YOU RESCUE ME, I RESCUE YOU [231]

So, how are your New Year’s resolutions going?

To all those that declared that 2020 was going to be “their” year, it feels natural to write it off as a false start, and skip to 2021. Twelve days were “lost” when the Gregorian calendar replaced the Julian calendar, in Europe, in 1582 – we could do it again! Australia could have Christmas in winter!

Addressing severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the cause of coronavirus disease 2 (COVID-19), has taken time because I believed doing so would not be helpful. Realising I needed to do it for myself, concerns over tone, and point of view, melted away. We all need hope, but we have our own hopes.

I understand the characterisation of the fight against coronavirus as a war, because of our collective memory of the last national emergency on this scale, mobilising an entire country against a common enemy, even if the Queen saying “we’ll meet again” at the end of her special broadcast made me think of “Dr. Strangelove.” 

But this enemy has no strategy, forcing sacrifices in routine not seen even during the Second World War, for our bodies are under attack, not our homes. (I know it didn’t stop Donald Trump calling coronavirus “a brilliant enemy... genius... hidden, but very smart,” but his words surprise no-one anymore.) Coronavirus may not be a plague, or a pox, but my mind headed there. Reading the diary of Samuel Pepys from late 1665, recounting the figures from the weekly bill of mortality, and hoping the impending frost will flush out the plague from London, is not far from our hourly news bulletins and talks of an “exit strategy.”

My exit strategy from coronavirus is set – having studiously followed Government advice to stay at home, leaving only for exercise or to buy essentials, I’ve had time to think. I needed a haircut before the UK was locked down, and it is now my priority - it’s weighing my head down. I will then head to a restaurant, most likely Five Guys – my burger toppings are “all the way,” with no ketchup. I fixed on these two actions as the signs of a return to normality, and decided not to question them further.

Once these are done, I can assess how my actions will change, just as everyone adjusts to new realities. The short version of the rebuilding of London after the Great Plague, followed by the Great Fire, was that a competition was held to devise a new layout for the city, but abandoned with the need to start rebuilding quickly... but the closed sewers, wider streets and installation of pavements to separate the public from the road ensured lessons were learnt just as fast.

In April 2020, we cannot yet say what we will change, but when a respirator can be conceived, designed, and approved for medical use within days, innovation caused by necessity will outstrip wish lists and ideology – see Brexit for further details. I have made attempts to order a contactless debit card, with cash being accepted in fewer shops, and have made changes at home to continue working. At the same time, internet networks will be strengthened to take a shift to working online that may eventually stay. Virtual or phone-based GP appointments, formerly a compromise, are mostly the only option right now, but more people are ready to accommodate them. Some shops that have adopted a delivery-only model during the crisis may continue in this manner without reopening their physical location. More consideration is going to be given to ideas previously dismissed as inconceivable, like a universal basic income, due to emergency measures like the Government-paid furlough in the UK. It would be a mistake to expect things to go back to normal – at least, not straight away.

There are also things that never change. Mobile phone masts have been attacked in the UK over the misplaced belief that the electromagnetic waves generated by 5G mobile signals make changes to people’s bodies, that will make them more susceptible to coronavirus. However, this conspiracy theory, itself spread by 5G being adopted first in more densely populated cities, ignores the fact that those frequencies use capacity vacated by digital television, so not only did these waves already exist, they were being used to broadcast “You’ve Been Framed!”

Meanwhile, as people stay at home, television increasingly resembles the YouTube series of “Leigh Spence is Dancing with the Gatekeepers.” My tips for making your video calls look better are very simple: sit or stand back from the camera, have the lens at your eye level, instead of looking down or up at your device, and use cool white lightbulbs at home instead of warm ones. My only extras are an external microphone and green screen, and you don’t need either of those.

I won’t go as far as saying “we’ll meet again,” but I look forward to saying “Happy New Year” again.

I’M JUST SECOND HAND NEWS [88]

It is very well-known that, one day in 1930, a BBC radio announcer proclaimed, “there is no news,” with piano music played to fill the gap. This is often read as the BBC deciding no news was worth broadcasting that evening which, in our age of instant reports and reaction to the merest flinch of an event, sounds either completely authoritarian or completely hilarious. However, the very specific set of circumstances that led to this decision would never be repeated, as our appetite for information was already increasing.

The day was Good Friday, 18^th April 1930. Usually, the BBC’s National Programme would broadcast, after the mid-morning Daily Service and Shipping Forecast, a continuous diet of concerts and talks from noon to midnight, with two news bulletins at 6.15pm and 9pm – regional services dipped and out of the national feed, re-reading “The Second News” at 10.15pm. However, Easter meant Good Friday’s main programmes started at 3.30pm, with a military band, string orchestra, sports results, church service, and an evening concert of Wagner’s “Parsifal,” conducted by Sir Henry Wood, who began the Proms. Regional services had their own concerts, but all had an interval at 8.45pm, for the single news bulletin of the day. All services closed down for the night by 10.15pm.

When regular radio broadcasts began in 1922, news bulletins on the BBC were only broadcast after 7pm, to protect the newspaper industry. By 1930, the embargo had moved forward to 6pm but, as before, the BBC was required to take its stories, unedited, from newspapers and their wire services, for which their paper tape machines had only just been installed. The BBC also had to broadcast numerous government announcements, even down to the banality of “post early for Christmas,” eventually forming their own section of each bulletin.

On this Good Friday, the system was nowhere to be found. The Chittagong uprising, in what is now Bangladesh, had just started, but news would not reach the UK in time. Even then, newspapers in the UK did not routinely publish on Good Friday until 1987, and their wire services were not running either. The BBC were expecting a denial to come from the Home Office over the reporting, in a newspaper, of an interview with the Home Secretary, because no newspaper would be available to report the denial – eventually, nothing came, as it was no longer news. With no news available, piano music became the more appropriate interval between the concerts.

In 1934, the BBC finally moved news out of its “Talks” department and into its own division, its reputation as a respected and impartial news provider formed in the heat of the Second World War. In contrast, newspaper circulation peaked has steadily declined since the 1930s, hastened by the advent of television and online news. Now, the cacophony of news stories leads us not to ask if what we are given is news-worthy, but whether it is even true – far better it be insignificant than absolute rubbish.

THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND, THIS LAND IS MY LAND [71]

Never having lived under an authoritarian, nationalist regime, it is easy for me to say, as a British person, that I am not a fan of fascism.

In modern history, Britain has never had a regime that took itself seriously enough for anything remotely fascist to work - the British national character, or our idea of one, likes to take overly successful or self-important people down a peg, so the personality cult found around many fascist leaders cannot materialise. I need not go over (again) the shortcomings of Nigel Farage, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin because they are both apparent, and well known to all of us, but those shortcomings mean they do not make the grade as a fascist leader – no, they’re not good enough for that either.

Replacing the existing British political system with fascist control would be too radical, and far too much work. Groups like the British National Party are tiny, but no “centre ground” party exists either, because the Conservative and Labour parties always vie for control of the middle ground in general elections. Dragging everyone towards the far right really requires a decisive, seismic event, and even the Second World War couldn’t manage that.

In the absence of a personal test, I agree with a passage often used to confirm British hostility to Fascism. It is found in the 1938 novel “The Code of the Woosters,” by P.G. Wodehouse, where Bertie Wooster repudiates Roderick Spode, leader of the Blackshorts. Spode is an analogue of British fascist leader Oswald Mosley, who was imprisoned by the British Government, with other far-right sympathisers, in 1940:

“The trouble with you, Spode, is that just because you have succeeded in inducing a handful of half-wits to disfigure the London scene by going about in black shorts, you think you’re someone. You hear them shouting ‘Heil, Spode!’ and you imagine it is the Voice of the People. That is where you make your bloomer. What the Voice of the People is saying is: ‘Look at that frightful ass Spode swanking about in footer bags! Did you ever in your puff see such a perfect perisher?’”

While the writings of Pelham Grenville Wodehouse embody the manners, the thoughts and the language of a Britain now gone, the sheer British-ness of the man himself got him into trouble. He initially did not escape his home in France when the Nazis invaded Paris in 1940, and was later captured after making an attempt. The following year, interred in Berlin, Wodehouse was made to broadcast five radio talks, directed to the United States and Britain, titled “How to be an Internee Without Previous Training.” In these talks, he confirmed, “I never was interested in politics. I'm quite unable to work up any kind of belligerent feeling.”

In the absence of knowledge about the circumstances that produced these talks, Wodehouse was decried in Britain. After the liberation of France in 1944, he returned to New York, where he also mainly lived before the Second World War began - his pre-war picture of Britain, as presented in his writing, was preserved. The broadcaster Malcolm Muggeridge, who was a MI6 intelligence officer when he encountered Wodehouse after the liberation, later said he was “a man singularly ill-fitted to live in a time of ideological conflict, having no feelings of hatred about anyone, and no very strong views about anything. ... I never heard him speak bitterly about anyone—not even about old friends who turned against him in distress. Such temperament does not make for good citizenship in the second half of the Twentieth Century.”

Where does that leave me? When modern-day fascists – “alt-right” really is just a branding exercise - feel emboldened by the actions of leaders, you have no choice but to speak out against it but, as usual for social media, you could be denounced for trying to censor someone to promote your own views. Plurality of opinion is ideal, but threatening the safety of others, in order to promote your own agenda, is simply stupid.

People can believe whatever they want, but if you do want to cut your nose off to spite your face, don’t be surprised if people happy with their own noses decide to offer you a scalpel – and if you think this will work instead, trying to sound reasonable will not work either, especially if the words are not there.

THE AIR ATTACK WARNING SOUNDS LIKE [48]

[Cover for "Protect and Survive" - 2016 reissue by Imperial War Museum]

I count myself lucky that, while remaining vigilant, I live in a place and time that is relatively free of danger. However, seeing the muted colours, strikes and flared trousers in old videos or pictures of the late 1970s, you forget that the average middle-aged couple of the time would have grown up during the Second World War, then live through the ongoing Cold War between the USSR and the West, under the very small, but still possible, threat of a nuclear attack.

You would hope there was plan in place if, or when, something happened - there was, but it had not been published. Previous examples of “civil defence” leaflets date back to 1938, when people needed advice on protecting their homes against air raids, but apart from some public information films in the early 1960s, nothing more was heard. Eventually, word got out that the Home Office had a booklet, already sent to official bodies, titled “Protect and Survive,” to be issued to homes if an immediate threat of attack appeared. Public interest led the Government to publish it for the general public in May 1980, costing 50 pence.

Reading in 2017, the booklet itself is hilarious, coming across as a way to help people busy themselves, distracting them from almost certain death. There are tips on where to locate your fallout shelter, how to build it, what provisions to keep there, and the siren warnings to listen out for. It is the grim side of the Blitz spirit on which we pride ourselves, but carrying on through anything and everything is the game the book requires you to play. I wish I knew how many people bought it on its original release, and what they made of the illustrations: drawing instructions makes them more functional, but I imagine photographs of real people readying themselves may make a hypothetical situation much too real.

Discredited on arrival by anti-nuclear campaigns, “Protect and Survive” was criticised for making nuclear war look like something that could be survived, leading to a second booklet, “Civil Defence: Why We Need It” (1981), explaining why a plan was even needed, likening the keeping safe of the country to wearing your seatbelt in your car.

Images from “Protect and Survive,” and the accompanying set of public information films, also originally meant to be classified, were co-opted in the cultural fight against nuclear arms, including “Threads,” the bleak TV drama depicting a Britain post-attack. Most effectively, the authoritarian voice of Patrick Allen, as used in the information films, was peppered through Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s song “Two Tribes,” with Allen re-reading the original words to ironic effect.

To me, this still feels like history, only just overlapping with my own lifetime, with debates over the UK’s nuclear deterrent submarines a small reminder of the Pandora’s Box that even the idea of nuclear weapons has proved to be. However, the United States Department of Homeland Security’s website, www.ready.gov, still advises that, despite the diminished thread since the end of the Cold War: “the possibility remains that a terrorist could obtain access to a nuclear weapon. Called improvised nuclear devices (IND), these are generally smaller, less powerful weapons than we traditionally envision.” Oh great, thanks for that.

AND WE’LL KEEP ON FIGHTING ‘TIL THE END [27]

Well, my original intention to write about newspapers was to excoriate how they assume their way of reflecting the United Kingdom fits the national character, how they second-guess the thoughts and reactions of their audience, before prescribing what they should think, and how they berate those who do not have the same ways they do, calling them “champagne socialists,” “the establishment,” or “Bremoaners” (the last one is particularly annoying, as if only a few people voted to stay in the European Union).

However, that is what most people think about newspapers, including many who still buy them – thankfully, they have other features and pull-out sections about less contentious stuff, particularly at the weekend, when we have more time to read them. The bigger question that came out of my preparation for this display of putting one word in front of the other, having not bought my usual Saturday copy of “The Times” recently, is: “does anyone still buy newspapers?”

It is a bit of an obvious question, as the answer, for now, is still “yes.” “The Sun” still sells nearly 1.7 million copies a day, and the “Daily Mail” is just behind that. However, only ten years ago, they each sold nearly a million more than that. The “Daily Express” once claimed the biggest circulation in the world, at over five million copies, except that was in the 1930s – now, they can’t even scrape 400,000 but, unlike “The Sun,” “Mail” and most other papers, they don’t give copies away, competing the million-plus copies of the “Metro” sent out every morning.

Sales of newspapers essentially started to decline with the start of radio, its potential seen immediately as a threat. The General Strike of 1926 hobbled the print industry, even reducing “The Times” down to two sides of an A4 sheet, but radio, with a number of bulletins per day, still got the news out to people, and in a much more efficient way. Once the strike was over, the British Broadcasting Company received a Royal Charter to become a corporation, but newspaper companies managed to have bulletins restricted to evenings only, using only news supplied by them – the outbreak of the Second World War to put an end to that.

So, what of newspapers now? Shorn of the ability to break stories first, they can only rely on influence, either through investigations being reported on by wider media, such as the “Guardian” series on phone hacking, or through its journalists being called upon to speak on TV and radio news. Meanwhile, the preponderance of opinionated columnists, like Katie Hopkins, and the inevitable Twitter backlashes they inspire, is the nearest we get to experiencing that particularly American type of talk radio that never arose in the UK, because we still had newspapers for that point of view.

As much as the “Guardian” website implores me to help pay for its content, it has given it away for seventeen years now, and when advertising on a website that attracts nine million regular visitors can’t pay for the level of quality it has to maintain its brand, and the only other option is paying TWO QUID for the paper version, there may come a point where the concept of a “newspaper” may end. It all depends if you can convince people to pay for it online, which “The Times” had, although “The Sun” scrapped its paywall after lack of interest. Thankfully, I don’t need to work out the answer but, if enough people are reading online, they could save the money spent printing ink onto woodpulp.