“History doesn’t repeat itself; but it often rhymes.” This take on Marx’s famous dictum, in 18 Brumaire, that history repeats itself - the first time as a tragedy, the second time as a farce - is widely attributed to Mark Twain, although it was in fact coined by the psychoanalyst Theodor Reik. Both the Marx and Reik quotes occurred to me yesterday, appropriately May Day.

I was listening to Mike Duncan’s Revolutions podcast. After nine of them, including the English, the American, the French, the Haitian, the July, the 1848, the Commune, and the Mexican revolutions, Mike finally arrived at the Russian Revolution back in May 2019 and is still going strong.

I am always a few episodes behind, so I was listening to #10.94 which was concerned, inter alia, with the 10th Party Congress in 1921 and, in particular, the response of Lenin and Trotsky to the criticism by the Workers’ Opposition and the Democratic Centralists of the Communist Party leadership.

Their response was to accuse the critical organisations of factionalism. Apologies to you Trots out there, but Trotsky was the strongest and most vicious in his condemnation of the WO demands: How could the party which was “the political manifestation of the industrial proletariat” betray the industrial proletariat? To claim this, was to deny both the vanguard role of the party and, thus, the revolution itself.

Of course, in its criticism of the top-down hegemony of party bureaucrats, it was doing no such thing. But Lenin (and Trotsky) were more concerned by the fact that the opposition was organised. The party had already taken over the unions, on the basis that the workers needed no protection from an employer which was their own state. Now, by banning factions, it was extending this theoretical concept to anyone with concerns or criticisms of the party. Especially if they expressed them in meetings or published them in newspapers and periodicals.

But ban them they did. No manifestations of factionalism of any sort would be tolerated, and failure to comply with this resolution “is to entail unconditional and immediate expulsion from the party”. And the power to define factionalism and expel members?

The Central Committee.

This resolution, On Party Unity, is crucial to the future of the party and the country. Because one man, Stalin, saw the opportunity to dictate what was right, what was wrong, who was in and who was out. And if you didn’t like it, you were guilty of factionalism and expelled.

I’m writing this on May Day, less than a month since a Jewish comrade and friend in my constituency was expelled from the Labour Party for anti-semitism.

I’m cautious about drawing precise parallels. But are you concerned about the denial of free speech within the party and the diktats of Starmer and Evans? Do the recent and continuing purges in the Labour Party, aimed primarily at left-wing Jews and socialists, ring a bell?

If it does, then the bell tolls for thee.

Today from the everysmith vaults: The John Adams Violin Concerto. A recent discovery which is haunting me day and night. The recording I have is by Leila Josefowicz and the St Louis Symphony Orchestra conducted by David Robertson. I’ll be checking out others in the weeks to come.

“Congratulations Boris. You have managed to smuggle TWO truths past the team.” The parallels between David Mitchell’s The Unbelievable Truth on Radio 4 and PMQs become clearer with each week that passes.

If you are not familiar with the programme, the idea is that contestants deliver a short essay on a given topic, the majority of which will be false but which will include random truths to be identified.

So, for example, the topic might be the Patel policy of exporting asylum seekers to Rwanda for ‘processing’. It’s a policy which has drawn criticism from labour, Lib Dems, SNP and the Church of England.

None of these organisations, however, has pointed out that Johnson was right, at least in this: that the originator of this policy was not Patel but David Blanket, the Labour Home Secretary under Tony Blair. Blanket described this policy, at the turn of the millennium, as “a 21st century innovation” to solve the “problem” of immigration.

(Johnson went on to describe Starmer as a “Corbynista in a smart Islington suit”. This may not be true now, but it was certainly true when Starmer stood for the Labour leadership. He stood on a programme which adopted the 2019 manifesto but which promised that, with his haircut and tailoring, he was more electable.)

The issue here is Labour’s complicity in the creation of an anti-immigration stance, the “hostile environment” which has empowered Patel and Johnson to put this vile and immoral strategy into practice.

I raise it not merely because I am ashamed and embarrassed by the current Labour party. I raise it because I am ashamed and embarrassed by the state of our politics in general. The government is a shambles of corruption. The opposition is fighting its own activists with more resources and vitriol than it does the government.

Which leaves us where, exactly?

We are nowhere. Nothing shall come of nothing. We are under the hegemony of a political elite which includes both “major” parties, plus the press, plus the broadcasters, plus the church, plus the global oligarchs and financial markets.

I shall work for my local MP - an honourable exception to the above - at the next election. And I will almost certainly continue to howl against the dying of the light in this blog.

But I warn you: It’s not dark yet. But it’s getting there.

Today from the everysmith vaults: Shostakovich of course - the magnificent 10th symphony performed by Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic.

"When we genuinely speak we do not have the words ready to do our bidding, we have to find them. And we do not know exactly what we are going to say until we have said it, and we say and hear something new that has never been said or heard before." 

​This counterpoint to Wittgenstein's famous 7th proposition in TLP is from Auden's Secondary Worlds published in 1968. I wish I had read it then.

In recent years, I have used this blog and these posts to work out positions and identify issues. Not exclusively, but primarily. Seldom do I have a preconceived argument to advance in advance, and my faux-Oulipian approach (500-ish words and no more than an hour at the keyboard) is intended to sharpen my focus.

It also serves to establish priorities. In the last few weeks, there has been and remains much to consider. Ukraine, of course, but also Syria and Afghanistan; the expulsion of a friend and comrade from the Labour Party for anti-semitism (yes, of course he's Jewish); the awesome shows from Dylan on the Spring leg of the Rough & Rowdy Ways tour; the imminence of a new baseball season (we play the Yankees in the Bronx tomorrow); the selling-off of Channel 4; the fact that Covid has preventing me seeing many of my grandchildren for months; the culling of a beautiful tree in a nearby garden.

​You will note that, even half way through this post, I still do not have the words ready to do my bidding. In fact, I have not yet even an inkling of what my bidding should be. So some random thoughts on a recent discovery.

I have stumbled on a series of books by Timothy Venning, entitled An Alternative History of Britain. I started with the English Civil War.

Venning concerns himself with the ‘what-ifs’ of history. In the volume I have read, the chapter headings give the game away. His Edgehill chapter, for example, is entitled Could the war have been won quickly by the King?  The year 1644 is headed Was the war winnable in 1644 - by the King, or by parliament without resorting to the creation of the New Model Army?

Not snappily worded, I agree. But good questions. And inside these larger questions are small details of what might have happened has something happened or not happened.

A new one for me is the fact that Parliamentary cavalry commander Stapleton had a clear shot, at close quarters, at the charismatic Prince Rupert during the first battle of Newbury. His pistol misfired.

Would Rupert's death have destroyed morale in the Royalist cause? Would the King have given in? Or would he continued his stubborn approach? Would he, perhaps, have refused to engage at Marston Moor?

​Venning describes it as “the most vital what if of the battle”. Of such mishaps is history made.

Today from the everysmith vaults: Not actually in the vaults but it will be. It is PJ Proby reading from Eliot’s The Waste Land and its bloody brilliant. The recommendation comes from the poet Roy Kelly (@stanfan49) who writes: “Summer and PJ surprised us.” Thanks, Roy.

Ts and Cs apply. For more than two years, I have observed the Covid regulations to the letter. For months, I didn’t see my elderly mother. For years, I have not entered a shop or store un-masked. I am triple vaccinated. I have tested each time we were likely to enter a social situation, as we were this last weekend. And then this happened: a positive test and the prospect and reality of isolation. Time for some positive thinking.

How long this period will last will depend on subsequent tests. I am assuming a week. Which is long enough to put into practice many of the aspirations and resolutions made at the start of the year; as well as indulge in reading and news-junkie-ism.

It is the latter which is taking precedence. Ukraine. And more particularly, the paucity of the response from Johnson and Patel. Not to mention the sudden mainstream coverage of Johnson’s involvement with Russian dirty money.

Johnson and his cronies have embraced not so much the Russian oligarchs themselves as the Russian oligarch’s money. He is not the only politician with this obsession (cf Blair, Mandelson, et al) but his regime appears to have institutionalised it.

Such observations have been made frequently before in organs such as Private Eye and Novaramedia but now they are commonplace. I cannot turn on my mainstream radio without hearing the conversations between those who had previously denied or ignored such connections.

It is now accepted that Abramovitch and Lebedev are merely the tip of the iceberg. Corruption and fraud are now endemic.

Thinking positively, this is a Good Thing. But in reality it is chitchat from the political elite.

Thinking positively, we have some control over - they are, after all, our elected rulers. In reality, all we can hope for is an inquiry and a report.

Speaking of reports, despite wall to wall news broadcasts, I have not heard mentioned the names of Sue Grey and Martin Forde, putative authors of reports into Tory parties and Labour shenanigans respectively.

Sue Grey has been superseded by the Metropolitan Police; Martin Forde by Information Commissioner’s Office.

In other words, we shall never discover the full extent of the institutional self-serving corruption at the heart of government and opposition alike.

It’s difficult to be positive right now. But baseball is back. And so (see below) is Bob.


Today from the everysmith vaults: the return of Bob to the live stage, notably the concerts in Phoenix and Albuquerque, and in particular, his performances of Crossing the Rubicon. “I lit the torch, I looked to the east/And I crossed the Rubicon.”

I don’t think I told you, but we moved house last year. We exchanged an elegant garden apartment in a Regency square in Leamington for a Victorian terrace in Warwick. But it’s not just any Victorian terrace. This one has history.

Our new home was once part of the Warwick County Mental Asylum - that’s what psychiatric hospitals were called in those days - and was built in the Gothic style on a grand scale.

It was opened in 1852 and rapidly expanded, gradually acquiring neighbouring farms, and developed into what amounted to a self-contained village with a blacksmith, a chapel, cricket and football grounds, an orchestra, hairdresser and beautician, water from its own spring. It extended over nearly 500 acres and was pretty much self-sufficient, with patients growing and cooking their own food, putting on plays and hosting an annual fête.

If all this seems very different from our ideas of Victorian asylums, that is because it was very different.

The activities and the grounds in which they took place were part of the treatment regime. Occupational therapy we would call it now. But although the treatments were ahead of their time in some respects, they were also of their time. For example, Electro-Convulsive Therapy was used; so was LSD.

Nevertheless, under the direction of John Connolly and William Parsey, pioneers in the humane treatment of mental illness, Central Hospital (as it was renamed) became, relatively speaking, a centre of innovation and excellence, visited by specialists from all over the world.

In 1995, Central Hospital closed with patients transferred to a modern, purpose built facility in Warwick itself. And then the developers moved in.

But as you can see, they did a pretty good job. Yes, there are many new houses built, but much of the landscaped grounds was retained and the original building sympathetically converted into homes.

One of which is now ours. Location, location, location - and the rest is history.


Today from the everysmith vaults: I’m listening to Close by James Knight. It’s a song cycle and it’s about as personal and heart-rending as any piece of music as I know. Including Four Last Songs and the Last Quartets.

“Nothing happens. Nobody comes, nobody goes. It's awful.” Like everyone, I am waiting. Waiting for Putin to invade the Ukraine. Waiting for the MLB lockdown to end. Waiting for the Forde Report. Waiting for the reinstatement of Corbyn. Waiting for the publication of Sue Gray’s enquiry. And waiting for the resignation of the Prime Minister.

These are merely a few of the various sources of angst which I am currently experiencing. And they are all issues over which I have no influence.

But the waiting does give us an opportunity to muse on the essence of those issues, to consider precisely why we feel so helpless: why we are denied the opportunity to act. We can think. We can feel. But what we think and feel is impotence, an inability to influence events, a lack of engagement with the processes that affect our lives.

We are not even in control of our ourselves. As Sartre says, we are ‘trapped in existence’.

Trapped in existence, Jill and I lead a moderately comfortable life: children, grandchildren, good friends, a nice house. All that good stuff.

But that does not eliminate anxiety. It merely mitigates. And I am waiting still for the freedom that Sartre promised would be the outcome of that anxiety.

True, it is about choice and the inability or unwillingness to make choices (which is, of course, in itself, a kind of choice). 

Unfortunately, choices - meaningful choices - are usually false or fraudulent. They are hostages to fortune. And those who make those choices are making the wrong ones.

Which makes me even more anxious. And even more angry.

Sorry about all this. You’ve caught me on a bad day.

Today from the everysmith vaults:​ In keeping with my mood, Shostakovich Symphony #15. Kirill Kondrashin and the Moscow Philharmonic.

We all know that, in the political world, enquiries are not launched to discover the truth; rather, the intention is to kick the can of worms down the street. Hence, for example, the lack of surprise - even lack of interest - at the recent ‘findings’ of Lord Geidt after two separate investigations. And hence the quite extraordinary delay in the completion and publication of the Forde Report into Labour shenanigans, the deadline for which passed over two years ago now.

So what can we expect from the investigation currently being undertaken by Sue Gray, a civil servant and employee of Johnson, into Johnson and his serial partying during lockdown?

Frankly, very little. For two reasons.

Firstly because the investigation was commissioned and launched in order to allow Johnson to prevaricate in parliament. We must wait for the findings he proclaims whenever a pertinent question is asked.

This is of course standard practice for all politicians and one factor in the lack of trust which would appear to be shared by the majority of the electorate.

But it is the second reason which is fundamental to our expectations, and it is essentially about marking their own homework.

Sue Gray is not independent. She is a career civil servant. She has no power to sanction anyone. Her role is tightly defined and it is to lay out the facts.

This should not take long. After all, the facts are already in the public domain and have not been denied. Indeed, Johnson has already confirmed that he attended the party on 20 May 2020. (He also spluttered that he thought it was a ‘works do’, which tells you something about his definition of work but ignorance of the law is no defence.)

No schedule has been established for this inquiry. It will take as long as it takes. And if it does its job, Johnson will not be in a hurry to draw a line under the whole sorry episode. Or episodes.

She will not be helped by the fact that staffers at No 10 have been instructed to clean up their phones (an activity with which Ms Gray is frighteningly familiar), and you can bet that Johnson’s diary will be packed with excuses for being unavailable for interview.

This shouldn’t matter. Ms Gray works in No. 10. She knows what’s going on. She is a member of the elite, part and parcel of the cabal. And the more I hear Tory MPs telling us that she is the best person for the job, the more I distrust both her and the process.

But let’s assume that her laying out out of the facts is accurate, timely and damning. Then what?

Ask Priti Patel. The person who will have to act on the findings will be Boris Johnson. And as with Patel’s bullying, he will decide to move on.

Nothing to see here. No action taken.

Today from the everysmith vaults: The death of Bernard Haitink is very sad news indeed. As he said, he suggested rather than instructed. Delving into the vault I am amazed at how many of my favourite recordings were performed under his baton. Today, it is A Sea Symphony by Vaughan Williams, with The London Philharmonic and the wondrous Felicity Lott.

PS Just as I was about to press the post button, news of yet another party at Downing Street emerges. I worked in advertising agencies in the '70s, where and when to say that a drinking culture prevailed would be an understatement. But we never had this many parties.

If anyone mentions 9/11 to me, the television images flood back. The tanks in the streets, the thousands confined in football stadiums, the bombing of the Presidential palace, the torture and murders, the burning of books, the death of Allende.

No, this 9/11 is not the attack on the twin towers. This 9/11 was in 1973 in Chile when Pinochet and the CIA launched a coup d’etat against the democratically elected presidency of Salvador Allende and for nearly twenty years imposed a vicious programme of neoliberalism.

Essentially, the Pinochet regime turned Chile into a laboratory for experimenting with the ideas of Friedrich Hayek. Hayek was primarily an economist, but his economic liberalism forced him into political philosophy. As thousands of trade unionists and leftists were tortured and murdered, Hayek was writing to The Times to defend the coup.

“I have not been able to find a single person even in much maligned Chile who did not agree that personal freedom was much greater under Pinochet that it had been under Allende” he wrote.

He should have got out more. But his small circle was convinced that democracy was an irrelevance. The free market, he wrote, is ‘indispensable for individual freedom … the ballot box is not.’ Small though the circle was and is, this conviction was and is powerful and influential.

Hayek and Pinochet were, of course, both friends of Thatcher, who carried a Hayek manual in her famous handbag. Hayek wrote to her complaining of the slow progress of neoliberalism in the UK, comparing it with the ‘achievements’ in a short space of time in Chile.

We are nearly half a century on and neoliberalism is still hegemonic, although the term itself is not. Its adherents are in denial. Although I have never heard Sunak use the term in public, he is on record as stating that he emphatically favours Hayek over Keynes. And of there is the odious Nick Cohen in a column published in The Observer on the Sunday before the second round of polling in Chile, claiming that not Blair, not Cameron, not even Thatcher herself, were neoliberals.

In his victory speech, Gabriel Boric told us that ‘If Chile was the cradle of neoliberalism, it will also be its grave’.

I profoundly hope so. For Chile, Latin America, and the rest of the world.

Today from the everysmith vaults: I have been revisiting the Airplane and subsequently the Starship. I think the prompt was a proposed live performance of Blows Against the Empire, which is where I started this morning. The mono version of Surrealistic Pillow followed, then Crown of Creation, and right now the final Airplane show at Winterland in August 1972. Love anything with Papa john Creach.

I have yet to meet anyone who lives within the borders of Warwick District Council and also supports the proposed merger with Stratford in order to create a super-authority across South Warwickshire. I assume such people do exist, because WDC has, this week, voted in favour and our future is now in the hands of Head Leveller-Up, Michael Gove, who will doubtless make his decision on the basis of political expediency.

It is a bizarre but not unprecedented issue. The “majority” for the proposal consists of Deloittes and the Conservative councillors on the Warwick and Stratford District Councils.

But the recent consultation demonstrated that there is a real majority against.

Residents are clearly against. Our MP is against. The Labour membership is against. The Greens are against. Parish councils, including mine, are against. Even four Tories are against. And of course I am against.

I scanned the record to see how my Labour councillors voted. Were they for or against?

Neither.

They abstained.

Given the opposition to the proposal throughout the constituency and, in particular, the call by Matt Western for a local referendum, you might think that this was a strange decision. How can the Labour Party not have an opinion on a proposal which will diminish local democracy significantly?

True, it would not have changed the decision, but it does demonstrate to voters where the Labour party stands. Or rather, sits. Which of course is firmly and uncomfortably on the fence.

I have read the rationale from the Labour leader on the WDC. Announcing that he has been led “to a position of abstention”, he stated that:

“I and my group … will want to take part in discussions about the devolution of powers, assets and decisions to towns and parishes. And above all, we will want to ensure that residents’ and other stakeholders’ voices are heard and heeded whether we continue to explore the merger proposed, service integration and transformation, or some other form of political geography.”

Well, yes. But by abstaining in this crucial vote, Labour has snubbed its MP, reneged on its responsibility, and handed the leadership of the opposition to the Greens.

Having sat on our hands during a key democratic vote, I suspect it may be difficult to regain a role “at the centre of the debates about protecting residents”.
​

Today from the everysmith vaults: Ignoring the call of Bob’s Christmas In The Heart, and indeed almost anything that hints of Christmas, I am listening to Shostakovich, the Jazz Suites. Thanks to Georgia Mann of Radio 3’s Essential Classics for reminding me of them.

I had my data stolen a month ago. I had not given any information to the company from which it was stolen, a so-called ‘third party’, and I don’t even know who the third party is. Nor do I know the extent of the theft, except that it is ‘significant’ and serious enough to involve the National Crime Agency (NCA), National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) and the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). Which sounds pretty serious to me.

If you are one of the (hundreds of) thousands who received the email from the Labour Party about this ‘incident’, and asked to keep it ‘confidential’, you are not necessarily a member of the Labour Party. You could have resigned, been suspended or expelled. Or - and this is very concerning - you could never have been a member of the party at all.

The fact is your data was stolen because the Labour Party was holding it; not only holding it but also sharing it with ‘third parties’. (I use the plural here because the email referred not to the the third party but a third party, from which I infer that there are more than one.)

It would appear that Labour is in clear breach of the Data Protection Act 2018 and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a breach which could justify compensation.

The issue, and this is why the chances of us ever hearing the full story are minimal, is not the breach itself but Labour’s privacy policies. Actually, not the policies but a succession of actions which do not accord with the policy statement. The ICO has already found against Labour innumerable times for its actions or lack of them, notably for its failures to respond to SARs requests. (SARs are Subject Access Requests which, under GDPR Article 15, makes it compulsory for an organisation to reveal the data it holds on an individual.)

It is, I regret to conclude, yet another example of the contempt with which David Evans et al treat the membership at large. We know that the database is used primarily to troll and monitor the activities of members. We even have an ex-Israeli intelligence agent in charge of this.

The email promised to update us. Don’t hold your breath. Like the Forde Report, the issues have been kicked into touch because,  I suspect, behind the hacking ‘incident’ is a plethora of illegalities and witch-hunting which, I am afraid, is the modus operandi of the current secretariat.

Today from the everysmith vaults: As Bob moves from town to town on the current leg of the never ending tour, I am grateful for the recordings that our American bobcats and Dylanologists are sharing with the rest of us, especially the remastered shows from Bennyboy. I'm currently loving Bloomington.