Public Identity

The issue of identity cards, once one of the flagship policies of our present marshmallow government, has rather sunk without trace, there but not there, if you take my meaning. Any sensible politician – and there are few of those in the Labour ranks – would have cast their eyes over the past history of identity cards in Britain; and the past history was anything but good.

Identity cards were introduced in the United Kingdom in September 1939. This was the second such scheme in British history, following a largely unsuccessful experiment during the First World War. Given the long British attachment to civil liberties the scheme was highly unpopular, though accepted in the light of the prevailing national emergency. It's possible to take a small measure of how the national identity scheme was received from remarks by the historian A J P Taylor in his English History, 1914-1945, where he describes the whole thing as an 'indignity' and talks of the Home Guard 'harassing' people for their cards.

After the war the government of Clement Atlee decided to continue the scheme in the face of the Cold War and the perceived Soviet threat, though it grew ever less popular. In the mind of the public it was more and more associated with bureaucratic interference and regulation, reflected, most particularly, in the 1949 Passport to Pimlico, one of the comedy movies made by the Ealing Studios in London.

Identity Cards also became the subject of a celebrated civil liberties case in 1950, when Clarence Henry Willcock, a member of the Liberal Party, refused to produce his after being stopped by the police. During his subsequent trail he argued that identity cards had no place in peace time, a defence rejected by the magistrate’s court. In his subsequent appeal, Willcock vs. Muckle, the judgment of the lower court was upheld, though in summing up Lord Goddard more or less accepted his defence;

This Act was passed for security purposes, and not for the purposes for which, apparently, it is now sought to be used. To use Acts of Parliament, passed for particular purposes during war, in times when the war is past, except that technically a state of war exists, tends to turn law-abiding subjects into lawbreakers, which is a most undesirable state of affairs. Further, in this country we have always prided ourselves on the good feeling that exists between the police and the public and such action tends to make the people resentful of the acts of the police and inclines them to obstruct the police instead of to assist them.

Protest reached Parliament, where the Conservative and Liberal peers voiced their anger over what they saw as 'Socialist card-indexing'. After the defeat of the Labour Government in the General Election of October 1951 the incoming Conservative administration of Winston Churchill was pledged to get rid of the scheme, “to set the people free”, in the words of one minister. This was a popular move, adopted against the wishes of the police and the security services, though the decision to repeal the 1939 legislation was, in significant part, driven by the need for economies. By 1952 national Registration was costing £500,000 per annum, a huge sum for the day, and required 1500 civil servants to administer it. Some things are best left in the dark.

A Man and a Brother

We are not long past the two hundredth anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade in the British Empire. The important question, one that I’m not sure has been fully considered, is why opinion swung so decisively against a practice that had long been part of the national economy. The answer is simple: slavery had been tolerable, like so many other abuses over time, for as long as it was invisible. By the late eighteenth century this was no longer the case.

Slavery and the slave trade were activities both remote from British shores and thus removed from popular consciousness. This changed after the conclusion in 1763 of the Seven Years' War, when ever increasing numbers of enslaved men and women began to appear in London, brought by their owners.

The immediacy was shocking enough, but it also raised questions about the validity of the institution in a country where there was no slave law. It lead directly to Somerset v Steuart in 1772, when Granville Sharp argued before Lord Mansfield at the Court of King's Bench that slaveholding in England was a violation of the Common Law. To ship slave law into the country would, as Sharp put it, make England "as base, wicked, and tyrannical as our colonies." Mansfield, in finding for the plaintiff, effectively curtailed the liberties of the slave owners. Though evading the more general question about the legality of slavery as such, he had, in effect, encouraged the view that the practice was "repugnant to English laws", as one slaveholder expressed it.

There was an acute irony at work here; for the Mansfield decision defined Britain as a 'land of liberty', not long before the slave-owning American colonies began to object to being subordinated to the 'tyranny' of Parliament. "Why", Samuel Johnson asked, "do we hear the loudest yelps for liberty from the drivers of Negroes?" In the ideological debates between the two sides, slavery became a political issue in a way that it had never been in the past, with the Americans insisting that if there were slaves in the colonies it was because British traders had put them there. Practically speaking, of course, it was all posturing, and neither side took any meaningful steps to address the issues raised; but it still drew attention to slavery as a moral problem; that slavery was a vice and that opposition to slavery was a virtue.

Before the American Revolution, the British Empire was little more than a commercial opportunity; afterwards it started the process of rebirth as a kind of moral mission, where rule should be exercised, as Edmund Burke put it, "for the benefit of the governed as well as the governors." Evangelicals within the Church of England pressed for the proper pastoral care of slaves within the Empire, just as officers returning from the war urged the government to give support and assistance to the escaped American slaves who had fought with the British Army.

It was now that the Quakers, who had always disliked slavery, but had not challenged the existence of the institution, began to press for abolition. Buoyed up by the conviction that the British people now considered slavery as a national embarrassment, they moved forward, gathering support and momentum along the way. By the early 1790s the consumption of West Indian Sugar, the chief product of slavery, was plummeting, showing that abolition had indeed become the cause of the nation. All that was needed was someone to direct opinion; all that was needed was William Wilberforce.

Apolcalypse Then

Terrorism and the fear of terrorism has become such an important part of our lives that it’s interesting to contrast present preoccupations with past perceptions, particularly those prevailing in the nineteenth century.

You see, Britain in the nineteenth century considered itself in every way more advanced politically than just about all of the powers of the Continent, most of which were considered to be under some form of despotic rule. This gave rise to the view that if foreign rulers were the targets of terrorism then it must be partly their own fault for ruling in an unreasonable way. It was also responsible for the liberal approach towards all those seeking political asylum. Foreign governments even suspected that the British were encouraging plots for their own particular ends, the Iran of the Victorian age! This view became especially pronounced after Felice Orsini threw his Birmingham-made bomb against Napoleon III in 1858, killing twelve bystanders in the process.

The reality, of course, was quite different. The government was always embarrassed when any given incident could be traced to English shores, but was still unwilling to risk a challenge in Parliament by making any fundamental alterations in the law, or to undermine a well-entrenched liberal tradition. This attitude was shaken somewhat when terrorism came home, as it did in the Fenian bombing campaign of the 1880s. But the only new law this led to was the Explosives Act of 1883, which obliged those possessing dynamite to prove that they did so for legitimate purposes. It is not as if the government ignored the advice that it gave out so freely to the Continent: namely, address the root problem and the violence will go away. Some attempt was made to tackle discontent in John Bull's Other Island with the introduction of the First Irish Home Rule Bill.

Sir William Harcourt, the Home Secretary of the day, responsible for domestic security, in a further, less publicised, attempt to improve matters, and to placate the Continental powers, created a section within the London Metropolitan Police, charged with keeping an eye on foreign socialists. This was followed by the creation of an 'Irish Branch'. In the end the two new offices were combined in a single Special Branch, charged with two functions: to be ready for any revival of the Fenian threat, and to reassure the Europeans that no threat would be mounted against them by exiles living in England. The Special Branch, whose activities were largely unknown to the wider public, could thus operate in such a way that did not mount a direct challenge to the liberal tradition.

Death as the Price of Fame

The post war execution of William Joyce, better known as Lord Haw Haw, on a charge of high treason was little better than an act of judicial murder, an opinion I am quite happy to share with A. J. P. Taylor, amongst others. Even Hartley Shawcross, who successfully prosecuted Joyce, was later to write of the case "It remains in my mind the one of which I am least proud."

You see, Joyce was born in New York, and therefore not a subject of the British crown; so he was in essence hanged for making a false statement on his 1933 application for a British passport, the usual penalty for which at the time was a £2.00 fine. He did not, moreover, by his words alone kill any subject of the crown, nor did he recruit for the enemy, unlike John Amery, who was also hanged for treason around the same time.

In essence, Joyce was executed not for what he did but for who he was. Death, for him, was the price of fame, a point made by Mary Kenny in her excellent biography, Germany Calling. There were, after all, other broadcasters for the Nazis, including one Margaret Bothamley, over whose nationality there was absolutely no doubt, released on a suspended sentence for essentially the same offence. But Lord Haw Haw could not be allowed to escape, could he now, not when much of the British press had decided the matter prior to his trail?

The whole business reminds me to some degree of George Orwell's essay Shooting an Elephant, where death is the result of the pressure of 'collective will'; where 'the state' is pushed forward by powers beyond its control. Who, after all, was Joyce that he deserved such special treatment? Was he any more than a rather pathetic individual, or, as Rebecca West put it in her trial report, "A queer little Irish peasant who had gone to some pain to make the worst of himself."

Disraeli, the Irish and the Jews

People may be mindful of Benjamin Disraeli’s famous defence of his Jewish ancestry in his quarrel with Daniel O’Connell, the first Catholic Irish Member of Parliament;

Yes, I am a Jew and when the ancestors of the right honourable gentleman were brutal savages in an unknown island, mine were priests in the temple of Solomon.

The story here is actually more complicated than usually assumed- that it was a straightforward attack on expressions of anti-Semitism. It was nothing of the kind. Insult had been traded for insult, and Disraeli had previously referred to O'Connell as an 'incendiary and a traitor.' The two men even came close to fighting a duel. Disraeli, in point of fact, was not a practicing Jew, but a Christian. Jews, as such, were not allowed entry to Parliament until 1858.

Another common error is that the remark was made in the House of Commons; it was not: it appeared in an open letter in The Times in 1835, addressed to Daniel O'Connell. During the Taunton by-election Disraeli, standing as a Tory, attacked the Whigs and their alliance with O'Connell, and the Irish radicals, in highly immoderate terms. He was particularly offensive in his remarks about the great Liberator. In response O'Connell, no less skilled in invective, denounced him as the 'worst possible type of Jew';

He has just the qualities of that impertinent thief on the cross, and I verily believe, if Mr. Disraeli's family herald were to be examined and his genealogy traced, that same personage would be discovered to be the heir at law of the exalted individual to whom I allude.

Disraeli responded by challenging O'Connell's son, Morgan, to a duel; and when this was refused his letter with the famous quote was published. O'Connell was not, in fact, denouncing Disraeli as a Jew as such, but as the descendent of a criminal. Disraeli took the occasion not just to celebrate a more elevated Jewish ancestry-the priests in the temple-, but to denounce the 'savage' Irish, in terms that would have appealed to all the prejudices of Victorian England. There is no evidence at all that O’Connell was anti-Jewish as opposed to anti-Disraeli. There is plenty of evidence that Disraeli was anti-Irish.

A Great Tactitian

Arthur Wellesley, the first Duke of Wellington, continues to be perceived in rather simplistic terms, as a good soldier and a political reactionary. But as always the picture is much more complex.

In many ways the political career of Wellington is not that different from the military: in both he sought to preserve the existing order of things from dissolution and chaos; but just as a good general knows when to advance and when to retreat, so too does a good politician.

In political terms he was a Tory, by both instinct and conviction, anxious to preserve the old order in both church and state, and deeply suspicious of all suggestions for radical reform. The political divisions in Lord Liverpool's cabinet between the admirers and opponents of George Canning, the Foreign Secretary, placed Wellington firmly on the anti-Canning right. Canning was in favour of Catholic Emancipation and Wellington was against it, because of the dangers this presented to the 'Protestant Ascendancy' in Ireland, of which the Iron Duke was a part. The contest between tradition and reform saw Wellington emerge as the champion of tradition, resigning when Canning emerged as Prime Minister in 1827. In the political confusion that followed Canning's early death Wellington himself became Prime Minister at the beginning of 1828.

Wellington now held all the keys; but unlike a true reactionary he sought to manage change, rather than resist it altogether. This became apparent when the issue of Catholic Emancipation could no longer be set to one side after Daniel O'Connell, a Catholic, won the County Clare by-election in July 1828. With British authority in Ireland in some doubt, the Duke brought an Emancipation Bill before Parliament, though he tried to mitigate the full effects of the measure by raising the property qualifications for voting. He likened the passage of the Emancipation Bill through Parliament to a military campaign, the political equivalent of the Battle of Waterloo. And for this operation none was better placed that the Duke. He persuaded George IV to accept the measure, and he drew on the Parliamentary support of the Whig opposition against the die-hard Tories who refused to fall into line. His notorious indifference to public opinion, usually harmful for any politician, was of distinct benefit; for he simply put the deluge of anti-Catholic petitions to one side.

Later, while in opposition, he was strongly opposed to Whig attempts to extend the franchise in the Reform Bill. But even here pragmatism came before principle. When Earl Grey, the Whig Prime Minister, threatened to push the disputed Bill through the House of Lords, where the Tories were in the majority, by obliging William IV to create a large number of new peers, Wellington withdrew his opposition, rather than have the King face this humiliation.

As the 1830s developed Wellington gave his full support to Robert Peel, now the Tory leader, in his attempts to give the party a more modern face. Peel's Tamworth Manifesto, which saw the beginnings of the modern Conservative party, would never have succeeded but for Wellington's assistance. In the Lords, moreover, Wellington continued to act as a restraining influence to his fellow Tory peers, who sought to oppose every item of Whig legislation, thus further assisting Peel in winning over moderate opinion in the country at large. Later, when Peel became Prime Minister, he was ably assisted by the Duke in the Lords, despite his advancing years. Both men sought to subordinate party interest to the interest of the country as a a whole. Wellington even went so far as to support Peel over the highly-contentious repeal of the Corn laws, though he was personally unconvinced by the economic arguments. It was only by Wellington's influence that the Corn Law Bill made it through the Upper House. He may not have been the greatest statesman in English history, but to the end of his life he preserved all of the qualities that made him a great tactician.

A Hunt for the Masses

Dear old Henry 'Orator' Hunt, the star of the Peterloo Massacre, a man who has had a particularly bad historical press. There have, however, been one or two attempts to redress the balance, and he is now more properly seen as a pioneer of working-class radicalism, and an important influence on the later Chartist movement.

He was first draw into radical politics during the Napoleonic Wars, becoming a supporter of Francis Burdett. His talent for public speaking became noted in the electoral politics of Bristol, where he denounced the complacency of both the Whigs and the Tories, and proclaimed himself a supporter of democratic radicalism. It was thanks to his particular talents that a new programme beyond the narrow politics of the day made steady progress in the difficult years that followed the conclusion of the war with France. Because of his rousing speeches at mass meetings held in Spa Fields in London in 1817-18 he became known as the 'Orator', a term of disparagement accorded by his enemies. He embraced a programme that included annual parliaments and universal suffrage, promoted openly and with none of the conspiratorial element of the old Jacobin clubs. The tactic he most favoured was that of 'mass pressure', which he felt, if given enough weight, could achieve reform without insurrection.

Although his efforts at mass politics had the effect of radicalising large sections of the community unrepresented in Parliament, there were clear limits as to how far this could be taken. The debacle at Peterloo, caused by an overreaction of the local Manchester authorities, added greatly to his prestige, but it advanced the cause not one step. Moral force was not sufficient in itself, and physical force entailed too great a risk. Although urged to do so after Peterloo, Hunt refused to give his approval to schemes for a full-scale insurrection. Thereby all momentum was lost, as more desperate souls turned to worn out cloak-and-dagger schemes, which surfaced in the Cato Street Conspiracy.

While in prison for his part in Peterloo, Hunt turned to writing, to putting his message across through a variety of forms, including an autobiography, his very own Mein Kampf, and just as tedious and self-regarding! After his release he attempted to recover some of his lost fortune by beginning new business ventures in London, which included the production and marketing of a roasted corn 'Breakfast Powder', the "most salubrious and nourishing Beverage that can be substituted for the use of Tea and Coffee, which are always exciting, and frequently the most irritating to the Stomach and Bowels." Catchy, is it not!? He also made shoe-blacking bottles, which carried the slogan "Equal Laws, Equal Rights, Annual Parliaments, Universal Suffrage, and the Ballot." Synthetic coal, intended specifically for the French market, was another of his schemes. After the July Revolution in 1830 he sent samples to Gilbert du Motier, marquis de La Fayette and other political heroes, along with fraternal greetings.

Business interests notwithstanding, he still found time for practical politics, fighting battles over a whole range of issues, and always pushing for reform and accountability. As a consistent champion of the working classes, a term he used with increasing frequency, he opposed the Whigs, both old and new, and the Reform Act of 1832, which he believed did not go far enough in the extension of the franchise. He gave speeches addressed to the 'Working Classes and no other', urging them to press for full equal rights. In his opposition to the Reform Bill he revived the Great Northern Union, a pressure group he set up some years before, intended to unite the northern industrial workers behind a platform of full democratic reform; and it is in this specifically that we can detect the germs of Chartism. Worn out by his struggles he died in 1835, like Moses never to see the Promised Land.

The Protocols of the Elders of Labour

What follows is an imaginary document (it is, isn’t it?), an agenda for Britain by the Labour Party, based, of course, on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, another infamous forgery about a supposed conspiracy. The difference is that the elements, the substantive elements, are all drawn from real history, past happenings and, from the date of the document, coming events. What about the conspiracy element? Well, I leave that for you to decide. :-)

Dismantling Britain

London, sometime in the winter of 1996.

Comrades, let me summarise the main points of our discussion and the elements of our agreed strategy. There has to be an election in the coming year, so we must be ready with the most effective programme possible. Also, comrades, none of this will go into our published manifesto. Let me remind you that you are all pledged to absolute secrecy.

Past Achievements

1.1 Ever since it was founded at the beginning of this century our Labour Party has been pledged to the destruction of Britain and the British way of life. We have approached this task in various ways. Before the Second World War our governments were too weak, too dependent on the good will of the then Liberal Party, to do any real damage. Something might possibly have come out from the partial victory of 1929 if it had not been for the treason of Ramsay Macdonald, joining in the National Government with the terrible Tories. For the nation is something we hate. The pacifism we supported certainly went a long way towards ensuring the country was not ready for war in 1939, but not nearly far enough.

1.2 We had a great victory in 1945 and made much of it under the guidance of Comrades Atlee and Bevan. The best way to ensure that the country would be ill-prepared for the future, for competition with the other capitalist states, was to start spending money it did not have on welfare programmes that it could not afford. How stupid our enemies were not to recognise how clever we were in building a Welfare State in a bankrupt country! How much more we could have achieved if Comrade Atlee had not lost his nerve and went for a general election in 1951. The Tories managed to reverse some of our damage, though we still made real gains on the road to ruin, massive public spending based on an economy that depended in a large part on dying and antiquated industries. Our comrades in the Trade Unions offered us valuable support here.

1.3 Our next period in office from 1964 to 1970 also saw positive achievements. Some comrades made useful and lasting contacts with the comrade communists in the Soviet Union as part of our secret foreign policy programme. Information was exchanged and deals done. Comrade Jack Jones of the Transport and General Workers Union performed some valuable services here, both as a paid-up agent of the KGB and as a sponsor of new MPs in trade union rotten boroughs. Comrades Blair and Brown were eventually to benefit from this union sponsorship. Comrade Wilson, our Prime Minister, pretended to be renewing the economy and reforming ‘outmoded’ trade union practices; but the economy just got weaker and the unions stronger.

1.4. More good work was done in our next period of government from 1974 to 1979, especially in the creation of ruinous levels of inflation, helped along by deals with the trade union dons. But things were still not moving fast enough; Britain was proving more resilient than we expected. Then came the disaster of 1979; then came Margaret Thatcher, the devil incarnate, who set about ruing all of our best achievements. We came close, but not close enough. We have to try harder, accelerate our programme in such a way that no future Thatcher will be able to reverse our work.

Future Strategy

We are now prepared for government, for victory in the election of 1997. These are the chief elements we must work on.

a. Devolution. Scotland and Wales must be given a parliament, in the case of the former, and an assembly, in the case of the latter. It was a mistake, comrades, to oppose devolution in the past, for this is the best way of beginning the end of Britain and the best way of isolating England. Don’t worry, comrades; in the short term we will still have the support of the bloc Labour vote from Scotland and Wales at Westminster, though English Tories will have no input into the affairs of these nations. A brilliant tactic. In the long term it will not matter what happens in England or what the English think for, you see, there will be no more England, which leads on to the second main feature of our master plan.

b. Europe. We shall accelerate the death of Parliament in England by giving away more and more powers to the European Union. We shall pretend to be opposed to any major political changes in Europe, changes of a constitutional nature, while advancing these as fast as we can. One element here is to pretend to allow the people to have a say in such matters and then, when our goals are within reach, change our minds. This approach might be used just prior to a future election. Westminster shall become increasingly irrelevant in peoples lives; England shall become increasingly irrelevant. Indeed, our third major strategy will make it difficult for people in future even to define Englishness.

c. Mass Immigration. We will open the doors. We will allow everyone in, whether there is economic cause or not, diluting the native English stock in a new multi-cultural utopia. We shall denounce all words of caution as racist, thus silencing debate. When we are finished it will be impossible to reverse the trend. This may very well lead to new forms of extremism in our old heartlands, as voters feel more and more alienated, a danger, yes, but such a process will help us forward by leading to the further fragmentation of England.

d. The Economy. Comrade Brown, whom Comrade Blair intends to appoint as Chancellor of the Exchequer, has excellent plans for laying the foundations of economic ruin by deregulating the banking sector-killing capitalism by its own devices-and by building a credit-fuelled boom, which will take the nation deeper and deeper into unsupportable levels of debt, public debt and private debt.

Summary

It is our earnest hope comrades that we win not just the coming election but the election after that and the election after that. It is our hope that we win and win. After twelve years or so people will no longer recognise this country, recognise it for what it once was. But I repeat, comrades, secrecy must be maintained. Only by that will the Elders of Labour emerge triumphant. Triumphant indeed.

A Scot and the Devils

I’m not long back from the college library and am simply dying to share this story with someone. When I read the details I had to go outside because I could not control my urge to laugh!

Anyway, my research, my period of special interest, led me to a book on the career of John Maitland, the 1st Duke of Lauderdale, and a Scot, one of the most powerful figures in the cabinet of Charles II. Lauderdale was one of the most learned public figures in British political history, being fluent in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew as well as the modern languages of French, Spanish and Italian. In his youth he went on a tour of Europe, which, amongst other places, took him to Loudon in France, where he had heard of the possession of the nuns, an historical event detailed in Ken Russell’s move, The Devils.

Lauderdale maintained a sense of rational detachment, suspecting that the whole thing was little better than a hoax. He wrote of his experience:

Into the chapel I came in the morning of a holy day, and with as little prejudice as any could have, for I believed verily to have seen strange signs; but when I had seen exorcising of three or four of them in the chapel, and could hear nothing but wonton wenches singing bawdy songs in French, I began to suspect a trick.

He at once conveyed his suspicion to a Jesuit priest, who tried to convince him of the truth of the possession. To test this Lauderdale asked if he could speak to the devils himself, saying that he would use a strange language, possibly the Hebrew he had mastered. When the priest asked what language all Lauderdale would say was that Neither he nor all those devils should understand me. Unsettled the priest replied These devils have not travelled.

Lauderdale records that he laughed. Well, that laugh carried down the centuries and took hold of me. I had to go for some coffee!

My Thoughts on the Peterloo Massacre

I wrote a blog earlier this year on Iran (I Met Murder on the Way) I quoted the last four verses of Shelly's The Masque of Anarchy, an angry poem written as a response to the news of the attack by the Manchester Yeomanry on a large and peaceful crowd gathered on St Peter's Field's in August 1819 to hear Henry Hunt, better known as Orator Hunt, call for Parliamentary reform. Soon after the incident, which resulted in the deaths of up to fifteen people and the injury of hundreds more, was being referred to as 'Peterloo', in mocking and ironic reference to the Battle of Waterloo, which had taken place only four years earlier.

Though not that well known outside England this is an incident that, in simple political terms, could very well stand alongside Russia's Bloody Sunday and the Amritsar Massacre in India. Having quoted Shelly, in the context of the repression being carried out today in Iran, I was asked by another user to offer a contemporary view on Peterloo. It's a timely request, as this year marks the one hundred and ninetieth anniversary of this milestone in English radical history. So, here is my perspective.

With events like this, events like Bloody Sunday and Amritsar, the first response is most often to look for a pattern, to determine, before all else, who was to blame. Shelly has no doubt at all: the crime is placed firmly at the threshold of the reactionary government of Lord Liverpool, though not Liverpool himself, one of the great 'blank spaces' of English history, a kind of Gordon Brown of his day. No, there are others more culpable, most notably Lord Castelreagh, the Foreign Secretary, who carries a heavy burden and some of the most memorable lines in English poetry:

I met murder on the way-
He had a mask like Castelreagh-
Very smooth he looked, yet grim:
Seven blood-hounds followed him.

It isn't quite fair, but then poetry, like politics, seldom is. Clearly what I have to do now is to sketch the background before proceeding to touch on the long-term significance of those events in Manchester on that August day all those years ago.

England emerged from the Napoleonic wars in an anxious mood. A lot had changed but the old landed elite who dominated Parliament and government, in much the same corrupt way they had since the emergence of Robert Walpole a hundred years before, was determined on 'normalcy.' All signs of radical dissent were to be suppressed least France come to England. Making no concessions to post-war conditions, the Corn Laws were introduced, benefiting agriculture but making food more expense for the labouring poor and costs more expensive for the rising middle-class manufacturers.

There was almost nothing these people could do by way of legitimate protest because Parliament was totally unrepresentative. Urban centres like Manchester, with close on a million people, were hugely underrepresented, while the so-called 'rotten boroughs' amplified the powers of the landlord. Old Sarum in Wiltshire, one particularly notorious example, sent two members to Parliament, elected by a single voter. Something clearly had to change, which is precisely why thousands of people gathered at St Peter's fields to hear Orator Hunt demand Parliamentary reform.

As I have already said, there is no clear pattern to what follows: it wasn't a deliberate act of murderous oppression; it was a bloody mess in the usual English fashion, a piece of administrative incompetence praised after the event as firm action to restore order. The government feared revolution so ordered the local magistrates to take whatever measures they judged necessary. The local magistrates, overwhelmed by the crowds, and uncertain what to do, called on the assistance of the military, including that of the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry, swaggering part-time soldiers, made up mostly of shopkeepers and publicans. Why publicans I have absolutely no idea. The Yeomanry were also said to be drunk that day, though this is a contention now beyond all objective proof.

The order was given to arrest Hunt and the other speakers, a task beyond the local law enforcement agencies in view if the massive crowd-estimated at up to 80,000strong-surrounding the speakers. The soldiers advanced, including the Yeomanry. Caught in the press of the mob, they panicked-it's as simple as that-cutting in all directions with their sabres. This continued even after the crowd tried to disperse, caught in a terrible bottle-neck. Some of the professional soldiers present were shocked by the actions of the Yeomanry, with one officer of the 15th Hussars calling on them to stop. But panicked soldiers, especially pseudo-soldiers like the Yeomanry, are often beyond reason.

That's it; that's all it as: a stupid, incompetent and tragic mess. The government, however, immediately congratulated the magistrates for their 'firm action' while continuing on a centralised policy of political repression, the centre piece of which was the Six Acts. It worked, up to a point. But this was England; things don't happen suddenly: they happen by slow degrees, like the advance of a glacier. In the end the system simply gave way under the pressure for reform, increasing Parliamentary representation by the Act of 1832, allowing the presence of elements of the upper bourgeoisie. Most of those present that day at St Peter's Fields were simply left behind, waiting for another hundred years to be able to chose the counsels of the nation.

Now an important part of left-wing martyrology the Peterloo Massacre had very little long-term political significance. Change came not because of it but in spite of it. Indeed, the only lasting memorial was the foundation of The Guardian newspaper, set up by a group of radical journalists outraged by Manchester's Tiananmen Square.

Theirs not to Reason Why-the Charge of the Light Brigade

But, you see, theirs was to reason why, and there is, indeed, another possible perspective on the famous charge, which tends to be completely overlooked: namely, that of the troopers themselves. It was not a question of blind obedience to an impossible order. Lord Cardigan, commanding the Light Brigade, could very well have refused to obey for the simple reason that senior officers were expected to exercise wide discretion in interpreting orders that might have been based on out-of-date information. However, both Cardigan and Lord Lucan, his superior officer, were aware of serious discontent among the ranks, which could very well have had a direct bearing on their conduct that day.

There were two things uppermost in the troopers mind on the day of the Battle of Balaclava: cholera and Cossacks. Since September cholera had been cutting its way through the ranks, to such an extent that disease had become the main enemy, not the Russians. According to one officer:

...the men and officers are getting daily more disgusted with their fate. They do nothing but bury their comrades. They say loudly that they have not been brought out to fight, but to waste away and die in this country of cholera and fever.

Those who died of disease could not, of course, expect any pensions to be paid to their dependants. The war, moreover, was beginning to settle down to one of siege and entrenchment, with little prospect for further cavalry action. In the end, far more men of the Light Brigade were to die of disease than in the Charge.

Unlike the men of the Heavy Brigade, the Light Brigade had seen no action. As a result they had been insulted both by the enemy Cossacks, and their own infantry, accused of being afraid of the Russian cavalry. One the day of the charge itself the Brigade had been close to mutiny because they had been ordered to hold back while the Cossacks killed Turkish soldiers attempting to surrender. It was the same Cossack units that had taken shelter behind the guns that Lord Raglan, the army commander, had ordered them to attack.

What is remarkable about that day is the number of men who disobediently joined the ranks after Lucan approved the order to attack, including one who was flogged for this afterwards. Also, if it was a question of merely obeying orders the men would have ridden at the regulation pace, but they did not; they rode too fast, and Cardigan was even placed in danger of being ridden down as he tried to slow the pace. One man in the 13th Light Dragoons even shouted to a comrade "Come on; don't let those bastards [the 17th Lancers] get ahead of us." Some 500 of the Brigade galloped through the guns right into the Cossacks, who fled in panic, even shooting through their own ranks in their attempt to get to the rear. The whole of the Russian cavalry, 2000 strong, broke and fled. Raglans’ order had been to hold some guns, effectively disobeyed by the Light Brigade in their eagerness to close with the Russians. It was magnificent; and it was war. Honour the Light Brigade/Noble six hundred!

The Past is a Foreign Country

Let me take you on a tour of Britain, the Britain of sixty years ago, austerity Britain. The first thing you will notice is that is that the physical fabric of the country has barely recovered from the war. All of the larger cities, London especially, were still showing serious signs of damage, with bomb sites and many damaged houses. Investment in new housing was still quite low, with the result that there was a lot of homelessness, addressed, in part, by the erection of squat, pre-fabricated accommodation, using the same kind of materials and techniques of the war-time assembly line. It is no accident that the leading British novel of the day, George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four depicts a drab and decayed urban environment. This was not an imaginary future: it was a very real present!

Defence was still a major preoccupation, with as much as 6.6 per cent of GDP being spent in this area, more than any other major country, with the exception of the Soviet Union. The Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force were still among the world's strongest and, in 1952, Britain became the world's third nuclear power. There were four times as many service people in the early 1950s as there are today, and all young men were obliged to perform two years of compulsory National Service.

The war, and its financial legacy, had had a profound effect on the economy. Some foodstuffs, like butter, meat and tea and coal, yes, coal, were still rationed. Confectionary had come off ration in 1949, but distribution had to be brought back under state control because demand was simply too great. Shortages meant that people took to producing their own food in back gardens and allotments. Income tax was at an extraordinarily high level, more than twice what it is today. Bureaucratic red tape was a major feature of everyday life, also brilliantly reflected in Nineteen Eighty-Four, and the 'social comedies' being produced by Ealing Studios, movies like Whisky Galore and Passport to Pimlico.

The reliance of coal as a source of fuel, and the high degree of urbanisation, meant that pollution was a major problem. In 1952 one particularly severe bout of smog in London lasted for five days, killing more than 4,000 people from heart and lung diseases. Industrial pollution had an effect not just on the air that people breathed, but contaminated their local waterways. The urban environment of the day is well illustrated in L. S. Lowry's paintings of his native Lancashire. Most people lived and worked in the towns and cities, though farming was still an important sector of the economy. Agricultural practices, though, were still closer to those of the nineteenth century, with little of the industrial farming we have today. The population, about 50 million by the year 1950, was overwhelmingly indigenous. The 1951 census showed that only 3% of people had been born overseas, and immigrants were, for the most part, white and European. The first post-war black immigrants arrived in 1948 on the Empire Windrush, but they were still a tiny minority of the total population.

Class-divisions would have been much more obvious than now, reflected even in forms of dress. Working-class men still wore the trade mark cloth cap and women the head scarf. Middle-class males were distinguished by white collars, suits and hats. These divisions were reflected in, and reinforced by, the educational system. The Education Act of 1944 had introduced a 'two-tier' system of schooling. Children were filtered by means of an Eleven Plus examination, which sent the majority to secondary modern schools, where they remained until the age of fifteen, leaving with few, if any, qualifications. A privileged minority went to grammar schools, although even fewer went on to university education, which still, by and large, was the preserve of a tiny upper-class elite.

Also in 1950, despite the huge contribution they made to the war-time economy, women were expected to remain in the home after marriage, rather than seek long-term careers. Domestic work was far more intensive, with few of the labour-saving devices present today. Shopping patterns were also quite different, with none of the 'all in one', self-service superstores. The introduction of the National Health Service in 1946, guaranteeing access to medical care, free at the point of delivery, was a great improvement over pre-war provision, especially for the poor and the elderly. Nevertheless, polio was still a serious problem, and remained so until an effective vaccine was introduced in 1951.

Attitudes towards sex and public morality in general were still fairly stringent. Homosexuality was illegal, as was abortion. Back street abortionists flourished in all of the larger towns and cities. Illegitimacy rates were low because of the stigma attached to unmarried mothers. Unwanted babies were mostly given up for adoption, or sent to institutions at home or in the Empire. Divorce was slightly more acceptable than it had been, but far less easy to obtain than it is now. Church attendance was far higher. Sources of entertainment for young adults were fairly restricted, largely confined to the cinema or the local dance hall. American performers and music, though not yet dominant, were becoming ever more influential, though fashion trends, like those of the Teddy Boys, were still uniquely British. For women the New Look was a welcome change from wartime austerity.

Remembering Sir Edward Hawke; remembering Quiberon Bay

Last month saw the anniversary of Nelson’s victory at the Battle of Trafalgar, the one great admiral and the one great naval victory that just about everyone knows, even if they know no another. But let me bring to your attention a forgotten admiral-Sir Edward Hawke-and a forgotten victory-the Battle of Quiberon Bay, the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of which just happens to fall on this day.

Quiberon Bay was the definitive naval victory of the Seven Year’s War. In some ways it’s even more important than Trafalgar. The latter was really a kind of postscript in that Napoleon had already abandoned his invasion plans. But Quiberon Bay had the effect of bringing to an end an immediate danger, a danger that would have seen large convoys of French troops transported in Scotland and England.

If you know anything about sailing ships and naval warfare I’m sure you will appreciate the sheer daring, the simple courage, the élan behind Hawke’s achievement. The French admiral had taken refuge in Quiberon Bay, believing himself safe from pursuit as the English were unlikely to enter these dangerous waters, with rocks and shoals stretching south from the Quiberon Peninsula, especially as the winds had reached gale force and night was beginning to fall. But Hawke, without the aid of a pilot, sailed in close pursuit into the confined waters of the bay, throwing the French into confusion and panic. In the subsequent battle the enemy was all but destroyed. Later Hawke explained why he had taken such a gamble;

Where there was passage for the enemy, there was passage for me. We are so close, there pilots will be my pilots. If they go to pieces on shore, they shall become our beacons.

Like Nelson, Hawke had defied all naval convention and fought a battle on his terms. The results were startling, with the enemy losing all of their main ships, sunk or run aground, and two and a half thousand men. One French historian said that the battle “is the graveyard of our navy and the ruin of our hopes.”

The Battle of Quiberon Bay ended all prospect of invasion. More than that, it marked the ascent of Empire. It’s such a pity that Hawke is not better commemorated by the Navy and the country which he served so well.

The Demon King

There seems little doubt that James VI of Scotland, the future James I of England believed in witchcraft; there seems equally little doubt that he used this belief with clear political intent.

There were two things uppermost in James' mind in the early 1590s: to protect his Scottish inheritance against his cousin, the dangerously unstable and ambitious Francis Stewart, Earl of Bothwell, and to groom himself as the most likely successor to the throne of his other cousin, Elizabeth I of England. The suggestion that Bothwell was responsible for attempting to drown the king and his new bride Anne on their voyage from Denmark to Scotland, with the aid of the North Berwick witches, suited his purpose very well. At a stroke he could remove Bothwell from the scene, and convince the wider English-speaking world that he enjoyed divine grace and sanction.

In 1592 a pamphlet called Newes from Scotland, detailing the outcome of the trials, was published in England. In her book Enemies of God: The Witch-Hunt in Scotland, Christina Larner argues that this pamphlet had one certain purpose, and was produced specifically with an English audience in mind. It was published, in other words, to convince the reader that God favoured James, and that he was the ordained heir to the throne of England. James was interested in these trials less out of superstition, and more to discover why such a determined attempt had failed. Answer to this was conveniently supplied by Agnes Sampson. When it was discovered that even the Devil could not kill the king, the women, so the story goes, rounded on him, and demanded an explanation. The Devil excused himself by saying "Il est un homme de Dieu-certainly he is a man of God."

It was from these nefarious experiences that Daemonologie took shape, providing additional illustration, if any such were needed, that James had insight into all demonic practices, and defence against them. It may not be of any great surprise that once the Scottish bottom was safely seated on the English throne, a new mood of royal scepticism set in, with James telling his own judges not to be too gullible in such matters!