The BBC’s Director General and George Orwell

THE OUTGOING DIRECTOR GENERAL (DG) of the BBC, Mark Thompson has been approached by Joan Bakewell to get  George Orwell’s statue built  from public subscription; and no lesser BBC luminaries  than Andrew Marr, James Naughtie, and Liz Forgan, lent their support.

            Ms Bakewell’s approach was however turned down by the DG, which is fair enough. But Thompson’s reason for doing so is bizarre in the extreme. Apparently Orwell was too Left-wing to be considered for a plinth at the BBC.

            When I read Ms Bakewell’s piece in today’s Daily Telegraph, I at first thought she must have got it wrong, and Thompson would step forward with the usual get out on such occasion of  having had his comments “taken out of context”; for what other reason could there be for such a display of ignorance on behave of a well educated and obviously intelligent  man who, no doubt, had read Orwell’s volumes of essays and journalism, as well as his novels.

            That Orwell was of the left, there is of course little doubt. But for someone to consider him too left-wing, needs to explain themselves further; and I hope Mark Thompson will do so.

            George Orwell could never be pinned down. In Spain he fought with the Trotskyist POUM and in his book Homage to Catalonia, he clearly loathed and distrusted the Communists who were in thrall to Moscow and Stalin, and carried as great a loathing for the POUM as they did Franco.

            During the war years he broadcast for the BBC (who never thought him too left-wing then). Orwell was the willing tool of anti-fascist propaganda. He broadcast from  the now infamous Room 101 at the BBC, and some have suggested that his greatest novel 1984 was not only based on Stalin’s Russia, but also on the culture at the BBC at the time.

            The creator of 1984 and Animal Farm was I believe a socialist patriot. He loved his country, and would today have been considered a nationalist, in the modern sense of the word. He would not, I believe, have supported those who wish to see his nation absorbed into a United States of Europe.   Neither would he have been a believer in Multiculturalism. In India, like Enoch Powell, he experienced the phenomenon which Powell called communalism; that was to lead to hundreds of thousands of deaths, and ultimately the creation of Pakistan.

            He would have believed in a multiracial society where different races could become British, but he would not tolerate sacrificing British culture on the altar of diversity – of putting British culture on an equal footing with the many dozens of other cultures. He would have insisted that Great Britain and its culture remain supreme over others, and if those others wished to become citizens, their cultures would have to obey British laws and customs, or return to the culture from which they came -does this sound like being too left-wing?

IF ANYTHING, today George Orwell would consider himself  somewhat to the right of David Cameron and just, but only just, to the left of UKIP.  But as I wrote earlier, Orwell could not be pinned down; which allowed many parts of the political compass to claim him as their own .

            When I read Orwell back in the 1970s, I did so warily as a supporter and member of the British Communist Party (BCP). The BCP at the time never thought him too left-wing, and neither did the branch I belonged to.

            One day, I took myself off to London. I went to Collets book shop in the Tottenham Court Road and I bought the whole Penguin paperback edition of Orwell’s essays and journalism, which I have still, sitting on my book shelves – his novels I picked up locally.

            If anyone deserved the notoriety of being too left-wing , it was surely myself at the time. First of all I refused to read Homage to Catalonia, as I had also done with Hugh Thomas’s definitive study, The Spanish Civil War, both of which bared heavily down on Communist Party orthodoxy .

            Of his novels I brought myself to trust at the time were Burmese Days and Keep the Aspidistra Flying. 1984 and Animal Farm were to come much later, when my own doubts began to overwhelm and supplant Moscow’s overtures.

            Orwell was indeed the greatest journalist of his time. He also wrote the greatest dystopian novel of his time, which has transcended his time to become a warning beacon in our time. 1984 was indeed an anti-Stalinist novel, but his time at the BBC gave him much of the material for composing  it.

SO MANY ON THE left have claimed Orwell as their own, including the Labour Party, who at times have used a quote or two to make a point.

            I believe that George Orwell would today be considered a nationalist  with a social conscience. But if he saw what had happened to his country in the years since his death, I think he would, for a start, having believed in the original Welfare State, would today have come to the conclusion that the 21^st century welfare state had become a hindrance. Instead of a safety net, the welfare state had become a whole supermarket of different entitlements.

            If anyone on the left today can claim (risibly) Orwell as their own, then they need to once more return to a study of the great man’s works and put them in a modern context. Like, I hope Orwell would; I believe that the great master of the revolutionary process, Karl Marx, would also transcend and eliminate his whole philosophy if he could return to witness the capitalism of the 21^st century;  instead of depending upon the 19^th century and before, as his philosophical model.

            George Orwell has lightened the load of many a modern journalist by proffering them an independent spirit that cannot be imprisoned by the corporate institution that pay their wages. It is up to them whether they agree the great man’s terms, or continue to cow-tow to their employers and continue to draw the manifold funds awarded to them by whatever news network they scribble for.

            Orwell should have had a statue in his honour decades ago (I would have thought that the NUJ would have seen to this), and, as the BBC refuses to have such a statue on their property; may suggest upon its completion it sits somewhere in London that overlooks our modern journalists as go into and from work, to remind them that there were once standards within their profession.

           

           

            

1984

GEORGE ORWELL SAW himself as a man of the Left - as those on the Left  still see him. He was part of the of the International Brigade that fought in the Spanish civil war against Franco’s fascists. In his book Homage to Catalonia however, he targeted and chastised his own side with as much rage as he felt for the fascists. The Left as always, were split into ideological groups; anarchist, socialists, and communists…the latter being sub divided into Stalinist and Trotskyite. The Stalinists took their orders from Moscow and loathed the Trotskyites as much, or even more so than the fascists; and under orders from Stalin would not hesitate to kill what they would have regarded as counter revolutionaries.

                Orwell fought with the POUM; the Trotskyite faction against Franco. One would have thought that the dystopian vision of 1984 would have been a vision of fascist domination. But Orwell perceived that the greatest threat would come from the Left. He understood how the Left thought and behaved; he not only had practical experience of its behaviour in Spain, but also the  Big Brother template that was the Soviet Union.

                Such a world vision, he believed, would come from the Left side of the political spectrum. Orwell was an English patriot who understood his country and its people better than anyone at the time. When war broke out he worked tirelessly on behalf of his country to defeat Hitler. His work for the BBC during the war (having been wounded in Spain) was patriotic propaganda; which many journalist’s today would be repulsed by. He believed in his country, if not its colonialism.

                Today Orwell would sit comfortably on the Right. He would see the idea of a European super state evolving over time, into the very entity described in 1984.

YET THIS IS WHAT IS ABOUT TO happen in Europe, and our (that is British) politicians are being panicked into seeing it come to fruition.

                Over the past few weeks we have seen two democratically elected leaders of two of Europe’s nations overthrown and replaced by what are being referred to as technocrats. On top of which both Italy and Greece have been told they must form a national government. Were these leaders replaced by the people democratically? Was it the people of these nations who demanded such a national government?

                No, they were the victims of a coup. The coup was led by Germany and France, because they objected to George Papandreou, for allowing his people a referendum on whether to make the sacrifices in order to remain part of a single currency, or to vote to leave.

                If this was not a forewarning of what was to come, then it has gone unnoticed by the journalistic benefactors of Orwell’s legacy. I find it outrageous that two European nations can be dictated to and ordered to comply by two other European nations. This could only have happened in the past if Italy and Greece were defeated in war and occupied. For this is what Germany and France’s demands amount to…an occupation.

                We are on the brink of an Orwellian nightmare. Politicians, unelected by anyone, are in control of the European machinery of government, that effectively governs us all. They are called commissioners and their power goes unchallenged by national governments. The very people whom the people elect are impotent to act.  Through treaty after treaty, they have consigned, bit by bit, our national sovereignty to the dustbin of history.

               

WHAT IS FAST becoming the survival of our nation state is taking place. Its survival at one time would have been determined by Napoleon and Hitler. It never entered anyone’s mind that a few unelected European bureaucrats could orchestrate the defeat of our nation state with the blessing of our leaders… via the implementation of treaties that the British public were never given the chance to vote on.

                Remember the Lisbon Treaty which we were told by our politicians was a mere technical adjustment and needed no referendum to implement; remember the Maastricht Treaty, also dismissed on such grounds. For how much longer are we going to trust our politicians when the ‘ideal’ of Europeanization seeks to cantonise every nation within Europe led ultimately by a reinvigorated Germany?

                Hundreds of thousands of our people were killed during the last war in order to defend the nation-state. It was this sense of nationhood  that our fathers and grandfathers were prepared to die for - not to see their nation dissipated into a Federal Europe by arrogant, disingenuous, and at times mendacious politicians.

                Europe is on the brink of something cataclysmic. The troubled single currency should be done away with; instead, the unfolding tragedy has actually whetted the Eurocrats appetite for immediate monetary union. Of those 17 members of the euro, some will have to be sacrificed, and we have no need to ask who will be booted out. Among the remaining, monetary and political union will forge ahead, leaving those 10 countries who never joined to become part of  a two speed Europe.

                Although the euro will survive, it will do so because of Germany’s economic power; and with such power comes control and authority. It was seen at the time of this great European union’s birth, that Germany would be brought into the European family after two attempts at trying to rule the continent and become an equal partner in the European family.

                Now Germany once more stands on the brink of dominating Europe. She will be the piper that calls the tune in this new slimmer monetary union. No wonder a French politician has described Angela Merkle as another Bismarck.

EVER SINCE ITS creation, the European union has had, to paraphrase Ann Widdecombe, ‘something of the night about it’. It has sought its legitimacy, not through democratic procedures, but through a bureaucratic commissariat of commissioners who dispense their demands throughout the continent; and legitimately elected national governments are forced to heed their directives. They have power over national sovereignty because our politicians have salami-sliced it away through signing those nefarious treaties that the people have never had any say in agreeing to.

                We are fast approaching a time when we can legitimately ask the question; what are our elected politicians for? Having deferred so many of their powers to Brussels, their primary task as law makers is being made ever more sterile by their need to take cognisance of Europe when writing our laws – especially when it comes criminal and human rights law.

                If European federalism is not an Orwellian construct, then the Pope is not a Catholic. It is incredible that we have, though a misplaced idealism, allowed this to get so far without even being aware of its dangers.

                But of course there were people who were regarded as party-poopers who did indeed warn; first of all about the direction that European Union would take us in, as well as flag up the dangers of a single currency being created among so many divergent economies.

                At the time such people were considered as swivel-eyed fanatics. These ‘Eurosceptics’ belonged to what was regarded as the xenophobic Right. They, once Thatcher was gotten rid of, were an irritant to the Tory leaders that followed her, but never managed to stop the contagion. The Tory Left, which got rid of Thatcher, thought at the time that they had not only driven a steak through the ‘vampires’ heart but, as Europhiles, had saved the country from isolation.

                Then came the  Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM)crises, that the chancellor Norman Lamont allowed his prime minister to talk him into joining in the first place. We were humiliated on a day when Germany preferred to stand by the French and allow us to sink or swim. We should have learned from this experience but in the Tory Party the Europhile torch never dimmed. As a Labour Party supporter at the time, the sight of Norman Lamont’s humiliation in front of the media as he announced our withdrawal from the ERM, after interest rates had surged to 15 per cent during the course of the day, brought me untold joy.

               

GEORGE ORWELL knew what the Left were capable of. Today in Europe (including the UK), there are no parties that could describe themselves as Conservative. In Europe both socialists and Christian Democrats, are social democrats. For if there were a truly Conservative Party in Europe today, it would oppose political and monetary union.

                In other words, the Left dominates the European union and are determined to solidify the whole continent through political and monetary union, and are doing so by waving away any attempt at allowing the people to vote by referendum on the course of their wisdom.

                The modern European politicians (including the UK’s) reminds one of the Divine Right of Kings in the way they so easily dismiss the electorate. To our modern generation of UK politicians; when it comes to Europe its people remain the nuisance.