Recently, a 'member of the public' has asked Essex County Council to explain why there are swastikas carved into the stonework on County Hall at Chelmsford, and describing them as "potentially offensive". Apparently, the potentially offensive Hakenkreutze were carved prior to the outbreak of WW2 in 1939, but quite why is not yet clear.
What is almost certain is that this is probably the first time that anyone's complained - and probably the first time anyone's noticed. It seems odd, too, that the complainant seems to require anonymity - almost as if he or she is expecting to be branded petty and nanny-ish. So - is it a storm in a tea-cup, caused by one of these serial moaners (you know, the type that deluges the local newspaper editor with letters that begin "Dear Sir, I note with concern............) - or is it time that these symbols were erased lest the public take offense? And if it is, then why has it not been mentioned before?
I very much suspect that the vast majority of people either (i) haven't noticed them, or (ii) couldn't care less anyway. There exists the possibility that both are true. My own view - and it is only a personal opinion, and therefore not necessarily right - is that it is the perpetrators of evil who used the swastika as a symbol that are offensive, and, as time passes, people ponder less and less on such matters. In any case, the Nazis did not invent the crooked cross, they simply borrowed it like they borrowed everything else - a sure sign of a cult that has no past, and not a lot of future, either. The Nazis and their borrowed history apart, the swastika has always been a symbol of peace, and, more especially, hope -a 'new awakening'. Of course, if you were one of those tragic people who ended up in a concentration camp, you are unlikely share this opinion or view the swastika with anything other than dread. I understand and respect that, but I also note that no such people appear to have complained to the council.
Here in Colchester, we have a council estate started in 1939, which was completed after the end of the war in Europe. The names of its roads commemorate that war, with Mulberry Way, Roosevelt Way etc. Quite astonishingly, it also boasts a Stalin Road! It's true, look it up, a road named after one of the biggest butchers in history - a man who murdered and tortured his fellow countryman - and anyone else who was handy - on a biblical scale. A man who was every bit as ruthless as Hitler and his thugs, and a man whose hands were drenched in the blood of the victims of his pogroms and purges. Have Essex County Council been asked to explain why it named a road after good 'ole 'Uncle Joe'? I don't think so, but now, of course, it's just a matter of time.
The thought occurs that a phobia for swastikas is not a healthy thing, for a phobia is, after all, a fear, and the scum that hid behind these crosses do not deserve fear. Better, I think, to do what everyone has obviously done for the past seventy-five years, which is ignore them.
Besides, if they're going to spend money on chiselling them all off, I'd rather they filled in some potholes.
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