LETTER FROM LONDON AUGUST 31st 2013

On Friday morning, after the vote in the House of Commons on Thursday, a vote  preventing any military response to Assad’s use of chemical weapons, a line of poetry from Louis MacNeice lodged in my head:-

‘And so Thursday came and Oxford went to the polls
And made its coward vote
And the streets resounded to the triumphant cheers of the lost souls.’

It comes from Autumn Journal and describes the Oxford By-election in the fall of 1938 which resulted in the victory of the pro appeasement candidate Quinton Hogg, later to become Lord Halisham. It is, some might say conveniently, forgotten now how popular appeasement as a policy was, true in the absence of accurate opinion polls the exact scale of that popularity is difficult to gauge, but no serious historian doubts the widespread popularity of the policy.
Crowds Cheer Chamberlain after Munich
When the British engage in activity that is cowardly or shameful, such as Munich or Suez they dress it up in high moral tones and congratulate themselves on their moral common sense and responsibility. Thus it was after another coward vote on another Thursday, for make no mistake this decision was popular and my own views, demanding action, very much a minority position.
On Channel Four news they interviewed Syrian refugees who expressed themselves perplexed by the decision of the British parliament. “Do our children,” one woman asked “not matter?”
I felt ashamed and couldn’t help wondering whether if it had been little Norwegian or Spanish children who had been shelled, rocketed and finally gassed, the British Parliament would have adopted such a careful and measured tone?
To be fair the Labour party leader Ed Miliband’s position was much more nuanced than has been reported, specifically not ruling out the use of military force. This was however drowned out by the cheers of the appeasers, and who now believes that such an option remains on the table?

The vote has some interesting implications, not least for the British constitutional settlement in the form of the royal prerogative. It is not perhaps widely known, certainly not outside this country, that Cameron did not constitutionally need a parliamentary vote. Under what is known as ‘the royal prerogative,’ that is the consequences of living in a monarchy, the prime minister enjoys the following powers:-

Make Orders in Council
Declare War
Make Peace
Recognise foreign governments
Sign and ratify treaties
Grant Pardons
Grant Charters
Confer Honours
Confer patronage appointments
Establish commissions

These powers, once the sole prerogative of the monarch have now been passed, with the consent of the monarch and on the understanding that the monarch is consulted, to the Prime Minister. As you can see these powers are very substantial indeed and ought to give anyone with concerns about the vibrancy of our democracy pause for thought.
Now one of these powers has been severely curtailed by parliament, for who now believes that any Prime Minister could take Britain to war without a parliamentary vote in the affirmative? So though I abhor the decision, the manner in which it happened feels like progress towards something that feels more like healthy democracy.
It is long past time that we took a good hard look at our constitutional framework and dragged further powers away from the anachronism of this settlement.
However if anyone believes that the Queen would watch passively whilst the fiction of her purely ceremonial function became a reality, then they are very much deluded. The Queen and her idiot son will fight viciously to hold on to their constitutional authority.

Carnival was fun as on the final day I flew the anarchist flag and gave the V for victory sign to the massed dancers below, who blew kisses and waved back. Carnival, like revolution a space were anything is possible, even magic.

I started with MacNeice so will end with him. Autumn Journal, is a wonderful panoramic view of the fall of 1938 and is one of the finest poems of the 1930’s. Not even Auden better captures the flavour of the ‘devils decade’

‘And you, who work for Christ, and you, as eager
For a better life, humanist, atheist,
And you, devoted to a cause, and you, to a family,
Sleep and may your belief and zeal persist.
Sleep quietly, Marx and Freud,
The figure-heads of our transition.
Cagney Lombard, Bing and Garbo,
Sleep in your world of celluloid.
Sleep now also, monk and Satyr,
Cease your wrangling for a night.
Sleep, my brain, and sleep, my senses,
Sleep, my hunger and my spite.
Sleep recruits to the evil army,
Who, for so long misunderstood,
Took to the gun to kill your sorrow;

Sleep and be damned and wake up good.’














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