Porter’s Pensées

The takeover of the Conservative party by its ‘nastier’ wing over the past few years is one of the most astonishing developments in modern British political history. I’m not by the way being unfair in using the word ‘nasty’ here. It’s the one that Theresa May herself chose to describe the Conservative party – or how it was regarded – in 2002. (See https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2002/oct/08/uk.conservatives2002.) But that was before she felt compelled to tuck herself into bed with the nastiest of them.

I always imagined that back in 2002 she was referring to the nouveaux  Conservatives whom Thatcher had represented, and who gradually displaced the older-fashioned sort – old-world, tweed-jacketed, cuddly, paternalistic – after the fall of the Empire, which had needed paternalists to rule it. The latter were Thatcher’s ‘wets’. Today’s nasties are her ‘dries’. Which is not to say that they are all hard-nosed neo-liberals in the Thatcher mould, although many of their leaders appear to be. Either that, or chancers like Boris, Nigel, Jacob and (I would say) Theresa; who are the ones who seem to be dragging the party and with it the nation Rightwards today. How this bunch came to overshadow the rest of us, from what had until quite recently been seen as a minority, marginal and indeed ‘extremist’ situation in British politics, will provide History PhD students with research material for many years to come. It will make a super dissertation topic. I almost wish I were starting out again twenty years hence, when our current affairs have become ‘history’.

Commentators – mainly op-ed writers in the press – have already begun trying to explain the ‘turn’, but usually in short-termist ways. (Journalists generally don’t have as broad a vision as we historians do.) Short-term politicking and plotting are undoubtedly part of the picture. The Right have always been good at plotting, as a way of countering or manipulating ‘democracy’; which is why they tend to suspect it on the other side: vide McCarthy and successive ‘Red’ – and long before that anti-Catholic, anti-French and anti-Russian – scares; plus our own ‘secret services’ at various times. (See my Plots and Paranoia, 1989.) They also tend to be less scrupulous about the means they use, more ‘Machiavellian’, if you like. (Though I have a theory about Machiavelli which puts him in a different light. He wrote The Prince  to warn  us.)

The ideological Brexiteers have undoubtedly been clever in using the flaws in the British system of government to pack a punch entirely disproportionate to their mere numbers, and to use any popular discontent that arises, whatever it’s really about, to further their reactionary cause. That’s what is happening today. They have been aided in this by two other short-term factors: Theresa May’s quite staggering, and surely unprecedented, incompetence, and Cameron’s before her; and what is seen as similar failures of ‘leadership’ from the other parties in Parliament. The result could be a further swing to the Right in British politics generally; that is, not only on the question of ‘Europe’, but on every other social and economic question, putting Britain on the road to the kind of populism/proto-fascism we’re seeing in America and many other places in the world today; and all due to the intrigues over the past decade or two of a mere handful of men (mainly men, I’m afraid), plus, of course, Cambridge Analytica.

But there must be more to it than that. Historians are rarely content with short-term explanations for events, and ache for something ‘deeper’. (Perhaps because it makes us seem cleverer.) I don’t want to go into this now – too old and tired – but here are a few hints, for those bright young PhD students of twenty years’ time, to start them off.

The decline of the British Press is obviously a factor. That’s been going on for more than a hundred years now; and recently has been instrumental in sanitizing right-wing causes, and in muddying the reputation of the ‘political classes’, which may be one reason why we don’t get better ‘leaders’ coming into politics. ‘They’re all the same’; ‘all in it for themselves’, and so on; which after a time becomes self-fulfilling. Then, I’m sure the surprising survival and dominance of the public (private) schools and their values are part of the problem. (Look at Cameron, Johnson and Rees-Mogg.) Thirdly: de-industrialisation, and the neglect of the mainly Northern working classes and of their concerns by all political parties, starting of course with Thatcher, were clearly medium-term factors behind the Brexit vote of June 2016; creating the wave of discontent and unrest which the Rightist toffs so cleverly rode. Fourthly, our past-its-sell-by-date voting system has much to do with it, leaving huge swathes of the population feeling unrepresented by and cut off from the ‘Westminster bubble’ (see https://bernardjporter.com/2016/02/29/first-past-the-post/). Fifthly: as a historian of better and more liberal times in Britain I can’t accept that Right-wing thinking (racism, xenophobia, authoritarianism and the like) has been especially or peculiarly rife there in the past, but on the other hand there can be no doubt at all that it has always been there, waiting to be whipped into flame if the conditions are right. Sixthly, there is of course the bloody Empire, whose ‘decline and fall’ you might expect me to claim, as an imperial historian, was a factor behind all this; but in fact I don’t entirely hold to that, for reasons I hope to explain in the new (6^th) edition of my The Lion’s Share  when it comes out next year. Seventhly, there are international  connections or networking between Right-wing movements. An example is the American Steve Bannon’s current European crusade on behalf of the Right.

And lastly, of course, there is my own favourite scapegoat, which is ‘late-stage capitalism’: a very long-term and developing factor, and also in itself a global one. But I need to do some thinking about that. And in the meantime I’m sure other long-term factors will occur – or be suggested – to me.

From the excellent Craig Murray: former British ambassador, with ‘inside’ sources.

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2019/04/so-where-is-the-swedish-warrant/?fbclid=IwAR0aUFgdavt0_jYsgo4wHhfryHbfTkd15f8UmUKhgkrdwmKLGXdTO2GWtzw

Exactly. See my https://bernardjporter.com/2019/04/13/what-will-sweden-think/. I’ve heard nothing yet from my ‘outside’ Swedish sources.

This piece by Martin Kettle pretty accurately describes my dilemma over Brexit up until now: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/apr/25/no-soft-brexit-no-deal-revoke-vote.

Like him, I guess, I’m a strong albeit Eurosceptical Remainer, but aware that the referendum result made that position a difficult one to sustain. That’s not because of any ‘respect’ I might have for the 2016 ‘people’s vote’, which was dishonestly and even criminally achieved, and in any case probably doesn’t reflect opinion today, three years on; but in fear of the so-called ‘popular’ – and probably violent – reaction in the country if it were not honoured. On a personal level this could be regarded as ‘cowardly’, though I’m not at all afraid for myself, especially now that I have my Swedish bolt-hole to run to; or for my children, who could claim Irish citizenship through their mother. My main motivation was my worry that being denied the fruits of their victory would push the Brexiteers further to the political Right, and inflame their loutish followers to serious rebellion in a reactionary cause. The current language of the Brexiteers, and of their press cheerleaders, together with the alarming revival of what is called ‘populism’ on both sides of the Atlantic, make it clear that this is a genuine possibility; especially for a historian like me who knows his 1930s.

Martin Kettle however suggests that there may be a glimmer of light. Up to now those of us facing this same dilemma have generally been willing, reluctantly, to compromise on the basis of what is called a ‘soft’ Brexit: that is, formal withdrawal from the EU whilst at the same time remaining within its single market; which would require the UK to abide by its rules (including freedom of movement) but without our sharing any control over them. This of course would not be perfect, but would be better than the ‘hard’ Brexit (I call it ‘Viagra Brexit’) that the more extreme Conservatives are pushing for – under the unproven assumption that this was what ‘the people’ voted for in 2016. This was Corbyn’s deep-laid plan, and I thought at the time a clever strategy (https://bernardjporter.com/2018/12/30/corbyns-way/). It would have preserved many of the economic advantages of EU membership, whilst at the same time pacifying all but the ‘hardest’ Brexiteers. With the option that Corbyn later tacked on to it of a second referendum on the terms of our withdrawal, it also revived the faint possibility of a return to the EU. That has been my reason for supporting the official Labour Party line throughout the last two and a half years’ negotiations, despite the criticism that has been hurled at it from both sides.

The new factor just now, however, is that this approach appears to be coming to an impasse. Discussions between May and Corbyn (and their advisers) are clearly foundering on May’s refusal – in order to keep her party’s hardliners on board – to compromise on the ‘single market’ issue. That seems to be ruling a ‘soft’ (or ‘limp’?) Brexit’ out. Which means that we’re left with only three options: ‘hard’, which Parliament has already rejected; May’s deal, which it has also rejected (not hard enough for the zealots); or a new ‘people’s vote’ on whatever ‘softer’ plan can be cobbled together, with the alternative on the ballot paper being to ‘Remain’.

The Brexiteers don’t want a second referendum, on the curious grounds that it – unlike the first one – would be ‘undemocratic’. (‘You lost – get used to it.’) But just now it seems to be becoming more and more likely, partly because of Parliament’s failure to produce a viable alternative, which makes it the only way out. Surely even the ‘get used to it’ mob could be persuaded of that. ‘Parliament can’t decide; put it back to the people.’ In which case the danger of all those Brexiteers rushing at us with their pitchforks might recede, and we could live in whatever peace and contentment this or any government has in store for us, after the sounds of battle have receded. (Which might, I fear, take a long time.)

There’s a good update here on the Assange affair.

http://normanfinkelstein.com/2019/04/24/the-truth-about-comrade-julian-assange/?fbclid=IwAR1WjghCbEkjn0QhLMu_cPpqNeRWVAidqXFedZmA4umfDtvpfTX9YRQylkY.

He’s an odd bloke, alright, with his pale face, white hair and unconventional life-style. His enemies – who include most of the governments he’s offended – have exploited his peculiarities, and then built on them, in order to undermine any radical support there might be for him. They’ve done a great job here. Most of the accounts I read of him in the press characterise him as a sex offender and a coward, who jumped bail in Britain in order to avoid being extradited to Sweden on ‘rape’ charges. They also hint that he has problems with his ‘personal hygiene’ – never washes, and therefore (one infers) stinks. One report had him smearing excrement on his shower-room wall.

That’s the general picture of him, which would be pretty off-putting if it were true. If it’s not, then it’s a brilliant piece of character assassination, such as you might expect from Tory newspapers, conservative (and other) governments, and secret services. (It also has the advantage of getting the feminists on side.) The 99% of people who only know about Assange from the media will probably have been taken in by it. The judge who arraigned him after his exit from the Ecuadorian Embassy certainly was. (See https://bernardjporter.com/2019/04/12/another-boris-fib/, at the end.) Whether or not it prejudices any trial he may face in the future is hard to know at this stage, but it must have alienated some of the people who otherwise might have been expected to support him.

To repeat what I’ve written before on the ‘rape’ point: this is not strictly speaking the accusation he faces in Sweden. In any case the charge is a very dodgy one, as I explained three years ago (see http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/free/lobster71/lob71-assange-again.pdf; and posts from around that time on this site); and was emphatically not the reason why he was unwilling to be extradited to Sweden. Rather, he was seeking to avoid re-extradition to the USA, which the Swedish authorities refused to rule out, and the possibility of which was pooh-poohed by some people, but which the American government’s latest extradition demand shows was a reasonable fear. On the ‘personal hygiene’ thing, of course I can’t know the truth, but there are plenty of his acquaintances and visitors who deny it. And it’s the sort of smear that you would imagine that amoral ministers, spooks and newspapers – and we have plenty of them – would  spread, about any dangerous fellah they wanted to pull down.

We’re still waiting to see whether the Swedish authorities will help the British government out by reviving their application for his extradition. The British Home Office appears to be keen for them to have first pick. (Extradition to Trump’s USA would be far more controversial.) So are the feminists. I’ve already suggested reasons why the Swedes might not be too keen to have him (see https://bernardjporter.com/2019/04/13/what-will-sweden-think/). If they do manage to put him on trial there, the advantage for the public of both countries will be the evidence that comes up at his trial, which might give a more reliable account of him and his alleged misdeeds than the hostile rumours that most of us are dependent on now.

The Swedes appear not to have come to a decision yet. I’ll look into this when I return to Stockholm at the end of next week.

For St George’s Day. (You’ll know of course that St George – if he ever existed – was a brown-skinned Turk – or Syrian – who is unlikely even to have seen a dragon, and never visited England in his life? He wouldn’t be let in to the country today.)

I’m of the generation that doesn’t really understand the internet. (To tell the truth, I haven’t caught up with electricity yet. Why doesn’t it spill all over the carpet when you unplug something?) Recently however I came to understand that the unsolicited stuff I’m getting via Facebook isn’t just random, and so doesn’t reflect opinion generally, but is selected by a clever robot in California (or somewhere) to be in line with my tastes and views. I think it works by something called an ‘algorithm’. (Is that right?) Which of course explains why most of the politics I read on Facebook is Leftish and anti-Brexit.

And is why I was surprised recently to be linked to a site called ‘Proud to be British’, which emphatically does not reflect my views. It’s what you might expect under that title: narrow and xenophobic. I should of course have ignored it. But, having been offered this new platform, I decided to make my own brief contribution. Here it is. (My FB friends will have seen it already.)

‘Proud to be British AND European. – Europe is an integral part of my British identity, which Brexit will deprive me of. Luckily, like some others, I have been able to secure another citizenship (through my partner) in order to restore the European freedom that you lot are taking away from me. There are many like me (the exodus should probably alarm you, unless you think that ‘proud Britain’ is well rid of us); but there is also a much larger number who will not have this opportunity. They will remain imprisoned in your Little Britain offshore tax-avoiding neoliberal US-dependent haven for the rich (who are the real ‘elite’: just look at your ‘leaders’!), and hell for everyone else. It’s so very sad, and demeaning for my country of birth. Goodbye Britain. You’re no longer the nation I used to love and admire.’

I imagine they’ll ignore it – if they haven’t deleted it already.

Forget for the moment Assange, Snowden and Manning, important as they are, and worth defending at almost any cost. Their revelations have been priceless, in revealing dirty deeds done by governments and other agencies all over the world, but hitherto kept secret in order to prevent public criticism. The hope is that these revelations will enable publics to come to more critical political decisions in the future. That’s all to the good.

The more conventional journalist Carole Cadwalladr, however, has gone a step further. What her painstaking investigations into the world of the internet – too complicated for most of us to understand, especially us oldies – have done is to reveal one important brand-new means by which opinion is being manipulated, usually by the Right, in what purport to be ‘democracies’. It started, so far as the broadsheet-reading public is concerned, with her sensational revelations about ‘Cambridge Analytica’ and its relations with social media engines like Facebook and Google, in connexion with the Brexit referendum of 2016. That has now broadened into an in-depth inquiry into the way democracy itself is being ‘subverted’ by these new magicians of the web. Here’s a good account of this by Cadwalladr herself in today’s Observer: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/apr/21/carole-cadwalladr-ted-tech-google-facebook-zuckerberg-silicon-valley.

In one way this is nothing new. We’ve long known how public opinion can be misled and distorted by ‘propaganda’. ‘Cambridge Analytica’ is just the most recent example. There’s a whole global industry – called ‘advertising’ – that has been founded on this assumption for over a century. (Read Vance Packard’s The Hidden Persuaders, 1957; and even before that, HG Wells’s 1909 novel Tono-Bungay.) People are easily fooled, and they don’t need to be stupid to be vulnerable; especially when their manipulators alight on new methods of fooling them as clever and hidden as Cadwalladr has revealed.

Clearly we need to find means of countering this, which may be difficult without encroaching on ‘freedom of opinion’. (That’s what stands in the way of ‘policing’ far Right ‘lies’ on Facebook.) Efforts such as Cadwalladr’s are a beginning, pre-warning us about how modern technological propaganda works. Beyond that, I still think that education could help, if school kids were given lessons or even courses on rational thinking, logic, criticism, the importance of checking sources and so on. Ultimately this will be the only way of keeping the wilful liars and misleaders – Boris is the obvious example – in check.

I’d be there if it weren’t for my distance from London, my age and my arthritis. Or are these just convenient excuses? (Sorry, can’t go to ’Nam; I have these bone spurs in my foot.) In principle, I’m all in favour of direct action in these world-critical circumstances, and supportive of the current ‘Extinction Rebellion’ in particular (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/19/extinction-rebellion-reports-hundreds-of-people-signing-up). The fact that it inconveniences commuters and shoppers is a further point in its favour, to my mind. People need to be materially inconvenienced, and indeed shocked. Mere publicity has achieved little.

At present the shocking appears to be coming from two directions: from the very old, i.e. the saintly David Attenborough, whose BBC1 programme the other night on Climate Change made the case powerfully; and the very young, represented by the astonishing 15 year-old Swede Greta Thunberg with her ‘School Strike for the Climate’ movement, who features in the Attenborough film, and is hoping to join the Extinction Rebellion in London sometime this weekend. Apparently Theresa May has refused to meet her. (Isn’t it interesting, by the way, that the ‘Thatcher generation’ between David and Greta is less well represented? We oldies remember what it was like before her. And youngsters have forgotten her, and so can still dream.)

But I also get the message. Support ‘in principle’ is not enough. Everyone has responsibility for the current parlous state of the world, and should do everything he or she can on an individual level to put it right. Every little helps. So, what can I do?

Some things are easy. On a political level, of course one should vote for parties that don’t carry climate change-deniers (like the Conservatives – Lawson – and the Republicans – Trump), and which reject the neo-liberal, growth-before-everything, devil-take-the-hindmost form of modern capitalism which has led us into this mess. That means the Greens if you don’t mind wasting your vote, or Corbyn’s Labour party if you really want to get somewhere. I’m of course happy with that.

But then there are the everyday things. Some of those are quite easy too. I’ve stopped using unrecyclable plastic. I even bought a wooden toothbrush the other day. (It’s not very good.) I heat my house by gas, but will be happy to switch to electricity, even if it costs more, so long as I can be sure that it isn’t ultimately produced from fossil fuels. (There are two coal-burning power stations just up the river from me; but also some wind generators, and a great forest of them planned soon for the estuary.) I might look into solar panels, though I suspect my roof faces the wrong way. Kajsa has geo-thermal, boring down into the Swedish bedrock; but I’m not sure that that will work on the muddy east coast of England. I don’t have a car, which means that I use buses and taxis more, but they’ll all be environmentally powered soon, won’t they? The same I assume with trains.

My greatest environmental sin is flying. As a British Swede (now), with a beloved sambo living in Stockholm, and with both of us having commitments (and family) in our native countries, I fly to and from Sweden – as does she – far more frequently than is healthy for the globe. I’d go by boat if I could. I dislike flying anyway; and I assume that, in view of the numbers they carry, boats emit less nasties per person than planes. Am I right? In England I live, conveniently, in a ferry port, which used to service Gothenburg (I think; if not, then somewhere further up the coast), but now only goes to Zeebrugge and Rotterdam. A friend has found that there are cabins for passengers on container ships from Immingham, which is just over the river from me, to Gothenburg; but costing £700 each way. (And I don’t fancy being carried in a box.) A lot of the more convenient cross-North Sea routes were axed as flying got so ridiculously cheaper. (I can fly from Gatwick to Arlanda for less than the train fare from my home to Gatwick.)

North Sea Ferries are OK. From Rotterdam you can get a train through to Stockholm with two or three changes, which is pleasant – cabaret on the boat, comfortable German trains, a pleasant stopover in Amsterdam, a less pleasant one in Hamburg in the middle of the night – but takes about 48 hours, and can be expensive. We’ve done it a couple of times. But it really would help if the old ferry routes could be restored. Then I’d feel I could look Greta in the eye, if I ever bumped into her in Stockholm.

I literally wept when I saw those pictures of Notre Dame de Paris in flames yesterday. I’ve never done that for calamities – shootings, bombs – which only hurt or destroy human beings. Is that bad? Does it make me cold and inhuman? Of course I sympathise with the victims of terrorist atrocities, and am shocked and angry at their plight. But that doesn’t get me as emotionally involved as the destruction – we hope not for ever – of an inanimate building, made of stone and wood. I really am deeply upset by yesterday’s events.

If I had to explain my reaction, if not to excuse it, I’d have to refer to my deep and lifelong love of Gothic architecture, and especially of French cathedrals, which are the flowers of that particular style. (Forget the ridiculous Ruskin’s Venetian Gothic; mere plasterboard by comparison.) Paris and northern France were at the heart of the mediaeval Gothic movement, beginning with the church of St Denis in a Paris suburb; and from where it spread into England – usually in the hands of French master masons – though rarely in a perfect form. Notre Dame was never my favourite French cathedral; but it was (is) the most perfect of them, especially in its proportions, which are essential in any style of architecture; probably because it was all of a piece: built in the relatively short period – for a mediaeval cathedral – of 200 years. And it is so compact! (See Pevsner’s Englishness of English Art to see how this distinguishes it from contemporary English versions of cathedral Gothic.) And then there are those wonderful flying buttresses: evidence of the sophistication of the Parisians’ understanding of structural engineering – ‘thrust’, and so on – which was not improved upon for centuries. Thereafter the ‘science’ of architecture fell away. French Gothic churches are the greatest cultural, artistic and also, therefore, technological achievements of the Middle Ages; justifying, or at least compensating for, all the horrors that are rightly associated with that period: wars, cruelty, tyranny, disease, religious fanaticism and poverty. They could even be said to justify the Catholic church, whose faith and ill-gotten wealth gave men and women the opportunities to express their finest human aspirations in material forms. In the shadow of one of these great cathedrals – we visited Amiens last year – all the dark sides of the 12^th and 13^th centuries melt away.

I’m afraid that’s how I think of ‘art’ generally: as justifying human society in a way nothing else quite does. Occasionally, in my lowest moments, I think forward to the inevitable demise of our planet as a dying sun swallows us up. I desperately hope that by that time we’ll have figured out how to spread, as a species, into other galaxies, to replicate and save the best of our human culture. People  I’m not too bothered with – they can be replaced, after all; but I can’t bear to think that great and unique human achievements, like Notre Dame and her sisters, some of the great Buddhist temples, Shakespeare, Botticelli and Bach (these are just a sample) should ever cease to be. So get to work on those spaceships, you clever scientists, in order to preserve Mozart among the stars; and even Notre Dame, stone by stone, or perhaps holographically. Then I can dry my eyes.

A new Brexit referendum would be democratically unexceptionable, whatever the Leavers say, and could well reverse the 2016 vote. This is because there’s more solid evidence now on which to base a judgment; the cheating and manipulation that dogged the first referendum can probably be prevented now that we’re aware of it; and the electoral demographics will have shifted in favour of ‘Remain’. So bring it on.

This seems to be looking rather more likely now, if only to break the deadlock created by our MPs (bless them). Jeremy Corbyn’s cunning plan, to leave it ‘on the table’ until all other alternatives are seen to have failed, is looking more sensible by the day. The later it’s left – i.e. the decision to hold a referendum – the more likely it is that even some of the ‘you lost, get over it’ mob will accept it. Let’s hope that the other alternatives – i.e. May’s deal, or the cross-party talks going on just now – do fail; or else incorporate a ‘referendum’ stipulation themselves.

If not, then there’s always Corbyn’s other alternative, which is a general election. He would prefer that, because it would open up the possibility of the radical reforming programme that the country so desperately needs just now. As he has always maintained, and as he repeated in a speech recently, the real divide today isn’t between people who voted leave or remain, but between the powerful rich and the powerless poor. From his point of view, Europe is a distraction from this. If there were  a general election, Labour would probably win, whatever mud the Conservatives might sling at Corbyn. Surely people have seen through all that by now? This of course is why the Conservatives are so a-feared of the prospect.

Its advantage for those of us for whom Europe is a higher priority than it is for Corbyn, and who might prefer a referendum, is that a new Labour government would probably – would have to, surely – hold a second referendum of its own. So we will get what we wanted either way. For the first time in this whole ridiculous tunnel of ignorance, deception and madness I espy just the slightest flicker of light.

Then of course we’d still have the ‘mob’ to deal with, led by a khaki-clad Farage with his rifle (https://alternativebristol.com/are-we-going-to-see-a-brexit-insurgency/), who for weeks have been trying to intimidate Remainers with threats of civil war if their ill-gotten prize is snatched from their hands. But we can handle that when it comes. And also the ominous rise of proto-fascist opinion and action that this whole affair has stimulated. A new Labour government with radical economic and social policies might well be the best antidote to that.

Pulled. Sorry. But not before a comment was added: below.