Peace, love and a need to disagree
I WAS never a hippy. The long hair and the flares were just what everyone was wearing.
Not only that, some of the things they got up to would have made my mother take to her grave early just so that she could turn in it.
I mean, did nobody at Woodstock remember to pack a shirt?
But I did go along with them on the love and peace thing. Being young in the ’60s and ’70s, with the Second World War still part of your parents’ daily conversation, Vietnam going ballistic and nuclear war just the push of a button away, it would have been hard not to.
Admittedly, the sight of John Lennon and Yoko Ono lying in bed for peace did briefly make me wonder if global conflagration might be preferable. But on the whole I thought only a madman wouldn’t want peace.
Then one day on the radio they played the most shocking song I’d ever heard. It contained the line, “We don’t want peace, we want civil rights.”
I’ve no idea who sang it or what it was called. I only remember that one line. But it was an amazing thing to hear in a pop song. It was the first time it occurred to me that peace might not always be the most useful option if you actually want to achieve something.
And you have the Archbishop of Canterbury to thank for inspiring me to bring this up.
During the Lords’ debate on the EU debacle, he said the country was more divided than he had ever known it and we had to try to heal the division.
It’s what you’d expect an archbishop to say. But he didn’t sound too different from those on the winning sides in the Scottish and EU referendums who basically think the losers should shut up and go away.
We’ve had our argument, now let’s shake hands and move on. What undemocratic twaddle.
If you believe something is worth fighting for, you keep fighting. Otherwise why have elections every five years? Just have one now and leave it at that, for ever. I’m sure everyone would then live together in perfect peace.
After all, I hear that flares are coming back.
Shake hands and move on? What undemocratic twaddle