Porter’s Pensées

In the Guardian today there’s a long piece by Michael Booth on Scandinavia, based on his new book, about which I blogged here when I received it for review in December. Here is my finished review, coming out in the Literary Review soon. I now think I should have been tougher on him. His description (in the Guardian) of the Systembolaget (quoting Susan Sontag) as ‘part funeral parlour, part back-room abortionist’ is a cheap travesty. They are wonderful places, bright, full of dependable wines – none of the rubbish you can get in our free-market wine stores – and staffed by helpful and knowledgeable people. Anyhow, here’s my review.

The Almost Nearly Perfect People. The Truth about the Nordic Miracle; by Michael Booth (Jonathan Cape, 395 pp., £14.99)

Scandinavia, or the Nordic countries if you want to include all five of them, does seem a bit of a marvel. To Labour supporters of my generation it was our ‘shining city on the hill’: an example of what democratic socialism could be like, without lapsing into Soviet tyranny. By the political Right it was either regarded as an embarrassment, suggesting that there was in fact ‘an alternative’ to liberal capitalism – remember Margaret Thatcher’s ‘TINA’?; or else dismissed as an illusion, a city built on sand, which would be bound to topple soon, and was probably less shining even then than it was presented. (Surely people must be groaning under all that taxation?) I feared at first that this book might be a sop to the latter group: ‘the truth about…’ (in the subtitle) seemed ominous; but I needn’t have worried over-much. Michael Booth has some conventional right-of-centre views about the Nordic welfare model: its unsustainability, its stifling impact on work and enterprise, its uniformity, its sheer dullness, as he sees it; but in the end his conclusion is that, for those ‘looking for an alternative to the rampant capitalism that has ravaged our economies’ in recent years, ‘the Nordic countries have the answer’. Which comes as a bit of a surprise after the strong criticisms of all of them expressed in the rest of the book. The Danish chapters are really quite excoriating; which puzzled me as to why the original Danish edition of the book, as its publisher tells us, got five-star reviews – until I reached the chapters on Sweden, which are even less complimentary. The Danes will accept any amount of punishment, it seems, if you beat the Swedes harder.

Booth starts with Denmark because he lives there, with a Danish wife and children at Danish schools. That, I suggest, gives him an insight into that country that doesn’t quite extend to the others, which he has merely visited and researched, and after Denmark, which has inevitably coloured his views of all of them. (I would do the same. I live in Sweden; when I visit the other Nordic countries I see them through Swedish, and behind that British, eyes.) He is at pains to point out how different they all are, and how scathing of the others. That’s true. You should hear my partner on the Danes (jokingly)! She’s going to love some of the ammunition provided here. Can it really be true that ‘seven per cent of Danish men have had sex with an animal’? (Not the same one, surely.) One of the major problems with this book is that it provides no sources or references, so we can’t rely on it. Much of it is impressionistic, and I have to say that many of its impressions of the Swedes don’t accord with mine. On the other hand, Booth is absolutely right to be angry about Sweden’s record in World War II, which ought to be a source of shame to Swedes still, but which most of them seem blithely unaware of. This may be one of the things that fuels the arrogance that their neighbours detect in them. In Finland, apparently, which Sweden refused to help in its ‘winter war’ against the Soviets, it is also seen as evidence of Swedish men’s ‘gayness’. That and the hairnets that were ordered for the Swedish military in the 1960s, when long hair was fashionable. (Booth is good on Finnish ‘macho’ culture.)

It was Sweden’s ‘neutrality’ during the war which laid the base for her economic prosperity afterwards, though most Swedes themselves – and their British admirers – prefer to attribute it to their ‘consensual’ political and economic model. That, and their social egalitarianism, especially with regard to the sexes, is something that all the Nordic countries share. Even in ‘macho’ Finland, with its ‘wife-carrying competitions’ and the rest, half its politicians are women, 60% of its graduates, and a large proportion of its CEOs. At the root of this undoubtedly lies Scandinavia’s generous parental leave and child-care systems, which enable parental tasks to be shared, and consequently women to be liberated to fulfill themselves in other ways if they want. (Booth worries about the ‘feminist’ pressures on them to go out to work even if they would prefer not to.) The trade unions are powerful, but also co-operative with the owners, which was, of course, what Harold Wilson’s government saw as the solution to Britain’s economic ills, until his unions scuppered it. Michael Booth spends a lot of time trying to get to the bottom of this ‘consensus’ culture in Scandinavia, with a number of ingenious theories, most of them historical: the Viking inheritance, ethnic homogeneity (until recently), the lack of a proper feudal system in the middle ages, Denmark’s reduction from a great power to the rump of a nation by the nineteenth century, and so on. My Scandinavian friends, on the other hand, think this is a ‘natural’ state of affairs. They would turn the question around: why are the Anglo-Saxon nations so competitive? (It took a long time for my partner to come round to the view that the Swedish way wasn’t the default position for any society.)

All travel books, or books about foreign countries, say at least as much about where their authors are coming from as about where they are going. Of course this doesn’t make them any the less valuable, even to the peoples they are describing: ‘O wad some Power the giftie gie us / To see oursels as ithers see us’. The Almost Nearly Perfect People must tell the Scandinavians a lot about themselves that they might not have noticed, because they haven’t been asking Booth’s question; and will serve as a stimulating introduction to the region for foreigners. If its general bias is obvious, and a bit Anglo-Saxon, it also rehearses the arguments against it, usually from academics he has interviewed in the Nordic countries, very fairly. It covers most of the topics you would expect it to, including Sweden’s political assassinations, the Icelandic banking collapse, Utøya, the Mohammed cartoons, immigration, and the Far Right. It is weak on culture; but then Booth thinks the welfare state is detrimental to high art. (He admits to one of his interviewees that this makes him a ‘typical British snob’.) It is also a thoroughly entertaining read, written brilliantly, and with a number of good jokes. Maybe that’s why the Danes liked it so much. They have a more robust sense of humour than the other Nordics.

I’m still trying to work out why the British seem so much less worked up about the Snowden revelations than other peoples. In the old East Germany last summer, for example, I witnessed public demonstrations in support of him. Angela Merkel has spoken strongly against secret US surveillance of her; other European and Latin American leaders have joined in. In the USA public concern has resulted in a wholesale reform of surveillance practices, at least cosmetically. (That surely should be enough to justify Snowden’s ‘treason’. It implicitly acknowledges that he was right) In Britain, however, it seems only to be the Guardian, some bloggers, and a few MPs. Ministers are totally relaxed. William Hague’s comment originally was that ‘if you are a law-abiding citizen of this country going about your business and your personal life you have nothing to fear about the British state or the intelligence services listening to your phone calls or anything like that.’ Didn’t Goebbels say something similar? Simon Jenkins has called it ‘the motto of police states down the ages.’ Yet the Brits simply shrug, and get back to their more immediate worries; which are, of course, legion.

My surprise at this may be naïve. As a historian I know that opposition to domestic ‘espionage’ of almost any description was almost universal in nineteenth and twentieth century Britain, and indeed a matter of great pride to most Britons, for whom it was thought to distinguish them from nastier foreign regimes like the Russian and the French. The word ‘espionage’ was even pronounced in a French way. ‘Spylessness’ was one of the traditions that defined their ‘national identity’. (Conservative education ministers seeking to use the study of history to inculcate ‘patriotism’ today might take note.) Of course it wasn’t absolute, and you can find precedents for state espionage going right back; but precedents don’t become a ‘tradition’ unless they are joined up, and the occasional uses of spies in and by Britain were not. They were pretty rare, usually harmless, provoked public outrage if they were ever discovered, and were for that reason always hidden from public gaze. I could give countless examples of this prejudice. My particular favourite is the Metropolitan police sergeant in the 1850s who was demoted for sneakily hiding behind a tree to witness an ‘indecent offence’; others are cited in an old book of mine, Plots and Paranoia (1989). So the present-day apathy seems out of historical character. But then of course it isn’t really our history that defines or ‘identifies’ us. That really is a naïve view.

Continental Europe and South America don’t have this ‘tradition’, of course. What they do have, however, is recent experience of state surveillance, and what it can lead to. The Stasi Museum in Leipzig exemplifies this chillingly, and must – together with their Nazi history – explain why Germans are more sensitive to this. (Merkel, of course, comes from the old East Germany.) Our own experience is less obviously cautionary. The Special Branch and MI5 have some skeletons in their cupboards, mainly to do with their manipulation by the political Right, usually directed against Labour governments; but much of that – as well as of many other British historical naughties – is still kept secret (some of it in the only recently discovered cache at Hanslope Park). [Guardian 18 Oct 2013.] Those things usually only get revealed when states – like the DDR – fall. So we are largely unaware.

Another possible explanation is that we are all still in thrall to our upper classes, who never shared the national liberal prejudice against ‘espionage’ to the same extent, if it was done against foreigners and plebs. One interesting sociological fact about the British secret services is that they were invariably headed by pretty posh people, most of whom, at least early on, were recruited either from the military, or from Britain’s colonial service, whose value-systems were forged in different environments. They also never quite trusted democracy, which is why they have been so resistant to effective democratic accountability for their spooks. Then of course there’s the impact of Irish and Islamist terrorism; though it has to be said that there was terrorism in nineteenth century Britain too – though obviously not on the scale of 9/11 – which doesn’t seem to have had this effect then.

But still, the lack of a public outcry does appear anomalous to a historian; and makes me wonder whether it might not be rooted in a fundamental national change when it comes to attitudes to ‘secrecy’. Today we seem quite relaxed about surveillance cameras in every street, Google’s satellite mapping, the use of ATM and shop receipts to track our movements, Amazon nosing in on our tastes in books and music: practices that would have been regarded with horror a century ago. More than that: thousands of people (and they can’t all be pimply adolescents) seem to enjoy secrecy, or pseudonymity, if it gives them the liberty to write rubbish comments on blogs, or abuse and threaten women and young people through Twitter. Again, ‘anonymous letters’ were once regarded as cowardly. Now they are widely accepted. How we’ve changed.

Another relatively un-concerned country appears to be Sweden, where I have my second home. That may be because they’re used to an intrusive State, and because of powerful hidden links they’ve long had with the Americans. I read recently that the Davos people have put their ex-prime minister Karl Bildt in charge of an inquiry into all this. That doesn’t fill me with confidence. You might as well appoint William Hague.

Another re-post, from an LRB blog (2 July 2012). Forget all the books – I think this is one of the best things I’ve written.

It may be because I’m a professional historian, and so proprietorial towards my subject, but I’ve always objected to British history’s being used – ‘prostituted’, would be my word for it – in order to inculcate patriotism, as Theresa May’s latest idea for a citizenship test for immigrants seeking British nationality appears to envisage. For a start it must be questionable how far our history ‘defines’ us as a nation, as opposed to our present-day circumstances, and influences from abroad. Second, history taught in order to teach patriotism must be ‘patriotic’ history, which is bound to be selective at best. Third, I rather like the Swedes’ view of their national identity, which is defined much more in terms of their aspirations – equality, and the like – than of their history. Just as well, perhaps; Sweden has quite a number of skeletons in its historical cupboard: as of course does Britain.

Still, if the Tories are set on this, there must be a way of doing it that is better than simply listing some ‘illustrious’ men and women (all white, incidentally; the Queen, the Duke of Wellington, Emmeline Pankhurst, Churchill and sundry inventors, poets and composers are the ones mentioned so far); emphasising the centrality of Christianity (another suggestion); and, presumably, trotting out the stock ‘key dates’ of our island story: 1066, 1215 and so on. Here’s a first stab at it: a short account for immigrants of the history of the country they are aiming to join.

“As immigrants to Britain, you are following in a long tradition. Britain’s origins lie in successive waves of immigration from the European continent: Celts, Romans, northern Germans, Scandinavians and Norman-French, most of them coming as conquerors, but some just to settle; and then bands of refugees from political tyrannies and economic deprivation from the 17th century to the present day. Many of Britain’s most distinguished later citizens have been, or have been descended from, these immigrants. They include some of the country’s greatest artists, scientists and industrialists; most of its older aristocracy; the Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition; and its present queen.

“To complement this, Britain has also been a nation of emigration, sending ‘settlers’ to North America, Australasia and Southern Africa, usually displacing the original inhabitants; traders, investors and slavers all over the world; and conquerors and rulers to India, Africa and elsewhere. Some of the settlers could be regarded as economic refugees from Britain and Ireland, driven by hunger. You may well have come across their descendants and the legacies of what is called ‘British imperialism’ in your countries of origin. There are differing opinions over whether the latter has overall been a force for good or ill.

“Back home, Britons have long prided themselves on their toleration, which made possible their generous ‘asylum’ policy in the past; the ‘freedom’ of Britain’s institutions, especially the law, and the jury system that underpins it; and – latterly – parliamentary democracy. All these however have had to be struggled for, usually by the ‘common people’ against a political class that has not always shared the same values; and they can never be said to be absolutely secure.

“The United Kingdom’s historical ‘identity’ is confused, differing not only according to class, which is still a powerful factor, but also according to nationality (English, Scottish, Welsh, Northern Irish), region, ethnicity, religion (Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, atheist…) and gender. Like every other nation in the world it has a mixed history of proud achievements, usually in defence of ‘liberty’, both its own and others’ (slaves, Nazi-occupied Europe), and egregious sins, some of them committed in its colonies.

“Britain is not defined by its history, but is ever developing, in response to internal dynamics and global pressures, including movements of population. To become British is to identify with this complex and changing identity. To become a good citizen will involve embracing the best features of it, and rejecting the worst.”

PS. (December 2013): my American son-in-law has just taken (and passed) the test, to enable him to continue working in the UK. That’s despite having a legit. English wife, and Anglo-American child. I looked through the books he was given; most of the history questions were silly, and some of the answers were either questionable, or just plain wrong. He’s promised to pass them on to me; I may blog about them when he has.

I’ve just been sent a popular book about Scandinavia to review. It’s by an Englishman. As a long-time English resident in Sweden (on and off), I always feel nervous and rather defensive when I come across books like this. This one is subtitled ‘The Truth about the Nordic Miracle’. That sounds ominous – or am I being paranoid?

The truth is, there are many people out there, especially in America but also on the British Right, who want to be told bad things about ‘socialist’ Scandinavia. According to them, it shouldn’t work. By most accounts, Scandinavians are happier, more prosperous, more equal yet more individually free (except to accumulate vast unnecessary fortunes), more enterprising, better brought up as children, politer, more moral (unless your only measure of morality is sexual), enormously more gender-equal and far less crime-ridden than in America: all of which qualities Americans are supposed to value. And yet the Nordic countries have high taxation, welfare states, very low church attendance, a higher rate of divorce, a miniscule prison population, and same-sex partnerships. Ideologically that’s wrong. Over the years I’ve read several American newspaper articles arguing that it’s also untrue. (One I remember – I can’t put my finger on it now – claimed that the Swedish murder-rate pro rata was higher than in Chicago.) Nordic noir is doing its bit, too; an American friend of mine, a distinguished professor, once told me he was thinking twice about coming to Sweden after reading The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo. (I’m trying to keep Midsomer Murders from him.) Scandinavia’s success sticks in the free-market gullet. It seems to suggest that there is an alternative. That’s why lefties like me have always admired it. When I was in the Labour party in the 1960s and ’70s, Sweden was always my ‘Shining City on the Hill’.

Sweden’s success, together with the ‘progress’ made in her direction in Britain under the latter’s heroic post-war Labour governments (remember the welfare state?), also stopped me becoming a fully-fledged Marxist. Marxists predicted that capitalism would inevitably become more and more red in tooth and claw, until it finally collapsed under the weight of its own internal contradictions. But it wasn’t happening! Both at home (the welfare state) and abroad (decolonization) capitalism was becoming enlightened enough to compromise, and hence stave off collapse. That was welcome even to a socialist like me, who wanted socialism but not via a bloodbath. (I had too much to lose.) Again, Labour Britain (before Blair) proved that there was an alternative, or a ‘third way’.

Then came Thatcher and Reagan – or it may have started before – and the ‘great reaction’ that brought the capitalist juggernaut back onto the tracks, snorting and belching fire, swiping away the socialists (i.e. human beings) in its path; in a way that seemed to suggest that Marx had been right all along. Except in Scandinavia; which was about twenty years behind Britain and America, and ten behind the rest of Europe: which was why it was so important that it remained social-democratic, to act as a beacon to all us defeated lefties still. Eighteen years ago, when I first came to Sweden, it still was. But it has been getting an awful battering since, from outside sources (including possibly insidious American influences), and its own right-wing – curiously named ‘Moderate’ – governments; so that in many regards it is not the ‘shining city’ it used to be.

That why I fear for English-language books about Scandinavia: in case they weaken its reputation and resolve even further. I haven’t yet read this book, and certainly won’t allow these anticipations to affect my judgment; so hopefully I shall be proved happily wrong. You’ll be able to find out in the pages of the Literary Review, sometime early next year.

The UK does averagely in the ‘Pisa’ tables, comparing student performances around the world. Michael Gove (our minister) blames the lack of progress on the previous Labour government. Sweden does disastrously, plummeting in all subjects. People there blame it on the present ‘Moderate’ government’s ‘Free Schools’ system, pioneered in Sweden recently, and being copied avidly (and ideologically) by Gove.

When the Moderaten came in their Education Minister (an ex-Army officer) promised that in a few years Sweden would boast ‘the world’s best schools’. In fact the ‘Free Schools’ have been beset with scandals; prompting STV to put out a programme a few months ago actually entitled ‘Världens bästa skitskola’. (For English-speakers, ‘sk’ before an ‘i’ is pronounced ‘sh’.)

I have a love for the game of cricket bordering on the religious, and on the incomprehensible for non-Anglo Saxon friends of mine. And Australia has long been my favourite country, certainly of those I have lived in. So I was distressed to find my regard for both undermined by the last day’s play in the Brisbane test, where the ‘sledging’ – Australia’s only original contribution, I think, to the game; compare that to India, which gave us the exquisite leg-glance – reached quite vicious proportions, not at all in what we old farts would call the ‘spirit’ of the game. Maybe England were as bad – I don’t know, and none of their comments was said to the press, or picked up by stump mikes. But it makes no difference. It’s clear that one or two of the Australian team (Warner, for example) are really nasty characters, and that certain players on both sides are regarding the present series in the light of a ‘war’. It isn’t. It’s a game. Real cricket lovers appreciate the quality of the play, far more than any result. At the beginning of this series I was hoping Australia would win it, narrowly, in order to even things up. The cricket world needs a strong Australia. (It has already lost the West Indies.) Now however I don’t care. If the series goes on as it has begun, and Australia win, it will be a pyrrhic victory. Who now cares – or remembers – who won the ‘bodyline’ series? This series could be remembered in the same unsavoury way. So I won’t be listening to the commentary in bed tonight (one of the last pleasures in bed an oldie like me has). Even if England do well.