CLEMENT ATTLEE - A DULL BUT ELECTABLE FIGURE

Attlee, reformer who looked like a solicitor

Although I am a Labour voter, I have to admit that the Conservatives give the impression of being a better home for both women and people from ethnic minorities. Only four people – all men, all white – have won power as Labour leaders yet the Conservatives have had three female leaders (who have all become Prime Minister) and, if rumour is true, they may have a fourth before long. Kemi Badenoch, who is both female and black, is said to be favourite to be their next leader if, as expected, Rishi Sunak, who is brown, loses the next election.

Labour has had six Prime Ministers, two of them having inherited the role. The four who won elections were Ramsay MacDonald, Clement Attlee, Harold Wilson and Tony Blair. The first was MacDonald, who was reviled for having agreed to form a national government with the hated Tories and was actually expelled from the party he had helped to found with Kier Hardie (after whom Starmer was named). Wilson was a clever fixer and a shrewd politician who was Prime Minister four times and Blair held office for ten years before handing over to Gordon Brown.

 

However, it was Attlee who led the post-war Labour government and probably made the most significant changes of all four of them. It was under Attlee that the National Health Service was started, many major industries were nationalised and the taxation of the rich was increased. This increase continued under Wilson to lengths which now seem both punitive and impossible and which seemed to show that Labour was the high tax party, willing to hit the rich with high marginal rates, maybe not so good at stimulating the economy to help people earn.

 

I read Attlee’s autobiography recently. It is safe to say that it is not an exciting read. Attlee was ‘a safe pair of hands’ who effected a lot of radical changes in society despite being a small c conservative in appearance. I did not see the film but Ken Loach, a noted left-wing film-maker, produced a homage to the post-war Labour government of Attlee some years ago. What received less publicity was that Attlee had not objected to the Americans dropping of the atom bomb and that he allowed British soldiers to be sent to fight in Korea.

 

Attlee himself had fought in the First World War and, had it not been for a lucky illness, may well have paid with his life, having been in the ill-fated Gallipoli campaign which was attributed to Winston Churchill. Later Attlee was to serve under Churchill as his deputy during the Second World War. Afterwards he defeated his former boss in the 1945 election and then brought the atom bomb to Britain. Labour governments are often more bellicose than Conservative, as the Iraq war, where Tony Blair supported the American invasion of Iraq, proved.

 

Attlee had proved to be a loyal and able deputy to Churchill during the years of the Second World War. Their duties were divided into running the country and running the war. After Germany had been defeated – but before Japan surrendered – Attlee’s Labour party beat the Conservatives by a thumping margin. It was before the days of opinion polls and people are still sometimes surprised at how comprehensively Churchill’s government was defeated.

 

I remember Barbara Castle, who was a cabinet member in a later Labour government, said that people might have voted Churchill back in out of gratitude but not his party. In Britain you do not vote for a president as the Americans do (we have a monarch for that job) but for a party to run the country. People felt it was time for a change and entrusted Attlee not his former boss Churchill to effect the changes needed – particularly founding the NHS.

 

Winning elections is not about preaching to the choir but, under our electoral system at least, involves persuading floating voters in marginal constituencies to vote for you. I suspect that these are not the most sophisticated voters and that they do not spend a lot time perusing manifestos and commitments but make their voting decisions on very a very visceral level, often reacting to their perception of the character of a party’s leader. That Blair (or Thatcher or Attlee) seems ok and I will vote for him/her as ‘a safe pair of hands’.

 

Attlee, who went to a public school and practiced as a lawyer, came from a background where a strong sense of public duty was expected. His very dullness was actually a recommendation to people who would not otherwise have trusted some of the more fiery radical figures he was surrounded with, but whom he allowed to get on with the business of founding the NHS, which doctors now swear by but which many of them swore at when it was started. As its founder Aneurin (Nye) Bevan said he would ‘stuff their mouths with gold’ to win them over. And he did.

 

Attlee was far more complimentary about Churchill than hw was about MacDonald. One of his last public duties was attending Churchill's funeral, where he caught a chill and died soon after. Attlee never made MacDonald's mistake of sacrificing socialist values for the sake of national unity. He showed no embarrassment about using the word ‘socialist’ to describe his views. At a certain level, however, he knew that he had to reassure rather than alienate those floating voters if he was going to get things done. He too was a doer and we are still grateful for what he did. 

Edwin Lerner My other blog is diaryofatouristguide.blogspot.com

 

 

LEAP YEAR MANSPLAINING

 

On Facebook I saw a cartoon (above). It said that men are always right on the following dates: 29^th, 30^th and 31^st February. Of course, these dates do not normally exist but 2024 has a 29^th February, being a Leap Year. These posts go out on the last day of the month, which is 29^th February this time and so I thought it might be relevant to look at the Leap year issue, which will at least be relevant to the date. It may not seem important but there is a reason for it.

To explain the Leap Year, process I have had to resort to Wikipedia, my normal source of information. You can read the full account here but it basically comes down to the differences between the Julian and Gregorian calendars. The Julian calendar was, as its name suggests, introduced by Julius Caesar in 45 BC and made a year match the movement of the sun. The Gregorian calendar came into effect in 1582 and was that bit more accurate.

 

The earth moves around the sun in 365 and a quarter days, which means that you have to elbow in an extra day every four years to make up for the quarter day. That is why we have Leap Years. However, it is not quite that simple. The exact time it takes for the earth to rotate around the sun is 365.245 days, which means that the more accurate Gregorian calendar misses out the Leap Year in dates divisible by 100 but not in those divisible by 400.

 

The Gregorian calendar was introduced in 1582 and named after – but not invented by the Pope at the time, Gregory the Thirteenth. The real inventor of the new and more accurate calendar was Aloysius Lillius and it was suggested by a German mathematician and astronomer called Christopher Clavius. Both men, however, have been largely forgotten by history and Pope Gregory is remembered simply because he gave its name to the more accurate calendar.

 

The slightly slower rotation of the earth around the sun means that 1600 and 2000 are Leap Years but 1900 and 1500 are not. Over time this in turn led to the Julian and Gregorian calendars being out of sync by eleven days and in the eighteenth century the more accurate Gregorian calendar won out over the less accurate Julian one. Britain ended up admitting defeat and aligning with the Gregorian calendar by an Act of Parliament in the year 1752.

 

This in turn led to eleven ‘lost’ days in that year as the two calendars aligned and, predictably enough, a lot of muttering about bloody foreigners stealing days from us. There is nothing new in the world. This just an early precursor of Brexit and by which we think we can solve all our problems be breaking away from countries that we had previously quite happily done business with. And that has not turned out well - in my opinion, at least.

 

I was wondering how serious the riots and objections to the ‘lost’ eleven days really were so, inevitably, I looked it up on the internet. The satirical painter William Hogarth showed an election scene in which a Tory poster is shown demanding these eleven ‘lost’ days back. The site I found this on (historic-uk.com) also says that ‘most historians now believe that these protests never happened [and were] the Georgian equivalent of an urban myth’.

 

There was probably a fair bit of grumbling about the ‘lost’ days and complaints about new-fangled ideas but most people accepted the new system and grudgingly admitted that there was a certain amount of sense in being aligned with the rest of Europe. After all, we still did a lot of business with European countries and it seemed sensible to be on the same calendar (or page) as them, even if we did not like the idea of synchronising with a European system. 

 

There was nothing imaginary about the Brexit vote, however. Those who wanted to break from Europe won that one and got their way. That surely was only the start of the process. It now behoves those who were in favour of breaking with Europe to show that the process can be successful and profitable for us as a country. If it had been left to people like me, nothing much would have happened and we would be trading with Europe as we were.

 

My partner and I went to Spain (which, incidentally, did not convert to the new calendar until 1926) before the Brexit referendum. We reached our hotel barely an hour after the plane touched down and were greeted pleasantly by the staff, who all spoke perfect English, and checked in quickly. I wondered why we considered it necessary to hate these people so much, what possible benefits could come from breaking with them and making Britain more bolshy.

 

It is apparently far harder now for people who actually make things to export them to European countries because they have to jump through a series of totally unnecessary hoops and fill in multiple forms to do so. The trade wins which were supposed to come about after Brexit seem to me to be totally imaginary. As one of my friends said when we had the original vote on the subject ‘The future for Britain has to be in Europe - surely.’

 

I see no reason to contradict him fifty years later. It is up to the Brexiteers to prove that their system of an independent Britain is going to work better than one which is integrated into Europe and there is not much sign that this is happening now. Just as the calendar was changed, despite the objections of those who considered it a popish plot and a European impertinence, so Brexit does not seem like the sensible solution to Britain’s problems.

 

Edwin Lerner

My other blog is diaryofatourist guide.blogspot.com

PACIFISM WILL NOT DEFEAT FASCISM

Universally recognised as a symbol of Nazism,
although the Swastika has a more ancient origin

Many countries have national service in which men (sometimes women as well) have to go into uniform and, if necessary, fight for their country. Although this has never been a British tradition, it has now been suggested here. The conscripted do not have the right to make the decision to go to war. That is done for them by older politicians who rarely see any of the fighting. The soldiers in uniform just have to fight, kill and either be killed or survive until the war is over.

They may opt to be classed as conscientious objectors, sometimes abbreviated to ‘conchies’. The phrase that has a hint of contempt in it and those who choose not to fight are often looked down on as cowards by those who do put on the uniform (and their supporters). However, it takes a certain type of bravery to reject war as a means of solving problems. It is often easier, in fact, to join the crowd lining up to enlist. At least no-one will accuse you of being a coward.

 

The Jehovah’s Witnesses, who stand on street corners in all weathers and knock on doors to try and convert people are all conscientious objectors. They pay their taxes and generally obey the law but they will not fight for their country, owing allegiance to a higher power. Many of them suffered badly at the hands of powerful rulers like the Nazis, who did not have sympathy for their views and regarded them as expendable – like the Jews they sent to the gas chambers.

 

I have a certain sympathy for this point of view but I cannot back it completely. There is a phrase, which I think I heard on the radio first, that ‘the best is the enemy of the good’ and that sums up my attitude. Obviously, we should not be trying to sort out our problems by king each other. The current war in the Middle East surely demonstrates that. Hamas will never destroy Israel and Israel will never destroy Hamas so the two sides have to learn to live with each other – which they show no signs of being either willing or able to do at present.

 

Yet, this message falls on deaf ears when delivered to people who think that violence will solve their problems by destroying their enemies – Jews, blacks, Arabs or whoever. The Nazi fascists really believed they could create a lasting Reich by killing Jews. Actually, although we remember that aspect of Nazism now, the Second World War did not start because of the killing of Jews. It started because Germany had to be reined in and we need a war to do so.

 

This is also why we dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and why we bombed Dresden so ruthlessly. We had to convince the fascists and fanatics who ruled these countries that the fighting was over and they had lost. Pacifism was never going to do that. It was necessary to defeat them militarily, to fight fire with fire, to talk them in the language they understood – whatever cliche you care to use – to show that resistance was doomed.

 

That argument would never convince conscientious objectors that boycotting all war was worthwhile. If you were not prepared to fight for your homeland off you went to the gas chambers. Between 1500 and 2000 Witnesses were killed in the course of the war. This number is minute when compared to the six million Jews who were gassed or shot and there is some evidence that, if they kept their heads down, Witnesses might be allowed to survive. 

 

However, although they may not have been persecuted like the Jews, who were killed automatically because of who they were, Witnesses had to learn to do the Nazi salute and pass themselves off as good Germans, to prop up fascism even if they would not fight for it. When it comes down to it, you have to make choices in life and some Witnesses chose to be complicit in Nazism. Others died or exiled themselves to avoid supporting facsism.

 

We did some fairly horrific things to the German people during the war, brutally bombing their cities from a sky which we increasingly controlled.. And to the Japanese for that matter. Japanese soldiers were not taken prisoner until the US army paid their soldiers a kind of ransom fee for bringing them in alive. To be fair, the Japanese authorities did not countenance surrender to the hated enemy either, death being preferable to the dishonour of surrender. 

 

Yet still neither country would surrender when it must have been obvious that they could not win the war. Lots of German citizens, who were suspected of being ready to surrender, were executed by their own side, their bodies left to hang from trees and lampposts, presumably to discourage those who saw them from having defeatist thoughts. If you surrendered – or even thought about surrendering – you were killed by the fascist overlords.

 

This kind of fanaticism will not be defeated by idealism or conscientious objection to war. It needed the kind of brutality that fascists inflicted on those they considered inferior to stop them in their tracks. That is why I would have fought in the Second World War and why it was right to bomb German cities like Dresden and Hamburg. Otherwise, it would have been necessary to sacrifice the lives of soldiers who were fighting their way to Berlin or Tokyo.

 

Life is about alternatives not absolutes. If you could say to the parents of those soldiers who had willingly put on army uniforms that the war could be won in a week or two by bombing but you would extend it by continuing to fight on land, inevitably at the cost of the lives of those soldiers, so that you would not be condemned by later generations for war crimes, you would be justified in opposing the atom bomb or the blanket bombing of Dresden and Hamburg.

 

I do not think I could do that, however. You cannot defeat fascism with idealism.

Edwin Lerner

My other blog is diaryofatouristguide.blogspot.com