Beware the False Prophets

The world changed in 2011.  It was a year when people-power allied to new technologies overthrew elites, with Facebook revolutions heralding an Arab Spring and toppling aging or ailing dictatorships.  But it would be wrong for the Western Democracies to think they are detached from these events.  As Greece has so clearly shown, even relatively modern states are in peril, given enough economic instability, a furious electorate and weak political leadership.

The economists suggest that 2012 is going to be a tough year for Britain.  Financial ruin is probable, the collapse of the EU is possible, public sector strikes and the severest political discontent for a generation almost inevitable.  Shades of grey will no longer suffice in such a divisive age, so it seems likely that this year will see a return to the old politics of left versus right in the UK.

For the previous 30 years, governance has been dominated by bribing electorates with tax cuts, while the major parties have differed only in nuance.  New Labour under Blair and Brown abandoned the polarising rhetoric of class warfare and Old Labour values were deliberately forgotten.  When Cameron became leader, he dragged the Conservatives to the centre ground with his supposed modernisation of the ‘toxic’ Tory brand, and reassured voters he was the heir to Blair.  Nothing too contentious would be attempted, all policies would be tested in focus groups and a consensual blandness smothered Westminster.  This was the politics of boom and borrowing.

Well, there are no longer any presents to give to swing voters and the distribution of our dwindling resources demands radical and unpopular political choices.  The economic prospectus for the foreseeable future is one of falling incomes, with rising unemployment, and deep cuts, mainly falling on the poor and middle classes.  Rather than an age of austerity, it is more likely to be an age of resentment, with a future which looks far worse than the dire predictions of just a year ago.

There are no easy fixes for this government, an inherently fragile marriage of convenience between political opponents, and it now seems difficult to imagine that it can survive until the 2015 election.  They hoped the recovery would begin by 2014 and the public would reward the economic bravery of the Coalition.  This will clearly not now happen.

This raises some serious questions and challenges.  The Conservatives are being dragged by their unappealing rightwing and Labour is unable to develop a coherent answer to the economy.  The Lib-Dems once offered a useful safety valve to disaffected voters, being a centrist alternative to register protest.  With their perceived betrayal, disengagement has never been higher in Britain.

Economic crisis have historically been a catalyst for extreme right and leftwing parties. As politics becomes more polarised over the coming years, we need to remember that Britain is not uniquely immune to extremes and beware of political parties who offer simplistic solutions to our problems.  It is hard work and our liberal traditions which will deliver us to a better tomorrow.

'Why Orwell Matters’ by Christopher Hitchens

(Basic Books, $15.95)

Why does George Orwell matter?  Frankly it depends who you listen to.  Was he hero or villain, socialist or conservative, patriot or traitor, modernist or misogynist?  It has become as fashionable for the Left, feminist, postmodernist and contrarian alike to denounce him, as it has been for those on the Right to claim him as their own.  It is into this confused and contradictory mess that Christopher Hitchens provocatively steps to recue Orwell in a brilliant and logical book.

For many journalists Orwell has become a revered figure, the patron saint of factual writing.  The sycophancy that surrounds his name would have appalled him.  He was a man who never shied from criticising his own heroes, and he was wary of any saint.  Indeed, Orwell once said of Mahatma Gandhi that “saints are always to be adjudged guilty until proven innocent.”

Orwell may have been equally amused with those who have attacked his works as with those who revere it.  Hitchens does not hesitate to destroy some of the fawning mythologies that have built-up around Orwell’s memory.  Instead he attempts to rebuild a more honest and rational legacy for perhaps the most influential of Twentieth Century writers.  One cannot help but feel that while Orwell might not have always agreed with Hitchens, he would have approved of both his techniques and the endeavour.

As a man of the Left who was denounced by his fellow travellers, Hitchens must have felt some empathy for the treatment Orwell received from his ideological brethren.  As an advocator of socialism whose roots lay in what he describes in ‘The Road to Wigan Pier’ as “an upper middle-class” upbringing, many of Orwell’s contemporaries viewed his politics with some scepticism.  Being an Eton Old Boy would only have added to the mistrust.  Such a background undoubtedly left Orwell with some intellectual baggage, however perhaps it was these contradictions as the perpetual outsider which gave his writing its concise, analytical, compassionate and balanced style.

Hitchens describes “The sheer ill will and bad faith and intellectual confusion that appears to ignite spontaneously when Orwell’s name is mentioned” by some from the Left.  Maybe it was the scathing attacks on fellow socialist thinkers, who he described as so awful that they were likely to put off the working man, which has made him an ‘enemy’ to some.  The most common mistake made in order to denounce Orwell, is to take the phrases spoken by characters in his fiction and then attribute them as if he was speaking himself, a literary error that schoolchildren should know not to make.  Hitchens takes these critiques and refutes them in a very compelling way.

Of the Right, Hitchens explains the numerous attempts made by conservative intellectuals to use or annex Orwell’s works.  As a writer who pioneered the opposition to Communism, championed individualism, disliked the instruments of government, believed in popular wisdom and who possessed a strong patriotic sense; it is easy to see how Orwell could be crudely painted as a Tory.  Hitchens dismisses these claims in what he refers to as the ‘body-snatching’ of Orwell.  While he may have had some conservative tendencies he fought intellectually against them all of his life.  You could by no stretch of imagination define his politics as being conservative.

A brief but interesting chapter outlines Orwell’s dysfunctional relationship with women.  Hitchens attributes this partially to an upbringing with a stern Mother and patriarchal Father, but generally concedes to the feminist arguments, except to show where they are overblown.  It is also fair to say that condemning authors of the past for failing the standards of today is a fruitful, but intellectually pointless pastime.

‘Why Orwell Matters’ is not only a well written, stimulating and informative book, it is also a necessary book, as his works needed to be rescued from his admirers and critics alike.  As Hitchens eloquently puts it, “Orwell requires extricating from under a pile of saccharine and moist hankies.”  With some of the ridiculous claims exposed as intellectually defunct or mere humbug, we can perhaps exhume Orwell’s truthful legacy.  It is one of insightful observations from the past which are so valuable to understanding the present.

This book also reminds us of Hitchens’ great strength as a literary essayist, something that is too easily overlooked because of his controversial polemics.  Gore Vidal once declared Hitchens to be his dauphin.  However there is a stronger case that when his work is viewed with perspective, Hitchens will be Orwell’s successor.

I cannot recommend this book enough.  

The Argentine sabre rattles again

Argentina is at it again!  One would have thought they would be remembering their dead as the 30 year anniversary of the Falkland Conflict approaches.  Instead they are engaged in their favoured nationalist pastime of sabre-rattling and intimidation of the Falkland population.

Lately the Argentine president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, has been spending her time convincing the South American neighbours to join in the perpetual diplomatic bullying of the islanders.  In December, she managed to convince the Mercosur trade federation which includes Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Brazil to ban ships bearing the Falkland’s flag from entering their ports.

It does raise the question of why the Mercosur have got involved in the nationalist obsession of Argentina.  Brazil should have more important problems to deal with, such as improving the living standards of their vast impoverished poor.  Uruguay’s acquiescence to their powerful neighbour is not particularly unsurprising.  Paraguay is a landlocked country, so one may reasonably wonder how many ships of any nation will use their ports.

At the Mercosur summit, the Falkland Islands were described as "a colonial British possession in South America”.  This fits with Argentina’s favoured tactic of portraying Britain as an imperial aggressor predating the coast of Latin America.  Despite this depiction being at least 100 years out of date, it fits into the rhetoric of many of South America’s despotic leaders, who are feeling confident at the moment and want to shed the controlling hand of the United States.  Lacking the bravery to challenge a superpower, they are using the Falklands to attack America’s closest, but vastly weaker ally instead.

The only inhabitants to ever live on the Falklands have been European; there was no indigenous population.  Contrastingly, in Argentina, the Amerindian populations have fallen to less than 2% being supplanted by Spanish invaders and subsequent European immigration.  That the Argentine claim to the Falklands is based on that of their former Spanish colonial masters, gives a powerful suggestion of just who the real imperialists are.

Argentina’s actual argument is that as the Falklands are small islands near a larger country they should by default be theirs.  Their desire for sovereignty based on nationalism and public diversion.  If we follow this imbecilic logic, then maps will have to be redrawn and millions forcibly removed across the globe.  Japan must belong to China and the Caribbean must be an annex of the United States.

For all of the bluster and bullying, the fate of the Falklands always returns to the right of self determination, enshrined in article 1 of the United Nations Charter.  Britain has historically seen the Falklands as a point of principle, it is for the islanders to decide their own fate, but following 1982 it would be a lie not to admit that the issue has now become a point of pride.

No British prime minister for the foreseeable future could ever contemplate betraying the Falkland Islanders’ wishes to remain British citizens under British protection, and that principle will be defended; whatever the cost maybe.