What a crazy few weeks it has been on the the television, with programmes featuring all the glory of war, the holocaust, Churchill and the Magna Carta.

As interesting as they are, I often find that these programmes about modern history seem to have a somewhat elitist bias to them, possibly because the majority of the arts and media industry is dominated by the offspring of the ruling classes.

Churchill for instance, has been documented as being and inspirational orator and war time leader on more occasions than I can count on my fingers and toes in the last week, but sceptics who have researched pubic feeling during and after his speeches, have discovered that amongst the alleged euphoria, there was often a feeling of apathy and indifference from many members of a battered and war weary nation.

Many observers thought Churchill was drunk and incoherent during his ‘Finest Hour’ speech and those who  claim to have heard his ‘Fight them on the Beaches’ speech live on the radio are in a state of deluded nostalgia, as it was not broadcast live. The speech was given in the House of Commons and recorded at a later date, one can only imagine, for purposes of posterity?

Churchill’s universal popularity is something of a myth and after trailing Labour during war time opinion polls, he was unceremoniously drummed out of power and into deep depression on the back of a Labour landslide victory as the common man voted for the most dramatic social welfare reforms in political history that included free healthcare (The NHS) available to every man woman and child, from cradle to grave.

Churchill had dragged his heels over social reforms recommended in the 1942 Beveridge Report and after declaring defeat over the Nazi’s he confidently called a general election after Labour (who were part of his three party wartime coalition government with the Liberals) demanded that it was time the people should decide on the continuation until victory, of the war in Japan.

Churchill was, despite what we are often led to believe, prone to to misjudgement, and by thinking that as a powerful wartime orator he would be an unbeatable Prime Minister, he made what was perhaps his most spectacular and indeed, humiliating error, since the Gallipoli fiasco in WWI.

Amongst all the glorification of Churchill, we hear little of his spectacular military disasters such as the one in Gallipoli in WWI which was a biblical catastrophe where 46,000 allied soldiers perished in nine months of utter chaos before an humiliating evacuation. Never, in history, have so many, given so much…for absolutely nothing.

Gallipoli: Churchill’s tactical disaster where the sea turned crimson

In fairness to Churchill, he was not the first, or the last war general to oversee such a cataclysmic strategy, but as well as his tendency for misjudgement, I am often intrigued by the lack of any mention in the history books with regards to his blue blood links to the aristocracy who, in the 1930’s, were riddled with links and financial support to the German Nazis and the British Union of Fascists (the Blackshirts).

These are not conspiracy theories by the way, they are historical fact. Prince Phillip and King Edward both had strong family links with the Nazi’s and Oswald Moseley’s Blackshirts were backed by Lord Rothermere and his newspaper, The Daily Mail, who ran a chilling “Hurrah For the Blackshirts” campaign that ended in a bloody battle in Cable Street, East London.

Lord Rothermere’s Daily Mail loved a good old dose of  Fascism

Churchill, it is without question, had some great moments of leadership, all world leaders have their finest hour at some point or another. However, I do believe that it should also be remembered that he had some catastrophic ones too and many military observers describe his tactical prowess in war, as being at best, pretty average.

You certainly wouldn’t have backed him in a game of chess with Field Marshall Erich Von Manstein.

As well as the 50th anniversary of Churchill’s death, it is also the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II when victory celebrations became increasingly subdued as a stunned world finally saw what they had long feared after Jews in Europe had seemingly just disappeared off the streets…it was a holocaust of biblical proportions.

Oh and it wasn’t just Jews by the way…Gypsies, homosexuals, disabled, prostitutes, the work shy, the list is endless unless you were six foot tall with big blue eyes and had a mop of blonde hair. My blue eyes probably wouldn’t have been enough to disguise a frame that nudges five foot eight with a fair wind and an extra pair of socks, so I would have probably gone too.

What amazes is me is that on social media people are expressing their utter shock after witnessing the stories of the holocaust from the few remaining Jewish survivors. What have these people been doing over the last seventy years…did they really not know about the holocaust until now? Surely The Only Way is Essex hasn’t been on TV to distract them for that long has it?

A friend of mine said he felt that these Auschwitz documentaries had an element of ‘Pogrom Porn’ about them. What he meant was that he felt that people have been watching them purely to get a thrill out of witnessing individuals who have had such awful lives compared to their own.

I see his point but I was almost too scared to say it trough fear of appearing anti-Semitic which I am certainly not. However, I do wonder if people watch these documentaries because it makes a pleasant change from staring in envy at the huge mansions and crass lifestyles of footballers and pop stars on dreadful TV shows or in trash magazines like OK and Hello.

If there is one thing that learning about the holocaust taught me, it is that when a race or a religion (it really doesn’t really matter which one) is persecuted, it will, over a period of time, galvanise itself and become the persecutor through a paranoid and almost hereditary fear of being attacked again; it happens wherever you look.

The form of Apartheid that Israel operates in Palestine is a classic case in point and it is my genuine hope that seeing the hideous reminders of the holocaust will make at least some of the more hawkish world leaders try every avenue of jaw, jaw, rather than a war, war slaughter that forever makes a mockery of the statement  “1914 – 1919- A War to end all Wars.”

How the cycle of hate is broken is a question that pitifully, remains unanswered, though it is pretty obvious that eye for an eye combat is a pretty hopeless strategy if peace is the ultimate goal.

David Starkey’s Magna Carta was probably the best documentary I have watched recently, I guess because it was a subject I knew so little about. In fact, such was my ignorance, in my youth I thought Magna Carta was Michael Caine gangster movie from the 1960’s.

It really isn’t worth me attempting to write too much about the Magna Carta as I have only just emerged from Magna Carta ignorant to Magna Carta novice. However, I do know that the principle of this agreement is as relevant today as it was when it was first produced.

The Magna Carta was, at least how I have read it,  the first tentative step to liberty, freedom of speech and democracy during the era of King John, who, as warlord, was almost as spectacularly unsuccessful in France as Churchill was in Gallipoli.

Over the centuries, the Magna Carta became the blueprint for democratic rights and was a huge part of the American independence agenda. It is still widely quoted in congress to this day, despite the wholesale abuse of its core principles in recent years, the Guantanamo Bay tortures being a classic example.

What the Magna Carta was supposed to achieve was equality, whilst stripping the power of the King or Queen to administer the law depending on what side of bed they had got out of on a particular day. It was a vital document that ultimately led to the house of commons and representatives (MP’s) elected by the masses.

However, what has remained in Britain,  like it has in no other democracy, is the popular ideology that the masses should remain subservient to the aristocracy. To this day, we are ordered to bow before royalty, watch and throw flowers at hearses outside state funded funerals, and hang out the bunting to support huge and expensive weddings in times of alleged austerity.

If I had to bow to anyone, it would be like pouring paint stripper all over my dignity but as a nation we seem to lap it up and I don’t really understand why? The Royal Family are okay for a bit of pomp and ceremony I suppose, but that apart, I really don’t get their relevance or the adulation they receive from families frantically trying to survive on the minimum wage?

Perhaps it is because the key principles of the Magna Carta are widely abused in the UK and the aristocracy still have control of governments, media and the arts. Perhaps that is why the likes of Churchill (a blue blood born in Blenheim Palace) is portrayed as a great hero of our time whilst his spectacular military disasters are largely swept under a convenient Union Jack rug.

it would seem to me that his failings are largely ignored because he was a member of the aristocracy and the aristocracy still believe that whilst they can no longer lop off someone’s head for the sheer fun of it, they should still be beyond any criticism or law. It’s pretty much fair to say that they get away with it, so why wouldn’t they carry on as they do?

The media in my opinion, in general, has a bias towards the aristocracy and a childish dislike for anyone who dares put their head up the parapet and seek alternative ideologies. Socialism is a poisonous word, yet 90% of the population who do not have a fraction of the wealth of the aristocracy, have benefited from the social reforms implemented by Nye Bevan after the Second World War. So surely, he is a peoples champion?

Personally, I have no particular axe to grind with the aristocracy, they are only taking what they can get away with, but you will never find me bowing in their presence, throwing up the bunting when they get married or weeping and chucking roses at a hearse when one of them croaks it.

That’s because I have far better things to do with my life and besides, I can’t imagine Kate and William stood on the edge of the A30 chucking roses at my hearse as I approach Basingstoke Crematorium, let alone turning up for the piss up afterwards, so why should I get immersed in national mourning for one them as Elton John alters his ‘Candle in the Wind’ lyrics for everyone to cry at?

As far as funerals go, I find really bizarre that a man (Churchill) who oversaw the death of 46,000 young soldiers managed to get a State Funeral, whilst another, who instigated social reforms that instantly reduced infant mortality and increased life expectancy amongst the masses, is largely forgotten.

There is one thing that Britain is Great at, and is the convenient re-writing of history to make the aristocrats look like our saviours and masters.

And do you know what…it’s a load of old bollocks.