The Armistice, Remembrance and Me

The Hounslow War Memorial

I must own up: I have no personal connection to the Armistice of 1918. As far as I know, no forebears of mine died in the conflict. In fact, I don't even know of any who served in the armed forces in WW1. Nevertheless, I have had an abiding interest in that war, having read a number of books on the subject, even when I was too young to fully understand the surrounding issues. I seldom talk to anyone about WW1, though, as I don't like anoraks myself. These are the types who have an enthusiasm for some activity, eg, Jazz or sport, and at every opportunity will bore you by diverting conversation to that subject. If you have never met anyone like this, believe me, they exist.

In the 60s, WW1 came to signify meaningless carnage - the image of Tommies going over the top to be slaughtered epitomised the futility of war. An "anti-war" spirit towards the Great War pervaded popular culture, with productions such as "Oh, What a Lovely War!" and a revived interest in the poems of Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, two of the greatest war poets in any language. The contemporary poet, Roger McGough, expressed the prevailing view of many in his poem "On Picnics":

"at the goingdown of the sun

and in the morning

I try to remember them

but their names are ordinary names

and their causes are thighbones

tugged excitedly from the soil

by frenchchildren

on picnics"

This does not mean that Roger McGough was himself callously indifferent to the fallen of WW1. On the contrary, anyone has read his poetry will know that he is deeply compassionate towards the victims of war, even writing about his own family members who suffered war's after effects. But this poem does sum up the attitude of many in the 60s - WW1 happened a long time ago; it was futile; the men and women who fell died for nothing, and they, like the war itself, should be forgotten.

This has been an enduring viewpoint, seen in films such as "Paths of Glory", "The Trench" and "Joyeux Noel". It can be heard in 80s songs like "Stop the Cavalry" (Jona Lewie), "The Children's Crusade" (Sting) and seen in the classic TV series of the 90s, "Blackadder Goes Forth".

What no-one took into account were the thoughts and feelings of survivors of the Great War. This view dismissed them as helpless victims - suckers, in other words. I cannot remember a single TV or radio programme that asked them whether they thought their hardship and sacrifice had been worth it or not; they were seemingly dismissed as being obsolete and irrelevant. Lyn Macdonald, in her marvellous book "To The Last Man", commented on this:

"In recent years I have listened in the company of (Great) war veterans to speeches which were kindly meant and expressed with real sincerity but whose sentiments have caused them pain...they realised long ago how difficult it can be to explain the concepts of loyalty, as they understood them..."

One positive result of the recent Armistice commemorations, as well as all other such events since 2014, has been to awaken a wider interest on the part of the general public towards those who fought in our name in WW1. There has been a greater debate on the rights and wrongs of Britain's entry to the conflict, and a boost in personal remembrance at public events and on social media. Many families have discovered more about long-forgotten forebears and learned to appreciate their sacrifice and suffering. Those forebears might have had "ordinary names", in Roger McGough's words, but they were people much like ourselves, in an extraordinary and nightmarish situation. It is as if, after the passage of a century, a barrier has been broken and a new bond has been formed.

For me, as far as I know, having no family members to remember, the barrier to the past was broken by my online work for Sefton Libraries: "Beyond the War Memorials", which I wrote about on April 29. Thanks to my work on the Waterloo and Seaforth War Memorial, and my investigations into the stories behind the names on that memorial, I had someone to remember. During the two minutes silence, I remembered them: Harold Joseph Wright, 14 years old, died on the Lusitania...Francis Zacharias, son of a German father and English mother...the gallant Walter Duncan, who escaped from German captivity...the brothers Andrew, Robert and Charles Cunningham, lost in France and Egypt...I thought of them all. A simple message on a wreath at Hounslow War Memorial summed up my feelings towards those newly important, if "ordinary" names:

And yet, while I now feel a much greater affinity and respect for our war dead, and fully appreciate the importance of commemorating the Armistice, I cannot help but reflect on the sadly unfulfilled hope of the combatants and survivors of 1914-18: that it would be the war to end wars. The violence went on in many places: Ireland, Turkey, Russia, Germany and the Baltic states. Warfare itself became even nastier, with civilians suffering an increased proportion of casualties. And, of course, the rise of Nazism in Germany led to WW2, partly, it is said, as a result of the terms imposed on the defeated Germans by the "victorious" Allies. But there was more to it than that. The C-in-C of US forces in France, General Pershing, said, in 1923:

"We never really let the Germans know who won the war. They are being told that their army was stabbed in the back, betrayed, that their army had not been defeated. The Germans never believed they were beaten. It will have to be done all over again.."

With the General's words in mind, I wrote this poem to mark the centenary of the 1918 Armistice:

ARMISTICE

Under fire from dawn,

We crouched in holes and slimy ditches

While spiteful bullets went buzzing overhead.

I prayed and sang with men and boys

Listening to the battle’s noise.

It stopped. Eleven a.m.

We sat for a while, bathing in silence,

Then slowly stood and cheered “The End”

And talked of going home again.

We sang “Goodbyeee” to sniper and shell,

Escapees from attritional hell.

Our foes stood up, side by side.

One German officer saluted and cried:

“Farewell, Tommy – we’ll meet again!”

And tried to control his wavering men.

The sun shone down with a friendly light

On souls emerging from endless night.

We shook their hands and said goodbye.

We drank a toast and wondered why

We’d had to fight.

They cheered, and marched off out of sight.

We drank more wine, and, gathered there,

The Padre led us all in prayer

For God to cause all wars to cease

And all mankind to live in peace.

But later, as I tried to sleep,

I thought long and I thought deep

Of the officer’s words before he went-

“We’ll meet again” – and what that meant.

The Tower of London, 11/11/2018. Photo by Bryan Morris.

"Maids in Hell" - Beirut to Park Lane

I was brought up with stories about William Wilberforce (1759 - 1833), pictured above. His campaign, along with other British abolitionists, led to the outlawing of the slave trade in the British Empire. He died about a month before the passing of the Slavery Abolition Act, yet he saw the beginning of the end of what he, and others, saw as an abhorrent institution. 

I wonder how Wilberforce would have reacted to a programme shown on the BBC three days ago - "Maids in Hell:Why Slavery?". It was a disturbing programme that dealt with the treatment of African and Filipina maids in the Middle East - specifically Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. Abuse of such workers has been reported before, but this programme conducted some hard-hitting interviews with a Lebanese employment agency ( run by the urbane Maher Dumit),Emma Mburu, a formidable Kenyan senator opposed to the domestic worker trade and some heart-rending interviews with ex-maids who described, in graphic detail, the ill-treatment they had received at the hands of their Middle Eastern employers.

Of course, there are obvious differences between this form of "employment" (called "Kafala") and the slavery system that Wilberforce campaigned to abolish. These domestic maids are, in theory, paid for their services, and their contracts end after about two years. Instead, their passports are confiscated, they are not allowed to change jobs and, in Jordan at least, they are not allowed to have mobile phones.

If this were not bad enough, some (many?) Middle Eastern employers of maids have a habit of expecting far more from the maids than simple domestic duties. Human Rights Watch has described numerous cases of beatings and sexual abuse of maids. Rothna Begum interviewed 19 Tanzanian ex-maids, finding that:

"The women who described sexual harassment and assault said that male family members groped them, exposed themselves, chased them around the house, and entered their rooms late at night. Several described attempted rape. Twenty-year-old “Jamila A.” said all the men in the family she worked for in Oman, “even the old man,” assaulted her and hid her room keys so she could not lock her bedroom door."

The BBC programme showed this to be the tip of a very large iceberg. There are also many complaints of maids being forced to work 18-hour days, with no time off. Many never receive any salary at all. Small wonder, then, 10 000 maids fled from Saudi Arabia last year. No surprise, either, that 67% of domestic workers' deaths in Lebanon are caused by suicide or "falling from buildings". One ex-maid in the BBC programme said that she had risked her life escaping from a third-floor flat, preferring death to servitude at the hands of her employer. That might explain these deaths - 110 in Lebanon in 2016, averaging two a week. Most notorious of such cases is that of Joanna Demafelis, a Filipina who was murdered by her employers in Kuwait, stuffed into a freezer and not found for a year.

Maher Dumit, the agent featured in the programme, passed the comment that if Lebanese people were all bad, no maids would go there at all. An ignorant person might ask "Well, why do they go?". The answer is ludicrously simple. These maids are recruited from the poorest people in Third World countries: Ghana, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and the Philippines. In fact, the "recruiters" specialise in attracting the desperate of these lands. To provide for their families, these girls and women are prepared to travel thousands of miles to an uncertain future. That is why all domestic workers in the Middle East are there - to send money home. 

The programme ended on a melancholy note. A Kenyan maid, Mary Kibana, a married woman with four children, returned from Jordan with 100% burns. Before she, sadly, passed away, she said that she was caught in a fire in her employer's kitchen. All she remembered next was being found by her employer and kicked. After Mary's funeral, the then Senator Emma Mburu tried contacting a minister in the Kenyan government, who made a politician's answer to her impassioned appeal for action. Mary's family received no back salary and no compensation. Emma Mburu commented: "You feel useless".

A couple of years ago, I felt like that. The programme, rightly, focussed upon this problem at its worst - in the Middle East. Unfortunately, the problem exists right here in the UK, where many wealthy Middle Eastern families own property and, when visiting London, bring their domestic workers with them. They bring their nasty, abusive attitudes to their domestic workers as well. A UK-based group that campaigns for domestic workers brought here was quoted in The Guardian in 2017:

"Kalayaan’s data showed that 85% of domestic workers... reported psychological abuse. In addition, 63% said they had no access to regular food and 81% claimed they were not allowed out of the house; 83% said their employer took their passport, while 33% said they received no wages at all."

This was reported to Kalayaan by domestic workers who escaped from their employers. If accurate, and I have strong personal reasons for believing it to be, we have Middle Eastern slavery right here in London. I have no doubt that this happens in every European capital city and everywhere Middle Eastern employers are domiciled.

I have encountered this awful state of affairs at first hand. Several years ago, we had a runaway Filipina visit us here in Hounslow. She came because a friend of ours, who knew that I was, and remain, a long-standing member of Amnesty International, thought I could help in some way. And this lady - let's call her "Linda" - needed help. She had been brought to the UK by her Middle Eastern employer to work in the family flat in Mayfair. Linda committed some minor misdemeanour and was threatened by her employer. He said that he would punish her severely for her offence (I think she broke a plate) when they returned home. Wisely, Linda escaped with the help of some Filipinos, only to find herself in a dire situation. She had not heard of Kalayaan (neither had I), she had no passport and faced possible deportation to the Philippines, although she had seen a solicitor.

I tried to help. I phoned AI's head office, but they were unable to provide much assistance. As Linda was possibly facing deportation to the Philippines, where she was not at risk of torture or imprisonment, AI could not intervene. They did give me the phone number of the Refugee Council, but could do no more. I reported back to Linda, and her disappointment was palpable. Like Emma Mburu said: "You feel useless". I certainly did. 

There is, however, a happy ending. Linda has been allowed to stay in the UK, and is loving it here. After what she has been through, that's no surprise. I could not have secured that for her. I cannot change the dire economic situation that affects so many in the Philippines and Africa, still less can I provide an answer to why so many (not all) Middle Eastern employers are so abusive to domestic workers. The UN condemns this situation, but has little means of taking positive action. In spite of this, I wish I could do more.

One of far too many...

OFSTED and Discovering the Obvious

OFSTED, the Schools Inspection Service, reminds me of the carthorses that used to draw milk wagons prior to WW1. The more elderly carthorses, like OFSTED, were slow and steady but got there in the end. There are differences, of course, but, for now, let's look at a similarity. 

The similarity arises from the recent belated discovery by OFSTED that schools - even primary schools - have become exam factories and that teachers have become "data managers", according to the OFSTED chief, Amanda Spielman, pictured above.

Mrs Spielman went on to say, several days ago: 

"The cumulative impact of performance tables and inspections, and the consequences that are hung on them, has increased the pressure on school leaders, teachers and indirectly on pupils to deliver perfect data above all else... we know that focusing too narrowly on test and exam results can often leave little time or energy for hard thinking about the curriculum, and in fact can sometimes end up making a casualty of it."

All well and good, but the fact remains that I, along with all teachers between 2000 and the present day, have known this for years. I retired in 2011, but still remember the effects of exam stress on pupils that I witnessed before then. I taught in a primary school, and, at that time, Year 6 children took three SATs tests. The highest grade was Level 5, while Level 4 was considered acceptable. Schools were under tremendous pressure to achieve well in their SATs results, which were published like some kind of league table. Year 6 children were taught to the examination to a high degree, going through at least one full mock SATs test, all of which were marked by the class teachers. Many children were subjected to intense pressure from their parents to achieve top grades. I have seen an 11-year girl in floods of tears after gaining two Level 5s and one level 4 - she was frightened that her mum would be angry. Another girl reported to us that her father had threatened to beat her up if she did not get three Level 5s. I lost count of the number of children who told me they were forced to study for hours by their ambitious parents. I myself had a pushy parent complaining that her daughter had only achieved a Level 4 in a practice test when I taught a Year 5 class. For this age group, a Level 4 was a very good result. All this, please note, for what was meant to be a monitoring measure providing assessment information to secondary schools. Instead, it became a virility test for primary schools and a matter of prestige for aspirational parents.

I think I was unkind to carthorses above. After all, they existed to provide a service. OFSTED exist for a service, of course, but they have functioned, until now, to enforce the examination regime which they now say is all wrong. As a veteran of many inspections myself, I regard this change of emphasis with utter cynicism. It's rather like the owner of a horse wondering why the horse never looks happy and, after a number of years, realising that it was because he repeatedly beat the poor creature. OFSTED do not beat teachers, of course, but their highly stressful inspections are part of the problem that they now profess to want to solve.

So - how do OFSTED propose to improve matters? Well, the BBC say that:

"The biggest planned change to the inspection framework is that the section based on "pupil outcomes" (exam results) is likely to be replaced with a new judgement for "quality of education".

There are also plans for three other categories: 1. Personal Development. 2. behaviour and attitudes (presumably of children). 3. School leadership and management.

There will be a consultation in January, which has been welcomed on all sides. This consultation will involve teachers and other "hands on" professionals, and, hopefully, will produce a more humane system for schools. What a pity it has taken so long...

A symbol for OFSTED?

George Galloway - Up Against it

I would not like to be in George Galloway's shoes right now. By looking at his facial expression, you can see that he's feeling up against it. George crops up on this blog every so often, and gets little sympathy. In fact, he gets none from me, as I think him to be an apologist for dictators in the Middle East and elsewhere. Anyone who doubts this must account for his flattery of Sadaam Hussein, his denial that the Tiananmen Square Massacre happened and his fulsome adulation of both President Assad of Syria and the regime in Iran. Please see my 2012 post on this issue. However, his most recent effort at distorting facts has been his support for President Putin over the Salisbury poisoning. He has vehemently defended Russia on this issue for months, on his talkRADIO programme, on YouTube and even to Piers Morgan and Susannah Reid on Good Morning Britain, back in March:

"I have no idea who did the poisoning, but Russia must be near the bottom of the list," he told hosts Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid. He said that Iran had previously produced the chemical, he added that it had been used in Uzbekistan, before pointing the finger at British biological warfare base Porton Down which is a few miles from Salisbury."

I sometimes wonder who George blames for the assassination of JFK. It must be the CIA, FBI or Harold Wilson. However, he will have to employ his creativity to the maximum to defend the Russian suspects for the Salisbury poisoning: Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Beshirov (real names: Alexander Mishkin and Anatoly Chepiga, both colonels in Russia's military intelligence service: The GRU). All commentators agree that their interview for RT borders on Monty Pythonesque farce. Their preposterous "explanation" for their visit deserves nothing but ridicule. As the BBC says:

 "They said they only stayed an hour in Salisbury on Saturday 3 March because of the snowy weather conditions, but returned on Sunday 4 March to visit the sights. The two men admitted they may have passed Mr Skripal's house by chance "but we don't know where it is located," Mr Petrov said".

For once, I agree with Teresa May:

 "The lies and blatant fabrications in this interview given to a Russian state-sponsored TV station are an insult to the public's intelligence,"

There has been much discussion today about what the Russian security services hope to achieve by attacks such as the Salisbury and Litvinienko poisonings. The Jeremy Vine programme on Radio 2 offered two explanations. The first, obvious, explanation is that these attacks warn Russians living in the west that the FSB and GRU have a long reach. Secondly, and less obvious, is that by their denials of even the most blatant attacks and the bizarre counter-accusations by the Russian government and their acolytes abroad, it causes widespread confusion about the facts among the general public in the west and Russia itself.

Among these acolytes abroad, of course, is our friend, George Galloway. As I said above, he will be severely taxed to come up with a way to whitewash the Russian "tourists" and their government. Using Photoshop, he could place Tony Blair and George Bush in Salisbury at the time of the attacks. He could blame MI5, MI6, the CIA or the Boy Scouts for the poisonings or, as the dedicated supporter of the Palestinian cause that he is, he could, failing all other options, blame the Israelis. He has an arduous task ahead of him !

Joking apart, while we argue about who is responsible for the Salisbury poison attack, we should remember the victims: Sergei and Yulia Skripal, Dawn Sturgess, Charlie Rowley and a police officer, DS Nick Bailey. Four of these people became severely ill, and Dawn Sturgess lost her life. For them and their relatives, justice must seem to be far away, as are Petrov and Beshirov. George Galloway is going to be very busy.

Labour's Anti-Semitism Quarrels - Ignoring the Real Threat

I hate writing about an issue that leaves no room for fresh insight. The row over anti-Semitism in the Labour Party has raged for some time, and there seems to be no immediate solution. I have wondered what it must be like at Labour Party ward meetings nowadays. If they are as fraught as this controversy seems to indicate, they must be very tense and fractious gatherings. Much has been said about this issue in and out of the Labour Party (not to say endlessly repeated), but I saw no reason to comment until a seemingly unrelated event happened in Germany this week.
The event is the outbreak of violence in Chemnitz between right and left wing groups, following an alleged stabbing of a German youth by two immigrants. The violence took the local police force by surprise - 6000 right-wingers arrived in Chemnitz in a very short time. This reminded me of an old concern of mine, and I will discuss it later.
Returning to the Labour anti-Semitism issue, it seems to revolve chiefly around Jeremy Corbyn. There is, of course, the argument about Labour's refusal to adopt the definition of anti-Semitism set out by the  International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's guidelines, which can be read online here. Jeremy Corbyn has been criticised for sharing a platform with Hamas and Hezbollah supporters and for (allegedly) laying a wreath on the grave of some Arab terrorists in Tunisia. Jonathan Sacks, the former Chief Rabbi, has entered the fray by saying:
“Now, within living memory of the Holocaust, and while Jews are being murdered elsewhere in Europe for being Jews, we have an antisemite as the leader of the Labour party and Her Majesty’s opposition. That is why Jews feel so threatened by Mr Corbyn and those who support him.”
With due respect to Jonathan Sacks, I think that is more than a little exaggerated. I have not conducted my own opinion poll, but not all Jewish people feel threatened by Corbyn. In fact, some are fervent Corbynistas. Anyone who doubts this can visit the "Jews for Jeremy" website.
I believe many criticisms of Corbyn on this issue to be valid, but he is no anti-Semite, at least according to his definition of the word. As he sees himself, he is an anti-racist, and has a long history of acting according to his principles, opposing far right groups, apartheid in South Africa and Enoch Powell. The sticking point is what he perceives as Zionism and his opposition to Israeli treatment of the Palestinians. Now, as the dreary old cliché that anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism appears to serve us well as an explanation of his actions, that appears to wrap things up.
But it does not. The problem is that the extreme right have hi-jacked the word "Zionist", using it as a synonym for "Jew". The National Front (NF) used this trick in the 70s, once describing the opposition to their activities in Ilford as due to a heavy Zionist presence. They did not explain how they knew so many supporters of Israel lived in Ilford - and, of course, they meant Jews. If you announce to a modern-day fascist that you are an anti-Zionist, he will think you mean something else. Genuine anti-Zionists should take this on board.
Besides this, there are real manifestations of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party which cannot be ignored. Two examples will suffice:
1.A Jewish Labour MP, Ruth Smeeth, was sent a 1,000 word death threat from a Corbyn-supporter calling her a ‘yid c–t’. The threat followed Smeeth’s decision to walk out of a meeting outlining Labour’s response to anti-Semitism because she was accused of working ‘hand in hand with the right-wing media to attack Jeremy’. Smeeth then received 20,000 abusive messages and has since questioned whether Labour is still ‘a safe space for British Jews’
2. A former Labour parliamentary candidate in Witham, John Clarke, shared a Neo-Nazi meme saying the Rothschild family has used money lending and Israel to ‘take over the world’. He said the meme ‘contained a great deal of truth’ and was later suspended.
There are more to be found HERE. To be fair, most of these incidents have led to (not always enforced) disciplinary action, but they stain the name of the Labour Party.
Ending on a personal note, I am a lifelong Labour supporter and will continue to vote Labour in coming elections - but I know some lifelong Labour supporters who will not. I hope that Labour will stop tearing itself apart, and I will only stop supporting Labour if things do become overtly anti-Semitic, although I might consider it if George Galloway is allowed back into the party.
Returning to events in Germany, I think we see a manifestation of the real face of anti-Semitism and eliminationist racism. The neo-Nazis who riot in Chemnitz are only one face of the monster rising from the deep. The far Right is on the rise all over Europe, and internecine quarrels between the rest of us can only work to their advantage. Given their chance, they will put all ethnic minorities, Zionist and anti-Zionist Jews and political opponents into the same boat, concentration camp or gas chamber. Bertolt Brecht has fallen out of fashion since the demise of Communism, but his words on Hitler ring true to this day:
"Do not rejoice in his defeat, you men. For, though the world stood up and stopped the bastard, the bitch that bore him is in heat again."

Boris, the Burqa and Tory Civil War

"Every part of the burqa/letterbox furore is about political warfare. Johnson knew exactly how to rattle the left and it’s working".

Those are very wise words, written by the Iranian-born comedian, Shappi Khorsandi, in the Independent, one day ago. When Boris published his column in the Telegraph, I was somewhat puzzled at the uproar it caused. After all, he stated quite clearly that he thought the ban on the burqa in Denmark was wrong, and he did not want to see it banned here. What offended so many Muslim women were his remarks that the burqa made the wearers look like letter boxes and bank robbers. All this is common knowledge now, but there is reason to believe that it was a tactic on Boris' part. There were strident protests on the Left, which Boris must have expected. He's appeared to have put his foot in his mouth before, and weathered the storm.

The word "tactic" is usually used in a military sense, but, as the old monster, Mao Zedong said: 

"Politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed".

Mao may have been responsible for the deaths of 70 million of his people, but he got that observation right. Boris is no fool either. He must have judged that his jokey remarks would trigger argument, knowing that it would become an issue of free speech. If he guessed that opinion polls would show that the wider populace would support him, he got that right also.The Sun says:

" A ComRes poll for the Sunday Express found the majority of Britons don't think Mr Johnson should be punished for the remarks made in a newspaper column."

My first instinct was that Boris had employed a diversionary tactic - stirring up trouble as a means to distract our attention from the Brexit debacle. In fact, I described it on Facebook as a Tory tactic. Now, I accept that it could well have been a manoeuvre without bloodshed  by Boris to improve his chances of becoming Tory leader. Mao would probably have described this as being part of a civil war. And he would have been right, it seems. The Prime Minister herself has said that Boris should apologise for his remarks, and there have been rumblings among senior (and grass roots) Conservatives against this. Tory MP Andrew Bridgen said:

 “If Boris is suspended it will be open warfare in the Conservative Party".

That paragon of modernity and tolerance, Jacob Rees-Mogg, suggested:

 "...the attacks on Mr Johnson's were a reflection of "envy" felt towards him because of "his many successes, popularity with voters and charisma".

I don't know how the Tories will resolve this matter but Boris, I am sure, will survive to fight another day.

Another reason I believe that Boris is engaging in political manoeuvring is his previous cock-up over Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, which leads me to doubt his concern for the rights of Muslim women. As Shappi Khorsandi says: 

"Nazanin, a British citizen, has been imprisoned without charge in Iran for almost two and a half years. Much to the horror of her husband Richard and the rest of us who are desperate for her release, when Boris finally spoke out against her detainment, he said she was “teaching journalism” in Iran. She wasn’t. Boris actually made things worse for her. Did he simply not care about this mum with a funny name who wasn’t born here?"

Ominously, Boris has received support from Steve Bannon, the ex-White House chief strategist. I have no doubt that Bannon is advising Boris as sagaciously as he advised Donald Trump. Today's papers endorse this view.

I hope that the outraged commentators, both Muslim and non-Muslim, who understandably condemned Boris in the most vitriolic terms, come to regard him as what I believe him to be: a political operator. He knows that his position in his party is not really threatened, because, as the Guardian says: 

"Conservative MPs’ support for Boris Johnson over his comments comparing Muslim women in burqas to bank robbers has “shone a light on the underbelly of Islamophobia” within the party, the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) has said."

Boris must have known this Islamophobia existed, and was able to launch his apparently blundering, but actually calculated, attack. Had Mao Zedong been a Tory, he would have been in his element, engaging in this bloodless civil war.

From Greaves Hall to Mitcham - A Familiar Story

Until 1992, when mental health provision was reorganised under the misleading title of "care in the community", there existed in the village of Banks, just to the north of my home town, Southport, an institution for the care of what were called the "mentally handicapped". The full name was Greaves Hall Hospital, but us locals always referred to it as Greaves Hall. It was an old country house that had been a private residence, a school, a convalescent home for TB sufferers and, from 1948, a hospital for people with mental health issues. Initially for patients from Liverpool, it expanded to become a regional centre.The mental health unit had wards and ancillary buildings in the leisure grounds of the old house. It was demolished in 2009.

We in Southport saw little of the inmates of Greaves Hall. Sometimes, a few would escape to be recaptured, but, usually, they were confined to the hospital limits. If they were referred to at all, it was often in mocking, disparaging terms. And the inmates saw little of the outside world, not even of their own families. Staff whom I knew said that they had patients from Southport who had not received visits for more than 10 years, despite the fact that a bus ride from Southport town centre to the hospital was a mere 25 minutes. The staff also told me that, if they encountered patients' relations when shopping, walking or socialising in Southport, the relatives would usually ask questions such as: "Oh - how's our so-and-so getting on?" - and leave it at that. Seriously ill mental health patients and people with learning difficulties were regarded as an embarrassment to be hidden away, and it is no disrespect to the ex-staff of Greaves Hall or any similar institution in Britain to say that is what happened.

Things began to change in the 1980s. A strange alliance of mental health campaigners and right-wing politicians worked to bring about the closure of places like Greaves Hall. The former group wanted to break down the stigma of separating mental health patients from the wider community; the politicians simply saw an opportunity to cut public spending. "Care in the Community" was born.

Almost immediately, things began to go wrong. Many released patients simply could not cope with life in the outside world. Support for them was erratic, as the whole venture was given insufficient resources. A large number became homeless, suffered violence, turned to crime or committed suicide. They still do; the institutions may be gone, but the prisons and homeless shelters are full of people with mental health problems.

Equally worrying was the fact that many disturbed patients, when released, became murderously violent. To spare regular readers, I will confine myself to saying that I have written about a number of murders by released mental health patients. At the risk of appearing obsessive, yet another of these appalling killings has happened. Many features are common to all these slayings, but each has something uniquely horrible about them.

The unique horror in this case is that a man has murdered his own grandmother in Mitcham, south-west London, weeks after being released from a psychiatric unit. Kordian Filmanowicz, a 21-year old paranoid schizophrenic, stabbed his grandmother, IIona Czuper 60 times in the throat and killed the family pets with a paving slab. As might be expected, he admitted manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. He had been released in March of last year after six months of psychiatric care, only to kill his grandmother on the 8th May, 2017. 

One depressingly familiar fact - complacent misdiagnosis - emerged during the trial. As the BBC says: 

"During his stay at a unit in Croydon in 2016, he threatened a staff member "in an aggressive way" with a plastic teaspoon, saying he would remove her eyes with it, Mr Mulholland (Prosecutor) said. But senior psychiatrists released him into the community on medication after deciding he had made a "huge improvement", the prosecutor said."

According to "The Bolton News", the judge:

 "..advised against medical experts taking his progress at face value, saying they should take great care "bearing in mind the decisions taken in the months leading up to his offending".

Suffice it for me to say that such advice should be obvious to the mental health professionals who deal with people like Filmanowicz. It would save a great many innocent lives. We are a long way from the era of Greaves Hall. Care in the Community has kept most of the mentally ill and mentally handicapped in the wider community, but has not received the necessary resources to be completely successful. As a social experiment, it has had mixed fortunes. Too many of both groups have simply swapped one institution for another: prison (or homelessness). A minority of the former group, as has been seen, have killed hundreds of innocent people, such as IIona Czuper, since the 1980s. Still, you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs, and the powers that be seem to regard these deaths as collateral damage.

Filmanowicz, safely confined - for now...