Monday 8 June 2009

A dangerous step into darkness

Depressing news I'm afraid.


The UK had four less MEPs to send to the European Parliament (because other countries had joined the EU and existing member states had to reduce their MEPs), and one of those seats were lost in the North West - as such each party needed even more votes if they were win one of the 8, rather than 9 MEPs available to the North West.



In 2004 Lib-Dems won two seats, this year we won one. Our vote was down 1.6%.





The Conservatives gained 1.5% of the vote share, and retained their three MEPs.







UKIP was up 3.7% and retained their MEP.





Labour vote took a battering, losing 6.9%, and one of their three MEPs as a result.



The most depressing news, which I'm sure you've all heard by now, is that BNP leader, Nick Griffin, took the last spot with a 1.6% increase in their vote.

It was weird - despite there being an awful expectation that the BNP would win a seat in the North West, when it actually came to watching the leader of the British National Party get elected to the European Parliament at about 2am in a packed Manchester town hall room (see below), I couldn't really shake off the feeling that it was a horribly historic moment. I felt disgusted - our region had just elected the leader of the British fascists to the European Parliament.

My maternal grandfather was part of the "2nd wave" of troops to clear through Europe during the final days of World War II. He was part of a unit that was first on the scene that liberated the Belsen concentration camp. He told my mother that most of the SS guards had fled, but a few remained.

He said that they didn't know why they left those guards there, because when they discovered the unimaginable horror inside the British troops simply battered the remaining guards to death with their rifle butts, not to save bullets, but simply as an instinctive reaction to the gut wrenching evil that they encountered. Belsen 1945 - British bulldozer buries bodies in mass grave

A British comedian called Michael Bentine, who served in the second world war, wrote this on his encounter with Belsen:
We were headed for an airstrip outside Celle, a small town, just of Hanover. We had barely cranked to a halt and started to set up the ‘ops’ tent, when the Typhoons thundered into the circuit and broke formation for their approach. As they landed on the hastily repaired strip – a ‘Jock’ [i.e. Scottish] doctor raced up to us in his jeep.

‘Got any medical orderlies?’ he shouted above the roar of the aircraft engines. ‘Any K rations or vitaminised chocolate?’

‘What’s up?’ I asked for I could see his face was grey with shock.

‘Concentration camp up the road,’ he said shakily, lighting a cigarette. ‘It’s dreadful – just dreadful.’ He threw the cigarette away untouched. ‘I’ve never seen anything so awful in my life. You just won’t believe it 'til you see it – for God’s sake come and help them!’

‘What’s it called?’ I asked, reaching for the operations map to mark the concentration camp safely out of the danger area near the bomb line.

‘Belsen,’ he said, simply.

Millions of words have been written about these horror camps, many of them by inmates of those unbelievable places. I’ve tried, without success, to describe it from my own point of view, but the words won’t come. To me Belsen was the ultimate blasphemy.

After VE. Day I flew up to Denmark with Kelly, a West Indian pilot who was a close friend. As we climbed over Belsen, we saw the flame-throwing Bren carriers trundling through the camp – burning it to the ground. Our light Bf 108 rocked in the superheated air, as we sped above the curling smoke, and Kelly had the last words on it.

‘Thank Christ for that,’ he said, fervently.

And his words sounded like a benediction.

Many people aren't interested in politics, indeed most people didn't bother to vote in this set of elections - but as we proved last night, if enough people disengage from mainstream politics we can so easily sleepwalk into political darkness.

If the economy recovers, as we expect it will, then I imagine the two BNP MEPs will lose their seats in five years time, but there is no escaping the fact that last night parts of our country elected those who our ancestors laid down their lives to protect us from.


It's sickening.