An illustrated and allusive guide to Noto55

Malcolm is frequently convinced that his iTunes feed is hexed: its degree of appropriate prescience is inspired.

He was about to post on the iniquitous 55% rule (see previous posts below) when John Cash started to belt out Remember the Alamo:



Tangentially relevant: Noto55 is a small Alamo. We may not win; but it is a strike for a significant freedom. Anyway, Cash is worthwhile at all times, any pretext to drag him into the discussion should be snaffled. And he is a one heck of a lot more impressive than the dismal prospect of Marty Robbins chirruping up on the same topic, with Paul Francis Webster's doggerel (he did much better elsewhere) to Dmitri Tiomkin's tune:

In the sand he drew a line with his army saber
Out of a hundred eighty five not a soldier crossed the line.
With his banners a dancin' in the dawn's golden light,
Santa Ana came prancin' on a horse that was black as the night ...

Well, we're not that far gone yet. But there is a line-in-the-sand. And, according to the Daily Mail, we have our Colonel Travis:

... a number of MPs want to retain the right to kick out a government by a simple majority of one, in a no confidence vote.

David Davis - once Mr Cameron's leadership rival - is understood to be among a growing number of politicians of the Left and Right opposed to the 'stitch-up'.

Davis is a Tory, and a rank one (so that's two strikes against him in Malcolm's elephantine memory). He is, however, an honourable man. Malcolm had to respect him when he went on his Quixotic by-election campaign against ID-cards and the rest of the surveillance society.

Notice that the iTunes playlist has now segued to equally-magnificent Jacques Brel:



If Davis is mustering, in the backwoods of Tory opinion something stirs. Over on Malcolm Redfellow's Home Service, our guide, philosopher and friend is noting two Tory grandees girding for a punch-up on the same issue.

Good on them all. Sphere: Related Content

The not-so-good and not-so-great, number 14

Cathal Brugha

Malcolm had no intention of including this one in the catalogue. That's for two good reasons: Malcolm sees Bugha as a tragic and honourable figure; and, to do him justice in a small space, it needed thought. However, he was challenged to do so by a comment from Dewi Harries. So: here goes (on the assumption that what follows is open to subsequent expansion and correction).

The basic facts of Brugha's life are well-established and well-known. He was born into a large family: Thomas Burgess, who was English by birth, and Marianne, née Flynn, produced a brood of fourteen. It was a cultured background: the father was an art-dealer. When the father's business failed, the young Charles Burgess left Belvedere College and went into trade. He was already well into the nationalist movement, becoming a member of the Gaelic League by 1899, and adopted the Hibernicised version of his name. His ecclesiastical candle-manufactory, Lalors, prospered: pictures of Brugha (as right), in or out of uniform, suggest the successful, dapper executive.

He took the IRB oath, and by 1913 was a lieutenant in the Volunteers: one of his early actions was at the Howth gun-running. He was out at Easter 1916, Eamonn Ceannt's second-in-command at the South Dublin Union. He suffered multiple wounds (perhaps as many as sixteen gunshots and a granade blast), and was not expected to survive. His recovery was much speedier once the internment order on him was revoked in August 1916: go figure. Then we have the first clue of something really significant: Brugha's immediate effort was to re-form a core leadership for the Volunteers.

Inevitably, at this moment, there was considerable repositioning going on inside the nationalist movement. Executions and internment meant that, throughout much of 1916-17, the nationalist movement lacked direction. Nor was there any agreed Sinn Féin policy. Factions set republicans against twin-monarchists. Ironically, the British demonising of Sinn Féin was as much the unifying force as anything else. Count Plunkett (father of the executed Joseph, and himself victor in the North Roscommon by-election, but, in Diarmaid Ferriter's brusque dismissal, "contrary and egotistical") was a key and divisive figurehead, to whom Brugha attached himself.

The immediate target for the Volunteers was to displace the Redmondities: further by-election victories in South Longford and East Clare were completed by the anti-conscription campaign of spring 1918. Into this policy vacuum stepped Brugha, the executive, as a pivotal figure. He appears, for example, alongside Plunkett at anti-conscription rallies and meetings, notably that at Beresford Place (10 June 1917, when he was arrested) demanding the release of the republican prisoners in English gaols.

What then ensued was a notable parting of the ways, which reverberates down to the present day. De Valera, Ashe and Brugha were set on moulding the Volunteers into a national political movement. Meanwhile, the likes of the rising Michael Collins were looking to the application of "physical force", derived from the IRB network and its traditions.

Take time out to consider a key passage in Tim Pat Coogan's seminal hagiography. Collins was:

incurring the wrath of Cathal Brugha. Given the differences in their attitudes to almost everything that mattered Collins would inevitably have had to clash with the formulaic, rule-book approach of the older man. Brugha was a 'static warfare' man. He still though of fighting in GPO terms. It's doubtful if he ever seriously believed they could win the war. For him, carrying on the fight was the important thing, keeping faith with the men who had raised the standard in other generations. He opposed Collins over ambushing.

Curious, then, that Brugha spent a fair bit of 1921 in London researching ways to murder the whole British Cabinet. However, what that boils down to is this (and the story has moved on a while):

Collins wanted to strike a spectacular blow like that of the Indian revolutionaries who had bombed and wounded the Viceroy Lord Hardinge in 1912 as he ceremonially entered New Delhi on an elephane, Among the plans Collins considered was assassinating French on the review stand during an Armistice Day march-past on 11 November 1919. The day before, McKee [Collins's number two] told Mick McDonnell that the gunman, firing from an office opposite the Bank of Ireland, would not escape alive. He then asked McDonnell to do the shooting! After a minute's hesitation McDonnell agreed, but he did not sleep that night. Next morning he was both surprised and relieved when McKee said Cathal Brugha had vetoed the operation because it endangered civilian bystanders.

Something of profound importance had happened in the command structure. It goes back to that aching divide between the aims of the political Sinn Féin and of the physical-force IRB. It can be precisely traced and dated; and it explains the cleavage between Brugha and Collins.

The IRB had aligned with Sinn Féin on the assumption that it was just another nationalist grouping that might be employed to IRB ends. At the Sinn Féin Feis of October 1917, the IRB had gone along with Sinn Féin's intention of securing international recognition of an independent Irish republic, but the Hungarian "twin monarchy"model still had supporters. The October 1917 pledge was hedged by the condition that the Irish people could then:

by Referendum freely chose their own form of Government.

The Party was republican from the 1916 Declaration: now it had to recognise what being democratic involved. The reformed Volunteers, effectively commanded by IRB men like Collins and Richard Mulcahy, might affirm:

The Irish Volunteers are the Army of the Irish Republic

but they had a separate agenda. As Tim Pat Coogan notes:

The Volunteers had their own executive and constitution, and though there was some overlapping of membership between individual volunteers and other national organisations they had a largely autonomous existence from Sinn Féin and the Dáil. The first shooting of policemen, for instance, was not sanctioned by the Dáil.

Which brings us to 21st January 1919.

In Dublin, at 3.30 p.m., the First Dáil convened in Dublin's Mansion House. Since de Valera (the President of Sinn Féin) and Arthur Griffith were both "Féghlas ag Gallaibh", in English gaols, so Cathal Brugha was installed as Príomh Aire pro tempore.

That same day, at Soloheadbeg, a quarry outside of Tipperary a small group of Volunteers, led by Dan Breen and Sean Tracy, ambushed a cart of gelignite, killing the two armed police guards. This is commonly regarded as the start of the "War of Independence".

Soloheadbeg was an independent action by the Tipperary Brigade: they had not consulted or informed Dublin; but one aim of the ambush was to embarrass the new Dáil into aggressive action.

Collins was the crucial figure here. He was now simultaneously president of the IRB, the Dáil's minister of finance, and the Volunteers' director of intelligence and adjutant-general. He personally condoned the Tipperary Brigade's action; but was under orders from the seven-man Military Council to condemn it. Richard Mulcahy (Commandant of the Dublin Brigade,and about to be Chief of Staff of the IRA) was incensed by Solobheadbeg: he had wanted the Dáil to take power peacefully, without sideshows or distractions, to mark a benign transition to democracy. Collins's ambiguous behaviour was seen as:

a formal reprimand with one hand and a pat on the back with the other.

When de Valera (who escaped from Lincoln gaol on 3rd February, and was at liberty after the freeing of the republican prisoners on 6th March) was installed as head of the Ministry, Cathal Brugha became the Minister of Defence. This set the scene for a confrontation.

It now became essential to establish the command structure. Dorothy Macardle, in 1937 and re-writing history in de Valera's graven image, explained things thus:

There was some opposition to the control exercised by the IRB. Cathal Brugha, who had belonged for some time to the Brotherhood, became antagonistic to it. De Valéra's membership had never been more than nominal and he had avoided being used by the Brotherhood in any other way than as an officer of the Volunteers. He determined, now, to cease all connection with the secret society and tried to persuade his close associates, Harry Boland and Austin Stack, to withdraw from it. He and Brugha maintained that the movement ought henceforth to be an open one and that no one who accepted responsibility as an elected representative ought to be subject to secret control.

That is belied by de Valera's own actions. On 10th April he declared that the:

Minister for Defence is of course in close association with the Voluntary military forces which are the foundation of the National Army.

It was left to Brugha to enforce the line. On 2oth August, with de Valera in America, he proposed to the Dáil that TDs and Volunteers should take an oath:

"to support and defend the Irish Republic, which is Dáil Éireann, against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same".

With Arthur Griffith presiding, and supporting the oath, it was agreed. Even so, the commanders of the separate brigades of the Volunteers were left to apply and enforce it.

De Valera did not come round to the issue until March, 1921. Then, and only then, did he decree that the Volunteers:

are under the Civil Control of elected representatives, and that their officers hold their commissions from these representatives. The Government therefore is responsible for the actions of this army.

When the Treaty negotiations began (11 October 1921), it was essential for the Volunteers to accept discipline. On 21 November 1921 Brugha brought to Cabinet and won the resolution that

the supreme body directing the Army is the Cabinet.

Thus, at critical moments it had been Cathal Brugha who set the pace, and called the tune. In a revolutionary situation he determined to establish democratic and orderly civilian control. So doing, he anticipated that Ireland should become and should remain a democratic nation.

If only for this, Cathal Brugha transcends most of his contemporaries and the confines of this sequence of also-rans.

The rest of Brugha's abbreviated life is easy to relate. He concurred with de Valera, on seeing the Treaty agreement on 3rd December, that "external association" be re-affirmed. So, in the Cabinet of 6th December he was in the minority (four to three) opposing the Treaty. In the Dáil Treaty vote (64-57) of 7 January 1922 he was again in the minority.

In that debate he delivered his virulent speech against Collins. His provocation was an editorial in the Freeman's Journal of 5 January, which had urged a vote for the treaty and for Collins. The paper characterised Collins as the man with a £10,000 bounty on his head who had won the war. Brugha cast doubt, correctly, on both counts. Brugha was motivated by a belief that Dublin Castle was exploiting the charisma of Collins to promote support for the Treaty. When the documents eventually became available, they showed Brugha's judgment was again correct: an official at Dublin Castle, Andy Cope, had been in cahoots with the editor of the Freeman's Journal, Martin Fitzgerald.

Even then Brugha looked for conciliation. He supported the 20th May pact between de Valera and Collins, which was subverted by Lloyd George who induced Collins to renounce his agreement. That, in turn, led to the June 1922 election, won by the Free Staters but with Brugha re-elected to the Dáil.

He rejoined the Republican forces only when the Free Staters fired on the Four Courts (28th June). He was wounded in "suicidal" action at the Granville Hotel, and died in the Mater Hospital on 7th July.
__________________________________________

Malcolm started this piece by expressing admiration of Brugha.

Of the "new" democracies established after 1918, only Finland and Ireland made the distance (Czechoslovakia, of course, was snuffed out by other means).

It could have been a near-run thing. In 1932, in the run-up to the election which brought de Valera to power, Eoin O'Duffy had been pressing for an army putsch. According to one legend, when the newly-appointed Fianna Fáil Minister came visiting, a senior army officer openly wondered: "Do we salute him or shoot him?" It was Brugha's previous efforts which delivered the correct response in both cases..

Sphere: Related Content

Malcolm's Classy rumination

Blame it on Our American Cousin. Zach introduced a new dimension by commenting on a recent posting:

As to whether or not you're free. Well you still have a Monarch and an unelected upper house of parliament for what it's worth.

There are too many tomes on the British class "system" and its psycho-pathology. A few are just about readable. Most are ill-digested and barely literate, spewed out of the Ph.D. factories of minor universities. As it used to say, just above the toilet-roll holder in number 4, Trinity College, Dublin:

Sociology Degrees: please take one.

A French encounter

A couple of decades back, in a small town in the Hautes-Alpes, Malcolm was settling his hôtel bill.

Prominent, beside the desk was a framed photograph. Madame and her son (a local sporting hero) were with Valéry Giscard d'Estaing. To lighten the ceremonial swiping of the credit card, Malcolm felt he should acknowledge this image:

"Ah, Monsieur le Président!"
"Non!" was the decisive reply, "Monsieur le Président de la République française!"

Malcolm was suitably chastened.

What struck him was such a comment would be unthinkable in Britain:

"Ah, the Queen!
"No: Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland."

It simply doesn't work, does it?

The brain-death of monarchy

The Royals (even that term contains a dismissal) are fragments of the universal "celebrity" culture. The Diana Spencer moment, now fortunately past and gone except for an ever-shrinking delta-minus semi-moronic rump, is regarded as a disastrous experiment in populism. The only remaining issue there being whether

• with a couple more brain-cells she could have been a plant, or
• was she so dissimulating that she was truly a calculating minx.

The current batch of princelings, noted mainly for night-club frolics, are not likely to upset that pattern.

For many, Helen Mirren is The Queen as much as the original article. Indeed, she seems to have edged aside Betty Boothroyd as a potential republican Head of State. Idle chatter of that kind tells Malcolm that there is a perverse lingering wish for a bossy, even brassy female figure to be National Governess. As was Margaret Hilda Thatcher of spine-shuddering memory.

But what to do with the Lords?

Zach's other thrust is more pertinent.

The Blair reforms, stripping out the lumpen mass of hereditary peers, went a long way; but it remains an incomplete project.

There are arguments for the great and the good to be there. "Statesmen" (i.e. retired parliamentarians) deserve a place: after a due period of silence, their comments may have worth. On the whole they don't insult the captain or spit on the deck. Since Parliament makes the laws, senior Justices should be allowed their voices. Religious leaders, too: better in the Chamber, where they will be heard critically, than in their pulpits, where they have unbridled licence. Appointment, too, should not be totally dismissed: Roberts Winston and Skidelsky are unlikely to gain a place by other routes.

Then comes the issue of election. How? It obviously should not be an adjunct to a General Election: that would merely ensure that the Upper and Lower Chambers are of similar complexion. Should the Upper House be as (party) political as the Commons? The logic of that is fixed-term, proportional-representation, without constituency boundary; in effect, a list system: yet that, in turn, gives factional groups power to "fix" the lists.

Perhaps, though, the British system even as presently constituted is not as bad as possible alternatives.

We do not want a "Senate" on the US model (too powerful) or on the Irish model (too ineffectual). Seanad Éireann is a pale, subservient creature: it is a model of what happens when patronage imposes on its clients. Its "electorate" is a self-mockery. As for the US Senate: Blagojevich in Illinois, the curious doings around Caroline Kennedy in New York, and the Minnesota Franken/Coleman stand-off suggest not all is well. Then there are the senatorial families: the Rockefellers, the Gores, the Bushes, the Kennedys, whose continued eminence suggests inbred, nepotistic dynasties are not just a British phenomenon.

Gunning for the aristos

This all arose from a chance remark about guns and government.

Malcolm grew up, with the Holkham Estate to west and south. The Earl of Leicester would host shooting parties at Holkham, to which royalty would arrive. At one time, perhaps still, the record "bag" for a day's shooting was set at Holkham, in a hecatomb of partridges helped along by Phil the Greek.

It is all too easy to be cynical about such events: the pre-metric assessment of running a shoot was "up goes a guinea, bang goes sixpence, down comes half-a-crown". And if the upper-class were prepared to finance their sport so lavishly, others could benefit.

For every gent with his Purdeys there was a Fred Hooker. Fred could snaffle moonlit birds as easily as anything. Among the up-and-comers, young Barry "Salts" Davie had a deadly silent catapult and an overcoat with poacher pockets. As Malcolm recalls, the view from the lower orders was short in condemnation for the malefactors: excoriation was left to Tommy Cook on the bench of the local magistrates. The class system can be seen from both sides: the exploitation was not all the one way.

This symbiosis goes back beyond dynasties, beyond history. There is, underlying that class-system and petty-snobbery to which Americans like to point, a parallel sub-culture. The urban worker detests and ridicules his bosses: the rural one has evolved long-standing pre-industrial ways around the landlord. As so often, Kipling, recently risen to land-owner on the back of his personal talents (and later brother-in-law of the Prime Minister-to-be), caught the mood:

I have rights of chase and warren, as my dignity requires.
I can fish--but Hobden tickles. I can shoot--but Hobden wires.
I repair, but he reopens, certain gaps which, men allege,
Have been used by every Hobden since a Hobden swapped a hedge.

Shall I dog his morning progress o'er the track-betraying dew?
Demand his dinner-basket into which my pheasant flew?
Confiscate his evening faggot into which the conies ran,
And summons him to judgment? I would sooner summons Pan.

His dead are in the churchyard--thirty generations laid.
Their names went down in Domesday Book when Domesday Book was made.
And the passion and the piety and prowess of his line
Have seeded, rooted, fruited in some land the Law calls mine.

Kipling, of course, refused all titles, most honours, knighthood and ennoblement. Queen Victoria profoundly disapproved of him. To Malcolm, the biggest strike against this otherwise admirable and egalitarian man is not his alleged racism, nor his ambiguous imperialism: both are marks of the times, with which Pandit Nehru had no problem. No: it is his militant anti-Home Rule Unionism, sprung from a long friendship with Carson.

Little removed from that, the neatest definition of "Anglo-Irish" is "a Prod on a horse". Sphere: Related Content

Green, green, it's green they say
On the far side of the hill.
Green, green, and I'm going away
To where the grass is greener still.


Barry McElduff has a problem (one for which Malcolm has some sympathy), and came up with a personal and partial solution, which he now regrets.

The problem remains.

Explain, Malcolm!

McElduff is an MLA for West Tyrone and Councillor in Omagh District. He is a nationalist and member of Sinn Féin (though, to the cognoscenti, the name and the location render this explanation otiose). The local boyos took it on themselves to paint post boxes green. McElduff expressed his approval of the redecoration. Outcry and general hoo-ha ensued. His political masters, who can be very persuasive, obliged McElduff to make a public and humiliating recantation.

That's the basic story: so a Malcolmian aside.

Quite why post-boxes should be seen as the ultimate symbol of national pride and tradition defeats our resident sage, philosopher and friend. Across the nation, long-redundant postboxes are preserved and ritually repainted to preserve the street-scene: one such is in Hampstead, NW3.

Early E2R boxes were blown up by the Scottish liberationists in the 1950s. This was on the specious grounds that Scotland had experienced just the one Elizabeth: thus reminding the rest of us that many SNP types are tartan Tories, with an essentially conservative, even feudal, mind-set.

Going postal

Yet, even in the UK it is possible to find green post-boxes. As the Letter Box Study Group (better believe it!) says:

Sometimes, older boxes or those which have previously been in poor condition have details such as the royal cipher picked out in gold, making for a splendid display. Disused or privately owned boxes can be found in a variety of colours, including black, white, green, blue and brown. Boxes in the walls of local Post Offices are often made of local materials to local requirements and may be bronze, brown or silver.

Even ordinary working letter boxes can be found in numerous different colours. Guernsey for example, paints all boxes blue. Some historical boxes on the British mainland can be found in green.

At Moorlynch, in Somerset, the local post-mistress insisted on repainting the box in her wall Harrodian green every time the Post Office painted it red: she wanted it to harmonise with the rest of her shop paintwork. Somewhere in the moorland wilds of Scotland Malcolm recalls an isolated green post-box, because a red one would be too glaringly out-of-place in a protected landscape.

As the LBSG implies above, the original colour for British post-boxes was green: red was only adopted from the mid-1870s. Nor is the red of the British post-box some brash-and-brassy sentiment derived from Georgian soldiery or the Union Flag. It is there, presumably, for the same reason that robins appear on Christmas cards, the early post-man's uniform red coat: hence they were nicknamed "robins" and "redbreasts". It is another piece of British tradition and mythology to be blamed on Charles Dickens & Co:

His portrait is an every-day picture of life, and yet not easy to paint. He is the very incarnation of alacrity, the embodied spirit of regularity and precision. Day by day, hour by hour, he is to be seen traversing with rapid step the limits of his own narrow district. The heavens may smile, or frown. Revolutions may shake the land ; or peace and prosperity gladden its children. Disease may wave its pestilent torch; or sudden calamity sweep away its victims. But the postman is still at his post. A diurnal dispenser of news. A kind of Hope in the Queen's livery, visiting every one in turn, and welcomed by all. A messenger of life and of death; of gratified ambition, or disappointed desire; of gracious acceptance, or harsh refusal. He is still welcome, for his presence, and that which he brings at least, puts an end to the most cruel of human sufferings- uncertainty.

It must come as an affront to any and every loyal Ulsterman to turn left out of Belleek, along the A47 Lough Shore Road towards Enniskillen. For just a few yards, across the bridge at Graffy, the road (suddenly re-designated the R47) is in the Republic. There, on the corner, is (or used to be) a green post-box, complete with royal insignia. To make the point even more blatantly, in the bad old days one might see an Arm na h-Éireann vehicle significantly adjacent. Bless!

The McElduff dilemma

The original Sinn Féin, not these latter-day wannabe saints and sinners, made nationalism work. Across the country, Republican courts operated, and people preferred them, and abided by their prompt and fair justice. In effect, long before the 1922 Treaty took effect, the first two Dála had evolved and implemented a parallel working State.

As Newton Emmerson, in the Irish News argues, that is one route for militant nationalist passive resistance:

Mr McElduff is much mocked for this focus on the everyday details of life in the United Kingdom but it is hard to fault his argument. Acquiescence to those everyday details is what enables any state, fictional or otherwise, to function. Imagine the chaos if 26 per cent of Northern Ireland’s adult population, equating to Sinn Fein’s vote at the last election, decided peaceably but firmly to do something as simple as not renewing their car tax. Quite apart from the lost revenue, the entire bureaucratic basis for the control and monitoring of vehicle ownership would collapse, taking the magistrates courts down with it.

Etc. Etc. (And the whole of Emmerson's piece is worth the visit.)

To Malcolm that's fair enough.

Except ...

The good people of the Republic, FF, FG, SF, Labour and Green, have been less than chuffed by Brian Lehihan's call to pay 21½% and Euro prices as an act of "patriotism". They have chosen to go north, pay 15% VAT and sterling prices. Equally, the tradesfolk of the North have not looked too shyly at the colour of the money crossing the border.

That's real life. That's everyday economics. It's also called giving people the choice. As with posting a letter: in the green box, it's €0.55 (say 49p). Take a dander across Graffy bridge, and save a third of the cost, even if the monarch's head offend, and the post-box is the wrong colour. Then it's a matter of competition: does the Post Office or An Post get you there quicker and safer?

It's the European Union in practice, for goodness' sake.

And, Malcolm suspects, the Irish lack-of-greenness is not so green, jejune and naive when we observe how "patriotic" Dell and its multi-national ilk have been. After all, Lenihan's budget argument was that all the cuts on health, welfare and pensions, all the imposts on consumers, employees and ordinary folk were justified to protect, preserve and promote the benign taxes on corporations.

But Dell saw things were greener on the other side of the Oder-Neiße-Grenze.

Brass tacks

The McElduff dilemma is not just one of postboxes and paintbrushes. It extends across the whole of community action. It embraces the need for ideologies in a changed economic climate, and is one facing all leftists in the island of Ireland, the PUP as much as SF. One even hears a DUP horn faintly blowing: did not Malcolm detect the great Reverend Doctor use the word "liberal" last week? And without obvious distaste!

The issue is how to make social -- even socialist -- alternatives attractive, and then work -- be it in 6, 26 or 32 counties. In other words, to make a society which is caring, sharing, and deserving. The flag-waving and sloganeering can follow later.

And that's an issue far bigger than just this posting.

So, altogether now:

It's not that easy bein' green;
Having to spend each day the color of the leaves.
When I think it could be nicer being red, or yellow or gold --
Or something much more colorful like that.

Sphere: Related Content

The Louisiana One takes Two:
a good deed in a naughty world.

The British right-wing have had it hard in recent years. Their distraction therapy has been to live the Great Bush Experiment (until it became the Greater Bush Disaster).

That meant there were howls and yippings whenever it looked as if, first, Hillary and, then, Obama were on the slide. Yelps of delight hailed each time Governor Sarah Mooseblaster's intellectual and ideological incisiveness could be applauded. In this world-view, she walked free, with her True Conservative "get out of jail free" card, when Senator McCain was shown to have failed because of lamentable liberal tendencies. At least, that's Malcolm's take on the whole thing.

A strange frisson hunts through the Tory tribe, in constant search of some backbone to run up.

So Tim Montgomerie's cheerleader site is featuring Dan Hamilton having conniptions over the strange events concerning the -- err -- peculiar Governor Rod Blagojevich.

And, also chez Montgomerie, there are the glad tidings, borrowed from America in the World, that Joseph Cao is now elected as Congressman for the Louisiana 2nd District (the election was delayed because of Hurricane Gustav).

A note of warning must intrude here: America in the World looks remarkably akin to one of those CIA-fronts that popped up all over the 1950s and 1960s. So, when Malcolm looked at its credentials, he found it had been launched as recently as October, with a featured photo-op of David Cameron, and its director is ... one Tim Montgomerie. Small world.

Let's stick to Cao. He was an underdog, barely registering on the clapometer a couple of weeks ago. He had certain advantages: for one, his odious and odorous opponent was the sitting Rep. Bill Jefferson.

Jefferson had scrambled to the Democrat nomination, despite growing clamour over his "business" practices. He had been arrested for corruption even before his 2006 re-election: the FBI had set up a sting with known bills, which turned up stuffed in lunch-boxes in the freezer in Jefferson's congressional office. Fans of the recent Damian Green affair might note that this was "the first-ever FBI raid on a Congressional office". Republican Senators and Congressmen went ape. In June 2007 Jefferson was indicted of sixteen counts of corruption.

Nancy Pelosi, as Speaker of the House and Democrat leader, had Jefferson offed from the Ways and Means Committee. The Louisiana Democrats tried to squash Jefferson. He was supported by the Congressional Black Caucus, however, and ploughed blithely on.

Jefferson's family have (or had) a very effective local machine, the Progressive Democrats. Hurricane Katrina was one disrupting force. Jefferson did himself no little harm during Katrina, having the National Guard and a helicopter to rescue himself and his belongings, while others were considerably less well-catered for.

The Louisiana 2nd is most of the city of New Orleans and is 64% Black. Jefferson ran his Primary campaign on an explicit appeal to those Black voters and narrowly saw off a strong challenge from a moderate Democrat, with links to the Black Organisation for Leadership Development, the main intra-party opposition to Jefferson's Progressive Democrats. Throughout the whole messy business, Obama personally kept well away, though (like the Democratic Party's central and State organisation) indicating distaste for Jefferson and his baggage.

Even so, Cao's victory was a close-run thing: 1,826 votes out of a valid poll of 66,846. But that's enough: vox polui, vox Dei. Suddenly, he is a Republican star. The Times-Picayune swallowed hard and opined:

In electing Anh "Joseph" Cao to replace indicted U.S. Rep. William Jefferson, Louisiana voters have delivered an undeniable message: that our state's tolerance for the cynical and corrupt politics of the past is waning.

To make the point, that can accessed via a pungently-phrased link to the AP story on Blagojevich:

Are our politicians no longer the most corrupt?

Cao is a very untypical Republican. He was a Jesuit seminarian, remains a devout Catholic, and has an honourable record in civic leadership and as part of the lay mission. He is a lawyer, specialising in immigration. He taught and has a doctorate in ethics. He entered politics in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina; and gained further kudos by campaigning against land-fill. All-in-all, he is precisely the Republican of whom Malcolm can substantially approve.

And yet, the whole press emphasis is that Cao is the first Congressman of Vietnamese origin.

Not so fast, says Malcolm. That was Congressman Peter Lien, in the double-episode which began the fourth series of The West Wing. The newly-elected Congressman for the Texas 22nd comes to the White House as the first part of 20 Hours in America concludes:

CHARLIE: Congressman Lien.

President BARTLET: Could somebody get Leo for me, please? Peter, you hear that? He called you "congressman."

Congressman Peter LIEN: Yes, sir.

BARTLET: You think when your folks got you out in '74, they imagined they were taking you to a place that'd be willing to make you a Congressman?

LIEN: As a matter of fact, sir, I think that's exactly what they imagined.

...

LEO: Good afternoon, Mr. President.

BARTLET: Leo, meet Congressman Peter Lien, Texas 22nd. Peter, this is Leo McGarry, U.S. Air Force, 144th Fighter Wing.

LEO: Pleased to meet you, Congressman.

BARTLET:
Peter's family fishes in Galveston Bay ... Peter's 34 years old.

LEO: I'm sorry it's been two months and we haven't been able to get you up here until now.

LIEN: No, please. It's a bust time. If there's any help I can give you in Texas...

BARTLET: Ordinarily I would tell you that ... you've got big shoes to fill, ... and you do, but obviously you have a bigger symbolic responsibilty then that.

LIEN: Yes, sir.

BARTLET: But you biggest responsibiltity isn't symbolic, right?

LIEN: Yes, sir.

BARTLET: What is it?

LIEN: It's my district, my country, and the Congress of the United States.

BARTLET: Welcome, my friend, to the show that never ends.

LIEN: Thank you, Mr. President.

Malcolm makes two postulations from what has gleaned about Joseph Cao:

• Cao has the makings of a great Representative, who will do "The Big Easy" very nicely;
• His commitments and sincerity will constantly disappoint the Right on both sides of the Atlantic. He has already done so by keeping his counsel on stem-cell research (that other sinister shibboleth, alongside being "pro-life").

He's got the odds stacked against him: his District is overwhelmingly and naturally Democrat. The Black interest groups are going to regroup and come after him in two years' time: they are already tagging him a one-term lame-duck. Next time, the sleaze issue may not be there to work in his favour; but, unless someone special comes along, his political demise would be a pity.

Here's to literate, sensitive, Joseph Cao:

"I read a lot of Dostoevsky who wrote works of literature but really was addressing philosophical questions." His favorite is Brothers Karamazov with its story of the "good man [Alexei] who lives a conflicted existence but holds on to his goodness."

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The spirit of Millicent and Lacey

The next item on the agenda is: Whither the Republican Party? (the first draft of that, homophonically, involved "wither").

Palinontology apart, there must be hope, in extremis, for a revival of the non-theocratic liberal wing. Doubtless, over its coming months and (let it be hoped) years in the political wilderness, the GOP will give us ample scope for thought, delight and commentary on just this ideological battle.

For the moment, it is nice to see Garry Trudeau's Doonesbury once again ahead of the curve. In a neat plot twist, he has managed to reintroduce the character of Lacey Davenport:


Despite Trudeau's disavowals, Lacey is generally supposed to owe something to the real-life Congresswoman Millicent Fenwick of the New Jersey Fifth District:

Elected to Congress from New Jersey in 1974 at age sixty-four, Fenwick became a media darling. Television commentator Walter Cronkite called her "the conscience of Congress." During her four terms in the House of Representatives, she emerged as arguably one of the most colorful politicians in American history. She was known for her opposition to corruption by both parties and special interest groups. She was one of the most liberal Republicans in the House.

This NJ Fifth is the northern end of the State, bordering New York, and swinging in an L-shape along the Pensylvania state-line. It is rural, confounding most of the prejudices acquired from the effluent zone towards Newark, but also embraces the commuter belt of Bergen County. It's some of that bosky greenery one sees, starboard-side, on the day-time western approach to Newark Liberty. The first representative for this district, back in 1799-1801, was Benjamin Franklin's nephew, Franklin Davenport (presumably, no relation).

The party of Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt, of Eisenhower and Nelson Rockefeller needs a new generation of Millicents and Laceys. To preserve a healthy democracy, it certainly deserves more intellect and breadth than its recent standard-bearers have offered. There is a roll of honour on wikipedia, those identified as RINOs. Sphere: Related Content

Core values ...

Thursday evening, Malcolm trots to the Maynard Arms in fashionable Crouch End, there to join the Labour Party's Audience with Dennis Skinner, MP.

Now, Dennis is not so much "Old Labour" (and rightly proud of it) as totally primeval. Malcolm, however, largely approves of the old shell-back: Skinner says what he means, with a sly and devious humour, and means what he says. He comes from the same stock and locality as Malcolm's paternal line. He is transparently straight and honest.

What interested Malcolm was how the audience reacted to Skinner's traditional stump-speech. The applause and chortles came when Skinner went for royalty and the Press, and mildly suggested that the railways might work better nationalized. This, let it be recorded, before a mixed (age, gender, background), largely professional, and wholly sophisticated group. Scratch a Labour Party and find a Labourite.

The Press we deserve

So Malcolm addresses, today, just one of those items.

What he also finds surprising is that so many others whom he encounters share a similar view of the British Meejah.

As a generalisation, politics, and the business of governance are treated as a sub-genre of soap-opera. Each new day needs a new episode, a new and predictable crisis, a new face or two. At the moment, the universal will of our newspapers and television seems to be a yearning for a wholesale replacement of characters, the introduction of new giants whose feet will, in short order, be revealed to be made of clay.

Dennis Skinner, and many others like him, see in this an inherent anti-Labour bias: they may have reason. Whatever: we saw it in, first, the demand for an autumn election, and, then, in the subsequent rubbishing of Gordon Brown for not thereby filling columns for the next six weeks. Skinner sees the remedy in Labour reclaiming the agenda: again, he may well be correct. Malcolm, however, suspects that the knee-jerking of the print and electronic journos would misrepresent any such attempt, just out of habit.

Rocking the boat

Malcolm reaches for a way of giving an example.

He takes one on which Skinner repeatedly touched: Northern Rock.

This continuing saga is being depicted as one of governmental failure, because Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling consistently fail to take the ever-changing advice and prescriptions (swallowed wholesale by the pundits) of the Opposition.

Despite this, the bank still survives; the British banking system has not been brought tumbling down; the burden of debt has not (yet) been taken on by the tax-payer; the British economy continues to expand. Yes, in the face of the trans-atlantic crisis, the British economy will grow
and grow faster than any other G8 country over the coming year:

In its Winter forecast released on Monday the ITEM Club, sponsored by Ernst & Young, showed that the UK economic growth will ease in 2008. The economic growth is expected to slow to 1.8% in 2008 from 3.1% in 2007. The think tank believes that the abrupt reversal in the credit markets in 2007 could result in a sharp decline in economic growth.

Chief Economic Advisor to the Ernst & Young ITEM Club Peter Spencer said: ... "As the Bank of England's interest rate cuts begin to take effect, the economy should pick up. With the money markets begin to thaw out we can be a bit more optimistic. So, touching wood, 2008 should not be such a bad year after all. Then I expect GDP growth to move back up to 2.5% in 2009."

Not so dusty, then. But, hark! what is this other rusting in the undergrowth?

Questions have been raised over the effects on the markets of the rogue trader who lost 4.9bn euros ($7.1bn; £3.7bn) at Société Générale.
Analysts are trying to assess whether the trader's actions contributed to the stock market turmoil and the Fed decision to cut interest rates.

Malcolm's reading of that goes like this: a £3.7bn default at a French bank had serious international implications, because it was so badly handled. The British Government and the Bank of England are successfully managing an apparent soft-landing for a potentially far bigger (by perhaps a multiple of twenty) debacle. No kudos from the Meejah lizards, only brickbats and abuse.

Don't stand too close to me

And there is one further dimension that irritates Malcolm.

Unlike the US, British bloggers are cajoled into following the mainstream media line. Not, of course, the small-timers (like Malcolm), but those half-dozen big-hitters who hog the local cybersphere's limelight.

These "stars" of the broadband have, effectively, been bought and bought out by the mainstream outlets.

Iain Dale (claimed to have the biggest single presence on the UK blog-scene) is on the pay-roll of the Daily Telegraph, and has a working relationship with both the Independent and the Guardian (to the extent of having his own by-line, right). There is, therein, a direct link from the Deputy Leader of the Conservative Party, via an important blog-site, to the bowels of the Daily Beast.

Guido Fawkes, a.k.a. Paul Staines, had maintained a hands-off honesty until, last year, he, too, sold out to the BBC Newsnight. Staines took the perfectly-proper view which Malcolm is trying to expound here, that the Press was too close to the politicos. His derivative interview with Michael White was a failure, as Staines himself recognised. That went a long way, in Malcolm's mind, to redeeming himself, except that Staines (along with Dale) market their offerings in a crudely commercial way:

The country's top political blogs Guido Fawkes, ConservativeHome.com and Iain Dale have partnered with four other political websites to launch online advertising sales service MessageSpace.

The company aims to get advertisers wanting to appeal directly to the political classes and opinion formers in Whitehall and Westminster.

Alex Hilton, the editor of Labourhome.org and Recess Monkey, who runs ad sales company EOS Online Media, is behind the venture...

Opinion sites from across the political divide have become partners in the service with Labourhome, Political Betting, Recess Monkey and LibDem Blogs joining the big three to offer exposure to more than a million readers every month.

Malcolm reads that again, very carefully, and very cynically. It seems that this aggregation of "top" political bloggers, what tamounts to the critical mass in the local political blogosphere, are blatant in selling themselves to "the political classes and opinion formers in Whitehall and Westminster".

At which point Malcolm is heard muttering after Jonathan Swift:

The Vermin only teaze and pinch
Their Foes superior by an Inch.
So Nat'ralists observe, a Flea
Hath smaller Fleas that on him prey,
And these have smaller Fleas to bite 'em
And so proceed ad infinitum.

Even Malcolm's place of regular resort, Slugger O'Toole, is less than totally "independent". Any resort thereto has been loud with an intrusive advertisement for the webcast "18 Doughty Street" (which was another vehicle for Iain Dale and his right-wing cronies, but sheds personnel like autumn leaves in Paradise Lost I.302). And Slugger's main ornament and progenitor, Mick Fealty, formerly an associate of The Guardian, now props up the Telegraph's Brassneck -- indeed the ad and the hotlink for that leads the Slugger web-page.

What price independence?

The blogosphere gives all of us a degree of independence. Here we can exercise First Amendment rights in a way never before experienced. The nearest equivalent is the explosion of pamphleteering at the start of the seventeenth century. George Orwell, a connoisseur of the pamphlet as a medium, described it thus:

The pamphlet is a one-man show. One has complete freedom of expression, including, if one chooses, the freedom to be scurrilous, abusive, and seditious; or, on the other hand, to be more detailed, serious and ‘high-brow’ than is ever possible in a newspaper or in most kinds of periodicals. At the same time, since the pamphlet is always short and unbound, it can be produced much more quickly than a book, and in principle, at any rate, can reach a bigger public. Above all, the pamphlet does not have to follow any prescribed pattern. It can be in prose or in verse, it can consist largely of maps or statistics or quotations, it can take the form of a story, a fable, a letter, an essay, a dialogue, or a piece of ‘reportage.’ All that is required of it is that it shall be topical, polemical, and short.

Malcolm accepts that in toto, if demurring seriously over the word "short". But he hesitates, too, over the ambiguity of "unbound".

• Can the likes of Dale, Staines and Fealty then be, in all truth, "unbound"?
• Why, apart from enjoying the revenue, should a "free" medium like this be "bound" by advertising?
• What, by the acceptance of an ad, becomes verboten?
• What inhibitions flow therefrom?
• Why is the relationship between these bloggers and the traditional media so cosy?

That is why Malcolm resolves, in future, to eschew all those polls and mutual-backscratchings that the cybersphere seems to revel in.

Prometheus Unbound?

So, back to Dennis Skinner.

Skinner is a Labour man through-and-through. He knows viscerally whom to care for, and whom to hate. What he may lack in "ideology", he more than compensates in gut-feeling. And in that he is correct.

His loyalty to the Labour Movement is total, yet he has an honourable record of failing to obey the Party Whip. And that, too, is proper and correct. Like the legend of Prometheus, he brings fire to humankind, and for that is punished by the gods of the Media. Better that than to be a supine creature of the Politinform system that bedevils our democracy.

Nobody, except his own keen appreciation of his constituency, dictates to him. He cannot be bought. He comes, as his Parliamentary declaration shows, without sponsorship or advertisement:

SKINNER, Dennis (Bolsover)

Nil.

Which, in Malcolm's book, qualifies him to speak and be heard. Compare that, as Skinner himself did, to the parallel entry by William Hague, over a page in length, and listing swathes of after-dinner speeches, all made at £10-20,000 a time. When one is proffering that amount of moolah, does one expect to be chastised or confronted with unpleasantness? What "freedom of speech" is being exercised there?

Dennis Skinner talks in a different accent, but a similar mode to Tony Benn :

Democracy is the most revolutionary idea in the world, nobody in power likes it.

The democratic, free blogger aspires to just that uncomfortable and discomforting posture:

Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent;

This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be

Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free;

This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory!

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