Ah! - by Richard... Monday, March 14, 2011

Ah! - by Richard... Monday, March 14, 2011

Catastrophic Clegg tells us: "We still have a soul". But what sort of soul?

In a Napoleonic sense, he is an unlucky general. He has been wiped off the front pages by Japan, so his message has been completely drowned. But perhaps that is just as well. The Eurotrash want to reposition the Lib-Dims from being a party of protest to becoming the voice of Middle England. 

Certainly, with that YouGov poll, he is going to be struggling. At ten percent of those who expressed a preference, he is only three points ahead of UKIP. And he thinks he can take the Middle England slot? He must be out of his tiny little mind.

But, as the a lone protestor at the conference said, offering a parody of David Steel's much derided conference proclamation of 1983: "Go back to your constituencies and prepare for oblivion."

COMMENT THREAD

Share

Print ready

Fukushima for dummies - by Richard... Sunday, March 13, 2011

A concise, very simple explanation of why the world is not going to end this evening ... or even tomorrow. As they say, fuk-u-shima.

COMMENT THREAD

Share

Print ready

Our conception of the "new Europe" - by Richard...

One of the great arguments between us and the Euroslime is the role of Winston Churchill in the promotion and development of the European Union. The official EU hagiography, for instance, starts with Churchill calling for a "kind of United States of Europe" in a speech he gives at the Zurich University in September 1946.

For students of EU history, therefore, it is fascinating to see that, on 23 August 1940, Churchill's War Cabinet in London agreed to set up a committee charged with making suggestions:

.. in regard to a post-war European and world system, with particular regard to the economic needs of the various nations, and to the problem of adjusting the free life of small countries in a durable international order.

The original initiative to set up the committee came from Information Minister Duff Cooper on 20 July 1940. He was responding to Hitler's plans for a "new European order" – with Cooper's idea couched in terms of offering the people of Britain and Europe specific "war aims". And here, there was a second string to the bow, because the committee also had to:

... consider means of perpetuating the national unity achieved in this country during the war through a social and economic structure designed to secure equality of opportunity and service among all classes of the community.

In approving the committee and its terms of reference, the Cabinet agreed that there was a growing demand for "some statement of what we were fighting for". We must, the Members said, make our aims clear, not merely to our own people, but also to the peoples of Europe whom we were trying to free. A time would come, they said, to "put across" our conception of the "new Europe".

Of special interest here is that, unusually, Churchill not only spoke to the item but his comments were also recorded in detail. Some of the points he thought "would be included" were that, in addition to the five Great Powers of Europe, there should be three groups of smaller States - in Northern Europe, in Middle Europe, and in the Balkans: 

He also looked to see the five great nations and these three confederations linked together in some kind of Council of Europe. There should be a Court to which all justiciable disputes should be referred, with an international air force. There must be a scheme for a fair distribution of raw materials. It was also important that there should be no attempt at a vindictive settlement after the war.

Another fascinating thing here is the timing. This is at the height of the Battle of Britain. Nazi bombers and fighters are storming over the coast each day, hunting down RAF airfields, factories, and convoys – with Fighter Command supposedly on the verge of extinction. 

Later on this day, the Germans bombed suburbs of London. Yet not for one minute do you get any sense of crisis as the politicians of a nation supposedly expecting invasion at any moment calmly assert that there should be no "vindictive settlement" after the war.

COMMENT THREAD

Share

Print ready

Life goes on - by Richard...

I was quick to bow out of reporting on the Japanese earthquake yesterday, remarking that this was an area where the blogs could not immediately complete. Unless there, actually on the scene, it is difficult for us to be anything other than derivative, lifting other people's work without offering any significant added value.

The issue that may emerge as one which will need the greatest analysis may be the nuclear reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi complex, where the chances of a release seem high. Even with the death and destruction around, this is getting special attention. It may have a significant impact on the ongoing energy debate. You can bet that the greenies will exploit any problems to the maximum extent that they can.

On a broader canvas, in suggesting that the blogs are not best equipped to pursue the earthquake story, one also looks at the print editions of the newspapers today in the newsagent. Then reluctantly buying one of them, one wonders why they bother with their style of reportage. In a fast-moving story, theirs is all yesterday's news, already left behind by television and internet coverage. Anyone seriously interested in keeping informed will rely on those sources, rather than tired – and space-limited – newspaper copy.

All the copy really does is reflect the media tendency to obsess about the hystérie du jour (not that Japan is hysteria, per sec - we are talking about the media response). They tend to clear the decks and report only on one thing at a time, and very little else.

One might have thought that a true and effective role for newspapers is to "watch our backs", monitoring all the news and events - not just those on the telly - informing us and reminding us that, even with the tragedy and disaster of Japan, there are other things going on in the world. However, keeping a sense of perspective, and being able to follow multiple agenda, is a sign of maturity which seems to have evaded the media fraternity.

In that context, I don't know how many readers picked up from my last ruminative piece, the apparently bizarre behaviour of MPs in the situation I raised. There we had London in flames, with what was possibly one of the most dreadful periods of the war in that particular locality, and we had this group calmly discussing "war aims" – the way things should be when the war, at some time in the unspecified future, was over.

Actually, though, the behaviour was neither bizarre, nor even in the slightest bit irrational. There was nothing else the MPs could or should have been doing to address the immediate situation. And part of their jobs – an important part – was to look to the future. It came under the heading, "life goes on" – the routine and not so routine tasks must go on regardless.

For me personally, this is a particularly difficult time, for precisley that reason. With everything going on around me, life has to go on. In the latter stages of writing my book, this is turning out to be one of the most complex – and time-consuming - pieces of writing I have ever done. I have an issue here which is actually, incredibly topical and one of enormous and current political significance, which has been neglected and mistreated through the decades, distorting our perception of who we are, and of our politics.

Stuck in my groove, however, I can quite see why past writers have taken the line of least resistance, and gone for highly simplistic – and thus heavily distorted – versions of history. Dealing with the reality is so complicated that, for many, it is obviously too difficult and not worth the effort.

What we have in the story I am writing is an amalgam of at least five separate strains – making it almost like a soap opera with several plot lines running simultaneously – each interacting and affecting each other. How much simpler it is to write of just one plot lines, ignoring the others and their interactions. Simple it is though, but very far from reality.

The complex mix that I am synthesising tells me that the Battle of Britain about whiich I am writing is very different from the one ablout which we read. What we saw fought in 1940 was a battle that is still being fought today. It was far more of a political than it was a military event - the shooting was was just the backdrop. The distinction then was that the military issues brought the politics into high focus and created pressures for their resolution.

That was what the "war aims" debate was all about, a shorthand for the debate about the future, the nature and shape of society, and where we as a nation should be going.

As I get a feel for the subject – that only comes with months of study and almost total immersion – I am coming to the conclusion that there were two strands of the debate then. One was about how Britain should look in the aftermath of war, in particular its place in the world. Then there was a separate – but parallel – debate about how liberated Europe should look.

I am not giving anything away if I suggest that the former was largely suppressed – ruthlessly so - by Churchill. He was a man of the past, defender of the status quo, of King and Empire. On 10 November 1942, in the wake of the victory at el Alamein he famously declared: "I have not become the King's First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire". There were going to be no debates on war aims – no "new world order" - while he was about.

The debate about the shape of Europe, however, continued apace. Churchill could not control or suppress that. So when it came to Dean Acheson's "end of Empire" comment, the lack of debate – and thinking – about Britain's post empire role had left an intellectual void. In their bid to fill the vacuum, the political classes rushed into "Europe". For them, it was the only game in town.

That is where we are today - right now. The debate suppressed in 1940 was one we still have not had. The context has changed – instead of a post-war Britain, we are now looking at the shape of a "post-Europe" Britain. But it is the same debate - the debate suppressed has become the debate delayed. It is one we must now have.

This, after all, is the Richard Stokes prescription: it is no use fighting for a negative object. You must have a positive one. And looking at our forum on this and the many interesting contributions, the one thing that does emerge is that we have a very long way to go. 

We seem to have got out of the habit of visionary thinking, of deciding on shapes, ideals and the very nature of society. But, without that, we will never be free of our chains. As we found at the end of the war, change without vision is simply to swap one set of chains for another.

COMMENT: NEW "ISM" THREAD

Share

Print ready

Booker - by Richard...

Things aren't going too well for the Prime Minister's boast of leading "the greenest government ever", says Booker. In 2007, Mr Cameron made a big play of opening a factory in Coventry to build electric-powered vans. Last week, after making only 400 vehicles in four years, the firm, Modec, sacked half its workforce and went into administration with debts of £40 million.

But there is just no end to how daft this whole greenie experiment has become.

COMMENT THREAD

Share

Print ready

No competition - by Richard... Saturday, March 12, 2011

This is one time and one area where the blogs cannot compete ... the global news system provides the coverage and there is very little, sensibly, that we can add – other than our profound sympathies and admiration for how the ever-resourceful Japanese are already getting to grips with their new crisis.

Further comment might be inappropriate, but a thread is open on the comments to monitor further developments. However, we need to be aware of the Jo Moore effect - not least with the Lib-Dim springfest - and the financial effects also bear watching.

COMMENT THREAD

Share