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Leamington Letters #138: History to the Defeated

17/12/2017

9 Comments

 
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It is a truism that “history is written by the victors”, but it’s not true.
 
There is, however, just enough truth in Churchill’s dictum to make it widely accepted by non-historians at least. It is plausible to assume that the weight of the state can manipulate a narrative to create a “useable past” which reinforces a status quo and provides an intellectual integrity to the setting of specific objectives and the means used to achieve them.
 
Plausible but wrong.
 
I am not an academic, and certainly no historian. I didn’t ‘read’ history at university. But all my life I have read history voraciously and I have been attracted, primarily, to the “lost cause”: those movements, philosophies, revolutions and revolts which coruscated briefly before, ultimately and often quickly, failing.
 
I guess I am hard-wired for opposition.
 
The road not taken is, for me, more interesting than the motorway along which we all race today. Not least because “History to the defeated/may say Alas but cannot help or pardon”.
 
And it is significant that Auden, who wrote those lines in 1937 in his poem Spain later renounced his communism and the poem itself. The volunteer ambulance driver on the Republican side took only a few steps along that road before taking the slip-road to the mainstream motorway. He fought in Spain, but when the real war against Nazi Germany, for which Spain was a rehearsal, broke out in 1939, he decamped to the United States.
 
He called the transAtlantic move “a new way of happening”. Others called it betrayal. “But today the struggle” he claimed. Yeh, right.
 
Nevertheless, it is that final stanza of Spain which has given me my title and theme for my 2018 project. And I’m putting this resolution out there to ensure that I remain committed.
 
It will be a book. And a podcast. And a website. It will discuss the failures of the Levellers, the Weather Underground and the Red Army Faction (the Baader-Meinhof gang). To balance the political scales, it will address movements such as the British Union of Fascists (Mosley’s lot) during the ‘30s and perhaps Prohibition -  I am open to suggestions.
 
Not Dark Yet, my musings on baseball and Bob and books, will continue in its parallel world here at www.everysmith.com. But my priority will be this history of historical failure.

​It will be entitled History to the Defeated and www.historytothedefeated.net has been duly registered. I am hoping – ambitiously, you may think, as I do – to research, write and record one topic per month throughout 2018.
 
But, by the end of next year, I at least will be able to say, with Maurice Merleau-Ponty, that “nous avons appris l’Histoire et nous pretendons qu’il ne faut pas l’oublier”.
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: I have always preferred the acoustic work of Hot Tuna to their electric stuff. So I am delighted to acquire two acoustic shows recently, and the one I am listening to right now is from the Mystic Theatre in Petaluma CA back in 2000. “If you don’t know Jorma, you don’t know Jack!”
9 Comments
Steve
17/12/2017 11:42:07

A worthy project. Hope you stick with it. Classic example of history not being written exclusively by the victors is the Confederacy. So much of movies, music is at least implicitly pro-Confederacy. Too big a subject? Look forward to checking out the new website in 6 weeks or so.

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Allan
17/12/2017 14:08:13

One could, I suppose, extend Enoch Powell's belief that 'all political lives end in failure' into political movements. Sooner or later, everything comes to an end, even the Roman and British empires, maybe even the great religions. And if one adopts dialectical materialism, which you have been known to do, you might also believe that failure is intrinsic to any and everything. From those you have noted as contenders for your attention, I'm thinking you are going for idealists, however qualified by political ideology. I will look forward to your first ... what, essay?

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Joe
18/12/2017 12:34:06

Good point. At what stage does one count something as a failure? And on what grounds? The Sovet Union for example. It failed but worked for nearly 100 years. And the Roman Empire? Suspect defining one’s terms will be the starting point.

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Ellie
17/12/2017 14:12:25

Just go for it. And if you fail, I'll blog about it!

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DuncanF
17/12/2017 18:10:22

Actually quite enjoy the eclectic subject matter of the current blog. Never know what to expect, or even if there will be anything at all.

But intrigued by this new project. I assume you will be setting aside your 500 word, half hour limit on the writing because your proposed themes deserve books in their own right - indeed, have already each been the subject of substantial tomes.

I assume you are going for a populist approach, in which case may I recommend Mike Duncan and Dan Carlin as your exemplars.

Will certainly subscribe to HTTD, but please do not neglect your almost weekly stuff on gigs, books, sport etc. They have cheered me up for five years or more!

Best, Duncan

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Jack
18/12/2017 10:30:06

Good luck with this. Agree that Mike Duncan's Revolutions should be your model.

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Jack
18/12/2017 12:24:53

PS Also, how about May 68, hippiedom, Chartists, gunpowder plot, apartheid? I will keep them coming.

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Joe
19/12/2017 07:50:26

Isn't the point that they must be defeated, as opposed to merely running out of steam? Or being relevant only for a specific period of time?

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Max
19/12/2017 10:32:32

A tweet from the excellent Tom London this morning: "George Orwell knew that whoever controls the past controls the future; and whoever controls the present, controls the past."

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    Max Smith

    European writer, radical, restaurateur and Red Sox fan. 70-something husband, father, step-father, grandfather and son. Resident in Warwick, England.

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