Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Taking no Pride in Prejudice

Not an actual Daily Mail headline, but maybe not a million miles away from one
I want to write something about prejudice but I need to be careful. The last thing I want is for anyone to think I’m some kind of intolerant, reactionary idiot, nor do I want to come across as full of my own goodness, or worse still hypocritical. The fact is that most of us carry around a lot of prejudice and we’re predisposed to form opinions about people and the world in general on the scantest of evidence.

I know that rationally speaking you should never make assumptions about people if you don’t really know them, but I think sometimes it’s difficult not to react to your gut instincts, which are formed mostly through your life experience. The trouble is that they don’t always bear scrutiny.  In my heart I know that not all drivers of white vans are inconsiderate towards other road users and that far more of them drive so sensibly as to go unnoticed; yet enough have cut me up on roundabouts to make me wary, so when it does happen occasionally it just reinforces my prejudice.

That’s kind of understandable in a way; I have after all been cut up by white van drivers on a number of occasions, but on a statistical level that’s hardly surprising in my 33 years of driving.  The trouble is, I also find myself susceptible to other, even more ridiculous prejudices: old men wearing cloth caps drive too slowly; young men in baseball caps drive too quickly; 4x4 drivers have a mean streak; cyclists riding two abreast are downright arrogant and should be arrested for being in possession of offensive lycra.

I have many others not related to driving: men with aggressive looking dogs are equally aggressive and probably buy a lot of dodgy stuff in pubs from similar men; women who take their kids to school in their pyjamas are not terribly good parents; tabloid journalists are more interested in making a story than reporting one; Liverpudlians are overly sentimental; public school boys have the same floppy haircut; those at the top of the management tree didn’t get there by being nice to other people; men in Speedos have no sense of shame; and so on.

These are all a bit petty and silly, and I don’t suppose they do a great deal of harm.  The traditional ‘big’ ones, I hope, are not part of my make up. Apart from when I was about 12, I never believed in treating people differently because of their race or colour; people’s religion doesn’t bother me if they leave me alone; disabled people are as capable as anyone else if given a fair chance to achieve.  And as for gender, men and women do think and react differently in many ways and it’s best just to accept it; I work with more women than I do men and I’ve learnt that, although our thought processes are sometimes different, we are still trying to achieve the same thing, and one approach isn’t necessarily better than another. It causes a lack of understanding sometimes, but I’m sure I infuriate them as much as they sometimes infuriate me!

Shall I tell you my least favourite expression in the English language? ‘Political Correctness’. This is a phrase invented by the tabloids to defend the indefensible, to mock those who try to behave decently. It’s the same line of thinking which ridicules “woolly” liberalism and which dismisses social workers as ‘do-gooders’. And my word, don’t they like to jump up and down when someone takes something a little too far: “it’s political correctness gone mad!” They talk about the ‘PC brigade’ like it’s a movement of people with a membership and a hierarchy, and maybe in their warped minds there are uniforms and meetings, at which politically correct directives are issued to the long suffering Daily Mail readership.

If PC means being tolerant and fair minded then I’m all for it. And yes I say that as someone who harbours all those stupid little prejudices which I talked about earlier. That’s the whole point. Prejudice is a condition that occurs naturally in all but the most saintly, but that doesn’t make it all right, any more than it is acceptable to be ill tempered or violent.  I suppose like all worthwhile things, you have to work at it.

Let's hope we've moved on ...

Monday, May 23, 2011

We were soldiers (not really)

Following on from my last post about my secondary school I got to thinking about the Combined Cadet Force (CCF) which was run by some of the teaching staff.   It was an after school activity you could opt to join from the 4th form (or Year 10 as I have now learned to call it).

The CCF had an Army and an RAF section.  I started off in the RAF, and while I enjoyed the one bit of flying I did (in the back of a ‘Chipmunk’ trainer aircraft at RAF Shawbury) and the summer camp at RAF Lyneham, the uniform was unbearable.  We had been issued with a stiff woollen jacket and trousers, a webbing belt, a shirt with a detachable collar (complete with fiddly collar stud), and a tie and a beret. Basically it was the RAF uniform as it had been in 1940. The clothes were incredibly itchy and uncomfortable, so much so that I took to wearing pyjama bottoms under the trousers.  I’d only joined the RAF section because my brother was in it and after a year I transferred to the Army section.

Now this was more like it.  First of all the uniform: khaki green jumper and durable but comfortable cotton trousers with loads of pockets, a really cool belt and again a beret, but on our feet we wore big black boots.  OK, the shirt was still itchy and scratchy, but you can’t have everything and at least it didn’t have a detachable collar.  The uniform was in fact bang up to date for 1975, and as an added bonus we were issued with a full set of combats for when we were camping or away on exercise.

Being in the army cadets was brilliant. There was still no getting away from doing drill, but even that was OK once we got the hang of it. Or rather once most of us got the hang of it; there were always one or two boys who were completely lacking in physical co-ordination.  One in particular was constitutionally incapable of marching.  Walking he could do quite normally, but when required to march he somehow managed to swing his right arm forward at the same time as taking a step with his right leg, and the same with his left.

Apart from the drill we did have a lot of fun.  For a start the ‘Quartermaster’s Store’ was crammed full of stuff which we were allowed to use in our own time, because the school encouraged us to organise our own unsupervised activities like weekend hiking trips.  We therefore had access to wet weather gear, camping equipment, maps and compasses, ration packs and hexamine stoves.
Hexamine solid fuel stove

We also had a firing range at the school and a set of ancient .22 and .303 bolt-action rifles, which we assumed had been around since the first world war.  We  learnt to strip, clean, reassemble and of course fire them.  I was a truly dreadful shot it has to be said.  However, the best fun of all was when we went on exercise at the Nesscliffe training area, or better still the annual camp to Minden in Germany, which at that time was home to one of the Light Infantry battalions.
.303 Lee Enfield Rifle

I’m fully aware that all this might make me sound like some gun loving NRA-style nutter, but nothing could be further from the truth, believe me.  However, imagine you are a boy of 15 or 16 and you are allowed at various times to fire a Self Loading Rifle, Sten gun, General Purpose Machine Gun and Carl Gustav anti-tank gun; or to throw thunder flashes (basically a massive banger, about a foot long and an inch or so in diameter that lights up the sky better than a Standard firework), and on one glorious occasion, a live hand grenade.
Carl Gustav anti-tank gun. It took 2 people to operate it. No recoil but a terrifying sheet of flame came out of the back when it was fired. Not half as terrifying as what came out of the front end though.

As far as I know, all this was done without any of us being a danger to ourselves or to others, apart from one occasion involving a hand grenade on a training area in Germany.  One of our number (not me!) pulled the pin and then accidentally dropped the grenade into the firing trench in which he and the army instructor were standing.  The rest of our platoon were just around a zigzag corner of the trench in a blast proof shelter, which was just as well really. We were surprised to hear a shout of “Oh, fucking hell”, before the cadet was thrown bodily into the shelter closely followed by the soldier.  Seconds later there was an almighty ‘whoomph’ and the ground shook. Amazingly, after a few choice words from an officer, we carried on with the grenade exercise, although perhaps paying a little more attention than before.

One or two of my friends went on to join the army after they left school, but it was never on the cards for me.  I enjoyed being a cadet but I realised that a career in the armed forces wouldn’t all be running around Salisbury Plain having fun, and what was more the constant discipline would have been unbearable.  And we may not have had an Iraq or an Afghanistan in those days, but we had Northern Ireland and that looked plenty scary enough for me. Playing at soldiers was all every well, but I was happy to leave the real stuff to the grown-ups.
9 mm Sub-Machine Gun (Sten gun)

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

They can because they think they can


My class photo in my 1st Year. I am sitting on the ground front right. The pained look is because Joe Turner, now a script writer on Coronation Street, is digging his feet into me.
I mostly enjoyed school. I have lots of good memories, which I won’t bore you with right now (maybe another time!), but I can at least give you an idea of what it was like.

I went to the Priory Grammar School for Boys, so in effect my future path through life was directed by managing to pass the eleven plus entrance exam at the ripe old age of 10.  Had I failed, I would have gone to the Secondary Modern down the road, whose lower academic expectations would quite frankly have allowed me to indulge my natural laziness. That wasn’t really an option at the Priory. Nothing overt, no pressure; it was more subtle than that. There was almost a culture of learning which was passed down over the years, if I can be a bit pompous for a moment.

The grammar school was slowly being modernised when I arrived, thanks mainly to the advent of a new head teacher, who happened to be my friend’s Dad. Even so there was still a hangover from the previous regime, which for years had attempted to model the Priory on the rather more illustrious public school across the River Severn.  So when I turned up in my brand new uniform (minus the cap which had been snatched from my head and thrown in the river by my brother’s mates) I was entering an establishment which still put Latin and Greek before modern languages, had a Latin motto on the school crest (“Possunt quia posse videntur” – “they can because they think they can”), where football was only ever of the rugby union variety, where teachers were referred to as masters, and you stood up if one entered the room.  In class we sat in rows according to alphabetical order and were called by our surnames only. This may all have contributed to its excellence as a school I suppose, but as we stopped imitating the ‘Nellies’ (our remarkably tame nickname for the public school boys), there was no diminution in academic achievement.

Teachers were given nicknames of course, but with the exception of one who alternated between “Rubberneck” and “Bastard Jack”, they were for the most part affectionate. I certainly had the feeling that the majority of the teaching staff were well meaning and dedicated to their work.  So even the Chemistry teacher known as “Hitler” was a thoroughly decent man and only so called because of an unfortunate combination of dark hair and moustache (come to think of it, he actually looked more like Charlie Chaplin in ‘The Great Dictator’).
There were some memorable characters; an RE teacher who told patently untrue stories about his exploits in the war, and a German teacher who would tell us in a Scouse accent to “learrn yer verrbs ”. He also once told me that the German adjective ‘o-beinig’ means ‘bow legged’ “or as we say in Liverpool, ‘couldn’t catch a pig in an alley’”.

There is no denying it was a good school, and within a year or so of arriving the new regime made a few changes to relax things a little, while still maintaining an emphasis on academic achievement. The majority of us passed most, if not all, of our O-Levels, stayed on in the VI Form for A-Levels and then went off to university.  The VI Form brought privileges; we were no longer required to wear uniform (although the arguments just switched to how faded your jeans were allowed to be), we could leave the premises in school time if we had a free period, or else make use of our own ‘common room’.
Rose tinted spectacles? Probably. I certainly had a few school mates who hated it and couldn’t wait to leave but I suppose that’s the beauty of looking back. You can choose to remember the good stuff. 
Six years later outside the VI Form Common Room. We had been to the pub. I'm sitting behind the guy with the white scarf with what might well be a fag in my hand!