Ken Sees Red
I used to live with a guy who grew up in the pre-Celtic tiger years who, like many Irish people of his generation was forced by economic circumstances to go and live in the UK. He found himself living on the streets of London and heard that there was an Irish centre there where he might find accomodation. After queueing for hours he finally got to meet the man behind the desk, who was none other than the then leader of the now defunct Greater London Council, Ken Livingstone.
It's a tribute to a man that must have had a busy schedule at that time that he was willing to take time out to help members of an ethnic minority in this way. Ken is often accused of egocentricity, yet when he was leader of the GLC in the late 70's and early 80's he was only paid £6,000 a year, about as much as someone playing for Birmingham City gets every week these days.
He's consistently shown himself to have a much better understanding of polictics and economics than a lot of people on the labour front bench today and if he'd lived in an age when ideas counted more than image or spin, he could be in a position of genuine policitcal influence rather than the joke job of mayor of London.
It's a job somewhat akin to being leader of the Palestinian Authority, with all responsiblity and no power. For example, when Ken was forced to cover his ass after the Madrid bombing, the otherwise wonderful activist site Alternet accused him of scaremongering.
Even though the Labour Leadership fought tooth and nail to stop him becoming mayor, his election may have worked to labour's advantage as he alllows some to indulge in the fantasy that labour are still a left wing party. When he expressed some sympathy for the May Day marchers a few years ago the Daily Telegraph got it's knickers in a twist, as it has somewhat of a prediliction for doing.
This week, though, Blair will be wishing that it was Buster Merryfield lookalike Frank Norris that got the job. Ken's gotten himself into a spot of bother by accusing a Daily Mail journalist of being a Nazi.
That seems like a reasonable enough accusastion to me. When I read Micheal Burleigh's The Third Reich: A New History, I was somwhat sceptical of his assertion that the Germans blamed their defeat in the first world war on the fact that the British had better propaganda. I was somewhat sceptical about this but then I was staying with some German friends and flicked through a calender with a photograph commerating what happened every day in history. On One page there was a picture of the Mail which that day was leading with a story that went something like: "Government plans to reduce age of consent for gays - SHOCK!" I wondered why the extension of gay rights in England could be of such concern to Germans, but it turned out that they were commerorating the birth of Viscount Rothermere, the founder of the newspaper, who had such an impact on their own countries history.
During the first world war, the Mail used to print stories about German soldiers eating babies which a newly literate but hardly disciminating working class lapped up. After the war Josef Goebbels studied their methods and realised that if you kept telling people the same thing, even something ludicrous like that Germans are the master race, they'd eventually believe it, and he turned out to be right. The Bush administration uses similar tactics when dealing with the US public, as does the contemporary Mail when dealing with issues like immigration.
The Mail has never been as much of a friend to the Irish as Ken has (to put it mildly), so I'm more inclined to take his side. During the second world war, they portrayed De Valera riding a donkey to "satirise" his policy of neutrality. It's sister paper, the London Evening Standard was even nastier when it, at the height of the troubles in the North, it printed a cartoon of a horror film simply titled The Irish. This is exactly the sort of thing that the Nazis used to do, and if you study what they write about immigrants and what the Nazis used to say about gypsies, you find find any great fundamental difference. So I agree with Ken when he says that their staff would have been the first to collaborate with the Nazis if they'd won the war, though I suspect the Telegraph would have been jostling in the Queue.
Yet Ken is being asked, even by the Guardian, to apologise. Why on Earth should he? Have they ever apologised to him for helping Margeret Thatcher to cripple the GLC, or for saying that he's too irresponsible to be mayor? For that matter, have they ever apologied to anyone for anything they've ever said, ever, except when losing a libel appeal? Not that I'm aware of. Tony Blair's request that he, like, y'know, says sorry shows him to be paranoid about the pernicious influence of the Mail, even though his party is way ahead in the polls and the worst thing that can happen him is a shrinking of his majority which might lead him to need to appease the left of his own party.
Yet for real chutzpah, would you Adam and Eve this article from the Telegraph, which argues that this event represents a new rudeness in British politics for which labour are mainly responsible. So I guess it must not have been Margeret Thatcher who shouted "Out, Out, Out", or Michael Howard who told single mothers to go and live in the gutter. Or John Major who described his cabinet colleauges as "Bastards". Or William Hague who goes round telling rascist jokes. Or Nicholas Ridley who accused the Germans of trying to take over Europe. Or Norman Tebbit who told unemployed people to get on their bikes. Or Micheal Heseltine who twice stormed out of interviews.
As to whether this will affect London's chances of hosting the next Olympics, well, Paris is a far more beautiful city with better infrastructure, existing stadia and a better location. But in London it's much easier to get drugs. So even after Ken's faux pas and the Mail's puerile reaction, maybe they have a chance.
It's a tribute to a man that must have had a busy schedule at that time that he was willing to take time out to help members of an ethnic minority in this way. Ken is often accused of egocentricity, yet when he was leader of the GLC in the late 70's and early 80's he was only paid £6,000 a year, about as much as someone playing for Birmingham City gets every week these days.
He's consistently shown himself to have a much better understanding of polictics and economics than a lot of people on the labour front bench today and if he'd lived in an age when ideas counted more than image or spin, he could be in a position of genuine policitcal influence rather than the joke job of mayor of London.
It's a job somewhat akin to being leader of the Palestinian Authority, with all responsiblity and no power. For example, when Ken was forced to cover his ass after the Madrid bombing, the otherwise wonderful activist site Alternet accused him of scaremongering.
Even though the Labour Leadership fought tooth and nail to stop him becoming mayor, his election may have worked to labour's advantage as he alllows some to indulge in the fantasy that labour are still a left wing party. When he expressed some sympathy for the May Day marchers a few years ago the Daily Telegraph got it's knickers in a twist, as it has somewhat of a prediliction for doing.
This week, though, Blair will be wishing that it was Buster Merryfield lookalike Frank Norris that got the job. Ken's gotten himself into a spot of bother by accusing a Daily Mail journalist of being a Nazi.
That seems like a reasonable enough accusastion to me. When I read Micheal Burleigh's The Third Reich: A New History, I was somwhat sceptical of his assertion that the Germans blamed their defeat in the first world war on the fact that the British had better propaganda. I was somewhat sceptical about this but then I was staying with some German friends and flicked through a calender with a photograph commerating what happened every day in history. On One page there was a picture of the Mail which that day was leading with a story that went something like: "Government plans to reduce age of consent for gays - SHOCK!" I wondered why the extension of gay rights in England could be of such concern to Germans, but it turned out that they were commerorating the birth of Viscount Rothermere, the founder of the newspaper, who had such an impact on their own countries history.
During the first world war, the Mail used to print stories about German soldiers eating babies which a newly literate but hardly disciminating working class lapped up. After the war Josef Goebbels studied their methods and realised that if you kept telling people the same thing, even something ludicrous like that Germans are the master race, they'd eventually believe it, and he turned out to be right. The Bush administration uses similar tactics when dealing with the US public, as does the contemporary Mail when dealing with issues like immigration.
The Mail has never been as much of a friend to the Irish as Ken has (to put it mildly), so I'm more inclined to take his side. During the second world war, they portrayed De Valera riding a donkey to "satirise" his policy of neutrality. It's sister paper, the London Evening Standard was even nastier when it, at the height of the troubles in the North, it printed a cartoon of a horror film simply titled The Irish. This is exactly the sort of thing that the Nazis used to do, and if you study what they write about immigrants and what the Nazis used to say about gypsies, you find find any great fundamental difference. So I agree with Ken when he says that their staff would have been the first to collaborate with the Nazis if they'd won the war, though I suspect the Telegraph would have been jostling in the Queue.
Yet Ken is being asked, even by the Guardian, to apologise. Why on Earth should he? Have they ever apologised to him for helping Margeret Thatcher to cripple the GLC, or for saying that he's too irresponsible to be mayor? For that matter, have they ever apologied to anyone for anything they've ever said, ever, except when losing a libel appeal? Not that I'm aware of. Tony Blair's request that he, like, y'know, says sorry shows him to be paranoid about the pernicious influence of the Mail, even though his party is way ahead in the polls and the worst thing that can happen him is a shrinking of his majority which might lead him to need to appease the left of his own party.
Yet for real chutzpah, would you Adam and Eve this article from the Telegraph, which argues that this event represents a new rudeness in British politics for which labour are mainly responsible. So I guess it must not have been Margeret Thatcher who shouted "Out, Out, Out", or Michael Howard who told single mothers to go and live in the gutter. Or John Major who described his cabinet colleauges as "Bastards". Or William Hague who goes round telling rascist jokes. Or Nicholas Ridley who accused the Germans of trying to take over Europe. Or Norman Tebbit who told unemployed people to get on their bikes. Or Micheal Heseltine who twice stormed out of interviews.
As to whether this will affect London's chances of hosting the next Olympics, well, Paris is a far more beautiful city with better infrastructure, existing stadia and a better location. But in London it's much easier to get drugs. So even after Ken's faux pas and the Mail's puerile reaction, maybe they have a chance.
posted by seamus @ 3:50 pm
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