'The Classroom Experiment' - BBC Two

I'm just watching the first episode. Early days yet, but it may be worth a look

Defence #3

Tomorrow morning the Strategic Defence Review final paper will be presented to the National Security Council. The Spectator and The Guardian both cover what we can expect, and the general answer is 'not much'. From the look of what they say, the new review will be a continuation of the old; gradual reductions in manpower, machines and bases. In fairness with the ending of operations in Afghanistan (probably around 2015) much of the pressure on the defence budget(s) will be ended. Nevertheless there is still, as Richard Norton-Taylor (Guardian) argues, the undecided question - what exactly are the British Armed Forces for? The defence of the homeland? Expeditionary warfare? Both? Or simply what public opinion and the American Government tells us they should be for at any one point?

Let me offer a single point. If the impressively inefficient defence procurement procedures in this country cannot be dealt with, we should scrap Trident. In fact I'm coming increasingly around to the idea that we should scrap it anyway. The fact of the matter is that it is not independent - operationally possibly, but not productively (the rockets are made by Lockhead Martin in the United States. We've been reliant on the Americans to make the missile bits since the failure of Blue Streak in the early 1960s). Is it a deterrent? We cannot out-produce the Americans, and the Soviets had far more missiles aimed at us than we did at them. As the Wermacht showed in 1941-1943, it is substantially difficult too to do damage to a country the size of Russia. Could we damage the Chinese in a similar fashion (more to the point, who are we going to point them at?). Would anyone use them? If memory serves me correctly, James Callaghan (Prime Minister 1976-1979) admitted before his death that he would not, should the Cold War have turned Hot during his premiership. The point of a nuclear warhead is to say to a country that you cannot hurt us without us hurting you in a fashion you cannot easily, or at all recover from. Who is to say that the authors of a nuclear attack will be automatically identifiable though? The Fourth Protocol (Frederick Forsyth) postulated a cover Soviet attack on an American airbase in the UK that would not be identified, and that was written in 1984.

What concerns me is that few of these questions are being openly asked. At a time of serious government cutbacks, our defence is being substantially rearranged without our being able to track how.

From the desk of the THES: Science, religion and dispute

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=413553&c=2 will link you to a Times Higher Education article about science, religion and their compatibility within the Academy. It is a fascinating topic, and one, I would argue, that is highly relevant. Speaking personally I would like to do more work on this - as a historian who is a Christian it's an area which I feel will be of great relevance to me. However even for those who intend to avoid religion and faith this is still a subject that should be picked up upon.

If I had any criticism of the THE piece, it is that it's too focussed on the 'science/religion' divide. As I'm sure I've said before (and if I haven't then I really should have), Christianity is an holistic paradigm - one cannot be a Christian simply philosophically or scientifically. As such this article touches upon one of the key academic methodological questions; to what extent should one's existing prejudices shape one's research. A more extreme example of this is summarised in Jeremy Black and Donald Macraild's Studying History (3rd edition, 2007)*, which has a brief section worth reading on Marxist historiography in the Soviet Union. They point to the work of M.N Pokrovskii, whose A History of Russia from the Earliest Times (1932) was 'the first full scale attempt to apply Marxist economic imperatives to the formation of Russian society and culture'. Now it may be possible, and even advisable, to do research on this subject in order to gain a greater understanding of Russian society and culture. Indeed Pokrovskii was probably someone with a genuine faith in Marxism (and thus in its role in historical analysis). As Black and Macraild point out though Pokrovskii's Short History of Russia (1920) was approved of by Lenin personally. This would seem to indicate that Pokrovskii was probably sailing somewhat close to the rocks of subjectivity and personal projection (topics hopefully covered in that post on Historiography I promised some time ago).

Ultimately it is impossible to be entirely objective about any subject the more complicated one's work on it becomes. To the best of my understanding this applies scientifically as well as in the humanities. The question is whether one's core beliefs stand up to categorical analysis. Now my belief in God has so far - I believe that being a Christian and being an Historian are compatible. You need to be careful though in applying said beliefs. Personal interpretation of relationships is one thing; personal projection of facts another.

I'm aware that some non-believers reading this may doubt whether or not a Christian can really mount a rigorous intellectual analysis. I discovered this passage the other day, and I do take some comfort in it. This is a extract from Job 13, verses 7-10:

'Are you defending God with lies? Do you make your dishonest arguments for His sake?....No, you will be in trouble with him if you secretly slant your testimony in His favour'.

Or more simply, 'Thou shalt not bear false witness'.





* The disclosure of relevant information section: Jeremy Black is my second supervisor.

Back from Cornwall, so here's a post on David Cameron

Which was lovely, refreshing and revitalising.

I'm in danger of repeating myself here, as this is a point I've pressed elsewhere. However I'm listening to The News Quiz while tidying my room and have just heard Sue Perkins describe David Cameron as a 'sweaty-faced Old Etonian'. I can't comment on his sweaty face (only to say that I don't imagine he's the only person to ever have sweated). I've never understood why 'Old Etonian' is such a negative point though. Here's a list of some Old Etonians, from the Eton College website:

Hugh Laurie (actor, comedian, star of House)      
Eton and Selwyn College, Cambridge

Damian Lewis (actor, star of Band of Brothers)  
Eton and Guildhall School of Speech and Drama

Dominic West (actor, star of The Wire)              
Eton and Trinity College, Dublin

George Orwell (writer, 1984 and others)              
Eton and the Imperial Indian Police service

John M. Keynes (economist)                          
Eton and King's College, Cambridge

Humphrey Lyttelton (musician, radio presenter)  
Eton

Hugh Dalton (Labour Chancellor, 1945-47)          
Eton, King's College, Cantab and LSE.

Now you can of course make the argument that Cameron has maintained his upper-class prejudices while those men I've just highlighted shed theirs where they existed. Certainly Humphrey Lyttelton proclaimed himself a 'romantic socialist' after the experience of working in a mine in Wales after he left school. While I was an admirer of Humph's though (and believe me a devoted Clue fan), I'm not sure what makes his political views better grounded than the P.M's. Humph spent his life as a cartoonist, musician and radio presenter, while Cameron has spent his as a political operative and PR consultant before becoming a full-time politician.

Disagree with David Cameron all you want, you are perfectly entitled to and should always be able to. To dismiss him as simply an 'Old Etonian' though is, in my humble opinion, simply lazy.

Off again

Cornwall for a week's holiday. Back next Saturday

The Pope's visit to the UK #2, or 'Ha-hmmm'.

The following is taken from a Vatican Radio transcript of an in-flight interview given by the Pope to several media outlets. I'm indebted to Cranmer for pointing out the issue, and the highlighting is mine: 

'Q. As is well known and as was also highlighted by recent surveys, the sexual abuse scandal has shaken the confidence of the faithful in the Church. How do you think you can help restore that trust?' 

'A. - First, I must say that these revelations have been a shock for me, not only a great sadness. It is difficult to understand how this perversion of the priestly ministry was possible. The priest at the time of ordination, after having prepared for this moment for years, says yes to Christ, to be his voice, his mouth, his hands and serve Him with his whole life, so that the Good Shepherd who loves and helps and guides to the truth is present in the world. How a man who has done this and said this may also fall into this perversion is difficult to understand. It is a great sadness, a sadness that even the authority of the Church has not been sufficiently vigilant and not fast or decided enough in taking the necessary measures. Because of all of this, we are in a time of repentance, humility, and renewed sincerity. As I wrote to the Irish bishops, I think we now realize its a time of penance, a time to renew and relearn humility with complete sincerity. Regarding the victims, I would say there are three important things. Our first interest is for the victims: how can we repair the damage done? What can we do to help these people overcome this trauma, to regain their life and rediscover confidence in the message of Christ? Care, commitment to victims is the first priority, with material, psychological, spiritual aid. Second, the problem of the guilty persons. The just punishment is exclusion from all possibilities of access to young people because we know that this is a disease and free will does not work where there is disease. So we have to protect these people against themselves and find ways to help them, protect them against themselves and exclude them from any access to young people. The third point is prevention in education, in the choice of candidates for the priesthood to be so careful that, as much as humanly possible, we exclude future cases. And I would now also like to thank the British Bishops for their attention and cooperation with both the See of St. Peter and with public bodies. It seems to me that the British Bishops have done a great job in their attention to the sensitivity of the victims and the law and I am very grateful to them for this'. 

(http://www.thepapalvisit.org.uk/The-Visit-Live/Speeches/Speeches-16-September/Pope-Benedict-Interview )

Now there are two ways of looking at this. Firstly that the Pope is trying to say that paedophilic priests cannot be allowed access to children because we cannot rely upon their being able to control their desire to harm. This is, I would think, relatively uncontroversial*. The second is that outlined by 'Cranmer'. If what affects these men is a 'disease', then they cannot exercise free will over their actions (as the Pope himself states in the highlighted section above). To quote from Cranmer's argument: 

'A mortal sin cannot be committed accidentally: a person who commits a mortal sin is one who knows that their sin is wrong, but still deliberately chooses to commits the sin regardless. Mortal sins are therefore premeditated by the sinner and so constitute a rejection of God’s law and love.

But if 'free will does not operate', the paedophile priest has not chosen to sin, for there can be no choice where there is no expression of will. God's law is not rejected, for there is no premeditation where there is no free choice'. 


Ha-hmmm

* There is the question of his actions while Archbishop of Munich, but I don't want to commentate on those here at the moment. 

A Research Trip, and a recommendation

Hello again.

Edinburgh went well. I was there to look through material in the Haldane Papers at the National Library of Scotland. Richard Haldane was a lawyer, politician and prestigious (and prodigious when he had the opportunity) amateur philosopher who was Secretary of State for War between 1905 and 1912, and whose reforms to the Army between 1905 and 1908 form an integral part of my doctoral thesis. There was plenty of material to look through. I'm hoping that without overdoing it, at least one set of letters I looked at can provide a supporting structure to my general hypothesis.

Back now for a week or so before I head off to Cornwall for a week's holiday. Not much blogging to be done (v. busy), but can I point anyone who reads this to the 'Archbishop Cranmer' blog. 'Cranmer', whose identity is a semi-open secret among some I'm told, blogs on politics, religion (from a strongly Christian perspective) and the intersection between the two. Nowadays in the increasingly secular society we live ('secular' in the American constitutional rather than atheistic sense), the intersection and interaction between those two topics is often downplayed if not agitated against. However it is an area worth thinking about. Christ was clear that there should be a division between civil government and faith organisation. Matthew 22:21 is possibly the clearest example here. It's an interesting, occasionally provocative blog, and I would encourage people to read it.

Crossing Continents

A fascinating, and if you're inclined that way spiritually uplifting, look at the explosive growth of Christianity in China over the last few decades.

On that note, off to Edinburgh for a week to do some research.

Bliar? Memory and a former premier

Would you have your peace process
negotiated by this man?

This morning the text of Tony Blair's prime ministerial memoir, A Journey, was released for general consumption. If you're interested, The Guardian have had a man reading it all day. A live blog of that can be found here: 


The release of the memoir is (among the) lead story on the BBC, Independent, Sun, Telegraph, ITN and Sky News websites, alongside the Guardian. The main stories are his semi-endorsement of the Coalition's economic policy and his finally disclosing his side of the 'TB-GB' relationship. 


To be fair these two are interesting. Blair appears to be distancing himself from the Labour Party as it wonders whether or not to continue with the 'New Labour' project (are there echoes of the 5th Earl of Rosebery, Liberal Prime Minister from 1894-5, here?). On a personal level the tone what I've seen so far is amiable - at one point he writes of how nervous PMQs made him feel, saying that he would prefer going through 'that scene in Marathon Man where the evil Nazi doctor played by Laurence Olivier drills through Dustin Hoffman's teeth'


However, can I point you towards Radio 4's Book of the Week? 


Chris Mullin is a former Labour MP and government minister. This week Radio 4 have been broadcasting an abridged version of the the third volume of his diaries (entitled Decline and Fall). It details the transition period between the Blair and Brown premierships, and Mullin's view of that time from his position as a relatively senior Labour backbencher. Blair appears as 'The Man'. He moves among the high political stratosphere, from carefully-planned event to carefully-planned event. 


Mullin's view may be somewhat skewered, so here's a more sympathetic account from the Labour MP Tom Harris: '...there are still many, many Labour Party members who remember Blair as an election-winning genius who, in office, was popular for an awful lot longer than he was unpopular. For those who want us to return to government sooner rather than later, Blair’s book will be a reminder that opposition doesn’t have to be permanent, and that great things can be accomplished by a Labour government, but only if we have a leader capable of appealing to voters beyond our own party’s core'. 


That may be true, but in the end it still outlines the major problem that many have with Blair. Who is the real Tony Blair? He is undoubtedly one, if not the, finest political operators of his generation, a man who led Labour through its first full second, into its first third, terms of office. When one spends one's days projecting a carefully thought out image to the world though, eventually the world begins to lose track of who the original man was. We have a situation approaching that outlined by Jean Baudrillard in his 'The Gulf War did not take place'. Was what we comprehended of Tony Blair a man, a series of images, or a combination of both?

Someone, I forget who, once commented that 'Politicians never lie, because the first people they always convince of anything are themselves'. To an extent that holds true for all people; I would humbly submit that none of us remembers our own pasts completely. Interlaced with any honesty there is the human tendency to romanticise our own histories to make ourselves appear 'better'. With all national leaders though, this tendency assumes the dimensions of a job requirement. Tony Blair is a fascinating man and a deeply influential Prime Minister. It will be up to other people to decide to what extent this memoir reflects truth though. We are still to close to him to see the truth for the image.