As you know from my profile I'm sixty-three, which means that I have been around for a while. A bit like saying "one and one are two." And when I think about my age and talk to other people about it, I'm flattered by how much younger I look than the people around me, that is, people of the same age or oven younger. I think it must be a subtle coping mechanism.
Now if you are young, I don't want to hector you, or make you feel that I am another one of those boring: "old farts", who knows what's best. The truth is, that the people that I feel most optimistic about, are the young, those of your who are, say, fifteen to twenty, "hoodies", if you like. Why? Because I was young once, and I know that in boys as well as girls, youth is a time of natural idealism. Young people, unless they are seriously damaged by adults, and in many instances, even if they are seriously damaged, are idealistic. They aspire to good things, have a perception of what is right and want to do it.
I am telling you this, because at the moment I am exercised about perception, and in particular about the seeming need that a lot of people have for a "hate" figure in their lives.
Perhaps because he is topical, Tony Blair is the current "hate" figure. Looking at him, he seems decent enough. And he has a young family. So there is a reasonable chance that he is not too out of touch.
Now contrast Tony Blair with Bill Clinton. I know that Bill lived in the White House and not in Downing Street, and that he was in charge of a much bigger patch. But Bill was unfaithful to his wife, and many would argue, debased the dignity of the office of President, by his encounters with Monica in the Oval Office.
Well you might want to come along and contradict me in a blog, but I have put Bill next to Tony, because in this latter respect at least, they are quite different. And I don't recall Bill Clinton incurring a level of disdain or public dislike, in this country, comparable to that being meted out to Tony Blair; even when the subject is not Iraq. And those, in my estimation who are the most disdainful, are members of his party, who believe that he has betrayed core labour values. Well, when I type those words "core Labour values" I find myself getting hot under the collar. So before I go any further, let me say a thing or two about core Labour values.
A core Labour value that grew out of the Trades Union movement and the desire for democratic government, was the idea that those in need would be taken care of via the welfare state. So what evolved was a health service, free at the point of use, and benefits, or state aid, for those in need. Now in their wildest imaginings, the "founding fathers" never envisaged that the care that they were handing down to future generations, would be limitless, extending as it does, to hip replacements, and to liver and heart transplants. And that's to say nothing of the cost of the technologies that make these treatments possible. Nor did they envisage a culture in which it would be acceptable, for some people to spend their entire lives on "benefits" as an alternative to work. And still less did they conceive of welfare as a means that would allow fathers, (and in many instances mothers,) to abandon their children and set up home with someone else, (and their children), with the confident expectation that the state would pick up the pieces, and provide an income for those they had abandoned. Which reminds me of a particularly pertinent experience.
Some time ago, as a part of my work, I met a woman who was incandescent with rage, because having assessed her ex husband's income, it was decided that he could afford to pay "maintenance" for his wife and children, and at a level that was greater than the benefit provided by the state. So why, you might wonder was she enraged. Well, sadly, it was a case of collusion, of a couple who in name only, were living apart, but who together were "fiddling the system". And what especially exercised her, and which she let slip, was that in this new situation her supposed ex husband, would have to pay, not just the basic weekly maintenance, but the mortgage on the family home, that up to the point where the father had been tracked down and assessed, had been paid by the state.
Now if Tony Blair tries to address any of these, or comparable issues, he will become more of a "hate" figure than he is at the moment, and we will be told with vehemence, that he is a traitor to Labour values. What the haters won't bother to reflect on, is that those good men, (and they were mostly men,) who struggled within the labour movement for a better society, knew and lived by the meaning of the words "thrift," "making ends meet," and "hard work." They were never a part of the "something for nothing" brigade.
Now lest you get a wrong idea, I too could be a severe critic of Tony Blair, and one of the criticisms that I would level against him is, that where it matters, he has wasted his talent. Here I wouldn't complain about the obvious, Iraq, but about the EU. As I see it, instead of leading from the front and fighting for what he believes, he appears to me, to have listened to focus groups, with the result that whether we do or don't join the rest of our friends in Europe, in full monetary union, has been kicked well into touch.
That said, in the context of "hate", I think we have to be careful about this tendency of wanting to "put the boot in," whether to Tony Blair, because we "hate" him, in the same way that we, "hate" George Bush and hated Margaret Thatcher before that, and Ronald Reagan at the same time. (But not Bill Clinton.) The thing about "hate" is, that it is a strong emotion; and if it is strong enough, it relieves us of the responsibility of having to come to terms with ourselves, with our uncertainties and conflicting emotions. In effect, "hate" makes life easy, we have it sussed, we "hate Tony Blair", so that's that, and no need to think about the possible permutations.
Some years ago we were walking through Sefton Park in Liverpool, when we stopped to talk to a mother with young children. As we chatted, I noticed a man some way away and it turned out that they were husband and wife. And as we chatted we discovered that all three of their children had been adopted.
Well, in the general conversation, we explained to this young couple, that before moving to Liverpool we had lived in London. And if you have read my earlier blogs, you will know, that at that time, we were very active in the anti nuclear movement: CND). We campaigned vigorously and effectively in Beckenham, and in the London Borough of Bromley. And although as campaigners, we, "didn't do hate," there was no shortage of hate figures around. Supreme among them was Margaret Thatcher, and following close behind was the entire Tory Party. But looking back, we always saw Sir Phillip Goodhart, who was the Conservative MP for Beckenham, as an essentially decent man.
In those heady days of campaigning, we were "visited," or so we thought, meaning, that from time to time, a hitherto unknown person would turn up at our meetings, or tag on to a public demonstration, and having made the acquaintance of everyone around them, would simply disappear. Nobody knew who they were or where they had come from; they were, it seemed, just passing through. And chief among the suspects were the Special Branch - a covert arm of the police, and when appropriate, the government also. And though we would never have been able to prove it, and given our mysterious visitors, we had the impression that our home telephone was tapped. But we were relaxed about it. What we were doing was lawful and open, and if people had the time or inclination to listen to our telephone calls, so be it.
Well, looking back, I have to say that Ronald Reagan, (someone we vigorously campaigned against and who was an object of "hate" for many,) had something going for him. Why? Because despite his scary "star wars" idea, he made a difference. True, he had to have the then Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev there to help him. But to succeed at all, Reagan had to have the capacity to see the opportunity and want to seize the moment. Which is what he did.
Well, returning to Sefton Park, in Liverpool we befriended the couple we met there, and who wouldn't? Any couple that have adopted three children have to be special, and they were. To "make ends meet" and not withstanding her Sunday to Friday job, this young mother had a Saturday job working as a waitress. And remembering that it was "to make ends meet," the obvious question to ask is, what did her husband do? Well, this in the context of the current disposition to "hate," is where my preoccupation with perception comes in. In my lifetime I have had to shift my ground several times, or perhaps I could put it better and say, recognise that the ground had shifted; and this was a case in point, because in time, we discovered that the father of these adopted children was, yes, a policeman, a firearms officer - in the Special Branch.
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© Cormac McCloskey
Note: "Hating Tony Blair" was first published, by me, on Windows Live Spaces on 15th November 2005
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