When I was a newspaper reporter, I wanted answers. It was a matter of professional pride to get them. But I met my match in the mid-1980s in the shape of the then Liberal Party leader David Steel. There was some controversy within the party over the policy on nuclear weapons. Someone slipped me Steel’s cellphone number and I gave him a call. I grilled him for 10 to 15 minutes to find out what the party policy was. He was a busy man and that was all the time I had. I thought I’d pinned him down to a firm statement of policy. I was satisfied. Then I looked carefully at my notes. It became apparent that he’d chosen his words very carefully. I had heard what I wanted to hear. He hadn’t actually said what I thought he was saying. He had said precisely nothing. I was torn between admiration and frustration. I’d been bested by an old pro. I tried the cellphone number again. But this time there was no answer.

It’s more than a little disappointing to find the BBC describing the 1948 Scots Guards massacre of 24 ethnic Chinese rubber plantation workers in Malaya as “alleged”. Sadly, there is little “alleged” about the massacre. Members of the Scots Guards patrol involved have given sworn affidavits that they were ordered to kill the men at settlement and the soldiers who did not want to be involved were sent to guard the women. The women also maintained that the men at Batang Kali were murdered in cold blood. Only the official British version maintains that all 24 men were shot while trying to escape. Common-sense suggests that the lack of wounded male villagers points directly to a massacre taking place.
The BBC was reporting the welcome news that there is to be a judicial review, probably next Spring into a British government decision a year ago to refuse to hold a proper public inquiry into the incident. A Scotland Yard investigation in the early 1970s, after members of the patrol told a Sunday newspaper that they had taken part in a pre-mediated massacre, was shutdown before it could be completed.
It’s pretty obvious that Batang Kali was selected for the massacre because it was suspected to be a supply base for the Communist guerrillas operating in that part of Malaya. The lesson intended by the massacre was learned and there was no further trouble in Batang Kali area. If a proper inquiry had ever been conducted while the adult villagers present in 1948 were still alive, it's possible that it might even have revealed that some of the men killed were active guerrillas. Or may they were indeed have been nothing but rubber plantation workers. But the British Government decided that the most important thing was to protect whoever ordered the killings. The fact that lorries arrived at the settlement to take the women folk away shows that the killings were not the work of a “rogue” patrol but part of a well organised operation. It would appear that the Scots Guards came into Batang Kali  from the jungle, rather than via the road, in an attempt to surprise the guerrillas believed to be operating out of the settlement. The British Government does not protect the reputations of ordinary squaddies. So who has it been protecting?

Years ago, many years many years ago, I worked in Inverness with an old English fellah called Tom. He’d had both legs amputated below the knee and got around with the aid of a grotty old brown National Health Service walking stick. I knew that he often took a short-cut home along an alley which was notorious for muggings. I asked him if he felt safe doing that. And that’s when I discovered that grotty old stick had a secret. I don’t think National Health Service sticks usually contain a rapier-like Wilkinson Sword blade. Tom told me it was a British Officers’ sword stick. I’ve often wondered what happened to it after he died. Did the folks that cleared his house know what it was or did it end up being thrown out?

Canadian television recently had a drama based on the events surrounding the creation of Canada from the British North American colonies. Many of the main players in the events in the 1860s which are portrayed were Scots. I was delighted to find that many of the TV actors  sported Scottish accents, some good, some not so good. In fact, I was more than delighted, I was stunned. Canadian broadcasters have a dreadful habit of giving every character from the British Isles an English accent. There was a drama about the massacre of Scottish settlers in the early 1800s by mixed blood Metis hunters near the site of present-day Winnipeg. The leader of the hunters was a guy called Cuthbert Grant who may well have been educated in Scotland. The hunters were put up to terrorizing the settlers by Scottish fur traders who didn’t want farmers getting their way. So, there was a lot of Scot-on-Scot violence going on. How many Scots accents were heard? I counted one – and a little research showed that although he had a Highland name he was raised in the United States. Of course, that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t have a Scottish accent, I’ve come across old second-generation Ukrainians born in Canada who speak English with a heavy Eastern European accent. I also remember a factual program about the evolution of Canadian English. It included a damning criticism of American influences delivered in a snotty English accent by an actor playing a school teacher. Once again, a little research revealed that the teacher in question was one of the many Scots who propped up the Canadian education system in the mid-1800s.
Of course, it’s hard to know how a specific person spoke in the days before recordings. But there are lots of recordings of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle speaking with a surprisingly strong Scottish accent. But Canadian television portrays him speaking with a plummy English accent.
You may wonder why this is important. Well, what if the famous Jewish people of history were all portrayed as Roman Catholics? Or the famous Blacks of American history were portrayed as white guys? And while I’m on the subject of accents, how come a Canadian radio presenter lets himself be egged on into doing his “Scottish” accent on air? I’ve got a feeling that if he’d been asked to do his “Chinese” or “Indian” accent he would have refused.

I was astonished to hear what a respected British international affairs and military analyst had to say when he was interviewed on Canadian radio recently.  He said that when the Americans and Canadians went into Southern Afghanistan a decade ago they believed the Taliban were foreign fighters with very little connection to local communities.
I was in Afghanistan in early 2002 and I knew that many of the people in the villages around Kandahar Airport were not happy to see armed foreigners driving around as if they had a right to be there. The foreign soldiers would only be tolerated if there was some tangible benefit to the locals from their presence. And making sure little girls got to go to school wasn’t one of the priorities for the guys who’d stashed their AK-47s and RPGs in drainage culverts when the Yanks and Canucks first showed up. You could see in their faces that if we didn’t start handing out sweeties soon, there was going to be trouble. And there has been.
We’ve dug a deep hole for ourselves in Afghanistan. We’ve tried to do things on the cheap. We’ve got into bed with some very unpleasant characters. In fact, we’ve proved very bad at picking our friends.
The time has come to have a look at what we actually want to achieve in Afghanistan. Would an Afghanistan without western troops be a menace to world peace? What are we prepared to pay and sacrifice for peace in Afghanistan? It is not going to come cheap.