poliphilo

Of course. The media are embedded with the police.

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unbleachedbrun.livejournal.com

You are such a staunch Royalist, it always amuses me.

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... that the little bastards have also vandalised Winston's statue, set fire to Palmerston's (and the Christmas tree), and desecrated the Cenotaph.

I cannot imagine how you'll contain your glee if they succeed next time, and get in the Abbey and shit on the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior.

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This is not my culture to comment on glibly, and I am not poliphilo, so I am treading here with care.

Churchill initiated the Anzac battles in Turkey during WWI that were so badly planned and so flippantly sacrificed the colonial men. He was a racist who cared nothing for the wellbeing of Indian citizens of the empire. Johann Hari does a good job of taking him down.

He had his moment during WWII, it is true, then the minute war was over he was voted out, because without the bombast of war to support him he was a poor leader.

I do not condone desecration of war memorials or cenotaphs, but WWI itself WAS a desecration, a class-biased bottomless black hole that sucked in, tortured and killed most of the young men in Western Europe as well as Russia. It was a stupid war that need never have been fought if old men had not willed young men to die in an irresponsibly trigger happy fashion by means of the wasteful and stupid means of trench warfare.

It is not ignoble to be opposed to royalism, which probably was the spark behind many futile battles, and Churchill and the Cenotaph are not immovable gods either. I was recently reading an interesting book by Geoff Dyer about how people chose to remember the Somme and it's interesting how the emphasis changes.

So I agree with poliphilo, while being opposed to damage for its own sake, from privileged people.

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... to send you a copy of my forthcoming book, The Confidence of the House: May 1940. I think you might profit by it.

You are, I fear, wrong in toto abt the Dardanelles; you are, w respect, shallow abt India; you utterly mistake the reasons why Labour won the 1945 General Election; and yr understanding of the 1914 War is, I regret to be obliged to say, markedly simplistic.

But I think perhaps we ought not clog Tony's thread too much. Tomorrow, perhaps, we may correspond if you care to do so. (I, for one, am for bed at this hour.)

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As that radical Rudyard Kipling put it:

"If any question why we died,
Tell them, because our fathers lied."

Or, in this case:

"If any ask why we're in debt
It's all because Nick Clegg's a get."

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I have never ever come across any historical source which has not indicated in not so many words that the Allied Dardanelles Campaign was a complete and utter balls-up. The thought that I might be *completely* wrong about that as opposed to *somewhat* is intriguing. (I don't think I'm wrong, but that's by the way.)

The reason I am "shallow" about India is because otherwise I'd have to write a book of a comment in response.

As for 1914 war - there I have done my homework and nothing has convinced me that all the diplomatic grandstanding could not have been avoided. Also once the retreat at Mons and the safeguarding of Paris were done, the rest of it was a truly pointless palaver on the Western Front at least with grandiose claims such as "bleeding the French white" and a method by which the attacking force was likely to have more troops killed itself than its victims. It didn't work, and rather than note it didn't work, the generals just kept pouring men into battle after battle. It's all very well to stand at the Cenotaph, but would it not have been better if these millions of men had lived, not been blinded, shellshocked, facially mutilated, crippled, or having their intestines and brains leaking out onto French and Belgian mud as they died in agony? And these included Chinese labourers who were treated as slaves, less than human. No wonder Sassoon sneered with rage at the idea that "Their name liveth forever" and Vera Brittain said "The War smashed up my life."

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Tomorrow, perhaps, we may correspond if you care to do so. (I, for one, am for bed at this hour.)

I dunno - you come across as patronising, which deters me from engaging further. But good night and good luck.

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My ancestors were Quakers. If you searched back far enough you'd probably find they marched with Cromwell's New Model Army...

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I have mixed feelings about Churchill. Yes, he provided the leadership we needed at the start of the war. On the other hand he was a political adventurer who made the wrong calls again and again over a long career. I refuse to regard him as some sort of national totem.

Palmerston I have no strong feelings about either way. I understand from bits and pieces I have read that he was a bit of a shit.

I deplore the desecration of the cenotaph. Relatives of mine served in both wars and my uncle (my only uncle) was killed in Italy.

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You know, I've had those lines running through my head for weeks now.

Your update deserves to be blazoned on a million placards.

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I'm completely in favour of direct action, but some of the incident werecounter-productive. I wonder how many of the perpetrators were genuinely students, and whether any of the participants had any preparation in dealing with infiltrators?

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ooxc.livejournal.com

Sorry - that was me

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I understand how you feel, and being rather sentimental myself am deeply sympathetic, but desecration implies consecration, doesn't it? And seems to me that the thing to which the cenotaph is consecrated is not your dead relatives, but the national cultus, militant and triumphant. Charles, his Bentley, and the cenotaph, are all of a piece, at least symbolically.

The fact that the very idea of such desecration fills wemyss with nationalistic outrage, to my mind, strongly suggests that I am right, too. You cannot pine for a more courageous and politically active youth, one day, then lament how they went too far, the next. I mean, you can, obviously, but it plays right into the hands of the ruling class as they seek to divide the opposition.

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I don't suppose there was ever a large political demonstration that was wholly under the control of its organisers.

As one of the demonstrators said yesterday the Millbank demo wouldn't have garnered nearly as much media attention if the Conservative Party HQ hadn't been attacked. These things are political theatre- and the more dramatic they are the more notice they attract.

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Good point. Some of those dead soldiers were once rowdy youths who'd have leaped at the opportunity to riot in the streets and smash things.

They'd have mocked at the cult that has grown up around them.

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we're here because
we're here because
we're here...

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If you want to find the Sergeant,
I know where he is, I know where he is, I know where he is.
If you want to find the Sergeant, I know where he is,
He's lying on the canteen floor.
I've seen him, I've seen him, lying on the canteen floor,
I've seen him, I've seen him, lying on the canteen floor.

If you want to find the Quarter-bloke
I know where he is, I know where he is, I know where he is.
If you want to find the Quarter-bloke, I know where he is,
He's miles and miles behind the line.
I've seen him, I've seen him, miles and miles and miles behind the line.
I've seen him, I've seen him, miles and miles and miles behind the line.
If you want the Sergeant-major,
I know where he is, I know where he is, I know where he is.
If you want the Sergeant-major, I know where he is.
He's tossing off the privates' rum.
I've seen him, I've seen him, tossing off the privates' rum.
I've seen him, I've seen him, tossing off the privates' rum.

If you want the C.O.,
I know where he is, I know where he is, I know where he is.
If you want the C.O., I know where he is
He is down in a deep dug-out,
I've seen him, I've seen him, down in a deep dug-out,
I've seen him, I've seen him, down in a deep dug-out.

If you want to find the old battalion,
I know where they are, I know where they are, I know where they are
If you want to find the old battalion, I know where they are,
They're hanging on the old barbed wire,
I've seen 'em, I've seen 'em, hanging on the old barbed wire.
I've seen 'em, I've seen 'em, hanging on the old barbed wire.

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My duty to the truth, however, remains.

You now say that you 'have never ever come across any historical source which has not indicated in not so many words that the Allied Dardanelles Campaign was a complete and utter balls-up': and so it was, as executed. But that is not what you first said, which is what was, simply, wrong. The campaign was badly executed; that it was badly planned, however, and planned so as to wantonly sacrifice Empire troops, is false. You needn't take my word for it: that was the view of, inter alia, Roger Keyes, who was present as a Naval officer and urged his superiors (in vain) to follow their orders; Josiah Wedgwood, who was at Helles, a Labour MP; and the young officer who was the next to last man off the beach at Suvla Bay, one Clement R. Attlee, all of whom regarded Churchill's strategy as sound and damned others for its failed implementation.

I may add that the motive for the Dardanelles Campaign was to break the Western Front stalemate you deplore.

I do not see how von Falkenhayn's purpose at Verdun in any way condemns the Allied participation in a clearly just war in which the Central Powers were the aggressors, in which Britain had treaty obligations, and in which anything less than victory should have rewarded German aggression (as it was, allowing the Germans an armistice after the Allies broke the Hindenburg Line and were advancing merely permitted the Germans to create their 'stab-in-the-back' myth - and sowed the seeds, thereby, for the Hitler War). I suppose that one can take the Bethmann-Hollweg view that Belgian neutrality was a 'scrap of paper' and thus that the war was caused by 'diplomatic grandstanding', but such a position is as squalid morally as it is false in fact.

But, there, you did say that nothing should convince you otherwise, and you seem to find controversion of your beliefs patronising, so it seems pointless to continue the attempt to correct them.

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... but I don't think your characterisation is particularly accurate either, however popular (in the worst sense) it has become.

I am rejoiced that we at least agree w/r/t the Cenotaph - if we still do agree, and the asinity of that Yank ... person ... below hasn't turned your head.

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Churchill was a genius- an extraordinary, complex, endlessly fascinating man.

The guy who swung from the flag on the cenotaph turns out to be Charlie Gilmour- a highly privileged youth- adopted son of the multi-millionaire rock guitarist, Dave Gilmour - and natural son of the actor and writer Heathcote Williams. He says he was carried away in the heat of the moment and didn't realise where he was. The more one learns about it, the more it seems like something out of Evelyn Waugh.

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Appalling that a chap reading history - even as a Tab - 'didn't recognise' the Cenotaph. Then again, he was apparently nearby when, as the Evening Standard now reports, there was an actual physical attack upon the duchess of Cornwall. http://tinyurl.com/28ltfdj. Suppose he didn't recognise HRH either.

I'm shocked, really, that you own to any solidarity with this lot of mostly middle-class, minor public school oiks and poons who believe that dustmen and charwomen want to subsidise their university fees - and who suggested, through the NUS, that HMG might best effect this middle-class subsidy by withdrawing bursaries and grants from students from families that are actually poor (and largely working-class). What the devil are you of all people doing in this galere, mon vieux?

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I haven't been following NUS politics. I have other- less boring- things to do. So the union suggested a withdrawal of bursaries? That sounds bad- but the marchers weren't marching to have bursaries withdrawn (most of them were probably unaware that this had even been mooted); they were marching against the rise in tuition fees.

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daisytells.livejournal.com

Am I to understand that the students are blaming the royalty for their tuition hikes? Isn't that just a tad inaccurate?

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Charles and Camilla's car wandered into a crowd of protesters and the protesters saw a handy establishment symbol and threw things at it.

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Y'know, once I stopped confusing literacy for intelligence, I leaned to laugh at people like you.

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My thinking exactly: it is ridiculous to think that, among all Britain's war dead, not one would have opposed the class warfare being ginned up by the Torries.

I find this obsession with the heroic dead to be invariably authoritarian, if not openly fascist. Franconic Spain was obsessed with the dead, as were the Nazis. The Valle de los Caídos is still highly controversial, as well it should be. In WWII Germany, each death's-head SS ring was to be recovered and returned to Himmler, where they were kept in a special chest. There were plans to build a huge quasi-religious memorial complex in Bavaria, but the Third Reich did not last that long.

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I'm curious: where is the evidence that the NUS wished for bursaries to be withdrawn? As far as I'm aware, part of the protest was against the withdrawal of the EMA, which is designed precisely to allow students from lower-income homes to continue with study beyond 16, and which, like Sure Start and university funding for the arts, is being scrapped by the current shower.

Also, where is the evidence that most of the protestors were 'minor public school oiks'? Very few of the protesting students from my own university (UWE, Bristol) could be so described. Nor could my fifteen-year-old son, who was kettled twice in successive protests over the last fortnight.

Another point that seems to be frequently ignored is that the current generation of students are not protesting directly on their own behalf. The ones who are going to be affected by these increases are those who are due to go to university from 2012 (and who were of course unable to vote in the election). To paint the protesters as self-interested is thus misleading.

I think you'll find that the emphasis of those who see a role for Government in education isn't on "dustmen and charwomen" (I hope you enjoy your visit to the current century, btw) subsidising students, but rather on those who have benefitted most from the profligacy of the last few years being asked to take responsibility for their own actions and inactions. More generally, many of us feel that for one generation to make its successors pay for its own mistakes is as un-Tory as it is un-egalitarian. It's also pretty un-CofE: "The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge." (Ezekiel 18 is a much underquoted chapter, I think.)

On another note, I've been searching for evidence that the Trafalgar Square tree was set alight. There are plenty of hearsay reports, but I've yet to find a single picture - and yet you'd think this would be a photographer's dream. A huge pillar of flame blazing into the December night.... wow.

Odd that no one seems to have got a shot of it.

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One of the reasons often given for pursuing hopeless wars- like the current one in Afghanistan- is that giving it up would be an admission that the heroic dead have died in vain.

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... I can't say that will trouble me, really.

There must be few things more bootless than concerning oneself with the laughter of fools.

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These things have been reported in the Telegraph and by Auntie.

I should hope that that suffices as 'evidence' even in the face of your pre-convictions.

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I've now managed to track down some pictures, thanks, and yes I can see that there was a rather ineffective attempt to set fire to the tree. (Clearly the protestor concerned hadn't been in the Scouts.) I suppose it wasn't as photogenic as Charles and Camilla, hence its being tucked away rather.

As you can see, my pre-convictions, as you call them, are quite easily swayed in the face of evidence, with or without scare quotes. If you can cite any to substantiate the claims that you made earlier and which I questioned, I will read it with interest.

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I should perhaps add that I'm not normally the sort of person whose default position is one of disbelieving news reports, but in the case of these protests the accounts of the police in particular have several times been demonstrably false. As, for example, when they denied having ridden at speed into a crowd at a previous protest - until the line of cantering horses showed up on Youtube. Or, from the other day, we had David Cameron talking about "police officers being dragged from their horse and beaten", when the video evidence showed that the one mounted officer hurt that day fell (no protester being near) and was trampled by his own mount. Such things encourage an attitude of scepticism in even the most pliant of belief.

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Invariably, those that proffer such arguments bear no risk of joining those heroic dead.

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My latest on the student demos: ‘Villains taken as heroes: Two: The burning yoofs’: http://tinyurl.com/29fdtg7.

I can now watch the rest of the Spurs match against the Rent Boys with a clear conscience.

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Thank you - and congratulations, by the way, on the draw. I appreciate your taking the time.

I have also, as it turns out, misjudged you, not having realised until now that "G. M. W. Wemyss" is a richly comic persona, rather than a human being. (I hope those scare quotes meet your exacting standards.) I feel rather foolish, in fact, and unable to say how much of what you have written in the Telegraph you would wish to stand by in real life. Given the place of publication, however, I think it's safe to say that many of your readers take you as being "on the level," so I will answer on that basis.

You actually crept under my guard, in places. I entirely agree about the outburst of sentimentality post-Diana. It bemused me at the time, and made me wonder whether I was living in a more emotional and, frankly, Mediterranean clime. On the other hand, I don't see any real connection between that and the justified anger that occasioned the recent demonstrations in London and elsewhere. The poll tax riots would be a more appropriate comparison, surely. Margery Kempe, I'm afraid to say, strikes me as a red herring. There are too many other factors involved in her particular brand of lachrymose mysticism to make the analogy enlightening - although there is of course a long tradition of civil disobedience within England that is too often smothered beneath the 15-tog duvet of post-Enlightenment rationality. Thus far, no doubt we agree.

However, you rather shifted the terms of the argument in suggesting that those who took part in acts of vandalism were largely public school pupils. That kind of Bullingdon/Woosterism is clearly something you'd know more about than I would, and I wish you joy of them, but what I asked about was the make up of the protesters as a whole. Your suggestion that other students might not be sufficiently mobile ignores a) the existence of public transport, including National Express, and b) the fact that London is not the only city in England, and that protests were also taking place in Leeds, Bristol, Sheffield, etc.

Having said that, I must record my admiration of the two arguments by which you did try to address the question more... well, 'directly' would be overstating it, but at least you gave it a go. They were wonderfully complementary.

The first was an act of erasure. As an opening move, you reduced the number of universities to Oxbridge (plus, oddly, one foreign university, Trinity College Dublin), noting that their students are largely taken from independent schools. Reluctantly, you then extended the same observation to a selection of Russell Group unis. The thousands of students who took part from other institutions were thus rendered "beneath your notice", and cut from the account. I, however, knowing many of them, can assure you that they exist and are real human beings (much like the dustmen and charwomen you so much admire), and considerably more so than your Beachcomberesque alter-ego.

The second strategy was the opposite of the first. Where the first was top-down (or haut en bas) the other was bottom-up. It asserted that everyone who took part in these (perfectly legal) protests was as guilty as the worst vandal, because they knew that this was an event where vandalism, etc., was likely to take place. That's an interesting argument, which would imply, for example, that any poor Tommy who enlists in the army is as guilty as the people who order and commit atrocities, because - let's face it - atrocities and war go together like soft-boiled egg and Marmite soldiers. I'm sure Tony Blair will be grateful to you for spreading the blame so thin.

Anyway, it's been real,

wemyss. I'm sure your article will go down a storm, amongst those with ears to hear and eyes to read.

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