Journal Entries

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY 5- THE LITTLE MAN AND THE BIG MAN

Posted Jan 22, 2014


G. K.Chesterton felt back in 1922 that in these most recent war and post-war times what was particularly missing was the voice of ‘the Little Man’ that had been provided a hundred years before by William Cobbett and his “Political Register”, which played an important role during and after the Napoleonic Wars.
One of Cobbett’s first references to the ‘Little Man’, in fact, may have been in the piece that he wrote around 1809, when it was proposed to change the system of representation in the Parish Vestry Meetings, which had been central to the operation of English democracy at the grass roots level and had sustained the idea of the ‘Commonweal’- that is the general principle that nothing should be done that would be damaging for the community.
But by this time the system of English Parish Poor Relief set up in Tudor times had been changed from ‘community support’ to an essentially monetary payment, and it was proposed that the voting in parish affairs should be changed with more votes being given to those with more wealth and property.
Cobbett wrote objecting vehemently and arguing that the ‘Big Man’ within a parish had all the advantages of his education and his wealth, which in any healthy community would be seen by everyone else as very much an asset to the neighbourhood and, in normal circumstances people would listen very carefully to whatever the ‘Big Man’ had to say because his word carried more weight in the ‘wider world’. But on some occasions a ‘Big Man’ might well think more of his self-interest than that of the Commonweal: and on such occasions it was important that ‘the Little Man’ at least had equal status when voting on local issues.
The proposal was rejected during the war while the Economy working at full-blast. But after a couple of years of troubled peace that change was made and local democracy was biased towards the representation of wealth and property. Fifteen years later this became the standard approach for elections to the Westminster Parliament that had to represent the whole of Great Britain and Ireland and different traditions of ‘political-economy’. Henceforward English politics was to be based not upon a common effort to promote the well-being of the whole English Commonweal, but upon wealth and property, with the greatest work of the Scot Adam Smith, advocating the primary virtue of the pursuit of “The Wealth of Nations”, becoming the ‘Bible’ of the Age of Heroic Materialism.
Today’s published research indicates that “the economy” is still the prime consideration of Scots voters in the forthcoming Referendum on Scottish Independence. Money and finance will decide it, as many Scots believe it settled the question of Union in 1707 when key Scottish politicians were, they believe, bribed by English gold to betray their fellow Scots.
After Chesterton’s slim biography of Cobbett, Dr. G.D.H. Cole, a Fabian Socialist, produced a more substantive study that ‘put Cobbett in his place’ as a ‘Little Man’ with no power base. But G.K. Chesterton continued his theme of trying to revive the spirit of that great Englishman by joining with similar minded friends to set up PEN, the international organization that promotes the work of Cobbett-type radical ‘Little Man’ writers- Poets, Essayists and Novelists.
And PEN really ‘struck it lucky’, when Arthur Miller was persuaded in the Sixties to become its Secretary and to turn it into a force for the promotion of international understanding and a vehicle for promoting the voice of ‘the Little Man’ from all over the world, in a Sixties and Seventies world of Cold War, and often of repressive regimes supporting both ‘East’ and ‘West’. If the USA is ever to re-establish its reputation, and its key-role within the leadership of the Free World, it will probably be from once again being seen as the champion of “The Common Man” rather than the “Big Man”.

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Latest reply: Jan 22, 2014

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY 4- THE FIFTIES ON TV

Posted Jan 21, 2014


Thinking back to my daily dose of “Father Brown” yesterday, the first episode of the repeat of series one, I am minded of the fact that there is a comon theme linking Father Brown with “Call the Midwife” and “Bletchly Circle”- and that is the ‘refugee’ world that I found myself living in as a toddler, that first “Age of Austerity”. And it is probably no accident that we have found a new interest in these times, with “Call the Midwife” now billed as Britain’s favourite drama series.
Surely a part of the appeal of the programme is in the sense of a real common struggle associated with that determination to ‘Win the peace the way that we won the war’, with the Midwives acting as urban missionaries coming into lives of deprivation and hardship in order to give the children of the post-war generation ‘a better start in life’. But perhaps no scenario can bring out more clearly the fact that the war had been fought, not to defeat and destroy Nazi Germany, but in order to preserve ‘Christian Civilization’, the essence of which is not really belief in God but belief in people.
To some extent that distinction goes right to the heart of the “Father Brown” stories of G.K.Chesterton. Back in the time of T.S. Eliot’s “Wasteland”, which dealt with Britain in the economic and social crisis of 1921, Chesterton chose the topic of William Cobbett, when asked to give a memorial lecture, and followed this up with a brief biography of Cobbett, which included very appropriate comments about the whole culture of corporatism, corruption and immorality that was associated especially with the vast fortunes being made in America through the giant oil conglomerates, and this was years before the ‘Teapot Dome’ scandals of the late 1920s, before the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the World Chaos of 1932-33. But ‘Teddy’ Roosevelt and the Muck-raking journalists had already led the counter-attack, Roosevelt observing that ‘Money makes a very good servant, but a very bad master’, something that seems very relevant too in our current problems that have been created by our corrupted and unhealthy relationship with the Financial System.

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Latest reply: Jan 21, 2014

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY 4

Posted Jan 21, 2014

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY 4
Thinking back to my daily dose of “Father Brown” yesterday, the first episode of the repeat of series one, I am minded of the fact that there is a common theme linking Father Brown with “Call the Midwife” and “Bletchly Circle”- and that is the ‘refugee’ world that I found myself living in as a toddler, that first “Age of Austerity”. And it is probably no accident that we have found a new interest in these times, with “Call the Midwife” now billed as Britain’s favourite drama series.
Surely a part of the appeal of the programme is in the sense of a real common struggle associated with that determination to ‘Win the peace the way that we won the war’, with the Midwives acting as urban missionaries coming into lives of deprivation and hardship in order to give the children of the post-war generation ‘a better start in life’. But perhaps no scenario can bring out more clearly the fact that the war had been fought, not to defeat and destroy Nazi Germany, but in order to preserve ‘Christian Civilization’, the essence of which is not really belief in God but belief in people.
To some extent that distinction goes right to the heart of the “Father Brown” stories of G.K.Chesterton. Back in the time of T.S. Eliot’s “Wasteland”, which dealt with Britain in the economic and social crisis of 1921, Chesterton chose the topic of William Cobbett, when asked to give a memorial lecture, and followed this up with a brief biography of Cobbett, which included very appropriate comments about the whole culture of corporatism, corruption and immorality that was associated especially with the vast fortunes being made in America through the giant oil conglomerates, and this was years before the ‘Teapot Dome’ scandals of the late 1920s, before the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the World Chaos of 1932-33. But ‘Teddy’ Roosevelt and the Muck-raking journalists had already led the counter-attack, Roosevelt observing that ‘Money makes a very good servant, but a very bad master’, something that seems very relevant too in our current problems that have been created by our corrupted and unhealthy relationship with the Financial System.
Chesterton felt back in 1922 that in these most recent war and post-war times what was particularly missing was the voice of ‘the Little Man’, which had been the provided in the new revolutionary age of the printed mass media by Cobbett through his “Political Register”. One of Cobbett’s first references to the ‘Little Man’, however, was in a piece that he wrote c1809 when it was proposed to change the system of representation in the Parish Vestry Meetings , which had been central to the operation of English democracy at the grass roots level, the level that sustained the idea defined in the Tudor period as the ideal of ‘Commonweal’- that is that nothing should be done that was not beneficial to the whole community. As the system of English Parish Poor Relief set up in Tudor times had been changed from community support to an essentially mechanical system that was possible in the developing market economy in which money was becoming more important than direct human interaction, it was proposed that the voting in parish affairs should be changed with more votes being given to those with more wealth and property. Cobbett objected vehemently arguing that the ‘Big Man’ within the parish had all the advantages of his education and his wealth, and that in any healthy community everyone else would see these as advantageous and an asset to the Commonweal, and would, more often than not, listen very carefully to whatever the ‘Big Man’ had to say. But on occasions the ‘Big Man’ might well think more of his self-interest than that of the Commonweal, and on such occasions it was important that ‘the Little Man’ had equal status at least when voting on local issues. That proposal was rejected, but almost ten years later, in the difficult post-war years the change was made, with a move towards the enfranchisement of wealth and property which became the standard approach for elections to the Westminster Parliament that represented Great Britain and Ireland in 1832. Henceforward English politics was to be based not upon the efforts of the whole English Commonweal but upon wealth and property, as the work of the Scot Adam Smith, who had advocated a collective pursuit of “The Wealth of Nations” in his book of that title that became the ‘Bible’ of the Age of Heroic Materialism.
After his biography of Cobbett, Chesterton continued his theme of trying to revive the spirit of that great Englishman by joining with friends to set up PEN, an international organization to promote the work of such ‘Little Man’ writers. Poets, essayists and novelists. And PEN really struck it lucky, when Arthur Miller was persuaded in the Sixties to become its Secretary and to turn it into a force for the promotion of international understanding and a vehicle for promoting the voice of ‘the Little Man’ from all over the world, a Sixties and Seventies world of Cold War, and often of repressive regimes supporting both ‘East’ and ‘West’.
At the same time Chesterton was an important part of the Roman Catholic revival in England. In fact William Cobbett was at least open to that because he read a Roman Catholic historian’s account of the Reformation in England and was disgusted to see that the whole thing was no more than the result of the lusts of Henry VIII, both for Ann Boleyn and the wealth of the Church in England, which he saw, along with the tithes that were still being collected, as in effect the Friendly Society Funds built up by the parishioners for their own security, and not the private wealth of the Church or its clergymen. By this time ‘livings’ in the Anglican Church had become acceptable places to ‘park’ the younger sons of the gentry, who would never inherit the family wealth, or be financed into a military career which might well be the ‘making’ of them.
Roman Catholicism, however, was something of a ‘Broad Church’ in England with a powerful “Anglo-Catholic’ tradition, which had led John Newman to progress from his position at St. Mary’s, the university Church at Oxford to being the first English Cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church for centuries. But perhaps a more important influence on people like G.K.Chesterton was the great Cambridge Historian Lord Acton, who had finally deserted his ‘master’, the great German historian von Ranke, when von Ranke became too aged and infirm, but also when the new German Empire became authoritarian, aggressive and obsessed with world dominion, while at the same time the Roman Catholic Church adopted the doctrine of Papal Infallibility. This was something that Acton could never accept, insisting on remaining a ‘Liberal Catholic’ in that Anglo-Catholic tradition that argued that it was the Church of England that had remained true to the Catholic (and universal) principles of Christianity and the principles of Love and Understanding.
It is this kind of ‘Christianity for the little man’ who is at least as close to God as the ‘Big Man’ that Chesterton celebrated in his Father Brown stories, setting them in the Cotswolds of my own roots

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Latest reply: Jan 21, 2014

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY 3

Posted Jan 20, 2014

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY 3
President Hollande’s affair is highlighting the difference between British and French attitudes to sex, with many in France sticking with the kind of ‘Scientific Rationalism’ that became so important in the build up to the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s.

Of course the “Scientific” and “Rational” exploration of sex made a “great leap forward” in the experiments of the Marquis de Sade in his contribution to the build up towards the Age of Revolution. “All men are born free, and yet everywhere they are in chains” wrote Jean Jacques Rousseau: and those chains included those social ties like marriage by which women secured their futures and those of their children, and therefore the future of Society, through the chains of legitimacy and legitimate rights- arguably an extension of the careful ‘nest-building’ instinct that is shown by females in many other species.

Hence revolutionaries like Karl Marx and Frederick Engels in “The Communist Manifesto” could refer to “bourgeois marriage” as a form of “prostitution” by means of which women exploited their sexual and procreative power in order to bind men to them through spiritual and temporal laws, though, perhaps in France especially, that applied to the ability to produce legal heirs, because the mistress, the courtesan and the ‘kept woman’ was very much a feature of the ‘Ancien Regime’.

Marx and Engels proposed that there should be ‘common ownership’ of women, whatever they envisaged by that: and, in spite of Mary Wolstencraft’s “Vindication of the Rights of Women” the “Age of Revolution” became very much an of “The Rights of Man”, as the ‘male principle’ of power, domination and “Heroic Materialism” became the ‘Spirit of the Age’- and still remains so. And in spite of those women who have followed Bonnie Tyler in “holding on for a Hero’, over the last hundred years the ‘Emancipation of Women’ has increasingly meant women seeking the chance to ‘invade’ and ‘conquer’ those same fields of power, domination and ‘Heroic Materialism’ in order to prove themselves just as capable of operating within the systems that still shape the modern world, while trying to turning the whole thrust away from the Malthusian Catastrophe’s that haunted the male imagination in the nineteenth century.

So it seems that there are still women who feel that “Heros” are men in need of their ‘other half’- the ‘heroine’ and ‘help-mate’ who complements them and helps to make them whole. Mary Wolstonecraft’s daughter, Mary Shelley saw that there would be a danger that Dr. Frankenstein’s male ‘demon’ would demand a help-mate and partner, who could match his disproportionate powers and form one monstrous whole. And perhaps it was because she elevated the ‘fishwife’ and the ‘housewife’ to the corridors of power and beat the men at their own game that Margaret Thatcher got up so many peoples noses.

It seems to have been a lesson learned by the two women who are arguably the two most powerful women on the planet. Chancellor Merkel of Germany seems to have made a virtue of offering to a German people still recovering from the obscenity of Nazism with its excessively “masculine” brutal worship of power, a milder, more gentle and less strident vision of the German character.

Christine Lagarde, on the other hand, is very much both a very modern woman and at the same time classically French, even if an important part of her ‘rise’ was spent in the USA. In fact the time she spent in the USA was probably crucial because she was in competition with both men and women who wanted to be the ones ‘who wore the trousers’; and, like many, perhaps most, French women Mme. Lagarde very evidently has never believed in neglecting her feminine attributes. There cannot be very many people, of either sex, who have risen to her kind of power and prominence in national and global affairs, who spent their earlier physical ‘prime’ as part of their country’s national Synchronized Swimming squad!

As soon as you register that fact, you can see that it makes sense. She still surfaces from some demanding session or manoeuvre with that charming and disarming smile: and she still carries herself with the self-confidence of having spent hours practicing and perfecting the art of making her bathing costume clad body look beautiful and ‘fit’. At a more mundane level the same knowledge can be found in the French ‘madame’ of ‘a certain age’ who enjoys it when men follow her around in the local supermarket with open admiration. All of this is just part of the natural order of things, natural beauty given that particular ‘French touch: and every creative ‘master’ or ‘mistress’ enjoys being appreciated by the ‘connoisseur’, which in some ways takes French people in some ways into their own version of ‘Enchantment’.

It seems significant that, though the French Revolution of 1789 took great inspiration from the American Revolution of 1776-83 and onwards to the drafting of the US Constitution, those learned and ‘rational’ members of the National Assembly who drew up the French Rights of Man saw that Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness were just the kind of unrealistic fantasies that seemed to energise ‘the English’ in their “Wonderland”. The new French Society would be built on Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, with the kind of liberty that would make it possible to really try to pursue happiness curtailed and cut back by the limiting impact of Equality and Fraternity. Rousseau of course was from Geneva and was more Swiss than French, and the French Revolutionaries were less interested in getting rid of all ‘the chain’ than sharing the chains around more equitably.

Thus, though the Hollande affair has not really scandalised French opinion, last year people were outraged and reduced to tears over the ‘affair Cahusac’ when it was revealed that one of the Hollande Cabinet had been forced to admit that, in his professional life before entering politics, when he was a successful dentist, he had made use of a Swiss Bank account in order to keep his money safe. It is not clear that he broke any laws, but, in the full knowledge of what a terrible ‘sin’ this would be thought to be by all French Socialists he had lied to his political colleagues. Some of the party faithful were reduced to floods of tears live on TV at the thought that M. Cahusac had ‘cheated’ on the PS, but cheating on your wife, husband or partner is another matter, as is cheating the law and law enforcement officers for most people. The French Police have finally had to fine French motorists who flash their lights to forewarn all motorists coming in the other direction that they are heading towards a Police trap. The ‘citizens’ are the natural enemies of the State apparatus.

To some extent this is still the legacy of the ‘realist’ school of novels associated with Emile Zola most obviously with “Les Miserables”. Zola investigated ‘the pits’ and sewers of French Society, took episodes that could happen to individuals and then made them all happen to one ill-fated character, whose life goes from bad to worse. It is dark and depressing tradition that was taken up by the “Pieces Noire” plays of Jean Anouilh in the 1930s to 1950s, in which the true worldly wise connoisseur tries to persuade the young idealist that life really is mostly ‘la merde’- nastiness that everyone has to just put up with, and the trick of succeeding is knowing how to enjoy those little compensatory moments which actually make life bearable. And the events of 1939-45 did nothing to lighten the mood with ‘chanteuse’ in black like Edif Piaf expressing the agony of everything that had to be endured and yet regretting nothing.

You only need to regret if you have not made the most of those compensatory moments that tend to be connected with natural appetites and senses. These are often connected with those orifices which can connect the individual with the wider world, and that includes the use of the anal passage as a very useful way to ingest medications and treatments.

Of course in more social situations the mouth is very important, with no country on Earth being prouder of its taste, discernment and mastery of all matters of food and drink. But France too is the land of perfume and smell, including its famous ‘petomane’- the farting entertainer: while music, painting and other serious arts find a ready audience and appreciation. So when President Hollande is up to his neck in political problems, as the most unpopular President France has had in the Fifth Republic, few in France will really blame him for finding some compensatory moments in the company of a beautiful young actress. In France this is not ‘cheating’ because in France no-one should really expect any different.

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Latest reply: Jan 20, 2014

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY 2

Posted Jan 19, 2014

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY 2
It was recently reported that a university-based study is underway to compare the rate of re-offending among those sentenced to Transportation compared to the alternative punishments available.
Well the alternative to transportation was execution: and the re-offending rate of the dead is statistically negligible. This point was made in an interview that I heard on French radio some years ago when the descendent of a King in French-speaking Africa was asked whether he was ashamed that his ancestor had sold slaves to the Europeans and replied that he was actually proud that he had been a humanitarian who seized on the opportunity to spare the lives of people who otherwise would have been executed.
In Africa as in England, and most places, keeping people locked up at public expense was not seen as a viable form of punishment, and prisons were largely just for holding people until they had been judged. Then (a) those who were found innocent were expected to pay their own gaol fees for the board and lodging they had received at the Crown expense. And (b)those who were found guilty were given some form of corporal or capital punishment with a popular and democratic one still the ancient practice of sitting in the stocks or pillory to “get what was coming to you” in the eyes of your local community. That could, of course, as in the case of ‘the Cock Lane Ghost’, mean people passing the hat round and making a collection for you rather than make sure that you ended up injured for life.
But it is true that, when the American colonies declared independence in 1776, there was no longer anywhere to send convicts and the hulks of old ships moored in the Thames Estuary were used to lodge the convicts at night, with them coming out to labour during the day. And the report I saw featured a picture of the hulks, which brought home to public opinion the brutal reality of convict life.
But wartime conditions are atypical in terms of criminal activity, with the impact on the ‘market economy’ creating the potential for Black Marketing and the Black Economy: and, at the same time, ‘joining up’ in the Armed Forces was a ‘way out’ that offered both employment and very often a chance to escape from an old life. When the young William Cobbett tried to join up during the American War the officer clearly thought that this teenager had got some girl pregnant and wanted to disappear or some similar kind of trouble. The Armed Forces offered “leg bail”- a chance to ‘leg it’.
The answer to the problem of the hulks, and also to American independence, seemed to be in the luxuriant possibilities of “Botany Bay” recently discovered by Captain Cook and Joseph Banks in Australia. Here was another wilderness where transported convicts could be sent. But the report on the forthcoming research specifically mentions the immigration records for Tasmania: and the Tasmanian sub-colony from Botany Bay was specifically created as a place to ‘dump’ the most hardened and difficult ‘nasty pieces of work’. Hence the collection of such human ‘Tasmanian Devils’ soon resulted in a deliberate hunting down and extermination of the Aborigines.
No doubt it will be possible to turn all of this into statistics of some kind or other.

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Latest reply: Jan 19, 2014


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