A Trump anniversary needs an Orwell reminder

It may not be the best literary diet for a twelve-year-old, to read Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World one week, and George Orwell’s 1984 the next. Not at least if he wants to retain an innocent, rose-tinted view of the world. I certainly didn’t when I raced through those two books, emerging somewhat shellshocked by the experience.

A mix not designed to encourage an adolescent

It was 1984 that hit me particularly hard. The book introduced the notion of ‘Big Brother’ to the world: Big Brother is a man, who might be no more than a propaganda fiction, presented as the leader of Oceania, the nation where the book’s protagonist Winston Smith lives. Big Brother’s face is on posters at every street corner or on screens in people’s houses. The slogan associated with the face was ‘Big Brother is watching you’, another phrase that has entered mainstream English.

The dystopia Orwell described saw the world divided into three blocs. He finished the book in 1948 (the title came from reversing the last two figures). That was just three years after the Second World War, which had been dominated by the Soviet Union fighting in alliance with the United States and the British Empire. At the end of the war, the Soviets had extended their control significantly westward, into Eastern and Central Europe. The British Empire was in decline, but both Britain itself and most of its former imperial holdings were closely bound to the United States.

A possible view of the world presented in Orwell’s 1984
Note who controls Greenland

It didn’t take a huge effort of imagination to conjure up the bloc Orwell called ‘Oceania’. It covers the Americas as a whole plus Britain and the whiter parts of its former empire. To defend itself against its rivals, it has become an authoritarian dictatorship, policing all thought, ostensibly because only such centralised power can defend against the other blocs.

The second of these, clearly based on the old Soviet Union and just as oppressive as the Soviet state and Oceania, is ‘Eurasia’. That’s Russia extended westward to the Atlantic and including all of continental Europe.

Meanwhile, in the Far East, a third bloc has emerged, covering China and Japan and their neighbours, called ‘Eastasia’. 

The three powers were in a constant state of war, in which Oceania allied with one or other against the third, but in a cynical but highly effective strategic move to guarantee their own survival, all three kept the fighting away from their homelands and concentrated mostly in Africa. There war would cause no damage at home while providing a distraction from domestic troubles.

Government in Oceania was provided through four ministries.

• Minipax, the Ministry of Peace, concerned with prosecuting war
• Miniplenty, the Ministry of Plenty, concerned with rationing 
• Minitrue, the Ministry of Truth, concerned with propaganda
• And Miniluv, the Ministry of Love, the most frightening of them all, concerned with crushing all possible dissent, though its secret police (the thought police – another phrase of Orwell’s that has entered the general language), its inquisitors and its torture chambers.

At the heart of the regime is the lie. It’s perhaps best summarised by its three slogans, picked out in giant lettering on the side of the ministry building:

WAR IS PEACE  

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY 

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

The lie doesn’t concern only the present and future. Minitrue also brings the past into line with present concerns. So when Oceania ends an alliance with Eurasia to fight Eastasia, and instead allies with Eastasia to fight Eurasia, it’s important for history to record that this was always so. Winston Smith, who worked in the ministry, saw people quickly adapting to the new ‘truth’ that: 

Oceania was at war with Eastasia: Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.

At one point, Smith, who is increasingly at variance with the regime he serves and keeping a diary in which he illegally records his own opinions (behaviour officially classified as ‘thoughtcrime’), writes that he can understand how the system works, but not why. That will be made clear to him later by a senior member of the party:

If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — for ever.

Of course, Orwell meant all this as a cautionary tale, a warning of how things might go if we weren’t careful to ensure they didn’t. As the actual year 1984 arrived, many of us felt some relief that, while there were clear trends towards the kind of authoritarianism Orwell had warned against, overall things weren’t too bad and democracy seemed reasonably secure.

Today, on the first anniversary of the start of Donald Trump’s second term as president, anxiety seems much more appropriate than relief.

He’s busy constructing himself an Oceania of his own. He’s produced an updated, though not improved, version of the Monroe doctrine, which he calls the Donroe doctrine, identifying the Americas as an exclusive domain of the US. He wants to add Greenland to it. Britain, as attached as ever to belief in a special relationship with the US even though it isn’t reciprocated by the Americans, may let itself be sucked in. After all, Brexit pulled the UK out of its association with its European neighbours, leaving it vulnerable to increased US domination.

Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin seems intent on building Eurasia. For the moment, it hasn’t gone as far or as fast as he might like, with only Ukraine invaded and proving a harder nut to crack than he’d hoped. But it’s clear that he’d be more than happy to move further westward just as soon as he can.

And the great winner in all the global posturing has been China, rapidly moving ahead of the US in key sectors such as green energy production, electric cars and, with increasing probability, even AI. At the same time, it’s growing its military power fast. Doesn’t that sound like a great core for a real Eastasia? 

Internally, the latter day Eurasia and Eastasia are both despotically authoritarian and oppressive regimes. Now Trump is emulating them. He’s sending masked armed men into US cities not sufficiently devoted to his worship. We’ve seen them opening fire on civilians without justification, causing them serious injury or even, in at least one instance, death. And, as in Winston Smith’s Minitrue, this is all backed up by a tissue of lies that presents an innocent victim as a terrorist, and anyone who dares oppose Trump as a criminal. 

Will there be military force deployed at polling stations in the November midterm elections, to intimidate possible opponents? Will they be seizing ballot results to ‘correct’ them to suit Trump? Will this be endorsed by Trump acolytes in an ever-increasing circle of compliant – or complicit – courts and media organisations?

Trump’s turning what Orwell meant as a cautionary tale into an instruction manual.

It feels to me as though we ought to pay a lot more attention to Orwell’s warnings. At last, some statesmen seem to be waking up. Gavin Newsom, governor of California, today warned that it’s time for European leaders to end their complicity with Trump. The Canadian Prime Minister, Mark Carney, has called for the non-Orwellian powers to pull together to resist abuse by the superpowers of Russia, China and the US. And French President Emmanuel Macron has warned against the emergence of a world ‘where international law is trampled under foot’.

We need to hear a lot more leaders voicing that kind of message. And a lot more voters backing them, even if it implies new costs. Because the alternative would mean that Orwell only got the date wrong. Perhaps by as little as half a century.

If we’re not careful, 1984 from being a past date will become a future destiny.

Postscript

I need to put in a good word for 1984 (the year, not the book). That was when our youngest son was born. While he could sometimes drive us crazy, he brought us a lot of joy, a lot more often. It’s certain that Trump has brought us much more vexation and, for anyone but his billionaire paymasters, practically nobody any joy at all.

Nicky, our 1984 kid, asleep. A couple of years later

The great Bill Gates conspiracy

We live in a time of conspiracy theories.

Of course, most times have had their conspiracy theories. The power of anti-Semitism in the early twentieth century spread rumours of an international plot of Jewish financiers to take over and run the world. There was even a remarkable document, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, explaining how this was going to be carried out.

Unsurprisingly, the document turned out to be a forgery. Equally unsurprisingly, that didn’t stop the conspiracy theory being believed. It is of the essence of a conspiracy theory that once you’ve been bitten by one, nothing will shake your confidence in it. Not even discovering that a key element is false. And if evidence for it is lacking, that only demonstrates how dastardly devious the conspirators are, in hiding all trace of their nefarious activity.

In the same way, any evidence against the theory is obviously fake news, put about by members of the conspiracy to fool the ingenuous and naïve.

You see, it isn’t the people who believe the conspiracy theories who are gullible, for accepting as true allegations with no evidence to back them. The gullible ones are the rest of us, without the acuity to realise that absence of evidence isn’t the same as evidence of absence. To say nothing of our being so innocent as to accept the truth of obviously fabricated so-called evidence against the theory.

Well, not a theory. The truth. Or even the Truth, with an initial capital letter.

Melinda and Bill Gates

The target of today’s favoured conspiracy theory is, rather oddly, the Microsoft founder, Bill Gates.

The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation has put $300m into fighting Coronavirus. You might think that people threatened with infection by the virus might be grateful for the gesture. I’m sure most are.

He also warned in a 2015 Ted Talk, that the great threat to life in the next decades would be from a virus, not from war. You might think that people would admire him for his prescience. I’m sure most do.

But not the conspiracy theorists.

To them, this is just part of his smokescreen for his real agenda. He wants the pandemic to spread – indeed is responsible for that spread, which is why he knew about it so early – so that a vaccine, developed with his money, can be injected into people – and with it a microchip allowing the Gates foundation to establish control over the people vaccinated.

There are other even wilder accusations around, and if you want to catch up on them, you can do so here.

As Bill and Melinda Gates point out, “we are just giving money away, we write the cheque...” They don’t develop the vaccine. They certainly won’t be administering it to anyone.

Besides, there isn’t a vaccine yet, and there may never be. More to the point, to my knowledge, there is no chip capable of controlling a human being into whom it has been injected.

Why, there isn’t even any evidence that the virus was deliberately developed by anyone, let alone Bill Gates, as the conspiracy theorists keep claiming.

Now, I’m not saying that there are no conspiracies. There are. Indeed, it could be useful to look at a real one, to get a better idea of how it differs from the fake variety.

In March 2018, two characters travelling on Russian passports but in names it seems were not their own, showed up in Salisbury, in Southern England. They were there again the next day. They later claimed that they had been so impressed by the cathedral on their first visit that they decided to return from London at the first opportunity.

Not long after, a former Russian Intelligence officer, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter fell seriously ill, with poisoning by the agent Novichok, of which there are significant stocks in Russia. Skripal had been a double agent, revealing Russian secrets to Britain.

Traces of Novichok were later found in the hotel room in London used by the Russians. And they were later fairly reliably identified as being longstanding members of Russian military intelligence.

The Skripals both recovered from the poisoning, though they were dangerously ill for a time.

Now none of this meets the high standard of a criminal trial, which is proof beyond reasonable doubt (a great criterion, although it hasn’t always stopped innocent defendants being convicted). But Russia’s never going to admit to involvement in the case, or release the agents involved for interrogation and trial in Britain, so we’re not going to get the evidence for that kind of rigorous test.

But on the weaker test of balance of probabilities, it does feel to me as though someone in the Russian state ran a conspiracy to wipe out a man Russia views as a traitor.

Now this story is a wonderful illustration of what a real conspiracy looks like.

First of all, you find out about them. And not just in the form of loose, vague allegations, but with real and convincing, even if only partial, evidence.

But the second characteristic is even more striking. It’s incompetence. The Russian agents failed in their mission. Indeed, when two uninvolved British citizens found and handled the flask that had contained the Novichok, they both fell sick, and one of them died.

In other words, the agents missed their target but hit two people with whom they had no quarrel.

That’s the way most conspiracies go. Inept people within it deliberately or unintentionally let the secret out. And they generally don’t do very well.

That’s one of the things that strikes me most about conspiracy theorists. They massively overstate the intelligence of conspirators. They regard the plots as sinister because they think the plotters ingenious, when in reality they’re like the Skripal agents.

Well, all I can say to conspiracy theorists is, every time you think a brilliant conspiracy is being directed against you, remember the Skripal case. The Russian state’s pretty sophisticated. And look what a pig’s ear it made of that one.

Then think of Watergate. Or the Weapons of Mass Destruction myth for Iraq. Conspirators aren’t as smart as you imagine they are.

The steel magnate Andrew Carnegie once said that the man who dies rich, dies disgraced. And gave away his money.

If Bill Gates is following that example, wouldn’t it be nice if we could just congratulate him, rather than spin a web of unfounded and deeply implausible conspiracy allegations around him?

Letrice in Beirut, or how we like to turn a bad situation into something far worse

It was Paris on the Mediterranean. It was sea-bathing in November, it was visiting Roman ruins in a blouse, it was sitting with colleagues on a sunny café terrace when at home everyone was indoors or wrapped in coats and scarves. It was no wonder her visit to Beirut left my mother, Leatrice, with indelible memories that she was still sharing with me 70 years later, not long before she died.

Leatrice in Baalbek or at the beach
She was a pretty 24-year old, but maybe already a little uptight...

It was 1948. A single trip abroad as a child had been followed by the thirties in London, then the air raid warnings and the bombs of the war, then the harsh winter of 1946, the bomb sites on every street, the rationing, the general gloom of the past-war years.

Leatrice, as I’ve mentioned before, got out just as soon as she could. In 1948, she was working as a typist for UNESCO in Paris. It organised a conference in Beirut and, to be a success in those pre-Word processing days, a conference had to have a legion of low paid assistants along, to record the words of the important or self-important, and to produce the documents without which no one would believe they’d actually been doing very much.

For Leatrice, it was a sheer joy to be there, to see the sights, to go for a swim, to visit the ruins at Baalbek, to enjoy the pavement life. I was reminded of that when going through another bundle of old photos, as part of a task that is probably going to take most of my retirement even if I have a long one, and came across more pictures of that trip.

What made the pictures all the more poignant was that I was looking at them just as I’d learned that Donald Trump, in what passes for wisdom in that orange head of his, had decided that the best action he could take in response to new threats from Iran, was to launch a drone-borne missile strike to assassinate the senior Iranian General Qasem Soleimani.

Now Soleimani was a ruthless autocrat and his hands are stained with the blood of thousands killed in combat or simply murdered in cold blood. The world is absolutely is arguably better off without him in it. But the same could be said of Saddam Hussein: we’re better off freed of him, or at least we would have been, had what followed in his wake not been far worse. Indeed, one of the most toxic consequences of bringing down Saddam was the rise of Soleimani.

It seems we don’t like learning from our mistakes (or, for those like Trump, perhaps we’re unable to learn), and keep thinking that a quick fix – the invasion of Iraq, the murder of Soleimani – is likely to deliver a long-term solution.

The reality, of course, is that Iran will avenge the death. It may do so directly itself, or it may use a proxy force, perhaps in Yemen attacking Saudi Arabia once more, perhaps in Syria attacking Israel, or indeed perhaps through its client militia, Hezbollah, in Lebanon. Whichever option they eventually select, it’s going to make the Middle East a still more tragic region than it already is.

Especially as whatever action they take, there will almost certainly be further retaliation from the US or its clients in Israel or Saudi Arabia. So things will ratchet up. Which, you may remember, is rather how things went after the invasion of Iraq.

Looking at my mother’s Beirut photos reminds me how far we’ve come.

Clockwise: the venue for the UNESCO conference;
Leatrice third from left at a pavement café; a street scene; the seafront.

Leatrice agreed with the description of Beirut as ‘Paris on the Mediterranean’. She regarded it as a sliver of paradise. But that was before the US and Russia, Israel and Iran, Saudi Arabia and Syria, to say nothing of its own internal conflicts, started interfering the life out of it.

I’d like to say that they’ve turned a paradise into a purgatory, except that purgatory is supposed to be where souls are purged ready to enter heaven. Sometimes, the Middle East looks more like a soul condemned to hell, from which there is no hope of escape. Certainly, none while its destiny is being set by Trump or Soleimani, Netanyahu or Assad, Putin or Mohammad bin Salman.

Mistakes commemorated, whether a revolution's or my own

Ah, the seventh of November. A bit of a special day. For me and for Russia

It’s the anniversary of the October Revolution.

Lenin addressing the crowd during the October Revolution
A moment that didn't lead to quite what was hoped
But that isn't the only mistake its anniversary brings to my mind

“The October Revolution?” I hear you cry, “In November?”

Indeed. One of the reactionary aspects of the Russian Tsarist regime, overthrown by the Bolsheviks in that great revolution, was that it had stuck with the old Julian calendar long after practically everyone it dealt with had moved to the Gregorian.

The Julian calendar, named after Julius Caesar who launched it, didn’t get the leap years quite right. The result was that as the centuries rolled by, the calendar year got further and further out of step with the actual movement of the earth around the sun (or, as modern science has it, the movement of the earth and the sun around each other). The time it takes for the earth to go around the sun (or, as modern science has it, etc.) isn’t exactly 365 days, but more like 365.256 and then a bit. That extra fraction eventually begins to add up.

So the Gregorian calendar adds an extra day every four years, in leap years, but then adds the additional refinement of not making century years leap years except, as a further refinement still, if the century year is a millennium year. 1900 wasn’t a leap year but 2000 was.

That keeps the years pretty closely aligned with the earth’s movement.

But the Gregorian calendar was launched in 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII. Well, the Protestants and the Orthodox were a bit wary of anything papal, so they didn’t immediately switch with the Catholic nations. That meant that Britain, for instance, was ten days behind most of Europe in the seventeenth century, leading to such charming little discoveries as the coincidence of the deaths of Miguel de Cervantes, author of Don Quixote, and William Shakespeare on the same date, 23 April 1616, but ten days apart.

It’s a lovely coincidence only slightly tainted by the fact that scholars today claim that Cervantes died on 22 April and the 23rd was the day he was buried. Still, why spoil a great little story just for the sake of the truth? After all, few of our political leaders these days do.

So you can see where this is heading. The revolution that brought the Bolsheviks to power happened on 25 October 1917 in Russia. Pretty much everywhere else it was 7 November. That is the date that the event is now commemorated.

Why’s it so special to me? Well, not because of the revolution. Once I thought it was a pretty remarkable event, opening the doors to a better future for the victims of oppression everywhere. Not any more.

These days, it seems to me that the Russian revolution was tainted in its very roots. Not by the violence to which it led. The revolution itself involved little violence, and it was only because of the attempted counter-revolution against it that a bloody civil war broke out.

No, the problem was that it was led by people who knew they were right. They were expressing the force of history, which is at least as magnificent and all-powerful as the force of divinity, for those who believe in that idea. So anyone who stood in their way, wasn’t just a critic or an adversary, he was a traitor to a fundamental force that was unstoppably moulding human destiny. To sweep him away wasn’t merely justified, it was obligatory. If that involved a little torture, some forced confessions and an execution, well you couldn’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.

The result was a regime that lasted over 70 years and killed more people than Hitler’s, mostly because it had so much longer to do so. That means the anniversary of the seizure of power is hardly a matter to celebrate.

Instead the reason I smile each year the date comes round is in memory of a deeply frustrating afternoon I spent in the library of the Royal Society, Britain’s most prestigious scientific academy, in London. I was researching a French scientist who had spent some time in London and, specifically, at the Royal Society in the early eighteenth century.

What I couldn’t cope with was that a letter of his announcing his departure from Paris was dated after another announcing his arrival in London.

Yep. I was being pretty dumb. I knew all about the problem of the Julian calendar in Britain and the Gregorian on the Continent. And yet I spent several hours racking my brain to try to understand how Maupertuis could have written a letter from Paris after his arrival in London. How I kicked myself when the solution to the conundrum came to me at last in a flash, as I remembered the difference in calendars...

7 November reminds me each year how badly I too can fail. Making it a salutary lesson in the importance of humility. Among the faults people attribute to me, and they are legion, excessive humility is not one that is often mentioned.

So the lesson is invaluable.

The fallen angel: not an example to follow

“This is the only city in the world,” our Madrid taxi driver told us a few weeks ago, “which has a statue of the Fallen Angel.”

Well. Taxi drivers don’t deliver their sententious statements under oath. And they’re not known for their strict impartiality when talking about their cities. Even so, it does seem true that Madrid is the only major city with a statue to this particular fallen figure, and it is only one of a handful of any such statues around the world.

The Fallen Angel: a beautiful spot on a fine day

Having an hour to spare in Madrid, in glorious weather, I decided not to resist the temptation to wander around the Retiro Park and track down the statue.

And there indeed it was.

He still has his wings, although the myth has God tearing them from him. But he’s falling fast, and far from happy about it. Especially as a snake is about to haul him downwards into the nether regions where he is to spend eternity. A sad fate for the greatest of the angels.

Detail of the Angel: not having a good day

For he was the bearer of light, or Lucifer to give the name in Latin. 

The story isn’t entirely logical. I mean, it claims he led a rebellion against the Almighty. It’s not quite clear to me why anyone would. How do you delude yourself sufficiently to believe that such a rebellion might succeed? Surely the clue is in the word. Almighty. All mighty. Not much point trying your luck against that, is there?

Besides which, how do you even get the conspiracy going? You’re talking about an all-knowing being. You could hardly chat to a fellow disgruntled member of the entourage without the principal knowing. All knowing. Again, the clue’s in the words. Why, you couldn’t even think about it yourself without his being entirely informed of your intentions.

Before you’d even formed them.

No, I reckon Lucifer should have just said to himself, “I’m the greatest of the angels, the bearer of light. That’s pretty impressive gig, quite honestly. And I want for nothing. What would I jeopardise all that for?”

Naturally, one could come up with all sorts of down-to-earth explanations of the myth. That the story is designed to demonstrate that greed for power is a passion that drives us all, maybe. And that there’s no greater sin than to rise up against the ruler. You can imagine how those might be messages that it suited powerful elites to communicate to their subjects, above all their over-mighty ones.

But that’s all psycho-babble, or socio-babble, and I had no intention of getting into that kind of thing on a fine morning in a lovely park.

In any case, we owe Lucifer thanks on at least one count. He did provide the Madrid sculptor Ricardo Bellver with the theme for a pretty good statue. Not too big, delicately carved, full of movement and emotion. On a sunny day, well worth seeing.

And maybe more people should. Because today too far too many people seem to be inclined to delude themselves that powerful forces can be overcome just by wishing it were so. And maybe we need a few more statues of the Lord of the Underworld, only to warn us not to elect too many of his followers into powerful positions. A lesson we need to think about in the US, Russia, Brexitland and other places.

Remember. Their role model may have been an angel, but he fell. It’s a long way down and not a comfortable ride to get there.

As the statue shows.

Mission accomplished: déjà vu

It’s always a little sad to see someone who really can’t be expected to know better, take credit for completing a job when they’ve barely even started. Worse still, they may have started down the wrong route. A child, say, who carefully paints all the parts of his new model before assembling it, only to find they no longer fit together afterwards.

Or the US President who claims to have achieved his objective when he has achieved nothing – or, worse still, achieved the opposite of his intent.

Dubya in 2003

That was my first thought when I heard that Donald Trump had claimed ‘mission accomplished’ following the US-French-British missile strikes on Syria. It was exactly the same claim as made by Dubya Bush back in 2003, giving me a thoroughly dire sense of déjà vu. That followed the invasion of Iraq and the toppling of Saddam Hussein. Dubya clearly felt he’d achieved a major success, a view that looks jaded fifteen years on, with fighting still raging in the region and the only winners in Iraq being the West’s great bogeyman, Iran.

That didn’t stop Trump making the same claim for his missile strikes. And I suppose he was right in the most limited possible sense: he gave the world notice of his intention to use missiles against Syria, and he has indeed used missiles against Syria. If that was the extent of his mission – to demonstrate the military power at his disposal – then I suppose the mission was indeed accomplished.

Donald Trump in 2018

One might imagine, however, that such an action ought to deliver more than that, however. More than allow Trump a feel-good macho glow (Macron of France, too, I suppose, though whether May enjoys machismo it’s hard to say – but then, little surprises me about her any more). Generally, one would expect the use of massive military force to advance some cause or another, beyond the purely personal. 

Topple President Assad, maybe? 

End the suffering of Syrian civilians after seven years of civil war? 

At least ensure that chemical weapons would not be used against them again?

Maybe that last goal may be achieved, though I think it would take a brave man to assert it. We shall see. And even if it, it’s unclear to me that being killed or crippled is that much less unpleasant by artillery fire than by chemical weapons.

As for overthrowing Assad or ending the war, it would take a high degree of naivety to believe that the missile strikes will have achieved that much. Or even that bringing Assad down, however desirable in itself, would do any more in Syria’s current crisis than the equally attractive overthrow of Saddam did in Iraq.

Perhaps there’s one negative benefit the strikes have produced: they seem not to have destroyed any Russian equipment or inflicted any Russian casualties. That suggests that we may have avoided a third world war for now.

No. It’s hard to believe that these strikes have done anything very much, except persuade people in the west that, because something had to be done about the chemical attacks, it was legitimate to just about anything, which is what has now been done.

That may have made Trump, Macron and May feel better about themselves. Which I suppose is a benefit of sorts. Though they’re unlikely to have done anything for the Syrians or, indeed, for anyone in the West.

Still, Mission accomplished. Again. In some sense of the expression.

Centenary of a revolution. Or coup d'état

November the seventh. The centenary of the October Revolution.

Yes, yes, I know. October. On 7 November because the Russians were a bit late switching from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar.

Lenin addressing a revolutionary crowd

When I first became interested in that portentous event, it had not long before celebrated its fiftieth anniversary. At the time, I accepted its description as a “revolution” and also believed that it had represented the seizure of power by a whole class, the working class of Russia, laying the groundwork for the introduction of socialism. Things had gone astray since but there was still hope that the course could be corrected and the promise of 1917 realised.

Nearly half a century on, I’ve had time to review my early impressions, correct some fairly crucial errors of perception, and fundamentally revise my opinion.

First of all, it was no revolution. That implies a fundamental change in society; in reality, Russia went from an autocracy oppressively run by a self-serving hereditary elite, to an autocracy oppressively run by a self-serving self-selecting elite.

Secondly, it was no revolution. This was not an uprising of the working class against oppression. Lenin never commanded a majority of the working class, but he had a wonderful theory to get around that problem: he proposed that though it was the revolutionary class, not everyone in it was as revolutionary as all the others. Instead, in his world view, there was a vanguard of the proletariat that understood the true working of history (which was to put Lenin and his pals in power) and would lead the rest of the working class to understand that truth. Finding a majority among the vanguard was easy, since the vanguard was by definition made up of those enlightened elements who’d realised that the Bolsheviks and Lenin were the best friends they’d ever had. That kind of sleight of hand is still popular, in groups of left and right alike, when they lack majority support outside their own narrow confines.

Thirdly, it was no revolution. Lacking mass support, what Lenin found was a God-given, or in his outlook, historically-inevitable opportunity in the chaotic conditions created by the government of Alexander Kerensky. With a small armed group and in the face of the impotence of the authorities to block him, he seized power in what he called a revolution but anyone else would call a coup d’état.

There was far more continuity than change across the dividing line Lenin and the Bolsheviks drew in 1917. Change came later, but it was one of degree, not of kind: the Bolshevik autocracy descended into bloodier oppression than ever previously seen in the long and blood course of Russian history. As many as 60 million Russians may have been put to death under the regime that followed Lenin’s, when Stalin mounted his own coup against the leaders of the first. Lenin died too soon to see it, which may have been fortunate: he might well have ended his life in gaol had he survived: he would have meant a constant embarrassment to Stalin, a reminder that he didn’t lead the uprising.

For if the October “revolution” was led by Lenin and his pals, it didn’t only include pals of his. Stalin, whose name meant man of steel, was a friend of no one but Jughashvili (his real name). It’s likely that his regime killed more people than the Nazis though, to be fair, it did have considerably longer.

Among his victims were leaders of the “revolution” that put him in power.

Bolshevik leaders
Indluded are Rykov, Radek, Zinoviev, Kamenev and Trotsky,
all put to death by Stalin – who’s nowhere to be seen

Not, then, an event to be celebrated with unmitigated cheer. I shall, I’m sure, raise a glass tonight, since I shall be with colleagues. But it’ll be to their health and mine, not to mark the centenary.

Of the October coup d’état.

Be careful what you wish for...

Do you remember FBI Director James Comey announcing, just eleven days before the US presidential election, that he was once more investigating Hillary Ciinton over allegations about her time as Secretary of State? Only once the damage was done did he let it be known that no charges were going to be brought. Many believe his intervention may have cost her the election.

It’s particularly galling that it has now come out that Comey was investigating Trump at the same time, for the contacts between his team and known or suspected Russian agents. Comey said nothing about that. Imagine the impact on Trump’s campaign if it had come out before the election that his campaign had clandestine contact with a foreign, and not particularly friendly, intelligence service.

Comey may have been instrumental in putting Trump into the White House, but that hasn’t stopped the President he helped create rounding on him. Trump now claims that Comey “saved Hillary Clinton's life” by not recommending charges against her. Comey may have given Trump the shove he needed to get in, but he has no control over him now.

James Comey: is Trump biting a hand that once fed him?

And what about Comey’s other investigation? Whether or not it ultimately discovers any wrongdoing by the Trump people, it’s fairly clear Putin was keen on a Trump victory and prepared to do what he could to facilitate one. Like Comey, he may be wondering now how wise that attitude was. Though candidate Trump was more than complimentary about Russia and Putin, during his visit to Moscow on 12 April, Secreatry of State Rex Tillerson described US-Russian relations being “at a low point”. In that, he was echoing Trump’s own views.

Meanwhile, Trump is finding it hard to deliver on his domestic pledges. Like so many other inept and authoritarian leaders, he’s resorted instead to military action. It’s so much easier to fire missiles at Syria or drop a massive bomb on Afghanistan, than to make deals with Congress (the “great deal-maker” Trump is proving he doesn’t deserve even that title), far less to improve incomes or extend employment opportunities at home.

Like Comey and Putin, many of those who believed Trump’s pledges to help them out of their difficulties, may soon be wondering whether they were as smart as they might have been in backing an amateur’s bid for the White House.

Meanwhile, back in Britain, it’s becoming increasingly clear that leaving the EU won’t increase opportunities or improve trade. On the contrary, the country is likely to find it hard to sign trade deals that would be as beneficial as the arrangements it currently enjoys with its European partners. Nor does it seem that Brexit will even lead to any decrease in immigration – Britain needs the foreign manpower – even though that was the principal aim of many Brexit supporters.

Comey and Putin may just be the tip of the great wave of disappointment likely to sweep the US and UK in the coming years. It would be gratifying if that disappointment would drive people back towards more sensible positions than backing Trump or Brexit. Sadly, disappointed people aren’t always the most rational. The reaction may be a switch to even more extreme positions.

We’re going through difficult times. They may become a great deal more difficult still. But we need to get through them if there’s to be any hope of resuming progress once this retroactive period is over.

In the meantime, it’ll do none of us any harm to be a little more careful what we wish for.

Happy 2017

1861 was a lousy year for the United States.

It started with southern States tumbling over each other to get out of the Union. Then in April civil war broke out. That was followed in July by the inexplicable conversion of the major Union victory at the First Battle of Bull Run into a catastrophic Union defeat (though it should be said that the notions of ‘major’ and ‘catastrophic’ would have to be significantly revised later in the war).

It’s no surprise, then, that on 31 December diarist George Templeton Strong wrote:

Poor old 1861, just going. It has been a gloomy year of trouble and disaster. I should be glad of its departure were it not that 1862 is likely to be no better.

155 years on, I feel we can safely echo Strong’s words. Particularly as 1862 turned out not only to be no better than 1861 but was, in fact, considerably worse. A feat 2017 is likely to repeat with respect to 2016.

The year just ended was one where many people, tired of the consensus that has predominated since the Second World War, decided that building bridges was no longer the way to go and we should have some new walls instead.

In June, the British people voted to turn the Channel once more into a moat rather than a mere waterway. Those who knew the sixties and seventies will remember the troubled times in which a former imperial power struggled to find a new vocation. By joining what became the European Union, Britain seemed to find one: no longer merely a diminishing force in the world, it would be a major contributor to the emergence of the Continent as a world power.

In deciding to leave, it has chosen to go back to the time of its decline. Those were the days when Britain was regarded as the sick man of Europe, plagued by poor productivity and constant strikes, where only the wealthy could enjoy a good restaurant meal or a holiday abroad. The nation steadily sank through the economic league table, with Italy at one point celebrating il sorpasso, the moment when its economy overtook the UK’s.

The EU turned that around, but it also opened the doors to immigration from Continental Europe. Those arrivals continue to play a vital role across the British economy, in the health service, transport, farming and catering. Such, however, is today’s fear of the outsider that most voters preferred to give up on the benefits of EU membership in the hope of controlling immigration. Ironically, the hope is likely to prove vain. The loss of benefit, however, will be real.

The American vote, however, was far more significant than Britain’s. It’s sad, though constitutional, that the victor took nearly 3 million fewer votes than his adversary. Donald Trump’s lack of a popular mandate is, however, going to have no impact on the way he exercises power in a democracy.

He’s the wall-builder extraordinary. Not that the one he promised, along the Mexican border, is likely to be built. Even if it is, he’s already made clear that much of it will be fence. But that’s part of his style: he feels he can make any promise he wants, without being bound to deliver – presumably, he has convinced himself that his intentions are pure and, in our post-truth society, honouring his word matters less than getting into a position in which he can mould it as he feels it needs.

His principal concern seems to be to make a friend of Vladimir Putin and an enemy of China. Whatever he does with physical walls, he has a metaphorical one in mind which will include Russia on his side and China firmly on the outside.

Aleppo: handiwork of Trump's pal Putin and his mate Assad

Putin has shown himself to be a strongman and supporter of strongmen, such as Assad in Syria or his new-found friend in Turkey, Erdogan. It’s telling that Trump wants to be associated with that club, perhaps because he also rather likes the homophobic, patriarchal and autocratic views it represents. If so, the US is going to become a considerable less pleasant place to be if you’re gay or a woman (how long will abortion remain a right?) and a great deal more unpleasant for African Americans, Hispanics or Muslims.

Meanwhile, we’d better hope that his attitude towards China represents another promise he has no intention of keeping. If he sticks to the collision course he’s plotted so far, the Trump presidency risks being not just bad but terminal.

Oh, well. George Templeton Strong survived 1862. He got through the end of the Civil War and Lincoln’s assassination. He saw the US reunited and prospering. We too may need to keep our nerve and nurse our patience and wait for better days to emerge in the future.

It happened for Strong, so it could happen for us.

In the meantime – happy New Year!

Cockup or conspiracy, and Turkey in trouble

Given the choice of explaining events in terms of conspiracy or cock-up, I’m always far more inclined to go for the latter.

This is because, while I’d never underestimate the sheer devious malice of many powerful people, I’m not as impressed as they are by their intellectual capacity. Nor do I have confidence in the ability of people to keep their mouths shut for long enough to pull off a really comprehensive conspiracy, especially if there are a great many of them involved or it lasts long enough to give them multiple opportunities to boast about it to their twelve best friends.

So I’m prepared to believe that 9/11 happened as a result of a conspiracy between a relatively small number of people headed by Osama Bin Laden, though even then I’m astonished that they were able to be quite so ruthlessly effective in their planning and secrecy. I’m utterly unable to believe that it was all a conspiracy stage-managed by the Pentagon, since that would have required 10,000 people to work in coordination, with not a single one of them spilling the beans since.

Why am I talking about all this now?

Because last Friday a coup was attempted in Turkey, a nation that was already well on the way to autocracy under the leadership of its remarkable and charismatic leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. In passing, let me saw it’s men like him that make charisma deeply suspect to me. 

He’s quick to defend democracy when it comes to defending his grip on power, which he indeed established by election. He’s much less so when it comes to protecting those other, less convenient if not downright irritating democratic values, such as the right to freedom of speech, to oppose to government or, even, to expose corruption.

Erdogan: smart operator who's been dealt a winning hand
But as briiliant as he believes? A champion plotter? I think not

Indeed, the Turkish experience is an excellent illustration of how holding elections, though a necessary condition for democracy, is far from a sufficient one.

The coup, as we all now know, fizzled out when the majority of the army failed to rally to it and Erdogan was able to call out large numbers of civilians to resist it. Now he’s in the wonderful position, for a man of his authoritarian inclination, to round up all his opponents – and he has some convenient little lists ready, of people who really wouldn’t be missed, at least by him or his followers. And he’s in the glorious position of being able to do it all in the name of democracy. To protect freedom from military intervention. To defend the core rights of the people to choose their government freely. Or at least, all those people, and it may be a majority, who vote for him.

Among the opponents he deals with over the next few weeks, you can be sure there will be quite a few who took no part in the putsch and were as opposed to it as he was. But they were opposed to him too and, sadly, by an unfortunate administrative error, they will be caught up in the post-coup oppression too.

Since only he seems to have benefited from the coup attempt, and it’s given him just the opportunity to move against the opponents he was targeting anyway, it is indeed easy to imagine that he was behind it in the first place. Who does it benefit, we ask? Him, obviously, so isn’t it possible that he or his agents ensured the attempt was made and crushed, to strengthen the strong man? 

It’s a tempting hypothesis. But not to my taste. I just can’t believe that Erdogan is quite that intelligent. He’s a highly effective bully, and perfectly smart enough to pull a faction together and use it to crush his adversaries. However, smart enough to get people who hate him to act in precisely the way he wants them? To go out on a limb and, as it now appears, put their lives on the line by doing something so completely half-baked, all because they’d fallen for Erdogan’s snake oil selling skills?

I don’t see it. On the other hand, my faith is deep and unshakeable in the capacity we all share to delude ourselves. It strikes me as far more likely that the men who led the putsch thought they’d get away with it. Just like the men in the dying days of the Soviet Union who thought they’d overthrow Gorbachev, and only got Yeltsin instead – with Putin not far behind.

In both cases, rebels got their tanks out without being sure of the backing they needed. They went into battle against men whose skill exceeded theirs only far enough to ensure they had more support than their opponents. These were not brilliant poker players turning the cards they were dealt into winning hands; these were one set of cheats outsmarted by the other.

In both cases, the ultimate victim was any hope of democratic development. Back then, the final price was paid by the Russian people, as now it will be by the Turkish. But it was down to cockup by putschists, not conspiracy by their opponents. Opponents and beneficiaries.

Vladimir Put in his place by Eurovision

So let me get this right.

The Eurovision song contest, one of the frothiest and least significant of competitions around the world, has actually got the Russians riled? Even though everyone knows the result is politically fiddled, with the Russians among the main manipulators? Are they perhaps upset because the Ukrainians outmanoeuvred them?

It seems the issue is that the winning Ukrainian song was about the deportation of the Tatars from Crimea in 1944. Crimea was part of Ukraine until two years ago, when the Russians moved in with armed force. Invited, they naturally assured the world, by locals, but then, how many invaders claim to be invited by the invaded?

That difficult moment back in 2014 has left what I suppose one can only call bad blood between Ukraine and Russia. So one can imagine that getting up Russian noses might well have been a pretty significant motivation for Ukrainians to sing that particular song.

As it happens, however, at the time to which the song refers, Crimea wasn’t part of Ukraine at all. It was Russian territory, as it had been for a long time. Russian claims to the Crimea are, to be honest, quite difficult to deny; it’s the use of saboteurs and tanks to enforce them that’s harder to swallow.

What’s more, back then, in 1944, Russia wasn’t even under the control of the present allegedly democratic regime. The Soviet Union was at the summit of its power, still led by its iconic dictator, Stalin. His regime in Russia, alongside Hitler’s in Germany, had been one of the two great totalitarian powers in Europe for a dozen years, and World War II, then raging, had been largely caused by their antagonism.

Tatars loaded into cattle trucks for their deportation
Ah, so reminiscent of scenes from Germany at the same time...

In driving the Tatars out of Crimea, Stalin was merely engaging in yet another act of totalitarian brutality. Totalitarianism flows from a sense of belonging to a movement powered by some force far greater than mere men: history itself for the Soviet Union, the destiny of a people for Nazi Germany, but it can equally be some religious or other faith in different places at different times.

If you represent the force of history, you can’t be doing wrong. So treating an entire ethnic group like the Tatars as disposable is perfectly justifiable, and driving them out made perfect sense to Stalin, whatever their suffering and their losses. This particular act of ethnic cleansing affected 230,000 people, of whom probably about 100,000 died.

Most of us these days take a dim view of such behaviour. It’s not generally regarded as compatible with the highest standards of democratic values. And the present Russian leadership likes to claim it wholly conforms to values of that kind.

So here’s the question: why on earth would they be offended by a song that denounces a regime under which Russia too suffered abominably for several decades? After all, Stalin wreaked more killing on the Soviet Union than Hitler did on Germany, partly no doubt because he had longer.

Unless, of course, there’s real hankering to get back to that kind of regime again. Might Putin be not quite so committed to democratic principle as he likes to maintain? Does he perhaps long nostalgically for a state in which he was, after all, a leading functionary of its most repressive institution, the KGB?

Ah, perish the unworthy thought.

Cameron: dithering on airports, confused on the Middle East, fumbling on Climate Change. Business as usual

Some enthusiasm may be in order, as the world adopts the Paris Agreement on global warming. It won’t go far enough, or be binding enough, but it may just be the first step towards breaking the logjam, and allowing action to save the planet on which we all depend.

Laurent Fabius brings down his gavel at the Climate Change Conference
and declares the Paris Agreement adopted

Here in Britain we have been debating for nearly a decade the need to increase the capacity for air travel in South East England. Any business organisation significant enough to make its voice heard has been calling for airport expansion. Our exciting Conservative government reacted to a report recommending a further runway at Heathrow, with a promise to make a decision before the end of the year.

Well, David Cameron has kept that promise. His government has made a decision. A firm irrevocable decision.

To put off deciding until next June.

Boris Johnson, the present Conservative Mayor of London, opposes Heathrow expansion. So does Zac Goldsmith, the Tory candidate to replace him. It’s clear that a decision in favour of Heathrow would damage Goldsmith’s chances to keep London, a predominantly Labour city, in Tory hands.

Perish the thought that such considerations may have weighed with Cameron, in his glorious decision not to decide.

In any case, that tendency to dither is by no means out of character for Cameron. He’s never been good at making up his mind. Sometimes, he makes it up and then has to unmake it a while later.

The best example concerns military action in the Middle East.

On 29 August 2013, David Cameron told the British House of Commons:

“…on this issue Britain should not stand aside. We must play our part in a strong international response; we must be prepared to take decisive action to do so.”

On 2 December 2015, the same David Cameron told the House of Commons:

“The question is this: do we work with our allies to degrade and destroy this threat, and do we go after these terrorists in their heartlands, from where they are plotting to kill British people, or do we sit back and wait for them to attack us?”

You’ve got to admire the consistency, don’t you? That full-hearted commitment to action. The determination to wipe out a clearly identified redoubtable enemy. And Britain must help. Unfortunately, in 2013 Cameron was talking about action against Syria’s vile dictator, Bashar al-Assad. One of the groups fighting Assad was ISIS who would doubtless have been delighted to see missiles raining down on the President.

In 2015, the action was against the execrable terrorist group ISIS, one of whose enemies is Syria’s vile dictator, Bashar al-Assad. Who must be delighted to see airstrikes being flown against his rebellious foes.

Ah, well. Cameron knows his own mind. Well, he knows the state it’s in today. More or less. Though it might be better if you asked in six months.

With his sureness of touch, Cameron’s more than ready to cope with the situation he’s plunging into, in the Middle East.

There we see the Russians running airstrikes, alongside the US, British and French, though to be honest the Russians have been doing rather a lot of bombing up in the North West, where there aren’t any ISIS people, though there are anti-Assad rebels. Those are the rebels that France, Britain and the US support. After bombing them, Russian planes fly close to the Turkish border and, according to the Turks, on occasions they stray across it. So when this happened once to often for Turkish tastes, they blew the plane out of the sky.

Meanwhile, Turkey has been training Sunni and Kurdish forces in Northern Iraq to fight ISIS. Back home, Turkey is fighting Kurdish rebels. And Iraq would really rather like Turkey to withdraw its troops from Iraqi soil. However, Iraq doesn’t have an army forceful enough to impose its will within its own borders. Shia dominated, the government is dragging its feet over incorporating Sunnis into that army, leading to delays in giving itself an effective military. The delays were deplored by the British Defence Secretary, Michael Fallon, who knows that airstrikes alone won’t achieve victory against ISIS. He needs someone to put in forces on the ground; Iraq can’t; Syria can, but its army’s controlled by Assad.

Confused? So are the Tories. How many sides are involved in this fighting? How many agendas are being followed? What would “victory” look like?

How can any of us know when the job is done? What are our objectives and how shall we know when we’ve hit them? What’s the exit strategy? That same Fallon calls progress “agonisingly slow.” That’s code for “we have no idea of where we’re going or how long it’s going to take to get there.”

Par for the course for the government Cameron leads. And the non-decision on airport expansion in South East England makes the point. Because, at the time of the historic Paris Agreement on Climate Change, only one option should really have been recommended: no expansion at all. In fact, we ought to be working on reducing our excessive dependence on air transport.

That option, sadly, wasn’t even on the table.

Politicians indulging in an act of faith. To launch more war

I believe it because it is absurd. Credo quia absurdum.

Not many people of faith would accept that as summing up their approach. But it strikes me as the most powerful statement of what faith really is. After all, it takes no faith to accept things that we know, or can deduce from observation. We don’t believe that the sun rises in the East, we know it, if only because we know that’s how the East is defined.

Faith is for what isn’t explicable in natural terms. A virgin birth. The execution of son of the God. His resurrection three days later. These are, in naturalistic terms, impossible, so those who accept them, accept them on faith.

That strikes me as a legitimate way to behave – on matters of faith. But when it comes to politics, we should demand something else. Political decisions should be based on firm evidence, and only on evidence. Which is why it’s so sad that faith plays such a role in determining policy.

Nowhere is that clearer than in decisions concerning war. In particular, that’s the case of the British government’s demand for airstrikes against ISIS in Syria. David Cameron constantly tells us how hard it is to make a decision for war; in reality, nothing is easier. Taking on Al Qaida after 9/11 was an immensely difficult task; invading Afghanistan and Iraq a couple of years later was simple. The easy action, satisfying the demand to do something, and do it now.

But did those missions achieve anything? There was no sensible exit strategy from either country.

We’re gradually pulling out Afghanistan. But it now looks as though the Taliban, our foes there, are poised to sweep back into power. It will leave the country in much the same position as when we invaded – but after having been suffered another decade and a half of vicious fighting.

The West has withdrawn, more or less, from Iraq, but what did we leave behind? A nation run by a dysfunctional, sectarian government heavily manipulated by Iran, with its Kurdish region autonomous to the point of near-independence, and large tracts now occupied and run by the very terrorist organisation that we’re now having to fight – ISIS. So our intervention has left Iraq, which previously hosted no terrorist threat against us, is now the base for the worst we face.

So here we are again, planning further military action in the Middle East. And again we have no exit strategy. We have no picture of where the action will take us. We have no idea of what the consequences are. But Cameron calls on us to back him. On faith.

Worse still, there’s no evidence whatever that the action will even be effective. The Americans have been bombing ISIS in Syria for a year, but that didn’t stop the organisation running its attacks in Paris. It doesn’t look as though the bombing has really been able to degrade ISIS, its declared aim, significantly. Indeed, we even know that many missions – three-quarters of the strikes being run by Britain in Iraq, for instance – are returning without even having fired their weapons. The obvious targets have already been taken out, and ISIS has become considerably smarter at not offering new ones – for instance, they don’t travel around the country in large masses that can be easily hit.

It’s hard to see how adding ten British planes to this campaign will make any useful difference.

Indeed, the only real gains there have been, have occurred when Kurdish ground forces in Iraq followed up on airstrikes and took back territory from ISIS. Most notably that was achieved in Sinjar, where the Yazidi people were persecuted by the terrorist organisation.

Again, Cameron has asked us to have confidence in his statement that there are ground forces in Syria which can follow up our air campaign. 70,000 of them, he argues. But but there are not 70,000 such fighters in a single coherent group. Far from it. Split among 110 factions, most of them are scattered all round the edges of Syria with very few of them even in contact with ISIS.

Russia's already taking part in the airstrikes
Not in a particularly helpful way...

Curiously, it is those so-called moderate fighters that have been taking the brunt of the bombing of one of the nations in action over Syria – Russia. So we’re bombing ISIS and our Russian partners are busily bombing the people we’re counting on to follow up our strikes.

In any case, it’s hard for Cameron to ask for our confidence. Two years ago he was calling for our support to bomb not ISIS, but its enemy President Assad of Syria. And yet he spoke with exactly the same conviction then as he is today. Within just two years he’s had to change his mind about which side to bomb? It leaves me short of confidence in his judgement.

Conclusion? There’s nothing but confusion on all these matters in government. There is no evidence to support what parliament is being called on to support. The position is, quite simply, absurd.

Which is why it takes faith to support it. Not, of course, anything like a Christian faith founded on a desire for peace, but something much bloodier. For which, God help us all.

PS The brilliant wit HL Mencken once wrote “Tertullian is credited with the motto ‘Credo quia absurdum’ – ‘I believe because it is impossible’. Needless to say, he began life as a lawyer.” Well, a lot of politicians started as lawyers. I’m not sure whether that’s significant, but it feels as though it ought to be.