"Did the RAF win World War Two?" asks the April 2018 issue of BBC History Magazine.

“Did the RAF win World War Two?” asks the front page cover title of the April 2018 issue of BBC History Magazine.  I know this month sees the one hundredth anniversary of the founding of the Royal Air Force and that it played a vital role in defeating Nazi Germany, but I think such a cover title is just a little bit over the top.  After all, it could be more easily argued that the war in Europe was won by the Russian Army and the US Eighth Air Force.  The Russian Army won a decisive victory at Kursk in the summer of 1943 and began its inexorable advance west.   The bombers and fighters of the Eighth Air Force achieved air superiority over Germany in the spring of 1944 allowing the destruction of German industry and the crippling of the Luftwaffe.

The BBC History Magazine editors may as well ask if the Royal Navy’s British Pacific Fleet, the most powerful fleet Britain ever sent into battle, won the war against Japan.  It achieved much, and not without sacrifice, but the American Army and Navy were well capable of dealing with the Japanese on their own.

Incidentally, another attention seeking question on the front page of the same magazine asks: “Brunel: is his genius a myth?”  What next I wonder?  Perhaps a cover title, “Winston Churchill: the Tony Blair of the 1940s?”

UPDATE 28th May 2018.
I am pleased to say I had a letter, based on the above post, published in the June edition of BBC History Magazine.  It was nicely edited and I reproduce the letter as it appeared.

Did the RAF really win the war?

How the RAF Won the War, read the title of your April cover feature.  Now, I know this year marks the one hundredth anniversary of the founding of the Royal Air Force, and that the RAF played a vital role in defeating the Nazis, but I thought that title was a bit over the top.  After all, it could be easily argued that the war in Europe was won by the Russian Army or the United States Army Air Forces. 

The Russian army won a decisive victory at Kursk in the summer of 1943, before beginning its inexorable advance west.   And the bombers and fighters of USAAF’s Eighth Air Force achieved daylight air superiority over Germany in the spring of 1944, ensuring the virtual absence of the Luftwaffe during the Normandy landings, and the eventual destruction of Germany’s war industries by bombing.

As for the Far East, one may as well ask if the Royal Navy’s British Pacific Fleet - the most powerful fleet Britain ever sent into battle - won the war against Japan.  It achieved much, and not without sacrifice, but I suspect the American army and navy were well capable of dealing with the Japanese forces on their own!

S.W., Somerset

An angel watches over a lane leading to Felton Common in North Somerset.

Just north of Bristol Airport on the A38 at Lulsgate Bottom is the road east to Felton, Winford and Chew Magna.  Take that road and 100 yards past the cattle grid you will see on your right a lane lined by aged beech trees which leads to St. Katharine’s Church and Felton Common.

Standing at the entrance to the lane is a striking statue of an angel looking skywards.  It was carved from a dying beech tree by Gloucestershire artist Ant Beetlestone in 2010.

An angel watches over a lane leading to Felton Common in North Somerset.

The angel carved from a beech tree at Felton Common in North Somerset. 

Robin Tilbrook's speech at the English Democrats Party Spring Conferance in Huntingdon.

In part of his speech on the 10th March to the English Democrats’ Spring Conference in Huntingdon, Robin Tilbrook gave his view of the current state of the Conservatives and Labour.  Here is the relevant section on Labour:

"Turning to Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour, the massive majority of Blairite  Remainiacs in the Labour Parliamentary Party has fully pushed Jeremy Corbyn into adopting a more pro-EU position that is on remaining within the Customs Union.

 

Coming out of the Customs Union is vital if there is to be any agreements with any other nations.  If we are in the Customs Union, not only can we not reach agreements with other nations on trade, but also the other nations wouldn’t even be interested in talking to us because they would know that they can trade with us by dealing with the EU and we would have to obey what the EU decides. 

So this is a troubling change of position on the part of Jeremy Corbyn but it illustrates something that has been happening within Labour for a long time, which is that Labour’s elite has been losing touch with its core traditional vote, or, as they call it the “White Working Class”, or as I would call it “English Workers”.  Our candidate for the South Yorkshire Mayoralty, David Allen, memorably and pithily put it in a recent BBC interview that Labour are “traitors to the English working class”. 

 More and more English people are realising that Labour is outright hostile to England and to English interests. 

 Labour now is an internationalist and increasingly metropolitan, statist and multi-culturalist party.  This is the same trajectory as all the Social Democrat parties across Western Europe.  The result across Western Europe has been that Social Democrat parties are no longer supported by their country’s working class.  So, for instance, in the recent French elections, we saw that French working class voters mostly supported the Front Nationale and not the middle class ideological obsessives of the French Social Democrat parties.  As the Doncaster MP, Caroline Flint put it that Labour’s “Sister Party” in France was reduced to 6%.

 I fully expect that, with the Blairites in Parliament, and with Jeremy Corbyn’s small parliamentary support group of Far-Left MPs, and with their middle class supporters in Momentum etc. that the divide between the Labour Party and its traditional support will grow eventually into an unbridgeable chasm.  We can only look forward to that day!"

For Robin Tilbrook’s speech in full, here is a link:

https://robintilbrook.blogspot.co.uk/2018/03/my-speech-to-english-democrats-spring.html

My own view is that left wing parties such as the Green Party and the smaller Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition seem to be haemorrhaging support to Labour, or perhaps that should be Momentum/Labour.  Be that as it may, it does seem to me that Labour is obsessed with promoting ‘diversity’ and ‘multiculturalism’.  Such a stance goes hand in hand with their relaxed policy on immigration.  

Meanwhile the Tories' cavalier attitude to immigration provides an everlasting supply of employees for their friends and supporters in business while keeping wages down into the bargain. 

In these circumstances it is hardly surprising that the interests of the English working class take a back seat.

The Conservatives, as far as I can see, do not seem be very conservative.  I can’t think of anything they are actually conserving except perhaps the riches of the financial elite.  If the Conservatives were a product I would report them to the Advertising Standards Agency!

Incidentally, Robin Tilbrook summed up the Liberal Democrats as having: "Shrunk into almost a total permanent irrelevance" - who could argue with that?

A snowy scene in a South Somerset garden.

After 18 hours of snow showers in South Somerset there is almost as much snow in the garden
as on March 2nd.  I thought it was supposed to be spring!

A snowy scene in a South Somerset garden on March 18th.

The loss of the light cruiser HMS BONAVENTURE. One of her crew is remembered at Christ Church in the village of Redhill, North Somerset.

Not far from my great-grandparents grave in the churchyard of Christ Church in the North Somerset village of Redhill is the grave of John Edward Reynolds and his wife Elizabeth.  I have always been intrigued by a modest memorial inscription on their grave which reads: “ALSO IN MEMORY OF THEIR GRANDSON EDWARD ARTHUR HUGHES R.N. KILLED IN ACTION 31 MARCH 1941 AGED 21 YEARS”.  As he died during the Second World War I thought it might be possible to find out how he came to lose his life.

My research revealed that Edward Arthur Hughes was a telegraphist serving aboard the light cruiser HMS BONAVENTURE when she was torpedoed 100 miles south of the island of Crete during the ill-fated British attempt to help Greece resist German attack in the spring of 1941.   

BONAVENTURE was a Dido class cruiser of 5,600 tons with a speed of 33 knots and armed with eight 5.25in guns in twin turrets.  The ship entered service with the Royal Navy on June 19th 1940. 

By January 1941 BONAVENTURE was operating in the Mediterranean where on March 1st she joined the 3rd Cruiser Squadron which was taking part in Operation LUSTRE, the transfer of British military forces to Greece. 

On 31st March 1941 at 0300 hrs, while heading for Alexandria as part of the escort for convoy GA008, BONAVENTURE was hit by two torpedoes fired by the Italian submarine AMBRA and sank within 6 minutes.  The destroyers HMS HEREWARD and HMAS STUART rescued 310 of her crew of 480, but 139 men were lost, among them Edward Arthur Hughes.  He was the son of Arthur Thomas Hughes and Bessie Sophia Hughes of Clifton, Bristol. 

This month sees the 77th anniversary of the loss of BONAVENTURE. 

Telegraphist Hughes is remembered on the Plymouth Naval Memorial. 

Viewing the "Letters" columns. Arm staff to end school shootings? Not such a good idea!

Following the latest dreadful school shooting in the USA President Trump proposed arming teachers.  These two letters published in The Week on March 3^rd suggest that might not be such a good idea.

To The Guardian

The maths teacher at my boarding school (circa 1959) lost her temper two or three times per lesson.  She would fling chalk, or worse, the wooden board rubber at a pupil so hard that her body would swing sideways – she was quite out of control.  How would we have fared had she possessed an assault rifle?

Priscilla James, Stoke-by-Clare, Suffolk

To The Guardian

Give teachers guns?  Most of us struggle with staplers.

Dorothy Granville, Middlesbrough