Here’s an excellent demolition of the delusion promoted by many Brexiteers, chief among them our old friend Boris, that a return to an imperial trading system (in effect) will more than make up for the European losses that Brexit will entail. By one of my old Commonwealth history colleagues. A long piece, but it should be made compulsory reading for all Empire-nostalgics.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/apr/10/commonwealth-uk-brexit-leaving-eu.
One trouble with ‘conspiracy theorists’, as well as their usually being crazy, is that they queer the pitch for anyone who believes that ‘conspiracy’ does sometimes have a place in explaining events – even on ‘our side’. Anti-conspiracy theorists will usually accept that enemies resort to it. If it was Putin who ordered the attack on the Skripals, for example, that was obviously a deep-laid (and, let’s face it, rather botched) ‘conspiracy’ on Russia’s part. But on the British Right it is only those who doubt Russia’s part in the plot who are labelled ‘conspiracy theorists’. That’s why so few of us who may distrust the government’s version of events are nervous about admitting it. In the popular, unthinking version of these things it puts us up there with the Holocaust- and moon landing- and 9/11-deniers. (Or, worse, with those – there are some: google ‘David Icke’ – who claim that Prince Philip is an alien reptilian shape-shifter.)
Yet there’s no doubt at all that British governments, as well as Russian, have historically engaged systematically in the sort of dissimulation and invention that is required to effect fairly large-scale ‘conspiracies’; sometimes on the grounds that if their enemies were doing it, they shouldn’t deprive themselves of these weapons against them. MI5 and MI6 furnish dozens of examples. Thatcher was adept at plotting against ‘enemies within’. I know; I’ve worked (historically) in these areas. (That’s not to say that I expect anyone to accept this simply on the basis of my authority: the evidence is in my books, especially Plots and Paranoia.) So it doesn’t make Corbyn a ‘conspiracy theorist’, or, in Boris’s latest barb, ‘Moscow’s willing idiot’, simply for wanting some more reliable proof of Russian government involvement in the Skripal affair than the government has yet put forward.
I was happy to accept that version of events initially, as the most likely explanation in view of what we know – or are told – about Putin and his opponents, but tentatively only, until better evidence was produced. That’s why I strongly supported Corbyn’s brave and measured response to May’s hasty and intemperate condemnation of Russia; that, and because as an academic I don’t like to accept anything on trust. In the days since the original attack I have become more and more sceptical of the official government version, even to the extent of admitting the possibility – though a very faint one – that Salisbury could have been a ‘false flag’ operation. We need to keep open minds, especially in the face of Boris’s bluster, and in view of the seriousness of the diplomatic row it has stirred up. We’ve all learned not to trust Boris, haven’t we? The critique of the official British version I’ve come to trust more than his is Craig Murray’s, in his blogsite. This is his latest post on this affair: https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/04/portonblimp-down-episode-2-a-tale-by-boris-johnson/. Murray used to be a British ambassador, and has close links with the Foreign Office and Whitehall still. Obviously we should be sceptical of this also; but he does raise some awkward questions. I recommend his site; which saves me from going into the issue here.
Please note – just to make things doubly clear – that I’m not necessarily denying the Government’s version, only doubting it. (As it happens, my money’s still on the Russkies.) Tories (and Blairites) who excoriated Corbyn for his ‘treachery’ in backing Putin over May – which of course he didn’t – ought to be aware of the essential difference. But of course they pretend they aren’t. Scepticism didn’t do much for Doubting Thomas’s reputation in history; and it doesn’t make for effective politics.
The Battle of Waterloo is supposed to have been ‘won on the playing fields of Eton’; which seems unlikely, in view – firstly – of how many German troops were on our side, and secondly of how generally brainless Britain’s public school-educated officer class has been throughout modern history. (On the origin of the quote, see http://oupacademic.tumblr.com/post/57740288322/misquotation-the-battle-of-waterloo-was-won-on.)
To the extent that it may be true, however, it could reveal something more about Eton’s and other public schools’ contribution to British public life. The ‘playing field’ was central to them. Cricket and Rugby moulded and tested ‘character’. A good example is Henry Newbolt’s famous poem, Vitai Lampada, which was meant to illustrate how lessons learned at cricket prepared boys for the horrors of war, no less. Here it is, reproduced in full.
There’s a breathless hush in the Close to-night—
Ten to make and the match to win—
A bumping pitch and a blinding light,
An hour to play and the last man in.
And it’s not for the sake of a ribboned coat,
Or the selfish hope of a season’s fame,
But his captain’s hand on his shoulder smote
‘Play up! play up! and play the game! ‘The sand of the desert is sodden red,—
Red with the wreck of a square that broke; —
The Gatling’s jammed and the Colonel dead,
And the regiment blind with dust and smoke.
The river of death has brimmed his banks,
And England’s far, and Honour a name,
But the voice of a schoolboy rallies the ranks:
‘Play up! play up! and play the game! ‘This is the word that year by year,
While in her place the school is set,
Every one of her sons must hear,
And none that hears it dare forget.
This they all with a joyful mind
Bear through life like a torch in flame,
And falling fling to the host behind—
Play up! play up! and play the game!
Stirring stuff, isn’t it! And if it had this effect – to motivate young men to hurl themselves before the enemy guns by pretending that instead of soldiers in a great global conflict they were No. 11 batsmen in a cricket match between Gryffindor and Hufflepuff – I suppose it might have had its uses. But isn’t it likely to trivialise great events, to reduce them to the level of – essentially – play?
I wonder if our prominent present-day Etonians have been conditioned to look at public life in the same way? It would explain their lack of intellectual depth in dealing with the great problems of the day, which Boris Johnson – the most stereotypically Etonian of the three of them (the others are Cameron and Rees-Mogg) — does appear to treat as a kind of sport, a ‘game of thrones’, to be won for onesself (not necessarily for one’s nation) by any means necessary, without consideration for its broader implications and effects. Hence Boris’s flagrant lies and cheating, intended mainly for effect, and for his own self-advancement. He’s simply playing a game. Is this what an Eton education is all about? Games, Latin, and acting up to the image of the loveable toff? Nothing more solid and substantial, about serious politics, for example, or economics, or the real – modern – world?
He surely can’t last long. Number 11 batsmen generally don’t.
I explained to the man in the tourist information office that this was my first visit to Belfast, having avoided it until recently because of the bombs and bullets. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘the good old days!’
I was there accompanying Kajsa to her conference, in the role that wives used to play in the ‘good old days’. I remember attending an academic conference in Sicily years ago which was (I think) exclusively male, though that didn’t strike any of us at the time. (It was about ‘imperialism’, then a rather macho topic.) Many of us had brought our wives, for whom special facilities were laid on while their husbands were doing the serious stuff: coach trips, tea parties, etc. I thought it rather unfair that the same wasn’t done for male partners at this conference: a pub evening, for example.
Still, it gave me time to wander around the city, and entirely to change my view of it: not a bowler-hatted Orangeman to be seen, and the bullet holes presumably all filled in. The people were friendly; and for an afficionado of Victorian architecture Belfast is a treasure-house. I personally rather baulk at the famous City Hall – imperialist architecture at its grossest – but there’s lots of Gothic, and odd variations of curious styles of the kind that give life and a quirky kind of joy to many Victorian cities. The Victorians weren’t all dull grey dogmatic Orangemen, either. If you’re there, visit the Crown pub: gloriously over the top.
Maybe the Troubles had one good effect, which was to prevent the ‘renovation’ of Belfast during one of the worst periods of British architecture.
Of course I have no better idea than anyone else, apart of course from the perpetrators, of who it was that planted the Novichok on the Skripals in Salisbury. It could still be the Russians. But the director of Porton Down – our main chemical weapons facility – says on Sky News today that he can’t verify this from the scientific evidence, which we were assured by the Government he would be able to; and which puts egg on the faces of ministers like Boris Johnson, who have been hurling insults at Putin on the assumption that he must have done it, with serious implications for our foreign policy and even, at a stretch, for world peace. It also redounds to the enormous credit of Jeremy Corbyn, who refused to knuckle under the savage onslaught of all those purple-faced Tories in the House of Commons (and some on his own side), who called him a traitor for not accepting Theresa May’s word on this. (See https://bernardjporter.com/2018/03/14/salisbury-and-russophobia/.) Lastly it shows that, at last, Britain’s secret services will no longer be cowed into conforming to ministerial bullying, as they were over Saddam’s ‘WMDs’ and the notorious ‘dodgy dossier’; and as the redoubtable Craig Murray has learned from his old FCO contacts the government tried to do in this instance too. (See https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/03/of-a-type-developed-by-liars/.)
Another thing the Porton Down man mentioned in passing was that Israel was likely to have stocks of these awful weapons as well. Could the Israelis have been implicated? (I hear whispers of ‘conspiracy theorist’ coming at me from all sides.) Which also makes a bit more sense of the great but deeply flawed ‘anti-semitic’ whirlpool they’re stirring up just now; probably discomfited by Corbyn’s stand on present-day Israeli policies. Corbyn has rejected the new ‘conspiracy theory’ that this is all an anti-Corbyn plot; but there can be no doubt that it’s useful to the pro-Israel lobby. Which must explain the ludicrous lengths to which its smears are taken: claiming, for example, that he is anti-semitic because he has met with the wrong sortsof Jews (https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/apr/03/jeremy-corbyn-called-irresponsible-after-attending-radical-jewish-event#img-1).
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I’m just now suffering – grievously – from what in these parts is called ‘viral vomiting’. Most unpleasant. I’m meant to be flying to Belfast tomorrow (a conference, at which Kajsa is giving a paper on ‘The Construction of the Male Intellectual’); then back to Sweden at the end of the week, to surrender my British passport for a couple of weeks in order to get a Swedish one, and to be regaled, or advised, by the British ambassador, together with a number of other Brits, on the implications of Brexit for us in Sweden. So I’ll miss the local elections. Which of course won’t stop me from commenting.
This – from Lord Sugar – is simply deplorable.
Why is it that the Right concentrates so much of its venom on good and honest people – Obama, Corbyn…? It must be that they’re scared of them. As well, of course, as being bad and dishonest people themselves; and needing to display every public figure in a cynical light, in order to excuse their own duplicity and undermine confidence in democracy.
You really don’t need to be a ‘conspiracy theorist’ to see a hidden agenda behind the current campaign against Corbyn and his supporters on the grounds of their alleged ‘anti-semitism’.
Back to anti-semitism.
Just think. (1) How many specific examples of Labour anti-semitism have you seen quoted recently, to justify the charge that Labour has a ‘real problem’ here? All the accusations I’ve read, of ‘deep pockets’ of anti-semitism and the like, are vague and insubstantial. Others – Ken Livingstone daring to mention Hitler’s support for a Jewish National Home where he could send all Germany’s Jews (true), and Corbyn’s initial support for an anti-capitalist mural in London, with just two Jews portrayed among the six bankers supposedly ruling the world – cannot possibly be read as unequivocally and essentially anti-semitic. Here’s the artist’s own comment on the latter:
So Corbyn is probably wrong to renege on his support for it. But you can see why he did. He’s under seige.
I’m sure, as I’ve said before, that there are some anti-semites among Labour’s very large membership. But there are probably some paedophiles there too. That’s not to say that Labour has a particular or serious problem with either. I can understand why – in the light of their history – Jews and Jewish organisations feel sensitive over these issues; but that’s not to say that their suspicions are justified.
Second point (2). – I’m not a ‘conspiracy theorist’ – or don’t think so – but it was put to me by a friend recently that if Jeremy Corbyn became Prime Minister, he would be much less pro-Israel (pro-the present State of Israel, that is) and more pro-Palestinian than any of our recent PMs. That might be a reason for the so-called ‘Israel Lobby’ in Britain to smear him with one of the most shameful charges in post-Holocaust history, in order to prevent his coming to power.
And that’s easy enough to do, by lazily conflating criticism of the present right-wing Israeli government with racism. In fact a very large number of Jews, including many Israelis, are also hostile to Netanyahu’s regime, to Israel’s ‘occupied territories’, and the rest. (One of them is an acquaintance of mine who is working hard – and generously – for Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation.) Israeli right-wingers sometimes dub these critics ‘self-hating Jews’. Am I a ‘self-hating Brit’ because I’ve always opposed imperialism?
And what is Israel if it isn’t itself a consequence of imperialism? Remember that modern Israel was originally created as a Western colony in a land occupied for centuries by others. The same could be said of England, since the Anglo-Saxon invasions; and of course the United States. One difference with Israel, however, is that it happened much more recently, which means that the Arabs have closer memories of their dispossession than the Celts or the Native Americans. Which is emphatically not a reason to destroy Israel – we’re stuck with it now, and it has many admirable national qualities, especially when compared with some of the states surrounding it – but that the Israelis should be aware of their problematic origins, sensitive to the Arabs’ feelings as well as super-sensitive to their own, and more generous and accommodating towards their neighbours than they presently appear to be. That, after all, was the liberal and socialist dream that fired the original Zionists, with the considerable support of the British Labour Party in days gone by.
I’ve written before about the Labour Party’s alleged ‘anti-semitism’: https://bernardjporter.com/2016/04/28/anti-semitism-and-labour/; https://bernardjporter.com/2016/05/04/antisemitism-again/; and https://bernardjporter.com/2017/12/19/more-anti-semitism/. It’s nonsense, of course; relying at best on an unscholarly confusion between Jewry or Judaism and the present Israeli government, and probably just a ruse by ‘New Labourites’ to discredit Corbyn: up there with the ‘Corbyn was a spy’ smear, but intrinsically harder to disprove. I’ve been in the Labour Party (on and off) for 50 years now, in a number of constituencies up and down the country, and alongside many Jewish comrades; and have never heard even the slightest whisper of anti-semitism there, even in coded form: but lots from the Conservative side, which is surely the anti-semites’ natural home. I’m sure we’ve got a sprinkling of members who sometimes let their hostility to capitalism or sympathy with the Palestinians push them close to anti-semitism; but Labour’s core anti-racist principles are a pretty good defence against their crossing that line.
The trouble is – apart from the damage these charges are doing to our cause and its leader – that it might rebound on Jews themselves. There’s nothing more likely to turn people into anti-semites than an anti-anti-semitic witch-hunt. Thank goodness my own love and admiration for Jewish culture renders me immune to this.
There’s a good answer to the anti-anti-semites here: http://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/jvl/a-jvl-statement-on-the-current-attacks-on-jeremy-corbyn/.
There were two major examples of cheating revealed yesterday: by the Brexit side in the EU Referendum (https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/mar/26/pressure-grows-on-pm-over-brexit-cambridge-analytica-scandal-theresa-may); and by the Australian cricket team during the last test match against South Africa (https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2018/mar/26/australian-outrage-over-ball-tampering-born-out-of-teams-moralising-hypocrisy). Before you dismiss the latter as merely trivial, remember how important a part sport plays in Australian national culture. As a Remainer, but also an Australophile and a cricket lover, I’m not sure which of these two scandals upsets me more.
Neither surprises me. I’ve already written here about the seamy side of Australian cricket (https://bernardjporter.com/2017/11/21/how-you-play-the-game/), and – at least a dozen times – about the sheer self-serving dishonesty of Boris Johnson and Michael Gove. (Other Brexit leaders I’m prepared to excuse, as wrong-headed at best, or stupid.) The good thing about the Australian scandal is the reaction it has provoked among the Australian public, who seem as shocked by it as I am. That says a great deal for them, and for the survival of the good old British ‘fair play’ tradition in their corner of the ex-Empire; and bodes well, I hope, for the future of the game there.
The Brexit side’s cunning side-stepping of British electoral law in the other case is more problematical. It ought to render the result of the referendum invalid, and so trigger another vote. That’s what happens (albeit rarely) in British General Elections; but then only on a constituency basis, with one proven example of election fraud only invalidating, therefore, 1/600th of the total seats in the Commons. In the case of a national referendum, by contrast, we’d have to re-run the whole thing, nation-wide. Just think what the Brexiteers would make of that! They’d obviously paint it as a procedural trick by ‘Remoaners’ who ‘won’t accept the democratic will’. That line of argument might even boost their majority in a re-run, as a way of striking back, again, against the ‘élite’. So it looks as though there’s no way back.
Of course there has always been political trickery and cheating, at least since Machiavelli’s time. (Though my reading of Machiavelli, incidentally, has him explaining all these Princely chicaneries to the people in order to forewarn and fore-arm them.) The difference today is that it has become far more sophisticated than it used to be. The development of the advertising industry since the late 19th century has played a part in that. (See HG Wells’s Tono-Bungay.) With the very recent development of digital targeting (is that the right term?) by companies like Cambridge Analytica, which claims to have swung both the American Presidential election and the EU Referendum, political gerrymandering has reached a peak of influence and power, and one whose techniques are presently only understood by a small minority of nerdish technocrats. It’s this that makes this factor a special danger today: a danger, that is, to true democracy, based – so far as it can be – on transparency and truth.
A decline in public morality might have something to do with it, too. People seem less concerned with ‘truth’ these days, than with what will be believed. That undercover interview with the Board of Cambridge Analytica, which I’ve referenced already (see https://bernardjporter.com/2018/03/21/6525/), illustrated that. I’ve known people who, when quizzed about something or other, are obviously less concerned with veracity than with what they can get away with. When pulled up for this, their argument is that ‘everyone cheats. Haven’t you ever told a lie?’ Well, speaking for myself: No, not knowingly, and not on serious matters. But there are clearly a lot of people for whom this is the only reasonable approach. They distrust everything, and are consequently less likely to be trustworthy themselves. People like me are unrealistic, even naive. I claim I’m neither. I’m aware that many people – especially governments and political parties – lie: I’ve spent half my academic career working on the British Secret Services, for pity’s sake; but I’m unwilling to assume that this is the default position all round. Genuine ‘realism’ acknowledges that some people tell the truth. To assume otherwise can make one a cynic. A sceptic, OK; but a cynic, no. I don’t ever want to become one of those.
Of course it’s impossible to say how ‘new’, or more developed, this kind of approach is today. If it is more widespread, I wouldn’t like to speculate on the reasons. The prevalence of propaganda and its close relative, advertising, is one. The decline of the kinds of religion that emphasise ‘honesty’ might be another. (The Christianity I was brought up in did that.) The schools may be to blame, especially the previously highly honourable – if deficient in so many other ways – ‘Public’ schools. The development of red-in-tooth-and-claw capitalism is, to my mind, clearly another factor: ‘whatever sells’. The ethic coming over to Europe from the USA, which crudely divides people into ‘winners’ and ‘losers’, has had an influence, I think; the sneering cry of ‘Loser!’ from such as Donald Trump and the Daily Mail, exemplifies it. If we have to divide people in terms of their achievements, I’d prefer two subtly different categories: ‘successes’ and ‘failures’. Many ‘losers’ could be classed as ‘successes’ – I’d like to think that I was one – and ‘winners’ can be ‘failures’ in every other sense. Look at the Australian cricket team, even before this last scandal. And Brexit, as I guess we’ll discover eventually. We don’t have to accept cheating in order to win, honourably and genuinely; or to come out better, in a moral sense, than the ‘winners’.
Theresa and Boris are really ratcheting up the anti-Russian rhetoric. This must mean – mustn’t it? – that they have solider proof of Putin’s responsibility for the Salisbury attack than they are letting on. Otherwise surely they’d hold their horses.
Boris’s comparing Putin with Hitler (albeit circuitously) ups the ante quite a bit. Usually this kind of debating trick – called ‘Godwin’s Law’ (see https://bernardjporter.com/2016/05/15/the-hitler-card/) – indicates a certain weakness in the argument. And May’s and Johnson’s use of it today does bear all the hallmarks of a desperate attempt to distract attention from their much deeper political problems.
But they surely wouldn’t do this if they weren’t morally certain that the international chemical warfare inspectors now in Britain were going to support their version of events, would they? If they don’t confirm it, the egg on Theresa’s face will be enough to make several omelettes; and prove Corbyn’s caution triumphantly right. But I can’t imagine that May is so stupid as to run this risk. Which is one – devious – reason for giving some credence to the ‘Putin did it’ thing.
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This (below) is a pre- or early World War I poster I picked up at the Australian War Memorial Museum in Canberra. If I knew how to ‘photoshop’, I’d stick May’s face on it, and replace the sinking ship (the Lusitania, I presume) by an image of Sergei Skripal swimming for his life. It seems to illustrate the Tory mood. (As well as being a rather fine painting of its kind.)
