"Hello. In the traditional motion picture story, the villains are usually defeated, the ending is a happy one. I can make no such promise for the picture you are about to watch." (Ronald Reagan)
2016 may have been an utterly horrendous year for many of us... but somehow, despite passing (/staggering through) my NQT year, starting a new job, finding a TV series I actually liked to watch, and generally despairing at the state of the world, I found time to read again!
This year, I set a Goodreads target of 15 books... which I smashed through in October. So I optimistically added another five... and in late December I went through that too!
So, for the first time since 2014, here is my year in books.
Numbers of new books- 22 (although I'd read extracts of The Secret History at university)
Fiction/Non-fiction ratio- 8:14 (I've taken the decision that counter-factual history is fiction- feel free to disagree!)
Longest Book- Broken Vows, 653 pp
Shortest Book- 43*: When Gore Beat Bush, 99 pp
Quickest Read- 43*: When Gore Beat Bush; Conclave, two days
Longest Read- In the Land of Giants, March 16th - July 19th; White Riot: The Violent Story of Combat 18, August 23rd - December 17th
Most Read Authors- Frederick Forsyth: The Odessa File and The Fourth Protocol; Jeff Greenfield: If Kennedy Lived and 43*: When Gore Beat Bush; Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope and Dreams from my Father
Ebooks- The Communist Manifesto, A Study in Scarlet, 43*: When Gore Beat Bush, White Riot: The Violent Story of Combat 18
Audio books- Dreams from my Father
Useless Fact- 2016 was the first time since 2013 I'd read any medieval primary text... need to up my medievalist game, clearly!
The List
Promised You a Miracle: UK, 80-82, Andy Beckett
The Final Days, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein
The Cold War, John Lewis Gaddis
The Odessa File, Frederick Forsyth
If Kennedy Lived, Jeff Greenfield
The Audacity of Hope, Barack Obama
The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
In the Land of Giants: Journeys in Dark Ages Britain, Max Adams
The Secret History, Procopius
The Wars Against Saddam: Taking the hard road to Baghdad, John Simpson
Stupid White Men, Michael Moore
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, George RR Martin
43*: When Gore Beat Bush, Jeff Greenfield
A Study in Scarlet, Arthur Conan Doyle
Dissolution, C.J. Sansom
The Fourth Protocol, Fredrick Forsyth
Them: Adventures with Extremists, Jon Ronson
In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great, Michael Wood
Broken Vows: Tony Blair, The Tragedy of Power, Tom Bower Dreams from my Father, Barack Obama
White Riot: The Violent Story of Combat 18, Nick Lowles Conclave, Robert Harris
As part of his attempt to bring New Year joy to us all, Jeremy Corbyn has done an interview with the Guardian. In the interview, he told Theresa May that "You're not Henry VIII."
Beyond the blindingly obvious, that she clearly isn't, the idea that Corbyn was pushing is that May is acting like Henry VIII did in the 1530s. Both broke with European political structures, to the utter horror of many within the country. And both used their enormous personal powers, in the form of the royal prerogative, to enact this change.
Corbyn is using the example as a dig at May's refusal to put any Brexit deal before Parliament. May believes that she is covered under the royal prerogative, the powers once wielded by the king, but now transferred to the Prime Minister. This includes most foreign affairs stuff, such as signing treaties, and declaring war. Corbyn is conjuring up the spectre of Henry VIII to claim that May is misusing these powers.
In the mad dash to get in a Tudor analogy, no one seems to have stopped and checked the historicity of this.
The English Reformation is a good analogy for Brexit, as hinted at above. It was also as immensely complex as Brexit will prove to be. When he decided to go it alone, Henry was trying to unpick a thousand years of history. The English Church had been established in the late 500s; the allegiance of the English bishops to Rome predated the creation of a single English state by several centuries. It wasn't as simple as just giving out some orders and making it so.
So Henry and his government went down a legal path. In the 1530s, a series of laws were passed by Parliament to legally separate the Church in England from communion with the Catholic Church. These were:
1532- Ecclesiastical Appeals Act- Made it illegal for church appeals to be made to the Pope. They were now heard by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York.
1532- Submission of the Clergy- The English bishops were forced to accept royal control over their decision making processes.
1533- Concerning Ecclesiastical Appointments and Absolute Restraint of Annates Act- Transferred the power to appoint bishops from the Pope to the king, and stopped the payment of money from the bishops to the Pope.
1533- Act Concerning Peter's Pence- Ended the payment of taxes from England to Rome.
1534- Act of Supremacy- Made the English monarch the Supreme Head of the Church in England.
1534- Treason Act- Made it an offence to deny that the king was Supreme Head of the Church.
1536- See of Rome Act- Made it treasonable to defend the authority of the Pope, and made all new priests and university students swear an oath acknowledging the king as Supreme Head of the Church.
Now, I know that these laws don't exactly have the snappiest titles (personal favourite is the long one in 1533), and contain some weird provisions (I'd love to have seen them making university students swear allegiance). There is also a huge argument about the role of Parliament in the early modern period, and whether they really had the power to stop Henry.
But the point still stands, that Henry VIII believed that the only way to achieve his break from Rome was by going down a legal route, using Parliament to achieve it.
In this respect, Theresa May isn't acting like Henry VIII at all. At least Henry went through Parliament, however much the process was simply nodding through what the king wanted.
A far better line of attack for Corbyn would have been to say that Theresa May is even worse than Henry VIII. But it's a bit late for that now...
2016 has been a year of political and economic calamities. The EU referendum led to the value of the pound slumping on the international money markets, and threw British politics into turmoil. In the USA, a bitter and sometimes violent election culminated in the victory of Donald Trump, a man singularly unfit to hold the office of President. Many are declaring that 2016 is the Worst Year Ever.
How soon we forget. For 2016 is the 40th anniversary of 1976. The year that the money ran out. Sort of. The year that a narrative was allowed to emerge that did not fit the facts. Sound familiar?
Our story starts at the beginning of 1976. The Labour government of Harold Wilson, unexpectedly elected in 1974, is clinging on. 1975 saw inflation spiral out of control. Wilson is not the crack political operator of the 1960s. But no one was expecting what happened when he turned 60. He resigned.
The country was stunned. As was the Labour party. Several distinguished men and women threw their hats into the ring to succeed Wilson. After several rounds of closely contested balloting, James Callaghan emerged as the new Labour leader and Prime Minister.
On the day he took office, Callaghan lost his majority in the House of Commons. He would govern for the next three years as the head of a minority government.
The economic legacy that Callaghan inherited was truly dreadful. Only a few years before, Richard Nixon had ended the post-war Bretton Woods system of international financial controls. This meant all currencies now floated on the money markets, although it was often said that sterling 'floated' in much the same way that the Titanic did. The pound was subject to constant speculative attacks, and the Treasury was spending hundreds of millions of pounds to prop up the value of sterling. The weaknesses in Britain's economy were clear for all to see, and so the crisis worsened.
The crunch moment came in October 1976. Denis Healey was supposed to fly to the Far East to attend a G7 finance minister's meeting. This was before in-flight phone calls. Healey would be out of touch for several hours. The vultures on the exchange markets were circling, ready to launch another expensive attack on the pound. Healey decided the risk was too great. In full view of the world's media, he turned around from the plane at Heathrow, and drove back into London.
Meanwhile, Labour were holding their conference in Blackpool. The atmosphere was toxic. The far-left of the party had just passed resolution after resolution, calling for mass nationalisations, the creation of a siege economy, withdrawal from NATO and the EEC. The arrival of the man they saw as 'Hitler Healey' to defend his position sent the hard left into overdrive. Healey wasn't even given a proper spot to speak, grabbing a few minutes from the floor. He gave an impassioned defence of the government's policies, calling for the support of the Labour movement in dealing with the crisis.
Shortly after this showdown, the men from the IMF arrived to exact their price. They called for swingeing cuts in public expenditure, in return for the loan that Britain needed to get by. Callaghan and Healey haggled, stalled, delayed, did everything in their power to wear down the IMF. A sizeable minority of the Cabinet was opposed, preferring a siege economy and international isolation over capitulation to the international bankers. Callaghan was only able to get acceptable terms by secretly threatening the IMF negotiators with a general election, pitting the bankers against the people.
Eventually, the terms were agreed, and passed by a divided Cabinet. In exchange for a loan of $3.9 billion, the UK government would cut public spending by £2.5 billion.
What is more staggering about this crisis is that it was all completely pointless. The Treasury had completely miscalculated all it's forecasts and figures. Britain didn't need any of the money. It was actually able to pay the loan back in full within two years of receiving it. The IMF crisis is an excellent example of where hyperbole around events gets out of hand.
But being able to pay this loan back did not save the Callaghan government. The complexity of international fiscal and monetary policy in a changing landscape was buried beneath the easy headlines. James Callaghan was Prime Minister under the most horrendous economic and political circumstances. He managed to govern incredibly successfully, and on the whole does not deserve the reputation the IMF crisis and the Winter of Discontent left him with.
However, being 'forced to go cap in hand to the IMF because the country was broke' was an easy slogan for the Leader of the Opposition to use to beat the government with. And use it she did, to devastating effect.
2016 was a bad year, at least if you are a Western progressive. But it is by no means unique. 1976 was also pretty bad. Both show what happens when narrative is allowed to replace facts.
One of the big factors to have emerged from 2016 has been the 'rise of fake news.' This is approaching a moral panic now; it is being blamed as one of the chief factors behind the election of Donald Trump. We now live, we are always told, in a 'post-truth' environment.
I would contend that this is actually as old as the hills. Here are some examples:
Popish Plot
Britain in the 17th century was a dangerous place to be a Roman Catholic. Barely a century before, the actions of Henry VIII had brought the English Church crashing out of communion with the Pope. Scotland had followed suit. Since then, Catholicism had become the national stock-villain.
Which made it perfectly believable that there was a plot afoot to murder King Charles II, and that this plot was being orchestrated to put Charles' Catholic brother, James, on the throne. From 1678 until 1681, fear and tensions gripped the country. A man called Titus Oates claimed he had discovered an attempt by the Jesuit order to murder Charles.
The reaction was near hysterical. Five Catholic lords were imprisoned and nearly impeached by Parliament. 22 people were executed for their role in the plot. A Bill was introduced to try and remove James from the line of succession. A new Act made it illegal for Catholics to sit in the Houses of Parliament. All across the country, Protestant noblemen and gentry armed themselves against the anticipated Catholic uprising. Panic and alarm reached a fever pitch.
You may have guessed by now that Oates had in fact made the whole thing up. He was a serial fantasist. Charles II was pretty sure that Oates was lying through his teeth. Eventually, with no assassin forthcoming, and protests of innocence all round, Oates' credibility collapsed. But Charles was unable to calm fears of a Catholic plot against the Crown. The legal restrictions placed on British Catholics remained in place until 1829, all thanks to a murder plot that never existed.
Not only is the news fake, but that is not a catchy headline...
Zinoviev Letter
It is easy to forget just how scared many people were of socialism in the early 20th century. The spectre of a mass workers revolution had actually come true, and the old Russia was being subsumed jnto the Soviet Union. In Britain, in late 1924, these fears were reaching a fever pitch. A few months earlier, the Conservative government of Stanley Baldwin had fallen in the House of Commons. Amidst near national hysteria, and political machinations to lock them out of power, the King, George V, had turned to Labour, and entrusted Ramsay MacDonald with forming the first ever Labour government. But MacDonald, running a minority government well short of a majority, knew an election had to come soon.
As polling day approached, many feared that Labour would be returned with a working majority. And so it was, four days before polling, that the Daily Mail published a letter. It claimed to be from Gregory Zinoviev, the head of Comintern and a senior Soviet politician. It called for closer relations between the UK and the Soviet Union, which would help to ensure the success of a communist revolution in Britain. Amidst the ensuing storm, Labour lost 40 seats, and the Conservatives swept back into power.
Not a word of the letter was true. The Soviets issued an immediate denial, with Zinoviev himself saying he had never seen it before. In 1998, Robin Cook launched an investigation, which found the letter was a fake. While the electoral impact of the letter is hard to gauge (Labour's vote rose by 2.6% even as it lost seats), the psychological damage to the Labour party was devastating. Their first spell in office, and chance to win outright, had been sabotaged by a downright lie.
It's nice to see the Daily Mail headline writer was still working for them in 1924...
Nixon's Dirty Tricks
The year is 1972. The Democratic primary in the United States is getting underway, as various candidates jostle to try and eject Richard Nixon from the White House. Foremost is Edmund Muskie, a Senator from Maine, who'd been the Vice Presidential pick in the razor's edge defeat of 1968. Muskie is the only Democratic candidate that the polls show has any chance of defeating Nixon.
The New Hampshire primary was fast approaching when disaster hit the Muskie campaign. A letter was delivered to the Manchester Union Leader, which said that Muskie and his staff had used insulting terms about French-Canadians. Given New Hampshire's proximity to Canada, this caused a storm. The Union Leader also reported that Muskie's wife had a drink problem, and also swore and insulted minorities. Although Muskie denied these claims, his campaign was badly damaged. When he spoke to defend his wife, he appeared to break down in tears, although he claimed it was snow melting on his face. Muskie was defeated by George McGovern in the primary, and McGovern went on to be hammered by Richard Nixon in the general election.
Much later, during the revelations around the Watergate burglary, it transpired that the letter and stories in the Union Leader newspaper had come from the Committee to Re-Elect the President. They had invented the whole thing. Tricky Dicky had been working to knock out the only Democrat capable of unseating him. Had the burglars never been caught, who knows whether we would ever have found out how Nixon tried to corrupt the election of 1972.
Muskie, either crying or fighting back the snow, 1972 New Hampshire primary
Iraq and *those* weapons of mass destruction
It really is easy to forget that the reason given for the 2003 invasion of Iraq was that Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction, which he would use to threaten other countries. I was 12, and I remember Tony Blair assuring the House of Commons that Saddam could use the weapons against Britain within 45 minutes.
And as a twelve year old really interested in weapons and stuff, I knew that was wrong. There are only a handful of countries that could deploy weapons of mass destruction against the UK in less than an hour. We are close allies with two of them, and the other two wouldn't even dare (thanks mainly to their fear of the other two). What Blair actually meant was that British interests could be hit in 45 minutes. He meant the bases in Cyprus. And even that turned out to be false.
From 2002 until 2003, an enormous amount of falsehoods were flung around the media about Iraq. There was a German intelligence asset who had worked on the mobile chemical factories. There were the stories of the Iraqi agents sent to buy uranium from Africa. Or links were drawn between the Baathist regime and Al-Quaeda, at a time when America was still reeling from the destruction of the World Trade Centre.
All of it was complete rubbish. The man in Germany was an Iraqi exile, who was saying what he needed to in order to get asylum in the West. The CIA quickly rubbished the reports of Iraqis buying yellowcake in Niger, only for Bush to go and use it in his State of the Union speech. And Baathist Iraq was possibly the most hostile of any Arab nation to Al-Quaeda.
The problem was, the Bush administration had decided it wanted to go to war with Iraq long before 2003. It had really been spoiling for a fight with Saddam since day one. Being handed an excuse to use America's military muscle by 9/11 certainly helped prepare the ground. But to really convince people, these stories were dug up and given much greater prominence than they deserved. And then they wondered why everyone was very, very cross when it turned out there were no weapons of mass destruction, and we'd broken international law for no real purpose...
Colin Powell, showing the UN more lethal material than Saddam possessed in his entire country...
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To be honest, I could go on. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the Hitler Diaries, satanic abuse in children's homes, the Ashley Todd mugging, the Great Fear in Revolutionary France, the Red Scare and McCarthyite witch hunts in the USA. Even the Black Legend put out by the earliest Protestants against the Inquisitions of the early modern Catholic Church. All are examples of fake news, put out there to try and sway public opinion.
These are not new. What is new is that the internet, and social media, has made it much easier for these stories to spread without going through the traditional gatekeepers of the newspaper press. But this doesn't make it a new problem.
I have been writing this post for the last few weeks. However, now that there is no chance of me being held in contempt of court over it, I'm going to say what I've wanted to say for months.
I told you. I bloody told you.
Today, Thomas Mair was found guilty of murder. He murdered his local MP, Labour's Jo Cox, of Batley and Spen, in June, a week before the EU referendum. He was motivated by far-right views, and tipped into murder by the referendum. As he carried out his appalling attack on that June day, Mair shouted "Britain first," or "independence for Britain." In his bag, alongside the weapons and ammunition, was a leaflet about the referendum.
At the time, I said that senior Leave people had to be prepared to stand by their words and actions. They had helped to create a climate of hysteria, in which an incident like this was made increasingly likely.
And lots of you were not happy with this. I remember being repeatedly told, by people from across the political spectrum, that Mair was clearly mentally ill, that it was nothing to do with the referendum, that I was wrong and sick to draw the connection.
Mair did not use medical evidence in his defence. That means he must be judged to be sane. Hiding behind the excuse of mental health is awful, as it insults those with genuine mental health conditions, and seeks to sweep away what Mair did as 'not his fault,' or 'just one of those things.' It also begs the question of why Mair is any different to those we have repeatedly labelled as terrorists: the IRA, Al Qaeda, the London bombers, ISIS. Many of these groups or people were ordinary, but who also took the messages of hatred and violence to the next level. They may be disturbed, but we do not treat them as such. The judge was correct- if they were terrorists, then so is Thomas Mair.
In fact, Mair did not defend himself at all. He has let his actions speak for themselves. And the jury have found him guilty.
So today I repeat what I said on that awful day. I did not accuse any of you of being murderers, despite what some people thought. But those who shaped and projected the agenda of the Leave campaigns helped to create a climate in which politicians were dehumanised, and in which people were told this was their chance to take back control of their country from the foreigners who were standing between them and greatness.
It is hardly surprising that, in this febrile atmosphere, someone with a violent tendency, with abhorrent political ideas, saw the signals and decided to act.
The Leave campaigns should be ashamed of themselves. By beating the drum of xenophobia, and screaming a message of taking back control, they sent the signals that led to those terrible events in June.
That this message of hatred and bigotry took us out of the EU is bad enough. But that someone had to pay with their life because of it is utterly, utterly shameful.
Today, justice was seen to have been done. But it will never bring back the person whose life was tragically cut short.
As you may have noticed, I am no fan of the next American president. I think he is a dangerous, ignorant, quasi-fascistic demagogues, who in his pursuit of the most powerful job on Earth has provoked violence, called into question freedom of expression, and threatened minorities and the most vulnerable in society.
There has been a lot of lazy analysis since his election the week before last, about how Trump is a dictator in the making. Much of this is false, or over-hyped, or a false/easy comparison with Hitler.
Unfortunately, we must await Trump's assumption of power before we know for certain whether his strongman rhetoric will exhibit itself as strongman leadership.
But, there is one worrying sign, that should be sending a chill through any observer.
It is his taste in interior design.
This week Trump met Shinzo Abe, the Japanese Prime Minister. Much of the media commentary centred on the fact that Trump shouldn't really be meeting foreign leaders before he takes office, or on the (very real and grave) questions raised by the presence of his daughter and son in law.
Me? I was gazing in horrified fascination at the inside of Trump Tower:
Similar scenes were in evidence when Trump met (/was accosted by) Nigel Farage. Look past the horrifying sight of two of the most repulsive men in Western politics sharing a moment to bask in their destruction of the Western liberal world order, what the hell are they standing in front of?!
Not only is it bloody awful, but I realised I'd seen designs like this before...
This is inside one of the palaces of Saddam Hussein, the dictator of Iraq toppled in 2003
While this is inside a palace of Nicolae Ceausescu, the Romanian dictator who was ousted in 1989
Colonel Gaddafi of Libya doesn't come out of this well either...
The photos from inside North Korea are impossible to verify, so I won't post them. But needless to say, the trend isn't looking positive one little bit.
If Donald Trump tries to get the builders in at the White House, that will be the best sign that is he trying to override democracy. That'll be when we all have to get scared.
The West Cork constituency really was at the very edge of Britain. It comprises those parts of Ireland that border the Atlantic Ocean. The next bit of land is in North America. Even today, it is a wild, rugged part of the world. I'd know, I was there this summer. It is where my grandad is from.
One hundred years ago, it was the scene of firsts and lasts. The sitting MP had died. This meant that West Cork held the dubious honour of being the first test of Irish public opinion since the Easter Rising of April 1916.
The initial reaction to the violence in Dublin had been one of annoyance at the actions of the rebels. Ireland was already guaranteed Home Rule once the slaughter in France was over. In the eyes of many, the declaration of a republic by the Irish Republican Brotherhood had harmed the cause of Irish nationalism, by associating it with violence and treason.
However, this initial dismissal had turned to shock and outrage, as the British government executed ringleaders, and imposed martial law across Ireland. The by-election in West Cork was a chance to gauge the lie of the land.
Seemingly, it was business as usual. The seat was taken by the Irish Parliamentary Party, the moderate nationalist party which advocated legislative autonomy for Ireland within the United Kingdom. They took it from a breakaway group, which also advocated a limited form of Home Rule. Both were campaigning for a settlement less powerful than Scotland and Wales enjoy today.
In this most Irish of seats, it seemed as if the settlement agreed before the outbreak of war in Europe, of Irish Home Rule once the slaughter was ended, was holding. The rebellion in Dublin seemed to have failed in its aim of persuading the Irish to abandon the Union between Britain and Ireland.
But it was false hope. The West Cork by-election of November 1916 actually marks the last time a candidate committed, in some form, to the Union between Ireland and Great Britain secured political representation outside of the future Northern Ireland.
Divisions within the republican party Sinn Fein meant they had not fielded a candidate. However, in every by-election held in Southern Ireland after this one, Sinn Fein swept all before them. When the general election of 1918 was held, they took every seat outside of the North, with the exception of the oddities of the Dublin University constituency.
West Cork proved a last gasp for moderate Irish nationalism, that would have kept Ireland and Britain united. From now on, the march to Irish independence was unstoppable.
One of the more worrying narratives to already emerge from the nascent Trump administration is the idea that he is trying to restrict media access to the White House. Some of Trump's supporters and surrogates have already suggested he refuse journalist credentials to those newspapers and TV channels that fought in the last ditch to try and stop him becoming President.
Fine. If Donald Trump wants to go to war with the media, let him.
Why am I so sanguine about this? One of those newspapers he has apparently considered blocking from the White House is the Washington Post. Amongst all the giants of journalism Trump is considering shunning, this would be suicidal.
Why? The Washington Post has previous in this area. I reckon they'd love to claim their second Presidential scalp...
N.B. I'm sure a longer piece on Trump and the media is in me somewhere, just not during assessment week!
I am not going to row back on what I said yesterday. I still maintain that Donald Trump is singularly unfit to hold the office of President of the United States of America. He is a racist, misogynistic demagogue. He has cut a path to the US Presidency by insulting minorities, women, and anyone who has stood in his way. He has threatened to use the organs of the state to put his political and media opponents on trial. He has incited violence, and undermined confidence in the political process. He has threatened to pull America out of it's commitments around the world, removing the defensive umbrella that provides the security of the Western world. And his economic policies, if he follows through on what he says, will do enormous harm to the world economy. The day America defaults on its debt is a day we will all become poorer.
And the message he has sent around the world is this. You can insult your way to the highest office in the land. Sexual assault, fraud, inciting violence, insulting anyone who disagrees with you, none of these are barriers. What he has promised to do is virtually impossible, therefore letting down those who are already feeling powerless and alone. All you have to do is say what people want to hear, and it will get you power.
What a terrible message to send round the world. From January, the leader of the free world be a rapist, who doesn't pay his taxes, and has insulted and lied his way to the Oval Office. It is utterly, utterly shameful.
On a purely technical note, if this election was held in any other country, Hillary Clinton would today be celebrating a knife-edge victory over Donald Trump. As I write, she holds a 1% lead over Trump in the popular vote. But it is virtually meaningless. For the second time in my lifetime, the Electoral College has delivered the loser of the popular vote the ultimate prize. Last time, we ended up with Dubya. This time, we got the Donald. Neither of those are compelling arguments in favour of the system.
I am going to write a piece soon about this tidal wave of populism which is sweeping the Western world, and how those of us who say we are on the left can start try and work out a way forward.
But that is for the future. Today is for looking aghast at the fear and loathing that the 2016 election has wreaked.
It is now night in the city on a hill. The dawn will be a long time coming.
Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid
(Matthew 5:14)
Today is US election day. American voters face a choice between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. One is the epitome of the technocracy, someone who has operated inside the Washington political scene for a quarter of a century. The other has been described as 'Rome burning in man form.' It was on a comedy show, but no one is laughing now.
For a long time now, the United States of America has been described as a city on a hill. The expression, Biblical in origin, began its association with Americans in 1630, nearly a century and a half before the creation of the United States. It was used in a sermon by one of the Pilgrim Fathers, John Winthrop, whilst on his way to establish the Massachusetts Bay Colony. It has subsequently been used by figures such as John F Kennedy, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, and most famously, Ronald Reagan.
These political leaders have used the expression as a metaphor. They are espousing the idea of American exceptionalism, the idea that the United States of America has a role as a leader, and a beacon. John Winthrop was using the quotation as a exhortation to moral, Christian leadership. Since then, it has been invoked to justify the leading clout of America around the world.
Now, God knows I am not the biggest fan of the United States of America. There are many parts of its culture, society and politics that I find abhorrent, from the extreme poverty to the rampant consumerism, mass gun deaths and appalling social divisions. And it hasn't helped itself internationally a lot of the time either, be it invading and destroying a sovereign state for no good reason, through to drone strikes and illegal killings by special forces.
And yet... The United States is the sole global superpower. And it is a liberal democracy. And, on the whole, it has used this power around the world for good.
Think about it the other way round. How will the world be different if, or when, the People's Republic of China is calling the global shots? Or the Russian Federation develops a greater desire and means to impose its view on the rest of the world?
America is an ally. They may have 'turned up late,' to the Second World War, as the common dismissive attitude is, but they had been bankrolling Britain's war effort for a long time before the attack on Pearl Harbour. After the war, it essentially funded the rebuilding of Western Europe by itself. Its role in NATO has helped to keep the peace in Europe for nearly seven decades. Its participation in international conflicts and peacekeeping missions is immensely valuable, and its power and sway has made it a deal broker in conflicts as diverse as Northern Ireland and the Middle East.
Like it or not, but the United States is the ultimate guarantor of Western security. It is also the economic centre of the world, despite a crippling downturn eight years ago. Not to mention a massive cultural centre. What happens there matters to all of us. Not for nothing is the President often referred to as the Leader of the Free World.
And Donald Trump wants to end that role of America as the city on a hill. He has spent the election saying that he doesn't see why the USA should be defending others, unless they pay a premium for it. He will willingly arm other countries with nuclear weapons, if it means that the USA no longer has to pay to protect them. Could you imagine what Putin may do next if the United States refused to honour its guarantees to the Baltic States? Or Poland? Would nuclear weapons spread if America's allies weten't sure they lived under the nuclear umbrella?
This city on a hill starts at home. This election has seen Donald Trump run on a demagoguic platform, attacking racial minorities, women, and the disabled, in language and terms which are abhorrent. He has incited violence against those who oppose him, has advocated using the machinery of government to go after his political and media opponents, and called the integrity of the election process itself into question. There is a very real chance that he will not acknowledge the result if he loses; the peaceful transfer of power is essential in all democracies, it isn't an optional extra. If he is elected, what sort of message will that send to those around the planet who look to the United Sates as the leader of the free Western world?
It is important that the United States remains that city on a hill, for all who believe in liberal democracy. Whatever you think of Hillary Clinton (and I seem to be in a minority in thinking she is an excellent potential president), Trump is a quasi-fascistic demagogue, and cannot be allowed to control the machinery of government. His election may be a scream of rage from those whose lives have been battered by globalisation, but he is not the answer.
I hope that tomorrow Trump is consigned to the history books. But until then, we have to sit out the long, dark night of the soul.
In the last few weeks, Donald Trump has refused to say that he will accept the results of the US presidential election if he doesn't win. He has also called for his supporters to go and monitor the polls, as he is afraid that they are going to be rigged against him.
This week, the High Court in London ruled that the government could only trigger Article 50, and begin the UK's withdrawal from the European Union, if they had first got Parliament to approve the measure.
What do these seemingly unconnected events have in common? They both terrify me.
Obviously, I am terrified at the thought of a Trump presidency, and I am writing another post about that. But for him to refuse to say that he'd honour the vote is unprecedented. His claims of widespread voter fraud are already calling the result into doubt. He is undermining the entire electoral process, before a single ballot has been counted. That is scary.
The High Court ruling has also given me the shivers. Not the ruling itself. I do welcome it, but I recognise that the law around the UK's membership of the EU is horrifically complicated. Is it an international treaty obligation, or a matter of domestic law? Can it be both? That's what the poor judges had to try and untangle.
And for their troubles, they have had a tonne of vitriol poured all over them. These headlines from Friday are particularly sickening:
It's the one from the Daily Mail that gets me. 'ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE' The ruling doesn't stop Britain leaving the EU. I'm resigned that that will happen eventually. It is just evidence that the UK's relationship with the EU is complex, and unravelling it will be an absolute nightmare.
But the link between these headlines, and the ramblings of the Donald, is this.
They are calling into question the very institutions that comprise a stable, democratic state. Free and fair elections. An impartial judiciary. The peaceful transfer of power. All of these are hallmarks of a Western liberal democracy. And now there are voices saying that somehow, these hallmarks have failed. That the system is rigged, and there is an elite controlling you, the ordinary people, and trying to frustrate you your wishes.
By seeking to label these checks and balances as 'enemies of the people,' or by saying the system is rigged against people, we may be unleashing forces we cannot control.
In 1995, this type of rhetoric was common in the USA. There were widespread anti-government messages, pushed by talk radio, the internet, and some elements of the Republican party. And then in April 1995, someone decided to act. He parked a massive truck bomb outside a federal government building in Oklahoma City. It was underneath the creche. 169 people died. 19 of them were children.
The UK is not immune. I live barely a mile from where the only MP in modern times to be killed by someone other than the IRA was shot dead in the streets of her constituency, by a man with far-right connections, at the height of the EU referendum. While this case is about to go to trial, and so I don't really want to write any more, the defence team has decided not to rely on medical evidence.
But I am scared. It only takes one person to be influenced by the messages they hear, or by the signs they see.
If Donald Trump wants to question the impartiality of the election process, or the British media want to undermine the objectivity of the law, then they must be prepared to face the consequences, and be ready to be held accountable if others decide to turn their words into actions.
Time for the second half of the first series of the X-Files. I began watching these as an over the summer thing. The fact I've managed to find time for the rest of the first series during term time should be a clue as to how much I'm enjoying them...
Exactly the same as before, a few musings on each episode, and then some overall conclusions.
Beyond the Sea
If Mulder is 90s man, Scully's father is 50s man...
Excellent, family trauma, psychics and kidnap.
A rare case where Scully is the believer and Mulder is the sceptic.
Well, Luther Boggs seems a well-balanced, rational, affable bloke.
Poor Mulder, all the UFOs and monsters, no effect, but the one deranged lunatic and she's all over it...
"Did time for sexual assault, narcotics, nothing big really." Maybe the 90s weren't all good...
Wow, they did not pull any punches in the penultimate scene.
Silence of the Lambs meets the Exorcist.
Gender Bender
Not sure this title would be accepted in our more 'civilised age.'
Because 90s clubbing improves everything...
Those people are clearly Amish, it doesn't matter how you dress it up.
The tolling bell is creeping the hell out of me.
That map Mulder gets given is atrocious. It might as well be a kid's drawing.
This is like the Wicker Man meets Sleepy Hollow. But with added sex.
They seem to have borrowed that cave from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
Oh yeah, send five armed agents in the house, and Mulder into the creepy cave *by himself*, great idea...
Take that back, where *is* the cave? Come to that, all the people?!
Lazarus
I reckon I have a guess at what this one will be about...
Hang on, that is not how bodies work...
Mulder, you can get headphones for that, get your fingers out of your ears.
I love that they have whole offices devoid of PCs.
This is turning into the weirdest hostage setup ever.
And this is why the FBI employed Mulder. Because he is good.
I'm sorry, was the FBI's full time Hostage Rescue Team busy this weekend?
Young at Heart
Prison seems a nice, normal place.
Palaeography finally comes in handy...
A dead stalker is the worst type of stalker...
I think Mulder did well out of getting out of Violent Crimes and into the X-Files...
Doctor Mengele is *not* someone you want to be compared to...
Oh good, Scully's gone back to using Microsoft 3.0
Does Scully not own any electric light in her flat?!
Good grief, that scene in Scully's flat was bloody terrifying...
Mr Helpful is back, at least Mulder bought him a pint for his troubles.
The FBI agents stand out a mile off at that concert.
Bloody hell, Mulder is a good shot...
E.B.E.
Rather depressingly, a story set over Iraq in 'the present day' is just as plausible in 2016 as it was in 1993...
What on Earth is Mulder doing with that gadget?
Scully is going out of her way to explain the UFO away, even by her standards...
At least they've visited the site during the day this time...
The rest of the Mulder fan club give nerds a bad name...
Some atrocious flirting going on in this episode.
Mr Helpful keeping terrible hours.
Mulder's searching for bugs in his flat was like Father Ted before the 'All-Priests five-a-side Over-75s Indoor Challenge Football Match, against Rugged Island.'
Given his track record, there is no way there are any top secret government bases in the USA that don't have a picture of Mulder at the gate.
More high level conspiracy stuff.
Finally, Mr Helpful is starting to spill the beans!
Miracle Man
Wow, this is a brave topic of them to have tackled, faith healing...
The worst aspects of American Protestantism.
"I know this isn't an X-File..." Oh yeah, Scully, Mulder'll really pass this one up...
Last time they exhumed a corpse, they dropped it, is this wise?! (Short answer- no).
I'm sure the bar is from the Blues Brothers...
"Agricultural smorgasbord" is my quote of the month.
That choir is *definitely* from the Blues Brothers.
When the autopsy isn't an alien, Mulder becomes a lot more squeamish.
Shapes
What is this, a gothic horror novel?! (This was written within the first 60 seconds.)
Answer- Yes (This was written after the first 120 seconds).
Montana has made the list of places to Never Ever Visit.
Clever, the FBI's involvement comes from the fact that this is an Indian Reservation case, complete with all the political tensions and grievances that provides.
Great bit of dialogue Scully: "We're looking for anyone who can provide us with informal..." Mulder: "We're looking for something that can create human tracks and then a step later leave animal tracks."
The Indians are coming across as more unhelpfully sinister than the Amish...
The first ever X-File, nice bit of archival drawing...
Scully, it's a funeral, don't gatecrash...
Mulder picks up an Indian name along the way.
Of course the power is out, why wouldn't it be?!
The transformation has held up remarkably well.
Why on Earth does Parker own a house full of stuffed animals?! Didn't he know it would cause confusion?!
Scully's determination to not believe is truly remarkable.
Darkness Falls
Talk about a gripping opening...
Eco-terrotists, villains from simpler times...
Casual Alphabet Agency reference
Where on Earth did Scully get that raincoat?!
And the 1994 Emmy Award for the most uses of the 'word' "ecoterrorist" before the first break goes to...
I mean, 10/10 for gender equality, but how comes Scully has to go up in the pulley to the strange unknown hive?!
Make that a strange unknown hive with a corpse in it...
'Hammer large pieces of crooked wood up against all the windows!'
Oh great, that residue is terrible news...
They've clearly borrowed the quarantine facility from ET...
Tooms
You again!
First repeat villain, not counting the aliens.
Hang on, who looked at his case file and thought he should be released?!
Smoking Man is back, as is Scully's miserable boss...
Things no one seems to be addressing at the court hearing include 'He's over a century old' and 'He's basically an evil Mr Fantastic...'
Isn't that how they found Richard III?
Seriously, how are those two not together?!
Jeez, Mulder watches some bad tv...
Clever move on Tooms' part.
Wow, the FBI bureaucracy really don't like Mulder, do they?!
Does the Smoking Man *ever* say anything?!
Answer- Yes
Born Again
Marvellous. Creepy child in alleyway. Nothing can go wrong here...
I mean, I was not expecting it to go that wrong, that quickly...
Some good honest parenting going on.
They just explained what origami is...
May have been the 'Dana Scully face of the series' when Mulder started talking about psycho-kenesis...
TAKE THE SCARF OFF!!
I take the parenting back, 90s American parents were terrible.
Good to see that Mulder also does Hamlet-esque monologues.
Roland
A 90s disability story. This can only go well...
Not an opening to watch while having dinner.
Mulder heads straight for the maths.
Q- Premonitions?
A- Premonitions.
Actually, an episode to avoid if you're trying to eat dinner...
Cryogenics, that's pretty bloody 90s.
Of course Mulder used the UFO toy as a prop.
If you're going to go to the extent of installing cryogenics, at least install a thermostat...
Nice Shakespearean showdown at the end
Fairly basic design flaw in that wind tunnel, the lack of an emergency stop.
Glad Scully stepped in and prevented Mulder from telling that woman 'It was done by psychics, obviously.'
A surprisingly good portrayal of disability.
The Erlenmeyer Flask
Hang on, is this Bullitt I've accidentally turned on?!
What is he, Captain Scarlet?
Ooh, different words on the intro credits! (N.B. Having got used to 'I Want to Believe,' seeing 'Trust No One' instead really freaked me out).
Mulder's taste in films is confirmed as dreadful.
Mr Helpful is back, being really cryptic.
Mr Helpful's 'real' name is Deep Throat. How has it taken them 24 episodes to mention that?!
Mulder completely disregards the scientist's unwillingness to talk.
Scully has got a point, at least Woodward knew who the Watergate Deep Throat was, and why he was helping them.
The 'Obi-Wan Kenobi Crap' should be the name of a band.
Seriously high end conspiracy stuff.
They've just had to explain the Human Genome Project...
Well, that's one use for commercial storage...
I love how the 'we've been using alien viruses for years!' line is delivered...
Why has no one spotted that Scully is the only person not wearing a lab coat, she stands out a mile off?!
One hell of an ending...
The Raiders overflow warehouse is still doing a roaring trade...
Overall Musings
Things the X-Files love/specialise in:
Twins
Post-death experiences
Electrical charges
Psychic connections
Only working at night
Visiting creepy places at night (see above)
Scully giving Mulder 'The Look.' Normally when the words 'aliens' or 'psychic connections' are mentioned
Shadowy obstructive government people
I'm completely hooked. Have already acquired the second series, ready to carry on. As Mulder announces, as the final line spoken in the last episode:
I'm... not going to give up. I can't give up. Not as long as the truth is out there.
As his campaign continues its descent into chaos, Donald Trump has found a new outlet for his anger. He has begun to increasingly blame his impending loss on the 'rigged election.' Usually, the media, or 'Crooked Hillary' Clinton is to blame. But nonetheless, Trump seems determined to paint his failure as the fault of the system.
For all it's faults, the United States of America is the strongest democratic country in the world. Not for nothing does the President still carry the unofficial title 'Leader of the Free World.' So accusations of rigged elections are dangerous. It allows those around the world who are not democrats (small d...) to justify their actions.
The thing is, America has faced problematic elections in the past.
1876
The US Civil War cast a long shadow over the country. Fought between Northern and Southern states over the twin issues of slavery and states' rights, the defeat of the Confederacy led to a period called Reconstruction. The Southern, overwhelmingly Democratic states were garrisoned by the US Army, who also supervised elections, making sure that they were held in accordance with the new laws that banned slavery and discrimination. This led to the election of mainly Republican politicians, including blacks, to governerships, the House and the Senate. Not surprisingly, Southern Democrats hated this policy.
Then came the election of 1876. There were a series of brutal confrontations and intimidations between supporters of both parties. The election went down to the wire. As the results came in, it was clear that the Democrat, Northerner Samuel Tilden, had polled more votes. Indeed, he had taken over half the votes cast, and was one electoral vote short of outright victory. But the results in three states, Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina, were in doubt. Tilden appeared to be ahead of the Republican, Rutherford Hayes, but no one could be sure. As the date for the new president to take office got closer, no solution had been reached.
Until a specially appointed Electoral Commission found that the three states had been won by Hayes. By a single electoral vote, and with a majority of Americans preferring Tilden, Hayes was elected to the presidency. There has been speculation that a deal was struck; the Republicans could keep the White House, but in return federal troops were to be withdrawn from the South. The troops did leave, and the protection they offered to blacks left with them. Reconstruction was ended, possibly thanks to a rigged election. The freed slaves were to suffer dearly during the next century.
Tilden: "Boo Hoo! Ruthy Hayes's got my presidency, and won't give it to me" 1876
1960
1960 is the first potentially rigged election to feature a well-known American political villain. But, for a change, in 1960 the election appears to have been rigged *against* Richard Nixon. The election had been close; no US election has ever been closer.
As the dust settled on the victory for John F Kennedy, the accusations started to fly. The era of political machines was almost over, but not quite. Kennedy had won two states by very narrow margins. His victory in Texas was attributed to the political machine of his vice-presidential candidate, Lyndon B Johnson. There were examples given of counties in Texas were 6000 people had voted, out of 4000 inhabitants.
But even more controversial was the situation in Illinois. Nixon had carried Illinois outside of the city of Chicago. But in Chicago, the political power of the mayor, Richard Daley, delivered the city, the state and the election to Kennedy. Even more sinister, there were accusations swirling that the Kennedy family had asked the mafia to sort out the election in Illinois, in return for the protection of their interests.
Nothing was ever proved in either case. But it is quite possible that one of the giants of American politics became president due to fraud.
John and Bobby Kennedy listening to election night returns, 1960
1968
No electoral fraud here, but possibly something even worse. In 1968, one issue dominated America. The war in Vietnam was turning into a slaughterhouse, with no sign of victory in sight. The war had already forced the sitting president, Lyndon Johnson, to withdraw from the race, as the Democratic party began to collapse amidst the conflict between pro and anti-war factions. The other crisis for the Democrats was that the old Solid South was backing racialist George Wallace of Alabama, rather than official nominee Hubert Humphrey.
Amazingly, despite the near death experience of the Democrats, Humphrey drew level with Richard Nixon, the Republican nominee again after six years in the wilderness. As November approached, it was neck and neck.
As this election was ongoing, there was another drama ongoing. In Paris, the peace negotiators were trying to hammer out a deal between North and South Vietnam. Johnson didn't want his presidency to end in failure, and knew a peace deal would boost Humphrey. The weekend before voting, Johnson called off the American bombing of North Vietnam, and outlined the deal that was about to be agreed.
Nixon panicked. In fact, he panicked so much, that he sent a message to the South Vietnamese, telling them that they would get better terms under a Nixon administration, and so they should reject the deal Johnson had offered. This they duly did. Johnson was livid, telling advisers that Nixon had blood on his hands. But as Johnson had learnt of Nixon's treachery by illegal phone taps, he was unable to reveal what he had done. And so Nixon won the presidency, by the skin of his teeth. Had the American public known he was prepared to sacrifice American lives to do so, they may not have been as willing to vote him in.
Nixon was the one in 1968, but only would he been had people known he'd prolonged a war to win?
1972
Normally, elections are rigged to make sure the 'right person' wins, or to turn a close race into a landslide. By this definition, it is a mystery why on Earth Richard Nixon felt the need to tamper with the 1972 campaign. The Democrats had selected George McGovern as their candidate, who was way to the left of what American opinion would accept. And this proved to be the case. Nixon hammered McGovern, 61% to 38%. Only Massachusetts voted for McGovern; the other 49 states went for Nixon.
This would probably have happened anyway. But there had been some strange events along the way. The campaign of prominent senator Edmund Muskie had collapsed, after he was accused of insulting French-Canadians, and rumours swirled that his wife was an alcoholic. Muskie was forced out of the race, and the road for McGovern was clearer. Then, problems beset the campaign. Problems such as rallies being cancelled, or double booked. Leaflets going missing. Insulting leaflets being handed out. Low level disruption.
And then one night, some burglars were caught in the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee, at the Watergate Hotel. Even as Nixon cruised to victory, in an election he would have won anyway, his efforts to frustrate his opponents were already being revealed. It would prove to be his downfall.
2000
The most obvious example that jumps to mind is the bitter experience of 2000. Al Gore and George W Bush were deadlocked in the Electoral College, although Gore had a clear edge in the popular vote. The state of Florida was close. In fact, it was so close that no one could establish who had actually won. The entire election process was thrown into chaos, as rows erupted over whether the voting machines were faulty, the best method to recount the votes, and whether the ballot papers had been marked correctly. It seems unlikely that thousands of Jewish voters opted for the ultra-conservative Christian firebrand Pat Buchanan, yet that is what their ballot papers seemed to say afterwards.
But this was not fraud, this was farce. The fraud came from the way that the aftermath was handled. The governor of the state is ultimately responsible for elections in their state. In Florida, in 2000, this was George W Bush's younger brother. The person who had the authority to declare and certify the winner was the chair of Bush's Florida campaign team. They did their best to disrupt and frustrate the process at every single stage. The arguments in the courts were designed to keep Bush as the winner, and not to determine the actual winner in the state of Florida. The Democrats presumed FairPlay, and so brought a knife to a gun fight.
Had a full recount been permitted in Florida, across the entire state, it is entirely possible that Al Gore would have emerged the victor. He may not have done either. That is fine. But what happened was not fair. It was what the Bush campaign wanted, and it happened they controlled enough positions in Florida to make it so.
Newsweek reflects the question of the American people, 2000
Why 2016 won't make this list
Compared to the examples, 2016 is unlikely to be remembered as a rigged election. With the exception of 1972 (when God knows what Richard Nixon was on), all of the examples cited above were razor edge close. Because the USA weights the votes of each state in the Electoral College, a close race can be decided by a handful of voters in one or two states. Had Gore been treated fairly in 2000 in Florida, a victory there would have put him over the winning line. Had the commission in 1876 worked out which states had voted for which candidate, Tilden may well have been elected, regardless of any secret deal. A shift of a few thousand votes would have seen a president Nixon in 1961, or a president Humphrey in 1969.
But Trump is not shaping up for a close race. If current polling is anything to go by, he is going to lose to Hillary Clinton by a solid margin, and her lead keeps growing as election day gets nearer. The previous experience of American elections is that, when one person is winning by a landslide, then it's because they are winning by a landslide. It's when it gets close that the chances of a suspicious result rise.
There's also the mechanics of how American elections work, sate by state. The Republican party controls most state-level posts in America, including many of the ones who organise and certify election results. Not only would every single Democrat have to be in on the conspiracy, but a fair chunk of Republican America would have to be involved in depriving their own nominee of the prize. Many Republican officials may not like Trump, but that claim is outlandish. There's no great love for the Clintons amongst the GOP.
There are many reasons Trump will lose this election. But a vast meta-conspiracy to rig the election isn't one of them.
A few days ago marked the 950th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings, when the Anglo-Saxon world came crashing down in the face of Duke William the Bastard. The Norman Conquest would sweep their world away.
Often forgotten is that the Anglo-Saxons were very, very lucky. They had got a second chance. For today marks one thousand years since the other Conquest of England in the eleventh century.
It's fair to say that the reign of Aethelred II of England was fraught with difficulty. Harried by Viking attacks for much of his reign, by 1014 he had been deposed, hiding in exile in Normandy. The Viking king, Swein Forkbeard, was due to be crowned. Then, at the start of 1015, Aethelred was saved. Swein died, and the Anglo-Saxon Witan invited their former king back. But Aethelred was living on borrowed time. Swein's son, Cnut*, returned with a vengeance. By April 1016, Aethelred was besieged in London. And then he died, on St George's day. Much of the country was under Cnut's control. The ancient line of kings, stretching back into the mists of the post-Roman world, had apparently come to an end.
Enter Aethelred's son. Edmund Ironside was proclaimed king by those in London. His first move was to leave the city, and return to his ancestral homeland of Wessex. Here, he raised the West Saxon fyrd, and prevented the Vikings from further advances. Edmund then returned to London, and at the Battle of Brentford he lifted the Viking siege of the city. After years of royal dithering and inactivity, finally the Anglo-Saxons were putting up a fight.
Cnut's forces fell back into Essex, pursued by Edmund and the Anglo-Saxons. On October 18th, 1016, Edmund overtook Cnut at the battle of Assandun. Here was his chance to rid England of the Danes once and for all.
But it never happened. Desperate for allies, Edmund was relying on the Mercian Ealdorman Eadric Streona, to assist him. But Eadric had a reputation for treachery, and this time was no different. During the battle, he switched to supporting Cnut, and the Anglo-Saxons were defeated.
Both sides were exhausted. Cnut had been unable to deliver the knockout blow he had hoped for, but Edmund could not hope to recapture the whole of England with only Wessex on his side. So, after the battle, they agreed to a peace deal. Edmund would retain Wessex, while Cnut would control the rest of the country. Edmund would also retain the crown. However, when one of them died, the other would take control of the whole country, and their children would have a guaranteed succession.
This deal was clearly unsustainable, a pause to allow both sides to lick their wounds and prepare for future struggle. And then suddenly, Edmund Ironside died, on St Andrews Day 1016. Whether he was murdered, ill, or succumbed to injuries from Assandun, we don't know. But Cnut was now the undisputed master of England. The Vikings had finally won. The old Anglo-Saxon royal family fled into exile. And for his treachery, Eadric was executed by Cnut in 1017.
However, this Viking Conquest of England was not to last. After Cnut, his two sons had short reigns, and died childless. By 1042, the Witan were looking for a new King. Who better than the brother of Edmund Ironside, Edward the Confessor?
Seemingly, the Danish Conquest of England had no long term impact. Unlike 1066, 1016 was not a Year 0. The Vikings took over the top tier of English society, but did not replace the entire ruling classes and structures, as the Normans would do.
But the Danish Conquest did have one major long term impact. As Cnut assumed power, the children of Aethelred fled overseas, into the safe care of their uncle. This alliance with the Duke of Normandy may have kept Edward the Confessor safe for a while, but it would ultimately bring about the end of Anglo-Saxon England.
Then Duke William sailed from Normandy into Pevensey, on the eve of Michaelmas. As soon as his men were fit for service, they constructed a castle at Hastings. When King Harold was informed of this, he gathered together a great host, and came to oppose him at the grey apple-tree, and William came upon him unexpectedly before his army was set in order. Nevertheless the King fought against him most resolutely with those men who wished to stand by him, and there was a great slaughter on both sides. King Harold was slain, and Leofwine, his brother, and Earl Gurth, his brother, and many good men. The French had possession of the place of slaughter, as God granted them because of the nation's sins.
950 years ago today, a period of history came to an end. It did so on a ridge-line in the Sussex countryside. The historical epoch shifted at dusk, although the struggle to end it had been going on since 9am. On this day, October 14th 1066, Anglo-Saxon England died on the battlefield of Senlac Hill. It would be known in the future as the Battle of Hastings.
The Battle of Hastings was a clash between two completely different worlds. Standing on the ridge that autumn morning, blocking the road to London, was the old world. The Anglo-Saxons represented a link to the end of the Roman Empire, with the barbarian migrations stemming from the vacuum left by the absence of Imperial power in the West. Their culture stretched back into the mists and forests of Northern Europe, a world inhabited by Beowulf, Woden and Thor. Upon settling in the British Isles, the Anglo-Saxons had soon adopted Christianity, and this blend of cultures had produced one of the intellectual and cultural powerhouses of the early medieval period.
Their recent past had been shaped by the Vikings. The Viking onslaught against the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in the 800s had transformed the map of the British Isles forever. Before, there had been four Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, with power finely balanced between them. But in the middle of the ninth century, the Vikings had destroyed the kingdoms of East Anglia and Northumbria, and reduced Mercia to a shadow of its former glory. Only Wessex survived, with Alfred the Great coming back from seemingly certain catastrophe to overcome the Norsemen. Under his descendants, the West Saxons expanded their power into the rest of the British Isles, until by the middle of the 900s, a powerful, centralised, and fairly unified state had been created in the lowlands of Britain. It was originally called the kingdom of the Anglo-Saxons, but by 1066 it was widely known as the kingdom of the English.
Their new king, Harold II, was not of the ancient line of Cerdic of Wessex. Instead, he had been elected by the Witan, the council that advised and chose the king, to take control of the country after the old king, Edward the Confessor, had died childless. Harold and his men had just won a stunning victory at Stamford Bridge. They had crushed the invading forces of Harald Hardraada of Norway; although they did not know it at the time, but this marked the end of the Viking threat to England. Now they were facing yet another foe.
Strangely, though, this foe at the bottom of the hill, the Normans, had recently been a part of this world too. Their forefathers had also been Vikings, who had settled in Normandy a century or so earlier. But now they were ingrained into the domestic squabbles of the French monarchy. The Duke of Normandy had emerged as one of the leading French noblemen, wielding more power than the king of France. Quite impressive, given that William the Bastard had become Duke at the age of 7 or 8, and had been forced to claw back his control over the Duchy. He had expanded his power and influence. With Edward the Confessor dying, William pushed his distant claim to the English throne. An unruly band of French knights and lords had been assembled, and promised land and power if they participated in William's great English enterprise.
For much of that day in October 1066, it looked as if William's throw of the dice had failed. His early cavalry charges failed to penetrate the Anglo-Saxon shield wall. False retreats by the Normans did thin the English forces somewhat, as the knights cut down those Anglo-Saxons foolish enough to chase their foes. But it was not enough. All the Saxons had to do was hold firm until night. After that, they could bring up fresh forces and supplies. William, on the other hand, was trapped in a foreign country, with no easy means of supply or retreat, and dubious allies.
And then late in the day, it all went wrong for the Anglo-Saxons. Their warrior king, Harold, was slain. In the popular imagination, he took an arrow to the eye. Other sources say he was hacked to pieces. We simply don't know. But without him, the English army began to collapse. The slaughter was terrible. The Anglo-Saxon nobility, with many of them holding positions and titles that were centuries old, was destroyed on Senlac Hill. The rest of the army fled, or was killed.
William initially refused the English permission to bury their dead; the bodies rotted on the field where they had fallen. In a way, it was a metaphor for what was unfolding. Great change was on the way, as the Norman Conquest used the strong, centralised state to launch a revolution in England. The Normans were the masters now. The new world was displacing the old. At Hastings, nine and a half centuries ago today, Anglo-Saxon England had come to a sudden, bloody, and tragic end.
What an utter waste of everybody's time. The Labour leadership election has resulted in another win for Jeremy Corbyn, who has slightly increased his lead, from 59% to 62%.
It's safe to say that Labour has had an utterly horrendous year. Electorally, it hasn't been great. Poor local election results in England, mediocre Welsh Assembly results, and a rout in the Scottish Parliament. And then over a quarter of a century of Labour foreign policy went up in smoke, as the British people voted to leave the EU.
This was the final straw for Labour MPs, who mounted a bid to oust Corbyn. First of all they no-confidenced him, which had... no effect. Next they tried to get him removed from the ballot in the leadership race... with similar results. And their final chance to get rid of him went wrong the moment they picked Owen Smith as their challenger. The internal debate has dragged on for months, with horrific abuse being hurled by both sides of the divide. For those of us who care about left wing politics, it has been like watching someone self-harm in public.
And all this pain and effort was for virtually nothing. Corbyn retained the leadership, by virtually the same margin as before. All that self-destruction was for nothing.
Despite all his cries of victory, things were not all plain sailing for Corbyn. He actually lost amongst the members who voted for him last year, by an impressive 63:37. His victory rested on the huge swell of new members he has brought into the party in the intervening twelve months. Owen Smith, for all he was a horrendous candidate, actually polled better than any of the leadership candidates last year, or indeed Ed Miliband in 2010.
But regardless of all that, this has to stop. Over the last year, the government has governed virtually unopposed. Labour's war with itself has not solved the problems in the party, it has only made them worse. And it has enabled the government to make the lives of millions of people worse. The Official Opposition has a job to do. It needs to start doing it.
It is now clear that, shy of a landslide defeat in a snap election, Jeremy Corbyn will remain as Labour leader until 2020. So, a truce is essential. The Labour MPs, the longer-term party members, and those towards the centre of the political spectrum, need to recognise that Jeremy Corbyn has tapped into a powerful reservoir of left wing support and enthusiasm. Fighting it has not worked. Indeed, much of their anger is justified, and should be what Labour is trying to address. Instead of trying to fight it, they need to find a way to work alongside it. It may offer a road back into government, no matter how remote that chance seems. Even if it doesn't, the centrists and moderates need to find a way to work alongside those people whose anger at the status quo is justified, and can be harnessed. Defections and splits may seem attractive, but they will make things worse, not better. When the SDP left Labour in the 1980s, they did not 'break the mould,' they let Mrs Thatcher back into government. Twice. Splitting the vote and letting the Tories back in will not help any Labour supporters, or Labour voters.
In return, the Corbynites need to accept that they are in control of the only left-wing political force in the United Kingdom that is in a position of assuming national power. This puts an enormous responsibility on them. Millions upon millions of people who need or want a left-wing government are relying on them to make it a reality. This means winning a general election. Everything they do must now be devoted to that aim. Preferring social movements and extra-parliamentary action is fine. But it is not what they are in control of. They are in control of a political party committed to the democratic road to power. True social progress is made not with the banner but with the ballot box. Those around Jeremy Corbyn are being tasked with delivering the next left-wing government. They must never forget that, nor act in a way that harms that.
Overall, the Labour party needs to accept it is a broad church. It contains a wide range of opinions and views. Ever since 1900, it has represented a coalition of interests. Indeed, it must be a broad based movement, to enable it to speak on behalf of all the people. So all the abuse, all the insults, threats, and derogatory remarks have to stop. Both sides have stooped to these levels in their struggle for control of the party. But the sexism, the racial slurs, the appalling anti-Semitism, the resurrection of political insults from different decades, the attacks on constituency surgeries, the threats of de-selection and sacking, have to stop. The people are watching. If you are seen as a repository for hate, they will not trust you with control of the country. And if you want to see where political hate can end up, the seat next door to mine is holding a by-election soon, to replace an MP shot dead in the streets.
If the two wings of the Labour party do not unite, then they will be destroyed at the next election. If they try to come together, there is just a small chance they will survive as a political force, and one day will operate the levers of power in the name of those who cannot speak up for themselves. Unite or die.
As a quick glance at this blog will confirm, I'm a big fan of historical anniversaries. This year, I've noticed that there have been a whole host of 25th anniversaries. More interestingly, many of the events of 1991 seem to have a direct relevance for us today.
L.P. Hartley told us that the past is a foreign country, and that they do things differently there. The recent past is a strangely alien place, at once almost familiar and yet so very different. But in 1991, they weren't doing things that differently to us after all.
Gulf War
It was billed as the first war of the New World Order- a rogue state was fought by a coalition, under a UN mandate, to ensure that international justice was maintained. The war was fought with smart weapons, helping to ensure that casualties were kept to a minimum. The war was fought to the letter of the UN's authorisation, and not a moment longer.
This is all a bit neat. In reality, the high-tech violence unleashed against Iraq by the US-led coalition in 1991 was utterly brutal. Civilians were killed. The Atlantic Alliance had spent the last half a century devising weapons designed to be used in a final struggle with the Eastern Bloc. When these weapons were finally used, they turned out to be devastating. There are accounts of bodies melting and pooling as fat in facilities hit by the bombing. The Iraqi army was so weakened that, when the invasion came, the land war lasted only 100 hours. There are serious questions as to whether or not such disproportionate use of force constituted a war crime.
The Gulf War of 1991 still stands as an excellent example of multilateralism. George Bush Senior put together a very impressive coalition of diverse countries, under a UN banner, to maintain international order. They did the job the UN had given them, and then they went home.
But, the longer term effects cast a much darker shadow. The Gulf War marked a transitional point. Saddam Hussein's Iraq had been an ally of the West during the 1980s, a counterpoint against the Iranians. Now Saddam was an enemy. His actions were the concerns of the rest of the world. The road to 2003 was already open, even if it wasn't yet clear.
And, barely discernible at the time, it put the USA in serious danger. When Iraq first invaded Kuwait, the Saudi monarchy received an offer from a leader of the mujahideen, the Islamic-inspired rebels who had just fought the USSR in Afghanistan. He offered his men to defend the holy sites in Saudi Arabia, and expel Iraq from Kuwait. That way, no non-Muslims would set foot in the sacred lands of the Prophet. The Saudis, faced with this rabble or the world's sole remaining superpower, chose the USA. The mujahideen leader was outraged, and directed his anger at America. His name? Osama bin Laden.
Iraqi vehicles destroyed along the Highway of Death by Allied airstrikes
Uprisings Against Saddam
If the Gulf War was an example of multilateralism at its finest, then the actions of the world in the aftermath of the war are less good. With his armed forces shattered, and his authority severely reduced, Saddam was gravely weakened by the Gulf War. For those inside Iraq who had suffered during his reign, they saw this as their best chance to overthrow the wretched dictator who had made their lives a misery. Egged on by the Voice of America radio broadcasts, a strange collection of Shia Arabs, Kurds, left-wing dissidents, and disillusioned soldiers, all rose in revolt against Saddam.
At first it seemed like they had succeeded. Within a few days, the Iraqi government controlled only four of Iraq's 18 regions. Millions of Iraqis had abandoned the regime; even Saddam's secret police fired their weapons in joy at his presumed overthrow.
Saddam may have been down, but he was not out. The deal with the UN forces that had ended the Gulf War enabled the Iraqis to continue using helicopters. Officially, this was to transport personnel around, given that the Allied air attacks had crippled Iraq's ground infrastructure. But Saddam used those same helicopters to suppress the rebellions. He unleashed his crack Republican Guard troops against the rebels, crushing first the Shia, then the Marsh Arabs, before finally turning on the Kurds.
The Kurds were terrified; it was only three years since Saddam had killed 5000 Kurds with chemical weapons, at Halabja. Pretty much the entire population of Kurdistan fled into the mountains, and the peshmerga prepared to make a final stand against the advancing Iraqi army.
It never came. The West belatedly realised what it had done, and, under pressure from the UK, created no fly zones in northern and southern Iraq. The Kurds were saved, and ultimately created a stable, prosperous and democratic autonomous region.
But for the rest of Iraq, the uprisings cost them dear. Thousands were killed as Saddam reimposed control, and the ancient way of life of the Marsh Arabs was ended forever, with the draining of the marshes.
The Iraqi people took a clear message; the rest of the world was not interested in helping to rescue them from Saddam. So when in 2003, the Americans and British rolled in yet again, the population was not grateful. They remembered how the West had abandoned them in their hour of need. We are still reaping the effects of failing to depose Saddam when the Iraqis wanted, rather than when George W Bush wanted.
Iraqi Kurds fleeing into the mountains
Maastricht Treaty
In the winter of 1991, the leaders of the European Community went to the Dutch town of Maastricht. They were there to discuss fundamental changes to the institution that they belonged to. Since it's foundation in the 1950s, the EC had been focused primarily on economic integration. There were some political structures, such as the European Parliament. But it was primarily to do with trade. Not for nothing was it known in English as the Common Market.
At Maastricht, all that changed. The document which emerged from that meeting was the Treaty on European Union. It set out plans for the creation of a single European currency, and committed the signatories to work together to develop common approaches to law enforcement, foreign policy, criminal justice, and social policy. What emerged from Maastricht was the EU that, for better or for worse, we all know today.
Even at the time, there was a recognition by the UK government that this would not go down well with British voters. And so John Major, in an incredible bit of negotiating, was able to secure a UK opt-out from the single currency, and to make the social affairs part an entirely separate agreement, which the UK then refused to sign. But this was not enough. Getting the Treaty ratified in Parliament nearly destroyed the Conservative Party, and it looks years to recover in the eyes of the voters. But above all, Maastricht made the issue of Euroscepticism a mainstream, acceptable opinion in the UK. A host of groups emerged to oppose the Treaty. One, the Anti-Federalist League, later morphed into UKIP. Had the Conservative party not chosen to endorse the Treaty, maybe the young Nigel Farage would never have quit the party in favour of the AFL.
The EU as we know it was created in Maastricht in December 1991, but the seeds of Brexit were planted as well.
BBC News, during the Maastricht summit, Dec 1991
End of the USSR
I've already discussed this here, so I won't go into it too much. Anyway, it was the fall of the Berlin Wall, in November 1989, that marked the real end of the Cold War, and which ushered in the era of American geopolitical dominance that we are still living in (debatable, see below). But for neatness sake, the end of the Soviet Union should probably get a look in.
Rodney King arrest
It must have seemed like any other crime committed that night. Late on the evening of March 3rd, 1991, the California Highway Patrol tried to stop a vehicle. When the car failed to stop, police gave chase, at speeds of up to 115mph. When the car was eventually stopped, the occupants were arrested.
What happened next shocked the United States. The last man out of the car was the driver, Rodney King. He was tasered, and repeatedly beaten by five LAPD officers, even after he had clearly ceased to be any kind of threat. The entire incident was captured on a camcorder. The officers claimed that they believed King to be on PCP, but no trace of it was ever detected, and his behaviour didn't fit this claim. Even amongst law enforcement officers, there was outrage at the behaviour of the police.
In April 1992, the police officers were acquitted on charges of assault. This was the cue for an outbreak of severe rioting in Los Angeles. Over five days and nights, a total of 55 people died, as rioting, looting, and fire fights engulfed Los Angeles. 2000 people were injured, and more than 11,000 were injured. In desperation, the California National Guard, and parts of the regular US Army, were deployed on the streets to restore law and order.
In terms of civil rights, we have come a long way. But the Rodney King beatings, and subsequent riots, show just as clearly as Ferguson and all the other tragedies that we still have a long way to go.
Footage from the arrest of Rodney King
World Wide Web goes public
Tim Berners-Lee deserves that knighthood. In 1991, he transformed the world we lived in forever. Over the past decade, Berners-Lee, who worked at CERN, had been designing and building "a large hypertext database with typed links." By late 1990, he had built an internal version at CERN. And in January 1991, the first Web servers outside of CERN were switched on.
This was not the start of the internet; that had been in existence since the late 1960s. What Tim Berners-Lee was offering was a brand new interface for presenting, storing and accessing information on the internet. One of the early name proposals for the World Wide Web was The Information Mine. Which gives you a pretty good idea of what they were going for.
Pretty much every single way you interact with the internet is through the World Wide Web, from checking your bank account, checking Facebook, emails (often, I will give you this is the last major exception), checking the news, even reading this post.
In future, when historians look back at our age, I reckon they will focus on this moment as one of the major turning points in history. We cannot now go back to a Webless world. The world as it existed before January 1991 is gone forever, separated from us by the colossus of the World Wide Web.
First ever web server, located at CERN
Birmingham Six released
Terrorism is a horrific thing. It kills and maims indiscriminately. It brings fear and panic to the society that it seeks to undermine. It turns the state against its citizens, and people against each other.
On November 21st 1974, between 20:15 and 20:30, 21 people were murdered in Birmingham, when bombs detonated in two pubs in the city centre. 182 people were badly injured. In terms of fatalities, it was the worst attack on mainland Britain during the Troubles. The police had received a coded warning from the Provisional IRA, but it was far too vague, and far too late.
The police had an early breakthrough. Six men, all known to an IRA member who had died trying to plant a bomb in Coventry earlier in the year, were all arrested trying to leave Birmingham not long after the attacks. They were all Northern Irish, all Roman Catholic, and were actually travelling to the funeral of the man who had died in Coventry, a fact they did not mention to the police who questioned them in Morecambe. In 1975, they were all convicted on 21 counts of murder, and sentenced to life imprisonment.
The problem was, they were innocent. All six had been subject to threats, beatings, threatened with dogs, and in one case forced into a mock execution. Under these circumstances, some had signed statements which had been written for them. The forensic evidence that they had handled explosives was extremely shaky.
As soon as they were imprisoned, the Birmingham Six began a long fight to clear their names. Their first attempt to appeal was rejected. In 1985, ITV's World in Action broadcast a documentary which seriously challenged the case against the men; as World in Action's Chris Mullin, later a Labour MP, claimed to have spoken to the actual bombers, it hardly seemed likely that the right people were in prison. Amazingly, this was not enough for the Court of Appeal, and in 1988 the men's convictions were upheld.
But the cat was out of the bag, and over the next three years momentum built behind the campaign to free the men. Eventually, in 1991 the case went back to the Court of Appeal. The Crown made the unprecedented step of not opposing the appeal, as it realised the convictions were clearly unsafe. The judges ruled that the men were free to leave.
As a result of this, and similar appalling miscarriages of justice, a Royal Commission was setup, which recommended the creation the Criminal Cases Review Commission, to examine convictions and appeals. But that is why this is not a significant moment.
The enduring significance of this event, and those like it, is the realisation that terrorism is a challenge we cannot get wrong. Six men, whose only crime was to have known a person who had broken the law, had spent 16 years in prison. But that reasoning, I know people who should be in prison. Myself included. They had been failed by the police and the judiciary. As they languished in their cells, the IRA's West Midlands unit was free to continue its attacks. And the trust between citizens and the state, which is crucial to defeat terrorism, was undermined, at least for some.
Today, we face the same challenges. There have been calls to give more powers to the Security Services to intrude on our lives, to allow longer detention without trial, to allow evidence and even whole trials to be heard in secret, or without a jury. Will that really help make us safer? In 1991, the answer was clear for all to see.
The Birmingham Six, along with MP Chris Mullin, outside the Court of Appeal after their convictions were overturned
Premier League is launched
Before 1991, if you'd used the words 'Premier League', people would have given you a strange look. Was it a type of beer?
English football was in a bit of a nadir in the early 1990s. The 1980s had seen the game blighted by hooliganism, falling attendances, static revenues. Many top players were moving abroad. What was even worse, in the eyes of the best clubs at least, was that the money acquired for the television broadcasts of the First Division was split evenly across the Football League.
As the 1991 season drew to a close, the five top clubs in the First Division (Arsenal, Manchester United, Spurs, Liverpool, and Everton) pounced. They signed an agreement that, after one more season of the Football League, they would break away and create a 'Premier League.' This was billed as an attempt to improve the quality of football, both in the top flight, and for the national team. The clubs in this Premier League would be able to keep all of the money from TV to themselves, instead of having to share it with clubs that no one had ever heard of.
In some respects, the Premier League succeeded spectacularly. The amount of money in football has increased dramatically, with clubs regularly trading players for hundreds of millions of pounds. Fit, young adults are now paid hundreds of thousands of pounds a week. People who had been stars beforehand were transformed into superstars, celebrities, whose actions off the pitch were as closely followed as those on it. At the same time, football was becoming more acceptable again. A game which had been associated with the working classes, and with violence, was being gentrified. Attendances rose, and so did ticket prices. Foreign investors became attracted at the sponsorship and ownership possibilities of English clubs. Soon, even previously minor English clubs had followers across the world, all supporting their favourite local Manchester United.
But, the much vaunted improvement in national football never followed. The English team continues to be the source of many jokes. Neither did it do much good for the teams that resigned en masse from the First Division; only nine of them are still in the Premier League (at the time of writing), and four of them have sunk to the third tier of English football.
Without the Premier League, most of this would doubtless have happened. But the cult of elite football was cemented by that decision.
The 1992-93 Premier League teams
US Presidential Longshot Bid Announced
Finally, it was in the autumn of 1991 that speculation began in earnest for the US presidential election in 1992. For the Republicans, their candidate was easy. George Bush had sky-high approval ratings over his handling of the Gulf War and the end of the Cold War.
This had an effect on the Democrats too. With Bush seemingly a shoo in for a second term, many high profile Democrats chose to bide their time. By 1996, the Republicans would have controlled the White House for 15 years. Whoever emerged as Bush's successor would be much easier to defeat. This meant that big names such as Mario Cuomo and Al Gore decided to sit the race out. But some decided to give it a shot in 1992. They were generally perceived as second rate candidates, people no one had heard of, who were entering to give the appearance of a contest.
One such man announced his bid in October 1991. There was little in his favour. He was the governor of a tiny Southern state, which hadn't voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since 1976. He'd been in office there since 1979, with two years out; he was actually the Southern governor mentioned in Jimmy Carter's malaise speech. He'd given the keynote address to the 1988 Democratic convention. It had been long, rambling, and bored many delegates. When he finally said 'In conclusion,' he got a round of cheers. The governor was going to have been a candidate himself in 1988. However, at the last minute, he withdrew. Rumours swirled that his personal life contained past affairs and mistresses that would sink his candidacy.
But in 1991, Bill Clinton threw himself into the race many said he would never win. One of his biggest supporters, and best advisers, was his wife. Back in 2016, she is now a stone's throw away from sitting in the Oval Office herself. Truly, we are still living in 1991.
Hillary, Chelsea and Bill Clinton, as he announced his bid for the White House, October 1991
