Porter’s Pensées

I wonder whether there are any serious historians out there who support Donald Trump? If it rests on his relationship with the subject itself, there can’t be many. His historical gaffes are becoming legendary: talking of the Revolutionary army capturing enemy airfields in the 1770s; eliding the War of Independence with the Civil War; confused about what the Declaration of Independence says (although it’s hanging on the wall of his Oval Office); uncertain whether or not he should obey the Constitution – ‘I’ll have to consult my legal team’ (although he swore allegiance to it at his inauguration); his claim that ‘we [the USA] invented everything’ – the list goes on; plus of course his utter ignorance of the histories of other countries. All this must read embarrassingly to anyone who knows his or her history, and woundingly to those (like me) who write about it. I imagine – or hope, at least – that my old American students at the Universities of Rochester (NY) and Yale won’t be indifferent to all this. Whether it put them off voting for him, I’ll never know.

More serious than any of this is what Trump is aiming to do to institutions of higher education, like (currently) Harvard University and the Smithsonian Institution: forcing them to teach only what he regards as ‘patriotic’ history, unencumbered by critical or what he calls divisive or ‘woke’ thinking; his being an old-fashioned heroic white men’s version of the American story, which will cement students’ loyalty to their flag. That’s a direct attack on the fundamental purposes of history teaching and research at this level: which are (a) to uncover ‘truths’, whether ‘patriotic’ or not; and (b) to open people’s minds to different ways of interpreting or defining those truths, wherever that may lead.

At the root of this appears to be a narrowly utilitarian view of education, and indeed of knowledge itself; which sees it not as a means of understanding, but only for how it can be used, in the pursuit of other objectives. Is it oversimplifying to connect this with the capitalist values – ‘deals’, and so on – that have defined his whole career? And which indeed represent so perfectly the stage of social and political development that the US has reached today.

When I used to research and write about historical anti-terrorism (The Origins of the Vigilant State, Plots and Paranoia), the term ‘terrorism’ had a specific and quite limited meaning. It didn’t cover all violent political activities, even assassinations, if they were directed against political enemies, or for a particular and well-defined political end; but only actions which were designed to terrorize whole populations, in order to make them less supportive of those enemies. (Some violent acts of course could do both.) So, a bomb placed in a café or a concert venue, killing indiscriminately, would qualify (and there were some of those in the late nineteenth century, as there are today); but not the murder of kings or generals, or (to cite a modern example) throwing paint over military aircraft.

Nowadays the word is used far more loosely; but surely not loosely enough to apply to Palestine Action, a march in support of which in London on Saturday led to the arrest of 500-plus demonstrators – many of them elderly – on charges of ‘supporting terrorism’. Painting airplanes, whether you approve of it or not, surely doesn’t qualify as ‘terrorism’ by any definition of that word. The Home Secretary has told us that she knows of other activities that Palestine Action indulges in that make it more dangerous to the common weal, but which she can’t vouchsafe to us yet. So we’ll just have to wait. In the meantime, the events of Saturday do seem somewhat incongruous – to put it mildly – for a Labour government, and in particular for an ex-barrister prime minister who used to specialise in human rights law. Critics suspect, of course, the ‘Israel Lobby’.

Incidentally, the word ‘terrorism’ was first used – in French revolutionary times –  to describe actions not by protestors, but by authoritarian governments, in order to cower opponents into submission.

I may write an Autobiography. I’ve sketched out three chapters; and a Preface – here.

A number of my friends and acquaintances – well, two or three – have suggested that I write a memoir or autobiography. I’ve always resisted this, on the grounds that I’m nowhere near important or interesting enough. (In fact my life’s ambition has always been to rise to ‘average’.) Nor do I really have the stomach for it, recalling as I do most of my early years with embarrassment, rather than pride.

Two considerations however have changed my mind on this recently. One is that I know from my own past researches that the memoirs of ‘average’ people can be as telling to a historian as those of ‘important’ ones; and even more so, in many cases, if one is wanting to plumb the Zeitgeist of a period. (I read dozens of ‘working-class’ autobiographies for my Absent-Minded Imperialists.) Secondly, and more personally, I need to write – I get depressed if I’m not doing it – and have run out of other topics to write about; or rather, at my advanced age, have run out of the concentration and energy that would be required to research them adequately. The last collection of material that I have left to work with now is my own life, locked in my brain; albeit not altogether reliably (more about that later), and not always pleasantly, for a habitual depressive like me.

I’ve also thought of a way of doing it which may be safer for me, and of more interest to others. That is to write a My Life and Times kind of book, with the ‘times’ featuring as prominently as my own petty affairs. For it is incontrovertible that I have lived through ‘interesting times’, from the 1940s to the 2020s – albeit probably no more interesting than any other comparable passage of years; and also in four different countries, which should have broadened my experience. So there must be enough here to be worth recounting, and to compensate for the embarrassing bits; which – in the interest of honesty – I shall need to refer to, but only fleetingly.

Those ‘interesting times’, to summarise, have carried me from the depths of a ‘total’ war to the collapse of the post-war consensus; taking in the loss of a world-wide empire, entry into and then exit from the post-war European Union, the creation and later partial dismantling of a welfare state, the social emancipation (to an extent) of women, foreign immigration and its repercussions, a revolution in popular music, sexual liberation following the spread of efficient means of contraception, a ‘cold war’ that threatened to become hotter under the shadow of ‘The Bomb’, the establishment of television as people’s main source of information and entertainment, the whole computer/internet thing, men on the moon, huge changes in the character of the popular Press, even greater changes in eating habits, several frightening pandemics even before Covid, the commercialisation of ‘the People’s Game’ (football), the entire reign of Britain’s longest-living monarch… and much more. That of course is an Anglocentric list. Other nationalities will have experienced the last eighty years in different – often more gruesome – ways.

My own place in this history has never been a leading or even a particularly active one, but it is one that has enabled me to observe it from a number of different points of view. That is because of my anomalous and shifting position in the all-important class structure of Britain – or of England, anyway – giving me what I think is an unusual insight into the situations, and especially the prejudices, of them all. My immediate family were aspirant lower-middle class; my paternal grandparents working class; at school I mixed with middle-middle class boys; and at university with the upper and public school-educated classes and even a few aristocrats. I got on pretty well with all of them. (The aristos were very kind.) In university vacations I worked in a factory, a dairy, and in theatres. My profession has been as an academic, at different types of university, and in three or four countries; specialising in British imperial history, for which I was sometimes mistaken to be an imperialist. I’ve written about a dozen books. I was brought up a Methodist, but enjoyed the Anglicans’ church services, and their architecture even more. I was a member of the Labour party for a long period, but with gaps when I’ve been unhappy with particular party policies. I’ve experienced marriage with a Scots-Irish wife, fatherhood, divorce, and a new relationship, this time with a Swede. I’ve lived in both the south and the north of England. I travelled extensively in Europe as a young man, and more later, when I also lived and worked for fairly long periods in the USA and Australia. I now live mainly in Sweden. My passions are architecture, music and cricket. The only substantial gap in this catalogue of life-experiences is women and girls, whom I scarcely got to know as a boy, or even at university, in my single-sex college. (This accounts for many of my ‘embarrassments’, which I shall pass over lightly here.) If all these experiences have affected my research, teaching and writing in my adult years, they are at least varied enough to have likely influenced them in divergent ways.

Of course this won’t be as ‘objective’ an account as I hope my other history books are – although it goes without saying that none of us can achieve absolute objectivity. Indeed, this is the whole point of it: to recount the history of the last eighty-odd years simply as it has appeared to and impinged on the life of just one male person who has lived through that time, studied it, and come to certain conclusions about it. Now read on. We average people need to be heard.

I’ve always had it in for golf, even before Trump, for reasons I explained here last year: https://bernardjporter.com/2024/09/22/golf/. Trump’s obsession with the game is probably quite low down among my reasons for disliking both it and him, but it does look quite apposite: a game where you are (in his case, I think) mainly playing against yourself, get carried from hole to hole in a buggy, and with plenty of opportunities to cheat. Today of course he’s in Scotland visiting his golf courses there, one of them at least highly controversial, with him trying to eject an old crofter who is spoiling the view for his rich clients; and followed – I hear – by a trail of little golf buggies, like ducklings following their Mum. That must be a sight! He’ll also be meeting Starmer, which I would have liked to hope goes badly (à la Love Actually): except of course that a trade treaty might depend on it. Humiliating for Sir Keir, I imagine, and for most of the rest of us; but maybe it has to be done. ‘Lie back and think of England…’

Britain once had a prime minister who was mad about golf, AJ Balfour (of Balfour Declaration fame). He wasn’t very good.

One little ray of light at a time when universities, especially in America, are being traduced and threatened with huge financial penalties on purely political and ideological grounds, by far Right governments like that of Donald Trump. (I see that Columbia is the latest to capitulate. Harvard, I think, is fighting, through the courts.) Often the excuse given for targeting universities is Faculty or student ‘anti-semitism’; but I wonder whether this isn’t deliberately conflating that sickening prejudice with opposition to Israeli army atrocities in Gaza? Can anyone tell me of any significant genuine anti-semitism, at Columbia, Harvard or anywhere else? We know how that false accusation has been very effectively ‘weaponised’ in Britain.

My ‘ray of light’ is a message I received this morning from my old university, Cambridge, informing me that a new Chancellor has been appointed, after a vote of members (like me). He is (Lord) Chris Smith; a former Labour minister, and a thoroughly good (by which I mean liberal) egg. He is also openly gay; not especially significant in itself, but it may indicate that we Cambridge graduate voters are mainly liberal too.

Incidentally: ‘Chancellor’ in this context seem to be a merely ceremonial role, the real work being done by the Vice-Chancellor. But it must give Lord Smith some influence, and even ‘pull’.

Returning to my own vomit this morning – checking the 6^th edn of The Lion’s Share in order to respond to a request for permission to quote passages from it in an exam paper – I was struck by how well it reads. Pleased, yes; but also depressed.

Depressed, firstly because I know that I’ll never be able to write anything as good again, at 84, and with my memory and concentration spent; but also, secondly, because I despair of The Lion’s Share’s influence. One reason I wrote the book originally was to persuade readers of the complexities and nuances of a subject – ‘British imperialism’ – which was usually regarded simplistically, and exploited politically, by both Left and Right, in highly misleading ways. It was for this reason that from the very beginning (the 1970s) I conceived of it as a book for a ‘general’ readership – to be displayed for example in bookshop windows and at airports: a bit like Niall Ferguson’s later Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World – and not as a school or college textbook, which was how my publisher eventually marketed it. I think they tried to ride both horses, with an eye-catching jacket design for example (discarded in later editions); but by then Longmans had morphed into a predominantly ‘educational’ publisher – later called ‘Pearson Education’. And I have to admit that the book was well reviewed, sold very well under their imprint – hence the six editions – and made me a bit of money, as a textbook. But that’s not what I wanted.

Maybe it wasn’t opinionated or one-sided enough, as Ferguson’s book is. (That was presented – not altogether fairly – as pro-empire, against the contemporary anti-imperial trend.) Perhaps I was simply not so famous – or as pushy – as him. (I’m not good at self-advertisement.) Maybe I haven’t got the ‘common’ literary touch; although one of the comments I treasured most dearly was a postcard from one who had, the famous travel-writer Jan Morris, telling me that she had been ‘reading it in the bath and was unable to stop until the water was cold’. (Could I have used that in the ‘blurb’?) Perhaps the subtlety of my interpretation will have filtered through eventually, to people who were given it to read as a textbook at school or university. (Or in exam papers like the one I’m supposed to be checking now.) That’s what I cling on to. But how can I know?

All I can know is that it doesn’t seem to have affected at all the wider discussion of British imperialism, or of other topics where the idea of ‘empire’ is reckoned to be pertinent. The subject is still mainly seen in simplistic terms. You’re either ‘for’ or ‘against’ it: which in my view is not a very fruitful approach, if you want to understand anything. I was – and am – neither for nor against the British empire as such: although I joined anti-imperial groups when they were protesting against particular colonial ills – apartheid, for example, Rhodesia, and the Kenya camp atrocities. But the history of the empire overall is nowhere near as straightforward. It may be the moral complexity of my analysis that deprived me of the attention I sought.

But isn’t this the fate of most scholars and academics: to be ignored by the general public even when they are telling them useful – albeit complicated – things? 

Here’s the blessed Naomi Klein on what she calls ‘End-Times Fascism’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtYSyb6fCxo.

The connexion between MAGA and the religious notion of the ‘Rapture’ hadn’t occurred to me before. It makes sense; in particular of the relationship between Trump and Netanyahu, who is visiting Washington currently. Is this the way capitalism and the world end (see my last post)? And is it what the ‘Christian’ Zionists want?

America seems to be going mad. Or at least, the minority of Americans (taking account of abstainers) who voted him in do. For the rest of us, all around the world: be afraid. Be very afraid. We know from historical experience how evil and destructive religions can be.

Well, here it comes, perhaps: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/jul/03/jeremy-corbyn-hints-at-launch-of-new-party-as-leftwing-alternative-to-labour?

The idea of a new and avowedly socialist party (in the UK) is obviously attractive to an old Leftie like me. I’d even welcome Jeremy Corbyn back, in a leading (if not necessarily the leading) role. It could steal some of Reform’s thunder simply by presenting itself as new, and as more convincingly anti-establishment: replacing Reform’s scapegoats with another kind of ‘boat people’ – rich yacht-owners rather than poor refugees in dinghies, for example, and Etonian toffs rather than welfare cheats; convincingly addressing issues that actually matter to people, homes especially, both ownership and rental; taxing the ultra-rich rather than reducing welfare benefits; cultivating an image of honesty, which is perceived to be in short supply in the other parties (that would require some discipline); cultivating a different kind of ‘patriotism’ from Reform’s: based on pride in the NHS, for example, rather than in the Royal family and the Flag (see my Britain’s Contested History, 2014); abjuring ‘wokery’, or the silliest bits of it; and possibly (if this is popular) supporting the Palestinian cause more genuinely. (Corbyn would see to that.) In other words: it could flourish by distancing itself from the ‘they’re all the same’ image that so harms the established parties today (perhaps unfairly), and which Reform plays on so effectively. It could even come out for proportional representation in elections, which would work to a small party’s benefit (see https://bernardjporter.com/2016/09/15/electoral-reform/); and might even (no promises) campaign for re-entry to the EU. Such a party could be popular, without being populist; and preferable, I think, to the cautious Labour government we in the UK have now.

But then we hit the problem of the forces that would be ranged against any such party: the right-wing popular press magnates, the Israel lobby that did so much harm to Corbyn, the power of money, the influence of the USA… and so on. I can’t see a new independent socialist party pushing its way through all that; at least until the time is absolutely ripe for late-stage capitalism to collapse, as is sometimes predicted, under the weight of its own contradictions – aided, perhaps, by the ultra-capitalist Trump. So I’ll stick with Starmer’s Labour Party for the time being; or at least until the new party – if it ever happens – proves its resilience.

Incidentally, I’ve been reading Trump’s recent campaign speeches – rambling, self-glorifying, ignorant, mostly fabricated, and stupid almost beyond belief. Is this the way capitalism ends, I wonder: not with a bang or a whimper (to adapt TS Eliot), but with a mad man’s ravings to his deluded followers?

I heartily dislike the sort of music that ‘Bob Vylan’ produces: a combination of ‘punk, hip hop, grime, and hardcore’ according to Wikipedia; and I don’t approve of anyone wishing ‘death’ on anyone else. So I too am pretty appalled by Bob Vylan’s performance at Glastonbury the other day – chanting ‘death to the IDF’ – that has provoked criticism in many quarters overnight. That is even though many of the reported current – and literally deadly – actions of the Israel Defence Force in Gaza and elsewhere might be said to justify strong opinions from, for example, supporters of the Palestinians, and in any case must be regarded as more reprehensible than a crude lyric blurted out to a few thousand young fans in a field in Somerset (or is it Gloucestershire?), UK.

What it wasn’t, however – or wasn’t necessarily – is anti-semitic: ‘the airing of vile Jew-hate’, as the British Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis characterised it yesterday. When will the Jewish community recognise – as a very large proportion of it does: e.g. https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/ – that opposition to Israeli policies and actions in the occupied territories is not always a sign of Judenhetze, any more than criticism of Nazi atrocities in World War II was necessarily evidence of anti-Germanism? And that the powers-that-be in Israel, and their defenders in the diaspora, should not use that ‘vile’ accusation as a cover for Israel’s rulers’ misdeeds; which would still be misdeeds whoever was responsible for them.

The authorities – not only the Chief Rabbi – seem to be over-reacting here. Officially recategorising ‘Palestine Action’ as a ‘terrorist group’ is another current example. Spraying red paint over a fighter jet is not a ‘terrorist’ act. ‘Direct Action’ doesn’t usually kill people. – It’s really very simple. (Or have I missed something?)

For some reason I receive Daily Telegraph headlines every morning on the internet. I don’t remember ever ordering them; perhaps a data mining company somewhere thought I was the sort of bloke to welcome them. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Analytica. Incidentally: isn’t it interesting that so many of the Cambridge Analytica gang were Old Etonians?) I’m also getting daily – even hourly – US stock market tips from somewhere – a sort of investors’ club, I think – which don’t interest me either.

Except that both are giving me an insight into the minds of the middling members of the Tory and Republican parties; not necessarily the leaders, or the lumpenproletariat, but the bourgeoisie which is the parties’ solidest base. With all that’s going on in the world, the Telegraph chooses nearly every day to headline (or is this just in the electronic version?) money issues, and especially house prices, interest rates, private school fees, and personal  tax. (These, and its ‘Puzzle’ section, of which it seems inordinately proud.) In other words, Tories seem to be interested only in their pockets; as obviously do all those middle-class Americans eager to make money for nothing, and seeking investment tips on line. (Many of them, by the way, are more worried than you might think about Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’, which is beginning to feature on my stock market site.)

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In Britain’s case, of course, this was encouraged by Margaret Thatcher’s great reforming government of the ’80s, which encouraged people to think only in ‘market’ terms. One of her most fervent disciples was Eric (now Lord) Pickles: a Tory city councillor for Bradford during Thatcher’s premiership, then MP for Brentwood from 1992, and a cabinet minister in various roles from 2007-on; in all these roles concerned mainly to save government or council money. Pickles is stereotypically Yorkshire, of the ‘plain-speaking’ ‘Yorkshire and proud of it’ type; and very – shall we say – chubby. (There’s a pic of him here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Pickles.) He was probably chosen as a minister by David Cameron because of these attributes; fat plain-speaking plebs who haven’t been to Public School or Oxbridge are in short supply in the upper levels of the parliamentary Conservative Party. (Pickles was educated at Leeds Polytechnic.) I, as a Yorkshire denizen – but not, thank God, West Yorkshire – know the sort. They can be a pain in the proverbial *rse. – (Incidentally: the Tories go on a lot about ‘wokery’; but if ‘woke’ meant saving money, I bet they’d go for it.)

Pickles’ name has come up recently in connexion with the horrendous Grenfell fire of June 2017 in North Kensington, which was largely blamed on cost-cutting under his aegis as Minister for Local Government prior to that. (The scale of the fire was due to its cheap cladding: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grenfell_Tower_fire.) At a recent Government Inquiry into the fire he showed his true colours – or priorities – by testily complaining that he was missing a dinner date. (It can be seen on Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAKGEYuvBzo – 1 minute in.) Yet it was after this that he was elevated to the Lords.