Porter’s Pensées

Deleted.

‘Tyranny is probably established out of no other regime than democracy.’ So said Socrates, apparently. (It’s been decades since I read Plato’s Republic.) Here, one Andrew Sullivan explains how, with reference to Trump. I have to say this impressed me.

Analysis of the votes cast in the 2016 Europe Referendum and in this year’s General Election revealed, among other patterns, two quite striking ones: that both Remain and Labour voters tended to be (a) younger and (b) better educated than the rest. This set some on the Conservative and Brexit sides ‘blaming’ the rapid expansion of University education in Britain in recent years for the difficulties they had experienced. There were several possible conclusions that could be drawn from this. The ‘elitist’ one was that Remain and Labour were the more intelligent or educated ways to vote. (But we’re not allowed to say that.) The one that many on the Right favoured, however, was that students were being over-influenced by the views of their academics, who were reputed, probably correctly, to be predominantly Leftish.

It must be this that has given rise to the extraordinary and alarming suggestion by one pro-Brexit Tory MP yesterday, that Universities report to the Government on courses that include studies of British-European relations, especially those that bear on the issue of Brexit, to the extent even of forwarding their syllabuses, booklists and outline lectures, and naming lecturers: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/oct/24/universities-mccarthyism-mp-demands-list-brexit-chris-heaton-harris. That would have included me, when I used to teach the history of Britain’s relations with Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

This is, of course, appalling. Apart from its being based on entirely erroneous ideas about higher education – that it consists of lecturers dictating their own views to students, rather than encouraging them to think (I see that Chris Heaton-Harris went to the University of Wolverhampton, an institution the existence of which I was snobbishly unaware of before today: is that how they’re taught there?) – it has brought to many critics’ minds the spectre of ‘McCarthyism’: policing teaching and so undermining freedom of thought in universities, which of course is the basis of all academic enquiry and teaching in a ‘free’ country. Universities will certainly resist it for this reason. Hopefully the Conservatives will too; even – or perhaps particularly – the Oxbridge-educated ones. (That’s one thing you can say about Oxbridge.)

There has always been an element in the Conservative Party that has opposed all popular education on the grounds that it would give the working classes ‘ideas above their station’. This may be what is behind Mr Heaton-Harris’s fears for the effects of Higher Education on the classes that have only recently been admitted to what had previously been a mainly elite cadre. Keep them ignorant, and they’ll be more likely to vote Tory. (Or for Trump in the US. Did his voters break down demographically the same way?) Benjamin Disraeli is supposed to have consigned this attitude to the past with the famous declaration he made in support of the 1870 Education Bill, passed at the time that Parliamentary democracy was just beginning to emerge in Britain: ‘We must educate our masters’. But only – Heaton-Harris would say – if their educators are carefully monitored.

I can well believe David Lammy’s recent complaints about Oxbridge admissions, having witnessed exactly the same during my time at Cambridge (1960-68). (See https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/oct/19/oxbridge-becoming-less-diverse-as-richest-gain-80-of-offers#img-1.) My only surprises are that these abuses have lasted so long since I left, and – in retrospect – that I wasn’t more aware of them at the time. I did become so during my last two years there, as a College Fellow; and indeed it was my college’s deliberate (it seemed to me) exclusion of boys from State schools that caused me to resign my Fellowship, and take up a job in a more sympathetic university, Hull, to the surprise of all my fellow Fellows, to whom Hull sounded rather ‘Secondary Modern’ – ‘it’s in the North, isn’t it, Bernard?’ – but to my great relief at the time. Once there I found I could sleep at night, unlike after those awful ‘High Table’ dinners with some almost unbelievably reactionary dons: ‘we don’t talk about the Round Ball game here, Bernard. Only rugger’; and indeed I never regretted my decision thereafter. The specific reason for that decision was the Senior Tutor’s deletion of the names of four or five good State schools I had provided for him, from a list of headmasters invited to a dinner at the college to establish ‘links’ with them. ‘The Master and I looked at your recommendations, Bernard, but came to the conclusion that these weren’t the sorts of schools we wanted our students coming from.’ It was as blatant as that.

So, how had I got in? I hadn’t been to a ‘Public’ School, but to something close: what was called at that time a ‘Direct Grant Grammar School’, where about two-thirds of the boys (boys only of course) were fee-payers, many of them boarders, and the rest, including me, financed by ‘County Scholarships’ from the local Education Authority. (When the ‘Direct Grant’ was abolished, it became fully ‘Independent’.) It had all the Public School attributes: lots of ‘Classics’, the ‘House’ system, a CCF, huge playing fields, bottom-beating (as a ‘Praeposter’ – or prefect – even I was allowed to cane smaller boys. I never did), and, of course, ‘links’ with Oxbridge colleges. The ‘masters’ – teachers – knew the ropes. I was ‘put in’ for an Oxford and a Cambridge College, and offered places at both, but chose the Cambridge one because it offered me a College scholarship too. (More money.) The day I received its offer, by telegram, was, I think, the happiest of my life.

It never occurred to me then that my success was not based purely on merit, but had depended very largely on luck. I was beneath the ‘class’ level of all my contemporaries: not working class but pretty near – lower-middle, the son of Secondary Modern school teachers, and with what today would be called an ‘Estuary’ accent, not quite Cockney, but pretty plebbish; all of which clearly put the College off me when I went ‘up’ for an early interview in my Lower-Sixth year. ‘The college is a community,’ explained the Senior Tutor (later incidentally to become Headmaster of Eton). ‘What we’re looking for is people who are clubbable.’ I clearly wasn’t, so I failed that; but later took the College’s scholarship exam, and passed that. (I was – always have been – better in writing.) Later I came suspect that the College, aware even then of public complaints of class bias, had taken me in as its ‘token prole’.

I didn’t mind. I was gloriously happy at Cambridge, during my undergraduate and postgraduate years: wonderful buildings, pretty good (but far from outstanding) teaching, long vacations, friendly mates, even the public-school boys (or ‘chums’, though they could be a bit patronising), and – at that time – adequate State grants of money for both tuition and living. Best of all, there were the fantastic ‘extra-mural’ opportunities that Cambridge offered. I concentrated firstly on the theatre, as a set-designer, taking productions to the Edinburgh Fringe and meeting many of the great actors, producers and comedians of my generation (I could name-drop if I wanted!); and secondly on Labour politics. (I was the sole member at my college of the University Labour Club.) I learned a great deal about the upper and upper-middle classes there, which stood me in good stead afterwards – in my understanding of British history, that is, rather than socially or materially. Looking back, I’m not surprised I loved it all.

It may have been this love that blinded me to the obvious fact that there were no non-whites or genuine working-class lads at my college then: though of course I noticed the absence of women – excused on the grounds that they would need special toilet facilities. (A lot of the older Fellows were bachelors. They obviously has no idea about girls’ plumbing.) And this was in spite of my socialism (even then), and my active participation in the Anti-Apartheid movement. How could I have not noticed? There were ‘blacks’ in Britain then. Maybe it was for the same reason – love – that Oxbridge has neglected this problem during the 50 years since I left. In my case I did get to know non-Europeans in my postgraduate years, in the research seminars I attended (in Imperial history), and in my college’s postgraduate annexe. (PhD students came from all over.) But still never the ‘working classes’, or Northerners, or Welsh. They only came into my purview at Hull.

I fully accept all the points that are made by Lammy and his supporters about the adverse social and political impact of this Oxbridge segregation. It has lain at the root of our national problems for decades. Cameron, Osborne, May, Gove, Johnson – all Oxbridge. If only they had come into contact there with plebs – except as college servants: they don’t count – don’t you think we would be far better run as a country? Harold Macmillan was as snooty as they are, but had had contact with ordinary soldiers in the First World War, which is what he claimed widened his vision and softened his sympathies. Public Schools and the ancient Universities don’t give you that. Open them both up to the ‘people’, I say. And don’t let Oxbridge tell you they’re trying. They really aren’t.

Excellent piece by Simon Jenkins in today’s Guardian – https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/oct/18/mi5-lost-plot-britain-safer-than-ever-andrew-parker-terror.

It really is important to distinguish between politically-motivated crimes that ‘only’ hurt people, and politically-motivated crimes that genuinely threaten the state – or democracy, or the British way of life, or whatever. Terrorists want to have their actions put in the latter category. That’s their whole purpose – to bring about political or religious change, through ‘terrorising’ the general population. Parker’s scaremongering must be music to their ears.

They understood the difference in the late nineteenth century. See my The Origins of the Vigilant State (1987).

It’s becoming more apparent by the week – almost by the hour – that Brexit is a disaster, led by idiots, clowns and vagabonds, voted for by a misled population (misled, not stupid), enabled by a deeply flawed political system, stirring up the worst passions of our people, and being implemented now – on our side – by incompetents.

Looking at it as a historian – one historian: others will disagree – it seems to me to mark an extraordinary stage, possibly the ultimate one, in the story of Britain’s decline from a position of perceived ‘greatness’, which in my view was never based on either ‘splendid isolation’ or ‘imperialism’, which is what the Brexiteers appear to be harking back to; but always on high ideals (not always lived up to), generosity (ditto), pragmatism, adaptability to a changing world, and good relations with our immediate neighbours. The end result will almost certainly impoverish us as a nation: materially of course – that’s becoming obvious; but also in terms of reputation, and, for those of us whose patriotism, such as it is, is not founded on illusions of past power and domination – national pride.

I’ve been energised by this to return to an old abandoned project of mine: a collection of essays analysing Britain’s ‘identity’ as a nation, and her historical relations with the rest of Europe: see https://bernardjporter.com/2017/10/10/cosmopolitan-britain/. (I know, I keep announcing new projects. It’s the conception that excites me. Let’s hope this one isn’t aborted, like ‘Essex’ and the rest.)

‘Don’t trust politicians. Liars and charlatans. All in it for themselves.’ Well, I know that’s not true, of some at least of the handful of politicians I’ve met personally – mostly Labour. Conservatives, of course are less ideologically averse to being ‘in it for themselves’. That’s why more of them (I think) were involved in the great ‘expenses scandal’ of eight years ago. It was that event that did more than anything else to tarnish the reputation of the House of Commons in modern times. Together, of course, with the press magnates, who would rather politics (a.k.a. ‘democracy’) got out of their way so that the ‘market’ could determine everything; and a natural popular prejudice against the ‘ruling classes’ going back to Greek and Roman times. All politicians suffer from this, probably unfairly; but it’s partly their own fault.

I wonder if this didn’t help to scupper the ‘Remain’ side in last year’s European referendum? The main spokespeople of that campaign were David Cameron and George Osborne; both Tories, and ultra-‘Establishment’, which meant that they were hardly trusted at all. They also argued in a way that appeared to be too apocalyptic: ‘outside Europe we’re doomed! Doomed!’; but is seeming to be less so now. Corbyn at that time was also campaigning to remain, and in a far more cool and rational way, but his speeches got very little publicity: see https://bernardjporter.com/2016/06/02/corbyns-fault/. Corbyn also wasn’t widely seen then, especially in the popular press, as the ‘unusually’ honest – if nothing else – politician he has been recognised as since.

On the other side stood a trio of mavericks who, although still politicians, were seen as apart from the ‘Establishment’; which may (just may) be one of the reasons why they triumphed. Boris’s and Nigel’s lies were quickly revealed as such; but then ‘all politicians lie, don’t they?’ Asked to choose between two sets of liars and dissemblers, the electorate preferred those whose eccentricities suggested they might nonetheless be on the same anti-Establishment side as them. They had a choice between, on the one side, two public-school smoothies, with conventional names; and on the other, two more public-school eccentrics with silly names and very un-smooth looks – a frog and a hedgehog. (With Gove swimming along behind looking like a goldfish.) If they were unconventional enough to look and sound silly, might they not be independent enough to tell the truth? Perhaps if Osborne hadn’t changed his name from ‘Gideon’ to ‘George’ early on, and had developed some character, his side might have stood more of a chance.

No, not a serious explanation for the Brexit disaster. But there could be something in it.

Just back from a wonderful birthday party near Copenhagen. Our friend Eleanor, the birthday girl, is a true International. She has lived and worked in Sweden, France and Denmark, and speaks all those languages, plus perfect English. Hence the guests came from all over: I and a couple of others from Britain, but living abroad; others from Sweden, France, Russia, and of course Denmark. All (even the Russians) were puzzled and deeply saddened over Brexit. I felt I have far more in common with them, than I do with the 52% of Little England Brexiters.

Or is it fewer than 52% now? An article I read in the train back over the Øresund Bridge suggests that, even if none of the original voters has changed his or her mind since the Referendum, natural wastage – deaths – could have shifted the balance; with the elderly having been predominantly pro-Brexit, and the young the Remainers. A 1-2% death rate among the oldies would apparently do the trick. Brexiters argue that we can’t go against ‘the people’s’ choice, as measured that one day in June last year. Does that include the dead?

As well as my published output, I’ve over the years drafted, started and even half-written a number of books and articles I never got round to completing. This is the draft Introduction to one of them; a book to be called ‘Cosmopolis’, which was actually accepted for publication, before I gave up on it five or six years ago. I’m not sure why; it may just have been life-time exhaustion, or incipient CFS. I find I have a couple of further chapters of it on my new computer, mercifully saved on iCloud, after my original laptop was stolen. I very much doubt whether I’ll go back to the project now (I still have my Essex one); but I thought this was worth posting, for a more limited readership, here.

Maybe if I’d persisted with it at the time it could have taken a few votes away from Brexit.

Britain is both less and more than a nation. Of course, one can probably say this of most countries; but in Britain’s case it is a particularly important aspect of her people’s ‘identity’. That identity is far less ‘national’ than in other cases. This is why modern politicians and commentators find it so difficult to define a form of ‘British national identity’ that everyone can subscribe to, now, when one is suddenly felt to be needed. There isn’t one. This is because Britain has always been, in modern times, far more divided than united, socially, culturally and in every other way; and far more connected with other parts of the world than self-contained. This is what I mean by ‘cosmopolitan’. It is Britain’s main national characteristic – if the weakness of a sense of nationality can be properly called that.

This goes against some conventional wisdoms. There will be many Britons who think they know what ‘Britishness’ consists of; unfortunately, if they look around them, they will find that there are also others who have a completely different idea of it. This came out once when Prime Minister John Major characterised ‘typical Englishness’ (something different, of course) in terms of village greens, cricket, warm beer and district nurses riding bicycles; only to be met with a torrent of very different clusters of images from other English people: featuring northern industrial cities, for example, soccer, fish and chips, and trade union banners. Chalk and cheese: but both equally ‘English’. (Widen it to ‘British’, and the task becomes even more difficult.) Some foreigners may also be surprised by this view of a more complex and porous Britain than they are familiar with. In particular, they will probably be sceptical of the idea, to be developed in this book, that Britain has been significantly less nationalistic than other countries. This however is because of the way Britain has presented herself – or been presented – to them. Foreign views of countries always differ from domestic ones. Anyone who knows the present United States well must be aware of how very differently its people regard themselves, and really are (thank God), from the way they are perceived abroad. Countries come packaged, usually quite simply, for foreign consumption. ‘Nationality’ is part of that.

Look inside the package – better still, live there – and the complexities will become clear.
One of Britain’s particular problems is that she comes packaged as an island – or, more strictly, a group of islands: one-and-a-bit major, and a lot of little ones. Islands are supposed to be insular. Surrounded by sea, Britons were bound to be inward-looking. This was one of the reasons why they managed to fix their external boundaries (with one exception) earlier than most other states. This will have coalesced them as a nation. But did it? There are two reasons for doubting this. One is that the seas that surrounded Britain were arguably more significant as highways than as frontiers. They were one of the factors that enabled her to connect with other peoples. (‘No man is an island’, wrote John Donne famously. No island is an island either, in this sense.) The second reason is that her insular situation may have made her achievement of national unity – those boundaries – too easy. Clearly enclosed by her cliffs and beaches, there was no pressing need for her to define her nationality in any other, deeper, way. Britain’s literal insularity, therefore, neither cut her off from other countries – just the opposite; nor helped significantly to unite her. It merely gave the impression that she was cut off and united; no more.

Obviously I am not the first to notice either of these two things – Britain’s internal divisions, or her outward-lookingness. No present-day historian of Britain, for example, can be unaware of the fact that Britain is made up of at least four literal ‘nations’: the English, Scots, Welsh and (Northern) Irish – though this was a charge often levelled against arrogant English historians in former times. (For them, the other three nations were just addenda.) Nor have they any excuse for not knowing about the divisive influence of class in Britain, though this has become a somewhat unfashionable idea recently. Anyone reading EP Thompson’s classic study of the English working classes at the time of the industrial revolution, for example, must be aware that they constituted a whole different nation (metaphorically speaking) from the middle and upper classes of that time. Nor – turning to the other side of the equation – have Britain’s relations with the rest of the world lain unstudied: her foreign policy, wars and trade probably never; her imperialism since the end of the 19th century; her emigrant and immigrant history from a little later; and her more informal connexions with other peoples – travel, intellectual contacts, cultural influences and so on, all in both directions – more recently. This has all been written about. What is not generally credited is how important these two circumstances were to the historical identity of Britain. They were not just marginal. They were crucial aspects of her development; far more so, I would say, than any other, more coherent, set of national peculiarities. That is what I shall be arguing in this book.

This of course is not the only way of regarding the sweep of British history over the past two centuries (the period covered here), but I hope it will prove to be an interesting and enlightening one. It will certainly make several quite familiar aspects of British history appear differently. Immigration will be central, and not just since the 1950s. So will emigration, and to countries other than the United States and the British Colonies. ‘Imperialism’ will take on a new complexity, as a two-way process, not just ‘Britons’ exploiting ‘native races’. Key developments in Britain’s domestic history that are usually explained in mainly indigenous terms – Parliamentary and social reforms, for example, and ‘Thatcherism’ – will be placed in an international context that may make more – or a different kind of – sense of them. Britons will find themselves sharing many characteristics and qualities that they thought were peculiar to them with other peoples. That may be because Britain was influenced by developments abroad more than she realised; or vice-versa (Britain affecting other countries); or because all these countries were subject to the same underlying and global trends. At the same time, Britain’s really distinctive characteristics – the ‘public’ schools, perhaps, suet puddings, and philistinism: these are just tentative suggestions at this stage – will stand out more. As well, of course, as her cosmopolitanism; which is not found in any other modern nation to the extent and in the ways it was in 19th- and 20th-century Britain.

Is this a good or a bad thing? Personally I should say at the outset that I’m rather attracted by it: by the multifariousness of British society, even if that means frictions and conflicts; and the reaching out to the world, so long as that is not done arrogantly. An inward-looking and homogenous country would bore me. I hope that does not lead me to exaggerate or idealise these factors in this book. They do have their disadvantages. A multifarious society is more difficult to govern, of course, than a united, consensual one. If you don’t have a clear idea of what you stand for as a nation, it is also difficult to decide what you should require of immigrants, or indeed any of your citizens, in terms of ‘loyalty’. Loyalty to what? It was much simpler before Britons became ‘citizens’ (in 1983), and were simply ‘subjects’, so the only thing you had to agree to was to be loyal to the Queen (or King), which meant nothing – and most of us weren’t even asked to promise this. Foreign influences always give rise to resentment and resistance. Foreign influence in the form of substantial immigration – especially when the immigrants come with powerful belief systems of their own – is always difficult for a people to handle.

Hence recent British governments’ desperate attempts to construct a sense of ‘national identity’, to unite us all, native-born and recent arrivals; right against – I would say – the whole trend of British history over the past 200 years. Other countries have common cultures to fall back on, or a set of founding ideals (the USA), or ‘race’ (if they are falling back very low). Britain has none of these things. That leaves her vulnerable in many respects. On the other hand her cosmopolitanism has contributed to her national life in many positive ways, some of which will be detailed in the following pages. And it is certainly appreciated by others; including for example the International Olympic Committee, which awarded the 2012 Olympic Games to London for apparently just this reason – the city’s vibrant ‘multiculturalism’. For those who may be looking forward to that event, that must be a plus for cosmopolitanism. For the rest of us, it is unlikely to put us off.