This has been a good Sunday with Saturday becoming better as the day progressed. I became excited about work after selecting 36 photographs in pages of 4 to communicate the changing nature of Sunderland riverside from its mouth to the Wear side Bridge. I was less satisfied with the accompanying words
River Wearmouth
"For two decades I walked the beaches of Seaburn and Roker, Sunderland, but infrequently, and even less to the mouth of the river Wear, and never the embankments from the estuary to the Wearmouth Bridge. Since the Millennium I have explored the new marina and village created around the inner harbour which looks across to the gates which guard the entrance to Port of Sunderland on the south bank(13). Only in the summer of 2007, I explored all the new developments.
As with the Tyne, the Wear, or Vedra, its classical name, is said to have been used by the Romans to transport supplies to its army, encamped at Chester Le Street. In the sixteenth century coal was transported from the port but was affected by the competition from Newcastle. However because Newcastle had to remain Royalist in the Civil War, because of its garrison, Sunderland through choice as well as expediency, was strongly Parliamentarian, and was consequently rewarded with a monopoly of coal shipping. The life of the port boomed and with the formation of a Commission for the river Wear in 1717, the development continued until its further expansion during the industrial revolution, which included shipbuilding which is known to have started in the 14th century, and which in turn led to the growth and prosperity of the town, which became a city in 1992, after winning a competition to mark the 40th anniversary of Elizabeth becoming the Queen. The town continues to have no Cathedral.
In 1972 the local authority took over responsibility for the port which along with the rest of town was suffering from the decline in ship building, the decline in coal output and shipment, and from the revolution in merchant shipping. It is to the credit of the local council, that the port is playing a key role in the regeneration of the district and the city, and which will continue as the vast areas of derelict and underused land are brought into economic effectiveness. The new port authority building, the restoration of Old Sunderland High Street, the new fish quay and public sales building, the University complex, the National Glass centre and new residential complexes, particularly the iconic new apartment block at the Wearmouth Bridge are no more than the beginning of development which I hope to witness during the rest of my lifetime."
Although I have planned the structure of this project I had hoped its size would be governed by the 40 pocket albums (80 page) on hand but I begin to think sixty 120 pages will be required as I am yet to tackle the Tyne River Mouth, the coast with the seashore and the rocky bays, or the six parks and the four other major open spaces
I write this, stopping from time to time to listen to the Manchester born singer song writer David Gray performing at St Luke's. It was a similar session two years ago that I first heard Damian Rice, also then unfamiliar to me, but with whom it is said by Wikipedia David has appeared on stage. His most popular songs reaching the top ten were Babylon and The One I love.
On Saturday I wrote Wartimes for the Rivera 2007 album of photographs and words with six photos on three pages as the last section on the historical aspects of the walks.
"As I walked close to the river mouths of the Tyne and the river Wear and along to coastal areas in between, there were few reminders of what is was like to live in this area during the Great War of 1914-1918 and the second World War which I remember so vividly; my mother and her sisters praying in the air raid shelter, near London's main airport, Croydon. I can still feel their fear, and mine, but also the fascination of watching a V1 flying overhead as we made our way to the shelter in daylight, and then the engine cutting out, and a few days later going to look at the crater where housing had been. I remember a telegram arriving about one cousin who was not to return from a Japanese POW camp, and one who did from Germany, liberated by the Russians. As a schoolboy I read the official reports of the Nuremburg War Crimes Trials of Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz, and in my first work at the age of sixteen I was attached to a section of six men, one navy and two airmen and three army, one of whom had lost part of his leg in the Great War.
There are the War memorials, and the buildings around the market Square South Shields have that look of post Second World War functionalism, reminders that in the war of my generation destruction and death marked the cities and town of Europe, especially in the industrial centres and the sea ports and shipbuilding towns. This is an area where the young men, and now young women, answer our continuous call for the sacrifice of their blood. There are often recruiting caravans in the South Shields shopping centre and the annual Sunderland Airshow, provides the opportunity for all the branches of the services to make appeal. Recently experiencing the 26 episodes of the BBC series of films about the Great War one memorable moment was the sight of Durham miners en masse walking out of their pits to enlist. As the war progressed it became necessary to halt this movement and mining work and shipbuilding became protected occupations, as in both wars we struggled to match the preparations and the might of the German war machine.
There is a gun on the cliff overlooking the bay of South Shields and cannons on Lawe Top, a notice explains that Cleadon Mill was used as target practice, while another tells of the bomber that ditched in the sea at Whitburn close to present day firing ranges."
The writing made me think more of my experiences and approach to the concept of war as a solution and the difference between a personal viewpoint and being in government. Of course if one became Prime Minister it would be difficult to separate the two and this clearly was an issue for Tony Blair, as further revealed in the second of three riveting programmes about his Premiership. There are two distinct types of Prime Minister. The first tries to satisfy the role of Primus inter Pares, the First among Cabinet Equals. He listen to everyone. His Cabinet colleagues in the government, his back benchers, his political party, the political opposition, the media and in relation to international affairs, the views of the interested nations, and attempts to achieve a consensus and balance this with what he believes to be best. If there is doubt he hesitates and if necessary postpones or abandons and leaves it to others to work out how to present the change or failure to progress to the best party political advantage. The problem with this style is that there is tendency to play safe, not take risks and maintain the status quo. This is appropriate in a time of stability and where there are no major threats. It was for this reason that with the ending of the cold war between the Soviets, and the rest of Europe and the USA, that a Conservative government commenced to accept Britain reducing influence in the world and saw the British forces as a small specialist force which could be a part of Nato and world policing activities and also provide training and set standards for others within the umbrella of a nuclear, technological and mechanised defence system. Forces were not expected to engage in personal combat on the kind of scale which reached its zenith in the Great War with over ten million dead, but which also was a major part of the Second World War along with direct attacks on the civilian population which Britain and America had not experienced in the Great War but which had remained a feature of all other wars with blockades, raping and pillaging of opponents, their families and their children.
The other kind of Premier is the shaper leader who has a clear view of how the world and life should be. Stalin, Hitler, and Churchill were similar men of my childhood who possessed single minded visions, albeit diametrically opposed positions within very different political systems. Since then in the UK with have had two examples of cometh the hour cometh the man, or woman, with first Margaret Thatcher and then Tony Blair. It can be argued that both came and held onto power because of the failure of the main opposition but the fact remains that a majority of the voting British people supported them not once but twice after they had found out what they were really like and stood for. They were individuals with personal charisma who people loved as well as hated
In the instance of Tony Blair the accusation during his first period of office was that he was not a man of substance but bent according to opinion pools and focus groups together with the shameless use of presentation and spin.
Then there was Kosovo, where he achieved what Margaret Thatcher did in relation to the Falklands but which was not about British self interest and which saved the lives of millions as mass killing, rape and the uprooting of lives began to engulf the middle of Europe. That Tony remains a hero in that land to this day indicates the magnitude of what was accomplished, although as he admits what turned a stand into victory was the willingness of America to put his forces on the ground, although this did not prove necessary, just its threat to do so. What Kosovo also established was the ability of Tony Blair to go out an convince others, as he was able to do in relation to Northern Ireland and to a great extent in Afghanistan meeting with President Putin and also having effective communication with Iran. However what appears to have changed his position and moving from personal leadership in a democratic context to proceeding because of personal conviction regardless of the opposition was 9/11 and the awareness that this kind of terrorism was just the tip of the iceberg of a fundamentalism which if left to develop would engulf the world as had Communism and Fascism but with the added and more serious threat of a belief system in which life was willingly sacrificed for the greater good of others and the belief in a self aware further existence.
In this respect I am probably closer to President Bush than Tony Blair if the decision to intervene in Iraq was layered in a hierarchical structure. The regime was a dictatorship and not a democracy. The regime was ruthless towards opposition using torture and extermination. The regime posed a threat to the rest of the Middle East and the wider world because it had developed and used weapons of mass destruction and attempted to go nuclear and the means of universal delivery and was known to be a safe heaven training for terrorism, although in fairness the regime was not religious fundamentalist If a stand about religious fundament then Iraq was a good place to make that stand. I a not sure if President Bush would go as far a sharing my view that religious or political fundamentalism which argues that it is the only truth and life system including political and social life, and justifies the extermination of anyone who disagrees or refuses to follow cannot be compromised with, you have to stop it, and in my case, I could not accept such fundamentalism even if it was agreed by a democratic majority. However I do not accept that the way to stop such a development is to the unscrupulous methods and tactics, but this is a personal position as a citizen and which would be different if I was in government, or the government as a President or Prime Minister can be said to be.
It is at this point that what happened in Iraq was complex. On one hand President Bush admitted in the programme, as did others, that having decided to take action, they did not believe or want to delay action to achieve a second UN resolution, or to make a commitment to a resolution of the Israel Palestinian Question a pre condition. They believed they were right and the record of the UN was such that achieving agreement was unlikely. President Bush was also a realist he did not want regime change in he UK and told Tony that if that was a likely possibility, which it was, then he would prefer to go it alone. This is where I believe Tony made his mistake, he should have accepted that he had failed to convince his political party and the country at large. If there was million on the streets of London then this was likely to represent ten, twenty and even thirty times that number in the UK and at that point, even if they were wrong, and the issue of fundamentalism would have to be confronted at some point, at home as well as abroad, anything less that immediate and comprehensive vindication would end in disaster. He should have backed down when given the opportunity. I have never had the view that the government manufactured or lied about the evidence of weapons of mass destruction because with victory in Iraq the truth would be revealed, as it was, but I share the view that the form of words used when making the case to the Commons in the crucial debate was wrong and did mislead whatever the personal intention and he should have known they would come to haunt him whatever the outcome as the sinking of the Belgrano by Margaret Thatcher. One can be forgiven for making the wrong decision for the right reasons but one is never for the right decision taken for the wrong reasons. Admittedly it is always easier to criticise with hindsight than ensure that a decision is the right one for the right reasons at the time
At this point I stop and erase the rest of my notes for rewriting and do not go back and confirm my thinking or correct the writing because the allocated time has run out and I am significantly behind in my plan for the rest of Monday and week ahead. If it does not make sense, is inconsistent, it has to be and hopefully there will be opportunity to revisit the subject and what I have written sometime soon.
River Wearmouth
"For two decades I walked the beaches of Seaburn and Roker, Sunderland, but infrequently, and even less to the mouth of the river Wear, and never the embankments from the estuary to the Wearmouth Bridge. Since the Millennium I have explored the new marina and village created around the inner harbour which looks across to the gates which guard the entrance to Port of Sunderland on the south bank(13). Only in the summer of 2007, I explored all the new developments.
As with the Tyne, the Wear, or Vedra, its classical name, is said to have been used by the Romans to transport supplies to its army, encamped at Chester Le Street. In the sixteenth century coal was transported from the port but was affected by the competition from Newcastle. However because Newcastle had to remain Royalist in the Civil War, because of its garrison, Sunderland through choice as well as expediency, was strongly Parliamentarian, and was consequently rewarded with a monopoly of coal shipping. The life of the port boomed and with the formation of a Commission for the river Wear in 1717, the development continued until its further expansion during the industrial revolution, which included shipbuilding which is known to have started in the 14th century, and which in turn led to the growth and prosperity of the town, which became a city in 1992, after winning a competition to mark the 40th anniversary of Elizabeth becoming the Queen. The town continues to have no Cathedral.
In 1972 the local authority took over responsibility for the port which along with the rest of town was suffering from the decline in ship building, the decline in coal output and shipment, and from the revolution in merchant shipping. It is to the credit of the local council, that the port is playing a key role in the regeneration of the district and the city, and which will continue as the vast areas of derelict and underused land are brought into economic effectiveness. The new port authority building, the restoration of Old Sunderland High Street, the new fish quay and public sales building, the University complex, the National Glass centre and new residential complexes, particularly the iconic new apartment block at the Wearmouth Bridge are no more than the beginning of development which I hope to witness during the rest of my lifetime."
Although I have planned the structure of this project I had hoped its size would be governed by the 40 pocket albums (80 page) on hand but I begin to think sixty 120 pages will be required as I am yet to tackle the Tyne River Mouth, the coast with the seashore and the rocky bays, or the six parks and the four other major open spaces
I write this, stopping from time to time to listen to the Manchester born singer song writer David Gray performing at St Luke's. It was a similar session two years ago that I first heard Damian Rice, also then unfamiliar to me, but with whom it is said by Wikipedia David has appeared on stage. His most popular songs reaching the top ten were Babylon and The One I love.
On Saturday I wrote Wartimes for the Rivera 2007 album of photographs and words with six photos on three pages as the last section on the historical aspects of the walks.
"As I walked close to the river mouths of the Tyne and the river Wear and along to coastal areas in between, there were few reminders of what is was like to live in this area during the Great War of 1914-1918 and the second World War which I remember so vividly; my mother and her sisters praying in the air raid shelter, near London's main airport, Croydon. I can still feel their fear, and mine, but also the fascination of watching a V1 flying overhead as we made our way to the shelter in daylight, and then the engine cutting out, and a few days later going to look at the crater where housing had been. I remember a telegram arriving about one cousin who was not to return from a Japanese POW camp, and one who did from Germany, liberated by the Russians. As a schoolboy I read the official reports of the Nuremburg War Crimes Trials of Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz, and in my first work at the age of sixteen I was attached to a section of six men, one navy and two airmen and three army, one of whom had lost part of his leg in the Great War.
There are the War memorials, and the buildings around the market Square South Shields have that look of post Second World War functionalism, reminders that in the war of my generation destruction and death marked the cities and town of Europe, especially in the industrial centres and the sea ports and shipbuilding towns. This is an area where the young men, and now young women, answer our continuous call for the sacrifice of their blood. There are often recruiting caravans in the South Shields shopping centre and the annual Sunderland Airshow, provides the opportunity for all the branches of the services to make appeal. Recently experiencing the 26 episodes of the BBC series of films about the Great War one memorable moment was the sight of Durham miners en masse walking out of their pits to enlist. As the war progressed it became necessary to halt this movement and mining work and shipbuilding became protected occupations, as in both wars we struggled to match the preparations and the might of the German war machine.
There is a gun on the cliff overlooking the bay of South Shields and cannons on Lawe Top, a notice explains that Cleadon Mill was used as target practice, while another tells of the bomber that ditched in the sea at Whitburn close to present day firing ranges."
The writing made me think more of my experiences and approach to the concept of war as a solution and the difference between a personal viewpoint and being in government. Of course if one became Prime Minister it would be difficult to separate the two and this clearly was an issue for Tony Blair, as further revealed in the second of three riveting programmes about his Premiership. There are two distinct types of Prime Minister. The first tries to satisfy the role of Primus inter Pares, the First among Cabinet Equals. He listen to everyone. His Cabinet colleagues in the government, his back benchers, his political party, the political opposition, the media and in relation to international affairs, the views of the interested nations, and attempts to achieve a consensus and balance this with what he believes to be best. If there is doubt he hesitates and if necessary postpones or abandons and leaves it to others to work out how to present the change or failure to progress to the best party political advantage. The problem with this style is that there is tendency to play safe, not take risks and maintain the status quo. This is appropriate in a time of stability and where there are no major threats. It was for this reason that with the ending of the cold war between the Soviets, and the rest of Europe and the USA, that a Conservative government commenced to accept Britain reducing influence in the world and saw the British forces as a small specialist force which could be a part of Nato and world policing activities and also provide training and set standards for others within the umbrella of a nuclear, technological and mechanised defence system. Forces were not expected to engage in personal combat on the kind of scale which reached its zenith in the Great War with over ten million dead, but which also was a major part of the Second World War along with direct attacks on the civilian population which Britain and America had not experienced in the Great War but which had remained a feature of all other wars with blockades, raping and pillaging of opponents, their families and their children.
The other kind of Premier is the shaper leader who has a clear view of how the world and life should be. Stalin, Hitler, and Churchill were similar men of my childhood who possessed single minded visions, albeit diametrically opposed positions within very different political systems. Since then in the UK with have had two examples of cometh the hour cometh the man, or woman, with first Margaret Thatcher and then Tony Blair. It can be argued that both came and held onto power because of the failure of the main opposition but the fact remains that a majority of the voting British people supported them not once but twice after they had found out what they were really like and stood for. They were individuals with personal charisma who people loved as well as hated
In the instance of Tony Blair the accusation during his first period of office was that he was not a man of substance but bent according to opinion pools and focus groups together with the shameless use of presentation and spin.
Then there was Kosovo, where he achieved what Margaret Thatcher did in relation to the Falklands but which was not about British self interest and which saved the lives of millions as mass killing, rape and the uprooting of lives began to engulf the middle of Europe. That Tony remains a hero in that land to this day indicates the magnitude of what was accomplished, although as he admits what turned a stand into victory was the willingness of America to put his forces on the ground, although this did not prove necessary, just its threat to do so. What Kosovo also established was the ability of Tony Blair to go out an convince others, as he was able to do in relation to Northern Ireland and to a great extent in Afghanistan meeting with President Putin and also having effective communication with Iran. However what appears to have changed his position and moving from personal leadership in a democratic context to proceeding because of personal conviction regardless of the opposition was 9/11 and the awareness that this kind of terrorism was just the tip of the iceberg of a fundamentalism which if left to develop would engulf the world as had Communism and Fascism but with the added and more serious threat of a belief system in which life was willingly sacrificed for the greater good of others and the belief in a self aware further existence.
In this respect I am probably closer to President Bush than Tony Blair if the decision to intervene in Iraq was layered in a hierarchical structure. The regime was a dictatorship and not a democracy. The regime was ruthless towards opposition using torture and extermination. The regime posed a threat to the rest of the Middle East and the wider world because it had developed and used weapons of mass destruction and attempted to go nuclear and the means of universal delivery and was known to be a safe heaven training for terrorism, although in fairness the regime was not religious fundamentalist If a stand about religious fundament then Iraq was a good place to make that stand. I a not sure if President Bush would go as far a sharing my view that religious or political fundamentalism which argues that it is the only truth and life system including political and social life, and justifies the extermination of anyone who disagrees or refuses to follow cannot be compromised with, you have to stop it, and in my case, I could not accept such fundamentalism even if it was agreed by a democratic majority. However I do not accept that the way to stop such a development is to the unscrupulous methods and tactics, but this is a personal position as a citizen and which would be different if I was in government, or the government as a President or Prime Minister can be said to be.
It is at this point that what happened in Iraq was complex. On one hand President Bush admitted in the programme, as did others, that having decided to take action, they did not believe or want to delay action to achieve a second UN resolution, or to make a commitment to a resolution of the Israel Palestinian Question a pre condition. They believed they were right and the record of the UN was such that achieving agreement was unlikely. President Bush was also a realist he did not want regime change in he UK and told Tony that if that was a likely possibility, which it was, then he would prefer to go it alone. This is where I believe Tony made his mistake, he should have accepted that he had failed to convince his political party and the country at large. If there was million on the streets of London then this was likely to represent ten, twenty and even thirty times that number in the UK and at that point, even if they were wrong, and the issue of fundamentalism would have to be confronted at some point, at home as well as abroad, anything less that immediate and comprehensive vindication would end in disaster. He should have backed down when given the opportunity. I have never had the view that the government manufactured or lied about the evidence of weapons of mass destruction because with victory in Iraq the truth would be revealed, as it was, but I share the view that the form of words used when making the case to the Commons in the crucial debate was wrong and did mislead whatever the personal intention and he should have known they would come to haunt him whatever the outcome as the sinking of the Belgrano by Margaret Thatcher. One can be forgiven for making the wrong decision for the right reasons but one is never for the right decision taken for the wrong reasons. Admittedly it is always easier to criticise with hindsight than ensure that a decision is the right one for the right reasons at the time
At this point I stop and erase the rest of my notes for rewriting and do not go back and confirm my thinking or correct the writing because the allocated time has run out and I am significantly behind in my plan for the rest of Monday and week ahead. If it does not make sense, is inconsistent, it has to be and hopefully there will be opportunity to revisit the subject and what I have written sometime soon.
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