PTSD: The War in My Head, BBC 2, BBC 3, BBC iPlayer, narrator Iwan Rheon.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p077ysvd/ptsd-the-war-in-my-head

Who are you? What are you? A simple way of telling a story involves both elements. To be identified as a soldier tells who you are. Lt. General Harold G. Moore, for example, proudly claims in his New York Times Bestseller, We Were Soldiers Once…And Young.   But it doesn’t tell what you are. The moron’s moron and Chief Commanding Officer of the United States Army, for example, was not a draft dodger, or conscientious objector like Muhammed Ali, for that takes courage of conviction. When you’ve no morals or convictions it’s pretty easy to claim to have a spur in your heel that stops you from walking properly and tell other poor fools to fight in Vietnam. George Bush, Junior, who did manage to steal an election using the Supreme Court and some chads as cover, claimed he was a recovering alcoholic. There were no physical ailments to mark him out as different. After the fall of the Twin Towers and what is referred to as 9/11 it would have been very difficult for an American President not to invade a small country. The Commander in Chief convinced Tony Blair the British Prime Minister to support his dubious claims of weapons of mass destruction and invade Iraq. In comparison, in the sixties, Prime-Minister Harold Wilson body-swerved supporting Lyndon B. Johnson’s veiled threats and diplomatic request to send British troops to help with the invasion of Vietnam.

Two of the dumbest Presidents in modern history, both commanders in chiefs. Ironically, we’re back here now with war in Ukraine. Afghanistan abandoned to the Taliban. Iraq dismembered and hundreds of thousands of lives lost. For what?

Who are you? What are you? This is the story of the three of these soldiers who fought in these wars. Listen carefully. When does the army’s duty of care begin and end?

Cost cutting under the false flag of austerity means that Tobias Ellwood, a former British officer and reservist, rehashes the Minister of Defence’s rhetoric about their duty of care, while quietly shifting the responsibility onto the NHS. The same NHS which the Tory Party has been attacking and underfunding and trying to privatise, while not admitting to such, because that would be political suicide of the Truss variety. British soldiers with mental health problems and suicidal thoughts would be uninsurable under such a scheme. And if you listen closely, Kevin Williams also developed testicular cancer, which he joked about to his sister of only having one ball. But he was under thirty. He might be a statistical outlier. What remains largely invisible and neglected as mental-health care in a world of crude propaganda of good versus evil is the armour-piercing shells and bullets we use are radio-active afterwards. Cancerous. Tens of thousands of Afghani and Iraqi children born and unborn are the unread litmus tests. Kevin Williams may have been a victim of friendly fire in more than one way, if there is such a thing.

The programme chooses to finish with those that made it to the other side. End on a high note. It’s a story of hope. But I’m not buying. A story of continued neglect would be nearer the mark.     

Notes:

This film tells the stories of three British soldiers who died in 2018 following lengthy battles with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). John Paul Finnigan from Liverpool, Kevin Williams from London, and Kevin Holt from Doncaster were in the same regiment, 2-Rifles, which served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

John Paul Finnigan, who died aged 34 and Kevin Williams, who was 29, took their own lives.

Through personal videos, voice notes, interviews and letters, this film reveals the private battle these men fought with their mental health.

While candid conversations with soldiers’ friends and families, document how their illnesses affected those around them.

As pressure mounts on the MOD to admit that they missed cases of PTSD in the wake of traumas experienced by soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, the film raises serious questions around the whole culture of mental health care in the army, which the Minister for Defence, People and Veterans, Tobias Ellwood says he is trying to change.

I need to unscramble my thoughts and get myself back together piece by piece.

3 soldiers who died, not the battlefield last year (2018) but in their own homes.

Commentator: These soldiers died after long battles with PTSD.

Kevin Holt 1988-2018.

Jess Holt. Kevin’s sister. He used to play outside building forts with those little green soldiers.

Kevin Holt (filmed by BBC 3 in 2012). I joined up because I wanted to get out of Lancaster. And obviously, when I were little, I watched a few Rambo film and that. Hmmmm.

Jess Holt [JH] He tried to join the first time, but they wouldn’t let im. Because he was far too skinny. He had to get those protein [drinks]. He never stopped eating.

Kevin Holt grew up in a big family. The only boy with four sisters.

JH. He was very full of himself. He always thought he was god’s gift. If you asked im about himself he’d say he was invincible.

KH: To be honest, I just wanted to be…get out there. Like get out on tour.

When Kevin joined the army, Britain was already at war in Iraq. He completed his basic training and went straight to Basra.

Kevin Williams 1988-2018.

Jennifer Williams [JW] Kevin’s sister. The family’s reaction to Kevin joining the army was not the best. Em, on the one hand, we saw it as a very honourable career choice.

Kevin Williams [KW own footage] Here we are Rifleman Williams the owner of this camera…And we have Rifleman Collison, say ‘Hello’ Rifleman Collison.

JW: I would definitely describe my brother as being not a mature 18-year-old. He’s definitely a boy. He wanted to join as soon as possible. Say, 15 and nine months, or whatever it was. So he basically, he broke my parents down until they said finally, yeh, we’ll sign the papers.

Rachel Kaden,  KW’s close friend,

Rachel Kaden met Kevin years after he left the army. She’d go on to make a documentary about him.

Rachel [looking at picture of him] I always remember him talking about meeting the Queen and serving in the army at 16. And one of the girls I worked with said I think he makes all this stuff up. You can’t join the army at 16. I remember feeling so angry. And I was never going to let Kevin know this and I searched the internet. And found a picture of him meeting the Queen. Just so I could go in the next day and say, hmm, he’s not a liar. See!

KW deployed to Basra on his 18^th birthday.

John Paul Finnigan 1983-2018.

Liverpool.

Steven Finnigan [JP’s brother]

SF. We did have a difficult upbringing. Don’t get me wrong. We never really had any real inspiration where he was going. But once we seen he was joining the army, we just seen this glow in him.

Leah Finnigan [JP’s ex-wife]

LF: Me and JP were 18 or 19 when we met. And it wasn’t a magical love story. It was just 2 friends and we fell in love. And, yeh, it was that simple.

[footage of their wedding]

LF: we decided when he got his dates for Iraq, OK, let’s get married. We got a formal wedding. Then it was straight onto the party. And drunken dance and Karaoke. We got Karaoke.  He/We just wanted to have fun.

Letter to family from JP in Iraq 20/11/2006 [read by SF his brother]

Don’t know if you’ll get this, but I’m writing it anyway. I’m missing everyone at home and the wife. I’m missing Leah much more than I thought I would, but hey things must go on. I got hit by a Chinese rocket. 25 meters away. A bit too close for comfort.

Lee Harding was one of JP’s best mates in the army. He lived near him in Liverpool and they served in Iraq, alongside Kevin Williams.

LH: It was just the ferocity of the contacts we were in. It was relentless. The minute we got there to the minute we got home. It was constant.

[Commentator] One day JP was out fixing the Bulldog fighting vehicle he drove. When they came under attack.

LH: 12 mortars from 6 different locations in the city. JP was out of the wagon and it landed no more than a couple of feet away. 

It burst JP’s eardrums. But at the time, you literally, laugh it off. Out there you have feelings. You don’t get hurt. Everything gets buried, deep down on you.

Commentator: In fact, JP was left with ringing in his ears. He later got diagnosed with an ear infection. Which left him with life-long hearing problems.

Commentator; [transition]

Keven William was in the same company as JP.

KW’s personal video.

Believe it or not I’m in a fucking place. Where most folk are being fucking killed.

Commentator: For 7 months the battalion endured daily attacks. They lost 3 young soldiers.

Jennifer Williams [JW] Kevin’s sister: When Kevin was in Iraq, he did lose one of his best friends. And that hit him really hard. Because Kevin is the type of person, when he likes you, he really likes you. And for him to call this person ‘his best friend’, it’s like more than a brother to him. 

Commentator: Aaron Lincoln was killed when out on patrol in 2007.

Footage from RKaden: KW speaking: I lost possibly the closest friend to me that served alongside me. He wanted to leave the forces. I convinced him to stay. And no long after he was killed.

Commentator: Kevin Halt was on tour for one month in Iraq, but what he saw in that month was to shatter any illusions he had about life of the front-line soldier.

Jess Holt. Kevin’s sister

One of the things that stuck with him most in Iraq was he went on patrol, and he saw this little girl, she must only have been about 3 or 4, and she was obviously in distress, really hot and dusty. And he gave her a bottle of water. Went on his patrol. Came back the same way. And they’d hung this little girl, cause she took the water from, obviously, a soldier. And they didn’t like that. But he always blamed himself for that. It really got to him.

Commentator: After any active tour, the army gives its soldiers a few days away before coming home. They call this period: decompression.

KW’s personal video, army base, Cyprus.

Daniel Holleran was friends with JP and KW and served in Iraq with the Rifles:  They basically just left us in the camp. And they’d a container with crates of lager and cider and everything you wanted.  We’d a bit of R&R in the daytime. Where we could go jet-skiing or paragliding. That was the joke, get out of bad habits before you get home and batter your wife.

Tobias Ellwood is the defence spokesman for veterans. He’s a veteran himself, who is still a reservist in the army.

TE: the decompression period is actually very important. What we didn’t want was them going from the violent arena, where they’ve seen things. Witnessed things. Or being aware of lost colleagues or so forth. Going straight back to seeing their families. Taking them to another arena such as Cyprus, were we have military bases there. They’re still together as a unit, but it’s not an operational environment. You have psychologists. You have padres there which offers the pastoral care, which allows people to start thinking, reflecting on what they’ve just been through. And being able to vent and share concerns. And so forth. Move on. Have something else. A bit of distance between what they’ve endured, before they meet their families.

KW’s personal video, army base, Cyprus:

Totally pissed.

TE: I’m not aware of huge quantities of alcohol. If that is the case then it’s a breach of the rules. And the controlled programmes that we’re trying to…eh. Have in place.

Commentator: KW’s struggle with mental health pre-dated his first tour. Unbeknown to the army, he had attempted to take his own life before he had joined. But after Iraq, he was diagnosed with a new condition. PTSD.

Filmed for BBC 3 in 2012: KW.

Mostly anger. At one stage I smashed up my room. Turned the TV over. Everything. And I don’t even know why.

PTSD is an anxiety condition that can occur after experiencing a frightening or distressing event.

Shirley Holt (KH’s mum).

2007, he got diagnosed with the condition.

He was bad for it. An he were bad from word go. As soon as he came home. You could always tell when he were gonna have an episode cause his eye used to change. I can’t explain it, but they do. Load of change.

Commentator: In the army, KW was given mental-health treatment. Including a period of hospitalisation in late 2007. The army makes judgement about who can handle weapons and go on tour based on mental as well as physical fitness. But Kevin assured medics he was able to cope.

Official report: Rfn Holt reported that he would like to soldier on.

   2009. KH deployed to Afghanistan. Where Britain had been at war for 8 years.

Jess Holt. Kevin’s sister

JH: He wanted to go to Afghanistan. He was obviously nervous. A bit apprehensive about it. But he had this mindset where he wanted to go. Not to make things better but…it just…get it done.

KW [personal video]: The last tour were Afghan, we spent 7 months there and my role were the valour man? Obviously, it’s just you holding a metal detector (mine sweeping) and you’re detecting any metal content in the IEDs.

Commentator: IDs, improvised explosive devices were responsible for most deaths and injuries for British soldiers in Afghanistan.

On the 10^th July, KH’s company was out on patrol. When a series of ID’s were triggered.

JH: I remember the day it happened. He weren’t supposed to be ringing. He were supposed to be like radio silence in the camp. But he rang my mum. I remember answering the phone. And he as just…He was crying. And I was like er, trying to get him to say what’s the matter? He were like, just put mum on. That was when we’d found out, he’d er…what had happened.

Commentator: 5 soldiers died that day. Including JH’s best friend James Backhouse.

JH: For him it wasn’t the initial explosion that kinda got to him. It was er afterwards. Picking all the bodies up. We can’t even imagine. The stuff of nightmares. He was an overthinker. It got to him. He just couldn’t shut it off. His head just couldn’t move on from that day, really.

Commentator: KH had been leading the patrol with a metal detector. Despite his feelings of guilt. The MOD recognised him as faultless in the incident. He even received a citation for his bravery. For continuing to search the area for further ID’s after the explosions. 

BBC 3 film, KH: Lot of people on the platoon, deserved it more than me. Everyone. . .

Commentator: The events of that day would cut short KH’s dreams of an army career.

KH: At first I were keen. I wanted to step up the ranks. The thing that stopped me being keen were seeing people I lived with, I worked with, that I care about, like get hurt. Or die.

Commentator: KH was discharged from the army at his own request.  But this was later converted to a medical discharge. In acknowledgement of his PTSD.

Liverpool.

Commentator: JPF couldn’t go to Afghanistan in 2009 because of the problems with his hearing. Instead, he was given a role in a welfare unit in England. In practice, this meant ferrying the families of the dead and injured flown back from Afghanistan so they could attend the repatriation ceremonies.

Leah Finnigan [JP’s ex-wife]:He had all these people in the back of his car. Taking them to hospitals or pick up the well…the dead. He felt guilty. He should have been there. In Afghanistan. He didn’t want to be driving the families. The guilt. The injury. That would have caused the trauma if he’d never done the tour. That’s when he started to shut off his emotions, actually. When he was ill. Really ill.

Commentator: Kevin Williams did not deploy to Afghanistan. He’d been discharged from the army in 2008. The year after he got back from Iraq, the recreational drug use increased. His sister believed by that time he wanted out. When she’s visited him on base in the UK a few months earlier, it was clear things were going badly wrong in his head.

Jennifer Williams [JW] Kevin’s sister: One of his friends actually pulled me aside. Aidan said, ‘I’m worried about Kevin.’ I went…OK… I was, he was saying he’d cut himself and he’d written some message in his own blood on the walls.  And so I broached  the subject with Kevin. And he was like yer, I did do that. I just had a bit of a meltdown. And he said that he was given a card to call a number to get help. And I asked him, ‘did you call the number?’ And he said ‘No’.

Well, you really need to call the number.

Commentator: It would be years before KW was diagnosed with PTSD. After his dismissal from the army he returned to his family home. But his increasingly erratic behaviour was difficult for his family to deal with. Or understand.

JW. It was quite a scary time for us, with KH in the house, cause he would have rages. All of a sudden a fist would go through the door.  So my mum arranged for him to see the doctor to try and get help. He was very clearly depressed.

Commentator: eventually KW got a diagnosis of PTSD through a veteran charity. And his friend Rachel, started making a documentary about him.

Kevin Williams – This is Me. A film by Rachel Kaden 2016.  

KW: Returning to civilian life was a big shock. The skills I learned, especially being in the infantry regiment was all combat based. So civilian life doesn’t really have much combat. I was pretty much, you know? Useless.

Commentator: KW began communicating with Rachel through voice notes. They provide a unique insight into his battles with PTSD. And are broadcast here for the first time.

KW: 7/3/2016. For some good reason I believe the battle field will be my home?  When I’m in conflict, I’m a nicer person than when I am not. You know, when I leave the house today, I just want to hurt everyone. You know when I’m in combat, I’m like, I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to hurt you. You know I don’t want anyone to get hurt. And I think, this is where I’m coming from.

Commentator. John Paul Finnigan was medically discharged from the army in 2010 because of his ear injury.

Steven Finnigan [JP’s brother]

Like when JPF came back to Liverpool, we found it very hard to get him out of his rut because he was in denial of what he was and was in denial. He’d fly off the handle. Fighting all the time.  He was like a yo-yo, basically. He’d go up and down with his moods.

Leah Finnigan [JP’s ex-wife] I told him, he needed help. And he went to the doctors and got CBT

Commentator: CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) is the key treatment for PTSD. It requires the sufferer identifying the emotions driving their behaviour. In JP’s case he was asked to start writing this down.

JP (read by SF] I’ve been diagnosed with PTSD, depression and anxiety which leaves me low and at a loss. Tight, on edge, unsettled. When things happen my heart races. My chest feels tight. My muscles tense and I go stiff. I usually lash out at walls and doors. But this still has affected my relationship with my wife and child. 

Commentator: But JP found it hard to keep following the therapist’s instructions at home.

LF: He wasn’t doing the techniques. They teach you techniques to do at home. But he just wasn’t doing them. And that’s not the way it works. In the end, it killed our marriage. It was the PTSD that done it.

Kevin Holt

To be honest, after I got out the army, that’s when like all the help stopped. An I were just like going down. From there.

Doncaster.

Commentor: After Kevin Holt was discharged from the army he moved back to Doncaster.

KH’s mum: He got a job in a kitchen place. He told them he had PTSD. They said they understood that and they’d have a quiet word. But it only lasted a week. Thought everybody were talking about im. So he got paranoid and he went on er sick.

Commentator: Kevin was given every available treatment for sufferers on the NHS. Including CBT and counselling. But his inability to talk about his problems was a barrier to the treatment working.

KH 2012: Everything I’ve been to, I feel it hasn’t really helped…I don’t really like talking about things…  That’s probably why.

Commentator: Tobias Ellwood agrees they struggled to get the right support, when they leave the army.

TE: We must make sure they get the right support. Nobody is left out. They must be slid across to the civilian operation. And given the support they needed. And it’s taken a little time, because this whole mental-support mechanism has grown and evolved. I go back to the fact, we’re dealing with a very macho environment. And sometimes there’s a reluctance to admit that there’s an issue. And that’s part of what the NHS now needs to do. Make sure they ask the right questions so they can provide the right support.

Commentator: The solution he says lies in specialist training for GPs. And new NHS units tailored specifically to veteran care. For KH help came in another form.

KH Mum: He just wanted to settle down and have somebody. And kids. He always wanted kids. Whatever girlfriends he had couldn’t cope with his PTSD. So we got him a dog. The veteran charity helped train Kevin with his PTSD.

KH sister, JH: The thing that helped him most was Dash. That dog was like his kid. It was trained to lick him and wake him up when he was having a nightmare. I think having the responsibility of having to get up and look after something else. And having that routine back. Was important for im.  

Commentator: To add to his struggles, Kevin was diagnosed with testicular cancer. During his treatment, he moved into a caravan next door to his mum.

JH: He used to allow his paranoia and phases when he wanted to be on his own and shut the world out. But I think focussing on thinking about getting himself better from the cancer distracted him a little bit.

A few weeks before he passed away, he was…he’d come around for a drink. He was joking about losing one of his balls. That was just the sort of person he was. He didn’t let anything like that sorta bother im. It was the big stuff that got to him most.

KH Mum: He told me the day before he wanted to be by himself. And [I said] I’m still goin to make sure you’re alright. But he waved to me through the kitchen window. And he smiled at me. So I seen im the day before.    

Commentator: On 13^th July 2018, KH was found dead in his caravan. The coroner ruled his death was by misadventure. KH accidentally overdosed on the morphine he’d been prescribed for his cancer. He was 30-years-old when he died.

JH: It feels like a massive blur. But I don’t think it’ll hurt properly. It looked like I said I lost my brother. But when he came back from Iraq, as much as I loved him and he was my big brother, he never really came home from there.

Basildon.

Commentator: Kevin Williams also struggled to find the right treatment for his PTSD. For him, Thai boxing seemed to relieve some of the strain. But in January 2018, things started to get on top of him.

KW voice note: 15/1/2018. I’ve been feeling very weird lately. My head playing games and everything else. It all plummeted at once. It was like I was supporting the bridge and all the suspension cables decided to fucking go off. One by one. Right after the other. It’s like I need to take a big step back from everything. And unscramble all my thoughts and my mind. And just get myself back together piece by piece.

Kevin Williams – This is Me. A film by Rachel Kaden 2016. 

RK: Well, he said it about the suspensions and the bridge. Just completely go. All I wish is I said, Let it all go. Come ere. I’ve got a spare room. Let it all go. Just come. Be still ere. So…hindsight is very easy to, er, make you think, isn’t it?

Commentator: Kevin’s final voice note was sent a week before his death. And he sounded back on track.

KW: 6/3/2018. 11/3/2018. Rachel, Rachel, Rachel, what are you doing today? It’s the tattoo artist again. I need your help. I’m going to look to book…

Commentator: On the 18^th March 2018, KW took his own life at his own home in Basildon. He was 29-years-old.

Jennifer Williams [JW] Kevin’s sister: When people talk about PTSD in particular they talk about walking the black dog. And…I just think that is just a really lame way of putting it. And the reason I’m saying it is anyone can walk a black dog down the park. These are soldiers. They can walk in the park. It’s more like being chained to a dark wolf. That it trying to eat you, constantly. And you have to fight it every day, every minute, every hour. And sometimes you get a lucky punch. That wolf goes down for… a few hours. Maybe a day. Maybe two days. But eventually that wolf comes round. And that wolf is always there. You’re chained to it. So you can’t get away from it.  

Steven Finnigan [JP’s brother]

JP was just talking to me. And I knew something was up, just by his voice. And he said he was goin for a walk. Now, I knew where, he’d walk, you know. Know what I mean?

So I jumped in my car and shot down there. And he was standing out at the bridge and I beeped me horn and that startled im. And he was out of that vision of what he were goin to do. Instead, he was thinking what were that? You know what I mean? Where I’d that time to drag him back over and throw him back into me car. And don’t get me wrong, he was fighting me all the way. To do it, but…

Yer, he was fightin me all the way to do it, but… No. That’s not the way he was going. In my eyes, yeh, know what I mean? He deserved better than that.

Commentator: After JP’s marriage ended he met and moved in with Danielle Miller fiancee.

DM: JP’s sister said to get in touch, she was worried and to get in touch with her. He had been having kinda suicidal thoughts. To me it was a shock.

Commentator: Danielle’s mother had taken her own life. So she knew how it felt to lose someone to suicide.

DM: I did say to JP, you know how much I don’t  agree with suicide. And JP promised me, he did, er think about it. But he wouldn’t do it. It was kinda spur of the moment talk. And promised me he couldn’t live without me. His children. His family.

Commentator: But it was a promise he was unable to keep. On 27^th May 2018, Danielle found JP’s body in the garden of the home they shared.

DM: I still don’t understand why JP done it. It’ll never leave. 

Steven Finnigan [JP’s brother]

Well, I felt hopeless. Because I was in a completely different country. An, I felt that he knew, I’d stopped im before. So with me out of the way, I’d no stop im, you know what I mean?

Leah Finnigan [JP’s ex-wife]

All day, every day, he suffered so much. And I…My heart breaks that he wasn’t able to get the help he needed. He shoulda got help. He shoulda. He shouldn’t have been up to im to ask for it.  It shouldn’t ave. That should have been given to him… It should be an automatic thing… It’s men and women… it’s so sad.

Commentator: After Afghanistan the army attempted to screen soldiers [eg video Expressing my Emotions – This is Belonging: Army Jobs 2018] for mental-health problems. But it wasn’t effective.

Instead the MOD is trying to change the whole culture in the armed forces. As this recruitment video shows.

Tobias Ellwood:

When I was in the armed forces, you were reluctant to say anything, you were intimidated. You were told to grab a mansuit and sort yourself out. Em, certainly, there was no recognition that there was perhaps that there was something there that might need attention. And if you dealt with it right away it wouldn’t incubate into something…worse. And eh, that’s what we’re trying to change now.

Commentator: But any change will come too late for combat, front-line soldiers of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Of whom 17% are suffering from probable PTSD. (source: KMCHR, October 2018 and refers to ex-serving personnel).

Commentator: Those sufferers include friends of JP. Men who fought alongside him. Daniel and Lee have both been diagnosed with PTSD. But it wasn’t until JP’s death, they faced up to their own thoughts to suicide.

Daniel: speaking about JP. I’d say he was one of the strongest soldiers. One of the strongest men I knew. Took his own life. But I understood why. I didn’t blame him. I didn’t judge him. To my shame, the first thought in my mind was he’s out of the pain now. And er, he hasn’t got all these things going round in his head. It was just complete and utter jealousy.

Lee: I didn’t know I was suicidal until you battle these demons and you feel numb.

Commentator: In the years since JP’s death, both have sought help.

Daniel: I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, JP’s death gave me life. Something changed in me. From that day I put the drugs down and I went into treatment and I got better. It was all down to JP’s death. Give me my life.   

Lee: Just getting over that line to say I needed help was probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done. [Pictures of him with his wife and family, toddlers and baby]. Going back to therapy. That first session, was hard, really hard.

Commentator: The family and friends in this film had done so in the hope more veterans would have the courage to seek help.

JH:It was hard, the first week, I couldn’t even say his name, but it’s what he wanted. Baby Kevin Holt III. Now I’ve got a little mini Kev. I hope he’s not as naughty as Uncle Kev.

Storyville, Final Account, BBC 4, BBC iPlayer, Director Luke Holland

Storyville, Final Account, BBC 4, BBC iPlayer, Director Luke Holland

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0013vf3/storyville-final-account

The simplest path is that of force. The crooked path is that of rhetoric and ideology. I ask myself a question here: Could I have done this. Could I have massacred men, women and children? My sympathy is not with the Nazis, but the victims of Neo-Nazism.  My answer is Yes. Like 99% of other Germans I’d have looked the other way. I’d have lied and minimised my role.  I’m aware of Miligram’s experiment (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment) that sought to teach us something about how we responded to authority. The Jesuit ideology of give me the child and I’ll give you the man.

But if you read and attempt to write you know the world is full of words and sand. Our thinking habits protect us from ourselves and others by not thinking. Gulliver bound by 10 000 threads asks to be released.  Antoine Augustin Cournot’s idea that we do not resolve difficulties we only displace them. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, dissenter and critic of the Soviet Union asked ‘how did we get into this quagmire’ (of Communism)? The principle of the cult became state religion. We see that with the moron’s moron in America. Not naivety or pragmatism: xenophobia, sectionalism and crude belligerence. Reagan’s Making America Great Again clarion calls, sound very much like Making Nazi Germany Great or Saving Mother Russia. For the Nazi state it was a built-in given. Ubermensch and the tendency to view the world of others as inferior.  The moron’s moron’s celebration of ignorance as a force for good. Blind optimism makes you blind. Collateral damage is what happens to those not in the cult. A term much used by George W Bush (junior) and his Yes man, Tony Blair. The idea  if you say something enough people will no longer recognise what it means—deaths: 55 000 in Iraq,  500 000 children under-five due to United Nations sanctions, in particular, chlorine used in treating water plants. Samizdat art and writing was a recognised way of getting around what couldn’t be said in the Eastern bloc. When it is hot in the desert, one does not take clothes off, but put more on. We are back to those cloaked references and signs from Mother Russia. Since we cannot save our world, we save the memory of that world and burn as we go.  

Notes:

Primo Levi, Auschwitz survivor.

Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, ready to believe and act without question.

Arnold Wieber former Nazi.

Buchenwald. To each what he deserves (cf Auschwitz, work makes you free).

In 2008, filmmaker Luke Holland embarked on a journey to find and interview witnesses to the crimes (atrocities) of the Third Reich.

Karl Hollander, SS Liebstandarte, Adolf Hitler, Oberstumfuhrer.

[trained at Dachau, ‘did quite well,’ promoted to Sergeant). 

Daughter: What is a Blood Order?

Father: It was a political decoration for participating in the 1923 Munich Uprising.

Did you take part?

No

You must have been only about nine.

Sworn in?

1935.

Otto Duscheleit, Waffen-SS, Insterburg Germany

The [church] bells rang over all Germany when Hitler seized power.  My mother voted for Hitler in 1932. My father also voted for Hitler in 1932.

Unemployment and inflation. 

My older brother was already a convicted Nazi in 1932. In 1932, he was 11 years old. I remember he showed me his brass knuckles with spikes.

He said, ‘Today we are going to smash the Communist HQ.’

Germans don’t buy from Jews

He photographed Insterburg citizens that frequented Jewish shops.  

And then these pictures were exhibited (shown) at the Insterburg Town Hall.

We had the task of standing guard in front of a Jewish department store. And we little boys—I was just 9—had to line up in front of the Jewish shop. And had to link arms and not let anybody through.

My friend said, ‘Let’s go in there.’  there must be something in there. we can recognise the jew by. The Jew smells. You can smell the Jew.

I was in a communication unit where we trained as wireless operators at the age of only 15 or 16. And my leader was drafted into the military. And then suddenly, I was a Hitler Youth Leader. They found me a bit girlish. I wasn’t the right kind of leader for Hitler Youth. Boxing in the afternoon. We weren’t allowed to stop until blood flowed. At the end of the week, the leader spoke to me. You don’t have what it takes to be a Hitler Youth Leader. You’re too soft. From 10 to 14 you joined Jungvolk. At 14 you joined the Hitler Youth.

Is that the Jewish grandmother?

‘yes.’

That’s the Jewish generation. That’s her. And that’s her mother?

Yes.

My older brother was a convinced Nazi. And later he realised that our Father was also Jewish, according to Jewish tradition.

His mother was Jewish.

[Therefore he was Jewish]

But he didn’t make that public.  He kept that a secret. And when my brother realised he was a Jew, He wanted to be racially pure. When he realised that according to both Jewish and Nazi rules, our father was actually Jewish, a process of rethinking began.

For girls it was the Jungmaedel… and the BDM. The Association of German Girls. 

Hans Werk, Berlin, Waffen-SS.

At aged 6, in 1933 I attended the local primary school. The teacher was a local party operative. He raised us according to the Nazi doctrine.

In the morning we had to stand up: Heil Hitler.

He practically raised me to be a Nazi. Against my parents’ wishes I trusted him more than them.  Our teacher asserted strong control over us. This is my Hitler Youth membership card. I joined the Jungvolk at aged 10 and received this. 1^st May 1937.

Even before I was 10 years old. I couldn’t wait.

We learned to read with the normal alphabet book. But we also had a Jew themed alphabet book. It was published by Streicher, who also published the Nuremberg Race Laws. And had a caricature of a Jew for each letter. I remember one in particular,  a butcher’s shop that was really greasy and filthy. A disgusting Jew with long hair and a hat behind the counter. Next to him,  was a blond German girl, with a white apron. He had his hand where it shouldn’t be. The Jews were to blame for everything. We were a village of 175 people. No electricity. The Mobile Nazi Film Unit come to show films. ‘Suess the Jews’. They showed Nazi films in the smallest villages. You can’t imagine today, what kind of presence they had.

There were no Jews in my village.

My parents had contact with a Jew who came from Freideberg-Ostbanhof. He bought the skins that was sold him on slaughtering days. I always went with Woldenberg with him, to get my hair cut. His name was Piefke. One day he didn’t turn up.

I asked, where is Piefke?

They told me he emigrated.

Marianne Chantelau, Wilhemshaven, Germany. Bund Deutscher Madel.

When you’re 10 or 12, you want to in a group. You want to get out of the house. We were allowed to play sports. We could play tennis on the main sports field. We were allowed to use the pool. We were allowed to play on the lawn in the park. Everything was forbidden before.

Klaus Kleinau, Bernburg, Germany, Waffen-SS.

My mother was active in the Frauenschaft. That was a women’s organisation. We went for walks on a Sunday, when I was little. My father always put on his uniform. And then we went for a walk. My mother didn’t like that at all. Women didn’t have a uniform, but he made sure that she wore a Frauenscaft badge on her coat. So that everybody could see they supported the Nazi ideology.

Karl-Heinz Lipok. Brandenburg, Germany, SS Death’s Head Unit.

I would like to have got involved, but father said no.  And in the summer of 1933, they finally said yes. And I got a brown shirt and black blazer for my birthday. And that was in Stendal, when we visited my grandparents. And they bought the uniform from a Jewish store.

We did things that we enjoyed. But that faded. Then we moved to the Hitler Youth aged 14.  Participation was mandatory.

Hugo Gotz,  Slawentzizt,  Germany, Wehrmacht. 

Between Slawentzizt and Ujest, there was a Jewish cemetery.  There was at least 100 graves or more. So there must have been a Jewish community. At some point. We were in the Jungvolk and Hitler Youth. And that’s when the Jew-baiting started. As we repeatedly went to the Jewish cemetery. We went at midnight for the witching hour. It was a test of courage. 

Blue skirt, white blouse and the knot made out of leather. It was a triangular necklace held together with the knot. There were these social events were we would meet

There were evenings when we spoke about Nazism and the Fuhrer.

Sometimes Hitler’s Mein Kampf, bits of that.

We didn’t support the party, but we liked the uniform. We went along with it, because we enjoyed it. Putting on the uniform and going on marches. Or singing and so on.

Oh, that was lovely. There were hiking songs that you could sing today. It was lovely.

[Sings: Raise the flag…

Comrades shot by the red front and reactionaries.

Henrich Schulze, Celle, Germany, Wehrmacht.

The Jews weren’t popular, where they? And this had consequences.

[reporter question: Why weren’t the Jew’s popular?

Apparently, they were into deal-making. They had hooked noses. 

Heinz Hennig, Bernburg, Germany. Wehrmacht.

Originally, it was a perfectly normal hospital for psychiatric patients. And it remained one. But the Fascists turned part of it into their Extermination Centre. It was all kept very secret. But word got round. That buses were arriving in Bernburg with blackened windows. In the direction of the Sanatorium as Bernburgers called it. Every few days, black smoke rose, and it smelled sweet. For this, many people concluded that people were being burned there. People arrived and were murdered. The furnaces are still there today. It was talked about a little. Very quietly. It was dangerous to talk about it. It was only whispered about in private.

Bernburg was one of six euthanasia centres in Germany and Austria. Approximately, 14 000 people regarded by the Nazis as ‘Not worthy of life’, were murdered here. 

Herbert Fuchs Waffen SS, Obersturmfuhrer Bergenz, Austria, 1919.

It was the 9^th November 1938. The SS was sworn in on that date every year. The SS from all over Germany concentrated on the Feldherrenhalle. It was night. And we marched there in ranks. And then came Hitler, Himmler and some others. To the left, under the Residenz, next to the Feldherrenhalle, there was a glow of fire. It didn’t mean anything. Just a fire somewhere. We returned to the barracks. The next day we found out: Kristlnacht. I had no idea. The fire was the synagogue.

Marianne Chantelau, Wilhemshaven, Germany. Bund Deutscher Madel?

The Party ordered the schools to take the children there.  The children should see it.

Q What was their motive.

A They did not belong to our ethnic group. Apparently, I don’t know the motives.

Q Can you remember your reactions?

A Firstly, I was too young then.

Q 14?

A But look, it wasn’t in our neighbourhood. And, honestly, we didn’t really leave our neighbourhood.

Karl-Heinz Lipok. Brandenburg, Germany, SS Death’s Head Unit.

From 1829 [plaque on wall] until its destruction on 10^th November 1938, this was the centre of the Jewish community in Weener. Synagogue from 1829 to 1938. A school from 1853. Rabbi and Teacher’s house from 1887. I can’t read the Jewish.

Q So there was a Jewish community here?

A Yes, in Weneer?

Q Who burned it all down?

A People from the SA.

? I didn’t really care if the synagogue was burned down. I wasn’t sorry about that. I didn’t feel any pity for the Jews.

Q So for you, it wasn’t a crime?

A No, not for me. Well, hold on. Crime…One would always have to say, Yes. However, I don’t consider it one. It was all the same to me. But if you look at it from a legal perspective, one would have to consider it a crime, because it is the destruction of other people’s property. And the one who destroyed it was the criminal. But I didn’t feel that way.  

Karl-Heinz Rinne, Wehermacht, Berlin 1922.

We were on Fasenenstrasse and saw the synagogues ablaze. And the fire brigade stood in front of it. And they did nothing. They did nothing at all. We were astonished that they didn’t intervene. They just let it burn down. I only understood it all later. They only made sure the neighbouring houses wouldn’t catch fire. But that was only the beginning of the hounding of the Jews.

Kristallnacht 9-10 December 1938.

Some 1400 synagogues and places of worship were destroyed.

Over 7000 properties and cemeteries were damaged.

Many Jews were murdered. 30 000 were imprisoned.

The event caused a major Jewish exodus.

Karl Hollander, SS Liebstandarte, Adolf Hitler, Oberstumfuhrer.?

We didn’t have any civilian clothes. We were always in uniform from morning until evening. And when you are in uniform the whole year round that leaves a mark. You have no time to orientate yourself as a civilian.

NAPOLA Nazi Political Academy.

In the Nazi Political Academy is was important that graduates should enter into all the professions. There should be people everywhere who played an elite role in Nazism.

Everyone hoped to be drafted as soon as possible. To become a soldier and go to war. Many of us volunteered for the Waffen SS.

So just as there was an elite. We wanted to be part of the elite (elite).

SS Lieutenant Karl-Heinz Lubbener Hollander. Believer [passport/book]

With the swastika. See?

Q This shows you are Aryan?

A Yes, of good stock.

Q You couldn’t become an officer in the SS otherwise?

A No. That was a prerequisite.

Q What was your rank?

A SS Obersturmfuhrer, First Lieutenant, at the end.

Karl-Heinz Lipok. Brandenburg, Germany, SS Death’s Head Unit?

I went to the SS because I heard they trained you hard. I was an athlete. Athletics, boxing, skiing, football, hiking. I liked sports. It got you tough.

Hans Werk, Berlin, Waffen-SS.

Fleurs Werk.

On 15^th March I signed up for the SS. The SS was the elite corps. They had the best tanks. And we got excited. Well, I did anyway. My father wasn’t so excited about it. I did it without his knowledge.

I had written farewell letters to my parents.

‘When I fall, you should be proud. You should not wear black.’

 Nonsense like that. You wonder how that could happen.

Karl Hollander, SS Liebstandarte, Adolf Hitler, Oberstumfuhrer?

My parents took me to a career counsellor. The man said: First he must complete his Labour and Military Service. That’s two and a half years. Or you could send him to Oranienburg. To the Death’s Head Unit. They’ll take him at 16. And then he won’t have to do any Labour Service.

Arbeit Macht Frie (Work sets you free)

Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp, Oranienburgh, established by the SS, 1936. 

Once I saw a man there. He once brought stamps from me for charity. And I wanted to go over. He hadn’t done anything! My comrade held me back and said, ‘You idiot! Haven’t you noticed what’s going on?’

That was a Mr Warschauer.

Q But why did they send him to Sachsenhausen?

A I can’t tell you that. Being a Jew was probably enough. Yes. Locking this man up was a disgrace. We did not agree with that. You can imagine. But when you’re caught up in it. [shake of the head] You keep your mouth shut. At 16! I’m sorry. But that’s the truth.

And then I heard screams outside. I put the table under the window. And then stood on top. So I could look through the window. And then I saw it. How people were beaten. With bull whips. And others hanging. Their arms behind their backs. The stool was pulled from under their feet. And they screamed until they were unconscious.

Q If an officer asked you to do it?

A If an officer had asked me to pull the stool away? The stool would have gone flying. No doubt about that.

200 000 prisoners were held in Sachsenhausen. Tens of thousands were murdered by shooting, gassing and medical experiments.

Karl Hollander, SS Liebstandarte, Adolf Hitler, Oberstumfuhrer.?

[trained at Dachau, ‘did quite well,’ promoted to Sergeant). 

On 10^th January 1940, I was ordered to attend the Officer Training school in Dachau. I passed the exams with fairly good results.    

The school was next to the concentration camp.

Q My question would be why Jews were interred in Dachau?

A No. We didn’t know that.

Q You didn’t know that?

A No, for us they were political prisoners.

Kurt Sametreiter Gastein Valley, Austria, 1922, Waffen SS, Oberscharfuhrer

If somebody says they don’t know about the concentration camps, this is just not true. The concentration camp inmates went to work in their prison uniforms. With 2 or 3 guards depending on how many prisoners. Everybody saw this.

I was stationed at Dachau, 1^st April 1938. There was also Jews there. I know this, because our local police commander was there. He was also a Jew. And he was taken there. I even saw him.

Q in the camp, in Dachau?

A Well, yes, on his way to work.

Dachau Concentration Camp 1933-1945.

The first of a network of concentration camps under SS control, where millions, mostly Jews were murdered.

Karl Hollander, SS Liebstandarte, Adolf Hitler, Oberstumfuhrer?

What Adolf Hitler came to power all those who opposed him were arrested overnight. Put into concentration camps, killed…The intellectual leadership of the resistance was gone. And anyone who still protested was promptly killed. Killed. So people were scared. I can’t explain it any other way. These heroes you expect to find—and there aren’t many of them.

Mauthausen Concentration Camp, Austria. Established by the SS, 1938.

Margarete Schwartz, Melk, Austria, 1925, Civilian.

I was 14 years old. I was nanny for an SS family for six years. I looked after their children. Because their mother worked in the concentration camp. We took the children sometimes when they wanted to see their mother. She never came home. She normally slept over there. She worked nights in the canteen. I also went to the cinema in the camp. The prisoners filled my teeth. They sorted out my teeth.

Q, So, you had dentists there?

A Yes, prisoners were the dentists.

A Yes, he filled my teeth. They were very nice prisoners. The Kapos and so on. They were nice. Only the poor Jews were killed straight away. When they arrived, they were immediately taken to the gas chambers. They burned them immediately. They killed so many people.

Franz Splek, Muhlverteregion, Austria, 1925. Apprentice Stonemason.

In Mauthausen they had the ‘Death Stairs’.  In order to avoid a detour… because the camp was at the top of a hill, and the quarry was at the bottom. To make it quicker, they built the ‘Death Stairs’. The steps were different heights. And when it rained there was those who slipped and fell. Or dropped the stone. And injured someone else’s foot. Many lost their life. There were many accidents.

Q Did you see that too, back then?

A yes.

Franz Splek, Muhlverteregion, Austria, 1925. Apprentice Stonemason.

And then there was another steep wall.  And some were pushed down, either by Kapos, or by the SS, over the steep slope. Twenty metres in free-fall onto stones. Nobody survived that.

Mauthausen was at the centre of camps providing labour to German and Austrian industry. Of the nearly 190 000 prisoners, nearly half were murdered.

U-Boat Bunker, Valerin, Bremen, Germany.

Bookkeeper.

These are tomatoes. I don’t have anything green. But I don’t think that matters. Smell this.

Q is it local.

A Homemade, yesterday.

This [photo] was taken for my ID card for the bunker site. I was a wage’s clerk. I did the payroll for the German workers. For the foreign workers, I only submitted their hours. Because the concentration camp prisoners did not get paid. There were groups of labourers in Kap Horn. And here at Valentin Bunker, where they built submarines.

Kap Horn was surrounded by water on three sides. On one side were pontoon, boats that the concentration camp inmates were herded into. And then taken to the steel works. We Germans were not supposed to go there. But I went once. And I saw how people stood. Packed in tightly like matches on a boat. 

I am ashamed to this day that humans could do that to other humans.

The Kapo came from a sub-camp, Nuengang concentration camp. And he had a group of 15-20 men . And these group of 15-20 men had to be brought back to the concentration camp- dead or alive. They dragged them along. Just so he could hand over the same number of men.

Q You mean at the end of the shift?

A Yes, when they could barely walk.

Q How did you know that?

A I saw it. Our hut was just 20 metres from the bunker. But as a bookkeeper I had nothing to do with it.

Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp, established by the SS in 1943, Germany.

They were unloaded from the trains. And then had to walk five or six kilometres to the camp. When they walked past in their wooden clogs it sounded like a threshing machine. Here they come again, we’d say to each other.

Most people benefited from it. They could work here and earn money. And those who earned money were okay with it.

Q They made a profit out of it, you mean?

A You could find advantages in it, yeh.

Q They benefited?

A Yes. Yes.

In some way the concentration camp had an effect on all of us. Local shops benefited too, of course. The butchers shops. The bakeries. And all the grocers.

Q Your grandfather was a delivery man?

A yes. He was a delivery driver. With a cart and horses. He collected goods from the train station in Bergen and took them to the camp.

Q The prisoners were hiding here somewhere (farm buildings?)

A Yes, they hid in the hayloft, or the pigsty. Or on top of the pigsty. I mean, they are big buildings. Either we discovered them in the morning or they came to us. Well, they were hungry.

Q And then what happened to them?

A Well, they were picked up. Here in the barracks, there was a bit, what do I know…Or to the concentration camp. They took them to the camp.

Q And who picked them up?

A Yes, Guards, you know.

Q But how did guards know that people were hiding here?

A Well, we discovered them and reported. At least that’s what I remember.

Q Did you make a telephone call or …?

A yes, yes, yes.

Q Did you know what happened to those prisoners?

A No. Nobody knows that.

Slawentzitz,44 kilometres from Auschwitz.

My father was a railway man. My father was also head of the cargo department. That was why our flat was right in the train station. It was interesting, because when the trains came we could see clearly what was happening.

Q What were his duties?

A Well, to register these trains. Let’s say, a freight train loaded with people. And headed for Auschwitz. It had to be registered on the paperwork at the freight yard. Where all the trains went.

Slawentzitz was one of many sites, that included concentration camps and factories, that formed part of the Auschwitz industrial complex.

The Nazi policy of Extermination Through Labour claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. 

They cut down all the trees for about ten kilometres. And they put up factories in no time. Massive camps of prisoners and Jews and so on. They were unloaded at the freight yard. And were marched to their respective camps. Every day, I saw guards escorting Jews from work back to camp. Sometimes they had to carry one of their fellows. Because they could not walk any more. They put them on some kind of stretcher. I saw that often.

My father knew where people were going.  No-one came back. Sometimes my father came home and said: ‘They dispatched Jews again today’. To Auschwitz. People said quietly: ‘They are driven up the chimney there.’

I still have the smell of the crematorium in my nose. When you saw the smoke going up, like when you burn car tyres, then we said, ‘They’ve put some more in’.  At least three people were put on there at a time on a metal grille. As the skin burned it produced a lot of smoke. You could smell it two kilometres away.

Grunewald station includes a memorial to 50 000 Jews deported to Auschwitz and other concentration camps.

Their departure was witnessed by Berlin’s residents.

Ebensee, Austria, the site of a concentration camp, established in 1943, where 30 000 individuals were imprisoned. Almost 9000 were worked to death.

Q [residents in Home] are you all from Ebensee?

A  yes, we were all born in Ebensee.

Q All of you? What did you know of the concentration camp during the war? How much did you know?

A [resident] we know nothing. At least I didn’t. I can’t speak for the others. I knew nothing. Everything about the camps was covered up. You understand? It was all hushed up. Suppressed. People would talk quietly. But not out loud!

B [resident] well, it was awful. It was awful. My old neighbour- he moved to Poland. He told me so much. Because he was in the concentration camp and survived. He survived. They were hungry. So many of them starved to death.

Q The camp inmates worked in the tunnels?

A –[c resident] Those who still could. Others had to carry them back in the stretchers when they couldn’t take any more. No food. They were finished.

[b resident] yes, but so many.

Q What happened to those that could no longer work?

A [c resident] they were burned. Yes, exactly, every time. The ovens were fired up. You could see the smoke from the ovens. You knew what was going on.

[b resident] these were horrific times.

[a resident] and they beat them to the end. In the labour camps, they beat them to the end.

Then it was over.

Q So you think the people here knew what was going on?

[b resident] Quietly, no one would admit it, for fear of going there themselves. People said, ‘Don’t say anything or you’ll end up in the camp too.’

They noticed.

Everyone knew, but nobody said anything. The day before the Americans came, there was lots of smoke and it smelled awful. They burned them all. The ones who were worn out. They burned them all. I remember that.

[c resident] I always sat by the window, so I saw a lot. The Jeep drove up, the Americans opened the gate. Imagine the rejoicing when they came. How they screamed! How they screamed! But for joy. They were cries of joy! They were so glad.

The townspeople got scared they’d break into the houses or something. But this didn’t happen.

[resident a] And suddenly, all the SS guards were gone. None to be seen, from one moment to the next.

[c resident] they would ring your doorbell, late at night. And your whole flat was searched.

But someone was there?

My friend. Yes, my boyfriend. Well, he was with the SS. They would have caught him.

But he was not from Ebensee. No, he was not from Ebensee.

I see.

Your husband. Was he a Nazi?

No.

Your husband was an SS camp guard?

C resident: If I hadn’t hid him for nine months, they would have arrested him. But they didn’t get him.

Herman Knoth, Hamburg, German, 1927, Waffen-SS.

For the German people, the Waffen-SS were at the peak of the nation. Not just physically, spiritually too. Yes, an elite.

Yes, it’s still here (tattoo mark on his arm)

Whenever I have surgery I tell them about it. I’ve had quite a few operations. It’s somewhere. Here, look.

[another member] Hans Werk

Now you should be able to see it. [showing tattoo]

Q what was your blood group.

A ‘O’. It was interesting you’d expect it to be done for all soldiers. To help everyone. But there was an awareness of an elite. Only the Waffen-SS.

[another SS member]

They come and said, ‘Show your arm.’ It was supposed to be your blood group. In case you were wounded. But many said they also did it to mark us forever.

[another SS]

The Waffen-SS had nothing to do with the terrible and brutal treatment of Jews and dissidents. And the concentration camps. The Waffen-SS had nothing to do with it whatsoever. Nothing in the slightest. We were always frontline soldiers. We were never involved in actions behind the front. Always at the front, eye to eye with the enemy. Nothing else. I have no regrets. And I’ll never regret being with that unit. Truly not. A camaraderie like that…You could rely on every man, one hundred percent. There was nothing that could go wrong. That was the beauty of it.  

Friedrich Elder, Salzburg, Austria 1925, Wehrmacht.

There were SS units that fought on the front line and they were merciless. They shot whole villages. Nothing remained standing. The people lay around like dead flies. That too, was SS units. The Russians were already driven out, but with civilians…they did what they liked. There were more dead than alive. The living received us begging ‘Please, Please…’ Generally, the Russians were taken prisoner. With some exceptions. I don’t know the percentage, but generally where the ordinary soldiers, not the elite troops, they drove away in their tanks, were shot. And buried in a mass grave. They had to dig their own graves which we put them in. Well, I wasn’t there. When they were forced to dig, they knew they’d be shot.

Q Did they talk to one another?

A No, there was a deathly silence

We were in the Pripvat swamps. A doctor and three medical orderlies.  And we were attached to the Hungarian SS unit. And allegedly, they found ammunition in a village. We witnessed as they started to set the houses on fire. The people flooded out of their homes. There was thick black smoke everywhere. It was like a film. It was a dark night. And these troops on their rather small horses and they’re riding back and forth shooting like savages. It was like a cowboy film. In the middle, was a house that was bigger than the rest. It may have belonged to a mayor. And when they people ran into this house, it too was set on fire. When the people inside could no longer stand the heat and smoke. They ran out of the house. Machine guns had been set up outside. And as they ran out they were just picked off. The whole village was wiped out. Women and children and men who were just… they would have burned alive if they didn’t come out. And if they came out they were shot.

Q What was the role of the medical personnel? 

A We had no role. We never had a chance. If a grenade had been thrown, and had injured a few Hungarian SS then perhaps…

Q If the SS men had been hurt?

A Yes.

Q Why did your officer not write a report?

A I don’t know. I can’t say. Perhaps they didn’t want one.

Q What do you mean?  

A What is not in the archives does not exist.

And then we withdrew further with the tank. And drove through a village, which was engulfed in flames. And I didn’t know this… I didn’t know about this ‘scorched earth’ order. Hitler instigated a ‘scorched earth’ policy. At the Fuhrer’s command no house should fall into the hands of the Russians. He hoped the Russian advance could be slowed down that way. Yes, it was cruel. But I did not care who burned.

On the 20^th January 1942, in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee, senior Nazi officials met to discuss the implementation of the ‘Final Solution’ the mass murder of all European Jews.

On the 9^th May 2011, former SS man Hans Werk met a group of young students at the site of the Wannsee Conference.

Q You said you are ashamed to be German, is that correct?

A No, I didn’t say that. I am ashamed today that I joined that organisation. That I was proud to serve in the Liebenstart. And I was proud to bear this tattoo. And our leader, this hero, hid in a bunker, like a coward. And shot himself and escaped responsibility. And Adolf and his cliché brought to disgrace. They cause us to lose our homeland. And I lost my honour.

Q And what?

A My honour!

Q But you were full of honour and pride, back then?

A What was I? If you’d kept your honour?  You’re ashamed now that you had the honour of standing for your fatherland? No I don’t understand?

He’s ashamed of that?

A I’m ashamed of the crimes committed. To stand up for the fatherland is something completely different.

Q Everybody goes soft on camera.

A Think about it…The majority cheered when they bombed London and Coventy to ash. Knowing that woman and children were killed. These are the consequences of letting ourselves be seduced? No, that’s the result. The concentration camps in Germany. The destruction of Warsaw. Wherever you go today you have to be ashamed.

Q Anybody in this room with a weakness of character?  Will think, ‘Shit, now I’m a German. What am I going to do now?’ That’s what you’re doing now. You’re judging people. Even though you said, it’s not our fault. Somebody with a weakness of character will think, ‘On, No, I’m a German, I must be ashamed my whole life.’

A why don’t you show your face? Why are you such cowards [screen faces blanked out.] Look at the camera and say what you think.

Q-A Then I’ll get a criminal conviction and get persecuted by the state.

Hans: I say, you’re one of them. Why are you hiding?

Q-A because I’ll be made out to be a criminal.

Hans: Why won’t you be?

Q-A of course I will.

Hans. That’s rubbish.

Q-A in your eyes, I’m a criminal, like your old comrades?

Hans: Then I would have to be afraid the Nazis would set my house on fire.

Q-A what nonsense.

Hans, shouldn’t I?

Q-A I don’t believe it, really.

Hans, when I speak so openly.

Q-A you shouldn’t be afraid that some Albanian stabs you on public transport? You should be afraid of that. Not your own kind.

Hans I’m getting agitated, but one should stay really calm.

Q-A But you’re doing it

Hans. Enough now. I belonged to a murderous organisation. What else was it? But innocent women… One can think one’s actions are wrong. Even very wrong. But innocent women, or because they were Jewish or Gypsies, or because they were weak, physically, or were sickly. They were killed by injections. Euthanasia…I remember a man called Frank Lemke. We used to tease him as a kid. One day he was gone. It turned out they had injected him in Landsberg. Gone. We were told that those ‘unworthy of life’ had to be destroyed. ‘Unworthy of life’. We carried it out to perfection. Planned at the Wannsee Conference, in this house. Around a table like this one.  In comfort, with coffee. They decided how the Jews, women and children were to be killed. By this horrid method. I cannot be proud of that. I am ashamed of that. It can’t be taken for granted that a Jew would wish to talk to a  SS man like me, who was convinced that what Adolf did was right. Think about what that means. I met 23-year-old German Jews. Their fathers were in the war. An old Jewish lady of over 80 years told me: ‘My father was in the First World War, he received medals. He did not want to believe that the Nazis would kill him. He refused to flee Germany. ’  You can imagine what happened. For me, this is too much. But I believe it is important to talk to young people like you. I ask only this of you. Do not let yourself be blinded!

[another former SS soldier]

Q  are you still proud today?  That you were a member of the Liebstandarte Adolf Hitler?

A Of course. Not just anyone could join.

Q you mean it was…?

A An elite. You could say that.

Q Are you willing to accept that the Liebstandarte was involved in the murder of Jews among others? How can you say this is an elite in the modern sense?

A They weren’t involved in those murders.

Q But the SS?

A Maybe, I don’t know. I never witnessed it.

Q Will you admit the SS was a criminal organisation?

A No

Q You won’t accept that?

A I won’t accept that. I would dirty myself if I admitted to that. And I won’t do that.  The whole SS organisation was recognised as a criminal organisation at the Nuremberg Trials. But not by a German court. So, I won’t accept that.

[new/old former SS soldier]

Q So, you are saying that the reports that came out later about the murder of Jews in the extermination camps, it’s said to be 6 million. 

A That’s a joke.

Q One million, maybe a little more in Auschwitz.

A yes [shrugs, means no]. I don’t believe it. I will not believe it. It can’t be. Today they say… Excuse me, but it’s the Jew who puts it that way. The scale that is claimed today. I deny that too. It didn’t happen. I can’t imagine that back home. So many horrible things happened. I don’t know.

[new/old former SS]

The majority of those under Nazism said after the war again and again, firstly, ‘I didn’t know,’  secondly, ‘I didn’t take part’,  and thirdly, ‘If I’d have known I’d have acted differently’. Everyone tried to distance themselves from the massacres committed under Nazism, especially those of the final years. And that’s why so many said: ‘I wasn’t a Nazi’.

[new/old SS]

An SS officer was lying next to me And an American officer came to his bed and said: ‘Are you a Nazi?’ to this SS officer. And he said, ‘Yes, I am.’ The American officer shook hands with him and said, ‘The first German to admit he was a Nazi. A pleasure to meet you.’ Later, I asked myself what I would  have said to this American officer if he’d said to me. ‘Are you a Nazi?’ Probably the same as everybody else. I was forced to. I joined the Hitler youth. And so on…I wouldn’t have said I was a Nazi.

[new/old SS]

We are, at least, complicit in other people’s crimes. We can’t be accused of being active perpetrators. We didn’t do that. We didn’t beat, or imprison anyone, or do anything like that. But we went along with it.

Q How can you say that you didn’t imprison anyone when you were a camp guard? A member of the Death’s Head SS. 

A A valid question. A very valid question. That’s when complicity begins to turn to guilt. That’s why I got out.

Q At what point does complicity make you a perpetrator?

A Complicity begins by going there in the first place. Not to have turned around straight away. We didn’t dare. Nobody walked away.

[old/new Nazi}

Let’s say there was an order to exterminate the Jews. If, as a policeman, or a soldier, I am forced to help round up Jews and take them to a concentration camp. What does that make me? If I go voluntarily. Then I’m definitely a perpetrator. If I’m ordered to do it… Has perpetration begun if I say, ‘Move along Jews…’ I don’t know. I can’t answer that question. What else could I have done? If I refused I could have been put against the wall and shot.

Q Did you ever yourself hear of this happening?

A  No, never.

Q there is no record of it happening, in the literature, either?

A I never heard of it.

Q If you received such an order what would you have done?

A Yes, that is a good question. If ninety-nine men had said yes before me, I might have participated as well.

[woman, former Nazi]

Q The main responsibility of the murder of the Jews in the second world war

A in the second world war the responsibility is German. It is the stigma they will bear for the rest of their lives. But I don’t feel part of the collective guilt of the Germans.

Q So who is to blame for these atrocities?

A God will be judge of that.

Q Put the good Lord aside.

A No.

Q I would like to have your opinion.

A Yes, but… the good Lord doesn’t sit opposite me. But I feel… I’m ashamed as a German. Because something so cruel happened in the German name. With this meticulousness. With this bookkeeping accuracy.

Hans:

What it comes to judging between those who did it and…Actually, they were all perpetrators. They were all perpetrators.

Q The concentration camp guard… do you consider him a perpetrator?

A Well, yes…I was one of them. I feel like a perpetrator.

[Nazi woman]

I’ve always said we didn’t know. But in the end, we are perpetrators too. We let it happen. We should have got to the bottom of it. So, in the end, we’re perpetrators too.

[Former SS]

Do I consider myself a perpetrator? [laughs] That’s such a broad question. I wouldn’t have been a perpetrator if I’d the courage to say ‘no’ at any point. So, if you say that I didn’t say that, then I’m a perpetrator. That’s an easy answer of course. But I can’t be convicted as a perpetrator. Because really I was an ideological perpetrator. And not a…But let’s finish now, shall we? [laughs]

[unrepentant SS former officer]

Q So you are not willing to blame Hitler?

A No.

Q For you? Hitler is not responsible?

A I will not blame him.

Q You will not blame him?

Q Do you still honour him?

A I certainly do. The idea was correct.

Q And the murder of the Jews, was that also correct? That’s what Hitler…

A  No, I don’t share that opinion.

Q Sorry?

A I don’t share that opinion that they should be murdered.  They should have been driven out to another country, where they could rule themselves. That would have saved a great deal of grief.

Angela Merkel [former] Chancellor of Germany.

The mass murder of six million Jews, carried out in the name of Germany has caused indiscriminate suffering to the Jewish people, Europe and the entire world.

The Shoah fills us Germans with shame. I bow before the victims. I bow before the survivors and those that helped them survive. 

Luke Holland. In memory of my murdered grandparents and millions of others.

Filmed and directed by Luke Holland.

Anna Politkovskaya (1958-2006) Chechyna: A Dirty War (1999—2002)

Anna Politkovskaya, a Russian journalist, author and critic of Vladimir Putin was murdered in her apartment in central Moscow 7^th October 2006.

Ryszard Kapuscinski. Imperium: ‘All dictators, regardless of epoch or country have one common trail: they know everything, are experts on everything.’  

Chechnya: A Dirty War 4^th November 1999.

‘You probably think I’m writing this to stir your pity. My fellow citizens have indeed proved a heard-hearted lot. You are enjoying your breakfast, listening to stirring reports in the North Caucasus in which the most terrible and disturbing facts are sanitised so that voters don’t choke on their food.

But my notes have a quite different purpose, they are written for the future.’

Vladimir Putin, the new Russian prime-minister had been head of the FSB, formerly the KGB. The breakup of the former Soviet Union had been relatively peaceful, unlike the genocidal wars in the former Yugoslavia. But when two Chechen warlords staged an armed rebellion against the former Soviet Union, Russian troops attacked two villages in Daghestan. Apartments in Moscow and other cities suffered bomb explosions. Around 300 Russian citizens were killed. Russian propaganda linked the attacks to Chechnya separatists and the international terrorism of Osama Bin Laden.

Alexander Litvinenko, a British naturalised Russian defector and former agent of the FSB, was poisoned with polonium in London and died 23^rd November 2006. He helped coin the term Mafia State. He accused Putin and FSB agents of planting the bombs in Russian cities. Chechnya separatists denied any involvement. Putin’s goal was to become President of Russia. His war against Chechnya and uncompromising stance was widely supported by the Russian public.  

Claud Cockburn the maverick Irish journalist put it quite simply, ‘Never believe anything until it is officially denied’.

‘The [Chechnya] refugees are unanimous. They talk today of a slaughter of the civilian population and the death of children, of pregnant women and old men.’          

March 2000

‘In December 1999 I went with Galina Matafonova to Pavletsky Station in Moscow to meet her son Lyonya. All that remained of this young man over six-feet tall was some ashes in a little box no bigger than the palm of my hand.

My name is Galina Nikolayevna Matafonova, I’m the mother of three children. My eldest son Alexi was taken into the army on 15 May 1998. He went out of a sense of duty and served for a year and a half. Every night he wrote home. Suddenly there was silence for two months and I began to fret. I was afraid he was in Daghestan. But I was reassured by the words of [Prime Minster] Putin: our boys would not be sent to fight without their voluntary agreement.   

The letter arrived in September…The boys in Alexi’s regiment told us how they were forced to sign a formal declaration of their agreement to fight. They were brought to the banks of the Terek River and told: ‘If you don’t agree, hand back your weapons. You’re free to go. You can make your own way back. Your Russian soldiers wearing uniform and you won’t make your own way back alive…It’s that or sign up.’  

‘My Homeland’ 27^th December 1999.

We are in Ingushetia on the outskirts of the village of Yandara, not far from the Chechen border at a refugee camp called Goskhooz. Tents, sheds and dugouts. Nothing to eat, nowhere to sleep, no clothes to wear and nowhere to wash, not even once a month…Yet the [tent] school is working. Many children cannot attend regularly, they have nothing to wear. As a rule one child attends the school today, and tomorrow a different child.

Abdlezim Makhauri: Composition for eight and nine-years-old.

I have only one homeland, Grozny. It was the most beautiful city in all the world. But my beautiful city was destroyed by Russia, and together with it all of Chechnya and the people living there. The people that Russia had not yet managed to destroy went to Ingushetia, as I did. But I miss my home. I so terribly want to go home although I know my house has already been bombed to pieces. All the same I want to go…LEAVE US ALONE, RUSSIA. WE’RE ALREADY FED UP WITH YOU…GO HOME.

Richard Powers, The Overstory.

‘There’s a Chinese saying. When is the best time to plant a tree?

Twenty years ago.’

Putin’s ‘anti-terrorist’ campaign destroyed Grozny. The Russian Prime Minister refused Western mediation. He pointed to NATOs bombing of Serbia. The Council of Europe had temporarily suspended the voting rights of the Russian deletion. But Tony Blair invited Putin to London. The British Prime Minister offered his support and that of Washington for the ‘terrorist insurrection’ in Chechnya.

The price of oil up over $100 a barrel.     

‘When’s the next best time to plant a tree?’

Now.’

The Murder of Jill Dando, BBC 1 and BBC iPlayer, directed by Marcus Plowright

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0003w40/the-murder-of-jill-dando

There seems to be a plethora of anniversaries and murder reconstructions on all of the main channels. We’ve had the Bulger, The Yorkshire Ripper and Jack the Ripper recently and before that Fred and Rose West. The list goes on. Partly, I’d guess to the world-wide success of The Making of a Murderer.  BBC couldn’t let the twentieth anniversary, 26^th April 1999, of one of its own, the presenter of the Holiday programme, Crimewatch UK and The Six O’Clock News, without a commemorative mock-up of the main actors, talking heads and what we know about the killer. The Queen commented on Jill’s death as did the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair.

The police were under enormous pressure to bring the killer to justice. Detective Chief Inspector (DCI) Hamish Campbell, who led the investigation, features in the programme. He tells us how he came to identify Barry George as a suspect, how he came to be convicted of Jill Dando’s murder in June 2001 and released on appeal seven years later after the UK High Court ordered a retrial and the Court of Appeal found the forensic evidence in the case ‘inconclusive’.

The presenter Nick Ross, who appeared alongside Jill Dando in Crimewatch, said, he’d also have acquitted Barry George.

Yet, we have DCI Campbell, giving the impression he got the right man. The evidence was circumstantial. After five months, the police were getting nowhere and had spent over two million pounds on the investigation. A tip had come from Hafad Taxi Company that someone, later identified as Barry George, had been acting strangely on the day Dando was killed. Six months later he was still acting strangely. A warrant and search of his house found that he’d filmed women, kept a log of car numbers and had press cuttings of Jill Dando. He also has a three-quarter length coat.

I must admit to also having a three-quarter length coat. My partner Mary hates it and wants to give it to the Salvation Army of some other charitable institute. But I’m quite oddly attached to it.  I was never a suspect in Dando’s killing.

Let’s get to the forensics on which the case was won and lost. Locard’s principle, sounds very much like Sherlock Holmes’, ‘every contact leaves a trace’.  A single particle of gunshot residue was found in the three-quarter length coat Barry George admitted to wearing. To describe it as gunshot residue is to place Barry George in the coat and have him pull the trigger and shoot Jill Dando on the doorstep. Such is the power of forensic evidence to captive a jury and convict Barry George.

Remember the newspaper headlines ‘Auntie Annie’s bomb-making factory’ associating trace elements of nitroglycerine with the Maguire Seven. Trace elements that were found in handling an ordinary pack of playing cards.

A single particle of gunshot residue would have to be magnified around 2000 times before it was the size of a pea. How else could it have got into Barry George’s pocket? Someone handling guns, perhaps a policeman, could have brushed against him on public transport.

The Crown won and lost its case on a single particle of evidence. Barry George in Scottish law would be found Not Proven. The hunt for Jill Dando’s killer goes on – only it doesn’t. The police have no new leads.  Case closed.

A Great British Injustice: The Maguire Story. BBC 2, BBCiPlayer, produced and directed by Eamonn Devlin and presented by Stephen Nolan.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0bs2v31/a-great-british-injustice-the-maguire-story?suggid=b0bs2v31

Fake news. Well, here’s a fake conviction that of the Maguire Seven: Anne Maguire, her husband Patrick, her teenage sons Vincent and Patrick, her brother Sean Smyth, her brother-in-law Guiseppe Conlon and a family friend, Patrick O’Neil. Prime minister Tony Blair was quoted on television and news media, on 10^th February 2005, to apologise on behalf of the nation, for the wrongful imprisonment of the Maguire family. “They deserve to be completely and publicly exonerated”.  Along with the Guilford Four, also wrongly convicted of The Guilford bombing on the 5^th October 1974, they were found guilty of the crime of being Irish.

There’s a series on telly, which I’ve not seen, called, Making A Murderer about Steve Avery. Yet I know by people talking about the twists and turns of the serial story that it contained the planting of forensic evidence, blood splatters, and that he was wrongly convicted.  The subtext is, fucking Americans, they’re all crazy, and it could never happen here.

Forensic evidence is the killer in any trial. I can vaguely remember a documentary questioning the nitroglycerine evidence in the Maguire Seven trial, the only physical prop the Crown Prosecution Service had for convicting them. Unlike the Guildford Four none of them had signed confessions. The documentary found the traces nitroglycerine found that convicted the Maguire Seven, could have been picked up by playing with an ordinary stack of playing cards.

“None of you broke,” says Nolan to Vincent Maguire. “We had nothing to break for,” he replies.

But in its own way that was also fake news. All of them broke, but in different ways.

Anne Marie, the youngest girl, aged seven was too young to be tagged an Irish bomb maker and terrorist. ‘Auntie Annie’s bomb-making factory’ was the kind of tabloid headlines which showed the media’s objectivity, an amplification of anti-Irish hatred. But the child was old enough for grown men in the streets to spit in her face. She was sent to live with her mother’s sister in Belfast and appeared on the programme and admitted to being a recovering alcoholic, her stories of loss alone were enough to make a man weep.

Vincent and Patrick, sixteen and fourteen, were sent down for four years and classified as Category A, prisoners in adult prison. Patrick, in particular, was broken, a boy that seemed disconnected from the world and at fourteen couldn’t tell the time, until he learned the hard way, by studying the clock face at his trial. Repeatedly beaten by the police, he said he gripped the desk while they were interrogating him and his tears made a puddle at his feet. In prison it was worse. He was classified as a suicide risk and locked up for twenty-three hours a day with a constant low light on, but he didn’t know what a suicide risk was until they told him and put that thought in his head. Every story here is of adults breaking because of their children and children broken on the wheel of injustice and separation.

The irony is Patrick Maguire had been a member of the British Army and he and his wife Ann Marie were members of the local Tory Party (such sins are forgivable) before being convicted of terrorist offences. Sir John May who was appointed by the government to investigate the miscarriage of justice, as expected, exonerated everyone involved from the judge who bemoaned the fact he could no longer hang Anne Maguire, and the Guilford Seven but satisfied the cry for justice by sentencing her to twenty-five years, of which she served nineteen and the lowest tariff of four years given to innocent children. Sir John exonerated police officers who battered women, men and children to gain a conviction based on lies and then covered it up, even when the Balcome Street Gang came clean and said they’d done the Guilford bombing. These ranking police officers were not held to account, nor was the Crown Prosecution Service that protected them by falsifying accounts, withholding evidence and lying in a way that if happened in open court would be classified as perjury.

The jailing of the Maguire Seven was portrayed as an unfortunate accident like a comet falling from the sky and striking their home. The forensic officer who conducted the initial examination and found traces of nitroglycerine appeared on this programme to re-iterate that the results were positive and there was no procedural error. Sir John May’s job was then to find a suitable scapegoat that would satisfy everyone but the innocent. And he found it, in all place, a tea-towel. Auntie Annie’s bomb-making factory had a tea-towel in it. And with the kind of logic, Terry Pratchett delighted in,  a flat planet balanced on the backs of four elephants which in turn stand on the back of a giant turtle, it was proved conclusively that Auntie Annie had handled a tea-towel, in fact, wiped her hand on it, as had her husband, children, brother, brother-in law, and a visitor. Here’s the rub, or smear, if you like, one of her visitors –not any of the Maguire Seven, who had been exonerated – but another Irish person, a terrorist had passed through the kitchen and wiped his or her hand on that dishtowel.  Auntie Annie had then handled the dishtowel and the nitroglycrine had jumped like a virus to contaminate anyone nearby. Tony Blair’s apology, stuff it, no smoke without fire. Guilty of being Irish. Therefore, guilty of knowing a terrorist that washed and dried the dishes for you. A good heart is hard to find as Feargal Sharkey used to belt out.

The truth was, of course, far more mundane. The Surrey laboratory where testing was conducted had its work surfaces polluted with the substances they were testing for. A false positive is still a positive if you’re telling stories about an Englshman, an Irishman and a Scotsman walking into a Surrey laboratory and coming out contaminated with prejudice. But not only was the methodology flawed, which can happen, larger questions of justice had to be asked about why no one was called to account for torturing and beating adults and the Maguire children. It makes you laugh, of course, when the government appoints another impartial Queens Counsel to look at the tragedy at Grenfell. I’m sure he’ll be totally impartial, as Sir John was towards another despised group. God help our impartial justice system.

James Bulger: A Mother’s Story , ITV 9pm. The Bulger Killers: Was Justice Done, Channel 4, 9pm.

The Bulger Killers: Was Justice Done?

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-bulger-killers-was-justice-done/on-demand/66601-001

James Bulger: A Mother’s Story

https://www.itv.com/hub/james-bulger-a-mothers-story/2a5514a0001

I watched both of these programmes. We know what happened. Twenty-five years ago, when Tony Blair was Shadow Home Secretary, ten-year-old  Robert Thompson and Jon Venables took toddler James Bulger from a shopping centre in Liverpool to a railway track near their home and killed him.  CCTV images showed them taking James Bulger. They were quickly tracked down and caught. Tape recording of police interviews of Venables and Thompson were used in both programmes, but in James Bulger: A Mother’s Story these same tapes were given subtitles and the parts of the interviewing officers and suspects were re-recorded by actors. For what purpose, I’m not quite sure. The actors sound like ten-year old Liverpudlian boys denying, crying, trying to put the blame on each other and then admitting their guilt.

There’s no doubt ITV’s production takes seniority. Sir Trevor McDonald fresh from interviewing inmates on death row in America is sent to talk intimately with the mother of the James Bulger. ‘All I want is justice’ is what she says.

Both Thompson and Venables are out of prison and have been given new identities in 2010, but by 2017 Venables was back inside, found guilty of downloading and distributing child pornography.

The presiding judge when finding Thompson and Venables guilty of killing James Bulger labelled they ‘evil’. Look at the footage of grown men attacking the police van when they were taken to court. Police officers were unanimous in their verdict and Sir Richard Henriquies Queen’s Counsel for the prosecution at that time looks back at the case and tells us they knew the difference between right and wrong.

Subtext, there’s ten-year old boys and there’s this pair. Albert Kidd a senior investigating officer called them devils. Damien out of The Omen was another officer’s viewpoint.

One of the moderating voices in both programmes was journalist and author Blake Morrison. He reasoned if immature ten-year boys could be tried for the crime of murder, then juries could also be made up of ten-year olds. A moral panic whipped by Kevin McKenna at The Sun called for justice to be done. Cut-out tabs could be sent from the reader to their MP demanding justice. Over a million signatures were collected denouncing the lenient sentence given to the child murderers. It was doubled by the Home Secretary, but it still wasn’t enough. Albert Kidd said he went to interview Venables at a secure children’s home and they had duvets and TV.

Justice is another word for hanging, beating, whipping, slapping and getting what’s coming to them. Venables should not have had the luxury of a duvet on his bed. He should have been in a dark dungeon with water dripping onto his forehead, dirty water and rats gnawing his feet.

James Bulger’s mum has a right to call for this kind of justice. But to pander to the lowest common denominator demonises not the villains but ourselves. The Bulger killing on 18^th February 1993 was not an accident, but it was a tragedy.

The following year two six-year old boys killed a five-year old girl.  No one called them devils. They continued with kindergarten education and their identity was protected. This was Trondheim, in Norway. No further reports of these kids re offending have reached us. Children in Scandinavian countries are different, of course, because they’re not born evil. Happy is a world that does not need heroes. God save us.  Happy a world that does not need devils.

Alan Johnson (2016) The Long and Winding Road: A Memoir.

I’d like Alan Johnson to be Prime Minster. That seems outlandish as Jeremy Corbyn, but Johnson is not such a Daily- Hate- Mail figure. But he was Home Secretary under the Labour Government 2009-10, a position our current Prime Minster Teresa May held before becoming Tory leader. I guess at the end of polling today she’ll remain Prime Minister. I read an interview with Paul O’Grady on Sunday in which he wished the heads of David Cameron, and his sick sidekick, George Osborne should be placed on display on Tower Bridge. I’m not sure I’d add Teresa May to that list, but I could easily be persuaded. Cameron and Osborne poisoned debate and played to the Tory grandees by using stereotypes of working-class life taken from shows such as Jeremy Kyle to cut the welfare budget and keep cutting it with spurious claims that it was to bring the nation’s deficit down to zero. If black people were portrayed in this way it would be classified as a criminal offence. Inciting racism. The promise to cut the nation’s deficit has been quietly side-lined by May.

The Long and Winding Road at one point tells us how the Conservative Party stage manages its annual get together. That’s when they pick their victims. The usual line-up. Johnson managed to infiltrate the conference. There’s a cartoon Johnson, from The Times, May 1994, portrayed as dog, savaging the President of the Board of Trade, Michael Helseltine who had lined up the Post Office – Telecom, Royal Mail, Parcelforce and Post Office Counters – as the next public service to be privatised. All were in profit, but, of course, it wasn’t about that. It was about ideology. Privatisation is good because it makes rich people richer wasn’t one of their arguments, but you get the general drift. The buzz word is usually efficiency.

That’s two paragraphs and I’ve barely mentioned Johnson’s book. I found it a bit boring and got to page 111 and pulled the bookies slip I was using as a bookmark from the book. The chances of me reading on are slim. It’s Johnson’s third autobiography and there is repetition. He needs to bring those that have not read his first book up to speed. This Boy, which is by far his best, outlines what happens when his feckless father left his sainted mother Lily, and the family was left to fend for themselves in East London slums in the 1950s.  I started with his second book, Please, Mr Postman, and worked my way backwards to This Boy.  Alan Johnson has met his future wife, who works with his sister Linda, but already has a kid, but they settle down in Slough. He starts working for the Post Office, a postman, all childhood dreams of becoming a pop star, put out of his head, with as much overtime as he wanted, leaving little time for anything else.  By the time the reader gets to The Long and Winding Road we know where the story is going, but the narrative drifts into meeting people such as Tony Blair who are going to become famous and blokes we’ve never heard of, but are salt of the earth type. It gets cliched and boring. But that’s my opinion. You May think otherwise. I’m sure when I wake up tomorrow Teresa May will still be Prime Minster, but not my Prime Minster and she’ll write a book in later years about her Long and Winding Road. Yawn.

Alan Johnson (2015) This Boy, A Memoir of Childhood.

This Boy is a prequel to Alan Johnson’s Please Mr Postman, set before he started his working life spent, mostly, in the Post Office and via his union involvement access to the Labour Party, becoming an MP and becoming Home Secretary in Tony Blair’s government. Our current Prime Minster Teresa May, was, of course, a former Home Secretary. Her father was a vicar. Alan Johnson’s father was an arsehole. In the prologue we’re shown a black and white picture of the happy married couple, January 1945. Stephen Arthur Johnson and Lillian May Gibson.

His smile is slight, betraying a determination not to show his teeth. The beautifully knotted beret – angled slightly too high on one side – covering his red hair. She seems happy. A pretty, petite Liverpudlian with a Doris Day nose (what she called her ‘titty nose’, which she insisted I had inherited); smart in her cockade hat, placed at the same rakish angle as his beret…He was small, she was smaller – not much more than five feet.

Part 1, Steve and Lily recalls how his sister Linda and he were born in different epochs. Linda was born before the creation of the NHS in 1947 and he was born after it in 1950 into a boom economy. His mother was advised to have no more children. Living in slum housing that had been condemned in the 1930s they had the luxury of two rooms. One for eating in and one for sleeping in, gas mantle for lighting a communal toilet in a yard with Paddington Station as a backdrop to early life in Kensal Town, Notting Hill. In the 1960s they moved up in the world, three rooms and a communal cooker on the landing for tenants where Lily burned things. Lily spent her short life hoping for the luxury of a council house.  Food, or lack of it, played a big role in Alan’s early life. Free school milk and filling up on free school dinners were a big part of his upbringing.

Cash was always tight. Steve worked intermittently as a painter and decorator, but had a gift for music and could play any tune he heard on the piano. Pubs were his natural environment and the wages he made was spent on his entertainment. Lily, to get by, worked for pin-money in the fancy houses in Ladbroke Grove and South Kensington, worked in shops and cafes and it was Linda, his elder sister’s job to take care of her brother, while their mother worked. Pin money was their only source of income and Steve, when drunk, which was much of the time, was violent. The harder she worked the worse her health got. Lily had a heart condition which killed her, but a consultant might advise her to take it easy and rest but Lily often had to pray to God for a shilling to put in the meter and asked local, family-run, shops to give her tick. Even when they said no, she’d go back, and try and wear their resistance down. She had to work in the same way that the kids had to eat.

Steve had his playtime with one of his mate’s wife. He was a lady’s man as they said in those days. Steve left Lily for Elsie and Alan never found out until years later he had a half-brother, David. The bad news for Linda and Alan was that the breakup of their mum and dad’s marriage was temporary. He came back to live with them, but that was temporary too. He disappeared on a day when they out, all his clothes, open razor, stubby shaving brush and belonging gone and moved in with another fancy piece. Impoverishment was not just monetary, but of Lily’s hopes. She believed in marriage being for life and Steve leaving aged her.

From an early age Linda taught her younger brother how to duck down and hide away from the windows when the tallyman came knocking at the door looking for money. Lily, like most others, did the pools, religiously, every week. In 1957 her luck was in. She won around £90, the equivalent of around three-month’s wages for a manual worker. No more ducking down needed and downpayments on a three-piece suite, a sideboard, a kitchen table, a Spanish guitar for Alan and a Dansette record player for Linda. Lily was in her early thirties, but luxury never lasts. She was, in effect, a single parent.

Alan measures his life against some of his school friends. Tony Cox’s father, for example, had also been in the war, and he wished he was his dad too. He was steady, decent, hardworking and provided the kind of life Alan could only dream of,  ‘they had an entire room that you had neither to eat or sleep in’ and it was ‘gloriously warm’. Tony Cox also had the great merit of being the best fighter and best sportsman in their neck of the woods, which offered Alan a kind of protection.

Reading was Alan’s thing and by some fluke that was enough to get him a pass in the Eleven-Plus and place in Grammar School. Only around a quarter of kids were offered places, but it wasn’t quite as simple as that. They had to find a Grammar School that would take Tony, waive the fees and Lily would have to pay for extras like school uniforms. Getting Alan into Grammar school was the be and end of all of her ambition and Alan admits he didn’t really do much when he was there. His great interest was music. This resurfaces in Mr Postman, when he gets to play the guitar in a band and dreams of stardom. Of course all their gear got nicked from the pub where they kept it. Echoes of his past, when the guy he delivered milk for presented him with nicked guitar from a selection in his basement.

The hole in his life, was, of course, his mother’s early death. She dithered whether to have the operation that would extend her life, but died before she could see her daughter married and her son grow into a man, courting his sister’s friend at 17 and married with a stepchild at 21. Life over. Yeh, that’s how is seems when we’re young. But there’s a lot of living still to do. Johnson has a follow up book, The Long and Winding Road. This is a Home Secretary who did know about poverty and the stigma of being a single mother. I’m sure it shames him as it shames me that so many children live in poverty and are reliant on Food Banks. We seem to be going backwards and not forward in time.

Alan Johnson (2014) Please Mister Postman. A memoir.

I’d a vague notion of who Alan Johnson was. I read this book because I wanted to chart his journey from ordinary working-class bloke—when the book begins, ‘a seventeen-year old shelf stacker at Anthony Jackson’s supermarket on the Upper Richmond Road in East Sheen’— to becoming an MP in the Conservative government under Thatcher, or John Major. I couldn’t remember which Prime minister it was. Alan Johnson became a Labour MP and severed in the Cabinet under Tony Blair. Same difference some of you might say. The journey is still the same one. But back then as he shows time and time again we had vague notions about equality. Government wasn’t entirely a more-it-tocracy increasingly serving the rich and their own interest. Economics wasn’t entirely about funnelling money from the poor to the rich under the pretence that it made the country stronger and more self-sufficient. The difference between Labour and Tories couldn’t be reduced to a simple equation of sacking as many workers as possible, make the remainder work harder to increase productivity and sell, pass the parcel of the company on, as quickly as possible to get an increased profit for the rich without the holes in the balance sheet and in people’s lives showing. Labour were for more and better government. Think about it for a second. Labour grew out of trade unions demanding rights for workers. It’s easy to forget that with this lot going to the same public schools, the same Oxbridge education and hob-nobbing with the Tories. Same old Tories, then as now, but we at least had a partial alternative.  The Tories were for less of everything, light-touch regulation and less being spent on things that didn’t and no longer matter to rich folk. Common things like having a home, being able to heat it and having food on the table. These were to be left to the market.

So I got it wrong he was in the different carriage of a train and got off at different station. Alan Johnson Labour MP. But here he is. ‘It’s Christmas Eve 1967. A Saturday. Four o’clock in the afternoon. I’m waiting for Mike.’ Mike’s married to Alan’s sister. An all-round good guy who likes a good drink. Back then drink driving was a laughable offence of finding your car key and being able to open the car door, rather than a criminal offence. Everybody did it. It never did you any harm school of tough love. Mike’s loveable, but his sister Linda is a little mum, their own mum, Lilian May Johnson, born 1921 had died 1964. Mike was his hero, but Linda provides the quiet corner of his life in which he can stretch and grow. Alan isn’t just a shelf-stacker. He writes songs, has started a band and hopes to hitch on the sixties zeitgeist and become a pop star.

The future Alan has planned out hits a speed-bump. He meets Judith Elizabeth Cox. He’s seventeen. She’s an older woman, twenty-one, with a child to another man. Melodrama. Not really. They are young and in love. They get married. Linda’s pregnant three months after the wedding. Thoughts of being the next Rolling Stone get shoved aside. He needs a steady job and a council house for his growing family.

Alan Johnson become a postman. He cycles from his digs in Notting Hill to Barnes Green, one of the smaller postal delivery routes in London. He’s a natural, it’s a steady job, a lot of ex-forces personnel. No corner cutting. No excuses.  The mail gets delivered come what may. He’s found a vocation. Something he’s good at.  But the money’s not too good. Overtime is the answer. Postman can work night and day, their job never ends (or so it seemed then).

Fast forward a few years. Alan’s got a council house in Slough. A little green were ten council houses nestled.  He can’t quite believe his luck. He can still cycle to work in Slough. Their neighbours are posh, the get-up-and-go type. And they do. When council houses are given away by the government they take theirs and move on. So does Alan.

Alan becomes a union rep. It’s not something he’s thought about a great deal, but he like to read and think. Only a fool can see that the workers were being screwed. It wasn’t all politics. Working class men had their clubs and after they put the politician in themselves to bed they had a shindig. Characters like ‘Big Joe Menzies’ a former railway worker from Perth, were both an inspiration and a role model. He tapped into reservoir of people that had worked with their hands and workers with fine minds that wanted to serve others like them.

Alan finds he’s spending more time on his union duties than on his postman’s job. He keeps working. He need to keep in touch with his colleagues. Their gripes are his gripes. Their causes his causes. He finds a sponsor and is promoted to full-time union officer. He travels the country. He’s a natural union rep as he was a postman. It’s a good combination, but his marriage suffers. He divorces. But life’s on the up and up.  But there’s a reminder that life isn’t something you can plan. Mike, his sister’s husband and one of his best friends, loses his job, admits he’s an alcoholic and hangs himself. Sobering.

But the years ahead with Cameron and his cronies gaining the levers of power are even more so. This book is a reminder that we once did things for ourselves, paid a decent(ish) wage, took pride in our work and did it well.  Perhaps that is the lesson that needs to be re-learned. No more to the robber-barons of government share issues, like the selling off of the post office, and an increasingly large share of any enterprise to the bloated and rich that produce nothing but stir the pot of the poor and take the honey. Alan Johnson’s memoir, it seems like Dickensian times now, rather than then.

One Nation – Aye right! What planet are you living on pal?

I met Scott Halley on my way up Singers Road. I assumed he’d been to the polling station. But he told me he didn’t bother. I know a lot of people that don’t bother. I can’t say I blame them. We live in a more-it-tocracy. The more you have the more you expect and the more you get, whether it’s wealth, jobs, health, or education. For the poor politics is something done to you. When you expect nothing and get nothing there are no surprises. That’s what governments do, give you less and less and expect you to stretch it more and more. More-it-tocracy is the politics of the rich.

The big losers in the election were the Labour Party. Alex Salmond called their bluff saying when you make an ally of the Tory Party, as they did in the referendum, and wear the same clothes, people often find it difficult to tell them apart. Ask Clegg and the Liberal Party. The truth is, apart from Trident, there’s not a lot of difference between SNP policies and New Labours. The big difference is SNP haven’t betrayed us – yet, because they haven’t been in the position to do so. We expect the Tory party to do what they do, give money to the rich, take money from the poor, dismantle the welfare state. It’s a tick list and they’re working their way down it.

As Neil Kinnock said of Thatcherism before losing the election to John Major: ‘I warn you not to be ordinary; I warn you not to be young; I warn you not to fall ill; I warn you not to get old’.

Labours biggest fault (well apart from making an ally of David Cameron) was not challenging the Tory lies about the need to bring down the deficit. Historically money at practically zero percent interest has never been so cheap. Apple, by share price and profits, one of the most successful company in corporate history has debt because it’s cheaper to borrow and spend on physical and social capital than just spend. It’s called investing in the future. That well known socialist institution The International Monetary Fund said much the same thing.

Why did we believe this great lie? Well for one thing the 2008 crash happened on Labour’s watch. And although they made noises about what the Tory cuts were doing to society it was too little and too late. Haunted by a past defeat to John Major, when most electoral polls put Labour ahead, the party blamed the electorate for not being able to stomach what was then a modest increase in taxation. The electoral success of Blair and Brown in agreeing to Tory fiscal constraints before being elected was a straitjacket Ed Miliband wore with pride. He was even pictured with it written in stone. They should bury him under it. Labour like the Liberal Party is finished. It’s the equivalent of the Berlin Wall falling. The choices in England are Conservative or Tory? Tory or Conservative? With less than twenty percent of the popular vote they lord it over the United Kingdom.

The Scottish National Party for whom I voted with fifty-two percent of the popular vote in Scotland and 56 of 59 seats is the winner. When Osborne dismantles the welfare state and hollows out the rights of workers and reduces those on benefits to rations and foodbanks that no modern European country, or its citizens, would find tolerable, Salmond can smugly say I told you so. But he can do nothing about it. Win win for him and SNP. Lose, lose for those on less than £100 000 a year.

History is when we’re doomed to make the same mistakes. After the Scottish referendum was lost in 1979 Labour were called the ‘feeble fifty’ because over fifty Labour Members of Parliament had Scottish seats but they could do nothing to halt Thatcherism. SNP MPs mirror that reality.

The big hope is when Cameron holds a referendum over Britain leaving the EEC.  England may well vote yes. Scotland will vote no. We could have a constitutional crisis. I’m sorry to say I was right about the Tory’s winning this election, but less sorry about predicting SNP sweeping Labour aside in Scotland. They got what they deserve. The problem is the Conservatives never seem to get what they deserve. Heads they win. Tails you lose. The games rigged and the poor man is always the loser. Scott Halley has a point. There’s no point in politics. I’m moving my assets to Switzerland where they’ll properly appreciate and I may follow on later.

http://unbound.co.uk/books/lily-poole