Hungary: a warning from history

Viktor Orbán's Hungary splits opinion: condemned by the left, revered by the right. Here is a trigger warning: this article contains nuance. Europhiles denounce Prime Minister Orbán for opposing the Franco-German left-liberal European Union consensus. Trump and others on the right laud him as the very model of a populist conservative leader.

Orbán has thrived on the diet of hostility the EU has fed him. Chancellor Merkel's open door immigration policy provided him with the opportunity to take a distinctively different position, adopting a much stricter policy in Hungary, which won him popular support at home. Similarly, President Macron's advocacy of a European army and greater powers for Brussels has played into Orbán's hands, gaining him popularity with Hungarian voters for defending their country's hard won independence. For all its protests, it is EU money that has financed the consolidation of Orbán's power. It was Merkel's European People's Party (EPP) which, for nearly twenty years, aided and abetted Orbán and his Fidesz Party as it strengthened its grip on political power in Hungary.

Yet, if Europhiles stand guilty of creating the monster they now deplore, so too have populist conservatives failed to see that Orbán's statist policies and hostility to a free press are anathema to the outward-looking, free trade instincts on which the success of Brexit has been founded. Sadly, too many on the populist right see Orbán as a model to admire and follow. At CPAC in America, he was an honoured guest, being praised by Trump supporters even after the Hungarian Foreign Minister had given a dressing down to the Ukrainian ambassador for supposed mistreatment of the Hungarian minority in Ukraine - and that was in the very week that most people in Europe were recoiling in horror at Putin's butchery of innocent civilians in Bucha. This, too, from Hungary, the country whose struggle for freedom was so brutally crushed by Russian tanks in 1956, as commemorated by Mihály Kolodkó's 'Sad Tank' mini-sculpture across the Danube from the Hungarian Parliament [see photo, above].

It is not just in the USA that conservatives have seen Orban's Hungary as a model to admire. In the UK, many of the same people who were disappointed to see the predictable failure of Marine Le Pen, France's Nationalist, Socialist, Putinist alternative to Macron, make no secret of their admiration of fellow Putin patsy Orbán. After all, unlike Le Pen, he does at least win elections.

Of course, not all that Orbán does is bad. Although he no longer controls Budapest itself, there is much to admire in the massive building projects he has supported there. In Buda Castle it is a joy to see buildings such as the Royal Riding Hall restored to their original glory having been razed to the ground by the Communists. The City Park is being transformed into a world class showcase of all that is best about Hungarian's artistic, cultural and scientific creativity; only this month Orbán opened the spectacular new Museum of Ethnography there with a characteristically pugnacious and patriotic speech.

There is nothing wrong with such patriotism and national pride, but unfortunately, in Hungary, it is accompanied by a narrow nationalism not unlike Putin's own. In Hungary's case that takes the form of a national obsession, carefully nurtured by Orbán, with the 1920 Treaty of Trianon. That treaty, concluding a war that Hungary itself had started, then went on to lose, left significant Hungarian minorities in its neighbouring states. In order to try to reverse that, Admiral Horthy, the autocratic ruler of Hungary in the 1930s, allied with Hitler's Germany. Sure enough, he was rewarded with the return of slices of former Hungarian territory from the countries that Hitler had bullied and invaded. As we all know, that shameful pact with the devil did not end well for Hungary.

Now Orbán has rehabilitated Admiral Horthy in no uncertain terms. Recently, while spending three weeks in the beautiful city of Budapest, I visited the exhibition, 'A New World Was Born: 1914-1922'. Like all the best propaganda it is dressed up in an interesting and entertaining package, but at its heart is a rewriting of history which portrays the UK and the USA as the bad guys, is sympathetic to all of Hitler's territorial demands and makes Admiral Horthy out to be a national saviour beyond reproach. It is a travesty of the truth.

And this is at the heart of all that Orbán does. Just as Putin has followed the Hitler playbook almost to the letter, so too has Orbán followed that of his hero, Admiral Horthy. Horthy saw that Hitler was intent on redrawing the map of Europe and saw that as an opportunity for Hungary. As the saying goes, 'that ended well, didn't it?!' Being Putin's patsy doesn't look as though it is going to end much better for Hungary than being Hitler's ally ended for Horthy's Hungary.

Orbán is unquestionably tactically adept, but that does not make him strategically wise, any more than that supposed 'strategic genius' Putin has proved to be. There is another way ahead for Hungary, but Hungarians seem reluctant to take it. That is to learn from history and to adapt appropriately - rather than trying to undo or rewrite it. The UK has reinvented itself again and again, after losing its American colonies and, more recently abandoning EU membership to return to a more global outlook. Austria has done much the same - eventually successfully transitioning from an imperial power to a prosperous smaller one. Would that Hungary would follow suit!

It's not as though Hungary wants for an example to follow from its own not-so-distant history. The beauty and wealth of Budapest were founded on an enlightened ruling class that encouraged enterprise and innovation, looking to Britain, France and the United States for much of its inspiration and investment. In the prime location on the Pest side of the Széchenyi Bridge, the British-based Gresham Life Assurance Company built the stunning art nouveau Gresham Palace (now, magnificently restored, the Four Seasons Hotel). Immediately opposite, on the Buda side of Hungary's most famous bridge, is another grand building; it houses Russia's International Investment Bank, which recently moved its headquarters from Moscow to Budapest as part of Putin's strategy of dividing Hungary from its NATO neighbours. It is a concrete sign of the way that Hungary has taken a wrong turn, rejecting the western, democratic model for the Russian, nationalistic, autocratic one.

As for conservatives in the UK, USA and other western countries, who seek a successful model of a traditionalist, patriotic government, they need not look far for such a model, in the shape of Poland and its ruling Law and Justice Party - a far better example to follow than Viktor Orbán's Hungary.

So much in Vienna will cause offence that the only solution is for it to be razed to the ground

It is hard to move in Vienna without encountering something that will cause offence. London and Washington DC are not in the same league in that respect. The balcony in the centre of the Neue Burg (above) is, infamously, where Hitler addressed a vast, cheering throng after the Anschluss which annexed Austria to the Third Reich.

The city is littered with reminders not just of its enthusiastic support for National Socialism, but of its record of vicious anti-Semitism stretching back for centuries. Emperor Franz Josef I, who brutally suppressed Hungarian democracy in 1849, presided over the construction of the famous Ringstrasse, designed to facilitate cavalry and artillery action against any popular uprising. The Votivkirche, erected to give thanks for his surviving an assassination attempt, contains a memorial to troops killed in the Austrian Civil War of 1934, when the Austrofascist Government deployed artillery on socialist council estates. The magnificent grounds and buildings of the Steinhof psychiatric hospital contain a memorial to the hundreds of innocent children murdered there. I could go on - and on. This is a city with so much to be ashamed of that the only logical conclusion for anybody who believes in cancel culture is that the whole place should be flattened in order to avoid the offence that its buildings and memorials must cause to so many people.

I write this after having visited the city for the seventh time, so you will gather that I find its more than chequered past bearable, but for many years I refrained from going because it seemed that the country that elected Kurt Waldheim as President had not come to terms with its past in the way that neighbouring Germany had. Since then, Austria, and Vienna in particular has, belatedly, but I believe genuinely, acknowledged its responsibilities again and again. Recently, it offered Austrian citizenship to the descendants of Jews murdered in the Holocaust. This is not mere virtue signalling; when I visited the Central Synagogue two years ago the young Jewish guide was adamant that Vienna today was a place where he and other Jews felt safe and positive about the future.

Of course not all is perfect or simple. Right now one of the Rothschild family is taking legal action against Vienna City Council over the expropriation of their property by the Nazi regime. There is a battle going on over the statue of Dr. Karl Lueger, a dynamic and charismatic former Mayor (a sort of Austrian Ken Livingstone in many respects) who knew how to obtain electoral benefit from stirring up the strong anti-Semitic streak in most Viennese voters in his day - something not lost on another Viennese resident, Adolf Hitler.

Life is not simple, history is not uncomplicated. We can either learn to live with it and accept it, as Oliver Cromwell is reputed to have said, 'warts and all', or follow the logic of woke, cancel culture and annihilate all history and all memory altogether. Vienna is a magnificent city and the current generation of Viennese running it deserve praise and respect for coming to terms with their past in an intelligent way, promoting tolerance. If you have not visited it, I urge you to do so when you can - before the cancel culture brigade ruins it.

There is no need to take lessons from ignorant woke hypocrites who have been happy to wear Nazi uniforms for 'fun' or who have made a fortune promoting the products of a company whose first boss made his name and his money designing uniforms for the SS.

Why I shall never forget the little children whose lives were extinguished in Aberfan

The late Cliff Michelmore, a fine broadcaster, known for his cheerful demeanour, said it all in one poignant minute: "Never in my life have I ever seen anything like this; I hope that I shall never, ever see anything like it again."

Now, fifty years on, it is with reluctance that I even comment about that dreadful day in Aberfan, for I know that the parents of the children who died that day have, rightly, pointed out that they remember their lost children every day, not just on the anniversaries of the disaster.

Members of the generation before mine often talk of remembering where they were when they heard that President Kennedy had been assassinated. I was too young to remember that; Aberfan was my 'Kennedy moment'. I was of similar age to most of the 116 children who died. Just as I and children the world over identified with the children in Enid Blyton's adventures, so too, for the first time, I identified with children in tragedy: the tragedy that overtook the pupils at Pantglas Junior School.

I do not wish to make any claim that my grief was any different to that felt by millions of others, but Aberfan has stayed in my mind all these years. As a classic, stiff upper lip, product of an English public school, I am not given to shows of emotion, but the very thought of the Aberfan disaster still brings tears to my eyes and has done so for as long as I can recall.

At school in leafy, posh, Llandaff, a few miles downstream from Aberfan, my world was a very different one from those children further up the Taff Valley. The main connection, for me, was the River Taff itself - filthy black from coal dust and other pollution from up the valley. The first time I travelled, in a car, up the valleys, I was shocked by the grim terraces, mines and coal slag heaps. It was just a few miles away, but it was like a foreign country to me.

The more I have learnt about those famous coal-mining communities, the more I have been impressed by their sense of community - that combination of coal mine, chapel, male voice choir, rugby, miners' institute, social club, trades union and, of course, the narrow constraints of the valleys themselves, created communities more tightly knit than perhaps any other in the United Kingdom.

These were communities that knew tragedy and hardship all too well, as those glorious, but mournful Welsh hymns convey so poignantly. The Aberfan disaster seemed to me then, as it does now, like tragedy heaped upon tragedy - simply too awful for words.

The dignity with which the people of Aberfan have coped with the legacy of that disaster is a tribute to the strength of their community. I doubt if any less close knit community would have handled its loss so well.

Looking at the walls of the beautiful memorial garden that now stands at Pantglas School, I see immediately that they are made of the same river-washed, rounded stones as the walls of our house in Llandaff. After the Aberfan disaster I was fortunate enough to return, of course, to normal schoolboy life; in the playground I would join the other boys playing Daleks, saying 'exterminate, exterminate' in our best impressions of Dalek-speak. Years later, I learnt that Terry Nation, creator of the Daleks, had, like me, been born in Llandaff. I have no doubt that the 116 little children who died in Aberfan on 21st October 1966 would have been playing the same games in the days before the disaster.

The dignity of the people of Aberfan is in contrast to the shameful behaviour of Lord Robens and the National Coal Board. Their theft - there is no other adequate word for it - of hundreds of thousands of pounds from the fund set up for the victims' families, is a reminder that it is not only the private sector that produces pond life such as Sir Philip and Lady Green, the public sector is every bit as capable of behaving disgracefully.

My heart goes out to the people of Aberfan, today - and every day.

Crumbs from a patisserie-filled land

Cafe Gondree, by Pegasus Bridge

Taking a short break from this 'cake-filled island' so despised by Emma Thompson and her ilk, I recently ventured across the English Channel to Normandy, following - geographically at any rate - in the path of the brave Allied soldiers who liberated France from National Socialism in 1944.

Appropriately enough, our first stop was at a Cafe - the tiny but famous Cafe Gondree, the first place in France to be liberated on D-Day. There were no cakes for breakfast, but plenty of crumbs fell from the delicious croissants that the legendary Arlette Gondree provided. The courage and brilliance of Major John Howard and his men is simply awe inspiring. Visiting with the incomparable Dr. Peter Caddick-Adams as our guide, our group - representing Shrewsbury School - could take pride in the knowledge that the famous British actor, Richard Todd, who went to school at Shrewsbury and later played Guy Gibson in The Dambusters, had taken part in Operation Deadstick on D-Day, as an officer in the 7th (Light Infantry) Parachute Battalion. I am pleased to see that belated plans are afoot to make a film about Pegasus Bridge, so that the heroism of the British Paras might at long last receive some of the well earned public acclaim that Saving Private Ryan has brought the American heroes of Omaha Beach.

Later on, laying a wreath at the Commonwealth War Cemetery in Bayeux, in memory of the Salopians who died in the Battle of Normandy, one didn't need to be an historian to appreciate how closely the lives of France and England have been interwoven for centuries. Here, in the first French city to be liberated in 1944, famous for its tapestry about another cross-channel invasion 878 years earlier, it is abundantly clear that Britain's links with continental Europe run far deeper than that creation of post-war politicians, the European Union. It is as absurd for the Remainiacs to claim that Brexit will damage our long links with France and other continental countries as it is for Emma Thompson to berate Great Britain for being 'cake-filled'. One of the great glories of France is that practically every French village boasts at least one good patisserie. France has even more gateaux than it has chateaux, and that should be a cause for celebration. French gateaux and British cakes will continue to give pleasure long after Brexit. Only Emma Thompson could regard that as a cause for dismay.

Brexit was YOUR victory

Rory Broomfield and me at the gates of Downing Street on 24 June 2016

As the old saying, once used by John F. Kennedy, goes, 'victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan'. Inevitably, the stream of accounts of the referendum campaign from those on the victorious Leave side is becoming a flood. Tom Waterhouse, Deputy Head of Ground Campaign for Vote Leave, was quick off the mark, on Conservative Home, writing, 'A bunch of 30-somethings had beaten the Establishment, creating a political shockwave that was felt across the world'.

I don't blame Tom, or anybody else, for letting people know his side of an important story, and I don't doubt that he and his team did a good job. However, in my experience, in any campaign, there is often much good and bad on both the winning and losing sides. Margaret Thatcher won a landslide general victory in 1987, but not before the famous 'wobbly Thursday', when she feared that she might be about to face defeat. Although she won, there is no doubt that Labour had done a good job of trying to make Neil Kinnock appear electable. Any ad man who could make Kinnock appear attractive deserves nothing but praise.

All too often, victory is attributed, after the event, to whoever shouts the loudest. I well recall Saatchi & Saatchi's clever 'Labour isn't working' poster. It was effective, but it was not the main reason for Mrs. Thatcher's historic victory many months later, in May 1979. Naturally, however, as you would expect of any advertising agency worth its salt, Saatchis did not hold back from taking the lion's share of the credit for that historic victory.

It is well known that 'the fog of war' causes confusion in any battle. Politics is no different. Later this month I shall visit the D-Day beaches for the first time since I was a five-year-old. Despite the most meticulous planning, much went wrong on D-Day, not least on Omaha Beach. The brave men who fought in a just cause in Normandy will forever deserve our gratitude, but none of them would claim that everything went to plan. Directly opposite Downing Street, where my colleague, Rory Broomfield and I celebrated Brexit victory (see photograph, above) with a Churchillian v-sign, is a statue of Monty, Field Marshal Montgomery, the commander of all allied ground forces on D-Day. My visit to Normandy will be paying particular tribute to Monty's right hand man, General Sir Miles Dempsey. Most people have never heard of him, even though he commanded all British and Canadian land forces on D-Day. A brilliant and highly regarded soldier, he was also a modest, self-effacing man. He believed that it was the men he commanded that deserved the glory, not their commander. How right he was! He deliberately wrote no memoirs and ordered that, when he died, all of his papers were to be destroyed.

I think that the same was true of Brexit. Of course leading Brexiteers played an important part, but, above all, I think that it is the 17,410,742 (the largest vote for anything in British history) who put a cross in the Leave box, who deserve the credit. Although he was born in a palace, Winston Churchill had the same sure feel for the views of his fellow countrymen as did Margaret Thatcher, born above a corner shop. Churchill was magnanimous and generous enough to appreciate that, despite the epic scale of his own contribution, it was the ordinary British people who had secured victory. His words, spoken from the balcony of the old Ministry of Health building in Whitehall on VE Day, should remind Brexiteers that Brexit was won by the many, not by the few: 'This is your victory! It is the victory of the cause of freedom in every land. In all our long history we have never seen a greater day than this. Everyone, man or woman, has done their best. Everyone has tried. Neither the long years, nor the dangers, nor the fierce attacks of the enemy, have in any way weakened the unbending resolve of the British nation. God bless you all.'

Our cake-filled island has a bright future, post-Brexit

The Seven Sisters, viewed from Beachy Head.

The saddest thing about some of the Remainers who fought so hard to prevent Brexit was that they appeared to hate their own country and to take pleasure in running it down. Foremost amongst them was Emma Thompson, who called Britain a 'tiny little cloud-bolted, rainy corner of sort-of Europe, a cake-filled misery-laden grey old island'.

Of course, many who voted Remain were and are good, patriotic people who did so because they believed it to be in the best interests of their country. I have no quarrel with them, but those who, like Emma Thompson, seem to loathe their own country, do that country great damage.

Recently, looking back at the Seven Sisters as I trudged up to Beachy Head from Birling Gap, I felt fortunate to have been born on Emma Thompson's cake-filled island. Were I a less inept photographer, I should have captured the sight of a Spitfire overhead, flying from the Eastbourne Air Show. It was a reminder that an earlier generation fought and died for this island, and, in doing so, also helped win freedom for people across Europe.

Now, with Brexit on the way, I believe that the United Kingdom has a glorious opportunity to be a world-leading bastion of free trade, free speech and free enterprise. I shall use this blog to chart its progress and to counter the naysayers who long to see Brexit - and Britain - fail.

We now have a Prime Minister who has gone on record as saying that she would be prepared to die for the cause of freedom. With leadership like that, and with the world eager to trade with us, the future for this big, beautiful, cake-filled, joy-laden, green old island has never been brighter.