Porter’s Pensées

I can’t see any way out of this. We brought it upon ourselves; or at least, David Cameron did. Isn’t it interesting, and also alarming, how much influence smooth, shallow people can have on History, and usually for the worse? That’s a factor we serious historians rarely take account of; just as we’re left puzzled by clowns like Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage. (And, over the pond, Donald Trump.) Outlandish figures like this appear to make the whole process of History random. And if it’s that, how can we hope to explain it rationally?

Of course it hasn’t been entirely random, although these little twists in the tail of events may have been. Although the Brexit vote wasn’t, as I’ve argued from the beginning, mainly about Europe (see https://bernardjporter.com/2016/06/16/is-it-really-about-the-eu/), it did reflect something more than mere chance. It was of course a popular protest vote – but not necessarily against the European Union, which was widely blamed but not really responsible for people’s woes. Even ‘free movement’ was not the real cause, having nothing to do with the extra-European immigration that was the sort that people mainly resented. The underlying reason for people’s discontent was the impact of ‘austerity’; or, to put it slightly more controversially, of late-stage capitalism, as it struggles on towards its Götterdämmerung. This in fact was the crucial factor behind most European countries’ (and the USA’s) different forms of protest movement in recent years, either of the Left or of the Right. (Because most people were blind to the ‘late-stage capitalism’ aspect of it, they could go either way; just as they did in the 1930s.) These movements were then hi-jacked by upper-class politicians with very different motives and reasons for complaint, including, in Britain, post-imperial resentment.

It’s obvious to most of us that Brexit will neither restore Britain’s domestic prosperity and welfare, nor her prestige and power in the world – nor even her national independence in the face of the global pressures that will be brought against her in her ‘splendid isolation’. Which means that it’s all been a dreadful mistake.

It’s easy to understand how this could have come about: through the calling of a simple-majority referendum on a single vaguely-defined and yet existential national issue; called (by Cameron) for narrow party political reasons, and against strict constitutional law; decided on the basis of widespread deception and cheating on the ‘Brexit’ side; and moreover, by an electorate which differed fundamentally from what it will become when Britain actually leaves the EU (by which time many of the old Brexiters will have died off, to be replaced by young Remainers); and yet without any possibility of undoing it, even when all these flaws have been made blindingly obvious.

A re-run, or at least a second parliamentary or popular vote on the actual terms of the ‘divorce’ arrangements, would seem to be the obvious solution. Of course the result might be the same, but in that case it would be seen to be more legitimate, because people would have had a better idea of what they were voting for. Brexiters claim it wouldn’t be democratic: ‘the people have spoken, get used to it’; as if democrats aren’t ever allowed to change their minds, or as though two votes are somehow less democratic than one. Hence their resistance to a second vote; backed by the Right-wing popular press, using terms like ‘traitor’ against ‘Remoaners’; one of the worst and least free ‘fourth estates’ in the world – see https://bernardjporter.com/2018/04/26/the-uk-press-number-40-still/ –  but which British politicians appear to crouch in abject fear of.

Imagine what would happen if Brexit were reversed, or even ‘softened’ – with Britain remaining in the Customs Union and European Free Market, for example. Brexiters (and the Daily Mail) would cry ‘Treason’. They might even foment a civil war, of one kind or another. That’s what I’m genuinely afraid of. If Brexit goes through – especially a ‘hard’ one – we on the other side will feel just as angry and resentful, but probably won’t take up arms. We’re better educated than the Brexiters – if that makes a difference. We’re also in less desperate circumstances than were those who were misled into giving the ruling élite a bloody nose by choosing Brexit; or those whose nostalgic yearning for a mythical imperial past has made them desperate in other ways.

So we’re basically fucked. Only a miracle can get us out of this hole. Perhaps ‘Doggerland’ rising from the waves, connecting us geographically to the Continent again. Or Trump’s America attacking us, reminding us of our dependence on our neighbours. Or the Daily Mail switching sides. Or the British people coming to their senses. (OK, unlikely, I concede.)

‘Home Office’ sounds rather comfortable – ‘homely’, ‘friendly’, ‘family’.  Abroad the equivalent is usually called a ‘Ministry of the Interior’, or some such. That gives off quite different vibes, more suited to police states. Which is what the UK, in its ‘home’ policies, may be gravitating towards.

It probably pre-dates her; but ever since Theresa May’s time as Secretary of State the Home Office has gone out of its way to seem strikingly less ‘home-like’ – harder, a more ‘hostile environment’, less welcoming, less liberal and more unforgiving – than ever before. This is especially true in relation to foreigners; and even towards those of its own legitimate citizens who can’t cope with the obstacle course it puts in their way before it will recognise their legitimacy (q.v. the Windrush scandal). It is also becoming notorious for its rank inefficiency: ‘losing’ its supplicants’ important papers, for example. (See https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/may/31/vital-immigration-papers-lost-by-uk-home-office.) And Theresa claims it is still unable to find one big file that was deposited with her a few years ago, containing evidence of alleged paedophile activities by MPs and other bigwigs in the past. Oh dear. You’d have thought that was something they would have taken good care of, wouldn’t you? Or perhaps they did. Is that the problem? Another nasty 1970s scandal – there were plenty of them – brushed under the carpet.

I worked there once, on some late nineteenth century documents they thought weren’t safe to pass on to the Public Record Office – papers to do with foreign refugees, as it happens. I had to sign the Official Secrets Act, and to have the HO vet everything I published that was based on those papers. The OSA covered anything I learned or did in the Home Office, quite apart from the documents I consulted. Anything. I joked to my students that I was breaking the law by telling them how much a plate of plaice and chips cost in the Home Office canteen. That was technically the case. Indeed, I may even be transgressing the Act here by revealing that I signed it there.

I still don’t get it. Arkady Babchenko, journalist and critic of Putin, is shot three times in the back in Kiev. There’s a photo of him in all the papers swimming in his own blood. Everyone in the West leaps in to blame Putin. The Kremlin denies responsibility.

Then, a day later, Babchenko turns up at a news conference in Kiev, fit and well. It turns out to have all been a plot. (Or a trick, for those who resile against ‘conspiracy theories’.) Obituaries have to be pulled from the next day’s papers. Boris Johnson in particular gets egg on his face, for being one of the first to be fooled. (This just a few days after he’s revealed to have been taken in on the phone by a trickster claiming to be the Armenian President. He claims he spotted the con immediately, but the phone call was logged at 18 minutes.) The Babchenko wheeze was apparently the idea of the Ukraine Secret Service, with the object of smoking a genuine Kremlin assassin out. There’s a drawing of the man they suspect in the papers. He looks a bit like Jeremy Corbyn. Has this story got any further to go?

So far it doesn’t seem to stack up. How can faking an assassination be used to reveal a genuine suspect, who obivously had nothing to do with it? Maybe we’ll be told. (I can’t believe that there’s no rational explanation. The Ukrainian Secret Service must be cleverer than that.)

The other problem with it, of course, is that it will throw doubt on all those other mysterious deaths of Russian dissidents, which are always blamed on the Russian state, but could – just could – have been similarly contrived in order to mislead. What about the Skripals, for example, who Boris was certain must have been the target of a cunning Russki assassination plot, but who then – a bit like Babchenko – turned up alive and well. Wasn’t Boris, at the very least, a bit hasty in rushing to judgment over that? This Babchenko episode must get us to think again about all these plots. (Only ‘think again’, mind; we can still believe, as I do, that the Kremlin or its agents were probably responsible.)

In any event, the affaire Babchenko isn’t exactly a propaganda coup for the West. Perhaps it was all set up by the Russians, as a kind of double bluff. They’re definitely clever enough. And Boris is definitely fool enough to help.

Since the Brexit vote tens of thousands of British nationals have applied for foreign citizenships in order to cushion them against the fallout, and to maintain their sense of European identity. I’m one of them. Luckily Sweden isn’t a country that insists that you relinquish your original nationality before you assume hers (I’m going for dual nationality), but several European countries are.

For them, however, the Home Office has devised a trick to make the divorce less amicable than it might otherwise have been. They’ve slapped a fee on anyone who wants to give up being British; and upped it in the last week or so. I realise and have accepted that acquiring a nationality will incur a cost – for the administration, if nothing else; but it had never occurred to me that you could be made to pay for giving it away. This seems odd.

The motive can’t be to deter us from leaving; it’s too little (£300+ per person) to have that effect. It can’t be worth the money that the Government will get out of it; although I imagine the sight of us all scrambling to escape the Faragean tentacles of Brexit Britain suggested to a civil servant somewhere that it could be a nice little earner. It’s far more likely to add to our resentment, and indeed could even have been designed as a punishment for the ‘unpatriotic’. ‘No’ – (evil cackle) – ‘we’re not letting you go until you’ve paid for your treachery.’ That, of course, would be very much in line with the ‘hostile environment’ atmosphere that was Theresa May’s legacy to the Home Office before she became PM.

Here’s the news report: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-latest-uk-citizenship-eu-nationality-foreign-nationals-passport-countries-a8369706.html. I wonder if it applies to dead former citizens. Or do they retain their Britishness in the grave? (Best place for it, I’m beginning to think.)

I always knew the Scandinavians must be to blame! I’ve just come across an interesting article on an American historical blogsite on gender relations in England in Anglo-Saxon times: https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/168948. All lovely and equal, women independent, both sexes doing the cooking and washing up, women becoming tribal chiefs, breast-feeding shared…. Well, I may exaggerate a little. (Though Kajsa once tried to convince me that men could breast-feed if they only tried.)

But anyway, it seems that things were relatively fine and dandy pre-1066, in almost a paradise of gender equality. That was until the Normans came along: turning women into chattel, forcing them into chastity belts, not letting them play football, and so on. (Unless they happened to be Queens.) This was yet another terrible downside of 1066 – Britain’s only experience of being brutally colonised by foreigners. (Unless we count the Anglo-Saxon colonisers themselves.) Bastards! And no: the great cathedrals don’t make up for it.

But hold on a moment: who were these Normans? Second-generation Viking immigrants, mostly, reared on soused herring and wood-bark, and proud No. 1 in the European ‘Raping and Pillaging League’ at that time. Hence the name, ‘North Men’. I’m sorry, my feminist social-democratic not-been-in-a-war-in-200-years Swedish friends: you can’t escape responsibility for that. Without you, we wouldn’t be needing ‘Me-Too’ today.

Sorry for the interval (Engl). I’ve been working on two projects recently: a paper on British emigration to the European continent for a conference in Amiens; and a short talk on Eva Reckitt, daughter of the Hull manufacturer (‘Reckitts Blue‘, anyone?) who became a Communist and was watched by MI5 – for a day’s conference here in Hull on notable local women. (I may publish it here too later.) Neither of these is due to be delivered until September; but with my summer looking to be taken up entirely hosting my large extended family and their relatives (16 in all, ages 1-45) on Svartsö – joyously – I thought I’d better get them researched and written up in good time. They’ve kept me preoccupied. I’m only now emerging, blinking, into the light.

Another post to follow shortly.

I don’t think I’ll ever forgive the Israel Lobby – as I suppose we have to call them, although the phrase sounds more ‘conspiratorial’ than I intend – for pressuring Ken Livingstone out of the Labour Party, on a specious charge of ‘anti-semitism’ when he was simply making an accurate historical point. He’s a great Radical politician, the best Mayor London has ever had, and clearly without a single racist bone in his body. It was noble of him to fall on his sword, but that it was necessary indicates how low we have fallen in terms of public debate. I’ve written enough about this case on this blog. Now I’m hoping for just two things: that reasonable Jews come to his defence even this late in the day, if they dare – I know there are many of them; and that my utter despair at the campaign waged against him won’t affect my general attitude towards ‘the Jews’.

OK, so I was wrong. I shouldn’t have boycotted the Royal Wedding. Apparently it was pretty politically correct: a mixed-race American bride, with a career of her own, and mildly feminist opinions; not ‘given away’ by her father (Prince Charles stood in, but we all knew she’s not his to give); multicultural music, including a ‘negro spiritual’ and one of Elgar’s softer pieces; and what everyone says was an ‘inspiring’ sermon, full of only half-hidden radical allusions, from a black Chicagoan bishop, after the manner of MLK (I’ve just watched it on YouTube). The vicar’s daughter now in No. 10 could learn a lot from him. There was also, of course, the building (‘Perp’); which an architecture nut like me was bound to appreciate.

Mind you, some of the shots of the congregation on that YouTube clip seemed to indicate that much of Bishop Michael Curry’s inspiration had gone over the heads of the posher members, with lots of them grim-lipped, or dozing off. And of course there’s all the other nonsense to take on board: the rather tacky gold-plated ceremony, onlookers festooned in Union Jacks (most of them American or Australian, judging by the interviews), and, curiously, nearly all the women in the chapel wearing what looked like flying saucers on their heads (a subtle reference perhaps to the ‘alien’ origin that some conspiracy theorists attribute to the Royal Family: google ‘David Icke’). Then there’s all those homeless people being turfed off the streets in Windsor so as not to spoil the view. (That says a lot about us.) Still, small mercies. And she does look lovely, doesn’t she?

My attitude to royalty generally is ambivalent. Of course it’s undemocratic, feudal, and hard on the royals (poor Charles! I wouldn’t like to do it); but a hereditary monarchy is not a bad way to separate the representative of a country away from its politics. (That’s the USA’s original sin.) So long as it can’t actually do anything apart from ‘represent’. I met Queenie once, at a shindig to celebrate the 75^th anniversary of the Historical Association. I was half-pissed on sherry but reckoned it wouldn’t matter, if my prejudice that they were a family of in-bred idiots was true. It turned out not to be: in her case, at least. She asked me what I researched on, and I told her, in simple terms; only to be surprised by a highly intelligent follow-up question from her. I had to delve deep into my sherry-addled brain for an answer; which clearly took more time than they had allowed for. Afterwards I grinned inanely around me: wasn’t she impressed?! Later we were sent photos of the occasion; mine shows my lips blurred with the speed at which they were working, and Her Maj with a look of utter boredom on her face. Normally that would be something to frame and put up in one’s study. I’ve kept it hidden, however, only showing it to my nearest and dearest – in Kajsa’s case after about ten years. (Perhaps I’ll put it up on this blog one day.) But I’ve been a fan of the top royal ever since. Just her, mind: not the rest of them. Except maybe – now – the new Duchess of Sussex.

(I posted a pic of me and Queen here originally, but have deleted it. Sorry. I just didn’t like it.)

Encouraging news at last. (1) Students – intelligent young people most affected by the Brexit catastrophe – are planning a great new anti-Brexit campaign in the summer: https://leftfootforward.org/2018/03/students-union-throws-weight-behind-brexit-second-ref/. 75% of under-25s (those who voted) voted ‘Remain’ in the referendum. (2) ‘Jewish Voice for Labour’ – the genuine (I hope) representative of Jews in the Labour Party – has come out firmly against the smear campaign against the Party for its alleged ‘anti-semitism’, with an excellent definition of genuine anti-semitism, uncoupling this vile prejudice from criticism of the state of Israel: http://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/campaigns/the-definition-of-antisemitism/. (3) Home Office lies and scandals over Windrush are being revealed at last, in a trail of evidence that must in the end lead back to the present Prime Minister, who was – as Home Secretary – the original author of them: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/05/15/home-secretary-admits-63-windrush-migrants-may-have-deported/. (4) The East Coast mainline is to be taken away from Virgin and restored to the public sector again, renaming it ‘LNER’, which is the name it had when I was a boy collecting (steam) train numbers on the pedestrian bridge over Gidea Park station in the 1950s: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-44142258. Does all this presage Spring? – Down, boy!

There’s another demand this morning, by the new President of the Board of Deputies for British Jews, for Ken Livingstone to be expelled from the Labour Party for making a valid historical point: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/may/14/labour-ken-livingstone-jackie-walker-antisemitism-row. Shouldn’t this alarm all of us professional historians? And shouldn’t it also concern most reasonable Jews; for whom the continuation of this grossly misdirected campaign, on the same day as the state of Israel is shooting peaceful Palestinian protestors in Gaza, cannot do much to dampen what anti-semitism there may be in Britain.