The First Day on the Somme - Remembrance and Revision

Back in the 1980s, I bought and read "The First Day on the Somme", by Martin Middlebrook. I found it such a distressing experience that I could not bring myself to read it again, and it stayed on my bookshelf for more years than I care to remember. However, as the 100th anniversary of the start of the Somme battle approaches on July 1st, I am reading it again, and finding it as moving as I did so long ago.
The facts of the battle are indisputable. The attack on July 1st, 1916, saw the worst day in British military history. An intense week-long artillery bombardment had failed to destroy the German barbed wire in front of most of the German front line. Most British troops were ordered to walk toward the enemy trenches and were cut down by machine gun and artillery fire. By the end of that terrible day, 57, 940 British soldiers were casualties, of which 19, 240 were dead. Half of these men were killed and wounded in the first hour of the battle. One man fell for about every 18 inches of the attack frontage. The Battle of the Somme continued for 141 days, ending on November 18. On average, 893 men died on each of those days; the total of Allied and German casualties came to about 1000 000. The Allied front line advanced five miles. By contrast, the British military serving in Afghanistan from 1st January, 2006, to 31st March, 2013 suffered 454 dead and 2, 116 wounded and injured.
Statistics are cold and impersonal; Middlebrook's book brings us the voices, thoughts and feelings of the men who fought and died on that day. A recent Daily Mail article, which features many of the men mentioned in Middlebrook's book, gives one such example: At 0400 hours...
"Many soldiers start writing last letters home. Second Lieutenant Ronald Grundy, 19, of the Middlesex Regiment tells his mother, ‘Please always look on the bright side. Only 5 per cent of the army is killed.’ He will be shot in the throat by a sniper at 7.30am (H-Hour)".
There are many such poignant moments in Middlebrook's book taken from the duration of the battle, but perhaps the most affecting statements are those of some of the men who survived July 1st, 1916 and, luckily, the rest of the war. Here are a couple:
"It was pure bloody murder. Douglas Haig should have been hung, drawn and quartered for what he did on the Somme. The cream of British manhood was shattered in less than six hours" - Pte. P. Smith, Border Regiment.
"More than anything I hated to see war-crippled men standing in the gutter selling matches...I'd never fight for my country again" - Pte. F. W. A. Turner, Sherwood Foresters.
The post-war bitterness of these survivors is understandable - and I have every sympathy for it. However, we have to take into account the fact that not all ex-servicemen from WW1 felt this way. Lyn MacDonald, who wrote some excellent books about the conflict, said in one of her prefaces that many veterans felt hurt by the view of them as dupes and donkeys - although some agreed with it. Nevertheless, the slaughter of the Somme's first day has become emblematic of the prevailing view of  WW1, depicted and expressed in "Oh, What a Lovely War", the poetry of Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon and "Blackadder Goes Forth".
I have a lot of sympathy with this view, but am concerned that it has become, for many people, an unchallengeable orthodoxy. Two historians who have expressed an alternative point of view, Professor Gary Sheffield and Dan Snow, have been greeted with near-violent hostility. So what have they said? Sheffield wrote a book called "Forgotten Victory", in which he advanced the view that the Somme was part of a necessary "learning curve" that the British Army went through to adapt to modern warfare, and led on to the "year of victories" in 1918. Snow simply pointed out that the British generals, like those of all other armies, were plagued by poor communications and needed to be located in a safe central position. He also, in 2014, debunked what he saw as 10 myths about WW1 (see link). For this, he received a good deal of abuse (and some vigorous criticism, bordering on invective). While Private Smith, quoted above, might have had no respect for Douglas Haig, the fact remains that when Haig died, in 1928, 12000 ex-servicemen travelled to Scotland to line the route of his funeral procession. The writing of history should never become the preserve of emotionalism and intolerance.
And yet - on Friday, when we remember the sacrifice of so many who died on the Somme, we must remember it as the human tragedy that it was. As my contribution to the commemoration of the Somme battle, I have donated a short poem by me on the back of a British Legion laminated poppy that will be planted among others along the route to the Thiepval Visitors' Centre, on the old Somme battlefield. I have 19, 240 good reasons for doing so. Here is the poem:

Lines Written for the Somme Battle Centenary

On the fire step,

First of July.

Birds soar,

 Bullets fly.

Men fall,

Widows cry.

Grief and glory

Never die.

Cameron's Demise and a Victory for the Racist Right

I could not believe the news this morning. For me, a "Leave" vote was out of the question, and it just couldn't happen. Well, it happened, and I have had to adjust to the sight of the triumphalist rantings of Brexit politicians, all of whom are right of centre. What a crew! There is the effervescently gloating Nigel Farrage, as well as Boris Johnson, Chris Grayling, and other stars in the Tory firmament. Interestingly, all the smiling faces are either UKIP or Tory pundits - I have seen no Labour Brexiters as of yet. This political imbalance, as well as the fact that Donald Trump and Marine Le Pen have welcomed the referendum result, is highly significant.
As for David Cameron's falling on his sword, he reminds me of the "upper class twit of the year" in the famous Monty Python sketch who ran himself over with his own car. As Owen Jones says in today's "Guardian": "He called a referendum not because he thought it was in the national interest, but because it was useful to manage internal Conservative divisions. The referendum was inevitably framed as a struggle between two Conservative factions."
Cameron miscalculated disastrously, for himself as well as those of us who did not buy into the Brexit side's "case". I would have been delighted to see him leave his post after losing a General Election, but I am not happy to watch his departure from office in this way. As I said yesterday (it seems a different world today!),he should have shown some personal steel (and common sense) in resisting the pressure to hold the referendum in the first place. In actual fact, the referendum result is not legally binding, and if Cameron had been braver, he could have disregarded it. As Haroon Siddique has written:
"The simple answer to the question as to whether the EU referendum is legally binding is “no”. In theory, in the event of a vote to leave the EU, David Cameron, who opposes Brexit, could decide to ignore the will of the people and put the question to MPs banking on a majority deciding to remain.
This is because parliament is sovereign and referendums are generally not binding in the UK."
Some hopes of that...
So, where are we now? Well, we all know about the run on the pound, the unrest in the Stock market and rumblings of nationalist discontent in Scotland and Northern Ireland. We know, also, that  Nigel Farage has disowned a pledge to spend £350 million of European Union cash on the NHS after Brexit. As Jon Stone says in "The Independent":
"Nigel Farage has disowned a pledge to spend £350 million of European Union cash on the NHS after Brexit."
In fact, "Barrage" denies having made such a pledge. For a man who has condemned so many other politicians for being slippery and evasive, Nigel seems to have learned from them.
Like I said yesterday, so long ago now, this referendum has created divisions across the political spectrum. The result has caused turmoil in our political life, having already led to the removal of David Cameron from office, and the possible sacking of Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party. But of particular concern, to me at least, is the nasty racist undercurrent that has accompanied the Brexit campaign. As one young Spanish lady said in a TV debate to Michael Gove:
"You are talking about us (EC migrants) as if we are enemies. I love this country".
Now, I accept that not all Brexit supporters are racists, but, as others besides me have pointed out, all racists are Brexit supporters. London voted to Remain yesterday, and some media pundits have given the misleading impression that the rest of the country voted to Leave. This is not the case, as many constituencies elsewhere in Britain (all in Scotland) voted Remain. The problem is that there was not enough of them. In many areas, including traditional Labour Party areas, the vote appears to have been swung by an antipathy to immigration. I do not believe that Nigel Farrage and his ilk are all racists, but they have shown that they know how to manipulate the racist vote. Brexit did particularly well in some depressed and disadvantaged areas, where there is a feeling that the native population (whoever they are) have been passed over in favour of immigrants.
This is a Europe-wide problem, and the Europe's far-right parties have been delighted at the victory for the Leave campaign. French National Front (FN) leader, Marine Le Pen tweeted: “Victory for freedom! As I have been asking for years, now we need to have the same referendum in France and in the countries of the EU.”
Presumably, the French equivalent will be called "Frexit". The FN's equivalents in the Netherlands, Germany (Alternative für Deutschland), the Sweden Democrats, the Danish People's Party and the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn in Greece are equally jubilant. The dogs of Europe are beginning to bark in unison. Donald Trump, who arrived in the UK today, the Daily Telegraph says:
 "Asked if he took heart from the result for his own campaign, Mr Trump said: “We're doing very well in the United States and essentially the same thing is happening in the United States."
We have been warned. Labour politicians who were misguided enough to support the Leave campaign should take note: they have helped the cause of the Right, in the USA, Europe and Britain immeasurably.
I conclude by looking at the impact this result is having upon the people that the Brexit campaign has targeted: EU migrants. This morning on TV, I saw a Polish couple who run a shop in Peterborough looking distinctly apprehensive about the fact that the town where they had lived for so long had voted decisively for Brexit. And not just EC migrants have cause to feel apprehensive. Joseph Harker, in the Guardian, says:
"Yes, the immigration issue has been about numbers coming from eastern Europe, and about people who don’t have English as their first language. But as anyone with a black or brown face knows, our nationality is regularly questioned, even when we’re born here: we are spoken about in phrases such as “immigrant communities”, and immigration stories carried in the media are commonly accompanied by images of black or Asian people, implicitly assuming they arrived from overseas."
The Brexit campaign, then, has potentially turned the clock back several decades to the days when Enoch Powell was the darling of the racist right, and the National Front (NF) appeared on our streets. That is David Cameron's final contribution to British politics. Thanks, Dave.

Today, I Voted Remain...

Well, yes, I did vote to remain in the EU, but not for the reasons many people are giving for voting either way. I voted Remain, because it is my view that David Cameron should not have called this referendum in the first place. Had he not allowed it, we would be remaining in the EU, and avoided one of the most divisive events in British political history. I believed this referendum to have been a bad idea from the very beginning, and it got worse.
In the first place, I think it has seriously undermined Cameron's own position, and the office he holds. My view is that, as elected leader of this country, and someone who supports the EU, he should have been tough enough to stick to that position, and not hazarded his future (and ours) by going to referendum. He is Prime Minister and believes passionately that the UK belongs in Europe. Why, then, has he risked losing the vote? In my opinion, he has made himself look weak, and, if the country votes Leave, his career in politics is finished.
Referenda, to use one choice of plural, are not always progressive and beneficial for society. They are used frequently in Switzerland (180 in the last 20 years, 9 this year alone), and have produced some very strange results in the past. Not until 1971 were women given the vote; not until the same year could women hold seats in parliament. Only in 2004 did a referendum grant Swiss women paid maternity leave. The Leave campaign in the present referendum campaign has seen some ugly racist and nationalist vapourings, which has done them little credit in the eyes of all but the most bigoted.
I think, though, that the most damaging aspect of the referendum campaign has been the divisions it has created between the supporters of either camp in all political parties. Even the extreme Left has been divided on this issue. The ill-will between Remainers and Leavers, sometimes between members of the cabinet, has been astonishing at times. To give but one example from many, Amber Rudd, the Energy Secretary, said of her fellow-Tory, Boris Johnson, in an ITV debate:“As for Boris, he is the life and soul of the party but he’s not the man you want driving you home at the end of the evening,”
Such invective can only leave a legacy of ill-will which could last well into the future. Instead of a house divided, we might see every political party (except the LibDems) divided into sections that have bad feelings towards each other, poisoning our political life. When the results of this referendum are declared tomorrow morning, a lot of people are going to be very unhappy, all of which adds up to an unhealthy legacy for David Cameron's misconceived referendum idea.

Terrorism, Mental Health Homicide and the Murder of Jo Cox

In 1939, W. H. Auden penned these lines in one of his poems:
"In the nightmare of the dark
All the dogs of Europe bark".
Well, as we know, one of those dogs came out of the dark yesterday and took the life of Jo Cox, M.P. We, as a nation, are reeling from this; the feelings of Jo Cox's family are unimaginable. All flags are at half-mast, and tributes are ringing out in the media. At the moment, I am listening to the Jeremy Vine programme on Radio 2, and a listener has just emailed asking:
"...what has happened to our beautiful, civilized country?"
That person's feelings are understandable, but, sadly, Jo Cox's horrible murder is not without precedent in this country or any other. As regular readers of this blog know, terrorism and mental health homicide are frequent themes of mine (some would say obsessions). The killing of Jo Cox brings these two themes together, and I think we need to look a little more closely at them here.
As for precedents, there have been a number of murders of serving M.P.s. Wikipedia lists eight, beginning with the assassination of the Prime Minister, Spencer Perceval, in 1812, and now updated with the killing of Jo Cox. Six of the MPs murdered were killed by Irish republicans, but Percival and Jo Cox were slain by people with a history of mental illness. There have, of course, been a number of murder attempts by political and religious extremists against M.P.s in recent years. There was the stabbing of Steven Timms, M.P. by the Islamist fanatic Roshonara Chaudry, which I wrote about in 2010. 2000 saw the murder attempt by a  mental health patient, Robert Ashman, upon Nigel Jones, M.P. (now Lord Jones), in which Jones' aide Andrew Pennington was killed by Ashman, who was wielding a sword. Incredibly, but in line with everything I have featured on Rhymes and Routes about released mental health patients, Ashman was released in 2008.
It hardly needs to be pointed out that terrorist organisations find people with mental health problems very useful. In 1975, members of the German Red Army Faction (aka "The Baader-Meinhof Gang") took over the West German Embassy in Stockholm, Sweden. This group, grandiosely  named "The Holger Mains Commando", was composed mainly of violent mental health patients. After the occupation of Iraq, Al-Qaeda in Iraq, the predecessor of Daesh, used mentally handicapped individuals as suicide bombers, and Daesh has continued the practice. Here in the UK in 2008, Nicky Reilly, a mentally handicapped young man with the mental age of ten, tried to blow himself up in an Exeter restaurant after being radicalized online.
Thomas Mair, the man arrested for the murder of Jo Cox, appears to tick both boxes - political extremism and mental health problems. He seems to have had links with far-right organisations in the USA and South Africa. During the attack on Jo Cox, he is alleged to have shouted "Put Britain first", or "Britain First", it is not clear which. Unsurprisingly, Britain First, the extreme right wing  group has denied all connection with Thomas Mair. It may even be true.
Mair also seems to have had mental health issues in the past, but, to be fair to the mental health mandarins, he does not appear to have exhibited any dangerous traits. One of his neighbours has said:  "He is just a quiet bloke who keeps himself to himself. "He is very helpful and he helps local people with their gardens. There is one neighbour who is a bit frail and he keeps her garden tidy. He has helped me cut my hedge a couple of times." In 2011, Mair volunteered to work as a groundsman at the nearby Oakwell Hall County Park, which he claimed helped ease his mental health problems, according to the Daily Telegraph.
It is my view that Mair was not an openly active member of any extreme right-wing party. Rather, I believe that we will learn how he nurtured his extremism in secret for years, watching neo-Nazi videos on the internet, as well as reading terrorist weapons manuals and extremist literature in preparation for an unspecified atrocity. One such book might well be "The Turner Diaries" by William Luther Pierce, written in 1978. Given the fact that Pierce was the founder of the neo-Nazi Nationalist Alliance in the USA, and the fact that Mair has been found to be in possession of National Alliance reading matter, it is more than likely he has read "The Turner Diaries".
This evil book, which tells the story of a white supremacist psychopath, Earl Turner, who launches a terror campaign against the US Federal Government, liquidating all non-white groups and launching a nuclear strike against Israel, has proven to be an inspirational text for aspiring fascist terrorists such as Timothy McVeigh, who was convicted of the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. McVeigh was found to have pages of this book on him when arrested. Another neo-Nazi seeking to emulate Earl Turner's example was David Copeland, who killed three people in a bombing campaign against London's black, Asian and gay communities in April 1999, and quoted from The Turner Diaries while being interviewed by police. Unbelievably, this hate-filled book is on sale at Amazon.
In the nightmare of the dark, the dogs of political and religious terrorism are still barking, and we will be very lucky indeed if they never bite again. There's nothing like hoping against hope, but that is what we do. We must at least ensure that our M.P.s are valued more, and provided with greater protection. This Fascist, Mair - for that is what I believe him to be - must not be allowed to undermine our democracy.
To conclude, I know I speak for all contributors and readers of Rhymes and Routes in sending our deepest condolences to Jo Cox's family, friends and constituents, should they happen upon this post. For a number of years, there has been a lot of cynicism directed at M.P.s, but Jo Cox was an outstanding young politician, who should have gone on to a fine career. For her husband and children, an empty space has appeared in their lives. Brendan Cox, her husband, has said:  "Today is the beginning of a new chapter in our lives. More difficult, more painful, less joyful, less full of love."
I wish them peace, and time to grieve.