MONTHLY BLOG 163, DO PARTISAN IDENTITIES ADD A PLEASANT FLAVOUR TO DAILY LIVING – OR DO THEY REALLY CONSTITUTE A TRAP THAT UNDERMINES TRUE HUMAN SOLIDARITY?

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If citing, please kindly acknowledge copyright © Penelope J. Corfield (2024)

Fig.1: Shutterstock (2024) – Tug of War

This BLOG is copy of my review, published in The Political Quarterly, Vol. 95/2 (April-June 2024), pp. 376-77, under the title ‘Uniting the Human Race’.

The book under review = Yascha Mounk, The Identity Trap:A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time (Allen Lane, London, 2023), pp. 401. See link = http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-923X.13393.

Note: I was invited by the journal to contribute this review, since I have already written on the subject of ‘Identities’ in one of my most widely read and quoted BLOGs to date.1

The truth is that all individuals have more than one identity. They can be classified under many headings – whether by age, citizenship, class, education, ethnicity, gender, intelligence, language, region, religion, or sexuality … to name some commonly invoked criteria. If an identity is chosen voluntarily – for example as fan of a football club or pop group – it can be a delightful thing to own and to share with fellow fans. How much importance to attach to this identity then becomes a matter of choice.

Yet, if one special aspect of an individual’s existence is singled out and harshly attacked, then that one identity can quickly become all-preoccupying – whether in defiant pride or fearful resentment. Subjective emotions quickly overtake dispassionate analysis. Little wonder that political campaigners often appeal to simplified sectoral identities – and stoke the stereotypes, to keep the polemical fires burning. Human solidarity is undermined.

That danger is the core message of Yascha Mounk’s new book on The Identity Trap. He himself is of Polish parentage, born and reared in Germany, educated in Britain and the USA, and currently working in the USA. As a result, he lives with the complexities of identity. He has described himself, for example, as a native German-speaker who never felt at home in Germany. And in this book, he takes up his pen to warn the world against crude over-simplifications.

Mounk’s writing style is chatty and accessible. Each chapter ends with a useful list of key points. At the same time, his arguments are buttressed by ample documentation. His purpose is deadly serious.

An opening peroration explains both ‘the lure and the trap’ of identity politics (pp.1-21). The story gathers force by examining the American Civil Rights movement of the1960s. Insofar as the book has a (muted) hero, he is the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Junior. He sought to forge an ecumenical campaign, endorsed by people of all skin colours and backgrounds. In his famous speech ‘I have a Dream’ (August 1963), he expressed the hope that one day: ‘little black boys and girls will be holding hands with little white boys and girls’. A colour-blind universalism and egalitarianism will prevail.

However, some colleagues began to fear that King’s soaring idealism lacked hard-edged realism. They called instead for ‘Black Power’ to deliver a more immediate route to remedy injustices. And, over time, as progressive reforms came only slowly, others on the American political Left began to lose faith in universalist solutions to deep-rooted inequalities.

Accordingly, Part 1 of this book (pp. 23-81) examines the genesis of what Mounk calls the ‘identity synthesis’, whereby universalist/liberal values are exchanged for sectional ‘affinities’. After the Second World War – with the growing awareness of the Holocaust and the advent of the atomic bomb – faith in grand visions of the progressive unfolding of history began to falter. Thinkers like Michel Foucault (1926-84) argued that knowledge systems were nothing more (or less) than expressions of power. And Jean-François Lyotard (1924-98) proclaimed, equally firmly, that the era of ‘Modernity’ had ended. Instead, people were living in a new ‘Age of Postmodernity’, in which absolute values were yielding to relative ones.

Critics of universalism thus argued that legal systems were not benevolently impartial. They were instead ‘cloaks for privilege’. One radical maxim stated that ‘Neutrality is political’. Another declared that: ‘Racism is permanent’. Action to help society’s most disadvantaged groups (especially those defined by race, gender and sexuality) was urgently needed. Separate ‘identities’ were thus not to be denied. Instead, they were to be embraced – and each group should be helped separately, secure in the validity of its own ‘lived experience’. A ‘proud pessimism’ (pp. 69-71) had arrived.

After that, Mounk devotes Part 2 (pp. 83-126) to demonstrating how the ‘identity synthesis has swept through American Universities – and begun to influence corporate, philanthropic, and political life as well. The impact of social media simultaneously encourages the sharing of confessional narratives. In addition, Mounk notes the human capacity for ‘group think’, especially on emotive issues. Furthermore, the Presidency of Donald Trump fuelled a surge of frustration and anger amongst the American political Left. Radical zeal was channelled into immediate campaigns on the ‘identity’ frontier, where local successes could raise morale.

Having recognised the ‘lure’ of identity politics, Mounk turns in Part 3 (pp. 129-235) to refute its claims. Here he pulls no punches. The ‘identity synthesis’ has too many internal contradictions to constitute a coherent philosophy. For a start, disadvantaged people do not always agree among themselves. Then societies are not all perennially divided into mutually uncomprehending groups. There is much overlapping and sharing. Thus it is historically erroneous to think that each type of cultural output belongs exclusively to one specific group and cannot be adopted or adapted by others. Moreover, a ‘cancel’ culture that halts free discussion of such issues risks fuelling despotism rather righting injustices.

Building upon those criticisms, Mounk in Part 4 (pp. 239-90) ends with a rousing defence of liberal democratic values. With care and empathy, people can understand and help one another. Universalist programmes to provide good health care, housing, education, job opportunities, access to transport, peaceful neighbourhoods, and freedom from discrimination, can – given time and commitment – work wonders. ‘Progressive separatism’ is not actually progressive. Instead, it inculcates a negative pessimism.

These debates are likely to continue. But Mounk now detects a growing readiness among critics of the ‘identity synthesis’ to voice their objections – as he has decided to do in this admirably thoughtful book.

In that spirit, this reviewer wishes to add one further point that is not fully covered by Mounk. At one stage (p.100), he cites (disapprovingly) the case of an eminent American University where students are discouraged from stating that: ‘There is only one race, the human race’. Elsewhere, too, Mounk refers to racial classifications as ‘dubious’ (p. 262).

But let’s be franker. The attempt at establishing a so-called ‘scientific racism’ led into an intellectual blind alley. Experts could not even agree on the number of separate ‘races’. Today, geneticists confirm that all people carry variants of one biological template, known as the human genome.2 Hence individuals from all branches of the human family can inter-marry and breed fertile offspring – the fundamental test of one common species. Mounk does himself refer to the ever-growing number of so-called ‘mixed-race’ individuals (p.14), who do not fit into simple ‘racial’ classifications. But are they fully human? Of course, they are.

True, some people today maintain strongly racist attitudes. That’s an urgent problem for societies to address. Yet it’s not a good reason for endorsing the separatists. Humanity must avoid the ‘identity trap’ and walk with Martin Luther King. He sought to transform: ‘the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood’ [or: siblinghood!] King was brutally cut down in his prime. But his cause and his optimism are needed today more than ever. Can the human family get its global act together, at this time of climate crisis? That’s another huge and urgently-unfolding story … but anyone immediately seeking a measured faith in liberal human universalism should read Yascha Mounk.

ENDNOTES:

1 PJC, ‘Being Assessed as a Whole Person: A Critique of Identity Politics’, BLOG no.121 (Jan. 2021).

2 See esp. L. Cavalli-Sforza and F. Cavalli-Sforza, The Great Human Diasporas: The History of Diversity and Evolution (London, 1996).

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MONTHLY BLOG 162, HAPPY CANVASSING MEMORIES

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Fig.1: Satire of Charles James Fox
(kneeling centre),
canvassing the Westminster parliamentary electors in 1784:
detail from an anonymous print, entitled
‘A New Way to Secure a Majority: Or, No Dirty Work Comes Amiss’ (1784).
Original in British Museum Dept. of Prints & Drawings, no: 1868,0808.5288.

Happy canvassing memories indeed! I no longer go out knocking on doorsteps – been there, done that, for many years, from the age of fifteen onwards! But, in this month of busy electioneering, when many of my friends are still on the stump, I can’t keep the memories at bay …

Political activists have a very mixed reputation, as has the political process itself.1 Door-to-door canvassers are sometimes seen as pests. Or as cravenly kow-towing to the voters. The image of Charles James Fox, the Whig reform candidate in Westminster election in 1784 (shown in Fig.1) pulls absolutely no punches. He is shown as literally arse-licking the voters. The shopkeepers and tradesmen, meanwhile, are lining up to receive his grovelling submission. (Either way, it worked. Fox won the seat, despite intense campaigning against him from the government, headed by Fox’s great political rival, the Younger Pitt).2

Well, needless to say, the canvassing that I have undertaken was always more dignified. Generally, I enjoyed the process. Rarely encountered voters who were rude or personally unpleasant. Often, it was just a case of ‘Will you be voting Labour?’ …, and, after the reply: ‘Oh thank you’ … or not as the case may have been.

Meanwhile, there were, from time to time, real doorstep debates. We canvassers are not supposed to linger but instead are required to press on relentlessly. But I enjoyed the rare chances for real conversations. Once as a student, when canvassing close to my parental home in Sidcup, I remember an impromptu doorstep encounter – discussing the pros and cons of comprehensive education with a genuinely questing voter, who was keen to get my views – and to share his. It was a stimulating exchange.

Later, on another occasion, in 2004, after the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq in 2003, a voter said curtly to me, on the doorstep, that all supporters of the Labour Party were war-criminals. Well, I could not let that pass unchallenged; and, although the leader of our canvassing team was urging me to move onwards, I remained for a good half an hour. We talked, at first fairly heatedly. but then more calmly. I did not myself support the invasion; but I reviewed the case for ousting Saddam Hussein; and I also talked about the immediacy of politics – the need for snap decisions; and the non-stop debates within as well as between the political parties.

By the end, the voter thanked me. She had not changed her mind – nor had I tried to change it for her. But she understood why I remained in the Labour Party – and she was glad that I’d stayed to talk through the issues.

Such moments made the whole procedure worthwhile. Rational democracy in action! And there have been plenty of other doorstep debates, though usually less basic than rebutting accusations of war-criminality.

Yet … I also learned that politics is not always about considered deliberations. There is scope too for quick and pointed repartee. Once, when first canvassing with my father in Sidcup, a voter asked on the doorstep with real anger in his voice: ‘What about the Labour Government’s failed groundnut scheme?’ 3 I then knew nothing of the issue (and cannot claim much expertise now!) Fortunately, my father was at a nearby doorstep. Quickly, I asked the voter to wait and ran over to consult my canvassing mentor. He said: ‘Go back and ask in reply: “What about Suez?”’4  I promptly did so. The voter stopped ranting and muttered ‘Oh yes, you’ve got a point there!’ He confirmed that he’d vote Labour – and I learned the value of smart repartee.

So there we are! In the big political battles, doorstep canvassers are mere foot-soldiers in the trenches. They know that. And the voters know it too. Yet, as already noted, these doorstep consultations are usually conducted politely. Voters may not want to see you at the moment that you call. But they do like to know that the political parties are out-and-about in the neighbourhood, talking to voters and picking up on local issues and casework. If there is no canvassing, there are liable to be complaints of: ‘We never see you!’ But they do often see Labour canvassers in Battersea, where I now live. It’s good for the voters; and educational for the canvassers too! ‘What about the groundnut scheme?’ … ‘Well, what about Suez?’ Long live doorstep democracy!

ENDNOTES:

1 See e.g. R. Behr, Politics – A Survivor’s Guide: How to Stay Involved without Getting Enraged (London, 2024).

2 For Charles James Fox (1749-1806), see L.G. Mitchell, Charles James Fox (Oxford, 1992); and for context, consult the impressive website on ‘Eighteenth-Century Political Participation and Electoral Culture’: https://ecppec.ncl.ac.uk.

3 For the Labour government’s project in Tanganyika (now Tanzania) the mid-1940s, see A. Wood, The Groundnut Affair (London, 1950); and N. Westcott, Imperialism and Development: The East African Groundnut Scheme and its Legacy (Woodbridge, 2020).

4 For the Anglo-French 1956 invasion of Egypt, see H. Thomas, The Suez Affair (London, 1967); S. Lucas, Britain and Suez: The Lion’s Last Roar (Manchester, 1996); and K. Kyle, Suez: Britain’s End of Empire in the Middle East (London, 2003).

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MONTHLY BLOG 161, DO LOCAL PEOPLE CARE ABOUT THE DIRE STATE OF WANDSWORTH PRISON?

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Exterior View of HM Wandsworth Prison from Heathfield Road
Source: Wikipedia

Do local people care about the dire state of Wandsworth Prison, as currently reported by reliable sources? Yes, they do. Perhaps surprisingly, but certainly encouragingly, they do.

On Wednesday 10 April 2024, I attended an evening meeting at St Anne’s Church Wandsworth, called by a concerned group of local Quakers and others who were launching their Wandsworth Prison Improvement Campaign.1 The capacious venue was packed. We did not have an official register of attendance; but my own head-count made it at least 250 people. Mainly middle-aged; but with a scattering of youngsters too. All listening intently.

We heard testimonies from prison reform campaigners, the former prison chaplain, former inmates, and the relatives of people currently serving time within the Prison. It is one of the largest in the country. It was opened in 1851, initially as the Surrey House of Correction, designed to hold some 700 prisoners. In 2023 it was estimated to be holding double that – between 1,300 and 1,500 inmates, including a number of individuals who are only on remand. The guilty and the innocent alike are housed in cells that were built for one inmate and now serve two. Rats and other vermin are rife.

Moreover, because of current staff shortages, those within spend much of the time locked up in their small cells, without opportunities for exercise, recreation or socialising with anyone other than their cell-mate. Little wonder that drug abuse is reportedly rife.2 Little wonder too that incidents of violence, in the form of inmate attacks upon one another and upon staff, are reportedly rising.3 In addition, there are growing numbers of prisoners with mental health problems – and an escalating shortage of (poorly paid) staff.

The packed audience was clearly uncomfortable at some of the information provided. And also indignant. But what impressed me was the positive mood of determination, rather than a collective and hopeless despondency. People were all asking: what can we do? The answer is that we must all, in our different ways, try to shine a light onto the closed prison. It is part of our neighbourhood. It employs people who are our neighbours. A proportion of the inmates are no doubt our local neighbours too (though prisoners are also moved round the country depending upon the availability of cells to be filled). And prisoners, having served their time, also return to the communities in which we all live.

Many small acts of lobbying, writing to our MPs, attending protest meetings, spreading the word, etc. will add up to something rather more than the sum of lots of individual actions.

So overall, the evening was one that conveyed appalling and distressing information, but also one that inspired those present with civic determination to campaign for change. Great! The mood at the first anti-slavery rallies in the 1790s must have been rather similar.4 We need a national conversation about the role of prisons – and, importantly, about safe alternatives to prisons – and the vital need to rehabilitate rather than brutalise offenders, who are all fellow citizens.

Small pebbles thrown into a pond can make major waves! Good luck to the Wandsworth Prison Improvement Campaign! Its website gives helpful advice on how best to lobby MP and prison ministers. Feeling civic (as I am)? Throw a pebble and help to get urgently needed and seriously real reform.

ENDNOTES:

1 For details see https://www.wandsworthprisoncampaign.co.uk/.

2 Report on BBC News 7 Sept. 2023, ‘Wandsworth Prison Life: Decay, Drugs and Drudgery’.  For context, see too https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HM_Prison_Wandsworth.

3 An Independent Monitoring Board was reported in Evening Standard 11 Oct. 2023, as finding conditions in the prison ‘inhumane’ and the resulting environment ‘unsafe’ for both guards and prisoners: https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/wandsworth-prison-conditions-independent-monitoring-board-report-b1112696.html.

4 See e.g. Z. Gifford, Thomas Clarkson and the Campaign against Slavery (1996); C. Midgley, Women against Slavery: The British Campaigns, 1780-1870 (1992); and J.R. Oldfield, Popular Politics and British Anti-Slavery: The Mobilisation of Public Opinion against the Slave Trade, 1787-1807 (1998).

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MONTHLY BLOG 156, Tracking Social Media: It’s High Time for Effective Regulation

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Yes, there are a range of good reasons for authorial anonymity. These are fully acknowledged in my MONTHLY BLOG/155 (November 2023).1

Yet … humans are tricky creatures. That trickiness, of course, helps to explain why authors so often seek anonymity in the first place. They may need to be protected in order to speak out against ruthless or corrupt employers.

Nonetheless, humans can also use secrecy, not just to protect themselves from harm, but also to harm others. Anonymous authors can lie, as well as speak truth to power. Indeed, some authors, writing anonymously, discover that the normal social restraints are subtly loosened. They find within themselves hitherto unsuspected levels of venom and hostility.

The result is that anonymous foul-speaking, trouble-stirring trolls have become a contemporary social curse, especially on social media. Trolling onslaughts can include cases of cyber-bullying; threats to the recipients and their families; stalking; and sexual harassment. All such behaviours are crimes. Yet they are masked by secrecy – and quasi-justified by claims of ‘free speech’.

Lawyers will, of course, point out that – these days – human rights are all embedded in frameworks of law. Free speech is an invaluable thing. No question. But it is not utterly untrammelled. There are laws world-wide which attempt to control written defamation (libel) and its spoken equivalent (slander).2 In effect, the legal framework tries to balances the right to freedom of speech with the right to protection from defamation, harassment, bullying and other criminal abuses.

However, today, the plurality of publication outlets, via the explosion of social media, has made those laws very hard to enforce. So what follows?

Historical practice is relevant here. When print publications began to multiply across sixteenth-century Europe, a de facto case law emerged. It became accepted that publishers are legally responsible for materials that appear under their imprimatur. Hence they tried to avoid publishing works that could be construed as defamatory, obscene, blasphemous, inciting criminal behaviour, breaching someone else’s copyright, or otherwise illegal.3   Quite a list!

As part of that responsibility, it has also become established that published works should show the name of the publisher, plus the location and date of the publication.4 Thus, while authors can remain anonymous (or can write under a pseudonym), their print publishers are ‘on the record’.

Similarly, a printed newspaper has the right to protect its sources. Some information is derived from sources who do not want to be named. But the newspaper owners and their editorial teams take legal responsibility for whatever is published. (Hence they generally double check their sources wherever possible). It means that ideas and arguments – and statements about individuals and causes – are not just bandied around in a legal void.5

When it comes to the internet, however, the explosion of social media – and the ease with which everyone has access – has dramatically changed the playing-field. The evolving legal framework was trying to balance an individual’s right to free speech with the parallel right to reasonable protection. There is also a collective social interest at stake. It is highly important that people have reliable access to the stock of knowledge and are not being misled by ‘fake news’ or ‘fake information’.

Research shows that using social media regularly can have both positive and negative effects on individuals.6 One adverse impact is a sense of personal impunity through anonymity. That has the effect of weakening normal social- and self-controls. People – and groups – indulge in over-the-top hatreds and invective. And so a dangerous ‘hate culture’ is born.

Furthermore, an unregulated social media ‘free-for-all’ is dangerous not only for the venom and/or errors of expressed opinions but also for the extreme velocity with which everything is circulated – unchecked.  So people are at risk of being fed on a daily diet of false-information and fake facts, which seem to be beyond checking and correction. Put at its most extreme, the entire corpus of careful and verified knowledge, which has been patiently accumulated and tested by humans over successive generations, may be at risk.

What is to be done? There must be an internationally agreed legal framework for regulating the internet (and for the ‘dark web’), just as there are legal frameworks for print culture. Easy to say! Hard to achieve! But the bedrock must be that web-publishers take responsibility not for every detail but for the broad reliability and non-criminality of the material which they broadcast. And each social transmission should include (ideally) the name of the sending account; (invariably) the name of the transmission agency (equivalent to the print publisher); and (invariably) the date/time of transmission.

Individual contributors, meanwhile, should be encouraged to take full ownership of their own views. In normal circumstances, they should fly under their own colours, with full name and identification.

But, as already agreed, at times there are good reasons for remaining anonymous. In such circumstances, someone else must step up and take responsibility. Every communication must have a known publisher, who can be tracked and held accountable.

To repeat: humans are tricky creatures. They have so many good qualities – and the reverse. What they have learned, painfully and slowly, is that their societies operate successfully only within frameworks of laws and regulation. Sure, there are disputes all the way about how such frameworks are operated in practice. No system will be perfect.  But that’s not the point.

Crucially, the big and ultra-serious point is that, without properly enforced regulation, today’s social media will strangle the life and knowledge out of all day-to-day human associations. The question is therefore not whether social media need a proper framework of regulation – but, rather, how the deed is to be done. There’s no call for censorship. But there is an urgent need for regulation.

Unsurprisingly, today there is much debate on this hot topic.7 There are many helpful suggestions out there. So it’s now time for a big public debate – followed by decisive action! Collectively, humanity is today facing many testing problems. It’s time to apply our collective ingenuity and creativity to resolve them. We must have transparency within social media systems, at specified levels and in specified ways. We must curb the circulation of fakery, misinformation, hatreds, and criminality.

Humanity is born ingenious. And it must use that ingenuity to keep the best of our inventions and to curb the excesses. It’s a global battle that we need to win. After all, if we fail, then we have nothing to lose but our brains.

ENDNOTES:

1 PJC, ‘The Anonymous Author: Seeking Justified Privacy or Avoiding Responsible Transparency?’ BLOG/ 155 (Nov. 2023) on www.penelopejcorfield.com/monthly-blogs.

2 See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamation (viewed 28 Nov. 2023).

3 For the UK, see e.g. J. Kirsch, Kirsch’s Handbook of Publishing Law: For Authors, Publishers, Editors and Agents (Acrobat Books, 1995).

4 G. Cole, ‘The Historical Development of the Title Page’, Journal of Library History, Vol.6, no 4 (1971), pp. 303-16.

5 In England, the current legal situation is governed by the 2013 Defamation Act, supplemented by the common law.

6 Pew Research Centre (USA), ‘The Future of Free Speech, Trolls, Anonymity and Fake News Online’ (29 March 2017), in https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2017/03/29/the-future-of-free-speech-trolls-anonymity-and-fake-news-online (viewed 29 Nov. 2023).

7 See thoughtful discussions, from a variety of perspectives, in J. Naughton, ‘Has the Internet Become a Failed State?’, The Observer, 27 Nov. 2016; A. Macrina and T. Cooper, Anonymity: Library Futures (Chicago, 2019); D. Ghosh, ‘Are We Entering a New Era of Social Media Regulation?’ Harvard Business Review (Jan. 2021): https://hbr.org/2021/01/are-we-entering-a-new-era-of-social-media-regulation (viewed 29 Nov. 2023); J. Susskind, ‘We Can Regulate Social Media without Censorship – Here’s How’, Time Magazine, 22 July 2022); M. MacCarthy, ‘Transparency is Essential for Effective Social Media Regulation’, Brookings Institution Washington – Commentary (Nov. 2022): https://www.brookings.edu/article/transparency-is-essential-for-effective-social-media-regulation/ (viewed 29 Nov. 2023).

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MONTHLY BLOG 155, The anonymous author, seeking justified privacy or avoiding responsible transparency?

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Last month I meditated on the need for fair and intelligent framework regulation for all manner of human activities. We are an ingenious but tricky species. Our best qualities and finest inventions can be used for dire purposes; or can generate malign results in the long run, even if no-one has actually willed such an outcome. Hence the need for clear and intelligent regulation.1

Such thoughts also raise questions about the pros and cons of anonymous writing. It can today be such a scourge. For example, on social media, vituperative hate messages are often sent to families of murdered children. Parents are accused of negligence in leaving their child at risk – or charged with outright complicity in the death. All from anonymous writers who have fierce anger to express, and not even minimal concern for the recipients’ feelings.

Logically, of course, it may even be that – however rarely – such accusations are correct. Children are sometimes murdered by family members. But pointing a finger anonymously, in an outpouring of anger and blame, does not help to identify a malefactor. It makes innocent parents feel worse. And (at a guess) it is likely to make guilty ones even more determined to hide their guilt.

The only ones pleased by such anonymous accusations are presumably the accusers themselves. They can feel, self-righteously, that they have seen the truth; denounced the guilty; and purged themselves of their own distress and anger at the brutal death of a child. Hence, in a world of ever-extending mass literacy, all can have a voice and vent their innermost primal feelings.

But is such a justification good enough? Do not primal feelings also need to operate within a broad (if flexible) set of rules?

So let’s review the case for anonymity. Firstly, it can be an essential shield for the powerless, when seeking to take action against the powerful.2 Whistle-blowers in the workplace, who do not wish to lose their jobs, but who do wish to reveal wrong-doing, often use the cloak of anonymity. Indeed, some organisations today positively recommend having a known channel for such communications to be made secretly and safely; and there are companies that either offer to set up a secure internal hotline or to provide one themselves.3

Similarly, would-be rebellious citizens living under powerful tyrannies may choose to act anonymously against their oppressors. If rebels oppose publicly, they often end up dead or in prison. If they act covertly, they live to continue the fight another day.

Historically, too, there are well-documented cases of anonymous protest. Desperately poor agricultural labourers in early nineteenth-century Britain sent barely literate unsigned letters to local landowners and magistrates, voicing grievances and threatening violence unless remedial action was taken.4 Hence, while anonymous letters are often considered to be written with a ‘poison pen’5 – like anonymous messages on social media today – they can be used to issue challenges to apparently impregnable powers-that-be.

Throughout, however, it’s wise to remember the trickiness of humans. Not all anonymous accusations against powerful – or even tyrannical leaders – are automatically accurate. While anonymity may, be justifiable in specific circumstances, it cannot confer infallibility.

Then there’s a different set of reasons. A considerable number of modest authors want public attention to focus entirely upon their writings, not upon themselves.6 They may be shy, private people. Some too may be acutely anxious.7 They all want to communicate but they want their output to stand or fall upon its own merits.

Moreover, numerous women writers, in the early days of the novel, rightly did not want to be patronised or side-lined because of their sex. As a result, a number first published anonymously, as did Jane Austen – though she did admit to being ‘A Lady’. Others used male pseudonyms. In the mid-1840s, the three Brontë sisters famously first published as Acton [Anne], Currer [Charlotte] and Ellis [Emily] Bell. At least they kept their original initials in full. Marian or Maryanne Evans, who published as George Eliot, had other concerns in mind – saluting her unofficial partner George Lewes by using his first name. The options are endless. It suffices that the ‘pen-name’ is the alter ego, standing forth in the public eye.8

In all cases, anonymous or pseudonymous novelists preserve the capacity to go quietly about their lives – observing the follies and foibles of their fellow humans – without being pestered or pursued by readers. Remaining unknown also safeguards authors from public embarrassment in the event of failure.

Presumably some combination of these motivations inspired numerous male authors to follow the same route. Samuel Leghorne Clemens later flowered as the celebrated American author, Mark Twain. One Marie-Henri Beyle later turned himself into the magisterial French author, Stendhal.  The insightful British author, George Orwell, was named by his parents as Eric Arthur Blair – with a first name that he was particularly keen to discard, thinking it too ‘priggish’.

Today, moreover, the successful crime thrillers by the female Spanish author, Carmen Mola, turn out to be authored by not one man but by three, working together anonymously.9 So an element of fun and play may also lie behind the use of pseudonyms. And no doubt an element of private laughter may follow, when the public is successfully hoaxed.

Yet … what about the principle of transparency? What about ‘owning’ one’s actions? Taking responsibility? Standing up to be counted? Playing fair with the public? Preventing false attributions and fake identities? Thoughts on these further burning questions, which haunt the history of publishing and communication, will be the subject of my next BLOG/156 in December 2023.

ENDNOTES:

1 See PJC BLOG/154 ‘In Praise of (Judicious) Regulation’ (Oct. 2023).

2 K. Kenny, Whistleblowing: Toward a New Theory (Cambridge, Mass., 2019); J.R. Arnold, Whistleblowers, Leakers and their Networks: From Snowden to Samizdat (Lanham, Md, 2020); T. Bazzichelli (ed.), Whistleblowing for Change: Exposing Systems of Power and Injustice (Bielefeld, 2021).

3 See e.g. https://www.northwhistle.com or https://www.safecall.co.uk/en/why-safecall.

4 E.P. Thompson, ‘The Crime of Anonymity’, in E.P. Thompson and others, Albion’s Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth-Century England (New York; 1975), pp. 255-308, with sampler of anonymous letters, pp. 309-41. [It’s good to acknowledge here the help in this research given to EPT by his old friend, the local historian E.E. Dodd].

5 E. Cockayne, Penning Poison: A History of Anonymous Letters (Oxford, 2023).

6 See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Works_published_anonymously (viewed 27 Oct. 2023).

7 For meditations on the psychology of anonymity, see E.M. Forster [Edward Morgan], Anonymity: An Enquiry (London, 1925); J. Schecter, Anonymity (London, 2011).

8 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Works_published_under_a_pseudonym (viewed 27 Oct. 2023).

9 They are Jorge Díaz, Agustín Martínez, and Antonio Mercero, three Spanish script-writers: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmen_Mola (viewed 27 Oct. 2023).

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MONTHLY BLOG 154, IN PRAISE OF (JUDICIOUS) REGULATION

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Image 1:
© Flaticon 2023

Humans are wondrously inventive. It’s the cultural trademark of the species. Simultaneously, however, humans are also reflective creatures. They eventually realise – with greater or less reluctance – that their inventions and innovations need good framework regulations to operate successfully. Unless the impact of significant change remains fully monitored, there is always a risk that creative inventions may help in one direction but may simultaneously cause unintended collateral damage in another.

Think of the motor car.  Freedom on four wheels – for those who have their hands on the wheel.  Immensely exciting. Yet … there are other people on the roads. Initially, in towns, the exciting new motor cars were each preceded by a walker, carrying a flag. Hardly the romance of the open road.

It quickly became apparent that the new vehicles could kill and main. In August 1896, for example, one Mrs Bridget Driscoll from Croydon received fatal injuries when she was struck by a slow-moving car which was giving demonstration rides at Crystal Palace, London (UK).1 And the drivers were themselves at risk. A wall plaque at Harrow-on-the-Hill records that fact, under the blunt heading ‘TAKE HEED’. It marks the location of the first recorded car accident in Britain (in 1899) that was fatal to the driver.2

Now, over one hundred and twenty years later, there are billions of motorised vehicles in all corners of the globe. And there are ample regulations and ‘rules of the road’.

In many (though not all) streets, pedestrian walkways are demarcated from driving areas. There are rules about which side of the road drivers should use. There are markings to designate traffic lanes. There are parking regulations; and, in places, local road taxes. There are traffic lights to regulate traffic flows at major junctions. At key places, there are also special pedestrian crossings. There are speed limits (if not always honoured). In many countries, too, there are rules about the wearing of seat belts. Further regulations require drivers to pass an official test, before being licensed to drive. (Beginners in Britain have to display the letter L for ‘Learner’ on their cars). All vehicles meanwhile need to be tested annually for road-worthiness; and to be fully insured against accidents.

Collectively, the aim is to obviate dangerous driving and to safeguard all road users. In Britain, the emergent ‘rules of the road’ were codified in 1931 as The Highway Code. It applies to all individuals using the roads, whether on foot, on horseback, or on wheels.3 Other countries produced their own versions. And in 1968, these variegated rules were codified into an international standard. Known as the Vienna Convention of Road Traffic, it is designed to facilitate international road traffic.4 Not all countries have ratified the treaty which confirmed its regulations. But the long-term pressures, arising from increasing cross-border traffic, make it unlikely that individual countries will be able to stand aloof from the international consensus.

At every stage in the evolution of these regulations, there have been arguments – often heated ones. Rival calls for ‘freedom’ and for ‘communal safeguards’ have been issued, often with intense passion. Currently, the same arguments are being canvassed with reference to urgent campaigns to reduce noxious carbon emissions, especially in large and heavily trafficked cities. As yet, there is no consensus; but it is not hard to predict that the unfolding climate crisis will hand eventual victory to the regulators – and, hopefully soon at that!

All these outcomes are far from the stately steps of the first flag-bearers, who walked in front of the first motor cars. But the undeniable need for community standards was apparent from the start. Imagine today’s 1.49 billion motor vehicles at large, without any regulation whatsoever. There would be total global grid-lock. And the first to call for properly enforced rules of the road would be the global billions of drivers.

So what follows? Mass human living depends upon proper regulation of all manner of things. From the safe building of houses, schools, bridges, and roads; to the safe storage of nuclear waste; to the efficient removal and treatment of human bodily waste.

Rather than arguing abstractly about the pros and cons of ‘freedom’ versus ‘regulation’, it’s much more productive to consider instead the key principles that should underpin judicious and appropriate community regulation.

Here then are five key principles:

(1) It’s essential that the need for regulations should be clearly explained and understood by a good majority of the adults within any community.

(2) It’s also vital that regulations are set and supervised by disinterested parties, whose identity is known and on the record. Self-regulation quickly becomes slack and ineffectual’; and can degenerate into criminal negligence.

(3) It’s also important that regulation is undertaken intelligently with a good sense of the overall objectives, so that rules are clearly comprehensible and manageable. Rules that appear to constitute nothing more than nit-picking and obstructive ‘red tape’ are liable to be held in contempt and evaded.

(4) It’s equally essential that the reporting of regulatory scrutiny and assessment is undertaken with scrupulous fairness – and the outcomes conveyed to interested parties with empathy and care. It may be that criminal prosecutions will follow in some specific circumstances; but regulation and assessment is a social and communal art, not primarily a legal process.

(5) Regulators always need reasonable security and independence in their role, so that they cannot be influenced in a partisan manner – or dismissed on a whim. Yet, simultaneously, they themselves should be regularly reviewed and their authority regularly renewed. Thus it should always be known to whom regulators are answerable: whether to local, national or international authorities.

Lastly, is there a better term for ‘regulation’? It can seem, at best, to be merely petty. Or, at worst, to be intrusive and meddling. After all, most people have broken minor rules on one occasion or another. Drivers sometimes exceed the specified speed limit. Pedestrians at times cross roads when the pedestrian lights signal ‘WAIT’. Even the most law-abiding citizens can be occasional rule-breakers on a minor scale. But that’s not really the point.

The key need is for a known framework of collective standards, which are set, monitored, and updated communally. In that way, human creativity and invention can flourish, without back-firing. Community standards with mass endorsement can obviate chaos. These tasks require debate, negotiation, clear-eyed realism, goodwill – and optimism. All excellent qualities! Onwards! 

ENDNOTES:

1 Guinness World Records: https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/first-person-killed-by-a-car (viewed 20 Sept. 2023).

2 H. Turner, ‘The Story of Britain’s First Fatal Car Crash’ (2016): in https://harrowonline.org/2016/04/13/the-story-of-britains-first-fatal-car-crash-harrow-1899/ (viewed 20 Sept. 2023).

3 A preliminary booklet was introduced in 1921, following discussions between the police and the Automobile Association (founded 1905). In 1931, the rules were standardised as the Highway Code, and issued by the government: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Highway_Code (viewed 20 Sept. 2023).

4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vienna_Convention_on_Road_Traffic (viewed 20 Sept. 2023).

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MONTHLY BLOG 147, A Great Painted Tribute to an Eighteenth-Century Cultural Ambassador between Global East & West

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Joshua Reynolds, Portrait of Omai

Image 1: Joshua Reynolds, Portrait of Omai (c.1776)
This cultural ambassador to Britain from the other side of the world
is shown in ‘exotic’ robes and with bare feet –
but his pose is open and friendly,
and his gaze (said to be a good likeness) is candid

As British sailors and explorers increasingly travelled the world in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,1 so the public back home clamoured to read all about it. Fictional fantasias like Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719) and Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726) became instant best-sellers. And factual accounts were eagerly consulted too.

In 1703, London society was enthused by the presence of a strange traveller, purporting to have arrived from Formosa (today’s Taiwan).2 He had exotic habits; and recounted tall tales about life in the orient. His Historical and Geographical Description of Formosa (1704) had a huge success – and was quickly translated into German and French. The book included details of the Formosan language; and provided a Formosan translation of the Lord’s Prayer.

Alas, however, it was all invented nonsense. The author turned out to be a mendacious Frenchman, named George Psalmanazar (c.1679-1763). His imposture was soon discovered; and his fame collapsed. Oddly, however, the man himself did not disappear, shamefaced. He continued to live in London as a jobbing writer, and later repented his Formosan hoax. Psalmanazar’s brief surge to fame had, however, undeniably shown that there was great public curiosity to learn about the wider world.

Another exotic visitor reached Britain in the 1770s. But this youthful Polynesian newcomer was the real thing. Omai (c.1751-c.1779), also known as Mai in his own language, was a cultural ambassador, bearing witness to his own people’s distinctive way-of-life.3 In personality, he was gracious, charming and amusing. And he was also willing to learn, managing after a while to speak good English, with his own accent.

Omai had arrived in 1774, on one of the ships returning from Captain Cook’s second voyage of discovery in the Pacific; and was greeted with immense excitement. He socialised with many luminaries, including King George III, Dr Samuel ‘Dictionary’ Johnson, the naturalist Sir Joseph Banks, and the novelist Fanny Burney. All who met Omai could observe differences of race, language, culture and clothing – as well as their shared humanity.4

The eminent artist Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-92) painted Omai as a princely visitor, majestic yet with his feet well and truly on the ground. He was no threat; no monster; no fiction.

Eventually, Omai returned to the island of Tahiti with Captain Cook (1728-79), when the great explorer made his third voyage to the Pacific – a voyage that took Cook on to discoveries, misunderstandings, quarrels and his own death in Hawaii.5 Reflecting upon the impact of the Tahitian traveller, the playwright John O’Keefe sought to dramatise the case for peaceful co-existence. In the pantomime, Omai, the heir to the throne of Tahiti, is due to marry Londina, the daughter of Britannia. Yet they struggle against many obstacles. The play helped to gild the reputations of both Cook and Omai. However, by the time that Omai: Or, a Trip Round the World was first performed in 1785, the real-life hero had died young in Tahiti.

Given that global encounters throughout the eighteenth century were very often marred by misunderstandings and conflicts, Omai’s peaceful embassy was a model for the constructive exchange of global knowledge. He did not do amazing things. Nor did he write his memoirs (shame!). Instead, he was a living cultural ambassador, whose message is as relevant today as it was then.

Today there is a campaign to save the Portrait of Omai for the nation.6 If successful, the painting will be sent on tour in Britain and possibly also at some future date to Tahiti, to continue the mutual cultural exchange that the real man himself undertook. Would Omai, Captain Cook, and Joshua Reynolds (to name but three eminent Georgians) have approved? They certainly would. They valued shared global knowledge; and so must we.

Images 2 and 3: Details from separate portraits of Omai and of James Cook,
here with their heads put together as if conversing,
as they undoubtedly did in real life.

ENDNOTES:

1 P.J. Corfield, The Georgians: The Deeds and Misdeeds of Eighteenth-Century Britain (London, 2022), pp. 20-40.

2 M. Keevak, The Pretended Asian: George Psalmanazar’s Eighteenth-Century Formosan Hoax (Detroit, Michigan, 2004).

3 G. Rendle-Short (ed.), Cook and Omai: The Cult of the South Seas (Canberra, 2001); R.M. Connaughton, Omai: The Prince who Never Was (London, 2005).

4 L.H. Zerne, ‘“Having a Lesson of Attention from Omai”: Frances Burney, Omai the Tahitian, and Eighteenth-Century British Constructions of Racial Difference’, Burney Journal, 10 (2010), pp.  87-104.

5 G. Williams, The Death of Captain Cook: A Hero Made and Unmade (London, 2008); N. Thomas, Discoveries: The Voyages of Captain Cook (London, 2018).

6 J. Gapper, ‘Joshua Reynolds’ “Painting of Omai” is a National Treasure. Why Are We Struggling to Save It’? Financial Times, 23 Feb. 2023 https://www.ft.com/content/bfa30b2c-b1bc-446a-89ad-03b558f37ba5 (consulted 24-4-2023). For information on the appeal, see artfund.org/donate.

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We Can Do It. Womens symbol of female power and industry. Doodle cartoon woman with grl pwr tattoo.

MONTHLY BLOG 145, Being a Citizen whilst Living under a Hereditary Monarchy

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We Can Do It. Womens symbol of female power and industry.

‘Yes We Can!’
Campaigning Citizens today are Not Halted by Britain’s Constitutional Monarchy
© Vector 26202920

It was infuriating twice over: firstly, to be informed by a contributor to the New York Review of Books that the British people are ‘subjects, not citizens’;1 and, secondly, to realise that my protesting Letter to the Editor, sent twice in case it went astray first time round, is not going to be published in the NYRB columns.

But what the hell!? Instead, my riposte is going to appear as my January 2023 BLOG, slightly expanded from my original letter. And I will send copies both to the author of the erroneous comment; and to the negligent editor, who is apparently uninterested in correcting factual mistakes in the NYRB columns.

The infuriating remark about the Brits appeared in an otherwise eloquent and enlightening essay by the Dublin-born author and critic, Fintan O’Toole. I guess that his constitutional put-down of the Brits is a common enough view among the Republican Irish. And it is true that Britain still maintains its hereditary monarchy, as recently demonstrated by the peaceful transition from Elizabeth II to Charles III. And it is equally true that, according to strict monarchical theory, those living under such a monarchy are ‘subjects’.

However, that is only half of a long story. Well before the twentieth century, the ‘free-born’ Brits were intensely proud of their rhetoric of personal freedom and independence. They stressed their individual rights vis-à-vis the executive powers of the land, going back to Magna Carta. And they knew the terminology of ‘citizenship’. Over time, the English use of the term was broadened – from originally meaning the freemen of chartered cities – to indicate, by extension, all legal residents within a national jurisdiction.

So Dr Johnson’s celebrated Dictionary in 1755 gave the term three shades of meaning – one being simply ‘an inhabitant; a dweller in any place’. And a later study by Thorold Rogers, entitled The British Citizen: His Rights and Privileges (1885), was not intended to be controversial.2

Moreover, the concept was extended to cover not only Brits at home but also the residents in Britain’s colonies. One famous rhetorical flourish from Lord Palmerston made that point. As Britain’s Foreign Secretary, he practised gunboat diplomacy. So when a Gibraltar-born merchant named Don Pacifico was maltreated in Greece, Palmerston sent the Royal Navy to blockage Athens in protest. He stated that all people living under the British flag were entitled to protection, whether at home or overseas, by the British state. And he cited a proud maxim from classical Rome. ‘Civis Romanus sum’ [I am a citizen of Rome] – implying that ‘all, who mistreat me, will face the wrath of Rome’.3

How the press and public loved it. On the day after Palmerston’s big speech, one newspaper praised him for extending his protecting arm ‘over every one of his countrymen’.4 Opponents sniffed at the cost and the potential diplomatic ramifications. But, by clear implication, ‘civis Britannicus’ could expect to be as well safeguarded as were the citizens of Rome. (How that protection works in practice was and is, needless to say, not always straightforward or satisfactory).

Interestingly, Palmerston’s rhetoric of shared citizenship referred simultaneously to his fellow Britons as ‘British subjects’. In the custom of the time, he used ‘men’ as the collective term for men and women. He also alluded interchangeably to the state as ‘Britain’ and ‘England’. These imprecisions were highly characteristic of the linguistic eclecticism of a country, whose constitution evolved in bits and pieces over time, as did the organisation of its overseas empire. (Another example of imprecision is the still-continuing practice of referring to the British monarchs of the United Kingdom post-1707 as kings and queens ‘of England’).

Eventually, pressures for international standardisation and clarification encouraged moves for legislative elucidation. In 1948, the Labour government responded with the Nationality Act. It declared all Britons and all residents of Britain’s colonies to be citizens of the United Kingdom and its Colonies.5

King George VI signed the new law into existence without hesitation. And there were no protests from ardent monarchists. (Perhaps the shade of Palmerston was cheering). In effect, this legislation was clarifying the already-existing dual status of the British people – both as subjects of the monarch as Head of State, and as free citizens of an independent nation.

A further British Citizenship Act in 1981 refined the categories of people who are entitled to claim that status.6 Its details proved controversial. But again there were no protests from ardent monarchists at the explicit terminology of national ‘citizenship’. And Queen Elizabeth II obediently signed the law into existence. She also accepted without protest Britain’s accession to the European Union, which technically turned her too, between 1993 (the Maastricht Treaty) and 2020 (Britain’s secession from the Union), into a citizen of Europe.7

There are manifest complexities alongside evident simplicities. Britons have long lived with plural identities. We are Britons – yet also English, Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish – plus the national affiliations of all who have settled in the British Isles from overseas. We are legally the subjects of a hereditary monarchy. Yet we are also free citizens of the British state. And some of us like to think too that we are ‘citizens of the world’.

Does this lack of strict logic matter? The answer is: No, not really. It is a way of living with organically evolving constitutional changes. Even nations with tightly written constitutions find that they have to make adaptations upon occasions. A flexible illogic works well enough, as long as all concerned can agree to accept its functional viability.

In the case of Britain, I have lived a lifetime under a monarchy. I do feel myself to be a free citizen. I don’t feel ‘subjected’. If there were a referendum tomorrow on keeping the British monarchy, I would join the minority of Britons who would vote for a republic and an elected president (on grounds of logic and constitutional principle).8 Yet I would accept the verdict of my fellow citizens if a majority wish to keep the institution. It works as long as the British people want it to work – and as long as the hereditary monarchs play their ceremonial roles correctly.

Lastly, some American friends claim that life under a hereditary monarchy is worse, constitutionally and psychologically, than living in the USA, with its lack of strict gun controls. I disagree. Uncontrolled guns kill the innocent, in large numbers. By comparison, today’s constitutional monarchs are pussycats. Ok – they are gilded pussycats, but they lack killer claws. (Virtually all royal prerogative powers are exercised by ministers. They do need reform – but that’s another issue). Britain’s monarchy is an evolving institution. One day (into the future) the monarch will be known as the ‘First Citizen’. And once (back in the past) an English king was convicted of High Treason against the people – and publicly beheaded.9 Monarchs today remember 1649 as do citizens.

ENDNOTES:

1 Fintan O’Toole, ‘The Two Elizabeths’, in New York Review of Books, Vol LXIX/16 (20 October 2022).

2 J.E. Thorold Rogers, The British Citizen: His Rights and Privileges (1885). The possessive adjective indicated that prime political rights in this period were thought of as pertaining to men, although women were not without some legal protections.

3 Palmerston’s speech in the House of Commons, 25 June 1850: see Hansard, CXII [third ser.], pp. 380-444: ‘as the Roman, in days of old, held himself free from indignity, when he could say Civis Romanus sum; so also a British subject, in whatever land he may be, shall feel confident that the watchful eye and the strong arm of England, will protect him against injustice and wrong’. See J. Ridley, Lord Palmerston (2013); L. Fenton, Palmerston and The Times: Foreign Policy, the Press and Public Opinion in Mid-Victorian Britain (2012); and wider context in T.K. Hoppen, The Mid-Victorian Generation, 1846-86 (Oxford, 1998).

4 The Globe, 26 June 1850.

5 British Nationality Act (1948), cap. 56.

6 British Citizenship Act (1981), cap. 61.

7 For the status of Europe’s remaining monarchies within the European Union, see https://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~rwest/wikispeedia/wpcd/wp/m/Monarchies_in_the_European_Union.htm (consulted 1 Jan. 2023).

8 For the history of British republicanism, see A. Taylor, ‘Down with the Crown’: British Anti-Monarchism and Debates about Royalty since 1790 (1999); and for the cause today, see https://www.republic.org.uk/what_we_want (consulted 2 Jan. 2023).

9 All those who signed King Charles I’s death warrant, later known as the Regicides, were punished after the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 – and the corpses of dead regicides were disinterred and publicly dishonoured: see J. Peacey (ed.), The Regicides and the Execution of Charles I (Basingstoke, 2001). Nonetheless, after 1649 future monarchs were much more cautious; and no longer attempted to use absolute powers to legislate or tax at will. For the diminution of independent royal power over the centuries and the consolidation of a ceremonial constitutional monarchy, see B. Hubbard, The Changing Power of the British Monarchy (Oxford, 2018); W.M. Kuhn, Democratic Royalism: The Transformation of the British Monarchy, 1861-1914 (Basingstoke, 1996); and F. Prochaska, Royal Bounty: The Making of a Welfare Monarchy (New Haven, 1995).

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MONTHLY BLOG 132, IS TEACHING SEXY?

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Fig.1 Symbol for Infinity,
referencing the infinite unknown …
Image from Wikimedia Commons (2021)

It’s the author and playwright Alan Bennett who says that teaching is sexy. And, before the massed ranks of educationalists protest instead that their work is exhausting and under-paid, let’s clarify Bennett’s precise formulation. In The History Boys (2004), one of his fictional school-teachers states firmly that: ‘The transmission of knowledge is in itself an erotic act’.1

Of course, there are immediate qualifications to be made. Not all words voiced on stage can be taken as representing the playwright’s deep beliefs. Just as well, for otherwise it would be impossible to write a play about conflicting ideas and contested ideologies.

Nonetheless, The History Boys is infused with tenderness for adolescent boys on the verge of manhood. And the play is conspicuously sympathetic to close teacher engagement with the charms of youth.

So Bennett’s proposition stands, if not as his ultimate personal credo, then as a viewpoint worthy of serious consideration. And, by way of context, it may be noted that, in the early 1960s, the young Alan Bennett was himself briefly an apprentice History don at Magdalen College, Oxford.

First-hand testimony from friends, who had the benefit of his tuition,2 confirms that Bennett was an excellent tutor. He was not only knowledgeable and sagacious, but also very good at inducting baffled student beginners into the required skills for self-directed study. Some came from schools where they relied for information upon ‘teachers’ notes’. Such students were astounded to be given a booklist of 20+ massive tomes and told cheerfully to return in a week with an original essay. Bennett was good at demystification, without being patronising. And, if he was gaining erotic satisfaction from these pedagogic exchanges, he gave no outward intimation of any such state of affairs.

Yet it is still worth asking: is the transmission of knowledge an erotic act? Here this discussion rejects entirely all sexual exploitation of students by teachers. At any and every stage in the educational system, such behaviour is illegal and immoral – and almost invariably damaging to the exploited young. It may be noted, too, that, in The History Boys, the school-master Hector’s explanation of his fondling of young boys’ genitalia as part of the eros of transmitting knowledge, as in the Renaissance, is robustly rebuked by the head-master: ‘Fuck the Renaissance’.

But is there a deeper point to explore about the pleasures of educational exchanges? Something that is not directly sexual. Nor even particularly sensual.

Yes, there is. Indeed, there are genuine intellectual pleasures to be gained from the life of the mind, as well as of the body. The best moments of transmitting and debating ideas with others are exhilarating. It’s exciting to push collectively at the boundaries of knowledge, which reach to infinity. It engenders a genuine electric buzz of the mind. Such excitements are particularly associated with advanced level teaching; but they can occur in any context of intellectual breakthrough. Out of uncertainty into the light: wow!

No special terms comes to mind to acknowledge this joyous and far from everyday experience. Something that is not directly ‘sexy’ or ‘erotic’. But, as they say, something else.

Greek terms offer some range. It is understood that Eros, the god of love, comes in many forms. His/her manifestations are protean. So the lofty Greek agapé means a god-like, universal, and unconditional love. And there is another term, which falls between agapé and eros. It refers to deep, nurturing, supportive and non-sexualised friendship, known as philia. That’s a very pleasant thing to give and to receive.

However, good friendship is not really the same as the intense stimulus of shared intellectual endeavour. Dictionaries of synonyms offer variants such as ‘mental stimulation’ or ‘food for thought’.

All of those are nice. Yet those terms are a bit tame. So let’s simply say that there is a positive intellectual buzz to be derived from the shared transmission of knowledge.

Is the experience erotic? No. Does it happen in every teaching context? No. Does it happen often enough to add zest to the educational process? Yes. Is the intellectual buzz intensely joyous? Yes. It’s generating real intellectual electricity, with its own power and light.

ENDNOTES:

1 A. Bennett, The History Boys (2004), p. 53.

2 Those friends include my life partner, Tony Belton, who studied History at Magdalen College between 1961-64.

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MONTHLY BLOG 127, World citizens in the twenty-first century are generating an ‘international sphere’ of public opinion, outside and beyond the control of national governments.

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Fig.1 Globe in Speech Bubble by Moilleadóir (2009):
from WikiMedia Commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WiktLogo-Bubble-WikiGlobe-red-1-.svg

There is today a growing international sphere of public opinion. It stretches well outside and beyond the control of national governments. It is purely informal; often fragmented; and lacking direct power. Nonetheless it is an identifiable liberal trend in world history – which is causing particular anxieties for repressive states. As a result, there are also hostile forces, working against the emergent international sphere. Yet the global advance of mass literacy since c.1800 is laying the foundation (in 2015. 86% of adults across the world were able to read and write);1 the diffusion of print continues to fan the fire; and the advent of personal computing, plus especially the invention of the world-wide-web in 1989, has thrown (metaphorically) petrol on the blaze.

Not all, but many citizens are now sharing and debating ideas world-wide. The numbers participating are likely to grow. And, in time, the strength of global public opinion, when united, will increasingly influence governments. To take one example, there may well be international people-power calling for faster action to cope with climate change. Of course, global public opinion will not always agree – any more than does public opinion within any nation-state. But debates are part and parcel of all civic life. In other words, it’s better to have people arguing and voting rather than fighting and killing.

This collective arena has recently been identified as a ‘global civil order’.2 And others detect the operation of an ‘international sphere’.3 That latter terminology is a verbal adaptation from an earlier usage, popularised by the German social philosopher, Jürgen Habermas.4 Writing of western Europe in the eighteenth century, he identified the advent of a new ‘public sphere’ or civic arena, which he contrasted with the ‘private sphere’ of the domestic household. Details of his interpretation are disputed. The two spheres were not as separate and self-contained as Habermas assumed. And his dichotomy between the supposedly ‘male’ and ‘bourgeois’ civic sphere and the supposedly ‘female’ household was not nearly as clear cut either.5

Nonetheless, an adapted version of overlapping, rather than separate, spheres is a helpful one, In the course of the eighteenth century, an increasingly literate population across Britain joined in debating ideas and ideologies in books, newspapers, homes, schools, theatres, market-places, coffee-houses, and debating chambers – all the way from private societies to national legislatures.6 And today the debates are taking places not only in household, local and national spheres but also internationally. There is no need to choose between one civic forum or another: they interconnect and overlap. Individuals can thus share interests not only locally but also with others across Planet Earth.

One criticism of this emergent trend was voiced in Britain in 2016 by the then Conservative premier Theresa May. Those individuals who view themselves as ‘citizens of the world’ are really, she claimed, ‘citizens of nowhere’. She further implied that the would-be internationalists were talking just to other international elites, and were betraying their fellow citizens ‘who live down the road’.7 Some cheered. But many, including some of her fellow Conservatives, rebuked her myopia. People should be praised, not blamed, for taking seriously their responsibilities to the global community that lives on Planet Earth. Today, that point is being underlined, more emphatically than ever, by the Covid pandemic and by galloping climate change.

At this point, it’s worth stressing that the emergent international sphere is not in itself hostile to the world’s governments in general (even if specific governments may be strongly opposed). On the contrary, the global exchange of ideas and opinions depends upon a degree of international order. Chronic armed conflict between rival nations clearly does not promote reasoned discourse.

So the achievements of national governments, from the early twentieth century onwards, have been vital, in establishing an institutional framework for international cooperation.8 It doesn’t always work. Crucially, however, this framework does exist. Key bodies include: the League of Nations (founded 1920), followed by the United Nations (1945); plus Interpol (1923); the World Bank (1944), the World Health Organisation (1948); the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT: 1948), followed by the World Trade Organisation (1995),9 the Geneva Conventions on the conduct of warfare (1949); the International Telecommunications Union (1965), the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (1996) and, not least, the International Criminal Court (1998). Support for such initiatives came from national populations who backed governments in thinking internationally; and these changes in turn encouraged further international thinking among ordinary citizens.

All the ensuing non-governmental global conversations are thoroughly diverse. Some are initiated by individual activists. The role of Greta Thunberg, the youthful Swedish environmentalist, is one remarkable case in point, as she tours the world to highlight the need for urgent action on climate change.10

At the same time, many non-governmental links are sustained by an immense number of global organisations.11 Sporting associations had practical reasons for collating their rules. Leading the way in 1881 was the International Gymnastics Federation. Another leader was the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA; founded 1904). Other groups which think globally include the churches; trade unions; professions; academics; librarians; scientists; doctors; and many specialist occupational groups, such as investment bankers. All these, and many others, run international organisations. One venerable and still thriving body is Apimondia, founded by the world’s bee-keepers in 1897.12

There are also numerous international aid or development agencies (some with government funding; many without). These bodies indicate that the charitable impulse, found within most countries, is now being energetically applied world-wide.13 Significantly, too, global lobbying on contentious global issues has grown ever more vigorous. In 2007, Avaaz, an American non-profit web-based organization, rallies international support to advance a liberal-left (non-ideological) agenda, opposing climate change, corruption, poverty, and conflict – and supporting human rights and animal rights.14 By contrast, some international networks deliberately operate on the dark side: those of criminals. money-launderers and people-traffickers, being prime cases.15 Unsurprisingly, these people do not contribute to the global discourse, but are instead the   subject of earnest international debate, in the difficult quest to curb them.

Another admirable set of organisations are devoted to literary and cultural matters. One congenial case is the Robert Burns World Federation, founded in 1885. Run by enthusiasts, it is a charity that promotes and celebrates Scotland’s most famous poet and song-writer. And it provides organisational links for a world-wide network of Burns Clubs (numbering over 250 in 2013).16 The fact that this Federation has now flourished for well over a century is impressive.

Robert Burns has also proved to be a song-writer for the world. In 1788, he wrote Auld Lang Syne, celebrating friendship and remembrance. Set to a traditional Scottish tune, the song has now been translated into at least 41 languages. Not only is it sung at private parties, but it is regularly performed in many countries at graduations, passing-out army parades, and festivities at the turn of the Old Year/New Year.17 It has thus become the world’s most frequently sung song, giving the international sphere an unofficial anthem. (‘We’ll drink a cup of kindness then/ For the sake of auld lang syne’). Once on a visit in Japan, I gave an ad hoc rendering, only to be asked by my audience, with pleased surprise, how I knew this traditional Japanese song so well.18

These internationalist thoughts have been triggered by my participation in the International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies/ Société internationale d’étude du dix-huitième siècle, of which I am currently President.19 This body, founded in 1963, is now nearing its 60th anniversary. It is run on a shoe-string, without any institutional backing, and has 35 affiliated national and regional societies (some more active than others). Together, its membership may be viewed as an update of the eighteenth-century scholars’ ecumenical Republic of Letters.20 And today the Society proudly contributes to the international sphere.

ENDNOTES:

1 See variously D. Vincent, The Rise of Mass Literacy: Reading and Writing in Modern Europe (Cambridge, 2020); M. Roser and E. Otriz-Ospina, Literacy (2013) in website: https://ourworldindata.org/literacy.

2 See D. Laqua, W. Van Acker and C. Verbruggen (eds), International Associations and Global Civil Society: Histories of the Union of International Associations (2019).

3 See two recent book titles: B. Winter and L. Sorbera, Contending Legitimacy in World Politics: The State, Civil Society and the International Sphere in Twenty-First Century Politics (2018); and C.R. Alexander, Frontiers of Public Diplomacy: Hegemony, Morality and Power in the International Sphere (2021).

4 See J. Habermas, Strukturwandel der Bürgerlichen Öffentlichkeit (1963), in 4th edn. (Neuwied, 1969), transl. as The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (Cambridge, Mass., 1989). p. 40.

5 For one pertinent critique among many, see J.A. Downie, ‘The Myth of the Bourgeois Public Sphere’, in C. Wall (ed.), A Concise Companion to the Restoration and Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 2004), pp. 58-79.

6 See e.g. H. Barker, Newspapers, Politics and Public Opinion in Late Eighteenth-Century Britain (Oxford, 1998); H. Kerr, D. Lemmings and R. Phiddian, Passions, Sympathy and Print Culture: Public Opinion and Emotional Authenticity in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Basingstoke, 2015); and M. Ellis (ed.), Eighteenth-Century Coffee-House Culture, Vols. 1-4 (2017).

7 For the full text of Theresa May’s speech to Conservative Party Conference on 5 October 2016, see The Spectator: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/full-text-theresa-may-s-conference-speech.

8 See e.g. I. Trauschweizer, Temple of Peace: International Cooperation and Stability since 1945 (Athens, Ohio, 2021); and meditations on future prospects by D.R. Kelley, Understanding a Changing World: The Alternative Futures of the International System (Lanham, Md, 2021).

9 B. Spiesshofer, Responsible Enterprise: The Emergence of a Global Economic Order (Munich and Oxford, 2018).

10 See A. Chapman, Greta Thunberg and the Climate Crisis (2020), and a detailed summary, covering her achievements, her school-fellow colleagues, and her critics, in: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greta_Thunberg.

11 Listed in Laqua, Van Acker and Verbruggen (eds), International Associations. as cited above n.1.

12 See https://www.apimondia.com/en/the-federation/history.

13 See S. Harland, D. Griffiths, and L. Walker (eds), The International Development Directory (2001); and Directory of International Development and Relief Agencies (2021), in https://www.guidestar.org/NonprofitDirectory.aspx?cat=6&subcat=32&p=8.

14 For details, see https://secure.avaaz.org.

15 See e.g. D.R. Liddick, The Global Underworld: Transnational Crime and the United States (2004); and M. Glenny, McMafia: A Journey through the Global Criminal Underworld (Toronto, 2009).

16 For further information, see http://www.rbwf.org.uk.

17 See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auld_Lang_Syne.

18 Translated as 蛍の光 / Hotaru no Hikari.

19 See the ISECS/SIEDS website, hosted by the University of Trois Rivières, Canada:   https://oraprdnt.uqtr.uquebec.ca/pls/public/gscw031?owa_no_site=304&owa_no_fiche=11.

20 Among a large literature, see D. Goodman, The Republic of Letters: A Cultural History of the French Enlightenment (1994); A. Goldgar, Impolite Learning: Conduct and Community in the Republic of Letters, 1680–1750 (1995); G. Ostrander, Republic of Letters: The American Intellectual Community, 1776–1865 (Madison, Wis., 1999); J. Israel, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, 1650–1750 (Oxford, 2001); S. Dalton, Engendering the Republic of Letters: Reconnecting Public and Private Spheres in Eighteenth-Century Europe (2003); and A. Lilti, The World of the Salons: Sociability and Worldliness in Eighteenth-Century Paris (Oxford 2015).

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