I have been reading today in the newspaper about the prison ships where people accused of terrorism are kept by the Americans for years, sometimes, without trial, and in reportedly horrific conditions. When I was a child, the thing I always heard people say about Nazi Germany was: But the Germans should have done something about Hitler! There are a lot of issues here about how easy it is to protest in a dictatorship when you know that people can get taken away, simply for expressing their opinion, and never come back. But that's not what concerns me here. I'm worried about what's happening in our society, now.
It does seem that if you are Asian, especially Muslim, however law-abiding you might be, you're more at risk of being stopped and searched, also more at risk of having the police break into your house in the middle of the night and take you away on suspicion, and at risk of being interned in a British prison for rather a long time, without trial or being informed of the accusations against you, and, if you're not a British citizen, being deported even if you haven't been charged with anything in the end. This is what our government, without being a totalitarian one, is doing now.
In addition, when a Labour politician was dragged out of the Party conference simply for saying 'rubbish' aloud once during a minister's speech, and was then interrogated under the Prevention of Terrorism Act, when it becomes a crime to wear T-shirts criticising Tony Blair within a mile of the House of Commons, and when people can be punished for the dreadful action of hanging a protest banner over a motorway bridge - not causing any hazard to traffic - it does seem to me that laws intended to protect our way of life began wrecking it - because what harm did any of those actions do?

It's so easy not to stick one's neck out, also to 'get on with our lives' because the people who are suffering are a different colour or religion - and that, of course, is exactly what happened with a lot of people in Nazi Germany - they preferred to look the other way, especially when it was dangerous to open one's mouth. But I keep thinking about what Martin Niemoeller said about the Third Reich: First they came for the Communists, and I was not a Communist, so I said nothing, then they came for the Jews, and I was not a Jew, so I said nothing, and then they came for me, and there was no-one left to speak for me.'

Labels: Second June

At the moment, where I'm at is sitting in my study at the computer, having finally got my blog sorted out. I started it three years ago, then I fell seriously ill - I'm better now, thank goodness - and then I became a grandmother and there was still writing to do - and so I forgot about the blog altogether. So here I am, in spring, a new start - and outside the garden is lovely, though it'd be lovelier if the sun came out. My dog is in her basket, wondering if I'm about to go to the kitchen and prepare food, when she hangs about and picks up any bits that fall. She's an orange roan cocker spaniel, a lovely animal.

I always have dogs in my books, it seems, somehow the characters just have to have a dog. So, in my next young adult novel - watch this space for a publication date - it's a mop-like animal called Muffi, a Hungarian Puli cross, full of character. The book is called Saving Rafael and it's about a lad and a girl who are childhood sweethearts, Jenny and Rafael. The only trouble is, it's Nazi Germany and he's Jewish and she's not. They live next door to each other and the families are best friends, like family to each other. But the Jewish family, the Jakobys, are forced out of their apartment and the antiquarian bookshop they run downstairs, and the father is taken to concentration camp and though he's released he's so badly treated he dies, and then only the mother and Rafael are left, doing forced labour in early wartime Berlin. Till Goebbels, the governor of Berlin, decides to give Hitler a Jew-free capital for a birthday present. But Rafael manages to escape when the SS come to the gasworks where he's labouring, and comes to Jenny and her mother for help.
The novel starts with Jenny in youth concentration camp. I got that opening from an exercise I set some adult writing students. I told them to imagine they were in prison, and think what might have got them there. In fact, I think only one of them chose that option, but I thought: H'mm, that would be interesting.
The rest is the novel.

I'm now thinking about another young adult fiction book set in Berlin, but it's too early in the process to talk about that. It's cooking while I do a bit of writing for adults, a novel which is going to take me a very long time to complete - but again I don't want to go public about that one, yet. There's an important role for secrecy at the initial stages of a novel, if you talk about it too much it spoils it. But there are some people I can always talk to about my writing, my husband, my two daughters, the dog - she doesn't betray confidences - and some of my writing friends, who Understand.
Enough. I must go and write again.