LONDON LETTER FEBRUARY 28TH 2013

February is the month in which you finally have had enough of winter and start to pine for the coming spring. It has been a bitterly cold February here in London, though weather conditions have not of course remotely approached those experienced in the Mid West and East Coast of the United States. The cold brings out the hermit in me; not that that particular aspect of my psyche needs much encouragement. Still I stirred my self and ventured out to see the Kurt Schwitters exhibition at the Tate, on a bitterly cold Monday morning.

I had only know Schwitters work through his connection with Dada and was certainly unaware that he had spent so much of his life in Britain. He died on the same day as his British citizenship was granted.

Like a great many anti Nazi refugees from Germany he was interned on the Isle of Man after the outbreak of war. This stupid and undiscriminating policy had the unforeseen effect of placing some of the most creative minds in Europe together in one small camp. The resultant cocktail of artist, writers and philosophers all intermingling together, encouraged by the camp commandant, an unwitting gift by the British establishment to the world. Schwitters art, which seems so curiously innocent, naïve even, and that he seems to have imagined wholly apolitical is in fact the most political of all, adopting such items as a tram ticket or a jagged piece of newsprint, concerned as such items are with the politics of living.[1]

Schwitters seems, like Arthur Koestler and many other cosmopolitan European intellectuals escaping persecution in continental Europe, to have felt at home in England. I find the image of Schwitters, a pioneer of the European avant-garde and refugee from Nazi Germany playing chess with his doctor or chatting away with the local gardener in a small village in the English Lake District somehow strangely and deeply moving. 

Sex scandals dominate the newspapers and airways, men accused of groping women, bishops of groping priests and men of all classes and social positions sexually fixated upon young children. Sexual obsession, like a character in some medieval morality play driving out sanity, rendering its victims stupid, cruel, bereft of common sense and caution and ultimately absurd. ‘Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make unzip their pants.’

The obsession with homosexuality currently gripping Russia is also an example that an obsession with sex and sexuality can drive a culture mad; it drove catholic Ireland mad as surely as it did puritan England. 
The Russian Duma has just enacted draconian legislation that has the same texture and feel as the Nuremberg laws. This time however aimed at the gay and lesbian community and which effectively outlaws any open manifestation of same sex sexuality[2]. On the radio this morning I heard some Russian fascist thug declare that Russia would rid itself of homosexuality. He might, of course just as well try and eradicate Russia of people with blue eyes. Though of course when individual men get so agitated about homosexuality it is invariably a symptom of an ambivalence in their own sexual orientation.

What a tragedy though that Russia, a country that suffered more from the scourge of fascism than the rest of Europe combined, should now be producing such a breed of the home grown variety.

There is of course another Russia, the Russia of the incredibly brave journalist Anna Politkovskaya who was murdered, of Pussy Riot and the many other unsung heroes who defy daily intimidation to speak truth to power in a land increasingly strangled by a poisonous mafia.

I watch a parade of ‘experts’ on TV news programmes decry the foolishness of the Italian electorate in rejecting austerity and savage cuts in welfare provision. For some reason the Italian electorate have taken umbrage with the idea that it is they who should pick up the tab for the mess created by the bankers and the Berlusconi clique, who in turn appear on the airways and tut tut about their feckless compatriots, whilst sipping Bollinger and salting away their bonuses out of range of the Italian tax collector. 
On TV this lunchtime I watched a extremely well remunerated Brussels official  explain that he felt the pain of the Italian people but there was no alternative. His tone was weary, a parent faced with a difficult child. I fear we have all let him down. 
I thought of the much quoted lines by Bertholt Brecht 

Some party hack decreed that the people
had lost the government's confidence
and could only regain it with redoubled effort.
If that is the case, would it not be be simpler,
If the government simply dissolved the people
And elected another?

Meanwhile the Pope rather like an elderly gardener who suddenly feels it has all got too much for him, resigns; another blow to the mystique of this preposterous office.

Chuck Hagel’s confirmation as US Defense Secretary, although someone hardly on the same ideological wavelength as my self, pleased me.[3] The victim of a sustained smear campaign, redolent of the worst excesses of McCarthyism, run by the pro Israel lobby,[4] for the terrible offence of demonstrating independence of thought respecting Middle East policy and calling into question the blind support of Israel, irrespective of the latter's behavior.

Obama finally called the bluff of this lobby, which up until now, drunk with hubris, had thought itself omnipotent, and won. Its spell broken, surely never again will it enjoy the power it has over the last few decades.

Incidentally if you think British politics is particularly Machiavellian and malevolent, check out this article in Slate:      

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2013/02/chuck_hagel_confirmed_as_secretary_of_defense_rand_paul_s_flip_flop_on_the.2.html

There is also a prize of a visit to Disneyland for anyone who can make sense of this and describe Rand Paul’s thinking in less than 200 words.[5]

The dreary cruelty of our own coalition government continues as people find themselves facing eviction because they have a spare room and require Housing Benefit to assist in paying their rent; this on top of swingeing cuts in community services and the infamous benefit cap that is causing mayhem in some London boroughs.I so want to believe in the Labour Party and Ed Miliband as a viable alternative, he seems like a passionate and honorable man, but I am constantly disappointed by the cynicism and opportunism of some of their actions.

Recently in the courts during the trial of a prominent politicians wife the Jury seems to have not fully understood its role and made some serious mistakes. This has led to a re-trial. Out came the Jury haters and some significant legal figures to beat up on the whole idea of the Jury system and the democratic concept of judgement by your peers. Better to leave such matters to the professionals. I mean it is not as if judges and lawyers ever make significant mistakes, aside that is from The Hanratty case, The Guildford Four, The Birmingham Six, the summing up in the Profoumo case........... 

Here it is cold with a slate grey sky. Sun however is promised for later in the day whilst I am reading a paean of praise to the writing of Nabokov,[6]pronounced, as I now understand in Russian, NO-BOAKOFF, which pleases me every time I say it.    

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[1] It always surprises me to hear some people talk as if it is possible to live somehow outside of politics. Even seemingly intelligent people I have heard say, “I have nothing to do with politics, not interested.’ Even recently a very bright young man in conversation with me described people as being selfish and obsessed by consumerism. When I said that this reflected the politics of the times we live in his response was “it has got nothing to do with politics, people are just selfish!”

[2] At the risk of being accused of opening up a hoary old chestnut isn't it time as a culture we outgrew the rather childish term ‘gay.’

[3] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/26/senate-approves-chuck-hagel-defense

[4] One particularly nasty group The Israel Emergency Committee used tactics of which Der Sturmer would have been proud.

[5] Competition open only to those over 70 who can be accompanied on the trip by both parents.

[6] The Enchanter, Nabokov and Happiness, Lila Azam Zanganeh, Allen Lane 2011.

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