Porter’s Pensées

Historians’ attitudes are often influenced by the history they study. I have to say that my distaste for covert domestic surveillance, secret policing and the like – except in extreme circumstances – has been coloured by the very honourable opposition to these methods I discovered amongst the 19^th and 20^th century British liberals and socialists I have spent so much of my professional life researching. It was in The Refugee Question, I think, and then in Plots and Paranoia, that I established what I called ‘spylessness’ as one of the major British moral and political principles of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries; one of the genuine ‘Victorian Values’ that Margaret Thatcher used to pay such lip service to. Unlike Thatcher, I’ve kept hold of these principles, broadly speaking, and have tended to judge Britain’s present-day activities in these areas by them. A couple of posts here will illustrate this: https://bernardjporter.com/2015/01/09/surveillance/; and https://bernardjporter.com/2016/03/01/the-snoopers-charter/. I have, in other words, remained a Victorian liberal in this respect, if not in certain others.

The dominant opinions of any age, however, are bound to be affected by that age’s material circumstances; and in this case there seems reason to think that the Victorians’ ‘spyless’ ethic no longer has much relevance today. This is not so much because the nature of the threats that face us, and our security services, is so much more serious than it was in the age of foreign revolutionary immigrants, Fenianism, violent anarchism, nihilism, communism, ‘free love’ and all the other perceived dangers that so exercised the British police and secret services in earlier times. Rather it’s because of the rapid growth of technologies that are making surveillance far easier than it used to be, and indeed scarcely avoidable, for anyone who uses bank machines or internet selling sites, for example, for any purpose whatever. I’m constantly shocked by the number of times my searching for a hotel on booking.com has been followed, rapidly, by Amazon’s recommending to me books on the very countries and places I was looking at; a minor annoyance, of course, but illustrative of the impossibility of avoiding one’s every action’s being noticed and broadcast. Unless, that is, I chose to live in a wood without phone or computer, eating berries, roots and stray deer. (Even there I wouldn’t be surprised if they’d found ways of disguising surveillance cameras as trees.)

All of which is bringing me to the conclusion that, whatever my personal feelings still are – I especially abhor the distrust that espionage gives rise to – I should abandon my historical and political distaste for ‘espionage’, and learn to accept it. Privacy was a 19^th century luxury. The internet has destroyed it, even as a fond ideal. Historically I need to acknowledge this – and to point out the contrast when I’m writing about Victorian times, simply as a contrast, and not necessarily as a fall from grace. Politically we need to find other ways of coping.

The right-wing tabloid British press has two favourite scapegoats: immigrants, and social security scroungers. With Khalid Masood’s having been shown not to have been an immigrant after all – strictly speaking; although of course he was black – the Daily Star goes for Plan B: http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/599978/police-probe-london-terror-attacks-khalid-masood-serial-benefits-cheat. Either way, it panders to their prejudices.

So far it’s looking as though I was right to be sceptical of all that ‘terrorist’ hoo-ha: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-39396101. Of course there’s still time.

As an Islamic terrorist, Khalid Masood was pretty pathetic. Not only because of his abject failure, as described in my last post, but also because he doesn’t appear to have done his jihadist homework. His background was criminal rather than religious, and overall seems very atypical of a genuine terrorist’s. He was too old, for a start. There’s no evidence at all that he was part of a ‘plot’; nor even that he was a devout Moslem. Isis have claimed him as one of their own, but they do that, don’t they? Aren’t proper jihadists meant to yell out ‘Allahu Akbar’, or something similar, as they rush towards their victims? I’ve not seen that reported. Masood could be a motiveless desperado, at the end of his tether, simply losing it as a dozen other crazy murderers have done; with the only thing linking him with political violence being the venue of his killing spree. To assume that he was part of the current Islamicist terrorist menace in any genuine way seems dodgy; and to publicise it as such, both in Britain and America, where such perverse and dangerous capital can be made of it by the likes of Farage, Katie Hopkins and the Trumpeters, is criminally irresponsible.

Of course we don’t yet know for sure. Police and MI5 enquiries might unearth more convincing evidence of religious motivation, or of jihadist connexions, in Birmingham, Kent, Sussex, Wales and all the other places he has lived (including three prisons), in his seemingly rootless life. Or from the wife/partner he is rumoured to have had. My scepticism may be ill-founded; even naive. But it’s not a bad approach to have, in such combustible circumstances. In any case we seem to have gone overboard on this, to the advantage only of the far Right, and of the Islamicists themselves. By exaggerating the terror, we are doing the terrorists’ work for them.

I’m hoping the intelligence services may be able to reassure us on this. Historically they have very often been suspected of exaggerating ‘threats to national security’ – communist, Irish, at one time moral (in the 1890s they tried to close down a magazine advocating ‘free love’) – and of dirty tricks on behalf, usually, of the political Right. They need to justify their salaries. But there have been times in the past when they (or rather the British ones, the only ones I really know about) have been more cool, impartial and objective. It’s a long way back, I realize; but they were crucially reassuring in the 1850s, when some very fiery revolutionaries flocked into Britain and to Jersey from the European Continent after the failure of their 1848 risings (Marx was one), and the government of the time, on the basis of some sober intelligence from its secret police branch, was able to persuade both its own people and panicky foreign monarchs, that they were pretty harmless really. I’m trusting today’s police and MI5 to adopt the same approach. Neither they nor the government, after all, have any interest in stoking up either terrorism or Islamophobia.

By the same token, however, if they do find Masood was part of a significant plot, I’ll cast my doubts aside.

The first thing to remark about yesterday’s attack on and near the Palace of Westminster – though it may appear callous to say so, in view of the four innocent lives lost and the unknown number of serious casualties, all of whom of course deserve our deep sympathy – is that it failed. That’s of course assuming it was a ‘terrorist’ attack, targeting the Houses of Parliament, and for the usual terrorist motives. For the moment – just a few hours afterwards – that looks the most likely scenario. The body of the assailant, shown on TV in early transmissions, but later with his face pixelated, was brown, and had a thick black beard without a moustache. Is it a sign of prejudice on my part to infer from this that he was probably a Muslim; and in view of his actions before he was killed, to go on from there to suspect that he might have been a jihadist? No-one will be more relieved than I if that turns out to be false.

The failure of his mission was twofold. Firstly, he never got into the Parliament building, which redounds to the credit of London’s police and the British intelligence services. We can conclude from this that we are safe as a nation, without requiring the kind of drastic measures that, for example, UKIP and Trump favour, like Muslim immigration restrictions and travel bans. There’s no way of preventing attacks by lone individuals (although, to be fair, MI5 still needs to determine whether or not he was ‘alone’, or had collaborators and sympathisers), driving ordinary cars, and wielding kitchen knives. They, of course, can come from any sector of society. The murderer of Jo Cox was not a jihadist.

Secondly (and this is where my expertise as a historian comes in): the literal and correct definition of ‘terrorism’ (dictionary.com) is ‘the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, especially for political purposes’. The word itself, terrorisme, was first used during France’s ‘Reign of Terror’ to describe government intimidation, of whole populations. Thus, it’s wrong to use the word – as it often is loosely used – to describe any act of political violence: for example the assassination of a political figure simply to get rid of her or him. In this sense, yesterday’s attack abjectly failed too; just as the London bombings of July 2005 (‘7/7’) did. Londoners have not been intimidated or coerced. They have a proud history of this, dating back to the London ‘Blitz’ of 1940. And London’s immigrants seem to have acquired the same sang-froid. They will be back to work today, and Parliament will sit again.

So overall this was good news – except of course for the poor victims and their families; and a lesson to those who would wish to curtail our – or our prospective immigrants’ – freedoms further in the vain search for absolute security; which however would likely be counter-productive. It is, after all, what the Islamicists want. Learn from our example, Donald.

I’ve been invited to give a lecture at a ‘festival of history’ – ‘La Storia in Piazza’ – in the Sala del Consiglio Maggiore of the Palazzo Ducale in Genoa next month. The ‘festival’s theme is ‘Imperi’, and they want me to fill the slot on the British Empire. As well as lectures, there will be ‘exhibitions, games, music, songs, etc.’ ‘Audiences have averaged 25,000.’ Gosh! (I imagine that’s overall, not all packed into my lecture.) I’ll be speaking in English, but simultaneously translated into Italian. Of course I accepted – any excuse to revisit Italy! And I’ve never been to Genoa, birthplace of Christopher Columbus. Kajsa is coming with me.

The title they suggested was ‘L’impero britannico: costruito quasi per caso?’ which is fine, and I shall indeed be talking on that theme; but I’ve chosen to call it ‘Brexit and the British Empire’, to make it more topical. I’ve also learned (from Kajsa) how to use PowerPoint, and have found some fun pictures to go with it. If anyone knows of anyone else who’d like to hear it, preferably in an exotic location with all expenses paid, please get in touch.

The problem with this kind of paper is that I can’t be sure of the sort of audience I’ll be meeting. All I’ve been told is that they will be mainly Italians, and ‘non-specialists’. But how non-specialist? What do they know already – or think they know – of the British Empire, and of Brexit? Will they have heard of Cecil Rhodes? Or of Nigel Farage? Will the simultaneous translator be able to convey the subtleties of my text? Or the jokes? Do they understand cricket? Should I poke fun at Silvio Berlusconi? Or at Columbus, even? What will Italian non-specialists expect? I’ve bombed before with this kind of thing. (For example, my talk to those Swedish lawyers: https://bernardjporter.com/2016/12/15/different-worlds/.) Any decent lecture needs to be constructed not only with regard to its content, but also with the particular composition of its audience in view. It’s important to pitch it right. I finished writing a version yesterday. Now I need to re-jig it with my hazily-conceived Italian audience in mind.

I’ll let you know how it goes; and – if it hasn’t been too much of a disaster – post it on this site after the event.

A worry. – Most intelligent people, and those with expertise, have been ‘Remainers’ in the British EU debate, and anti-Trump in America. I’m not saying that sensible cases can’t be made for both Brexit and Trump; only that the weight of intellectual opinion has been presented and perceived as being on the other side. The Trumpists and Brexiteers have been widely pilloried for their falsification of facts, and their general stupidity. They themselves seem to have taken that as a compliment; or to have allowed the patronising sneers of the intelligentsia and of experts merely to strengthen them in their prejudices. That fits into a deep if hitherto submerged ‘anti-intellectual’ current in both countries. ‘We’ve had enough of experts’, as Michael Gove notoriously said during the EU referendum debate. (And he an ex-Education Minister!)

My fear is this. OK, so the anti-intellectuals will probably be proved wrong: although to the detriment of both our countries as both Brexit and Trumpism fail. That’s bad enough. But what if not? Suppose that in, say, three or four years’ time, both Brexit Britain and Trumpite America prove to be – or can be presented as being – roaring economic successes? What if, in spite of all us arrogant intellectual naysayers, America really does become ‘great’, and Britain proud and independent, again? What will that do for intelligence and expertise in the future generally, and for those of us who consider ourselves the guardians of truth and reason? Having been proved wrong in these two major instances, are people going to trust us, about anything, ever again?

And how will that leave the state of political discourse in the rest of the 21^st century? In the hands of irrationalists, the prejudiced, the emotional, the unreasoning haters, peddlars of ‘alternative’ truths, uneducated hoi polloi; with ‘intellectuals’, academics, researchers and all other thinking people – my sort – stranded on the edges of the debate, mocked, and never taken seriously again? There are precedents for this, with 1930s Germany the obvious – and much cited – one. That’s one of the broader things at stake in the present crisis of liberalism.

In fact it probably won’t be that bad. The end results of both Brexit and the Trump Presidency (if it lasts that long) will probably be too messy to be able to draw any definite conclusions from them. That’s the way these things usually work out in history. Which means there will still be room for rational debate afterwards, and for rational debaters, like me. – Still, it’s a worry.

Some crumbs of comfort for America. The horror of Trump seems to have galvanised the Left – certainly women (see last post but one) – which is all to the good. A few of his concrete policies might actually be beneficial, both to America and to the world; like détente with Russia, and the rolling back of neo-liberal globalisation to some extent. Hillary wouldn’t have done that. To be sure, most of his other policies don’t carry quite the same hopes: healthcare reform, that Wall, irresponsible foreign interventions, encouraging Israeli colonialism, anti-abortion, the green light given to global warming, and so on. The only tiny bit of progressive hope we can take from all these is that they might fail, and be seen to fail, disastrously. That would surely provoke a more general reaction against him and the Republicans (and especially among the Republicans), in much the same way as his victory represented, at bottom, a reaction against the Obama-Clinton Democratic élite. (American elections are so negative.) Then it might be Bernie’s turn again, if he’s not thought to be too old; or alternatively, Elizabeth Warren’s. (? I’m not that familiar with the American political scene.)

No crumbs for Britain, I’m afraid. We’ve really fucked up.

Tony Blair and David Cameron have this in common: that despite their many achievements (Blair’s, anyway), they will be mainly remembered in history for their two great catastrophic failures of judgment – the Iraq war, and the EU referendum. Other twentieth-century British prime ministers who share that burden are Anthony Eden (Suez) and Neville Chamberlain (appeasement; though I think he’s been unfairly traduced over that). Going further back, one might add Lord North (American independence) to this list; and – before the days of prime ministers – kings John ‘Lackland’, Richard III and Charles I. These are some of the most notorious unheroic ‘losers’ in British history. You can be a heroic loser, too: viz. King Harold, Joan of Arc, and even Adolf Hitler in the minds of some deluded people today. But what unites all those others is that they are seen, or will I believe be seen in the future, as pathetic losers. That’s a dreadful historical reputation to bear, and afterwards to carry to the next world.

In the cases of Blair and Cameron, this might be considered a shame, because neither of them is a noticeably bad man. But then the two things don’t always go together. Good men and women can have bad effects, and vice-versa; or, as I put it in one of my books (concerning the British empire), maleficence – bad things happening – doesn’t necessarily follow on from malevolence; or – conversely – beneficence from benevolence. A lot of the evils that came out of the British empire were the unwanted results of the best of intentions – ‘the road to hell’, and all that. It’s the same with Blair and Cameron: the first a holy fool, the second a smooth and privileged empty-head. Perhaps their only real sin was over-self confidence; the idea that they could do the job they were elected to do. Which is a shame, as we would like to blame them more – it’s this that lies behind all those ‘BLIAR’ taunts – because, in an old-fashioned, perhaps Christian way, it fits in with our view of the ‘wages’ of sin: that it’s evil-doers who will get their come-uppance, by a kind of moral symmetry. But that’s not how history works. It’s not a question of morality, or motive, or what the Romans called vertu; but of judgment. That is what will damn Blair and Cameron in History-land.

A clear majority of people in the USA is against Trump, and a clear majority in Britain finds Farage risible; and yet these two clowns appear just now to be the immoveable political winners in their respective countries. There are many complex reasons for this, some of which have been aired in this blog; but one of them is undoubtedly the lack of a unified and convincing movement against them. That ought to be socialism: equality, anti-austerity, Bernie, Jeremy. But socialism’s in the doldrums just now: trivially yet bitterly divided, incompetently led (I’m referring here not necessarily to Jeremy, but to the collective Labour leadership), monstered by the capitalist press, judged by its past failures, some real enough but many confected by the said capitalist press (e.g. that Brown’s government, not the bankers, was responsible for the recession), having to struggle against decades of vilification and even fear in the USA, and with an ‘old-fashioned’ image problem. So it really is difficult at this moment to see the traditional Left as the saviours of the present day. Maybe if it could link up with the Lib-Dems in Britain and the Democratic establishment in the US? But they are all too partisan for that.

The only effective public opposition just now comes from two quarters: the television and social media satirists, who would win any contest against their Right-wing equivalents hands-down – see https://bernardjporter.com/2017/03/05/satire-and-trump/ – but don’t seem to be able to translate this into real power; and, secondly: women. One thing that Trump and Farage and their leading followers have in common is their blatant and reactionary sexism, which has clearly riled millions of women; all those, that is, who don’t feel more comfortable in a world where they are petted and patronised. (Many clearly do.) Trump’s ‘locker-room talk’ in the summer, though it had less effect on the presidential election than many people (as I remember) predicted at the time, has lain there, just under the surface of politics, to galvanise millions of Americans, including many men, to lead the popular movement against him; with their ‘pussy’ hats and witty placards, in a way that the anti-capitalist movements have failed to do. They may be our main hope now.

Women’s liberation is a movement on the march – quite literally. Some of the post-Trump women’s demonstrations, both in America and in the UK, have been mightily impressive. Trump seems to have galvanised feminism; but it was already on the rise before then. That’s the difference between it, and socialism, which seems to be on the decline. The progress feminism has made even in my lifetime has been astonishing, with women now on an equal footing with men – and, because it follows from this, men on an equal footing with women – in many areas of life that they were effectively excluded from just thirty years ago. And – this is my impression – they don’t any longer need to become virtual men, like Thatcher, in order to do this. Of course they aren’t all the way there yet. There’s a lot still for them (and for us men, alongside them) to fight for: genuinely equal pay, parental rights, security against male violence, attitudinal changes, and so on; enough to justify their new British political party, Women’s Equality (http://www.womensequality.org.uk), which was founded recently to fight their cause. (I’ve joined.) OK, it could be considered a niche issue; but so too were the interests of working people when the Labour Party was founded in 1900; and look how that spread and infused all areas of British politics and life afterwards. Labour was our ‘progressive’ spearhead in the twentieth century. Maybe women could take on that role in the twenty-first.

Of course I get as irritated with many of the trivialities of present-day feminism as most other ballsy men: all that row over whether Emma Watson is justified in calling herself a ‘feminist’ if she chooses to show a nipple, for example; well, it may be an interesting debating point among the sisterhood, but is not that important, surely, in the broader scheme of things. And, highlighted as it is by the likes of the Daily Mail, this sort of thing puts folk off. I’ve lost count of the number of people I’ve seen interviewed on TV claiming that they were turned into Trump or UKIP voters by the ‘political correctness’ of the Left. Even I get slightly irked, as a writer, by having to use contrived neologisms that ruin my stylistic flow in order to avoid ‘gendered’ terms. (I’m sorry, but I refuse to write about ‘herstory’, or ‘sheroes’; or to avoid the feminine pronoun when I’m writing about countries; although – in my own defence – I am careful to write ‘his or hers’ if that’s what I mean.) If feminists, like socialists, would discipline these excesses, I’m sure they would garner more support. Then they might lead us all out of this Trump- and Brexit-inspired darkness, into a more egalitarian and democratic light. Men: put away your prejudices against being ‘dominated’ by women – it’s not like that. Let the women take over now. You’ve had your chance. I’m behind them.

I have to say that I was inspired and emboldened to this conclusion by attending the ‘Vigil’ I posted about earlier outside the Law Courts –  https://bernardjporter.com/2017/02/16/alice-wheeldon/ last Friday, to mark the centenary of the (flawed) conviction of the pacifist and feminist Alice Wheeldon – a ‘shero’ if ever there was one. The purpose was to secure a posthumous pardon for her. Many of the demonstrators came in Edwardian dress, including old suffragette sashes. It was on BBC TV, though only for the East Midlands. Here’s an account from the BBC’s website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-39238029. About 60 turned up, some from Australia, where her descendants emigrated (I don’t blame them), and including one of Alice’s great- (I think) granddaughters, very ill with cancer. It was an inspiration from the past.

But maybe nature is righting the balance just now. Between us, Kajsa and I have eight grandchildren, seven of whom are girls. Only a small sample, I appreciate; but still…

My daughter Kate has just ventured into the entrepreneurial world (after her Oscar triumph) by putting on to the market this new skin cleansing balm:

https://www.harbourelements.com

(that’s her, in the second picture), which recently got this fantastic review in The Times: 

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/times2/five-of-the-best-cleansing-balms-jk7hjxb7m.

I’ve asked if it works for men too – it’s mainly, I think, for washing your face after makeup – and she says it’s worth a try. Go on! Order a jar! Only £22, and beautifully packaged.

If it’s any recommendation, everyone involved with it – the chemistry, manufacture, packaging, marketing – is a woman. Why is that no longer particularly surprising, except to an oldie like me? (I have to admit, when she said ‘chemist’ the picture that came into my mind was of a man.) – I’m thinking of posting a blog soon on what used to be called, in ‘my [historical] period’, ‘the woman question’. (Next.)