On 1st September 1939, war was declared. On 1st September 1949 my parents married. On 1st September 2019, I reflected on our demonstration the day before and the linkage.  If my father was alive, he would rue the day that saw what he fought for being so casually trashed. I did not expect to enter my 70s feebly fighting for democracy and the survival of the country’s integrity and economy. I have written before about the uncanny, unsavoury resonances between 1930s Germany and Britain today, but those parallels are at last being noted, as many home-made placards recognised.

I started this blog four years ago, even then with less hope than most of my contemporaries that things would turn out alright. I have been increasingly unable to continue it precisely because my worst fears have been realised. As the neanderthal cult of evil which has now seized control of government is opposed by a few thousand of us good-naturedly demonstrating on the street, they show their true colours by marching those of their own supporters who are insufficiently fervent out of the door under armed guard ‘to encourage the others’. 

Four years ago, I visited Dachau. Historical literacy not being a British trait, few will know that this first Nazi concentration camp was established in 1933 by Chief of Police Heinrich Himmler to house political dissidents, Communists and other opponents of the regime in which Nazis were still only a minority partner. (Hitler had come second to Hindenberg in the 1932 presidential election with 13.4 million votes, 36.8% of the poll – or 32.8% of the total electorate. Teresa May won the 2017 general election with a very similar 13.6 million votes, 42.4% of the poll – but just 27.75% of the total electorate. Boris Johnson was elected by 92,153 Tory members, or 0.19% of the total electorate of 45,775,800 UK voters.)

Hitler’s rise to power had been supported by right-wing media and it is instructive to quote the banal press release which announced the camp in March 1933, deploying familiar references to national security and over-stretched prison facilities:

On Wednesday the first concentration camp is to be opened in Dachau with an accommodation for 5000 people. ‘All Communists and—where necessary— Reichsbanner and Social Democratic functionaries who endanger state security are to be concentrated here, as in the long run it is not possible to keep individual functionaries in the state prisons without overburdening these prisons, and on the other hand these people cannot be released because attempts have shown that they persist in their efforts to agitate and organize as soon as they are released.

There were 32,000 documented deaths at Dachau, more from starvation, disease and overwork than deliberate execution, but untold numbers more died during its 12-year history, and 10,000 of the 30,000 prisoners liberated in 1945 were sick.

People laugh at these parallels, while unconcerned at the destruction of a parliamentary democracy which never had a written constitution and which many feel served them poorly. The cynical electoral promises of money for the institutions long starved of cash will soon prove hollow, not least because of the shrunken tax take inevitable with Brexit, but facts have never been allowed to cloud this debate. Those most affected by previous government austerity measures will continue to take the heat for what follows. Once their parliamentary representatives, however ineffectual, have been silenced, how long before other voices of protest are found not to be ‘in the national interest’? We now know what the referendum mantra of ‘take back control’ means. It certainly doesn’t mean you.