Nothing Changes!

Last week Pat and I went to the Royal Concert Hall here in Nottingham to enjoy – and I do mean enjoy -  an  evening with Joan Baez. It was wonderful. Baez, the voice of protest and my generation is now a seventy one year old. Her long jet black hair is now cropped short and silver but, oh dear, the magic voice was still there. Immediately she opened her mouth I was transported back to mid sixties, to the college folk club and to my old Dansette record player. Transported back to when I was going to change the world – and of course, in her way, with the help of voices like Bob Dylan she did. When she sang  “With God on our side” it was just as relevant today as it was in the early sixties – and the packed audience knew it. A wonderful  night.  Gentle, inspiring and one sensed that as she took her final bow and left the stage she was leaving an audience who had not only enjoyed the show but who actually loved and had a huge respect for this woman's role in the world.

Baez today - a wonderful night!

In the days since the concert, however, I have mused upon how much – or little – things have really changed since Baez, Dylan and the rest of us baby boomers promised to make the world a better place! My musings have been fed by various events and items of news that have given me food for thought.

When Pat and I arrived at the Royal Concert Hall it was already busy. Hundreds of people were pouring through the glass doors into the vast foyer, the bar areas were full of people enjoying a pre-show drink and chat. Overwhelmingly the audience was of my generation – middle aged or older. Everyone casually but smartly attired for an evening out. On the great entry doors were huge posters with pictures of the grey haired Baez, announcing “An evening with Joan Baez”. As we stood we looked down on the entrance and noticed a large group of young men - about twenty of them - standing just outside. They were laughing and joking as they waited – not causing  any fuss or disturbance ...........but.......wait for it........they were all dressed as nuns, complete with crucifix and carrying plastic machine guns! Now I could have a rant about that but I will spare you. After a little while they all came through the  doors and into the Concert Hall. They were obviously completely oblivious to the fact that they were quite different to everyone else standing in that foyer. As they climbed the stairs to our level they were accosted by one of the Concert Hall staff and turned back. They all broke into wild laughter and turned . They had got the wrong place – they should have been next door at the Theatre Royal where “Sister Act” was playing! The Concert Hall announcer announced that this was “An Evening with Joan Baez” not “Sister Act”!

Oops - got the wrong show!

As I stood there I sadly shook my head. A simple mistake?.....Mmmmmm? Were they so besotted with themselves that they didn’t realise that they didn’t fit in with the other thousand people filling the foyer? How could the whole group of them possible have walked past the huge posters on the entrance doors without one of them noticing that they were in the wrong place. Had none of them looked at their tickets? Why do we allow these people  to walk amongst us?  Should they be at liberty – I mean, they might harm themselves or others by their crass stupidity. Yes, we can all have a good laugh; “Chill out” people will say to me – “they’re only young”. And I will disagree with you. Today’s young are allegedly the best educated ever, they are  far more street wise than my generation was at a similar age, they have access to things like the internet and computers which assist in their grasp of the world........but, they don’t have any “nous” or common sense! Have we really progressed since the 1960s  - I’m not too sure! I sadly reflected that when Baez, Dylan, me and millions of others sang "The times they are a'changing" or "We shall overcome" half a century ago - we really believed that we were striving to make the world a better place for future generations. We little realised, however, that the better place we were creating would spawn young men being so dim, crass and stupid that they walk around a city centre dressed as nuns with plastic machine guns and fumbling their way into the wrong building!

So what comes next! Ah yes, politics!

The other day I was reading in the Guardian about the educational accomplishments of our top politicians  and political commentators: George Osborne (history, Oxford), David Cameron (PPE, Oxford), William Hague (PPE, Oxford), Danny  Alexander (PPE, Oxford), Nick Clegg (anthropology, Cambridge). Ed  Miliband (PPE, Oxford), Ed Balls (PPE, Oxford), Stephanie Flanders (PPE, Oxford), Nick Robinson (PPE, Oxford), Robert Peston (PPE, Oxford).  Well, obviously a PPE  (Politics, Philosophy and Economics) degree from Oxford is the way to success in modern GB and it may well be that in order to get one you have shown considerable talent that fits you well for  a glittering career. But, I would seriously ask, in the diverse, industrial, multi-cultural, high tech, pluralistic society that we all inhabit now is it right that virtually all our leaders should all come from the same stock and have the same skills and talents? The majority of these people have swapped the playing fields and quads of Eton (or some other remote public school) for the playing fields and quads of Oxford and  have now moved in to quads of Westminster. They can have, and do not have, any sort of concept of any other sort of life or skill base or value system. In my view, that’s bad for our country no matter how bright and deserving  they are.

And following this, and more seriously, the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has announced that he will stand down later this year. There seems universal agreement about Williams - an overtly good man given an impossible job. A brilliant mind but a poor communicator – people didn’t understand him. The stresses and strains within the Church – gay bishops, the ordination of women and the rest meant he was always going to miss out.

A saintly man with a great intellect -
why should he have to work with "numpties"?

Well, for me I think it is all very sad that when a man who everyone agrees is good – many commentators (including, even, the secular Guardian) even suggest that he has an aura of "holiness" about him – can be judged a failure by that society. It perhaps says more about the society than it does about Williams. Similarly everyone acknowledges that  he has a brilliant mind – but that same society  does  not applaud this. Instead,  it marginalises it by  suggesting he is a poor communicator who found it difficult to get down to the level of ordinary people. Mmmmmm? I think I agree with my wife on this one – when she read it she exclaimed “It’s not his fault he has to work with “numpties”.  She is quite right – why should the Archbishop of Canterbury dumb everything down for Mr and Mrs Joe Public – perhaps we, Mr and Mrs Joe Public, have a responsibility to try  to understand rather than always want the idiots guide or the comic cut version.

I’ve thought about this in relation to the young men dressed as nuns and  carrying plastic machine guns and who did not have the common sense and sensitivity to get into right theatre. Is it the responsibility of a spiritual leader, one of the great men of the world (and I am not particularly religious), a man who has a brilliant mind and is allegedly “saintly”.....is it really his responsibility to get down to their level? I think not – there is an imperative here for the rest of us and especially those  young men –grow up, wise up!  If it is the Archbishop’s responsibility to dumb down everything in an effort to be a “better communicator” then it says much about the aspirations and motivations of that society and the individuals within it. It’s not about the communication skills of the Archbishop it is about the lack of those skills in the rest of us. We are aspiring to become “dummies” - an attribute that those machine gun toting nuns have clearly acquired.

And then in the last few days we have had the Peter Cruddas affair which is still rippling through English politics and may well do so for a little time. For those of you unfamiliar with the story Cruddas, the millionaire Conservative Party treasurer and fund raiser, was secretly filmed offering places at the Prime Minister's dining table and possible political influence to the wealthy and powerful for about £250,000 a seat. I am not naive, I’m sure this sort of thing has always gone on and  that in  some way it will go one which  ever  party  is in power. It merely reminds me of the eleventh commandment “Thou shalt not get caught”. In this case Cruddas, and by implication the Prime minister and his party, were well and truly caught with their proverbial trousers down!

Rich as Croesus -
 but not quite "top drawer"

What I did find interesting and perhaps a little disturbing was the way the thing was reported and the comments that it generated. As it emerged Cruddas was portrayed as someone not quite “top drawer” – to use an old fashioned term from the age of the British Raj. The Guardian’s commentary was not untypical:  “Raised on a Hackney council estate, Cruddas left his Shoreditch comprehensive at 15 with no qualifications. His father was a porter at London's Smithfield meat market and drank too much. There was little money to go around. His mother, who was an office cleaner, was the backbone of the family. She survived the Blitz, spending days sheltering in Bank tube station. He peppers his conversation with stories about his mum. His two brothers, including his twin, did what might have been expected and ended up as London cabbies. But somehow Cruddas  defied the odds. Today he runs his own online trading business, CMC Markets, and is estimated to be worth £860m. He was named the richest man in the City in a Sunday Times ranking, beating Lord Rothschild into second place. So how does that feel? "Fantastic," he says with a smile. "Fantastic, fantastic.” He has  two Bentleys, a Porsche Cayenne Turbo, a  private jet;  homes in Monaco, Antibes and Hertfordshire. "I sometimes have to pinch myself to see how far I've come." he continues "I mean we're talking about a 15-year-old Hackney boy that really has started a company that's worth about £1bn with no investment from anybody."

 A real rags to riches story but as all the papers indicated the top Conservative echelons are washing their hands of him – he isn’t “one of them”. In another Guardian  article he is described as a “city wide boy”  and that his lack of finesse and social graces meant that he was rarely  invited to dinners at the Conservative top tables.

It all reminds me of the epic book by Paul Scott – the “Raj Quartet” – or “The  Jewel in the Crown” as it is more usually referred to.

Yep, Eton really does prepare you
for running a  modern society

India is governed by the Raj – comprised of the brightest and best of English aristocracy and the upper class. It is a paternalistic and patrician rule. At one stage the well intentioned upper class officer, Teddy Bingham says to one of the Indian soldiers under his command “I am your father and your mother” – in other words, “I will make decisions on your behalf for your own good.........because it’s the natural order of things. I am a member of the ruling class and that is what we are good at”!  (Teddy, like most of the other officers in the tale is the product of Chillingborough Public School - the fictional Eton). Maybe he also had a PPE degree!.  And, of course, at the same time running through the wonderful  book,  is the brooding and nasty presence of the “grammar school boy” (as opposed to the Eton educated top brass)  Ronald Merrick. He is someone who very definitively isn't “pukka” or  “top drawer” – but who makes his way by doing all the nasty stuff that  the “brightest and best” won’t dirty their hands with or don’t want laid at their doorstep.

And when you get to Oxford to read PPE you
can  join the Bullingdon Club and wear more
silly suits that prove you are "top drawer"
and ready to rule the country.

It all seemed to me as if Cruddas was filling a similar role. I’m not excusing him or condoning his behaviour but I’m tempted to think that there is more than  a whiff of  good old fashioned snobbery and hypocrisy  here! Don’t get me wrong I’m not a Cruddas fan. I despise his politics and how he has been operating but I can admire that he turned a very humble background into this rags to this riches story.

To go back to the beginning of this blog it all looks a bit cosy when we look at all the PPE degrees from Oxford that continue to exert an unacceptable level of influence throughout our national life in modern Britain. In days gone by these people would have comprised the Raj – but the Raj is long gone, there is no India to rule.   They are still, however, making the decisions  on our behalf , even though they have little in common with the rest of us...........and they still have their equivalents of Ronald Merrick to do the dirty work – except now he’s called something like Peter Cruddas. As one newspaper commented:”He (Cruddas) has the kind of background that most Conservatives would kill for: a council estate childhood, no formal qualifications and a fortune made via financial spread-betting, a trade given a huge boost by the big bang of 1986. He and David Cameron, it's fair to say, are from completely different worlds........”

So where does all this rambling leave me?

Despite all our claims to have a better educated society, more tolerant, more caring, more democratic  and the rest  I’m not so sure. Despite all the advances and expenditure in education and the availability of the information society we still have a generation who have not got the common sense and basic awareness to get into the right theatre! At the same time as a society we find it difficult to accept the goodness and intellect of an Archbishop – and actually chastise him for being too bright! We have a government and political hierarchy who are overwhelmingly drawn from the same remote  and far removed background –and  possibly totally out of touch with the lives, aspirations, dreams, ambitions, and problems  of the modern and diverse society over which they rule. And finally there is still, in modern Britain, more than a whiff of class differences still at work within this political elite and government.

I wonder – did Baez and our generation really make significant change? I'm tempted to think perhaps not!

Barbie & Ronald Merrick in the
TV production  of Jewel in the Crown.
Part of the Raj - but not "pukka" or "top drawer"

Going back to the “Raj Quartet” two events spring to mind.  The magnificent  put down by the lowly “paying guest”, Barbie,  when, after her small wedding present of silver apostle tea spoons has been ungratefully received by Mildred the upper class matriarch and bride's mother,  she bitterly comments “The twelve apostles would have got short shrift here in the Officers Mess at Pankott” . Such is the snobbery, egotism and out of touch world of the upper class. And the second quote – from the wonderful Mabel Layton  as she stood in that same Officer’s Mess and reflected that it hadn’t changed in forty years since she first came there as the bride of the young officer who became Colonel Layton. She recognised that the Mess and the people who inhabited it, the Officer class, the "brightest and best" of England's upper class society were totally out of touch with the reality of  India and the millions that they governed as the Raj crumbled and India gained independence.  She commented ruefully –“I’m not even angry – but someone ought to be!”


As I reflect on our society today and think of the aspirations many of us had half a century ago then I can only sadly conclude that perhaps we haven't made much real progress. Cosmetic changes? - yes. But changing people, values, beliefs - no. In fact, I'm even tempted to think we have gone backwards.  Perhaps, like Mabel Layton suggests, we should all be a bit more angry!