THE modern history of Sweden has been one characterised by a state of continuous peaceful existence. No participation in any war since 1814, neutral in both world wars, no political assassinations in the country for nigh on two centuries following the murder of King Gustav III in an aristocratic coup attempt in 1792. This remarkable irenic run, free of political violence, was shattered on the night of 28th February 1986 with the seemingly unfathomable murder of Sweden’s incumbent Democratic Socialist prime minister, Olof Palme＊.
Sveavägen murder scene 🔻 (Photo: Anders Holmström/Svenskt Pressfoto)
“Clouseauesque” policing The Swedish PM’s shooting in Sveavägen, one of Stockholm’s busiest streets, by a single assassin, was followed by an amateurish investigation that was a complete shambles from the start. An initial mix-up over phone calls meant the police were slow to respond to the crime, losing precious minutes while the murderer made good his escape. On arrival, they failed to cordon off the murder scene properly, allowing onlookers to contaminate potential forensic evidence; key witnesses were allowed to leave the scene without being questioned. Established crime protocol—a street-by-street search of the area (ie, a dragnet)—was not implemented [“Olof Palme: Sweden believes it knows who killed PM in 1986’, BBC News, 100-Jun-2020, www.bbc.com/]. Another injudicious move on the police’s part was the ignoring of witnesses who had key information.
🔺Head of investigation, H Holmér (Image: www.news.sky.com)
The police investigation was headed by Chief Commissioner Hans Holmér who assumed more or less from day one that the crime was politically motivated, eventually becoming fixated on the Kurdish militant group the PKK as the likely perpetrators, to the neglect of other, more tangible leads. After a haul of locally-based Kurdish immigrants were arrested and then released for lack of solid evidence, the prosecutors and media turned against Holmér’s handling of the case, forcing him to resign [‘“Murder Most Foul” – the Death of Olof Palme’, (Jan Lundius), Inter Press Service,30-Jun-2020,www.ipsnews.net; BBC News]⦿.
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The cast of suspects and the conspiracy theories◘ In the 39 years since the Palme shooting the police have conducted 10,000+ interviews and more than 134 people have confessed to the murder. Aside from the PKK, another international suspect was the white South African regime. Palme was a charismatic figure in world politics but also a controversial and polarising one, as a foreign policy-minded social democrat he elicited criticism from both left and right, including from both superpowers. In addition, his high-profile anti-apartheid stance was a thorn in the side of the Pretoria government. One theory suggests a conspiracy between South Africa’s security and intelligence forces and right-wing extremist mercenaries within Sweden to execute Palme. The view gained some traction but Swedish investigators have never satisfactorily connected the dots between these elements. Not unexpectedly, CIA involvement in Palme’s murder was also suspected by some.
🔺 Stockholm: Intersection of Sveavägen and Tunnelgatan
Palme’s economic reforms, especially those geared towards promoting worker control, did not endear him to the capitalist class in Sweden. More specifically there was Palme’s strong stance against the Swedish arms manufacturer Bofors who was illegally selling weapons to several proscribed nations. When Iran was blocked from receiving a shipment one scenario advanced is that an Iranian hitman liquidated the Swedish PM [‘Sweden’s Bofors Arms Scandal’, Directorate of Intelligence, 04-Mar-1988, www.cia.gov/].
Political pressure for “a result” Refocusing domestically on individuals, the spotlight turned to Christer Pettersson who had a criminal record including manslaughter. Pettersson was dubiously convicted of Palme’s murder in 1989, in part because Palme’s widow, prompted by police officers, picked him out in a police lineup. The seriously compromised verdict was easily overturned on appeal (lack of a murder weapon or motive) [‘Who killed Sweden’s prime minister? 1986 assassination of Olof Palme is finally solved – maybe’, (Andrew Nestingen),The Conversation, 11-Jun-2020, www.theconversation.com]. The investigation team’s eagerness to ‘fit’ Pettersson for the crime despite the absence of hard evidence, reflects the pressure exerted by the ruling Social Democratic Party on the police to secure a quick resolution of the crime “acceptable to the public” [‘Who killed the prime minister? The unsolved murder that still haunts Sweden’, (Imogen West-Knights), The Guardian, 16-May-2019, www.theguardian.com].
Another, more ‘political’ suspect to attract the police’s interest early on was Victor Gunnarsson. Gunnarsson was an activist with connexions to various right-wing groups, especially the European Workers Party which held grudges against Palme. Gunnarsson was briefly detained by Holmér but the case against him however dissolved when witnesses failed to locate him at the murder scene at the time of the crime. Gunnarsson later emigrated to the US where he himself ironically became a homicide victim [‘Victor Gunnarsson’, People Pill, www.peoplepill.com].
“Skandiamannen”✪ Another name on the person of interest list of police was Stig Engström. Engström willingly offered himself up to police as a ‘witness’ at the time of the assassination and though questioned, the police eventually discounted him as a serious suspect. But some 20 years after the murder, a new theory, originating in a book by Lars Larsson and developed by journalist Thomas Pettersson, gained traction. The case put by Pettersson that Engström was the killer rested on a conjunction of factors—the “right timing, the right clothing, (he had) unique information, he had close access to guns of the right type, he was right wing and Palme unfriendly” [‘After 34 Years, Sweden Says It Knows the Killer of Olof Palme’, (Thomas Erdbrink & Christina Anderson), New York Times, 10-Jun-2020, www.nytimes.com]. Petersson handed over his findings to the police in 2016, leading to a reopening of the investigation.
Palme, then Swedish communications minister, appeared in the controversial 1960s “erotic-drama” ‘I am Curious – Yellow’ (below with the film’s star, Lena Nyman)🔻
”Resolved” but left up in the air? In 2019 the state prosecutor announced that he had come to the conclusion that Engström was probably Palme’s killer, but, given that Engström himself died in 2000, he promptly closed the case. Not everyone in Sweden is satisfied by the conclusion to the Palme case, many questions remain unanswered about the inconclusiveness of the evidence…eg, no DNA match, where is the missing murder weapon and what was the motive? (BBC). To paraphrase one antagonistic perspective on the case resolution: “it settles none of the unanswered questions”, instead it “underlines the determination of powerful political forces to continue the cover-up surrounding Palme’s murder” [‘Decades-long cover-up continues of assassination of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme’, (Jordan Shilton), World Socialist Web Site, 13-Jun-2000, www.wsws.org/].
Endnote: Palmology and parallels with the JFK conspiracy saga The collective trauma felt by Swedes with Olof Palme’s 1986 assassination—many expressing a sense of lost national innocence, no longer immune from political violence◘—recalls the devastating effect the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963 had on the American psyche (Lundius). Both leaders’ violent deaths triggered a runaway train of conspiracy theories, some plausible and some highly implausible◕. In the years since 1986 Sweden’s national obsession with the unsolved murder, labelled Palmessjukdom (“Palme sickness”) has inspired a raft of plays, films, television and musical works on the topic. It has even been cited as a contributing “factor in the worldwide explosion of Scandinavian (noirish) crime fiction”. ‘Palmology’ has spawned a veritable Swedish industry of privatspanarna – a legion of private investigators (such as Thomas Pettersson) conducting independent inquiries into the baffling crime…some have been serious researchers, others espousing “crackpot theories” (West-Knights).
🔻 PM Palme (source: www.cnbc.com)
——𝄪——𝄪——𝄪——𝄪——𝄪——𝄪——𝄪——𝄪——𝄪——𝄪——𝄪 ＊ not however the country’s last political murder, in 2003 Swedish foreign minister, Anna Lindh, was assassinated by another “lone wolf” assassin ⦿ marginalising SÄPO (Säkerhetspolisen – the state secret police) from the investigation didn’t make the task any easier ✪ Engström was dubbed “Skandia Man” by Lars Larsson because he worked in the Skandia Insurance Co tower building which fronts on to Sveavägen-Tunnelgatan ◘ and perhaps in some measure jolting Swedes out of a lingering outlier complacency ◕ among the considerable number of suspects ‘fingered’ for the hit on the Swedish PM was the Swedish police, the Yugoslav secret service, even Palme’s own wife, Lisbet!
I happened upon the remarkable, daring exploits of Lt. Edgardo Simoni—the Italian prisoner of war who made a habit of repeatedly escaping from various Australian POW camps during WWII—while reading the non-wartime story of another (very different) ace escape artist, Kevin John Simmonds, a con on the run from NSW cops who bamboozled an extensive manhunt comprising 500-odd police and 300 volunteers in 1959, leading them on a long, fruitless chase through harsh and rugged bush land before being finally being recaptured. To their embarrassment the state’s police officers found themselves lagging far behind the solo fugitive in a catch-up game of “Where’s Wally”, with Simmonds making them at times look like “right” (and not very bright) “Charlies” (They’ll Never Hold Me, by Michael Adams (Affirm Press, Melbourne, 2024).
Kevin John Simmonds
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The theme of valiant escape and valiant escapees from POW camps is a standard trope of cinema and television that has been done to oblivion over the years. This sub-genre has been a recurring feature in cinema for the past seven or eight decades, including a raft of classic war (WWII) features like Escape from Stalag 17, The Colditz Story, The Bridge on the River Kwai, Von Ryan’s Express, The Wooden Horse, The Mackenzie Break and of course the most lauded of all movies subscribing to the sub-genre – 1963’s The Great Escape.
But for me my favourite POW screen vehicle is the antithesis of these largely stark and grim dramas. No, not Hogan’s Heroes but another TV war sitcom, an episode from the Seventies TV series Ripping Yarns (created by two-sixths of the “Monty Python” team, Michael Palin and Terry Jones) called ‘Escape from Stalag Luft 112B’. The protagonist played by Palin (Major Phipps) is a serial escape attempter…during the war to date he has attempted over 560 escapes, 200 of them before he had left England, as a consequence he is transferred to Germany’s most infamous prison camp. At Luft 112B he continues his escape attempts 24/7, all of them ludicrously impossible. Meanwhile the rest of the British POWs frustrate Phipps no end by being perfectly content to sit out the war in their cosy and comfy little gentleman–officer confinement. By the show’s end the other POWs and German guards have all scarpered, leaving Phillips as the only man to never have escaped the “inescapable POW camp”. In his life after the war we learn that escaping is so intrinsically part of Maj. Phipps’ DNA that two years after his death and burial, locals discovered a tunnel dug from his grave to the cemetery fence: his final and “greatest” escape! A gem of a send-up of both the unrelentingly solemn POW film and British upper-middle class and upper class twits𖤓.
Michael Palin, ‘Escape from Stalag Luft 112B’
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Back to the real life POW escapologist Signoré Simoni. Simoni was one of more than 18,000 Italian military personnel captured by the Allies and transported to Australian POW camps, in his case assigned to the Murchison Camp # 13, near Shepparton, Victoria. Unlike the fictional Maj. Phipps’ fellow prisoners and the great majority of his fellow Italian POWs, Edgardo Simoni never content to stay put behind barbed wire and high fences paralleled the fictional Phipps in trying to escape whenever the opportunity presented itself.
Italian prisoners of war arriving at Circular Quay wharf, Sydney, 1941 (source: coasit.com.au)
Simoni’s first shot at freedom failed but undaunted he soon tried again. Swapping uniforms with an Italian private in the prison was his passport to the outside POW work detail. From there he easily managed to slip away from the Murchison guards and head for metropolitan Melbourne. Once there, he took the alias “George Scoto” and got a job selling door-to-door cosmetics (very successfully) which lasted for ten months. Afterwards, Simoni moved to Mildura in country Victoria where he found work on a farm. Here he was recaptured by Australian military police and despatched to a higher security goal in the isolated town of Hay, NSW. Simoni was not intent to accept captivity in Hay and in no time he had escaped by painstakingly filing through the bars of his cell window, becoming the only POW to escape from that supposedly escape-proof incarceration facility. Simoni then walked 300km to Bendigo where he caught a train to Melbourne. His second sojourn in Melbourne was cut short by a stroke of rotten luck when he was spotted and arrested by the same policeman who had arrested him on the previous occasion! (‘Italian POWs in Australia’ by Frank O’Rourke, Newsletter # 580, 02–07–2021, www.melbashed.com.au)✦.
Italian POWs at Myrtleford Camp (photo: Geoffrey McInnes/Aust War Memorial)
Myrtleford, Victoria, was the next POW camp (# 5) to accommodate the peripatetic Signoré Simoni. Edgardo had been an anti-fascist in Italy and had joined Mussolini’s army only after swearing allegiance to the monarchy, but in Australia he started to embrace communism which led to the authorities placing him under special surveillance. Not very successfully it seems because Simoni was still able to regularly abscond from the Myrtleford facility at night-time without much effort to moonlight as an unofficial organiser for the local tobacco sharefarmers exhorting them to agitate for better working conditions (‘Edgardo Simoni oral history interview by Dan Connell’, 06–11–1986, http://archival.sl.nsw.gov.au).
Col. Edgardo Simoni (ret.) in 1974: revisiting his travels around SE Australia
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Endnote: All in all Lt. Simoni—who earned the nickname La volpe (“the Fox”) for his war-time escapades—made 13 escape attempts in the three years he was a POW in Australian detention. At the end of the war, upon release, Simoni returned to Italy and resumed his career in the military, rising to the rank of colonel. In 1974 La volpe re-visited Australia, this time on happier terms, to retrace the steps of his fugitive odyssey around NSW and Victoria.
𖤓 the 2000 Aardman film animation Chicken Run also mines the escape from prison trope, freely parodying WWII POW movies (especially The Great Escape) by exploiting all the familiar cliches
✦ the press closely followed Simoni’s escapades in Australia as if they were tracking “Public Enemy # 1”: ‘Search For Italian’ MELBOURNE. June 10. Police and military authorities searching for Lt. Edgardo Simoni, 25, the Italian who escapedon a bicycle from a prisoner ofwar camp in Gotiburn Valley on Saturday, believe that he has crossed the Victorian border. Detectives and railway enquiry officers are checking; every interstate and country train. and interstate detectives have joined the search ~ Adelaide Advertiser, June 11 1942”
In 1975 the Republic of India annexed the small, remote Himalayan Kingdom of Sikkim. This was a sudden move on Delhi’s part but not entirely unexpected by observers outside Sikkim. For a number of years leading up to this, India had flagged its intentions, sometimes obliquely, to tighten its grip on the Himalayan micro-state. Sikkim’s ruler, the Chogyal (“god–king” or “righteous ruler”), had been under mounting pressure from forces, both external and internal, conspiring to subvert his increasingly tenuous hold on power.
Map of the Kingdom of Sikkim
The buffer state: After British rule over the Indian Sub-continent ended in 1947, the new nation of India, faced with the imposing spectre of communist China to the north, sought to shore up its northern frontier borders. The vast Himalayas provides a natural barrier to India’s north but the 64km-wide independent state of Sikkim offers several passes through the mountain range. This gateway to and from Tibet gave any hostile power (ie, China) a saloon passage into the heart of India. Thus to the Indians from the very start, Sikkim was of immense strategic importance to their national security. In 1950 Delhi bullied Sikkim into accepting a treaty favourable to India, allowing it control of the tiny kingdom’s international affairs, defence and communications, restricting Sikkim to control of its internal affairs only§. After the PRC forcibly incorporated Tibet in 1951 India closed its borders with Tibet. In 1967 Sikkim was the site of border clashes between Chinese and Indian troops in Nathu La and Cho La passes.
Nathu Pass on the Indo-Chinese frontier (credit: Nature Canvas Travel)
Clashing political agendas: While Indian designs on Sikkim intensified, internal factors also challenged the Chogyal’s rule. Chogyal’s vision for Sikkim centred around a greater independent role for the country and an enhancement of its (and his) international identity. Chogyal’s policies also tended to favour the Bhutia–Lepcha community which made them widely unpopular with other sections of society. In the early 1970s domestic opposition to the Chogyal was led by Sikkim’s chief minister Kazi Lhendup Dorjee. Opponents of the monarchy were critical of the ruler’s reluctance to initiate democratic reforms for the country. They wanted Chogyal to concentrate on internal development and increase Sikkim’s political freedom, rather than continue with his preoccupation with the kingdom’s international stature [Gupta, R. (1975). Sikkim: The Merger with India. Asian Survey, 15(9), 786–798. https://doi.org/10.2307/2643174]; ‘Letting go of Sikkim’s ghost’, Nepali Times, 03-July-2021, www.nepalitimes.com].
Chogyal of Sikkim (Palden Thondup Namgyal)
Undermining the monarchy: India played a double game in the political intrigues in Sikkim – openly supporting Dorjee’s anti-king movement while reassuring Chogyal that the country’s monarchy was not in peril. Chogyal was completely blindsided by the deception and tragically continued to believe in the goodwill of the Indian government towards his kingdom. A principal agent of the subversion was RAW (India’s secret service organisation), often working through the pro-democracy Sikkim National and State Congresses (commandeered to do India’s bidding). RAW covertly promoted public unrest within Sikkim in various ways, such as trucking in stacks of Indians to take part in supposedly Sikkimese-dominated protests against Chogyal. RAW also incited those Hindu–Sikkimese who bore a grudge against Chogyal to revolt against his regime. Similarly alienated from the king were the Nepali-speaking Sikkimese (comprising 75% of the population), leaving the Chogyal with little popular support at the time he needed it most [‘The Pain of Losing a Nation’, Sudeer Sharma, The Darjeeling Un-Limited, Sept. 2007, www.darjeeling-unlimited.com].
RAW headquarters in New Delhi
Countdown to coup: Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, fixated on the question of border securityand creating a buffer to China, was a prime mover in the push for a “permanent association”…in 1973 India made its move. Chogyal was coerced into taking part in talks with Delhi, the outcome of which was the severe curtailing of his royal powers (reducing his rule to the status of figurehead). More ominously India formally became the “protectorate” of the tiny Himalayan state. The ultimate chapter in the saga came in April 1975 when, totally unexpected by Chogyal, a 5,000-strong Indian force stormed the royal palace in Gangtok, easily overcoming the royal guards and took the king prisoner. India swiftly abolished the Sikkimese monarchy, installing Chief Minister Dorjee (nominally) in charge. A hastily-arranged referendum–for which the foreign press was banned from observing—produced a highly contentious, totally lopsided vote confirming Sikkim’s incorporation into the Indian republic as its 22nd state, described by Delhi as (giving Sikkim) “freedom within India”. India was prompted to fast-track the coup against the king because of concern that Sikkim might follow the same course as Bhutan had in 1971, becoming a member of the UN (Sharma). Beijing duly protested India’s annexation of the Himalayan micro-state.
Entrance to the Sikkim royal palace and monastery, Gangtok
Postscript: Arguments have ensued over whether the 1975 annexation was legal or not. From the Indian standpoint, the key element was the Maharaja of Sikkim joining the British-initiated Chamber of Princes (CoP) in 1920. As an “Indian princely state” Indians argue, this bound Sikkim to post-independence India’s arrangements with the princely states for incorporation. Advocates for the retention of Sikkimese sovereignty counter that Sikkim was only ever a formal member of CoP, which in any case had no executive powers to legislate [‘Did India have a right to annex Sikkim in 1975?’, Sunil Sethi, India Today: Upd. 18-Feb-2015, www.indiatoday.in].
PM Mrs Gandhi and the Chogyal: Choosing your Indian friends
Footnote: The Chogyal’s choice of wife in the early 1960s, the new Gyalmo (“Queen of Sikkim”), a young American woman named Hope Cooke, didn’t enhance the king’s popularity among many of his countrymen or in Delhi. Because of her American origins suspicions were voiced in that Cooke was a CIA agent (unsubstantiated) and was thought to be influencing the Chogyal in his stated intentions to achieve greater independence from India [‘Take-Over of Sikkim by India Is Laid To Protectorate’s Move to Loosen Tie’, Bernard Weinraub, New York Times, 28-April-1973, www.nytimes.com].
The king and queen of Sikkim (Namgyal and Cooke)
§ as the British had done in Sikkim before India gained it’s independence
The post-independence relationship of India and Pakistan has been characterised by ongoing tensions, mutual suspicions and a sequence of short wars involving the sovereign state successors to the British Raj𖤓. At the forefront of this regional disharmony has been Jammu and Kashmir (J & K), the greater part of the area controversially awarded to Hindu-dominated India in the 1947 Partition of the Subcontinent but populated by a Muslim majority.
Kargil: 8,780 ft above sea level
Advancing by stealth across the disputed boundary: The most recent of these short-lived, episodic wars occurred in 1999 in Kargil in the remote union territory of Ladakh. Faced with the frustration of India holding the dominant hand in the disputed Kashmir region and unwilling to consider any alterations to the Line of Control (LoC)𖦹, Pakistan opted for a bold if brash strategy. “Infiltrators” from the Pakistan side, crossed the LoC and took hold of Indian positions in the inhospitable glaciated terrain of Kargil, initially undetected by the Indian command. Alerted to the incursion, the Indian military unleashed a counteroffensive and over two months of fighting drove the Pakistanis back onto their side. Islamabad first sought to explain the military incursion as the work solely of Mujahideen “freedom fighters”, but this deception was quickly exposed with Pakistan paramilitary involvement discovered to be central to the military operation❖.
Kargil and Kashmir (image: insightsonindia.com)
Islamabad’s motives for the act of aggression taken by what Indian media termed “rogue army” elements, seem to have been severalfold. The strategic plan was to cut India’s communication lines in Kashmir between Srinagar and Leh. Pakistan was probably also motivated by a desire to regain lost honour for earlier military reversals at India’s hands, especially the Indian army’s 1984 seizure of Siachen Glacier and the crushing defeat in the 1971 war (Liberation of East Pakistan). Islamabad hoped that the proactive move might also prove a fillip for the flagging Pakistani insurgency movement in Kashmir [RAGHAVAN, SRINATH. Review of Dissecting the Kargil Conflict, by Peter Lavoy. Economic and Political Weekly 45, no. 44/45 (2010): 29–31. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20787524]. Essentially, Pakistan’s intent was to create a crisis in Kashmir with the aim of forcing New Delhi to sit down to negotiations and finally settle the Kashmir imbroglio.
Pakistani soldiers in snow-capped Kargil (source: au.pinterest.com)
Strategic miscalculation:The upshot for Islamabad was pretty disastrous, the status quo remained in New Delhi’s favour, strategically Pakistan failed to hold its advance position into enemy territory and found itself diplomatically isolated by its action…most of the international powers, including its ally China, criticised Pakistan for what some observers saw as its “reckless”, “adventurist”, “risk–adverse” behaviour. [Tellis, Ashley J., et al. “THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE KARGIL CRISIS.” Limited Conflicts Under the Nuclear Umbrella: Indian and Pakistani Lessons from the Kargil Crisis, 1st ed., RAND Corporation, 2001, pp. 5–28. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7249/mr1450usca.8. Accessed 15 Nov. 2024]. This generally-held perception of Pakistan resorting to intemperate action allowed India to turn the information war in the Kargil conflict into a diplomatic victory for New Delhi.
Pakistan, First Islamic state to join the nuclear club (source: Topcity–1)
Spectre of the nuclear option: While the brief Kargil War was limited to a low intensity conflict, the potential was there for it to escalate into an expanded conventional war, and most alarmingly, into a nuclear confrontation. The possibility of this happening existed because a year prior to Kargil, in 1998, Pakistan joined India as the second South Asian state to attain nuclear weapon capacity. This became more acutely critical to the international community during the war when, in response to India’s massive build-up of military arms in Kargil-Dras sector, Pakistan foreign secretary Ahmed hinted that the country might resort to using nuclear weapons. Islamabad may have only produced the nuclear card as a deterrent to an Indian counter-thrust, nonetheless Pakistan Prime Minister Sharif was clearly engaging in nuclear brinkmanship – by moving nuclear warheads towards the border (for which he was roundly rebuked by US President Clinton) [‘India and Pakistan Fought in 1999. Why Didn’t It Go Nuclear?’, Sébastien Roblin, The National Interest, 14-June-2021, www.nationalinterest.org].
Indian soldiers celebrate victory in the Kargil War (photo: business–standard.com)
No let-up for the troubled Kashmiris: Although there hasn’t been any new wars in Jammu & Kashmir since 1999, tensions and conflicts have continued virtually unabated since then. In 2019 there were troop clashes across the de facto border following Pakistani Islamist terrorist attacks. With Prime Minister Modi’s BJP Hindu nationalist regime committed to integrating J & K, an administrative rearrangement of the territory saw it lose its autonomy and be downgraded in status. Civil and political rights of the majority Muslim population have been eroded and Indian security forces are frequently accused of human rights violations. Separatist and jihadist militants continue to wage a protracted insurgency against the authorities [‘Indian Kashmir’, Freedom in the World 2024, https://freedomhouse.org].
Heavy Indian army presence in Kashmir fuelling Pakistani resentment (photo: pakistanpolitico.com)
Postscript: Atlantique IncidentAfter fighting in Kargil ceased in July 1999 there was no easing of Indo–Pakistani tensions. Just one month later the Indian airforce shot down a Pakistan navy plane in the Rann of Kutch (border land between Pakistan’s Sindh province and Western India’s Kutch district), accused of violating the former’s air space. The matter dragged out with both sides blaming each other and a failed international court appeal, leading to a further deterioration in the ruptured relationship.
Rann of Kutch, site of Atlantique Incident (Sir Creek) location of a second long-running Ind–Pak border dispute
𖤓 1947–48, 1965, 1971, 1999
𖦹 the temporary border separating the two countries in the Himalayas region
❖ in so doing it breached the Simla Agreement (1972) between the two neighbours
As a kid I developed a liking for “Our Gang” comedies, a series of American short films about a gang of poor, mainly white (but including black) children. I enjoyed the good-natured tomfoolery and minor mischief perpetrated by the juvenile gang members, particularly Spanky, Alfalfa and Buckwheat. I’m thankful that I was exposed to the “Our Gang” shorts🅐 as it pointed me towards another cinema series about the same demographic that became part of my standard viewing fodder – the Dead End Kids series of movies and its successors.
The “53rd Street Gang” in their playground
While the antics of “Our Gang” were unadulterated if sentimentalised fun, I came to prefer the more serious tone and developed storylines of the “Dead End Kids” (DEK) movies. The early movies were starkly realistic, and this was realism of the grittiest kind, rooted in the unforgiving here and now of grim slum life in America’s depression era. These kids were dirt poor, locked into a daily struggle for survival, taking every opportunity, fair or foul, to fleece or steal from anyone or anything that presented itself. At the same time their brutal experience had made them rebels with a cause – the inequities of capitalist America…impoverished slum boys who never missed a chance to decry or one-up the “better-offs” in society.
Where it started: Dead End (1937)
The Kids from Dead End: The DEK phenomena had its genesis in a 1935 Broadway play, Dead End🅑, by Sidney Kingsley, featuring a cadre of young actors which would go on to form the nucleus of the gang in the movie series: Billy Halop, Bobby Jordan, Gabriel Dell, Huntz Hall, Bernard Punsley🅒 and the Gorcey brothers, Leo and David. The play was successful, running for two years, Hollywood mega-mogul Samuel Goldwyn saw the show and was immediately impressed. Goldwyn bought the film rights and made Dead End as a United Artists feature film in 1937, co-starring the Kids alongside Humphrey Bogart. The film was a hit but the boys caused havoc during the production, crashing a truck into a soundstage, prompting an annoyed Goldwyn to unload them to Warner Brothers.
Angels With Dirty Faces: the Dead Enders plus James Cagney in a gangster melodrama (source: alchetron.com)
Warners Bros’ crime school graduates: At Warner Brothers the Dead End Kids made six features, typically in supporting roles to big stars (Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Cagney, Pat O’Brien, Anne Sheridan, John Garfield and Bogart). In They Made me a Criminal (1939) starring Garfield, the Kids don’t make an appearance until 25 minutes into the film. The Warners’ series followed the studio’s formula of serious social crime dramas with the Kids heavily involved in the plot and also lending some comedy relief (‘Dead End Kids’, www.boweryboys.bobfinnan.com). Billy Halop was acknowledged as the leader of the gang and was purportedly paid more than the other boys, leading to some bad feelings within the group. Despite the DEK success at Warners the studio was disenchanted with the group’s off-camera antics (more impromptu hell–raising) and released them from their contracts after their sixth film.
Sea Raiders (1941): emphasising the interchangeable nature of the group’s various names, Universal tended to use the double-billing, “Dead End Kids” and “Little Tough Guys”, in their advertising
Little Tough Guys: Universal decided to get in on the act, cashing in on the DEK’s appeal with its own (B–movie) series. Billing the gang as the “Little Tough Guys”, Universal made 12 features in the late 1930s–early 40s, featuring at one time or other all of the original Kids except Leo Gorcey. Shemp Howard, one of the popular “Three Stooges”, appeared in two of the LTG movies, and was acknowledged by Huntz Hall as an influence on the slapstick style of comedy that the group later developed.
East Side Kids: The Dead End Kids morphed into a new incarnation called the “East Side Kids” in a series made by Monogram Pictures. These were 22 films made as low-budget imitations of the DEK movies, initially crime melodramas with comedic overtones, but as the series evolved, the comedy angle took greater emphasis. With Halop gone by this time, Leo Gorcey and Bobby Jordan were now the gang leaders. As the series progressed, the comedy duo of wise guy Leo Gorcey and zany but dim Huntz Hall became the focus in films like Million Dollar Kid and Spooks Run Wild (a horror comedy headlined by an ageing Bela Lugosi) (www.boweryboys.bobfinnan.com). As a variation on the usual criminals that the boys routinely cross swords with, in Let’s Get Tough (1942) they find themselves this time trying to foil Nazi and Japanese saboteurs in the US. A black former child actor of the original Our Gang movies “Sunshine Sammy” Morrison and William (“Billy”) Benedict were added to the ESK retinue of scruffy working class street kids.
Spooks Gone Wild (1941): East Side Kids v Dracula
Bowery Boys: Stoogesque slapstick and streetwise Abbott and Costello In 1945 the ESK series folded and was replaced by yet another name for the team of screen performers, the “Bowery Boys”🅓. Leo Gorcey this time had an enhanced stake in the enterprise, owning 40% of the production company🅔, acting as producer and contributing to the script. Gorcey also brought his father Bernard to the films’ players. Bobby Jordan left the series again and Gabriel Dell returned. The interaction of Leo Gorcey, with his malapropism-prone utterances as “Slip”, and Hunt as dim-witted sidekick “Sash”, continued to provide the central plank of the humour. The Bowery Boys series—made by Allied Artists, successor studio to Monogram—comprised 48 movies in all. The early efforts continued the standard fare of gangster melodrama, but after “Three Stooges” director Edward Bernds started directing Gorcey and Co, the films resorted more to slapstick comedy, Three Stooges-like wordplay and occasionally to fantasy themes (‘The Bowery Boys: Anything But Routine’, Ivan G. Shreve, Jr Classic Flix, 19-Sep-2013, www.classicflix.com). Abbott and Costello’s influence is also evident, there are obvious echoes of Africa Screams in the Bowery Boys’ Jungle Gents (1954) (‘Dead End Kids’ found new life as ‘Bowery Boys’, Jim Willard, Loveland Reporter-Herald, 07-July-2018, www.reporterherald.com).
Bowery Boys Meet the Monsters (1954): several movies in the series sought to capitalise on the public’s craze for horror/monster movies
By the time the final Bowery Boys film In the Money is made in 1958, the series is looking tired, stale and frayed…only Huntz Hall and David Gorcey remain of the originals (Leo’s ongoing bouts with the demon alcohol saw his forced departure in 1956, replaced by Stanley Clements), the “Kids” were now middle-aged, hardly juvenile delinquent material, and their screen work lacking the verve and punch of earlier days.
In the Money (1958): ageing juvenile delinquents
🅐 syndicated for television in the 1960s as The Little Rascals
🅑 the “Dead End” tag came from the inscription on the road sign at the river’s edge in the original, 1937 film
🅒 Punsly was the odd one out among the “young punk” band of actors, he stayed in the DEK/ESK series only till 1942 (notching up 19 films) before leaving show biz for good to become a successful physician (later chief of staff at a private hospital in LA)
🅓 the Bowery is a street and neighbourhood in Lower Manhattan, NYC
The lethal force of the Covid-19 outbreak unleashed on the world in 2020 has killed to date in excess of seven million people globally (worldometers.info). In addition to this great toll of human life the pandemic and the ensuing commercial lockdown had a deadly effect on struggling businesses. One such victim is Debenhams plc, a retailing national institution with a continuous history centuries old. The British high street retailer went into liquidation and irrevocably out of business in May 2021, drawing the curtains on a trading lifespan extending back nearly 243 years.
Debenhams: Oxford Street (London) flagship store (photo: Debenhams plc)
Debenhams, the world’s oldest department store, was an iconic brand with a trusted reputation, a staple for household goods, beauty brands and clothing. The department store titan was bought out of administration by online fashion retailer Boohoo for £55m with the purpose of its famous brand being reinvented as an online bazaar – which is an ironic outcome given that Debenhams’ reluctance to refocus its sales strategies around the online platform (see below ).
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Debenhams stores across the UK
Debenhams was founded by William Clark in 1778 as a drapers’ store in Wigmore Street, London. In 1813 Clark partnered with investor William Debenham, trading as Clark and Debenham in London and Cheltenham. After Clark retired Debenham partnered with Clement Freebody in 1851 (under the name Debenham and Freebody). Into the 20th century the company was still in the hands of William Debenham’s descendants and in 1920 acquired upmarket Knightsbridge department store Harvey Nichols. Debenhams experienced a business crisis in the late 1920s involving its subsidiary Drapery Trust, the fallout of which forced then owner Ernest Debenham to sever his family’s connections with the retail chain that still bears his name…as a result the company went public.
Era of expansion: The 1930s and 40s saw considerable expansion for Debenhams, becoming the biggest department store chain in the UK by 1948, with takeovers in several British cities (in 1950 there were 110 stores in the UK). In the 1970s Debenhams found itself in more volatile waters, having to fight off takeover attempts, culminating in it being acquired by the Burton Group in 1985 (subsequently the two demerged in 1998). From the 1990s the retail company took on an international profile with stores opening in 18 countries. Debenhams stores spread to Ireland as well as acquiring the Danish department store chain Magasin du Nord, plus a raft of widespread franchises encompassing the Middle East, Asia, Malta, Russia, Australia and elsewhere.
Debenhams’ Belfast (NI) store: closing sale (photo: news.com.au)
Profits decline while debts inflate: The Covid pandemic put the shutters on Debenhams’ retail existence but the decline of the household name in British retailing can be traced to business failures and wrong strategies over the preceding two decades. The decline had been precipitous, in 2016 the 166–store strong chain had been worth £900m, just three years on, this had plummeted to £20m. Retail analysts attribute Debenhams’ demise in part to its failure to read the future, to embrace change in consumer preferences resulting from the advent of the iPhone and online shopping. Simon Reynolds, a branding consultant, skewers management for neglect of the company’s historic brand – missing in Debenhams was a “clear brand proposition for its customers…it couldn’t demonstrate what made it different to its competitors and it lacked relevance to younger customers”. Debenhams’ expansion plans in 2006, its stated intention to double the then 120 stores it operated𖤓, added an additional cost burden§ which failed to be offset by a sales revenue boost (sales remained static in fact). This down-spiralling trend, according to retail consultant Richard Hyman, demonstrated that Debenhams had lost its relevance in the competitive retail environment (‘Debenhams: Three things that went wrong’, Rebecca Marston, BBC News, 09-April-2019, www.bbc.com). The end was nigh.
𖤓 in 2017 when it should have been closing underperforming stores, and just one year before a record loss toppled Debenhams into administration, the company inexplicably was still opening new stores! Poor store placement was a negating factor as well, opening new stores in small population areas like Stevenage or too close to existing Debenham stores was symptomatic of the injudicious path taken by the retailer (‘One ‘reckless’ decision that killed UK retail giant Debenhams’, Benedict Brook, News.com.au, 21-May-2021, www.news.com.au)
§ a combination of prime-site large properties, big rents and long leases, high rates and large staffing needs
