They’re all the same

Many years ago, I was an active member of a political party. Being active mainly involved listening to speakers and debating resolutions at monthly meetings. More exciting were the elections campaigns, local and national. The most time-consuming task in elections was to identify those people most likely to vote for your candidate so that they could be encouraged to go out and vote on election day. Voters varied from friendly to hostile with many indifferent. Some would offer opinions of the parties or the candidates. But one group puzzled me - the people who told me that they never voted because the parties were ‘all the same’. This was puzzling because in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when I was politically-active, the two main political parties were further apart than ever before (or since). It is only now, with hindsight, that I realise that for some of these voters the parties were indeed the same: neither was explicitly racist.

The racist undercurrent in British politics has indeed been under-represented, and only bursts into the open on infrequent occasions. In April 1968, the MP Enoch Powell made a much-publicised speech calling for an end to non-white immigration and the repatriation of minority ethnic groups, and opposing anti-discrimination laws. The speech included many of the themes common to racist organisations before and since. There were the scary (and almost certainly invented) tales of elderly white people threatened by black neighbours, the absurd idea that white people would be ‘swamped’, and the paranoid idea that black people secretly wished to dominate the country. To his credit, the Conservative Party leader, Edward Heath, sacked Powell from his post as Shadow Defence Secretary. But public opinion polls at the time showed that Powell’s views were widely-supported and there were several short strikes as well as marches to Parliament by thousands of London dockers and porters.

None of the main political parties since that time has explicitly endorsed racism and both the Conservatives and Labour have promoted black and minority ethnic politicians to cabinet rank. Anti-racist laws were strengthened and racist views essentially banned from the broadcast media. As a result, racism was driven underground. If you are white, other white people would express racist views to you in confidence with a sort of illicit glee. Racism and discrimination could be practised in similarly disguised manner in recruiting and promoting staff. Nevertheless, public opinion polls show a steady decline in racist views, perhaps as a result of an older generation being replaced. But this progress was reversed with the vote on leaving the European Union.  

After the vote on our villages neighbourhood plan, I spent some time chatting to the polling clerks. They told me (without prompting) of their miserable experience at the EU referendum. Many voters had clearly never voted before and were paranoid about the vote. Some demanded to use a biro instead of a pencil “because the secret service will rub out our votes”. Some men insisted on directly supervising how their wives voted to make sure they voted to leave the EU. This group of undercover xenophobes,  who had previously dropped out of voting ‘because they’re all the same’, had now found a cause.

This month we’re loving

Supermarkets now all hand out free monthly magazines to their shoppers. These are usually glossy publications with recipes and promotions of particular products. The Co-op magazine is particularly good and the Marks and Spencers food magazine (‘What’s Fresh at M&S’) is particularly bad. I only noticed this because I rarely shop for food at M&S, but their August 2019 edition includes an article that intrigued me. This is headed:
    ‘This month we’re loving... Our celebrity tasting panel take their pick from our new summer-ready treats’.
The four celebrities are Emma Willis, Paddy McGuiness, Amanda Holden and Rochelle Humes. Each have supposedly selected a different M&S food product and include a sentence in its praise. For instance, Emma Willis says “I’m picking the Smoky Chorizo Slices, they really fill you up, they’re tasty and make you feel like you’re on holiday”.

This all invoked a volcano of cynicism within me. Can we believe that these four people take a break from their busy lives to gather and taste a range of food and wines before finally selecting their favourites? Did they actually compose the sentences in the praise of each product? Or is it more likely that they just attached their names to this advert drafted by an advertising agency in exchange for a fee plus a smidgen of the publicity needed to maintain a celebrity career? If my cynical views are correct, then there is a further question: why should anyone be influenced by what three presenters and an actress recommend? None have, as far as I know, claimed any expertise in the appreciation of food and wine. But I suspect that the marketing men know what they are doing. People are most likely to be influenced by those they admire, and the greatest admiration is for people who appear on television.

Hymns, ancient and modern and incomprehensible.

One of the more miserable features of my secondary schooling (apart from sport, the cadet force, Saturday morning attendance and the dreary lessons) was morning assembly. This followed the practice at that time of a broadly Christian service comprising the Lords Prayer, various other prayers, and a couple of hymns. It was all rounded off by an address by the headmaster about various school matters. These occasionally included warning and admonishments about behaviour in the showers after sports day. Since I left for home as soon as possible after compulsory sport and avoided the showers, I had no idea what he was warning us against.

I also had no idea what the various hymns were supposed to mean. There were a few that had good tunes that could be sung with enthusiasm (Jerusalem, He who would Valiant be, Oh God our help in Ages Past), but most were dreary affairs. Even worse, their words simply made no sense. One I particularly puzzled over was Teach me my God and King. I now learn from Wikipedia that it was based on a 17th Century poem called The Elixir, written by George Herbert. The most obscure verse was:

‘A man that looks on glass,
        On it may stay his eye;
Or if he pleaseth, through it pass,
        And then the heav'n espy.’

But this verse was hardly any better:

‘A servant with this clause
         Makes drudgery divine:
Who sweeps a room as for Thy laws,
         Makes that and th' action fine.’

Even the hymns with good tunes were obscure: Jerusalem seemed to aspire for a better society, which struck me as a good idea. He who Would Valiant Be suggested that we should aim to be pilgrims. What that could involve was unclear, although I understood this better a few years later when I read John Bunyan’s book Pilgrim’s Progress. My incomprehension extended to Christian theology. I never understood the idea of the Holy Trinity and still do not.

This might of course indicate a failure on my part to comprehend abstract thought. Other people do not seem so handicapped. For several centuries, different factions of Christians argued over the precise nature of the Holy Trinity, as well as transubstantiation and justification by faith.  These arguments have at times involved warfare, persecution, torture and execution. This willingness to consider slaughter to defend an abstract idea is not of course exclusive to Christianity or religion in general. In the 20th Century, millions have been led to their death in the name of such secular abstractions as ‘the nation’, ‘communism’, ‘democracy’ or ‘fascism’. The hymns and prayers of my schooldays now seem only a feeble protection against such evil.

It's a mad mad mad mad Brexit

The whole process of leaving the European Union (‘Brexit’) has sent British politics insane. Support for the two main political parties has fallen drastically, and a once-secure prime minister suffered an unprecedented series of defeats in the House of Commons on her main policy while only resigning after prolonged pressure from her own party. In the meantime, demands for Scottish independence have been strengthened, while both the Good Friday agreement in Ireland and the status of Gibraltar have been imperilled. This disaster is the outcome of a series of blunders unique in British politics:

1.    David Cameron never intended to hold a referendum on leaving the EU. Hostility to the EU was for the Conservative Party always a pseudo-policy - one designed to win votes and please the party faithful but never to be implemented. David Cameron was the master tactician here. When competing for the Conservative Party leadership against David Davis, he posed as ‘anti-European’ by stating that he would take Conservative MEPs out of the main centre-right grouping in the European Parliament. This pointless exercise alienated the allies in the EU that he would need later. Faced by a growth in support for UKIP, Cameron’s next wheeze was to pledge a referendum on remaining in the EU into the Party manifesto for the general election of 2015. If, as he expected, the coalition of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats was returned, this commitment could be conveniently dropped as part of a new coalition agreement. But the collapse of support for the Liberal Democrats in the election resulted in a government exclusively of Conservatives, thereby forcing Cameron to honour his electoral commitment and hold the referendum.

2.    Cameron expected to win the referendum but held it at the worst possible time to do so. Cameron probably faced the referendum with some confidence, having already won two (on the alternative vote and on Scottish independence). But the vote occurred at the worst possible moment for the Remain side, with a major refugee crisis following the Syrian War, and the over-bearing policies of the European Central Bank against Ireland, Greece and other countries using the Euro. The Remain campaign focussed on the practical advantages of free movement of trade and people within the EU and the economic disaster that would follow Brexit. These warnings probably had limited effect because the benefits of EU membership have become so much part of everyday life that they were taken for granted. For instance, many of the British emigrants to other EU countries who voted Leave were seemingly unaware that this would threaten their property rights and access to local healthcare. By contrast, the Leave campaign invented the threat of mass immigration following the non-existent possibility of Turkey’s admission to the EU, and stressed the possibility of redeploying the (much exaggerated) UK payments to the EU into the NHS. A major theme of the Leave campaign was that little else would change - Britain, according to Boris Johnson, could ‘have its cake and eat it’. Others emphasised that Britain would of course continue to enjoy tariff-free access to European markets.

3.    Members of the Labour Party are heavily in favour or remaining in the EU, but the Labour Party is a major cause of the drift to a No-Deal Brexit. A key part in the failure of the Remain campaign was the lacklustre participation of the Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn. The Labour Party has been pro-EU since the late 1980s, but its left wing saw the EU as a means of entrenching neoliberal policies. Corbyn, as a follower of the late Tony Benn, espoused the same policies until his elevation to the Party’s leadership. He campaigned for Remain, but it was a low-energy campaign, which produced great anger among Labour Members of Parliament and an unsuccessful challenge for the Party leadership. Since then, the Labour Party has gradually shifted its official position towards a second referendum with Remain as an option. But in Parliament, Labour voted against the Withdrawal Agreement, thus guaranteeing its defeat and the eventual replacement of Theresa May by Boris Johnson.

4.    Leaders of the Leave campaign did not expect to win. What Cameron did not anticipate was the defection of some of his keys lieutenants to the Leave side, especially Michael Gove and Boris Johnson. Neither had previously been particularly vocal in favour of leaving the EU, but they probably spotted an opportunity to win support among Conservative members for a potential leadership bid. Once the result was announced, and the Leave vote won, both looked utterly crestfallen. The unexpected nature of the result could be seen in the almost complete absence of any plans to negotiate with the EU. The ultimate symbol here is the single blank sheet of paper on the table in front of David Davis when he was supposed to be negotiating with the formidable EU team. The singleness of purpose of the EU side (comprising 27 separate sovereign states) contrasted with the disorganisation of the UK side, in which there was never any agreement within the government (let alone the Conservative Party) about the aims of negotiation.

5.    The treaty to leave the EU failed in Parliament because it was opposed by those most ardently in favour of leaving. Theresa May began the process of leaving with only the most vacuous of objectives (‘Brexit means Brexit’ and ‘a red, white and blue Brexit’). After the responsible cabinet minister (David Davis again) failed to make progress, her office took over negotiations and reached a detailed withdrawal agreement that was then rejected by Parliament. This took place because the Conservative Members of Parliament who were most opposed to the EU voted with the Opposition parties against the withdrawal treaty. They could so in the expectation that the UK would then leave the EU in any case when the period set by invoking Article 50 expired. The rationale for opposing the withdrawal agreement was the so-called ‘Irish backstop’ - the name given to a provision in the withdrawal agreement that the UK would remain in the EU customs union until a solution is found in subsequent negotiations to prevent a ‘hard border’ between the UK and the Irish Republic. Opponents of the Irish Backstop veered between arguing that a hard border could be avoided by various unspecified technological solutions and simply not caring what happened to Ireland.

6.    The main political party representing Northern Ireland in the UK Parliament schemed against the wishes of the majority of its population. After losing her  majority in Parliament after the 2017 General Election, Theresa May came to a ‘confidence and supply’ agreement with the Democratic Unionist Party in exchange for a commitment to an additional £1 billion pounds of public funding for Northern Ireland. However, this deal did not include any corresponding commitment by the DUP to vote for a withdrawal agreement, which they subsequently opposed. Business in Northern Ireland fears the economic consequences of a customs barrier at the border, while the majority of the community in Northern Ireland fears the danger this would pose for the Good Friday Agreement and voted to Remain in the referendum. But the DUP would probably be happy with a wall around the Province. It resolves this conflict by expressing opposition to a hard border while voting to make it happen. The DUP is virtually the only voice for Northern Ireland in Westminister because the main Nationalist party, Sinn Fein, is in favour of Irish unity and refuses to attend a British Parliament. It thereby empowers its main opponents and ensures that a hard border will occur.

7.    Those most in favour of a ‘hard Brexit’ admit that they will need to negotiate a treaty with the EU after leaving. William Rees-Mogg (a financial trader in the City of London who acts the role of a Victorian country gentleman) has spoken of the need to negotiate a treaty with the EU similar to that negotiated between the EU and Canada. If this follows other EU treaties, it would probably involve accepting EU product regulations and tariff-free trade (or a ‘customs union’ as it is usually termed). In any case, British firms wishing to export to the European Union will need to conform to EU product regulations. When the UK leaves the EU, this country will no longer have a say in the content of these regulations.

8.    Those most ardently in favour of leaving the EU in all circumstances are also those most willing to sell the UK to the USA. The ardent patriotism espoused by Nigel Farage and the Brexit Party coincides with a close alignment with the extreme right in the USA and its President. The US ambassador to the UK has argued that any trade agreement between the UK and the USA would require the UK to accept debased US food standards and open the NHS to purchase by the rapacious American healthcare corporations. These proposals are supported by many of the most ardent supporters of Brexit, who form a squad of Quislings-in-waiting. 

9.    Members of Parliament supporting Remain or a negotiated withdrawal agreement have failed to agree on anything else. There were several opportunities during the dying days of Theresa May’ government to agree an alternative to her Withdrawal Agreement that did not involve leaving without any deal. All these were defeated. In early 2019, seven Labour and four Conservative Members of Parliament who supported Remain defected from their parties to create a new party called ‘Change UK’. Four months later, six of these split from the new party to be even more independent (although two have since joined the Liberal Democrats). The new leader of the Liberal Democrats (a former minister in Cameron’s coalition government who was hitherto famous for introducing a measure to charge employees for bringing cases against their employers) refused to work with Jeremy Corbyn, while the various defectors showed an unwillingness to work with anyone else.


How can we explain this insanity? A major factor is ignorance about the EU among politicians, the media and the public. The EU debate had been successfully sidelined as an issue in British politics until David Cameron revived the referendum as an election pledge. This meant that there was no tradition of debate and discussion beyond silly season news about supposed EU regulations (‘straight bananas’ etc). This meant that the public could easily be scared by outright lies, such as the supposed plan to merge the British armed forces into a European Army or the threat that 5 million Turks were about to ‘invade’ the UK.

It is probable, however, that for most of those voting for Brexit, leaving the EU was rational based on the information available to them. Public services under Cameron and May had been starved of cash, resulting in increased crime and homelessness, and the elimination of many local further education, library and youth services. It appeared to make good sense to divert the money the UK pays to the EU to support these services, while avoiding the fate of being ordered around by foreigners. Neither can people struggling to get a decent home and in marginal employment be expected to support unrestricted immigration with any enthusiasm.

But a minority of Leave supporters view the issue with far more passion, as a matter of national identity.  They regard the EU as an oppressive alien force which threatens the British nation and which must be opposed even if this involves economic ruin. Opposition to the EU is thus the focus of a new kind of English ultra-nationalism, which, like all forms of nationalism, explains the problems people experience as the work of an external enemy. The EU has thus come to replace Jews, black people, Catholics, capitalists, communists and other devil-figures of the imagination. This focus on the EU as the unique impediment to British sovereignty is strange since the UK is a member of many other treaty organisations - in particular NATO. It was NATO membership, not membership of the EU, that resulted in British troops dying in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Ultra-nationalists of this kind are unlikely to welcome any agreement with the EU, even after the UK leaves. This presents the current Conservative government with a difficult dilemma: leave the EU without any agreement and face the unpopularity resulting from the resulting shambles; or come to some sort of agreement and face the undying hostility of the ultra-nationalists who will split the Conservative vote in a general election. The next few weeks will reveal which of these outcomes will prevail.

The ubiquity of misinformation

Two years ago our parish council was seeking funds to help build a skate park on the village playing field. We learnt that a firm was offering £35,000 to purchase a small corner of the  field to build a transmission mast for mobile telephones. This seemed a good offer, particularly since mobile phone reception was poor for some of the main networks. The Parish Council agreed this was a suitable offer and would help fund our new skate park. The start of each meeting of the Parish Council is always preceded by ‘democratic time’ - half an hour in which any parishioner can raise an issue for the attention of the Council. At the next meeting, one resident stated her opposition to a phone mast because she said she was ‘electrosensitive’ and that the signals from the mast only a mile from her house would produce headaches or even brain damage. Her objections were silenced when a councillor pointed out that the village already had two mobile phone masts in operation (of which she was unaware), and that these seem to have had no adverse effect on her.

The mast has now been built, and is about the same height as the local telephone poles. Mobile phone reception has improved and there have been no fresh reports of ‘electrosensitivity’ in the village. This is a consequence of the fact that this phenomenon probably does not exist. There is of course evidence that people blame microwave radiation for a wide range of symptoms, including even suicide. But several well-conducted scientific experiments have found that, like our local resident, people who complain of ‘electrosensitivity’ are unable to detect when a signal is or is not being transmitted. One study from 2005 is typical and is summarised by the NHS website here: https://www.nhs.uk/news/neurology/mobile-phone-mast-sensitivity-is-it-all-in-the-mind/. This used an experimental group of 44 volunteers who claimed to be ‘electrosensitive’ and a control group of 114 people. The experimental group reported symptoms when they were placed near to a mobile phone mast and told that it was ‘switched on’. When the tests were repeated with the sample not knowing whether the masts were switched on or off, there was no relationship between their symptoms and whether or not mobile phone signals were actually transmitted.

Of course, microwave radiation from mobile phone masts could have long-term effects on people even though their reports of short-term symptoms like headaches are unreliable. Fortunately, there have been several thorough research studies which have attempted to measure the health outcomes of exposure to mobile phone masts. Even better than individual studies are ‘systematic reviews’, which collect every relevant research study, rate their quality according to strict criteria, and come to an overall conclusion based only on the high-quality studies. The World Health Organisation has reported the results of a systematic review of this kind on the health effects of phone masts (https://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/88/12/09-071852/en/). This looked at 134 studies, of which 117 were rejected as not being relevant or not meeting quality standards. A review of the remaining studies found no evidence of any health effects from mobile phone masts. It also confirmed that people claiming to suffer from ‘electrosensivity’ were unable to identify whether or not they were actually exposed to any such signals.

This is good enough for me, speaking as a retired medical researcher. But it raises the question why many people continue to believe that mobile phone masts damage their health. This is really two questions: why do people attribute the very real problems they may experience in their life (such as headaches or depression) to mobile phone masts, and what social circumstances sustain this belief?

It is common for people to seek explanations for adversity, including problems with their health. In the past, they often identified unseen magical forces such as witchcraft and the desire of local gods (or devils) to inflict punishment. Jews or other stigmatised minorities served as locally-identifiable devils. So in 1670, the Empress Margarita Teresa in Vienna blamed her miscarriages on the magical workings of the local Jews, who were promptly expelled from the City. Technology has provided a sequence of unseen forces, from electricity to television sets, and now mobile phones. Each at various times has been blamed for causing cancer or more minor ailments. Few people now worry about electric sockets or television sets interfering with their brains, but mobile phone masts are comparatively new and still being built, at least in country villages. So they have become the latest focus for anxiety.

It is a paradox that beliefs of this kind are sustained in the modern world by means of the very technology that they blame. The Internet, transmitted through wireless routers and mobile phone masts, has become the world’s largest human repository of fantasies and lies. Search for articles on ‘electrosensitivity’, and you will find websites devoted to the concept, often including impressive-looking studies proving their claims. How can a person without expertise in a specialist field distinguish one of these websites from scientifically-valid studies? The answer is that we struggle. What we can do is defer to an expert but be careful in our choices of expert. In particular, we should pay most attention to those who have relevant qualifications and training and who do not have a financial interest in one particular course of action. It is almost certain that a neurologist who has undergone a decade’s training in the science of the brain and its disorders knows more about the causes of headaches than some unknown person running a website on ‘electrosensitivity’. Likewise, more trust should be placed on the opinions of the world’s top climate scientists than an unqualified politician who has been funded by the oil and coal industry (even if he is President of the USA).

The quiet streets of my childhood

I was born at home, which at that time was a flat at the back of a shop in Haslucks Green Road in Shirley. Shirley is a suburb of Birmingham, now comprising rows of shops and supermarkets stretching for miles along the Stratford Road. Behind the shops are roads of detached and semi-detached houses, which reach further each year over the Warwickshire countryside. I have few memories of my first home, apart from the time that I returned to it one night in a hospital car after a tonsillectomy. At the age of four, we moved to a rented house in Stroud Road, a short distance away. This was a great step up. The house was semi-detached with a front and back garden. At the end of the garden was a sandpit, where my little brother and I would play in summer. A rough access road led along the back gardens, and I spent a lot of time there learning how to ride a bike. Bikes were a safe and common form of transport for children because the roads were almost empty. Children all played in the road, often for many hours of the day. We would move aside when the occasional car appeared. Best of all, empty roads were good for playing on trolleys. My father made a trolley from two planks and four pram wheels. The front axle was on a pivot and could be steered by a rope. I would lie on my trolley and whizz down the hill in Stroud Road.

When I was eleven, my parents managed to buy a house and we left Stroud Road for a larger semi-detached house in Haslucks Croft, also not far away. I do not remember what happened to the trolley. Did my parents dispose of it with the same complex emotions of nostalgia and regret at the passing of childhood that I experience when I now see my own children’s abandoned toys?

The last man to see him alive

Nothing beats a good murder - at least in fiction. I have spent many a contented hour reading Agatha Christie, Dorothy L Sayers, Raymond Chandler and, more recently, Anthony Horowitz. I have learnt that a key rule in police investigations of murder is that the first suspect is the last known person who admits to seeing the victim alive. I was such a suspect back in the 1970s, although I was unaware of the fact at the time.

This all began one afternoon after I had visited the University of Warwick to meet a former student colleague who was by then beginning a career that would eventually lead him to become Professor of Politics. This must have been in Winter, because I remember it was dark by the time I returned to the railway station in Coventry. While I was waiting for the express train to Birmingham, I went into the waiting room on the platform. This was quite full, and I remember one man of indeterminate age who sat with glasses and a trilby hat on his head looking straight ahead. The man radiated misery, and I remember thinking “He’s a miserable old bugger”. The train arrived and I got on a half-empty compartment. After the train had reached top speed, I saw the face of the miserable man looking through the window in the door to the vestibule at the end of the carriage. About five minutes later, I decided to go to the toilet, which I assumed would be in the same vestibule. Instead I found no toilet and the carriage door wide open. I rushed into the next carriage and asked if anyone had seen the man with a trilby hat return, but no-one had. I warned them of the open door and then ran up the train to the café to tell the train staff. They told me there was no point in stopping the train because it would reach Birmingham New Street station in less than ten minutes. The  guard went to the open door to warn passengers. The train arrived in Birmingham New Street and was met by British Transport Police, who took my name and address and my account of what had happened.

After that, there were two events, although I can not remember in which order they took place. But the police visit may have happened first. I was staying with my parents at the time, and a one day a police detective called. I remember he was an avuncular man with a moustache who interviewed me carefully about what I had seen. It was only later that it occurred to me that he had interviewed me as a possible suspect, although I was not cautioned. After a while, he became less formal and told me about the deceased. The man with a hat had been a retired railwayman who had put his savings into running a shop with his wife. This was now near bankruptcy. Before retirement, he had worked on the line between Coventry and Birmingham New Street and sometimes took nostalgic trips between these stations. In those days, there was no central locking of carriage doors. Instead, passengers could open the door by pulling down the window, reaching outside and turning the door handle. It was therefore hard to open a door of this kind by mistake, and this all to me suggested suicide. Either way, death had been instantaneous. He had left a train travelling at about 100mph and smashed his head on the opposite track.

The inquest was held in the coroner’s court, which was also attended by the deceased’s widow, brother and other family-members. I reported what I had seen, and then the brother asked me angrily why I had not pulled the communication cord, inferring that this would somehow have saved the life of the deceased. Strange are the ways of anger (and possibly guilt). The coroner intervened to protect me from such hostile questions. The jury returned an open verdict, which is often used in England when suicide is suspected but not proven.

Some years later, I read that there had been some fatalities on the railways attributed to faulty carriage doors or doors not properly closed when the train left the station.