The death of Ian Forsyth marks the passing of a man and of an age.
The Hamilton boy went gently last week at the age of 97 and after a life of extraordinary service and love. Forsyth was 21 and a wireless operator when his regiment, the 15th/19th King’s Royal Hussars, reached the gates of Bergen-Belsen on April 15, 1945. What they saw there changed many of the men and Forsyth in particular.
Speaking to the BBC in 2020, he recalled: ‘When we got to the first part of the corrugated iron fence that was around the camp there were bodies everywhere. Somebody who did not see this would not believe what it was like. There were people looking out of the barbed wire fence wondering who we were.’
Forsyth remembered ‘a strange smell about the place’ which no one could identify at first. It was, they came to learn, the stench of the dead and the dying. In all, 50,000 were killed in the Nazi concentration camp and contemporary photographs show bodies piled up around the grounds. When Forsyth arrived there were 60,000 prisoners left alive, though by no means were they living — starved, emaciated, ridden with typhus and tuberculosis. Fourteen thousand of them were so far gone that they would die after liberation.
Bergen-Belsen is where Anne Frank perished and where, five days after the British arrived, the camp’s surviving Jews held a Shabbat service and, standing at the mouth of Hell, sang the Hebrew song Tikvatenu. ‘Od lo avdah tikvatenu’ — ‘Our hope is not yet lost’. Belsen was, Forsyth would later attest, ‘the first time I realised just how low mankind can sink’.
The experience would have driven many a man to cynicism or hatred or a haunted withdrawal. Forsyth, however, would not be a prisoner of despair and used his wartime experience in a civilian life dedicated to others. As well as a career as a school teacher, Forsyth spent many years supporting Polish veterans living in Glasgow, efforts for which he was awarded the Officers Cross of Merit of the Republic of Poland. He was also heavily involved in the Royal British Legion (Scotland), serving on the national executive committee and as president of the Hamilton branch. He was awarded the MBE in 2011.
But his legacy will be his commitment to Holocaust education, doing his part to pass on to the next generation and the one after that the truth about what happened. His testimony had a lasting impact wherever it was heard, including all the way to 10 Downing Street. Forsyth shared his memories with the Prime Minister in a video call in January to mark Holocaust Memorial Day. Boris Johnson called Forsyth’s recollections ‘perhaps the most powerful things I’ve ever heard’. Because of Ian Forsyth, ‘never again’ is all the likelier to mean never again.
As we admire him for turning hatred into love, compassion and service, we cannot help but notice that so many seem to be moving in the opposite direction. Hatred is the strongest currency of our age and one in which a great many are prosperous. Remainers hate Brexiteers, trans rights activists hate JK Rowling and anti-vaxxers hate the 'sheeple' who get jabbed. Millennials hate boomers, boomers hate snowflakes, snowflakes hate gammons, gammons hate wokes, and wokes hate everyone.
It's important to say that, for now, this is still a phenomenon limited to political elites, activists and people who spend too much time on Twitter (which is any time spent on Twitter). Those for whom politics has supplanted a normal, balanced life find it increasingly difficult to treat each other in a normal, balanced way. Where others see differences of opinion, the politically-centred see hatred. Where others see political opponents, they see bigots. Where others can agree to disagree, they feel the need to call out and cancel and silence dissenting views.
Those who live their lives in politics and online are forever fretting about how easily manipulated the hoi polloi are and how susceptible they are to prejudice. In fact, it is the most highly-educated, tech-savvy, and socially aware who are the most vulnerable to forming mobs and going after unpopular people and viewpoints. A willingness to believe the worst of others, a desire to be part of an in-group, and a fiery righteous certainty are driving otherwise intelligent people to the most ludicrous positions.
Only in this context can you convince yourself that the world's most beloved children's author is in fact an agent of bigotry. Only by shutting yourself off in little cocoons of received opinion can you reach the conclusion that Sajid Javid is in cahoots with Big Pharma, scientists and every other health minister in the world to push toxic vaccines on the population.
What is troubling is that this kind of thinking might be spreading beyond the elites to normal people living normal lives. YouGov research highlighted last week found that more than one in five of us have no or ‘hardly any’ friends of opposing political views. This is most common among Labour voters, 35 per cent of whom have few if any associates of opposite beliefs, and least common among Tories, only 14 per cent of whom are in the same position.
There may be a generational shift in the works. Where only 20 per cent of over-60s move in ideologically monochromatic social circles this figure rises to 34 per cent among 16-to-24 year olds — Generation Woke.
The common thread in all this is the undue inflation in the place of politics in our lives. It may be treasonous for a political columnist to say so but the truth is: politics doesn’t matter all that much. It’s important, of course, in determining national priorities, setting levels of taxation and spending, and ensuring strong defences and quality public services. But even though we have been living in more politicised times since the global financial crisis, the gap between the main parties is still modest.
That is a source of consternation for very ideological people but should be reassuring to the rest of us. When governments in this country change, little changes fundamentally, only priorities, tone and emphasis. Gone are the days of 40 years ago, when a change in government would have meant a swing from laissez-faire economics and privatisation to socialism and renationalisation. Radical and revolutionary eras may seem more exciting, and they may get more songs and movies written about them, but if it's peace, prosperity and personal happiness you're looking for, may you live in uninteresting times.
Politics, at least the dominant mode today, tells us that hating one another is a moral imperative but, as the life of Ian Forsyth teaches us, the opposite is true. Forsyth knew hatred. He saw the worst kind up close, close enough to smell it. It taught him that we all have a duty to challenge hatred, to rise above it and to play our part, however big or small, in creating a world of humanity and dignity and, however much the word might have fallen out of fashion lately, love.
This week will bring the Christmas celebrations, when Christians mark the birth of their saviour and most of us look forward to spending time with family and friends after almost two unimaginably trying years. You need not believe that the child born in a manger in Bethlehem all those years ago was the Son of God, you need not believe in much of anything, to recognise the power of Christmas. It is a time when the world loses most of its claim on us and we give ourselves to those we care about and give ourselves over to the values of love, charity and hope.
Those values are more important than even the noblest political philosophy and more spiritually nourishing than gorging ourselves on hatred. Although it can sometimes feel like we are not in control of the forces that guide our lives, it ultimately falls to us to make a choice about who and what we want to be. Be like Ian Forsyth and be what he represented.
Originally published in the Scottish Daily Mail on December 20, 2021.
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