davidsberry

Hard of the heels of our discussions on both advisability of the UK attempting to build new aircraft carriers for a global role it can’t afford (see Macho White Heffalumps from March 26th) and the hubris of empire over islands at the far end of the world that we British thought we could hold easily (see Those Who Don’t Learn from History in November 2011), we find ourselves at the 30th anniversary of the short, sharp Falklands War (Guerra de las Malvinas to those on the other side). From media coverage, the lessons hard learned then do not yet appear to have been learned.

In 1982, despite the Empire being just a memory to people over 40, Britian still aspired to a global rôle. So when, on April 2nd, Lieutenant Commander Guillermo Sanchez-Sabarots’ Amphibious Commandos Group, landed and rolled up Major Norman’s handful of Royal Marines, it was all over in a day. This should not have come as a total surprise to the MoD. Two weeks earlier, a non-military Argentinian occupation of the abandoned whaling station on South Georgia had resulted in them dispatching two nuclear submarines (HMS Splendid & HMS Spartan) along with RFA Fort Austin to support the only RN ship in the area, the survey ship HMS Endurance.

Carrington’s resignation and Thatcher’s doughty dispatch of a task force to re-take the islands is well documented. The resolute, brave and professional exploits of all three services will, deservedly, receive much media coverage over the next two months, up to June 14th, the 30th anniversary of the Argentine surrender in Port Stanley. Epic though those exploits were, it was, as Wellington phrased it at Waterloo; “a damn close-run thing”. Not only could it have been a disaster but any modern equivalent would almost certainly be. This is because a series of major pieces of luck all fell our way:

1. The ‘Argies’ didn’t expect a response. Even the US thought the UK crazy to try to take islands 7,000 miles from home and over 2,000 from their nearest base on Ascension. As a result, the garrison of partly conscripts weren’t expected to have to fight.
2. Casper Weinburger was an anglophile. In deference to his latino population and diplomacy in Latin America, President Reagan resolutely declared the US to be neutral but his Secretary of Defense persuaded him to supply badly needed satellite intelligence and sidewinder missiles, without which the British would have lost.
3. The Argentinians had few Exocets. French-built and carried by a Dassault Super-Etendard strike fighters, these were weapons for which the Task Force had no real answer (Phalanx gatling guns came later). Launched from below the horizon, two of these destroyed HMS Sheffield and the Atlantic Conveyor (with 6 Chinook heavy-lift helicopters). The lucky part is that the second target was meant to be HMS Invincible, the loss of which would have ended the operation.
4. Although operating outside the British-declared exclusion zone around the Falklands, the WWII-vintage cruiser Belgrano was sunk by a single torpedo from HMS Conqueror, triggering a dispute as to the legitimacy of the action. However, this did remove any surface threat to the Task Force and allowed it to concentrate on the occupying land forces and incoming air attacks.
5. Despite their phenomenal bravery flying at extreme range with ‘iron’ bombs, Argentinian Air Force pilots destroyed few of the sitting-duck-target ships in San Carlos Water after the landing. They hit plenty but at least three out of four bombs did not explode because they were released so low, the fuses had no time to arm.
6. Operation ‘Black Buck‘ was a success. Due for scrapping that year, the RAF still had a number of Vulcan delta-wing bombers on strength. By scraping together a dozen air tankers and refueling single Vulcans, one reached the Falklands from Ascension to strew 21 1,000lb bombs across the runway at Port Stanley, rendering the airfield unusable to all but light aircraft. This denied the Argentinians air superiority.
7. Goose Green was held mainly by conscripts. After the landing, 2 Para was sent to clear this flank of the advance on Port Stanley. Across bare ground, with little artillery and no armour support, this was an almost suicidal mission,. But, carried out with such bravery and determination, it psyched out the defenders who surrendered, but not before Col. H. Jones lost his life leading the attack. News of this undermined the remaining Argentine defenders’ morale.

Had any one of the seven items not happened, the outcome would have been in serious doubt; had several of them happened, the operation certainly would have been a disaster and the Falklands probably have become the Malvinas and part of Argentina. But the present exploration for oil in the waters around keeps the question of sovereignty alive.

Nowadays, with no aircraft carriers, no long-range bombers, no STOL Harriers, fewer ships, fewer aircraft and ‘operational stretch’ of forces being fully committed (overcommitted?) in Afghanistan and elsewhere, a similar occupation—in the Falklands or even anywhere else up to and including North Sea oil rigs and Channel Islands—could not be repulsed, let alone ejected, by the UK’s present forces, even if an equivalent seven lucky breaks to the above could be guaranteed.

For a country with the third highest defence budget in the world (£40bn), we have an execrable deal. It’s one about which serious questions need to be asked—as well as what the UK thinks it is doing in the 21st century, not just in Afghanistan, but in the fourteen ‘pink bits’ on which the sun still never sets, any of which have the ability to entangle us in a Falklands-type war. The difference being that, now, there’d be little chance of winning.

Seldom have I seen so many politicos in a tizz, so many journos wrong-footed or so many people who should know better vacillating between doing the headless chicken and venting their spleen over the thumping victory “Gorgeous” George Galloway achieved in Bradford West. Unlike his rabbit-out-of-a-hat job at Bethnal Green in 2005 where he squeezed past a bemused (and rather undeservedly) dejected-looking Oona King by 500 votes, this was the real deal; here, he cleaned the floor with his opposition.

His opposition—quite apart from the usual 3-digit fringe parties—was actually the three major UK parties. George likened them to three buttocks on the same arse and certainly had skelped them all by the time the night was over. Their usual henchpersons were out explaining away why they had neither seen it coming nor had convincing explanations for what happened. What happened is as close to a landslide as elections ever get, viz:

1. George Galloway (Respect) 18,341 (55.89%, +52.83%)
2. Imran Hussain (Lab) 8,201 (24.99%, -20.36%)
3. Jackie Whiteley (Con) 2,746 (8.37%, -22.78%)
4. Jeanette Sunderland (Lib-Dem) 1,505 (4.59%, -7.08%)
5. Sonja McNally (UKIP) 1,085 (3.31%, +1.31%)
6. Dawud Islam (Green) 481 (1.47%, -0.85%)
7. Neil Craig (D Nats) 344 (1.05%)
8. Howling Laud Hope (Monster Raving Loony) 111 (0.34%)

While a cuffing for parties of Government and the low vote for minority/unheard-of parties were both on the cards, this was a Labour seat with a 5,000+ majority in the Labour heartlands of the ex-industrial North of England caused by nothing more sinister than the retirement of a sitting MP for reasons of ill-health. With the Coalition having their worst week so far and Labour’s new leader of six months itching to make his mark, this result ought to have been a foregone conclusion.

As close as the day before, Labour thought it was, reporting that Galloway was making a strong challenge but that Imran Hussein, a Muslim from the area, would be the winner. Indeed, it is almost unprecedented for the opposition party of the day to lose a by-election—as rare as three times in the last 40 years, including this one. And it wasn’t just Labour: the ConDem parties and just about everyone else but George and his troops had written this off as a Labour romp.

Since the result was announced, party spin machines have been in a lather of damage limitation with Harriet Harman most to the fore, declaring “we need to learn the lessons” on five occasions in 24 hours and “we need to deepen connection with voters” on three. If this smacks of Johann Lamont’s recent sackcloth and ashes script, it’s probably no coincidence; Labour—especially New Labour—is not geared to doing ‘humble and repentant’; it’s not in their DNA. Labour leadership is now suffering criticism that they were too focussed on maligning the Tories nationally even while campaigning in Bradford West—and there is much truth in this.

Two Eds are Better than One When the Pasty Tax Bites at Greggs

But Labour was still out there working the streets; they had a plausible candidate and a long history of steady support. What went wrong?

First of all, Bradford West is an unusual constituency. It is unusual in the same way that Bethnal Green is: the two have the largest percentages of Muslim voters in Britain. This played to George’s Respect Party’s strengths, which are anti-war and pro-Muslim. Many people may have forgotten the Iraq war, even if they have not forgotten Afghanistan. But, as Diane Abbott MP has pointed out, those who have not lie outside the political classes and provided an unrecognised undertow of opinion.

Secondly, there is George himself. It’s hard to name a British politician as flamboyant, as self-believing, as shamelessly self-promoting or—among politicos at least—less popular. No-one who is anyone likes him and many claim his 2010 squirmingly unpalatable Big Brother appearance contributed much to his win. This is simplistic. George is actually not only politically astute but clearly understood the people of Bradford West far better than any other candidate/party.

More than simply campaigning on an anti-war footing, he threw out conventional campaigning and addressed an unprecedentedly sectarian letter appealling to Muslims to search their hearts for they know ‘instinctively’ who is a Muslim and who is not. It is bracketed with the customary Muslim greeting as no previous party election literature.

A Catholic himself, he flatters them divine discernment—what they know ‘instinctively’ is what Allah knows perfectly. He declares: “God KNOWS who is a Muslim and he KNOWS who is not” and he goes on to list his Islamic virtues: “I, George Galloway, do not drink alcohol and never have… I, George Galloway have fought for Muslims at home and abroad, all of my life… I, George Galloway, tell the truth…I, George Galloway, hold Pakistan’s highest civil awards…I, George Galloway, came to the side of the people of Palestine in their agony…’. He also says he will give his remaining days in service of all the people of Bradford West “if God wills it”.

It is as brazen and clever an appeal as anyone could come up with—and that is the third vital element in this. More than anything, it underscores just how vital speaking directly to local voters is. That involves not just bombarding them with literature and messages but working out what kind of community you are dealing with, what their concerns are and speaking to them in a language that resonates. That used to be the case for all parties. But in this day of central offices, large staffs and bright young things fresh from university, that seems to have been lost. With a weak local presence and scant hope of winning, such a mistake being made by the Tories or Lib-Dems is understandable. But that Labour should make it on a home patch is reprehensible.

The bottom line is that this massive victory was no fluke. It was caused by one—certainly flamboyant—candidate knowing how to speak to people while the ‘professionals’ gagged it, big-style. Wounded by his 2010 loss of Bethnal Green, written off after his risible showing on the Glasgow MSP list last year, Georgeous Gorge is back with a vengeance, stunning his old party and ca’ing the legs out from under Milliband’s leadership, just when he thought (rightly) he had the Tories on the run.

As even those marginally interested will know, watching the House of Commons is hardly comparable to watching the Bourne trilogy for entertaining action. Love him or hate him, now that GG’s back, that will change.

We Scots poke fun at our neighbours quite a bit. And, truth be known, they do deserve it sometimes. One such occasion was the polTroon fest underway this weekend, during which various ‘heavyweight’ spokespersons (applies in particular to Lord Strathclyde but I’ll try not to make this too personal) have been freighted up to the woolly North to shore up the Union before Babe Ruth gives it all away.

Others have better dissected the largely ill-informed speeches made in Troon. Suffice to say that the premise on which they all depended (‘better off together’) made them all seem to look back to the days of Empire, the enlightenment of dark corners and the ol’ Dunkirk spirit. I wish to disparage none of those, as Scotland was very much a partner in all. But we also shared mining, heavy engineering and shipbuilding. As none are any basis for a prosperous future now, why ipse facto is the Union? That question remained unanswered at Troon.

Co-incidentally (and not, in any way, to avoid the Cameron, May, et al cavalcade heading north) I have headed south this weekend. Spending time in England is always revealing and helps my perspective. This time I was in the non-Home Counties South, traveling from Somerset, through Wiltshire and on through Oxford to Leicester.

The first thing that strikes you is the diversity—the almost bucolic feeling of villages around the Somerset levels, with their narrow streets and crowding-in tall hedgerows giving it a cosiness that is uncommon elsewhere. Then a sheer bustle of places like Trowbridge or Devizes contrasts with the timeless serenity of the Avebury megaliths only a few miles away. Down there, with the sky-splitting early Spring sun bringing them on, the daffodils are fading, buds bursting and the grass glowing green with growth. All rather beautiful, especially approaching some dreaming pile of warm Cotswold stone like Norton Philip.

Also, the level of civilisation is palpable—lunching in the Summertown part of Oxford on a sun-drenched verandah just off the Banbury Road compares with anything on the Rive Gauche or Rodeo Drive. Even stopping off at the Dog and Gun in Chipping Warden, that effortless calm of rural England pervades the soul amidst oak beams, horse brasses and comfortable chairs. Great stuff, which I don’t always get to enjoy on a visit.

But you are also struck by the hectic of most towns and roads; there’s traffic everywhere road signs are appalling and everyone’s in a hurry. Some places like Tamworth are almost choked by cars piling in and out of hypermarkets, sprawling malls and DIY centres, even as pedestrianised streets of the old town centre are thronged too. More than anything, I am struck both by the sheer density of people—whether housing everywhere, town centres choked or roads nose-to-tail. Even far from London—which you expect to be crowded—there is an urban and/or higher-paced feel all over.

This intensifies when you enter quite secondary cities like Swindon or Leicester. Though football crowds make moving about impossible, even on a Sunday roads are thronged with cars and sirens punctuate the air more often than I recall even in Glasgow or Edinburgh. But most striking in virtually ever such city are the rows upon rows of Victorian brick-built terraces where the corner shops are long gone and cultural mixtures abound. Wandering such streets feels like another country, largely because such sprawling suburbs are less common to me but partly because the degree of cultural mixing is limited only to some parts of Scottish cities.

While cultural diversity is relatively unknown in Tamworth or Swindon, in cities of the Midlands and North like Leicester or Oldham, it is the norm. Having little experience of it, I have few insights to give. But such areas do have a very different feel and I start to get some sense why the English seem to be so much keener on border controls than the relatively open-minded Scots. If we had the scale of population mixing, we might share their attitudes. But we don’t.

But, when Theresa ‘Shoes’ May comes North to rouse the polTroons and dares to lecture the Scots how border controls would need to be introduced in the event of Scottish Independence and our signing up to Schengen, despite recent insights, I am still ashamed of such jingoistic paranoia about immigration. From my own experience, immigrants have drive and ambition and are generally not burdens on but benefactors to the state. How immigrants are supposed to reach England via Scotland when we have no direct ferries to the Continent any more on which they might stow away remains a mystery.

And, with the Scots natural curiousity about the world that made us equal partners with the English out of all proportion to our population, it’s time we started to reassert that willingness to engage with others and distance ourselves from an inward-looking, defensive attitude that now dominates English dealings with their neighbours, especially under the congenitally hostile-to-furriners Tory governments, as typified by La May. It wins few friends and impresses no-one.

So, pleased though I am to rediscover the culture of darkest Englandshire and that it, despite overcrowding issues, remains vibrant, until they get themselves a more tolerant, outward-looking government that the rather petty minds we have now, the sooner we Scots should celebrate our distinct culture of inclusiveness by asserting our right to it. And if southern paranoia insists border posts, they can put them up on their side

Tony Blair has a lot to answer for. Taking nothing away from the vision with which he shook the Labour Party out of its post-Foot slumber and made it electable, there are unsavourary aspects of his legacy with which many are still having to cope. The least savoury of those is the bottomless pit known as Afghanistan.

Meaning no disrespect to the bravery and dedication of all British forces who have served or are serving in that far-flung, foreign and mountainous region, the question that is still asked all too seldom is: What the Hell do we think we’re doing there? Long before Camp Bastion was even a glimmer in Blair’s eye, that place had been a graveyard for foreign intervention. The mighty Soviet Army found that out when they piled in there thirty years ago, only to slink out of Kabul a decade later much, much the wiser.

What is especially galling is the the British—of all the global forces on this planet—ought to have known better than to stick their fingers back into that particular fire. For, long before the Russians, ‘way back when the Great White Queen (Victoria, not Elizabeth) had barely ascended the throne, the Afghans taught the Raj a lesson that the MoD at least seems to have forgotten.

Once India was conquered and settling into its role as “The Jewel in the Crown”, the ‘wider still and wider’ edict of empire drove the then-Governor-General of India Lord Auckland to take down the troublesome Amir of Kabul by force. The occupation was relatively easy at first (sound familiar) and left 10,000 British troops split into two main garrisons at Kabul and Kandahar. So easy was it that the Kabul cantonment was built with so little consideration for defence that the commissariat stores were placed some 400m away outside its perimeter.

To command this most far-flung, split-new conquest, Auckland sent the 60-year-old, gout-ridden, flatulent and incontinent Lord Elphinstone, who arrived to be told by the outgoing General Cotton that “You will have nothing to do here: all is peace”. No sooner had he left the country then communication with India was severed by Afghans in the hills, a relieving force chased into Kandahar and “Elphy Bey” found himself besieged in Kabul.

Almost immediately, his health broke down. But since he could not abide his abrasive second-in-command Brigadier Shelton he would not relinquish command to him. Nor would he make up his mind what action to take as the Afghans looted the stores and gave the clumsy, overdressed British infantry reacting to their raids a series of sharp lessons in both skirmishing and accurate musket fire. When the British formed squares to repel Afghan light cavalry, the accompanying sharpshooters found the obligingly large, bright red, mass targets impossible to miss, even at a distance.

With supplies gone, casualties mounting and the appallingly poor standard of British musketry (some officers took to throwing stones at the Afghans, so poor were their men at picking them off, the 44th Regiment of Foot being especially bad), Elphinstone waited until mid-winter before deciding on evacuation. “Everything is reverting to the old state of things” he said his last dispatch.

With snow a foot thick all the 100+km to Jalalabad and the safety of the Khyber Pass beyond, the 16,000 headed East, harassed all the way by tribesmen and even children who picked off exhausted soldiers and stragglers. Although of smaller scale, because of the totality of the result it rivaled Napoleon’s humiliating retreat from Moscow just 30 years before in the annals of military disasters.

The only European to reach Jalalabad and safety was Surgeon-Major William Brydon. Once the news reached Auckland, a punitive expedition was launched and the great bazaar at Kabul was burnt, which the bulk of Afghans cooly observed from the safety of surrounding hills. For the next 150 years, the perils of trying to occupy, pacify or even interfere with the internal affairs of Afghanistan were passed around the Army and the Foreign Office as career-ending gospel if they were to be ignored.

Unfortunately, those who feel the hand of destiny upon them rarely pay much heed to dusty lessons from a distant past. Any Man who would be King makes his own fate and, like Peachy Carnaghan and Daniel Dravitt of Kipling’s tale before him, drive on through the perils beyond the Khyber to make their mark on the world. Peachy and Daniel both paid dear for such temerity—as, more recently, have 400 British servicemen.

Meanwhile, the Man Who Would Be (and was) King now gets six-figure speaking fees and sleeps sound at night, untroubled by any nightmares of Elphinstone’s terrible legacy in its current incarnation.