It is sad but also pathetic to hear Mark Francois MP’s fearful yet bombastic defiance: “My father Reginald Francois was a D-Day veteran, he never submitted to bullying by any German, neither will his son,” published on the same day as the likely next German Chancellor, with numerous German politicians, made a heartfelt plea in a letter to the Times: “Britons should know, from the bottom of our hearts, we want them to stay…Britain did not give up on us after the second world war and welcomed Germany back into the European community…Germans have not forgotten and we are grateful…more than anything else, we would miss the British people, our friends across the Channel.” My father did not take part in D-Day because he was in a POW camp, having been shot down during a bombing raid over Germany in 1943, part of the bombing campaign that flattened more than 200 German cities. It is just bizarre and even pathological for Mark Francois and his fellow Brexiters to act as if we were on the losing side.
Sadly, we cannot interview Francois pere but it would be surprising if he did not have a more realistic view of what World War II was about than his son has.
In the second debate on Indicative Motions last night, Labour's Barry Sheerman put on record what all too few MPs have expressed:
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
I rise to speak with great pleasure, because this has been a good debate. Over the weekend, when I was thinking about speaking in the debate should I be lucky enough to be called, I decided that I wanted to be entirely positive. Indeed, I am a Labour and Co-operative Member of Parliament and have a penchant for co-operation in my DNA. The right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) and I were both born during the blitz. I was born a week before him on 17 August, the day after the heaviest bombing by the Germans in the second world war. A week later, my neighbours—both parents and two little children—were killed by a German bomb.
When I got into Parliament, many of the generation here in 1979 had fought in that war. Denis Healey had been on the beach at Anzio, and Ted Heath had also been in the war. They were great pro-Europeans because they had seen two world wars and knew what the killing and waste had done to Europe—to our economy and to our people. The European economy was set back for many years and political progress seemed the only way forward. Those men and women built the United Nations and NATO, and started the European Coal and Steel Community, which was the beginning of Europe. We should honour them, and put this debate into context. I often say that I have been sent here from Huddersfield to make sure that people from my town get a better standard of living, improved health, welfare and prosperity. We all say that, and we all believe it, but we must put it in the broader context of the hallowed duty we have never to go back to that Europe that was so divided and bitter.
The young men who came back from that war, believing there had to be a better way, voted in the great reforming Attlee government. They would have been the people in mature years who ensured that there was a two-thirds majority for Remain in the 1975 European Referendum. My father, veteran of the 1st and 8th Armies, was one of them.
In the second debate on Indicative Motions last night, Labour's Barry Sheerman put on record what all too few MPs have expressed:
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
I rise to speak with great pleasure, because this has been a good debate. Over the weekend, when I was thinking about speaking in the debate should I be lucky enough to be called, I decided that I wanted to be entirely positive. Indeed, I am a Labour and Co-operative Member of Parliament and have a penchant for co-operation in my DNA. The right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) and I were both born during the blitz. I was born a week before him on 17 August, the day after the heaviest bombing by the Germans in the second world war. A week later, my neighbours—both parents and two little children—were killed by a German bomb.
When I got into Parliament, many of the generation here in 1979 had fought in that war. Denis Healey had been on the beach at Anzio, and Ted Heath had also been in the war. They were great pro-Europeans because they had seen two world wars and knew what the killing and waste had done to Europe—to our economy and to our people. The European economy was set back for many years and political progress seemed the only way forward. Those men and women built the United Nations and NATO, and started the European Coal and Steel Community, which was the beginning of Europe. We should honour them, and put this debate into context. I often say that I have been sent here from Huddersfield to make sure that people from my town get a better standard of living, improved health, welfare and prosperity. We all say that, and we all believe it, but we must put it in the broader context of the hallowed duty we have never to go back to that Europe that was so divided and bitter.
The young men who came back from that war, believing there had to be a better way, voted in the great reforming Attlee government. They would have been the people in mature years who ensured that there was a two-thirds majority for Remain in the 1975 European Referendum. My father, veteran of the 1st and 8th Armies, was one of them.
No comments:
Post a Comment