Was the First World War a just war?

Well we all know the answer to that question, don’t we? We’ve all watched Blackadder Goes Forth so we know it was a futile conflict and a criminal waste of human life. “Lions led by donkeys” and all that.

Historian Professor Gary Sheffield begs to differ. In History Today, he argues that it was a just war. He reminds us that the war was started by the aggressive and expansionary policies of the Central Powers (Germany and Austria-Hungary). Had Britain not intervened, the Central Powers would have defeated France and Russia, and achieved complete hegemony over continental Europe.

This argument matters today for two reasons. First, next year marks the centenary of the start of the war, and the beginning of four years of official commemorations. As Professor Sheffield points out, the British government was set to travesty the conflict by adopting a neutral stance:

As it stands, the Government’s position of neutrality regarding the meaning of the war denies the commemorations the context necessary to make sense of them. The UK’s leading historian of the First World War, Professor Sir Hew Strachan, who is a member of the Government’s own advisory committee, early on described official plans for the commemoration as ‘conceptually empty’. Strachan’s criticisms remain valid. The Government has explicitly disavowed trying to create any particular ‘narrative’, but by refusing to set the commemorations into the context of the origins of the war and the aggression of the Central Powers, this is exactly what it has done. Merely commemorating the sacrifice of British troops without explaining why they died tacitly gives support to the dominant popular view that the war was futile and the deaths meaningless. So does the fact that the original programme of official commemorations included defeats such as Gallipoli and the First Day on the Somme, but omitted the great victories of 1918 that won the war, such as Amiens and the breaking of the Hindenburg Line.

The second reason this matters is important for Liberals. A consensus has developed that Britain entered the war only because of the incompetence of the Liberal government and in particular the Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey. Again, this is a travesty of history. True, Britain has had better foreign secretaries than Grey, but even he cannot be blamed for the aggression of the Central Powers.

There are legitimate arguments to be had about whether the conduct of the war was optimal. A stubborn adherence to trench warfare led to a horrendous death toll. A more effective and less costly military strategy was doubtless possible. It always is – 20/20 hindsight is a wonderful thing.

No one is arguing that the centennial commemorations should be turned into an orgy of jingoistic German-bashing. But there is no case for travestying history and no need for Liberals to beat themselves up over what the British government did in 1914. Had Britain stood aside in 1914, the same critics would have been castigating the Liberal government for throwing Belgium and France to the wolves.

Blackadder is one of the finest TV sitcoms ever made but it should not inform next year’s official commemorations, and nor should Liberal guilt complexes.

Busted: the greatest authoritarian myth of all

The Communications Data Bill would not have prevented last week’s murder in Woolwich. I know that. You know that. Even MI5 knows that.

But here’s another authoritarian myth busted: The greatest authoritarian myth of all – that Mussolini made the trains run on time. In fact he didn’t. Brian Cathcart explained why in the Independent in 1994:

Say what you like about Mussolini, he made the trains run on time. That was the famous last excuse for Fascism, conveying the idea that while dictatorship might not be very nice, at least it got things done.

It is an argument we may hear again following the election triumph of Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia and its allies, who include neo-Fascists. After all those years of chaotic politics and corruption, perhaps what the country needs is the smack of firm government. Mr Berlusconi, people may be tempted to say, could be just the man to instil punctuality in those recalcitrant Italian train drivers.

But did Mussolini really do it? Did Il Duce, in his 20 years of absolute power, really manage to make the railway service meet its timetable? The answer is no.

Like almost all the supposed achievements of Fascism, the timely trains are a myth, nurtured and propagated by a leader with a journalist’s flair for symbolism, verbal trickery and illusion.

Cathcart goes on to cite several eyewitness accounts of the unpunctuality of Italian trains in the 1930s. And we now know what a shambles Berlusconi turned out to be.

But why dredge up an article written in 1994 about events before the Second World War? It is because the article concludes with an important lesson:

Typically, [Mussolini] fell victim to his own propaganda. Mussolini’s biographer, Denis Mack Smith, points out that Italy usually imported its coal by sea, but after the Second World War broke out this was no longer possible and it had to come overland. The Duce’s railway system, however, was not up to the job.

“Only two of the nine railroads through the Alps had been provided with double tracks and their capacity was estimated as equal to little more than a quarter of Italy’s peacetime needs,” writes Mack Smith.

“As the trains running on time had become one of the accepted myths of Fascism, and as Mussolini had never charged anyone with the task of planning communications in the event of war, the matter had gone by default.”

Authoritarianism simply doesn’t work, and it’s the same whether the dictatorship is in politics or business (as Jonathan Calder explains here and here). Without the benefits of an open society, poor decision-making is never open to scrutiny or tested by criticism. That is because there is no tolerance for critical thinking and people are afraid to admit failure or suggest improvements. Hence bad decisions go unchallenged. Indeed, the spectacular failure of Fred Goodwin at RBS was largely the result of his dictatorial methods and the climate of fear he created.

Despite this, authoritarianism remains fashionable in certain quarters. In a period of uncertainty, there is a temptation to believe that the answer to all our ills is a “smack of firm government” – just look at the wistful hankering for a messianic leader that surfaced after Mrs Thatcher died. Meanwhile, the television shows The Apprentice and Dragons’ Den ignore the example of Fred Goodwin and continue to encourage the idea that management is basically about being macho and shouting at people.

In our age of impatience, instant gratification and shortened attention spans, it is harder to argue for such time-consuming processes as critical deliberation or rational problem solving. So politicians assert their authority through ill-thought-out ‘initiatives’. What matters is getting things done, without stopping to ask whether these things are any good. The difference nowadays is that, whereas Mussolini declaimed to huge crowds from a balcony, today’s managerialist politicians read out a press release in a branch of Morrisons.

The real legacy of Margaret Thatcher

A lot of rubbish was said and written about Margaret Thatcher immediately after her death. The consensus was depressingly deferential – partly in the spirit of “never speak ill of the dead”; partly due to her supporters seeking to exploit the mourning to reinforce her legacy; partly due to her opponents being overwhelmingly defeatist; but mainly because, although the economic orthodoxy she established has crashed in flames, no one has any idea what to do next.

The few who dared to criticise her openly were no better. Many of these critics descended into appropriately 1980s-period SWP-style gesture politics (the ‘Ding Dong’ song and mock funerals and all that).

What was missing was some serious analysis and an historical perspective, and two commentators have helped to remedy that lack.

In the New Statesman, John Gray, ostensibly reviewing a book about Edmund Burke, observes that Thatcher sought to shake up Britain but that the results were far from those she expected and in some ways the opposite of what she wanted:

As a consequence of her leadership, the Conservative Party is in some ways weaker than it has ever been. Turning it into an instrument of her personal will, she triggered a coup that has left every subsequent Tory leader on permanent probation. Alienating Scotland, she virtually wiped out her party north of the border and planted a large question mark over the Union. Within England, her indifference to the human costs of de-industrialisation deepened the north-south divide. The result is a hollowed-out and shrunken party that faces huge obstacles in ever again forming a government. For someone who has been described as the greatest Conservative leader since Churchill, it’s quite a list of achievements. If you wanted to shake up Britain and change it beyond recognition, Thatcher was, of all postwar leaders, the one mostly likely to have this effect.

In short, Thatcher instituted the very kind of revolutionary politics that Conservatives were meant to oppose. Her politics is no longer a solution to anything but the present political establishment remains mesmerised by her legacy and unable to snap out of it.

TV documentary maker Adam Curtis, meanwhile, has a theory about why the pundits were incapable of analysing Thatcher after her death. As a corrective, he has put up a film he made in 1995 about Thatcher called The Attic:

It’s about how she constructed a fake ghostly version of Britain’s past, and then used it to maintain her power. But also how she became possessed and haunted by this vision.

I’m putting it up as a bit of a corrective to the terrifying wonk-fest that took over after Mrs Thatcher died. A conveyor belt of Think Tank pundits and allied operatives poured into the TV studios and together they built a fortress around Mrs Thatcher’s memory that was rooted in theories about economics.

They did this because economics is the only language that wonks understand. It’s a view of the world where they see the voters – the people who put Mrs Thatcher in power – as simplified consumption-driven robots.

What was missing was the fact that Mrs Thatcher was also a powerful romantic politician who created a strange but compelling story about Britain’s past that connected with the imagination of millions of people. It was fake, but it was incredibly powerful because she believed it. And the power of her belief raised up ghostly dreams from Britain’s past that still live in people’s imaginations – long after she fell from power.

The problem with wonks is that they can’t deal with emotion and feeling, and they don’t like stories. It means that they cannot connect at all with the feelings and imaginations of the voters. Yet the think-tankers have built a sarcophagus of economic discourse around Westminster.

What we are waiting for is a politician to come along who can connect with our imaginations and inspire us about political ideas instead of boring us to tears.

I fear that emotional politician might be a bloke called Nigel, propping up the bar with a pint and a fag and a thing about foreigners. In the meantime, here is the film:

Mr Lloyd George’s Favourite Pudding

Due to some serendipity on Amazon’s website, I came across an inexpensive little booklet called Lloyd George’s Favourite Recipes, which arrived in the post yesterday.

The title is misleading, since it contains only three pages of Lloyd George’s favourite recipes (five recipes at the beginning of the booklet plus a further five missing from earlier editions and restored in an appendix). The booklet is no less interesting for that.

It would doubtless have sold less well if it had been titled more accurately. It is nevertheless one of those fascinating locally-published Women’s Institute collections of family recipes. The edition I received was published in 1996, being a reprint of Lloyd George’s Favourite Dishes published in 1974, in turn a new edition of a collection first published in 1919 and originally titled The Criccieth Women’s Institute Cookery Book; including Recipes for the Favourite Dishes of the Prime Minister (The Right Hon. D. Lloyd George, M.P.).

You will of course want to try one of Lloyd George’s favourites, and in 1919 there was none of that nonsense about healthy eating:

Mr Lloyd George’s Favourite Pudding

1 lb flour, 1 lb raisins stoned, ½ lb suet, a pinch of salt, mix all together and moisten with milk. Put the mixture into a basin and boil for four hours. Serve with sauce or sugar.

Charles Bradlaugh – the musical!

Well, not quite. But there is a new play.

Charles Bradlaugh is a hero of several members of the Liberator Collective. He was Liberal MP for Northampton from 1880 to 1891, and an atheist. When he first entered the House of Commons, he asked to be allowed to affirm instead of swearing a religious oath of allegiance. After a protracted battle, including imprisonment and several by-elections, he eventually won the right for members of both houses of parliament to affirm instead of swear an oath. It is thanks to Bradlaugh that non-believers won the right to sit in parliament, and it is for this achievement that he is best remembered.

However, Bradlaugh was also an early campaigner for birth control. Together with Annie Besant, he published a pamphlet advocating birth control and was prosecuted for “obscene libel”. The ensuing trial is the subject of the new play – the National Secular Society has more details:

A new play by Derek Lennard, The Fruits of Philosophy (Such a scandal!) which examines secularism and free thought in Victorian Britain will be presented at Conway Hall on Friday 15 March at 7.30pm.

It is based on the true story of the trial of Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh (founder of the National Secular Society) who were accused in 1877 of publishing “Obscene Libel” – a sixpenny pamphlet advocating family planning and describing contraception.

The play will give a dramatised account of the trial, the scandal that surrounded it, the way it affected the lives and careers of the accused, and the impact on wider society.

Entry to the play is free (book a place here) but there is a suggested donation of £5.

By ’eck, it’s Abe Lincoln

The new Steven Spielberg film Lincoln has no scenes set in Lancashire. Perhaps it should have.

As the BBC’s Paul Mason points out, Lancashire’s cotton workers, urged on by Liberal MP John Bright, expressed solidarity with the Union’s fight against slavery and its blockade of the south, despite losing work from the resulting loss of cotton supplies.

Lincoln is commemorated by a statue in a square named after him in Manchester:

At a mass meeting in Manchester’s Free Trade Hall, on New Year's Eve 1862, attended by a mixture of cotton workers, and the Manchester middle class, they passed a motion urging Lincoln to prosecute the war, abolish slavery and supporting the blockade – despite the fact that it was by now causing them to starve. The meeting convened despite an editorial in the Manchester Guardian advising people not to attend.

Mr Lincoln, in a letter dated 19 January 1863, 150 years ago... replied with the words that are inscribed on his statue:

“I cannot but regard your decisive utterances on the question as an instance of sublime Christian heroism which has not been surpassed in any age or in any country.

“It is indeed an energetic and re-inspiring assurance of the inherent truth and of the ultimate and universal triumph of justice, humanity and freedom… Whatever misfortune may befall your country or my own, the peace and friendship which now exists between the two nations will be, as it shall be my desire to make them, perpetual.”

Leadership contest? Don’t bet on it

PoliticalBetting.com reports that bookmaker Paddy Power has announced its odds on who will lead the Liberal Democrats into the next general election.

Not surprisingly, Nick Clegg is favourite at 8/15. His closest rival in the betting is Vince Cable at 7/2, followed by Tim Farron at 7/1.

These odds sound about right. A change of leadership is not impossible before the 2015 election but is very unlikely, for three reasons.

First, Clegg intends to maintain the coalition until the last minute. It is not clear what his exit strategy is, or even whether he has an exit strategy. But it is clear he does not want an extended period between the end of the coalition and the election, when the party can re-establish its independence. Without this space, it would be difficult for any rival to mount a challenge.

Second, who would mount a challenge anyway? If Clegg were to resign voluntarily, there would be no shortage of candidates. But if he doesn’t, it is hard to imagine any possible successors wanting to risk their chances by being seen as the assassin. Even without that risk, who would want to inherit the coalition-related opprobrium attached to Clegg? Any serious leadership contender would be better off waiting until after the next election.

Third, the only conceivable circumstances in which Clegg would depart before the election would be some sort of dramatic failure, but what would that be? The bad results in the May elections of 2011 and 2012 did not spark a revolt, so why would similar results in 2013 or 2014 be any different? The tuition fees debacle and NHS reforms did not undermine Clegg’s leadership, so what other policy issues would? Sure, there has been growing disillusionment in the party but different members have different tolerance thresholds – there is no united ‘line in the sand’.

A bad result in 2015 and no coalition afterwards, and Clegg would probably depart. But for now, a trip to the bookies is not warranted.

Meanwhile, the Independent reports that Clegg unveiled a plaque in London to commemorate the founding of the Liberal Party in 1859 – but mistakenly referred to it as a ‘memorial’.

Was this gaffe a Freudian slip? I sincerely hope not.

The surprising decline in violence

“Everything you know is wrong,” says psychologist Steven Pinker in a lecture for TED.

Conventional wisdom says that the modern era, with its technological warfare, genocide and violent crime, is uniquely violent. Our tribal ancestors, meanwhile, lived in communal harmony.

“In fact,” says Pinker, “our ancestors were far more violent than we are, violence has been in decline for long stretches of time, and today we are probably living in the most peaceful time in our species’ existence.”

You can see the whole lecture here:



This lecture was recorded in 2007 and Pinker subsequently expanded his theory into the book The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined.

Note that Pinker is not claiming that there is no violence today, rather that there is a lot less of it compared with most of human history. If, having watched the lecture, you still disagree with Pinker, read the comments thread here, where your points may already have been raised and answered.

Meanwhile, consider the question Pinker raises at the end of his lecture. The decline in violence should force us to ask not just “What are we doing wrong?” but also “What have we been doing right?”

Bomb Sight

A website has just been launched called Bomb Sight, an interactive map of the bombing of London during the Blitz from October 1940 to June 1941.

During this period, the Luftwaffe bombed London for 57 consecutive nights. More than 20,000 civilians were killed and 1.4 million Londoners were left homeless.

Bomb Sight’s map enables you to zoom in on any part of London and see precisely where the bombs fell. We tend to think that the Blitz took place mainly in the East End, the docks and the City, and indeed those areas suffered most. The reason the maps appear to underestimate the damage done in those parts of London is that they show only where individual high explosive bombs and parachute mines fell. They do not chart the smaller incendiary bombs, which caused wider destruction by starting fires.

For the greatest visual impact, however, zoom out on the map. What is striking is that the whole of Greater London was affected, not just the East End. Not a single neighbourhood, even in the outermost suburbs, was untouched. This was clearly strategic area bombing rather than a campaign focused on specific military or industrial targets.

Zoom in, click on any individual bomb symbol and you can see how the website provides scope to collect photographs and personal memories of each individual incident. Capturing these memories is an urgent historical task, since the Blitz took place 72 years ago and not many witnesses are still alive.

If there are the resources to expand this project to cover the whole of the war and/or the whole of the UK, this would become a remarkable historical resource.