Indo-UK News and Discussion - April 2013

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fanne
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Re: Indo-UK News and Discussion - April 2013

Post by fanne »

I think we made a mistake on Aug 15 1947 then, we let go lots of great english speaking people (not only in parliament but outside!!, I heard even General Dayer ordered in English - Fire not maro, and these guys make unnecessary issue of such an issue out of Jaliawala Bagh!!). Wait a minute, I heard Chacha was also a great speaker in English so maybe it was not a mistake. Well 2014 election certainly is, we voted out a Oxford educated, sauve English speaking (or not speaking) guy with someone, who does not speak English!!
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Re: Indo-UK News and Discussion - April 2013

Post by Vayutuvan »

<deleted a bunch of weird stuff that does not belong in an open fora. Informal warning>
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Re: Indo-UK News and Discussion - April 2013

Post by Haresh »

Have these talking heads ever actually done any real work?
Do they have any real life experience of what the live of ordinary common people in India are like?

I saw an interview with this mani shankar on TV and he came across as an arrogant, privilaged, know it all who thoght the world owed him respect.
I did some research on google and he wrote in Outlook India "Democracy in America apparantly means the right of the lower orders to be rude to their social superiors"
http://www.outlookindia.com/article/Ame ... ary/281668

And he describes himself as a socialist/communist does he!!!!!

I have met some of these types and they were all congress types and all descibed them selves as "socialists" and "Arya Samajists". The reality was they were lazy, incompetent, privliaged and not very intelligent.

I used to wonder why Indians thrive outside of India but are held back in India, I know now. Congress socialist? I don't think so. These types actually make me sick.
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Re: Indo-UK News and Discussion - April 2013

Post by JE Menon »

I'm told Modi has, in requesting people to help promote the clean India campaign, named Tharoor among others. I am currently in an area where TV from India is not available, so maybe someone can keep an eye out. If he has specifically named Tharoor, it will be something to note.

Haresh, MSA is a total twat - I personally see no redeeming feature.
Tharoor is a different kettle of fish - faux pas like Cattle Class, etc. notwithstanding.
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Re: Indo-UK News and Discussion - April 2013

Post by Haresh »

He should also invite MSA, rahul the prince, and the Italian waitress.
My poor family in India as well as all the other poor have had to carry these parasites on the shoulders for years. :(

How do they contribute anything? They just suck on people like leeches
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Re: Indo-UK News and Discussion - April 2013

Post by Sagar G »

Go to his twitter account there are a host of people whom he has invited for the campaign. Aamir Khan was their on stage for the launch of the programme. I am told that Aamir Khan did a lot of anti modi talk during one of his Satyamev Jayate show. So don't read too much into this, Modi is simply engaging them till they are talking positively about him else he will give it back to them as and when required as he has done before.

PM Narendra Modi invites Sachin Tendulkar, Salman Khan and 7 other luminaries to join 'Clean India' campaign
In this regard, he announced the names of Goa Governor Mridula Sinha, Bharat Ratna Sachin Tendulkar, yoga guru Baba Ramdev, actor Kamal Haasan, Congress leader Shashi Tharoor, actress Priyanka Chopra, actor Salman Khan, business honcho Anil Ambani and the team of Tarak Mehta Ka Oolta Chashma.
Image
chaanakya
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Re: Indo-UK News and Discussion - April 2013

Post by chaanakya »

JE Menon wrote:I'm told Modi has, in requesting people to help promote the clean India campaign, named Tharoor among others. I am currently in an area where TV from India is not available, so maybe someone can keep an eye out. If he has specifically named Tharoor, it will be something to note.

Haresh, MSA is a total twat - I personally see no redeeming feature.
Tharoor is a different kettle of fish - faux pas like Cattle Class, etc. notwithstanding.

Yes he specifically named Tharoor. Rajeev Shukla has already questioned why only Tharoor was named and not other congi. :D
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Re: Indo-UK News and Discussion - April 2013

Post by chetak »

chaanakya wrote:
JE Menon wrote:I'm told Modi has, in requesting people to help promote the clean India campaign, named Tharoor among others. I am currently in an area where TV from India is not available, so maybe someone can keep an eye out. If he has specifically named Tharoor, it will be something to note.

Haresh, MSA is a total twat - I personally see no redeeming feature.
Tharoor is a different kettle of fish - faux pas like Cattle Class, etc. notwithstanding.

Yes he specifically named Tharoor. Rajeev Shukla has already questioned why only Tharoor was named and not other congi. :D

Difficult to get them out of tihar where most congis seem to be headed??

Also tharoor may have compromised to wrangle his way out of some recent difficulties concerning his wife and he may have become useful in the back channel with the pukis .
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Re: Indo-UK News and Discussion - April 2013

Post by KLP Dubey »

chaanakya wrote:Yes he specifically named Tharoor. Rajeev Shukla has already questioned why only Tharoor was named and not other congi. :D
Somebody please tweet this to the Qyoon's representative in TVM: "eDo TharoorE choolu piDikkyaDA ! Modi-saar paranjadANu". (abbe tharoor jhadu pakad, Modi-sahib ne kaha hai). :rotfl: Bugger has a chance to do a honest day's work for a change.
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Re: Indo-UK News and Discussion - April 2013

Post by Vadivel »

HOW PRIVATIZATION SCREWED OVER BRITAIN, ACCORDING TO AUTHOR JAMES MEEK

http://www.vice.com/read/how-corporatio ... profit-921
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Re: Indo-UK News and Discussion - April 2013

Post by Vayutuvan »

<deleted - wrong thread I gass. Did not realize that it is an open forum what with all the propping up of a English speaking burra saheb - mai mistique>
Last edited by Vayutuvan on 04 Oct 2014 00:07, edited 1 time in total.
Aditya_V
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Re: Indo-UK News and Discussion - April 2013

Post by Aditya_V »

pandyan wrote:Kamal and JJ dont go well together....especially during vishwaroopam movie release JJ caused all kinds of problems.
All she did was allow TMMK and their ilk who Kamal loved soo much to show their true colors. If she acted against them she would have been "communal, DMK and Kamal himself would have protested against her. So I think his grievance is wrong.
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Re: Indo-UK News and Discussion - April 2013

Post by Philip »

Watch it beer lovers if you're attending the Oktoberfest! This is what happened to a poor Brit.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 63113.html
British man raped while urinating in bushes at Oktoberfest beer festival in Germany
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Re: Indo-UK News and Discussion - April 2013

Post by shyam »

habal wrote:Where I agree with JEM, is that for all his failings Tharoor is the only erudite, effective & capable parliamentarian who has ever emerged out of Kerala.
Sorry to disagree. That credit goes to V K Krishna Menon. People may discredit him for 1962 debacle, but if you watch his overseas interviews, you will realize that he was a very strong nationalist with high caliber.
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Re: Indo-UK News and Discussion - April 2013

Post by kancha »

‘Top Gear’ crew flees Argentina after cars stoned
The host of the popular BBC television program "Top Gear" and other members of the crew have fled Argentina after being pelted with rocks by people who believed one of their cars had a license plate alluding to the Falklands War.
The "Top Gear" crew was using three cars, one of them a Porsche bearing the license plate "H982 FKL," which some Argentines believed was a reference to the brief but bloody 1982 war in which the country tried and failed to capture the islands held by Britain.
:twisted:
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Re: Indo-UK News and Discussion - April 2013

Post by pankajs »

Of all the places Londonistan to welcome Modi and that too to install Gandhi's statue!!! What has the world come to hanji?

http://www.business-standard.com/articl ... 048_1.html

Gandhi, Modi & the politics in London celebrating the 'unwelcome'
Two Indian men, derided, despised and generally made to feel unwelcome in Britain, will be feted and celebrated in London next year.

The British are falling over themselves to secure approval of the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) for Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to the UK. The date they are looking for is January 30, the day Mahatma Gandhi was martyred 66 years ago. The occasion is the unveiling of a statue of the Mahatma - whom former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had once mockingly described as a half-naked fakir - at prestigious Parliament Square, outside the Palace of Westminster.

Though the plans to put up Gandhi's statue were announced by UK chancellor George Osborne and foreign secretary William Hague some time ago, the date is crucial. The UK is to have elections in May 2015 and the statue will come in handy to move persons of Indian origin to vote for the party trying hard to get it installed. And, if the man to unveil the statue is Modi, politicians reckon, the party will be a shoo-in for victory.

Osborne, when he announced the plan to put up a statue, the second in London - there is already a bust of Gandhi's at London's Tavistock Square - said: "As the father of the largest democracy in the world, it is time Gandhi took his place in front of the mother of Parliaments. He is a figure of inspiration, not just in Britain and India but around the world."

Gandhi will be sharing the space with Jan Smuts and Nelson Mandela, the South African leaders who were on two sides of the segregation fence, as well as Churchill and many others. There are only a handful of foreigners whose statues have been erected at Parliament Square, one of the most prized parks in London. The statue has been designed and executed by Philip Jackson, a British sculptor.

For Modi, too, the unveiling will be important. Riding on the back of the offer are the votes of 400,000 British Gujaratis, who live in and around London. Gujaratis are the second-largest section of the Indian immigrant population in Britain.

It was the Labour Party that froze relations with Modi in the wake of the Gujarat riots in 2002, in which several British Gujaratis died, including former Indian MP Ehsan Jafri (who became a British citizen :eek: and whose wife, Zakia, led a relentless battle against the state government, charging it and the chief minister with having reneged on responsibility in controlling the riots). Although Britain resumed relations with Modi later, with High Commissioner James Bevan meeting him in 2013, there continues to be a degree of awkwardness in dealing with him. Members of Parliament there believe that feeling will be washed away by the single act of inviting him to unveil Gandhi's statue.

The Indian government is still turning the offer over in its mind. The reason: The January 26 Republic Day festivities will barely have ended when it would be time for Modi to travel to London. But, whatever the timing, there is no denying that inauguration of Gandhi's statue by Modi will be a moment of quiet satisfaction for much of India.
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Re: Indo-UK News and Discussion - April 2013

Post by chetak »

^^^^^^^^^^^

I am sure that poor old winston must be turning over in his grave. Imagine!! the half naked fakir, out side his parliament. The sun has truly set on the empire.

Good show, MKG.
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Re: Indo-UK News and Discussion - April 2013

Post by pankajs »

That is only half of the story saar ji. Think of our oxford educated sickulars, who have demonized Modi, having to see Modi go to their second home and unveil the statute of MKG in front of the so called "mother of Parliaments".
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Re: Indo-UK News and Discussion - April 2013

Post by chetak »

pankajs wrote:That is only half of the story saar ji. Think of our oxford educated sickulars, who have demonized Modi, having to see Modi go to their second home and unveil the statute of MKG in front of the so called "mother of Parliaments".
The crowned "democracy" onlee.

goras, hold out begging bowls and lining up to receive Modi.
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Re: Indo-UK News and Discussion - April 2013

Post by member_28797 »

I wished they installed someone else's statue haven't we had enough of Gandhi? Putting on a statue of Bhagat Singh would be better IMVHO onlee
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Re: Indo-UK News and Discussion - April 2013

Post by Hitesh »

I am in a debate on another forum where one defender of the British Raj was arguing that the British would have granted Dominion status to India in the 1930s if it wasn't for WWII and would have granted dominion status, thereby giving rights, freedom, etc other bovine fecal matter.

Do you have any sources or links which completely rebuts this above argument and show it to be a complete myth? Was Britain going to grant democracy and freedom on its own to India?

How credible is this? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montagu%E2 ... rd_Reforms

Do you have any links where Churchill in 1945 did not want to let go of India? What about Clement Attlee?
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Re: Indo-UK News and Discussion - April 2013

Post by vishvak »

narendranaik wrote:I wished they installed someone else's statue haven't we had enough of Gandhi? Putting on a statue of Bhagat Singh would be better IMVHO onlee
Yes, sir. Install statues of Bhagat Singh and give back treasures looted from India. Including, of course, the Kohinoor.

Since we share special relationship with the Brits, we need to get our treasures, gold, Kohinoor back. Win-win only in very civilized manner.
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Re: Indo-UK News and Discussion - April 2013

Post by chetak »

vishvak wrote:
narendranaik wrote:I wished they installed someone else's statue haven't we had enough of Gandhi? Putting on a statue of Bhagat Singh would be better IMVHO onlee
Yes, sir. Install statues of Bhagat Singh and give back treasures looted from India. Including, of course, the Kohinoor.

Since we share special relationship with the Brits, we need to get our treasures, gold, Kohinoor back. Win-win only in very civilized manner.
The UKstan will install what they want. Installing MKG is an act of humiliation for them and good for us. Inauguration by Modi is the cherry on top. mucho khujli in peaceful peoples in pukistan and ukstan, not to mention India.
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Re: Indo-UK News and Discussion - April 2013

Post by chetak »

vishvak wrote:
narendranaik wrote:I wished they installed someone else's statue haven't we had enough of Gandhi? Putting on a statue of Bhagat Singh would be better IMVHO onlee
Yes, sir. Install statues of Bhagat Singh and give back treasures looted from India. Including, of course, the Kohinoor.

Since we share special relationship with the Brits, we need to get our treasures, gold, Kohinoor back. Win-win only in very civilized manner.
What special relationship?? The fakers stole from us.

unless you are talking about the maculayputras/putris stockholm syndrome...
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Re: Indo-UK News and Discussion - April 2013

Post by vishvak »

Installation of Gandhi statue on the day he was killed by Nathuram Godse seems to be the message here, by the way, not on the day of Indian independence (when PM will be in Dilli), or quit India or dandi march against the salt tax. The British indulged wholeheartedly in loot, wars, famines and at the end in chaotic partition but now tend to focus on a particular moment onlee.
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Re: Indo-UK News and Discussion - April 2013

Post by member_28797 »

The only special relationship is that of us Indians being king but pretending to be beggars and briturds being beggars pretending to be king. London should be really down on the priority list of Modi. It's a good for nothing country that got rich through piracy and colonization. Now that the empire is gone, it's nothing more than an american poodle, not very different from Canada.
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Re: Indo-UK News and Discussion - April 2013

Post by vivek.rao »

There was a twitter image of Bank of England with picture showing treasure of gold stolen from Indian temples nearly $3 T? Any truth to that?
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Re: Indo-UK News and Discussion - April 2013

Post by member_28797 »

vivek.rao wrote:There was a twitter image of Bank of England with picture showing treasure of gold stolen from Indian temples nearly $3 T? Any truth to that?
Probably is, the annual loot from India during colonization was about one million pounds mostly in gold, silver and other precious metals/jewels. Add to that tons of indigo and timber transported from India to turdistan for constructing railway lines, ships, houses etc.

I won't be surprised if it indeed is.
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Re: Indo-UK News and Discussion - April 2013

Post by vishvak »

Any idea who is the gent in that pic
link.
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Re: Indo-UK News and Discussion - April 2013

Post by pankajs »

Londonistan in full flow.

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014 ... CMP=twt_gu

Anti-terror police arrest four men in London raids
Four men have been arrested in London as part of an investigation into Islamist-related terrorism, Scotland Yard has said.

One of the terrorism suspects was Tasered during his arrest and firearms officers assisted one of the arrests during dawn raids across the capital.

The men, aged 20 to 21, are being questioned at police stations in central London on suspicion of being concerned in the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism.
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Re: Indo-UK News and Discussion - April 2013

Post by pankajs »

Another grooming scandal. Rest of the news is paywalled.

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/uk/c ... 227800.ece

Hundreds of child victims in new sex abuse scandal

Hundreds of children in Manchester have been sexually exploited in the latest grooming scandal.

Details of more than 400 victims, linked to 105 crimes and 242 suspects, were reported across Greater Manchester in the ten months to January, and police received 2,286 pieces of information.

Campaigners fear that the true figure may be far higher and could exceed the 1,400 victims identified in a report on child sexual exploitation in Rotherham over a 16-year-period.

The figures come after Ofsted accused Manchester’s children’s services of inadequacy and said that “child sexual exploitation processes are not well embedded in social care teams”.
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Re: Indo-UK News and Discussion - April 2013

Post by pankajs »

BBC Breaking News ‏@BBCBreaking 3m3 minutes ago

Ex-RAF officer Eddie Graham found guilty by court martial of 23 sex abuse charges against boys at German base in 80s http://bbc.in/1v6WC7S
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Re: Indo-UK News and Discussion - April 2013

Post by Philip »

Tories suffer humiliating by-election defeat to UKIP.Lib-DEm lose their deposit!

Ukip’s Clacton byelection victory opens up new chapter in British politics
Douglas Carswell’s win means four-party politics is here to stay, at least for the time being, with Labour’s problems of little comfort to the Tories
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/201 ... servatives
Patrick Wintour
The Guardian, Friday 10 October 2014
Douglas Carswell Douglas Carswell celebrates with his wife Clementine after winning the Clacton byelection for Ukip on Thursday night. Photograph: Chris Radburn/PA

For a decade the British electorate has had a compulsion to punish governing parties in byelections, and voters on Thursday in Essex and the north-west refused to kick the habit, but that does not do justice to the way in which a new chapter in British politics has opened. It may yet turn out to be a brief chapter, or a diversion in the main direction of the plot, but it does not quite feel like that.

Ukip has duly gained its first seat in parliament in Clacton, propelling the intriguing Douglas Carswell from the eccentric fringe of the Tory backbenches to the front line of politics ahead of the election.

In Heywood and Middleton, Labour scraped home with a majority of 600 votes, further proof that Ed Miliband’s appeal in traditional northern seats is tepid. The swing from Labour to Ukip was 18% and Ukip saw its support surge from 3% in 2010 to 39%, its best showing in a northern by election of the parliament.

Labour had its argument ready. The low majority was a reflection of low turnout. The Ukip share of the vote did not increase markedly from its performance in the May local elections. Labour’s own share of the vote was up 1% to 41%, and the narrowness of its majority reflects the collapse of the Tory vote, rather than a fall in support for Labour. The campaign built round a defence of the NHS had a coherence, even if it did not inspire.

But these arguments only take Labour so far. The result will redouble the debate in the party about whether Ukip can damage Labour as much as the Conservatives. The Fabian pamphlet published last week, Revolt on the Left written by Marcus Roberts, makes a cogent case that Labour may be as equally threatened by Ukip in the general election, losing seats directly to Ukip, as well as failing short in Tory-held marginals due to the erosion of its support to Ukip.

The call to persuade Alan Johnson to leave his books and late-night BBC sofas to return as a Labour’s immigration spokesman will grow. There will also be calls to back reform of the EU free movement of labour, a central pillar of the Treaty of Rome.

Labour’s problem will be little comfort to the Tories. Cameron has described the north-west as the front line in his battle to win an overall majority and yet his vote in Heywood fell from 27% to 12%.

Heywood is not a target for the Tories, but it is adjacent to many marginals. As many as 10 seats that the Tories hope to win in the north-west will be unobtainable unless Ukip are squeezed back.

Cameron will have to redouble his warning that if you go to bed with Nigel Farage you will wake up in the morning with Miliband. It may be that voters recognise that these were byelections, and will take the risk of a one-night stand with Farage. In terms of policy, there is little more that David Cameron can do to make his party more appealing to disenchanted Ukippers. He just needs to keep pointing out the consequences of a vote for Farage, and use the Rochester byelection as the stage to make that argument time and again.

The Conservative chief whip, Michael Gove, will also be watching his backbenches like a hawk for any sign that another MP is set to defect.

For Farage there are challenges as well. Carswell is his own man, a true libertarian that is not opposed in principle to immigration. His call for humility, modesty, inclusion and compassion in his victory speech is a new, less swaggering tone. He senses the disenchanted are not interested in politicians’ triumphalism. If fellow Tory defector Mark Reckless is elected as well, Ukip could suddenly be led by a discordant trio.

But the biggest message from these results is that four-party politics is here to stay, something that no one thought possible within the straitjacket of first past the post.

Once the Greens and Scottish nationalists are taken into account, it is possible to argue we have reached six-party politics. Solving what this may mean for politics is as easy solving a Rubik’s cube.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/po ... 86271.html

Clacton by-election: Douglas Carswell becomes Ukip's first ever elected MP after a sensational victory

Torygraph:
Westminster rocked as Ukip wins first seat in Clacton
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/
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Re: Indo-UK News and Discussion - April 2013

Post by member_28714 »

In this regard, he announced the names of Goa Governor Mridula Sinha, Bharat Ratna Sachin Tendulkar, yoga guru Baba Ramdev, actor Kamal Haasan, Congress leader Shashi Tharoor, actress Priyanka Chopra, actor Salman Khan, business honcho Anil Ambani and the team of Tarak Mehta Ka Oolta Chashma.



Would it not have made sense to hire all party workers of AAP instead. They are already functionally well equipped with brooms and kejri has anyway dropped off the radar. Some one needs to keep the tards busy.
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Re: Indo-UK News and Discussion - April 2013

Post by IndraD »

UKIP making progress by leaps and bounds, other parties sweating.
some how UKIP has convinced people they are solution of problem
and the only problem in UK is immigration, once this is stopped and UK pulls out of EU
gold will be raining from above
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Re: Indo-UK News and Discussion - April 2013

Post by member_28797 »

^^without a quarter of a world to loot from, briturd umpire will have to live on the pension of it''s heydays.
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Re: Indo-UK News and Discussion - April 2013

Post by Philip »

A fine piece on Churchill's indomitable spirit and will at war.While he was a bigot and utterly steeped in imperialism when it came to India,"cometh the hour ,cometh the man",the man who stood up to Hitler and the Nazis.In recent times in post-Independence India we had Mrs.G who stood up to the entire western world in '71 when she carved Pak into two,against huge odds.No lesser feat for us Indians.Political gadfly and PM-in-waiting should Cameron trip up,Boris Johnson,has just written a book on Churchill.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politic ... Nazis.html
Boris Johnson: The day Churchill saved Britain from the Nazis
Few people now remember how close we came to striking a deal with Hitler, argues Boris Johnson in an extract from his new book
Winston Churchill leaves 10 Downing Street en route to the House Of Commons

By Boris Johnson
13 Oct 2014

If you are looking for one of the decisive moments in the last world war, and a turning-point in the history of the world, then come with me. Let us go to a dingy room in the House of Commons – up some steps, through a creaky old door, down a dimly lit corridor; and here it is.

You won’t find it on the maps of the Palace of Westminster, for obvious security reasons, and you can’t normally get the guides to show you. The décor is predictable: green leather and brass studs; heavy course-grained oak panelling and Pugin wallpaper; a few prints, slightly squiffily hung. And, on the afternoon of May 28 1940, smoke: because in those days many politicians – including our hero, Winston Churchill – were indefatigable consumers of tobacco.

It is safe to assume there wasn’t much daylight getting through the mullioned windows, but most members of the public would easily have been able to recognise the main characters. There were seven of them in all, and they were the War Cabinet of Britain.

It is a measure of the depth of their crisis that they had been meeting almost solidly for three days. This was their ninth meeting since 26 May, and they had yet to come up with an answer to the existential question that faced them and the world.

These days we dimly believe that the Second World War was won with Russian blood and American money; and though that is in some ways true, it is also true that, without Winston Churchill, Hitler would almost certainly have won.

What I mean is that Nazi gains in Europe might well have been irreversible. We rightly moan today about the deficiencies of the European Union – and yet we have forgotten about the sheer horror of that all too possible of possible worlds.

We need to remember it today, and we need to remember the ways in which this British Prime Minister helped to make the world we still live in. Across the globe – from Europe to Russia to Africa to the Middle East – we see traces of his shaping mind.

At several moments he was the beaver who dammed the flow of events; and never did he affect the course of history more profoundly than in 1940.

Churchill was in the chair at that meeting. On one side was Neville Chamberlain, the high-collared, stiff-necked and toothbrush-moustached ex-Prime Minister, and the man Churchill had unceremoniously replaced. Rightly or wrongly, Chamberlain was blamed for fatally under-estimating the Hitler menace, and for the failure of appeasement. When the Nazis had bundled Britain out of Norway earlier that month, it was Chamberlain who took the rap.

Then there was Lord Halifax, the tall, cadaverous Foreign Secretary who had been born with a withered left hand that he concealed in a black glove; he had been Chamberlain’s choice of successor. There was Archibald Sinclair, the leader of the Liberal Party that Churchill had dumped. There were Clement Attlee and Arthur Greenwood – representatives of the Labour Party against which he had directed some of his most hysterical invective. There was the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Edward Bridges, taking notes.

The question before the meeting was very simple, and one they had been chewing over for the last few days, as the news got blacker and blacker. No one exactly spelled it out, but everyone could see what it was. Should Britain fight? Was it reasonable for young British troops to die in a war that showed every sign of being lost? Or should the British do some kind of deal that might well save hundreds of thousands of lives?

I don’t think many people of my generation – let alone my children’s generation – are fully conscious of how close we came to such a deal; how Britain could have discreetly, and rationally, called it quits in 1940. There were serious and influential voices who wanted to begin “negotiations”.

It is not hard to see why they thought as they did. The War Cabinet was staring at the biggest humiliation for British armed forces since the loss of the American colonies, and there seemed no way back.

Everyone in that room could imagine the consequences of fighting on. They knew all about war; some of them had fought in the Great War, and the hideous memory of that slaughter was only twenty-two years old – less distant in time from them than the first Gulf War is from us today.

There was scarcely a family in Britain that had not been touched by sorrow. Was it right – was it fair – to ask the people to go through all that again? And to what end?

It seems from the cabinet minutes that the meeting more or less kicked off with Halifax. He went straight to the point: the argument he had been making for the last few days.

The Italian embassy had sent a message, he said: that this was Britain’s moment to seek mediation via Italy. This was not just a simple overture from Mussolini: it was surely a signal from his senior partner. Coiling itself round Whitehall and penetrating the heart of the House of Commons, it was a feeler from Hitler.

Churchill knew exactly what was going on. Contemporary accounts say he was by now showing signs of fatigue. He was sixty-five, and he was driving his staff and his generals to distraction by his habit of working on into the small hours – fuelled by brandy and liqueurs – ringing round Whitehall for papers and information, and actually convening meetings when most sane men were tucked up with their wives.

He was dressed in his strange Victorian/Edwardian garb, with his black waistcoat and gold watch chain and his spongebag trousers – like some burly and hungover butler from the set of Downton Abbey. They say he was pale, and pasty, and that seems believable. Let us add a cigar, and some ash on his lap, and a clenched jaw with a spot of drool.

He told Halifax to forget it. Britain was at war with Germany, and had been since September 1 the previous year. It was a war for freedom and for principle. The minute Britain accepted some Italian offer of mediation, Churchill knew that the sinews of resistance would relax. A white flag would be invisibly raised over Britain, and the will to fight on would be gone.

So he said no to Halifax, and some may feel that ought to have been enough: the Prime Minister had spoken in a matter of national life or death; in another country, the debate might therefore have been at an end. But that is not how the British constitution works: the Prime Minister is primus inter pares – first among equals; he must to some extent carry his colleagues with him; and to understand the dynamics of that conversation we must remember the fragility of Churchill’s position.

He had been Prime Minister for less than three weeks, and it was far from clear who were his real allies round the table. Attlee and Greenwood, the Labour contingent, were broadly supportive; and the same can be said for Sinclair the Liberal. But their voices could not be decisive. The Tories were by some way the largest party in Parliament. It was the Tories on whom he depended for his mandate – and the Tories were far from sure about Winston Churchill.

From his very emergence as a young Tory MP he had bashed and satirised his own party; he had then deserted them for the Liberals, and though he had eventually returned to the fold, there were too many Tories who thought of him as an unprincipled opportunist.

Halifax had been over to see Hitler in 1937 – and though he at one stage (rather splendidly) mistook the Führer for a footman, we must concede that he had an embarrassing familiarity with Goering. Both men loved fox-hunting, and Goering nicknamed him “Halalifax” – with emetic chumminess – because halali is a German hunting cry. But in his own way, Halifax was a patriot as much as Churchill.

He thought he could see a way to protect Britain and to safeguard the empire, and to save lives; and it is not as if he was alone. The British ruling class was riddled – or at least conspicuously weevilled – with appeasers and pro-Nazis. It wasn’t just the Mitfords, or the followers of Britain’s home-grown would-be duce, fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley.

In 1936 Lady Nelly Cecil noted that nearly all of her relatives were “tender to the Nazis”, and the reason was simple. In the 1930s your average toff was much more fearful of Bolshevism, and communists’ alarming ideology of redistribution, than they were fearful of Hitler. Indeed, they saw fascism as a bulwark against the reds, and they had high-level political backing.

David Lloyd George had been to Germany, and been so dazzled by the Führer that he compared him to George Washington. Hitler was a “born leader”, declared the befuddled former British Prime Minister. He wished that Britain had “a man of his supreme quality at the head of affairs in our country today”. This from the hero of the First World War!

The Daily Mail had long been campaigning for Hitler to be given a free hand in eastern Europe, the better to beat up the bolshies. “If Hitler did not exist,” said the Mail, “all western Europe might now be clamouring for such a champion.”

The Times had been so pro-appeasement that the editor, Geoffrey Dawson, described how he used to go through the proofs taking out anything that might offend the Germans. The press baron Beaverbrook himself had actually sacked Churchill from his Evening Standard column, on the grounds that he was too hard on the Nazis. Respectable liberal opinion – theatre types like John Gielgud, Sybil Thorndike, G. B. Shaw – were lobbying for the government to “give consideration” to talks.

Of course, the mood had changed in the last year; feelings against Germany had unsurprisingly hardened and grown much more widespread. All I am saying – in mitigation of Halifax – is that in seeking peace, he had the support of many British people, at all levels of society. And so the argument went on, between Halifax and the Prime Minister, for that crucial hour.

It was a stalemate; and it was now – according to most historians – that Churchill played his masterstroke. He announced that the meeting would be adjourned, and would begin again at 7 p.m. He then convened the full cabinet of twenty-five, ministers from every department – many of whom were to hear him as Prime Minister for the first time.

The bigger the audience, the more fervid the atmosphere; and now he made an appeal to the emotions. Before the full cabinet he made a quite astonishing speech – without any hint of the intellectual restraint he had been obliged to display in the smaller meeting.

He began calmly enough: " I have thought carefully in these last days whether it was part of my duty to consider entering into negotiations with That Man."

And he ended with this almost Shakespearean climax: "And I am convinced that every one of you would rise up and tear me down from my place if I were for one moment to contemplate parley or surrender. If this long island story of ours is to end at last, let it end only when each one of us lies choking in his own blood upon the ground."

At this the men in that room were so moved that they cheered and shouted, and some of them ran round and clapped him on the back.

Churchill had ruthlessly dramatised and personalised the debate. By the time the War Cabinet resumed at 7 p.m., the debate was over; Halifax abandoned his cause. Churchill had the clear and noisy backing of the cabinet.

Within a year of that decision – to fight and not to negotiate – 30,000 British men, women and children had been killed, almost all of them at German hands. Weighing up those alternatives – a humiliating peace, or a slaughter of the innocents – it is hard to imagine any modern British politician having the guts to take Churchill’s line.

He had the vast and almost reckless moral courage to see that fighting on would be appalling, but that surrender would be even worse. He was right.

The Churchill Factor by Boris Johnson ....
pankajs
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Posts: 14746
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Re: Indo-UK News and Discussion - April 2013

Post by pankajs »

News of Londonistan
BBC Breaking News ‏@BBCBreaking 27m27 minutes ago

Three men and three women from Portsmouth, Farnborough and Greenwich held in police anti-terror operation http://bbc.in/1qmqJBy
RajeshA
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Posts: 16006
Joined: 28 Dec 2007 19:30

Re: Indo-UK News and Discussion - April 2013

Post by RajeshA »

IndraD wrote:UKIP making progress by leaps and bounds, other parties sweating.
some how UKIP has convinced people they are solution of problem
and the only problem in UK is immigration, once this is stopped and UK pulls out of EU
gold will be raining from above
Indians in UK should move to Scotland en masse, and let UKIP win in England, resulting in UK leaving EU, and Scotland leaving UK to stay on in the EU.
Agnimitra
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Re: Indo-UK News and Discussion - April 2013

Post by Agnimitra »

RajeshA ji, even though I'm bummed out about the Scottish referendum, lovely to see you back. :)
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