Secretes, Shoots and Leaves

Once upon a time, all we had to prevent us eating each other in public places was Civic Virtue and the Old Bill. Now we have over 4 million surveillance cameras in the UK. We British really love ’em — New York gets by with a paltry 5,000, where London has more than 400,000. Keep smiling, because unless you are in Church or on the can, you can pretty much bet you're starring in someone’s real life Big Brother show. And they call it a liberal society.

Tate Modern is putting our ongoing Snoopy Show into context with a summer exhibition Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera. I thought I’d go along to find out where it all began. The Victorians had a variety of gadgets, including cameras hidden in shoes and the tops of canes, to record the unwilling. Cartier-Bresson snapped his Leica around the streets of Paris with sublime results, some of which are in the exhibition.

Developing technology since the nineteenth century has delivered images to feed a growing culture of celebrity. Here is Garbo sheilding herself from the camera with a perfectly formed hand, and an utterly wonderful shot of Kim Novak trying to sit down discretely in a dining car whilst a row of men in homburgs sit and stare. The exhibition includes Weegee’s iconic shot of Marilyn Monroe accidentally on purpose flashing her thighs over a stream of hot air. All culminates in the Paparazzi martyrdom of the Princess of Wales, captured in some newspaper stories of the day. There was interesting work by Alison Jackson, who spoofs the whole idea by using lookalikes in a way that makes you think “surely it can’t be...” It isn’t.

There were some fine historical examples of Candid photography, in the Monty Python sense — Brassai’s images of 1930’s secret and scenes from mexican bordellos to travellers on the New York Sunway. Stripped of the accoutrements of glamour photography most people look surprisingly contemporary, simple and innocent.

There is a harrowing section on war, which takes us from the shocking images of carnage thrown up by the American Civil War to the human débris of concentration camps, Nick Ut’s Vietnam and various recent gulf wars. One image stays on the memory — Lee Miller’s shot of the fair-haired daughter of Leipzig’s Bürgermeister, draped exquisitely over a chair, hours after she had committed suicide with Nazi Germany collapsing around her.

The extraordinary mechanisation of snooping has not improved the quality of the images. The final rooms make you wonder who watches this stuff, and how close we are coming to an entirely surreal position where we are all constantly photographed for the amusement and edification of machines. Once nobody’s watching any more, what is the point? The almost complete elimination of privacy raises interesting questions about the integrity of the person, and the almost complete elimination of liberty by the control mechanisms required by unfettered liberalism. Time for a re-think?

Afghanistan and Remembrance

Strong feelings were expressed, and questions asked, at Remembrance this year. I was at St Paul’s Bledlow Ridge, a lovingly looked after village church which is (wonderfully) kept open in the day. There’s a John Piper West window which some see as a vision of heaven. Some people present knew well the village names on the war memorial, and it was good to have a crowd there to keep faith with the dead of the last century’s wars, and show their gratitude for the basics we all easily take for granted, as well as express our pride in the dedication and professionalism of our armed services today.

This year, however, with news reports of a British soldier killed yesterday in Afghanistan, and seven others in the past week, people were asking questions. Remembrance felt very much more immediate than has often been the case in previous years. The people of Wooton Basset have evolved a mark of remembrance and respect, almost weekly of late, to dead service personnel as their bodies are repatriated. Millions of ordinary people are united in their respect and admiration for those who serve in our forces, putting their lives at risk daily for the rest of us.

Everyone this morning very much expressed this admiration, and wanted to show solidarity with our troops and their families in the UK. However, people are seriously uncertain as to the aims of the current exercise. It’s not that they doubt the war is winnable, because nobody seems to know what “winning” would amount to. Many who are entirely supportive of our service personnel feel they owe it to those who are risking their lives daily for us to ask our politicians hard questions the troops can’t.

On a micro- scale our forces are doing what they are being asked to do, whatever the cost. However, the bigger macro aim is unclear, and nobody is hearing a clear or convincing answer to the question of what our macro-aims might be from the politicians who put our troops in danger in the first place. Simply asserting it’s all somehow vaguely necessary, without explaining what and why, is not enough. Those making big sacrifices, along with the rest of us, deserve better. Perhaps greater clarity is unachievable for as long as the Americans don’t know what they’re trying to achieve there either.

It was interesting to be asked, as someone who has studied Victorian history, about our previous three wars in Afghanistan, and what might be learnt from them.

1839-42 (First Afghan War)
This proved that there is no such country as Afghanistan, just a ragbag of local loyalties and warlords. Therefore any attempt to turn it into a conventional buffer state between the Indian empire and Russia did nothing but stimulate Russian interest in the region, and inaugurate a new phase of what came to be known as the “Great Game.” The war proved there’s no such “nation” as Afghanistan except in the vaguest notional terms, and it was an easier place to get into than out of.

1878-1880 (Second Afghan War)
This was the war in which literary fans may recall Sherlock Holmes’ chum Dr Watson served. It demonstrated clearly the utter hostility of the terrain, the limited usefulness of modern arms technology, and the utter impossilibility of imposing coherent government on it, along with the lack of any real British interest in the place.

The British concluded that as long as it was that hostile to Western culture and mores it would be equally hostile to the Russians. The way the treaty of Gandamak broke down, showing itself unnecessary as well as unenforceable, showed the perils of backing any one local leader too closely. Eventually, the British withdrew their resident from Kabul. There was nothing to be gained by interference in the complex internal dynamics of the place, for Britain or Russia.

1919 (Third Afghan War)
This was the shortest Afghan war yet, and yielded only one major additional conclusion of value. What was learnt was that in any operations in Afghanistan ground communications were unnecessarily hazardous. The RAF should therefore be the lead service in any future operations that might need to be carried out in the mountains.

You might think that a flood of ground troops (what some call a surge) could somehow sort everything and transform the place into something other than it has consistently proved to be, in military terms, over the past 170 years. I’m not sure the Russians would agree with you there, after their experiences on the ground in the late eighties. Of course in the eighties the West was arming and resourcing the local mujahideen, but it’s hard to think that was the only reason the Russian occupation failed.

So, it’s time for the politicians who started this war to tell us, and especially the troops whose lives they are risking daily, where and how they think it should end. Osama and chums legged it to Pakistan years ago now, and most money and resource for terrorism comes from Pakistan and Saudi. So what are doing in Afghanistan, and how are going to know when we’ve done it? We’re all ears, and very much hoping the current ceremonies at Wooton Basset will not become a permanent fixture of our national life...

Europe: worth a few straight bananas

Awaiting European election results, Lucy and I popped over for a look at the Kelvedon Hatch Secret Nuclear Bunker, now open to the public. For 20 years up to 1992 it was a regional government centre; a hidey hole from which a commissioner and 600 Civil Servants would have run a great chunk of Britain after the Bomb went off. Authentic Public Information films from the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s play as you go round.

Stentorian government announcers explain how to protect and survive with bin liners, 35 milk bottles of water each, a sand tray and a central core or refuge under the kitchen table. They all assume one bomb somewhere with two weeks to recover, and we can only wonder at how we’d have died, the lot of us, if these devices had gone off in any number. They’re also rather coy about what you do when the fallout from your own nukes blows back across the channel and kills you anyway.
Yet for much of my lifetime that was the plan — hold the Russians on Lüneborg Heath for up to a fortnight, then go nuclear.


Some of us well remember the Cuban missile crisis — thinking war could happen, with some childish notion it would be a bit like the blitz. These films make it plain it would be like nothing of the sort.
A small amount of imagination makes it obvious this whole nuclear survival thing was and is a bunch of crap. Even with a backyard the size of Siberia (or Alaska) it's a complete hiding to nowhere.

When I was a nipper in 1962 a teacher told me there would probably be a third world war by 1970, as there had been one every 25 years of that century so far. That’s what she had experienced, anyway. The European Union may not have acheved straight bananas, but it has broken a sequnce of bloody European wars which ran for 300 years like sick clockwork, (1700+/ 1750+/ 1790+/ 1848/ 1870/ 1914/ 1939). NATO has provided a defence umbrella, but positively speaking, the EU has built a continent where a war between its historic nations is now, for the first time in 300 years, unthinkable. Its processees could doubtless be reformed in sensible ways, but the central achievement is that for the first time in 300 years, two generations, mine and my children’s, didn’t have to march off to a major war.

I’m less than impressed by anyone who is prepared to risk dismantling Europe, or reducing it to a mere trading arrangement.

The great failure of the League of Nations in the 1930’s was its inability to construct union at a deep enough level to prevent war between nation states in 1939.
It broke under stress precisely because it could develop no substantial common institutions.

To be a Little Englander you have to be too stupid, ignorant or unimaginative to understand the most basic fact of our contemporary history. In a world of globalised superpowers, Victorian nation states are ultimately roadkill; and if anyone were to let off a nuke the other side of the channel, we’d be killed by the fallout anyway within hours. Why wouldn’t we want to play a positive role in the mechanism for preventing that ever happening?

Gaza: Every breath cries out “Stop!”

Violence escalates in Gaza. The military do their stuff, short term relief that aggravates the long-term problem. Gandhi was right — an eye for an eye and everyone ends up blind. Meanwhile the weak, the poor, the vulnerable become roadkill. What is there to say?

You may not have been following the Israeli charts, so here is Sarit Hadad singing Shema’ Israel — the title recalls the ancient words of the daily foundational prayer, the Shema’ (Dt 6:4) — When the heart shuts up, every breath cries out, make it stop...

and the words, vocalised and translated by John Hobbins:

When the heart is crying only God hears
the pain rises from within one’s breath
a man falls before he goes under
with a short prayer, he cuts the silence

Hear Israel, my God, you can do all
you gave me my life, you gave me all
in my eyes a tear, silently the heart cries
when the heart shuts up, one’s breath cries out

Hear Israel, my God, I am now alone
make me strong, my God, so I won't fear
the pain is great, there's nowhere to flee
make it end, no strength is left in me

When the heart is crying, time stops moving
in an inkling a man sees his whole life pass
to the unknown he does not want to go
to his God he calls, on the edge of the abyss.

When the heart is crying only God hears
the pain rises from within one’s breath
a man falls before he goes under
with a short prayer, he cuts the silence

Hear Israel, my God, you can do all
you gave me my life, you gave me all
in my eyes a tear, silently the heart cries
when the heart shuts up, one’s breath cries out

When the heart is crying only God hears
the pain rises from within one’s breath
a man falls before he goes under
with a short prayer, he cuts the silence

Hear Israel, my God, you can do all
you gave me my life, you gave me all
in my eyes a tear, silently the heart cries
when the heart shuts up, one’s breath cries out

כְּשֶׁהַלֵּב בּוֹכֶה רַק אֱלוֹהִים שׁוֹמֵעַ

הַכְּאֵב עוֹלֶה מִתּוֹךְ הַנְּשָׁמָה

אָדָם נוֹפֵל לִפְנֵי שֶׁהוּא שׁוֹקֵעַ

בִּתְפִילָה קְטַנָּה חוֹתֵךְ אֶת הַדְּמָמָה.

שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל אֱלוֹהַי אַתָּה הַכֹּל יָכוֹל

נָתַתָּ לִי אֶת חַיַי נָתַתָּ לִי הַכֹּל

בְּעֵינַי דִּמְעָה הַלֵּב בּוֹכֶה בְּשֶׁקֶט
וּכְשֶׁהַלֵּב שׁוֹתֵק הַנְּשָׁמָה זוֹעֶקֶת.

שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל אֱלוֹהַי עַכְשָׁיו אֲנִי לְבַד

חַזֵּק אוֹתִי אֱלוֹהַי עֲשֵׂה שֶׁלֹּא אֶפְחַד

הַכְּאֵב גָּדוֹל וְאֵין לְאָן לִבְרוֹחַ

עֲשֵׂה שֶׁיִּגָּמֵר כִּי לֹא נוֹתַר בִּי כֹּחַ

כְּשֶׁהַלֵּב בּוֹכֶה הַזְּמָן עוֹמֵד מִלֶּכֶת

הָאָדָם רוֹאֶה אֶת כֹּל חַיָּיו פִּתְאוֹם

אֶל הַלֹּא נוֹדַע הוּא לֹא רוֹצֶה לָלֶכֶת

לֵאלוֹהָיו קוֹרֵא עַל סַף תְּהוֹם

War to end War?

The 90th anniversary of the Armistice has triggered interesting historical reflection about the First World War. Perhaps the time is coming when our perceptions of it can become more historical. Military Historians are probing the inadequacies of what you might call the Blackadder view. Nowadays they talk about a “learning curve” on the Western Front, which the British army negotiated painfully and sometimes haltingly, but neverthless successfully.

Confronted with the horror of the war, of course people said “never again” and talked of it as a war to end war. Given the way in which Germany collapsed, and the way things were left after Versailles, we can easily see now that the peace terms contained the seeds of the next war; so the real learning curve is about exit strategies and how you leave things. The Clemenceau desire for punishment and revenge, however understandable, has to be curbed, in a way it wasn’t in 1919.

I wonder wehther a generation raised on computer games will have a greater or a lesser capacity to feel for the human dimension of war? We are more squeamish than our great grandparents, but there’s a danger everything becomes a computer game for us. With the Big Snit in mind, I was interested to come across a Bigger Snit, pictured by Vincent Chai at the University of Hertfordshire — a dead cert war to end wars, cobbled together from 21st century fears, fantasies and images:

Evil through the eyes of a child

Way back, the Go Between explored how adult games look through the eyes of a child, vivid, simple, utterly pragmatic. The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is Auschwitz through innocent eyes — good script, brilliantly cast, beautfully made, well acted, almost impossible to watch.

This film does not ham things up, preach, sentimentalise, or demonise. The unvarnished tale is more disturbing. The horror is in the substance not the way it’s served up. Conventional war movies, even compassionate ones like Sergeant Ryan, are all well and good, but all the wrong things steal the show. They’re like sermons where the circumstantial illustration smothers the point. This one is painfully right on the button.


The “Bloody Fool” school of history has answers to everything, but understands nothing. It’s too ready to believe that people in the past were just utterly different, that‘s all. Big labels like “Evil” do not answer the basic question that matters — “how do people do such things?”

Filling in faces of the holocaust is a painful necessity, or it simply becomes incomprehensible or, worse still, the stuff of prurient curiosity or myth. We have to try to understand what there is in us what blinds us to what we don’t want to know, our own capacity for “Don’t ask, don’t tell”.

The audience we were part of in Wycombe was slightly stunned. So we bloody well should be. I suspect this film will not pack the cinemas this autumn, but people who can bear to watch it, may understand a little bit more, and, in the end, be glad they did.

Moving Heaven and Earth

From the Early Church to the Simpsons, family falling out is an integral part of being human, being family. Small disputes are part of a much bigger context. In the week of Canada Day, pondering all the strife and dissension around the place, I remembered The Big Snit. Lucy and I have been laughing about it, off and on, for about 20 years. It’s one of the greatest stories ever told — pure joy, with sawing for teens, shaking eyes like a shaking rock ’n roll band, and a happy ending... Well, pull my lips off. It looks like a bunch of people. Is there some kind of parade on or something?

Remembrance, progress and hope

Remembrance this year included dedicating a new school war memorial at Wargrave Piggott School, and a village service at Worminghall. Lists of names make the point that wars involve particular human beings, not just walk-on parts in war movies or computer games. With a small amount of imagination you can spot the family connections, even in small village communities.
Here are some postwar musings of Woodbine Willie, about winning the peace:

Trying to cure Europe of its present miseries by mere information and intellectual education is like trying to cure a man suffering from peritonitis by giving him a new pair of pyjamas. The only hope is in something that goes deeper than reason, and purges and purifies the underworld of man’s irrational self. The primitive passion must be opposed by, and overcome by, a purer passion of greater power — a passion for God and his humanity, which is true religion...
...It is easy to get out of trouble by sweeping generalisations which enable you to take sides, and shift the blame to someone else. It is easy to say that the workers are work-shy, and the employers greedy, and to turn the problem into a battle. It is always easy to get out of thinking and praying by fighting, always easy, and always useless and mean. But with that sort of nonsense Christianity can have nothing to do.