Rudinblog

Democracy mugged

I am feeling pretty sour today following last night's carve - up of top European jobs. I've never been mugged (touch wood, etc.) but I feel that's what's happened to me and 500 million others in the political sense. Who needs 'The Thick of It' when real political life is beyond satire? A foreign minister for 27 nations and 500 million people, who has never been elected to anything and didn't even know she was a candidate until just before she was appointed, to a job created by a Treaty which only 1% of the electorate has had any say in (and the 1% - in Ireland - only approved after being told to vote again as they got the 'wrong' answer the first time), who was originally appointed as a Commissioner by a Prime Minister – who doesn't have a mandate in THAT job - so that he could bring back another unelected Minister back into his Cabinet.

Why didn't the new Papacy go the whole hog and have smoke billowing out when the 'Cardinals' had made their decision? The demos, of course, excluded from it all.

But THEY seem more concerned with foul play at a European footie match than in the autocratic way they are now governed. FFS!! Still, never mind, we can still vote in The X Factor' and 'Strictly'. Probably have more affect than a vote in a general election now when the real power has shifted to those whom we do not elect and cannot remove. Weapons of Mass Distraction keep the electorate from having to worry about such matters. The other Blair – Eric – got it bang on in '1984' (which was seen as a warning against creeping totalitarianism but seems to have been used as a text book by New Labour and the EU).

"The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power."

 

Of course, 'Cathy' Ashton insists she will be a good 'High Commissioner' but if not, what? Gordon Brown tried to bluff his way out of the 'democratic deficit' issue last night by stating that she and the new 'President' were chosen by elected heads of government of the 27 EU states (a rather tendentious claim in his case, given that he is PM using a Commons' majority secured in an election in 2005 at which the then PM and party leader, Blair, stated categorically that he would be there for the full term and "a full term means a full term" – but let that pass. This morning Neil Kinnock made a similar claim - that's Lord, Neil Kinnock, the former EU Commissioner, whose wife and son have also done well out of the EU and will continue to do through salaries and lavish pensions paid for by us, a body that Kinnock pledged to take Britain out of through the '70s and most of the '80s; indeed Brown and Blair were first elected in 1983, with a manifesto pledge to withdraw from the then EEC without a referendum. But let THAT pass! The idea that ANY of these leaders, with the possible exception of the Irish, have any mandate to transfer these powers and make these appointments is outrageous!

 

Then we get the point – unchallenged by the BBC's Justin Webb on the 'Today' show this morning, that this is no different from Cabinet appointments in the U.S. Well, of course, such appointments are made by a directly elected President (unlike Brown and many other heads of government in the UK) but, crucially, there ALL appointments are subject to intense Congressional scrutiny and approval. Obama took months to get one of his key appointments approved. Whereas, the EU Parliament (members mostly elected under the party list system, rather than as individuals) can either accept ALL the appointments, or refuse them all – they cannot pick and choose, and neither can they vote to remove one of these super-ministers during their term if, say, 'Kathy' is not up to snuff.

 

Two more frequently quoted claims about the EU that went unchallenged: the Lib Dem's (former EU Commissar) Chris Huhne on 'Question Time' last night repeated the old one that the EU was run by fewer people than run Birmingham City Council. That comparison is intended to suggest that there are few bureaucrats in the whole of the EU than in Birmingham – the biggest local authority in Europe – but in Brum's case the figure includes all the frontline staff; teachers, social workers, etc. A deliberate piece of misinformation. But Huhne has form on this. He also recently repeated the line that the EU had "kept the peace in Europe." This is the one that sends me into orbit! What kept the peace in Europe of course up to the early '80s was the division of the Continent into broadly two military camps, NATO and Warsaw Pact, both armed with nuclear weapons and each side's integrity guaranteed respectively by the USA and USSR, and Germany - the chief, initial aggressor in the two world wars - split into two, one side in each camp. Just who, I wonder, does Huhne - and others who repeat this –think would have been at war but for the EEC/EU? Would Ireland have invaded Denmark? France gone for Belgium? It's just ludicrous! The proof of my position that the Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) prevented another war in Europe, is that when the Soviet bloc collapsed in the early '90s there WAS war in Europe!

 

The biggest threat in Europe remains regional and ethnic/religious wars, not between nation states. I would even contend that the divorce of the elite from the people is MORE likely to lead to tensions, which may result in violence.

 

SO: what is to be done? Do we just sigh, roll our eyes, shrug our shoulders, etc. and get on with our lives, and hope no one will come and get us for running foul of some EU Directive or be dragged from our homes to some other EU country using the European Arrest Warrant? (And do be careful, by the way, guys, that you don't commit anything that might be construed as a sex crime when visiting the Czech Republic – they have the unkindest cut of all for certain types of miscreants there).

 

Passive resistance is probably the best way forward. The EU has no legitimacy, no mandate, so should be ignored and defied. They can't throw all of us in prison. But of course people won't do it. Britain is such a wussy nation - with those Weapons of Mass Distraction as giant, electronic pacifiers. As yer man Lennon said in 'Working Class Hero':

 

Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV,
And you think you're so clever and classless and free,
But you're still fucking peasants as far as I can see

 

It took centuries to establish some sort of democracy in the UK (let alone most of the rest of Europe) and now 'they' have - by Treaty, Directive, lie and misinformation -taken it away. Yes, we are back to the future in a new, post-democratic age.

 

 

The Berlin Wall – my part in its downfall!

I've been doing quite a lot of thinking and writing recently about how our personal and collective memories are forged. Anniversaries – always a good stimulus or excuse for these memories - seem to have come thick and fast this year: the 90^th anniversary of the first Armistice commemorations and the death of the last UK participant in World War 1; 70th anniversary of the start of World War II (at least for Britain!); the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing, and the 30th anniversary of the first election of Margaret Thatcher and the end of the post-war Keynesian consensus. But the one which most exactly unites personal and world events for me is the fall of the Berlin Wall. What followed was a glorious period in which it really did seem for a while that, as a result of true 'people power', freedom and democracy would take hold throughout Europe and beyond, and furthermore with very few casualties.

 

In my early teens I had a fascination with Berlin. My mum remembers discussing it with me, saying how she thought it was an awful place but I, apparently, had disagreed with this and said I would very much like to go there. At that stage, of course, I had no idea that I would end up with the British forces broadcasting (BFBS) and would be posted there. That is indeed what happened in February 1982.

Until I went out to Germany I thought, in common perhaps with millions of others, that the 'Berlin Wall' described a neat partition of Europe between East and West, which somehow ran down the centre of Berlin. What I hadn't realised was in fact there were two walls; the first dividing West and East Germany, with the second some 80 miles inside East Germany and encircling the Western sector of Berlin, with the World War II victorious allies of France, the UK and the USA controlling one side; and fellow former ally, now enemy, the Soviet Union, the eastern sector. So, getting into West Berlin meant travelling deep inside Soviet controlled territory and a bizarre observation of the niceties of respecting the post-war partition of Europe and agreements with the Soviet Union. Furthermore, the other three Allies refused to recognise the right of the so-called German Democratic Republic to determine who should or shouldn't be able to enter the Western sector of Berlin.

There were three routes, or corridors into the western section; by road, rail and air. I experienced all of these but it was via the first that I first experienced Berlin, setting off with my then girlfriend (later to become the first Mrs Rudin!) in my car from Köln in north-west Germany, which was then home to by far the largest BFBS radio station. One of the things that was impressed on me before we embarked on this journey was that you had to be very careful not to miss the exit from the East German autobahn into Berlin, because your mileage was clocked at either end of the journey and that if you strayed along or past the exit you would be in serious trouble – indeed, would quite likely spark a major international incident! As it happened, the day that we set out was foggy and so I was fearful we would miss this turning.

Before we hit the autobahn, though, we had to go through both the Allied and Soviet checkpoints on the western side. This involved, firstly, having your documents checked by the British forces and then going through the Soviet checkpoint. The Soviets could, and often did, make you wait for a long time, especially if you were American and volubly made comments about "those commie bastards", etc.

At the Soviet checkpoint I had to get out of the car, leaving my then girlfriend inside, salute the Soviet soldiers on duty and then go into a hut, where you would submit your documents, a hand (no other part of the body was visible) snatched them, the hatch snapped shut and you just had to wait for as long as it took. Although I could hear a few voices behind this hatch and a television blaring, I couldn't see the car and so had no idea what was going on outside. This was very unnerving and intimidating - as of course it was intended to be. After a few minutes or so the hatch was raised and a hand maybe the same one – maybe not!) pushed the documents back at me; I stepped outside the hut, saluted the soldiers again, got into the car with some relief and off we went.

Naturally, I was peering anxiously through the windscreen as the mileage indicated that we were near the exit and fortunately I did manage to take it and was very relieved indeed to get to the Allied checkpoint under the arc lights and then be waved through into West Berlin where I was greeted by my new boss at the Berlin station, Alan Clough.

Alan and his wife Janet made a great fuss of us over that weekend, taking us to the French sector and the French equivalent of the NAAFI, the Economat, where we stocked up on fabulous cheeses and wines (naturally!) and I think that first weekend we also went to the American sector, to their equivalent, the PX. The US sector was, as might be expected, a fully created version of smalltown America, complete with its movie houses, bowling alleys and hamburger joints. They even imported Cadillacs and the like and all the street furniture you would associate with the USA.

The British sector wasn't quite like that and seemed to be much more integrated into the life of West Berlin. Before we got married the following year, and had our own quarter -- a fabulous house by the Grunewald (green forest), which would apparently have fetched around half a million pounds in the early 1980s -- I lived in a civilian mess on one of the city's great thoroughfares. It was also next to the British Military Hospital and the first day I was there I was having the evening meal when there was a commotion outside, with armed police, dogs, sirens, etc. Clearly, something more than a squaddie going to the outpatients' department following a rugby accident was going on!

"What's happening?" I asked my fellow diners. "Oh, that'll be Hess arriving" said one. "What, Hess as in Rudolf Hess, Hitler's former deputy?" I asked as I dropped my fork. It was indeed. Hess was by then the sole prisoner in Spandau jail, which was in the British sector, and who was guarded in turn by the four wartime allies but as the British hospital was the nearest he was always treated there and had a whole floor devoted to him. On a later tour of the hospital I was allowed into the room where he was treated: he wasn't there at the time I hasten to add! – but one of my great claims that I've sat on Rudolf Hess's bed! It was just one of many extraordinary things about that city. But, this is supposed to be about the Berlin Wall…

It would be wrong to say that, unless you happened to live and work in its sight, that it was constantly at the front of your mind, but it was certainly never far from your thoughts. Of course, you were most conscious of it as you travelled, as we Allies were allowed to, from West Berlin via Checkpoint Charlie into the East. Mostly, these would be on official tours organised by the respective military powers and was certainly a 'must do' whenever you had any visitors, so my mum, stepfather, and brother, as well as numerous friends, all 'did the East tour'. After showing your passports in the coach, or sometimes pressed against the window for inspection, you would be allowed through the checkpoint and taken to certain approved sites and displays. However, there were also unofficial tours that I did, once with my by then fiancée, was led by a British spy, although of course he did not have that job title emblazoned about him!

He took us to a few places that weren't available to the normal tourists, including some interesting historic sites. You were always followed, of course, and when we stopped off at the dreary Russian equivalent of the NAAFI, the car was broken into and thoroughly searched by East German agents and our friendly spy announced at one point that we were being followed by the, 'People's Police' and he was going to "lose them", so we had a very exciting fast journey around that part of East Germany!

At other times, though, as you would wake up to the news that somebody else had been shot and either killed or injured as they tried to make good their escape over the Wall, you realised this was a deadly game. On other occasions you'd be going out about your business as usual and suddenly find yourself confronted by a section of the Wall, perhaps at the end of an innocent looking street. I remember one occasion when I was doing some work -- actually very lucrative work! -- at a little recording studio, just about 50 yards from where the wall ran. After I finished the recordings, I climbed the steps of the Wall to peer over and, just beyond the 'death strip', some kids were playing football, just as they will in any street in any part of the world. But in this case, their presence and mine was being observed by armed soldiers with binoculars in the watchtowers, and had the ball gone over into the death strip it would not be possible to knock on the door and ask for it back!

There were almost constant visits of major politicians, including President Reagan - whose speech I attended - Margaret Thatcher, Michael Heseltine (then Defence Secretary) and former Prime Minister Jim Callaghan, who granted an extended one-to-one interview with me at the BFBS studios. We were very spoilt as broadcasters, as virtually every major star who passed through would agree to interviews and I've lost count of the number of concerts I went to. I also have great memories of terrific, *interesting* nightclubs and restaurants, as well as walks in the glorious green spaces and trips on the River Havel.

Unlike the Allies' presence in other parts of Germany, the British and Americans seemed genuinely popular in West Berlin, not least because we had sacrificed many lives and resources in the Berlin blockade of 1948 - 49, when the Soviets had attempted to establish their right to govern the whole of Berlin by blocking off outside access to the Western sectors. There had been various attempts and threats since then, not least of course in the construction of the Wall in August 1961 (the only wall in the history of the world designed to keep people in rather than the enemy out), but the airlift had shown that the Americans, in particular, were serious about halting any further march westwards of the Soviet Union and were prepared to engage in a third world war if necessary to defend the west. At any stage between 1949 and 1989 a wrong move could have unleashed a nuclear holocaust. So Berlin was, indeed, the frontline of the Cold War and you were certainly very conscious of that.

To help giving a breathing space in any further attempts to seal off the city, about six months of food supplies were constantly available in the western part and as of course meat and dairy products go off after a while, these were then sold to the personnel, including civilians, of the Allied powers every few weeks at knockdown prices. There was a deep underground nuclear bunker in the centre of Berlin but that was never openly revealed until the 1990s. I visited it and many other sites with the family in 2003. It was very emotional to freely walk through the Brandenburg Gate.

But to 1989 and the year everything changed. I was married, with a baby on the way, and working for the BBC in Leeds. We had not yet moved into our new home there, so my wife was back in the north-west, in our lovely stone cottage a mile or two from where I live now. My temporary accommodation for four days of the week was then a small hotel and so when the pictures came up of the crowd surging through the Wall on the night of November 9 we were apart but watching the same TV news broadcasts, and then excitedly and tearfully discussing them over the 'phone. The next day, of course, the coverage continued on the breakfast-time news, which they had on in the hotel restaurant. I was so excited and so happy that I had a bout of 'emotional incontinence' over my corn flakes, prompting the waitress to ask if I was all right. Back at the BBC studios they were desperate to find someone who knew something about Berlin to add commentary to the events, so I was whisked through to give my thoughts. I made a prediction that although what was happening was unprecedented and wonderful, it would not mean that Germany will become united - at least not for many years! Oh well, I wasn't alone in thinking that.

 

What I do remember is that for the next few months the world seemed an extraordinarily hopeful place and it really did seem that we would move on to new, peaceful era and that perhaps, at least in the northern hemisphere, war and conflict would be at an end. My two and a half years in Berlin were certainly the most exciting, and in some ways the most significant, part of my life. Tomorrow, 9 November, I shall be thinking of all those who dreamed, for all those who died, and for all those who were left behind in those terrible 40 years of division.