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The West has withdrawn, more or less, from Iraq, but what did we leave behind?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.

A good book prompts a trip down memory lane

What could be better than a book that offers a quick burst of pleasurable nostalgia? Especially if it’s a good book.

It was years and years ago – perhaps as many as fifteen – that I first travelled to Toronto. It was February and I’d been given to understand that the winter was cruel in that part of the world, with eight-foot snow drifts and most of the life of the city taking place underground. Imagine my delight when I turned up to blue skies and balmy temperatures, with only small traces of snow still lying around. Why, I even went for a walk along Lake Ontario (OK, not in shirtsleeves) and I think the word to describe it is charming.

Funnily, I’ve been back once more since, again in February, and again to the same weather. So I enjoy informing Canadian friends of the pleasure I’ve had enjoying the mild winters of Ontario.

At that time, Borders had opened few I any bookshops in England – certainly I hadn’t come across any. Later of course they mushroomed, all replete with their inbuilt Starbucks, offering a satisfying experience of being able to browse huge numbers of books and then have a coffee. Satisfying, that experience, but not sufficiently to resist the competition of Amazon – order the book from the comfort of your own couch, make your own latte and avoid all the hassle of traffic and finding a parking spot. So like mushrooms they opened, and like mushrooms they vanished, without even filling an omelette.

Since it was all new to me, I took great pleasure in spending a couple of hours in a huge Borders (with coffee, of course) in central Toronto. And inevitably bought three or four books. But considerations of economy, and luggage weight, made me put back on the shelf one that had attracted my attention.

Inevitably, once I was home, I decided that of all the books I’d looked at, that was the one I should have taken.

Now roll forward a few years, to January 2006. Danielle and I visited New Orleans, just five months after the havoc wreaked by Hurricane Katrina. Our hotel room was up high, and everywhere we looked we could see blue sheets on roofs that had been stripped of their tiles. The streets smelled distinctly of mould, like a damp cellar that’s been neglected too long. And everywhere one could feel the shortage of people – restaurants all had signs up, “looking for cooks – se busca cocineros” or similar.

New Orleans, returned to life

There was also, however, an atmosphere of staunch resistance. The city had been struck. But it was going to re-emerge, and do so with all the beauty and charm for which it is famed.

A little way from the centre, we found a pleasant bookshop. Not a huge affair like the one in Toronto, but something much more comfortable and human in scale. It suddenly occurred to me that they might have that book I’d failed to buy.

There were two women in their thirties running the shop. All bookshops, at one time, seemed to be run by two, sometimes three, women aged something between 30 and 60. They were always polite, friendly and fiendishly well-informed.

“I was looking for a book,” I started, always an intelligent way to open a question in a bookshop, “and I don’t remember what it was called, but it seemed to be contrasting the lives of Thomas Jefferson and John Marshall… I’m sorry, I know that’s pretty vague…”

“Do you mean James F. Simon’s What kind of nation?” asked the thirtyish woman, in her glasses and cardigan (did I say they always wore glasses and cardigans?) “I think we have it in stock.”

She marched me over to the other side of the shop and knelt at a low bookshelf.

“Yes, here it is,” she told me as she handed over a copy of the very book I was after.

Now, last month I finished listening to, rather than reading – I’m into audio books these days: they’re great when walking a dog or vacuuming a floor – Lincoln and Chief Justice Taney which, like the earlier book, compares a president with a Supreme Court Chief Justice. It’s an interesting formula, because we tend to know a little about Presidents, but usually next to nothing about judges. And yet they can fundamentally mould the direction of a nation.

That was certainly true of John Marshall, a last minute appointment by the last Federalist President John Adams before he handed over to his nemesis (but also friend – yes, it’s a great story) Thomas Jefferson. By naming Marshall, Adams hoped to leave some Federalist influence to reign in the Republican Jefferson, whom he regarded as dangerously radical. Marshall made a great many key judgements, not least one of his first, which established that the Supreme Court could carry out judicial review – specify, in fact, whether a law was actually legal – a pretty key power.

So it made for a good book. But so was Lincoln and Taney. Lincoln was, of course, the President who won the Civil War and outlawed Slavery. On the way to that happy outcome, he encountered one of the most significant, but infamous decisions of the Supreme Court, made by Roger Taney: the judgement of the Dred Scott case buttressed slavery and, worse still, authorised the principle that blacks in the US could never be citizens and ““…had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”

Strong stuff, and well handled by the author. Who turned out to be James F. Simon.

I should have guessed, of course, since the formula was so similar. And Simon has the rare distinction of being both a fine historian and a lawyer. So this approach works particularly well for him.

Both books were a pleasure.

But the greatest pleasure of all was to be reminded of the conditions in which I first discovered their author. In the pleasant winter weather of Toronto. And the charm of a stricken city that was quickly emerging from its pain – with intelligence, grace and elegance.

Syrian air strikes, or the British call for gesture politics

If a group declares war on us, we have every right to take military action against it.

Only a convinced pacifist could think otherwise and, while I have considerable admiration for pacifists (and vegetarians), I can’t follow them in writing off all resort to military action (just like I can’t resist the occasional bacon roll). ISIS has certainly declared war on the West. Not just any war, but one of the most loathsome, directly aimed at civilians. It’s entirely legitimate for the Western powers to respond militarily to that threat. Well, as long as three conditions are met.

1. There must be legal authority for the war, and broad consensus – which are pretty much the same thing, since both would come through the United Nations. 
2. There must be parallel diplomatic activity to bring a satisfactory outcome that will end the fighting as quickly as possible.
3. The military action must be effective, again to keep it short.

On the first two points, there has been a little tentative progress. The UN has backed action against ISIS, with no veto by Russia, which is now involved in the conflict. Discussions in Vienna may lead to some movement over the internal politics of Syria, though past experience gives little grounds for optimism.

It’s on the third point that there’s most to be done.

Firstly, effective military action means action to achieve specific, stated goals. In this context that’s action to defeat ISIS. Not to meet some politician’s hidden agenda.

Secondly, winning a war means taking and holding the territory of an enemy. Consequently, the only branch of the armed services that ultimately matters is the infantry. Air strikes not followed up by infantry achieve very little. The best example of that kind of warfare? The charge of the light brigade, where the cavalry played the role of air strikes today. They charged and took the Russian guns but, without infantry to hold the position afterwards, all the small number of survivors could do, was limp back.

The only place where air strikes against ISIS are being followed up is in Kurdish Iraq. Unsurprisingly, it’s the only place where any territory has recently been taken back from ISIS, at Sinjar. If Iraq had an army worthy of the name, it too could be supported by air power to achieve similar advances, but it doesn’t.

As for Syria, even David Cameron admits we need support on the ground. He accepts that we can’t provide it. Western populations have had enough of sending soldiers to the Middle East, and the Middle East has had far more than enough of seeing them there. Sending them in can make matters far worse, as the disaster of the Iraq invasion has shown: it led directly to the emergence of the very ISIS we’re now having to combat.

So Cameron is relying on the 70,000 so-called moderate rebels in Syria. But as the BBC’s security correspondent Frank Gardner has pointed out, those rebels aren’t that concerned with ISIS. Their aim is to fight the government of Assad in Damascus. Incredibly, they’re also split into 110 factions. Our new friends, the Russians, are also bombing them. Trying to work with the Russians is never easy, but trying to be friends with them and allies of the people they’re bombing would be a major undertaking. That leaves only one force in Syria that can be relied on to tackle ISIS, and hold the ground it recaptures from it: Assad’s own army.

We could, of course, support that army. It wouldn’t be the first time we’d stood with a regime we distinctly disliked in order to overcome a common foe: we supported Stalin against Hitler, for instance. Still, it would take some clever footwork by Cameron. Just two years ago, he was showing exactly the same earnest and sincere desire for air strikes on Syria as he is today – but on that occasion against Assad, rather than against his enemies in ISIS.

In fact, it’s an issue Cameron needs to confront. Why should we believe him now when he got it so badly wrong then?

All this leads to the unfortunate conclusion that there’s no prospect of viable ground forces we can support from the air against ISIS. Consequetly, airstrikes are unlikely to do any good. Indeed, the US has run 7600 against ISIS already, but that didn’t stop the Paris attacks.

US airstrike against ISIS

So why is Cameron so keen on extending the bombing campaign to Syria?

Well, destroying ISIS may be the only legitimate goal of such a campaign, but it’s by no means the only possible obective. In a telling argument for airstrikes in Syria, Cameron has loudly proclaimed that we can’t leave them to the US and France alone.

So there we have it. We’re talking gesture politics. Cameron and his supporters are worried that not taking part makes him, and Britain, look bad. He wants us to join the campaign so that any politician who lines up with him, can face the voters and say “we’re taking action.” The action’s ineffective? No matter, as long as it’s seen to be taken.

This isn’t unusual. It was certainly a major part of the motivation for invading Iraq, to be seen to be doing something, whatever its value, in response to 9/11. Britain’s involvement was down to Blair wanting to offer visible support to the US, or more specifically to Dubya.

The same is true of the plan to renew the British nuclear deterrent, Trident. It’s going to cost the earth – estimates rose recently from £25bn to £31bn – so it must be good. And not to have it would make Britain look weak. So we want to divert huge sums from conventional defence, that we need, to a colossal prestige project involving weapons it would be suicidal to use.

All gesture politics. The real question facing us in Britain today is whether we’re prepared to have more gestures. 

Specifically, how far will we stomach military decisions to help politicians feel better about themselves?

Tory U-turns: a matter of relief, but with questions of responsibility and irresponsibility.

George Osborne, Chancellor of the Exchequer in Britain’s Tory government, produced a spending review on 25 November that does a complete U-turn on two heavily trailed and highly unpopular measures.

On his way to making those announcements, he repeated the claim he’s advanced frequently in the past, that any difficulties the economy is facing are the fault of the previous Labour government. As his opposite number, the Labour spokesman on Finance, John McDonnell, pointed out, there comes a time when you have to stop blaming your predecessors and take responsibility yourself. Osborne has, after all, been in office for five and a half years. Back in 2010, he set targets by which to judge him, in particular eliminating the structural deficit in government spending by 2015, which he spectacularly failed to hit.

At the 2015 election, he persuaded a large number of voters to give him another chance to hit his targets by 2020, though it again looks as though he won’t make it. Indeed, I believe one prediction we can make about 2020 with some confidence, is that the Tories’ woes will not have been vanquished, and they’ll still be blaming them on Labour. Osborne, it seems, is never responsible.

Part of his irresponsibility will be continued austerity policies. And that’s despite the two U-turns he has just announced.

The first U-turn concerned cutting tax credits, vitally necessary to a great many people for whom the Tories claim to speak – the striving working poor. The Opposition parties and others had mounted a major campaign against the cuts. It’s a measure of the opponents’ success that they were able to convince a great many voters of their case, and a further measure of that success that Osborne, wily politician with well-tuned antennae, simply abandoned his proposal.

Osborne: a wily politician but not so hot on responsibility

Secondly, he has dropped plans for further cuts to the police, a position made deeply unpopular by the Paris terror attacks.

Smart moves by a clever operator. And most welcome: I supported the opposition to both cuts, and it’s with sincere relief that I greet their abandonment. But there’s no reason to reduce the pressure on Osborne, all the same. For two reasons.

Firstly, it would be deeply foolish to think that he isn’t going to sneak them back in. That’s already happening with tax credits. That particular support is being phased out to be replaced by the new system of Universal Credit – which Osborne has already cut. So as people are moved over to the new arrangements, many will face cuts of £2000 a year and more – around 10% of their earned income – that we were complaining about before.

So the opposition has to continue. Otherwise all we’ll have bought is a little time.

And secondly, there’s the justification Osborne has used for his U-turns. The Office for Budget Responsibility has revised its forecasts of future government revenue. It is on the strength of those forecasts that the government felt it could afford to reverse its cuts. But the Guardian was absolutely right to quote the comment by the great American economist, J K Galbraith, on the subject:

The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.

George Osborne has taken a gamble on the economy turning out as the forecasters have suggested it might. Not on money in the bank, but on money he hopes to see flow in later.

Now I’m very much in favour of seeing growth stimulating increased government revenue, so that the constant cuts associated with austerity can end. But it strikes me that a government that is constantly quoting little common place phrases of everyday life as though they constituted analysis of an economic policy for a nation – “the country has maxed out its credit card”, “we inherited an economy on the brink of bankruptcy”, “we’re fixing the roof while the weather’s good” – would at least admit that it’s taken to spending today, money it has at best an uncertain chance of earning tomorrow.

It’s particularly striking in this context that the Office for Budget Responsibility doesn’t have a good track record in economic forecasting. Of course, it doesn’t have to take responsibility for any budgetary decision taken by the government.

But then, it seems George Osborne doesn’t feel the need to either. And he’s taking those decisions. With cheerful irresponsibility.

It's urgent to get stuck into the Syrian War. Or should we think a little first?

It’s fascinating to watch all the noise that’s been generated over whether or not Britain should take part in air strikes against ISIS in Syria. It’s as though this was becoming an acid test of one’s commitment to democratic rights and rejection of terrorism. Back the bombing of Syria or give up any hope to be taken seriously as an opponent of ISIS, that sort of thing.

No one seems to want to stop and think whether adding Britain’s really rather limited punch to what’s already going on would actually make any serious difference. After all, the US, France and some reluctant, on-off allies from the Arab world have been bombing ISIS for months. As the Paris attacks showed, that’s not really degraded its capacity to act, has it?

It’s not surprising that it’s been so ineffective. Take the French effort after the Paris attack: they flew sorties across the weekend after and announced, with pride, that they’d killed 31 militants. Since estimates range up to 200,000 in ISIS, at 31 dead ever two days, it was going to take a terribly long time to reduce its force seriously that way.

In fact, the only serious reverses to ISIS have been in places like Sinjar, where Kurdish forces have retaken the city from ISIS. Air strikes were vital to that victory, but they couldn’t achieve it alone. It took Kurdish ground forces. 

What’s true in Sinjar is true in Raqqa too. Air strikes will cause inconvenience, and will kill innocents (written off as “collateral damage”) but they will not drive ISIS from their unofficial capital.

No one’s calling for British, French or US forces entering ISIS territory on the ground. Rightly. After all, we put forces on the ground into Iraq, and look how that worked out: our actions directly contributed to the rise of ISIS. The last thing we should do now is to try that again. Far better to back local forces to recapture what is, after all, their land.

I say that though I know that even local forces don’t always do the job we want: there have been accusations of ethnic hostility directed against Sunnis in Sinjar since the Kurds took the city.

In any case, the problem is that in Iraq only the Kurds seem to be capable of putting effective forces in the field. The Shia dominated government is unable to build an army able to take on ISIS. As for the Sunni opposition, rather too many of them seem to have decided that their poor treatment by the government can only be met by backing ISIS.

As for Syria, who on earth can we put our trust in? Who can play the role that the Kurds have played in Iraq? That role may be limited, but in Syria, gripped by a three-way civil war, no one can play it at all.

Which brings us back to the question of the air strikes. Because even in the air, the situation is as confused as on the ground.

We have the US and France with occasional allies bombing ISIS positions. We have Russians claiming to bomb ISIS position but, apparently, focusing more of their action on other, non-ISIS opponents of President Assad – indeed on the anti-Assad forces that the US, France and Britain support. 

To the North lies Turkey, ally of the US, France and Britain, in NATO. But it has Kurdish opponents within its own territory – Kurdistan extends into Iraq, Syria and Turkey. So our ally Turkey has little time for the only force that is making progress against ISIS in Iraq. If the enemy of Turkey’s enemy is Turkey’s friend, one has to wonder how they really feel about ISIS.

And that takes us to the latest development, the downing of a Russian fighter on the Turkish-Syrian border. A long way, incidentally, from the nearest ISIS positions. At first Turkey claimed the strike, on the grounds that the plane had entered its airspace. But later Turkoman rebels in Syria claimed they’d brought down the plane.

Russian jet brought down probably by Turkey.
Adding to the sense of chaos

So we have Russia running bombing strikes against ISIS nowhere near ISIS positions, and we have Turkey, or possibly Syrian rebels aligned with Turkey, bringing down one of the planes.

Confused? Yes, it’s a frighteningly confusing situation. Multiple actors with different agendas, including unavowable objectives kept hidden from their allies, and sometimes running directly contrary to the war aims of those allies.

But in Britain the debate has been boiled down to just one question: when are we going to join the US and France in bombing ISIS in Syria?

Isn’t it time that we started asking a few more questions? Perhaps more sophisticated ones? And maybe do a little thinking about the complexities of the situation before we leap into action?

Especially since such action isn’t likely to do a lot of good, and could create further dangerous incidents, like the downing of the Russian jet.


PS, on a lighter note

If it was the Turks that brought down the Russian plane, it does occur to me that they might have limited themselves to issuing warnings and following up with a stiff diplomatic note afterwards. That would at least have avoided the risk of precipitating a major international incident.

All that reminds me of a story told me by my Genevan uncle-in-law. 

During WW2, British bombers attacking Italian targets would apparently take a shortcut through Swiss airspace. The Swiss were neutral, but flying around took too long and consumed too much fuel.

Every time they did it, Swiss anti-aircraft crews would radio the RAF planes.

“You’re overflying Swiss territory, you’re overflying Swiss territory.”

The RAF crews would radio back.

“We know, we know.”

The Swiss gunners would open fire and the RAF would radio them again.

“You’re firing too far to the left, you’re firing too far to the left.”

“We know, we know,” would reply the Swiss.

A TV of strong female leads. At last

It felt like a long overdue change might be taking place, as we watched episodes from three TV series this weekend, all with powerful female characters.

Amazon released a couple of episodes of The Man in the High Castle some time back, but the full series came out at the end of last week. It’s set in a parallel present (well, parallel past now, since the book appeared in 1962). World War 2 was won by Germany and Japan. What had been the United States is now split into a huge zone covering the middle and eastern states, under the dominion of the Greater Nazi Reich, a smaller coastal area in the west administered by imperial Japan, and between them a neutral zone based around the Rocky Mountains.

An alternative reality for the United States

The key figure is Juliana Crain, well played by Alexa Davalos as conflicted, troubled and dangerous to all who come into contact with her. Around her are some powerful characters, mostly male – including an utterly vicious bounty hunter played with deeply sinister and blood-chilling panache by Burn Gorman – and together they make for great viewing. But don’t make my mistake and read the book before watching the series: I find myself constantly regretting the series’ divergence from Philip K. Dick’s novel. It presents the Japanese as significantly less heavy handed in their oppression than the Nazis; indeed, much of the narration focuses on a Japanese character whose torment is central to the action. In addition, the book is much more about the nature of fiction and reality, far less about the top-level story. Most of that seems to be gone from the series, at least in the first four episodes we’ve watched so far. Instead, it’s more concerned to tell a tale around the theme of occupation and resistance.

It’s still gripping, though, and Juliana’s character is complex and believable.

Meanwhile, the BBC has released the latest season of The Bridge, the Swedish-Danish police series centred around the character of Saga Norén, socially awkward to the point of autism, but a thorough and gifted detective with the Swedish police in Malmo. We were a little concerned about how the story would keep going having lost Saga’s opposite number from Copenhagen, Martin Rohde, denounced by her at the end of season 2 and now in gaol. But the series keeps going just fine, with the same bewildering cast of characters, the same highly-stylised and vicious killings, and Saga driving same Porsche with its weird shade of green.

Saga Norén and her weird-coloured Porsche 911

A sub-plot’s already been announced, in which Saga’s going to have to address her own complex past, above all in relation to her parents and the death, for which she blames them, of her sister. Chickens, one feels, are going to come to roost. Meanwhile, her new Danish partner has secrets of his own, including drugs and apparently a rather unusual view of sex. Plenty of promise there, then, for more Nordic noir at its most intense.

The other series has just been released on Netflix. Even the Guardian talked about Jessica Jones as unusual for being yet another Marvel comics spinoff, but unusually with a strong female lead. The eponymous protagonist is played by Krysten Ritter, and she has real complexity. Still shaken by PTSD, she seeks solace in two activities which don’t play much of a role in most comics: heavy drinking and (occasionally) casual sex. She’s a compelling character, but not necessarily a nice one.

Jessica Jones: always interesting, not always nice

The basic story line is standard for a Marvel spinoff. She’s a super-hero, though with the neat twist that she’s retired from the game, making her living as a Private Investigator. She’s up against a super villain (David Tennant) with truly diabolical powers – indeed it’s because she’s a past victim of his that she’s a PTSD sufferer – and, again in an original departure, there’s nothing of the joker about his villainy, which is quite bleakly cruel. Much more like The Bridge indeed, than Guardians of the Galaxy, say.

I didn’t expect ever to feel anything more than slightly supercilious amusement at a comic-strip spinoff, but this one’s a cut or two above that. I’m looking forward to the next episode.


PS In a piece about strong female characters on TV, you might feel I ought to have said something about Nicola Walker. I haven’t forgotten her. Watch this space.

Under attack, France unites in resistance around the Marseillaise

No words in response to the Friday the thirteenth attacks in Paris have struck me as much as the message “je suis en terrasse” – I’m on a [café or restaurant] terrace. 

As a way of expressing defiance to the terrorists who attacked, among other places, a café and a restaurant, they can’t be bettered: they say, “we’re not going to be put off, we’re going to go on living the life we choose, despite your vile actions and your threats.”

French defiance: your acts won't drive me away from the life I choose

It’s relatively unusual, since this particular attack hasn’t produced much in the way of universally appealing slogans. Nothing so striking as “Je suis Charlie” after the murders at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo or the first use of a phrase of this kind, “Nous sommes tous Américains”, we are all Americans, the day after 9/11. There has been one fine visual image, the peace symbol with the Eiffel Tower at its centre. It has power and elegance, but hasn’t had the impact one might expect.

A great symbol, but it hasn't taken of like “Je suis Charlie”

In the absence of overarching visual symbols, there’s an audible one that keeps recurring and really does incarnate French attitudes towards their aggressors: the singing of the Marseillaise.

The French are lucky in possessing a stirring anthem. One that it’s hard not to hear without wanting to sing it. Why, some of the best bits of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture are built around the Marseillaise. That’s ironic, since he wrote the piece to communicate quite the reverse message – the triumph of Russia over Napoleonic France. Sadly, the national anthem of Russia, as it appears in the same piece of music, is as dirge-like as our own anthem, here in Britain.

There was a bit of a scandal in Britain some weeks ago over the then newly-elected leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, failing to sing the anthem at a memorial service. He could never have said it, but I wish he’d replied that he found nothing sufficiently inspiring in that dreary tune to make him want to sing it.

I mean, compare God save the Queen with The Star Spangled Banner. All we Brits ask for is to be allowed to have the Queen reigning over for us for ages, to a stodgy tune. I prefer Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, which England fans sing at rugby matches. On the other hand, given the recent performance of the team, something dirge-like is probably, and sadly, more appropriate.

The Americans, in contrast to the Brits, celebrate the continued resistance of their gallant forces to the overwhelming aggression of their dastardly (and, as it happens, British) foes.

The French call on their compatriots to rise up against the blood-soaked flag of tyranny. In passing, I have to admit that the Marseillaise also calls for the furrows of French fields to be irrigated with “impure blood”, which could lead to all sorts of racist notions of what kind of blood is pure – notions that have sadly played a role in the debate since the ISIS attacks. That’s going to be discussed repeatedly in the coming months and years, as we argue over the difference between the small numbers of Muslims behaving viciously, and the entire Muslim community.

That can wait, however. For now, let’s focus on the way the Marseillaise acts as a bond between Frenchmen in adversity.

Fans were being evacuated from the Stade de France, filing through the tunnels to the exits, spontaneously began to sing the anthem. The same scene occurred several times on the following days: the Marseillaise being sung by people gathering to mark the event. Again, on Friday evening a man, in an apartment near the Bataclan concert hall, started to sing it as the time of the attacks came round, one week on. Passers-by took it up in the street.

All this reminded me of a Frenchman I heard interviewed on the radio some years ago. As a young man, in 1940, following the disaster of the French defeat in May of that year, he was one of the handful who immediately responded to de Gaulle’s call to form a resistance to the Nazi occupation. He managed to make his way to London and eventually to the building the Churchill government had made available to de Gaulle for his headquarters. There was, as yet, no accommodation for the young volunteers and so he spent the first night with several dozen others, sleeping rough on the floors of the offices.

The young men were of many backgrounds and viewpoints – poor or wealthy, Catholic, Republican or Communist – thrown together in their sleeping bags on the hard floor. The one thing they had in common was that they were French, and they were determined to start on the long, hard and uncertain road which would take their nation back from humiliation to pride.

So, spontaneously, like the football fans in the tunnel at the Stade de France, or the Parisians near the Bataclan, in the lonely dark, they began softly to sing the Marseillaise. Which so fully expressed what united them, and their will to fight back.

Harking back to that time, and the spirit of resistance it generated, is perhaps the best way for the French to react to what happened in the ISIS attacks. Maybe it’s appropriate that the Marseillaise should be the principal symbol of their response.