Last night I went to a joint poetry reading in our fine Arena Theatre, by my colleague (and PhD supervisor many years ago) Rosie Miles and Liz Berry, who has won lots of prizes and the praise – as Rosie pointed out – of both the Morning Star and the Daily Mail. You can buy Rosie's beautifully designed pamphlet Cuts direct from the publisher here and Liz's collection Black Country (live, her pronounced Dudley accent adds an extra layer of poetic sound to the words on the page) from all good book shops and probably lots of nasty tax-evading bad ones too. Here she is reading at the John Rylands Library:
Despite having a stinking cold which made leave early, missing most of Liz's set, it was a really good evening. Seriously good poetry, and an appreciative crowd. Congratulations to the one English literature student who made it to the event.
I took some photos (the rest are here: click on these ones for enlarged ones):
The book jacket made for Rosie as part of an art project
So one of the big announcements from government is that TV shows may now be vetted in advance to make sure nobody says anything subversive. Presumably some retired spooks now working for Serco, Atos et al. ('This office will require the whole time of not a few overseers, and those no vulgar men…we may easily foresee what kind of licencers we are to expect hereafter, either ignorant, imperious, and remisse, or basely pecuniary') will be contracted to watch everything about to be shown in case uncomfortable opinions are expressed. Not all uncomfortable opinions mind, just 'extremist' ones. What does 'extremist' cover? Well put it like this: Ayn Rand's descendants won't have to worry much. We're talking about extremists with brown skin and non-Christian views. For now. Then it'll be animal rights activists. After that, trades unionists. And after that, who knows?
We've been here before. From 1988-94, after a long period in which Northern Ireland broadcast material was banned in various legitimate and illegitimate ways, the Conservative Government decided that Sinn Féin – a legal political party which contested elections in Northern Ireland – was 'extremist' and should be denied the oxygen of publicity. Having failed to ban it, they hit on the wheeze of forcing broadcasters to dub their spokesmen's voices: you could hear their exact words, and see their mouths move, but not hear their actual voices: those were provided by actors (except during election campaigns). I know this sounds like the policy of someone on all the drugs but it really happened. If I'd been in charge of the news I'd have trolled the government royally by dubbing Gerry Adams with a Margaret Thatcher impersonator (or more subtly, a Gerry Adams impersonator) but they lacked the gumption.
which led to Chris Morris and Steve Coogan's parody (thanks to Andrew Bailey / @scopperil for reminding me of it):
It wasn't just news either - documentaries, dramas and even a Pogues song about the (innocent) Birmingham Six was banned because it expressed 'general disagreement with the way in which the British government responds to, and the courts deal with, the terrorist threat in the UK'. That's right, disagreement.
Fast forward twenty years and here we are again: a politician proclaiming 'British values' of (as usual) fair play etc. etc. etc. while announcing the kind of powers usually associated with the most authoritarian regimes, as even Tory MP Sajid Javid asserted.
It may not surprise you to learn that we've been here before: but not on such a scale since, um, 1643. That's right: Theresa May's big plan to silence 'extremists' is a re-hash of the Licensing Order, which the Commonwealth of Britain brought in once it realised that those old monarchs were onto something back in the day. Beset by Diggers, Levellers, Ranters, Fifth Monarchists Quakers and others on the left, and by Royalists on the right, all printing Broadsides in secret, Cromwell's government decided that the stability of the state depended on the ability to pre-authorise newspapers. Instead of publishing what you wanted and then facing the wrath of the courts afterwards, you were meant to hand in your draft for the government to approve.
Whereas divers good Orders have bin lately made by both Houses of Parliament, for suppressing the great late abuses and frequent disorders in Printing many false forged, scandalous, seditious, libellous, and unlicensed Papers, Pamphlets, and Books to the great defamation of Religion and government. Which orders (notwithstanding the diligence of the Company of Stationers, to put them in full execution) have taken little or no effect…
It is therefore Ordered by the Lords and Commons in Parliament, That no Order or Declaration of both, or either House of Parliament shall be printed by any, but by order of one or both the said Houses: Nor other Book, Pamphlet, paper, nor part of any such Book, Pamphlet, or paper, shall from henceforth be printed, bound, stitched or put to sale by any person or persons whatsoever, unlesse the same be first approved of and licensed under the hands of such person or persons as both, or either of the said Houses shall appoint for the licensing of the same, and entred in the Register Book of the Company of Stationers, according to Ancient custom, and the Printer therof to put his name thereto.
The Guardian might recognise too some of the thinking behind the Order, having had its computers smashed up by MI5 (which appears not to know about cloud computing):
the Gentleman Usher of the House of Peers, the Sergeant of the Commons House and their deputies, together with the persons formerly appointed by the Committee of the House of Commons for Examinations, are hereby Authorized and required, from time to time, to make diligent search in all places where they shall think meete, for all unlicensed Printing Presses, and all Presses any way imployed in the printing of scandalous or un licensed Papers, Pamphlets, Books, or any Copies of Books belonging to the said Company, or any members thereof, without their approbation and consents, and to seize and carry away such printing Presses Letters, together with the Nut, Spindle, and other materialls of every such irregular Printer, which they find so misimployed, unto the Common Hall of said Company, there to be defaced and made unserviceable according to Ancient Custom
Poet and high-ranking government functionary John Milton was not impressed. No liberal, he nevertheless felt that true freedom resided in the full expression of all views (except perhaps those of Catholics because Catholicism is itself tyrannical) as long as the publishers and authors were ready to face legal trial, torture and/or execution afterwards. All this is expressed in Areopagitica (1644):
A
SPEECH
OF
Mr. JOHN MILTON
For the Liberty of UNLICENC'D PRINTING, To the PARLAMENT of ENGLAND.
No society is perfect, he argues, and a society which suppresses opposition is one which can never be reformed:
For this is not the liberty which wee can hope, that no grievance ever should arise in the Commonwealth, that let no man in this World expect; but when complaints are freely heard, deeply consider'd and speedily reform'd, then is the utmost bound of civill liberty attain'd, that wise men looke for.
There's more we can learn, he says, from the circulation of ideas, even if they're wrong (clearly an early dialectician, our John): a licensing scheme will only reinforce what's already thought to be true
it will be primely to the discouragement of all learning, and the stop of Truth, not only by disexercising and blunting our abilities in what we know already, but by hindring and cropping the discovery that might bee yet further made both in religious and civill Wisdome.
unlesse warinesse be us'd, as good almost kill a Man as kill a good Book; who kills a Man kills a reasonable creature, Gods Image; but hee who destroyes a good Booke, kills reason it selfe, kills the Image of God, as it were in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the Earth; but a good Booke is the pretious life-blood of a master spirit, imbalm'd and treasur'd up on purpose to a life beyond life.
Milton's keen to demonstrate that while he opposes Licencing, he's no fan of 'licence' either, and takes the reader on a learned tour of Classical censorship. Philosophers weren't received particularly well by the Greeks and Romans at times, he says, though the Romans were quite happy for saucy material like Catullus's poems to circulate. While poets might have been banished, he says,
Books were neither banisht nor call'd in.
…at least until the Republic became the Empire as you Star Wars fans will understand. Under early Christian rule, censorship was only fitful: a lot of the time books were denounced as heretical but there were few attempts at censorship or proscription until the Popes achieved tyrannical status:
engrossing what they pleas'd of Politicall rule into their owne hands, extended their dominion over mens eyes, as they had before over their judgements, burning and prohibiting to be read, what they fancied not
until eventually
their last invention was to ordain that no Book, pamphlet, or paper should be Printed (as if St. Peter had bequeath'd them the keys of the Presse also out of Paradise) unlesse it were approv'd and licenc't under the hands of 2 or 3 glutton Friers.
Like the Popes and Bishops, Theresa May no doubt feels that censorship isn't a problem as long as it's conducted for the right purpose: I read recently of a new government in the 1970s bringing back censorship. Challenged about it, the minister replied that under the old regime, bad people were condemning good books for bad reasons: under the new government, good people were condemning bad books for good reasons. Milton was way ahead of them.
But some will say, What though the inventors were bad, the thing for all that may be good? It may be so… I am of those who beleeve, it will be a harder alchymy then Lullius ever knew, to sublimat any good use out of such an invention.
Milton then launches into a long and learned defence of reading books in general, drawing mostly on the early Church Fathers. St Paul, he said, would quote from the heathen Greek poets, whereas Julian the Apostate banned Christians from reading non-Christian texts. In modern terms, it's the equivalent of May telling us that hearing the arguments of those we fear or disagree with will hurt us. It assumes that only people like us have access to truth, and yet we're so weak that just being exposed to falsehood will destroy society as we know it.
In fact, says John, banning the works of the Greeks just made the Christians dumber and more vulnerable:
So great an injury they then held it to be depriv'd of Hellenick learning; and thought it a persecution more undermining, and secretly decaying the Church, thenthe open cruelty of Decius or Dioclesian.
Instead, he says, learn from the vision of Dionysius Alexandrinos, to whom God appeared in a vision after a priest accused him of defiling himself by reading pagan books:
Read any books what ever come to thy hands, for thou art sufficient both to judge aright, and to examine each matter. To this revelation he assented the sooner, as he confesses, because it was answerable to that of the Apostle to the Thessalonians, Prove all things, hold fast that which is good. And he might have added another remarkable saying of the same Author; To the pure, all things are pure, not only meats and drinks, but all kinde of knowledge whether of good or evill; the knowledge cannot defile, nor consequently the books, if the will and conscience be not defil'd.
We, however, are considered not sufficient to judge aright the words of Anjem Choudhury or whomever is nominated Demon of the Week.
Theresa May thinks we're so stupid that we need protection, while others think we should only read 'improving' material: my parents, never fiction readers, would rip books out of my hands when I was growing up, convinced on the flimsiest evidence that most of it was corrupting. If only they, the Tories and their equally authoritarian Labour counterparts had read Areopagitica:
bad books… to a discreet and judicious Reader serve in many respects to discover, to confute, to forewarn, and to illustrate.
If only I'd thought of that argument back in the day.
For Milton, true freedom resides in the exercise of the independent intellect.
God committs the managing so great a trust, without particular Law or prescription, wholly to the demeanour of every grown man…God uses not to captivat under a perpetuall childhood of prescription, but trusts him with the gift of reason to be his own chooser; there were but little work left for preaching, if law and compulsion should grow so fast upon those things which hertoforewere govern'd only by exhortation.
It's a key theme of the Protestant Reformation: sweep away the Latin Bible explicated only by priests and bishops to their own advantage - read it yourself, at home, and draw your own conclusions. Four hundred years later, clearly we're considered far too untrustworthy to experience uncensored speech.
Furthermore, how can we tell what is seditious or un-British speech (how I hate this appropriation of Britishness)? May assumes that it's easy: she'll have some experts with a list. Milton thinks this in utter nonsense: good and evil often look alike superficially, he says: Adam and Eve ate of the fruit because it looked good:
Good and evill we know in the field of this World grow up together almost inseparably; and the knowledge of good is so involv'd and interwoven with the knowledge of evill
Adam, he says, learned what's good by doing evil. We aren't going to get that chance. Instead, we're to be preserved in a state of what Milton calls an 'excrementall whiteness': untested, unthinking, never exposed to a single unsettling thought
I cannot praise a fugitive and cloister'd vertue, unexercis'd & unbreath'd, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race, where that immortall garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat. Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world, we bring impurity much rather: that which purifies us is triall, and triall is by what is contrary. That vertue therefore which is but a youngling in the contemplation of evill, and knows not the utmost that vice promises to her followers, and rejects it, is but a blank vertue, not a pure; her whitenesse is but an excrementall whitenesse
May thinks that if we hear bad thoughts, we'll all run off and join Isis. Not right-thinking people of course: in common with all moral panics, she's only concerned for the weak-minded mob who might be infected. Really? says Milton: you'd better ban the Bible too – it's full of filth and heresy.
for that oftimes relates blasphemy not nicely, it describes the carnall sense of wicked men not unelegantly, it brings in holiest men passionately murmuring against providence through all the arguments of Epicurus: in other great disputes it answers dubiously and darkly to the common reader
If we ban exposure to bad books, he says, it's the end of learning too because the boffins aren't exempt:
books, & those in great abundance which are likeliest to taint both life and doctrine, cannot be suppresstwithout the fall of learning, and of all ability in disputation, and that these books of either sort are most and soonest catching to the learned, from whom to the common people whatever is hereticall or dissolute may quickly be convey'd, and that evillmanners are as perfectly learnt without books a thousand other ways which cannot be stopt, and evill doctrine not with books can propagate, except a teacher guide, which he might also doe without writing, and so beyond prohibiting, I am not able to unfold, how this cautelous enterprise of licencing can be exempted from the number of vain and impossible attempts.
No doubt lots of us are thinking that May's censorship of TV is ludicrous anyway: it'll stop the rigorous public examination of ideas on the freely available airwaves, while millions watch Youtube clips, Vines, discussion boards and the like far from public view, and free from any kind of informed challenge. Milton's there too: pre-licencing print media is like
the exploit of that gallant man who thought to pound up the crows by shutting his Parkgate
What's the effect of banning speech? It makes the speaker cool. It gives him or her cachet. 'The man they tried to ban'. Rather than ridiculing a bad argument, we're conferring martyr status on any old demagogue. Imagine George Galloway's reaction if he was banned from the airwaves! He'd love it, and so would his fans, proved right again that the System is scared of him. Again, Milton knows:
instead of suppressing sects and schisms, it raises them and invests them with a reputation: The punishing of wits enhaunces their autority, saith the Vicount St. Albans, and a forbidd'n writing is thought to be a certain spark of truth that flies up in the faces of them who seeke to tread it out.
I've detained you long enough (as no Home Secretary ever said). Milton goes on to expound many, many more arguments against this pernicious system, all of which are relevant to this latest version. I'll leave you with one more. A society, he says, which assumes that all the good ideas have already been discovered, is a dying society. To wilfully close one's ears to different and new perspectives is to be intellectually dead.
Henceforth let no man care to learn, or care to be more then worldly wise; for certainly in higher matters to be ignorant and slothfull, to be a common stedfast dunce will be the only pleasant life, and only in request.
Truth and understanding are not such wares as to be monopoliz'd and traded in by tickets and statutes, and standards. We must not think to make a staple commodity of all the knowledge in the Land, to mark and licence it like our broad cloath, and our wooll packs. What is it but a servitude like that impos'd by the Philistines, not to be allow'd the sharpning of our own axes and coulters, but we must repair from all quarters to twenty licencing forges.
Where would our own society be if this course had been adopted long-term? We might never have overthrown the monarchy (sadly temporarily). Slavery would be legal, democracy would not. Capital punishment would be rife, and education a hollow shell. Human rights would be a fantasy…oh wait, that's coming too.
Would Milton be allowed on the news under the Tories' new law? I doubt it.
Despite the general gloom (a viciously rightwing government intent on grinding our faces into the dirt, environmental collapse, all the marking, deadlines etc. etc.), it's actually been a rather lovely few days for those of us here in Vole Towers.
Quite a lot of the weekend was spent in my favourite city, Manchester. If it wasn't for their football teams' blend of arrogance and entitlement, it would be the best place on earth. Fine food was eaten, beautiful beers were consumed in fine independent establishments like the Port Street Beer House, arty gifts were bought and we saw Ride, reformed and in amazing form at the Manchester Albert Hall, a venue suspended in decaying beauty. The same goes for the crowd actually. The band looked trim and barely aged, and the audience had unearthed all its shoe gazing and baggy clobber for the occasion: t-shirts from back in the day and a fine collection of Italian leisure wear last glimpsed on the terraces in 1991, worn by (mostly) chaps whose jowls, hairlines and paunches hadn't stayed quite so pristine. I sang along to all the songs, as did most of those present, and the band soaked up the adoration. By the time they name checked their favourite Manchester bands we were eating out of their hands.
Back at work, we hosted a talk by Narinder Dhami, author of 200-300 childrens' books (so far), ranging from novelisations of Bend It Like Beckham to her 'Bindi Babes' series and crossing genres from light comedy to (in her new novel 13 Hours) thrillers. With her mother and sister in the audience, she read extracts from the new novel, talked about basing characters and events on her childhood, avoiding 'issues' writing, the work involved in being a prolific author, how to get published and stay current, her relationship with fans and the writing process itself. Afterwards we went for dinner and I spent a long time chatting with her husband about our mutual favourite subjects: leftwing literature and photography. It sure beats moaning about marking.
So, after a week of marking and funerals and sibling birthdays, we have a long weekend ahead of us. As it's raining, I'm going to Manchester where at least that's normal. I'm off to see Ride, one of the first bands I really fell for (see also Gorky's Zygotic Mynci, Tindersticks, Elastica and REM).
Being deprived of music until I got to university in 1993, I caught the tail-end of shoe gazing, just as Britpop killed off all the genuine indie bands. Britpop added ambition, cocaine, Union flags, football laddishness and fun. Not all of these things were conducive to good music, though looking at my enormous collection of coloured vinyl 7" singles, I clearly wasn't a very discerning listener. I just bought everything NME told me to, and passively accepted whatever the staff of Cob Records foisted on me (unsaleable stuff by their bands mostly). They'd openly mock what I asked to buy, and they were largely right. Nobody needs more than one Cecil or Northern Uproar single.
So, Ride. Good hair. Introspection. Enigmatic artwork and designs. Mumbling. Softness followed by jarring LOUDNESS. Britpop wiped them out for not being ambitious enough but they seemed fairly big and outgoing to me.* I also liked that wave of one-word bands: Pulp, Salad, Ride, Blur, Lush, Verve and so on. My favourite Ride album is Nowhere: here's 'Vapour Trail'.
I also love this melancholic American cover version:
I've also had a soft spot for 'Twisterella', 'Leave Them All Behind' and 'Chrome Waves' from Going Blank Again.
All their albums have a place in my heart, but Carnival of Light is special - the sound of a band with the vision and cash for a sprawling, cosmic piece of work. Once you've got a children's choir on board, you're off and away:
Finally there's the song and album that broke them up. 'Black Nite Crash' is a riffing monster. I love it.
I think what was lost with Britpop was a sense that the music itself was important. So many Britpop bands (and almost all the ones that followed) seem happy to be the soundtrack to a football goals highlights package or adverts. The British indie scene was often smug, precious and introverted, but there was a commitment to a culture that went beyond commodity entertainment. Yes, Ride had a prog element, but however imperfectly, they made art rather than stuff that eventually got them a judge's seat on Britain's Got Talent.
So anyway - off to Manchester for a loud night's shoegazing. Enjoy your bank-holiday weekend.
*also the drugs. I read a very amusing interview with them in which the singer was obsessed with whether the tongues of his trainers could be seen peeking out from his trousers. In retrospect, it seems likely he'd refreshed himself over-liberally.
Yesterday I went to the Grapes in Stafford to see my friends The Nightingales do a warm-up for their tour, supported by The Courtesy Group and deliberately unfunny comic legend Ted Chippington. I took some photos (the rest are here), though the lighting was dire (I hate using flash) and I reached the limit of what this camera will do (if anybody wants to offload a used full-frame Nikon at a mutually acceptable price, let's talk).
The gig was fun. It was a small venue, packed with men of a certain age. The commemorative prophylactics sold by The Nightingales (£2) were optimistic at best, redundant at worst. I suspect the band slippers sold rather better. The 'Gales have a new guitarist for whom this was his first gig - if there were nerves during their trademark 60-minute no-stopping set, they didn't show. The sound, too, was great: every note and syllable audible. Not always a good thing, but the new album is a joy. Typical of the 'Gales, their manager texted to ask me to bring a stapler, and when I got there he borrowed a couple of quid from me. I guess that makes me a patron of the arts. I want the stapler back though. Limited edition, that.
I'd never seen The Courtesy Group either. The shirts worried me slightly – props make me wonder why bands want to distract from the music – but they were fascinating: a mix of pop hooks with Black Country punk poetry (quite similar to this classic) and Beefheart raw sound. They persuaded me to buy their 2009 CD, Tradesman's Entrance.
Click on these to enlarge.
Al Hutchins, The Courtesy Group
Andreas Schmid (bass), Robert Lloyd, The Nightingales
Andreas Schmid, The Nightingales
Audience member
Hidehiko Nagai, The Courtesy Group
Robert Lloyd, Jim Smith, The Nightingales
Jim Smith, The Nightingales
Robert Lloyd, The Nightingales
Ted Chippington: this is funny because a lot of his jokes start with 'I was walking down the road'
I know I shouldn't rise to this kind of clickbait even when it's notionally critical of the mainstream, because they're all culturally and methodologically suspect, but I did enjoy reading 'Books That Literally All White Men Own' (which is actually Some Books That A Number of Middle-Class Heterosexual American White Men Own).
I own and/or have read 29 of the American 78, though I wouldn't say I'm a huge fan of many of even the ones I've read. I was surprised by some omissions too: if we're going to play Normative Gun-Totin' Yankee Bookshelves I'd have expected some PJ O'Rourke for the Republicans, or Bill Hicks if you're a Democrat, biographies of Hugh Hefner, Rush Limbaugh and various Fox presenters, and a lot more Stephen King.
Joking aside for a second, fiction is one of the main sources of normative identity models. From them we learn how we're expected to behave. The American list is basically men ruling, killing and shagging things, or feeling bad because times have changed and the usual suspects aren't letting them kill, rule and/or shag with quite the same impunity. Playboy, for instance, was a work of genius in the 70s, constructing an ideal masculinity out of gazing on naked women, wearing good tailoring, listening to sophisticated music on expensive stereo equipment, buying big cars and being smooth: masculinity as a commodity product furthering the interests of capitalism.
What would a British Bloke's Bookshelf bear, excluding the American texts which might well make it over here? Here's my guess - feel free to add more in the comments section.
PS: I like some of these works. Guess which ones.
1. The World According to Clarkson. Punchy man, punchy prose! He's got opinions you know, and some of them are deliberately calculated to annoy people he doesn't like (females, the poor, lefties, liberals, homosexuals, foreigners, the state-educated, Midlanders, cyclists, pedestrians, ethnic minorities) for money. This is the kind of freedom of speech Theresa May is going to keep!
2-7. More Clarkson, obviously.
8. Andy McNab, Bravo Two Zero. Real men kill people and describe their guns in pornographic detail. But they sometimes feel bloody conflicted about it. Not for long though. He's been there, and you can too, vicariously.
9. Andy McNab, Bravo Two One
10. Andy McNab, Bravo Three Zero.
11. Nick Hornby, About A Boy. The message being that if you let boys like Joni Mitchell, they'll end up voting Labour, sympathising with Caroline Criado-Perez and never punching anyone. Girls are yucky. But you can't live without them.
12-25. Everything by Kingsley Amis. Particularly Difficulties With Girls and anything that mentions how absolutely bloody women, lefty pinkoes and foreigners are. Especially those who are all three. Oh, and the Welsh.
26. Martin Amis. Not the tricky stuff, just Money perhaps or the one about the police. Or where he has a go at chavs or Muslims.
27. Tony Parsons, Man and Boy. Cos men have feelings too, so long as they 'ave 'em a) in demotic and b) at the football.
32. Fatherland by Robert Harris. Nazis! In Britain!
33. Jamie Oliver's Cookbook. You don't even need to cook anything from it. Just let the dollybird see it and she'll think you're on the right side of metrosexuality. Bish bash bosh.
36. A Clockwork Orange. Nothing wrong with a bit of ultra-violence and the old in-out, in-out.
37. Ken Follett. Fall of Giants. Proper story, clever bloke, knows his history.
38. Roddy Doyle, The Commitments. We don't mind Paddies so long as they're not bombing stuff. They're the blacks of Europe you know. Good songs too. Guinness. Stag weekends in Temple Bar. The Wild Rover.
39-67. More books about the Nazis, Churchill, the Paras etc. Anything to remind you of the days when it was easy to spot who the bad guys were (the ones with the cool uniforms but bad moustaches and monocles).
68. Ben Elton, Popcorn. Bit of a smart-arse but got better once he stopped slagging off Maggie and that.
69. James Hawes. Funny hard-boiled stuff with good sex'n'drugs but no soppy stuff.
70. John Wyndham, The Day of the Triffids. When the chips are down, you need a stiff upper lip. And a penis. Apocalypse is perfectly survivable if you have an officer-class penis.
72. Frankie Fraser,Mad Frank's Diaries. He'd rape your grandmother but he'd say thank you afterwards. Diamond geezer. They broke the mould with him etc. etc.
73. Howard Marks, Mr Nice. Never harmed anybody, liked a bit of waccy-baccy. Good old Howard.
You stick to those, my son, and you'll be alright. None of your ethnic/alternative sexualities malarkey or women's writing. Just bourgeois class tourism and a spot of fisticuffs.
Bozza here, yours truly. Pater, who was an MEP, and my brother Jozza – also an MP and now a Minister - have asked me to explain to you villeins what a 'meritocracy' means. Apparently some of you are cutting up rough about so many Johnsonians running the show. Now this is what fine Roman chap Horace called an inverted pile of piffle. Alright, you say, why is that Jozza and Bozza get to run the country, just because they went to Eton and Oxford, and were members of the Bullingdon club along with jolly old Call Me Dave and Gidders and the lead writer of the Financial Times who gave Red Ed a damned good thrashing for his obsession with 'equality', whatever that is? The only 'level playing field' I like comes with sheets, pillows and someone else's wife. Huzzah!
The new Cabinet
It's about time you oiky types caught up. The School, the University and the Buller are what we call meritocracies. They only let the best in. Trotskyists, our cousins from the colonies and women keep on moaning ad nauseam that they're 'exclusive' because they're restricted to men from Eton (and in act of charity, Osborne who only went to St. Paul's) but they're amazingly wrong. You have to shake the cornflake box and see what rises to the top. In this glorious country, those who rose to the top - indicated by their use of white tie and tails as casual wear - were yours truly, my brainbox brother, Gideon and somehow Dave. My old man was a very clever chap despite only attending Sherborne before Oxford, so naturally Bozza and Jozza are also very clever chaps (as is my sister Razza except she understands she can't run things being a chapess of the female persuasion). In fact Comrade Dave proves that the system works. Descended from Charles II via the wrong side of the blanket and the son of a funny-money chap of the kind lefties describe as a tax avoider, he's very much the kind of guy who had to buy his own furniture. Good job he's got a fruity wife from the top-drawer to help him draw a veil over his origin in trade eh readers? I know some of you will struggle to understand this, given that you have IQs under 85 – about the same as my beagles – but you need coves like my chums and me to look up to. How could you possibly aspire to that second lavatory without the example of the landed aristocracy occupying the jolly old corridors of power, business, the armed forces, the media and so on? A little inequality might give one or two of you a shove and look where you might end up? We gave little Johnny Major a go, and there's always that nice Mr Shapps who amuses us all with his magic computer tricks. He's 'not quite' if you catch my drift, and he's down rather well for himself. 'faber est suae quisque fortunae' as we say at the Athenaeum. So let's hear no more about the politics of envy from you toilers. It's all a bit infra dig. We've jolly well earned the right to run the show (and rather a lot of the folding stuff along the way) so don't worry your greasy little heads about it: vae victis and so forth. I rather fancy we've heard quite enough of the vox populi for now. Pop off back to your allotments, foot-the-ball and bingo secure in the knowledge that some bloody good chaps – and Dave – have it all under control. And if you all behave, we'll let you have a brace of pheasant each when the season starts! Don't worry: our secretary Theresa's got your address. Alea iacta est. Which is Bozza for 'pipe down plebs and carry on'.* Toodle-oo. *And if you don't, we have another Roman tag for our administration:
flectere si nequeo superos, acheronta movebo
Lex talionis very much applies - no more panem et circenses for you. Think on.
Jon Snow knows nothing. Evan Davis knows nothing. ICM knows nothing. Ipsos-Mori knows nothing. Lord Ashcroft knows nothing. Party HQs know nothing.
In particular, I know nothing.
I'm not so stupid as to think that my social and social media circles reflect the views of the man and woman on the Clapham omnibus: my Twitter feed is disproportionately middle-class, PhD-heavy and privileged in a number of ways, as are my friends and family in meatspace. And yet, and yet. I've been out on the streets delivering leaflets for Labour in this depressed city. My students are culturally diverse and virtually all working-class. I read political coverage on paper and online every day. Although I expressed worries about a 'shy Tory' vote in the days running up to the election, I genuinely thought – as did every pollster and commentator – that Ed Miliband was advancing on a gentle wave of personal and political support, and that Labour would lead an administration of some sort.
I do not know how the pollsters got it so wrong. At this point, having demonstrated that I know nothing, further speculation from me would seem utterly pointless. Dick Tuck's 'The people have spoken – the bastards' might be gracelessly witty, but it's lurking in the back of my mind. Why would people vote Tory? The xenophobic campaign against the Scots appears to have paid off amongst English voters. The Scots seem to have abandoned any faith in pan-British parties to represent them and put it into the SNP in the hope that they really are a progressive post-68 nationalist party and not crypto-Tory ethnic essentialists. Labour in Scotland has rotted from within over the decades, the inevitable result of complacency, arrogance and all the special (sectarian) ingredients of that nation's politics.
In the end, I'm left with the conclusion that democracy works. People have got what they wanted. You can't blame the political parties - especially the Tories – for their breathtaking cynicism. While they tried to obscure some issues such as where cuts will come, we have to admit that a large enough group of English and Welsh people deliberately voted for zero-hours contracts, for the abolition of the Human Rights Act, for eventual dissolution of the UK and exit from the EU, against environmental protection and clean air, against union rights and workers' protection, for the privatisation of the NHS and the education system, for higher tuition fees, for enhancing our contribution towards nuclear holocaust, for global warming, for racial and social segregation, for total surveillance, for poverty-shaming, and of course for food banks.
Perhaps the famous British class system has never gone away, and the voters actually feel comfortable tugging their forelocks and installing the upper classes in power as though it's 1815, not 2015.
In sum, the voters have decided that there is no social contract, no moral or political bond between us all, that we have no responsibility for the wellbeing of others or our shared commons. The fantasies of Gove, Murdoch, Mensch, Osborne, Ayn Rand, Jeremy Clarkson, the hedge funders and financiers whom we saved at the cost of Sure Start, EMA and all our other social provisions are about to be put into action. We've had no shortage of personal and corporate lies, fraud and deceit over the past five years. The Chairman of the Conservative Party is a proven liar and con-man: we voted for him. The newspapers which hacked the phones of everyone from murdered teenagers to people who shared the same name as celebrities' relatives have been rewarded. The banks which ripped off individuals via PPI schemes, fixed LIBOR and other rates and – in the case of HSBC – knowingly aided drug cartels are going to be encouraged. Tax cheats will be pressed close to the government's bosom. Even more of our schools will be handed over to cranks, fundamentalists and arms dealers.
Meanwhile the elites on the liberal left such as the New Statesman are going to argue, alongside rightwing commentators, that Labour lost because it wasn't rightwing enough. I think they're wrong. The Scots voted for what appears to be a leftwing party. I don't think there's any mileage or point in Labour becoming any more neo-Tory. That's what the Lib Dems did and the voters preferred to go straight for the real thing. Without wanting to make excuses for Labour, it was also faced with an almost uniformly hostile media landscape, from the newspapers owned almost entirely by tax-avoiding non-coms via offshore shell companies to broadcast media which seems so entirely dominated by exactly the same people as the politicians. They mostly went to private schools, then to Oxford and Cambridge, where they knew the politicians. James Langley: Etonian. The Financial Times leader writer who condemned Labour's concern for inequality: a member of the Bullingdon Club alongside Cameron and Johnson. The commentators, whether BBC or not, are almost exclusively the 1% and find it impossible to challenge the dominant discourse.
Can I find any bright spots in this? It's some consolation that my local Tory MP Paul Uppal was deservedly ousted: a smug, lazy, arrogant, untrustworthy property speculator, he was the very definition of mediocrity.
On a very selfish level, I have one of these on my desk.
Despite occasional wobbles, I always thought the British were capable of a generosity of spirit and altruism that would keep life here bearable. After this election result, I'm starting to have my doubts. I like this country and its people very much, but it's not looking this morning like a country whose citizens care about each other very much. Exit from the EU and the break-up of the UK now looks only too plausible, and even if these things don't happen, an administration of Cameron, Gove, Shapps, Pickles, Iain Duncan Smith, Osborne, Jeremy Hunt and co can only produce a country strong on envy, suspicion, xenophobia and meanness. That the British people consciously voted for it makes me wonder whether it's time to look elsewhere. Cowardly, I know, but I'm shell-shocked this morning.
If I don't run, what can I do? Working in Higher Education, particularly at this institution, I feel a responsibility to my students that far outweighs the exchange of teaching for cash. These (mostly young) people have never known a leftwing or even liberal polity. The vicious individualism of loans, debt, privatisation seem natural to them. Collectively, I can work harder (somehow) to rebuild a caring, socialist politics in the face of overwhelming odds. Personally, all I can do is repress the instinct to run and redouble my effort to embody the values of the left, which boil down to one thing: kindness.
I had such high hopes. I thought Ed Miliband was capable of greatness. I thought the electorate, battered by neoliberalism, was ready for a period of thoughtful altruism. I thought that having spent most of the past 40 years wearily fighting against the neoliberal tide that I'd be able to relax for a while, even enjoy life. I was ready for a rest.
Sometimes I despair even of my beloved Guardian. I was annoyed a few years ago when it declared gastro-pubs 'over', before one had even opened here in the Land of Pork Scratchings. Yesterday's (otherwise positive) review of the Super Furry Animals' gig similarly got me.
Especially this bit.
The reunion marks the 15th anniversary of their Welsh-language album Mwng, and a mid-set four-song slab of its experimental accordion jazz and Pink Floydish echoes feels an indulgence.
OK. So a band whose members speak Welsh as a first language, singing some of their Welsh-language songs in Wales to a Welsh audience on the anniversary of those songs' first release is 'an indulgence'. I see. Or rather I don't, because I don't assume that I am the intended audience for absolutely everything because I'm from London.
Luckily the Super Furry Animals have a song for that and it's not in Welsh so the reviewer will understand it perfectly.
Meanwhile, have a track or two from that 'indulgent' album.
I won an election this week. A real, old-fashioned two-horse race with no prospect of coalitions, confidence-and-supply, deals, minority administrations or any of the shenanigans currently being attempted by the participants in the other – and frankly minor – election being held this week.
Yes, dear readers, I was re-elected by a landslide, on an admittedly low turnout, as the academic member of the Board of Governors. In return for my muted protests against the corporatisation of higher education, I get the key to the velvet-padded Executive Conveniences and a prime seat on the Juggernaut of Educational Decline.*
(This space is reserved for an illustrative clip from The Simpsons' 'Homer and Delilah' if one ever turns up)
In return, the Executive and my fellow governors receive my patented blend of cosseted idealism and weary sarcasm, with which they cope with considerable grace and forbearance.
Having triumphed as a Tribune of the People once more, do I have any advice to proffer my Westminster colleagues? Well as it happens, I do!
Firstly: accept that the closer you get to Power, the further away you are. Was it Yes Minister which described the levers of government as made of rubber? Decisions are either made in an inner sanctum and presented as a fait accompli, or dissolved beyond recognition. Most of the things you want to do are pointless anyway. In a globalised capitalist system, the most you can do is throw some sand into the gear. Not that there's anything wrong with doing that.
Secondly: as much as people moan, they like a vile, negative campaign. I recommended that Ed Miliband take a leaf from William Morris's book and promote the sunny uplands of the Socialist Future. Socialism is inherently optimistic because it believes that people are essentially good and look out for each other. Ed had a go, but the rest of the grim-faed pragmatists in the Party joined the Tories by raging on about immigrants, scroungers, the Scottish Traitors and so, endlessly, on. Result? A core vote tie which I'm fully expecting to turn into a stronger-than-expected Tory result. Negative campaigning works.
Thirdly: never meet the public. The late Dick Tuck once quipped 'The people have spoken, the bastards'. When Sid Vicious was asked what the man in the street thought of his music, his response was pungent: 'I've met the man in the street. He's a c…'. This is the key to the 2015 Westminster election, and one I took to heart. Beyond writing a paragraph-long manifesto (no nukes on campus, no illegal wars, be kind to animals and students, I will aspire to abolish marking and Bad Things under my long-term pedagogical plan, stick with me so I can finish the job), I studiously avoided meeting my electorate. I skipped meetings, left work under cover of darkness and pretended to be David Mitchell whenever anyone tried to speak to me.**
Similarly, my junior colleagues have done their very best to avoid meeting any voter who hasn't been fully vetted.
It's not just the Tories of course: I met Ed Balls, who appeared at the tram station to pose for photos with Labour activists, then left. Political content: zero. The thinking appears to be – rightly when it comes to both them and me – that the more people you meet, the more people vote against you. Instead, you organise what photographers call a goat-fuck so that while the event looks like a cynical pretence of engagement there, it looks like a massive crowd on television.
The same event from the preferred angle.
Which is what matters. It is, as Baudrillard might say, a 'simulation' of symbolic exchange. The concomitant strategy is to avoid all public hustings and debates: the Prime Minister ducked TV debates, Radio 4's long-standing Election Call, the Citizens' debates a couple of days ago and many other events. Across the country, Tory candidates – including mine – have decided not to appear, to the extent that it now looks like a strategic decision. Imagine being in Tory HQ and issuing this advice. 'It turns out that people who meet you vote for the other candidate. Hide, and appeal to their worst side via staged events about immigrants and Jocks'. What a triumph of democracy. Still, it worked for me and will probably work for them.
As the Guardian reports, one woman dragooned into a faux-rally held at her workplace appears to have been threatened for asking a real question rather than holding a placard and grinning inanely while a politician makes a speech consisting of disconnected nouns, the occasional imperative, the word 'passionate' and a swipe at Perfidious Caledonia and its hordes of heroin-munching, Irn-Bru-injecting, er, citizens of the World's Greatest Democracy.
Rolled-up sleeves? I'm just an honest worker doing a fair day's work for a fair day's pay just like you guv. And doesn't George Osborne look uncomfortable surrounded by his own supporters (what a diverse and representative bunch of people they are too)?
Still, one of the advantages of an election campaign is that I can update my list of Companies That Don't Need My Custom Because They Support The Tories In Crushing Workers' Rights and Pay. Banks's/Marstons' Beer: goodbye. I'm unlikely to buy a JCB or Rolls-Royce soon either.
'I drove one of these, until those footballer chaps at West Villa made them a bit chavvy. Carry on, oiks'
Always, always wear high-vis jackets. It doesn't make you look like one of the entitled plutocrats Kevin McCloud subtly denigrates on Grand Designs at all.
'I'll have the platinum hip bath next to the eternity pool yah'
Organise a compliant media. It helps if almost all of them are owned offshore by non-dom tax evaders with little concern for the importance of the Fourth Estate and absolutely no sense of shame. Yes, the Mail, Telegraph, Times and Sun, I'm looking at you.
On the left, Reason 2 reads 'Stop SNP running the country'. On the right: 'Why it's time to vote SNP'. Let's just hope that nobody has access to social media, eh? Oh. As to the broadcast media, that looks after itself. Do all the sofa shows, if you have to do a serious one just recite the list of catchphrases and look, just don't worry about it: the few reporters on Newsnight, Today and the others who weren't in the Bullingdon or Oxford University Conservative Association with us are fixated by the same bubble stuff we like anyway yah? Get them on the campaign bus and threaten to leave them in Stoke or Rochdale or whereversville if they try to cut up rough OK?
Never apologise, never explain. Whether it's cutting taxes on the rich while beggaring the poor, tripling tuition fees, deregulating the banks, making absolute, racist and hypocritical promises to cut immigration with 'no ifs, no buts', just keep robotically demonising your opponents. Harp on about their broken promises while ignoring your own. Above all, never, ever suggest that governing a country is a complicated business which requires adaptation in changing circumstances. If the public doesn't crucify you, the newspapers will (unless they're your newspapers, obviously). This tactic worked very well for me. I made no specific promises, mumbled something about being responsive to the electorate, then went back to my desk. Most people don't vote. Those who do, appear to be the ones doing quite nicely thank you. Pander to their prejudices. Ridicule anyone who tries to engage the poor, young, sick and marginalised, like poor Ed Miliband having actual serious arguments with Russell Brand.
So in summary: take off your jacket; stage events behind closed doors; bash the Scots; launch a pre-emptive campaign against parliamentary democracy in case your opponents might be able to get a majority together; sell fear; blame the poor; say anything but say it with absolute confidence. 'Long-term economic plan'. 'I'm going to win a majority'. Whatever. But be ready to say it over and over and over and over and over and over and over. People don't want ideas. They want reductive mantras. What do we want? Reductive Mantras. Don't Let Them Sell Off Our Reductive Mantras. Long-Term Economic Mantras. Reductive Mantras: Winning Here. British Reductive Mantras For British Workers. End The Tax on Reductive Mantras. Stop Driving Away Reductive Mantra Creators. A Reductive Mantra On Every Table.
With apologies to Rudyard Kipling.
If you can scam some crowds and fake your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor silly hacks can reach you,
If rich men count with you, but not the poor;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of waffle run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be PM, my son.
So there you have it. If you can't see the sound good sense in my election-winning guide, you must be some kind of subversive lefty whinger. Your name's already on a list. See you on May 8th.
*Not really. We're actually rather democratic when it comes to the jakes. I'm not joking about the Educational Decline though.
** Sort of true. We share a birthday, opinions, style and looks to such an extent that nobody noticed I had his photo on my ID card for several years. People used to shout his name at me in the street. I once had lunch with an ex of his. She kept calling me David. I wondered if this was a good sign or a bad one. Bad, as it turned out.
