Do not ask for an apology......

The pressure in so many discussions for those alive today to apologise for decisions and actions executed before they were born is  highly undesirable, and for several  reasons. The fact that no one can be responsible for  the actions of those now departed this life is not the most significant reason

First, where does one stop? If the Christian west should apologise fot the Crusades, should the Islamic world apologise for the explosion of Islam out of Arabia after the death of the Prophet, which led to the seizure of  the Holy Land ( and North Africa,  and Spain for seven hundred years) ?  But secondly, and more fundamentally, to apologise for the past is to impose our current values on situations different and often remote from today's world, and to crystalise  judgments ( including the acceptance of blame) which might be,  and very often are,  simply wrong on the historical evidence

As regards values, some years ago a very sweet lady broadcast the fact that she was travelling to Australia to meet the descendants of those who had killed her great grandfather, a Christian missionary, She would apologise for his attempts to impose Western values on them, and they would apologise for killing him. The fallacy of this analysis is apparent - he was taking to Australia the greatest good news in the world, and they were defending their land - advisedly so,  in view of what happened afterwards.  This lady's analysis was intellectually and I think morally corrupt but it is clear that sweetness and light would follow her visit.

As regards blame, if  I remember correctly.Pope John Paul II, when surveying the history of the Church's actions against the Jews over  the centuries, did not apologise but said that what had happened on so many occasions was reason for great sorrow - and this seems a possible way through the problem. Moreover, even apart from the question of blame, an apology often crystalises a supposed solution which is in fact wrong, or at least only partial. There was nothing that England could have done  about the Irish Famine, to prevent the failure  of the potato crop in two successive years, and to bring food in any quantity to Ireland  in the years of the "Hungry Forties" in England itself, and at a time when reserves of food could not be accessed as they can today. But the apology by Tony Blair no doubt contributed to a relaxation of tension and to an extent dissolved resentment on behalf of many of the Irish.  In many cases an apology can have beneficial effects, even if from a corrupt base.

It would be best if no one wanted to ask for an apology for a distant  action. Both parties should rise above these contortions and deal with the matter at a detached and reflective level. But I appreciate that human nature will not in many cases be able to overcome what is after all a very human desire.

The right of succession still affects us

Elizabeth II at ninety represents succession in a constitutional monarchy ( though see my entry on the Republic of the Untied Kingdom) but we have lost the sense that ancestry provides a validation of a succession to power. That sense existed for centuries. To take a very clear example, the throne of Poland was for a time subject to election ( though of course from a small list of candidates ). One such King sent an embassy to Elizabeth I with a message which the Queen did not like at all, and in a powerful retort she argued that the Polish King, being merely elected, lacked the authority of birth

It may be thought that we have left all that behind, but there are examples of how the accidents of birth in ruling monarchies in the past still have very large effects today

Katherine of Aragon, the first wife of Henry VIII had several sons . But they  died almost at once. Had one lived Henry would not have wanted to divorce Katherine in order to have a son, and would not have had to break with Rome in order to achieve that divorce ( marriage declared invalid 1533). He might of course have  been tempted by the riches of the Church which after the break with Rome he seized and gave to his favourites ( as indeed did several of the German princes who followed Luther ). But maybe not.. After all, Henry had written a refutation of Luther's position which led the Pope to award Henry the title "Defender of the Faith" , still held by our monarchs. And, in particular, we should never have heard of Elizabeth I and never have seen the establishment of her amazing compromise between catholic ceremony and protestant theology which remains the Church of England to this day

Frederick the Great of Prussia ( see also my entry) was born in 1712 as the third son of his father King Frederick William. Had one of his two elder brothers not died before he was born,  Frederic would not have become king  And although no doubt providing his brother with excellent generalship, without Frederic  in charge Prussia under a more ordinary man might well not have proceeded  to seize Silesia from the Habsburgs and establish Prussia as a great power. This would have happened in due course anyway,  but the tempo of history would have been different, with large consequences for the interplay of countries and events, such as the timing and structure of a united Germany

And, as a final example, the most dramatic of all, the Emperor Frederick III of Germany came to power  in 1888, but died that year, the same year as his father, of cancer of the throat. He was married to Queen Victoria's daughter ( also Victoria)  and had views far more liberal than those of his son who in the same year inherited as William II ( the Kaiser). How far the German constitution would have been changed under Frederick for the democratic  better is a matter for speculation, as these constitutional matters have their own momentum, but the cards would have been played in a different order.  And in addition, one thing Frederick was highly unlikely to have done was to build a fleet against England, which his son did, making sure that in any war England would be against Germany, and winding up the European tension. These developments would have ensured that the tempo of European history would have been different at the beginning of the 20th century from the tempo actually experienced.. With a different tempo there could well have been a war, as national rivalries were very strong,  but with a different timing the  unusual sequences of events that enabled Lenin  to seize power in Russia, and Hitler in Germany, could hardly .have occurred.  No doubt other tragedies would have been seen, but  two most terrible and evil men would not have found their moments

Royal Opera Night - Coronation 1953

This reception at the Royal Opera House preceded  the first performance of  the opera Gloriana by Benjamin Britten, as part of the events surrounding the Coronation  of Elizabeth II.  This draws attention to certain features of  interest.

One can gather from the atmosphere portrayed that there  was still an assumption and an acceptance of the United  Kingdom as a great power, or anyway a great player in  the world. It was true that India and several other   countries had achieved independence by 1953, but the  first African colony left the Empire only in the late 1950s, and it was around the same future date that  Germany    was to overtake the UK in economic terms. The feel  of the event in this film is remarkable as reflecting this  atmosphere

Nevertheless, the choice of this opera was a significant and indeed a foolish mistake, as was reflected in the reaction at the time. This has nothing to do with the quality of the opera as a work of art. After many years it can stand on its own quality. That the music was not easy  for some to penetrate at the time was a contributory factor but one which would have been less important if the subject matter had been appropriate

Britain had by 1953 suffered decades of hardship and misery. First the years before the Second World War had seen  a tremendous economic crisis following the 1929 Wall Street crash, Then there was the war with all its death and destruction. We were victorious, but the aftermath of the war scarcely gave us any reward as our position in the world - despite the points above - declined sharply, economically and imperially

But then a new queen came to the throne, and the economic position saw something of an improvement.. A new Elizabethan age seemed to dawn and we could look forward to better days. An opera looking back to the reign of Elizabeth I would provide exactly the right subject, covering as it did a threat from a great military power, Spain and the Armada then, Adolf Hitler and the Blitz now........and in both cases an emergence into victory and peace. 

But Britten showed the first Elizabeth in her last days, surrounded by difficulties and facing death. How completely inappropriate and badly judged - just what was NOT needed and in no way reflecting the national mood.One can faintly understand Britten writing thus, in view of his pacifism and therefore his presumed dislike of triumphalism, though it showed a very cramped judgement.  But the fault rested with those who approved, indeed planned,this opera..Lord Harewood was a prime mover and in Kobbe he defends it on musical grounds, but also by belittling the views of "grandees and courtiers".  Others have claimed that in looking forward to more problematic days Britten was more realistic than the audience. In one sense perhaps so, but not in the sense of what was required at the time, especially as a directly relevant subject was clearly available in the defeat of the Armada

Clement Attlee, Prime Minister

Margaret Thatcher said of Attlee that he was all substance and no show, and certainly his calm and detached personality, together with his firm determination, marks him out as a man very suited to be Prime Minister. And he had a talented cabinet.  It is a pity that one has to add that the policies of his government, from 1945 to 1951, were disastrous, establishing the post war consensus that dramatically accelerated the country's decline and led to something close to bankruptcy in the 1970s.

This is not usually a recognised conclusion, as a result, I suppose, of the general tendency to see aims as important rather that the consequences of  government policies. Attlee and his colleagues set out to look after the classes that had been so poor and so unpowerful, but the result of their actions was to hit those sections of society as much as others.

Most frequently the National Health Service is mentioned, but this argument is upset by the fact that a  "Comprehensive National Health Service" was in the Conservative Manifesto in 1945 so would have happened anyway. It was an idea whose time had come. Let us rather look at the main elements of Labour's economic policies in those years, rigorously enforced and disastrous in their consequences

Labour nationalised a whole raft of industries, creating national monopolies which had all the faults of any monopolies.But that was not the worst consequence. These were old industries,  - coal, steel,.  etc - due for decline or needing rationalisation.  Nationalisation kept them going for years when they should have faded or changed -   indeed one could with little exaggeration say that the true beneficiaries of the nationalisation of say coal were the coal owners, who would otherwise have had to bear the burden of the decline.....and anyway the decline would then have taken place over years, with far less pain than their eventual sharp demise,  And in those years they sucked in subsidy after subsidy, using funds better spent elsewhere and employing people better employed elsewhere. The whole system made worse by the pressure from the trade unions to resist change.

Indeed the power of the trade unions was a bane of many governments for many years after the war  ("Get your tanks off my lawn" said Harold Wilson), not only for the influences just mentioned but also in that there was a significant Marxist element in their thinking, leading to a distrust of the market economy which was soon to flourish in Germany. These people illogically  wanted growth and economic success but didn't like profits.

In addition, taxes were sharply raised. It was perhaps not surprising that in an attempt to raise the standard of living of the working class the socialists of that time ( and regrettably of today) saw that raising money from the rich  to pay for better conditions for the poor was justified. But these things are not a zero sum game - by encouraging initiative and investment one raises more wealth for social spending. Tax at 83% on earned income and 98% on "unearned " income led to a denial of  entrepreneurial investment and a clamp on growth.  One feels also that social justice, as perceived by  socialists, was the central aim.......even though the people they were trying to help would have been better off with taxes at half those levels.


And what about Beveridge? He wrote "The State in organising security should not stifle incentive, opportunity, responsibility........The insured persons should not feel that income for idleness, however caused, can come from a bottomless purse"  And much more of the same. No doubt these limitations on welfare were rather unrealistic, but they were anyway ignored by the Labour government which vastly increased spending in these social directions without taking care not to overspend,  whilst at the same time curbing the growth of the economy.

All in all a disaster.  It took Margaret Thatcher to rectify the situation and so engrained were the faults that her policies had to be tough, so that she became vastly unpopular as a result. Tony Blair got the message ( she regarded his conversion as her greatest achievement), and it is a second reason for regretting the Iraq war that his reputation also in economics was clouded, with the result that socialist ideas have revived today in the stupidities of Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party

Not Mrs Thatcher's Big Bang

It is assumed by many that the Big Bang in the City of London in 1986 was instigated by Mrs Thatcher and  that it deregulated the banks. Some believe that it led directly to the financial crisis of 2007/8. None of these assumptions is true

It was the Labour government ( that left office in 1979) that referred certain City practices to the Restrictive Practices Court. These practices were

1. Stockbrohers could sell or buy shares and bonds to and from the public but at fixed rates of commission and were not allowed to make markets

2. Stockjobbers could make markets in shares and bonds but were not allowed to deal with the public

3.  Brokers and jobbers were not allowed to take in foreign and other capital

When the Tories came into government in 1979 they could hardly - whatever their view on the substance of the matter - withdraw this case at a time when they were attacking restrictive practices in trade unions.

There was then a period of consultation. This was not just reactionaries resisting change, Many believed that there was a lot to be said for the traditional system, including the Bank of England which had the task of raising large sums for governments and of managing the resulting market in government debt. But eventually the Bank and the other parties agreed.. These practices were abolished and the result was much the same as it would have been if the case had gone to the court and the City had lost. And the changes were not initiated by Mrs Thatcher

Note that although the word " deregulation" was ( and is)  used of this change it was not concerned with the supervision of the behaviour of financial institutions.  The banks were not involved in the practices which were abolished.  Banks were throughout regulated by the Bank of England  until regulation was switched to the Financial Services Authority by Gordon Brown, with unfortunate consequences  in 2007/8 -  see my entry on The Financial Crisis  - Solved  in this blog

Nevertheless, in the government bill which was then brought forward to establish the new systems, there was a certain amount of new regulation, and over Mrs Thatcher's period of office the rules governing the behaviour of financial institutions were vastly increased. These rules - which  were further elaborated later - can now  be regarded as cumbersome and  have by some  been adversely compared with the more gentlemanly policing of the past  (the eyebrows of the Governor of the Bank of England, raised to express doubts).  Now we are ruled by rows of computers containing vast legal documents. But the change was inevitable, first  because of the growth in suspicion of self regulation, and secondly because of the changes in the character of financial institutions after Big Bang.

The removal of the three practices  listed above  led to the creation in London of large general banks providing many services as a result of the acquisition of brokers and jobbers by banks from many countries. These banks enabled London to maintain and improve  its position in the world as a financial centre, paralleled only by New York, and to the great benefit of the United Kingdom.

  

Of course there were other influences aside from Big Bang - globalisation, the IT revolution, the development of complex derivative instruments.   And if the new financial world is less gentlemanly than in the past that is true of many aspects of life today, including the fact that it is probably politically incorrect to say "gentlemanly"

Most politicians are the same - but some are dangerously not

A defector from the Tories to UKIP has said that the voters feel that all the established politicians are the same, and that they do not deliver. He was right, but should have added that they cannot deliver. The problems facing this country - and indeed the world  - are not capable of solutions.......it is only that they have to be managed as efficiently as possible.  As a result the electorate is presented daily with a constant series of difficulties, the impact of which is exacerbated by the media's concentration on bad news, the probing of good news for weaknesses and the over - dramatising of events.

As regards the economy, no one knows what are the solutions to economic problems on a theoretical level to more than a limited extent -  one result of which is that many commentators will select the theories that fit their social preferences. Discussions on this level are therefore a waste of time. But practical experience since the Second War has supplied evidence that certain ways of proceeding work and others to not.This evidence points to the success of careful management of the market economy ( see my entry on The Financial Crisis - Solved) . And  this entails unpopular policies, such as keeping government spending under control

The demands on the National Health Service can never be met, as we get older, and more medicines and techniques are developed. So  there are always complaints, and  any attempt to rationalise the existing set-up is met with foolish accusations that the NHS is under attack

As for the benefits budget, it is in practice certain that much is wasted on claims in marginal cases. But attempts to cut out the waste are met by shouts of horror that the weakest are being attacked. The various charities are disgracefully irresponsible in these discussions, as they always bring forward the most severe cases as being under review. If I were a minister I would ask the main charities and pressure groups to propose cuts in their budgets of 20% - after all they are the experts. If they refused I could conclude that they were not worth listening to

And who can solve the questions of immigration? Hundreds of thousands of non-EU citizens have arrived in this country in recent years and far fewer have left. David Cameron's 20 000 asylum seekers should not be judged without these others. They all have to be fitted in. And millions and millions are out there,  desperate for tragic or for economic reasons to get in. This is another problem that will run for ever.which no one can solve. ( See my entry on A real Pandora's Box)

In such an environment one has to choose politicians who can handle these difficulties and crises best. The relevant  candidates are the traditional parties - Tories, Social Democrats, and New Labour ( which threw over socialism).  But because they cannot deliver there is an attraction in those who claim to be able to provide solutions - such as Mr Corbyn, a throw back to failed philosophies, and relying on  party activists, who from whichever party should never have more than marginal influence. And in the US we can see the same foolishness in the support for Trump.

Join the established parties and ridicule  the deluded followers of Corbyn

Frederick the Great ( I )

Frederick's character was extraordinary, even more remarkable perhaps than his military and other talents. He maintained his self restraint and firm judgement  throughout his several wars, despite defeats as well as victories, and when the whole  burden of the State and the wars rested with him alone. So his upbringing is of central interest, and indeed many studies have examined the years before his marriage (when he might be regarded as having to an extent settled down,  even though it was a marriage of convenience).  But despite a number of enquiries not one of the experts in this area of history that I have contacted has noted any link to his Great Uncle, the Margrave Christian Ludwig of Brandenburg (1677 - 1734)

Christian Ludwig's name is familiar to music lovers as the man to whom Bach sent in 1723 the music we know as the Brandenburg Concertos. The two had met in Berlin  during a visit by Bach, and perhaps when later sending the Concertos Bach hoped for a job in Berlin. But the Margrave  was a younger son and  not a ruling prince. The revenues of Prussia where in the hands of his nephew, King Frederick William I,  Frederick's father.  Christian Ludwig maintained a small orchestra, it is thought without the necessary range of instrumental players to perform the Concertos. But my point is that from 1712 when Frederick was born,  until his marriage in 1733, and during the years when he was in adolescent revolt against his father the King, Christian Ludwig was around, not dying till 1734.

Were they in contact? Frederick was intensely musical - he played  and  later wrote for the flute, and his compositions were said by Mozart to have content. He had a small musical band. But this and his other cultural activities were not appreciated by his father Frederick William, who preferred building up his army (which Frederick would later make use of) and smoking with his cronies.  It seems impossible that the two musical enthusiasts - Frederick and his Great Uncle - did not meet and discuss the things that Frederick could not discuss with his father, or the Court, who were careful of the King's wrath. And Frederick could discuss music with his band only as a Prince. With Christian Ludwig he could talk freely to someone of his own rank, who could be a mentor, and a kind of confessor. Indeed what a release for him if it happened  -  this is a factor very relevant to the development  of Frederick's  character. And if it did not happen why not? Did the King prevent it?

The Kingdom of America

It is surprising that the Founding Fathers, breaking away form the British semi-constitutional monarchy, should have put together a constitution for America which follows the plan of a medieval and non-constitutional monarchy, albeit an elective monarchy.

The King (the President) sits in his palace (the White House) surrounded by his court.....he chooses  them, so that within the Administration his power is very great and in a sense absolute.

But he is constrained by the great territorial Earls and Lords ( the Senate)....he has to take account of their power when he frames and executes policies

And he cannot ignore the more widespread views of the population at large led by the lesser lords  ( the House of Representatives)

Nor can he ignore the Church (the Supreme Court) which examines ancient  and authoritative scripts to see how far they are relevant today

This seems to me an inefficient way to run a country. The President is too powerful in the Administration........in a real cabinet, he would have colleagues with  power bases of their own so the evolution of policy would not be centered in one mind. On the other hand the President is not powerful enough in the system as a whole, because of the role of Congress. But Congress is separated from government, and any tendency in the Senate or the House to see the path to good governance is constrained by too frequent re-elections. As for the Supreme Court,  if the terms of a constitution written in the 18th Century are confirmed, one has to ask why such a ancient text can be useful today,  whereas if the Court updates the Constitution then  it - the Court - becomes a part of the governmental structure - as it clearly is - created in a peculiar way

It needs a political genius of the highest order as President to run this system, who is also right minded in his or her aims. Franklin D Roosevelt was such a man, and one can only be astonished at the skill he showed in the New Deal,  and in the war both before and after Pearl Harbour. But a constitution should not depend on the emergence of a political genius of that order, especially as the President is elected by the public at large, who cannot know how the talents and minds of the candidates are balanced. I do not think that Frau Merkel or Mrs Thatcher would have won in a presidential type election. But some candidates appealing to the simplistic prejudices of the electorate can garner votes, as with Mr Corbyn in Britain or Mr Trump in the States

Too late, of course,  to do anything about this now, especially as US citizens are trained from birth to see the Constitution as the best possible instrument. I was however once at a dinner in Washington  with several Americans who without any prompting from me suddenly agreed about cabinet government as above. I felt an almost physical shock

Vegans - choose the possible

I would like to propose a political but positive point to vegans. You have no hope of persuading more than a tiny minority to give up eating meat, and as nations such as China become richer the people eat more meat. But the methods by which animals are prepared for eating are in many and perhaps most cases horrible. They are often raised in terrible conditions (pigs spending all their lives trapped in a narrow cage) and killed in  ways at which we can only shudder.

 It is also the case that many if not most people (even meat eaters)  are in principle animal lovers and enhanced campaigns against the methods of raising and killing animals would have the effect of  changing things for the better,  though the campaigns would have to be determined and continuous. Indeed there have been some successes in this direction......in the cases of how chickens are kept, and in the production of veal. This is the way forward, and to argue against eating meat in principle will weaken the impact - those that eat meat will dismiss the whole matter as the views of a minority of special pleaders

I would add that it is only vegans and vegetarians who can legitimately campaign against traditional fox hunting. The cruelty to the fox is marginal to the cruelty involved in fattening and killing animals for food. And as for the moral fault in killing animals for pleasure, one has to say that any campaigner against hunting who takes pleasure in eating meat without considering how it is brought to the table is even more morally at fault

The Republic of the United Kingdom

We are a republic. The country is ruled by Parliament, the Cabinet and the Prime Minister. And like Germany - and for the better in both countries - the head of government is separate from the head of state. Unlike Germany, our head of state is hereditary.

It is not true that we have no constitution. It is all over the place, and mostly in rules and strongly entrenched customs which are usually to do with the actions of the republic in the name of the monarch. That the structures which result are not written down in one place is a secondary matter. Or,  looking at it from another point of view, the monarchy is a governor, in the engineering sense that it keeps the mechanisms of the republic on an even keel, through the rules which have grown up and evolved over time.

If the monarch were replaced by a President, one can imagine Alec Douglas Hume and James Callaghan in the role since the war, and as President they would have done very well. But they could   not have been the focus of the nation to any significant extent. This has two aspects. As Churchill remarked,  it is better if the embodiment of the state is not used as a lever by politicians., which can happen if the head of government is also the head of state. And by attracting to itself the glamour of celebrity and by reflecting human values the monarchy is a very efficient mechanism for keeping the politicians and others in line with the agreed rules and customs embodied in the monarchy.

Harold Wilson, a socialist prime minister, mentioned Bagehot's distinction between the efficient part of the constitution,  the government,  and the dignified part, the monarchy, and added that if the efficient part were run as efficiently as the dignified part the country would have few problems.

This efficiency would by lost in a presidential system, with a worthy but scarcely iconic head of state . Against that it can be argued that the monarchy promotes social divisions and snobism. But this argument is far less important than  the good governance of the country. And in addition the Establishment, headed by the Queen, has certainly moved with the times. Mick Jagger has a knighthood and Brian Rix is in the House of Lords as Lord Rix of Whitehall. This is serious and sensible, and not a farce.