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We've stopped standing up for Britain
Hold the line! Stay with me! Hold the line! That is the thrilling cry of the heroic Roman general Maximus as he leads his men into battle in the film Gladiator. I have watched it many times with my son and every time my inner child has responded to this exciting Hollywood call.
These days, and not least last week, I often think that we as a society have lost the determination to hold the line in defence of common sense and shared values against stupidity, dishonesty and external threats. Take the thin blue line which the police are supposed to hold against lawlessness.
Last week it emerged that the police have willingly, and sneakily, broken that thin blue line themselves, at least in Gloucestershire where the constabulary rejected 108 potential recruits purely because they were white and male, in the name of promoting diversity and advancing women and ethic minorities instead. The fact that they did so in an attempt to follow government guidelines only makes it worse.
Last year Gloucestershire constabulary had advertised for recruits, secretly determined to select as many women and minority people as possible; as a result every female or ethnic minority applicant was chosen for the second round while two-thirds of the white male applicants were rejected. Even so, 171 white men, despite their undesirable race and sex, did make it through to the second round. But soon afterwards 108 of them were mysteriously told they had been “randomly deselected”.
That must be untrue. They had been deselected not “randomly” but precisely because they were white males; I suppose it may be true that the choice of which white males to “deselect” within the group was made randomly but that is hardly the point. On the thin blue line, race and sex were seen as more important than merit.
Fortunately, lunacy has not yet taken over entirely. A Bristol industrial tribunal did pronounce last week that Gloucestershire constabulary had been “at the very least disingenuous and at worst misleading” by unlawfully discriminating on grounds of race and sex. The force apologised, saying it was only trying to advance diversity and had thought this was “lawful, positive action”. You can hardly blame it; this whole subject is riddled with doublespeak. There is a deep dishonesty about the government setting targets but rejecting “quotas” as illegal. It is hard to spot the difference. Gloucestershire Plod thought he was under pressure to meet a government target to get ethnic minority recruits up to 7% of the total by 2009. Last year the figure was 1.6%.
What is so ludicrous about all this is that Gloucestershire has the fewest ethnic minority people of almost anywhere in Britain. A Guardian newspaper map of multicultural Britain shows no significant groups of ethnic minorities in the area at all. According to the Gloucestershire force’s own figures, the proportion is only 2.8%. Besides, it is highly contentious that every group (women, minorities, homosexuals or redheads) must be represented in every occupation in exact proportion to its numbers in the general population.
It may well be that the tiny number of West Country Sikh women, or Chinese men, don’t actually want to be police officers. They might have cultural reasons which dissuade them and surely we are supposed to respect such cultural diversity.
What, in this lamentable story, is this guilty obsession with race, this daft and patronising determination to exclude and demoralise the indigenous people? It is actually imposed in Gloucestershire by people who are mostly white males themselves. What is wrong with them? Why are they unwilling to hold the line against thoughtless, intrusive, guilt-ridden, destructive stupidity? One word for it is self-hatred. Another is decadence.
It is for the same reasons, whatever they may be, that we are so obviously failing to hold the line against the extremes of Islam. We no longer carry high the standard of free speech for fear of offending people, usually Muslims. Stalwart citizens have recently felt it their duty to reprimand the Pope and a former Archbishop of Canterbury for discussing Islam and violence — for even raising such offensive questions.
The results, for which we have only ourselves to blame, are alarming. Anyone who heard it must have been horrified by a British Muslim haranguing John Humphrys on Radio 4’s Today programme on Friday. Abu Izzadeen, the Jamaican convert who had heckled the home secretary at a meeting with Muslims, sounded even more terrifying on the air. Aggressive, illogical and blustering, he expressed his hatred of our government and its “crusade” against Muslims. He thinks free speech and democracy are incompatible with Islam.
When Humphrys asked him what was wrong with democracy, with trying to change things through Britain’s democratic process, he replied that “democracy means sovereignty for man, Islam means sovereignty for sharia . . . The UK doesn’t belong to you, it belongs to Allah”, and Allah has put Muslims on earth to implement sharia (Islamic law). So, Humphrys insisted, “the Islamic process but not the democratic process?” “Yes,” said Izzadeen confidently, “that’s right.”
It would be comforting to assume that Izzadeen is solitary and ignorant. Unfortunately he isn’t. An NOP poll for Channel 4 found that almost one in four British Muslims believed that the slaughter in London on July 7 was justified. Muslim community leaders can say what they like about Islam being all about peace; it’s perfectly clear that not all Muslims see it that way. For a long time now they have spread rage and resentment among their people and we have lacked the will and the instinct for self-preservation to resist it.
We all know what happened to Maximus. For all his strength and honour, for all that he tried to hold the line in his country’s interests, he came to a sticky end because Rome was by then decadent, demoralised and rotting from within. It may seem extreme to compare contemporary Britain and the Gloucestershire constabulary, or the mouthings of an irrational Muslim convert, with the latter days of the Roman empire. But it’s worth a thought.
The Sunday Times | Thursday, September 28, 2006 | Comments (3)
Final triumph of the Queen over Diana
It is often said that the more you learn about something, the more right wing you come to feel about it. That may not always be so but it seems to be true of the monarchy, judging from Stephen Frears’s dazzling new film about the Queen.
The more he and his great leading actress came to know of the Queen, the more royalist they seem to have become. The result is that they have created a royalist film; it is practically a hagiography. The film The Queen will work public relations wonders for the House of Windsor. This is all the more astonishing because neither Frears nor Helen Mirren is the kind of person you would expect to have a single good word to say about the Queen. Luvvies tend not to be courtiers.
Mirren was brought up as a working-class republican and, as she said recently at the Venice film festival, she was determined not to appear as a “grovelling knee-jerk royalist”. “But,” she went on, “I must say I slowly fell in love with her. It started off with, ‘Oh what the hell is this about?’ But as I researched her I fell in love and I never thought that would happen.
“My parents were very anti-monarchy and anti-class system, but you’ve got to separate your political views, call it your chip on the shoulder, and just look at the person . . . Having played an essence of the Queen, I’ve lost that chip on my shoulder.” This is from a woman who once said she thought the Queen withholding, cold and rather greedy, and that she would like to see the monarchy abolished.
Frears, too, seems to have surprised himself with his own sympathetic portrayal of the monarch. “The Queen is someone who has been in my life far longer than anyone else — longer than my children, my wife or my brothers — so of course I’ve got complicated, unconscious feelings. Oh God, it’s deep stuff.” Indeed. But what about his mother? Perhaps that’s rather deep, too, perhaps “a Mummy thing” as Frears’s Alastair Campbell suggests to the film’s Tony Blair; the unconscious feelings that surround the throne are very deep. Even those who would like to ignore them seem to find they can’t.
The film deals with the famous week that probably came close to destroying the royal family. After Diana’s death, when the royal family stayed in silent seclusion at Balmoral without making a public statement, the people turned on them with a violence we have almost forgotten. So it seemed, to judge from the news, but I remember thinking at the time that the tabloids actively encouraged people to denounce the royal family to the cameras and call the Queen’s behaviour “ disgusting” and “disgraceful”.
Media-led or not, this frenzy was catching: an opinion poll during that week found that one in four people wanted to get rid of the Queen. It was a sanctimonious time; one could almost hear the tumbrils rolling. The Queen was expected, in the spirit of Diana, to go touchy-feely and come out to share her people’s pain and press their flesh, or so we were told.
There was a sinister sub-text: she should also confess her “guilt” and her family’s “crimes” against the iconic Diana. To this end the Queen had to agree to give a television address, written for her by Downing Street and eulogising Diana “from the heart”, as she was obliged to say, even though everyone knew it couldn’t possibly be entirely sincere. Then, perhaps, it was felt the people might “forgive” her.
Blair had caught the people’s mood, in the spirit of the people’s princess — a phrase dreamt up for him for a nauseating churchyard speech — and became the people’s premier. The Queen had missed it, apparently.
Frears’s film gives a subtle account of that extraordinary mood, and of how the Queen had to recognise it and bend to it to survive. Her own mood, or mode, was the old-fashioned one of self-discipline and discretion, combined with compassion for her grandsons and a longing to protect them in privacy. “Quietly and with dignity. That’s how we do things in this country, and that’s what the rest of the world admires us for,” says Mirren as the Queen.
This placed the Queen on the losing side of what was seen as the Diana divide, much discussed at the time, a gulf between old and new, between self-restraint and self-expression, between feeling and duty, between privacy and publicity, between discretion and letting it all hang out. It did seem at the time as though the Queen had missed the post-Diana mood, or had underestimated it, and had been defeated by her daughter-in-law, even in death. But now I wonder.
This film is evidence of how shallow the Diana effect has proved to be. No longer does Diana appear as the unblemished victim, the standard bearer of feeling and truth against the massed forces of establishment repression. It’s true that Prince Philip and the Queen Mother appear as pantomime class stereotypes, perhaps with justification. But no longer does the Queen appear unfeeling or unsympathetic.
As Mirren said: “I think of all the things the Queen has gone through, the psychological traumas of the war years, 10 prime ministers . . . but she’s had the same values, the values of duty first, self last, and that constancy is extraordinary . . . and of course those values are the ones we cherish today.” And that is what she shows and makes us feel, in her magnificent, inspired portrayal of the Queen.
What a turn-up for the books. Frears and Mirren, like all talented artists, probably have their fingers instinctively on the public pulse — or, to put it another way, they are weather vanes: they know which way the wind of public sentiment is blowing. What’s more, the film’s producers must be convinced that this mood, and not the Diana mood, is what will make money these days. Le peuple le veut; the people want it. The royal family appears to be interesting, complex, human and forgivable.
Even the red carpet flummery, Balmoral kilts and stalking are gently treated, whereas in the Diana mood they might have been parodied viciously. This is all good news for the Queen and for royalists. And if Mirren’s responses are anything to go by, it is good news for the succession as well: Dame Helen is a big fan of Camilla.
The Sunday Times | Sunday, September 17, 2006 | Comments (2)
We should allow Huntley to kill himself
When Wolfgang Priklopil realised that the pretty girl he had kept captive for eight years had grown up and escaped, he threw himself under a train in Vienna. The wheels cut off his head. Difficult though it is to understand why a man should do something so terrible to a child, it is not at all difficult to understand why he should have done something so terrible to himself. It was the only thing to do.
From any point of view, he had no future. The girl was gone and the perverted obsessional world that he had constructed around her was destroyed. His private guilt, if he was capable of feeling any, and his public shame would never leave him; they would pursue him always, like the Furies. He could never show his face again, just as he had hidden hers. His time in prison would be long and terrifying; it would be a choice between solitary confinement and the brutality of fellow prisoners, who are merciless to child abusers.
All that was left for him was fear, loathing and enduring punishment. Even so, that may not be the explanation for his death; it’s impossible to imagine in any detail what his motives were. Perhaps in some sense he loved the girl and could not live without her. Perhaps he was trying, in a final act of cruelty, to punish her by his suicide, as he had often threatened.
What is striking, in all the prurient deluge of news and comment about the ordeal of Natashcha Kampusch, is that nobody has anything much to say about the suicide of Priklopil. It passed almost unnoticed. Usually in such cases there are clamorous outbursts on all sides, from the vindictive to the merciful, and all denouncing suicide. Some claim angrily that the criminal has cheated justice and taken the coward’s way out; others say that society has cheated the criminal of any hope of redemption. Others express horror at any suicide. Yet in this case the usual voices have been silent. There seems to be a tacit acceptance. It is as if people feel that it was for the best, or for the least worst.
It is striking, by contrast, how differently people in this country have reacted to the attempted suicide last week of Ian Huntley, the Soham murderer. Huntley is a man who is every bit as mad or bad as Priklopil. He captured not one but two girls and then sexually abused and killed them. Like Priklopil he tried to kill himself, with an overdose last Monday night in his cell at Wakefield jail; he failed because the Prison Service belatedly managed to rush him to hospital where his stomach was pumped out. He has now gone back to jail where he faces at least 40 years inside. Not surprisingly, he has tried to kill himself before.
Yet the main public response, oddly enough, has been anger at the Prison Service for failing to stop him. The Home Office is profoundly embarrassed and has said that it will review the way Huntley is supervised. This is all the more ludicrous since it is only eight weeks since the Home Office published a previous review of Huntley’s first suicide attempt in June 2003.
The conclusion of that report was that there were “serious systems failures” and “corporate” failure at Woodhill prison where he was incarcerated at the time. The report also emphasised that Huntley was highly likely to try to top himself again or, in statespeak, presents an “ongoing significant risk of self-harm”. Paul Goggins, the junior Home Office minister of the day stated — how awkward it now sounds — that “the safe custody of Mr Huntley is an absolute priority for the Prison Service”.
But why? I don’t share the indignation of the prison reformers who think that the screws should have kept a closer watch on Huntley. I agree that the Prison Service should be better run and that Huntley’s two suicide attempts are symptoms of the general chaos that besets it. I also agree that for justice and humanity Huntley should be kept safe from the vindictiveness of other inmates and from any bullying by prison officers. But I don’t see why, in this particular case, it is necessary to take time and trouble round the clock to protect him from himself. I do not see why suicide is such an unacceptable end for such a man.
In some societies it was considered merciful to give a man the choice of suicide. I don’t know how common it was but all theatregoers and novel readers are familiar with the scene where the disgraced soldier is given a revolver and a bottle of whisky by his brother officers and left alone in the library to do the decent thing. It was considered less terrible for him, and for them, and spared them the ugly necessity of having him tried, humiliated and executed.
In some cases suicide is the decent thing, in effect if not always in intention. There are crimes that are unforgivable. Huntley’s, like Priklopil’s, was one. There are crimes to which the idea of rehabilitation or of paying one’s debt to society is quite irrelevant. The cases of Fred West and Harold Shipman are obvious examples. It hardly matters whether one considers them responsible for their behaviour or not. If they are not, they cannot be rehabilitated, and if they are, that only makes their crimes more hideous.
I don’t advocate capital punishment for them — I am against it because I believe it is so bad for those who administer it and for a society that permits cold-blooded administrative murder. But I do suggest that for them death is a consummation devoutly to be desired, if chosen freely. It would also bring a sense of an ending to all those around the victims.
There is also the question of priorities. Questions of money always undermine a moral argument, I know, but I cannot understand why Huntley’s suicide watch should be an expensive “absolute priority”. There are all kinds of people in jail — those facing their first night behind bars, those on remand, the mentally ill who may have committed quite minor crimes and above all the very young — who are known to be at an extremely high risk of killing themselves. Should Huntley have priority over any of them? Most certainly not.
It would be both right and merciful to turn a blind eye to Huntley’s peephole at the graveyard hour and turn time and money instead to the needs of prisoners who have a chance of redemption. Whatever his motives, and whatever ours, let Huntley do the decent thing
The Sunday Times | Sunday, September 10, 2006 | Comments (3)
Eternal life won’t live up to expectations
Do you sincerely want to live forever?” was the title of a documentary film I worked on as a researcher more than 20 years ago. It was about the science of ageing and what was known at that time. It featured a crew of the brilliant and the eccentric, including a couple of long-haired ex-hippie Californians in the Life Extension movement, gulping handfuls of different drugs every day, and a very distinguished American scientist cutting his calories back to the starvation levels of his own ancient laboratory rats to increase his lifespan as he had increased theirs. In their different ways — both alternative and highly scientific — these remarkable characters were actively trying to do what the rest of us only dream of: to hold back death.
I was reminded of them last week by the strange story of Dr Jeya Prakash, a Harley Street plastic surgeon, who claims he has reversed the ageing process. He has been experimenting on himself and on his wife with injections of human growth hormone, and is so pleased with the results that he plans to market the drug as anti-ageing. He posed for pictures with his pretty wife last week and it is true that she, at least, looks astonishingly young for her age and could, as he says, be mistaken for his daughter, though she is as middle-aged as he is.
There’s nothing very new about seeing HGH as the elixir of life. Some sportsmen and sportswomen use it to improve their performance and have found that as well as increasing their strength and suppleness very noticeably it also unmistakably rejuvenates their skin and their general appearance. Not surprisingly, international beauty bandits have been onto this for several years. HGH is an extremely powerful drug; it can have very serious side effects, and its magical rejuvenation disappears when you stop taking it, but that won’t deter the fanatics.
Yet one cannot help thinking that what is flaky today will soon become respectable. Twenty-something years ago a very distinguished American professor of gerontology said in our documentary that knowledge in his field was doubling every year. It may not be long before hormones like HGH can be used safely. It is a safer bet that a huge amount of research is going into it. And there is progress in related fields: last week it was reported that gene therapy had rescued two middle-aged men from the last stages of cancer — and actually cured them.
American scientists of the US National Cancer Institute team in Bethesda extracted some of the two men’s own immune cells, genetically modified them to attack the cancer cells, and transfused them back into the patients, where — miraculously it seems to the lay woman — the new cells attacked the tumour cells and began to destroy them.
This may be only the beginning of a very complex process but it has immense implications, not just for cancer but for everything that flesh is heir to, including the ravages of age. Presumably there will come a time, perhaps in the lives of today’s children, when all the cell degeneration that makes us grow old and die could truly be arrested by gene therapy. Already we’re a long way on from monkey glands.
The question remains, however: do you really want to live forever? The photographs of Maria Esther de Capovilla, an Ecuadorian woman who died last week at the age of 116, made me think not. To be very aged and frail and dependent, and — I confess — to look every day of 100 years old is not something I want. A remarkable Englishman celebrated his 100th birthday last week with his colleagues at Pimlico Plumbers in London, where he works at a physically demanding job. He looks quite amazing, but I am not sure I would like to reach that stage.
There was a very sad story recently of a Frenchwoman who lived in good health to well over 100, but in her last two or three years her care workers took away her cigarettes, supposedly for the sake of her health. To be bossed by stupid busybodies and be too weak to defy them is one of the many terrors of old age. In Britain starvation and neglect on the NHS is another.
Age means the loss of the best things in life: youth, power, beauty, sensation, energy, memory and independence. It is particularly fearsome in a culture like ours which worships youth and beauty so much and thinks age is unnecessary, as King Lear bitterly said. I look around at people who are growing old, including my friends and me, and wonder what has gone wrong. The distinguished gerontologist in our film was very nearly bold enough, but not quite, to say on camera that ageing is a disease.
I hope this doesn’t sound heartless; if it is, I have it too. As my mother rather bleakly used to say, life is nasty, brutish and far too long. I respect the courage and the style of those who face age philosophically, but I don’t aspire to it. I don’t want to cling to life sans everything.
If, however, science could offer us not just long life but long-drawn-out youth and health as well, if life extension were in effect youth extension and if the passing decades hardly touched us, perhaps one would answer the question differently. If one could be as youthful and fit at 90 as one was at 30, wouldn’t one immediately grab the pills and swallow them? I wonder.
One of the most striking things about our film was the number of people who said that death gave meaning to life. I’m not thinking of those who said so for religious reasons, and who in a sense look forward to death; I mean those unbelievers who felt, somehow, the need of a sense of an ending. The need of a shape to one’s life is the same as the universal need for a shape to the great stories; it gives purpose and definition. For that reason one doesn’t want to go on and on repeating experiences, even the best ones. There can only be one first love, one first born. Presumably that’s why people talk of being tired of life, of having had enough.
There needs, in the end, to be a resolution, or even an escape, and death provides it. As E M Forster said, death destroys a man (but) the idea of death saves him. A timely death is something to be welcomed. Death, be not proud, though some have called thee mighty and dreadful, for thou are not so.
Dying is a different matter; like Woody Allen, I’m not sure I want to be there when it happens. My ideal would be to die very suddenly at three score years and 10, looking and feeling only 32. Well, perhaps a little longer . . .
The Sunday Times | Sunday, September 03, 2006 | Comments (3)
