LOCK-DOWN LETTER FROM LONDON

Well the novelty has certainly worn off. I like increasing numbers of people live alone, the lack of physical face to face contact can start to tell on the psyche. This can be particularly hard in a big city like London in which, paradoxically you are surrounded by people, sometimes only separated by thin walls. For myself I am better equipped for solitude than most, not only used to my own company and remaining alone in the flat* all day. I have a wide range of interests, a love of reading, cooking and music. With modern technology I need never feel at a loss for intellectual stimulation. So, if I am beginning to flag a little, I can only imagine what it must be like for those with less interests or a lack of access to technology. Though I make no special pleading for the solitary. For those unhappily married cooped up all day in a tiny inner city flat with small children and someone they are increasingly beginning to hate the idea of solitude must sound like bliss. The weather, which has been glorious has not helped, again I am lucky I have a space where I can go and sit outside in the sun.

I miss the days when a trip to the supermarket did not feel like an excursion to Chernobyl. Had one gone to sleep in April 2015 and only just awoken, asking ‘much happen whilst I was away?’ You might wish to return to your slumbers. We are living through a surreal dystopia, with a madman in the White House and a buffoon as British prime minister, who is determined to crash the economy by pulling out of the EU on whatever terms, or even non at all. And everyday the news carries the current death toll.

I escape from the nightmare into history, from our troubled times to the troubled times of our ancestors. Why it should come as a surprise that people have reacted in the past very much as they do in the present; I have no idea, but it so often does.

Read a great many history books lately and amongst the most interesting has been ‘It’s Only A Joke Comrade by Johnathon Waterlow, an exploration of humour during the worst of the Stalin years from 1933-1939. Long a fan of Soviet Jokes I was slightly disappointed to find that many of the jokes I most liked were probably concocted later, long after Stalin’s death to fill joke books to sell to tourists after the collapse of communism, whilst many of the actual jokes were not that funny, or more accurately have not travelled well through time from their original context.

Of course, people were risking a great deal in telling jokes about/against Stalin and the Soviet system, even their lives. What the books demonstrates is that the idea that totalitarianism produces a different species of human being, wholly controlled and brainwashed by the state is wholly false. People turn out to be recognizable as just like oneself even in the midst of the Stalinist terror of 1937/8. Arguably this is something Orwell did not fully grasp.

The other major history book that stands out is ‘The Counter Revolution of 1776.’ Gerald Horne’s book is an incredibly professionally researched critique of the role that slavery played in the run up to the American Declaration of Independence and the break with Britain. It is clear from his analysis that a factor in the break was a fear of the growing trend in British society toward abolition. Slavery had created immense wealth for a few and the move to independence forestalled any attempt to put an end to this source of wealth. Slaves were after all ‘private property’ which these founding fathers viewed as sacrosanct.

Unsurprisingly in these circumstances many slaves sided with Britain in the war that followed, leaving to a long legacy of suspicion and mistrust.

It is a difficult book to read, given its subject matter and the terrible descriptions it contains, but it is essential reading for anyone wanting to understand slavery and the long shadow it has cast over American society and politics.

As I write this, I see that President Trump has speculated about the possibility that injecting disinfectant might cure the Corona virus. He has become Caligula. His continued presence in the White House is a danger to the whole world.

Whilst here in the UK the government has decided against making the wearing of masks compulsory, not because the science is ambivalent about their effectiveness, - surely even if they prevent just a few Covid transmission’s they are worth wearing, - but because they do not have enough masks for carers and other key workers!

The sun shines on a near deserted Portobello road, an unbearably sad sight, the tourists absent. The world over travel and tourism provide a living, often the sole source of income for many who will face destitution as the beaches, cafes and hotels are empty. As I think about this, I know that ‘normal’ has gone, it will not be returning any time soon.

Alex Talbot April 2020.