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Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Last night, I watched a repeat of a programme that took me back about 30 years to when I was a young kid being taught history by a very leftwing history teacher. The period of study was the Industrial Revolution, and I remember getting what I call the default-setting “Black Satanic Mills” version of the 18th and 19th centuries, full of horrible factories, brutish owners, vicious and incompetent governments, heroic but downtrodden workers, starving farm labourers, not to mention a cast list of all those splendid French revolutionaries. I think it was at about this time – 1976-77 – that I formed in my still-young head the vague sense that I was being sold a line, that something about this was not quite accurate. Anyway, I was only 10, I was more interested in sports and messing about with my mates, and had yet to take a more serious interest in the world of current events. But even at that age I developed a love of history that has stayed with me, and for all that he is a died-in-the-wool leftie, my old history teacher, who is now retired, is someone of whom I have fond memories. He is actually one of the nicest of men and I keep in touch with him. The programme in question was fronted by Tony Robinson whom many non-Britons will know as the guy who played Baldrick in the glorious Blackadder TV series. In more recent years, Robinson, who is a campaigner for things like trade unions, long-term care for the elderly and other causes, has made a name for himself as an enthusiast for ancient history. His programme last night was a classic example of the sort of history that I was taught at school: wittily presented, but at its base incredibly biased, often factually inaccurate, and playing into a narrative of UK history that has coloured our views of industry, law, industrial relations and trade ever since.
One of the main parts of the programme was about the use of the death penalty and how the harsh penal code of the time was used to protect the property of the landed classes and the emerging class of entrepreneurs. That the code was harsh is undeniable. By the early 1820s, there were scores of offences, even ones like stealing potatoes or game, that were punishable by death. What Robinson ignored, however, is that juries frequently refused to convict such crimes because they could see that the punishment was outrageous. And in the 1820s, Robert Peel, Home Secretary at the time, swept almost all capital crimes off the statute books, save only for murder. Robinson does not mention this. And Robinson scorned how landowners were allowed, under the English Common Law, to defend their property by deadly force. He then juxtaposed pictures of poachers being executed with the recent case of Tony Martin, the Norfolk farmer who shot, and killed, an intruder at his home after having been burgled repeatedly. As far as Robinson was concerned, Martin was a throwback to the disgusting concept of using deadly force to guard property, and did not stop to consider that it is often very poor, vulnerable people who are the victims of robbery and attack. The arguments presented by the likes of Joyce-Lee Malcolm, who, for example, has defended the right of use of deadly force in self-defence, do not even enter Robinson’s frame of reference. Indeed, the whole show gives us an insight as to how the UK political left – Robinson is an avid Labour Party supporter of the old, hard-left variety – view the whole concept of self defence and the role of the state generally.
The economics of the Industrial Revolution makes up the background of his programme, which is mainly about crime and punishment. Not surprisingly given his political views, Robinson also gives the standard line that the Industrial Revolution was produced on the backs of “the workers”, but then what is crucial to any fair appraisal of the massive changes that happened at the time is whether most, if not all, labourers were better off than they were in the days of serfdom and the peasant-based, agrarian life that pre-dated it. The Marxist historians such as Eric Hobsbawm may like to present the pre-Industrial age as one full of peasants happily gamboling around in the woods choosing to work when and where they wanted, in order to contrast it with the horrors of industrialism, but this is dishonest nonsense. Without enclosure of land and the more productive agricultural system that sprang from it, and without the industrial wealth that enabled Britain to grow rapidly, it would have been hard to see how the rising population of the time could have adequately fed itself, let alone produce a sustained improvement in living standards. As a result of the agricultural changes and of free trade, Britain was less vulnerable to a catastrophically bad harvest, unlike Ireland, which because of its dependence on the potato and the Corn Laws, was terribly hit by the potato blight of the 1840s. Starvation was a regular feature of European life, even in relatively rich countries, for centuries. But in England, whatever other problems existed, widespread famine was no longer an issue by the end of the 18th Century.
There is no doubt that there was much misery and ugliness in the time. When tens of thousands of soldiers and sailors were paid off at the end of the Napoleonic wars, for example, there was an influx of labour into the workforce and wages in sectors like farming came under brutal pressure. But what Robinson ignores is to cure such poverty meant that the Industrial Revolution’s primary focus on producing goods for the mass market such as textiles and ironware was right, both economically and for that matter, morally. Within a matter of decades, the idea of even a poor person moving from say, Manchester to Newcastle in a day was not the stuff of fantasy. It was reality.
The Industrial Revolution has been, at least in my view, strangely under-covered in much of the mainstream histories that you see in bookshops today. Walk into a Borders or a Waterstones and much of the history sections are full of books about WW2, warfare generally, some social histories of quite recent times, some stuff about the Romans (popular again thanks to movies like Gladiator) and the Greeks. But this crucial phase of British, and world, history, does not really get much of an airing. A few years ago, I praised a wonderful book about some of the men who fashioned the Industrial Revolution, The Lunar Men, by Jenny Uglow. But such books are remarkably rare. Still one of the finest and most succinct accounts of the early phases of our industrial life was written more than half a century ago by T.S. Ashton. About the only other time one sees anything about the Industrial Revolution on the television, meanwhile, are things like the programmes about old machines by the late Fred Dibner or Jeremy Clarkson’s excellent programme about Brunel.
It seems to me there is a gap in the market for an account of the Industrial Revolution written by someone who is not reflexively hostile to it, as was demonstrated last night by an ageing comedy actor. It is about time the record was set straight.
Here’s a good essay on the standard-of-living debate and the Industrial Revolution.
I began fully-listening when Ellis Cashmore appeared as a ‘witness’. Cashmore is ‘professor’ of Culture, Media and Sport, surely the Andrex of academic disciplines. You can listen to him on the website – it’s the programme about celebrity – he appears at about twenty minutes. You may need a new laptop as these machines don’t take kindly to being flung across the room. The gist of what Cashmore said was contained in his line ‘Cultures are no better or worse than each other’. Right then, Prof, here’s my time machine and, woosh, here we are in Tiananmen Square during Mao’s Cultural – geddit? – Revolution. You, being an intellectual, are about to be stamped to death for the entertainment of the peasants. Luckily, I am on hand to, first, console you with the thought that all cultures are equal and, secondly, to operate the time machine and whisk you off to Germany in the thirties. I, having a Jewish mother, am being dragged off by Brown Shirts, but, luckily, you are on hand to console me with the thought that all cultures are equal. Sadly, you cannot operate the time machine. … Who are these people? What are they for?
– Bryan Appleyard listens to the BBC Radio 4’s The Moral Maze
As if an answer to my suggestion to document the communist history in Eastern Europe through the lives and eyes of individuals, the PLOTKI, an on-line and print magazine about culture and society in Central and Eastern Europe, invites contributions to a project Changes from Below:
The project “Changes From Below“ aims to collect pieces of research which highlight personal stories behind movements against ‘‘communist’’ dictatorship in Central and Eastern Europe.
… Whilst historical investigation on resistance to ‘communist’ rule often focuses on historical ‘grand events’ such uprisings as Prague Spring 1968, Hungarian Autumn 1956, 17 June 1953 in GDR or Poland in the 80’s, Plotki wants to research the smaller stories, personal experiences and the rumours which slipped through the historical sieve and serve them up via various artistic means such as writing, photography, graphics, film or audio. We are thinking about the Orange Alternative in Poland who attended illegal meetings of dwarfs, and were arresting for handing out tampons to women; the spontaneous ‘community supported agriculture’ networks that evolved during Ceausescu’s dictatorship in Romania, and that kept urban people alive by illegally supplying them with food; or Czechoslovakia’s Society for Happier Contemporary Times; or the diversity of ecological movements as the Umweltbibliothek (an environment documentation centre) in East Berlin, Ekoglasnost in Bulgaria or groups of people concerned with ecological damage in Bohemia; or factory self-management in Yugoslavia; or the protestant churches resistance in GDR; or the countless other inspirational, exciting and quirky forms of resistance which once inhabited the region.
Great stuff and worthwhile effort, no doubt. Just one minor gripe – what’s with the quotation marks/inverted commas around the word communist?!
A new movie about the doings of special agents and local French Resistance folk in the days leading up to, and beyond, D-Day is out. I might go and see it – the reviews look quite good and the cast looks impressive. Lots of delicious French actresses – hardly difficult to turn down, really.
At the Imperial War Museum – always worth a visit if you have not been there – there is a section about the special forces that have operated before, during, and after WW2, such as the Long Range Desert Group, M16, the SAS, The Chindits (Burma), other forces in Malaysia, Northern Ireland, Aden, France, former Yugoslavia, Greece, etc. The displays are well done and there is loads of fascinating information about the ordeals of those involved, their lives, methods, equipment and roles in various campaigns. For all that I quite enjoyed the Ian Fleming exhibition in the same place, the real-life displays of derring-do by people who are often totally unknown to the broader public was in some ways far more impressive and actually rather moving. It was also, just to make a “point”, clear that many of these operatives did not need the full benefits of a surveillance state to do their jobs. What was clear that the prime qualities of getting good intelligence are commonsense and a lot of guts.
In one of the most beautiful avenues of Budapest, Andrássy Road, is a museum dedicated to the two 20th century horrors, Nazism and Communism. House of Terror (Terror Háza) does not differentiate between the two toxic ideologies. After all, they are the same thing with different packaging – one in black, the other in red. That they hate and fought each other is not evidence to the contrary, merely evidence of territorial in-fighting.
In winter of 1944, when the Hungarian Nazis came to power, hundreds of people were tortured in the basement of the house in 60 Andrássy street. In 1945 Hungary was occupied by the Soviet Army. One of the first tasks of the Hungarian communists arriving with the Soviet tanks was to take possession of the location. The building was occupied by their secret police, the PRO, which was later renamed ÁVO, subsequently ÁVH (names for political police). The entire country came to dread the terrorist organisation. The ÁVH officers serving at 60 Andrássy Road were the masters of life and death. Detainees were horribly tortured or killed. The walls of the cellars beneath the buildings were broken down and transformed into a prison.
After the end of communism in Hungary, 60 Andrássy Road has become a shrine, the effigy of terror and the victims’ memorial. At least in Hungary they recognised that the ‘past must be acknowledged’. The exhibition is a visual feast, both in the artefacts displayed and in the symbolism of their arrangement. The rooms have themes and objects in them are meant to create an atmosphere as well as communicate facts. Alas, the visual beauty conjures an image of a retro nightmare – distant and unreal it masks the brutality and dull reality of communist terror.
There is an exquisitely designed hall dedicated to Soviet forced-labour and slave camps. There are reminiscences, photographs and the display cases contain relics, the original paraphernalia used by the people detained by the Soviets and taken to gulags. And yet, it does not squeeze your heart and make you sick to your stomach. The muted light and the droning voice of the audio guide fail to convey the tragedy. By trying to describe the suffering of many thousands, they miss the opportunity to make us feel the suffering of one, to put ourselves in their place, imagine our lives being arbitrarily and brutally torn apart. And to remember that this did not happen in some kind of parallel universe, that this is history next door.
I wanted to know the people whose meagre possessions I was looking at in the display cases. Their names, stories, family, circumstances, fates. I believe that the best and only way to understand Communism and Nazism is through the lives of individuals who were affected by it not through a historical methodology or chronological exposition.
And so we need to be told about their neighbours reporting and spying on them, children betraying parents, we need to hear the tales of endurance, mercy and resistance that no historical narrative can capture. We document history in such impersonal terms and yet there is nothing more powerful then actions of a man. We look for overarching explanations but historical causality without human beings and their behaviour leaves the patterns of history indistinct, lacking in colour and texture. → Continue reading: House of Terror
How remiss of me to forget – today is the anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy, France. In a few weeks’ time me and the missus are heading to Honfleur, the French port town in northern France, for a long weekend. It is one of my favourite bits of France.
We should never forget the sacrifices made on that day and in the weeks thereafter. A relation of mine was in the British beach landings, and he lasted the entire campaign right through the Battle of the Bulge, the Rhine crossings and later, as part of the post-war occupation of north Germany. He went back to Normandy a few years ago and said the same family were working in a cafe near Caen as when he was a young lieutenant in the artillery. Oh, and he married a German girl from Hamburg, who was a lovely woman without a trace of bitterness.
“Happily, we were indestructible. We didn’t need seat belts, airbags, smoke detectors, bottled water or the Heimlich manoeuvre. We didn’t require child safety caps on our medicines. We didn’t need helmets when we rode our bikes or pads for our knees and elbows when we went skating. We knew without being reminding that bleach was not a refreshing drink and that gasoline when exposed to a match had a tendency to combust. We didn’t have to worry about what we ate because nearly all foods were good for us: sugar gave us energy, red meat made us strong, ice cream gave us healthy bones, coffee kept us alert and purring productively.”
– Bill Bryson, The Live and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, page 106.
I adore this book.
My title of this posting is taken from that fine film, “The Right Stuff”, based on the book of the same title by Tom Wolfe. The character who uttered those lines in the movie was Werner von Braun. The reference is to the fact that at the end of the Second World War, a group of German scientists working on the V2 and other rocket systems were captured by the Allies and ended up working on the US space programme, while another lot of Germans ended up working for the Soviet Union.
Via the Andy Ross blog, here’s a review of a new book on von Braun.
Of course, no reference to von Braun would be complete without the following song from Tom Lehrer.
Samizdata has now been going for more than half a decade, and since what I am about to say has been becoming ever more true throughout that time, I may have said what follows before. So if you have already read, marked, learned and inwardly digested all of this, apologies, and on to the next posting.
I want to make a point about the nature of voting in British general elections. It now looks as if there is going to be a Labour melt-down, in the next one of these. A whole generation of Labour MPs seem about to lose their jobs, and whole new swarm of now diligently obscure Tories seem about to step forward to take their places. Setting aside what one feels about these two groups of people, why the completeness of the switch? Why these huge lurches, from massive Thatcher majorities, to massive Blair majorities, and soon – it now appears – to massive Cameron majorities? Even if the next general election does not yield the anti-Labour landslide that everyone is starting now to anticipate, we all know that it could. In the years when I first noticed party politics in Britain, parliamentary majorities were never this big, or they never seemed so. Parties lost elections, but they weren’t crushed, the way they get crushed now. Now, we live in an age of electoral landslides. Why? What has changed?
It may simply be that I have changed. Maybe landslides always happened from time to time, but I only started noticing rather recently. That could be it. Also, in a similar comment debate about this sort of stuff, here or somewhere, I seem to recall being accused of describing London rather than England or Britain when I talked this way. But I do think that there is something else going on here other than me just being me, living where I do. I think that the electorate has also changed. This posting makes an essentially rather simple point, but be warned now, it does it at somewhat tedious length. If you push that “Read more” button, you may rather quickly want to read less. → Continue reading: The age of political landslides
The new-look Harry’s Place carries this zinger of an article debunking a piece of revisionist tripe from the former editor of the New Statesman. The idea, essentially, is that Britain should have stayed out of WW2 so that the poor, put-upon Mr Hitler could then have shipped those pesky Jews off to some island in the Indian Ocean.
Unbelievable.
Tyler Cowen, the US economics writer, ponders – in the course of responding to a column by the US leftist economist Paul Krugman – whether modern industrial development would have reached its current pitch had it been forced to deal with today’s levels of regulation. On the face of it, had the Industrial Revolution, starting in the 18th Century, had to deal with 21st century levels of state bureaucracy, health and safety rules, and the rest, we’d still be using horses and carts and there’d be no blogging. Or would there? The trouble with these kinds of assertions is that there is no counterfactual universe against which to check it. The best we can reasonably do is to look at those societies that have imposed heavy restrictions on entrepreneurship and technology, and those that have not done so, and see if there are any consistent patterns to give us an idea. I suppose one good example is what happened in China about 600 years ago, when the rulers of that nation decided they’d had enough of all that exploration business and turned inwards. Another might be the extraordinary rise of Hong Kong in the 1940s under the benign laissez faire policy of UK colonial administrator, Sir John Cowperthwaite.
The other point that Cowen and Krugman deals with is the idea that the pace of development in the field of energy and industry has slowed down. Well, up to a point. When the late Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001 was made in to a film by Stanley Kubrick, people who watched in the 1960s were led to think that travel from Earth would soon be a relatively normal event. We have not got there yet. Maybe the problem is that there are sometimes periods of history of enormous change compressed into short periods, followed by longer stretches of time when not a lot appears to happen, but actually the incremental changes are quite big. We just need to get used to this rather than become unduly depressed that we are in a holding pattern rather than moving forward.
Note: I appreciate that not everyone accepts that the Industrial Revolution “started” in the 18th Century, but from my own readings, that century is when the critical mass of scientific, technological and economic forces came together, starting in the UK. For a marvellous account of the men who helped shape that revolution, I recommend this by Jenny Uglow.
On the pace of scientific advance in the West, and how it has arguably slowed since about 1950, this Charles Murray book of a few years back is a good read and is absolutely packed with statistics. I am not a professional statistics man so I am not sure I can comment all that intelligently on the rigour of his methods, but they look pretty robust.
The more I think about it, the more I realise that the establishment of a formal, state-run empire was a mistake, both from the point of view of the conquered peoples and from that of Britain. The first phase of British expansion – our informal mercantile dominion – was much the more successful. It is at least arguable that the nationalisation of the East India Company marked the moment when things started to go badly wrong.
– Daniel Hannan
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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