As a teenager I was on the far left, a republican socialist, but then after starting to study economics I veered towards liberalism.  But these were not good times for the Liberal Party.  I remember one morning at LSE meeting with a few others to share the gloomy news that with defeat in a Welsh bye-election the Liberal representation in Parliament had been reduced to five (including two, the only English ones, dependent on a pact with the Conservatives.)

Nevertheless, during the fifties and sixties it seemed (from my biased position) that though Liberals attracted few votes at elections, they punched far above their weight in intellectual debate and new ideas.  Perhaps paving the way towards later electoral success?  It is surely the case, however, that the increase over the years in the vote and in the number of Lib-Dem MPs, MEPs and local councillors owed more to the paucity of ideas and fading of popular trust in the Labour and Conservative Parties — and also the line of inspiring Liberal/LibDem leaders.  If so, the increased vote was always fragile.  Persuaded by David Cameron that the Conservatives are no longer “the Nasty Party”, former Conservative voters have gone home.  Persuaded that Nick Clegg is a Tory, former Labour voters have gone home.

I regret not giving much attention to publication in the nineties of the Orange Book, to which several Lib-Dem members of the coalition Government contributed.  This espoused hard-nosed, small-government ideas, arguably harking back to Asquithian Liberalism, and more “right wing” than the convictions of Lib-Dems who are not in government, like Selwyn Hughes, Menzies Campbell, Charles Kennedy.  But am I mistaken in thinking that while Liberals today have greater public support than in the fifties and sixties, even in this year’s elections, there is now less intellectual and fresh policy output from Liberals?

What is Liberalism?  To my mind it is based on the ideas of individual freedom and social responsibility.  Although they may be some tension in pursuing both at the same time, they are basically complementary, twin ideas.  For example, individual freedom should be universal but cannot flourish amid grinding poverty and social disorder.  At present neither Conservatives nor Labour can be wholly trusted to pursue either individual freedom or social responsibility.  And the Orange Book Liberals, who flirted with replacing the NHS by an insurance scheme, don’t seem securely committed to social responsibility.  Questions arise.  Are Liberals or LibDems better as a free-ranging opposition proclaiming varied, sometimes contradictory and impractical polices?  Are they therefore unsuited to government responsibility and compromises?   Am I a liberal or really a social democrat?  Let’s see how Ed Milliband shapes up.

Last Saturday thousands of people – some say 250,000, others 500,000 – processed through London to Hyde Park in protest at the scale of the public spending cuts in process and to hear speeces by Ed Milliband and TUC worthies.  The scale of it was impressive, but once seen it quickly lost its televisual appeal.  So the TV cameras concentrated on more exciting activities of a few hundred active demonstators left behind in central London.  Developments were interesting.  There were a number.

Substantial numbers of an  organisation we were told was “UK Uncut” entered shops.  We are told that on previous occasions (my recall may not be fully accurate but the sesnce is the same) they had entered premises of businesses alleged to be unfairly avoiding UK taxes, such as Boots where they acted out the setting up of a hospital, Topshop – a play centre – and WH Smith – a library.   Clearly all such activites are disruptive of business but apparently they have been non-violent.  On Saturday the prime target was the luxury store Fortnum and Mason with some 150 entering.  It seems that customers were not interfered with and business carried on.

In the meantime the TV cameras showed small numbers of people, watched by a hundred or so spectators, attacking banks.  Once instance was assault on Santanders.  After numerous attempts using feet and poles a large window collapsed and some people entered the bank.  While this was happening TV viewers could see police – twenty or so just round the corner in a line across the road but doing nothing.

Back to Fortnum and Mason, later TV news showed a police woman advising the Uncut people they were free to leave and that they should, turn left to avoid the violent demos outside.  When they did 138 were arrested and charged.

Several conclusions may be drawn, including

1  The police chose soft targets to arrest and avoided confrontation with violent people as long as they could.

2  They chose, or were perhaps under instruction (by the Home Secretary?) to allow violent demonstrations to carry on so as to divert attention from the hundreds of thousands of peaceful demonstrators.

Whether or not either of these suggestions is valid, the response of some of the media fit in.  For example, the Sunday Telegraph ran the large-type headline  “The Face of Hate” above a picture of violent demonstrators.  Their actions buried what should have been the main news of the day.

A great flurry of writing and a torrent of speech are to be expected this year, the four hundredth anniversary of the publication of what I still prefer to call the Authorised Version.  Some of it reveals fascinating new facts, new at least to me.  Some, but not much of it borders on pretentious twaddle.  Let’s start with a book I was given for my birthday: When God Spoke English by Adam Nicholson .

This, the book of a TV series, is a very good read.  There is excellent background about the uninhibited lifestyle of James, his court, aristocratic England and church leaders, and some glimpses of low life too, as well as the story of the translation itself.  There are many revealing anecdotes and potted biographies.  It’s a pity few source references are given.  The translators were very thorough, working in six companies of about eight, each preparing a block of bible books and then going through an overall editing process.  Nothing much beyond their names is known about some of the men, but a lot about some, for example Lancelot Andrewes, the chief translator.  He was a great scholar (speaking 15 modern languages and 6 ancient) and man of prayer (spending five hours each morning in payer — anyone who visits before noon does not believe in God).  His book of personal prayers is still treasured.  Holding multiple church offices he turned down a bishopric because there was not enough money in it, but eventually held the wealthy see of Winchester.  He was known to be generous with his time, ever ready to stop and talk with anyone on the steps of St Pauls after preaching one of his great sermons.  Yet when Plague threatened he abandoned his parish and parishioners in Greenwich for a more salubrious residence.  After the 1605 Gunpowder Plot he interrogated an almost certainly innocent Puritan Separatist who was then hung, drawn and quartered.   He was, however, not the only one to have a very complex character.

The translating teams did include some “moderate” Puritans and some Calvinists, but most were mainstream Anglicans.  An interesting “by the way” is that the Pilgrim Fathers, leaving for the New World, from choice not persecution (says Nicholson), took the Geneva Bible with its anti-establishment marginal notes as their bible.  However, when they became the establishment, this bible was dumped in favour of the King James Version which, despite its monarchist slant, did keep nonconformity in its place.  [Norman Jones (see below) records his wife’s photo of a bumper sticker on a car from Georgia, USA, “KING JAMES BIBLE – GOD’S FINAL AUTHORITY”.]

Nicholson shows how the translators used earlier English translations, notably that of Tyndale, the English Lutheran, but also the Geneva Bible, the work of English reformers in Geneva.  They embellished them, made some corrections and emphasised royal prerogative and traditional church nomenclature, for example ecclesia was translated as church not, as before, congregation and presbyteros as priest, not elder.  I feel he goes rather over the top in extolling the finished work and its superiority over all others, ancient and modern. This it seems is because the translators held themselves consciously poised between the claims of accessibility and beauty, plainness and richness, simplicity and majesty, the people and the king, while these great questions are not the medium of modern religion. … Unlike the churches themselves, the words of this Bible remain alive. He quotes John 21:4-7 in the AV and compares it unfavourably with the NEB which he claims is dead, no immediacy, nothing vibrant … with … every right decision by the Renaissance Translators abandoned, every wrong fork taken. Not until page 241, in his final chapter, does he admit I am no atheist, but I am no churchgoer, perhaps because these things (accessibility and beauty etc) are no longer voiced in church.

What Nicholson does not do is relate how the 1611 words were corrected in the eighteenth century to the AV we know.  In the Church Times for 11^th February this year, Chris Wright, a retired Editor for an American Christian publisher, tells us that the original master-copy was not kept and that various printers introduced various printing errors, including the notorious commandment “thou shalt commit adultery”.  Not until 1762 (Cambridge University) and 1769 (Oxford), i.e. over thirty years after the Wesleys’  “conversion” experiences, was anything done about it.  Then typos were corrected, spelling updated (“son” instead of  “sonne”) and a few words that had changed their meaning put right.  Wright concludes: “Most Authorised Versions sold today come from these Cambridge or Oxford editions.”  This leaves the intriguing thought: are there some, albeit small, variations still in print?

Norman Jones, Associate professor of English at Ohio State University, notes (Church Times, 25^th February) that Prof. Stephen Prickett’s phrase “the King James steamroller” alludes to the way it flattened out stylistic and lexical differences in the Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek originals, thus causing translation inaccuracies in the interest of beauty of language.  It also contributed to the colonising appropriation of other cultures by the British Empire.  By contrast, Melvyn Bragg in another TV programme argued for the revolutionary impact of the KJB, citing Martin Luther King: “I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low.”

Arnold Hunt, a curator of manuscripts at the British Library, comments (Church Times 4^th March) on the validity of modern translations. He quotes the left-wing historian, AJP Taylor describing the New English Bible as a “mortal blow against the English Language”, adding that this version now seems old-fashioned as its “dynamic equivalence” had been replaced in favour by the more conservative “formal equivalence”.  I’m not sure I understand these terms but I like the sound of a new translation he mentions, by Robert Alter.  The well-known opening of Ecclesiastes Vanity of vanities; all is vanity, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities, all is vanity becomes Merest breath, said Qohelet, merest breath, all is mere breath. Hunt says with Alter’s version “you never forget you are reading a document from a profoundly different culture.”

I conclude with a personal note.  I was brought up with the AV, taught to memorize passages and how to read it in church, but found it archaic and hard to understand.  Then the “new” translations of the New Testament by Weymouth (1903) and Moffat (1913) opened a window.  They also left the Old Testament seeming still more antiquated.  (I see Moffat also published an Old Testament translation in 1924, but I don’t remember reading this) There was the “official” Revised Version of 1884, but this aimed to make as few alterations as possible to the AV.  [My Local Preacher Presentation Bible in 1960 is the RV; I have never used it.] Then the (American) Revised Standard Version and the (British) New English Bible transformed bible study.  New commentaries were published using the new texts and so much became clearer.  Later on, I still think my local church was mistaken in choosing the (American) New Revised Standard Version rather than the (British) Revised English Bible for our pews, but both are invaluable.  Yes the 400^th Anniversary of the King James Authorised Version should be celebrated.  But we should not allow ourselves to be deflected by the scorn of the literature high-brows.  The Bible is meant for religious edification and we need the modern translations, so meticulously and faithfully made, to better understand its record of man’s search for God and God’s search for man.

I’ve just finished reading this amazing book, subtitled “The Logic of Economic Calamities”.  It was first published in America in 2009 but it came out here in the Penguin format last year (346 pages plus copious notes).  It could be viewed as yet another account of the 2007-2008 financial crash but several things make this one different (so far as I know).

• He is a journalist and writes in an easy to read journalistic style.
• He has a very good understanding of, it seems to me, all branches of modern economics.
• He goes back into the history of economic ideas (from the nineteenth centurythrough to the 1970s), showing the relevance of past theorists – for good or ill – to recent developments.
• He has researched the immensely complicated world of financial markets and conveys an understanding of what has been going on.

It is in three parts (like a classic sermon?) plus a conclusion. The first part describes and analyses what he calls “Utopian Economics”.   The rot began with the over-mathematical systematisation of Keynesian economics (Paul Samuelson etc) which led to its discrediting in the 1970s “stagflation”.  He then shows how the free market idealaism of Hayek and Milton Friedman was developed, in particular by Robert Lucas, into an idealised all-embracing mathematical macro-economic system.   This “perfect competition” ideal can be traced back to Adam Smith in the eighteenth and Walras, Pareto, Jevons and Marshall in the nineteenth centuries.  The consquence was mathematically sophisticated economists, statisticians and physicists were recruited by Wall Street and the City of London to devise investment models based on the “efficient market hypothesis”, the idea that if governments could only stop interfering then all markets, including financial ones, would home in on the ideal most-efficient solution because all availalble information would be reflected in current prices.

In Part Two, “Reality-Based Economics”, Cassidy demonstrates how recent history has demonstrated the weaknesses of the efficient market hypothesis.  As Keynes in the 1930s pointed out, financial markets are subject to waves of irrational optimism and pessimism.  He likened investing to newspaper competitions where  “the competitors have to pick out the six prettiest faces from a hundred photographs, the prize being awarded to the competitor whose choice most nearly corresponds to the average preferences of the competitors as a whole.”   So the object is to go along with the herd rather than act on one’s own judgement.

Part Three is “The Great Crunch in which the villan is Alan Greenspan, chairman of The Federal Reserve (the US central bank) for so many years.  He was so taken in by the Lucas minimal government school that he neglected to intervene to prevent market crashes.  The critical development in recent years on both  sides of the Atlantic has been housing.  Provision of “sub-prime mortages”, in extreme  “NINJA”  mortgages to people with no income, no job or assets, could only work with ever-increasing house prices.  Here is where the mathematicians went wrong.  It was assumed that if a large number of dodgy mortgages were lumped together and sold on as a “derivative” product the risks would be minimised by the law of averages.  Defaults can occur not only, indeed not mainly, on a  random basis.  A shock such as a rise in interest rates is likely to lead to widespread defaults, leading to a fall in house prices and further defaults and further price falls …. Cassidy details numerous other faults in the system such as remuneration packages based on short-term marketing successes.  All in all, a sorry mess ending in “Socialism in our time”.   Descibed with many telling anecdotes, I can only try to give a flavour of the whole book.

What is to be done?  Cassidy makes a number of detailed suggestions for reform.  He concludes that measures must be taken to avoid “a financial system dominated by a handful of firms that are ‘too big to fail’, but that can take on as much risk as they please, secure in the knowledge that if things go wrong the taxpayer will be there to bail them out. … Before the political will for reform dissipates, it is essential to put Wall Street in its place and to confront utopian economics with reality-based economics.”   Well he wrote that in 2009.  I think utopian economics has been well and  truly confronted in the economics professsion, but I’m not too sure about Wall Street and the City of London.  And I fear the will for reform is weakening;  I hope I’m wrong.

Today’s Guardian reports on data of England’s social and health inequalities, Marmot Indicators for Local Authorities in England.  A year ago a weighty, in both senses, report  from an enquiry set up by the Government in 2008 and researched and written by a group under the chairmanship of Sir Michael Marmot  (Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health at University College London)  Fair Society, Healthy Lives was published last February. I must confess it passed me by and I suspect the Government was not exactly thrilled by it.  It said that reducing health inequalities is a matter of fairness and social justice.  Action is needed across all the social determinants of health, focusing not only on the most disadvantaged.  Health and life expectancy rise  with income, education level, housing quality and other social factors.  Action on these would bring economic benefits, but economic growth is not the most important measure of our country’s sucess.  Fair distribution of health, well-being and sutainability are important and interrelated goals.  Six policy objectives were listed:

• give every child the best start in life
• enable all children, young people and adults to maximise their capabilities and have control over their lives
• create full employment and good work for all
• ensure healthy standards of living for all
• create healthy and sustainable places and communities
• strengthen the role and impact of ill health prevention

Action is required by central and local government, the NHS, the third and private sectors and community groups.

Effective local delivery requires effective participatory decision-making at local level.

The indicators for local authorities now published are interesting.  It’s no surprise to see that those living in the leafy and relatively wealthy places around Slough are healthier and have a longer life expectancy.  But the Slough figures show some important variations with the national averages.  Life expectancy for men (79) and women (83) are average.  The inequalities in life expectancy (relating to income, social class, education, etc) are also average and inequality in disability-free life expectancy is less severe in Slough than average.  But a figure that stands out is that in Slough less than half (48%) of children aged 5 have a good level of development (behaviour, readiness to learn, as assessed by teachers),  compared with 55.7% in England as a whole.   This does not look promising.

The Essex and England cricketer and test match commentator, Trevor Bailey, has died in a fire in his retirement home at the age of 87.  The obiturists remember him as “Barnacle Bailey”, so called because of his obdurate “stonewalling” resistance when batting against Australia to save matches.  This actually revealed a triumph of character over limited ability.  He was by nature a dashing batsman full of strokes but not quite up to the highest test match standard.  So against Australia he compromised and stayed in for dear life, eschewing the adventurous strokes that might have lead to his depature.

I first saw him play in 1948 at Lords for the Gentlemen of England against the Australian tourists.  The previous week I had seen Bradman’s last test innings bowled for nought second ball.  This time there was no mistake; he made 150 in double-quick time with 24 year-old Bailey one of the bowlers massacred in the Austrailans total of 610 for 5 decalared.  Bailey opened the bowling and took 2 for 112 from 27 overs.  He batted at number nine and made 20 and 14 not out.  The Gentlemen lost by an innings and 81 runs.

Next season New Zealand were the tourists and I saw Trevor Bailey in his second test match, at Lords.   He batted at seven and made 93, mostly in a stand of 189 with Denis Compton.  He hit 16 fours and outpaced Compton, who made 116.  I went with my dad and my friend Edgar Dunster.  I remember Ed saying, after one stylish leg glance by Trevor, that Denis was in danger of being outshone.   Bailey opened the bowling, but had no wickets for 136 of 33 overs in New Zealand’s only innings.  The match was drawn as were the other three tests,  forcing the MCC to decree “no more three-day-only tests”.

In last weeks Oldham and Saddleworth by-election the Liberal Democrat share of the vote was held at the General election level of almost 32%, while the Labour share went up by 10% to 42% and the Conservative’s down 13% to 13%.  Michael Meacher suggests in today’s Guardian, however, that only half of the LibDem voters had voted for that party in June, the rest coming from tactical voting by Conservatives.  I doubt whether there were so many tactical Tories.

The turnout went down from 61.2% in June to 48.6%, a 21.5% decline in the number of votes.  With a popular MP sacked by judges in London, it is reasonable to suppose that the Labour vote held up better than that of the Coalition parties, falling by, say, 10%.  It is also reasonable to suggest that Conservatives were the most likely to stay at home since it was their party that finished third in the General Election.  (The vote for other parties, predominantly UKIP, BNP and Green, with the Bus Pass Elvis party polling just 67 votes, actually went up by 93 votes, from 10% to 13%).

Assuming that the average 21.5% of LibDem voters sat on their hands, then over five thousand of those who voted Conservative at the General election did not vote last week.  Making the rational assumptions that all the Conservative switches were to the LibDems, that all the LibDem switches were to Labour and that the increase in the votes for other parties came from the LibDems — of course, there would have been other switches including irrational ones — then the out-turn would have been like this:

This suggests that nearly 37% of those who voted Lib Dem in June voted for other parties in January.  Not very encouraging for Mr Clegg!  It could be worse: Michael Meacher’s calculations assume more Conservatives voting with more of them switching to shore up the LibDems, and hence even more Lib Dem defectors to Labour.

Someone suggested that a blog with this title was odd: two disciplines with nothing in common.  One thing they have had common is a certain arrogance.  Theology used to call itself the Queen of Sciences; now theologians may be regarded as rather quaint outsiders in academia.    Economists used to regard other social sciences with a superior smile; in the wake of the largely unforeseen credit crunch they are obliged to show more humility now.

I have just pulled off my bookshelf a book I bought at the Sarum College bookshop for £1 (reduced from £16.99) some time ago but had never read: Ivan Petrella The Future of Liberation Theology, first published in 2004.  Liberation theology flourished in Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s, using Marxist analysis to promote a “preferential option for the poor”.  It waned after the collapse of communism in Russia and Eastern Europe, and condemnation by Pope John Paul.

Petrella argues that the time is ripe for a renewal.  Food, drink and shelter are part of God’s plan for all people.  Theology and social sciences (economics, politics and sociology) must be integrated to embody that plan of salvation.

At the same time, various economists argue that economics must deploy the tools of psychology and social psychology to comprehend what has gone wrong with the world economy and what policies are needed to pursue economic wellbeing or happiness.

It is not difficult for a Christian with a well-honed social conscience to see connections!

Are Christians in England a beleaguered minority, liable to be persecuted?  Some, including  former Archbishop Carey, seem to think so.  And some seem even to relish this position.  But it is criticised by Simon Barrow of the Ekklesia think tank.  Lord Carey thinks the “rich legacy” that the Christian faith underpins the values of Britain “is under attack”.  Barrow counters that, although Christians do not rule others in the way they once did, this does not amount to persecution.

Now Carey once headed the Established Church and still sits in the House of Lords as a Life Peer.  Barrow, the Co-Director of Ekklesia is a Mennonite; they form a small Christian sect with a very strong social conscience, well used to being in a minority.  It’s easy to see the distance between them

Let’s turn to a rather unlikely place for help in understanding the role of Christians and the Christian Churches — the First and Second Books of Kings, in the Old Testament — with the aid of an American commentator, Peter Leithart. [1] Kings appears to be a history of the Kingdoms of David and Solomon, and their successors who failed to live up to their standards.   In fact it is a theological treatise on the dealings of God with his chosen but fallible people.  For example, spread over a number of chapters, the power and wealth of Solomon is grossly exaggerated, revealing God’s bounty rather than Solomon’s wisdom, while the reigns of many of the others are dismissed in few words.  Amidst all the carnage, God is shown as forbearing, forgiving and patient.   Furthermore, in Leithart’s analysis, Israel foreshadows the Church, not the modern nation state, and accordingly the Church is expected to have a public role.  But as the Kingdom/Church falters, worshipping idols and making treacherous foreign alliances, prophets, notably Elijah and Elisha come to the fore.  And the concept of the faithful remnant emerges.

This remnant does not cut itself off, waiting for the rest of Israel to get its comeuppance.  It confronts the rest, ever seeking renewal.  The parallel with today is that “true” Christians should not retreat into a corner, however charismatically noisy, and let the world and the traditional, more staid, churches pass by.  They should get involved — both with churches and public life.

Where does Carey and Not Ashamed, the campaign speaking up for Christian values in public life stand?  Purportedly it is on Leithart’s side, but the chosen battleground — neck chain crosses, prayers by nurses and “Winterval” seem rather trivial and mostly individualistic.

On the other side, Barrow is very much against “established” religion.  He quotes approvingly Stanley Hauerwas, the American Methodist/Anglican theologian:  Most of Christianity in recent times – since Constantine, in fact – thought it needed to rule. I represent what I like to call the non-Constantinian, ‘peasant’ view of Christianity. I just want to know who’s ruling me and how I can survive them!. This sounds more like Christianity in the ghetto, cut off from the public sphere. But this is not actually what Barrow stands for.  He writes:

Putting it personally: my faith is not and cannot be private. But nor do I wish to use the force of law to impose it. I actively oppose state religion, special privileges for Christians, discriminatory faith schooling, and religious opt-outs from equal treatment of others – not because I am a ‘secularist’ in some narrow sense, but because such things go against foundational Christian beliefs. Christ came not to impose a separate sphere called ‘religion’, but to call us to radical, voluntary transformation – personally and socially. And the basis of that transformation is communion (mutual indwelling), not separation or dominion.

As a non-conformist, biblical Christian, my conviction is that the message of the Gospel is spread by good example (martyria, witness) never by compulsion. Public testimony is about peacemaking, forgiveness, faithfulness, unconditional care for others, sharing our resources and living ‘holy lives’ – that is, lives dedicated to nurturing good wherever it is found and opposing the degradation of God-given life.

My heart is with Barrow rather than Carey.  But I remain suspicious of emphasis on non-conformity which so often has the tendency towards a holier-than-thou exclusivism.  Can a critique of politics and economic policy from right outside the system have as much effect as one from within?  Can “pure” Christians be as effective as those prepared to get their hands dirty?

“Frankie’s Story” by Jimmy McGovern, the second in the BBC1 series “Accused”, shown on Monday evening aroused controversy.  Apparently “the Generals” wanted it pulled and Radio Times contains an article by Colonel Tim Collins, veteran of the Iraq War, denying that the behaviour of British troops in Afghanistan is anything like that portrayed in the drama.

It was about two hooligans, Frankie and Peter a champion boxer, who joined the Army to escape criminal penalties (not possible says Collins).  They serve in somewhere like Afghanistan and Peter cracks with what used to be called shell shock but the NCO in charge calls cowardice.  He is then unmercifully bullied until he shoots himself.  The Lance Corporal who led the bullying makes Frankie concur in the fabrication that it was not suicide but death in action.  This would comfort Peter’s family, especially his father who had been a decorated veteran himself (as well as getting the NCO off any hook).  He also encourages Frankie to accompany the coffin back for funeral in his home town.  The father, however, drawing on his own experience, detects that his son had in fact killed himself (but does not tell the rest of the family).  Frankie does not admit it, but on return to his unit confronts the Lance Corporal and reports him to the Sergeant who dismisses his account.  Frankie then does not kill himself, but the Lance Corporal.  He is tried for murder in a civilian court in England, offers no defence or explanation and is sentenced to a minimum term of 25 years.

Collins writes that this is “not the army I know.  In this fantasy world there are no adults, no officers and no control. … The British Army is … free of (this) sort of brutality and chaos …” Nevertheless this story, it is fiction after all, reminds us of the strange deaths in the Deep Cut barracks in Surrey some years ago.  Over a couple of year several young soldiers are found dead from bullet wounds.  The official verdict is suicide, but no reasons are given.  Were they bullied beyond bearing?

National Service, the requirements of all young Britons of reasonable health to serve for two years in the armed forces, mostly at the age of 18, but 21 if they were deferred to complete an apprenticeship or higher education course, ended in over 50 years ago.  I served in the Army from 1952 to 1954, most of the time in West Germany.  If nothing else, it was an experience of meeting all sorts and condition from all parts of the country.  I was promoted to Lance Bombardier (and always feel I was cheated out of promotion to the much better paid Bombardier!)  I was a clerk in charge of the Battery office.  My staff included a dustman, another straight from grammar school and a burly coal miner.  It was fascinating to see the latter bending over a typewriter using his huge fingers most effectively. Most of this Royal Artillery regiment – junior officers, NCOs and gunners – were National Servicemen.  There were regulars – senior officers and NCOs and gunners – and they were different.  Some were very good people, able and decent.  Others had very dark natures and behaviour (some mentally and emotionally scarred by service in the Korean War).  But the predominant ethos was that of National Service: I do not recall serious incidents of bullying.   Incidentally, some individuals were posted on to serve in Korea to replace casualties, most commonly signallers who served in advanced positions to direct artillery fire and hence were most exposed.  I recall at least one signaller who tried to escape such a posting by self-harm.  Towards the end of my time it was announced that the regiment would go to Korea where the precarious cease-fire that still prevails had begun.  The regiment was filled up with regular soldiers and henceforth had a very different atmosphere.

In my military service during the early 1950s the Cold War had begun and there was a hot war in Korea.  As a clerk I rarely did guard duty.  I did so when the rest of the regiment was away on manoeuvres.  At one time there were extensive exercises on Luneburg Heath (where the Nazi Surrender had been signed) quite near the, Russian occupied East German border.  After a period in home barracks I was sent by train to join the regiment.  (I remember going through Hanover where a vast area was still flattened by wartime bombing.)  One night I was on guard duty after the regiment had returned from an exercise.  I was in charge of a small picket guarding all the battery’s vehicles and field guns, parked in an open field.  We had rifles BUT NO AMMUNITION.  Nor did I have any idea of where I could find ammunition should an emergency occur.  Nor did I have any instructions as to what to do in an emergency.  The same had been the case when on guard duty back at the largely empty barracks.

I do not know whether the Army has changed much in the past 60 years, whether today’s soldiers are different from those regulars I knew.  Obviously greater stress is laid on men and the need for mutual support is greater when under fire, especially from a mysterious enemy like the Taliban.  I do not know who is fantasising the most – Jimmy McGovern or Tim Collins.  But I do know that it was irresponsible on someone’s part for those young men and women at Deep Cut to have had access to ammunition to kill themselves (if that is how they died).  And I worry about the emotional and mental as well as physical health of those teenagers in the front line in Afghanistan today.