TASHY HEARS

GREEN FIELDS OF FRANCE

It would be difficult, if not impossible, to grow up in the sixties and not be exposed to protest songs and the protest singer. Bob Dylan was always said to be one such singer and his nasal, gravelly voice certainly fitted well with the notion of an angry protest. Other singers and songwriters were, perhaps, more biting, harsher, in their style. Phil Ochs, whose song, “Changes”, I have already selected, had several, almost cruel, songs, mainly protesting against the Vietnam war. “I ain’t marching anymore” or “Is there anybody here” should be on every school curriculum to provoke thought and discussion.

By the time I was 11, I had watched documentaries, such as “The Valiant Years”, about a war that only finished some 15 years before and, one through which, both my parents and other family and friends had lived. Since then I have been totally opposed to war. There are exceptions. If one country, and I mean one country not half a country that was arbitrarily divided by others, invades another, then the removal of the aggressor is, in my view, justified. The Falklands war and the one when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, I would support. Aggression must never triumph.

But the Iraqi war of 2003, in which we, of the so-called free world, were either lied to by our democratically elected leaders or were being led by leaders who were so incompetent we should never have elected them, was to me totally, and indeed morally, wrong. For me, George Bush and Tony Blair will go down in history as deceitful liars or incompetent fools. They promised us Saddam Hussein had Weapons of Mass Destruction, they told us how soon they could be launched, and they told us they had first hand information of these facts. He didn’t and they didn’t. That’s either a lie, or the guy in charge accepted as fact something that so many others thought wasn’t. On reflection, my historical judgement on Bush and Blair may be wrong; they may have been lying, incompetent fools.

But they are not the first. The Great War, now called the First World War, was, as this song says, “the war to end wars”. It didn’t and it has indeed happened “again and again and again and again”. The song is simple and, to me, extremely poignant. Again it would be something if this song was introduced into every school curriculum. Eric Bogle, who was born in Scotland but emigrated to Scotland when he was 25, has an amazing way of conveying the suffering and futility of war. 'The countless white crosses in mute witness stand, to man's blind indifference to his fellow man”. No comment needed.

He also wrote another anti-war song called “And the band played waltzing Matilda”. Look for that too.