2020 in Books

It's that time of year again, when I list all the words I managed to read. For some reason, this year there's a fair few more of them...

Books read- 36
Pages read- 15,950
Target- 35 (amended up from 27 because, you know, lockdown)

• Fiction/Non-fiction ratio- 10:26- A better year for fiction, but only marginally...

• Longest Book- A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, 1184 pages.

• Shortest Book- The Ascent of Rum Doodle, 192 pages.

• Quickest Read- A three way tie between The Ascent of Rum Doodle, Stasi Child and Just Mercy, each of which took me three days.

• Longest Read- KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps, August 2019-August 2020.

• Most Read Authors- A tie this time: Diarmaid MacCulloch, one his book on the English Reformation under Edward VI, and the other his mammoth history of Christianity, and two John le Carre novels.

• Ebooks-  KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps, Stasi Child, The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America, Left Out: The Inside Story of Labour Under Corbyn, Norton of Everest: Soldier and Mountaineer, Providence Lost: The Rise and Fall of the English Republic, The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper, The Norman Conquest, Tudor Church Militant: Edward VI and the Protestant Reformation.

• Audio books- La Belle Sauvage, First Man In: Leading from the Front.

• Useless Fact-A grand total of four other people read the biography of Edward Norton. 367,424 others read Just Mercy.

The List

• The President is Missing, Bill Clinton and James Paterson
• The Long '68: Radical Protest and its Enemies, Richard Vinen
• Where Power Stops: The Making and Unmaking of Presidents and Prime Ministers, David Runciman
• Austerity Britain, 1945-51, David Kynaston
• The Black Death: An Intimate Story of a Village in Crisis, 1345-1350, John Hatcher
• Piers the Ploughman, William Langland
• The Mirror and the Light, Hilary Mantel
• The Ascent of Rum Doodle, W.E. Bowman
• Gorbachev: His Life and Times, William Taubman
• Selling Hitler: The Story of the Hitler Diaries, Robert Harris
• The Ministry of Nostalgia, Owen Hatherley
• Excalibur, Bernard Cornwell 
• A Most Wanted Man, John le Carre
• La Belle Sauvage, Philip Pullman
• Doctor Who: Fear of the Dark, Trevor Baxendale
• The English Civil War: A People's History, Diane Purkiss
• Born in the GDR: Living in the Shadow of the Wall, Hester Vaizey
• The Edge of the World: How the North Sea Made Us Who We Are, Michael Pye
• My Life, Our Times, Gordon Brown
• Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, Bryan Stevenson
• Hidden Histories: A Spotter's Guide to the British Landscape, Mary-Ann Ochota
• First Man In: Leading from the Front, Ant Middleton 
• KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps, Nikolaus Wachsmann
• Stasi Child, David Young
• A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, Diarmaid MacCulloch
• The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America, Timothy Snyder
• Left Out: The Inside Story of Labour Under Corbyn, Gabriel Pogrund and Patrick Maguire
• The Brothers York: An English Tragedy, Thomas Penn
• Norton of Everest: Soldier and Mountaineer, Hugh Norton
• Providence Lost: The Rise and Fall of the English Republic, Paul Lay
• Stranger Than We Can Imagine: Making Sense of the Twentieth Century, John Higgs
• The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper, Hallie Rubenhold
• Between the Sunset and the Sea: A View of 16 British Mountains, Simon Ingram
• The Norman Conquest, Marc Morris
• Tudor Church Militant: Edward VI and the Protestant Reformation, Diarmaid MacCulloch
• Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, John le Carre

Death at the Altar

On this day 850 years ago, in 1170, Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was murdered by four knights inside Canterbury Cathedral itself. It was an event which appalled medieval Christendom, elevated Becket to sainthood, and left a deep impression on the English imagination.

 

Lestnytgh, lordynges, bothe grete and smale,
I xal you telyn a wonder tale,
How Holy Cherche was browt in bale
Cum magna iniuria.

The greteste clerk of al this lond,
Of Cauntyrbury, ye understonde,
Slawyn he was with wykkyd hond,
Demonis potencia.

Knytes kemyn fro Henry kyng,
Wykkyd men, withoute lesyng;
Ther they dedyn a wonder thing,
Ferventes insania.

They sowntyn hym al abowtyn,
Withine the paleys and withoutyn;
Of Jhesu Cryst hadde they non dowte
In sua malicia.

They openyd here mowthis wonder wyde:
To Thomas they spokyn mekyl pryde,
'Here, tretour, thou xalt abide,
Ferens mortis tedia.'

Thomas answerid with mylde chere,
'If ye wil me slon in this manere,
Let hem pasyn, alle tho arn here,
Sine contumilia.'

Beforn his aunter he knelyd adoun;
Ther they gunne to paryn his crown;
He sterdyn the braynys up and doun,
Optans celi gaudia.

The turmentowres abowtyn sterte;
With dedly wondys thei gunne him hurte.
Thomas deyid in Moder Cherche
Pergens ad celestia.

Moder, clerk, wedue and wyf,
Worchepe ye Thomas in al your lyf;
For lii poyntes he les his lyf,
Contra regis consilia.

 

 A medieval English carol, recorded in the 15th century MS Sloane 2593. Translation from https://aclerkofoxford.blogspot.com/2011/12/song-for-st-thomas-becket.html?m=1

 

Listen, lords, both great and small,
I shall you tell a wonderous tale,
How Holy Church was brought in bale [into sorrow]
By a great wrong.

The greatest cleric in all this land,
Of Canterbury, you understand,
Slain he was with wicked hand,
By the power of the devil.

Knights came from Henry the king,
Wicked men, without lying;
There they did a terrible thing,
Raging in madness.

They sought for him all about,
Within the palace and without;
Of Jesu Christ had they no thought
In their wickedness.

They opened their mouths very wide:
To Thomas they spoke in their great pride,
'Here, traitor, thou shalt abide,
To suffer the pain of death.

Thomas answered with mild chere, [in a meek manner]
'If ye will me slay in this manner,
Let them go, all those who are here,
Without injury.'

Before his altar he kneeled down;
There they began to cut off his crown;
They stirred the brains up and down;
He hoped for the joys of heaven.

The tormentors began their work;
With deadly wounds they began to hurt.
Thomas died in Mother Church
Attaining to heaven.

Mothers, clerics, widows and wives,
Worship Thomas all your lives;
For 52 points he lost his life,
Against the king's counsels

Alternatively, watch Brian Blessed in The Black Adder do much the same thing.

A Return to the City on a Hill

It seems like a very, very long time ago, in a world which does indeed seem far away. But it is only four short years since I wrote this pair of posts:

The Dark Night of the Soul in the City on a Hill

Night in the City on a Hill

It is safe to say that the American republic has not had its best years since that day. Every week of the Trump presidency has been such a rollercoaster, it would be impossible to try and recount all of it. The coronavirus catastrophe, which has killed more Americans than most wars the country has ever fought, is the best, most vivid, most raw example of that. The whole presidency has been bad, both for those in the United States, but for everyone around the world. Yes, many of the worst fears have not come to pass. The system of checks and balances the US prides itself on has by and large held. Trump remains the only president to preside over a government shutdown when his party was in full control of government. Many of his gestures were just that, gestures.

But you cannot argue these have been four good years. Indulging white supremacists, authoritarians, conspiracy theorists, climate deniers, and all-round lunatics hasn't done anything for the United States. The world stage has cowered in fear that he subscribed too much to the madman theory, and his ripping up of the Paris Climate Accord and the Iran Nuclear Deal is just downright dangerous. Above all, Trump shows that democracy is not inevitable. Americans believed it was, and so they didn't mind when the beast made its way into the White House. He has sewn carnage in his wake. The United States is a young country. It is still younger than Athenian democracy was when it was conquered by Alexander of Macedon, and only half the age of the Roman Republic when Caesar led his armies across the Rubicon and brought it crashing down. It is not inevitable that the poster child of democracy around the world will remain as such. Trump is the symbol that yes, it can happen here.

I think what has surprised me the most is that anyone cares. Plenty of countries are run by authoritarian strongmen, by quasi-fascistic lunatics who shouldn't be allowed to run a race let alone a nation. Their mismanagements and outrages go unremarked day by day. For some reason though, those of us who live in democracies hold the USA to a higher standard.

Maybe it’s because we live in the world it created. The world we live in is culturally American, and is defined by global institutions and power structures which were set up by the United States. We do care when it lets us down. It will go on doing that, even under a President Biden. But it will be ten times worse under a second term Trump.

If Joe Biden wins tomorrow, that isn't the problem solved. Trump, as has been written many times by many people, is a symptom, not the disease itself. But if he wins again, that message will almost be worse than him winning in the first place. Consigning Trump to the ash heap of history is a powerful message that it can happen here, and it can be undone.

I can see all the evidence that points to Trump losing. And yet I cannot truly believe it. As John O'Farrell said of those who despaired that Labour would win in 1997, in the face of similarly overwhelming evidence, we are like brides who have been abandoned at the altar, and cannot accept that they will ever be happy again. In the words on Fox Mulder's office wall in the X-Files, I Want to Believe.

Everything I said in those posts four years ago still stands. If America still sees itself as the city set on a hill, a shining light to the rest of us, then it bloody well better show it. Once again, we all have to go through that long, dark night of the soul with them.

Good night, and good luck.

The Life and Times of John Hume

A few years ago, I was mentoring a trainee teacher. It was… a painful experience. About halfway through a lesson, I was sat taking notes, when a student asked him ‘Sir, who do you think is the most important historical person?’ Quick as anything, he answered ‘Martin McGuiness, who was an Irish Nelson Mandela. He did more than anyone to bring peace to Northern Ireland’

I put my pen down, stunned. I could just about see where the Nelson Mandela analogy came from, in that McGuinness had been a violent revolutionary who had turned to the democratic system to advance his interests. But he had not done more than anyone to bring peace to Northern Ireland.

Northern Ireland in the mid 1960s was a powder keg. Ever since partition in the 1920s, the unionist majority, predominantly Protestant, had clung to their overwhelming power in part by political manipulation to exclude the nationalist, mainly Catholic minority, from jobs, housing, and the equal right to vote. Slight moves by the governing Ulster Unionist Party to improve the lot of nationalists had produced a hysterical reaction from some unionists, including Ian Paisley. On the other side of the divide, various civil rights movements were starting to spring up, advocating civil disobedience, inspired in part by the images from the Deep South of the United States.

One of those who joined the Derry Citizens’ Action Committee was teacher John Hume. Hume was elected to the Northern Irish Parliament as a nationalist, and helped to form the moderate nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party in 1970. He was present at marches against internment without trial, and against the increasingly heavy-handed police and army actions of the early 1970s.

 The street politics of Derry, late 1960s and early 1970s

 
The future of the nationalist movement did not look to be in electoral politics. What had begun as street protests and marches for better conditions was rapidly descending into armed conflict, as hatred at the Stormont government, the police, and increasingly the army was fuelling the rise of the Provisional IRA. Equally appalling was the actions of loyalist paramilitaries, who used fear of the IRA to justify appalling sectarian killings. At times, Northern Ireland seemed to teeter on the brink of total collapse. It was a hard time to be calling for peace and reconciliation.

Hume stuck to his (metaphorical) guns. He joined a hunger trike and sit in outside Downing Street in 1971, to highlight the plight of nationalists suffering at the hands of the Stormont administration. He was part of the team who helped to negotiate the Sunningdale Agreement in 1973, a false dawn of power sharing even as the carnage escalated. After becoming an MEP in 1979, and an MP in 1983, he cultivated links with the Irish-American political community, seeing the advantage that American influence would bring. Margaret Thatcher said the landmark Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985, which conceded that the Republic of Ireland had a role to play in the future of Northern Ireland, was brought about in large part by American pressure.

From Downing Street sit in to the Oval Office

But it is for his willingness to talk to anyone who could bring about peace, even at risk of talking to those who would murder, for which John Hume will be remembered. In 1988, in an incident which seemed to be the very depths of depravity, mourners at an IRA funeral were killed by a loyalist gunman. At their funerals, two soldiers who drove into the procession were dragged from their car and beaten to death in the street. A picture of a Catholic priest kneeling over the soldiers, administering the last rites, was beamed around the world, epitomising the abyss into which Northern Ireland had sunk.

In the pocket of Father Alec Reid was a letter. It was from Gerry Adams, the leader of Sinn Fein, the political wing of the IRA. At the time, Adams was seen as so dangerous, so vile, that his voice was not allowed to even be heard by the British people, to deprive him of the "oxygen of publicity," as Margaret Thatcher put it. The letter was being sent to John Hume. Two less likely allies couldn't be imagined. But, thanks to the work of Father Alec Reid, the two men were corresponding. The letter set out the position of Sinn Fein for an end to the 'armed struggle,' and asked the SDLP leader for his take on them. It marked the start of the ‘Hume-Adams process,’ by which the IRA and Sinn Fein were gradually nudged away from the Armalite and towards the ballot box. First of all in secret, then in the open, these talks helped to persuade the IRA to declare a ceasefire in 1994. Unionist fury and scepticism was seemingly confirmed when the ceasefire collapsed in 1996, with a huge bomb in the London Docklands. But Hume kept going, amidst the derision.

It took a new government in Westminster in 1997, with a large enough majority to not be beholden to unionist votes, for the Northern Ireland peace process to really get going. I’ve told that tale before, so won’t do so again. But it was John Hume and David Trimble who shared the Noble Peace Prize in 1998, not Adams or McGuiness.

The years since have not been kind to Hume, or the SDLP. He suffered from the onset of dementia, to the point that he had no memory of his role in the history of the 20th century. The SDLP has seen itself overtaken by Sinn Fein, the former hardmen of violence, as the main party of nationalism in Northern Ireland. But the very fact that disagreements in Northern Ireland are played out politically, and not with bullets and bombs, is testament to the lasting impact of people like John Hume, who imagined and argued for a world of peace when it seemed virtually impossible to attain.

My feedback for that lesson largely consisted of outlining this story. And telling my trainee to think before he blurted out such sweeping statements. I feel that the former teacher, turned politician and Nobel Peace Prize winner, would have approved.


https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/nov/20/john-hume-steered-northern-ireland-peace-process For the views of the late Seamus Mallon, that other senior SDLP giant, and his take on the significance of John Hume.

The Road to Jerusalem

On 22nd May 1960, an El Al flight from Buenos Aires, via Senegal, arrived in Israel. One of the flight attendants had to be carried off the flight by his fellow passengers. Not because he was drunk, but because he was drugged. He had been kidnapped.

Ten years earlier, he had arrived in Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina. He had a Red Cross passport. The name on the passport was Ricardo Klement, and it said he was from the Italian Tyrol. There was nothing suspicious about this. Since the end of the Second World War, many from the former Axis powers had migrated to South America. Argentina in particular had a large expat community, and so was an obvious location for those wanting to start a new life.

 Red Cross passport of Ricardo Klement

And yet, not all was as it seemed. The passport had been issued under the authority of an Austrian Catholic Bishop, Alois Hudal. Once a rising man in the Vatican, he had been a prominent supporter of National Socialism, and with the Nazi experiment now in ruins, Hudal was very much out of favour. He had turned to providing “a charity to people in dire need.” What he was actually doing was helping Nazis and their fellow travellers to escape. Across Europe, the Allies, and the new states born out of the ashes of a defeated Europe, were engaged in denazification, and trying to bring those responsible for war crimes to some sort of justice. Thanks to Hudal, and those like him, around 9000 former Nazis made it out of Europe and across to South America, the bulk of them to Argentina. These were known as the ratlines.

Hudal, lecturing on Nietzsche in 1937. Pretty much the most Nazi thing imaginable

Further mystery surrounded the man who stepped off the boat in Buenos Aires that July morning in 1950. His passport gave his name as Ricardo Klement, and that he came from a German speaking part of Italy. Yet when he had approached Hudal’s organisation for his papers, his name had been Otto Heninger, and he had been living in northern Germany, working in the forestry industry. Before that, he had been a prisoner of war, and before his escape from an American prison camp he had gone by the name of Otto Eckmann. Travelling to South America on a forged passport, issued by a Nazi sympathiser, and with a string of false identities behind him, Ricardo Klement was clearly a man with a past.

Klement’s family came to join him in 1952, and after several years of working low paid, menial jobs, he eventually got a job with that most German of companies, Mercedes-Benz, working his way up to be a department head. Here the story could have ended. But it didn’t.

On 11th May, Klement got off the bus on his way home from work. He was approached by a man who asked him, in Spanish, if he had a moment. Klement, nervous, tried to walk away. Suddenly, two other man appeared. There was a struggle, but eventually Klement was overpowered and shoved into the back seat of a nearby car.

All because a young man had got himself a girlfriend.

Klaus loved to boast to Sylvia that his father had been a great war hero, helping Germany to accomplish great deeds. Yet no one knew where his father was, he told her. That was why he lived with his uncle, Ricardo Klement.

What Klaus was not to know was that Sylvia’s family was German-Jewish; her father, Lothar Hermann, had been imprisoned in Dachau, and upon release in 1938 had fled to Argentina. Lothar alerted a West German prosecutor that he believed his daughter had found a relative of a senior Nazi holed up in Argentina. Lothar than persuaded Sylvia to undertake an act of monumental bravery. She was to visit Klaus at home, and try to meet his uncle. This she did, but when she called at the house, Klaus was not home yet. Instead, she was invited in by Ricardo Klement. When Klaus returned, not knowing that Sylvia was there, he addressed Klement as father.

Lothar Hermann was stunned. For if Ricardo Klement was Klaus’ father, that meant they would share a surname. Eichmann. This meant Ricardo Klement was one of the most wanted men in the world.

The true past of Ricardo Klement

In the aftermath of the Second World War, the Allies had put the most senior Nazis on trial. But during their testimony, they realised they were missing other monsters. One such monster was Adolf Eichmann. Before the war, he had been involved in Nazi efforts to expel Jews from Germany. When it became obvious that this plan would not work, the Nazi regime embarked upon the Final Solution; the mass murder of European Jewry. The plan which emerged from the Wannsee Conference in January 1942 was to build a network of camps, purely for the purpose of murdering Jews and other untermenschen (sub humans). These camps are now infamous reminders of the horror of horrors. Auschwitz-Birkenau. Treblinka. Belzec. Sobibor. The enormous administrative task of identifying people and transporting them to these camps was to be organised and co-ordinated by Eichmann.

List from the Wannsee Conference, setting out the Jewish population of Europe

His full role was not really identified till after the war, when his name came up again and again at various war crime trials. But by then, it was too late. Eichmann had slipped through the net, and made it to Argentina.

Lothar Hermann passed the information on to the West German prosecutors. But they were afraid; if they launched a formal investigation, Nazi sympathisers in the office might tip Eichmann off and allow him to melt away again. So they passed the information to a group of people who were very interested in getting their hands on Eichmann.

The revulsion and disbelief at the horrors of the Holocaust had been largely responsible for the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. It was the defining experience of Judaism in the modern era. When the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence service, was tipped off that the man who had orchestrated the practicalities of mass genocide was living quietly in Buenos Aires, they swung into action.

A few weeks of surveillance in early 1960 confirmed that they had the right man. But they also had a problem. Argentina had routinely turned down extradition requests for Nazi war criminals. If Israel unveiled Eichmann’s existence to the world, Argentina would drag its heels, and again the world’s most wanted man would slip away. Eventually David Ben-Gurion, the Israeli Prime Minister, authorised the only option open to Israel; Eichmann was to be kidnapped. The director of the Mossad flew to Buenos Aires himself to lead the mission.

After he was snatched from the streets, Eichmann was questioned in a Mossad safe house. They were confident they had the right man. The Mossad team also learnt that Eichmann knew the location of Joseph Mengele, the so called ‘Angel of Death’ who had carried out human medical experiments in the death camps. They paused to watch this new location for a few days. But Mengele had recently moved out of this boarding house, and no one knew where he was. Deprived of a double capture, the team now needed to get Eichmann out. His family had searched the hospitals of Buenos Aires, but had not yet informed the police of his disappearance. But the Mossad team could not afford to wait much longer.

Argentina was celebrating 150 years of independence from Spain. A large team of Israeli diplomats and politicians had flown in to mark the occasion. When they flew back out again, to Senegal to refuel and then on to Israel, the team was slightly larger. And one of the flight attendants looked very much worse for wear.

On 23rd May 1960, David Ben-Gurion announced to the Knesset that Israel had acquired Adolf Eichmann. The reaction of the members, often at loggerheads with each other, was estatic. The Argentines, on the other hand, were livid at the infringement of their sovereignty. The West Germans and Americans panicked, worried that Eichmann might implicate senior Nazis who had survived denazification, and were currently working for them. For Eichmann himself, his biggest moment was yet to come, when he would face trial in Jerusalem.

Eichmann in Jerusalem. A tale for another time

Why what you know about VE Day is (probably) wrong

This year marks 75 years since VE Day, the end of the Second World War in Europe. As with most historical events, everyone 'knows' what happened. As with most historical memory, what you think you know isn't the full picture...

Celebrations

We've all seen the pictures. People celebrating, dancing in the streets, crowding central London to hear Churchill and the King speak and appear on the balcony of Downing Street. And with good reason. After six years of hardship, and having been expected imminently over a week, the Second World War in Europe was at last at an end.

And yet...

All of this did happen, that is beyond dispute. But away from most city centres, VE Day was a quiet day. "Usually, crowds were too few and too thin to inspire much feeling," reported Mass Observation. In the afternoon and evening, between 33% and 40% of the adult population was inside, tuned to BBC Radio, listening to coverage of various speeches, church services, and what we would now call vox-pops. In L.S. Lowry's VE Day, the side streets are deserted.

Many people found the whole atmosphere a bit artificial, a bit forced. The author Vera Brittain reflected that it was not as spontaneous as the end of the First World War 27 years previously. This makes sense. For many people, the war had become normality. VE Day marked the first jarring step into the unknown.

In popular memory, it was the hero of the hour, that icon of Britain at war Winston Churchill, that people were keenest to hear from. And yet, Mass Observation recorded some people treating his speech about the future with derision. "It was just like this after the last war and twelve months later we was standing in dole queues" a middle-aged man was heard to say when Churchill made positive noises about rebuilding the country. And although he was hushed by those listening to Churchill's speech ("He's done a grand job of work for a man his age - never sparing himself"), Churchill was living on borrowed time. Within weeks he would prove he was not the man to lead Britain into the brave new world. Forced into an election campaign, he said that his war cabinet colleagues would need a Gestapo to make their planned welfare state work. Churchill led the Conservative party to a crashing defeat, and was replaced by Labour's Clement Attlee. With this piece of knowledge, maybe it makes sense that the popular, unpolitical King George VI was the person people wanted to hear from the most on VE Day.

The two sides of Winston Churchill in 1945: heroic war leader to bungling party politician within a month

We won

I mean, on the face of it, yes. Britain was on the winning side. And what we had helped to defeat was the epitome of political depravity and evil. The evidence for that was evident, from the death camps of the Final Solution that were liberated as the war drew to a close.

But victory had come at a price. In 1815, relaying news of his victory at the Battle of Waterloo, the Duke of Wellington had said:

My heart is broken by the terrible loss I have sustained in my old friends and companions and my poor soldiers. Believe me, nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won.

This is a pretty good summary of the place the United Kingdom found itself in in 1945. Yes, it had won. But at great cost. Around 384,000 British servicemen and women had been killed, and another 376,000 injured. 67,000 civilians had been killed, mainly in the bombing of British cities between 1940 and 1941. The country had bankrupted itself in this fight to the death with Nazi Germany, and was reliant on cheap loans and handouts from other countries, particularly the USA. It would now have to rebuild Britain, and pay its share of rebuilding Germany, with empty pockets.

The psychological damage to Britain's place in the world was also profound. For the Britain of 1945 was not just the United Kingdom we know today. It encompassed a quarter of the world's land mass, and one in five of every person alive in 1945 was a part of the British Empire. But Britain's position as the pole imperial power was badly shaken. It had been the colonies and Dominions of the Empire which had rescued us just as often as the other way round. The speed with which France had fallen, and the British withdrawal from it, the ease with which the HMS Repulse and Prince of Wales had been sunk, the falls of Singapore and Hong Kong to the Japanese, the fact that the Channel Islands had been occupied and not freed until after the war was over, all had shattered the image of British imperial might. Britain's treatment of the empire's brightest prize did not bear close scrutiny. The Bengal Famine of 1943-44 was made worse by the focus of the British Indian government on fighting the Japanese, and there was a crackdown on the Indian National Congress by the authorities. Within a decade and a half, the British Empire would be no more. It is telling that the contribution of the colonies in saving Britain from Nazi Germany has virtually not featured in our telling of the story of the Second World War. It is too painful, too unlike the story we tell ourselves.

Soldiers of the British Indian Army, 1944. They are often omitted from our story of the Second World War

It is often said now that the USA contributed the most money and industrial money to the war effort (the US economy only emerged from the depths of the Great Depression thanks to the Second World War), the USSR the most manpower (somewhere between 20 and 30 million Soviets died in the war), and Britain provided the most brains and innovation. A simple glance at the shelves in any bookshop, with titles like Churchill's Boffins, or recent films and TV shows about Alan Turing and Bletchley Park, will show this approach. And it is true that some technological advances were designed with the help of British scientists, notably the atomic bomb. But it does offer a telling glimpse of the reality of the postwar world. The future belonged to those two superpowers who had dominated the war effort. Britain was now very much going to play third fiddle on the world stage.

 

Part of the myth that we tell ourselves is that our brainpower helped win the Second World War

Britain did emerge from the war with immense moral authority. After all, it had stood alone in 1940 and 1941, carrying the flame of resistance and hosting the governments in exile, as country after country was plunged into Nazi occupation. Even this is contentious history, as many politicians in 1940 were prepared to talk peace with Hitler (it has to be said, amusingly given the regularity with which they reach for the imagery of the war, many senior Conservatives, often the ones who had resisted Churchill's ascent to the premiership), the USA was already bankrolling Britain by that stage, and it ignores the support of Greece and Yugoslavia, countries we notably failed to save from Nazism in the spring of 1941. But rightly or wrongly, Britain did get moral credit. It was to waste much of that in 1956, during the humiliation of the Suez Crisis. Some victory indeed.

War's over

VE Day is often held up as the end of the Second World War. It really wasn't. In the Far East, Imperial Japan still controlled vast swathes of Indonesia, the Philippines, Pacific Islands, and China. Japanese attitudes to surrender were that it was a huge dishonour. Already, even turning the tide against Japan had been far bloodier than much of the fighting in Europe. The Americans were closing in on the Japanese home islands, but the war was far from over.

There were three alternatives open to the Allies. One was to starve Japan into submission, by using their navies to sink ships transporting food between the four main islands. 67 of Japan's cities had already been subject to firebombing; this would be intensified. The second option was to invade Japan itself. Given the ferocity of the fighting so far, the casualty estimates sometimes ran into the tens of millions, when taking in Allied servicemen, Japanese soldiers and civilians. Also, there was no guarantee that the Japanese wouldn't just move the Emperor elsewhere and carry on the war. For soldiers in Europe, being held to prepare to transfer to Japan ahead of the planned invasion, there was genuine fear. Certainly, many people looked grimly at the Far East and expected several more years of carnage.

So the third option was taken. On August 6th 1945, the Japanese city of Hiroshima was obliterated in a blinding flash of light. Three days later, Nagasaki was also destroyed. Japan, facing the full horror of warfare in the new atomic age, decided to surrender. There were more celebrations around the world for VJ Day. At last, the war was truly over.

The true end of the Second World War(?)

Even this isn't so simple. The Second World War may have been over. But the one thread which held the Allies together was defeating Nazi Germany, and Imperial Japan. With these enemies vanquished, it became rapidly apparent that the USA and USSR would not get along. For another 45 years, the spectre of a war between these two would haunt the world. And many people would die in the conflicts fought by their proxies. In the celebrations of VE Day, it is possible to see the Cold War which would dominate the world until 1990.

The signing of the final German peace treaty, in September 1990, at the end of the Cold War

The army which fought the war in the Far East for Britain is often called the Forgotten Army. The army which fought in Burma and Malaya does not attract the same attention as the fighting which took place in Europe and North Africa. The focus on VE Day shows this. But this was not the end of the Second World War, and we would continue to live, and fight, in the world it created for a long time to come.

Commemoration

All of these confused memories aside, we have decided to commemorate VE Day. This is fairly novel. We did not make this a big deal of the anniversary in 2015, or 2005. The Bank Holiday was moved for the 50th anniversary of VE Day in 1995. This 1995 event is important, for it marks the start of the resurgence of war commemorations in Britain. Until the mid-1990s, attendance at Remembrance Sunday events was continuing to fall, Remembrance Sunday itself was the day marked, over Armistice Day. Major anniversaries, of battles and events, were marked, but not to anywhere near the same extent as they are today.

VE Day's 50th anniversary in 1995- the start of Britain's rememberance mania

Whereas now, we are in a very different landscape. Remembrance Sunday has become a major event on the calendar, and more attention has turned to Armistice Day, to the extent that both are now marked in the same week with silences and ceremonies. The recent passage of the centenary of the First World War saw a wide range of events, and the Second World War does too. It has become heresy to suggest that these events cannot be commemorated, celebrated even, on a large scale.

Our commemoration has increased at the same time as the number of people who were there has gone down. To take the Second World War, these events were barely marked through until the 1990s. But there were millions of Britons in the 1950s, 60s, 70s, and 80s who had direct memories of the Second World War, indeed who had fought in the war, yet they chose not to mark these events. It is only with the increasing passing of this generation that our commemoration has gone up several gears.

Part of this makes sense. As there are fewer links to that past, there is more of a drive to connect to it, partly because it is harder for us to associate with it. But this also means the opportunities for mis-remembering are rife. We retreat into a safe, warm, memory, but one which may not really have happened. The current VE Day setup is borderline a festival (albeit one being conducted at a 2m distance). That is not fair to the sacrifices of millions in the Second World War. I often think 'Is this what they would have wanted us to be doing?' Look at the tea boxes full of food they definitely would not have had, the national sing along, containing none of the songs that the radio played on the day, the idea that Churchill was lauded as the nation's saviour when he was weeks away from being ejected from Downing Street in a landslide.

I have really conflicted views on this. I obviously believe the defeat of Nazism was a good thing, and it is important to mark it, and the contribution of those who did it. To borrow the words of the Kohima Memorial, those who gave their tomorrows for our todays. But I am also a history expert, who spent five years studying it at university, and five years teaching it to people. Much of the way we mark these events is what we want to remember, not what really happened. This is bad history. Bad history leads to a bad misunderstanding of the present. And bad history is something the people of 1945 had just spent six years pitted against.

 

US combat engineers passing out champagne on VE Day, May 1945

Nazi Germany's Ten Days Without Hitler

By 30th April 1945, it was clear to everyone that the Second World War in Europe did not have long left to run. In the West, the reverse of the Battle of the Bulge in the winter felt like a distant memory. British and American troops were across the Rhine, and driving deep into Germany itself. On the Eastern Front, the Red Army had begun its assault on Berlin, and was fighting house to house in the 'lair of the fascist beast.' Everywhere they went, Allied soldiers were uncovering the true depths of depravity which Nazism represented, as the death camps and concentration camps of the 'Final Solution' were thrown open. Five days earlier, US and Soviet troops had met at the Rive Elbe. Surely, the end had to be in sight.

Then, on 1st May 1945, Hamburg radio began broadcasting a newsflash. Adolf Hitler, the Fuhrer of Germany, the man who embodied the Nazi party and state, was dead. He had actually been dead since the previous afternoon. After dictating his last will and testament, Hitler had committed suicide, along with his new wife, Eva Braun. Their bodies had been burnt in the garden of the Reich Chancellery. The man often identified as the epitome of evil in history was no more.

 The news everyone had been waiting for- but the war was not yet over

Yet for ten days, the Third Reich fought on. Nazi Germany was a state built around 'ein volk, ein reich, ein fuhrer,' but somehow it staggered on without its supreme leader, or for that matter many people or much of an empire.

In the days running up to Hitler's demise, the struggle to succeed him had raged inside the Nazi machine. Hermann Goering, Hitler’s designated successor, had telegrammed Hitler on April 23rd asking for permission to assume power, in effect trying to remove the besieged leader. Five days later, the head of the SS, Heinrich Himmler, was revealed to have approached the Swedish government to act as a peace broker between Germany and the Western Allies. Outraged, Hitler sacked both Goering and Himmler, declaring both to be traitors. In his last will and testament, Hitler ended the office of Fuhrer, dividing it back into the Chancellorship and the Presidency, which had been the situation during the first year and a bit of Hitler's rule, when President Hindenburg was still alive. It was to another military leader that Hitler turned; Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz, the leader of the German navy, would become President, and Joseph Goebbels, the director of propaganda, would become Chancellor.

Goebbels’ Chancellorship lasted a little under 24 hours, before he too committed suicide in the Fuhrerbunker in Berlin, along with his wife; they also murdered their six children. This left Doenitz as the last Nazi standing. From his headquarters at Flensburg, he became the President of the German Reich and the commander of the armed forces.

The new leader of Nazi Germany, Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz

 

By this stage, the German armed forces were the only arm of the state that continued to function. The civilian ministries had been scattered across Germany during the chaotic exodus prior to the Battle of Berlin, and many government ministers were in effect running German life on paper only. But the armed forces were still responding to orders, albeit close to collapse. It was to them that Doenitz spoke first. He urged them to continue to fight.

At the time of Hitler's death, the white bits were the extent of Nazi control; being Fuhrer wasn't as attractive a job prospect by this point...

Not because he expected to win. Rather, Doenitz's policy was to hold off the Soviets for as long as possible, while entering into localised negotiations with Western Allied commanders. The hope was that conducting separate peaces would make the Western Allies fall out with the USSR, and they could then unite with the Germans in an anti-Communist crusade. In case this fantasy didn't work out, Doenitz's other objective was to surrender as many soldiers to the West as possible; the savagery of Wehrmacht atrocities in the USSR meant that there would be no quarter given by the Soviets, even in defeat.

This also explains Doenitz's decision to exclude prominent Nazis from his government. Apart from Albert Speer, none of the new ministers had been notable in the Nazi government so far. The SS and other organs of the Nazi party were kept at arm’s length. The idea was to present a new face, one which the Western Allies could do business with.

The changes were only cosmetic. The Hitler salute and greeting continued, a bust of Hitler remained in Doenitz's office, and the Nazi party remained in existence. The Nazi system of summary justice carried on, and around 10,000 concentration camp prisoners remained in the hands of the SS. This was business as usual.

It even looked as if the plan would partially succeed. Doenitz's representatives met the British general Bernard Montgomery, and offered to surrender all Wehrmacht forces in north-west Germany to him. Montgomery refused to accept that, but did hint he would accept the surrender of any forces fleeing the Eastern Front. The deal eventually hammered out with Montgomery and Dwight Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander, was that on 5th May, all German forces in north-west Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands would surrender to Britain and America. On 6th May, all German forces in Bavaria and the south west would surrender to the Americans. Doenitz also began talking to the US General George Patton, whose forces were racing through Czechoslovakia. The idea was to surrender German forces fighting on the Eastern front to Patton, and enable him to enter Prague. Patton was famously anti-communist, and the USSR had already been promised control over Czechoslovakia at the Yalta Conference. He had been approached deliberately to cause maximum rage in Moscow.

Montgomery has a reputation for being prepared to play the media game. This time, he didn't play it well enough. He failed to put out a version of the surrender order. Doenitz and the Germans spotted this gap and published their own interpretations of what had been agreed. As well as disagreeing over warships and areas to be surrendered, it described the agreement as a truce, not a surrender. A pause in the fighting, not an end to the fighting. It looked to all the world as if Britain and America were conducting talks with the Nazis and excluding the Soviets.

Montgomery accepting the partial German surrender at Luneburg Heath; this act caused chaos amongst the Allied leadership

Too late, Eisenhower spotted the trap. He forbade any further partial surrenders like this. Patton in particular was ordered to halt his advance into Czechoslovakia, despite howls of anguish from Patton at not being able to support the Czechoslovak resistance battling for control of Prague. In Moscow, Stalin was livid. Could it really be that, at this 11th hour, the West was going to betray him? Would they soon be joining with the Nazi remnant for a new war against communism?

When German representatives went to Reims in France to try and surrender wholesale to the Western Allies, Eisenhower was ready for them. He refused point blank to accept any surrender that did not include the USSR. Doenitz told his representatives to stall, to give him time to pull as many forces and refugees away from the Red Army and into the arms of the West. When this became obvious, Eisenhower told the Germans he would close the Western Front to new arrivals, and fire on anyone trying to cross. This would leave the Wehrmacht trapped between the Western Allies and the Red Army, with no alternative but slaughter. When Doenitz was told this, he agreed his representatives could sign the deal, and that all units would surrender at 23:01 on 8th May 1945.

But this still wasn't the end. There was confusion over whether the Soviet delegate could sign the agreement, and then Moscow protested that Doenitz was still continuing to withdraw units westwards away from the Red Army. The surrender document was amended, and was signed not by Doenitz but by the heads of the three German armed forces. It still went into effect on 8th May 1945: VE Day, although by Moscow time it was the 9th. But it was of no importance when it was. The war in Europe was over. The ten days in which Nazi Germany fought the war without Adolf Hitler at the helm were at an end.

The second signing of the German Instrument of Surrender. Second time lucky...

Incredibly, this still was not the end of the Flensburg government headed by Doenitz. It staggered on until 23rd May, ignored by the Allies, but still meeting every day in a school sports hall, discussing matters such as the reconstruction of Germany. They also messaged Imperial Japan, informing it they would struggle to uphold their end of the Axis alliance bargain.

On 23rd May, the game was up for the Flensburg government. Its members were arrested, and on 9th June the four Allies issued a declaration that as Germany had no government, they would assume control over the country for the time being. Planted in this was the seed of the Cold War, and of a divided Europe. The mistrust which came to blight the world in the later 20th century can be seen in the squabbles and arguments over the negotiations with the Flensburg government.

The arrest of the Flensburg government, 23rd May 1945

Another idea which the Flensburg government bequeathed the post-war world was just as sinister. The administration came into being as the true extent of the horror of horrors of the 20th century was being unveiled. The scenes at the camps of the Final Solution prompted revulsion around the world. Doenitz’s government, aiming to be given control of post-war Germany, needed an answer, fast. They blamed the SS, and elements within the Nazi party, for the violence and savagery. The armed forces, had not been to blame. Doenitz himself benefitted; despite being Hitler's chosen successor, he emerged with a good reputation, and thousands attended his funeral in 1980. By downplaying the guilt of the German leadership, and pinning the blame on some bad apples, the 'myth of the clean Wehrmacht,' and the very beginning of Holocaust denial, can just be seen.

One last final way that the Flensburg government impacts Germany today. The surrender document was signed by the German High Command. Technically, no government had agreed to Germany ending the war. The Allies claimed this was because Germany's government had disintegrated in the collapse of the Nazi regime; this is one of the reasons they were so keen to avoid acknowledging Doenitz as President, as it would make their assumption of total power over Germany more awkward if there was still a German government functioning. But it also gave rise to the idea that the German state had never surrendered, and still exists somewhere. In recent years, the German police have struggled with the Reichsburger movement. Their claim? That the German government never surrendered to the Allies, and they are claiming it for their own.

Why Florence Nightingale?

The speed with which the government has converted exhibition centres into hospitals is amazing. From sites normally used to trade fairs and concerts have risen fully equipped hospitals. In England, all of them bear the same name, and it has become a shorthand for the entire category of field hospitals: NHS Nightingale.

Most of us are familiar with the story of Florence Nightingale. The heroine of hundreds of primary school history lessons, her valiant efforts to clean up hospitals in the Crimean War saved thousands of soldiers' lives, and changed nursing forever, with its focus on caring and cleanliness. After the war was over, she returned to Britain, and dedicated the rest of her long life to improving standards in nursing and hospital cleanliness, including submitting radical new designs for hospitals to improve the care of the sick.

Seen here in totally accurate drawing definitely made at the time

But for all her good works, Florence Nightingale has a problem, which makes her a terrible choice of name for these new NHS hospitals. The Crimean War took place from 1853-1856. At this point, the commonly accepted theory for the cause of disease was the miasma theory- this stated that disease was transmitted through 'bad air,' caused by the rotting or decay of material. This was central to Florence Nightingale's thinking: when she ordered the hospital wards cleaned, and the buildings totally redesigned to allow for more air and light, it was miasma she was trying to combat.

Yet scientists had also noticed something interesting. When this rotting material was looked at through microscopes, it was seen to contain thousands of micro-organisms. The explanation of this was that these 'germs' were caused by spontaneous generation- the breakdown of rotting material, which caused illness, also caused the micro-organisms to appear from nothing. They had all the right answers, but not the right order.

Suspicions had persisted for years that this was not quite right. Some medical practitioners were inching towards the solution. In the 1790s, a Gloucestershire physician Edward Jenner had realised that giving someone cowpox stopped the far deadlier smallpox. But he was totally unable to explain how this fantastical discovery actually worked. In the 1840s, a Hungarian doctor called Ignaz Semmelweis, trying to solve the problem of women dying from childbed fever, saw that his friend also perished from the same disease when he cut himself during an autopsy. Semmelweis concluded that somehow, doctors were carrying the fever from the autopsy into the delivery room. He immediately insisted all doctors wash their hands, and the infection rate tumbled. But lacking proof as to why his ideas worked, he was hounded out of a job, dying in an asylum, ironically of blood poisoning. In Britain, an outbreak of cholera in 1854 in Soho was stopped by the diligent work of Dr John Snow, who traced cases and realised that they were all connected to the same water pump. When Snow inspected the pump, it transpired it had a leak from a nearby cess pit. Snow concluded that, somehow, cholera was spread through the water. In their own way, each was inching towards the solution of human disease. But they weren't quite there.

The answer to the greatest scientific mystery of all time came from a French research chemist. Louis Pasteur had been asked by a friend to investigate why the beer and wine in his brewery kept going off. Pasteur noticed that, the greater the concentration of micro-organisms in the liquids, the more rotten it had become. Boiling the liquid killed the micro-organisms, and so stopped it from going off. Pasteur suggested this would also work for human illnesses. He called this the germ theory. In 1880, he had the final piece of the puzzle, when his assistant unknowingly exposed a chicken to weak cholera. When they tried to give the chicken full blown cholera, it was immune. The secret of Jenner's vaccine was at last cracked open.

Many in the medical community reacted with scorn. Pasteur was a chemist, not a doctor. And how could such lowly microbes fell something so complex as a human being? One pamphleteer said:

The disease-germ-fetish, and the witchcraft-fetish, are the produce of the same mental condition; both of them considered simply as superstitions, or harmless theories.

The author? Florence Nightingale.

In her defence, she did change her tune. By the time she conducted later campaigns to improve sanitation in India, she was advocating handwashing to kill germs. And her ideas for cleaning hospitals to remove the miasma did work against germs, albeit totally coincidentally. But it does all make her a curious choice to be the poster of the new NHS hospitals set up to fight the worst outbreak of disease in a generation.

Far more fitting would be for the NHS to honour the real disease trailblazers, either who advocated germ theory before Pasteur, or who took his ideas and ran with them:

• Edward Jenner- Developed the smallpox vaccine in the 1790s, setting us on a path which ended with smallpox being the only disease eradicated from humans. 

Jenner,  breaking every single ethics rule by testing his experimental treatment on his gardener's son.

• Ignaz Semmelweis- The John the Baptist of germ theory, crying (and ignored) in the wilderness that disease was carried on the hands of doctors.

 The other doctors resented these changes so much they forced Semmelweis into an asylum

• John Snow- The doctor who solved the mystery of cholera transmission in the 1850s.

The map that Snow used to plot the cholera cases- the infected pump was at the centre

• Joseph Lister- A surgeon who transferred Pasteur's work into the operating theatre, inventing antiseptics and ending one of the biggest dangers of pre-modern surgery.

Carbolic acid being sprayed in the operating theatre by Lister- inelegant, but effective

• Alexander Fleming- Accidental discoverer of penicillin, the first medicine which could kill multiple micro-organisms. 

Fleming holding the penicillin discovery, presumably about to file it away for a decade (no, really)

• Howard Florey and Ernest Chain- Found Fleming's original (and ignored) research on penicillin, and turned it from a lucky accident in the lab into something which could, and did, save billions of lives.

Florey and Chain, busy doing what Fleming should have done ten years previously and actually making more penicillin

But then again, maybe choosing someone who was right, albeit by accident, and who steadfastly refused to change their ideas until it was long past the time to do so, is the best summary of Britain in the coronavirus outbreak.

Can't Pay, Won't Pay!

It was the single greatest domestic political blunder made by any postwar UK government. It provoked a huge civil disobedience campaign, violent riots, and toppled the longest-serving Prime Minister of the 20th century, one who won the previous election with a majority of over 100, and had been voted into office by 13.7 million people.

The issue which caused this political earthquake?

Paying for local councils.

No, really.

By the 1970s, Britain's councils were strapped for cash. They used a system called the rates to collect money, based on the potential rental value of a building you owned. It was derived from the system used to collect money for the Elizabethan Poor Law of 1601. As councils no longer simply handed out relief to the deserving poor, it wasn't anywhere near enough. More and more money had to be given to local councils from the central government, as costs rose and the value of the rates decreased.

The 1980s were a bleak time for the British left. Labour underwent a near-death experience, as the SDP split and the Bennite revolt came close to destroying the party. The result was two hammering at the ballot box, in 1983 and 1987. At times, the road back to national power looked impossible. But the party did hold power across vast swathes of Britain, at district and county level. It was from here the new left of the 1980s began their fightback against Thatcherism.

Thatcher took notice. Some councils were easy to deal with. The metropolitan county councils, most obviously the GLC of 'Red Ken' Livingstone, were simply abolished. But the costs of other councils continued to spiral as they spent on their new radical agendas. Liverpool council was famously taken over by the Trotskyite Militant Tendency, provoking a showdown with the government and also within the Labour party.

And then Thatcher unveiled her masterstroke of a solution. The rates would be scrapped, and replaced with a 'Community Charge.' A flat rate tax, payable by every adult. The bloc grant from central government would gradually be reduced. After a few years, councils would cover their own costs, and face a grim choice; set higher taxes to maintain levels of service, or set lower taxes to avoid being driven from office. For many, this looked like the end of local authorities as we knew them.

But behind the stunning simplicity were signs of danger. The poll tax (as everyone dubbed the new tax) had repeatedly been rejected by civil servants due to its unfairness; a duke would pay the same as a dustman. It had made its way to Cabinet thanks to over-eager free market advisors who were convinced it would be a vote winner. It would take a test case for the real problems to emerge.

In Scotland, the rates were re-calculated more regularly than they were in England. A rates revaluation in 1985 and 1986 had been politically damaging to the already poor stock of the Scottish Tories. Grasping at any lifelines, the Scottish Conservatives persuaded Thatcher to let them go first with the poll tax. They were so confident that it would be a vote winner that they cast aside the original plan to phase the tax in, and brought it in in one go in 1989.

The problems began mounting soon after. Partly, it was poor administration. A form sent to every household had asked them to list everyone living there- some people filled out everyone, resulting in children and even pets being billed for poll tax. Some people used it as an excuse to disappear from the electoral register. Buildings with an unknown number of occupants, or short term occupancies, proved a nightmare. The other catastrophe was the cost. Far from reducing costs, poll taxes were much higher than rates. Rates had also only been levied on home owners; suddenly, people were getting a bill from their local councils for the first time in their lives, and it was a fortune. But rather than blaming their local authority, the blame rebounded onto Thatcher.

All over the UK, the campaigning left swung into action. The far-left, long on the back foot, was at the centre of the All Britain Anti Poll Tax Federation, which brought together the activities of local Anti Poll Tax Unions. Their opposition was two-fold. The first focussed on protests and marches. This culminated in the huge rally, 200,000 strong, in London against the poll tax, the day before it was brought in for England and Wales, on March 31st 1990. The rally itself passed off peacefully, but after the main march was over it descended into clashes between police and protesters. In what was dubbed the Battle of Trafalgar, protests became riots, and mounted police charged crowds on foot. 339 people were arrested and 113 were seriously injured. The scenes of central London looking like a war zone shocked many. Amongst those condemning the chaos were the Anti Poll Tax Federation itself.

Dramatic as these scenes were, it was the Fed’s other campaigning tactic which was causing the most panic inside the government. Widespread outrage at the way the tax had been handled, plus the spiralling costs, made the Fed’s call for non-payment an attractive proposition. Up to 18 million Britons failed to pay the tax. This refusal was not limited to the ‘usual suspects’ on the far left, but  many who had never disobeyed the law in their lives were sending their requests back emoty, or not at all. Such a widespread flouting of the law was unprecedented, and it was this which caused panic in the government. Tory MPs began to get reports of widespread unhappiness with their inability to reign Thatcher in. Labour surged ahead in the polls for the first time in years. The coalition which had kept them in office since 1979 was starting to unravel.

But Thatcher seemed determined to plough on, even as Tory popularity plummeted. She was apparently immune to the panic it was causing amongst her own party. The muttering that the Iron Lady was going rusty were getting louder. Voices began to be raised, opinions shared, that the end was in sight for Mrs Thatcher.

And by an extraordinary twist of fate, the Tory king over the water could claim to be blameless in the poll tax debacle. It had been the next item on the agenda when he had staged his walkout resignation from the cabinet in 1986. When Michael Heseltine made his bid to oust Thatcher in November 1990, he pledged to do away with the poll tax entirely. But that’s a story for another time.