Porter’s Pensées

I was intending to post a comment on a widely quoted statement of Theresa May’s at Prime Minister’s Question Time a few days ago, but have since thought better of it. She was reported to have shouted over to Jeremy Corbyn: ‘We will never allow you to rule!’; which, for someone who has studied Establishment (including Secret Service) plots to undermine Labour governments in the 1920s and the 1960s by subversive means (see Robin Ramsay, Smear, 1992), struck me as reminiscent and somewhat menacing.

Anxious however, as any historian should be, to check my facts, I looked in Hansard and on Youtube for the offending words, and couldn’t find them. The nearest was her telling Corbyn, at the same PMQs: ‘We will never let it happen’; but referring, quite clearly, to letting the national debt rise while the Conservatives were in power. That’s an entirely different thing. A discussion on Facebook revealed that others had taken this the wrong way too.

It is, to be fair, in line with May’s authoritarian tendencies: viz her career at the Home Office. But it seems in fact – and unless anyone can come up with another reliable source – to be an example of ‘Fake News’; which we Leftists are always accusing the Right of making up for propaganda purposes, but in this case is either an invention or – at best – a mistake, by someone on the Left. Warning: don’t believe something just because you want to. That way lies Trumpery.

Kajsa tells me – back here in Sweden – that the Sverigedemokraterna (right-wing anti-immigration party, with neo-Fascist historical roots) are trying to make themselves look more ‘moderate’ and respectable by taking on the defence of ‘Christianity’ as one of their policies. There’s already a Swedish Christian Democratic party, but that’s in decline, so I suppose the SDs are hoping to pick up some of its supporters.

I was brought up a Christian of the ‘gentle Jesus’ kind, and so can never understand Christianity’s being hitched to hateful right-wing causes. But then of course, politically speaking, there are two kinds of Christian: those who believe in its ethic and wish that to inform political events; and those to whom Christianity is simply a species of tribe, determining one’s identity and loyalty. I imagine that Theresa May’s, learned at her vicar father’s knee, must be of the latter kind. I certainly don’t recognise it from my childhood.

The scandalous traducing of Jeremy Corbyn by almost the whole of the British press – including even the Guardian – is widely acknowledged. To an extent it may have been counter-productive, with Corbyn’s principled refusal to respond in kind impressing many waverers.

Yesterday I attended a memorial service for an old college friend who went on to become a financial journalist, in the ‘journalist’s church’, St Bride’s Fleet Street: one of Wren’s finest. I looked there for any signs of Christian contrition, for its worshippers’ persecution of Jeremy. Nothing, of course; until we came to the second hymn, ‘He who would valiant be’: whose second verse, I thought, could easily be taken to refer to followers of our new ‘JC’.

Who so beset him round With dismal stories,

Do but themselves confound – His strength the more is.

No foes shall stay his might, Though he with giants fight:

He will make good his right To be a pilgrim.

‘Who so beset him round with dismal stories.’ The modern press, surely? I glanced around, but no-one else seemed to be catching on. I held back my instinct to start chanting ‘Hey, Je-re-my Cor-byn!’ It wouldn’t have gone with my Cambridge college tie; or, of course,with the dignity of the occasion.

Afterwards we adjourned to ‘the journalist’s pub’, the Humble Grape – better attended normally, I imagine, than the nearby church. I met dozens of City journalists there, affable and friendly – I wouldn’t have expected any less of dear Chris’s old friends – but seemingly oblivious of the upheaval that is threatening to pull their whole late-capitalist world down. (?!)

Which is symbolised, of course, by the tall blackened remains of Grenfell Tower in North Kensington, which I saw on my way in from nearby Shepherd’s Bush. We’ve all seen the pictures, but believe me it looks even more terrible and moving in real life. Of course the residents’ wishes should be paramount here; but I’m still rather wedded to my original idea: that a Corbyn government preserve it as it is, as a fitting monument to neo-liberalism.

I’m on my way back to Sweden, where I’m sure they’ll quiz me on all the nonsense they read about daily from the UK. Several press commentators have remarked on how low Brexit, May, Boris and the rest have dragged Britain’s reputation down abroad, in much the same way as Trump has done for the USA. Whether that matters or not, or whether it’s a fair judgment on us, are matters of opinion. But it’s also my experience on the Continent, for what it’s worth.

According to one of the regular commentators on this blog, that’s not very much. He’s been bombarding me with insults for about a month now; his last one (this morning) calls me a ‘pompous prat’. Well, I may be; but my main objection to his contributions is that he grossly misunderstands and distorts what I write, which is of course far more wounding to a serious author than ‘sticks and stones’. I won’t go into details, and haven’t done so with him – mainly because his comments are pseudonymous (he calls himself ‘TB’), and I’ve made it a rule never to reply to anonymous communications. What has become of the days when anonymous letters were regarded as beneath contempt, and indeed deeply un-British, by respectable folk? (See my writings on Victorian ‘secrecy’.) Nowadays the blogosphere is full of these; which is another thing, I think, dragging our nation down.

Apart from this, it’s unfair. I know nothing about him, or where he ‘comes from’ (Google’s no help); whereas he can find out anything he likes about me. Indeed, in his case ‘where I come from’ appears to be the main or even the only reason for his hostility. He knows I’m an (ex-) academic, and so attributes to me all kinds of attitudes and views which he assumes must spring from that – arrogance, elitism, contempt for ordinary people – in the face of what I actually write. (He almost never addresses my arguments.) I’ve always been scrupulous, in the Prefaces to my books for example, to be open about the personal and institutional background factors that might inform my views – and also about my struggles against them: against Cambridge, for example. That’s in the interests of ‘full disclosure’. I’m now beginning to wonder whether this was a good idea.

Out of fairness to him, I’ve always allowed TB’s vitriolic comments to appear beneath my posts – I could censor them out if I wanted – and have assumed that any of my followers who bother to read them will immediately see how ludicrous they are, without my needing to respond. TB will probably regard that as ‘pompous’ too.

According to a recent poll, 60% of British citizens would like to keep or retrieve their European citizenship after Brexit, even at the cost of – say – £400 a year. (https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jul/01/poll-european-eu-rights-brexit.) That will include me, if my dual Swedish citizenship doesn’t come through. I really do feel angry at the way I have been robbed of my European identity by the Brexiteers. Surely this should be a matter of individual choice?

I wonder what individual EU citizenship would involve? Obviously the right to move freely and work in the EU, without special permits or dispensation. Probably the duty of paying taxes abroad. The right to vote in foreign elections? At present, as an EU citizen living in Sweden, I vote in local and European elections, but not for the national parliament. Health care? I’m entitled to that now in Sweden, but this will stop, I guess, after Brexit kicks in. Military service, for younger people? The right to be defended and represented by European embassies in other parts of the world? And would we need to permit EU citizens to buy British citizenship on the same terms, to even things up?

Anyway: surely this way of sharing or splitting one’s national identity among several countries is a good thing, and an acknowledgment of how the world is moving just now. I’m sure there are many like me who feel British (or whatever), but not exclusively; who have other identities as well as their narrow passport or ‘blood’ one, which they feel is far too limiting for them. That’s partly due to ‘globalisation’, and the bad odour into which ‘nationalism’ has fallen in liberal quarters; as well as to the fact that ‘nationality’ can no longer adequately contain or define one’s identity on its own. Most countries of Europe, as well as the USA, are divided between at least two diametrically opposed versions of the local nationality, each of which claims the exclusive right to it: Republican-Democrat, or Trumpist-Sandersist; Conservative-Labour, or UKIP-Corbynista…, all claiming their superior ‘patriotism’ over the others. National identities are not fit for purpose any more. They don’t tell you anything.

So why not allow people formally to choose their own mix of identities, with the relevant passports provided? I hope to be British-Swedish soon, which will more accurately reflect who I feel I am in terms of nationality. (Of course, like everyone else, I have other identities too.) Given even greater choice, I’d probably want to add a couple of others too. Irish? Australian? But that’s a lot of 400 poundses. British-Swedish-EU will do for now.

In many countries History is taught in order (partly) to inculcate patriotism. This has meant prioritising one’s own country’s history over others’, and in some cases teaching and learning one’s own history alone. I’ve always been proud that History teaching in British schools and universities from ‘A’-Level onwards has not, generally speaking, followed that pattern. This was one of Margaret Thatcher’s complaints against the new National History (school) Curriculum that was drawn up in the 1980s (I had a very small part in that): that it wasn’t ‘British’ enough. (Her other objection was that it seemed to have jettisoned the rote learning of lists of Kings and Queens with their dates, in favour of critical thought.) My own (Mediaeval) A-level course was as much continental European as it was English; and when I got to university I found that it was impossible to take more than 30-40% of my History courses in British history alone. Most of the other choices were in continental European history, or American. That suited me at the time. It should have suited the ‘patriots’ too; for what better way is there of understanding your own country’s history than by studying it in the context of others’?

I had one gripe then; and I’ve added another to it since. Apart from American, which was seen as a kind of extension of British history, we were able to study very little extra-European history. There was one exception: imperial history, called – tellingly – ‘The Expansion of Europe’; which in any case was not highly rated, but only offered as an alternative for those who weren’t bright enough to cope with its alternative, which was the history of European political thought. (That’s what I opted for. Hence I became an imperial historian without ever having studied imperial history as an undergraduate.) So the syllabus still seemed to me to be Eurocentric, even if it wasn’t Anglocentric; that is, ‘white men’s history’ – yes, just men – alone. I hasten to add that this was many years ago, in the 1960s. I guess it will have changed now.

I wonder whether my other gripe has been addressed? That concerns the geographical limits that were placed even on the European history we were given to study; which comprised, almost exclusively, the histories of France, Germany and Italy – or what later became those nations. Other countries occasionally got a look in if they had fought with any of those nations, or with Britain, or had been invaded by them; so Russia, the Low Countries, the Balkans and the Hapsburg and Ottoman Empires were given walk-on roles from time to time. But all the serious action revolved around the core European countries of France, Germany and Italy (together of course with Britain); with what we might call the continental periphery being almost totally neglected. That included the Iberian peninsular, Greece, and the whole of Scandinavia.

It’s the Scandinavian absence that has, naturally enough, struck me most since I started living (partly) in Sweden twenty years ago; not only the omission of the Nordic countries from our history syllabuses, but also the lack of any serious reporting from there in our current British media. The Swedish press has been covering our recent political shenanigans in great detail – and with an accuracy and objectivity we don’t often find in the British press. The only time Scandinavia is prominently mentioned in our papers, however, is when there’s a massacre there; or if it corroborates our stereotypes of the place: IKEA, leggy blondes, the ‘Nordic model’, and so on. When we want to make political or economic comparisons between our own national situation and foreign ones, it’s nearly always to the ‘core’ nations that we turn, even when Scandinavian ones might be more apt. The aptest one would be with Sweden’s (and for all I know Norway’s and Denmark’s) political, social welfare and economic systems. You occasionally find references to Swedish child-care, for example. But these are mere mentions, footnotes, never properly explored in the British discourse. If they were, they could teach us a lot.

Similarly, even we ‘intellectuals’ know very little about Scandinavia’s cultural life, apart from Ibsen, Bergman, Grieg, Abba, and The Scream. When I switch my computer on, it gives out the first chord (I think) of Sibelius’s Fifth Symphony; leading me to wonder each time: what has become of Sibelius’s stock now? In my youth he was one of the great modern symphonists; now he is rarely heard on British radio. Is this another example of our (British) marginalisation of the North?

When I left university I still had only the vaguest idea of Scandinavia. One of my father’s friends was a nudist, and went to Sweden to practice his hobby. That coloured my image at the time. We heard stories of young Swedish women – mainly au pairs – being particularly liberal with their sexual favours. We assumed it was cold there all the year round. We also admired Sweden for its internationalism, anti-imperialism and pacifism. In the Labour Party we had this glorious vision of the ‘Swedish model’ of society, our ‘shining city on the hill’, which we hankered after in Britain, but without knowing much about it.

Meeting Kajsa in 1995 was my first proper introduction to the country. I can’t – mustn’t – say I was disappointed (where are all those nudists?), but I was surprised. Its women are not particularly promiscuous. Indeed, the Swedes are rather straight-laced about these things. (It comes out in their particular brand of feminism.) Its summers can be hot, and even its winters seem warmer (because drier) than ours. Historically, the country is not at all innocent of aggression, militarism, imperialism, slavery and collaboration with tyrants (in World War II). No country is perfect. But the Scandinavian ones are still better than most, and worth serious study, both historically and politically, by us Brits. We could learn a thing or two. They shouldn’t be dismissed simply because they’re way up there, on the edge of our ‘civilised world’.

For the 48% who voted to remain in the EU last summer – the narrow margin indicating a clear division, and probably a wide range, of opinion over the issue then – the argument of the more extreme Brexiteers that that vote gave them a clear and eternal popular mandate to distance Britain as far away from the EU as possible – a so-called ‘hard Brexit’ – is, frankly, ludicrous. There are four reasons why.

The first is that our parliamentary constitution gives them no mandate to claim such a mandate. The relations between Britain and other nations can only be altered by Parliament, after extensive consideration, and irrespective of any kind of direct test of ‘public opinion’, which – it’s perfectly clear – can only be ‘advisory’. The fact that our last craven Parliament voted against its better collective judgment, and in fear of popular (in fact Press) recrimination if it didn’t, only papered over this requirement. It voted, in effect, to surrender its constitutional responsibility; which I suppose makes the decision strictly speaking constitutional, but only by abandoning the safeguards against hasty decisions that the constitution is there to ensure.

Secondly, the claim that holding a second referendum in order to reconsider and even possibly reverse that decision would be ‘undemocratic’, is self-evident nonsense. In simple logic: if one referendum is democratic, why can’t another one be? Why should the first one bind us all for ever after, even if public opinion has shifted in the meantime? I don’t know whether that is the case (I’ve seen no polls to indicate it); but it’s quite possible that, for example, the young, who are the ones who are going to have to live longest with the new dispensation, and who would almost certainly have made a crucial difference if they’d bothered to vote last year, might come out and vote in a second referendum, as they did in the recent General Election, so reflecting a fuller range of public opinion than last June’s vote.

In the third place: the first referendum had obvious and blatant flaws, which rendered the result probably not a judgment on the issue that was formally presented in it, nor one taken on the basis of a fair presentation of both sides. I’ve posted on this before (https://bernardjporter.com/2016/06/16/is-it-really-about-the-eu/). The vote was taken in a moment of high dissatisfaction with the government of the day, for all kinds of reasons, and reflected that general dissatisfaction at least as much as it did hostility to the EU per se. I’ve talked with Brexiteers of all kinds and classes, and although some were genuinely and knowledgeably concerned about Europe (I share many of those concerns), and a few others were simply stupid (as were many Remainers too: that’s the nature of our society), many others were far more concerned with other things. Politicians’ out-of-touchedness-with ordinary people was one. A few months later their discontent was made even more obvious by the result of the June 2017 General Election, which slashed the Conservatives’ majority. Really, the EU Referendum was held at a very bad time. It was like being asked to come to an important decision in a rage.

Fourthly, it seems obvious that not all Brexiteers were voting for the same kind of Brexit. What kind that was, was never spelled out, leaving a number of possibilities, ranging from absolute isolationism to the closer Norway model. There is no way of knowing which degree of Brexit the voters favoured, and no justification at all for assuming it was the most extreme kind. If it was not, then there would seem to be some degree of overlap between the two camps; a compromise, based on the preservation of the single market, for example, and with most of the rules, like fairly free movement, which that would bring with it: in other words, a ‘soft’ enough Brexit to satisfy most people on both sides.

All of which is why Parliament, which is a better – more deliberative – channel for public opinion than a crude ‘in or out’ referendum, and the one that is licensed by our constitution, must have the final say on whatever terms of exit are negotiated between us and the remaining members of the EU. We’d then know exactly what we were voting on. In order to achieve consensus, and hence a positive vote, it obviously couldn’t be as extreme and final as the Brexiteers are demanding today. And, by rights – in democratic principle, indeed – it should leave open the possibility of our reneging on Brexit, and returning to Europe, despite that knee-jerk vote of 23 June last year.

For me as a historian, as well as an ordinary citizen, this whole event has, I have to say, shaken me. Historians like to be able to rationalise history, to trace underlying causes and broad trends, in a way this referendum affair is going to make difficult. I don’t recall many historical events that have turned as much as this one on accidents, misunderstandings and errors. That makes me uncomfortable This is not because the result of the referendum turned out ‘wrong’ for me. Before it, I was in two minds about Britain’s membership of the EU, especially in view of the distortions caused by the Euro, the EU’s failure to come to grips collectively with the refugee problem, its neoliberalism, and its ‘imperialism’, as I saw it (as an imperial historian), in Eastern Europe and the Ukraine. (I’ve blogged critically on all these issues.) My reason in the end for voting ‘Remain’ was in order for us in Britain to retain a degree of ‘control’ over our affairs, with the help of our European allies, against what is the major contemporary challenge to our national sovereignty, which is not Brussels, but globalisation; which an isolated mid-Atlantic economy cannot hope to resist on its own. If we had decided to leave the EU in a more considered and constitutional way, I would still have sorrowed, at the way my cherished European identity (one of several) had been stolen from me; but not felt as angry as I do now. For this to happen in such an accidental, random and irrational way is what disturbs me as a historian, and upsets me as a citizen. I imagine that others feel this way, and will continue to do so if Theresa May’s form of Brexit goes forward. That festering grievance bodes ill for our stability and contentment as a nation for years to come.

Right-wing Americans have been dissing Sweden for decades. At first it was because of its socialism; no patriotic American could understand or credit the good it seemed to be doing to the country in so many ways. I remember years ago while in the US reading in a paper that Stockholm’s murder rate was higher than Chicago’s. More recently it’s been because of Sweden’s generous immigration policy, which must be posing an existential threat to the country, surely? Remember Trump’s reference to Moslem riots in Sweden six months ago – ‘Who would believe it! Sweden!’ – which turned out to be totally fictitious: see https://bernardjporter.com/2017/02/24/rinkeby/. But the Trumpists haven’t learned – or, probably, wanted to.

Robin Ramsay has sent me these two pieces of ‘fake news’ from more recent American blogsites:

https://www.jihadwatch.org/2017/06/sweden-on-the-brink-of-civil-war-national-police-chief-help-us-help-us; and http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-06-24/leaked-police-report-exposes-23-muslim-controlled-no-go-zones-sweden-plagued-violenc.

(And you should look at some of the BTL comments on these.) They are, of course, utter nonsense. One has a picture of posters allegedly put up by Swedish jihadists to mark ‘Sharia Law’ areas, written in English! Sweden has immigration problems, sure, but nothing like as serious as this. Indeed, this other US website shows how the others were conned:

http://www.snopes.com/sweden-crime-no-go-zone-police/

(again, from Robin). But I doubt whether this will persuade patriotic Americans. They believe what they want to. Sweden is a standing rebuff to all they hold dear: free market capitalism, Christianity, punishment, guns. So it can’t be real.

A small gripe. A pretty good documentary on BBC2 last night, Who Should We Let In?, fronted by Ian Hislop, was largely based on a book of mine, The Refugee Question, and on quotes and illustrations I provided directly to the producer over the phone and through the internet; yet with no acknowledgment of my contribution at the end of the programme. Should I be miffed? Or simply pleased that my findings – original when I published them – have now entered into the general discourse? I guess that the slight disappointment I presently feel is unworthy of a scholar who should be more concerned to reveal truths, than to gain personal kudos. But we’re all human.

It has been interesting entertaining Swedish friends here in England at such an eventful and – probably – crucial time in our history. First there was the General Election, with the rise of Jeremy and the revolt of the Youth, and the Greek-tragic (hubris-nemesis) decline of the Maybot; then no fewer than three ‘terrorist’ attacks; and lastly the Grenfell Tower disaster, with all that can be inferred from this about the state of modern British society generally. I’m sure all this will provide them with dinner table conversation in Sweden for months. (They’re on their way back now.) ‘We were there…!’

I’ll get back to serious blogging soon. My foreign friends’ visit, on top of my operation – fully healed now, thanks – has rather held that up recently. Perhaps in a few days time…

In the meantime let me refer to Prince Harry’s recent claim, that none of the present Royals actually wants to be King or Queen, though they would, he says, take on the burden out of duty. It has been much criticised in the Press, but it has rather warmed me to him. I have little time for our Royal family (except Liz: she’s OK); but one of the few advantages of the hereditary principle, surely, is that it is likely to exclude ambitious people from the Head of State role, and in particular people who are solely motivated by personal ambition. They’re the dangerous ones. Look at the Maybot.