When I was at school in the 60s we used to store the props for school plays in the bomb shelter - not a leftover from the Second World War, but a purpose-built hardened bunker as demanded by the planning authority.
For kids the Cold War was a scary time - never knowing when the four minute warning would sound - but for a generation including my father, it was also deeply perplexing.
They had fought a war so their children would be never hear an air raid siren or the crunch of foreign jackboots on South London pavements, yet military annihalation seemed just round the corner.
At least, they would say, when the East/West conflict is over, then we will be safe.
Now look where we are - for at least the fifth time since the Cold War ended, it looks like British war drums could beat again, this time in Iraq. Again, the labour movement is debating the rights and wrongs of war in a far-off land.
There are of course other things to write about this month - great strides are being made for our members. Agency workers for example are being given real status for the first time.
But the present instability in the world raises a nagging question - what do we tell the kids?
Mine, I hope, will never have to ask: "what did you do in the war Daddy?". They may though wonder what I did in Trafalgar, Red Lion, and Grosvenor Squares, or for that matter, the High Roads of Wapping and Willesden.
(Don't worry - if you can't remember them you weren't there, although there are BECTU members who went to them all.)
In 1991 the union joined the "no blood for oil" campaign against the war in Kuwait and Iraq.
By the mid-90s, as the gruesome collapse of Yugoslavia gained pace, the word "peacekeeping" seemed to justify the use of force, and when Kosovo's turn came we joined most of the labour movement in a dignified silence, except when the US smart-bombed the Serbian TV HQ.
The campaign against Afghanistan, to many of us, seemed remarkably mild compared to what might have happened after 11 September, and if you stretched the rules of evidence, there might well have been a just cause.
But now, as the B52s reload their bomb racks, it is time to ask whether military action against Iraq is going to make the world a safer place.
Apart from doing nothing to solve a decade of destitution thanks to trade sanctions, any assault on Iraq is bound to share the shortcomings of every other campaign we have seen since 1991.
Carpet bombing, for instance, kills innocent people - often thousands of them. An airforce that can flatten its friends by dropping food parcels from 100 feet, is capable of indiscriminate havoc from five miles higher thanks to wind drift, navigation problems, and dodgy intelligence.
Then there is the legacy left on the rare occasions that our military eventually withdraw. Take Kuwait, where there was no doubt about the illegal Iraqi invasion justifying military action. As soon as Iraq was rebuffed and the foreign troops left, the country reverted to being a US petrol pump, with a nodding donkey of a democracy. Nor do we ever hear a word about the repressive, anti-women, regime of our great ally in that campaign, Saudi Arabia.
Where was the kind of political leadership that rebuilt Europe after the last World War?
As for the right of the US and others to act as the world's policemen - well we do seem a bit selective about when and where we dispense justice. While we cheered on the UN peacekeepers in Bosnia and Croatia, there were levels of brutality and bloodshed in African conflicts that made Balkan bigots, and even the Taliban, look like good neighbours. Yet hardly a single blue helmet appeared on that troubled continent.
None of these considerations seems to weigh heavily on President, or do I mean Constable, Bush.
Perhaps he really does believe that war can be fought lone-ranger fashion - sent a heavily-armed Tonto off to right injustices, and have him back at the homestead before the first commercial break. Or it may just be the influence of White House advisors who are so bellicose and so right-wing that they even scare members of their own Grand Old Party, and would need no make-up to play evil wizards in panto.
Instead of hard evidence to justify an Iraqi adventure, they offer "reason to believe" that Saddam's government - undoubtedly evil and corrupt - is planning to unlease mass destruction on us. It's a phrase that belongs to plodding members of regional crime squads in TV cop shows - not a phrase that should launch an unprovoked regional war.
One of the few things that prevents Constable Bush from being exposed as the world's judge, jury, and executioner rolled into one, is the veil of decency offered by UK support for his initiatives.
Despite our special relationship with the US, our government needs to decide whether Bush is the upstanding honest policeman he claims, or just another bent copper.
Tony Lennon
April 2002
