All posts by Alan Storkey

Alan Storkey has stood in two elections as a Christian candidate, was Chair of the Movement for Christian Democracy, has written "Jesus and Politics" and has helped shape recent Christian political thought.
From War to Peace

FROM WAR TO PEACE: 1

Chapter One: Winning the War and losing the Peace.

Defeating Evil and Winning the Second World War.

            Winning the Second World War was perhaps the greatest war victory in history. Hitler and the Nazis were evil, dominating and terrorizing first the German folk, and then the other conquered nations into their own will. They were shaped in the cruelty of the Great War. They murdered and used people through militarism to their own self-worship. They wanted military domination, forced labour and unrelenting totalitarian control of people’s lives, faith, families, education and thought. In 1940-41 it looked as though they had succeeded in subduing Europe to their collective will. In their Genocide of the Jews, Gipsies, Homosexuals, Christians and other groups, their deliberate baseless hate was carried into extermination in an act which enhorrors us now. The Holocaust was perhaps the most cruel mass evil in human history. “Our will be done” bestrode the globe, and it was to slaughter and enslave.  It still warns of the potential evil of human beings, selling their souls to conquest and empowered by weapons.

            And, of course, militarism and its arrogance was their downfall. Those who use weapons perish by them. The attack on the USSR carried the false invincible militaristic hope of victory and conquest, but the USSR stood against them, gradually overcame the aggressor through magnificent victories, and, with the help of the United States and Britain, won the War. When the extermination camps were opened, the measure of the world victory over Nazi evil was established. The fanatical military conquest and subjugation of peoples was itself defeated. Millions of soldiers, sailors and airmen fought with valour to defeat the Nazis and many died heroically in the task. As the evil was great, so those who gathered against it were greater, to the blessing of humankind. This will not be gainsaid. But evil is more complicated than only that.

            The Nazis were not merely a lone political group. Rather, Fascism was a world-wide ideology against popular socialism and communism supported by the rich in most countries of the world. It was also a western economic problem; as we saw in War or Peace? The Nazis were supported by Ford, Thyssen, American financiers and a whole range of Fascist sympathisers in France, Britain, the United States and elsewhere and especially by the arms companies and other military interests. They were successful because of the military support they gathered around them. When the Nazis were defeated, this group quickly faded away from publicity around their support of Nazism, but they did not necessarily retreat from their capitalist, military and right-wing views and continued to have influence in the late 40s and fifties in many countries. We need to look at these people carefully, for in fact they helped generated the fully armed world economy.

            The Fascist evil was influential in many other states than Germany. In the East, Japan had similarly succumbed to intense militarism and a Fascist lust for empire, especially directed against China. It had hoped for a victory strike against the United States at Pearl Harbour as a result of its military dreams of domination, and then committed appalling atrocities in China, the Philippines and much of East Asia in imposing its military will. We note the inner link between military attack and atrocities, the latter are necessary to make military domination accepted and routine. Atrocities establish the dominance of fear, just as the crucifixion did in the Roman empire. This Japanese wickedness also generated its own reprisal in defeat and suffering as the Allies fought, bombed and then occupied Japan. Again, the aggressor became the one who suffered defeat.

            So, too, Italy, led by the bombastic, vain Mussolini, had espoused frog-marching Fascism, driven by the false ambition of winning a war and colonies in a pathetic echo of the Roman Empire. It, too, was defeated twice. First, it was overrun by the German Army unhappy with the Allied advance through Italy, and then it was defeated by the Allies. There were Fascist tendencies in many other countries, and the evils of control and kill were practiced by many of them. Thus, those who took the sword, perished by it. The destroyers were destroyed. In this deep sense, aggression was defeated world-wide, in this, we hope, greatest of all wars.

Yet, evil does not have simple boundaries. The Allies were drawn into, or were already inhabiting, their own evils. The history of Soviet Socialism was tortured. It had faced the Civil War within and after the Great War, with support for the Whites from Churchill and other western states. The birth of the USSR was bathed in blood and it continued with famine and purges, and a fear of foreign sabotage. Stalin, the steel one, had been undertaking internal purges against his supposed enemies which involved some 1.6 million deaths and he knew when Hitler came to power that the USSR would be attacked. The purged army suffered as the Nazis moved east occupying much of Russia. Gradually they were pushed back, but the Soviet march to Berlin was marked by retaliatory killings, rape and a reign of terror against the Poles and Germans. Stalin was totalitarian, evil, ruthless and facing a totally devasted state across a vast area. No-one in the West really understood the horror of the Soviet WW2 devastation; but the victors practised evil against Poles and Germans as they advanced to victory too.

The British also had their revenges and colonialisms, including the treatment of famine victims in Bengal. They were happy with revenge bombings to flatten German cities and Churchill was playing Roosevelt and Stalin to his own interests. Americans were handy with the pay-back gun and the nuclear bomb. When you fight a war, you are corrupted by it. Revenge, gratuitous fear and total war devoid of humanity become the order of the day. The good guys bombed Dresden and also killed to make those suffer by whom they had suffered. Evil destroys and then destroys again, if it is not stopped. At the same time, on all sides there were those who honoured people, fought lawfully and did their best for their enemies. Many, too, were trapped in the war by coercion, through fear for their loved ones and by where they were living. Others, through false propaganda, ideology, youth and ignorance became part of that which they did not understand. No-one really knows how long recovery from evil really takes.

One form of western evil was the Atomic Bomb development, the Manhattan project. Its scale was amazing, a project involving 130,000 workers and costing at least $2 billion in wartime dollars; it was a major new industry in formation led by Du Pont, Raytheon and other munitions companies, but directed by the United States’ Government. The bomb would vaporize tens of thousands of people, rip the flesh off tens of thousands more and kill others by radiation death. The actual accounts of those who suffered the attack are of an obscene destruction of friends, schoolmates, parents and colleagues in a city that was largely obliterated. The bomb was planned for the Germans or the Japanese. It was the necessary evil that would end the War. “Necessary Evil” was the name of the B-29 Super-Fortress plane used in the Hiroshima attack. When that kind of killing is a necessary evil, how far down the road to hell have we come? The complexity of violent evil, its virulence, should stop us all dead in our steps, so as not to allow it to weed the world.

There was another great dynamic of evil. Trauma carries evil across relationships and through generations. As the Nazis pushed east into Poland, the Ukraine and Russia they committed unmentionable atrocities. The suffering of the USSR during the Nazi invasion in terms of hunger, cold, destruction and death is unimaginable. There was also effectively genocide of many people in the region, so that German populations could move east and settle there. Then the tide moved the other way and the Soviets swept back with their own pattern of revenge. Rape as a weapon of war and direct physical attack were wanton during this period leaving the whole region raw with inhumanity. Poland lost 17% of its pre-War population, the highest of any nation involved, and perhaps 38% of the remaining population suffered PTSD in one form or another.[i] No-one can understand Poland who does not dwell with the suffering of that great nation.

Evil, if it is to die, needs the long healing of receding suffering, love, patience, empathy, carrying burdens, forgiveness and non-retaliation, and for many communities this was the abiding task from 1945 onwards along with physical recovery. There was the hope that the next generation, my generation, would be different. But would the defeat of the Nazis be the victory of peace?

The End of the European War – 1945.

            The War rushed towards a close. In January, 1945 in the East the Soviet army pressed through Poland and Hungary towards Berlin and liberated Auschwitz and the other extermination camps. The western Allied forces fought the last “Battle of the Bulge” in Belgium sending the German Army in retreat, this time without any resources. Hitler, whose mind was really dominated by losing the First World War, must have frozen on the fact that he had also lost the Second; his life hope was in tatters and the German people had let him down. The pathetic egomaniac was done. In the Far East the Americans were freeing Manila and the Philippines. On the 4th February, 1945 Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill met at Yalta in the Crimea to plan what should be done in Germany, Poland, the Far East, and by setting up the United Nations after the War, a justly famous meeting. Roosevelt’s journey there was heroic, because he was weeks away from death. In February, the push through the Rhineland began. The Allies moved through northern Italy Dresden and other cities were bombed, and fierce fighting took place as American forces pushed north and east. In March Allied forces crossed the Rhine, a Communist Romanian Government was established, and Soviet troops moved into Austria. On March 5th The Nazis started calling up 15 and 16 year olds. German subs sank daily. On the 22nd March the largely undefended final push from the West over the whole front above and below the Rhine into Germany took place. Hitler was now ignored. The European War was closing and the Nazis were ratting off to save their skins. In April US forces captured Okinawa, the island on the way to Japan. The Axis powers were imploding and the worst war in history would end.

            Then, on 12th April, 1945 President Roosevelt, the linchpin of the western fight against Fascism, died. The wheelchair President, the handicapped one, the thinking Christian politician, had had a massive cerebral haemorrhage. Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt probably knew it was coming and was calm. Graham Jackson, a Negro who had played his accordion many times for F.D.R., stood with tears streaming down his face, and played one of the President’s favourite hymns, “Nearer, my God, to Thee” one more time, and it was sure true now.[ii] It was a great job nearly done by one of the greatest statesmen of all who had fought Fascism at home and abroad.[iii] He was succeeded by Harry Truman, a short, no nonsense, small town untried man, three weeks before the war would end. It should have been Henry Wallace who, like Roosevelt, was a world statesman, but he had been removed from the Vice Presidency by the right-wing cabal in the Federal Government who were disturbed by Wallace’s attacks on capitalism. Truman would end the War.

Hitler, now a rabbit in a hole, committed suicide in Berlin on the 30th April, ending the thousand-year Reich nine hundred and eighty six years prematurely to the relief of everyone. Adolf was also not good at prediction. The great USSR push from the east met the American and British push from the West, and unconditional surrender took place a week or so later among delirious celebrations in Moscow, Washington and around the world. Victory in Europe, or VE Day, was on the 9th May, 1945 after nearly six years of European war. The humble George VI and Churchill, who, at this stage of his life, could write history in a million words or with two fingers, V-signed victory from Buckingham Palace, and people danced knowing that the War was over. The celebrations were heart-felt, and widespread, as the world recognized that this victory was a great good for humankind, and they also took relief from the end to a killing and destruction unequalled in human history, for some 85 million people had died through war and a similar number been injured.

The Fight for Peace: The Insight of Paul.

            Victory was ambivalent in another deeper way. The end of the war was a victory in war, but it was not necessarily a victory over war, a victory for peace. We can see this insight if we look at a two thousand year old Christian argument, one of the keys for this whole book. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians in its conclusion contains a description of the armour of God. It is often treated only as great Christian rhetoric, signalling the place of salvation, righteousness, faith, truth, peace and the Spirit of God in the life of the Christian. Though this is centrally true, it ignores the obvious Pauline intent in using this metaphor. Paul deliberately replaces the powerful kit of the average Roman soldier – helmet, sword, breastplate and shield with mere spiritual qualities of life. He uses the Roman method of fighting, standing in tight formation, to emphasize the Christian fight, but to fight against what? The passage is a deliberate demilitarization, a replacement of weapons, an insistence on a different way of doing things. Paul requires the understanding that “we do not fight against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers”. To his hearers and to us his words are really quite strange, because the Romans fought against people, as did all the millions of combatants in the Second World War. Of course, you fight against people. The point of armour and weapons is to fight other soldiers without being killed yourself. It is so obvious we do not usually even think about it. Yet Paul requires us to. He is requiring us to fight wearing the armour of God, but what is he fighting? Paul insists on not fighting against people and makes sure that the fight is not to be so construed. Christianity is not a fight against flesh and blood, but a fight against fighting; we love our enemies and see beyond the agenda of conflict. In every situation where we might resort to conflict against people, against flesh and blood, there is a longer view, an outlook which puts people on the same side, not in conflict, but in amity. Christianity breaks down the dividing wall of hostility.

            The phrase, “principalities and powers”, has been much studied and commented on. It has an obvious general connotation of systems standing against God and the ways of God. But the theme of the whole passage seems to make it abundantly clear Paul is talking about the armour of God in part defeating the armour principle, the militarism, of the Roman soldier. Rome was, of course, the dominant power, the principality of the era for hundreds of years and its guiding principle was militarism, the relentless sword and shield which crushed all before it. The Caesars, the conquerors, were their god. Paul’s statement of what we are fighting against is by no means limited to militarism, but it is quite focused on militarism. Paul is out to replace Roman armour as we would say, quite aptly, lock, stock and barrel. He is looking to the God of peace. We do not fight against flesh and blood, but we do fight against the principalities and powers which would intimidate and cower people into submission by the sword. The fight is not one of aggressor against others, but a principial one. Having our feet shod with the Gospel of Peace is to go in a different direction which is the true one for humankind. Crucial, as in the teaching of Christ, is not giving way to fear of those who would intimidate and kill. And so, in our long history, this war against fighting did go on beyond headline facts like Christians being thrown to lions and retreating to the catacombs. Roman militarism decomposed and its power lost sway. Over time the British Isles faced “Unrule Britannia” as Christianity came in peace, with missionaries, to Iona, Lindisfarne, the flat estuary of Bradwell on Sea and other places, but later the British then followed Rome rather than Paul and started hacking out an empire and singing crude patriotic songs.

            All of this is by way of addressing what was happening at the end of the Second World War. There was an understandable sense that the Allies had been fighting against the Nazis, the Japanese, and the full Axis powers and had defeated them. It was good winning against evil. They were fighting against flesh and blood and had achieved victory. We won the War. But this victory was not the Pauline victory against the principalities and powers of militarism and other such evils. Indeed, because weapons, armies and air forces had grown so much during the War into the world’s greatest industry, the deconstruction of militarism had become more difficult as so many were caught within it as their normal working pattern. Millions of soldiers happily went back to civvy street, but many did not, and militarism east and west was not going to disappear so easily. Not many saw the problem with Pauline clarity. Fighting the battle for peace and against the powers of militarism required a certain kind of insight and the new set of weapons that Paul so carefully describes. But 1945 was the best of all times to do it, and nobody, absent Roosevelt, was in place to do it. Let us dwell on the kit of peace for a while.

            There is the belt of truth, the truth that Jesus claimed when before Pilate as the basis of power in the kingdom of God in contrast to Pilate’s military power. Can truth be more important and powerful than weapons? Well, Yes. The truth is that war does not work, that fear is not a good way to run states and that killing people is wrong. Truthfulness before God is the foundation of all good politics. Yet, propaganda and the construction of false understanding had spread through Goebbels, had been radioed to populations, and was now loosed on the world as a systematic direction of thinking. Those who wanted to compel people to think their way were trained up. So, the victory over Propaganda was won, but also lost. We are to buckle on the breastplate of righteousness, or right, law-abiding and just living. Can that be the basis on which society functions rather than fear of the sword? Well, Yes. It is far more efficient. Indeed, no society can function without its law-abiding people. It gives the best state that has ever been devised. Law-abiding democracy was entering its golden era, but still the swords would proliferate. We can wear the Good News of Peace on our feet, bringing peace wherever we go, rather than war. Christians took off on missionary journeys rather than patterns of conquest. The great Geneva Disarmament Conference of 1932 was nearly successful for peace, and meeting on the road and shaking hands is a great way to live. We can have immigrants and emigrants, holiday visitors and hotels, rather than conquering armies. Invade France or have a holiday in Paris? Take your pick. So, we fight the soft fight for peace. But it did not really win in 1945. Within months we were into the Cold War. And we take up the shield of faith. When tension, quarrels, misunderstanding and opposition occur we can see through to resolution and concord and even to the Lamb on the throne, the Christian vision of where history will go. The Lamb on the Throne? The slain one was not defeated. There were to be wars and rumors of wars, and plagues, but also the healing of the nations. So, we have faith in the Lamb on the throne and little bits of faith for peace in our daily lives to build and not break down. Faith can move mountains. Then, deep cutting under the whole conception of conflict lies the Christian understanding of salvation – the helmet of salvation. With war, evil is always on the other side, and we construct the self-righteousness which justifies hatred and violence, but when we all wear on our heads the knowledge of our sin, our need of forgiveness before God and its gift to undeserved grace to us, the confession of our faults and the peace with God which banishes hostility, then wars will cease and nation will speak peace unto nation. So, there is another way, another kit for fighting fighting, and it is quite ordinary and cheap. As millions of soldiers left the battlefields and went home to cups of tea and precipitating a baby boom, they knew something of it, but its Christian fullness was not told and many did not dwell with the Spirit of God and pray the prayers of peace which would bring about the full healing of the nations. Blessed are the peacemakers, said Christ. We have to make peace. And there was opposition, stubbornness, the arms industry, the militarists, the secret service people and they did their thing and knew how to be in the right position. They were dressed in militarism. Nor was the War fully over. There was a civil war in China, trouble in Vietnam, the early shivers of the Cold War. Calculations about weapons carried on dominating world politics. The Pauline lesson was unlearned; the full fight for peace did not take place. We still need a World War For Peace fought with these weapons, and we are going to have it. But in 1945 War was not defeated.

The “Super-powers”? 

            So, the world hung at the end of a cataclysmic conflict looking where it should go. We, knowing the actual path it took, often presume that it would be like this, but perhaps it need not so have been. Indeed, it was stacked the other way. At the end of the Second World War there were two world “superpowers” – the USSR and the US. Really there was only one. The GDP of the American Economy was four times the size of the USSR and it had increased by 184% between 1938 and 1945. The other economies were UK 115%, France 54%, USSR 96%, Germany 88%, Italy 65% and Japan 85% of the 1938 figure. But the US and UK were the dominant military powers. Neither Stalin or Roosevelt had any real interest in external military aggression. The Nazis by attacking the USSR and Japan by attacking the US at Pearl Harbour set up their involvement in the War. Both these great states were reluctant fighters. Indeed, Hoover, Roosevelt and the Soviets were avid for peace and disarmament at the Geneva Conference in 1932. Thus, the major allies had arrived as superpowers without immediate rancour against one another. Both countries armed against a known and obvious aggressor when they had to rather than initiating their own militarization.

The further irony was that neither the USSR nor the United States had any need for aggression or military conquest on several major counts. Both powers had vast tracts of space which could be taken up by immigrants or expanded populations; they of all countries were not looking for more living room or conquest of territory. Second, they both had mineral and agricultural resources beyond what they could exploit already on their own domain, and development of these was the priority, unlike little Britain, or Belgium. Third, they were both preoccupied with internal economic reformation – the United States since Roosevelt’s New Deal in 1932 and the Soviet Union through the Five Year Plans. In addition, the USSR, the nation that suffered on a vast scale the devastation of war, had to rebuild with desperately reduced resources and manpower. It was a nation on its knees. Finally, both were seen as invincible after the Second World War and the victories each had achieved in that War meant they were unassailable for decades. The aggressors Germany and Japan had been more thoroughly defeated and had internalized that defeat more thoroughly than in 1918; for them war was unthinkable. The USA and USSR had no conceivable rivals on the planet and were separated by thousands of miles from each other. For all these reasons in 1945 they had no need of weapons or armies and could relax from militarism for the forseeable future. Indeed, as we shall shortly see, they nearly decimated their forces and proceeded on this path of domestic reconstruction. The only hope for militarism was that they could be pitted against one another.

Yet, the USSR and the USA had become vast military states. But even if you walk backwards into being a superpower, the direction of your walk is towards militarism, and the word “superpower” had arrived. William Fox wrote a book, The Superpowers: The United States, Britain and the Soviet Union — Their Responsibility for Peace. It was written in 1944, coining the word and identifying the problem in the title. Britain did not really count; there were the two. How can superpowers, based on military might, be responsible for peace? The philosophy of Nietzsche with its emphasis on power as the formative drive in human history had inhabited Fascism, especially in Germany. Yet, those who fought Fascism were now also used to thinking in terms of divisions, hundreds of bombers, tanks, guns and deaths. Fascism had been, and would continue to be, part of the philosophy of the West. We believed in freedom and democracy, whatever they meant, but power, military power, was still in the driving seat. The calculus of military power had been practised by thousands of leaders in outcomes across the globe and they could not easily forget their modus operandi. They were trained in and used to military power as the currency of human affairs, and it was going to be difficult for them to stop the old ways. So, the world sleep-walked towards the idea of the “Superpowers” without much thought about what that move entailed and perpetuated the vast manufacturing military machines the greatest war of all had constructed. Military might trundled on, even when billions of dollars of military equipment was becoming useless, because it was not decisively faced and a few powerful people had a vested interest in it. We shall look at the detailed history, but always this was the underlying failure in the narrative. Though the argument for disarmament, untried in 1932, was as strong, and even stronger, militaries around the world, and especially in the States, had a vested interest in all the aspects of their trade – weapons, war, domination, rivalry, threats and the military establishment – and especially in the US it came to be in control, not automatically, but because the power brokers did their work. 

[i]           Eur J Psychotraumatol. 2018; 9(1): 1423831

[ii]               http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/fdrdeath.htm

[iii]              See War or Peace? Ch. 21 especially.

General, Personal

Hitch-Hiking Round Europe with Colin Wills 1961 and 1962

(Incomplete)

For two summers Colin Wills and I hitch-hiked around Europe, the first one to the Adriatic Coast via Germany and Austria, and the second down through Italy to Greece from Brindisi and back through Yugoslavia, Venice, Switzerland, Luxembourg and home. The years were 1961 and 1962 when we were entering the Upper Sixth and after A levels at the CNS in Norwich. We both stayed for a third year at the CNS before Cambridge, Colin to do Science and me to do Economics

Colin had a good cultural nose musically and artistically and we used guides to find art galleries, other sites, the normal tourist stuff and the history of the area. Usually we visited free, low price or student price places weighing what we could afford. We hitched, or walked, with a rucksack, medium size, using Youth Hostels for accommodation. Youth Hostels in Europe had a good reputation. You got an international Youth Hostel Card, and they were great places to stay. Our Mums had made cotton sleeping bags which we slept in and there were clothes, washing stuff, maps, passport, water holder, cup, plate and cutlery. Money was in a belt Mum made, safe away and really we travelled quite light.

The trips lasted five and then six weeks. I think I/we took about £35 for the first one and a bit more for the second one. We rationed ourselves effectively and did not have any financial crises. On the second trip we booked a train to Köln and a night in the hostel to get underway fast and travel further south.

The politics of Europe was quite settled before the Berlin Wall. Kennedy was President and Macmillan Prime Minister. There was some gratitude for Britain’s role in WW2 and so hitching with a union jack was supposed to be easier, except in France which had the reputation of being slow for hitch-hikers, so we went SE rather than into France and Spain.

We got on well together, discussed what to do and decided, always had a lot to think about and absorb, the hitch-hiking was reasonably successful and easy and they were both good, heathy, relaxing holidays where we learned a lot. We had some French and German from School and muddled through in language terms, partly relying, sadly, on those who spoke English and trying to pick up the basics in Italy and elsewhere.

THE FIRST TRIP.

We set out from Lowther Road, waving goodbye to Mum and Dad, walked down to the Ipswich Road and hitched to Harwich. Our parents let us go and did not dump their worry on us. We went towards Germany. I’d already hitch-hiked in the Netherlands earlier and we were aiming to get down into Germany. We’d had a school trip to Goslar earlier, and so it was not completely new. One constraint was that you could not hitch on autobahns, and so other routes might be less direct.

We headed for the Rhein, and really missed a lot travelling through with glimpses of Heidelberg and its university up on the hill, and the first place we really stopped was Stuttgart. We were learning the process. The YH was good. We went to the old and new gallery. In the old one I remember the Durer looking at you and in the new one seeing the early 20th century German ones for the first time. I remember Kurt Schwitters for some reason.  Stuttgart looked modern, newly built and a different style to back home.  I’m not sure whether we worked out that it was because we had bombed it. From Stuttgart we went on the Ulm and for some reason were committed to climbing the Cathedral Tower to get a magnificent view of the place and we were at home in Germany, but moving fast. Colin on the whole took the lead and was keen on Salzburg and Vienna probably for musical reasons. We hitched along the main Augsburg, Munich road, round Munich, aware of what we were missing, and on towards Salzburg.  I think we stopped off at Rosenheim, with the final walk to the Youth Hostel. The YHs were friendly, clean, you could always get information, knowledge, link up with folks. It was a great system of international friendship and we enjoyed it from the start.

The move over the border into Austria to Salzburg was easy and we booked in the YH for two nights with a day’s sightseeing. Colin did obeisance at Mozart’s birthplace, but I don’t think we could afford to go in and we wandered around the old city soaking it in. It was where we began to get a feeling of travelling back in time as well as down through Europe. Was this eighteenth century or what? Working out what cities were then. Then we moved on again to Vienna, aware we were approaching something big. Through Linz, aware we were picking up the Danube. Vienna you could get a grasp of through the ring and where everything was in relation to it. We looked at trams, coffee houses, the great imperial housing, information on Viennese figures. We had time. I think three days sightseeing and now knew what we must see. The Domkirche, total medieval Gothic vertical praise. We had to go to the Albertina, Belvedere, where I think we just walked up to and looked through the doors and windows. Lots of places you could get in free or reduced with a YH Card, but not there. Colin focussed on Mozart and Beethoven while I majored on Durer, especially the glory of God small clump, Rembrandt, the Blauer Reiter and others beginning to emerge. We got a feel for the Austrian Empire, saw Freud and other figures and home and a lot of important people in stone riding horses. One evening we decided that we should go out to the Ferris Wheel in the Harry Lime movie over by the Canal. It was a slog to get there and back before closing time at the YH and when we got there it was just a big wheel across the Canal largely in the dark.

Our diet, established quite early was YH breakfast, a litre of milk each and a fried egg on bread which a lot of places did. Then we shared a loaf of bread and bag of fruit during the day with sometimes something else in the evening. It has basic, but healthy. No restaurants.

The plan was Vienna and Venice, but we were not sure about the rest. From Vienna we travelled south, knowing that hitching was more or less impossible in Tito’s Yugoslavia and we would have to catch a train. So, we hitched slowly to the border and eventually walked over it into Yugoslavia. I’ve tried to establish on a map where it was, but know there was a lot of wondering about what route would work. We walked across the border and eventually found a railway terminus where we could get a train. It was hot, midday. We were probably a Graz for a night. The railway terminus was a dead end ending in a complex network of sidings and some of Tito’s soldiers were there with less than nothing to do and they had this elaborate game where they were shunting trucks, moving points at the last minute, and changing places. It felt like the most relaxed place on the planet. Eventually we got a train, I think, straight down to Rijeka on the Adriatic. This was to be holiday and the turn around. We knew we could not go further on time and budget. On the train we were both dozing and tired and at one of the stations I vaguely saw a guy passing with rucksack and a union jack on it. I said to Colin, “Hey he’s English.” to which Colin’s response was, “Hey that’s my rucksack.”  At the next station the police were on the train and the miscreant disappeared. At Rijeka we had a short kind of Adriatic holiday. The highlight of luxury was being at the sea’s edge where a cold freshwater spring bubbled up into the sea where we put a bunch of grapes we had bought, so that we had chilled grapes while sunbathing and swimming.

Then we largely hitch-hiked round through Trieste to Venice. The Youth Hostel was on the  island, looking across to San Marco. We used the vaporettos and gondolas were out of the question. We did the churches and were beginning to know what we wanted to see. We walked and vaporettoed everywhere. I think we tried to go to the Bienniale but it was too expensive, but we went to the Accademia, got a good dose of Canaletto and others and were exposed for the first time, outside the National Gallery to Italian art. Of course Venice feels 15th and 16th century, and so it was another layer of history. Of course, Venice is always marvellous and being just across the water from the main square was awesome. Eventually we headed out west on the way home, a good look at Verona, passing by the great Italian lakes and the foothills of the mountains, and one dreadful night when we decided to miss out a Youth Hostel and kip down in the trees quite high up. After all it was warm in Italy. Except it was bitter cold and by morning we were gibbering. Through Basel, where we saw Rodin’s great Gates of Hell with the Thinker out in the open and then up through Luxembourg back to the Ferry over to Harwich,  a lift up to the Ipswich Road and walking home. It was a deep experience of Europe and its riches for both of us. Hi, Mum. There was the kindness of those who gave us lifts and the easy getting along together that was part of the L stream ethos. Colin was a great companion, culturally aware, thinking things through, learning and teaching, and low-key fun. It was a good trip lasting five weeks on under £35. Next year, we agreed, we’d push it a bit further. This was really just the first course.

We Can Disarm the World

ENDING THE WESTERN-RUSSIAN STAND OFF FOR EVER

Russia and the Ukraine.

It is sad that we not only do not understand our enemies, but also that we cannot, because we are so self-righteous and indoctrinated. Russia has been wronged badly and deliberately and we do not even understand what is wrong. Putin is a dangerous and at times wicked leader, but that does not mean he cannot be right.


The Russian Complaint.

Putin/Russia repeatedly say their concern is that Ukraine should not join NATO thus forming an aggressive boundary to Russia. We could, with a little thought set out below, understand that concern and actually see that the new NATO is deliberately creating this aggressive boundary. We could even end this silly confrontation.

When the USSR/Russia agreed to the unification of Germany around 1990 Gorbachev was promised by the United States and the West that there should be no aggressive forces east of the former West German border. It was clear why. History matters deeply, especially when it is this history.

The Perfidious West.

In WW1 German troops ripped through Russia, Russia lost the War, suffered horror and was only rescued by the final defeat. Except then Churchill as Minister for War fought his own vendetta against Communism, trying in his words to “murder the baby (Communism) in the cradle.” It was a long War and no-one could be trusted. Stalin saw Hitler coming and prepared for War again. It came in the great onslaught in the East when the USSR carried WW2 and beat Hitler. The USSR won WW2 especially at Leningrad and Stalingrad. As Churchill well knew the USSR saved Britain from invasion and carried most of the War while we deliberately slowly opened a second front. After all, if the Nazis and the USSR were fighting one another, why should we crash in on the act? By carrying the backbone of the War, with western logistics help, the USSR lost 25 million people. The US and UK lost half a million each. They thus suffered perhaps fifty times more than we did, and we never even think of thanking them for Winning The War. Indeed, in mass film, political, cultural propaganda, we insist that We (the US or UK) Won the War. That untruth the Russians know to be a lie. We blank the truth.

The understanding that emerged in the USSR under Stalin was that twice in World Wars Russia was invaded from the West with a total destructive invasion. It must never happen again, and consequently the USSR needed a buffer between them and German and Western aggression.

Worse than that, at the end of the War Churchill (and the US hawks) were gung ho for attacking the USSR, our ally, pushing around papers proposing it. The USSR had fought this heroic War against Hitler and were also an exhausted, devastated country. Stalin learned of the proposed attacks through his spies and saw the West was not to be trusted an inch. Later there were plans to nuke Moscow and the USSR.

We blithely ignore the fact that at the end of the War in the United States after Roosevelt’s death, when some ex-Nazi sympathizers were close to power in the US – the Dulles brothers and Forrestal – they together with Churchill and Truman in the “Iron Curtain” speech of the 5th March, 1946 declared strong military confrontation against Soviet Communism. Stalin was devasted. It was a mere six months after the end of the War – the USSR had lost 25 million, and as many injured, it had been a faithful ally fighting Japan in the East. It had just faced a cruel Russian winter with urban and factory destruction, shortages, famine and housing crises across most of its territory to defeat the Nazis. The snow had hardly melted. Yet Churchill persuaded the US President to resume his (Churchill’s) military confrontation with the desperate USSR to open the Cold War. Churchill, ousted by the British electorate, could resume his control of history. A Red Scare and the McCarthyite era made Communism into the new enemy. The USSR, who had been at the centre of winning the War, were treated like rubbish, ignored by Marshall Aid, while Germany received much help.

Our Cold War.

The Cold War lasted nearly half a century. Historians are clear it was led by the United States and allowed the expansion of the US military usually on the basis of lies about USSR military strength and a domino scare theory of Communism which was untrue in Korea, Vietnam and elsewhere. We hide the fact that the precursor to the Cuba crisis was the US lining up missiles on the USSR border, an issue which Kennedy insisted remained undeclared, or that the US regularly opposed disarmament moves. The Cold War show was mainly run by the US (and UK) military until the USSR collapsed under its own militarisation. The biggest propaganda bombardment in history was used to insist that the USSR (and China) were always wrong.

When the USSR collapsed, the world breathed a sigh of relief that the Cold War was over, with its vast costs, danger of nuclear war and worlds-wide polarisation. Gorbachev and Yeltsin offered an entirely friendly relationship with the West. They agreed to the reunification of Germany, which, given the history, was a massive concession, provided eastern Europe was not militarised, and the reunification took place. Germany, especially under Merkel’s leadership, has been no problem to Russia. But NATO has.

NATO’s push to recreate the Cold War.

In 1990 NATO, whose raison d’etre had been military opposition to the USSR, was out of a job. It had only a friend to fight. The so-called ideological confrontation between “Freedom” and “Communism” was over, because Russia was Capitalist now. It should have been wound up. We have to understand what a vast structure NATO was of command centres, logistics centres, communication, weapons systems and enough of these people decided to recreate themselves. Its budgets and organisations were cut but the highly paid staff there were not going to do themselves out of business, so they set out to recreate the Cold War. It took about twenty years. They recruited into NATO Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, Albania, North Macedonia and actively sought to include Turkey as well. Now anyone, however thick, who looks at a map will see that if a big “defence” organisation incorporates all of these territories surrounding Russia in a large ring, it is aiming at Russia.

There was, and is, one exception. Ukraine is still a buffer state, and now NATO aided by the US and UK Governments insists that “of course” the Ukraine should join NATO. This will allow advanced Western weaponry to be placed once again on Russia borders in case anything happens. It is, we hear, a right in a free democracy. It is of course, aside Turkey, the full encirclement military strategy of NATO which guarantees the confrontation on which they depend. And gradually it has been successful. Putin, reared in the Cold War, has become more remilitarised, autocratic and plays their game. He has his problems, but given the long perfidious military history of the West and its history of starting wars, his fears are genuine, as rockets on your borders emphasize. The failure to observe the 1990 understanding, spearheaded by NATO, has recreated a Cold War and Russia is worried about Ukraine and NATO. Boris, to keep the show on the road, sends a massive annoying flotilla of warships round the Black Sea.

The Stupid Superpowers.

Thus, this whole confrontation is an artifice to keep NATO people in their jobs, support the arms industries of the West and Russia, and keep people scared into military subservience. It is on any assessment a stupid way to conduct international relationships. Wise people, who saw through what is happening, could cleanse the world of this evil. Or it can grow to threaten the planet again. It’s our choice. As Jesus pithily said, “Those who take the sword will perish by the sword.” We should deeply heed his words.

We Can Disarm the World

WE CAN DISARM THE WORLD EXHIBITION. 7. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED

The Second Iraq War occurred after a long series of errors and failures in the Middle East driven by the aim of making it a big market for western weapons. It had oil wealth, and in the 1960s and 1970s the US and UK especially began pushing arms sales. The US had already sold lots of arms to Iran under the Shah and the aim was to keep some control over the oil supplies from the region.

We Can Disarm the World

WE CAN DISARM THE WORLD EXHIBITION. 3. WW2 HIROSHIMA

The Second World War was worst than the first. It was six years. World War One was the War of trenches. World war Two was the War of bombs. Its devastation ate up ten years of world GDP. 60 million or so died. The atrocities in the Holocaust and in the fighting were beyond facing. The evil which emanated from Hitler and the Nazis made it into the narrative of good and evil of the modern era. The Nazis were evil and we were good, or at least the US and UK were good and the USSR was Communist. We won the War defending Democracy and Freedom and saved the World. The lesson is to always defend against the likes of Hitler so that the War does not happen again.

Except this version of history is not true. First the USSR mainly won the War. It lost 25 million in the fighting. The US and the UK lost half a million each. The USSR faced the lion’s share of the fighting and the battles of Leningrad and Stalingrad broke the Nazi regime. Second, before the War the Nazis had widespread support from other Fascist groups and sympathizers in Europe, the US and elsewhere. US loans funded the Nazi militarisation

General, We Can Disarm the World

WE CAN DISARM THE WORLD EXHIBITION. 2. TOLSTOY WRITING RESURRECTION

The Peace Movements throughout the 19th century were strong and critical. They understood that weapons created conflict and were pushed by capitalists wanting profits from wars. The Napoleonic Wars had been horrific, but then in the 1830s and 1840s industrial iron and steel weapons got underway. The age of horses and swords was coming to an end, as the Charge of the Light Brigade showed. Tolstoy was, of course, the great chronicler of the Crimean War. War and Peace, often seen as the world’s greatest novel, is set in it. But Tolstoy also wrote directly of it. The correspondent’s direct reporting of war is devastating. He opens up the vanity of soldiering against the reality of what happened – men lying around dying. He described a soldier facing cannon who looked down at his leg, and suddenly it was not, taken off by a cannon ball. The failure of the Crimean War was written on all sides. Florence Nightingale tended the sick, often dying of gangrene and injuries, a basic fight against inhumanity. Into the Valley of Death. War was unheroic.

Tolstoy personally was converted to Christ. He understood Christ’s teaching and turned his life around. He quit elite Moscow society where he was the lauded, and went to live with the peasants. He became a pacifist, realising what the others were saying. He lampooned the military arrogance of the Kaiser. He rejected the world’s greatest novels – War and Peace and Anna Karenina – as belonging to immaturity, and he saw in depth Christ’s message of peace. “Those who take the sword perish by the sword.” There is this vast, self-defeating system. Murder is the most serious crime, but we teach our soldiers mass murder and say it is their highest calling. The Tsar is under pressure to call the 1899 Hague Peace Conference. Tolstoy, the follower of Christ, backs the Doukobors, a pacifist group which when called up into the Tsar’s army had a party and made a bonfire of their rifles. They were imprisoned in Siberia, but Tolstoy fought for their freedom and that they were right. Eventually, old and with TB, he wrote perhaps his greatest novel, Resurrection, and the royalties went to help the Doukobors migrate to Canada. This painting is of Tolstoy writing Resurrection. He held militarism to deep account in “How should We then Live?” and other writings and was part of 19th century pacifism. This was not just a withdrawal from fighting, but saw the whole system as a waste, immoral, destructive, impractical and a false religion of power. We have partly lost that clear, obvious conclusion, because the militarists have scared us. Tolstoy is for all of us, before World War One made the point even more obvious.

We Can Disarm the World

WE CAN DISARM THE WORLD EXHIBITION. 1 NOT HOME FOR CHRISTMAS

Those who go to War promise success. They pretend the War will work. They hype up soldiers, require patriotism, demonize enemies and talk up their weapons. The arms people have been working at this for decades. Buy weapons. They will solve your problems, give you an empire, make you great. But then it comes to this. World War One was a certain kind of hell, killing, injuring, deranging tens of millions. This painting shows a little bit of it.

General

THE WORLD’S BEST POLICY -COSTS NOTHING

Disarm the world by agreement and close down one of the biggest contributors to global warming.

ONE HUNDRED ARGUMENTS FOR WORLD DISARMAMENT.

1. Weapon based wars have killed two hundred million people in the 20th century.

2. Military encounters have produced more than 200m serious lifetime injuries.

3. Arms destroy normal trust in international and domestic relationships.

4. Military and War CO2 generation is intense – probably 5-10% of total world CO2.

4. WW1 was caused by the escalation of arms, not territory or any other factor.

5. Western military colonialism taught that arms rule around the world at horrific cost.

6. Soldiers on one side shoot soldiers on the other, and vice versa. It is a silly policy.

7. Arms companies sell to anyone, largely irrespective of the dangers.

8. Arms companies need wars. Their business depends on it, and they get them.

9. Wars have caused trauma, PTSD, on a vast scale – more than a billion in a hundred years.

10. Those traumatized also cause their own hate and destruction. Hitler was one of them.

11. Weapons have escalated in destruction through technologies of increasing horror.

12. Gas was an horrific death in WW1. We have disarmed the world of gas weapons.

13. We recruit soldiers who might die. The elite running wars usually survive.

14. We ennoble soldiers’ deaths through patriotism, but their killing was a waste.

15. Since 1900 about 5% of total world GDP has gone to the military. It produces no good.

16. Since 1900 c 5% of world GDP has been used repairing war destruction. A vast waste.

17. Militarism has skewed science and technology in largely useless directions.

18. Arms companies lied about Dreadnoughts to help start WW1. They frequently lie.

19. Arms companies bribed Japan’s military away from Democracy and towards Fascism.

20. Military colonialism undermined real free trade among the nations.

21. Britain taught natives militarism. Afghan tribesmen got 140,000 rifles before 1914.

22. Early arms firms – Krupp, Zaharoff – went direct to rulers and by-passed democracy.

23. Always arms firms promote fear, creating false antagonisms – the “Hun invasion”.

24. Rulers who trust arms distance from democracy and accountability.

25. Arms cost lots and Armies loot wealth the loser pays. Two wrongs.

26. Militarists promise to win wars. Always all sides lose wars; the promise fails.

27. Wars tend to be long. You are never home before Christmas.

28. Wars provoke retaliation. One side starts them, but they can last a century.

29. 1870, 1914 and 1939 are linked in German-French history. Trust broken, continues.

30. Arms are normally backed by the ideology, “We are Right”, when we are not.

31. Jesus’ emphasis on not fearing others is proved right. Weapons are fear not love.

32. In War families, marriages, parenting, childhood, education, joy and love perish.

33. In War communities, property, common wealth, infrastructure, history are destroyed.

34. In War children die before their parents. The Young are killed, injured, hurt, absent.

35. War destroys public health – 50-100m died in 1918-20 of Spanish flu. People are weak.

36. Arms companies really want wars. They are bonanza time for them.

37. Armies are always external, against others, and internal, against domestic opposition.

38. Arms involve the belief that if you kill them, the problem goes away. It does not.

39. Arms inflate the egos of rulers and nations towards, “My will be done.”

40. Disarmament, fair and trustworthy, is easy. The militarists aim to make it hard.

41. Military leaders justify conquering and killing by being infallible.

42. Militarism always rubbishes those they attack. It is inherently self-righteous.

43. Arms not used, build up and precipitates towards war. Arms always tend to War.

44. The World Disarmament Conference at Geneva in 1932 addressed armed conflict.

45. Accepting the Hoover Proposals for disarmament would have stopped Hitler.

46. They were strangled behind the scenes by the militarists and British Cabinet.

47. Since they became known as the Merchants of Death (1934) arms firms hide.

48. Arms firms bribe to sell their wares – everywhere most of the time. Arms are oversold.

49. Mussolini was backed by the arms firm, Ansaldo. Arms made Il Duce.

50. Hitler was backed by the steel/arms firm, Thyssen. Arms made the Fuhrer.

51. Hitler’s central vision was to fight. The Nazi/Fascist vision is fighting.

52. Fascism was a problem in France, the US, Britain and everywhere – pushing arms.

53. Appeasement involved British elite backing Hitler and the arms faction even in 1938.

54. WW2 was caused by militarists and the push for arms sales, not by failing to arm.

55. Often arms are sold on borrowed money. The US lent Hitler vast amounts to buy arms.

56. War debts often cripple economies for decades – Germany in 1918, Britain in 1945.

57. Wars generate active hate – murders, the Holocaust and other genocides.

58. A reasonable estimate is that WW2 cost the world a total ten years of economic activity.

59. Weapons have become mass killers – machine guns, shells, bombs, fire-bombing.

60. We love weapons and hang on to them to retain the power to kill in false belief.

61. Nuclear weapons – a “race” with Germany, a quick defeat of Japan, a US possession.

62. The UK and US deserted the USSR, who lost 50X more people and did most fighting.

63. At the end of wars, arms companies face a slump. So they engineer a new enemy.

64. Espionage around militarism has become a useless world industry wasting billions.

65. The Red Scares and McCarthyite accusations demonised the new enemy.

66. In 1945 the Fascists and Nazis went underground

67. Offence as defence is dangerous. Really you plan to attack.

68. The West is hypocritical. It will not fight one another, but sells arms for others to fight.

69. The USSR was not behind the Korean War. It was a national spat seen as a red threat.

70. The Vietnam War was a mistake, fought to fund the arms companies and Monsanto.

71. In war the truth suffers on all sides. Propaganda becomes normal and enemies evil.

72. In wars mistakes always happen – bombing, equipment, mass deaths

73. Disarmament cost nothing; it takes out the useless tools of aggression.

74. Military and nuclear costs explain most or all of states’ national debt.

75. Proportionate disarmament on all sides puts none at risk with decreasing threats.

76. The peace dividend moves all those resources from war and destruction to good uses.

77. We live in an integrated trading world. Th idea of international rivalries is daft.

78. The strongest powers fear the most, because they have departed justice.

79. Mutual Assured Destruction was MAD in the 80s, but we still renew nuclear weapons.

80. The arms industry got rid of Carter in 1980 and damages politicians it does not like.

81. 1% of nuclear weapons would destroy the earth’s stability, but we still produce more.

82. Arms for oil has made the middle east a war zone.

83. The US through the CIA has taught the world terrorism through “covert actions”.

84. We are now arming space – another futile escalation of militarism.

85. The arms industry destroys, yet we are backing it towards bigger destruction. Lunacy.

86. The new US/China/Russia “superpower” confrontation is silly and pointless.

87. The militarists control the media; so the truth about militarism is always suppressed.

88. Superpowers become rotten at the heart – leaders who want to be rich, exploit, kill.

89. Disarmament kindles friendship, co-operation, appreciation and understanding.

90. We must disarm the world if global warming is to be addressed – saves 5% CO2 min.

91. Disarming saves some 10% of world GDP – arms, war cost, economic relationships.

92. Disarm the world and military dictators and domestic tyranny will melt away.

93. Disarm the world and the United Nations will be real.

94. Jesus pointed out that we make peace. We must actively disarm the world.

95. Disarming the world will prevent nuclear superpower war.

96. Disarming the world will end refugees, failed states and lift up the poor and weak.

97. Disarming the world opens up peace for all beyond our understanding

98. Disarming the world allows truth to rule over force.

99. Disarming the world brings about the healing of the nations.

100. Disarming the world unlocks the door to loving one another.

We Can Disarm the World

THIS FULL REMEMBRANCE DAY.

This Remembrance Day we will once again be invited to live inside the Battle of Britain and be grateful for the armed forces that defended us against invasion, as though that was the typical form of British militarism. We will be expected to forget that the Battle of Britain in 1940, and the Spanish Armada in 1588 were the only times we have been threatened – twice in 950 years. It is time to take fuller stock of our long national military stance.

The background is not good. We see ourselves as defensive, but historically we have been the opposite. In the modern era we have invaded more than 80% of the countries of the world with cannon and machine gun to impose our will on them. The British Empire militarily conquered a quarter of the world land area, and over 400 million people were bent to our will by the gun. The British Empire involved mass slavery, the opium trade and vast economic exploitation, but we were genuinely convinced that we were the goodies. Actually, our aggressive militarism and cruelty has been widespread and prolonged; we attacked others and dominated them into submission.

We also started and pushed the industrial arms trade more than any other state, introduced the Concentration Camp and mowed down natives with the Maxim gun. By 1914 British arms companies, along with others, had stoked four arms races that produced the Great War, running scares and media campaigns, especially against the Hun. After the War we continued to back our international arms trade against disarmament. In 1932 the Tory Cabinet deliberately stalled the Great Geneva Disarmament Conference and the proposals of President Hoover to cut all arms by a third and eliminate the most aggressive weapons; backing it would have prevented Hitler coming to power. Then in the late 1930s the same Tory Nazi sympathisers, the Appeasers, allowed him to accrue military power and start WW2. British Fascism helped bring about WW2.

Since then, the UK, linked to the dominant US, has promoted the Cold War, opposed nuclear disarmament and sold weapons around the world including to many oppressive military dictatorships. Frequently our State stokes international antagonisms, ramps up fear deliberately and chooses military escalation. Nor is it over. We have just occupied Afghanistan for twenty years leaving it in a desperate state when we finally lost the war, but trying to blame the Taliban for its disarray. We currently parade an aircraft carrier fleet around and around the China Sea in a show of military bluster.

The great ritual of Remembrance at this time of year, while focussing on honouring the beloved members of the armed forces who have died and been injured, is really aimed at obliterating all questions around our militarism. We bully, create enemies, are aggressively nationalist, undertake wars, have shady allies, scaremonger, fail to support the UN and sell weapons to psychopaths, yet, it is implied, we are merely protecting the homeland. We focus down on our national losses, trying to ignore the 200 million who have died around the world in war in the last hundred years, the higher number who have been injured, and the billion or more who have been traumatized by war. We are supposed to blank the fifteen years of total world national income wasted by war in the twentieth century. But this time we will not be fobbed off, but face the biggest failure on the planet.

We are asked to give unconditional support to Our armed forces and Our militarism in these inarticulate acts of remembrance, but even that is distorted. In 1918 much of the world was convinced that the Great War should be the War to end all Wars through disarmament, but we are asked to forswear disarmament as the obvious way of ending militarism to keep the arms companies in business. But militarism has killed 200 million and growing. It always fails and produces another war, because arms companies need wars and for much of the last two hundred years they have been inside government and steering policy towards one war after another, as they are now in the UK. They have led us astray into bereavement and destruction. Soldiers coming home from war say, “Never again” or are already dead; now we listen to them, listen to all the dead, injured and traumatized in depth. The lesson of every war is not who is in the wrong, though we have been in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya and Yemen this century, but that war and its weapons fail us all. The US Superpower and the UK poodle have dominated the world since 1945 but only to expand fear, arms sales and dubious wars. They have refused multilateral disarmament, especially after 1990 when they had the power to lead it.  Patriotism is not enough; it is self-focussed. The world and its peace need our attention.

We will also remember that world disarmament is crucial to address global warming. Militarism generates 5-10% of all CO2 through armaments, wars, bombs and destruction. That must be cut out to save the planet. The military are keeping their heads down at COP26 pretending this vast waste does not exist. But it does, and is actually the easiest to eliminate, the lowest hanging fruit. We will be asked blinkered to glorify our troops and our militarism at the Cenotaph, a whitewash state ritual, but we can do multilateral military disarmament.

Indeed, given that the UN treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons was passed with 122 states in favour and 1 against, is now in force (and we are, with the US, disobeying it), World Multilateral Disarmament would almost certainly be accepted by an overwhelming majority of states, especially with US/UK backing. We only need to see that worldwide disarmament in five years is urgently required and practical for the planet. We will honour the dead in the only honest way through full world disarmament all the way to peace. World disarmament is far easier than the opposite in every way.

This year we will examine ourselves more deeply. It was wrong to attack Iraq and Afghanistan in 2003; we have devastated much of the middle east. We have worked on both Russia and China to assume the role of enemy that US/UK militarism requires if it is to be profitable and dominant. We play a big part in generating world tensions. More deeply, US/UK superpower policies have spread militarism and undermined democracy, leaving hundreds of millions of people with poor and corrupt governments. But we will repent and see it all.

This year we will remember them, we will remember all of them – all those who have died and suffered around the world. We will look at our enemies with honesty and recognize that often they have been wronged by us. We will recognize, as all good historians do, that mainly the USSR won WW2, not Britain or the USA; the 25 million who died in the USSR in their great battles against Hitler were fifty times more than the casualties of the UK or the US. We will repent what the arms we have sold have done and are doing. We will address the plight of those who are dying now through our wars. We will know that military elites and politicians do not die in wars, but ask others to, and hold them to account. We will face the devastation war has been on the earth and our fixation on making weapons and know it must end.

This year we will understand how Jesus words, “Those who take the sword perish by the sword” speak across the earth that militarism is the greatest failed experiment in human history. And we will weep and turn to the easy task of disarmament, for it is actually far easier to mutually disarm than to arm, unless you put the military in charge. Lancashire and Yorkshire worked it out half a millenium ago. Disarmed peace ends failed states, refugees, military dictators, wars, deaths, destruction and vast clouds of CO2 and honest people can do it. It is good for us that nation speaks peace unto nation. This Remembrance Day will address the task for which it was really set up – to disarm and end all wars, to bring about the healing of the nations. We need learn war no more, and we can agree to be ruled by, not the Lion or the gun, but the Lamb.

General

Establishments

Christians might do well to do some sociology. After all the Bible is full of it. One basic concept is “establishments”. They are people with privileges and patterns of control who maintain their positions in a range of ways. So, for example, we are used to the Queen being surrounded by soldiers, dressed posh so that we like them, but soldiers have partly kept the monarchy in place since William the Conqueror, except when Oliver Cromwell took over, and he was military too. But establishments are held in place by many factors. They can be impressive though buildings like the Palace of Versailles, or dress, or music, or statues or capital cities or fame. Indeed, the Tower of Babel and Ziggurats were probably the first establishments – the central group of people who will make a name for themselves. They normally, backed by military compulsion, establish themselves through law, property ownership, slavery and control of labour. The Norman conquest did the Doomsday Book to establish Norman property rights and people were serfs to part control their labour. Most societies through most of history have been establishments; in China the literati have been basic to its civilisation. So all of us should try to understand them.

Establishments are so normal that they shape culture, the way we see things, through most of history. In ancient Greece the slaves were eclipsed by Plato and Aristotle in the formation of ideas, and since then scholars, poets, playwrights, jesters, philosophers and religions have gathered round the political establishment, mainly the monarch. The Pharoahs, the Roman Emperors, the Doges in Venice, the Spanish, Indian, Chinese and British Courts carried the culture of the day. Shakespeare traded in establishment cultures – Caesar, Hamlet, the Merchant of Venice, the English Kings, Macbeth, Lear and the black Othello. So cultural formation, what is often called civilisation, is establishment culture, what the big people think. And the big people have time to think, because they have other people working for them, paying taxes and being servants. In the18th century the aristocracy had libraries in their stately homes and employed tame philosophers to think for them. We call it the Enlightenment. Most people in the arts rely on establishment patrons to fund their painting and they have often produced boring large sycophantic works which we move quickly past in the Louvre, Vienna, the National Gallery or stately homes. In all of this vast establishment culture lurks the question, “Does the Establishment possess the truth?” Normally, the Establishment answers quickly, “Of course, we do.”

And then there is establishment and religion. You have already thought of “the established church”. But that is not a big enough place to start. Often the gods have been the establishment. The Pharoahs, Dagon, the Caesars were gods, state gods. Athena in the Parthenon was the Athenian state. If the god, the centre of all existence, was the state, then it ruled, it was to be obeyed unquestioningly. We easily forget that in 1945 the Emperor of Japan had this status still, even when Japan had been defeated. So religion has been owned by the establishment throughout most or all human history, fused with the state and it has told us how to do religion with many bizarre outcomes. We have had gods of war, gods who keep the masses in fear. Many religious buildings, temples, are there to impress, to keep this great show on the road. Obviously, we have scarcely touched this great subject, but we must press on.

For establishments are self-important. They involve some people seeing themselves as special and looking down on others. The others may be slaves, serfs, workers, servants, the masses, ordinary people, hoi polloi (the many), the proletariat and so on who will supply the work and goods to keep the established elite in the comfort to which they are accustomed. Taxation is a part of this – taxation which then pays a servant class. The control of wages is similar. We now realise that the whole business of slavery and empire was part of an extension of this pattern around the globe. The Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, British, Belgian, French, Italian, Russian and German Empires involved constructing a vast pattern of domination around every continent to serve the elites of Europe and enrich them.

So this concept is quite close to the centre of human history, except it is not quite. It occurs in the Bible, but it is, so to speak, knocked off its pedestal and now we must consider how. Pharoah is establishment and the Children of Israel are slaves. But Pharoah is defeated and the Children of Israel are freed to live before God. They receive the Ten Commandments and are called to live by the law. Moses is the servant of God, and is sanctioned when he fails. The military is not important. The religious system is limited to a portable ark of the covenant and life is defined for all people as living in lawful equality. The distribution of land is roughly equal and slavery is forbidden except at the edges. Of course, this is a primitive society, but what we tend not to notice is that the nation-state of Israel is anti-establishment. God chooses the normally humble ruler, not the establishment. It is a minor nation. It wrongly chooses the route of wanting a king like the other nations and God’s prophets emerge as a continual critical commentary on the rulers and political establishment. When Solomon establishes religion in the Temple and accumulates chariots and horses and Rehoboam moves to slavery, Israel breaks up, and the later prophets are a continual commentary against establishment and its falsehoods.

Come the Gospels and Jesus thoroughly deconstructs the whole system of establishment. He will bring down the mighty from their thrones. The ruler is the servant. His yoke is easy. He ignores the self-important. The first will be last and the last will be first. God’s pay is equal. He is the friend of the outcast. Yet he is the ruler, the King of the Jews, the Son of Man, the Messiah, the actual ruler who will not even be defeated by the cross, that tool of Roman intimidation.  He is the ruler who has nowhere to lay his head, and the one who rejects control even when his betrayer is sitting with him. But this is not merely a reaction against establishment, but the business of all of us living the whole of life openly and truly before God and Jesus parables us into what that is like. The Good Samaritan is healthcare for all. We do not trust the sword. We forgive and mend relationships. We love our neighbours and learn that meek living is good news. The disciples, the learners are ordinary people, and, Jesys insists, the rulers must be slaves. Of course we are still trying to see what this great calling to humankind means, but it certainly means the overturning and withering away of establishments.

And the Church is compromised. Catholic and Protestant churches have long done deals with the established state. The churches trim their messages to supporting the State. God will give us the victory in War. The Archbishop crowns the sovereign. In return the church is established. In the Elizabethan era you could be fined sixpence for not going to church. Many churchpeople think, live, pray and vote in terms of the establishment. In the Trump era some American Christians tried to achieve a special US version of a subchristian establishment. But perhaps now things must be different. We cannot short cut on God’s way. The planet is being destroyed by the Western establishment, especially the capitalist one. We ordinary Christians have the task of unthinking all our habitual orientations towards the establishments we live in. For establishments just carry on. But the teaching of Christ, whom we follow as students, does not carry on. There may be two dozen establishments from which we must escape and new relationships which must be forged, if God is to be with us. Of course, God is with us, if we are humble and open, but we must seek to find, and destruction is stalking the planet. Substantially, it is destruction caused by establishments, and the meek, the non-establishment people, will inherit the earth. It is a vast unviolent revolution, bigger than all of us, to be done by following Jesus. Responding to what the Creator may be asking of us to conserve this exquisite earth requires establishments to reform or crumble. These levels of thinking involve exiting the status quo and Jesus insists on saying, “But I say unto you…”