Holocaust Memorial Day - Reflections and Memories

Back in the 1970s, as an active member of the Anti-Nazi League (ANL), like all members and supporters, I was involved in distributing posters, sticker and leaflets which depicted scenes from the Holocaust below a banner headline : "Never Again". This was part of a campaign against the National Front (NF) which we saw (rightly) as a neo-Nazi organisation with plans for Britain's ethnic minorities and their political opponents similar to those of Adolf Hitler's NSDAP (Nazis), i.e. mass murder.
Fortunately, the NF imploded at the end of the 70s, and never got to implement their policies. Undoubtedly, the campaigning by the ANL had played its part in this; even in the 70s, memories of the Holocaust and the crimes of the Nazis were still fresh in our national memory. Holocaust Memorial Day, chosen for the 27th January as the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by the Red Army, is intended to remind future generations of the multitude of crimes committed durng the Holocaust, as well as honouring the Holocaust's victims.
Today, of course, is of particular poignancy to the Jewish people, who Hitler had marked down for total annihilation. We usually attribute the figure of six million to Jewish victims, but this is probably an underestimate. Thousands of infants and babies were killed before their births could be registered.
Even back in the 1970s, there were people who pointed out that there were millions of non-Jewish victims in the Holocaust. As the Huffington Post says:
"Historians estimate the total number of deaths to be 11 million, with the victims encompassing gay people, priests, gypsies, people with mental or physical disabilities, communists, trade unionists, Jehovah's Witnesses, anarchists, Poles and other Slavic peoples, and resistance fighters."
And we should remember them all, even though remembering can be traumatic. As Shakespeare's Macbeth says in Act 5, Scene 5, merely reading of Holocaust statistics and survivors' memories can leave you saying:
"I have supped full with horrors".
Here are just a few carefully chosen examples:

1. Approximately 220,000-500,000 Romanies (Gypsies) were killed during the Holocaust.
2. More than 870,000 Jews were killed at Treblinka with a staff of just 150 people. There were fewer than 100 known survivors of Treblinka.
3. In one infamous concentration camp experiment, newborn babies were taken away from nursing mothers to see how long they could survive without feeding.

And that's quite enough for a short blog item...

That's why we in the ANL campaigned under the slogan "Never Again!". The trouble is, it has happened again, albeit in circumstances we could never have anticipated. Pol Pot in Cambodia, between 1975 to 1979, oversaw the murder of about 1,700,000 people; Idi Amin of Uganda slaughtered 300 000; 900 000 were killed in Rwanda in 1994; 320 000 are estimated to have perished in the Syrian Civil War, which began in 2012.

Besides this, which is only a sample (click on link for full list), I was saddened to read in the Guardian and on the BBC website that hate crime shows no sign of disappearing. As the Guardian says today:

"A quarter of the British public have witnessed racial hate crime in the last year, according to research released to mark Holocaust Memorial Day as the millions who fell victim to genocide are commemorated".

We can only be grateful that the neo-Nazis have failed in their attempts to create a mass movement in this country. Efforts to counteract hate crime, though, must be stepped up, not by a successor to the ANL, but by all of us. Ethnic and religious minorities, asylum seekers, LGBT people and even the disabled are targets for hate crime. Just how bad this has become is borne out by statistics:

"Home Office statistics on recorded hate crime released in October showed a rise of 18% on the previous year. In 2014-15 there were 52,528 hate crimes recorded by police, compared with 44,471 hate crimes the year before.
Of those, 42,930 (83%) were hate crimes based on race, 5,597 (11%) were about sexual orientation, 3,254 (6%) were to do with religion, 2,508 (5%) were directed at disabled people and 605 (1%) were transgender hate crimes."
In sum, we must all become campaigners against hate crime; we owe it to the victims of all the Holocausts to prevent another.

The Guardian, the DWP and Unintended Consequences

"The law of unintended consequences, often cited but rarely defined, is that actions of people—and especially of government—always have effects that are unanticipated or unintended." - so says the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics, although we are all surely aware that this can happen, whatever course of action we follow. Or perhaps not - the dropping of atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the last century and the disastrous invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq in this are examples to the contrary. Failure to think ahead before proceeding with well intentioned actions, as the old saying says, has paved the way to Hell itself.
Recently, I came upon two Guardian articles, written with the most laudable of aims, which could well have unforeseen repercussions.
One, by Diane Taylor, dated on the 6th of this month, is titled: "The DWP – a bureaucracy of outstanding brutality"; the other, by Aisha Gani and written on the 7th January is titled "DWP told woman she was not ill enough for benefit on day she died". Both are well written, and sincerely concerned for the victims of apparent DWP malevolence.
Diane Taylor's article is a moving account of how a young African woman she calls Hawa, illegally trafficked to the UK as a sex slave, escaped, was granted asylum, and turned to the DWP for support, only to be denied benefits. Taylor says:
"It eventually emerged that Hawa’s benefits had been pulled because she had not shown the DWP a letter she had recently received from the Home Office extending her refugee status into indefinite leave to remain. But why were her benefits being axed for failing to comply with an instruction that was never received? It was explained that the benefits could be applied for again but the process would have to start from scratch".
Aisha Gani's article covers a subject that featured more widely in the media: the outrageous case of tragic 67-year old Dawn Amos whose sickness benefit was cancelled in a letter sent on the day she died. Gani writes:
"Sent on the day she died, it notified her that her allowance was being withdrawn based on “treatment, medication, symptoms and test results”.
Both these cases are deplorable, and I completely support what these journalists have done. What worries me is that these articles, and others like them, could well have highly unpleasant consequences for ordinary DWP staff.
Now, if you type "Guardian" and "DWP" into Google, you will see that the Guardian has run a number of articles attacking the actions of the DWP and the politicians whose policies they implement. They are unique in doing this, as right-wing newspapers (guess who!) usually attack the DWP for lavishing huge amounts in benefits on scroungers, migrants and bloody foreigners in general. The problem is, as I see it, that it is the front line DWP staff who have to follow the directives handed down to them and suffer the backlash from the public.
In May 2014, I posted an article - "Biting the Helping Hand"- which looked at violence against public sector workers. I looked at the rate of assaults on teachers, police, NHS staff, and the DWP. Assaults against DWP staff at that time were showing an increase, but I have been unable to locate figures for 2015. With apologies for this, I quote myself here:
"The DWP's own stats showed staff reported 476 assaults in 2012/13 - up from 228 in 2009/10, before the coalition took power and began changing the benefits system...Of the 476 assaults reported last year, 80 resulted in cuts and bruises and 23 in an injury greater than a cut or a bruise..."
I have written about this since, but omitted to describe the effect that these incidents have on DWP staff. From "The Sunday Post" of two years' ago, I found this:
"Policies to slash the benefits bill have led to a rise in assaults. Increasing violence in job centres is leaving staff scared to go to work...Last year alone there were more than 20,000 attacks."
I am not suggesting that Diane Taylor, Aisha Gani and other Guardian journalists are inciting these attacks or condoning them, but I wish they would make a distinction between politicians who frame policy, senior staff who order that policy to be carried out, and the poor staff at the sharp end who have to follow their directives. As a Guardian reader of many years sitting and standing, I expect far better.

David Bowie, Music, and the National Front

No-one takes the National Front (NF) seriously these days. They are estimated to have no more than 400 active members and, as Hope not Hate comments:
"Few of the NF’s branches have ready access to party materials and the party is often seen as a drinking club".
That is welcome news, but things were not always like this. Back in the 1970s, the NF were seen as an approaching menace, growing in number, influence and credibility by holding provocative street marches, rowdy public meetings and recruiting soccer hooligans. At times, and especially in the violent street confrontations that took place, it was possible to believe we lived in Weimar Britain, facing a neo-Nazi takeover. I was in the Socialist Workers' Party (SWP) at the time, largely because they were - to their credit - spearheading the campaign against the NF, widening the base of the campaign by founding the Anti-Nazi League (ANL) and Rock Against Racism (RAR). Some pundits will have it that Mrs Thatcher caused the NF's demise by her restrictions on immigration. Anyone, like me, who took part in any of the many events organised all over Britain by ANL and RAR at that time, finds that hard to swallow. In 1978, they held a joint rally and music festival in Victoria Park, Hackney, which starred anti-fascist bands such as The Clash, The Tom Robinson Band and Sham 69. I was there, and well remember the exhilaration of the event. I cannot bring myself to believe that all the activism of those times had no effect. Or perhaps I'm just being sentimental?
RAR began because of the declarations of support for Fascism and racism by three leading musicians. One of these musicians was Eric Clapton, who, drunk on stage in Birmingham, August 1976, praised Enoch Powell and told the audience to "get the coons out of Britain". A number of times during the concert, Clapton shouted "Keep Britain White!" - an NF slogan. (Clapton has never lost his admiration for Powell). Another singer listed by RAR was Rod Stewart, and the third - of interest here - was David Bowie. At the time, there was a rumour that one of these three was secretly financing the NF, but this was never proven.
David Bowie went further to the Right in his statements. The eulogies written about him since his recent death (January 10) praise him for many things. His individualism, his ambivalent sexuality and flouting of the dull conventions of 60s and 70s Britain, would appear to make him, as Rod Liddle has said in "The Spectator":
"...  a sort of combination of Harvey Milk and Peter Tatchell rolled into one: a fearless fighter for LGBT rights, pushing back the barriers of conservative morality and heralding, almost single-handedly, a brave new world of equality for gays, transgendered persons, bisexuals, etc."
It comes a shock to learn that Bowie:
1. In 1975, said that Britain needed a good dose of fascism.
2. Again at that time, he said: ‘I believe very strongly in fascism… Adolf Hitler was one of the first rock stars."
3. On the moral decay he believed he saw in Britain at that time: ‘You’ve got to have an extreme right-wing front come up and sweep everything off its feet and tidy everything up."
There were unconfirmed rumours that he had been caught with Nazi literature in his luggage by Swedish customs. There were also reports that he had been photographed giving Nazi salutes in one of his personas - the Great White Duke. As the Jewish Chronicle says:
"As the Duke, Bowie was known to make pro-fascist comments, praising nationalism and Hitler in interviews. He subsequently blamed heavy drug use for his behaviour."
He also blamed his persona for having led him into making extremist statements. This is a remarkable thing to say, rather like Steve Coogan blaming Alan Partridge for his (Coogan's) getting a job as a TV presenter.
And Bowie survived this storm - why? Some artists would have been finished by such events, but he bounced back. One reason could be that no-one really believed Bowie to mean what he was saying. And he didn't - he went on to marry an African woman and father a mixed race child, on whom he doted. He was a great supporter of Live Aid and a huge admirer of black funk and soul  music. He recently teamed up with P Diddy to re-record "This is not America". These are not the actions of a hard line national socialist, but Bowie should have counted himself lucky to have survived as a performer.
If all this is relevant, it shows the power of Bowie to change his personas, his musical styles, his lyric content and infuse them all with enduring passion. His early tracks still sound as fresh and original as they did when he first began, even the "Laughing Gnome". He went from being an Anthony Newley clone to an androgenous sex god, to a diamond dog, then a Great White Duke, then a guy in the group ("The Tin Machine") to a musical recluse. He could sing rock, blues, soul, funk, ballads and Christmas songs (with Bing Crosby). He even played saxophone on a Steeleye Span album track.
I can only wonder: did all these fluctuations reflect a psychological defence mechanism which he developed from childhood? Perhaps he only felt comfortable when he pretended to be someone else? Also, in his lyrics, marvellous as they are, there seems to be an affinity with outsiders. Major Tom, Ziggy Stardust, Jean Genet ("Jean Genie"), the narrator in "Where Are We Now?" (off the penultimate album, "The Next Day") are all outsiders in some way. Did Bowie think of himself in these terms? Was he the kind of person who could feel lonely in a crowded room? I shall never know, and he might well have been none of these things. His self-imposed isolation of recent years might hint at this, however, as well as the opaque nature of some of his more recent lyrics.
This is all speculation, of course. What can definitely be said is that the worlds of music and art have lost a towering genius. Perhaps the most significant of the many tributes to Bowie came from the first British astronaut, Major Tim Peake, who tweeted from space:
 "Saddened to hear David Bowie has lost his battle with cancer – his music was an inspiration to many."
I think it fair to say: Major Tom's creator would have liked that.