The fine British tradition of wishing Americans well on Independence Day

Best wishes to all my American friends, this fourth of July.

I say that with complete sincerity, even though I’m British, and the celebration is of American independence from Britain. In fact, by wishing them well on this day, I’m merely perpetuating a tradition fully rooted in Britain. It stretches back to the time of that breach, nearly two and a half centuries ago.

The names of many of the leaders of the American side in that struggle still resonate today. Men like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton or Benjamin Franklin, though we draw a delicate veil over the inconvenient truth that the first two of those champions of liberty were slave owners, and the other two endorsed a constitution which allowed them to continue.

Their opposite numbers in Britain are far less well remembered. Maybe some retain a vague sense that there were two William Pitts, the elder and his son the younger, and even maybe that they both became Prime Minister. Some still recall the name of Edmund Burke, if only as the father of modern Conservatism. And there may even be those who remember the great wit and maverick, rival of the younger Pitt, Charles James Fox.

Pitt the Elder, Pitt the Younger, Charles James Fox, Edmund Burke

If I had to pick four figures who stand out as extraordinary from that period of British history, it would certainly be those. And they stand head and shoulders above those who prosecuted the war against the Americans, most notably King George III and his Prime Minister, Lord North.

What did those four have to say about British action against the colonists?

In 1775, even before the Declaration of Independence was issued, the elder Pitt, by then Earl of Chatham, by then already suffering from his final illness, came into the House of Lords to call for conciliation of the colonists:

We shall be forced ultimately to retract. Let us retract while we can, not when we must.

On 12 June 1781, his 22-year old son, by then a Member of Parliament himself, made his own heartfelt declaration about the conflict in America to the House of Commons:

It is a most accursed, wicked, barbarous, cruel, unnatural, unjust and diabolical war… Where is the Englishman who on reading the narrative of those bloody and well-fought contests can refrain lamenting the loss of so much British blood shed in such a cause, or from weeping on whatever side victory might be declared?

The British blood whose loss he lamented was being shed on both sides – like most of his contemporaries, he saw this fight as pitting British subjects against British subjects.

Charles James Fox said something similar, speaking presciently to denounce Lord North’s behaviour towards the colonists in October 1775. He was:

the blundering pilot who had brought the nation into its present difficulties ... Lord Chatham, the King of Prussia, nay, Alexander the Great, never gained more in one campaign than the noble lord has lost—he has lost a whole continent.

In a pamphlet of April 1777, Edmund Burke was even blunter in his denunciation of British government policy:

When any community is subordinately connected with another, the great danger of the connection is the extreme pride and self-complacency of the superior, which in all matters of controversy will probably decide in its own favour…

They have been told that their dissent from violent measures is an encouragement to rebellion. Men of great presumption will hold a language which is contradicted by a whole course of history. General rebellion and revolts of an whole people were never encouraged, now or at any time. They were always provoked.

The government had provoked the uprising against its rule. But it wasn’t an uprising against Britain, only against certain British leaders. Burke, Irish born and therefore aware of what oppression from London could feel like, knew what he was talking about and backed an opposition that would have hoped to do things differently had it been in office.

It was indeed the short government in which he held ministerial office that ultimately forced the King to recognise American independence.

It’s not the outlook of the men who waged a brutal and futile war in North America, but that of these outstanding figures, that I’d like to emulate.

And it’s in the spirit that I wish all my American friends a happy July the fourth.

Baseball Trumping Patriots

It was odd to discover that some colleagues from the US wouldn’t be able to join a meeting I’d called, because it was ‘Patriots’ Day’.

That’s not Patriots’ Day in the US, you understand. It’s not even Patriots’ Day in Massachusetts. It’s Patriots’ Day in the City of Boston and in that city alone.

It’s the day the population of that fine city celebrates the moment when its English inhabitants showed, with valour and tenacity, that it would not be denied the rights of Englishmen, forcing out the troops sent there by the English King.

A man increasingly crazed, of limited intellect and devoured by his autocratic inclinations

Although one of my colleagues seemed to blame me personally for the misdeeds of the British troops (apparently, I should have been nicer to the colonists – I promise to do better next time), I am fully in sympathy with the rebels. They set a fine example and one we latter-day Englishmen would surely do well to emulate. In fact, I only regret that all their courage and self-sacrifice have only been crowned, sadly, by their descendants being saddled with a Trump as head of state.

A man increasingly crazed, of limited intellect and devoured by his autocratic inclinations.

That being said, I’m fond of Boston. I’ve not been there that often but each time I’ve got to know it better and the experience has only reinforced by initial liking of the place.

On my last visit, my boss took several us to see a Red Sox baseball game. Now, I’m not going to say that was the high point of the visit, since naturally it was the work we did at our meetings that formed the true high point. Perhaps I’ll just say that had there not been those meetings, it would have been right up there at the pinnacle.

I’d never been to a baseball game before so it was a great educational experience. It’s a bit like cricket, only the advantage lies far more with the man with the ball in his hand, rather than the poor unfortunate holding the bat. Things are rather the other way around in cricket.

Apart from that, and a slight truncation in the time it takes to complete a match, much of the spirit of the game is similar to that fine English game. As, I suppose, befits a nation founded by fine Englishmen.

It wasn’t just the game itself that amused me, however. I’ve always liked the film Field of Dreams. You know, “if you build it, they will come”. You may remember the moment when Kevin Costner talks James Earl Jones into accompanying him to a game at Fenway Park, home of the Red Sox.

A scene from the film. 
With the green monster - the wall at the back - clearly in view

It was a joy to sit in the stands and look out at the same scene that they saw. Nothing surprising maybe – the filmmakers shot the scene on location. But still it sent a tingle up my spine just to be where those characters had sat and see much the same sights that they saw.

A scene from (my) real life
Ditto

Wonderful. It wasn’t on Patriots’ Day, as it happens. Still, from a purely personal point of view, it was just as worthy of celebration in my eyes.

Of course, as it happens Patriots’ Day is also the day of the Boston Marathon. Which was run this year in temperatures down to -1 (that’s -1 in real money – Celsius). Making it a pretty miserable experience.

But then, since we’ve already sad that the legacy of the original patriots is now in the hands of the Donald, that may not be wholly inappropriate.

Happy 4th of July, Amexit Day

It’s that time of year again, when we congratulate our transatlantic cousins on winning their freedom from the tyranny that a government in Westminster was inflicting on them.

Why, an American friend visiting London even found a poster celebrating the connection between that event and one much more recent: 

A fine sentiment. 

A delightful parallel, though perhaps not an entirely accurate one. Back then Americans were exiting Britain, rather than Britain exiting anywhere. It was really more of an Amexit. They did it to get away from control by Westminster. Today’s Englishmen, on the other hand, voted in their wisdom for Brexit, ostensibly to strengthen Westminster’s control. With growth halted and living standards falling, they may soon realise that such control is, in practice, as uncomfortable to them as it was to those American Englishmen 241 years ago.

For Englishmen they were. Champions of English rights. None more so than Thomas Jefferson, who drafted that Declaration of Independence for which we’re celebrating the anniversary today.

Earlier he had written A Summary View of the Rights of British America. Let’s stress that British. In the document he reminded British King George III that:

...our ancestors, before their emigration to America, were the free inhabitants of the British dominions in Europe 

There they enjoyed rights derived from their “their Saxon ancestors”, which by transmission they continued to uphold in America. Here he showed scant regard to the sometimes contradictory rights of the people who already lived there, but then he spared scarcely a thought for the liberties of Native Americans: no one, on either side, ever did.

The rebels were also wonderfully English in the glorious ways they found to reconcile incompatible views. You’ll understand that I’m trying to avoid the word “hypocrisy” here. The Declaration of Independence is long on inalienable rights and equality of creation, assuring us of the belief that: 

...all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness

The document is, however, strikingly short on the rights of black people.

To be fair, Jefferson did want to denounce slavery. Among many other charges, his first draft claimed of the King that:

...he has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither

Jefferson’s colleagues thought that was perhaps too much of a good thing, as they founded a nation based on human rights including the right to own other humans. So they struck out this passage.

It’s also a tad ironic that Jefferson himself had slaves, fathering several children on one of them. And talking about people capable of bearing children, women were wholly absent from the process of declaring independence. Now that’s the kind of commitment to universal rights which would have struck a chord in England too.

Still, as far as it went, the Declaration of Independence was an extraordinary document. It lit a beacon that has stayed alight to this day. Indeed, many of its points are as topical now as they were back then. Take its charge against the King concerning judges:

...he has made our judges dependant on his will alone...

The Executive trying to impose its authority on the judiciary? That’s certainly the hallmark of tyranny. But isn’t that just what the Donald would like to do?

Sometimes I can’t help feeling that in George III the American people had a ruler as bad but no worse than the one they’ve elected now. July the fourth: is it slightly a celebration of leaping from the frying pan into the fire?

Or to put it another way, misquoting that excellent film Brassed Off, if Thomas Jefferson were alive today, he’d be spinning in his grave.

Strange how the fascination with dynasties continues...

It’s amazing how difficult it is for us to rid ourselves of belief in the power of “blood” as the main determinant of anyone’s qualities. We all know it isn’t true, but we still somehow believe that mere birth will make someone better qualified than anyone else to lead, or to rule, or just to lord if over everyone around.

I mean, look at Prince Charles. You want proof that high birth doesn’t guarantee high qualities? Look no further.

The prejudice clings on even in a country where deliberate steps were taken to put an end to this preposterous notion. “No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States” claims the Constitution of that fine nation. And yet the sixth president, John Quincy Adams, was the son of the second, John Adams. Just as Benjamin Harrison, the 23rd, was the grandson of William Henry Harrison, the ninth. Even the two Roosevelts, though not closely related, were distant cousins.

The dynasty that never fulfilled its promise was the Kennedys. Bobby and Ted both held high office, under or in the wake of their brother JFK, but both were cheated of going further by death: in Bobby’s case his own, in Ted’s that of Mary Jo Kopechne, drowned when he drove off a bridge at Chappaquiddick.

These instances of keeping things in the family weren’t always bad. John Quincy Adams, for instance, strikes me as rather a fine fellow. He was defeated at the end of his second term by a cruel, bigoted and authoritarian successor, Andrew Jackson, the man who drove the Cherokees and other native Americans away down the “trail of tears” and had far less than enlightened views of the role of African Americans (he felt slavery was right for them). 

Undeterred, Adams got himself elected to Congress where he served 17 years, up to his death. And he appeared as a lawyer for the (successful) defence of the rebel slaves of the Spanish ship Amistad when their case went to the Supreme Court.

William Henry Harrison.
Distinguished only by the shortest presidency
And having a grandson who also achieved the office

Many of these blood relatives, however, were a pretty sorry bunch. William Henry Harrison’s presidency was distinguished only by being the shortest ever (32 days until his death from pneumonia); his grandson Benjamin’s presidency is undistinguished by anything at all.

But when it comes to sorry dynasties, we have to come forward to the present day for the sorriest. With Jeb Bush declaring his interest in the presidency, we have in prospect for the first time ever a candidate who is not merely the son of a President but the brother of another. And yet the father was unprepossessing in office, the brother lamentable.

Now this kind of thing can happen in a monarchy, as in Britain. George III lost his mind by the end of his reign; he was succeeded by his vainglorious, self-indulgent son George IV; and then by a younger son, William IV, who though slightly brighter, was never going to set the Thames alight.

Surprisingly like the Bush bunch.

Now, that this can happen in a monarchy is sad but understandable. But in a strongly established republic? With two or three hundred million people to choose from? It seems amazing.

What’s particularly striking is that every presidential election between 1980 and 2004 – seven of them – had at least one Bush or Clinton on one of the tickets, running either for President or for Vice President. And 1992 pitted one of each against each other: Bush the father against Clinton the (erring) husband.

Well, if Jeb Bush gets his way, and Hillary Clinton gets hers, 2016 could see a re-run of that battle of the dynasties. Proof if any were needed that, whatever the Constitution says about actual titles, notions of aristocracy run as deep in the US as they do anywhere else.

Hillary Clinton: a more inspiring representative of dynastic politics
Besides, she's not really a member of the dynasty

To be fair, one of the possible outcomes would again prove that this kind of dynastic politics doesn’t always have to be bad news. A Hlllary presidency could be a great result, and not just because she would be first woman president, after the first African American, but because Hillary is even brighter than the other half of the Clinton duo – and in any case, she wasn’t a Clinton by birth, only by marriage.

Which naturally brings to mind the old story about the couple. Skip it if you know it, but in case you don’t, it bears repeating here.

The Clintons were filling up with petrol – gas, I should say – at some miserable filling station in the wilds of Arkansas. Bill was struck by the strange looks passing between his wife and the station attendant.

Once they were back on the road, he asks what that was all about.

“Oh, we dated for a while back then when we were in High School,” she explains.

Bill laughs.

“Well, just think what a different life you’d have had if you’d married him! You wouldn’t have got to the White House.”

“Oh,” replies Hillary, “if I’d married him, he’d have been its occupant.”