Sunday, August 26, 2012

THE US IN THE POST-WAR WORLD



[This is the second of six articles I am writing on the respective positions of Britain, the US, France, Germany, Russia and China in the post-war world]

Presidents:
1945-53 Harry S Truman                    1977-81 Jimmy Carter
1953-61 Dwight D Eisenhower           1981-89 Ronald Reagan
1961-63 John F Kennedy                    1989-93 George Bush
1963-69 Lyndon B Johnson                1993-2001 Bill Clinton
1969-74 Richard M Nixon                  2001-09 George W Bush
1974-77 Gerald Ford                          2009-     Barack Obama


The US was the overwhelming victor of the Second World War. Although she had spent enormous sums of money equipping herself and her Allies and had suffered heavy casualties (405,000 dead), her homeland and civilians were untouched, her industries were operating at full capacity and her huge armed forces were victorious in Europe and the Pacific. Franklin Roosevelt, the inspiring leader since 1933, died in office in April 1945 just before the German surrender in May and his successor vice-President Harry Truman took the fateful decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 ending Japanese resistance. The Nuclear Age had dawned and the US maintained global dominance for the next 25 years.

Early Post-War Years

Harry S Truman


Dean Acheson
There was inevitably a period of confusion as millions of soldiers returned to civilian life and industries once geared up for war production changed to manufacturing other much-desired items. Generous schemes were established to assist GIs re-integrate, but there were shortages of materials and many strikes – union power was curbed by the Taft –Hartley Act of 1947, passed over Truman’s veto. Against the expectations of pundits, Truman won re-election in 1948 and surrounded by a competent New Deal team later including Dean Acheson, headed a successful presidency. He took the risk of alienating Southern Democrats by ordering the desegregation of the armed forces, which took some years to take full effect.

Foreign affairs were an urgent priority. Europe was prostrate but the US responded generously with the Marshall Plan greatly helping reconstruction in Western Europe.  The Iron Curtain divided Europe into Allied and Soviet spheres, with partitioned Berlin an isolated island. The Soviets blockaded Berlin in 1948-49 but an Anglo-American airlift lasting 10 months triumphantly defied this pressure. Immediate recognition of the State of Israel in 1948, despite State Department misgivings, upset the Arab world but was electorally popular. NATO was established in 1949, underlining the US commitment to Europe; West and East Germany were created. In 1949, the Soviets showed they were rapidly catching up in the arms race by exploding their first atom-bomb.

In Asia, Japan was governed by US General McArthur and China, though rent by civil war, was a special US interest. The triumph of Mao’s communists in 1950 came as a nasty shock and the US persisted in a policy of only recognising Chiang-Kai-Shek’s Nationalist government, now exiled to Formosa (Taiwan). A major crisis arose when North Korea invaded the South in 1950. A UN force, mainly American, was despatched but the war was bitter and 30,000 US soldiers lost their lives. China intervened dangerously and the US commander McArthur disobeyed Truman who dismissed him in 1951.The fighting ended in 1953 with de facto partition but no peace treaty was ever signed.

The US in the 1950s

Soviet and Chinese hostility stiffened the attitude of a growingly conservative US. The expansion of Communism was to be limited by the policy of Containment associated with the state department official George Kennan. This policy came to be exercised aggressively in the 1950s, especially by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, who would intervene politically or even militarily when communism threatened. The US came to support some unattractive anti-communist regimes, notably those of Syngman Rhee in South Korea, Ngo Dinh Diem in South Vietnam and others in Latin America.

Dwight D Eisenhower
John Foster Dulles
 An anti-communist hysteria and spy-mania engulfed Washington through the House Un-American Activities hearings and the wild accusations of Senator Joe McCarthy until his bubble was pricked in 1954. As an omen of much worse unrest later, Eisenhower used Federal powers in 1957 to force the desegregation of schools in Little Rock, Arkansas, when governor Orval Faubus defied the law.

Despite these problems, the US enjoyed a golden age of capitalism in the 1950s. Great corporations expanded and prospered, the stock market rose headily, business was good. No country could rival the US; American cars, clothes, machines, movies and life-style were admired and yearned for. The mighty dollar allowed Americans living abroad to live like kings. Easy-going President Eisenhower, a popular war hero, ran a largely laissez-faire administration. As he relinquished office he wisely warned against the power of “the military-industrial complex”

There were a few international set-backs; Nasser seized the Suez Canal in 1956 and collusion between key US allies, Britain, France and Israel to regain it upset Eisenhower who refused to support them. A period of recrimination followed when Nasser kept the Canal. An attempt by Hungary to break free of foreign domination was ruthlessly suppressed by Soviet tanks in 1956. Soviet scientific progress was apparent as they beat the US to launch the first satellite Sputnik in 1957 to be followed in April 1961 by the first man in outer space with Yuri Gagarin’s historic flight.

The American Dream

The Americans must have regarded themselves as the most fortunate of people. National wealth brought great material comforts. The US standard of living, her easy luxury, her gleaming consumer goods outstripped those of any other country. A flood of immigrants was absorbed into the melting-pot, employment levels were high, equality was proclaimed – even if black Americans lagged behind. Since 1945 American culture had been vibrant. Novels, if not their best, flowed from Hemingway and Steinbeck. Norman Mailer, James Jones and JD Salinger captured the imagination of a new generation.  Jack Kerouac’s On the Road spoke to the disillusioned; Arthur Miller’s dramas thrilled his audiences; the All-American verities of artist Norman Rockwell in time gave way to experimental Rauschenberg. Wonderful movies streamed out of Hollywood, including timeless MGM musicals to make the world sing, dramas like All about Eve or A Star is Born, Cecil B deMille blockbusters and comedies ranging from Abbott and Costello to Bob Hope. The reach was global as pop music burgeoned from the sophisticated tones of Frank Sinatra to the raucously dynamic Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly and Little Richard.

The Sixties and early Seventies

The 1960s were more troubled. They started off in a blaze of optimism as John Kennedy succeeded Eisenhower, representing a new and more glamorous generation. A memorable Inaugural address fired the idealism of service and another at the Berlin Wall proclaimed Western freedom – but the rhetoric was greater than the achievement. A crisis over Soviet missiles in Cuba in October 1962 brought the world to the brink until Khruschev backed down. Kennedy had acted decisively. When Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas on 22 November 1963, the US and the world were stunned and regretted what might have been if Kennedy had served his full term.
John F Kennedy



Lyndon B Johnson
                                               
  The assassination of JFK high-lighted the worrying trend towards political violence in the US. Civil Rights workers were murdered in Mississippi, Malcolm X was gunned down in 1965, Martin Luther King shot dead by a white racist in 1968 and Robert Kennedy, campaigning for the Democratic nomination, killed in Los Angeles also in 1968. The new President, Lyndon B. Johnson, was a Southern machine politician and expectations were not high. However LBJ understood how Capitol Hill worked and made very substantial legislative progress on what he called The Great Society confirming voting rights, educational rights and employment rights for American blacks. This was a huge achievement to emerge from much turmoil.

Johnson was less fortunate overseas. For years the US had been at the edges of the conflicts in Indo-China. When the French were defeated in 1954, American aid and later “advisers” bolstered the mainly Catholic regime of Ngo Dinh Diem (assassinated in 1963) against North Vietnam and the local communist Vietcong. JFK had increased US involvement and in 1964 Johnson used an obscure naval action in the Gulf of Tonkin to justify obtaining from Congress freedom to wage open war against North Vietnam. Despite immense US commitments and optimistic assessments, little military progress was made and there was a shock when multiple targets were attacked in the 1968 Tet Offensive. The US gradually withdrew its armies in 1973 but the war dragged on until South Vietnam finally collapsed in 1975. This was a heavy blow to US prestige in Asia and the war split US society grievously; the human cost of 58,000 US dead was chilling.


Richard M.Nixon
Kenry Kissinger
 
.
              
           

LBJ did not stand for re-election in 1968 and there were serious riots as Hubert Humphrey became the Democratic candidate at Chicago. George Wallace, governor of Alabama, stood on a racist platform as the third candidate. The Republican Richard Nixon won the election comfortably and the liberal 1960s were over. Richard Nixon was unlovable but an experienced politician who became expert in international affairs. Early on, he was able to bask in the reflected glory of the NASA Apollo 11 moon landing in July 1969.  Closely advised by Henry Kissinger, Nixon pulled off a momentous détente with China in 1972 and a US settlement of the Vietnam War with the Paris Peace Accords of 1973. His real virtues were overshadowed by the shameful Watergate scandal of 1974 and painfully he resigned to avoid impeachment.

Economic Pressures

The US’s total dominance of the global economy could not last. By the 1960’s Japan had made great strides as had Germany and the EEC. The US started to run a balance of payments deficit rectified not by higher taxes but by overseas deposits in the US as a safe haven. Inflationary pressures arose both from Johnson’s Great Society and from the cost of the Vietnam War. The dollar had become overvalued and in 1971 the Bretton Woods system which had run from 1945 broke down. The dollar’s fixed exchange rate ended and it ceased to be convertible into gold; in due course all major trading currencies floated. Although the US as much as Europe suffered when the Arabs imposed their oil embargo in 1973, followed by a huge increase in the cost of oil, the US deficit was easily offset by the flood of petro-dollars returning to her. The US sucked in global liquidity from the Middle East, and later from China, which was recycled by Wall Street into a variety of financial instruments, contributing to the Economic Crisis of 2007.

 The unhappy 1970s and the Reagan Era

Nixon’s stopgap successor Gerald Ford lacked charisma and was followed by dogged Democrat Jimmy Carter. Both suffered from an economic recession and “stagflation”. Ford fell out with intransigent Israel, who had plenty friends in Washington, and Carter was eventually brought down by his failure to end a 444-day diplomatic hostage crisis in Iran in 1980, whose revolutionary Shia Muslim government was rabidly anti-American. Important arms limitation treaties were signed with the USSR and a green agenda was established by idealistic Carter.

The US wanted a change and embraced former movie actor and California governor Ronald Reagan. He was at 69 older than any other incoming president and no intellectual but his two presidential terms were highly successful, greatly reviving the Right.


Ronald Reagan meets Mikhail Gorbachev in 1986

 Nonchalant, confident and homely Reagan has a rather simple world vision. The US was threatened by the “evil empire” of the USSR – so US military expenditure was much increased and the Star Wars missile defence plan initiated. Libya was funding terrorism – so Tripoli was the target of a punitive bombing raid in 1986. Taxes were too high – so Reagan cut business taxes and followed the monetarist policies elucidated by Milton Friedman. The US economy responded and prosperity returned, even though some taxes were re-imposed. He frowned upon welfare dependency – so he cut programmes for the poor and urged them back to work. In all this he was supported by his close ally Margaret Thatcher of Britain who operated similar policies. The USSR’s ramshackle economy could not compete with the US on defence and Reagan’s successor Bush witnessed the destruction of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the collapse of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe and finally the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991. Much of the credit goes to Ronald Reagan.

Life in the US from 1960 to the present

There has of course been a transformation in the last 50 or so years but some things do not change. The US remains by a wide margin the richest country in the world and a global leader. Her people are a curious mixture of the puritanically religious, the dedicatedly commercial and the wildly unconventional. Her politicians do not have the debating and intellectual skills valued in Europe but seem to manage pretty well. Business enjoys a much higher prestige than elsewhere.

The cultural reach is enviable. Fine concert orchestras and auditoria abound. Most cities have galleries and museums of estimable quality. The theatre survives and some television is of a high standard. Writers like Gore Vidal, Tom Wolfe and Lewis Lapham have scandalised, amused and instructed us, as have gadflies like Truman Capote. The art world has seen reputations come and go including those of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. The film industry has rather abandoned Hollywood itself but the world has still thrilled to the Star Wars and Indiana Jones sagas or the films of Clint Eastwood and Arnold Schwarzenegger. The horrors of Vietnam were evoked by The Deer Hunter and Platoon and there have been fine sci-fi fantasies from Back to the Future onwards. Pop music has seen black Americans take a leading place with many fine Motown artistes, energetic Michael Jackson and lovely but tragic Whitney Houston.

The US seems basically conservative, but she enjoys an excellent education system and the people are better travelled and less parochial than once they were. Their pride in their own country and her achievements is admirable.

The US from 1989 onwards

Although George Bush Senior saw the end of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the USSR, his presidency was essentially an addendum to that of Reagan. He handled well the invasion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and saw to Saddam’s dislodging and defeat; he might have pressed his advantage harder. Preppy Bush did not have Reagan’s popular touch and he gave way to Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton in 1993.

Clinton had the good fortune to preside over a period of unparalleled prosperity.  He was folksy and articulate, pushing forward the North America Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico, pressing a State Insurance Program for children through the Republican Congress together with other welfare reforms. He undertook in return to balance the budget. Overseas, the Cold War was over but NATO forces had to intervene against the Serbs in Bosnia in 1996 and in 1999 NATO handed over Kosovo, where Serbia had been harassing ethnic Albanians, to UN administration. Various embassy bombings in East Africa underlined the growing threat from Bin Laden’s al-Qaeda. Clinton’s womanising became an issue and he was accused of perjury and almost impeached; the US had little appetite for such a move and Clinton escaped, remaining a popular, if personally flawed, president.

 The two presidential terms of his Republican successor George W Bush were beset by great problems. The election was won by a whisker of votes in Florida; Bush himself was not an impressive figure, oddly inarticulate publicly. He surrounded himself with Neo-Con figures, given to extreme rightist opinions, although there were mainstream Republicans too. He relied on advice from his experienced Vice-President, Richard Cheney.

On 11 September 2001, al-Qaeda terrorists hi-jacked 4 civilian airliners and flew them in suicide attacks on the New York World Trade Centre, whose twin towers collapsed, on the Pentagon, which was seriously damaged and on the Capitol, saved by the brave actions of the passengers. Almost 3,000 people were killed; the US rallied patriotically round her President.

Richard Cheney
George W Bush


















Bush declared a War on Terror invading Afghanistan which harboured Osama bin Laden and overthrew the Taliban. Establishing a stable regime proved elusive and the Taliban continue to mount a major insurrection.  He had a handful of allies, notably Tony Blair’s Britain. More controversially he and his allies attacked Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 2003, on the pretext that it was developing weapons of mass destruction, later unproven. Saddam was overthrown and hanged but murderous sectarian divisions between Sunni and Shia emerged and more than 100,000 Iraqis have since died. Both wars became very unpopular in the US and Iraq has been evacuated and an Afghanistan withdrawal is under way.

Domestically Bush dismissed the Kyoto green protocols, spent large sums on welfare and Medicare as the economy improved but his second term was difficult. He was blamed for mishandling Hurricane Katrina which devastated New Orleans in 2005. Much worse was the Economic Crisis which simmered from 2007 with sub-prime mortgage worries but exploded in 2008 with the collapse of Lehmann Brothers and difficulties in many other financial institutions. Wall Street had been inadequately controlled in retrospect by Alan Greenspan, 19 years heading the Fed. The sober-sided bankers of yesteryear had morphed into greedy well-heeled shooters betting, and ultimately losing, in a vast global crap-game. Greenspan’s successor Ben Bernanke had to clear up a horrible mess and the world economy has stalled.

The Future

The election of Barack Obama as President was a triumph for the long struggle for black civil rights. He inherited a deep well of goodwill, but though his rhetoric has often been inspiring, his achievements have disappointed and his crab-like caution has frustrated his supporters.

Barack Obama

Yet in the final analysis the US occupies an immensely strong place in the world. Her GDP is twice that of her nearest rival, China. The Cold War and the overt threat of nuclear war are over. Diverse and multi-racial US society is peaceful and forward-looking. Internationally the US has earned loyal friends. How to live with an assertive Muslim world remains a challenge and patient diplomacy may be required to bring China fully into the family of nations.

Long may the US flourish!



SMD
26.08.12







Sunday, August 19, 2012

BRITAIN IN THE POST-WAR WORLD



[This is the first of 6 articles I will write on the subject of the respective places of Britain, USA, France, Germany, Russia and China in the Post-War World]

Prime Ministers:
1945-51 Clement Attlee                                  1973-76 Harold Wilson
1951-55 Winston Churchill                             1976-79 James Callaghan
1955-57 Anthony Eden                                   1979-90 Margaret Thatcher
1957-63 Harold MacMillan                            1990-97 John Major
1963-64 Sir Alec Douglas-Home                    1997-2007 Tony Blair
1964-70 Harold Wilson                                   2007-10 Gordon Brown
1970-73 Edward Heath                                  2010-     David Cameron

The Aftermath of war and Reconstruction

Although in 1945 Britain was one of the main Allied victors of the Second World War and her international prestige and self-confidence were high, she had sustained severe physical damage and was exhausted financially. She was overshadowed by her US ally and soon felt threatened by her erstwhile co-belligerent, the Soviet Union. A long period of austerity and rebuilding stretched ahead.

Yet the British public wanted much more than that. In the last weeks of the war it had elected a Labour government by a landslide, pledged to massive reform. A comprehensive National Insurance system was introduced providing universal pension and unemployment benefits. Ambitious plans were laid for large-scale state house-building, when materials became available.  Almost all hospitals were brought under public ownership and most doctors contracted to operate the National Health Service providing universal free health care. Although soon modest prescription, dental and optical charges were introduced, the NHS remains a cherished corner-stone of the Welfare State and a huge boon to the people.

Clement Attlee
Another leg of Labour’s programme was the nationalisation of coal mining and steel, road transport, railways and public utilities. There was much ebb and flow in this area but Britain ran a “mixed economy” for about 35 years, accepted by all parties with close cooperation with the trades unions. This was the “post-war consensus” and was combined with Keynesian economic policies often dubbed “Butskellism” after two vigorous chancellors, Labour’s Hugh Gaitskell and Conservative Rab Butler.

The mixed economy stuttered and stumbled. Initially it was highly centralised and micro-managed, with food and clothes rationed, everything subject to planning permission – proclaiming “the man in Whitehall knows best”. By the mid-50s a more free economy emerged, credit became widely available and MacMillan was able to boast “You never had it so good”. While this was maybe true for many Britons, other nations in Europe and North America had it much better.  Despite early promise from computers, jet engines and nuclear power, Britain seldom successfully exploited its technological expertise, its products were often over-engineered, industrial management was weak and labour relations deplorable.

 The Outside world

This poor economic performance exacerbated existing weaknesses and limited Britain’s room for manoeuvre. Externally Britain faced huge challenges. A founder member of NATO, she maintained an army in Germany confronting the Soviet threat. In 1947, weary of trying to hold the ring between the irreconcilable Jews and Arabs, she effectively surrendered her Mandate over Palestine and withdrew.  In August 1947, after years of generally peaceful agitation, the British Raj made way for the independent Republic of India, which was partitioned amid murderous communal rioting as Pakistan was also created. The jewel of the Empire was lost.

Britain tried to exert herself as a world power but her economy would not allow it. She withdrew her troops from Greece supporting the Royalists in the civil war and handed over to the US. She sent her soldiers to join the UN intervention in Korea, but it was essentially an American show. A jungle war in Malaya, the Mau Mau insurrection in Kenya and EOKA terrorism in Cyprus stretched her resources unmercifully. Eden’s ill-judged attempt to regain the Suez Canal in 1956 after Nasser seized it, ended in humiliating failure. Britain had long decided to become a nuclear power and great treasure was spent on missiles, aircraft and submarines as military platforms evolved, to ensure “a seat at the top table”, but Britain was a very junior partner to the US.

By the 1960s Britain had decided to withdraw East of Suez and to complete the decolonisation of Africa, a largely peaceful and rapid process associated with Iain Macleod. Only Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) was unresolved until 1980. In an attempt to rejuvenate her economy Britain finally negotiated her entry to the European Economic Community in 1973 under Edward Heath. Benefits did flow, but Britain needed an IMF rescue in 1976 and as Europe now moves towards closer fiscal union, Britain’s basis of membership is still closely debated.
Life in Britain

Despite all these problems, Britain was rather a fun place to live in at least from the mid-50s. It was lively artistically with Evelyn Waugh, Kingsley Amis and Angus Wilson in good literary form; after an entertaining court case, Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover became publishable; John Osborne electrified the stage; Laurence Olivier, Paul Schofield and a host of others trod the boards with great panache. The film industry greatly amused its large audience with first the Ealing and then the Boulting Brothers comedies. Period dramas were a speciality with David Lean progressing from Oliver Twist to Dr Zhivago and Lawrence of Arabia and Albert Finney charming us as Tom Jones. High art was provided by Henry Moore and Lucien Freud. The BBC (ignoring its elitist 3rd Programme) progressed from community-based entertainments like Workers’ Playtime and Have a Go! to the more cerebral Panorama and Kenneth Clark’s seminal Civilisation.

Popular culture was unrestrained. Packed dance-halls pulsated to the strains of rock n’ roll; everyone sang along with Alma Cogan or Tommy Steele until the thunderclap of The Beatles and a myriad of Liverpool sounds captivated the world. The Profumo scandal – a heady cocktail of sex in high places, espionage, slum landlordism, pimping and hypocrisy – gave much amusement. Trendy Mini cars and delicious Mini-skirts heralded Swinging 60s London and a good time was had by all. Olde England with its formal values was dead forever.

The Thatcher Revolution

1970s Britain was rather dismal with coal strikes galore causing temporary power cuts and a 3-day week, coupled with an oil crisis, a rigid incomes freeze and feeble economic performance justifying jibes at the “sick man of Europe”.  But salvation was at hand. Charmless Heath failed managerially and was dumped by the Tories in favour of Margaret Thatcher. Harold Wilson had once promised to harness “the white heat of the technological revolution” but had not delivered; he gave way to avuncular but ineffective Callaghan, who was defeated in the 1979 election, after the grey 1978/9 “Winter of Discontent”

Margaret Thatcher

Margaret Thatcher was a conviction politician, suffering no fools gladly and determined to galvanise her nation. Keynesian demand management had failed and she embraced the monetarist policies of Milton Friedman and the market liberalism of Friedrich Hayek. She smashed “the post-war consensus” by privatising many state corporations, abolishing exchange controls and ignoring the trades unions. She declined to bail-out failing companies. After a sharp recession Britain’s economy raced forward; the miners, led by cocksure Arthur Scargill misjudged their strength and were comprehensively crushed after a bitter strike in 1984/5. Restraints on the financial sector were eased by Big Bang in 1986 and for 20 years the City became a gold-mine. National morale visibly swelled. Thatcher won 3 elections but finally over-reached herself in her growing hostility to Europe and was deposed in 1990. She was however easily Britain’s most successful and inspirational leader in the post-war era.

The Thatcherite prosperity outlived her regime and continued through the ministries of Major and Blair. Britain has now the 6th largest economy in the world, slightly behind that of France. Labour allowed government expenditure to rise too much and was caught over-borrowed when the Economic Crisis struck in 2007. British banks had been highly imprudent and two of the largest needed to be rescued by the government. The mess has still to be cleared up and the miscreants brought to book.

Britain in the world now

Britain struggled from 1968 onwards with the vexed matter of Ulster. A civil rights campaign degenerated into an IRA terrorist insurrection initially tacitly supported by the Irish government. Murder, assassination and bombings were commonplace but elements in the majority Unionist community retaliated brutally in kind. Wiser counsels in Dublin and patient British diplomacy finally produced a settlement on Good Friday 1998. A painful boil had been lanced.

Britain was still exposed to colonial troubles. In 1982 the Argentine military dictatorship seized the faraway Falklands. Britain faced the indifference or hostility of Europe, the opposition of the US State Department and of course the enmity of the UN General Assembly. Mrs Thatcher was not deterred and had good relations with US President Ronald Reagan and Defence Secretary Casper Weinberger, whose help was invaluable as a British task force defeated the Argentines and regained the islands. Mrs Thatcher’s popularity soared. The final important asset of the Empire, Hong Kong, was returned to China on reasonable terms when its lease expired in 1997.

Mrs Thatcher’s good relations with Reagan assisted their mutual steadiness towards the USSR, eventually rewarded by the collapse of East Germany and the Eastern European communist dictatorships in 1989 and the disintegration of the USSR in 1991. The nightmare of nuclear war receded. Closeness to the US however meant that Britain could not avoid involvement in unpopular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Relations with Europe tended to be fraught as the political elite were often euro-enthusiastic and the general public euro-sceptic. The move towards a common currency (ERM) burnt British fingers in 1992 and Britain did not join the Eurozone on its formation in 1999. Despite Blair’s enthusiasm, Gordon Brown did the nation a service by opposing entry as Chancellor and Prime Minister. A looser association with the EU may be a more logical course for Britain.

The Good Life


After the Beatles era, Britain still punched above her weight in pop music with bands like Human League, Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd winning a large following. In literature Martin Amis wrote challenging novels (London Fields) and Alan Bennett was a thoughtful and witty commentator. Bennett (The History Boys) also enlivened the theatre, where he was joined by prolific Alan Ayckbourn (Absurd Person Singular) and Michael Frayn (Noises Off, Copenhagen and recently Democracy), and versatile Willy Russell (Blood Brothers, Educating Rita and Shirley Valentine).

Perhaps Britain’s greatest contribution was in children’s literature where Roald Dahl (Matilda) scintillated but the greatest success was in high fantasy with the largely posthumous popularity of JRR Tolkien (Lord of the Rings) and CS Lewis (The Chronicles of Narnia) soon overtaken by JK Rowling, who sold over 400m copies of her Harry Potter books.

The cinema had its usual diet of James Bond thrillers but Mama Mia!, using Abba songs was the highest grossing British film in history. TV was distinguished by wonderful David Attenborough nature documentaries (Life on Earth) and Britain’s distinctive period pieces from Upstairs Downstairs to Downton Abbey. The world of art was illuminated by the paintings of Francis Bacon and the ingenuity of Tim Berners-Lee gave us all the World Wide Web.

Sport was a national obsession and while England won the football World Cup in 1966, its subsequent success was at club level in Europe with trophies regularly won by Liverpool, Manchester United and Chelsea. David Beckham and Wayne Rooney became international celebrities. Cricket and Rugby fortunes fluctuated from the sublime to the ridiculous but in golf a long list of champions emerged including Tony Jacklin, Sandy Lyle, Nick Faldo and Rory McIlroy. Britain had plenty to cheer.

  The Future

Britain has made great strides since 1945 but there are as ever many challenges. The divorce rate has increased 20-fold since 1945 and the prison population 7-fold. Britain has more teenage mothers and children born out of wedlock than any other European country. 13% of the working population claim disability benefit compared to 5% in the US and 3% in Japan – there is a large social underclass. Educational standards are indifferent in too many state schools.

Mo Farah wins 5,000 and 10,000 metres Olympic Gold for Britain, London 2012

Yet there are so many positives. Fine universities and many excellent public and state schools; a tolerant society protecting minorities; the rule of law; a competent civil service generally free of corruption; a country of surpassing beauty; a cherished monarchy; a talented people; acceptance of a reduced status in the world but pride in being multi-ethnic as exemplified by the splendid staging of the Olympic Games in London

It is an honour to be a citizen of such a country.


S M Donald
19.08.12
Text Copyright Sidney Donald 2012

Saturday, August 11, 2012

MITTELEUROPA MUSINGS



Helmut Schmidt is now 93, but the highly respected former German Chancellor sent a vigorous message the other day to Mrs Merkel and Wolfgang Schaueble. He said that Germany cannot and should not try to take on the leadership of Europe in response to the economic crisis. The wounds of the Holocaust and of WWII are still too raw and the memories too painful. He is right. While it may be unfair to the present blameless generation, the Germans are burdened with war guilt for years to come. They can be valued friends, partners and allies but they can never again assert German hegemony.

Central Europe has always interested me. I use the term to mean all modern Germany, Austria, Poland, the Baltic Republics, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and the Slav Balkans. Historically the term Mitteleuropa described those lands which would fall under German hegemony if it won the First World War. It covered all the above (though with very different frontiers if the multi-ethnic Habsburg Empire survived) with the addition of the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Alsace-Lorraine. Mitteleuropa as a political programme was not taken very seriously but it is useful shorthand for the large European hinterland.

I cannot readily explain my fascination. We had elegant refugee Hungarian neighbours in Aberdeen and an inspirational schoolmaster in Edinburgh taught European History- he was half-Scots but had been educated in Germany and Heidelberg. He taught me the career of Frederick the Great, the various Polish partitions, Maria Theresa, von Kaunitz and the diplomatic revolution, The Enlightenment, the reforms of von Stein, the Congress of Vienna, the manoeuvres of Metternich and the later brilliant diplomacy of Bismarck. So I had the framework.

I have scant knowledge of the German language and I have not travelled widely in Mitteleuropa. While I have been much stimulated by visits to Vienna, Berlin and Prague and often toured in Germany and Austria, I know nothing first hand of Poland, Hungary and points south. Yet Mitteleuropa culture has entranced me with its Baroque, Rococo and Neo-classical buildings, its incomparable musical genius, its profound philosophic and historical writing and its diverse and brilliant intelligentsia.

Rococo St Nicholas, Prague
The Ringstrasse Boulevard, Vienna
           



Music seems to appeal particularly to the German spirit. The air is filled with glorious harmonies from the joyful sonorities of Bach, the exquisite sympathy of Mozart and the passionate sensibility of Beethoven, only three in a wonderful catalogue including Telemann, Haydn, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Strauss, Wagner and non-German Dvorak and Liszt.

J S Bach
W A Mozart
                    
In the world of philosophy and scholarship the Germans have few rivals. Prominent leaders of the Enlightenment, Mitteleuropa gave us Immanuel Kant (of the categorical imperative) never venturing further than 10 miles from his beloved Prussian home city of Koenigsberg in a long life, or profound Hegel, Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. The status of Leopold von Ranke as the pre-eminent champion of unbiased history is undoubted and eyes were later opened wide by the biblical scholarship of Albert Schweitzer and Rudolf Bultmann. The universities of Mitteleuropa were famed throughout the world for arts and sciences.

Surrounding all this was a glittering intelligentsia of artists, novelists, journalists, connoisseurs and dramatists. Mitteleuropa civilisation perhaps reached its apogee in late 19th and early 20th century Vienna, so evocatively described in Edmund de Waal’s The Hare with Amber Eyes.

This civilisation was, alas, only skin-deep and concealed a festering canker. From 1897 to 1910 the Mayor of Vienna was Jew-baiting Karl Lueger, building up votes by working on populist anti-Semitic themes long latent in Austria-Hungary. Hitler himself was Austrian and learned his street politics in Vienna bringing his poisonous opinions to Germany proper in 1913. Defeat in World War 1, privation and poverty bred political extremism in Mitteleuropa and the Jews, the most loyal supporters of the Kaisers, became the scapegoats. All decency, all human feeling deserted the German-speaking world as the Nazi persecution gathered pace. Human and property rights were ignored and the intelligentsia dispersed.

Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Arnold Schoenberg and Thomas Mann were among the legion of intellectuals, mainly Jewish, who fled to Western Europe and North America, greatly enriching their adopted countries. Tragically, poor Jews could not emigrate and during WWII 6m Jews and many other minorities were butchered and gassed with bestial cruelty to the enduring horror of the outside world.

How could such a civilised people behave in this way? Nemesis was severe with ethnic German populations brutally repatriated and historic territories like Silesia and East Prussia lost. Breslau became Wroclaw, Koenigsberg Kaliningrad and Danzig Gdansk. Germany itself was in ruins but with a new constitution and effective politicians, it renewed itself, acknowledged its crimes, paid substantial compensation, kept a low external profile, revived its great industrial base and achieved reunification in 1990. It had rehabilitated itself in many respects.

Austria sadly is still in denial about its Nazi past, posing as a victim rather than a willing accomplice. Vile Austrian Nazis Arthur Seyss-Inquart and Ernst Kaltenbrunner were deservedly hanged after the Nuremburg tribunals, but property restitution to Jews was only grudgingly and partially made; its election of deeply compromised ex-SS officer Kurt Waldheim as President exemplified its ambiguous attitude.

Nationalism is a strong emotion and a very dangerous one. Mitteleuropa, apart from Germany, is now a mosaic of small nation states and the old multi-ethnic Imperial unity has long disappeared. It seems almost impossible to keep multi-ethnic countries together – see the USSR, Bosnia or Czechoslovakia.  Under the stress of the economic crisis, moral standards slip; countries look inwards and fear foreigners. Even here in Greece I have faced abusive jeers from otherwise rational, if peasant, Greeks to “go back home to England” – the ultimate insult to a Scotsman! Theft and even assault may not be all that far away.

Freude schoener Gotterfunken, Schlaf in himmlischer Ruh, Walther von der Vogelweide – the words and the names trip off the tongue pleasantly and easily. But other names - Belsen, Buchenwald and Auschwitz- stick in the craw and conjure up a nightmare. The nightmare can never be forgotten and may only be forgiven when the last Holocaust orphan or loser of siblings passes away.


SMD
11.08.12

Text copyright Sidney Donald 2012









Saturday, August 4, 2012

LEADING FROM THE FRONT


Oh where, tell me where, have our bonnie leaders gone? So many of the grievous problems that currently beset our institutions and companies emanate from a lack of leadership. It is easy, but sloppy, to single out individuals who have erred here and there, often mightily. They may have demonstrably fouled up personally but really the basic fault is usually a deeper cultural one in an organisation which has lost its way. A new leader must normally be found to get the institution back on the rails.

A case in point is News International. Once a lively if unbalanced, collection of papers and media interests, at least in the UK, suffused with the prejudices and enmities of Rupert Murdoch, it finally lost its “moral compass”. Spectacular and useful investigative journalism was degraded into phone hacking, harassment, bribing of police and prison officers and all the influence peddling laid bare by the Leveson Inquiry and the hearings of the Parliamentary Culture Committee. With Rupert Murdoch now an old man and his son James and senior executives allegedly implicated, a complete changing of the guard looks overdue. An industry which fostered Horatio Bottomley, Northcliffe, Beaverbrook, Robert Maxwell and Conrad Black is always likely to have more than its fair share of colourful characters, but public patience with infamy can only be stretched so far.

Murdoch: End of an Innings
King: The Buck stops here
      

                           

Inevitably we also think of the great banks, RBS, Barclays, Lloyds and HSBC. Who can deny that they have lost their way? A generation ago those who worked in banks (I did myself) inherited a work ethic and at least a residual feeling that they were custodians or trustees of a long-established and valuable institution. Alas, much of this disappeared with Big Bang in 1986 as globalisation took over and bankers ceased to know their customers. High rewards turned the heads of top executives. Bob Diamond and Jerry del Missier were no doubt consummate deal-doers in the dog-eat-dog world of investment banking, but how could the Board of Barclays Bank have believed they were remotely suitable to be the torch-bearers as CEO and COO of a culturally conservative UK institution? How did such madness take hold?

By then of course, the great banks were being run for the benefit of their senior executives – forget about the ordinary staff, the shareholders, the customers or the depositors. In recent weeks alone, these banks have been caught up in scandals involving the manipulation of LIBOR, mis-sold insurance, malfunctioning IT and Mexican money-laundering to add to a long litany of previous shortcomings. This heaps shame on the City and tarnishes a bright jewel in our economic crown. Yet the Governor of the Bank of England since 2003, Sir Mervyn King, on whose watch all these scandals occurred, remains in office. No doubt he has made strenuous efforts to deal with these problems but he is supposed to lead and in part control the City. He has comprehensively failed and in the words of Cromwell “For God’s sake, Go!”

My final failing institution is the BBC, once held in high public esteem and affection. The public service broadcasting ethic was a high ideal and from Reith’s day onwards brought first-class culture and entertainment to the nation. Inevitably the changing face of Britain altered the flavour but people like Richard Dimbleby, Robin Day and David Attenborough, or programmes like The Goons, Till Death Us Do Part or TW3 were hugely influential and national events were covered with professional aplomb. TV and radio channels have proliferated enormously and the BBC is now one of many. The feeble recent coverage of the Jubilee is a symptom of decline, while very high salaries and tax avoidance payment structures are characteristic of a disconnection between the institution and the luckless taxpayer providing the funding. A slimmer and more transparent business model needs to be introduced.

By the way, am I alone in feeling my flesh creep every time I watch a heavily scripted BBC despatch from some trouble spot? Dan in the studio squeezes himself in a know-all orgy of self-congratulation as he pronounces “Keith, there is clearly much sectarian tension out there between the Hausa and the Ibo”. Keith, clad in a flak-jacket and tin hat replies in oleaginous tones “Yes, Dan, you’re quite right, the tension here is palpable…etc “. How I long for Keith to say “No, Dan, you misunderstand the situation completely” or much better, “Why, Dan, do you talk such bollocks!”… but it never comes. The whole exercise is redundant anyway as neither Dan nor Keith nor the viewing public give a toss about the Hausa, the Ibos or their tensions.

Sorrell: WPP Dynamo


Branson: Virgin's Leader

                           









Enough gloom and doom, the good news is that there is plenty leadership talent in the UK. Many leaders are abrasive and difficult fellows and you would not care to be marooned on a desert island with them: but they can run organisations. Just to mention a few, there is much to admire in the way Sir Martin Sorrell has transformed tiny WPP into perhaps the leading advertising company in the world: or recently the leadership of Sir Christopher Gent at the helm of mighty Vodafone and that of Sir Moir Lockhead driving forward FirstGroup. Sir John Buchanan successfully guides Smith and Nephew to ever higher dividend payments. There can be few more prominent company leaders than Sir Richard Branson at Virgin Group, who has probably made dozens of mistakes but bounces back tenaciously and leads from the front.

These are the types of personality who can reinvigorate the boardrooms of our stumbling entities and restore their credibility. Shuffle the leadership pack now!


SMD
4.08.12


Text Copyright Sidney Donald 2012