Author Archive

This evening I was wandering roung the National Portrait Gallery, just off Trafalgar Square, as it was open late (I have an encyclopaedic knowledge of which museums and art galleries keep late hours on which day of the week in London). Among other small exhibitions I found a selection of caricatures from Vanity Fair in the late nineteenth century.

There was a very fine picture by Baron Melchiorre Delfico, the man who created the Vanity Fair style in caricatures, of Baron de Reuter, founder of Reuter’s news agency, now known Thomson Reuters. The man clearly had a very impressive pair of mutton-chop whiskers. What was particularly interesting, however, is the comment that the editor had added in that long-ago issue of the magazine (December 14, 1872, since you ask).

As foreign news is now managed it is not too much to say that he who has the command of telegrams has the command of public opinion on foreign affairs. 

First telegrams, then telephones, satellite phones, even e-mails. That is how journalists have viewed their own position in the world for some time now. It is not easy to accept that the Vanity Fair editor’s comment no longer applies.

That is not exactly true as there most definitely is such a geographical concept as Europe and even a cultural one, though there have been enormous problems in defining the latter ever since it emerged in the fifteenth century or so. The great historian of the Renaissance, Sir John Hale, has written about it at length in many of his works. What there is not is a political and social entity called “Europe”.

There are few things more irritating than blithe American assumptions about “Europe” and “Europeans”, all of which have been in evidence in connection with Obama’s Berlin speech, which seems to have been a little less than overwhelming according to what people who were there say.  

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There has been a certain amount of fuss recently over the case of the sued hairdresser. The story is readily available in the MSM so I shall sum it up very quickly indeed. Ms Sarah Desrosiers runs a hairdressing salon in King’s Cross, North London, which specializes, as she puts it, in “funky urban hairstyles”. I am not sure I know what it means but whatever it is the business has been successful. As it happens I know two young women whose hair is always beautifully cut, who had followed Ms Desrosiers when she left the big salon she had worked for and set up her own business.

In other words, we are talking about a talented, hard-working, entrepreneurial young woman of the kind this country needs many more of. Whether we are going to have them after this particular episode remains questionable.

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This is big for us on this side of the Pond. Ireland is the only member state of the European Union that has had a referendum on the Constitution for Europe Mark II, known as the Lisbon Treaty. In the other states, governments and legislatures ratified with no reference to whether people want to have this far-reaching and complex document imposed on them. The reason for that is simple - just as two years ago in France and the Netherlands, so this year in Ireland, when the people are given a chance to vote on a further step towards the creation of an integrated European state, they tend to say no.

We are still waiting for the official result but the government has conceded and the spin has begun. We shall hear a great deal about people not really voting against the Lisbon Treaty but on many other subjects. Whenever people vote the “wrong” way, they apparently do not intend to do so; they are merely misguided or have misunderstood the subject.

The big question is what will happen now. According to EU rules every treaty has to be ratified by every signatory state. Clearly Ireland will not be able to ratify the Lisbon Treaty. Strictly speaking that should mean the end of it and the still incomplete ratifications, such as the British one (the Bill is still in the House of Lords, waiting for the Third Reading) should now stop. The EU may decide to make some cosmetic changes and insist that Ireland vote again. This has been done before but not recently, as it is becoming a high-risk game. Or there may be a Declaration that gives Ireland a special status at the level of the Nice Treaty that the country finally agreed to after two referendums, the second one conducted in a very dodgy fashion. That, one must assume, is legally challengeable as it breaks the EU’s own rules. So we wait.

Pleased though we are, it has to be said that this is not the end, or the beginning of the end or, even, the end of the beginning (to misquote Churchill’s famous pronouncement). There is a long way to go before we can restore any semblance of democracy to European countries.

The dust has settled, former Mayor Livingstone has departed, his immediate staff have had to clear their desks and Boris Johnson, the new Mayor has been, if not exactly sworn in, as that is a rather old-fashioned idea, certainly signed in. In some quarters the bells are still ringing and hosannas are being sung but, elsewhere, it might be time to take a look as to what might be reasonably expected from the new Mayor.

In the first place, it is worth examining what the position entails, where it is derived from and what controls there are on it. Until 2000 there was no Mayor of London. The reference one comes across in history and literature, particularly Shakespeare’s Chronicles, to the powerful individual, who owes that power to the fractious and difficult citizens of London, is to the Lord Mayor of the City of London, who still exists, still owes his (there has not been a woman so far) power to those who elect him and who managed to see off the upstart Mayor, Ken Livingstone, in short order.

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It was inevitable that the stories both in the media and on the blogosphere would use variants of Henry II’s alleged comment, which sent the four knights on their deadly mission to Canterbury. The Sun was the only newspaper to avoid it successfully with the headline “What a Burqua”. As good a reaction as any other.

When the first news of the latest faux pas by His Bloviation, the Archbishop of Canterbury, hit the internet, I thought I would stay away from the mess, on the grounds that I have covered the man’s pronouncements in the past and need not do so for a little while.

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A very happy, creative and prosperous 2008 to all readers and contributors from damp and foggy London. Where is that global warming I’d like to know. Bah! Humbug!

All best wishes for Thanksgiving to our American friends from this side of the Pond. To be honest, it ought to be a British festivity as well. They were English, were they not?

London’s National Film Theatre, one of the most useful institutions in this city (when it does not fill its entire programme with gay and lesbian films from Outer Mongolia) is running a Lawrence Olivier season in August and September. Naturally, the four Shakesperian films are shown and “Henry V” has been given pride of place with a certain number of disclaimers by critics who, over the years, have had to acknowledge with pursed lips that, despite its heroism and emphasis on patriotism, the film is superb. Some of us might think that contrariwise, the heroism and patriotism add to the quality of the film but that is probably why we are not film critics.

Made during the war, with Olivier taking time out from his service with Fleet Air Arm, it does emphasise patriotic ideals, in particular ideals of England. As it happens, none of that was invented by the film-makers – the lines, the images, the concepts are there in Shakespeare’s play, which is what makes them so interesting.

Cinematically the film is mesmerizing, beginning and ending with a panorama shot of Elizabethan London, carefully recreated from contemporary prints. Famously, Olivier accepted and incorporated into the film the sheer theatricality of the play. We start with a raucous performance of “The Chronicle History of King Henry the Fift with His Battell Fought at Agincourt in France”, during which the Chorus, played by Leslie Banks, urges us to expand the play in our imagination to take in England and France, and opens out first into the Boar’s Head Inn, where Falstaff is dying, then the two courts, the armies and the battles themselves. William Walton’s music spreads through the film.

The opened up scenes are not particularly realistic though the battle and the sight of the dead afterwards affect one with melancholy about the horrors of war, no matter what modern critics might say. But it is all artificial, with scenery, costumes, group shots based quite clearly and enchantingly on late mediaeval miniatures. The film was shot in Technicolour, another thing the programme notes see fit to apologize for (it did seem amazing to those unsophisticated audiences in the forties, honest) and the artificial look of it adds to the splendour of the film and makes it a more consistent work of art than Kenneth Branagh’s “gritty and realistic” version made forty-odd years later. Of the two, it was Olivier who served in Fleet Air Arm, having returned to Britain in 1941 from Hollywood, and there have even been stories of him having been recruited into the Special Operations Executive (SOE) to build up support for Britain in the United States while it was still a neutral country.

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One of the great sorrows of British life at present is the widespread anti-Americanism both on the left and the right. One can understand why the left should feel so - the United States is the pre-eminent liberal (mostly) democratic capitalist society, all of which they hate.

Why the right should seethe with anti-Americanism is a little more complicated and one that I hope to discuss in greater detail in a future posting. For the moment I simply want to wish all the best to all our American friends for July 4.

Tony Blair’s so-called resignation was possibly the most inelegant exit made by any British Prime Minister. By no means the first leader to go before his term was up (of the post war ones Churchill, Eden, Macmillan, Wilson, Thatcher did), his was most the most prolonged and agonizingly dull. By yesterday morning, when the BBC Russian Service called to ask if I would take part in a discussion to be broadcast that afternoon, all I could do was to groan. Hasn’t he gone yet? We are waiting for the announcement, chuckled the producer.

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Let me list all the people we are not particularly proud of in Britain at the moment. First off, are the politicians. Nothing new there, you might say. Whoever could be proud of politicians? Still, they seem to have messed up the aftermath of the Iranian hostage-taking and release in a particularly noxious fashion, not least because of their pusillanimity with regards to the boys in uniform. No, I don’t mean the Iranian Revolutionary Guard but our own boys in uniform, specifically the First and Second Sea Lords.

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For those who do not know about the history of the Russian radical movement I should explain that the title was not invented by Lenin. Very little was. This was the title given to an interminably long and boring novel by Chernyshevsky, which outlined in fictional form the ideas of radicalism. One of the great mysteries of the Russian soul is how a novel of such incredible turpitude should have become so popular in a country, which, at the time, boasted some of the greatest novelist in the world.

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Here is an interesting question for all our readers? Who burnt down the Reichstag in 1933? Can you recall the name of Marinus van der Lubbe, the somewhat crazed Dutchman, who actually set it on fire? And even if you can, do you not think that there was somebody behind it all? After all, it could not be just a lone lunatic, could it?

It would be interesting to know how many of those who read the above paragraph nodded and said: “Of course, Hitler ordered and manipulated van der Lubbe (assuming you can recall the name) and then used the fire to get rid of the opposition and to blame the Communists.”

I am willing to bet that nobody said: “Oh yes, it was the Communists and they managed to get away with it because Dimitrov’s trial (assuming you can recall that name) was unsuccessful. Hitler merely took advantage of the event.”

That, ladies and gentlemen, is the difference between good and bad propaganda.

The truth is that van der Lubbe did act on his own. This has been investigated and proved by a number of historians. No evidence has been found of anybody else’s involvement. Further, Hitler did take advantage of the fire to do what he had always planned to do and destroy the remnants of German democratic parliament and ban the Communist Party of which the Nazis were oddly afraid. All of that is true.

Now we come to the battle of the propagandists. Everyone, but everyone, quotes Dr Göbbels’s comment about the big lie and compares every would-be spin doctor with him. But who actually believed Göbbels? A large proportion of the German people for a time and some supporters in other countries who wanted to believe him.

As opposed to that, millions of people across the world repeat certain “truths” for which there is “full agreement” without once realizing that it is propaganda first started by that genius of spin doctoring and promoter of the Comintern, Willi Münzenberg, without even knowing his name or comparing any tuppenny-ha’penny press officer to him. Now that is propaganda. Sheer genius. Achieved by a long list of small and medium-sized lies.

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.. it’s just we don’t really like it when it does not go the way we want it to. Or so, clearly, reasons Martin Schulz, leader of the Socialist Group in the European Parliament. He is not happy about what the EUObserver quaintly describes as the centre right being sort of in power in the European Union.

The reason for this mini-flap is that the former leader of the EPP, Hans-Gert Pöttering, has been elected as president of the European Parliament, thus becoming the third vaguely right-wing person to hold an important position in the EU. The others are Commission President Barroso, whose right-wing credentials are questionable or would be if one knew anything about his politics, and Chancellor Angela Merkel, temporary president of the European Union, rather handicapped by the grand coalition she heads back in her own country.

None of this is the slightest importance, politically speaking. Merkel is in that position only till the end of June and the Toy Parliament that Pottering presides over is not exactly a power in the land. In any case, what matters in EU politics is attitude to further integration and greater centralized regulation. In that there is not much to choose between the left and the right, the division being between the main groupings and the smaller ones.

Nevertheless, Martin Schulz is finding the situation disturbing.

Socialist leader Martin Schulz told EUobserver that while he was “not concerned” by the set-up, he added that “We’re here to ensure that this will not change into a dangerous situation.”

Oooh-err! Those centre-right Germans and Portuguese can make any situation dangerous.

Herr Schulz is worried by another development and that is the formation of the new right-wing (or so we think, though many of them are old-fashioned socialist corporatists) grouping in the Toy Parliament, the Identity, Tradition and Sovereignty group.

Disregarding the fact that all these people were elected in their various countries, just as Herr Schulz was and that they have not actually broken any rules in the European Parliament (they have not even pointed out the criminal past of various Commissioners, as UKIP has done), he is demanding that they be deprived of their rights.

Immediately after the announcement of the 20-member group’s formation, Mr Schulz wrote to leaders of the parliament’s democratic groups, urging them to deny the new group posts under the proportional d’Hondt system of appointment.

In his letter Mr Schulz says: “We must not abandon this Parliament, which symbolises the integration of Europe, to those who deny all European values.”

Oh dear, those European values again.

Let us for the moment set aside such awkward historic incidents as the Inquisition, religious wars, bloodshed on a large scale, concentration camps and various others I am too tired to mention. Let us take Herr Schulz’s statement at its face value. Surely those famous European values, as represented by the Toy Parliament, include the concept of democracy and freedom of speech.

In that case, much as one may dislike what the various members of the new grouping say, as long as they do not break the law (and that contingency is provided for by their immunity) and are not linked to any terrorist or criminal organization, they are entitled to the rights and privileges (of which there are many) exactly as the Socialists are.

Of course, if the European Parliament, which serves no real purpose beyond pushing forward a centralizing, integrationist agenda, were abolished with consequent large savings to all of us, none of these problems would arise.

As this is unlikely to happen in the near future, let us consider what might emerge if one started banning people from taking the positions for which they were elected because some do not like their views. Can Mr Schulz answer for all members of his grouping? Have none of them expressed support for deeply unpleasant systems and leaders like Stalin, Mao, Ho Chi-minh or Mengistu? Have none of them wept over the wrongs of terrorists who openly say that their aim is to exterminate as many of their enemies as possible?

What of Glenys Kinnock, chosen at random, who came back from a study trip in South Africa and neighbouring countries before the end of apartheid and cheerfully admitted that she had not bothered to investigate conditions in SWAPO prison camps?

What of the various East Europeans who had been in their Communist parties before “seeing the light” not to mention the various goodies, and becoming all European in their attitudes? Should they not be deprived of various rights and privileges?

It seems that European values, so dear to the heart of Herr Schulz and Chancellor Merkel, do not include freedom of speech or of historical debate. Once again, it has been put forward as an aim of the German presidency, to make Holocaust denial illegal across the European Union.

Germany has set numerous goals in its 25-page programme for the EU presidency, including everything from securing Europe’s energy supplies to outlawing Holocaust denial, improving Europeans’ image of the bloc and getting serious about climate change.

This is beginning to be seriously boring.

Let us be quite clear on the subject. No event in history, however horrible, can to be immune from discussion, wrong-headed arguments, lies and denials. That applies to the Holocaust as much as the far greater numbers murdered by various Communist tyrants.

It made sense to pass that law in West Germany and Austria immediately after the war. Let us not forget, however, that both those countries have been democracies for nearly six decades and there is not particular evidence of that coming to an end. Far from spreading laws passed at a particular time in history to other countries, who are in no need of this sort of cleansing, it may be time for Germany and Austria to rethink the matter for themselves. They have grown up and can treat deeply unpleasant episodes in their past as mature democracies.

Alternatively, we might have to start campaigning for the outlawing of denial of Communist atrocities. And then where will Martin Schulz and his grouping be?
(Cross-posted from EUReferendum)

Happy Thanksgiving to one and all from this side of the Pond.

How Hollywood loves to show that it believes in true ideals and hates all superficiality and artifice. The industry that is devoted to superficiality and artifice turns its collective and, no doubt, carefully straightened nose up at such frippery as the fashion industry. Or so it would seem is the message of �The Devil Wears Prada�.

The film tries very hard to be on the side of Andy Sachs, the idealistic young fledgling journalist, who comes to New York and applies for jobs in magazines and newspapers. Of course, she gets ignored until, unexpectedly, she is interviewed for the job of the second PA to Miranda Priestley (Meryl Streep), all-powerful editor of the biggest and glossiest fashion magazine, �Runway�. Andy and her friends are rather snooty about the fashion industry (well, all but one who appears to understand it) and she shows it by her lack of interest in the subject, dowdy clothes and complete inability to deal with the problem of being Miranda�s PA.

Then she is taken in hand by Miranda�s second in command, played with kindly waspishness by Stanley Tucci, who does his best to explain what it is all about to Andy. Failing in that, he dresses her in wonderful clothes, which are a little hit and miss, as they would be on a young woman, however pretty, who has not really acquired a style of her own. Andy gradually becomes so efficient that even Miranda appreciates her and starts pushing her ahead of PA No 1, Emily. Andy plays along, gets to go to the Paris shows, without ever apparently really acquiring any real knowledge of the world she lives in and has a one-night stand with a well-known writer.

Then, suddenly, through a series of machinations, she understands just how ruthless the fashion world is, chucks in her job together with her ever-demanding mobile phone, which she throws into one of the fountains in the Tuileries gardens (the Paris geography is a little sketchy), realizes that she has lost her ideals and goes back to them by becoming �.a journalist. And, of course, nobody ever gets shafted in �real� journalism.

The problem with this reading, the intended one, as I suspect, is that it is absolutely impossible to take the silly, supercilious little chit seriously. Neither she, nor her hipster friends appear to have any interests beyond feeling superior to the fashion industry. Soooooooo superficial.

As against that we have two superb characters who speak for the fashion industry. There is Meryl Streep�s Miranda Priestley, the workaholic slave-driver and bitch-queen, who, undoubtedly, has the best lines, the best make-up and the best wardrobe. And there is Stanley Tucci�s Nigel, her second in command, the man who eventually gets shafted as Miranda fights to preserve her own job.

It is not just that they have the best lines, many of which are now being repeated by delighted viewers, they are also articulate in their understanding and defence of the fashion industry. When Andy chuckles over a couple of belts that look exactly alike to her and produces a spurious apology about not understanding �all this stuff�, she gets a withering lecture from Miranda who explains coldly and meticulously just how the creative minds of the fashion industry influence the lives even of people who are �too intellectual to care what they put on their backs�. When Andy weeps about Miranda not being nice to her, Nigel tells her in no uncertain terms how utterly useless her attitude makes her for her job and to her colleagues. Fashion journalism is highly professional and very hard work.

There is, I suspect, a real problem here. Hollywood may talk idealism but it does not really know much about it. It may decry superficiality and artifice but those are what it understands best, can analyze and recreate best. There is not a single false note about the character of Miranda or Nigel or, even the PA number 1, Emily, played excellently by a young British actress, Emily Blunt. When it comes to the idealistic hipsters, they do not come to life except, occasionally, to irritate the viewer. There are several mis-steps with them. Would a young rather impoverished couple live in Lower East Side? How does Andy manage to remember the ambassador at the grand reception, whose face Emily has momentarily forgotten? Why exactly does a would-be journalist not know the identity of the editor of one of the biggest and glossiest monthlies in New York, which publishes feature articles all the time? The last of those questions is easily answered: because she thinks it is all beneath her. But what kind of a �real� journalist will she make as she apparently does not think research is of any importance?

Most of the reviewers, who, despite their supposed cynicism, tend to accept the point of view a film is promoting, were rather disappointed by Anne Hathaway who plays Andy but, naturally enough, fell in love with Meryl Streep�s Miranda. There is nothing wrong with Ms Hathaway or, one assumes, her acting. But to be cast as the idealistic young heroine only to find that the part is really one of a real fluff-head, could be quite galling. Especially, as the film has produced an unexpected heroine: Miranda Priestley, the ever-sharp, ever-stylish, every-despotic editor of the superficial fashion magazine.

Some of our readers might have heard the sad news of the death of Lord Harris of High Cross. Yes, yes, I know he was in his eighties but that does not alter the fact that his passing fills one with great sorrow both on the political and, in my case, personal level.

Ralph Harris was one of the people responsible for the intellectual underpinning of the Thatcherite revolution. His colleague, Arthur Seldon, died last year. (And, by a strange coincidence, I attended yesterday the memorial meeting for Sir Alfred Sherman, a somewhat more controversial figure but one whose achievements must not be overlooked. Lady Thatcher was present, looking fragile but well.) Sadly, that generation is going and we shall all be the poorer for it.

I have known Ralph since my late teens (though he actually thought he had known me as a young child) as my father attended the IEA lunches in the late sixties and early seventies, when their ideas were generally considered to be a brand of harmless lunacy at best. Even in those days Ralph cultivated his persona of the Edwardian gentleman, hats, moustaches, waistcoats and walking sticks included.

What mattered above all was not his mannerism, not even his fantastically ebullient personality � nobody could ever forget Ralph even after a brief meeting � but his hard-headed approach to Britain�s problems.

Neither he nor Arthur Seldon would have been welcomed in the wishy-washy, condescending tory-toff Conservative Party of David Cameron. They would both have been horrified to hear that a Conservative Party leader could snootily dismiss the notion of choice in education for all. I can still remember Ralph Harris�s tones when he talked about that public school boy Anthony Crosland vowing to destroy �every f***ing grammar school�. [Apologies for the implied swearing � those are the words Crosland used.]

Ralph Harris came from a working class family in north London, went to a grammar school and thence to the University of Cambridge. He knew the importance of good education for people who wanted to rise and achieve; he, as well as Arthur Seldon, knew that the working classes had been perfectly capable of looking after themselves and their families; they knew how destructive the welfare state, imposed largely by do-gooding middle class politicians, been to working class families and, beyond that, to the whole of British society.
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Well, they finally got her. Anna Politkovskaya, one of the world�s most courageous journalists, who wrote openly critical pieces about President Putin and his system, who managed to get through to Chechnya and