In all our sanctuaries we sit at risk

  • Day Naught (Friday 8th May 2015)

    We wake to fangs and lowered eyes
    and a few new
    sound-bites for breakfast.

    Davie.orc sees true
    that five more years
    of effing tories

    call for a sugary word
    or two to sweeten the toad
    of his venomous victory.

    “Talk ‘fairness’ chaps,” he glows
    to his new cabinet.
    “Sound all nice again.”

    Round the corner, IDS
    slides his tongue between his lips
    and heads for a door marked

    “Poor People”
    his sack replete
    with instruments of hurt.

    “Now go to work,” whispers Davie.orc
    “All those promises we made
    have to be paid

    for, gottit ?
    Make it neat, ok ?
    And discrete, ok ?

    But each finely dressed
    Tory dinner-guest
    needs a return

    for filling our purse
    so fatly. Let us show
    ample gratitude

    for that selfless support.
    Off you go, dear IDS
    and stop at naught.”

     

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  • Now What ?

    If you look at the map of political power in the UK now – with red for Labour seats won, blue for Tory, Yellow for SNP – you see some very clear divisions and deployments :

    Almost all of Scotland : SNP

    Much of the North of England, the Midlands and Wales (though much less than before) : Labour

    Almost everywhere through the south of England : Conservative

    The exception in this last and largest region is a blob of red in and around London. There are also little spots of red where other English cities are – Bristol, Southampton and – surprisingly – Exeter.

    So what significance does all this have, if any ? It shows very starkly :

    1/ The north/south and also the “Celtic/Saxon” divide between Left and Right ;
    2/ In England, another divide, this one between countryside and city. The countryside represents an old and displaced economy based on agriculture ; and nowadays it is where the wealthy live, with their horses and Range Rovers and computers.

    With several familiar leaders and other prominent figures either being unseated or falling on their swords within hours of the election result, this is certainly a great and extraordinary triumph for Cameron and his divisive energy, his skilled and irresponsible manipulation of divides, his smooth aggression, his plausible but consistently deceitful language, his politics of fear and propaganda, his allies in a press owned by tycoons who hate regulation as much as he does. But his class and his philosophy simply do not provide the answers and vision this country and our civilisation need for a viable future. They offer just a canopy of nastiness and disconnection in which too many of our fellow-citizens have taken cover. Long-term, this election result suggests a profound disaster for our nation, not just for its poor. If Cameron sees himself as being part of the UK, then – at some level, not of course apparent to him – it is a profound disaster even for him, as well.

    Another conclusion to draw from the map is how tiny are the patches on it which have a different colour from the three just mentioned. One constituency for the Greens ; one for UKIP ; a vastly decreased number of Lib Dem constituencies ; three for Plaid Cymru. Is this multi-party politics, supposedly taking over from the two party monoliths ? Surely not.

    The SNP will be a much more vital Opposition in Westminster than Labour will, for months to come at the very least. (For all our sakes, might not the two parties look for ways to join forces ?). But the main picture in the House of Commons now is surely very different from the multi-party alliances so recently being planned for ; for the foreseeable future, there will be effectively one-party rule in England, the party of Me and Mine largely unchallenged, powered by horse and Range Rover.

    Even in these times, one takes some sort of weird comfort from words which others find that seem to say something true, even about the almost unbearably painful. Here are two such comments, presumably written in exhaustion after an awful night for the writers, as for so many of the rest of us. Guardian art critic Jonathan Jones on that tweeted kiss : “I find it exhausting to hate Cameron,” says Jones. So do I. The next five years will be exhausting for very many people. And here’s Martin Kettle, also from the Guardian, drawing strands together that describe succinctly the enormity of what has just happened, so dramatically fast : “Many were poised on Wednesday, as the polls narrowed, to conclude that Miliband would deserve huge personal credit for sticking to what seemed potentially to be a modestly successful Labour strategy through the campaign. Now, on Friday, those enthusiasts must confront the question of responsibility for what [in a few hours] has turned into a failed strategy, about which far too many on the left were far too sanguine and self-deceiving for far too long. They got their party back [the party that fails]. And look what has happened. Now what?”

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  • Re-uniting the United Kingdom

    My partner has begun to dread the subject of Cameron. Cameron fills our heads and house far too often. What if, after all, Cameron retains power this Thursday, or sometime thereafter ? Another five years of this, she wonders ?

    But what if Cameron doesn’t ? What then ? Where will all this anxiety and indignation go ?

    Who is this Cameron ? How can I, how can we, allow him such power to fill our thought-patterns, our speech-patterns, our meal-times, our ways of being ?

    This continuous effort of mine to understand better who he is and what he does, from whence he gains and keeps his traction – is it a way of trying to dispel him and his works, to banish him from our meal table, through being able to place him better in our minds, establishing his true shape ? Or is it, on the contrary, just a symptom of my failure to keep him at bay, hold him in check  ? There he remains, like a balloon, a sleek and brutal rubberiness hanging over our heads, in our own space,  as we sit together.

    Let’s hope Ed and his troops can banish Cameron from the nation’s meal-table on Thursday, though it doesn’t look as if there’s going to be a clean or decisive result, and I continue to fear the worst. And even if the man is driven out along with his acolytes, their meaning, the force they work by, and speak for, and seem to release, will certainly not be leaving with them.

    I can roughly understand how a people can turn to unworthiness in times of confusion, when that unworthiness communicates so plausibly and with such confidence and appears – on the surface – to be offering neat answers that comfort some sections of our community.

    But a feature that struck me afresh yesterday seems worth recounting here. I am not sure what its implications are. Does this fresh line of thought I’ve set out below throw any new light on Cameron and how he ticks ? Or does it say more about us, the electorate, the punters, the “plebs,” how we tick, or fail to ?

    The Observer’s editorial today suggests that Cameron is merely Osborne’s “front man.” Interesting observation, which feels right. I would add another. Cameron is a salesman through and through. Perhaps he is nothing much else. I happen to think that he is also a highly dishonest salesman. It is important (but in present circumstances very difficult) to distinguish between evasiveness/guardedness/distance/spin on the one hand, and plain dishonesty on the other. So many of us, in our anger and enforced disengagement and powerlessness, are saying “they are all the same.” Not so. Spin and distance are bad enough, whatever the complex reasons for these. But plain dishonesty is a different thing.

    I’ll pursue my thought about the salesman a bit further. For the past five years, Cameron has held the position of Prime Minister of a nation still called the United Kingdom. But through a string of examples I shall list below, I think he has shown utter indifference to what those things mean in reality – a lack of awareness or care which might almost be described as pathological. Over the last five years, have we really been seeing a Prime Minister at work, filling a high office of leadership over a country made up of various elements – or is he merely a privileged con man, making hay with whatever he can get away with ? The nation’s Head of State – or merely its Head Rude-boy, swaggering about in his bovver boots ? The leader of a densely populated nation, dynamic and complex – or merely pack leader for a narrow section within that nation, abusing and demeaning his high position merely to advance his own pack’s interests, its territories, its codes, at the expense of everyone else’s ?

    I’ll resort to an image before running through the examples. For there is surely something extraordinary that has been going on here, under our noses. My image is a variation on Steve Bell’s condom. It is a kind of floating mask which looks a bit like a face. We have been willing to call this mask “Prime Minister” and to speak to it as if there’s a man inside. But what fills the mask is invisible. Or else the mask is merely hollow. It turns in a particular direction and speaks words to the group it is facing, seeking to win them over. Everyone standing behind the mask sees that it is hollow. The mask turns again and speaks to a new group. Another part of the nation now stands behind it and sees that it is hollow.

    The extraordinary thing is that whatever lives inside the mask does not seem to notice the growing number of people now witness to its emptiness. One after the other it speaks against the groups standing behind it, trying to please whoever stands in front of it, seeking its own advantage in the moment. It doesn’t seem aware of the growing multitude who see that it is hollow. It doesn’t seem to care that its own narrow advantage in this moment will have no value if it leads to overall disaster in the next. Whatever is in front of it at this one moment, are all it cares about, if it cares at all. In fact, it doesn’t seem to have any sense, or concept, of “overall” either. It seems to sense and tend only to its own advantage, in this moment, now.

    Let’s hurry down the list. Some of the examples have already been referred to in previous posts here.

    1. The NHS.

    The Tories know the NHS is popular, even though many of them hate it for ideological reasons. So their 2010 manifesto forbore to mention their plans radically to transform the NHS, according to Lansley’s plans. And from beginning to end, the mask has kept insisting on its loyalty to the NHS and its plans to keep supporting it.

    But how many people work in the NHS ? Many thousands. All now know, from direct experience, that the mask keeps lying. They can see behind it. But it isn’t looking at them. It does not see itself as their Prime Minister, their leader. It is looking at a small number of people in the marginals who might be persuaded by the spin, the lie.

    In its report, the King’s Fund, a respected independent body of healthcare expertise, calls the Lansley reorganisation of the NHS a disaster. The mask does not blink (it has no eye lids). It announces to its own audience that the King’s Fund praised it. The mask’s interest does not extend to the witness to truth available at the King’s Fund, and the expertise of that body can be ignored, even though its employees’ number are now added to those who know its emptiness, its lie. The mask keeps smiling caringly at its own audience.

    And then heads off to talk to its own supporters in Wales. And there brings up the image of Offa’s Dyke, an ancient division between the Mercians and the Welsh. The NHS is all good under Tory management on the English side of Offa’s Dyke, the mask intones, but it’s all death in Wales. The mask secures a headline or two with that one, which was presumably its intention. The assertion happens to be a crass and irresponsible lie and to cause a great deal of justified outrage. But the mask sees no advantage to itself in pleasing those of the nation’s citizens who live west of “Offa’s Dyke”. So it turns away from them, showing them the darkness of its back.

    2. The UK Welfare Benefit changes.

    Enormous suffering has been caused by the Benefit changes introduced by the Coalition Government. The mask does not blink (it has no eye-lids). For its own advantage, it smiles in the direction of some focus groups and ideologues – and does not see the people it is persecuting  – or their champions, the bishops, the vicars, the food bank organisers. This is not the nation the mask need bother with. The bishops protest, publishing the truth. You’re wrong, says the mask, repeating its lie. The mask dons a halo for the cameras.

    3. The Scottish Nationalist Party.

    As we all know, the SNP has become hugely popular in Scotland. The Tories might just have played a part in that popularity. The mask and its gang secretly exult. In Scotland, before the referendum, the mask faced the Scots, proclaiming its love for them. Then it swiftly turned away and the Scots saw its darkness, its hollowness. Since the referendum, the mask has done nothing but demonise the Scots and the SNP, looking to win over a few UKIP votes, looking to its gang, seeking advantage for its gang – at the cost of its nation.

    4. The Economy

    The mask spends five years proclaiming its fiscal competence and discipline in contrast to those irresponsible spendthrifts on the other side of the House. Then, just before this week’s election, it makes extravagant promises of largesse to carefully targeted members of the population, smilingly. The fiscal competence line evaporates, no longer useful to the gang. It needs to recruit some new gang-members. The rest of the nation will have to pay for this uncosted largesse at some later date. But the mask does not see “nation”. Neither does it see “later date.” It sees only Me and the immediately Mine. My gang, today. Let tomorrow and nation be someone else’s worry.

    And so on and so on.

    I conclude :

    For the last five years this nation has been beguiled. It has kept talking to a mask, a pretence, as if to a Prime Minister. What was behind that mask ? What really were we addressing, behind the mask ?

    What will now become of this nation, already in danger of splintering under the pressure of the upheavals of our time, the momentous, almost tectonic developments taking place in our world ? To navigate and forge a civilised way through these waves we face, requires the best efforts of all of us, united and led by the wisest and most trustworthy among us, chosen with great care.

    The importance of Thursday’s election result cannot therefore be over-estimated. We have allowed the role of Prime Minister of the United Kingdom to remain vacant for five years. The vacancy has been occupied instead by a parasitic source of activity that threatens the health of this nation and works through transparent deceitfulness, abusing the connecting lines of our democracy and demonstrating contempt for our community. We need to redeem ourselves by giving power to a worthy occupant now, and we need to give that person full powers to re-unite and responsibly govern our nation.

    What or whom has this piece really been about ? Who is in question here ? Cameron or all of us ?

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  • Anger Uncaged at Election Time

    Over the last few weeks I have been sharing the Parrot’s cage with him.

    On finishing my version of John Skelton’s poem “Speak, Parrot” (see post below), I felt galvanised by it, amazed both to have come up with it (riding on Skelton’s shoulders, admittedly), and also at its topicality. It spoke for me and also – I thought – for the position which all of us are in at this election time, weighing up the sort of society we want to live in, the sort of people we want to be, and having some power to influence these things, this May, this week.

    But since then, the venture seems to have gone rather flat in various ways. People I’ve shown it to, several of whom know me well and are friends, some also counsellors and therapists, have seemed actually almost disapproving of it.

    I believe they thought that the anger that runs through the blood vessels of the poem would stop people listening to it properly. Really effective satire, they suggested, does not put anger to the fore, for anger usually just shuts people down, pushes them away. It’s wit and penetration that does the damage to the satire’s “object.” I needed more distance, my friends implied.

    But also maybe they blanched a bit at what they saw and felt was in me, as if – through my anger – I had lost some balance or poise or centredness or true judgement, as if something outside me had taken me over.

    Sobering and salutory feed-back. But still I believed enough in the poem, or was driven, to make real efforts over the next few days to send it out to anyone it might speak to, or be useful for, including politicians. Which door-bells to press, which addresses to click on ? Might not this strange poem about Parrot have some small part in helping to strengthen people’s resistance to, and rejection of, the whole present orchestration and evangelising of “Me n’ Mine,” this venomous constellation which has brought together Mammon and Hard Sell and incessant Spin and unscrupulous Lie, and done such vast harm to our Society’s bindings and to our children’s prospects ?

    Might my darling Parrot in a cage even end up making the difference at this knife-edge teetering election, so finely poised, with so much resting on the result ? The election has immense implications for all of us, not just the most vulnerable. The Coalition Government’s treatment of the vulnerable and the stranger disgraces and threatens the integrity and humanity of us all.

    So let a poem get up onto the hustings for a change ; let real words be uttered there, instead of the weary insult of yet more puerile slogans. Now’s the time and these words might even have some sort of influence on people, the minstrel’s words before battle.

    But there was I, on the tips of all my toes, tensed up, desperate to find a platform for my words, a hall for my lyre to play in – and again nothing much happened. The wheels kept spinning, faster and faster. Twitter sang on, stream upon stream of it.  Facebook comments piled in and then dropped out of sight almost immediately, everyone having their say and never really listening to anyone else. The Parrot fell flat again.

    Was it my anger that was doing the damage ? Not so lucky.  Of course it was just everyone’s lack of time. The original Skelton poem is very long indeed. My initial version was much reduced. The audio version had been reduced even more. But still it lasts 15 minutes and still people do not have that sort of time. (What sort of time do they have ? one might ask)

    So I compromised yet further with a world which seems seriously in danger of squeezing its own life out of time. I minced my Parrot into a succession of momentary sound-bites on my new Face book page. Each morsel of words has its own picture of prison bars, taken in the lonely tower that honours William Tyndale, perhaps the greatest ever writer of English prose.

    But what’s the point of the Parrot having liberty to speak, if no one has time to hear him ? After all that screwing up of his courage ? Silly old bird.

    But now there is little more I can do and I have come to terms with the strong probability that the Parrot won’t be winning the election for Ed, after all, (though he may win a precious favour or two, in time).

    And after all that fuss, I am left with some major question-marks about anger.

    For I too, in the middle of it all,  have worried for months about my fury and contempt for Cameron and his government, and fear of what he would get up to if given another chance. Is all that troubles me and makes me fear for our future, down to an individual, or individuals, or a particular government, so that life and hope would be restored to bright colours if only these failed pretenders were to be displaced ? Of course not. I know well that much of what appals me has far deeper roots and more complex elements, than these particular personalities, or policies, awful though they are. Awful though they are, they are just drops in the wave of which all of us are part.

    And everyone seems so merely angry on all sides. All those dreadful comment streams in the press, beneath feature after feature. So am I just jumping into the anger pool ? Splash splash, all in it together ? Am I really just splashing about in a general anger pool, part of our common disarray and consternation and urge to lash out ?

    I took my anger and the parrot to a vicar round the corner, representative of a faith whose membership does often display a very ambivalent attitude towards anger. In Christian terms, standing up for what is right is often associated with holy “meekness,” that bewildering business of “turning the other cheek.” So I waited for the vicar’s response with some concern.

    To my relief and to some degree my astonishment, he welcomed the poem and found merit in it. His response reduced me to tears. Truth needs a voice and that voice is sometimes bound to be angry. He referred to the traders in the Temple. Go ahead, he said. Give voice. Parrot agreed. So did Skelton. There is a place for anger. It can belong. In fact, sometimes it must.

    But still I think there are questions left hanging. Surely this force comes from a whole range of places, some entirely personal to me and fit for the analyst’s couch.

    But also something else, even more difficult, in some ways. One of my friends suggested it. He had been quite strongly critical of the Parrot poem’s tone and surrender to anger. But then he took me by surprise by suddenly wondering aloud whether this wasn’t a concentration in one person of an anger that is general but essentially not articulated, whose real source cannot be recognised or made plain or brought to the surface or into circulation, maybe deprived of words by our general bewilderment, made all the greater by the spinning and the lying and the human urge to retreat from discomfort. “The best lack all conviction…etc” And, in a reaction that might almost be called chemical, I just rage in the crowd as it carries on cheering the naked head rude-boy, as if he were wearing robes of state. I am carrying and voicing not just my true seeing but the crowd’s as well, which it cannot acknowledge, to which it cannot be reconciled.

    I do think my friend might just be right, or at least partly right. And what he is describing may be what pushes quite a lot of poetry into the world. The energetically unspoken can drive you crazy. So you speak the unspoken in the first place for your own sanity’s sake, seeking form for it. In the beginning was the Word.

    Silly old bird, the Popinjay Royale.

     

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  • What does “hard-working people” mean ?

    There is clearly merit to be earned by any politician who uses the term “hard-working people.” It seems to be this group of people the politicians of all parties want on their side, this group they want to seem to stand for and to be talking to and to please.

    Perhaps the word has gone out in Westminster that “hard-working” is a phrase we all now feel should apply to us, when we get up in the mornings, or go to sleep at night, or queue in the supermarket, or head for the pub, or watch TV – like “Mister” or “Mrs” or “You Guys.”  Once it was “gentle” as a compliment, as a sign of respect, a necessary soubriquet. Gentle woman. Gentle sir. Gentle folk. Gentil. Now it is “hard-working.”

    But is it really true that this phrase works as a sweetener ? Who of us needs to hear this as a description of ourselves, as a social nicety, like “Sir” or “Madam” ? The radio or TV interviewer groans and begs to be spared yet another repetition of the phrase, but out it comes again and again, and yet again, from the politicians they interview. The latter believe it still pays.

    The politicians know that they have never been less respected or trusted, yet still they think this stock phrase goes down, that it is necessary, that it will press our buttons.

    But how and why and when did our buttons start being susceptible to it (in someone’s view) ? Is it Georgie-boy, Deputy Head Rude-boy of Blingland, who cast this shadow and injected this futile little phrase into our systems, when he started peddling the Striver/Skiver lie for Tory gain and our nation’s shame and pain ?

    And that leads to the point I want to make here. The word “shadow.”

    When I get up and go outside, it is not just my conscious self that appears in the street, above my feet. My shadow comes too, with whatever my shadow contains. Do I know what is hidden there ? Do I know what I bring with me in my slipstream, in my wake ?

    Just so, words have shadows and we should think of that when we speak them. Not just the face of the word, its presenting frontage, above its feet, but what it carries behind it and beneath, unsaid but perhaps implied and almost certainly heard, and understood, and taken in.

    “Hard-working” on its own means virtually nothing, but it is used as an implied compliment and statement and distinction. A distinction from something.    But what ? “Hard-working” – whatever that means –  is obviously a “good thing.” It implies “worthy” in some way.

    In its wake, its shadow, it also implies an opposite, of course. That not “working hard” is a bad thing. So who doesn’t “work hard” ? Presumably people on Benefits. Who else ?

    People on Benefits are slackers. They are parasites on the State. Hard working people like us, we tax-payers, should not have to keep them going.

    None of that is true, of course. A very large proportion of people on Benefits are in low-paid work, often doing several jobs. A very large proportion of people on Benefits are long-term disabled in some way. A lot of unpaid work, done by people on Benefits, is of enormous social value, often greater than many a paid job.

    But what do people on Benefits hear when someone who purports to represent them in Westminster starts mouthing the phrase “hard-working,” and claiming that territory, that group, as his or her constituency ?

    “Hard-working” as used by the politicians is a meaningless phrase and an irresponsible abuse of language, insulting and divisive. It is a word of no meaning but of great harm. How do they justify their use of it to themselves ?

     

     

     

     

     

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  • The Parrot’s liberty to speak

    Here is my reading of a poem about a truth-telling parrot in a cage. It is based on a sixteenth century poem called “Speak, Parrot” by John Skelton. I think the parrot has much to say to us Britons now, in 2015, in the weeks following the Tory win here.

     

    The reading is accompanied by photographs taken in and around the Tyndale Monument, a tower on the edge of the Cotswolds, overlooking the Bristol Channel. From the top, you can see for miles. But you are surrounded by bars, just like the parrot.

     

    		 john_skelton
    It seems a good setting for the poem. For Skelton’s parrot is a bird of paradise behind bars. In turn, the parrot is our heart and soul, the truth, caged. But paradoxically, the poet may also need a cage for protection from the repercussions of his truth-telling. So the monument works as both cage and sanctuary for the “popinjay royale.”

     

    But there are other reasons why the Tyndale Monument is suitable. It honours William Tyndale, the first man to translate the Christian New Testament into English. Until then, the bible could only be read in Latin, with the result that the poor and uneducated could not read it for themselves. Tyndale risked and lost his life through doing this work. The authorities caught up with him and burnt him at the stake.

    		 nicholas_tyndale
    Nicholas Tyndale

     

    tyndale_burnt_at_stake
    William Tyndale is burned at the stake in Belgium in 1536, from Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, published in 1563.

     

    All this took place in the reign of Henry VIIIth. Skelton, Tyndale’s contemporary, had died less than ten years earlier – of natural causes. But he too had been a risk-taker. For, amongst much else, his poem “Speak, Parrot” incorporates a sustained verbal onslaught on Cardinal Wolsey who, for some years, held unprecedented power in England. As Skelton saw it, that power, and Wolsey’s abuse of it, constituted a threat to good order in the state and in nature. But incurring the displeasure of such a powerful man was dangerous, of course. Claiming the liberty to publish his word, Skelton – like Tyndale – put his life at risk.

    My version of Skelton’s poem is in three parts. The first is largely just a translation of Skelton’s words into contemporary English. I have made deep cuts in his text and also replaced some of his topical references with my own. For there is a Wolsey in every generation. Accordingly, that name is replaced in my version by something more general – “the Felon Lord.” In every generation, the Felon Lord abuses power and threatens the governance of state and nature.

    In the second part, covering Skelton’s middle sections, I go more my own way, but still echo some of Skelton’s resonant phrases, and keep as close as I can to the spirit and direction of his argument.

    In the third part, the nervous Parrot in his cage is finally persuaded to ”speak out, true and plain” and that Felon Lord of our own time emerges from out of the Skeltonic mists and ryme royale phalanxes, and is presented to us, true and plain. Or fairly plain. Who is this Lord of Murdor, ruling a world through Hacking, bought Orcs and Dust ? Who is this Davie.orc, giving the people the lies they like, so as to keep them in Murdor’s power ?

    The poem contains quite a few references to the UK hacking scandals mostly involving Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. And it touches on details associated with those scandals, such as Rebekah Brooks’ wedding in Oxfordshire, that borrowed police horse on which Cameron rode with her in Oxfordshire fields, and Andy Coulson, Brook’s ex-lover over ten years, and Cameron’s friend and close advisor, who went to jail. I would like to give due acknowledgement to Nick Davies, Guardian journalist, for his work in bringing dark things to light.

    Here are three excerpts from the poem, as examples :

    Like Parrot, the Truth is caged. Outside in the street
    Felony’s slaves and creatures sing their song.
    Up and down upon untaxed horses they strut
    Kicking the poor aside as they canter along.
    Much money, we know, is spent for wrong
    Purposes, for poor to stay poor, and Lord on top.
    And caged is Truth, and Love, and Youth, and Hope…

     

    This England
    this Bling Land

    this Bling and Buy Land
    this Hack and Spy Land

    This Try a Lie Land
    this Me and My Land…

     

    “’Mumsy, Mumsy, it’s all Gordon’s fault, not mine’ –
    That’s a good one – Georgie thought so too.
    And look, they bought it ! Making people toe your line
    Means feeding them the lies they like. Like sleek glue
    My lies have cleaved my friends to me….”

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  • Is there a place for honour in this House ?

    So the UK’s Coalition Government of the last five years is now behind us and we are in the process of choosing its replacement. A frantic election campaign has begun, and in fact began ages back, much of it conducted at the lowest possible level by people trained in hitting low. There is a mix (and muddle ?) of parties to choose from, accurately reflecting our own mix and muddle, and general dissatisfaction.

    I think a dramatic and important interchange took place in the House of Commons on the Coalition Government’s last day, which has raised an important question, chiefly with regard to the choice we have to make on who will form the next government, but also to our evaluation of the years we have spent under the previous one – how to assess the impact of those years, their meaning, the nation they leave us with and the prospects for the future they suggest.

    And the form and shape of this interchange was somehow highly appropriate, even emblematic. A puerile, nasty, crafty plot had been hatched by senior figures of the Coalition Government, relying on last day absences to give them a majority. One of the plotters was William Hague, outgoing Leader of the House. Michael Gove was another. It looks highly likely that David Cameron was another, our Prime Minister. The plot was thwarted. In the process, a speech of unusual and real passion was made in the House. Even more unusual was the use of the word “honour” in that speech. We are so used to slick slogans, catch-phrases, mock outrage, ham-acting, band-standing. The contrast here was startling. And that word “honour” spoken, without notes, in near tears, on a Parliament’s last day. What on earth could it mean, this unfamiliar passion and authenticity ?

    The name of the speech-maker was Charles Walker, MP for the Tory safe seat of Broxbourne and Chair of the Commons Procedure Committee. I would guess that few outside the Commons and Broxbourne itself would have heard of him before. Certainly I had not. Now that I have, I admire him. Here is the Telegraph’s account of how he ended his speech :

    “Clearly choking back tears, Mr Walker said: ‘I have been played as a fool and when I go home tonight I will look in the mirror and see an honourable fool looking back at me and I would much rather be an honourable fool in this and any other matter than a clever man.’

    Before that climax, Mr Walker had said to the House : ‘I do say to the Government, this is not, I think, how they expected today to play out. The Government was hoping that the party would be kept here under a three-line whip for a party meeting and others would have gone home. This does not reflect well on the Government.

    ‘But can I just say this? How you treat people in this place is important. This week I went to the Leader of the House’s leaving drinks. I spent 20 minutes saying goodbye to his special adviser yesterday. I went into his private office and was passed by the Deputy Leader of the House yesterday, all of whom would have been aware of what they were proposing to do. I also had a number of friendly chats with our Chief Whip yesterday and yet I find out at 6.30 last night that this House, the Leader of this House, is bringing forward my report.’ ”

    (For the whole Telegraph article, see : http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/11497116/Who-is-Charles-Walker-Tearful-Tory-MP-played-as-a-fool-over-botched-Bercow-plot.html)

    It is fair to assume that, not only did Mr Walker feel that as a person and in his constitutional role he’d been treated badly, even treacherously, by his colleagues, but also that their whole demeanour in these days, the whole plot, was dishonourable. In fighting back, in refusing to countenance or collude, in voicing a protest, he was taking his honour back from these people who, while making nothing of their own honour, had also made light of his.

    Furthermore, I would say that he was taking the honour of the House of Commons back from them, who were threatening it. The honour of the House of Commons, even of all of us, rested with him that day, against its (and hence our) enemies.

    This word “honour” then. Does it matter (whatever it means) ? If it matters, should we not include it in the discourse of this election campaign ? Should we not seek to choose a leader and a government which we can trust to act honourably in the execution of their duties, as well as all the other topics being talked about ad infinitum ? Dare we assume we can take our leaders’ “honour” for granted ?

    I think we can’t and shouldn’t. I think we can’t afford to. I think we have a duty to ourselves and to the future of our country not to.

    Accordingly, I shall now go through various incidents in the life and record of the previous government that stick out in my mind. I shall briefly examine each of them, for what they can tell us, for what they seem to mean. Perhaps I shall then be able to draw some general conclusions from them under the headings of honour and character – the honour and character of the people who seek to lead, and the honour and character of the times and society in which we all find ourselves and for which all of us are responsible, to one degree or another.

    I shall start with Charles Walker himself. Something in his situation begs a question. In the last days of the Government’s life, he was treated by his own people in a manner which most of us would see as treacherous and contemptible. Days later, he has had to start campaigning on behalf of that same party, which – if successful – will be led by those same individuals. Obviously he believes in the Tory party and its principles. He also believes in honour. He expects the two to belong together. But not, or no longer, while led by these people, it seems. Where then, is Charles Walker’s true Tory Party ? What does he do next, in search of it ?

    Now let’s go all the way back to 2009, a few months before the Coalition Government was formed. New Labour was still in power, with Cameron Leader of the Opposition. The expenses scandal was erupting, unearthed by the Telegraph newspapers. And how did Cameron behave as things began to come to light ? Somehow the image of his wisteria still sticks in the memory. And the sheer rapidity with which he paid back that money he had claimed from the taxpayer to cover the expense of trimming the wisteria that graced the walls of his comfortable cottage in Oxfordshire. And then the air of clean-limbed virtue and decisiveness he emanated in addressing the scandal as it spread and destroyed a number of political careers and reputations across Westminster, and did such massive damage to the credibility of UK politics as a whole. In originally claiming that money he was apparently acting strictly and entirely by the book, the letter of the law. Yes indeed. But by the spirit ? This man already so very wealthy ? His second house ? Wisteria ? Surely Cameron was less claiming necessary expenses than grabbing as much as he could for Me and Mine, without too much compunction as far as ethics go ?

    And then am I right in thinking that he somehow managed to magic that neat footwork in paying the money back, into an illustration and display of his virtue, the decisiveness of a true leader ? The thief proclaims his high moral rectitude after hastily returning the spoils just before the cops arrive. And we buy his line.

    But what part does real honour play in this story ? And where is the boundary here between actually doing right and merely creating the illusion of doing right, to please the gullible punters ? Or to pull the wool over their eyes ? Did Cameron get away with something there ? A Wisteria Will-o’-the-Wisp ?

    Here is a short piece from the Telegraph, written in 2009, detailing Cameron’s claims : http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/mps-expenses/5315163/David-Cameron-repays-680-bill-for-wisteria-removal-MPs-expenses.html

    I shall try to define lying at this point, since telling the truth surely has something to do with keeping honour. My understanding of lying is quite wide. Lying is more than saying something you know is not true. The following distinction might help to make clearer what I am trying to say. People who tell the Truth are the servants of Truth. They try to serve Truth faithfully, as best they can, seeking always to serve better. By contrast, those who lie, according to my understanding of it, are seeking to re-work the facts so that the facts serve them and their self-interest, whatever they perceive their self-interest to be. If I am the servant of Truth, I regard the truth as being larger than I am. In lying, I put myself to the fore, larger than all else, perhaps all that counts. If the facts do not suit me, I shall dress them up so that they suit me better. I shall cover or distort them. I shall conjure them into something new. I shall create a delusion, an alternative image, whose aim is chiefly to deceive, mollify, win over.

    This wider definition of lying means of course that great swathes of our society are set up, if not as enemies of the Truth, then with priorities which do not have Truth at the top of the list. Thus, advertising is a form of lie, putting a spin on what you have to sell, so that the customer will be seduced into buying it. (Regulations exist in the advertising world that seek to prevent the worst abuses, but still the overall aim is one of manipulation). Another form of lie is the system by which organisations in many spheres now have departments often (and ironically) called “Communications.” People are employed there to put a spin on events, or decisions, or policies, which shed a positive light on the employing organisation, or otherwise serve and promote its interests. In this case it is the employers’ perceived self-interest that comes before those of Truth. This is what Peter Oborne was objecting to when he left the Telegraph a few months ago. But where in our Society can Oborne now go, in search of fellow-servants of Truth ? Where can he go to escape the slaves and creatures of Self and the Lie ?

    And insofar as in our present search for political leaders we are looking to select people we can trust to lead us well and responsibly, and hence to keep their Word and their Promises, we are bound to expect more of them than we see in so much of the behaviour and conduct around us, more of them perhaps than we expect even of ourselves. For in the final event we have to trust someone. Without trust there is no Society.

    People of honour can be trusted. People of honour tell the truth. So we need leaders who are honourable. Maybe they will inspire us to be more honourable ourselves. Even if they are also fools. Honourable fools, let’s have more of you.

    Now let’s also carry on with the list.

    The Coalition’s lie about who was to blame for the international banking crash of 2008. It was all Gordon’s fault, was their immediate line, Cameron to the fore, Clegg obediently and unforgiveably in tow, sharing in the lie. And for the past five years the lie has kept on coming. And highly successful it has been. Many still believe it. If it’s not Tweedle-dum, it must be Tweedle-dee, they think. But it was brought about by the banks and it began in the States ! Ah yes, they say, but Gordon was responsible for de-regulating the banks here in the UK. But the Tories wanted to de-regulate them even more ! Exactly the same thing would have happened to them, had they been in power. Ah yes, but no-one’s listening to this discussion any more. Tee-hee.

    And Gordon Brown, Chancellor of the Exchequer for ten years, awe-inspiring figure, received international praise for his response to the crisis. Would Osborne have done as well ? I have no doubt whatsoever that it would have simply swept him away.

    The banking crisis of 2008 raises huge questions about our whole system and Western way of life. Those questions remain unanswered and in fact have been largely ignored. There was never a chance that the Coalition Government was ever going to address them.

    I am not equipped to go further on the subject of the banking crash except to make some points and ask some questions, all about process. Many of the UK electorate have been fooled by the Cameron lie. But there is no chance that foreign leaders will have been. Insofar as they were paying any attention, they would have seen that Cameron’s a reckless and transparent liar and street-corner bruiser above all else. Surely they would have taken note and surely there would have been consequences ? Yes of course Realpolitik has its own rules in international relations, but personal relationship plays a part as well. What creative relationship can there be with a shrill and brazen liar, who plays games with the truth without apparent thought of wider or long-term consequence ?

    How can a country led by such a man be seen as a reliable ally, a partner to be trusted ?

    I believe the facts about the crash are so plain, that many who accept Cameron’s lie, actually know it for what it is, a mischievous fiction that feels comforting in some fashion. Perhaps it acts as a block to ensure that awkward questions on its real implications stay in the bottle. One can only guess at why the lie has proved so durable, but whatever the reason, this behaviour, this ritualistic defiance of the adult facts, the truth, cannot increase the standing of the role of Prime Minister. The Prime Minister is a high office. In Cameron’s hands it has been hugely lowered and cheapened. Being successful in selling a lie is not leadership, it is merely pollution, hooligan mischief. It has harmed and dishonoured the House and all our communities north, south, east and west of the House.

    I shall keep adding examples to my list, insofar as doing so yields new insights or helps me in my search for an overall understanding.

    A few years ago, George Osborne, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, voiced a rhyming distinction, a rhyming opposition, a duality. We have the “Striver,” he said, and then we have the “Skiver.” Was that phrase his coining, or did some bright and fresh-faced Tory staffer come up with it ? It has hung in the air ever since, spewing all sorts of divisive poison. It has been extremely powerful and “agenda-setting,”  appealing to a certain mind-set that is not at all interested in fact, or in truth, or in community, or in humanity. It is a lie and I cannot call it anything but a wicked lie. Osborne will never admit it, nor will his colleagues who failed to challenge him on it, nor the creatures of the still unregulated, Tory-supporting oligarch-owned press that have followed it up in a bid to reinforce it, but his entire purpose in voicing it can only have been to gain some cheap and unworthy popularity among some of the population at the expense of others. Divide and rule. Fiendishly clever.

    Osborne is such a clever chap and will know that he was telling a lie, making a fiction, a false distinction. Further, if he had been bothered, he would also have known that he was instantly further excluding, and adding to the burdens upon, a large number of the population who are already extremely vulnerable and stigmatised. For instance, a very high proportion of people on long term benefits (“skivers”) have long term mental health problems or learning disabilities (it is interesting that the parties are all now competing to show how much they care about the mental health issue).

    So what enabled Osborne to throw out that little fizzing sack of verbal poison, with no reference to, or interest in, whether or not it was true  (incidentally reminding us of just how powerful words can be, for ill as well as for good) ? Clearly he saw some advantage to himself and to his Party and to his strategic purposes, in doing so. But did he not think through all the possible harms that phrase would do, to the community at large, to individual mental states in particular ? (Remember “we’re all in this together” ? Good one, George). Did he balance harm against good, or did he simply not care ? Or – and this is what I believe is likeliest – the world outside the window of himself is simply not very real to him. History’s likely judgement of him cannot be very real, either. The world he lives in is simply a chess board with pieces on it which he likes to play. It is a computer game created just for George. People are creatures you manipulate to do your will.

    Here is Zoe Williams on the striver-skiver addition to UK political discourse :  http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/jan/09/skivers-v-strivers-argument-pollutes

    We’ll soon be heading for Offa’s Dyke, but let’s stay with Osborne for now, and another of his fiendishly clever lies.

    It came a fair time after his Striver-Skiver conjuring trick. UKIP were looming large and Osborne and Cameron were accordingly in a barnstorming, band-standing lather of indignation at a UK surcharge to be paid to the EU. Off to Brussels rode Osborne on his white horse borrowed from some Oxfordshire stable, to sock it to the EU bureaucrats. He came back claiming a famous victory.  There had been “hard-fought negotiations” he said, with the result that the EU had agreed to halve the bill.

    It was all a propaganda fiction, of course. The bill had indeed been halved, but by an automatic rebate which was always going to apply and everyone concerned had always known it would. Osborne was rebuked for his lie by the all-party Treasury Select Committee, chaired by a truth-telling Tory called Andrew Tyrie. The Committee said : “The suggestion that the £1.7 bn bill demanded by the EU was halved is not supported by published information.”

    Andrew Tyrie said: “The terms of the UK’s rebate calculation are set out in EU law. It should, therefore, have been clear that the rebate would apply.”

    But when these points were put to the relevant government spokesperson, that person merely repeated the Osborne fiction. It was as if the Committee had not existed or reported. As if fact and reality were not the point. The chosen lie, the propaganda fiction, were the only currencies of exchange HM Government would accept on this matter. A fantasy Dragon slain by a fantasy St Georgie-boy.

    Here is the Guardian’s report on the exchange : http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/feb/27/george-osborne-rebuked-for-boasting-he-halved-17bn-eu-surcharge

    Now let’s head off to Offa’s Dyke, that impressive old Mercian frontier constructed to keep out the Welsh. Cameron likes the image and has used it more than once. His use of it has caused outrage but that has not deterred him. Whereas there is life here in Tory England east of the dyke, there is death to the west of it, he has proclaimed on successive occasions. A powerful image that stays in the mind and slithers about in dark corners. That ancient divide still operates. Of course Cameron was talking tribal here, Tory English vs Labour Welsh, misusing statistics in order to do so, trying to convey the Tories’ (highly ambivalent) championship of the NHS. Dr Peter Carter, Chief Executive of the Royal College of Nursing, was sufficiently exasperated to write him an open letter in protest. Was Cameron aware of the effect on NHS morale of his casual yah-boo imagery ? What will NHS staff in Wales, striving to save life, make of this utterly irresponsible untruth ? I know Peter Carter personally and honour him. He is level-headed and person-centred and fills his role to capacity. Contrast that with yah-boo Cameron who seems unable to do Prime Minister of a Nation, only ever Head Rude-boy of a Delinquent Street-gang. The picture seems to fit : where there is a divide, however ancient and left behind, Cameron fingers it lovingly, as if yearning to widen it. Maybe division excites him. “We’re all in this together” is absolutely the opposite of what he is about.

    Here is more detail on Cameron’s interest in Offa’s Dyke : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-31628749

    I think the above examples have some common themes and these have become clearer as the list lengthens. But also there are differences, particular shades and features in this or that example which can throw new light on the others, and make the whole picture clearer. Before trying to draw some conclusion about that picture,  I’ll mention one more example, very briefly – Cameron’s manoeuvrings to avoid a proper TV debate with Miliband or Farage. He will have been advised on this, of course, by Crosby and others. There would have been no thought of the needs of the electorate, or of democracy, or of democratic accountability, or of honour, of course. Just of Cameron winning. And with that as the only measure, it seemed better to keep Miliband draped and hidden behind Tory slander than to allow him to be seen for who he is. And yes, of course there would be flak, and embarrassing references to Cameron’s earlier stated enthusiasm for the debate format, but the plebs would soon forget all that and the flak die away and the electoral gain for Cameron would out-weigh any short-term loss he might suffer as a result of his game-playing. And any loss we the nation might suffer was of absolutely no concern.

    But we know all that. The particular point I want to draw out, the aspect that makes this example worth including, is the utter contemptuous transparency of Cameron’s and the Tories’ ploys and prevarications to make sure they got their way in blocking democratic process. S’not fair – you should include the Greens. Just one example. Yeah, yeah. As if he cared two hoots about including the Greens.

    Everyone knew what was going on. The Tories knew we knew, but didn’t care. Their game of pure self-interest, wrapped in a succession of careless lies, was played out to its utterly cynical conclusion, bringing yet further contempt upon our system and upon our very use of language. Was Cameron bovvered ?

    Every parent has to deal with a child who learns to lie and then wants to experiment with what advantages lying can bring. I wonder if Cameron has ever done so with his own children. Now listen to me, children, he might say. If you start lying to people, they’ll never believe you. If you want people to trust you, you should tell them the truth. Just so. Talking to liars is a wasteful use of precious time. How much of our talking is just an exchange of lies ?

    But more than that, the community needs protection from people who lie as a matter of policy. For to lie and to keep lying to your neighbour implies a detachment from and contempt for that neighbour that makes you dangerous.

    And yet further than that, lying as Cameron did in this case, as if you can’t be bovvered even to seem to be trying to come up with something a bit plausible ? How to understand that ?  Massive and angry arrogance is the only answer I can think of. The fucking plebs have gone along with his lies up to now. They don’t need or deserve that he make even the tiniest effort this time.

    I shall now do what I can to make some sense of this succession of examples, to see if a fair portrait emerges, a profile or set of features that can in turn instruct us on what might lie ahead. I remain mindful of the words “character” and “honour,” mentioned towards the beginning of this piece.

    The first thing to say is that I do not think the story of the Coalition Government has followed its initial script. That initial script belonged with Cameron. He was to create and offer a cool and “modernised” Tory Party in much the same way as Blair had done with New Labour. But there has been a major difference. Whatever New Labour’s sins of commission and omission during its decade in power, real and substantive change took place in the party itself (though not of a kind to avoid a possibly disastrous loss of support among the population). Far less real change has taken place among the Tories. Cameron is a public relations man. He thought a few slick ad-man images would do. Hug a Husky. Hug a Hoody. (And in doing so, always focus the camera on Davey-boy). And as some of the above examples have shown, he continues to act not just as if his message is the only medium that counts, but is a substitute for reality. No need for the truth. Block it out by just repeating the message, the ads, the selling lines, the lies. The fucking pleb will get it in the end. My message will lodge in the plebian brain like an advert jingle and eventually the pleb will buy.

    The next thing is the amount of division and dividing lines we can discern in the examples I have listed in this piece. Several are explicit, others implicit. Might we say that wherever Cameron goes, division appears to go with him, so that where there was already division he adds to it, and where there was none before he seems somehow to introduce it ? England vs Scotland ; UK vs EU ; Wales vs Mercia ; rich vs poor ; “skiver” vs “striver” ; “us” vs “immigrants” ; govt vs bishops ; spin vs fact ; lies vs truth ; delusion vs reality. The image is of the family man chopping Little Gem lettuces, the wisteria wagging trimly outside the door. The reality may be very different. The indulged and slick-tongued bully-boy addicted to battle and reduction, turning the Commons into a playground where delinquent rowdies rule, at all times needing and fermenting division and fragmentation.

    Thirdly, the arrogance of these people, their disconnection from, and disdain for, so much the rest of us know to be true. To establish the cause of their arrogance, their disregard for plebian concerns such as truth and honour, we cannot discount the class and education so many of them have come from, if only because it was so noticeable and pronounced in the Coalition. Those schools so many of them went to still signify and encourage separation, difference and superiority. That is what these people were sent there for and that is what we as a nation have suffered from them. There are many other reasons for disconnection and disdain in modern life, but this particularly English one surely features here, to an unknown extent.

    I am talking character here. In doing so I must be careful not to simplify. We are looking at Cameron’s character, and that of much of his government. It counts and influences how he behaves, in his position of power, his role of Prime Minister being now so much more “presidential,” or at least continually in the camera’s spotlight, than it used to be. But it is not the whole story and while Cameron is to be held individually responsible for what he does with his power and his role as leader of a nation, for how he uses it and abuses it, the character I am loosely drawing here is also our character, as a people and as a generation. In a sense Cameron is because we let him be. Cameron, at the head of his “team,” acts out what he thinks we like to see and hear. He will do so as long as he thinks enough of us like it. He is an aspect of us. If he is a creature of division and fragmentation, so to a great extent are we.  Do we want to continue down this road ? If so, we’ll vote for Cameron.

    Finally “honour.” There has been a terrible and inexcusable lack of honour in the policies and behaviour of the Coalition Government, right up to its last day. The examples I have given in this piece wreak of dishonour. Honour is not some luxury or relic from a bygone era, romantically remembered, rose-tinted. It is a staple for civilisation, since it is necessary for mutual trust. And I will say again to Charles Walker MP, bring on the honourable fools. Let’s have more of you. You are better and also safer company than the clever men we can assume you were talking about.

    But I would add this : I do not think you need be a fool to be honourable. Nor do I think dishonourable people are clever at all. Far from it. Being honourable is the only clever thing to be. As individuals and as a Society, being honourable is our only hope.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

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  • What’s a “Carer” ?

    Each of us surely wants to be acknowledged as a “caring” person, even while so much that is uncaring is happening all round us – perpetrated presumably by aliens. The Head Rude-boy of Blingland has presided over changes in the Benefit system that disgrace us all, even while they continue sufficiently popular with his constituency to keep him at it. But he is careful to dress up the changes in some fashion that can make them seem benevolent, to make him seem to be someone who really, really “cares.”

    But for several years now, the word “Carer” has been used to describe something a bit more specific that just the good neighbour, true or feigned.

    In the social care services, the term describes – albeit very clumsily – a person involved – to a lesser or greater degree – in the care and support of someone who cannot manage for him or herself. Often the word “informal” is added, to emphasise the point that what is being described is unpaid, voluntary and unofficial, merely natural. For instance, the mother, or spouse, or child, or friend, involved in the community support of someone with long-term mental health problems, or someone who is elderly and infirm, is deemed an “informal carer.”

    And the point is to ensure that the crucial nature of that complex role is recognised, so that certain state entitlements now due to the people concerned, carrying their burden, are claimed and provided. For it is still the case that many people whose lives are centred on, and defined by, their “informal caring” role, would not dream of using those words to describe what they do and are not aware that their activities warrant some (minimal) support. All they know is that their role and function is exhausting yet inescapeable, merely natural.

    Some years ago I briefly worked with some “carers” and several poems resulted. Here, here  and here are perhaps the best of them.

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