Porter’s Pensées

I have atheist friends who refuse to celebrate Christmas because it’s Christian, and socialist friends who grumble at it because it’s commercial. It’s certainly the latter. But one of the advantages for me, as an agnostic, of celebrating it in Sweden is the almost entire absence here of any Christian connotations: no cribs, baby Jesuses, wise men, or stars in the East. I imagine you see these in churches, but not, in my experience, in the streets, shops or homes. Instead the prevalent iconography features Tomtes (miniature Santas), trees, and goats. I think the goat was the animal that Odin, the original Santa Claus, rode around on at “midvinterblot”, distributing gifts. There’s a huge one made of straw erected every year in a small town called Gävle (below: thanks, Tilda), which is burned down by hooligans every time within a few hours. The Swedes find that rather funny.

It’s the irreligious aspect of a Swedish ‘Jul’ – their pre-Christian name for it – which I go for. Here Jul was always a people’s festival, celebrated by a multi-theist society – far preferable to single-god ones, which are apt to be more dogmatic and aggressive – until it was stolen from us by the Christians. Pagan festivals are always more fun than religious ones, even with the human sacrifices taken away. (‘You can’t get the virgins, you know.’)

OK, the commercialism is still pretty vulgar; and the food isn’t as toothsome as in the UK: ham and cold smoked mutton instead of roast turkey and the trimmings. But one can develop a taste for anything after a few glasses of aquavit or glögg – or preferably both. And the Swedes celebrate it early, on Julfaton (Xmas Eve), rather than on the day itself. That reduces the waiting, allows Santa to see his way (he comes in daylight), and dissociates it further from our ‘Christmas’. I’m looking forward to it, tomorrow. God Jul.

Featured on the cover of the current TLS, double Xmas issue; but you may have to buy it to read it.

http://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/private/swinging-fifties/

I very much doubt that this really is the worst time ever in British history, though it’s beginning to feel like it. Obviously periods of war, famine, extreme poverty, political oppression and great natural catastrophes bring far more suffering to more people; and women have been worse off at almost any other time. But there may be one factor that distinguishes today from most other periods: which is the virtual extinction – in Britain at any rate – of hope. Even in war people can feel that things will be better afterwards; famines can be brought to an end, as can dictatorships and imperialisms; earthquakes and tsunamis will pass. However poor one is, one can bear it if one believes that things will improve in the future. Hope is what takes the edge off suffering: that bright small light at the end of the darkest tunnel, that encourages us to push on regardless.

This was why the 1850s and 1860s were such a ‘golden’ age in Britain’s history, despite the abject condition of most of her population – not to mention her exploited colonial subjects – which of course was far worse than today’s. (Dickens’s Hard Times, and the industrial novels of Mary Gaskell, bear this out.) The difference, however, is that most people then had hope for a better future. For the working classes the promise lay in the advance of their Chartist and Socialist movements, and in particular in the steady contemporary progress made towards parliamentary reform. For the capitalist middle classes the engine of ‘progress’ was supposed to be the advance of ‘free trade’. (We mustn’t forget that for liberals then, unlike the ‘new’ liberals of today, the free market was believed to conduce to greater social equality.) The grounds for these two classes’ hopes were different, indeed antagonistic; but they were both optimistic in their own ways, at what was in consequence a mainly optimistic time. And then, of course, there were those many Christians who believed that Jesus would make it better for everyone, if they continued to have faith. The future was rosy.

Can anyone believe that these days? We ‘progressives’, of course, have been terribly discouraged by the key events of 2016: Brexit, Trump, wage stagnation, growing inequality, Islamicist atrocities, climate change denial; which it is difficult to see as mere blips in the generally upward trend of human history. Even more discouraging is the lack on the Left of any leaders or movements, like the Labour Party and Trade Unions used to be, able to spearhead the cause of those who would like to be hopeful still. But turning to the other side: are the Trumpists and Farageists – history’s winners this year – any more hopeful? Do the Ukippers really believe that Britain can thrive – as opposed to merely exist – outside the EU? How many Americans truly and confidently believe that Trump can make America ‘great again’? How many ex-colonial subjects any longer think that things are going to get better for them? Who in the world has any faith at all in the likelihood of global poverty and inequality diminishing, or wars ceasing, or even in their planet being still habitable in – say – the next 100 years? Right wingers don’t sound very hopeful. Hence all their hatred and bile.

Which perhaps makes some sense of Nigel Farage’s latest obscenity: his labelling of ‘Hope not Hate’ – the movement set up in the wake of the murder of the MP Jo Cox by an English nationalist – as ‘extremist’. Perhaps ‘hope’ is ‘extreme’ now, no longer the normal state of mind of most of us which it was until fairly recently.

I’m reminded of the line by the John Cleese character in Clockwise, when during a farcical struggle across the country to get to his Headmaster’s Conference, he and his under-age pupil driver find themselves ditched beside the road, unable to move another yard. Suddenly, with all hope of reaching his destination seemingly lost, he relaxes. ‘I don’t mind the despair’, he says. ‘I can cope with despair. It’s the hope I can’t bear.’ Maybe that’s how we can cope with our modern political despair. Abandon hope. And – as it’s Christmas coming – get drunk.

And who knows, salvation might be just around the corner. That’s the message of Christmas, after all, in both its religious and original pagan forms.

My latest review: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/dec/21/empire-of-booze-henry-jeffreys-review. Just a fun piece. But – hey! – it’s Christmas.

The LRB Xmas party was pretty good fun, as usual. I always feel at home there, amongst the Metropolitan Lefty intellectuals; much more so than at the Literary Review ‘Bad Sex Awards’ party, held just before, at the Army and Navy Club, surrounded by pictures of heroic massacres (a.k.a. ‘battles’), and peopled mainly, it seems, by the upper-classes, celebrities, and the literary set. It’s odd how much the two tribes differ. I’d have expected there to be more overlap. Again, it was fun (the ‘bad sex’ bits read from the prizewinning novels), but I didn’t feel comfortable. As one gets older one leaves off exploring new and exotic environments, as I used to delight in doing, and reverts to type. I realised at the LRB ‘do’ that I should really live in Islington. Most of the others there seemed to. Impossible now, of course, with London house prices as they are.

I was even less comfortable at that Swedish lawyers’ event, which I reported on earlier (https://bernardjporter.com/2016/11/25/the-swedish-lawyers/), and thought at the time had gone OK, but I now realise didn’t. My talk was obviously not what they wanted, but never having been in or anywhere near the mind of a besuited conservative Swedish lawyer before I still have no idea what that might have been. I’ve received no thanks for my talk, only for ‘making the journey’; and they demanded I produce receipts for all my (very modest) travel expenses. I don’t have them all – for taxis, for example. I thought they might recompense me for other ‘expenses’ too, like the four days’ profitable writing time I took out to prepare and travel for the talk – I should have been working on my LRB piece: 800 quid! – but no sign of that yet. And I always thought that lawyers were well-heeled! It was explained to me afterwards that this wasn’t in my (verbal) ‘contract’ with them. That illustrates the difference between our two worlds. Academics don’t ask for fees or expenses up front – asking is too mercenary for their elevated calling – but they quite like to get something for their efforts, contract or no. Next time I’ll remember to negotiate beforehand. And get it in writing.

My expenses haven’t come through yet. Maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised.* In which case I apologise to my hosts. But I still don’t think I could ever feel relaxed in their world. It’s not a national –  Swedish/British – thing, but professional. It’s our callings in life that mainly define our ‘identities’. I can get on perfectly well with Stockholm’s equivalent of our Islington set. (Enskedegruppen? Kajsa – to the left in the photo below – will correct me.) And I’m sure Sweden’s lawyers would have plenty in common with ours.

*No. The bare minimum. 20/12.

No proper post this time, just a pic.

With our lost leader, at the LRB Christmas Party, 12 December. He would be my choice still.

So, David Cameron blames his ignominious defeat over Brexit on the rise of ‘populism’ (http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/david-cameron-populism-cost-him-his-job-following-eu-referendum_uk_584a6921e4b0fccb67992bcc). By that he clearly means the ‘mob’, which has been the great bugbear of his class and political persuasion for centuries. It was the fear of ‘mob rule’, in fact, which led the makers – or rather evolvers – of the British constitution, such as it is, to insert safeguards into it in order to avoid the great unwashed’s storming the ramparts of their privileges, so endangering not only those privileges, but also – they claimed – the security and well-being of the nation as a whole.

The ascendency of Parliament – composed (the Commons, that is) of elected representatives who would be able to channel the will of the people safely, after due debate (three readings of any bill), and then subject to amendment by the House of Lords and clarification by the judiciary, the powers of all of these being ‘separated’, as in the USA – was the main formal means to this. Other means, rather less overt, but still effective, were official secrecy (about which I’m just now writing a piece for the LRB); the oppressive use of certain laws; privileges granted to unelected people and bodies; propaganda; and various other forms of chicanery. All this, of course, as it becomes revealed – as it is being, for example in the book I’m reviewing for the LRB – somewhat undermines the claim that these ‘checks and balances’ are working to the benefit of ‘the people’ at large.

But there’s something in what Dave says. Analysis has shown that Brexit voters were on average lower-class, less well educated and poorer than those who voted the other way: a pretty good indication what the upper-classes would regard as ‘mobbery’. (See http://www.politico.eu/article/graphics-how-the-uk-voted-eu-referendum-brexit-demographics-age-education-party-london-final-results/.) But that’s not the main point. It doesn’t matter who voted for Brexit, so much as the circumstances in which they voted. I can imagine other demographics voting (in my opinion) wrongly, on this or on other questions; if, as in this case, they aren’t given the opportunity to consider their votes calmly and seriously, and are forced to decide on the basis of inaccurate facts (those Brexit battlebuses and posters of invading Turks), and on just one single occasion, at a time of great political feeling about other issues, and of popular frustration and resentment on a number of grounds – I’ve already argued that it was these that lay behind many of the ‘leave’ votes (https://bernardjporter.com/2016/06/16/is-it-really-about-the-eu/); on the basis of a simple and, as it turned out, very narrow majority of votes (most foreign referenda on fundamental constitutional issues demand a significantly larger-than-50% majority); and – lastly – with no mechanism for reconsideration. There is one such mechanism, in fact, which however is what the Brexiteers are getting so het up about now: putting it to Parliament, they say, will flout the ‘popular voice’. But that is exactly what British Parliamentary democracy, which they claim to want to liberate from Brussels tyranny, is – or was – all about. Not flouting the popular will, necessarily, but ensuring that, on such an important issue as this, it is a considered and tested will. Not just a hasty decision taken for reasons irrelevant to the main issue, and which might melt away in the very near future, and especially without sober consideration: meaning three readings in the Commons, at least.

According to Wikipedia Cameron took History A-Level at Eton – though he didn’t follow this through at Oxford. Didn’t he study any British Constitutional history, which should have taught him all this? If he had done, he would have realised that Britain has never been a country ruled by plebiscite, and for very good reasons, quite apart from the less laudable ones. At the very least, he would have made it plain that the referendum he called to appease his wilder backbenchers was advisory only; should have emphasised that Parliament was still sovereign; and possibly – taking the example of other nations – might have required a (say) 60% majority, for such a huge and shattering decision. And if he’d been more in touch with the ‘people’, he might have seen the popular reaction against his government  – indeed, against ‘Westminster’ generally – emerging a lot sooner than he did. There were clear signs of it. The surprise is that it took him so much by surprise.

What an ignorant and irresponsible fool he was; to have so misjudged the nation, and then wagered its entire fate on the flip of one coin.

My latest review is of a book about Scandinavia: literaryreview.co.uk/nordic-by-nature. It’s behind a paywall; but here is my original version.

Robert Ferguson, Scandinavians. In Search of the Soul of the North. Blake Books, 455 pp., illustrated, £25. 3 Nov 2016.

This book started out as a quest for the Holy Grail of Scandinavian ‘melancholy’. Robert Ferguson has lived in Norway for thirty years, and published biographies of the pretty gloomy Ibsen and the unrelievedly depressing (and fascist) Knut Hamsun, so he must know something of it. The book is an odd one, jumping around from one country and one historical era to another, interspersed with personal reminiscences and transcriptions of conversations he has had with literary figures, interrupted in medias res with an original three-act playlet featuring Ibsen, his wife, and the mother of the illegitimate child he fathered in his youth, and mentioning melancholia every now and then; but never quite reaching his stated goal. Indeed, we’re left feeling at the end that it has all been something of a wild goose chase, the myth of Scandinavian melancholy being simply that – a myth – spread around Europe by a few well-known artists – Ibsen, Strindberg, Munch, Ingmar Bergman – and latterly by the popularity in Britain of those astonishingly popular ‘Nordic noir’ TV series, themselves rooted in the same fin-de-siècle stereotype. It’s one of Ferguson’s literary friends, the translator Birger Rønning, whose conversation, retailed here, is most persuasive of this, even if we can’t be sure that Ferguson himself has been quite convinced. ‘Scandinavian melancholy is a literary illusion… For a hundred years that’s all the world ever knew about the Scandinavians. We were appointed official purveyors of melancholy to the rest of Europe.’ In fact the gloomy stereotype of the Nordics is no more accurate than their idea of the Brits as tweed-clad pipe-smokers with silly upper-class accents. More generally (though this is my conclusion, not Ferguson’s or Rønning’s) this could be taken as a cautionary lesson for literary scholars who assume they can ever divine the ‘soul’ of any nation from its élite literature. You need to search more widely than that. (If a nation could be said to have a ‘soul’, that is.)

That said, Scandinavians is a terrific read. It has some great descriptions of the Vikings (from the Sagas plus a few stones), Denmark’s and then Sweden’s Stormaktstider (Great Power ages), and later murders, like the infamous Malexander ones in 1999, by a pair of prison inmates paroled in order to perform a play in public as a form of therapy, under Sweden’s proudly progressive penal policy. The mass-murderer Breivik also comes into it, though less prominently. It even has a car-chase. Ordinary democratic life in Scandinavia features far less, making Ferguson’s account less recognizable to someone who lives there more dully; though it is not entirely neglected, its consensual nature being held largely responsible, if not for Scandinavian melancholy, then for the madness and extreme forms of artistic expression (Munch, Strindberg) that it produces, Ferguson claims, as a desperate attempt to escape from it. It’s this that accounts for the otherwise seemingly inexplicable factor, actually measured in a number of recent international surveys, that Scandinavia is the happiest place on earth. How can you be both happy and sad? If there is a key, this is it.

All this looks like a wild guess to me. But literary scholars are good at wild guesses, some of which might be true, and in any case are generally thought-provoking. That’s what makes a book like this worthwhile. It reads like many nineteenth-century travel books, which also combined wonderful narrative description with bright speculation. It’s splendid on the differences between what Ferguson calls the three main Scandinavian ‘tribes’, which are too often lumped together, but which go right back to Viking times; on the age-old competition between them; on the long tradition in Scandinavian history of powerful (as well as beautiful) women, which he attributes to the fact that Viking men were out raiding most of the time, leaving the women to take charge of everything else; on the elevated position of writers in Norwegian society, taking the place of the aristocracy that was formally abolished in 1821; on the serious wars that were fought between Denmark-Norway and Muslim north Africa in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, provoked by the latter’s slave-raiding in the north, which were new to me; on the three countries’ very different experiences of World War II (Ferguson suggests that Sweden’s guilt over her semi-collaboration with Germany then may partly explain her generosity towards Middle Eastern refugees today); on polar explorers, especially the ludicrous and ill-fated effort by the Swede Salomon August Andrée and his crew to beat their more famous Norwegian contemporaries to the North Pole by flying over them in a balloon (too heavy to take off at the start, they jettisoned their furs but kept the crate of champagne – they were later found frozen to death); on the enlightened Danish regent Johann Friedrich Struensee and his ghastly end (in the process of his execution his genitals were cut off and displayed to the watching crowd); on the philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, who turns out to be far more interesting than I, for one, had thought; on Danish football; and quite a bit more.

Not too much more, because Ferguson prefers to elaborate a limited number of themes, characters and events in a novelistic kind of way, rather than to attempt any kind of comprehensiveness, or impose a logical order on his material. But it’s this that makes the book so thoroughly enjoyable – to me at any rate, as a fellow-exile in the not very melancholic North; but I should guess for anyone new to it, too.

Sorry for the silence. Due to travel, family, despair at the way things are going (except in Austria), and the feeling that I’ve nothing new or original to say. But I’ll be back.

In the meantime this (below) seems to me a brilliant strategy, albeit a painful one, for us Remainers. – Don’t try to row back on the referendum, however unsatisfactory it may seem as an expression of the established ‘will of the people’, taken as it was at one tiny moment of a very confused and difficult time. Let Nigel, Boris, Govey and Co. hang themselves with their own petards. Don’t make it easy for them, with a ‘soft Brexit’, which they won’t appreciate in any case. Then rub it in; and hope for a return to sanity.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/david-vigar/let-brexit-happen-let-peo_b_13374722.html?utm_hp_ref=uk.

I posted some historical background to the ‘Snooper’s Charter’, which has just been passed, in March this year. Here it is: https://bernardjporter.com/2016/03/01/the-snoopers-charter/.