Picture by Doc Kazi
There’s nothing like a laugh to set you up for the weekend. Here’s a heading from the BBC News website: “Queen Nazi salute film: Palace ‘disappointed’ at use.” It’s impossible to dispute that the future Queen Elizabeth gave a Nazi salute, and her sister, and her mother and her uncle, the future King Edward VIII. It’s there in a picture on the front page of today’s Sun. I can well imagine the Palace is disappointed that it appeared; but to somehow indicate that the Sun, for all its sins, was guilty by publishing it and the Royals the innocent victims…As I say, nothing like a chuckle to start your weekend.
It’s ironic that this Royal disappointment comes as the Tory government seeks to put further curbs on the Freedom of Information Act. The Act was passed in 2000 when Tony Blair was prime minister. It gives everyone the right to have access to information that the government and other public sector bodies hold. Blair has since announced his regret in passing it, because it doesn’t give enough “safe space” to civil servant when they advise ministers, since their words might come back to haunt them. In recent times the Freedom of Information Act has meant we’ve heard about MPs’ expenses scandal, Prince Charles writing letters to ministers to influence them, and only last Friday the Freedom of Information Act brought us the information that British pilots have been taking part in air strikes in Syria.
So the Tory government has decided the Act should have a ‘review’ – that’s code for cutting back on the degree of Freedom involved. As with all these things, the composition of the review panel tells you what’s happening. Former Tory Home Secretary Michael Howard is on it. He’s the ‘something-of-the-night’ guy and some of the decision he made in government were disclosed through use of the Act. There’s Labour’s Jack Straw who helped create the Act but like Tony Blair is now openly critical of it. Especially since, at the moment Straw is the subject of a request for information concerning the rendition of terror suspects when he was Foreign Secretary. And then there’s Lord Burns, who was a top civil servant in the Treasury during the 1990s. Civil servants don’t like the Act one little bit. You begin to see how this review panel might think about Freedom of Information.
Are the Tories right to look at tightening up on the scope of the Act? Well, let’s try a parallel. Suppose you’ve hired a servant (yes I know, Virginia, people don’t have servants since Downton Abbey). But suppose you have a servant and you’ve a suspicion he’s up to something dodgy.So you get him in a room and ask for a full and frank account of what he’s been doing. His response: “None of your business”. So you say it is your business, since it may involve your bank account, or relations with the people next door, or a range of things. But the servant insists it’s none of your business, and what’s more he wants a Right to Secrecy section written into his revised contract with you.
Not an exact parallel but helpful. We often forget: civil servants are our servants – we pay them. As we pay MPs, and Cabinet Ministers, and the Prime Minister. So when did it become the case that the hired help has the right to decide what his employer should or should not know? And for him to say “Ah, but it’s in your own best interest for you not to know” has to be the sort of Alice-in-Wonderland crazy talk that makes you either laugh out loud or put your head on your desk and sob.
So the Saxe Coburg family are ‘disappointed’ at the publication of a picture from pre-digital alteration was possible, and shows how a good German family salutes Adolph Hitler.
Are they now ashamed or just embarrassed by this expression of their culture?
Possibly the loyalists in NI knew what they were doing by displaying Swastikas and were just paying homage to Mrs Saxe Coburg.
Jeee-e-e-ez, talk about guilt by association, what were most of us up to at seven years old? Specially if uncle’s with dubious politics wee lurking in the background?
The old QM was fairly giving it large with the NAZI salutes, she actually looked more animated and excited than I`ve ever seen her. Maybe excuses can be made for wee Lizzy but her mother should have known better. Having said that Lizzy`s sisters in law all married NAZIs. Thank God the likes of Harry have never shown any similar tendencies…..
Jude you don’t have servant? My word I will send my apprentice one down to you.
Away back in the 30`s when you were a teenager I am sure you didn’t do anything silly or do a Nazi salute….
Moving away from that little tangent I agree with the thrust of your argument that people have always the right to know what is happening.
BTW good to see you are right behind Rupert Murdock!
You’re stretching it a bit neill when you suggest that I was Nazi-saluting in the 1930s. Gimme a break on both those. Right behind R Murdoch? A better place to be than have him behind you…
In 1933, Esteemed Blogmeister, the same year as the little schulmadchen and furture Royal Heilness, Elise Saxe-Coburg-Goth was practising her cute Hitler salutes a London debutante, three times her age, Unity Mitford was also acting out her own genetic imperatives.
Although born in London, England Unity Valkyrie Mitford had actually been conceived in (gulp) Swastika, Ontario where her folks had gold mines. Her mittel name came from the friendship between her grandfather and Richard Wagner, the composer of the eponymous opera.
If Wagner was the pin-up boy of Hitler old Onkel Dorf was in turn the pin-up boy of the impressionable Unity. Both she and her older sister, Diana were part of the British Union of Fascists delegation to their comfort zone. Which turned out to be the Nurenmberg Rally of that year. Diana was in the process of becoming the hausfrau of ole Oswad Mosley.
So determined was the unit known as Unity Mitford to meet her dreamboat that she set out to stalk him, in the manner of another Oswald, one, Lee Harvey. Eventually the worlds of Adolf and Unity collided: in der kaffeehaus in Munchen where der Fuhrer was wont to go to sit, and stir, and brood.
To say Hit was smitten by Mit and Mit by Hit wouldn’t not be too far off der mark. He was particular chuffed by the V of her middle name. Not only did he pick up her bill but he also presented her with a pearl-handled pistol for her own protection.
Alas, the course of true love etc (One would peusue this listless line but, alas, the superior Hiberno-English version is not to hand). Eventually, the once-bitten Unity Mitford was to make a botched attempt at blowing out her own brains with, of all weapons, the pearl-handled pistol and in, of all places, der Englischer Garten.
This English-designed English garden in the heart of Munchen which has survived war after war, is the pride and joy of that Bavarian city’s ubermensch. Think: Schloss Vindsor outside London. Once again, a stricken Onkel Dorf was to pick up der tap, both for the hospitalization and subsequent repatriation of, um, UM back to London..
All of which brings sadly to mind the Civil War of 39-45 between the Germans and die Englander, between the Anglos and the Saxons. And raises, perhaps, the futility of the Irish involvement in same.
As any PC Plod or indeed Garda Stad will attest: when the forces of law and order are called to quell a domestic dispute, the probability of the hitherto warring family members abandoning their temporary differences and joining forces to confront the intruders is high to very high. As many a sore, saucepanned PC or Garda can testify.
Only last week this Field Day of Futility was ceremoniously celebrated in the, erm, Gairdini Naisiunta Cuimhneachain Cogaidh na hEireann which is figleaf for the National War Memorial Gardens at Islandbridge. On this occasion the focus was specifically on a previouis Civil War of the Saxons, affectionally known as The Great Donkey Derby 14-18.
According to the official FSS Website: ‘The site at Islandbridge had fallen into neglect, decay and dilapidation during the 1970s and early 80s and had become an open site for caravans and animals of the Irish Travelling Community’.
Eh?
As a rinky-dinky slice of low-key racism this is just about as good as the FSS gets, which is praise indeed.. Whether it is an unconscious piece of same is another matter: the anonymous scribe might well have been blissfully unaware that the mainland European equivalent of the ITC – the Romany untermensch were oven-fodder for the ubermensch from Dachau to Belsen
The irony is not exhausted here. Sir Edwin Lutyens who designed the Gardens was married to the grand-daughter of Edward Bulwer Lytton, the novelist who not only bequeathed to us ‘The Last Days of Pompeii’ but also such enduring phrases as ‘the great unwashed’ and ‘the pen is mightier than the sword’.
As an act of reparation, which we down her in the Free Southern Stateen, are noted for (for we never shut up about it) perhaps,in the light of little Lizzie’s Nazi salute, the Irish War Memorial Gardens might be quietly played down again and allowed to revert to their pristine 3 D condition of the 1970s.
Two birds might well be downed with this one stone: (1) an apology to the Irish Travelling Community for dissing them with The Great U. term; and (2) a reaffirmation of the abiding truth of the pen and sword comparison.
The project might even be called: ‘The Last Days of Pomposity’.
Ah Britannia, where freedom of the press is paramount, unless they publish factual stories about ze royals…
Maybe this film has been misinterpreted, and the young Elizabeth and family were just giving a cheery wave to cousin and future spouse Philip von Battenberg, who just happened to have 2 members of the SS as brothers in law.
The most recent revelation about the abuse of procurement procedures in hospitals in Dublin is evidence, if any more evidence is required that corruption in society has been elevated to an art form. Disclosures about MPs salaries, expenses, lobbying scandals, phone tapping in the media and price fixing do not appear to deter the ‘influencers’ and ‘fixers’ in our midst.
Private Finance Initiatives have become the norm in health, education and housing, a system that is heavily weighted in favour of private companies. Activities are shrouded in secrecy and fall outside public information requests given ‘commercial sensitivities’, now where have we heard that before?
There are, however, grounds for optimism in the Celtic fringes. The SNP has thrown down an anti-austerity gauntlet to the Tories and in this part of the world at least we have transparency in our administration, that is, most people can see through it.
Hands up if you’ve ever done a Nazi salute. But seriously…
I can’t help but feel that this ‘story’ has something of the bread and circuses about it. The Sun is traditionally the voice of the British establishment. Albeit the misogynist, xenophobic, lowest common denominator one, but you know what I mean.
Currently the Tories are doing all they can to privatise the NHS, dismantle the BBC, destroy Trade Unions, repeal the Human Rights Act, take away housing benefit from the under 21s and make poor people’s lives a misery in whatever way they can. Oh, and also cover up the rampant paedophilia that occurred at the highest levels of the British establishment in the 70s and 80s. And that’s before you even get to the murder, collusion and torture in these six counties during the same period. Sorry, where was I?
Ah yes. It was already common knowledge that Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson were Nazis. Is it really a surprise that they were trying to introduce the younger generation to the joys of the Third Reich in a way that children would understand? Why are we being fed this story now? Guy Debord would have a field day with this, I imagine.
Or maybe I’m just being overly cynical. Ach, well. Hang ’em all, I say 🙂
just to raise a wee smile ! here’s tonight’s Saturday Night Film https://eurofree3.wordpress.com/2015/07/18/nazi-salute/
thanks for sharing this!
I am not sure what the shock and surprise is about? Hasn’t it been common knowledge for a long time that the royal family were sympathetic to Nazis? I have seen lots of photo’s (and I don’t mean prince Harry dressed as a Nazi) of royals at Nazi gatherings. I think the German intelligence had files that noted the sympathies of different royals. They only parted ways when the Nazis bombed London. Hitler gave strict orders for London not to be bombed but when the RAF bombed Berlin he lifted the ban. The Queen has always kept her political opinions secret unlike her husband. I think the press would have done well to expose the links 70 years ago. It is irrelevant now, Maybe the Queen should have thanked the press for keeping it secret for so long- but again I thought it was common knowledge. I can almost hear a guy in Carrickfergus saying ‘I told ye we didne need to take it down’.
While sweaty Betty Windsor can sort of be excused for mimicking the nazis as a child, her mother can’t. Alas all that is ignored by the establishment p.r machine. A grown woman should have had more sense? This vile cabal must have some laugh behind closed doors when they see their peasant subjects fawning after them. The fools can’t see what’s blatantly in front of them.
They have hoodwinked the Brits for decades, you have to hand it to them…..
“We often forget: civil servants are our servants – we pay them. As we pay MPs, and Cabinet Ministers, and the Prime Minister. So when did it become the case that the hired help has the right to decide what his employer should or should not know? And for him to say “Ah, but it’s in your own best interest for you not to know” has to be the sort of Alice-in-Wonderland crazy talk that makes you either laugh out loud or put your head on your desk and sob.”
Jude’s statement is for me the crux of the issue. FOI restrictions are a threat and the elected/temporarily hired help have no business in creating limitations on what can be requested it’s supposed to be a democracy correct? The Saxe Coburg Gothe clan (klan?) antics should be embarrassing on a national level. The tory review and imposing restrictions on information are the bigger threat