Cassandra Voices

Author: frankarmstrong

  • September 11th Recalled

    A few months after the destruction of the World Trade Centre in New York on September 11th, 2001, Frank Armstrong wrote this article, which was originally published (translated into Spanish) in La Vanguardia. He recalls how his sister had visited the building only the day before the attack, and goes on to observe that – beyond the immediate tragedy of approximately three thousand lost lives – it signalled that history was not at an end as had been predicted at the end of the Cold War.

    It is exceptional that a news story produces shock waves across the world. An event like the death of Princess Diana dominated the media, at least in the United Kingdom but was somehow parochial, pop cultural, and at times comical. Even those who lit their ‘candle in the wind’ must have realised that Diana’s death did not have the potential to alter the course of human history.

    Similarly, it is possible to read about two-and-a-half million deaths in the Congolese Civil War, or about the threat of global warming, and find these happenings uninvolving. Undoubtedly, the loss of life in Africa is awful, but it is all happening so far away; unrecorded and unconnected to the wider world. Likewise, one can worry about global warming and its attendant threats, but it recalls the concerns of the character Vitalstatistix from Asterix, who feared that tomorrow the sky would fall on his head – but tomorrow never arrives. So we carry on, taking flights, driving cars, heating houses. What can we do? The luxuries have become necessities.

    When September 11th occurred it felt like it could bring about the end of the world as we knew it. The attack on the epicentre of capitalism revealed the fragility of the global economy. Those of us who had consistently criticised the ‘World Order’, who bemoaned the crass commercialisation of our age; the McDonaldisation of culture; the instillation of MTV values, suddenly realised that we too had been become dependent on the fruits of commercial progress.

    How would it be possible to live without flying away to other countries, without the opium of televised football and the succour of culinary variety? Even worse, one had to contemplate the terrifying spectre of war, the poison of chemical and biological weapons and the Armageddon of nuclear catastrophe.

    The television images that came before us were horrifyingly hypnotic, perversely satisfying. Across the world people were transfixed. Most had a clip that stood out. My own personal one was the sight of an aeroplane disappearing altogether into the vastness of the tower, like sperm implanting an egg.

    The events became a movie blockbuster played out across the news media: each one of us was a character in the movie, caught inside the buildings, jumping out the windows, powerless, vulnerable.

    Many people have their own personal involvement with what happened. My sister was in New York at the time. On September 10th, less than twenty-four hours before the first plane hit its target, she visited the World Trade Centre, took a lift to the top and appreciated the view like so many other tourists had done before her, but will never do again. At the bottom of the tower, she purchased her brother a t-shirt in The Gap. Now that t-shirt is mine, my own little part of history, like a fragment of Berlin Wall.

    How times have changed since September 11th is a question that will fill vast quantities of newsprint over the course of the forthcoming week. In reality little has changed, there are still two worlds, the North and the South, one aspiring to be the other. Beyond the three thousand innocent people killed and their families, it has only really affected a change in perception. A realisation that history is not at an end, that the steady march to prosperity could be de-railed.

    A moment of high drama captivated a planet. Two of the great phallic symbols of capitalism rendered impotent. It seemed to be inaugurating an era of uncertainty, but instead we went back to work, to watching football, to eating Indian food, and to taking trips to far off places, but it did shake us, and forced conclusions to be drawn.

    In exchange for the pleasures that we derive from the liberal economy so we must accept the dominance of the US Superpower. The torture of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay or the deaths of Afghani civilians may trouble us but we learn to forget very quickly as such occurrences do not imperil our existence. In all likelihood we won’t do anything beyond mutter disapproval if the US affect regime change in Iraq. The US government is the guardian of the wealth and material comfort to which we have become accustomed, and most of us, including myself, are, in the final analysis, unwilling to countenance the alternative. That is what was scary about September 11.

    All images (c) Constantino Idini

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  • How to Prevent a Brexit ‘Domino Effect’

    As the United Kingdom inches perilously closer to a ‘no deal’ Brexit, Frank Armstrong recalls the European Union’s origins as an antidote to destructive and ill-conceived nationalism, which tore the continent apart for thirty years between 1914 and 1945. He argues that explanations for British exceptionalism should not be reduced to post-imperialist delusions, instead highlighting a long-standing failure to make adequate provision for post-industrial ‘rust belts’, regions witnessing a recrudescence of nationalism right across the continent. He also interprets Brexit as a product of competing nationalistic forces within the U.K., proposing the E.U. should avoid an acrimonious separation, and leave the door ajar for a return. Finally, he identifies necessary reforms to the E.U. Treaty to avoid the very real possibility of a ‘Brexit Domino Effect’ threatening the wider union.

    Community Origins

    At the outbreak of World War I in 1914 British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey wrote in a letter to a friend: ‘The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our life-time.’[i] Grey’s foreboding ran contrary to the dominant ‘it’ll be over by Christmas’ view. From that war’s outbreak the continent descended into thirty years of almost continuous violence and instability – with non-combatant civilians often victims of collective punishment.

    At the Paris Peace Conferences in 1919 ascendant ‘Wilsonian’ ideas of democracy and self-determination swept away multicultural empires, (Hapsburg-Austrian, Hohenzollern-German, Romanov-Russian and even Ottoman-Turkish) which for centuries accommodated multiple ethno-linguistic ‘nationalities’, ruled by a transnational aristocratic caste.

    Cobbling together states based on often plastic identities proved problematic almost everywhere, however, as dispersals of nationalities rarely cohered with distinct geographic frontiers. Moreover, many nations possessed insufficient populations to make up viable sovereign entities, engendering dual- (Czechoslovakia[ii]) and multiple- (Yugoslavia) nation-states. Meanwhile, in violation of ‘Wilsonian’ principles of self-determination, the Peacemakers prohibited any unification between Germany and German-speaking Austria.

    Throughout the inter-war years, across Europe, a significant challenge for many governments lay in accommodating German minorities – the volksdeutsche that had settled in Central and Eastern Europe over the course of the Middle Ages – but also others such as Hungarians living beyond their rump state. This poisoned relations between newly emerged countries from the outset, while embedding seemingly implacably hostile minorities within states such as Czechoslovakia, and others.

    Establishing what Benedict Anderson referred to as the ‘imagined community’[iii] of the nation as the basis for a state, also elevated racial notions of a single volk, or people, with ‘blood’ attachments to a particular territory. This further estranged widely scattered, and linguistically heterogeneous, Jewish communities – without a state of their own or any prospect of creating one in Europe – from dominant national groups. Jews became convenient scapegoats, characterised as either bloodsucking-capitalist-Rothschilds, or transnational-Communist-ideologues, depending on political expediency.

    The U.K. was among the few European countries where anti-Semitism was not rife in this period. Indeed, with the Balfour Declaration of 1917, the British Empire committed to ‘a national home for the Jewish people’ in Palestine, to the consternation of its indigenous population. By the 1920s, however, the British were confronting a distinct fraying of imperial bonds (or really bondage), beginning with the concession of Dominion Status to the recalcitrant Irish in 1921, and threatening the ‘Jewel in the Crown’, India, which finally gained independence in 1946.

    A Community to End all Wars

    By 1945 World War II had stained the continent with the blood of almost fifty million. Nazi, and to a lesser extent Soviet and other states’, Crimes Against Humanity and Genocide introduced greater ‘national’ homogeneity, with Jews the main victims, but also most of the volksdeutsche were often brutally corralled into the two German states that emerged in the wake of the thirty year conflagration.

    As Europeans drew breath many – including Winston Churchill who coined the term a ‘United States of Europe’[iv] – identified the need for a political entity to safeguard what would have seemed a fragile peace, and confront the encroachment of the Soviet Union – and even the United States. The experience of total war brought by nationalist excesses proved cathartic.

    The European Community, proceeding from the European Coal and Steel Pact of 1951, and culminating in the Treaty of Rome in 1957, might reasonably be held up as the most successful peace process in history, coinciding with, if not incubating, an epoch of unprecedented stability and prosperity for Western Europe at least. Establishing close economic ties could, in the words of French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman, ‘make war not only unthinkable but materially impossible.’[v]

    Seemingly irreconcilable French and Germans, especially, found common cause in rebuilding their countries and raising the standard of living – with the assistance from the United States through the Marshall Plan. A nascent supranational identity eroded the dominant idea of the nation – along with its implicit racial ideas of a distinctive volk – although any pan-European identity relied more on rational construction than emotional identification.

    Vitally, a hybrid ‘social market’ – an accommodation between capitalism and socialism that emerged across post-war Europe – brought, or coincided with, the so-called ‘Miracle on the Rhine’, or Wirtschaftswunder (‘post-war economic miracle’) in Germany, Les Trente Glorieuses (1946-75) in France and Il Miracolo Economico to Italy. Affection for the European project was nourished by the rising living standards of a substantial majority across Western Europe.

    Under conditions where individual states, in general, sheltered citizens from ‘cradle to grave’ from naked market forces, the free movement of goods, services, capital and labour, a Common Market – the defining feature of European Law – worked to the benefit of the majority; at least until the oil shocks of the mid-1970s brought that sustained period of broad-based development to a close, jeopardising an unspoken European social contract.

    The one notable Western European democracy that declined to sign the Treaty of Rome was the U.K.. This ensured the organisation’s legal system was based on the Civil Law tradition of France rather than British Common Law, or a hybrid of both. Importantly also, Charles de Gaulle’s ‘non’ to British membership in 1967, reinforced British exceptionalism: a sense that they were of Europe but not from Europe – an island apart from the continent belonging to an Anglo- or Atlantic- sphere. Thus, when Britain (and Ireland) finally acceded to membership in 1973 it joined an institution whose still recognisable form had already crystallized, and at a less economically dynamic stage in European history.

    Left and Right Opposition

    It is commonly assumed that, from the outset and beyond, it has been the U.K.’s idea of itself as a global Empire that brought aloofness from the European Community.[vi] In fact, a succession of post-war Tory leaders including Winston Churchill, Harold MacMillan, Edward Health, John Major – if not Anthony Eden and Margaret Thatcher, David Cameron and Theresa May to the same extent – have been decidedly pro-European, viewing what became the European Union in 1992 as a guarantor of free trade on the continent. Even the current Tory Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, famously vacillated before urging a ‘leave’ vote in the 2016 Brexit referendum.[vii]

    On the other hand, the Community was initially identified by many on the left in Britain as a Capitalist club, working to the detriment of workers, in cahoots with Uncle Sam. Thus the U.K.’s Post-War Labour government declined an invitation to join the European Coal and Steel Pact in 1951. In response Churchill, then still Tory leader, inveighed against the decision in front of the House of Commons, maintaining that ‘The whole movement of the world is towards an interdependence of nations.’[viii]

    Indeed, from the outset, across Europe, the main opposition to the Community emanated from the radical left, Communist Party and others. But as long as states provided adequately for needy citizens agitation against the Community remained marginal. In the U.K.’s case, the ‘Bennite’[ix] wing of the Labour Party led opposition to membership in 1973, an enduring standpoint in the Party – albeit prominent ‘Bennites’ such as Shadow Chancellor John McDonald now advocate another referendum and a ‘remain’ vote.

    Importantly, the Community’s defining liberalism does not extend to the treatment of the agricultural sector, long protected through trade tariffs and embargos from cheaper exports imports from beyond the continent. To an extent this contradiction was the basis of the Community itself – offering French farmers German prices for their produce brought (or bought) necessary electoral support, as well as guarding against dependence on imports from beyond the continent in the event of another world war.

    The effect has been to preserve millions of small- and medium-sized farms that would otherwise have become commercially unviable. Controversially, however, the Common Agricultural Policy used to suck up to two-thirds of the Community’s budget, and still accounted for almost forty percent in 2018.[x] Moreover, the subsidy regime has proved regressive, rewarding wealthy, including super-wealthy, landowners,[xi] and is insufficiently attentive to the environmental damage of farming systems, including traditional pastoralism that prevents necessary re-afforestation and re-wilding.

    In contrast, the populations of post-industrial regions – ‘rust belts’ – such as the North and Midlands of England, north-east France and elsewhere, have been given little European assistance since much heavy industry has pulled out. Historically these areas offered staunch support for left-wing parties, but loyalties have shifted in recent times, with UKIP and the Brexit Party, as well as the French National Front in particular, gaining traction among working class voters.

    The expansion of the Union into Eastern and Central Europe in the 1990s has also worked to the detriment of these regions, with increased competition for employment in Western Europe, and re-location of multinationals to low-wage Central and Eastern European economies.

    Indeed, the demise of the Soviet Union crippled the ‘hard’ left across the continent, with Communist Parties losing both an important patron, and exemplar. By the 1990s most European socialist parties, including the U.K.’s ‘New’ Labour Party had shifted to a broadly pro-European, and even neo-liberal, outlook.

    An ensuing vacuum has been opportunistically filled by a range of Far Right or nationalist parties, opposed to the supranational Europe project. Populist parties have gained support in economically depressed post-industrial regions, where atavistic appeals are often made to the nation or volk, targeting constituents ill-served by the Common Market.

    Furthermore, since the 1960s most European countries have experienced an influx of overseas migrants, mainly drawn from former colonies. That the Union guarantees the free movement of labour has brought a misleading association with an ensuing multiculturalism. This is despite immigration from beyond Europe being subject to the laws of individuals states, a point affirmed in the Dublin Regulation of 2013 on refugees.[xii] This requires, in most cases, that an asylum seeker’s application is processed in the first EU member state he or she sets foot in.

    Explaining the Referendum Result

    Ironically, it has been elements within the Tory party, the long-standing champion of the free trade the Community brought to the continent, which came to the fore in opposing the Union. The opposition of ‘Shire Tories’ may have come as no surprise, but the referendum also revealed deep antipathy towards the Europe Union in the economically depressed regions of the Midlands and North.[xiii]

    This should have come as no surprise. Since Britain’s entry into the Community heavy industry has continued to depart these regions, helped along by Thatcherite privatisations throughout the 1980s that worked to the benefit of speculators in the City of London. Crucially, the British media focused working class malcontents on the European Union, with constant emphasis on Britain’s heroic role in World War II, and enduring stereotypes of Nazi Germans and cowardly French.

    British working class antipathy towards Europe can also be explained by a lingering – not altogether without foundation – left-wing view that indigenous industry cannot recover under free trade conditions, and without state-aid grants, currently prohibited under European law.

    Moreover, as indicated, the U.K. entered the Community at a stage of economic decline across the continent, and with a sense of unbelonging. Importantly, unlike within the founding states, there is no collective memory to draw on of thirty glorious years of growth and development under European suzerainty.

    Also, the U.K. lay at a remove from the extremes of cathartic bloodletting during World War II. Notwithstanding the experience of the Blitz, and the loss of hundreds-of-thousands of men-under-arms, the country was spared Nazi occupation – the apotheosis of state-sponsored racism.

    Increasingly strident national identities within the U.K. itself now also shape attitudes towards the supra-national institution; on the basis that ‘my enemies enemy is my friend’ Scottish nationalism is identified with a European affiliation, while Northern Ireland Unionism is antipathetic. Thus Brexit signifies, and fuels, a fissuring of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

    Also, strikingly, a majority of English Brexiteers are more concerned with leaving Europe than preserving the Union.[xiv] A willingness to shrink one’s state hardly equates to residual imperialist ambitions.

    Brexit Effect

    It seems Brexit cannot be avoided, and Europe (including the Irish government) should refrain from counter-productive meddling in U.K. politics. Its electorate cast the dye, and recent election results for the European Parliament indicate there are no regrets.[xv] A face-saving resolution can surely be found to the so-called ‘Backstop,’ especially given the U.K. has undertaken to respect the terms of the Common Travel Area,[xvi] allowing for unhindered movement and reciprocal employment opportunities for Irish and U.K. nationals.

    It now appears that both Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron have softened their stances on preserving all aspects of the Withdrawal Agreement[xvii], putting it up to the Irish government to offer alternatives. But the uncompromising, and occasionally nationalistic,[xviii] rhetoric of Taoiseach Varadkar and Foreign Minister Coveney leave the minority Irish government vulnerable to attack from current partners Fianna Fáil, and opponents Sinn Féin.

    The total volume of trade between Northern Ireland and the Republic amounted to just over £5 billion in 2016,[xix] suggesting the challenge of equipping the border to check in-coming container traffic is not insurmountable. The key to preventing further Troubles surely lies in addressing the impoverishment and ghettoization of areas such as the Creggan in Derry.

    Of far greater concern for the Republic should be the extent to which trade flows are dependent on the Holyhead ‘land bridge’, rather than through direct links to the continent. Previously, this led to the boorish comment from the new Home Secretary Priti Patel that the threat of food shortages could be used as a weapon in negotiations over the Backstop.[xx]

    Clearly the current Tory leadership, and membership, is hell-bent on ‘delivering’ on Brexit. But their preferred outcome is presumably a compromise deal, but they are at least courting the possibility of crashing out.

    A period beyond the Union would acquaint dyed-in-the-wool Brexiteers – especially those Prosecco-quaffing ‘Shire Tories’ – with a salutary lesson in the perils of life outside a substantial free-trade block. For starters, the prices of many foodstuffs, and beverages, will rise through the weakness of the pound and potential retaliatory tariffs. The Cabinet Office’s leaked Operation Yellowhammer document even anticipates food shortages.[xxi]

    A period of stagflation is on the horizon with many multinational companies poised to pull out. But if a Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour government were to come to power, it would surely introduce state aids to assist fledgling industries, which might flourish under protectionist conditions, with a weak pound conducive to exports. Whether such a regime could resist a tendency towards over-bureaucratization, historically evident in command economies, remains to be seen. But the alternative of business-as-usual in many regions under E.U. is just as unpalatable to many living there.

    Politically, Brexit may finally prompt the U.K. to settle on a written constitution, the absence of which has brewed such confusion, including the latest prorogation of Parliament. Much of the uncertainty around the Brexit referendum, and beyond, is linked to the absence of a clear text explaining the powers of the various arms of government. Ultimately, it seems likely that a majority in the U.K. will wish to return, but for this to happen undue punishment should be avoided.

    How to Save Europe

    If a ‘take it or leave it’ ‘in/out’ vote had been placed before other European electorates in all likelihood some would have chosen to push the exit button too. Even in Ireland – the beneficiary of disproportionate financial supports due to a substantial agricultural sector – two recent referendums on extending the European treaty have yielded negative votes, only reversed after clamorous support from the main political parties and mainstream media.

    Likewise, the French and Dutch electorates rejected the European Constitution in 2005,[xxii] but were ignored, while the populations of both Switzerland and Norway have repeatedly chosen to remain outside.

    As the poet Micheal O’Siadhail put it: ‘Starred blue flag so dutifully raised, / Still not fluttering in our chambered hearts’[xxiii]: Lacking symbols such as a football team to support, or other singular cultural representations, the European Union has not invented a lasting idea of itself beyond its liberal freedoms. These are now associated with a permissive Globalisation benefiting rapacious and tax-avoiding multinational corporations, and often working to the detriment of working people. Moreover, an extensive and exceedingly well-remunerated[xxiv] E.U. bureaucracy is associated with unnecessary red tape – and not only in the U.K..

    The Brexit vote should give rise to profound questioning of the laws and institutions of the E.U.. Lest we forget, European leaders displayed palpable disregard for the welfare of the Greek and Irish populations during their economic crises; as Irish journalist Fintan O’Toole put it in response to Ireland’s EU/IMF Bailout in 2010:

    There is no European solidarity. And there is not even a genuine sense of self-interest. The sadistic pleasures of punishment have trumped the sensible calculation that an Ireland enslaved by debt is not much use to anyone.[xxv]

    A worldwide economic crisis impoverished many parts of the continent, and the E.U. became an agent of a doctrinaire austerity, often to the benefit of speculators.

    What it means to be ‘European’

    For the European Union to develop lasting legitimacy among a new generation – increasingly removed from the bloodletting if the first half of the twentieth century – it needs to be seen to do more than maintain the liberty to move goods, services, capital and labour. It should inspire loyalty by guaranteeing basic socio-economic rights, including inter alia basic sustenance, a dwelling, health and education, and defend human rights violations in countries such as Spain – where draconian measures curb freedom of expression, and have led to outrageous prison sentences being handed down to Catalan separatists for having the temerity to hold a referendum.

    This requires a re-negotiation of the Treaty, along with abandonment of grandiose notions of a European super-state, and army. It could involve the incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights into E.U. law. We also need to see far greater institutional accountability, with all forms of lobbying being completely transparent, and outlandish salary scales re-assessed. The Commission ought to be democratised, with Commissioners perhaps being elected from a Europe-wide list, instead of positions being in the gift of national governments – resulting in political ‘fixers’ such as our own Commissioner Phil Hogan being promoted without democratic oversight.

    Far greater burden- (and benefit-) sharing of refugees is also required – meaning the Dublin Regulation should be scrapped. This would take pressure of states such as Italy and Greece that have had to accommodate a disproportionate share.

    Our ‘European’ identity should be disentangled from blood and a Judeo-Christian heritage; instead being a European should be equated with taking pride in one’s region’s culture and history, while holding a curiosity for others, available to visit via a continental rail network that is a unifying-symbol of progress. To this end, legislation offering all eighteen-year-old-Europeans a free Inter-rail pass is to be lauded.[xxvi]

    A European identity should become modern in the sense of understanding global environmental responsibilities; along with recognising that a certain income threshold is required for human flourishing, beyond which gains are marginal.

    A failure to reform is likely to result in a ‘Brexit Domino Effect’, with states such as Italy, Hungary and Poland succumbing to Populist, anti-EU political parties. A progressive supra-national alternative to inward-looking nationalism must be offered, but if states are unwilling to accede to a greater focus on environmental protection, human rights, income support and inclusivity then these should be permitted to leave, or be shown the door, and face the harsh realities of life outside the Union, just like the U.K..

    There is much worth saving about the European ideal. In particular, as we stare down the barrel of an environmental crisis threatening humanity’s very survival, we require an E.U.-led Green New Deal, including reform to the CAP so as to make it more equitable and focused on environmental protection.

    Europe can be a beacon to the rest of the world, and the development of a symbiotic relationship with nature can inspire a new generation, countering obsolete nationalist ideas of racial belonging.

    Let us leave the light on also, and the door ajar, to allow the U.K. to return, whether United or not.

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    [i] [/efn_note]Viscount Grey of Fallodon: Twenty-Five Years 1892–1916, New York, 1925, p. 20[/efn_note]

    [ii] At least in name. There were also German, Ruthenian (Ukrainian) and Hungarian minorities, as well as Jews drawn from different nationalities, along with a substantial partially nomadic Romany community.

    [iii] Benedict Anderson Imagined communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism, London, Verso, 1983, pp.6-7.

    [iv] Boris Johnson, The Churchill Factor: How One Made History, Hodder, London, 2015, p.301

    [v] ‘The Schuman Declaration’ May 9th, 1950, https://europa.eu/european-union/about-eu/symbols/europe-day/schuman-declaration_en.

    [vi] Ishaan Tharoor, ‘Britain clings to imperial nostalgia as Brexit looms’, Washington Post, January 4th, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/01/04/britain-clings-imperial-nostalgia-brexit-looms/.

    [vii] ‘Jessica Elgtot, Secret Boris Johnson column favoured UK remaining in EU’, The Guardian, October 16th, 2016. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/oct/16/secret-boris-johnson-column-favoured-uk-remaining-in-eu

    [viii] Ibid, Johnson, p.300.

    [ix] Followers of the Labour politician Anthony Neil Wedgwood Benn 1925-2014.

    [x] ‘Common Agricultural Policy: Key graphs & figures’ https://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/sites/agriculture/files/cap-post-2013/graphs/graph1_en.pdf, European Commission, July, 2019.

    [xi] George Monbiot, ‘The one good thing about Brexit? Leaving the EU’s disgraceful farming system’, The Guardian, October 10th, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/10/brexit-leaving-eu-farming-agriculture.

    [xii] Regulation (EU) No 604/2013, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=CELEX:32013R0604

    [xiii] Untitled, ‘EU Referendum Results’, Financial Times, 2016, https://ig.ft.com/sites/elections/2016/uk/eu-referendum/

    [xiv] Frank Armstrong ‘An Irish Poet Attains Greatness’, Cassandra Voices, August 31st, 2018, http://cassandravoices.com/history/an-irish-poet-attains-greatness/.

    [xv] Ashley Kirk and Josh Wilson, ‘EU election UK results and maps: Brexit Party wins nine of 12 regions, Lib Dems triumph in London’, The Telegraph, May 28th, 2019, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/05/28/european-eu-election-results-2019-uk-maps-brexit-party/

    [xvi] Untitled, ‘Johnson tells Varadkar that Common Travel Area will remain after Brexit’, August 20th, 2019, RTÉ, https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2019/0819/1069694-varadkar-johnson/.

    [xvii] Katya Adler, ‘Brexit: Is EU softening over Withdrawal Agreement?’, BBC August 27th, 2019, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-49475117.

    [xviii] Juno McEnroe, ‘Varadkar: United Ireland possible in hard Brexit’, Irish Examiner, July 27th, 2019, https://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/ireland/varadkar-united-ireland-possible-in-hard-brexit-939785.html.

    [xix] Untitled, ‘Trade across the Irish border’, February 26th, 2018, Fullfact, https://fullfact.org/europe/irish-border-trade/

    [xx] Untitled, ‘Patel comments on no-deal Brexit in Ireland criticised’, BBC, December 7th, 2018, https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-europe-46488479.

    [xxi] Rowena Mason, ‘No-deal Brexit: key points of Operation Yellowhammer report’, The Guardian, August 18th, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/aug/18/no-deal-brexit-key-points-of-operation-yellowhammer-report.

    [xxii] Untitled, ‘Dutch say ‘devastating no’ to EU constitution’, The Guardian, June 2nd, 2005, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/jun/02/eu.politics

    [xxiii] Frank Armstrong ‘An Irish Poet Attains Greatness’, Cassandra Voices, August 31st, 2018, http://cassandravoices.com/history/an-irish-poet-attains-greatness/

    [xxiv] Bruno Waterfield, ‘10,000 European Union officials better paid than David Cameron’ The Telegraph, 21 May, 2014, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/10847979/10000-European-Union-officials-better-paid-than-David-Cameron.html

    [xxv] Fintan O’Toole, ‘Abysmal deal ransoms us and disgraces Europe’, Irish Times, 29th of November, 2010, https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/abysmal-deal-ransoms-us-and-disgraces-europe-1.683289

    [xxvi] Alexander Sims, ‘EU plans to give free Interrail pass to every 18-year-old in Europe on their birthday’, The Independent, September 30th, 2016, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/interrail-passes-free-eu-parliament-debate-europe-train-tickets-a7339466.html.

  • Irish Media’s Business Model Brings Climate Inaction

    Following a global trend since the arrival of the Internet, mainstream Irish media, including the so-called ‘paper of record’ the Irish Times, is increasingly required to sell itself. The days of someone reading a daily newspapers cover-to-cover are fading into nostalgic memories. Now editors feel obliged to dangle click-bait, and even fake news, often through social media feeds, with content increasingly accessed on smartphones.

    The result is diminished intellectual content, with greater emphasis on sports, titillating lifestyle stories, and consumer surveys. Moreover, advertising paymasters, generally multinational companies, often appear insulated from probing investigations; in Ireland’s case leading to a reliance on foreign-owned publications to break stories.

    Journalism should not be placed on a pedestal, or equated with a secular priesthood: any writer has conflicts of interest, biases and personal foibles. Nor are business people bereft of ethical considerations. The point is about how the interests of the public informant and salesperson are balanced across a media spectrum, and the danger inherent to any democracy when media is run on a purely commercial basis, identifying its interests with other businesses. This now appears to be the case with the three main Irish players: the national broadcaster RTÉ, Independent News and Media and the Irish Times newspaper (which last year purchased the only other indigenous national daily, the Irish Examiner).

    It is also apparent that the current Irish government’s ‘pro-business’ policies align with the interests of leading providers. This brings broadly sympathetic coverage, evident especially in the uncritical ‘reporting’ of strategic leaks, and publication of generally flattering images of leading politicians, especially media-conscious Taoiseach Varadkar.

    The close relationship between mainstream Irish media and the government came into sharp focus last year when unmarked government advertorials appeared across indigenous print media.[i] This now has serious implications for reporting on the environment, including man-made climate change and the Extinction Crisis.

    Climate Inaction

    On June 16th the Irish government launched a Climate Action Plan that gained essentially positive press coverage, emphasising how seriously the government was taking the issue. For example, the headline in the Irish Times the following day read: ‘Climate action plan promises ‘radical’ change.’

    Environmental NGOs, however, reacted very differently to the Plan. An Taisce said it fell ‘well short of the kind of radical, transformational document our recently declared national ‘climate and biodiversity emergency’ warrants.’[ii]

    Friends of the Earth offered a more favourable assessment describing the machinery for delivery as ‘the biggest innovation in Irish climate policy in 20 years.’ They cautioned, however, that the ‘plan gets us to the starting line on climate action. It will take consistent political leadership to ensure it is implemented on time…’[iii]

    Elsewhere, The Environmental Pillar, a coalition of over thirty national environment groups, lambasted a ‘general lack of clarity, ambition and urgency in the new Climate Action Plan to Tackle Climate Breakdown’, or reverse biodiversity decline.[iv]

    Finally, the Irish Wildlife Trust in its press release bluntly stated: ‘There is no indication that the government is willing to rethink agricultural expansion plans which are as odds with environment goals.’[v]

    Importantly, agriculture (essentially livestock agriculture) and transport (mostly of the private motor car variety) are projected to remain the main sources of Irish greenhouse gas emissions (currently combining to comprise over 50% of the total – rising both in absolute terms and proportionately. See table below).

    Climate Deception

    The Plan does little to address the Irish population’s disproportionate contribution to a climate change (the third highest per capita in the EU[vi]) that is already giving rise to extreme weather events close to our shores, and increasing frequency of storms here too. It also all but ignores a potentially irreversible Extinction Crisis facing the natural world, including in Ireland.

    Since then the government has blocked the passage of a cross-party Climate Emergency Bill, using a previously arcane and potentially unconstitutional ‘money messages’ parliamentary procedure. The Bill would have denied any further licences being granted for the purpose of oil or gas exploration in the country. This is certainly not evidence of the kind of “consistent political leadership” sought by Friends of the Earth, who, on reflection, more recently acknowledged that the ‘actual measures in the Plan don’t add up to bringing Irish emissions down far enough fast enough.’[vii]

    In essence, the Irish Times, among others,[viii] helped generate positivity in the Plan’s wake. This is apparent in the opening paragraph to an editorial the following day:

    The appropriately broad scope of the Government’s Climate Action Plan must be acknowledged. A scan of the plan’s headings shows that this administration, however belatedly, has fully grasped that global heating is negatively impacting every aspect of our life and that a plethora of policies and behaviours require urgent changes.[ix]

    Over the following days, opinion writers debated aspects of the plan, but none, it seems, was permitted to excoriate it.

    The greenwashing is best illustrated by a photograph featuring the following day in the Irish Times of the full Cabinet of Ministers arriving in the Phoenix Park to launch the Plan on an electric bus.[x] Yet this is one of just 13 State-owned electric vehicles among 6,573 listed, and came after the National Transport Authority recently announced the purchase of a further 200 diesel buses,[xi] for use nationwide. In Dublin nitrogen dioxide levels from diesel engines are already in breach of EU standards in a range of locations,[xii] seriously imperilling human health.

    The EPA’s recent emissions’ projections[xiii] make for stark reading:

    Mt CO2 eq 2017 2020 2025 2030 Growth 2018-2030
    Agriculture 20.21  20.32  20.66  20.85  3.2%
    Transport 12.00  12.68  12.48  11.86  -1.2%
    Energy Industries 11.74  11.95  13.66  8.62  -26.5%
    Residential 5.74  6.42  5.66  4.55  -20.7%
    Manufacturing Combustion 4.66  3.86  3.70  3.44  -26.2%
    Industrial Processes 2.23  2.39  2.67  3.01  34.6%
    Commercial and Public Services 1.97  1.31  1.15  0.97  -50.9%
    F-Gases 1.23  0.98  0.90  0.78  -35.9%
    Waste 0.93  0.58  0.49  0.44  -52.2%
    TOTAL 60.74  60.53  61.43  54.55  -10.2%

    The highest-emitting sector, agriculture, is predicted to increase its share to almost forty-per-cent of the total by 2030, while emissions from transport flatline. There is no evidence that the government’s Plan will alter these trajectories.

    Climate Opportunism

    In fact, climate change is being sold as an opportunity to roll out a fleet of electric cars, especially once the implementation of Bus Connects – really a road-widening exercise – ensures Dublin becomes even more of a U.S.-style motor-city.

    Foreign manufacture of electric vehicles externalises environmental and human impacts, including the mining of cobalt in Congo for lithium batteries.[xiv]

    Considering the success of the Luas, light rail seems a superior option to develop in our urban areas than noisy, uncomfortable and polluting buses. With a comparable population to Dublin, Prague has an extensive tram network offering a rapid, regular and comfortable service.

    A sensible climate action plan for urban areas could offer scope for a new generation of electric vehicles, including electric bikes, scooters and vehicles for the elderly – perhaps even involving state assistance to manufacturing enterprises. The motor car, as currently conceived, is not simply a major polluter, it is also unnecessarily large and poses serious dangers to other road users, as well as leading to social atomisation.

    Moreover, as long as fossil fuels generate electric power (under the Plan coal-burning Moneypoint power station is to be phased out in 2025,[xv] conveniently beyond the lifespan of this or the next government), electric vehicles could actually generate higher emissions than diesel equivalents, as one German study shows.[xvi]

    Another lacuna to the Plan is a failure to discuss reducing air travel between Dublin-London, accounting for 15,000 flights per annum, making it the busiest air corridor in Europe.[xvii] This might involve improving ferry services out of Dublin and, at the very least, providing a rail service from the Dublin city centre to the Port. It could even involve cooperating with the U.K. government to achieve improvements in the rail service out of Holyhead, potentially making sail-rail journey times competitive with air travel alternative.[xviii]

    Furthermore, the tired argument about maintaining the status quo in agriculture, the worst-offending sector, to the benefit of a narrowing elite, and underpinned by billions in subsidies, is based on a common misconception that Irish livestock ‘production’ diminishes impacts from livestock agriculture occurring elsewhere.

    This is the ‘our coal smokes less than their coal’ argument. In fact, recent analysis by An Taisce of U.N. figures[xix] shows Irish agricultural products to be responsible for among the highest emissions in Europe. Any plan purporting to diminish Ireland’s contribution to climate change is a waste of paper without proposals for radical reform of Irish agriculture. Emphasis, and subsidies, should shift to the cultivation of fruit and vegetables for the home market thereby reducing fossil fuel dependency, increasing employment and potentially raising the nation’s health.

    The so-called ‘Paper of Record’

    The Irish Times should not be considered a ‘paper of record’, or an unbiased conduit of ‘facts’, as it advertises itself. Although managed as a trust, a significant salary overhang and investments extraneous to news-gathering and commentary, including www.myhome.ie, have seen it develop into what is an overwhelmingly commercial concern. This approach may be a necessity for the survival of a medium-sized newspaper in the digital era, but it has important, generally unacknowledged, consequences for Irish democracy.

    It should be emphasised that many Irish Times journalists display diligence and integrity, and stories are still broken, but since Paul O’Neill became editor in 2017, the paper has become noticeably more business-friendly, and deferential to the current government.

    One leading columnist, Stephen Collins, is particularly partisan in his support for the dominant economic consensus of steady growth and rising rents administered by a political duopoly.[xx] Left-wing analysis of Irish politics and society is only given an intermittent platform, especially since Vincent Brown’s retirement, and with Fintan O’Toole mainly devoted to international commentary.

    Notably, Dan Flinter, chairman of the Irish Times Trust since 2013, holds a range of external directorships, where potential conflicts of interest could arise. For example, he is a non-executive director of Dairygold Co-Op, and chairman of its Remuneration Committee and a member of the Acquisitions and Investments Committee.[xxi] Ongoing expansion of the dairy sector since the lifting of EU milk quotas in 2015 has been the leading cause of the agricultural sector’s (and the country’s) rising emissions.

    A worldwide environmental crisis is upon us, and many, particularly young, Irish people are focused on the country’s global responsibilities. Meaningfully addressing the gathering storm – in Ireland’s case by shifting agricultural priorities (and subsidies) away from livestock production and phasing out the motor car in urban areas – would work, however, to the detriment of vested interests that advertise heavily in Irish media.[xxii] Such an approach would also be anathema to the dominant paradigm of economic growth-without-end, oblivious to environmental impact.

    The government’s Climate Action Plan seems to have been designed to assuage the justifiable fears, and desire for real action, among wide sections of the population, but it is really a greenwashing exercise, as the responses of leading environmental NGOs show.

    Unforgivably, the Irish Times misrepresented the Plan as a ‘radical’ document, despite its obvious deficiencies. This is a betrayal of a loyal readership, and honourable journalists working there. Irish democracy is being undermined by an institution which many of us grew up believing was one of its cornerstones, on an issue of crucial global importance.

    [i] Kevin Doyle, ‘Varadkar orders review of Project Ireland €1.5m publicity campaign amid controversy’, Irish Independent, March 1st, 2018. https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/politics/varadkar-orders-review-of-project-ireland-1-5m-publicity-campaign-amid-controversy-36660463.html

    [ii] Press Release. ‘New Gov’t Climate Plan offers much improved rhetoric: but An Taisce cautions that “winning slowly will be the same as losing”’ June 18th, 2019, An Taisce – The National Trust for Ireland. http://www.antaisce.org/articles/new-gov%E2%80%99t-climate-plan-offers-much-improved-rhetoric-but-an-taisce-cautions-that-%E2%80%9Cwinning

    [iii] Press Release, ‘Promised mechanisms to ensure delivery and oversight are biggest innovation in Government climate plan’, Friends of the Earth Ireland, 17th of June, 2019,  https://www.foe.ie/news/2019/06/17/promised-mechanisms-to-ensure-delivery-and-oversight-are-biggest-innovation-in-government-climate-plan/

    [iv] Press Release, ‘All-of-Gov Climate Plan falls far short on biodiversity measures’, Environmental Pillar, 17th of June, 2019, https://environmentalpillar.ie/all-of-gov-climate-plan-falls-far-short-on-biodiversity-measures/

    [v] ‘PRESS RELEASE: Nature largely missing from the government Climate Action Plan’, Irish Wildlife Trust, 18th of June, 2019, https://iwt.ie/press-release-nature-largely-missing-from-the-government-climate-action-plan/

    [vi] Conall Ó Fátharta ‘Ireland’s Emissions the Third Highest in the EU’, November 23rd, 2016 Irish Examiner, https://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/irelands-co2-emissions-third-highest-in-eu-431895.html

    [vii] Untitled, ‘End of Term Climate Report: ‘Little Leo is falling in with the wrong crowd’, Friends of the Earth, 9th of July, 2019, https://www.foe.ie/news/2019/07/09/end-of-term-climate-report-little-leo-is-falling-in-with-the-wrong-crowd/

    [viii] Broadsheet.ie offers a summary of the newspapers headlines the following day: https://www.broadsheet.ie/2019/06/17/de-tuesday-papers-321/

    [ix] Untitled, ‘Irish Times view on the Climate Action Plan: activity must match ambition’, June 18th, 2019, Irish Times, https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/editorial/irish-times-view-on-the-climate-action-plan-activity-must-match-ambition-1.3928552

    [x] Miriam Lord, ‘Miriam Lord: From emission agnostics to climate apostles’, June 17th, 2019, Irish Times, https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/miriam-lord-from-emission-agnostics-to-climate-apostles-1.3930031?mode=sample&auth-failed=1&pw-origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fnews%2Fpolitics%2Fmiriam-lord-from-emission-agnostics-to-climate-apostles-1.3930031.

    [xi] Juno McEnroe, ‘Only 13 of 6,700 State vehicles are electric’, July 1st, Irish Examiner, https://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/ireland/only-13of-6700-state-vehicles-are-electric-933924.html

    [xii] Cormac Fitzgerald, ‘Levels of dangerous air pollutant NO2 possibly exceeding limits on M50 and on Dublin street’, thejournal.ie, July 9th, 2019, https://www.thejournal.ie/pollution-traffic-4715146-Jul2019/

    [xiii] ‘EPA’S GREENHOUSE GAS PROJECTIONS SHOW THAT IRELAND HAS MORE TO DO TO MEET ITS 2030 TARGETS’, Environmental Protection Agency, June 6th, 2019. https://www.epa.ie/mobile/news/name,66072,en.html?fbclid=IwAR3cGLpPKV9k4fTIVE8EMCJ_DPqG4bK_Ked5xWObMD5pzt_j63_wGQK7R24 accessed 9/6/19.

    [xiv] Untitled, ‘CBS News finds children mining cobalt for batteries in the Congo’, March 5th, 2018, CBS News, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cobalt-children-mining-democratic-republic-congo-cbs-news-investigation/?fbclid=IwAR1uNxopb2YEdfPIUyQvoTtfBVWn-o7OKTvAHuPH_IgV4HfVnmAeSzFE9_Q

    [xv] Government of Ireland, ‘Climate Action Plan – To Tackle Climate Breakdown’, June 16th, 2019, p.23. https://dccae.gov.ie/documents/Climate%20Action%20Plan%202019.pdf

    [xvi] Commentary, ‘Electric Vehicles in Germany Emit More Carbon Dioxide Than Diesel Vehicles’, June 10th, 2019, Institute for Energy Research, https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/international-issues/electric-vehicles-in-germany-emit-more-carbon-dioxide-than-diesel-vehicles/?fbclid=IwAR3PGVCkKRWjp12WtvqFMCgqKpOYhh4f001QxrRt6OEeUJ7S0eLQI5DkLys.

    [xvii] Untitled, ‘Dublin-Heathrow Busiest International Route In Europe’, 21st of January, 2019, Roots Online, https://www.routesonline.com/airports/2412/dublin-airport/news/276780/dublin-heathrow-busiest-international-route-in-europe/

    [xviii] Ruadhan Mac Eoin, ‘A User’s Guide to ‘Sail-Rail’ with Bicycle and Opportunities on the Dublin-London Route’, April 30th 2019, Cassandra Voices, http://cassandravoices.com/environment/off-the-rails-sail-rail-with-bicycle-from-dublin-to-london-with-some-observations-on-opportunities-for-improvement/

    [xix] Press Release, ‘Bombshell for Irish Beef’, An Taisce – The National Trust for Ireland, February 10th, 2019, http://www.antaisce.org/articles/bombshell-for-irish-beef.

    [xx] For example: Stephen Collins, ‘Politics of centre ground has served Ireland well’, May 2nd, 2019, Irish Times, https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/stephen-collins-politics-of-centre-ground-has-served-ireland-well-1.3877455

    [xxi] Dairygold Annual Report, 2018. https://www.dairygold.ie/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Dairygold-Annual-Report-2018.pdf

    [xxii] As regards the motor car industry, see Stephen Court, ‘Drivetime’, Cassandra Voices, 31st of May, 2018. ‘http://cassandravoices.com/environment/drive-time-the-irish-medias-message/

  • No Comment: London New and Old

    [Best_Wordpress_Gallery id=”47″ gal_title=”London, July 6th, 2019″]

  • The Shadow of Italian Justice

    Nowhere that I have visited has quite the charm of Umbria, Italy’s throbbing green heart, and only land-locked province apart from the Alpine region. Along its horizon, verdant hills culminate in fortified settlements that act as sentinels over fecund valleys, where wheat fields and vineyards have long sustained a saturnine populace. The lumbering waters of the Tiber snaking through the countryside bestow lush fertility, while in the distance the spine of mountains that form the Apennine range cleaves into view.

    The region has strong spiritual traditions: Saint Benedict, who developed the communal model of Western monasticism, hailed from Norcia; while around Assisi Saint Francis saw the divine in all living beings. But inward contemplation has often intertwined with outward savagery, the charming cities bearing the stain of bloodshed from centuries of internecine conflict.

    Just as sweet birdsong contains fierce threats to competitors, so the form and grace of Umbria’s built environment belies the violence of perennial power struggles. Extravagant civic architecture was a form of competitive display between the signorie that ruled those city states during the Middle Ages and Renaissance.

    First among equals is Perugia, Umbria’s capital and hub. At dusk, imbibing the rising chatter on Piazza IV Novembre, one may assume the light to be eternal, and that the dancing shadows will never give way to the enduring gloom of night.

    Into this setting in 2007 strode an insouciant Amanda Knox, then twenty years of age. Enrolling in Perugia’s Universitá per Stranieri, she realised a dream of studying the Italian language on a semester abroad from her native Seattle, a world apart on the distant west coast of America. A familiar student lifestyle followed in those first weeks of term: falling in love; alcohol and cannabis; the irritations of part-time work as a waitress; all this as she nursed the hope of a career as an interpreter.

    Universitá per Stranieri, Perugia. Image: Daniele Idini ©

    Video footage from the period reveals her as vivacious and quirky, a bundle of mischievous energy whose fair complexion might break a few hearts over the course of her stay. She seemed destined to skip back home to the relative anonymity of grad school, career and family, holding on to fond memories of an old Europe she would rarely, if ever, return to. What lay in store was an altogether different fate, a living nightmare. She retains the role of femme fatale in a film noir that was not of her choosing.

    On November 1st, 2007 British student Meredith Kercher was found dead in the apartment she shared with Knox and two other Italian students. Knox and her then boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were accused of her rape and murder. The prosecution alleged that Kercher had been killed during a sex game gone wrong, with Knox orchestrating proceedings. Crucially, DNA evidence linked Knox to a knife the prosecution claimed could have been the murder weapon. But this evidence was found inadmissible when independent forensic experts found a strong likelihood of contamination of the DNA, leading to Knox and Sollecito’s successful appeal in 2011, ending their incarceration. They were definitively exonerated in 2015 by the Italian Supreme Court. In the meantime, a serial offender, Rudy Guede, was found guilty of the crime and is currently serving a reduced sentence after an early admission of guilt, based on incontrovertible DNA evidence and a confession after he had fled to Germany, from where he was extradited back to Italy.

    The circumstance of Meredith Kercher’s horrifying demise gave rise to a mystery play, in which the two main characters are removed from the scene of the awful attack. As the plot unfolds we encounter another articulation of evil no less sinister than that which prompted the fatal assault.

    It involved a battle of wills, and wits, between Amanda Knox and her prosecutor Giuliano Mignini, whose bizarre conjectures suggests perverse imaginings. He had been revealed as a fantasist before his attention was drawn to the pretty American student ‘inappropriately’ kissing her boyfriend outside the crime scene. In 2001, the same Mignini, as Perugia prosecutor, had ‘identified’ a satanic sect that supposedly killed women for black masses, which he linked to the unsolved ‘Monster of Florence’ serial murder case. To that he end, he arrested twenty people all of whom were, like Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito, completely exonerated.

    In the 2016 Netflix documentary Amanda Knox we meet an unrepentant Mignini, who speaks of his fondness for Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. The pipe he sports seems in homage to the Victorian sleuth. It is unsurprising to discover this taste for fantasy fiction, and characterisations of extreme evil. Did he cast himself as the English gentleman – the ‘dandy’ long revered in Italy – defending an idealised damsel? In such imagining Kercher had been killed at the instigation of the promiscuous and drug-addled Knox, who was portrayed as a sinister witch.

    We may speculate that Mignini developed a sordid fascination with both Meredith Kercher and Amanda Knox. A devious and enduring campaign against Knox might suggest a Freudian sublimation.

    Mignini’s persecution of Knox and Sollecito could be dismissed as a sinister aberration of Italian justice, but for the extent to which his theories found favour among many Italians, stoked by an international tabloid media that latched on to every gruesome conjecture. The prosecution manipulated damaging evidence against Knox, in particular, before the court of international opinion, and a character of ‘Foxy Knoxy’, previously her MySpace handle, was invented. To this end, a policeman masquerading as a doctor lied to her saying she was HIV positive, and encouraged her to write a diary outlining her sexual history, which was then stolen and passed on to the media.

    In the documentary Mignini makes the startling boast that ‘normally people say that ‘Nobody is a prophet in his own country’, but that’s not what I experienced’. Casting himself as a Savonarola for our time, he sought to cast away the sins of the world, sins he believed were personified in Amanda. The backdrop to this was a widespread feeling of moral decline in Italy, especially identified with the then prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s lewd antics. But Mignini’s self-righteousness recalls Shakespeare’s ‘Sonnet 94’: ‘Lillies that fester smell far worse than weeds’.

    Mark Williams suggests that a mythology ‘furnishes a culture with a total worldview, interpreting and mirroring back everything that that culture finds significant’. Contemporary Italian culture is still steeped in mythology, whose living presence is emphasised by the ubiquity of ancient ruins. Perugia itself possesses an architectural legacy stretching back to the ancient Etruscans.

    The Etruscan Arch or Arch of Augustus, Perugia. Image: Daniele Idini

    Italy was only unified in 1861. The following day, the politician and intellectual Massimo d’Azeglio famously said: ‘We have made Italy and, now, we must make the Italians.’ The formidable culture of Ancient Rome was drawn on in particular. For example, the term ‘fascist’ derives from the Latin word ‘fascis’ meaning bundle. ‘Fasces’ is a bound bundle of rods, which had its origin in the Etruscan civilisation and was passed on to ancient Rome, where it symbolised a magistrate’s power and jurisdiction.

    That Roman inheritance still exerts influence on the Italian collective unconscious, often importing an ideal of woman as objective beauty and passive agent. Laurens van der Post contrasts the Ancient Greek attitude to women, expressed in Homer’s Odyssey, with that of the Roman, expressed in Virgil’s Aeneid: ‘It is precisely because this journey of Odysseus and his reunion with the eternal feminine that is Penelope, is the blueprint of the Greek story that made Greece, I believe, more creative than Rome.’

    Van der Post contrasts Odysseus, who returns to his wife after twenty years of exile, with Aeneas – a Trojan who becomes the first hero of Rome – and symbolically rejects ‘the eternal feminine’, not once but twice. Firstly, in choosing to carry his father Anchises rather than his then wife Creusa, on his back out of a burning Troy; and afterwards, in his memorable rejection of Dido’s love in favour of patriarchal duty.

    After many trials Aeneas and his fellow surviving Trojan refugees land in Latium in Italy. There, he has learnt on a mystical Underworld journey, a (male) ancestor will establish the city of Rome. To bring this about, however, he must first subdue the local tribes. Defeating their champion Turnus in mortal combat he wins the hand of the virginal Lavinia, daughter of Latinus, king of the Latins. Critically, Virgil describes her as, ‘the cause of all this suffering, her lovely eyes downcast.’ The unashamed sensuality of Amanda Knox – kissing inappropriately outside a crime scene – was an insult to a Roman ideal of downcast loveliness.

    Knox and  Sollecito – he as collateral damage it seems – became the victim of Mignini, the latter-day Sherlock. In custody for days on end, and without access to lawyers, the young pair were made to sing. Confessions were extracted and subsequently recanted. In the grip of terror, bizarre fictions emerged.

    This is not unusual. Saul M. Kassin describes ‘coerced-internalized false confessions‘, as ‘statements made by an innocent but vulnerable person, who, as a result of exposure to highly suggestive and misleading interrogation tactics, comes to believe that he or she may have committed the crime – a belief that is sometimes supplemented by false memories.’ Kassin cites numerous US cases where innocent parties implicate themselves in crimes in which subsequent DNA evidence definitively reveals they had no involvement. One such instance was the notorious Central Park jogger case, in which a number of young men confessed to a crime and were found guilty, before the real perpetrator came forward and admitted to the crime, saying he acted alone, with DNA evidence corroborating his account.

    Amanda Knox is often criticised for implicating Patrick Lumumba, the Congolese boss of the bar she worked in at the time. But who among us knows the scenarios that would spill forth to end a long and tortuous interrogation, after probable trauma in the wake of a horrific murder? The important principle is that confessions extracted under duress are entirely unreliable as evidence, and unworthy of consideration. Any charge of conspiracy over the false accusation should never have been leveled against her.

    As far back as 1908 Hugo Munsterberg  wrote about a Salem witch confession involving ‘illusions of memory’ in which ‘a split-off second personality began to form itself with its own connected life story built up from the absurd superstitions which had been suggested to her through the hypnotising examination.’ A witch hunt will find “absurd superstitions”, just as a man with a hammer sees nails.

    Jung’s conception of evil is useful for examining the aftermath of Meredith Kercher’s murder and rape. His ideas diverge from the Catholic doctrine of Privatio Boni, which identifies evil simply with the absence of good and not as an independent and eternal phenomenon. In contrast, Jung argues: ‘Evil does not decrease by being hushed up as a non-reality or as mere negligence of man. It was there before him, when he could not possibly have had a hand in it.’ Furthermore, he warned:  ‘The future of mankind very much depends upon the recognition of the shadow’. The serpent may crawl into the most rarefied of environments.

    Shadows in Perugia. Image: Daniele Idini

    The evil evident in Rudy Guede’s offence is a sadly familiar story of a dislocated childhood, and a spiral of nefarious deeds, ending in a heinous crime. But Mignini’s actions appear to represent denial of the shadow. He comes across as virtuous – disciplined, abstemious, family-orientated –  but he may have failed to countenance an evil lurking within his own nature. This may have led him to build a narrative out of diabolical imaginings, which nearly destroyed the lives of two young people, who will never fully recover from the ordeal.

    Jung saw the mechanism of the shadow as accounting for the persecution of Jews through history. He argued that Christians scapegoated Jews in response to their own rejection of the real meaning of Christ. Mignini’s reign of terror fits into a wider phenomenon of targeting individuals for broader perceived failings in a society. The origin of contemporary racism is also located in the inability of communities to live up to standards some members expect, with contagion blamed on an internal enemy.

    The Meredith Kercher case became a cause celebre in early twenty-first century in Italy. Television channels featured nightly debates which voyeuristically picked apart the details, while the personalities of the protagonists were relentlessly scrutinised and their images placed on constant display. One may assume it suited Silvio Berlusconi’s government, which controlled most television channels, to saturate the public mind with the protracted case, distracting from the endemic corruption, which would ultimately bring down his government in 2011, the same year as Knox’s successful appeal.

    Moreover, it is commonly believed in Italy that official explanations cannot be relied on. The suspicion that there is always something going on behind, ‘dietro’, the surface, produces the common word ‘dietrologia‘, used to refer to a conspiracy. The bizarre details of the Knox-Sollecito case fed a veritable industry in competing interpretations. Besides, a liberal critique could be countered by the racial dimension: the black African languishing in jail, while the white American escapes, plus ca change.

    Many Italians are still unwilling to contemplate that the whole Knox-Sollecito prosecution was indeed a bizarre invention. After all, to do so casts grave doubts over the integrity of their entire legal system. This has parallels with the unwillingness of Lord Denning to countenance the ‘appalling vista’ of police criminality in the Birmingham Six, wrongfully found guilty of the Birmingham pub bombings, who spent sixteen years in prison before the Court of Appeal quashed their conviction in 1991. The ‘Umbrian vista’ of a serious miscarriage of justice is still questioned by many Italians.

    Douglas Preston argued that the answer for this denial of an unwillingness to recognise a manifest injustice lies in the Italian concept of face (‘la faccia‘) ‘whose deep and pervasive power most Anglo-Saxons who have not lived in a Mediterranean country have a hard time appreciating.’

    V

    Amanda Knox and Christopher Robinson ‘selfie’, Dublin, February 2018

    I met Amanda Knox and her boyfriend the writer Christopher Robinson when they visited Dublin last month. They had arrived in advance of Amanda’s appearance on the Ray D’Arcy Show, her first television interview outside the United States since her exoneration in 2015.

    Like most people, I had taken a passing interest in what seemed a bizarre case, piqued more by the Umbrian backdrop to the crime scene than the lurid storylines. In truth, I had not given serious consideration to the guilt or innocence of the protagonist, and only engaged with the case when I met a person whose nature seemed entirely unfitted for the role of psychotic murderess. The more I read, the more my intuition was confirmed.

    The protagonists in high-profile cases seem unreal until you actually meet them, or not, as is the case with most of the self-anointed true-crime experts, who search Amanda Knox’s every gesture for ‘signs’ of guilt; bestowing credibility on evidence that was not only inadmissible, but may have been part of a sinister conspiracy.

    What is most striking about Amanda is an outgoing disposition, a West Coast woman with plenty of spunk. She and Christopher are a gregarious pair, at ease in the territory of literature, philosophy and languages, the last of which is her specialism. Surprisingly, she gives no impression of bitterness, even towards Italy. Perhaps it is still that failure to play the role of downcast Lavinia bemoaning her fate which evokes suspicion, but why should she restrain a natural joie de vivre?

    Nor does she shy away from recalling her experiences: casually dropping in a mention of the aubergine – or ‘egg plant’ – provided in prison; or how she earned the respect of illiterate inmates by writing letters on their behalf (in return at one point a Neapolitan gang pulled her out of a brawl that was getting nasty). Nonetheless, she has admitted to suicide ideation during four years behind bars. Sharing cells with hardened criminals for four years for a crime she did not commit provides a perspective few of us gain.

    On their trip I accompanied the couple on a hike along Howth Head, during which she revealed herself as an animal lover, greeting every pooch and kitty as if they were long lost friends. Travelling by train I became conscious of a few gawkers, mostly Italian tourists, but this did not interrupt her flow. She refuses to cower before unsubstantiated accusations. Understandably, between Amanda and Christopher humour has become a safety valve, though a lifetime of being the butt of cheap jokes cannot be an easy lot.

    Following her release she took a degree and then worked as a journalist for a local newspaper under a pseudonym. Now she uses her unchosen fame judiciously, advocating on behalf of the Innocence Project in the United States, and writing for Vice magazine, among others. Ideologically, she is left-liberal and opposes President Trump, despite his support for her cause. I can envisage her becoming a politician herself one day.

    The monster of Giuliano Mignini’s imagining is still at large in the obscure regions of virtual reality, and Amanda Knox seems likely to be pursued by vengeful furies all her life. She told me she receives death threats on a daily basis. In the anonymous chambers of social media she still evokes an outrage proving that mud, no matter how unearned, always sticks. A cursory search on Twitter for #AmandaKnox reveals an array of hateful commentaries. Yet she is free – free of guilt and free-spirited.

    From these exacting trials she bears wounds that will never heal, and a life sentence of having to defend herself against unsupported accusations. From a depth of suffering she emerges as a hero to anyone wrongfully accused; to women who are attacked for unashamed sensuality; for those who embrace life and do not succumb to despair. Like the rest of us, she has made mistakes, but her life experiences give her rare insights.

    The Knox-Sollecito case exposed wider failing in the Italian justice system – 4 million Italians since the Second World War have been falsely charged with criminal offences. That Giuliano Mignini and his jackbooted Squadra Mobile remain in positions of authority suggests the endurance of fascist attitudes in the administration of justice. Widespread corruption did not begin or end with Silvio Berlusconi, as Michael Day puts it: ‘Perhaps Italians should start looking in the mirror rather than blaming everything on one brilliant but unscrupulous entrepreneur.’ The octogenarian’s apparently impending return to power might be interpreted as a symptom rather than a cause.

    As part of that self-assessment embedded mythologies might be explored. Can the sympathetic vision of St. Francis displace the judgmental attitude of latter-day Savonarolas? Might the spirit of the exiled Roman poet Ovid return to metamorphose the relationship with the ‘eternal feminine’? His ‘Kind Earth Mother’ asks:

        Do I deserve this? Is this the reward
    for my unflagging truthfulness? For bearing
    year after year, the wounds of plough and mattock?
    And for providing flocks with pasturage,
    the human race with ripened grain to eat,
    the gods with incense burning on their altars?

    At least the many enlightened Italians I know can draw solace from Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito’s belated exoneration by the Italian Supreme Court. That court also upheld a prison sentence against Silvio Berlusconi in 2013, which is now preventing him from returning to the office of Prime Minister. Many observers consider the senior Italian judiciary as a crucial bulwark against erosion of democracy and the Rule of Law.

    Perhaps the bereft family of Meredith Kercher may some day come to believe Amanda Knox’s protestations of innocence. Their grief must have been considerably heightened by Giuliano Mignini’s handling of the case. One suspects that any process of coming to terms with their loss will include some form of reconciliation with Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito.

    RIP Meredith Kercher.

  • Brown Tide: Five Signs the Irish Government Could Not Give a Shit about the Environment

    Recent Local and European elections witnessed an electoral Green Tide, especially in Dublin, where Ciaran Cuffe topped the European poll. But this week Dubliners are contending with a Brown Tide, of shit, after overspill from the Ringsend Wastewater Plant.

    It is far from an isolated example of this government’s environmental negligence. What makes it all the more nauseating is the doublespeak emanating from many Fine Gael politicians, who claim to care, including the Taoiseach Leo Varadkar. Hard decisions are avoided and basic infrastructure is creaking, or non-existent, undermining the nation’s health. Planning for the future is long on glossy PR brochures but short on substantive action.

    Creaking infrastructure.

    Here are five obvious signs:

    1. Milking for all it’s worth: the Environmental Protection Agency recently projected a steady increase in national emissions, emanating in particular from the agricultural sector. By 2030 they estimate almost forty per cent of the national total will emanate from that sector.[i] This is the product of long-standing government policy. The Harvest 2020 plan, published in 2010, and driven by Simon Coveney as Minister for Agriculture from 2011, set ambitious targets for increasing dairy production, which have made Ireland the world’s second leading exporter of controversial infant milk powder into the Chinese market.[ii]

    2. Drilling Begins: The May elections showed Irish people are awakening to the need for climate action. Conveniently, two days after the poll, the Department of Climate Action granted consent for an exploratory oil and gas well off the Kerry coast.[iii] It begs the question as to whether the Department understands its remit to be the acceleration of climate change, as opposed to the opposite.

    3. Traffic Fumes: It is over a decade since the European Union’s environmental body described ‘Dublin as a ‘worst case scenario‘ for ‘unsustainable car-dependent urban sprawl.’[iv] Little or nothing has been done in the interim to counter what is an unusually car-dependent city. Moreover, a recent survey found Dublin to be one of the slowest cities to drive through in all of Europe[v]; all these cars, including those with diesel engines that continue to be sold, are diminishing air quality, with air pollution levels regularly breaching healthy standards set out by the WHO.[vi]

    Seapoint, Dublin, 9th of June, 2019.

    4. Swimming Ban: Thousands of Dubliners depend on a daily swim for their mental health and wellbeing. Last week it was revealed that partially treated sewage had leaked into Dublin Bay, creating a substantial health risk to bathers. The treatment facility was built in 2005 to accommodate a population of 1.64 million people, but now handles wastewater from approximately 1.9 million. As a result, the facility is constantly overloaded, tarnishing one of the city’s greatest assets in Dublin Bay.[vii]

    5. Greenwashing: Senior Fine Gael politicians have long specialised in saying one thing on the environment, while doing precisely the opposite. Leo Varadkar, for example, claimed he supported the school strike for climate,[viii] oblivious, or attempting to undermine, how these young adults were, in fact protesting against the negligent policies of his government. In terms of agriculture, the Irish Wildlife Trust’s Padraic Fogarty recently wrote about the government’s propaganda that ‘it would be wrong to think that Origin Green was merely ineffective – it is much worse than that. It is, in fact, a greater threat than all these insidious pressures precisely because its marketing is so effective.’[ix]

    School Climate Strike.

    [i] ‘EPA’S GREENHOUSE GAS PROJECTIONS SHOW THAT IRELAND HAS MORE TO DO TO MEET ITS 2030 TARGETS’, Environmental Protection Agency, June 6th, 2019. https://www.epa.ie/mobile/news/name,66072,en.html?fbclid=IwAR3cGLpPKV9k4fTIVE8EMCJ_DPqG4bK_Ked5xWObMD5pzt_j63_wGQK7R24 accessed 9/6/19.

    [ii] Amy Forde, ‘Ireland is the second largest exporter of infant formula to China’, Agriland, September 21st, 2015, http://www.agriland.ie/farming-news/ireland-is-the-second-largest-exporter-of-infant-formula-to-china/, accessed 9/6/19.

    [iii] Niall Sargant, ‘Government gives consent for drilling off Kerry coast’, Greennews.ie, May 28th, 2019. https://greennews.ie/gov-consent-green-wave-oil/, accessed 9/6/19.

    [iv] Untitled, Belfast Telegraph, ‘EU using Dublin as example of worst-case urban, 4th of October, 2016, sprawl’ https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/breakingnews/breakingnews_ukandireland/eu-using-dublin-as-example-of-worstcase-urban-sprawl-28409383.html, accessed 9/6/19.

    [v] Barry Arnold, ‘DUBLIN TOPS THE LIST AS ‘SLOWEST CITY CENTRE IN ALL OF EUROPE’ FOR TRAFFIC CONGESTION’, Extra.ie, February 14th, 2019, https://extra.ie/2019/02/14/news/irish-news/dublin-traffic-congestion-inrix-report, accessed 9/6/19.

    [vi] Untitled, ‘Dublin air pollution levels breach healthy standard study finds’, Newstalk, 14th of September, 2018. https://www.newstalk.com/news/dublin-air-pollution-levels-breach-who-standards-study-finds-497361, accessed 9/6/19.

    [vii] Kevin O’Sullivan, ‘Why is partially-treated sewage leaking into Dublin Bay?’ Irish Times, Jun 7th, 2019, https://www.irishtimes.com/news/environment/why-is-partially-treated-sewage-leaking-into-dublin-bay-1.3918122, accessed 9/6/19.

    [viii] Cormac Fitzgerald, ‘Leo says he supports school students going on strike next week as part of global action on climate change’, thejournal.ie, March 6th, 2019, https://www.thejournal.ie/climate-change-student-strike-4526018-Mar2019/, accessed 9/6/19.

    [ix] Padraic Fogarty, ‘Is greenwashing our greatest threat to nature?’, Greennews.ie, June 6th, 2019, https://greennews.ie/greenwashing-the-greatest-threat-to-nature/, accessed 9/6/19.

  • No Comment: Schools Climate Strike

    [Best_Wordpress_Gallery id=”45″ gal_title=”No Comment: Schools Climate Strike”]

  • Gluttony, Gastronomy, and the Origins of ‘French’ Food

    As French President, François Mitterrand enjoyed his fair share of sumptuous feasts in the haute cuisine tradition. His enduring esteem reflects a wider French anxiety, in an era of Globalisation, expressed by Pascal Ory, as to whether French cuisine will be ‘all that remains when everything else has been forgotten?’[i] Thus, in 1996, for his final supper, the dying statesman made an unusual request – alongside requests for the familiar capons and oysters – for a small, yellow-throated songbird, the ortolan, supposedly representing the French soul, to appear on the menu. As is customary, Mitterrand consumed the plucked bird whole in a sauce of Armagnac, crunching the little bones with his face behind a napkin – ‘so that God himself could not witness the barbarity.’[ii]

    Even committed carnivores might baulk at devouring a morsel of flesh from a rare creature that fills the air with song, and, apparently, the mouth with blood – providing another use for the napkin. There was, nonetheless, a brutal honesty to Mitterrand’s act, acknowledging the wantonness of a food culture that permits the sacrifice of a songbird for the sake of a fleeting corporeal pleasure.

    French authorities prohibited the hunting of ortolans in 1999. Nonetheless, 30,000 birds are still trapped every year, and are said to fetch up to €150 apiece on the black market. Tragically, ortolan numbers have dropped by 84% between 1980 and 2012.[iii]

    For most of us, however, the sins of the table are indirect and unacknowledged, as where virgin habitat makes way for grazing the animals we raise for meat, or to grow the crops used to feed them – rather than ourselves. A blindfold of distance prevents us from witnessing the nesting grounds of birds going up in smoke on hillsides; or hedgerows being eviscerated; let alone the pesticides bringing Insectageddon,[iv] which are wiping out the primary foodstuff of many birds.

    Nonetheless, since the French Revolution, there has been a clear distinction between a gluttony associated with the vice of excess, and the virtue of gastronomy – ‘the art and science of delicate eating’, underpinning French cuisine in particular. Yet this gastronomy often acts as a blindfold to the gluttonous excesses of a food culture that has attained global dominance. French cuisine has much to recommend it, especially in terms of the value ascribed to unique environmental contexts or terroir, but it remains excessively dependent on animal agriculture.

    It might be helpful to chart the emergence of the Sin of Gluttony, originally encompassing both excess and delicacy. In Roman times Seneca (d. 65 CE) was appalled by his decadent contemporaries who would ‘vomit in order to eat, and eat in order to vomit’, bemoaning the wastefulness of ‘banquets for which they ransack the whole world.’[v] Later, St. Paul writes of enemies of the cross whose end is ‘destruction, their god is the belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things.’[vi] This reflects Adam succumbing to the temptation of an apple, the Original Sin of greed, but distinguishing between greed and necessary – and invariably enjoyable – consumption of food is not straightforward.

    St. Augustine of Hippo (d. 430 CE) provides an archetypal insight into the moral confusion wrought by appetite in the autobiographical Confessions. He acknowledges he must eat for the sake of his health, but is wary of the ‘dangerous pleasure’ he draws from it: ‘it is difficult to discern whether the needed care of my body is asking for sustenance or whether a deceitful voluptuousness of greed is trying to seduce me.’[vii] For St. Augustine, all bodily appetites are indicative of the fallen state of Man, a form of cupiditas: ‘Ardent desire, inordinate longing or lust; covetousness.’

    It fell to Pope Gregory I (d. c. 604 CE) to develop the most lasting definition of gluttony, when he laid out the seven ‘deadly’ or ‘cardinal’ sins. Building on St. Paul’s condemnation of those who treat their bellies as ‘God’, he defined that Sin as being more than merely eating too much. For Gregory, the contagion resided in the eater’s thoughts, as much as his actions:

    the glutton eats before he is hungry and continues to eat when he is no longer hungry; he craves costly and gratuitously sophisticated dishes; he eats too much and with excessive eagerness; he seeks not sustenance, but pleasure; he becomes the slave of his stomach and his palate.[viii]

    Breaking any taboo, however, tends to exert a fascination, and wealth and prestige are often expressed in conspicuous consumption. Thus, while gluttony was considered the ‘mother of all sins’, the medieval European nobility revelled in excess, enjoying stupendous, Bacchanalian banquets, memorably evoked by the sixteenth-century French writer François Rabelais in his tales of Gargantua and Pantagruel (c. 1532-64). Folk ambivalence towards orthodox theology is revealed in the popularity of a fictional land of fantastical abundance called ‘the Land of Cockaigne’. Herman Pleij reveals:

    Everyone living at the end of the Middle Ages had heard of Cockaigne at one time or another. It was a country, tucked away in some remote corner of the globe, where ideal living conditions prevailed … food and drink appeared spontaneously in the form of grilled fish, roast geese and rivers of wine … One could even reside in meat, fish, game, fowl, or pastry, for another feature of Cockaigne was its edible architecture.[ix]

    The reach of the myth of Cockaigne attests to a yearning for a sensuality in food consumption which the deadening moral schema prohibited: the reach of the mortal Sin of Gluttony failed to accommodate what is simultaneously a pleasurable and necessary activity. The early modern period witnessed an ideological shift that continues to govern our understanding.

    Mainly due to improvements in agriculture and the discovery of New World crops, by the late eighteenth century a rising bourgeoisie could enjoy the privilege of plenty, with wealth diffused more widely across society. Previously the nobility’s social superiority could be expressed in gargantuan banquets, but, for that style of eating to impress, hungry onlookers are required. How could consumption remain conspicuous? The answer lay in increasing the demands made upon chefs to innovate. New dishes became increasingly complex, a process accelerated by accumulated culinary knowledge in recipe books. The emphasis turned to quality, mainly dependent on human ingenuity, rather than largesse. The introduction to one French recipe book from 1674 signals the shift in fashion:

    Nowadays it is not the prodigious overflowing of dishes, the abundance of ragoûts and gallimaufries, the extraordinary piles of meat … in which it seems that nature and artifice have been entirely exhausted in the satisfaction of the senses, which is the most palpable object of our delicacy of taste. It is rather the exquisite choice of meats, the finesse with which they are seasoned, the courtesy and neatness with which they are served, their proportionate relationship to the number of people, and finally the general order of things which essentially contribute to the goodness and elegance of a meal.[x]

    According to Stephen Mennell this newly discovered sense of delicacy implies ‘a degree of restraint too, in so far as it involves discrimination and selection, the rejection as well as the acceptance of certain foods or combinations of foods, guided at least as much by social proprieties as by individual fancies.’[xi] The trend for more varied and delicate ragoûts predictably spread from elite circles to the burgeoning bourgeoisie. What was crucial, however, to upending the private banquets of the ancien regime was the French Revolution, which established the public restaurant as the location for fine dining, par excellence.

    The word ‘gastronomy’ seems to have first appeared in 1801 as the title of a poem b Joseph Berchoux.[xii] It was rapidly adopted in both France and Britain to designate ‘the art and science of delicate eating.’ The meaning of ‘gastronome’ overlaps with the older terms ‘epicure,’ and ‘gourmand,’ as well as the newer one ‘gourmet.’ Both ‘epicure’ and ‘gourmand’ had formerly pejorative meanings close to ‘glutton’ – applied to those who ate greedily and to excess. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, however, ‘epicure’ had acquired a more positive meaning in English as ‘one who cultivates a refined taste for the pleasure of the table; one who is choice and dainty in eating and drinking.’[xiii]

    In France, the word ‘gourmand’ had the same favourable sense and was used by the first ever restaurant critic Alexandre Balthazar Laurent Grimod de la Reynière as the title for his series of restaurant reviews: Almanachs des Gourmands (1803-12). In contrast, today English writers commonly draw a distinction between a ‘gourmand’, which has the same negative connotation as ‘glutton’, and a ‘gourmet’, who is considered a person with a refined palate. But as Mennell notes, ‘gastronome’ differs from all the other terms in one key respect: a gastronome is generally understood as a person who not only cultivates his own ‘refined tastes for the pleasure of the table’ but also, ‘helps to cultivate other people’s too.’[xiv]

    The first restaurant critic, Grimod – a dispossessed noble who held democracy in contempt – was alive to the possibility that he could be attacked for being a glutton, asserting: ‘Let it be said that of all the Deadly Sins that mankind may commit the fifth appears to be the one that least troubles his conscience and causes him the least remorse.’[xv] He grapples with the challenge of altering the understanding of the term:

    If the Dictionary of the Academy is to be believed, gourmand is a synonym for glutton or greedy, as gourmandise is for gluttony. In our opinion this definition is inexact; the words gluttony and greed should be reserved for the characterisation of intemperance and insatiability, while the word gourmand has, in polite society, a much more favourable interpretation, one might say a nobler one altogether.[xvi]

    It was, however, Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (d. 1826), a bachelor lawyer of a more democratic persuasion than Grimod, who most clearly distinguished gastronomy from the medieval concept of gluttony. In the opinion of Balzac, Brillat-Savarin’s La Physiologie du gout was a work of literature beside which that of Grimod’s was ‘too much of a pot-pourri.’[xvii] Even Grimod, upon reading his contemporary’s work, magnanimously observed: ‘Beside him I am no more than a kitchen skivvy.’[xviii] Brillat-Savarin’s Gourmandism was ‘an impassioned, reasoned and habitual preference for everything which gratifies the organs of taste.’ Importantly, he distinguished this from excessive eating and drinking, arguing that gourmandism is ‘the enemy of excess; indigestion and drunkenness are offences which render the offender liable to be struck off the rolls.’[xix] Brillat-Savarin embraced the sensual pleasure of food, beyond sufficiency, arguing it ‘is one of the privileges of mankind to eat without being hungry and drink without being thirsty.’[xx]

    This appears to be a refutation of Gregory’s definition of the mortal sin, where ‘the glutton eats before he is hungry and continues to eat when he is no longer hungry’, repudiating Gregory’s conviction that drawing ‘pleasure’ as opposed to ‘sustenance’ from food is gluttonous. This, Brillat-Savarin contended, showed ‘implicit obedience to the commands of the Creator, who, when He ordered us to eat in order to live, gave us the inducement of appetite, the encouragement of savour, and the reward of pleasure.’[xxi]

    Brillat-Savarin’s book has been in print every year since publication in 1826 and his bon mots remain staples in gastronomic literature. He can be credited with altering our understanding of gluttony and liberating sensual appreciation of food from the grip of the dualistic philosophy of the medieval Church. But Brillat-Savarin left an inaccurate picture of French food, which became a global hit.

    The meat-heavy diet promoted by the early gastronomes is still equated, misleadingly, with traditional French rustic fare. In fact, Fernand Braudel writes: ‘the diet of peasants, that is the vast majority of the population, had nothing in common with the cookery books written for the rich.’ Peasants, the great bulk of the French population (and beyond) until the mid-twentieth century, might eat meat in the form of salted pork just once a week [xxii]: traditional French fare is basically soup and bread.

    Nevertheless, aristocratic ‘French’ food went viral as the ultimate expression of privilege far beyond France. The great chef Auguste Escoffier (d. 1935) boasted: ‘I have ‘sown’ two thousand chefs all around the world … Think of them as so many seeds planted in virgin soils.’[xxiii] It became the dominant idiom in Western elite cooking over the course of the nineteenth century and France remains the pre-eminent gastronomic destination. An implicit appeal of that cuisine, expressed in restaurant dining, is the impression of aristocratic sophistication, an aura maintained to the present day, where otherwise plebeian patrons are addressed as ‘sir’ and ‘madame’ by besuited waiters.

    The extensive use of French words in English-language gastronomic discourse (notably cuisine, chef, and even bon appetit!) accentuates divisions between the diets of rich (many of them with a command of the French language) and poor. Working class communities often lack a vocabulary to talk about ‘posh’ food. One’s upbringing generally exerts an influence throughout life, as Pierre Bourdieu remarks: ‘[I]t is probably in tastes in food that one would find the strongest and most indelible mark of infant learning, the lessons which longest withstand the distancing or collapse of the native world and most durably maintain nostalgia for it.’[xxiv] Thus, altering patterns of consumption, as Jamie Oliver discovered, is no simple matter, but the prevailing appetite, especially for meat, is causing untold damage to the planet.

    A diet based on plants – whether undertaken for ethical, health or environmental reasons – is still viewed as the poor gastronomic relation, and as even involving a drudgery that campaigns like ‘Meat-free Mondays’ may actually compound. Moreover, high-profile gastronomes – especially celebrity chefs – maintain a food tradition that is mistakenly viewed as timeless.

    Leaving aside the burning issue of climate change, explosive growth in human population from just 1.5 billion in 1900 to over 7 billion today is exacting a terrible price on many wild animals, which are rapidly losing habitats. A recent comparison of global populations of domesticated animals and wild animals reveals that humans and their livestock now account for an astonishing 96% of the total mammal biomass on planet Earth.[xxv] Animal agriculture, including the expansion of monoculture agriculture for feedstuffs is the leading culprit: close to 70 percent of the planet’s agricultural land is used for animal pasture alone,[xxvi] while barely half of the world’s cropland is to devoted to food for direct human consumption.[xxvii]

    Most people would hesitate before eating an endangered species, such as a rare songbird like the ortolan, but recognition that the lifecycles of livestock are largely responsible for these extinctions is less commonly acknowledged. To bring about what The Lancet describes as the ‘Great Food Transformation,’[xxviii] involving a substantial reduction in meat consumption, a new generation of gastronomes must instil new tastes. A vast array of edible plants, both wild and domesticated, are available at a far lower environmental price. These can form the basis of a new gastronomy that will not demand blindfolds to avoid the shame.

    [i] Pascal Ory, ‘Gastronomy’ in Nora Pierre (editor) Realms of Memory: The

    Construction of the French Past, Volume II, Traditions. Translated by Arthur

    Goldhammer. New York, Columbia University Press, 1997, p.444

    [ii] Michael Paterniti, ‘The Last Meal, June 27th, 2008, Esquire, https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a4642/the-last-meal-0598/, accessed 8/4/19.

    [iii] Dale Berning Sawa, ‘Deadly appetite: 10 animals we are eating into extinction’, April 3rd, 2019, The Guardian,  https://www.theguardian.com/food/2019/apr/03/deadly-appetite-10-animals-we-are-eating-into-extinction?CMP=twt_a-environment_b-gdneco&fbclid=IwAR3xEteCZyEb-qgIoeAG7S3LcPn-4qnzeWrK-lEOftEzq9Cpx520U4vYTQk, accessed 11/4/19.

    [iv] George Monbiot, ‘Insectageddon: farming is more catastrophic than climate breakdown’, October, 20th, 2017, The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/oct/20/insectageddon-farming-catastrophe-climate-breakdown-insect-populations, accessed 11/4/19.

    [v] Aviad Kleinberg, Deadly Sins – A Very Partial List, translated from Hebrew by

    Susan Emanuel in collaboration with the author, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2008,  p.81.

    [vi] Phil. 3.18-19, New International Version.

    [vii] John K. Ryan, The Confessions of St. Augustine, New York Doubleday: New York, 1960, p.83.

    [viii] Kleinberg, 2008, p.6.

    [ix] Hermann Pleij, Dreaming of Cockaigne: Medieval Fantasies of the Perfect Life.

    Translated by Diane Webb, New York, Columbia University Press, 1997, p.3.

    [x] L’art de bien Traiter, L.S.R., 1674 quoted in Stephen Mennell, All Manners of Food: Eating and Taste in England and France from the Middle Ages to the Present, Oxford, Blackwell, 1985, pp.73-74.

    [xi] Mennell, 1985, p.274.

    [xii] Ibid, p.266.

    [xiii] Ibid, p.268.

    [xiv] Ibid, p.268.

    [xv] Giles MacDonogh, A Palate in Revolution: Grimod de la Reyniere and the

    Almanach des Gourmands. London, Robin Clarke, 1987, p.186.

    [xvi] Ibid, p.187.

    [xvii] Ibid, p.108.

    [xviii] Ibid, p.166.

    [xix] Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, The Physiology of Taste. Translated from French

    by Tome Jaine. London, Folio Society, 2008, p112.

    [xx] Ibid, p.183.

    [xxi] Ibid, p.112.

    [xxii] Fernand Braudel, The Structures of Everyday Life: The Limits of the Possible: Civilisation and Capitalism 15th-18th Century: Volume 1, Translated from French by Sian Reynolds, London Phoenix Press, p.187.

    [xxiii] Ory, 1997 p.444.

    [xxiv] Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction. Translated from French by Richard Nice. London, Routledge Press, 2010, p.71.

    [xxv] Yinon M. Bar-On, Rob Phillips, and Ron Milo, ‘The biomass distribution on Earth’, PNAS June 19, 2018 115 (25) 6506-6511, https://www.pnas.org/content/115/25/6506, accessed 8/4/19.

    [xxvi] Gaelle Gourmellon, ‘Peak Meat Production Strains Land and Water Resources’ Worldwatch Institute, August 26th, 2014, http://www.worldwatch.org/peak-meat-production-strains-land-and-water-resources-1 accessed 6/5/19.

    [xxvii] Brad Plumer, ‘How much of the world’s cropland is actually used to grow food?’ Vox, December 16th, 2014. https://www.vox.com/2014/8/21/6053187/cropland-map-food-fuel-animal-feed, accessed 6/5/19.

    [xxviii] Prof Walter Willett et al, Food in the Anthropocene: the EAT–Lancet Commission on healthy diets from sustainable food systems, January, 2019. The Lancet.https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(18)31788-4/fulltext?utm_campaign=tleat19&utm_source=HPfeature’, accessed 8/4/19.

  • Spain’s Grand Inquisitors Send Out an ‘Indisputable Message’

    Repost…

    The year is 1500 and Jesus Christ returns – to the city of Seville in Spain. There he performs a sequence of miracles, whereupon he is arrested and hauled before the Grand Inquisitor, as imagined by Ivan Karamazov – a character from Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s 1880 novel, The Brothers Karamazov.

    In his infinite mercy he walked once again among men, in the same human image in which he had walked for three years among men fifteen centuries earlier.

    Surprisingly the aged Grand Inquisitor is decidedly unwelcoming to the putative messiah, warning him that ‘man seeks to bow down before that which is indisputable, so indisputable that all men at once would agree to the universal worship of it.’ There can be no muddying of the message; this interloper cannot be permitted to renew the Christian gospel.

    He resolves to hide the true Christ’s identity from the masses, ‘for this time we shall not allow you to come to us’, and intends to burn him as a heretic. He acknowledges: ‘We shall deceive them again, for this time we shall not allow you to come to us. This deceit will constitute our suffering, for we shall have to lie.’

    The Grand Inquisitor holds those under his power in low esteem: ‘never will they able to share among themselves.’ Instead they should marvel at their rulers: ‘man seeks to bow down before that which is indisputable, so indisputable that all men at once would agree to the universal worship of it.’

    In addition, he adds, ‘we will allow them to sin, too; they are weak and powerless, and they will love us like children for allowing them to sin.’[i]

    Five centuries later in Spain, a new breed of Grand Inquisitor sits atop the judicial tree, sending out an indisputable message, insisting on the territorial unity of the state under the rule of corrupt men, who appear to see women as ‘fair game’, and where left-wing and secessionist parties are subjected to espionage and fake news stories calculated to discredit them.

    For the past year, nine Catalan leaders have been incarcerated before being tried on charges of violent rebellion for the crime of holding a peaceful independence referendum. A leaked text message from a leading Partido Popular (PP) senator claimed a proposed carve up with the Socialist government of judicial appointments, which would see the trial’s presiding judge, Manuel Marchena, being made president of the Supreme Court would allow conservative forces to dominate the judiciary ‘through the back door’.[ii] Legal experts in Spain say that a guilty verdict seems a foregone conclusion, with a draconian sentence of up to twenty years in prospect.

    Moreover, bizarrely, the Far Right party, Vox, has been permitted to act as a third ‘people’s prosecutor’ along with the public prosecutor and state’s council.[iii]

    The treatment of the Catalan leaders is in marked contrast to the leniency shown towards a group of men, coincidentally from Seville, calling themselves ‘the wolf pack’ who appear to have gang-raped a woman during San Fermin – the running of the bulls festival in Pamplona.

    In April 2018, all five were acquitted of rape, but found guilty of the lesser crime of ‘sexual abuse’. This came down to a fine point of law: as the men had not used violence to coerce the woman into the act, the crime could not technically be categorised as sexual assault, a crime which includes rape. The men were thus sentenced to nine years instead of the twenty-two to twenty-five years sought by the prosecution.

    On June 21st, however, there was another twist as the five men were released from jail on bail, pending an appeal against their sentences. In their decision, the judges said the men’s ‘loss of anonymity’ through the trial made it ‘unthinkable’ that they would attempt to flee the country or commit a similar crime.[iv] Or perhaps: “they are weak and powerless, and they will love us like children for allowing them to sin.”

    Most recently, Spain has been rocked by allegations of spying directed against the left-wing Podemos party and prominent Catalan nationalists. This surveillance was not justified by suspicion of any crime – it was simply the ruling party using the organs of state security to wage a dirty trick campaign against opposition parties. High-ranking officials in the Interior Ministry granted residency to a Venezuelan man in April 2016 in exchange for documents purporting to show the existence of offshore bank accounts belonging to its leader Pablo Iglesias and other Podemos leaders.

    Although these payments were revealed as bogus, the information was, nonetheless, circulated throughout national media, at a time when Podemos and the Socialists (PSOE) were negotiating over a possible government coalition.

    Recordings have been leaked featuring a police officer saying that whether the evidence is good or bad doesn’t matter, the only thing important is to be able to accuse Podemos of illegal party funding from Venezuela.[v] It was carried out in a way similar to how fake Swiss bank accounts were used to discredit the Catalan independence movement. In other words “We shall deceive them again, for this time we shall not allow you to come to us.”

    As the rest of Europe stares goggle-eyed at the Brexit drama, a more sinister drama is being played out on the Spanish stage, where three Grand Inquisitorial parties – the Partido Popular, Ciududanos and the Far Right newcomer, Vox, compete with one another in their vilification of Enemies of the One, True Spanish State – “so indisputable that all men at once would agree to the universal worship of it.”

    [i] Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, London, 2004, Vintage Classics, pp.248-259

    [ii] Eoghan Gilmartin and Tommy Greene, ‘The Republic on Trial’, 19th of February, 2019, The Jacobin, https://jacobinmag.com/2019/02/catalan-independence-trial-elections-referendum, accessed 29/4/19.

    [iii] Ibid

    [iv] Meagan Beatley, ‘The shocking rape trial that galvanised Spain’s feminists – and the far right’, April 23rd, 2019, The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/apr/23/wolf-pack-case-spain-feminism-far-right-vox, accessed 29/4/19.

    [v] Eoghan Gilmartin and Tommy Greene, ‘Assassinating Podemos’, April 11th, 2019, The Jacobin, https://jacobinmag.com/2019/04/podemos-spying-pablo-iglesias-psoe-elections, accessed 29/4/19.

  • A Spectre Worse than ‘Brexocide’ for the British Establishment

    Fact is a poor story-teller. It starts a story at haphazard, generally long before the beginning, rambles on inconsequentially and tails off, leaving loose ends hanging about, without a conclusion. It works up an interesting situation, and then leaves it in the air to follow an issue that has nothing to do with the point; it has no sense of climax and whittles away its dramatic effects in irrelevance.
    Somerset Maugham[i]

    And so the Brexit drama continues, wending inconclusively through the House of Commons as a post-modern farce premeditated by Franz Kafka. It must, nonetheless, be counted a success of sorts given the column inches it has generated. Like an episode of Channel 4’s ‘Big Brother’ it is difficult to take one’s eyes off this distracting blight on the politics of our archipelago of islands.

    Perhaps what Brexit has revealed, above all, is that the UK’s unusual unwritten constitution[ii] – arguably a contradiction in terms – is not fit for purpose. When a majority unexpectedly voted in a referendum in 2017 against remaining in the European Union, it was unclear what should happen next. A court challenge was required to assert parliamentary sovereignty[iii], which is now as divided as the country on the matter. Speaker John Bercow recently invoked a precedent from the reign of James I, having been accused of acting ‘unconstitutionally’ for breaking with other precedents.[iv] The mind boggles at the pick and mix of Conventions from which fundamental laws derive.

    That referendum was David Cameron’s brainchild for keeping troglodyte Eurosceptic colleagues off his back. The outcome was not supposed to happen. His strategists probably assumed that recalcitrant Mondeo Men, and Shire Tories unable to get over the smoking ban in pubs, were a lost cause. But they surely did not expect the working class of Stoke and Sunderland to put their two fingers up at the European Union in such numbers; never mind they had been incubated on unwholesome doses of Euro-trashing by the Red Tops, amidst repeated identification of the Union with Nazi Germany.[v]

    Conservative Party top brass had been, after all, solidly Remain; the Parliamentary Labour Party could be relied on – even Jeremy Corbyn’s previously doctrinaire opposition had softened into a lukewarm Remain – while the Lib Dems were gushingly Europhile; and the SNP saw in the Union a counterweight to the ‘auld enemy’.

    UKIP seemed an anachronism, a busted flush electorally, barely mustering a single MP, making the political earthquake all the more startling.

    An amorphous and secretive – but identifiable and enduring nonetheless – Deep British State (DBS) is doing all in its power to avert damage to trade and industry; devaluation of the pound; and to prevent London’s property bubble from bursting. Make no mistake a fabled no-deal brexocide would damage corporations and wealthy individuals, with a rise in unemployment and even food shortages looming for the working class. The pillars of a profoundly unequal but at least functioning economy are shaking, but Brexit is only one aspect of a wider difficulty.

    the DBS

    The financiers, captains of industry, press barons, and elements within the BBC, are presided over by a permanent civil service, including the intelligence services MI5 and MI6. These not entirely comic Sir Humphreys keep a vigilant watch over the political officeholders, often intellectual inferiors, without the distinction of an Oxbridge education. At the highest level of government there are well documented connections to major corporations, including the armaments industry[vi], allowing good fellows to secure pleasant retirements, where the only crash disturbing the evening air comes from willow and ash meeting above the village green.

    The prospect of another referendum became politically impossible once the volume of True Believers in the Conservative Party became apparent. With a smell of Dunkirk in their nostrils, some relish Brexit at almost any cost. The DBS are struggling to contain this rowdy element, which could do serious damage to the economy, but this is the devil they know.

    After her disastrous performance in the 2017 election, the ‘May-bot’ became as lame as any duck can be. No doubt she has been eyeing up a comfortable pile among wheat fields in rural Oxfordshire since – where good Tories go to die. A favourable retirement package requires her to align closely with the DBS.

    The really scary outcome for the DBS is a Jeremy Corbyn-led, Labour Government. The City of London is petrified lest a large proportion of its vast wealth derived from speculation is seized. So an immediate election must be avoided, with only one winner possible in another round of Corbyn-May. Thus, according to the lead story in The Telegraph on March 30th: ‘Snap election under Theresa May would ‘annihilate’ the Conservatives, senior Tories warn’.[vii]

    Corbyn, defying expectations, masterfully played his strongest card to offer a so-called People’s Vote – a referendum rerun – at a pivotal moment in the game. As the BBC’s Andrew Marr put it:

    Corbyn’s greatest political skill may turn out to be his talent for delay. He lets events come to him. Under his bo tree, he quietly sits, and sits, and takes the hits – as, for instance, on the referendum issue – waiting for his moment.[viii]

    Having averted deep ruptures in his own party over Brexit, at least compared to Tory factionalism, Corbyn allowed centrist opponents, including Chuka Umunna, to resign from the party to form the so-called Independent Group. Who’d have thought the bearded lefty could be so cunning?

    So a deal, however humiliating, is pushed through, and the DUP are surely being offered the required sweeteners in exchange for the Backstop; having been informed a refusal will see them being thrown to the wolves – howling rosaries in Gaelic.

    The DBS is playing for time, seeking an orderly but irrelevant Brexit, and then for someone reasonable to emerge from within Conservative ranks, now May has obligingly agreed to fall on her sword. The chauvinist bluster of the likes of Boorish Johnson, Rabidly Dominic or Jacob Really-Smug do not inspire confidence, but Populism may be required to counteract the radical appeal of Corbyn, who has the DBS firmly in his sights.

    A Very British Coup

    Former Bennite Labour MP Chris Mullin’s 1982 novel A Very British Coup imagines the possibly of a genuinely left-wing Labour Prime Minister coming to power. The fictional Labour leader Harry Perkins wins a general election on a platform of radical change to a floundering economy serving a privileged few.

    Perkins is frustrated, however, at every turn as he endeavours to withdraw the U.K. from NATO and re-nationalise industries. Collusion between the permanent government, including Intelligence services, media barons and the captains of industry leads to his premature resignation – A Very British Coup – and replacement with a malleable, New Labour, government.

    Although originally from Sheffield in the North of England, Harry Perkins bears a striking resemblance to one Jeremy Corbyn. Thus:

    Harry Perkins made a fetish of travelling on public transport telling one official: ‘I am afraid it is necessary, Inspector. You see, my party wants to phase out the private motor car in cities and encourage people to use public transport instead.[ix]

    On entering office he addresses an uncooperative Governor of the Bank of England: ‘What’s the point in having elections if, regardless of outcome, a handful of speculators in the City of London and their friends abroad continue to call the shots?’[x]

    Perkins also dismisses New Labour centrism in a manner reminiscent of Corbyn: ‘We offer the electorate a choice between two Tory parties and they choose the real one;’[xi] and confronts a centre-left media that often pays lip service to promoting meaningful change: ‘The Guardian agonised for ten column inches before concluding that, although Labour’s plans made sense, “Now was not the time.”’[xii]

    In the novel the DBS, many with links to the arms industry, are determined to maintain the American alliance and resist de-nuclearization. Thus, Sir Peregrine Craddock the fictional head of ‘DI5’, ‘had long regarded CND as the most subversive organisations on DI5’s books. Its subversive nature lay in the breath of its appeal.’[xiii]

    Perkins, like Corbyn, invokes the possibility of a neutral Europe ‘which had haunted Pentagon defence planners for so long.’ Also, as with the current Labour leader, Perkins arrives from the point of view: ‘apparently supported by documentary evidence, which saw America as the centre of a worldwide network of tyranny, terrorism and suppression.’[xiv]

    Little is said in the novel on Britain’s relationship with the Europe Community. This reflects how the Labour Left’s historic opposition Europe was based on an assessment that the E.E.C. was set up in the interest of capitalists, and used as a pawn against the Soviet Union by American Cold Warriors. This is quite unlike the sense of cultural exceptionalism and even outright racism motivating ardent Brexiters.

    ‘Eventually Socialists run out of other people’s money’

    The DBS assumes that a Corbyn-led government will interfere with an economy still, broadly, dominated by free market doctrine, albeit the NHS remains largely untouchable.

    Free market ‘reforms’ were unleashed by Margaret Thatcher throughout the 1980s as her dictum, ‘Eventually Socialists run out of other people’s money’[xv] became preeminent. The relative brutality of the adjustments impoverished large swathes of the country. The rust belts of the North, Midlands, and even Wales, would ultimately vote for Brexit.

    Thatcherite policies were tempered slightly under John Major, and more so with the advent of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown’s New Labour, but the adjustments, especially privatisation of essential government services including railways, endured and in some cases continued.

    At the end of Conservative rule in 1996 Britain was the most unequal society in the Western world, with the gap between rich and poor as great as in Nigeria. By then the worst-off were living on roughly the same incomes as their equivalents in Hungary.[xvi] Inequality actually deepened under Blair and Brown[xvii], albeit outright poverty diminished[xviii], but the Crash led to welfare cuts, while inequality deepened apace.

    Armed to the teeth

    The DBS is also profoundly worried by the turn U.K. foreign policy would take under a Corbyn-led government. This could jeopardise the valuable armaments industry that Corbyn has inveighed against throughout his career.

    In 2016 The Independent reported that that U.K. was the second leading exporter of armaments in the world.[xix] Saudi Arabia alone pays £10 billion for equipment[xx] as it pursues a dirty war against Yemen. Just this month Jeremy Hunt visited the kingdom, and we may safely assume contracts were discussed. The DBS is intimately linked and lobbied by the leading companies, as the organisation Campaign Against the Arms Trade reveals.[xxi]

    Furthermore, a Zionist lobby in the U.K. has long exerted influence over U.K. foreign policy, beginning with the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which led to the foundation of the state of Israel in 1948. This is hardly a controversial point, and there are many good reasons for this, not least sympathy for the idea of a Jewish homeland in the wake of the Holocaust. The Labour Party itself has a long tradition of support for Israel.

    Corbyn, however, has stood with immigrants from Third Wold countries deeply opposed to Zionism throughout his career. This brought him into contact with unhelpful figures espousing implacable hostility. But there is no evidence of Corbyn advocating a military invasion of Israel or questioning its right to exist as sovereign state.

    He did, however, make ill-judged comments during his years in the political wilderness, comparing ISIS to Israel, and calling for Hamas and Hezbollah to be treated as ‘friends.’[xxii] To his credit he has, however, apologised for these statements. As a consistent advocate of the rule of law, and multilateralism, there is no reason to be believe Corbyn has any concern other than vindicating the human rights of Palestinians, and respecting international law.

    The accusation that Corbyn is anti-Semitic is simply a way of getting at him. The virtuous, ascetic and seemingly incorruptible character needs to be darkened, and prominent members of the Jewish community, including from within the Parliamentary Labour Party, are lined up to level the accusation.

    Some of his colleagues, including Ken Livingston, have made unacceptable comments, but Corbyn has never stooped to racial stereotyping Jews. His quarrel with Zionism is political, and he has collaborated with left-wing Jews including the American Mike Marqusee.

    Corbyn’s alliances with what he perceives as comrade anti-imperialists in the Irish Republican movement also brought accusations of treachery. To many, however, especially the young, the disadvantaged and those from immigrant backgrounds, he is a hero, who shares their own critical views on the domestic and international policies of successive U.K. governments.

    Getting it right more often than not

    Corbyn has leveraged popular global causes to engineer domestic political success. After Afghanistan he correctly predicted that George W. Bush would link the terrorist attacks with the ‘axis of evil’ – Iraq, North Korea and Iran – to justify an invasion of Iraq. This was ridiculed by the media and the majority of MPs.

    Subsequently, during the febrile period before the U.S-led invasion of Iraq, supported by Tony Blair, Corbyn was granted a rare audience with the Labour Prime Minister. ‘One question’, he asked, ‘Why are we doing it?’, to which Blair testily replied, ‘Because it is the right thing to do,’. Corbyn responded ‘That’s not an answer.’[xxiii]

    A platform of wealth readjustment, especially advocating transfers from older property owners to younger people, including students, proved extremely popular during the 2017 election. The demographic supporting Corbyn is growing, and well-equipped to play the data wars that modern elections require.

    Corbyn’s challenge, as with any aspiring socialist movement – whether that failing in Venezuela or those delivering across Scandinavia – is to ensure that state dominance of the means of production does not diminish innovation or lead to bureaucratization. Socialists must learn from the mistakes of the past, both in the U.K. in the 1970s when the trade unions ground the country to a halt and, more obviously, the extremes of Communism in Eastern Europe.

    Perhaps the most pernicious influence of Thatcherism, and neo-liberalism generally, is the dominance of the view that state services are automatically inferior to those provided by private enterprise, and that civil servants do not take pride in their work in the absence of incentives. In many cases this has become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

    For a true revival in the U.K.’s fortune a greater sense of national cohesion seems required. This need not involve a lasting break with the European Union, but could require a loser arrangement within the United Kingdom itself, with individual ‘nations’ granted increased autonomy, or even full independence. A written constitution and the abolition of monarchy would also be salutary.

    Under Corbyn, England could accept its lot as a medium-sized country, guaranteeing a basic level of income for all, and operating within supranational institutions. The trade-off for would be a decisive end to imperialist ambitions, including abandonment of the vastly expensive nuclear weapon programme. This will, however, be resisted by vested interests seeking to preserve the status quo within the DBS.

    In 2016, at one of his lowest ebbs politically, and with even long-standiy supporters losing heart, Corbyn was addressed by David Cameron in the House of Commons in the manner of a school prefect dismissing a lackey: ‘For heaven’s sake, man, go!’[xxiv]

    In the interim  Cameron has become a widely-derided irrelevance, while Corbyn is the front-runner to become the next Prime Minister. The question is whether the apparent disorder of Brexit will be resolved by this unlikely leader. If Corbyn does come to power he confronts the real possibility of A Very British Coup, whittling away its dramatic effects.

    We rely on contributions to keep Cassandra Voices going.

    [i] W. Somerset Maugham, Ashenden, London, Vintage Books, 2000, p.v

    [ii] Frank Armstrong ‘UK Unwritten Constitution Brews Brexit Confusion’, February 1st, 2018, Cassandra Voices, http://cassandravoices.com/politics/uk-unwritten-constitution-brews-brexit-confusion/, accessed 31/3/19.

    [iii] Sandra Fredman, ‘A vital reaffirmation of Parliamentary sovereignty’, 25th of January, 2017, University of Oxford, http://www.ox.ac.uk/news-and-events/oxford-and-brexit/brexit-analysis/parliamentary-sovereignty#, accessed 28/3/19.

    [iv] Isabel Hardman, ‘John Bercow’s disregard of precedent is a serious constitutional issue’, 9th of January, 2019, The Spectator, https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2019/01/john-bercows-disregard-of-precedent-is-a-serious-constitutional-issue/, accessed 28/3/19.

    [v] Julia Rampen, ‘The 4 most unfortunate Nazi-EU comparisons made by Brexiteers’, 19th of January, 2017, New Statesman, https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/staggers/2017/01/4-most-unfortunate-nazi-eu-comparisons-made-brexiteers, 28/3/19.

    [vi] The website of the Campaign Against the Arms Industries (https://www.caat.org.uk/resources/influence) provides details of high level contacts and ex-public servants working in the arms industry.

    [vii] Edwark Malnick and Nick  ‘Snap election under Theresa May would ‘annihilate’ the Conservatives, senior Tories warn

    [viii] Andrew Marr, ‘Andrew Marr’s Diary: May’s reshuffle plans, Corbyn’s gardener socialism – and why I’m painting clowns’, 20th of March, 2019, New Statesman, https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2019/03/andrew-marr-s-diary-may-s-reshuffle-plans-corbyn-s-gardener-socialism-and-why-i, accessed 28/3/19.

    [ix] Chris Mullin, A Very British Coup, London, Hodder and Staughton, 1982, p.44

    [x] Ibid, p58

    [xi] Ibid, p.63

    [xii] Ibid, p.80

    [xiii] Ibid, p.172

    [xiv] Ibid, p.174-175

    [xv] ‘Margaret Thatcher on Socialism’, Margaret Thatcher’s Speech to the House of Commons on 22 November 22nd 1990, Youtube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okHGCz6xxiw, accessed 30/3/19.

    [xvi] Geoffrey Lean and Graham Bell, ‘UK most unequal country in the West’, 21st of July, 1996, The Independent, https://www.independe’nt.co.uk/news/uk-most-unequal-country-in-the-west-1329614.html, accessed 29/3/19.

    [xvii] William Underhill, ‘INEQUALITY HAS GROWN UNDER NEW LABOUR’, August 1st, 2010, Newsweek, https://www.newsweek.com/inequality-has-grown-under-new-labour-70943, accessed 30/3/19.

    [xviii] Robert Joyce and Luke Sibieta, ‘Labour’s record on poverty and inequality’, June 6th 2013, Institute for Fiscal Studies, https://www.ifs.org.uk/publications/6738, accessed 30/3/19.

    [xix] Jon Stone, ‘Britan is now the second biggest arms dealer in the world’, 5th of December, 2016, The Independent¸ https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/britain-is-now-the-second-biggest-arms-dealer-in-the-world-a7225351.html, accessed 30/3/19.

    [xx] ‘UK Arms Export Licences’ Campaign Against Arms Trade, https://www.caat.org.uk/resources/export-licences, accessed 30/3/19.

    [xxi] https://www.caat.org.uk/, accessed 31/3/19.

    [xxii] Tom Bower, Dangerous Hero: Corbyn’s Ruthless Plot for Power, London William Collins, 2019, p.276

    [xxiii] Ibid, p.136

    [xxiv] ‘Cameron to Corbyn: ‘For heaven’s sake man, go!’ – BBC News’, June 29th, 2016, Youtube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHIQAnUGhIQ, accessed 30/3/19.