There are many things that lay forgotten, like herbal teabags you never get around to drinking, as so it is with memories.From one day to the next you never give them a thought and then something triggers them and they come back in full color. And so it was in January 2025 with the election if Donald Trump to a second term that politics got interesting again. Some pundit remarked that for the first time in years the American public had been given a real choice, between left and right. Like many a modern democracy the choice had been between Coke or Pepsi taking turns. Now it was socialism and censorship or capitalism and free speech.
This event coincided with the conviction of the mass murderer Axel Rudakubana, who had stabbed three small girls and killed them in Southport.
The knives were also out for Kier Starmer who had become wildly unpopular for his handling of the whole shooting match. The looney left and the racist right. My memory of the time I saw the left and right in closeup.
Sometime in the 80s, through a friend, I had wangled a trip to Berlin. This would have been few years prior to the fall of The Wall. There was still a smell of Len Dayton in the the air when I landed at Tegel airport. Bomb damage was still evident, and a large military presence loomed. Rudolf Hess was cooling his heels in Spandau prison, which was in a posh bit of Berlin.
To paint a little background to my story I need to explain how things were in Berlin at the time. First to say that the Russians had won the war, with Americans and British Empire joint second and the French taking up the rear, so to speak. Germany was divided into the Bundes Republic in the west and the DDR in the east. Berlin was in the east and was accessible though a road corridor or by air.
The allies shared the territory of Berlin which was split into four zones. American, British, Russian and French. No one could tell me why the French were there. Someone said they threatened to sulk if not and wanted to make it look like they had been in the war.
Berlin at the time was still under marshall law, although the Berlin police were still in business giving out traffic tickets and investigating disturbances among Germans, they had no power over the military , so nome Germans parked where they liked ( with reason) .
It was far easier to visit as a member of the armed forces and so I took King’s Shilling, signed the Official Secrets Act and was given a little ID card. No uniform was offered so I could pretend to be a spy, maybe. I I was allowed into the NAFFI where the food was pretty awful, but the tea was OK, and the bar convivial.
Being driven around West Berlin I was puzzled to see a large black car flying Soviet flags with important looking passengers. It was explained that this was a “flag tour” where the soviets showed their right to drive around West Berlin. This has been part of the Potsdam Treaty I was told.
Come Saturday I joined a tour bus of new arrivals and set off for a look at East Berlin. I remember having to change some Deutschmarks in Ost marks at one for one, which was a swizz as Deutschmarks were worth much more. I got to see the Escapees Museum at checkpoint Charlie, where you good see cars, aircraft and other smuggler stuff. Also stories of those killed trying to escape the soviet paradise.
As I said, it was Saturday and West Berlin was in full shop, shop, shop, and busy. The East was like a tomb. Streets empty, buildings empty, bomb sites, and as West berlin had some post war real estate development, the East look well preserved from the pre war era. On the main drag, nothing. Then in the distance came the sound of an angry wasp which turned out to be a Trabant, a sort of Reliant Robbin, but no so reliable. This was a workers car that you had to wait years for. It came and went, then nothing. The occasional Russian Officer walked by in full uniform with a chest of medals. We spent our marks of a cup of undrinkable coffee and an inedible sausage.
There was a clothes shop, but it only sold gloves ( rabbit skin ). I didn’t check mut I hope they were of mixed left and right? A grubby supermarket had a large line outside, then a coach drew up. They said they were from Poland on a shopping trip. There contrast East and West, was impressive.
I stayed maybe a week or so, then got DE mobbed, and returned home. It would be a few years before the wall was to come down, but we all knew which way the human tide would flow.