Nauru is a tiny island nation in the eastern Pacific region of Micronesia, approximately 2000 miles to the northeast of Australia.
The geography of the island features a coral reef and white-sand beaches fringed with palms. Inland, tropical vegetation surrounds the picturesque Buada Lagoon. The underground lake of Moqua Well supplies the island with its major source of freshwater. The rocky outcrop of Command Ridge, the island’s highest point, has a rusty Japanese outpost from WWII. To many, at first glance, Nauru might seem a tropical paradise.
The country of Nauru, the smallest island nation in the world, has an area of 21 square km. and a population of just over 10k persons. The nation’s official languages are English and Nauruan, with the Australian dollar as the local currency. Nauru has been inhabited for at least 3,000 years, originally by Polynesian and Micronesian tribes.
A German colony in the 19th century and an Australian protectorate until the middle of the 20th, Nauru was once one of the richest places on Earth – thanks to extensive deposits of phosphate-rich guano. Present-day, Nauru has been described by one writer, Ben Doherty (to whom I direct credit for some of the finer details in this article), as “a barren moonscape of jagged rock, entirely unsuitable for agriculture, industry or forestry – the consequence of strip-mining of the island for fertilizer during the middle part of the 20th century.”
Nauru gained its independence in 1968 and, for a while, was a wealthy country, second only to Saudi Arabia in per-capita GDP. However, the nation’s wealth was squandered by a succession of incompetent governments which engaged in disastrous projects. Money laundering, particularly involving the Russian mafia, was rampant; the country’s officials engaged in corrupt practices; membership of the UN General Assembly was used for financial gain.
Ben Doherty is again informative when he points out that when, inevitably, the phosphate ran out, unemployment hit 90% and the school system collapsed. The population now suffers from high levels of diabetes, heart disease and obesity.
This is the country to which, since 2001, Australia has sent the major proportion of its “boat people”.
A broken and dependent country is used by Australia as a remote site for the “offshore processing of people who seek asylum and protection. What began as a hurried political response to the arrival on Australia’s northern horizon in 2001 of one boat, the MV Tampa – a Norwegian freighter carrying 400 mainly Afghan Hazara refugees rescued in international waters – has metamorphosed into a standing permanent policy, the so-called “Pacific Solution”, with the support of both Australia’s major political parties.”
The story of the events surrounding the foregoing is a drama in itself
The narrative involves defiance of international law by the Australian authorities, political intrigue by the Conservative-National coalition government of John Howard, and the focusing of immigration as an ongoing election issue in Australia federal politics. Notwithstanding, the camps in Nauru were considered to be a solution to the problem, existing since the mid-1970’s, of the unwanted arrival of boat-carrying asylum seekers in Australia. The camps were designed to be punitive and were widely promoted as a deterrent, to discourage anybody from seeking sanctuary in Australia by boat.
It is the current policy of the Australian government that no persons who arrive in Australia by boat and seeking asylum are ever settled in Australia. Instead, they are sent to Nauru, or to Manus Island in Papua New Guinea. Furthermore, it would seem that no genuine process of resettlement ever takes place. Nauru and Manus Island simply engage in a prolonged period of “offshore processing”. Interestingly, no arrivee in Australia by plane and seeking asylum is ever subject to “mandatory detention”!
It would seem that, of the 442 (as of June, 2016, and including 49 children) asylum seekers and refugees in Nauru’s “regional processing centre” – not to mention those now living in the community of Nauru, no distinction is made between asylum seekers and refugees. Possibly 75% of the latter can be regarded as persons with a well-founded claim to be refugees and in fear of persecution and, therefore, in line with UN directives, are legally owed protection.
The “Nauru Files” of the Australian government’s Department of Immigration and Border Protection is a cache of over 2000 leaked documents covering incidents of self-harm, assault and sexual assaults in the Nauru detention camps during the period 2013-2015. The files further show that there has been an average of 782 adults in detention in Nauru over that time period. It has been reliably estimated (based on the latest figures for 2014-15) that the annual cost of Australia’s offshore detention programme has risen to $A1.2 billion.
The experiment that has been Nauru seems to have had two stages.
The first began in 2001, after the MV Tampa crisis (see above). By 2007, largely as a consequence of the problems bedevilling the Nauruan camps – for example, overcrowded tents, unsanitary conditions, lack of medical facilities and a shortage of water – as well as the growing realization that those who had arrived on Australia’s shores, the “boat people”, were not “queue jumpers” or criminals, or terrorists, but rather people fleeing genuine persecution, the “Pacific Solution” was seen to be quite unsatisfactory. Most “boat people” were, in consequence, resettled – mostly in Australia.
A repeat of the policy of Nauru being an isle of detention began in 2012. This was instituted by a Labour government and has been carried on by Liberal-National coalition governments. This iteration was seemingly brought about by the increase in the number of boats arriving in Australian waters, with a concomitant rise in the number of deaths at sea amongst the “boat people”.
The “second Nauru detention regime” has been carefully and deliberately kept hidden. Despite this, however, some information, in addition to the “Nauru Files”, has leaked into the public domain.
It seems that conditions in the refugee camps are no better than they were in their previous incarnation, including: self-harm, sexual assaults (particularly on women), the effects of detention on mental health (not only but especially with children), squalid living conditions, lack of medical treatment, and reports of suicide (threatened or actual) by the inmates. A former chief psychiatrist responsible for the care of asylum seekers in detention on Nauru and Manus Island, Dr Peter Young, described the camps as “inherently toxic” and said “the immigration department deliberately harmed vulnerable detainees in a process akin to torture”.
The government of Nauru has seemingly made it clear that there will be no permanent settlement of refugees on Nauru. There is a five year limit on “boat people” staying on the island. Australia will need to find other places to help solve its self-induced dilemma.
In an article entitled “This does not deter – it causes damaged souls”, David Marr, a Guardian Australia journalist, author and commentator, has said that “Nauru is Australia’s work. We Australians own this despair. Nauru is on perpetual death watch”. Day after day there are records of the “cries of people that Australia has deliberately brought to the brink”.
Again, Dr Peter Young, in stating his professional view that the Australian department of immigration was deliberately inflicting suffering on camp inmates (whom he considered to be “prisoners”) in order to force them to return home, said: “If we take the definition of torture to be the deliberate harming of people in order to coerce them into a desired outcome, I think it does fulfil that definition”.
The politics have not shifted, nor its consequences: camp inmates continue to be degraded; despair deepens; families are split apart; lives are broken; human suffering and sorrow intensifies, all trapped “in a makeshift prison on a sweltering island”.
This is not the Australia in which I grew up. Aussies that I know or know about are not brutal people intent on brutalizing others. What brought about the so-called “Pacific Solution”?
David Marr considers that this situation is the result of two lies: “(1) because both sides of politics tell us that only by detaining refugees out there will the boats stop coming, and (2) we are assured that there is somewhere in the world ready to take them off our hands”. Thoughts of a similar lying nature were evident in the arguments of those in favour of the UK leaving the EU during the recent UK referendum on membership of the EU.
Australian governments are trying to break the “boat people”. They will not succeed. The inevitable will happen. The asylum seekers will land and enjoy asylum. The refugees will stand on Australian soil and savour the refuge they desperately seek. For David Marr, “Despite all that has been done to them and all that their treatment tells us about Australia, they still want to live there. It’s a humbling verdict.”
We might say that, eventually, they want to call Australia home!
RSC
Posted in Uncategorized
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Tagged asylum, Australia, boat people, detention, home, Nauru, Nauru Files, Pacific Solution, punishment, refuge, resettlement, secrecy, suffering
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I am commencing this article on July 3, 2016. The date is significant as it is exactly twenty-five years since leaving Australia in 1991 to return to the United Kingdom to take-up an appointment in Northampton, England, as the Manager for Domestic Programmes with World Vision UK. I have remained a resident of Northampton ever since then.
In my previous article ‘Much ado about something’, I mentioned my first arrival in Australia on Monday, June 12, 1955. From this information, the reader will realize that movements between the UK and Australia, and the reverse, have been a significant aspect of my life and the lives of my family members. Having spent roughly half my life in each of the respective countries, the reader will appreciate that I duly refer to myself as a British Aussie – British (more particularly Scottish) by birth and holding a British passport, and Australian by outlook and in virtue of having an Australian Resident Return Visa. Both possessions are prized.
Reflections such as those in the above came to me as, following the recent British referendum on whether or not the UK should remain in or leave the European Union (the nation chose the latter – BreXit), I began reading the book A Secret Country, by the Sydney-born Australian journalist, documentary film maker and author, John Pilger. Recipients of my emails and readers of my blog in both the UK and Australia, or elsewhere for that matter, will know that I am a great admirer of John Pilger and a fervent advocate of his work.
Since retiring from life as a schoolteacher in 2012, one of my projects has been to watch each and every television and film documentary that he produced and presented, and to read every book that he wrote or was written about him. This project currently proceeds. When Australia finally assumes its full stature as an independent nation and decides to become a republic with an Australian as its head of state, then the republican John Pilger would, along with a number of Indigenous Australians, be a most worthy candidate.
This article is being published on July 10, 2016. This is the date on which my family and me arrived in the UK in 1991, after spending a week on the west coast of the USA re-acquainting the family with such places as Disneyland, Knotts Berry Farm and Universal Studios. It also gave me the opportunity of catching-up with colleagues associated with World Vision’s Urban Advance team and taking-in the spectacle of a July 4 Independence Day parade at Claremont. The time on the USA west coast was an enjoyable interlude en-route to the UK.
During the past week, as well as reflecting on the week in 1991 spent in Lost Angeles, I have managed to complete my reading of Pilger’s book, A Secret Country. I have done so against a background that saw the British nation vote in favour of BreXit and commences an awareness of what it will mean to leave the European Union; further news of the determination of the Scottish government to oppose BreXit and remain within the EU; a contest within the Conservative Party to elect a new leader and, therefore, a new British Prime Minister (a contest that revealed just how factional the Tory party remains); and a leadership crisis in the Labour Party involving the very identity of this movement and what kind of future it envisages for itself.
It is often said that ‘a week is a long time in politics’. The past week has seen a number of changes in British politics and governance, changes that will rumble on for some time and will permanently alter the face of British social, economic and political life.
A significant chapter in John Pilger’s book recounts the events during the 1970’s when the Australian Labour government of Gough Whitlam was dismissed from office by the appointed Governor-General of Australia, Sir John Kerr. Pilger persuasively argues that this event involved the interference of both the USA and the UK in the processes of Australian governance. His argument hinges on the view that, because of the changes that the Whitlam Labour Government wished to introduce into Australian political, social and economic life, Gough Whitlam presented a threat to established, if not entrenched, interests in Australian governance.
As a republican, I could not help but notice the intrinsic criticism that Whitlam had for a royal appointee dismissing a sovereign Australia government. At that time, John Kerr had powers that allowed the Governor-General to ‘sack the government…appoint and sack individual ministers…dissolve the House of Representatives…need not assent to a Bill to alter the Constitution”, and more besides.
As a fellow republican, Pilger carefully enunciates an extended list of the insidious powers of an unelected public and political figure in Australian governance – powers and privileges that speak volumes about Australia’s ongoing deference at that time to a former colonial power. There is little to suggest that this situation has altered in the forty or so years since.
The year after the dismissal of the Whitlam Government in Australian, my wife Vicky and I were married in the UK and, within two years, we had taken up residence in Melbourne. Our stay in Melbourne was to last until the aforementioned return to the UK in 1991. Therefore, we lived through the turbulent government of Malcolm Fraser and the seemingly successful and progressive Hawke-Keating partnership (redolent of the New Labour administration in the UK 1997-2010).
The period of power of the H-K administration was, of course, the years which witnessed the rise and rise of such colourful and controversial Aussie characters as Rupert Murdoch (media baron), Kerry Packer (casinos and World Series cricket), Alan Bond (gold dealing and Four X beer brewing) and Neville Wran (a frustrated New South Wales State Labour Party leader who wanted what Bob Hawke got).
In the well-resourced and documented Pilger analysis, Bob Hawke, a former President of the Australian Council of Trades Unions (ACTU), presided over a period of governance in Australia that has been characterized by the concept of ‘mates’. In a saying which recalls the words of the former British PM, Tony Blair, to the former USA President, George W. Bush, to wit ‘I will be by your side whatever’, Bob Hawke was quoted as saying, ‘If I see my mates attacked without justification, my mates will find me shoulder to shoulder with them’. He was, of course, not referring to the Australian people per se, but to Murdoch, Packer, Bond and the like – his wealthy and well-placed mates.
An article which appeared in the Australian Financial Review stated: ‘If this was South America, a people’s liberation movement would be under way…’
Much has been said and written concerning the view that the result of the recent EU Referendum was a victory for a form of voter’s liberation movement, that is, the fact that British voters wished to register their perception that Westminster politicians are out of-touch with the ordinary British people. Whilst I do not necessarily wish to argue against this viewpoint, I feel that when the events of recent times in the UK, as previously described, are analysed by future historians, social scientists and political analysts, the outcomes of this referendum will be seen to have been influenced, if not determined, by factors that, so far, have been out of sight and comprehension.
The XXXX title of this article is not so much a reference to the brand of beer brewed by Alan Bond (one of Hawke’s closest mates) as it is a reference to the unknown future now faced by BreXit UK. Apart from the repetitious mention of the Australian ‘points system’ for immigration, little else seems to have been known by contemporary British commentators about the history of Australian politics since the era of Bob Hawke (1983-1991) and since.
Since the Hawke ascendancy, Australian politics has experienced a volatile generation of government, with coalition and minority governments, internecine party conflict and constant leadership changes – irrespective of whether the Liberals (conservatives) or Labour have held power. A similar situation has confronted recent British governments and their oppositions. It remains to be seen as to which direction British politics will go in the foreseeable future of the post-BreXit generation.
John Pilger’s book, A Secret Country, is a patriotic book and, as the London Daily Telegraph commented, ‘it is an essential text for anyone wishing to understand the real Australia obscured by the advertising industry’s image of a nation of white Anglo-Saxon Crocodile Dundees with the wit of the cast of Neighbours. It is also a necessary book for those of us who believe in the redeeming power of truth.’
RSC
The weekend that has gone witnessed the continuing celebrations for the 90th birthday of the reigning British monarch, Elizabeth Windsor. Parades of guards, bands and royal carriages through the streets of London, aircraft fly-pasts and, it is reported, street parties in various parts of the land, have accompanied the celebrations. Always wanting to go one better, the Australians have a national holiday to celebrate the event – or at least that is their story.
Although I have lived for the past twenty five years in the UK, I have a good reason to remember the 12th June Queen’s Birthday holiday down-under. This was the date in 1955 when I arrived with my family in Australia. I was a ten year-old immigrant – a British export! We had disembarked our ship, the HMV Georgic, and been deposited on the Port of Melbourne quay. A bus was then to take us to the Melbourne Exhibition Buildings, there to spend our first few days enjoying communal living close to the city centre before being shipped-out to a Commonwealth of Australia migrant hostel in the outer western suburbs of Melbourne
As we waited quayside, a radio carried a live broadcast of what I was to later discover was the traditional Queen’s Birthday holiday Australian Rules football match taking place at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. The game was between two of that era’s best teams and fiercest rivals, the Melbourne Demons and the Collingwood Magpies. I seem to recall that Melbourne won that day, as they did last weekend in the latest clash between the two. However, neither team is amongst the Australian Football League’s present-day elite teams.
Whilst Elizabeth Windsor’s birthday celebrations were being observed in the UK and in at least one former colony, the world moved on. In Orlando, USA, fifty young people – most of who were lesbian, gay, bisexual or trans-gender and socializing at the Pulse nightclub – were shot and killed by an American-born Muslim with seemingly extremist or conflicted views on religious faith and human sexuality. The President of the USA, Barack Obama, said that it was a crime not only of terror but also of hate.
Marseille, a port city in southern France, has been the crossroads of immigration and trade since its founding by the Phoenicians in 600 B.C.E. It was said that the city’s police had “prepared well for the invasion of British supporters” (Daily Mail). It appears that it was forgotten that the Russians would also be in town! Ostensibly started by well-prepared Russian fans, a running battle was engaged in the Marseille city centre between the opposing English and Russian supporters. The trouble continued inside the football stadium when the match between the two teams concluded with a drawn game.
The outcome of all this was that, as both teams relocated to northern France, the football associations of both countries were threatened with expulsion from further participation in the on-going Euro 2016 matches if there is a repetition of the violence by either countries’ supporters.
In the Middle East Muslims with differing slants on the ideology of Islam continued to batter the hell out of each other, as town after town is laid waste and the casualty numbers mount daily. This is a conflict, however, involving more than opposing Islamic forces. Increasingly, we learn of covert military involvement by the forces of western governments and other interests.
Whilst, amongst other events, all of the above has been going on, the war of attrition between opposing sides in the UK over the European Union In/Out Referendum has been gathering momentum. Arguments about economic outcomes, immigration, human rights, industrial and agricultural policies, trade agreements and, would you believe, taxation on female hygiene products, have waged to and fro.
Of particular interest to me at this time is the debate about democracy and national sovereignty. It is the case, argues the “leavers” that, if the British were to leave the EU, then the nation would take back its border controls and, in consequence, regain sovereignty and control immigration into the UK. So too, it would re-assert the role of British courts in dispensing British-style justice, enable political decisions about the UK to be made by the Parliament at Westminster and, in various ways, protect the British way of life and its national institutions.
All of the foregoing, it is stated, would re-focus and strengthen democracy in the UK.
Nevertheless, in recent days there does not seem to have been much of a hindrance to the operation of British democracy and in the UK being a member of the EU – no interruption to parades, street parties and royal strutting down the Mall; the opportunity for football supporters to be passport-free to visit France, even if not enjoying a fracas with supporters from Russia, a non-EU country (and who would probably be delighted if the UK left that union); no let-up in the awarding of so-called “royal honours” to women and men for simply being good at doing what they are meant to do; and, of course, no interruption to the Queen’s Birthday holiday tradition of an Aussie Rules football match at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (some things will always remain the same).
Further, as a convinced federalist who is also a firm supporter of British membership of the EU (being a Scot by birth and having been brought-up in the Federal Commonwealth of Australia being formative), I am aware of some major inconsistencies in the “leave” position when it comes to retaking British national sovereignty and re-staking the nation’s democracy.
Will the British people be allowed to have their say on whether the institution of monarchy should continue (even if it means the possibility of Aussies losing one of their national holidays), and the question of the discriminatory role of the monarch in the established Church of England? When will the British political class decide that it is most undemocratic to have an unelected Upper House (the House of Lords), especially when it is composed of many who took their seat in the house in consequence of favours or funding remitted, failure to be elected to, or retiring from, the House of Commons, or who are high-ranking acolytes of the established Church of England?
Furthermore, will leaving the EU remove the silent but powerful influence of the British civil service (as contrasted with the Brussel’s bureaucracy) in the determining, supervision and practical outcomes of parliamentary policies and decision-making? Is there any guarantee that the British courts will be any more effective in the administration of justice and probity in the land, e.g. human and workers’ rights and matters of climatology, than the councils of the EU?
As well, will leaving the EU encourage the British government be any more honest and transparent in exposing its covert military operations in places such as Iraq and Libya or in its permission to sell military equipment to countries that practice terrorism, genocide and internecine religious strife? Will that same government refrain from deepening and extending its policies of economic austerity on ordinary British families, or stop blaming the European Union and the free movement of Europe’s peoples for the need for such policies?
From an examination of recent British political history, there is very little to indicate that British politicians, law-makers and scions of industry and commerce, would be any more effective in realising the impractical dreams of the EU “leavers – whether these dreams be of economic opportunity and consolidation, legal and social fairness, issues of so-called national sovereignty and security, democratic accountability for the operations of government at home or abroad, or preventing violent altercations involving British football supporters at venues outside of the UK?
It is my fervent hope that the referendum on whether the British should remain in or leave the European Union will prove to have been a matter of much ado about something, but that it will result in the UK solidly staying within, remaining integral and vital to, and constantly and unashamedly being identified with the EU.
RSC
As the United Kingdom approaches its historic referendum on whether or not to remain a member of the European Union, all across the European continent there has been a significant rise in the level of public protest, primarily, but not exclusively, by right-wing organizations. A significant focus of this protest has been anti-Islamism and this, in turn, has given rise to counter-protests with demonstrations by, amongst others, human rights’ groups, anti-racism activists, trade unionists and political activist groups.
The above phenomenon is not exclusive to Europe. Such activity can also be seen down-under, in Australia, where a movement known as Reclaim Australia has increasingly been making itself known and heard. Described by a significant section of the media as a far-right movement, Reclaim Australia is “a loosely structured group which, in 2015, began holding street rallies in cities across Australia in protest against Islam.” One of the speakers at these rallies has been the well-travelled Australian politician Pauline Hansen.
According to the movement’s website, the organization’s objectives include “the reclaiming of freedom, the belief in the equality of gender and law, and the opposition to ‘Halal’ certification”. Reclaim Australia has said that its rallies are “a public response to Islamic extremism and a protest against minority groups who want to change the Australian cultural identity”. Nothing new there then, in the land of the Australian Aborigine! But the latter, as well as the whole question of Australia’s “cultural identity” is another story.
According to Troy Whitford, a lecturer in political history, Reclaim Australia is “unlike previous short-lived radical nationalist groups. The movement has avoided becoming a structured organization, draws a broader support base, and lacks high-profile leaders who become a focus for opponents.” One of the group’s founders, Catherine Brennan, said that she had “never been politically active, but that the 2014 siege at the Lindt Café (Sydney) was a turning point for her.”
Already, Reclaim Australia has spawned splinter groups, notably the far-right United Patriots Front. Apart from supporting Reclaim Australia rallies, organisers of a Brisbane rally told the crowd that they had split from Reclaim Australia in order to join a group that was more explicitly anti-Islamic. Members of this movement have been known to carry firearms. Needless to say, movements such as Reclaim Australia and the United Patriots Front have witnessed counter movements such as those seen in Europe (see above).
I came across the above information on Reclaim Australia following further research after reading an article in the Australian Daily Review on Australian singer Jimmy Barnes. Though, like the writer, a Scot by birth – Jimmy Barnes was born and lived in Glasgow for the first five years of his life before moving to Adelaide – Barnes is an elder statesman of the Australian rock scene, having occupied the spotlight for around four decades. Now sixty, Barnes joined the Cold Chisel pop group as a 17 year-old. Cold chisel is known as the “quintessential Aussie pub rock band, with a true rock sound led by Barnes’s balls-to-the-wall screaming vocals, but it has musical roots outside of Australia.”
In 1985, three years before he became an Australian citizen, Jimmy Barnes recorded what is generally considered to be his signature song as a solo artist, Working Class Man (written by the American Jonathan Cain). Certainly, it would seem to be his best known and most played song (interestingly, in view of what follows, the B side of the recording was called Boys Cry Out For War). Barnes performed Working Class Man at the closing ceremony of the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games.
Barnes has said that the song meant a lot to him. “Most people thought that it was written about me, but it was actually about my audience – staunch, honest people, who work and care.” So too, he didn’t realise “how much of an impact it would have as an image centre” in the years following its release. The song was also released as a music video – filmed at Port Kembla’s steelmaking plant in keeping with the song’s theme.
So – “staunch, honest people, who work and care.” Are these the kind of people to whom Reclaim Australia wished to appeal when, along with songs by such other well-known Aussie singers as John Farnham, John Williamson and Midnight Oil (who collectively agreed that their songs be played only if they were respectful to the memory of fallen servicemen and women), they used Jimmy Barnes’s song Working Class Man at their rallies?
So too, would this right-leaning nationalist movement find any encouragement from the fact that the tune of Working Class Man was combined with the words of the Australian National Anthem, Advance Australia Fair, to become a popular song, Working Class Anthem, sung by the comedian Adam Hills, at the 2003 Melbourne Comedy Festival. It was later released as a pop single.
Reclaim Australia might find comfort in the song, but not support from Barnes himself. It is reported that, whilst recording some tracks for a new album, appropriately named Soul Searchin’, Barnes became aware of, indeed, was shocked by, the discovery that “some of his own classic songs had been taken on by the protest groups Reclaim Australia to lobby against immigration and Islam.”
“I just kept seeing all this behaviour I didn’t believe in – this lack of tolerance, this lack of empathy for people, this hatred, this anger – and I was watching it on TV, and every time they showed it there’d be Working Class Man or Khe Sanh (another of Barnes big hits) playing. I just thought that I didn’t want people to associate that music with what they’re doing.”
Of course, Jimmy Barnes is no knight in shining armour and, as he says of his own memoir, “you’ve got to be ready to bare your soul. There’s a lot of stuff in my life that I’m not particularly proud of, and that’s not even just my own actions. How I grew up as a child, it was very rough – we were starving, it was promiscuous, it was violent, we were abused – there’s all sorts of stuff there that I didn’t really want to talk to people about.” Later this year Barnes is releasing another album, called Working Class Boy, which will fill-in some of the gaps of his boyhood and teenage years as he looks back, cathartically, on what he calls “the good, the bad and the ugly.”
Notwithstanding, with words like those above it is easy to understand the empathy that Jimmy Barnes has for oppressed people and groups, as well as his dislike for organizations that wish to discriminate against such people and groups. He may acknowledge the right of the Reclaim Australia movement to hold its views, but he has no wish to collude with them in doing so.
In a widely publicized Facebook post, Barnes said that he did not support the Reclaim Australia protests: “I wouldn’t like people to be thinking that, full-stop. But everybody’s entitled to their own thoughts, and this is a free county and part of the reason we’re free is that everybody gets to have their say. But they are not going to say it with my songs, and that’s all I said.”
Not unexpectedly, Barnes copped plenty of back-lash from the supporters of Reclaim Australia, and says that he received hate mail and death threats towards his family. This will not come as too much of a surprise to those in the UK who closely followed the events of last year’s Scottish referendum and British national elections and, of course, those observing the current contest between the opposing sides in the British In/Out referendum on membership of the European Union.
Somehow it seems that competition between opposing ideologies, political and social processes, religions, philosophies, even football teams (witness this year’s Scottish Cup Final) seems to bring out, individually and collectively, the worst in people. This too will come to many, working class man or otherwise, as no surprise.
RSC
The President of the United States of America, Barack Obama, is to visit Hiroshima, Japan, the site of the first dropping of an atomic bomb during war-time. Obama will visit Japan prior to the end of his presidency later this year. It is not anticipated that he will offer an apology for the dropping of atomic bombs by the Americans on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, actions that resulted in the deaths of more than a quarter million persons – with repercussions to this day.
As his two-term presidency comes to a close, Barack Obama is thinking of the legacy he will leave as the 44th President of the USA. His visit to Japan, and particularly to Hiroshima, is, no doubt, related to what he will consider to be a worthwhile personal legacy. What Obama does between now and the end of his term of office could be considered to be the last will and testimony of his time in the oval office. His legacy is regarded as an important part of the service he has given.
Indeed, that is true of most people. What we leave behind, from a particular singular pursuit, an occupation or position in a household, or at the end of a lifetime’s work of writing, entertaining or some other undertaking, is something we personally value and hope will be of worth to others. We trust that our last will and testament will say something important about or sum-up what our life, or particular aspects of it, has been about.
Certainly, as we enter the twilight years of our lives we particularly think about putting our various affairs in order and we are encouraged by accountants, solicitors, priests and others, to reflect, put pen to paper and, amongst other things, complete a last will and testament. Not on the scale of a President, perhaps, but this document becomes part of the various legacies we may leave.
As, over the years, I have listened to classical music, I have become aware of the seeming fact that some composers have given thought to what their last will and testament could be in terms of their musical history. Perhaps this has not been more clearly realised than in the Ninth Symphony of the Austrian composer Anton Bruckner.
This symphony has been described as “Bruckner’s boldest compositional achievement, the only one that’s explicitly dedicated to God.” In a real sense all of Bruckner’s music is a tribute to his devout Christian faith, seen most especially in his masses, motets and other religious music, but, as one critic commented, “the 9th dares to be something darker, more doubting, more apocalyptic, and more ear-shatteringly aggressive and even deliberately ugly than he had attempted before.”
I have recently acquired the completed four-movement version of Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony, with Sir Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra (BPO). The opening passages of this recording provides a firm idea of what will be the approach to the music – especially to give a foretaste of what is to come with the realised fourth movement. Rattle has commented that Bruckner wrote this symphony at a time when he was “experiencing terror, fear and passion in his life”. So, the music is suitably sober, even a little sombre, as it moves into what would be Bruckner’s, and perhaps the 19th century’s, last statement on the symphonic form.
What we have in this recording is a pre-eminent orchestra, the Berlin Philharmonic, and one of the foremost British conductors of his generation, Sir Simon Rattle. The recording combines the best features of orchestra and conductor, and a most acceptable recording quality – a spacious recording that enables the various parts of the orchestra to register their contribution with clarity and distinction, even in the loudest and most congested musical passages.
As he has shown with his presentation of the Mahler’s symphonies, Rattle is very much inside the heavyweight music of the Northern European tradition. His dramatic style fits the demands of the composer and his music. He enjoys directing the long, sonorous passages, the quicker, more quirky musical interludes, the arresting climaxes, the bold musical statements and melodious connecting pieces that a Bruckner symphony includes. Combine all this with an orchestra that plays superlatively and one has a recording that can be repeatedly returned to.
This is especially so with the addition of the Samale/Phillips/Cohrs/Mazzuca performing version of the score of the fourth and final movement of Bruckner’s Ninth. It is reported that Bruckner had already outlined at least 90% of the score, so the realisation of the fourth movement has a genuine air of authenticity. Guided by Rattle, the BPO certainly plays the final movement as if it had been in place from the beginning of the symphony’s existence. The performing version should, therefore, present few, if any, problems for the aficionados of this composer.
The highly recommendable, mellow, yet persuasive 1959 version of Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony, with Bruno Walter and the Columbia Symphony Orchestra, provides the unfinished version of this symphony with a noble, if not resigned, conclusion, after which, in the words of the Penguin Guide, “anything would have been an anti-climax”. It is as if the “vision of a despairing abyss” has been consoled by a quiet moment of transfiguration. Rattle and the BPO, with the addition of the completed fourth movement, seriously challenges this viewpoint. In so doing, it changes the whole perspective on the role and explanation of this symphony in Bruckner’s output.
The cover note of this CD states that Bruckner left a “stark and magnificent torso”, as well as leaving “fragments and sketches for a magnificent finale that would cap his life’s work.” Rattle himself has said that this realisation of the fourth and final movement of Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony “crowns his musical last will and testament with an intense and visionary splendour.”
The third movement Adagio of this symphony contains a searing climax that has the force of a musical atomic explosion which, as Rattle explains, “ends in a dissonance never previously heard in classical music.”The concluding fourth movement musically returns to the beginning of the third movement Adagio in order, according to Rattle, to resolve it with a huge, yet entirely suitable, finale. The third movement’s nobility remains, but its resignation is removed and replaced with a fuller affirmation and intellectual appreciation of his belief in life and God. The music’s dissonance is dissipated, harmony is re-established, obsessiveness is transfigured and the pain of the cosmos is offered healing.
Having made his final statement, Bruckner is more at peace. Simon Rattle has stated that the fourth movement contains music of the type that is “very cold, very lost; a type of music that Bruckner never wrote before.” Notwithstanding, the final movement of the Ninth Symphony, especially the closing pages, “has all the bursting energy of a supernova, and an overarching sense remains that even in the face of adversity and death there will be triumph.”
It seems to me to be of a kind of music to be contemplated by an American President before he visits the formerly devastated Japanese city of Hiroshima – before he concludes the last will and testament of his high office. Perhaps the one note of discord between Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony and President Obama’s visit to Japan is that the former has no need of an apology!
This performing four-movement version of the Ninth Symphony has all the ingredients for a musical feast to satisfy even the most fastidious of Brucknerian tastes. It possesses much of the recognisable Gothic cathedral architecture, with “visions of grandeur that are at once ancient and modern”, of Bruckner’s symphonic output. However, the Ninth Symphony concludes with its structure being permeated with the warmth and human happiness with which this composer is able to suffuse his music.
The completed four movement version of the Ninth Symphony is a must for any Bruckner collection – a fitting last will and testament to this colossus of 19th century symphonic composers.
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Tagged Anton Bruckner, apocalyptic, apology, atomic, Barack Obama, dissonance, finale, Hiroshima, legacy, symphony, triumph
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He blamed the Book of Mormon – not the actual book, but the show of the same name now running in the West End of London. Jonathan Freedland, a lead writer with The Guardian, said that after spending “a couple of hours in the theatre with Elder Price, Elder Cunningham and the gang, it is hard to take any kind of religious ritual seriously. Not after you’ve spent an evening giggling at the poor saps idiotic enough to venerate nothing more than a book.”
In an article entitled “Religion is like sex – it can seem absurd but it works” and published last year, Freedland issued the confession that, thanks to seeing and hearing this show, Book of Mormon, he now “looks at sacred rites differently, including those I think of as my own.” Jonathan Freedland is an adherent to the Jewish faith.
As an example of this reappraisal of perspective on sacred rites, Freedland recalls his most recent experience of being at his synagogue for last year’s Yom Kippur remembrance, perhaps the most solemn day of all for the Jewish faith. He had a completed what he called a “marathon stint” in the synagogue on the Jewish day of atonement. What followed is worthy of a quoted paragraph all to itself – it is witty, frank and to the point:
“There we were, with the holy scroll – on whose yellow parchment are etched the Hebrew words that make up the five books of Moses – placed at the centre of the room. We made a great ceremony of bringing it out and another of putting it back again. Each time the scroll was revealed, we stood up as a mark of respect, only sitting down again when it was covered up. We sang, in a language few of us truly understand, our praise for the holy text. At one point one of us held the parchment aloft so that we could all see it. Those who wore the distinctive woollen prayer shawls of black and white would occasionally touch the scroll with the shawl’s fringes, raising them to their lips for a small kiss of reverence.“
Following this, Freedland reflected on the similarities between religious rituals and sex. He suggested that, if the physical actions involved in the sequence in which both sex and religious rituals are performed, then they both look “absurd, embarrassing, or both.” In his view the producers of the stage show Book of Mormon chose Mormonism because it is “a small and calm, unexcitable and unemotional“, sectarian branch of American Protestantism.
Freedland further conjectures that, in choosing Mormonism as the vehicle for satirising religious ritual, the show’s production team were probably thinking that there was little risk of this church answering back. So too, founded in 19th century America, Mormonism is a relatively recent addition to worldwide religious faith. Therefore, the founding myth of this new branch of Christianity might sound, to many observers and critics, as being especially implausible.
As with all expressions of religion, Mormons have their own beliefs and rituals – including baptism and the church ordinances (washing, anointing and sealing – weddings). These are available to all “worthy adult members” of the religion. Otherwise known as the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints, this church believes that it is the restoration of the true gospel and a revelation of the true god. The Book of Mormon is its primary scripture.
Freedland’s conclusion to this review of the West End musical and his comments on his own religious faith is to say that the target of the producers could have been any of the world’s religions, “whose rites inhabit a distant realm from the cold rigours of reason.” However, some founding myths are more memorable and powerful and have a greater longevity than others.
As a teacher of Islam within a secondary school Religious Studies syllabus, I taught students about the Five Pillars of Islam. One of these concerned the Haj – the pilgrimage of Muslims to Mecca. At one point in the Haj ritual, at a place called Mina, devout Muslims throw seven stones at pillars said to represent Satan. At one recent pilgrimage a horrific stampede occurred at Mina that resulted in the deaths of 700 ritual-observing pilgrims.
Coincidentally, as Freedland informs his readers, “on the same day (as the stampede at Mina), the US Congress stood in rapt silence listening to a man in a white robe held to be incapable of error and who teaches that 2,000 years ago a child was born to a virgin.” The Pope of the Roman Catholic Church, the largest of the Christian churches, claims power and authority from that child. Freedland concludes his article by saying that, “whatever else the seers of the past, from the Aldous Huxleys, Jules Vernes and H.G.Welles, imagined for the 21st century, it wasn’t this…”
I came across Jonathan Freedland’s article as I began reading the reviews and text of the first book by Sam Harris, “The End of Faith – Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason”. Sam Harris is a graduate in philosophy from Stanford University and has a doctorate in neuroscience from UCLA. His book is provocative and persuasive as it attacks ideals held very dear by many, “from the sanctity of religious faith to the desirability of religious tolerance.” It has been said by one reviewer that the book is “a timely wake-up call to anyone who dislikes religion but believes that private beliefs should go unchallenged.”
The key concern of this book is the author’s stated opinion that “there are religious fundamentalists who are happy to kill themselves and others on the basis of their faith in particular holy books.” It might also be added that these religious fundamentalists are dogmatically committed to the necessity of observing specific religious rituals that are purported to be found in their holy books.
Harris is of the view that the most effective way must be found to prevent this from happening. Most interestingly, his view is that the way to do this is to “undermine all religion, not just that of the fundamentalists.” He further considers that religious fundamentalism is allowed to flourish as a consequence of “religious tolerance”. This is the liberal consensus which minimises conflict between believers and non-believers, and between moderates and radicals. This situation “creates a climate where only actions can be challenged, not the beliefs which cause them.” In other words, it focuses on ethics (behavioural outcomes, moral actions) and not on philosophy (ideas, foundational beliefs – from which come ideologies).
Both philosophy and ethics are discussed in Harris’s book. He is, however, certain that “your beliefs define your vision of the world; they dictate your behaviour; they determine your emotional response to other human beings.” This viewpoint is somewhat at odds with some popular contemporary perspectives, for example, those of the Cambridge philosopher Don Cupitt.
Interestingly, of the three holy books of the primary religions discussed, Harris pours more scorn on Christianity and Islam than he does on Judaism. But each of these three religions claims primacy for its holy book – its beliefs and rituals, the source of their creeds and dogmas. Applying Jonathan Freedland’s earlier analogy, each claims to be more “sexy” than the other, that is, more absurd, more embarrassing, or more of both!
However, the climax of this activity in each of these religions, especially so in Christianity and Islam, is the promise of a significant reward in the afterlife. This is to further suggest that, when it comes to terrorism, for example, the political causes should be downplayed and the cultic and sectarian, if not spiritual, background emphasized and critiqued.
This, then, goes to the central core of Harris’s book, that is, when it comes to religion, there is a distinct lack of rationality – in premise and practice. This becomes axiomatic when it is considered that the holy books of these religions were written by human beings. That being the case, rationalism and scientific proof should not be abandoned to religious “faith”.
In a superb epilogue to his book, Sam Harris says: “Where we have reasons for what we believe, we have no need of faith; where we have no reasons, we have lost both our connections to the world and to one another.” As Richard Dawkins has stated: “Read Sam Harris and wake up.”
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Posted in Uncategorized
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Tagged afterlife, beliefs, holy books, Mormons, myths, rationality, reason., religious faith, religious ritual, sacred rites, scientific proof, sex
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One of the things I have been doing since retiring from teaching has been to maintain my interest in academic pursuits. Continuing with reading and study is not just a way of passing time. On the contrary, I find that further and ongoing study is a way of reinvigorating my thinking, adding value to my writing, understanding to my membership of various organisations, and breadth and depth to my general conversation, as well as aiding reflection on my life and human life generally.
To aid these purpose I occasionally purchase one of the course offerings from “The Great Courses”. “Great Courses (TGC)” is a series of college-level audio and video courses produced and distributed by “The Teaching Company (TTC)”, a company based in Virginia, USA. Its teaching methods are done via mobile, tablet, connected TV appliances, CD, DVD, MP3, MPEG-4 download formats, and streaming media. Clearly, “The Great Courses” are a very contemporary approach to further learning and are highly recommendable.
The series differ from most online learning platforms in that they are produced for enrichment purposes only and offered without schedules, homework, exams, or certificates. The courses themselves are quite extensive, ranging from “The Fundamentals of Photography” to “Power over People: Classical and Modern Political Theory”; from “The Origins of Civilization” to “Mind-Bending Maths: Riddles and Paradoxes” and “How Jesus Became God”.
I am about to commence my sixth course, with another three on the shelf. You might say that I am hooked! The series of courses are not, however, without controversy or criticism.
It was whilst looking through the latest monthly edition of “The Great Courses” magazine that I came across the information on Course No.8410: “The Story of Medieval England: From King Arthur to the Tudor Conquest”. The information on the course stated that it will:
“Examine the remarkable thousand-year period in British history – from the withdrawal of Rome’s legions to the beginning of the Tudor dynasty – and learn how medieval Britain laid the foundation for much of what we know today.”
The course is described as a “tour de force” that purports to show (to repeat):
“…how medieval Britain laid the foundation for much of what we know today”.
Then:
“Richly detailed, these 36 lectures are essential to a complete understanding of the modern world.”
The above is all very well and reads attractively, if not enticingly. However, as a Scot by birth and a former teacher of secondary school history, I could not overlook some of the linkages being made or suggested. For example:
a) The title of the course is “Medieval England”; yet, the course description talks about “Britain” and “British”.
The two are not coterminous! There is no country that is properly called “Britain”. The latter is an epithet, just as the United States of America is referred to as “America”. Certainly, “Britain” is not another name for “England”. There is, of course, a “British” nation, but that is a relatively modern, not medieval, term and reality, and includes the four countries that comprise the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The “Great” here refers not to power but to size – the fact of being the largest island in the (geographical) British Isles and, moreover, an island encompassing the nations of Wales, Scotland and England. It is also the case that the “British Isles” includes the independent country of the Irish Republic, a nation that shares a land mass with the British nation of Northern Ireland.
b) The Romans never conquered Scotland, so how can they “withdraw” from the same? So too, Tudor rule, or that of any other English dynasty, was never extended to hegemony over Scotland – though not for want of trying!
It is true that, at various times, the forces of the kings of England managed to defeat (and were defeated by) the Scots in various battles – a number of them are quite rightly the stuff of the legends that have grown-up around them. Jurisdiction over various parts of Scotland followed. However, Scotland was never politically linked in a formal way, by force or otherwise, with England until the Act of Union in 1707 (outside the period of Course No.8410).
c) What seems never to be mentioned in information about courses such as the one under discussion is the fact of the existence of the nation known as Wales.
Though often dominated by England, the Welsh have a distinctive medieval history – a history that is rarely mentioned in courses such as the one under discussion. I am aware of this for, as a schoolboy in Wales, I was taught some of the specific history of Wales – in between the numerous lessons about the (monarchical) history of England!
Interestingly, another history course being advertised in the same “The Great Courses” magazine, “A History of England from the Tudors to the Stuarts” (No.8470), stays strictly with its references to England:
“Learn how England transformed itself from a medieval backwater into the first modern state in this sweeping 48-lecture course on one of the most interesting periods in history.”
Yet, there is an excellent case to be made for including a more “British” reference within this course in view of the fact that the Stuart kings were also the kings of Scotland – not to mention the inclusion of William of Orange in this course and his influence on both British and Irish history (an influence still remembered and celebrated today in non-English parts of the UK)!
I am aware, of course, that “The Teaching Company” is a USA-based franchise and that history courses such as No.8410 are being written by American historians. Observations convince me that such writers have a penchant in everyday conversation, as well as with academic works, for using the terms “British” and “English” in a coterminous manner.
Nevertheless, the nomenclature of academic historical presentation surely requires the necessary accuracy. Of course, the British are not themselves particularly adept at differentiating between geographical and historical terms such as those discussed above.
This is increasingly being witnessed with reference to British sports teams, notably those participating in the Olympic Games where the British team is now consistently and annoyingly (as well as, perhaps, somewhat arrogantly), being referred to as “Great Britain” (Team GB). I often wonder at what the people of Northern Ireland feel about this, seeing that Ulster men and women rightfully compete for the British team in such competitions, yet without the complementary inclusion of their country in the team name.
Incidentally, in stating what I have in the above, I am obviously being careful to give credit where it is due to the achievements of the English. Unless the English are quite happy to share their substantial achievements with the rest of the British nations, then it needs to be emphasised that, until the modern period, that is, the post-medieval period, of history, the achievements of medieval England are just that – English achievements.
So, in a course like No.8410 that purports to deliver historical facts, surely it is to be expected that clear historical facts are presented, even to the correct naming of countries and peoples? In this way credit can be given where it is due.
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Question: What does the United Kingdom have in common with Saudi Arabia? Answer: The UK, as with Saudi Arabia, does not have a written constitution. These two countries are to be numbered amongst the very few countries in the world which do not have a written constitution.
The officially named Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the second-largest state in the Arab world, was founded in 1932 by Ibn Saud. Since then, Saudi Arabia has been an absolute monarchy, effectively a hereditary dictatorship governed within the Islamic Sunni tradition. This is strange given that the Sunni strand within Islam believes in a more political and meritocratic choice of successor – albeit against a backcloth of cultural, ethnic and tribal differences.
Saudi Arabia is sometimes called “the Land of the Two Holy Mosques” – located in Mecca and Medina. The country’s global spreading is largely financed by vast deposits of oil (it has the world’s second largest oil reserves) and gas (sixth largest reserves in the world). As a monarchical autocracy, Saudi Arabia is an active member of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation.
In 2010-14, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) found that Saudi Arabia, being regarded as a regional and middle power, had the fourth highest military expenditure in the world and was the world’s second largest arms importer. One of Saudi Arabia’s major arms suppliers is the UK.
Founded in October, 1941, Freedom House is a non-partisan, non-governmental organisation (NGO) based in the United States of America. The organisation conducts research and advocacy on democracy, political freedom and human rights. It describes itself as a “clear voice for democracy and freedom around the world”. Freedom House publishes an annual report called Freedom in the World. This document “assesses each country’s degree of political freedoms and civil liberties”. It is frequently cited by political scientists, journalists and policy-makers.
Freedom in the World has critically commented on “the extent of censorship, intimidation and violence against journalists, and public access to information in Saudi Arabia”. Further, the country has attracted criticism and a “Not Free” ranking by Freedom House for its lack of democratic freedoms, the status of women in Saudi society and its usage of capital punishment. This, then, is a country with which the UK shares the questionable characteristic of not having a written constitution. This permits Saudi Arabia to unquestioningly have its sacred cows.
The UK does have a constitution – of sorts. It is “the sum of the laws and principles that make up the political composition and practice of the UK”. These laws and principles “concern both the relationship between the individual and the state, and the functioning of the legislature, the executive and the judiciary”. In short, the constitution is concerned with the relationship that the government, and especially its various ministries and governmental institutions, relates to and works for the people of the UK.
However, unlike many other countries, for examples, the United States of America, but like another small group, including Saudi Arabia, the UK has no single constitutional document. The UK constitution is uncodified, that is, it is an “unwritten” constitution. Much of the British constitution “is embodied in written documents, within statutes, court judgements, works of authority and treaties. The constitution has other unwritten sources, including parliamentary constitutional conventions”.
In other words, the British constitution is camouflaged, if not buried, in a myriad of documents which is particularly accessible and peculiarly relative only to a privileged coterie of the governing establishment and its acolytes, constitutional lawyers and the appropriate courts and judges, as well as interested academics. It could be said that it is an aspect of the “dark matter” of the British political and social universe. It could hardly be said that the British constitution is a document that enables democracy to move forward.
Since the so-called “Glorious Revolution” of 1688, “the foundation of the legislative British constitution has been described as the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty, according to which the statutes passed by Parliament are the UK’s supreme and final source of law”. It follows from this that the British constitution can be changed by Parliament simply passing news Acts of Parliament.
Herein lies one reason for the conflict for the UK within the EU – is the UK’s constitutional sovereignty maintained when it is required to follow the diktats of the parliament of the European Union? Where does the British rule of law end and European law begin? And who has access to this information? Where do the people of the UK stand in this situation?
However, the above is not only a matter for a resolution within the debate about EU membership; it has important implications for the UK per se. Perhaps of most importance is the necessity of enabling the British constitution to become accessible to a wider public than just those involved with government and the process of law-making. This is the view of Professor Stephen Haseler, the Emeritus Professor of Government and Director of the Global Policy Institute in the City of London (at the London Metropolitan University).
Professor Haseler is a persistent critic of the British political system. His perspectives on the matter of the British constitution are contained in his latest book, Broken Kingdom: Replacing the Westminster Establishment with a Federal Constitution.
In the view of Professor Haseler, the Scottish referendum presented “a wake-up call for the whole Westminster political class and its antiquated ‘Ancien Regime’ of a constitution”. In his book, Stephen Haseler looks at the deep historical origins of the political crisis – the Scottish question, an English parliament, what role for the rest of the UK, including London, and, of course, membership of the EU. This crisis is one about which he argues “our ruling class has been ‘auditioning for’ for decades”. He accuses the whole of the Westminster class and system of government of being “remote and arrogant”. With its unwritten constitution, it is a failed system.
Professor Haseler argues that “Britain cannot remain, like Saudi Arabia, one of the very few countries in the world without a written constitution. In a new federal constitutional settlement there should be no sacred cows. All our ‘ancien regime’ institutions need to be re-examined and, if necessary, radically reformed or abolished altogether”.
His own programme of modernisation would include “abolishing the unelected House of Lords, reducing the bloated House of Commons, dis-establishing the Monarchy (before Charles III takes over), abolishing the Privy Council and removing the Bishops from the Upper House”. To the latter could be added the dis-establishment of the Church of England. He would also introduce “re-call and term limits for Members of the new Parliament”.
Stephen Haseler’s basic premise is that “if we avoid fundamental constitutional change the union will break-up within the next few years”. He suggests that a “new written constitution will allow us to finally break with our dismal past and start again. It would be an act of renewal”.
The provision of a new written constitution for the United Kingdom would negate any comparisons of the UK with an anachronistic kingdom like Saudi Arabia. Indeed, it would place the UK in the forefront of modern, democratic states that took seriously the situation and circumstances of the contemporary world and the welfare of its own peoples.
Without such a new written constitution, the UK as we know it may be in its final years.
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Posted in Uncategorized
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Tagged absolute monarchy, ancien regime, autocracy, British Constitution, civil liberties, constitution, establishment, failed system, human rights, laws, modernisation, political freedom, principles, reform, renewal, Sunni Islam, unwritten constitution
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It is not often that you see and hear the leader of the worldwide Roman Catholic Church express genuine anger. Yet the phenomenon occurred this past week as Pope Francis (the first Bishop of Rome to use this name) returned to the Vatican after a visit to Mexico.
Whilst in Mexico, Pope Francis conducted a papal mass on the Mexican side of the fence that designates part of the border between Mexico and the United States of America. As he left Mexico, Pope Francis was recorded as saying that “any man who builds walls rather than bridges could not be (a) Christian.”
The Pope was clearly commenting on some words of the Republican Presidential hopeful, the billionaire businessman Donald Trump. On the hustings as a candidate for the Republican nomination for the presidency of the USA, Trump said that, if he became President, he would “build a wall to separate the USA from Mexico.”
It was the same Donald Trump who had also stated that he would not permit people of the Islamic faith to enter the USA. Donald Trump is no stranger to controversial comments. His response to what the Pope had said about him was to say that a Christian leader should not attack the faith of others – unlike political leaders, whom, it seems, can attack whoever they like!
Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel are my favourite popular music duo. One of S&G’s most successful songs is called ‘I am a rock’. The words of the song’s second verse are as follows:
I’ve built walls, a fortress deep and mighty, that none may penetrate. I have no need of friendship; friendship causes pain. It’s laughter and it’s loving I disdain. I am a rock, I am an island.
The songs of S&G are invariably poetic. This song is no exception. It is, of course, possible to not only to survive but to thrive in the kind of environment described in the song – with, as the song also states, suitable protection, e.g. books and poetry. This was shown by the latter-day Robinson Crusoe-type character played by Tom Hanks in the film Castaway. He struggled to maintain mind, body and soul alone on a rock in the ocean (with only a basketball to share conversation).
The above verse speaks of walls that are built in order to provide isolation, solitude, protection. Personal walls prevent contact, therefore, the possibility of pain that friendship might bring. The building of walls can result in a disdain for love and laughter and cuts-off the individual from the relationships that might bring these things into one’s life.
It is not only individuals who build walls. Walls are erected by whole communities, even by nations. This can be seen in the present-day mass movement of asylum seekers and economic migrants from various parts of the world into the European continent. One consequence of this people movement is seen in the fact that some European countries have erected boundary fences – walls of various kinds – in order to try and stem the flow of the incomers. The UK breathes a sigh of relief that it has the English Channel as protection – a form of wall.
Several years ago, The Guardian newspaper published a story that ran with the headline: ‘Through the barricades – how life is shaped in the shadow of the walls’. The article detailed the extent of the barriers between countries such as North and South Korea, US-Mexico, India-Bangladesh, Greece-Turkey, and Spain-Morocco. The list could go on.
Perhaps the most notorious of these purpose-built walls is the one erected on the West Bank in Palestine. Israel says that “the wall is for security”. However, both inside and outside of Israel, many believe that the wall is a monstrosity and that the real reason for its erection is so that Israel “may confiscate as much land as they can and to isolate Palestinians in the hope that they will go away”. That is one problem with walls of separation, such as the one on the West Bank – they force you to take sides. Walls cast giant shadows.
The West Bank wall, the brainchild of the iconic and controversial former leader of Israel, Ariel Sharon, was condemned as illegal by the International Court of Justice. I am reminded of the words of another Israeli, the writer Avi Shlaim: “Good fences may make good neighbours, but not when they are erected in the neighbour’s garden.”
The Guardian newspaper article commented that barriers such as those above-mentioned are separating communities around the globe. However, some say that such barriers offer a sense of security and peace, even tradition. Concerning the latter, walls feature in such obscure practices as the ‘Eton Wall Game’ and its more sadistic variants. For others, though, living with such structures creates a feeling close to imprisonment.
Despite the contemporary age being described as “the new age of the wall”, the history of the Great Wall of China, or even Britain’s modest Hadrian’s Wall, shows us that walls rarely do what they set out to do. It is a difficult, perhaps impossible, task to keep one people in, or another people out. The building of walls by individuals, communities, or whole nations rarely results in a state of complete isolation from others.
It was Janet Napolitano, one-time US Secretary for Homeland Security, who astutely observed, “Show me a 50ft wall, and I’ll show you a 51ft ladder.” Wendy Pullan, the senior lecturer in the history and philosophy of architecture at Cambridge University has stated: “We don’t have examples of walls solving problems”, they are, in fact, “more symbolic than anything else.” But the symbolism of walls is enormous. Even today, Berlin remains best known for its wall and, as Pullan has observed, “the most recognizable symbol of Jerusalem is now, arguably, its wall.”
The Church of England priest, journalist and academic, Dr Giles Fraser, recalls a visit he made to the Christopher Wren church in London’s Piccadilly. As a part of its Christmas 2014 presentation, the church had erected a 26ft wall around its church building. It was meant to be a full-size copy of the Israeli separation barrier to block-off the church. The vicar of the church, the Rev. Lucy Winkett – who lives above a shop on the church complex, told Fraser that she had trouble sleeping, as “the grim presence of the temporary structure was with her all the time”.
Lucy Winkett further stated: “Politics aside, living beside the 26ft wall is having a curious effect on those who are here. It dominates our imagination and has colonized our minds – and ours is only an art installation up for the 12 days of Christmas.” What, then, is to be imagined about real places where people live with the constant reality of walls that separate?
Do prospective wall builders, for example, Donald Trump, apartheid wall builders like Israel, nation-dividing North Korea, or the countries that build walls to separate different faiths, such as those on the Indian sub-continent and the Middle East, ever seriously stop to consider the terrifying consequences of the colonization of mind and body their dividing walls will produce?
The Cambridge University’s ‘Centre of Urban Conflict Research – Conflicts in Cities’ project states: “The physical reorganization engendered by a wall is accompanied by an inevitable impact on the psychology of those who live beside it, or within its defining boundaries.” It further states: “There’s a tendency to vilify those on the other side. It’s very easy to say: we can’t see them, we don’t know them. So we don’t like them.” In short, their existence can be effectively ignored.
So, with apologies to the poetry and song-writing ability of Simon and Garfunkel, we need to remember some words of the 17th century English metaphysical poet, John Donne, who said: “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.” On this continent, walls are unwelcome; their giant shadows should be erased.
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Posted in Uncategorized
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Tagged colonization, division, imprisonment, islands, isolation, protection, separation, shadows, symbols, walls, West Bank
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A quotation is “the repetition of one expression as part of another, particularly when the quoted expression is well-known or explicitly attributed by citation to its original source, and is indicated by quotation marks”.
According to Wikipedia, quotations are used for a variety of reasons: “to illuminate the meaning or to support the arguments of the work in which it is being quoted; to provide direct information about the work being quoted; to pay homage to the original work or author, to make the user seem well-read, and/or to comply with copyright law”.
Quotations are also commonly printed as a means of inspiration and to invoke philosophical thoughts from the reader.
I collect quotations, that is, I am in the habit of writing down and preserving things that others have said or written and which I consider to be important to keep or worthwhile to repeat in appropriate circumstances. The regurgitation of what others have said can be used in sermons, newspaper articles, group discussions or personal arguments, speeches and other forms of public address and, of course, as starters or fill-ins for blog articles such as this one.
In all of the above cases, a quotation is usually included to give a glimpse of the user’s personality, to make a statement of his/her beliefs, or to spread his/her views or ideas. In this I am reminded of the views of the 19th century German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, who said that personal statements are expressions of the user’s personal philosophy and that “every philosophy, in fact, is a personal confession, a kind of memoir”, and that “every philosophy really has a moral root, a moral prejudice”.
Nietzsche saw the un-rooting of some of these prejudices as an important aspect of his work.
I was reminded of the foregoing when I recently came across a quotation from that exemplary source of misquotes, verbal blunders, inappropriate statements and questionable memoirs, Philip Mountbatten. It was he who had the title of the ‘Duke of Edinburgh’ bestowed on him when he became a naturalized British citizen before he married Elizabeth Windsor. Ironically, Philip Mountbatten was born in Greece, the birthplace of some of history’s greatest philosophers.
Philip Mountbatten is quoted as once having said: “Everybody was saying we must have more leisure. Now they are complaining that they are unemployed.”
In saying the above, it is blatantly apparent that this so-called ‘royal person’ is confusing two fundamentally different situations – what is ‘leisure’ and what is ‘unemployment’? Perhaps this is to be expected from someone who left active military service and his day job in the British navy as far back as 1952 (in preparation for his marriage to Elizabeth Windsor).
Philip Mountbatten has had a history of making flippant and erroneous statements. He is someone who seems to have lived a life of unending and (probably) boring leisure as the consort of the longest-serving monarch in British history, and who, along with the rest of his family, was effectively given a job for life at the expense of the British public. Unemployment has never impacted his life.
In commenting on unemployment and linking it with leisure in the manner he does, he is surely being very offensive to the millions of people, including at times members of my own family, who are or have been caught-up with the struggle of being in a situation of not having a job, never-mind a ‘job for life’. Such persons can clearly differentiate between leisure and unemployment.
Unlike many British people, Philip Mountbatten does not need to be concerned about the economic well-being of his wife and children. The British public and the private wealth of the ‘royals’ ensure that. So too, he has been in the very fortunate position of being well-placed and affluent enough to have a long and exceedingly comfortable retirement – with a substantial pension.
In making statements such as “Everybody was saying we must have more leisure. Now they are complaining that they are unemployed”, and without any countermanding statement, Philip Mountbatten demonstrates that he seems to care very little about the ordinary people of the UK. He apparently believes that he can insult them with seeming impunity. But, there again, what’s new?
Perhaps the fact that statements made by individuals can be quoted, as I have done with one opinion of Philip Mountbatten, might serve to remind us of the consequences of making flippant, abusive and inappropriate comments about matters that are publicly sensitive.
On the other hand, the fact that such statements can be placed in the public domain may be a valuable means of gaining an insight into the kind of characters that occupy prominent public positions.
RSC
Posted in Uncategorized
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Tagged consort, Friedrich Nietzsche, injury, inspiration, insult, leisure, philosophy, prejudice, public domain, quotations, thought, unemployment
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Robert Stewart Culbard 