I have to admit I am a big fan of the television. Even when I was a child my old dad used to sometimes call me ‘square eyes’ because he would usually find me glued to the TV even as a child. (By the way, TVs were square back in the day!) What is really amazing is the way we can experience history pretty much as it happens through the medium of the television. Take this week for instance with the resignation of Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
I did read some news snippets over the previous weekend indicating Starmer was planning to resign on the Monday but I pretty much dismissed that as just a rumour without any background. Of course journalists have their contacts within government and certainly whoever started that rumour off must have had a good source because he was proved fully correct.
Watching the TV news on Monday was really exciting because first we had Starmer’s resignation speech which to a great extent was similar to resignation speeches of the past, in fact the first thing I thought of when I saw it was the resignation speech of Theresa May who like Starmer began to get emotional towards the end.
Not long after that we TV viewers were treated to Andy Burnham making his way to Piccadilly station in Manchester where he was due to get on a train to London. Later more updates came with him arriving at Westminster to be sworn in as a MP. Apparently, according to the news media, it might only be a short while until he becomes our next Prime Minister. Not a bad few days work for Andy, one day Mayor of Manchester, the next day an MP and the next our Prime Minister in waiting. Anyway for me it’s all been rather exciting watching everything unfold on the TV screen.
I’m trying to think of some past historical events I’ve experienced through television. The very first one that comes to mind was in 1968 when Robert Kennedy was assassinated. I was only 11 years old then but I knew who RFK was and that he was the brother of John F Kennedy who had also been shot. I remember being very shocked by the shooting and going outside to be alone. In fact we had a shed in our garden and I went round the back and said a prayer for him. Kennedy was taken to hospital where he later died from his wounds.
Robert Kennedy picture courtesy wikipedia
Who killed him? It was a man named Sirhan Sirhan who later claimed various things. He had shot Kennedy because of his support for Israel and later that he had no memory of the shooting. Police found notebooks at his home filled with pages and pages of script repeating RFK must die over and over. Did he really kill Kennedy? The shot to Kennedy’s head was apparently fired at point blank range but witnesses say Sirhan wasn’t close enough and he was grabbed by people nearby after his first shot so how could other shots have hit Kennedy?
Either way that was a very sad day. Later that year Apollo 8 reached the moon and the astronauts made a broadcast on Christmas day reading from the book of Genesis in the Bible. Looking on the internet I see that it was actually Christmas Eve when the crew made that transmission so maybe my memory is out or the US/UK time difference meant it was on Christmas Day for us in the UK. Anyway, it was something that made a huge impression on my younger self.
In July 1969 Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon and I’ve mentioned in a few posts how exciting that was. I was getting up for school on that particular morning and watched the astronauts on the moon before getting dressed and being dragged away from the television by my mother.
On August 31st 1997 I had come downstairs to watch old episodes of Doctor Who that were then being shown on cable TV. I made a cup of tea and turned on the TV to find that during the night Princess Diana had been killed in a car crash in Paris. Every channel I turned to seemed to be full of the same story. Diana had been in Paris with her boyfriend Dodi Al-Fayed, the son of Mohamed Al-Fayed the owner of Harrods, the famous London department store. They were staying at the Ritz, also owned by Dodi’s father.
Apparently, the couple wanted to get away to Dodi’s nearby apartment. A decoy vehicle left the front of the hotel to draw away the paparazzi and Dodi and Diana left in a Mercedes from the back of the hotel. Their Mercedes was driven by Henri Paul, who was deputy head of the Ritz security team and also in the car was Diana’s bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones.
After leaving the Ritz the car entered the Pont de L’Alma underpass and the driver lost control at 65mph and hit one of the tunnel’s central roof supports. The only survivor of the crash was Rees-Jones. Diana survived for a while and was helped by an off duty doctor. She was taken to hospital but died at 04:00am.
By John Mathew Smith & http://www.celebrity-photos.com from Laurel Maryland, USA (Archived link) – BEST ALL-TIME DIANA! (Archived link), CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=85061623
I think I probably spent most of the day watching the news as well as watching things unfold over subsequent days. Charles flew to Paris to bring back Diana’s body and every day the stack of flowers left at the palace grew and grew. The royal family were criticised as they stayed away from London and even when they returned there were more issues as the flag at Buckingham Palace was not shown at half-mast. It seems that the Royal Standard is never shown at half-mast even if the sovereign dies as then a new King or Queen immediately comes into play. As a compromise the Union Flag was displayed at half-mast instead.
Fast forward to September of 2001 and I turned on the news to see that an aircraft had crashed into one of the twin towers of the World Trade Centre in New York. The pictures were shocking and terrible but I remember being almost unable to come away from the images. As I watched another aircraft slammed into the second tower and it was some time later when both the towers collapsed.
The suicide attacks were organised by Al-Qaeda the terrorist group headed by Osama bin Laden and four aircraft in all were hi-jacked. One plane was flown at the Pentagon in Virginia and on the final plane, the passengers became aware of the other hijackings and a group of passengers got together to try and take the aircraft back from the terrorists. During the struggle control of the aircraft was lost and the airliner crashed into a field in rural Pennsylvania.
The recent newscasts about Keir Starmer and Andy Burnham have had their parallel in recent years. David Cameron decided to resign after backing the ‘remain’ movement in the Brexit referendum. Boris Johnson, like Burnham a former Mayor, perhaps should have taken over then but lost out to Theresa May in a leadership contest. She resigned after her draft EU withdrawal bill was rejected by Parliament. Boris was finally made Prime Minister but tried to continue in government despite reports of his Downing Street staff flaunting social distancing rules and partying during the Covid 19 pandemic. Eventually he was forced to resign and Liz Truss took over for a short while until a disastrous budget made her resign in favour of the man she had just beaten in a leadership contest, Rishi Sunak.
Keir Starmer has been dubbed the most unpopular Prime Minister of all time and he has now been forced to resign as the Labour party begin to look ahead to the next election and clearly feel Starmer will not be a vote winner. Elections are held every five years so the next possible election, unless called earlier by the Prime Minister (whoever he or she may be) will be on 15th August, 1929.
Hopefully, If I’m still alive I’ll be sat in front of the TV with a ham sandwich and a cup of tea, ready to watch history.
Letters from an Unknown Author! 