LONDON LETTER FEBRUARY 2014
Well Nick Clegg has
surprised me, as indeed have the Lib Dems as a whole, in demonstrating more
backbone than I expected and have provided full backing to Maajid Nawaz, (see below):
“However, the Liberal
Democrats are a party of respect, tolerance and individual liberty. We
fundamentally believe in freedom of expression in an open, liberal and free
society and therefore strongly defend Maajid’s right to express his views.[1]”
This uncharacteristically
robust response undoubtedly owes much to the vigorous campaign waged by Chris
Moos and others in support of Maajid. Is it too much to hope for that we have
reached a turning point in these matters and enough people are now willing to
stand up and call the bluff of these religious and cultural bullies? If we have
reached such a point the last people to catch up will be the senior management
of the BBC who continue to offer the most abject surrender to these theocratic
fanatics.
 |
| Michael Gove Your Country Needs You |
As we approach the 100th
year mark since the outbreak of World War 1 an unseemly and rather
ridiculous political row has broken out
respecting the way the history of the war, not least its causes, are presented.
We have a minister responsible for education in Michael Gove who is imbued with
all the petty bourgeois prejudices of the successful social climber. He wears
his patriotism on his sleeve and demands no less of the rest of us. A modern
day Horatio Bottomley [2]
he decries the alleged lack of patriotism of the left, demanding that we all
celebrate the first world was as a defence of "western liberal values." Not for Mr Gove the finer nuances of historical debate.
One wonders incidentally what a conscripted African soldier, a third class citizen in his own colonised country, deprived not only of any voting rights but basic civil liberties, would make of the claim that he was fighting for ‘liberal values.’
As it happens I have agreed to teach on the origins of the war and annoyingly I have to say that in one sense Gove has a point, the received wisdom about the war is far too simplistic and as I have written elsewhere a much more nuanced debate about the war is required. http://alextalbot.blogspot.co.uk/2009/11/senseless-slaughter.html
The college in which I will be teaching is incidentally a remarkable institution. The Recovery College in Southwark has been set up to provide free education to homeless people and those living marginalised lives in poverty, though is open to all who wish to attend. The educational programme is designed as a result of specific requests from students. I feel honoured to have been asked.
I have just finished reading ‘In the Garden of Beasts’ by Erik Larson. Leaving aside its rather lurid title it is an extremely interesting book, in which Larson recounts the residency in Berlin of the American Ambassador to Germany, William Dodd, from 1933 to 1937. It also describes in considerable detail the bizarre and implausible love life of his daughter, the infuriatingly silly Martha. Martha at one point infatuated by the Nazi ‘revolution’ dated the head of the Berlin Gestapo, later falling madly in love with an NKVD agent and eventually committing to the communist cause.
The central figure is Dodd himself, an obviously humane, erudite and sensitive man completely out of his depth when dealing with Nazi gangsters. As a portrait of Berlin in the early days of the Nazi regime the book is invaluable and I came away with a clearer picture of the mood of fear and despair amongst the remaining German intelligentsia.
There are no heroes in the book but it is stuffed full of people giving off the stench of real evil. There are also odd moments of sheer farce. The description of the grotesquely obese Goring, clad in an all white uniform of his own design, at the ceremony ‘celebrating’ the re-internment of his first wife will stay with me for some time.
Conventional academic history the book is not, but despite having the feel of a novel appears to have been scrupulously researched; in particular he provides a revealing insight into the anti-Semitism of the American diplomatic core.
I have also just read Hilde Spiel’s ‘Return to Vienna.’ Spiel, an Austrian assimilated Jew was living in London at the time of the Anchluss and consequently found herself a stranded exile. A published novelist who hailed from the Viennese intellectual milieu, erudite and full of acute psychological insight, the book is the diary she made when returning to the city of her birth, as a correspondent for New Statesman in 1946.
The book is interesting not least in its description of the Viennese sense of victim-hood after the defeat of the Third Reich. The city residents particularly resented returnees, especially Jews who gave the lie to the narrative of Austria as Hitler’s first victim.
We have now entered the most interesting period in British political life since the early 1970’s, with a European election, Scottish independence referendum and a general election looming that is impossible to call. However I find myself though feeling curiously disengaged. The problem being the childish manner in which politics is practised in this country. This was highlighted recently by a breakfast TV encounter between the Prime Minister and Helena Kennedy, a human rights lawyer and member of the House of Lords. Kennedy raised her concerns about the signal that would be given to the rest of the world should Britain, as the Tories threaten, withdraw from the International Court of Human Rights. The Prime Minister’s response was to twitch like a divining rod and declare, “so, so, Labour want to give prisoners voting rights, this is your new policy is it?” I felt a wave of weary despair shouting at the TV screen, “you are the Prime Minister for God’s sake, not a child in the midst of a sugar rush!”
Now that we are into February I feel a lifting of the spirits, the Spring is that much closer, with the possibility of lighter evenings and spring sunshine.
A.T. February 1st 2014
One wonders incidentally what a conscripted African soldier, a third class citizen in his own colonised country, deprived not only of any voting rights but basic civil liberties, would make of the claim that he was fighting for ‘liberal values.’
As it happens I have agreed to teach on the origins of the war and annoyingly I have to say that in one sense Gove has a point, the received wisdom about the war is far too simplistic and as I have written elsewhere a much more nuanced debate about the war is required. http://alextalbot.blogspot.co.uk/2009/11/senseless-slaughter.html
 |
| Prospectus Spring 2013 |
I have just finished reading ‘In the Garden of Beasts’ by Erik Larson. Leaving aside its rather lurid title it is an extremely interesting book, in which Larson recounts the residency in Berlin of the American Ambassador to Germany, William Dodd, from 1933 to 1937. It also describes in considerable detail the bizarre and implausible love life of his daughter, the infuriatingly silly Martha. Martha at one point infatuated by the Nazi ‘revolution’ dated the head of the Berlin Gestapo, later falling madly in love with an NKVD agent and eventually committing to the communist cause.
 |
| Martha Dodd |
Conventional academic history the book is not, but despite having the feel of a novel appears to have been scrupulously researched; in particular he provides a revealing insight into the anti-Semitism of the American diplomatic core.
I have also just read Hilde Spiel’s ‘Return to Vienna.’ Spiel, an Austrian assimilated Jew was living in London at the time of the Anchluss and consequently found herself a stranded exile. A published novelist who hailed from the Viennese intellectual milieu, erudite and full of acute psychological insight, the book is the diary she made when returning to the city of her birth, as a correspondent for New Statesman in 1946.
 |
| Hilde Spiel |
The book is interesting not least in its description of the Viennese sense of victim-hood after the defeat of the Third Reich. The city residents particularly resented returnees, especially Jews who gave the lie to the narrative of Austria as Hitler’s first victim.
We have now entered the most interesting period in British political life since the early 1970’s, with a European election, Scottish independence referendum and a general election looming that is impossible to call. However I find myself though feeling curiously disengaged. The problem being the childish manner in which politics is practised in this country. This was highlighted recently by a breakfast TV encounter between the Prime Minister and Helena Kennedy, a human rights lawyer and member of the House of Lords. Kennedy raised her concerns about the signal that would be given to the rest of the world should Britain, as the Tories threaten, withdraw from the International Court of Human Rights. The Prime Minister’s response was to twitch like a divining rod and declare, “so, so, Labour want to give prisoners voting rights, this is your new policy is it?” I felt a wave of weary despair shouting at the TV screen, “you are the Prime Minister for God’s sake, not a child in the midst of a sugar rush!”
Now that we are into February I feel a lifting of the spirits, the Spring is that much closer, with the possibility of lighter evenings and spring sunshine.
A.T. February 1st 2014
[1] http://www.siawi.org/article6789.html
[2] The ultimate jingo flag
waving fraud. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horatio_Bottomley
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