I described in an earlier post how my mother was a committed supporter of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. As a child, I became familiar with the notion of mutually assured destruction, or MAD, for short, the theory that underpinned and justified these weapons. No-one would dare use them because they would ensure their own destruction - as long as their opponent had them as well. This made them, so the theory went, an effective way of ensuring peace between powerful nations.
 The first part of the proposition could legitimately be argued on the basis that, since 1945, they haven't been used (though some would say that the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 came uncomfortably close. I certainly still remember the palpable fear that was widespread at the time). The second proposition is clearly untrue, since what happened was that the two superpowers - as well as dividing Europe into two hostile and isolated camps - simply moved their conflict into proxy wars in S. America, Africa, the far East - well actually any part of the globe where they could exert influence and gain an advantage over the other. Millions of people have died in these wars and their consequences. The cold war has now changed with the fall of the soviet bloc, but the West - or the USA, since they determine most aspects of Western policy - is still in conflict with Russia in the Ukraine, and in Eastern Europe generally as NATO tries to woo the old Soviet states into its sphere of influence, and, of course, in Syria. There have also been conflicts between the two states in Georgia (2008), over NATO anti-missile systems being placed in Poland and the Czech Republic, and over Russian military cooperation with Venezuela.
The first part of the proposition is also open to challenge. Simply because it hasn't yet happened doesn't make it impossible, and the consequence would be the end of humanity. If MAD is an acceptable defence position, then it's open to all. We now have nine nuclear armed states with a combined arsenal of around 16,000 nuclear warheads, some of these states existing in extremely unstable regions. The use of these weapons would, of course, break every conceivable aspect of both agreed rules of conflict and any understanding of morality. The immediate and indiscriminate incineration of potentially millions of men, women and children is an extraordinary basis on which to build a defence policy. It is questionable whether any state would be the first to resort to such weaponry knowing that all it would bring would be a conquered wasteland and the fallout threatening its own existence ( remember the Chernobyl power station disaster - minuscule compared to nuclear war - deposited nuclear waste across much of Western Europe). Clearly the negotiated destruction of these weapons is a sensible policy, but how can it be argued by states who both maintain and upgrade their own nuclear arsenals? How can Britain be serious about nuclear non-proliferation when it is planning to significantly increase its own missile strength with the controversial Trident missile policy? And what does it do to a culture, to us all as human beings to live permanently in the shadow of inhuman threats to destroy us all to secure an illusory peace. William Blake understood this well when he wrote, around 1794 :

The Human Abstract

PITY  would be no more If we did not make somebody poor; And Mercy no more could be If all were as happy as we.   And mutual fear brings peace,         5 Till the selfish loves increase; Then Cruelty knits a snare, And spreads his baits with care.   He sits down with holy fears, And waters the ground with tears;         10 Then Humility takes its root Underneath his foot.   Soon spreads the dismal shade Of Mystery over his head; And the caterpillar and fly         15 Feed on the Mystery.   And it bears the fruit of Deceit, Ruddy and sweet to eat; And the raven his nest has made In its thickest shade.         20   The Gods of the earth and sea Sought thro’ Nature to find this tree; But their search was all in vain: There grows one in the Human brain.

I mention all this because the debate outlined above is back with us again, hardly changed after over forty years. This has been pushed to the forefront of the news because Jeremy Corbyn (yes, it is he again!) has stated that he would not press the nuclear button. How, splutters our outraged media, can he make any claim to be Prime Minister if he plays himself into the hands of our nuclear enemies in this naive manner? Anyone wanting the top job must make it clear that they are at least prepared to annihilate millions of people if they absolutely have to. Or at least pretend they would. Corbyn finds himself in a difficult position - one he will find himself in again and again. As a long term opponent of Britain's so-called independent nuclear deterrent (it is, of course, entirely under NATO's, that is US control) he knows that his position will not be supported by the largely right wing  Parliamentary party. To persuade the party to ditch its commitment to upgrading Trident would seem impossible under the present policy-making arrangements. So what does he do? He will try every means possible to get the policy changed, but I, for one, admire his willingness to say, I might not win on this policy, but let me make it quite clear, I will not agree to mass murder, or pretend that I would. There is a moral basis to my political beliefs. If he were ever to become PM it is clear that the 100 billion pound bill (probably 130 billion over the 30 year lifetime of Trident according to 'The Guardian') would immediately become completely unnecessary for as long as he is in power. What better reason to vote for Jeremy? 

Although CND and the Labour Party were both part of the backdrop to my childhood years, I was, of course, largely taken up with surviving life on the estate. Our flat was small and our finances dire, but at least we had a place to live provided by the welfare state at an affordable rent. There was a consensus across all political parties at the time that the state had an important part to play in guaranteeing the necessities of life to all its citizens if possible, and that taxation -the sharing of costs as fairly as possible across all social classes - was the most effective way of doing this. The 1945-50 government of Clement Attlee had, from the basis of an economy devastated by war, managed to create the National Health Service, a nationwide council housebuilding programme, universal state pensions, sick-pay, child benefits a national investment strategy based on nationalisation - while our own government, with an economy devastated by the greed of the banks, can only look at cutting every state entitlement still left while lowering the living standards of the working poor. This post-war massive state investment led to a decade of sustained economic growth, while our own era stagnates as the real value of wages declines inexorably and our economy is reliant on financial and service 'industries' for any sign of recovery.

Our flat was getting too small for three growing children. My brother, myself and my sister all shared one bedroom, sleeping in bunk beds and this must have been particularly hard for my sister. This wasn't the only hardship she had to endure. She too suffered at the hands of the menacing Georgie Burton. He saw her playing with his younger sister at the back of the block of flats where the sheds belonging to each flat were situated. In Georgie's dad's shed there was a lot of building material stored, and Georgie thought it would be diverting to load up a large plank of wood with the contents of an open sack stored there, creep up and tip it over my sister's head. This was a sack of lime, which can cause skin burns and blindness. My sister's eyes were badly affected and she had to be rushed to hospital for immediate treatment which, fortunately, was successful. Georgie, of course, thought this whole episode was hugely entertaining. A not dissimilar incident happened to me not long afterwards, though this time - surprisingly -Georgie Burton was not involved. 
I don't know if they're still around, but a favourite kid's sweet of the period was a 'Jamboree Bag'. This was a sealed paper bag with a range of sweets inside - always some chews and at least one sherbet filled 'flying saucer' - and a small toy of some kind. One week the manufacturers decided (maybe Georgie Burton was an adviser) to include a small, but effective, metal catapult as the toy of the moment. Difficult to imagine a sweet manufacturer today thinking a toy that projected solid missiles at great speed would be just the thing for young children. Pretty soon, the kids on the estate were firing small stones at each other from behind walls, parked cars or their own windows. I rarely had money to spend, so could not join in the mayhem, but as I was walking home, someone suddenly leaped out from behind a car and let fly at me from short range. He got me straight in the right eye which immediately filled with blood rendering me temporarily blinded. Slowly my left eye came back to vision and I was able to get home. My mother took one look at me and begged our immediate neighbour to drive me to hospital, which, seeing me, he readily agreed to do. I was taken to a theatre for examination and it was found that a main vein to the eye had severed and my mother was told that my chances of seeing again from that eye were slim. My eye was bandaged up and I was consigned to a bed and, once more, found myself alone in a hospital children's ward.
I stayed about a week in this ward as my eye was left to - hopefully - heal and as the days went by, I started to read through with my functioning eye some of the books and comic annuals kept in a cupboard near my bed. It was here I discovered Rupert the Bear. This had a strange effect on me. Maybe it was the medication, but I found these stories both compelling and seriously scary. There was something about the way that the strip had both speech balloons and rhymed text underneath, a pug, an elephant, a badger and a pig all dressed like English aristocrats. The sudden appearance of several Chinese, or maybe Japanese characters - why? where from? The strangely empty, dream-like landscapes, but, most scarily for me - Rupert himself. Those startling check clothes and bright red top contrasting with that huge, blank white head with just two black pin-pricks for eyes and no expression - he gave me the creeps and frighteningly entered my dreams at night. He is a character I still find strangely unnerving. 
My eye healed and I regained sight in my right eye. This time I knew exactly what to expect at home. In a later post I will come back to bloodied eyes when I get to an early encounter with a young David Jones - later Bowie. But all in good time