Thoughts on D-Day

I often drivel on about stuff that has happened to me or stuff that I've done but we are 2 days past the 70th anniversary of D-Day so there are more important matters to discuss.

I don't have any relatives who were involved in D-Day but my parents both served in the RAF in WW2 and my now deceased Dad was in the infamous Imphal Valley in Burma.

I also know they were in units side by side with Poles, West Indians and Africans amongst others so it pains me immensely to see the plethora of people re-posting content from Nazi organisations like Britain First and the BNP in support of our veterans. The immensely brave D-Day veterans, who deserve our eternal gratitude, fought to rid Europe of the evil of fascism and many lost their lives doing so. We now see those following the very ideology that those brave veterans fought against using their memory to gain publicity from the re-postings of people who, in the main, are making a very genuine but horrific mistake in doing so.

I posted the following on Facebook:

Copied from James Lees who copied it from Mick Clements but everything said is absolutely bang on and says exactly how I feel when I see this fascist drivel posted on here in the name of our fallen soldiers.

While we commemorate the brave soldiers from all the allied countries, including the commonwealth, who fought on D-Day, let’s also take a moment to remember what they were fighting for. It was not for ‘patriotism’, Britain or anti-Europeanism. It was a fight against Fascism and all it entails.
When ‘Britain First’, the EDL, the BNP, UKIP or any of the racist and bigoted factions try and hijack that fight for their own political agenda it makes me sick. The sacrifice that those courageous men made was in response to an evil man who exploited antipathy towards Jews, Gypsies, Ethnic minorities, Gays, Unions and the Unemployed to control the population and who offered hatred as a solution to his country’s problems. These groups wish to peddle the same ultra-right ideology and the fact that they choose to do so by exploiting the very men who fought against such prejudice and intolerance is shameful. WW2 was described as the war to end all wars. Sadly humans still continue to destroy each other in armed conflicts the world over but Europe, at least, has lived without war since. If we return to days of obsessive and subjective patriotism, hatred of other races and colours, intolerance of religious or sexual persuasion and the demonization of the unemployed, the poor and the needy then we truly do dishonour every man that lost his life on those beaches on that day 70 years ago. Say NO to Fascism – that’s how I will commemorate them.

It succinctly sums up how I feel.

On 28 June the fascist EDL will be holding a national march in my home town of Middlesbrough. I will be joining the counter demonstration to protest at these modern day Nazis taking to our streets to preach hatred and division. I'm very proud of my Dad, not just for his fight against fascism in uniform but also because he fought on the streets of Teesside against our home grown fascists in the guise of Moseley's Blackshirts. I honour his memory and the D-Day veterans by continuing that fight against fascism.