After a month in the Hungarian capital, the Secretary of the Swedish Embassy there, Raoul Wallenberg, had to decide quickly on the form of Schutz Pass, or ‘protective passport’ (‘SP’) he would use in his humanitarian relief work with the Jews of Budapest. He attached a specimen to his report to Stockholm of 16 August. It was an important part of his assignment to provide 1,500 Hungarians with temporary passports as protective documents. These could be persons with very close family links with Sweden, or who had been for a long time closely connected to Swedish commercial life, a number that rose later to 4,500. The issue of the new Swedish protective document came with a structure: a long-term Swedish connection had to be proved documentarily, while the Schutzbrief issued by Langlet had no such condition attached. Wallenberg quickly perceived the scope of humanitarian action. He was a good organiser and had numerous Hungarian colleagues in the accomplishment of tasks. He soon appreciated the unreliability of the Hungarian political élite and its tendency to vacillate, experiencing the many ways in which responsibility could be evaded. Most of his Hungarian acquaintances were ashamed of what was happening to the Jews but insisted that the brutality was exclusively the work of the Germans. Unlike them, he saw clearly what could be described as the Hungarian hara-kiri, and stressed the responsibility of Hungarians, making it clear that anti-Semitism is deeply rooted in Hungary. He pointed out that Jews on forced labour were not allowed to take shelter during air-raids, leading him to the conclusion that the Christian population evinced only a very luke-warm sympathy, and that it would be very difficult for the Jews to avoid their doom by flight.
The Swedish protective passport in Hungarian and German, with the holder’s photograph, was not acknowledged in international law and had no force. Nonetheless, its influence could not be underestimated. In the summer of 1944, it commanded a certain respect and carried a message. In the presence of immediate lethal danger, many saw in it the chance of escape, of organised defence and the embodiment of their hopes of survival. In August more and more groups of Jews in fear of deportation came to him. The news of his protective passport spread like wildfire and long queues waited on Gellérthegy outside the Humanitarian Section of the Swedish Embassy. From 16 August, a further building was rented and applicants were received from 4 p.m., with questionnaires filled in and six photographs. These were the conditions imposed by the Hungarian government for asylum documents. On the 22nd, the Ministry produced an order on the subject of the exemption of individuals from the regulations relating to Jews. By mid-September, the strength of Wallenberg’s Hungarian apparatus was approaching a hundred. He provided extra accommodation for them at Gellérthegy and also on Naphegy, where ten rooms and a cellar were rented, and round-the-clock shift-work was instituted.
The taking on of colleagues, the formation of an effective organisation and the thorough checking of the data submitted in applications for the Swedish document all took time. The apparatus required for this grew constantly. On 29 September, he reported to the Swedish Foreign Ministry that the entire staff including families number about three hundred persons and are exempt from wearing stars and forced labour. By that time 2,700 letters of protection had been issued and the numbers of those who had gained exemptions from wearing stars exceeded the original 4,500 by a further 1,100. For the first four months of the humanitarian action, it would have been impossible for the Swedish passport of protection to be handed out as a gift to those who did not have clear Swedish connections. That came later when the Arrow Cross reign of terror meant that people were in fear for their lives in an imminent sense. Then, resourceful Jews would copy names (similar to their own) and addresses from the Swedish telephone directories held in the Budapest head post office and send a ‘reply paid’ telegram. Kind-hearted Swedes, realising that the sender was pleading for his or her life, would then confirm the ‘relationship’ by return telegram. Wallenberg’s biographer, Jenő Lévai, has concluded that very many obtained protective passports and escaped through letters or reply telegrams from complete strangers.
The embassy’s work offered reasonable security against the constant threat of deportation. Those employed on humanitarian work received a legitimising card from the Embassy of the Kingdom of Sweden in Budapest and a special personal card from the Hungarian Ministry of the Interior. This exempted them from wearing the yellow Star of David and from the ever-more widespread duties of forced labour within the army. Wallenberg had essentially established a system of dual nationality, and this repeatedly aroused the suspicion of both the SS and the Hungarian authorities. According to a German Embassy note of 29 September, the director of the Budapest political section of the Hungarian Foreign Ministry was thinking that the Swedish Embassy should be called to order in a responsible, clear and sharp tone.
By mid-October, Vilmos Langfelder’s family had come under the protection of the Swedish Embassy and he moved to the central office of the Humanitarian Section at Űllői út on the Pest side of the city. Langfelder probably came into contact with Wallenberg because of his knowledge of German and his ability to drive. Within a short time, he had become the Swedish diplomat’s close associate as his chauffeur. His SP had been issued on 20 August, when he had belonged to a forced labour unit under Swedish protection. Langfelder took charge of Elek Kelecsényi’s Steyr car for the purpose of life-saving work. According to Lévai, Wallenberg sent out an Instruction which set out what had to be done to save holders of Swedish protective documents from the clutches of armed bandits, potentially a lethal undertaking. This summed up the dramatic essence of the immediate life-saving work:
Members of this section must be on constant duty day and night. There are no days off. If anyone is arrested, let them hope for much help, and if they do good work let them not expect thanks.
Langfelder frequently found himself driving Wallenberg, at night, to someplace where people needed his protection. Among the couriers and agents, disappearances were frequent, especially when they went into one of the Arrow Cross houses to inquire about a missing person, exposing themselves to a world of pain and indescribable horrors. Increasingly, abductions and murders were carried out in broad daylight. László Hollós and Ödön Ullman were on their way to inform Wallenberg of an Arrow Cross assault on a hospital when they were arrested and murdered. In the countryside, the role of the Hungarian actress Vali Rácz has also been recognised by Israel. She hid many families from Budapest in her home in the countryside after the initial deportations but was denounced to the invading Red Army for fraternising with German soldiers (in order to protect her ‘guests’) and almost shot as a collaborator. A Red Army Colonel intervened to stop this and she was exonerated. There were also some members of the army and police who saved people (Pál Szalai, Károly Szabó, and other officers who took Jews out from camps with fake papers) as well as some local church institutions and personalities.
Rudolph Kasztner also deserves special attention because of his enduring negotiations with Eichmann to prevent deportations to Auschwitz, succeeding only minimally, by sending Jews to still horrific labour battalions in Austria and ultimately saving 1,680 Jews on what became known as ‘Kastner’s train’, which by the beginning of August had left Bergen-Belsen with its human ‘cargo’ bound for Palestine.
Those left in the ‘Jewish houses’ and the ghettoes were increasingly targeted for forced labour gangs. They were lined up in the streets, marched off, ceaselessly shouted at, trudging off to Óbuda in broad daylight. Klára Tüdős’ recollection draws a concise picture for posterity:
Dreadful rumours circulated about Jews interned at brick-works and cattle-trucks with barbed wire on them, and as dawn broke processions of people wearing stars would set off in the streets of Pest. These things are mixed up inside me together with the wailing of sirens, like a delirious dream.
The Extreme Right’s Reign of Terror begins:
The coming to power of Ferenc Szálasi and his followers on 15 October through the armed intervention of the SS was the nadir of the Horthy régime, its bloodstained final act. Under the Arrow Cross Party, terror became the tool of the totalitarianism of the extreme Right. Its ranks were swelled in particular by the lumpen elements of the underworld and misguided youth that could recognise the chance for unrestrained robbery and violence. On 15 October, Daisy Lászlo’s father, the tallest man in the apartment block, removed the yellow star from the front door. By the afternoon, however, he realised that with this act he had risked his life again. Since he was aware of the politics of the janitor’s wife, he secretly left the house in the dark, but before the doors would have been locked. She must have said something to the Arrow Cross thugs, however, because the following evening a heavily intoxicated young man, wearing the party uniform, kept banging on the Lászlo family’s door, looking for Mr Lászlo. The story continues below, in Daisy’s own words:
He searched every room, causing terrible alarm among the families placed there because he pushed and shoved everybody, shouted and took whatever he laid his eyes on. He was brandishing his revolver, and we were scared that he would start shooting. There was a large table in the entrance hall of the apartment, around which we took our meals, mostly together. He dragged off the tablecloth and packed in it the stuff he had collected from the various rooms. It seemed that he had forgotten why he had come and we were hoping that he would take the bundle and leave. He was proceeding toward the front door when he changed his mind, returned and demanded a drink. Jews were not permitted to purchase alcohol, but somebody must have had something stashed away, because after a short discussion, a bottle appeared on the table. While he was sipping from the bottle, he … informed us that he was an actor. He jumped on the dining room table, and began reciting Petőfi’s poem, ‘The Lunatic’.
He got totally carried away, stomping with his feet, his face distorted; he seemed in a trance. I do not know how much of the poem he had recited, whether he knew it by heart, or made mistakes, but when he finished there was a thunderous applause and … bows on the table, surrounded by his terrified public. … He told us that he would go home … but would return the following day and continue the recital. He threw the bundle over his shoulder and staggered out the front door. … stumbling toward the street corner. He did not return, neither the following day, nor ever. We did not know what had happened to him, but for days we feared that he would reappear.
After Szálasi and his men took over the government a rapid series of changes of personnel took place in the organisations providing the protection of the regime. New organisations were formed including, on 17 October, the State Security Police, the Hungarian Gestapo, was re-formed. Its activity extended to all opponents of the Germans and the Arrow Cross, irrespective of rank or status. On the 26th, the ‘National Unit for Accountability’ came into being, responsible for extinguishing the lives of many civilians. In the implementation of its laws, decrees and orders, the régime could rely on the gendarmerie, the police and the armed formations of the Arrow Cross Party. In what followed, those that belonged to the service slaughtered a large number of army deserters, Jewish forced labourers and people arrested during raids, increasingly and frequently on the spot. Apart from the scale of the violence, the deluge of accompanying decrees, renewed orders and contradictory instructions increased the turmoil. A wholesale breakdown occurred in the army, the police and public administration. From 28 October, Arrow Cross members received regular payments from the state to carry out robbery and murder on a grand scale. They not only had the right to bear arms but also formed the local detective, investigative, interrogation and enquiry squads. They could act on their own authority to create the ever more tragic and corrupt conditions which they considered ‘order’. In the practice of totalitarian dictatorship, the paramilitary members of the Party knew no bounds.
A typical element of the Hungarista programme was the widespread persecution and terrorising of the Jews. Following the assumption of power, party terrorists attacked starred houses in Budapest and Jewish forced labour barracks. For example, one of Daisy’s schoolfriends, Marika, lived with her mother in what became a ‘Jewish house’ after 19 March. Marika’s biological father was not Jewish but he refused to marry Marika’s Jewish mother because he was a close crony of Miklós Horthy, entitled as vitéz (‘man of valour’), a title he would have lost if he had been known to have married a ‘Jewess’. In June, Marika had been sent to a summer camp in Balatonboglár, run by Sisters in the Catholic Church. She was given a fictitious name and false papers, along with two other girls. One night they were awakened by gendarmes and pulled out of bed. She was so traumatised by this that thereafter she frequently peed herself. She ‘escaped’ and left for Budapest on foot, where she eventually returned to her house where she fell into the arms of her mother, kissed and cried, and ate sausage in the pantry. Her return lasted until 15 October, when her mother greeted Horthy’s abortive proclamation by opening a bottle of champagne. Happiness lasted a very short time. Marika’s mother helped to forge documents, while her mother was placed in one of the ‘protected houses’. Once, when Marika was visiting her with her aunt Duncy, Arrow Cross soldiers raided the area. Her aunt yelled at one of them, outraged that he had dared to ask for her papers.
Meanwhile, Marika’s mother became seriously ill with meningitis, and her sister arranged for her to be taken (with false papers) to the Szent István Kórház. Marika could still visit her there, where she eventually died. One night her uncle urged them to leave their new house in Benczúr utca, and they found refuge in the cellar of a nearby pharmacy owned by a relative. Next day the Arrow Cross raided the house, ordered everyone in it down to the courtyard and shot them all dead. When the siege of Budapest began, Marika, her aunt and her grandmother did not dare go down to the air-raid shelter. By that time, they were living in hiding alongside Polish and Czech refugees. One day the Arrow Cross soldiers marched the refugees down to the bank of the Danube and shot them into the river. Daisy herself narrowly escaped a similar fate during that autumn, when she spent several days wandering alone, stealing her food from outside grocery stores. She found herself in Szent István Park and was thrown into a column of thirty people being marched towards the lower embankment of the Danube under the guns of two young Arrow Cross hoodlums. She recalled:
We progressed silently, adults and children, without anyone protesting or crying. But when we reached the small underpass, and I was hit by the familiar stench of urine, without thinking about the consequences, I simply turned right and left the group.
Nothing happened and no one called out. I turned around the corner … Only after the Liberation did I hear that Jews had been shot into the Danube from the lower embankment of the Pest side … I never mentioned this episode to anyone fearing that people would think I had made it up out of a need to create a heroic story; that I was ashamed that while so many from our family had been murdered, I had not come close enough to death.
Another of Daisy’s friends, Vera S, had already lost her relatives in the countryside to Auschwitz in the summer, but she still lived in Budapest with her parents and grandparents, where their apartment building had become a ‘Jewish house’ and their apartment filled up with strangers. The residents were ordered down into the courtyard several times and were threatened with deportation. On one such occasion, when they were permitted to return to their apartment, they found the rooms ransacked and most of their belongings missing, even Vera’s dolls were gone. Then, shortly after 15 October, the men in the house were rounded up. Running to the balcony, Vera and her mother tried to see where the group was being taken, but Vera’s father, looking up and fearing for their safety, motioned with his hand, urging them to go back inside. That was the last time they saw him. A postcard arrived from Valkó, where they had been taken on foot. From there, Vera’s father was deported to a concentration camp. They knew nothing more of his fate.
Shortly after that, Vera’s mother had to report to the Óbuda brick factory and the children were placed in a Jewish orphanage. Vera escaped and rejoined her brother when their grandparents found shelter in a Swedish ‘protected house’. Their mother escaped from the brick factory, bought false papers from their former janitor, and went into hiding. The following day, the Arrow Cross took the orphans from the ghetto and shot them all into the Danube. Thereafter, Vera and her brother stayed with their grandparents where they lived with twenty other surviving children, in one room. These children knew nothing of their parents and were starving. One day, Vera’s mother arrived at the ‘protected house’ but Vera couldn’t recognise her because she had dyed her hair to fit her false papers. Vera later recalled:
She said that when the Russians fully surround the city, and we will have to die, she will return that we should die together. She did come back, but fortunately we did not die.
On 30 October, German soldiers arrived in the house on the Pest side of the Danube where Iván lived with his family. They entered their apartment in the company of Miki, the janitor’s son who was wearing his Arrow Cross uniform. Although Miki had been Iván’s friend and playmate for the past decade, that did not prevent him from handing him over to the Nazis. Requiring additional labourers, the Germans had the help of the Arrow Cross in collecting men over sixty and boys under sixteen from the surrounding ‘starred houses’. By then Iván’s father had been away for years in a forced labour camp, and after their paint shop had been closed under anti-Jewish legislation, his mother had supported their two boys, her mother and herself by making artificial flower arrangements. Iván and his group of conscripted labourers were taken to Lepsény in western Hungary where they were made by the Wehrmacht to organise a military depot next to the local railroad station. They worked there throughout November, emptying trains that carried military supplies and filling military trucks with winter clothing for soldiers. Iván later learned that his brother Ervin, who had a weaker constitution, had also been sent to Transdanubia and had died while digging ditches. He was buried in a mass grave near Győr. Iván was the only survivor from those who were taken from his apartment house.
Ágnes B, another of Daisy’s friends was just ten years old when her father was drafted as a forced labourer. Soon after 15 October, Arrow Cross soldiers came to their apartment house, where they lived with her mother’s sister’s family. They rounded up all the women under forty, including her mother, who did not resist, despite being only weeks away from her fortieth birthday. Ági recalled her leaving:
My mother put on a fur-lined coat because it had been very cold. I followed her across the yard until the gate and I watched as she joined the group of Jewish women. She wrote one card from the road to Austria, telling me that they had been placed in a pigsty overnight. I never saw her again…
Life for all the remaining Jews in Budapest became increasingly difficult, but the access to Swiss and Swedish protection documents could provide some amelioration. Daisy’s friend’s mother was able to procure copies of the ‘protection documents’ Wallenberg had been handing out, but it was too late to use them because the Germans occupied their house and transported both sets of grandparents to the ghetto. Kati was sent to live with distant relatives, where she got false papers and a new name to learn, along with the names of her seven new ‘sisters and brothers’. She was with relatives, but still felt ‘terribly alone’. Although she looked ‘Aryan’ (see the picture below), she was not allowed out on the street. Another friend, Tomi, was twelve in 1944, by which time his entirely assimilated family had decided to convert to Catholicism, mainly to avoid the increasing restrictions placed upon Jews. In June, they had been forced to leave their apartment on the first floor of a Rózsadomb villa and moved to a ‘Jewish house’. By this time, Tomi’s father was in a forced labour camp and after 15 October, all three had to report to the brick family of Óbuda, from where they were supposed to be deported. Tomi’s father was able to provide them with Swiss protection documents and, therefore, three days later, they were moved to the overcrowded ghetto.
Wallenberg’s Responses and Reports:
The sudden turn of events took the Swedish embassy organisation by surprise, as it did the humanitarian activists too. Wallenberg himself had been expecting Hungary to pull out of the war, which had been much talked about in Budapest social circles as the government’s intention. He was also calculating when the Red Army would reach Budapest, and was thinking of going back to Stockholm a few days before it happened. Up to 15 October, the Swedish Embassy had received eight thousand applications and 3,500 had been granted the SP. A week after Szálasi’s rise to power Wallenberg reported that armed bandits have attacked those in possession of protective passports and torn them up. The Hungarian staff had reacted to this unexpected turn of events by going into hiding, as he noted:
The events have had a catastrophic effect on the section, the entire staff has absented itself, and a car which was placed at our disposal free of charge, together with the keys of various locked places and cupboards etc., have vanished.
In order to put some spirit and courage back into his dismayed colleagues, Wallenberg cycled through the bandit-infested streets in order to pick up the threads of his work again, a procedure which was fraught with risks. Instead of the peace that many had yearned and hoped for a fresh wave of destruction began. On 16 October the head of the Arrow Cross Party staff decreed that Jews were not to leave their homes until further notice. Buildings designated by stars of David were to be kept shut day and night. Until further notice, only non-Jews might go in and out. Non-Jews were not allowed to visit Jews. On 18 October, one of his Swedish officers reported that the new government had introduced strict anti-Jewish regulations and that the entire Jewish staff of the Embassy was in mortal danger. A crowd of Jews seeking revenge was besieging the embassy, which was incapable of accommodating them.
In the course of renewed the renewed persecutions, the previous forms of protection lost their usefulness. Beginning on 20 October, armed Arrow Cross men lined up tens of thousands of men aged between sixteen and sixty, on two trotting-tracks, dividing them into labour-companies and took them off. The one suburban sports ground, in Zugló, became the mustering place for Jewish women, as directed on posters. The assigned Jews of the city were made to work on fortifications, digging defensive ditches. Renewed talks with the black-uniformed, green-shirted Arrow Cross leaders were required, as were new methods of saving people. Wallenberg quickly made contact with Szálasi’s Foreign Minister, Baron Gábor Kemény. In matters of the “Jewish Question” and other ‘Jew-related’ topics he later had to deal with the Foreign Ministry. On 21st, he reached an agreement with Kemény that the Hungarian authorities would give the staff of the Royal Swedish Embassy and members of their families exceptional treatment. They were exempted from wearing the yellow star; from all kinds of forced labour; they were not obliged to live in starred houses, and allowed to go out onto the streets without curfew. This rapid agreement gave hope to several hundred people by officially extending the scope of Swedish protection. It also gave Wallenberg the room to prevent the complete destruction of the Budapest Jews.
This became known, along with the change of régime in Budapest, on 24 October in Bern, Washington and New York (World Jewish Congress), at the Red Cross International Council centre in Geneva and elsewhere. However, the Szálasi government quickly realised its mistake, and drastically reduced the scope of the exemption by the end of October. On 29th, it restricted the circle of those exempted by a ‘variation of decree’. For his part, Wallenberg worked at adding to the exemption that had been obtained and at retaining the greater and lesser fruits of the talks. Protection from the embassy was, in reality, frequently nothing more than a thread of hope. The ‘protected’ houses offered an unstable, relative refuge. Security and day-to-day survival were unpredictable and depended on luck and the movements and whims of the armed Arrow Cross men. Exactly a year later, on 24 October 1945, Béla Zsedenyi, President of the Provisional National Assembly, meeting in Debrecen, thanked King Gustav V of Sweden, the Swedish people and the Swedish diplomatic mission in the name of the Hungarian nation for their help in the humanitarian activity in 1944. He described the defensive stand taken by embassy secretary Wallenberg as “invaluable service”, emphasising that…
… he had taken a selfless and heroic part of decisive significance in warding off the acts of mass muder planned against innocent and defenceless citizens, and by his resolve had succeeded in saving the good name of the Hungarian people from further stain.
By that time, Wallenberg had disappeared at the end of a bitter winter during which he and his staff at the Swedish Embassy Annex had succeeded in saving the lives of thousands more, enabling them to survive the war and the terror in Budapest.
Return to Auschwitz:
Those already deported from the Hungarian countryside to Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen and Dachau had no means of protection, of course, and continued to face ‘extermination’ in the camps. Daisy Lászlo’s Uncle Samu and his family had been deported to Auschwitz from Dunaszerdahely in the summer. His wife, Aunt Berta was his second cousin, a fact which was constantly mentioned on the fringes of family visits and gatherings because both of their boys had disabilities. The older son, Nándi, had a speech impediment, and the younger one, Ármin, was almost totally deaf. All that was learnt of the family in 1945 was that they were among the hundreds of thousands of victims, but neither the place nor the time of their deaths was known. In 2010, an Israeli relative found the story of Ármin’s last months among the files of the International Tracing Service in Germany. This showed that on 25 October, he was transferred from Dachau back to Auschwitz.
During the last months of the war, thousands of Jews were returned to Auschwitz for extermination because they were considered too weak to work. As is shown below, Ármin’s physical description (including height, eye colour, the shape of mouth and ears) accompanied the transfer. His mother’s maiden name, his permanent domicile were also recorded. His signature at the bottom of this document led Daisy to believe that Ármin’s had been a special case, perhaps because of his deafness. However, she then found out that during the autumn of 1944, over five hundred inmates were returned to Auschwitz within a few weeks, accompanied by the exact same documents. Clearly, the Nazi coup in Budapest had had indirect effects in quickening the death machine of Auschwitz.
January: the Beatles filmed a cameo for the animated movie Yellow Submarine, which featured cartoon versions of the band members and a soundtrack with eleven of their songs, including four unreleased studio recordings that made their debut in the film. Released in June 1968, the film was praised by critics for its music, humour and innovative visual style. It would be seven months, however, before its soundtrack album appeared.
May: (8th) – at a meeting between Cecil King, Hugh Cudlipp (proprietor & editor of The Daily Mirror) and Lord Louis Mountbatten, King proposed an anti-Wilson ‘putsch’; Mountbatten rejected the idea and informed the Queen.
October: Widespread student discontent continued.
1969:
30 January: The Beatles’ final live performance was filmed on the rooftop of the Apple Corps building at 3 Savile Row, London (pictured left).
Voting age lowered to eighteen. Open University founded; maiden flight of Concorde. In the summer, union leaders (including Hugh Scanlon & Jack Jones of the TUC) were given a private dinner at Chequers to discuss In Place of Strife, the government’s plan, led by Barbara Castle, to reform industrial relations. The Labour cabinet split on the issue. A Gallup poll suggested 54% of electorate agreed with Powell’s plans on repatriating coloured immigrants.
Bernadette Devlin, civil rights campaigner and member of the radical Ulster Unity Party elected to the Commons, the youngest ever woman MP. James Chichester-Clarke replaced Terence O’Neill as Stormont PM. In the summer, the Apprentice Boys of Londonderry (a Loyalist & anti-Catholic organization) held their annual march for the same route as a civil rights demo. This was attacked by the police, including the ‘B-Specials’, an armed, 12,000-strong voluntary wing of the Royal Ulster Constabulary. Seventy-five marchers were injured, including leading, moderate political figures. At the beginning of August, there was a serious pitched battle between Catholic residents, Loyalist extremists and police in the middle of Belfast. Wilson & James Callaghan (Home Secretary) decided to send in British troops and abolish the B-specials. In November, at a Dublin meeting, the IRA split, bringing into being the pro-violence Provisional Army Council, or ‘Provos’ (PIRA).
1970:
January: Sir Edward Heath (Conservative leader of the Opposition since 1965) held a brainstorming session of the shadow cabinet at The Selsdon Park Hotel near Croydon, Surrey. The aim of the meeting was to formulate policies for the 1970 General Election manifesto. The result was a radical free-market agenda, condemned by the then Labour Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, as the work of “Selsdon Man”. Meanwhile, 66% of those polled said they were either more favourable to Powell than Heath.
Wilson called an election, confident despite the failure of ‘In Place of Strife’. Late in the campaign, Powell gave his backing to Heath, leading in a late surge in support of the Tories. Edward Heath won the General Election by an overall majority of thirty. He began negotiations with Pompidou for Britain to join the EEC. Over the next eighteen months, a deal was thrashed out in London, Paris and Brussels.
In Dublin, two Irish cabinet ministers, Charles Haughey & Neil Blaney were sacked for being Provo-sympathisers & arrested for smuggling guns into the Republic (they were later acquitted).
31 December 1970: Paul McCartney filed suit for the dissolution of the Beatles’ contractual partnership on Legal disputes continued long after their break-up, and the dissolution was not formalised until 29 December 1974, when John Lennon signed the paperwork terminating the partnership.
1971:
First British soldier killed in Northern Ireland. Free milk for schoolchildren abolished (by Margaret Thatcher, Secretary of State for Education & Science, who became known as the ‘milk-snatcher’).
On May Day afternoon, the popular Kensington boutique Biba was the object of a bomb attack by ‘The Angry Brigade’, Britain’s own and only terror group, a bunch of anarchists.
Above: In 1971, the editors of the underground magazine ‘Oz‘ were prosecuted for obscenity. A libidinous cartoon Rupert Bear was at the centre of the case, but the significance of the whip is unclear.
At a press conference at the Élysée Palace, Pompidou revealed to the surprise of the media that, as far as France was concerned, Britain could now join the EEC. The Labour Opposition had become anti-EEC, a special conference in July voting five to one against joining (their MPs were two to one against). Heath won a Commons majority for going in, with 69 pro-European Labour MPs defying their party & voting with the Tories.
Expulsion of British Overseas Nationals (originally from Asia) from Uganda. Enoch Powell led an angry opposition to Heath’s decisive action to bring them into Britain. Airlifts were arranged and a resettlement board established to help the refugees; 28,000 arrived within a few weeks.
Also in 1971, ‘Decimilization’ replaced a coinage which had its origins in Anglo-Saxon times. This brought about a big change in everyday life, initially very unpopular and blamed (together with the decision to join the EEC) on Edward Heath, though it had first been agreed by the Wilson government in 1965.
1972:
‘Bloody Sunday’ – 30th January; troops from the Parachute Regiment killed thirteen unarmed civilians in Londonderry. An immediate upsurge in violence led to twenty-one further deaths in three days. In Dublin, Irish ministers reacted with fury, and The British Embassy was burned to the ground during protests. Bombings and shootings in the first eight weeks of 1972 led to forty-nine people killed and 250 serious injured. Over four hundred people in the province had lost their lives as a result of political violence by the end of the year.
In Britain, the national Miners’ Strike, the first since 1926, led to power cuts; The miners were pursuing a pay demand of 45%. Arthur Scargill, a militant South Yorkshire pit agent organised a mass picket of 15,000 of the Saltley coke depot in Birmingham. An independent inquiry into miners’ wages led to a 20% wage increase, 50% higher than the average increase. The NUM accepted this, winning the most clear-cut defeat of any government by any British trade union ever. Heath was forced into a U-turn on incomes policy and industrial intervention after the Industry Act had given them unprecedented powers in this respect.
Cosmopolitan and Spare Rib published for the first time. Frederick Forsyth’s Day of the Jackal published.
The removal of lending limits for high street banks led to a surge of 37% in 1972, followed by a rise of 43% in 1973, the precondition for the credit boom of the Thatcher years. The old imperial sterling area was abandoned.
Also in 1972, the contraceptive pill was made freely available on the NHS, and local government was radically reorganised, with no fewer than eight hundred English councils disappearing and huge new authorities, much disliked, being created in their place.
1973:
1 January: The UK and the Republic of Ireland joined the EEC (European Economic Community).
British Prime Minister Edward Heath (centre) with Alec Douglas-Home (left) and Chief Negotiator Geoffrey Rippon sign the Common Market Accession in Brussels Photograph: POPPERFOTO/ Getty Images
July: Twenty bombs went off in Belfast, killing eleven people.
September: The “Selsdon Declaration”, to which all members must subscribe, was adopted at the Selsdon Group’s first meeting at the Selsdon Park Hotel. Folk-rock band The Strawbs reached number two with their anthem, Part of the Union.
October: The Yom Kippur War, a short war between Israel and Egypt resulted in Israel’s decisive victory and a humiliation for the Arab world; it struck back, using oil, and placing a total embargo on the United States, Israel’s most passionate supporter.
OPEC (Organisation of oil-producing countries), dominated by the Saudis, raised the price of oil fourfold, leading to a crisis in Western countries and bringing to an end Britain’s Golden Age. School leaving age raised to sixteen; VAT (Value-Added Tax) introduced.
The Break-up of the Beatles:
During recording sessions for their Double White Album, which stretched from late May to mid-October 1968, relations between the Beatles grew openly divisive. Starr quit for two weeks, and McCartney took over the drum kit for Back in the U.S.S.R. (on which Harrison and Lennon drummed as well) and Dear Prudence. Lennon had lost interest in collaborating with McCartney, whose contribution Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da he scorned as “granny music shit”. Tensions were further aggravated by Lennon’s romantic preoccupation with avant-garde artist Yoko Ono, whom he insisted on bringing to the sessions despite the group’s well-established understanding that girlfriends were not allowed in the studio. Describing the double album, Lennon later said:
“Every track is an individual track; there isn’t any Beatles music on it. John and the band, Paul and the band, George and the band.”
McCartney has recalled that the album “wasn’t a pleasant one to make.” Both he and Lennon identified the sessions as the start of the band’s break-up. Issued in November, the White Album was the band’s first Apple Records album release, although EMI continued to own their recordings. The new label was a subsidiary of Apple Corps, which Epstein had formed as part of his plan to create a tax-effective business structure. The record attracted more than two million advance orders, selling nearly four million copies in the US in little over a month, and its tracks dominated the playlists of American radio stations. Despite its popularity, it did not receive flattering reviews at the time.
Five weeks later after their last ‘concert’ on the rooftop in Savile Row, engineer Glyn Johns, Get Back’s “uncredited producer”, began work assembling what was to be the Beatles’ final album, Let it Be. He was given “free rein” as the band had “all but washed their hands of the entire project”. New strains developed among the band members regarding the appointment of a financial adviser, the need for which had become evident without Epstein to manage business affairs. Lennon, Harrison and Starr favoured Allen Klein, who had managed the Rolling Stones and Sam Cooke; McCartney wanted Lee and John Eastman – father and brother, respectively, of Linda Eastman, whom McCartney married on 12 March. Agreement could not be reached, so both Klein and the Eastmans were temporarily appointed: Klein as the Beatles’ business manager and the Eastmans as their lawyers. Further conflict ensued, however, and financial opportunities were lost. On 8 May, Klein was named sole manager of the band, the Eastmans having previously been dismissed as the Beatles’ attorneys. McCartney refused to sign the management contract with Klein, but he was out-voted by the other Beatles.
George Martin stated that he was surprised when McCartney asked him to produce another album, as the Get Back sessions had been “a miserable experience” and he had “thought it was the end of the road for all of us”. The primary recording sessions for Abbey Road began on 2 July 1969. Lennon, who rejected Martin’s proposed format of a “continuously moving piece of music”, wanted his and McCartney’s songs to occupy separate sides of the album. The eventual format, with individually composed songs on the first side and the second consisting largely of a medley, was McCartney’s suggested compromise. On 4 July, the first solo single by a Beatle was released: Lennon’s Give Peace a Chance, credited to the Plastic Ono Band. The completion and mixing of “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” on 20 August 1969 was the last occasion on which all four Beatles were together in the same studio. Lennon announced his departure to the rest of the group on 20 September but agreed to withhold a public announcement to avoid undermining sales of the forthcoming album.
Released six days after Lennon’s declaration, Abbey Road sold 4 million copies within three months and topped the UK charts for a total of seventeen weeks. Its second track, the ballad Something, was issued as a single – the only Harrison composition ever to appear as a Beatles A-side. Abbey Road received mixed reviews, although the medley met with general acclaim. Unterberger considers it “a fitting swan song for the group”, containing “some of the greatest harmonies to be heard on any rock record”. George Martin has singled it out as his personal favourite of all the band’s albums; Lennon said it was “competent” but had “no life in it”. Recording engineer Emerick notes that the replacement of the studio’s valve mixing console with a transistorised one yielded a less punchy sound, leaving the group frustrated at the thinner tone and lack of impact but contributing to its “kinder, gentler” feel relative to their previous albums.
For the still unfinished Get Back album, one last song, Harrison’s I Me Mine, was recorded on 3 January 1970. Lennon, in Denmark at the time, did not participate. In March, rejecting the work Johns had done on the project, now retitled Let It Be, Klein gave the session tapes to American producer Phil Spector. In addition to remixing the material, Spector edited, spliced and overdubbed several of the recordings that had been intended as “live”. McCartney was unhappy with the producer’s approach and particularly dissatisfied with the lavish orchestration on The Long and Winding Road, which involved a fourteen-voice choir and 36-piece instrumental ensemble. McCartney’s demands that the alterations to the song be reverted were ignored, and he publicly announced his departure from the band on 10 April 1970, a week before the release of his first, self-titled solo album.
On 8 May, the Spector-produced Let It Be was released. Its accompanying single, The Long and Winding Road, was the Beatles’ last; it was released in the United States, but not in the UK. The Let It Be documentary film followed later that month, and would win the 1970 Academy Award for Best Original Song Score. Sunday Telegraph critic Penelope Gilliatt called it “a very bad film and a touching one … about the breaking apart of this reassuring, geometrically perfect, once apparently ageless family of siblings”. Several reviewers stated that some of the performances in the film sounded better than their analogous album tracks. Describing Let It Be as the “only Beatles album to occasion negative, even hostile reviews”, Unterberger calls it “on the whole underrated”; he singles out “some good moments of straight hard rock” in I’ve Got a Feeling and Dig a Pony, and praises Let It Be, Get Back, and “the folky” Two of Us, with John and Paul harmonising together.
McCartney filed suit for the dissolution of the Beatles’ contractual partnership on 31 December 1970. With Starr’s participation, Harrison staged the Concert for Bangladesh in New York City in August 1971, but the ‘fab four’ never recorded or performed as a group again. Legal disputes continued long after their break-up, and the dissolution was not formalised until 29 December 1974, when John Lennon signed the paperwork terminating the partnership.
Two double-LP sets of the Beatles’ greatest hits, compiled by Klein, 1962–1966 and 1967–1970, were released in 1973, at first under the Apple Records imprint. Commonly known as the “Red Album” and “Blue Album“, respectively, each has earned a Multi-Platinum certification in the United States and a Platinum certification in the United Kingdom.
The Troubles in Northern Ireland:
By the late 1960s, politics in Northern Ireland had moved onto the streets of Belfast, Londonderry (‘Derry’) and other cities and towns across ‘the Province’. The relatively peaceful civil rights demonstrations of the mid-sixties had campaigned in particular to end discrimination against the Catholic minority in employment and housing as well as against electoral ‘gerrymandering’ (changing constituency boundaries in order to ensure domination by the Ulster Unionists). By 1968-69, Terence O’Neill’s Stormont government had achieved little, torn between the more conservative fringes of unionism and the increasingly more radical Irish nationalism among the Catholic communities. The radicals may only have wanted a fully democratic society, but the majority of the province’s population increasingly saw this as a return to the ancient tribalistic power-struggles between unionism and nationalism. While the unionist governments under Chichester-Clark from 1969 to 1970 were trying to create a consensus by granting most of the civil rights demands, the revival of the latent violent sectarianism made the province ungovernable. The Westminster government of Harold Wilson, therefore, deployed troops in the province in 1969.
From 1970, Irish military forces were also involved in co-operation with the British in securing the Republic’s border with Northern Ireland. On coming to power in 1970, Edward Heath worked closely with the Taoiseach (Prime Minister of the Irish Republic), Jack Lynch, and the new Stormont leader, Brian Faulkner, a middle-class businessman by origin, was more in Heath’s image than the old Etonian landowner, Chichester-Clark had been. Eventually, he had even managed to get the leaders of the Republic and Northern Ireland to sit and negotiate at the same table, something which had not happened since ‘Partition’ in 1920. Chichester-Clark had simply demanded more and more troops, more and more repression, but Faulkner was open to a political solution. Inside Downing Street, three options were being considered. Northern Ireland could be carved into smaller, more intensely Protestant areas, with the rest surrendered to the Republic, thus effectively getting rid of many Catholics. Or it could be ruled by a power-sharing executive, giving Catholics a role in government. Or, finally, it could be governed jointly by Dublin and London, with its citizens losing their joint citizenship.
Though Edward Heath rejected the first option because it would be crude and leave too many people on the wrong side of the borders and the last one, because the Unionists would reject it, his second option would be taken up by successive British governments. A fourth option, advocated by Enoch Powell who later became an Ulster Unionist MP, was that the UK should fully incorporate Northern Ireland into British structures and treat it like Kent or Lincolnshire, but Heath never took this seriously. Nevertheless, his readiness to discuss other radical solutions gives the lie to the idea that his administration was pig-headed and unimaginative. But before he had a chance to open serious talks, the collapsing security situation had to be dealt with, and politics had to take a back seat. Ordered in from Belfast to put a stop to stone-throwing Bogside demonstrators, the Parachute Regiment began firing, as it turned out, on unarmed people, many of them teenagers. Some were killed with shots to the back when, clearly, they were running away. It was the climax of weeks of escalation. Reluctantly, Heath had introduced internment for suspected terrorists. Reprisals against informers and anti-British feeling meant that the normal process of law was entirely ineffective against the growing PIRA threat so, despite the damage it did to relations with other European countries and the United States, he authorised the arrest and imprisonment in Long Kesh of 337 IRA suspects. In dawn raids, three thousand troops had found three-quarters of the people they were looking for. Many of them were old or inactive, and many of the real, active ‘Provos’ escaped south across the border. Protests came in from around the world.
At the beginning of 1972, the most violent year of the ‘Troubles’, Heath was forced to take over the government of Northern Ireland through Direct Rule. The British government had become involved very reluctantly and its subsequent policies were aimed at finding a political solution by creating a middle ground in which the liberal wings of nationalism and unionism could find a consensus that would eventually marginalise the militants on both sides of the sectarian divide and make them redundant. This strategy proved unsuccessful at first, due mainly to the nature of Direct Rule. Denied access to power, both sides could attack British policies as inappropriate and blame the government for failing to deliver their respective demands. At the same time, paramilitaries on both sides could drive these point home by the use of violence which was justifiable in the eyes of their respective communities. This was the background to the events of ‘Bloody Sunday’ which, despite endless inquiries and arguments, and more recent government apologies, remain hotly disputed. Who shot first? How involved were the IRA involved in provoking the confrontation? Why did the peaceful march split and stone-throwing begin? Why did the paratroopers suddenly appear to lose control?
Whatever the answers, this was an appaling day when Britain’s reputation was burned to the ground along with its embassy in Dublin. ‘Bloody Sunday’ made it far easier for the PIRA to raise funds abroad, particularly in the USA. The Provos hit back with an attack on the Parachute Regiment’s Aldershot headquarters, killing seven people, none of whom were soldiers. The violence led to yet more violence and the imposition by degrees of direct rule by London and trials without juries in the ‘Diplock Courts’. Besides the Belfast bombs of the same year, mainland Britain became the main Provo target. In October 1974, five people were killed and sixty injured in attacks on pubs in Guildford, and in December twenty-one people were killed in pub bombings in Birmingham city centre. Those responsible, although known to both the British and Irish governments, have never been brought to justice, while innocent Irishmen served lengthy terms in jail. But that’s a sad, subsequent narrative which deserves to be told separately, as I have done previously on this site.
Nonetheless, the level of political violence on the island of Ireland itself subsided considerably after 1972; in most subsequent years more people died in road accidents in Northern Ireland. However, in 1973, the Sunningdale power-sharing agreement failed to restore government to Stormont because the majority of unionists would not accept an ‘Irish dimension’ in the form of the proposed Council of Ireland that nationalists demanded. While the British government’s approach became more nuanced towards unionist concerns, a formula that was acceptable to both sides was to remain elusive for the next thirty years, until the Good Friday Agreement of 1998.
Paranoia, Plots & Politics under Wilson:
Fifty years on, the paranoid atmosphere which existed only a few years of Wilson’s first administration is difficult to fathom. Nonetheless, there was a rising conviction among some in business and the media that democracy itself had failed. Cecil King, the megalomaniac nephew of those original press barons of interwar Britain, Lords Rothermere and Harmsworth, and the effective owner of The Daily Mirror was at the centre of the plotting and attempted coup which followed. He had originally supported Wilson but was offended when the egalitarian PM declined to offer him a hereditary title. However, Wilson did make him a life peer as well as a director of the Bank of England and gave him seats on the National Coal Board and the National Parks Commission. King was also offered a number of junior government jobs, but he attacked Wison as a dud, a liar and an incompetent who was ruining the country and should be replaced as soon as possible. King’s theme, which was not uncommon in business circles, was that Britain was coming near to the failure of parliamentary government and now needed professional administrators and managers in charge rather than ‘dodgy’ politicians who had made…
… such a hash of our affairs that people must be brought into government from outside the rank of professional politicians.
His private views came close to a call for insurrection or a coup, to be fronted by himself and other business leaders. This culminated in a clumsily attempted plot which sought to inveigle Lord Louis Mountbatten, former last Viceroy of India, Chief of the Defence Staff and close member of the Royal Family. He stood above politics, though many believed he liked to be thought of as a man of destiny and looked up to by those who dreamed of an anti-Wilson ‘putsch’. He had voiced his concerns about the country but had denied that he was advocating or supporting any notion of a Right Wing dictatorship – or any nonsense of that sort. In fact, his candidate to replace Wilson was Barbara Castle. Nevertheless, King’s conversation during a meeting in May 1968 was wild. He told Mountbatten that, in the coming crisis…
… the government would disintegrate, there would be bloodshed in the streets; the armed forces would be involved.
He then asked Mountbatten to agree to become the titular head of a new administration. According to Cudlipp, Mountbatten then asked Sir Solly Zuckerman, the government’s chief scientific advisor (who had also been present at the meeting) what he made of this discussion. The scientist rose, walked to the door and replied:
This is rank treachery. All this talk of machine guns at street corners is appalling. I am a public servant and will have nothing to do with it. Nor should you, Dickie.
Mountbatten agreed and later recorded that it was he who had told King that the idea was ‘rank treason’ and had booted him out. King, for his part, claimed that Mountbatten himself had said that morale in the armed forces was low and that the Queen was worried and had asked for advice. He had simply replied that…
There might be a stage in the future when the Crown would have to intervene: there might be a stage when the armed forces were important. Dickie should keep himself out of public view so as to have clean hands…
That the meeting took place is beyond doubt, even if what was actually said is. Mountbatten then reported the conversation to the Queen, while King unleashed a full front page attack on Wilson in The Daily Mirror under the headline, Enough is Enough, calling for a new leader. Shortly afterwards, he himself faced a putsch by his severely embarrassed board. Of course, there is no evidence that the ‘plot’ ever got further than this conversation, or that the security services were involved, as has since been asserted. But the Cecil King conspiracy counts in two ways. First, it gives some indication of the fevered and at times almost hysterical mood about Wilson and the condition of the country which had built up by the late sixties, a time more generally remembered as a golden age. Alongside the obvious cultural successes of the period, a heady cocktail of rising and organised crime, student protest, inflation, and violence in Northern Ireland had convinced some that the United Kingdom as a whole was becoming ungovernable. The suggestion that British democracy, which had survived through the post-war period, was ever threatened, seems with retrospect to be an outlandish suggestion. Yet there were small but significant groups of conspiracy theorists on the left and fantasists on the right who emerged in the transition from the discredited old Etonian guard of Macmillan-era Britain and the new cliques of Wilsonian Britain.
Wilson himself was a genuine outsider so far as the old Establishment was concerned, and he seemed to run a court full of outsiders. The old Tory style of government by cliques and clubs gave way to government by faction and feud, a continued weakness of Labour politics since the inception of the party through trade union patronage. Wilson had emerged as what we would now call a populist leader, hopping from group to group, without a settled philosophical view or strong body of popular support in any particular faction within the party. Instead, he relied on a small gang of personal supporters, including Peter Shore, Gerald Kaufman and, in the early years, Tony Benn. Added to these were outside advisors, such as the Hungarian-born economists Thomas Balogh and Nicholas Kaldor, who acquired the nicknames of ‘Buddha’ and ‘Pest’! The elder son of a wealthy Budapest Jewish family (his father was head of public transport, his mother the daughter of a professor), Balogh studied at the city ‘Gimnázium’, considered ‘the Eton of Hungarian youth’, then at the Eötvös Loránd University of Budapest and then in Berlin. He took a two-year research position at Harvard University as a Rockefeller Fellow in 1928. Following this, Balogh worked in banking in Paris, Berlin and Washington before arriving in England. He acquired British citizenship in 1938, he became a lecturer at Balliol College, Oxford, and was elected to a Fellowship in 1945, then became Reader in 1960. He was also the economic correspondent for the New Statesman, becoming an economic adviser to Harold Wilson’s Cabinet office following the 1964 Labour Party victory. He was a critic of consumption- and profit-orientated tax policies, arguing that…
… profit can be earned not merely by satisfying long felt wants more efficiently and in a better fashion, but also by creating new wants through artificially engendered satisfaction and the suggestion of status symbols.
He argued that nationalisation was a better means of securing wage restraint and a more equitable tax system as a whole. He later opposed Britain’s entry to the EEC. Balogh was created a life peer as Baron Balogh, “of Hampstead in Greater London” on 20 June 1968.
Nicholas Kaldor, Baron Kaldor (12 May 1908 – 30 September 1986), pictured right, born Káldor Miklós in Hungary, was a Cambridge economist in the post-war period. He developed the “compensation” criteria called Kaldor–Hicks efficiency for welfare comparisons (1939), derived the cobweb model, and argued for certain regularities observable in economic growth, which are called Kaldor’s growth laws.
From 1964, Kaldor was an advisor to the Labour government of the UK and also advised several other countries, producing some of the earliest memoranda regarding the creation of value-added tax.
Kaldor was considered, with his fellow-Hungarian Thomas Balogh, to be one of the intellectual authors of the Harold Wilson’s 1964–70 government’s short-lived Selective Employment Tax (SET) designed to tax employment in service sectors while subsidising employment in manufacturing. On 9 July 1974, Kaldor was made a life peer as Baron Kaldor, of Newnham in the City of Cambridge.
Other members of Wilson’s ‘gang’ came from business, such as the Gannex raincoat manufacturer Joseph Kagan, or from the law, such as the arch-fixer of the sixties, Lord Goodman. Suspicious of the Whitehall Establishment, with some justification, and cut off from the right-wing former Gaitskillites and the old Bevanites, Wilson felt forced to create his own gang. A Tory in that position might have automatically turned to old school tie connections, or family ones, as Macmillan had done. Wilson turned to an eclectic group of individuals, producing a peculiarly neurotic little court, riven by jealousy and misunderstanding. This gave ammunition to Wilson’s snobbish enemies in the press, especially Private Eye, which constantly displayed its xenophobia towards insiders with foreign-sounding names. Many in the old Establishment struggled to accept that Wilson was a legitimately elected leader of the United Kingdom. Wilson was indeed paranoid, but, as the saying goes, that didn’t mean that there were not plenty of powerful people who were out to get him, or at least to get him out.
‘In Place of Strife’: Labour and the Trade Unions:
Until the end of the decade, the sixties had not been particularly strike-prone compared to the fifties. Strikes tended to be local, unofficial and easily settled. Inflation was still below four per cent for most years and, being voluntary, incomes policies rarely caused national confrontation. But by 1968-9 inflation was rising sharply. Wilson had pioneered the matey ‘beer and sandwiches’ approach to dealing with union leaders. But after the seamen’s strike of 1966, he was becoming increasingly disillusioned with attempts to moderate the activities of the union ‘rank and file’ shop stewards through their leadership. He was supported by an unlikely ‘hammer’ of the unions, the left-winger Barbara Castle (pictured above in 1965), the then Secretary of State for Employment.
In an act of homage to her early hero, Nye Bevan, and his book In Place of Fear, she called her plan for industrial harmony, In Place of Strife. She proposed new government powers to order pre-strike ballots, and a 28-day pause before strikes took place. The government would be able in the last resort to impose settlements for wildcat strikes. There would be fines if the rules were broken. This was a package of measures which now looks gentle by the standards of the laws which would come in the Thatcher years, but at the time men like Jack Jones and Hugh Scanlon saw it as a return to the legal curbs of the twenties and thirties which they had fought for decades to lift.
The battle which followed nearly ended the careers of both Wilson and Castle, and made the Thatcher revolution inevitable. The failure of In Place of Strife is one of the great lost opportunities of modern British politics. Castle’s angry harangues put the backs up of male MPs, trade union leaders and newspaper journalists and editors, who compared her to a fishwife and a nag, just as they would Margaret Thatcher. Her penchant for luxury yachting holidays in the Mediterranean at the height of the conflict did not help her cause among ‘the brothers’. That same summer of ’69, at a dinner at Chequers, Scanlon warned both ministers that he would not accept any legal penalties or even any new legislation. Wilson replied that he found such a position unacceptable, as he would be running a government that was not allowed to govern. If the unions mobilised their sponsored MPs to vote against him,
… it would clearly mean that the TUC, a state within a state, was putting itself above the government in deciding what a government could and could not do.
This was just the sort of language which would be heard in more public arenas first from Ted Heath and then, more starkly, from Margaret Thatcher. Scanlon rounded on Wilson, denouncing him as an arch turncoat, another Ramsay MacDonald. Wilson hotly denied this and referred to the Czech reformist leader of 1968, who had been crushed by the Red Army:
Nor do I intend to be another Dubcek. Get your tanks off my lawn, Hughie!
But, just as in Prague, the tanks stayed resolutely parked under Wilson’s nose. Wilson and Castle contemplated a joint resignation, for if the PM walked away then the Tories would almost certainly be returned, and would no doubt introduce even tougher measures to control the trade unions. As the stand-off continued, the unions suggested a simple series of voluntary agreements and letters of intent. They had decided to tough it out since they knew that Wilson and Castle were isolated in the cabinet and on the back benches, and on both wings of the party. Jim Callaghan, the Home Secretary and a former trade union official, voted against the measures at a meeting of the party’s ruling National Executive Committee. His enemies were now fully convinced that the failure of In Place of Strife would finish Wilson off and become a question of who would become the leader ‘In Place of Harold’. In a bitter cabinet meeting, Richard Crossman made a plea that they must all sink or swim together, to which Callaghan retorted with the phrase “sink or sink…” George Thomas, Callaghan’s fellow Cardiff MP, described him as ‘our Judas Iscariot’. Ten years later, following ‘the Winter of Discontent’ I passed up on the opportunity to vote for Callaghan as a student in the Welsh capital. By then, he was seen as the Prime Minister who had betrayed us all by failing to support labour relations reform and enabling Margaret Thatcher to sweep to power. Tony Crosland and Roy Jenkins, two other big-hitters on the right of the party also ratted on Wilson, and Tony Benn, having previously supported Castle on the left, also changed his mind.
It is possible to argue that Castle’s plans were too hardline for 1969, though Callaghan himself later admitted that penal sanctions had been necessary. At the time, he and other ministers left Wilson with no option but to give way. His earlier threats to resign were swiftly forgotten, and it was Barbara Castle who was now isolated, even from Wilson himself. He cruelly joked about her:
Poor Barbara. She hangs around like someone with a still-born child. She can’t believe it’s dead.
She made a ‘solemn and binding’ agreement with the TUC under which the unions agreed to accept TUC advice on unofficial strikes. ‘Solomon Binding’ became a national figure of speech, and of fun. Roy Jenkins admitted that both Wilson and Castle emerged from the debacle with more credit than the rest of the cabinet. Andrew Marr poses a great background question about the Labour governments of the sixties:
… whether with a stronger leader they could have gripped the country’s big problems and dealt with them. How did it happen that a cabinet of such brilliant, such clever and self-confident people achieved so little? In part, it was the effect of the whirling court politics demonstrated by ‘In Place of Strife’.
In the end, however, it was not the wild-eyed plotters which destroyed the Wilson government, but the electorate. There were good reasons for Labour to think that, in spite of the cabinet split over In Place of Strife, they would see off the Tories again. The opinion polls were onside and the press was generally predicting an easy Labour victory. Even the right-wing commentators lavished praise on Wilson’s television performances and mastery of debate, though he pursued an avowedly presidential style and tried to avoid controversy. Just before the campaign had begun, Jenkins learnt, too late, that more bad balance of payments figures were about to be published along with bad inflation figures. This helped tip things away from Wilson and gave Heath his thirty-seat majority. Polls afterwards, however, scotched the idea that Jenkins’ pre-election budget had lost Labour the election. In fact, it had been quite popular.
A Brief History of the Relationship between Judaism and Christianity over Two Millennia.
In addition to researching the relationship between Christians and Jews in the time when the New Testament was written, and in the millenarian movements of medieval Europe, I found an article summarising the relationship since the first century, by H L Ellison. It helps to fill some of the gaps between the apocalyptic literature of the first century and the twentieth century.
At first, Christians were regarded as a Jewish sect by both Jews and Gentiles. This led to opposition and persecution of the church by the Jewish authorities, who objected to its doctrines and the admission of Gentiles without their accepting the Law. Yet since Jews were also already scattered in communities throughout the Empire and beyond, they provided Christian missionaries with an entry into the Gentile world. Since the first of these, like Paul and other apostles, were Jews, they used the synagogues, both inside and outside Judaea and Palestine as ready-made centres for evangelism. Paul regularly used the local synagogue as the starting point for bringing the gospel to a new place.
Recent archaeological evidence at Capernaum and elsewhere in Palestine supports the view that early Christians were allowed to use the synagogues for their own meetings for worship. Although most of their fellow Jews remained unconverted, many God-fearing Gentiles, who were attracted to Judaism but had not gone through the ritual of total integration into the Jewish community, became Christian converts. In fact, in spite of the growing divergence between the church and the synagogue, the Christian communities worshipped and operated essentially as Jewish synagogues for more than a generation.
Apart from the period of the Jewish wars, the Roman Empire enjoyed three hundred years of peace and general prosperity. This was known as the Pax Romana, the Roman peace. It allowed both Christians and Jews great freedom to travel throughout the Mediterranean world along superbly engineered roads and under the protection of the Roman government. Paul was able to do this until the final years of his life, but he was only the first of many missionaries. Equally, pilgrims to Jerusalem were able to travel in the opposite direction.
This was part of the reason why Paul emphasised the importance of good government, but once Christianity began to diverge, Christians lost the special privileges given to Jews. Jews were specially exempted from taking part in the cult of emperor-worship. Christians also sought this exemption, since they recognised only one God and served one Lord, Jesus Christ. But when the Church became largely composed of Gentiles, it was no longer possible to shelter under the wing of Judaism. Christians refused to offer a pinch of incense on the altar to the divine Emperor, and this was interpreted as being unpatriotic since most people saw it as purely symbolic of loyalty to the Empire. As a result, the Roman attitude to the Christians became less favourable, as they became known for their ‘anti-social’ practices in worship gatherings held now in homes, rather than synagogues. Emperor Nero (54-68) used this developing prejudice against them in order to carry out massacres against them in July 64, scapegoating them for the burning of Rome.
After the Jewish revolts against Rome (AD 66-73) most Christians dissociated themselves from the Jews. The Jewish Christians’ refusal to support the revolts caused them to be regarded as national enemies, at least within Judaea. From this time onwards few Jews were converted to Christianity, as a result. After the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in AD 70, Jews took strong action against Christians in their midst, and anti-Christian additions were made to the synagogue prayers. Although there were Jewish Christians throughout the second century, few of these remained in Jerusalem or Judaea. They had already moved to more northern parts of Palestine by the end of the first century. Increasingly, and especially when the church was recognised by Constantine following his conversion in 312, becoming the accepted state religion by the end of the fourth century, Christians saw in the refusal of the Jews to convert a deliberate hatred of the ‘gospel’ of Jesus Christ. Legal discrimination against them gradually increased, until they were deprived of all rights. Until the time of the French Revolution, there was no distinction between the attitude of the Church and the State towards the Jews.
In the Dark Ages and the Middle Ages, the Jews were exposed to constant harassment, frequent expulsions and periodic massacres. One of the worst examples of the latter occurred, as I have written about elsewhere, during the First Crusade (1096-99) and again in 1320 when Christian millenarianism was at its most vocal and violent. The Jews were banished from England in 1290, from France in 1306, 1322 and finally in 1394. They were given the choice between converting to Christianity or banishment or a violent death. In Spain, the massacres of 1391 led to many ‘Marranos’ to accept Christianity, though often only in name. The Inquisition investigated, with all its horrors, the genuineness of their faith. Only in the Moorish Kingdom of Granada were they treated with tolerance and respect, until they were finally expelled even from there, together with their Muslim defenders, in 1492. Throughout the medieval period, contacts between Christians and Jews were minimal, except when the latter were being massacred. Those who survived these massacres were forced to wear distinctive dress and to live in special streets or districts known as ghettos.
The Renaissance and Reformation enabled a few more learned Christians to revise their opinions and to adopt a more enlightened view of Judaism. But even a theologian like Martin Luther (pictured above) made bitter and despicable attacks on them. In one particularly vulgar tract, he recommended that all the Jews be deported to Palestine. Failing that, they should be forbidden to practise usury, compelled to earn their living on the land, their synagogues should be burned and their books, including the Torah, should be taken away from them. Eventually, Jews were allowed to settle in the more liberal and tolerant Netherlands in 1598, in Hamburg in 1612 and in England in 1656 during Oliver Cromwell’s ‘Commonwealth’.
From 1354, Poland was the chief centre of European Jewry. As the country grew weaker, the Jews were increasingly subjected to the hatred of the Roman Catholic Church and the hostility of the people. When, after 1772, Poland was partitioned, most Polish Jews found themselves under either Roman Catholic Austria or Orthodox Russia. Economic pressure and the Russian massacres (the ‘pogroms’ of 1881-1914) led to the exodus of nearly two million Jews from eastern Europe, mainly to the United States. Meanwhile, the ‘Enlightenment’ of the eighteenth century brought a new attitude towards the Jews throughout most of Europe. In opposing traditional Christian doctrine, many thinkers also attacked long-held prejudices against the Jews. This led to the complete emancipation of French Jews during the French Revolution (1790). By 1914, emancipation had occurred throughout Europe up to the frontiers of the Russian Empire and the Balkan States. In every nation-state, the Jews became fully integrated into mainstream society. Nevertheless, Theodor Herzl, a Hungarian Jew who came to prominence at the end of the nineteenth century, could foresee that this ‘happy’ situation was only a temporary respite from persecution, and therefore began the Zionist movement, demanding a national homeland for the Jewish people.
The first real missionary concern for Jews since the days of the early church was shown by the Moravians and the German Pietists in the first half of the eighteenth century. But there was no major advance until Jewish missions were started in the Church of England in 1809, among Presbyterians in Scotland in 1840, and in the Free Churches in 1842 throughout Britain and Ireland. This general missionary movement spread to other Protestant countries such as Norway. The mass exodus of Jews from eastern Europe to America resulted in further missionary work there. Some Roman Catholics also sought to evangelise among Jews. Most of the converts, however, belonged to the secular fringes of Jewry. This was partly due to the bitter individual, familial and collective memories of the past which meant that the majority of Jews had a deep-seated suspicion of both the motivations of the missionaries and that, even where trust existed, they remained sceptical that attitudes among the general Christian population had really changed.
Of course, Jewish people were proved to be justified in their scepticism. Political acceptance of Jews did not remove the deep-seated popular prejudice with which they were still confronted as a people. This had reasserted itself as early as 1878 when a movement of Antisemitism soon spread throughout the ‘civilised world’. Even in the United States, where the Jews had never been discriminated against, antisemitic feeling took root, often accompanying anti-German feeling in the First World War. In Germany and central Europe, it was given expression by the growth of popular nationalism and anti-communist feeling, and in the rise of National Socialism in Germany in the 1920s and ’30s, which led on to Hitler’s ‘Final Solution’, a ‘Holocaust’ (‘Shoah’ in Hebrew) in which six million Jews, a third of world Jewry, perished. Among those who tried to save Jews from persecution and deportation were many devout and sincere Christians, and their commitment has since been recognised throughout the world, and especially in Israel. Since 1939-45 and the Holocaust, Christians have tended to stress mutual understanding, the removal of prejudices and inter-faith dialogue rather than attempting a direct missionary approach, although some extreme evangelical churches in the United States have recently developed a ‘Christian Zionist’ movement, based on literal interpretations of the apocalyptic literature of the Bible and those ‘prophecies’ which point to the mass conversion of the Jews, and their return to Israel as a pre-requisite for the Second Coming of Jesus as Messiah at the ‘End of Times’. Most ‘mainstream’ churches reject these extreme interpretations, though politicians have been keen to take advantage of them, both in the USA and Israel. At the same time, especially throughout Europe, there has been a further rise in antisemitism, particularly in relation to the ongoing Arab-Israeli Conflict although Arabs, like Jews, are themselves Semitic in ethnic origin. The rise of ‘militant’ Islam has been a major factor in this.
Source:
John H Y Briggs, et. al. (eds.) (1977), The History of Christianity. Berkhamsted: Lion Publishing.
15 March 2017 marks the sixtieth anniversary of the death of Rezső Kasztner. The following post is based on Anna Porter’s 2007 book, Kasztner’s Train, and includes extensive extracts from it.
Introduction:
“The affair of the Judenrat (and perhaps also the Kasztner case) should, in my view, be left to the tribunal of history in the coming generation. The Jews who were safe and secure during the Hitler era ought not presume to judge their brethren who were burned and slaughtered, nor the few who survived.”
David Ben-Gurion, quoted in Weitz, The Man Who Was Murdered Twice.
Five years ago, Zsolt Zágoni published a translation of a handwritten notebook of Rózsa Stern, written in Switzerland following her escape on the train via Bergen-Belsen (1,684 people were deported on the train to the camp and from there in two groups to Switzerland – I have summarised her account of the transit elsewhere). Rózsa’s father, Samu Stern, was the President of the Hungarian Jewish Community in Budapest at the time of the Nazi occupation on 19 March, obliged to negotiate with Eichmann about the fate of the Jewish community, not just in Budapest, but throughout Hungary and the Hungarian-occupied territories. Rózsa’s notebook confirms that Rezső Kasztner encouraged Samu to leave with his daughter and her husband, György Bamberger, because if there are no mice, there is no need for a cat either (if there are no Jews left in the city, there is no need for a President of the Jewish Council).
Above: The memoir written by Samu Stern in 1945 (he died on 9 June, 1946).
Stern’s photo is seen on the cover
In the accompanying historical essay, written by Krisztián Ungváry, the historian also confirms Porter’s account that in the early Summer of 1944 the Kolozsvár-born Kasztner had made a deal with the SS Commander in Budapest, Adolf Eichmann, the man sent to Hungary that Spring to complete the Final Solution. It was as a Hungarian lawyer and journalist, a leading Zionist and member of the Rescue Committee that he had been given the approval of the Jewish Council to meet with Eichmann, the Nazi architect of the Holocaust, in Budapest. Following the German occupation of Hungary on 19 March that year, Eichmann had been charged with the deportation of all six hundred thousand Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz within a matter of months. By the end of June, more than 440,000 had been deported from the countryside, first placed in ghettos, and then transported in cattle wagons on trains to the death camp. Yet Kasztner and his colleague Joel Brand secured Eichmann’s agreement to allow 1,684 Jews to leave for Switzerland by train. These negotiations and the deals they struck with the devil continued to haunt Kasztner for the rest of his life, and help to explain why he has never been fully honoured for his role in saving so many lives.
Dealing with the Devil:
In exchange for getting the Jews to Switzerland, Zionist organisations would transport military trucks through Switzerland to Germany. The wealthy Jews of Budapest and Kasztner’s native Transylvanian city of Kolozsvár (now and previously Cluj in Romania) paid an average of $1,500 for each family member to be included on the lists of those who would eventually leave for Switzerland by train and emigrate to Palestine. The poor families included were to pay nothing. Kasztner also negotiated to keep twenty thousand more Hungarian Jews alive in Budapest – Eichmann called them Kasztner’s Jews orhis Jews on Ice – in exchange for a deposit of approximately $100 per head. It was the right and duty of Kasztner’s Rescue Committee to decide who would get on the train that would mean survival. In order to include some of the poorest, who paid nothing, they had to select mainly wealthier, educated people and, controversially, relatives and acquaintances from Kolozsvár. Had he told even these people what would probably happen to those left behind, he would certainly have risked the success of the entire rescue mission, including the futures of the twenty thousand Jews on ice, as Eichmann called them, who would not be deported, in exchange for $100 per head. Rózsa Stern’s journal confirms that of those interned at the Aréna Street (now Dózsa György Street) Synagogue on 30 June, awaiting the departure of the Aliyah train most… were families from the countryside who were saved from the brick factories. Only about a dozen people died on the way to Switzerland, so that the survivors on the Kasztner train could consider themselves the ‘lucky’ ones.
After the war Kasztner was a witness at the trial of major war criminals and was a defence witness six times in the case of Kurt Becher in Nuremberg, the SS officer with whom Kasztner was negotiating in 1944 and who later settled in Israel. In 1953 Kasztner was accused in a newspaper article of collaborating with the Nazis. Since he had ambitions for a political career in Israel, he was told that it was essential for him to clear his name, and he therefore filed a lawsuit. However, this backfired on him and although he won his libel case, the evidence presented led to the widespread public conclusion that he had sold his soul to the devil. In Israel, Kasztner’s case turned into a political scandal. The survivors whose lives were not saved by the train and whose families died in Auschwitz or on the trains and forced marches there, saw in Kasztner a mean, calculating collaborator. His alleged favouritism for family, friends and acquaintances in the selection of the ‘survivors’, together with the fact that , knowing the whole truth about the death-camp, from the so-called Auschwitz Protocols, he chose not to reveal this to the wider public, strengthened the subsequent hatred against him. In fact, those who really wanted to know what was happening to those deported had had many channels from which they could get information from as early as 1942, and had access to these since well before the AuschwitzProtocols arrived in Budapest via Bratislava. Porter’s book gives evidence that many of the Jewish leaders, including Samu Stern, did not want to give credence to what the Eichmann and the Nazis repeatedly dismissed as malicious rumours aimed at starting an uprising, which would be met with severe repression should they be repeated or publicised in any way.Certainly, it was made plain to Kasztner that any rumour-mongering would lead to the breakdown of his plans for an exodus of remaining Jews.
In Israel – Accusations of Collaboration:
In Israel, after the war, the exiled Kasztner was vilified in an infamous libel trial for ‘collaborating’ with the Nazis. As a result of the libel case, the Israeli government was forced to resign. The Israeli political right labelled their opponents as Gestapo agents and Kasztner became an obvious scapegoat. It was the first time that the general public, in Israel and elsewhere, became aware of the contacts between Zionist organisations and the Nazis and, not having experienced the terror of 1944 in the Hungary, they failed to understand the pressures which the Budapest Rescue Committee and the Jewish Council in Budapest were under, pressure which led to almost continual friction between the two organisations over tactics in dealing with the Nazis, whether at home or abroad.
In Tel Aviv, Kasztner and his whole family were subjected to appalling hate crimes. His young daughter, Zsuzsi, was stoned on the streets and his wife Bogyó became severely depressed. While awaiting the Supreme Court verdict that would eventually vindicate him, he was assassinated outside his apartment block in Tel Aviv. Kasztner did not think of himself as a hero, but as a proud Zionist who believed that promises, even those made to the Nazis, had to be kept. Anna Porter, born in Budapest and educated there after the war, has written a compelling account of him, subtitled The True Story of an Unknown Hero of the Holocaust, based both on written sources in Hungarian and English, and on eyewitness accounts, collected at a time when there were few recorded references to the victims of what she (properly in my view) calls the Hungarian Holocaust. There were even fewer references to Rezső Kasztner, although the better-known Oskar Schindler, who had met Kasztner in Budapest in 1942, had written of his actions that they remained unsurpassed. Soon after the war, Schindler was recognized as a Righteous Gentile, supported by grateful survivors, celebrated and lionized. Kasztner, by contrast, became a symbol of collaboration with the enemy. Porter acknowledges that:
… the deals Kasztner made with the SS… raise questions about moral choices, courage in dangerous circumstances, the nature of compromise and collaboration, and how far an individual should go to save other people. These questions are as valid now as they were in the 1940s. They continue to haunt the world today.
Yet moral questions must be set alongside historical ones and Porter’s book, though a work of popular history, is meticulous in its use of diaries, notes, taped interviews, courtroom testimonies, and memoirs – both written and oral, including those written in German and Hebrew. Since Kasztner’s only goal was that of saving human lives, she concludes that Kasztner achieved more in this way than any other individual in Nazi-occupied Europe.
The Consequences of the Libel Trial, 1956-57; Extracts from Porter:
In March 1956, the chief magistrate in Jerusalem dismissed the charge of perjury against Kasztner… but the year presented greater trials than the re-trial of the perjury case… On October 29… the Israeli army invaded Egypt and occupied the Sinai Peninsula. It was a pre-emptive strike at the heart of Egypt’s occupation of the Suez Canal. The invasion’s chief achievement, as far as the Israelis were concerned, was that it signaled to the surrounding Arab states that Israel could preserve its security against its enemies. Headlines in Israeli papers were occupied with news of the victory and the ensuing peace negotiations. Kasztner was no longer in the headlines. The government cancelled his protection.
He continued to work for ‘Új Kelet’ (‘New East’) and co-produced some radio programmes. He took on some freelance work as a translator… Tomy Lapid (a colleague) said that Kasztner seemed aware of his life being in danger. “He became a hunted man,” Lapid said… Kasztner now looked along the street carefully before he stepped out of a doorway; he hesitated when he turned corners; once, when a car backfired he ducked into a store; he stayed close to walls; he had seemed nervous even when government-appointed guards followed him. There were so many abusive, threatening calls that he stopped answering the phone at the office. At home, too, he disconnected the telephone. He didn’t want his wife or daughter listening to the deranged ravings about how his life was to end.
On March 3, 1957, Kasztner was working the night-shift at the editorial offices of ‘Új Kelet’. He drove a colleague… home. A few minutes after midnight, Kasztner parked his car in front of his apartment building at 6 Sderot Emanuel Street. While he was still in the driver’s seat, he was approached by two young men. A third, he saw, was standing in the shadows of the building. One of the men asked if he was “Doctor Kasztner.” When he replied that, yes, he was, the man drew a gun, but it misfired. Kasztner opened the car door, pushing his assailant aside, then ran toward the entrance of the building. The man fired, twice in quick succession. This time the bullets found their target. Kasztner ran a few more steps, then collapsed. He shouted for help as the three assailants fled. He saw the gunman run to a jeep and speed off.
He was still conscious when the first person from the building arrived at the scene and tried to administer first aid. A woman who had gone to her balcony when the shots rang out ran to wake Bogyó (Kasztner’s wife). Another man heard Kasztner say that the assailant had gone in a jeep; that neighbour jumped on his bike and gave chase. Two men emerged from the jeep near the city zoo, where their pursuer, a former army man, found a phone booth and called the police.
A crowd gathered around Kasztner. Someone had called an ambulance. Bogyó, a neighbor reported later, seemed strangely calm when she saw that Rezső had been shot. Perhaps she, too, had been expecting something like this to happen. She knelt next to her bleeding husband, put a pillow under his head, covered him with a blanket, stroked his forehead and whispered to him…
Friends and a few passengers from the Kasztner train went to the hospital with flowers. There were hundreds of telegrams with good wishes for a speedy convalescence… Newspapers that had denounced Kasztner now shouted in headlines that the attackers had aimed at the heart of the nation of Israel.
Kasztner’s room was guarded by two policemen. He was conscious but spoke little. He wished to see no visitors except his immediate family and Hansi (his Zionist colleague Joel Brand’s wife and Rezső’s long-term lover). Bogyó had intended to bar Hansi from the room, but she managed to plead her way in. At one point he asked her, “Why did they do this to me?” Hansi was with him on March 12 as his condition began to deteriorate.
On March 15, at 7:20 a.m., Rezső Kasztner died.
The Aftermath of the Assassination:
On Sunday, March 17, 1957, Rezső Kasztner’s coffin was set up in front of the Hadassah Hospital in Tel Aviv to provide his many admirers with an opportunity to pay their respects in public and to show their solidarity with the family. His mother, his two brothers, Bogyó, and Zsuzsi (his daughter), stood next to the coffin. Though neither David Ben-Gurion nor Mohse Sharett came, the Mapai (the ruling party) were represented by Attorney General Chaim Cohen and State Secretary Teddy Kollek. Some of his old colleagues from Budapest and Kolozsvár, and the halutzim who had worked with him paid their respects. Hansi stood near the coffin but out of Bogyó’s immediate circle. Yoel Palgi was there, as were many of the passengers from the Kasztner train. At the Bilu Synagogue, Rezső’s brother Gyula, his voice breaking as he read the words, recited the Kaddish, a prayer for the dead…
Kasztner was interred at the Nachlat Yitzhak Cemetery in Givataim, on the outskirts of Tel Aviv, amid numerous declarations of friendship and tears. Most of the speakers vowed to continue the struggle not only to clear his name, but also to enshrine it among the heroes of the Holocaust. Those he had helped to survive promised to take promised to take care of his family.
‘Új Kelet’ published a moving obituary written by Ernő Márton. He praised Kasztner’s capacity for wit and erudition and his obsession with saving Jewish lives, his death-defying courage, his self-sacrifice, and his ambition to do something great, something “eternally significant for his people.”
Within days of the murder, the police arrested a twenty-four-year-old man, Zeev Eckstein, and his evidence led to the arrest of two other men, John Menkes, a former member of the Stern Gang, and Yaakov Cheruti, a lawyer. The three were tried, convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment the following January. A week later, on 15 January 1958, the Supreme Court exonerated Kasztner in a four-to-one decision. In the key matter of the original libel of his collaboration with the Nazis, the majority of the judges accepted the appeal of the attorney general and convicted Malchiel Grünwald. In the midst of the joy of vindication that followed the Supreme Court ruling, notes of doubt remained.
The Supreme Court of Israel had acquitted Kasztner of all the charges brought against him, except for the one of helping Becher escape prosecution at Nuremberg. This led to remaining doubts concerning his affidavit written on Becher’s behalf at that time, and his subsequent confused evidence in the libel case about this. In his statement about this following the initial Grünwald trial, Kastner had written:
I cannot refrain from expressing again my sorrow over the impression which may have been made in some people regarding the phrasing of my testimony about Becher, and the result of it. Neither I nor my friends have anything to hide in this whole affair, and we do not regret that we acted in accordance with our conscience, despite all that was done to us in this trial.
Several journalists continued to criticise Kasztner as having sold his soul in his deal with the Nazis. Nevertheless, the promise made by Alexander Rosenfeld at his funeral; We shall not rest, nor shall we remain silent until your name is cleared had been fulfilled by the Supreme Court’s verdict. His widow and daughter expressed their sadness that the new verdict had come too late to save his life. He had died aged just 51.
Despite the justifications of Kasztner’s role in Budapest, his fateofmaking friends with the devil, still divides the shrinking number of survivors of the Hungarian Holocaust of 1944-5. In 2006, István Bubryák made a three-part documentary about his life and several academic works, including Anna Porter’s book, have been published about his life. By way of postscript, an Italian book by Andrea Schiavon has also been published about one of the subsequently famous survivors on the train, Shaul Ladany. He was a member of the ill-fated Israeli Olympic team in Munich in 1972. When the book was published (2012), he was in his seventies and still taking part in various walking competitions (see picture below).
These accounts lend support to the evidence presented by Anna Porter, that, while human beings always have choices to make, even in the most difficult of times, there was no doubt that Kasztner acted with integrity during those months between March and December 1944, and that his actions saved many thousands of Jews from deportation to Auschwitz, not just the 1,684 who went on his train, but those who might have died on the subsequent death marches, or at the hands of the Arrow Cross. It is this very fact of survival which enables the ultimate vindication of Kasztner and the Budapest Rescue Committee.
Sources:
Anna Porter (2007), Kasztner’s Train. London: Constable.
Zsolt Zágoni (ed.), (2012), From Budapest to Bergen-Belsen: A Notebook from 1944. Budapest.
Hosea the prophet, Russian icon from first quarter of 18th cen. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Second Sunday in Advent. A ‘topical’ text from Hosea, chapter 12, vv 6-10, 13-14:
‘But you must return to your God; maintain love and justice, and wait for your God always. The merchant uses dishonest scales; he loves to defraud. Ephraim boasts, “I am very rich; I have become wealthy. With all my wealth they will not find in me any iniquity or sin.”
“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt; I will make you live in tents again, as in the days of your appointed feasts. I spoke to the prophets, gave them many visions and told parables through them.”
‘The Lord used a prophet to bring Israel up from Egypt, by a prophet he cared for him. But Ephraim has bitterly provoked him to anger; his Lord will leave upon him the guilt of his bloodshed and will repay him for his contempt.’
and chapter 13 v 14:
“I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death. Where, O death, are your plagues? Where, O grave, is your destruction?”
Related articles (not necessarily agreed with/’approved’)
From the ‘Greensleeves’ Waits’ carol in New Christmas Carols, 1642.
This carol shows us that until at least the seventeenth century in Britain, today was celebrated as the ‘name day’ of Christ. The reason is contained in the fact that, possibly until about this time, New Year’s Day was April 1st, so this carol, sung in alehouses, was perhaps designed to get the English population used to the coincidence of the two events, following the change in the calendar. Most holidays were eight days in all, so it’s possible that most people returned to work after the eighth day of Christmas as well, so it served as a reminder of the true significance of the day in the Christian year. In keeping with this, the third verse is a reminder of the more sober duties of the New Year festivities, and may well have been viewed as useful ‘propoganda’ by the increasingly powerful Presbyterians in Parliament and elsewhere who were, at the very least, lukewarm in their attitude to what they perceived to be excessive merriment at this season:
‘And now with New Year’s gift each friend
Unto each other they do send:
God grant we may all our lives amend,
And that the truth may appear.
Now, like the snake, your skin
Cast off, of evil thoughts and sin,
And so the year begin:
God send us a happy New Year!‘
Jesus (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The following passage from Luke’s gospel (NIV) reveals the original importance of this day among the twelve in the Christmas Festival:
‘On the eighth day, when it was time to circumcise him, he was named Jesus, the name the angel had given him before he had been conceived.’
‘When the time of their purification according to the Law of Moses had been completed, Joseph and Mary took him to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord (as it is written in the Law of the Lord, “Every firstborn male is to be consecrated to the Lord”), and to offer a sacrifice in keeping with what is said in the Law of the Lord: “a pair of doves or two young pigeons”.
Now there was a man in Jerusalem called Simeon, who was righteous and devout. He was waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not die before he had seen the Lord’s Christ. Moved by the Spirit, he went into the temple courts. When the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him what the custom of the Law required, Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying:
Rembrandt – Simeon and Anna Recognize the Lord in Jesus – WGA19102 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
“Sovereign Lord, as you have promised,
you now dismiss your servant in peace.
For mine eyes have seen your salvation,
which you have prepared in the sight of
all people,
a light for revelation to the Gentiles
and for glory to your people Israel.”
‘The child’s father and mother marvelled at what was said about him. Then Simeon blessed them and said to Mary, his mother:
“This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too.”
‘There was also a prophetess, Anna, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was very old: she had lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, and then was a widow until she was eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshipped night and day, fasting and praying. Coming up to them at that very moment, she gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem.
‘When Joseph and Mary had done everything that was required by the Law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee to their own town of Nazareth. And the child grew and became strong; he was filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon him.’
Thus concludes the nativity stories of the two gospels. These texts are powerful. In one sense, Simeon and Anna are the first ‘Christians’, testifying not only to little ‘Yeshua‘, or ‘Joshua’, not just as the long-awaited Jewish Messiah, but also to his mission as the saviour of the ‘gentile’ world. As a Greek doctor, Luke must have fully understood the significance of what he was recording to its context. Jesus was not just a child challenging the dictatorship of the Judean tyrant, Herod and his family, but also the might of the Roman Empire, which by then was controlling most of the Greek-speaking world. Being born just before Herod’s death into a territory which was bathed in the blood of innocent children and the citizens the tyrant also had murdered, even on his death-bed, Jesus was also born into a very precarious political atmosphere. It took an old man with vision and an old woman of great dedication, to utter the truly revolutionary words which would eventually bring down both the evil dynasty and imperial rule, through the Christ’s sacrifice. Even his mother is not spared the pain contained in the prophecy, and, far from keeping the identity of the baby a secret, Anna told the good news about his birth to all who were waiting for the Messiah to set Jerusalem free from tyranny, to her fellow ‘revolutionaries’. This was a risky strategy indeed, as there must have been many spies posted, not just the unwitting wise men, by Herod, to bring him news of the child’s whereabouts, and the child’s significance and threat to his power was being confirmed under his very nose, in the very heart of Jerusalem, not from their temporary refuge in Gaza. Herod’s death shortly afterwards, before the Passover Feast, did not relieve the pressure on his people from the continuing dynasty, and the child was taken to the relative safety of Mary’s home town, when they would perhaps have preferred to remain in Bethlehem, with Joseph’s family. Jesus’ birth had taken place in a hard winter, and this was no ‘Arab Spring’. This was occupied Jerusalem, controlled by a tyrannical dynasty who knew that if they did not control their people by means of terror, the Romans would.
So, the real message of the Incarnation is that it broke the wall between time and eternity, temple and city, sacred and secular. It allows no division of the Gospel into personal and social, permits no surrender to evil, lets no injustice escape judgement. The God who assumed flesh sought the redemption not just of one nation, but the whole world; not just of ‘the spiritual realm’, but of the whole of human and earthly life in all its circumstances and conditions. Forgetting this, and refusing to take the risks in proclaiming the Gospel in the uncompromising terms and means of Simeon and Anna, the Church ceases to be the Church of the Incarnated Christ. Perhaps New Year ‘resolutions’ are not just the preserve of individuals. As Canon Burgess Carr, the Secretary General of the All Africa Conference of Churches, wrote forty years ago, ‘God’s intervention in human history is not to endorse man’s powerlessness: He came to take his position with them in order to free them.’ Amen to that!
1&2. Readings from Genesis: Curses and Blessings on Mankind.
First Lesson: Genesis 3, vv8-19:
‘And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day; and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden. And the LORD God called unto the man, and said unto him, Where art thou? And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself. And he said, Who told you that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat? And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. And the LORD God said unto the woman, What is this thou hast done? And the woman said, the serpent beguiled me, and I did eat. And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, cursed art thou above all cattle, and from among every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life: And I will put emnity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed: it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel. Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be thy husband, and he shall rule over thee. And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in toil shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field: In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.’
‘And the angel of the LORD called unto Abraham a second time out of heaven, And said, By myself have I sworn, saith the LORD, because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son: That in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies; and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou hast obeyed my voice.’
Advent (Bidding) Prayer – The Antiphons for Emmanuel
O wisdom of the Most High that spannest the universe, mightily and sweetly ordering all things; come and teach us the way of understanding. O Adonai and leader of the house of Israel, who didst appear to Moses in the flame of the burning bush and gavest the law on Sinai; come and deliver us with an outstretched arm. O root of Jesse, who standest for an ensign to the people, before whom kings shall shut their mouths, whom nations shall intreat; come and deliver us, tarry not. O key of David and sceptre of the house of Israel, who openest and no man shutteth, and shuttest and no man openeth; come and release the souls of men from their prison house. O dayspring, splendour of the eternal light, and sun of righteousness; come and enlighten those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death. O king of all nations, whom they long for, the corner-stone that bindest all in one; come and save men whom thou formedst from the clay. O Emmanuel, our king and law-giver, the Saviour whom we look for; come and save us, O Lord, our God. AMEN.
3&4. Isaiah fortells the coming of the Christ-child.
Third Lesson: Isaiah 9, vv2, 6-7:
‘The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined…For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The might God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgement and with justice from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will perform this.’
Fourth Lesson: Isaiah 11, vv1-3a, 4a, 6-9:
‘And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots: And the spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD; and shall make him quick of understanding in the fear of the LORD:..But with righteousness shall he judge the poor, and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth:..The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice’s den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea.’
From the Authorised (‘King James’) Version.
Carols: There is no Rose of Such Virtue, Candlelight Carol
Sans Day Carol (trad., Cornish, arr. Rutter):
This Carol was named after the Cornish saint St Day, whose church in the parish of Gwennap was where much of it was written down. St Day was a Breton saint whose cult was widespread in Celtic Cornwall. It was preserved by the vicar who wrote it down in an English version after hearing it sung by an old man. A Cornish version, ‘Ma gron war’n gelinen’, was published later, adding the fourth verse to the English version:
“Now the holly bears a berry, as blood it is red,
Then trust we our Saviour, who rose from the dead:
“And Mary bore Jesus Christ, our Saviour for to be,
And the first tree in the greenwood, it was the holly..”
5. The Birth of Jesus Announced
The Fifth lesson, Luke 1 vv 26-38:
‘In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy God sent the angel Gabriel to a town in Galilee named Nazareth. He had a message for a girl promised in marriage to a man named Joseph, who was a descendant of King David. The girl’s name was Mary. The angel came to her and said, “Peace be with you! The Lord is with you and has greatly blessed you!” Mary was deeply troubled by the angel’s message, and she wondered what his words meant. The angel said to her, “Don’t be afraid, Mary; God has been gracious to you. You will become pregnant and give birth to a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High God. The Lord will make him a King, as his ancestor David was, and he will be the king of the descendants of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end!”
Mary said to the angel, “I am a virgin. How, then, can this be?” The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you. For this reason the holy child will be called the Son of God. Remember your relative Elizabeth. It is said that she cannot have children, but she herself is now six months pregnant, even though she is very old. For there is nothing that God cannot do.”
“I am the Lord’s servant” said Mary; “may it happen to me as you have said”. And the angel left her.
Mary’s song (in Hungarian, by Mihály Babits):
“Üdvözlégy óh Szűzek Szűze,
aki megváltónkat szülte!
Te vagy ama Tenger-Tűze,
csalhatatlan csillaga:
Az élet tengere ringat;
ne engedd törni hajónkat!
Kérd érettünk Megváltónkat:
imádj Istent, Mária!…
Jézus, óh szent méh magzatja,
légy a világ áradatja
közt menekvés szabad útja,
égi révbe vezető:
tartsd a kormányt, vidd a gályát,
csillapítsd a hab dagályát,
adj kegyedben könnyü pályát!
Vár az édes kikötő…
Carols: The Virgin Mary had a Baby Boy; Mary had a Baby
6. Sixth Lesson: Luke (Luc) 2, vv1, 3-7 (in Welsh):
Genedigaeth Iesu:
‘Yn y dyddiau hynny aeth gorchymyn allan oddi wrth Cesar Awgwatus i gofrestru’r holl Ymerodaeth…Fe aeth pawb felly i’w cofrestru, pob un i’w dref ei hun. Oherwydd ei fod yn perthyn i dí a theulu Dafydd, aeth Joseff i fyny o dref Nasareth yng Ngalilea i Jwdea, i dref Dafydd, a elwir Bethlehem, i ymgofrestru ynghyd á Mair ei ddyweddi; ac yr oedd hi1n feichiog. Pan oeddent yno, cyflawnwyd yr amser iddi esgor, ac esgorodd ar ei mab cyntafanedig; a rhwymodd ef mewn dillad baban a’i osod mewn preseb, am nad oedd lle iddynt yn y gwesty.”
A Carol in Welsh: Tua Bethlehem Dref; Suo Gán
7. Seventh Lesson: Luke (Lukács Evangéliuma) 2, vv8-16 (in Hungarian):
The visit of the shepherds:
‘Pasztorok tanyáztak azon a vidéken a szabad ég alatt, és őrködtek éjsaka a nyájuk mellett. És az Úr angyala megjelent nekik, körülragyogta őket az Úr dicsőseége, és nagy fegelem vett erőt rajtuk. Az angyal pedig ezt monta nekik:
“Ne féljetek, mert ime, hirdetek nagy örömet, amely az egész nép öröme lesZ: Üdvözitő született ma nektek, aki az Úr Krisztus, a Dávid városában. A jel pedig ez lesz számotokra: találtok egy kisgyermeket, aki bepólyálva fekszik a jászollban.”
És hirtelen mennyei seregek sokasága jelent meg az angyallal, akik dicsérték az Istent, és ezt mondták:
“Dicsőség a magassában Istennek, és a földön békesség, és az emberekhez jóakarat.”
Miután elmentek tőlük az angyalok a mennybe, a pásztorok igy szóltak egymáshoz:
“Menjünk el egészen Betlehemig, és nézzük meg: hogyan is történt mindaz, amiről üzent nekünk az Úr.”
Elmentek tehát sietve, és megtalátak Máriát, Józsefet és a jászolban fekvő kisgyermeket.’
Carols in Hungarian: Pastorok, Pasztorok; Áldott Éj (Soha nem volt még..)
8. Eighth Lesson: Matthew 2, vv1-12: Visitors from the East
Eighth Lesson: Matthew 2, vv1-12:
‘Jesus was born in the town of Bethlehem in Judea, during the time when Herod was king. Soon afterward, some men who studied the stars came from the East to Jerusalem and asked, “Where is the baby born to be the king of the Jews? We saw his star in the east, and we have come to worhip him. When King Herod heard about this, he was upset, and so was everyone else in Jerusalem. He called together all the chief priests and the teachers of the Law and asked them, “Where will the Messiah be born?” “In the town of Bethlehem in Judea” they replied, “For this is what the prophet wrote:
‘Bethlehem in the land of Judah,
you are by no means the least of
the leading cities of Judah;
for from you will come a leader
who will guide my people Israel.’ “
‘So Herod called the visitors from the East to a secret meeting and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. Then he sent them to Bethlehem with these instructions: “Go and make a careful search for the child; and when you find him, let me know, so that I too may go and worship him.”
‘And so they left, and on their way they saw the same star they had seen in the East. When they saw it, how happy they were, what joy was theirs! It went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. They went into the house, and when they saw the child with his mother Mary, they knelt down and worshipped him. They brought him gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh, and presented them to him. Then they returned to their country by another road, since God had warned them in a dream not to go back to Herod.”
Carols: Out of the Orient Crystal Skies:
‘Out of the Orient Crystal Skies, a blazing star did shine, showing the place where poorly lies, a blessed babe divine, born of a maid of royal blood, who Mary hight by name, a sacred rose which once did bud, by grace of heavenly flame’. It goes on to describe how the star guided the ‘three kings’ to the ‘silly poor manger’ and how the shepherds ‘came singing all even in a rout, ‘Falan-tiding-dido!’.
I don’t have a recording of ‘Falan-Tiding’ sung to Tyrolean tune, ‘Ihr Hirten, stehet alle auf’ of about 1610. The contemporary five-part madrigal setting by Richard Zgdova is frequently sung by madrigal choirs in the US, and I have found an early English tune by William Byr
The Coventry Carol (trad., English):
This is probably the oldest carol in English, dating from at least the time Chaucer was writing his ‘Canterbury Tales’. When the Pope banned drama from church services in the thirteenth century, the Guilds gradually developed pageants, or mystery plays for performance in the market places outside, and the Coventry plays ran from 1400 to 1450, and have been more recently revived on the new Cathedral steps. This tradition led to the writing of religious songs in the venacular, gradually substituting folk-song and dance-tunes for the liturgical Latin music sung inside. The text of the carol was first printed in 1534, but the plays were witnessed by Margaret, Henry VI’s Queen, in 1456, by Richard III in 1484 and Henry VII in 1492. The Carol was for the Pageant of the Shearmen and Tailors, probably performed on Holy Innocents’ Day, hence the contrast between the lullaby and Herod’s massacre of the children in the second verse, followed by the departure for Egypt in the third. The tune dates from 1591, in its recorded form, but the Smith’s play was still being performed in 1584, so it is probably much older if not original.
9. The Ninth Lesson: Jn 1 vv 1-4: The Gospel is Proclaimed.
Carols: In The Bleak Midwinter; O Little Town of Bethlehem
Benediction
Recessional Carol: O Come All Ye Faithful (Adeste Fideles).
Is it just me, or is society becoming increasingly self-centred? Sure, there are many acts of kindness taking place out there, and people give up time and money to raise huge sums for charity, taking part in telethon extravaganza, or just turning up to volunteer for a few hours a week. Having been a regional co-ordinator for my son’s charity for children with upper limb deficiencies, ‘Reach’, I know that not everyone is motivated by Christian concern to take part in various voluntary events, and that those who volunteer from humanistic principles are often more reliable than those who seek to draw attention to themselves within a local church setting.
However, what makes me most upset (it’s more despair than anger) about the current attempt by the UK Government to redefine marriage is not so much the false dichotomy it seeks to draw between church and state, between the civil and religious, or even the arrogant assumptions it seeks to make on behalf of Gay and bisexual Christians as part of its so-called ‘consultation process’. I am even open to persuasion that there is a genuine issue of human rights and equality which requires the Law to be changed to go beyond the contracting of civil partnerships between same-sex couples. I certainly believe there is an issue arising from the exclusion of heterosexual couples from this new right.
No, what upsets me most is the lack of focus on ‘faithfulness’ as the central concept in any human relationship, and especially in marriages which involve the creation of children and new family life. Attitudes to marriage reveal that for many, not just Gay couples, it has already been redefined purely as a right, not as a solemn duty or a responsibility which needs constant commitment, a continual renewal of promises and a life-long ethos of friendship, companionship and co-operation. Society seems obsessed with sexual gratification, rather than gratitude for God‘s grace. We promise to be faithful to one another, to love, cherish and, yes, even to obey each other, without the first idea what these promises mean. For example, there is much talk about ‘equality’ in marriage, but the New Testament idea, developed in Paul’s letters is of faithfulness which requires the subjugation or sacrifice of both people to each other. It’s not a balancing act based on prenuptial financial transactions, nor is it biased to one party, that faithfulness means the other person being faithful to me, not me being faithful to the other person.
I recently took part in a campaign called ‘Faithfulness Matters’, in an attempt to expose the operation of web-sites set up to cash in on marriages in difficulty by helping spouses to commit adultery. To understand what is meant by faithfulness we need to look way beyond the human idea that it means seeking sexual gratification, even with just one life-long partner, and look at the divine picture of it.
, American religious figure. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
This is the title of one of the great hymns of the last century, written in the USA in early twenties, and made popular in Britain through Billy Graham crusade of 1954, which my dad was involved in. It’s now the fourth most popular hymn in the UK. Written by Thomas Chisolm, a Methodist minister from Kentucky, it first gained popularity by being frequently
Moody Bible Institute (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
used on the radio station of the Moody Bible Institute, set to music by William Runyan. George Beverly Shea sang the hymn on the radio and then, as lead singer at Billy Graham’s rallies, helped to popularise it across America. The opening verse is directly based on scriptural affirmations of the Almighty. Lamentations 3.22 and 33 proclaim that ’his compassions fail not. New every morning they are great: great is thy faithfulness’ and James (1:17) declares that ‘every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.’
Jumping Jehoshaphat! – Son of David, King of Judah
Who was he and why was he jumping?!
To begin with, he was faithful and obedient, like his father:
See 2 Chronicles, 17: 3-9.
He sent out teachers to train his people in faithfulness to the one true God, tearing down the totem poles of Baal.
However, he then he entered a military alliance with Ahab, King of Israel, against God’s will – with disastrous results; God wasn’t best-pleased with him!
Naturally, he became anxious when his enemies, already having wiped out Ahab, approached – very jumpy! All the enemies of Israel and Judah had come together in a huge show of strength. So Jehoshaphat went to the Temple and made a very public plea to God for help. God’s response is an amazing illustration of faithfulness, communicated to the people through one of the Levites, Jahaziel, who prophesies to them, and then by Jehoshaphat himself, who ordered men to sing songs of praise to God’s enduring love at the head of his army:
2 Chronicles, 20: 1-30. Try reading the account in stages:
vv 1-13:
Later the Moabites, Ammonites and some Meunites came to start a war with Jehosaphat. Messengers came and told him, “A large army is coming against you from Edom, from the other side of the Dead Sea. They are already in Hazazon Tamar!” Jehoshaphat was afraid, so he decided to ask the Lord what to do. He announced that no one in Judah should eat during this special time of prayer to God. The people of Judah came together to ask the Lord for help; they came from every town in Judah.
The people of Judah and Jerusalem met in front of the new courtyard in the Temple of the Lord. Then Jehoshaphat stood up , and he said….
Imagine and describe the setting, the atmosphere and mood of the people. Imagine yourself as an Israelite (vv 3-4). What are you feeling?
Perhaps a bit like the men, women and children of Rohan, in J R R Tolkien‘s ‘Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers’, under siege at Helm’s Deep by the hosts of Mordor, waiting for their king, Theoden to do something dramatic…
Jehoshaphat’s Prayer (vv 6-12). On what basis does he appeal for help?
“Lord, God of our ancestors, you are the God in heaven. You rule over all the kingdoms of the nations. You have power and strength, so no one can stand against you. Our God, you forced out the people who lived in this land as your people Israel moved in. And you gave this land for ever to the descendants of your friend Abraham. They lived in this land and built a Temple for you. They said, ‘if trouble comes upon us, or war, or punishment, sickness or hunger, we will stand before you and before this Temple where you have chosen to be worshipped. We will call out to you when we are in trouble. Then you will hear and save us.’
“But now here are men from Ammon, Moab and Edom. You wouldn’t let the Israelites enter their lands when they came from Egypt. So the Israelites turned away and did not destroy them. But see how they repay us for not destroying them! They have come to force us out of your land, which you gave to us as our own. Our God, punish those people. We have no power against this large army that is attacking us. We don’t know what to do, so we look to you for help.”
How would his view of God encourage the people to trust in God?
vv 14-19:
God’s response (via Jahaziel), filled with the Holy Spirit . How would the prophet’s words have required faith from the people?
vv 14-17:
All the men of Judah stood before the Lord with their babies, wives and children. Then the Spirit of the Lord entered Jahaziel, Zechariah’s son…a Levite and a descendent of Asaph (who) stood up in the meeting. He said, “Listen to me, King Jehosaphat and all you people living in Judah and Jerusalem.The Lord says this to you; ‘Don’t be afraid or discouraged because of this large army. The battle is not your battle, it is God’s. Tomorrow go down there and fight those people. They will come up through the pass of Ziz. You will find them at the end of the ravine that leads to the Desert of Jeruel. You won’t need to fight in this battle. Just stand strong in your places and you will see the Lord save you. . Judah and Jerusalem, don’t be afraid or discouraged because the Lord is with you. So go out against those people tomorrow.’
What evidence is there that the people believed his message?
vv 18-20:
Jehoshaphat bowed face down on the ground. All the people of Judah and Jerusalem bowed down before the Lord and worshipped him. Then some Levites came from the Kohathite and Korahite people stood up and praised the Lord, the God of Israel, with very loud voices.
Jehoshaphat’s army went out into the Desert of Tekoa early in the morning . As they were starting out, Jehoshaphat stood and said, “Listen to me, people of Judah and Jerusalem. Have faith in the Lord your God and you will stand strong. Have faith in the prophets, and you will succeed.”
How would you have felt if you’d come looked over the desert towards the vast army?
vv 21-23:
Jehoshaphat listened to the people’s advice. Then he chose men to be singers to the Lord, to praise him because he is holy and wonderful. As they marched in front of the army , they said, “Thank the Lord, because his love endures for ever.”
As they began to sing and praise God, the Lord set ambushes for the people of Ammon, Moab and Edom who had come to attack Judah. And they were defeated. The Ammonites and Moabites attacked the Edomites, destroying them completely. After they had killed the Edomites, they killed each other.
Have you ever praised God in the middle of a problem – BEFORE an answer came? Apparently, this is what Cromwell’s troops did when they went into battle against their King in the English Civil War. They didn’t just put their trust in the Lord, they didn’t just pray, they kept their powder dry and sang psalms of praise.
How were the people affected by God’s faithfulness?
vv 24-30:
When the men from Judah came to a place where they could see the desert, the looked at the enemy’s large army. But they only saw dead bodies lying on the ground; no one had escaped. When Jehoshaphat and his army came to take their valuables, they found many supplies, much clothing and other valuable things. There was more than they could carry away; there was so much it took three days to gather it all. On the fourth day Jehoshaphat and his army met in the valley of Beracah and praised the Lord. That is why the place is called ‘Beracah’, or the ‘Valley of Praise’ to this day.
Then Jehoshaphat led all the men from Judah and Jerusalem back to Jerusalem. The Lord had made them happy because their enemies were defeated. They entered Jerusalem with harps, lyres and trumpets and went to the Temple of the Lord.
When all the kingdoms of the lands around them heard how the Lord had fought Israel’s enemies, they feared God. So Jehoshaphat’s kingdom was not at war. His God gave him peace from all the countries around him.
What can we learn about faithfulness from the example of Jehoshaphat and the people of Judah from this passage?
At the end of the story, Jehoshaphat was jumping with joy! Have you ever experienced this as a result of God’s faithfulness to you?
How does God’s faithfulness to us affect the way we treat others?
How can we grow in faithfulness to God and others?
The Eric Liddell story – ’he who honours me, I will honour’:
The 1981 Oscar-winning British film, ‘Chariots of Fire’ commemorated the achievements of this runner, known as ‘the Flying Scotsman’, before and at the 1924 Olympics. There is a scene which depicts the true story of how Liddell fell in a 400 metre international race and made up a 20-metre deficit to win.
Another scene from the film shows Eric Liddell preaching on a passage from Hebrews, to the crowds who stayed to hear him after one of his races. He compares Faith to running in a race, and asks ‘where does the power come from to see the race to its end?’ He answers, ‘from within…If you commit yourself to the love of Christ, then that is how you run the straight race.’
Later, at the Paris Olympics, he refuses to run in the 400m heats on a Sunday, and when he is handed the chance to run in the 200m instead, he is also handed a piece of paper by one of the American athletes with a quotation from 1 Samuel on it, ‘he who honours me, I will honour.’ A true story. Not just Hollywood, and he wins the race.
Hebrews 12.1: ’Let us run with patience the race which is set before us. Let us keep our eyes fixed upon Jesus, on whom our faith depends from beginning to end…’
This verse from Hebrews is well known in English as the basis for the verse of a hymn written by J S B Monsell (1811-75). Born in Ireland, he believed that Anglicans were ‘too distant and reserved’ in their praises. He wrote over 300 hymns, many of them set to joyous and bouncy tunes, still popular with young people, like this one:
Run the straight race through God’s good grace,
Lift up thine eyes and seek his face;
Life with its way before thee lies,
Christ is the path and Christ the prize.
Our faithfulness needs to be a reflection of God’s faithfulness, the shining prize set before us, which also lights our path. Liddell certainly remained faithful. He returned to China, where he was born, as a missionary and died in a Japanese Prisoner of War camp. Being faithful requires action on our part, whether it be fasting, praising, running, jumping or praying! But then we need to submit and subject ourselves to God’s will and purpose for our lives, just as Jehoshaphat did.
Pray about the things you need to give up to God’s control in your lives… in the coming weeks and months… as you look out for heroic acts of faithfulness at the 2012 London Olympics and Paralympics!
‘Cruel to be kind’ was an expression I used to hear a lot as a child. Not so much in my own home, the manse, but certainly at school and occasionally at church. It was sometimes accompanied by the first part of the proverb, ‘spare the rod…(and spoil the child.’) It used to puzzle me then, and it puzzles me even more now. I think it was Martin Luther King who wrote that the ends never justify the means, but the means are always inherent in the ends. Oliver Cromwell’s ‘cruel necessity’, the execution of Charles Stuart, ‘that man of blood’, found guilty of tyranny and war crimes against his own people was, for others, a brutal act of regicide, making the Stuart King a martyr for his divine right to rule. There was nothing ‘necessary’ about it, but, of necessity, it led to a brutal dictatorship which only ended with the restoration of the Stuart monarchy and the reaffirmation of its ‘divine right’ to rule.
In British society, the idea that stoicism can only be taught through suffering has, thankfully been replaced, but the idea which has replaced it also seems to have its limitations. Whereas generosity characterised much of British behaviour in the war-time generation, more recently it has seemed that the prevailing wisdom is that it isn’t ‘cool to be kind.’ The most popular situation comedies of recent years have used ‘dark humour’ if not ‘black comedy’ to portray the long-suffering character of the British in sit-coms. To be successful over five series, the character of Edmund Blackadder needed a ‘butt’ to kick sideways in the mis-shapen turnip-nosed Baldrick, who was never given a Christian name except for ‘Sodoff’, because that was what the other children in the playground told him to do! Tony Robinson’s character became the perfect ‘foil’ for the hapless Blackadder, with Baldrick taking on all the blame for Rowan Atkinson‘s woes. The only time that Blackadder speaks to Baldrick without a barbed remark is at the end of the last series when they all face the ultimate cruelty of going ‘over the top’ into the barbed wire together. ‘Cool to be cruel’ often seems to be the basis of a lot of British humour, both on screen and of, so that we are encouraged to laugh at latter-day clown figures, rather than with them, or through their suffering.
Even Christians in Britain, though generous in deed towards the poor and the sick, often seem to find it difficult to affirm each other in Church. Non-Christians have sometimes misinterpreted what may be traditional ‘reserve’ for coldness, even cruelty. Occasionally, preachers seem to regard it more important to make fun of themselves, or to gently mock others, rather than to express a kind word to their congregations. Perhaps they worry that they might be seen as courting popularity rather than confronting truths. But it concerns me greatly when I read in the social media that Christians are seen as going to Church because we think we’re better than others and that we then carry on behaving badly towards others at work or more broadly in our six-day lives.
One such social media site is called ’Random Acts of Kindness’, giving suggestions and examples as to how we might improve the atmosphere around us by helping others. The site asks, ‘what acts have you encountered recently?’ When I read this, often nothing springs very readily to mind. Even more difficult to bring to mind are specific acts of kindness I might have performed for others, whether pre-medidated or spontaneous. The latter are generally more prevalent, which is perhaps as things should be, but I wonder if, sometmes, I don’t actually block the flow of God’s kindness into my life by not being more pro-active in identifying need in others.
The anger of Saul with David. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The early chapters of 2 Samuel give us an interesting comparison and contrast in their pen-portraits of Saul and David as early Kings of Israel and Judah. Saul allows jealousy, envy and bitterness to block the flow of kindness, twice tries to kill David. Jonathan, Saul’s eldest by his only wife (1 Sam 14:49-50), comes to David’s rescue, out of friendship and loyalty…and also perhaps because he realises that his father is mentally ill and will destroy himself by destroying David.
2 Samuel is a ’history’ book about David; 1 Sam is about the transition to monarchy under Saul, picking up from ’Judges’ in which the continual attacks on the Hebrews from surrounding tribes make the people ask for king (as a necessity, NOT as an ideal form of government, you’ll notice). David is a shepherd boy, youngest of eight sons of Jesse, a skilled musician and composer. The second book begins in civil war after Saul’s death in battle and ends with the rivalry of David’s sons over the succession. David establishes Jerusalem as capital, Solomon succeeds him (1 Kings) and builds the Temple; the kingdom is then split in two under Rehoboam, King of Israel (the ten tribes in North) and Judah (the two in south). This is ‘His’ story told from special point of view – God’s plan at work in the Jewish nation. It is therefore highly selective and deliberately biased, as much history is. However, this is NOT legend or mythology, nor is it propaganda – its reliabity is testified to contemporary documents and archaeology, in addition to older wrtings, records, and genealogies. Looking forward, Jesus is seen as David’s descendant, the ‘Messiah’ (Hebrew), ‘Christ’ (Greek), or ’anointed one.’ Just as a king or queen is anointed. It’s no ‘fluke’ that the oldest crown jewel in Britain, is also one of the smallest – the anointing spoon, with which the Archbishop of Canterbury anoints the monarch as s/he turns to the High Altar. The Coronation anthem, Handel’s ‘ Zadok the Priest’ reminds us of 2 Samuel 8:17, in which the High Priest appointed by Solomon helps to bring the Ark of the Covenant back to Jerusalem (1 Ki 2:26-35).
“Death of King Saul”, 1848 by Elie Marcuse (Germany and France, 1817-1902) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
At the beginning of 2 Samuel, David returns to Ziklag following his victory over the Amalekites, a nomadic tribe who lived in the desert south of Judah. They had been at continual war with the Israelites from the time of the exodus. A survivor of Saul’s defeat at the Battle at Mount Gilboa by the Philistines arrives with the news of the death of the king and his three sons, including Jonathan. He is an Amalekite, and therefore tells lies in saying that he agreed to Saul’s request to kill him before the Philistines captured him (in fact, Saul fell on his own sword), thinking David would be pleased. However, since he has killed ’the Lord’s anointed’, David has him killed. He then writes an elegy for Saul and Jonathan which includes the following verse:
’How the mighty have fallen in battle! Jonathan lies slain on your heights. I grieve for you, Jonathan my brother; you were very dear to me. Your love for me was wonderful, more wonderful than that of women.’
When Saul’s remaining son is murdered, David has his murderers killed. He is then made king, first by the tribes of Judah and then by the whole of Israel. He makes a ’contract’ or ’covenant’ with them, and is anointed king at the age of thirty, reigning for forty years in all. He begins with a series of victories over the Philistines. Then the Ark of the Covenant is brought to Jerusalem.
What kind of king is Jesus compared with his ancestor? His entry to Jerusalem is not on warhorse, with soldiers, but on a donkey, with children and pilgrims. Power struggles among the leaders of Israel had allowed Rome to take control in 63 B.C., and rulers like Herod ‘the Great’ were anything but that, for they were approved and appointed by Rome. They were not seen as ’anointed’ by God and weren’t popular with the people. They therefore used methods of terror to keep control, and savagely put down any support for alternative authorities, such as prophets and ’messiahs’.
By contrast, in his relationship with Jonathan, David shows great faithfulness, giving his commitment to Jonathan’s descendants, something unusual for a king to do, upholding another king’s dynasty, which was normally seen as a threat and banished (at the very least).
But David determined to end the feuding as well as keep his promise never to ’cut off his kindness’ from Jonathan’s family. (1 Sam 20, vv 15, 42). He also makes the same promise to Saul, on oath, even after Saul tries to kill him (1 Sam 24: 20-22). Even after Saul loses God’s favour, David treats him with respect and even spares his life (’from evildoers come evil deeds’). David only takes lives ’in cold blood’ where justice is served, despite brutality of the times.
Did David keep his promise?
Read 2 Samuel 9:
David asked, ’Is there anyone still left of the house of Saul to whom I can show kindness for Jonathan’s sake?’
Now there was a servant of Saul’s household named Ziba. They called him to appear before David, and the king said to him, ’Are you Ziba?’
’Your servant,’ he replied.
The king asked, ’Is there no-one still left of the house of Saul to whom I can show God’s kindness?’
Ziba answered the king, ’There is still a son of Jonathan; he is crippled in both feet.’
’Where is he?’, the king asked.
Ziba answered, ’He is at the house of Makir son of Ammiel, in Lo Debar.’
So King David had him brought from Lo Debar, from the house of Makir son of Ammiel.
When Mephibosheth, son of Jonathan, the son of Saul, came to David, he bowed down to pay him honour.
David said, ’Mephibosheth!’
’Your servant,’ he replied.
’Don’t be afraid,’ David said to him, ’for I will surely show you kindness for the sake of your father Jonathan. I will restore to you all the land that belonged to your grandfather Saul, and you will always eat at my table.’
Mephishobeth bowed down and said, ’What is your servant, that you should notice a dead dog like me?’
Then the King summoned Ziba, Saul’s servant, and said to him, ’I have given your master’s grandson everything that belonged to Saul and his family. You and your sons and your servants are to farm the land for him and bring in the crops, so that your master’s grandson may be provided for. And Mephishobeth, grandson of your master, will always eat at my table.’ (Now Ziba had fifteen sons and twenty servants.)
Then Ziba said to the king, ’Your servant will do whatever my lord the king commands his servant to do.’ So Mephishobeth ate at David’s table like one of the king’s sons.
Mephishobeth had a young son named Mica, and all the members of Ziba’s household were servants of Mephishobeth. And Mephishobeth lived in Jerusalem, because he always ate at the king’s table, and he was crippled in both feet.
(New International Version)
1. What characteristics of David stand out?
He shows respect for Saul and Jonathan, behaving honourably, wanting to show God’s ’exceptional kindness’, or ’grace’, towards them. It includes forgiveness.
2. What steps did David have to take to find Mephibosheth?
Ziba, Saul’s servant was sent to find Mephishobeth in Lo Debar. Wherever this was, it was a considerable distance from Judah.
3. What reasons might David have had for not being kind to Mephibosheth?
His disability – because he was dropped by his nurse, (2 Sam 4). Also because his his uncle, Ish-Bosheth, had been made king over large part of Israel, while David was king of Judah only for first 7 years, so there had been a bitter civil war between the House of Saul and the House of David. It wasn’t just that Saul had tried to kill him, but that many ’brothers’ had died in the War. David’s actions remind me of how Henry Tudor united the Houses of York and Lancaster through marriage and the symbol of the Tudor Rose, combining the red rose of Lancashire with the white rose of Yorkshire, whilst at the same time dealing harshly with ‘pretenders’ to the throne.
4. What was David’s kindness based on?
On his love for Jonathan, on his promise made to him; on his forgiveness for House of Saul and on his promise to Saul.
5. In what specific, practical ways did David show kindness to Mephibosheth?
The way he greeted him, as Jonathan’s son, with enthusiasm, though they had never met; the granting of Saul’s land, the settling of Ziba’s family to farm the land; the protection of him at the Royal Court in Jerusalem (as a disabled person he was unable to defend himself and his lands directly, but his position at court enables him to have a son and therefore continue the House of Saul.)
6. What thoughts or feelings do you think Mephibosheth had when called before David?
As last surviving member, he probably feared for his life, especially after having fled before uncle’s murder by men at his own court, even though David had executed the men responsible, which he may not have known.
7. What would he have felt as he heard the words contained in verse 7?
Mightily relieved? Reconciled, recognised, restored and reaffirmed. No longer a refugee. Justified by the Restitution of his family.
A Hymn/ Psalm:
Praise my Soul
The King of Heaven
To his feet
My tribute bring
Ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven,
Who like me his praise would sing.
The Challenge:
Think of those who have been especially kind to you. How have you been blessed by their kindness?
How can you repay their kindnesses? How can you affirm and encourage them?
What is an affirmation? How can we make one?
It’s not simply a general, positive statement, but a promise to do something specific for someone.
Christians have been showered with blessings from the King. Can you count your blessings while you may? There are two great songs, one British and the other a Salvation Army chorus, popular in the USA, which charge us with doing just this:
Count Your Blessings (#1; British):
Count your blessings one by one,
When dawn appears and day has just begun.
They will light your heart with happiness,
Make each hour bright
And bring you gladness.
Count your blessings one by one,
When twilight falls and toil of day is done,
And in sweet dreams they’ll come again to you,
If you will count your blessings
Each day through.
Count your blessings while you may,
For we are here but little time to stay.
All around are hearts sincere and true,
Lovely things abound just waiting for you.
Count your blessings while you may,
For big or small, whichever come your way.
For then you’ll find this world a place of love,
If you will count your blessings from above.
Count Your Blessings #2 (American):
Chorus:
Count your many blessings, name them one by one.
Count your many blessings, see what God has done.
Count your blessings, name them one by one,
And it will surprise you, what the Lord has done.
When upon life’s billows you are tempest-tossed,
When you are discouraged, thinking all is lost,
Count your many blessings, name them one by one,
And it will surprise you, what the Lord has done.
Are you ever burdened with a load of care?
Does the cross seem heavy you are called to bear?
Count your every blessing and each doubt will fly,
And you will be singing as the days go by.
When you look at others, with their lands and gold,
Think that Christ has promised you his wealth untold.
Count your many blessings; wealth can never buy
Your reward in heaven, nor your home on high.
So, amid the conflict, whether great or small,
Do not be disheartened, God is over all.
Count your many blessings, angels will attend,
Help and comfort give you till your journey’s end.
I’m not good at ‘blowing my own trumpet’, so they tell me. I’m too shy. The British aren’t generally good at it. We have a reputation for ‘reserve’, which we perhaps deserve! Though I can think of some Kings and Prime Ministers who haven’t done too badly at it blowing their own trumpets, our current Queen doesn’t like being the centre of attention, so a four-day event to mark her sixty years as monarch is not, as she sees it, for herself, but for her people.
In its origins, the word ‘Jubilee‘ has nothing to do with monarchy. The word was ‘coined’ when Moses received ‘the Law’, long before God reluctantly agreed to let the Hebrews anoint an earthly king to rule over them. Every fiftieth year in Israel was to be a year when the trumpet was, quite literally, blown, to proclaim Liberty to all Israelites who were slaves and the restoration of ancestral property. The land was to remain fallow (Leviticus 25). There is doubt as to whether these laws were ever seriously kept, but the spirit of them was honoured, especially in the way David treated the family of Saul and Jonathan (2 Samuel), as well as in the story of Naomi and Ruth. Kinship ties were very closely related to property-holding for rich and poor alike, and there were strict rules about the buying and selling of land:
“The land must not be sold permanently, because the land is mine and you are but aliens and my tenants. Throughout the country that you hold as a possession, you must provide for the redemption of the land.” (Lev 25:23).
“If one of your countrymen becomes poor and is unable to support himself among you, help him as you would an alien or a temporary resident, so that he can continue to live among you. Do not take interest of any kind from him, but fear your God, so that your countryman may continue to live among you. You must not lend him money interest or sell him food at a profit. I am the Lord your God, that brought you out of the land of Egypt to give you the land of Canaan and to be your God.
“If one of your countrymen becomes poor among you and sells himself to you, do not make him work as a slave. He is to be treated as a hired worker or a temporary resident among you: he is to work for you until the year of the Jubilee. Then he and his children are to be released, and he will go back to his own kin and to the property of his forefathers. Because the Israelites are my servants, whom I brought out of Egypt, they must not be sold as slaves. Do not rule over them ruthlessly, but fear your God.” (Lev 25: 35-42)
The true meaning of Jubilee is that we each have a ‘stake’ in our land, not as permanent owners, because the earth is the Lord’s and we are merely tenants. Even the Queen. Even though we may sell our labour, we are not slaves, and can never be made so by our fellow countrymen. We are all subjects of the Queen, and she is subject to God, as we are. She is the ‘chief’ stake-holder in the land, whose role is to maintain the Liberty of her subjects. Just by being there, she does that. We know that she would not give her assent to any Law which threatened this Liberty, though it has always been enough for her to exercise this power without having to invoke her authority. So, even if some of her subjects would still like to replace her as Head of State and Governor of the Church, we can all still celebrate the past sixty years of Liberty, especially when we look back to the threats posed to it in the troubled sixteen years of her father’s reign. Britons will never surrender to slavery! Amen.
Nicholas Kaldor, Baron Kaldor (12 May 1908 – 30 September 1986), pictured right, born Káldor Miklós in Hungary, was a Cambridge economist in the post-war period. He developed the “compensation” criteria called Kaldor–Hicks efficiency for welfare comparisons (1939), derived the cobweb model, and argued for certain regularities observable in economic growth, which are called Kaldor’s growth laws.
Introduction:
Andrew James 
You must be logged in to post a comment.