ACADEMIC PAINTERS - DOMINANCE AND DECLINE

Fashions in Art are as volatile as fashions in Clothes. For at least 2 centuries the Academies in, for example, France and Britain set themselves up as the arbiters of taste and the promulgators of artistic rules.  At times, the Academies held sway and academicians produced highly polished, if not often inspirational, paintings. But the artistic community is not easily biddable, revolt against prescribed rules is inevitable and a huge variety of original images and themes bubble up for our dismay or enchantment. The academicians came to be derided but their solid achievements deserve due praise. My piece will concentrate on Britain, with only tangential reference elsewhere.

Portraits of the Academicians by Johan Zoffany

The Royal Academy was founded in London in 1768, many years behind institutions in Italy and the French Academy established by Louis XIV in 1648.  The ever-disputatious French soon got into a controversy on the merits of the line of Poussin as against the colour of Rubens but London was less dogmatic. The Royal Academy elected urbane Sir Joshua Reynolds as its first President.  Reynolds was an undisputed artistic leader, even though his sometimes slapdash technique earned him the nick-name “Sir Sploshua”, and he was much admired in the higher reaches of society.

Lady Charles Spencer by Reynolds

      

Reynolds decreed that the Academy follow “The Grand Manner”, the renewal of the works of the Old Masters, concentrating on mythological, classical or historical subjects, but including portraits and the naked female form. There were many exhibitions, as much social as artistic occasions.  In Paris there were controversies between the disciples of David, Ingres and Delacroix but easy-going London tolerated the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (Millais indeed morphed into an RA President).

There was a heyday of Academic painting in 19^th century Britain. The great names were Sir Lawrence Alma- Tadema and Frederic, Lord Leighton.

Cimabue's Celebrated Madonna by Frederic, Lord Leighton (1855)

The Roses of Heliogabalus by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1888)

These paintings were accomplished and architecturally accurate with a polished sheen. The Victorian public loved them and the academicians became rich. They were however over-fond of the nude (Her Majesty herself, George Eliot or Florence Nightingale failing to satisfy their gaping erotic appetites!) and later generations accused these artists of “lubricity”.

Cave in the Storm by Sir Edward Poynter

The Birth of Venus by W-A Bouguereau

The Sirens and Ulysses by William Etty

These quasi-erotic themes were exemplified by the kind of paintings above, mirrored by Bouguereau’s French confection, acceptable to Gallic susceptibilities in a way that Manet’s shameless Olympia never could be.

The reputation of these Victorian academicians sharply nose-dived by the 1920s, but bounced back. An Alma-Tadema painting The Finding of Moses, originally sold in 1904 for £5,250. In 1960 it was “bought in” for £252 when it failed to reach its reserve in auction. This same painting was auctioned in 1995 for £1.75m and in 2010 auctioned in New York for a Victorian painting record of $35.9m (sic!). Leighton is also a darling of the sale-room and his splendid Oriental-tiled mansion in Holland Park, Leighton House, is one of the hidden treasures of London.

The Scots painter Sir William Russell Flint (1880-1969), with scant regard for fashion, continued the Academic ethos with his well-draughted evocations of Spanish gypsy girls and females in advanced states of undress. Perhaps he knew that his Scottish public, frozen to the vitals by the desolate North Sea haar, needed to fantasize and dream of warmer pleasures. In truth Flint teeters away from the Academy towards the values of Playboy magazine.

The Silver Mirror by Sir William Russell Flint

The Academies have thus delivered a mixed legacy. They have provided conventional pleasures in an accessible form, surely preferable to the many-papped or three-eyed monstrosities served up by the grotesquely over-praised Modernists.

It may be instructive to evoke another artist, Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) who was at least a half-academician. He received his professional training at the highly conservative Vienna School of Arts and Crafts, the equivalent of an Academy. He worked on conventional murals and ceilings. He fell foul of the authorities, rather in the academician fashion, by decorating the Great Hall of the University of Vienna with ceiling paintings criticised as “pornographic”. Klimt founded the Vienna Secession movement and moved towards Symbolism. Yet Klimt knew his public and his line and vibrant colours were in the Academic tradition. In a so-called Golden Phase, Klimt painted his Portrait of Adele Bloch Bauer in 1907. To global astonishment it was bought for an astounding $135m in 2006 by the Neue Galerie, New York, the highest price ever paid for a painting.

Adele Bloch-Bauer by Gustav Klimt

Those Academicians always had an unerring instinct for the soft-spots of public taste – not for them starving in a garret – and they prospered mightily.

SMD

24.05.16

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2016.

FALLIBLE MEMORY

We often think we can remember past events clearly, indeed we may honestly believe our version of mis-remembered moments - just as I thought last week I was re-reading The Great Gatsby (I realised I had never read a word before) or Dirk Bogarde remembered entering Belsen (he was never there) and I once had a deluded boss who claimed personal credit for master-minding a successful transaction (in fact his hand was wholly absent).


 Similarly we entirely forget past pronouncements, - as David Cameron, with convenient amnesia, has forgotten he once advocated Brexit if he did not secure a decent new deal from the EU (he failed to get one) and now says (improbably) that Brexit would increase the likelihood of World War, a prospect to which he had never previously alluded. In their zeal to terrify the electorate, the Remainers (with Osborne and Carney in their front rank) will say almost anything in the way of alarmist claptrap and I fully expect dire predictions soon of a plague of boils, then of locusts before a climax on about 20 June predicting the death of our first-born unless their cause prevails!

Yet memory does play tricks. I now struggle to remember significant people and events in my childhood, but I do remember peculiar and oddball things which I had to memorise by rote. I remember the Australian nursery rhyme we sang at my Aberdeen school (aged about 5):

The famed Kookaburra

Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree

Merry, merry king of the bush is he

Laugh kookaburra! Laugh Kookaburra!

Gay your life must be.

I suppose American influences were at a height of esteem in about 1948 as we also recited The Song of Hiawatha:

By the shores of Gitche Gumme,

By the shining Big-Sea Water

Stood the wigwam of Nokomis

Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis

It was not all jack-asses and Red Indians, as we also had dourly to learn Psalm 46 – The Lord of Hosts is with us, the God of Jacob is our Refuge, followed by uplifting stuff (peaceniks would approve) about snapping spears and burning chariots.

A little later, at prep school, I recall a rather sinister-looking master with a deep voice reading aloud to us narratives on the Labours of Hercules and The Siege of Troy – we were entranced by the adventures of Agamemnon, Hector and Ajax. Finally I remember in about 1955 the Headmaster enlivening one morning assembly with an enthusiastic rendering of The Lake Isle of Innisfree by W B Yeats:

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, 

And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made; 

Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee, 

And live alone in the bee-loud glade. 

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, 

Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings; 

There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow, 

And evening full of the linnet’s wings. 

I will arise and go now, for always night and day 

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; 

While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey, 

I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

I was impressed then and remain impressed by Yeats’ lyricism, even if the piece is hackneyed and lampooned by some Irish intellectuals. That strait-laced English-born headmaster and WW1 veteran first instilled in me a love of poetry. Thank you, Harry Nock!

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If you are thinking that I am meandering somewhat, you are dead right. I have switched off my brain for the duration of the Eurovision Song Contest, the annual musical orgy, noisily camp, which I have followed avidly since about 1970. I confess this year to having sat through two semi-finals and tonight’s Grand Final, listing meticulously the merits or otherwise of the contestants. Dumb-founded by the elimination of Ireland and the inclusion of Ukraine, mercifully my memory is another casualty and I cannot remember any of the tunes, any of the lyrics or, best of all, any of the bizarre costumes or even most of the artistes (although nobody can forget 2014’s glam bearded tranny Conchita Wurst!).

At the end my favourites were Australia, pretty Dani In belting out her number, Poland, with a guy in a red military jacket and painted fingernails giving us a rousing Euro-anthem; Russia’s Thunder and Lightning was a wow with remarkable special effects, the Spanish girl surprised with her zip while my long-shot was the strong song by the curvaceous girl from Azerbaijan.

Oh no, shock horror! Splendid Australia has just been pipped at the post by the dismal Ukraine song, a dirge set in 1944, which I assumed would not survive the semis. Well, the Eurovision is always unpredictable and maybe I am not the ideal critic. I will studiously resolve to forget everything about tonight!

SMD

14.05.16

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2016

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THE MERRY MONTH OF MAY

We can throw away our long combinations, consign our bed-socks to retirement, empty and hide away our trusty hot-water-bottles, for the calendar has gloriously announced the arrival of May, harbinger of summer and days of wine and roses. May has a lot to live up to:

O The month of May, the merry month of May, 
So frolic, so gay, and so green, so green, so green! 
O, and then did I unto my true love say, 
Sweet Peg, thou shalt be my Summer's Queen. 

So sang Thomas Dekker, the Tudor bard in 1599, while the arrival of May once triggered off galumphing dances around the Maypole, an orgy of Morris dancing, the wearing of diaphanous clothing by blonde beauty queens and serious revelry for the lads, booze and bonfires, especially in Northern Europe when they combined May Day with traditional Walpurgis Night. At Oxford 50+ years ago, we loaded up a punt with a few girls, rustled up a picnic, and congregated after a chilly night out on the river, for the May Morning choir trilling from Magdalen Tower. But much of this is for the antiquarian – 21^st century May has different enchantments.

Leicester City fans go bananas

If you are looking for May miracles, what about Leicester City, 5,000-1 outsiders who won the English Premier League title when Spurs failed to beat Chelsea on 2 May? The team cost a fraction of those of the famed leading clubs, but team spirit, some inspirational individual performances and steady, unflashy management from Claudio Ranieri has seen them gloriously through.  The world rejoices at the triumph of the underdog and nobody grudges them their moment of immortality. I confess to the occasional pang of regret that I will never again hop, skip and jump or play rugby or speed about a squash court – but spectator sport suits me fine and saves me from sweaty scrums, broken limbs and freezing hours on the boundary.

In Greece this year May Day clashed with the Orthodox Easter Sunday, a time for kissing strangers and general reconciliation and renewal. This mood is not likely to last as the traditional parties long to get their snouts back in the trough and do their damnest to undermine the SYRIZA-Anel coalition. I suppose Lefties throughout Europe marched grimly on May Day with their red banners and clenched fist salutes (or have they phased them out?) – anyway not much in evidence here in peaceful Tory Folkestone! The 5 May local elections see a Labour Mayor of London, but Labour disasters in Glasgow and elsewhere with some Tory and UKIP joy: the SNP was rampant but not wholly dominant.

A more generally applauded anniversary will be VE Day on 8 May, 71 years since Nazi Germany finally surrendered after causing 6 years of mayhem and suffering. The world could breathe again, although we had to wait until 1990 for the Berlin Wall to fall and communism peacefully to crumble in Europe. Our continent is poorly run and its governance requires a radical overhaul, but it remains a beacon of hope, attracting migrants from all over the world. To be fair, everyone, even Germans themselves, wants to avoid a revival of German hegemony in Europe and instead strive with every good will to support economic progress and mutual cooperation.

I was in classy Highgate, North London for two days and how lovely the gardens are in May, with cherry blossoms galore, magnolias starting to burst and a hundred other blooms dizzying the senses with colour and aroma. Yesterday morning I strolled over to Kenwood to admire again Robert Adam’s wonderful Library and savour the pictures from the Iveagh Bequest, ravishing English portraits from Romney and Gainsborough, frolicsome Bouchers and Dutch masters, like Vermeer and Rembrandt: I most enjoyed the peace and serenity of Cuyp’s View of Dordrecht, with the still water, the motionless boats and the distant townscape.

Albert Cuyp's View of Dordrecht from Kenwood

That peace and serenity is what Europe and the world needs this May.

SMD

6.05.16

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2016

KEEP IT SHORT

“Brevity is the soul of wit” - the wise adage that Shakespeare puts into the mouth of Polonius in Hamlet. Will himself practised what he preached as there are few finer masters of the economical sonnet with its blessedly limited 14 lines. As I tumble towards senility, I appreciate more and more those authors, poets and composers who take less and less time and space to convey their no doubt exquisite thoughts or messages.

Take the French (I suppose someone must) who gyrate wildly between the amazingly prolix and the neatly laconic. I recall trying to read Marcel Proust’s À la Recherche in 1969 in the Scott-Moncrieff translation (12 paperback volumes) – one famous single sentence in Sodom et Gomorrhe would easily occupy 1 ½ pages of print. Others complain about how long Madame Bovary takes to die in Flaubert’s classic. Short, sweet and underrated are the beautifully-written novels of André Gide, Strait is the Gate and The Immoralist.  I greatly admire the punchy, arresting style of Albert Camus’s brief L’Etranger, which much influenced my callow youth. Its opening words seize you: “Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday. I can’t be sure.”

Albert Camus

         

Marcel Proust

                        

                                             

The Continentals have their novellas but the term is less used in English. Plenty glittering gems qualify: Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray or Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. There is a tiresome tradition in the novel in English to spread and sprawl like bind-weed. It was an early fault epitomised by Sterne’s eccentric Tristram Shandy and much in evidence in Dickens’ Pickwick Papers. Dickens redeemed himself later in his great novels and the merits of brevity were well illustrated in his cherished A Christmas Carol. American novelists are perhaps the worst offenders. They adore the blockbuster, the 800-page effusion more useful as a door-stopper than a work of literature. They revel in huge casts of characters, in narrative diversions and endless sub-plots. Thus classically there is Wolfe’s meandering Look Homeward, Angel, while recently Donna Tartt’s The Gold Finch (788pp) has wowed her voracious American public.

More is seldom better and I favour the pithy, short works of the younger Evelyn Waugh like Scoop, the original and engrossing The Bridge at San Luiz Rey by Thornton Wilder, Conrad’s gripping The Heart of Darkness or a brilliant fable like Animal Farm by George Orwell.

Nowhere is my intellectual stamina more tested, and the attraction of sleep more pervasive, than in the opera house. Why are operas so long? Was Wagner some kind of sadist that he thought it reasonable to inflict upon innocent Germans (there must be some) up to 5 ½ hours of Parsifal? I long to shout out “Enough, please stop!” but I know my words would be drowned out by the shrieking of the overfed diva in her helmet on stage. By comparison Mozart is a dawdle, but even Wolfgang Amadeus can go on too long and his only opera of perfect length (not to mention perfect harmony too) is his ravishing Die Entführung.

Stylist Evelyn Waugh

Haiku Herman van Rompuy

      

In fact the palm for economy in literary emanations must be granted to the Japanese, who invented the haiku, a delicate poetic form with 3 themes nowadays compressed into 4 lines. Perfect! It can only take a few seconds to read a haiku – the shades of Homer and Milton please note. To my great surprise I read that the former President of the European Commission, Belgian Herman van Rompuy, is an expert composer of haiku and was nicknamed “Haiku Herman” – our Nigel Farage called the luckless euro-bureaucrat much worse. I now fondly dream of euro-regulations being reduced to 4 lines of pellucid poetic commands!

SMD

26.04.16

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2016

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BREXIT; BLOOD AND THUNDER AT LAST

Well, we waited a long time with many an arid exchange, but at last the Brexit debate has caught light with some vital matters being sensibly debated. We have however had to suffer an ineffably frivolous speech from Boris Johnson, stretching a laboured joke about Britain supplying French knickers to our Gallic friends and, much worse, watch President Obama nakedly threaten Britain, while our Prime Minister Cameron looks on, silent and beaming, - a truly stomach-churning spectacle.

Obama on cue for Cameron's Project Fear

Obama was a willing accessory to Cameron’s campaign to paint Brexit in lurid colours, emphasising dangers, darkly referring to the unknown and exaggerating difficulties. The campaign, dubbed Project Fear, intends to give the heebie-jeebies to doubters and potential Leavers. George Osborne produced a Treasury paper, supported by allegedly expert analysis, claiming that the UK economy would be 6% smaller by 2030 (£4,300 p.a. per household) if we opted for Brexit – this paper was immediately christened “the dodgy dossier” and its assumptions derided by the Leavers. Then Michael Gove spoke at length about the liberating stimulus Brexit would bring. He contrasted the negativity and pessimism of the Remain argument with his vision of Britain operating in a pan-European and global market to everyone’s benefit.

Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England, threw his hat into the ring. He spoke of the current slowdown in UK growth as the referendum looms and the damage to the UK finances that would emanate from Brexit. His words would be taken seriously by the City, powerhouse of the economy, and the Leavers need to make a strong contrary case. Then up popped Mervyn King, retired ex-Governor, who criticised the Treasury paper as “exaggerated” and complained that the referendum issues cannot be reduced to a cost-benefit analysis – it was a judgement on how the UK saw its future- and King has long predicted that the Euro is doomed. King’s views carry some conviction.

Contending Governors: Mark Carney

Mervyn King

 

        

Remainers have their tails up – polls give them a narrow lead, eminent people are paraded to support their cause and Obama’s intervention is deemed influential. We Leavers are not so sure. Obama is entitled to his opinion, but I guess he sharply offended more than he charmed. His gloating remark that after Brexit “Britain would be at the back of the queue for a trade deal with the US” did not play well – and anyhow why should the British listen to a lame-duck President from a country sharing a handful of our values but distant cousins otherwise? Obama speaks for American interests, which are not our interests. By the way, come November, Americans, vote Republican!

Many of the British electorate are in a funk. Their familiar landmarks are missing. No Labour voice – Corbyn inanely advocates a “social Europe” and havers on about his priorities – workers’ rights and global warming (sic!). The Remainer Tories are defeatist and pessimistic, let’s not rock the boat, let’s not upset our allies, let’s not pull ourselves up by our boot-straps. But Masterly Inactivity will never work anymore than Appeasement did.

The Leavers, the advocates of Brexit, want us to retain our institutions and our heritage, quickly being eroded or destroyed by the EU. We are a nation of innovators with a wonderful history, with great universities, Nobel laureates galore and with a resilient, inclusive population incorporating diverse cultures. Of course we have the ability to run our own country in our own way! Eloquent Gove should speak more often, Boris should raise his game with real gravitas and Farage should barn-storm popularly everywhere. Shakespeare saw the danger of failing to act:

And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment,
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.

We will be resolute, we will unshackle ourselves from the corpse called the European Union, we will proclaim and apply the eternal values of Britain. In 58 days we will joyfully vote LEAVE.

SMD

24.04.16

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2016

KENNETH MORE and TIMOTHY DALTON: Celebrities of Stage and Screen (22)

[This is one of a series celebrating British artistes who found fame on the stage or in the cinema]

The two artistes I here describe often played heroic roles in a style which changed over the generations. More was the stiff-upper-lip Englishman, Dalton an edgier, more fashion conscious type. Both played a variety of other roles very competently and both gave much pleasure.

Kenneth More and Kay Kendall in Genevieve (1953)

Kenneth More (1914-1982) was the son of a former naval pilot, who became general manager of the Jersey railway. Kenneth was educated mainly in the Channel Islands. An unsettled youth, he eventually first worked as a compere at the Windmill Theatre, home of broad comedy and the then daring nude tableaux. More drifted into acting in the mid-1930s and earned his apprenticeship in repertory in Birmingham and Wolverhampton. Enlisting on the outbreak of war, he saw active service and was commissioned lieutenant in the Royal Navy.

He resumed his acting career, edging up his profession, and eventually was talent-spotted by Noel Coward (who inevitably but unsuccessfully tried to seduce him). In 1952 he had a substantial success in the West End as Freddy, the drunken former pilot in Rattigan’s The Deep Blue Sea playing opposite Peggy Ashcroft. Stardom came in 1953 in the British hit film Genevieve where More greatly amused as the caddish Ambrose, paired with lovely Kay Kendall racing his veteran car against John Gregson on the London to Brighton rally: a very English entertainment. Other bright and breezy comedy parts followed in Doctor in the House, Raising a Riot and The Admirable Crichton.

More as Douglas Bader

However More was already being cast in the heroic mould. He impressed as Douglas Bader in Reach for the Sky, the cocksure pre-WW2 RAF pilot, becoming a double amputee after a crash and later a fighter ace before capture and incarceration in Colditz. He was an officer on the Titanic in A Night to Remember (1958), a redoubtable Richard Hannay in a remake of The 39 Steps, a gallant Army officer protecting an Indian prince from mutinous tribesmen, succoured by glamorous Lauren Bacall and dependable Wilfred Hyde White in North West Frontier. He reached his apex of film stardom with Sink the Bismarck! in 1960, playing the naval strategist tracking down the Nazi battleship, causing havoc with British shipping – a flag-waving triumph here at home.

More with Dana Wynter in Sink the Bismarck!

More had been consistently popular during the 1950s but his type was passing out of fashion. He did not have matinee idol good looks and he was derided by some as a typical returning- from-war officer with crinkly hair and a tweed jacket. His acting range was thought limited – probably not a natural Shakespearean thespian nor a kitchen-sink drama ranter.

His film career stalled in the 1960s, dwindling to cameo roles. He had blotted his copy-book, no doubt while in his cups, by heckling and swearing at John Davis, head honcho of the Rank Organisation at the BAFTA awards dinner in 1960. His contract was terminated and he was not given the part he coveted (it went instead to David Niven) in The Guns of Navarone, a global hit. He had TV success in the BBC’s Forsyte Saga playing Young Jolyon in 1967 and with Father Brown. His private life unbalanced him; married for 20 years to popular “Bill” Barkby, he upset family and friends by running off with actress Angela Douglas, 26 years his junior. Their 1968 marriage was generally a success and lasted until his death.

I saw Kenneth More on the London stage in 1970 in the role of Sir Robert Morton, the eminent KC, in a revival of Rattigan’s The Winslow Boy. He was excellent, especially in the dramatic scene he brutally cross-examines a weeping Ronnie Winslow in his own home, calling him “a liar and a cheat” then calls for the papers to be sent to his chambers, taking on the case and intoning – “the boy is clearly innocent!”

A theatre was named after him in Ilford but More was afflicted by Parkinson’s and was progressively unable to work. He died aged 67 in 1982. He may have had a repertoire limited to stiff-upper-lip heroics and breezy light comedy but he played both superlatively and is affectionately remembered.

Timothy Dalton (1946- ) is a much more versatile actor than Kenneth More ever was though his stage persona is less overtly genial.

Handsome Timothy Dalton

Born in Colwyn Bay, North Wales, the son of an advertising executive, the family moved to Belper, Derbyshire where Timothy was educated. Spurred on by seeing Macbeth, he decided to be an actor, attending but not completing the RADA course (1964-66). He quickly found work, as the French king in The Lion in Winter movie and as Heathcliff in a BBC TV version of Wuthering Heights. He played Lord Darnley (not one of his best efforts) in the epic movie Mary, Queen of Scots in 1971, played by Vanessa Redgrave. More significantly he became Vanessa Redgrave’s lover, a tempestuous affair which was to last on and off until 1986.

Vanessa was an attractive woman but over time became a wildly Leftist harridan voicing extreme views noisily and unconvincingly. She was consumed by her belief in the forthcoming Revolution and when Timothy made her choose between him and Revolution, she chose her dismal cause.  She inspired Dalton to study acting seriously and from 1971-76 he worked mainly at The Royal Shakespeare Company. He was to play many of the great roles and his Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew was particularly memorable. Tall, lean, green-eyed and with rather saurian good looks, Dalton was much in demand with the ladies and had various liaisons. He finally married musician Okesema Grigorieva in 1998.

Dalton as James Bond in Licence to Kill

Far from his serious acting, he appeared as Prince Marin in the gloriously camp 1980 comic-strip and sci-fi extravaganza Flash Gordon with its distinguished cast wildly over-acting to a great Queen soundtrack. He became better known and this led to his recruitment as James Bond on the retirement of Roger Moore. He made only two Bond films – The Living Daylights (1987) and Licence to Kill (1989) which were well regarded, and his darker interpretation of Bond has endured subsequently. Dalton was now a global star. Although contracted for 5 Bond films, the franchise producers got bogged down in a 4-year legal dispute and Dalton did not renew.

Since then Dalton has capitalised on his fame and was an excellent Rhett Butler in the US mini-series Scarlett in 1994. He has appeared in numerous plays, TV dramas and done voice-overs. He is now 70 and his heroic days are behind him. His career has been versatile and highly rewarding.

SMD

23.04.16

Text Copyright ©Sidney Donald 2016

COMMERCIAL REALITY

The world is sometimes an unforgiving place and the iron laws of economics are not easily defied. We are basically compassionate people and hate seeing families uprooted, lives compromised and security undermined. Yet the economic prospects of large numbers of people since time immemorial have been at the mercy of “the market”, of supply and demand, of overcapacity or of technological change. The challenge for modern society is how sensibly to manage this inevitable process.

Britain has seen this process in action many times. In the 18^th century a mainly agricultural society was transformed by the Industrial Revolution, mechanising weaving, stimulating coal mining and the production of iron. In time, great industries were developed – cotton in Manchester, wool in Bradford, iron in Glasgow, coal in South Wales. Trade hugely expanded and tobacco, sugar and tea came to be processed in Bristol, shipbuilding boomed on the Clyde and the Tyne – railways spread prosperity around the country, although working conditions in “the dark, satanic mills” were often appalling. By the 20^th century many of these great enterprises were in sharp decline, thanks to competition from Europe and America as the developed world caught up, lower labour costs from Japan, India, Korea and China as they joined the industrial league.

Poverty and overcrowding in early 20th century Britain

Successive governments failed to stem the tide. Coal, shipbuilding and steel were nationalised but still lost dominance, at last effectively collapsing. The UCS shipyard, the Meriden motor-cycle works and other visionary projects quickly failed. Not only basic industries were effected: the British motor industry, once well respected, failed to adapt to changing markets and fell to German, Japanese and even Indian buyers. North Sea Oil enjoyed a boom but excessive oil supply and falling prices has seriously stalled this industry.


Britain is not alone facing these problems. The French coal industry has disappeared too and the German steel production much diminished. Throughout Europe, in Italy, Spain and Greece, large employers have shut their gates forever. In the USA a great steel city like Gary, Indiana has closed down and fabled Motown, Detroit, Michigan is a desert of closed auto factories and abandoned neighbourhoods. Spare a thought even for the demonised UK bankers, devastated by the 2008 Crisis, where the big 4 banks cut 189,000 jobs.

In Britain the hot topic is the fate of Port Talbot a massive steel plant in Wales, losing £1m a day for its Indian owner Tata, who has decided to withdraw from / close or sell the plant. In the present steel slump there are unlikely to be buyers and the unions and the Labour Party are calling for some kind of nationalisation to protect the jobs threatened. This sounds like a bad idea, to invest vast sums in a failing industry. I would expect the Government to encourage and even to incentivise new industries to set up nearby and retrain the 7,000-strong workforce. Probably the sad fact is that the sooner Port Talbot is shut down the better.

Hugely loss-making Port Talbot

We live in a post-industrial world and the steel workers, no more than the coal miners of old, cannot be held immune from economic reality. There are new industries in pharmaceuticals, information technology and aerospace, not to mention the resilient financial services and retail sectors.   Currently the most pampered sacred cow is the NHS. Cameron and Osborne, knowing where the votes are, solemnly “ring-fence” spending on the NHS protecting it from the disciplines of the market. We all love the NHS, I do as a pensioner, but inevitably some hospitals become redundant, departments need to be amalgamated, new equipment bought, the qualified workforce reduced here or expanded there. This vast enterprise needs to be managed carefully and if the taxpayer can spend less on it without damage, so much the better. Yet nurses and junior doctors, egged on by the infamous and militant BMA, squeal loudly for ever-improved pay and conditions, whatever the cost to the public purse or the health of patients.

Noisy but deluded junior hospital doctors

Thus another selfish state-dependant profession joins the teachers and the civil servants as an almost immoveable vested interest, blackmailing the feeble government and squeezing the suffering taxpayer. We must resist or lose control of our finances – quite a dilemma.

SMD,
17.04.16,
Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2016