Church and Society Articles, General

CAN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND SING FROM THE SAME HYMNSHEET ON GENDER AND MARRIAGE?

At the risk of inflaming discussion – oh what fun –  I want to suggest that the Church of England and other Christian groups are doing a poor job of discussing marriage and gender issues for reasons they seem unable to recognise and there is a different kind of debate which needs to open up.

First, English Churchpeople feel they are defending marriage between one man and one woman as an institution. Why? Marriage around the world seems to be a life stage reality for over 80% of the world’s population. We include co-habitation, which has to operate like marriage, and serial marriage which is failed repetition, but marriage is the basic model worldwide. The institution seems fairly dominant. Billions live it and it has obvious social and sexual weight which will not go away. We could defend the fact that the sea is wet, but to feel under siege while doing it is not rational.

Of course, the Churchpeople we are discussing would point out that in “advanced societies” (oh the error of that idea) marriage is often later, incomplete, casual, disliked or very mixed up. “Singleness” or being “unattached”, both slightly slighting ideas, are more common. More to the point, gay marriage, transgender relationships and all kinds of other relational arrangements are appearing on the scene, and we Christians, we conservative Christians, orthodox Christians, need to defend marriage against this secular incursion into Christianity, otherwise the Christian faith, the orthodox Christian faith is fatally compromised.

On the other hand, and Churchpeople usually have two hands, Christians are aware that they have not been nice to gay, transgender and other non-orthodox people. They have been put beyond the pale, outside, seen as sinners and badly treated, when the culture as a whole has become more tolerant and retreated from a kind of Victorian moralism which Churchpeople still seem trapped in. More than this, these non-orthodox people are often good Christians, people with thought and integrity and we love them.

So, the English Churchpeople have two hands flapping. One is defending marriage between a man and a woman, and the other is inclusive, involves new patterns of respect and welcome, and suggests there needs to be patterns of revisionism in traditional views of marriage and gender.

This little study suggests that there are errors within the Churchpeople on both sides and also in wider, what is called secular, society, on both sides, and four wrongs do not make a right. First, we look at the two Churchpeople positions.

The orthodox Churchpeople hold a view of marriage which is either sacramental or moral. The sacramental view focusses in church weddings, vows, indissolubility and the NT simile between marriage and Christ and the Church. It moves from marriage as a human institution to a churchy view. Given perhaps three billion married people live in marriages outside a Christian validation, this becomes a limited perspective. In practice it also becomes subcultural surrounding marriage with a load of church accretions among the worst of which was the subjugation of women in line with Jewish and Christian patterns (as well as Islamic, Hindu and other cultures) Marriage is not a sacrament and the sacrament idea is significantly over-egged by Churchpeople. But marriage is also not “moral”. It is actually social, a relationship, an institution, with a complex social character. To see this clearly, we need to re-examine morality.

Churchianity became moralist in two ways. First it became the Church’s thing to do morals, especially personal morals, while the state did politics and the capitalists did business. It was a kind of division of labour  in many European establishments. The moral people dressed in black. The Churchpeople were quite good as morals, mainly because the Bible is. Faithfulness works. Honouring parents does, even when they are failures. Honesty is the best policy and so on. So, there is good stuff here. But being in charge of morals is dangerous for any group. This is obvious when we look at Jesus’ radical critique of the moralists of his time who took on themselves the task of applying morals, the Mosaic Law, to the people – the Pharisees. They, and the law were taken seriously by Jesus, but his critique was devastating at a number of different levels. They were finnicky and missed the important points. They were behavioural and rule focussed rather than structural and strategic in what was wrong. They did not see things wholly before God. They did not see that all were sinners and tended to self-righteousness and they did not understand the centrality of love or that they needed to be born again. And, by the way, they did not practice what they preached and were hypocrites. Churchpeople may not be Pharisees, and there were many good Pharisees like Nicodemus, but the institutional danger is there, and has surfaced in a number of ways around sex and gender issues in the churches.

 The second form of moralism arises from epistemological issues. It grew out of the emergence of the social sciences in the 19th century. They, in order to validate their scientific status, adopted a range of epistemologies which were supposedly neural – empiricism, positivism, materialism, causal theory, behaviourism, historicism and others. Their academic success belied the fact that these theories of scientific knowledge were not neutral and did not allow the theory to be formed as it should. Their foundations were inadequate, partly because they were usually self-refuting or inconsistent, but especially because all human activity is normative and because they were supposed to be value-free. Gradually this modernist neutrality broke down in the late 20th century, but not before it has dominated universities and the human disciplines for more than a century. Crucially, theology, which became the only obvious Christian discipline in this view of the social sciences took up ethics/morality as its specialism, because the social sciences could not easily move from an “is” to an “ought”. Many Christian ethicists appeared, for whom the spectrum of knowledge was theology/ethics/world. The main problem in this vast act of cultural formation was that Christianity became cut off from understanding all the areas of life – politics, economics, race, nationhood, marriage, sex and gender – to name but a few, which actually fill the Old and New Testaments. Christianity addresses the whole of life before God and Churchianity only takes up a limited space. Ethics was thus disengaged from understanding all these areas of life, including gender, family, sexuality and marriage. Christian became amateurs.

These two failures led to the brittle and inadequate Church responses which have dominated recent decades and prevented an obvious Christian understanding and critique of what has been going on. Churches bought into moralism and some of its self-righteousness and they became “ethicists” carefully defining what is right and wrong either in a situational relativism or a rationalist orthodoxy. Recently, the Churches have tried to bridge this gap, as with the recent LLF initiative and studies, but it has no consensus of understanding around it and perhaps we need to see the big picture problem in which it is set.

The conservative Church people appear to be defending marriage as some kind of moral absolute (never trust the word “absolute”). They would die for it, or at least leave the Church of England for it. But of course, heterosexual marriage is not a “moral absolute”; it is an institution overwhelmingly normal around the world, which is facing attempts at gender redefinition, but which involves human fallibility at all kinds of levels on a wide range of issues. The problem is that Jesus did not seem to have any problems with human fallibility. He welcomed prostitutes, traitors, nutters, thieves, betrayers, aliens and scum into the Kingdom so that they could begin living in relation to God and on God’s terms, because all are equally important before God. And then he addressed them with a range of principles which opened up change through lives centred on God. Obviously, for all of these different people their subsequent journey would be complex, except for the thief on the cross; he just had to die. Yet, as the Gospels make clear converting to God had consequences for issues surrounding sex and gender. Sexual chastity, caring, cherishing, honouring one another and all the characteristics of love are there and are good for us. The tone for example of Paul’s letters to the Corinthians are pastoral and faith filled. They go for general principles. Let us dwell for a moment with that word pastoral. It is leading people out to feed on good food and grow, very different from the Phariseeism Paul has left behind. For example, he takes the Corinthian Christians through a case of incest into restored relationships. The conclusions of Conservative Christians are often fine, part of a rich pietist and holiness tradition, but when they are cast in a moralist mode, rather than in terms of social and pastoral understanding, they still miss the point and are disastrously tainted by a citadel mentality and somehow are out of touch. What are we to make of this?

Well, first of all, we face the fact that generations have departed from Christianity in the UK. They have not remotely thought about God, read the Bible, understood Christianity, been converted, see their lives daily in relation to God or live as Christians. A few percent go to churches. More important the BBC, newspapers, political parties, the media, the commercial sector, the educational and university systems, popular culture and consumption have deliberately marginalised Christianity for six or seven decades. It is not sinister, though it has often been unfair, and a lot of Christians have been sidelined for their faith. But in Nazi and Fascist regimes, in the USSR, in China, mildly in India and throughout the Islamic Middle East Christians are being persecuted in this supposedly modern world. Britain does not face this kind of persecution, but the outcome of people wanting to live their lives their way and not wanting the church to tell them how to live, for they, too, have swallowed a moralistic version of Christianity. Obviously, empirically, British people are not Christian.

It’s not even complicated. We have Boris committing adultery all over the place and producing kids here and there, and he does not want to go to church and be told to repent, although, of course, no bishop in a pointy hat would be so direct. Adultery and fornication is fairly widespread and so lots of people do not go to church for the same reason. Often too, they do not understand what happens in church; I too do not and I’ve been going for decades. The church has been docked in the sacred, a separated arena of incomprehensibility, which normal life walks round, except for a few million who know what the Christian faith actually is in some way or another.

But, I am goading you. We are talking about the Church again. What about the non-church ninety per cent? What do they believe? Of course, they largely believe nothing. They are secular non-believers, without faith. That is the official version, a state statement of faith in secular France. Yet, of course, that is fundamentally not true. That is the fiction. Everyone lives by a set of beliefs, views, a weltanschauung, their light, their thing, and the overwhelming faith in the late 20th century and now is in the individual, myself, to do it my way, to be happy, consume, be rich, be a success, a celebrity or just choose what I do when. We live in ego time. Consumption, preached by millions of “you owe it to yourself” ads, dominates much of this self-realisation. This consumption moves from bought things to experiences and states of being, but the self is central. It is a manipulated idol which has dominated public culture in our lifetimes. A load of corrupt priests worshipping Mammon use the ego to keep their money-making shows on the road, at least until Coronavirus.  “I did it my way” plays as the coffin slides out of view. Liberalism is the self in politics. Rights is the self in law, and utility and maximisation in economics. In popular philosophy, kids are constantly urged to “be themselves” without questioning what that self can be. It is so dominant that few dare to contest it. Self is what the British worship, however difficult that might be.

But it has probably, and this is where the debate begins, failed on an enormous scale in the West and elsewhere in intimate relationships. Of course, we now say, divorce, serial monogamy and multiple partner sex is “good”, because people want it for themselves and so it must be. A bit of romanticism hangs round stupendously extravagant wedding events, but marriage is about individuality and happiness. Except a lot of people are not happy in their relationships. Say 50% of US first marriages end in divorce and 40% plus in the UK. Subsequent marriages are more divorce prone and millions cohabit formally or informally so that they can break up with less fuss, because the relationship is likely to fail. Serial relationships without cohabiting are normal, and then, as we say, people move on. The great liberal consensus, dominant in all our institutions, does not allow this to be questioned. Indeed, in sociology, studying this stuff, the liberal individualism remains so sovereign and unquestioned that this cannot be failure.

But it is, often with serious damage of great significance, say in well over half of all adult modern intimate relationships. And all the other relationships will probably have a few serious problems as well. Millions are rejected, hurt, experience relationships which do not work, cruelty and domestic violence or know the inability of shared living. The most toxic forms have been brought into the open. Gender studies have shown that men have special problems, but the contributions of women to broken and abusive relationships are now appearing. All this occurs when couples have money, holidays, cars, treats and small families compared with Victorian families with many children, work down the pit and a day washing and drying clothes was a far greater pressure. It is relational failure off the charts, unquestioned, not circumstantial and of deep damage. Millions have retreated into isolation, game playing and as we now say, mental ill-health.

The generational outcome is similarly bleak. If, and this is part of the Christian debate, children “need” two parents, man and woman, who love one another to bring them up, then actually their lives a bleak. Many are being reared by single parents. Many individualised parents leave their kids to be brought up by social media. Parental levels of child contact can often be measured in minutes a week, and many children experience embittered relationships among adults and have to negotiate their upbringing. What sociologists used to call “socialisation”, a suitably secular term, is often a jungle loosely held together by school. We simply do not know what the outcome of this deep cultural change will be.

So, and this is the obvious Christian point, this direction in western culture – so strong that in the States supposedly Christian people back the arch narcissist Trump, want guns, the individual right to deny virus lockdown behaviour, and to do everything their way – fails because the idol, the god Self, will not replace God the Creator of all human life so that we love our neighbour as ourselves. Further, worshipping the self is just silly, about as reliable as trying to ride a rabbit. Jesus, as always, puts his finger directly on the pulse by requiring us to die to self. He confronts the idol and buries it. Why? Because self-worship is toxic, and loving the neighbour, the spouse, the child, the enemy requires massive ego shrinkage. Western liberal individualist culture has goofed. All that enigmatic Christian stuff about being meek, humble, repenting, poor in spirit and a sinner actually cuts it in life. We all get ourselves so wrong every day,we need resetting before God. We need to follow Jesus, not Sinatra. Individualism is no way to run the world, and we have not even mentioned global warming, wars, self-worshipping dictators, failed celebrities, addiction or being overweight. So, the big cultural debate needs to happen. This is where our intimate relational problems come from.

But, you rightly say, you have gone round the houses and ignored what you are supposed to be talking about – contemporary gender relations LGBT – and the church. You may say this because you want to ignore the big point. Now we need to unpick this Churchpeople polarisation. The gay movement has partly been defined in terms of being gay or lesbian and therefore needing the individual rights which they have lacked. This pitch is, in part, a biological formulation and obviously cast in terms of individual rights, for those are the terms of late western culture. Our concern is not to attack rights, or people’s self-identification – except to say that none of us in Christian terms is defined by our sexuality but by our full personhood before God and the word sex was only invented in the late 19th century. Rather, we can question whether social experience, rather than genetics or biology is not much more important in all human formation and social development including gender relationships.

When we do this, the shallow positions on all sides of the debate are exposed. There is the immediate point that throughout history gay communities have obviously been related to sexual segregation – whether in ancient Greece, Egypt, Islamic groups, public schools, Kings College, Cambridge or celibate priests. It is in part not a genetic condition, but a formed one. And here we look more generally at all of us. We do not fully understand the deep formative effects of parental relations – between parents and towards children – on gender and sexual formation in the next generation. Again, those whose growth is centred on, or thwarted by, by one parent or adult are likely to have gender issues later. Further, sexual experience, like all experience, forms all of us for better and worse, and people are induced into prostitution, immature marriage, required celibacy and promiscuous relationships in gay and straight contexts. Yet again, trauma, bullying, rows, defective and controlling friendships, alienation, racism, school, neighbourhood, family are problematic for most of the population in many different ways. Again, tribes of race, class, education, faith and gender have their own powerful, but false forms of validation which shape gender and prevent us loving our neighbours as ourselves. Now, too, many self-serving and even hateful social media channels are spreading destructive stuff. Finally, the journey of the self, centred on the self, leads millions of us into alienation, self-pity and isolation. It is amazing that secular sociology, supposedly value-free, has gone along with its own liberal cultural milieux with such unself-critical abandon while these issues pile up in our culture. All of us, therefore face a range of issues which are defeating people in their intimate lives and gender and sexual identity is enmeshed in that. That needs acknowledging and when it is done a range of issues can be discussed with trust and for the good Especially, we realise that ego worship is both a gay and straight issue, which distorts the discussion of both..

But equally these issues expose the silly polarisations of Churchpeople on gender issues. We have focussed on a “Straight-Gay” polarisation of the truth, and ignored the vast range of relational issues across and within generations which result from the selfish ideology of individualism. We have strained out the gnat and swallowed the camel, as someone once said. Christianity is about living with God through being educated by and recentred on Christ. It therefore involves dying to self, and that is the great antithesis of our age. This is great good news. To focus, with warped understanding, on the gender thing as the necessary defence of orthodoxy, while ignoring adultery, capitalism, slavery, excess, hypocrisy, status, the hoarding of wealth and self validation is a perverse understanding of the New Testament and the big picture of the human condition. It is time to wake up and get things in perspective, folks. There is a world culture out there going to pieces.

Of course, when the dust settles, we will find that faithful marriage, gender mutuality, sexual chastity, a meek economic life, the importance of children, recognising suffering, patience, repeated forgiveness and all the other things present in the teachings of Christ are wise and not easily reached in one generation. We will rediscover parenting and generations will heal. We will learn why we have to love others more than ourselves. We will be strong enough to be weak. The false modernisms of progress, neutral science, controlling the environment, personality and celebrity culture, happiness, self-fulfillment, success and failure, consumption and ego-centric choice will drop away. Both the respect of people with varying sexualities and the holiness of marriage will be part of the journey of the two billion Christians walking with Christ as we set about saving the planet from the egos, our egos, which have been let rip across the globe from the pseudo-Christian west. Nobody throws stones in Christ’s Kingdom, but we have scarcely started naming the big truths of our age, despite having the best teacher ever and realising we are still growing up…

Economics, General, Politics

SUNAK’S REAL PROBLEM

Most of us can see a problem emerging for the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Coronavirus has led to the excess expenditure of some £400 billion to keep the normal economy afloat. It is not over yet, and government debts are piling up. It is a bit like punting. There is the guy punting down the river, who gets into a bit of a problem near the bridge, puts one foot on the base of the bridge arch, and, too late, feels the punt and bridge move apart with his weight on both feet. We, and he, know that he will finish in the water. Sunak was not late realising. He, as in other similar economies, decided to do what it takes and supported workers forbidden to work because of the pandemic. It is not a problem of his making. But his feet are moving apart and long legs will not solve the problem.

Most of us, too, think we can see the problem. The punt and bridge are moving part because government expenditure is not matched by income from taxation. We remember “austerity” which followed the 2008 crisis to balance the books, and realise this crisis is Times Ten and do not know when the budgetry problem can be solved. The answer seems to be to kick the ball further down the road. Almost all the commentators see the problem in these terms. Some mention BREXIT and rightly see a crisis coming in the New Year, but the Chancellor’s problem is basically an accounting one – too little income and too much historic expenditure. Plus, there is the normal Keynesian point that recessions require government expenditure stimuli to bring the economy back to normal. Note the assumption of some kind of normal.

Some rightly look further back. They recognize that Gordon Brown as Chancellor did fund the NHS properly and that was followed by cuts under his Tory successor, Osborne, which we are now paying for. The frenetic rush to address having almost no PPE stocks cost £12 billion, much of it wasted. Our NHS underfunding then has cost us tens of billions now. That is certainly true, and other failures in public funding in care homes, benefits, mental health, schools, public health are now biting us. Yet all of this analysis is within a framework of Treasury thinking and established political responses, and it is possible that the thinking does not go deep enough and does not address the problem we really have.

Let us ask an obvious question. The Government owes £1.8 trillion, but to whom does it owe that money? The answer is a bit slippery, but we can get some kind of answers. First, it owes some of it to us through the banks. We put money in the bank and the bans hold government bonds which used to yield interest, but now yield very little. But let us probe this a little more. Some of us put money in the bank, a lot of it. This includes very profitable companies. Other people, the poor and the young, are borrowing money from the banks, often at 20% or more interest. The banks make their profit from the poor, and merely hold a lot of government debt. Second, now the Government is borrowing money from itself through what is called Quantitative Easing, or QE. It is best to think of this as printing money. It costs the Government nothing and allows expenditure to soar. Previously, as with the German inflation of the mark in 1922, printing money leads to inflation. Economists do not explain why QE does not lead to inflation. Third, international finance including oil economies, China, Japan, dictators and the very rich will possibly hold some UK government debt as well as having a well-appointed house in London. Debt is not a problem if people are willing to hold it, but debt also signifies a big discrepancy between those who have it, and those who do not, namely our Government.

But we are merely skirting round the problem. To see it clearly, we must double its size. The Government owes something approaching £2 trillion, but since Margaret Thatcher the State Public Sector has had something like another £1 trillion sold off, often at knockdown prices, to the rich who now support the Tories. Telephones, Gas, Electricity, Water, Trains, Car Companies, Shipyards, Post Office, Bus and Coaches, Defence Companies, Land and all kinds of public sector resources built up over decades were sold off or privatised and the money went into the coffers of the Exchequer, vast amounts. When Thatcher sold off Local Authority Council Houses, through a legal sleight of hand, she claimed the money for the central Exchequer, spent it, but not on building more Council Houses, hence our present housing crisis. When the vast amounts received for North Sea Oil, at zero cost to the Government were sold off, the money was not saved for the long-term as the Norway Government did, but was spent mainly during the long period of Tory dominance. Indeed, we should all be angry that the Tories during this period were claiming economic competence while really they were spending not just the family silver, but all the resources needed for a good functioning public sector. They were worse than the Prodigal Son. Often their rich friends profited, and of course, European companies often bought up the utilities. But it was even worse than that, because the Tories began borrowing to build needed hospitals, local authority facilities and schools, as we now know, often at crippling rates of interest. Worse still, private contracts are now used in the NHS, Defence, the Home Office and elsewhere to run the public sector where there is no competition and the contracts involve vast profits. The corporate state of Fascism is with us, fortunately thus far without the violence. Most economists would agree at all of this adds up to at least £2 trillion, taking the public sector from vast surplus for our good into overdraft and private dependence. If we take the overall public sector loss in more recent times at £3 trillion, that comes out at £40,000 per capita, but because that is redistributed  some have gained hundreds of thousands or millions, while others are paying thousands and tens of thousands for resources they no longer have or now go without.

Where has all this money gone? The taxation take, especially for the rich, has been relatively low, because the public coffers have been raided, indeed, cleaned out. They have accumulated and been relatively lowly taxed. Taxes on wealth have more or less disappeared. Council Tax is based on property values of 1991 when property prices since then have gone up three or four times. The money has gone into investments, property overseas, international capital and into tax havens. How much? There is now an industry intent on hiding how much. It is secret beyond secret. We are all guessing, and there are different figures depending on whether you look at UK citizens who avoid tax offshore or UK trading companies who hide profits there. Aside this disinformation, £100 billion a year of tax avoided would not be outlandish, excuse the pun. It is the kind of money the Treasury needs. So both within the UK, and through international tax avoidance, the rich have soaked up this money. They get the rich contracts, high salaries, big pensions, profits, bonuses, the government spending, low taxes and massive windfall profits on property while the poor struggle. This is reflected in a two tier wage system. The poor get £10 an hour and often pay their own costs, while the rich get a £100 an hour, or even a £1,000 an hour for work which reflects being in the right place, rather than merit.

So, the real divide is private wealth and public squalor, the rich and the poor, and the failure to require the rich both to face proper levels of pay, profit and taxation, and the Tories will not acknowledge or address that this is the problem. They will duck a wealth tax, Council Tax re-evaluation, transactions tax, eliminating off-shore tax holdings, and other such reforms. Indeed, they may even seek to make the UK a bigger tax haven to attract money in to cover the present crisis after Brexit with a sticking plaster. So, the real underlying problem will not be addressed. There will not be the jobs, income, wealth, resources in poor areas to really lift them. The bias to the South East will continue. The sink estates and impoverished areas cut off from good work will stay that way. While Sunak shows goodwill, the real levelling will not take place, just as the idea of “levelling up” to the rich is unreal to start with.

It was clear at the last election that unless Boris had thrown out the promise to “level up” in the North and to create a “Northern Powerhouse” – (what is a Powerhouse?) – the Tories would have lost the election. With that, and the false antisemitic charges against Corbyn, the Tories won. Sunak must channel some funds up north and seek to redress the imbalances which have been going on for decades, but it is a few billions which are announced, when hundreds of billions have gone the other way, especially in the ownership of wealth.  we have discussed this without even mentioning the subsidy to the banking system giving them the funds to build skyscrapers, give ridiculous bonuses and pay out big profits, even when they went through the crisis in 2008.

The accounting problem waits for a solution, but without the rich being held to account, it will be entrenched. But the real underlying problem, the gap that has opened up between rich and poor, made worse by the plundering of the public sector goes on and gets worse. The payments handed to the North will not change it. The gap will remain open. Brexit, falsely trumpeted as a solution, will make it worse. The Tory politics of window dressing will leave millions of casualties because the whole economy is so skewed. That failure has been going on for decades, and the present adjustments do not change it. The gap opens up and the Conservative Government is in terminal failure.

Christianity

HOW HAS SO MUCH AMERICAN EVANGELICALISM BECOME SO DISTORTED?

This is no slight problem. American Evangelicals (and the label is complex) have, in their links to Trump and their views, ignored so much of Christ’s teaching that the meaning of Christian faith seems lost. They espouse guns, self-promotion, riches, sexual promiscuity, aggression, false prophecy, racism, injustice and hatred and suck up to the powerful. How has this happened? Perhaps it has a long prehistory.

Perhaps, too, it is mainly about money. A lot of America Christianity has become big business over a period – organisations with their own brands, celebrities, media systems, commercial links and peculiar truth claims. Because they have become rich, they continually need to press their own enterprises to keep the growth coming. This has been going on for decades and the big prize is some kind of influence with the President and in politics. Billy Graham and others handled that with some awareness, but gradually the lure of “power”, media and financial clout has won over a period of many decades. The leaders are running a show and they induce followings which are fairly uncritical.

The link with the Republican Party goes back a long time, perhaps to the McCarthyite era when Right Wing Republicans persuaded a lot of  evangelicals to attack Godless Communism in the USSR to get the Cold War underway. They needed to vilify FDR’s Christian Democratic tradition – “We will expel the moneychangers from the Temple.” Which threatened their wealth. During the fifties the pattern set in. Evangelicals supported Eisenhower, a principled Protestant, and Nixon, Tricky Dicky, who linked with Billy Graham. Graham described Nixon (probably with regret later) as “a man of destiny to lead the nation.” So, the Republicans were Protestant, the Democrats Catholic (through Irish and Italian immigrants), and older migrant groups British, German, Dutch and Scandinavian lined up with the Republicans. The position was also racial. Evangelical blacks, like Paul Robeson, were “Communist” and became part of the opposition. So, in this period Christians accepted these cultural divisions and moved into their own tribes, heightened by the vast US geographical spread. It was Christianity divided.

The bid to stop Catholic Kennedy with Tricky Dicky failed in 1960, but during this period Christian ministries and churches, soon to be megachurches, and Christian Colleges, often very good, grew as part of the ground roots Christian suburban flourishing at the time. The context was always American nationalism, shared in churches, chapels and communities. America was great, was leading the world, and of course American capitalism was right for the world, and the Christian critique of power and money in the Bible and the teachings of Jesus retreated into oblivion. I remember meeting the thoughtful son of a dad running a Christian radio show at this time, who understood and hated what his Dad was doing from his own Christian perspective. So, Republican, Capitalist Evangelicalism became normal. US Churches were conceived on a capitalist model. They partly competed for members and a congregation and the ones that put on the best show, often from very good motives grew the most. But there are problems with Church as performance, audience and events. That is not the Gospel. The Colleges were the same, good, competing, but often living within their own culture. Meanwhile, the United States was defending the world against Communism, and was beyond question.

The Kennedy brothers were assassinated. Martin Luther King raised a range of unaddressed issues of racialism in the American churches, but he too went. Grass roots American Evangelicalism was now quite fully shaped by radio and television networks linked with churches and personalities, like Oral Roberts, Jimmy Swaggart, Hal Lindsey, Garner Ted Armstrong, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and others. Music was part of the mix – Jim Reeves, Elvis, Dolly Parton, Johnny Cash and a host of church music groups good and bad. It has its simplicities. Christianity was “You must be born again”, as of course it is, but in this case without all the mind-changing teaching that Jesus also insisted on. Christian Colleges flourished as an important part of the US educational system, producing world class scholars and also in some cases uncritical ones living in the American dream. At Calvin College in 1980 there was some tension between the De Vos/Amway (short for the American Way of Life) major rich donor and the more radical, thoughtful Christian academic staff. In the 80s and 90s everywhere many courses were becoming how-to, technique, courses in business studies, technology, media, weapons and management, and the slower business of thinking was short-changed. Evangelical, and other, thinking became unhitched from principles and worldviews into instant opinion and process news.

Too often the simple won, especially in the media. Television is constructed around wall to wall advertising and advertising gets you to buy the product without study or thought. In fact, as we shall see, Trump is merely a rather successful bad advertisement. So, Christianity had to be simple, and here the great simplicity was formed. Christian political engagement was about abortion. Abortion does deserve to be treated differently by the liberal elite. It glosses the widespread using of women by men, the failure of caring for the next generation, the disrespect of all that sex involves and the trashing of love and the life of the forming child. It downplays the mother-to-not-be’s mental health. But it sits alongside capitalist exploitation, near slave labour, destructive wars, tens of millions of refugees, global warming, nuclear weapons, obesity, addiction, mass poverty, militarism, dictators in the world’s and America’s problems in politics. Christian politics is not a one-legged centipede. But it became the single Evangelical sledgehammer for many, the only, instant test of tribal loyalty.

By now we are through the fall of Nixon, the failure of a conservative/ evangelical/ fundamentalist/ capitalist coalition in the dirty tricks of Watergate. When Carter, the obvious honest evangelical appeared on the scene, would the tribal evangelical/ fundamentalist groups, led by their gurus, change allegiance? No, because they had vested in Republicanism – money, alliances, public support, access to politicians – and were building into the machine. So, Carter was merely tolerated. However, he was hated by the militarists as he worked for peace and disarmament, and they were determined to get him out. Reagan who had been an actor, TV spokesman for an arms company, General Electric, and had one folksy political talk about communism, became the evangelicals’ man. Though he possibly did not know one end of a church from another through infrequent attendance, he became their Republican Man, not Carter.

By now something was clearly wrong. Reagan’s team in the 1980 election had sent a delegation to Paris to negotiate with the Iranians to prevent the Iranian hostages from being released before the election. Yes, they deliberately worked at the continued detention of these American citizens to help Carter’s defeat. The deal was in exchange for military spares and equipment which marked the beginning of the “Iran-Contra deal” where money was sent to Nicaragua rebels to fight the regime there. The Iranians released the hostages as the very time the victorious Reagan was being inaugurated as President, presumably to imply to the world that their detention was linked to Reagan’s election. The counter story went round that when Reagan actually put his hand on the Bible, the hostages were released. If you believe that, you will believe anything. Already delusional stories could carry the day.

Reagan threw a few sweets to the evangelical leaders, but nothing substantial. He was the front guy, with a team running his show, and they did not have much evangelical interest. In 1988 Pat Robertson thought of running, got backing from 3 million followers and loads of money and then in the primaries failed, because he was an awful politician.. Bush Senior and then Bush Junior linked up with the evangelicals and got their rewards in votes. There were now major enterprises that were evangelical, right-wing, capitalist and had built up media and other empires. Prophets were emerging as gurus of how christianity and world events should be seen, usually separated from centuries of good Christian scholarship and thoughtful educated Christians who were sane, but without any media following. Lots of people stopped reading books, except those which were cultish and could be finished in an afternoon.. Since Reagan the capitalist elite had had a green light to expand and dominate American public affairs. Evangelical Christians could not really pretend that their faith had any influence with the political machine, or the great US fight between Democrats and Republicans to control Washington. They were really marginalised and used as voting fodder. Mammon was running the show its way. This involved rubbishing climate change so that big business was not upset. It involved wars in the Middle east and strong support of the US military and the US position as superpower. It involved ignoring healthcare, poverty and wealth and all the other ills of American society. It involved having guns as a constitutional right, even though there were now no slaves.  The Evangelical agenda accepted laissez-faire Republican capitalism as its own and defined the left as enemy and abortion still as the only touchstone of Christian politics. It ignored Obama, an obvious principled, educated Christian President, partly because he was black and Democrat and descended into hearsay. The leaders, like Franklin Graham, became a parody of their forebears, and the way was opened for Trump.

He was rich enough to run, was able to dominate the Republican machine, and threw a few bribes to the Christian leaders, now desperate to be listened to. Abortion and the Supreme Court was enough. He obviously despised God and worshipped Mammon, had no knowledge of Christianity, denied the faith in most of his personal life and attitudes, and did not do repentance, but still the Evangelicals went after him, as the pagan Cyrus who might serve God’s purposes one way of another. He was given some 80% support and even as his promises, failure to tell the truth and murky principles became exposed, was still supported in this recent election, although quite a few withdrew. He also made promises to the unemployed and poor in the Midwest, which this election shows they do not enough think he has kept. It was false advertising, promises thrown out to the poor sods who might have some hopes and evangelicals went along with it. Of course, there are vast numbers of thoughtful, principled, faithful Christians all over America, and legitimate differences of view and Christian understanding, and this is merely describing a tendency, but it is one which can be measured in millions of votes.

This really is a long Christian calamity – Evangelicals supporting an establishment which has backed militarism and war, world capitalism, ignoring the poor and followed a nationalistic agenda.  It is perhaps almost as big a problem as the Catholic Church faced at the beginning of the Reformation. Christ’s warnings about false prophets and empty leaders who put on a show, but are inwardly full of dead men’s bones, applies to Trump. He should never have been near public office. The Republican Agenda has no integral link to Christianity. More than this Democrats have their own establishment; this is no either-or, except at Presidential elections. It is not even enough to have Christian, or Evangelical leaders and politicians, but there is the long hard slog of seeking and thirsting after what is just and wise, what is for the poor and weak, what heals the nations and allows ordinary good living. Present ideologies and the criticisms are often trading vacuities. The United States has often seen itself, and been seen around the world, as leading Christianity, but this is failure which needs repentance, deep re-evaluation and the flattening of the power and wealth and control. There are many American and other Christians who have already done the thinking, but are ignored by the media circus. Good change can be relatively free from pain and calamity, but the time is ticking away and a very large American Christian subculture needs to start sifting its thoughts and attitudes with an unprecentented level of self-criticism. There is a slow train coming round the bend.

We Can Disarm the World

A FULL REMEMBRANCE DAY REFLECTION

Each year we honour the dead, those who were slain in war for us. Often they were young men taken from life. We remember them. We think how many. We recall the horrors of gas, of submarine warfare, of being hit and dying and what each could have become. We are in debt, and the debt can never be repaid by us.

But there is more to remember. There are war memorials all over Britain, and we have mostly stood at several. They are usually World War One memorials with World War Two names added. At Coton and elsewhere there are often several names from a family, but fewer in World War Two. For Churchill, after the Gallipoli failure in WW1, was parsimonious of British soldiers lives and long delayed the Second Front while the Russians ground down the German army. We lost half a million men and Russia lost twenty five million. So we also remember the dead Russians.

Then there is the battle of Britain. Here Spitfires still fly over most weeks from Duxford, do a few amazing moves in the clouds, and fly back. Wars hang on machines, pilots, tanks and we remember them. We all know the Battle of Britain, the fight for Britain’s survival in 1940, and we remember it with unqualified gratitude, whether we mow the lawn or hear Vera Lynn. We think of the women workers who helped win that War. We think of our family members eighty years ago.

We remember through poppies, because the fields of Flanders, with churned up mud from exploding shells, became fields of poppies through the seeds that germinated in the process, and that beauty covered the barbed wire and body parts. The poppies as remembrance are not quite to be trusted. They are too beautiful, beside weeping widows and shell shocked men.

We remember war memorials in Cambridge Colleges – a vast long list of young men in Trinity, thinking and learning, and then killed. Rupert Brooke, on the list in Grantchester Village Hall Board, did not even get to Gallipoli. His poems were overtaken by the real war after he died. For loss is loss and it cannot be without mourning, and fathers should not mourn their sons. And we remember inadequate politicians left in the twenties and thirties.

Then we remember that all military history is not like the Battle of Britain. We have invaded and conquered like the Nazis tried to do. In fact, we have had a go at half the countries round the world. And now we know we were often despicable, using them for our gain and purposes. We confiscated Hong Kong because the Chinese did not want us to make them into opium addicts. We used the vast Indian economy during and after the East Indian Company, and we did not help properly in the Bengal Famine. Even in 1952-60 we practiced appalling torture on a massive scale in the “Mau Mau uprising”, but kept it quiet. We did Concentration Camps in the Second Boer War, and Blair did WMD to back up an illegal war with a lie. We, our State, is not the righteous one, and we have often been not glorious, even wicked. We are like the others and not exceptional.

We remember empires, but how? Perhaps a rich Anglo-Saxon English Christian culture was destroyed by the Normans. The Romans built roads here, but at what cost? Who worked and who supervised? And was England really good for Scotland, Ireland and Wales? And were the Spanish Empire, the Dutch Empire, the British Empire, the French Empire justified in their self-importance, their slavery, their quest for gold and their distain of those they conquered? We have to re-remember empires.

We remember the Bible’s treatment of military empires. Pharoah and the Egyptian Empire are forced to Let My People Go. The Children of Israel are little people and God set them up with good laws, to respect the alien, without armies, and to live good holy lives. They fail, but God is patient and guides them on and on. Their rulers also fail, like all do. They do self-importance, but God introduces the Servant-king. The What? The One they and we would not understand, the gentle ruler for the people, for all people who are created for God’s glory, the One who served the people and did not need soldiers.  So Isaiah’s not-understood Servant king is there to serve, heal and bring peace. Nation shall speak peace unto nation, and they will not learn war any more. He will settle disputes among the nations and they will beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks. First they will disarm first and then, obviously, nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war any more.

We remember the great reversal. The mighty are brought down. Hitler in the bunker. Caesar “Et Tu Brute”. Why do the mighty fall? Israel faces Babylon as captives, but Nebuchadnezzar finishes on his knees, eating grass and acknowledging the Lord God Almighty rules. God has them, and later rulers intoxicated in their own power in derision because of their pretentiousness. Those who self-promote with weapons, only destroy. They will fall. He will lift up the lowly. The mighty must come down from their thrones. Why do we not see that? The Superpowers will fall because they serve themselves. They are already falling.

Then I remember, nearly only I, because it has been obliterated from British national history, the Geneva Disarmament Conference of 1932, supported by tens of millions of people around the world to make the Great War the War to End All Wars. I have studied the German delegation confident that an agreement would see Hitler’s gang off into oblivion. President Hoover’s proposal to cut all aggressive weapons completely and all other weapons by a third with the US ones on the table was deliriously welcomed around the world – the USSR, Germany, China, Italy and most of the other states, because disarmament would mean peace. Yes. But then the British Cabinet, jealous of the US new superpower, holding on to its navy to control the Empire, squeezes the Conference into doing nothing with a little help from Fascist Japan. We stopped disarmament in 1932, and soon the arms traders were back in business, Hitler came to power and was funded and armed by the US and others into World War Two. We do not remember that history. It is covered up by the word “appeasement” and hidden from view.  We nearly did world multilateral disarmament in 1932 

And I remember a likeable former student, back from the Gulf, now strange, talking of depleted uranium, in physical distress before the label PTSD was available to me. There was another Northern Ireland student whom we held down all night when he flipped after the Troubles resurfaced in his life. We now know there are tens of millions of traumatized soldiers and civilians suiciding, or fighting, or angry, or withdrawn through the evils they have known. We each probably remember one or more of those suicides. Secondary PTSD among those who suffer from the main victims is another massive problem. WW1 shell shock was horror taken to the grave. War scars humanity. This, we now learn, is normal history in the USSR, China, Germany and now throughout the Middle East and after all wars. Terrorism is PTSD when your home has been trashed by the West. How dare we believe that war leaves us normal?

We remember soldiers showing bravery beyond thought out of concern for others, those who die, those who are honest and care for the enemy and for their comrades. We remember not the films, but the unseen goodness shown in war. We remember the honesty of soldiers who face death at our behest.

Then there is the antinomy, the great contradiction. The people we remember and honour were themselves shooting to kill. We honour the sanctity of their lives, but command them to kill – machine gun, howitzer, landmine, bomb, even nuclear bomb to destroy others. We remember the US bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the report of a little girl with her eyeballs in her hands. We remember the First US Secretary of Defence, James Forrestal went mad, partly because he had seen the bombs at Bikini Atoll. We command to kill, in principle to defend, but then in practice, to protect life and people die. The military train to kill to preserve the sanctity of life.

 Then we remember that they tell us this. The militarists sell the threat to kill as the route to peace. We have lived within this propaganda though our lifetimes from the Cold War to renewing Trident as if there were no alternative. They would say this, wouldn’t they? The business of militarism needs its advertising. We keep you safe. Give us more missiles, guns, nuclear weapons, fighters. We must spend a trillion dollars on this fighter. And we remember Corbyn and others who question this militarism are trashed, and are slightly uneasy. We remember Eisenhower warned us about the Military-Industrial Complex. This message rules the world – superpowers, military dictators and ordinary states who must have a military and pay for it, thoug their neighbours are all nice. The message always gets through and the arms companies flourish.

We remember the peace people as nice gentle folk who withdraw from war, and really do not pull their weight for the nation except as hospital porters of something. But some of us remember the real peace people. Tolstoy, the world’s greatest novelist, moves on from War and Peace to only peace. He lambasts the Kaiser. He backs the Doukabours who burn their weapons. Gladstone sees why WW1 will happen. Keir Hardie follows Jesus to try to stop the Great War and Pope Benedict XV organises the first Christmas truce and tries to make it permanent, because all will lose and civilisation will be destroyed. The real pacifists need to be heard again, because we do not remember them.

There is the pacifism which ridicules the whole military show and sees through it. Weapons only destroy. Individual murder is the greatest wrong, but mass murder validated by the State is “glorious”. What a waste. In the playground we know that kids get on much better without weapons, why not among states? Autocratic rulers needs weapons, but why run democracies on weapons? Militarism is often a 2-10% drag on the economy; disarmed peace costs nothing. Can’t you work it out: No weapons – No wars. One war leads to another. Weapons breed distrust. Peace works in Sawbridgeworth or Goolagong. Why have we idiots been persuaded that weapons are the way to live?

Then we remember Jesus  – he is always right and we have had two thousand years to hear him.  “Those who use the sword, will die by the sword” Yes, Japan, Germany and the USA should understand that. Pearl Harbour- Hiroshima. Nuremburg and the Bunker. The CIA train and arm Al Qaida to attack the USSR and finish up with the Twin Towers. Those who go for weapons suffer from them. Americans with guns under their pillows more often get shot. Militarism does not work. It is the biggest failed experiment in history. Jesus is right. Jesus is always right.

We remember that Jesus does the other. He laughs at us, because we are so thick. He does peace; he switches the war horse entrance to Jerusalem for the donkey, the parody of L’Arc De Triomphe. Sort all quarrels early, he says. Forgive wrongs. I rule by truth, not military power, he says to the representative of the Roman Empire, and tells the truth: “I am King of the Jews” even when the truth will automatically lead to his death. Turn the other cheek; break the causal chain of retaliation. Love your enemies and understand them; they will disappear. Make peace and you will be blessed – you have to manufacture peace; it will not just happen. Pass on peace to others. No threats. We can be friends. God’s gentle rule can come among us. I am the Lamb on the Throne. I use words not weapons. I do the Servant King and that is the God-given structure of government. I insist on it, and the first will be last and the last will be first. When we remember Jesus, the friend of all us sinners, war is powerless. Do NOT fear those who kill the body, he says, and after the resurrection, “My peace I leave with you.” So what will we do with it?

Then we remember that the United Nations passed the Treaty Prohibiting Nuclear Weapons with a substantial sane majority, and it is now ratified and will pass into Law next January. We sadly understand that the “Superpowers” who have not used nuclear weapons for seventy five years because they are unusable, but have spent tens of trillions on them, cannot lose face by abandoning them. But we can. We can quit nuclear weapons and all weapons in about six years, if we have a mind to it, and we ordinary people have to have a mind to it, together, democratically, around the world. The militarists will not do it, because turkeys do not vote for Christmas. But it can be done, and then we will honour those who have died. Then we will close down the war machine by truly remembering and bringing about the healing of the nations. “Blessed,” said Jesus, “are the peace makers, for they (we) will be called children of God.” “My peace I leave with you”, and we can do His peace, ordinary High Street peace that works for everybody and against no-one.

We Can Disarm the World

THE UNITED NATIONS’ TREATY PROHIBITING NUCLEAR WEAPONS IS BACKED BY THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND FOR THE UK

OVER 30 BISHOPS INCLUDING BOTH ARCHBISHOPS HAVE URGED THE UK GOVERNMENT TO COMPLY WITH THIS TREATY TO HELP MOVE TOWARDS A NUCLEAR FREE WORLD. AT PRESENT THE UK GOVERNMENT IS TRYING TO HIDE AWAY FROM THIS LEGAL COMMITMENT TO THE UN, BUT THIS STATEMENT BRINGS IT OUT INTO THE OPEN AS OBVIOUS MORAL AND COMMON SENSE.

THE GOVERNMENT CANNOT EVEN DISCUSS THE ARGUMENTS, BECAUSE THEY ARE SO BAD. IT WILL MUTTER SCARES TO COVER THIS POLICY VACUUM. SO LET US GO THROUGH THE ARGUMENTS THAT BORIS, AND THE OTHER NUCLEAR POWER POSSESSORS, WILL NOT ADDRESS.

ASIDE THE NUCLEAR POWER MILITARY LOBBY, (AND THIS HAS BEEN A GRAVY TRAIN THROUGHOUT OUR LIFETIMES) THE CRUCIAL PROBLEM IS THAT THE SUPERPOWER LEADERS CANNOT ADMIT THEY HAVE BEEN WRONG FOR SEVENTY FIVE YEARS. “OH WE GOOFED AND WASTED TENS OF TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS AND JUST WENT AROUND SCARING ONE ANOTHER” WILL NOT BE SAID. WE HAVE TO BE THEIR COMMON SENSE, AND THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND HAS GOT IT MOVING. WE WORK WITH THE UNITED NATIONS TO GET THIS TREATY FULLY IMPLEMENTED..

FIRST, WE RECONSIDER WHY NUCLEAR WEAPONS ARE NOT A GOOD IDEA.

  1. THEY ARE UNUSABLE. Nuclear weapons have not been used for seventy five years, really because they are unusable. No person or state can plan to wipe out ten or a hundred million people merely because they cannot sort out a quarrel.
  2. NUCLEAR WEAPONS ONLY DESTROY. Nuclear weapons only destroy – people, cities, nations, animals and even the planet. We talk about nuclear states as powerful, but the power to destroy is an illusion. Only the power to do good counts. Destruction is useless tantrum power. It is the other side of useless. Superficially, we learn that “if a single nuclear weapon “designed to emit EMP were detonated 250 to 300 miles up over the middle of the country it would disable the electronics in the entire United States.” That might be inconvenient, but one nuclear explosion can wipe out a conurbation of several millions and make life unliveable well beyond that. They destroy trillions of property and infrastructure. The only destroy – ridiculously that is their purpose. The nuclear people are toying with the destruction of the planet, the dark winter, the end of civilisation, what will make coronavirus seem a picnic. They hide the evil outcome, but this evil destruction needs to be prevented now.
  3. CONTINUED PRODUCTION IS NONSENSE. Around the world over a hundred thousand nuclear weapons have been produced since 1945, none of which has been used and most of which have been scrapped at great cost. If we produced a hundred thousand flying saucers which were never used, we would stop making them and close the industry down.
  4. THEY COST THE EARTH. The cost of these unused weapons is vast; it cannot really be calculated. It involves the bombs, missiles, submarines, planes, command systems, bases and manufacturing centres all spending money flat out. The US has spent well over $10 trillion on them. Other nuclear powers – at least another $10 trillion on these useless things. Wasting far more than $20 trillion is criminal and should cease. This vast cost has ruled out good spending which would help people, end poverty and be useful. By contrast, peace is free and costs nothing.
  5. THE SYSTEM RUNS ON BUILT-UP FEAR AND MOST OF THE FEAR SURROUNDS NUCLEAR WEAPONS. The nuclear powers fear one another. The US feared the USSR but not before the USSR feared the US. China Fears the West. India fears Pakistan. We did not fear Russia after the Cold War, but now Russia fears us and we fear them. France does not know whom it should fear. Most of the fear is of nuclear weapons, but the weapons purport to address the problem they have created. Those with the most weapons fear the most.
  6. FEAR IS CONTINUALLY STOKED BY THE MILTARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX. Most of the fear is generated by those who depend and profit from the nuclear defence system. In the 50s the US military greatly exaggerated the USSR forces to get more bombers. Since then the nuclear sector and its paid political spokespeople continually talk up the external nuclear threat. We are taught to fear tinpot North Korea, Russia, China and so on SO THAT THE DEFENCE MONEY KEEPS FLOWING. They profit from our fear and explain why the policy is continued.
  7. NUCLEAR ACCIDENTS ARE A POSSIBILITY. There have been a string of accidents and near strike backs. In early 1961 two nuclear bombs came down at Faro, West Virginia, about 300 miles from Washington. On one three out of four of the safety devices failed and one held. On the other the firing device was on after it broke from the bomb. In September 1983 Stanislav Petrov saw five incoming missiles on his screen and should have notified the Soviet retaliatory counter-strike people. He concluded that because it was only five missiles it was a screen error. At the time the US was flying bombers straight towards USSR targets veering off at the last moment to scare the USSR operatives. There have been dozens of US and USSR nuclear bombs lost at sea, ablaze in aircraft or in other dangers. PROBABLY NUCLEAR WEAPONS HAVE BEEN A GREATER INTERNAL THREAT THAN AN EXTERNAL THREAT.
  8. NUCLEAR WEAPONS GIVE A UN SECURITY COUNCIL PLACE.  The US, Russia and China are the world’s most heavily armed states and permanent members of the Security Council. France and the UK believe they retain permanent places partly because they have nuclear weapons. Actually, this gives a power base to five militarist and arms exporting states which locks the UN into the status quo, but it is a dumb playground bully way of thinking. So, although the UN is committed to peace, its five most powerful members are militarists. This structure has headlocked the UN since 1945. The smaller nations, talking sense, rightly challenge this.
  9.  NUCLEAR WEAPONS HASTEN GLOBAL WARMING. Nuclear weapons are intense energy users. The bombs are obviously are the biggest potential energy wasters on the planet, but tests, missiles, bombers, nuclear submarines, bases, weapon development all use lots of energy and the most intense energy materials on the planet. A missile not only costs a lot of money, it costs a lot of energy before it is fired. Cutting this vast waste out is the biggest green win we could have bar one. Even nuclear energy is now more costly and less efficient than wind, solar, tidal and others. It has nothing going for it.
  10. THE UNDERLYING STANCE OF NUCLEAR DEFENCE IS FLAWED. All the nuclear states say they would never use them first, but only in reprisal, but they teeter on the edge of first strike, because there is no defence. A missile will always get through. Reagan was talked into “Star Wars” as a defence shield. It made many arms firms very rich, but it could not work. It was not just the problem of “hitting a bullet with a bullet”, or of nuclear fireworks over Britain between the USSR and the US, but the fact that stopping one missile was many times more expensive than making one. There is no defence against nuclear weapons, except to get rid of them all.
  11. MISSILE DETECTION IS DODGY. Nuclear defence involves spotting incoming missiles, so that one can respond. But it is a dodgy process. We all toast Mr Petrov because he worked out the five incoming missiles weren’t. But the nuclear missile detection systems are paranoid. You have minutes to decide whether to blow up the planet in accordance with your threats of retaliation. Are they missiles, geese, mistakes or what? Here we could get catatonic laughter. “Ballistic Missile Threat Inbound to Hawaii. Seek Immediate Shelter. This is not a drill.” Oh, he pressed the wrong button. “Ministers have been accused of covering up the failed test which saw the launch of an unarmed Trident II D5 missile from a British submarine off the coast of Florida in June.” Oh, Sorry, yes we are your ally and very glad you sold us the missiles in the first place, but it went the wrong way – yours, Theresa May. The whole system is dangerous and flawed, because there is no time for corrections in this counterstrike culture. The knock out counter punch does not work;  not getting in the ring in the first place is far more effective.
  12. NATIONAL CONQUEST WAR IS OVER. Though many have not realised, national conquest war no longer works. The US failed in Vietnam and Iraq. 9/11 showed that the cost of subduing those you attack rises and rises. You cannot occupy, tax or exploit. Countries are full up and too complex to control. War is a failed enterprise and nuclear weapons belong to that failed enterprise – a useless weapon in a failed enterprise.  
  13. NATIONAL MILITARY RIVALRY IS SILLY. As Europe has shown, national military rivalry is unnecessary and it is far better to get on with one another. Time and again, nationalism, patriotism, mutual blame, self-promotion, leading the world, imperialism have led to destructive useless wars, including several hundred in European history. Now Europe knows that Spain, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, France, Sweden, Norway, Belgium, Poland, Portugal and the other countries living together is the better way. Some of the nuclear rivalries are tragic. India and Pakistan need their resources for their people. Now they are buying vast quantities of nuclear related weapons to feed a rivalry which can only destroy. Expressing National Rivalry through Nuclear Weapons is a dumb response. When you meet friends and neighbours, you do not put a bomb on the table, let alone a bigger one.  
  14. NUCLEAR WEAPONS DO NOT DETER CONVENTIONAL WARS. One argument for nuclear weapons used to be that nuclear weapons deterred conventional weapons, because they were obviously more powerful. This is not the case. Conventional wars have gone on in the last seventy years, often against nuclear powers, and the nuclear weapons have not deterred anything. Vietnam was not deterred from beating the US. Egypt was not deterred from evicting Britain from Suez. Afghanistan got rid of the USSR in a long war and Saddam did not give up in Iraq or Assad in Syria. It would be difficult to suggest one war which has been deterred by the possession of nuclear weapons.
  15. NUCLEAR POLICY IS NOT DEFENDED STRAIGHT. Nuclear weapons are sold to the public through fear – “We will protect you”. Actually, the fear is unnecessary. No state has threatened the UK for the last seventy years. The threats are talked up. In the Renewing Trident debate Teresa May could only come up with North Korea as a country to fear. Second, those who are against Nuclear Weapons are presented as traitors. I remember chatting with Bruce Kent, of CND, one evening on an empty Finsbury Park Underground Station.  The media had claimed he was receiving money from the USSR. He laughed, and I asked how he tackled it. “I just told them to come and have a look at my office.” The disarmers are demonised, lied about, singled out, as Corbyn recently experienced. The rhetoric has the underlying form of  “WE” are fighting the Battle of Britain again and so, of course, we are in the right. The nuclear policy makers do not explain why a never used, unusable, expensive weapon should be retained.
  16. NUCLEAR WEAPONS ARE USELESS AGAINST TERRORISM. We are told terrorism is the main threat. Obviously nuclear weapons are useless in addressing this kind of conflict, because it is micro militarism, personally carried.
  17. THE POLITICAL RHETORIC HAS BEEN FALSE. Between 1945 and 1990 we were told that the nuclear problem was Communism. When the USSR collapsed in 1990 under the weight of its military expenditure and the Cold War finished, Western/Russian relations were fine for a while. Now with Russia governed by a Capitalist oligarchy, we have reverted to a Cold war stance, because the military regimes in the US, Russia, NATO and the UK needed mutual enemies. The problem was not Communism at all. It was militarism.
  18. BECAUSE WE ARE AN ECONOMICALLY INTERDEPENDENT WORLD, NATIONALIST NUCLEAR WEAPON STATES ARE OUT OF DATE.  We import and export around the world, travel, share technologies, food and education. We have an interdependent world economy at many levels. This old nationalistic nuclear weapons culture and distrust doesn’t fit the world economy. It is merely foisted on us by national self-interested militaries and the arms manufacturers, the merchants of death, because it means attacking those who help us and trade with us…
  19. NON-PROLIFERATION TREATY. The Non Proliferation Treaty required the Nuclear Powers to disarm and they agreed to do so. They have failed to honour that commitment. The nuclear powers should do that now.
  20. NUCLEAR WEAPONS DO NOT UNITE NATIONS, BUT DIVIDE THEM. The UK ignored the United Nations over the Iraq War and with the United States, it has created chaos in the Middle East. We should abide by UN Treaties like this one.  This is a Treaty passed by over two thirds of UN members and ratified by over fifty. Treaties require members to comply. We have signed up to “refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state” which fits this Nuclear Weapons Ban. We should be promoting peace. Obviously nuclear weapons are a threat. It is time to practice peace and honour the collective democracy of the United Nations and the meaning of its title.
  21. CONVENTIONAL WORLD MULTILATERAL DISARMAMENT CAN FOLLOW.  It is sometimes said that removing nuclear weapons makes conventional weapons more dangerous. We have seen that does not seem to be so. Conventional wars have taken place frequently with and without nuclear powers, with nuclear weapons not damping their occurrence. Nevertheless, the multilateral acceptance of nuclear disarmament could be swiftly followed by multilateral conventional disarmament. If conventional weapons were cut by 20% a year for five years with full scrutiny, open inspection, policing, the required closure of all terrorist groups by disarmament or force,  we could close down all militarism in five years. It is actually easier than competitive arming, far cheaper and allows military tensions to ease away.  Disarmament works.
  22. JESUS SUMMED IT UP. Jesus’ words, “Those who take the sword perish by the sword” identify the problem. Aggression, threats, weapons always bring reprisal and later self-destruction. It has been so throughout history. Weapons do not work. We need to close down the process, which now enslaves world leaders. Surely, we should realise that now after two thousand years. Tit for Tat, and keeping ahead in weapons race, reveals a certain lack of intelligence. I will blow you up before you can blow me up is not a good relational attitude. We can do better.

ALL THESE ARGUMENTS POINT TO THE UNDERLYING FAILURE OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS. THEY ARE NOT FOR THE GOOD OF THE NATIONS, BUT KEEP MILITARY ESTABLISHMENTS GOING AND THE CONTRACTS FLOWING. POLITICIANS DO NOT EVEN OFFER A RATIONALE FOR THEM ANY MORE, BUT EVADE ALL DISCUSSION, BECAUSE THE CASE FOR NUCLEAR WEAPONS IS SO BAD.  THE NUCLEAR EMPEROR HAS NO CLOTHES AND IT IS TIME TO TELL HIM THAT HE IS FAT AND USELESS. THE POLITICIANS HAVE PROBLEMS SAYING THEY HAVE BEEN WRONG, BUT MILLIONS AND THEN BILLIONS CAN HELP THEM CHANGE THEIR MINDS. THE POLITICS OF THIS TRANSITION WILL EMERGE. FIRST WE NEED ACKNOWLEDGEMENT THAT NUCLEAR WEAPONS ARE USELESS AND MUST GO. THEN, AS JESUS SAID, WE MAKE PEACE, PASS IT ON, UNDO THREATS AND CONSTRUCTED ENEMIES AND MAKE SURE THAT NATIONS ONLY SPEAK PEACE TO ONE ANOTHER AND DO NOT LEARN WAR ANY MORE.

Politics

PRICKING THE TRUMP BALLOON

Let’s state the Christian obvious. God had created everything. Human beings just move stuff about. Those who claim to “create”, to be “big” are just blowing up their own balloons. Thatcher’s “wealth creation” was laying off workers and telling the others to work harder. Trump puts himself at the centre. He will recreate America. He is a self-inflator. His claims are all balloons. His “economic revival” was Obama’s careful return from the Bush warring big spend. “No global warming” he says while California is on fire. Inject with disinfectant he says while coronavirus is rampant. Trump’s make America Great Again (for the second time), is balloony – a Greedy, Bullying, Fat, Stupid, World Gobbling US? We don’t want it. It successes the failures of sin. It is the biblical crash of the mighty. It is an orange painted coating on a sepulcre of lies. It is preaching without practice. It appeals to the poor from Trump Tower. It is a tax avoiding for the rich state careless for the sick. It is a blown-up illusion, the big lie, and people might love darkness rather than light, but not all the time.

In the light all balloons must be pricked. Jesus said, “Beware a wolf in sheep’s clothing” but that is to flatter Trump voters. “Beware a rat posing as an elephant” is more like it. “Many will come in my name,” says Jesus while Trump fumbles to say anything about the Christianity he is supposed to champion. So ALL the Christians had better sort this out. We can see Self-worship and Narcissism inflated by State propaganda, but Christianity insists on false gods being exposed. The balloon must be pricked for the humble poor, the planet, and because we have met and heard the Saviour. If the meek are blessed, this man is a curse, and part of the Good News is his demise.

Re-Remembering War

RE-REMEMBERING 4

THE INDIAN “MUTINY” (1857-9).

RUNNING A CAPITALIST EMPIRE. Accounts of the Indian “mutiny” often focus down on little events or issues which tripped the “mutiny” into action, but it was part of a long British capitalist annexation of the East by the East India Company. It is possibly the biggest example of capitalist political control ever. The East India Company (EIC) had both a fleet and an army with which it gradually subdued an area which extended into Afghanistan and east into Burma and China. It annexed territories or reached agreements with rulers to suit its trading plans. Its oak armed monsters on the water intimidated local boats. Cannon could be used to subdue territories and gradually a control system was established. Soldiers could mow down any native people who objected to this control with rifles. The military ability to kill and dominate led to economic enslavement. This British pattern began in the late 17th century and extended throughout the 18th with land and naval battles and new trading patterns. Gradually, the British Empire forged ahead of other European Empires – the Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Belgian, Russian and French especially in its control of the Indian subcontinent.

THE COTTON CONTROL SYSTEM. The economic control was exercised through trade and then focussed on products like tea, cotton and opium. The East India Company opened up farms, estates, factories, markets, employment and slavery to extend their economic reach, and a lot of colonials became extremely rich and then retired home to enjoy their wealth. They changed the Indian economy. The opium poppy was cultivated by over 1.3 million peasants in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar who would otherwise grow food. We see the significance of that later. The British could control India’s trade through tariffs. In the early 18th century India was responsible for 25% of the world’s textile trade. Within a century that had fallen drastically. We all know about Lancashire cotton cloth and the Industrial Revolution. Cotton clothes were manufactured in Lancashire towns and wool ones in Yorkshire towns as the industrial revolution got underway. Except it was not like that. India grew cotton and made efficient industrial cloth in the 17th century and 18th century, well before Lancashire got going. Gradually the East India Company took over the trade, in competition with the Dutch, and imported about a million and a half pieces every decade through the 18th century. Most of those nice 18th century clothes we see in pictures of the Aristocracy were Indian cloth. The EIC had its own factories and ran cotton worldwide. But they transferred the manufacture to Britain. When the Industrial Revolution got underway Lancashire factories began to do the manufacturing, partly financed from capital from Indian profits, and India was relegated to producing the raw material and its markets closed through tariffs. Later American slave labour produced it even more cheaply.  

MILKING THE INDIAN ECONOMY TO MAKE BRITAIN RICH. We now see that the Indian economy was used and exploited in a whole load of ways to support Britain. The cost to the Indian economy ran into trillions. It was de-industrialised to suit us. There were land taxes. Territory was appropriated by the EIC. It produced opium for our trade. We raided anything we wanted. A ten year old Prince was forced to hand over the Koh i Noor diamond, cut down to half its size, for Queen Victoria’s brooch in 1849 along with the annexation of the Punjab. The colony was milked by the colonial power. The East India Company had developed its own army, or three armies, mainly using Indian soldiers, because that was far cheaper. The soldiers were given privileges and the system of control that had gone through many generations was assumed and unassailable. This is the age-old pattern of a colonial power exploiting its controlled policy to bring wealth back home. The wealth came back to build expensive homes, boost share prices, invest in industry and build warships and weapons. There was some Indian investment in canals and  railways, obviously built with Indian labour, but the net impact of colonial rule was to limit, close down and use Indian productivity for British enrichment on a substantial scale. The rupee sank in value. Silver declined, and the relative stagnation of the Indian economy was a big part of the colonial heritage.

FAMINE. It was also kept in place through famine. Countries face famine and learn to handle them, but when your agriculture is controlled, taxes take income, poverty is acute, cotton and opium replaces food, and a policy of not interfering is in place, the famines intimidated the population. There was one in the 1780s which killed more than ten million, and one in 1837-8 which killed 0.8 million. In other years there were shortages. Three in the 1860s killed 4.5 million and probably took the sting out of the “Mutiny”and then there was the Great Famine of 1876-8 which killed from 6-10 million. When issues of food are immediate, colonial confrontations recede in priority. Later in the century Florence Nightingale and others insisted the issue be addressed in Britain..

THE “MUTINY”. So, in 1857 the East India Company, vast, profitable and milking India successfully was in control. It ran native armies to subdue the populations it controlled and had agreements with vassal rulers which kept the situation stable. By 1857 the three EIC armies had about 280,000 soldiers. Those from two of the three armies also served in other areas like China and Burma. British soldiers always outranked Indians. They would be paid and equipped from the taxes and profits made by the East India Company. By 1857 there were a range of dissatisfactions among the troops which exploded when Mangal Pandey rebelled against the east India Company and shot at his commanders. He was hanged. Antagonism spread. A dispute over the greasing of cartridges created more points of tension. Eighty five soldiers at Meerut who refused to use their cartridges were sentenced to ten years imprisonment with hard labour. Their comrades saw them shackled and led off, and then revolted killing four men, eight women and eight children. A wider revolt occurred, and then action moved to nearby Delhi where there were riots and killings. Troops blew up an arsenal of arms and explosives before it could be captured and another magazine with 3,000 barrels of gunpowder was secured against the “rebels”. There were Hindus and Muslims who “rebelled” or stayed loyal. Most of the Bengal soldiers “rebelled” and the main “rebel” areas were in the Ganges valley especially around Meerut and Delhi. Soldiers rebelled or stayed loyal.

THE BRITISH GET VICIOUS. Bahadur Shah Bafur the old Mughal Emperor was proclaimed Emperor of India in Delhi and the uprising spread among populations in the area. The British were slow getting troops together, and were also fighting in the Crimea, but then moved on Delhi, hanging rebels they captured to show they meant business. A three month siege of the City occurred from the ridge overlooking the city. Eventually, with sufficient fire power of cannon and guns the city was captured and pillage and revenge killings took place. Another problem occurred at Kanpur in June 1858 where a siege was mounted against the occupying British force. An agreed evacuation turned into a massacre including of women and children and it became the moral justification for later British revenge killings. Reliable reports of what happened are difficult, but soon the atrocities committed by Indians were dwarfed by systematic British killings. Mass hangings of Indians occurred at Fatehpur. Sepoys were tied to the mouth of a cannon and blown up, as the picture at Peshawar at the top shows. Rape and torture occurred on a large scale as the British eliminated the rebellion. In Britain the press focussed on the atrocities committed by Indians and ignored the much large number done by British troops. 6,000 of the 40,000 British living in India were killed, but more than a hundred times that number were killed by the British in this completely disproportionate response.

BRITISH STATE CONTROL OF INDIA. The British state troops had held India and the whole territory therefore moved from East India Company ownership to the Crown. Victoria became Empress of India and the political Empire took over from the EIC. Three lessons were learned. First Hindu and Muslim ways needed showing more respect. Second, elite Indians needed training into British Government. Third, the troops needed securing as British troops with greater British control over arms and key militias. Few concluded that British control of India was wrong. India was used to enrich Britain; William Digby estimated that from 1870–1900 £900 million was transferred from India to Britain. So, the famines came and the control continued for another eighty years. There were many good British people who served in India, and there were benefits in technology, patterns of government and other areas that the British may have brought. Probably the missionaries with hospitals, schools and better motives than the colonialists brought other long term benefits and there are many Anglo-Indian friendships and links which we respect and celebrate, but the Indian mutiny, reflecting a mainly selfish British colonialism, was a despicable part of British history, which we should regret.

REMORSE. Some 6,000 British died in the mutiny, and we remember them. Some 800,000 Indian troops and people died during the “Mutiny”, often vicious and appalling deaths to reinstate colonial control. If we are silent remembering the British troops who died for two minutes, we will be silent remembering the Indian people for four and three quarter hours, and when we have done that, we apologize to our Indian friends with remorse.

General, Re-Remembering War

RE-REMEMBERING 3

3. THE SECOND OPIUM WAR OF 1856-60.

The East India Company imported opium from India to China, until in the 1830s there were five million addicts. The Qing Government issued a decree banning opium, and British imports were confiscated. So, Britain went to war in the First Opium War of 1839-42. Britain won, confiscated Hong Kong, because the Chinese would not allow us to make them opium addicts, and insisted on the opium trade in exchange for Chinese goods like “china”. The principle was of unfettered colonial trade access; Britain sold cheap goods to India, picked up opium to sell on to China and brought back quality Chinese goods, now our “antiques” to sell to the British.  

In the 1850s Britain wanted more unfettered access and went to war around a ship wrongly displaying the British flag between 1856 and 1860. It won, with a bit of help from the French who also wanted colonial pickings, and from then on opium was legalised for sale throughout China. The British and French troops entered Peking and looted the old Summer palaces of the Emperors. Lord Elgin, yes, the son of that Lord Elgin, then ordered the old Summer Palaces to be burned down in a final act of vandalism. The Treaty of Tientsin which sealed the victory ceded Kowloon to the British, made the Chinese pay 4 million taels of silver compensation, banned the Chinese from calling us “barbarians”, opened Peking and other ports fully to British trade and allowed our warships in the Yangtze river. It was total humiliation.

As a result of that settlement opium became so common that it was grown domestically and took over much of the economy. Possibly half of all Chinese men became addicts. It was called “the Century of Humiliation” by the Chinese, and if opium reduced the economic input of Chinese men by a fifth, we can guess its effect on the Chinese economy during that century.

But it is worse than that. At the same time 1850-64 the Taiping Rebellion against the Qing Dynasty was also underway. It was led by Hong Xiuquan, influenced by a mixture of western and Christian culture. He believed he was the brother of Jesus. It is undoubtedly true that the western colonial attack on the Qing Dynasty helped the conditions for the “Taiping heavenly Kingdom” to carry out its civil war, and the Second Opium War, of course, weakened the resistance to this barbaric rebellion. It was one of the most destructive wars ever, killing some 20-30 million Chinese, and we indirectly contributed to its occurrence.

So, we remember them. A few dozen British soldiers and sailors were killed in the Second Opium War attacking the Chinese. But we also remember the tens of millions who became opium addicts and the tens of millions who died in the Taiping rebellion aided by our foreign policy. Gladstone was a statesman who railed against the evil we were doing in China, but Palmerston and others were happy to proceed with our barbaric imperial mission and we have never really acknowledged or apologised for the damage we did to China throughout the 19th century through our military dominance. We will remember them.

General

RE-REMEMBERING 2

THE CRIMEAN WAR DISASTER AND THE LIES OF WAR.
Wars generate lying on a massive scale. We are right and they are wrong. This is for the glory of the nation. This is your Christian duty. The Crimean War lasted from October 1853 to February, 1856. It was a coalition of France, Britain, the Ottoman Empire with support from Austria against Russia. Russia lost, but really nothing much changed.


It was formally about church arrangements in Jerusalem, and whether the Russian orthodox or Catholics should run the holy sites, but actually the churches sorted it out with the Ottomans. There were territory disputes with the Austrians, but they too were sorted out at the start of the War. Partly, it was about Russian influence in the Black Sea and pushing back Russia so that it did not have a naval presence there. There was no obvious reason for the French and British to support the Ottoman Empire. We could ask why Britain was even involved. Perhaps we were worried that Russia, rather than Britain, might be Great. So, each of the powers plunged into a war which had no real purpose or rationale with lies of patriotism swaying their populations and precipitating the War. Those who opposed the War in Britain, especially Cobden and Bright, were called traitors, as they always are.


Nearly one and a half millions troops took part, and some 430-600,000 died, a lot through disease. Most of them were young and their families would need them back home. So, we remember half a million who lost their lives needlessly. The British casualties were 22,182 who died needlessly in a War we should not have fought, with engagements which were mistakes, and without basic care, until Florence Nightingale came along. We will remember these 22,182 needless British deaths, but we also remember our contribution to half a million deaths. We should always remember those we kill as well as our killed.


Tennyson’s poem, “The Charge of the Light Brigade” sees it as both as glorious and a disaster, but actually it and the whole war was a disaster, but let us look at how the Charge was dished up. The poem is fundamentally dishonest.

Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
   Rode the six hundred.
“Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns!” he said.
Into the valley of Death
   Rode the six hundred.

II
“Forward, the Light Brigade!”
Was there a man dismayed?
Not though the soldier knew
   Someone had blundered.
   Theirs not to make reply,
   Theirs not to reason why,
   Theirs but to do and die.
   Into the valley of Death
   Rode the six hundred.

III
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
   Volleyed and thundered;
Stormed at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of hell
   Rode the six hundred.

IV
Flashed all their sabres bare,
Flashed as they turned in air
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
   All the world wondered.
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right through the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reeled from the sabre stroke
   Shattered and sundered.
Then they rode back, but not
   Not the six hundred.

V
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
   Volleyed and thundered;
Stormed at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell.
They that had fought so well
Came through the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of hell,
All that was left of them,
   Left of six hundred.

VI
When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
   All the world wondered.
Honour the charge they made!
Honour the Light Brigade,
   Noble six hundred!


Someone had blundered, but not Lord Raglan.

We look at Hansard and the establishment’s praise of the big brass, even when they had made such a mess of things.


House of Lords 14/12/1854 THE DUKE OF RICHMOND presented a petition from the Mayor, Aldermen, and Burgesses of Wakefield, praying that the war may be brought to a speedy, successful, and honourable termination. The petitioners expressed the utmost admiration of the undaunted courage displayed by the allied forces at Alma and elsewhere, but regretted that the force in the Crimea was not sufficient to attain the object contemplated by the expedition, the capture of Sebastopol. The petitioners, therefore, prayed that the House would impress on Her Majesty’s Government the necessity of bringing all the resources of the country to bear, in order that the war might be brought to a successful and honourable termination. He need not assure their Lordships how fully he concurred in the prayer of the petition, and was glad to find that it was the intention of the Government to prosecute the war vigorously, and send reinforcements as speedily as possible. As he should not be in his place in the House to-morrow, when it was intended to move a Vote of Thanks to the army and navy, because he was about to join his regiment in order to induce as many of them as possible to volunteer, and as in that way he would, perhaps, promote the public service more than by making speeches in the House, he begged to take that opportunity of stating that lie joined most cordially in admiration of the conduct of Lord Raglan and the British soldiers under his command, who had justly entitled themselves to the Thanks of Parliament and the country. They had had to contend with difficulties which would have tried severely an army of veterans, and he was sure the House and the country would be unanimous in voting them Thanks for their gallant conduct, and for the perseverance, steadiness, and coolness they had exhibited under fire. Lord Raglan had exhibited perseverance, quickness, and coolness under fire—which was not surprising—and had shown all the abilities of a great general, and he hoped and trusted that Providence would preserve his life, and enable him to come back to England and reap the just reward of his brilliant services.” This speech advocates ending and continuing the war. It is a rag-bag of establishment sycophancy. If you swallow Lord Raglan and the “just reward of his brilliant services”, you swallow anything. It cloaks what was actually going on in a tissue of lies – it is War in Christmas wrapping paper

LEO TOLSTOY.
We leave it to the world’s greatest novelist to tell the final lie and the truth from the Russian side of the Crimean War.


SEVASTOPOL.
The doctor, after bandaging the other officer’s wound, pointed to Kozeltzoff and said something to a priest with a huge reddish beard and a cross, who was standing nearby.“What! Am I dying?” Kozeltzoff asked the priest, when the latter approached him.The priest without making any reply, recited a prayer and handed the cross to the wounded man.Death had no terrors for Kozeltzoff. He grasped the cross with his weal hands, pressed it to his lips, and burst into tears.“Well, were the French repulsed?” he inquired of the priest, in firm tones.“The victory has remained with us at every point,” replied the priest in order to comfort the wounded man, concealing from him the fact that the French standard had already been unfurled on the Malakoff mound.


To honour the dead we tell the truth about war.

General, Re-Remembering War

1. RE-REMEMBERING WAR.

We are coming up to Remembrance Day, but this year it must be different. Usually, it is frozen in a sacred, silent respect for the dead and an implicit, always unchallenged, understanding that they died for a good cause. Actually, they always did not, as this man in the painting knew. Respect for them should be different. They were let down by war after war that should not have been. We look at these failures and honour those who died, and still die needlessly, by facing the real cause of wars and rumours of wars. Let us shake off this propaganda control by the militarists and honour the dead by facing the truths about war. We begin with a general point and the example of WW1.


1. WORLD WAR ONE. The Military-Industrial Complexes of the World need wars and generate wars. Accumulating arms causes wars and did in 1914.
Most modern wars do not have a big disputed reason, but start because the military and the arms sellers need wars for their business. The military-industrial complex, allied to its politicians, cause wars and rumours of wars.


Why was the Great War triggered by a single murder in Sarajevo? Because there were already four massive arms races underway. The GREAT WAR WAS ABOUT ARMS. This was hidden in the long remembrance of the World War One. We discussed it endlessly, but not its cause.


The person who knew the build up to World War One most thoroughly was Lord Grey, British Foreign Secretary for the preceding decade. He said: “The moral is obvious; it is that great armaments lead inevitably to war. If there are armaments on one side, there must be armaments on other sides.. The increase in armaments that in each nation is intended to produce consciousness of strength and a sense of security, do not produce these effects. On the contrary, it produces a consciousness of the strength of other nations and a sense of fear. Fear begets suspicion and distrust and evil imaginings of all sorts…The enormous growth of armaments in Europe, the sense of insecurity and fear caused by them – it was these that made war inevitable. This, it seems to me, is the truest reading of history, and the lesson that the present should be learning from the last in the interests of future peace, the warning to be handed on to those who come after us.”

There were many other witnesses to the same truth, as we shall see. ARMS CAUSE WARS.


Is Lord Grey correct? Your answer counts.

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