A RAMBLING REMINISCENCE

We are coming up to the beginning of July, a month in which a couple of events of note took place in the United States.  The Continental Congress voted in favour of the Declaration of Independence on the 2^nd July 1776, and it was printed and published on the 4^th July 1776. Four score and seven years later in July 1863, during the American Civil War, the Battle of Gettysburg was fought between and 1^st and 3^rd of July. In that encounter there were over 50 thousand casualties, dead and wounded, although it is difficult to ascertained just how many were actually killed. Those figures represented nearly half the Southern Confederate army and a quarter of the Northern United States Army. It is viewed as a victory for the Northern States, although it continued for another two years. Some four months later, over the burial grounds of the battle, the conflict was heralded as a resolve that “this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth”.

Fifty years later in, 1913, at some commemorative event, two elderly veterans shook hands, presumably symbolising the coming together of that nation. 

That new birth of freedom is under attack. The assault on the Constitution and the very democracy it upholds has been brewing for the last 5 years and, despite the election of Mr Biden as president of the United States, it continues to smoulder on, and may well have devastating consequences. 

Two major democratic and public decisions, which have deeply affected the whole of the, so called, western world were made 5 years ago. On each occasion I was in France. On the 24^th June 2016 Celia and I were in Normandy at L’Etang-Bertrand, when we woke up to the news that the European Referendum had been lost.   

 

 

On that day we visited Utah Beach where the Normandy Landings took place on the 6^th June 1944. The Normandy beaches were a symbol of allied co-operation which eventually led to the European Union, and the establishment of International Law, for which many gave their lives and whose blood may still be beneath the sand we walked over.

 

Later in the year, on Wednesday the 9^th November 2016, whilst in Paris, we heard the news that Donald Trump had been elected President of the United States and consequently leader of the free world, a task for which he was manifestly unsuited and, indeed, from which he proceeded to abrogate himself with his America First diatribes.

 

On that day I wrote a blog entitled “The American has dwindled into an Odd Fellow” – it began:

2016 Annus horribilis - there can be no question that the 24th of June and the 8th of November have given voice to an extraordinary number of discontented, dissatisfied and hostile people on both sides of the Atlantic. The deep seated racism and bigotry that has oozed out from the so called common citizen is horrifying. A distinct side step from a natural evolution towards a more civilised society.

I went on to quote a passage from Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience:

All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong, with moral questions; and betting naturally accompanies it. The character of the voters is not staked. I cast my vote, perchance, as I think right; but I am not vitally concerned that that right should prevail. I am willing to leave it to the majority. Its obligation, therefore, never exceeds that of expediency. Even voting for the right is doing nothing for it. It is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should prevail. A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men. When the majority shall at length vote for the abolition of slavery, it will be because they are indifferent to slavery, or because there is but little slavery left to be abolished by their vote. They will then be the only slaves. Only his vote can hasten the abolition of slavery who asserts his own freedom by his vote.

I also noted at the time that Stevie Wonder had stated “Voting for Trump was like asking me to drive a car” He was exactly right.

 

And so we come to 2021. The world is still gripped in a pandemic, and in a Britain divorced from union, supposedly on the verge of lifting its lockdown measures, the number of new variant infections is steadily rising. Having come down to several hundred average cases per day at the beginning of June, it is now over 14,000 per day and rising, which is the result of gross miscalculation by the current government. This government, which was not elected by a majority yet purports to act for the majority and claims a mandate, is no more capable of driving a car, than Stevie Wonder ever was. 

Covid Chart 28/06/2021

The cack-handed approach to dealing with the European Union, since ‘Brexit has been done’, is further proof of the duplicity and incompetence of the Johnson ministry. The continued hovering over breach of international law in an attempt to blackmail its way to a favoured status in unconscionable.  It shows a paucity of leadership which, for some reason, the great British public refused to acknowledge. 

 

In America, the Trump neurosis looms large. The psychotic and repetitive behaviour of the ex-president is stupefying. His rants persist, the republican party submits, and a polarization of political interests becomes entrenched. The numbers are narrow, but the margins are so far apart, that the risk of schism is most definitely present. It seems that a barrage or even a flood of facts cannot extinguish the Big Lie. Mr Trump claims he wants to save America. His followers claim to be supporting the Constitution. I do not believe that either he or his followers have even read the Constitution, let alone the Declaration of Independence. They have certainly not understood it if they had. Maybe that doesn’t matter.

There was once an innocent time in America. During the latter half of the nineteen fifties when, in High School, we studied Problems of Democracy. Our parents had been through the viciousness of a world war and its horrific revelations. It was never to happen again; however, it was the time of the Cold War, and the communist Sino-soviet bloc had to be thwarted. Civil Defence and atomic resistant home shelters where on offer along with cheap used cars. It was the coming of age of the ad-man. Oddly enough, we actually believed the text of the bill of rights, the constitution and the declaration of independence. Freedom was paramount. Everyone was equal. So far as elected officials were concerned, honesty and integrity went without saying, didn’t it? We pledged allegiance to the flag, after all. Liberty and Justice for all, isn’t that right?

As the House Un-American Activities Committee began to spread its authority, we had moved on to university campuses and began to protest for our rights under the Constitution. The movement beginning at the University California, Berkeley was for the right to free speech and academic freedom. We started smoking pot and developed flower power, but from then on various other problems of democracy began to emerge. The Civil rights movement in the south and spreading throughout the country. The Anti-Vietnam War protests spreading throughout the world. Gay Pride in San Francisco. Dramatic changes were occurring everywhere and particularly in 1968. The following are just some of the events that we lived through during that year (The list is long):

The Tet Offensive; Richard Nixon announces his candidacy for president.; Around 100 Indians and Pakistanis arrive in Britain from Kenya, escaping discrimination; highway patrol officers killing 3 students and injuring 27 others demonstrating at South Carolina State University; thousands of people in West Berlin demonstrate against the United States’ involvement in the Vietnam War; 5,000 Latino high school students in L.A. walk out of their classes to press their demand for better education;  Students demonstrate in Warsaw, Poland; the My Lai massacre -. in one of the most controversial incidents of the Vietnam War, American soldiers kill 400 unarmed Vietnamese civilians; more than 200 people have been arrested after thousands of demonstrators clashed in an anti-Vietnam war protest outside the United States embassy in London; at Howard University in Washington D.C., students seize the administration building in an attempt to gain a greater voice in student discipline and the curriculum; a student riot takes place in Nanterre, near Paris; U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson authorises a troop surge in Vietnam, bringing the total number of United States soldiers to a peak of 549, 500; Martin Luther King Jr., United States civil rights activist, is assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. His assassination leads to riots in more than 100 cities in the United States; Five buildings at Columbia University are taken over by students and they briefly hold a dean hostage in a call to the university to cut its ties to military research; a riot takes place between more than 5,000 university students and the police in Paris. Workers throughout France are staging sympathy strikes within a week after the riot, which threatens the French economy; one million French citizens demonstrate against President of France Charles de Gaulle and Georges Pompidou; the Czech government announces liberalising reforms under Alexander Dubček; French president Charles de Gaulle proposes a referendum and students in France set fire to Paris Bourse; the U.S. Supreme Court rules 7-1 that burning a draft card is not an act of free speech protected by the First Amendment; French president Charles de Gaulle disbands the French parliament; the Poor People’s March on Washington D.C. takes place; Robert F. Kennedy is shot three times by Palestinian Sirhan Sirhan, who also wounds 5 others at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California; President of Yugoslavia, Tito, promises reforms in the country; Daniel Ellsberg is indicted for leaking the Pentagon Papers; The Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty is signed by the United States, Britain, the USSR and 58 other nations. It was an international treaty with the aim of preventing the spread of nuclear weapons; the Glenville Shootout takes place in Cleveland between black militants and police, leaving three dead on each side, plus one bystander. Riots continue in the city for 5 days; during the night, 250,000 Soviet and Warsaw Pact troops invade Czechoslovakia in response to the Prague Spring; the Warsaw Pact forces complete their invasion of Czechoslovakia by arresting the Czech leader Alexander Dubček and forcing him to sign the Moscow Protocols; Police and anti-war demonstrators clash at Chicago’s Democratic National Convention. Police and Illinois National Guardsmen go on a rampage, clubbing and tear-gassing hundreds of anti-war demonstrators, and much of the violence is broadcast on national television; the United States Olympic Committee suspends Tommie Smith and John Carlos for giving the ‘black power’ salute as a protest during the victory ceremony;  with progress in the Paris peace talks, President Lyndon B. Johnson orders a halt to “all air, naval and artillery bombardment of North Vietnam,” effective from the following day; Republican candidate Richard Nixon is elected President of the United States, defeating Democratic candidate Hubert Humphrey and Independent candidate George Wallace; the U.S. Supreme Court decision Epperson v. Arkansas results in the court declaring unconstitutional the law in Arkansas which bans the teaching of evolution in public schools; Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association March in Armagh is stopped by Royal Ulster Constabulary because of the presence of a Loyalist counter demonstration led by Ian Paisley and Ronald Bunting; after a civil rights march in Dungannon, Northern Ireland, a violent crash occurs between Loyalists and those who are taking part in the march; Northern Ireland Prime Minister Terence O’Neill makes a television appeal for moderate opinion in what became known as the Ulster Stands at the Crossroads speech.

 

All that was just over a half century ago. We demonstrated in the hope that democratic changes were on the way. There were high hopes all over the world, despite the horrors of Vietnam and the Troubles of Northern Ireland. Protest against war and political oppression were top of the agenda. There was a world wide notion that peace could be possible and was worth supporting. Harold Wilson, Labour, was Prime Minister in the UK, Lyndon Johnson was leaving the presidency to be replaced by Nixon in January 1969.  Leonid Brezhnev was running the Soviet Union. In France Charles de Gaulle presided over the newly formed Fifth Republic.

 

In the UK a Pathe news piece was shown in cinemas across the country. It was hardly a news report, more of a commentary in full support of the powers that be or were. As was the footage as well.

The French view of Mai ’68 was a more considered view. I hope your French is up to it:

For whatever reason, there was an air of optimism that things could be done, and there was a coming together all over the planet. The was a form of social revolution bubbling away, indeed in the summer of 1969, from the 15^th to the 18^th August over 400,000 people gathered at Woodstock Rock Festival on Max Yasgur’s dairy farm in Bethel, New York.

We who watched the happenings, were committed to the idea of individual freedom and, believe it or not, despite the protests, smoking dope, yelling at the ‘pigs’, defying convention and the establishment, believed essentially in the rule of law, to do no harm. We became lawyers, doctors, architects, environmentalists, artists. In effect, recreated an establishment; but, as we were developing our futures a new force came into being, the Thatcher/Reagan years of complete laissez faire capitalism and greed. A selfish gene had embedded itself in the mix. Regulations of the financial markets were shoved aside, which is what eventually led to the 2008 monetary and banking crisis. Attitudes have barely changed since then, now 12 years on, and the people who suffered most have backed leaders who have appealed to them, but are the least able to actually help them, and who have lied to them. Boris Johnson in his clownish public-school demeanour (“They’ve apologised – Cummings, Patel, Hancock… – it’s over, let’s move on”) keeps on and is hardly brought to account. No one is this government actually behaves with integrity according to any ministerial code. A good photo op is all that is required.

As to Donald Trump and his so called base of republican, or rather hard line MAGA thugs, who knows where it will go and whether the Republican Party can find its spine and truly stand up to be counted for responsible democratic government. Otherwise, all one can see ahead is a return to the serious civil unrest of 160 years ago.

In 1861 the war begun

In 1862 the bullets flew

In 1863 the slaves were set free

In 1864 the war was almost or’

In 1865 President Lincoln died

Where will the next Gettysburg take place?