Journal of the Plague Years

• Far from rebelling, we vote to be branded.
• The House is the new Coll.
• Grim Anniversary.
• Inquiries.
• Did we support the war?
• Lies, Damned Lies and Narrative.
• The Stench of Hypocrisy. Again.
• The South Bank Show.
• If you sup with the Devil, use a long spoon...
• Literacy and the Proms.
• Manifestations.
• Standing up to be counted.
• The meaning of 'Liberal', US style vs. UK style.
• Long Life To Chairman Brown: Ever Forward With The Great Prudence.
• Maybe It's Because I'm A Londoner.
• What is a 'National Debate'?
• Sanctimoniousness - a new deadly sin.
• Rite of Passage. (The Oath to the Queen.)

Far from rebelling, we vote to be branded.

20 March 2008 .

From Robert Fisk in today's Independent: "How did the people - the senatus populusque Romanus of our modern world - not rise up in rebellion when told the lies about the weapons of mass destruction, (and) about Saddam's links with Osama bin Laden and 11 September?"

Quite.


The House is the new Coll.

20 March 2008 .

I was watching one of the '10 Days to War' slots earlier this week, about the day of the Commons vote which gave The Dear Leader the go-ahead for his adventure in Iraq back in 2003.

Sometimes it's a small detail which hits home. In this episode, Anne Campbell MP was I think having lunch with Patricia Hewitt, before the division; she'd indicated her intention to vote against the invasion and Hewitt asked her, 'Don't you think you're being a bit self-indulgent?'

It was the sort of smug, unthinking arrogance which has become all too familiar to us: Campbell, an MP deeply concerned by the matter on which she was being asked to vote, was greeted by that sort of Chelters head-girlism, which had absolutely no bearing on the arguments or the morality of an extraordinarily profound situation - and which is reflected every day in the vapid expostulations of Jacqui Smith, Harriet Harman, Ruth Kelly or any of dozens of other prefects (of both genders, to be fair). (Actually, again to be fair; Kelly does seem to be getting her act together - better late than never if she is, though the jury is out as yet.)

We might have hoped that a growing female presence in Parliament would prove a restraining and/or civilising influence but, when we've looked to the Blair babes for that, we've been fairly consistently disappointed. None of those fatuous aparatchiks, so far as I know, voted against the war - that was left to a slightly earlier generation, such as Mo Mowlem, who actually had some idea what they were voting about.

Hewitt won't ever be asked to wear the Queen's uniform, but you can be sure that that wouldn't stop her from doing her patriotic duty, handing out white feathers.


Grim Anniversary.

19 March 2008 .

Five Years since the 'Coalition of the Willing' invaded Iraq. Although, after ten years of being bombed, there were probably plenty of Iraqis who didn't notice much difference.

George Bush declared today that the operation has been a success. (85,000? 1,000,000? Whatever the figure, we've out-saddamed Saddam.)

When you want to sell a car which is running rough, you can haul it into the garage and have it properly repaired. Or you can put some porridge in the sump - it'll run sweet as a pea, so I'm told... for a while.

[I expect to see Blair wheeled out on the television at some point this evening; I would certainly like to be able to read that particular mind today.]


Inquiries.

17 March 2008 .

The Leader Of Our Nation has said, or suggested, or hinted, or implied, that there should after all be an inquiry into the invasion of Iraq. But perhaps not yet. Later, maybe. Why do these things always seem to come to us in such a roundabout way these days, and so undefined? [I'm sure the rot started with Blair's penchant for telling us important things on the Jimmy Young Show, but now I half expect Brown to announce the next general election during a cat-food advertisement.]

Any welcome to the (possibility of) an inquiry is bound to be qualified.

1. The reason why I (at least) argue for an impeachment is that the inquiry system has been too compromised in the past five years. Frankly, I would not be inclined to trust an inquiry set up by the present government. The suggestion seems to be that it might be a matter for the Privy Council, but even they're no longer seen as the great and the good.

2. Brown simply doesn't seem to realise the urgency of this matter, both domestically in the UK and in our international relationships. A vague promise for the future (this not being a urrrgh prudent moment) can only exacerbate the situation.

3. Several hundred Iraqi translators (who worked for the Brits and whose lives were consequently threatened), and their families, were promised a safe haven last year - but while at least a dozen have been murdered and tens or hundreds beaten up and tortured - not one single one has yet been helped. As this news leaks out while the Brits hand Basra over to ragbag of gangsters and zealots, the question must begin to be asked: should we also be beginning to look at another inquiry, into the ending of the invasion?


Did we support the war?

17 March 2008 .

General Sir Mike Jackson holds that in March, 2003, about two thirds of the population of the UK were in favour of the imminent invasion of Iraq (BBC Newsnight).

Is he right? Where does his figure come from? We all have our recollections, of course, coloured by our own opinions, but mine is of a million people marching against the war and no great counter-march in favour.

Added 19 March: In the same programme, a day or two later, both Anne Campbell (who voted against the war) and Paul Stinchcombe (who voted for) said that when they returned home after voting, their constituents made their feelings clear: Campbell was feted, Stinchcombe criticised. The same pattern seems to have repeated throughout much of the country.

So where's the evidence for General Jackson's certainty?

Silly me: in this post-modern age, evidence is irrelevant (you don't need WMD for there to be WMD). Narrative is everything.


Lies, Damned Lies and Narrative.

17 March 2008 .

The 'War Against Terror' must be fought, and if it means sacrificing some of our liberties, so be it. That's the official line, isn't it? All the armed police on our streets, and bother about travel and ID cards, and surveillance, and massive increases in recruiting to the security services, are responses to that simple fact. Our state is acting in our interests, responding to the growing threat of violence from large numbers of Muslims - including our own citizens.

In short, far from being to blame, the state is our heroic defender.

It's called a narrative, and that narrative is carefully built up, and it's a feature of post-modern Britain, and it's what ordinary people in this country used to call a lie. The giveaway clue in this is that the thinking for databases and ID cards, which we're told were devised to fight terrorism, was taking place long before there was any suggestion that any Muslim was going to blow up bombs in the UK - and long after it would have done any good against the IRA.

Affiche (poster) of May, 1968 - Paris

The campaign against the terrorists is not a response to unprovoked attacks by evil men; on the contrary, their attacks are the (tragic) response to a constant abuse of Muslim lands by the West which, in its present chapter, has been going on for 80 years. (For fuller argument, see Impeaching Blair.)

But let us just imagine that the politicians truly believed their own rhetoric. They would understand, wouldn't they, that the erosion of our liberties, albeit in this noble cause, would disquiet some of our citizens.

So why are they piling one thing on another? The newly awarded right to police to enter any premises, including homes, where a person may be evading taxes - without a warrant, without a requirement to explain or arrest, and without evidence - will not fight terrorism. It isn't even intended to fight violent crime.

If it wanted to reassure us, the state could have waited a while before implementing this one... but no, because that's not what the new state is about. On the contrary, sometimes unconsciously, sometimes quite deliberately, in a muddled 'British' way, it seeks to subdue us.

I'm in my 50's, not old but getting on a bit. Sometimes it's said that as you get older, you burn out and don't have anything much useful to say any more: on this issue... Big mistake.


The Stench of Hypocrisy. Again.

17 March 2008 .

A bit of half-conscious prejudice which I inherited from somewhere in my ancestral background is a hostility to a certain sort of holier-than-thou Sassenach presbytarianism, a sort of whiff of the manse such as that which hangs around our Great Leader, Brown.

He's at it again. I'm sure that in a speech to the Labour conference last year he said that Mugabe wouldn't be allowed to get away with his barbarity any longer, and I know that he's been claiming moral high ground in his dealings with the Zimbabwean regime (refusing to talk with Mugabe at a summit, stopping the England cricket tour, etc). Now his government has sent letters to a thousand Zimbabwean asylum-seekers telling them that they've got to go back, but it's okay because there's no risk to their lives.


The South Bank Show.

16 March 2008 .

The South Bank Show (ITV) is marking the 40th. anniversary of the battle of Grosvenor Square tomorrow. I'd like to think that this is will mark the start of a year in which we begin to discuss the legacy of 1968, which was certainly the most socially influential year in Europe since 1945, probably until 1989.

The programme is a respected cultural magazine which is naturally, and rightly, going to see events from a certain perspective (looking at the counter-culture); but it's wheeling out a lot of the usual suspects - Tariq Ali, whom I rather admired but who became something of an establishment turncoat (like so many!) and Vanessa Redgrave, a certain sort of socialist (and coming from established wealthy and/or successful families does seem to make a certain sort of socialist of you - c/f Margaret Hodge), who turned into a very nasty Stalinist voice of the Socialist Worker's Party which undid a great deal of the good she might otherwise have done.

Even as I write, the programme's just moved on to Paris in May - and the production of the affiches which I've been including on this site for the last few days...

[I was in France in May (it was my gap year and I was supposed to be working and learning a bit of French.... I learned a bit of radicalism instead...) and, though I was in London in March, I wasn't at Grosvenor Square. So, I do have a certain perspective on the events of the year: I was far more interested in the social protest of Paris and in the Prague Spring than I was in Vietnam.]

To go back to some of the talking heads:

The programme's mentioned Mick Jagger at Grosvenor Square; he may well have been there and been deeply involved, but all I remember of him around that time is seeing him at the back of what was then my local (The Phoenix in Smith Street) blind drunk (or stoned) and urinating against the wall. At about that time his mate Brian Jones was so revolutionary that he was boasting how many girls he'd infected with the Clap. Far more full of themselves than of the revolution, in my opinion then and now.

And the Damascene moment for Paul McCartney, when he wrote 'Revolution' (did I hear that right?). I know that by the end of '68 I regarded the Beatles as a load of pretentious gits jumping on various bandwagons - a pity, because I'd thought the world of them a few years earlier.

The problem is that '68 wasn't about leaders; my regard for Tariq Ali, or even 'Red' Daniel Cohn-Bendit (one of the few who seems to have stuck to his guns), were rather residual even then: it was about the unity, the brother-and-sisterhood in which we all seemed to matter and to have something to offer. But, I suppose that it's inevitable that reminiscences in the media this year will revolve around supposed figureheads. At least the South Bank Show has a reason, since culture of the year did, in a sense, have its leaders.

(But not the affiches, which were agreed by everybody together).

Personal note: Paris in May was instructive - and amazing; every student on a gap year should have one.


If you sup with the Devil, use a long spoon...

15 March 2008 .

The Federation of Poles in Great Britain has complained to the Press Complaints Commission that the Daily Mail has been consistently defaming the Polish community, with headlines like about 'feckless Poles' and 'Polish Borat' claiming that 'groping women is normal in eastern Europe' appearing week after week in a manner which amounts to being racist.

Those already living in this country have had very little say in the immigration of the past generation; and that of the past few years has reportedly been the highest ever. I think it is fair that, faced with life-changing events such as mass migration, we should be allowed to discuss them - and I think it's fair enough if sometimes we voice a degree of resentment.

Unfortunately, I don't think the Mail has helped the debate: there is certainly a (hardly hidden) agenda about UK membership of the EU through much of their reporting and, since (perhaps because I'm only an occasional reader) I can never find the letters page, which is buried in the back of the paper and sometimes absent, I'm not sure that they're that interested in appearing to encourage debate.

More than that, however: I've written here from time to time about the pressures of immigration, including from the 'new' Europe, and I've certainly leaned towards concern about the numbers; so I should perhaps be able to feel that I'm on the same side of the fence the Mail. I don't: their writing about immigration and east Europeans generally leaves me feeling uncomfortable... if not spitting...


Literacy and the Proms.

15 March 2008 .

Richard Ingram described Ma Hodge as 'semi-literate' in her comments about the exclusivity of the Proms. She is, but I think he was wrong to point it out; firstly, because what she said was silly in its own right and, secondly, because even the semi-literate have opinions that can be worth airing and, as citizens, they must be allowed/encouraged to do so. After all, as a result of the way politicians have mucked the educational system round for a generation, we're all you have left.

Unfortunately, the fact that Hodge's opinions do hint at (or reflect) the thinkings of a semi-literate government, as Ingram points out, suggest that maybe he was right after all. Ho hum.

Anyway, for his part in the nurturing of Private Eye, Ingram gets forgiven almost anything by this observer.


Manifestations.

15 March 2008 .

Five years this month since the invasion of Iraq. We're also approaching the fortieth anniversary of the events of May, '68.

La lutte continue...

... except that it doesn't, not in the UK. The ideals of May are loathed by conservatives, condemned by Thatcherites, betrayed by many of those who were there and lost to the next generation. We've been bought off with scraps from the tables of others. More on this, absolutely for sure.

Affiches, posters, appeared on the streets of Paris during the manifestations; this is one. If there is a claim to the copyright on this poster (or any other material appearing on this site), please contact me.


Standing up to be counted.

14 March 2008 .

Sometimes I have to recognise that I can't add anything useful to the debate, but I still want to stand up and be counted. So, just a couple of protests, today, without any argument:

1. That the British government is trying to ban the demonstrations at Aldermaston against nuclear weapons, which have been taking place for 50 years without any trouble (albeit without very much effect, either).

2. That the government is still even considering sending a 19-year-old gay boy back to Iran, where homosexuality is a capital offence and where his lover has already been hanged for that 'crime'.

3. That Gordon Brown puts business before all in his dealings with China.


The meaning of 'Liberal', US style vs. UK style.

13 March 2008 .

My stamping grounds in the US are strictly Dixie, pecan pie and peach blossom. Before my first visit there, I had some prejudices about Southern 'conservatism'; I'm afraid American films about the South that make it across to the UK do not, on the whole, give Dixie a very good press - nor a very fair one. Once there, I soon found that there is in fact a great respect for differing opinions (more so than in, say, the People's Republic of Islington) and I felt encouraged to declare my liberal credentials.

After a time that I realised that the word 'liberal' doesn't mean the same thing there as here. Since that's how I've described this site and since I'm getting one or two regular visitors from the US, I'd like to make it clear that I have used the word in its 'British' sense, although there are ways in which I'm in accord with the American version, too. It was an article in today's Independent, 'Mamet's new work: Why I am no longer a brain-dead liberal', along with the third leader, which reminded me of the difference and led me to post this item. (I'm talking about social liberalism, not economic!)

My understanding is that American liberals have a strong faith in government and some distrust of the private sector; as I guess is clear on this site, I'm far from uncritical of government (in practice or theory) and philosophically I'm disdainful of any system which claims to have all the answers. I prefer this, from the Indy: 'Liberal' (in Britain) "refers, more commonly, to those who are open to new ideas and oppose dogmatism from whichever end of the political spectrum it arises. It describes those who instinctively resist the attempts of anyone, be it corporations or governments, to meddle in private life." (It further suggests that in its British sense, 'brain-dead liberal' is an oxymoron.)

I did get one or two funny looks when I said I was a liberal, over there in Dixie, until I realised the difference. And I still have to admit to a bit of collectivism in my philosophical soul.


Long Life To Chairman Brown: Ever Forward With The Great Prudence.

13 March 2008 .

The realities of the Beijing Olympics keep leaking out, through the media or by the net, despite the best efforts of the Party. This week, inter alia, more news of a vicious crackdown on Buddhist monks in Tibet, hints of further oppression of the Uighurs in China's far west (but who over here gives tuppence for them?) and reports of already-stressed areas hundreds of miles from the capital - far enough so that details are difficult to get - being deprived of what little water they have so that Beijing won't run embarrassingly dry.

I'm not saying anyone should boycott the games, which always seems to me totally counter-productive. I am saying that the games are our chance to express our opinions, to talk with the Chinese, which is part of what the Olympics should be about. (Except for us British, of course, whom our own authorities have already tried to muzzle...)

Britain closing down even as we hope that China will open up.

Maybe It's Because I'm A Londoner.

12 March 2008 .

Government figures show that just less than 22% of children in London of primary school age are ethnic British (from BBC news this evening). I don't suppose it's possible to establish how many are ethnic English; or even 'indigenous' Londoners - how many, say, had family in the Blitz.

A chap with a beard reassured us that London has always drawn people in and that it's not a figure to be concerned about.

I do wonder how often in the past London, or any other established capital city of an established nation, has drawn more than three quarters of its next generation from overseas.


What is a 'National Debate'?

12 March 2008 .

Lord Goldsmith, trailing his Oath of Loyalty and the rest of his medicines to restore Britishness, has talked about a public debate.

The concept of a public debate turns up from time to time, but I have not the remotest idea what it means. I certainly never get asked for any input; if I have a conversation in the pub with my friends, I've never heard of that going any further, either. The contributors to such a debate who have any chance to be heard are always going to tend to be the usual suspects: a few members of the public may be interviewed in the street on the Six O'Clock News, but otherwise we mostly hear what the politicians and the media (often with their own agendas) think. If you or I want to be heard, we can write to the papers, where whether we are published lies in the lap of the gods; we can lobby our MP, which may or may not have some effect but which doesn't quite qualify as debate; or we can post on the web... which itself seems to me to be a pot luck which may not have much to do with whether or not we have anything useful to say.

No conclusions, here; just the observation.

The Mail reports today that Goldsmith wants a 'National Citizens Corp' (does he mean Corps?) "to enrol school and student volunteers and provide high status for members which other young people would wish to emulate." The blood runs cold...

Sanctimoniousness - a new deadly sin.

11 March 2008 .

The other day, Monsignor Gianfranco Girotti of the Vatican produced his updated list of the seven deadly sins. Somewhat predictably, perhaps, some of the papers seem to have been producing their own alternative versions; I happened to see James Delingpole's, in the Mail.

I was mildly concerned to find that I broadly agreed with his headline list, if not with many of his comments - it often concerns me if I find myself agreeing with anything in that voice of Middle England (apart from Peter Oborne, who sometimes writes some good stuff). He named Spinelessness, Sentimentality, Irresponsibility, Ignorance, Self-Indulgence, Narcissism and Sanctimoniousness. He acknowledged that these are not new sins, but said in effect that our society is giving new opportunities for their expression - he called the night-time scenes in our city centres 'Babylonian'.

The last, sanctimoniousness, hit home, especially when he wrote 'some of us think a bit of sun would actually be rather nice'. I guess my item from yesterday (Pigs Flying, Journal 01 Mar - 10 Mar 08) might fall bang in the middle of Mr. Delingpole's target area; I think I get awfully close to sanctimony sometimes on this site - starting with its core activities (the destruction of our environment and the threat to our body politic).

But I cling to this: I believe that our world is in imminent danger. Beliefs are at the root of a great deal of the nonsense in this world (Muslim bombers, Christian rapturists, Blairite war-makers, etc. etc. etc.); but a belief in the damage we're doing to our world is based on good science, and it is supported by the core of established and respected scientists ('Lord Rees, President of the Royal Society and Astronomer Royal, has given Humankind a 50-50 chance of surviving the present century', I've written at the bottom of a couple of pages). My fears may prove wrong, but they're neither irrational nor unfounded; and if I'm right we can't go on breeding, flying, using resources and creating entropy at the rate we are.

So I suggest that survival, not sanctimony, is at the root of this website. And I believe that in this respect, Mr. Delingpole is dangerously short-sighted - in fact, ignorant... and irresponsible... and self-indulgent... that's three of his own sins!

(Purely by the way: have you noticed how often, when it's not caused by beliefs, the nonsense in this world seems to be caused by men with moustaches?)

Insofar as this site reveals that I can be accused of ignorance, which I'm afraid it sometimes does: I try my best!


Rite of Passage. (The Oath to the Queen.)

11 March 2008 .

An oath of allegiance to Brenda by all schoolchildren as they approach adulthood has been suggested by that lovely man who, cravenly changing his legal opinion, gave the The Dear Leader the go-ahead to invade Iraq five years ago this week.

I see two philosophical problems with youngsters swearing a loyal oath as a rite of passage;

1. There is an implication that someone who does not take the oath, because they don't wish to or for some other reason, is somehow not fully a citizen (else, what's the force of having the rite in the first place?) By extension, the same will apply to somebody who's too young to have taken it. History is littered with examples of people (including children), who are not seen as full partners because they haven't been through some rite, beginning to see an erosion of their rights.

2. The experience of signing the Official Secrets Act (in all innocence and trust) when young, only to have the signed paper pop up again years later in connection with a quite unrelated - and political - issue, leads me to a degree of suspicion. It's not beyond belief that a future government might use an oath sworn by a youngster as a form of moral blackmail; many may feel bound by such an oath.

I have no objection in principle to swearing an oath to the Queen: I have done so myself.... but I was in a position to choose.

Added 17th. Feb: In fact, I favour the oath of allegiance being made to the monarch. The implications of the armed services owing their loyalty to the political state are profound: the Queen, however, is on the one hand purely a figurehead in no position to use the armed forces to any dubious purposes of her own and on the other the only constitutional balance to the arrogance of the state which can't be cowed or suborned.

• Which is why I remain a monarchist in practice, no matter that I loathe the concept in theory.

• Which is also why a serviceman dissenting from the invasion of Iraq can refuse to fight as a matter of conscience without breaking his allegiance, whatever the politicians may say.

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