2016 in Books

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

No Jeremy, she isn't Henry VIII... she's even worse...

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...

When the money (sort of) ran out: The IMF Crisis of 1976

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.

Fake News: Old Story

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.