Coming to terms with the past

My first father-in-law had an abiding hatred of the Japanese borne of his WW2 experiences. It was perhaps understandable. He has signed up at its outset, got shipped out to bolster the defence of Singapore about a fortnight before the British surrender and spent the rest of the War as a Japanese POW. He suffered unimaginable hardships and deprivations, saw indescribable things and (as he told it) survived only because of his unquenchable determination to live and by becoming a Brit version of Corporal King [reference the 1956 movie King Rat, directed by Bryan Forbes, starring George Segal as a Yank who came through via his unscrupulous black marketeering].

Over the years we had occasional conversations about his POW years and I once asked him – in the context of a story in the media about a Brit Japanese POW who had latterly forgiven his Japanese captors enough that about forty-five years later he actually met up with one of them and shook his hand – about forgiveness and reconciliation.

In response my father-in-law freely admitted he possessed not an ounce of either in him. He was not in the slightest interested in Japanese culture and/or their concept that anyone who chose to surrender rather than die (even if they were Japanese) was unworthy of respect or humane treatment. From his viewpoint, the Japanese and all that they stood for was inhuman. Forgiveness and reconciliation was quite out of the question. They were bestial animals, end of message.

The issue of redemption, being given a second chance, forgiveness and reconciliation has come up twice in the past week.

The first was in the wake of the death and funeral of former Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland Martin McGuinness, the former IRA activist and commander, from either a serious heart condition and/or cancer.

Public reaction to his death was polarised. For some, especially those affected by IRA terrorist outrages, whether they were victims or relatives of victims like former Tory Minister Lord Tebbitt, there was no forgiveness possible, especially since McGuinness never acknowledged, nor expressed regret or apology, for his IRA history  – indeed Tebbitt admitted in a radio interview that he actually celebrated McGuinness’s passing and wished him good riddance.

For others, the fact that McGuinness seemingly had a genuine ‘Road to Damascus’ conversion to ‘jaw-jaw rather than war-war’ (as Winston Churchill once described it) and became instrumental in the Good Friday Agreement and thence the current power-sharing arrangement in Northern Ireland that still endures despite its recent political complications was enough to allow acceptance, reconciliation and forgiveness. Everyone deserves a second chance and a leopard can change its spots – and so on. Nobody is perfect, but perhaps by their actions even someone with a despicable backstory can redeem his past and go on shape the future in a positive way.

I make no personal comment on these things, I’m simply recording what I see and hear.

And then yesterday Lord Heseltine – so I read on the news websites – made the headlines in his new role as a recently sacked Governmental adviser now able to openly campaign against what he describes as ‘the Brexit disaster’ by commenting in an interview given to The House magazine:

“We’ve now abandoned the opportunity to influence Europe, the council of ministers will meet and we won’t be there. Our ability to speak for the Commonwealth within Europe has come to an end. The Americans will shift their focus of interest to Germany. And if I can put it to you, for someone like myself, it was in 1933, the year of my birth, that Hitler was democratically elected in Germany. He unleashed the most horrendous war. This country played a unique role in securing his defeat. So Germany lost the war. We’ve just handed them the opportunity to win the peace. I find that quite unacceptable.”

Lord Heseltine turned 84 this week. I’ve got to be honest, I’ve had a sneaking admiration for him for decades. He seemed like a decent chap who was scarcely a devoted fan of Mrs Thatcher [in my book he scored 5 bonus points out of 10 for that alone], a bit of a maverick ploughing his own furrow, a man who possessed his own mind and was a ‘One Nation’, rather than a far right, example of the Tory fraternity.

However, I’m not sure where Lord Heseltine sits on the scale of compassion, reconciliation and forgiveness generally, let alone on this latest outing into the public arena. Perhaps a degree of mental frailty and/or dementia is beginning to kick in. I say that only because his comments about Germany seem off-the-scale absurd.

All that registered, I can see where he’s coming from in one sense. We Brits had a narrow squeak in 1939-1945 against the Nazi Jerries. I’d personally avoid describing it as ‘our’ victory and characterise it rather as a case of us avoiding defeat long enough for the Americans eventually to enter the conflict and win it.

But (my point is) the aftermath worked out okay: the world had realised that reparations on the scale of those imposed upon Germany by the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 produced a counter-productive effect. An all-round better route to restoring and maintaining peace was Metternich’s Congress of Vienna (1814-1815) approach of ‘helping the defeated back on their feet and including them in the club of nations, rather than humiliating them’ [please excuse the GCSE level of historical analysis here!].

Lord Heseltine apparently sees the history of the  European Common Market (later the EU) as a case of the UK counter-balancing potential German domination of Europe.

I can see the drift here. You cannot trust the Jerries. Left to their own devices, they would love to conquer the world and it has only been our presence at the EU table that has prevented it.

It’s no different with the Frogs either, is it? You cannot trust them. If we hadn’t stopped them at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, it would have been them dominating Europe and then the globe.

And don’t get me – or indeed Lord Heseltine – started on the Eye-ties!

Those damned Romans rampaged across Europe, invaded Britain, built Hadrian’s Wall and it was only the British Queen Boadicea [or ‘Boudica’ as we now apparently are supposed to refer to her] who chased them back into the sea and began the process that eventually became European civilisation and the peace we now enjoy under Emperor Junkers.

And whilst we’re at it, let’s not mention the Greeks either! Those Spartans were always going around creating wars and strife the length and breadth of the Aegean Sea and it was only in 1915 when we invaded the Dardanelles (or at least attempted to) …

[Ad infinitum].