Conservatism in Retreat —or Advancing?

Transcription

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ANZAC & ITS ENEMIES
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No. 521 Volume Lix, Number 11
Letters
Chronicle
quodlibet
ASTRINGENCIES
politics
islam
asia
correspondents
immigration
argument
culture
economics
religion
architecture
theatre
literature
art
first person
film
story
books
guest column
Poetry
2 Mark Scully, Sidney Roveda, Paul Monk, J.B. Paul, John Carroll,
Richard Forrest
6 John O’Sullivan
8 Peter Coleman
10 Anthony Daniels
12 The Birth of a New Conservative Age Peter Murphy
18 Malcolm in the Middle? James Allan
24 Islam and Modern-Day Sexual Slavery Victoria Kincaid
30 Economic Liberalism and Asian Vitality Razeen Sally
34 Points of the Compass: Hong Kong Nick Cater
36 The Good Migrant Riccardo Bosi
39 The Politics of European Immigration Jenny Stewart
42 Appeasement and Vladimir Putin I: Patrick Morgan;
II: Andrew Bilinsky; III: Tom Switzer
48 A Renaissance in Popular Culture John Carroll
54 Drawing the Wrong Conclusions Steven Kates
60 Of Briseis and Achilles Kenneth Harkness
64 Thomas Wran, the Sculptor Who Discovered Australia Philip Drew
68 The Monsters Who Made Tennessee Great Michael Connor
72 The Parish of Comedy Gary Furnell
76 In Pessoa’s Footsteps Iain Bamforth
80 The Irreplaceable Brian Sewell Giles Auty
82 The Life of an Artist Robin Norling
84 Synagogue and Sacrifice Daniel O’Neil
88 Brezhnev: My Part in His Downfall Tony Thomas 91 The Art of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers Neil McDonald
94 On the Dam Hal G.P. Colebatch
98 Submission by Michel Houellebecq Douglas Murray
101 Books by Greg Sheridan and Gerard Henderson Miranda Devine
103 The Collected Poems of Lesbia Harford Alan Gould
105 Vivid Faces by R.F. Foster Simon Caterson
107 Australian Essays by Roger Scruton Michael Warren Davis
109 Poetry & Ideas edited by Raffaella Torresan Patrick McCauley
111 Joseph O’Donoghue
17: Other Minds Stephen McInerney; 23: To the Orchid Hunter
Dan Guenther; 29: The Student; Security Light David Mason;
38: Suburban Traces; The Balkans Rod Moran; 46: Streetbird
Nana Ollerenshaw; 47: Three poems Cally Conan-Davies; 53: The
Harder Job Sharon Olds; 59: Across the Pyrenees David Mason; Agony
Aunts Joe Dolce; 63: Two poems Nana Ollerenshaw; 67: The Beatitudes
Peter Stiles; 71: On Forgiveness; The Legacy Elisabeth Wentworth;
75: William Pitt Hal G.P. Colebatch; 81: On the Award of the
Nobel Prize Hal G.P. Colebatch; 83: The Bamboo Dragonflies
Andrew Lansdown; 87: Kilroy; I Set a Mousetrap Joe Dolce;
96: Good things Hal G.P. Colebatch; 112: Breakaleg Joe Dolce
Letters
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2
Section 57
SIR: James Allan’s polemic (“The
US Constitution in Trouble:
Lessons from Australia”, September
2015) commending section 57 of the
Australian Constitution, notes that
that section (a) provides a means
for dealing with “unbridgeable
disagreements between the lower
and upper houses, a topic not
untimely in the US today”, and (b)
represents an improvement upon
the US Constitution. I agree with
Mr Allan’s views, but still feel that
they are gilding the lily.
Stephen J in Victoria v
Commonwealth (1975) explicated
the teleology of section 57 or our
Constitution thus:
Few, if any, of the provisions
of the Constitution occasioned
so much debate as did s. 57.
It is clearly an extraordinary
provision, a measure of last
resort, introducing the unusual
concepts of dissolution of an
upper House and of temporary
abandonment of the bicameral
system, and this for the
purpose of resolving disputes
between the two plenipotent
chambers ... An examination of the
operation of s. 57 discloses
that it is in fact … a subtle
solution to deadlocks between
the Senate and the popular
House. It relies, after the first
occurrence of deadlock, upon
providing opportunity for
second, and perhaps wiser,
thoughts and for negotiation
and compromise between
the chambers, likely to be
stimulated, no doubt, by the
prospect that should this be
unavailing each chamber
may untimely face the
electorate following double
Quadrant November 2015
dissolution. Should legislative
harmony nevertheless elude
the legislature, the majorities
in each chamber proving
irreconcilable, double
dissolution may ensue and
freshly elected chambers,
reflecting the current feeling
in the electorate, will then
address themselves afresh to
the task of legislation, having,
as a last resort, recourse to
the ultimate arbiter of a Joint
Sitting should they, like their
predecessors, again disagree.
In this light, section 57 embodies the ideals of “deliberative
democracy” (that is, the philosophy of formally reviewing prospective laws through mechanisms that
require, or at least prompt, debate
and negotiation over those laws’
eventual forms). Further, section 57
also represents the sort of “checks
and balances” jurisprudence that
America’s founding fathers would
have endorsed.
Be that as it may, where a bill
is blocked in our Senate it takes at
least six months for the “section
57 double dissolution mechanism”
to pass the blocked bill via a joint
sitting (which sitting is virtually a
redefinition of “parliament”). And
in our federal system money supply
bills are supposed to be passed by
parliament annually to ensure the
proper administration of government. Accordingly, the six-month
delay is a painfully slow means for
resolving those deadlocks which
arise when the Senate refuses to
pass a supply bill.
Therefore, if the US were looking for model provisions of constitutions which it might adopt
to resolve its own Congressional
supply deadlocks, I submit that it
could do better than Australia’s
section 57. Moreover, given that the
proportional voting system used for
our Senate means that our governments usually do not control the
Senate, I also submit that it is high
time section 57 were amended to
Letters
allow the more expeditious passage
of blocked supply bills.
Mark Scully
Kingston, ACT
The public payroll
SIR: The country faces an obvious problem with the budget, so
fame and the gratitude of thinking
Australians will be guaranteed to
the investigator with the abilities
and courage of a Hal Colebatch.
Briefly, the research would investigate the salaries and perks, including superannuation levels (17+
per cent), of senior people on the
public payroll. Phase one of the
study could be limited to a few key
areas such as senior public servants, university administrators and
ABC staff. Some of these people
draw salaries greater, for example,
than the combined salaries of the
Prime Minister and the Leader of
the Opposition. At least the politicians must front the electorate
every three years, whereas with
the above group the appointments
appear more-or-less permanent.
A possible result of this research
could be a suggestion that nobody
on the public payroll may be paid
more than a minister of the Crown.
This would introduce a note of fairness into the system and lighten
the load on the budget.
Sidney I.L. Roveda
Townsville, Qld
Robert Conquest
Sir: In an obituary for Robert
Conquest (September 2015), Peter
Coleman claimed that I criticised
Conquest some sixteen years ago,
in the pages of Quadrant, on moral,
as well as statistical grounds, for
his work on the Soviet terror and
Gulag. This is untrue and needs to
be corrected. Certainly I pointed
out that new data from the Soviet
archives had shown that Conquest’s
statistical estimates for the number
of victims of Stalin’s rule had been
too high. But I argued that he had
been doing important work and
that the whole subject needed to be
a part of our common moral education in the twenty-first century.
Conquest’s own initial response
to my essay was aggrieved and
high-handed. He declared that
I was part of a dubious school of
historiography that was minimising Stalin’s crimes, called my essay
misleading and muddle-headed,
and urged that Quadrant’s readers
cast it aside and “start again”.
I responded, in a letter to the
editor: “... readers of Quadrant are
completely welcome to start again
and even to start by reading all of
Robert Conquest’s books, especially The Great Terror, Harvest
of Sorrow and Kolyma: The Arctic
Death Camps. The point is that one
cannot finish there.”
I commented that “Conquest
seems to feel that he is under personal attack by me and the ‘school’
to whom he obliquely refers. This is
not so. I have always regarded him
as being on the side of the angels
and have never had any truck with
Stalinism or communist apologetics, as readers of Quadrant will be
aware ...” I went on to point out
that Conquest had not made a
case for his original estimates, as
against the data coming out of the
archives. He had, rather curiously,
admitted that the original estimates had been too high, but had
not offered a revised estimate. He
simply wanted to dismiss my own
as misconceived and misleading. It
is quite possible that there are still
gaps in the record, I conceded and
that I have made errors, in which
case let’s identify those gaps and
errors and get the numbers right,
since the subject is very important
and the whole idea in sound scholarship, in a Popperian sense, was
to make the errors one is always
prone to making in complex and
conjectural matters as quickly as
possible and then clear them up;
thereby getting closer to the truth.
Conquest wrote a second letter to Quadrant, in which he stated
both that the tone of my response
to his attack had been “disarming”
and that his original, published
estimates, for example as regards
the number of deaths in the
Kolyma death camps, had turned
out to have been “exaggerated at
every step”—not, of course, wilfully. He then explained, correctly,
that he had had to deal, at the time
he wrote his books, with a grave
paucity of data and to extrapolate
from defector reports, rumours
and propaganda what the numbers
had been. This, of course, had been
precisely the point I made in my
essay. Estimates by various writers
during the Cold War had put the
death toll from Stalin’s rule at anything from 20 to 100 million. The
emerging demographic and archival data suggested that the correct
figure was between eight and ten
million. The number of executions
in the Great Terror, for example,
seems to have been around 750,000,
not the many millions claimed by a
number of writers during the Cold
War. This was still a staggering
figure for a peacetime regime and
was not a matter of “minimising”
Stalin’s crimes, but of getting them
in clear perspective.
Peter Coleman, for whom I
have the highest regard (as I have
always had for Robert Conquest)
claims that I criticised Conquest on
moral grounds. On the contrary, it
was Conquest who levelled a moral
charge against me, asserting that
my essay was as misconceived morally as it was statistically.
I still think of Conquest’s
books as classics in the exposure
of Stalin’s abhorrent rule and as
precursors to the great works of
scholarship that have been written
only in very recent years, drawing on great quantities of Soviet
archive material that was never
available to Conquest when he
was writing his books. The work of
Oleg Khlevniuk—The History of the
Gulag: From Collectivization to the
3
Letters
Great Terror (2004), Master of the
House: Stalin and His Inner Circle
(2009) and Stalin: New Biography
of a Dictator (2015)—and Anne
Applebaum—Gulag: A History of the
Soviet Camps (2003), Iron Curtain:
The Crushing of Eastern Europe
1944-1956—and Paul Hagenloh’s
Stalin’s Police: Public Order and Mass
Repression in the USSR 1926–1941
(2009) all do what Conquest could
not. Stephen Kotkin has commenced a monumental new threevolume biography of Stalin, with
the first volume (Stalin: Paradoxes
of Power 1878-1928) taking us only
up to the eve of forced collectivisation. The truth is emerging in
detail. Robert Conquest can rest in
peace.
Paul Monk
Melbourne, Vic
Evatt and Molotov
Sir: Rob Foot’s very informative article “Dr Burton at the
Royal Commission on Espionage”
(October 2015) calls for a little
constructive criticism specifically
directed to that part sub-headed
“Postscript”.
The release of the final report
of that Royal Commission to
Parliament on September 14, 1955,
did not contribute to the “Great
Split” in the Labor Party. By that
date that split had already been
formalised. Dr Evatt’s inflammatory attack on the Labor Party in
Victoria on October 5, 1954, set in
motion a train of events. By the time
Parliament reconvened on April 19,
1955, a new and separate Australian
Labor Party (Anti-Communist)
had been formally announced by
its leader, Robert Joshua, and its
seven members took their seats on
the crossbenches. Their presence as
a breakaway group certainly enlivened proceedings when the Royal
Commission’s final report came to
be debated.
The rest of Foot’s “Postscript”
deals with Dr Evatt’s opening of
4
the debate on that final report in
the House of Representatives on
October 19, 1955, when he disclosed details of his purported correspondence with Molotov only to
be greeted with openly expressed
scorn and disbelief. Foot has also
attempted to place John Burton at
the centre of this celebrated event.
Robert Manne’s account of this
should be cited from his classic
study The Petrov Affair. After giving
details of Evatt’s letter to Molotov,
which Manne rightly described as
one which “must rank as one of the
strangest ever sent by a responsible western politician to a Soviet
leader”, he then discussed how it
might have been received in the
Soviet Foreign Ministry. It should
be noted that the Soviet Union’s
withdrawal of its embassy from
Canberra on April 23, 1954, some
days after Evdokia Petrov sought
political asylum in Australia and
the corresponding withdrawal of
Australia’s diplomatic mission in
Moscow, meant that any formal
diplomatic dealings with Moscow
had to be conducted through the
Swedish legation in Canberra.
According to one of Evatt’s staff,
that was where he lodged his letter
to Molotov for transmission to the
Soviet Foreign Ministry. Manne
continued his account as follows:
The Soviet Foreign Ministry
may have been genuinely
puzzled by Dr Evatt’s letter.
Perhaps they read into it some
complex trap. For six weeks
there was no reply. When
it finally came, despatched
on April 9, 1955, it must
have represented a severe
disappointment to Evatt.
The letter was signed not by
Molotov but by a relatively
junior official of the Soviet
Foreign Ministry—[L]
Ilyichev, Chief of the Press
department—who claimed
to write on the Foreign
Minister’s “instructions”. Its
contents were bland and nonQuadrant November 2015
committal. Ilyichev expressed
the fullest agreement of
his Government with Dr
Evatt’s analysis of the Petrov
Affair. It had, indeed, been
staged by anti-democratic
forces intent upon harming
Australia-Soviet relations.
The Petrov documents were,
he agreed, fabrications.
Unhappily, however, Ilyichev
offered Dr Evatt neither new
evidence on this matter nor
even fresh argument. He
politely but firmly declined
Dr Evatt’s suggestion for
the arbitration of the affair
before an international panel
of judges. Such an arbitration,
he pointed out, would have no
“subject matter”.
Despite being given the brushoff by Ilyichev on the matter of
international arbitration, Evatt still
urged the same in the course of his
speech on October 19.
The evident bewilderment in
the Soviet Foreign Ministry could
have included disbelief that Evatt
was the signatory to this letter even
if the Swedish legation had confirmed that he had despatched it.
Might it not have been the handiwork of a highly skilled practical
joker or even a nutter? Although
space does not permit me to
enlarge on this, it was a fact that in
the wash-up after Stalin’s death in
March 1953 and especially after the
forced resignation of his successor
Georgiy Malenkov in February
1955, Molotov was something of
a beleaguered figure as Foreign
Minister. In the event he was
deposed from that office in June
1956 and, like Malenkov, never held
high office again. It is possible that
Molotov wearily delegated replying to Evatt’s letter to someone as
junior as Ilyichev. On the other
hand it is possible that Ilyichev,
after consulting with colleagues
at his level, took it upon himself
not to distract his minister with
the letter’s contents but to reply
Letters
to them as if acting on his minister’s “instructions”. It would have
been a hilarious situation indeed if
the first inkling Molotov received
of that correspondence was when
reports reached Moscow of Evatt’s
disclosure of it on October 19.
Foot’s quotation from Calwell’s
memoirs (1972) in my judgment
is unconvincing when measured
against the testimony of others. It
is clear enough from the account
Russel Ward gave in his memoirs A
Radical Life (1988) that he and John
Burton, who had assisted Evatt
in the preparation of his speech
to the early hours of October 19,
were stunned to hear Evatt giving details of his letter to Molotov.
This bolt from the blue struck
them as they listened to the direct
broadcast of the Doc’s speech at a
party Burton gave at his Canberra
house attended by a large number
of Evatt’s supporters. I also find it
impossible to believe, as Foot surmises, that Burton planted details
of the letter to Molotov and the
reply in Evatt’s speech on October
19 on Moscow’s instructions.
J.B. Paul
Bellevue Hill, NSW
Turnbull and Abbott
Sir: The lament over Tony
Abbott’s demise, within certain
sections of the right of the Liberal
Party, and among some conservatives in Australia, seems misguided
to me. Abbott should be judged
principally on his competence as a
prime minister, not on his political
principles and his social values.
Abbott was, like his predecessor
Julia Gillard, quite simply not up to
the job. While Kevin Rudd presents
a more complex case, Australia has
suffered the misfortune of three
poor prime ministers in a row. The
political system has demonstrated
wisdom in ensuring that the reign
of all three was mercifully brief.
David Marr caught the mood,
in commenting that most of the
country breathed a collective sigh
of relief when Abbott was deposed.
I haven’t talked to anyone since,
from anywhere on the political
spectrum, who didn’t share this
sentiment.
It is early into the new prime
ministership, but I have to say that
it is refreshing to have a national
leader with the eloquence and
judgment befitting the office.
John Carroll
Fitzroy, Vic
Sir: When you refer to “Liberal
rank and file who support a political party from tribal loyalty or
ideological sympathy” (Chronicle,
October 2015), I feel you are talking about people like my wife and
me. You assert that we are all very
upset at the moment, that our “discontent will have to be soothed”
and our “support will have to
be won back” by the new Prime
Minister.
Yes, we have been in “ideological
sympathy” with, and supported,
the Liberals continuously since
the Whitlam era. But one learns
a lot in that time, and though we
are fully occupied with everyday
family and work matters, we are
capable of forming an idea of the
way things are going, and we trust
our own judgment. An example
of this is the ninety-nine-year-old
relative of mine, who, when asked,
a few years back, how she viewed
another unsuccessful politician,
said, “They do not have what it
takes.” Sometimes you do not need
a degree in economics or political
science to see things clearly and
form an accurate opinion.
In our case, seeing the way
things were going under Mr
Abbott, we decided, for the
very first time, to visit our local
member and tell him we no longer
supported the Liberal Party. We
told him we felt that, apart from a
few very obvious things the current
leader was doing, and should do,
he was not focused on the broader
national interest. Furthermore, we
felt that, in the light of the way he
broke a promise he made (on 18C),
he was taking our vote for granted.
You also say that “Turnbull
won, but did against 45 per cent of
his parliamentary colleagues and a
much larger percentage of Liberal
Party voters in the country”.
To support your opinion of the
voters in the country, you adduce
telephone and internet messages
into Canberra at the time of the
“coup”. I would offer anecdotal
evidence to the contrary in the
comments, before the “coup”, of a
wide variety of acquaintances of
ours in the country.
In the light of events, our
“discontent” will not have to be
“soothed” and nor will our “support
have to be won back by the Prime
Minister”.
Richard Forrest
Pacific Pines, Qld
Quadrant welcomes letters
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to editing unless writers
stipulate otherwise.
This project has been assisted by the
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5
Chronicle
J ohn O’S ulliva n
O
nly hours after the first Democratic debate
closed on October 13, the Associated Press
fact-checkers issued their analysis of a random sample of the lies told by the two leading candidates, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. This
exercise was charitably described in the headline
as “Clinton, Sanders revise history”. But it was
weightier than the catalogue of minor errors that
usually constitutes media fact-checking.
It pointed first to shameless and serious denials
of the truth, such as Mrs Clinton’s claims that
she had not reversed herself on the Trans-Pacific
Partnership. For some years she has been praising
the trade agreement (which she helped to negotiate)
as “the gold standard” of such deals. In the debate
before a highly-partisan and unionised Democrat
audience, however, she switched, claiming with a
straight face merely that she had “hoped” it would
be the gold standard but that, alas and alack ...
Her donors in Wall Street and corporate America
might in theory be alarmed by this betrayal of their
interests—except that they are quietly confident
that if she succeeds in winning the presidency, she
will switch right back again after the briefest of
pauses for reflection.
Second, and more significantly, the AP checkers
went further than correcting straightforward
factual reversals to contesting the arguments and
highlighting the contradictions underlying the
candidates’ claims. Both Clinton and Sanders, for
instance, came under fire for promising to provide
students with free tuition.
“Free for the students,” corrected the AP sternly,
“but someone has to pay.” It then estimated that the
federal and state taxpayers would have to cough up
$35 billion (Clinton) or $70 billion (Sanders) over
different periods to finance this generosity. And
it concluded, this time primly: “Neither candidate
told TV viewers of the costs to the treasury of what
they propose.”
Sanders was individually reproved by the AP for
proposing a doubling of the minimum wage on the
grounds that an increase of such magnitude would
cause job losses as employers found it too expensive
6
to keep existing workers at the higher pay rate.
This second sort of fact-checking goes beyond
simply pointing out that someone is using false
statistics or fake quotations. There is a danger that
it will evolve over time into ideological criticism
in disguise. Thus, the AP might ask Sanders that
if government can raise wages by fiat, why not a
minimum wage of $100 an hour, before pointing
out that this would mean a massive rise in prices,
inflation, the dismissal of other workers throughout
the economy, mass bankruptcies, and probably
(under President Sanders) vast subsidies to failing
industries.
Conservatives and Republicans have been
expressing anxiety about this expanded concept of
fact-checking for some time, since they have been
the main victims of it until recently. If it is now
being directed at liberals, leftists and Democrats,
then it might significantly re-balance the credibility
between the two parties while AP’s mood lasts.
With five more Democratic debates in the
near future, however, it could also raise real
difficulties for Democrat candidates by asking such
questions as, “Are there any limits to the ability of
governments to improve the lives and pocket-books
of their citizens?”
In the abstract most people would agree that
such limits not only exist but are pretty tight. But
the Democratic debate was taking place not in the
abstract but in Las Vegas, which has taken over
Hollywood’s original role as the “dream factory”
and is in addition one of the most highly unionised
cities in America. An audience living in a unionised
dream factory is unlikely to accept the idea of limits
quietly.
Jim Geraghty summed up the result in
National Review Online: the audience of Las Vegas
Democrats applauded these sentiments loudly,
passionately, and with no regard for the principle
of contradiction:
They contended socialism is mostly about
standing up to the richest one percent and
promoting entrepreneurs and small business;
chronicle
climate change is the biggest national security
threat facing the nation; college educations
should be free for everyone; all lives don’t matter,
black lives do; Obama is simultaneously an
enormously successful president in managing
the economy and the middle class is collapsing
and there’s a need for a “New New Deal” ...
The audience in Nevada applauded higher
taxes, believes that Hillary Clinton doesn’t
need to answer any more questions, supports
the complete shutdown of the NSA domestic
surveillance program, and that Obamacare
benefits should be extended to illegal immigrants.
As it turned out, the candidates mostly gave that
audience the policies it wanted. Mrs Clinton did
so cautiously and with occasional escape clauses;
Bernie Sanders did so without reserve; former
Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley imitated
Sanders more and more as the evening drew on;
and Lincoln Chafee pandered so incompetently
that he achieved little more than providing a full
stop to each set of questions.
James Webb—former Democrat Senator, former
Navy Secretary under President Reagan, novelist,
war hero, and suitably curmudgeonly historian of
the Scotch-Irish in America—was the sole hold-out.
“With all due respect to Senator Sanders,” he
said, “I don’t think the revolution is going to come,
and I don’t think the Congress is going to pay for
all this.” But as several commentators have noted,
Webb is the candidate of a Democratic Party that
no longer exists and of a blue-collar workingclass constituency that is no longer reliably loyal
to the Democrats. So he was civilly treated by his
colleagues, applauded politely by the audience, and
largely ignored.
M
ost commentary since the debate has concentrated on its “horse race” implications.
The pundits generally thought that Mrs Clinton
strengthened her position, Bernie Sanders marginally weakened his, O’Malley and Chafee damaged
what were already weak chances, and Webb honorably isolated himself as if he had wandered into a
betting shop thinking it was a church. These initial
impressions may well change, but the headline verdict must be that Mrs Clinton restored herself as a
formidable candidate to the point where she might
deter Vice-President Biden from entering the race
and perhaps even defeat him if he does.
The key moment came when Sanders denounced
the national curiosity about Hillary’s e-mails as
trivial when the world and the middle class were
threatened by enormous dangers, was embraced by
her, and then loudly applauded by the audience.
Any candidate who had thought of exploiting
the e-mail scandal at once abandoned the idea.
Thereafter the debate turned into a campaign
rally for all the Democrats against their wicked
Republican opponents rather than an exploration
of the different policies advocated by different
candidates. Whether by accident or design, it put
the entire Democratic Party on show in unusual
harmony.
That was probably a good thing for Democrats
in the short term. But as Anderson Cooper said
mildly, sounding like an anxious chorus in a Greek
tragedy, most Americans outside the hall did not
share many of the views expressed inside it. He
was suggesting that many Americans distrust Mrs
Clinton’s accounts of the e-mail scandal, but he
could have been talking about many other things
said from the platform—and about the changing
nature of the party.
As the irrelevance of Jim Webb hinted, the
Democrats are no longer a working-to-middleclass party but an alliance of ultra-rich capitalists
with liberal social views, middle-class progressives,
and public sector unions with a membership tilted
towards low-paid immigrants. Hillary gets the first
group, Sanders the third, and they split the second.
But these groups are uniting around policies many
of which will strike most Americans as reckless,
odd, even at times sinister.
That came out when a questioner asked if Black
Lives Matter or if all lives matter. Considered
abstractly, all lives matter most, since they include
black lives. But under the pressure of post-Ferguson
campaigns, Democrats have been pushed to choose
the formulation that Black Lives Matter. Only
Webb was prepared to affirm something like the
equal value of all lives. So four leading Democrats
seemed to deny the equal value of all lives and thus
implicitly the worth of white, Hispanic, and Asian
lives. They can defend this decision by arguing it
is an attempt to rescue the values of black lives
neglected until now. But most Americans don’t
follow these ideological niceties closely, and it
will have looked to them that the Democrats were
flirting with anti-white racism.
Similarly with economics. Sanders succeeded
in drawing the debate sharply to the socialist left
(with modest resistance from Mrs Clinton) so that,
as Geraghty pointed out, they risked looking like a
socialist party. But do Americans want a socialist
party—especially one with odd racialist attitudes?
Probably not. And where will the Jim Webbs go?
If the Democrat problem is that they are uniting
around the wrong policies, it will be a really serious
problem as long as the media is examining their
policies with a newly sceptical fact-checking eye.
7
quodlibet
P eter C olem a n
M
ore Cloak than Dagger is Molly J. Sasson’s
personal story of her forty years in the
secret services monitoring Nazism and
communism in Britain, Holland and Australia.
(She retired in 1983 before the era of terrorism.) But
it is her cool appraisal of the Australian Security
Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) that will command most attention and raises still unanswered
questions of great importance.
Despite ASIO’s historic success in managing the defection of the Petrovs in 1954, it remains
Sasson’s conviction that “a number” of ASIO officers
betrayed Australian, British and US secrets to the
Soviet Union over many decades. She relies largely
on the testimony of Soviet defectors Major-General
Oleg Kalugin and Colonel Oleg Gordievsky, both
senior officers of the KGB. But she believes that the
most significant disclosures of the KGB’s “penetration” of ASIO came from Vasili Mitrokhin, a former
senior archivist of the KGB.
In 1972 the KGB gave Mitrokhin sole responsibility for supervising the moving of 300,000 topsecret files from the overcrowded Lubyanka in
Moscow to a new location. It took him twelve years.
But the more he examined the archives the more
horrified he became. “I could not believe such evil,”
he said. Like the Stasi agent in the great German
film The Lives of Others, he could no longer control
or suppress his conscience. He carefully made notes
of the files and smuggled them home in his shoes or
trousers, and buried them at weekends in tins and
milk churns under the floor of his dacha. He hoped
in due course to publicise his records but there was
no possibility of this until after the collapse of the
Soviet Union in 1991.
In 1992 he was able to take a holiday in Latvia
where he asked the American embassy in Riga to
allow him to defect to the United States, with his
archive. But the CIA officials decided the sample
files Mitrokhin showed them were fakes. He did
not have original documents, only copies and notes.
They turned him away. But the British embassy
quickly recognised his importance. The problem was
that most of Mitrokhin’s files were still buried in his
dacha outside Moscow. Six MI6 officers dressed as
workmen unearthed six trunks of files and loaded
8
them into a van. They then “exfiltrated” Mitrokhin,
his family and files to Britain, where they finally
arrived on September 7, 1992. The American FBI
described the files as “the most complete and extensive intelligence ever received from any source”.
Mitrokhin lived under police protection, and under
a false name, for the rest of his life. He died in
January 2004.
But soon after settling in Britain he began collaborating with Professor Christopher Andrew of
Cambridge to publish two volumes based on his
archives. The first appeared in 1999 and the second in 2005. They examined most countries in the
world but not Australia—although MI6 had almost
immediately passed to Australian authorities the
Mitrokhin material about the KGB operations in
Australia and in particular in ASIO. The Keating
government thereupon ordered two inquiries into
ASIO. The first, by the Australian Federal Police,
was codenamed Operation Liver. Its findings remain
secret, but according to Sasson, were “so sensational”
that the Keating government appointed Michael
Cook, a former director-general of the Office of
National Assessments and Australian ambassador
to Washington, to write a full report on suspected
KGB penetration of ASIO. The Cook Report has
also remained secret.
Sasson concludes: “Surely the Australian people
have a right to know if real spies were operating,
and for how long, in our government departments,
instrumentalities and intelligence agencies.” They
should have been exposed and prosecuted, but they
were allowed to retire with full pension rights. She
calls for the publication of Mitrokhin’s revelations,
the results of Operation Liver and the contents of
the Cook Report. We need not worry, she says,
about what our American and British allies might
think. “They would know this already! They have
lived with our ‘problem’ for far too long.” There may
conceivably be a good explanation for the silence of
the authorities. If there is, it should be made public. It is extraordinary that Mitrokhin’s revelations
about almost every country in the world have been
made public, but not Australia, with no reason given.
Small wonder that Sasson asks: Why the cover-up?
She asks the same question about a number
quodlibet
chronicle
of other issues in the history of ASIO and of the
British and Dutch intelligence services in which she
has served. (She devotes a chapter to the allegation
that Roger Hollis, a former director-general of MI5,
was a Soviet agent. She leaves the question open.)
Scholars are now writing a three-volume official history of ASIO. Volume one, The Spycatchers by David
Horner, was published in 2014. In More Cloak than
Dagger Sasson contributes her experience, ideas and
doubts to the official story.
It is noteworthy that she pays a special tribute
to Sir Charles Spry, the director-general of ASIO
from 1950 to 1970, who recruited her in 1967 to help
him in dealing with suspected moles in the intelligence services—“a task I was, sadly, prevented
from completing due to lack of support, deliberate
or otherwise, displayed by my colleagues and others in the organisation at that time”. Referring to
an ABC documentary of 2010 that smeared Spry’s
good name and character, she writes: “What greatly
surprises me is that the government of the day never
intervened to refute the unfair attacks on this great
man who had put the security of his country uppermost against the heavy odds he had to face … May
he always be remembered as a great Australian.”
In the Report of the Royal Commission into
ASIO (1986) Justice Robert Hope judiciously concluded: “ASIO may be, or may have been, penetrated by a hostile intelligence service.” Spry had,
and Sasson has, no doubt about it. More Cloak than
Dagger gives much of the evidence. It is now surely
time that a biography of Brigadier Sir Charles Spry
was written to complement the official history of
ASIO. Sasson dedicates her book to him.
(The above is the Introduction to Molly Sasson’s
book, published by Connor Court.)
T
he recent gathering in Paris to launch the poetry
of Les Murray in French was a first. He has
already been translated into several foreign languages
(including Hindi) but only now has a collection of
his work become available in French. Published by
L’Iconoclaste, its title is C’est une chose sérieuse que
d’être parmi les hommes. Daniel Tammet selected and
translated forty poems which have influenced him in
his personal life and as a writer (of such acclaimed
works as Born on a Blue Day, Embracing the Wide
Sky and Thinking in Numbers). An Englishman and
autistic savant now resident in France, Tammet
stumbled on Murray’s Poems the Size of Photographs
some years ago and immediately knew he had made
one of the great discoveries of his life: J’en avait la
chair de poule. It gave him goose pimples.
The occasion of the launching of the new book
was the Paris Festival of World Writers, sponsored
by Columbia University and the National Library
of France. They named the session in La Maison de
la Poésie “Conscious and Verbal”—the words used
in the press when Murray recovered from a liver
infection in 1996, and which he later adopted for his
collection in 1999.
Murray and Tammet each read a number of
poems to enthusiastic applause from the French
audience. Tammet knows how almost impossible it
is to translate poetry faithfully, let alone poems of
the subtlety of Murray’s. But if he cannot capture
the magic, he sensitively conveys mood and idea.
How can you translate Murray’s “Vietnam” poem
“On Removing Spiderweb”? Murray begins:
Like summer silk its denier
But stickily, and ickilier,
Miffed bunny blinder, silver tar,
Gesticuli-gesticular …
which Tammet bravely renders as:
Telle la soie estivale, son denier,
Mais poisseuse, ointe,
Glu argentée qui aveugle les lièvres,
Colle qui fait gesticuler …
Or take “The Last Hellos”, about the death of
Murray’s father, with its echoes of Bunyah patois.
It ends:
Snobs mind us off religion
nowadays, if they can.
Fuck thém. I wish you God.
With Tammet it becomes:
De nos jours, les snobs nous mettent en garde
Contre la religion, quand ils le peuvent.
On les emmerde. Je te souhaite Dieu.
After the readings someone asked Murray what
writers had influenced him. In a practised way he
promptly listed three. The first is Ken Slessor and
the second Hesiod, both well-known influences
on him. But the third is less well known. It is the
medieval Welsh poet Dafydd ap Gwilym. Then
Murray suddenly added a fourth: Molière.
Tammet told his audience that Murray is the
poet laureate of the English-speaking world.
His genius shows that autism can be a source of
creativity, of alternative thinking that enriches
our understanding of the world. He quoted Joseph
Brodsky that Les Murray is “celui en qui ‘la langue
anglaise respire’”—the one in whom the English
language breathes again. But Murray added: “I can
still write a rotten poem.”
9
astringencies
A nthon y Da niels
D
etroit was the second American city I ever during that curious and uniquely French phenomvisited. It was fifty years ago, and it was enon, la rentrée littéraire, the flurry of books, espethen at the apogee of its prosperity. It never cially novels, published to coincide with the return
occurred to me—I don’t suppose it ever occurred of most of France from its summer holidays at the
to anyone else either—that half a century later it end of August, as if, refreshed by sun and sea, they
would be an inhabited ruin, a dystopian novel come were ready to resume reading.
to life, a city that has taken a book by J.G. Ballard
Reverdy, born in 1974, has already published
not as a warning but as a blueprint.
novels about the post-9/11 situation in America and
Not long ago I was invited to a conference the post-Fukushima situation in Japan. No doubt
in Dearborn, still the headquarters of the Ford he feels, as most of us do unless we stop to think
Motor Company. I could see Detroit in the far about it, that extreme situations tell us more about
distance from my hotel window, dominated by human nature than do everyday ones: we do not
the dark round towers of the Renaissance Center. find out who we really are until we are put to the
The Renaissance Center—I like that: it testifies to most stringent test. If we crack under stress, like an
Man’s permanent temptation to magical think- aeroplane wing after too much flying, does it mean
ing. If one gives a thing a name, it will become or that we are not really who and what we thought we
act like that name. In Britain, we give the vertical were before we cracked, that it was all but a veneer?
concrete prisons in which we incarcerate the young Mark Tapley, in Martin Chuzzlewit, was a notably
unemployed, the schizophrenic, the domestically- cheerful individual, but he thought there was no
abused single mothers, the asylum-seekers, and merit in his cheerfulness so long as the conditions
the psychopathic drug dealers, the names of great in which he found himself were tolerable, and he
writers—Addison House, Jane Austen Tower—in deliberately sought to test himself by seeking out
the hope that it will educate them and refine their more and more discomfort to find out whether his
behaviour.
cheerfulness survived, in other words whether his
My request that I should visit Detroit was greeted cheerfulness was a sham.
by the conference organisers much as if I had gone
In Il était une ville a young French engineer,
to the manager of the hotel and asked him for the Eugène, who works for a giant globalised car comkeys to the rooftop so that I could throw myself off. pany called only the Enterprise, is sent to Detroit
In the event, I went straight back to Detroit airport to study the possibility of manufacturing there a
without having visited the city, and have had to kind of template for a car to suit, with necessary
content myself since with the irresistibly titillating variations, all markets in the world, to be called
photojournalism (abandoned mansions, feral dogs the Integral. He falls in love (for the first time in
roaming the deserted and crumbling streets) that his life) with a local barmaid, who herself has been
appears from time to time in British and French associated in the past with a pimp and drug dealer.
newspapers and magazines. “See what America A parallel plot relates how this man organises a
has come to!”—the Schadenfreude is unmistakable. large group of adolescents who have run away from
The misfortunes of others, especially of the rich home into a kind of criminal collective, living in
and powerful, are the greatest balm known to the an abandoned school in a deserted part of the city.
human soul.
He is the Fagin de nos jours; while the collective
Having some slight personal connection with itself has some of the characteristics imagined by
Detroit, I bought a novel just published recently William Golding in Lord of the Flies.
in France in which the city is the protagonist. The
The depiction of Detroit in ruins is very convincnovel is called Il était une ville (There Was Once ing (which is not to say that it is accurate, though I
a City), by Thomas B. Reverdy. It was published suspect that it is: but one is often convinced by the
10
astringencies
chronicle
inaccurate). Anyone who was able has left the city;
only the trapped, who would leave if they could,
remain behind. Reverdy describes—lovingly, or at
least with relish—the worst aspects of American
civilisation. Here is what is to be found on the
shelves of the shop attached to a service station:
There were packets of crisps of all flavours,
many chicken with barbecue sauce, doughnuts
of all colours iced with a smooth layer of
synthetic sugar that could have been plastic
toys for the bath presented in transparent
packages, there were cans of corned beef and
re-constituted ham, a fatty compressed purée,
vaguely gelatinous …
yourself, I was told by the Americans. It is
a matter of a year or two, time to displace a
few people like me and to make thousands
more people unemployed, here [in America] or
in Europe. Enough time to announce a new
strategy, reassure the markets like a phoenix
that cannot die, because capital cannot die,
because money must circulate. There will be a
difficult moment, but you have already won.
You will say: the invisible hand has
reshuffled the cards, but everything will
re-equilibrate one day. That’s false, and you
know it. You will say: it’s the only rational
solution. But it is a rational disaster.
And then Eugène describes the city: “There
It says something about the almost miraculous are children here who join gangs because there’s
adaptability of Man’s physiology that he can sur- no more work in the factories …” The chapter, the
last in the book, in which his resvive many years a diet composed of
ignation letter appears, is called
such things.
“La main invisible” (The Invisible
Eugène knows from the first
he depiction of
Hand).
that his project is futile, that there
Detroit in ruins
Before he was sent to Detroit,
is no possibility of its succeeding;
is very convincing Eugène spent two years in China,
but the Enterprise, which is on the
in one of the Enterprise’s factories
verge of bankruptcy, is a bureau
(which is not to say in
a horrible, featureless, polluted
cracy as inflexible as any governthat it is accurate). town (whose very name he has forment ministry. At the end of the
book, when he receives the news
Reverdy describes— gotten), called into existence by the
on the site of a village.
that the Enterprise will build no
lovingly, or at least factory
Thus the novel gives us an apocnew cars in Detroit and that it is
alyptic vision of the coming world:
with relish—the
indeed bankrupt, he sends his letDetroit for the West, horrible, polter of resignation to his superior in
worst aspects of
luted, featureless Chinese towns for
the organisation in Paris, known
only as his N+1, presumably Niveau American civilisation. the East, all to the benefit of a few
financiers.
+ 1, the person one level above him.
This is gratifyingly simple, and
(As we have seen, the bankruptcy
of an organisation in the modern world does not plausible because it contains elements of truth.
mean that it cannot continue in existence.) In his Detroit is terrible, there are Chinese towns such as
letter of resignation he assigns blame for what in he describes, and financiers do benefit. But Detroit
is not necessarily the shape of things to come in
Detroit is called “the Catastrophe”:
America, there are particular local reasons for its
implosion; and many millions of Chinese have been
Dear Mr N+1, this is not against you personally,
lifted out of abject poverty by the development of
please understand that. I have no desire to add
towns such as that to which Eugène was sent. The
to the vicissitudes of the Enterprise or to the
emergence from mass poverty has never been pretty.
torments of the Hierarchy. Please believe when
And the alternative is what, precisely?
I say that I am not at all a revolutionary, neither
Protectionism? It is necessary to keep in mind the
for fun of it nor from a spirit of rebellion. I
insight of the great French economist Bastiat, that in
shall not besiege Wall where the price of your
economics there are always things seen and unseen.
shares is crumbling, even if I believe that
The author does not comprehend the necessity. If he
certain heads well deserve to roll …
had not dilated simplistically on the causes of the
The Enterprise is bankrupt. The Integral
Catastrophe, if he had only described it, his book
project will never be completed here but
would have been much stronger.
in China, perhaps you don’t even realise it
T
11
P eter M ur ph y
The Birth of a New
Conservative Age
The tide of politics
T
he political tide is turning. Conservative
parties are in power in the United Kingdom,
Australia, Canada, Ireland and New
Zealand. There are Republican governors in thirtyone of the fifty American states. Since Stephen
Harper’s election as Canadian Prime Minister in
2006, there has been a distinct lean to the centreright in the major Anglosphere states. The political
tone accompanying this has been one of caution.
The mood of electorates is mixed. They lean culturally to the left; economically to the right; and
socially they are torn in both directions.
Australia’s long-serving former Prime Minister
John Howard was a master of negotiating the Leftliberal Right-realist electoral divide. He embraced
gun control and border control. His understudy
Tony Abbott could not manage the same precarious
balancing act. A short two years as Prime Minister
saw Abbott oversee successful free trade, border
protection, anti-terrorism and tax policies. Yet he
couldn’t hold on to popular support. Trailing in the
polls, his party abandoned him. Abbott’s successor, Malcolm Turnbull, had previously experienced
a similar fate, when his constant flirting with Leftliberalism made him unpopular with the base of
his party. This remains a long-term liability for him
even if, like Abbott, he proves to be a short-term
electoral success.
The merry-go-round of leaders of Australia’s
centre-Right has been shaped by party sentiment
and electoral calculation. But something deeper also
is in play. For the temper of Anglosphere electorates
is changing in a conservative direction. Yet what it
means to be a conservative is also changing with
Shattered Consensus: The Rise and Decline of
America’s Postwar Political Order
by James Piereson
Encounter Books, 2015, 416 pages, US$27.99
12
the change. This is because what we are seeing is
not the regular short-term political cycle. In that
cycle parties of the Centre-Left and Centre-Right
alternate fairly predictably. Instead a deeper but also
more incalculable shift is taking place. This is not
just about who is in office but about the political
spirit of the age. A historic re-gearing and re-sorting
is under way.
The political spirit of the age is what societies
broadly and tacitly agree upon. This agreement
shifts at crucial historical junctures. These shifts
then unfold over decades. A pivot of this type
occurred in the years from 1929 to 1932. A mix of
social liberalism, social democracy, Keynesian economics and cultural leftism emerged ascendant after
the 1930s in most of the Anglosphere and after the
Second World War in Continental Europe. Only
in the 1980s was this to any degree seriously questioned. This was the era of Thatcher and Reagan. It
looked for a time at the end of the 1980s that the old
political consensus might collapse. There are signs
now that it is in trouble again.
This does not mean plain sailing for conservatives in politics. While the social winds are moving
in a loose rightward direction, political conservatives have to adjust to the imperious gusts of history
as much as anyone else. The future will not see a
re-run of the age of Salisbury or Thatcher, Coolidge
or Reagan. History, in that sense, does not repeat.
Ironically it is the Left that today is besotted with its
own past. The UK Labour Party has elected Jeremy
Corbyn, a 1970s throwback, as its leader. Democrat
Party primary voters in the United States are semiseriously toying with the idea of nominating a selfdeclared socialist, Bernie Sanders, as the party’s
presidential candidate. Across the Anglosphere
Left-liberals dominate public institutions and the
universities. And yet every species of social liberalism, social democracy and cultural leftism is in
strife. This is because the Left has run out of ideas.
It recycles with ever-diminishing returns the 1930s
and the 1970s.
The Birth of a New Conservative Age
In contrast conservatives have learnt to re-imagine rather than recycle their past. One reason for
this is that there is no single conservatism. Rather
there is a spectrum of conservatives. There are
free-market, classical liberal, libertarian, national
security, anti-totalitarian, Christian, evangelical,
reform, futurist and traditionalist conservatives. A
second reason is that after 1970 conservatives were
excommunicated from the official public sphere.
This denied them a platform. Yet it also freed them
from the intellectual conformism of the age of
Keynes. Most important of all for the sprouting of
the conservative imagination has been the thread
of “fusionism”—a term coined by the American
philosopher and National Review editor Frank
Meyer—that runs through much contemporary
conservative thinking.
If politics is the art of compromise then political imagination is the virtuosity of fusion. John
Howard, who had a touch of political genius about
him, forged an effective liberal-conservative party
alliance in Australia during four terms in office.
David Cameron has done the same in Britain. But
no fusion lasts forever. Cameron is perhaps smart
enough to understand that his political synthesis
has a limited shelf-life. He is not going to seek a
further term in office. His successor will need a different, probably more conservative, blend. But what
that might be is necessarily an open question, for
there is no “true” conservatism. There are just conservatives; each one offers a more or less successful fusion. If you doubt that then consider this: the
Ur-conservative Edmund Burke was a Whig in politics. Of course, not all fusions work. Tony Abbott
tried to mix a strain of social conservatism derived
from Australia’s old Democratic Labor Party with
John Howard’s liberal-conservative model. On
Abbott’s part the meld was authentic and deeply
felt. Yet it failed because it was also awkward. It
lacked fluidity. It didn’t fit together elegantly. As a
result Abbott’s prime ministerial public persona was
stilted. Watching him on television set the viewers’
teeth on edge. Even his strong supporters felt this. The American political cycle
F
usion is a difficult art. But difficulty rewards.
Fusion has given present-day American conservative thought a fertile and energetic quality. It mixes,
merges and melds a wide range of contrary CentreRight ideas. One of its notable off-shoots has been
a rich re-imagining of public policy. Conservative
commentators today produce a regular stream of
high-quality meditations on public policy issues.
In recent times we have had James C. Bennett and
Michael J. Lotus’s America 3.0, Newt Gingrich’s To
Save America, Thomas Sowell’s Wealth, Poverty and
Politics, Charles Murray’s Coming Apart and By the
People, Kevin Williamson’s The End Is Near and It
Is Going to Be Awesome and Charles C.W. Cooke’s
The Conservatarian Manifesto, to name a few. Even
the usually tedious by-the-numbers campaign book
genre in the hands of conservatives today turns out
to be quite interesting. Marco Rubio’s American
Dreams is a very thoughtful diagnosis of public
policy. Carly Fiorina’s Rising to the Challenge vividly
highlights the drag of bureaucracies on economy
and society.
Something must be up if campaign literature
is worth reading. In the last century pretty much
only Churchill and Reagan had anything interesting to say on the hustings. So what is going on?
Ideas—as distinct from clichés—only appear in
democratic politics when a deep shift is under way.
There is thus reason to think that we might be in
the midst of such a shift. A compelling argument
for this is presented by James Piereson in Shattered
Consensus. Piereson’s book offers a brilliant insight
into America’s post-war political consensus and its
break-up.
The pivotal section of the book is the author’s
chapter on America’s Fourth Revolution. In it
Piereson outlines a cyclical model of American
politics. A Democratic-expansionist regime dominated from 1800 until 1860. It collapsed because
of the slavery-and-secession crisis. A Republicancapitalist regime dominated from 1865 until 1930.
It was brought down by the Great Depression. A
Democrat-welfare regime was hegemonic from 1932
until the present. Its future is now in question. A
fourth tectonic shift in American politics beckons.
Quite possibly today we are teetering on the edge of
a second Republican regime.
Arthur Schlesinger, Sr. (1888–1965) introduced
the idea of cycles into the study of American politics. The country, he proposed, is subject to tides
in national politics. It oscillates between liberal
and conservative eras. Piereson deftly reworks this
theme. The Jefferson–Jackson Democrat regime
promoted local democracy and westward expansion. This involved a series of conflicts with France,
Spain, Great Britain and Mexico. Slavery proved
its undoing. Lincoln’s Republican regime achieved
the industrialisation of the nation. This was built
on the precepts of economic liberty, the tariff and
the gold standard. This idea mix collapsed as the
Great Depression began. The Roosevelt New Deal
Democrat regime followed. The regime was characterised by social welfare and government spending.
It has endured to this day. The Whigs held office
in the age of the Democratic frontier. Likewise
there were Democrat presidents in the ascendant
13
Republican era and Republicans have frequently post-industrial education-health-and-public-sectorheld office during the age of big-government lib- driven economic model.
eralism. America is a two-party republic characNixon is a classic example of the way American
terised by sequential one-idea regimes. Political regime politics works. He was both an antiopponents may come to power but the policies they communist nightwatchman and a pioneer of bigenact rarely run against the grain of the prevailing government regulation. In the 1950s, 1960s and
consensus.
1970s, many Republican politicians were model
As frustrated conservative voters often today liberals. They adapted to the tenets of the New Deal.
complain, simply electing a George H.W. Bush or a Many Democrats likewise reciprocated by adapting
George W. Bush makes little difference to the way themselves to Cold War-era anti-communism. This
government functions. What matters is the regime period was the high point of the liberal consensus.
that is in place. A big-spending regime begets As Piereson notes in Shattered Consensus, intellectual
big-spending Republicans just as much as big- figures like Harvard’s Louis Hartz argued that
spending Democrats. Centre-Right populists point America was built on liberal-Lockean assumptions
to the spiritual corrosiveness of Washington on and lacked a viable conservative tradition. The
Republican elites and the party establishment. The Left-liberal historian Richard Hofstadter insisted
donor class, the consultants and the Congressional that American conservatives were anti-intellectual
leadership all bend to business-asand paranoid. Many American
usual. Business-as-usual is defined
liberals today still believe this.
by the regime of the era. It is very
Their
ignorance of their political
n place of ideas,
difficult to shake. It permeates all
opponents is astonishing.
liberalism turned
institutions of state. It infuses the
The irony of Hartz’s and
attitudes of intellectuals, academics
Hofstadter’s
dismissive views was
to advocacy. It
and the media. It soaks public opinthat, as they made these claims,
ion. It is commonplace, unstated sequestered itself in a an incipient conservative intellecbubble. It turned to tual flowering was under way in
and often unconscious. It is the
wisdom of the times. However, the lobbying, rent-seeking, the United States. It began with
wisdom of the times periodically
Russell Kirk and William Buckley
resource-petitioning, in the 1950s. Buckley’s magazine
changes.
Piereson, in Shattered Consensus,
urging, promoting National Review attracted distinpoints out that shifts in the preguished writers, many of them exand pushing.
vailing American consensus have
leftists like James Burnham and
occurred three times in American
John Dos Passos. This was followed
history. In these decisive moments,
by the neoconservative wave in the
everything changes. A sudden deep-going swing 1970s. The generation of Irving Kristol and Norman
occurs. What was true yesterday is no longer true Podhoretz fled the Left and the Democrats. The
today. These momentous shifts are marked by re- first rifts in the American liberal regime appeared
alignment elections.
in the 1980s with the election of Ronald Reagan.
There is a considerable academic literature Reagan did not undo big-government liberalism.
on these elections. Thomas Jefferson’s victory in But he did slow down its expansion for a time. This
1800, Abraham Lincoln’s in 1860 and Franklin D. began the polarisation of American liberal and conRoosevelt’s in 1932 each signified a deep shift in voter servative voters. It is also triggered a polarisation of
sentiment. A Democrat consensus formed. It was conservatives and liberals in the Republican Party.
followed by a Republican one and then a Democrat
The American liberal consensus was vigorously
one. American politics echoes the cyclical concept enforced in the universities. Over time, conservatives
of the Greek historian Polybius. Each of these long in universities were marginalised and shut out. In
cycles or regimes is split in two; a partial re-pivoting the 1950s one in two academics voted Republican.
occurs mid-cycle. Andrew Jackson’s election in 1828 Today the figure is one in ten. The consensus view
marked the Democrat turn to westward expansion. of American politics left no room for conservative
William McKinley’s 1896 election signified the dissenters on campus. Many decamped to policy
turn of the Republican regime from isolationism bodies like the American Enterprise Institute and
to internationalism and the rise of the progressive the Heritage Foundation. The few that stayed
strain in American politics. Richard Nixon’s 1972 were often financed by conservative foundations.
re-election signalled the beginning of the end of Piereson has interesting observations about the role
the classic industrial era of American political of the Centre-Right foundations. He himself was
economy and its pivoting to a hyper-regulated Executive Director of the John M. Olin Foundation
I
14
from 1985 to 2005. Notably, the libertarian Volker
Fund underwrote Friedrich Hayek’s appointment
as professor of moral science on the Committee on
Social Thought at the University of Chicago and
Ludwig von Mises’s appointment at New York
University. Volker and other funds also assisted
Milton Friedman’s Chicago school of economics
and James Buchanan’s public choice school of
economics at the University of Virginia.
Conservative intellectuals in America make up
a broad spectrum of types. A lot even pointedly
insist, like Hayek, that they are not conservatives
at all but classical liberals. But nonetheless they all
stand definitively outside the Left-liberal consensus as Hofstadter and Hartz defined it. They are
loathed by their liberal academic peers who believe
that conservatives are devils incarnate. Intolerance
on American campuses is intense. American Leftliberalism is exceptionally illiberal. Those who step
outside the consensus are routinely excommunicated. The irony is that it is not conservatives who
suffer the most from this but liberals. Liberals now
only talk to liberals. They communicate in an echo
chamber. This means they have no way of testing
their ideas. As time passes, the quality of those
ideas drops. As a consequence liberals now produce
little of intellectual note.
In short, big-government liberalism has run out
of ideas. As Piereson points out, what Left-liberals
command now are organisations: courts, universities, centres, international bodies. In this, liberals
are well ahead of conservatives. American liberalism’s long march through the institutions was successful. Take the case of foundations. Liberal
foundations spend $1.2 billion annually compared
with conservative foundations, which spend $100
million. Instead of ideas liberals have causes. Their
aim is to get the self-righteous language of these
causes embedded in law and policy. New Deal liberals looked to big government. The radical liberals of the 1960s went a step further. They changed
the ends of American government. No longer, in
their eyes, was government tied to the natural ends
of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. What
mattered rather were the ostentatious imperatives of
over-weening moral activism. Feminism, affirmative action, race justice, gay marriage, environmentalism and disarmament were adopted as the kitsch
ends of American political society. Histrionics
replaced debate. Every liberal cause was a response
to a breathless crisis. Each crisis was manufactured.
In place of ideas, liberalism turned to advocacy. It
sequestered itself in a bubble. It turned to lobbying,
rent-seeking, resource-petitioning, urging, promoting and pushing. Grievance, complaint and accusation became its default language. Its time is up.
The pendulum is swinging
I
f it is correct that Richard Nixon’s 1972 re-election was the pivotal mid-point of the American
liberal regime, then 2016 will be a realignment election. Of course, such a thing is unpredictable—and
the dating may well be wrong. The long-term cyclical ebb-and-flow of American politics, though, is
palpable. The regime does change.
So what suggests that a major pendulum swing
is about to happen? Piereson’s argument is that the
existing American consensus is broken, the polity is
deeply polarised, and intense polarisation is a predictor of a regime change. The schism in the body
politic is evident. The era of Orrin Hatch–Teddy
Kennedy chumminess is over. President Obama is
filled with contempt for his Republican opponents.
The underlying regime template that previously
made procedural devices like the filibuster in the
American Senate work is badly torn. Establishment
and insurgent forces in both political parties are at
war with each other.
The shattering of consensus has strong historical
precedent. It is ultimately rooted in the mid-point
pivot of each regime cycle. The mid-point unites
forces that eventually fall out, which triggers the
end of the cycle. Jacksonian democracy united the
westward movement of Americans looking to settle
on free soil with pre-modern Southern plantation
slavery. This contradictory combination couldn’t last.
The union of Gilded Age Republican free-market
individualism and progressive Protestant smalltown moralism in the 1890s similarly collapsed in the
1930s, superseded by the era of the large bureaucratic
organisation. Bureaucracy promised liberal security
in place of market liberties. The 1970s melded
New Deal industrial-era social security with postindustrial public sector bureaucracies and media
moralism. That union is now coming apart.
Piereson details the most obvious symptom
of this. Government spending is out of control.
Nineteenth-century budgets serviced a limited
nightwatchman state responsible for law and
defence. The New Deal changed that. Government
became responsible for social security. Postindustrial politics changed that again. Spending
on regulatory, education and health bureaucracies
swelled. Government spending is possible on one,
even two, but not on the three functions of policing, social security and post-industrial administrations. Accordingly the historic Democrat consensus
is now very brittle. Voters will say that they are in
favour of defence, welfare and education—as long
as these are presented to them as motherhood items.
Yet a consensus for the omnibus defence-welfareeducation state has disappeared. Or rather it is no
15
longer coherent. It is not possible to fund police, going on since 1990, and is accelerating. Whitepensions and low-productivity paperwork together collar jobs are disappearing, as blue-collar jobs did
without trillions of dollars of unsustainable debt. in the 1970s. This work is being eliminated by comSomething must give.
puters and robots. The post-New Deal big governAccordingly American public opinion is sharply ment 1970s model said, “Expand education, health
polarised. Liberals robotically defend big govern- and regulation to create jobs.” Creating large whitement. Yet only 24 per cent of voters identify as liber- collar bureaucracies in the public and private sector
als; 38 per cent identify as conservatives. Opinion is expanded mid-tier employment but not productivsplit. The pendulum has not yet tipped. But tension ity. Slowing productivity meant less growth and a
is high.
shrinking tax base. As tax dollars dried up, deficits
Might the pendulum tip in the 2016 election? and debt grew along with unfunded public liabilities
The hyper-liberal Obama was re-elected President and fiscal pressures.
in 2012 although with fewer votes than he received
Barack Obama’s presidency was not the start of
in 2008. In theory the Republican candidate Mitt a new liberal era but arguably the end of the one
Romney was well positioned to win the 2012 elec- that began in 1932. He got remarkably few things
tion. In practice he did not because of turn-out. into law. Mainly he ruled through executive decrees,
Many Republican voters were
all reversible by future presidents.
unenthusiastic about him. Similarly
The items he did get into law, the
the lack of voter approval of Obama
Act and Obamacare
hat might a new Stimulus
in his second term is significant.
in 2009, both failed. His stimupolitical consensus lus failed to revive the stagnant
It means that it is improbable that
a Democrat will secure the presilook like? Arguably American economy. His health
dency on Obama’s coat-tails. Lack
scheme drove up insurit would strengthen insurance
of Republican enthusiasm and turnance costs and pushed even more
out is unlikely to apply in 2016. This
the nightwatchman Americans into hospital emeryear 24 million viewers watched the
gency rooms to see a doctor. These
state. It would
first Republican primary debate on
were failures not just of a mediocre
retain but modify
television. This was four times the
president but of an ailing political
viewership of the most-watched
regime.
social security.
Republican debate in 2012.
The problem of the American
Above all, it would health system is not only insurance
Mitt Romney insisted that he
was “severely conservative”. But con- tackle the problem of but the systemic bureaucracy that
servative voters did not believe him.
total health costs. American
liberal bureaucracy. inflates
Obama calculated that voter turnhealth insurance is unreformable
out was the key to winning the 2012
unless that bureaucratic regime
election. Romney’s problem though
changes. Fifty per cent of US hoswas that voter turn-out was not simply a matter of pital costs are tied up in paperwork, and these costs
Silicon Valley software, helpful as that can be, but are continuously expanding. The same applies to
of voter motivation. He was not a re-alignment can- education. Contemporary universities are the most
didate. He could not answer in two sentences what expensive public good ever devised by human ingelies beyond the defence-welfare-education state. nuity. Seventy per cent of university spending today
Jefferson, Lincoln and FDR changed the political is on administration, including the many officious
conventions of their day. Romney could not do so. university moral bureaucracies. Moral histrionics
Piereson is clear that underpinning this is the prob- are the flip-side of administrative vacuousness. They
lem of political economy. The New Deal-turned- fuel indefatigable bureaucratic expansion. It is no
post-industrial megalith is out of steam. Its day is accident that the golden era of American universiover. Under the surface of American society, things ties was the Republican-dominated age from 1890 to
are changing. Voters can sense this. They also sense 1932 when administrative costs were low and intelthat most Washington insiders cannot see what is lectual activity was high. The reverse now applies.
happening.
o what might a new political consensus look
The post-industrial era is giving way to the autolike? Arguably it would strengthen the nightindustrial era. A new wave of creative destruction
is working its way through the American economy. watchman state. It would retain but modify social
This heralds a long-term shift that may well trans- security. Above all, it would tackle the problem
late into a new American political cycle. The mid- of liberal bureaucracy. The New Deal set in train
tier of American jobs is shrinking. This has been a bureaucratic society. James Burnham saw what
W
S
16
was coming in The Managerial Revolution (1941).
The post-industrial era aggressively expanded
public and private bureaucracies. The result today
is that American taxpayers and consumers struggle to pay for over-priced administered goods. The
industrial goods that consumers buy at Wal-Mart
are cheap. Health, education and regulatory goods,
whether public or private, are intolerably expensive.
From green electricity to university places to health
insurance, the story is the same. As mid-tier postindustrial work shrinks, these goods become ever
less affordable. The American middle-class standard
of living is falling. The only effective answer is to
shrink the cost of public goods.
The regime of American politics is shifting.
Liberalism’s outworn mix of institutional capitalism, public sector unions, big bureaucracies and
insider lobbies culminated, in the Obama years, in a
lethargic blend of unretired public debt, low productivity, wilting national strength, declining personal
assets, increased numbers in poverty, and unaffordable public goods.
A new consensus will likely have three foundations. One is a reduction in the cost of public goods
and the size of government, health and education
bureaucracies. The second is higher productivity
and higher growth. The third is a focus on the great
American traditions of individual initiative, voluntary association and family enterprise.
Cutting bureaucracy is a key to all three. It will
stimulate growth. It will reduce crusading officialdom. And it will encourage small businesses, enterprising families, sole traders and partnerships—the
liveliest parts of the contemporary American economy. They represent a spark of dynamism in an age
of stagnation. Over the historic long term, income
from capital work has been growing while income
from wages and salaries has been declining. A new
consensus has to build on that. Its starting point is
not liberal bureaucracy but conservative dynamism.
Its energy arises from broad-based self-employment
and popular entrepreneurship. In the place of a
bureaucratic society the conservative future promises a world that is less administered and more
energetic, with far fewer rules and many more productive purposes. Peter Murphy is Professor of Arts and Society at James
Cook University. He is the author of Universities and
Innovation Economies: The Creative Wasteland of
Post-Industrial Society (2015). His new book, AutoIndustrialism: Creative Capitalism and the Rise
of the Auto-Industrial Society, will be published by
Sage next year.
Other Minds
The lives we live in other people’s minds
shadow our own, are cast by what we do—
and yet are different, too—not ours at all;
the lives we might have lived except we did
not, knowing that we lived them, half aware
at best of the tempestuous affair
that never was, except as happened there
in someone else’s mind, half false, half true.
You watch those shadows play against the wall,
the moonlight in between them; restless winds
hurrying through the trees, the moon half-hid;
and wonder at the lives that you have lived
not knowing that you lived them, in her mind,
half false, half true, and not to be believed,
because they weren’t—except that you were
behind her eyes, his fingers in her hair.
Stephen McInerney
17
J a mes A ll a n
Malcolm in the Middle?
A Dilemma for Australian Conservatives
R
onald Reagan once famously remarked that
he (up till then a long-time Party member)
had not left the Democratic Party, it had left
him. In a recent issue of the Spectator British leftwing commentator Nick Cohen made a similar sort
of argument about the Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour
Party. Cohen said that tearing up his decades-old
Labour Party membership card was not a sign of
having significantly changed his political positions,
but rather of the Party’s having done so.
I wonder how many right-of-centre Australian
voters are feeling much the same after September’s
Liberal Party coup that defenestrated Tony
Abbott in favour of the darling of the Australian
Broadcasting Corporation, Malcolm Turnbull.
How many of us who favour policies that might
be described as reflecting a worldview in favour of
small government, tough control of our borders,
no wasteful spending on “it won’t do anything at
all anyway” climate over-reactions (including on
renewable energy corporate cronyism and disguised
carbon taxes), scepticism about supra-nationalism,
pro-free-speech positions, being tough on terrorism, and reining in the ABC’s bias and bloated
budget will now be experiencing that Reaganesque
epiphany that they have not left the Liberal Party;
rather the Malcolm Turnbull version of it has left
them?
Of course movement within a political party
is a relative thing. No sane single voter can expect
any political party to espouse policies wholly in
line with his or her own preferences. Not all of any
party’s slate of policies will be welcomed and supported by you, or by me, or by anyone. Voters have
to pick between the choices on the table and they
have to do so in a world where some issues matter
more to them than others. There may be occasions
in which a voter might feel that a party position
on issue x outweighs all other stances it takes on
all other issues. As voters we have to pick between
what is on offer.
Now those of us living in Canada, the UK, the
18
US and here in Australia are lucky in myriad ways,
but one of which is that we live in countries with
majoritarian voting systems. Put bluntly, a core feature of these voting systems is to deliver majority
governments. These systems accentuate winning
and magnify losing while being harsh to marginal,
fringe, designer (call them what you will) political parties. In these Anglosphere countries you can
think of the voting system as creating two big political camps or broad-church alignments or big tents.
On the Centre-Left the big tent encompasses many
union supporters, redistributists, environmentalists,
feminists, human rights lawyer types and so on. On
the Centre-Right there are economic dries, social
conservatives, Hobbesians as regards defence and
national sovereignty, a few libertarians and so on.
Within each big tent nothing is ever fixed-in-stone;
there is flux and internal competition, with each
sub-grouping pushing against the others.
Winning elections is what ultimately resolves
these internal conflicts for the time being—think
of what sixteen years of losing to the Tories did
to a Labour Party that moved from the socialist
extremes it presented to the voters in 1979 to what
it offered them under Tony Blair. Or think of how
losing has now, perhaps inadvertently, pushed the
Labour Party back to those seemingly unelectable
extremes under Jeremy Corbyn today.
The point is that voters under majoritarian voting systems get a choice between two alternatives
where nearly all of the compromising has taken
place already inside the big tents and the results
have been made clear. To a significant extent the
voters know what they are getting; the voters therefore have plenty of say.
Nothing like that is true of the proportional
voting systems in most of Europe (and, tellingly, in
elections to Australia’s Senate). In such proportional
representation (PR) voting systems the general goal
is to achieve a legislature where a party’s percentage
of MPs closely aligns to the percentage of voters
who voted for it. In one sense this seems fair. But in
others it patently is not. No political party will win
a majority on its own under a PR system, so small
parties carry massively disproportionate influence,
as they will be needed to form any possible future
coalition. Worse, all the negotiating and bargaining that in the Anglosphere takes place before an
election (and then is presented to the voters) under
PR systems takes place after an election; the voters
are frozen out. Parties can promise what they like,
they can be as pure as the driven snow, since everyone knows (the voters included) that such promises
are largely meaningless when post-election coalition
negotiations start. When that happens it is inevitable that some small grouping of voters, some small
party, representing a fraction of a sliver of a soupcon of the voters’ views will need to be wooed and
will get its way. (Look at the Senate’s bizarre and
illegitimate version of this dance—the claim that
a majority government that won 53 per cent of all
votes in the Lower House, the one that picks the
government, is now supposed to bargain and compromise with a Jacqui Lambie or a guy who loves
cars or a minion of Clive Palmer before that government can do what it promised the voters before the
last election, the one it won in a landslide!)
Anyway, in my view majoritarian voting systems
are significantly better than PR systems, and our
preferential version of a majoritarian voting system
is slightly better than Canada’s, the UK’s and the
US’s first-past-the-post version, largely because ours
also measures whom you don’t like and accounts for
second choices while still giving us majoritarian
outcomes.
B
ut here’s why I indulged in this digression on
voting systems. First, no broad-church political
party operating in the majoritarian-voting-system
Anglosphere world can remain static over time. A
party will change in response to its internal dynamics, but that in turn will be driven by how a party
does at elections. Everyone accepts that. Yet be clear
about this. Big changes are supposed to come as a
result of the voters’ decision, or at least this should
overwhelmingly be the case. For a party to commit
regicide against a sitting prime minister (who by
definition won the last election, and so is in a very
different position from that of an Opposition leader,
who has no mandate from the voters) is in a sense an
act of betrayal by the party against its own voters.
I cannot think of a single instance in post-war
Canada of any political party defenestrating a sitting prime minister. Even by the end of Brian
Mulroney’s prime ministership, when polls put his
and his government’s popularity at world record
lows, he was allowed to retire just months before the
election. Of course in the United Kingdom there
is the well-known example of Margaret Thatcher.
She was deposed by her own party, and the Tories
in Britain are still feeling the after-shocks of that
decision even today. And more than a few commentators think the party’s shift to John Major—which
in the event did deliver the Tories one more election
win—was not worth the thirteen years of Blair–
Brown Labour government rule that the Thatcher
defenestration helped bring about.
If we return to the Liberal Party’s removal of Mr
Abbott we can now see that for any right-of-centre
voters who feel aggrieved by what happened—and
that includes me—the gravamen is not that the
Party changed direction (we know that political
parties are bound to change direction) but rather
how it did so and when. Yes, in a Westminster system the voter votes for a party via his or her local
member of parliament, but the voter also votes for
this particular version of the party, with all the builtin compromises that the leader took to the previous
election. No one in Australia voted for Malcolm
Turnbull’s version of the Liberal Party. Indeed it
is quite likely that without Mr Abbott’s work on
the boats and the carbon tax that not enough voters ever would have opted for Mr Turnbull to make
him prime minister.
This point about the voters having been offered
an Abbott Liberal Party, not a Turnbull version, and
why this matters in a jurisdiction with a majoritarian voting system, is the second reason I had for not
resisting the temptation to make a short digression
on voting systems. The sense of grievance a voter
will, and should, feel when a sitting prime minister
is terminated by his party behind the backs of the
voters is much, much higher in a voting system that
forces political parties to take a more-or-less solid
package of policies to the voters (as is the case in
the Anglosphere, as I set out) than it ever would be
in countries with PR systems where everyone is well
aware that nothing any party offers you is anything
more than a bargaining chip in the coalition negotiations that will assuredly follow. (Julia Gillard did
not understand this difference.)
N
ow these are early days as far as the Turnbull
reign is concerned, but before I get to how one
might respond to Mr Abbott’s ousting—and why
it is problematic to ask people who voted for the
Liberal Party at the last election to give the newly
transmogrified Liberals their vote in the future—
let me first set out the case for thinking that the
Liberal Party has indeed changed direction.
Well, tax reform talk has already been revamped
to make clear that it will leave tax increases on the
table. Indeed, talk of “eliminating tax concessions
on superannuation for the rich” has been explicitly
19
ruled back in as a possibility, though a more honest the UNHRC, because all these other countries are
description would be that a Turnbull government bound to do whatever a small country of 24 million
will now consider taking more money in taxes from at the bottom of the world tells them would be morthose (and let’s be clear it will not just be the rich ally better.
but the middle classes too, and even then it won’t do
What else? Well, the new prime minister is
much to fix this country’s spending problems) who sounding softer on terrorism. On top of that, his
have been forced by the government to contribute to government is sounding much more friendly to the
superannuation rather than spend today or save in ABC, to the point that the new minister in charge
some other way. This would be a tax increase, full made the patently ridiculous claim that there is no
stop, however much such blunt talking is avoided.
problem about bias on the ABC—that Mark Scott’s
Next? How about the clear softening on the behemoth does not breach its statutory obligation to
renewable-energy corporate cronyism, the scam be balanced. The new minister overseeing the ABC
under which businesses (think solar, think wind) should be fired immediately for mouthing such patthat would be uncompetitive on their own get huge ent propaganda. The old Abbott regime saw the
dollops of our money channelled to them. So elec- problem with the ABC but lacked the will for a
tricity prices go up and we have rent-seeking par fight (unless you call a paltry 5 per cent cut to a
excellence. Of course we had that
bloated bureaucracy something that
with Mr Abbott. Odds are we’ll
amounts to having a bit of backhave more with Mr Turnbull.
bone). The new Turnbull regime,
t is not yet clear
Then there are the outreach
perhaps grateful for the ABC’s
whether Malcolm
genuf lections to the fashionable
unrelenting two years of attacks
will move a party against Mr Abbott, is for now
thinkers of the inner cities, none
of whom are likely to have voted
happy to pretend that wall-to-wall
that was not
Liberal in the recent past (and in my
lefties at the ABC does not affect
particularly right- their impartiality (a joke, a joke on
view few of whom will do so under
Mr Turnbull). So we are going to wing under Tony just stilts when one looks at their track
push to be part of United Nations
and a sleight-of-hand joke in
a bit to the left, or a record,
Human Rights Council from 2018.
the sense that being against rightI’ve written a bit about this body in
good deal to the left, of-centre policies need not mean
my most recent book Democracy in
against Mr Turnbull if he is
or heaps to the left. being
Decline. This UN body has made
sufficiently left-leaning himself).
more resolutions against Israel for But move left it will.
Don’t forget too the weakbreaching rights-respecting behavening on standing up to the
iour than it has against every other
climate-change alarmists. Any
country on earth put together, all 190-plus of them accountability by the Bureau of Meteorology has
including such stalwarts as Somalia, Saudi Arabia, been removed. Then there is the total cave-in on the
Pakistan, China and the rest. Ponder such claims universities front—talk of fee increases of the sort
as that, say, women’s rights or minority rights or that are working fine in the UK and that are not
homosexual rights are less well protected in Israel lowering access by the poor while making future
than in Saudi Arabia (where they stone homosexu- lawyers and doctors pay more for the educations that
als to death every week) or in Somalia or in Russia will make them personally rich has disappeared; the
or in China.
university cuts have also been deferred. My tertiary
Consider the list of nations which are mem- kingdom for the Abbott outlook on that one, even
bers of the UNHRC. For at least half of them if the rogue Senate independents blocked all such
you wouldn’t take moral advice from their lead- changes!
ers or top officials if your life depended upon it.
Industrial relations reform is still verboten—just
Spending even one cent to get on this UN body as it was under Mr Abbott, to be fair. But Turnbull
is a total waste. Mr Abbott saw that. Mr Turnbull is supposed to change things, and not just in a leftdoesn’t—though I suppose that if you have the sort leaning manner.
of acting talent that would allow you to move to
Then there is the corporate cronyism that has
Los Angeles tomorrow and immediately find work been on display. We have seen a Kevin Rudd, 2020in Hollywood then you might be able to argue with style summit bringing together government, unions,
a straight face that the point of becoming a member social welfare groups and big business—every
state on the UNHRC is to reform it and make it less vested interest going but not a trace of taxpayers
of an Israel-hating, US-loathing, ineffectual body. or taxpayer groups or small-business advocates. To
Mr Turnbull just wants to bring about change on no one’s shock these groups see our taxes as a free
I
20
good, something that is theirs almost by right. They
want more. The Turnbull team seems a lot more
sympathetic to this Italian and French-style capitalism than was Mr Abbott’s, or than anyone would be
who sat down and read Adam Smith.
As I said, these are all just indicators of where
things seem to be going. It is still early days. But
every move by this new Turnbull Liberal government has been to the left. Sure, they’ve left in place
the Abbott policies to stop the boats, though not
without a big wobble when Mr Turnbull made the
error of saying what he really thought. And the Libs
have kept the Abbott compromise on the same-sex
marriage plebiscite and, so far, Mr Abbott’s rejection of any carbon tax, even one disguised as an
ETS. Would those hold were Mr Turnbull to win
next year’s election and get his own mandate?
What we can say, or at least what I think I have
now shown to be plausible, is that the current government under Mr Turnbull has moved to the left.
Mr Abbott was far from perfect. Indeed no one
was a bigger critic of his than I when it came to
his disgraceful cave-in on free speech, on his politically correct pieties that led to him favouring “Team
Australia” (the members of which lifted not a finger in his support when the chips were down, quite
predictably) over the core Liberal voters to whom he
had promised a repeal of the 18C hate-speech laws.
We are seeing nothing better out of Mr Turnbull
on this front, not even a few hints to shore up his
flank. In fact, the Turnbull government already
looks worse on free speech—just ask the American
who wanted to come here and speak about abortion.
S
o we will now take it as read that Mr Abbott
was deficient in terms of delivering a right-ofcentre package of policies (even of delivering such
policies to the Senate, where they may well have
been blocked but the government could at least have
built up sixty or seventy triggers for a double dissolution election and then …). But we will also take
it as read that in these early days of the new regime
Mr Turnbull appears to be a good deal worse. True,
it is not yet clear whether Malcolm will move an
Abbott party that was not particularly right-wing
under Tony just a bit to the left, or a good deal to
the left or heaps to the left. But move left it will.
That being the case, the rest of this article will
deal with how supporters of Mr Abbott might
respond to this Turnbull coup. First, what are the
options for those of us who worry, à la Ronald
Reagan, that we’re not leaving the Liberal Party
but rather it is now leaving us? Is it worth voting for
the Liberals under Turnbull? Are there other ways
to show your anger? Second, what are the effects
of all the various pleas one now hears to get on
board the Turnbull express, the “all pull together
now” preaching? Do these entreaties to disaffected
Abbott supporters have any weight? Last, what does
the coup mean in terms of Australia’s voting blocks?
Is it worth voting for the Coalition at the next
election? Well, this is a question of future consequences, and none of us can know for certain what
they will be. Smart, nice, well-informed people will
disagree. Some will bite their tongues and vote for
Malcolm. Some will not. Of course compulsory voting (about which I have moved from being against
when I arrived in this country eleven years ago to
being in favour today) makes things easier for the
regicides. The laziest, and most tempting, option
for us latter-day Reaganites would be just to sit at
home and not vote for anyone. That’s what many
of the disgruntled would do in Canada or the UK.
But not here. Here one’s choices cover the following spectrum: You can spoil your ballot, keeping
your own hands clean but giving nothing to either
Shorten or Turnbull. Or, you can avoid giving the
Libs your first preference, but give them your second. This will aid the Libs in winning the constituency, but it will hurt them financially because
of our campaign finance rules. Indeed it will hurt
them quite a bit financially if enough plump for this
option of making the Turnbull team their second
preference. Sure, it would still be like a slap on the
wrist in one sense, but better than nothing. Or, you
could vote for the Libs in the House, but not in
the Senate. Many of the ringleaders in Mr Abbott’s
defenestration were in the Senate. The government
is formed based on how it does in the House of
Representatives. So if you’re really angry at the Libs
for how they knifed Tony, but can’t bring yourself to vote for Electricity Bill, then you can show
your anger by not voting for them in any way in
the Senate. Or, you could just vote for Labor on
the calculation that the immediate pain of such a
government would be outweighed by the long-term
benefits that would flow from seeing the back of Mr
Turnbull (and these include having something to
the right-of-centre to vote for as opposed to choosing between the least-bad lefty). This is a distasteful
option, to be sure, but remember that the Australian
opted for Mr Rudd at the 2007 election over Mr
Howard, and there is little doubt in my mind that
Mr Shorten is no worse—indeed he is better—than
either Rudd or Gillard. None of these choices is
self-evident and all are defensible.
The second issue is what to make of all the pleas
for party solidarity and cohesion coming from those
who showed none to Mr Abbott. When a Niki Savva
or the Australian or any of the conspirators begs for a
rallying around the new leader, what do those of us
who supported Mr Abbott make of such hypocrisy?
21
And how do we respond? I suggest that the insights with the possible exception of the small-government
of evolutionary psychology offer some insights. I criterion—and even there the evidence thus far is
went through this in more detail in a recent piece that his government will be worse, not better.
in the Spectator but the gist is that tit-for-tat or recSo the political landscape has changed, and
iprocity-type thinking seems to be hard-wired into changed for the worse. The calculation made by the
us under the pressures of millions of years of evolu- Turnbull team is that they can move left at little
tion. Be nice to others. Give them the benefit of the cost, as long as they stay a shade to the right of Mr
doubt. But when you are cheated or metaphorically Shorten. You, the former Abbott voter, will have
stabbed in the back then all trust and co-operation nowhere else to go. You may not like it, but you—or
end. So when those who undermined and consist- most of you—will vote for Malcolm.
ently attacked Mr Abbott now demand fealty of the
This may well be true. It was clearly the strategy
sort they themselves did not give, one’s instinctive of Mr Cameron in the United Kingdom. Of course
response is to declare war and do unto them as they up there this led to the burgeoning electoral sucdid unto us. Such thinking, by the way, has great cess of the UK Independence Party which took over
evolutionary advantages; it is adaptive. Sitting MPs three million votes at the last election. Mr Cameron
who voted for Mr Abbott have stronger reasons to was lucky that such disaffection by former Tory votfight these sentiments than others,
ers did not cost him the election
namely self-interested motives. But
(just as he was lucky in facing an
we voters will need more reasons
he calculation made inept opponent in Mr Miliband).
for jumping on the new bandwagon
even then as he neared the last
by the Turnbull team And
than the pleas of Turnbull supportelection Mr Cameron was forced
ers that their man is better than Bill is that they can move to move to the right on just about
Shorten.
issue.
left at little cost, as every
Liberal voters who feel the coup
This is the thinking of many
long as they stay a who are now suggesting that a
was unwarranted (or something
stronger) can perfectly well agree
shade to the right of new conservative party needs to
that Shorten is worse than Turnbull
be established in Australia, that it
Mr Shorten. You,
without also coming to the conclucould grow at the same rate as the
sion that a Turnbull win in the next
UKIP in Britain. But that seems
the former Abbott
election is desirable. It is a complimost unlikely. Up there they have
voter, will have
cated question of likely long-term
the issue of the European Union,
nowhere else to go. the democracy-enervating beheconsequences. Will Mr Turnbull
pull things so far to the left that it is
moth that overshadows all else. It
better to plump for short-term pain
is unlikely that any single issue in
(Shorten) in order to move the Liberals back some Australia could galvanise a significant chunk of
way to the right? There is no obvious answer to that. right-leaning voters in the same way.
But the more those who had a hand in Mr Abbott’s
So a new party is at present, I suspect, a bad idea.
defenestration now bleat on about unity and mov- That leaves the Coalition. The Nationals might keep
ing on, the less likely it is that I will move on. They Mr Turnbull in line on a handful of issues, maybe.
would be wise to shut up.
And we can hope that the conservative rump of the
Liberal Party might have enough backbone to baulk
nd that brings us to my last issue: what the were the boat-return policy, or any blatant carbon
coup has done to Australia’s political landscape. tax resurrection (even in the guise of an emissions
Clearly things look a good deal worse for those of trading scheme), to begin to tempt Mr Turnbull.
us who favour small government, tough control of But the Liberal Party caucus does not give one cause
our borders, no wasteful spending on climate over- for optimism. Think back to the attempt to repeal
reactions, scepticism about supra-nationalism, pro- 18C, the hate speech provisions in this country, and
free-speech positions, being tough on terrorism, remember how many Liberal MPs stood up for free
and reining in the ABC’s bias and bloated budget. speech: virtually none. Some backbenchers I spoke
We had a Prime Minister in Mr Abbott who was to at the time didn’t even think it was an imporsympathetic on most of these issues (I am doubtful tant issue—unlike their expenses, or getting enough
about the small-government criterion), although on years under their belts to get the big pension.
some of them he was either a poor salesman or not
So it would be a brave observer who thought the
prepared to fight in his first term. Now we have a Coalition backbenchers would do much to keep Mr
Prime Minister in Mr Turnbull who is worse than Turnbull in line were he to win the next election.
the man he defenestrated on each of these counts, We will have a prime minister whose personal views
T
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22
could easily see him sitting within a Labor Party.
In a good many ways he strikes me as to the left
of David Cameron. Yes, there will be constraints
upon him. Most of those will come from the voters
of this country, the voters he needs for a right-ofcentre party to win office. Perhaps some constraints
will come from any post-election caucus.
But there has been a significant shift in the political landscape, of that there is no doubt. The bigbusiness block has seen its relative standing improve;
so has the social-welfare block; and so, most definitely, has the ABC. Even the unions are happier
with a Turnbull government, if the alternative is
an Abbott one. The transnational lawyers’ brigade
is happier too, and some will be beside themselves
with joy at the prospect of Australia trying for a
place on the UNHRC. But the small-business block
has lost in relative terms; so have social conservatives, Hobbesians, and possibly even those who care
most about free speech.
How the losers might react is anyone’s guess. But
it will lie at the core of what the Liberal Party looks
like in a decade or two.
James Allan is Garrick Professor of Law at the
University of Queensland. He wrote “The US
Constitution in Trouble: Lessons from Australia” in
the September issue.
To the Orchid Hunter
On your journey to view the wax lip orchids
you came upon a unique landscape
in the semidarkness of a glade,
one where the medicinal value of the rarest flowers
had yet to be determined.
From a gully strewn with empty bottles of Flag Ale,
a hybrid, still unknown to science,
rose as pale as the lunar orb;
and you were gratified you left behind that old life,
summoning the courage to search for what you had found.
For a time you sat in the serenity of a windless quiet,
high on the sudden rush of your unexpected find,
meditating on your own imperfect story,
while within the hollow sanctum of a giant gum
the bush bees practised their alchemy.
Among the clusters of ferns arching through the shade
you watched a pair of foxes rendezvous,
the eyes of the bold vixen
staring back at you
as they twisted together in a feral stink.
And when the mutterings of the night insects began
you asked yourself if you were turned inside out
with ambition,
or if you still wanted anonymity,
knowing life does not reward those who cower in the dark.
Dan Guenther
23
V ictor i a K inca id
Islam and Modern-Day
Sexual Slavery
T
he continual attempts of the Islamic State (IS)
to systematically annihilate the non-Islamic
world have striking similarities. Texts such
as the Koran and Hadith boast close to two hundred
verses advocating jihad, and lay out specific guidelines for waging this “holy war”. Beheadings and
suicide bombings are commonplace, and Westerners
are primed by the media to see these atrocities as the
defining features of Islamic radicalism. However,
a recent development in the IS terror trend that
remains distinct is the newly reinstated practice of
sex slavery.
Regardless of the constant professing of IS that
they act in the name of Allah and the Islamic faith,
there is a strong tendency of Western left-wing
ideologues to deny the religiosity of the agenda.
Such vehement refusal to criticise the religion itself
continues to be as baffling as it is frustrating—augmented by the paranoia of the Left that any criticism
of Islam amounts to bigotry. More to the point, the
lofty attitude of these self-deprecating Westerners
does nothing to support the cause of the “unbelievers” enslaved and violated by IS.
The unbelievers in question are the Yazidi religious minority, who inhabit tiny villages on the
southern flank of Mount Sinjar in northern Iraq.
They are an estimated 1.5 per cent of Iraq’s population of 34 million. The justification of the persecution put forward by IS is the Yazidis’ connection to
a pre-Islamic past. They can therefore be defined as
“devil worshippers”, a perfect sect of infidels.
Although the sex-slave trade gained momentum early in 2014, the brutal attacks of August 3
on Mount Sinjar brought the issue blazing into the
spotlight. IS fighters stormed the Yazidi villages,
separating the men from the women. The men and
boys were taken to nearby fields, forced to lie on the
ground, and peppered with automatic fire. Women
and girls were dragged into open-bed trucks, taken
to warehouses and sold at auction, often for the price
of a packet of cigarettes. It was the single largest
kidnapping of women this century.
24
One woman, who identified herself as Dalia,
gave this harrowing account of the attacks:
We woke up in the village of Hardan in the
Sinjar mountains with IS forces attacking us.
We tried to flee, but they captured us. They
brought us together in the village square and
told us if we didn’t convert to Islam, we would
die. We agreed, to save our lives, but it didn’t
help. They took the men ... They separated the
younger women from the older ones ... The IS
commanders, including Turks, Germans and
Chechens, came every day and bought one of
us females, including girls who were twelve or
thirteen.
Dalia continued with a description of her treatment after being purchased:
One day an IS member by the name of Abu
Mustafa took me so he could give me as a gift to
a Chechen member of the organisation named
Ayman. Before raping me, Ayman pulled my
hair and forced me to dunk my head in a full
pail of oil, telling me: “You are so dirty that this
is how we will purify you.” Then he imprisoned
me in his house and raped me for three days.
According to UN envoy against sexual violence Zainab Bangura, the selection process is very
specific. Girls and women are stripped naked and
scrutinised for attractiveness and breast size, and
put through intrusive virginity tests. The youngest and those considered the prettiest are sent to
Al-Raqqah, the stronghold and self-proclaimed
capital of the Islamic State. The oldest women fetch
the lowest price, and girls aged one to nine are the
most expensive. Virgins are distinguished from the
group, and have a higher price again. Age is not a
factor in sexual slavery; child rape is encouraged.
The sex-slave markets serve three key purposes
for IS. First, they attract foreign fighters. According
Islam and Modern-Day Sexual Slavery
to community leaders, a total of 5270 Yazidis were used for hangings. Other girls slice their wrists or
abducted last year, and at least 3144 are still being throw themselves out of moving trucks. Some have
held captive in Iraq and Syria. The United Nations electrocuted themselves.
recently released a report stating that over the last
One Kurdish human rights activist accurately
two years, more than 25,000 fighters from over one described the tragedy of the situation: “An entire
hundred countries have poured into the Middle generation of Yazidis has disappeared off the face
East. Most of them have infiltrated Syria and Iraq, of the earth.”
and the lure of sex slaves is crucial to the influx.
A woman who has worked with survivors of the
To maintain control, IS has developed an intri- sex trade recounted the story of Jilan Barjess-Naif,
cate bureaucracy of sexual slavery, so stringent in aged seventeen, “a beautiful green-eyed girl, with
its rules and organisation that the sales contracts rare blonde hair”. Because of her unique looks, she
are notarised by the IS-run Islamic courts. Men was separated from less attractive girls, and deemed
from deeply conservative Islamic communities, in fit for “special rape treatment”. She slashed her wrists
which casual sex is forbidden, see the promise of near Mosul, northern Iraq, in a public bath-house.
the sex trade as a golden opportunity to fulfil what When her body was discovered, it was thrown from
they believe is the will of Allah
an upstairs window into a dumpster.
while indulging in a twisted sexual
According to Yazidi nurse Amal
campaign.
the bodies of some girls
ver the last two Hasou,
The second purpose is to genwho commit suicide are thrown to
years, more than
erate a profit for IS. The markets
the dogs.
are run as a business, like the catJilan’s sister Jihan suffered a
25,000 fighters from
tle trade. There is a structure to the
similar fate. She was transferred,
over one hundred
auctions, and a limit to the number
along with a number of other girls,
of slaves one man can buy. For countries have poured to Al-Raqqah. A few days after
example, unless he is from Syria,
being subjected to the markets, she
Turkey, or a Gulf nation, a man can into the Middle East. took her own life. Their pregnant
only purchase up to three women. The lure of sex slaves is mother, who gave birth to her baby
Saudi buyers accrue transport and crucial to the influx. in a cave, was eventually freed but
food costs that other members of IS
returned home driven insane by the
do not. Therefore, they are provided
suicides of her daughters. In addiwith a higher travel quota to make
tion, IS executed six of Jilan and
their purchases profitable. Some fighters will sell Jihan’s siblings and their father, and arrested twenty
slaves back to their families for an obscene profit, other family members. Their whereabouts are still
often tens of thousands of dollars. Foreign radi- unknown.
cals are satisfied, and the Islamic State continues to
In the Syrian city of Shadadi, a thirty-four-yearbring in revenue.
old Yazidi woman was repeatedly raped by a Saudi
The hierarchy of IS is observed when the Yazidis fighter. However, she was more fortunate than the
are sold. Sheikhs are given first choice, followed by Saudi man’s second slave, a twelve-year-old girl
emirs, with fighters receiving third preference. “They who, regardless of heavy bleeding, was raped for
often take three or four girls each and keep them for days at a time: “He destroyed her body. She was
a month or so, until they grow tired of a girl, when badly infected,” the woman said.
she goes back to market,” Bangura continued. “At
The fighter kept coming and asking me, “Why
slave auctions, buyers haggle fiercely, driving down
does she smell so bad?” And I said, she has an
prices by disparaging girls as flat-chested or unatinfection on the inside, you need to take care of
tractive. We heard about one girl who was traded
her. I said to him, “She’s just a little girl,” and
twenty-two times.”
he answered: “No. She’s not a little girl. She’s a
The third prong of the sex trade is a slow genslave. And she knows exactly how to have sex.
ocide of the Yazidi “infidels” by waging a war on
And having sex with her pleases God.”
women. Putting aside the number of women and
girls who die from infections or are murdered by
he statement, “Having sex with her pleases
their captors, sixty Yazidis commit suicide every
God”, ties into the reasoning behind this
month. Terrified of being ostracised by their families because of the shame associated with rape, and human trafficking. Members of IS are explicit in
unable to bear the barbaric treatment they suffer, their justification of sex slavery: to forge a path to
many choose to end their lives. IS has forbidden Allah while adhering to the instructions laid out by
slaves from wearing headscarves, as too many are Muhammad in the Hadith and Koran. They readily
O
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25
assert that Islam is the motivation behind their
treatment of these unbelieving women and girls.
They are, in fact, proud that they are following these
teachings so stringently.
As their agenda is to conquer the world and
destroy the West by enforcing sharia law, it is
unsurprising that they cite religion as motivation.
However, Western left-wing apologists continue to
insist that the driving force is not Islam. They blame
other generalised causes of dysfunction: despotism,
extremism, and sometimes mental illness. To them,
the terrorist is the victim, not the villain; the problem is external, not intrinsic. They clamour that the
vile agenda is a disorganised, chaotic regime with
very little structure, perpetuated by lunatics.
This is most certainly not the case. The force
behind the sex-slave trade is frighteningly organised, its leaders are intelligent, and its structure is
chillingly precise. For example; last year a twentyseven-point pamphlet was released by IS clarifying
the position Islamic law takes on slavery. It explicitly states that forcibly engaging in intercourse with
non-Muslim women and girls is permissible:
Question 3: Can all unbelieving women be taken
captive?
There is no dispute among the scholars that it is
permissible to capture unbelieving women [who
are characterised by] original unbelief [kufr asli],
such as the kitabiyat [women from among the
People of the Book, that is, Jews and Christians]
and polytheists. However, [the scholars] are
disputed over [the issue of] capturing apostate
women. The consensus leans towards forbidding
it, though some people of knowledge think it
permissible. We [IS] lean towards accepting the
consensus …
Question 4: Is it permissible to have intercourse with
a female captive?
It is permissible to have sexual intercourse with
the female captive. Allah the almighty said:
“[Successful are the believers] who guard their
chastity, except from their wives or [the captives
and slaves] that their right hands possess, for
then they are free from blame ...” [Koran 23:5-6]
The answer to question thirteen gives a more disturbing answer:
Question 13: Is it permissible to have intercourse
with a female slave who has not reached puberty?
It is permissible to have intercourse with the
female slave who hasn’t reached puberty if she
is fit for intercourse; however, if she is not fit
for intercourse, then it is enough to enjoy her
without intercourse.
26
Question six reveals the Islamic State’s willingness to buy and sell women:
Question 6: Is it permissible to sell a female captive?
It is permissible to buy, sell, or give as a gift
female captives and slaves, for they are merely
property, which can be disposed of as long as
that doesn’t cause [the Muslim ummah] any
harm or damage.
It is evident that the sex-slave trade is clinically
structured, and this structure is based on religion.
There are a number of verses in the Koran and
Hadith that support the practice, most notably the
accounts that Muhammad himself kept slaves. He
also traded in slaves from Africa and other areas, as
did many other people in the Arabian Peninsula at
the time. One account (among many others), Koran
4:24, states, “And all married women [are forbidden unto you] save those [captives] whom your right
hands possess [slaves].”
This is supported by the Hadith. Bukhari
34:432 describes women captured and raped with
Muhammad’s approval. Muhammad discusses selling the women because of concerns that impregnating them will lower the price. Bukhari 62:137
accounts for women taken as slaves in battle. After
their husbands and fathers were killed, they were
raped; again with Muhammad’s approval.
T
he phenomenon of slavery in Islam is not a
recent one, nor is it only mentioned sporadically in religious texts. Islam has a long history of
trading slaves. According to Murray Gordon, the
European African slave trade was preceded by the
Muslim African slave trade by one thousand years.
As Islam expanded in the seventh and eighth
centuries, Muslim jihadists infiltrated Asia and
Africa, enslaving huge numbers of people. The
mortality rate was high, but the trade proved so
lucrative that Muslim leaders continued the human
trafficking. As the supply of slaves was constantly
being replenished, the trade grew quickly. A gargantuan network was established; slaves were also
taken from the Byzantine empire, sub-Saharan
Africa, and eventually Europe.
However, the African trade was the largest. At
least 17 million slaves were harvested from Africa,
two thirds of them women. However, these were
only the survivors; it is estimated that up to 85 million Africans died en route. Eventually, the slave
trade spread to India and Europe, with Muslim
pirates terrorising Spain, Italy, Britain and even
Iceland. Between 1530 and 1780, approximately a
million white European Christians were enslaved
by Muslims.
Even after its official abolition, slavery is
still entrenched in Muslim ideology. Rukmini
Callimachi, foreign correspondent for the New
York Times, has been instrumental in exposing the
explosive resurgence of sexual slavery, and has highlighted the inherent religious and theological motivation with evidence from escaped Yazidi girls and
women.
Callimachi revealed the horrifying network of
the trade in a ground-breaking report. “We first
became aware of [the sexual slavery] last August,
when IS took Sinjar Mountain,” she stated in an
interview.
than a disorganised system of “repetitive rape”, the
victims suffered a co-operative of organised rape
deliberately cloaked in Islamic ideological justification. Many of the Yazidis had asked their captors
why they were being subjected to such abuse. The
common response was, “You’re a disbeliever, you’re
an infidel, and what I am about to you is good for
you and it’s good for Islam. What I am about to
do to you, God will smile down on me for doing
...” The phrase used over and over again was, “I am
drawing closer to God by raping you.”
The rape itself was referred to as ibadah, meaning “worship”. The account of a fifteen-year-old girl
captured on Mount Sinjar last year, sold to an Iraqi
And very soon after, there were reports that they
fighter in his twenties, demonstrates this. “Every
were raping the women and enslaving them.
time that he came to rape me, he would pray,” she
And it sounded so crazy at the time that many
said. “He kept telling me this is ibadah. He said that
reporters, myself included, thought it must to be
raping me is his prayer to God. I said to him, ‘What
an exaggeration, that it couldn’t be true.
you’re doing to me is wrong, and it will not bring
you closer to God.’ And he said, ‘No, it’s allowed.
However, a revelation in October 2014 confirmed It’s halal.’” Another account tells of a fighter who
that the reports were true. In their official English- forced his slaves to recite passages from the Koran
language magazine, Dabiq, IS pubas he raped them.
lished an article titled “The Revival
Social media is a breeding
of Slavery Before the Hour”. This
ground
for similar IS propaganda.
onsider the evidence.
piece not only admitted to the
Israfil Yilmaz, a Dutch Islamic
Acknowledge the
trade, but unashamedly asserted
State fighter, has stated in a blog
history, the religious post that the trade has more to
that the justification for slavery was
theological.
do with the Islamic State’s agenda
texts, and the
“[It is] based on the fact that
to restore the world to the origitestament of the
[sexual slavery] is mentioned in
nal caliphate—a “pure” state of
the Koran, and that it was pracIslam—than sex. In addition, an IS
women and girls
ticed, allegedly, by the Prophet
member recently tweeted that the
who have had their purpose
Mohammed and his closest comof keeping “concubines” is
panions,” Callimachi continued. As fragile bodies bartered, to introduce unbelievers to Islam
a journalist, she has covered rape in
in an Islamic environment—teachsold, and violated ing
the Congo, Guinea, Mali, Senegal,
them the religion while forcing
beyond belief.
and other places where rape is used
them to convert. The Twitter post
as an instrument of war. However,
stated, “Many of the concubines/
the critical difference is that these
slaves of the Companions of the
perpetrators usually attempt to deny or hide the use Prophet (PBUH) became Muslim and some even
of rape, as it is seen as something shameful. IS, on [became] big commanders and leaders in Islamic
the other hand, happily admits to it and encourages history and this is if you ask me the true essence of
the practice.
having slaves/concubines.”
“Here, the Islamic State was publicly advertising
egardless of the evidence supporting the
it,” Callimachi stated.
dangers of Islamic ideology, there is a still a
Of course, they don’t use the word “rape.”
refusal by the Left to address it as the catalyst for
They don’t consider what they are doing to
Islamic terror. Many apologists turn to the usual
these women to be rape, they just call it sexual
(irrelevant) criticism of Christianity to encourage
intercourse … I just was dumbfounded that a
this reservation of judgment, pointing out that
group would admit to such a horrible, horrible
the Bible mentions slavery in the Old Testament.
This is true, but the context is very different. In
practice.
Deuteronomy, the Bible speaks of capturing slaves;
After interviewing escaped Yazidi women and passages almost identical to certain verses in the
girls, Callimachi was shocked to discover that rather Koran. However, the Bible does not treat slavery
C
R
27
as divinely ordained. Instead, it conveys slavery as
a reflection of the condition of humankind at the
time, and constantly describes “voluntary” slavery as
opposed to forced.
The greatest contrast between the Bible and the
Koran is the New Testament, in which Saint Paul the
Apostle (among others) explicitly condemns slavery,
and urges slaves to take their freedom if possible. 1
Corinthians 7:21 states, “Were you a slave when you
were called? Don’t let it trouble you—although if
you can gain your freedom, do so.” Islamic religious
texts have no such contradiction of slavery advocacy.
Pointedly, there is also no record of Muslims
seeking to end the slave trade at any stage. By contrast, it was a small group of Christians in the eighteenth century (notably John Newton and William
Wilberforce) who took the measures that led to the
abolition of the European trade. It is also relevant to
mention that the European slave trade was not justified wholly by Christian ideology. This was not (and
is still not) the case with the Islamic slave trade.
The self-deprecating of self-loathing Westerners
and the political correctness of the media have
branded any criticism of Islam as bigotry or
“Islamophobia”. The term “racism” constantly makes
a nonsensical appearance. Islam is not a race; it is
a belief system, like other religions. To insist that
showing dissent towards Islam is somehow bigoted,
while happily criticising other religions, is a double
standard.
However, the fact that most Muslims are moderate, peaceful and productive members of society
must not be ignored. The blame should not be laid
on Muslim people as a whole, most of whom look
on in silent horror at the destruction their cherished
beliefs are causing. However, this does not change
the fact that atrocities such as the sexual slavery
trade are occurring because of this insidious religious ideology. Put simply, the peaceful majority
cannot be cited as a reason for absolving Islam of
any responsibility, nor should Islam be immune to
criticism because of it.
This was impeccably demonstrated at the 2014
Benghazi Accountability Coalition Event. The purpose of this gathering was to discuss concerns associated with the 2012 attacks on the US diplomatic
compound in Libya. Brigitte Gabriel, a Lebanese
Catholic who was persecuted by Muslim radicals
as a child and is a long-time campaigner against
radical Islam, gave a stirring reply to a loaded question asked by moderate Muslim law student Saba
Ahmed.
Ahmed pointedly reminded the Coalition of the
peaceful majority. “I know we portray … all Muslims
as bad, but there are 1.8 billion followers of Islam,”
she stated, wearing a hijab. Gabriel responded:
28
There are 1.2 billion Muslims in the world
today. Of course not all of them are radicals.
The majority of them are peaceful people. The
radicals are estimated to be between 15 to 25 per
cent according to all intelligence services around
the world. That leaves 75 per cent [of Muslims]
being peaceful people. But when you’re looking at
15-25 per cent ... you’re looking at 180 million to
300 million people dedicated to the destruction
of Western civilisation. That is as big as the
United States.
So why should we worry about the radical
15 to 25 per cent? Because it is the radicals that
kill. Because it is the radicals that behead and
massacre. When you look throughout history …
most Germans were peaceful. Yet the Nazis drove
the agenda. And as a result, 60 million people
died … the peaceful majority were irrelevant.
Most Russians were peaceful as well. But
the Russians were able to kill 20 million people.
The peaceful majority were irrelevant ... When
you look at Japan prior to World War II, most
Japanese were peaceful people too. Yet Japan was
able to butcher its way across South-East Asia,
killing 12 million people … the peaceful majority
were irrelevant.
On September 11 in the United States we had
2.3 million Arab Muslims living in the US. It
took nineteen hijackers—nineteen radicals—to
bring America to its knees … and kill almost
3000 Americans. It’s time we take political
correctness and throw it in the garbage where it
belongs.
Consider the evidence. Acknowledge the history, the religious texts, and the testament of the
women and girls who have had their fragile bodies
bartered, sold, and violated beyond belief. Consider
the blatant professing of IS that state-sanctioned
rape facilitates passage to Allah. Finally, remember
that the nature of the Islamic State is, by its very
name, Islamic.
The persecution of the Yazidis, along with
other acts of terror committed by IS, are not the
fault of extremism, fundamentalism or mental illness. Terrorism is not the result of a failure by the
Western world to accommodate or understand the
“cultural differences” of Islam. To suggest this,
which many unthinking liberals do, is to trivialise
the abhorrent persecution faced by the Yazidis and
others like them. It is hypocrisy and banal appeasement at its worst. With all facts on the table, and all
excuses quashed, the rotten core of the problem can
only be Islam.
Victoria Kincaid is a journalist, screenwriter and poet.
The Student
Just hours before he went to hang himself
he smiled at me and promised poems would come,
then waved goodbye, apprentice to the word.
He lived. But in fractions. A feeding tube
uncoiling from his abdomen. His aunt
and mother held him still to shave his face.
I bent and kissed the boy. He mouthed the air
and murmured what we hoped was meaning speech.
He wasn’t fully made when he strung up
his life. His instrument was still untuned.
That was a year ago. Word comes of struggle,
as if a strangled soul would find the strength
to love what wasn’t wholly there before,
only the promised happiness of song
beyond the comprehension of the mind.
What else could explain the effort to crawl back
among the living, for whom speech is easy
but understanding never comes in peace?
Security Light
The glow outside our window is no fallen star.
It is futility itself. It is the fear of night
a neighbor burns with, nightmare of a stubborn child.
I dreamed of chasing crows in a dark of sea fog
and no wind, the chill smell of kelp and changing things,
knowing the sea’s edge and the sand met where the fish lived.
I saw the waters running out to meet the water
coming in, the small crabs lifted off their claws.
I saw the trysting place of cormorants, the cliffs
of guarded nests where eagles watched like sated kings
alive, alive at the moving sand clock of the sea
where all’s dissolved, where earth itself is taken down.
David Mason
29
R a zeen S a lly
Economic Liberalism
and Asian Vitality
I
t is easy to be gloomy about the state of liberalism in Asia. China is firmly authoritarian,
indeed more so under Xi Jinping. Democracy
has been reversed in Thailand and is under threat in
Malaysia. It is fragile in South Asia, except India,
and hardly exists in Central Asia. The Middle East
is in flames. Economic liberalisation has slowed
down since its heyday in the 1980s and 1990s, and
even stalled in some countries.
Is this gloom justified? Up to a point, but it is
overdone. There are chinks of liberal light. Their
most penetrating rays are those of the market economy, not those of democracy and human rights.
My focus is economic liberalism in Asia—for
two reasons. First because it presents a paradox: it
has hardly taken root as an idea, but it is much more
widespread in the daily lives of Asians. And second, because it is at least as important as political
or social liberalism. What matters most to ordinary
folk, rather than middle- or upper-class intellectuals, are their everyday freedoms, not least their freedom as consumers and workers. And without such
freedom, political and social freedom might be nonexistent, or not mean much in practice.
Economic liberalism as an idea
B
ig ideas on how to organise human society
originated in the West and spread to the rest of
the world via colonial conquest, trade and Christian
missionary activity. That was true of collectivist
ideas—socialism, communism and nationalism. But
it was also true of liberal ideas, centred on the individual, his freedom and his rights. Of course there
are native traditions of political, economic, legal and
social thought outside the West—most collectivist,
a few liberal. But the imperial march of European
ideas—Greco-Roman, Judeo-Christian and secular
modern—pushed them back.
Asia has imported mostly collectivist ideas from
the West. Liberal ideas spread in the nineteenth
century, mainly in British colonies, but imperial
domination triggered a backlash. Socialism and
30
communism, imported from the West and bound
up with nationalism, fuelled the native reaction to
Western imperialism. These ideas gathered steam
in the decades before post-1945 decolonisation, and
only ran out of steam several decades afterwards.
Socialism, if not communism, is still far from spent.
Of all “liberalisms”, political liberalism has had
the most mileage in Asia. Civic freedoms—rights
to free speech, assembly and association—and representative democracy have enjoyed more success as
ideas than economic freedom (the individual’s freedom to produce and consume goods and services)
and social freedom (individual freedom concerning
the family, gender, sex, the workplace, and so on).
But even political liberalism is much more contested
in Asia than it is in the West—China being the outstanding example.
Economic liberalism regained ground in the
West from the 1970s to the 1990s, especially in
the Anglosphere. Milton Friedman and Friedrich
Hayek led the charge. But it is remarkable how little
their ideas resonated in Asia. Rather, the governing
philosophy of Asian elites (to use “philosophy” in the
loosest sense) is “pragmatism”. They are not beholden
to any economic doctrine, they say; instead they
will do “whatever works”, mixing authoritarianism,
social engineering, paternalistic nudging and the
free market in different combinations, depending on
the situation, and altering the mix as circumstances
change—all free of ideological blinkers. How often
one hears such talk from Chinese Communist Party
technocrats. It is the credo of India’s Prime Minister
Modi and Indonesia’s President Jokowi. Lee Kuan
Yew shouted it from the rooftops; it remains the
Singaporean elite’s mantra.
If this were the whole story, the state of economic
liberalism in Asia would be bleak. But it is only part
of the story. In Asia, economic liberalism in practice
is far more widespread than it is as an idea; indeed
it permeates ordinary people’s lives more than ever.
The idea may be essentially Western in origin, but
its application is near universal. This is the paradox
I want to explore.
Economic Liberalism and Asian Vitality
Economic liberalism in practice
F
or most of the past millennium, Asia had predatory states that suppressed individual freedom
and enterprise. They lacked market-supporting
institutions—credible laws and enforcement mechanisms to uphold property rights and contracts, the
freedom of trade and employment, free price formation, sophisticated money markets and accountancy
standards, and so on. They repressed creative and
critical thought. And they shut themselves off from
the rest of the world. This was true in China, India,
Japan and the Islamic world. Asia’s twentieth-century experience has been similarly blighted. Think
of China under Mao, India’s “licence raj” from
the 1950s to the 1980s, Indonesia under Soekarno,
Vietnam under Ho Chi Minh, Cambodia under Pol
Pot, and Burma under Ne Win. The list goes on.
Western Europe caught up with and overtook
Asia well before the Industrial Revolution—to the
extent that Asia fell prey to European conquest.
Asian backwardness played its part, but so did the
commercial rise of the West. From the Middle
Ages, rulers of towns and cities, and then nationstates, began to treat merchants and entrepreneurs
as socially useful. A variety of market institutions
emerged to support competition and enterprise.
Markets expanded through international commerce.
These were the ingredients of successive commercial, agricultural and industrial revolutions. The
Industrial Revolution made the West really take off
and outdistance the rest—what became the Great
Divergence that lasted until the late twentieth
century.
However, Asia did have golden ages of commerce before European colonisation—China under
the Sung dynasty, India under the Mauryas, and the
Silk Route during the Pax Mongolica, for instance.
But what I have especially in mind is Indian Ocean
and South-East Asian seagoing trade over five centuries ago.
Arabs rode the monsoon winds to trade in
ports all over the Indian Ocean, reaching as far
as Chinese ports by the middle of the eighth century. Arab diasporas knitted this trading network
together from East Africa to China. As the Tales of
the One Thousand and One Nights describes, Sinbad
the Sailor, a Baghdadi trader, plied the route from
Baghdad to Canton, stopping at entrepôts along the
way. The Indian Ocean was Mare Liberum before the
Portuguese muscled in during the sixteenth century,
not controlled by any power and fully open to trade.
Coastlines were dotted with “port-polities” such as
Aden, Hormuz, Cambay (near Ahmedabad in modern Gujarat), Goa, Cannanore and Calicut (on the
Malabar coast), Aceh, Malacca (close to Singapore)
and Macassar (in the Spice Islands). These were
independent towns and cities whose lifeblood was
seagoing trade. Indian textiles, spices from the
Moluccas, Chinese silks and porcelains, were all
traded vigorously and without discrimination. As
Sultan Al’auddin of Macassar put it:
God made the land and the sea; the land he
divided among men and the sea he gave to them
in common. It has never been heard that anyone
should be forbidden to sail the sea. If you seek to
do that you will take bread from the mouths of
the people.
These port-polities had a reasonable separation of market and state, with light-touch regulation. Trade tariffs were modest—3 to 6 per cent on
imports and zero export duties in Malacca, which
also had a legal structure for trade that prefigured
the English common law. A customs judge, assisted
by a panel of local and foreign traders, valued cargoes and conducted auctions. According to William
Bernstein, the author of A Splendid Exchange, this
was “a medieval eBay in the tropics, in which good
rules attracted good traders, who in turn insisted on
better rules”.
In essence, freewheeling economic competition
flourished alongside decentralised, flexible political
institutions. Fractured geography and competing
polities combined to promote economic freedom,
growth and prosperity—as in medieval and early
modern Europe. Moreover, these were religiously
tolerant, highly cosmopolitan places. Tome Pires,
an apothecary who accompanied the founders of
the Portuguese Estado da India, counted eightyfour languages spoken in Malacca. Some portpolities had Hindu rulers and local populations, but
Muslims dominated trade. Islam spread through
trade and bourgeois example, not by the sword as it
did elsewhere.
The Voyages of Discovery, and then Portuguese,
Dutch and British colonial expansion, smashed
economic freedom in the Indian Ocean and SouthEast Asian archipelagos. Portuguese conquistadors
barged in with extreme violence and commercial
rapine—“in search of Christians and spices”. They
took control of the seas, and then coastal entrepôts,
through murder and marauding, lying and stealing.
They sought monopoly control of spices and grabbed
markets from local trading diasporas. The Dutch
East India Company did the same, only with more
ruthless efficiency. The British followed in Dutch
footsteps.
It took the Pax Britannica to restore Mare
Liberum and freeish trade in the Indian Ocean.
Stamford Raffles gave economic freedom in Asia
31
a massive boost with his founding of Singapore in GDP increased 6 per cent annually, between 1990
1819. He envisaged a “vast emporium”, fully open and 2009. And the World Bank estimates that over
to trade and capital, and to migrants seeking work a billion people escaped extreme poverty in East and
and enterprise. He was probably the first to real- South Asia between 1990 and 2011.
ise, in concrete form, Adam Smith’s vision in The
But dry numbers mask the essential story of Asia
Wealth of Nations. The British took Hong Kong just today—its unprecedented expansion of economic
over twenty years later, founding what became Asia’s freedom. What Adam Smith called “natural libother great modern free port. In the second half of erty”—the individual’s ability to exercise choice
the nineteenth century, the British Empire removed in daily economic activity—has charged ahead in
most mercantilist restrictions and allowed multi- “globalising Asia” (by which I mean East and South
lateral commerce to flourish. Chinese and Indian Asia, not less-globalised West and Central Asia).
diasporas fanned out across the empire, creating new Technological progress has helped, but its crucial
trading networks.
enabler is liberalisation—of interFree markets, the freedom of the
nal and external trade, of domestic
seas and free trade were shredded
and foreign investment, of product
emoving
again in the first half of the twentiand factor (land, labour and capital)
eth century. Asia suffered even more restrictions that repress markets.
than the West. In the 1960s, the economic activity has
These “negative” acts—removing
Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal unleashed the animal restrictions that repress economic
portrayed an “Asian drama”—
activity—have unleashed the anispirits of ordinary mal spirits of ordinary people. They
a continent trapped in unequal
exchange with the West, and mired people. They now have now have incentives to exercise their
in myriad market failures that pre“natural liberty”; they are doing so
cluded escape from poverty. Myrdal incentives to exercise with gusto and are transforming the
and other development experts their “natural liberty”. world. Peter Bauer’s descriptions of
concluded that only massive infuthe enterprise of small-scale rubsions of Western aid, Soviet-style
ber growers in Malaya and cocoa
planning and import-substituting protection could producers in the Gold Coast, penned in the 1940s,
overcome market failures and kick-start industriali- hold true of swelling hundreds of millions of people
sation, growth and development. In a cultural echo today. One sees this particularly among the aspiring
from the same period, V.S. Naipaul dismissed India younger generation. Their commitment to educaas a “broken, wounded continent”, full of “walking tion, work and self-improvement is everywhere in
skeletons”. Karl Marx, Max Weber and others had view. These are the most uplifting sights in Asia.
written off China and India, given their hidebound, What a contrast with much of the West today, parprogress-shy traditions.
ticularly in Europe!
But Asia has made a remarkable comeback over
ut there is still a long, long way to go, for most
the past sixty-five years—an Asian Drama, but
of Asia remains far behind the West. Asia is still
the exact opposite of Myrdal’s prognosis. It began
with the first generation of East Asian Tigers home to half the world’s extremely poor—almost
(Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and three-quarters of them in South Asia. And economic
Singapore), then spread to South-East Asian Tigers freedom, though expanding, remains repressed.
Repressed economic freedom is most felt in
(Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia), then to China
and Vietnam, and later to India. What started in everyday acts of buying and selling, trading and
a handful of East Asian economies fanned out all investing. Red tape—on registering property,
over East and South Asia. Markets were freed up enforcing contracts, opening and closing businesses,
and integrated into the global economy. East Asia getting licences and permits, paying taxes, getting
became the production hub of global manufacturing credit, hiring and firing workers, clearing goods
supply chains. According to Angus Maddison, in through customs—chokes producers and consumers
1950 Asia accounted for 60 per cent of the world’s all over Asia. Only four Asian countries are in the
population but less than 20 per cent of its GDP World Bank’s list of the top twenty countries in
(at Purchasing Power Parity). By 2001, its share of which to do business. Most are way down the list;
world GDP had doubled. By 2030, it should account India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Laos and
for more than half of world GDP. China has already Burma are among the worst in the world.
Asian financial markets are heavily regulated;
become the world’s largest economy (at PPP). The
Asian Development Bank estimates that output in governments still control many Asian countries’
developing Asia increased 7.5 fold, and per capita financial systems. China retains a command-
R
B
32
economy-style banking system at the heart of
an otherwise liberalised economy. Such systems
favour inefficient public-sector enterprises and
private-sector cronies, while starving the rest of the
private sector of capital. Foreign trade and foreign
investment are much more open than domestic
financial markets in Asia. But that still leaves large
pockets of protectionism—less so in manufacturing,
but much more so in agriculture and services. Finally,
government intervention throttles Asian energy
markets even more than finance. Public-sector
monopolies, price controls, subsidies, and restrictions
on exports and inward investment, are the norm.
Persistent government controls are not difficult
to explain. They have everything to do with alliances between politicians, officials and entrenched
interests with power, profits and ill-gotten gains
to defend. But how to explain Asia’s virtuous cycle
of freed-up markets, growth and prosperity? The
answer has little to do with the power of big ideas—
much less so than in the West. The explanation,
rather, is pragmatism. Leaders have changed course
when existing policies have manifestly failed—when
their economies have got stuck, or careered towards
crisis and calamity. The usual triggers are hyperinflation, mushrooming public debt, a plummeting
currency and exhausted foreign-exchange reserves.
Or it might be a famine—as in Vietnam in the mid1980s. Often a political crisis is mixed up with an
economic crisis, threatening the collapse of the state
or existing political system—as Deng Xiaoping felt
was true of China in the mid-1970s.
In such situations, Dr Johnson’s dictum applies:
“When a man knows he is going to be hanged in a
fortnight, it concentrates the mind wonderfully.” And
when those in charge have opted for market reforms,
they have copied better practice elsewhere—countries that have succeeded by opening markets and
integrating into the world economy. The South-East
Asian Tigers emulated Hong Kong, Singapore and
the East Asian Tigers. Then China copied both East
and South-East Asian Tigers; India and others followed. Deng Xiaoping launched pro-market policy
experiments far away from politically rigid Beijing,
notably Special Economic Zones in southern China.
Other cities and regions copied these success stories, and ultimately Beijing changed its policies and
rolled them out nationwide. The historian David
Landes calls this “initiation from below and diffusion by example”.
Where to from here?
P
ragmatism has expanded markets and freedom
in Asia. But no one should count on it alone to
deal with huge unfinished business. Market lib-
eralisation can easily get stuck or be reversed. In
fact that has happened worldwide since the global
financial crisis. The pendulum has swung back to
collectivism with Keynesian macroeconomics and
new micro-interventions in markets, starting with
financial markets. Asia is no exception.
The problem with pragmatism is that most
policy-makers do “whatever works” without a
compass—an overall orientation, a set of guiding
principles. That leaves them exposed to the conventional wisdoms of the day. Like big ideas, epigonal and ephemeral ideas usually originate in the
West and are exported around the world. And like
the slender Asian bamboo, those in authority sway
with the wind. In Asia and elsewhere outside the
West, they suffer from the prolonged post-colonial
hang-up of mimicry. They resemble V.S. Naipaul’s
Caribbean “mimic men”, aping whatever passing
fad comes out of the West.
This brings me back to the power of big ideas.
Economic liberals should provide a compass in
Asia, not least to counter collectivist conventional
wisdom, whether home-grown or wafting over
from the West. They should rely on the Western
intellectual canon, of course. But it would help
enormously to draw on indigenous liberal traditions. To take one example: Gurcharan Das advocates a liberal state, a free-market economy and a
bottom-up civil society in India. To make this case
he draws on dharma, a word in ancient Sanskrit
texts that connotes proper moral conduct. It provides underlying norms in Indian society. And Das
argues that it contains surprising liberal principles,
akin to the “bourgeois virtues” that enabled market
society to flourish in the West. Dharma, he says,
has limited the power of kings, infused the behaviour of merchants, and helped to spread markets
all over India.
John Stuart Mill said, “The word in season does
much to decide the result.” The “season” refers to
the real world, which one must approach pragmatically. But the “word”, in season, can change reality
for the better. What is the classical-liberal word?
It is that freedom and prosperity have bloomed
on Asian soil because government predation has
been checked and markets have been unleashed.
Limited government—a “strong but small” state
that performs its core functions well but does not
intervene left, right and centre—free markets at
home and free trade abroad: that is the “system of
economic liberalism”, as Joseph Schumpeter called
it, to which Asians should aspire.
Razeen Sally is Associate Professor at the Lee Kuan
Yew School of Public Policy, National University of
Singapore.
33
N ick C ater
Points of the Compass
Hong Kong
T
he 800th birthday of Magna Carta was only
lightly celebrated in Hong Kong, where
mental energy is generally directed to the
future rather than the past. A brief appearance in
the Eastern Court last month by a certain Donald
Tsang, however, suggests that Magna Carta remains
a steadfast force in the former British colony.
Tsang, a former Chief Executive of Hong
Kong, was charged with two counts of abuse of
public office. The charges were instigated by the
Independent Commission Against Corruption,
which began its investigations while he was still in
office. The Beijing-appointed head of the Special
Administrative Region is not, as many once feared,
untouchable.
Punctilious attention to the rule of law was not
something I foresaw in the earnest think-pieces
about Hong Kong’s future I wrote as a correspondent there in the early 1990s. Few of us around the bar
of the Foreign Correspondents Club imagined that
the crazy idea known as “one country, two systems”
would last eighteen months, let alone eighteen years.
Indeed, when I finally left the slurred conversation
at the FCC in the early hours of July 1, 1997, I half
expected to see the building surrounded by tanks
while engineers from the People’s Liberation Army
tore down the signs for Queens Road Central.
Tranquility never makes good copy in the foreign
correspondent caper, where reputations are built on
panic and disorder. The day-two handover story was
among the dullest I’ve written.
It is far too early to make a definitive historical
judgment about the transition. The Chinese, after
all, are inclined to play a long game. Yet the rule of
law may yet turn out to be Britain’s abiding legacy
to this fortunate corner of China.
The independence of the judiciary is beyond
doubt. So is the tenacity of the ICAC, which has
been working vigilantly since 1973 to protect Hong
Kong’s reputation as the cleanest jurisdiction in Asia.
The comforting news for Tsang is that he stands in
the dock under the presumption of innocence—a
34
luxury seldom enjoyed by the accused on the other
side of the border.
The China Daily, the mouthpiece of the Chinese
People’s Government, celebrated Tsang’s prosecution with a high-minded editorial worthy of the
Times of London. “Nobody is above the law,” it
thundered. “The rule of law … is the cornerstone of
democracy and no matter how one interprets it, the
law must be respected.”
A cynic might baulk at the invocation of democracy; Hong Kong’s complex election system appears
designed to take the sting out of the popular vote.
Proceedings in the Legislative Council resemble
those of a local council chamber more than the
Palace of Westminster; to all intents and purposes
the bureaucrats run the joint while Legislative
Councillors nip at their heels like terriers.
The bastardised system is hardly perfect, but the
dispersal of power and an astonishing degree of liberty have so far kept tyranny at bay in this happy
corner of the People’s Republic of China. The judiciary and the ICAC run separate gigs, each stringently independent.
The bench of Hong Kong’s Court of Final
Appeal customarily includes non-permanent judges
from other common law jurisdictions. Some 99 per
cent of cases are decided under common law, without reference to the Basic Law, the constitutional
document that took effect with the handover in July
1997.
The power given to China by the Basic Law to
overrule the Hong Kong courts on matters concerning defence and external affairs is seldom invoked,
and never in the audacious manner with which the
Commonwealth government repudiates the states
by wielding section 109 of the Constitution.
The court’s supremacy was given symbolic stature a few weeks ago when it moved from its temporary home in the old French Mission Building
to the granite, neo-classical building in the heart
of Central that was once home to the Legislative
Council.
points of the compass
“Those principles of Magna Carta I have set
out—the independence of the judiciary, equality,
respect for fundamental human rights—are fundamental to Hong Kong’s well-being,” the Chief
Justice of the Court of Final Appeal, Geoffrey Ma,
told a gathering of students in December. “These
principles underlie our Basic Law.”
C
learly I was wrong to predict the imminent collapse of civic order the moment HMS Britannia
sailed out of the harbour with governor Chris Patten
on board at midnight on June 30, 1997. Hong Kong
remains a bastion of English liberty. Edmund Burke
would be proud of it. John Stuart Mill would be
jumping for joy.
If journalists feel under pressure, it is probably
the same pressure felt in any slimmed-down, multitasking newsroom in Australia. The tyranny to
which they bow is the tyranny of deadlines.
Yet, if my rosy thesis is correct, how do we explain
the widespread anxiety about the heavy hand of the
PRC that prompted tens of thousands of polite,
educated, middle-class people to join the Occupy
Hong Kong movement last year waving umbrellas
in the streets?
The wounds to the social fabric are unmistakable. A discussion with just about anybody in Hong
Kong these days inevitably leads to brooding on last
year’s protests and the tensions they signified. The
conventional wisdom is that the change of leadership in Beijing in 2012 marked the beginning of a
more assertive China, yet it is hard to uncover concrete evidence of its impact on Hong Kong. The
most frequently cited imposition from the mainland
comes not from Beijing but from the border crossing
at Lo Wu, where thousands of Chinese day trippers
squeeze into crowded train carriages.
Increasingly, one hears a sentiment that was seldom expressed under British rule—a proud sense
of local identity. In defiance of Beijing’s jingoistic
claims of national unity and territorial integrity,
Hong Kong people cherish a culture that appears
ever more distinct.
Hong Kong is not only different from mainland
China, but also different from the former Portuguese
territory of Macau, and different from Taiwan, for
all its democracy and relative freedom. Hong Kong
should properly be included in that happy group
of territories we awkwardly call the Anglosphere,
bound by a common language and the virtues of
common law.
Why does China put up with this post-colonial
impertinence? The conventional view, frequently
expressed, is that a Hong Kong bathed in liberty
is a Potemkin village built to fool Taiwan. Come
across, it says. Everything will be fine.
The truth, I believe, is more prosaic. China lives
with Hong Kong’s system—and perhaps is beginning to love it—because it actually works. Common
law, and the security of contracts it bestows, produces the best conditions yet discovered in which
enterprise can flourish. It encourages a permissionless culture in which anything not expressly forbidden by law is allowed.
Hong Kong shares in the miracle of the
Anglosphere driven by a special notion of liberty
that took hold in a damp island on the north-western fringe of Europe and became the foundation of
a remarkable empire. Hong Kong’s dynamic, lightly
regulated, free-market economy is both a product
of liberty and is protected by the institutions that
evolved from liberty.
Britain was not the only colonial power to secure
a trading concession in China in the nineteenth
century, but it was by far the most successful. The
legacy of the former German concession in Qingdao
amounts to nothing more than a few interesting
buildings and the Tsingtao Brewery. Hong Kong,
meanwhile, with a population smaller than that
of New South Wales, is the world’s eighth-largest
trading economy. It has the sixth-largest stock
market in terms of capitalisation, the largest foreign
exchange market, and enjoys the tenth-highest
income per capita.
The Fraser Institute and the Heritage Foundation
agree that it is the freest economy in the world: free
flowing capital, free trade, free markets, and free of
foreign exchange controls. Adam Smith would have
loved this place.
Information flows freely too. I can think of no
other city in which one wakes up to find five broadsheet newspapers and a tabloid piled outside the
hotel door.
The defiant display of the Union Jack by some in
the Occupy Hong Kong movement last year was not,
as some suggest, a yearning for the colonial past. It
was celebration not of Britain, but of Britishness—
the concept that formed in the nineteenth century
to encapsulate the values of a Greater Britain. The
seed sown at Runnymede in June 1215 germinated
into a peculiarly British idea. It would grow into
the most stable and effective process for managing
shared concerns the world has ever known. It was
the foundation for the rule of law, modern democracy, enterprise and liberty. It blossomed around the
world, most particularly in the English-speaking
nations.
In Hong Kong, as in Australia, this happy inheritance provides the foundation for future prosperity.
Nick Cater is Executive Director of the Menzies
Research Centre, and the author of The Lucky Culture.
35
R icca r do B osi
The Good Migrant
A Personal View
The senator [Senator Fierravanti-Wells], who has more
than 30 years’ experience working with multicultural
groups and has close links to the Muslim community,
said the government needed to build a relationship of
trust with communities at risk.
—Cameron Stewart and Sarah Martin, Australian, October 2
I
t is 1885 and an exciting period for Australia.
The flow of foreign capital into the colonies is
strong, Hugh Victor McKay patents the stripperharvester, Sheet Anchor wins the Melbourne Cup
and the Richmond Football Club is formed.
Internationally the situation is less certain.
A New South Wales contingent of infantry and
artillery is sent to the Sudan to fight Muhammad
Ahmad, the self-proclaimed Mahdi, after he defeats
Major General Charles Gordon at Khartoum. In
South Australia, the cabinet meets to discuss the
Russian scare. Australian nationalism is on the rise
and the policy to keep Australia European—that is,
non-Asian—is in place.
Around this time, a young man named John, the
Australian-born son of a German Jew who arrived
during the gold rush of the 1850s, writes to his cousin
Leo in the United States. Leo, it seems, favours his
German heritage over his American birthright, and
this position causes John some disquiet:
To what country and people do I owe most?
To that which I have never seen, with which
I have no connection but that it is the home of
some of my relatives?
Or to that in which and among whom I was
born, have grown up, where I have learned all
that I know, to which I owe all the happiness
that I have experienced?
Shall I in return for this look upon it as a
foreign land to be deserted at the first convenient
opportunity?
No.
It is my native land. I have contracted from it
36
a heavy debt and it will ever be to me a prominent
object in some measure to repay that debt.
T
he quote resonates deeply with me. I too am
a first-generation Australian and I too felt as
a young boy a heightened sense of national feeling
equal to if not greater than that of the predominantly Anglo-Celtic children among whom I grew
up in Sydney. But why?
For my part, I didn’t see my family or me as different from the other good families at McAuley
Preparatory School—the Goulds, the Daltons, the
Malleys or the Boyds—and I didn’t know my father
spoke with an accent until it was pointed out by a
classmate in Grade 4. But different I was, apparently.
So, was my sense of national pride because of, or
in spite of the daily reminders at school that I was
an outsider, a wog? Such was Australia in the 1960s,
I was once told I was a poof because my parents
drank wine instead of Resch’s Dinner Ale with the
evening meal.
While the abuse was unpleasant, mostly it left
me confused because I was a good boy. I worked
hard, tried to be nice to others, turned the other
cheek and told the truth even if it meant corporal punishment meted out by teachers. I did as my
Mum and Dad taught me.
My parents, Giuseppe and Livia, and their families were Italian refugees from a Europe still in chaos
from the Second World War. They met on board the
ship to Australia but disembarked at different cities,
my father’s family in Melbourne and my mother’s in
Sydney. The year was 1951.
Life was tough. My father at seventeen years
of age became the sole breadwinner for his family
because his father, an engineer, could find no suitable employment and, eventually, no employment
at all. So Giuseppe, who was known as Pino, found
whatever work he could, from picking fruit to carting cement blocks, and sent the money back to his
parents. Livia at fifteen also had to supplement her
family’s income, which in part was derived from a
the good migrant
dairy cow. Livia was exceptionally bright and indus- perhaps it is not so surprising that I felt the way I did
trious and could have been and wanted to be a doc- towards Australia. Despite the hardships and alien
tor but necessity drove her to a factory job screwing nature of their new home, I remember from their
lids onto toothpaste tubes.
stories the gratitude they felt for the opportunity
Money, they had little. Hard work and determi- they had been given, and like thousands of other
nation they had in abundance. Less than eight years new Australians, make the best of it they did.
after arriving in Australia with virtually no English,
They worked and strove to benefit themselves
they were broadcasting on 2CH the very first bilin- and their families. They travelled to where the work
gual radio program in Australia as a purely com- was, not looking for a handout but just a chance
mercial venture. The program provided news and to get ahead no matter how modest. They worked
current affairs from Australia and Italy; in English hard to develop trust between themselves and the
for the Australians and in Italian for the Italians. Australians among whom they now lived. They had
For those days, it was an extraordia legal right to be in Australia but
nary achievement because Australia
this did not automatically confer
was so insular. It was a time, for
upon them any level of emotional
rust is not some
example, when olive oil was considconnection from Australians. To
vague or woolly
ered a pharmaceutical product and
think so would have been the height
concept. It is hard
could only be purchased at the local
of immaturity. It’s not unlike how
chemist.
a
parent might react to a beloved
and measurable and
daughter’s new boyfriend: “Yes, you
ike other migrants, Pino and comprises many parts, are welcome here but watch your
Livia lived through the diffi- and chief among them step.”
cult process of becoming part of the
Even though I was born here,
are honesty, consistency I too
Australian fabric of life. However,
was treated with suspicion.
and loyalty. So do It might not be fair, but there you
they resisted the attraction of living among other Italians. They
it. I looked different and I
you believe you are have
knew that their experiences would
was different until I proved otherworthy of our trust? wise. And so I did. Amongst other
not be their children’s experiences;
that which moved their Italian souls
achievements, I served for twentywould not be the same for their
four years in the Australia Defence
children. So they led by example and moved into Force including service in the elite world of Special
predominantly Anglo-Celtic suburbs in order for Forces. To its credit, the ADF at no time cared about
their children to grow up as Australians.
my background, only about the performance of my
They continued their work for the Italians and duties. I earned my place here and I have earned the
became community leaders, eventually becoming right to say my piece.
as familiar to prime ministers as they were to the
o, now let me address new migrants directly.
greengrocers. But they genuinely lived Rudyard
It is not the responsibility of the Government or the
Kipling’s lines, “If you can talk with crowds and
keep your virtue, / Or walk with Kings—nor lose people of Australia to establish trust with you. It is up
to you to establish trust with us, and this trust must be
the common touch.”
They guided the Italians and the other ethnic earned. You are guests in our home. “Yes, you are welcommunities by way of their radio programs and come here but watch your step.”
Trust is not some vague or woolly concept. It is
journalism as well as more formally through Pino’s
leadership of the Ethnic Communities Council of hard and measurable and comprises many parts, and
New South Wales. Here Pino battled self-interested chief among them are honesty, consistency and loyseparatists who wished to pursue political agendas alty. So do you believe you are worthy of our trust?
rather than employing the unifying tool of a com- As the old television advertisement once asked, “Try
this quick quiz …”
mon language—which was his approach.
Have you and your community leaders been honSuch was the contribution they made to both
Australia and Italy over the coming decades, Pino est with us, by our standard of honesty?
Have you and your community leaders been conwas awarded Commendatore (Commander) in the
Order of Merit of the Republic of Italy as well as sistent in support of Australia?
Have you and your community leaders been loyal
a Member of the Order of Australia (Honorary
Division). Livia was awarded Cavaliere (Knight) in to Australia?
Until the answer to all these questions is an unethe Order of Merit of the Republic of Italy.
Reflecting on the example set by my parents, quivocal “Yes”, you are not be trusted. To trust you
T
L
S
37
the good migrant
would be folly and in the current climate of terror,
would potentially invite disaster.
Trust by its very nature will take time, effort and
proof on your part to earn.
Which brings me to the quote by John at the
beginning of this article. To what country and people
do I owe most?
The John to whom I refer is, of course, General
Sir John Monash GCMG, KCB, VD, arguably
the most eminent and greatest Australian of all
time. Monash, the son of German Jews, who made
Australia his home, became a soldier, engineer,
lawyer and administrator. Monash, whose military leadership was so valued by King George V
of Britain that he was knighted on the battlefield;
the first time a British monarch had honoured a
commander in such a way in 200 years. Monash,
whose sheer brilliance was so highly prized that he
was being considered to replace Field Marshal Sir
Douglas Haig as the senior commander of British
Forces in the First World War, had it continued into
1919. Monash, who asked the question that is now
more pertinent that ever: To what country and people
do I owe most?
For all of us, here in the Great Southern Land,
and at this time in history, there is only one satisfactory answer to that question.
So the next time Senator Fierravanti-Wells
speaks to a multicultural group, she might like
to consider asking them first to answer Monash’s
question.
Riccardo Bosi is a former lieutenant-colonel in
Australia’s Special Forces. This article appeared as
a guest post on the Catallaxy Files website (http://
catallaxyfiles.com) last month.
Suburban Traces
The old market gardens gave way
To a modernity of sub-divisions.
Stacked tomato trellises were burnt,
Humus stripped and contours levelled,
Nearby wetlands systematically filled.
Moorhens undertook aqua-migrations,
Other beckoning waters shining.
A new compelling habitat emerged,
An ecology of function and comfort.
At night, a high polar moon glinted
From cubist glass and balconies of chrome,
Domiciles of warm domestic order.
Yet, something of the past survived, too,
Perhaps coded in the landscape’s memory,
Suggestions of a rustic origin—
Aniseed growing wild by the freeway,
Sunflowers ablaze in a suburban yard,
A filigree of antique grape-vines,
The occasional tattoo of homing egrets
Across a sky glowing blue as lupins,
That small olive grove in a local park,
A trace of umber peat on the breeze.
The Balkans
(For Ismail Kadare)
Ancestors compel them to homicide,
The long dead still conniving at death,
A moon shining like a butcher’s blade.
The village has its keeper of the blood,
A clerk of the enduring vendettas,
Liabilities in a woman’s beauty.
Falling in love can entail lethal risks.
Honour involves a calculus of murder
(There are stone bolt-holes for fugitives
Scattered like tombs across the landscape).
Islam’s onrush was envelopment,
Ustasha’s domain then Peking’s outpost,
Modern overlays on the ancient order.
History holds their malevolent code,
And the frigid screes bleed on demand
When a pale rider crosses the border.
38
Rod Moran
J en n y S tewa rt
The Politics of
European Immigration
T
he effects of the war in Syria continue to
dominate world headlines. As the European
Union attempts to come to grips with the
resulting flood of asylum-seekers, the democratic
deficits created by its political architecture are
becoming ever more apparent. Existing EU-wide
immigration policy is determined by the European
Commission, with limited input from the European
Parliament. While the Parliament is gradually
acquiring more powers, there is little prospect, even
in the medium term, of the emergence of a coherent
immigration policy that is considered legitimate by
the citizens of all EU countries.
No one knows the full extent of what is called
“irregular” migration into the EU. (Irregular
migrants are those who, whether they enter legally
or not, remain without permission.) The involvement of people-smugglers has posed huge additional challenges to an already overloaded system.
In 2000, the OECD quoted an estimate of
400,000 people smuggled into the EU per year.
The recent surge in those seeking asylum (600,000
applications in 2014 and over 700,000 by August
2015 and rising) reflects not only the consequences
of the Syrian catastrophe, but a still more complex
picture of dispossession and disadvantage extending well beyond the Middle East.
I
t is difficult to think through issues such as these,
but some observations from a policy perspective
may be helpful. Whatever one’s views on the claims
of those seeking a new life in the EU, no state can
afford to lose control of its borders. Yet if illegal
entry attracts no sure penalty, that is precisely the
situation that the EU faces. Until people are formally processed, and sometimes not even then, it
is impossible to know who is a refugee and who
is not. Policy dysfunction has only one consequence—more arrivals and bigger markets for the
people-smugglers.
The problem of dealing with uninvited arrivals
is not unique to the EU. But it is arguably much
harder for the EU to reflect the political preferences
of its citizens in these matters. The EU belongs to
no known type of state. It has some attributes of
a federation, but such vital matters as defence and
foreign policy have never been centralised. It is
called a union, and is one, in the sense that there
is free movement of goods and people within its
borders. As the hapless Greeks discovered, if you
are a member of the Eurozone, and you step out of
line financially, you will be hammered. But as the
rising tide of unregulated arrivals from Africa, the
Middle East and Afghanistan demonstrates, it is
almost impossible for the EU to devise, let alone to
implement, a common immigration policy.
Popular destination countries such as the UK
have tired of the relentless population growth
imposed by poor regulation. And no member state
particularly wants to be obliged to resettle refugees.
The short-term costs are high, and public opinion
can change overnight, particularly if the numbers
involved are substantial. Germany, still haunted by
its Second World War reputation, has announced
its intention to be generous. None of the other EU
nations has shown particular enthusiasm. In the
case of the Eastern Europeans, there is outright
hostility to the prospect of significant immigration.
The EU suffers from an asymmetry between
its geographical composition and its distribution
of wealth and political power. If Germany, as the
dominant power, were geographically on the border of the EU, we might expect that there would
be some order in the processing arrangements for
new arrivals. But Germany is not on the border—
the weaker EU states occupy that difficult position.
Each has its own problems to face. As Turkey does
little to stem the flow of desperate people from the
chaotic countries around it, Greece is one of the
states in the front line. It has few resources and little incentive to process the arrivals, and they have
no reason to stay. Italy processes thousands arriving via Libya, many of whom continue northwards.
Hungary is deeply unhappy about those who wish
39
The Politics of European Immigration
to use the country to transit to Germany, and builds immigration program, which has meant attending
walls to keep out those wishing to cross into its ter- closely to public opinion on irregular immigration.
ritory from Serbia.
By contrast, European countries have traditionally
Germany, through Angela Merkel, proclaims its been countries of emigration rather than immicompassionate heart. But it is not at all clear that gration and, as we have seen, collectively have no
the Chancellor has widespread support in taking effective mechanism for creating (or enforcing) an
this stance. Right-wing groups are rightly deplored. over-arching immigration policy. Europe therefore
But many Germans remain uncertain about the has a situation which is tailor-made for overlookchanges that large numbers of new citizens will ing the legitimate demands of so-called ordinary
require of them.
people, who are being told that they must, for the
We can all do with reminders about compas- good of their fellow man, bear the brunt of change.
sion. At the same time, those who use this lanWhatever the outcome of the immediate
guage should acknowledge that the citizens of the European crisis, the underlying policy problem will
countries where most immigrants are likely to want remain. I have no doubt that if the sentiments of
to settle, are being asked (or told) to accept far- many Europeans could be translated into policies,
reaching changes in their communities, which they Europe would run a much tougher line on immimay not have endorsed politically
gration—or at least, the EU would
in their own countries, let alone in
have a clearer and more enforcerelation to the EU as a whole.
able policy. In Australia, where the
uropean countries responsibility
The debate remains hobbled by
of the national govhave traditionally ernment for the issue is clear, and
the fear, widespread among the
political and bureaucratic elites of
we know the policy most people
been countries of
all Western countries, of politibecause voting is compulsory,
emigration rather want
cal incorrectness. As a result, any
the verdict is strong and unambiguassertion of the rights of existing
than immigration, ous—no illegal arrivals.
citizens, as distinct from those of
It seems unlikely, though, that
and collectively
newcomers, is conf lated with a
the EU will be able to summon the
have no effective
charge of racism. The sensible midpolitical will to close down peopledle ground, as always, is attacked
smuggling channels, and to keep
mechanism for
by both the Left and the Right.
them closed. The people-smugglers
creating (or enforcing) will not give in easily. As fast as one
he nub of the problem of acceptroute is closed off, another will be
an over-arching
ance is not racial, but cultural.
opened. As the Australian experiimmigration policy. ence has demonstrated, you have to
Post-war Australian immigration
policy emphasised the attraction of
be tough to make an impact. The
people who were culturally as simiincentive to attempt the crossing
lar as possible to the Australian population of the to Australia had to be reduced to zero before the
time. There was time for everyone to adapt. Greeks policy could be seen to work.
and Italians, considered exotic in the 1950s, soon
Such an objective seems out of the question for
became mainstream, as did increasing numbers of the EU. There is simply too much border country
Asian migrants from the 1980s onwards.
to attend to, and too many countries beyond the
Australia’s current migration intake, now for the EU’s borders with whom co-operation would be
most part determined by the skills of newcomers, difficult to achieve. Better co-ordination within the
is fully multiracial and multicultural, and sourced EU seems the only way. Unfortunately, the EU’s
from over a hundred originating countries. Where decision-making machinery makes even that of the
countries have taken in large numbers of particu- United Nations seem agile. It will take some time
lar ethnic groups, as the UK did in the 1970s and before expanded and professionalised processing
other countries (such as Germany itself) have done centres in the countries of first arrival can be made
for both economic and humanitarian reasons, there operational. Even then, the effect is likely to be the
have been obvious problems with integration. A attraction of still more arrivals. As this pressure
very large influx of refugees from Syria, particu- intensifies, the centres will become de facto places
larly if their resettlement is concentrated in particu- of detention—or they will simply be staging-posts.
lar parts of particular countries, will not be easily As Australians have found, the real test is whether
managed.
you are prepared to detain people offshore.
All Australian governments have been aware of
If it is difficult for the EU to go forward, is it
the need to maintain public support for the national possible for it to go back, and to restore a degree
E
T
40
The Politics of European Immigration
of national sovereignty to migration-related decision-making? There are signs that this may already
be happening. Under pressure from the German
federal states, or lander, and from adverse polling,
Angela Merkel’s “open door” line appears to be
changing. Asylum-seeker applications from residents of Balkan countries such as Kosovo will no
longer be accepted. Despite EU-level agreement to
national asylum-seeker quotas, it is widely acknowledged that these agreements will be almost impossible to enforce. But to go further and allow greater
national sovereignty in this area would involve
retreating from the Schengen Agreement which
provides for open borders and common visa rules across the EU.
enter Australia illegally. To this end, the panel recommended a range of measures including a return
to offshore processing on Manus Island and Nauru.
Despite these proposed changes, the boats continued to arrive. Indeed the rate of arrivals accelerated
over 2012 and 2013.
As the Abbott government’s experience from
2013 demonstrated, re-erecting barriers involves
even greater harshness than imposing them in the
first place. The real test is whether governments are
prepared to reduce incentives for irregular entry to
zero, by stopping boats and detaining people offshore. Perhaps the best they can do in these situations is to behave clumsily. To be
both caring and effective seems
almost
impossible.
s the Abbott
hatever the EU decides to do,
Governments like to clasgovernment’s
the Australian experience
sify, but people are unclassifiable.
experience from
tells us that this is not a game for
Governments must figure out how
nuance. When Malcolm Turnbull
determine goals and then pro2013 demonstrated, to
became Prime Minister, it was
gram organisations to achieve
re-erecting barriers them. People-smugglers and their
reported that the people-smugglers,
sensing a possible opportunity from involves even greater clients, on the other hand, are infithe accession of a potentially more
nitely adaptable. People-smugglers
harshness than
soft-hearted leader, were offering
have a very clear goal, whereas in
cut-price passages on the boats. As
practice the policy and adminimposing them in
the Rudd government discovered
systems that constitute
the first place. The istrative
when it dismantled many of the
“government” are multi-valent and
real test is whether chaotic. Toughness and compasHoward-era policies, once a workable method of deterrence has been
sion, fairness and efficiency vie for
governments
found, you change it at your peril.
prominence, operating on a number
are prepared to
Even mandatory onshore detenof different axes. The policies that
tion of asylum-seekers while claims
enact these values, and the periodic
reduce incentives
were processed had little impact on
re-adjustments within and between
for irregular
the numbers of arrivals.
them, constitute the fundamental
entry to zero.
With boat arrivals continuing to
reason for the chaotic behaviour
increase, the Gillard government
of the asylum-seeker system as a
attempted several solutions. The
whole.
first, the Malaysian solution, involved an exchange
In the longer run, only improved governance in
of Australian asylum-seekers for Malaysian- the desperate countries from which these desperate
based refugees registered with the UNHCR. This people come will be decisive. But it is a fatal error
proposal was defeated when the High Court ruled to assume that these same countries must be taught
that, as Malaysia was not a signatory to the Geneva lessons by Western militaries or rescued by Western
Convention, appropriate treatment of asylum- aid-givers. Improved governance can come only
seekers sent to Malaysia could not be guaranteed.
from within. As ever, the countries of the West will
By now desperate, the Gillard government continue to be drawn to the fatal flame of intervencommissioned a special panel to recommend a new tion, retracting only when it becomes obvious that
solution. This, the “no advantage” solution, was they have made matters worse, or when the public
premised on the view that asylum-seekers should refuses to keep paying the bills.
enjoy no advantage over those who were admitted in the conventional way (that is, through the Dr Jenny Stewart is a Visiting Fellow, and was
UNHCR and the planned refugee intake). In this formerly Professor of Public Policy, at UNSW
way, it was reasoned, there would be no incentive to Canberra.
W
A
41
Patrick M organ , A ndrew B ilinsk y, Tom S witzer
Appeasement and Vladimir Putin
An Exchange of Opinion
H
I: Patrick Morgan
ow embarrassing for Tom Switzer! The
Russians, whose views he has recently been
providing excuses for, have let him down. Just after
he wrote in the October Quadrant that Putin’s “foreign policy has been reactive and defensive”, merely
protecting his own borders, Putin has expanded his
pattern of aggression by moving his military might
into the Middle East, hardly part of Russia’s “near
abroad”. And just when Switzer has written that
Iran’s “capacity to overturn the international order
is exceedingly limited”, Iran is sending troops into
Syria to further destabilise a theatre of war not in
Iran’s bailiwick.
How did Switzer get it so wrong? First, because
he keeps writing the same article imposing a preconceived “big picture” foreign-policy template onto
events, irrespective of the changing facts on the
ground. And, more importantly, because he fails
to understand Putin, by naively believing that what
Putin says are his motives are his motives. With
Putin it is not his changing rationalisations which
are important, but his unchanging personality.
Switzer argues, following the fashionable US
“new realist” school of thinking, that the West—
the US, EU and Nato—have caused the present
imbroglio by acting aggressively since the fall of
communism, by expanding Nato and the EU up
to Putin’s doorstep, which has forced him to act
defensively to reassert hegemony over his buffer
states. This of course just happens to be Putin’s
own rationalisation—funny, that. The reality is
that between the fall of communism and the rise
of Putin. the West did everything it could to help
Russia and Eastern Europe recover—money and
advisers from the IMF, World Bank and elsewhere
were poured in, Russia was welcomed into the G7
and G20 to assist its move back into the comity
of nations, and no military action to cripple it was
taken by the US or Nato in those years when it was
vulnerable. It was not Nato but the former satellite
42
countries which were clambering to expand Nato
by getting into it, because they knew from hard
experience they needed protection from an uncomfortable neighbour, the family from hell, and they
were right to do so. Contra Switzer, Russia was
mollified by the West after 1989, Russia has been
the aggressor and the West the rather meek reactor.
Switzer ignores all this because facts on the ground
are not his territory. He enjoys endless Spenglerian
speculation on motives and perspectives at which
he considers himself an overnight expert, having
no previous track record of knowledge of this part
of the world.
Take one matter which Switzer naturally
has amnesia about. In the mid-1990s Russia and
Ukraine signed a pact in which Ukraine, encouraged by the West, agreed to surrender its nuclear
stockpile and to allow Russia to retain its Crimean
naval base, in exchange for a guarantee that Russia
would respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity. In this
agreement Ukraine had to surrender two assets,
which made it more militarily vulnerable, whereas
Russia had to surrender nothing, except abide by
standard international norms. Russia has twice torn
up the agreement, by its incursions in Crimea and
the Donbas. This history flies in the face of the neat,
self-proving Switzer narrative of Western pressure.
Switzer never discusses the internal situation
in Russia, for good reasons, because if he did, he
would understand Putin’s mentality and the wellsprings of his foreign policy. Putin allows no opposition—anyone who shows the slightest signs of
dissent is threatened or loses his job, or is stripped
of his wealth, or imprisoned, or forced abroad, or
deported, or imprisoned, or mysteriously murdered. Putin’s biographer Masha Gessen says he
has one message: “Don’t mess with me, or …”—in
other words he is inherently aggressive in his very
DNA. You don’t need complex international relations theory to understand this. He is a common
garden Leninist-Stalinist of the KGB variety, for
whom brutal power and domination is a first and
only resort. He is scared of the Russian people, so Russia has made no effort to repatriate them, nor
he can’t allow them a free election.
to pay their welfare and settlement costs abroad,
One principal reason for Putin’s moving on a formidable financial burden for poor countries
Ukraine has nothing to do with buffer-state con- like Kazakhstan and the Baltic states, while Russia
solidation. East Europeans are now free and enjoy- has been rolling in oil and gas revenues. When the
ing building up the economy and stability of their Soviet Union collapsed, 90 per cent of Ukrainians
newly liberated nations. And they know how to voted for independence, and polls over the next two
get rid of oppressors by conducting a spontane- decades have reinforced this view. Now a quarter of
ous non-military national uprising from below, a century later Russians abroad are not going home
as with Solidarity in Poland and
for obvious reasons—in Russia
the Maidan movement in Kiev.
you are not free. They have been
(Switzer wrongly calls it a “coup”,
gradually
assimilating in their new
ith Russia’s
which just happens to be Putin’s
homelands with few problems and
crumbling
term for it.) With Russia’s crumcomplaints. They were not calling
infrastructure, poor for Russian help, until a few years
bling infrastructure, poor living
conditions and lack of freedom,
ago when Putin artificially started
living conditions
Putin cannot allow contented states
up such a campaign. Instead of
and lack of freedom, feeding them with food and shelter,
next door, as the contrast gets
greater as every year passes. Switzer
Putin cannot allow Putin is feeding them with highseems oblivious to Putin’s internal
powered television disinformation.
contented states
drives, which co-ordinate with and
Revisionist academics have in
explain his external ones. He treats
the past argued that the US was to
next door, as the
Ukraine as he treats his Russian
blame for the Cold War. Now their
contrast gets greater “realist”
opposition, with threats, physical
successors are arguing that
as every year passes. (guess who?) the US and the West
intimidation, economic strangulaare to blame for the present troution, and ultimate dismemberment.
Switzer thinks of everything
bles in Eastern Europe. In all Tom
from the aggressor’s—Russia’s—point of view. But Switzer’s recent writings in the Australian and elselet’s look at it from a victim’s—Ukraine’s—posi- where a mono-causal prejudice reverberates like a
tion. From 1920 to 1945 Ukraine had unwanted liturgical mantra—the West is the aggressor, the
Soviet terror of an unparalleled kind, first a delib- West is wrong, and the West is to blame.
erately induced famine which killed millions, then
the Nazi-Soviet pact which caused the borderlands Patrick Morgan published an article on Ukraine in the
of Poland and Ukraine to become the bloodlands, September 2014 issue.
with the Holocaust following the Holodomor, then
back to “normal” imperial domination from 1945
to 1990. The crucial point since is that Russia has
II: A ndrew Bilinsky
never apologised and compensated Ukraine for all this. Russia has had no lustration, it is in denial We cannot stand by when the sovereignty and
over these horrors. Worse, Putin wants to revive territorial integrity of a nation is flagrantly violated.
—President Obama on Russia’s actions
the Soviet Union, and instead of sympathising
in Ukraine at the UN General Assembly,
with Ukraine’s fate and repairing the damage, he is
September 28, 2015
repeating the dose by moving in for a second bite.
And Switzer is providing for Western eyes a rationwas surprised that Tom Switzer needed Quadrant
ale for him to do this.
to be another vehicle for his already well-proPutin has recently complained that 25 million
Russians now living outside Russia are being moted pro-Kremlin geopolitical views, where it
badly treated, so he will act as their protector concerns Ukraine.
Mr Switzer sees no problem in President Putin
and saviour. Let’s look at this problem since 1989.
These 25 million were not visitors or tourists caught disregarding international law and has no issue
overnight in 1989 by events, but the sinews of a when it comes to the numerous international treabrutal invading imperialist army and bureaucracy. ties Russia has violated and is still violating. He
When communism collapsed whole Soviet talks about geopolitics and the grievances that
formations were abandoned by Russia, their pay Russia has suffered with the dissolution of the
cut off, and they had to fend for themselves, or USSR. This dissolution President Putin regards as
find their way home if they wanted to. Since then the biggest tragedy of the twentieth century. That
W
I
43
the Kremlin murdered millions of Ukrainians who
The Minsk agreements have been ineffective,
resisted or were regarded as possible enemies of with Russia and its proxies constantly breaking
the ruthless communist regime that was thrust on them and even gaining more territory at the time of
them is a somewhat more significant tragedy.
signing. This occurred with the battle of Debaltseve.
Does Mr Switzer remember that President Every day long-range guns and rockets provided by
Putin denied any involvement in the takeover of Russia are killing Ukrainian servicemen, volunteers
Crimea, then later admitted he had been planning and civilians. During lulls in fighting, Russia has
it all along and handed out medals to his invad- been busy shipping armoury to its proxies and its
ing army? Now President Putin denies his people regular Russian forces inside Ukraine to test its latare in Ukraine, when the world knows they indeed est weapons. Russia is now building new military
are there. There are spy satellites hovering above bases near the Ukrainian border.
that can see what is happening on the ground. The
When it comes to the issue of President Putin’s
corporations who had been doing business with desire to protect Russian speakers in Ukraine, it is
Russia would never accept sanctions without good worth noting that over 60 per cent of Ukrainian
evidence of Russia’s transgressions.
forces fighting in the Donbas are Russian speakNato has been liaising with Russia for years ers. Most Ukrainians are bilingual, as Russianand has posed no military threat to Russia, and language use has come from ruthless Russification
as events have shown, it has neither the armoury programs and ethnocide of the Ukrainian people by
nor the desire to confront Russia.
the Russian empire and the USSR.
The West has even been supplyThere was no coup in Ukraine in
ing military technology to Russia’s
2014. The military was not involved,
rom what and
armed forces. Former countries of
and President Yanukovych, who in
whom are the
the USSR and its former satellites
his time had brought kleptocracy
have joined Nato. Having experito a breathtaking art form, fled for
Russians to be
enced life under Kremlin control
Russia at his own volition.
protected? How
they requested Nato membership.
The situation that led to
There has been no existential threat
President
Yanukovych’s departure
exactly has Russia
to Russia because of their choice.
is well known. Peaceful street probeen threatened?
The 1994 Budapest Memoran
tests were sparked by Yanukovych’s
dum guaranteed the territorial
refusal, after two decades of negointegrity and borders of Ukraine,
tiations, to sign an agreement that
an agreement signed by the US, UK and Russia was to commit Ukraine to economic, judicial and
with much fanfare in exchange for the handing financial reforms and to converge its policies and
over of Ukraine’s nuclear arsenal, the third-biggest legislation with those of the European Union. This
in the world.
refusal followed years of relentless economic and
It is difficult to imagine how the Russian political incursion by Russia. This background
Federation, the biggest territory in the world by to the Maidan protests is something Mr Switzer
far, should feel itself encircled. Why should Russia disregards.
need a buffer state to protect it when a tiny counPresident Yanukovych’s use of deadly violence
try like Estonia does not? Russia can set up buffer to disperse the protests, resulting in many deaths
zones on its own territory if it needs to. And from and serious injuries, galvanised the population
what and whom are the Russians to be protected? and members of parliament against his regime.
How exactly has Russia been threatened? It could European mediators came to negotiate between
not be by Ukraine, as it had already been effectively President Yanukovych and opposition parties, at
disarmed by the Yanukovych regime.
which time Yanukovych agreed to stay on and call
As late as early 2014 a majority of Ukrainians early parliamentary elections.
showed no desire to join Nato. It was after the batI am sure if Mr Switzer had some idea of
tle of Ilovaysk in Eastern Ukraine in August 2014 how elections took place in Ukraine at the time
that the attitude of Ukrainians towards Russia and of Yanukovych’s election he would not use words
Russians changed markedly. During that battle such as “democratically elected” so readily. Fraud
Russian forces slaughtered some 400 Ukrainian and blatant vote-buying were rampant. Soon after
soldiers who had been assured of safe passage dur- his election, Yanukovych incarcerated the opposiing their retreat. It is no surprise that Ukrainians tion leader, Yulia Tymoshenko. So much for his
have never been as united against Russia as they democracy!
are now. Today a large majority of Ukrainians are
Ukraine is good real estate and a rich country
aspiring for security within Nato.
that since the dissolution of the USSR has had
F
44
its potential robbed by oligarchs aided by corrupt
politicians enjoying parliamentary immunity from
prosecution. The newly democratically elected
Poroshenko government is now seeking to eradicate
this kind of corruption. With Russia undermining
the Ukrainian economy with the war, their reform
task is akin to repairing an aeroplane while it is in
flight.
The apologists for Russian geopolitics in the
Western media and in Western universities and
think-tanks do no service to the Ukrainian people, whose sons and daughters are dying in the
Russian invasion of Ukraine. Their views also show
no respect for the principles of international law.
Ironically, such apologists enjoy freedom of speech
that is denied to their academic and journalist
counterparts in Russia.
The Kremlin has an army of trolls on its payroll
in the West and in Russia spreading disinformation. This propaganda is designed to fool the citizens of the Russian Federation and the West, and
unfortunately a section of Western academia and
media are taken in by it.
Just like Australians, Ukrainians have every right
to determine their future and not be set up as some
sort of “buffer state” for an imperialist neighbour.
As an Australian citizen, with no other allegiances
or passports, I consider Ukraine to be fortunate to
have the support of the Australian government to
counter the invasion by Russia.
Andrew Bilinsky is the Chairman of the Ukrainian
Association of Sydney.
S
III: Tom Switzer
orry for sounding like the pub bore, but let me
remind Patrick Morgan and Andrew Bilinsky
that a failure to deal with the world as it really is
obstructs clear thinking about international relations. So too is a refusal to bring commitments
and power into balance and to put yourself in
your adversary’s shoes and see the world from that
perspective.
Morgan and Bilinsky instead rely on wishful
thinking. They do not recognise the limitations of
Western powers in a region where no US army has
fought. Nor do they take into account the sensitivities of a (declining) great power in an area that has
been in Russia’s sphere of influence for centuries.
This is a foolish and dangerous way of conducting
foreign policy.
From the outset of the Ukrainian crisis in
February 2014, foreign-policy realists like me have
tried to explain Moscow’s response to what most
Russians deem a genuine threat to their nation’s
vital interests. If we understand their motivations,
their conduct is easy to understand, which is not to
say we have to like it. But we do need to understand
what caused this crisis if we are to have any hope
of resolving it.
Like most Russians, including Boris Yeltsin
before him, Putin viewed years of Nato and EU
expansion, culminating in the commitment to
move Ukraine out of Moscow’s orbit and integrate
it into the West, as a direct threat to Russia’s core
strategic interests. If Putin were an aggressor bent
on recreating the former Soviet empire, why hasn’t
Russia invaded Kiev or even all of the Donbas?
Where is the evidence he had decided to take
over Crimea before the pro-Russian government’s
downfall on February 22, 2014? Morgan and
Bilinsky never ask, let alone answer, these questions, and they deny that Washington did back
the protesters, which helped escalate the crisis and
topple President Yanukovych, who was democratically elected.
Morgan and Bilinsky imply that the end of the
Cold War a quarter-century ago has meant the end
of power politics. If only the West would line up to
declare our solidarity with the little bloke and decry
the interference of big bullies who deny countries
like Ukraine the “right to determine their future”.
But such self-righteous indignation ignores an old
truth of geopolitics. Great powers, as University of
Chicago professor John Mearsheimer has pointed
out in Foreign Affairs, live by different rules than
minor ones and are acutely sensitive to threats in
their neighbourhood. There is nothing “new” about
this realism: it is the way the world works, and
always has. Did the US allow communist Cuba to
form a military alliance with Moscow and invite
the Soviets to put nuclear weapons in the Western
hemisphere? Will the Chinese allow Taiwan to
declare its independence?
Morgan and Bilinsky highlight the sanctity
of the (non-binding) 1994 deal: in exchange for
relinquishing Ukraine’s nuclear arsenal, Russia
would respect its territorial sovereignty. Never
mind that great powers—including the US—
have a long record of breaking promises as well as
international law. Washington promised Moscow
that in exchange for a reunified Germany’s inclusion
in Nato twenty-five years ago it would not expand
the Cold War pact east of Berlin. And never mind
that since the elected Ukrainian government was
overthrown by violence in February 2014, Moscow
believed with good reason all negotiations with
Kiev became nullified, because it was no longer
seen as a legal government. Morgan and Bilinsky would be well advised
45
to stop thinking as Wilsonian idealists and start that Russia is taking on the very Sunni jihadists
thinking like hard-nosed strategists. If they did, that the US and its allies have declared as a grave
they would recognise that Putin has a deep-seated and present danger which must be degraded and
interest in getting Washington and Brussels to destroyed.
back off from trying to integrate Ukraine into the
I am a friend of the Ukrainian people, not an
West and in making it instead a
adversary. A policy of a neutral
neutral buffer state. They would
Ukraine that many other realalso recognise that the West has
(such as Mearsheimer, Henry
ists
he Minsk accords
no interest in confronting Russia
Kissinger, Stephen Walt, Stephen
of February 2015
militarily in an area where Moscow
Cohen) advocate would lead to a
can help ensure a
has a huge tactical advantage in
stable and maybe even prosperous
both conventional and short-range prosperous but neutral Ukraine and greatly reduce any
nuclear forces, and where the
chance of war. It is designed to do
Ukraine that does
balance of resolve favours Russia,
good for Ukrainians of all stripes
because it cares much more than
not threaten Russia and put an end to the civil war. The
the West about Ukraine’s future.
Minsk accords of February 2015 can
and allows the US help
As for Syria, Morgan says
ensure a prosperous but neuRussia’s power play undermines
tral Ukraine that does not threaten
and its allies to
my belief that Putin’s conduct has
and allows the US and its
repair their relations Russia
been defensive and reactive. Not
allies to repair their relations with
with Moscow.
true. The Western powers have
Moscow.
sought to topple the Assad regime,
But the solution of Morgan,
which is Russia’s only ally in the
Bilinsky and other hyperventilating
Middle East. (Morgan should consult a map of the pundits will cause Ukraine to be wrecked, which
old Ottoman empire: it is much closer to Russia will inflict massive pain on the divided Ukrainian
than he suggests.) Putin fears that if Assad falls, people. Moreover, it runs the risk of causing a war
Russia’s presence in western Syria and its strategic between two nuclear powers. The choice, you would
naval base on the Mediterranean will be gone. think, is obvious.
That is why Russia is flexing its military muscles in
western Syria. And by reaching an understanding Tom Switzer is research associate at the University
with Damascus as well as Tehran and Baghdad to of Sydney’s United States Studies Centre and host of
share intelligence about Islamic State, Putin shows Between the Lines on the ABC’s Radio National.
T
Streetbird
Brush turkeys have migrated from the brush
to take up their new habitat with us
like pigeons must have once
and sparrows who share coffee.
They peck on asphalt now.
Megapodes don’t need
their giant feet for this.
But something’s sad about them,
unconnected to a place where they were wild once,
the peaty earth their own, leaf mounds,
stars on forest nights
exchanged for this concrete.
46
Nana Ollerenshaw
From a Place with a View
The world is not falling apart.
The world quickens in disaster.
The world wobbles roundward,
sweeping the highest pasture.
Near Lake Solitude, it slows,
self-righting like a boat.
The world keeps a campfire burning,
though the flame is hard to trust
if you come at it to gloat
or catechise. Come lost.
The world is a world wherein
winged and tendrilled things,
deeper than people are,
will have their way in the end,
and the end will be shift, not disaster.
We all die of wounds, and the sounds
of earthborn death chants rise
to the steadfast scudding sky,
flushing a column of pelicans
trailing torn white clouds,
and crows black as graves.
Child at the Bay of Fires
Shelly Beach Sunday
A girl climbs in the scarred pandanus, a boy
digs a moat in the sand, a yellow sail
glides on the swell, gulls and terns hang
blithe behind the surf, then hit like bombs.
Banksias hold the dunes. The girl in the branches
shouts I am king of the castle, you dirty rascal
and the boy hollows out the shape of his first name.
From a bench on the clifftop carved in memory of
Edwin Edwards, 1918–2007, Enjoy His View
where a southerly onshore wind tangles my hair,
I see light on the water lift all kinds of blue—
nacre making a mirror of the hard world’s edge,
aquamarine in the shallows, sapphire beyond reach.
A tinny pitches on the swell, bow-backed surfers bob.
The lucky ones will catch a perfect break
while those attending to the burning shore,
in the arms of trees, moulding fortresses of sand,
though sun-dazed, stare faithfully at the sea
for a shadow on the blue, dark-fused and not our own.
She squats with her little drum
shaded by a melaleuca,
then runs to the flame-hard
rocks where water bugs skate past
clouds flowing in the pools,
where blunt-snouted blennies dart
Cally Conan-Davies
among anemones and soft corals,
where the tide combs
and knots the giant kelp,
then drops her heart
murmuring to the bottom of the sea
where it cools by a thousand degrees
the blue glass cities and the gulper eels,
until cracks in the ancient dark pound out
the beat switched on by her brand new
running feet.
47
J ohn C a r roll
A Renaissance in
Popular Culture
T
he discontents of our time lie squarely in
the domain of life-meaning—or rather, in
a feared lack of it. Unbelief shadows the
post-church, secular West. Once faith waned in
the existence of a higher divinity guiding human
affairs, as it has for most who inhabit the modern
world, the central metaphysical questions rise to the
fore. These are the questions of where have we come
from, what should we do with our lives in order to
make sense of them, and what happens when we die.
Doubt becomes pervasive, if mainly lurking beneath
the surface of everyday life; grey replaces black and
white; absurdity and futility threaten; and anxiety
mounts.
The central and difficult truths require answers,
for which the primary resource is personal experience. Personal experience is itself framed and articulated through shared images and stories supplied by
the wider culture. There, it is art in the broad, taking
account of changing times, that helps us understand
the world we inhabit, and our place within it. The
issue then becomes, which works of contemporary
art stand out in terms of finding a language that may
speak to the times? Indeed, are there any?
In High Culture there have been precious few.
The mainstream of literature, philosophy, art, and
the newer media has, since the late nineteenth century, waged war against the traditional view of the
role of culture, as responsible for providing people
with ways of understanding their lives, celebrating the triumphs, making sense of the tragedies.
Modern High Culture has been militant in its hostility to absolute truth; to the pursuit of the beautiful;
and to the assertion of any universal good. Painting
and sculpture exemplify, in their turn against the
authority of the Old Masters, deconstructing the
human condition into a blur of abstract squiggles
and blotches. Once art abandoned the human narrative—recounting stories about real people subject
to life’s trials—it largely lost its mission. Today, it is
barely alive, kept moving by its dismal and terminal
motive—a desire to shock.
48
By contrast, Popular Culture has taken seriously
the timeless challenge of culture, and furthered it,
giving surprising birth to a Renaissance. On occasion it has reached Shakespearean heights, through
virtuoso scripting, acting and dramaturgy. It has
taken on the big meaning questions, successfully
pressing at the frontiers of our understanding.
There is no necessary separation of the two cultures. Indeed, Western culture began in ancient
Greece with texts that were both widely popular and
of great aesthetic sophistication—led by Homer’s
Iliad and Athenian tragic drama. They became
“classics” in a panoptic sense. Shakespeare continued this tradition.
Where has this popular modern art of singular
quality appeared? Not in the cinema, which had its
golden era in the 1940s and 1950s; not in the popular novel nor in pop music; not in contemporary
art galleries; and not in free-to-air television. It is
American cable television that has been the generative source, predominantly through Home Box
Office (HBO). To my mind, two productions stand
out, peerless in a broad milieu of high quality that
also includes Mad Men, Treme, Breaking Bad, True
Detective, House of Cards, Game of Thrones, Suits and,
many would add, The Wire. Let me consider these
pre-eminent two.
A
s much as the temper of an age may be read
through the most insightful works of the imagination that it produces, and it can to a significant
degree be so read, then the last two decades may
come to be typified by The Sopranos. Over six cable
television series (a total of eighty-six episodes running from 1999 to 2007), the lead character, Tony
Soprano, wrestles with his ordeal of unbelief, and
loses.
At the outset, in the first episode, Tony is suffering from panic attacks. He collapses unconscious—in a symbolic rehearsal of death. The first
attack occurs after a family of wild ducks, which
has settled in his home swimming pool, flies away.
A Renaissance in Popular Culture
He has welcomed the arrival of the ducks with won- interest in finding someone to show him the way.
der and elation. He even wades down into the pool The one pale substitute is his psychoanalyst, and
in his dressing gown towards the ducks, the scene part mother confessor, Dr Melfi, but the program
replaying baptism images from Renaissance paint- makes clear that she effects no reforming change
ing. Tony is in search of rebirth, of some kind of in him, except for unwittingly providing him with
metamorphosis that will bring enchantment into his some smart psychological tricks for better controllife. The ducks represent a family that has grace—a ling others. The Sopranos is dismissive of the modern
freedom, innocence and beauty that his own family Socratic hope for redemption through knowledge,
lacks in his own eyes.
or more precisely the hope of becoming a better and
In rational, objective terms Tony should be happier person through gaining self-knowledge.
mightily satisfied with his life, leaving aside that Here is one marker of its contemporary relevance.
he is the local Mafia boss. He has a family, which
Tony is only fully alive in violence. When carried
he handsomely provides for, living in an opulent away in surges of rampaging aggression the blood
suburban mansion; he is the most powerful male flows, and he feels great. It is only then that he
around, one feared by everybody he encounters; he transcends the depressing demands of the day—for
is a brilliant and very successful leader of his gang; which Dr Melfi has him on Prozac. After flexing
he has made himself rich; and he
his Mafia muscles, which ultimately
is attractive to women, whom he
means committing murder, he finds
seduces with careless abandon. But
e is haunted by a he doesn’t need his medication. His
he is haunted by a pervasive sense
is a case of what Georges Sorel, in
pervasive sense that 1906, lauded as therapeutic violence.
that all these things are somehow
tainted, and not as they should be,
Unlike Don Quixote, Tony does
all these things are
not right. They lack the special qualnot need an extravagant fantasy
ity that he projects onto the ducks. somehow tainted, and to activate him. He is not seeking
not as they should
What should be sacred in his world
something to believe in. Nor does
is mired under a profane fog.
he
feel he lacks drive from within—
be, not right. What absence
He fantasises that in previous
of passion is not his probshould be sacred in lem. His quest is rather for a world
generations the Mafia was glorious,
guided by a chivalric code of honhis world is mired that is enchanted, and right. The
our, whereas today it has slumped
the ducks live represents a quiet
under a profane fog. way
into sordid and cowardly mediocand calm order, exemplary of what
rity. We see enough of Tony’s father
is natural, and of how things ought
to know that the son’s nostalgia
to be. If only a magic wand could be
is delusional; a conclusion that is reinforced when waved over New Jersey.
Tony visits Naples seeking his roots, only to find the
Tony is driven spontaneously and impulsively
Italian Mafia in an even more decadent state than from within—the most powerful impulse being
its New Jersey offspring. On another occasion, sit- anger, which erupts sporadically. Lust and a yearnting in the local Catholic church with his daughter, ing for enchantment also drive him. The cost is that
Tony rhapsodises about the craftsmanship displayed once the blood cools he is back with his existential
in the stone carving, a care and capacity for qual- despair. In the opening episode, Tony’s second panic
ity that has been completely lost in contemporary attack occurs in a nursing home, collapsing at his
America—the beauty has flown from the world.
psychopathic mother’s words: “people come here to
In his quest for meaning, Tony also flirts with die”.
the small-g gods of sociologist Max Weber, the least
In The Sopranos, the ordinary members of society
bad solution to the meaning problem in moder- are fascinated by life in the New Jersey Mafia gang,
nity. At the finale of the first series, as Tony sits at and especially that of its leader. Whenever Tony’s
dinner with his family, he tells them warmly that own psychoanalyst meets other analysts, whether
these intimate moments are the ones that matter, socially or professionally, they eagerly probe the
this is what life is all about. But the tenderness is nature and doings of her patient. The culture of
forced, the cosy glow a Romanticised indulgence counselling is one of therapy and care, mediated by
that is quickly forgotten. In the last episode of the the relentless, unflappable calm of the analysts as
last series, sitting in a diner, again with his family, they politely massage human nightmare, for hour
a scene accompanied by strong signals to the viewer after carefully-minuted hour. In this television
that he is about to be assassinated, his son has to series, it gives way to a near-pornographic leering at
remind him of what he said on the earlier occasion. a man who respects no rules, who has brute power,
Tony does not yearn for a saviour. He has no and who will, without a blink, exercise it. After Dr
H
49
Melfi has been raped, she fantasises that Tony is the
only man capable of avenging her. Her husband is
too civilised—code for emasculated.
The show hits a modern nerve here, for Melfi
stands proxy for the viewer, who sees and judges
Tony Soprano, in the main, through her eyes. The
program taunts: perhaps you the viewer are drawn
to Tony because of the very proclivities in him that
have become too much denied in your own obsessively orderly, civilised and comfortable life. Tony
is the fantasy alter ego, compelling and horrifying,
presenting an ultimate ambivalence—If only I could
be him; but nothing would be worse.
Tony Soprano is categorised by some of the
psychoanalysts as a “sociopath”, a person who can
inflict grievous harm with no bad conscience, but
who is morally conscious of what he is doing. And
indeed he is difficult to place. For long phases within
the television series, the audience tends to quite like
him. He is a strong family man. Much of the time
he is an engaged father, loving his daughter, and
doing a pretty good job as father to a very difficult
teenage son. He is attached to his wife, in spite of
regular clandestine affairs; and he is warm to her
whenever he sinks into a melancholy questioning
of the meaning of life, which happens regularly.
He has masculine virtue, as a fearless leader of the
gang—quick-witted, insightful into the motives and
intentions of others, a peerless capacity for strategic
thinking, and for fast and decisive action. He has
strong affection for the key gang members, although
he can be ruthless if they are weak, or if they betray
him.
A benign reading of Tony’s appeal might posit
that the full life requires living and acting in the
world; such a life inevitably includes the winning
and utilising of power; and it includes a need for
adventure and risk. Modern middle-class life is out
of balance: it is too secure; too well insured and
protected from danger; too bureaucratised; in short,
it is too genteel. Hence it sets up a craving for the
opposite—in the imagination. Tony Soprano satisfies that craving.
The tougher reading is that viewers are titillated by the fear that many people—perhaps even
they themselves—harbour a fragment of something
similar to Soprano viciousness inside. The audience unwittingly identifies with Tony, who arouses
deeply buried strains of sadism in it, universal ones.
Viewers take pleasure, at an imaginative remove, in
the powerful act of inflicting pain. Violence is violence, and it can be seductive.
The program engages with this discussion, by
including a few psychopathic mobsters. They are
contrasted with Tony. There is, for instance, Ralphie,
who in a fit of rage bashes his own girlfriend to
50
death, after she has questioned his manliness in
front of others. Ralphie, who lacks any normal feelings of human warmth and attachment, is excited
shamelessly by sadistic cruelty.
I
n my view, a second cable program ranks equally
with The Sopranos. Deadwood, also made by HBO,
ran for thirty-six episodes between 2004 and 2007.
The setting is a frontier gold-rush camp bereft
of civilised order: life is a struggle for survival in
which power is the only law, and the powerful are
driven by greed, lust and sadism. Deadwood provides a laboratory for studying the human condition in secular times. It casts its characters into a
world of Hobbesian anarchy, stripped of all security
and predictability, and it observes how they behave.
Produced at the same time as the later series of The
Sopranos, it puts a contrasting interpretation of the
quest for ultimate meaning in the modern world.
Al Swearengen is the central character. He runs
a bar-room brothel. He has no illusions about life,
having deliberately left places of comfort and stability farther east, for an elemental Darwinian frontier
where there is no moral law, where everything is
permitted, life is cheap, and men survive on their
wits and their capacity to mobilise effective violence—Swearengen beats women and kills men, and
does so mainly unblinkingly, without conscience.
His central ambition is to survive. He explores his
own thoughts in long Hamlet-like monologues
devoted to reflecting on life, human character and
the strategies he needs to employ whenever new
threats appear, which they do regularly throughout
the series.
Swearengen gains satisfaction from acting as the
de facto head of the town, directing events, keeping
balances, and outsmarting those who challenge his
power. An ironic detachment from life, a freedom
from illusion, and a formidable practical intelligence
combine to make him a kind of political genius,
able to see through the motives of others, and plot,
chess-like, the sequence of moves he needs to make
in order to get his way.
In spite of his own cold-blooded brutishness,
he displays some care for his staff, who all love
and admire him. He grudgingly likes some other
inhabitants of the town, whom he treats with a
bemused but harsh indulgence. Through his own
complex personality, and the precarious civic order
that he manages to preserve, he makes possible
acts of selflessness that shine as beacons of hope
through a ghastly medieval nightmare. Deadwood
has space for human goodness. Charity is embodied
in half a dozen wilful, strong-minded and eccentric characters. These include the gentlemanly Wild
Bill Hickok, his devotee Charlie Utter, a manic
doctor, the drunken man-fearing Calamity Jane, quent monologues querying the sense, some delivSwearengen’s favourite whore Trixie, the gold-miner ered to the head of a dead Indian chief that he keeps
Ellsworth, and the proprietor of another brothel close-by in a box.
Joanie Stubbs.
The good characters are engagingly likeable—
The Deadwood camp is a society without beauty. partly because of their raw honesty of perception
The streets are awash with mud and excrement, and acidly-expressed opinion, and a warm, comwhich soils the garments of everybody who crosses panionable, derogatory banter they trade amongst
them. Corpses are fed in full public view to the local themselves. There develops an unspoken code of
Chinese boss’s pigs. The communal meeting-places respect and trust loosely binding them, a code of
are bars, brothels and gambling houses—or combi- honour that is the more intense and admirable
nations of all three. These places are stocked with because it flourishes in an entirely unsympathetic
semi-naked, unwashed and malodorous prostitutes environment. A strange type of epic heroism rises
who are treated like cattle—as, for instance, when out of the slime.
they are examined for venereal disease.
The abiding sense left by the series is of the
When the richest mining magnate in the world power of human potential—of the capacity in some
arrives he buys the hotel for his accommodation, individuals for a resilience, craft, benevolence and
smashes walls down to give himself
empathy that blesses them with
more space, but does not bother to
a kind of nobility of soul. What
repair the damage—this is not a
he abiding sense might be called “redemptive” here
town in which one wastes energy on
resides in the character of the choleft by the series
pleasant decor. The language spoken
sen individuals, and how they act
is of the power of
spews out of the sewer—a constant
within the harsh circumstances into
staccato of foul swearing (the main
human potential— which they find themselves cast. It
reason the series was never shown
is to do with being, with the quality
of the capacity in
on free-to-air television). Odd
of the “I”, and with the way its prescharacters try to maintain a con- some individuals for ence resonates in the world.
trasting decorum by speaking with
The casting and the acting work
a resilience, craft,
wooden Puritan formality, or florid
to brilliant effect, conjuring up a
benevolence and
Victorian pomposity. Deadwood is
Dickens-like vividness of character.
a wasteland.
script, led by the Swearengen
empathy that blesses The
Yet, the series Deadwood is
monolog ues, often achieves
them with a kind
uplifting. It paints a world without
Shakespearean virtuosity. Finally,
god or moral law, viciously misogywhat
engages the viewer is a comof nobility of soul.
nist, centred on a town that floats
posed story—an aesthetic form
on mud and shit, murder, drunkwoven out of the rough and greasy
enness, gambling and prostitution, with a pig-sty wool of actual everyday life, in just the same manner
serving as the combined funeral parlour/cemetery. as Sophocles wove Oedipus the King.
Four of its endearing characters—Utter, Jane, Doc
Deadwood is an ideal measuring stick for caliand Ellsworth—are explicitly cast without style, brating the religious in post-church modernity. In
elegance or refinement. Swearengen has charisma, its world, individuals struggle to negotiate their
but he generally appears with greasy hair, unshaven, lives without the help of any externally provided
dressed in a dirty and crumpled suit, or in his under- supports—not church, not community, not moral
wear, drinking heavily, urinating, or abusing one of law or legal system, and not even shared customs
his prostitutes as she performs fellatio on him.
and civilities. By implication, where these supports
So, wherein lies the redemption, the signal of do exist in the actual contemporary West their contranscendence? There is a rugged, irrepressible vital- tribution to existential meaning is illusory, as Tony
ity in this town. Life is stripped of its canopy of Soprano also discovered.
comfort—customs, rituals, pastimes, pleasantries
The question that arises is, once all the consoling
and sociability—and above all stripped of the nor- and securing illusions have been stripped away, what
mal illusions and hopes that buoy individuals along is left, what survives? Deadwood works with the
their mortal journey. There is no hiding the vicious- ugly—the brutish, the squalid, and the profane—as
ness and the vice that infests the human condition the base human reality, and examines whether any
when it is reduced to its lowest common denomina- green shoots emerge from the mud. What it discovtor. Everyone in Deadwood lives close to the exis- ers is that half a dozen individuals of strong chartential bone, often driven to question the why and acter throw themselves into the fray with relish, a
the wherefore. Swearengen leads, with mordant elo- wry smile, and a defiant sticking to principle, and
T
51
with loyalty to those with whom they feel affinity—
those whom they judge good. They are like a chosen
band, although they themselves would baulk at such
language.
The chosen endow the category of “goodness” or
“virtue” with an absolute quality—they will die for
it. They are all, however, secondary players in the
drama, performing as a kind of Greek chorus. This
does not make them lesser.
Al Swearengen is the central, most intriguing
and compelling figure. His character is different.
Swearengen achieves moments of goodness, for
which the chosen band love him. But he is not a
good man, far from it, nor does he strive to become
one. He does take some covert pleasure in being
liked for his generous acts.
Swearengen’s story is rather that of the solitary
journey. His monologues, both in their content,
and in what they represent, indicate that he is on a
quest. The quest has something to do with taking
on very difficult circumstances, and wrestling his
way through, not shirking any difficulty or conflict,
using his wits, his will, his nerve and his charm. He
is contemptuous of the weak, the pretentious and
those who live on false hopes and misty illusions
(except for his protégés). While pitching himself
into the fray, he yet retains a sceptical detachment.
He provides a running commentary as he goes,
reflecting on the sense of it all, and where he might
find some small gratification.
If we blinker out the extremity of the setting,
one that requires an extremity of character in order
to survive and to prosper, Al Swearengen stands as
an ideal of how to live in secular modernity, if a
tarnished one whose acts are at times inexcusable.
He lives without the need of redeeming illusions,
yet maintains confidence in who he is and what
he does. At the same time, he is an altogether different character from the absurdist anti-heroes of
the mid-twentieth century, such as Albert Camus’s
Meursault, from the 1942 novel The Stranger.
Swearengen feels no need to postulate some metaphysics of human dignity in the face of an absurd
and indifferent universe. He is much more vitally
engaged with life than that, and thereby represents
a strong negation of modern pessimism.
S
o what may we conclude? Both The Sopranos
and Deadwood cast their central characters in a
milieu stripped of all civilised costuming and props,
one in which there are no binding rules—everything is permitted. These characters are driven by
an elemental human striving for power—power over
necessity, in order to survive, power over others, and
power as an energising buoyancy in itself. Both men
are shrewd, clear-eyed realists.
52
But Tony is discontented, yearning for a magic
light to shine down, illuminating a circle around
him. Instead of finding enchantment, however, he
experiences the world that engages him spiralling
out of control. His son withers into suicidal failure; his appointed successor becomes a heroin addict
whom Tony himself is driven to murder; his gang
disintegrates; and even his own pleasures sour.
What Tony is missing is the blessing that comes
upon the chosen band in Deadwood. In his craving
for what lacks, he is given, on occasion, to sentimentality—a sugary overblowing of an imagined reality,
in desperate hope that something might be there.
Swearengen is not misty-eyed; he accepts things as
they are. Life is endowed with a mysterious value,
and not cast over by the shadow of the “big nothing”, as Tony Soprano’s mother refers to death. The
magic wand has been waved over his world, bringing with it what used to be called grace. This is simply good fortune for those on whom the light shines.
It is not a reward for some virtue of character. And
where there is virtue of character, it tends rather
to follow from the grace. Swearengen gains a zest
for life, if a mellow and wryly ironical one, and an
affirmation—a riposte to Soprano bleakness.
Grace is a religious term that is perhaps even
more pertinent in secular times than in earlier, more
explicitly religious ones—ones that were more confident about the existence of powers beyond, ones
with the capacity to confer blessings. That God, and
multiple gods, have, for most, departed the human
world, does not mean that all mystery and wonder
have vanished with them.
The two works considered in this essay, springing out of what might loosely be termed popular
culture, speak today, to times that are focused on
everyday life, as lived relentlessly in the here and
now. They take up the big meaning questions of
what to do in order to make sense of a life, if that is
possible; how to find some fulfilment, if that is possible; and how to move and act free of the shadow of
death, which threatens as the big nothing. They do
this with more insight, originality and evocativeness
than anything else. By any criteria, they are works
of the first rank.
The Sopranos and Deadwood present an either-or,
between two paths in a world without clear external reference points. Soprano and Swearengen share
much in common, yet the difference between them
makes all the difference. And it is given; not chosen.
One might say that it is fated; not won. Such is the
nature of a blessing.
John Carroll is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at La
Trobe University. His website is johncarrollsociologist.
wordpress.com.
The Harder Job
(for Tina and Paul Kane)
Love gives to some the harder job,
to some the easier. And it doesn’t
seem to be those who love the most deeply
who always get the harder job,
or the easier. It isn’t love
which gives us our work, but raw, cold
chance, which may strike the beloved in an instant,
or slowly grind the dearest one
down and down to death—for some,
sure as an execution in the morning, all the
pardons gone, for some it may be
years from now. Meanwhile, extreme
suffering, as in war, without war’s
malice. When you have joined, for life
and beyond it, with the one whose presence
touches you profoundly with your luck, it is not so much
hard to love even more through the worst—
an illness which dismembers, which silences—
as impossible not to. If there were music
for this, it could be a late ferocious
quartet, or an opera—its almost screaming
anguish. It is not a devised torture
to have to watch the dearest one
there was, or is, or will be, lose
everything, attribute by
lovely skill, speech and motion and
eventually breath. And look at him
as he looks at her, it is as if
love is a particulate light,
which his gazes, which the silver fibers of his lashes,
move toward her. And when you look
head-on at him, when his hands are on
the pinion-stubs of her wheelchair handles,
it is like looking at an archway through which
is visible a pure shining,
a power stronger than anything—
unable to heal her, unable to keep her
here, the fierce workings of love—which is
the means by which we exist, and the reason we exist.
Sharon Olds
53
S tev en K ates
Drawing the Wrong Conclusions
Two Diagrams That Fooled the World
L
et me state at the start where this is heading,
since it may not be apparent from the way it
begins. Two of the great intellectual disasters
of our age are Keynesian economics and anthropogenic global warming (AGW). For both there is a
theory which most of the specialists in each area
take to be an unshakeable truth. For Keynesians,
it is the belief that aggregate demand is the single
most important factor determining the level of output and employment. For those who accept AGW,
there is the so-called “settled science” that greenhouse gases will over the next half-century lead to
an upwards movement in global temperatures with
a series of ecological calamities to follow.
Both theories have had a single diagram that
has provided the conceptual framework on which
millions have built their understanding of what’s
involved. In economics, it has been what is known
as the Keynesian-cross diagram that relates aggregate demand to the level of current production. For
AGW it has been what has become known as “the
hockey stick”, which shows temperatures more or
less flat for the past thousand years until the beginning of the twentieth century, after which they rise
dramatically with no peak in sight.
If these diagrams presented a genuine understanding of the facts they supposedly portray, there
would be value in their wide acceptance. But neither
does. Both are so deeply flawed that it remains a
scandal that neither has been finally put to rest and
the theories they support discredited for all time.
The catastrophic role of diagrams in
economics
O
ne of the great catastrophes to overtake economics was the utilisation of the diagram in
place of words. Even more than mathematics, which
still requires an economist to think about things, a
diagram produces restful disengagement. The picture replaces thought. If you are trying to convince
others about your theory, and you can draw a dia-
54
gram to explain it, you are more than halfway there.
This is what I wrote about this modern trend in my
book Defending the History of Economic Thought:
The argument in earlier texts was carried in
the words and not in the manipulation of lines
on a graph. In a modern text, there is almost
invariably some graphical apparatus presented
that one learns to manipulate. The diagram
provides a way of looking at things that gives a
kind of precision to the underlying reality that
just may not be there. A modern text will tend
to present a kind of stability in equilibrium
different from the kind of message earlier
economists were trying to convey ...
Using diagrams in the place of argument
and reason changes the nature of economic
instruction and tends to make such
instruction more superficial. By teaching price
determination as if it is merely about a meeting
point between two lines when such lines have no
existence and no one setting a price ever knows
where they are or even thinks such concepts
are of any direct relevance, we may be leaving
students less capable of truly understanding the
logic of economic action.
Both micro and macro are saturated with
diagrams that are seen as essential for an
understanding of the conceptual framework
being taught. Students who are instead
compelled to explain such matters without
diagrams but using the logic of the situation
are very different kinds of students and become
better economists as well.
A diagram tends to lull someone into a false
sense of comprehension. It becomes the reality, and
the world the diagram is supposed to describe falls
backwards into the shadows.
The two diagrams here discussed—Michael
Mann’s “hockey stick”, used to demonstrate the
devastation caused by global warming, and Paul
Samuelson’s depiction of aggregate demand in a
diagram he devised back in the 1940s—have already
cost us an unbelievable amount of communal wealth
and have warranted an immense transfer of purchasing power from the community to governments,
which continues without much likelihood of cessation. I start with the hockey stick, since it is now the
subject of a wonderful and hilarious book by Mark
Steyn called A Disgrace to the Profession.
The hockey stick
T
he hockey stick was put together by Dr Michael
Mann of the University of Pennsylvania. Based
on data culled from analysis of tree rings across the
past thousand years, the diagram shows virtually
no increase in planetary temperatures until around
1900, from which time temperatures rise sharply. It
showed what many dearly wished to believe, that
something happened after 1900, and that the something that happened was the rise in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere
that then led to a rise in global temperatures. The
hockey-stick metaphor is thus based on the notion
of a long steady period followed by a sharp upwards
trend, in the way that the blade at the end of an
ice-hockey stick rises at the end of the shaft. Let
Scientific American take up the story, from an article
in 2005 when climate scientists were still attempting to defend Mann’s work:
The work of Mann and his colleagues achieved
special prominence in 2001. That is when the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC), an international body of climate
experts, placed the hockey-stick chart in the
Summary for Policymakers section of the
panel’s Third Assessment Report. (Mann
also co-authored one of the chapters in the
report.) It thereby elevated the hockey stick
to iconic status—as well as making it a bull’seye. A community skeptical of human-induced
warming argued that Mann’s data points were
too sparse to constitute a true picture, or that
his raw data were numerically suspicious, or that
they could not reproduce his results with the
data he had used. Take down Mann, it seemed,
and the rest of the IPCC’s conclusions about
anthropogenic climate change would follow.
That led to “unjustified attack after
unjustified attack,” complains climatologist
Gavin A. Schmidt of the NASA Goddard
Institute for Space Studies. Although questions
in the field abound about how, for example, treering data are compiled, many of those attacking
Mann’s work, Schmidt claims, have had a priori
opinions that the work must be wrong. “Most
scientists would have left the field long ago,
but Mike is fighting back with a tenacity I find
admirable,” Schmidt says. One of Mann’s more
public punch backs took place in July 2003, when
he defended his views before a congressional
committee led by Senator James M. Inhofe of
Oklahoma, who has called global warming a
“hoax.” “I left that meeting having demonstrated
what the mainstream views on climate science
are,” Mann asserts.
And mainstream these views certainly are, most
importantly through their promotion by the IPCC
and Al Gore. After the IPCC’s 2001 report the
hockey stick became (along with stranded polar
bears on an ice floe) the most important so-called
demonstration of the supposed reality of climate
change. The diagram has wormed its way into the
consciousness of millions who know nothing about
climate science, but believe the planet is heating and
its temperature rises must be controlled.
But as the article shows, even by 2005 there were
sceptics aplenty. The most important moment came
when Michael Mann crossed swords with Mark
Steyn. Steyn is one of the great climate change sceptics. In an obscure post at National Review Online he
wrote a comment that will make no sense without
some knowledge of the background. This is what
Steyn said:
If an institution is prepared to cover up
systemic statutory rape of minors, what won’t
it cover up? Whether or not he’s “the Jerry
Sandusky of climate change”, he remains the
Michael Mann of climate change, in part
because his “investigation” by a deeply corrupt
administration was a joke.
This vague association with Jerry Sandusky led
Michael Mann to sue National Review and Mark
Steyn for defamation. Sandusky, like Mann, was
at the University of Pennsylvania. Sandusky was
convicted of statutory rape while employed at
UPenn but the university’s initial investigation let
him off the hook. And it was in this vague association between himself and Sandusky that Mann
believed he had been defamed. It is a case that has
now dragged on since 2011. You can catch up on the
legal side of it if you don’t know the details by visiting the SteynOnline website, but the insanity of
the American justice system may remain the most
bizarre aspect of this entire process.
And so we come to A Disgrace to the Profession. In
order to make use of the immense amount of material he has collected on Mann, which he intends to
55
take up with Mann as part of the legal discovery
process, Steyn decided to put together a volume
filled with all of the criticisms of Mann’s hockey
stick that have been made, not just by amateurs and
observers such as Steyn and most of us, but also by
actual climate scientists. And what a rich field this
turned out to be, full of evidence that leaves the
hockey stick utterly without credibility. No scientists who wish to keep their credibility intact will
go anywhere near it.
Steyn originally went along with his other
defendants at National Review in playing the legal
system with a straight bat. But after one example of
legal insanity after another, in which the process is
the punishment, he broke away and is now running
his defence on his own, and running it in the court
of public opinion at the same time as the case makes
its way through the glacial and costly American
judicial system. And bearing in mind that Steyn is
being sued for defamation, there is something very
unusual in that he describes Mann in print as “Mr
Fraudpants” and runs articles with titles such as this
on his website: “Michael E. Mann: Liar, Cheat,
Falsifier and Fraud”. In such posts we find the kind
of quote that Steyn’s book is filled with. The following was written by Dr John Christy, the scientist
who created the satellite temperature record, someone one might take as an authority:
Regarding the Hockey Stick of IPCC 2001
evidence now indicates, in my view, that an
IPCC Lead Author, working with a small
cohort of scientists, misrepresented the
temperature record of the past 1000 years
by (a) promoting his own result as the best
estimate, (b) neglecting studies that contradicted
his, and (c) amputating another’s result so as to
eliminate conflicting data and limit any serious
attempt to expose the real uncertainties of these
data.
It takes someone like Dr Christy to see through
it all and explain the problem with authority. Most
people, however, will only know what they are
shown by the IPCC and Al Gore and in the media,
which seldom discusses the views of sceptics. Thus
millions have been convinced by this diagram and
think it is the gospel truth beyond challenge. If and
when the discovery over Mark Steyn’s defamation
case ever takes place, the cross-examination during
“the trial of the century” may end up being more
closely watched round the world than the trial of
O.J. Simpson, with a great deal riding on the outcome. Although they are no friends of Steyn’s on
climate science, the entire media establishment in
the United States is lining up with Steyn, since an
56
adverse judgment will leave every journalist in the
world vulnerable to defamation in doing no more
than just reporting the news.
The Keynesian-cross diagram
Y
et for all that, the single most damaging diagram in the entire history of the sciences is,
without any doubt, the Keynesian-cross diagram.
It has been depriving economists of the ability to
make sense of economic events since it was first
published in the first edition of Paul Samuelson’s
Economics text in 1948.
The idea of honouring this diagram occurred to
me when Mark Steyn described A Disgrace to the
Profession as “the story of the 21st century’s most
famous graph and the damage it has done both to
science and public policy”. Ah, I thought, but the
present century is still young and although the harm
the hockey stick has undoubtedly caused may already
be calculated in the billions, the harm Samuelson’s
diagram has done may be calculated in the trillions.
For those unfamiliar with the Keynesian cross,
it shows an upward sloping aggregate demand curve
which reaches equilibrium where it crosses the fortyfive-degree line at a level of national income well
below the level of production that would employ
everyone who wants a job. The answer, therefore, is
an increase in public spending which pushes the line
upwards and therefore pushes the equilibrium level
of production along the horizontal axis to the right
which then allows everyone to find a job.
So in the diagram we have all of the elements
of spending, by consumers, investors, governments and those overseas net of imports—that is,
C+I+G+NX. The total level of spending is the total
level of national output, GDP, represented by the
letter Y. So when the economy goes flat, and aggregate demand is down, the government can restore
GDP and raise employment by increasing its own
spending. All this is shown by the diagram which
has been used in classrooms around the world for
three generations and where the increase in public spending is shown by the increase from G1 to
G2. Equilibrium then rises from Yu to Yf, with Yf
being the full employment level of output while at
Yu unemployment was unacceptably high.
Other diagrams of the same sort are now more
popular—what are termed in the trade IS-LM and
AS-AD—but the core message is the same. You
can cause a line on a curve to shift by raising public
spending and the result is a higher level of Y. The
higher level of Y, the higher the level of employment. Everyone learns it if they have done even a
single economics course, and in spite of what some
economists like to pretend, this remains the theory
C, I, G, X, M
Y
C+I+G+X-M
(NX)
AD2 = C+I+G2+(X–M)
AD1 = C+I+G1+(X–M)
45°
Y
Yu
Yf
The Keynesian-cross diagram.
near-universally accepted in dealing with recession.
As a result of this belief, when the Global Financial
Crisis struck, the automatic and near-universal
response across the world was to increase public
spending or find some other means, such as lowering interest rates, to raise the level of aggregate
demand.
The policy has, of course, never worked, but the
trillions of dollars of public sector waste have drained
our economies of astonishing levels of wealth, keeping our living standards well below their potential
since Keynesian theory finally took its grip of the
economics profession. The thing is, the diagram
seems so reasonable since everyone translates it into
what would happen in a single business. If there is
an increase in demand for some product, efforts will
be made to produce and sell more of whatever it is.
The problem is that you cannot translate this
across to the entire economy. Sales in an economy
occur because buyers have produced other products
somewhere else and received an income for their
efforts. The purchase has therefore already come
with a contribution to the total amount of goods
available for sale. Although the aggregate contributions to production and the subsequent purchases
are so massive that it is impossible to keep track, in
a market economy demand in total is made up of
supply in total (unless what was produced did not
match what others wished to buy). Everyone once
knew that. Now almost the whole of the economics
profession denies it absolutely.
Thus, with Keynesian deficit spending, there are
more units of output that buyers are trying to buy
than there are units of output that have been produced. And the result is that across the economy
there are individuals who find themselves unable
to buy as much as they expected. Ultimately, rather
than increasing demand and employment, the result
is a fall in real demand and employment.
Or to put it another way, it is one thing to argue
that as total output grows across the economy the
level of demand will grow. More output leads to
more sales. That is just economics and ought to
be obvious. It is quite another thing to argue that
as demand grows, the level of output will grow
to match the demand, that spending by itself will
magically create the goods and services to buy. This
is a cargo-cult mentality and fundamentally wrong.
Yet that is what virtually every modern economics
textbook now says.
And whether others can see the logic or not,
the reality, time and again when these Keynesian
experiments have been tried, is high rates of unemployment and a slowdown in growth. We have seen
experiments in public spending and deficit finance
across the world since the GFC, and in not a single instance has an increase in public spending led
to an upturn in the economy and a return to full
employment. The British Labour Prime Minister
James Callaghan said in 1976 at the height of the
Keynesian-induced Great Inflation:
We used to think you could spend your way
out of recession and increase employment by
boosting government spending. I tell you, in all
candour, that that option no longer exists. And
57
in so far as it ever did exist, it only worked on
each occasion … by injecting a bigger dose of
inflation into the economy, followed by a higher
level of unemployment as the next step.
And why did he and millions of others think it
was even possible? Because they could draw a line
on a diagram, increase the level of G, see that the
new equilibrium was at a higher level of GDP and
then assume that the economy would behave in
exactly the same way.
I have written my own book on the disgrace to
the economics profession, now in its second edition.
It takes apart Samuelson’s piece of beguiling illogic.
Keynesian theory is itself the height of junk science,
which has never on a single occasion allowed an
economy to raise its level of production and return
an economy to full employment. It has, instead, led
governments to pour their trillions into one wasteful project after another, of which green energy is
only the latest, but far from the most expensive,
example.
Economists who use any of these Keynesian diagrams starting with Samuelson’s are throwing sand
in their own eyes. It is almost impossible to explain
to someone who has been taken in by these graphs
why they have been so badly misled. No stimulus
has ever worked but we still teach the diagrams that
say public spending will bring our economies out of
recession and give us strong and balanced growth.
Who could believe that after what has gone on since
2009? Yet they do. A disgrace the diagram may
be, but what is even more disgraceful is that the
entire profession continues to accept a theory that
has never worked. This diagram has corrupted the
understanding of more individuals than any other
diagram in human history.
Drawing to a close
W
e live in an age of science, so if you are going
to be deceived, you will be deceived in a scientific way. No one has the remotest possibility of
checking on any of the scientific facts all of us accept.
The universe began with a big bang. Humans have
descended from apes. The sun is mostly hydrogen.
The list goes on. We believe, as has probably always
been the case, because everyone else believes as well,
but also for most of us, what we believe hardly matters in the slightest in the way we lead our lives. But
we do know that this thing called “science” works
since we are surrounded at every turn by the wonders it has created.
Thus, if scientists come along and tell us that
greenhouse gases will cause the polar ice caps to
melt, raise sea levels and disrupt our civilisation, we
58
are apt to listen. And then, when they provide us
with a diagram that shows, using scientific methodologies, that these problems exist and need to be
dealt with as a matter of urgency, we pay attention.
Just as we did back in 1999 when computer scientists
told us about how the new millennium was going
to cause massive global disruption in our computer
networks.
The cost to us personally is immense in believing such things if they are untrue. AGW may turn
out to be the greatest scam in history. “Hide the
decline” is a phrase known to all who are dubious
about the science, but either unknown or ignored
by those who accept the conclusions and the need
for action.
With Keynesian economics, the power of diagrams is immense, coming as they do with equations,
computer models and extensive extrapolations. They
are, moreover, found in virtually every macroeconomics text in the world. Government outlays in the
trillions of dollars have been based on these theories
and models, yet the evidence that there is actually
a fiscal lever attached to any part of the economic
apparatus remains scant indeed. If the theory is not
right, we are costing ourselves immense amounts of
wealth and are blighting billions of lives by denying a large proportion of the world’s population the
kinds of living standards entrepreneurially-driven
businesses can bring. Because of Keynesian analytics, productive businesses continually find themselves competing with governments for these funds,
or worse, finding governments passing on billions
to their crony capitalist associates who deplete our
wealth in dismally unproductive ways.
And this is where AGW overlaps with Keynesian
theory. Both are built on explaining the harm that
must follow by leaving things to the market. Both
are aimed at suppressing individual freedom in order
to overcome the problems a market economy supposedly creates. It is the powerful wish that these
theories are true that drives their adoption in the
face of massive evidence that they are wrong. Actual
scientific truth cannot withstand such beliefs.
Governments are now spending immense amounts
on green energy and other such programs to combat
a problem that may not even exist. AGW has now
met Keynes in another way, since Keynesian economics provides a warrant for governments to spend
at prodigious rates. Unless both sets of theories are
recognised as utterly without foundation in every
important respect, they will be our certain economic
ruin.
Dr Steven Kates is Associate Professor in the School
of Economics, Finance and Marketing at RMIT
University.
Across the Pyrenees
We had to change. Iberian rails
were a wider gauge. The tricorn hats
of the Guardia Civil glared in the rain.
Their submachine guns glared, and that’s
how we knew Franco was still alive.
The sleepy passengers packed in,
leaned on baskets or thigh to thigh
as steel on steel made a lurching whine
and we were moving through the night,
the Spanish night, the civil war
of books fresh in my memory
and in the looks these faces bore,
till a man whose thin, unshaven face
was wan with sleeplessness pulled down
a bota full of wine and squeezed
a long stream into his open mouth
and smiled, passing the bag to me.
It was my first goatskin of wine.
He showed me how to tip my head
and squeeze the skin until a line
of fruit and sunlight filled my mouth
with a sweat and leather aftertaste.
I passed the skin to a young girl
across from me who wore a chaste
black sweater, but drank the wine
in a long, slow, practiced pull
and shook her pretty head and laughed.
The old man called it “blood of the bull,”
slicing slabs of cheese with a knife
while his plump wife busied herself
paring apples from a plastic sack
she’d taken down from the luggage shelf.
These too were passed among us, bread
and wine, cheese and fruit, and I
had nothing to offer my companions
but a word of thanks they waved away.
Agony Aunts
A custom begun as eighteenth century
question-answer column for men, until a gentle-woman, asking if ladies
could also submit inquiries, was assured
her questions would be taken seriously.
UKs best known, Dear Marge, was Rebecca Marjorie Proops, OBE. Almost as popular, mid-wife Claire Rayner, referred to as: the opposite of a shrinking violet—
a swollen rhododendron, even described herself as a stubborn old bag, offering her signature empathy: done it myself, lovey.
For anonymity, readers often
adjective-signed letters—
Sincerely, Confused.
Fictional Mrs Mills, of the Sunday Times,
gave humorous bad advice: get a new best friend—
she is obviously sleeping with your husband. In the US, Ask Ann Landers (aka Ruth Crowley),
lived on, after her death, in
Esther “Eppie” Pauline Friedman Lederer,
who won the column, in a contest.
Eppie’s twin sister, Pauline Esther “Popo” Phillips,
(who said: marriage must be permanent,
even when disturbed by masculine lunacy), started Dear Abby, permanently estranging the twins.
Obviously, they never wrote each other for advice.
Joe Dolce
Yes—it happened many years ago
in the passing dark of northern Spain.
Some strangers shared their food with me
in the dim light of the night train.
David Mason
59
K en neth H a rk ness
Of Briseis and Achilles
The Joy of Religion and the Hollowness of Scientism
W
hat a tortured soul it must be to turn to
religion. That religion is a delusion is not
the question. How did they get away with
it for so long? That is the question.
Hell no! Religion’s a party. A party to celebrate
life—life contemplative, intimate, communal and
civic. Think of the holidays, food, drink, pageantry,
art, music and singing. It can be ecstatic, or like a
dawn picnic on the beach with friends—familiar,
companionable and rich beyond tears.
Why celebrate life? How can we but celebrate—
it’s so fantastic! Just reflecting on life awakens
delight. Death and pain are there, but they goad us
to explore life’s depth. This is the world of religion:
life, celebration, reflection, suffering and meaning.
Don’t bring a spectrometer. Bring trumpets and
cymbals, strings and tambourines, cheeky piccolos
and deep-throated bassoons.
Before civilisation, life was celebrated in song
and dance with myths and rituals that stored tribal
lore and framed one’s identity. The invention of
grain-growing led to civilisation, bringing tribes
together—and with it came an existential crisis. We
could still celebrate in the manner of our tribe, but
the quest for universal answers had begun. Writing
followed, so that the wisdom of sages could be preserved, pondered and compared.
A sage’s teaching resonates over time. Science is
informed by patterns, religion by these resonances.
Any religion of antiquity deserves our respect
because it has been tested, maintaining resonance
for generations, through war and peace, famine and
plenty, and by surviving has cemented civil society.
It is a “pearl” of a kind. But not everyone sees it
this way. For some, their cause is objective truth, and
anything else is just guessing.
Those for whom objective reasoning comes easily are likely be attracted to vocations where this is
prized—just as someone with strong personal empathy might be drawn to others. We tend to see the
world through the lens of our own strengths. But
there are proper limits to objectivity, just as there
60
are proper limits to empathy. It is in denying their
limits we make them toxic. Scientism is unbridled
objectivity.
S
cientism troubles science in the same way that
“reforming” judges trouble the judiciary and
radical fringe groups trouble mainstream political
parties. Sincerely promoting their ideals, they spend
the credit that others have saved.
When a renowned cosmologist denigrates religion, assuring us that the universe could come into
being without a creator, this resonates because of science’s objectivity. But what qualifies them to speak
on religion? They are saying that science doesn’t
merely study patterns, but that patterns are sovereign. Science doesn’t require this. Hypothetically,
if a microbiologist were to be healed by a miracle,
integrity would not demand that they give up their
job. They could continue as before, just saying there
are more things in heaven and earth ...
The proponents of scientism not only hold religion to be delusional, they hold it to be bad. As scientism has been around for centuries and has been
embraced by various regimes, we can examine its
own performance as a practical system of ethics.
Scientism has been unable to establish any canon
or creed, and this makes it difficult both to maintain orthodoxy and to form a curriculum to teach it.
Hence the popular movements generated by scientism have been diverse, contradictory and shortlived,
such as Unitarianism, utilitarianism, Nietzscheism,
scientific communism, secular humanism and
Freudian psychology.
Scientism rejects the idea of transcendence and
so offers no ultimate hope for those who defend virtue. It also offers no sanction beyond the law for
those offending its taboos. There is no psychological brake against the abuse of power. Consequently,
scientistic regimes have been unable to sustain
civil society. Scientism as a religion lacks a mature
organisation, so that anyone may claim to speak on
its behalf. Scientism therefore avoids accountability
for the excesses of its proponents. Scientism can’t
nourish the soul that it doesn’t believe in. Insisting
that man does live by bread alone, scientism lacks
a spirit of celebration or much by way of music or
song of its own. Seeing life as a pattern of chemical
reactions, it is weak in the taboos that flow out of
the reverencing of life. Chemical reactions have no
intrinsic worth. In times of security and prosperity,
when we feel safe and comfortable, the weakness of
its taboos is part of scientism’s appeal. Taboos constrain, but they also protect. We may yet be glad of
those protections.
Where scientism expresses its ethic in mere aphorisms such as, “Do no harm”, it lacks the sophistication needed to inform our consciences, jurists
and legislators. But where it has
achieved sophistication, the “scriptures” of scientism have been the
cience,
scripts of murderous regimes.
especially as it has failed to settle any canon or creed.
It is no defence to say that scientism only tries
to expose the irrationality of belief systems rather
than establish its own. Science is not the measure of
all things. That would be to make a god of a good.
Religions don’t try to be science and so it makes as
much sense to use science to critique religion as it
does to use science to critique art. A scientist might
tell us that Picasso’s clock would never keep time.
How could that be art!
Worse than being wrong, scientism is culpable
when it denigrates religion. Our consciences and our
legal system demand ethics and taboos from which
there is no other practical source. Their absence
produces unspeakable suffering. For scientism to
demolish the “thought slums” of
religion and leave no moral shelter
its place is a crime, not a virlike law, in
tue. Slander requires no particular
places a premium on skill, but we can be accountable
objectivity and eschews for its damage. Communists slanfree markets and removed
emotion. Emotions dered
them from great nations. Having
only cloud judgment destroyed, they built nothing, leavtragedy. Might we not hold
in law and science. ing
communists accountable despite
But there are places their idealism? Hubris is not just
where not only are an over-reaching by the bold and
it is culpable recklessness by
emotions permissible, clever,
the arrogant.
S
R
eligion provides a constant
message in changing times.
The durability of its teaching is its
virtue, in a similar way to national
constitutions, which are valued for
their stability ahead of their logic.
By contrast, the strength of science
is in its eagerness to qualify or abandon past opinions. This refines our
knowledge of the material world
but is too unstable for the civic role
their absence is
cient ism ha r ms science.
of religion. For all its strengths,
unhealthy. Parenting
Darwinist evolution is a comdoubt-driven science is not a pracis an example.
pelling and plausible theory.
tical source for a durable system of
However, it claims a lot and it is in
ethics.
Religion, being a
the spirit of science to critically test
Science, like law, places a premium on objectivity and eschews celebration, is another. those claims. Scientism recruited
Darwinism to champion atheism
emotion. Emotions only cloud
so that now it’s impossible to objecjudgment in law and science. But
there are places where not only are emotions per- tively critique Darwinism—its defenders have too
missible, their absence is unhealthy. Parenting is an much invested in its preservation. Huxley created
example. Religion, being a celebration, is another. this problem, using Darwinism as a club with which
This doesn’t diminish the importance or seriousness to beat deists.
Unitarianism may have faded under the attack but
of either parenting or religion. So scientism suffers
as a religion for its dourness. Substance abuse and Christianity did not, being based on the reliability
celluloid fantasy become the soul’s escape from its of the Gospels rather than on biology. The Gospel
miracles still cannot be explained as natural events.
sterility.
Religion draws on our capacity for reverence. Archaeology has corroborated where it might have
Science is a critical, reductive process, and reverence disproven. Textual criticism has exposed no fault
is an impediment to its objectivity. Hence scientism lines between myth and history in the Gospels.
Ancient creeds required no change to accommois iconoclastic and tends to deride the sacred. But
there is more to reverence than mere sentimentality date science. The Sermon on the Mount lost none
and it is usually regarded as a benign part of our of its resonance. For all our science, in the desperate
wars of the last century we again turned to God,
psyche.
Therefore, despite its vague appeal, we can be the churches of the 1950s burgeoning in gratitude
sceptical of scientism as an alternative to religion, for deliverance.
S
61
Being part of life’s experience, the physical
world is a proper subject for our scientific curiosity.
Science also helps build a more intelligent, prosperous and humane world, reducing suffering through
its discoveries. The science community should be
jealous to preserve the respect it has earned. Science
itself should be the scourge of scientism. It is no
business of science to speculate on the existence or
nonexistence of a creator. It is not ludicrous to suppose that human selfconsciousness derived from a
greater consciousness rather than from particles randomly tossed. If such a creator exists and wants to
be known, then we’re not going to earn that revelation by building a big telescope. If they don’t want
us to see them, then we’re hardly likely to outsmart
and spot them anyway. Religion is not a branch of
science and its credibility is established other than
by objective proof.
T
he celebration of life is synonymous with the
reverencing of life as the essence of our being.
Religions typically create rituals to reverence life at
three stages: at birth, to welcome it; at marriage, to
dignify the life act; and at death, to honour life’s
passing. It is from this reverencing of life that we
derive our taboos. How can we celebrate life if we
don’t welcome, dignify and honour it?
Truly celebrating life requires us to embrace life
as the messy business it is. Malcolm Muggeridge
used to say that the spires of the Gothic cathedrals
point to our capacity to conceive the ideal, while
their gargoyles laugh at our incapacity to attain it.
The confronting and resolution of that reality
are at the heart of religion and much of the arts.
Wolfgang Petersen’s movie Troy is not The Iliad
but it does portray ancient themes in a way that
is accessible. In Troy, the following dialogue takes
place between Briseis, the pious Trojan virgin, and
Achilles, her Greek captor, just after he rescues her
from being ravaged by Greek soldiers:
Achilles: Are you hurt? [No answer.] I watched you
fight them. You have courage.
Briseis: To fight back when people attack me? A
dog has that kind of courage.
Achilles (offering food): Eat.
Briseis: I’ve known men like you my whole life.
Achilles: No, you haven’t.
Briseis: You think you’re so different from a
thousand others. Soldiers understand nothing but
war. Peace confuses them.
Achilles: And you hate these soldiers?
Briseis: I pity them.
Achilles: Trojan soldiers died trying to protect
you. Perhaps they deserve more than your pity.
Briseis: Why did you choose this life?
62
Achilles: What life?
Briseis: To be a great warrior.
Achilles: I chose nothing. I was born and this is
what I am. And you? Why did you choose to love
a god? I think you’ll find the romance one-sided.
Briseis: Do you enjoy provoking me?
Achilles: You’ve dedicated your life to the gods.
Zeus, god of thunder. Athena, goddess of
wisdom. You serve them.
Briseis: Yes, of course.
Achilles: And Ares, god of war? Who blankets his
bed with the skin of men he’s killed?
Briseis (reluctantly): All the gods are to be feared
and respected.
Achilles: I’ll tell you a secret. Something they
don’t teach you in your temple. The gods envy us.
They envy us because we’re mortal. Because any
moment might be our last. Everything’s more
beautiful because we’re doomed. You will never
be lovelier than you are now. We will never be
here again.
Briseis: I thought you were a dumb brute. I could
have forgiven a dumb brute.
Briseis forgoes the chance to kill Achilles that
night and instead they are united as lovers. Later,
Achilles disfigures the body of an enemy but weeps
when confronted with the truth of his brutishness.
At the end, the dying Achilles says to Briseis, “It’s
all right. You gave me peace in a lifetime of war.” It
is unsaid, but having embraced Ares/Achilles, she
too was saved—from the barren frigidity of her onesided romance.
In Lord of the Rings Frodo forgoes the opportunity to kill treacherous Gollum. It is Frodo’s painful acceptance that he is both Samwise and Gollum
that ultimately saves him—and the free world.
In Phantom of the Opera it is when Christine can
embrace the obsessive spirit (phantom) of her late
father that she is free to receive the wholesome intimacy of Raoul. In Islam, the fasting of Ramadan
ends with the feasting of Eid. In Christianity the
two great festivals are Christmas and Easter—birth,
suffering, death, resolution. Buddhism has yin and
yang.
To scientism, all this is delusional. Life is a
reaction of chemicals—no more, no less. Bertrand
Russell counselled us to embrace despair. The hardware exists for its own sake, there is no program, no
meaning, no purpose and there is nothing to celebrate. Grow up!
B
ut why God? I think the answer is in history—
seen as a cauldron. Before history we resolved
the tensions of life by not resolving them. We were
fatalists, animistic and polytheistic. The chaos of
our lives was a reflection of a chaos beyond. Some
deference was paid to piety but power, politics and
passion were dominant.
Then a tribe of monotheists arose for whom
piety was their passion. Through every exigency a
remnant clung to their God and became an extraordinary nation—by no means perfect, but far more
caring, healthful and communal than any other.
Their integrity so shone that, in exile, they would be
trusted with positions of high authority. Their gentle
piety softened the hearts of rulers but made others
contemptuous. Their broad ethic was Do justly, love
mercy and walk humbly with thy God.
Jesus transformed this exemplary tribal religion
(bound up in intricate laws) into a universalistic
religion accessible to all regardless of tribe, race or
status—the law now being written on the heart.
His ethic was higher—to heal with radical virtue
(grace). Love your enemies. Forgive wantonly. Don’t
even think evil. Surrender your life in service as a
living sacrifice to God. You will fall short but God
too forgives wantonly.
It was all based on a loving God who sees the
good that is done in secret and rewards it, both
within and beyond this life. And did it resonate!
Jesus became the hinge of human history—BC, AD.
Jesus resolved joy and suffering in his own death
and resurrection. Something of a “party animal”,
he celebrated life. His first miracle was to replenish
the wine at a wedding. He was criticised for feasting
openly and for his disciples not fasting. He prom-
ised life—life to the full. He invited his friends to
join him for an eternal banquet—to carry on the
party forever! He killed death and gave life freely
to any who would but embrace their Gollum, even
as did the thief on the cross. His words resonated:
“the crowds were amazed at his teaching, because
he taught as one who had authority, and not as
their teachers of the law”. The contradictions of the
human drama were resolved in the Trinity—a cosmic love-dance.
Take God out of all this and you are not left with
humanism. Take God out and it just falls apart. For
those who have experienced this adventure of grace,
humanism is not the culmination of Christianity
but rather the ethical wake left by believing generations, a pale reflection, an empty husk.
Briseis clung to her frigidity as piety. It is very
human to project our weaknesses as strengths—
both to ourselves and to others. Briseis found her self
only when she embraced what she once held in contempt. Scientism demands life be tidy and knowable. It is awkward with messy reality. Scientism is
arid materialism projecting itself as being mature,
honest and objective.
Sex and religion are both problematic—and yet
they have been rich, joyful and healthy dimensions
of the human experience since time immemorial.
What to do? Try letting the enemy in—to breakfast
by the beach, as he did all those years ago.
Kenneth Harkness is a Sydney solicitor.
Yesterday’s Bike Ride
Men on Bikes
Bikes lean
stopped at cafes
where the men
hang out, brothers
bright as birds,
shorts that show
the curve of braided muscle,
sculptured thigh.
Who knows how far
behind them lies
the ribbon of their wheels
from years of sharing talk
roads and sweat,
dawns, fatigue,
a spank of tyre on the wet.
The blue day lingers
after the gravel road,
the hills,
the valley filled with cane,
after the country homes,
the cluck of fowl,
the scrunch of tyres
and always the road
spelling the heat and the distance,
suspended in dust,
cycling on, part of the day,
part of the sun,
part of the sweat, the dirt
and the land we’ve become,
taking it with us.
Nana Ollerenshaw
63
P hilip D r ew
Thomas Wran, the Sculptor
Who Discovered Australia
W
e have struggled to confront the physical
nature of Australia. This reluctance has
held back the expression of Australian
themes in art and architecture. An experimental
nineteenth-century work of architectural sculpture
in a sandstone facade marks a significant cultural
breakthrough, insofar as, in lieu of the Greek architectural orders, Australian birds and animals were
used for the first time. For sixteen years, it stood in
the very heart of Sydney as testimony to the uniqueness of Australian nature.
From afar, it looks very ordinary, this single-storey
sandstone front topped by a triangular gable. Above
the gate, a sign reads “Annandale Creative Arts
Centre”. Behind it there is a plain brick hall of no
particular interest. You hardly notice it or the other
tell-tale discrepancies.
A foundation stone to one side announces that
it is a Methodist church and was consecrated on
September 16, 1891. There are further discrepancies but you have to be a detective or an archaeologist with a keen eye to notice them or conclude
that some of the sandstone is not original. There is
a slight disparity in the width of the upper gable
and first floor. The fact that the church has two
entrances is a further clue.
The two parts of the facade are so cleverly matched
they appear to be all-of-a-piece, as though they
belonged and were like that from the very beginning. You would be mistaken. The facade was not at
all like that originally. Nor was it ever intended for its
present location on Johnston Street, the main northsouth traffic artery through the Annandale subdivision. What you are looking at is a cleverly contrived,
reconstructed facade that was judiciously cobbled
together following the Great Fire of October 2,
1890. The fire consumed a large portion of the centre
of Sydney, north of Moore Street, between Pitt and
Castlereagh Streets, resulting in an insurance bill of
£750,000. If you look more closely you can still see
broken string courses, incomplete mouldings over
the heads of arched windows, and missing heads
64
and body parts from some of the upper sculptures.
The evidence is there if you take the time to look for
it. The fact that the facade did survive and there was
enough of it left was something of a miracle. Such
was its importance that, at considerable expense, it
was skilfully rebuilt in less than a year.
Take a closer look. What you see is startling
and wonderful. Scattered across the lower first-floor
front, and concentrated on the entablature of the
two porches, is a veritable menagerie of Australian
native animals and birds, all carved in exquisite
detail. Even more surprising and astonishing is
when, and by whom, they were carved. The facade
did not belong to the church originally. Before 1891,
the warehouse was a four-storey construction for
dual occupancy with basement. It is barely recognisable in the present-day 81A Johnston Street facade.
The sculptures were carved by a gifted English
sculptor who had recently arrived in Sydney, at the
end of twenty-seven months spent as a selector at
St Lawrence on Broad Sound, some 100 kilometres north of Rockhampton. Thomas Wran worked
as a skilled sculptor in England before coming to
Australia, having gained his professional reputation
with a team of twenty-five stonemasons on the splendid St Mary’s Church at South Dalton in Yorkshire,
sponsored by the 3rd Earl of Hotham. The church
was designed by a leading English Gothic Revival
architect, John Loughborough Pearson, who later
designed Brisbane Cathedral.
The Wran carvings were completed in 1873-74. The
choice of Australian subjects for architectural sculptures caused such a sensation, the Sydney Morning
Herald published not one, but two, detailed reports,
in which each sculpture was named and located.
The report credited Mr T. Wran, “late of London”,
assisted by his son Walton Wran and Mr Robert
McCredie, jr, as responsible. The explanation for so
much attention is obvious: the choice of native animals on an important facade was unprecedented. Up
until that time, architects adhered strictly to a code
of practice which demanded traditional Doric, Ionic
Thomas Wran, the Sculptor Who Discovered Australia
and Corinthian classical orders for important public
commissions. Correctness was greatly valued and
liberties were likely to meet with hostile criticism,
which is what happened in the notorious instance
of the 1882 spandrel figures in James Barnet’s Pitt
Street GPO facade by the Italian sculptor Signor
Sani. It emerged later that Barnet’s chief mistake
was his choice of contemporary realism in lieu of
allegorical classicism.
Bull’s Warehouse on Pitt Street, as the deep,
narrow-fronted four-storey warehouse structure
was known, freely employed Australian fauna as
sculptural decoration, something entirely without
precedent in 1873. This is what makes it so intriguing—whose idea it was, and what motivated this daring stylistic departure, is pure conjecture. We don’t
have reliable answers. What is clear is that it was the
first occasion on which architecture publicly admitted that it was in Australia and Australian. And
why, at this particular time, two
decades before nationalism and a
conscious Australian identity would
he only
become politically important?
Ionic on the shores of the Aegean and the islands.
In that moment, Rowe in collaboration with
Wran created something no less than a symbolic
statement of architectural independence which
indicated a new creative orientation and freedom.
It would take at least another decade-and-a-half for
the French convict, sentenced to death for his role
in the 1870 Paris commune, to develop his “Waratah
order”, which, in a similar vein, and in much more
highly stylised way, offered an alternative to the
dominance of the Greek orders.
Possibly, it was the presence of such a highly
skilled and experienced sculptor as Thomas Wran,
an individual who, moreover, had spent more than
two years on the bush frontier of central Queensland,
who, therefore, was intimately acquainted with
Australian fauna, that encouraged Rowe to experiment. Rowe was a Cornishman, Wran came from
Sussex. The two may have found a common cause, a
shared vision and mission, to separate themselves emotionally from
word that England. However you explain it,
something clearly gelled between
fully does justice to them. Whether it was personal
here are a number of explana- them is “magnificent”. chemistry or their provincial backtions. Thomas Rowe, its archigrounds, the result is singularly
tect, was one of the most prominent What Thomas Wran powerful and astonishing.
created is an early
and successful architects in the
fter 143 years, exposed in
city. He would go on to construct
colonial masterpiece
the open to all weathers and
a number of much larger structures on Pitt Street, but none with and national treasure. storms, and more recently, exposed
to urban pollution, it is amazing
quite the verve or originality and
the carvings are in such good conbeauty of detail. A little earlier, on
August 22, 1871, architects got together and formed dition and so much delicate detail survives. It also
the New South Wales Society for the Promotion demonstrates Thomas Wran’s competence and proof Architecture and Art. The name soon changed fessionalism and, one can infer, his utter committo the Institute of Architects following a falling- ment to the project, not only his skill in working
out with the artists. This suggests Sydney architects the sandstone, but also his careful selection of the
were becoming more conscious and professional. very best fine-grained durable yellow block. After
About this time, articles appeared in the press which all this time, the most deterioration one can see are
discuss the properties and use of local Australian fine cracks in the ring mouldings circling the colmaterials in building construction, indicating a new umns and much more sustained and severe damage
level of awareness of their contribution in conveying of the unprotected porch roofs.
But the sculptures themselves: the only word
a sense of place.
Rowe went much farther: he substituted native that fully does justice to them is magnificent. What
animals and birds instead of following the long- Thomas Wran created is an early colonial masterestablished practice of the Greek Doric and Ionic piece and national treasure.
It is not simply the individual sculptures alone,
orders. In doing so, he created for the first time a
truly authentic Australian architectural order. In but the overall conception of the decorative scheme
effect, he endorsed the region and made architecture that is masterful. Each individual carving of an
symbolically Australian. The ancient Greek orders animal or bird has its own story—each is fitted
of Doric and Ionic—the one having a broad capital with its own narrative—so they come alive in our
with a jutting echinus topping a primitive mascu- imagination.
Wran was evidently fascinated by birds. One of
line column, the other, with descending volutes that
frame a row of ova—evolved in different regions, his prize-winning sculptures before he left England
Doric essentially widespread in mainland Greece, was of a linnet, a small, drab-brown songbird. A
T
T
A
65
Thomas Wran, the Sculptor Who Discovered Australia
more unlikely and challenging subject is hard to
imagine. Birds are delicate creatures that soar and
float, seemingly weightless—the direct antithesis of
monumental stone. The facade has a parrot, a hawk
with its prey, a kookaburra, a mopoke, another hawk
or possibly kite, three birds devouring grapes, and
a headless bird in the right gable. Ranged across
the facade are a diverse selection of native animals
including a native cat and prey, two ring-tailed
possums, a koala, a dingo and a kangaroo rat.
O
ne mystery surrounding Wran’s career in
Sydney is how he, a relatively newcomer to
Australia, was able to create such realistic sculptures. Wran arrived at Rockhampton aboard the
Royal Dane on November 18, 1870. Until then, he
had lived in London and in small to medium-sized
provincial towns. One possibility is that he used the
Australian Museum in College Street. The museum
was a major popular attraction—a must for visiting
royals. It was a short walk from Pitt Street to the
museum, where Wran could study and sketch the
exhibits in their glass cases. It would have been an
easy matter for him to visit the museum and make his
sketches and models, which he could check later and
correct against the stuffed specimens. Whichever
way he did it, the close detail and naturalism of the
sculptures are remarkable.
Wran initially found accommodation in the city,
but in June 1875, on completing the commission, he
bought a property in Caroline Street, Balmain. Thus
began the Wran family connection with the harbourside suburb. His name is also closely associated
with the building company McCredie Brothers.
What started with Bull’s Warehouse was continued
on the General Post Office for which Wran executed
twenty-four keystone busts representing Australian
colonies and overseas countries which the post and
telegraph reached. The post office sculptures are
equally impressive and demonstrate Wran’s great
ability to produce typical faces that are recognisable
types.
One of his most intriguing sculptural creations
is a coat-of-arms on the Macquarie Street balcony
of the Colonial Secretary’s Building. Not content
with the challenge of a large lion and chained unicorn, Wran carried the flag over the back of balcony,
turning his sculpture into an impressive fully threedimensional work. On the back, in an empty part
below the folds of the New South Wales flag, he
lightly chiselled, “T. V. WRAN Sculptor 1876”.
Sydney’s stonemasons are a forgotten and anonymous group. They rarely received recognition for
their heroic labour, cutting and shaping the magnificent sandstone monuments that are so representative and key markers of the city’s identity. Thomas
66
Wran is a rare exception. We know a great deal more
about him than is usually the case for a stonemason,
but even so, much of his life remains in shadow. He
seems to have had a gift for publicity and was dedicated to his chosen field of architectural sculpture.
We know that he struggled to find employment
after St Mary’s, and worked as a painter, a plumber
and a tobacconist. He never abandoned his determination to follow his vocation as a sculptor. In 1865
he entered prize-winning sculptures to the South
London Industrial Exhibition, and, a little later, in
the Anglo-French Workmen’s Exhibition in which
he entered his sculpture of a linnet.
Perhaps his next most important contribution
to Australian life, after Bull’s Warehouse, was his
great-great-grandson, Neville Wran. Sculptor and
politician share some qualities: not only their generosity and their determination to succeed, but in
Neville something of Thomas’s artistic side, largely
suppressed by the exigencies of law and politics,
seeped through in unexpected ways. However, it is
Thomas’s creative legacy, his discovery of Australia
in sculpture we must be most grateful for—in breaking with the prevailing slavish adherence to English
Palladian and classical models.
Patrick White’s observation in Voss, voiced by
Laura, identifies the problem: “Everyone is still
afraid, or most of us, of this country, and will not
say it. We are not yet possessed of understanding.”
Thomas Wran had every reason to be fearful. His
family was barely settled in St Lawrence when
their eldest, Eleanor, drowned. The tragedy affected
them deeply long afterwards, the pain magnified by
a brutal struggle to survive in a land utterly unlike
anything they had experienced in England. In the
sculptures we discern something altogether different, an intense focus on the qualities of each bird
and animal, and a determination to portray them
with absolute fidelity that comes close to a loving
embrace.
In the past, animals were sacred symbols.
Throughout Sydney, people were everywhere confronted by rampant lions and chained unicorns on
massive coats-of-arms above the entrances of public
buildings as tangible reminders of British rule. The
significance of Bull’s Warehouse can be overstated,
but it nonetheless marks a forward step in national
awareness: in its bold, unprecedented departure
from classical models in architecture it suggests
pride in Australia and, in the face of personal tragedy, simultaneously a tribute to natural science and
acceptance of Australian uniqueness.
Philip Drew is a Sydney architectural historian and
critic. He wrote on the Barangaroo development in the
October issue.
The Beatitudes
On an early summer’s day in Prague
we step inside a gallery
exhibiting the work of Alphonse Mucha.
Reluctant to leave the tourist-traipsed city square below
our eyes take time, but then adjust to
the delicate pastel tones and lines,
walls of his detailed art nouveau.
Idealised, grace-filled female forms
in patterned, symmetrical beauty,
framed and arranged advertisements for
Cycles Perfecta and Théâtre de la Renaissance.
A chronology of carefully crafted meal vouchers,
selling a product to keep a man alive,
creative flourishes shaped for daily bread.
It is cool and quiet in this place.
As we pass from one gallery space to another,
forming our regard with comment and colour,
a series of simple, rustic vignettes,
“Blessed are” scenes with nothing to sell but their truth.
Even here, a displaced traveller,
The words of Jesus slice through my reality:
Blessed are the merciful,
Blessed are those who mourn,
Blessed are the peacemakers.
Today, in the hush of solemnity,
we visited the Jewish synagogues in Prague.
Killed with sneer and loathing
the ordered names (just names) of thousands of
children, men and women lined the walls of one.
Mucha himself, in 1939,
died soon after being “questioned” by the Gestapo.
Here, then, one fair city (for us, much awaited)
displays both the zodiacs of love and hatred.
Peter Stiles
67
M ich a el C on nor
The Monsters Who
Made Tennessee Great
T
he American playwright David Mamet says
intelligent, commonsense things about theatre but sometimes he is wrong:
The greatest performances are seldom noticed.
Why? Because they do not draw attention to
themselves, and do not seek to—like any real
heroism, they are simple and unassuming, and
seem to be a natural and inevitable outgrowth of
the actor.
When we suddenly crash into great acting that is
“simple and unassuming” the effect on the audience
is startling for we know that though the performance may outwardly seem “natural and inevitable”
we are also hearing a silent voice commanding us,
“Look at me, look at me”—and we do.
In this year’s Helpmann Awards Hugo Weaving
won the Best Male Actor for his role in Samuel
Beckett’s Endgame, and last year the award for
Best Female Actor went to Cate Blanchett for Jean
Genet’s The Maids. Both plays were only one-act
performances. Weaving’s face was covered in white
makeup, he was seated in a wheeled chair, both legs
strapped together beneath the costume. In the theatre from quite close to a long way back his face was
kabuki Beckett. Blanchett’s director either hid her
behind the furniture or revealed the action, when
offstage having her head plunged into a handy
bidet, via video camera close-ups projected onto a
screen—a technological treat that sucked life out of
the live performance. If any audience members were
awestruck watching Weaving and Blanchett it was
their celebrity, not their acting, which impressed.
The Helpmanns rewarded the stars for being successful at the movies, not for what we saw onstage.
Tennessee Williams’s early plays were made
The Collected Plays of Tennessee Williams
The Library of America, 2011, two-volume boxed
set, US$80
68
famous by great actors. Before he uploaded the fatal
dose of Seconal in 1983 he had been a fashionable
playwright and an unfashionable one. A biographer,
who unfortunately never got around to telling the
whole story, described him as “a man who couldn’t
handle his success”. A sprinkling of his insecurities
may have come from knowing that his fame had
been built on strange foundations: a drunk made
him famous, an egomaniac (two if you count the
director) kept him there.
The Glass Menagerie was his first popular hit
when he was thirty-four. It is the story of his own
family. The poor surroundings, a dominating, loving
mother, lost in her dream past of southern elegance,
“gentlemen callers”, and burning desires for her
crippled daughter and poet son, and an absent
father—“a telephone man who fell in love with
long distances”. Within an impressionistic setting
it was a poetic and conventional play which became
extraordinary because of Laurette Taylor.
The sixty-year-old actress had not been on stage
for five years:
I couldn’t find a play for a time … It was either
acting old mountaineer crones who spit tobacco
juice in their son’s eye—either that or Ibsen. I
couldn’t chew tobacco, and I wouldn’t be found
dead in A Doll’s House, so I did nothing, till all
at once Eddie Dowling [the director] sent me
the script … It fascinated me.
Before her long sabbatical from the theatre she
had been a highly praised and popular performer.
Her second husband, the British playwright J.
Hartley Manners, had written the very successful Peg O’ My Heart for her and she had toured it
widely. A weekend spent at home with her family
in the 1920s gave Noel Coward the material for Hay
Fever—when it was staged their friendship came to
an abrupt end.
Jed Harris, the outstanding fedora and camelhair overcoat Broadway producer and director of
The Monsters Who Made Tennessee Great
the 1920s and 1930s, described being overawed by expected to play the character her answer was, “I
her brilliance in a play by James Barrie. Planning to don’t know, really. It depends on what the rest of
visit her backstage, he first left the theatre to calm you actors do and how the audience behaves.”
the emotions he was feeling. The house manager
Before New York the play opened in Chicago
found him in the street and began apologising. He with some problems, and good reviews. Transferring
asked if Harris had noticed that Taylor had spent to Broadway, on opening night the leading lady was
the performance sitting down. Harris said he was found dead drunk and collapsed in the alleyway
only aware “that tonight she was probably the great- beside the theatre. In the ninety minutes before
est actress in the world”. The house manager told the curtain was due to go up she was taken inside,
him Taylor had been so drunk they had considered poured into a shower and fed strong hot coffee. The
cancelling the performance: “That’s why we had to play was ten minutes late starting. Because of the
put her in a chair.” After her husband’s death in 1928 interest created by the Chicago reviews the audience
her life had deteriorated into chronic alcoholism. At was packed with critics and famous first-nighters;
the time she was cast as Amanda
even Garbo was there. Dowling,
Wingfield in Menagerie she had
who was also acting as the narraa reputation for closing plays, not
tor,
began the play. When Laurette
oung actors who
opening them.
Taylor made her first entrance the
would later themselves audience applauded, and kept on
roubles began at the first read- be famous came to see applauding. She was confused and
ing and Tennessee Williams
fill in the unexpected interruption
her play, and returned to
went to see the director to complain
broke into dialogue from the second
again and again.
of her accent: “Oh, Mr Dowling,
act. On stage then, and throughyou’ve got to get rid of that woman
Those who recalled out the successful season, she was
who’s doin’ a Negress. My mother
extraordinary. Young actors who
ain’t a Negress. My mother’s a her acting spoke of her would later themselves be famous
lady.” Taylor always claimed that
naturalism, as if a came to see her play, and returned
her southern drawl was copied from
again and again. Those who recalled
Williams himself. What she did woman off the street her acting spoke of her naturalism,
in rehearsals isn’t taught in drama had simply wandered as if a woman off the street had simschools. Sitting by the stage she
wandered on stage and become
on stage and become ply
would more or less say the text
mesmerising. That night, and on
mesmerising.
and indicate the actions she would
others during the season, she played
take and movements she would
and then walked to the side of the
make across the stage by waving
stage. Out of sight of the audience
her hands in the general direction of where these she vomited into a bucket before returning to the
would happen, but not actually do them. Preferring lights and resuming the dialogue.
her own writing to the author’s, she subtracted his
It must have been something like this. The famwords from the script and added her own. A letter ily are seated at a table eating. Taylor rises and prefrom Williams to a New York friend described a day pares to briefly exit to collect the dessert from the
on the front line:
imaginary kitchenette. As always she is talking of
her past: “I remember one Sunday afternoon in Blue
Taylor was ad libbing practically every speech
Mountain [exits and vomits in the wings while Laura
and the show sounded like the Aunt Jemima
and Tom talk. Re-enters carrying the blanc mange]
Pancake hour. We all got drunk, and this A.M.
one Sunday afternoon in Blue Mountain—your
Taylor was even worse. I finally lost my temper
mother received—seventeen!—gentlemen callers!”
and when she made one of her little insertions
Stark Young’s review appears to have been writI screamed over the footlights. “My God, what
ten the same night and he tried to describe the
corn!” She screamed back that I was a fool and
brilliance:
all playwrights made her sick.
This, even after just seeing the play, is almost
After the lunch break she resumed. The performimpossible to convey with anything like the
ance was so touchingly good that the playwright
full, wonderful truth. Hers is naturalistic acting
and cast burst into tears. “So I don’t know what to
of the most profound, spontaneous, unbroken
think or expect.” Though she had been drinking,
continuity and moving life … Only a trained
Williams had not yet seen her drunk—or perhaps
theatre eye and ear can tell what is happening,
sober. When the director finally asked how she
and then only at times.
Y
T
69
The Monsters Who Made Tennessee Great
A cast member, closer to the flame of genius,
recalled that “she played almost through a fog”.
Cast and crew gathered in the wings to watch her
onstage performance, and offstage vomiting. Jed
Harris later said, “She brought The Glass Menagerie
to life as no other actress has succeeded in doing.”
After twenty-four curtain calls Taylor asked her
director: “Eddie, I can’t remember anything. Does
it look like a success?” It was. Two weeks after its
New York opening The Glass Menagerie won the
Drama Critics Circle Award and was voted the Best
Play of 1945. That first season stretched out for 561
performances.
There is no recording of the performance though
there is a very, very short radio extract of Taylor
speaking lines from plays including The Glass
Menagerie. This was one of the greatest performances in American theatre history. If Taylor had
been sober that first night, and during the remainder of the play’s run, we might never have heard of
a playwright named Tennessee Williams.
I
n Williams’s next successful play, A Streetcar
Named Desire, the two leading actors, Marlon
Brando and Jessica Tandy, played by different rules
when they took to the stage. She was conventional elocutionary theatre, he was ego plus Actors
Studio plus ego. We think the play is about Blanche
DuBois. During that first season, the one that made
it famous, audience members, including MGM boss
Louis B. Mayer and Jean Cocteau, thought the play
was about Brando’s character, Stanley Kowalski.
Across his playwriting many of Williams’s characters are bruised by life and slightly, or more, past
their bloom. Their days of beauty are past, and
they rebel against time. Stanley was written for a
man about thirty years old. Brando was twentythree. His sexuality, his masculinity, his sweat and
torn white T-shirt rewrote the play. Director Elia
Kazan’s production notes are typically concentrated, precise and decisive. What he hadn’t allowed
for was Brando, who, even in rehearsals, was taking
control. Concerned that the balance of the play had
been destroyed, Kazan said, “I looked toward my
authority, Tennessee. He was no help; he seemed
enraptured by the boy. ‘The son of a bitch is riding
a crush,’ I said to myself.” Brando gave the author
an idealised handsome thug who had stepped out of
his own life. Kazan saw Williams threatened and
abused by one of his partners. What the director was
creating onstage, Williams was living in the hotel
room just across the hall: “That’s the way Williams
was,” said Kazan. “He was attracted to trash—
rough male homosexuals who were threatening him
… Part of the sexuality that Williams wrote into
the play is the menace of it.” On stage Brando was
70
entirely alive, and completely unpredictable.
But finally, Blanche DuBois conquered Stanley
Kowalski. Her victory came rapidly. When the
New York production closed, the touring company that took over with Uta Hagen and Anthony
Quinn placed Blanche in the spotlight and there
she has stayed. Productions typically headline the
women who play Blanche, from Tallulah Bankhead
to a twelve-year-old Nicole Kidman at the Phillip
Street Theatre or recent productions with Cate
Blanchett and Gillian Anderson. To find the name
of the actor playing Stanley, look in the small print.
The violence which attracts his wife Stella to him
is too confronting for a modern audience to accept.
Stanley made the play masculine and dangerous,
Blanche encourages camp. In some ways the rape
scene appears untruthful. Blanche wants Stanley,
and their coupling seems so ordained that his line,
“We’ve had this date with each other from the
beginning!” could just as easily come from her. In
a masculine performance that line is the key to the
play. In the usual feminine performance, “I have
always depended on the kindness of strangers”—
said as she is being taken to the madhouse—is the
cue for audience sniffles. It’s unlikely we will ever
see another male production. The times are against
masculinity and Brando’s performance was so distinctive that he has left little room for other actors
to move in and make the part their own. Too much
brawn, fire and torn T-shirt and the actor is put
down as a Brando copy.
The onstage naturalness that locks our attention
onto an actor is not accidental. We are seeing a selfish and egotistic performance which, strangely, can
also bring to life the other actors on stage. Being
forced to deal with uncertainty may produce a tension in their own acting which is communicated
to the audience. Jessica Tandy wasn’t wrong when
she called Brando “an impossible, psychopathic
bastard”. Yet Elia Kazan said there were also days
when she admired him.
David Mamet also said, “Most plays are better
read than performed.” Tennessee Williams is a
wonderfully readable playwright. Many of his
stage directions and scene setting descriptions are
as interesting as the dialogue. An attractive twovolume boxed set of his plays—The Collected Plays
of Tennessee Williams, published in a slipcase by the
Library of America—gives a generous serving of his
work from 1937 to 1980. Williams himself preferred
seeing to reading: “The printed script of a play is
hardly more than an architect’s blueprint of a house
not yet built or built and destroyed.” Laurette Taylor
built The Glass Menagerie; Marlon Brando’s Stanley
built A Streetcar Named Desire, but Blanche got the
keys and doesn’t look like moving out.
On Forgiveness
I might have worn those chains for life
Or lived like a puppet dancing on tangled strings
Bound by the cord to the hurt and the memory
Always at the mercy of the lesser gods.
A life of sorts but circular, no progress
Waiting long years for release, for apology
For some small expression of regret.
Instead I learned that forgiveness is a choice
A decision to turn and stand and face and say
Enough! I cut the cord. I set myself free.
The Legacy
i.m. John Wentworth
Your last working days, mid-illness, were spent in retreat
A promising teacher, given the library as respite
From the heat and the chaos of the classroom, a place
To postpone the hard decisions and the long rest ahead.
Inner-urban, the eighties, another wave of refugees
Washing through on their way to free-standing dreams.
That year, the last of the Nguyens from what we all thought
Were the last of the boats, surely, passed through the gates.
You called them to read like a coach with a starting gun
“On your marks, get set ... wait (said with a growl) ... Go!”
They would race to the shelves, books flying through air
Caught, opened, eaten, shared.
You re-stocked the library
Twice that year, taking with you the ones who played up
And the ones who sat silent, still waiting for the boat to sink.
The warehouse was the Education Department’s secret pride
No children allowed.
But you gave them each a trolley and sorted out the forms
And the objections later. On your marks ... Go!
And they ran, racing up and down Australian aisles
Extracting fresh books by look, smell, feel
Learning entitlement—this is your country now
While you caught your breath and wished them well.
The books they claimed were read that year again and again
Almost to shreds by the time the next wave
washed through the gates.
Elisabeth Wentworth
71
G a ry F ur nell
The Parish of Comedy
A Second Rediscovery for Barbara Pym
B
arbara Pym is being rediscovered for a second time, when it’s a lucky writer who gets
discovered or remembered at all. Pym’s
novels—comedies of manners—achieved solid if
unspectacular sales and attracted consistently good
reviews in the 1950s; she published six novels during
this time. Then, despite this success, publisher after
publisher refused to accept any more of her novels:
the 1960s mantra of experimentation, existentialism and feminism had rendered Pym passé because
she wrote about genteel people, church fetes, afternoon teas and tepid attempts at illicit romance.
It was hardly the stirring stuff required for social
revolution.
Pym’s first rediscovery occurred in 1977 when,
in a Times Literary Supplement survey, both Philip
Larkin and Lord David Cecil, with no collusion,
nominated Barbara Pym as the century’s most
under-rated novelist. Within a fortnight, the publishers that had for seventeen years rejected the novels Pym had sent to them, now contacted her asking
for any new works. Fortunately for them and for us,
Pym had continued to write despite the constant
blows to her confidence by the long years of repeated
rejection. Larkin was one friend who constantly
encouraged her to keep writing. Three more novels
were quickly published to critical acclaim, one novel
being short-listed for the Booker Prize.
Barbara Pym died of cancer in January 1980,
aged sixty-eight, but at least for three years she
enjoyed and was grateful for the belated recognition
accorded to her. Then she was rediscovered again
in 2005, when new editions of her works started to
appear, each novel introduced by a literary figure
who is a fan of Pym’s comic novels, including Sally
Vickers, Jilly Cooper, John Bayley and Alexander
McCall Smith. I and my bespectacled eyes are especially enjoying the attractive large print editions
now available in my local library.
Pym’s novels are not pure comedies like the comedies of P.G. Wodehouse—uncorrupted by a single
idea—but social comedies in which the actions and
72
thoughts of the characters are revealed, exposing the
discrepancies between words and deeds, the pettiness, the self-delusion, and the sheer silliness of
human deportment, especially when unwarranted
attempts are made at solemnity. Thankfully, there
is no malice in any of this; Pym is a kind author.
A cheerful, practical person, she made the most of
her life—enjoying her administrative work at the
African Institute and the modest house she shared
with her sister—and it is this sense that life will
mostly turn out well that makes reading her novels
a refreshing experience.
In Crampton Hodnet, my favourite Pym novel,
the abrasive and snobby spinster Miss Doggett
never does get her just deserts and I don’t want her
to—I enjoy her too much to want her to learn from
her errors and change her ways. She upbraids her
lady’s companion, Miss Morrow, a sort of Elizabeth
Bennet character who observes with amusement
but who usually keeps her observations to herself,
when in a moment of impetuous joy Miss Morrow
embraces a monkey-puzzle tree:
It was a lovely morning, when even the monkeypuzzle was bathed in sunshine. She clasped
a branch in her hand and stood feeling its
prickliness and looking up into the dark tower
of the branches. It was like being in church.
And yet on a day like this, one realized that it
was a living thing too and had beauty, as most
living things have in some form or another.
Dear monkey-puzzle, thought Miss Morrow,
impulsively clasping her arms around the trunk.
“Now, Miss Morrow,” came Miss Doggett’s
voice, loud and firm, “you must find some
other time to indulge in your nature worship or
whatever it is. You look quite ridiculous. I hope
nobody saw you.”
Miss Morrow is being courted but in a desultory way by a handsome curate, Mr Latimer, whose
charming comments to everyone seem to come from
an interior gramophone record. Church people like
him to be present, even if he would prefer to be
absent, at a tedious jumble sale:
“How much longer will it last?” he asked in a
low voice. “It’s five o’clock now.”
“It will last as long as you stay here,” said
Miss Morrow. “Surely you can see that?”
Mr Latimer heaved a scarcely perceptible
sigh. “Do you think that if a thunderbolt
suddenly fell out of the sky onto this hideous
embroidered tea cosy it would end then?” he
asked.
“The tea cosy would be spoilt and nobody
would be able to buy it, but why should the Sale
of Work end?” said Miss Morrow.
“Are there no sick people I ought to visit?”
asked Mr Latimer hopefully.
“There are no sick people in North Oxford.
They are either dead or alive. It’s sometimes
difficult to tell the difference, that’s all,”
explained Miss Morrow.
Eventually, Mr Latimer chooses a moment
when Miss Doggett is absent to propose to Miss
Morrow. It’s comic disaster. Here they are at the
tender moment:
“We’re neither of us young, if it comes to that.
But we aren’t old yet.” His voice took on a more
hopeful note. “Oh, Miss Morrow—Janie,” he
burst out suddenly.
“My name isn’t Janie.”
“Well, it’s something beginning with J,” he
said impatiently. It was annoying to be held up
by such a triviality. What did it matter what her
name was at this moment?
“It’s Jessie, if you want to know, or Jessica
really,” she said, without looking up from her
knitting.
“Oh, Jessica,” continued Mr Latimer, feeling
a little flat by now, “couldn’t we escape out of all
this together?”
Miss Morrow began to laugh. “Oh, dear,” she
said, “you must excuse me, but it’s so odd to be
called Jessica. I think I rather like it; it gives me
dignity.”
“Well?” said Mr. Latimer, feeling now as flat
as any man who has just proposed marriage and
been completely ignored.
“Well what?” echoed Miss Morrow.
“I said, couldn’t we escape out of all this
together?”
“Do you mean go out this evening?” she said,
with a casual glance at the marble clock on the
mantelpiece. “To the pictures or something?”
Also in Crampton Hodnet, Miss Doggett’s nephew,
Francis Cleveland, a middle-aged don (Oxbridge
don, not Mafia Don) falls in love, or thinks he falls
in love—maybe he’s just bored or wants to shake his
wife out of her complacent attitude towards him—
with a cracker of a student, Barbara Bird. Barbara
imagines she is in love with Francis but, alas for him,
her love is Platonic rather than erotic. Nevertheless,
the bumbling don and the confused student plan to
elope to Paris where their love—a meeting of bodies
in Francis’s mind, a meeting of minds in hers—can
be properly consummated. But Francis, more Don
Quixote than Don Juan, doesn’t know the way to
Dover, he doesn’t know when the ferries to France
leave, and when they arrive late and have to stay in
a dingy hotel Barbara comes to her senses and bails
out. Francis retreats to his wife who knew about his
infatuation but she guessed that Francis was too lazy
and too conventional to endanger his cosy home and
easy way of life. She is right but no credit to her. She
imagines she handles the marital crisis well but she
does nothing other than let the inertia of their lives
determine her path. When she does wonder about
Francis’s interest in Barbara, she distracts herself
from the troubling thoughts.
It occurred to Mrs Cleveland that Francis had
been rather evasive about the whole thing, but, as
it was the strawberry season and there was a great
deal of jam to be made, she was really too busy
to give the matter much thought, although she
sometimes found herself brooding over it before
she went to sleep at night. But that, as everyone
knew, was the very worst time to think about
anything. It was much more sensible to push all
worries out of one’s mind and to play a nice little
alphabet game until one went off to sleep.
M
rs Cleveland’s refusal to enter into the depths
of her own life is typical of many of Pym’s
characters, and this common inauthenticity is
prominent among Pym’s abiding themes. One of
Tolstoy’s repeated descriptors of character, especially
in Anna Karenina, involves this self-diversion from
difficulties, this decision to put ease before honesty:
“He did not want to see, and did not see … He
did not want to understand, and did not understand
…” “She guessed at something which she could not
tell her mother, which she did not put into words to
herself. It was one of those things which one knows
but which one can never speak of even to oneself …”
and so on, relentlessly, throughout the book. Pym
isn’t as scorching in her exposure of inauthenticity
as Tolstoy, but it is still there and obvious. This
self-deception is compounded by outright silliness.
Much of the humour in her novels comes from
73
the characters’ small pretensions or the emotion
they waste on negligible concerns. In An Academic
Question, Caro thinks her husband is having an
affair and seeks consolation from Dolly, a friend.
Unfortunately, Dolly can’t comfort Caro because
Dolly needs comfort herself: her pet hedgehog,
Maeve, a yellowy-coated critter, has died. Caro tells
her that there are other hedgehogs. Dolly responds
by adapting a line from Yeats: “Yes, but not my
golden Maeve, the ancient Irish queen.”
Back in Crampton Hodnet, the parish Sale of
Work is opened by a vague but graceful and eminent Londoner, Lady Beddoes. Her silliness is on
full display, but no one minds or even notices:
If they had not been so charmed by her manner
and appearance, they might have realized that
she had almost given the impression that the
garden party was in aid of the poor of Poland,
about whom she spoke with great feeling for
about ten minutes. And then, perhaps realizing
that she had wandered from the point, for
she had quite forgotten to refer to her written
speech, she ended up by saying that there really
were a lot of poor people who needed our help,
especially in London—in the East End, she
added, frowning a little, for London to her
meant Belgravia and she had not really seen
much sign of poverty there. We ought therefore
to buy as many things as we could. She herself
was certainly going to buy a great many things.
T
he Anglican Church and its parishioners provide rich opportunities for Pym to portray consistent silliness and inauthenticity. The clergy are
routinely portrayed either as eccentric or as so dull
that one could trace the decline in the Church’s
influence in England just by studying Pym’s novels.
This inanity occurs when a vicar welcomes people to
a church garden party:
“Let us pray,” said the vicar in a voice that was
intended to be sonorous but succeeded only
in being harsh and startling. “O Lord God
Almighty, look down and bless our humble
endeavours and the cause for which we are
working. Grant that we may be successful
in our enterprise and that we may have fine
weather, so that we may enjoy the fruits of
the earth, which Thou in Thy mercy hast
vouchsafed to us. Amen.”
But the garden party is spoiled by a storm:
A crowd of people was soon hurrying into the
vicarage, stalls were covered up and tea things
74
hastily abandoned to the fury of the downpour.
“What a pity, what a pity,” said the vicar,
flapping his hands in confusion. “I’m so sorry,”
he added, as if feeling that the inadequacy of
his prayers was to blame for the break in the
weather.
When one reads Pym’s novels one finds oneself
wishing—there is a lot of this type of very English
phraseology in Pym—that people got more from
their faithful church involvement than they seem
to get. A sense of community is there, and some
small solace in distress, but little more. Routine and
convention seem to have largely smothered vision
and transcendence: they fuss over flower arrangements and jumble sales. I read the novels, especially
Jane and Prudence and Excellent Women, and longed
for an Anglican Kierkegaard, who would have at
least attempted to smuggle Christianity back into
the Church.
For many years, Pym was a member of the parish council of St Lawrence’s church and it caused
her great distress when the decision was made to
close St Lawrence’s because of debt and few attendees. She had first-hand experience of the petty concerns that overwhelmed church people and their
unquestioning acquiescence to this pettiness, yet she
loved the Church and grieved over its diminishing
vibrancy and influence. She saw that people were
seeking answers to their problems through therapy
rather than sanctity; in one of her 1960s notebooks,
she observed that the doctor’s office was crowded
but the vicar’s office was empty.
Pym exemplifies the idea that the fairest and
most incisive critic of anything is the person who
loves that thing and not the person who hates it. In
a rare episode of real frustration with the church,
the curate Mr Latimer experiences and admits to
himself—nothing inauthentic here!—a sense of suffocation in his vocation:
Yes, this was the Church of England, his flock,
thought Mr Latimer, a collection of old women,
widows and spinsters, and one young man not
quite right in the head. These were the people
among whom he was destined to spend his life.
He hunched his shoulders in his surplice and
shivered. The church, with its dampness and
sickly smell of lilies, felt cold and tomblike. He
had the feeling, as he mumbled through the
service, that he and his congregation were dead
already …
After the service he lingered in the vestry,
feeling disinclined to make conversation, but
when he got outside he saw that he had not
escaped. Miss Doggett and Miss Morrow were
waiting in the porch. He felt like some pet
animal being led home. As he walked by Miss
Doggett’s side, a sudden feeling of despair came
over him, wrapping around him like the heavy
crimson eiderdown which he so often tossed
onto the floor when he woke in the night.
Although occasional characters seem to see a
greater depth of mystery and grace and find their
faith sustaining, they are the exceptions. Wilmet
Forsyth in A Glass of Blessings is one who experiences
grace in a deeper manner.
Pym’s faith survived, despite the difficulties of
church involvement, and her faith made her thankful. After recovering from a minor stroke, she wrote
to a friend:
Luckily one doesn’t brood too much about one’s
declining years, being blessed with an optimistic
temperament and realizing that there is nothing
you can do about it. Also I have faith that I
would somehow be sustained—I felt that very
much when I was in hospital and couldn’t read
or write properly.
I’m glad Barbara Pym’s novels are enjoying
a resurgence, albeit a modest one (that in itself is
Pym-like); they portray, especially the early novels,
a bygone era when innate decency could be assumed;
they are witty novels; there is a gentle undercurrent
of the quest for significance and for a satisfying
manner of life; and they are rare in that they highlight—but without sneering at—the comic silliness
that attends all our lives.
Gary Furnell, a frequent contributor of non-fiction
and stories, wrote on Alexander McCall Smith’s Mma
Ramotswe novels in the July-August issue.
William Pitt
(An entry in an internet contest for a verse on William Pitt)
Not everyone could, like William Pitt
Lead in a desperate war.
And when he became Prime Minister
He was only twenty-four.
So of the good Mr William Pitt
Let the muse stand forth and sing:
He stopped the great genius-gangster,
And that was one very Good Thing.
Another Good Thing about William Pitt
Is that he seems one of my sort.
He spread the Army and Navy too thin
But like me he liked a good port.
But the serious thing about William Pitt
That stands alone and real,
Is that he never wavered.
He met steel with harder steel.
That is the lesson that William Pitt,
Alfred, Churchill, and some others teach:
Stand, and if you must, stand alone,
Alone in the terrible breach.
Hal G.P. Colebatch
75
I a in B a mforth
In Pessoa’s Footsteps
A Disquieting Guide to Lisbon
A
s Fernando Pessoa would tell you: there is
no better time to visit Lisbon—“luminous
Lisbon”—than winter, when the sun is slant,
the light weak and diffuse, the streets mostly empty,
and the rain gusting in from the Atlantic Ocean
sleeks the pavements with a fine skein of rain that
turns them a grey mother-of-pearl. Visitors who
favour leather-soled shoes have to be careful when
they walk the seven hills of Lisbon though. Not
only are Lisbon’s roads paved; many of its sidewalks
are paved too, with fine, pale, slippery stones. And
you have to be especially careful if you’re carrying
one of Pessoa’s books in your hand.
Not only did I have one of his books in one
hand, the all-too-appropriately-named The Book of
Disquiet; I was ill-advisedly trying to open a popout map of the city of Lisbon with the other. All
I had to do was flick my wrist, and all of origami
Lisbon would open out before me; or so I thought.
Obviously I was really much more eager to observe
the universe at a slight angle to it, like Pessoa
himself …
L
isbon’s air is “a hidden yellow, a kind of pale
yellow seen through dirty white. There is
scarcely any yellow in the grey air. But the paleness
of the grey has a yellow in its sadness”, according
to Bernardo Soares, putative author of The Book of
Disquiet.
Bernardo Soares was Pessoa’s alter-ego, an
assistant bookkeeper who lived in a rented room
and worked for a textile trading firm in the same
street, Rua dos Douradores, one of the drabber
streets in the bustling commercial district of Baixa:
I know: if I raise my eyes, I’ll be confronted
by the sordid row of buildings opposite, the
grimy windows of all the downtown offices, the
pointless windows of the upper floors where
people still live, and the eternal laundry hanging
in the sun between the gables at the top, among
flower-pots and plants.
76
Not much happens in Rua dos Douradores
except for the occasional sound of someone practising scales, arguments between family members
and the endless meteorological rearrangements
overhead. That was how Soares liked it.
The description of Soares, and the circumstances of his life, as laid out in the preface to
The Book of Disquiet, sound very close to those of
Pessoa himself, who often ate lunch in a café in the
street. That is why Pessoa—famous now for taking his commitment to multiple perspectives to the
point where to be “Fernando Pessoa” was also to
be (and to be astonished by) the other poets within
him—insisted that Soares was “solely a mutilation
of [his personality]”. Soares’s life looked too much
like his own as a writer and translator of business
correspondence (for the agent and importing firm
Casa Serras in 1934 and 1935) in the Rua Augusta,
which runs parallel to the Rua dos Douradores, for
him to qualify fully as a heteronym, the term Pessoa
seems to have invented to describe his fictive personalities. “I grew soon to have no personality at
all except an expressive one,” he wrote describing a
kind of revelation he had in March 1914. “I grew to
be a mere apt machine for the expression of moods
which became so intense that they grew into personalities and made my very soul the mere shell of
their casual appearance.” He had found his voices.
There were three principal heteronyms: Alberto
Caeiro, a tranquil, bucolic shepherd who wrote
pagan poems of nature mysticism (and the only
one deferred to as the “master”); Ricardo Reis, a
strictly rhyming classicist with Horatian poise and
manners; and Álvaro de Campos, an exuberant,
hyperbolic, noisy modernist in thrall to movement,
loudness and sensation: it has he who advanced the
doctrine of multiple personality that governed their
relations. The three heteronyms even compelled
their first reader, the medium called Pessoa, to discover how the old notion of a single, self-possessed
authorial presence (“know thyself ”, as the oracle
instructed) might actually be an impediment to a
life of writing.
Bootstrapped out of the ex nihilo paradox of
creativity itself, these three personages were secure
enough in their literary identities and opinions to
argue with Pessoa himself. So much do they argue
that when the semi-heteronym, Soares, chips in
with a comment about his being the living stage
“where various actors act out various plays”, it may
well seem that the observation properly belongs to
the pen of that principal player, Fernando Pessoa—
whose surname is cognate with the Latin word persona. (Long before them, the eighteenth-century
Scottish philosopher David Hume, in comparing
the self to a form of theatre, had already denied
the possibility of there being only one authoritative player on stage at any time.) The forthright
Campos—who has purportedly studied naval engineering in Glasgow, travelled the world and wears
a monocle—even intervened on the occasion of
Pessoa’s only known romantic liaison, with a secretary called Ofélia Queiroz (note the given name)
in the employment of one of his clients, telling her
in a letter to abandon any idea of marriage with
her “Fernandinho”. Even then, Pessoa (the orthonym Fernando Pessoa, to be technical about it) was
capable of writing wildly different poems under his
own name, publishing avant-garde works in the
famous literary publication Orpheu while reserving
his more reactionary outpourings for a monarchist
periodical. It is almost as if he expected his readers
to be cognitively dissonant too.
When Pessoa died the day after checking into
the Hospital de São Luis dos Franceses, the French
hospital, in November 1935, of fulminant liver disease brought on by heavy drinking, most of the 523
fragments of what became The Book of Disquiet were
found in an envelope marked “L. do D.” (Livro do
Desassossego) among the 27,543 documents (number
still growing) that constitute Pessoa’s considerable
oeuvre. “The saddest book in Portugal”, as Pessoa
called it, had no design, and it is unlikely Pessoa
himself could ever have edited it.
Compiled by a team of editors and published
in 1982, The Book of Disquiet is now Pessoa’s most
frequently read volume. It is by no means all as
sad or lugubrious as he suggested: some entries are
droll and self-mocking. In view of Pessoa’s lifetime
obsession with astrology and the occult, it is amusing to read Soares complaining (like a true aesthete) about the stylistic shortcomings of the mystic
masters: “[They] all write abominably. It offends my
intelligence that a man can master the Devil without being able to master the Portuguese language.”
And he doesn’t provide excuses for the holier kind
of mystic either. “To have touched the feet of Christ
is no excuse for mistakes in punctuation.”
Forestalling the phenomenon that has been prematurely called, since the 1960s, “the death of the
author”, Soares’s philosophical musings could even
be regarded as a spoof on the entire genre of wisdom literature. “Travel?” he writes. “One need only
exist to travel.”
The Book of Disquiet could even be said to be a
self-help book in which the writer starts from the
premise of having no self about which to reflect.
P
essoa himself had much stronger feelings for
his native city than Soares, who rarely ventured even as far as the marina and port area of
Cais dos Colunas. Soares in The Book of Disquiet
says, “I have no social or political sentiments, and
yet there is a way in which I’m highly nationalistic.
My nation is the Portuguese language.” Yet Pessoa
himself insisted, in a memorable phrase, “To be
Portuguese is to be European without the discourtesy of nationalism.”
Born in Lisbon in 1888, Pessoa lost his father
at the age of five and was taken to colonial Natal
in South Africa when his mother married the
Portuguese consul in Durban. When he returned to
Lisbon at the age of majority it was to settle there,
and he never left the city again except to make
a couple of trips to provincial towns. And while
many modernist writers have had a strong link
with a particular city—think of Joyce and Dublin,
Kafka and Prague, Svevo and Trieste, Musil and
Vienna—Pessoa did for Lisbon something that few
other leading writers have done for their home cities. He wrote a tourist guide to the city that his
own poems have since helped to remake in their
image. Was this part of the “infinite sightseeing
cruise” Soares mentions somewhere in The Book of
Disquiet? Or was it requested—given the fact that
Pessoa wrote it in English—by one of the commercial firms that employed him, for the use of foreign
visitors to the city on the Tagus?
His guide is particular noteworthy in view of
the generally critical relationship that modernism
has had with “tourism” as an economic and cultural
activity, in which it is invariably and unfavourably
contrasted with travelling—although it is probably
true that in the eyes of indigenous people all visitors
look like tourists. Pessoa certainly had no interest
in leaving his native city once he had rediscovered
it in his late teens.
What the Tourist Should See is a bare eighty
pages, and like nearly everything he wrote was
retrieved from a manuscript found after his death.
It imagines a voyager approaching the city from the
sea, already smitten by the sight of the red roofs of
Alfama and Mouraria and the dominating citadel
of São Jorge, and only too eager to get through
77
customs and on to the major sights.
quake of 1755. The marquis has his own statue at the
This, of course, is Portuguese history in reverse, top of the imposing Avenida da Liberdade. Camões,
as I observed when I took the train from the Cais the great epic poet of The Lusiads, Portugal’s own
do Sodré railway station, where Pessoa handled Aeneid, stands on another baroque pedestal in the
correspondence for a firm called Toscano & Cruz Chiado surrounded by less illustrious bards. Even
in 1920, past the famous squat castellated limestone Pessoa has been copperplated and placed outside
Belém Tower—which marks the ancient northern the famous coffee house A Brasileira in the Rua
district of the city from which Vasco da Gama set Garrett, his left leg jauntily resting on his right.
out for India in 1497 and Pedro Álvares Cabral for Tourists can’t resist sitting next to him.
Brazil in 1499—to Cascais, the upmarket resort at
It is difficult to imagine a more inappropriate
the northern tip of the Bay of Lisbon. Nearly all the memorial to Pessoa, whose true effigy is really one
passengers on the train sat on the left: they wanted of the few photographs of him with gabardine, bowto look out to sea, to admire the yachts sailing on tie, specs and moustache. This is what Tintin might
the Tagus, and measure their progress along the have looked like, if he had progressed from being
coast by the Bugio lighthouse that stands between a boy-reporter to the cosmic disillusion of middle
Lisbon and the abyss. This was
age. Álvaro de Campos, his loudwhere they could commune with
mouthed heteronym, even blurted
“the ancient Portuguese speech of
out on one occasion, “Fernando
essoa’s guide to
the sea”, as Pessoa put it in one of
Pessoa, strictly speaking, doesn’t
Lisbon is really
his poems.
exist.”
Pessoa’s guide to Lisbon is really
a museum guide,
y Pessoa moment in Lisbon
a museum guide, since this splensince this splendid
occurred in the famous elécdid city on seven hills “which rises
city on seven hills
trico 28, one of the ramshackle but
like a fair vision in a dream” (as he
appealing narrow-gauge vintage
puts it in his decorous English) has
“which rises like
trams manufactured between 1936
always had mythical pretensions.
a fair vision in a
and 1947 that still serve the narAs one of the oldest European citrow
streets of the city’s hills. I got
ies it was formerly called Olissipo,
dream” (as he puts
on it in the Rua da Conceição, and
in homage to Ulysses. (Editora
it in his decorous
found a seat at the back (seats for
Olisipo was the name of a shortlived publishing house run by
English) has always only twenty persons, standing room
for almost twice that number) as it
Pessoa between 1921 and 1923 in
had mythical
trundled around the Chiado and
the Rua da Assunção which among
pretensions.
slid down the Rua da Loreto in the
other titles published a couple of
direction of the Estrela park. The
volumes of his not very convincing
driver had to get out once to readpoems in English.)
Lisbon cannot separate itself from its revenants. just the pantograph, which had become dislodged
Every square seems to boast massive, muscular effi- on one of the sharp bends ascending the Chiado,
gies of kings and explorers whose very bulk delivers stepping smartly out of his cab with a long pole
a verdict on the mediocrity of the present. What in his hand. But we didn’t get very far. A funeral
convinced this city’s inhabitants five centuries ago was being held in the Santa Catarina church, and a
that reality doesn’t flatten out at the horizon? How hearse was parked outside the steps to bring in the
did a seafaring kingdom that once commanded coffin. The tram had no option but to wait behind it
half the world, from Brazil in the west to entire as the bells pealed down the narrow street. Bowing
countries on both sides of Africa as well as scat- to the inevitable in what appeared to be another
tered entrepôts in Asia through its knowledge of fairly common occurrence, the driver got out of the
the Atlantic gyre and the volta do mar (“turn of the cab again, this time to have a smoke. Half an hour
sea”) retreat to this recess on the edge of Europe later, with several other trams piled up behind us,
where the loudest debate on the quays is over the we were able to continue the journey to Pessoa’s last
home.
price of cod?
This was the tram to Prazeres, in the neighbourThe vast space of the Praça do Comércio, for
instance, is crowned by the mounted effigy of King hood of the cemetery in which Pessoa was interred
José I, his charger busily crushing snakes. This on December 2, 1935, when it rained and rained. He
square, and nearly all the districts of the city close lived in this district for the last fifteen years of his
to the river, were rebuilt by his prime minister, the life, and the apartment he leased at 16 Rua Coelho
Marquês de Pombal, after the devastating earth- da Rocha where his mother and other members of
P
M
78
the family lived at various times has been transformed into a museum, Casa Fernando Pessoa:
it holds his personal library, his bed, his personal
astrological chart cast in marble on the floor and
some of his school reports from his British colonial
education in South Africa. He had clearly been a
studious pupil.
At the Casa Pessoa, I picked up the exhibition
catalogue, “Os lugares de Pessoa”. I used it to visit all
of “Pessoa’s places” in a single day, from the fourthfloor apartment on the Largo de Sao Carlos where
he was born in 1888 (and which is now guarded by a
sculpture with its head appealingly lost in a book);
the Church of the Martyrs where he was christened; the apartment of his aunt (“Tia Anica”) on
the Rua de São Bento, close to my own hotel; and
his residence on his definitive return to Portugal in
1905. The Café Martinho de Arcada, an upmarket
restaurant recessed in the arcade behind the Praça
do Comércio, even has a little shrine to Pessoa from
the days when it was called Café da Arcada, and
he was a regular. It still does his favourite menu:
Portuguese cabbage soup, cod and fried eggs with
cheese.
I
n 1988, on the centenary of his birth, the writer’s
remains were transferred to the famous Mosteiro
dos Jerónimos (Monastery of the Order of St Jerome
or Hieronymites) in Belém where the country’s
greats are buried. The monastery is the centrepiece
of Pessoa’s What the Tourist Should See, in which
he describes it as “the most remarkable monument
which the capital contains”. Commissioned by King
Manuel I five hundred years ago, its western front
remains a masterpiece of Renaissance stonework:
made of worked limestone, it is richly ornate and
incorporates maritime symbols and objects gathered during the naval expeditions of the Age of
Discovery. Its vaults and pulpits are no less remarkable, and also full of memorabilia: “The vault which
rises over the cross is an admirable work, and contains the real bronze escutcheons which belonged to
the caravels that went to India and to Brazil.” Once
the visitor has seen the monastery, Pessoa suggests,
he will never forget it.
Strange, I thought as I walked the few miles back
from Belém on those rain-slicked cobblestones, to
come upon the mortal remains of such a timid and
housebound man in such a place, “glorious” as he
said it was, and alongside those of Camões. Pessoa
had always maintained that imaginary travel was
superior to the actual thing—but it’s true that in
his early writings he had also written about dreamcaravels sailing off to discover transcendent “New
Indias” and flirted with Sebastianism, the doc-
trine of the messianic king who was supposed to
return and restore Portuguese culture to its former
greatness (after leading it to disaster in 1578). His
theatrical splitting into three heteronyms, a semiheteronym and someone who claimed to be called
Mr Person was perhaps the only way a twentiethcentury poet could hope to emulate Camões’s epic
dispersal—to be a “super-Camões”. Self-coherence
gave way to subsidiary psyches. Instead of going
to the tropics Pessoa multiplied the “desire to die
another person beneath unknown flags”. Esoterism
was made to stand in for exoticism. Pessoa had discovered that the world isn’t a globe at all; it is flat,
paper-thin even.
Pessoa intensified to an almost hallucinatory
pitch Calderón’s supposition, in his famous seventeenth-century Spanish drama Life is a Dream,
that “though no man knows it, all men dream the
lives they lead”; and while his attitude may seem
resigned and restful, or even have a mystical Zen
quality, it has its recessed elements too. The heteronyms can even be seen as a means of concealing
rather than expressing aspects of Pessoa’s personality. Ivo Castro, one of editors of the critical edition
of Pessoa’s work, has remarked, “Hiding from his
own editor is perhaps the most subtle form of disguise which Pessoa ever adopted.” Whether masks
or mutes, it is difficult to imagine Pessoa reading
Dante’s strictures about the need for coherency in a
human life with equanimity.
The immobility of Pessoa’s life has a haunting
quality. You only need to chance on one of the
excerpts in The Book of Disquiet—which is certainly
not a book to be read cover to cover—to be seized by
a renewed sense of what the title suggests:
I don’t know how many will have contemplated,
with the attention it merits, a deserted street
with people in it. This way of putting the phrase
already seems to want to say something else, and
indeed it does. A deserted street is not a street
where nobody ventures but a street on which
people walk as if it were deserted.
Scale that up, and you are contemplating a complete urban geography of Lisbon. Walk in Pessoa’s
footsteps, especially in the rain, and you’ll discover
his insomnia too. Saudade, that uniquely Lusitanian
quality, isn’t just nostalgia for the past, but for the
future too.
Iain Bamforth is a poet, physician, essayist and
translator who lives in Strasbourg. His essay collection
A Doctor’s Dictionary was recently published by
Carcanet.
79
G iles A u t y
The Irreplaceable
Brian Sewell
W
hen I wrote about the controversial
English art critic Brian Sewell in the
May edition of Quadrant I was aware
that he was already seriously ill. Sadly Brian died
on September 19 in London. I find it hard to believe
I will never see his witty, informed and provocative
articles in the Evening Standard again. That is a very
great loss after nearly thirty-one years.
Our professional lives as critics began within
weeks of each other in 1984 and I have been aware of
Brian’s welcome presence in the greater firmament
of critics ever since. Our backgrounds may have
seemed quite different yet often we reached similar
conclusions about the serious shortcomings of supposedly world-class recent artists and exhibitions. I
believe that was because we tended to view all art
in a greater context of time than the merely recent.
Thus we might see a painter described by others as
a highly significant figure of the moment but both
of us could not help wondering how such an artist
could really be held to rate in comparison with certain persons from previous centuries—Rembrandt,
Velazquez and Vermeer from the mid-seventeenth
century, for instance, or Degas, Manet and van
Gogh, say, from the late nineteenth century.
Those are questions any art critic worthy of the
name should be asking himself—at least in private—but to do so requires considerable knowledge
of the history of art. Fudging a column together
largely from press releases really will not do.
Brian possessed a great range of knowledge but
rarely flaunted it. He consistently made contact with
the intelligent general reader rather than merely
with the chattering classes. Thank God there are
still more of the former than the latter left in the
world—an important fact which even astute editors
of newspapers are sometimes slow to acknowledge.
In Australia the problem is often exacerbated
because the arts are widely looked on here as an
area merely of peripheral interest. If they are indeed
so then that may simply be an indictment of the
quality of critics and arts editors whom too many
publications employ.
80
The visual arts are—or certainly should be—one
of the great adornments of human history. Other
than the saints and mystics, great practitioners of
the visual arts deserve their place in the highest levels of human achievement.
How then does Australia stand in a world context? Too often we work ourselves up into a frenzy
here about minor and parochial matters—dare one
mention the Archibald—while remaining in woeful
ignorance about significant world trends, ideas and
events.
In Australia some overdue effort has been made
by the present government to combat the widespread politicisation of art, which has been a too
easily ignored effect of establishing bodies such
as the Australia Council. I have always wondered
why Maynard Keynes did not foresee widespread
cronyism and nepotism as inevitable consequences
of public funding for the arts—in certain areas such
as literature and the visual arts at least. Keynes
was the driving force after the war behind the
Committee for the Encouragement of Music and
the Arts, which later became the Arts Council in
Britain and led in time to the foundation of the
Australia Council here. An inability to foresee such
likely consequences argues strongly against Keynes’s
reputation as a major social visionary.
Sewell was a consistent critic of the realities of
public funding rather than ever of the worthy idea
in itself. Here is Sewell on the Arts Council:
The English, though much given to glorifying
adventurers who did and died, and do-gooders
single-minded enough to do the good
themselves, are at heart a nation of committee
members, cosy only in the comfort of corporate
responsibility and the safety of numbers.
Of this the Arts Council is a prize example,
burdened with committees on which some
members sat … not for mere years but even
for decades, and some sat on half a dozen
concurrently and in sequence, bending their
patronage to their own purposes and those of
The Irreplaceable Brian Sewell
buddy-boys. Once a broad church in the visual
arts, mounting exhibitions devoted to the old
masters as well as modern, it now, with mightily
increased funding, restricts its quite uncritical
activities all but entirely to the support of
immediately contemporary art, and is one of the
engines that establishes and maintains the fame
and fortune of the favoured few. This it contrives
by excluding from its advisory groupies, and
particularly from the rank of Councillors, all
who have ever been critical of its activities.
Margaret Thatcher when Prime Minister once
expressed her wish to extinguish this nest of
vipers, but neither she nor any minister since has
seized the opportunity. Beyond reform, only by
shutting it down and sending into exile all who
have served on it or in its arrogant bureaucracy,
starting again with a tabula rasa, shall we ever
be able to devise a system for funding the arts
that is not buddy-boy back-scratching and
bureaucratic, but fair, simple, broadly based and
swiftly effective.
During the eleven years in which I wrote a
weekly art column for the Spectator I received only
one invitation from the British Council to attend an
exhibition which they had organised overseas, while
certain more pliant colleagues received as many as
sixteen in the same period. Those trips were generally extremely enjoyable, to lands such as Japan.
In my article in May I recommended readers of
Quadrant to acquire the last anthology of Brian’s
writing, Naked Emperors (2012). Wherever one turns
in the book one encounters Brian at his funniest
and most acerbic while at the same time making
a vitally relevant point. Here he is describing an
exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery in London
in 1999 called “Examining Pictures”:
“Examining Pictures” is a rotten title for a
shoddy little show that is a disgrace to the
Whitechapel Gallery. Though the press release
announced it as the great beginning of a new
programme of exhibitions, the catalogue tells
another tale—that far from being part of a
coherent programme this exhibition is no more
than an ill-considered impulse stemming from
chance cocktail party chatter. To this the sane
man’s only response is that the curators should
have known that sound exhibitions depend on
much more than whim and the heady whiff of
alcohol, take many months to prepare, and are
founded on a proper thesis rather than codaesthetics that expose them to accusations of
intellectual incapability.
Their sixty odd pictures by sixty odd
artists—and odd is certainly the word for most
of both—give the impression of an entirely
random choice, a morning’s shopping for the
dregs of Cork Street, the discards of collectors
who have learned something of connoisseurship
since acquiring them, or the leftovers from a
sale at Sotheby’s; the last thing in the world
we could assume from them is that they
represent the revival and resurgence of the art
of painting—and yet this is the claim made by
these curators.
Brian is sorely missed. It will be a long time—if
ever—before we see his like again. On the Award of the Nobel Prize to Harold Pinter
The greatest living playwright
Of the English speaking-world
Makes art of the absurd.
Stylistically elegant,
Tough-minded, deeply literate,
Original, yet a master-craftsman,
Probes truth with wit and grace.
Politically courageous and decent,
Anti-totalitarian,
Rebellious in the best sense—
Deserving of it if anyone is.
Hal G.P. Colebatch
81
R obin N or ling
The Life of
an Artist
I
’ve spent a lifetime painting and drawing and
passing on to others insights about these skills,
forever pondering the question: What is art?
Whatever I’ve done and am doing must be of some
value to society … I haven’t starved yet!
I’ve encountered prehistoric art in southern
France, ancient Egyptian tomb painting in the
Valley of the Kings, rock shelter art in Kakadu, as
well as the great Gothic windows of St Chapelle
and Chartres and the extraordinary frescoes of
Renaissance Italy. I’ve taken pilgrimages to the
Venice Biennale and have guided bewildered
masses through many Sydney Biennales.
With all these experiences I still ask myself,
“What is art?” The closest I can get is: “any object
made to be viewed aesthetically, when viewed aesthetically”. My definition therefore requires the act
of production or creation, then put “out there” for
aesthetic response by a perceptive, sensitive, knowledgeable viewer … are there any out there? Art is
a performance to an audience. (I think artists are
their own best audience.)
No matter how famous an artist is, only the
artist will fully see the layers of creativity that the
work of art has locked up within it. By retracing
the endless decision-making, the informed viewer
can enjoy some of the frissons of discovery, and
have some of the “ahh, ha-ha’s” that make up the
“aesthetic response”. The artistic contract has been
created.
In my experience of watching gallery-watchers,
most viewers dispatch a painting in three to ten seconds. They will spend more time reading the label
than they will spend looking at the art object. We
have been taught to read text, but we have not been
schooled in “reading” the art object. For many of us
our first art instruction took place on our mother’s
knee, and our first pictorial matter was probably
a magazine. We learnt to recognise “puppy dog”,
“pussy cat”, “house”, “lady”, we were rewarded by
the enthusiastic response of our parent when we
became pictorially literate, that is, when we could
82
recognise printed representations of the real world.
This “object recognition” approach has stuck
with us, with the added sophistication of joining up
with a narrative cause and effect: “The lady holds
the pussy cat away from the barking dog as she
enters the house”. We “read” the picture as painted
language.
Anyone wishing to pursue this line of thought
should read an excellent tract, The Painted Word by
Tom Wolfe; but Wolfe, for all his insights into the
critical and marketing aspects of art participants
and promoters, does not venture into how we
should look at a work of art. Unfortunately the “art
work” may not have been created with aesthetic
viewing as its primary aim. Much of what currently
bedecks gallery walls has been created to be
viewed politically, sociologically, environmentally,
art-historically, and so on, which makes it a bit
frustrating for those who go to the art work looking
for visual delight. I may be regarded as antiquated,
left-footed, off-field, quaintly old-worldly, but all
of my paintings have been created to be viewed
aesthetically. I shall try to explain what I mean by
“aesthetically”.
P
ainting is a form of design. Design, I believe,
comes from two Latin words, deus (God) and
signo (sign)—therefore “signature of God”. (My
Oxford dictionary doesn’t support my etymological
theory, nevertheless …) The world to most is a
chaotic set of happen-chances. To the artist or
scientist falls the task of bringing it all together,
to show order where perhaps little cohesion seems
to exist.
The rectangular frame through which most artists view the world is an artificial device, which,
once accepted, dictates to the pictorially sensitive
eye the many adjustments necessary in the adaptation of the visual world to the structure of the
picture plane. This is the act of composition. For
many years I struggled to rid my art of the rectangle, and my carefully carpentered, cut-out images
the
the
folly
lifeof
ofInsurrection
an artist
avoided background and the enclosing rectangle. whole then needs to be related to the rectangular
Nevertheless the rectangle is in some way implied frame.
if not explicit. Like the prodigal son, I returned to
In some ways artists never really get it all
orthodoxy more a believer than ever before.
together. All paintings have unresolved or poorly
The world is ever-changing and three-dimen- resolved areas; nevertheless the viewer’s pleasure
sional; that which is caught on the picture plane is can be in the involvement as to how the resolutimeless and flat. Sitting at a street-side café watch- tions are made. Much the same way, listening to a
ing the world go by is endlessly fascinating, but a piece of music we have never heard before our brain
photograph of it is somehow a litparticipates by anticipation of the
next note or chord that becomes
tle less than fascinating. However,
a painting of it, say, Rembrandt’s
resolved.
How much reality? How
n my experience of
Night Watch, despite all that it
much geometry? What have been
watching gallery- the pictorial sacrifices? What have
lacks—smell, sound, and changing
watchers, most
light sources—has what raw reality
been the aesthetic gains?
doesn’t have: design. It is this wresFifty years of my artistic ramviewers spend more blings
tle between reality and geometry
may be arbitrarily broken
time reading the
and the thousands of choices that
up into excursions which will bear
must be made that provides the
such labels as “nudes”, “portraits”
label than they
aesthetic adventure which is there
“landscapes”. However, metawill spend looking and
to fascinate us, should we wish to
morphosis and geometric devices
stand and ponder. Unfortunately
like the grid are the linked threads
at the art object.
the millions of gallery visitors to
of my seemingly haphazard journey.
the shrine of Rembrandt get a little
Hansel and Gretel dropped pebdazzled by the bright lights of fame and monetary bles to mark their journey into the wilds. Theseus
value; many leave wondering what all the fuss was had a ball of string to enable his exploration of
about.
Minos’s maze. My advice is to let yourself go and
Most art students study to gain the skills to get lost; there is no one right way.
depict A and B. The next skill developed is to
be able to put A and B into a pictorial relation- Robin Norling lives in northern New South Wales.
ship, whereby they have a bigger unity (the whole His website, http://robinnorling.com, includes many
becomes more than the sum of the parts). This examples of his artwork.
I
The Bamboo Dragonflies of Arashiyama
In a bamboo grove
a man is carving bamboo
to make dragonflies—
their long tails counterweighting
their paired forward-thrusting wings.
In the beginning,
who imagined the balance
and the buoyancy
that could be achieved by means
of mere weight and counterweight?
Yet stability
depends on many matters,
as the recently
steady bamboo dragonflies
discovered when I bumped them.
Even as they bob
and wobble out of balance
they look elegant—
the bamboo dragonflies carved
to match poise with counterpoise.
Andrew Lansdown
83
Da niel O’N eil
Synagogue and Sacrifice
T
he City of London, the literal and figurative “square mile” that was once London’s
medieval core and now serves, with Wall
Street, as one of the global capitals of finance, is
a dense potpourri of architectural styles. Tudor
wood and stone (or, at least, what little of it survived the Great Fire of 1666 and then the onslaught
of the Luftwaffe) huddles in the shade of sharp
and thrusting twenty-first-century glass and steel.
When it comes to the City’s more historic structures, it is difficult to swing a dead cat without
knocking it against something Wren had a hand in
designing. As for the newer buildings, one is surrounded by showpieces with light-hearted, illustrative nicknames: the Gherkin, the Cheesegrater, and
the Walkie-Talkie (which, when it was first opened,
had the unfortunate habit of concentrating sunlight
on its curved windows and firing scorching “deathrays” at cars and footpaths), while on the other side
of the Thames the thousand-foot Shard looms over
the City.
Famous though they now are, none of these
buildings were here a decade ago. The built environment of the City is not static, and guides to its
architecture fall out of date very rapidly. The City is
a protean thing, ever-changing, its face rejuvenated
(or disfigured, depending on one’s perspective on
architectural preservation) by perpetual construction work. Walking between the silver-red-andwhite dragons that mark the ancient boundaries
of the City, one is forever encountering chain-link
fencing and colourful banners emblazoned with
the logos of construction companies. A merchant
banker transported from the City of the 1980s to
the City of the present would struggle to orient
themselves, or to recognise the City’s skyline from
afar. Amidst this tumult is a superficially uninteresting street named Bevis Marks, upon which is
located the oldest synagogue in Britain.
I
caught the Circle Line to Aldgate, the Tube station closest to Bevis Marks. Aldgate (once, as its
name suggests, the site of an opening in London’s
84
long-demolished city walls) is where the prosperous City begins to shade into what were once the
slums and rookeries of the East End, the pits of
Georgian despair from which so many were transported to Botany Bay and Van Diemen’s Land.
(There is a persistent theory—albeit not one that
receives a great deal of support from linguists—that
the Australian accent is a mutated form of nineteenth-century Cockney.) Until the mid-twentieth
century, the East End was also the major centre of
London’s Jewish population, and traces of this survive: nearby Brick Lane is home to a distinct variety
of beigel (so spelt) quite unlike those found in New
York or Montreal.
Aldgate station is sadly notable for something
more recent. Just before 8.50 a.m. on July 7, 2005,
extremists detonated a bomb on a Circle Line train
travelling between Liverpool Street station and
Aldgate. Seven people died, and it is important to
take a moment to rescue them from the cold realm of
the statistical and remember them as human beings
with hopes, aspirations, stories, and full inner lives:
Benedetta Ciaccia (who was two months from her
wedding day), Lee Baisden (who was also planning
on marrying his partner), Richard Ellery (who had
come down to London for the day from Ipswich),
Richard Gray (who left two children behind), Anne
Moffat (who was born on Christmas Day), Fiona
Stevenson (who had bought a new home a fortnight
earlier), and Carrie Taylor (who had always struggled to get her parents to share her love of Russian
drama).
(I was tempted to open this last paragraph
with a brief biographical sketch of the murderer—
he was so many years old, from such-and-such a
place, motivated by such-and-such an insane ideology—but on reflection the empty limbo of damnatio memoriæ seems a far more appropriate fate for
this animal. Contrary perhaps to popular belief,
terrorists are very rarely compelling or interesting
individuals. The defining trait of a terrorist is not
his commitment to a cause or his fanaticism, but
rather always his frustration, his failures in life,
his final, ultimate banality. They are ciphers, as the
man who blew up the train at Aldgate was a cipher.
The victims of that day seem much more worth
memorialising.)
E
very year, there are some 60 million passenger
entries and exits at Liverpool Street station,
one of Britain’s busiest. Scant few of these travellers, I should say, give a thought to the Bevis Marks
Synagogue a mere five or so minutes’ walk away.
For three centuries without interruption, services have been held at Bevis Marks—a privilege
of unbroken, unshattered tradition that Nazism
robbed of almost every other Jewish house of worship in Europe. Famous names in British Jewish
history hang around the place: Montefiore, Sebag,
Disraeli (or rather, D’Israeli: Benjamin’s father was
a member of the congregation here before his son
altered the spelling of the family name). Before
the completion of Bevis Marks in 1701, London’s
Sephardic community worshipped at a smaller site
(no longer extant) on Creechurch Lane, adjacent
to the present synagogue. In October 1663, Samuel
Pepys attended a Torah service at Creechurch Lane
with a Jewish acquaintance. Pepys was, for all his
talents as a diarist, a man of his time, and was sadly
possessed of the prejudices of his time when it came
to the Jews. The impressions he left of the service
were not favourable:
Lord! to see the disorder, laughing, sporting,
and no attention, but confusion in all their
service, more like brutes than people knowing
the true God, would make a man forswear ever
seeing them more and indeed I never did see so
much, or could have imagined there had been
any religion in the whole world so absurdly
performed as this.
“Away thence with [his] mind strongly dis
turbed ”, Pepys continued on by coach to
Westminster.
I mention Pepys in part because of his renown as
a chronicler of London, but also in part because the
anti-Semitism he demonstrated has become dispiritingly relevant in our own time. Now more than
ever, as anti-Semitic violence blights Europe (the
Charlie Hebdo attacks, the murders at the Jewish
museum in Brussels) and so few European Jews see
a future for themselves and their families in this
continent (what would a man or a woman liberated
from a concentration camp in 1945 have said to the
suggestion that even seventy years later it would
still be necessary for pieces like Jeffrey Goldberg’s
April 2015 essay in the Atlantic, “Is It Time for the
Jews to Leave Europe?” to be written?), it is crucial
to appreciate and celebrate the heritage and continuity of European Jewry. It is worth five minutes’
walk from Liverpool Street, certainly.
I
visited Bevis Marks on a weekday morning. It
was a dark day, and the sky was the colour of a
well-worn jumper. I was reminded of something
Germaine Greer wrote years ago as she reflected
on what she missed most as an Australian living
abroad: “In Europe, the sky sits on your head like a
grey felt hat; in Australia, the sky is a million miles
away and all that lies beneath it belongs to you.”
This seemed apt. It was a summer’s day, a reminder
that in Britain the seasons are really little more
than notional variations on the perpetual theme of
autumn. Not, I hasten to add, that this is necessarily a bad thing: indeed, the beauty of much of the
landscape here, particularly in Scotland, is in fact
enhanced by the bleakness of the weather. What
better way to see the ruins of the cathedral at St
Andrews than while standing on a windswept beach
with your hands stuffed deep into your coat pockets,
an electrical storm thundering over the horizon as
the North Sea lashes the base of the cliffs? I will
concede, however, that this greyness tends to flatter
urban landscapes somewhat less.
The staccato rumble of a twin-rotor Chinook
helicopter reverberated through the streets outside.
Two burly men with walkie-talkies and bomber
jackets stood at the synagogue’s entrance, projecting an air with carefully-measured portions of reassurance and menace, a precaution as depressing as it
is necessary. At least they do not yet feel, like their
counterparts in Paris or Brussels, the need to arm
themselves with sub-machine guns.
Bevis Marks is like the other houses of worship
of its era (the English seventeenth century was a
puritanical time): less fabulously ornate than those
of earlier or later centuries, perhaps, but dignified,
with touches of grandeur whose effect is amplified by
the austerity of their surroundings. A carved, oaken
Star of David flanked by overflowing cornucopia
greets the visitor on arrival. Heavy columns (twelve
in number, one for each of the Tribes of Israel), also
in oak and painted in imitation of caramel-coloured
marble, surround the interior of the synagogue,
supporting the upstairs women’s gallery. Seven
ornate gold chandeliers hang from the ceiling: one
to mark each day of Creation. Inscribed in Hebrew
on the ark (the structure that holds the synagogue’s
Torah scrolls) are the opening words of each of the
Ten Commandments.
A life-size photographic portrait of one notable
member of the Bevis Marks congregation stands
at the synagogue’s entrance: Lieutenant Frank
Alexander de Pass of the 34th Prince Albert Victor’s
85
Own Poona Horse, thinly-moustached and in full
Indian Army regalia. Having charged a German
trench at Festubert in northern France in late 1914,
de Pass and another man carried a wounded soldier
back to safety under heavy fire. The following day,
he was killed by a German sniper, having volunteered to stay behind and repair a portion of his
regiment’s trench. He became as a result the first
Jewish recipient of the Victoria Cross, at the age of
twenty-seven. I note sadly that the name of another
de Pass, Crispin, is recorded on the granite slab
on the synagogue’s exterior commemorating the
“honoured memory of the yehidim [Jews] and sons
of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews’ Congregation
London who gave their lives for their country,
1914–1918”. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori, their
mother must have told herself.
can bring forth extraordinary deeds from ordinary
people (Lieutenant de Pass’s gallant actions amidst
the living hell of trench warfare, for instance), certainly, but what of ordinary times?
It is here that the Memorial to Heroic Self
Sacrifice illuminates the human character, and
human capability. The most recent of the plaques
on the memorial (placed there in 2009) reads as
follows:
Leigh Pitt, reprographic operator, aged 30,
saved a drowning boy from the canal at
Thamesmead, but sadly was unable to save
himself, June 7, 2007.
This, in contrast to, say, striding victorious
across the battlefield at Waterloo, was the culmination of a situation one could plausibly imagbrief stroll from Bevis Marks is another ine oneself becoming involved in at any time.
oasis of peace amidst the bustle of the City: Thamesmead is an ordinary place (an eastern subPostman’s Park, a small piece of
urb of London largely built on
greenery wedged incongruously
reclaimed marshland), and Pitt
beneath the financial district’s
wo burly men with was an ordinary man. On that
towering skyscrapers. Postman’s
in June 2007, a nine-year-old
walkie-talkies and day
Park (named for its proximity to
boy fell into the canal while playbomber jackets stood ing outside his home: hearing the
the former General Post Office) is
home to my favourite of London’s
at the synagogue’s boy’s cries, Pitt ran from his flat to
commemorative edif ices: the
rescue him, grabbing the boy and
entrance, projecting holding him above the water. But it
Memorial to Heroic Self Sacrifice,
a wall of white Royal Doulton an air with carefully- became apparent that, once in the
plaques housed under a slanting
there was no obvious way to
measured portions canal,
wooden loggia, unveiled in 1900,
escape from it (the canal had been
of reassurance and built through uninhabited marshand recording the names and deeds
of those who selflessly gave their menace, a precaution land during the Napoleonic Wars,
lives to save the lives of others in
and its architects never envisaged
as depressing as
the course of everyday life.
that it would one day run through
None of the names on these
a populated area): there was no ladit is necessary.
plaques will be familiar to the
der, no handrail, and the fifteenvisitor: but it is precisely the very
foot walls provided no purchase for
ordinariness of the deeds and persons commemo- climbing. Pitt’s son and another neighbour lowrated here that gives them their pathos. London is ered a length of hosepipe into the canal, and the
home to many, many monuments preserving the child was saved. Pitt, however, was not so lucky.
deeds of great men and women of history: Nelson’s Unable to tread water and hold the boy aloft at the
Column, the Wellington Arch, the Cenotaph. same time, he drowned. But his memory shall live
One is certainly impressed by these men and their on forever in one of the most beautiful corners of
deeds, but the circumstances of their heroism are London, for the consideration of visitors like you
often so far removed from our own that our rever- or me.
ence for them is in a sense abstract. Can we, as we
go about our lives, truly feel ourselves a Nelson, Daniel O’Neil is studying history at the University
a Wellington, or a de Pass? Extraordinary times of Oxford.
A
86
T
Kilroy
was here.
The world’s most well-known
graffito. Bald-headed geezer
with banana-nose peeping over walls,
fingers clutching sides to steady a pea-eyed gaze.
In WWII, the average Joe’s
default method of planting the flag,
on every available wall, barn, railway carriage.
Discovered on so much captured US weaponry,
Hitler thought it a code name.
Even Stalin found Kilroy
perving in his bathroom.
Known as Mr Chad in the UK,
Private Snoops, The Goon and Watcher.
A variety of accompanying slogans included:
Wot, no sugar?
Wot, no Fuehrer?
In WWI Australia, Foo Was Here.
In Africa, Smoe & Clem.
In Russia, Vasya.
Other nicknames: Flywheel, The Jeep,
Luke the Spook and Stinkie.
Contests held to discover origins—
How Kilroy Got There— to no avail.
One theory suggested a derivation
of Greek Omega Ω
the symbol for electrical Resistance.
I Set a Mousetrap Late Last Night
I set a mousetrap late last night
with a cube of wholemeal bread
by morning light I soon discovered
I’d caught a broom instead
my wife must have leaned it there
in that corner unaware
yet and still the bread was gone
I had no notion where
about an hour or so ago
after a bottle of wine
silent-gazing at the fire
with nothing on my mind
I saw a mouse head poking
out of the firewood sticks
our beady eyes quickly met
I almost read his lips
he seemed to be enquiring
if tonight I would be serving
the bread and broom combo again
his boldness was unnerving
In 1997, the little witness was
last officially spotted
peeking over the edge
of New Zealand stamp #1422.
The earliest documented version, 1937,
chalk-scratched inside
Fort Knox.
I recognized immediately
a fellow philosopher
and agreed to break bread cordially
again with him (or her)
the same table as before I asked
the corner of the room
he’d find his bread cube on the tray
this time without the broom.
Joe Dolce
87
Ton y T hom as
Brezhnev: My Part
in His Downfall
O
n a limpid autumn day in 1977, my phone
rang in the Age’s office in the Canberra
press gallery. We were in the rabbit warren of second-floor rooms in what is now the Old
Parliament House.
A heavily accented voice said, “Good afternoon,
Mr Thomas. My name is Oleg Petrovich Tsitsarkin.
I am with the Soviet embassy.”
“Well, hi, Oleg Petrovich! What can I do for
you?”
“I would say first, that at the embassy we think
highly of your economics writing.”
That was nice, I love compliments. I had been
Economics Writer for the Age for seven years.
“Thanks. I do my best.”
Mr Tsitsarkin continued, “I must tell you I have
a problem. My boss Mr Shilin sends a monthly
briefing on economic policy back to Moscow, and
he has gone on leave and these briefings I now have
to write. But I do not know much about your economics and my reports will be criticised. Perhaps
you can help me with advice?”
“Sure! CPI, GDP, SRDs, whatever. I’m a walking encyclopaedia.”
“Mr Thomas, let us have lunch and a talk. You
can explain about Mr Howard’s Treasury policies
perhaps. May I suggest next Monday, the 19th Hole
at the golf club?”
I don’t know about other journalists but I would
sell my grandmother for a swanky lunch. Plus I had
been angling unsuccessfully for an exclusive interview with the reclusive Soviet Ambassador Mr A.V.
Basov, and Mr Tsitsarkin could be a useful lever.
T
he Royal Canberra Golf Club’s restaurant is no
longer called the 19th Hole, but it’s still a ritzy
joint for “a memorable and enjoyable experience”.
That’s what I got, four decades ago.
I gathered for Mr Tsitsarkin some economic
bumph that cascaded across my Age desk, and a
speech or two by the Treasurer.
He was a slim and nervous chap about my age
88
(then thirty-seven). The restaurant had glossy panels and pretty views of the links. I ordered a rare
steak and breezily selected a shiraz. Mr Tsitsarkin
gallantly approved my choice. He was full of bonhomie and seized upon my “Treasury Round-Ups”
with gratitude. I impressed him with the finer
points of fiscal and monetary settings.
I mentioned my desire to interview the ambassador. A great idea! He would talk to the first secretary, Mr Pavlov, this very afternoon on my behalf.
By the end of the bottle I was full of goodwill.
Poor Mr Tsitsarkin, he didn’t get out much, literally, holed up in the Soviet residential compound.
His wife Ekaterina would get out even less. He was
a guy just trying to do a difficult job. We had things
in common.
“Tell you what, Oleg,” I said brightly. “Grab
your wife and have dinner at our place in Empire
Circuit. What about next Thursday?”
That was only a few days ahead. I was taking a
real risk here, not because I was dealing with sinister Russians but because my then wife did not like
being sprung with dinner guests at short notice.
Oleg gave a startled response. Sure, thank you,
he said, he would ring me back to confirm. He
seemed to have come by taxi so I offered to drop
him back at his office in my Cortina. As we neared
the embassy in Canberra Avenue, he suddenly
remembered some dry-cleaning to collect at the
local shops. I dropped him off there and returned
to Parliament.
I
waited for his acceptance to dine with Mr and
Mrs Thomas. Days passed, Thursday came and
went. I was curious about this breach of good manners, but spared a row with Mrs Thomas, so I didn’t
think much more about it.
A couple of months passed and the phone rang
again. It was Oleg, as if he’d never stood me up.
How about lunch? Well, why not.
His new choice of restaurant was a budget-priced
Chinese at Belconnen about fifteen kilometres out.
Brezhnev: My Part in His Downfall
When we met, he was at a table at the edge of the
room. (Interjection from John le Carré—“So he can
check out anyone else entering!”) Oleg had a few
things to discuss and I was happy to enlighten him:
the press secretary to the Minister for Resources
was so-and-so, the private secretary was so-and-so,
to get an appointment you would go through the
chief-of-staff.
My interview with the ambassador? Oh, he’s
been travelling, no opportunity. Expect an invitation any day now.
We parted amicably. He didn’t need a lift home.
to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, now in the USA. Why
was the Soviet Union bad-mouthing him? she
demanded.
Poor Oleg. Whatever he replied would have
repercussions. He would give the party line on
Solzhenitsyn, even if it meant hostilities with Mrs
Thomas and loss of best-buddy status with me.
Solzhenitsyn was a dishonest person who had
cheated in his high school exams, he said, and
became an army coward and was now in someone’s
pay to blacken the good name of Soviet society.
Mrs Thomas revved up the dispute.
The rest of the lunch was frosty. Oleg decided
e would ring now and then with inane ques- he had little to lose, and made an announcement:
tions. All my calls back to the embassy, I later “I wish to speak to Mr Thomas—alone!”
realised, were three-way, with ASIO listening in
Mrs Thomas’s face changed colour at being
and keeping an eye (ear?) on things.
ordered out of her own dining room. She exited
The embassy now seemed lukewarm about my with bad grace. I sensed I was going to hear more
value. The next Oleg invitation, in early 1979, was about this later.
for lunch—at McDonald’s!—to
With her out of the way, Oleg
talk more economics. I liked getcame close and lowered his voice. “I
ting tidbits about the diplomatic
to ask you, will China invade
leg came close and want
circuit. This time I showed up
North Vietnam?”
lowered his voice.
with my three-year-old daughter,
I was dumbstruck. Why ask me?
who loved Maccas and chips, and I
I
had
an inspiration. “You know,
“I want to ask you,
again handed over a few economics
the Far East Economic Review had
will China invade a piece on this topic only yesterday.
bulletins in an A4 envelope.
He looked a bit surprised to
North Vietnam?” I’ll find it.”
find we had a threesome. In fact
rummaged through the pile on
I was dumbstruck. theI coffee
it was a fivesome. ASIO, I later
table, found the magaWhy ask me?
learned, had assigned a young man
zine, flicked to the article, ripped
and woman, ostensibly courting or
it out, and handed it to him with
skirting domesticity, to join us at
a pleased expression. He took it,
Maccas. Sadly, the racket in the store made conver- unimpressed, and soon after he departed. I never
sation too hard to record.
heard from him again. A month later, China
Oleg accepted my envelope somewhat nervously. invaded Vietnam.
The ASIO couple took careful note. Technically it
lert readers may wonder how I know ASIO
was a “live drop”, much interior to the favoured
was on my case. Here’s how. A couple of years
“dead drop” in the espionage world.
Oleg fobbed me off again on the ambassado- later I stayed the weekend in London with a friend,
rial interview. I still thought it would be nice to Ken, in the Australian public service. Also staying
meet the friendly couple at home over dinner, and was another chap, Maurice. Ken mentioned that
this time he accepted for lunch. But Mrs Tsitsarkin Maurice was with ASIO.
I got chatting privately with Maurice and related
didn’t speak good English and he would come solo,
my trysts with Tsitsarkin. We were interrupted and
he said.
I never got to finish the story. We all went our seprs Thomas was far from pleased but turned on arate ways.
some chicken and salad. Oleg arrived bearing
Months later, back in Melbourne, Maurice
children’s books for our three-year-old. They were phoned me and suggested lunch. Nothing loath, I
dowdy but nice and the Russian illustrators ignored agreed and over steak and shiraz, this time ASIOthe Western convention (to this day) that puppy financed, I gave him the full saga.
dogs lack an anus. All the rear views of the Russian
Maurice had done his homework and probed
puppy dogs included a small black dot.
my inconsistencies. He seemed less interested in
At the table, the awkward atmosphere got Oleg than in the Soviet embassy’s press attaché,
worse when Mrs Thomas, who had never wanted Mr Lev Koshliakov. “Tell me about your contacts
this socialising, abruptly turned the conversation with him,” Maurice said.
H
O
A
M
89
Brezhnev: My Part in His Downfall
I racked my brains. He was the chap I originally “wired” for my meetings with Oleg. But how would
phoned for an interview with the ambassador. But this fit with my day job? Technically, I should also
I denied any other contact. Maurice kept at me. have asked my Age editor Greg Taylor if he wanted
Eventually he disclosed his hand: they had logged an agent on the payroll. (Probably not!)
me making a couple of calls I had forgotten about.
The other day I acquired my ASIO file. It showed
Maybe Maurice was concerned I was using innocu- me tick-tacking with Tsitsarkin about a lunch at
ous lines as code to Koshliakov. I hope I straight- the Lotus restaurant (sounds plausible) on October
ened him out. I also explained what was in the A4 19, 1977. Then there were many pages about Tony
envelopes I was handing over to the Soviets.
Thomas doing rabid agitprop for the Palestinians
“Why so concerned about Koshliakov?” I asked. against the Israelis—mistaken identity by ASIO,
“It’s like this. Koshliakov was the senior KGB as that was a different “Tony Thomas”.
man in the embassy. The press attaché bit was his
Then nothing (time-travelling backwards) until
cover. Some of his stuff was illegal
December 1972, when I attended
and we hoped to expel him back to
evening cocktails at the Soviet
Moscow.
in my capacity as National
eronty Lazovic, embassy
“Now about Oleg. He wasn’t
Press Club treasurer. This evening
it emerged last year, appeared uneventful to me but a
that important but we like to know
what they want to know. He was
went on to recruit Soviet official, Lazovic, kept calllow-level GRU, that’s the miliing in as Duty Officer to see if evea top agent inside rything was “in order”. It wasn’t.
tary intelligence. He was called
third secretary. I don’t know why ASIO or Defence and Soviet off icial Morosov “was
he was cultivating you. Sometimes
reported to be ‘very drunk’ at 2225
it’s cloak-and-dagger but some- earned a medal for it. hours and was collected from the
times these guys are genuinely at As for Koshliakov, he residence and taken home”.
sea and need a local’s advice.” I was
Lazovic, it emerged
was rated Moscow’s lastGeronty
relieved. I usually take people, even
year, went on to recruit a top
most dangerous agent agent inside ASIO or Defence and
Russians, at face value.
What about that first dinner
in Australia, with earned a medal for it. More satisinvitation to Oleg and his wife,
fying than carting drunk Russians
more than 115 press home
that he ignored? Maurice laughed.
from cocktail parties.
“To him, entrapment. Same as contacts. I could have
As for Koshliakov, he was rated
you trying to drive him back to
Moscow’s most dangerous agent in
been number 116.
the embassy. Everyone knows that
Australia, with more than 115 press
we have photographers across the
contacts. I could have been number
road.”
116. He became KGB station chief
My economics help to Oleg? Useless, said in Norway, was busted for spying, and got handed a
Maurice. “Anything published, they already had. top job at Aeroflot where he remained until at least
That’s why you got downgraded to McDonald’s.” 2010, about his retirement age of sixty-five.
I flinched.
On the excitements of my briefings of Oleg
Tsitsarkin, ASIO files were blank. Not blacked out,
n Canberra a few years later, a Labor Party appa- but blank. Yet according to my chats with Maurice,
ratchik, David Combe, formed a friendship with ASIO was seriously interested. A little mystery
a Russian diplomat and KGB man, Valery Ivanov. It there!
blew up, Bob Hawke expelled Ivanov, and Combe
As to my part in Brezhnev’s downfall, well,
was severely punished—by being sent to Western sticking him for my steak and shiraz at the 19th
Canada as senior trade commissioner. Why am I Hole was another straw on the camel’s back.
never punished like that?
I was stupid to have any truck with Russians. Or, Tony Thomas, a frequent contributor, also blogs at
and this is delicious, I should have rung ASIO to be tthomas061.wordpress.com.
G
I
90
N eil M c D ona ld
The Art of Fred Astaire
and Ginger Rogers
B
ack in the days when Kenneth Branagh was
regarded as an art-house director he made
a musical version of Shakespeare’s Love’s
Labour’s Lost. The play was set in the 1940s and
blended musical numbers from the period with the
rich Elizabethan love poetry. I’m not a fan of playing
Shakespeare in settings significantly later than his
own period, but here it worked. The Irving Berlin,
Cole Porter, Jerome Kern and George Gershwin
songs blended superbly with the Shakespearean
verse, as did the pastiche of musical numbers in the
style of the period.
All of which tells us a lot about the Astaire–Rogers
films Branagh evoked so skilfully. Fortunately all
the films they made at RKO between 1933 and 1939
have been released on DVD complete with some
excellent commentaries, most notably by Richard
Mueller, author of the definitive Astaire Dancing:
The Musical Films of Fred Astaire, as well as archival
interviews with the choreographer Hermes Pan,
who worked with Astaire on seventeen of his films
including all the Astaire–Rogers collaborations.
Seeing these films again after viewing Love’s
Labour’s Lost made me realise just how similar they
were to Shakespearean comedy. The Bard’s witty
manipulations of sexual identity, where in the
Globe boys played women who disguise themselves
as young men, are strikingly similar to the
mistaken-identity plots employed by Hollywood
screenwriters. The stock comic characters played by
supporting actors such as Edward Everett Horton,
Eric Blore and Erik Rhodes have rough equivalents
in Sir Toby Belch or Andrew Aguecheek in Twelfth
Night. Shakespeare’s dialogue is of course infinitely
better; but as Branagh demonstrated, the songs by
masters like Berlin, Porter, Kern and Gershwin are
comparable to Shakespeare’s poetry. Moreover, the
relationships between the world of the film musical
up on the screen and the regular movie-going
audiences of the 1930s were every bit as complex as
those existing between the spectators and players in
Shakespeare’s playhouses.
I did not, of course, see the Astaire–Rogers
movies when they were first released. But as a
boy of eight I was taken to a revival of Top Hat
at the King’s Theatre, Chatswood, and not long
after to a first-release screening of The Barkleys of
Broadway (1949), their last film together. Musicals
and swashbucklers were a major part of my early
movie-going. It was not until I was studying the
relationship between the spectators and the players
in Shakespeare’s theatre that I came to realise
how rich these early experiences really were. In
his pioneering study Shakespeare and the Popular
Dramatic Tradition, S.L. Bethell argued that
Elizabethan spectators were simultaneously aware
of the players as performers and the characters in the
plays. This was, he insisted, quite different from the
willing suspension of disbelief in realistic theatre
where audiences react to the actors as characters in
the drama. This is also true of certain film genres.
But in musicals it was different, especially in the
Astaire–Rogers musicals.
My parents belonged to their original audiences
and I believe their responses were more or less
typical, as may have been my own. After all,
film-going in the 1930s and 1940s was a family
experience. My mother remembered discovering
Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers sometime in 1934
when after a morning’s shopping in Melbourne she
went to a matinee of The Gay Divorcee. She knew
nothing of Astaire’s background as a star in West
End and Broadway musicals or even that he had
scored a great success partnering Ginger Rogers in
Flying Down to Rio (1933). But like so many others
she was entranced by the pair’s dance numbers. My
parents were film-goers with regular seats booked
every Saturday night at the local cinema. So of
course my father was taken to see The Gay Divorcee
and they both went to see the rest of the cycle of
films Astaire and Rogers made at RKO. So what
made these films so special?
91
The Art of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers
M
usicals were as old as sound film. Indeed the Astaire decided the dance should further the plot
studios at first made so many musicals and and not be just an embellishment. One of Ginger
made them so badly that they became box-office Rogers’s great strengths was that her acting
poison. A common advertisement in 1930 and 1931 continued during the routine. Indeed the range
stated, “This is not a musical”.
of emotions conveyed by both of them was more
All that changed with Warner Brothers’ 42nd complex than anything in the dialogue. Astaire
Street (1932), directed by Lloyd Bacon with the once said there was no need for them to kiss because
musical numbers staged by Busby Berkeley. It was he was making love through the dance. When he
what came to be known as a “putting on a show” finally did kiss Rogers on screen in Carefree it was
film with “the show’s” success resolving every- as the climax to a slow-motion dance routine. His
one’s problems; but here it was much more real- wife claimed Astaire was making up for lost time.
istic. It is the Depression. Many of the showgirls
More than with any of his other partners, the
have wealthy protectors. The dance director wears tap and balletic routines Fred Astaire and Hermes
a derby hat and chews a cigar. The director who Pan devised for Rogers were sensuous, even erotic.
has lost the money from his earlier successes needs She had a superb figure that was seen to advantage
one last hit. There isn’t a lavish apartment in sight, in the flowing gowns of the period. “Some dresses,”
only the bleak rooming houses
she once said, “make you want to
often seen in the Warner Brothers
dance in them.” And at this time
gangster films. But the “show”
Rogers had excellent dress sense.
n these dance
moves from a believable recreaThis is true of the famous gown
tion of a stage production to the sequences the viewers’ she designed herself for the “Cheek
gloriously improbable. The camera
to Cheek ” number in Top Hat
eyes were drawn
seems to go through the legs of the
that began to moult during the
into the frame and routine, with the feathers getting
chorus girls as Dick Powell sings
involved in every
“I’m Young and Healthy”. There
into Astaire’s eyes. Even if you
were top shots of dancers forming nuance of the intricate are in the know and can spot the
intricate patterns, while the actual
feathers on the floor, the couple,
choreography.
dancing was drastically simplified.
and the gown, look stunning. She
42nd Street became the prowas right too about the beaded
totype for a series of musicals
dress she wore for the “Let’s Face
where, however realistic the plot, the show within the Music and Dance” number in Follow the Fleet
the show became more and more elaborate, with (1936). To be sure, one of the heavily weighted
design, editing and intricate camera movement sleeves hit Astaire in the face and nearly knocked
creating extraordinary lavish spectacles. Rarely him out. (He continued dancing and the take is in
did a performer dominate the spectacle in the the film.) But although the dress might have been
Busby Berkeley films. The two exceptions are Joan heavy its movement was a stylish enhancement of
Blondell in the Forgotten Man sequence in Gold the choreography.
Diggers of 1933 and James Cagney and Ruby Keeler
As a dancer Astaire was insinuating and elegant
in the Shanghai Lil number in Footlight Parade.
in the romantic numbers and could still produce
The Astaire–Rogers films were a reaction against explosive energy for the tap routines. From the
the Berkeley spectacles. Fred Astaire as his own beginning Rogers and Astaire had tremendous
choreographer was able to insist that the camera on-screen rapport both as dancers and as actors in
cover his routines in one or two set-ups and that the featherweight plots. As film followed film her
he and his partner were filmed full-length with no dancing became increasingly flexible and soon she
cuts to feet or close-ups. It was the same as Charlie was more than holding her own in the tap numbers.
Chaplin, whose comic routines were usually covered
he partnership really began with The Gay
in a single set-up. This of course contradicted the
Divorcee, the film that entranced my mother
currently fashionable montage theory that insisted
the essence of film was in the editing. Not that and was a great box-office success. When I finally
Astaire or Chaplin worried about film theory. They caught up with it at the National Film Theatre I was
were doing what was best for their art. As a result, slightly disappointed. The Gay Divorcee is charmin these dance sequences the viewers’ eyes were ingly daffy with a mistaken-identity plot, absurd
drawn into the frame and involved in every nuance jokes from the comics—“How very whumsical”
exclaims Eric Blore—and the delicious sequence
of the intricate choreography.
While he was appearing in stage shows like The where Edward Everett Horton sings “Let’s Knock
Gay Divorce (adapted to film as The Gay Divorcee) Knees” with a young Betty Grable and a chorus
I
T
92
The Art of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers
of modestly swimsuited beauties. But the “Night tap-danced on roller-skates for “Let’s Call the
and Day” number with Astaire and Rogers does Whole Thing Off ”. In Swing Time they worked
not compare with “Cheek to Cheek” a year later. with George Stevens, one of the best directors of
Similarly the “Continental” sequence may have the period, who was later to make classics such
well-devised routines for the stars, but the for- as Woman of the Year and Shane. The plot was as
mation dancing that supports them lacks focus. preposterous as ever but the performances by Rogers
Director Mark Sandrich and producer Pandro S. and Astaire acquired new depth under Stevens’s
Berman seem divided between the musical num- direction, with the “Never Gonna Dance” number
bers as spectacle and concentrating on the appeal achieving an emotional intensity that went beyond
of the new stars.
anything in the script. Neither Astaire nor Stevens
Any such uncertainty must have been resolved by had any time for the colour bar, so when Astaire
Roberta (1934). Astaire and Rogers support a radiant and Hermes Pan came up with a routine that paid
Irene Dunne and the dramatic
tribute to the great black tap dancer
emphasis is on her romance with
Bill “Bojangles” Robinson there
a very handsome Randolph Scott.
were no problems. Astaire played
he plot was as
Still, Ginger Rogers has a lot of fun
blackface and danced a series of
preposterous as ever in
with a fake accent and pretending
intricate variations on Robinson’s
to be a countess. She had also but the performances taps. This was also the time when
acquired greater assurance as a
a camera trick Astaire
by Rogers and Astaire through
dancer. It was before the taps for the
danced to three enormous shadows.
acquired new depth
tap dances were post-synchronised
he 1930s was one of the great
and director William Seiter had
under Stevens’s
periods for song-writing and
miked the dance floor. This limited
direction, with the the Astaire–Rogers films include
orchestrating the sound of the taps
to the music but there are delightful “Never Gonna Dance” some extraordinary collaborations
with the best popular composers in
moments when we hear Rogers’s
squeals of delight when she gets a number achieving an the business. Many of them were
emotional intensity at their best when they came to
difficult step right. Then there are
work in Hollywood. A few years
the soft taps of Astaire and Rogers
that went beyond
before, Jerome Kern and Oscar
dancing to “Smoke Gets in Your
anything in the script. Hammerstein II had revolutionised
Eyes”.
the American musical with Show
By Top Hat (1935) the formula
Boat, and Kern and Hammerstein
had been established along with
a complex relationship with the audience. When worked on Roberta while Kern and Dorothy Fields
Astaire sings and dances with Rogers “Isn’t It a wrote the songs for Swing Time. Irving Berlin was
Lovely Day to be Caught in the Rain” it is a new responsible for the music in Top Hat, and shortly
development in the plot—a dashing dancer wooing after completing Rhapsody in Blue and Porgy and
a pretty girl—but is appreciated as yet another Bess George and Ira Gershwin composed the songs
routine by the viewers’ favourite stars. “Cheek to for Shall We Dance. And although Astaire is best
Cheek” is a declaration of love. Their final routine remembered as a dancer he was an excellent singer
and the formation dances become a celebration of who could do full justice to the poetry of songs
their union, enjoyed as developments in a witty like Kern’s “The Way You Look Tonight” or the
mistaken-identity plot as well as further exciting Gershwins’ “They Can’t Take That Away from Me”.
dances together. Then there are the virtuoso When George Gershwin died not long after comroutines. Astaire is menaced by a chorus line for pleting Shall We Dance, Astaire sang the song in
the famous “Top Hat” number or does a sand dance the radio tribute program. Twelve years later in The
to put Ginger to sleep. All this became a familiar Barkleys of Broadway Astaire and Rogers used the
pattern welcomed by audiences in the subsequent song for one of their key dances in the film.
Fred Astaire never saw himself as a great artist.
films.
Astaire, Hermes Pan and Rogers herself were “I was just doing it to make a buck,” he said in a
artists at the top of their game and their regular last interview. But he undoubtedly was a great artist
audiences (including my parents) came to expect and his work was appreciated by a popular audience
them to come up with something new each time with a greater range of awareness than was ever
they played together. In Shall We Dance (1937) they realised at the time.
T
T
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On the Dam
H a l G.P. C olebatch
“A
nd how did we obtain this … conveyance?” Sir Eric asked, his voice
heavy with sarcasm. His little saurian eyes, almost lost in his fleshy
rubicund cheeks, were heavy with contempt.
“It was part of the old station outfit, Sir Eric. Bush carpentry. It
was enough then. The river wasn’t much more than a creek, except in
the wet.”
Sir Eric nodded wordlessly. The craft, a deck built over two rusty pontoons with a
large but antiquated motor in the well aft, chugged slowly on. An awning amidships
provided shade for the collapsible chairs and the little refrigerator.
Sir Eric made notes on a pad, and wiped at runnels of sweat. He was a heavily built
man, but his figure bespoke muscle as well as fat. Looking at him, Rickles remembered
that he had come up the hard way. His biographical notes gave bare details: born in
London’s East End, product of a comprehensive school and a technical college. Among
his achievements a light-heavyweight belt as an amateur boxer. Representative of the
consortium which had built the dam with the aid of state government financing, he had
been in a London winter a few hours before.
Like portraits of Sir Winston Churchill, who Sir Eric to some extent physically
resembled, he still sported a few strands of red hair on his balding head. “Eric the Red”
had been his nickname until it ceased to make sense.
A hamper was opened, and food shared out. Sir Eric took more notes and surveyed
the waterscape with binoculars. The craft chugged between new islands and across wide
stretches of water. The sun slid out of the high noon as the hours went by.
The edges of the float’s deck were circled by a ring of tiny, gem-like green tree-frogs.
As the dam filled, the tropic water over what had been a derelict cattle-station boiled
with life—water-goannas and rifle-fish already gaining weight, vast shoals of the latter
already darkening the water. Swarms of magpie geese roosted in the upper branches of
the drowning trees, and flocks of parrots wheeled overhead.
“I trust you’ll have thought of some way to control those birds before our agriculturalists
move in,” Sir Eric said.
“Our biologists are working on a number of lines. If all else fails, it’s hard to see why
netting over the crops wouldn’t be effective.” Sir Eric’s sardonic look said a great deal.
On the islands jabiru storks, the “policeman bird” of the Kimberley, patrolled with
constabulistic stride, beaks stabbing to snap up frogs and lizards. They passed the halfsubmerged stone walls and tin roofs of the abandoned, flooding homestead, crowded,
as they could see, with snakes and other animals that had found a temporary refuge
there, and between whom the rising water had forced a truce.
A dead cat came floating out one window, its ears above water like the spinnakers
of two sad little yachts. As they watched it disappeared, snatched from under in a
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flurry of foam.
“There are plenty of freshwater crocodiles here,” said Rickles. “They’re breeding up
fast. We’re hoping that they’ll be good for tourism.”
Sir Eric continued to stare at him. Another trickle of sweat ran down his face. He
pointed wordlessly, and the others followed his finger. “And just how much has that
cost? Go closer.”
Rickles, obedient to Sir Eric’s gesture, steered the float across the chocolate-coloured
water. An expression of rage on his face, Sir Eric bit his cigar in two and flung one end
over the side. Its brief sizzling matched his temper.
A line of vehicles—jeeps, trucks, even some heavy earth-movers—stood axle-deep
in the rising water of the dam. The water was already well over the engines of several
of them.
“Somebody has evidently overlooked them,” he said. “I wonder what else has been
overlooked. I take it the water has damaged them too badly for them to be salvaged. It’s
just as well I came out here. They’ll be under water in a few days! Tens of thousands of
pounds—I mean dollars—lost!”
“Most of them are worn-out plant, Sir Eric,” Helen Samson, Rickles’s personal
assistant, tried to assure him. “It was decided they weren’t worth taking away. See!” She
pointed to the gaping bonnet of one truck, “The engines have been removed. So have
all the usable parts.”
“I’m sure!” Sir Eric’s voice remained heavy with sarcasm. He turned away from the
drowning vehicles, and surveyed the party with an intimidating slow-motion stare.
Those that could drew away. He did not actually utter the words “Heads will roll!” but
they hung heavy in the air.
“I wonder if they would have been abandoned like that if I had given notice that I
was coming,” he said. There was a steely reptilian hiss in his voice. “Well, doubtless the
London board will be able to draw their own conclusions. I take it there are inventories
and service records of the vehicles which can be examined.
“It should be possible to tell the state they were really in. Could they at least have been
disposed of for scrap value? Or”—again with heavy sarcasm—“perhaps it is proposed to
make them an artificial reef? A nursery for game-fish?”
Rickles and Peter Docherty, representing the company’s accountancy consultants,
exchanged worried looks.
There was a sudden bumping and scraping. Somebody tripped as the pontoon
lurched. Docherty grabbed at one of the stanchions supporting the awning.
“And what was that?”
“It’s all drowned hills and valleys under the water here,” Rickles said. “It hasn’t been
charted properly … machinery, submerged trees, all kinds of snags. It could be deep or
shallow.” He pointed across the water to where the upper vanes of a nearly submerged
windmill could be made out.
“Why hasn’t it been charted properly?”
“We were going to do it when the water stopped rising and cleared.”
“You talked about the dam’s tourism potential. How much water-skiing do you plan
to do through a lot of submerged machinery?”
“We weren’t planning to water-ski here,” said Rickles. “Or anywhere else on the
main dam. See there!” He pointed to a set of deep furrows gouged in the red earth and
mud on the bank of a nearby islet. It receded rapidly as the pontoon chugged on.
“A saltwater crocodile’s taken off there. Very recently. We thought there were still
some in the main dam. But that’s the first hard evidence I’ve seen of one. The little
Johnsons—the freshwater crocs—are harmless of course. But no water-skiing. It would
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just be trawling for them. No swimming, not even in the diversion dam. We’ll install a
big pool when the chalets are built.”
Jim O’Connor, the Aboriginal stockman and guide, nodded, “Salty,” he confirmed.
“Big one. Really bad bugger.”
“We’re hoping the Environment Department will give us permission to shoot them,”
said Rickles. “That’s the main tourism we’ve got here that’s really unique. That and the
fishing, of course.” He pointed at the vast cloud of inch-long rifle-fish visible near the
surface. “They’ll be a foot long soon, and they make good eating.”
“Anyway,” said Docherty, “tourism’s very much a sideline. You’ve seen the figures.
It’s irrigation that matters. If we can clear the pests out of the cotton …”
“Yes, and I want a full report on progress there. By tomorrow please! A full report!”
His contemptuous look was reciprocated by most of the men on the float. Only Jim
muttered something enigmatic about “Big fella.”
“We’ll be going to the biological station tomorrow.”
“There!” Jim pointed. Two bulges of eyes, two of nostrils, on the water not far away.
They looked like the eyes and nostrils of the little Johnson crocodiles seen through a
magnifying glass. They sank out of sight into the muddy water as they watched. “Big
salty,” he added. “Biggest I’ve seen. It’s watching us.”
“Have we got a rifle?”
“No. They’re protected, anyway.”
“What if it tries to climb up here with us?”
“I think we’ve got too much free-board for that.”
“Have you seen how high they can jump?”
The float puttered on. A great water-goanna swam past. Marooned creatures—rock
wallabies, dingoes, even some cattle with great scrub bulls—could be seen on the
drowning islands.
“Are those cattle to be taken off?’
“It won’t be easy. Those bulls are among the most dangerous creatures in the world.
The water probably won’t go too much higher, and the larger islands will make natural
zoos. I’ve got some artist’s impressions back at the camp.”
They moved on into what gave the appearance of being open water. They had all
been drinking steadily—beer, bottled water and soft-drink in insulated flasks—in the
heat. There was a sudden screech of metal and the craft lurched to one side. Rickles
threw the engine into reverse, and the craft tore free of the snag.
As when the Titanic scraped down the side of the iceberg, all was suddenly silent for
a moment except for a new water-noise, and a bubbling.
Expressionless as an ancient lizard, Sir Eric gazed out at the opaque water. A fast
and furious line of bubbles rising from the starboard pontoon bespoke serious damage.
Already the craft had a perceptible list.
“Oh Gawd! Oh Gawd!” Jenner, the engineer, was suddenly white under his tan. “I’m
going to try to run her ashore!” he said. “That pontoon’s badly holed, and she can’t float
with one. This thing was never meant for deep water.”
The starboard pontoon dipped lower. Chocolate-brown water poured over the
combing into the engine well. There was a violent hissing, sparks, and the engine
stopped.
For a moment the group on the float stood in silence again, as the magnitude of the
accident sank in. A current of the drowned river, still flowing, was bearing them away
from the land.
Rickles and Jenner tore off their shirts and tried to stuff them into the gash torn in
the ancient rusty metal of the pontoon, but it appeared most of the damage was now
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too far under water, and the holes too big.
“We’re in trouble, aren’t we?” said Sir Eric.
“Yes.”
“Is there any chance this thing will float on one pontoon?’
“It was built to carry things across little creeks that most of the time you could wade
if need be. One float might hold it on the surface, but the deck will go under. Vertical.”
“And there’s a crocodile following us?” This was directed to Jim. He nodded, and
pointed.
“I saw his eyes again a few minutes ago,” Jim said.
“And if we don’t come back, nobody knows where to look for us.” The great new lake,
spreading out behind a newly-completed dam, was probably one of the most remote and
isolated places in the world. There were men and a couple of boats back at the camp, but
no way to reach them or signal their plight.
“We’re going to get wet.” No one mentioned the crocodile now. The Australians
knew too many stories of tourists—and others—“taken” by crocodiles in tropic waters.
Sir Eric pointed to a large island ahead of them. “Will we run ashore on that?”
“No,” said Jim. “We’ll pass it close.”
Sir Eric pointed to the coiled-up mooring line. “If someone could swim ashore with
the end of that—two people perhaps—we could pull the pontoon to the shore.”
“I think the crocodile is under the float. I’m sure it’s not far away.”
“Somebody has to go,” said Sir Eric. “Me and one other. We can tow the float. I’m
not too old to swim. In fact, I’m still a strong swimmer. And … at least the water’s
warm.”
“But why should you do this?” Despite their dire situation, Rickles was amazed.
“Why not one of the younger men? Why risk yourself?”
Sir Eric looked at him with eyes that were curiously calm, the sarcastic reptilian
glare gone from them. There was a peace, almost a happiness, in his face and voice
the other had not seen before. He spoke like a man whose lifelong secret dream had
suddenly beyond hope been made real.
“You must understand,” he said. “I am a knight.”
Hal Colebatch lives in Perth. His book Australia’s Secret War: How Unionists Sabotaged Our
Troops in World War II (Quadrant Books), shared the Prime Minister’s Prize for Australian
History last year.
Good things about having a bad cold
Not having to work, not having to think;
plenty of orange-juice to drink.
Front door locked, phone off the hook;
nice red jelly and a book.
Hearing rain beat on the roof above;
my wife beside me who I love.
Hal G.P. Colebatch
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D ougl as M ur r ay
A Society Ripe for Submission
Submission
by Michel Houellebecq
William Heinemann, 2015, 256 pages, $32.99
M
ichel Houellebecq is a genius. He is also a
nihilist. And not the fashionable type of
American nihilist (“nihilism with a happy ending”,
as Allan Bloom once called it), but a connoisseur
and practitioner of the fullest-blown fin de millénaire
French nihilism. For Houellebecq and his main
characters life is a solitary and pointless labour,
devoid of interest, joy or comfort aside from the
occasional—generally paid-for—blow-job.
The fact that the poet of such an existence can
have been celebrated by his peers (Houellebecq
has been awarded the Prix Goncourt, among other
prizes) is perhaps less surprising than the fact that
such a writer has proved so popular. For almost two
decades his books have been best-sellers in their
original French and in translation. When books
sell this well—especially when they are also quality, rather than pap, literature—it is because they
must speak to something of our times. It may be an
extreme version of our present existence, but even
the unarguably bracing nature of the nihilism would
not be sufficient as an attraction without at least a
disgusted flicker of self-recognition from his readers.
Houellebecq’s first important novel, Atomised
(1999), laid out what became a signature scene. He
depicts a society and a set of lives with no purpose
whatsoever. Familial relations are poisonous where
they are not absent. Death, and the fear of it, fills
the space which was once absorbed by the business
of God. At one point in Atomised the lead character
Michel takes to his bed for two weeks, and repeatedly asks himself as he stares at a radiator, “How
long could Western civilisation continue without
religion?” No revelation comes from this, only more
looking at the radiator.
Michel’s half-brother Bruno is told by a girl
that he has a very pessimistic view of the world.
“Nietzschean,” he corrects her, before feeling inclined
to add, “Pretty second-rate Nietzsche at that.” In the
middle of what is described as “depressive lucidity”
there are—apart from sex—no moments of pleasure. Christine, with whom Bruno has been having
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a halting, meaningless conversation, interrupts a
silence by suggesting they go to an orgy on a nudist beach. The philosophical state of their culture
has washed across them and submerged them under
in its own pointlessness. At one point we read, “In
the midst of the suicide of the West, it was clear
that they had no chance.” The joys of consumerism are certainly not enough, but they can prove
diverting. As Bruno is meant to be arranging for
the burial or cremation of his mother’s body he plays
Tetris on his Gameboy. “Game over,” it says, and
plays “a cheerful little tune”. (Mother-son relationships in Houellebecq are especially non-existent,
a fact which the interviews with and writings by
the novelist’s now late mother confirm as certainly
autobiographical.)
A
lthough Atomised works as a meditation on the
state of the culture, it works less well as a novel
and even less well as narrative. Although the rarity of events is part of the point, in the absence of
any plot-drive Atomised always risks contaminating its readers with the fatal ennui of its characters. But if the themes and characters of Atomised
are repeated in Platform (first published in English
in 2002) they also find there something to centre
on. Again graphic sex, repetitions and variations of
the same are the only light in the gloom. Valerie, a
woman who is willing to do absolutely everything
sexually with the main character, Michel, is a good
find and a source for hope. But even so, the genitals,
it is made clear, are “meagre compensation” for the
misfortune, shortness and pointlessness of life. And
horror followed by acceptance and then indifference
towards human suffering lead to no enlightenment
or interest. “On the whole, I am not good,” the narrator tells us, “it is not one of my characteristics.
Humanitarians disgust me, the fate of others is generally a matter of indifference to me, nor have I any
memory of ever having felt any sense of solidarity
with other human beings.” However, in Platform
another worldview imposes itself on Houellebecq’s
characters.
Having given up his job as a civil servant, Michel
takes Valerie on holiday to Thailand. He loathes the
decadence of the tourism and the people who take
part in it at the same time as taking part in it himself. One day Islamist terrorists—who also loathe
the decadence on show but have a view of their own
on what to do about it—storm the beach and massacre many tourists, including Valerie. After the 2002
Bali terrorist attacks this particular scenario was
seen to have been prescient. But whatever respect
Houellebecq might have enjoyed from this was
mitigated by the trouble the book helped get him
into in France. Even before the description of the
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beach-massacre the character Michel calls Islam an
“absurd” religion. After the massacre his contempt
for the religion builds to a paragraph in which he
reflects:
It is certainly possible to remain alive animated
simply by a desire for vengeance; many people
have lived that way. Islam had wrecked my life,
and Islam was certainly something which I
could hate; in the days that followed, I devoted
myself to trying to feel hatred for Muslims. I
was quite good at it, and I started to follow the
international news again. Every time I heard
that a Palestinian terrorist, or a Palestinian
child or a pregnant Palestinian woman had been
gunned down in the Gaza Strip, I felt a quiver
of enthusiasm at the thought that it meant one
less Muslim. Yes, it was possible to live like this.
For this passage and others deemed offensive
both from interviews and from Atomised (where a
character describes Islam as “the most stupid, false,
and obscure of all religions”) Houellebecq found
himself the target of legal proceedings in France.
Whether for this reason, or his often-cited desire to
minimise his taxes, Houellebecq left France to live
in Ireland.
Perhaps it was the stupidity which chased
him away. After all, anybody who actually read
Houellebecq—as opposed to (in the current fashion) excerpts they hoped to be offended by—could
see that the characters in his novels are infinitely
harsher in their criticism and contempt of the modern West than they are of the precepts and claims
of Islam or Muslims. Houellebecq’s contempt
always fires off in all directions. In Atomised Bruno
at one point expounds his theory that there are no
such things as homosexuals, only pederasts. But
he also claims that heterosexuals like himself are
never attracted to people their own age, only much
younger versions—a problem at the root of most
of his male characters’ discontents. Or you might
turn to the description of the behaviour of Chinese
people in Platform which climaxes with the narrator describing the Chinese as “an awful lot of pigs”.
Dragging Houellebecq to court for being rude about
Muslims was a demonstration of the grossest sensitivity top-trumps of our time, but it also showed
a wild literary ignorance. Not only in hauling an
author to court for his expressions, but in the fact
that Houellebecq’s derision or contempt so clearly
goes beyond the whines and pleadings of specialinterest groups: his is a rage and contempt aimed
against our age and our species as a whole.
Yet however great the acrobatics and pyrotechnics in a literature of this type, it is always the case
that it must at some point either mature or fizzle
out. The evidence that Houellebecq wasn’t going
to fizzle out came with his 2010 Prix Goncourtwinning The Map and the Territory—the story of an
artist called Jed Martin who makes himself fabulously wealthy through his deeply occasional work.
This wealth allows him to seclude himself from a
France doomed to become in the near future little more than a cultural theme-park for the new
Russian and Chinese super-rich. The work is not
only an exploration of the traditional Houellebecq
themes (dysfunctional family life, empty sex, solitude) but a profound satire on modern culture. It
includes a hilarious and devastating self-portrait—
a reminder of the truth that the most savage critics always also turn their gaze on themselves. Jed
visits the drunken writer Michel Houellebecq in
his remote and unattractive Irish retreat. There are
boxes everywhere and no furniture. “Have you just
moved in?” his guest asks. “Yes. I mean, three years
ago.”
Houellebecq’s self-portrait is, if the interviews
and accounts of those who know him are anything
to go by, remarkably accurate. Dissolute, alcoholic, depressive and meandering, the portrait of
Houellebecq in The Map and the Territory shows an
almost affrontingly desiccated life. It is also a life
which produces enemies. A curious detail is that
at one point in the novel, “Houellebecq” is found
dead—decapitated, flayed and mutilated. This year
that scene assumed less amusing overtones.
H
ouellebecq’s most recent novel, Submission,
was due for publication on January 7 this year.
Even before publication it had caused critical and
political controversy. The plot takes French politics
forward to the 2020s. The current French President,
Francois Hollande, is coming to the end of a disastrous second term. The National Front party of
Marine Le Pen is ahead in the polls. The moderate
right of the UMP collapses, as do the Socialists.
But another party has come together over recent
years—a Muslim party led by a moderate Islamist
who enjoys the support of France’s growing Muslim
population. As the run-offs get closer it is clear to
the other mainstream parties that the only way to
keep the National Front from power is to unite
behind the Islamist party. This they do, and the
Islamist party wins. Using some old pliant French
lefties for cover the Islamists set about transforming
France, not least by taking control of education and
making (with the help of substantial Gulf funding)
all public universities, including the Sorbonne, into
Islamic institutions. Gradually even the novel’s main
figure—a dissolute scholar of J.K. Huysmans—sees
the sense of converting to Islam.
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In the few public comments he made about the Islamic, “blasphemous” and offensive novel ever
book, Houellebecq was at pains to stress his admi- written Houellebecq would have the right to pubration for Islam—a demonstration perhaps that the lish it and do so without being judged by politicians
brow-beating and threats of the thought-police do or gunmen who in their different ways fire off over
work. It was to be expected that such pleas would be books they don’t read. As it happens, Submission is
drowned out, if not for the reasons which transpired. not a simple provocation. It is a deep, gripping and
Among those to attack and ridicule Houellebecq haunting novel which proves a culmination point of
for a plot many claimed was wilfully provocative was Houellebecq’s work so far and, in my view, a recent
a satirical weekly magazine then little known outside high-point for European fiction. I can think of no
France called Charlie Hebdo. The magazine—which writer currently working who can get anywhere near
has a long tradition of left-wing, secular, anti-cler- Houellebecq’s achievement in finding a fictional
ical iconoclasm—had come to limited international way into the darkest and most necessary corners of
attention in recent years after repeatedly showing our time. Nor can I think of another writer curitself willing to depict Islam’s prophet (a willingness rently working who would be able to write a novel of
it was almost alone in demonstrating after the 2005 this depth, scope and relevance while also making it
Danish cartoons affair). There were assaults, includ- witty and page-turning.
ing a firebomb attack, on their Paris offices but the
The most intelligent criticism to date has come
publication held firm, as it had over
from reviewers who have objected
their earlier critiques of the Pope
to one layer of the novel which
and far-Right leaders including the
relates to the academic specialism
can think of no
National Front.
of the main character. Francois is a
writer currently
In expectation of the launch
typical Houellebecq leading man: a
of the new novel, a typically ugly working who would middle-aged academic whose parcaricature of a hideous, gnome-like
ents’ deaths have no effect on him,
be able to write
Houellebecq was on the cover of the
who has short relationships with his
a novel of this
magazine on that January morning
younger female students and who
when two Islamist gunmen forced
since separating from an attractive
depth, scope and
their way into Charlie Hebdo’s Paris
young Jewish student, with whom
relevance while also he still intermittently has sex,
offices and shot ten of the magazine’s staff and two policemen. As
switches to prostitutes though finds
making it witty
the Yemen-trained French Muslim
libido insufficiently diverted.
and page-turning. his
gunmen left the offices they were
When Francois flees the looming
heard shouting, “We have avenged
chaos in Paris by going to the sigthe Prophet Muhammad” and
nificantly chosen town of Martel in
“Allahu Akbar” (“Allah is greatest”). Among the the south of France he tries to interest himself in
victims of their assault on the magazine’s morning Cro-Magnon man. At one point he reflects, “Croeditorial meeting was the economist Bernard Maris, Magnon man hunted mammoth and reindeer; the
a close friend of Houellebecq’s.
man of today can choose between an Auchan and
Paris and France went into several days of lock- a Leclerc, both supermarkets located in Souillac.”
down, and another assault (by another Islamist
But Francois’s internal life is not only dry—it is
gunman on a Jewish food store) was still to come. also painfully in need of relief. As French culture
Houellebecq’s publishers announced that his public- and society decay all around him, two revelations in
ity tour was cancelled and the author himself went particular stand out. The first comes as a result of his
into hiding. Ever since he has been accompanied by Jewish girlfriend’s choice to leave France (another
bodyguards. And although the French state is help- slightly prophetic idea) and join her family in heading to protect him it has by no means thrown itself ing to Israel. After their sexually athletic final meetbehind him. In the immediate aftermath of the ing she asks him what he will do, especially now
Charlie Hebdo attacks the country’s Socialist Prime that the university looks as if it will close when the
Minister, Manuel Valls, chose to make an address in Muslim party comes to power. “We were standing
which he said, “France is not Michel Houellebecq … at the door. I realised that I hadn’t the slightest idea,
it is not intolerance, hatred and fear.” Obviously— and also that I didn’t give a fuck. I kissed her softly
unless he had got hold of an early proof—the Prime on the lips, and said, ‘There is no Israel for me.’ Not
Minister had not read the novel.
a deep thought; but that’s how it was.” As anyone
Of course it is worth stating from the outset— who has followed Europe’s recent tergiversations
since in these times we seem to have to do such will know, that is a very deep thought, and a demthings—that even if Submission were the most anti- onstration of the profligacy of Houellebecq’s genius
I
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that he can throw it away with such apparent ease.
But the deeper spiritual point in the novel lies
precisely in Francois’s meditations on his scholarly
interest. Houellebecq (like a lot of his literary critics) assumes that his readers will be unfamiliar with
the work of Huysmans, but I would have thought
that a significant portion will have read or at least
heard of A Rebours (“Against Nature”), one of the
central texts of late-nineteenth-century French
decadence. By the point at which the novel starts
Francois is tiring of his enthusiasm for Huysmans,
in the way that many academics are after their first
love is overlaid by years of the same lectures and
questions. But the choice of Huysmans as a constant presence in the novel is more important and
pertinent than some critics seem to realise. As the
novel develops, Francois not only rediscovers part
of his passion for Huysmans but also confronts one
of the central challenges of Huysmans’s life. Like
many of his contemporary decadents across Europe,
Huysmans ended up being received into the Roman
Catholic Church. It is a journey which, as everything falls apart around him and intimations and
then sporadic and shocking outbursts of violence
become commonplace across France, Francois tries
to emulate.
Francois even heads back to the monastery in
which Huysmans found his faith and in which the
young Francois spent some time in search of his literary idol while a younger man. He sits in front of
the Madonna and his meditations strain towards a
goal. But he cannot do it: he may have returned to
the source, and he may even be open to the moment
but he cannot perform the necessary leap of faith.
And so he returns to Paris, and there the university
authorities—now Islamic—explain to Francois (as
one they have generously pensioned off) the logic
of Islam. And not just the logic that he will get his
career back at the Sorbonne if he converts, but the
logic it will make in other corners of his life. He will
have wives (up to four, and younger—if he wishes—
even than his usual tastes). And of course he will be
part of a community of meaning for the first time.
He will be able to continue enjoying most of the
few pleasures he has had and will gain much more
than he had thought possible in the way of comforts.
Unlike the leap required to become a Catholic, the
practical logic of Islam in a society ripe for submission as a whole becomes irrefutable. Houellebecq’s
plea that the novel is by no means anti-Islam is not
without foundation.
Is the novel’s vision plausible? I would say
so—often deeply uncomfortably so. Endless small
details rhyme. For instance in the run-up to the
crucial election the French media and mainstream
politicians deliberately obscure stories of real interest.
One is reminded of the events last December in
France when Muslim extremists kept driving into
crowds of people while shouting “Allahu Akbar”,
only for the politicians and media to dismiss these
events as meaningless traffic incidents. Then there is
the portrait of the Jewish community leaders who
remain around to flatter their enemies and negotiate
for themselves (as many did with the Nazis) even as
everything signals their community’s destruction.
And of course the novel’s truest conceit is the
depiction of a class of politicians across the political
divide so keen to be seen above all as “anti-racist”
that they end up flattering and ultimately handing
over their country to the worst racists of our time.
Houellebecq’s career has included several fateful
coincidences of timing. But perhaps the most
propitious is that his work has come to artistic
maturity at just the moment to capture a society
tipping from over-ripeness into something else.
What precisely? More decadence, barbarism, or
salvation? And if salvation, then what kind, and
whose?
Douglas Murray is the author of Neoconservatism:
Why We Need It, and is the Associate Director of the
Henry Jackson Society, a British think-tank.
M ir a nda D ev ine
The Young Tony Abbott and Others
When We Were Young and Foolish
by Greg Sheridan
Allen & Unwin, 2015, 384 pages, $32.99
Santamaria: A Most Unusual Man
by Gerard Henderson
Miegunyah Press, 2015, 505 pages, $59.99
oiled attempts to recruit Tony Abbott into the
Labor Party bookend Greg Sheridan’s entertaining, name-dropping memoir of a Sydney
Catholic coming-of-age in the middle of the Cold
War. The opening scene of When We Were Young
and Foolish features Bob Carr at a Greek restaurant in 1984 trying to persuade Abbott, then a disgruntled seminarian, that fighting communists is
best done where they exist, in the ALP. The book
closes soon after a series of unproductive dinners
in the president’s dining room of the New South
Wales Parliament House, with Johno Johnson, the
staunch Irish-Catholic Labor president of the parliament, making a last-ditch bid to woo Abbott to
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his party.
Carr, then a colleague of Sheridan’s at the
Bulletin, also tried to sell the virtues of the social
democratic Labor ideal to another bright anticommunist university activist, Peter Costello.
“But Bob,” responded the young future Treasurer.
“What happens when the state gets too big?”
Sheridan reveals that Abbott and Costello subsequently both also turned down job offers with the
ironworkers’ union:
Given the subsequent history of union
amalgamations, either of them could have
ended up Bill Shorten’s boss at the AWU ...
One might have been ACTU president and the
other, perhaps, a Labor Prime Minister. Talk
about the ghostly ifs of history.
less”, and a hopeless administrator, and complains
about the meagre salaries paid to toilers like him at
the NCC. Santamaria, he says, was:
intellectually courageous, focused on Australia’s
role in the Asian region and opposed to the
White Australia policy. Yet, as I got to know
Santamaria better, I came to understand that
he was not fond of disagreement with those
he deemed to be his political allies. Every
organisation with which he was associated
experienced a significant split.
The two men fell out, never to reconcile, after
Henderson gave a speech at the NCC conference
criticising Santamaria’s centralised management
style. Sheridan, who watched the performance as
a young student in 1974, describes it as “impresLabor’s recruiting drive obviously was unsuc- sive, not least because it meant, in effect, defying
cessful, but in the shadow of Abbott’s truncated Santa in the heart of his own organisation … I
prime ministership, Sheridan’s insights into the didn’t realise that it virtually meant the end of his
man he calls both his best friend and a “paradox”, involvement in the NCC.” Henderson remained
explain something of political
fascinated with Santamaria, who
failure.
was the subject of his PhD thesis,
Abbott has a presence, also, in
which became his 1982 book Mr
heridan reveals
Gerard Henderson’s lively biograSantamaria and the Bishops.
that Abbott and
phy of the great anti-communist
In this second, more perwarrior B.A. (Bob) Santamaria. As Costello subsequently sonal, take, Henderson writes that
a latter-day acolyte of Santamaria,
both turned down Santamaria was opposed to capiwho led the Catholic split in the
talism and conservatives, but “had
job offers with the no particular commitment to the
Labor Party in 1955, Abbott was the
first Catholic prime minister elected
ironworkers’ union. ALP, except as a possible means
from the Liberal Party. The story of
of implementing his political
how such a man became the leader
agenda—based on Catholic social
of what had once been the party of the Protestant thought, as he saw it”. Santamaria was convinced
establishment is the story of Australia’s own Cold that Bert Evatt, Labor leader during the Split, had
War, and is deeply entwined with the history of used sectarianism against the Movement, and he
Santamaria.
was fond of saying that “anti-Catholicism is the
Santamaria: A Most Unusual Man is Henderson’s anti-Semitism of the intelligentsia”.
second book on his estranged former mentor, whom
bbott, who, like Sheridan, took his faith serihe lauds and disparages, in unequal measure. He
ously, was active in an NCC campus group at
first met Santamaria in 1965 as a bright student
at Melbourne University and went to work for the Sydney University. He came to Santamaria’s attenNational Civic Council five years later. His book tion when he arrived in Melbourne for a conference
traces the birth in the 1930s and explosive trajec- of the Australian Union of Students in 1977, when
tory of the Catholic “Movement”, led by this bril- he and his anti-communist allies were assaulted by
liant son of Sicilian migrants, which helped defeat far-Left groups, who used violence systematically to
communism inside Australia’s trade unions, and suppress dissent. Sheridan writes that Santamaria
kept the Left at bay for half a century. It explains met him and Abbott and offered the services of an
Santamaria’s role in the Split, when mainly Catholic ex-military-policeman, an NCC supporter who proanti-communists broke away from Labor and cre- tected their group for the rest of the conference.
Abbott called Santamaria a friend, writes
ated the DLP, whose preferences kept Robert
Menzies and the Liberal Party in power for almost Henderson. But when he asked him for a reference
for Liberal Party pre-selection, Santamaria refused,
two decades.
While Henderson describes himself as an telling Abbott that no one who was “very publicly
“admirer”, he also criticises Santamaria as “ruth- Catholic” could get anywhere in the Liberal Party.
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Henderson gives smaller insights into
Santamaria’s personality. For instance, he ate fish
and chips with a knife and fork; and he didn’t
like to trouble shop assistants, so would buy the
first pair of shoes, or clothing, he tried on, with the
result that nothing he wore quite fitted.
A young Anne Summers features, too. Then
Anne Cooper from Adelaide, in 1963, she briefly
worked for Santamaria but found the girls were
“goody-goody” and the men didn’t flirt. She quit
after being chastised by a secretary for dressing
“immodestly” in a “sleeveless summer dress”.
Sheridan’s book also is peppered with famous
names, alongside evocative depictions of growing up in the 1960s in a big Irish-Catholic family crammed into a small flat in the inner-western
Sydney suburb of Lewisham. When he arrived at
Sydney University, via several schools and the seminary, he bonded with the muscular rugby-playing
Abbott over their “shared mistrust of communism
and shared admiration for B.A. Santamaria”, as
Abbott put it.
Sheridan describes his friend as a paradox, “in
that his nature is essentially action-oriented, but he
also cares about ideas for their own sake … A key
to Abbott’s personality is his deep romanticism.”
Malcolm Turnbull, on the other hand, he found
intimidating. Describing himself as a bearded,
bespectacled, plump intellectual, Sheridan found
Turnbull to be an “almost impossibly glamorous figure around campus”. But he was put off
by Malcolm’s social circle, who had “a touch of
Brideshead Revisited ... A lot of style, some living
in college, a lot of talk of wines and restaurants
and the like … Somehow we didn’t click.” Sheridan
liked Turnbull, with whom he later worked as a
journalist at the Bulletin, but said he was “the only
person in the whole of Consolidated Press who
really made me feel nervous … I most often felt like
I’d forgotten to tighten up my tie or something.”
Turnbull and Abbott met at an AUS conference
in 1978, and Sheridan records Turnbull’s character sketch for the Bulletin of the man who would
become his political rival: “While he can win support from students because of the shocking state of
affairs in AUS he cannot take the next step because
of his conservative moral views.”
The intertwining personal narratives of Sheridan
and Henderson’s books cross over most often when
it comes to Abbott, who counts both authors as
friends. “Whatever Tony’s achievements or failings
in political life,” writes Sheridan, “he has never
failed in friendship.”
Abbott launched each book, in what we now
know were the waning days of his prime ministership, and the ghost of his abbreviated promise adds
poignancy to these important overlapping narratives
of Catholic Australia’s war against communism.
Miranda Devine is a Sydney journalist and
broadcaster.
A l a n G ould
Poet of the Women’s War
Collected Poems of Lesbia Harford
edited by Oliver Dennis
UWA Publishing, 2014, 135 pages, $29.99
I
f the Great War were our subject, and poetry
the sole lens we employed to look at it, we might
remark how, while the war’s evocation for English
readers came from their male soldier-poets in the
front line, for Australian readers this came from
a singular woman who worked on the home front
in clothing factories. And while those soldierpoets conjured images of men en masse from which
an individual might catch intermittent, piteous
light—in Wilfred Owen’s “Strange Meeting” for
instance—by contrast, the Australian poet caught
precisely the absence of men en masse, and a child
surrogate to point to the vanished individual.
There’s a little boy who lives next door
With hair like you,—
Pale, pale hair and a rose-white skin
And his eyes are blue.
When I get a chance I peep at him,
Who is so like you,—
Terribly like, my dead, my fair,
For he’s dumb too.
(“The Silent Dead”)
Across the spectrum of war poetry, has loss ever
been approached so delicately, stated with such
finality? In other poems we are made conscious of
the change in that en masse, the men gone, replaced
by the women in their factory bays where, say, a
machinist catches momentary highlight.
I sit at my machine
Hourlong beside me, Vera, aged nineteen,
Babbles her sweet and innocent tale of sex.
(“Machinists Talking”)
In compiling this new collection of Lesbia
Harford’s poems, Oliver Dennis has done Australian
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poetry a service. It is thirty years since the excellent and thoroughgoing compilation The Poems of
Lesbia Harford was edited by Drusilla Modjeska
and Marjorie Pizer. So Dennis’s service consists in
a renewal of trust that Harford is one of our poets
who should be available to us perennially.
Why do I call Harford a perennial? In both
her life and her work, she is remarkable to our
literature. Eventually graduating in law not long
before her early death, she interrupted these
studies during the First World War to work
among the machinists of clothing factories and
as a domestic servant in well-to-do houses. This
was a deliberate identification with working-class
rigours and culture. She took lovers from both
sexes, campaigned on behalf of the International
Workers of the World and anti-conscription
causes, suffered frail health, and died in 1927 aged
thirty-six, leaving the 200-odd poems collected in
this book, most of them unpublished.
These poems, almost all short lyrics, suggest a
mind writing memos to itself. That is to say, they
have a dailiness. They are interior and fluid in the
manner, say, of Emily Dickinson, rather than in the
tableau composition of a Judith Wright meditation
such as “South Of My Days” or “Bullocky”. I intend
no aspersion by this. Harford’s concise, forthright,
spur-of-the-moment utterance communicates the
very fabric of the living she is at pains to persuade us
is most vital. Her art lies in how she communicates
the spontaneity of a reaction, and how dailiness partakes of the natural essence of poetry.
O
liver Dennis mentions Harford’s ear for dialogue and her adeptness with the Sapphic
“docked line”. Certainly, in her energised bisexuality, her feminism, her good nerve to be utterly
direct in statement (indeed in her very Christian
name), Harford’s poetry traces its lineage to the
ancient poetess of Lesbos. My own ear, I confess,
when reading the Sapphics in, say, Hardy, or Pound,
hears more metrication than music in the trochee/
dactyl grid. That said, Harford’s mostly short lines
are conspicuously sinuous and restive in the metres
they harness. She has a good ear and an adventurous
one. At times I hear an iambic echolalia of Christina
Rosetti or Emily Bronte (to whom she dedicates a
poem). At times she is twisting the Sapphic trochees and dactyls to her use:
Hé looks ín my héart and the ímage thére
Ís himsélf, himsélf, than himsélf more fáir.
But countervailing these classic building blocks
is the modern intelligence and candour in the watch
the poet keeps on her reactions to the world. These
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combine being post-suffragette while reaching back
to the womanly self-possession that Sappho’s poems
proclaimed for womankind:
For since no male
Has ruled me or has fed,
I think my own thoughts
In my woman’s head.
So I discern a tension in Harford’s poems. A
sensibility, still trailing some poeticisms from
a former age—“shineth”, “shouldst”, “nay” and
“thee”—is trying the more rigorous investigation
of feeling that self-conscious modernism brought
to the composition of poems. Be it remembered
that Lesbia Harford composed her poems during
precisely the period T.S. Eliot wrote his early and
middle work, for all that she is isolated from the
collegiality of those early moderns. In her restive
experimentation with line-length and stanza she
reminds me of Hardy, in the “sudden-ness” of her
address she reminds me of Emily Dickinson, and
in her trust to the simplest of words and statements, she resembles her Australian contemporary
John Shaw Neilson. She probes her lesbianism,
menstruation, class resentments, the abandonment
of deity, the alcoholism of a husband. The objects
that appear in her poems encompass trams, cranes,
silk stockings, a clock tower, an unmade bed, these
images working in tension with the lilacs, swans,
meadows of an earlier poetic sensibility.
For this reason I’ll make an odd comparison; she
resembles A.D. Hope. At first sight the two poets
are dissimilar: Harford’s thought, vibrant with
Sapphic directness, Hope’s measured in its formal prosody and rationalist values. But both poets
work an identical tension, choosing to illumine the
strangeness of modernity by casting it deliberately
in the light of classical structure, Harford with her
Sapphics and nineteenth-century lyric echolalia,
Hope with his mindfulness of Dryden and the
Augustans. One might look for an equivalent in
the visual arts in Dali perhaps, the Spaniard’s classical draftsmanship brought to modern strangeness
in theme and objects.
I
have one quarrel with this collection. It claims
Harford is “one of the two finest female poets so
far seen in Australia”, Judith Wright being cited as
the other. This is a disservice to the work of other
poets, Gwen Harwood and Rosemary Dobson in
particular. It is also to perpetuate a preoccupation
with stature and league as opposed to the distinctive character of any given poet’s work.
In my view it is character that makes the
discussion of poetry interesting. Of course some
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poets will be immensely more assured in craft,
vision, penetration and comprehension than others.
But as a literary canon unfolds and accomplishment
accrues, there is a point where discriminations of
stature yield to the incomparableness between one
talent and another. For me, Harford, Harwood,
Wright and Dobson all belong to what I call the
perennials. Their credentials are distinct each from
each while the credibility of their poems is on a
par.
So, in Harford I see as I have described above.
In Harwood I discern the compelling storyteller
and remembrancer, her wit in converting canonical philosophy into poems. In Dobson I identify
a quality I have called in another essay her “passionate serenity”, this together with her affectionate impishness. In Wright I find the intent vision,
best stated in her own words as the process “from
love to Love”, which is to say from attraction to
the world to identification with it. In each of these
four cases, indeed in any poet where I apply that
dignity “perennial”, there are the collected poems
in each case, but in addition there is the poetry that
exists, as it were, between the poems, that builds
the molecular bonding of a character where voice
and its substance make a luminous whole.
It is this that Oliver Dennis, and before him
Modjeska and Pizer, bring to us in restoring Lesbia
Harford from her marginalisation. In this volume
we have the evidence of a character and a craftswoman, and all the lines of intersection with which
she belongs to the poetry that preceded her and
which can intrigue the poetry that came after her.
Alan Gould’s ninth novel, a picaresque titled The
Poets’ Stairwell, was recently published by Black
Pepper Press in Melbourne.
Simon Caterson
Conservative Revolutionaries
Vivid Faces: The Revolutionary Generation
in Ireland 1890–1923
by R.F. Foster
Penguin, 2015, 464 pages, $24.99
I
n Ireland, so often it seems as though the past
occurred within living memory. I remember as a
postgraduate student in Dublin in the 1990s witnessing the moving commemoration of the Great
Famine, an event that had occurred a century and
half beforehand, but whose legacy was real and
widely felt.
The Irish past is current once more as I write
this with the occurrence this year of the 150th anniversary of the birth of W.B. Yeats and the looming
centenary in 2016 of the Easter Rising. The Rising
was an event which led, after long years of guerrilla
war followed by civil war, to the creation of the
modern Irish state.
Still today, an aspiring political leader in Ireland
can expect serious public interest to be expressed in
what his or her forebears did during that period,
and in particular which side they were on. The
main political parties in Ireland themselves are
the direct descendants of the warring factions of
a century ago. Indeed, the Ireland of one hundred
years ago is referred to in one of the chapter titles
of Vivid Faces as the Ireland of yesterday.
The timing and location are propitious for a
ground-breaking study in the history of the Irish
revolutionary generation. There could scarcely be
a historian better equipped and more capable of
tackling such an ambitious topic than R.F. Foster,
arguably the most compelling historian currently
writing in English. Like the similarly prolific and
fluent Geoffrey Blainey—Australia’s foremost historian and one of our best writers of prose—Foster
is an inclusive, fair-minded chronicler of the past,
scrupulously adopting a both/and rather than
either/or approach. Like Blainey, Foster writes
elegantly, succinctly and humanely, and has a gift
for turning a phrase both memorable and telling.
While delineating with typical deftness the
sectarian and secular fault lines of religion, class,
ethnicity and gender that inevitably form part of
the Irish story, Foster is not about to advocate a
moral or other superiority of any one faction or
school of thought over another. For an inclusive,
non-partisan historian, a modern revolution is
not the arena for apportioning blame or settling
scores. “We search now, instead,” writes Foster, “to
find clarification through themes of paradox and
nuance; we have become interested in what does
not change during revolutions, as much as what
does.”
Which is not to say that things do not change,
albeit in ways that no one at the time could have
predicted. One paradoxical aspect of the revolution
which Foster notes is the disappearance after the
event of much of the secular impetus behind it:
The part played by socialist beliefs and
labour activism in the pre-revolutionary
mindset can too easily be forgotten, given
the drastic restabilization of politics in a
Catholic-nationalist mould during the War of
Independence and afterwards.
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In important ways, the Irish revolution can
be seen to have gone full circle. It is a view that
was supported at the time by Kevin O’Higgins,
one of the dominant politicians of the post-revolutionary period (until, that is, his assassination
by members of the IRA in 1927). “We were probably the most conservative-minded revolutionaries that ever put through a successful revolution,”
O’Higgins observed. The key to the success, we
may infer, was that very conservatism—a point that
I imagine would not be lost on the more thoughtful proponents of the current movement towards an
Australian republic.
Even now, it is remarkable to think that the
Irish republic, for all the political hatred and violence that occasioned its coming into being, did in
a relatively short space of time become a stable and
relatively peaceful democracy. Like so many members of those independence movements that sought
freedom from British imperial rule, the revolutionaries in Ireland believed they were pursuing a goal
consistent with a distinctly British notion of truly
representative parliamentary democracy.
B
y definition, a portrait of an entire generation
must include everyone of significance who
dreamed and participated in the establishment of
the modern Irish state. In part, it was the political expression of the natural tension within families and the wider society between the older and
younger generations, strengthened by wider social
and political currents.
More than a few of the original Irish rebels were
the Edwardian sons and daughters of the middle
class rebelling against what they saw as the stifling
Victorian values of their parents:
The changes that convulse society do not appear
from nowhere; they happen first in people’s
minds, and through the construction of a shared
culture, which can be the culture of a minority
rather than a majority. In Ireland, as elsewhere,
discontented and energetic young men and
women, whose education often left them facing
limited opportunities with a sense of frustration,
turned their attention to critically assessing the
status quo.
The revolutionary generation in Ireland was also
shaped by other forces finding an outlet at the time,
such as suffragette-era feminism, and there was
even a sublimated homoerotic component to the
atmosphere of political fervour embodied in figures
like Roger Casement and Patrick Pearse.
Though we tend to want to sum up the meaning
of the Irish revolution by reaching for quotations
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from the work of writers such as Yeats, Foster goes
beyond grand literary gestures to look at what the
majority of people were actually writing and reading. In particular, he describes the vast number of
small-circulation journalistic publications that proliferated throughout Ireland before the revolt. He
also makes a case for the powerful influence of the
Christian Brothers school system, which produced
hardened Irish nationalists by the score.
Revolutionary politics was typically a matter
discussed at a community level: “The blizzard of
news-sheets wrote the revolution into the hearts and
minds of young radicals far more potently than the
poetry of Yeats or the fictions of George Moore.”
Foster shows how the prospects for revolution in
Ireland could mean very different things to different people, and that these aims were often antithetical—some wanted a modern secular republic with
freedom from perceived sexual as well as political
and religious oppression, while others were inspired
by a morally pure, almost mystical vision of an
Ireland in which everyone spoke the Irish language
and which was profoundly Catholic.
The Easter Rising itself, as has often been noted,
was not popular, especially among Dubliners. The
storming of the General Post Office and other sites
caused much death and destruction, and the insurrection did not spread. Famously, writes Foster, “the
captured rebels were abused by Dublin crowds as
they were led through the streets”.
It was only later, when the British authorities,
brutalised in their political thinking by the Great
War then raging in Europe, made a catastrophic
mistake in executing the rebel leaders during
a period drawn out to over a week. Public opinion shifted decisively, and the revolution became
a popular movement. In seeking to make a grim
example of the first rebels, the authorities only created martyrs to the cause. Even so, the eventual
outcome of the nationwide conflict sparked by the
response to the Easter Rising was not quite what
any of the revolutionaries envisaged. Revolutions,
like all political movements for radical change, have
a way of obeying no law but that of unintended
consequences.
One of the characteristics of Irish history, notes
Foster, is that “in the case of a split the future was
on the side of the dissident minority”. It was, in the
event, the main political force opposed to the treaty
with Britain that finally ended the war of independence which came to dominate the newly independent republic that their opponents had accomplished.
As they grew older, according to Foster, many
members of the revolutionary generation became
disillusioned with what Ireland had become. He
quotes the writer Sean O’Faolain asking himself,
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in the 1930s, in a biography of one of the more
idealistic revolutionaries:
... if all revolutionary movements ever move
towards defined ends, whether all such
movements are not in the main movements of
emotion rather than thought, movements arising
out of a dissatisfaction with things as they are
but without any clear or detailed notion as to
what will produce satisfaction in the end.
Foster is first and foremost an effective communicator—intelligent, direct and wise. History these
days, like every other field of scholarship in the
humanities, operates under the dual threat of, on
the one hand, arcane academic specialisation, and,
on the other, mere dumbing down.
In both cases, many historians, especially those
who appear in the media, appear to have developed
a weird tic of talking about all past events in the
present tense. I guess in part at least this habit has
spread as a way of trying to make history seem more
immediate to an easily bored younger audience,
or perhaps it has something to do with information technology making everything seem instantly
accessible.
Needless to say, R.F. Foster does not write in the
present tense about the past. History is always contemporary, as confirmed by the Irish revolutionary
experience and as richly illustrated by Vivid Faces.
Simon Caterson is a Melbourne-based writer partly
educated at Trinity College, Dublin.
M ich a el Wa r r en Dav is
Roger Scruton’s Anti-Intellectualism
Australian Essays
by Roger Scruton
Connor Court and the Institute of Public
Affairs, 2014, 98 pages, $19.95
N
ot all great intellects, of course, are intellectuals. The “intellectual” as we understand him
today—the public intellectual—is a relatively recent
phenomenon. In the Bad Old Days, as Prince Philip
calls them, we had men of letters, who possessed
such penetrating minds that they were able to earn
their bread reflecting on the more abstract aspects
of society, politics and culture. One couldn’t earn
that exalted title merely by scaling the ivory tower:
in the English-speaking world, the exalted Doctor
of Letters was (and occasionally still is) awarded on
an honorary basis, to acknowledge the accomplishments of the elite thinkers of a generation. Their
life’s purpose was to stand above the tide of fad
and fashion: whatever transpired in our tumultuous
Western societies, they ensured the survival of high
culture and high-mindedness.
But, in the wake of the French Revolution, the
men of letters began their slow decline. It was no
longer enough that men of extraordinary genius
devoted themselves to the formidable task of guarding the cultural and philosophical heritage of our
civilisation. They were to enlist themselves in the
service of radical politics, fortifying the ivory tower
and turning their pens against our heritage. Their
new charge was to give intellectual justification for
the cultural vandalism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Naturally, men of letters became irrelevant. No
one was looking to recruit “the sweet laughing eagle
thoughts that grow / Where wings have memory of
wings”. The men of letters were the memory-banks
of Western civilisation; what the radicals demanded
was forgetfulness. Post-revolutionary society needed
their big formidable brains to help engineer a new
civilisation, not to preserve the old one. If they (the
Brains) glanced to the past at all, it was through
a veil of dream-distortion, as though recalling a
recurring boyhood nightmare. These architects of
the new order were called intellectuals, and they’ve
been plaguing us ever since. Culminating in the
career of Russell Kirk, the man of letters is today
nearly extinct.
Roger Scruton is one great intellect that refuses
to fit the mould of the plat du jour intellectual,
and one of his most recent publications, Australian
Essays, contains some of his most incisive criticism
of soi-disant intellectuals to date.
T
he first essay, “Where Did We Go Wrong?” is
addressed to all of us who share the inheritance
of Western culture, law, philosophy and religion.
The idea itself is radical: we’re not used to great
intellects condescending to address us at all; when
they do (as with Chomsky), it’s only to reprimand
us for not paying greater heed to the edicts of the
intelligentsia.
Naturally enough, what follows is a criticism of
the insular ivory tower, with its “gymnastic display
of nonsense, and the peculiar self-referential syntax”.
(“Ingrown toenail syndrome”, as Scruton calls it.)
He argues that the alienation of Western man from
high culture, and the ensuing loss of a meaningful
common identity, has left us with a yawning divide
between the academy and the marketplace. There’s
no longer any such “society” to be initiated into, no
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community to satisfy our need for belonging. The able in themselves, and merit preservation despite
bonds that once united us—worship, music, liter- (or, perhaps, thanks to) their irrelevance to the pet
ature and the like—are relegated to the so-called projects of academia, from stripping metaphysics
private sphere. Those enterprises that make life, not from religious thought to “desegregating” genderonly meaningful, but bearable, have been privatised. specific bathrooms. They offer us the sense of true
We call them matters of “personal taste”.
meaning, of authentic belonging, which has given
So the academy has created its own rites of way to the sorry state of the modern university.
passage, based in convoluted jargon that’s totally
We shouldn’t think that Scruton is by any means
inaccessible to the uninitiated. As in the gnostic an anti-capitalist. Rather, he echoes John Ruskin,
religions of antiquity, sacred knowledge is guarded who he elsewhere calls “the greatest conservative
jealously by the privileged few deemed worthy thinker of the Victorian age”. As Ruskin said of the
to receive it. “Nonsense,” Scruton opines, “when merchant and manufacturer: “It is no more his funcuttered with due solemnity, as the rites of a mystery tion to get profit for himself … than it is a clergycult, has a natural capacity to reproduce itself.” By man’s function to get his stipend.” Ruskin counted
piously imbibing and regurgitating certain spells the merchant among five indispensible professions
and incantations, the intellectual is promised a of a civilised nation. The merchant’s vocation is to
place in the postmodern Valhalla of
provide for civilisation, as well as—
footnotes and Facebook quotes.
or, when duty calls, at the expense
The second essay, “Freedom
of—himself.
rchitects have
and Its Discontents”, is ostensibly
Thence follows no pathetic
gone about making socialist dogma; only that the
a reflection on the pervasiveness
of Soviet power structures in postmerchant and manufacturer aren’t
everyone feel as
Soviet Eastern Europe. In fact, it
exempt from their responsibilities
though they don’t
seems more of a pretence for Scruton
to the commonwealth. Their trade
to offer one of his sharp, though
belong in our great isn’t an end unto itself. And while
ever constructive, criticisms of the
state could no more enforce
cities any more. It’s the
mainstream centre-Right. He issues
such an ethic on them than it could
the “architecture
an urgent warning to political leadvet physicians for their kind-hearters in the West, particularly those
edness or lawyers for their sense
of nowhere”, as
of a “free market and capitalist perof righteousness, conservatives, as
Scruton calls it.
suasion”, who act as though “ecodefenders of the free market, have
nomics is the base of social order,
every right and reason to hold them
and law, morality and religion no
to this standard. When we become
more than a superstructure”. This, he rightly notes, preoccupied with material provision, we lose sight
is a sort of right-wing variation on materialism: “the of what it is we’re being provided for: family and
most damaging part of Marxism”.
friendship, art, music, nature and the like. Just as a
The essence of conservatism, he suggests, isn’t man obsessed with his health can fret himself into
reducible to laissez faire economics. Rather, Scruton illness, so too we risk becoming so obsessed with
holds up the traditionalist qua freedom-fighter he our livelihood that we stop living, and merely surencountered among the Hungarian underground: vive. For the time being, Scruton is the voice of one
“young people who understood the value of books crying in the wilderness, but the survival of conand learning, who respected their national history servatism—indeed, of civilisation—depends on our
and culture, and who were anxious to protect their heeding his cries.
environment from destruction”. The conservative
ne aspect of life long neglected that we can,
movement hasn’t rearmed itself, so to speak, for the
with a bit of gumption, reclaim for ourselves,
culture war just yet; but pockets of resistance are
is our sense of being: of belonging somewhere in
forming.
As the humanities are further devoted to the the world. Architecture, one of Scruton’s areas of
perpetuation of soixant-huitard gobbledygook, with expertise, is the art of habitation. In the traditional
any semblance of a canon or tradition rapidly dis- understanding of architecture, we don’t impose oursolving in a bath of corrosive deconstructionism, selves on the earth, flaunting our dominance over
students are already gathering to keep the classics— nature. Instead, we bring our dwellings into harShakespeare and Milton, Elgar and Debussy, Plato mony with the natural world, complementing the
and Hume—from being lost to living memory. beauty of creation with our own created things. The
There’s a growing sense, in defiance of our intel- various buildings and, indeed, the landscapes from
lectual elite, that these humane pursuits are valu- which they arise, seem to be “enjoying each other’s
A
O
108
Books
company”.
The sixth essay in the collection, “How to Change
the World?” contains some of Scruton’s clearest
prose and insights on the subject. He condemns
our modern utilitarian architects for imposing the
Marxist theory of alienation on us: where the supposed estrangement of the proletarian never manifested in revolution as Marx anticipated, architects
have gone about making everyone feel as though
they don’t belong in our great cities any more. It’s
the “architecture of nowhere”, as Scruton calls it:
“It lies there by the road, as though some giant had
dropped it as he strode across the landscape.” He
gives voice to the secret wish that arises in the heart
of everyone confronted by the brutality of our major
settlements: “to re-attach ourselves to the community, to the place and to the form of life that is ours”.
From what I can tell, there are only two previously
published pieces in Australian Essays: “The Return of
Religion” is taken from his introductory Gifford lecture, The Face of God, and “Eat Your Friends” from A
Political Philosophy. But the best essays are certainly
the original ones, and no Scrutoneer’s collection can
do without this little volume. It’s also perhaps the
best sampler of Scruton’s thought, interests and style
available, an ideal starting point for those wishing
to acquaint themselves with the greatest living conservative, but who are intimidated by the sheer volume of his output. And for his Australian devotees,
we can take special pleasure in knowing that it’s his
gift to us.
Michael Warren Davis is an editorial assistant at
Quadrant.
Patr ick M c C aule y
Bohemian Bestiary
Poetry & Ideas: Text and Images
edited and drawn by Raffaella Torresan
Devil Dog Publishing, 2015, 166 pages,
$29.90
P
oetry & Ideas is a beautiful, hard-covered,
A4-sized, strongly bound book, with nice thick
paper eager for turning. The cover outlines the nine
major themes explored, with collaged poster-like
images of animals and trees sailing through the
steam of nuclear power stations.
Raffaella Torresan has organised an art event over
a period of years, in which she has invited poets and
artists to explore nine themes in what she calls her
“Conscience Shows”. The nine themes were: Keep
it in the Ground—Anti-Uranium Mining (2007),
For Love of Whales (2008), TreesTreesTrees—for
Love of Trees (2009), More More More is Never
Enough—Greed Show (2010), Beauty (2011),
LoveAnimals (2012), Strange (2012), Freedom (2013),
Leave the Animals Alone (2014).
Each theme attracted an exhibition of paintings by between ten and twenty painters and a
small hand-stapled booklet of poems of between
ten and twenty poets. Each exhibition had an opening and a poetry reading which usually raged on
into the nights of Collingwood, spilling out of the
Collingwood Gallery onto the footpath—as much
as the passing bohemian life of Smith Street was
sucked into the exhibition. Each event was packed
with buyers and painters and art and poetry lovers from across the spectrums of society, mixing the
Melbourne literati with a wide variety of painters
and their bohemian entourage.
It is this mixing of the poets and the painters,
teachers and students, known and unknown, left
and right, bohemia and liberal, young and old, where
Torresan has really made a hit. She has managed
to create a forum for the meeting of minds which
transcends the current cultural or political divide,
by focusing the work on particular themes. Poetry
& Ideas is a selection of the poems which were submitted for the above exhibitions over the nine years,
illustrated by Torresan using pastel, pencil, etching,
collage, pen and ink and printmaking, particularly
linocuts.
Art historian Richard Haese, famous for his 1981
book exploring the revolutionary years of Australian
art, Rebels and Precursors, has written a glowing and
inspiring foreword to Poetry & Ideas which outlines
the development of Torresan’s work through three
previous publications which in many ways have also
been collaborations with poets. Haese notes:
the seemingly endless enigma of the relationship
between poetry and painting ... I’ve long
been absorbed by the ways in which some of
Australia’s finest modernist painters—notably
Sidney Nolan, Albert Tucker, Arthur Boyd,
John Olsen (obsessive readers all)—were fixated
on the poetic word. Many of their key works
correspondingly have their roots in the great
imaginative struggles of Rimbaud, Rilke, T.S.
Eliot, Dylan Thomas—and not the least our
own inimitable Ern Malley.
Torresan has chosen an eclectic and yet
magnificent group of Australian contemporary
poets of which Ern Malley (or James McAuley, his
father) would have been proud. Jennifer Compton
109
Books
(winner of the 2014 Newcastle Poetry Prize), Jordie
Albiston, Jennifer Harrison, Judith Rodriguez and
Anna Fern all feature beautiful, well-crafted and
profound poetry—perhaps to some extent freed
to focus on a single subject. For example, Jordie
Albiston finds a mood through the whale theme in
her poem “Whale Song”:
I sway, broken mast, mad harpoon, stuck
like a limpet on the hoary back of pain.
But do your worst cetacean shadow
I have flukes of my own, and when you
sound I can hold breath for a lifetime.
Les Murray seems relaxed and playful in this
short poem, and Torresan’s simple drawing, diving
down beside it, translates “bubba dog down”:
Vertically diving,
thick roof tail
spilling salt rain
off onto wallowing
upthrust all around,
bubba dog down.
Eric Beach’s famous performance poem “I’m the
Man who talks to trees”, which he does in a crazed
loony manner, is printed here, above a swirling lino
cut of windy circles surrounding two hands waving
into the sky. It’s a magnificent poem and one you
can read to teenagers sceptical of poetry. Anybody
who reads this poem out loud immediately becomes
a genius.
P
oetry & Ideas is overflowing with, well, poetry
and ideas. Domenic de Clario attempts a certain
syntax outside his usual performance space, in his
poem “once more” which is accompanied by a beautiful simple Torresan linocut with a blue moon. Colin
Talbot talks about an adventure with the famous
romantic iconoclast poet Shelton Lea, and John
Flaus asks “Who Remembers Emily Davison?” The
book is a constant and seemingly endless treasure
trove of urban myths, consistently good poems and
humour, with lines which take the mind through
some of the most profound questions that humanity
has to ask of itself in our times.
The poets probably represent Melbourne-based
poetry across all the tribes from the university creative-writing-based work of Kevin Brophy, to the war
cries of the Dan O’Connell and the bars and dens
of the Melbourne performance poetry circuit. The
remnants of the old bohemian Melbourne push and
110
the Pram Factory appear in several excellent poems
from the recently deceased Phil Motherwell. His
poem “One fucked unit” is a testament to his genius
for finding beauty under difficult circumstances.
A white pig-dog, a bad bad boy
Back-handed and teased
In bikie bush camps
Bloodied for the hunt
The homeless in the honking city
Took up residence in my yard.
His face was at every window
Pressed against the glass
Heart-breaking loneliness writ large
Wormed his way inside
Butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.
Then, as the list of victims lengthened
The green needle of execution
Was as close as the next triple 0 call
As this Jekyll & Hyde of dogs
Bastardized beyond repair
Walked his giddy tightrope.
Hard wired to hate people of color
Ripped the pale face off a gentle Japanese
Savaged children trying to pat him
Even bit me once wildly tearing
As I pulled him from a fight
Man’s best friend?
Well so they say
While I had him
Everyone stayed away.
Outriding intellectuals, such as Alex Skovron,
Marietta Elliott-Kleerkoper and the late Leon
Shann are there in all their glory, accompanied
by Bruce Dawe, Gary Foley and Jack Charles.
Komninos, the multicultural poet on the VCE syllabus, adds gravitas.
This is a book of Australian poetry and art you
could read with your children or send to your relatives in Europe—which would reflect something
which is not only Australian, but also tells you
something about the state of Australian art and
poetry. It is a book which celebrates art for art’s sake
and poetry for the poem’s sake. It is an illustrated
art book of Australian poets discussing the human
condition through their love of animals. The artist
has created the borders and imagined the poems in
line and form.
Patrick McCauley lives in central Victoria. He is one
of the fifty-seven poets whose work appears in Poetry
& Ideas.
guest column
J oseph O’D onoghu e
F
or the past ten years or so, I’ve been a horrible sleeper, often waking up numerous times
throughout the night. I finally bit the bullet recently and organised an appointment with a
sleep doctor.
Surprisingly, rather than having me strung up
to monitors and reported on, the doctor simply sat
me down and provided me with a fascinating education on the natural patterns of sleep. She reassured me that my problems were easily correctable.
Apparently I wasn’t a naturally bad sleeper at all,
but rather had just developed some poor sleeping
habits along the way.
The solution, I was told, was simple. Learn to
relax for a few hours before bedtime. But more
powerfully, whenever possible, get out of bed at
the same time each day and a spend little bit of
time in the morning light.
For the morning sunlight, it seems, is one of the
best natural facilitators of that “happy hormone”,
serotonin. When we expose our eyes to the dawn,
this body-clock-recalibrating chemical helps our
brains wash away the sleep-supporting melatonin,
and makes us feel more optimistic and more awake.
So, with an ambition to correct my disastrous
sleeping habits, I bought a very loud alarm clock
(sans snooze button) and committed myself to
embracing some more regular morning light.
The problem was, though, that this new proposed behaviour was utterly at odds with my moral
code. Having moved back from overseas last year,
one of the first things I noticed about Sydney was
its uncouth obsession for early starts. I was jaded
by Sydney’s passion for the dawn. I loved a good
sleep in, couldn’t understand why everyone got up
so damn early, and often found myself scoffing
about it to friends.
After all, I learnt overseas, sophisticated Europe
seemed to be perfectly happy with a later start to
the day. And weren’t they meant to be the cultured
and more balanced ones? As I observed the frenetic Sydney morning, I couldn’t help but feel that
I was surrounded by a city of neurotic “hard bods”,
motivating themselves into the morning light just
to squeeze in a bit more body sculpting before the
working day ahead. It was simply not my style.
However, after just a few days into my morning
“prescription”, it all suddenly clicked. A light bulb
switched on upstairs. All of a sudden, I understood
Sydney’s fascination with early starts and I became
irrevocably addicted. The infant morning sunlight
dancing upon the water, the friendly smiles of the
“dawners” and the noticeable increase in serotonin
all quickly swept me off my feet. After many years
away, I was once again seduced.
I
n this coastal city that directly faces east, it
seems no matter where you are in Sydney, the
morning sunlight has a special way of poking its
eyes over the near horizon and making our urban
landscape seem magical.
I couldn’t tell you what single ingredient of the
cocktail got me hooked—it may have been all of
it. There is a peacefulness and quiet in the Sydney
morning that you can’t experience at any other
time. When the weather’s good, the sun illuminates native colours that tightrope-walk between
the subtle and the bold. And whatever mood you
awake in, the dawn is always celebrated by a symphony of happy lorikeets, cockatoos and kookaburras. All of your senses are awakened and stimulated.
It’s nothing less than a gift. The European quality of life is often attributed
to a better balance of socialising and the actual
“living of life” during the working week. Where
the Europeans take long lunches and late dinners,
I had always assumed that Sydney people bottled
up their weekday life, letting it pour out everywhere on the weekends.
However, I’ve come to realise that our muchneeded weekday “stretch out” may indeed be our
charismatic mornings. Perhaps it’s just that we
balance things out a little in reverse. Perhaps we
balance things in a way that better suits us and
our city. And just as Sydney is beautiful in the mornings,
it is also a whole lot friendlier. The dawn brings
with it a local charm that seems to dissipate quietly
111
guest column
as the angle of the sun rises. Dog walkers chat as
their barking mutts wrestle. Beach swimmers towel
dry in the sand and talk sea temperature. Surfers
sit on boards, wait for waves, and watch the rising
sun together. The hard bods congregate, compete
and sculpt in the open spaces. Friends or couples
sip rich coffee and gossip against the clackity-clack
background of the coffee machine as the baristas
call out customers’ names.
I think my favourite, though, is the friendly
little morning “hellos”—the polite nods, the
acknowledgment with eyes and the shy warm
smiles. And the earlier the hour, the more affinity
you feel in the passing greeting, the more enthusiastically the “Morning!” is exclaimed. It as if the
unsaid translation of this passing salute is actually
meant to be: “Oh! You’re out here early like me?
Isn’t it wonderful!”
And the more I involved myself in the Sydney
morning, the more I began to realise that the sunlight, serotonin and morning sounds have dripped
deep into the Sydney psyche. The morning owns a
chunk of our unique culture. From an early age, we
develop a deep and intrinsic relationship with it. It
gets into our bloodstream and forms part of what it
means to grow up here. It injects sensorial memories into every local’s “suitcase of the subconscious”,
which they happily carry with them wherever they
go.
Whenever I arrive back at Kingsford Smith
early in the morning, it is this homecoming time
that strikes me with the most resonance. Driving
home from the airport just after the sun is up,
when Sydney’s eyes are only just opening, I feel
my whole body fill with excitement at the reality
of really being back home.
S
o: has the prescription of sunlight been the
promised silver-bullet sleep soother? I still toss
and turn, but I have noticed a vast and welcome
improvement. The thing I’m most content with, though, is my
rediscovery of Sydney mornings.
They not only fill my day with a serotonin-filled
calm. They have also reinvigorated my love for my
beautiful home town. They’ve made me realise that
Sydney actually does have its own special way to
live, and that the mornings here are nothing less
than a gift—a gift whose ingredients I have not
encountered anywhere else. A gift that is celebrated best by being embraced, and a gift that only
a fool would scoff at.
Joseph O’Donoghue is a freelance writer and digital
consultant. He has a blog at http://theblankcanvas.
postagon.com.
Peter Ryan is unwell, but plans to resume his
contributions to Quadrant shortly.
breakaleg
The New Statesman, in 1921, declared theatre
the second most superstitious institution,
in England, after horse racing.
To wish luck, was unlucky.
Theories of origin abound.
Old slang for a bow, or curtsy, at curtain call.
Elizabethan audiences banged chairs
for approval, often until a leg broke.
Ancient Greeks didn’t applaud, they stomped,
and if one stomped hard enough ...
German WWI pilots wished each other
hals und beinbruch—neck and leg fractures.
Lincoln Theory holds assassin
John Wilkes Booth broke his
leaping from the balcony.
French acteurs declare Merde!
“The Divine Sarah” Bernhardt only had one leg,
so good luck, to be like her.
The Italian attore encourages
in bocca a lupo—
into the mouth of the wolf—
with a reply essential,
before placing a foot on the stage,
crepi il lupo—
may the wolf die.
112
Joe Dolce
renodesign.com.au R33011
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They are determined to destroy the legend and ruin the Centennial
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Conservatism in Retreat —or Advancing?

Transcription

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