I OFTEN find that the middle of the year, like the end of the year, is a good time to take stock. And that’s just what I did recently, when I took a walk through Radnor Park.

Work has now begun on the all-weather sports pitch in Radnor Street. I am proud that I was able to secure £200K of capital funding in the last Labour budget in 2017 to pay for this much-needed facility for local young people along with the playpark, which opened last year.

I moved to Radnor Park in 1963 at the age of five. At that time, the damage of the Blitz was still all around us. The sports pitch, known as “The Pen”, seemed to arise spontaneously among the ruins of Radnor Street.

My mother still tells me stories of the horrors of the bombing in the Blitz during the Second World War but, as a child, I innocently played among the ruins made by the German bombs.

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It would well behove our new Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, to reflect upon the horrors of war. Even better would be for him to reflect upon the benefits of three generations of peace in Western Europe. This is the true value of the European Union – not a trade deal, not any kind of economic benefit, but peace itself, which is priceless.

However, at a local level, I would point to two major assets funded by the EU in our area: the district heating system in Radnor Park and Centre81.

But populist demagogues like Johnson, US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin have no such values – only egotism and tyranny.

It is time to call them by their right names – they are fascists. Just like the fascists Bankies resisted 78 years ago.

It is time for us all to rise up against this fascist government together, whether we call ourselves nationalists, liberals or socialists, and tell them that we will not throw away the precious gifts of international cooperation and peace.

Nor will we be dictated to by anti-democratic forces, as this new government obviously is.

Theirs is not the way forward. The true way forward is through peace, internationalism, and equality.