Not the Man in the Empty Cab

Did somebody just reprint it?    This morning I've run across a couple of different people recalling the chestnut about how " 'An empty taxi arrived at 10 Downing Street, and when the door was opened [Clement] Attlee got out.'
For those of you with no memory of World War II, that would be Clement Attlee, British post-war prime minister and the architect of "socialist Britain"--and perhaps equally important the man who, as deputy prime minister, ran the country while Winston Churchill ran the war.
I don't doubt that somebody said it--hey, I just said it. But the near-universal attribution of this jibe is to Churchill himself.  I'll give a chocolate cigar to anyone who can show that Churchill actually did say it.  Grant that Churchill had a scabrous tongue.  Grant also he had plenty of reason to blow his top at Attlee: they worked cheek  by jowl through the war years, and it must have seared Churchill's soul when he lost to Attlee in the 1945 election.

Yet there is abundant evidence that Churchill had the greatest respect for Attlee's abilities, and seriousness of purpose (however much they may have disagreed on substance).  Start with the wartime coalition where, by any decent appraisal, Attlee did a spectacular job--"spectacular" in the sense of "almost totally invisible, at a time when the last thing the war leadership needed was the distraction of domestic politics."  Churchill clearly understood; after all, at least after the turning of the tide, he probably could have had Attlee removed with the snap of a finger if he chose.

But don't take it from me; listen to Attlee's biographer:

After the war one quip which went the rounds of Westminster was attributed to Churchill himself. 'An empty taxi arrived at 10 Downing Street, and when the door was opened [Clement] Attlee got out.' When [John] Colville repeated this, and its attribution, to Churchill he obviously did not like it. His face set hard, and 'after an awful pause' he said: 'Mr. Attlee is an honourable and gallant gentleman, and a faithful colleague who served his country well at the time of her greatest need. I should be obliged if you would make it clear whenever an occasion arises that I would never make such a remark about him, and that I strongly disapprove of anyone who does.'

--Harris, Kenneth. Attlee (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson (1982)

It's reprinted here, with a cross-cite to  Augarde, Tony, ed. The Oxford Dictionary of Modern Quotations (Oxford University Press, 1991).  I believe I read essentially the same story in Roy Jenkins;' biography of Churchill, though I can't put my finger on it just now (might be from the same source). 

Grant that Attlee the man was the very picture of modesty and humility, particularly compared to Churchill's drama and flamboyance.    Still he ran what was almost certainly the best single British government since the war.  And he was not entirely bland; Wiki has a selection here. Including this just self-appraisal:

There were few who thought him a starter,
Many who thought themselves smarter.
But he ended PM,
CH and OM,
an Earl and a Knight of the Garter.

 For non-British readers, that would be "prime minister,"  "companion of honor" and "order of merit."   Fun Fact:  Attlee's grandson John, inheritor of his earldom, is a hereditary member of the House of Lords and a conservative.

Geoffrey Writes History on a Broad Canvas

Students of British History know that Geoffrey of Monmouth, in his Historia regum Britanniae, undertakes to give his tale a proper classical lineage, beginning with the founding of London by Brutus,great-grandson of Aeneas. Less obvious is how careful Geoffrey proves to be in showing the links between his British tale and the event of the Bible. Describing the foundation of London by Brutus, he adds, "at this time the priest Eli was ruling in Judea and the Ark of the Covenant was captured by the Philistines." 

 Having described the reigns of (the folkloric) Queen Gwendolen and her son Maddan, Geoffrey adds: "At that time the prophet Samuel was reigning in Judea, Aenes Silvius was still alive and Homer was considered to be a famous rhetorician and poet." Just a paragraph later he tells how Maddan in the twentieth year of his reign was "surrounded by ravening wolves and eaten up in miserable circumstances." Geoffrey adds: "At that time Saul was reigning in Judea and Eurysthenes in Sparta." A paragraph on, having decribed the 39-year reign of Ebraucus, he adds: "At that time Kind David was reigning in Judea and Silvius Laatinus was King in Italy. In Israel, Gad, Nathan and Asaph were the prophets." 

 Shortly after he offers his account of "Leir" (Shakespeare's "Lear.").   The Lear story extends over several pages and ends "At that time Isaiah was making his prophecies; and on the elventh day after the Kalends of May Rome was founded by the twin borthers Remus and Romulus." In a footnote, the translator notes that Geoffrey had alreadyd twice mentioned Rome as being in existence.

All excerpts are from the Penguin Classics paperback translated by Lewis Thorpe.

"Confound their Politics, Frustrate their Knavish Tricks"

Happy 60th, Elizabeth.  A.E. Houseman (in A Shropshire Lad, 1896) celebrates an earlier monarchic anniversary.

I. From Clee to heaven the beacon burns

1887

FROM Clee to heaven the beacon burns,
The shires have seen it plain,
From north and south the sign returns
And beacons burn again.
Look left, look right, the hills are bright,	5
The dales are light between,
Because ’tis fifty years to-night
That God has saved the Queen.
Now, when the flame they watch not towers
About the soil they trod,	10
Lads, we ’ll remember friends of ours
Who shared the work with God.
To skies that knit their heartstrings right,
To fields that bred them brave,
The saviours come not home to-night	15
Themselves they could not save.
It dawns in Asia, tombstones show
And Shropshire names are read;
And the Nile spills his overflow
Beside the Severn’s dead.	20
We pledge in peace by farm and town
The Queen they served in war,
And fire the beacons up and down
The land they perished for.
‘God save the Queen’ we living sing,	25
From height to height ’tis heard;
And with the rest your voices ring,
Lads of the Fifty-third.
Oh, God will save her, fear you not:
Be you the men you ’ve been,	30
Get you the sons your fathers got,
And God will save the Queen.

 Pinched from Bartleby.

John Le Carré and the Aesthetics of Humiliation

Mr.and Mrs. B. have been imbibing BBC version of John Le Carré's, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. That would be the 1979 mini-series with Alec Guinness, not the current movie (that comes later). And I'm struck by the general air of grunge, of seediness that haunts the whole enterprise. Some it surely is intentional, deriving from the novel itself. Some is, I suspect, a tad more accidental. The almost comical amateurishness of the sets, for example,  like the stuff they used to market as self-parody in the old Bullwinkle cartoons (and the telephones have cords, bleah). But I suspect part of it just derives from the larger atmosphere. Though this is 1979, we're still at the end of the long and debilitating case of the grippe that swept over England when it woke up to the fact that was broke, without an empire, and generally an also-ran in the competition for national greatness.  And it brings you up short to reflect that we're actually functioning after the Beatles, the Swinging Sixties, the Carnaby Street revolution: crushingly, almost none of these characters seems to grasp the fact that his entire career has been a total waste of time.

Humiliation enough right there, had you known what was happening to  you--and George Smiley, at least, for one does appear to know.  He also know that he's being shamelessly cuckolded by one of his nearest and dearest.  To watch it, to enjoy it all, you pretty much have to share his own bleak sense of his own disgrace.  This theme of humiliation, not bye the bye, is also the theme of  my true favorite post-war British flic: Sunday, Bloody Sunday, where we see Glenda Jackson and Peter Finch both having their nose rubbed in the fact that they're not the lover they wanted to be.   


1979: way past the pull  date for the post-War malaise.  Meanwhile, the clattering you here at stage right would be that rough beast herelf, her hour come round at last.

Missed the British Election?

Not to worry. Chances are, it will be around again soon.

In the meantime, says John Lanchester, Conservative David Cameron and Lib Dem Nick Clegg will jockey for position:

The Tories’ goal will be to look like a plausible government and to reassure both the markets and the electorate. Doing both at the same time, in the current fiscal climate, won’t be easy. Cameron’s one big advantage is that electorates hate being made to elect and will resent the party which forces the next contest. Clegg’s goal will be to remind everyone he exists and to get them thinking that he would be a better PM than anyone else. He can bring the government down whenever he likes, so his task is to pick the right moment, one which makes him look like a man of principle and the Tories look like eye-bulging ideologues.

Oh, and the other guys? Their job will be to pick a successor to the most unloved British Prime Minister in modern history.

The British Conundrum

Just heard a BBC commentator--maybe Andy Hamilton, say that Britain is divided between people who say

I've never voted Lib Dem before
But I really like that Nick Clegg.

...and those who say

I just might vote Lib Dem
If it weren't for that Nick Clegg.

The Masterpiece Theatre Party

I suspect that if there is one thing that the American chattering class of a certain age can agree on in politics it is the superiority, moral and intellectual--or at least aesthetic--of the British Liberal Party (these days, it's actually the Liberal Democrats, the Lib Dems, but we keep forgetting the Dems part). In our heart of hearts, it is right up there with Masterpiece Theatre--no, maybe it is Masterpiece Theatre with all those wise, wry yet compassionate vicars and dons assuring us that there'll always be a n England Britain and we won't have to be ashamed of it. We may be a bit chagrined about the drinking habits of Charles Kennedy although he seemed like a good chap; we have a vague sense that Paddy Ashdown is as solid as roast beef, but our memories really go back to Lloyd George, Herbert Asquith and perhaps even to the great W.S. Gladstone (Wasn't he the one who actually translated the Iliad? Oh yes he was.).

Ours is a taste somewhat like our youthful taste for Chairman Mao, in that it is perhaps best enjoyed at a distance. It has the added advantage of powerlessness: it's coming on 88 years now since the last liberal prime minister got himself turned out of office; ever since the libs have been free to counsel, to criticize, and otherwise to take the high ground.

Now we are in odd position of discovering that we might get what we wish for. It's probably still a long shot, but leveller heads than our own are saying that the plague-o'-both-your-houses British electorate is about to return a hung parliament, and that that nice young chap Nick Clegg, the Lib-Dem leader might find himself a coalition prime minister.

Nick who? The truth is, we have a tough time distinguishing him from David Cameron, the one with the boyish smile who fronts for the conservatives. Clegg, the son of a banker, is just four months younger than Cameron, the son of a broker. Private schools, check, Oxbridge, check. The fact is, they are a couple of toffs. Cameron's pedigree is perhaps more Handelian; but Clegg can claim descent, if not from the Scottish highlanders, then from a member of the Imperial Russian Senate.

And now here is, the fresh-faced boy who seems to have set the nation on its ear with a dazzling presence in a debate the other night. Clegg for PM? I'd say it still has to be regarded as a longshot, but the British press has decided that that it's not beneath them to take it seriously. And what they find, of course, is that things are far stickier close up than they look from far away. Here, Timesonline puzzles over the issue of how he Clegg builds a coalition :

It’s easy to imagine Mr Clegg forming an alliance with Mr Cameron. A public-school-educated son of a banker, the man who leads the Liberal Democrats looks like a natural Conservative. Indeed, when he was working for Leon Brittan in Brussels, the European Commissioner assumed that Mr Clegg would end up as a Tory MP. Like Mr Cameron, Mr Clegg backs free schools and wants to scrap ID cards; he is in favour of a smaller state and green jobs. The “Orange book” Lib Dems and the Tory modernisers are socially as well as economically liberal. But neither represents their whole parties. Can you imagine Mr Clegg going into a coalition with Bill Cash? Or the Lib Dem sandal-wearing lefties agreeing to prop up a minority Conservative administration?

The Labour Party is similarly divided between modernising liberals and more statist traditionalists. The first group, which includes most of the Blairites, is in favour of constitutional reform and choice in the public services. They would love to create the “progressive alliance” with the Lib Dems that Mr Blair discussed with Paddy Ashdown in the run-up to the 1997 election. But they do not have complete control of their party. The second Labour group has a visceral loathing of the Lib Dems, regarding them as a combination of wimps and traitors with dangerous ideas about the role of the State. They would never contemplate any kind of alliance.

Mr Clegg has a problem with Mr Brown. It dates back to the MPs’ expenses scandal, when the Prime Minister summoned the Tory and Liberal Democrat leaders to a crisis meeting at No 10. They were given a 15-minute rant about what should happen, which ended with Mr Clegg telling Mr Brown: “Look, Gordon, there’s no point having this meeting if all you want to do is lecture us.” It was no coincidence that in last week’s debate, Gordon’s catchphrase was “I agree with Nick”, but Mr Clegg repeatedly shrugged him off. For the Lib Dem leader, his Labour rival symbolises the old style of politics. Despite Mr Brown’s recent conversion to changing the voting system and Lords reform, he sees him as part of Labour’s statist clique.

Indeed, those close to Mr Clegg have made it clear to senior Labour figures that it would be difficult for the Liberal Democrats to do a deal with a Labour Party led by Mr Brown. “The whole notion of change is so important to Clegg and Gordon doesn’t represent change,” says one Labour strategist. “It’s hard to see how they could prop up Brown in a hung Parliament.”

Link. So yes, we just might have a Clegg ministry. And a messy, confused, incoherent melange it may be. Welcome to hard times. And by the way, while we're considering how much Clegg looks like Cameron, isn't it the case that they both kind of put you in mind of this guy?

Update: The super smart guys at FiveThirtyEight ask: is the Lib Dem surge real? Their answer is a definite maybe.