Porter’s Pensées

In my May 6 blog I mentioned an ‘awful woman’ presenting the recent local election results on BBC1 TV, whose commentary was so fixated with Jeremy Corbyn and what the results meant for him, in a continually negative way, as to entirely skew the whole event, and to lose all sense of balance and objectivity. She made me angry listening to her. Since then I have learned who she is: Laura Kuenssberg, the BBC’s political editor; and that her presentation of the election results has provoked a petition signed by 35,000 people (but not me: I wouldn’t) to get her sacked. So I wasn’t alone in my disapproval.

Unfortunately some of the complaints against her were couched in abusive sexist terms, the effect of which has been to smear all her critics with the stain of misogyny, and – as I understand – to detract from the force of the complaints themselves. The petition has even been ‘taken down’, so it won’t now go through. (See  the Guardian: http://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/may/12/bbc-bias-labour-sir-michael-lyons.) Liberals and progressives, including Corbyn himself (that good man!), are all up in arms defending her against the ‘trolls’. So the point of her anti-Corbyn bias is lost, and she will no doubt be allowed to continue presenting politics for the BBC in the way she does.

‘God’ knows – as do my feminist partner and close friends – that I’m no sexist. But I do get irritated when prominent people are protected from reasonable criticism by the fact of their sex, or race, or religion, and the assumption that it’s an underlying prejudice against these characteristics of theirs that lies behind the criticisms. It’s similar to the way that critics of Israeli government policy are often vilified.

As it turned out, it wasn’t the Man United supporters I should have worried about. It was ours who spoiled the day – attacking the Man U bus with bottles as it drove into the ground, with the Club’s co-chairman – the ex-pornographer and jail bird David Sullivan, brought up as it happens in the same east London suburb as I was – blaming the visitors for being late. (He’s since retracted.) My son Ben and I didn’t see any of this, and only learned of it as we were leaving, through a cordon of riot-geared policemen and -women. (I hope no-one takes seriously the pic of me that Ben’s posted on one website, over the legend: ‘Police have released this picture of the man they believe to be the ringleader of the violence…’) Up until then it had been a wonderful occasion, and – almost incidentally – a terrific match: 1-0, 1-1, 1-2, 2-2, then 3-2 to the Irons. Joy was unconfined. Until we got out. As so often, it is the hooliganism that has made the headlines.

I suppose that in a way this might be considered an apt send-off for the old ground, true to its history. West Ham has always been known as an – even the – ‘academy’ of skilful and clean football; the legacy of the late, great and good Ron Greenwood, in the era when those dour cheating thugs of Leeds United were winning everything. (See the 2009 film The Damned United.) But its immediate environs, the poorest part of the East End, has always thrown up villains – ‘Jack the Ripper’, the Krays – some of whose criminality seems to have rubbed off on a number of the Hammers’ supporters. These are highly organised, notably in a group who style themselves the ‘Inter-City firm’, whose passionate rivalry with the equally violent and racist ‘Millwall Bushwhackers’ – slogan: ’Everyone hates us and we don’t care’ – can be bloody. (Luckily West Ham and Millwall are in different divisions just now.) It should go without saying that the degree of hooliganism among supporters bears little if any relationship to the playing style and conduct of the teams they follow. It just so happens that the Hammers are burdened by playing in this deprived, violent neighbourhood. Which is a good reason, I suppose, for them to leave. (Last night’s match was their last at Upton Park before they move to the Olympic Stadium in Stratford. ‘East’, not on Avon.) Another is that the Stratford site is far more approachable by buses. One of the sparks last night was the difficulty the Man United coach had threading its way along narrow Green Street, through crowds of supporters, to the ground. Yes, it would have helped if they’d planned to arrive earlier. Ben and I got there in good time. And I came all the way from Hull.

The point is that the Boleyn Ground is cramped: not only its environs, but the ground itself. Its capacity is only about 35,000, which is small for a top club these days. That has huge attractions for those who can get in, of course: from the front rows you can touch the players, and the atmosphere is intense. The walk from Upton Park Underground station to the ground passes between small terrace houses, many of them turned into chippies and ‘pie and eel’ cafes, which make walking along it an olfactory as well as a visual and aural delight. It’s a journey into the past, and into my own past: the old, friendly, communitarian, humorous – as well as villainous – East End. I shall miss it terribly. (I’ve supported West Ham for 60 years.) As I left the ground, a tear passed down my cheek. I wiped it away quickly. In the East End grown men don’t cry.

It’s not only the cramped approach to the Boleyn Ground that has sealed its fate. It’s the commercialisation of football generally. Originally a working-class game, well suited to the sort of venue the Boleyn Ground occupies now, it has – like most other great cultural productions, most of them emanating from ‘below’ – been bought up by the capitalists, who can never ‘create’ anything themselves, in order to exploit it. In parallel with this, there is the ‘gentrification’ of the East End of London, pushing up the monetary value of West Ham’s present real estate, which is very unlikely to be utilised in a way that will benefit the typical East Ender: with genuinely ‘affordable’ housing, for example. (Barney Ronay’s take on this today in the Guardian is good, I think: https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2016/may/10/goodbye-bash-upton-park-west-ham-united-manchester-united.)

And so the capitalist leviathan rolls on, The Boleyn Ground is its latest victim. It may be worth the move to Stratford if it prevents scenes in the streets like last night’s. But then the warmth and comradeship and humour and the smell of frying onions won’t be there. We’ll all be too far from the play, with a wall of capital between us and it.

(An edited version of this is posted on the LRB Blog, 11 April. It attracted quite a few comments btl. – http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2016/05/11/bernard-porter/goodbye-to-boleyn/)

Just off to see West Ham’s final game at the Boleyn Ground. Ben got us tickets, miraculously. (They’re like gold. I’ve already been offered £1000 for mine.) The best birthday present I’ve ever had. My mind goes back to all those times I got cross with him as a boy for one reason or another. Oh the guilt…

It will be an emotional occasion. I’ve been going to matches there for sixty years – more than half its history. All of us Hammers love the old ground. Slap in the middle of the East End of London, that wonderful walk up Green Street from the Tube Station, the smell of meat pies, eels and chips all along, the police horses (just in case), claret and blue bunting, ‘I’m for ever blowing bubbles’ being belted out from a thousand beery throats…. And then into the ground, very cosy, spectators pressing right up to the pitch, clouds of soap bubbles floating over, terrific atmosphere, ghostly memories of Moore, Hurst and Peters (who, as you’ll be aware, won the 1966 world cup on their own), lots of humour… (I liked it when they played Spurs recently. Spurs are associated with the Jewish population of Tottenham. The police warned the West Ham fans not to shout anti-semitic slogans. When the game started the Spurs fans started shouting ‘Come on you Yids!’, to which the Hammers fans responded, pointing over to them: ‘Racists! Racists! Terrific.) – Of course it won’t be the same at the bloody Olympic Stadium!

I can’t write more. My eyes are filling with tears. And as one has just been operated on – which is why I’ve not posted anything recently – it’s hard to for me see and write. I have a black patch over that eye, which I’m hoping will frighten the Manchester United hooligans off. When I get back to blogging, it may be about the social and economic significance of the move from Upton Park to Stratford East, and what that says about modern-day capitalism. (Which is quite a lot, actually.)

In the meantime, COYI ! (Come On You Irons!)

The election of Sadiq Khan to be mayor of London is really quite a significant event. Does any other comparable city in Europe or America have a Muslim mayor? Its symbolic importance, at least, is comparable to that of Obama’s Presidency of the USA. In a way it’s more surprising than that, bearing in mind that anti-black prejudice in the US had been declining for some years, whereas Islamophobia in Britain is now at its peak. Shameful efforts by his Conservative rival Zac Goldsmith, probably under the influence of the evil Australian spin-doctor Lynton Crosby, to paint Khan as a ‘friend’ of terrorists, spectacularly backfired; which is hugely promising and a great credit to Londoners. Their city has been attacked and its people slaughtered more than once by self-styled Islamists; yet they can still distinguish between the latter and the great body of Muslims who have integrated into British society peacefully. Contrast Donald Trump, who wants to get rid of all American Muslims. It shows that we in Britain are not that far on the road to Fascism yet.

It also conforms with one of Britain’s most bruited ‘national traditions’ – though it’s one often more honoured in the breach – of tolerance towards outsiders; whatever those who assume that, because Britain had an empire, she must have been racist, may have been told. I’ve argued elsewhere – in my books on imperialism and refugees – that this was not so. Of course negative hypotheses like this are hard to prove; but the present condition of multicultural cities like the now famous Leicester could be taken as evidence; together with Britain’s much greater ‘toleration’ – the word used in the nineteenth century, though it’s a problematical one (why not ‘acceptance’?) – of Jews throughout history, compared with the Continent. As far back as 1868 Britain even elected a (converted) Jew as prime minister. And there have been dozens of Jewish government ministers since. Last year the Tories even appointed a Muslim, Sajid Javid, as Secretary of State for Business: although to tell the truth he’s a little too integrated for my taste. (He’s a Thatcherite. See below, April 1.) I’ve been reading some blog comments today on Khan’s election which have reacted to it with a disgusting level of Islamophobia, but no-one takes these as typical. Khan’s election in itself would seem to disprove that. And incidentally, the scale of anti-Semitism – the other kind of ‘Semite’: for aren’t Arabs Semitic too? – is even more miniscule, whatever calculating Tories pretend and vigilant guardians of Israel may genuinely think. That fuss was mainly a ruse to ‘get at’ Corbyn.

Let’s hope that Sadiq Khan, within the narrow remit he has as a mere ‘mayor’, can fulfil the hopes placed in him. Controlling the free market to provide affordable London housing must be his main priority, after the Boris Johnson years of encouraging foreign millionaires to buy up prime properties as ‘capital investments’. Then it would be good if he could demolish that ghastly misshapen skyscraper in Fenchurch Street known as the ‘Walkie-Talkie’. (He must have some planning powers?)

But his main significance lies in his election itself: as a son of working-class immigrants – a London bus-driver and a seamstress – brought up on a Council estate (almost all of these are ‘privatised’ now), and still openly retaining his Muslim identity, in a city where big money and an Eton education (both represented by Zac Goldsmith) have been making all the running for years; and at a time when his ‘sort’ could so easily have been painted as the ‘enemy’ – bombers, machete-wielding zealots – as Goldsmith intended, if Londoners had not been more discriminating.

As a Londoner originally – albeit an outer suburbanite – I always rather despised the place, preferring more sheerly beautiful foreign cities (Paris, Stockholm, San Francisco…), and wishing I didn’t come from there. For years now I’ve been trying to take on a more provincial identity. But I can now see, I think, what Sadiq Khan meant, when he described it, in his victory speech, as ‘the greatest city in the world’. It has always been – always – a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural place. That’s reflected in the culture that has arisen there: I can’t imagine Shakespeare’s mind being so broadened and stimulated if he’d stayed in boring mono-ethnic Stratford. Occasionally – where foreigners arrived together in large numbers – this has caused trouble. (The East End was Oswald Mosley’s main – indeed just about his only – popular recruitment area.) But generally London has been ‘big’ enough, in all senses, to welcome strangers, to its and our huge benefit. That must make it pretty great.

We lost to the Lib Dems in my ward. A great shame; Rosie was a terrific councillor. I was on polling station duty again, as a ‘teller’ – sitting in the sun for six hours, asking the voters for their numbers so that we could cross them off. Only a few refused to divulge them, as they’re entitled to, of course; probably under the illusion that we could use them to find out how they voted. Most of them were big men with tattoos and scowly faces and meek little women following them, also declining to divulge their numbers, but apologetically. I put them down on my little pad as ‘UKIP’. So if their motive was secrecy, it didn’t work.

Then back to follow the coverage on TV in bed. It was pretty dispiriting: all the emphasis on what it meant for the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, whom the commentators (especially one awful woman) clearly felt very superior to. Dozed off, I’m afraid. Waking up in the morning I found that the results for Labour in England and Wales were nothing like as bad as had been predicted; but that just meant the commentators shifted their focus to Scotland, where Labour, of course, had never stood a chance against the Nats. I’m still waiting for the London Mayoral result. And the votes for ‘Elected Police Commissioners’, though that (fairly new) position is not really taken seriously. I spoiled my paper for that.

It seems to me that after all this, things remain very much as they were. Nothing has changed, or been ‘proved’. Everybody thinks the crucial vote will be the EU Referendum on June 23^rd. That’s not a party question – far from it – so they won’t be needing ‘tellers’. Once that’s out of the way, we can get back to the issues that should have dominated yesterday’s elections. And make the Tories pay.

Let’s get this straight. There’s criticism of the policies of the government of Israel. Then there’s anti-Zionism, directed at the ideology behind the foundation of the State of Israel and its expansion. Thirdly, there’s anti-Judaism, critical of the Jewish religion. And fourthly, there’s anti-Semitism, or hostility to the Jews on grounds of their ‘Semitic’ race. These may possibly overlap, with anti-Zionism’s being a supposedly more respectable cover for anti-Semitism, for example, or anti-Semitic feeling in reality infusing all these positions; but this certainly doesn’t follow, and isn’t always true.

Likewise statements of historical fact, such as that Hitler supported the removal of Germany’s Jews to Palestine as an early solution to his ‘Jewish problem’ before he hit on the ‘Final’ one, or that Israel’s foundation was an essentially imperialist project at the expense of the Palestinian Arabs (whatever the extenuating circumstances), should not be taken to indicate ‘anti-Semitism’ on the part of those expressing them, although they may do. (‘Holocaust denial’, however, almost invariably does; although I suppose you could say that the deniers have simply made an honest mistake.)

I’d even go so far as to say that proposals to evacuate the Jews from Israel to the United States, or anywhere else, are similarly not intrinsically and essentially anti-Semitic, although of course they are anti-Zionist. You might believe that removal would be in these good people’s best interests. Other religious communities have flourished, as communities, even ‘nations’ in effect, in the USA.

In 2012 a film appeared, called And Europe will Be Stunned, featuring a fictional (I think) ‘Jewish Renaissance Movement’, whose aim is to return the Jews to their ‘home’: but not a home in Palestine. ‘It is,’ claims the supposed ‘Manifesto’ of the movement, ‘Poland that we long for, the land of our fathers and forefathers. In real life and in our dreams we continue to have Poland on our minds.’ Fictional this may be; but could not Eastern Europe be regarded as the most convincing ‘homeland’ of at any rate the Jews who originally came from there, rather than the land that was pledged to them by ‘God’ thousands of years before? (God has a lot to answer for in this context. Which is a good reason for disliking the Jewish religion; in my case in common with most other organised religions.) It was there that their modern culture was formed; there and thereabouts that they made their greatest contributions to world civilization; and there that a more enlightened and liberal surrounding population might allow them to live again. Unlikely, I grant; but Poland’s remaining Jewish population is actually recovering today. They could even be happier there, so long as they were no longer persecuted. The Middle East would undoubtedly be a happier place. So would every country threatened these days with violent Islamism (which isn’t an excuse for the latter). And – to return to the main question posed in this post – how could it be regarded as ‘anti-Semitism’ to want the Jews to come back and live with us?

That’s a logical – you might say ‘academic’ – take on this question. But of course it’s not a practical one. We might wish that the influence of Zionism within Judaism were less important, that the Israel colony had never been established, that it had behaved better when it was established – I’m thinking of the West Bank settlements here – despite the undoubted enmity and provocation of the Arab world, which of course have taken far more diabolical forms; that Hitler (and before him the Russian anti-Semites) had been stopped; that the Poles really would take the Jews back: and so on. But these developments are now a given. All we – the world – can do is to make the best of a bad job: defend Israel’s right to exist but try to dissuade her from what you might call ‘defensive excesses’; help her counter the Islamicist menace, but perhaps less provocatively: and see where that gets us. Personally I’d rather like the Israeli government to acknowledge the colonialist crime their forced occupation of Palestine originally constituted: in other words, to show some humility. That is, after all, what we Brits are expected to do with respect to our imperialism. Luckily there is a large minority in Israel and among its supporters abroad who are also thinking and feeling along these lines. Which is why it’s wrong to condemn Israelis, let alone ‘Jews’, indiscriminately.

This isn’t an anti-Semitic point of view. It’s largely shared, as I say, by liberal Jews. The trouble is that elements of it can be taken that way, by certain pro-Israelis and by – here in Britain – right-wing politicians who find it convenient to use the term ‘anti-Semitism’, which since the Holocaust has been just about the most serious charge you could lay against anyone, to smear their political rivals and enemies with. (Personally, I think this is pretty rich coming from Conservatives, in view of their own history! Surely it will rebound on them when someone unearths some of their tweets.) It’s for this reason that Labour leaders do need to be careful of what they say in public; even if what they’re saying may seem to be perfectly OK rationally and academically, and if a rational academic like me feels upset that one can no longer, in this climate, say reasonable things. I probably shouldn’t have said them here. So it’s lucky for me that the readership of this blog is so small.

This blog was supposed to be political and general, or at least professional, rather than personal, but of course you can’t always keep the two apart. Just think of all the people who vote Conservative in order to stay rich. I feel very personally affected by a number of political developments just now. Or at least, political developments as they are filtered through to me in Sweden by BBC World News – through my ‘pillow speaker’ in bed at night – and the Guardian internet site the next morning. Years ago I used to worry that while I was abroad important things could have happened back home which would shock me when I returned. (I remember telling a friend this as we were flying back from a ski-ing holiday: ‘for all we know there could have been a revolution.’ When we landed we found there had been. Martin Peters had been transferred to Spurs.) Now of course we can keep abreast of it all. I almost wish we couldn’t.

Are things really as bad as they seem from here? I’m thinking of course of Trump; but also of recent developments in my own British Labour Party. The last general election result was both a shock and a tragedy, and also profoundly undemocratic (an extreme Conservative government being allowed to get its evil way on the basis of 30-odd per cent of the vote); but then along came Jeremy, an unlikely saviour, I grant you, but one who seemed to be doing pretty well, and in particular keeping his dignity and developing a reputation for honesty which had been thought to be rare in politicians, against fearsome opposition, in a way that led some of us old Labourites to hope that he might, just, and with the world going the way it is now, triumph in the long run. We’d begun to recoup some hope again. And hope, after all, is one of the two main secrets of political success; the other being fear, whose repercussions don’t bear thinking about.

It’s this, the ‘fear’ factor, playing on the apparent hopelessness of our times, which appears to be dominant now. Trumpists fear Mexicans and liberals, and resent the loss of American ‘greatness’. In Britain we fear immigrants, terrorists, and Muslims generally: the last being the key line taken by the Conservative candidate in the London mayoral election just now against Sadiq Khan, the Labour man. (‘Would you trust London in the control of a friend of extremists?’- superimposed on a picture of a bombed London bus.) It’s as a result of this that people respond to politicians presented as ‘leaders’, who can defend them against these terrors. That way, of course, lies fascism, of whatever hue; the ‘hue’ differing according to culture. (Trumpists are unlikely to do the goose-step for example.)

‘Leadership’ is a problematical idea. It emerged in British politics first, I think, in the 1960s: partly under the influence of certain new Business – ‘managerial’ – ideologies; and partly because the ’60s were now far enough away from the war for its inevitable association with the ‘Führerprinzip’ of Hitler. Mussolini, and the rest to become blurred. Harold Wilson, sensing this, used to complain of how ‘leadership’ was coming to be identified with strong, tough, even bullying control, as against the encouragement of consensus and compromise, which was his preferred way. His successor-but-one, Margaret Thatcher, of course, exemplified this to the hilt. After her it has been difficult to deviate from that pattern. (Tony Blair used to say how much he admired her.) Before her, however, there had been examples in British history of prime ministers who had none of her qualities, yet were arguably more effective and certainly more beneficial in office. The obvious one is Clem Attlee; ‘a modest man’, as Winston Churchill is supposed to have said of him, ‘who has much to be modest about’; yet arguably the greatest peace-time prime minister in our history. By miles.

Which is what distressed me about a feature in the Guardian yesterday accepting that Jeremy Corbyn was, of course, not anti-semitic, but doubting whether he had ‘leadership qualities’. This of course is in connection with the current crisis in the Labour party over its alleged ‘anti-semitic’ elements, which has been mainly contrived by enemies of Labour, and within Labour by enemies of Corbyn, forcing the latter to set up an inquiry into it, chaired by an ex-Chair of ‘Liberty’: a good choice, by the way. I’m pretty confident that that Inquiry will substantially exonerate the party (of course there must be a few genuine anti-semites there, as everywhere); but by then – in about two months, I believe – it will be too late. The mud has been flung, and some will remain sticking. It is bound to affect the ‘narrative’ against which this week’s (local government) elections, and then the later EU referendum and general election, will be fought. It’s the headlines that stay in the public mind, sometimes for years. I have a friend who still thinks that MI5 ‘must have had something on’ Harold Wilson; and another close friend (a relative, actually) who believed that Jean Charles de Menezes really did leap over the barrier at Stockwell underground station in July 2005 (before being killed by police in mistake for a terrorist): in both (utterly false) cases because that’s what the newspaper headlines said at the time. The damage has been done.

All of which fills me with despair; and – to get back to the personal – a growing feeling that I can no longer bear to live in Britain just to be enraged and disappointed like this continually. Kajsa and I talked this morning about my moving to Sweden permanently. I would be a kind of refugee. I’d keep a small base back in the UK, of course, after downsizing drastically (anyone interested in loads of books, CDs and my old research notes?); but we’ve more or less decided which room in her house I’d have as my study. It will double as a guest room, so friends from Britain (and anywhere else) will be welcome to come, bearing jars of Marmite, and tales of how much worse things have got ‘back home’.

Meanwhile I’m back in Blighty tomorrow, partly to help out with the election in Hull. Maybe I’ll find that things aren’t so bad after all. Or that the company of other Labour ‘tellers’ will cheer me up. Or persuade me that by leaving, I’d be choosing the cowards’ way. But in the meantime, it’s good to know that I have a bolt-hole. Most of my fellow Labourites won’t. (And we can’t fit them all in here.)

*

On the ‘Anti-Semitism’ thing, this letter in the Guardian yesterday, signed by 82 Jewish writers, artists, academics and actors who are all members of the Labour Party  (one as it happens an old friend of mine), was I think excellent.

“We are Jewish members and supporters of the Labour party and of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, who wish to put our perspective on the “antisemitism” controversy that has been widely debated in the last few weeks (Labour’s antisemitism crisis as Livingstone suspended, 29 April). We do not accept that antisemitism is “rife” in the Labour party. Of the examples that have been repeated in the media, many have been reported inaccurately, some are trivial, and a very few may be genuine examples of antisemitism. The tiny number of cases of real antisemitism need to be dealt with, but we are proud that the Labour party historically has been in the forefront of the fight against all forms of racism. We, personally, have not experienced any antisemitic prejudice in our dealings with Labour party colleagues.
We believe these accusations are part of a wider campaign against the Labour leadership, and they have been timed particularly to do damage to the Labour party and its prospects in elections in the coming week. As Jews, we are appalled that a serious issue is being used in this cynical and manipulative way, diverting attention from much more widespread examples of Islamophobia and xenophobia in the Conservative and other parties. We dissociate ourselves from the misleading attacks on Labour from some members of the Jewish community. We urge others, who may be confused or worried by recent publicity, to be sure that the Labour party, under its present progressive leadership, is a place where Jews are welcomed in a spirit of equality and solidarity.”

Globalisation as a Utopian ideal has been around for more than 150 years. The very word implies Utopia, or perfection, just as monotheism, or the idea of there being just one true God, does. (See below, March 24.) And it is equally dangerous.

150 years ago it was not called ‘globalisation’, of course, but ‘Free Trade’. (The word ‘free’ has much the same kind of pure resonance as ‘global’.) If anyone doubts the Utopian nature of it, then read this, by the great Corn Law abolitionist Richard Cobden in 1846.

I have been accused of looking too much to material interests. Nevertheless I can say that I have taken as large and great a view of the effects of this mighty principle as ever did any man who dreamt over it in his own study. I believe that the physical gain will be the smallest gain to humanity from the success of this principle. I look farther; I see in the Free-trade principle that which shall act on the moral world as the principle of gravitation in the universe,—drawing men together, thrusting aside the antagonism of race, and creed, and language, and uniting us in the bonds of eternal peace. I have looked even farther. I have speculated, and probably dreamt, in the dim future—ay, a thousand years hence—I have speculated on what the effect of the triumph of this principle may be. I believe that the effect will be to change the face of the world, so as to introduce a system of government entirely distinct from that which now prevails. I believe that the desire and the motive for large and mighty empires; for gigantic armies and great navies—for those materials which are used for the destruction of life and the desolation of the rewards of labour—will die away; I believe that such things will cease to be necessary, or to be used, when man becomes one family, and freely exchanges the fruits of his labour with his brother man. I believe that, if we could be allowed to reappear on this sublunary scene, we should see, at a far distant period, the governing system of this world revert to something like the municipal system; and I believe that the speculative philosopher of a thousand years hence will date the greatest revolution that ever happened in the world’s history from the triumph of the principle which we have met here to advocate.

Gosh golly! – All this would be the ultimate result of allowing commercial markets absolute freedom domestically and internationally, unrestrained by governments (aka ‘democracy’) or workers’ combinations (Trade Unions), both of which would be entirely subordinate to the dictates of Adam Smith’s ‘invisible hand’. It was the idealistic aspect of it which recommended the principle of Free Trade even to working-class radicals in the mid-19^th century; this, together with the promise of ‘cheaper bread’ that it offered (imported), and – which may be more difficult to credit today – the promise that eventually the free market would lead to greater social and international equality. Just think of it! (And see below, April 18.) That was important.

Whether TTIP – the latest effort to allow market needs and considerations to override democratic ones – will in fact give rise to this kind of Utopia must be doubted. We know how markets can be fiddled and fixed; how easily they can morph into monopolies, which can hardly be regarded as ‘free’ trade, and into imperialism; the dangers it poses to people’s preferred rights, for example to a ‘National’ Health Service…. And very few people nowadays – especially nowadays – can be under any illusion that it can ever conduce to ‘equality’.

More generally, we ought to be aware of the enormous dangers that have always attached to simplistic and idealistic ideologies like this, historically; from the various great monotheisms, through communism, and now culminating – but for how long? – in blessed ‘Globalisation’. Lesson: beware of Utopias, even when dressed in utilitarian clothes, and advocated by ‘good guy’ American presidents.

I’m surprised by the allegations emerging just now of anti-Semitism in the British Labour Party. As long-standing member of the party, I must say I can’t quite believe them, or that they are significant. I touched on historical left-wing anti-Semitism in my first book (Critics of Empire), where it was a charge laid against those who attributed Britain’s imperialist war in South Africa to the influence of capitalists there, some of whom were Jewish; but came to the conclusion – based on my knowledge of the anti-imperialist community more generally, who included other Jews – that, obviously in this context, it was their ‘capitalism’ that set the Left against them, and that genuine racial anti-Semitism played little part. It is well known that the creation of Israel was enthusiastically supported by the post-Second World War Labour Party, based partly on left-wing appreciation of the genuine socialism that appeared to be an essential part of the project – kibbutsim, and all that.

Of course the state of Israel has changed quite fundamentally since then, and has become open to criticism on the Left for what the latter sees as its militancy, colonialism (the West Bank settlements), and domestic treatment of its Arabs. Some of us historians, musing on various ‘hypothetical histories’, as we are bound to, must occasionally wonder what might have transpired had Arthur Balfour never made his ‘Declaration’, and if the European Jews’ national aspirations had been satisfied elsewhere – like Uganda, tentatively offered to the Zionists by the British Colonial Office before the War. Wouldn’t that have made things in the Middle East better today? (Of course we can’t know. That’s the difficulty with ‘hypothetical histories’.)

I imagine that it was this kind of ‘musing’ that led the Labour MP Naz Shah to make her cringeworthy suggestion (before she became an MP) that the present state of Israel be uprooted and transferred to America – ‘problem solved’, as she put it; cringeworthy because in this day and age it must resurrect memories of ‘ethnic cleansing’ both in Nazi Germany and elsewhere, and because she really should have been sensitive to the place that the geographical ‘Holy Land’ holds in the minds of Jews everywhere (however emotionally and therefore irrationally). She should also have been alive to the way in which criticism of Israel and anti-Zionism are – whether we like it or not – often these days confused with anti-Semitism, or seen as a ‘cover’ for it. That’s a minefield that even milder critics of Israeli government policies have to traverse gingerly every day. That displayed very poor judgment on her part, as well as ignorance. I trust her statement, made yesterday in the House of Commons, that she now fully and deeply acknowledges this.

As for other expressions of ‘anti-Semitism’ in Labour student circles (it’s usually students who say these silly things), I have no knowledge of what they are supposed to be. But we do know – if I can be allowed to write this without being suspected of racial prejudice myself – that some sections of the Jewish community can be over-sensitive and over-suspicious here. (With good historical reason, I have to say. And they share this with women and blacks.) In connection with this, I was reading Christopher Isherwood’s wonderful 1964 novel A Single Man recently, and came across this. It’s in a lecture the main character, ‘George’, is giving to his students at (we presume) UCLA.

‘And I’ll tell you something else. A minority has its own kind of aggression. It absolutely dares the majority to attack it.’

I hope quoting that doesn’t get me into trouble. If I had posted this on a blogsite that people actually read, like the LRB Blog – my usual vehicle – I suspect it would provoke plenty of comments and complaints BTL; which is why I’m confining it to this one. For the time being.

I thought of adding here a statement of my enormous admiration for Jews and their societies and cultures. (I often wish I was one.) But why should I be forced into such a defensive stance? (There. I have been.)

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PS. (later.) Apparently Ken Livingstone is now being accused of anti-semitism for pointing out that Hitler supported the formation of a state of Israel in the 1930s. I’m sorry, but that is true. It was part of Hitler’s solution to Germany’s ‘Jewish problem’ before he thought of the ‘final’ one. Of course Livingstone was neither defending Hitler nor tarring Israel with a Nazi brush. Right-wing Labour MPs, including one respectable historian, Tristram Hunt, sadly, are piling in to call for his removal from the Party on these grounds. I suppose it’s the mere mention of the ‘H’-word. This bears out what I’ve just written. I despair.

Hillsborough (1989) was not unique. The scandals connected with that tragedy that have been revealed over the past few days, especially with regards to policing and the press, were in fact pretty typical of the later 1970s and 1980s. The 1984 Miners’ strike was the occasion for a number of them: state conspiracies, excessive police brutality, cover-ups, and false police statements leading to the imprisonment of innocent miners, especially in connection with the ‘Battle of Orgreave’ (coking plant), which later cost the South Yorkshire Police £425,000 in out-of-court settlements. Before that there were the false convictions of the so-called Birmingham Six, Guildford Four and Maguire Seven – all supposedly IRA terrorists – in 1974-6. These convictions too were later overturned, usually after 20+ years, with the victims this time paid millions in compensation. Those were some of the main political ones. There were also dozens of ordinary civilian miscarriages:  murderers and others convicted on fabricated evidence. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_miscarriage_of_justice_cases#United_Kingdom.) Thank God the death penalty was not still in force.

In addition to this, the Conservative Party and the security services are positively known to have resorted to ‘dirty tricks’ at this time in order to undermine radical movements (like Trade Unions and CND) and the Labour Party. (How successful these were is a matter of doubt. They certainly plotted to remove Harold Wilson, but it doesn’t follow that Wilson’s eventual removal was due to them.) They were encouraged in this by the more politically corrupt sections of the press, especially the Daily Mail, and the newspapers that Rupert Murdoch took over in the early 1970s. The Sun, of course, is one of the main villains of the Hillsborough piece.

At the time, accusations of police and state malpractice were usually dismissed by these papers, and by governments, as the ravings of loony ‘conspiracy theorists’. This created an atmosphere of disbelief, and undoubtedly acted as a deterrent to proper investigation of many of these charges. It is against this background that the heroic efforts of the Hillsborough campaigners have to be measured and appreciated. It took them 27 years. What other ‘conspiracies’ from that time still remain to be uncovered?

This period – circa 1975-90 – may well be looked back on by future historians as one of the most institutionally corrupt in British history since the early nineteenth century. (For that, see my Plots and Paranoia, ch. 2.) I’m not sure – it needs to be compared with other eras; and I wouldn’t be surprised if it carried on beyond that. Nor am I sure of the reasons. Irish terrorism was an obvious justification. But right-wing fear of even moderate socialism is likely to be another. Real-life communist plots may have played a part. As well as these factors, Conservatives, especially under Thatcher, have never been fully committed to ‘democracy’, except as ‘show’, and insofar as it can be manipulated. (Look at them now.) That would help explain it.

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PS. (next day.)  And I forgot – how could I have done? – the paedophilia: involving establishment figures, police and cover-ups, again. Lift up a corner of the carpet covering the Thatcher era, and what do we find crawling out…