The Sun is Getting Stronger

The sun is getting stronger, and at last the long spell of wet and windy weather has abated. The daffodils will soon be out and I have started to work in the garden. Here are some that are already out in Baltimore (photo by Ger Kavanagh) -

      Meanwhile a nice boring Irish general election beckons. Boring elections are surely a good sign of a country. None of your Westminster high drama! I like it this way. Foreigners say, 'but what are your politics about?' I say well think rugby for Fine Gael, G.A.A. (Gaelic football and hurling) for Fianna Fail  and soccer for Labour. There's a little bit of harmless tacking to left and right, but the main thing is to be able to shuffle the pack regularly - throw out one crowd and have the other lot in. This strikes on the whole me as reasonable and healthy.

     If one can only avoid such monstrous miscarriages of democracy as Brexit! Yet maybe the absence of high drama here does indicate a rather large dose of fudge! For example, is not national security at least one of the most basic responsibilities of Government? And what have our Irish politics to say about it? We support the UN! Beautiful, but meanwhile we basically leave it to the Americans and British to come between us and any real badies. 

     Unfortunately the USA seems to be in danger of becoming a rogue state itself. Even the Tory Minister of Defence has said he is kept awake at night by it. The EU has the potential to become an alternative, but the Tories are committed to demolishing the political, industrial and technological ties that have been built up since WW2 and which might provide the basis for this alternative. Mr Johnson claims to want to continue working with Europe, which appears to be both insincere and irresponsible. Anyway so much of British defence capability is dependent on the Americans. It also seems to me that the emphasis on aircraft carriers and submarines is a matter of still fighting the last war. They do not constitute a basis on which to build real security today, which highlights  the fact that the Brexiteers' famous idea of national sovereignty is downright obsolete.

     By far the greatest threats to our security these days are in connection with digital technology and climate change, and again, the EU constitutes our main hope of doing anything effective about them, at least on the political level. One can only hope that things do not have to get too drastically bad in Britain for the lies about a bright future on the basis of Brexit to be revealed in all their lurid fatuity, but in the meantime we just have to keep banging on doing our best to expose them. 

     I have been reading a little book of my grandfather's, recently liberated from a dusty fish box: 'Prophets, Priests and Kings' by A.G.Gardiner. It consists of biological sketches of prominent figures of the early 20th century, before the Great War. He describes 'a time of change and disturbance and fickleness', when the outlines of modern Britain were already emerging.  There were of course great hopes, even while standards were being turned upside down, for example by Lord Northcliffe, founding owner of the Daily Mail. 'The principle to which his loyalty never falters is to be on the side of the big battalions.' When he found himself in danger of being 'left in company with that dismal thing, failure,'  he found the 'thing unthinkable, and he leapt the fence on the instant.' Distinctly reminiscent of some leading Tories today!

     Mr Gardiner proceeds to deliver this philippic:- 'It is this commercial conception of journalism which is Lord Northcliffe's contribution to his time. Journalism was a profession: he has made it a trade. It had a moral function: in his hands it has no  more moral significance than the manufacture of soap. The old notion of a newspaper was a responsible adviser of the public. Its first duty was to provide the news, uncoloured by any motive, private or public; it's second to present a certain view of public policy which it believed to be for the good of the State and the community. It was sober, responsible, and a little dull. It treated life as if it was a serious matter. It had an antiquated respect for truth. It believed in the moral governance of things.
  Lord Northcliffe has changed all this. He started free from all convictions. He saw an immense unexploited field. The old journalism appealed only to the minds of the responsible public; he would appeal to the emotions of the irresponsible. The old journalism gave news; he would give sensation. The old journalism gave reasoned opinion; he would give unreasoning passion.'

      Thus Mr. Alfred C. Harmsworth, an archetypal 'man in the street', became Lord Northcliffe of the Daily Mail. The elite had to realise that there was 'a better way of dealing with the office-boy than to drive him into revolutionary movements. It is to give him a vote and the 'Daily Mail'. Yet one cannot help feeling that Mr Gardiner paints perhaps too rosy a picture of 'the old journalism', even though he had no illusions about the Tories, describing their 'fundamental policy' being 'to hoodwink the people, bribe them, drug them, use them as tools.'

     Even if they were misled by 'irresponsible emotion',  it was hardly their own fault that they proceeded to be led off to the killing fields, was it, a few years afterwards? They surely were most (ir)responsible who found it more politic to exploit nationalism than to anticipate what a modern war would involve. The people fell into the trap. Have their grandchildren and great grandchildren managed to learn anything at all? 

     These days we might justly refer to the likes of the Daily Mail  as 'the old journalism'. Just look at the alacrity with which they have turned from serious questioning of the new Government to the Royal Soap Opera! It's a bit of a chicken and egg situation, but we must hope for a new journalism and a new facility for critical thought on all sides. If we don't cop on and get a new grip on ourselves, we could end up in a situation that makes the World Wars seem like tea parties. In order to do so, we need a new leadership whose method is reason and whose focus is truth, but it's hard to see how it can emerge when the mere pursuit of power is so difficult and all consuming. Meanwhile, I'm off to get some seaweed on the garden.

First fine evening in the heart of Sherkin.