Author: Ade Clewlow MBE

Like most people across our planet, I was again saddened by the senseless killing and maiming of so many people in what is a beautiful city. Like many, I have visited and enjoyed Barcelona. Like many I have wandered aimlessly around the streets without thinking I was in danger. I tweeted this picture yesterday; I am also aware of how futile a gesture it was but I had to express my support for a fine European city.

So do we need to change our behaviour in the light of terrorists attacking ‘soft’ targets? 

In the military we were always on the look out for people acting suspiciously, especially during the IRA’s reign of terror in Northern Ireland, Germany and mainland UK. It was called Sharkwatch and tended to be used when socialising. 

Is it time to introduce something similar into our lives?  Should we now routinely expect a member of tourist groups in the UK or abroad – whether family or friends – to be alert to things out of the ordinary? Can we expect people without any relevant training to even think about their safety when out and about in a place they should be able to relax in? Are we subconsciously doing it already? Probably not, but it’s worth conserving all the same. 

It’s a hangover from my military career, but I am constantly profiling people when I am in unfamiliar environments. It pays to be prepared. I guess we call it people watching. It’s what so many of us like to do. Instead we need to do it within the context of the current terror threat. There will be more attacks. We have to accept that we could be caught up in something, but the statistics don’t lie; the chances of being involved in a terrorist incident are very low. 

So caution is the watchword. Balanced with our right to relax and enjoy ourselves. Coupled with a faith in authorities that they have done everything they can to minimise the opportunities for terrorists to strike. There’s a lot to think about this summer.

Ok, back to the book…

Its been a while since I last wrote anything on this blog. I have been head down settling into a new and demanding role, which has included some of the more interesting things in life: travelling abroad, taking photographs; meeting people; and generally living a busy and extraordinary life! These things don’t last forever though and enjoying them while you can is the key… so what have I been up to since my memorable visit to Budapest in November 2015, followed by my appearance on BBC Radio 4’s Saturday Live programme?

In November I went to the Middle East with work. Whilst there I renewed a number of old acquaintances and made some new ones. I visited Doha, Dubai and Abu Dhabi. It was a packed programme with some challenging meetings and some great reunions with my Qatari friends in particular. I also met up with our old Au Pair who has settled in the UAE working as cabin crew with Etihad. It was great to meet everyone. On my last day in the region I was a VIP guest of Williams F1 on the Friday at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

I can hardly find the words to describe how much of a privilege it was to be wondering around the paddock, using the Williams villa as my base, doing some serious VVIP people watching, drinking coffee (and more…) finding myself sitting next to and meeting Claire Williams, Sir Jackie Stewart, Damon Hill, Felipe Massa, Toto Wolf and Martin Brundle from Sky. There were too many others to mention.

It was an extraordinary day and one of those experiences that even at the time I knew was unlikely to be repeated. I was treated exceptionally well by the Williams team and I watched (and listened to) the two drivers tearing around the circuit, coming in for practice starts and getting technical tweaks done to their cars. It was very special, standing next to Felipe’s Father (whom I also met – I speak Portuguese) at the back of the garage. I was then invited to meet the Williams drivers and to have a formal photograph. The picture below has now been framed at home! Getting such an insight to F1 life was remarkable. Strolling along the paddock, watching Bernie Ecclestone chatting to the teams and seeing Nico Rosberg walk through the paparazzi heading for his own Mercedes villa. Little did they all know how things would change in the months after that race.

Then last month I was back in the UAE again. And back at Yas Marina. This time inside the 5 star Viceroy Hotel which straddles the track. I arrived, joined my boss in the lobby and ordered a coffee. Then who should turn up but the entire global peloton who were staying in the hotel in advance of the Tour of Abu Dhabi. And Mark Cavendish wandered over, shook our hands, then agreed to pose for a picture. Who will I meet next time I am there?!

So after a period of hibernation I am back and will start to share my thoughts with you once more. What can you do to help? Please share this link if you find what I am writing to be of interest. I will be commenting on many things. I will be giving my views on local, national and international matters. And I want to hear from any readers who find what I am saying to be interesting.

Signing off…

  Thanks for reading this short blog and for visiting my site.

I know many readers are very interested in my connection with Sándor Görög who lives in Budapest. In fact I can say with clarity that my experience of visiting Sándor this Autumn was a highlight for me and it marked the end of a remarkable journey. I hope Sándor feels the same way. We both agreed that we would meet up again this time with my family in tow, so that he can get to meet my wife, my teenage son and my daughter. We will go there one day.

After returning to the Uk after my whistle stop visit to Hungary, I then ended up on UK national radio as a studio guest on a very popular Saturday morning programme on Radio 4 called ‘Saturday Live’. It was a special moment and I relished the opportunity to talk about my journey, which started in Auschwitz and ended in early November meeting Sándor in Budapest. I am so proud of my connection to Sándor and I feel privileged to have become his friend. He is a special man.

So I will sign off by wishing you a Happy Christmas and prosperous New Year. I am looking forward to 2016 more than I have ever anticipated the coming of a new year before. Much has happened in the last 12 months, which has included losing a job, finding another, starting to write my book on my experiences in Kosovo in 2008, and of course meeting Sándor. I never seem to have a dull and uneventful life!

All best and take care.
Ade

Sunset over the Atlantic

Its not often that we are able to escape from the rat race. This week I flew out to stay in a family house in a small, near deserted seaside village in northern Portugal called Moledo.

I have only ever been here in the summer and the difference is stark. The streets are empty with dried leaves swirling around the windy streets, devoid of cars and holiday makers. Instead there are stray cats darting between hiding places with a few locals, either retired or working locally, going about their daily routines. No queues, no noisy kids, only the regular train service shaking the house to its foundations every time it passes the rear of the property!

I am here to write my long awaited book on my experiences from Kosovo. I am, as they say, fully immersed in something that happened 7 years ago. In fact, 3 days into this trip and on advice from a successful author who I met the night before flying out here, I’m now concentrating on writing enough for a submission to an agent. There’s a lot to write; I have underestimated the time I will need to complete this project.

I have to say that getting away for ten days has done me the world of good already. I’m still looking for a permanent role and have arranged several meetings on my return, but for now it’s ‘me time’!

Update: I first wrote this blog in the summer, long before the Paris attacks. I didn’t publish it at the time because it really did sound too extreme. But on reflection, I think that the events of the last 7 days have more than justified publishing the post now.
In my earlier post I suggested that the Government’s proposals to conduct mass surveillance across social media – along with other means of communication – should be supported. I argued that when a country is facing an existential threat, as we are now from violent Islamic extremism, Government policy must reflect the reality facing the country as it did in the Cold War and at other periods when the country’s freedoms were under threat.

I wasn’t arguing for gun turrets on village halls, but I was arguing for the ability to prevent massacres on our own soil at the heart of our society (thereby having to use village halls as temporary morgues). Is this too sensationalist? Time will tell, especially if the likes of David Davis and his civil libertarian cohort manage to prevent the much needed legislation from being passed into law.

But I think we should be doing more. Thankfully the vast majority of Muslim families in this country are vehemently opposed to violence and travelling to Syria would be unthinkable. I welcome that, as most normal people would. So what should we do when the very few do up sticks and travel abroad to join the Islamic State?

Well, anyone who travels to live in the ‘Islamic State’ – essentially condoning a murderous and barbaric sect – or who fights for ISIS should forfeit their right to be British. Their passports should be deleted from the mainframe computer and all records removed. They should cease to exist in this country.  

So what about their property and their assets? 

There is a simple answer. Their houses should be requisitioned by the Government and sold. The proceeds from the sale, together with their other possessions, should then be paid into a fund to support the families of those people who have died at the hands of ISIS, whether in this country or abroad. Those who wish to do us harm, or support a regime that is intent on doing us harm, should be given no quarter in the UK.

We have to be more intolerant of intolerance. 

And that should start now.

As many of the visitors to this site will know, I was fortunate to have been one of the guests on the very popular Saturday Live programme this weekend. 

It was great to meet Richard Coles and Asmaa Mir, both of whom were really welcoming and interested in everyone’s stories. Even the production team afterwards congratulated us on the quality of the show, mainly because we all interacted so easily which made for a very relaxed environment.

So what could be better than meeting some interesting new people and talking to hundreds and thousands of people about Olivia Newton John, a hedgehog called Harrold (that I thought I had squashed) and of course my friend Sándor in Budapest? Whether that type of experience ever happens to me again I really don’t know, but it was so much fun (and kind of addictive too..).

So thanks for coming to this site and reading the stories about Sándor and my other musings. Ros Hubbard, who was also on the show, did her best to encourage me to do something with the story. So I am now thinking what that may be. 

Watch this space!!

Taking the train: final destination Budapest.

Tuesday 3rd November 2015

It’s been very last minute but I am on my way to a country I have never been to, to meet a man I have never met.

I am finally fulfilling a personal journey that started in the bitter cold of Auschwitz in 2007 and will end tomorrow in the Autumn sunshine of Budapest, on the banks of the River Danube. So why am I making this journey?

As part of my military career I attended a course which included a study of genocide. What better place to see its grim reality than at Auschwitz. So on a bitterly cold day, trudging through the snow covered ground, I found myself at the heart of the Nazi’s most notorious extermination camp. During the visit I was advised to buy a book called “I Was Dr Mengele’s Assistant”, written by Doctor Nyiszli who was recruited to perform the post mortems for the infamous Nazi torturer. On my way home from Poland I read the book in one sitting; it was so compelling.

Towards the end of the book, I read about a boy who had been hidden by his Father in a monastery in Hungary, to avoid being rounded up by the Nazis in 1944. The boy was the son of Doctor Görög who had been sent to Auschwitz with his wife and daughter (who were both killed on their first day at the camp). Dr Görög was recruited by Dr Nyiszli to ease his workload, such was the volume of post mortems.

Auschwitz, a place without birdsong.

At the end of the book, when Doctor  Görög was close to death, he pleaded with the author of the book to adopt his son after the war. Whilst Dr Nyiszli agreed to this request and wrote this in the book, he never did fulfil Dr Görög’s final wish.

The boy was called Sándor Görög and he was 12 years old.

With no further mention of Sándor, I was intrigued to know what had happened to him after the war. I searched for him online when I got home to the UK and I found a Sándor Görög, who was around the right age, and like his Father, he had become a successful scientist.

Next to this information there was also an email address. So I wrote to Sándor Görög to ask if he was the boy in the book.

One hour later I received a reply and he confirmed that it was him.
He then wrote to me at length about his family’s story and Hungarian Jews in general. Over the years we have exchanged many pictures of our family, especially at Christmas time.

And today I am flying to Budapest to meet him for the first time.

We always knew that a threat existed against all things Western, but the massacre on the beach in Sousse was still a shock. So should we be surprised? 

Growing up in the Cold War era, our lives were dominated by the existential threat of communism and images of the Red Army’s tanks rolling towards the ‘west’ across the plains of Northern Germany. The Cold War was not only a highly defined threat that infiltrated everyone’s consciousness, it also shaped Government policy of the day. 

Now that threat has been resurrected for the current generation by ISIS; and it is a more tangible threat to our way of life than anything this country has experienced since the Roman invasion over 1000 years ago. So what has to happen for the population of Britain to accept that Government policy needs be developed to reflect this evolving situation?

When was the last time your business practiced its emergency lock down procedure? When did your children’s school rehearse its reaction to a mass shooting event. If this sounds far-fetched, or overly dramatic, then the growing trend (and success) of lone wolf attacks, aided by unregulated border controls in Europe and the availability of assault weapons flooding into the EU from North Africa and through its eastern borders, suggests that the UK will soon have to face a similar incident. 

The PM talks about being intolerant of intolerance; for a famously tolerant society this concept is difficult to accept for some. But accept it we must, because the next attack will not be in a London railway station, or at a popular beach resort, it will be at a village fete in Hertfordshire or Derbyshire. It will involve mass casualties, and it will strike at the heart of our culture and profoundly harm our sense of security.

So let’s not wait for that day. Let’s give the security services and other Government Agencies the tools to keep us safe. Let’s not pander to the liberals and professional campaigners who have never experienced the harsh world of 21st century terrorism. Let’s not bolt the stable door with the horse cantering into the distance. 

It is time to take the initiative in our fight against Islamic Extremism.

If you would like any copies, let me know…