Porter’s Pensées

To paraphrase Marx: ‘History repeats itself: first as Hitler, then as Trump’ (Eighteenth Brumaire). There’s no doubting that the circumstances behind the rise of ‘the Donald’ and of certain European right-wing mavericks today do bear an uncanny   resemblance to those of the 1930s: economic depression, feelings of national humiliation, anger,  ethnic scapegoating, widespread dissatisfaction with establishment politics, ‘threats’ to the propertied from the Left – and so on. Trump, Farage, le Pen, Akesson and the rest of them look like clowns to most outsiders at present, but then so did Adolf before he rose to power. I doubt whether Trump could ever become a Hitler; any American brand of fascism is bound to be very different – I imagine more soft-ball – than the pre-war German kind. But we can’t be complacent.  Let’s just hope, if the democratic socialists can’t get their acts together, and we do lurch Right-wards, that the end result will be – in Marx’s original version – more ‘farcical’ than ‘tragic’. But I wouldn’t bet on it.

I’ve just reviewed two books about the year 1956 for the LRB. I hope they publish it (they don’t always); if not I’ll put it up here. The 1950s have a bad reputation in historical retrospect, as a time of relative post-war austerity, still, a stifling social environment for most people, especially women, the tragedy of Suez, the repression of the Hungarian uprising, and Jim Crow in the USA. There was no colour TV; most people didn’t own cars; the diet (in Britain) was frightful; you still had deference, hanging, and beating in schools; and the Empire was going down the drain. Photos and films from the period are all in black, white and (predominantly) grey. We had to wait until the 1960s for things to perk up. (Or to perk down, if you’re an old-fashioned conservative.) The year 1968, in particular, was the turning-point. From then onwards, until comparatively recently, the sun began to shine. No-one, writes the author of one of these books, would want to return to the time before then.

I don’t agree. I remember the 1950s. I was 15 in 1956. I found it an immensely stimulating decade (quite apart from the natural biological stimulus of adolescence), and greatly to be preferred to our own in many ways. Of course I was privileged: ‘selected’ to go to a ‘good’ school, with prospects of a ‘good’ university after that; missing ‘national service’ by a whisker; and – perhaps the most important thing – male. It was women who were most disadvantaged in the 1950s, and whose condition has improved most since. I’m lucky to have been a boy – and not gay. Gays also had a terrible time in the 1950s. (See the very black-and-white film Victim, starring Dirk Bogarde – courageously, in view of his own closet homosexuality.) Yes, the food was lousy, we were beaten at school, and the rest of it. All that is perfectly true. But there were two things that compensated, massively.

The first was the existence of obvious social and political ills to react against, providing material for the new ‘kitchen-sink’ theatre of the time, for example, and the new popular music – ‘skiffle’ and ‘rock and roll’. John Osborne, Arnold Wesker, Harold Pinter, Bill Haley, Elvis Presley, some of the earliest modern political satirists, and most of the genuine cultural revolutionaries usually associated with the following decade all started up around 1956, in clear – albeit sometimes dumb – reaction against convention and the ‘establishment’, and shocking our elders to their cores. More overtly politically, there was the emergent Civil Rights movement in America; and anti-imperialism, anti-capital punishment, anti-apartheid and ‘Ban the Bomb’ campaigns in Britain. These were clear, concrete ‘causes’ to attract the young (and many of the old: Bertrand Russell, for example) at that time; something really to bite on, as opposed to today’s vaguer and more complex targets, like ‘inequality’ and ‘austerity’. That was thrilling. I remember. (I was in anti-apartheid and CND.)

The other compensation was that all these causes looked achievable. However bad things might have been, they seemed to be getting better. That was because they were. Civil Rights were progressing, albeit slowly, in America. Hanging in Britain was just about to come to an end. Despite Hungary, the Soviet Union was disowning the cruder kinds of Stalinism. We in Britain were already starting to ‘liberate’ our colonies, a process that was made to appear smoother and more consensual than it really was. (See my ‘Imperial’ books.) Things looked promising for gays, with the Wolfenden Report (1957). Feminism appears to have been a bit behind the other ‘causes’ – it certainly didn’t make the limelight – but at least women could work now. In fact anyone could work. There was virtually no unemployment (1.8% in 1956, I think). Anyone who wanted could have a job, and ‘privileged’ people like me had a choice of them. (I swithered between jobs in academia, the Foreign Office, the theatre and the BBC. I could have walked into any of them; not because I’m particularly talented, but because they were all recruiting like mad.) The few disadvantaged were rescued by a pretty generous welfare state, and all of us could call on the brilliant new NHS, at its peak then, for first-class medical treatment, free.

All this was buttressed ideologically by a wide-ranging – almost universal – belief in the inevitability of social and political betterment, through the United Nations, the friendly old Commonwealth, and the welfare state: the ‘progressive’ stage of our domestic history. No-one dreamt that we could ever regress from that. The Labour Party was pretty progressive – enough for me, at any rate. Even the Tories, who were in government for most of the 1950s, embraced the welfare state, and even boasted of extending and improving it. The welfare state would have a wider beneficial effect, too, by providing a compromise position for those unattracted by both American-style capitalism, and Soviet communism. This, and decolonisation, made ‘progress’ inevitable on the international front, too.

Which puts the finger on the main difference – for me – between the 1950s and the 2010s: which is that sixty years ago there was hope, whereas there seems to be very little of that today. That hope may possibly have been misplaced, even naïve – though I think that if Britain had taken a different path from the 1970s onwards (a Swedish path, perhaps) things might have turned out differently. (That is, if it had been possible to take a different route; i.e. reckoning without the global capitalist juggernaut.) Today, it seems to me, there’s very little of this kind of hope. That’s why these two books about 1956 were so deeply nostalgic for me. I’d swap my colour TV – even my iPhone – for a tot of hope, any day.

David Cameron’s mother has come out as a champion of the junior doctors in their quarrel with the government. At Prime Minister’s Questions today, Cameron was twitted about this. (Not by Corbyn. He refuses to get ‘personal’.) His reply: ‘Ask my mother? I think I know what my mother would say. I think she’d look across the dispatch box and she’d say: put on a proper suit, do up your tie and sing the national anthem.’ Conservative MPs behind him hooted with delight. They’d been behaving pretty badly all week, on another occasion yelling soccer hooligan chants at Corbyn. As one who – as everyone who knows me will agree – is a poor dresser, who doesn’t even possess a suit, or at least one that will fit me, that warmed me even more to Corbyn. Maybe snappy dressing isn’t one of his top priorities, as it clearly is one of Cameron’s and his Mater’s. It also showed up the Tories for the immature public-school jerks they are, and must, surely, have alienated most of the rest of us who actually saw the exchange on the BBC Parliament channel. I remembered reading that Keir Hardie was given exactly the same harrumphing treatment when he first turned up to the Commons in a flat cap. I must say I was filled with a deep feeling of what can only be described as class hostility.

Which is rare in my case, and in fact is usually, I think, more a characteristic of the upper and upper-middle classes – especially the nouveaux – than it is of those ‘beneath’ them. This is what Owen Jones’s Chavs is about. Thatcher was consumed by hatred of the ‘lower’ classes and their values. So, clearly, are Cameron and Osborne. I’ve had an unusually wide experience of many of the classes of English society: from my poor working-class grandparents, through my lower-middle class parents, to the rich boys and genuine nobs I rubbed shoulders with – quite amicably; they were very tolerant of me – at Cambridge. The worst were the ones I met as a Fellow of my college on ‘high table’. Some of them were so arrogant and antediluvian in their opinions – however brilliant they may have been at science or Greek – to make me want to leave that beautiful place; which at length I did. I remember thinking that no-one would believe me if I told about them. It was beyond belief. I see it again in Cameron and Osborne. Ghastly people. Please God (or that Great Collective in the Sky), deliver us. Soon.

I listen to the radio all night. (I can’t be left alone in the dark  with my own thoughts.) I did the same when I lived in the USA. The fare there was usually crazier than on Radio 4 and the BBC World Service, which made it, of course, far more entertaining. (Like Donald Trump, for us lucky non-Americans.) I remember one interviewee indignantly justifying killing his wife and burying her on a mountainside because she hadn’t had his dinner on the table on time (‘well, what would you have done?’) – though I suspect that was a wind-up. Another interviewee, however, was deadly serious. The programme was a ‘phone-in’ about the British and American bombing of Dresden in February 1945. Someone mentioned the London Blitz of 1940. A caller maintained that this was launched in retaliation for the Dresden bombing. What interested me was his refusal to accept that he must have been wrong, in view of the chronology. This could not simply be a ‘matter of opinion.’ ‘But I’m a free American,’ he riposted, ‘and can believe whatever I like.’

This is true on one level, of course, but rather discouraging for those of us who believe in free rational debate. At the time I comforted myself by reflecting that this was probably a particularly American kind of libertarianism. It couldn’t happen in Britain, or at least not on so wide a scale as I met it nearly every day in America. That thought helped me to get to sleep at last. It is only in the past 5-10 years that I have – metaphorically speaking – been cruelly woken out of this illusion. The agency of this enlightenment – my vision on the road to Damascus – has been the internet, and in particular the discussions that go on ‘below the line’ (btl) of some quite sensible and rational posts. They have revealed to me the rank stupidity of a far larger proportion of the population than I had ever suspected. The shock of this has begun to undermine my belief in democracy, no less.

I recognise the flaws in this argument. (I try to be a rational being, after all.) Firstly, I was clearly being naive in not spotting this before btl started up. Stupid comments probably made up a majority of print editors’ post-bags, before editors edited them out for publication. (I’ve not been an editor, so I didn’t know that.) So it’s not new. The other flaw is that I could very well be over-estimating both the numbers and the significance of these trolls. (Is that the right word?) Maybe they only amount to a few hundred, after all. My initial suspicion, inferred from both the content and the style of their contributions, was that most of them must be pimply adolescents darkly crouched over their computers in their rooms when their mothers think they’re revising or tucked up in bed. That reassured me for one reason: if they were adolescents, it meant they didn’t have the vote. If the political fate of my country depended on large numbers of voters whose only contribution to any political discussion was ‘Osborne is a wanker’ (even if I might agree with them on this), it seemed a bit scary. But I’m starting to think that this is exactly the situation we’re in. ‘I’m a free Briton’ (or whatever). ‘I can spout any nonsense I like.’

I imagine that more worldly people than I have been aware of this for years. The whole political propaganda industry, after all, must be predicated on it, or at least allow for it. It’s dangerous for politicians openly to belittle the rationality of their electorate, for fear of being dismissed as elitists or snobs. The question is, whether they exploit the ignorance (like Trump, though he may well believe what he spouts), or try to combat it, or at least to divert it into more sensible paths. And then, of course, my pimply adolescents may be more of a minority than they appear btl. In which case we can all relax.

Perhaps the btl phenomenon has simply revealed what has always been there, under the surface, in which case it could be said to be performing a valuable service in shaking us naïfs out of our illusions. On the other hand I wonder whether it doesn’t also partly create the problem, in two ways. One is that it gives people the idea that it’s OK to express their views in print, on anything at all, whether they have any special knowledge of the area or not. As an author, essayist, reviewer and occasional blogger, I’ve made it a rule not to comment publicly – even btl – on anything I don’t have a particular expertise in, which would enable me, therefore, to contribute. This blog may be the first time I’ve broken this rule; except that of course I do have some close knowledge of btl, having been ignorantly traduced there a number of times. (One comment on the LRB blog thought I was a BNP supporter; a more recent Guardian one surmised that I must be a physical ‘coward’. Well, I may be: I hope not but I’ve not yet had my courage tested under fire; but there was no way he or she could have inferred that from the article they were commenting on.) That’s not the reason for my discontent, however. (Whoever reads these comments? I don’t, any longer.) The main one is the stupidity and ignorance displayed in so many of them, which offends against my rational delusions, or what Graham Wallas long ago called (in Human Nature in Politics, 1908) the ‘intellectualist assumption’ of people like me. And that’s because they’re encouraged, by the opportunity btl gives them, to think that their views are worth anything.

The other contribution of blogsites to this trait is that they seek these opinions instantaneously, and allow them to be offered anonymously. ‘Instantaneous’ means that btl bloggers don’t have to give themselves time to think. Sometimes it appears that they don’t even give themselves time to read the articles they are commenting on. A single word near the beginning might set off a stream of prejudice. (That’s my experience, in the cases I cited.) Anonymity – or more accurately, pseudonymity, often under pen-names that themselves attest to their writers’ immaturity – means that they can’t be held to task for what they write. There may be excuses for anonymity in certain cases: for whistle-blowers, for example, or people fearing violence on account of their views. For most people, however, the only reason for using a pseudonym is to allow them to write any nonsense without comeback – except from other pseudonymous bloggers on the same site. But – to return to our stupid American radio show caller-in – as well as being ‘free’ to say what you want, you should be ‘responsible’ for it. The other way really is a ‘coward’s’ way; the equivalent of ‘anonymous letters’ in a past age, when they were always rightly despised. Why aren’t they any more?

*

A final thought. It’s just as well my blog has scarcely any ‘followers’, or this post too might attract dozens of silly responses btl. As well of course as some intelligent and useful ones – not all bloggers are idiots; but I haven’t got time these days to separate these from the chaff.

It’s pretty obvious what’s going to come out of the negotiations Cameron is pursuing with our European partners just now (Friday afternoon), in the next few hours or days. Much of it is pure theatre. The negotiations are drawn out so that all sides can persuade their electorates of the difficulties of the task, and the lengths they are prepared to go in order to assure their nations’ interests. Then at a minute to midnight – or later – they’ll announce a settlement, which all sides will parade as a hard-won victory. So far as Cameron is concerned, the gains he’ll have made will be very minor ones, but he’ll make the most of them, and enter the referendum debate on the ‘In’ side. Many of his own MPs – perhaps a third or more – will nonetheless vote for ‘Brexit’; but it won’t matter, because a large majority of the Labour Party and all the Scots Nats, certainly in Parliament, will vote ‘In’. That’s despite the nature of the concessions Cameron has won – neoliberal ones – which would not have been the ones Labour would have sought, but the very opposite. So far as they’re concerned, the EU will be a less comfortable fit now than if Cameron had never messed with it. Come the referendum, and partly because of the ‘fear’ factor – the unknown repercussions of Brexit – the ‘Yes’ side will win, by a small majority. Cameron will retire before the next general election, as he has already promised to do, his historical reputation, or ‘legacy’, having been established, as the man who saved both the Union (with Scotland) and Britain’s place in Europe. He may turn out to be the only British politician whose career – to quote Enoch Powell – has not ‘ended in failure’. He won’t deserve it.

That of course is to take no account of ‘events, dear chap’ (Macmillan); i.e. unexpected ones, which could change everything. If so, forget all this. If not, remember where you first read this prediction.

My latest Guardian review.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/feb/19/heroic-failure-and-the-british-by-stephanie-barczewski-review

The numbers of beggars – usually Roma – in the Stockholm streets don’t seem to have diminished since Kajsa and I wrote our LRB Blog piece about them exactly a year ago: http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2015/02/11/bernard-porter/on-stockholms-streets/. These are – I think – quite apart from the huge number of Middle Eastern refugees that Sweden has taken in, but housed in transition centres and camps in the countryside. Apparently the latter are now bursting the bounds of the facilities provided for them, provoking a rethink of Sweden’s ultra-generous asylum policy. That is understandable, and still leaves Sweden way above mean-minded Britain – let alone the eastern European nations – in the refugee morality scale. Obviously this is a problem that needs to be tackled Europe- or even world-wide, and would be if the EU lived up to its best ideals, of being more than merely a ‘common market’. (See below, 16 Feb.)

Many of these problems – excluding the many caused by wars and Islamic fanaticism – have their roots in the growing inequalities of the present day, remarked on by nearly everyone and highlighted by those on the Left; which in their turn are clearly (it seems to me) a function of unrestrained capitalism. I was struck by this report in today’s Guardian: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/feb/18/san-francisco-technology-entrepreneur-bemoans-citys-homeless-riff-raff; a prosperous technology entrepreneur in San Francisco complaining that he has to pass by beggars – ‘riff-raff’ – on his way to work. Yes, he admits, rising house prices and gentrification are one cause of this, throwing the poor out of their homes; but still, ‘wealthy working people have earned their right to live in the city.’ They ‘shouldn’t have to see the pain, struggle and despair of homeless people.’ Poor rich diddums. After all – and this is the clincher – ‘the reality is we live in a free market society.’ Ah, yes. Not a human society, but a market one. That is ‘the reality’. It’s natural. I’m reminded of Dickens’s description of ‘Coketown’ in Hard Times (1852): human and social life determined, every hour of the day, by the iron discipline of the machine.

The other aspect of this report is what it tells us about the mindset of some of the rich in these circumstances, persuaded by their belief in the ‘naturalness’ of capitalism and its resultant inequality, to regard poverty as (a) inescapable, and (b) somehow the poor’s own fault. Owen Jones’s book Chavs is good on this, the demonization of the poor, to the extent even, of blaming them for the economic ills of society generally. Hence it’s the poor – not the bankers – who are supposed to bear the cost (‘austerity’) of the latest financial crash. I suppose that’s understandable, if you’re brought up to believe in the habitual fecklessness of the working classes.

How that bears on Stockholm’s ‘Roma problem’ I’m not sure. Obviously they’re not begging in the streets because of Swedish inequality. They were poor and discriminated against before they came. Maybe we can blame capitalism if we regard it as a global phenomenon. But there are, of course, many other villains of the piece. Race prejudice for a start; followed by religious prejudice, evil dictators, and war. More equality, however, both domestically and between nations, might help.