Language lessons

This is really narcissistic, but I am going to post on one of my own posts. The response to my piece on the quality of debate over Gaza at the Drink-soaked ones was really heartening (and special thanks are due to my pals on the Trots for their kind comments and links). I want to use this post to explain that it wasn't that difficult a task to write it. All I was doing was using a set of analytical tools I use in teaching students about clear thinking.

Language matters and the debate over the use of it is an old one in radical circles. Though Orwell's fine essay, Politics and the English Language, is probably the best known on the topic, he was, in fact, repeating old arguments. Much came from the 19th Century Freethought and rationalist movements, whose importance is often under emphasised as a source of radical ideas. I particularly like a deeply obscure pamphlet from the 1850's produced by the London Confederation of Rational Reformers that I unearthed in the Nettlau archive. Its theme was that "the bulk of mankind are, and have ever been, the egregious dupes of language."

Most of the tricks I described in the post and many others can be found in a splendid little book, first published in 1935, Straight and Crooked Thinking by Robert Thouless. It is out of print, and the examples are out of date, but there are loads of second hand copies around and it is still very useful. More recently Jamie Whyte produced Bad Thoughts, a Guide to Clear Thinking (evidently not that clear as he comes across as a bit of a Tory), which is a good, accessible read. There is a lot more out there too. So I wasn't being particularly original, it is just that we pay too little attention to the logical structure of argument in constructing and repeating our views (especially over a pint or several).

What I was trying to do with the Gaza post was to open out the debate by looking at the way it had been constructed rather than rehearsing tired and circular arguments and, with one possible exception, it seems to have worked. I am not that virtuous though. In this other post I was doing something else.

In attacking a spectacularly stupid assertion by the Labour MP Graham Stringer that dyslexia could not exist because Nicaragua had achieved 100% literacy in its schools, I quoted the UN World Development Report, which gave Nicaragua an adult literacy rate of under 77%. Naughty. Why? An adult literacy rate includes the whole population, not just the recently educated, and many of those would have been schooled before the literacy drives associated with the Sandinistas. I should have used the UNICEF figures for young people, which gives a rate of 84% for males and 89% for females. Still short of the claimed 100%, but not quite as spectacular.

So why did I do it? For impact? To exaggerate my case? No. It was because Stringer was Chair of the council that closed my beloved College of Adult Education in 1990 and I do bear a grudge. I wanted to make him look even more ridiculous. So the moral is, read with care and without total trust. And keep thinking, thinking clearly.

Early day motion

I have always thought that this sounded vaguely scatological, however it is a Parliamentary procedure.

An early day motion has been laid down by the Labour MP for Blackpool South, Gordon Marsden, welcoming the launch of the Campaigning Alliance for Lifelong Learning. CALL is encouraging people to write to their MP urging them to sign.

You can read the motion here.

The joys of jargon

It isn't often that a Parliamentary Select Committee report has me laughing out loud. Prompted by this item from the BBC, I turned to the Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills Committee's review of the DIUS's Departmental Report 2008. It is savage.

They must have loved describing it as being filled with "jargon-riddled phrases, assumptions backed-up with no clear evidence but which appeared to be designed to provide a positive tone to the Report, and euphemisms deflecting likely failure".

Could the committee have suppressed their smiles as they dryly noted the following?

During the evidence session with officials in DIUS we selected at random and read the following extract from the Departmental Report to Mr Watmore:

"An overarching national improvement strategy will drive up quality and performance underpinned by specific plans for strategically significant areas of activity, such as workforce and technology. The capital investment strategy will continue to renew and modernise further education establishments to create state of the art facilities".

Mr Watmore was unable to explain the meaning of the passage. He conceded that “documents written by people in senior positions can often be very inaccessible to the public”

Inaccessible? Meaningless more like. Managerial bollocks shown up for what it really is. And I have to labour under the policies that these officials dream up. Bravo to those MPs who can spot a distinctly naked emperor.

Hat tip Ian

Inauguration

Whatever the future of this presidency has in store, today has not been a day of historic change, it has been a day that indicated that change had already occurred - and for the better.

Serial learning

There can't be much to do in Kalamazoo.

You might say Michael Nicholson has a passion for learning. The 67-year-old Kalamazoo retiree has amassed 27 college degrees since 1963, and he's not done yet.

Just the sort of thing we are trying to stamp out in England.

"I enjoy learning as a means of independence," Nicholson said. "I have academic freedom; I can study or do whatever I want to do."

...Michael Nicholson said he'll keep pursuing higher education as long as he can.

"I find that the intellectual stimulation and the acquaintances that I have at the intellectual level make it really worthwhile," he said.

He and his wife, who has seven degrees, both got fee discounts as they worked for Western Michigan University. Learning for the joy of learning, it's something that we need to start to value again in this country. Lovely.

Ta Will.

Reading Gaza

For once, the word ’swamp’ is appropriate. Wading through some of the partisan and ignorant apologias that have flooded comment boxes, appeared in the mainstream media and infected on-line ‘citizen journalism’ was like battling through a stagnant, weed-choked morass, gagging against the foul air, unable to breathe. We need air, light and clarity. That can only come from thought.

I do not want to discuss the rights and wrongs of Gaza, instead I want to write about what I see to be the main rhetorical tricks, self-deceptions and lazy arguments that were used to try and reconcile current events with previously held commitments. It is about how to read Gaza.

A preliminary point: some of the claims that I refer to could be contested as fact. Without access to proper authoritative information it is impossible to challenge them with certainty. Therefore I am taking all claims at face value. My aim is merely to illustrate what I see as the false arguments that surround them.

Historical analogies

If you see an article or post that contains the words Apartheid, Warsaw Ghetto, Hitler, Nazis, Sarajevo, Holocaust, and, especially, any mention of the Second World War, do not pollute your mind by reading it. Delete it, throw it away, stamp on it. Do not read it.

Analogies can be useful to illustrate a general principle, but historical analogies are usually misleading. Historical events are rarely analogous, and the Arab/Israeli conflict has a pretty strong claim to singularity. When they are used, there is always a tendency to talk about the supposedly analogous situation rather than the real one under discussion. They take us further from the truth rather than closer to it.

However, the way they are predominantly being used at the moment is worse than that. Analogies are not being used to provide meaningful comparison; instead they are words that have been ripped from their historical context, from the reality of the situation in which they occurred, and have become symbols of evil. This is not the use of the analogy; it is a game of guilt by association. It is dishonest.

The people who use them are just like Joseph Goebbels – you see how easy it is, and how wrong.

Intent

This has been an interesting one. I have often heard the argument that the difference between Israel and Hamas is that Hamas intend to kill civilians, unlike the Israeli military who try and avoid it. This one has been all over the place and has led to endless irresolvable debates about whether Israel was deliberately targeting schools, hospitals and civilians. It sounds reasonable, but isn’t quite what it seems.

A consequentialist would say that all that matters is the consequence of the action, not its intent. I do not agree. Intent matters, it matters a great deal. For instance, in the British legal system we distinguish between murder, manslaughter, causing death by dangerous driving, etc. on the basis of intent. It is also true that our reaction to the early death of someone we loved and the process of mourning and recovery is affected by the nature of the death. An accident is a tragedy, but a murder is traumatic.

However, intent is not quite as simple as that. A drunk driver uses a car because of the expectation that they will not be caught and will not cause an accident. It is a risk, but the odds are on their side. If a child is killed, we vilify and punish the driver, though not for murder. Now imagine that if a drunk driver got in a car knowing that it was certain that they would kill a child and that the child’s death was the inevitable consequence of driving home from the pub. They wouldn’t drive; the intent not to kill would overwhelm the desire to get home without paying for a taxi.

And this is the problem when we come to Gaza. To launch an aerial assault attack on a densely populated urban area does not risk civilian casualties; it guarantees them. Intent and consequence blurs. Therefore the correct argument is that the difference between the two is regret not intent. Rather than celebrating and enjoying killing, one side regrets the necessity of killing civilians. It is a distinction, but a more morally ambiguous one. And perhaps a more meaningful debate would be on whether that killing was necessary or not.

The blame game

It should be easy. Drop a bomb and kill a child and it is your fault. Not necessarily, if the child is used as a ‘human shield’ then blame neatly passes from the bomber to the bombed.

Only it shouldn’t. If a target is protected by a human shield, you can either decide to attack it, killing the people in the process, or you can decide not to attack it, or you can try and get the target a different way. There is always a choice.

The use of human shields is absolutely abhorrent. It can be based on two calculations. One is that it will stop the attack, the other that, if it doesn’t, the deaths will be a propaganda coup. In the former, the ruthless are calculating to gain advantage from the humanity of the other side. In the latter, the ruthlessness of the one relies on the ruthlessness of the other. It is a dance of death in which both sides share a proportion of the blame.

Yes but …

This is a simple way of shifting the debate away from something that discomforts you to something that bolsters your case. There have been two main ways in which this has been done. First when critics point out the damage being done in Gaza they are reminded of the rockets on Sderot and exactly the same happens in reverse. At best, all that happens is that we get drawn into a pointless argument about proportionality. Then one side reminds us that Israel has two homicidal militias on their Northern and Southern borders whilst the other counters with the bitter experience of the Palestinians of dispossession and military occupation.

Both are true. One does not excuse the other, but the trick in debate is to concentrate on one at the expense of the other, distorting the argument. A coherent position does not mean minimising the fact that diminishes your case whilst maximising the one that suits you best, it considers both as an intrinsic part of a single problem.

The misuse of history

Poor history, battered, bruised and abused, she staggers from the debate barely able to stand. There has been so much bad history used that it would take far too much space to detail all the examples.

Anyone attempting to bolster their case through the use of history who cannot distinguish research from propaganda, who is not be able to see whether a source they are using is credible or not, who doesn’t know the ‘historians’ who see their roles as standard bearers for a cause and thereby distort, misinterpret, and select material dishonestly, please stop now. Don’t clutter discussion boxes with bollocks and counter bollocks, argued with a passion out of all proportion to any pretence at knowledge. History is contentious, but not that contentious.

(An aside: I think the most significant historical fact is that the establishment of Israel necessarily meant the displacement of Palestinians, not merely physically, but also in terms of their own national self-determination and political status. This was obvious to all Zionists at the time, and, though there were pacifist alternatives to statehood put forward, talk turned to transfer on the model of the Greek/Turkish population exchanges agreed under the Treaty of Lausanne – which, please note, did not mean ‘ethnic cleansing’ and other anachronistic distortions. Of course, a managed settlement never happened and the war resulted in a transfer through flight and expulsion. There is so much mythology about that as well. Pro-Palestinians talk of a coherent plan to drive out all Arabs (apart from the ones that remained??); Israeli ultras have devised a range of scenarios that are all variations on a theme of ‘they expelled themselves’! Though I haven’t found one that says that they prevented themselves from returning – yet.

Thus the establishment of a Palestinian state within just borders, with a settlement of the question of Jerusalem, and at peace with Israel, is not an act of ‘generosity’ or a ‘concession’, it is an act of restitution, of justice. It ensures that justice for one people does not flow from injustice for another.]

Choosing sides

It was very easy for most, they had already chosen. The ‘we are all Hezbollah now’ crowd had embraced Hamas long before the fighting in Gaza. Theocratic totalitarianism is, after all, the latest fashion accessory for the ‘left’. Their language was redolent with scarcely concealed anti-Semitism and demonstrations against the war were filled with an iconography of hate and menace. Those who favoured the Israeli action in Gaza were only too ready to minimise and justify civilian casualties, attempt to discredit inconvenient witnesses for their supposed bias, and, at the margins, flirt with anti-Arab racism.

So whose side do we choose? How about ours? This is a left blog, written from different perspectives though sharing some common values; social justice, anti-racism, equality, respect for human life, a hatred of oppression. That’s the side to be on. Hold hard to our principles and use them as a guide, rather than rely on a blind partisanship. Some of the best commentary chose this path and called for long-term action for a settlement. Too often it was drowned out by the clamour of the committed.

A personal conclusion

In the last years of her life my mother was inclined, as many elderly people are, to wander back into the past. In her case this usually meant the war. She had lived in London throughout the blitz. I remember once when her face crumpled at the memory and the tears flowed. It was the same expression I saw from the historian E P Thompson in a TV documentary as he recalled sending a fellow officer into action and certain death. She looked up and said, “War is hell. It should only be used when absolutely necessary”. She had no doubt that the defeat of Hitler was just such a necessity, despite the pain of her lost friends and dead brothers. Now I look at Gaza and wonder if the hell inflicted on the people was “absolutely necessary”.

Was it?

Thoughts on Gaza

I got involved in a discussion in comments on this post on Terry Glavin's site about the need for a real peace movement. Will asked me to turn my thoughts into a post for the Drink-soaked Trots. It turned into something completely different about the poor quality of much of the debate and the abuse of language. It is long and you can read it here.

UPDATE

As the DSTPFW site is no more, I have reposted Reading Gaza above for the record as it was one of the few posts not cross posted here.

Insight

According to Will Hutton,

The prime minister is incandescent ... When Britain needs all its big banks to act together to stop a credit crunch-induced slump, Barclays, putting its own interests - and bonuses - first instead triggers a second phase of the crisis.

Now footage has emerged of boardroom discussions.

Expertise

The instant 'experts' who 'bravely speak out' against the prevailing consensus are with us again. Now it is the turn of dyslexia to be the target. Graham Stringer, Labour MP for Blackley, thinks it is a "cruel fiction".

"The education establishment, rather than admit that their eclectic and incomplete methods for instruction are at fault, have invented a brain disorder called dyslexia," said the MP.

Note the language; it is the little man against the powerful establishment, a hint of conspiracy and, of course, there is the invocation of the "dyslexia industry", a very useful technique if you want to ignore vast piles of evidence and research.

The 'industry' itself is unamused. Dyslexia Action have responded with a sense of weary resignation,

Once again dyslexia seems to be making the headlines for all the wrong reasons. It is frustrating that the focus should be on whether dyslexia exists or not, when there is so much evidence to support that it does.

It is a mistake to mix up dyslexia, a wide spectrum of disorders, with literacy. It makes aspects of literacy harder to acquire, but dyslexics can overcome it with support. I have worked with dyslexic students and colleagues, all highly qualified, but with varied individual needs depending on the specific nature of their disability. I have also seen the damage that is done to people when dyslexia has remained unidentified before we managed to pick it up in adult education and begin remedial action. In my everyday working experience it is very real indeed and its denial risks unnecessary damage to dyslexic individuals.

Stringer's clinching argument is that,

If dyslexia really existed then countries as diverse as Nicaragua and South Korea would not have been able to achieve literacy rates of nearly 100%.

The United Nations Human Development Report for 2007/8 gives Nicaragua an adult literacy rate of 76.7%.

Werewolves

It is the full moon and George Szirtes' Transylvanian heritage is stirring. He is angry. I am not surprised - he has been to a meeting. A meeting about funding.

He wanted to say:

Poetry has been with us since the dawn of time, and it will carry on being with us until we die out. I don't care about your money and your surveys and your evaluations, this is not flower arranging or Disneyland (though flower arranging is an art too) it is a core human instinct and no one should apologise for it or go begging and, furthermore, it's a proud high craft and one of the greet deep pleasures, and I myself am proud, and you neglect poetry at your soul's peril.

But didn't.

Lets do some word substitution:

Adult education has been with us since the dawn of time, and it will carry on being with us until we die out. I don't care about your money and your surveys and your evaluations, this is not flower arranging or Disneyland (though flower arranging is an art and a really popular course too) it is a core human instinct and no one should apologise for it or go begging and, furthermore, it's a proud high craft and one of the greet deep pleasures, and I myself am proud, and you neglect adult education at your soul's peril.

It is the universal plaintive cry of those who care to those who fund.

I had an email the other day from a semi-retired adult educator who is busier than ever, working outside the system with voluntary groups. Adult education survives because it has to, we have to. Learning is what we do and what we are. Yet he also despaired that a national system that opened the door to everyone and anyone is shrinking.

Though they try and kill us off, we survive. We are the undead and should wreak revenge, roaming the night tearing out the uncaring hearts of bureaucrats, chilling the blood of strangers with our howls of revenge. But we don't. Instead, we go to meetings.

Action on adult education

CALL, the Campaigning Alliance for Lifelong Learning, have announced a mass lobby of Parliament for Wednesday February 25th. I would urge anyone who can attend to go. Only limited details are available at the moment, but you can follow the planning for the event on CALL's website.

Sometimes on a Monday

The poet Ruth Padel was on Desert Island Discs this week (repeated on Friday). I didn't know about her connections with Greece. Her last choice of record was Melina Mercouri singing Manos Hadjidakis' song The Boys of Piraeus from the movie Never on a Sunday. This is one view of the film:

In the deployment of the voyeuristic visual economy of the show or backstage musical, modern Greekness is feminized in accordance with the gender stereotypes that determine the articulation of the Hollywood musical's style and structure. As a result, the film depicts Greek ethnocultural specificity as naive carnality and unreflexive pathos.

Padel thought it was evocative and sexy.

Vote Olly

And vote often. The only choice. You know it makes sense.

UPDATE
The result. 1.6%. A triumph.

Garbage

Norm turns to the most vexed political question of all. Rubbish collection.

Doorstep rubbish collections are being scrapped with families being required instead to use huge communal bins in a scheme that might be introduced across the country.

Brighton & Hove City Council will begin installing 3,200-litre communal bins in 500 streets next week – one for every 40 homes. For some residents the bins will be 150 yards away.

In Greece, communal collection is the norm (sorry). I am used to trotting down the lane with my σκουπίδια. It all works pretty well and the bins are cleared on a regular basis. Contrast this to the situation in Salford where a one-person household in a terraced house, with only a small back yard, has to cram three large wheelie bins for recycling into a tiny space, sometimes meaning that it is a struggle to get out of the back door. And if you don't and leave the bins out - a £100 fine or more awaits you under the Environmental Protection Act 1990.

Whilst Norm ponders the practicalities, he should also think of the principles. I am certain Madeleine Bunting will. You can just imagine it, can't you. 'This is an example of the triumph of community over the atomised lifestyles of the individual suffering in the hell of a modern consumer society. The merging of our rubbish is a way in which we can come together in mutual respect and understanding. By collectively disposing of our waste we symbolically cleanse our troubles and unite with all humanity in harmony with nature as we recycle together as one'. Henry Porter, too, will see it as a way fending off the surveillance that will inevitably lead us into a police state. 'Collective solidarity against the tentacles of the state and the defence of our ancient liberties begin with the bins'.

Just as ancient Greece invented democracy, so modern Greece shows us the way again. As long as we can still flush our loo roll down the bog that is.

Please and thank you

We English are so polite, aren't we? Courtesy is seen as a quintessential part of the anodyne national characteristic of Englishness. However it wasn't always so. I spent part of my holiday reading a flawed but hugely entertaining social history, Ben Wilson's Decency and Disorder. These titbits give a flavour of what we used to be like:

'Speaking English' was a French slang term in the eighteenth century for being frank to the point of offensiveness.

And then there is this, derived from an English/French phrase book of the same era,

How could a Briton survive without the French for 'shitten girl', 'short-arse' or 'he is the crackfart of the nation' when he was abroad?

So what happened? Ben Wilson makes the case that we were tamed.

The book paints a picture of a hugely drunken and disorderly working class slowly succumbing to what became known as Victorian Values. It is an over-generalisation. It relies too heavily on some of its sources, notably the reminiscences of Francis Place and the 'Tom and Jerry" fiction of Pierce Egan. It concentrates too much on London, whilst Wilson's brief foray into political economy leaves a lot to be desired. He doesn't make the links between working class life and working class movements and politics, nor does he mention the radical press. At a time when he talks about growing civility, Bristol was in flames as a result of rioting during the reform crisis of the 1830's.

The greatest weakness is the lack of reference to working class intellectual life, Jonathan Rose is not included in the bibliography, leading to a blurring of what was imposed with what was authentic. Yet Wilson is superb on the attitudes of a growing, and recognisably suburban, middle class. He resurrects the activities of the gruesome Society for the Suppression of Vice, points out the sheer awfulness of some Utilitarian thought, looks at the ideology of the Society for the Suppression of Mendicity (James Purnell would be perfectly comfortable in its ranks) and its role in generating ungenerous attitudes towards the poor, together with a range of other grim instruments for the imposition of respectability. These include the cruel press campaigns that destroyed Byron and the actor Edmund Kean and the misuse of the Vagrant Act to suppress popular entertainments and pleasure in general. Then there was the insidious requirement for the appearance, and only the appearance, of decorum for any form of employment or social acceptability - it was the "age of cant". On every page there is another gem.

As a football fan who no longer attends, I was really impressed with Wilson's account of the O.P. campaign. After a fire burnt down the Theatre Royal in Covent Garden in 1808, the rebuilt theatre opened in the following year. It gave an inferior view to those in the cheapest seats and was financed by raised prices and extensive private boxes for the wealthy, thereby hiding them from view. It could be a description of any Premiership football ground in England. In 1809 the audience wouldn't take it. They packed the place night after night, but when the play started it was first greeted by boos and catcalls, then later with rhythmic chanting calling for O.P. - old prices. The management hired prizefighters to break up the demonstrations but the violence failed to deter the protesters. The play became inaudible and irrelevant, the audience was the main entertainment. The protests lasted every night until 1810 when the old prices were restored and most of the private boxes removed.

The most important point that Wilson makes is that respectability was a set of values belonging to the middle class and that its growing influence was a reflection of a new bourgeois ascendancy. Moral reform was not neutral, it was a weapon against both working class and upper class debauchery, though in reality it aped the hypocritical mores of the aristocracy. Wielded against the working class it was a tool for suppression, social control and a system of punishment. It set out to crush the disorderly liberties of "Merry England" in favour of the obedient, sober industriousness desired by employers and evangelical enthusiasts.

What excited me was the realisation that this should provide the context in which we need to read much 18th and 19th Century political economy. Mainstream figures, like Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill, seen against this background, emerge from the shadows as the radicals they were. Smith's advocacy of the economic utility of vice and Mill's arguments on liberty place them firmly in the corner of the working classes against their middle class oppressors, and also, in Mill's case, against his old boyhood tutor, Jeremy Bentham. Then there were the vast array of counter movements, anti-temperance, free love, freethought etc., all fighting against this stifling morality.

Of course this was not the whole story for working class politics. Much of it succumbed to the moral agenda. I have ploughed through a number of Victorian left-wing utopias and they are uniformly depressing. The future world is inevitably inhabited by crosses between the Waltons and the Stepford Wives - blissfully happy, thoroughly moral, all reformed into niceness by the wonders of socialism. Surely the ideal life can't be that boring? Any utopia that doesn't contain a bit of drunken misbehaviour, the odd fractious argument and a good dollop of sin isn't my vision of the 'New Jerusalem'.

The interesting part of this is that there is a clash between one set of working class interests - the movements for self-improvement, popular education, women's rights, etc. - all seeking reform, and others that relished liberty and pleasure and wished to resist control. And that conflict is with us today. In New Labour, itself heavily influenced by the Christian Socialist movement, the moral crusaders can be seen represented in health campaigns against the horrors of binge drinking and obesity, in the 'respect agenda', in criminal justice legislation, and, above all, in welfare reform. There is also the recurring desire to find a way to regulate the Internet. Anyone out there remember that suggestion for a blogger code of conduct? Yep, it came straight from the same stable. Yet there are also the counter influences from the libertarians, relaxed licensing and gambling laws, anti-discrimination, acceptability of different lifestyles and more. The tension has not been resolved.

Wilson tries not to romanticise 18th Century disorderly conduct, after all exploitation of women, arbitrary violence, animal cruelty, venereal disease and alcoholism aren't to be celebrated. However, you know where his real sympathies lie. They are with a working class that is strong enough to be able to fight back against the petty hypocrisies of respectability and the deadly seriousness of the evangelical reformers, to be able to preserve their liberties and pleasures, and to have lots of fun whilst they do so. It is a generous vision and one I am intrinsically attracted to. 'Champagne socialism' was often used as a derogatory term, for me it is an aspiration.

Romance

Ah bless. Those sensitive souls at the Rugby Football Union are big soft (and rich) romantics at heart, they have teamed up with Mills and Boon to produce the RFU International Billionaires series of books.

"They've got all the elements of a quintessential Mills & Boon romance: jet-set locations, hunky alpha male heroes and hot sex, but in a rugby context."

Us league types prefer our sporting literature to be a bit grittier - and a lot better.

Evolution

I am back to a barrage of foul-mouthed abuse from a white van driver for taking too long to pay for my petrol, this was because the bank had put a stop on my card as it had been used, suspiciously, to take money out in Greece.

It is the Darwin bicentenary.

Here is another take on it.



More here

Winter scenes

Time to pack up the computer after a slight wobble in the plastic chair indicated a tiny earth tremor, so a final reminder of what I am leaving behind.

Technology ...

... and the multiplication of needs. Using an unreliable dial-up connection from here makes you realise that the Internet is rapidly becoming unusable without broadband. My reading and writing habits have been in abeyance. Tomorrow I return and the speed of my connection will be back to normal. Scant consolation for the return of reality. As for today, it's raining again.

New Year's Eve

Yesterday I pruned the vine in sleet and hail, the snow line dropped lower and the cold made the Yorkshire coast seem mild. Today, the rain stopped. It was a dry morning, but with low grey clouds and a bleak wind. Down at the front there were waves rolling in and a sense of desolation unique to seaside towns out of season. I drove to Lafkos, the location of the nearest cash machine. Snow lay on the roofs still, the air was colder and the wind sharper. The church bells were tolling for a funeral. Large white flowered wreaths stood by the door. Sharply dressed undertakers lounged around outside smoking, sheltering from the wind.

The road down from Lafkos provides the best views in the area of the peninsula snaking round hugging the sea protectively; it is always breathtaking. And then the clouds began to lift, the snow on Mount Pelion glowed bright and the sky turned blue. Tonight there will be a frost and tomorrow is forecast to bring some welcome sunshine. The world is turning and that a spring and summer will follow is the only certainty.

Friends will be round soon to share a meal and see in the New Year. I will not be sorry to see the end of 2008, a bad year for me. So at midnight when the neighbours step out on to their doorsteps and blast into the air with their shotguns and the patter of pellets on the patio signify, in this part of the world at least, that Persephone is considering her return, alcohol fuelled hope will swell for another year. I shall raise my glass to my friends and to the readers of this blog to wish you all a Happy New Year.

Cold and wet

It has been raining solidly for the past two days. In one sense that is good. After two dry winters in succession, this one has been wet and the ground is soft under foot. Water supplies are being replenished and the trees are drinking deep. It reminds me of the childhood Christmases I used to spend with my uncle in North Wales; cold and wet with damp stone walls, being warmed by open fires, and walking over dramatic hills, covered in ferns that held droplets of moisture, twinkling at their tips. Except this time the hills I look out to are dotted with olive groves and the village gardens are full of citrus trees laden with brightly coloured fruit.

The orange tree on the patio is not an ordinary one. It is a Bergamot. The oil derived from their skins is what is used to flavour Earl Grey tea. They are not for eating raw, the oranges are very bitter and the Greeks use them to make γλικό, spoon sweets of fruit in thick sugary syrup. They will boil the oranges three times, discarding the water, to take away the sharpness.

However, we English like the combination of bitter and sweet and Bergamot make one of the glories of our cuisine, a quite magnificent marmalade, heady with smoky Earl Grey flavour and deliciously tangy as an acidic sharpness cuts through the sugar.

So today we have been picking oranges and making marmalade and the whole house is aromatic with the unique citrus smell of Bergamot. It is very easy to do.

Each batch takes a dozen large oranges. You peel them and then squeeze the juice into a large pan. The pips and pith are bundled in muslin and hang in the liquid as it cooks. Shred the skins to taste, I like mine chunky. Then simmer for around two hours in three litres of water.

When they are soft you add a kilo of sugar and boil until the liquid reaches setting point and then you decant it into jars to set, topped with a circle of greaseproof paper.

Now comes the difficult bit; you have to wait before you can eat it. Ah, but when you do … it might even inspire me to post something serious.

Bah humbug

A Happy Christmas to all who read this blog, including any festively challenged friends, and greetings to all the people I forgot to send cards to.

Ho, ho, ho – or, as they say in Greece, χο, χο, χο

Nothing

Yesterday the snow came to the mountains leaving the slopes of Mount Pelion with patches of white. The day was bright, the sun warm, but with a piercing cold wind.

Great thoughts will have to wait a little longer and you will have to make do with pictures.

The answer ...

… is a lemon. More precisely, the first lemons on the tree I planted. I have an absurd sense of pride and squeezing one to dress the lettuce salad was a symbolic moment of achievement. And that is the extent of today's great thoughts on the condition of the world.

It is a cold wet day, snow is forecast, but I expect it will only fall in the mountains. Travelling through Athens on a bus after another day of protests you could see precisely nothing. No demonstrators, no banners, simply a big city getting on with everything that big cities do; people travelling to work, opening shops, clearing rubbish, normal humdrum things. And here in the countryside all is quiet, even the cockerel is hiding from the rain that drips from the skeletal frame of the klimataria and the bare sticks that were a vine in summer.

With the brain in a state of suspended animation, it is time to retreat to the olive wood log fire.

The great escape

Off to Greece this evening. Subsequent posting may be light.









Καλές Υιορτές !

Magic and reality

Apparently Norm goes mad in his attic at regular intervals. It is all down to magical thinking.

The capacity to hold rational thoughts alongside irrational intuitions is part of the mind's design. Even if we deny belief in the supernatural - in ghosts, say, or astrology - we are all inclined towards magical thinking and superstition. It's a frame of mind that one direction opens out to a dream world of myth and imagination and the other leads to practical creativity in the arts and sciences. The dark side is mental illness.

So what is this example? Peter Singer writes,

Throughout his tenure as South Africa's president, Thabo Mbeki rejected the scientific consensus that Aids is caused by a virus, HIV, and that anti-retroviral drugs can save the lives of people who test positive for it. Instead, he embraced the views of a small group of dissident scientists who suggested other causes for Aids.

Mbeki stubbornly continued to embrace this position even as the evidence against it became overwhelming.

This delusion is now estimated to have resulted in 365,000 premature deaths.

And there are so many more. Here's Charlie Brooker from a while back.

It's hard enough to successfully operate a video shop with a staff of three, for Christ's sake, let alone slaughter thousands and convince the world someone else was to blame.

That's just one broad objection to all the bullshit theories. But try suggesting it to someone in the midst of a 9/11 fairytale reverie, and they'll pull a face and say, "Yeah, but ... " and start banging on about some easily misinterpreted detail that "makes you think" (when it doesn't) or "contradicts the official story" (when you misinterpret it). Like nutbag creationists, they fixate on thinly spread, cherry-picked nuggets of "evidence" and ignore the thundering mass of data pointing the other way.

Then there was George Monbiot only last week.

In his fascinating book Carbon Detox, George Marshall argues that people are not persuaded by information. Our views are formed by the views of the people with whom we mix. Of the narratives that might penetrate these circles, we are more likely to listen to those that offer us some reward. A story that tells us that the world is cooking and that we'll have to make sacrifices for the sake of future generations is less likely to be accepted than the more rewarding idea that climate change is a conspiracy hatched by scheming governments and venal scientists, and that strong, independent-minded people should unite to defend their freedoms.

Anthony Cox joins in the debunking too.

Ian Hislop was interviewed by Radio 5 Live’s Simon Mayo on Friday. In a discussion about the Eye’s campaigning journalism Mayo brought up the Eye’s coverage of MMR vaccine. The Eye published a special edition about MMR in May of 2002 subtitled “The story so far: a comprehensive review of the MMR vaccination/autism controversy”. It was an appalling piece of scare-mongering journalism ... Here are the views of David Elliman and Helen Bedford ...

...Understandably, much space is given to the harrowing accounts of parents who believe that the triple vaccine caused their child’s autism. However, the overwhelming evidence suggesting no link between the vaccine and autism and bowel problems is either not mentioned or dismissed out of hand, while the suggestion of a link is given uncritical prominence.

Some of these notions simply produce hot air and hours of harmless fun for obsessive bloggers, some, like Mbeki's, do real damage to real people. And we are all prone to it, however rational we may think ourselves to be.

Here's Singer again, talking much sense:

The lessons of this story are applicable wherever science is ignored in the formulation of public policy. This does not mean that a majority of scientists is always right. The history of science clearly shows the contrary. Scientists are human and can be mistaken. They, like other humans, can be influenced by a herd mentality, and a fear of being marginalised. The culpable failure, especially when lives are at stake, is not to disagree with scientists, but to reject science as a method of inquiry.

Now I must get one of these games of patience out otherwise tomorrow will go badly. If I move that red eight ...

Crisis and change

The protests in Greece are not over. English language Greek blogs make for some interesting reading at the moment. In Thessaloniki, Teacher Dude posts some of his impressive photojournalism as well as his thoughts, whilst My Big Fat Greek Life and Surviving Athens have contrasting views on the riots. In the mainstream media there were two longer commentaries this weekend, Helena Smith in the Observer and Maria Margaronis' eloquent piece in the Guardian, where she wrote,

The teenagers and twenty-somethings who have come close to toppling the Greek government are not the marginalised: this is no replay of the riots that convulsed Paris in 2005. Many are sons and daughters of the middle classes, shocked at the killing of one of their own, disgusted with the government's incompetence and corruption, enraged by the broken promises of the education system, scared at the prospect of having to work still harder than their exhausted parents.

Much of this commentary is specifically about Greece, but it also illustrates something much more generic. The economic model that has been the elite consensus for around thirty years is collapsing. The experiment in privatisation, marketisation and deregulation that had replaced the post-war social democratic settlement is in crisis.

The shock of the credit crunch has focused minds and the media on the nature of unregulated finance, but, arguably, the social consequences of the change in political economy have been felt for far longer. Of course it was the poorest who were the first to be hit.

In the developing world, public provision was drastically diminished by the effects of Structural Adjustment Packages in the wake of the world debt crisis. In this country, the loss of employment and the erosion of the welfare state had a devastating impact on communities locked in a downward spiral. Nick Davies wrote in Dark Heart, his 1997 book of social reportage, about the Hyde Park area in Leeds:

And yet, repeatedly, the people of Hyde Park told the City Council team that they wanted to improve themselves. Among the workless, 86.5 per cent said that the wanted to go back to school or college. Lone parents had the same message: 69.7 per cent of them wanted more education. But few of them obtained it. They had no one to look after their children, they lacked the essential qualifications, some of them could not read or write, many of them could not afford it or could not find college places. So, they were stuck. The welfare state that might once have helped them was no longer able to do so.

It had retreated like an exhausted mother, too tired to offer her children anything but indifference.

I have always appreciated that passage as it gives the lie to the notion that the under-representation of working class people in education is due solely to their 'low aspirations' rather than the structural failings of our public services.

However, apparently these are middle class protests. How can a middle class that has prospered be discontented? Here the answer is generational. For the past few years there has been the unedifying sound of privileged people pulling ladders up behind them. For instance, in higher education, ministers who owe their position to full grants and, often, adult education, have been busy ensuring that those benefits are not extended to their children or grandchildren in order to avoid questioning their faith in low personal taxation.

There certainly is a belief that increased public provision is both desirable and possible, but also one that it is unaffordable unless partly funded through greater productivity (doing more with less) and that grim euphemism, efficiency gains. The result in higher education has been rising staff-student ratios and pressure on staff recruitment; it is now not just a middle class profession, but also a very middle aged one. Ally this to the costly introduction of managerial models throughout the public sector and the squeeze is on.

In post-school education, the result has been a mantra about transferring the costs of education directly to the beneficiaries through higher fees and a system of loans. This amounts to a poll tax on the student. Whatever the outcome of your degree - social worker or merchant banker - you pay the same. This has been justified by dubious theories, such as 'the knowledge economy', or by distinctly dodgy statistics about the average earnings premium a graduate can expect. The consequence of such thinking is that, at all levels, education is now being mainly seen in instrumental and economic terms.

So what if the expected benefit never emerges? What happens when people who have invested heavily in the degree that should be the passport to gainful employment end up out of work or in menial, low paid and temporary jobs? The other benefits of education hardly matter when all that it has been sold on is a passport to wealth rather than wisdom. And, of course, UK universities have been subsidising themselves with the higher fees of overseas students, many of them Greek, paying for degrees that may have little or no market value.

Yet this is not all. One of the drivers of neo-liberalism has been the effective marketing of a particular type of materialism. What if people stop wanting it? Say they want a different type of prosperity instead, one based on greater economic security and on collective goods. Margaronis again,

Instead of education, values and understanding, the young are being sold an aspirational "lifestyle" they can't afford, which many of them don't want.

The market may be deciding against the market.

I have no doubt that the demand for clever, useful technology and nice clothes will continue, consumerism is not dead, nor do I think that there is any desire for a lessening of personal liberty. Instead, patterns of demand may change, and none more so than in political choice, the preferred ideas of political economy. To the incomprehension of mainstream leaders, popular solutions to the ongoing crisis may well be found in libertarian forms of social democracy or even, heaven forbid, democratic socialism. And, if so, we may see more than a struggle for the restoration of middle class privilege, instead this could be the starting point for the emergence of a more egalitarian polity.

A cultural icon

The actress Kathy Staff has died. She played one of those fictional characters whose name has passed into popular usage. When I had a problem with my leg earlier this year the bandage slipped and wrinkled. The nurse glanced at it and said, "look at that Nora Batty".

A symbol of wrinkled stockings and indomitable northern womanhood, Nora Batty was straight from the northern comic tradition, an affectionate parody of a ferocious domestic matriarch. Who needs glamour?

Light and dark

To the lasting horror of the critics, the wonderfully naff Mamma Mia, is now the biggest selling DVD of all time. I can understand the charms, especially given the backdrop of the warm, sunny Greek islands. However, I watched another DVD last night, also filmed in Greece. It wasn't the same.

The Weeping Meadow is the first in a planned trilogy of films by Theo Angelopoulos and is an unremitting tragedy, a howl of grief at the brutalities of the first half of the Twentieth Century. Its backdrop is the plains of Northern Greece, all scenes were filmed in winter, and deals with the fate of Greek exiles who fled from Odessa in 1919. It is visually stunning and atmospheric, and its themes are both epic and intimate. I was uncomfortable with its unremitting bleakness, a frame of mind reflected by the absence of spring or summer, though it is a fine piece of work with a memorable score by Eleni Karaindrou.

Angelopoulos was consciously exploring the experience of his mother's generation, one that spanned most of the Twentieth Century. Modern Greek history is a troubled one of exile, dispossession, civil war, invasion and dictatorship before the achievement of democracy. Sometimes when I walk through the village where my house is, I wonder at the lives of the old people sitting together and gossiping on their chairs dragged out of their houses on to the street. If there is a political message to The Weeping Meadow it is that the gains of post-war western democracy are not to be lightly dismissed but to be protected and built upon. And perhaps us western baby boomers should be a little more aware of our historical privilege and the good fortune of our birth.

1834 and all that

The passing of the New Poor Law Amendment Act did more to sour the hearts of the labouring population, than did the privations consequent on all the actual poverty of the land. Rightly, or wrongly, may be a subject of discussion, but the fact is undeniable, that the labourers of England believed that the new poor law was a law to punish poverty; and the effects of that belief were, to sap the loyalty of the working men, to make them dislike the country of their birth, to brood over their wrongs, to cherish feelings of revenge, and to hate the rich of the land.

Samuel Kydd - shoemaker in the 1830's writing in1857.

James Purnell has announced his new welfare reform white paper. The Tories describe the proposals as "almost identical" to their own.

Unveiling the plans in the Commons, Purnell said that most people on incapacity benefit would be required to attend job interviews and the unemployed would be expected to do four weeks' full-time activity after a year out of work. Pilot schemes would require them to work full time for their benefits after two years.

(Surely some mistake here, if they are working full-time aren't they wages not benefits and why aren't they going to be paid the minimum wage?)

Come back less eligibility, all is forgiven.

On the riots

However much I love being in Greece, I am an outsider and the riots only betray my ignorance. The crisis continues and reading some of the reporting and comment now coming out of the country I am struck by two predominant sentiments. One is the general sense of horror and despair at the events, the other is anger, in particular at the current Nea Dimokratia government, but also at the state of Greek politics in general.

In the mainstream media, Helena Smith seems to captures the mood well, whilst the blogosphere has produced this passionate piece of angst from Hope Dies Last. On Comment is Free, the Liberal Democrat, Antonis Papasolomontos, writes harshly about the rioters, making the observation that, "The majority of Greeks, whatever their grievances, are welcoming, kind and passionate people, hugely proud of their history and of their status as Europeans", a view I can endorse. However, it sits very uneasily with his cod sociological observation that the blame for the disurbances lie in "the Greeks' cultural psyche, their attraction to collective disobedience", as if conformity and dutiful submission to authority are necessarily democratic virtues and their converse an automatic trigger for violence. That there might be some rationality to "disobedience" is suggested by this Economist article from September about the failings of the Karamanlis government.

I don't know enough to comment other than to make a general observation that there seems to be a parallel with Britain in the 1980's when discontent about urban policing spilled out in localised rioting across the country. That rioting took place in the context of a right wing government dismantling a social and economic settlement that was the product of an earlier social democratic consensus, leading to increasing unemployment. Recent events have indicated that certain aspects of that restructure were mistaken and policy reversals are now taking place. Just perhaps, this might throw a light on the current Greek experience as well.

UPDATE

As if on cue,

A mile away, a 27-year-old waitress had joined a peaceful protest outside the parliament building. Declining to be named, she told me she had been demonstrating since the trouble began because she was "fed up with life here".

"I have two degrees but I am a waitress. There is no opportunity for young people here any more but I don't think this is confined to Greece. The economic situation leaves a lot of young people across Europe feeling bleak and hopeless."

The case for a renewed European social democratic settlement in the wake of the banking crisis is becoming compelling. And in a nod to Shuggy,

"The weather is changing. It's getting colder. That will finish it sooner than the police can," she said

See here too. And here (via)

UPDATE 2

Kostas Gemenis writes in Open Democracy

What it is all about

Just back home, slightly the worse for wear, from a lovely night out for a curry and drinks with wonderful work colleagues. The restaurant was boisterous with a Christmas do for the staff of The Sandpiper, a new pub in Welton, East Yorkshire. The landlord boomed out that he was giving out awards, one was a bottle of sparkling wine. The winners? The other customers that had to put up with them tonight - us. Nice.

Then we got our taxi home, driven by a Romanian. He wanted to study at the University but was told that his impeccable English wasn't quite good enough and he was advised to do more study and apply again. We gave him all the right contacts (i.e. me) to get him on adult education courses in January. He seemed thrilled. I hope he emails and we can get him going on something good.

One of my friend's sayings when she is down is, "what's it all about?". And this is what it's all about. A bit of generosity, support, appreciation and a hand up to anyone we can give it to. It might not seem much, but it can make someone's day, or, perhaps, as with our taxi driver, change their lives. It goes under many names, decency will do for now.

I'm dreaming of ...

... a peaceful Christmas.

Off to Greece in a couple of weeks for Christmas. It could be an interesting trip. Ian Bone is certainly getting excited.

Me? I am getting old. I am looking forward to this instead.

Update:
Just heard that there is a lot of destruction around Syntagma with shops and banks on fire and looting going on. Worrying.

Contention and peace

It is time for me to delve into my memories again, this time about Israel/Palestine. I am supportive of Israel and vehement in my opposition to anti-Semitism, including its current murderous manifestation in fascistic Islamist movements and their gruesome western apologists. Yet support for Israel should not result in the neglect of the Palestinian people's experience, of their rights and their own unique national history. And that recent history is one of dispossession.

There is not space here to discuss the development of Zionism and the founding of the State of Israel, but the displacement and dispossession of one people was the consequence of the national liberation of another, a liberation that took place under the shadow of genocide. Hanging over the whole conflict has been a fundamental failure. The United Nations promised partition into an Arab and Israeli state. The plan was not enforced and a combination of great power diplomacy and Arab regional ambitions meant that no Palestinian state was created. It is 60 years overdue.

It is now over twenty years since I was a volunteer English teacher in the Occupied Territories. I wasn't there for long but what I saw and heard then are some of my most vivid memories. There were the families I met where old men showed me their treasured deeds and the keys to the houses they had fled, kept in the main room as shrines to the dream of return, there were the families I visited in the ramshackle camps and was treated to overwhelming Arab hospitality by people living in shocking poverty, and there were the conversations, some chilling – "we need another Hitler to rid us of the Jews"; one, with a single man suspiciously living in a remote location, "all who arrived before 1918 can stay, the rest must go"; another family chorused, "six million were never killed" – some guilt inducing – "you take your photographs, but what do you bring us?" – the majority though were all the same – "there must be two states living in peace with good relations". It is the opportunity that has yet to be grasped and it is still there even though conditions have deteriorated further.

I remember too visiting the universities and the self-help projects, the women's education centres, the craft schemes, all, ironically, allowed to grow under the occupation when Palestinian education and development had been stifled by the Jordanians. And there were new opportunities that some people had never known, for instance I remember guiding the blind woman who was studying to be a lawyer back to the bus stop. I also remember the tear gas, the roadblocks and the harassment. I remember, too, running when the shooting was about to start and of the old woman in traditional Palestinian dress, a load on her head, walking deliberately, without changing her slow pace, through a cloud of tear gas and emerging unmoved from the other side, forcing an army jeep to swerve.

Then there was the vegetable market in Ramallah, a huge covered barn of a place, packed with stalls. There were my favourite sellers. One was 'cucumber man'. I taught him the English for cucumber whilst he tried to teach me the Arabic. Every time I walked in he would leap out from behind his stall with his permanent three-day stubble and toothless grin and shout "cucumbeeerrr!!!", brandishing one wildly above his head. The other was the fig seller. The first time I bought off him he glared at me – " British or American"? "British". "Good", he shouted adding an extra handful of fruit to my bag, " the British are our friends. Americans …", he turned his head and spat expressively on the ground, a respectable distance from my feet.

And it was in the vegetable market you saw the settlers. They were able to move more freely in those pre-intifada days and they were unmistakable, dressed in shorts with machine guns slung over their shoulders, usually sporting a New York accent. They were scary and bitterly resented. They would happily use the guns too, just as the local kids would throw rocks at their cars after they had left the city and were on the open road. They were not Hebron settlers though.

Hebron has more than religious significance for both peoples. It is a symbol of the cycles of violence that remain unbroken. In 1929 it was the scene of a massacre. Sixty-seven Jews were murdered by Arab mobs. It was an old community, without connection to the new immigration that started in 1881 and had intensified after the First World War following the Balfour Declaration. It was an easy target. The survivors were expelled cruelly; the historic Jewish presence was no more.

When Hebron fell under Israeli occupation in 1967 and the settler movement began, the restitution of the Jewish community was an obvious and deeply symbolic act. In different times it could have been a symbol of reconciliation; instead it was a provocation. The community was not the same as the one that had been murdered and removed, but consisted of the ultra-right. The constant security that had to be provided for the settlers made life ever more difficult for the Palestinian inhabitants. And the settlements spawned their own massacre too. They were the home of Baruch Goldstein.

Now they are in the news again, some activists are being removed from an illegally occupied house. Will sent me this excellent post by Aryeh Cohen – and make sure you watch the video clips.

Language is often a casualty of tyranny and terror. The house in Hebron which bears a sign which reads “God gave Israel to the Jews” is called the “House of Peace” by the Jewish community of Hebron.

The website of the Jewish community of Hebron has videotapes of the forced evacuation of the house which most of the media calls the “house of contention” and they call the house of peace. The footage is fascinating, in the way that a car wreck is fascinating. Sometime around two and a half minutes into the first clip, someone starts calling the Israeli soldiers “Nazis”. About a minute later somebody calls them “an occupying army.” The settlers wail and scream and curse the soldiers for forcibly evicting them from their homes. Their homes of a day, a week, several months. They run into the power of the IDF with the hubris of those who know that they won’t really be harmed. This is not the way the IDF evacuates Palestinians. … When the IDF evacuates Palestinians and destroys their homes, the rifles are cocked, the safeties are off and fingers are on the triggers. The Palestinians are marched out of their homes in their underwear and their homes are bulldozed. Palestinians don’t get to scream at the IDF face to face, as the Judaists from Hebron do.

The comparison is telling, the self-pity of the privileged against the fear of the occupied - and of the occupiers. But that is not the only point. The settlers, after putting up that show, can give up their ideological struggle and make a life anywhere in Israel or they can continue their protected existence as outriders for an aggressive, rightist, religious nationalism. The Palestinians have nowhere.

I keep repeating the following almost as a mantra whenever I am asked for my views. To be pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli is not a contradiction. There is an identity of interest in a viable two state solution and a breaking of the cycles of war, violence and oppression. It is what the bulk of the people want on both sides. It is what the irridentist nationalists on both sides oppose and will do all they can to wreck.

This solution has been a possibility since 1948. It needs to be grasped. Sixty years is too long. Only then can the long, slow process of national reconciliation begin.

Peace in our time

After the carnage comes the solidarity as peace marches and vigils take place in Mumbai to reject terrorism. It seems to be a good time to post some personal reflections on the ambiguity of peace movements and peace politics.

In the 1980's I did a part-time MA in Peace Studies at Bradford University. The choice of course was down to sheer opportunism, it was about keeping a temporary job I had been lucky enough to get. It wasn't a bad option in the end, the degree was stimulating and well-taught. It also brought me into touch with peace activists. I felt that they fell into three broad categories.

The first were what I would call hard pacifists and believers in non-violence. They rejected war as inherently inhuman and wished to build non-violence as an alternative form of political action, believing in its power and potential. They asked difficult and important questions, had no illusions about what they faced, were not apologists and many of them worked in conflict mediation, community development or non-violent resistance, sometimes in areas of considerable danger. They had my respect even if, ultimately, I couldn't share their faith.

Secondly, there were the ideologists. There was a strong feminist element who associated war solely with patriarchy, though the majority were drawn from the Guardian reading classes. The intellectual contortions the Guardianistas went through to explain the innocence of Stalinism were something to behold. They were hideously certain. Whatever it was, it was America's fault. The arguments about this regressive form of reactionary 'leftism' have been well-rehearsed over the last few years and there is no need to go into them yet again here. These people are the ones who now cleave to 'anti-imperialism' and, even in the wake of last week's horrors, some still creep out of the woodwork.

Finally, there were the monomaniacs. Nice, kind, respectable people for whom all that mattered was 'Peace'. No details, just 'Peace'. What was that 'Peace'? It seemed to be rooted in their own egoism, an outcrop of their peaceful nature. Despite being on a highly academic course they had a profound anti-intellectualism. Peace was something inherent, not something to be studied, analysed and thought about. Self confident, self-righteous and often embarrassingly patronising, they were good-hearted and profoundly wrong. At heart, their commitment seemed to be an emanation of a deadly combination of wishful thinking with liberal guilt and fear. 'If we stop being beastly to these nice people then they won't harm us. After all, they are not nearly as horrid as people say'. They are the people who are taken in by vile regimes and who swallow the sophistry whole, whilst political prisoners are tortured out of sight.

The Professor during my time there, James O'Connell, liked to quote Gerard Manley Hopkins:

When will you ever, Peace, wild wooddove, shy wings shut,
Your round me roaming end, and under be my boughs?
When, when, Peace, will you, Peace? I’ll not play hypocrite
To own my heart: I yield you do come sometimes; but
That piecemeal peace is poor peace. What pure peace allow
Alarms of wars, the daunting wars, the death of it?

O surely, reaving Peace, my Lord should leave in lieu
Some good! And so he does leave Patience exquisite,
That plumes to Peace thereafter. And when Peace here does house
He comes with work to do, he does not come to coo
He comes to brood and sit.

"He comes with work to do" and it is hard work too. There is an untold history in many conflicts of the work of the non-violent activists, of mediators, and negotiators trying to break cycles of violence. Amidst the greatest of horrors there are courageous humanitarian acts that saved countless individual lives. Outside the ranks of the committed, there are other heroes too, compelled by who knows what, to work hard for the common good; teachers, medics, trade unionists, journalists, human rights workers, builders and engineers. They are the creators of a peaceful civil order, they are the workers for social justice, without which it is a poor peace indeed. And this is the moment when an absolute pacifism fails, for all its supposed morality.

When faced with something as malignant as a fascistic movement in power, with its celebration of sadism, most peace making activity ceases. Individual resistance may keep hope alive, but unless harnessed to a force capable of defeating a tyranny, it will be a single flame in the night. There was a common, glib one-liner that did the rounds some years ago - 'fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity'. It is trite and utterly untrue. Not to resist evil is a sure way of ensuring that it remains undisturbed and murderously destructive of human welfare. Troops can be workers for peace too. This does not mean that violence is a perpetual good or an eternally liberating force, it is utterly dependent on the situation in which it is used and the cause for which it is deployed. Hence the need for hard questions.

The rest of my activists are hard at work at the moment too. One lot will be inventing tortuous arguments about how objectively it is all the fault of the USA or relapsing into the spurious complexity of conspiracy. The others will be dreaming their fluffy pink dreams of cooing doves as they sit at the feet of bloody dictators, gazing up with admiring benevolence, hoping for that piecemeal peace. And in doing so, both will betray the real workers for peace, the fighters for peace, and all our patient hopes for a peaceful world. Given power, they are dangerous.

Delight

About time someone said it:

On meeting Cameron, Obama was, according to diplomatic sources, "distinctly unimpressed", contrary to some reports (excitedly spun by the Conservatives) which suggested that the two men had formed an instant "bond". Instead, I have been told, Obama exclaimed of Cameron after their meeting: "What a lightweight!"

Named that Tory in one.

And now see Olly as well

Gleefully nicked from Tom Freeman

Democratiya 15

The central struggle in Afghanistan is not the war with 'the Taliban.' It is a struggle against poverty, illiteracy, and slavery. It's a struggle against an Islamic variation of all the totalitarian, xenophobic, obscurantist and misogynist currents that it has been the historic mission of the left to fight and to defeat.

Terry Glavin in the latest Democratiya. Amongst the rest, Peter Tatchell writes admiringly of Edward Carpenter (one of the best known of those around the late 19th century radical movement, though, to my mind, not the most interesting) and Eric Lee argues for the centrality of trade unionism to the new American Presidency.

Odetta

One of the great voices of the Civil Rights Movement has died.



UPDATE
Read Jude Rogers here and the performance the article refers to is here.

New or old?

Anthony Giddens thinks that the response to the financial crisis does not mean that the New Labour project is dead.

This is odd. In his mercifully short book, The Third Way, Giddens wrote earlier that the reason for the need to 'modernise' social democracy was that,

...the left, of course, has always been linked to socialism and, at least as a system of economic management, socialism is no more.

Now, it seems that he is saying that it is the prevailing neo-liberal consensus on political economy which is finished:

The world won't be the same again - the period of deregulation, involving minimal governmental oversight of economic affairs, is over. We are into new territory.

Doesn't this mean that the intellectual foundations of the 'project' have shifted towards a different model of social democracy? To be fair to Giddens, he always did talk of the need to regulate financial markets, however, surely the key to New Labour was the acceptance of, and adaptation to, the Thatcherite settlement.

In one sense though Giddens is right. Those writing New Labour's obituaries are overlooking the continuing trajectory of social policy and an undiminished enthusiasm for the marketisation of public services. For those of us who were never Blairites, the fight is still on. Changing economic policies have yet to produce a serious rethink of the analysis that underpinned 'modernisation'.

Whatever, Giddens has made sure that he will always be on the right side of history. If you define New Labour, as he does, simply as "being prepared to think afresh and innovate", then anything and everything is, and will forever be, New Labour. This vagueness will not do. Politics cannot be simply defined as the practice of novelty. Instead it is rooted in different understandings of both what is and what should be. I think that my innovations may be somewhat different to his and that the next election may not simply depend on the effectivenes or otherwise of the rescue of the banks.