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Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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In the print version of The Times T2 supplement today, there was an interesting article by Ann Treneman about attitudes amongst a selection of British Jews living in the heavily Jewish Golders Green area of London. One particular section caught my eye in which Rabbi Pini Dunner remarked about a perceived increase in hostile views towards Israel and jibes about Jews. When asked ‘Like what?’ he replied:
“Like the phrase ‘You people…’ Language we do not expect. Colleagues at work will refer to ‘you people…’ What is that? People think: I am British. I am Jewish. I support the state of Israel. That does not make me ‘you people’. You don’t refer to Conservative supporters as ‘you people’ or black activists as ‘you people.”
Yet he is quite wrong on all counts. I think black people (activists, no less) would be hugely amused to hear they are not referred to as ‘you people’ by some sections of British society. And to hear Conservatives referred to in that manner all you need to do is listen to Prime Minster’s Question Time in Parliament.
Notions of identity are a complex thing in a multi-layered dynamic society like modern Britain. As a friend of mine once said to me, “In Jamaica I feel British and In Britain I feel Jamaican.” For her, feelings of identity bounce off context and her context keeps changing. For Rabbi Dunner, his feelings of ‘dissimulation’ from Britain are, I suspect, more a measure of his own feelings than those of British society around him. All I have to do to become one of ‘you people’ is start loudly espousing libertarian views in Britain or mentioning my Catholic background. My ex-wife once told me she hated it when in London she was referred to as one of ‘you Northerners’ (she came from Newcastle).
The British are a patchwork quilt of a people, not some volk, or Rabbi Dunner would find himself in a very different society indeed, one he would be far more removed from culturally than this one. When we express views that support foreign states or have unusual religions, then we should not be surprised when people notice we are different to them in some ways… but neither should be think it really matters all that much. We are all ‘you people’ to someone. Get over it.
Is ‘Britain’ still a culture rooted in evolved wisdom and contradictions that stretch back more than a millennium? Do those Anglo-Saxon, Norman, Celtic and Nordic roots still run deep?
Or is Britain in 2002 the product of a transcendent collective moment in 1945, just waiting these years since for the uncluttered minds of New Labour to sweep away the last remitments of the Old Empire and cut the even older entangled thread of yeomanry and gentry, producing the longed for value-neutral tabula rasa of ‘Cool Britannia’? Is this Year Zero, in which all cultural values are equally valid… dancing around the maypole, Guy Fawkes night, religious tolerance and snogging behind the bike shed are not more or less a part of a collective multicultural state-society than burqas, clitoradectomy and enforced arranged marriage?
Well the verdict is in… in excess of one million people lined the 24 mile route of the Queen Mother’s progress to St. George’s chapel to cast their vote on the impromptu referendum on just what ‘Britain’ actually means. Millions understand that a hereditary monarchy that reigns over society without ruling the state is less corrupting than democratically sanctified political patronage. These same millions know what it is to be British and stood up to be counted yesterday. They were not there just to see what was but also to show to each other was still is.
Paul Staines finds himself moved by a display of profoundly national sentiment
Have just finished listening to “The Falklands Play”. Looking out from my study, across the Thames over the House of Lords the Union flag is fluttering at half mast in an English spring breeze against a blue sky. A queue of thousands snakes from Westminster hall to pay their respects to the late Queen Mother.
Sometimes even a cynical rational Libertarian-republican-internationalist can cry.
The queue of mourners can seen backed up across Lambeth bridge and around further along the Thames Embankment
Paul Staines
The current worrying increase in crime in Britain, with its spate of shootings, muggings, burglaries, as well as the continued rise in general boorishness and incivility, is one of the main topics of public debate in this country. Predictably, our political masters have reacted to this by proposing such illiberal and largely useless “solutions” as restricting the right to trial by jury, state ID cards, and so forth. So it is encouraging to know that an earlier generation was able to tackle what was by then a relatively unruly society withouth raining all over civil liberties. It has been done before and it can be done again.
I refer to that much misunderstood and maligned period – The Victorian age. They brought about a substantial drop in the crime rate without raining all over civil liberties. And one interesting feature of that period was that the school-leaving age was lower than it is now. Of course this is a complex subject, but I cannot help thinking that some of the current bout of delinquency among youngsters is that many of them are bored out of their minds at school and could be spending their lives more usefully elsewhere.
I found myself nodding in agreement whilst reading this snapshot analysis of the state of politics in Britain by Brian Micklethwait.
What he is really describing is the slow, but seemingly irreversible, public disengagement from politics and its traditional practices. The ever decreasing voter-turnout, not just in Britain but elsewhere, confirms it. People simply don’t want to talk about politics or politicians anymore (except to complain about both). The whole subject is boring; painfully boring. Switch channels, change subjects, let’s talk about Feng Shui instead. Or skiing. Or David Beckham. Or something. Anything. Politics is dull. Politicians are all the same anyway.They’re all useless. They’re all liars. Voting changes nothing.
Good. Disengagement from and disillusion with politicians is precisely what we want and not voting is a libertarian act. But it may not have libertarian consequences.
First of all, voter apathy is not being matched by bureaucratic or managerial apathy. In fact, if anything, the reverse is true. (I do not have any scientific evidence but there may be some correlation here). The less the public engages in political debate the more laws and regulations and policies get churned out. Take the EU (somebody, please). There is no voter engagement at all with the EU commission yet it is a sausage-factory of pointless pettyfogging decrees. It is almost as if, freed from the effort and inconvenience of actually having to argue the merits of their case(s), our political masters are free to do more or less as they please. Added to this is the damage than can be wrought by small but well-organised and energetic lobbyists (coporate and otherwise) who can pressure politicians to get their agenda imposed upon all. Meanwhile, the poor exhausted public simply rolls its eyes, tuts, grumbles and gets on with it, as if they expect this and just have to learn to live with it. There is apathy but widespread obediance and disillusion is a long way from rebellion.
Now some will say that this state of affairs cannot possibly last forever and they would be right. But it can last for an awfully long time and, currently, there is no end in sight.
Secondly, there most certainly is a huge, sucking ideological vacuum out there and nature dictates that it will be filled sooner or later. Certainly liberty is the oxygen that may well fill it but it is just as possible that it may be filled by a re-emergence of communism or (more likely in my view) tribal nationalism. Reason does not always triumph over stupidity and, let’s face it, collectivist philosophies have always had a far more visceral appeal to disenchanted and angry mobs.
Libertarians tend to assume that because we are right we will prevail. Dangerous, very dangerous.
Time for an update about British party politics. When I started Samizdating, I posted a piece about how the British media have finally started laying in to our hitherto untouchable Blair Labour – from now on: Blairbour – government, after about seven years of Blairbour being beyond criticism. However, in my earlier posting I exaggerated how easily the Conservatives might be able to exploit all this. I assumed that they could make clear and rapid strides in the entirely smart direction, and of course being the Conservative Party that’s beyond them. Plus, I keep forgetting how much Normal People hate and despise the Conservatives.
The underlying story here is of a great nationwide coalition for Blairbour between (a) Normal People who want better public services without taxes going up, and (b) Abnormal Socialists who find the Conservatives so appalling that they are prepared to tolerate any other non- or anti-socialist humiliations in order to see the Conservatives go on being humiliated by the Normals. This coalition is starting to crumble.
The Normals want “better public services” and the idea was that by booting out the Conservatives (who supposedly don’t care about public services) and having a Blairbour government that did care about public services (but who wouldn’t put taxes up), they’d get better public services. This was never true. “Public services” don’t work like that. See everything else ever written by libertarians since the dawn of time. Blairbour cannot ever do as well with public services as it has promised. Some public services have patchily improved, at great cost. Others have got worse, also at great cost. Blairbour is starting to mutter about tax increases. The patience of the Normals is wearing thin.
Insofar as it is possible to contrive any “better public services” the only methods that stand any chance – and it is only a chance – are Conservative methods. So now that “we must start actually delivering better public services”, the Abnormals are also starting to be seriously pissed off. Their own methods always fail, and everyone except them knows it. So the methods of the hated Conservatives are being obstinately persisted with by Blairbour, and if anything being beefed up (“we must now actually deliver better public services”). So the patience of the Abnormals is also wearing thin.
(The Abnormals also hate that Blairbour backs the USA against Terrorism. The Abnormals are deeply confused about Terrorism. Some Abnormals are neutral for it. Others Abnormals are neutral against it. None oppose it as keenly as Blairbour or the Americans.)
But the Conservatives remain hated and despised by both Normals and Abnormals. Blairbour is no longer the Best Government available. But Blairbour remains something almost as politically potent, the Least Worst Government. Watch for a huge surge in the polls by the Conservatives, because if that happens I’ll be proved wrong. But my best guess for the next general election is for further significant gains by the Sod-You-All Party, that is to say a further decline in the overall percentage of people eligible to vote actually bothering to vote, for anyone, with the actual number of MPs remaining much as now, except that there’ll be a few more Liberal Democrats. Far more likely than a surge of enthusiasm for the Conservatives – or for anybody else – is a general sense of depression and cynicism about politics as a whole.
Sounds good to me.
Which provokes the question: what of libertarianism? Could there be some kind of British “libertarian political party” cobbled together to fill a small but growing patch of this huge vacuum and snatch some of those idle votes? Maybe. But as usual, the Conservatives are now making just enough libertarian-ish noises (“diversity” – “importance of the market”) to keep all those “libertarians” who are fascinated by British party politics fascinated, still, by the Conservative Party. And the rest of us have better and more amusing things to do with our lives.
Yes, I think that’s what they call it: being ‘ahead of the curve’. In this case, the ‘curve’ that I am ahead of is The Times in an article warning of the dangers of the Proceeds of Crime Bill, the UK government’s grand apparatus in the already-discredited war against ‘money-laundering’.
The writer adopts a more conservative (some might say measured) tone than I did. The piece reeks of unctious solicitude much in the manner of a senior Civil Servant advising a Minister that his decision is ‘courageous’ but it does taper to a fine point:
“The legislation needs to be framed in such a way that it does not deter honest businesses from consulting their professional advisers on grey areas, where they may need clarification of their position in order to be able to rectify it. Otherwise the very professional confidentiality that has created a healthy climate of compliance in the UK will be undermined. This is likely to lead to more criminality, not less.”
Precisely the point I made (among others) nearly a year ago(1).
Still, my natural desire to gloat must be tempered by my satisfaction that some serious people in serious places are starting to get the message and, more importantly, are broadcasting it.
(1)= (link requires Adobe Acrobat Reader which can be downloaded for free)
I was quite overjoyed to see the BBC news report that two thirds of the entire population of Gibraltar turned out in a demonstration, led by the mayor (or whatever the head of government there is called) in defense of their right to decide their own fate.
That the United Kingdom could even consider negotiating with Spain over the transfer of Gibraltar to them is appalling. Not because of anything they are doing in the negotiation specifically, but because of the entire concept that underlies their talks.
It is like Feudalism.
In Feudalism, the peasants and their land are traded about between rulers like poker chips in Las Vegas. The thought people who live in a place might actually prefer one situation over another is foreign, or at least not as important as Raison’s d’Etat to the Feudal Lord.
This is not a UK party issue. The Conservaties sold the Hong Kong peasants to China; now Labour wishes to sell the Gibraltar peasants to Spain. At least in Northern Ireland we’ll get to vote about it. Repeatedly if we want.
I would imagine the Falklands peasantry will be the next to be sold off. After all, it’s bloody expensive defending them. Then perhaps we can sell the Channel Islands slave… er peasants… er subjects… to France! Yeah, that’s the ticket!
I would suggest to Gibraltarians they begin to arm and prepare defensive positions. The government of the United Kingdom wants to sell them, so perhaps a slave revolt is in order.
At the very least they could make it very messy for Spain. I’ll bet there are loads and loads of hardened tunnels and caves in those rocks.
Inside Europe: Iberian Notes on 11:00 CET, March. 22, 2002 (no link to individual articles) does a pretty good job of comprehensively trashing the Spanish claims on Gibraltar and pointing out the weird logic involved.
Margaret Thatcher‘s remarks are hardly surprising to anyone who has read what she has said over the years but it was a surprise to me as an outsider looking in to read the negative response from so many British Conservatives.
For years Perry has been telling me that they are ‘The Stupid Party’ and are not committed to resisting EU envelopment and super-statism. I see now that he is quite correct. [Ed: like I said about the Libertarian Party in the USA, there are some good people in the Tory Party, but they are not the ones running it]
It seems that the only argument between the much of the Tory party and their political enemies in Britain is the rate at which British is to be enveloped by Euro-statism. The British Army was once said to be ‘Lions lead by Donkeys’. It would seem the Tory Party are ‘Donkeys once lead by a Lioness’. As the contrast between the more dynamic economy of the USA and Euro-sclerosis grows harder to miss by even the most willfully blind, how can the party which actually started the privatising ball rolling that shattered the seemingly unstoppable advance of ‘democratic’ socialism in the 1980’s have come to being in step with histories obvious losers? The Stupid Party indeed.
Thieves tried to grab a diamond necklace from U.S. entertainer Liza Minnelli while she was honeymooning with her new husband David Gest. The Oscar-winning star was the victim of an attempted robbery when the car in which she was a passenger stopped at traffic lights in Holland Park, west London.
That should boost the British tourist trade – not!
This is the first time I have noticed one of the 2001 pattern two pound coins (£2 = US $3). I think the tails side is far nicer than the messy modern art confusion of the previous pattern, which looked like a circuit board that had been stamped on by an elephant.
 
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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