Bognor Regis Herald: Refugees and Asylum Seekers, their sons, a personal view

by Jan Cosgrove

me, aged around 2

Negative aspects of immigration tend to dominate the News and the thinking of politicians fearful of losing support from communities where there is a perceived problem. Yet in many communities where there are relatively few migrants there can be as great if not greater prejudice.

But immigration and refugee issues also get confused and mixed up. Many say they are sympathetic to the plight of the refugee, and at one time the British told the world of our tolerance. Yes, refugees coming here are migrants, often from appalling conditions, wars, famine etc. We can judge for ourselves whether we still deserve such a reputation and many will point to the disgraceful failure of the UK over unaccompanied child migrants suggestive that our government fears backlash back from some parts of the public.

Yet when we look at history, many of us have refugee ancestors, people who fled from persecution from Europe and elsewhere, and the claim of anyone to be pure English etc is likely to wilt in most cases under scrutiny — go back and at some point most of us will find a refugee in our bloodline.

Huguenot Croix

St Bartholemew Massacre

Indeed the term ‘refugee’ is not English in origin, it is French derivation from refuji, one seeking refuge, and first used in the late 16th Century with regard to an influx of people fleeing religious persecution in France, a crisis which saw many protestant huguenots murdered in ethnic cleansing, over 400000 estimated to have fled to Germany, Holland and England. Later some of these went onto America Australia etc. France suffered badly as these were often from the middle classes, educated and prosperous. Their loss our gain as so often re migration. Think of the traditional English corner shop, I well recall such from my 1950s childhood. Now a byword for Asian family enterprise, many initially taken on by East African Asians who fled Ugandan persecution (now it’s gays) under the notorious butcher, Idi Amin.

!

Tintagel Castle, Cornwall

My Mother, Doris May Dangar 

For me there are refugees and asylum seekers on both sides of the family. On my mother’s side, go back to Cornwall in the 1570s and the parish register at Tintagel records one John Dangar marrying a local maid. The name which my mother bore, is a Huguenot name, those who fled France from Catholic persecution and murder. Dangar is D’angar so far as I can tell. Other derived names from this are Dangerfield and Angiers.

Dangars emigrated to Australia, this from 1891. There is indeed a Dangar Island

So within 5 years, this lad is marrying local, having found his way to Cornwall to that essential British place, the birthplace of Arthur, you can’t get more Brit (not English you german usurpers who settled e.g. in Sussex (South Saxons, immigrants the lot of you). 

[Interesting fact, so far as I am aware, the Huguenots have a chapel in Canterbury Cathedral, uniquely in the Anglican Church). The Dangars go onto integrate completely into the local scene as farmers etc.

        

Ernie Cosgrove, I took this aged 9 Isle of Wight

Now on my paternal side, an issue. Ernest Thomas Auckland Cosgrove, whose surname I proudly bear, Anglo-Irish family, ran away to sea and somewhat of the black sheep, married my mum in 1947 on return from serving in Burma in the Royal Sussex, odd in a way I ended up here given that. His story in Burma, not one he or many of his comrades wanted to retell, especially to their sons, because of the sheer horror they saw. I pestered him until he told me a story, I never asked again. The cost to his health, bouts of malaria in my childhood, I saw its effects as he lay in bed shaking.

But he was not my biological father, that fact belongs with Bruno Marek Nadolczak, born in Poland, served in its military pre-war, spent, so far as one can tell, 2 years in Germany 1937, spying. “You know Janek, I came close enough to Hitler to kill him 3 times” but presumably not under orders to do so. Took part in defence of Warsaw, 1939, captured by Gestapo, fled to France and then to England in 1940 and was sent to Canada to help train Polish and others in parachute skills. Became one of the 360 or so agents known as the cichociemni (roughly ‘silent dark’) and parachuted on a mission in autumn 1944 into Poland re uprising against Nazis and, if I am correct, the Soviets also). Escaped from latter’s NKVD (became the KGB) to England. I ‘came about’ in Brindisi where he and my mother both were (she in a support unit in the FANY with Sue Ryder). He is still in Poland at the end of the War in Europe.

Polish cichociemni with FANY staff 1944

Colonel Bruno Nadolczak

emblem of cichociemni

He meets a Polish lady, Aldona, before he leaves and there we have a classic triangle. Aldona’s is another story, Polish underground or one of them, Warsaw Uprising 1944. Another story …. She and Bruno match up and emigrate to the US and I don’t find him until I am over 60 and he in his 90s. I knew from age 11, never told Ernie I knew, why would I. Hence 2 dads …. Two mums too ….. Such is life.

An asylum seeker like John (Jean) Dangar. Both sides of the family one in quite recent times. Why the move to the States? Well Bruno could not return to Poland, well not if he intended to live, and yes, Aldona told me, the racism of some English folk was enough to persuade them to emigrate and to become US citizens. Maybe I missed those lost decades for reasons not unlike those which caused some voters round here to vote Brexit. I say that having read their real reasons for supporting it.

Medals including Virtuti Militari

What now happens re EU people here? And UK residents in e.g Spain and France? Your guess, Pandora, is as good as mine, and you would insist on opening that bloody box without knowing what was in it.

Interestingly, the claim in one of today’s article also in this edition, that migration brings lower crime may be borne out by the stats I have collected over some months re convictions imposed in local magistrates courts. Of a total of some 195 in the local area I counted 17 from EU East European countries, which I suspect is a lower proportion than their numbers in the community and some local sentiment suggest. Many of us, thus, have something of which we can be proud in our refugee ancestry, people who fled terrible oppression, poverty, disaster, ill-fortune, starvation, even simple old fashioned poverty, they came, stayed even if not accepted, had children whose descendents are England, we who made and MAKE it what it is.

If Brexit is people forgetting their roots, it is a betrayal of those who came before that, and the truth is still the truth even if some want to deny it in a vain hope that “things will go back like they used to be”, the refuge(?) of those unwilling to accept the changes that, let’s face it, made England what it is. No, not happy to accept that? Well ….. Go home Saxons!

Footnote: People in Tintagel will tell you that King Arthur was no myth but existed. Well you explain King Arthur’s Pub and car park then …. Seriously, no one seemed to be able to trace the man. Yes, a legend he was born in Tintagel Castle (image above) but NOT that one which is ruined but is Norman from the 11th Century. Very craggy and right romantic.

In the 1920s there was an archeological dig in the grounds in what were regarded for decades as a 6th century celtic monastery. Not so long back, the University of Strathclyde department of archeology revisited the dig and reinterpreted as a substantial celtic hill fort 6th century (Castle, OK?) with evidence of substantial trade with Spain (Europe, lol). And a most inconvenient shard of pottery which is inscribed with “this place was built by Arthog, son of the High Prince”. Arthog, yes, = Arthur. But not HIM. Nah say the professors, well notnecessarily …. Guess what the locals say …. told you all along, and that’s his Car Park.

The Arthog fragment

EXCLUSIVE - Sir Richard Hotham Regeneration Scheme appeal submitted to Planning Inspector

The Herald understands that an appeal against Arun's refusal to grant planning permission for its ambitious £80 million Regeneration scheme has now been submitted by the Sir Richard Hotham organisation to the Planning Inspectorate.

In rejecting the scheme some weeks back, the second version to be so rejected, Arun's Development Control Committee DCC rejected a comprehensive report by its own planning officer recommending approval, and relied instead on a report from a consultant which criticised architectural aspects despite the scheme architect being the same one whose nearby Esplanade Grande scheme collected major design awards, and using the same successful 'Edwardian-style' theme for the Regeneration proposals.

We have been advised by a contact in the planning area that rejection of recommendations by DCC's is fraught with risks and thus unusual.  She feels the reasons put by the Committee to justify rejection may get short shrift because design quality is, at best, an area for personal preference as opposed to sound planning criteria.   She opines that, though she has not seen the appeal, which we understand is very comprehensive and detailed, she would expect the appeal to have a very high chance of succeeding.   In that case, Arun, she says,  could face a very serious challenge if it then refuses to deal with Sir Richard Hotham as landowner.

"This is not a private owner, it is a public authority with very clear responsibilities to consider Best Value in such matters.  Its own scheme might well then have to be compared in those terms against the SRH proposition which, after all, comes with £80 million of funding which its own scheme entirely lacks,   For example, instead of the £26 million we are told SRH will invest in their 1100 seat theatre, Arun has admitted it does not known how the future development of the 350 seat Alexandra Theatre can be funded, a major issue indeed for a cash-strapped council."

We contacted a spokesperson for SRH who said they are not in a position to make a statement except they had also sent copy to Arun.   We also contacted Arun's Chief Executive, Nigel Lynn, but at this time we have not had a response.

It is not known when the appeal will be considered but probably in the early autumn.

Arun announces Regeneration Conference

In the meantime Arun has announced a Conference to be held on 22 September at the Butlins Conference Centre in Bognor entitled.

Turning the Tide   -   A bright future for Bognor Regis

"We would like to invite you to come and find out why Bognor Regis is THE place to live, visit and invest in the South East. With over £280 million invested in the town in the last few years, around £290 million currently being delivered and £970 million more planned plus 5,500 new homes, the party’s already started, but there’s still time to join the fun. Come and hear why Rolls-Royce Motor Cars chose to invest in Bognor Regis, how Butlin’s has transformed the resort’s visitor profile to ABC1s, how the University of Chichester is doubling student numbers in Bognor Regis and why design-guru Wayne Hemingway is working on four major projects in the town"     

An email address link does not work however.

Don' t ask me to tell you what I was doing at GCHQ .....shhh!

The author is retired, lives on the South Coast, and has worked mainly in the charity and voluntary sector apart from brief early spells in local government.   He is national secretary of a UK children's rights organisation and is a serving town councillor in his locality.   But his first job was a very different matter ....

Leaving Sixth Form having failed A-levels one was in a dilemna.   You see, transferring from a secondary modern co-ed at 16 with 8 O-levels, going to Cheltenham Boys Grammar single-sex was a shock.  And one also had discovered the usual things that kids then and now discover.....

The existence of GCHQ (The Government Communications HQ) also in Cheltenham was not really known to me, its work was not discussed locally, but after applying I found myself interviewed, and after 'positive vetting'  (parents' backgrounds, me checked on back as far as school in coastal Essex at age 9 ...) I was working there at Oakley Park,the name for the GCHQ establishment.   I suppose they took on board that Mum had worked in  WWII in FANY, The Field Auxilliary Nursing Yeomanry, and where she met my Dad, Bruno Nadolczak, who was part of the Polish chicociemni and who parachuted into Poland flying from Brindisi where I 'happened'.
Cichociemi, from Wikipaedia


In those days, GCHQ still had its policy of recruiting the odd-ball, those who viewed life from the odd angles, the other end of the telescope, a hangover from the war years, then it got much more academic success.  Now it seems they may be reverting to the old ways, so I suspect my grandson, Daniel, may be right up their street if he develops as he is.

First, security briefing, you never talk to anyone about your work, not even others in GCHQ, unless it's an authorised part of your work.   This was great, it made for lack of bores talking about work outside and also terrific parties.  My mate, the redoubtable Reg, had this great basement flat in the town centre.   I had the best collection of singles and always got invited.

If asked, we had to say we did communications research, any further probing was"It's very technical" and then, it was report it.   BTW, there is a myth you sign the Official Secrets Act.   Only Her Majesty signs Acts of Parliament.  What you do is a statement saying you know it is an offence  to disclose matters rated under the Act to unauthorised persons.  My security clearance was Q, above Top Secret, rarely Eyes Only.   My wife and sons do not know what I actually did, it stays that way, Matt the eldest says "admit it Dad you were a spook" but, hey,  I was a civil service clerk, honest.

To get into GCHQ, one had to pass through the security block and wave a photo pass at them.   This was the subject of legend, the idea that the pass was a religious icon, because anyone who saw it who knew one grabbed it and said "Jesus Christ is that you?"

So, GCHQ was split into various Divisions, mine was H, based at the very top of the hill and in what seemed to be a former hospital type structure with a central corridor and small rooms branching from this etc.   This division

was headed by the legendary Hugh Alexander, chess doyen and on of that brilliant group who worked at Bletchley Park cracking the top German codes, especially Enigma and also the next generation of  machines such as the Lorenz SZ42 which the Germans swore were uncrackable.   I saw an Enigma machine on a visit to Bletchley  which is now the museum for this subject.

 Also,another BP luminary, mathematician Shaun Wiley, who I saw reasonably frequently :he'd pop into my office "Jan, thank God you're here, the only sane person in the whole place".  

So it was all very spooky?  Well, actually, er no. Not from where I was sitting.  Oh yes, I knew what I was taking part in was, and is to this day, essential in the world in which we live.  Now more in the public eye - when I worked there, its substantial funding was not revealed, it was hidden.   

There were moments but part of it was hours of scanning paper tapes for whatever, unwinding them manually and then rewinding manually, so tedious.   There was the Great Paper Tape Eater, a device for rapid rewind which either tore the tape into shreds or indeed spewed it everywhere. Developed by our Tech Wizards the other side of town at Benhall. I was lazy and thought, this sucks and so one day, as I had now a spare record deck with 4 speeds 16-33-45-78, I brought it into work to test my idea.  Yes, unwind at 16, scan at leisure, rewind 45/78, no shredding no spewing.    So Shaun sees this one day and, hey presto, later that day, Hugh Alexander and others pop in to view.  I felt such a fool, but there were appreciative murmurs.....

Remembering spewing paperwork, as a break of one month, my section boss, a truly lovely man, Leo Ferguson, engaged me on a task 25 years old, and this was the raw material to justify our getting our mitts on the new IBM 360s GCHQ had purchased, oh and did the IT boys guard them from mere louts in H Division, or anyone. 

Well we had to write a routine and that was where I was taught about Fortran IV, and we wrote the routine and sent it to F Block to be run.  A few days later Leo gets an agonised call and says simply that I needed to pop over to discover a small problem.  And it was small, a mistake in a nesting sub-routine, in the print stage.  So?  Look at what has happened .....  I did, lots and lots and lots of paper all over the print room floor.  Oh says I, what happened there?  I was told the program had run absolutely fine but for one teenzy problem.  It had printed one letter a page.... a failure in a nesting sub-routine would one believe.  Aaah, said I and retreated hastily, profusely apologising.   In the end, it came out, we solved the mystery, the information was .... useless but I know now where the sun rises and if asked could devise a nifty Playfair Square, with knobs on.    Some time later I took tests to enter a programming job with the Civil Service, and was told, having learned to program at GCHQ, that I was not 'suitable'.   Oo-er.

There was fun, there had to be. Usual romances, birthday cakes and lunchtime celebrations of such.   We had one lad, Roger, had an army fixation, and he got steaming in the birthday lunchtime rounds, and we had to get him past security to get back into GChQ, and I devised the idea that he was part of a mission in civvies and we had to get past the enemy gates.  Yes he was that steamed.   So between 2 of us ensuring he stood upright we frog-marched him, quickly, hup-one-two-three... "pass display!  Pass lower" and bundled him into an empty office to sleep it off.  The same lad at one of Reg's parties climbed out of the bathroom window in y-fronts at 3 am on a testicle-freezing morning, again as soldier, and I had to run after him and grapple him to retrieve him.   

Ah such times, only spoilt by a resident in the block, four storeys up who couldn't hear anything, I stood outside Reg's window and his door, but clearly he didn't like "goings on" so at 3am went round waking neighbours who told him to bog off, as one said, so I am getting on with an assignation, I am called to the front door by Reg,the man is there and has the cheek to drop dead right then and there.  Put a right dampener I can tell you.

Even working there, one was not aware fully of what had been achieved between 1939 and 45 by our cryptanalysts (code-breakers, cryptographers make them) but even though there was  an ordered huge destruction by Churchill of a lot of what  was done after the war, it was clear, to me at least, that without that work, we would not have been on the winning side.   The official line is still that this work helped shorten the war by a few years.   The Enigma traffic was read to a high level, depending on the service being looked at.   Sometimes 60%, but there were up and down periods, even complete loss.   I am not going to rehearse here what has been better described elsewhere.

But to penetrate to that level meant it was close to mind-reading.   The story about the breaking of the next generation Lorenz SZ42, using Colossus, the first programmable electronic computer,is again told elsewhere.   What I can say is a) I saw a later version of C in F block, valves of a size you wouldn't believe and b) in my view that work set the stage for so much more post-war this field.   Funnily enough, a version of one of the German machines turned up on e-bay:
Secret German WW2 code machine found on eBay

and the rather incredible story of  how it was done:
From encrypt to decrypt - the full Lorenz story

That there just 200 of these as opposed to many hundreds of Enigma is an indication as to the level of secrecy Hitler entrusted to their use.  If Enigma was middle-to-high command, the SZ42 was The Mind of Hitler and his immediate cronies.   When you have that degree of penetration to the enemy's highest level, you do everything you can to protect that knowledge.   I don't have or ever expected to have any examples but if it meant sacrificing a thousand troops or a town  ...I am sure that was done. and had to be done.   Even a people ......?
Enigma was used by the Germans in controlling the railways of Europe under their control and occupation. So when train loads filled with Jews and others transported them to concentration and extermination camps, did the code-breakers at Bletchley discover this?   If so, would that have been something that, even now, a UK government would want revealed?   If we had done so then it would soon have made the Germans realise they had been compromised.   So much would have been lost.   Relations with Israel are never easy, so imagine post-war the devastating effect of such news.

The development of Colossus is credited to Post Office engineer Tommy Flowers, but he was always ready to acknowledge the theoretical basis laid down by mathematician Alan Turing whose work at GCHQ played the most crucial role in the breaking of both Enigma and Lorentz, not least in the ground-breaking theoretical work he published pre-war on computing machines.   If Colossus was and is anyone's baby, it was his.   Turing, truly a genius, and the fact that we read those machines encoded outputs and what that meant for the war's outcome would have been enough to secure his honour and fame for ever, but when we look at our modern world,  then we see just how extraordinary was that contribution.  

The laptop recording this piece and its transmission via the internet that is a great grandchild of Colossus,   I am  reminded that, when Isaac Asimov wrote his famous Foundation scifi novels in the 50s etc, he envisaged a period when the Galactic Empire had existed for 30,000 years and its original home The Earth was merely a legend.   So the latest What Galaxy? science/tech novelty was the minisec a natty hand held device able to do .... what your i-pad etc can do now .....    
Colossus: Breaking the German ‘Tunny’ Code at Bletchley Park. An Illustrated History

So Turing the hero?   Well, we know the disgraceful truth, arrested in the early 50s re homosexual offences, ordered to be treated with hormones to reduce his sex drive, committed suicide.   The law, not applying to female same-sex activities, based on gutter-press incitement of public dislike of such people, condemned another genius, Oscar Wilde, and hastened his premature death.   Our forbears ensured through their prejudice that the UK lost one of its most brilliant sons.   An odd-ball. 

GCHQ recruited them, I recall the peculiar young man who was apt to walk down the hill at Oakley Park in the traffic stream making car noises, I used to rescue mould-infested cups from his room, and he eventually set himself on fire.   Hugh Alexander used to fly his old iron-frame bike down the hill, no brakes and zoom into the rush traffic of the main road at the bottom.  Or Bud, a tanned, wiry Yank from NSA whose old Ford Popular was his pride and joy, one day the driver-side door fell off, he got out, gave a considered look: "Guess m'door's fallen off Jan" got in and drove off.   You can't forget Bud.

But it was not just Turing or Wilde, it was ordinary folk, and one of them was Ray, surname forgotten, who was, well let's say it camp, as camp as Baden Powell's Biggest Jamboree, as I always say.   He worked in H Division, not sure what he did, we didn't ask.   After he had not been seen for a few days at work and was not on leave,   Where is he?  In Yorkshire, in the Ministry of Transport. Wasn't due to move?   Er, caught cottaging (a new term to me then) in the male toilets in a local park.   No prosecution (oh aye),just moved.   Like to the British Gulag (Yorkshire?)  Having a consensual relationship then was legal, doing things in public, not so.

It;s ironic that Ray was considered a security risk because of a nasty-minded, venal law that criminalised him for being who he was not for a real crime.   It was the law, not his being camp-gay, that made him a security risk.   I wonder what happened to him, he was wry and had a sharp, acidic humour, and pouted. Not a charade, it was him.   I won't hazard how and why, we just accepted him and guessed his 'interests' at which oblique references he would simply shrug his shoulders and give us all that look.

Being gay when it was still a crime
and
Gay men convicted of abolished sexual offences to be pardoned

So, now Turing is pardoned.   Good ho we say, and all those other gays.   Well, not all, see:
MP close to tears as Justice Minister's speech thwarts gay pardons bill to cries of 'shame'

A Royal Pardon for Turing, and on his reputation and fame, for many other gays  who also were convicted, on his posthumous coat-tails.   But, wait a moment.  A Pardon relates to  a crime you have committed.   Given that such activities for which they all we convicted are no longer criminal acts (bar with underage or vulnerable persons),  I have to ask, should these things ever have been criminalised, and if the answer is 'No', then the State, acting for all of us, in our name, wrongly enacted such law.   Qui custodit ....   Who pardons the pardoners?   If it is not a crime now, and as nothing in science etc has shown any sound reason for the passing of the original law, we ought, surely, for the sake of honesty and decency, to say that they never committed the crime, that our supreme national body, Parliament, was in error and acted unjustly, in a spirit of ignorance.   It is not as if the point was not made at that time indeed.

What is the course open to this nation and its elected representative body?   Exoneration,  which means saying that the laws were a mistake.   That we as a nation can recognise that and make amends.  Turing surely deserves that, but Ray does as well.

GCHQ apologises for treatment of gay employees

There is one further step.  Given what he and his band of ten thousand did, and what his work is meaning for mankind and will into the future, I'd nominate this shy, introverted genius for a statue somewhere very prominent indeed, built and maintained at public expense.  Maybe in Parliament Square. After all, that work almost certainly saved the Mother of Parliaments and its electors from ruthless tyranny and subjugation.

Exoneration of persons convicted of gross indecency and related “homosexual offences”

What happened to my GCHQ career?   I took the internal Civil Service examinations for the Executive Officer grade, and came third in the country and fifth after the A-level candidates had been taken into account.  Promotion, in GCHQ?   No.  No places available.  Go where you're sent or lose promotion.   London, MOSS, Ministry of Social Security, Shoreditch Area Office, Hoxton was my patch.  Arse of a manager.  Gee thanks.   The poorest part of London.  Thanks a bunch, but that too opened my eyes, how people had to live.   Still one of the country's poorest areas,  39 years on.   

People in 1939-45 fought not only against tyranny but for a better future.   It was over 20 years by then and it wasn't happening for the poorest, nor is it now.

GCHQ, not without controversy ......
GCHQ: the Uncensored Story of Britain's Most Secret Intelligence Agency

GCHQ as it is now

GCHQ's technical site at Benhall as it was

Article:   INSIDE GCHQ: Welcome to Cheltenham's cottage industry

Apologies, can't find any pics of GCHQ Oakley Park in the 1960s.