GEORGE BARNSBY DAILY BLOG NO.588 WEDNESDAY 1ST OCTOBER 2008 www.gbpeopleslibrary.co.uk
MY FASCINATION WITH TWO WORLD WARS..
This is perhaps natural, my father having served throughout the First
World War only to die in 1922 during a ‘flu epidemic which left my mother a
widow struggling to gain an enhanced pension on the grounds that he had been
gassed during the war, and me to grow up never having known my father, a
loss that I feel to this day.
And the Second World War in which I was engaged from a month after it
started until after VJ day gradually becoming a Communist in the 1930s as it
became obvious that Neville Chamberlain and his Appeasement pals were hell
bent on joining Hitler to destroy the Soviet Union. After the war began and
my brother was involved in the debacle of Dunkirk, which incidentally was
the
last time I ever prayed for his safety being made aware that priests
would all vote for ‘their’ side to win the war. After 1941 I published a
Soldiers’ Paper (probably the first since Cromwell’s times) advocating a
Second Front against the Germans, and so, since it had become unfashionable
to shoot mutineers by then the, military authorities took the easy way
out and detached me from my unit and sent me abroad, where I ended up for
four years in India and Burma and when I challenged the authorities to admit
that it was because of my Soldiers’ Paper, they denied that there was any
connection.
I became emotionally involved with the ‘Red’ Dean of Canterbury when
stationed near there and was present when Dr.Hewlett Johnson, until then
anathema to the military establishment, preached the sermon at a divisional
church parade on the week that
Hitler attacked the Soviet Union and leading military figures who knew I was
a Communist asked me how long I thought the Red Army would last and I was
proud to be able to say that victory in the war against fascism was certain
from that day on.
Although I was right, it was a close run thing as millions of Red
Armymen and civilians died from our refusal to open a Second Front on the
not entirely specious excuse that we were not prepared to start a second
front until we had sufficient armaments to avoid the mistakes of the First
World War when millions of men perished as military and political
authorities persisted in throwing men into the inferno of German artillery
and machine gun superiority. Lions led by donkeys it was generally and
correctly described. But the heroism and self sacrifice of the Russians made
them more popular than they had ever been.
It was in searching for a book called, ‘The Military Strength of the
Great Powers, by Max Werner, which explained why western authorities
believed that the Red Army made a hash of their war against Finland when in
fact it faced a Finnish army under the fascist dictator Mannerheim armed
with all the latest weaponry from Nazi Germany in the winter snow and it had
been a very comprehensive victory. I did not find my book, but I did find
two book s by the Dean of Canterbury which I did not know existed called
Soviet Strength; Its Source and Challenge published in 1941 and Christians
and Communism published in 1942. In these he writes of German planes
destroying the very Deanery from which he writes and says he wrote the books
in order that the unnecessary war which could have been avoided had it not
been for the determination of the ruling class to destroy Communism should
not last a single day longer than it needed to..
Today George W.Bush is embroiled in an analogous situation - the
placing of missile systems across Eastern Europe to ensure that there is no
rise of Communism in Russia and throughout the world.. This requires the
fight led by CND, Searchlight International and all other forces opposed to
nuclear weapons to join together to see that there is no World War Three.
HOME AND AWAY IN BRITAIN.
Today there is talk of US occupation of Iraq coming to an end
as the phoney permission for the invasion runs out with games being played
as to who is the best and who the worst of the 12 prime ministers since the
war. The BBC has taken up the same game and says that Churchill comes first
and Brown last, with David Cameron likely to oust Churchill but no question
about Brown being last. As far as the last place is concerned it looks as if
will have to be a Citizen’s Arrest for Brown to ensure that his mass
murdering ceases. As for Cameron, his change of mind into supporting the
war in Iraq and his failure to reply to me and others who are against the
war in Iraq means that he will never become a prime minister in spite of his
posturings in Birmingham today at the Tory Party conference.
MICHAEL MOORE’S TEN POINT PLAN TO FIX THE WALL STREET MESS
Since the richest 400 citizens of America own more than the poorest
150 million Americans Moore suggests that they take their own medicine and
grin and bear it.
1.Appoint a Special Prosecutor to criminally indict anyone on Wall Street
who knowingly contributed to this collapse.
2.The Rich must pay for their own bail out.
3. Bail out the people losing their homes, not the people who build an
eighth house.
4. If your bank or company gets any of our money in a Bail Out, then we own
it
5.All regulations must be restored - the Reagan Revolution is dead.
6.If it is too big to fail, then its too big to exist.
7.No executive should be paid more than 40 times their average employee.
8.Strengthen the FDIC and make it a model for protecting not only the
peoples’ savings, but also their pensions and their homes.
9. Everyone needs to draw a deep breath, calm down and not let fear rule the
day.
10. Create a National Bank - a People’s Bank.
And while we’re taking a deep breath let Gordon Brown and the Governor of
the Bank of England, Mervyn King, our man who was educated at Wolverhampton
Grammar
School, which of the above proposals we want enacted in Britain.
THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES.