From the Archive

From the Archive

(2008)

Dispatches ~ Volume 9

30 December 2019

I

IT IS A SHOCK TO THE SYSTEM ~ EIN SCHOCK FÜR DAS SYSTEM to see anti-Semitic graffiti daubed across London this morning, in the same fashion that heralded the descent of the German People into the chaos and hell of the Third Reich 1933-1945 and destruction of Germany in just 12 years.

It is even more of a shock recalling that members of my own family fought and died "to rid the world of brute oppression, tyranny and fear", as Winston Churchill eloquently and very defiantly put it.

Even ten years ago in Liverpool, when I owned and edited a lifestyle magazine, this action would have been unthinkable.

My parents were alive then; they had survived the Blitz; both had been bombed and strafed as teenage civilians, even here, in Britain. My father saw Coventry on 15 November 1940 with his mother, Mrs Webb had made a train dash to the city with her 13-year-old son in tow to check up on her brother, wife and family in Coventry following the previous night air raid. In Luftwaffe jargon the term coventriert or coventryed was used.

II

In spite of all that, my sisters and I were brought up by our parents and four grandparents to not hold any bitterness towards the German People. Those familiar with my work will know where I stand. A brief visit to both of my website leaves no one in doubt.

I have a very close association with Germany and with Austria.

These two countries are part of my family heritage because of two world wars. In my family, we have been drawn closer to these two countries, starting with my sister visiting Salzburg, Austria, with her school in 1968 and my visit to Innsbruck, Austria, with my school the following year, 1969. My parents knew what they were doing.

III

I have a very close association with Israel. My faith is resolute, not strait-jacketed, totally rejecting the Christian fundamentalist view that Israel should return to its biblical borders of two millennia ago: a VERY loose Christian, well outside the box. I understand the plight of the Palestinians. I have spent much time in Jerusalem, the Galil, and the Golan Heights over the years, similarly in Berlin and Hamburg.

I know well the arguments.

IV

In the United Kingdom, it seems that we do not teach history as it was taught when I was at school. 

Consider this:  a head teacher and part of my family pointed out yesterday the quandary he faces. He is a history teacher. A young teacher approached him the other week and asked him to help her. What was the Blitz? It was something she needed to teach about.

Ten years ago, in Liverpool, a young friend (19), when I mentioned the Liverpool Blitz of May 1941, wondered aloud, "What's that? A bar of chocolate?" And he was not being sarcastic or flippant. He genuinely didn't know.

He was shocked when, a week later, I showed him the Liverpool Blitz. It was, after all, his city. His birthplace. His home of 19 years. We were looking at an image of Liverpool that filled one of the windows of the recently closed art deco Lewis's of Liverpool. He wasn't too pleased with his former history teacher, Let's put it that way because his reply is unprintable. I observed a young man grow considerably in stature just in that short visual introduction. He looked around him. It dawned on him. Most of the buildings were 'new'. He then visualised wide open spaces. His reply was again unrepeatable.

V

And so this leads me to wonder what my grandparents and parents – the greatest generation – would have thought if I was able to say to them that that which they fought to defeat fascism - and lost their sons and brothers fascism - alien to us here in these islands, was now rearing its head amongst the British People in the heart of London.

I am relieved they are not here.

More importantly, what are universities and schools doing? How has the teaching profession allowed two generations to grow up without knowledge of the Second World War?

I am not going to post on here the images that daub London. Absolutely not. Absolut nicht! 

VI

I do know this. Something extraordinary happened on 12 December 2019. The British People dealt with antisemitism and a shattered and rebellious parliament by the most powerful means: they used the ballot box to register their anger. They also used that ballot to sweep away the voices of strife and division, of malcontent, of malpractice.

That is how we do things here. 

Erm! In 2023, I find myself well and truly shafted, as my note at the end explains.

VII

To my Jewish and German friends, I sincerely thank you for how you take this sinister turn of events in your stride. 

Remember the maxim of dictatorship: 

“When the vociferous minority portray themselves as the silent majority, and the silent majority are rebuked as the meaningless minority.”

— KTW

When a nation turns its back on history, it turns its back on its responsibility. It lays itself wide open to all the political idiots who shout and clamour to be heard, recognised, and given power and authority. In this paragraph alone, we see the apt description of a megalomaniac, Adolf Hitler. Let us truly on alert when young people see that man as "just another major character in history!"

VIII

Many superb teachers and lecturers exist in our schools, academies, colleges and universities. There are also many who, if weighed on the scales, would be found to be of no use. To be a teacher lacking in teaching skills is one thing. That situation can be corrected. Not so, when the start point is a complete absence of knowledge and expertise in their qualifying subject.

That same group of teachers will court anarchy and rebellion.

IX

A brooding, silent, peaceful people will look on; they will bide their time, and through the rule of law, they will give their weight to true democracy—this brooding we glimpsed, momentarily, on 12 December.

On 13 December, the world realised that the Mother of Parliaments had stepped back into the fray; she had made herself heard and felt. She had also stepped back from the brink. And the free world heaved a sigh of relief. The closed and totalitarian world cursed beneath its breath.

Populism belched.

X

As I write this, I see to my right on the desk my uncle, Ken Webb, in 1941 in Alabama, USA, training to be a pilot with the Royal Air Force. I have all his correspondence with the family. He was 19 in this photograph, and in one of his letters to his mum, he writes, "I think we're doing the right thing, Mum". He and I never met, but I am named after him.

I also have a poem that his mum had copied out in pencil at the same time – at the height of the Blitz on Britain – entitled Because He was a Jew. I have not seen this since I was a boy in the 1950s.

Referring to Christ, the poem is a two-edged sword, for it also makes it very clear where the Jewish People stood in the writer's thinking and reasoning, and most surely in my Grandma's thinking and reasoning, and also that of her three sons, Arthur, Ken and Des. And my father, Desmond Webb, always reminded me of the importance of that poem when I was growing up. And they were not in an inferior position either in that poem or in my or my family's thinking.

XI

I have spoken with survivors of the concentration camps. My nieces, both 37, have been to Auschwitz. I have written about that place in both "Shoah" and "They Came in the Night". I have visited the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem several times, but I confess that I cannot bring myself to visit Auschwitz. 

All of us must remember that there are people who delight in neo-fascism. Many can be found in America. Many, alas, can be found here.

Let the Muslim, the Jew, the Christian, the Hindu, the Sikh, the Pagan, the Atheist and everyone else put aside religious differences and strive for the higher ideal of humankind. 

“I do know this. Something extraordinary happened on 12 December 2019. The British People dealt with antisemitism and a shattered and rebellious parliament by the most powerful means: they used the ballot box to register their anger.

They also used that ballot to sweep away the voices of strife and division, of malcontent, of malpractice.

That is how we do things here.”

— KTW

I don't know whether I simply misread, saw the world through childlike eyes, or simply put, have been completely shafted by a bunch of career politicians and career civil servants who epitomise that description of the Pigs on the Farm when George Orwell penned those infamous words in Animal Farm (1940).

All Animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.