When I visit Buxton, which I do rather often, I am always intrigued by the stories of this period.  The Luftwaffe attacks on Harpur Hill (the big RAF bomb depot) near Buxton, and the random dropping of bombs when the German pilots couldn't find their main targets in Manchester, remind me that this beautiful Derbyshire countryside was once not quite so peaceful.

This was written for a paper in the states.  Because I can't cut and paste in this application, I have rekeyed it.  Any spelling mistakes or other errors are mine alone.

David



"Never have so many owed so much to so few"

 

When I was living in Britain in the 1970's, memories of World War II and, most notably, the Battle of Britain were still fresh.  People readily recalled where they were and what they were doing during the desperate summer months of 1940.

 

However, 70 years later, while discussed with considerable reverence, the Battle of Britain is nonetheless fading from the national consciousness.   It's a function of time, I am afraid.   The average age of the fighter pilots who fought off the Luftwaffe in 1940 was 22.  Today, there are only a handful of these brave men still left.

Indeed, anyone more than a child at the time is at least in their mid-80's.   But none of that takes away from the bravery and determination that showed the world what a free and resolute people could do when faced with overwhelming odds.

By May of 1940, Hitler's Army and Air Force had managed to conquer all of Western Europe.   The British Expeditionary Force in France was routed and managed to return home thanks only to an improvised seaborne evacuation off the beaches at Dunkirk.   But though more than 3330,000 men escaped to fight another day, most of their equipment, including their rifles, remained in France.  Until they could requip, the best the British could do if hitler decided to invade Great Britain was to field a few divisions.   In a ground campaign they would have most certainly lost.

However, Hitler knew that to launch a successful assault he needed control o the air, which entailed destroyin the Royal Air Force.  The, he was told, wouldn't take long.   The RAF was weak and depleted from its losses in France.

The was a surprisingly accurate assessment.   Winston Churchill, Britain's new prime minister, had asked the Air Ministry how many squadrons it would take to defend the country.  He was told 52.  At the time the RAF had 24.   But the British still had a few cards to play.   They had radar, then a new invention, and fighter aircraft, the Hurricane and the Spitfire, that would prove remarkably effective in close air combat with the Germans.

Most of all, they were defending their homes.  At the time, the United States was neutral and the Soviet Union had signed a non-agression pact with the Nazis.   With most of Europe under the Nazi boot, Britain had no allies.   She was alone.  It was the ultimate battle of desperation.   Churchill told his cabinet: If we go down, let us go down fighting.

The Battle of Britain -- the fight for air supremacy over the Sceptered Isle, began in July, and at first the Nazis had the upper hand.  The Luftwaffe focused on the air bases, intent on destroying the RAF aircraft and facilities.  It was a good strategy, but when the Nazis accidentally attacked an English city, the British responded with an attack on Berlin.  Hitler, enraged, promised retaliation.

The Luftwaffe was ordered to shift its focus from pasing the crucial RAF bases to bombing the major British cities.  Tens of thousands would die in the blitz attacks on London, Manchester, Birmingham, and other targets.   The property damage was enormous.   But the RAF got the breathing space it needed.

What happened next centered on what modern air strategists call the "kill ratio."   The British, while suffering losses, managed to inflict far more on the enemy.   The courage this required was daunting.   As one pilot told Edward R. Murrow in a 1940 radio interview, "There were three of us, and 12 of them, and we did what we always do, we attacked."  It was exactly that kind of daring that later prompted Churchill to say that "never was so much owed by so many to so few."

Many doubted that Britain would survive.  President Franklin Roosevelt openly expressed these concerns.  Even in Britain, immediately after the fall of France, some advocated a negotiated peace.   Churchill would have none of it.  It was that indomitable spirit that was to guide the United Kingdom through a long and desperate summer.

The exact end of the battle is hard to calculate.   The Germans still had plenty of planes, but the losses they were taking over Britain were beginning to seriously strain the Luftwaffe.  In September, Hitler canceled the planned invasion of England.  Britain had won the battle.

Seventy years later, the lesson to those of us in the 21st century isn't so much about how the battle was fought.  Rather, it's about courage and the power of a free people in battling tyranny.  Once upon a time, a small group of individuals, backed by a determined nation, drew a line and said, in a phrase popular at the time, "We can take it."

When I was in Buxton recently I chatted with some students from the Sixth Form at Buxton Community School.  They put me through my paces, and frankly, I am not sure I lived up to their expectations.  They seemed to know more about what was happening in political Washington than I did.  But one student did ask me a question that as an American guest I was embarrassed to answer.  She asked, "Did our Election (the May General Election) get much coverage in the United States?"

It was a good question.

I didn't sugar coat the answer.  I said, just a bit sheepishly, "...no, not really.  Americans, as a rule, don't take that much interest in foreign politics."  Of course, there are people like me that do, but most Americans just aren't that interested.  I was disappointed in having to offer that response, but I didn't want to claim a level of interest that wasn't there.  Thats why I was sorry that in the days that followed, I couldn't offer this sixth former a follow-on.  She might have been surprised and perhaps pleased.

While Americans weren't that interested in the General Election, I can say that what happened in the days after, with the formation of the coalition government, got lots of attention.  American politics, and this is a major complaint, is intensely partisan.   Many view Washington D.C. as mired in partisan inaction.   Nothing, at least in their minds, seems to move forward in Congress, because of intense partisan hostility.   That's an oversimplification, of course, but watching a nation, with political values very much like ours, and partisan hostility at times just about as intense, come together to form a coalition, was to many, astounding.  

In the world of American politics the very nature of such an alliance seems incredible.  A Conservative and Liberal Democrat Coalition??!!  In the U.S. these are not the names of parties, of course, but they are labels, and the two, as far as most U.S. politicians are concerned are incompatible.   They refer to the two extremes of the American political spectrum.  While the political spectrum in the United States, when it comes to what counts as left and right is a bit different, the very names of the coalition partners was part of why this was all so fascinating. 

But the remarkable thing, and this was noted in several stories covering the formation of the coalition, was that during the election there seemed to be no love lost between the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives.  The edginess in the debates between Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat Leader and David Cameron the Tory Leader was almost as intense as it was between Cameron and Gordon Brown, the Labour Prime Minister.  But, here we are, in July, and Clegg and Cameron have aligned to not only govern, but carry out some of the most controversial cuts in public expenditure since Margaret Thatcher.  They seem to get along just fine.

Americans, used to the "red" (Republican) versus "blue" (Democratic) labels, and the constant partisan bashing they hear from the talking heads on TV, radio and the Internet, are fascinated with the idea that two major national parties could, at least to some degree, reconcile their differences, in order to work together to govern the nation.  

Of course, American attention spans, when it comes to politics, and as I said, this is especially so for overseas politics, are short, but if the coalition survives, manages to succeed at trimming the nation's budget, and along the way, revives the economy, then many in the states are likely to ask the question, "why couldn't our politicians do the same?"

   

Starting with Franklin Roosevelt the "first hundred days" of a new presidential administration have carried a special significance.  It's a bit arbitrary.  Why a hundred days?  I don't know.  After all, a President's term lasts four years, but this opening phase of an administration often sets the tone, and the direction of the years to follow.

Its also a time when a President can get a lot done.  Usually, both sides, Democrats and Republicans, are willing to cut the new President a little slack.  And if there is a major crisis, or something of a mandata from the voters, the Congress is often willing to give the new chief executive carte blanche.  At least for a litle while.

FDR for example was able to get Congress to enact dozens of emergency relief measures to deal with the Great Depression.  When Lyndon Johnson was elected to his own term in 1964 he used his first one hundred days to craft the core of the Great Society.  A decade later, Ronald Reagan used these early days of his administration days to develop the legislation and executive orders that became the heart of the Reagan Revolution.

Barack Obama is following the same tradition.  He has only been in office six weeks and he hasn't wasted a day of it.  His economic stimulus bill, which totals $780 billion dollars, is larger than any other government program since World War II.  Its a mix of direct spending on public works proejcts, education and health care.  It also provides large scale assistance to the states to help the unemployed. 

The President has put almost all of his political capital into the economic stimulus bill.  He knows the situation is desperate and is hoping that dramatic action, if carried out quickly and deliberately, can help stem the current economic crisis.

He was, however, dissappointed that he didn't get the bipartisan support he was hoping for.  However, the Republicans, feeling like they were getting rolled over, turned partisan early in the debate.  While there were enough Democratic votes in Congress to pass the bill, all of the Republican members of the House of Representatives voted against it, and all but three GOP members of the Senate.  Right now, there is an intense debate about whether or not the stimulus plan will work.  However, the reality is that no one, not President Obama, and not the Republicans, know if its the right medicine for the country or not.  Its a big gamble.  Maybe it will stem the tide of bad news that headlines the nation's newspapers each day and maybe it won't.  Thats the part of this political equation that will take a lot longer than 100 days to find out.

 

I don’t go to that many fancy dress affairs and when I do I often just content myself with wearing a suit. That’s a very American approach.  But, on the day after Barack Obama won, and figuring I would be going to an inaugural event or two I decided to try on my old tux and see if it fit. There had been a lot of hearty meals since the last time I had worn it. I do like to eat.  Alas, as I feared, it didn’t fit. Indeed it was so bad that I couldn’t even zip up the zipper let alone fasten it.  Now, of course I could have just said, “I’ll buy a new one.” That, in planning for an inaugural would have been appropriate, but that wasn’t my response. For some reason, and no doubt my doctor would approve of this, I saw it as a challenge. And so I committed myself, before Barack Obama’s Inaugural, to lose enough weight so I could fit into that darned tux. This was no small undertaking. Particularly given my affection for Christmas cooking.

However, the good news is that I am headed to an Inaugural Gala tonight and the tux fits. Well, almost. I have to confess that it’s still a bit taut and I guess I had better be careful and not bend over too quickly. Otherwise there will be that distressing sound, one most of us have experienced, of a parting seam or two.

Washington, D.C. is the midst of the largest inaugural event in history. Usually, an inauguration draws anywhere from a half a million, to maybe as many as a million people. The latter however is pushing the limits of the city’s ability to handle a crowd. Washington just isn’t that big. Tomorrow, the expectation is that there will be 1.5 million people in the nation’s capitol. Buses, planes, trains, and cars from all over have begun descending on the Washington area. Hotels as far south as Richmond, Virginia, nearly 100 miles away, are booked solid.
 

For many of these people actually seeing anything tomorrow is going to be difficult. The crowds will be carefully controlled, and to avoid any stampedes or panics, the number of people that can stand on the National Mall or along the parade will be carefully controlled. But for many that won’t matter. They want to be a part of the event, and besides, even with the winter cold, its going to have a party feel to it. They just want to be here.

There will also be no shortage of police and security personnel. By one estimate, there will be police officers and agents from some 79 different police forces and federal agencies. The actual number of security personnel on duty is a secret, but a good guess is in excess of 10,000. The Secret Service, the folks in charge of the President security, want this go off without a hitch and I tend to be on their side on this one.

The ceremony itself is surprisingly short. It will commence, right on time, at noon. The oath, which was penned by George Washington, commits the President to defend and uphold the Constitution. That’s pretty much the gist of it. The oath will be administered by the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court and when he is done he will say “Congratulations Mr. President.” The band will immediately break into “Hail to the Chief” (a score without lyrics by the way) and elements of the Third Infantry Division, the Army Unit that handles ceremonies for the President, will begin their 21 gun artillery salute. With that, the Obama Administration will officially begin.

How Tiny Tim Saved Christmas

 

By David Kerr

 

On Christmas Eve my grandfather used to read Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” out loud to the family.   He made the story come alive, but I have to be honest, being little at the time, I can’t quite remember whether I ever made it through the entire story or not.  Usually, by the time we had gotten to the second or third ghost, I was fast asleep. 

 

I do remember thinking that it was all just a bit scary, what with ghosts and dead men rattling chains, but I enjoyed the story just the same.  Sadly, this family tradition didn’t survive my grandfather.  No one could do it quite as well.  But even today, at least once every Christmas, whether it’s seeing it performed on stage, or watching one of the many movie versions, I make sure the story is a part of my Christmas.

 

But a Christmas Carol carries a more profound historical meaning than most people realize.  The story was written at a time when the celebration of Christmas was in retreat, and this little tale, first published in 1843, in its own charming way, helped reinvigorate the celebration.    

 

The first half of the 19^th century, both in England and America, was the beginning of the industrial revolution.  It was a transformation that came at a high price.  As people moved from farms to the cities, traditional society and family ties were disrupted on a scale that is hard to imagine today.  For many it was a harsh existence.  Traditional holidays, so popular when people lived in the countryside, were fading.  Even Christmas was sometimes only recognized in passing.   In America Christmas was still a regular work day.

 

It’s unlikely that Dickens had any idea how popular his story would become.  At only sixty pages it was first published as a serial in newspapers.  The story proved immensely popular.  It was quickly put in novel form and has been in print for most of the past 165 years.  But most importantly, it set into a motion a revival in our attitude towards Christmas.  It reminded people, in its own unusual way, what Christmas was all about.

 

In typical Dickens fashion it reflected the harshness of the times.  Scrooge’s beleaguered accounting clerk Bob Cratchit was trying to keep his family together in the face of daunting odds.  His daughter worked in one of the era’s dark and dingy factories and his son, Tiny Tim, was afflicted by a disease that Cratchit couldn’t afford to have treated.  Then there was the lead character, Ebenezer Scrooge.  Unkind and miserly, he seemed to be a man without a soul.  However, and this is the point of the entire story, Scrooge, as calloused as he had become, was still capable of being redeemed.  The ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future saw to that.  Dickens, in a story that was as entertaining as it was powerful, touched on the very meaning of Christmas.  Namely that Christmas was about redemption.  Not just of Ebenezer Scrooge, but of mankind. 

 

Prompted by the immense popularity of this little novel, and continuing through the remainder of the century, Christmas once gain became popular.  On both sides of the Atlantic, the celebration slowly came back to life.  It’s hard to tell whether that’s what Charles Dickens had in mind when he wrote the story.  Probably not.  At the time, he was short on cash, and had to make a deadline.  But in helping his readers connect with the meaning of Christmas, we owe a thank you to Charles Dickens, and of course, his characters, Ebenezer Scrooge, Bob Cratchit and Tiny Tim.  God bless us everyone.

You might think that election 2008 is over, but hold on, we’re not quite finished yet. Yes, though Barack Obama is considered the President-Elect, his election doesn’t become final until the votes of the Electoral College are cast in each state capitol and then sent, hopefully by a reliable courier, to Washington D.C.

My own state, Virginia, which for the first time in 44 years voted for a Democrat for President, is having its Presidential Electors get-together of Presidential electors today. The formula for the number of electors, if you’ve forgotten this over the past few weeks, is the number of members of the U.S. House of Representatives plus the two Senators. In my state, and we, for reasons I have never quite fathomed call ourselves the Commonwealth of Virginia (one of only four states to do that) have thirteen electoral college votes. There are a total of 540 nationwide.

Later today these thirteen people will meet in Richmond, our state capitol, and in a very solemn ceremony cast their ballots for Barack Obama. In years past, this wasn’t a particularly exciting event. From Richard Nixon in 1968 until George Bush II in 2004 the electors were always Republicans.

This year however, not only will they be Democrats, their number will also include the first African American electors in the state’s modern history.

Being an elector isn’t really that exciting an affair. The whole ceremony takes just a few minutes, but as in the case of Barack Obama, every once in awhile they get to participate in the making of a little history.

Once their voting is done this morning, and I hope they get fed a good lunch for their troubles, the tally will be officially transmitted to the Speaker of the House in Washington D.C., who, on January 6, 2009, to a gathering of both Houses of Congress will read the state results, out loud, one by one. The votes will then be toted up, and at that point, and only that point, Barack Obama will officially be declared the President elect.

Its ceremonial and no one usually cares. Sometimes it doesn’t even make the news, but this year, far more than most, the little extras, the procedural aspects of the election, like the official voting of the electoral college are getting are getting special attention.

Footnote: Now, here is an interesting aside. Electors, by law, aren’t necessarily bound by their party’s choice. As recently as 1960 some Democratic Southern electors, not happy with John Kennedy’s election, decided to vote for a segregationist senator instead. However, since the parties choose the electors, and since tradition, and personal honor govern their commitment to their party’s candidate, this doesn’t happen all that often.

American politics is in a very strange place at the moment. The New President, with the title President-Elect, is waiting in the wings, but until Noon on January 20, 2009, George W. Bush, and all the appointees and cabinet officers that make up his administration remain in power. That may seem like a long wait, but just consider that up until Franklin D. Roosevelt’s second term in 1936 newly elected Presidents had to wait until March.
 

Usually, for the outgoing President this gap is somewhat anti-climatic. However, there have been exceptions. Lyndon Johnson, much like President Bush is doing now with Afghanistan and Iraq, had to continue to run the war in Vietnam until he turned it all over to Richard Nixon in 1969. Jimmy Carter, perhaps one of America’s best former-Presidents, spent almost every waking hour of his last days in office trying to negotiate an end to the Iran Hostage Crisis. He succeeded. Bill Clinton, in typical Clintonesque fashion, went on a whirlwind. In a last minute move, he used his executive power to set aside large tracts of land, mostly in the west, for conservation. Developers and mining interests were furious, but there was little they could do about it. It’s probably one of his most enduring legacies.

However, at the moment, most of the attention is on President Elect and what he is doing to prepare for the transition.   A transition is no small undertaking.  Its a carefully managed and coordinated affair that involves dozens of teams, fanning out across the Washington Bureaucracy, collecting data, proposing plans, and making recommendations for appointments and priorities.

The new President, in a surprisingly short period of time, has to appoint new cabinet secretaries, all of which need to be confirmed by the Senate, and he also has to prepare a new national budget. Given that the current budget for the United States is $1.3 trillion, and oh yes, is also deeply in the red, this is no small undertaking.

Most of the media focus is on the people who may make up the President’s cabinet. The only choice, as of this writing, to be announced is the Chief of Staff. While critically important to running the White House, it’s not an appointment most Americans stay up late worrying about.

Given the President-Elect’s emphasis on repairing our relations around the world one of the most important appointments it the new Secretary of State.  Hillary Clinton has been mentioned, so has John Kerry, the Democratic candidate for President in 2004, and a name that’s popped up more than once is former Senator Sam Nunn.  Nunn is not that well known, but was highly respected in the Senate, and has been actively involved since his retirement in promoting nuclear nonproliferation.

The prospective choices fill the air. Stay tuned long enough and you might find your next door neighbor is being considered for a job. One of the most interesting prospects has been the possible selection of Colin Powell to be Secretary of Education. His leadership experience, grasp of national policy issues, and his passion for education issues, might be refreshing for a department that’s been all but ignored by the current Administration.

There is also the matter of the inauguration.   The stands are already being constructed along Pennyslvania Avenue and as many as a million visitors will flock to the Capitol for the festivities. This will be a record. Hotels are booked solid, and now, local residents, some not quite so passionate about staying in city for the events, are getting offers as high as $5,000 to rent out their houses for a week. While a solemn and serious event, its also one big party.