hms iron duke

hms iron duke

Friday 30 December 2011

In Shadows Deep

Alphen, the Netherlands. 30 December. Just before Christmas I received an email from a friend of mine for whom I have great respect and have known many a year. He is a fifty-something and like me a tired British social democrat and one-time believer in the great idea that was Europe. His email came as a shock. He suggested that I was ‘right’, the Eurozone crisis had parted the waves of Euro-speak to reveal Germany and France for what they have always been, Britain’s natural and irreconcilable enemies. I beg to differ.

My friend had been following closely my strident defence of Britain in the teeth of the Eurozone crisis and my critique of Germany and France for their flawed and self-assumed ‘leadership’ in the name of ‘Europe’. Not a natural ally of mine the Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Junker summed up the flawed strategy perfectly when he said, “we know how to solve the problem, we just do not know how to get re-elected afterwards”. 

French political thinker Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in the nineteenth century that political liberty is easily lost because democratic peoples want equality even if it means losing liberty. Germany and France are trying to achieve something much more ambitious - leadership, equality and democracy in crisis.  That does not make Germany and France enemies. Yes, it is a fairly fundamental squabble about who is in charge of Europe and how it should be organised but my objection has not been in principle to the leadership of Berlin and Paris, but rather their attempts to exclude London.
My friend's email also touched on much deeper issues that all of us in our fifties and beyond are forced to consider. None of us can expect to die from the land into which we were born. Change happens. However, since my 1958 birth the change that has taken place in my land of Europe has been so revolutionary – for better and for worse. Like him and millions of my fellow time-travellers I do indeed feel alienated not least because much of the change has been imposed upon me.  He is also right that ‘positive’ discrimination does indeed condemn many men in their fifties to the wastes of ‘freelancery’ (unemployment without benefits).  But we are where we are. 

Weak governments Europe-wide are now forced to make difficult choices  to manage the dangerous consequences of their previous inactions.  Youth unemployment is soaring, populations are rising seemingly uncontrollably and social and cultural diversity now challenges old concepts of society. Britain is a case in point. One only has to look at the place to realise that the London-elite are utterly detached from the everyday reality of ordinary Britons. 

So why do I persevere sending out blogs into the unfathomable ether? It is precisely because I do feel alienated from the political process however futile my blogging may on occasions seem. Far from retreating from politics now is the moment to engage.  Indeed, if I do not engage liberty in Europe will slowly die. And, strangely, being a fifties-something man I have earned the liberty not to cow-tow to anyone, however powerful or important they believe themselves to be. 

Irish poet W.B. Yeats once wrote; “When you are old and grey and full of sleep, and nodding by the fire, take down this book, and slowly read, and dream of the soft look, your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep”.

So, my friend, I am sorry you misunderstood my meaning but Germany and France are not Britain’s enemies, they are not even friends, they are family.  The shadows are indeed deep but there is always hope and you too must engage for the sake of our Europe.

Happy New Year!

Julian Lindley-French

Thursday 22 December 2011

Is Britain Going Mad?

Alphen, the Netherlands.  22 December.  Is Britain going mad?  Please someone tell me it is not so.  Sitting here on this side of the Channel I have been following over the past couple of days what passes for a debate on racism in English football.

On Tuesday Mr Luis Suarez of Liverpool Football Club was found by the Football Association to have used language against an opponent that may have had racist overtones.  He was banned for eight games.  If he did indeed use racist language then the sanction is just as such language does indeed have no place in modern society.  However, what is dangerous about this incident is that it appears that it is simply the word of Mr Suarez against that of his accuser Mr Patrice Evra of Manchester United.  There are no other witnesses. 

If that is the case then it would appear to mean that a black person can now make a career-damaging accusation and all that matters is that the accusation is made.  That would go against all tenets of natural justice.   

On Wednesday formal charges of racist abuse were laid against the England Football Captain Mr John Terry by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).  I will not comment on that case as it is sub-judice but the way in which the press reacted had all the hallmarks of a witch-hunt.  Sadly, the CPS seems increasingly political  and politicised and I really do hope Mr Terry gets a fair trial.  

Today, Mr Alan Hansen, a football pundit, is being hunted down by the PC wolves.  Last night he referred to black people as 'coloured' on the BBC's Match of the Day, a soccer programme, although clearly no offence was intended. Mr Hansen was clear in his message that racism is wrong even if his use of language was perhaps out-dated. 

What is behind all of this?  First, the derided media are trying to prove their PC credentials by attacking individuals for what are in many cases the slightest infringement of race rules and laws that have become now so draconian that ancient liberties are at stake.  Second, the London elite seem determined to ram this issue down the throats of Britons as a warning and because of profound failures of policy.  Indeed, these witch-hunts are becoming so shrill that they reflect the steady and dangerous shift of hitherto irritating political correctness into something far more sinister; socio-fascism. 

Sadly, this PC madness will only make community relations more tense, not less so as a non-racist but nevertheless fed up English majority feel that implicit in this frenzy is the suggestion that a) they are all racist by association; and b) a precedent is being established by which the law will be applied in favour of one section of society against the rest. In recent polls 85% of the population object to the Establishment obsession over race and racism believing it to be over-reacting.

Racism is wrong and must be dealt with but in a patient and common sense way, not the kind of public show trials that now seem to be the norm and which seem to be taking place almost weekly.  Remember, I know what damage discrimination can do to a person and a career and I oppose all forms of such behaviour as I have myself suffered from it.  The real danger is not that people will stop saying racist things, but that they will stop saying anything anymore for fear of being accused of racism.  If that happens they will join the many millions of Britons who have retreated into sullen silence at work and elsewhere for the very same fear.

Where are the British going with all of this? Maoist-style re-education classes? Thought police?  The Dutch think the British are going mad over this issue.

Britain used to be renowned for common sense, tolerance and balanced thinking.  On issues of race and racism that is clearly no longer the case.

Julian Lindley-French    

Wednesday 21 December 2011

Guido Westerwelle: Europe’s New Hillary Clinton?


Alphen, the Netherlands. 21 December. Watching German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle with British Foreign Secretary William Hague this week I was reminded of a John F. Kennedy quote; “The problem with power is how to achieve its responsible use, rather than its irresponsible or indulgent use”. That is not to suggest that Westerwelle is in any way irresponsible. Indeed, what struck me about Westerwelle in London was the vision of a German foreign minister behaving on the European stage much like a US secretary of state on the world stage. It is clear that Germany really does now lead Europe, just as it is clear that Britain is critical to German leadership. 

Westerwelle had come to London, “…to build bridges”, and described Britain as an “indispensable partner”. At one level this is a French nightmare and explains the provocations from Paris of late. Paris is always concerned that Berlin will do a deal with London that is not made in Paris. Equally, it would be a mistake for Britain to believe there are tensions between France and Germany to be exploited. The French are clearly in on this ‘good cop, bad cop’ strategy, as evinced by this week’s British-friendly amendments to the EU Common Fisheries Policy which were supported by both Berlin and Paris purely for reasons of grand strategy.  

Britain must therefore stand on strategic principle, but is London any longer up to the task? The many attacks on Prime Minister Cameron by London’s Chicken Littles miss the point...as per usual. Cameron’s Brussels ‘no’ was strategic, even if the way the British approached the failed summit was more Ealing comedy than grand epic. “The Economist” called Cameron’s stand a mistake. This merely reflects briefings against Cameron by British diplomats so long lost in the EU trees that they are unable to see the strategic woods.

In fact, Cameron achieved precisely what I said he would achieve at the time. He forced Germany to deal with Britain not simply as another member of the EU 27 but rather as a great power. There was always something strategically unworldly about the idea that even in the teeth of the Eurozone crisis Britain would simply acquiesce to a fiscal union built around Germany that by its very nature would critically damage Britain. Turkeys do not normally vote for Christmas and yet this is what the critics were calling for.

Britain’s strategy towards Germany should be clear and simple. Any move now towards fiscal and political union would by definition exaggerate German power and influence.  Any such ‘union’ would force the weak into a system organised around Germany. As such the Union would begin to look more like an empire than a community, even though that clearly is not Berlin’s intention.  In Europe of all places power must be held in check.  However, the EU as currently structured affords no such checks. Therefore, Britain must act as the check on German power and to that end Berlin must work in partnership with London if German leadership in Europe is to be legitimate and to be seen as such.

Equally, both London and Berlin must recognise the limits to partnership. Westerwelle talked of European integration as ‘…the answer to the darkest chapter in our history”. World War Two may have been the darkest chapter in German history but the British still see it as their "finest hour", to quote Churchill, and modern Britain’s defining moment. The idea that somehow Britain will in time subordinate itself to German power, even if dressed in European finery, is wrong and Westerwelle seemed to be implying that.  Britain must always make Germany work hard for British support and the maintenance of some distance between the two powers is therefore vital. The political balance of Europe depends upon it.

So, what about Westerwelle the man? Is he Europe’s new Hillary Clinton? In some respects he is more Nick Clegg than Hillary Clinton; a junior liberal, coalition partner to a conservative leader. He has also made mistakes, such as Germany’s abstention on a key Libya vote in the UN Security Council which sided Germany with China and Russia against Britain, France and the US. His motivation seems to have had more to do with his party’s perilous position in German regional elections than responsible international politics. It is a trait of imperial power to impose local politics onto international partners.  Privately the Americans have compared Westerwelle unfavourably with one of his predecessors Hans-Dietrich Genscher who played a critical role in the unification of Germany…and the 1990s disaster in the Balkans. However, shuttle diplomacy in a crisis clearly suits him reinforcing not only his own credibility but German leadership.

And finally... may I take this opportunity to wish all of you who have done me the honour of reading my thoughts this past year a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. No, ‘happy holidays’ here – that is far too politically-correct. More blasting to come in 2012!

Julian Lindley-French

Monday 19 December 2011

The Power of the Powerless: In Memory of Vaclav Havel

Alphen, the Netherlands. 19 December. Two men died this weekend. One was a towering literary and political figure, one of my heroes, a man who understood change and freedom and put his life on the line for it. The other was not; resisting change and freedom at all costs in the defence of an extreme version of a failed idea against which the other fought.

Vaclav Havel was a Czech patriot, playwright, poet and president who broke the crushing bureaucracy and terror of absolutist totalitarianism. Kim Jong Il was a North Korean born to be president of a dynasty in the ludicrously named Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, an absolutist, totalitarian state that is neither democratic nor of the ‘people’. Son of his dictator father the Dear Leader exercised power through terror, the crushing bureaucracy of an overweening state and by blackmailing neighbours with the threat of an over-costly military and nuclear weapons. Both in their ways defined their age in their space, and yet they occupied opposite ends of truth.

Let me deal first with President Kim Jong Il. Enough said.

Vaclav Havel wrote; “The exercise of power is determined by thousands of interactions between the world of the powerful and that of the powerless, all the more so because these worlds are never divided by a sharp line, everyone has a small part of himself in both”. Europeans have fought for centuries to ensure that the powerless have sufficient ownership of the powerful to render accountability real; the very cornerstone of democracy.

Sadly, Central and Eastern Europeans understand the value of freedom in ways which shames us all in Western Europe, where dangerous complacency reins. Perpetual vigilance is vital to protect freedom, particularly at times of crisis such as this. European history is replete with fool's contracts; “we the powerful will resolve the mess we have created if only you the people give us more power and all your money”. Havel would have rejected a choice between being bankruptcy and freedom, but if choice was forced upon him he would have chosen the latter.

Small was beautiful for Havel. Indeed, Havel believed passionately that power should be seen to be alongside the people, in the people, with the people. His desire to bring power down from the high perches of pride it so often and too often claims for itself in Europe saw President Havel oversee the break-up of Czechoslovakia into the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic. That was the will of the people.

Havel found the presidency an uncomfortable part in a theatre de l’absurde, describing himself ‘absurd’ at his investiture in Prague Castle. And yet perhaps it was not Havel who was absurd but rather the ridiculous ego-driven pomposity, perks, and police-escorted pageantry that Europe’s new great and increasingly not-so-great now routinely claim for themselves in the name of ‘protocol’. Havel rightly mistrusted power and the people with it.

As Europe teeters on the edge of a financial and economic abyss the truly powerful call for more power. There is a very real danger that power in Europe will become systematically ever more distant from the people – the very anti-thesis of freedom and democracy. This elite-driven project comes in various ‘plays’ and ‘acts’ on stages from Berlin to Brussels. Some call upon one superpower state to lead in the name of ‘Europe’, others call for a super-state that is ‘Europe’. Both threaten democracy and freedom if not held in check. Sadly, checks and balances are being eroded in the name of 'Europe', with Havel's Europeans patronisingly encouraged to disengage from the political process, ‘our’ political process and to ‘leave it to them’.

For that reason above all other Havel was an inspiration for this blog and its own self-satirising and pompous mission to ‘speak truth unto power’. Indeed, I see myself as a true Havelist because I have never lost, nor will I ever lose my capacity to laugh at myself. However, whilst I am and can only ever be a pale imitation of my Czech hero my mission remains deadly serious – the defence of freedom in Europe.

Europe is most decidedly not North Korea. We Europeans do at least retain the semblance of choice over our leaders that the Dear Leader denied his people. Moreover, our leaders for all their many faults are not Kim Jong-Il. Nationally-elected political representatives in national parliaments are close enough to the people to understand them and their needs and yet close enough to power to hold to account the eternal and infernal ambition of the super-ego. May it ever be thus. 

‘Europe’ remains a good idea in a world that is getting ever bigger as ‘we’ Europeans get ever weaker. However, Big Europe also threatens freedom even if it is not intended and must be guarded against. Havel understood the danger of seeking efficiency and effectiveness at the expense of democracy and freedom. Throughout history that has been the seductive, siren call of the powerful in pursuit of absolute power in the teeth of crisis. The pursuit of absolutism comes in many forms but it is always ‘for’ the people and in the name of the ‘people’, as it is in North Korea. Europe is a long way from that but 'we the people' must remain vigilant.

“I really do inhabit a system in which words are capable of shaking the entire structure of government, where words can prove mightier than ten military divisions”. It was Havel’s optimism that attracted me to him all those years ago, precisely because the system he had fought against had failed to crush Havel’s self-defining ‘hope’. In Havel’s Europe the line between the powerful and powerless must remain blurred even if it is not ‘efficient’. Let us all honour Havel the man by respecting his vision for Europe.

In honour and in memory of Europe’s great, ordinary man. Vaclav Havel was a friend I never met.

Julian Lindley-French



Friday 16 December 2011

A Week is a Long Time in High and Low Politics

Alphen, the Netherlands. 16 December. In 1964 former British Prime Minister Harold Wilson said, “A week is a long time in politics”. This has been a very long week for both high and low politics.  

A week ago I was waking up in Brussels to the British ‘non’ to the Brussels Botch. This was European low politics at its worst as Euro-fanatics and the plain anti-British spurred on by Berlin and Paris attempted to shame Prime Minister Cameron into reversing his position and to blame Britain for a collective failure of strategy and politics. Sadly, they were aided and abetted by the strategically-inept back in London who a) illiterate in the language of power panicked at the thought of British ‘isolation’; and b) seemed willing to pay any price to keep the Germans and French happy. The British reaction was as one would expect – defiant. The British people were up for a fight and it showed.

Recognising the impasse Chancellor Merkel made a conciliatory speech mid-week in Berlin.  Britain will remain an important partner, she said. Was this a new political demarche? No. Last night, Christian Noyer, the Head of the French National Bank, called on Britain’s AAA credit rating to be downgraded. On the ‘not very helpful right now’ scale of ten that got at least a nine. Well done, M. Noyer.

It saddens me that the elite of such a great nation for which I have a genuine liking and respect seems unable to resist pressing the anti-Brit button whenever it does not get its way. French low politics will only trigger more British low politics and thus make it far harder to find a solution and maintain political momentum in other crucial areas such as defence co-operation. More worrying M. Noyer would appear not to understand either the nature of the Eurozone crisis or the causes of it. Thankfully, London reacted in a measured and appropriate tone to M. Noyer’s engineered outburst, something I am sure Berlin will have noted.

Let me now switch to the other side of the ‘pond’. On Wednesday President Obama made a speech at Fort Bragg marking the end of nine troubled years of American military presence in Iraq. Since March 2003 over 100,000 Iraqis and 4500 Americans have died with many thousands more wounded, not to mention the dead and wounded from the other coalition partners who took part in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

If Europe is being broken by an excess of low politics, America is endeavouring to extricate itself from an excess of ill-considered high politics. President Obama said that whilst Iraq "is not a perfect place…we are leaving behind a sovereign, stable, and self-reliant Iraq, with a representative government that was elected by its people". The President went on, "We are building a new partnership between our nations. Because of you [US military personnel], we are ending these wars in a way that will make America stronger and the world more secure".  With the hindsight of history the Iraq War as a mistake; there were no weapons of mass destruction, it distracted from the main thrust of post-911 strategy in Afghanistan, cost huge amounts of money and many lives; and tied down American forces in such a way as to embolden the world’s real mischief-makers. The US may not be the world’s policeman, but it is the actor of last resort.

Back in 2003 Germany and France warned against this adventure.  Berlin and Paris were correct. The fact that Saddam is gone and some semblance of stability (and it is only a semblance of stability) has been achieved much of it due to the ability of American forces to adapt and learn, does not forgive the error of high politics America and Britain made. The 2011 consequences only indirectly reflect the 2003 war aim, "…to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, to end Saddam Hussein's alleged support for terrorism, and to free the Iraqi people". Critically, neither America nor its allies have been strengthened by this war and its aftermath, either in the ‘Greater Middle East’ (wherever that is) or the wider world.

The war crucially divided the NATO Alliance at a critical moment from which it has never really recovered and made America and the West seem far weaker than is in fact the case in the eyes of allies and adversaries alike. In particular, the American and British failure to properly prepare for the post-war stabilisation of Iraq was a profound mistake, much of it driven by Washington’s ideological belief that the invasion would be seen by all Iraqis as a liberation. 

What conclusions do I draw? It is questionable whether Europeans are any longer capable of high politics in the face of crisis. The gap between the rhetoric of Europe's leaders and their actions is now so wide as to border on self-deceit.    Equally, the gap between what America has to do and what it is willing or can afford to to do is itself becoming dangerously wide.  Indeed, for Washington the common ground between high and low politics in the international arena remains elusive. 

Above all, these two political failures, the  Iraq War and Eurozone crisis, have destroyed trust, that most precious of political commodities and the concrete foundation upon which all sound strategy must stand.

A week is indeed a long time in politics and this indeed has been a very long and a very bad political week.

Julian Lindley-French

Wednesday 14 December 2011

"Very Well, Alone...ish"

My Dear Fellow Europeans, don't worry I have not gone terminally Churchillian...yet!  However, I thought you should all see Low's famous cartoon which all we British hold close to our hearts at moments of stress with you lot! And, let's face it you can be just so tedious.  Your only saving grace is that you are NOT American...and only some of you are French (c'est une pleasanterie, Nicholas).  That would be all together too much. All best, Julian


'Very Well Alone'

Be Careful Europe. You May Get What You Wish For

Alphen. The Netherlands. 14 December. Yesterday in Strasbourg at the European Parliament European Parliamentarians made some of the most shocking and inappropriate attacks ever against one member-state - Britain. The leader of the European People’s Party warned of ‘punishing’ Britain and of ‘tanks and Kalashnikovs’. In the feeding frenzy of myth-making and scapegoating much of it using language that verged on the profoundly disrespectful to Britain and its people.  Indeed, this was unparliamentary language at its very worst, a clear attempt to create a new ‘narrative’ for a crisis entirely of the Eurozone’s own making by placing responsibility on to the British for the appalling failure of Eurozone leadership. 

This is a blame game.  Indeed, it is a blatant attempt to implicate a country that is not even a member of their benighted currency and which warned against its structural contradictions from the very outset. Even President Barroso joined in this stitch-up…and we all know who is behind him. How dare they?

Some talked of British ‘egotism’ and ‘nationalism’. These people would not have the freedoms they enjoy but for the sacrifice of the British people in both World War Two and the Cold War. Some talked of a lack of solidarity by Britain. These are the same people who for years have dodged their responsibilities for Europe’s security and defence and imposed its true cost on the British people. These are the same people who have dodged their responsibilities in Afghanistan forcing the British to do too much of the dying. These are the same people who wringed their hands over Libya as the British did what was necessary to prevent a massacre in Benghazi. How dare European parliamentarians lecture Britain about solidarity?

As for the Eurozone crisis the full extent of the Brussels stitch-up is only now becoming apparent. There was no need for a new treaty, only Chancellor Merkel wanted that and by demanding it she sought to make the crisis one of the EU at 27 rather than 17. It is in any case already falling apart validating once again British pragmatism.  What is more to the point is that having tried to make this a crisis 'owned'by all 27 neither Merkel nor Sarkozy were prepared to offer Britain the joint leadership role befitting Europe’s second or third largest economy and strongest military power. No, Britain was expected to subject itself formally to German and French leadership even though she is one of Europe’s Big Three.  That will never happen.  How dare they?

And now these same people pretend that the Euro-crisis is all of Britain’s doing because London failed to properly regulate the banks in the City, many of which are German and French et al. They conveniently forget Germany’s failure at the summit to offer any real leadership to solve the immediate crisis. They conveniently forget the chronic debt into which their national leaders have pitched almost all of the Eurozone countries. They conveniently forget that Britain is the second net contributor to the EU and that the British taxpayer has for years been transferring huge amounts of money to southern and eastern Europeans with little or no prospect of any benefit. They also fail to notice that Prime Minister Cameron is climbing rapidly in UK opinion polls for saying 'no' to the wrong treaty at the wrong time for the wrong reasons for Europe.

Last week I warned against Britain retreating from Brussels however seductive the vision of our standing defiantly on the White Cliffs of Dover shaking our fist and rekindling the defiance of 1940. “Very well, alone then” was, I suggested, neither a policy nor a strategy for Britain. After yesterday’s sham of a debate in the European Parliament, more redolent of a fascist show trial than a modern, tolerant democratic Europe, I am no longer so sure.

Be careful Europe. If you continue down this road of abusing, blaming and scapegoating Britain for your own lamentable failings you may indeed get what you appear to want. Britain out of the EU.

Julian Lindley-French