Making Shameful Conquest of Itself – Shakespeare, the BBC, Bombs and the Lords

I’ll take this opportunity to answer some points and return to one or two subjects which are still being debated here.  The first is the House of Lords – not the fake row about the guillotine, but the actual debate on the second chamber.  Paul Noonan wrote : ‘You clearly haven't been listening to the debates in Parliament, when many Tory backbenchers, (from Graham Brady, Conor Burns and Philip Davies, to Rees-Mogg, Rifkind and Peter Lilley, from David Davis to Angie Bray) have outlined exactly the sort of principled opposition to an elected chamber that you say there hasn't been a "peep of".’

He’s responding to my writing on Wednesday that ‘The destruction of the real House of Lords (and the fatal undermining of the foundations of the monarchy)  was achieved by Anthony Blair when William Hague was leader of the Tory Party. For a moment, it looked as if Mr Hague was going to fight this constitutional vandalism on principle, but then he had the rug pulled out from under him by the then Lord Cranborne. The weird hybrid chamber which has resulted is unsustainable, and almost impossible to defend. And it’s noticeable that there hasn’t been a peep of principled opposition to an elected (i.e. wholly party-controlled) ‘Senate’ from the Tory Party, merely moans that it’s not a priority and they have other things to do (what are they?).’

The key word here is ‘principled’. There has been (as he notes) some *pragmatic* opposition to the Bill, much along the lines of the campaign in Australia against the abolition of the monarchy a few years ago, under the cunning slogan ‘not *this* republic. This enabled republicans to vote against what was, even on their terms, a not-very attractive new constitution, without ceasing to regard themselves as republicans.

Now, all the people Mr Noonan names were elected on The Tory manifesto of 2010, which said :“We will work to build a consensus for a mainly-elected second chamber to replace the current House of Lords, recognising that an efficient and effective second chamber should play an important role in our democracy and requires both legitimacy and public confidence”.

And here are some samples of what these heroes said:

Conor Burns said  ‘many of us are in favour of reform: we are in favour of introducing a mechanism for peers to retire; we are in favour of a limit on their numbers; and we are in favour of strengthening the independent House of Lords Appointments Commission. In short, we are in favour of some of the excellent ideas contained in his right hon. Friend Lord Steel’s draft Bill.’

He added :’ I want to see a *fully appointed* second House, and I will go into the Lobby with the aim of trying to preserve that.’

Sir Malcolm Rifkind said: ’ By all means, *let us get rid of the hereditaries*. That can be done extremely easily, by a very small Bill that would hardly be opposed by anyone.’
Graham Brady said : ’…unlike many of my hon. Friends,  *I would support an elected upper House*.

The idea that a mainly hereditary House was superior in every way (which it was, because it was entirely outside the power of the whips and had the right sort of powers for a revising chamber , that is delay and obstruction, but a veto only over major constitutional change) is now considered an absurdity by the so-called Conservative Party.  As with every piece of ground this party gives up as it retreats before the social, cultural, sexual and ultimately political revolutionaries of the 1960s left, it has no understanding of, or liking for, the things it is supposed to defend. So once it has given them up, usually by running away from a fight, it never occurs to it to recapture the ground lost. It becomes, bit by bit, the image of its opponents, until it is actually part of the revolution itself.

An appointed House is in the end indefensible. On what principle is it chosen? Either you worship at the altar of 'democracy' or you defend the force of tradition and inheritance.
But an appointed House? What principle does that stand for? The principle of the liberal elite picking its own friends, that's what. You can go on, till dusk falls and the bats come out,  about contriving an 'impartial' body to appoint your new peers, but who will appoint it? Impartiality, as the BBC has shown, tends to mean an impartial adherence to the consensus, to conventional wisdom and to a quiet life.

Here's a conservative principle, that tradition, inheritance and nobility are things which are good in themselves, coupled with a sensible scepticism about that upstart idea called ‘democracy’ – which in Parliament means that the members are chosen, controlled, rewarded and punished by a centrally-directed party machine subject to the executive.  It is precisely because of this last fact that the idea that the recent revolt was a genuine defiance of Downing Street’s wishes is so absurd. So far as I can see, Mr Jesse Norman is in trouble not for voting against the whips, but for openly proclaiming in an e-mail that a vote against restricting debate on the Bill (and so effectively throttling it)  would be welcomed by the Prime Minister.

I have no doubt that Mr Norman was quite right in saying that. Mr Cameron wants a split with the Lib Dems, and Mr Clegg wants a split with him. But both need to be able to pretend that Mr Cameron’s hand was forced by his feisty, rufty-tufty ‘right-wing’ backbenchers  (a group of people who have distinguished themselves by their poltroonery and weakness ever since 2010, so much so that they make the average Pekingese look fierce and independent)  But it is one thing to mutter it behind your hand. It is quite another to put it in an e-mail, and give the game away. After all, Mr Cameron had told another Tory MP, Andrew Griffiths, that a rebellion on this issue would not be ‘career-threatening’  .Contrast this with his treatment of rebels on the EU referendum last October , discussed here



Darmstadt and After

One of the good things about debates here is that they compel me (and some contributors) to widen our knowledge through further and deeper reading. I cannot keep up with all the recommendations passed to me on the antidepressant subject, though will try to do so soon. That is partly because I’m engrossed in
‘Going South’, Larry Elliott and Dan Atkinson’s powerful riposte to the grandiose complacency of our political classes, and many economic commentators, about the true position of this country. I’ll be writing more about it when I’ve finished it.

But I’ve been diverted by needing to read (as I should have done long ago) Max Hastings’s excellent ‘Bomber Command’. I’ve never been a great admirer of Sir Max as a journalist or editor (though I respect all war correspondents who venture directly an deliberately into combat zones). I think he has often been too ready, as a writer and an editor, to accept conventional wisdom – though of late he’s also been very brave in admitting that he has in the past been mistaken.

But his military histories are simply unequalled. He has found an extraordinarily clear and authoritative voice. He has done superb research. And his great respect for courage does not blind him to folly or wrongdoing by the courageous.

‘Bomber Command’ is in many ways a more effective polemic against Arthur Harris’s campaign than A.C. Grayling’s ‘Among the Dead Cities’. This is because it is not written as a polemic, but as an engaged and intelligent history of this episode. It is very well written  (as Hemingway used to say ‘It reads easy, because it was writ hard’) and no reader here would be disappointed by it.

The claims of the Harris camp, for the military value of area bombing, are thoroughly debunked. The terrible losses of brave aircrew are heartbreakingly described. One officer’s words, those of Flight Lieutenant Denis Hornsey of 76 Squadron, deserve to be read and remembered by all thoughtful people. He wrote in 1943:’If you live on the brink of death yourself, it is as if those who have gone have merely caught an earlier train to the same destination, and whatever that destination is, you will be sharing it soon, since you will almost certainly be catching the next one’. I won’t tell you what happened to Denis Hornsey in the end. You’ll have to read the book.

They knew, you see, that they were almost certain to die, and not just die, but die horribly in the dark and the cold, and only a few hours from the comfort of homes which in many cases they had left that morning and to which they would never return.

Harris’s own obdurate resistance to more effective types of bombing is recorded (a concentrated campaign against German fuel installations might actually have shortened the war in Europe. Harris’s supporters alwyas claim he shortened the war, but he didn’t, not least because he always objected to the use of ‘his’ bombers for such action as the raids on the synthetic fuel plants) .

Sir Max also deserves much credit for the chapter in which he describes the indefensible destruction of the city of Darmstadt on 11th September 1944 (it was not, in any significant way a military target) , and what it involved for those living there. As I know well, and as I have had confirmed in many exchanges with readers in the past few weeks, there is a dogged, almost furious resistance in this country to recognising what we actually did in Germany. I think this is because many people fear and suspect that it was wrong, and prefer their comforting illusions. So they will not open the door that leads to truth. Sir Max’s book is a door that leads to truth. Try this small sample : ‘the first terrible discoveries were made: cellars crammed with suffocated bodies – worse still, with amorphous heaps of melted and charred humanity. There were  whole families whose remains could be removed in a laundry basket. Some bodies had shrunk to a quarter of life-size. …There were blue corpses and purple corpses, black heaps of flesh and protruding bones. Kramer saw a man carrying a sack containing the heads of his entire family…’

The Pedant’s Revolt

I’d like to qualify (slightly) my praise for the new BBC Shakespeare series, having at last found the time to watch the opening play, Richard II. This is a marvellous work, crammed and stuffed with profound thought, wonderfully expressed. And I suppose any director must be allowed to play with it a bit.  But I had been alarmed by the idea (recorded in various interviews and previews)  that the actor playing Richard II had modelled much of his address and behaviour on…Michael Jackson.  I have to say this flouncing, rather effeminate figure didn’t seem to me to be feasible. Richard, remember, behaved with courage and resolve when faced by the Peasants’ Revolt and was a fearsome and devious tyrant when it suited him. This Richard seemed to be a sort of camp martyr.  I also thought the King’s death by crossbow, mimicking the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian, was plain silly and in conflict with the text. Who’d use a crossbow to murder someone in a dungeon?

Can anyone tell me why ‘Hereford’ (Bolingbroke was duke of Hereford) was pronounced throughout as ‘Hurford’? Is there some convention about this?  And why was John of Gaunt’s dying speech cut, to leave out both ‘This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings, feared by their breed and famous by their birth, renowned for their deeds as far from home, -as is the sepulchre in stubborn Jewry of the world’s ransom, blessed Mary’s Son’ and also ..’that England, which was wont to conquer others, hath made a shameful conquest of itself’.

For me, this is one of the most powerful passages anywhere in Shakespeare, which in other times many people learned by heart . The BBC couldn’t have been so short of time that they couldn’t include it all. So why cut it at all, and why particularly cut those words? 

By the way, my general criticisms of TV are not at all reduced by accepting that Shakespeare can be very effectively produced on TV. I also much appreciated the TV version of 'Tinker, Tailor'. But it has to be accepted that the enormous majority of TV is neither Shakespeare nor Alec Guinness.