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From Our Own Correspondent
I Never Got to Florence
00:27:49
Correspondents' stories. Few British go to the Italian seaside town of Alassio these -...
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You have downloaded from our own correspondent.
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This edition is the latest one broadcast
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on BBC Radio 4, and here to
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introduce it is Kate Ady.
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Hello. Today, desperate to leave, families fleeing as the jihadists from ISIS set their sights on Baghdad, there's mounting industrial discord in France and worrying times for coffee producers in Brazil. Perhaps that's why one of them thinks nothing of drinking 30 cups a day. We find out why Enid Blyton's no longer required reading. Under the palms on the Italian Riviera. And you'll have heard of Chinatown, Little Italy as well. But what was it which wiped Little Germany off the map of New York City? Fighting's continuing this morning around the strategic northwestern Iraqi city of Tal Afar, where Islamist rebels have been battling pro government forces since Monday. Militants from the Sunni jihadi group ISIS are trying to take control of the city, which lies on an important route to Syria. Elsewhere, there's ongoing fighting in the city of Baiji, where the insurgents have been besieging Iraq's biggest oil refinery. They say they will march on the capital, Baghdad. Richard Galpin, who's there, says people have become increasingly concerned, not just about the advance of isis, but also about the men the government hopes will defend the city.
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We agreed to meet our contact on the side of a major highway which runs from Baghdad to Baquba, a city just an hour's drive from the capital. We stopped near a grimy workshop on the barren northern edge of Baghdad, parking our armoured cars close together to shield us in case of attack. Our contact, a man called Ali, was a journalist from Bakuba, and we wanted to hear it firsthand what had been happening inside the city. And over the past few days. He painted a grim picture. The Islamist extremists from ISIS and other Sunni militants had been attacking the western flank of the city, at one point briefly taking control of several districts. He feared they had sleeper cells in the area and would soon attempt a move on the city center, which he said would lead to a bloodbath. Population is a mix of Sunni and Shiite Muslims. As in so many other cities, towns and villages in the northern provinces, the approach of the jihadists, whose reputation for brutality surpasses all, sparked panic, and hundreds of families have left in their place. Bakuba is now filled with Shiite militiamen helping the regular army defend the city. I asked our contact what would happen if eventually Bakuba was were to fall to the extremists. Then he said they would move on Baghdad from the north, the east and the west, leaving only the southern part of the city open so the Shiite population could flee. It is a simple fact that after Baquba, there are no more towns or cities before the capital. It's a fast road straight into Baghdad. It's also true that the jihadists control the city of Fallujah, just to the west of Baghdad. They're now trying to push forward along another major highway from the northwest. In the capital itself, some people have already decided it's time to pack their bags and leave. Outside a busy travel agency in the city center, a local television journalist told us he was desperate to get on a plane out of Iraq to anywhere. But he said there were no tickets or all the flights were full and he needs to escape quickly. On his mobile phone, he showed us photographs of him dressed in full Iraqi army uniform. He'd worn this while presenting his television show recently, believing it was his duty to show his support for the armed forces at this critical time, particularly after the country's most senior Shiite religious leader, the Grand Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani, had appealed to everyone to fight in defense of the country. But a few days after the program was broadcast, he started receiving threatening phone calls. He was warned he'd be killed if he did not leave the country within days, but he can't. And he believes those threatening him know where he lives. Although he's not sure who made the phone calls. It's likely to have been Sunni extremists who already have a significant presence in the city, frequently carrying out bombings and shootings targeting the security forces and the majority Shiite population. But the rising tensions in this city are not just about fears of the Sunni extremists already embedded here or those led by isis, whose recent offensive has now brought them close to the capital. It's also about what the Shiite dominated government has done in response to the jihadist threat. Powerful Shiite militias, some accused of carrying out atrocities in recent years, are now reappearing. We followed one militia as it put on a show of force in Baghdad last weekend. Men with an array of powerful weapons speeding through the streets in the convoy of vehicles. Although they claimed to have Sunni Muslims and Christians in their ranks, it seemed most were Shiites. Outside the travel agency, another man was having huge difficulty getting a flight to Turkey for himself, his wife, and three children. He'd been told he'd have to pay £1,500 per ticket. He, too, had been threatened several times and likewise does not know who was responsible. But it was one of the militias he thought, either Sunni or Shia. He said they'd been threatening everyone. The militias were all murderers and thieves, he said, who'd been given weapons by the authorities and were allowed to kill. It is a measure of the desperation of the government that it is now resorting to these irregular forces to stop the jihadists reaching Baghdad.
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Richard Galpin. Pressure continues to pile up on the French President, Francois Hollande. Air traffic controllers are to strike from Monday. This follows a 10 day rail protest which has brought widespread disruption and much critical comment about the President and his plans to energise his country's stagnant economy. Increasingly, France finds itself portrayed as the sick man of Europe. Businesses are closing down, unemployment's growing. For Mr. Hollande, the struggle to remain a credible leader just seems to get harder. And according to Hugh Scofield in Paris, he's not being helped by by some of the decisions being made in his public relations department.
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I wonder how many of you have heard of the French artist Pierre Soulage? Probably not a lot. Me, I've lived here nearly 20 years and I was only vaguely aware of the man. Apparently, though he's the world's greatest living painter. We have that on the authority of none other than President Francois Hollande, who was down in the southern town of Rodez the other day opening a new museum to, to display the master's oeuvre. One other rather important thing you need to know about Pierre Soulage, who incidentally is now in his mid-90s. He only ever paints in one colour and that colour is black. Well, that's not entirely true. At one point he did occasionally use some blue, but then he evidently decided that was a concession too far towards chromatic convention. So since 1979, everything he's done has been in variations of sable, coal, pitch and jet, or as he calls it, ultra black. I think the idea is that if you look beyond the stripes and swirls of the all consuming black, you emerge in a new artistic world and start seeing light in the black. Anyway, far be it from me to cast judgment on a painter who apparently commands large sums in the art galleries of New York. What intrigued me was the French President's decision to pay such public and extravagant homage to a man whose existence, I can assure you, most French people, let alone the rest of us who French have barely registered. It speaks volumes about the nature of power and culture and elitism in France that the President can have imagined that a thousand mile round trip to pay court to this master of the Noir was a worthwhile PR event. Of course, he justified it by describing Soulage as a beacon of French civilization, a luminous example of how France still counts in the world. But of course, the irony is that in fact, France Soulage represents the exact opposite. Outside of a small intellectual coterie, he's unknown in the world. And even inside France, most people aren't going to take it simply on the word of the President that their painter is the best there is and therefore they should all be proud. Most people are going to look at the agglomerations of black streaks and striations and frankly, they're going to have a laugh. I'm not saying they are right to laugh at the paintings. For all I know, these are genuinely innovative, challenging ways of analyzing modern reality. What I am saying is that most people, the non elite, aren't going to get it. And it's with most people, the voters, that Francois Hollande and the rest of the Paris political elite have long since parted ways. It's hard to exaggerate the sullen, rancorous, bitter atmosphere in France today. Just this week, in addition to the regular backdrop of economic misery, we've had a few extras to darken the mood even further. A strike by railway workers. Yes, them again. The ones that can retire at 50 over some incomprehensible reform of the SNCF. Bad enough, but this time it coincides with the start of the baccalaureate. So the poor teenagers have the extra worry of not knowing if they'll make it to the exam hall in time. And now the intermitants are back on the streets. These are the workers in the arts, whose highly favourable benefit system has accumulated billions of euros of debt and accounts for fully a third of the entire annual deficit in the unemployment budget. They're threatening to shut down the summer art season if their privileges are tampered with. Personally, I wouldn't care two hoots if they did shut down the summer festivals. It's a bit like Pierre Soulage. The French like to think it's all part of the country's cultural re on the mort, shining out like a beacon, and that the whole world is watching them jealously agog. But are they? Have you ever heard of the Uzez dance festival? Or the annual actors Spring of Montpellier? Out of darkness there comes the light, quipped Francois Hollande as he looked around the funereal canvases of the world's greatest living artist. One thing about the President, he does have a sense of humor. He was drawing a parallel. But between the art and his own misfortunes and making a little joke. The trouble is that in France these days, no one feels the slightest inclination to laugh.
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And that's Hugh Scofield in Paris. We all know that there's an awful lot of coffee in Brazil. Trouble is, the recent rainy season didn't really happen. So coffee prices have gone through the roof. But despite getting more money for the beans they produce, farmers in the world's biggest coffee producing nation are worried that their crops been so damaged they could face problems for years to come. Katie Watson's been out to Brazil's coffee growing region, where she spoke to farmers and learned more than she ever thought possible about the beleaguered bean at the heart of the business.
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Brazil is famous for its football, samba and coffee. Yes, it's a little cliched, but while the World Cup's on, certainly no one doubts they love the beautiful game here. Samba too. Of course. Every time Brazil scores, the celebrations spill out onto the streets. But as someone who loves her coffee, I wasn't quite sure what to expect. When I came to Brazil, I knew the country produced a third of the world's coffee. But just because they grow the stuff doesn't always mean they're good at drinking it too. But right from the start, I was pleasantly surprised. Or relieved is probably a better word. Whenever you meet a Brazilian, you're guaranteed to be offered a cafesinho, a small, strong, black coffee. It's polite to say yes, unless it's the fifth meeting of the afternoon and you want a decent night's sleep. The process of coffee drinking is positively encouraged. Even our office coffee machine is impressive. My Brazilian colleague proudly told me on my first week that Sao Paulo was the only BBC bureau with 100% Arabica coffee beans. So that put my mind at rest. Brazilians like their coffee, and that makes me like Brazilians. But coffee isn't just a morning ritual for me, it's also become an important story. The rainy season this year didn't deliver. January and February were the driest in decades. And that's had a knock on effect for thousands of producers. I travelled to coffee country to see for myself. I visited a small town called Espiritu Santo do Pinao, on the border of so Paulo state and Minas de Reis, the country's biggest coffee producing region. The town runs on caffeine, with many of the residents working in the industry. There I met Diogo, one of the farmers who showed me his fields, miles of rolling hills. It was a beautiful sight, but the coffee bushes were limp, their leaves just crying out for water. Diogo showed me how the lack of rain had badly damaged the crops dried. Black cherries hung on the bushes and inside them were shrivelled beans, no good for anything. But it's not just this year that's a concern, Diogo told me. It's next year too. The lack of rain stunted the trees growth that could mean fewer and smaller beans in next year's harvest. It's a worrying time for farmers. I spent a few hours talking to producers and watching the coffee pickers who've been brought in to harvest the beans. It's a tough job and very labor intensive as the people in the fields strip the branches of their beans and bag them up. On my way back, I took a trip to the co operative. Inside there was a laboratory named after Ernesto Illy, the son of the founder of the famous Italian Coffee Company. Mr. Illy came here to source coffee for his espressos, and people say he had a huge impact on the local industry. In the lab were several men in white coats examining beans brought in by the farmers. At a sniff, they can tell if they're good beans or bad. At a glance, they know what size they are without even measuring them. This year, they're seeing far more damaged beans pass under their noses. Their quality control work is needed more than ever. And while the men in lab coats analysed the quality of the raw bean, experts in the room next door were working on the next stage. The making a very loud noise while they were at it. These people are known as cuppers or coffee tasters. Eduardo is one of them, and he spends all day, every day, sipping coffee. For a coffee fanatic, he says, it's the best job in the world. It's a bit like wine tasting. Take a big breath, slurp the coffee loudly, spit it out and move on to the next cup. From that split second slurp, Eduardo can work out which beans go to which clients. The Russians, he says, are very particular about their coffee, as are the Scandinavians. Chile and Argentina, on the other hand, ask for lower quality beans. As Eduardo says, they may be able to produce good wine, but their taste in coffee isn't quite as refined. Coffee is the lifeblood of Espiritu Santo do Pinao. And Alexandre, who heads up the co operative, demonstrated that to a tea. He told me a story about when he went to the doctors for a checkup and he was asked how many cups of coffee he had a day. And his response was nothing unusual, just the normal amount. And what's normal? The doctor asked. Oh, 25, 30 cups, you know. The doctor looked aghast. Even by Brazilian standards, that was a tad excessive. But it just goes to show that the passion here is as much about the coffee as it is about football and samba.
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And that was Katie Watson. Now there are places along the French and Italian Riviera well known to the British visitor. One thinks perhaps of Nice, Cannes. Saint Tropez, Portofino. The Italian resort of Alassio is rather less celebrated. Come to think of it. I went there when I was 13. But if most English speaking people have heard of it at all, it might be because of a piece of music of the same name by Edward Elgar. More than a century ago. The composer spent several weeks there and his wonderfully sunny overture called Alassio, or In the south, was the result. Today the flow of British visitors is down to the merest trickle. But as Vincent Dowd has been discovering, one of the facilities laid on for the tourists of Elgar's era remains today.
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In modern tourism, it's not enough to have a good climate and the Mediterranean shuffling its endless cobalt blue beside your beaches. Even Alassio's quick and convenient rail links from Nice down to Genoa draw in few non Italians these days. Today, the attractive seaside town in Liguria is not on the international travel industry a list. But it used to be. When Edward and Alice Elgar alighted here in December 1903, the couple would have heard English voices all around them. In late Victorian and Edwardian times, Alassio, like other resorts on the Italian Riviera, was a place to recuperate and to escape the cold north for the winter. Even then, the town's extraordinary English language library was well established that 136 years after it was founded, it still opens its doors four afternoons a week is largely now the work of one remarkably dedicated woman, Jacqueline Rossidoni. Born Jacqueline Poole in London, she came to Alassio almost by accident in 1959. She was 19 and stopping off briefly before going on to Florence. But she fell in love with a local plumber. They married and they've been here ever since. She hasn't been back to England, she tells me, for 35 years. Jacqueline unlocks the heavy doors and we enter the quiet of a building constructed as an art gallery, but which resembles a small Edwardian church. The walls are covered now with shelves and there are aisles of books, some 18,000 of them, carefully arranged by subject and available for loan without charge. Jacqueline settles into the librarian's chair, occupied unpaid for 27 years. Even in her time, she recalls, an Anglican vicar would sometimes come down from Genoa to hold services, but the congregation became too small after that. If a special service was required, a vicar had to be persuaded. Down from Nice. Jacqueline smiles ruefully. Generally that meant a funeral. Today the permanent British community, once many hundreds, is about fifteen, with perhaps the same number again resident part of the year. The town's mayor arrives to say hello. These days, in an act of huge civic generosity, it's the town which pays the bills. The mayor tells me the library had become part of Alassio life. It's not easy to find the money, but no one could bear to see it close. The mayor goes, and we inspect the shelves behind us. It's clear parts of the stock have been there since before the Second World War. Rows and rows of faded spines provide a curious snapshot of what appealed to the Alassio English of the 1920s and 30s. A few of the authors remain familiar, such as P.G. wodehouse or Somerset Maugham, but I ask Jacqueline if people really now take out the works of Mrs. Belloc Lowndes or the Abbot's Heel by Neil Bell. No, she says, some of those haven't been issued in all the years she's been here. There is, she admits, the odd day in winter when no one comes in at all, and she wonders if she can carry on. But the next day there'll be eight or 10 people, and she decides she can't possibly let the library close. Jacqueline shows me the children's section, but admits few young people these days take an interest in Enid Blyton or the tales of RM Ballantyne. So now Roald Dahl and Terry Pratchett feature too, and paperback thrillers for the grown ups. The COVID of 50 Shades of Grey would have shocked or baffled readers in the 1870s. Some of the new books Jacqueline buys, others are donated. Alassio's honorary librarian offers to walk me back to the station, but we make a small diversion to see the Villa Giovanni, where Edward Elgar stayed all those years ago. In fact, Jacqueline Rossadoni tells me, the Elgars were disappointed by the weather. It was very rainy that winter, and they went back to London early, never to return. Jacqueline's stay in alassio has lasted 55 years so far. It was supposed to be just a few days, she says, but it became my life. How can you tell how things will turn out as we part? She adds, and I never got to Florence, not ever. Everything I wanted was here.
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Vincent Dowd by the seaside in Italy across the Atlantic, everybody's heard of Little Italy. In New York Chinatown as well. Well, but what about Little Germany? It did once exist, but then vanished. One of the theories is that a disaster exactly 110 years ago pushed it into extinction. There was so much grief and rancour that the community disintegrated and dispersed. The anniversary this past week has brought fresh attention to those historic links between Germany and the United States. Steve Evans used to be our man in New York. Now he's in Berlin.
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When I lived on the Lower east side in Manhattan, I was sort of aware that there had been a German presence there. Above a doorway, I spotted the words Einig Kaitmach Stark Unity makes strength engraved in the stone lintel above a door and Freie Bibliothek above another. But it wasn't obvious. Certainly nothing like Little Italy or Chinatown. Then when I moved to Germany, the connection became clear. The apartment in which I live in Berlin today could have been built by the same people who built the one I lived in on East 11th Street. Five storeys, with the letterboxes just inside the door and a central stairwell like an echo chamber, high ceilings. New York imported the German system of living, not to mention German food. Think of hamburgers and frankfurters. A Berlin bouletta is a burger by any other name, an American beer brewed by Anheuser and Busch and Schlitz. But this past week there's been another, more sombre connection. On June 15, 1904, exactly 110 years ago, New York's biggest loss of life until September 11, 2001, occurred. More than a thousand members of the German community in what was then called Klein Deutschland died when a pleasure trip turned to tragedy. For its 17th annual picnic, St. Mark's Lutheran Church on the Lower east side had chartered a paddleship, the General Slocum, to cruise up the east river to Long island where the trippers would relax and have fun. But as the three decked wooden vessel sailed past 81st Street, a fire started below deck in a lamp room full of oily rags. According to reports later, Captain William Vans Schaick initially disbelieved the alarm raised by a 12 year old boy. When he did finally realize that there was a fire, he continued in the belief that the blaze could be contained. As it became obvious to the passengers that it couldn't, some of them jumped into the water and drowned. The ship's lifeboats were in poor repair, fire hoses were rotten. Reports afterwards said that mothers put life belts on children and lowered them into the water to see them drown in the swift current. All told, 1021 people drowned or died in the fire. The account of the disaster in the New York Times reminds me of the way September 11, 2001 unfolded, with initially empty hospitals filling to beyond capacity. Through the day, the reverberations continued in Kleindeutschland, the area around what's now known as Alphabet City because of its avenues A, B, C and D. A thoroughly German area then. At one stage, New York was the world's third biggest German speaking city, exceeded only by Berlin and Vienna. And people stuck together Prussians in one ward, Bavarians in another. Hundreds of families in this tight community were bereaved. And after the disaster, the number of suicides rose. There were rows about the relief fund, again to be echoed after 9 11. A vibrant community confident enough to dress up in Sunday best and hire a boat to go on an annual picnic became downbeat and depressed. The magnet which kept people together had lost its power. It's also true that the First World War meant that German communities made themselves invisible if they could. Because of the two disasters, Kleindeutschland disappeared. But there is one other trace of it left today in Tompkins Square park, once at the heart of Kleindeutschland, there is the Slocum Memorial fountain, dedicated in 1906 and donated by the Sympathy Society of German Ladies. It's made of pink Tennessee marble and depicts two children looking out to sea. It is a memorial to the dead of that day, of course, but I think now from my home in Berlin, that it's also a tribute to. To the great contribution Germans made to the making of America.
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Steve Evans on the ties between Germany and the usa. Let's hope they don't become strained when their footballers face each other next week at the World Cup. There'll be more from reporters far and wide on Thursday and Saturday of next week. Do join us. Goodbye.