Porter’s Pensées

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.

It’s difficult for a democrat to defend the House of Lords, of course, except by casting doubt on the institution of democracy itself. But this headline from the Daily Mail makes one want to, together with the Mail’s inclusion of the Lords as ‘traitors’, to join all those others it has smeared with this term – the judges, Jeremy Corbyn, ‘Remainers’, Ed Milliband’s dad – over the last few months. The Lords are unelected, and only there because their great-great grandmothers were screwed by the right toffs, or to reward political favours done by them to governments in the more recent past. They’re mostly old, and frequently caught by the cameras on the Lords’ red benches dozing in their ermine dressing gowns. They don’t exactly inspire a democrat’s confidence.

But, by ’eck – to use an expression I’ve picked up from my long sojourn in Yorkshire – can’t they pack a punch when they wake up?! Over the past few days they’ve rejected or crucially amended fourteen key clauses of the Government’s great European Union Withdrawal (or ‘Brexit’) Bill; which needn’t be fatal for any of those measures – the Commons can overrule the Lords – but will force the Government to think again, and is giving great heart to Remainers. In the course of the necessary re-debates  in the Commons, this Lords rebellion is likely to force the government into a ‘softer’ form of Brexit, at the very least; and could – just could – wreck the whole enterprise. This is why the Mail wants to send these ‘traitors in ermine’ to the Tower.

The democratic argument for listening to the Lords is that the Brexit process in itself was democratically flawed. I’ve noted this from the very beginning: https://bernardjporter.com/2016/06/16/is-it-really-about-the-eu/; since when revelations of the Brexiteers’ dark and sophisticated methods of influencing public opinion – secret donations, fake claims, Cambridge Analytica and all that – have reinforced the view that the vote in June 2016, with its narrow 52:48 result, was hardly a true reflection of informed opinion, at the very least. Popular referenda give the appearance of being the most democratic system there is; but their results need to be carefully tested and modulated before using them to trigger huge, existential changes of national policy like Brexit. That of course is true of all voting systems; – which is why we have the House of Lords.

Anyone in any doubt about the true nature and credibility of the campaign currently being waged against Corbyn and the Labour Party, on the grounds of their alleged ‘anti-semitism’, should read these two pieces, published recently.

https://orientxxi.info/magazine/anti-semitism-orchestrated-offensive-against-jeremy-corbyn-in-the-uk,2446; and https://www.opendemocracy.net/uk/jamie-stern-weiner-norman-finkelstein/american-jewish-scholar-behind-labour-s-antisemitism-scanda.

I’ve said it before (see for example https://bernardjporter.com/2018/04/16/have-you-stopped-beating-the-jews/), but let’s say it again: criticising the Israeli government, and supporting the cause of the Palestinians, are not signs of or necessarily rooted in anti-semitism. But they seem to be the main complaints of the current crop of anti-antisemites. Similarly, pointing out that Hitler at one point supported a ‘national home’ solution for the Jews – Ken Livingstone’s notorious claim, for which the Labour Right want him expelled from the party – is a statement of fact, and not intended to imply that Zionists are Nazis, for goodness’ sake! And (lastly) a mural painting of capitalists sitting around a table is not necessarily directed against Jewish capitalists. (The problem with this is that Corbyn once endorsed it: see https://bernardjporter.com/2018/03/28/israel-jezza-and-imperialism/). But these seem to be the main items of ‘anti-semitic’ ‘evidence’ that Labour’s critics are currently offering. It’s pretty thin gruel.

I have to say that I’m personally getting fed up with – even enraged by – all this false anti-antisemitic propaganda; especially when it’s directed against and could derail the best hope we have at present of bringing the present crazy and dangerous stage of our national history to an end, and returning us to a decent social democracy. – Which itself poses a problem. Anti-semitism is not, I’m still convinced, a serious problem in Britain, and least of all in the Labour Party. It’s also far milder than other kinds of British racism, or the racism that important elements of Israeli-Jewish society display towards other ethnic groups. The outcry against it is clearly whipped up – and supported by the Israeli government – simply in order to stop a Palestinian sympathiser from getting into No. 10.

But – and this is my main point – the outcry in itself could easily provoke a new anti-semitism on the Left, if people come to blame it for Corbyn’s failure to win the next general election. I’m sure I can resist the temptation – I’m fascinated in a positive way by Judaism, and even planning a visit to Israel soon – but many on the Left won’t be able to. Launching this campaign against Corbyn, in fact, was a high-risk strategy for British Jewry, which could well rebound against them. Let’s hope not.

Just to make clear: I’m personally greatly in favour of Israel’s survival, despite its ‘imperialist’ origins, though I don’t think Netanyahu is going the right way about it. And – because this is often a charge brought against critics of Israel – none of what I’ve just written amounts to a ‘conspiracy theory’. Jewish fears of anti-semitism, in this British context, are wrong and misguided, but they are genuine, open and above-board. I’m not sure, however, that I could say the same about newspapers like the Daily Mail, whose anti-Corbyn philo-semitism seems of very recent growth.

Written in my diary for 19 May are the words: ‘Royal Wedding. Be out of country.’ ‘Out of country’, of course, meant Stockholm. But now I find I won’t be able to avoid it even there: https://www.facebook.com/events/813022998888560/. So I’ll probably stay in England and bury myself under the duvet all day.

It was the British ambassador himself who alerted us to this, at a meeting of ‘Brits in Sweden’ called last week at his Residency, to discuss Brexit-related problems. (See pic below: I’m hovering in the corner at the back; Kajsa just in front of me, talking earnestly to the Political Attaché; the ambassador with crossed hands back right.) The ambassador was of course diplomatic on the issue of Brexit – when I said something mildly uncomplimentary about Boris, he said ‘Steady on, that’s my boss you’re talking about!’ – but gave the impression of wanting to help us poor expatriates. Kajsa says the coffee was the best she has ever tasted.

About 20 of us attended, out of a total 30,000 Brits living in Sweden – though I’m not quite sure what ‘living’ means. (Short-term? Long-term? Accredited residents?) A show of hands revealed that 70% of us were applying for Swedish nationality.

What jarred with me a little – apart from the Stockholm street party – was the image the Political Attaché had on the back of his visiting card:

Cringeworthy, I thought. And in any case ‘great’ in this context doesn’t mean that. See https://bernardjporter.com/2018/02/06/make-britain-great-again/.

I must buy Robert Harris’s new novel, Munich. A review of it on Swedish Radio this morning suggests it goes along with the view I’ve had for many years, that Chamberlain and ‘appeasement’ have had a bum deal at the hands of nearly everyone since 1938. In fact Chamberlain wasn’t fooled by Hitler, but knew that Britain couldn’t fight a war against Germany then, and needed to rearm; which he then set about doing in the breathing-space provided by Munich. By the autumn of 1939 Britain was capable of resisting the Nazis, if only just. What I didn’t know – and must check for myself – is that Hitler, wanting to go to war straight away, regarded Munich as a great setback. In other words, Chamberlain won.

So he doesn’t deserve the scorn and vitriol that have been almost universally poured on him for the last eighty years. That’s sad for his historical reputation, but in my eyes makes him more heroic. (It’s a shame he looked so little like a hero – more like Groucho Marx.) More damaging than this, however, is the effect the popular view has had on the policy of ‘appeasement’ generally. Every bellicose statesman brings up ‘Munich’ when diplomatic solutions to foreign policy crises are suggested. But appeasement isn’t a good or a bad policy per se. There are many instances in Britain’s history apart from this one – especially her imperial history – when appeasement has been, or would have been, the right course of action. Unless you think the anti-colonialists should have been resisted all the way.

‘You know what some people call us? The nasty party’. That was Theresa May at the Conservative Party Conference of 2002. It didn’t seem at the time as if she were taking it as a compliment. The impression given was that she would like her party to better itself, become more inclusive, even come to deserve a reputation for niceness. 

But it has hardly worked out like that. As Home Secretary she pursued a policy of redoubled nastiness towards immigrants – those great billboards telling them to ‘Go Home’ under fear of arrest, for example; her revision of Britain’s immigration laws to make it more difficult even for legal immigrants to prove their rights to stay; draconian expulsions by ‘quota’; her stated ambition to make Britain a ‘hostile environment’ for migrants; and her obsessive crusade against European ‘Human Rights’ courts that tried to rein her in. All, of course, designed to win over the popular nationalist (or racist) vote from Ukip. These are the measures that are coming back to haunt her today, as Prime Minister, after the ‘Windrush’ scandal, which was totally her responsibility, although it’s her own Home Secretary Amber Rudd who is paying the price. Now that she doesn’t have Amber to deflect the flack, some are saying that she – Theresa – can’t last long. (I’m not so sure. There’s still the fear of Corbyn to factor in: see https://bernardjporter.com/2018/04/25/corbyns-to-blame/.)

That’s not the only bit of nastiness around. The Tory-supporting propaganda machine has gone into overdrive against Corbyn, with yesterday’s Sunday Times (Murdoch owned) suggesting that Russian interference during the last election lay behind his success. He’s already been accused of being an ex-Soviet spy. Then of course there are all those ‘Labour anti-semitic’ smears – and they are smears, with hardly a grain of truth in them – seeking to associate him with the vilest sort of racism in history. I don’t know whether, or to what extent, the government or secret services of Israel may lie behind this last. Rumours are floating around of a million-pound donation from somewhere to stop Corbyn winning. Maybe the question to ask here is ‘Cui bono?’ Israel of course objects to his pro-Palestinian stance, which Right-wing Jews openly, albeit mistakenly, equate with anti-semitism. It’s difficult not to credit that this might be a factor, among Israeli lobbyists, and for those British Jews – who are the loudest, but who may not be a majority – who have taken so strongly against him.

But, finally: all this is so obvious, isn’t it? If it’s to succeed, propaganda surely shouldn’t be so blatant as this. Some people will be fooled by it; but a larger number – I hope – will see it merely as a sign of desperation by the Right. The mild-mannered and transparently honest Corbyn could even be strengthened in the public eye by his brave and dignified resistance in the face of it. British Jewry could become a casualty of its own ‘anti-anti-semitic’ campaign, if people come to associate it with smearing and libelling: which is why pro-Corbyn Jews should speak up more – or, perhaps, seek to get a fairer coverage in the press. I would hate to see a genuine anti-semitism growing out of this. Lastly, the ‘nastiness’ of May’s government in many directions is becoming more striking by the day: towards the NHS, for example, the disabled, teachers, and almost every sector of society it should be any ‘nice’ government’s duty to protect. It was she who spotted the trend, in 2002; now she seems only intent on aggravating it.

The 2018 ‘World Press Freedom Index’, compiled by an organisation called ‘Reporters without Borders’, has just been published (https://rsf.org/en/ranking), with Britain once again coming far down the list – at number 40, to be precise. That’s out of 180, with North Korea at the bottom. I commented on last year’s report here: https://bernardjporter.com/2017/04/30/press-freedom/. Again, the Scandinavian countries (together with the Netherlands) come top of the rankings, which is no doubt why my Dagens Nyheter makes such a splash about it today. I don’t suppose the Murdoch press or any of our right-wing propaganda sheets have highlighted it so much, although to be honest I haven’t checked.

They would probably dispute Reporters without Borders’ methodology, which Wikipedia describes thus:

The report is partly based on a questionnaire which asks questions about pluralism, media independence, environment and self-censorship, legislative framework, transparency, and infrastructure. The questionnaire takes account of the legal framework for the media (including penalties for press offences, the existence of a state monopoly for certain kinds of media and how the media are regulated) and the level of independence of the public media. It also includes violations of the free flow of information on the Internet. Violence against journalists, netizens, and media assistants, including abuses attributable to the state, armed militias, clandestine organisations or pressure groups, are monitored by RSF staff during the year and are also part of the final score. A smaller score on the report corresponds to greater freedom of the press as reported by the organisation. The questionnaire is sent to Reporters Without Borders’s partner organisations: 18 freedom of expression non-governmental organisations located in five continents, its 150 correspondents around the world and journalists, researchers, jurists and human rights activists.

Looking through that list, it will not be difficult to pick several categories in which the British mainstream media are likely to have picked up their low scores, among them pluralism, self-censorship and independence. But Britain’s poor showing must surprise many of those who pride themselves on our having a distinctively ‘free press’, compared for example with Costa Rica, Samoa and Ghana – all several places above her; which is our Press’s rationale for opposing (and in the end killing off) ‘Leveson Part 2’ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leveson_Inquiry). I imagine that for Murdoch and Co.  ‘freedom’ means what it does for most ideological capitalists: market freedom of the rich to buy up and control – in this case – the media. Against which, of course, some of us hope that the social media, now rapidly ousting ‘print’ journalism, might prove a corrective. I have to say, I hae me doots.

In Britain at present the print and broadcast media are two of the the main obstacles to a rational and informed democracy. It may be the same in the USA; which appears no-where in the top 40, and so presumably is even worse than ours. Trump’s new French friends, by the way, are at No. 33.

We’d probably have a Labour government now if it wasn’t for Corbyn. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying that Corbyn is holding the party back – quite the reverse. He’s been immensely influential in reinvigorating Labour, and returning it to its social-democratic (or, if you like, socialist) roots. I’m fairly confident (if only fairly) that Labour would win a general election right now, if it came. 

But that’s the crux of it. His enemies know this, or at least suspect it’s a possibility; and so can’t let him have the general election the country surely merits in present circumstances. This must be the most incompetent, corrupt and in many ways sheerly ‘nasty’ government (to use Theresa’s word) Britain has ever had. It’s also a minority one. If there had been a neoliberal alternative to it – like Blair’s regime – it would have collapsed by now. But those who could do the collapsing – left-wing Tories like Kenneth Clarke, Irish loyalists, even some of Corbyn’s own MPs – are too terrified of the genuinely socialist alternative he offers, to risk rocking the boat. So the bastards survive. 

I’m also pretty convinced that it’s this that has triggered, or if not at least sustained, the incredible smears he has been subjected to over the last year – traitor, anti-British, Russian spy, royal-baby-hater, bad dresser, and – the latest and most ludicrous one – tolerant of ‘anti-semitism’ in the party; smears put out and flogged to death by people and their newspapers who are simply, when it comes down to it, terrified of his socialism. It’s the old ‘capitalists versus the people’ thing again. Whoever said the class war was over?

Windrush ought to have sunk May. It’s entirely her responsibility, a direct result of the ungenerosity of spirit that is a key feature of this government, and in particular of her time as Home Secretary in the Coalition, and whose disastrous repercussions she was loudly warned of: by Corbyn, among others. By rights and by parliamentary convention, she should have resigned weeks ago. But no: Corbyn, painted as weak and pathetic a year ago, is now seen as too strong a threat. 

I’ve just had my British passport returned to me by Migrationsverket, which means, I hope, that I’m being seriously considered for the dual Swedish-British nationality I applied for after the Brexit vote. One of the advantages of that will be that I can distance myself, to an extent, from all these dreadful goings-on in my country of birth: Brexit, the Windrush fallout, terrible Theresa, bonkers Boris, braying Tory warmongers, a collapsing NHS, rising knife-crime, homeless dying in the streets, marketised universities, our appalling tabloid press, of course… and so much more. 

Here in Sweden more civilised goings-on are grabbing the headlines just now; and in particular the current ‘scandal’ at the Swedish Academy (Svenska Akadamien), the highly prestigious body that awards the Nobel Prize for Literature, and which is – quite literally – falling apart. The Swedish Academy was founded in 1786 by King Gustav III, the weak but highly cultured monarch who is assassinated in Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera. It was modelled on the Academie Francaise, and was originally supposed to have twenty members (half the French complement), but with the number later reduced to eighteen because Gustav thought that ‘eighteen’ in Swedish (arton) resonated better than ‘twenty’ (tjugo). (Or so they say.) The Swedish king is its patron, and it has the motto Snille och Smak (‘Talent and Taste’). The eighteen are appointed by secret internal ballot for life, and not allowed to resign; which caused problems in 1989 when three members tried to, in protest against the Academy’s reluctance to support Salman Rushdie over the Satanic Verses affair. As a result they simply didn’t turn up to meetings. Others have followed their example since, on other grounds; making it difficult – and now impossible – for meetings to reach their designated quorum of 12.

I’m not quite clear of the details of the latest scandal, except that involves charges of – yes, you’ve guessed it – sexual harassment against the French husband of one of the Academicians, who also works for the Academy. As a result three more members decided to ‘resign’ last week, including the Permanent Secretary. She was replaced by a new ‘Temporary Permanent Secretary’ (!), whose title must reflect the mess the Academy is in. It now has only eleven active members, and so simply can’t operate. There was a big demonstration over it in Gamla Stan yesterday afternoon. Women wore blousy ties or cravats in solidarity with – I’m not quite sure whom. Perhaps my Swedish friends will enlighten me.*

The latest development is that Sweden’s current King, Carl XVI Gustaf (they have a funny way of numbering their monarchs here) – a nice man I think, better than our British lot – has been brought in to try to sort it out. As far as I know, that’s the state of play so far. – My solution would be to ask the Norwegian Nobel Committee to fix it. Oslo awards the Peace Prize, so they should know about peacemaking. But I don’t know where they stand on sexual harassment.

It’s complicated. Perhaps when I’m a Swedish citizen I’ll understand it better. In the meantime, in the face of the currently appalling state of affairs I’m hoping to escape from in Britain, it doesn’t seem such a big deal. More amusing than otherwise. Lucky old Swedes.

* Marie Clausen tells me it’s Sara Danius, former Permanent Secretary, who was one of the resigners.

Gladstone was probably Britain’s last manifestly honest Prime Minister, though he had to wriggle a bit in order to maintain that reputation. (It was I who discovered that he deliberately absented himself from one of his own cabinet meetings, called to discuss the formation of a secret political police branch, so that he could disclaim knowledge of it afterwards. There’s also that business of him and the dirty books…) Since then there have been very few completely trustworthy senior Ministers. Blair tried to make himself out to be a good, Christian statesman, until he was rumbled over the Iraq War. Robin Cook was unusually honest, but then died. Harold Wilson had a reputation for trickery, but in fact was one of the least inclined to tell porkies, unless he really was the Russian spy that MI5 suspected him to be. (He was also, in my minority view, one of our great Prime Ministers.) Thatcher of course was a dyed-in-the-wool conspirator. Major looked honest, which was often read as naiveté. – Indeed, that’s probably the fate that awaits any ‘good’ politician in the modern more cynical age, in which honesty is either taken for weakness, or else simply not credited. Corbyn will get plenty of that, if – when? – he becomes Prime Minister.

There have always been dishonest politicians, of course, but the present age may be the most disgraceful of all in this regard. Ministers seem quite blasé about telling dreadful untruths, often for just momentary effect. An example was Theresa May’s attempt only yesterday to pin the responsibility for the destruction of Windrush arrivals’ disembarkation cards (necessary to claim residence) on the last Labour government, which got her a great cheer from the benches behind her, but was shown ten minutes later to have been a lie. She and her Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, can hardly help themselves. It’s said that Johnson really can’t tell the difference between ‘genuine’ and ‘fake’. That figures, if the only use he has of words and ‘facts’ is as counters in a game. (See https://bernardjporter.com/2018/04/08/the-playing-fields-of-eton/.) It also of course fits in with the phenomenon of ‘fake news’ in the US – they’ve got it as badly as us; and with the generally amoral spirit of the times. 

It’s also bewildering: as I suspect it’s partly intended to be. Who can be trusted, if anyone? I’m trying to sort out at present what really happened in Salisbury last month, and in Douma last week, with reports coming in from all sides flatly disputing the official versions of who was responsible for those two atrocities. Of course it’s possible to make some sort of judgment by looking carefully at the credentials of the reporters, the reliability of the media channeling their reports, and – above all – the evidence they present. But most of us don’t have time for all that. Which means that the debate is mostly conducted in what the American spook James Jesus Angleton once called a ‘wilderness of mirrors’. We decide on the basis of instinct, which generally means prejudice.

One of the reasons for my admiration of Jeremy Corbyn – apart from the fact that he’s my generation, with the same sartorial taste, and similar principles – is that he has promised to put politics back on to a more polite and straightforward path. His disavowal of ‘personal’ attacks is part of that; hopefully a revival of political honesty will be another. He has already shown how reliable his judgment is, having been right about most things over the years. The most recent example is his vote – one of only eighteen – against Theresa May’s immigration Act of 2014: the one that has caused all the trouble with the Windrush folks. He has also shown amazing personal endurance, simply by still standing after all the unprecedented and often vile attacks that have been launched at him. Maybe my support for him is naive. From the point of view of his ‘leadership’ image in the Press it might have been better if he had once been a soldier, or a comedy game-show contestant, or at least not made his own jam. But it could mark a real moral revolution in our widely discredited national politics, if he were to win.