BREXIT ACHIEVED!

As the clock reaches 11 pm GMT on Friday 31 January 2020, I celebrate the withdrawal of the UK from the European Union with profound satisfaction. I believe our economy will perform well, our sovereignty will have been restored and our national morale will be greatly refreshed. There will no doubt be abrasive discussions on the terms of future trading with the EU, but all sides have an interest in a fair agreement and, while no-deal remains possible, surely common sense dictates an early and comprehensive Entente between the UK and her trading partners on mainland Europe. The people of the UK long to step away from the European issue which has divided us grievously for at least 3 years.

In retrospect, our original accession was a serious political error, and we should have heeded the warnings of Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell in 1962:  It means the end of a thousand years of history. You may say: "Let it end." But, my goodness, it is a decision that needs a little care and thought.

Hugh Gaitskell, patriot

De Gaulle delivers his veto in 1963

We should have listened to Charles de Gaulle when he gave lucid explanations for his veto to UK accession in 1963:

England in effect is insular, she is maritime, she is linked through her exchanges, her markets, her supply lines to the most diverse and often the most distant countries; she pursues essentially industrial and commercial activities, and only slight agricultural ones. She has in all her doings very marked and very original habits and traditions. In short, the nature, the structure, the very situation that are England’s differ profoundly from those of the continentals.

 But we were dazzled by the early success of the EEC and believed that joining it would transfer some of its star-dust to our economy. It never really delivered, although our trade links greatly altered, allowing the EU to generate a huge surplus from trading more freely with us.

The Thatcher government of the 1980s reformed our economy single-mindedly while Europe became more bureaucratic and integrationist. The cracks between the parties deepened, stimulating Margaret Thatcher to declare in Bruges in 1988:

 We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them re-imposed at a European level with a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels.

We remained a round peg in a square hole. We negotiated rebates, opt-outs and exemptions – sticking plaster covering our fundamental systemic divergence from the European Project. A single currency (the Euro) was introduced and plans laid for a European Army. Pressure grew, as the direction of travel of the EU became clearer, for a referendum on membership (full marks to indefatigable campaigner Nigel Farage) and an over-confident David Cameron conceded one. The vote to leave in June 2016 shocked the UK establishment and triggered a furious attempt to derail Brexit, which only failed with the December 2019 election confirming Brexit under vigorous Boris Johnson.

Margaret Thatcher, crusader for Britain

         

                                               

Boris signs the Withdrawal Agreement

                                               

Boris and his government have stiff challenges to face. The imbalance of North and South, excessive concentration of power in London, further devolution, developing the transport infrastructure with HS2 and airport expansion, reviewing the powers of the Supreme Court, reduction of carbon emissions, reform of the House of Lords to create a more relevant second chamber and productivity improvements are typical issues requiring attention. Then there is a heap of knotty foreign policy matters to unpick. A Conservative government with an 80-seat majority is well placed to tackle this weighty agenda.

Can the divisions bedevilling us be overcome? It will take some time, as Leavers will not easily forget the gloating doom-mongers and nay-sayers nor forgive the likes of John Bercow, Dominic Grieve, Amber Rudd or Philip Hammond for their treachery, whatever their professions of principled sincerity. Yet I recognise the pain and worry felt by many good people who loved the ideals of the EU, who admire European culture, who want to travel unimpeded through Europe and who have many friends and deep connections there. Such people deserve reassurance and support. Our policies for allowing EU citizens to reside here must be liberal and suited to our economic needs. Whatever their origins, we should welcome the salt of the earth to our shores with open arms.

We are entering a new and exciting epoch, when freedom and opportunity will flood in and refresh us. May our beloved United Kingdom flourish!

Happy Brexit Day to you all!

SMD

31.01.20

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2020.

SCOTTISH WRITERS

Although her links with England are extremely close and mutually beneficial, Scotland’s culture has its own distinct flavour and excellencies, as much in literature as in any other sphere. Always less hierarchical and feudal than England, while materially poorer, the Scottish royal court historically patronised the arts generously and fine poets of the 15^th century like Henryson and Dunbar were able to flourish. The Union of the Crowns in 1603 removed this prop, with the court moving from Edinburgh to London and 17^th century Scotland produced no rival to Milton or Dryden.

Despite this, Scotland’s culture prospered mightily in the 18^th century during the remarkable Scottish Enlightenment. The novelist Tobias Smollett produced picaresque romps like Roderick Random, Humphry Clinker and Peregrine Pickle between 1748 and 1771 on similar lines to the works of Sterne and Richardson. More seriously the great philosophical and ethical works of David Hume starting with his Treatise on Human Understanding (1740) contributed to Edinburgh’s reputation as “The Athens of the North”, arguing that man is a bundle of emotions rather than a rational being, earning him a European reputation. To this acute intelligence we can add the name of Adam Smith, professor of moral philosophy at Glasgow, who published his The Wealth of Nations in 1776. His analysis of economic behavior and his arguments in favour of international trade resonate still. He revolutionised the science of economics and laid the intellectual foundations of modern capitalism.

David Hume

James Boswell

More riches were to follow. James Boswell (1740-96) epitomised many of the failings of Scots, a snob, a drunk and a debauchee, but he had warm virtues too, the gift of friendship and an acute eye for the society in which he lived. He visited the courts of Europe and befriended Voltaire, Rousseau and the glittering circle round his mentor Dr Samuel Johnson in London and the finest minds in Scotland. His daily Journals from 1763 reveal his merits and failings with vivid candour. Even his sharpest critic, Lord Macaulay, declared that Boswell’s Life of Johnson (1791) was the greatest biography in the English language and that eminence has never been challenged.

As his 25 January birthday is upon us, let us celebrate the fine poetry of Robert Burns (1759-96), whose Romantic and lyrical works endear him to Scots everywhere:

But Mousie, thou are no thy-lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men,
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!

…or in a more radical vein:

Then let us pray that come it may,

(As come it will for a' that,)

That Sense and Worth, o'er a' the earth,

Shall bear the gree, an' a' that. For a' that, an' a' that,

It's coming yet for a' that,

That Man to Man, the world o'er,

Shall brothers be for a' that.

Robert Burns

Sir Walter Scott

                                                                           

Walter Scott (1771-1832) was a busy Scots lawyer of Tory sympathies who first became known as a poet. His Marmion and Lay of the Last Minstrel were much admired. The famous lines below give a flavour:

Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land?
Whose heart hath ne’er within him burn’d,
As home his footsteps he hath turn’d,
From wandering on a foreign strand?

Scott’s enduring fame rests on his historical novels, a genre he effectively invented, publishing Waverley in 1813 followed by many others including Heart of Midlothian, The Antiquary and Ivanhoe. He attracted a European audience, but his works fell out of fashion, (guru-critic F L Leavis an enemy), in the 20^th century and only now are being re-appraised. The ambition and sweep of his plots are striking and the many monuments to him in Scottish towns are a testimony to the high esteem in which he is held.

It is perhaps useful if I set out what I think are the trademarks of much Scots writing:

-         - A fascination with ideas, either religious or philosophical

-          - A strong compulsion to praise (even overpraise) the merits of Scotland

-          - An excessive interest, often tortured, in sexual feelings

-          - A contrarian spirit, both to shock or entertain, fed by the author’s vanity

-          - Radical political views, opposing the existing order, whatever it might be.

Returning to the 19^th century, the industrial revolution had made Scotland prosperous though not enough prosperity trickled down to the labouring classes. Scotland had in David Hume a much-read historian though he wrote a History of England rather than Scotland. Similarly Anglophile was Lord Macaulay, with a Scottish father but who spent his life in England (and India). He was thus half-Scot, but I would settle for that fraction of a glorious stylist and an incisive critic even if his Whig interpretation of history raises hackles.

More definitively Scottish was Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), the Sage of Ecclefechan, who admired German writers like Goethe and Fichte. He was a believer in heroic Great Men, for example Cromwell or Napoleon, and disparaged democracy. His The French Revolution and his biography of Frederick the Great gave ample scope for his eccentric, declamatory prose style. He was a kenspeckle figure round his home in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, and was a doughty controversialist all his life.

A maverick and bohemian figure was Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-94) driven from his native damp and chilly Edinburgh by chronic bronchial problems. His Child’s Garden of Verses graced children’s bookshelves but his Kidnapped and Treasure Island were in fact adult adventures while Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde famously explored the splits in the human personality.

Thomas Carlyle

Robert Louis Stevenson

Two other Scots writers distinguished themselves with now classic stories for children J M Barrie and Kenneth Grahame. Barrie was a busy playwright but his Peter Pan (1904) earned him an enchanted immortality. Kenneth Grahame celebrated the other world of animals in the touching anthropomorphic tale The Wind in the Willows (1908) with the delightful adventures of Moley, Ratty, Badger and Toad.

A less sunny view of Scottish mores was taken by George Douglas Brown, a critic of the sentimental kailyard school of writing, whose The House with the Green Shutters (1901) described the jealousies and pettiness of small-town Scots life. More sophisticated were the short stories of H H Munro (aka Saki) exuding the languid values of pre-1914 London club-land.

The Great War and the later economic slump changed everything. Red Clydeside revelled in the expected collapse of capitalism, others like the brilliant achiever John Buchan, continued to write for an appreciative conservative readership, The Scottish Renaissance, ushered in by Hugh Macdiarmid’s 1926 epic poem A Drunk Man looks at the Thistle, attracted famous names like novelists A J Cronin, Eric Linklater, playwright James Bridie and poet Norman MacCaig. There was a strong element of Scottish nationalism in this movement, although some intellectuals like poet Edwin Muir opposed the use of Scots vocabulary and championed English and indeed England. A cherished writer from the Left was Lewis Grassic Gibbon whose moving Sunset Song described the struggles of a farming family in the North east.

Macdiarmid lost his acolytes as he changed his political opinions constantly moving from nationalism to rigid Stalinism before recanting. He was the archetypical moaning Scotsman justifying P G Wodehouse’s jibe “It has never been difficult to tell the difference between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine!” A more cheerful nationalist was Sir Compton Mackenzie, who had a colourful life as Great War intelligence agent, a playboy in Capri, a prolific novelist and writer of history and a co-founder of the SNP. Best known for novels Sinister Street (1913) and Whisky Galore (1947), I had the honour of receiving some school prizes from him in 1960!

Hugh Macdiarmid

Sir Compton Mackenzie

 

My knowledge of contemporary Scottish writers is tenuous – both Iain Banks of The Wasp Factory fame or Irvine Welsh of Trainspotting tackle subjects I frankly prefer not to know about.

Taken in the round, Scottish writers have punched far above their weight and added substantially to British and World culture.

SMD

24.01.20 

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2020

ASSASSINATION

“Murder, I should fancy, is invariably rather a mistake,” Oscar Wilde has demonic Lord Henry Wotton drawl in The Picture of Dorian Grey, “one should never do anything one cannot talk about after dinner.” This cynical axiom would not have impressed President Donald Trump, no great exponent of good manners and etiquette, when he ordered the dispatch of Iranian General Suleimani, a venomous enemy of the US and the West in general. Iran and her Arab allies have been whipped into an even higher level of anti-American hysteria, aided by the usual suspects in the West, but political assassination is a well-established technique and the cries of horror at the very thought of it have an unrealistic ring.

Donald Trump

General Suleimani

Philip II of Macedon (336 BC), father of Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar (44 BC), Roman emperors Caligula (41 AD), Galba (69) Vitellius (69) and Domitian (96) were all bumped off by political or dynastic rivals. Very few lucky Emperors of Rome or Byzantium (i.e. the then civilized world) died of old age or in their beds and this gory tradition persisted in Renaissance Europe with the Medicis and Borgias stirring or dodging poisoned chalices every day.

Julius Caesar

Lucretia Borgia

In more modern times maniacs abounded, British Prime Minister Spencer Perceval falling to one in 1812 while plucky Queen Victoria survived at least 5 nefarious attempts in her long reign. 4 US Presidents have not been so lucky, Abe Lincoln (1865), James Garfield (1881), William McKinley (1901) and John Kennedy (1963), all lethal targets. Unsurprisingly, Russian tsars have also been targets, Alexander II (1881) and Nicholas II, plus family, mown down without due process (1918). 

Other crowned heads suffered the same fate – Empress Sisi of Austria (1898), by an Italian anarchist, George I of Greece (1913), by a leftist vagrant, Alexander of Yugoslavia, accompanied by French Foreign Minister Barthou (1934) at the hands of a Croat fanatic. Going down several classes, Hitler, never one for half-measures, managed one weekend to dispose of his ideological enemy Gregor Strasser, his predecessor as Chancellor, General Schleicher, and his rival in thuggery, Ernst Röhm, in the Night of the Long Knives (1934). Joseph Stalin, among his many crimes, also ordered the assassination of rival Leon Trotsky in Mexico City (1940) executed (unlamented) with an ice-pick.

Empress Sisi of Austria

Ernst Rohm

As an instrument of policy, assassination is notoriously unpredictable. The Serbs behind the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo (1914) can hardly have wished the world to be convulsed with a War during which Serbia ceased to exist for some years. Murdering Abe Lincoln did nothing to alleviate the sufferings of the South and the death of JFK only brought deep sorrow. Very often an assassination is a form of revenge – a dish best served cold – as the Armenian diaspora hunted down for many years those responsible for, and senior deniers of, the Ottoman genocide of 1915-18, and Israeli Mossad tracked the Palestinian killers of athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Similarly the elimination of Osama bin Laden, organiser of 9/11 and many other murderous sorties, by US Navy Seals (2011), can be thought a just retribution. The liquidation of ISIL’s Al-Baghdadi (2019) and Iran’s General Suleimani (2020) can be looked at in the same light.

Trump pledged that US troops would leave the Middle East and this will happen well before the US elections in November. He fired his deadly Parthian shot to remind Shia Islam that America’s arm is long and it can defend its interests just as easily from its base in Omaha, Nebraska, as it can from its compound in Baghdad.

Osama bin Laden

Lord Mountbatten of Burma

Yet assassinations can cause much grief and injury to what I look upon as the forces of progress. Who benefited from the murder of Mahatma Gandhi (1948) or of Martin Luther King (1968) or of the offspring of Nehru, Indira Gandhi (1984) and Rajiv (1991), other than incorrigible extremists –  or from that of Benazir Bhutto (2007) in the violence of Pakistan? Nearer home there is a grim catalogue of assassinations in Ireland, ranging from the Phoenix Park murder of Lord Frederick Cavendish (1882), of Sir Henry Wilson (1922), of Treaty negotiator Michael Collins (1922) of vigorous Free-Stater Kevin O’Higgins (1927), British Ambassador Christopher Ewart-Biggs (1976), of war hero Airey Neave (1979), of eminent Admiral Lord Mountbatten (1979) to Thatcher loyalist Ian Gow (1990). Many murders of ordinary people soiled the reputation of Ireland in the inter-communal Troubles (1968-98). Let us hope that period of horror is behind us forever.

It is legitimate to dispense death in an overtly military and well-declared conflict. Alas, many modern conflicts are conducted in surreptitious forms in a half-light, surrounded by fake news and weasel words. Novel judgements of danger and hard decisions are often quickly required. Human lives are precious and may our leaders have the wisdom and means to protect us from our enemies without betraying the moral values we cherish.

SMD

12.01.20

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2020