was met with your disappearance.
I was there when the Berlin Wall fell. I saw men and women streaming across that boarder with tears in their eyes. In historical terms, that was just yesterday. It is within the living memory of nearly all voters that communism was replaced by democracy and relative affluence. The fear of a return to those days runs through all East Europeans like the word 'Blackpool' through one of those sticky sticks of sugar.
Similar fears run down the backbones of the Italians, French, Greeks, the Spanish and the Portuguese, as they remember a post-war parade of incompetent clowns and despotic generals. The European Union is the only real protection they have against those days ever returning and the European Court of Human Rights the real protector of the rule of law. We may regard the EU as restrictive and even stultifying, but for most of Europe, they have experienced the alternative and it is too dreadful to even think about.
Britain is unique in Europe as the only country that has had hundreds of years of stable and evolving government, without wars tearing the very fabric of society apart. The Wars of the Roses and the Battle of Culloden were a long time ago. We no longer live in fear that soldiers will come and rape our wives and daughters, behead our sons and burn down our villages, because the House of York and the House of Lancaster have fallen out again, or because we speak Gaelic.
Britain may have exported nastiness aboard: India, China, Africa and Ireland saw little of British tolerance and found little to laugh about. But at home, Britain has been lucky. The French Revolution may have spooked the aristocracy, but we avoided its wholesale slaughter. National Socialism floundered badly on the soft ground of British indifference and humour - it's hard to be a frightening and despotic leader, when people are laughing and pointing at you, because you are running around in baggy football shorts!
After the war, Britain was the richest larger country in Europe. Its infrastructure was nearly all intact, there was the rule of law and life may have been austere, but it was tolerable. The well educated workforce returned to the factories and to manufacturing civilian goods and these could be transported on the roads and railways without difficulty. Wealth and a new beginning beckoned. 'A land fit for heroes!' was the cry as a radical Labour government was swept to power under Attlee. Despite huge debts from the war effort, Britain should have been able to grow and prosper.
It didn't. Instead, what followed was the wholesale nationalisation of industry, the maintaining of a huge and unproductive conscripted military and the unpopular continuation of rationing.
Nationalisation started with the Bank of England, civil aviation, coal, and cables and wireless. Then came railways, canals, road haulage and trucking, electricity, and gas. Even bus services were nationalised. Finally Attlee nationalised iron and steel manufacturing. Altogether, about one fifth of the economy was taken over. The post war Labour government's ideology was so extreme, that they actually had plans to nationalise farmlands, but these were dropped when the money ran out!
But they kept their biggest mistake for the auto industry - a massive 60% luxury tax on cars!
Whilst Germany was subsidising its infant car industry and even handing out generous cash bonuses for exports and paying for R&D, Britain penalised car ownership with extra petrol rationing in Summer and added £600 to the cost of a £1,000 car, making cars more expensive than houses. By 1951, living standards were no higher than during the war. A grossly incompetent government had worn out its welcome and Churchill returned.
Until 1979, it really looked as if the Labour governments maintained a near-monopoly on stupidity and ineptitude. First Wilson and then Callaghan managed to mismanage Britain, staggering from one crisis of their own making, to another. This ended with the infamous 'Winter of Discontent' of 78-79.
There was of course an interlude for another incompetent, Ted Heath, who did nothing wrong, but then did nothing right either. Events flowed over him and civil servants pushed him which ever way they chose, using him to introduce their pet schemes, local government reform, decimalisation, abolishing retail price maintenance and, of course, joining the Common Market.
But when called to act decisively over devolution, the economy and the trades unions, he failed just as completely as Wilson and Callaghan and his premiership ended with strikes, the three-day-week, 'bath with a friend' and run-away inflation.
After the disaster that was Callaghan, in 1979 came Thatcher and she pushed for privatisation at all costs - and the costs were staggering. Civil unrest, the like of which we had never seen since the General Strike of 1926, threatened to tear the country apart, as the mines and factories closed and thousands of workers went on the dole. Pushing cosseted state-owned companies into privatisation may have been steps in the right direction, but the speed and ruthless nature of the push crippled them. It was as if you have a child that is protected against the World and hardly has to lift a finger - and then, on its 14th birthday, you throw them out of the house, without so much as a packed lunch!
The high costs of these violent economic reforms were met by North Sea oil - and this was the opportunity a tiny, tiny, wee party, founded in the 30s, called the Scottish National Party needed. "It's our oil!" was the slogan that brought them 11 MPs by 1979, but then they sided with the Conservatives in a vote of no confidence in Callaghan and lost all but two seats in the 1979 general election. But the seed had been sown and branches of the SNP sprang up all over Scotland. A disciplined and well defined structure began to emerge.
What was to follow, in retrospect, reads like a script written to favour the SNP and make Scottish independence inevitable.
Thatcher was seen as anti-Scottish and the SNP gained steadily in popularity, as she gave away Scottish fishing rights and imposed a poll-tax only on the Scots. Thatcher was followed by even more incompetents - Major, Blair, Brown and then, 'Call me Dave' all either ignored Scottish issues, or rode roughshod over Scottish interests. At the same time, Scottish demands lead to the reinstatement of the Scottish Parliament by Blair.
At first this new parliament was dominated by Labour, but as case after case of corruption and incompetence came to light, they lost control completely and it just became another stick with which the SNP could beat Westminster. Despite loosing the referendum for independence in 2014, promises made by 'Call-me-Dave' (which were then broken) meant that the following general election saw the SNP win an amazing 56 out of 59 Scottish seats in London.
Ever since then, the Labour Party has been in a constant state of civil war and this weekend, collective idiocy reached a new high, as Labour MPs lined up in a neat circle to form a firing squad, as everybody blames everybody else for the outcome of the Brexit referendum.
With the Labour Party totally preoccupied with attacking itself, 'Call-me-Dave' did not seem to be in any real difficulties. All he had to do, was to smile sweetly and carry on. But instead of just running the country and being boring, he decided to liven things up a bit and snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. In the true tradition of post war political blithering stupidity on a truly epic scale, he decided to call a referendum on EU membership - and lose.
Because this is a script seemingly written only to benefit the SNP, 'Call-me-Dave' forgot to check the constitutional issues involved if he looses. Any deal with the EU would have to be ratified by two acts of parliament - one by the Westminster parliament and the other in Edinburgh. In effect, to fulfil the outcome of the referendum, any government in London has to do a deal with the Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon.
And Scotland insists on maintaining those ties with Europe.
Just ten short years earlier, Germany had emerged from total destruction and complete anarchy. Historian Keith Lowe described it, “Imagine a world without institutions. No governments. No school or universities. No access to any information. No banks. Money no longer has any worth. There are no shops, because no one has anything to sell. Law and order are virtually non-existent because there is no police force and no judiciary. Men with weapons roam the streets taking what they want. Women of all classes and ages prostitute themselves for food and protection.”
Those memories of total destitution and misery are burnt upon the psyche of mainland Europeans. Two world wars tore their lands apart, dictators like Franco, Mussolini and Hitler brought dread and hatred to their countries and the wholesale slaughter of their own countrymen. Communism brought a permanent state of fear and poverty to the whole of Eastern Europe, turning their states into little better than open prisons, where your dissention was met with your disappearance.
I was there when the Berlin Wall fell. I saw men and women streaming across that boarder with tears in their eyes. In historical terms, that was just yesterday. It is within the living memory of nearly all voters that communism was replaced by democracy and relative affluence. The fear of a return to those days runs through all East Europeans like the word 'Blackpool' through one of those sticky sticks of sugar.
Similar fears run down the backbones of the Italians, French, Greeks, the Spanish and the Portuguese, as they remember a post-war parade of incompetent clowns and despotic generals. The European Union is the only real protection they have against those days ever returning and the European Court of Human Rights the real protector of the rule of law. We may regard the EU as restrictive and even stultifying, but for most of Europe, they have experienced the alternative and it is too dreadful to even think about.
Britain is unique in Europe as the only country that has had hundreds of years of stable and evolving government, without wars tearing the very fabric of society apart. The Wars of the Roses and the Battle of Culloden were a long time ago. We no longer live in fear that soldiers will come and rape our wives and daughters, behead our sons and burn down our villages, because the House of York and the House of Lancaster have fallen out again, or because we speak Gaelic.
Britain may have exported nastiness aboard: India, China, Africa and Ireland saw little of British tolerance and found little to laugh about. But at home, Britain has been lucky. The French Revolution may have spooked the aristocracy, but we avoided its wholesale slaughter. National Socialism floundered badly on the soft ground of British indifference and humour - it's hard to be a frightening and despotic leader, when people are laughing and pointing at you, because you are running around in baggy football shorts!
After the war, Britain was the richest larger country in Europe. Its infrastructure was nearly all intact, there was the rule of law and life may have been austere, but it was tolerable. The well educated workforce returned to the factories and to manufacturing civilian goods and these could be transported on the roads and railways without difficulty. Wealth and a new beginning beckoned. 'A land fit for heroes!' was the cry as a radical Labour government was swept to power under Attlee. Despite huge debts from the war effort, Britain should have been able to grow and prosper.
It didn't. Instead, what followed was the wholesale nationalisation of industry, the maintaining of a huge and unproductive conscripted military and the unpopular continuation of rationing.
Nationalisation started with the Bank of England, civil aviation, coal, and cables and wireless. Then came railways, canals, road haulage and trucking, electricity, and gas. Even bus services were nationalised. Finally Attlee nationalised iron and steel manufacturing. Altogether, about one fifth of the economy was taken over. The post war Labour government's ideology was so extreme, that they actually had plans to nationalise farmlands, but these were dropped when the money ran out!
But they kept their biggest mistake for the auto industry - a massive 60% luxury tax on cars!
Whilst Germany was subsidising its infant car industry and even handing out generous cash bonuses for exports and paying for R&D, Britain penalised car ownership with extra petrol rationing in Summer and added £600 to the cost of a £1,000 car, making cars more expensive than houses. By 1951, living standards were no higher than during the war. A grossly incompetent government had worn out its welcome and Churchill returned.
Until 1979, it really looked as if the Labour governments maintained a near-monopoly on stupidity and ineptitude. First Wilson and then Callaghan managed to mismanage Britain, staggering from one crisis of their own making, to another. This ended with the infamous 'Winter of Discontent' of 78-79.
There was of course an interlude for another incompetent, Ted Heath, who did nothing wrong, but then did nothing right either. Events flowed over him and civil servants pushed him which ever way they chose, using him to introduce their pet schemes, local government reform, decimalisation, abolishing retail price maintenance and, of course, joining the Common Market.
But when called to act decisively over devolution, the economy and the trades unions, he failed just as completely as Wilson and Callaghan and his premiership ended with strikes, the three-day-week, 'bath with a friend' and run-away inflation.
After the disaster that was Callaghan, in 1979 came Thatcher and she pushed for privatisation at all costs - and the costs were staggering. Civil unrest, the like of which we had never seen since the General Strike of 1926, threatened to tear the country apart, as the mines and factories closed and thousands of workers went on the dole. Pushing cosseted state-owned companies into privatisation may have been steps in the right direction, but the speed and ruthless nature of the push crippled them. It was as if you have a child that is protected against the World and hardly has to lift a finger - and then, on its 14th birthday, you throw them out of the house, without so much as a packed lunch!
The high costs of these violent economic reforms were met by North Sea oil - and this was the opportunity a tiny, tiny, wee party, founded in the 30s, called the Scottish National Party needed. "It's our oil!" was the slogan that brought them 11 MPs by 1979, but then they sided with the Conservatives in a vote of no confidence in Callaghan and lost all but two seats in the 1979 general election. But the seed had been sown and branches of the SNP sprang up all over Scotland. A disciplined and well defined structure began to emerge.
What was to follow, in retrospect, reads like a script written to favour the SNP and make Scottish independence inevitable.
Thatcher was seen as anti-Scottish and the SNP gained steadily in popularity, as she gave away Scottish fishing rights and imposed a poll-tax only on the Scots. Thatcher was followed by even more incompetents - Major, Blair, Brown and then, 'Call me Dave' all either ignored Scottish issues, or rode roughshod over Scottish interests. At the same time, Scottish demands lead to the reinstatement of the Scottish Parliament by Blair.
At first this new parliament was dominated by Labour, but as case after case of corruption and incompetence came to light, they lost control completely and it just became another stick with which the SNP could beat Westminster. Despite loosing the referendum for independence in 2014, promises made by 'Call-me-Dave' (which were then broken) meant that the following general election saw the SNP win an amazing 56 out of 59 Scottish seats in London.
Ever since then, the Labour Party has been in a constant state of civil war and this weekend, collective idiocy reached a new high, as Labour MPs lined up in a neat circle to form a firing squad, as everybody blames everybody else for the outcome of the Brexit referendum.
With the Labour Party totally preoccupied with attacking itself, 'Call-me-Dave' did not seem to be in any real difficulties. All he had to do, was to smile sweetly and carry on. But instead of just running the country and being boring, he decided to liven things up a bit and snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. In the true tradition of post war political blithering stupidity on a truly epic scale, he decided to call a referendum on EU membership - and lose.
Because this is a script seemingly written only to benefit the SNP, 'Call-me-Dave' forgot to check the constitutional issues involved if he looses. Any deal with the EU would have to be ratified by two acts of parliament - one by the Westminster parliament and the other in Edinburgh. In effect, to fulfil the outcome of the referendum, any government in London has to do a deal with the Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon.
And Scotland insists on maintaining those ties with Europe.
