irishtoon

Broadly speaking, it’s no surprise that society’s elites hold their noses when they approach the topic of mass democracy. When have the wealthy and powerful ever thought it was a good idea to put decision-making in the hands of the poor and ignorant? The answer, ironically enough, is in Gladstone’s era, the century roughly beginning in 1850. That century is perhaps unique in all of human history in how much insistence there was on the importance of redistributing power from the elites to the masses.

Now, things have reverted to type: the successful want to pull up the drawbridge again. In their view, Gladstone’s achievements naturally count for nothing. What does it matter if his name is torn down from a student dorm? Indeed, what does it matter if students have never even heard of him? No big deal – we believed in all that stuff once, but it’s old hat now.

Read more:

https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/03/17/the-erasure-of-william-gladstone/

By DAVID MCGROGAN for sp!ked.

Spiked (also written as sp!ked) is a British Internet magazine focusing on politics, culture and society. The magazine was founded in 2000 with the same editor and many of the same contributors as Living Marxism, which had closed in 2000 after losing a case for libel brought by ITN.

There is general agreement that Spiked is libertarian, with the majority of specialist academic sources identifying it as right-libertarian, and some non-specialist sources identifying it as left-libertarian. Activists associated with Spiked, sometimes described as part of "the Spiked network", took part in the Brexit Party as candidates or publicists, while disagreeing with Nigel Farage on many domestic issues.

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Living Marxism's introduction summarised its outlook as follows:

We live in an age of caution and conformism, when critical opinions can be outlawed as 'extremism' and anything new can be rubbished as 'too risky'. Ours is an age of low expectations, when we are always being told what is bad for us, and life seems limited on all sides by restrictions, guidelines and regulations. The spirit of LM is to go against the grain: to oppose all censorship, bans and codes of conduct; to stand up for social and scientific experimentation; to insist that we have the right to live as autonomous adults who take responsibility for our own affairs. These are basic human values that cannot be compromised if we are ever going to create a world fit for people.

LM writers criticized the media portrayal of the civil wars in Rwanda and Bosnia and disputed that either Serb or Hutu forces committed genocide during those conflicts. In 1993, LM published an exhibition titled "Genocide against the Serbs" which juxtaposed images of Serbs killed in World War II-era crimes with Serbian soldiers killed in battle during the Yugoslav Wars. In 1995, LM published an article by Fiona Fox arguing that:

The lesson I would draw from my visit is that we must reject the term ‘genocide’ in Rwanda. It has been used inside and outside Rwanda to criminalise the majority of ordinary Rwandan people, to justify outside interference in the country’s affairs, and to lend legitimacy to a minority military government imposed on Rwanda by Western powers.

The ITN/LM case:

In February 1997, editor Mick Hume published an article by German journalist Thomas Deichmann which claimed that ITN had misrepresented the Bosnian war in its coverage in 1992. The publishers of LM, Informinc (LM) Ltd., were sued for libel by ITN. The case initially caused international condemnation of ITN as one of LM's critics, the journalist George Monbiot, who wrote in Prospect magazine:

Some of the world's leading liberals leapt to the magazine's defence: Harold Evans, Doris Lessing, Paul Theroux, Fay Weldon and many others condemned ITN's "deplorable attack on press freedom". The Institute of Contemporary Arts, bulwark of progressive liberalism, enhanced LM's heroic profile by co-hosting a three-day conference with the magazine, called "Free Speech Wars". With the blessing of the liberal world, this puny iconoclastic David will go to war with the clanking orthodoxies of the multinational Goliath.[13]

However, Monbiot continued:

This, at least, is how LM would like its struggle to be seen. But there is more to this David than first meets the eye. His may be less of the great liberal cause that his supporters would like to believe. For the closer one looks at LM, the weaker its link to the oppressed appears, and the stronger its links to the oppressor. It has, in other words, less in common with the left than with the fanatical right.[13]

The article "The picture that fooled the world" argued that ITN's footage in which an emaciated Bosnian Muslim man stood behind a barbed wire fence was designed to portray a Nazi-style extermination camp while Deichmann claimed: "It was not a prison, and certainly not a 'concentration camp', but a collection centre for refugees, many of whom went there seeking safety and could leave again if they wished".[14] However, an examination of the substance of this case by a professor of cultural and political geography at Durham University argues that the key claims made by Deichmann and LM are "erroneous and flawed".[15]

The libel case went against LM and in March 2000 the magazine was forced to close.[16] Reporters Penny Marshall and Ian Williams were each awarded £150,000 over the LM story and the magazine was ordered to pay £75,000 for libelling ITN in a February 1997 article.[1]

Looking back Hume commented in The Times:

Would I do it again? We could have got out of the case by apologising, which seems to be the fashionable thing to do. But I believe in the unfashionable freedom to state what you understand to be true, even if it causes offence. I would do almost anything to avoid ever again setting foot in Court 14. But some things really are more important than a mortgage.[17]

In contrast, Professor Campbell of Durham University summarised his study of the case as follows:

[A]s strange as existing British libel law is, it had an important and surprisingly beneficial effect in the case of ITN vs LM. The LM defendants and Thomas Deichmann were properly represented at the trial and were able to lay out all the details of their claim that the ITN reporters had "deliberately misrepresented" the situation at Trnopolje. Having charged 'deliberate misrepresentation', they needed to prove 'deliberate misrepresentation'. To this end, the LM defendants were able to cross-examine Penny Marshall and Ian Williams, as well as every member of the ITN crews who were at the camps, along with other witnesses. (That they didn't take up the opportunity to cross-examine the Bosnian doctor imprisoned at Trnopolje, who featured in the ITN stories and was called to testify on the conditions he and others suffered, was perhaps the moment any remaining shred of credibility for LM's allegations evaporated). They were able to show the ITN reports to the court, including the rushes from which the final TV stories were edited, and conduct a forensic examination of the visuals they alleged were deceitful. And all of this took place in front of a jury of twelve citizens who they needed to convince about the truthfulness of their allegations. They failed. The jury found unanimously against LM and awarded the maximum possible damages. So it was not ITN that bankrupted LM. It was LM's lies about the ITN reports that bankrupted themselves, morally and financially. Despite their failure, those who lied about the ITN reports have had no trouble obtaining regular access to the mainstream media in Britain, where they continue to make their case as though the 2000 court verdict simply didn't exist. Their freedom of speech has thus not been permanently infringed.[18]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_Marxism

Meanwhile:

On 11 July 1882, Gladstone ordered the bombardment of Alexandria, starting the short, Anglo-Egyptian War of 1882. The British won decisively, and although they repeatedly promised to depart in a few years, the actual result was British control of Egypt for four decades, largely ignoring Ottoman nominal ownership. France was seriously unhappy, having lost control of the canal that it built and financed and had dreamed of for decades. Gladstone's role in the decision to invade was described as relatively hands-off, and the ultimate responsibility was borne by certain members of his cabinet such as Lord Hartington, Secretary of State for India, Thomas Baring, 1st Earl of Northbrook, First Lord of the Admiralty, Hugh Childers, Secretary of State for War, and Granville Leveson-Gower, 2nd Earl Granville, the Foreign Secretary.[130]

…

Historian A.J.P. Taylor says that the seizure of Egypt "was a great event; indeed, the only real event in international relations between the Battle of Sedan and the defeat of Russia in the Russo-Japanese war."[131] Taylor emphasizes long-term impact:

The British occupation of Egypt altered the balance of power. It not only gave the British security for their route to India, it made them masters of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East. It made it unnecessary for them to stand in the front line against Russia at the Straits....And thus prepared the way for the Franco-Russian Alliance ten years later.[132]

Gladstone and the Liberals had a reputation for strong opposition to imperialism, so historians have long debated the explanation for this reversal of policy. The most influential was a study by John Robinson and Ronald Gallagher, Africa and the Victorians (1961) which focused on The Imperialism of Free Trade and was promoted by the Cambridge School of historiography. They argue there was no long-term Liberal plan in support of imperialism. Instead they saw the urgent necessity to act to protect the Suez Canal in the face of what appeared to be a radical collapse of law and order, and a nationalist revolt focused on expelling the Europeans, regardless of the damage it would do to international trade and the British Empire. Gladstone's decision came against strained relations with France, and maneuvering by "men on the spot" in Egypt. Critics such as Cain and Hopkins have stressed the need to protect large sums invested by British financiers and Egyptian bonds, while downplaying the risk to the viability of the Suez Canal. Unlike the Marxists, they stress "gentlemanly" financial and commercial interests, not the industrial capitalism that Marxists believe was always central.[133] More recently, specialists on Egypt have been interested primarily in the internal dynamics among Egyptians that produce the failed Urabi Revolt.[134][135]

…

In 1881 he established the Irish Coercion Act, which permitted the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland to detain people for as "long as was thought necessary", as there was rural disturbance in Ireland between landlords and tenants as Cavendish, the Irish Secretary, had been assassinated by Irish rebels in Dublin.[136] He also passed the Second Land Act (the First, in 1870, had entitled Irish tenants, if evicted, to compensation for improvements which they had made on their property, but had little effect) which gave Irish tenants the "3Fs"—fair rent, fixity of tenure and free sale.

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In the latter half of the 20th century Thatcherite Conservatives began to claim association with Gladstone and his economic policies. Margaret Thatcher proclaimed in 1983: "We have a duty to make sure that every penny piece we raise in taxation is spent wisely and well. For it is our party which is dedicated to good housekeeping—indeed, I would not mind betting that if Mr. Gladstone were alive today he would apply to join the Conservative Party". In 1996, she said: "The kind of Conservatism which he and I...favoured would be best described as 'liberal', in the old-fashioned sense. And I mean the liberalism of Mr Gladstone, not of the latter-day collectivists". Nigel Lawson, one of Thatcher's Chancellors, called Gladstone the "greatest Chancellor of all time”.

Nigel Lawson can be found here on this site: 

https://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/8985

See also:

https://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/35062

https://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/31379

https://yourdemocracy.net/drupal/node/34178

https://yourdemocracy.net/drupal/node/34182

And please, do not forget:

“Remember our duty to nature before it is too late...That duty is constant. It is never completed. It lives on as we breathe.” 

                                                             Margaret Thatcher at the UN in 1990 

Whatever else you think of Margaret Thatcher, remember this. She 'got it' on Climate change in a way that few political leaders have before or since. Today's press will rightly focus on the impact of her economic policy and the memory of her singular political personality. In both cases we will read about how she enforced her will. However, there is one issue on which she didn't manage to carry the Cabinet, or the country with her: climate change.

I am grateful for James West at Grist for developing this case: Her 1990 speech to the UN laid out a simple Conservative argument for taking environmental action: “It may be cheaper or more cost-effective to take action now,” she said, “than to wait and find we have to pay much more later.” Global warming was, she argued, “real enough for us to make changes and sacrifices, so that we do not live at the expense of future generations.”

Thatcher's climate conviction appears to have been based on the mixture of personal dispositions that made her such a distinct leader; scientific understanding - she apparently rebuffed the counter-argument that climactic variation was caused by solar radiation rather than C02 emissions based on her own personal understanding - and domestic housekeeping- planning ahead to minimise future costs and the burden to future generations.

Read more:

https://www.thersa.org/blog/2013/04/the-forgotten-legacy-thatchers-deep-conviction-on-climate-change? 

Cartoon at top: British politicians are forced to endure the stink of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman's "cigar" of Irish Home Rule.

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