Perhaps the most unexpected achievement of Lenin and Stalin was their success in holding together the vast multiracial Russian Empire created by the Tsars, so that in the end it outlasted all the other European world-empires.
In the two centuries before the First World War the Tsars expanded their empire enormous distances from its ethnic Russian base around Moscow. It now stretched all the way across Siberia to the Pacific, and took the Amur provinces from the Chinese Empire. The Baltic provinces, Finland and most of Poland were incorporated, as were the Christian kingdoms beyond the Caucasus, and the Moslem lands of Central Asia, with their ancient cities of Samarkand and Bokhara. By 1914 ethnic Russians made up less than half the population of this vast empire. Everywhere the Tsars encouraged the local ruling elites to work within the imperial structure in return for their wealth being guaranteed: Baltic German nobles, Cossack warriors, Georgian clan chiefs, even Moslem emirs. In only a few cases did the Russians meet long-term resistance. It took half a century to compel the Chechens and other tribes of the Caucasus mountains to accept Russian rule, and the Jews, of whom great numbers lived in the western regions of the empire, were always subject to discrimination and occasional persecution, with the result that hundreds of thousands of Jews emigrated, and others became revolutionaries. The Poles never accepted Tsarist rule, and from time to time they rose in rebellion and were crushed with great ferocity. (I once visited a Polish museum in Berkshire. The theme was entirely anti-Russian: you would never have learnt from it that Germany had twice overrun Poland in the past century; nor was there any mention of the once-great Jewish community in Poland)
Lenin and the Bolsheviks seized power in 1917, but initially they controlled only the ethnic Russian heartland around Moscow and up to Petrograd. Vast areas had to be surrendered to the Germans by the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in early 1918, but after a vicious and enormously costly civil war, and the collapse of the German Empire, it turned out that almost all the old Tsarist empire had been recovered. Finland and the Baltic lands had been lost. The trans-Caucasian territories of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan attempted to break away, but wasted their energies quarrelling amongst themselves, and were forcibly incoporated into the Soviet Union a few years later. Poland, however, successfully beat off an invasion. By this time, however, the empires of Germany, Austria and Turkey had collapsed, but the Russian Empire was still there, albeit now in Communist garb. The national minorities in the frontier areas, particularly in the Ukraine, suffered particularly in Stalin's collectivisation of agriculture and Great Purge.
The end of the Second World War saw Stalin not only regain almost all the territories lost earlier, but also establish a cordon of client-states in central Europe, where any sign of independence was ruthlessly crushed. Only Finland of the old Tsarist empire now remained outside Soviet control. What was left of the ancient Russian Jewish community was once again persecuted in Stalin's last years, and several of the more awkward racial minorities; Chechens, Crimean Tartars and others; were deported to Siberia, where enormous numbers of them died before Khrushchev eventually let them return to their homelands. Local nationalism was a topic never to be officially discussed in the Soviet Union.
In the end, the Tsarist-Soviet Empire outlived even the British and French empires, and only came to an end with the collapse of communism in 1989-91. But the behaviour of Putin's government in Chechnia, Georgia and the Ukraine suggests that Russia's rulers are even now not fully reconciled to their empire's demise.
Thursday, 11 October 2012
Thursday, 4 October 2012
John Stuart Mill on Liberty
John Stuart Mill (1806-73) was the son of James Mill, a disciple of Jeremy Bentham, the founder of the political philosophy of Utilitarianism; being the theory that all actions should be judged solely by whether they promote “the greatest good of the greatest number”. John Stuart Mill (hereinafter referred to simply as “Mill”) was brought up according to his father’s unique educational theories, with the result that whilst still a teenager he was writing articles on economics for serious journals, and then at the age of 20 suffered a nervous breakdown which caused him to modify his beliefs. Before this, he had been arrested for distributing pamphlets on family planning and briefly imprisoned as a pornographer. In 1865 Mill was the only philosopher ever to be elected to Parliament, during which time he introduced a motion calling for votes for women, which attracted little support and much ridicule. His advocacy of this, and other deeply controversial matters such as easier divorce, resulted in him losing his seat in the 1868 general election. His most famous work, “On Liberty”, was written in 1859 as a tribute and memorial to his wife, Harriet, who had died the year before.
In this book, Mill advances a powerful plea in favour of a very wide degree of freedom, both of ideas and of lifestyle, but many of his arguments seem rather strange nowadays. Right at the start he announces that he will not attempt to argue that there is any “right” to freedom. “Human rights” was considered by the utilitarians to be a meaningless metaphysical concept (“Nonsense on stilts” according to Bentham): instead, Mill hopes to show that freedom is in the interests of man as a “progressive being”. The whole notion of “progress” is central to Mill’s thought: I shall deal with it at the end of this essay.
Mill shows his Victorian optimism by maintaining that there is no longer any need to defend freedom against a tyrannous government, but instead he detects new dangers in the more democratic society which was beginning to emerge, particularly what he calls “tyranny of the majority”. Society itself, he argues, now exerts powerful pressure upon us to make us conform to certain norms of behaviour, which are frequently mere prejudices without any rational base, thus fettering not only personal development but also changes in society. A democratic society, says Mill, has no more right to compel me to obey than does a single dictator. Mill’s other central tenet is that the only justification for coercing me is to prevent me from doing harm to others (what he calls “other-regarding actions“). “Self-regarding actions”, which affect only me (such as, what clothes I choose to wear) must be absolutely free. Coercing someone “for their own good” is justifiable only when dealing with children or lunatics; it is no way to treat civilized adults.
The second chapter of the book consists of a lengthy argument in favour of free speech and discussion. Nobody, says Mill, ever has the right to suppress new ideas, because that implies infallibility by the censor, and no-one should ever claim to be infallible. On the contrary, new ideas should always be welcomed, since without them there would be stagnation. There is, of course, no obligation to accept new ideas as true, but provided we give them serious consideration before deciding to reject them, something useful has been achieved, since we have been exercising our “mental muscles” in the process. Thus, even erroneous ideas can have an educative effect. Now this is all very well, but I do not see how it could be employed in an argument about, let us say, the censorship of pornography. Also, one will search in vain in Mill’s book for any discussion of how far the state may impose censorship in the interests of “national security”. The mid-Victorians felt so secure that they had no need for an Official Secrets Act!
Mill then moves on to discuss what we might call “liberty of lifestyle”, and which he calls “experiments in living”. He produces a number of different arguments in favour. Man, he says, is not a machine, but should be like a tree, allowed to develop and grow after his own nature. Pressure to conform to custom tends to produce mere “ape-like imitation”, and has no educative effect, whereas “genius can only breathe freely in an atmosphere of freedom”. We should not therefore worry too much about what the neighbours think of us. He goes as far as to call the English middle classes “a collective mediocrity”. The main argument, of course, is that without people who dare to live their lives in an unconventional manner, society will tend to stagnate and progress will come to an end.
In the remaining chapters Mill discusses a number of specific problems, such as alcohol, gambling and even (rather tentatively) deviant sexual behaviour. In each instance he is against any outright prohibition. The argument about alcohol may stand as typical. Undoubtedly, drunkenness is a matter of public concern; it leads to crime and accidents; alcoholics may be unable to hold down a job and so their families will have to be supported from public funds. Does it therefore follow that alcohol should be totally prohibited, and I should be forbidden to have an occasional glass of beer? Certainly not! Most people who have an occasional drink do not become alcoholics, any more than most people who have a flutter on the Derby every year become compulsive gamblers. Perhaps confirmed alcoholics (or compulsive gamblers) should be treated differently from other people; but otherwise prohibition would be a gross interference with the freedom of the purchaser. We may wonder whether Mill’s arguments are applicable to modern concerns which he does not discuss, such as drugs or firearms. Mill also opposes the enforcement of Sunday Observance laws, and says that the Mormons should be allowed to live their own lives in Utah free of persecution. For deviant sexual behaviour, Mill would appear to side with the lady who said, according to legend, “Just as long as they don’t do it in the streets and frighten the horses!” He thinks anything should be permitted, provided it takes place in private and only freely consenting adults are involved. It is not easy to see how these freedoms can be defended without some postulation of “human rights”.
Finally Mill gets himself into a dilemma over the question of education. It is clearly highly utilitarian and conducive to progress that all children should go to school; but this will involve some coercion (since many parents would prefer their children to be out earning money), it will cost a great deal of money, which will have to be met from taxation, and will involve a massive extension of state power, which Mill always opposes. Furthermore he does not trust the state to run schools: no state could resist the opportunity this would provide for indoctrination through propaganda, and state schools would inevitably become “a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another”. Mill would have had in mind the schools of France under the Emperor Napoleon III, but his fears can well be applied to later and more totalitarian dictatorships.
The central concept in Mill’s ideology is “Progress”, and this obsession he shared with many contemporary intellectuals, not least Karl Marx. The mid-Victorians were aware that the society they lived in had changed very fast over the previous half-century, and that it had developed unprecedented manufacturing power which was enabling them to take over the world. Other civilisations have been left far behind. How and why had this happened? And how to ensure that this progress continued? Mill believes he has the answer. Progress, he thinks, can only come through individuals who dare to think and act differently from the masses around them: conformity is likely to bring stagnation and an end to progress. He clearly has no faith in the ability of the state to plan and implement progress, and he specifically cites China of his day as a dreadful warning of how societies which are too dominated by tradition will fall behind their more dynamic neighbours. Marx in the “Communist Manifesto” sings a hymn of praise to capitalism, which has taken mankind onto a higher level of civilisation than anything seen before. But Marx believes that capitalism will soon form a drag on any further progress, and will be replaced by a superior form of civilisation, namely, “Communist society”. Forty years later, Marx’s friend Engels (in “Socialism: Utopian and Scientific”) outlined how after the revolution the new Communist state would plan progress. This was not a notion which would have met with Mill’s approval.
Mill's intention, I am sure, was to create a new basis for morality, which would not be founded on the traditional base of "God commands this." Like all Utilitarians, Mill was an unbeliever. The foundation of his moral code was that the only actions which can be proved to be wrong are those which injure other people - and do them actual harm; not simply offend their religious and moral standards. This is not a foolproof standard of judgement, but is probably better than any other.
In another book, "Considerations on Representative Government", Mill discusses the issue of democracy and freedom. In a democracy, "tyranny of the majority" takes on a political form. Mill argues that a democratic majority has no more right to restrict my personal liberty than does a single dictator. I hope to deal with this matter in a future essay.
In this book, Mill advances a powerful plea in favour of a very wide degree of freedom, both of ideas and of lifestyle, but many of his arguments seem rather strange nowadays. Right at the start he announces that he will not attempt to argue that there is any “right” to freedom. “Human rights” was considered by the utilitarians to be a meaningless metaphysical concept (“Nonsense on stilts” according to Bentham): instead, Mill hopes to show that freedom is in the interests of man as a “progressive being”. The whole notion of “progress” is central to Mill’s thought: I shall deal with it at the end of this essay.
Mill shows his Victorian optimism by maintaining that there is no longer any need to defend freedom against a tyrannous government, but instead he detects new dangers in the more democratic society which was beginning to emerge, particularly what he calls “tyranny of the majority”. Society itself, he argues, now exerts powerful pressure upon us to make us conform to certain norms of behaviour, which are frequently mere prejudices without any rational base, thus fettering not only personal development but also changes in society. A democratic society, says Mill, has no more right to compel me to obey than does a single dictator. Mill’s other central tenet is that the only justification for coercing me is to prevent me from doing harm to others (what he calls “other-regarding actions“). “Self-regarding actions”, which affect only me (such as, what clothes I choose to wear) must be absolutely free. Coercing someone “for their own good” is justifiable only when dealing with children or lunatics; it is no way to treat civilized adults.
The second chapter of the book consists of a lengthy argument in favour of free speech and discussion. Nobody, says Mill, ever has the right to suppress new ideas, because that implies infallibility by the censor, and no-one should ever claim to be infallible. On the contrary, new ideas should always be welcomed, since without them there would be stagnation. There is, of course, no obligation to accept new ideas as true, but provided we give them serious consideration before deciding to reject them, something useful has been achieved, since we have been exercising our “mental muscles” in the process. Thus, even erroneous ideas can have an educative effect. Now this is all very well, but I do not see how it could be employed in an argument about, let us say, the censorship of pornography. Also, one will search in vain in Mill’s book for any discussion of how far the state may impose censorship in the interests of “national security”. The mid-Victorians felt so secure that they had no need for an Official Secrets Act!
Mill then moves on to discuss what we might call “liberty of lifestyle”, and which he calls “experiments in living”. He produces a number of different arguments in favour. Man, he says, is not a machine, but should be like a tree, allowed to develop and grow after his own nature. Pressure to conform to custom tends to produce mere “ape-like imitation”, and has no educative effect, whereas “genius can only breathe freely in an atmosphere of freedom”. We should not therefore worry too much about what the neighbours think of us. He goes as far as to call the English middle classes “a collective mediocrity”. The main argument, of course, is that without people who dare to live their lives in an unconventional manner, society will tend to stagnate and progress will come to an end.
In the remaining chapters Mill discusses a number of specific problems, such as alcohol, gambling and even (rather tentatively) deviant sexual behaviour. In each instance he is against any outright prohibition. The argument about alcohol may stand as typical. Undoubtedly, drunkenness is a matter of public concern; it leads to crime and accidents; alcoholics may be unable to hold down a job and so their families will have to be supported from public funds. Does it therefore follow that alcohol should be totally prohibited, and I should be forbidden to have an occasional glass of beer? Certainly not! Most people who have an occasional drink do not become alcoholics, any more than most people who have a flutter on the Derby every year become compulsive gamblers. Perhaps confirmed alcoholics (or compulsive gamblers) should be treated differently from other people; but otherwise prohibition would be a gross interference with the freedom of the purchaser. We may wonder whether Mill’s arguments are applicable to modern concerns which he does not discuss, such as drugs or firearms. Mill also opposes the enforcement of Sunday Observance laws, and says that the Mormons should be allowed to live their own lives in Utah free of persecution. For deviant sexual behaviour, Mill would appear to side with the lady who said, according to legend, “Just as long as they don’t do it in the streets and frighten the horses!” He thinks anything should be permitted, provided it takes place in private and only freely consenting adults are involved. It is not easy to see how these freedoms can be defended without some postulation of “human rights”.
Finally Mill gets himself into a dilemma over the question of education. It is clearly highly utilitarian and conducive to progress that all children should go to school; but this will involve some coercion (since many parents would prefer their children to be out earning money), it will cost a great deal of money, which will have to be met from taxation, and will involve a massive extension of state power, which Mill always opposes. Furthermore he does not trust the state to run schools: no state could resist the opportunity this would provide for indoctrination through propaganda, and state schools would inevitably become “a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another”. Mill would have had in mind the schools of France under the Emperor Napoleon III, but his fears can well be applied to later and more totalitarian dictatorships.
The central concept in Mill’s ideology is “Progress”, and this obsession he shared with many contemporary intellectuals, not least Karl Marx. The mid-Victorians were aware that the society they lived in had changed very fast over the previous half-century, and that it had developed unprecedented manufacturing power which was enabling them to take over the world. Other civilisations have been left far behind. How and why had this happened? And how to ensure that this progress continued? Mill believes he has the answer. Progress, he thinks, can only come through individuals who dare to think and act differently from the masses around them: conformity is likely to bring stagnation and an end to progress. He clearly has no faith in the ability of the state to plan and implement progress, and he specifically cites China of his day as a dreadful warning of how societies which are too dominated by tradition will fall behind their more dynamic neighbours. Marx in the “Communist Manifesto” sings a hymn of praise to capitalism, which has taken mankind onto a higher level of civilisation than anything seen before. But Marx believes that capitalism will soon form a drag on any further progress, and will be replaced by a superior form of civilisation, namely, “Communist society”. Forty years later, Marx’s friend Engels (in “Socialism: Utopian and Scientific”) outlined how after the revolution the new Communist state would plan progress. This was not a notion which would have met with Mill’s approval.
Mill's intention, I am sure, was to create a new basis for morality, which would not be founded on the traditional base of "God commands this." Like all Utilitarians, Mill was an unbeliever. The foundation of his moral code was that the only actions which can be proved to be wrong are those which injure other people - and do them actual harm; not simply offend their religious and moral standards. This is not a foolproof standard of judgement, but is probably better than any other.
In another book, "Considerations on Representative Government", Mill discusses the issue of democracy and freedom. In a democracy, "tyranny of the majority" takes on a political form. Mill argues that a democratic majority has no more right to restrict my personal liberty than does a single dictator. I hope to deal with this matter in a future essay.
Wednesday, 26 September 2012
Emma Pooley
Emma was born in October 1982, brought up in Norwich and educated at Trinity Hall college, Cambridge, where she graduated in Engineering. She was originally a cross-country runner, and gained a “Blue” for triathlon; only taking up cycling seriously after a foot injury forced her to train on an exercise bike. She hardly has the physique of a top cyclist, being very small (5 feet 1 inch high, and weighing less than 8 stone), which means that she sometimes has difficulty generating the sheer power needed on the flat, but has the compensation of making her one of the very best hill-climbers in the world.
Emma currently lives in Zurich, where she is studying for a Ph.D. in geotechnical engineering at ETH university. Her supervisor (Sarah Springman, herself a noted triathlete) is, she says, is “very understanding”, allowing her to spend the winter training in Australia.
She joined a professional team in 2005 and first represented Britain at the 2007 World Championships. In the 2008 Olympics her role in the road race was tactical, setting it up for Nicole Cooke to win the event, but Emma then came into her own in the Time Trial, where she took second place and a silver medal. There was a reprise of this in London this year, where she again helped to protect the sprinters (we all remember Emma leading the peloton over Box Hill) and thus set up Lizzie Armistead’s second place. But Emma was unable to match her Beijing success in the Time Trial: the terrain was too flat to play to her strengths, and she finished sixth.
At the World Championships in Holland in September, Emma was extremely disappointed with her performance (4th in the time trial, 15th in the road race, and leading her sponsorship team to 3rd place in the team event), though in fact this was far better than was managed by any other senior British cyclist, male or female. She said she felt she had “disimproved” over the past year, and began to talk about taking a year off from the sport, or even retiring completely, to concentrate on her academic studies; which, she tells us, concern mining waste and related matters.
She is very forthright at interviews. Her disappointment at not winning comes through strongly, though she has never ever voiced a word of criticism at a team-mate, or even complained about the conditions; instead she invariably places the blame on herself, for not doing better. On the other hand, she does not hide her anger at the lack of official encouragement for women’s cycling, and with good cause: her many successes outside the Olympics have generally been ignored by the media, all the teams she had joined have quickly folded, and the financial rewards for the women are pitifully small compared with those available for the men (though cycling, sadly, is by no means unique in this discrimination: see also women’s cricket, football, etc).
Emma is clearly a serious-minded and highly intelligent lady. As well as her academic achievements she speaks several languages, and has made a video for Amnesty International, appealing for help for Fatima Hussein Badi, held without trial in the Yemen accused of murdering her husband, and threatened with rape if she does not confess. We could do with more people like Emma in professional sport! If she does retire, her motives will be understandable, but she will be greatly missed.
Here are a few pictures of Emma.
Postscript: Happily, Emma decided not to retire quite yet! She won two silver medals at the Commonwealth Games this summer, and also completed her Ph.D. Only now has she decided to give up competitive cycling. Instead, she intends to concentrate on Triathlon!
January 2015: Emma was on the winning team of "Celebrity University Challenge" for BBC television, representing her old college of Trinity Hall, Cambridge!
This is Emma today: still cycling up mountains and loving it!
Friday, 21 September 2012
Ullswater
This is a tribute to my father, who lived for almost half a century at Penrith in the Lake District, a few miles from Ullswater.
He took a great many photographs of the lake, of which this is a very small selection
As you can see, he was particularly interested in trying to capture the effects of light on and around the lake at different times of the year.
I hope you like them
He took a great many photographs of the lake, of which this is a very small selection
As you can see, he was particularly interested in trying to capture the effects of light on and around the lake at different times of the year.
I hope you like them
Saturday, 8 September 2012
Edward Heath and Madame Furtseva
Yekaterina Alexeyevna Furtseva was Soviet Minister of Culture in the days of Nikita Khrushchev, and, incidentally, the only woman in the history of the U.S.S.R. ever to reach the dizzy heights of the Politburo. When this appalling woman visited London, Harold Macmillan decided that Edward Heath was the most appropriate minister to arrange an itinerary for her. But all did not go according to plan. When Heath incautiously asked a question about Stravinsky's ballets there was a prolonged debate in the Soviet camp as to whether Stravinsky would ever become ideologically acceptable enough for performance in Moscow. Worse, he proposed a visit to Henry Moore's studio. This brought some urgent questions. Was Moore a "modern" sculptor? Yes. Did that mean his sculptures had holes in them? Again, yes.
"In that case", Heath was informed, "It would be quite improper for a Soviet Minister of Culture to visit Henry Moore's studio! I think it would be better if we cancelled all the arrangements for the rest of the week!"
This raises the question: why are dictatorial regimes always so afraid of the arts?
(Source: Edward Heath: "Music")
"In that case", Heath was informed, "It would be quite improper for a Soviet Minister of Culture to visit Henry Moore's studio! I think it would be better if we cancelled all the arrangements for the rest of the week!"
This raises the question: why are dictatorial regimes always so afraid of the arts?
(Source: Edward Heath: "Music")
Thursday, 6 September 2012
P. G. Wodehouse and Fascism
The great comic writer P. G. Wodehouse was living in Le Touquet when he was captured in the German offensive in 1940. His significance was realised by Doctor Goebbels's propaganda department and, very foolishly, he agreed to make some radio broadcasts for the Nazis. Although the actual content of these was perfectly innocuous, there was a massive popular outcry in Britain, some institutions banned his books, and there were demands that he should be prosecuted as a traitor. In the summer of 1945 George Orwell felt obliged to write an essay, “In Defence of P. G. Wodehouse”, arguing that Wodehouse was no more than a complete innocent in political understanding. Some people, said Orwell, had detected “Fascist tendencies” in Wodehouse’s stories; whereas in fact there were no post-1914 tendencies at all! Eventually the fuss died down, but Wodehouse moved to the United States and took up American citizenship. Near the end of his life he was given a knighthood, showing that all was now forgiven.
However, I do not think Orwell was right. In “The Code of the Woosters”, which is surely the best of the “Jeeves and Wooster” novels (and which, for some reason, Orwell fails to mention at all in his essay), Wodehouse does introduce an actual Fascist character, by name of Roderick Spode. It is instructive to see how he is treated.
Bertie Wooster describes his first impression on seeing Spode:-
“It was as if nature had intended to make a gorilla, and had changed its mind at the last moment …… I don’t know if you have ever seen those pictures in the papers of Dictators with tilted chins and blazing eyes, inflaming the populace with fiery words on the occasion of the opening of a new skittle alley, but that was what he reminded me of”.
The exquisite bathos of “skittle alley” sets the tone for how Wodehouse will proceed to demolish Spode throughout the book.
Spode does have ambitions of becoming a dictator. As Bertie’s friend Gussie explains:-
“Roderick Spode is the founder and head of the Saviours of Britain, a Fascist organisation better known as the Black Shorts. His general idea is to make himself a Dictator.”
Bertie interposes: “By the way, when you say “shorts”, you mean “shirts”, surely?”
“No. By the time Spode formed his association, there were no shirts left. He and his adherents wear black shorts”.
“Footer bags, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“How perfectly foul.”
Once again, the perfect note of bathos in “footer bags” ("Footer" being the Etonian slang for football). And there is more to come. Spode bullies and intimidates Bertie and Gussie, and at one point is about to beat Bertie up, but Bertie is able to turn the tables and blackmail Spode into submission. Jeeves had discovered Spode’s guilty secret: that he has another career as a talented and successful designer of ladies’ knickers!
“Good Lord, Jeeves! No wonder he didn’t want a thing like that to come out.”
“No, sir. It would unquestionably jeopardise his authority over his followers.”
“You can’t be a successful Dictator and design women’s underclothing. One thing or the other. Not both.”
“Precisely, sir.”
With this weapon to hand, Bertie is able to tell Spode in no uncertain terms what he thinks of him:-
“It is about time that some public-spirited person came along and told you where you got off. The trouble with you, Spode, is that because you have succeeded in inducing a handful of half-wits to disfigure the London scene by going about in black shorts, you think you’re someone. You hear them shouting “Heil Spode!” and you imagine it is the Voice of the People. That is where you make your bloomer. What the Voice of the People is saying is: “Look at that frightful ass Spode swanking about in footer bags! Did you ever in your puff see such a perfect perisher?””
How could anyone who read these words ever imagine that their author was pro-Fascist? There could hardly be a more ruthless, and perceptive, hatchet-job. One can only wish that all would-be dictators could be addressed in this manner!
However, I do not think Orwell was right. In “The Code of the Woosters”, which is surely the best of the “Jeeves and Wooster” novels (and which, for some reason, Orwell fails to mention at all in his essay), Wodehouse does introduce an actual Fascist character, by name of Roderick Spode. It is instructive to see how he is treated.
Bertie Wooster describes his first impression on seeing Spode:-
“It was as if nature had intended to make a gorilla, and had changed its mind at the last moment …… I don’t know if you have ever seen those pictures in the papers of Dictators with tilted chins and blazing eyes, inflaming the populace with fiery words on the occasion of the opening of a new skittle alley, but that was what he reminded me of”.
The exquisite bathos of “skittle alley” sets the tone for how Wodehouse will proceed to demolish Spode throughout the book.
Spode does have ambitions of becoming a dictator. As Bertie’s friend Gussie explains:-
“Roderick Spode is the founder and head of the Saviours of Britain, a Fascist organisation better known as the Black Shorts. His general idea is to make himself a Dictator.”
Bertie interposes: “By the way, when you say “shorts”, you mean “shirts”, surely?”
“No. By the time Spode formed his association, there were no shirts left. He and his adherents wear black shorts”.
“Footer bags, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“How perfectly foul.”
Once again, the perfect note of bathos in “footer bags” ("Footer" being the Etonian slang for football). And there is more to come. Spode bullies and intimidates Bertie and Gussie, and at one point is about to beat Bertie up, but Bertie is able to turn the tables and blackmail Spode into submission. Jeeves had discovered Spode’s guilty secret: that he has another career as a talented and successful designer of ladies’ knickers!
“Good Lord, Jeeves! No wonder he didn’t want a thing like that to come out.”
“No, sir. It would unquestionably jeopardise his authority over his followers.”
“You can’t be a successful Dictator and design women’s underclothing. One thing or the other. Not both.”
“Precisely, sir.”
With this weapon to hand, Bertie is able to tell Spode in no uncertain terms what he thinks of him:-
“It is about time that some public-spirited person came along and told you where you got off. The trouble with you, Spode, is that because you have succeeded in inducing a handful of half-wits to disfigure the London scene by going about in black shorts, you think you’re someone. You hear them shouting “Heil Spode!” and you imagine it is the Voice of the People. That is where you make your bloomer. What the Voice of the People is saying is: “Look at that frightful ass Spode swanking about in footer bags! Did you ever in your puff see such a perfect perisher?””
How could anyone who read these words ever imagine that their author was pro-Fascist? There could hardly be a more ruthless, and perceptive, hatchet-job. One can only wish that all would-be dictators could be addressed in this manner!
Saturday, 1 September 2012
Americans in London
I was told this story by an American couple I met in Prague. It's an anecdote I would very much like to believe; and I can only hope they weren't talking about themselves.
An American lady in London asked, "At road crossings, when the little green man comes up, why is there a bleep-bleep-bleep noise?"
"That's to help blind people", she was told.
"Ah!" she replied, "But in America, we don't let blind people drive!"
An American lady in London asked, "At road crossings, when the little green man comes up, why is there a bleep-bleep-bleep noise?"
"That's to help blind people", she was told.
"Ah!" she replied, "But in America, we don't let blind people drive!"
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