Porter’s Pensées

Eleven years ago I published a piece on the LRB blogsite, bemoaning the capture of the ‘People’s Game’ by capitalism, and its consequent decline as a sport which in the past had used to truly represent communities, rather than the power of money. Here it is.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2014/december/like-the-ancient-romans

Things have obviously got worse since then, with foreign and often corrupt capitalists buying up major clubs for millions of money, players paid fortunes, teams very rarely coming from their local areas – or even their own countries; and ‘my’ team, West Ham United, now in the control of a rich pornographer. (I’m thinking of shifting my allegiance to Leyton Orient, just up the road: https://www.leytonorient.com/club/history. The ‘O’s’ presently stand three divisions below the ‘Hammers’; but I’m hoping that this puts them beyond the grasp of the plutocrats.)

Donald Trump is currently the King of the Capitalists; and yesterday’s World Cup draw ceremony at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC featured him receiving recognition of this in the form of the newly minted – and extravagantly gilded – ‘FIFA Peace Prize’, awarded to him personally by FIFA President Gianni Infantino, in recognition of his efforts for peace – and obviously to make up for his failure to secure the Nobel Peace Prize, which we know he coveted. It was quite toe-turning, almost as ridiculous as a Nobel Goal of the Month award would be; but then Trump cuts a more ridiculous figure in genuinely soccer-playing countries than he obviously does in his own estimation.

The matches are to be played in Canada, Mexico and the USA. That might be awkward for the US-based matches, if Trump brings his toughest immigration measures into play.

Should people have things they said and did decades ago at school held against them today? The question has come up in Britain recently, with reference to Reform Party leader Nigel Farage, whose overtly Nazi comments whilst a teenager at Dulwich College in the 1970s have re-emerged to discredit him in recent days. (See https://www.theguardian.com/politics/ng-interactive/2025/nov/18/deeply-shocking-nigel-farage-faces-fresh-claims-of-racism-and-antisemitism-at-school.)

In response to this, Farage veers between denial; claiming that the language he used was normal at the time; dismissing it as mere ‘banter’; insisting that none of it was targeted at individuals; and attacking (irrelevantly) the BBC. But the evidence against him, much of it coming from twenty-odd of his contemporaries at Dulwich, and truly shocking – telling Jewish pupils that ‘Hitler was right’, for example, and making hissing sounds in their ears to mimic the gas chambers – is convincing. Perhaps more damning is that he has never apologised for any of this, which is usually the form for people who are truly embarrassed by their schoolboy (and I suppose schoolgirl) errors. That may be because he doesn’t want to lose the support of the racists and anti-Semites on his side. But it also seems to confirm Reform’s reputation – or stigma – as a ‘racist’ party.

As it happens, I was at a similar school to Farage’s, albeit a decade earlier. One of its alumni is David Irving, the well-known holocaust denier. I’ve no idea of how he behaved at school – we didn’t overlap – but I recognise some of the characteristics attributed to Farage in the attitudes of some of my own contemporaries there. In a school mock election we had a ‘Right-Wing Nationalist Party’, headed I think by a fellow called Hutt, who persuaded me, as the school artist but too young to participate directly in the election, to design some political posters for him. None of them as I recall was racist or anti-Semitic. (Most were simply anti-communist.) So I don’t feel any need to apologise retrospectively for them.

The point is, however, that in the vote the RWNP came nowhere; and the election was won by a joke party called ‘The Intellectual Extremists’ – slogan ‘Sideways With Daddy’ – to the open disapproval of the headmaster, who had intended the project to be a lesson in serious politics. People like Hutt, and I presume Irving before him, were seen as beyond the pale of normal boyhood culture; which found it quite easy to avoid Farage’s type of racist ‘banter’. So, if Dulwich was anything like the same, Farage probably shouldn’t blame his time there for his opinions. He could have avoided the minority right-wing culture there if he’d wanted; or properly disowned it today.

Now sexism is something different. That was more difficult to avoid, in single-sex schools. I’m sure that both Farage and I imbibed some sexual chauvinism from our schoolfellows. For which I’m quite prepared – indeed, eager – to apologise today.

So the jury system in Britain is coming under question once again (https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy7vdvrnnvzo). This is nothing new. The jury system is a messy one, with twelve ‘ordinary citizens’ having to be recruited each time at random, to have the last word on the guilt or innocence of people accused of crimes, and being forced (‘Jury duty’ is not voluntary, although there are ways of getting out of it; and it’s not paid) to sit in court for a couple of weeks or more, listening to the arguments on both (or all) sides, before coming to their conclusions.

The general or principled objections to it are that (1) it wastes people’s time; (2) ‘ordinary citizens’ are too stupid to reach unprejudiced judgments; and (3) – and this is the current argument – it delays justice while the trials are being set up. (At present the backlog is said to be around 78,000 cases.) Justice Minister Lammy’s proposal is one that would only affect relatively minor or middling crimes, with murder, rape and issues of public importance being exempted, and tried by juries still. Does that make a difference?

Most of the public discussion just now about this centres on people’s own experiences as jurors. I could contribute along those lines too, having been called up for jury duty on two occasions in the past; but I wouldn’t like to generalise on the basis of those two cases, when everyone’s experience is likely to have been different. In brief: the first of my trials resulted in a ‘guilty’ verdict. I was the jury foreman – level of education, I presume – and after my ‘guilty’ call the ringleader of the gang yelled at me ‘I hope you die in your bed!’ (That didn’t alarm me greatly; I wouldn’t be averse to dying in my bed too.) – The second case involved the theft of a ‘Maharaja’s uniform’, but was cancelled when the defendant changed his plea to ‘guilty’ – to my disappointment. In both these cases I was impressed by the fairness and rationality of my fellow jurors, which would cover objection number (2). But that may be because the people of Hull are particularly fair-minded. In any case I don’t want to argue that they were typical.

My main reasons for supporting the jury system are – as you might expect from a historian – historical. The principle that accused people should be judged by their ‘peers’ goes back at least to Magna Carta (1215), and indeed to the Saxons before that. (I loved that Tony Hancock line in his version of Twelve Angry Men: ‘Remember Magna Carta! Did she die in vain?’) It was the foundation stone in the slow building up of our modern ‘democracy’: protecting ordinary people from tyranny from above, including tyrannical judges. This should appeal to self-styled ‘patriots’ especially. It also gave everyone a small stake in the governing of his country; and of hers, when women were finally admitted to the role. It was part of your duty as a citizen. Which is why it’s compulsory now.

Indeed, in the 19^th century the principle of being tried by your peers even extended to foreign criminals, who were entitled to have juries half comprised of other foreigners. (Did you know that?) Usually defendants could gain brownie points by turning the privilege down, on the grounds that they ‘trusted to the good sense of twelve honest Englishmen’. That went down well with juries. (I learned this when I was researching the history of foreign refugees in Britain.) It was certainly canny when it came to prosecutions with political aspects to them, when the ‘democracy’, represented by the jurors, overturned judges’ clear recommendations in a number of trials. In one such case, the trial of the French murderer Emanuel Bartholémy in 1853, the jury acquitted him on the grounds that, being French, he probably didn’t realise that murder was a crime in Britain. (That only worked on one occasion; after his second murder he was sentenced to death. He was an atheist, and his last words on the scaffold were ‘Now I’ll know whether I’m right’. You’ve got to hand it to the man.) In more recent times – 1985 to be precise – it was a jury that contravened a judge’s clear instructions by refusing to convict the civil servant Clive Ponting of an offence under the Official Secrets Act. ‘Ministers aghast’, was the Daily Telegraph’s headline reaction. Another way of looking at it might be as a victory for democracy, against a would-be authoritarian state.

This is the original and ultimate argument in favour of juries. They are more venerable than all the other trappings of democracy in Britain, to set against justice only meted out by judges, who can get things wrong. (Judges are usually drawn from a particular and distinctive class of people, with special prejudices of their own.) In Sweden we don’t have juries: only a judge flanked by two lay assistants representing the major political parties (I think). It seems to work efficiently (I’ve attended one such case); but a number of bad mistakes have been made under this system in recent years (see https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2013/december/the-thomas-quick-affair). And juries are certainly not infallible either, as we know – again – from past history. The point here, however, is that in a jury trial twelve people (or sometimes ten), plus the judge, have to be convinced; which gives you a better chance than the 1:1 odds of a judge-only hearing.

I’m not yet entirely convinced on this either way. We shouldn’t base everything on historical precedent. Retaining juries only for more serious crimes, as David Lammy is suggesting (see today’s press), might be a valid compromise. If it gets us out of the present ‘backlog’ problem it’s probably worth considering. But personally I’d like first to be convinced that it would save time and money; better than employing more judges, for example. (Has anyone done the calculations?) And in any event we shouldn’t ever lose track of the centuries-old jury system’s importance as a foundational aspect of British democracy. (And, of course, American.)

Can a teacher who is committed to a particular political point of view teach political history objectively? I’m pretty sure the answer is yes.

In my own career (long ago now) as a lecturer and professor at a number of universities in England, the USA and Australia, I delivered courses in modern British history, some of them going up to very recent times, which I believe were politically balanced and objective. In case they were not, I prefaced them with warnings of my own political views, usually with a little joke: waving my left arm up and down to indicate my ‘left-wing tendencies’; and with nary a complaint from any of them. One of my British students went on to become a Conservative MP; he was always very friendly. (He did have one gripe, which was that when we came on to the First World War I had said almost nothing about the fighting. He thought he must have missed a lecture between ‘causes’ and ‘effects’. He later published books about the war itself; and incidentally married into the Army. I think she was a Major.) He kept in touch occasionally, and resigned before the last general election, partly in protest against ‘Boris’. Maybe my caustic treatment of the ‘Public’ schools in one lecture rubbed off on him here. But not my views of the parliamentary politics of the period.

This was because I always tried to be fair to all sides, including the ‘other side’ of any question; not simply in an effort to appear ‘balanced’, but because I felt I could usually understand those sides, and indeed had often been half-seduced by them myself. I could (and can still) see virtues in the Public school system, for example; and was even half-convinced – well, a quarter, and only temporarily – by one lecture I gave on the anti (women’s) suffrage movement in the early 1900s. The same is true of the historical topic I’m mainly associated with today, which is British imperialism. My first book in this field was on the opponents of colonialism; but while researching it I developed an appreciation of the ‘pro’ side too. In all these cases I believe this was necessary: to myself in order to truly understand ‘my’ side of these questions, on the good old principle of  ‘know your enemy’; but also to encourage students to think about them. That after all is what education – certainly at this level – should be about: not imposing one’s own views on students, but encouraging them to think. A lot of right-wing politicians in Britain and (especially) the USA seem not to understand or credit this.

It’s really quite easy, so long as you aren’t cowed by criticism and threats from the other side; of the kinds that are emanating from the White House today –  demanding that only ‘heroic’ and ‘patriotic’ versions of American history are taught. Are there similar pressures on British university history courses? I’ve been too long away from the front line to know.

Kajsa tells me that Trump is very influential on the centre-Right of Swedish politics; as he is of course in Britain. That seems amazing to me. Surely no foreign politician has exerted so much personal influence abroad, even in social democracies, since – who? Hitler? And he’s far stupider than Hitler.

I think I can understand it. Trump expresses something deep in the human soul: the desire for the liberation of common and widespread feelings and prejudices, from the civilized restraints that have bound them until now.  

Just a few years ago, when the ‘culture wars’, ‘political correctness’, ‘no platforming’ and ‘wokeness’ first burst – or rather slunk – on to the political scene, I remember being irritated by them, but only mildly. I recall just one occasion when I was personally taken to task on PC grounds. This was after a public lecture I gave in Melbourne, Australia, when a young feminist in my audience objected to my referring to nations as ‘she’. (What I should have told her was to try that in la France; but I thought of it too late.) A few months afterwards I was reluctantly persuaded by a publisher’s reader to replace all the ‘shes’ (used in that way) in one of my books by ‘its’; but that marked the limit of my submission to the new fashion. It didn’t much matter either way, I thought; except perhaps to the young students I was teaching, who would later come to realise what was really important in life. It was never going to affect politics for example, with few adults being sufficiently riled by this kind of nonsense – as some of it was – to allow it to affect their broader political views.

How wrong I was – apparently! At the present time anti-wokery features as a powerful weapon in the hands of the British and American Right, who attribute much of the perceived decline of their countries to this insidious element that has, they sense, infected the public discourse. Trump and Farage are full of it. ‘Our country will be woke no longer,’ the former promised recently’ (https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/watch-trump-says-u-s-will-be-woke-no-longer). Farage followed this up with a similar attack on ‘wokery’ early this year (https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgenl77d50wo). They both use the word – whose real meaning is somewhat vague and malleable – to attack mainly ‘progressive’ causes and policies – in Farage’s case here solar panels to counter climate change – or even simple virtues like compassion, charity, and probably the majority of the Beatitudes.

I suspect however that the main attraction of ‘wokery’ as a target is its association with intellectuals, and with Trump’s hated ‘Radical Left’ universities; which Rightists nearly everywhere viscerally distrust and despise. But of course it’s useful for wokery to be around, if only to stimulate discussion, and because of the truths it may embody. After all, anti-slavery was probably considered to be ‘woke’ once. Not to mention Jesus…

‘That’s not who we are’. You sometimes hear this from liberal Americans who disapprove of policies or actions taken by their country, or by its people or Presidents. But of course it’s not entirely true.

Going back over US history – if that is meant to indicate ‘who they are’ – we encounter numerous examples of crimes committed in the name of the country that could quite legitimately be taken as characteristic, and are reflected in its present situation and identity. Genocide (of native Americans) is one; slavery is another; Jim Crow a third; the whole ‘Western’ (cowboy) experience a fourth; unrestrained capitalism and the corruption associated with it a fifth; murder and the gun culture a sixth and seventh; imperialism – however you want to define it – an eighth; – and there are several other features of historical American culture that critics, especially foreign ones, might take to be more typical and defining of the present USA, than the right to ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ that figures so large in its original Declaration of Independence. This is not to single out America in particular for its national hypocrisy; most countries, including my own, are guilty of not living up to their stated ideals. As a British imperial historian I’m only too aware of this. And of course the US also has its admirable sides. The point is, however, that America places more emphasis on its founding ideals than do the rest of us, and so should surely be held to those ideals more strictly than we are to ours.

In any case ‘who we are’ is a difficult thing to establish, and may be a silly one to try. Most ‘national identities’ are over-simplified and confused. I’m not even sure of my own personal identity; or which one of my several identities – British, English, Essex, European, lately Swedish, male, middle-class, MA Cantab, academic, cricket lover, West Ham supporter – I would want to prioritise. In my case they’ve changed over time, with my ‘identity’ now being different from what it was fifty years ago; having been affected – for the better, I like to think – by my contact with other ‘identities’, especially when I was a graduate student of British imperial history, thrust into the company of the products of many other cultures, bits of all of which have clung to me. Because my ‘academicism’ remained constant during all these experiences, that is probably the identity that I would choose above the others; but that has little to do with where I come from, or with what we, as a nation, ‘are’. There are things I like about being English (and Swedish), and things I don’t. So far as I’m concerned it’s a mixed and ever-changing bag. And the same applies, on a broader scale, to the rather un-United States of America at the present time; to its eternal credit and benefit, for nothing is more sterile than uniformity and rigidity.

What I think American liberals mean by ‘that’s not who we are’, is that it’s not what they want their country to be. That’s fair enough; so long as they don’t assume that the America of the Declaration of Independence is a kind of natural or fall-back position. The story of the past 250 years has shown that it’s not that at all, but at best simply an ideal that needs to be struggled towards, against some of the other tendencies that have dominated America’s history for all that time; and especially today, when the countervailing forces are arguably stronger and more malevolent than they have been since the American Civil War. They’re also stronger throughout the West, of course, even in social-democratic Sweden, encouraged by the American example, and by American money; which means that we European liberals must be on our guard too. We’ve got dark precedents in our countries also. Very little in any of our histories is an infallible guide to ‘who we are’ today; and still less to ‘who we might be’. The same applies to the USA.

I know very little about the American judicial system, apart from what I’ve seen in films like Twelve Angry Men, which probably idealised it, and in any case is seventy years old. So I don’t know what is likely to happen with Trump’s stated intention to sue the BBC for between one and five billion (!) dollars, after its admitted distortion of a speech he gave on the day of the notorious MAGA attack on the Capitol building in Washington DC of 6 January 2021. Did he incite the riot directly, as the BBC’s version of his speech implied, and as many of the rioters clearly understood; or only implicitly? There’s a one-to-five billion dollar difference between the two versions.

What I don’t know is how exactly Trump and his lawyers intend to do this. Does he – can he – sue the BBC in a British court? Or in an American one? If the latter, would it be Federal or State? If in the US, I understand that it would have to be in Florida (where he mainly lives), but where we’re told the BBC programme was not aired. So it was unlikely to have done any ‘reputational damage’ to him there. Any such damage would be difficult to quantify in any case, with his having won the next Presidential election in 2024 in spite of the BBC. Surely two resignations at the top of the BBC are more than enough to appease him for this. And everyone knows – not least because of his pardoning of the main rioters after that election – that he strongly supported them, at the very least. – Then there may be other legal barriers to a prosecution: like a Statute of Limitations, if that exists. (The alleged offence was more than four years ago.) But as I say, I’m ignorant of US law.

Would it be a jury trial? (In which case we might see a Henry Fonda amongst the Twelve Angry Men. He’s the ’goodie’ in that film.) And then, how would Trump get hold of his 1 to 5 billion dollars, if he won? An international bank transfer? More tariffs? Monies from the British Treasury (i.e. from us). Or by seizing whatever assets the BBC has in the US? – In truth, it’s difficult to see any of this happening. It looks like a bluff. So the BBC were right to refuse him the money; unlike several American media companies, incidentally, which have caved in to similar blackmail.

On the other hand, I’d have quite liked it if the case had come to court. Trump himself I assume would have had to give evidence. The BBC’s lawyers would have had a field day probing into his own propaganda: his ‘fake news’, distortions, lies, and libels against almost anyone who opposes him. Surely these could be used as evidence against him? – A trial along these lines might have made terrific television, and afterwards even another film – perhaps one as good as Twelve Angry Men (with George Clooney to play the Fonda character?). So it’s a shame it’s unlikely to come to trial. But then – I repeat – I’m woefully ignorant of American jurisprudence.

The BBC must hold firm on this. There are far bigger issues involved than Trump’s self-regard. In Britain public service TV, and the political idea of public service generally, are two of them. (This is why the Right, who hate public service – ‘socialism’ – are on Trump’s side.)

At this moment I feel like I probably would have done in the 1930s: – that the world is hurtling towards a catastrophic end. Even before climate change fries us, our population is multiplying to a level that surely can’t be sustainable; whole peoples are moving around the world unsettlingly; grotesque inequalities are incubating social and political enmities that will probably break out in a variety of violent ways; nations can’t agree on how to meet the climate crisis; people are reverting to instinctual rather than rational ways of thinking and behaving; Fascism – or something very like it – is raising its ugly head again; capitalists are taking advantage of us; fools and tyrants are at the helms of the leading nations; one of them is threatening to sue the BBC for a million dollars; and West Ham are third from the bottom of the Premier League. It’s mighty hard to get away from thoughts like these; especially when you’re in bed and can’t sleep. (It’s four o’clock in the morning as I’m writing this.)

(12 noon.) Well, I’m now over my ‘black dog’, as Winston Churchill used to call his bouts of depression; but not because I want to disown any of what I wrote in the night. I suppose my better mood now – or apathy – comes from the knowledge that at my advanced age I’m not likely to live through the coming ‘catastrophe’; although I realise that that’s somewhat selfish, in view of what my children and grandchildren, and their generations, will have to endure.

Sorry kids. It’s my generation that has left you this mess. Yours is the one that will have to clear it up. It’s systemic, as I argued two posts ago, and so getting rid of Trump and Britain’s press magnates won’t do it alone. But you could maybe start with them.

And after all, we recovered from the 1930s.

The degree to which the far Right in both the US and Britain hate public services is difficult to overstate. Currently its ire is being directed against the BBC, occasioned by a 2024 Panorama report which spliced together two sections of a Trump speech in order to give the impression that he was directly inciting – rather than just hinting at his support for – the riotous attack on the Capitol of 6 January 2021. That was appalling journalism, as the BBC has admitted; and which as I understand has caused it to set up new editorial procedures to safeguard against a repetition. But it was surely not serious enough to justify the resignation of the BBC’s Director General, and of the head of its News service; or to justify Trump’s threat, just announced, to take legal action against the BBC (how? Can he prosecute the corporation’s people in the USA?); especially, you might say, when set against the plethora of lies put out by Trump and his favoured American media outlets virtually every day.

But of course it’s not only that Panorama clip that the Right is gunning for, but the BBC as a whole; as a public service body that it would like to be ‘privatised’, like most of America’s broadcast media are. When I’ve lived in the US I’ve been quite impressed by PBS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PBS); but I imagine – American friends will correct me – that it isn’t as much viewed or influential as are the better-financed commercial TV and radio stations; and in any case Trump has it in his sights to ‘defund’ – defund, not defend – it currently (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_14290). British Rightists – papers like the Daily Mail – have for years been pressing for the abolition of the license fee there, the public tax which mainly finances the BBC; and for the organisation to depend on capitalist providers and sponsors for its existence. Nigel Farage thinks this, and came a step closer to it today by expressing the hope that, as a first stage, the new DG be recruited from the private sector (https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/2131767/nigel-farage-bbc-tim-davies-resignation). ‘Public bad, private good’ – the mantra of the Right for decades.

If the BBC goes, the NHS will probably follow; and the victory of the ‘last stage’ of capitalism – see my last post – will be complete.