FORUM: Illtyd harrington: ‘as i please’

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Published: 24 March, 2011
by ILLTYD HARRINGTON

Decent human reaction wins as government flops

JAPAN closed its doors to the West for many years, slamming them in the face of predatory explorers. And they only reopened them when the Meiji was restored in 1867. A country mystifying in its contradictions. Now once again there are awesome scenes of disaster. The only country to have had two atomic bombs dropped on it. This country presided over by a government that is incompetent and indecisive. The civil service, which really runs the place, practises Amakudari – which is the justification from grateful contractors for accepting bribes after leaving office. 

My particular interest in these dreadful days is that part of my extended family live in north Tokyo, a city I know well. Always living on a knife-edge, my family were wealthy and established, stalwarts of the peace movement. 

Until recently, most Japanese believed that the emperor was the descendent of the sun goddess, Amaterasu. A country which still lives in the devastating aftermath of Nagasaki seems to be failing in basic human needs, and in developing contingency and emergency plans. 

Some Japanese watchers put it down to the “chaos of harmony”. 

Two weeks ago, the lights went out and the real fears of increasing radiation in food fish and water became apparent. People began to flee Tokyo in a new exodus, while still behaving with incredible restraint. 

The human rescuers, doctors and nurses there are having to share their handfuls of rice with the starving populace. 

How many in Britain recall the Atomic Energy Authority, which never knowingly admitted responsibility and often denying obvious contamination. It took the slothful Irish government, fishermen and the local medical profession and Panorama, to demand action over Sellafield and the poisoning of the Irish Sea. 

Thankfully, decent human reaction takes over when government flops. The challenge and the danger is often taken up by voluntary workers who show unqualified courage. Robert Burns said “man’s inhumanity makes countless thousands mourn”. 

People’s compassion is stronger. 

I saw the scene of the Moorgate tube disaster in February 1975. 

As chairman of the GLC’s emergency committee, I went up the tunnel to guarantee there would be no bureaucratic intervention. Firemen old enough to remember the Blitz were astonished to see 20-year-old London firefighters coping with a gruesome situation, eager to find evidence of life. They were comforting the dying and respecting the dead, which was nobility in every sense of the word. 

Another horrific and equally terrible tragedy I witnessed in the mining village of Aberfan, where I was born. For decades, waste from the pits had piled up in a huge, growing arch, growing more precipitous over the village.

 Then shortly after the children had arrived for their last day at school before the half-term break in 1966, millions of tonnes flipped off the mountain and smashed into the school: a racing bomb, the momentum making the impact heavier. 

Under a clear blue sky and in the vivid autumnal surrounding countryside miners burrowed frantically into this mountain. Their ceaseless activity only stopping at a signal, where one would bring out a broken body of a child – 28 adults and 116 children died. 

Mr Justice Davis, the chairman of the rapidly put together tribunal, was shaking. After a time, the village had no sound of noisy children playing. It was uncanny. The pied piper had come stealthily and taken them into the dark shadows of the mountain. 

Lord Robens, the chairman of the National Coal Board blustered, but shifted personal responsibility from himself. Aberfan triggered a worldwide surge of shared sorrow and humanity. The pain was shared but the grief remains. 

I met the novelist Gwyn Thomas, a chronicler of humour in the times of depression. As a miner’s son he was angry – “outrage is too weak a word” he said to me. I tried to describe it to the readers of Tribune, but felt very inadequate. 

I heard the third bomb on the July 7 2005. The current inquest might well draw some embarrassing conclusions on official neglect, non sharing of intelligence and frustrating bureaucracy for the firefighters. 

Worse than that, perhaps, the human misery and death being examined by Chilcot’s Iraq I­nquiry – estimated at one quarter of a million dead – never seemed to mention the basically poor people. 

So stop thinking of Japan as Madame Butterfly, the Mikado, Sumo wrestlers, Geisha girls. Humanity marches on. And hopefully the tsunami will carry away some of the obsolete and cynical government of Japan.