Wartime Nazi atrocities on Alderney to be reinvestigated

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The German occupation of the Channel Islands during the second world war is likely to receive new prominence because of an official inquiry into what happened in those years on Alderney.

Unlike the other islands, Alderney was largely cleared of its population and became a prison for slave workers building Hitler's sea defences.

A report in the Observer today looks at the tensions between those who believe far more people died on the island than the official account suggests, and those who resent the issue being opened.

The paper even managed to find a local who accused Sir Eric Pickles, the UK’s Holocaust envoy, who is leading the inquiry, of "wokeism".

Martin Bright has written a long article on the Index on Censorship that sets out the case for scepticism about the current official account of what happened on Alderney during the war:

While Alderney is technically a Crown Dependency and not a part of the United Kingdom, the British government was responsible for the surrender of the Channel Islands. The occupation of these islands has always been an inconvenient truth. By the summer of 1940, Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s War Cabinet concluded the islands could not be defended, and at the beginning of July, Jersey, Guernsey, Sark and Alderney were all occupied.

However, unlike on the other islands, all but a handful of people on Alderney were evacuated. This paved the way for the island to be turned into a vast prison for slave workers constructing Hitler’s sea defences. In January 1942, therefore, four camps – Helgoland, Norderney, Sylt and Borkum – were set up for workers from so-called Operation Todt. Conventional wisdom is that the majority of those transported to the island were Russian prisoners of war. But the records show a significant proportion of those in the camps were Spanish Republicans, north African Arabs and French Jews.

The conditions on Alderney were appalling and, in common with other Nazi work camps, prisoners were beaten and starved. Many succumbed to disease. Those who could no longer work were sent to camps in mainland Europe where they were murdered. The overall numbers of those who died on the island is also the subject of academic controversy: the minimum estimate is between 700 and 1,000 people, but experts believe the actual figure could be much higher.

Immediately after the liberation of Alderney, two senior British soldiers, Major Cotton and Major Haddock, were sent to investigate war crimes. As a result, the Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) office, the body responsible for bringing Nazis to justice, concluded the conditions were akin to those in other concentration camps in German-occupied territory: “The position here is somewhat similar to Belsen, stronger perhaps because the offences were committed on British territory.” A young captain, Theodore Pantcheff, was brought in to carry out a full investigation. In September 1945 he wrote: “Wicked and merciless crimes were carried out on British soil in the last three years.”

And yet Britain did not bring a single German officer to justice for what happened on Alderney. Instead, the authorities chose to focus on the Russian victims of the regime in the island’s camps and shift the responsibility for any investigation to the Soviet authorities. In October 1945, Pantcheff’s report was sent to Moscow, where it lay in the archives until 1993. The British copy was destroyed.

In particular, it seems unlikely that the official position that only eight Jews died on Alderney during will survive this renewed investigation.

Bright writes about the Jewish investigator, Marcus Roberts, who is determined to pursue the truth about the Holocaust on British soil. He believes it is possible that between 15,000 and 30,000 people died on the island, with at least 1000 being Jewish:

Roberts is the founder of the Jewish heritage charity JTrails. He began researching the Nazi camps of northern France in 2007. Two years later he turned his attention to the Channel Islands. He has been pushing for official recognition of Alderney as a Holocaust site, the establishment of an appropriate memorial and protection of Jewish graves. Roberts has established it was not just French Jews who were sent to Alderney; there were Jews from many from other parts of Europe and north Africa.

His research demonstrates that a considerable number of Jews are likely to have died on the island from dysentery and disease. His view is that the push for a Soviet inquiry was a smokescreen. Roberts told The Observer: "The way I read it is that the investigation regarding the Russians was undertaken first as a diversion from war crimes against other nationalities, but also there was definitely discussion in the papers we can read that they wanted to guarantee access to Allied war graves on Russian territory. It was also about plausible deniability."

And Bright also introduces us to the work of Caroline Sturdy Colls, professor of conflict archaeology at Staffordshire University, who was the first to apply modern forensic techniques to sites on Alderney:

Although she has challenged the numbers cited by Roberts, Sturdy Colls also believes the scale of the Jewish atrocities has been downplayed. “It is evident from the wide range of testimonies available and from the surveys we did of the camps in which Jews were housed that they were treated appallingly, and more Jews likely died than we know of,” she said. “The conditions in which Jews were housed were an extension of those that they were kept in elsewhere in Europe. The camps on Alderney were part of a network of sites that housed Jews and harsh punishments, terrible working and living conditions, and torture characterised their lives on Alderney.”

She added that it was important to recognise the atrocities committed against other groups on Alderney – eastern Europeans and Jehovah’s Witnesses, for example. “Overall, the suffering of most of the people who were sent to Alderney and were under the control of Organisation Todt and the SS has been underplayed.”

Caroline Sturdy Colls's book Adolf Island: The Nazi Occupation of Alderney, written with Kevin Colls, was published last year. You can hear them talking about it in this Wiener Holocaust Library video.

The Joy of Six 1022

"Eric Pickles, the head of the UK’s lobbying watchdog, says we now have 'entitlement whereby the existing cohort looked after the cohort that just left [government], in assumption that the cohort coming up would look after them.'" Chris Stokel-Walker unpicks the long history of cronyism.

Joe Ryle says a four-day week with no loss of pay would have an environmental impact equal to taking the UK's entire private car fleet off the road – and make us happier and healthier too.

"We are not benefiting children, either through parents overprotecting and overmonitoring them, or through society not creating an environment for unstructured and independent play." Emine Saner asks if 'free-range' parenting is the key to healthier, happier children.

Meg Keneally looks at now very different life was for parents and children before vaccinations for infectious diseases became available. One of her interviewees says: "Many younger people have no concept now of how awful it was."

Alexandra Heller-Nicholas on women and video nasties.

"Won’t Get Fooled Again ... would remain the band’s masterpiece. Anarchic, but beautifully produced; their most politically charged song, and their most commercially viable hit." Eoghan Lyng marks the 50th anniversary of the release of The Who's album Who's Next.

Six of the Best 508

Nick Barlow stands up for localism against Eric Pickles.

Jackson Lears stands up for liberal education against neoliberalism.

More than 50,000 families have been silently shipped out of London boroughs in the past three years, says Daniel Douglas,

Ragged University argues that modern housing developments have been made little else but a stage for isolated family living

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"Oh for the lost days of our youth when a small boy could come skipping out of a chemist's shop with a manual of witchcraft in one hand and a bag of bomb ingredients in the other." Adrian Bott rediscovers How to Make Magic from 1974.

Whatever happened to the Coalition's commitment to localism?

More and more, the Coalition agreement reads like the blueprint for the government Britain needed but did not get.

Take the introduction to the section on communities and local government:

The Government believes that it is time for a fundamental shift of power from Westminster to people. We will promote decentralisation and democratic engagement, and we will end the era of top-down government by giving new powers to local councils, communities, neighbourhoods and individuals.

What we have seen instead is Eric Pickles threatening to strip local councils of their planning powers and hand them to a centralised planning inspectorate.

And we have seen deep cuts in local government funding while many central government budgets are protected.

As Matthew Oakeshott says behind The Times paywall today:

Ring-fenced spending will be half the total in 2015-16. It's nonsense: no self-respecting finance director would run a business with half its overheads untouchable; no Chancellor should either.

The reason for this ring-fencing of central government budgets is the weakness of politicians and political system. To get elected David Cameron had to promise he would not spend less than Labour in many areas: in the hope of getting elected next time Labour is now promising it will not spend more.

One answer would be for local councils to raise more of their own revenue, but there is currently no prospect of any government tackling that question.

So local government continues to suffer and there is money for vanity projects like HS2 while local bus services are cut.

Six of the Best 270

Mark Gettleson, on Conservative Home, argues that a Liberal Democrat meltdown would kill the Tories' chances at the next election: "The Coalition has united the centre-Left and split the centre-Right for the first time in a century."

A new report from Big Brother Watch looks at how the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act has been used by both local and public authorities in recent years: "A decade on and more than three million authorisations later, our research found how there is still a great deal of uncertainty about how and why the powers are being used – and a clear need for the Coalition to go further to protect civil liberties."

Again on Conservative Home (Reader's voice: Are you feeling all right?), news that Eric Pickles is increasing the rights of bloggers to attend council meetings.

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I thought of Eric Pickles' curry academy first

One of the more diverting stories of recent days has been the news that Eric "Lime" Pickles is to found

a UK curry college that would teach British workers the secret of perfect pakoras a showpiece of the government's integration strategy to be published shortly. 

Pickles's "curry college", as it is being called, would see the government backing a school to train British people from all backgrounds to become chefs specialising in Indian food as an answer to the crisis in the £3.2bn curry industry triggered by the Home Office's ban on bringing in chefs from Bangladesh, India and Pakistan.

Back in February 2008 I pointed to earlier reports of this recruitment crisis in the "curry industry" and also to reports of high unemployment rates among young people with a Bangladeshi background.

I asked:

So if there is such a need for new staff in curry houses, shouldn't we be looking to recruit and train them from the Bangladeshi community in Britain?

Well, Pickles' college will be open to people from any background - and quite right too - but it is clear who had this idea first. This, incidentally, is not the first time this blog has anticipated an idea later put forward by a leading Conservative.

In my essay in Liberalism: Something to Shout About I wrote:

[Public] order is best seen as a by-product of people going about their ordinary business rather than the result of enforcement action by the authorities. 

Perhaps the next Lib Dem London Mayoral candidate should campaign for a new generation of Routemaster buses and promise to employ conductors on them.

Well, Boris Johnson got there eventually.

Incidentally, I was puzzled that Johnson's plan for a new Routemaster aroused such opposition among Liberals and the left. I suppose they think that everything good must bear the stamp of Progress, and the bus idea was tinged with nostalgia.

Eric Pickles and weekly bin collections

Shades of the Cones Hotline are hovering over the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester. Because the government initiatives so far announced to coincide with the event are distinctly underwhelming. An increase in the speed limit. Weekly rubbish collection. Is that all you've got?

Maybe this tells us something important about Cameron's Conservatives. If you take away the impossibilist fruitcake agenda - abolish all regulation of business, withdraw from Europe, withdraw from the modern world - it is hard to see what of substance is left.

As to the question of weekly rubbish collections, this is a perfect example of an issue that should be left to councils to decide. In cities it may make good sense to have weekly collections, but here is Harborough everyone seems happy with the fortnightly system and we have one of the highest recycling rates in the country. To spend £250m on helping councils provide a weekly service looks  a criminal waste at a time of such pressure on public finances.

Finally, Eric Pickles's claim that

"It’s a basic right for every English man and woman to be able to put the remnants of their chicken tikka masala in their bin without having to wait a fortnight for it to be collected."

looks like a parody of the modern fondness for inventing rights.

You throw out your stinking rubbish and someone else has a duty to deal with it for you? It hardly sounds a Conservative view. I am sure Mrs Thatcher always washed her milk bottles before she put them out.

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Virtually Naked hails an improbable liberal hero. Eric Pickles today said: "“Many councils are internet-savvy and stream meetings online, but some don’t seem to have caught up with the times and are refusing to let bloggers or hyper-local news sites in. With local authorities in the process of setting next year’s budget this is more important than ever."

When I began writing, the four-volume Penguin edition of George Orwell's journalism was my bible. The Worcester Libertarian reviews a new selection of his articles for the Observer.

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The problem is not that young people do not want to join the Scouts, says the Gyronny Herald, it is that there are not enough adults involved to enable them to do so.

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From the North remembers Nicholas Courtney (Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart) whose death was announced today. Its writer "had the great good fortune to meet Nick, socially, on several occasions and found him to be one of the nicest, gentlest and funniest actors I've ever crossed paths with".

Lord Bonkers' Diary: My new friends, the Conservatives

So what are our Conservative friends like? It has been what the young people call “a steep learning curve” for me as, until recently, I generally saw Tories from the saddle as we hunted them across the fields of Leicestershire and Rutland. I recall a good run a county councillor gave us until he went to earth near Billesdon Coplow...

Anyway, in the spirit of cross-party co-operation, I here offer pen portraits of a few of my new colleagues.

My older readers will recall that popular programme from the early days of the moving television, “Have a Go with Eric Pickles”. With his catchphrases “Are yer courting?” and “Give him the money, Barney”, Pickles soon became a household name. He disappeared from our screens amid persistent rumours that he had eaten one of the Dagenham Girl Pipers, but later resurfaced as MP for Brentwood and is now Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government.

George Osborne, a scion of the biscuit dynasty, made his first worker redundant at the age of 10. His parents must have been so proud.

A little bird told me that, had the Conservatives won an overall majority, then Nadine Dorries would have been prevailed upon to accept my Outer Space portfolio. I take it as a tribute to Nick Clegg’s skill as a negotiator that he was able to win the post for a Liberal Democrat.

Iain Duncan Smith is known as “the quiet man”. I am told that he intends to revolutionise the Social Security system in Britain, but am unable to hear a word he says.

In 1977, at the age of 8, William Hague brought the Conservative Conference to its feet with his peroration: “I hate Socialism and, besides, you lot will soon be dead anyway”. Thirty-three years later, now aged 87, he is Foreign Secretary. Isn’t it strange how things turn out?

“Do you know Theresa May?” a civil servant asked during one of my first visits to my new department. “No,” I replied, “but I am grateful for the tip.”

Earlier this week

Autumn has come to Rutland
At the first hint of an asteroid

Eric Pickles, Chairman of the Conservative Party, justifies his expenses

Lest we forget.

Let's see what Eric Pickles is made of

Colin Breed, the Liberal Democrat MP for South East Cornwall, has issued a challenge to Eric Pickles, the Chairman of the Conservative Party.

A few days ago Pickles described Paddy Ashdown as "frail and confused" after the former Lib Dem leader said the South West had been "trampled on" by previous Tory administrations.

Now Breed has challenged Pickles to:

"visit Cornwall and Devon and meet Mr Ashdown. Perhaps first they could 'yomp' across Dartmoor."

Turning the irony up to 11, Breed went on:

"I can assure Mr Pickles we have very long memories in the South West and we would love to see him down here.

"Of course I suspect he would have passed out on a boggy patch a few hundred yards after trying to keep up with the frail and clearly decrepit Paddy Ashdown."

Let's see if Pickles will have the courage to take up this challenge.

Come on, Eric, show us what you're made of!

House Points: Eric Pickles and MPs' expenses

My House Point's column from today's Liberal Democrat News. It is one of those slightly preachy ones where I try to point a moral.

Youtube has the video of Eric Pickles on Question Time. The rough, tough, gruff trope is stolen from In the Red by the late Mark Tavener, an early stalwart of the Liberal Revue.

Pickled logic

The worrying feature of the scandal over MPs’ allowances is not that voters no longer trust MPs. It’s that MPs no longer trust the voters.

It was easy to laugh at Eric Pickles’ performance on Question Time last week. The wonder that spread over his face when he announced he sometimes has to start work as early as 9.30 was comic gold. And his insistence that Westminster “runs like clockwork” looked pretty silly a few days later when a guest at his reception was tear-gassed and arrested by the rozzers.

But what was really noteworthy about that performance was the way Pickles assumed that he would not be able to convince the audience he was entitled to a second home in London. “I am never going to satisfy you folks,” he said, “because I am an MP and therefore guilty."

Granted, it would have been a hard task. His Brentwood constituency is only 37 miles from London. When I catch an early morning train the 83 miles from Market Harborough to London it can be hard to find a seat. It is full of people whose employers wouldn’t dream of paying for a second home for them in the capital.

Pickles was made chairman of the Conservative Party to be the voice of Northern common sense among the Southern smoothies. Pickles’ own website quotes Peter Hetherington of the Guardian as calling him a “bluff diamond”. Hetherington might have added that he is rough, tough and gruff.

But on Question Time he’d had enough and was in a huff.

Pickles has been doing himself well, but he is far from the worst offender. (It is pleasing, incidentally, to see how sensibly Lib Dem MPs have conducted themselves.) So if he is not prepared to mount a reasoned defence of his conduct, what hope is there for the rest of them?

This mutual distrust between politicians and voters is bad for democracy. The hollowed out political system it has created invites in a populist “anti-politics” candidate like Berlusconi. And there are nastier forces than that in the wings too.

The answer is for MPs to curb their "go out boys and spend it" mentality. Then they might feel able to treat voters like adults.

Three journalists arrested at Commons reception hosted by Eric Pickles

STOP PRESS: Paul Waugh knows who was arrested.

Sky News reports:

Sky News political correspondent Jon Craig said Conservative sources had told him the two men and one woman were journalists.

"Police broke up what the Conservatives have told me was a domestic," he said.

"There are cells in the House of Commons and they could be held there for some time.

"My understanding is that these people are under arrest still.

Craig added that the Tory chairman was likely to be hugely embarrassed by the incident.

Pickles is the man who kept telling us that "the House of Commons runs like clockwork".

Later. The Northern Echo adds:

Police used CS spray to break up a fight in the Houses of Parliament tonight, sources said.

It is understood that guests of an official passholder began scuffling shortly after 9.15pm.

Police officers were unable to stop them fighting and one used their CS spray. According to reports, three people were arrested.

Eric Pickles defends his second home on Question Time

Here is Eric Pickles' legendary performance from Question Time last week. Note his assurance that the fact he sometimes has to be in Westminster for 9.30 entirely justifies his being bought a second home at public expense.

Bear in mind too that Pickles was promoted to leaven the Cameroons with some Northern common sense. He was meant to be rough, tough and gruff from somewhere like Brough (and to have eaten several cream puffs).

I fear that the way Pickles crashes and burns here is symptomatic of the way the entire political class is becoming distanced from the large majority of the people they are elected to serve.

Thanks to Lib Dem Voice.