Jan 28

2025

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Helen Whitten

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Prevent and Protect: Taking these responsibilities seriously shouldn’t be too much to ask

The key duty of a government is to take action to prevent harm and thereby to protect their population and keep them safe.  I am not alone in questioning whether our government and its institutions have been taking this responsibility seriously enough.  In the matter of prevention and protection, the little girls murdered in Southport have obviously been failed, as was Sir David Amess, the MP murdered in his surgery by Ali Harbi Ali, as was Lee Rigby, and also the girls raped by grooming gangs.  At the same time, we, the public, have been treated as if we cannot be trusted with information, so the facts about the Southport murderer, Axel Rudakubana, have been kept from us.  Apparently, this was so as not to influence the court case, although many argue this was not strictly legally necessary and information in other cases was shared without these restrictions. Within seconds of the attack police were telling us he was not a terrorist but in the next minute telling us they did not yet know his motive.  How could they make this announcement that he was not a terrorist without evidence of the motive, which even now they don’t seem to fully understand? 

Such withholding of facts reminds me of a passage in Alexei Navalny’s book Patriot where he talks of the Russian state not trusting the population with the truth.  A Communist or authoritarian state can get away with ruling despite a lack of trust but in a democracy trust is crucial.  If the government obfuscates because it doesn’t trust its voters, then the voters lose trust in their government, and this latest incident is just one of many over recent decades of untruths. But, I believe, pivotal. In fact, perhaps so pivotal that it has struck such fear at the heart of this Labour Government that Yvette Cooper’s Home Office has written a report recommending that there be even more “non-crime hate incidents” recorded by a police force that is already overstretched and unable to arrest shoplifters, rapists, burglars. At the same time the report recommends that anyone challenging, however legitimately, “two-tier” policing or expressing horror or heartbreak at the terrible crimes of the rape gangs or Southport, will now be labelled “extremist”.  This chills my heart.

There was always something that didn’t add up about the news that came out after those tragic Southport murders. The public aren’t stupid.  People smelt a rat.  They intuited that what they were being told was not the whole story and made their own, often logical, conclusions that this fellow was not a sweet harmless Welsh choir boy but was most probably radicalised.  This certainly does not mean that those who caused violence or set fire to asylum hostels should not be in prison. Of course they should. But the general gaslighting of many others who were genuinely horrified by this tragic event was unforgiveable and remains so. As a mother and grandmother, I was heartbroken at the thought of those little girls being slaughtered in this way, as were many others.  I didn’t go on any demonstration, but I did, and still do, feel let down by successive Governments who have not taken right action to protect us from such incidents.  If to feel empathy, shock and sadness in such moments is to be ‘far right’ then call me so, although it used to be the Labour party who branded themselves the compassionate ones. Either way, how dare they politicise this by labelling everyone who cares far right and thereby silencing us.  As far as I am concerned this had nothing to do with party politics and everything to do with being appalled that the government had not acted to prevent this horrific attack.

The news released in the last few weeks has revealed how inadequate the systems of prevention and protection of our communities really are. The fact that Axel Rudakubana had downloaded the Al-Quaeda terrorist manual and created the highly toxic poison of ricin is apparently even now not evidence enough that he was radicalised by a specific ideology.  Really?  When those who investigated him recorded that he had watched the Westminster and London Bridge attacks, the 7/7 London bombings and videos from the Middle East, etc. The planned terrorist attack on the Taylor Swift concert was exposed only a few days later so you might have thought there would be some joining of dots. But no, the decision was, before and after, that he was just someone interested in news and world events.  Well, many of us are interested in world events but don’t choose to watch those kinds of videos.

It now transpires that Rudakubana had a veritable arsenal of weaponry in his bedroom and 43 devices (what normal person has 43 devices?) only 32 of which the police managed to access.  He had deleted his browsing record just before the attack, so even now the police cannot proclaim him not radicalised, not a terrorist.  According to the police, if the Government had been willing to declare him a terrorist earlier, the FBI would have acted faster to access the deleted data from the search engines to clarify what had influenced him.  Instead, the Government were too busy declaring anyone who dared to suggest that Rudakubana had been radicalised, to be a member of the ‘Far Right’, politicising this tragedy and basically silencing those who were challenging what they were hearing.

We now also discover that those working for Prevent have not necessarily been adequately trained in how to carry out such interviews or work out how to identify someone who may not easily fit into some ideological box.  Dealing with such people is complex.  Of course, those doing so should be adequately trained in what questions to ask, what to watch out for, how to listen out for what is not being said underneath the words, behaviours or silences.

Did the police, social services, mental health professionals not visit his bedroom?  If not, this was surely a dereliction of duty as, if they had, they would have picked up that this young man had dangerous tendencies.  What about his father, his parents?  Although they did request support, were they not also responsible for notifying the police with more urgency about the contents of this room, its knives, machetes, bows and arrows?  In the States the parents of under-age children are now becoming partly responsible for school massacres.  Do parents here not hold some kind of responsibility?

The fact that Prevent did not insist on his taking part in their Channel programme of mentoring seemingly meant no one ended up watching this man.  It was as if no one wanted to touch this problem and ultimately the fear of being accused of racism or of inciting social unrest, ended up putting ‘community relations’ above the need to uphold the law and protect people.  This was seen to happen with the grooming gangs and here we are again, witnessing the same problems getting in the way of protecting young girls in particular.  We can’t let this trend continue.

What I fear is that neither the police, other institutions, Prevent or the Government will really be that keen to get to the truth in this enquiry, or the grooming gangs enquiry, despite what they say.  It could be too embarrassing for all concerned to be exposed, both as giving the public a message that did not reflect the facts they knew, and embarrassing too for those responsible for having missed the clues that could have saved those girls’ lives.  Easier to point fingers at Amazon for selling knives, or to the tech companies for the videos he watched, than to admit that there has been a culture and practice of putting the sensitivities of community relations before the protection and prevention of danger to the population as a whole.

The daughter of Sir David Amess is equally frustrated that her father was not protected from the known terrorist who murdered him, nor that there were any lessons learnt from that and other incidents that could have protected these girls.  We should all seek to hold the Government and its institutions to account.

All we are asking for is that we are safe to walk around the streets, go to pop concerts with our children, without being blown up or lacerated with knives.  Our democracy depends on it and we depend on the Government, Prevent and the police to ensure the safety of the population.  There are too many incidents occurring daily. We need to understand, regardless of background or skin colour, what leads these lone wolves to be radicalised, what leads boys to become gang members and stab one another, or groups of men to rape.  Getting to the bottom of these problems, cultural and behavioural, acts as protection for all those living in this country. We can’t do that without facing facts honestly and courageously. As I see it, this is not a party political issue but a national emergency.

To restore trust, we now need proof that the Government are taking this responsibility seriously and not obfuscating, name-calling or pussy-footing around community relations rather than maintaining our safety.  We need action.

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Jan 15

2025

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Helen Whitten

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“Who’s that little person on the cross, Mum?”

This is the question my mother overheard in a jewellery shop many years ago, when the child’s mother was looking at a necklace with a Crucifix. My mother was shocked that the child didn’t know about Jesus.  I’m talking different times – probably 30-40 years ago, when her generation would have taken for granted that everyone around them would have some understanding of Christianity.  Nowadays children are issued with trigger warnings when mention of Christianity is encountered in books or plays, and young children are unfamiliar even with the words of carols.

What does this mean for our society?  This is a question that was one of the topics of conversation at an interview hosted by Freddie Sayers of the online journal UnHerd between the musician, Nick Cave, and the historian, Tom Holland, author of Dominion, The Making of the Western Mind.

Both men were willing to share their own experience of Christianity.  Nick Cave, whose song Into My Arms, Oh Lord, starts with “I don’t believe in an interventionist God”, but who, nonetheless, found solace in a 12th century church in Sussex where both his sons are buried. And Tom Holland who, when making a documentary about the Yazidis in Iraq, encountered deep fear when under threat of being kidnapped by ISIS. Then, having been an agnostic, perhaps even considering himself atheist, he was surprised to experience an angelic presence when he found a picture of the Annunciation in a ransacked church.  It was the only item intact.  His rational mind told him otherwise, but he felt the presence, nonetheless.  Both men spoke of how their individual experiences of Christianity, one through grief and the other through fear, had opened them up to the consolation of believing in something beyond the physical world.

Tom Holland’s book makes the point that in England and most of Europe we have been steeped in the stories, prayers, Ten Commandments, gospels, birth and Crucifixion, within our education at school, in families and communities.  The music, art, architecture of Christianity and its values are all around us.  They have indeed shaped the Western mind, and this is under some attack now, both from within and without.  Not only are we more aware of Islam, Hinduism and other religions but our own priests are looking almost embarrassed about standing up for Christianity. Yet Holland now feels very much a Christian himself and, having done a huge amount of research in order to write his book, feels that Christian values of love, loving one’s enemy and neighbour alike, and respecting the dignity of every human being are exceptional values worth protecting.

Earlier in the week I had listened to a lecture on Nietzsche and the lecturer talked of a crisis of values occurring through the decline of religious belief – “whither is God, we have killed him” – and how even Nietzsche wondered what would fill this gap.  For a gap is left, without doubt, and even an atheist has to acknowledge the presence of those who believe in God in order to develop their own ideas of not believing in any God.  The lecturer questioned how values are to be shared when evangelical atheists such as Richard Dawkins, together with the vacuum that is the leadership of the Church of England at the moment, promote disbelief.  In this environment where do we find the morality that binds a society or community together?

These words and thoughts struck a chord with me.  I have experienced a strange vision of my own, of my dead son standing next to Christ.  One’s rational mind can’t work in the same paradigm to explain such things.  They just are. Just as for me the cathedrals, churches, candles, incense, rituals, chanting of psalms, hymns, carols, prayers, and silence, are deeply meaningful and comforting but to another mean nothing.  For me the sense of something ‘other’ has been present since I was a small child. I had nightmares about a powerful God but was also fascinated by stories of wizards and witches, fairies and angels, and I always prayed.

It’s not that my parents were particularly religious.  My mother took us to church but herself considered some of the locals in stockbroker Surrey to be hypocritical, turning up at Matins in their hats and suits but not being particularly friendly or neighbourly when we moved in.  My father was, I think, more of a humanist. He disliked the way humans were supposed to grovel, being “not worthy to gather up the crumbs” under Christ’s table.  But they both enjoyed a good conversation on philosophical topics with our local vicar, who was delighted to be able to talk openly with them and be offered several gin and tonics instead of the usual sickly sweet sherry he was offered elsewhere!

We had Assembly every morning in all the schools I attended and, however boring much of it seemed to us at the time, we were, nonetheless, exposed daily to the morals, values, prayers and hymns of the Christian Church.  Schools seldom do this today, for fear of upsetting those of other religions.  But this leaves a gap.  What will the young understand as they walk around the art galleries, museums and religious buildings of Europe in the future I wonder? They will not recognise the figures depicted, nor the scenes being portrayed. As Latin is to be discontinued in State schools, they won’t understand the words of In Dulci Jubilo, nor the meaning of carpe diem or other Latin phrases frequently used. For myself I feel this is a pity and I hope the teachers find other ways of affirming morals and values, as however boring I found those moments I am sure the messages somehow seeped into my consciousness.

We have more mental illness and stress in young people than ever, yet there is evidence that having a faith of some kind reduces these problems, as does having a strong sense of community. We are letting both fade in ways that other religions are not.  I remember there was a short period of my life when I experimented with deciding not to believe in any metaphysical aspects of life, whether Christianity, Buddhism, spirituality.  It was the unhappiest fortnight of my life.  I couldn’t do it. 

Blaise Pascal, the French philosopher, wrote in the 17th century “Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us estimate these two chances.  If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He is.”  In a nutshell, as we have little to lose by a belief in a higher power, and plenty to gain if it is true, it is rational that we believe.

As Tom Holland suggested, to acknowledge a sense of divinity in everything and a sense of connection between all things and all beings is valuable.  “All you need is love,” as the Beatles sang.

Even Chat GPT tells me “Belief in God can be rational depending on the framework one adopts: Yes: If one accepts philosophical arguments, values existential meaning, or weighs the practical benefits of faith. No: If one prioritizes empirical evidence and applies strict scepticism.

Neutral: If one acknowledges the limits of human knowledge and remains open to possibilities. Ultimately, the rationality of belief in God depends on one’s epistemological and existential priorities.”

I personally think that acknowledging the limits of human knowledge and remaining open to possibilities is our best way forward.  Noone has yet been able to prove there isn’t a God or a divine energy in this world of ours. I see no reason why a mystical approach cannot live alongside the science and technology of our day, nor, just because we live alongside people of many different faiths, does it mean that we have to lose our own.

Surely, we can retain the core values and morals of our Christian culture without having to believe in all the metaphysical teachings or follow precise dogma. But opening up the possibility for children to imagine a sense of the sacredness of life, and at the very least know the history of Christ, and how so much of Western civilization has been shaped by Christianity, is an essential part of their knowledge bank.

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Jan 01

2025

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Helen Whitten

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Dear England: let’s make 2025 a year to celebrate

When I was young in the 1950s, those post-war days, we used to salute soldiers when they passed us by on the road.  We were grateful for the courage and efforts of our servicemen and women.  We even saluted the AA or RAC service vans when they passed if we had the same badge. A sense of loyalty and pride in our country was endemic in everything around us.  My father had fought in the war, my mother and sister had been at home when a bomb fell on their house. When we went to London my mother would wear a hat and we would be dressed up smart, as if to ward off threats, to mask the sadness and the horror their generation had witnessed. There were bomb sites everywhere.  The fragility of life and the need to bond together was tangible.

So it saddens me when I read how politicians, the media and influencers endlessly drag our country down yet seldom put any historical or factual context on their criticisms. We were, according to them, the worst empire, the worst colonials, the worst abusers of slaves, failing to mention all the other nations and dictators throughout history, and more recently, that were empire-builders, slave-owners and brutal in the process.  Think Egypt, Africa, India, China, Russia, the Romans, Greeks, Turks, and more recently the millions slaughtered in labour camps by Stalin, Hitler, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot. Nor is there any mention of what we did, and continue to do as a country, to remedy these events nor of our commendable role in ending slavery. It’s fashionable to sling arrows at Churchill but I wonder how happy those who do so would be had he not played his part in winning the war and instead we, and our neighbours in Europe, were being ruled by Nazis?

When Gareth Southgate wrote his Dear England letter to the English football team he referred back to our history, to his grandfather’s role in World War II, to his own childhood and what living in England meant to him and why he felt proud to represent the country, and why the team could – in fact needed to – do the same.  We don’t have inspirational leaders at the moment to draw us together in a diverse but cohesive sense of belonging to a country of which we can feel proud.  We shall have to do this for ourselves.

If we are to get ourselves out of this decline, we need to stop this self-flagellation and get reading more history books.  Context is essential if one is to make aspersions, yet in the age of TikTok, evidence or in-depth historical tracts or facts are not required, it seems.  A headline can sway a whole group to take up a position despite not really knowing anything about it.  Look at the student pro-Palestine protests where many of those on the streets and campuses did not understand the history nor the meaning of the words they were chanting.

There was too much of the Tudors and the Stuarts in our history lessons perhaps, yes. The world has changed and a balance has needed to be made, though no country’s history classes can cover the whole world.  But the way people speak of England and its history (and it’s only going to get worse under Bridget Phillipson’s ‘decolonising’ policies) is the equivalent of shoving a whole country into the stocks and pelting it with rotten tomatoes without fully understanding why one is doing so. And that is totally un-English because justice and the creation of the common law and a legal system that all can access has been one of our greatest achievements, together with the development of the institutions of government, both of which have been adopted by other countries around the world. English common law has proved to be the basis of the most successful legal systems in the world, not only because it is the basis of legal systems of so many other jurisdictions, including those in the United States, but it is also voluntarily adopted for multitudinous international business transactions and arbitrations, even in cases where there is no connection with Britain. 

Since 1688 we have enjoyed the relative stability that our constitutional monarchy and parliamentary democracy provides.  On our doorstep in Europe almost every country has experienced autocracy, a dictatorship that was either fascist or communist, or occupation by a foreign force.  This has not been our history.  We have also geographically been islanders, and all this leaves us with a different sense of ourselves.  Inter-generational memory and trauma leaves a population with triggers – we can see this with how concerned Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Finland and Poland are now that Putin has once again shown Russia’s desire to recover land from Ukraine, despite the independence these countries have won. It is essential that we wake up to the fact that Russia and China are intent on weakening and dividing our society by hacking our security systems and infrastructure and undermining our certainties via their social media bots.

Perhaps because of being brought up in the post-war environment I am fully aware that peace cannot be taken for granted, nor can the wonderful changes we have seen in human rights during my lifetime.  We only have to look at Iran and Afghanistan to see how women’s rights can be cruelly overturned within days. The LGBT community may now take their freedoms for granted but it only takes some mad Ayatollah-type for these to be denied. Our way of life, our culture, civilisation and values must be protected, and we can’t do that if we constantly drag it down.

So open your eyes, as we enter into 2025, and remind yourself how lucky you are, despite the challenges, the grey skies and windy weather. We have a free health service (we hope will survive!), and the welfare state (though perhaps this is now so generous this may not survive). In my childhood there was no central heating – we had to get dressed in bed or by the fire in the morning. Several of my friends had outdoor loos. Few people had washing machines, dishwashers or tumble driers until the 1960s or 1970s. Don’t take all the advances of the 21st century for granted. If Putin knocks out our infrastructure, we shall, as they are currently experiencing in Ukraine – have none of it – heat, water, wifi, mobile phones, Google maps. We would need to have the resilience within us to manage such conditions, as the Ukrainians are proving they have.

To maintain our economic place in the world we need to pull together, work hard and help others to do the same.  There are millions out of work. I presume the majority are genuinely unable to work but I believe others could be supported back into the workplace for King and country, so to speak. We all suffer if the economy suffers and losing our entrepreneurs and high earners is going to do nothing for the tax available for our infrastructure.

We are a nation of innovators. We should not forget this.  The Industrial Revolution happened here.  More recently, Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. We have heroes and can be proud of them, just like other countries are proud of theirs. We have been self-deprecating for too long. In a global environment this doesn’t work. What message does it give to young people if we delete our scientists out of some weird sense of colonial shame? They changed the world for the better. We need our young to find that same entrepreneurial and creative spirit and put their energy into innovating and building businesses of all kinds. This means sharing our knowledge. A 22-year old I spoke to recently complained that his boss is seldom in the office, so when he needs advice or direction he has to phone or Zoom him but he finds him miles away and distracted, so has to carry on without his guidance.  This problem will be mirrored across organisations public and private. How will people build bridges that stand up or planes that fly if they don’t learn from those with the knowledge?

I know many of us are nervous of the future. We certainly stand at a precarious point in history, with Ukraine, the Middle East, Trump, China and Taiwan, Korea, and many unsettled areas of Africa and the world, plus climate change. Despair gets us nowhere, not in our personal lives and certainly not in the energy we bring to our own communities and country. Without inspiring leaders, we have to become leaders of our own lives. We can each of us look to where we can play our part in being the solution to these issues, problem-solving, taking action to remedy what we can, rather than sitting around feeling despondent. We know only too well ourselves whether we are doing all we can for our workplace, for our families and community. We don’t need to be told by others. As Gareth Southgate wrote to his team “Look. That’s the way to represent your country. That’s what England is about. That is what’s possible.”

I have travelled extensively, lived my early years in Portugal, have lived on and off in France, and love the world and its people but England has a special place in my heart. I love the little country lanes, the churches, carols, cathedrals, public libraries, literature, sense of humour, music and art.  Our theatre draws people from across the world. For a tiny country we have accomplished extraordinary things, and I hope we shall continue to do so.

I wish you a very happy new year and hope that 2025 will bring you personal happiness and fulfilment and that each of us can come together to create a positive future and peace here and in the world.

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Dec 17

2024

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Helen Whitten

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The Trials and Joys of being a Writer

“An insightful and exciting read: Helen Whitten’s new novel set in Moscow is a great read. She skilfully evokes the atmosphere of the times and her story of love and intrigue is a real page turner.” Amazon reader 5*

It’s a year now since No Lemons in Moscow was published (and still not too late to buy it for a Christmas present!) It is so lovely to get 4 and 5* reviews on Amazon and know I have given some people a few pleasurable hours of reading.

Writing a novel is a solitary business.  One has to take time to be in the heads and hearts and intentions of one’s characters, think about who they are, how they came to be that person, what their intentions and responses might be. What an interesting, and somewhat frightening, experience it is, then, to unleash these characters and their story out into the public sphere.  Although I had written several non-fiction books related to my career as a business coach, publishing my novel No Lemons in Moscow was so much more of a personal experience: it contains a part of me, my emotions, perceptions and my understanding of people and life.  Here I’m describing characters who are often a mishmash of people I have actually met, and some fictional ones I am glad I never shall meet! 

On publication one hopes that the reader will understand who each character is, and why they do the things they do.  I didn’t want to make my main protagonist, Kate, into some perfect creature who got everything right.  I wanted her to be vulnerable, to be a woman who is understood for having come out of a bad marriage, whose father died just as she was becoming a woman, whose mother fell to pieces afterwards and became an alcoholic. A woman who also lost a baby son and wants to create a charity in his memory.  All these events shape a person and can chip away at confidence, so when a handsome young Russian pays her a great deal of attention she is inevitably flattered, and then also sold into his dream of exposing corruption in the Russian system, as infrastructure is sold off to the oligarchs.  What a cause. What an adventure. He’s her Navalny.

Some people found her infatuation with Valentin difficult to grasp – “she’s 35 years old, she’s a grown up, she wouldn’t fall for someone in that way” but age doesn’t always blunt these feelings, nor make one as wise as one might wish to be!  Look at Robert Harris’ recent excellent book, Precipice, detailing the extraordinary obsession Prime Minister Asquith had in his sixties with the very young Venetia Stanley. But it is a never-ending challenge for the writer to convince the reader and so one is continuously honing the craft to better express the twists and turns of emotions, relationships and life.

There is also the practical and emotional side of getting the job done, sitting down at one’s desk even when one’s mind does not have a clue what will come next. It’s a combination of motivation, some self-discipline and quite a lot of determination to overcome the self-doubt that can drive one into distractions like checking emails, loading the dishwasher, or, worse, writing block.

No Lemons in Moscow is set partly in the post-Soviet era of Russia, from Gorbachev to Putin, and partly in London during its “Londongrad” period. Alongside the knowledge I gained from my two trips to Russia, I had to spend hours in research, reading as many books and documents as possible to give the nitty-gritty detail of what life might be like in the places I set the novel.  My cupboard is still packed with papers, books, newspaper cuttings, pages of plot plans, mind maps of chapters, timelines, arcs of characters.  Perhaps I shall have a large bonfire of it all one day, but not just yet.

In writing one has to convince oneself, over and over, that it is worth making a start, writing the first few pages. I am not alone – and I am sure many of you who read this are also writers – in working a sentence in a multitude of different ways to try to convey what I mean. Then waking in the middle of the night to think of a better way of expressing this, or realizing one needs to rework the whole of a section in order to make it more dramatic.  Then one has to convince oneself, over and over, that it is worth carrying on. But what surprised me was that I discovered I did have the patience to do this and even enjoyed the endless editing… and editing some more. Unlike non-fiction, where one can more-or-less gauge whether one is writing rubbish or not, writing fiction is something one will only know has met its mark when one gets reader feedback.  So, the Amazon and other reviews are invaluable to me.

The whole episode has also been an eye-opener back into the publishing world I left many years ago. The teaching of creative writing has become quite an industry now. People promise to teach you the perfect formula for writing a bestseller, how to write the perfect synopsis, the perfect pitch letter to an agent that will guarantee your book gets taken up, the perfect template for the ‘cosy murder mystery’ (it does seem a bit strange to me that murder should have ended up being branded ‘cosy’ – but there we are, and people love them!).

Then there are the publishers and booksellers who want you to define your book within an exact genre and woe betide you if your book straddles a few and can’t exactly fit.  My publishers plumped for No Lemons in Moscow being defined as ‘literary fiction’.  Yet when I look at my bookshelves full of books I read through the 1960s-2000, genre was less of an issue and many of the best books definitely could not be pigeon-holed.

Nonetheless, I very much appreciate what I have learnt from my creative writing tutors and editors. I have picked up a great deal and am indebted to them – especially the one who pointed out that someone couldn’t possibly attempt to escape kidnap by bashing open the door in front of him if he had his hands tied behind his back. Quick rewrite! At the same time, I think many of us writers are concerned not to end up with some formulaic result.  The reason we write is because something inside us is pressing to be said. There have been endless thrillers, spy stories, love stories written century after century and yet each one is unique in its way, each one introduces the reader to new characters, new ideas, new events or relationships. Each one expands your mind and imagination just a tad. As the writer George R R Martin said, “a reader lives a thousand lives where someone who doesn’t read only lives one.”

It has indeed been heart-warming to receive some lovely feedback from people who have enjoyed No Lemons. Even if one person has received pleasure from reading it, that makes it worthwhile as it had to be written. It couldn’t stay inside me. So having many nice comments and 4* and 5* ratings has made me feel the effort was worthwhile.  

As an aside, and as it’s Christmas, I will mention that I’ve also recently published a new collection of poetry, The Safety of Small Things, which is contemporary poetry and could just be an excellent stocking-filler for a loved one! I find I have to get into another mindset to write poetry – more of a dream state, observing what is around me. Anyway, I hope you enjoy them.

All available on Amazon, of course, or No Lemons in Moscow can be ordered from your local bookshop, so do support them if you can.

Happy Christmas and Festive Season to you all and thank you for your support, Helen

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Dec 05

2024

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Helen Whitten

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How has the “Be Kind” brigade become so cruel?

We were told that Woke stood for Awakening, to wake up to where we needed to become more tolerant, open, aware of bias and inequity.  We were told that it was about being “kind”.  How has it happened, then, that we are actually waking up to a world that is less tolerant, more divided and cruel than I have ever known it in my lifetime?

Every day we read of vitriol on social media, of people being threatened with death, rape, harm to family should they express an opinion that is not considered “acceptable”. Such a person or group posting this unpleasantness often hides behind an anonymous or false user-name.  These words would probably not be expressed in a similar way if people were actually to meet face-to-face or be looking one another in the eye, but on social media people seem to think they can say whatever disgusting things they like. Some, no doubt, do this without fully being aware of the impact of the words.  Others will be writing these words deliberately to threaten, to frighten, and to silence.

We have come to a place that is similar to a child’s playground and yet the grown-ups have left the room.  We are left in a world where sending people to Coventry is commonplace, where Chinese Whispers end up getting spread and ruining a person’s career, or life, without due process of the law.  We are in a place where pointing fingers of blame at anyone and everyone happens every day but where a finger very seldom points back at the person who is doing the accusing, so there is little personal responsibility or personal awareness of their own part in a situation.  Telling tales and snitching is the norm in business and politics, where people run to a boss or HR to report feeling offended by something someone said.  Name calling and labelling those who have a different viewpoint is used as a way of shaming the person into silence – “bigot, racist, transphobe, Islamophobe” etc – so there is no real will in hearing another person’s opinion. And cancelling the lecturer who might talk on subjects that are not popular to some majority view removes the threat of anyone actually being able to challenge their own opinions. Or, as happened at the Oxford Union this week, the audience turn like a mob on a speaker who doesn’t conform to their world view. Manners and respect go out of the window, as does curiosity.

This is the most intolerant and judgemental period of my life.  Forgiveness, or an effort to understand the ambiguities and subtleties of life, have been discarded.  It is a black and white world where you are either with me or against me, either good or bad, and if you have a different opinion to me then you are bad, if not actually evil.

How have we got here?  It has been building up over several years now and is silencing people’s ability to joke, to speak out about what they believe in, or even to test out ideas as a group, for fear of saying something someone in the group dislikes because then you’re in trouble. Cancelled.

You aren’t allowed to make mistakes.  Young men have always been rather clumsy in their first attempts at wooing and my generation generally forgave them (sometimes too much) but no young person, whatever their sex, knows exactly what to do when they first get together with the person they are attracted to.  It is a learning curve that can often take several years to discover what works best.  Yet it seems that if you get it wrong these days you can be sent to Coventry, as was apparently the case of Oxford student Alexander Rogers, who tragically committed suicide.

The Sunday Times of 1 December carried some heartbreaking stories of university students nervous of speaking up. They shared experiences of being ostracised, sidestepped by friends and isolated if they said or did something perceived as wrong or offensive, or out of kilter with the current groupthink.  Building a social network of friends at university is so important but how can you know who your friends are in this tribal world, where making one small mistake can have you cruelly shoved out of the group. 

Who have we become that we are so unforgiving, that we don’t realise that we spend the whole of our lives, not just our childhood, learning, adapting and improving ourselves.  Personal development doesn’t stop when we leave school. We are continually learning and reinventing ourselves as we go through different phases of life and in this we have to listen to others, be curious, and take the odd risk to push ourselves into a new career, direction or relationship.

This is very far from any “kind” generation.  It is more a world of “Lord of the Flies” and subtle and not-so-subtle bullying and threatening, so that no one dares to have a different opinion or to bother to really think why people have formed a set of opinions, or whether they are based on facts or context. 

The sad truth is that we can’t always be kind to everyone.  If we are kind to one set of people, we can’t always be as kind to another set.  Such is life, and any government has to make difficult decisions, knowing that giving money in one direction will mean that some other group will go without.

However, this doesn’t mean you don’t have compassion for both sides, or for all needs, even if you can’t actively help everyone.  You don’t have to have a firm preference for one side or another but in this day and age apparently you aren’t allowed to see in shades of grey. The subtleties of situations such as Israel/Gaza, the fallout from mass immigration, the decisions around Brexit, the trans debate, the difference between being a Muslim and an Islamist, the election of Trump, the war in Ukraine, or climate change are lost. You can’t even explore those subtleties in conversation because in doing so you might expose yourself to be on the “wrong” side and that would threaten your position with your friends or work colleagues.

It seems that keeping in with the in-crowd these days involves chucking others out in the most cold and callous way. And it isn’t just in student life, this is true in business too, where the smallest misspeak can get you sent to HR, even if your intention was not to do any harm.  The grownups are just as bad – statements like “I’ll never have a cup of tea with a Tory” or “I won’t talk to a Brexiteer” are common and are intended to close down discussion.

Recently it was reported in The Guardian of 25 November that Professor Dorothy Bishop, Emeritus Professor of developmental neuro-psychology has resigned from the Royal Society because of Elon Musk’s fellowship.  She has been quoted as saying “I am not going to be polite and nice to Elon Musk, so I can’t keep the code of conduct.”  But why can she not be polite to him?  She may disagree with him but surely she could have an interesting conversation with him to discuss their differences?  Similarly, Bishop Helen-Ann Hartley, who recently called for the resignation of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, says she has since met a “wall of silence” from her fellow Bishops, effectively sending her to Coventry for her action.  Again, why can’t people have reasoned debate and discussion and learn from one another’s differences instead of just deciding, without deeper investigation, that someone is a bad person for something they have said or done. We may disagree but that doesn’t make them a bad person.

All this adds up to a judgemental and unforgiving period of history that is stifling freedom of speech, creativity and relationships.  It is making people nervous to open their mouths for fear of alienation or being misunderstood.  It is not a good place for a society to end up.  We have too many examples through history of how populations have been silenced to the detriment of the majority.

If being “kind” is really something of an aim, then that takes being rather more curious as to WHY people have that opinion because very often you discover they are not so different in their principles and aims. However, if you can’t be bothered to understand the background or intentions that underlay their views you will never arrive at a meeting point. I have a friend who has a very different view of Assisted Dying to my own, but I fully respect his opinion and remain fond of him as a friend. Why shouldn’t I? The whole point of ‘diversity’ was to listen to others different to ourselves, wasn’t it?

Is it not time to slow down, stop judging and pointing fingers but instead ask questions? Teachers told us not to tell tales, bully or isolate friends.  Let’s remember some of those playground messages. We will never learn anything if we silence opposite opinions.  The adage “I may not agree with your opinion but I respect your right to express it” needs to be lived and acted upon more often if we are to innovate, grow and get along as a society.  Silencing people, dividing or isolating them is anything but kind.

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Nov 26

2024

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Helen Whitten

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A Personal View on Assisted Dying

Assisted dying ignores “what it is to be human” a member of the Church of England wrote recently, but who is to decide what it is “to be human”?  For them it is presumably a spiritual matter but for others it could just be based on the biology of the human body and its frailties. 

Similarly, a self-appointed “progressive” wrote that people “ought to” end their lives by making the most of their last months. But who are they to tell others what they ought to do, especially if that person has no capacity to make the most of their life? The same writer also stated that, with this bill, a person might be put under pressure to end their life in the “wrong” way.  But who is someone to tell another person what is or isn’t the wrong or right way to spend their last days?

It seems we are being expected to abide by another person’s God or belief system in this.  At a point in time in history it was declared that a life was the gift of God but there can be no concrete evidence of this, only faith.  I believe in the sacredness of life but that does not extend to prolonging it beyond what is tolerable for the individual, plus there are many people who don’t believe in this particular God, or any God, or have other beliefs, but have been dictated to for centuries by people forcing these regulations on others. 

After all, the established religions were against IVF to create life at first, yet this breakthrough has changed women’s and family’s lives and brought precious children into the world. Watch the new movie Joy for a flavour of this.

Contrarily the CofE seems to have been remarkably quiet on the issue of saying that one’s birth sex was created by God in a specific way.  In fact, Welby, as Archbishop of Canterbury, supported trans ideology being taught in schools, which, on the basis of considering “what it is to be human” seems to be very much on the spectrum of making it an individual choice as to what sex one is, despite being born a particular way.  So, if we can have individual choice over one’s body on changing sex, why can’t we have it on choosing to end our lives?

The NHS already acts as God, as does the Government, by making budgetary and clinical decisions around who will get medication and who will not.  It is already an Excel spreadsheet and postcode lottery. It is certainly possible that the NHS could be as keen to kill us off as our relatives would, potentially by applying the Do Not Resuscitate notices.

The independent Office of Health Economics estimated that around 20 terminally ill people in the UK die in unrelieved pain each day.  Also, fewer than 5% of terminally ill people in England who needed hospice care received it in 2023.  It isn’t always possible to alleviate all pain, and many doctors know how miserable that can be. It may be distressing to assist a death, but it is also distressing for staff not to be able to help a patient be free of pain.   

Two-thirds of the UK population want to go ahead with some form of assisted dying, and it is telling that many of them are in the over-65 age-bracket.  In other words, closer to death than some of the people who are dictating the law to us. In the conversations I have had with my peer group, most of us are anxious about the end of our lives.  Most of us want to exit this world with dignity.  Most of the friends I have spoken to say we would choose to die rather than linger in some care home or NHS ward in some state of pain or distress.  We might well choose to go a little earlier but leave this world with dignity, for our own sake as much as that of our families.

What is stopping us are old belief systems that belong to another era, to religions other than our own, other beliefs than our own.  And fear – the endless fear of “the slippery slope” that people will feel they are a burden.  Yes, they might but parents make sacrifices for their children all the time and I hear often that elderly relatives say that their life has become unbearable and that they want to die but can’t. And, as I wrote above, my main fear is whether I have sufficient money to pay for a care home and/or whether I shall die in pain or without dignity. 

Personally, I don’t think it should be the general doctor or hospital ward that supervises these cases.  I believe it should be the Palliative Care system that already deals with compassionate ways of looking after people in their last days.  I have seen people write that we should improve the Palliative Care system rather than approve the Assisted Dying bill.  I believe we should do both and have specialist teams who oversee the terminally ill and ensure their death is as peaceful as possible.

The likelihood of being able to get a High Court Judge to approve these cases is surely only going to lead to more distress and delay, as the courts can’t even bring rape or assault cases to court for years on end.  How can a High Court Judge add anything to the equation, or more than two objective doctors, the person themselves and their families?  What evidence will they be able to analyse, and how? If there is a dispute, obviously the law will need to be actively involved.  Otherwise, I don’t see that involving a Judge brings anything other than more delay and complexity to an already complex event.

In this country we have to effectively starve ourselves to death if we wish to die and, unless we are in a position to be cared for, that can be painful and distressing for all involved.  The alternative is to go to Dignitas, but why should we be forced to travel to another country and potentially put any relative or friend who accompanies us at risk of being accused of being an accomplice?

If we allowed an animal to be in the pain or distress that we allow humans to be, we would be reported to the RSPCA for cruelty.  It seems to me outrageous that I can give my cat a more dignified and peaceful death than I can expect to have myself.  This isn’t murder.  This is a choice personally made about one’s own life, one’s own body. Why should the state or another person have the right to choose what I do with my body if I am not threatening anyone else or putting anyone else at risk?

Of course, safeguards need to be put in place, and I think we need to be very careful when it comes to disability and also mental illness. I have personal experience of those who were mentally ill and suicidal but came out of it and lived happy lives for many decades afterwards.  I am horrified by the posters placed on the tube by Sadiq Khan and TfL apparently of young people celebrating suicide.  This is not what this bill is about.  It is a serious piece of legislation intended to put some people, not all, and only by personal choice, out of their misery as they approach the end of their lives.

There are moments when the world and its possibilities change and, yes, we need to learn from all the mistakes and breakthroughs other nations have made in this complicated subject.  IVF was a compassionate breakthrough and so, I believe, can assisted dying be.  To help someone die peacefully and out of pain can also be a compassionate breakthrough.

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