Who Owns This Country?

  I  have read with interest these recent revelations in The Guardian some of which is new but most of which is historical fact. The original agreement which Harold Wilson, whom I have written about previously, signed with the American's, about GCHQ Bude,provided for American funding of all of the equipment on the base, whilst the British would, exclusively, provide the manpower.

 The NSA have always wanted their moneys-worth out of GCHQ from Bude and have, in the past, stated their intention to take-over the base and man it should its flow of information to them be disrupted. In 1980 one of the first malevolent acts of that bitch Margaret Thatcher was to abolish the Pay Research Unit who were responsible for recommending pay rates for civil servants. Put simply the Unit had been put in place to provide a fair system of renumeration for staff by comparing their salaries with the equivalent outside analogues in the private sector. So the work of Civil Servants, from high ranking heads of ministerial departments through to scientists, and clerks and messengers at the other end of the scale were compared with their outside analogues in the private sector and a settlement between the government of the day was usually agreed between the Civil Service Trades unions and the government of the day. This not only maintained a fair pay system in the Civil Service but also prevented industrial disputes from arising.

 As a result, dismayed at this action Civil Servants, voted to fight back and begin a rolling course of one day strikes in 1981 across key areas of government including at GGHQ Bude (then known as CSOS Morwenstowe), the Courts Services, DHSS offices and other key areas of government.

 Sometime after we held the two one day stoppages I was contacted by one of our Trade Union officials from Cheltenham who said that he and a colleague (David Hall and George Pounder - devious bastards, acting as 5th columnists ) wanted to come down to Bude to discuss the strikes with me and the other Executive Officer working there. I cannot recall exactly when this was but a considerable time had elapsed since any industrial action at the site .The Officer In Charge at the station, because they were union officers, refused to allow them on site but after I discussed the matter with him and suggested that it may not be a good idea to hold discussions of this type in a local pub, we compromised and  agreed that we could meet in the car park but he was adamant that he would not allow them to enter the station buildings. Ironically the local Union officials for the radio officers and engineers who worked there on a regular basis, and had taken part in the strikes, were not affected by any such ban. 

 Now it is important to remember, at this stage, that the industrial action that we had taken was fully supported by the Civil Service trades Unions at national and local level and that we had voted in favour of the strike action. No decision of this sort is ever taken lightly, as I have stated previously on this blog.

 They arrived on a normal windy and rainswept North Cornwall day and the four of us huddled in the porchway to the site to hold our discussions. They said that they had come to ask us not to take any further industrial action at the site, should it arise, as they had been told that the Americans would go over the head of the Director of GCHQ to the Joint Intelligence Committee to request that they should take over and man the station should the station's operations be seriously affected at anytime in the future. Because of the seriousness of the issues involved I asked for time to consider their request, as did my colleague. D, my colleague had also heard that St Mawgan Air Force base in Cornwall, had been notified that a USAF aircraft may be landing there with specialists from the American National Security Agency who would be deployed to Bude to run the station if further serious prolonged industrial action took place.

 At the next meeting of staff from the station and a some senior full time officials from some of the Civil Service Trades Unions down in a pub in Bude, to discuss future strategy, I sought out my own full time officer from the Society of Civil and Public Servants and related the information to him. He immediately said that if I had deep concerns over taking any further action then, as far as he was concerned, I should act accordingly.

 There, or so I thought, the matter ended and having completed my tour of duty I returned to Cheltenham, although it was clear that my career in the organisation had been detrimentally affected. Move forwards a few years to 1984 and Margaret Thatcher introduced her infamous ban on Trade Union membership at GCHQ. I was one of a handful from the organisation who became an appellant against the ban.

 The rest, as they say is history but we mounted a long but successful campaign against the ban, and in 1997 almost the first act of the new Foreign Secretary Robin Cook was to restore the right to the staff at GCHQ to join a free Trade Union of their choice.

 I have attempted to record the events of that time as accurately as possible and hope that there is new information here for students of history to add to the plethora of information already on the public record including the Catalogue of GCHQ Trade Union Campaign papers held at Warwick University.

I have withheld names, because some of the people involved are still alive. 

 As for conjecture and comment I have the following observations to make. Brian Tovey, the Director of GCHQ at the time was the architect of the ban I presume because of the American response to events at Bude which I have outlined above. Bobby Inman visited the site shortly after the strikes and was said to be delighted when Tovey put the plan to him according to a report In The Sunday Times, published shortly after the ban was imposed.

 After the ban was announced Peter Jones for The Council Of Civil Servants and the Head of the Civil Service, Robert Armstrong were said to have negotiated a deal for unions to remain at GCHQ provided they signed a no-strike agreement but this was rejected by Margaret Thatcher whose inability to compromise led to her eventual downfall. This was subsequently the basis of the agreement between the Unions and Robin Cook in 1997. I have my own views on why, following the actions at Bude in 1981, it took until 1984 for the ban to be announced but I do know that one earlier attempt was aborted, at the last minute. 

 Dwight Eisenhower warned of the corrosive effects of  Military Industrial Complex in 1961 and although the Anglo-British relationship has been of vital importance to the peace of the world at certain times, recent events in Palestine, Iraq, Libya Aghanistan and elsewhere have posed a threat to the peace of the world and the two countries between them, since the 1960's have been responsible for more injuries and deaths to innocent people through their bombs and their policies than any other nations on earth. For those of us who having been fighting peacefully for a better and fairer world since the 1960's there is just a faint hope that government has at last been rumbled by the people following the banking crisis, and recent revelations by Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning. It is time for governments to serve the people once more rather than manipulate the people into becoming serfs of government who undermine their own peoples civil liberties and who pay lip service to democracy

Harold Wilson, Socialist.

Relatively early during the troubles in Northern Ireland Harold Wilson correctly predicted that there were storm clouds gathering. Presenting his '15 point plan' in the House of Commons, the central point of which was that the final settlement of the Irish question lay in unity, he stated that new initiatives had to be brought forward speedily because, 'if men of moderation had nothing to hope for, men of violence will have something to shoot for'.
He won more elections (four) than any other 20th century Prime Minister and some of his governments initiatives have proved to be far-reaching achievements. These include:-

the foundation of the Open University;
the liberalising of laws affecting homosexuals and obscene publications:

equal pay for women:

the voting age was reduced from 21 to 18;

the first medically verified criminal law against drunken driving was introduced;

censorship was banned in in our theatres:
the ending of capital punishment;

he pressed forward with the introduction of Comprehensive schools;

expenditure on students and teachers was increased;

as did the student population;

council house building was increased, with the proportion of council housing increasing from 42% to 50%;

prescription charges were abolished;

pensions were increased substantially;

farmers subsidies were increased;

social security benefits were markedly increased;

the holding of a referendum which ensured that we remained in the European Union.
He also gave us a national holiday to celebrate May Day and his coming to power in 1964 heralded the birth of the swinging sixties and in 1966 we won The World Cup.

 And yet for a prime minister who civilised the face of the U.K. and, in my opinion, excluding wartime, was one of the three most influential prime ministers of the 20th century that pratt(ling idiot) Andrew Marr in his book,  "A Mystery of Modern Britain" claimed that Wilson had a limited intellectual background ( he graduated in PPE (Philosophy, Politics and Economics) with "an outstanding first class Bachelor of Arts degree, with alphas on every paper" in the final examinations, and a series of major academic awards ), a blinkered political judgement and the lack of substance behind the wisecracks and slogans. Marr. is a closet Tory and his biased verdict, on one of our greatest prime ministers,  is in stark contrast to those provided by the open university of our age Wikipedia. If Henry Ford thought that history was bunk then Marr must have learnt his history in the same infants school.

He was a powerful orator and some of his more legendary quotes survive to this day:-
A week is a long time in politics;
I'm an optimist, but an optimist who carries a raincoat;
The monarchy is a labour intensive industry;
The Labour Party is a moral crusade or it is nothing;
N0 comment - in glorious technicolour;
He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery;
Whichever party is in office, the Treasury is in power.
When hit in the eye by a stink bomb thrown by a schoolboy his response was, 'With an arm like that he ought to be in the England cricket team.'
His premiership was fraught with problems however. He managed divisive cabinets many of whom had sharp intellects and inflated egos and, although he was thought to be paranoid at the time, it has since been proved that he was undermined by parts of the military and the security services.
He kept us out of the Vietnam war, despite American demands for the presence of British troops and it was also under Wilson that, for the first time in a century or so, A WHOLE YEAR passed without a British soldier being killed on active service.
How different to the cringing subservience by Tony Blair to George Bush or Theresa May to the Donald and their cringing assertions that Britain had a moral duty to go to war anywhere in the world where western values (whatever those are) are threatened.
 I am also very proud of the fact that the first constituency Labour Party that he joined was  the Liskeard Branch of my local Labour Party.
Nice one Harold.

Labour's Fiscal Credibility Rule: Neoliberal Orthodoxy Dies Hard

Counterpunch, as ever, doing what's on the tin. Interview of professor Bill Mitchell by JOE EMERSBERGER questioning John McDonnel's Fiscal Credibility Rule and why his hands might be tied by a very large knot.

Shit Happens

On the sidebar to this blog you will find references to other places that I visit. One of them is Shit happens, which I urge you to read.

 In it this a young lady, in her forties, describes her existence on a low income in Brixton. She is courageous and not bitter. but describes the issues that she has to face on a daily basis.
 She was not awarded a medal in the New Years Honours list, like so many other do gooders who feed the poor, and in so doing aid and abet the Tory government, for their failure to accept their responsibility to protect the poorest in this country, through taxation, but to me she is a hero of this country.

Foodbank in a Waitrose Supermarket

 Please take a moment and see what it is like to live in her world, where it is a struggle to get through every day. She makes me feel ashamed of myself.

Matthew Arnold.

For almost 50 years I had convinced myself that the finest poem in the english language was Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard . But one day, as I turned the page of a book of poetry. that I was reading on the beach on the Atlantic side of Barbados with it’s huge rollers topped by white horses crashing onto the beach with a sound that eerily reminded me of the percussion in Holst’s armaggeden threatening musical movement Mars, this poem, about another beach in another far away lost country astounded and touched me in such a way that when and wherever I die it will be read to those that gather to celebrate my passing.

Dover Beach

BY MATTHEW ARNOLD

The sea is calm tonight. 

The tide is full, the moon lies fair 

Upon the straits; on the French coast the light 

Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand, 

Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay. 

Come to the window, sweet is the night-air! 

Only, from the long line of spray 

Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land, 

Listen! you hear the grating roar 

Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling, 

At their return, up the high strand, 

Begin, and cease, and then again begin, 

With tremulous cadence slow, and bring 

The eternal note of sadness in. 

Sophocles long ago 

Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought 

Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow 

Of human misery; we 

Find also in the sound a thought, 

Hearing it by this distant northern sea. 

The Sea of Faith 

Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore 

Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled. 

But now I only hear 

Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, 

Retreating, to the breath 

Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear 

And naked shingles of the world. 

Ah, love, let us be true 

To one another! for the world, which seems 

To lie before us like a land of dreams, 

So various, so beautiful, so new, 

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, 

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; 

And we are here as on a darkling plain 

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, 

Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Famous Birmingham City Players: Nikola Zigic.

 Nikola Zigic  - Ziggy  ( a Serbian international and sometime captain) split opinion at Blues. One Camp thought he was lazy and couldn’t pass a ball and for his unusual height missed many airborne sitters and that his hold up play was meh. Whilst his most vociferous supporters thought that he was God incarnate and almost single handily won the League Cup Final  for us in 2011 with his goal, and assist in the final and another in the earlier rounds.

 I am in the former camp and to back that up would state that he was not often selected by both Alex McLeish or Chris Hughton during his time at the club. What also grates is the fact that he was given a four year contract and was paid ££60,000 a week. This money drained the club financially whilst he sat on his arse  most of the time. He was sometimes seen in a supermarket in Solihull, the posh district of Brum where wasters like General Blue also live. I’m told he was a nice man and very approachable
His wife , who was also Serbian was a model.

Sue Townsend on "The Blair Years"

Please read here.  A little more:-

"Dear Diary,

I read A Journey all night and into the early hours. At 5.10am I had a revelation. Mr Blair surrounded himself with Alpha Males: Alastair Campbell, Gordon Brown, John Prescott, Margaret Beckett, Philip Gould, Jonathan Powell and Peter Mandelson, yet he was not an Alpha Male himself. He was a receptacle and a conduit of their wishes and opinions. Mr Blair had as much self-belief as a chameleon.

I remembered that when he returned to London after a long period in the United States he had an American accent, much like that of his fellow Christian and friend, Sir Cliff Richard.

I am not a trained psychologist but I am wise beyond my 40 years and think that I have discovered why Mr Blair was so keen to become a war leader and to swagger alongside George Bush. He thought it would give him another pair of testicles and would promote him to Alpha Maleness."

  Is he now supporting alpha male Trump ot Bomber Clinton?  Tough call Tony.