I
am writing these words in the last knockings of a grey Sunday
morning. It is 1 November 2020. It is 11.45. Outside the window, the weak
sunshine of the early morning is long gone. The wind becoming a gale. The rain will soon be horizontal. There is barely
a leaf to be seen on the swaying trees.
And
tomorrow is Monday. The start of another week. A week where so many
things could change for better or for worse. A week which will go a
long way to shaping the course of the rest of my life. And the lives
of my sons. And the lives of my yet unborn grandchildren.
Might
the coming week be the most important in my near sixty years on the
planet? Well. Almost certainly not.
I
guess there were three weeks when my life could have been changed and
changed utterly.
April
1989.
Not the whole week. The weekend in the middle of an unusually
sunny month. On the night of 14 April, Carol and I got togther and we
have stayed together ever since. A true life changer. Then on the afternoon of 15 April, I
skirted the gates of death by the skin of my teeth. In the cages of
the Leppings Lane Terrace.
Hillsborough.
Sheffield. South Yorkshire. And I made it. 96 of my fellow Reds
didn't. It was the only time in my life when mass death stared me in the
face.
So,
yeah. April 1989. My life went on, but it was changed. Changed utterly.
The
first huge week of my life is one I have no memory of whatsoever.
October 1962. I was closing in on my second birthday when Kennedy and
Kruschev brough the world to within a few minutes of mass death. And
a one year old me would no doubt have been on the list of tens of
millions to perish. Preston was high up on the Soviet nuclear hit list and our little
family would have been transformed into ash within a nano second had
the Americans and Soviets chosen to press their buttons.
The
second of my life and death weeks also passed without me having a
clue that anything had even happened. Me and millions of others. In fact,
me and pretty much the whole world. We're talking September 1983. I
was a couple of weeks into my last year at Cambridge. On September
26th, the threat screen at a Soviet early warning station
lit up like Blackpool illuminations. The computer had sensed multiple
American nukes headed for the Soviet Union and the doomsday clock was
ticking down. The guy in charge was a Colonel called Stanislav
Petrov. His training made what was to happen next crystal clear –
pass the news down the line to the rocket guys and let Armageddon
roll.
Stanislav
chose not to buy what the computer was selling. Three times the
klaxons howled and three times he ignored them whilst all his
colleagues begged him to do otherwise. After a few minutes it became
clear the computer had screwed up and everyone smoked strong Russian
fags with shaking hands.
There
were at least five U.S. Air Force bases within fifty miles of my
college. Had Stanislav Petrov obeyed his standing orders, I would have
been been gone without a trace. Of course I never knew any of this.
None of us did. The story only leaked out decades later when the
Bolshevik Empire crashed and burned.
The
coming week is unlikely to carry the same imminant threat to my life and
limb as those long lost weeks in 1962, 1983 and 1989. Its impact
will take longer to play out. And yet the after effects of the next
few days could determine the next half century. Maybe longer.
I'm
not going to look at this globally. Instead I will be selfish and
examine what might or might not come next through the eyes of me and mine.
First
up is the big one. Tuesday night and the long early hours of
Wednesday morning. The U.S. Election. What else? Has there ever been
an election in the history of democracy which has held the attention
of the whole world like this one has? No chance.
Of
course anything which affects the way America is run has a pretty
massive impact on the rest of us. For now at least, they are still the big
dog. But the fate of Trump represents something much bigger. For the
last five or so years, the world has been sliding into darkness much
like it did in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Country after
country has fallen into the hands of so called 'strong men; Russia
and Brazil and the Philippenes and Hungary and Turkey and England.
And
of course America.
Trump
has made himself the pin up boy for an encroaching tide of Fascism. At times it
feels like if you listen hard enough you can hear the sound of
crashing jack boots drawing ever closer. And this is a sound guaranteed
to scare the living daylights out of anyone who is a part of a mixed
race family.
Right now the world has a horrible feel of Germany 1932.
If the nightmare becomes reality on Tuesday night, the world will suddenly
feel like Germany 1933. A die cast. A dark future locked in. The road
to a new Dachau suddenly open for traffic.
But
if he loses and loses big, then it will feel like the world has taken
a step back from the brink. From the appalling. From the unthinkable.
And maybe it can mean the start of something better.
The
media seem to think our Lords and masters in Westminster are waiting
on the result of the U.S. Election before making up their minds about
a 'No Deal' Brexit on 31 December. This is a huge deal for my
professional life as a food bank manager.
A
no deal Brexit will probably mean thousands of trucks stuck on the
wrong side of the English Channel. Supermarket shelves won't take long to empty out and the panic buying will make last March's run on
toilet roll and pasta look like a minor inconvenience. Last March
conclusively proved all the Brexiteer talk of the plucky 'Blitz Spirit'
to be nothing more than yet another right wing fever dream. There
will be no Blitz Spirit if the shelves are cleared. There will be
mass panic and civil unrest. And probably not enough cops.
As
a food bank, we are doing our best to put some kind of plan into place to do as
much as we can in the event of this potential nightmare. Thanks to
unbelievable support from some of our local food suppliers, we should
be capable of providing enough for the most vulnerbale 4000 people in
the area we cover for two weeks. The amounts of food needed to
achieve this are eye watering. 10 tonnes of flour, 2 tonnes of pasta,
2 tonnes of mashed potato flakes.... Our thinking is probably somewhat
optimistic. There seems no way the spineless occupant of 10 Downing Street will be able
to withstand mass rioting for more than a few days. Hopefully
after a week of so of this kind of mass mayhem, Johnson will high tail it to Brussels
to get down on his knees and beg for a five year extension to the Transition Period which will hopefully allow for a return to some
semblence of normal. It seems beyond crazy to have to be thinking
this way, but we live in truly crazy times. Our threadbare plan
reminds me of the old war plans from the height of the Cold War where
the NATO forces were tasked to hang on by their finger nails for long
enough for massive American forces to make it across the Atlantic to
save the day.
OK.
U.S. Election. Done. Prospect of a No Deal Brexit done. So all that
leaves in my life changing week is the future of Scotland.
This
one is a tad more subtle. Right from the get go of the Covid 19 pandemic, the
Scottish Government opted for the tried and trusted option of using
local health boards and Councils to run 'track, trace and isolate'.
Johnson and Co chose to dish out £12 billion work of tax payer's
money to their cronies in the corporate sector. The results have been
pretty much conclusive. Our system, which has been tried and tested since the
pandemic of 1918, has worked reasonably well: it seems we get a hold
of 98% of those who test positive. The system down south barely
reaches 60% on a good day.
This
coupled with clear communication by a leader the people like and trust
has meant Scotland has done a whole lot better than England. Every
day at 1pm, I obsessively log on to the Scottish Government site to
see how many cases we have had over the last 24 hours. Over the last
week this figure has fallen every day. Not by much, but by a bit.
1400, 1300, 1250, 1150... On a pro rata basis, were we following the
English curve these numbers would be at least double and rising.
Right
now we seem to have falling numbers whilst still being able to keep
schools, colleges and shops open everywhere and pubs and restaurants
in over half of the country.
The
next week is huge. If we are able to see a continued fall in cases
whilst under a regional and partial lockdown at the same time as England
sees an explosion of cases drive it into a full lockdown, then it
could well be a true game changer.
Right
now 'Yes' is sitting at 58% in the polls. If this coming week sees
Scotland pull away from England as both countries battle the
pandemic, then the lead could begin to stretch past 60% and well
beyond.
Far enough for the result of the coming referendum to be pretty much a done deal.
Which
of course would mean I get the chance to live out my days as a New
Scot in an independent country.
So
if things go well this week, the future can start to look slightly
brighter. The cancerous march of Fascism might be stopped in its
tracks. The lunacy of a No Deal Brexit might be put back in its box.
And the
dream of an Independent Scotland might just be a whole lot closer.
It's
going to be quite a week.
