Do we really want Adolf Hitler staring at us in our Buckingham Community Centre?

I simply want the racist and anti-Semitic imagery currently on display in our Community Centre at the heart of Buckingham, to be removed and placed somewhere outside the public domain. I am not asking for the artwork of what was originally a temporary exhibition, to be destroyed or ‘cancelled’ as it were. I just don’t think it is appropriate to display a Nazi swastika, an image of Adolf Hitler and Luftwaffe plane to the public who use the centre. It is not illegal and I am not claiming that any hate crime is being committed. I do think it is hurtful, discriminatory and unsuitable to be displayed in this permanent way. 

What do you think?

I have tried over several months, carefully and patiently, to get this issue resolved behind the scenes, as it were. But I reached the end of that road a few days ago and I have been facing a choice between giving up and letting the matter slide or going public in this way. Please trust me when I say, I have thought long and hard about whether to do so, but I now feel I must. 

And I will publicly acknowledge that a short video by John Ameachi (“Not-racist v anti-racist: what’s the difference?” https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/zs9n2v4) tipped me into this course of action. I met John up in Manchester a couple of years ago. He is a stupendously inspirational and wonderful man. His words on this video were compelling to me. I feel I must take a stand, and do so publicly. 

And I recognise that this will upset and anger some people but that is not my intention and I certainly don’t want to get into any kind of blame game at all. I have no ‘beef’ with the designer or the crafter who created this particular section of the whole display. I have no reason to doubt that the actions that led up to this point were only done with good and honest intentions. That for me is not this issue now… Please allow me to tell the (long) story of how we got to here from my perspective:

It all began on 10 September 2019 when I attended a meeting of the Aylesbury Vale Transport Users Group in the small hall at the Community Centre. I looked up above the kitchen hatch to the display of the 10 tapestries created to commemorate a 100 years since the WW1 armistice. I had seen them before, but only briefly, when they were on temporary display in the Library in the Autumn of 2018. But as I sat in the meeting a year of so later, it gradually dawned on me that staring down at me was a picture of Adolf HItler and a Nazi swastika. I was later to be told by Cllr Mark Cole, Town Mayor at the time, that the featured plane was a Messerschmitt Bf 109. This was the tapestry depicting the decade of 1938 to 1948. 

I felt sick and angry and struggled to maintain a focus on the meeting. Perhaps I am overly sensitive, but I was and still am deeply offended by this imagery. I don’t expect and don’t want to have it put into my line of view in a public meeting place. It seems others are comfortable with these images being on display. I am not. I fully recognise that I may be only one of a small number in having deep objections to these images. But I am not going to let this pass without trying again through this written piece, to persuade the Trustees of the Community Centre to remove this tapestry from public view. 

A few hours after the meeting in September, I wrote to the Chair of the Trustees of the Community Centre expressing my concerns and asking her and her board to take action. (The Chair was and still is Cllr Geraldine Collins. The other Trustees are listed here: https://beta.charitycommission.gov.uk/charity-details/?regid=1155556&subid=0) In my email I said:

“I wish to object in the strongest possible terms to having this imagery on display - especially as it in the room that I understand has been dedicated to Mouvaux and our twinning association links with them. This is a public room and so it is highly inappropriate that there should be such imagery of a man and regime that murdered millions of Jewish people (and others of course) in the Holocaust. And, as we establish greater links with our friends in Neukirchen-Vluyn, would we really expect them to be comfortable in this room? (I understand such imagery is illegal in Germany.) I would like this picture removed or in some way 'edited'. I look forward to your thoughts. Thank you.”

Geraldine wrote back saying she was away but would look at the matter on her return. I had also copied Jane Mordue (Buckingham Twinning Association) and Cllr Mark Cole (the Town Mayor) into my initial email who both wrote to Geraldine expressing their support for my request. They have reaffirmed their support in recent days. 

I did not receive any further reply from Geraldine. But I noted, during the next time I was in the same room a few weeks later that a woven poppy had been attached to the tapestry, effectively masking most of the offending imagery. I thought it was a deft and fitting solution at the time and told Geraldine so when I next saw her. I was at that point prepared to let the matter rest. It was not exactly what I wanted but it was close enough. 

However, I was led to understand that members of the Royal British Legion (RBL) were horrified and upset that their artwork (ownership exhibition display rests with them) had been defaced with no reference to their association at all. I received a strongly worded letter of complaint from a leading member of the RBL about ‘my action’ to attach the poppy. They wanted the offending poppy removed and any damage restored so that the images of the swastika and Adolf Hitler could be seen unhindered. (The irony of the RBL wanting this was not lost on me.) I replied to the letter saying that the decision to place the poppy was, I presumed, taken by the Community Centre Management Committee which operates independently of the Town Council. I went on to suggest that the matter should be addressed to Geraldine and her colleagues on the management committee. I can only guess that this was indeed done as the poppy was subsequently removed some weeks later. 

This was now edging towards the end of the year and I was wondering what next to do. Then we had a general election and a new MP. I thought maybe Mr Greg Smith might be able to exert influence where I had not been able to do so. I wrote to him mid January, explaining all that had happened. Isabella Wallersteiner, Senior Parliamentary Assistant to our MP, replied a day later:

“I am writing on behalf of Greg Smith MP. Thank you for bringing this matter to Greg’s attention. It is clearly not acceptable that this imagery is being displayed in the community centre and Greg supports your wish to have this imagery either removed or altered in some form. As such this office will be contacting the community centre and Cllr Geraldine Collins on your behalf to find out what can be done to rectify this. Greg will be in contact in due course once a response is forthcoming. I hope this response is satisfactory to you and thank you again for writing to Greg about this matter.”

I was buoyed up by this response. I was optimistic that the matter would be resolved. Naturally I appreciated that our MP has no authority over how the community centre functions but I felt his involvement would be a most positive one. I don’t doubt Mr Smith’s commitment to tackling racism. Indeed in the last few days of July this year, he was chosen as the first patron the “Conservatives Diversity Project” which describes itself as an “Independent group based on the @Conservatives philosophy of #empowerment for all. We aim to work together with the grassroots to foster #inclusion in our party”. 

After a couple more email exchanges, time sped by and Mr Smith had been unable to secure a meeting with Geraldine. A possibility of one occurred at the beginning of March (involving the RBL too, was the plan) but then the world changed and Covid19 happened. The Community Centre shut its doors and closed its curtains. For several weeks much of ordinary activity was suspended. 

It was not until June 9 (on the day of George Floyd’s funeral) that I wrote again to Ms Wallersteiner inquiring as to whether any progress had been made. Some emails and weeks later, I was informed that Mr Smith and Cllr Collins had at last talked on the phone and that she told him that she would be having discussions with the RBL. I was frustrated that this had not happened weeks before but so be it. After a few more emails exchanged with Geraldine and a few more weeks elapsed until she wrote back to me on 23 July saying:

“I have now had replies from all of our trustees and the majority do not want the tapestries removed …. The community centre has had no complaints from anyone except yourself.”

So here we are. Impasse it seems. 

So I am going public to see if it is only me (as Geraldine asserts) that wishes to complain about this imagery - although others have expressed support for my objections as stated above. I would be very sad if only a few of us are prepared to take this stand, but what will be, will be. What do you, reader, want to do?

As final thought to leave you with: you may have noticed the symbol of Superman, the cartoon ‘man of steel’ also on the tapestry. This image nudges up next to the one of Adolf Hitler. Being a bit of a sci-fi geek, I find this juxtaposition particularly offensive. Here is why: 

Superman was created by childhood friends Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, classmates at Glenville High School in Cleveland, Ohio… One of the most interesting aspects of the character's genesis is that his origins lie not in Friedrich Nietzsche's conception of the ubermensch – travestied into Adolf Hitler's belief in the innate superiority of an Aryan master race – but in Jewish mythology. Both Siegel and Shuster were Jewish, the sons of recent European immigrants – as were Bob Kane and Bill Finger who created Batman the following year – and the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union and Benito Mussolini's Italy was on the minds of these young men, powerless to intervene and dreaming of a saviour. "What led me into creating Superman in the early thirties?” Siegel later reflected. "Hearing and reading of the oppression and slaughter of helpless, oppressed Jews in Nazi Germany… seeing movies depicting the horrors of privation suffered by the downtrodden. "I had the great urge to help the downtrodden masses, somehow. How could I help them when I could barely help myself? Superman was the answer." (*https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/superman-jewish-origins-film-adaptations-curse-jerry-siegel-christopher-reeve-henry-cavill-a8344461.html) 

Superman was created during this decade for sure. But given the history described above, this most probably unintentioned and happenchance juxtaposition shows such little respect to the victims of the Holocaust. Do we want all of these images on permanent public display in our Community Centre? I know I don’t. Will you join me in objecting by writing to the Trustees of the Community Centre? In hope, thank you for your support.

Buckingham Community Centre, Cornwalls Meadow, Buckingham, MK18 1RP | buckingham@bcommunitycentre.plus.com