As in previous years, Kaberi and I celebrated the birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore with Prantik at Shakespeare’s Birthplace in Stratford-upon-Avon in the UK. Our theme this year was Tagore and the seasons: Spring.
We began our performance by recreating the dance procession each year at the Spring Festival (Basanta Utsav) in Santiniketan to the song Orai grihobashi. Our procession started from the steps of the Shakespeare Centre and wound its way around the garden of Shakespeare’s Birthplace until we reached the performance area by the house in which Shakespeare was born.
After an introduction by Emily Ireson from the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, we performed various songs for Tagore’s seasonal collection (Riturongo). Kaberi also danced to the poem Shesh Modhu (Spring Finale), which Prasenjit Saha had kindly translated into rhyming English for us.
The English translations of the songs and poems were recited by Shakespeare Aloud! actor James Anderson. The singers and musicians from Prantik, apart from me, were:
Anindita Sengupta Saha (also on tanpura)
Chhaya Biswas
Farzeen Huq
Kaberi Chatterjee (who also danced)
Mousumi Basu (who also recited the poem Shesh Modhu)
Nikhilesh Das Gupta
Sudakshina Roy
Supratik Basu (also on mandira)
Tirthankar Roy (also on esraj)
We were honoured that Krishnendu Banerjee from the Indian High Commission and Brij Kumar Guhare, Deputy Director of The Nehru Centre in London, came to Stratford-upon-Avon to attend our performance. Both expressed their appreciation of our performance and the uniquely appropriate setting of the garden of Shakespeare’s Birthplace.
Liisa Miil kindly filmed the performance for us. You can watch the video above. My script for our performance is available as a free download but please note its Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Sharealike licence. If you wish to use the script for commercial purposes or plan to remix or reuse it, please contact me.
Earlier in the day, we had visited Anne Hathaway’s Cottage, on the outskirts of Stratford-upon-Avon, to see how the tree we had helped to plant in 2011 for the 150th birth anniversary. That time, Kaberi had shown students from a local drama school how to dance in the traditional tree-planting (brikkhoropon) procession established by Rabindranath Tagore.
Especially as I was going to refer to it later in my narration, I was relieved to see that the tree is doing well. You can see it in the foreground of the photo below, with Anne Hathaway’s Cottage in the background.
For some reason, the UK Government seems deeply reluctant to investigate Russia’s apparent interference in the UK’s 2016 EU Referendum. Usually, a foreign power trying to destabilise a country would provoke immediate national security concerns.
In February, Parliament’s DCMS Committee repeated its “call to the Government to make a statement about how many investigations are currently being carried out into Russian interference in UK politics. We want to find out what was the impact of disinformation and voter manipulation on past elections including the UK Referendum in 2016 and are calling on the Government to launch an independent investigation.”
In January, the US Senate report Putin’s asymmetric assault on democracy in Russia and Europe: implications for US national security, criticised “the way in which UK campaign finance laws do not require disclosure of political donations if they are from “the beneficial owners of non-British companies that are incorporated in the EU and carry out business in the UK”.”
This opacity, the report suggests, “may have enabled Russian-related money to be directed with insufficient scrutiny to various UK political actors”.In a court case a few weeks ago, the Prime Minister’s legal representative, Sir James Eadie, told the court that “The true position is the Prime Minister is entirely well aware of the notorious facts … of the well-publicised facts: Electoral Commission findings, the facts of an appeal, police investigations, ICO, DCMS committees. All clear, publicly done and properly done. And it’s perfectly obvious that the Prime Minister has decided to carry on and that Parliament is proceeding and that everyone is proceeding on that basis.”
Of course, there is nothing new about this rather British preference to turn a blind eye towards serious crimes and misdemeanours affecting the lives of many. There was another infamous example 100 years ago.
India’s contribution to the Second World War
Although they are rarely mentioned in British history, hundreds of thousands of Indians fought in Europe in the British army in World War I. Over 1,000 died at Gallipoli and nearly 700,000 fought in Mesopotamia against the Ottoman Empire, Germany’s ally.
India also supported Britain in cash and kind, to the tune of some £50 billion in today’s money. India suffered high taxation to support the war, accompanied by high inflation. In return, Britain had promised to deliver self-rule progressively to India at the end of the war.
Rowlatt Act
However, after the war, the Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms of 1918 were very far from this. A hundred years ago today, on 10 March 1919, it also passed the Anarchical and Revolutionary Crimes Act of 1919. This unpopular Act became known as the Rowlatt Act, after Sir Sidney Rowlatt, the British judge who was the president of the Rowlatt Committee which recommended it.
The Act effectively authorised the Government to imprison any person suspected of terrorism living in British India for up to two years without a trial, and gave the imperial authorities power to deal with all revolutionary activities. It reimposed all the wartime restrictions on freedom of speech and assembly (which had been lifted after the Armistice).
“The Act granted the authorities the power to arrest Indians on mere suspicion and to try them in secrecy without a right to counsel or a right of appeal.”
An era of darkness: the British Empire in India by Shashi Tharoor
On 30 March and 6 April 1919, Indians went on strike throughout Punjab, shutting down normal commerce in many cities, including Amritsar. Without violence or disorder, they expressed their dissatisfaction with Britain’s betrayal.
On 9 April, the British arrested two nationalist leaders who had addressed protest meetings. As news of their arrests spread, the people of Amritsar pushed their way to police headquarters to protest. Some threw stones at the police who barred their way. The police retaliated by opening fire, killing 10 demonstrators.
In the riot that followed, five Englishmen were killed and a woman missionary was assaulted.
Amritsar, April 1919
Brigadier General Reginald Dyer, c1919
By 11 April, 600 soldiers arrived in Amritsar to restore order. The following day, their commander, Brigadier General Reginald Dyer arrived. By then, the city was calm and any demonstrations or protest meetings were peaceful.
Nonetheless, Dyer issued a proclamation on 13 April forbidding people to leave the city without a pass, to organise demonstrations or processions, or even to gather in groups of more than three. However, unaware of the proclamation, some 10-15,000 people from outlying districts gathered in Amritsar the same day to celebrate the major religious festival Baisakhi.
They had assembled in an enclosed, walled garden called Jallianwala Bagh. It was a popular spot for public events but was only accessible through five narrow passageways.
When Dyer heard of this meeting, he took a detachment of soldiers in armoured cars equipped with machine guns. Although it was clear that the people were unarmed, Dyer ordered his troops to open fire on them without any warning. They continued to shoot for 10 minutes until all their ammunition was exhausted.
Seeing that the exits from the Jallianwala Bagh were blocked, many sought refuge from the bullets by jumping into a well in its centre. According to a plaque by the well, 120 bodies were found in it.
Afterwards, Dyer forbade his soldiers to give any aid to the injured. He ordered all Indians to stay off the streets of Amritsar for twenty-four hours, preventing relatives or friends from bringing even a cup of water to the wounded, who were writhing in agony calling for help.
The massacre and Dyer’s evidence to the subsequent Hunter Commission which was set up in October 1919 to investigate it were depicted in the Richard Attenborough film Gandhi. Officially, 379 people were killed and 1.137 injured. The casualty number estimated by the Indian National Congress was more than 1,500 injured, with approximately 1,000 dead.
Dyer reported to his superiors that he had been “confronted by a revolutionary army”. Major General William Beynon and Lieutenant-Governor of Punjab Michael O’Dwyer approved of his actions. The Lieutenant-Governor requested that martial law should be imposed on Amritsar and other areas, and this was granted by the Viceroy of India, Lord Chelmsford.
Dyer became known in India as “The butcher of Amritsar”.
Tagore’s reaction
News of the massacre was suppressed by the British Government. Nonetheless, it reached Rabindranath Tagore on 22 May 1919.
Seeing the inaction of the British Government, and after being prevented from arranging a protest meeting in Calcutta, he decided to write to the Viceroy of India on 31 May 1919, returning the Knighthood he had been awarded by King George V on 3 June 1915.
Your Excellency,
The enormity of the measures taken by the Government in the Punjab for quelling some local disturbances has, with a rude shock, revealed to our minds the helplessness of our position as British subjects in India. The disproportionate severity of the punishments inflicted upon the unfortunate people and the methods of carrying them out, we are convinced, are without parallel in the history of civilised governments, barring some conspicuous exceptions, recent and remote. Considering that such treatment has been meted out to a population, disarmed and resourceless, by a power which has the most terribly efficient organisation for destruction of human lives, we must strongly assert that it can claim no political expediency, far less moral justification. The accounts of the insults and sufferings by our brothers in Punjab have trickled through the gagged silence, reaching every corner of India, and the universal agony of indignation roused in the hearts of our people has been ignored by our rulers—possibly congratulating themselves for what they imagine as salutary lessons. This callousness has been praised by most of the Anglo-Indian papers, which have in some cases gone to the brutal length of making fun of our sufferings, without receiving the least check from the same authority—relentlessly careful in smothering every cry of pain and expression of judgement from the organs representing the sufferers. Knowing that our appeals have been in vain and that the passion of vengeance is blinding the nobler vision of statesmanship in our Government, which could so easily afford to be magnanimous as befitting its physical strength and moral tradition, the very least that I can do for my country is to take all consequences upon myself in giving voice to the protest of the millions of my countrymen, surprised into a dumb anguish of terror. The time has come when badges of honour make our shame glaring in the incongruous context of humiliation, and I for my part wish to stand, shorn of all special distinctions, by the side of those of my countrymen, who, for their so-called insignificance, are liable to suffer degradation not fit for human beings.
These are the reasons which have painfully compelled me to ask Your Excellency, with due reference and regret, to relieve me of my title of Knighthood, which I had the honour to accept from His Majesty the King at the hands of your predecessor, for whose nobleness of heart I still entertain great admiration.
Details of the massacre did not emerge in Britain before December 1919. On 20 July 1920, the fate of General Dyer was debated in the British Parliament. Winston Churchill, then Secretary of State for War, opened the debate with an explanation of the three options available to the Government:
remove [the officer] from his employment or his appointment, relegated to half pay, and told that he has no prospects of being employed again. … The officer in question has no redress. He has no claim to a court or inquiry or court martial.
retire an officer compulsorily from the Service, or imposing on him some reduction or forfeiture in his pension or retired pay. In this case the officer is protected … by the fact that it is necessary for three members of the Army Council to approve the proceeding, and by certain rights of laying his case before them.
Honour, liberty, life are affected. Cashiering, imprisonment, or the death penalty may be involved, and … the whole resources and protection which judicial procedure, lawful tribunals, and British justice accord to an accused person are brought into play.
In Dyer’s case, he was removed from his appointment by the Commander-in-Chief in India; passed over for promotion; was informed that there was no prospect of further employment for him under the Government of India; and that, in consequence, he reverted automatically to half-pay. The Army Council had chosen the first option.
Churchill then explained the facts:
The crowd was unarmed, except with bludgeons. It was not attacking anybody or anything. It was holding a seditious meeting. When fire had been opened upon it to disperse it, it tried to run away. Pinned up in a narrow place considerably smaller than Trafalgar Square, with hardly any exits, and packed together so that one bullet would drive through three or four bodies, the people ran madly this way and the other. When the fire was directed upon the centre, they ran to the sides. The fire was then directed to the sides. Many threw themselves down on the ground, the the fire was then directed down on the ground. This was continued for 8 to 10 minutes, and it … stopped only when it was on the point of exhaustion, enough ammunition being retained to provide for the safety of the force on its return journey. If more troops had been available, says this officer, the casualties would have been greater in proportion. If the road had not been so narrow, the machine guns and the armoured cars would have joined in. Finally, when the ammunition had reached the point that only enough remained to allow for the safe return of the troops, and after 379 persons, which is about the number gathered together in this Chamber to-day, had been killed, and when most certainly 1,200 or more had been wounded, the troops, at whom not even a stone had been thrown, swung round and marched away. … I do not think it is in the interests of the British Empire or of the British Army for us to take a load of that sort for all time on our backs. We have to make it absolutely clear, some way or another, that this is not the British way of doing business.
Winston Churchill, Secretary of State for War – UK House of Commons, 8 July 1920
Churchill personally would have wished that General Dyer had been “placed compulsorily on the retired list”. However, he recommended (and the House of Commons confirmed) the decision of the Army Council as it was clear that “General Dyer’s conduct has been approved by a succession of superiors above him.” Although he was censured by the House of Commons, he was exonerated by the House of Lords and allowed to retire on a handsome pension. Rudyard Kipling hailed Dyer as “The man who saved India.”
Fund-raising for Dyer
The conservative, pro-Imperialist Morning Post newspaper (which subsequently merged with The Daily Telegraph) launched a fund to raise money for Dyer. When he arrived in Britain after his exile from India, he was presented with over £26,000 (equivalent to over £250,000 today).
In contrast, after many months of fighting for justice, the families of the victims of the massacre were given 500 rupees each (equivalent to £1,450 today) for each human life.
Several years later, on 13 March 1940, Udham Singh, who had been serving water to the crowds in Jallianwala Bagh before Dyer and his troops opened fire, assassinated Michael O’Dwyer in Caxton Hall in London. Historians now believe that O’Dwyer had ordered Dyer to carry out the massacre.
Jawaharlal Nehru wrote later that “This cold-blooded approval of that deed shocked me greatly. It seemed absolutely immoral, indecent; to use public school language, it was the height of bad form. I realised then, more vividly than I had ever done before, how brutal and immoral imperialism was and how it had eaten into the souls of the British upper classes.”
Brexit and the British elite
A century later, it would appear that the British elite are applying similarly brutal and immoral tactics in forcing a hard Brexit on an unsuspecting British public. They seem to be somewhat nostalgic about Britain’s imperial past.
As Alternative War author James Patrick noted on Friday:
You know, over the centuries Britain has built up quite a horrific Karma account. The world’s a small place with a long memory and the bill has come due.— James Patrick 🐐 (@J_amesp) March 8, 2019
While Theresa May and Jeremby Corbyn play games with Parliamentary procedure, time is passing. In less than three months, on 29 March 2019, 2 years after Theresa May triggered the Article 50 procedure, the EU Treaties will cease to apply to the UK … unless Parliament does something first. The only problem is that the there is a political impasse in Parliament.
To get an idea of how people feel about this, we have created an online “event” which you can take part in anonymously. By answering this first question, you will help to feed the word cloud below. You can add several words if you wish, before clicking on the ‘Send’ button.
Fresh from its Christmas break, the Home Office started to ask non-British EU nationals living in the UK to apply for ‘settled status’. Actually, the tweet called on all EU citizens living in the UK (ie including British citizens) to apply.
EU citizens and their families will need to apply to the EU Settlement Scheme to continue living in the UK after 31 December 2020.
Apart from the legal error, this suggests that the Home Office has failed to learn the lessons of the Windrush scandal and is about to launch another “ethnic cleansing” programme on a much larger scale – there are some 3.6 million non-British EU nationals living in the UK. As Professor Tanja Bueltmann has pointed out, ‘settled status’ will create a new Windrush generation of EU citizens. The unsettling effects of this policy on people who have lived and worked in the UK for decades are illustrated by the people in the video response below.
Earlier today, in the middle of the Christmas holidays, the Home Office posted a clip with smiling stock photography faces and upbeat music telling us EU citizens at home in the UK that we have to apply if we want to stay. This is what the clip should really look like and say. 1/ pic.twitter.com/TTzkFFZvxe
Meanwhile, back in Parliament, Theresa May has negotiated a deal with the EU27 which few MPs (other than those in Government) are prepared to back. It is either a worse deal than staying in the EU or does not allow the UK sufficient independence from the EU – depending on the perspective of the MP concerned.
MPs were supposed to have voted on the deal on 11 December but the vote was postponed by Theresa May until 14 January as she realised that a significant majority of MPs would vote against the deal. Her strategy appears to be to scare MPs with the perspective of a ‘no deal Brexit’ if they vote against her deal. The delay also seems to have been designed to reduce the time for a People’s Vote on the deal before 29 March 2019.
In theory, the UK could ask the EU27 to extend the Article 50 deadline. However this would require all 27 Member States to agree to this and, given that Theresa May has already exhausted their patience, there would seem to be a high chance that at least one Member State would block such an extension.
Another option, confirmed by the 10 December ruling of the European Court of Justice, is that the UK is free to revoke its Article 50 notification unilaterally. That possibility exists until either the withdrawal agreement comes into force or the 2-year period expires on 29 March 2019.
So there seem to be four options for MPs, as shown in the question below. Which of them would you prefer? You will see the relative support for each option after you have made your choice and pressed the ‘Send’ button.
So far in Parliament, most MPs are against a ‘no deal’ Brexit. However, there is currently no majority in Parliament for any option which might avoid this outcome.
Tagore had observed over a century ago that nationalism has a subtle but quite destructive effect on society.
“… the idea of the Nation is one of the most powerful anæsthetics that man has invented. Under the influence of its fumes the whole people can carry out its systematic programme of the most virulent self-seeking without being in the least aware of its moral perversion,—in fact feeling dangerously resentful if it is pointed out. …
“The Nation has thriven long upon mutilated humanity. Men, the fairest creations of God, came out of the National manufactory in huge numbers as war-making and money-making puppets, ludicrously vain of their pitiful perfection of mechanism. Human society grew more and more into a marionette show of politicians, soldiers, manufacturers and bureaucrats, pulled by wire arrangements of wonderful efficiency.
But the apotheosis of selfishness can never make its interminable breed of hatred and greed, fear and hypocrisy, suspicion and tyranny, an end in themselves. These monsters grow into huge shapes but never into harmony.”
Excerpt From: Rabindranath Tagore. “Nationalism.”
Tagore also drew attention to the tendency of nationalists to hold foreigners responsible for causing problems because they are different.
“The social habit of mind which impels us to make the life of our fellow-beings a burden to them where they differ from us even in such a thing as their choice of food, is sure to persist in our political organization and result in creating engines of coercion to crush every rational difference which is the sign of life.”
Excerpt From: Rabindranath Tagore. “Nationalism.”
Of course, this is not limited to the UK and Brexit. The late Paddy Ashdown, whose last book Nein! Standing up to Hitler 1935-1944 explores a similar period in German history, noted that President Trump has been using the same techniques as were used in that period.
Please note carefully I am NOT saying Pres Trump is a fascist. He is not. But he’s using the same techniques as they used in the 1930s. First divide. Then identify the enemy. Then lie about them. Then denigrate them. Then mobilise against them. So frightening it still works
In an interview in 2016, Paddy Ashdown had said “Leave aside the fact – which is good – that we don’t have mad militarists who want to go to war, everything else about our age reminds me of the 1930s. The fracture, the disrespect for the business of government, the hatred of the establishment. You see a retreat into isolationism, you see the rise of ugly forces, you see those who lie and make a pattern of lying … As Goebbels said, if you’re going to tell a lie, tell a big one and tell it often.”
Fortunately, in the same interview, he also said “I am certain that decency and the forces of good will triumph. When, I don’t know. But that it will happen, I am absolutely clear.”
Yesterday, British broadcaster, actor, producer and director Stephen Fry launched this 12-minute animated documentary. It shows how certain UK politicians have built their careers by stirring up fear of immigrants and fear of a ‘mythical EU dragon’ over the past couple of years.
The video opens with an illustration of an illusion known as ‘forced perspective’, which Stephen Fry suggests is how the politicians have convinced people that these fears are real. As he points out, and as I mentioned in my previous post, they and the mainstream media promoting their views have used propaganda techniques similar to those used by the Nazis in the 1930s.
In the US, Donald Trump brands all news stories and facts which contradict his narrative as ‘Fake News’. Similarly, these UK politicians have branded inconvenient facts and forecasts as ‘Project Fear’.
Thanks to this approach, facts are unlikely to convince supporters of these politicians to change their minds. Stephen Fry explored this phenomenon in a previous video about the Dunning-Kruger effect … and explained how to tackle it.
In his excellent new book How to be right … in a world gone wrong, Radio talk show host James O’Brien describes how the media have fuelled the rise of this type of politician.
As with climate change, media organisations like the BBC have attempted to preserve ‘balance’ by interviewing people who have opposite views for the same amount of time. However, even if 95% of scientists are convinced that climate change has happened, this attempt at ‘balance’ gives disproportionate exposure to the 5% that do not.
James O’Brien suggests that his approach of asking people ‘why?’ (rather than the ‘what?’ asked traditionally by interviewers) obliges those he is interviewing to explain why they believe what they do, often revealing their misconceptions. However, he lays the blame for this at the door of the politicians who have misled his callers, not his callers themselves. Here is his recent RSA discussion about his book, which inspired me to buy the book.
Another impressive, recent initiative is the podcast series Dial M for Mueller, with award-winning investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr (who revealed the Cambridge Analytica/Facebook data scandal) and Peter Jukes. The latest episode explores why Nigel Farage is a ‘person of interest’ for the FBI investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller.
As I have mentioned before, Rabindranath Tagore attempted to warn the world about the dangers of nationalism over 100 years ago. His 1939 dance-drama Shyama , written in the context of growing tensions of pre-Independence India and the rise of nationalism in Europe, opens with a foreign merchant who is falsely accused of theft by a repressive regime.
I was happy to see that French President Emmanuel Macron reiterated this in his speech on Armistice Day. Fortunately, there are still a few politicians around who are brave enough to stand up to the real Project Fear.
Notice on the door of the Poundworld shop in our local High Street
This week’s UK Budget is expected to reduce business rates, to reduce costs faced by shops and businesses on UK High Streets, but not by their online competitors. Media reports about recent closures of shop chains have mentioned reduced sales in High Street shops due to people buying online. Few dare to mention any loss of interest in shopping (in general) due to uncertainty faced by many households, particularly low income households, as a result of the UK Government’s seemingly incompetent handling of the UK’s departure from the EU.
Yesterday, I took a walk along our local High Street, in Sutton, which is in the suburbs of London. I took these photos of all the abandoned shops and businesses, many of which have closed in the past couple of years. Of course, there are other recent arrivals (mainly cafés, restaurants, vaping shops and nail parlours) which allow the High Street to retain some life. Nonetheless, I was left feeling quite sad about the state of what was a vibrant High Street not so long ago.
Series of closed shops
Former bank/building society branch
Shop for rent
Shop for rent
Former pub, now closed
Our favourite electrical shop, now closed
‘Pop-up’ bag shop, now empty
Patisserie Valerie, threatened after discovery of cash shortfall
Large Poundworld shop, opened and closed this year
Maplin’s, our favourite electronics shop, now closed
Former Dixon’s/Curry’s shop now a Christmas shop
Mall shop crammed with discount household goods
Vacant mall units decorated to look active
Debenhams, under threat of closure?
Pawn/loan shop doing good business
Vacant offices above nail parlour and discount shop
Former British Home Stores, now being stripped out
If this is happening in the relatively affluent South-East of England, I suspect that the situation is even worse in other parts of the country, particularly further North – often forgotten by Westminster parties and political leaders. In any case, the impression of decay in our own High Street is far more intense than in other parts of Europe we have visited over the past couple of years. The UK is apparently more heavily into online shopping than other countries but, even so, that cannot be the only explanation.
The owner of our favourite kebab shop confirmed to me on Saturday night that the costs of his raw materials (particularly vegetables) had already gone up significantly as a result of the 18% fall in the value of the pound since the Referendum was announced. So far, he has been absorbing this increase without raising his prices – he knows he would lose business if he increased his prices.
A significant proportion of his customers are from low income families and they have been telling him that they are uncertain about the future and are trying to spend as little as they can now. Yes, they are fed up of hearing about Brexit but that is because it is not at all the simple process they were led to believe it would be by certain politicians – instead, we now hear the Government warning that people may need to stockpile medicines and that lorries may need to be parked on the M26 (several miles from the coast) while waiting to cross the English Channel. This could explain the popularity of online shopping and the state of the High Street, which is far less busy than it used to be (and those that are there seem to be window shopping rather than buying).
Last Christmas, my holiday reading was the disturbing book Alternative War by James Patrick, a former police officer turned investigative journalist. The book tackles Russian interference in the UK’s EU Referendum and the US election of President Donald Trump, suggesting that these are elements of a ‘hybrid war’ Russia has launched using fake news and sophisticated disinformation campaigns. The book documents how ‘detached and deniable assets’ and ‘useful idiots’, such as Wikileaks, the far-right (including UKIP and Republican officials), were engaged by Russia to subvert two of the world’s superpowers and install managed democracies as part of a strategy to enhance Russia’s position and destabilise its perceived enemies.
Brexit’s lead economist Prof Patrick Minford on UK car industry:
“You are going to have to run it down … in the same way we ran down the coal industry and steel industry. These things happen.”
One of the key claims of the Leave campaign was that £350m contributed per week could be spent on the NHS. However, it is now emerging that, in the event of ‘no deal’, there may be cancelled NHS operations and staff shortages.
Demagoguery moves the middle to the extremes. Those who were already on the extremes are often moved to violence and the unthinkable becomes possible—but it must never become acceptable.
Via Cory Doctorow, I came across this 15-minute short film American Psychosis featuring Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges. In it, he draws parallels with totalitarian regimes he has reported on and a culture dominated by ‘pervasive illusion’ which he now finds in the US. Perhaps this is also the situation in the UK?
Lord Adonis has been travelling around the country arguing in favour of a People’s Vote on the Brexit deal (or no deal) which Theresa May is negotiating. In this article for The New European, he explains why we are now in a similar situation to the 1930s. He recommends the new book by Paddy Ashdown Nein, Standing up to Hitler 1935-1944 about the German resistance, and how it was undermined by the appeasement of the British and French Governments.
Today’s appeasers of the far right similarly recreate the weak and demoralised liberals and conservatives of the 1930s, from Germany’s Catholic ‘centre’ party which voted with Hitler in 1933 to Neville Chamberlain treating so disastrously with the German dictator thereafter. Theresa May is eerily Chamberlainite in her stubbornness, her deep ignorance of the extreme political currents swirling around her, and her appeasement of an English far right – Nigel Farage, Jacob Rees-Mogg, the puppet Boris Johnson …
Andrew Adonis, Yes we are back in the 1930s – The New European, 25 October 2018
Meanwhile, the number of people sleeping rough in the UK has increased by 169% since 2010, with increases every year for the past 7 years. The conditions would appear to be ripe (again) for populist politicians to offer the fantasy of an easy solution: nationalism. But, as Tagore pointed out over a century ago, this approach comes with risks for the society we live in.
Most perpetrators of mass killings shooting etc have diagnosed or undiagnosed mental illness.They frequently also are paranoid .They are easily influenced by hate speeches /sentiments especially from politicians , leaders and on social media . We must be v careful not to incite
Throughout history, demagogues rarely need to direct the violence. They set the tone – they focus the blame, ridicule, rage and hate — and leave the violent acts to others. That way, they can always say “it wasn’t me. I don’t have blood on my hands. The culprits are out there.” — Robert Reich (@RBReich) October 28, 2018
Robert Reich, Berkeley professor and former US Secretary of Labour
A few weeks ago, I was dismayed but not surprised to see James Patrick suggesting that the real objective of the UK Government is a ‘no deal’ Brexit, with all the harmful consequences its own documents now predict. I did find it shocking though that the reason would be to justify Ministers using their powers under the Withdrawal Act to by-pass Parliament.
In effect, this ’emergency rule’ would take the UK out of a democracy and into dictatorship. I would invite you to follow the link below and read the rest of his thread on Twitter. I hope this is not the real objective of the UK Government (whose official line is still that it is working towards an agreement with the EU27). However, as time goes by, and as the UK missed the opportunity of the recent Summit in Brussels to sign any agreement, perhaps his analysis seems increasingly likely?
Numerous sources have confirmed the British government is deliberately aiming for a no deal Brexit outcome in order to take advantage of extended powers available to them under the scenario – including civil contingencies and so-called Henry VIII.
With this in mind, here are some of the speeches from last Saturday’s People’s Vote march. Note particularly the comment from Tom Brake that the UK Government and Parliament have spent the past two years being so focused on Brexit that they have not tackled the real problems affecting millions of people, such as the housing crisis, reform of the education system and the state of the NHS. Maybe, in time, the people who spoke at the march will be seen as the ‘resistance’.
Yesterday, Kaberi and I were among the estimated 700,000 people marching for a People’s Vote on the outcome of the negotiations between the UK Government and the EU27. These comments summarise our impressions.
Today I saw the Britain that I feared we had lost: inclusive, calm, compassionate, funny, resolute, welcoming, decent.
Thank you all for reminding me it’s still there, and will always be there.#PeoplesVoteMarch
People’s vote marche is the most impressive and deeply moving support for Europe I‘ve ever seen. Millions across Europe feel with you! Thx so much!!! Danke! Merci!
What struck me today was that this was the voice of the gentle people, the people who don’t shout the loudest, who don’t demand the most, who are used to being ignored. Just for one day they gathered and showed that in gentleness there can sometimes be great power.
It was indeed a wonderful feeling of hopeful welcoming solidarity, crossing generations. It was a delight to be a part of it and uplifting to know the awfulness on display recently does not represent the majority. This is the Britain I want to represent and be proud of.
Yesterday’s march, which was led by young people, was a moving reminder that humanity is still a strong force in the UK. We saw people of all ages in the march, ranging from senior citizens marching for their grandchildren to children wrapped in the EU flag.
There were also many, original placards which people had made. Here are a few examples.
Meanwhile, the BBC continues to boost the profiles of politicians like Nigel Farage, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Boris Johnson by quoting them ‘for balance’ every time anyone dares to question the wisdom of the UK leaving the EU.
The scale of the March felt amazing, as we stood in it. Before we set off, we heard a series of stirring speeches. Our friend Tom Brake, Brexit spokesperson for the Liberal Democrat’s, pointed out how much of a distraction Brexit has been for both the Government and Parliament. There are many other pressing issues, such as homelessness, which they could have been doing something about.
The speeches included Vince Cable uttering the most popular slogan of the day: “Bollocks to Brexit”. The rhythmic pattern of this slogan was repeated from time to time during the march using whistles.
By Sunday morning, news of the march (which eventually became the top story on BBC News on Saturday afternoon) had been removed from the BBC’s top stories. Even while the article was the main story, the first person quoted in it was Nigel Farage, who was speaking at a pro-Brexit event in Harrogate attended by 0.17% of the number of people attending the march. That there has been no follow-up of the March at all by the BBC suggests censorship rather than balance.
As we approached Downing Street, we could see many marchers heading in the opposite direction. We learned from them that access to Parliament Square had been blocked as there were too many people.
On our way to finding something to eat in Chinatown, we passed the statue of Shakespeare in the middle of Leicester Square. The quote on the lectern he is leaning on reads “There is no darkness but ignorance”. It seemed somehow appropriate for the occasion.
For this year’s celebration of the birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore at Shakespeare’s Birthplace, we chose to highlight Tagore’s educational philosophy. I will write in more detail about this in a later post.
Of course, we also sang a few Tagore songs which are traditionally sung to celebrate his birthday. Our thanks to the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, particularly to Birthplace Manager Hannah Jones for making the arrangements and to Emily Ireson not only for taking care of us on the day but also for volunteering to hold the camera during our performance.
Singers & musicians from Prantik:
– Anindita Sen Gupta Saha (also playing the tanpura)
– Chhaya Biswas
– Farzeen Huq
– Kaberi Chatterjee
– Mousumi Basu
– Obhi Chatterjee (who also wrote, narrated & directed the programme)
– Sudakshina Roy
– Tirthankar Roy (playing the esraj)
They were joined by Shakespeare Aloud actor Kelly Hale.
Join us at 3.30pm in the Birthplace garden for a celebratory performance by Bengali cultural group Prantik. This is to mark the Birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore, icon of Bengali literature and music. pic.twitter.com/oZ8EYKwO23
— Shakespeare B Trust (@ShakespeareBT) May 6, 2018
On 6 June 1944, the largest seaborne invasion in history began the liberation of German-occupied northwestern Europe from Nazi control and contributed to the Allied victory on the Western Front. Just over 73 years later, courtesy of Theresa May triggering the Article 50 procedure to leave the EU and calling today’s General Election, Britain now finds itself looking over the precipice, away from most of its allies.
The official exit poll predicts a hung parliament: 314 seats for the Conservatives and a possible 314 seats for a ‘progressive alliance’ of Labour, SNP and Liberal Democrats. The Brexit negotiations are due to resume next Tuesday and the UK already lost 4 weeks’ preparation time due to the General Election. The deadline to complete the negotiations remains 29 March 2019.
If the exit poll is close to being correct, the Conservatives could lose 16 of the 330 seats they had won in 2015. This is rather more than the condition Theresa May had set for leaving Jeremy Corbyn (or rather, in practice, Keir Starmer) to lead the Brexit negotiations.
If I lose just six seats I will lose this election and Jeremy Corbyn will be sitting down to negotiate with Europe: https://t.co/OwbfDseOJh
Of course, the exit poll after the UK Referendum on 23 June 2016 had predicted the opposite result to the Leave vote which emerged by the morning. Still, for now, this does not appear to be the resounding mandate Theresa May had called for to enter the negotiations with the EU27 for the UK to leave the EU.
Man loses his true stature when he fails to unite fully with his fellows. A complete man is one who has this capacity for union, a lone individual is a fragmented being. We know that a child dreads ghosts only when he is alone. This is the lone person’s fear of his own weakness. Most of our fears are replicas of this fear of ghosts. — The Co-operative Principle, 1928.
As you will have understood from this series of blog posts, I will be dismayed but not surprised if Theresa May and the Conservatives win this General Election, in spite of all the gaffes and scandals which emerged during the election campaign. The song ‘Liar, Liar’ in the video above reached Number 2 in the UK music charts on Monday, in spite of being banned from being played by radio stations.
The future based on hate that Theresa May promises is not only outside the EU Customs Union without freedom of movement but also with a clampdown on the internet, a collapsed NHS, an unworkable approach to social care and an inadequately resourced approach to dealing with extremism and terrorism. In short, it is a dystopian future which few would want to be part of.
So why would people vote for it? I was reminded today that people’s level of trust in Government, judiciary and media has fallen sharply, particularly in the past year. They need someone they can believe in who could lead them through this. Hence Theresa May’s repeated use of the phrase ‘strong and stable leadership’ and branding the opposition as the ‘coalition of chaos’, whether in interviews, speeches and in campaign literature. She has also promised to fight injustice and make the UK ‘a country that works for everyone’. Although this encouraged some to refer to her as the ‘Maybot’, these repeated soundbites were no doubt deliberate from a psychological perspective.
As with the UK Referendum last year, we all suffer from three intrinsic biases: personal bias (influenced by our own experiences as we grew up), education bias (since western education focuses on reading, writing and arithmetic instead of opening the mind to learning) and media bias (where only extraordinary activities receive the attention of journalists). Unconventional ideas are rejected without analysis. This is how those who stir up people’s anger against the establishment gain their popularity. Of course, in this case, it is ironical that Theresa May is the establishment!
In addition, with so many other problems facing people in the UK, it could have done without diverting scarce resources to negotiating Brexit – an expensive activity which I am sure will be regarded in years to come as an act of self harm by the UK. All to settle a catfight within the Conservative party that got out of hand, as the European Parliament’s Chief Negotiator, Guy Verhofstadt, put it.
Maybe the UK will recover from the experience, one day sooner or later. Here is a poem from Tagore, as I near the end of this (almost daily) series of pre-election blog posts.
Through the troubled history of man comes sweeping a blind fury of destruction and the towers of civilisation topple down to dust. In the chaos of moral nihilism are trampled underfoot by marauders the best treasures of Man heroically won by the martyrs for ages. Come, young nations, proclaim the fight for freedom, raise up the banner of invincible faith. Build bridges with your life across the gaping earth blasted by hatred, and march forward. Do not submit yourself to carry the burden of insult upon your head, kicked by terror, and dig not a trench with falsehood and cunning to build a shelter for your dishonoured manhood; offer not the weak as sacrifice to the strong to save yourself.
Long-standing followers of this blog will remember that I started to take a special interest in healthcare and particularly dementia after my father started to decline towards what was eventually diagnosed as frontotemporal dementia. I was so shocked by what I discovered that I made the feature-length investigative documentary You must be nuts! – The business of dementia. So, even though the topic of the day remains security, I will turn my attention in this post to an issue which came up much earlier in the election campaign: the dementia tax and the state of the NHS.
What emerged from my research into how best to treat my father was so distressing that I included animated sequences to ensure that viewers would make it to the end of the film! Over 8,000 people have watched it so far on YouTube, after around 1,000 had watched its initial appearance on Vimeo. Thanks to the contacts I made when making my film, I now find myself among an active but occasionally frustrated community of scientists and researchers who have joined the quest for a holistic approach to healthcare.
If you have been watching the ‘Doctor in the House’ series on BBC 1, you will know that my namesake Dr Rangan Chatterjee uses such an approach to treat families after visiting them in their homes and experiencing their lifestyles. You may also have seen cardiologist Dr Aseem Malhotra on TV. Dr David Unwin is a GP who became the first to publish a paper demonstrating how lifestyle changes could reverse Type 2 diabetes and have saved £20,000 per year in diabetes medication costs in his practice. He recently argued in a paper in the British Medical Journal that GP practices should be able to keep the money saved from putting patients on a low carbohydrate diet.
So what is stopping the NHS adopting a holistic approach to healthcare? Unfortunately, this is where you need to ‘follow the money’. I detailed my concerns and called for a formal investigation in a letter to the Chair of the Commons Health Select Committee in February 2015. I have given up hope of ever receiving a reply, let alone seeing a formal investigation. As others who had raised similar issues before me have found as well, the problems I identified seem to lead right to Jeremy Hunt, Secretary of State for Health since 2012.
In essence, I believe that certain Government policies may have increased the risk of dementia and other modern chronic diseases (cardiovascular disease, obesity, diabetes and cancer). Over several decades, under successive Labour and Conservative Governments, the NHS has been pursuing unscientific practices such as:
The third problem area is the reluctance to regulate the widespread use of pesticides and herbicides on crops and indeed domestic gardens. Each of us can try to protect ourselves from this by buying organic and eating only real, unprocessed food. Still, it does raise the question of why the consequences of poor nutrition and dietary advice are being ignored while the NHS suffers increasing costs of treating the resulting illness.
As if this was not enough for the NHS to cope with, thanks to the ‘people-have-decided’ anti-immigrant mantra of the Brexiteers, there is also the imminent potential departure of tens of thousands of non-British EU nationals working in the NHS who now feel unwelcome in the UK since last year’s Referendum result. Nick Clegg highlights this in the video above.
Almost all of my father’s carers were non-British EU nationals. We gathered that British carers preferred to stay on benefits rather than continue as carers and earn only marginally more – it is a very tough but low-paid job.
This brings me to the ‘dementia tax’. In the UK, the NHS looks after treating people who are ill while local councils are responsible for social care – as they were before the creation of the NHS. Based on our experience with my father, this setup is totally dysfunctional. Elderly patients are often left for weeks occupying hospital beds while the doctors treating them remain to be convinced that their patients will be able to survive with the care they will get after they leave. Moreover, hospital doctors have different IT systems from community health practitioners such as GPs. In my father’s case, that meant that, although a hospital doctor had signed a paper advising that my father should not be resuscitated in case of breathing problems, this meant nothing to ambulance staff and paramedics without his GP signing a similar paper!
In case you had not realised, local councils have very tight budgets. Social care funding is means tested, although based on their disposable income, not their total assets. This already gives local councils an interest in assessing elderly people as ‘self-funders’. A few weeks ago, Theresa May announced a manifesto commitment to include the cost of people’s homes in this calculation. According to the announcement, their homes would not need to be sold until after their deaths.
However, this seems to be unlikely in practice if the system continues to work as it did when I was managing my father’s carers. He was a ‘self funder’, which meant that he received a monthly contribution from the local council towards his care costs but it was he who was liable to pay the care agency/carers – not the local council.
Under Theresa May’s proposal, his share of our house would have been included in the calculations, presumably reducing considerably the monthly contribution made by the local council. Nonetheless, he would still need to pay the care agency/carers. At £15 per hour, this adds up very quickly – especially if care agencies insist that their carers cannot attend the person alone and need to have two carers in attendance (which is very disorientating for anyone with dementia).
Even with a cap on care costs that was eventually extracted from Theresa May after an outcry by other political parties, the carers have to be paid each week and, somehow, the councils need to find the money to fund the difference. I cannot imagine how an elderly person would avoid having to sell their house during their lifetime (and hence move into a care home) to pay the care bills if the value of their house is included in the means testing assessment.
From what we have seen, there are ways for the NHS to save money provided people are given the right (non-commercially-funded) dietary advice and treated holistically by their GPs (instead of doctors and medical journals being sponsored to encourage daily drugs being prescribed for the rest of people’s lives). In addition, it would be useful if the Government would ban two processed foods which are known to increase the risk of heart disease (margarine and highly processed vegetable oils, such as sunflower oil), as well as glyphosate – the key component of the most popular domestic and industrial weedkiller which is known to be an endocrine disruptor.
However, this would need politicians with the guts to take on Big Food, Big Pharma and Big Ag. Given his performance over the past 5 years, Jeremy Hunt doesn’t seem to be one of them.
