Devious diggers and curious curators

The current issue of the Times Literary Supplement is a wall-to-wall Dickensian extravaganza. Then there’s the main article  — page three of the TLS is a major event, any week.

It is a Richard Clogg’s review of Susan Heuck Allen’s Classical Spies. For the record, Clogg is a historian with a Grecian bent and Allen an archaeologist. So, can the twain ever meet?

Whereas the book’s subtitle suggests an exclusively American perspective, Clogg spends a lot of useful time considering what the Brits, dispossessed to Cairo and elsewhere, were up to for the duration. We come to a different view to the norm of the WW2 activities of the archaeologists and Hellenists:

 the classicists and archaeologists appointed to the American and British schools were indeed engaged in intelligence work, while their counterparts in the German, Italian and Vichy-controlled French schools carried on digging on behalf of the German occupying forces.

Digging, that is, in the broadest sense of the word.

Clogg drops names who were SOE types:

C.M.Woodhouse, N.G.L.Hammond, Anthony Andrewes, Stanley Casson, J.M.Cook, T.J.Dunbabin, Peter Fraser, Eric Gray, T. Bruce Mitford, David Talbot Rice, J.D.S.Pendlebury and David Wallace.

In the ’60s you didn’t get very far reading (or, in Malcolm’s case, barely scanning) Classics or early History without hitting hard against many of those names.

• Bruce-Mitford, for example, was a fixture at the British Museum for four decades — and wrote the definitive study of the Sutton Hoo burial.
• If anyone needs a right-wing hero figure, Monty Woodhouse (there he is, right, in full Greek mountain fig) might qualify. Straight out of New College, Oxford (with a double first, to boot), he was into the Royal Artillery. By 1941 he was in Crete, liaising with the resistance, then onto the mainland with the Harling Force, and by 1943 (still in his mid-20s) a full Colonel in charge of the British Military Mission in Greece. After the War he was still spooking: first in Athens (machinating as Second Secretary against the Muscovites), then in Tehran overthrowing the Mosaddegh government and establishing the Western-friendly Pahlevi régime (a certain Kermit Roosevelt was doing his bit for the CIA). Oh, and in between Woodhouse was a Tory MP for two terms and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. And was among the first to finger Kurt Waldheim, sometime secretary general of the United Nations and President of Austria, as a Nazi executioner, ignorant of Jasenovac concentration camp and deaf and blind to summary executions of Titoists outside his office.

Nearer home

Let’s change the location to Dublin, well out of the climactic events of the wartime period (By the way, when will “historians” recognise that, unlike Switzerland, Ireland seems never to have formally declared “neutrality?)

Surely, there’s no parallel?

Mahr, not less

Well, there was Adolf Mahr, an Austrian whose dedication Nazism predated the Anchluss. In his spare time from being Director of the National Museum he quite openly ran the Nazi Auslandorganisation in Ireland, complete with its own Hitler Youth. That involved him with the strange ménage around Maud Gonne, which included her daughter Iseult and son-in-law Francis Stuart. Mahr’s reports back to Berlin had identified certain Germans as “Juden”, thus guaranteeing their ends. A cynic might also go looking for a rationale of the remarkable Goethe-Plakette in 1934 to WB Yeats, soon after Mahr’s appointment as Director of the Museum.

At the outbreak of War in 1939, Mahr was — conveniently for the Irish government, which then didn’t need to expel him — “on holiday” back in Germany (and, in 1945, when he came looking for his job back, made him extremely unwelcome). `Marooned in wartime Germany,  Mahr went to work for Goebbels’ propaganda radio and Irland Redaktion. By 1944 Mahr was running Ru IX and Ru II, which broadcast to Britain, Ireland and the British Empire, usually immediately after “Lord Haw-Haw”.

Nice guy: the dirt on him and Ireland’s other Nazis was well dished by David O’Donoghue for History: Ireland. A small detail: even with Mahr in Berlin, Nazis were running the Turf Board and the ESB, with a niche in the Department of Finance.

The extraordinary Richard Hayes

Passing Mahr regularly, and probably on nodding terms at least, would have been Richard Hayes, the director of the National Library. Take care here: there are two Richard Hayes around at this period: the other one was censoring films, and not every writer (and even fewer indexers) has sorted the one from the other.

Librarian Hayes was another of those polymaths made extinct by ever-greater specialisation in higher education: he had three honors (correct spelling, Malcolm assures you) degrees from Trinity — in Celtic Studies, in Modern Languages, and in Philosophy. By the time of the Emergency, Hayes too had a sideline. Having polished off the administration at the National Library, daily he bestrode his sit-up-and-beg bicycle up to Collins Barracks in Arbour Hill. There he devoted himself to the systematic decoding of all and anything that came his way. He was Ireland’s one-man equivalent of Bletchley Park.

The National Library hold a remarkable collection of Hayes papers, relating to his crypto-analysis. We can see he worked on double-folio broadsheets, ruled into harlequin squares. Clearly, as early as 1939 Hayes was breaking the German and American diplomatic cyphers. The “approved” version is that Hayes was into the British cypher by late-1941. That may well be true, except it is a very useful date for “previous offences” not to be taken into account. Equally, it may be that Colonel Dan Bryan, who became head of G2 in 1942, was felt by some to be too close to the British MI5; and not all the material Hayes accessed crossed Bryan’s desk. We must also be aware that the Hayes papers we have have probably been “weeded”. In any event, the British were extremely impressed by Hayes’s results: he had a hand in the arrest of all of the dozen German spies during the Emergency. If there is one particular success, it must be the cracking of the code used by Hermann Goertz, who managed to stay “on the run” in Dublin for nineteen months (another suspiciously convenient arrangement: in that time Goertz was repeatedly face-to-face with the greatest in the land and in the Irish military).

Going, going …

It was only when he was ensconced in The Bridge House, lunchtime curry on order, pint of Broadside to hand, reading Rachel Sylvester in The Times, the truth hit home. Andrew Lansley and his NHS Bill are truly, irredeemably in the cess-pit.

A peep behind the pay-wall

Starting half-a-dozen paragraphs in (after a tour d’horizon of past ministries and their resignations) we get to the meat:

 It is extraordinary that Andrew Lansley is still in position as Health Secretary having so monumentally mishandled the Government’s NHS reforms.

This week peers will give another mauling to the Health and Social Care Bill, which is already bent double under the weight of amendments and concessions. The Royal College of GPs— whose members are supposed to benefit most from the changes — has now joined the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy, the British Medical Association, the nurses and the midwives in calling for the “damaging, unnecessary and expensive reorganisation” to be scrapped. A joint editorial by the three leading health journals describes the planned reforms as “an unholy mess”. Mr Lansley has failed spectacularly to persuade either the professionals or the public of the purpose of this legislation. What was intended as a symbol of modernity has become an emblem of obstinacy that will do little to improve patient care.

There is deep frustration in No 10 about the Health Secretary’s handling of the “pause” in the passage of the Bill — which was announced last April in an attempt to show that the Government was listening. Strategists have watched in dismay as, far from attempting to win over his critics, the Health Secretary has used the time to further annoy NHS staff and alienate voters.

“We’re back to square one,” says one exasperated insider. “Andrew Lansley is just a disaster. Dogged and determined at his best, the Health Secretarey is at his worst described as a “law unto himself”: during the last general election campaign he entered into talks with Labour on long-term care for the elderly without telling Mr Cameron. He seems emotionally incapable of showing any understanding of other people’s concerns and intellectually unwilling to consider alternative ideas.

This matters to the Conservatives, of course, because proving that they could be trusted on the NHS was central to the detoxification of the Tory brand. Now Ed Miliband has been given an opening to echo Tony Blair’s 1997 line that there were only “24 hours to save the NHS”. with his call for a cross-party campaign to block the health reforms.

“Andrew Lansley should be taken out and shot,” says a Downing Street source. “He’s messed up both the communications and the substance of the policy.”

Both Mr Cameron and George Osborne are remarkably loyal to Mr Lansley, who was their boss at the Conservative Research Department. But many senior figures, Lib Dem and Tory, now admit privately that it was a mistake to introduce a flagship Bill on health when most of the key changes could have been implemented without primary legislation. Indeed, Nick Clegg considered calling publicly for the whole thing to be abandoned­ then decided, for the sake of coalition unity, to back substantial amendments instead.

“Health reform should have been carried out by stealth,” says one strategist. The contrast is drawn with Michael Gove’s education reforms, which have been presented successfully as the fulfilment of Tony Blair’s schools policy rather than a complete break with the past.

Perhaps it’s too late to change direction. Maybe the Government now just has to minimise the damage and move on. But this issue still has the potential to destroy the Conservatives at the next election, and they know it. 

Malcolm copies that at length, because the Murdoch policy on pay-walls means too many will miss that gem — correction, necklace of priceless diamonds.

The anatomy department

Of course, there are things, small and grand alike, adrift with the Sylvester biopsy.

Yes, the “24 hours to save the NHS” was a good ploy. It was from the 1997 campaign; and it was on Tony Blair’s watch. But it wasn’t original, and it wasn’t decisive. It wasn’t decisive because the battle had long since been won: this was merely the cherry on the sundae (well, Thursday, but who’s counting). It was merely a Blairite encapsulation of Neil Kinnock’s better, unscripted (?), uncontrived effort at Bridgend on 7th June 1983:

I warn you not to be ordinary, I warn you not to be young, I warn you not to fall ill, and I warn you not to grow old.

Thirty years on …

They had to stifle Kinnock’s oratory through a concerted Tory campaign: “the Welsh windbag” — and a bit of xenophobic abuse never went adrift among true English Tories. But — the point here is … what should we make of Sylvester’s systematic shafting of Lansley?

• First, and most obviously, this one came from His Master’s Voice. Consider the repetition of “deep frustration in No 10”, and all those “strategists” — safe bet, they’re one and the same source. In a sentence, the inner-cercle Cameroons are briefing against Lansley.
• Second, the hard-core parliamentary Tories have lost faith in Lansley. He has no political future, in office or on the back-benches, simply because he has demanded too much of the poor-boody-infantry. The Whips have registered this, and Lansley is dead meat.
• Third, whatever Lansley wanted to deliver (it was a semi-privatised system) is beyond the possible. So, now it’s down to palliative treatment. Somehow the Great British Public (who, lest we forget, see on every pay-slip a subscription of  9% of gross income to National Insurance) have to be convinced they are getting value-for-money.
• Fourth, Cameron hasn’t got the guts to knife Lansley from the front. Therefore, there’s this back-doors whispering to persuade him to be a sick man and spend more time flipping his second homes, pleasing his wife’s Pharma clients, Walker’s Crisps and Micky D’s (one expenses scandal and various financial subsidisers, if anyone missed out).

Above all, what concludes Sylvester’s essay is a very, very strange — even bizarre — final paragraph:

There is an intriguing idea circulating in No 10 — that Alan Milburn should be offered a seat in the House of Lords and his old job of Health Secretary. With a guaranteed free hand to change the policy, he would be asked to complete for the coalition the reforms he began under under Mr Blair. By creating in effect a government of national unity, this would neutralise the issue of the NHS. In policy terms, it would achieve many of the aims of the Bill without the controversy. That’s a reshuffle people would notice but it would certainly end the era of stability.

Huh? Milburn’s apotheosis suddenly makes him the angel of universal harmony? With a single bound our Dave is free? [I]n effect a government of national unity?

In your dreams!

All of the above should be read in conjunction with Paul Goodman on ConHome. He starts from Sylvester’s end-piece (subtly implying that her only one source is LibDem liaison in Downing Street, which may point a finger at Julian Astle or, even more likely, James Mcgrory). He then extends into a dystopian prognosis of what Cameron could, and should do:

He should keep the bill and stick with the Health Secretary till the reshuffle.

Then he should hand over the Act (as it will be) plus the coming NHS crisis – complete with patients parked on trolleys, ambulances marooned outside A & E wards and NHS managers closing wards while pleading bankruptcy – with his compliments and very best wishes to a new Liberal Democrat Health Secretary plus an entire team of Liberal Democrat health Ministers.  And turn the Business Department over to a Conservative Secretary of State who, unlike the present incumbent, is enthusiastic about enterprise and deregulation.

So, if you thought things couldn’t get even worse ...

The passage of time

In his days at the chalk-face, Malcom would have to illustrate how language changes over time. His quick-and-easy method was to use the word “phonograph”. Most students will have no awareness of Thomas A. Edison’s name for his instrument for automatically recording and reproducing sound,which the OED authoritatively states is “(now hist.)“. The phonograph became the record-player, the pick-up, the Dansette of Malcolm’s schooldays, the stereo, the quad, the Walkman and a whole series of patent names, until it disappeared totally into the technology of the smartphone. Somewhere along the way even the most reluctant (male) student would contribute to the word-game by showing knowledge of the latest development. Success: point made.

Where’s that?

Even Malcolm was taken aback to read accounts of the disruption to Heathrow-bound flights which led to passengers being stranded at “an airport in the County Clare”.

That’s Shannon, my sub-editorial friend. Try it again —  Shannon.

Between the late 1940s and the early 1960s it was the normal stop-over for transAtlantic flights. Later, Aeroflot used the airport to refuel flights to and from the Americas.

So, here’s an experiment to try at home: do a Google or Bing web-search for images of “Shannon”. In the first hundred or two, the main return is leggy and busty lovelies.

We have here an illustration of “Shannon’s theorem”. Claude Elwood Shannon (1916–2001) was an American mathematician. His seminal thesis posited concepts that are the origin of much information theory. One aspect of his “theorem” amounts to how much “interference” can be accepted before a message becomes hopelessly corrupted and beyond understanding.

Quite frankly, “an airport in the County Clare” (rather than “Shannon”) is just such an exercise in obfuscation.

The new co-ordinate

You may have had your demoiselle , sprig or sprog bring home a maths homework. Something like this:

The pour little brat then has to work out a whole series of pointless (indeed!) co-ordinates.

A year or two later, the geography teacher sends home the same exercise. Bit bigger brat has to interpret co-ordinates on a map. Since the maths and geography teachers are daggers drawn, the school doesn’t have an effective curricular map, and the National Curriculum doesn’t specify how to make the connection, it’s Yogi Berra’s déjà vu all over again.

Applying today’s lesson to political commentators

It used to be simple: left and right, readable and turgid.

Suddenly it’s got much more complicated.

Consider Iain Martin, usually to be found stabled at the Telegraph or, in his even more demotic moments, at the Mail (right, readable — somewhere around “A” on the matrix above). As a result of a useful piece on the highly-enjoyable, enforced self-defenestration of Chris Huhne, Martin is in some small spat with Mike Smithson at Political Betting (right, barely readable — let’s say “B” as above). Then there’s also John Rentoul at the Sindy tending away from Martin (Rentoul could possibly be “C”. Which, by default, leaves Malcolm at “D”. Hmmm …)

The tissue/issue before us is …

Will the ConDem coalition survive for the full five years? Will election day, as promised, be 7th May 2015?

Behind the public verbiage, Malcolm has the distinct impression that the Labour Party types have, quite literally in view of funding problems, been banking on precisely that. In that view, it oesn’t matter whether Ed Miliband cuts the mustard right now. Any opinion-polling is, at best, no more than trending; and at current percentages of 41, 40, 10  that’s one heck of a long way up from 29, 36, 23 in May 2010.

What matters is getting the little ConDem ducks in a line in forty months time.

So Martin’s thesis matters.

What put this into Malcolm’s [-3,-4] mind was (as they say on all the best ballot papers) “none of the above”. It was off-stage left, above the fold (a trifle populist, but say -2, +4) Kenny Farquharson in Scotland on Sunday. Farquharson uses the marital analogy to suggest:

What happens when marriages of convenience become inconvenient? No, this isn’t a question about the torrid revenge saga of Chris Huhne, his lover and his ex-wife.

This is a different marital conundrum, about a relationship at the heart of British politics that’s clearly in trouble. I believe David Cameron will decide well before the end of his five-year marriage of convenience with the Lib Dems that he wants out early. No doubt he will explain himself to Nick Clegg in the time-honoured way: “It’s not you, dear – it’s me.”

Looked at from a narrow Tory point of view – go on, try it – there’s a case for arguing the coalition has served its purpose. It was necessary in 2010 to put a Conservative prime minister into Number 10, but why prolong it? There will have to be a parting of the ways – politically, at least – in the run-up to a general election. So why not short-circuit the process and go to the country earlier?

That puts the grub on the table as robustly as one might expect in any Dundonian household.

Meanwhile the Tory press was queuing up this Sunday morning to put the same boot in. The Sunday Times bewailed that:

The Prime Minister’s problem is more basic. People no longer know what he stands for, if they ever did, and he is radiating weakness from Downing Street.

Actually, the whole Murdoch machine seems to be working up a fine froth over bankers’ bonuses, and how despicably wrong Downing Street has been not to ladle out mega-bucks. Sallies against Cameron should be read in that light. Watch for the Boris Johnson juggernaut’s wheels to be well greased in weeks to come, provided BoJo remains sound on boardroom lucre.

True Kremlinologics should be applied to the Sunday Telegraph‘s editorial (remembering that Iain Martin’s seminal piece appeared adjacent). It starts well for Bullingdon Dave:

David Cameron’s leadership of the Coalition of Tories and Liberal Democrats has in many ways been outstandingly successful. The partnership is in good shape. There have been resignations from the Cabinet, such as Chris Huhne’s last week, but they have happened for personal rather than political reasons. On the whole, Mr Cameron has kept Conservatives and Lib Dems united, and prevented party divisions, historically the bane of coalitions in Britain, from damaging the Government.

Note the On the whole. Rapidly followed by up to a point and growing concerns. There are no fewer than seven concerns in this piece. Apart from that one and the sub-headline’s omnibus growing concerns among his supporters about the direction of his leadership, they deal with:

• foreign aid;
• the wider message the Government is sending to wealth creators (boardroom billionaires to you and the rest of humanity: see the wit and wisdom of Old Man Murdoch, above);
• wind-farms (albeit in a comment);
• nukes (ditto);
• his habit of watering down, or even ditching, proposals that he has brandished or actually put in place (ditto repeat, as Malcolm’s Mum would have said. That one has Europhobic undertones, of course).

Which covers an awful lot of waterfront.

What about Ben Brogan?

Well, Malcolm puts Brogan’s co-ordinates around +3, +4. He had a very Broganish piece earlier this last week, which may be the seed-bed from which these other commentators have plucked the thinnings. Brogan was essentially arguing that Cameron was intending to steal the middle political ground:

Backbenchers are nervous because they see the Liberal Democrats picking at the ties that bind them to the Coalition. Nick Clegg is pursuing a deliberate strategy of differentiation, to make sure voters notice his party. When, some Tories ask, is David Cameron going to do the same and reveal himself to the voters as a Conservative? When are we going to see some Tory differentiation?

Three events this week underscore why there is unmistakeable unease on the Tory side. The first was Mr Cameron’s equivocation on the issue of the £1 million bonus offered to the RBS boss, Stephen Hester. To Conservatives who believe in the basics of contracts, capitalism and confidence in the City, the Prime Minister’s intervention on the side of popular opinion driven by the anti-capitalist Left looked opportunistic and weak. Above all, it looked like pandering to the campaign against wealth being waged by Mr Clegg. Second, last night’s calculated stripping of Fred Goodwin’s knighthood will compound that impression of a Conservative doing fundamentally un-conservative things. And the third culminated yesterday in Mr Cameron’s statement to the Commons on the outcome of the eurozone negotiations. Tory backbenchers competed to ask him why he had given ground substantially on the workings of the new treaty, just weeks after vowing to stand firm. Again, the charge in the air was pointed: having basked in their support when he delivered his “No!” to the EU, he now preferred to curry favour with Mr Clegg by compromising.

Re-reading that suggest the true Tory requires big bucks for bankers, respec’ for the honours system, staunch and unbending Euroscepticism, and heavy dissing of the LibDems and the anti-capitalist Left (on which latter point Malcolm mutters, “If only …”.

The Big One

Malcolm remains convinced what will break the ConDems is Europe.

So Malcolm will be watching one spot with considerable interest. For convenience, he happily lifts this summing up  from a New Statesman piece by Samira Shackle:

George Osborne has said that Britain could provide more funds to the IMF if there is a “strong case” for an increase. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, the Chancellor said that he would consider increasing Britain’s contributions above the £10bn extra already pledged, if there were adequate reassurances.

This is nothing new: Osborne has been laying the foundations for an increased British contribution for a while. It’s vital for Britain that the IMF has enough cash to help struggling eurozone countries, because of our geographical position and trade links with Europe. But David Cameron gained some serious brownie points with his party when he opted out of further contributions to the eurozone bailout, and it will be difficult for the government to sell this as anything but propping up the eurozone by another name.

There is no way that cannot go before the Commons. On what has been already said, there is little chance of Labour not opposing any transfer to a eurozone support-fund, however it is filtered through the IMF. The Tory press will not wear a bail-out either. The Tory Whips will have sleepless nights. On this one Clegg and the LibDems have a magnificent chance to “differentiate” themselves from the Tory revanchists.

Memo to self:

On 25th October 2011, 79 Tories voted against the Whip for an EU referendum. Add two tellers. A further fifteen abstained. That’s half the backbench parliamentary party.

The next General Election may be sooner than we have thought.

Is that the blood of a hawk or a dove?

Wild horses and steel chains won’t get Malcolm to see The Iron Lady.

He’d rather have ninety-odd seconds of this:

 

Redfellow Hovel lies in the patch of Lynne Featherstone, MP.

Few of her parliamentary colleagues, and fewer of her ever-growing number of critics would account her the sharpest knife in the drawer. So let’s hear her on nominating Chris Huhne for the LibDem leadership — twice:

Lynne Featherstone explains why she thinks Chris Huhne is the right man to lead the Lib Dems – and why Sir Menzies Campbell was the wrong one

Ming nobly fell on his sword – having recognised that the attacks on him were not going to stop, he was not going to be able to turn it round and it was hurting the Party. Right decision in my view. Respect!

So now – opportunity knocks – again! After we despatched Charles last time – the establishment moved quickly behind Ming’s candidacy.

Well – I don’t do establishment. I think things through. And despite the knowledge that Ming would almost certainly win – as he was known and revered in the Party – I didn’t believe that Ming was right to lead the Party and therefore telephoned both Chris Huhne and Nick Clegg to ask them to run. Albeit they were new to Parliament – they had both been MEPs which I thought would give them enough credibility to run.

Chris said yes! Nick said no. And whilst I think the world of both of them – for me – that made Chris the one to choose. And nineteen months on – that bravery, courage and judgement first time round win my support again.

So why Chris? Then it’s taking brave decisions and not playing safe – which is something the Liberal Democrats should be born for.

It’s having someone who can take on Brown on his own territory of the economy and get the better of him.

It’s having someone who has been in the real world running things. It’s having a person who sets the agenda – as Chris did last time out – when he made the environment central with the ‘big idea’ of switching taxation from good things like earnings to bad things like pollution – immediately jumped on by the other contenders and now party policy.

It’s having someone who isn’t like Cameron or Blair. It’s working with someone who uses Parliamentary colleagues as his advisers and listens to them – and follows their advice. It’s having a real influence on the ideas and therefore influencing the future direction of the Party.

And Chris is saying the things I want to hear about radicalism, equality and fairness.

In his declaration Chris said: “I am reiterating my commitment to lead a Party that is radical; green; honest and angry about the gross unfairness in Britain.”

That’s the agenda I want for our party and Chris is the guy who can sell it and deliver it.

The one thing our Party needs like a hole in the head, in my view, is to become part of the cosy consensus that both Labour and Tory indulge in.

There is little underpinning either of them any more in terms of real values and beliefs – so their policy pronouncements appear to be based only on vote catching and that is why, in my view, we have seen the overwhelming volatility in the polls that can swing so dramatically and so quickly.

The people have nothing to believe in any more – only bargain basement offers from political parties selling their wares to attract at lower prices. That is why policy nicking is even possible.

So – I asked Chris to run – again! He has, in my view, the potential to be a great leader not a follower and to take the Liberal Democrats where they bravely need to go – which is to a liberal future. Britain is a liberal country (that’s why ‘illiberal’ is a term of insult in the UK) – and we need a liberal party to challenge the authoritarian consensus of the two main parties – and of the political establishment.

I fear that the establishment will once again move in one direction – and that won’t be behind Chris. But hey – as I said – I don’t do establishment – and look what happened last time!

Gosh!