Derby revisited

I went back to Derby. I was determined to see L'Armee du Crime. This time I'd checked with QUAD that the film had been properly ingested. My cold was a bit better. Something at the back of my mind warned me that I wasn't quite well enough but I was fed up with limitations and headed back to the cinema.

I think this is only the second French film about the Resistance I've seen. The first, L'Armée des Ombres (Army of Shadows), shook me with its darkness. It began and ended during the occupation and showed members of a Resistance cell punishing their own members - always with execution - when any disobedience made the group vulnerable to betrayal. Although I knew that the Occupation ended, there was no happy ending of Liberation.

The title of L'Armée du Crime suggested a dialogue with the earlier film. There are other similarities. The film is similar in shape: it begins and ends during the Occupation, shows a key character being captured early in the film and ends by explaining what happened to the surviving characters. But there are key differences.

In L'Armée des Ombres, the main characters are members of mainstream French society who therefore seem to represent French opposition to Nazi occupation. I may be misrembering, but the film seemed to me as shadowy as its title. Shades were sombre as though brightness had been leached from the film-maker's palette.

L'Armée du Crime, like the recently-released photographs by André Zucca, has sequences of light. There are moments of happiness when Paris is, as one of the characters says, "beautiful". Ordinary Parisiens get on with their lives in technicolor. They - like the Resistance members and Nazi occupiers - have picnics, enjoy food, sing and make love. The Nazi occupiers who are killed and blown up by the Resistance are not deeply characterised but - perhaps more disturbingly - are shown enjoying life in Paris. The stroll in the sunshine, look at the Eiffel Tower, attend a book launch, chat with laughing young women in the doorway of a brothel. Neither they nor the Resistance members have lost their capacity for happiness.

Inevitably the light and happiness is in tension with darker events. Communist prisoners are executed in revenge for every Nazi killed. First ten are executed for every one Nazi, then twenty. A policeman who seems as kindly and anxious as every hero of a police procedural sighs as he reports a woman's anxieties about her neighbour - and sighs again when he watched the neighbour being tortured. Jews, trusting the French commitment to the "rights of man" stitch yellow stars onto their clothes. Then they obey the French policemen who cram them into ordinary buses on their way to the internment camp at Drancy. The buses roll past ordinary Parisiens who are unconcerned.

As the film proceeds, the contrast between everyday happiness and the cruelties that ordinary people would rather ignore becomes sharper. A soundtrack of Charles Trenet singing "Je chante" plays as a Jewish restaurant is smashed. Human beings are tortured in a cellar and no-one - not even the victims - questions that this is how things are. Outside is familiar Paris. There is still sunlight and beauty.

This isn't a film about typical French heroes defending their country from an external invader. Its focus is the cell led by the Armenian poet Missak Manouchian. Almost all the cell members are immigrants or stateless refugees. Manouchian's father was killed in the Armenian genocide and the group included Poles, Hungarians, Italians, Romanians and Spaniards. Some were Spanish Civil War veterans. Several were Jewish. Most were Communists and the story begins with news of the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, which brought the Nazi-Soviet pact to an end, heightening the vulnerability of communist exiles in France.

The decision to resist violently is not treated lightly in this film. Manouchian in particular, chooses to abandon his ethical principles. But there are no easy choices for the members of this Resistance cell. Most of them risk death merely by being "untermensch." But the official poster - l'affiche rouge - issued after their death failed in its attempt to show the cell members as criminals rather than liberators. Its description of the activities of the Manouchian group led to the accolade "morts pour la France" (died for France).

It's a long, complex and gripping film. I walked away from the cinema reflecting on French response to the film. Although it was shown out of competition at Cannes - and despite the director's reputation - the film did badly in reviews and at the box office. I wondered whether this was caused by the film's implicit response to L'Armée des Ombres. It's an uncomfortable film, given the way the Liberation of Paris is currently perceived: achieved by the Resistance with the support of the people of Paris. I wondered uncomfortably how current anti-immigrant feeling had worked against the film. Imprisonment and deportation of refugees take place regularly - in England too - to widespread silence from the safe, passport-holding citizens of Europe.

I was nervous on the dark, damp and empty streets that led to the station. After all the violence of the film, I was alert to the risk of attack. I glanced ahead and tried to check no-one was lurking in the shadowy spaces behind bollards or advertisements. Gradually, as the few strangers on the roads failed to attack me - I think they were more concerned with getting home or to the pub - I became calmer.

There was some time to wait before my train. I took up the recommendation of a commenter on my previous post and enjoyed a swift half in the Brunswick, a restored Georgian pub with micro-brewery. It's very convenient for the station and I hope to go there again when I'm next in Derby. A £1 cone of chips from the Station Fish Bar provided a warming supper as I headed home.

The all-purpose May Day march

It's May. Some of the empty shops have unexpected blossoms: bright new businesses nestling in bankrupt empty caverns and urging sunlit strollers to enter and buy. I have little hope they'll make it through next winter but there's something appealing about their optimism, even though I doubt a champagne bar will succeed in a suburban high street.

All over Europe, yesterday was May Day. In England, they waited till today for the marches and the holiday is on Monday. I read about Nottingham's march on Indymedia and decided to join in.

We assembled in Brewhouse Yard at the bottom of Castle Rock against a background of caves. There were flimsy but colourful stalls with banners, books and badges. A van was selling vegetarian food and the Clarion choir was preparing to sing.

Sometimes Nottingham's May Day marches have a focus - I've been on one which was against the war in Iraq - but this year all sorts of people were involved. The campaign against privatising the Post Office had top billing but there were marchers from several trades unions, peace groups, and left-wing organisations or parties. I was offered a CND placard, against the renewal of Trident, and agreed to carry it. That made it hard to take photos.

We ambled cheerfully through Nottingham, led by a samba band. Caught in the middle of the crowd of people and banners (police estimates reckoned about 500 of us), I couldn't see the band or many of the marchers. My view was largely of the backs of banners, police (with numbers and earpieces securely in place) and smiling crowds. No-one seemed greatly perturbed at the slight delay we caused - instead bystanders stopped to read the banners, raised their phones to take photos or even started dancing along to the samba band. Occasional attempts to start chanting slogans foundered. There was some annoyance at bankers but this didn't flower into anger. Instead brief conversations sprang up in which individuals shared their concern. But conversations subsided. We were enjoying the sun, the crowds, the company and the walk.

It was a short amble, causing no difficulties for the small children in family groups or the people in power-wheelchairs. We passed the edge of the Market Square, the Robin Hood statue beneath the castle and the abandoned Lace Centre before re-entering Brewhouse Yard. Then the marchers looked at one another's stalls, queued for vegetarian food and sat on the grass to hear the music and speeches.

I deposited my placard and bought a veggie burger before wandering round the stall. I paused for a while to talk to people at the Refugee Forum, still collecting for the destitute asylum seekers whose poverty shames us. I accepted a leaflet for the campaign to free Hicham Yezza. Like many people who are arrested with a great fanfare on terrorism charges, he's now been imprisoned on visa irregularities and is threatened with deportation. And I spoke to a fellow Quaker behind the stall for the City of Sanctuary campaign, which asks, simply, that we make refugees and asylum seekers welcome.

There was a speech by Alan Simpson, one of the few Labour MPs I would vote for. Unfortunately he's not my MP and he's retiring at the next election. He spoke passionately about the environment, but I was enjoying the sun so much my concentration wandered. I couldn't focus on the songs (by Red Banner) for long either. I wandered off to inspect the trades union banners, now propped against the caves that were carved from the sandstone centuries ago. (No-one lives there now.) I wondered briefly what the march might have achieved. At least we all enjoyed it - and the event was encouraging. I felt less alone in my concerns. And so, encouraged, I slipped away.

Cold

A month or so again it was still warm. That's when I saw him: a stocky, cheerful, black-bearded man smoking a cigarette and reading a paperback book. He looked as though he was enjoying life. And that struck me because he was snuggled in a sleeping bag beneath a blanket in a shop doorway. He had half an hour or so till the shop would open and was enjoying the his daylight solitude.

It's not hard to see rough-sleepers in any town if you get up early. There's an underpass which usually houses one or two men (usually men, sometimes women) who, on cold nights, burrow deep into their sleeping bags so that only their hair or a woolly hat is visible. Every so often the underpass floods and the sleepers aren't there any more. I don't know where they go.

I don't know where they go in the snow and hard frosts we've had in the past fortnight. There are hostels - but not many - and I've heard that some rough-sleepers are frightened of them. The people who use them are sometimes drunk or mentally ill. People who are homeless have rarely had a comfortable, secure past.

I don't know what to do to help rough sleepers. I know money would help, because it would provide warmth, which must be a major need. But money is short in a time of financial crisis - people (including me) cling to what they have.

Most vulnerable of all are the asylum seekers forced into destitution because their claims for help have been refused. Some fear deportation - what they fear must be terrible if they choose homelessness and near-starvation in preference. Failed asylum seekers are forbidden to work, forbidden to claim benefits, forced to beg for survival. A local organisation hands out supplies but it doesn't have much money. Destitute asylum seekers are given a bag of food a week if they can find somewhere to cook it or £2.50 a week if they cannot.

Meanwhile, we prepare to celebrate Christmas. The story tells of a young couple forced to shelter in a stable because there is nowhere else for them to sleep. Later, with a small baby, they seek asylum in Egypt because they fear persecution at home.

When the shops open, the rough sleepers move on. The Christmas carols mingle with more recent songs in the city centres.

Paris-on-sea

I'd heard about Paris Plage but never been there before. This year there wasn't much publicity. I couldn't find a separate leaflet so settled for a more general leaflet about summer events in Paris. It didn't tell me much but, after a delicious Lebanese lunch in the Carrousel of the Louvre (the food court is excellent for travellers on a budget), I headed past the glass pyramid to the banks of the Seine. There the blue banners directed me towards the "plage".

It's not a real beach. Apart from the month of Paris-Plage, it's a fast road. But from mid-July to mid-August, traffic is diverted and replaced by sunloungers, boules pitches, showers, and sports activities for children and adults.

I'm not someone who lounges in the sun. My skin parched in the heat despite occasional breezes so I welcomed the showers where water was dispensed in a fine mist which drenched eager children but also supplied a barely visible sprinkling of moisture to passers by. There were fountains too, where we could fill water bottles.

Wandering alone, I was an observer rather than a participant. What I saw was Parisiens' Paris - the place where the locals relax and enjoy the summer if they aren't lucky enough to join the big getaway.

Later I found my way to the Hotel de Ville (the Paris City Hall). The square in front had been transformed into a temporary (ephemeral) garden with green plants and lakes, to promote the ecological gardens of the city. There was mini-golf for the children and stand dispensed Paris water, free of charge, with fresh mint or lemon added. I joined the water-drinkers at their tables, sipping and savouring my water - and trying to swallowing the huge sprig of mint in the glass.

I need to be economical this year - the trip to the Comedie Francaise was my big extravagance - so much of my exploration consisted of walking around Paris. However, I'd invested in a Navigo, which meant I could take buses, trains or metros when I wished - and the guide called the Indispensible made it easy for me to find the best routes. But every so often I wandered freely, finding unexpected views, with a sense that I was walking through history.

On a sunny day, history seems calm and distant. It's easy to forget the real violence - or that pain and grief were felt as acutely in preceding centuries as they are now. It's too easy to treat Paris like any theme park that nourishes nostalgia - and forget the history which links the city to the world. But the history of Paris has affected the way people understand their human condition. I know too little of it but have picked up episodes like a series of snapshots: the theological debates in the time of Peter Abelard, the Revolution, the Napoleonic era, the siege and commune, the occupation, liberation, Sartre and de Beauvoir in a cafe.

In the past couple of years I've been acutely aware of signs recalling the occupation and its atrocities. Pausing on my calm, sunny progress, I saw another plain memorial:

TO THE MEMORY
OF THE PUPILS OF THIS SCHOOL
DEPORTED BETWEEN 1942 AND 1944
BECAUSE THEY WERE JEWS,
INNOCENT VICTIMS
OF NAZI BARBARITY
WITH THE ACTIVE COMPLICITY
OF THE VICHY GOVERNMENT.

THEY WERE EXTERMINATED
IN THE DEATH CAMPS.

That's too close to be the safe past. I have met some of the few survivors who have camp numbers tattooed on their arms.

I was impressed by the acknowledgement of complicity. I thought of the children deported from Britain with their families after their claims for asylum have been turned down. I recalled what I had read of dawn raids. Children are easy to locate and deporting a whole family helps the authorities meet government targets. What happens to those children who suddenly vanish from British schools, who are bundled onto flights to unfamiliar lands where they face hatred and oppression?

Perhaps one day Britain will erect memorials to them too. I wonder if the British will be as honest as the French. Will the British government and people acknowledge even partial responsibility for what happens next?

"like a dead man"

Just at the moment, I'm unable to post as frequently as I would wish. But I ask anyone visiting my blog to read Mark Haddon's article in today's Observer in full. He's writing about the treatment of refugees in Britain. I thought I knew enough about this subject, but his account of human beings denied life-saving medical treatment, parents and children forbidden from meeting, and brutal deportation procedures makes me feel sick and angry. And that's before I think of human beings who have been raped and tortured condemned to destitution in Britain. They are punished because they believed Britain's favourite myth of itself - that Britain cares about freedom and democracy, and defends the oppressed and persecuted.

Refugee Week starts tomorrow. There are events all over the United Kingdom. It's a good opportunity to find out the truth behind the headlines. You can find local events on-line - and there may be programmes in public libraries.

The picture shows Yarl's Wood Detention centre. In the last year for which figures are available, 1,160 children were imprisoned there. They had not committed any crime. 116 were imprisoned for more than 28 days. Because they are asylum seekers, they aren't protected by the same laws as the rest of us.

The video below illustrates one contribution made by asylum seekers to this country: the Amadeus Quartet plays Beethoven (part of the 16th string quartet).

Invisibility

It's up there on the list of favourite superpowers. "Would you rather be invisible or able to fly?" the quizzes ask. I'd go for flying any day - so long as it's not in a plane. I don't like being shut in. And invisibility, however much fun it might be at first, is a kind of prison.

H.G. Wells' Invisible Man came out of the same era as Sherlock Holmes and pre-dates (but only by a little) the spy stories of the Edwardian era. Their heroes gained a kind of invisibility through their mastery of disguise but would return to safe visibility in the world of comfortable rooms, a housekeeper and a London club. Temporary invisibility was a kind of power. It could even be a route to power. W.H. Auden is thinking of the commnist agent when, in his poem "Our Hunting Fathers", he compares the perfect life of animals with the "mature ambition" to "hunger, work illegally/And be anonymous." He's recalling an account of Lenin given in Ralph Fox's biography.

But permanent invisibility - the kind where you look in mirrors and can't expect to see yourself - that's not such fun. Listening to the follies of others loses its attraction if you can't be seen laughing at the joke. And in the end the invisible are vulnerable to all kinds of cruelty. Unless they're caught by chance in a picture or seen in the background of a story, it's as though they don't exist. They can slip beyond the law and beyond compassion. They are rarely seen as equal or fully human.

There's a sinister term "the disappeared", used mostly of those who vanished in South American states. It's sometimes put another way - that they "were vanished" or "were disappeared". The passive verb alludes indirectly to the involvement of government torture squads or death squads. But the practice of "disappearing" people is older than that. It happened in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union - and in democratic France in 1961 when the police massacre of Algerians in central Paris went largely unreported.

Today we have the "ghosts" of Abu Ghraib, who rarely made it into the photos, and the anonymous victims of extraordinary rendition. Presumably they are still carried through British territories and bases at home and abroad. I complained to my MP once. He responded that the British could hardly be expected to search United States planes on a regular basis and that, in any case, the prisoners being "rendered" could always make representation in the British courts through their lawyers. This seemed such a wilful misunderstanding of the facts that I gave up.

Those are the extremes of invisibility. Others choose invisibility because the alternative is worse. The nameless Nigerian deported on a B.A. charter flight last month was briefly noticed, because his fellow passengers objected to his treatment. It didn't help him. He was still deported but the other passengers were thrown off the flight for complaining. One man, on his way to attend his brother's wedding, was held in police cells where the British police confiscated all his money before dumping him, penniless and without a ticket, back at Heathrow. I don't know what happened to the man B.A. deported. I hope he's still alive, and safe.

For others, invisible is a daily fact. Some office workers literally don't see the cleaners in their buildings. Shoppers walk past the beggars and Big Issue sellers and don't pause to look them in the face.

Detective stories between the wars sometimes used invisibility as a clue. The housewife would open the door and take a delivery but later comment on the emptiness of the street. And the readers, accustomed to not seeing the people who served them, would ignore the implied presence of the man, woman or boy who made the delivery. In those stories, the invisible man would often be the killer. Sometimes invisibility is an excellent disguise. And sometimes people who are ignored want to make their presence felt.