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 3^rd 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 6^th 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

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 19^th and early 20^th 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

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

AN ENGLISH CHURCH RAMBLE

England is uniquely fortunate in possessing a wonderful collection of Parish Churches many of them from the medieval period. Their features and beauties have been chronicled exhaustively and expertly by Pevsner, Betjeman, Clifton-Taylor and most recently by Simon Jenkins, all of whose guides are indispensible. I would just like to touch on some aspects which particularly appeal to me, without claiming any scholarly knowledge, only confessing the wayward enthusiasm of an amateur of churches.

I suppose what gives older English churches their distinctive character is their Stone, most brilliantly oolitic limestone, but also sandstone in the North and granite in Cornwall – whatever was the available material. The limestone may be combined with flint to create charming flushwork as seen at Long Melford in Suffolk, mainly built in flint

Long Melford, Suffolk, Flint and Limestone Flushwork

Inside the church one sometimes finds stone carving of consummate quality notably of the Capitals of columns – the Leaves of Southwell are the most famous, but the Minster there is a cathedral, not a parish church and thus outside our scope – but a good example are the capitals at Eaton Bray in Bedfordshire.

Capitals at Eaton Bray, Bedfordshire

Fine stonework is also evident in window Tracery, most strikingly in Jesse Windows depicting the family tree of Christ, starting with Jesse, the father of King David. A favourite is the window at Dorchester Abbey, Oxfordshire.

Jesse Window, Dorchester Abbey

Although there is still too much banal and dark Victorian stained glass in Anglican churches, the best Glass is astonishing. The set of 28 16^th century Tudor windows at Fairford, Gloucestershire depicting Biblical characters rival some of the best in Europe.

Anna and Joachim, Fairford, Gloucestershire

Another internal joy is Woodwork. The Victorian woodcarver Gibbs Rogers produced lovely swags and screens at sumptuous St Mary-at-Hill in Billingsgate in the City, often mistaken for the work of the master Grinling Gibbons. Sadly a severe fire in 1988 badly damaged the church and the Gibbs Rogers work has not been reinstated. But fine wood carving can be seen at 14^th century Trunch Church in Norfolk:

Leg of Baptismal Font Canopy, Trunch, Norfolk

Choir stalls are often much enlivened by Misericords the under-ledge of tip-up seats which gave the occupier welcome support when having to stand for a long time. The misericords were carved, sometimes by apprentices, with grotesques or naturalistic scenes, not usually religious in character. The best sets of misericords are found in the cathedrals like Chester, but there is a splendid set of 20 at 14^th century Nantwich, St Mary in Cheshire.

A Lion and a Wyvern fight, attended by bat-like Grotesques

 Misericord at Nantwich, St Mary, Cheshire

Worthy local families or wealthy guilds wanted to leave their mark on the parish church. In the lovely though architecturally complex church at Burford, Oxfordshire, by the Windrush, the unpopular Tanfield family raised their lavish Chantry Chapel and Memorial in 1625

Tanfield Memorial, Burford, Oxfordshire

English churches have been built over many years and different parts have different styles. Thus majestic St Mary Redcliffe, Bristol “The fairest, goodliest, and most famous parish church in England” in the words of Queen Bess, is in the Decorated and Perpendicular styles. Flower and Ball ornamentation from the Decorated period is most evident in the flamboyant North Porch, a riot of ostentation.

North Porch, St Mary Redcliffe, Bristol

Tower and Spire, St Wulfram's, Grantham

England enjoys wonderful church Towers and Spires and from the same Decorated period comes the splendid spire of St Wulfram’s Grantham in Lincolnshire – “the finest spire in England” claims Jenkins. John Ruskin supposedly swooned in rapture when he first saw it! Grantham is ever associated with Margaret Thatcher, (nee Roberts), whose father ran a local grocery store. Alderman Roberts was a Methodist lay-preacher, so maybe Maggie only visited the church on formal occasions but its spire may have been a latent inspirational influence.

The larger English parish churches are usually cruciform in shape and are built with an East end altar, notionally facing Jerusalem, known as Orientation. The Anglicans were often insistent on this, although there are odd exceptions. Famously the Knights Templar built The Temple Church, off the Strand in London with its circular end as a copy of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, so Orientation was superfluous. A striking circular-ended church is the 1792 St Chad’s, Shrewsbury.

St Chad's Shrewsbury, Shropshire

Islam takes Orientation very seriously and all mosques must face towards Mecca. A “Mihrab”, usually crescent-shaped, is built into the fabric of the mosque and points towards Mecca with considerable accuracy. This lack of Orientation partly explains why Muslims often did not easily convert captured Christian churches for their own use, such as the Haghia Sophia in Constantinople – the buildings were liturgically unsatisfactory.

Blind Arcading, St Mary Woolnoth, City of London

If I were to pick a favourite church in England I would probably plump for a prominent but rather overlooked church in the City of London, St Mary Woolnoth. This is a masterpiece by Wren’s pupil Nicholas Hawksmoor and was completed in 1716. The rusticated façade and original 2-tower design give an impression of massiveness, supplemented by brilliant use of Blind Arcading to provide interest and convey strength on the North (Lombard Street) side. Internally the church is compact and of modest size, more suitable for a baptism than a wedding, with a blue star-decorated roof and a baroque baldaquin sheltering the 10 Commandments at the East end.

St Mary Woolnoth, City of London

With Bank Underground station beneath it and the ever-busy City bustling around, many scarcely give this imposing church a second glance or think about the precariousness of human life.

But “Dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return” and my final ramble is to those fascinating church-yards attached to our older churches. Cemeteries are somewhat depressing places but reading tombstones is rather like reading history books - there is so much to learn. In any event I particularly admire Chest Tombs, much used in the late 17^th and 18^th centuries. There are examples in Burford but the best selection is in the small Cotswold town of Northleach with its fine 15^th century church, richly endowed by the prosperous wool merchants of those years.

17th century Chest Tomb, Northleach, Gloucestershire

With the tomb exuberantly carved on every surface, it is surely an impressive final resting-place. It would almost be a pleasure to be buried beneath such a tomb!

SMD

7.07.12

Text copyright: Sidney Donald 2012

LORD BYRON: FROM ABERDEEN TO ATHENS

 As a young boy up to the age of 8, I attended the splendid Aberdeen Grammar School in my home city. The front of the granite-clad school was dominated by a large statue of Lord Byron, the most famous alumnus of the school, who also spent childhood years there up to the age of 10, leaving in 1798. The statue was of a solemn robed personage and my young mind assumed he had been a highly respectable member of our society and an obvious role model.

Byron's statue at Aberdeen Grammar School

Of course, he was nothing of the kind. Lord George Gordon Byron (1788-1824) had an immense talent but he was a shaky pillar of society. So scandalous was his alleged private life that he left England never to return in 1816 and Westminster Abbey refused to bury him and did not allow a plaque in his honour until 1969. But in his time he was the most celebrated and admired poet in Europe.

Byron had a most unhappy childhood. His father “Mad Jack“ Byron died when Byron was 3 and his mother, Mad Jack’s second wife, had been squeezed by him of her Scottish fortune and they lived impecuniously. Lochnagar, Deeside and the Grampians made a lasting impression on the young boy but he had been born with a club right foot which caused him pain all his life, made worse by his unstable mother’s over-zealous care alternating with bouts of cruel ridicule of the sensitive child’s handicap. In 1798, his great-uncle died and George succeeded aged 10 to the title of Lord Byron and the heavily mortgaged properties of Newstead Abbey and Rochdale. He moved to England but initially lived with his mother in rural Southwell, quite near to Newstead which had been let out. They were penurious aristocrats.

After a spell at school in Dulwich he went to prestigious Harrow. He was a great success, making friends easily. His bi-sexual nature flourished as he had numerous affairs with both sexes. He started to write poetry and when he moved on to Trinity College, Cambridge in 1806, he continued his rather profligate life-style, ran up large debts, read much but neglected his studies. His youthful first volume of poetry was harshly criticised by Brougham in The Edinburgh Review and Byron’s rebuttal was his witty satire English Bards and Scotch Reviewers in 1809.

In that year he embarked on a Grand Tour with his Whig political friend John Hobhouse. As the Napoleonic Wars closed off much of Europe to Englishmen they travelled instead to England’s allies, Portugal and Spain and to the Balkans, then remote and under Ottoman control. Byron at that time was physically very attractive. Despite his club foot he was an excellent swimmer and horseman and had even played cricket for Harrow against Eton.

Byron, the handsome Poet

Byron loved the lively cities of Spain but was enchanted by the Balkans, by the exotic court of Ali Pasha in Ioannina and most of all by the tiny “village” of Athens where he cavorted sensually among the hovel-inhabiting population of about one thousand amid the splendid ruins of the Ancient World. In the nonchalant fashion of the time he even carved his name on the bottom of a capital at the lovely Temple of Poseidon at Sunion. He also visited Smyrna and like Leander swam across the Hellespont.  His muse was inspired and on his return he wrote the first 2 cantos of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, the largely autobiographical narrative poem, where the protagonist complains of the follies of the world and longs for a life of more excitement and profundity; the restless “Byronic” hero was born.

Byron in Albanian costume

 On the publication of the first parts of Childe Harold in their Spenserian stanzas in 1812, Byron remarked “I awoke famous”. For the next 3 years he was lionised by English society and the Whig establishment. He was pursued by many women, obsessively by Lady Caroline Lamb, who immortally described her Byron as “mad, bad and dangerous to know”. He wrote much poetry with a fashionably Eastern flavour. The political side of Byron was revealed by his eloquent protest in the Lords in 1812 against the repressive policies towards organised labour practised by the Tory government:

You call these men a mob….are we aware of our obligations to a mob? It is the mob that labour in your fields and serve in your houses, that man your Navy and recruit your Army that has enabled you to defy the world and can defy you also when neglect and calamity have driven them to despair.

In January 1815 Byron married Annabella Milbanke, a talented mathematician – “the princess of parallelograms” he called her. The marriage was a disaster, they quarrelled, Byron took to drink and in 1816 they separated. Annabella only claimed he had gone mad, but widely believed stories of Byron’s fornication, incest (with his half sister Augusta) and sodomy circulated: whatever their truth Byron left England in 1816, never to return.

He first lived in Switzerland and was much influenced by the beauty of the Alps and then made a home in Venice where his dissolute behaviour was notorious. Oddly, he became interested in the Armenian religious community there, learned its language and was involved in producing grammars and a dictionary. He wrote more fine cantos of Childe Harold and composed the much-praised The Prisoner of Chillon and the dramatic poem Manfred among others.

 He was building a European reputation, was admired by Goethe, and in 1818 embarked on his masterpiece, the witty and wide-ranging Don Juan. The piece turns the Don Juan legend on its head and has the Don as the victim of voracious women. There are characteristic Byronic moments:

But sweeter still than this, than these, than all,
     Is first and passionate love—it stands alone,
Like Adam's recollection of his fall;
     The tree of knowledge has been pluck'd—all's known—
And life yields nothing further to recall
     Worthy of this ambrosial sin, so shown,
No doubt in fable, as the unforgiven
Fire which Prometheus filch'd for us from heaven.

But Byron’s life was about to take a dramatic turn, presaged in Don Juan:

The mountains look on Marathon –

And Marathon looks on the sea;

And musing there an hour alone.

I dream’d that Greece might still be free.

In 1823 he accepted an offer to become the representative in Greece of the London Philhellenes, Greek nationalists having risen against Ottoman rule in 1821. He threw himself into the cause and tried to organise the ever-exasperating Greeks. He spent £4,000 of his own money (about £200,000 today) in refitting the Greek fleet to attack the Turks.

Byron at Missolonghi

Before he could do anything significant he contracted a malarial fever from the nearby swamps and died in Missolonghi on 19 April 1824. His death was received as a catastrophe throughout Europe but his sacrifice hugely boosted the Greek cause, leading to the decisive naval engagement at Navarino Bay in 1827, when a combined British, French and Russian fleet destroyed the Turkish one, and independence came in 1830.

Many years of Greek Anglophilia followed and even today many Greeks are named Vyron (pronounced “Veeron”) in honour of their national hero. A statue in Central Athens has a symbolic Greece proffering a laurel crown to Byron.

Byron Statue in Athens

So my piece starts and ends with two statues. Byron is best known in England for his shorter love poetry like So, we’ll go no more a-roving or She walks in Beauty although the greater achievements of Childe Harold and Don Juan are fully acknowledged. As I sit in my summer house in Samos – Fill high the cup with Samian wine – I raise a glass in salute.

 What a Life, What a Spirit, What a Genius!

SMD

29.06.2012   

 Text Copyright Sidney Donald 2012

GREECE CAUSES A TREMOR

I was expecting an earthquake followed by a tsunami but in the event the 17 June Greek election only made the ground move a fraction and there is no sign yet of any dam breaking. The anti bail-out Syriza, led by vigorous Alexis Tsipras, greatly increased its 6 May poll from 16.8% to 26.9% but was pipped at the post by conservative New Democracy with 29.7%. New Democracy won 79 seats as against Syriza’s 71 but under the Greek system gets a bonus of 50 seats to 129 as the highest polling party. It looks as if New Democracy will get active or maybe only tacit coalition support from PASOK (33 seats) and Democratic Left (17 seats) to give it a working majority with 179 seats in the 300-seat parliament.

Seats in May 2012 and June 2012 elections

The mood in Athens is rather flat – the return of the same old incompetent and corrupt gang of ND and PASOK is hardly inspiring. People in the shops shrug their shoulders and say Syriza will get there next time, but who knows? There was certainly a huge “Stop Tsipras” campaign in the Greek media, from the political and business elite, egged on improperly by Brussels and Berlin. Many ordinary Greeks too were fearful of a Syriza victory: typically a neighbour voted New Democracy even though her pension had already been cut 30% - she feared losing it completely. If ever FDR’s dictum that “you have nothing to fear but fear itself” applied, it was to the wavering voters of Greece on 17 June.

Contradictions still abound. The Greeks say they want to stay in the Euro. They desperately need the large bail-out subsidies grudgingly released in dribs and drabs by the EU/ECB/ IMF “Troika” yet fight against the pre-conditions. The tax measures have been imposed but privatisations are moribund. No action has been taken on reducing the minimum wage down to Spanish levels (the Left and the unions, poor dears, would be offended). Worst of all, the government payroll has not been cut by even one pen-pusher. There are 760,000 state employees. Greece promised to fire 15,000 in 2012 (a fleabite) and a total of 150,000 by 2015 (a substantial enough number but hardly likely to be missed in the dysfunctional Greek bureaucracy). Anyhow, precisely nothing has been done – with PASOK, Syriza and the Left rambling on about “lines in the sand”. A reality check has long been urgently required. 

Leaders of the Old Gang, Antonis Samaras and Evangelos Venizelos

Syriza says it will operate as a vigorous and challenging Opposition, although how loyal that opposition will be is an open question – there will be plenty opportunities for mischief-making and the Greeks have liked a good punch-up since the Nika Riots of AD 532. The New Democracy leader Antonis Samaras has had a career thus far distinguished only by turning his coat and changing his mind – once an opponent of the bail-out, now a supporter. His mettle will be sharply tested in the coming months – can he get better terms from the Troika or even a soft landing if Grexit is inevitable? Proceedings in the normally somnolent Greek parliament may turn loud and nasty as the new boys on the block are 18 members from unsavoury neo-Nazi Golden Dawn, unlikely to abide by any code of good manners.

Although the Greek election caused no more than a tremor, it certainly concentrated minds in many chancelleries. Is unremitting austerity the only proper medicine for over-indebted states? Can Eurozone countries in surplus recycle automatically some of this surplus to those chronically in deficit?  All the rhetoric from Berlin and Brussels firmly maintains that exit from the Euro by Greece or anybody else is an impossibility – “Ever closer Union” is the catchphrase. Yet every respectable economist has been saying for months that Greece, at least, must leave the Euro to survive at all. The Eurozone countries are too disparate to form a coherent currency bloc – even within Germany 40 experts have just written to Mrs Merkel advocating a Northern Euro (the Thaler) for Germany, the Netherlands and other like-minded states leaving the existing Euro to readjust for the benefit of Southern Europe.

For the sake of the world economy, Germany above all has to address these questions with real thought and argue its case with compelling conviction. In Greece the populist vision of Mrs Merkel has her as a Queen Bee sucking in the life-blood of her drones in Greece and elsewhere. The truth is more complex and movement on these great issues of the day is urgent.

SMD 20.06.12 

 Text Copyright Sidney Donald 2012

OLDIES AND THE NEW TECHNOLOGY

There was really never any doubt about it in the long term and despite an admittedly rather slow early learning curve, it can plausibly be claimed that the Older Generation has come to terms with the New Technology. By “the Older Generation” I mean anybody over 60 and for the “New Technology” read personal computers, internet communication, mobile phones and all the attendant gewgaws which make our simple lives so baffling and expensive.

By saying that we Oldies had come to terms with these novelties, I choose my words carefully. We do not much love or embrace the New Technology. We observe goggle-eyed the manifold conveniences it brings, have a vague working knowledge of how it basically works but we sigh nostalgically for earlier and easier times.

Our own grandparents took a frivolous view of high tech progress. Typical was their amusement at the fantastic contraptions drawn by Heath Robinson in the 1930s like the head-wart remover, steam-driven and accomplishing its outlandish purpose via a complex system of weights and pulleys. The Second War forced us to take technology seriously and many great advances flowed through. Yet for our parents and in our own youth there were some relatively fixed points. To communicate privately we used pen, ink and paper to write and post eloquent or chatty letters at red pillar-boxes and we used a fixed line telephone. These objects are rapidly becoming antiquarian curiosities and to preserve their memory I attach photographs.

Pen, Ink and Paper

                                               

A Rotary Dial Telephone

The world of business spawned a multitude of gadgets and machines. Colossally expensive mainframe computers were the province of the largest companies but this was a world away from the modest commercial sector, whose technology amounted to possession of a typewriter and various mechanical calculating machines.

A Typewriter

A Curta Calculator

                                  

My boss in my early banking days was extremely proud of his Curta Calculator, resembling a pepper-mill. You aligned numbers on slides round the machine drum, cranked once for addition, pushing forward and cranking for subtraction and other carriage-shifting for multiplication and division. It was effective, if slightly comical, German in origin and derived from pin-wheel machines first seen in the 18^th century.

By the 1980s all these things were obsolescent. Computers downsized, micro-processors and miniature chips made them commercially commonplace. In time the dam broke completely, standards and protocols were established, incompatibilities overcome, the Internet was born, Broadband proliferated and the World-Wide-Web allowed anyone to communicate anywhere. The pace of change has been dizzying and continues unabated.

In 1993, aged 51, I left the protective womb of my banking employer, teeming with secretaries and young “techies” and I had to cope with this Revolution myself. First I had to learn to type and, a late developer, I soon bought my first personal computer. Thank goodness I had three keenly computer-literate sons as without their generous help I would have been totally lost. Over the years I have made hundreds of anguished pleas to them or disturbed them with late night phone-calls whenever I got stuck – usually quickly resolved by a single forgotten key-stroke. Now and then there have been slightly uncharitable mutterings about my incipient Alzheimer’s or my moronic anxieties – probably all Oldies suffer such occasional barbs. An Oldie friend tells me his supportive children refer to him as a “techno twit”, probably typically enough, if a tad unkind.

There remains a generational gap between the Oldies and the rest of the cyber-space population. Some of it is just down to age; we boring Oldies are not much interested in pop music blaring from unexpected sources or in noisy games more suited to an amusement arcade than a family sitting-room. It is just a matter of taste as I admit to playing Mozart on our I-Pod (wearing ear-phones) and I will often have a gentle round of golf on our Nintendo Wii with my lovely wife.

A greater divide is the vexed matter of privacy. I do not want to be on permanent call and am quite happy to turn off my PC or mobile phone. Most matters can wait the dawn of a new day, and we Oldies surely have plenty of time on our hands. I cannot understand the urge to reveal all on Facebook. By all means exchange social chit-chat and opinions but some Facebook users are clearly obsessional and exhibitionist. I can just about understand someone wanting to share an experience like visiting Chichen Itza or walking on the Great Wall of China but news that they are devouring a burger at the Walsall branch of MacDonald’s is banality in spades. I am also chary about revealing my whereabouts in case Sony send up an unmanned drone to zap my Wi-Fi.

The all-powerful Smartphone

It is also apparent that sitting for hours in front of a TV monitor is deeply unsociable, a solitary vice practised by a vast monkish Order, the TechnoTrappists. Caught up in one’s own interests, endlessly seeking information, forever reading or writing emails means you are not sharing your life with your partner or your family. This is surely no way to live and yet it is a very common phenomenon. Now that the focus seems to be shifting from the laptop to the all-powerful Smartphone, there is no sadder sight than to see people constantly hunched over a phone texting their contacts, self-absorbed and alienated. I say regulate and ration use of these machines and break the shackles of their enchantment. Technology is our slave and we are its master, not the other way round. Oldie or youngster, stay always connected with the real world, converse, think, share, laugh, dream and dare – in short, Get a Life!

SMD

10/06/2012

Copyright Sidney Donald 2012