Happy Liberation Day

Seventy years ago today, the city of Strasbourg fell to Free French forces, under the command of General Leclerc de Hautecloque.

French troops enter Strasbourg, November 1944

Strasbourg is the capital of Alsace, on the Rhine, as far East as you can get in France without finding yourself in Germany. In fact, for centuries many Germans claimed that once you were in Alsace (perhaps I should say Elsaß), you were already in Germany. 

The territory had been German until the seventeenth century, and became German again after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. It was only reincorporated into France at the end of the First World War. When it was retaken by German forces in the Second, it wasn’t regarded as occupied France, but as re-integrated Reich territory. One particularly painful consequence was that, unlike other Frenchmen, young men from Alsace were treated as Reich citizens and subject to call-up.

So to drive the Germans out of Strasbourg was to achieve not just a military victory, but a major symbolic one. It would mark the definitive end of German occupation, with only minor operations left to clear the final German positions.

But it was even more symbolic because of the words pronounced nearly four years earlier by the French commander, then Colonel Leclerc. He had captured the Italian position at Kufra, in the Sahara desert of Lybia, at the head of Free French forces brought up from Chad.

Leclerc and his officers watch the French flag being raised
over the Italian fort at Kufra, March 1941

In the great scheme of things, the battle of Kufra was unimportant. Fewer than 700 soldiers were involved. Its significance was that it marked France’s return to the war on the Allied side, and what’s more, marked it with a victory. It was an acorn; Leclerc had the vision to see the oak it could turn into.

So at the end of the battle, in March 1941, he had his troops swear what has come to be known as the oath of Kufra:

Swear not to lay down your arms until our colours, our beautiful colours, are floating from Strasbourg Cathedral.

He understood the importance of the capture of Strasbourg, and set it as his goal before he’d even left Africa.

On 23 November 1944, the goal was achieved. And, indeed, a young soldier took it on himself to scale the tower of the Cathedral and fly the flag from it.

Today, Strasbourg has become a city symbolising peace. No one challenges French sovereignty over it. Why, French and German military units even train together nearby. The Council of Europe, including the Court of Human Rights, brings together representatives from all over the Continent in the city.

We lived in or near Strasbourg for eight years, and I nurture the hope of moving back some day. Tonight, I’ll raise a glass to all my friends in and around that fine city, on the occasion of the seventieth anniversary of its final liberation.

And for now, put this note up to mark the day.

The French flag still flies frequently today
over the Cathedral in Strasbourg

Keeping score in badminton. Better than counting lengths of a pool

One of the advantages of the weekend, is that the kind of exercise I take changes.

During the week, it’s swimming. But at the weekend it’s badminton. And that’s a huge improvement. Not just for the obvious reason that badminton doesn’t involve total immersion in cold water, or contact with any kind of water at all except perhaps in a bottle, but because badminton’s actually more fun. You score points in badminton – well, occasionally you lose them – so you can work out who’s won.

A winning point, as a shuttle dips over a net

It’s impossible to tell who the winner is in swimming, except that I have a sneaking feeling it’s the pool. Certainly, I always feel I come in second.

I suppose the reason I enjoy a game, as opposed to a sport, with a scoreline rather than mere endurance, is that I’m fundamentally competitive. That doesn’t mean that I expect to win or anything. I like to think I’m far too much of a realist for that. What I have is more a kind of potential competitiveness: the sense that in a competitive game, there is a chance that I might win.

After all, it does sometimes happen.

There’s a curious phenomenon that comes into play here. The same thing, I’m told, happens in childbirth. Clutching the little bundle of joy they’ve just received, and blissfully unaware of the 20 years of sheer ghastliness ahead, new mothers lose all memory of the pain they’ve just gone through to get that bundle of devilry into the world in the first place.

The same thing happens to me with badminton. I know I must have lost a whole bunch of games because I know, with my rational mind, that I played rather more games than I won.

Make that substantially more games than I won.

But the detail of any one of those defeats? Expunged from my mind as though they’d never happened. The victories, on the other hand, stay with me in glorious detail, to be replayed at leisure in my mind afterwards. For instance, in that wonderful bath into which I let my aching limbs subside.

With swimming, there’s no such joy. Just a vague sense of achievement. Though since I leave the pool by the same ladder that I entered it, even that is somewhat limited: all that effort to get back to place I started from? What was the point? Where’s the mileage in that?

It was like that in the days when I used to go running. However far I ran, I always ended up back at the car. Like one of those nightmares, or Alice in Through the Looking Glass: you run and run but you get nowhere.

So I’m enjoying the weekend. Badminton on Saturday. Badminton on Sunday. And some games I’ll win.

Then Monday, I’ll be back to swimming. And it’s a safe bet the pool will end up ahead. Again.

No wonder things are getting worse: the saints are all dying

Every generation claims, once it reaches a certain age, that the world has sadly deteriorated since its youth. 

It often seemed to me that this was just the perennial problem of the old complaining about the young. No generation gets old without finding that the next is exhibiting a deplorable loss of standards.

It’s particularly amusing in my own. I love it when people who were teenagers in the sixties, as I was, complaining about the behaviour of the young. It has a nostalgic quality. It reminds me of our elders denouncing us as long-haired layabout louts, who believed the world owed us a living and had never learned consideration for others (without wondering who was responsible for teaching us at the time we were failing to learn these invaluable lessons).

Still, there are times when I look at the news and it occurs to me that there might be a rational explanation for humanity’s gradual deterioration over time. This seems particularly clear when someone celebrated dies. Today for instance the press is full of tributes to Mike Nicholls.

“A mentor, friend, colleague. One of the best observers of life.”

“… the funniest, smartest, most generous, wisest, kindest of all… a truly good man…”

“… one of the most generous people I have ever known…” 

So far I haven’t come across anyone saying “we shall never see his like again”, but even so, it’s fairly clear that if such a man leaves the world to the rest of us ordinary mortals, the overall stock of mankind must inevitably decline in quality.

The best go here
and the average goes to hell

It’s even worse when a child dies, whether of natural or violent causes. Have you noticed how every teenager who dies was something of an angel?

“Loving to his family, cheerful to his friends, he would light up his class with his laugh and help anyone who needed it.”

“She will be missed for her kindness, her ready smile, her enthusiasm that inspired everyone she came into contact with.”

“The entire school is in shock. She was one of the most popular and kindest of people, as well as an outstanding student.”

If these are taken from us, it leaves us with just the common grind of teenagers, the kind that leads many to believe that teenagers are best drowned at birth. The ones whom the gods choose were already otherworldly even before they reached the other world; the kind who stay behind are all-too-this-worldly: noisy, truculent, angry or depressive in turns, contemplating their own deaths when their problems aren’t solved for them, contemplating death for others if anyone tries to help.

The ones who depart this vale of tears never left a dirty sock lying on their bedroom floor, or drank straight out of the milk bottle from the fridge, or finished the shampoo in the course of a shower that used up all the hot water anyway. They did their homework, got up early, wished their families well and left the house so promptly that they always got to school on time.

Late teenagers were never late.

The general picture is depressing. The best hurry off to the next world, while the one they leave behind declines still further. We stay to rot while they decompose.

At least until it’s our turn.

Scots: pleased you gave us English another chance?

Two months ago today, voters in Scotland rejected a proposal for independence.

The British government, which had done nothing for two years to persuade the Scots to stay in the United Kingdom, had woken up a few weeks earlier to the fact that they might actually leave. David Cameron, who has all the energy of a sloth with none of the charm, at least had enough self-awareness not to travel to Scotland himself – he knew that would only strengthen the “Yes” campaign.

Instead, he turned to his much-maligned and beaten opponent of 2010, former Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and had him revitalise a fairly moribund “better together” campaign previously led without inspiration by Brown’s former Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling. To the surprise of those of us who had despaired over his lacklustre election drive four years ago, Brown managed to put some fire into the anti-independence cause.

He also managed to extract a promise from all the main leaders in the Westminster Parliament to grant more autonomy to Scotland, in the event of a “No” vote. This was published by the Labour-leaning Daily Record, which called it a “vow”, a name that stuck.

The “No’ camp ultimately won the vote, by a healthy but not conclusive margin of 55-45%.

Two months on, where do we stand?

Recent polls suggest that if the referendum were held now, the Scots would go. This seems far from unrelated to the fact that since 18 September, the English have done next to nothing about fulfilling the “vow”. With the immediate danger of Scottish secession fading, England has lost interest in the question, and moved on to consider other things, of more importance to it.

Hadrian's Wall is just a historic monument
But is it time to rebuild it as a frontier?

Among other matters, this includes its own secession from the European Union. David Cameron has promised a referendum by 2017 on EU membership, and it’s perfectly possible that the Scots, having stayed in the Union with England, may be forced out of the Union with Europe by the overwhelming power of English votes. It needs to be remembered that the great problem in the UK isn’t Scottish, Welsh or even Irish nationalism, it’s the English variety: it’s English nationalism that poisons relations with the other nations of the UK, it’s English nationalism that poisons relations with the other nations of the EU.

Leaders at Westminster were exercised by the Scottish questions for all of several days after the referendum. David Cameron, who has all the leadership qualities of a lemming with none of the winsomeness, decided that more autonomy for Scotland could only come at the cost of preventing MPs for Scottish seats voting on English questions. Coincidentally, one might say by sheer fortunate happenstance, that would deprive Labour of any hope of a majority in Westminster for a long time to come.

It may not come as a shock to discover that Ed Miliband, for the Labour Party, didn’t agree. 

The discussion ran into the sands. Since then, Cameron, who has the attention span of a moth with none of the elegance, has done nothing to revive the debate. So the bad feeling festers, the Scots become more restive, and the anti-Union feelings grow.

If nothing is done to meet Scots aspirations and, in addition, if the UK comes out of the EU, the pressure for a new referendum in Scotland will become irresistible.

In September, I was on the side of the “No” vote, for preserving the Union. But if England treats the Scots that badly, if we let them down again after that last minute appeal to trust us and give us one last chance, next time I’ll have to back independence. After the last chance, you don’t deserve another. 

Then we might discover how inconclusive a 55-45 margin really is. We might be forced to watch the Scots heading for the door. And I, for one, will have to admit they’re right to go.

To be honest, I’ll probably not be far behind myself.

Sandwich man, stand up and call on us to stand with you

One story yesterday seemed to sum up the problem of lack of political focus in Britain today, and in the West more generally.

The story concerned the company Greencore and its operation in Northampton, in the English Midlands. Greencore make sandwiches for several of the major supermarkets, including Marks and Spencer. They’re growing strongly. Recently it emerged that they’d been recruiting unskilled workers in Hungary, much to the anger of many in the local population: Northampton, like a lot of Britain, indeed of Europe, is suffering high unemployment.

Greencore in Northampton
from the Guardian

Inevitably, this engaged what is now the common debate about immigration.

Is it true that the company simply couldn’t find enough staff locally prepared to take on this low-paid, difficult work (days can last twelve hours and, according to an employee, managers may pressurise workers to stay even longer)?

Locals say they never saw the jobs advertised and would apply at once if they had the chance, if only to get off the unemployment queue at last. But, some argue, the company prefers to employ Hungarians who are prepared to work for lower wages.

Nonsense, say the company. They are an equal opportunities employer. Everyone is paid the same. There is no advantage to the company to use Hungarians rather than Brits; it just can’t find enough Brits.

I have no idea who’s right and who’s wrong here. Nor, it seems, does the Guardian journalist, who simply presents both sets of arguments and leaves it to the reader to decide. What I do know, is that this is only tangentially a problem of immigration; that the tangential problem is easily resolved, without leaving the European Union or imposing tighter border controls; that meanwhile, there is far more serious problem raised by the case, which no one seems prepared to take on. Indeed, UKIP and their allies in the Conservative Party seem only concerned with diverting attention from it, while Labour is having trouble plucking up the courage even to raise it.

First, the easy problem. To ensure that the company is playing straight, all we need is legislation to impose on such operations that all staff should be paid equal rates for equal work. We could keep the companies honest, making them live by the standards Greencore says it applies already: to pay immigrants the same as locals so there’s no financial incentive to recruit abroad.

Will UKIP pick up this call, for equal wages for immigrants? Don’t hold your breath.

UKIP won’t pick up the demand even though it would solve the problem. Indeed, it would solve some other problems too: it would ensure that women or people from ethnic minorities are not discriminated against either. You make sandwiches, you get paid the same as any other sandwich-maker.

Now let's turn to the far more serious problem. Its nature emerges from the detail of the article.

The unskilled staff in Greencore are on minimum wage, £6.50 an hour. After they complete their three-month probation period, they qualify for additional payments to compensate them for working in the cold environment sandwich production requires. Where conditions are a little colder, the employee receives 24p extra an hour; if conditions are officially “cold”, they get 48p an hour more; if they work in a freezer, they get 68p an hour more.

The maximum such a worker could earn, therefore, would be £7.18 an hour. That’s for working in a freezer for up to twelve hours a day.

Meanwhile, last year Patrick Coveney, Greencore’s Chief Executive took £1.3m. That works out at a cool (pun intended) £788 an hour.

Putting it another way, assuming an average of 220 working days a year, a worker doing 12-hour days at Greencore would have to work for 69 years to earn what Mr Coveney took for a single year.

Putting it more simply still, Mr Coveney believes he is worth the equivalent of 109 of his unskilled employees.

That he contributes more than any one of those unskilled workers, I can accept. Even perhaps that he contributes more than ten of them – many have long suggested that no one in a company should be paid more that ten times what the lowest paid receive. But that he contributes more than 100 of these workers? I’m afraid that simply defies belief.

He takes as much as 10-12 General Practitioners, 20-25 experienced nurses. He may run the world’s best sandwich-making operation, but does that make him worth 10 GPs? Seriously?

Now, that’s the real problem today. We live in a society dominated by, moulded by, people who believe they are worth as much tens, dozens, perhaps in some cases hundreds of the rest of us. They will do all they can to preserve that position. Over the last four years, a new report has shown, that has caused the least well paid 5% of the British population to lose 3% of its earnings, while the top 1% has increased its disposable income by between 1.2% and 2%.

Every moment we spend debating immigration is a moment we take our focus off that primordial question of our time. UKIP exists to keep our focus elsewhere; the Conservatives will do nothing to highlight the issue; the big question is, does Labour have the guts to wrench the debate on to that ground?

Because if it did, it could win the next election. And do something about the most shameful distortion of our economies today. Which isn't immigration, but inequality.

Charm and its effect, even late in life

Anne-Catherine de Ligniville, Madame Helvétius, known as Minette, was reputed to be quite a character, as well as being married to one of the more controversial thinkers of eighteenth-century France. 

Claude-Adrien Helvétius was denounced as an atheist, his book burned by the public executioner. Even his name has a story: he was called Helvétius because he came from a family with the surname Schweitzer, which they presumably regarded as altogether too Germanic. Helvetic means the same as Swiss, so they simply latinised the name, making it sound much grander and less Teutonic. 

Minette. Turned a few heads but not everyone approved

Madame Helvétius was, apparently, quite a looker, and as contemporaries might have put it, no better than she should have been. 

I’ve always had a soft spot for Abigail Adams, wife of the second US President John Adams, and in my humble opinion the more interesting half of that partnership.

To be more truthful, there’s nothing in the least humble about that opinion. I hold it with complete conviction. I have no qualms about putting it out there, right here.

What I can’t deny about Abigail is that she was of somewhat Puritan stock. Rural Massachusetts, don’t you know. Late eighteenth century. They liked things just so.

Abigail met Minette while she was in France with John, during one of the latter’s diplomatic missions on behalf of the emerging American nation. The senior American diplomat was Benjamin Franklin and it was at a dinner he gave that Minette, who was highly fond of him, met Abigail, who didn’t become in the least fond of her. Franklin told Abigail that Minette was a “genuine Frenchwoman, wholly free from affectation or stiffness of behavior”, and:

… one of the best women in the world. For this I must take the Doctor’s word; but I should have set her down for a very bad one, although sixty years of age, and a widow. I own I was highly disgusted, and never wish for an acquaintance with any ladies of this cast. After dinner she threw herself upon a settee, where she showed more than her feet. She had a little lap-dog, who was, next to the Doctor, her favorite.”

Abigail Adams
"I must study politics and war that my sons 
may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy.”
I'm a fan of hers, but she was none of Minette's

I have to confess that, attached as I am to her, these views of Mrs Adams’ don’t make me think any the less well of Madame Helvétius. 

Apparently many others, and not just Franklin, thought rather highly of her at the time. A generation before Franklin, another thinker had found her fascinating. Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle had been the grand old man of French science, in a life that in the end fell only one month short of a century long.

When he met Madame Helvétius, he was already in his late nineties.

"Ah, madame," he is said to have remarked, "if only I were eighty again.”

Not sure why I’ve devoted a post to that story, except that it’s Saturday afternoon. What time would be more suitable for a gentle anecdote? Especially in a blog devoted to random views.

Art for the pleasure of Art, thanks to Carl Randall

It was refreshing to hear Carl Randall speak about his paintings, at a new exhibition that has opened at the Berloni Gallery in London’s West End.

We first came across his work at the National Portrait Gallery, which had honoured him with a BP travelling prize that had enabled him to spend time in Japan and produce a series of paintings which kept us spellbound by their detail, their vivacity and their enchanting – sometimes humorous – ability to present Japanese life as it strikes a foreign visitor.

Exactly the atmosphere of bustle and liveliness of a busy Japanese station

So going to hear him speak about his paintings was an opportunity we couldn’t pass up. It proved well worth it.

First of all, because he talked plainly and simply about his paintings, about his time in Japan, and above all about what he’d been trying to do. On display were more of the works we’d come to associate with him: packed with people and places, breathing life and bustle, enjoyment or concentration.

Carl Randall introducing his paintings to us
at the Berloni Gallery

But we also discovered a new side of his art. There were some swift stolen sketches of travellers in trains, absorbed in themselves, their phones, their music, or just passing the time on the way to work. 

And then other pieces, as large as the ones we already knew, but largely empty – as he explained, he was working to a more Japanese idiom, in which “negative space” (what I’ve always thought of as “white space”) isn’t shunned, but used to heighten the impact of the detailed painting. He had several Japanese ink works, on Japanese paper, in which he’d used a single model or perhaps two models, repeatedly, sketching their heads over and over, but leaving wide areas untouched. The ink sometimes ran, sometimes splashed, sometimes simply soaked differently into the absorbent paper, giving an engagingly unpredictable effect to the final result.

Japanese faces in the Japanese style
Japanese ink on Japanese paper

He’s working now on a series of fifteen “portraits of London”. That’ll be fun, to see him take on with the same verve and gusto, scenes from another country and another city, and one he knows in a very different way, as his home rather than the objective of an outsider’s visit.

But I described listening to Randall as “refreshing”. One of the more refreshing aspects was the way he kept pointing out the almost gratuitous nature of some of his techniques. He often subverts perspective, showing a large figure in the distance and a smaller one in the front.

“I do it because I like it,” he explained, “I like the flattening.”

I enjoyed that because it reminded me of many conversations I’ve had with people who’ve earnestly assured me that Jane Austen, or Graham Greene, or Salman Rushdie deliberately wrote something or other. In other words, they want to tell me about the author’s intent. But they have no idea of what the author intended and in the first two cases, they certainly can’t even ask, as they’re both dead; even in the case of Rushdie, they’re unlikely to get the chance to check, and even if they did, they might be disappointed with the answer.

So I was delighted when Randall assured us that his flattening of perspective didn’t symbolise anything in particular, except for his pleasure in doing it. That doesn’t stop a viewer seeing symbolism in it, and perfectly legitimately – a viewer, or a reader, has every right to see symbols in a work of art, and it matters not a jot that the author or painter intended none of it. After all, what something symbolises is a matter for the observer, not for the creator; if you see it, then it’s there.

But it was highly refreshing to hear an artist assure us with great sincerity that it wasn’t there because he deliberately put it there.

So we passed great hour or two, in good company, with fine paintings. 

Want to know more? Check his website.