The last political "realignment"

There is some talk going on about the need for a political realignment, for new parties to make a break-through, for old parties to split according to ideas and even ideology - it seems to be leading nowhere. What with the talk and with the many reminiscences of the seventies and eighties that followed Lady Thatcher's death this is undoubtedly a good time to recall the last time an attempt at political realignment seemed to fail though it probably succeeded in the long run and in an unexpected fashion.

In 1981, two years after what turned out to be one of the most significant elections of modern British history, dissatisfied members of the Labour Party, led by the "Gang of Four", Roy Jenkins, Shirley Williams, David Owen and Bill Rodgers, set up a new party, which, they hoped, would carry on the more Social-Democratic tradition of the Labour Party, which had been, in their and many others' opinion, taken over by left-wing Marxist activists.

While David Owen and Bill Rodgers were still sitting MPs, Shirley Williams had lost her seat in 1979 and Roy Jenkins had more or less opted out of British politics, which was becoming unpalatable to him in 1977, when he became President of the European Commission. After January 1981 Wembley Conference, which committed the Labour Party to unilateral disarmament, they finally faced up to the fact that they had only two choices: either conform with the left-wing Marxist movement that was taking over the party or to break away and form a new one.

The summary of the party's history on Wikipedia is, in fact, quite good, though many of the details and twists and turns necessarily had to be left out.

The new party formed an electoral alliance with the Liberal Party very soon after its formation and this continued till 1988 when the two parties merged more formally, the mould not having been broken though somewhat dented. As Charles Moore points out in the first volume of his Thatcher biography, the Gang of Four had not been paying enough attention to what was going on in the Conservative Party, underestimating Thatcher and her increasing influence on British politics. One could say that they had made the decision to break away from the Labour Party too late. If only they had done so when the first calls for a new, centrist, Social-Democrat party had started in the mid-seventies ....

For the story of that attempt at political realignment goes back  to some years before 1981, though many of the players are less well remembered than the Gang of Four and their followers. There is the story of the Social Democratic Alliance, a group of Labour politicians at various levels who struck out boldly against the extreme left-wing infiltration of the party and what they saw, with a good deal of justification, as the pusillanimous behaviour by the party leadership and its Gaitskillite social-democratic wing. Though there was half-hearted support from Roy Jenkins, the other later "rebels" shied away from the fight. Indeed, I recall Shirley Williams appearing on TV to tell us all that she could not understand what the SDA's members were complaining about: she could see no extremist infiltration and Militant was not a problem. She might have been that stupid (you can never tell with Baroness Williams as she is now) or she might have been frightened to tell the truth or she might have thought it was a clever manoeuvre.

Then there were the deselection fights in several constituencies with moderate or right-wing MPs, which were painful and long-drawn with varying results. The most important of these was in Newham North-East where the battle against Militant and various Trostskyist infiltrators was fought by the man who probably did more than anyone else to bring the truth out into the open and whose apparently hopeless struggle produced a curious success eventually: Reg Prentice.

It is wonderful to find that his name is being restored into its rightful place in modern British political history  by Geoff Horn's new biography, published by Manchester University Press, called Crossing the Floor - Reg Prentice and the crisis of British social democracy.

Dr Horn, an expert on social-democratic politics in the Labour Party, has produced an exhaustive and detailed account of the gradual disintegration of that party in the seventies and eighties and of the gradual control exerted over trade unions, local party organizations and, eventually, the national organization. Perhaps, it is a little too detailed for a non-geek. After a while, one gets exhausted by the account of all the meetings and all the resolutions but it is worth persevering as much of what happened afterwards in British politics is rooted in those apparently boring squabbles, hastily called meetings, dubious votes, legal injunctions and, most of all, inability on the part of Labour's right, the Gaitskillites to throw off their political paralysis.

There were exceptions to the latter and one of the most important ones was Reg Prentice, a man of impeccable socialist credentials who, nevertheless, stood up against union violence, political intimidation and extreme left-wing ideology, proclaiming over and over again the need for law and order, for sensible economic compromises, for parliamentary democracy. For his pains he was deselected in his constituency and was subjected to a good deal of harassment. He tried to fight back but did not succeed, thought of standing as an independent when he realized that his idea of a new, social-democratic party was not being taken up by his colleagues and, eventually, crossed the floor and joined the Conservative Party.

Prentice was a decent and honourable man though not an easy one to deal with. Men who feel inspired by a political mission rarely are and if they are losing the battle even less so. For all of that he was right as many in the Labour Party recognized too late.

The book tries to be objective but one cannot help feeling some contempt for the so-called Right in the Labour Party, the supposed Gaitskillites and self-defined social-democrats who did not have the courage to back either the rebels of the SDA or Reg Prentice when these tried to persuade the grandees that the Labour Party had to split and a new political alignment was needed. Nor does Dr Horn spare the two leaders of the time, Harold Wilson and James Callaghan who turned out to be incapable of dealing with the clearly evidenced infiltration. Their punishment was to watch the Labour Party's decade of growing political irrelevance.

The realignment did not happen as envisaged even when the new party was formed. By this time many of the electorate who might have supported it in the mid-seventies had decided that they quite liked Thatcher's Conservatives and voted accordingly. The left-wing activists of the Labour Party were right in one thing: the post-war consensus was failing the country and changes were needed. They simply were wrong as to which kind of changes and the Labour establishment was powerless to fight them.

It would not be correct to say that there was no realignment at all. After a decade or more of progressive destruction and disintegration, after the split that created the SDP, after Michael Foot's spectacularly inept leadership of the party, there was a concerted effort to sort the mess out. It took a few years and a good deal of money but Militant tendency was defeated and its influence in the party negated. It took another few years for the policies to be changed and for the party to become electable under the much disliked yet highly successful Tony Blair.

Dr Horn discusses briefly whether New Labour is, in fact, the social-democrat party that Reg Prentice and the others would have liked to see. Perhaps it is. But one can also argue that we now have two or even three social-democrat parties and, confusingly, the electorate do not seem to like any of them all that much.

Geoff Horn:                 

Crossing the floor - Reg Prentice and the crisis of British social democracy

2013                          Manchester University Press

Just a reminder

Things are happening out there in the big bad world. Bad things. And article in the Wall Street Journal about the Libya debacle says quite firmly: the more we learn about Benghazi the more it looks like a gross security failure. Indeed, it does. What with that and things looking nasty between China and Japan, it is hard to find our own party conferences in the slightest bit interesting.

No there is no looting, I mean rioting here

It is a little surprising, given that this is West London, the hub of gang culture, that there are constant fights and arrests here (though there has not been a murder in my street for three years so, clearly, things are changing) and Westfield shopping centre is just down the road, that the lootings riots motivated by hatred of the establishment especially the oppressive police have not spread here. Perhaps, the Somali gangs are too busy murdering each other and running illegal shisha cafes and the other gangs are still so backward in their political education as to think that they would prefer to choose the highly expensive clothes they buy rather than grab the first thing that they can, even if that means paying.

From the above paragraph readers might surmise that I am not impressed by the highly politicized explanations given by some analysts most of whom, curiously enough, do not live in London and have no real understanding of the different areas and what happens in them. Parts of Tottenham experience serious trouble every week-end and often on week days as well. The gangs are very real, indeed, and have little to do with alienation experienced by people who have nobody to vote for. If these people or their "community leaders" think that the police are not on their side, they are, we all hope, absolutely right. It is not the job of the police to be on the side of violent gangs who terrorize local shopkeepers, mug passers by on the streets, sell drugs (well, OK, I do think the drug laws should be changed but the police works in the legal environment that is created by others) and, when all else fails, have violent fights with each other.

The real problem, as expressed by many of the inhabitants of Tottenham, Enfield and other places, is that the police is insufficiently on the side of the law-abiding inhabitants. There are many reasons for this and the infamous Macpherson Report had much to answer for. The police were no longer on the side of the law-abiding members of ethnic minorities but on the side of the criminals from those communities. A discussion of all the other problems would take at least one long posting and today I want to stick to what is happening now.

I would, however, like to describe a scene I witnessed near here some weeks ago. There are many small supermarkets on Uxbridge Road, Shepherds Bush Green, Goldhawk Road and all around them. Most of them have boxes with fruit and vegetables outside. A tall and strong-looking young black lad went past one of these shops, picked up an orange and started eating it. A young member of the Asian shopkeeping family (no, I have no idea whether they are Muslim or Hindu and it is of little significance) remonstrated and got a volley of abuse back, the chief of which was the young lad with the orange demanding that some respect be shown to him. He was being "dissed" when asked to pay for the fruit he was consuming. It was not clear to me whether he was asserting that he was going to pay in the fullness of time or not. One of the older shopkeepers came out, broke up the fight, shooed his young relative back into the store and let the lad go with his orange and whatever else he picked up on the way. He then told the young relative off. It was clear to me what was happening: the shopkeepers wanted no trouble with the disrespected lad and his friends and thought that the loss of some fruit was a price worth paying. Clearly they did not think of calling the police. Notoriously, the police do not even list shoplifting when compiling their crime statistics.

This small episode is being echoed in the complaints of the people of Tottenham right now. Far from complaining about police brutality, they would like to know why the police had not been prepared for the looting and arson anti-establishment rioting and were not out in force protecting people and their property.

As these riots have spread, certain things have become obvious. There are no geographic or any other kind of links. Simply in several areas of London where there are already gangs in place, some of the smarter organizers decide to target shopping areas and bring their mates together via cell phones, twitter and whatever other expensive communication network is available to them. These are not the "wretched of the earth". The police are thinly spread and are somewhat hampered by the knowledge that if they do use a certain amount of force, there will be uproar on every side of the political divide about "police brutality". The same people who are calling for tougher action now will be screaming in horror if there are pictures of police going in with batons or deciding to adopt the Continental method of water canons.

It is, of course, about time we worked out what the police are for and what do we want them to do. Possibly the events of this week-end will open up that discussion but I am not holding my breath. And while we are on the subject, is it not about time we started worrying just a bit about the very large underclass of all colours, races, religions and ethnic groupings that we have in this country?

ADDENDUM: I have found an interesting blog that is following events closely.

Could this be what people mean?

One of the things I find particularly puzzling is the widespread if somewhat fuzzy opinion that politicians should not be professionals but, somehow, be just "ordinary people". Of course, when they do behave like ordinary people opinion turns against them and they are berated for not showing a better example.

What exactly is the problem with "professional" politicians? Is it the fact that they are paid? Well, I go along with that. The idea of paying them was to allow people who are not rich to enter politics and to keep them honest. May have worked in the first case though there were plenty of people in politics who were not rich before but, obviously, not the second. Honesty, thy name is not politician.

So, do we mean that we actually do not want people whose only job is politics? I go along with that as well, but to achieve that state of affairs, we need to have two very big changes. We need to allow people to speak in the Commons on subjects they know about, that is those they actually work in, and, above all, we need to reduce government drastically. As things stand, no politician can even think of earning money for anything honest and honourable and do his or her work in the House. Things are different in the Lords but they do not get a salary. That could be the model for the Commons.

Perhaps, we want people in politics who have first done or achieved other things. Well, maybe. There is, as it happens no evidence that successful businessmen or officers make good politicians. And, as we look back to what we may consider to be the hey-day of British politics we find people who had dedicated their lives to a political career.

What we come to is a vague acknowledgement that politicians in the past may have dedicated their lives to their political careers but managed to have some other interests in life and, often, some other business or profession.

I have been reading a book of essays by that (failed) liberal politician, short-term barrister, historian and man of letters, Philip Guedalla, which I picked up in one of the few remaining second-hand bookshops in Charing Cross Road. Incidentally, he, too, represents a breed that is well-nigh extinct.

The essays are about writers, politicians, places and personalities; they give a wonderful view of what educated opinion was like in the early 1920s and, as usual, a great deal of amusement about the analyses and predictions. Still, Mr Guedalla is not often wrong in his judgements.

In his essay about Stanley Baldwin, then newly become Prime Minister, Mr Guedalla writes about the man's much publicized love of pigs their breeding, comparing it with Disraeli's peacocks and Joseph Chamberlain's orchids. All these men's politics seemed to be tied in with their choice of hobbies.

Then he adds an interesting point, one that applies to the discussions of our own times:

One has rarely known a statesman in these islands who was not racked by a distinguished craving to be something else. Sometimes our Premier is a manqué golf professional. Once (and a Peer, too) he had scientific leanings. But mostly he sits among the red boxes at Westminster and sighs for the English countryside. These thwarted longings are an invariable indication of political aptitude: perhaps it has some unpleasant explanation in psycho-analysis.

Mr Disraeli, who died in politics at seventy-six, craved only for the conversation of his fellow-farmers in Buckinghamshire. Lord Palmerston, who died in office at eighty, was believed to know no pleasure except in Hampshire. And Mr. Gladstone, who only retired at eighty-five in deference to the failure of eyes and ears and the successful persuasion of his united colleagues, found his sole happiness in the crash of falling trees at Hawarden.

The English always prefer someone, who is something, to be really something else: this is called the amateur tradition, and is a sure safeguard against the grave menace of professionalism. Their statesmen are recruited from the crowded ranks of successful competitors at local flower-shows; their favourite critic of the drama is a Civil Servant; and their one Homeric scholar is a banker. it is a grand tradition of inconsequence.

Let me add a couple of things. First of all the Premier with scientific ambitions was Lord Salisbury and those ambitions did not do him much harm when it came to understanding politics.

Secondly, the description of a barely capable Mr Gladstone being finally eased out of office reminds me of the time the same thing was done to a barely capable Churchill in 1955.

I am not exactly clear as to whom he means when he talks of the Homeric scholar who is really a banker. Perhaps, some readers will know.

But having read Mr Guedalla's gentle mockery of amateurism and inconsequence I can only say that if he were to see the Britain of today he might change his mind and long for the good old days.

Displacement activity

Have these buffoons nothing better to do, asked a friend in a rhetorical mood. No, I said, they don't. They have no political ideas and if one comes their way they run and hide in terror. We were discussing (on line) this idiotic announcement.

The British government has accepted that laws surrounding succession to the throne could be "discriminatory" and that "discussions have started" to change them, CNN has learned.

Whatever CNN may have learnt, it is not the government that change legislation but Parliament.

Furthermore, there is hardly a huge demand for those changes or, even, any interest in them. If William and Kate have a daughter to start with, we can think about it all. It is not of any great importance at the moment. But I can just see some idiot in the Commons (the oleaginous Keith Vaz springs go mind) deciding to tie up parliamentary time with this rubbish.

While we are on the subject of displacement activity let me make a quick comment about the row that is going on about Cameron's immigration speech. I rarely comment on the subject because it is too complicated to discuss and rouses the sort of passions I find despicable.

While I am delighted to see the Prime Minister and his Deputy, the noted skier Clegg, falling out with each other yet again, I cannot help thinking that this scatter shot attack on all those who were not born in this country is immensely helpful to the political establishment. People hare off in all directions, swoon in horror because allegedly one in eight was born abroad (unspecified) and once again we leave the real subjects alone.

What are they? Well how about these for starters: the real problems with the European Union;our bloated, centralized, inefficient and corrupt welfare and social security system; above all, our education system. Too difficult, I suppose. So much easier to scream abuse about foreigners of all description.

Some thought processes I simply cannot understand

The Boss of EUReferendum, my erstwhile home, and I do not always see eye to eye. In fact, we disagree on various issues and, let's face it, how could we not? However, there are times when I acknowledge quite freely (OK, get off the phone now, I am acknowledging) that he has absolutely whanged the nail on the crumpet, as Lord Peter Wimsey says in one of the novels.

He has surpassed himself in his posting about foreign aid going to India, the country, we are told, that is developing so fast it will overtake the West any minute now together with China, Brazil and Russia (please stop guffawing at the back). As it happens, India's economy is developing very fast and many millions of people have been able to clamber out of the oppressive and very real poverty (not simply being unable to afford a third holiday in a year). That development is unlikely to be speeded up by foreign aid; to the contrary what foreign aid is likely to do is to make India's worst problem, all-pervasive corruption, even worse.

There is no point in my adding anything to his analysis but I want to open the subject up a bit. On the whole, I can usually understand the thought processes of people I disagree with. I often think that they are wacky but I can understand how they develop.

For example, I do actually understand why real supporters of European integration and of the concept of a single European state think (or, to be precise, used to think since there are precious few real supporters around). Given the fact that in the course of the twentieth century European countries committed virtual political suicide, the idea of a single state rising from the ashes may well have seemed like a good one. It wasn't as it happens but there is logic behind that idea.

There is even some logic behind the idea that one needs proper planning to make an economy work as an unplanned economy is likely to throw up some real surprises, some of them very unpleasant.

The problem with those two is that people might hang on to them in defiance of all historic experience. That is when these ideas become incomprehensible. Why, given the experience of the Soviet Union, would anyone think that planned economies are efficient?

There are, however, people whose thought processes (if one can call it that) are completely incomprehensible. I simply cannot fathom why they should think the way they do and come to the conclusions they do. It's not that they are wacky, they are, in my opinion, completely incomprehensible.

What exactly makes our politicians (for lawmakers they are not) think that giving aid to India is a good idea? What precise process of thinking (if I may call it that) leads them to the conclusion that shelling out money to bloodthirsty kleptocrats in Africa helps anybody to achieve anything? What is behind all that? Is it just ordinary mushy emotionalism? Is it a desire to prevent the developing world from actually doing any developing? Is it a sense of their own superiority? What is it?

Or take another idea (OK, I am using the word very loosely): the Big Society, hereinafter referred to as DC's BS. What on earth makes that idiot the Prime Minister think that organized welfare is any different from big government socialism? Come to think of it, what sort of thought processes fuel his supporters who keep nodding like toy dogs and saying four legs good, two legs bad big state bad, big society good?

Then there is that other cracking idea, the Big Society Bank, which, as far as anyone can understand will take money from all kinds of sources, like the lottery and what politicians call "dormant accounts" and, undoubtedly, something from the taxpayer to set up a state bank to hand out money to socially useful enterprises, particularly, one assumes, those that cannot raise money anywhere else, not being viable in business terms. Ahem, is that not what triggered the financial crisis over on the other side of the Pond? That was just a trial run. We are going to show those Yanks how to create a real financial crisis. But what exactly makes people think this is a good idea?

It's no good. There are certain kinds of mentality that I shall never fathom.

Sensitive hypocrisy

It is, in many ways, so much easier to be on the right of the political spectrum because it is so much less likely that one is accused of hypocrisy. Trying to reduce one’s tax bill? No problem. Everyone should be paying lower taxes because people are more likely to use their money sensibly (or, at least, the way they really want to) than governments.

Trying to get one’s offspring into a good school? No problem. Everyone should have choices in schooling and, if that requires some kind of a voucher system at first, so be it. And so on.

Even if one finds oneself using state controlled enterprises and organizations there can be no accusation of hypocrisy as the system is such that few people can avoid doing so at some point and, in any case, we do actually pay for all those huge juggernauts.

So different for those on the left, who tend to preach unselfishness to the rest of us while practising enlightened self-interest for themselves.

This extends to other matters, such as sensitivity, anti-racism, feminism (about which I have written on numerous occasions) and general lack of nastiness, all of which the left claims for itself, displaying all the bad things in abundance but squealing with horror the moment criticism is aimed at them.

It did not surprise me in the slightest that after the filthy and prolonged abuse that the left had hurled at President Bush, his wife, his family, at Condoleezza Rice, at Sarah Palin and her family, there was squealing at the slightest attack aimed at President Obama. To this day, as I found when I commented on other blogs about the preposterous Peace Prize, there is personal abuse directed at anybody critical of The One.

Presumably, somewhere at the back of these people’s minds there is an unwanted picture of Bush putting up with all that abuse without a single complaint and Obama with his coterie whining each time and, presumably, this unwanted picture makes people ever more hysterical.

When it comes to Britain the hypocrisy of sensitivity is not restricted to the left but has spread to what we laughingly call the right that is the Conservative Party. It seems that soon after the Conservative Party Conference Ben Bradshaw (Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, since you ask) Twittered some unpleasant personal attacks on David Cameron.

I am not on Twitter and if I were I would not waste my time following self-important politicians so I have to rely on other people’s accounts but there seems to be a general idea that the attack had something to do with the tragic death of little Ivan Cameron earlier this year and, possibly, his life as a severely disabled child. Not nice and completely unnecessary.

Then again, I was a little puzzled at the display of sensibility by various Tories on blogs and Facebook (where I do have a presence); smelling salts were called for; fainting people had to be revived ever so gently.

Ahem, I said, rather quietly, as is my wont, what of the times you people attacked Gordon Brown personally? What of all the comments about his health, physical and mental?

The responses were rather odd. One person wrote that this was completely different. At least, I think that is what he wrote but as he seemed unable to string a coherent sentence together and started his comment by informing me that it was no wonder that I supported Labour, we can discard his opinion as being worthless.

Others assured me with a straight face that no Tory has ever attacked Brown on personal grounds. Well, not on the Conference platform, anyway. Well, neither did any Labour politician attack Cameron on the Conference platform. This is a silly argument. My point was quite simple: personal attacks on politicians are not a good idea though it is hard for one lot of socialists to attack another lot on political grounds. However, if you do it yourself than do not squeal when the direction of the manure is reversed.

Since then, we have had the still continuing saga of Stephen Gately’s death, his elevation to sainthood without all the paraphernalia of miracles, Devil’s Advocates and Papal decisions, and the unfortunate hounding of Jan Moir, a mostly harmless hackette, started by Stephen Fry, also on Twitter. The word sensitivity was brandished quite extensively. Jan Moir and those of us who tried to protest in the name of freedom of speech were subjected to quite exceptionally vile abuse, all in the name of sensitivity.

Which leads me to an even wider question of sensitivity and hypocrisy and the harm that combination can do. One of the books I am reading at the moment is Nicola Humble’s Culinary Pleasures, a highly entertaining and somewhat idiosyncratic history of cookery books from Mrs Beeton’s magisterial tome to the present day.

She does mention one or two of Mrs Beeton’ immediate predecessors but seems unaware of early eighteenth century and seventeenth century books to which several of the ones she covers hark back.

Any history of cookery books or “cookbooks” as Ms Humble refers to them is likely to be idiosyncratic because with very few exceptions it is almost impossible to tell what was really popular and influential at a certain period. I am not sure Ms Humble even tries, preferring to follow her own interests. She is, however, on safe ground with Mrs Beeton, whose Book of Household Management she has edited to produce a shortened version for Penguin Publishing.

Isabella Beeton, whose complete book is now available in facsimile edition and on the internet (also here and several other sites), has had a bad press over the many decades after her untimely death, while her book was destroyed by publishers, a false persona was created by the same and every single thing that is wrong with English cooking was attributed to her.

In actual fact, the book is quite sensible; it is full of interesting information about middle class household management of the period (though as Ms Humble rightly points out it is important to separate description from aspiration); and its advice is often extremely practical.

Nicola Humble is eminently fair to Mrs Beeton but, as a life-long vegetarian, has a problem with the latter’s emphasis on meat. In particular, Ms Humble thinks, that there is something hypocritical about someone writing about the need for animals to be kept well and slaughtered humanely who also gives many different ways of dealing with the meat with few pages between the various passages. The first, in the author’s opinion, points to a modern, urban view of animals, while the second takes us back to a more savage era.

I fear that it is Ms Humble and her likes who can be accused of hypocrisy brought about by our old friend, sensitivity.

For instance on page 39 of my paperback edition we can read, as an introduction to one of Mrs Beeton’s recipes:

This is a typically brisk set of instructions in which some of the crucial details are dealt with rather quickly: ‘collaring’ as a culinary procedure means to roll up and tie with string, s it is the calf’s head itself that should be rolled tightly, not just the cloth in which it is wrapped, a distinction that Beeton’s prose leaves rather vague. It is also unclear whether the head should be divided completely or just split to facilitate removal of brains and bones. Beeton follows this recipe with a note on feeding the calf, in which she instructs that ‘if the weather is fine and genial, it should be turned into an orchard or paddock for a few hours each day, to give it opportunity to acquire a relish for the fresh pasture’. The gruesome contrast between this image and the calf’s eventual fate does not appear to strike her – despite her concern with decent animal husbandry she has none of our modern squeamishness about killing animals for food.

There follows a recipe for Collared Calf’s Head that is neither hard to understand not particularly gruesome but hard to follow nowadays, partly because few kitchens are big enough or well enough equipped for the preparation but largely because health and safety regulations have made it impossible for butchers (where there are any still left) to sell any animal’s heads for food.
The real problem is that last, incredibly sensitive sentence. With respect to Ms Humble, most people are not vegetarians and there is no way of eating meat without killing animals first. But she is right in pointing out that too many people are squeamish about that and would prefer not to think about it.

The outcome is precisely the opposite of what might be expected. Mrs Beeton, who had spent most of her life in the small town of Epsom, knew about animal husbandry and slaughtering. She knew the link between that and the production of food and was anxious to campaign for humane treatment of animals, because of that. People with modern squeamishness would rather not think about the way animals are kept for meat or dairy, let alone about the conditions in which they are slaughtered. They are so squeamish and so sensitive that they would rather ignore animal suffering than to think about it.

This was brought home to me forcefully when I was involved in an investigation into the fate of small and medium-sized slaughterhouses after various EU directives had been imposed on the industry and a campaign to alter rules in order to save the remaining ones.

Newspaper editors who might have been interested in another campaign against EU over-regulation and British gold-plating, refused to touch the story: their readers did not like to hear about animals being slaughtered. Oh yes, they ate meat but they were not anxious to be reminded about the realities of food production. The RSPCA produced one learned report that nobody read but mumbled apologetically when asked why they did not devote some of their enormous resources to the saving of small and medium-sized abattoirs on grounds of animal welfare. And so on, and so on, with the honourable exception of the Humane Slaughter Association.

And don’t even get me on the subject of international development aid and sensitivity. That requires another long posting.

Why I find it so tedious

I wouldn't go so far as to say I don't give a sh*t about British politics but I do find it extraordinarily tedious. I know it is August but to have the issue of some daft Conservative MP making a "gaffe" when he did not realise he was recorded (shades of "Yes Prime Minister"), his apology and the non-problem of his future as the most important one of the day, nay several days, is enough to make one give up the will to live. (There are many other links in the media and the blogosphere I could post but cannot be bothered. As Private Eye might say: continued on pp. 3, 4, 6, 7-9, 11-14 & 94)