REMEMBER - BUT REMEMBER THE TRUTH

Today, as if to tie in with the Commonwealth Games, there was a ceremony at Glasgow Cathedral to remember the start of World War I. Leaders from thoughout the Commonwealth gathered to commemorate the 'ultimate sacrifice' of the men that had died in the conflict. Two things struck me when I read this story. The first was the political disingenousness of this service. It was like a propaganda exercise to promote the myth of everybody 'mucking in together' during wartime; a celebration of how great Britain and its empire was. The second thing is the way it's made out as if those men that died in the war actually died for an idea, instead of just being pawns in European power politics.

McMurdo returned from his exile today and also decided to indulge in a bit of unionist propaganda vis-a-vis the Great War. According to him, it was Serbian nationalists that started the war. That's a bit simplistic; even in Ordinary and Standard Grade History you learn about the entanglement of treaties and the tense situation in Europe. Even that doesn't tell the full story.

Fritz Fischer's explosive book 'Germany's War Aims in the First World War' outraged many in Germany but gave retrospective respectability to the Allies' part in the war, making it look as if they were fighting to preserve democracy and freedom. Fischer's thesis has been pretty much accepted as the standard version of what happened, pinning the blame squarely on the Germans. This was the version of how the war started that I was presented with when I did Higher History.

At university, however, you're encouraged to be more sceptical and not just accept whatever you're told. Nobody has bothered to investigate why Russia, France or Britain wanted to go to war. I tell a lie; apparently one historian wrote a book about Britain's aims but it turns out that she was related to people in government and in the Foreign Office so the book was pretty much a whitewash. Although nobody has looked too closely, one thing stands out about Britain at the time: it was in economic decline. McMurdo trots out the tired old rhetoric about Britain's power being at its zenith after WWI. That, however, is a load of garbage.

Real power is more than just pink bits on a map and the fact was that Britain was falling behind. In the good old days of the mid-Ninteenth Century Britain was about the only industrialised nation on the planet and held Free Trade as its gospel, as it undercut and destroyed local economies. By the end of the Nineteenth Century, however, things had changed. Other countries had not only caught up but were using new processes that left Britain far behind. The Tharsis Copperworks in the Garngad, for example, used a process that was now about sixty or seventy years old. German factories used more modern, less labour-intensive, processes so could produce copper a lot cheaper. And that wasn't the only industry faced with the problem.

A formal empire is an expensive business and neither the Ancient Roman, nor the British, governments wanted it. It was forced upon them by expediency, the need to protect trade from foreign competition. Free Trade was no longer the be-all-and-end-all as it had been when Britain was the only game in town. Now it was necessary to protect British interests. The British Empire was a sign of economic weakness, not strength. So a case could be made for Britain wanting to wipe out European competition so that it wouldn't have to maintain the money-pit that was the formal empire.

I used to laugh when I was doing O Grade History as we were told about Britain doing this, Germany doing that or France wanting to do something or other. I used to imagine the whole nation huddling in a corner, whispering about plans while not letting others know what they were up to. The truth is, though, that it's the people in power in the countries that we're talking about. They're the ones that make the rules, whether they're good or bad for the rest of us.

We'll be hearing a lot about 'fighting for democracy' over the next four years and yet most of the men that fought in WWI didn't have the vote. It's strange to think that my great-grandfather had no say in the running of the country or even the running of the local council. His neighbours that had not come from Ireland were no better off. Only working-class men that earned a certain amount were allowed to vote; which effectively ruled out everybody except for tradesmen. So the men of Britain weren't fighting for any high-minded ideals but for the rich to maintain their place in the world.

McMurdo says that international banks financed the Russian Revolution, which is straight out of Mein Kampf. Why the hell would top financiers want to set up a Communist state? Ah! I forgot; the international banks are, and always have been, controlled by Jews, who want to undermine western democracy and society. So, according to McMurdo, Adolf Hitler was right all along!

Which leads me nicely to the Second World War. Surely nobody can argue against that being a great moral crusade? Well, yes. The fact is that most of the upper classes in this country were all for Hitler. Nobody gave a shit about the Jews; how many folk in this country called for a boycott of the 1936 Olympics? Nor did anyone care when the tanks rolled into Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia, Austria or Spain for that matter. Not until it looked like Hitler was going to threaten British interests did our ruling elite decide to act against him. All the shite about fighting for freedom and against the forces of tyranny and oppression were just cover stories; nobody in our ruling classes gave a flying fuck about freedom, tyranny or oppression. The Nazis could have carried on killing Jews and others as long as they didn't threaten the interests of our lords and masters. Equally, our rulers would have been perfectly happy to see Hitler invade the USSR; in fact they probably would have helped him!

So let's stop all the lies about our forefathers fighting and dying for freedom; they weren't. All they were fighting for was so that our ruling elite could maintain control. McMurdo mentions Ireland, which provides a stunning case-in-point. If Britain was fighting in WWI for freedom then why were they so determined to subjugate Ireland? And in the 1930s, when many in India were looking for freedom from British rule, the British answer was to send in aircraft to strafe demonstrators with bullets. Let's not kid ourselves here. If you lived in Africa or Asia it mattered not if you were being trampled on by a jackboot or a British army boot; the end result was pretty much the same.

And it's still going on. Saddam Hussein was well-known as a bloodthirsty tyrant but, then, who cared? His men went about slaughtering Shia Muslims by the thousands, but our powers-that-be were quite happy to let him get on with it. Strangely, that attitude changed when Saddam decided to trade Iraqi oil in Euros instead of dollars. Suddenly he was a menace that had to be removed to preserve peace in the Middle East. How could anyone argue against invading and toppling him? He had been killing his own people, for God's sake!

It's the same with the current situation in Gaza. None of our people in power care. Imagine, though, if, in a couple of years' time, Israel were to threaten the Saudi oil fields. Do you think our folk at the top would be prepared to stand by and let that happen? And if they sent troops in what do you think they would say about why they're doing it: to protect oil supplies or to stop Israeli aggression? And who could argue? After all, look at all those Palestinians they killed!