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

THE CLOUD-CAPP'D TOWERS OF ENGLAND

 The English are often thought to be phlegmatically practical and they reserve their fantasies for their literature rather than for their buildings. Other nations build their pyramids, ziggurats and Babels or ruin their lovely capital cities with the likes of the Eiffel Tower, so much at odds with the genius loci of Paris. The English are certainly more cautious but imagination does explode at times, all the more welcome for being so unexpected.

That mixture of the practical and fantastic is well illustrated by 16^th century St Botolph’s, Boston (The Boston Stump) at 272 ft once one of the highest buildings in Europe, whose elegant English Perpendicular proportions remain a beacon over The Wash and served as a guide to bombers returning home to the many wartime airfields of Lincolnshire.

The Boston Stump

The Shard

                

                                          

Height in itself is not enough – the Empire State Building and newer erections in Chicago and Kuala Lumpur beat records but do not make the spirits bubble. I suspect Londoners will come to like The Shard, the 1,017 ft glass tower to be completed in 2012 – its eccentricity and modernity are appealing and it merely dominates the presently unlovely environs of London Bridge Station.

London of course has its own Tower but frankly my blood runs cold when I enter its forbidding precincts, redolent of chains, torture and executions – not a comforting place. Heroic Nelson lords it over Trafalgar Square on his mighty Column, a landmark to be sure but maybe not an artistic success. I much prefer the skyline from the Thames created by Wren as he rebuilt much of the City following the 1666 Fire. St Paul’s Cathedral itself is a wonder with its huge dome, not to forget the elegant Monument on the site of the source of the Fire, but I am always cheered by his playful wedding-cake tower of St Bride’s, Fleet Street on its cramped site, combined with so many other fine towers of the City churches.

St Bride's, Fleet Street

St George's, Bloomsbury

          

 

For extraordinary eccentricity the steeple of St George’s, Bloomsbury takes some beating.  The church was completed by Nicholas Hawksmoor in 1731, in his usual strikingly monumental style. It is crowned by a stepped pyramid, at the bottom of which a heraldic lion and unicorn fight and at the top stands a statue of George I, looking uneasy in a Roman toga. This steeple is an adaptation of Pliny’s description of the 350 BC Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, a Wonder of the Ancient World and certainly a wonder now in bourgeois Bloomsbury, though not easy to view from the busy street below.

Salisbury Cathedral

One of the great sights of England (I write as an Anglophile Scot) is the spire of Salisbury Cathedral, inspiringly reaching for the heavens in its Gothic Decorated glory, with its incomparable setting of manicured lawn and civilised Close. It epitomises so much of the essence of England. I love too the Tudor romance of turreted Burghley House completed in 1587, traditional and aristocratically self-confident.

                                    Burghley House, near Stamford

I suppose I have covered the cloud-capp’d towers, the solemn temples and the gorgeous palaces, but I want to return to a Tower. A dear friend, Philomena de Hoghton, now sadly gone, for many years lived in, cared for and loved Hoghton Tower a venerable stately home in Lancashire. Its tower does not rival some others but it has been maintained and cherished for many generations with dedication and love. No doubt in time its stones will crumble but her proud values and those of her magnificent England are eternal.

Hoghton Tower, Lancashire

SMD

30.05.12

Text Copyright Sidney Donald 2012

GREXIT and EUROZONE IMPLOSION

If Angela Merkel or Wolfgang Schauble still possess a tin hat inherited from the war days (in their case the coal-scuttle model), I strongly advise them to don it without delay. Whatever they threaten, whatever imprecations they pronounce, whatever firewalls they have erected, Alexis Tsipras and his Leftist Syriza will probably become the largest party in the Greek elections on 17 June and will inform the Troika (EU/ECB and IMF) that Greece cannot abide by the terms of the bail-out and cannot impose more austerity. Although Greece will say it wants to stay in the Eurozone, Brussels may insist that is not possible and the balloon will go up. Indeed it is not clear that Greece can survive in the Eurozone without subsidy even until 17 June, so Greek exit (“Grexit”) might come any day. Armageddon is at hand!

The Greek Savonarola, Alexis Tsipras, leader of Syriza

 It could easily turn rather nasty. Many Greek opinion polls show Syriza in the lead at 28-30%, though conservative New Democracy is fighting back hard. New Democracy and PASOK, dubbed by Tsipras as “The Taliban”, are trying to terrorise the electorate by luridly describing the horrors of Greece outside the Euro but they have a credibility problem.  Syriza can probably find the allies to form a majority government. Syriza’s policies do not themselves bear strict analysis – even Danny “The Red” Cohn-Bendit, German radical veteran of les evenements in Paris of 1968, thought they were unrealistic – but they have the overwhelming merit of not emanating from the corrupt old parties, soon to be buried without trace.

 At a Syriza victory expect paroxysms of fury from Berlin and Brussels and from Mme Lagarde in Washington. If Greece defaults, expect rapid shortages of fuel, energy and, soon enough, food, leading to the breakdown of public services and civil order with no help from the glowering EU, at least not immediately. Let’s hope the UK sends a ship or two to evacuate us innocent Brits!

We should realise that Alexis Tsipras is not just a loony left politician (which he is). He is a latter-day Savonarola stoking up a Bonfire of the Vanities to consume the frivolities of the last 40 years of life of the selfish Greek political and business elites – taxes unpaid, untrammelled corruption, urban poverty ignored, bloated bureaucracy, useless welfare programmes, jobs for the boys and grotesque parliamentary immunities, to name but a few. The Greeks know they need a catharsis, a cleansing, a jump away from the slimy past into a poorer but cleaner future. Tsipras is their Messiah.

The defeated Greek parties face a horrid prospect. The stink emanating from PASOK and New Democracy is already overpowering, made worse by shocking daily revelations of the multi-millionaire life-style of former PASOK defence minister Akis Tsahadsolopoulos, now known to have a large portfolio of fancy properties in Berlin and Paris as well as in Athens. Syriza will doubtless appoint a modern equivalent of the revolutionary Committee of Public Safety. Embezzlers, cheats and hornswogglers (there are plenty) will be brought to account, tax evaders (i.e. everybody) can expect condign punishment and a formal system of anonymous denunciations, like the French corbeau, will be established. How the ordinary Greeks will savour their moments of revenge!

The fate of Greece is ultimately a side-show; the big story is the fate of the Eurozone. If exasperating Greece could be expelled cleanly, the Eurozone would be thrilled. Over 75% of German voters want Grexit and probably every Eurocrat in Brussels feels the same. Yet the dilemma is stark: Is it less damaging and cheaper to carry on subsidising Greece and others, even on softer terms, to protect the cherished Euro Project, or to sit out a Greek bankruptcy? Already credit insurance for trading with Greece is being cut, a run on the Greek banks cannot be far off and the coffers are empty, so if the Germans have some rabbit to pull out of their hat, they had better tug fast as time is running out.

Schauble and Merkel plot Teutonically

 Grexit hurts all banks, especially French ones. Spanish contagion produces much larger problems throughout Europe. Portugal and Ireland may totter, and if Italy is derailed the euro is doomed. The internal contradictions of a currency zone with no machinery for recycling surpluses to deficit areas, no lender of last resort and fundamental policy disagreements amongst its members bedevil the whole project. The EU has blindly refused to moderate austerity, even when independent economists have argued that it cannot be the only measure and when it clearly has become politically unsupportable.

Who would want to be a member of a club which bullies and impoverishes its members? Eurozone countries are surely not ready for financial rule from Berlin, so it is back to the franc and the deutschmark. The Brussels gravy train will judder to a halt leaving Barroso, Van Rompuy, Rehn, Juncker and Ashton to slink back to their lairs and their vast retinues to find real jobs. A wide grin will appear on the face of UKIP’s Nigel Farage and a reinvigorated Cameron (or Boris) will negotiate a much looser association between the UK and the EU.

Three cheers for Alexis Tsipras, who will have shaken up the world!

SMD

28.05.12

Text copyright Sidney Donald 2012

INCONVENIENT DEMOCRACY

Greece may take credit for inventing democracy in about 500 BC but her observance of its principles has been at best fitful. Of course in the shiny European Union, democracy is touted as the ideal system (unless it clashes with the wishes of the EU apparatchiks) and Greece herself has been reminded this week that democracy can limit the free rein of her politicians (no bad thing) and paralyse her government (a serious inconvenience).

Greece is in an even greater tangle than usual. Years of economic misgovernment and misinformation, endemic corruption and tax evasion, an incompetent and grossly bloated public sector, feeble productivity and rampant consumption have led to a disastrous level of debt, bearing the threat of incipient bankruptcy. In a wearying process, Greece has been bailed-out twice in May 2010 and February 2012 with amounts totalling €240bn by the Eurozone countries, the ECB and the IMF (“the Troika”) and has imposed a 70% haircut on its private bondholders.  The bail-outs were granted on stiff terms requiring Greece to impose harsh austerity and boost its tax take. The medicine is not working as Greek business is collapsing after 5 years of recession and unemployment stands at 21%.

The terms of these deals have been hugely controversial in Greece. The PASOK government of George Papandreou postponed the difficult job of cutting public sector staff levels and instead concentrated on cutting state pensions, typically by 30%, raising income taxes and VAT, levying a “solidarity” tax and worst of all introducing at short notice an entirely new and heavy property tax, collected through the electricity bill. No payment, no power – probably illegal but very effective. Realising his mandate was weak, Papandreou suddenly proposed on 31 October 2011 a referendum on the terms of the second bail-out. This caused consternation in Brussels and soon enough Papandreou was forced to resign and an interim government was formed with unenthusiastic support from the conservative New Democracy with the appointment of central banker Lucas Papademos as prime minister until the second bailout was passed through parliament.

Elections duly took place on 6 May and the results were as shown below. The pro-bailout party PASOK was decimated – it previously held 153 seats and pro-bailout New Democracy slumped 10% in voting terms although it got a bonus of 50 seats as the highest polling party under the Greek system. All the other parties are hostile to the bail-out.

The major surprise was the strong showing of Syriza, a ramshackle coalition of leftist and ecological campaigning groups led by the charismatic 38-year-old Alexis Tsipras. He won 16% of the votes against New Democracy’s 18.8%. He has consistently opposed the bail-outs root and branch, although the details of quite how Greece would operate if it were outside the euro have not been articulated with any precision, although there has been plenty rhetoric. Opinion polls now show that if there were new elections, Syriza would poll highest at 27%, New Democracy would get 20% and PASOK would shrink further. The anti bail-out Independent Greeks, a New Democracy splinter group, would more or less hold its vote as would the Democratic Left. Neo-Nazi Golden Dawn, about which many get agitated, would drop from 7% to about 4% as they essentially attract a protest vote.

Attempts by New Democracy, Syriza and PASOK in turn to form a coalition have failed. The Greeks don’t really do compromise and there has been rancour between the pro- and anti-bail-out camps. Some kind of caretaker coalition will probably be patched up by President Papoulias until fresh elections in June 10 or 17.

The Greek political landscape will change radically. Assuming Syriza emerges as the strongest party, a coalition between it, Democratic Left and dissident PASOK members is quite likely. PASOK has been characterised by its own leader Evangelos Venizelos as “rotten” and it may dissolve. The position of Antonis Samaras as leader of New Democracy is vulnerable especially if he loses a June election and that party could disintegrate too.

A Syriza – led government will reject the bail-out terms. Endless deflation and austerity is economically illiterate and politically unsupportable. In due course it will be clear that Greece cannot continue within the Euro, it will default, return to the drachma, but hopefully stay within the EU.  Syriza would be wise to moderate its populist anger at inflexible Angela Merkel, snarling Wolfgang Schauble and the demonised EU man in Athens Matthias Morse and IMF’s Poul Thomsen as it will need some goodwill to achieve a soft landing. A future Greece will need all the friends it has, while it rebalances its economy.

If the people have chosen, it is madness to ignore them. Sometimes democracy comes up with the wrong answer but the Greek electorate is happy to have given the corrupt Old Guard a bloody nose. The Euro Project will receive a setback, but probably not a mortal wound – that will need blows from heavier hitters like Spain and Italy.

SMD

14.05.12

Text Copyright Sidney Donald 2012