current affairs

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Motorboat Museum closure makes the news – will the Council listen? #basildon #toryfail

It is good to see that the local and regional media have been taking an interest in the Motorboat Museum, even if Basildon’s Conservative-controlled Council is no longer bothered what happens to the nation’s foremost collection of motorboats. Interestingly, the Council have confirmed to me that they made no effort to find a private sponsor and set aside no money to promote the museum (the budget for promoting it came out of the general countryside services promotion budget – so I guess it didn’t get very much).

Most of us would not have much time for the excuses made by a company that complained about falling sales having not advertised its products, so it strikes me as a little rich for the Council to complain that visitor numbers were falling when they did nothing to tell people the museum was there!

Before going on, I think I should make it clear that I see this as a matter of political will and prioritisation – and not something that is the responsibility of a countryside services budget already stretched to capacity. To that end I think it appalling that in the coverage I have seen, no administration councillor has seen fit to defend this decision publicly, instead choosing to hide behind officials and spokespersons.

It is probably all too late, at least in terms of saving the collection in Basildon, but this local and regional media coverage has been impressive.

Sophie Edwards had a good piece in the Echo which featured George Sawyer, the former world record holder who lives locally and who is a member of the Friends of the Motorboat Museum. He sums it up very well:

“He said: “If the collection is broken it will be a disaster.

“Basildon has really lost something. This museum was the only one of its kind in the world, which traced the history and evolution of motor boats.

“Hopefully the museum won’t be lost altogether, even though it will be sadly lost to Basildon.””

I was rather less measured, not least of all because I am fed up of tip-toeing around issues which are too easily dismissed as a minority issue or of limited significance:

““I don’t believe the council has invested any serious effort in maintaining the integrity of the collection.

“I have nothing against taking funding from Government for a new green education centre.

“However, if the council was bothered enough, it could have sought to preserve this nationally-significant collection.””

ITV’s London Tonight programme visited Basildon yesterday and spoke to George and Nina Sawyer at the museum. Whilst it is not on their main website, ITN sells clips of its footage and you can see it as a preview on their page.

And today, John Hayes featured the fate of the Motorboat Museum on BBC Essex’s prime-time “Drive Time” programme. The three minute feature on the Motorboat Museum is exactly 43 minutes into the programme.

Until the end of last year, school kids on their curriculum museum visits could see examples such as the Fairey Huntress, the boat that James Bond and Tatiana Romanova use to escape from SPECTRE at the end of From Russia With Love.

That is one of the most iconic chase sequences in any Bond film and I remember it fuelling many a childhood secret agent fantasy.

Now?

I am left wondering sadly how on earth Basildon Council can rationalise that the preservation of a nationally-significant collection like this simply doesn’t matter any more.

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Cameron’s Conservative Party, Con-coctions and Torydiddles: Tories dump environment despite pledges [The Fib List No. 3] #toryfail

In June 2008, David Cameron opened a speech with the following words:

“Today, I want to tackle an argument that seems to be as cyclical as the economy. The argument that when times are good, we can indulge ourselves with a bit of environmentalism – but when the economic going gets tough, the green agenda has to be dropped.

“According to this argument, protecting the environment is a luxury rather than a necessity – and it’s a luxury we just can’t afford in an economic downturn. I want this generation to be the one that bucks that trend: to be the generation that finds a way to combine economic, social and environmental progress.”

In what I imagine was a shot at critics who thought that the huskies and the cycling (with his papers in the car behind) were a stunt, he made the following  very firm statement:

“Today I want to make my position on this absolutely clear. We are not going to drop the environmental agenda in an economic downturn.”

At a press conference this morning David Cameron gave a list of ten reasons to vote for the Conservatives.

The environmental agenda did not feature at all.

The green agenda has been dropped. Completely. And, ironically, as Britain continues to teeter along the brink of recession.

Spend a moment looking at those two documents and then tell me Cameron’s long-term critics weren’t right. Cameron’s environmental credentials have been exposed as the cynical exercise in hoodwinking they always were.

This should ring alarm bells across the South East, and particularly in Basildon and Thurrock, where the threat to our green spaces and natural environment is ever-present. With DP World’s recent announcement that they will be deepening the Thames to allow the largest cargo ships in the world to dock at the proposed London Gateway port, voters should now be clear that making sure developments like this – which are important for jobs and regeneration – don’t wreck our environment is not a priority in any way for Conservatives.

Back in October last year, at the Tory conference, Cameron called for more leadership on the environment:

“And to be British is to have an instinctive love of the countryside and the natural world. The dangers of climate change are stark and very real. If we don’t act now, and act quickly, we could face disaster.

Yes, we need to change the way we live. But is that such a bad thing? The insatiable consumption and materialism of the past decade, has it made us happier or more fulfilled?

Yes, we have to put our faith in technologies. But that is not a giant leap. Just around the corner are new green technologies, unimaginable a decade ago, that can change the way we live, travel, work.

And yes, we need global co-operation. But that shouldn’t be difficult. It just takes leadership, and that’s what we need at the Copenhagen summit this December.”

By contrast, a recent survey of Tory PPCs by ConservativeIntelligence (!) revealed what looked like a shocking gulf in thinking between prospective Conservative MPs and David Cameron’s leadership team. Reducing Britain’s carbon footprint was their lowest priority. Even protecting the English countryside from over-development, something Tory councillors have been preaching for years, was way down the list of priorities.

Then, following ‘Climategate’ and the sceptics’ even more outrageous and very public manipulation of scientific evidence (i.e. flatly denying it), public opinion has shifted on global warming. The BBC recently reported a drop of 8% in the numbers believing it is taking place.

Does Cameron show the leadership he demands, attemting to lead public opinion rather than follow it? No, like his candidates, he limps on behind, dropping environmental commitments that might dent his chances.

When it comes to the environment, David Cameron has been playing us for fools for a long, long time. His environmental commitments were just the latest in a long line of rebranding exercises, designed to get votes by saying whatever people want to hear.

The 75% of people who understand global warming is taking place should stop giving him and his party the benefit of the doubt and take a long hard look at the evidence.

Cameron and the Conservatives cannot be trusted on the environment.

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Cameron’s Conservative Party, Con-coctions and Torydiddles: Anger as Tories increase teen pregnancies (The Fib List No. 2) #toryfail

In a decimal point slip of breath-taking ineptitude, David Cameron’s Conservative Party proclaimed an increase in the number of teens getting pregnant in Britain’s most deprived areas that was hugely in excess of the official figure.

Yesterday, the Tories published a document on Labour’s “Two Nations” that, as well as serving as a vehicle for cribbing Lib Dem policy such as the pupil premium, loudly proclaimed that 54% of Britain’s poorest teenage women became pregnant before the age of eighteen. The document, issued in David Cameron’s name, laid responsibility for this 54% increase squarely on the shoulders of Gordon Brown and his Government.

The actual figure is 5.4% – and this latest row comes just ten days after the Tories were lambasted by Sir Michael Scholar, the head of the UK Statistics Agency for misusing crime figures in a way that could damage public trust in official statistics.

So how did the Tories make such a stupid mistake?

The first question is did they? A cynic might assume this was a deliberate ploy, designed to fuel the prejudices of traditional Tory voters whilst inflating a general sense of outrage at the country’s moral breakdown. It would certainly fit with the apparent Tory habit of manipulating statistics for sensational political effect.

More likely, though, it was cock-up. In that case, one has to ask how on earth such a blatantly ridiculous statistic made it past the combined fact-checking powers of the Shadow Cabinet, their advisers, the Tories’ Parliamentary Research Unit (who I assume was asked to check it) and the Conservative Party Press Office – especially when David Cameron put his name to its foreword.

The frightening thought is that perhaps they are that out of touch with the country that they simply passed it over, shaking their heads as they collectively “tut-tutted”, assuming it was true.

An increase of 5.4% is nothing for Labour to be proud of.

Britain is regularly reported as having the highest rates of teenage pregnancy in Western Europe. The most recent figures for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) puts the rate of teenage births in the UK at 24.8 births per 1000 women aged 15-19. (Note – this is teenage births. Pregnancies would be higher – and this statistic does not account for births in teenagers under 15.)

A 2001 paper by Alice MacLeod, published in the British Medical Journal said:

“In England reduced rates of teenage pregnancy have been found to be associated with proximity to youth family planning clinics.”

The lack of access to proper advice would be consistent with a more recent YouGov survey for Channel 4 that found that almost a third of teenagers want more sex and relationships education.

The experience of other European countries, who have equally sexualised societies (and arguably more-so), but more comprehensive education about sex and relationships, is that rates of teenage pregnancy are lower. For instance, there has been controversy over proposals to end the parental opt-out of sex education in English schools once pupils turn fifteen (currently parents in can opt their children out until the age of nineteen), yet no such opt-out exists in most European countries. (There is an interesting comparative paper available from the National Foundation for Educational Research which, unfortunately, doesn’t include Britain, but does look at the way sex education is structured elsewhere in the world.)

Teenage pregnancy is an issue that needs tackling with proper understanding – firmly, calmly and compassionately. That isn’t achieved when you are electioneering from the campaign scrimmage, trading the misery of broken lives for the votes of “Disgusted of Tumbridge Wells” with utterly wrong information.

Concoction or cock-up, it doesn’t leave you with any confidence about the Tories’ real commitment to tackling social deprivation beyond their election re-branding.

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Kamal Labwani: parliamentary archives page #labwani

Since Kamal was illegally imprisoned by the Syrian regime in Adra Prison, in 2005, numerous of our democratically elected representatives have raised his plight in our national and international parliaments. I have trawled through the websites of the UK Parliament and the European Parliament to consolidate the various representations in one place. I have also linked again to the petition running on the Number 10 website.

Some of you may wonder why I bother.

To some, Kamal is just one more unfortunate political progressive caught on the wrong side of an unreconstructed Middle Eastern dictator.

Not to me.

I bother because he is an artist, a philosopher, a radical and a Liberal.

Most of all, though, I bother because he is my friend.

Please take a look at this parliamentary archives page and be grateful for our own freedoms and democracy.

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Syria and Human Rights in the European Parliament, September 2009 #eu #syria# labwani

I don’t suppose I am alone in not paying much attention to what our representatives say in the European Parliament.

It is a mistake not to. Trawling through the archives I found the text of a debate from September last year in which the cases of Muhannad Al-Hassani, Kamal Al-Labwani and Anwar Al-Bunni are all referenced.
Take a moment to read it and realise that there is a point to what these people do – and we should be supporting them in their efforts.

Kamal, Anwar and Muhannad need us to.

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Eva Sajovic’s “Be-Longing”: Workshop information #gypsies #travellers #roma

News of two workshops being run at Eva Sajovic’s “Be-Longing” exhibition at 198.

Workshop with Delaine Le Bas – Saturday 13 February 2010, 12-5pm

Delaine Le Bas is part of the UK Romany community. In her works she explores many of the experiences of intolerance, misrepresentation, transitional displacement and homelessness that the community continues to experience. She uses multi media creating installations that include performance and music. Le Bas’ work was included in Paradise Lost, The First Roma Pavilion, Venice Biennale 2007; Refusing Exclusion, Prague Biennale 3, Prague 2007; Living Together, Museo De Arte Contemporeanea De Vigo, Spain, 2009 (curated by Emma Dexter and Xabier Arakistain). Her most recent exhibition was Foreigners Everywhere, with Claire Fontaine, Karl Holmqvist and Damian Le Bas at Dvir Gallery, Tel Aviv. She is included in Sixty: Innovators Shaping Our Creative Future by Thames & Hudson. Delaine Le Bas is represented by Galleria Sonia Rosso, Turin and Galerie Giti Nourbakhsch, Berlin.

Delaine is inviting people to join her for a workshop to create a piece for the gallery window cabinets, exploring the themes of Eva Sajovic’s  “Be-Longing: Traveller’s Stories, Traveller’s Lives”:  BELONGING, IDENTITY, MIGRATION, COMMUNITY, DIASPORA.

Delaine is asking participants to bring objects and images related to these ideas to contribute to the installation that will be created at the workshop.

See more examples of her work on Flickr.

The Role of Photography and Media in Challenging Stereotypes and Prejudice when Representing Gypsy, Traveller and Roma Communities – Wednesday 17 February 2010,7-9pm

This seminar will be chaired by leading  Gypsy Journalist Jake Bowers.

After growing up on the road as one of 17 children, increasingly hostile public attitudes and the impending arrival of the first of his three children pushed him into a more settled life. He now runs the Gypsy Media Company, providing education about Gypsies and Travellers through media, and presents Rokker Radio, a BBC programme for the travelling community.

With:

Resonance 104.4 FM

Delaine Le Bas

R Point

Michael Cleere

Sarah Butler

And others including people from http://www.oicd.net/

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Dr David Kelly – Norman Baker’s chilling book #iraq #davidkelly

The Strange Death of David KellyWith the Chilcott Inquiry proving a much more exacting process than many of us imagined it might, curiosity provoked me to buy a copy of The Strange Death of David Kelly by Norman Baker MP. Norman Baker stepped down from the Lib Dem front bench after the 2005 election, despite the offer to continue as Environment spokesman, so that he could spend time investigating the circumstances surrounding the sudden death of the United Nations’ pre-eminent expert on weapons inspections.

My curiosity was also piqued by the news that emerged earlier this year that Lord Hutton had requested a gagging order of 70 years on documents relating to Dr Kelly’s death, including the post-mortem reports and photographs. His inquiry was widely condemned at the time as a white-wash. I remember seeing the size of the report, watching MPs responding to its conclusions as presented by Tony Blair to the House of Commons,  and wondering how on earth they could make any sense of something so vast, with so much evidence, in the sort amount of time available to them to prepare for a government statement. Speaking to the BBC on 26 January 2010 about the gagging order, Norman Baker was typically forthright:

“It’s astonishing and unheard-of for material of this nature to be hidden away for any length of time, let alone 70 years.

Coroners’ inquests are held in public. Lord Hutton’s inquiry was unique in its format and unique in requesting restrictions of this nature.

His statement today undermines the validity of his own inquiry and gives further justification to the case being made by many for a proper inquest to be held into this most public of deaths.”

Writing in the Daily Mail on 25 January 2010, Norman Baker was even more blunt:

“Now we learn that evidence which was not presented at the inquiry has been locked away for 70 years – and this inquiry, remember, was to subject Dr David Kelly’s death to public scrutiny.

How could Lord Hutton have got it so wrong?

The reality is that his inquiry was fixed by Blair and his cohorts to produce the right result. If you put down the tracks, that’s the way the train goes.”

Think back seven years, to the frantic stories over the validity of the “dodgy dossier”, or to the earlier dossier with its claims that Iraq could deploy weapons of mass destruction in just 45 minutes. Think back to the surreal reports that Dr David Kelly had been found dead, just two days after he carefully and professionally gave evidence to the International Affairs Select Committee.

It seems like a lifetime away.

Seven years later, out of the Helleresque maelstrom of torturous logic twists that characterised so much of the political conversation at the time, it is easy to sweep this under the carpet of history and wait for it to quietly disappear. Commentators and analysts help push the subject to the margins, keen to avoid attracting career-hindering labels. A knowing journalistic smile places those who ask difficult questions in the company of loony conspiracists and authors of badly-formatted underground websites, moments before the jingling traffic report is read and the story is forgotten. Despite even Baroness Scotland writing to Sir John Chilcott to request that the inquiry include the death of David Kelly, a quick search of the transcript of evidence given by Tony Blair to the Chilcott Inquiry reveals David Kelly’s name doesn’t occur once.

As Norman Baker reminds us, we like to think that unpleasant things like political murder don’t occur in Britain.

So what of Georgi Markov?

What of Roberto Calvi?

What of Alexander Litvinenko?

If you are not going to buy the book, you can read a summary of the many questions in this article published by Norman Baker in the Daily Mail in October 2007.

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Lord Hanningfield: suspended from Conservative Party; resigns as Leader of Essex County Council; faces criminal charges #essex #conservatives #hanningfield

Paul White, known to most as Lord Hanningfield and leader of Essex County Council, is to face six criminal charges under Section 17 of the Theft Act 1968 (Section 17 is the part of the Act that relates to “false accounting”).

He, along with three Labour MPs (Elliot Morely MP, David Chaytor MP and Jim Devine MP), have been summonsed to appear at the City of Westminster Magistrates’ Court at 2pm on 11 March 2010. The maximum sentence that could be applied under Section 17 is seven years’ imprisonment.

As these cases have been investigated by the police, the authority responsible for prosecuting is the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). Interestingly, although defence lawyers for those charged have raised the issue of Parliamentary privilege, the Director of Public Prosecutions Keir Starmer QC is clear in his statement that “the applicability and extent of any Parliamentary privilege claimed should be tested in court”.

Parliamentary privilege is an ancient privilege granted to parliamentarians, however the extent of its protection is both widely misunderstood and fiercely contested. When the Speaker made a statement to the House of Commons on 3 December 2008, regarding the arrest of Damian Green MP and entry into his offices, he reminded Members of Parliament  that, according to Erskine May (Parliament’s authoritative companion guide to procedure), parliamentary privilege has never prevented the operation of the criminal law. He also restated the position of the Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privilege in its 1999 report that “the precincts of the House are not and should not be ‘a haven from the law’”.

In respect of the specific charges against Paul White (Lord Hanningfield), Keir Starmer QC said:

“The charges allege that between March 2006 and May 2009, Paul White dishonestly submitted claims for expenses to which he knew he was not entitled, including numerous claims for overnight expenses for staying in London when records show that he was driven home and did not stay overnight in London.”

According to the BBC, Lord Hanningfield has resigned his front bench position as Conservative business spokesman and stood down as leader of Essex County Council. David Cameron also requested that Lord Strathclyde, the leader of the Conservative opposition in the Lords, suspend the Conservative whip with immediate effect.

Keir Starmer QC’s closed his statement with the following:

“Can I remind all concerned that the four individuals now stand charged of criminal offences and they each have the right to a fair trial. It is extremely important that nothing should be reported which could prejudice any of these trials.”

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Mozes on Syria’s policy of “resistance”: regional politics from a Syrian perspective #syria #labwani #maleh #bunni #aqil

Winston Churchill made an elaborate but astute observation regarding Russia in a radio broadcast in October 1939:

“I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest.”

Step forward seventy years and it’s not too great a leap of the imagination to make the same observation of Syria – though you might argue that the Syrian national interest bears a close correlation to the interests of Bashar al-Assad.

N. Mozes of the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) has compiled a comprehensive series of media reports that quote Syrian politicians and officials on Syria’s evolving regional and global political relations. The article, “Syria Regains Pivotal Regional, Int’l Role – The Triumph of the ‘Course of Resistance’”, reveals a Syria that has grown immeasurably in confidence, with a determination to resist what it sees as Western interference in its regional politics.

If you are interested in the politics of the Middle East, I urge you to read it.

Syria’s diplomatic bravura is understandable in terms of the politics of local alliances and attempting to forge a distinct and US-independent stabilising force in the region, along Islamic lines.

It is also entirely in keeping with the egoistical nature of Bashar’s regime. Hitherto, Damascus has been regarded by many as Ba’athist in name rather than principle. However, Syria’s posturing and tightened grip on matters of internal security (in obvious violation of its civil and political rights obligations in international law) has provided Syria, as the only regional power run by the Ba’ath Party, with a beacon status with which to lead a foreign policy that is based on revitalised Ba’athist ideals of pan-Arab nationalism.

In my view, domestic suppression is part of the code of that diplomatic flexing, demonstrating in its publicly loud prevarication over the EU-Syria Mediterranean Agreement that it will not see its economic interests subordinated to Western ideals of civil society.  The careful switch of language regarding the US that Mozes identifies, from enemy to adversary, shows Bashar understanding that the West are desperate to engage Syria but that, at the same time, by maintaining a measure of distance he can enhance his credibility as the emerging leader of the region.

This, to my mind, can only have worrying consequences for those like Kamal al-Labwani who advocate peaceful and democratic reform of Syria’s politics. He and others would appear to be exemplars of Bashar’s policy of resistance. If Bashar’s goal is consolidation of his regional status, he will be in no hurry to release those detained for democratic politics redolent of the West (and Israel), except maybe on an exceptional basis to titillate those European politicians determined to spot reformist intentions in the Syrian regime whatever the regional political weather (and cost to their own diplomatic credibility). If this is the case, maintaining the international spotlight on their plight is even more important.

The fact that the EU are so ready to embrace the EU-Syria Mediterranean Agreement suggest that Bashar’s ploy of deft belligerence is working and the diplomatic pressures that those of us concerned about the fate of Kamal al-Labwani, Anwar al-Bunni, Hatham al-Maleh and Ma’an Aqil wish to see exerted will not emerge. The UK, like its EU partners, is in danger of being suckered.

I hope I am very wrong.

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Lest we forget: Holocaust Memorial Day 2010 – The Legacy of Hope

It was more made more striking by its ordinariness: a standard-issue Council desk with a signing book and cheap pen placed neatly in the middle and little yellow booklets strewn about. The foyer of the BasCentre bustled, but the space around the table was poignantly empty. Sitting at the desk, words failed me and I was unsure what to write. Everything seemed trite – a sentiment that couldn’t reflect the sheer horror of the Holocaust, sanitised as it is through the combined filters of years and internet technology and information overload.

Yesterday was Holocaust Memorial Day. Visiting the site I discovered that I was the 34,127th person to light a virtual candle and become part of the Legacy of Hope. Each year, Holocaust Memorial Day (known this year as “HMD2010”) identifies and develops a particular theme:

Holocaust survivors have played an immense role in bringing our attention to the lessons of the Holocaust. They speak of pain and loss, of strength and survival, of despair and their wish for a Legacy of Hope. They encourage us to look within and without, to be sure of our moral compass, to be certain of our choices and to use our voice, whenever we can, to speak out. They have translated difficult experiences to create a future that is free from the dangers of exclusion and persecution. They have passed a message of resilience and hope to the next generation.

Our responsibility is to remember those who were persecuted and murdered, because their lives were wasted. Our challenge is to make the experience and words of the victims and survivors of the Holocaust and subsequent genocides a meaningful part of our future. The aspirations of those who have suffered from the effects of the Holocaust and of genocide around the world, should inform our lives today. Their words can make us think about our own attitudes, our behaviour, our choices, the way we vote, the way we interact with one another, the way we respect and celebrate the differences between us and the way in which we build a safer future together. It is their example that can inspire us to greater action. We need to ask ourselves what we should be doing today to build a safer, stronger society so that the risk of the building blocks of genocide ever being laid is removed.

As humanitarian activist Hugo Slim says of the voices that speak out of tragedy to our shared sense of humanity: “We need to listen, for a change.”

Remembering is a responsibility on all of us.

It is too easy in this age of instant tragedy, when an earthquake or tsunami can be broadcast into our living room, to forget the sheer brutality we are capable of inflicting on each other as human beings. I saw the legacy of that insane cruelty in my recent work in Sierra Leone. According to the UNDP, Sierra Leone is the third poorest country in the world. I saw single, double, triple and quadruple amputees attempting to rebuild and live their lives alongside those who had perpetrated their agonies upon them in a vicious civil war.

The Holocaust is the ultimate manifestation of that evil that drives man to brutalise man.

To be honest, I struggle to get my head around the figures involved. Auschwitz-Birkenau was the largest Nazi killing camp, murdering approximately 1,100,000 men, women and children. In total, 6,000,000 Jews were murdered (almost two out of every three Jews in Europe), alongside 200,000 Roma and Sinti (Gypsies) and almost 250,000 mentally or physically disabled people. Tens of thousands of gay men and women, Jehovah’s Witnesses, intellectuals and political opponents were also murdered. They are the sort of stratospheric figures that become meaningless – and in that meaninglessness lies incredible danger.

Holocaust Memorial Day reminds us that genocide is not a thing of the past:

Genocide is with us today. It is another inconvenient truth that, in its hopeless enormity and our helpless inadequacy, we push uncomfortably from our minds.

In Nuremberg, in  Bavaria, the city closest to the village where I spent my first few years growing up, part of the monstrous unfinished remains of the Nazi Party’s Congress Hall (Kongresskalle) has been transformed into a museum of brutal truth: the The Documentation Center Nazi Party Rallying Grounds (Dokumentationszentrum Reichsparteitagsgelände). I have visited it three times and it has never failed to move me to tears. It tells the story of the rise of Adolph Hitler and the  Third Reich, the Holocaust, liberation and the Nuremberg trials. It does not flinch in admitting the culpability of the German nation in the Holocaust. It is a harrowing experience – but one that begins to make a dent in the inconceivability of such horror. Importantly, the centre serves as a reminder of the hatred and evil that was spawned in ordinary men and women on that very site.

It demonstrates, in terrifyingly precise detail, the truth in that phrase coined by Hannah Arendt: “The banality of evil”. (Her premise was, essentially, that it is ordinary people -not monsters – who are responsible for the greatest acts of evil in history. They accept what they are told by the state and so participate in even extreme acts because it is normal to do so.)

“First they came…” may be a poem that has become mired in controversy over its origins. However, whether they are the words of the Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller or not, they contain a simple and uncomfortable truth about our preparedness to speak out in circumstances of right and wrong that we should all reflect upon. Read them again and think about them – not with the eyes of knowing, ironic commentators who might claim these words are the refuge of the lazy and clichéd, but as if you’re seeing them for the first time:

“First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak out.”

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