The politics of the past
Were a visitor to our planet to be told that the nation in which the economic revolution that has transformed every aspect of human life in almost every quarter of the globe over the last two centuries began, and which for almost a century directly controlled a quarter of the globe and indirectly controlled much of the rest of it, for some reason teaches its younger generations almost nothing of any value about its past, they would surely find this claim very odd indeed. That nation is Britain and that claim, unfortunately, is true.
The upcoming centenary of the outbreak of World War One seems to be sparking a rarely seen mood of reflection in Britain. A heightened sense of collective self-awareness can only be a good thing in today’s world of perpetual change, but the upswing of interest in our nation’s history belies a wider trend. Young people today are astoundingly ignorant of history.
Unfortunately the controversy surrounding Michael Gove’s curriculum reforms have associated this view with right-wing alarmism, and it is true that no reliable studies have been published on the subject. But, say what you like about the ever-provocative Education Secretary, there is something distinctly disturbing about the glee with which this fact was leapt on by the educational establishment as providing grounds to dismiss the perception that there is something amiss with the state of historical knowledge in Britain as little more than a conspiracy theory. They would do well to remember that while anecdotes are not evidence, experience is, particularly when it is almost universal.
I dislike arguing from personal experience, but in this case I think it is necessary. I left school with no meaningful grasp of historical narrative whatsoever. So did all of my friends and my entire school year, and so has a friend of mine who aims to study history at Oxbridge and whose potential I have no reason to doubt. Since this state of affairs was the product of generally competent teaching of the curriculum that 90-odd percent of pupils studied, I have no reason to doubt my right to generalise from it. Take, for instance, the friend that I just mentioned. He has recently finished his GCSEs and did not know in which year World War One began. Nor could he identify a single event that took place in the late 19th century. The Russian Revolution? Nineteen-fifty-something. The French Revolution? Probably before the Russian one, but not sure. He did, despite this, achieve the highest history GCSE grade in his class and can therefore talk at length on the political, economic, and religious causes of the Civil Wars; the life of Martin Luther King; and the circumstances leading to the rise of Hitler. The problem is that absolutely no attempt has ever been made by his teachers to thread any of this disparate collection of facts together and he therefore has no sense of historical perspective.
To those who deride narrative in history on academic grounds I have no response. I know very little about the matter. It should be obvious, though, that if it is possible to learn anything from history of practical use it requires us to draw links between events; and that this requires knowledge that goes beyond the bounds of artificial, hermetically sealed case studies and a rudimentary ability to locate facts in time.
I will take the liberty of assuming that the official position of the government, and of those involved in teaching history, is that knowledge of it is of at least some use in understanding the present. Otherwise—were it purely a matter of idle intellectual curiosity—they would presumably not compel children to study it for nine years and compel taxpayers to pay for this privilege. We need not make any profound philosophical argument, then, to show that the educational system is failing in this respect by its own lights.
My own view is that historical knowledge is important not just for creating an informed citizenry, but for the preservation of national identity itself. In a globalising world, creating a shared sense of heritage is a means of reinforcing the significance—and the salience—of the national ‘we’. As every sphere of interaction and communication becomes more globalised historical identity is, potentially, a constant. And like it or not, the nation-state is a form of political organisation uniquely suited to democratic governance and the nation a community uniquely productive of empathy and compassion. It is unlikely that we would tolerate a coercive institution taking two hundred billion pounds of our money and giving it to the disadvantaged if we did not regard them as fundamentally ‘us’ in a deeper sense than we do humanity as a whole, and we need only take a cursory glance at countries like the Ukraine to see what happens when government is not based on national identity.
Agree with me or not on this matter, it is at least clear that if you share common assumptions about the use of historical knowledge in understanding the present, you should recognise the dismal state of historical knowledge among young Britons today as a serious problem. Far from being a right-wing myth, historical ignorance is a serious national issue.
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Unreasonable discussion
“Democracy”, Clement Attlee once said, “is government by discussion, but it only works if you can stop people from talking.” At a time when politicians could still silence journalists by replying to their questions with the words “no comment”, no doubt the talking Attlee was referring to was the bickering of his colleagues, not the deafening roar of twenty-four hour media coverage. But he could just as well have been thinking of today’s twitter-sphere as yesterday’s cabinet rows.
The distorting effect that the tendency to talk too much can have on politics is constantly in evidence—the weighing up of harms is always biased toward the psychologically salient, the hard-hitting and the dramatic. We are all too keen to reach for our Orwellian lexicons each time the government proposes to change the laws regulating freedom of speech or the right to privacy, and to decry the measure as sinister and authoritarian. But rarely do we stop to consider the fact that the government never acts in isolation from the effects of our own distorted perceptions of the events it claims as justification for such measures. Obviously terrorism is appalling, but how often do you reflect on the fact that, if you are an average British citizen, you are more likely to be killed by a wasp than by Al Qaeda? (1)
Of course none of our irrationality would disappear were our press less free and vibrant and public debate less vigorous. But it would be less harmful. Unfortunately even self-consciously responsible institutions like the BBC find themselves giving in to the temptation to indulge our emotionally-driven judgements, rather than challenge them—how can they not when, in the age of twitter and microblogging, the alternative is to slide into irrelevance? The result is a frenzy of irrationality, with every common bias in political judgement being reinforced, exaggerated, and magnified in significance by the way in which issues are reported on. And the government, ever-terrified of losing power, has little choice but to feed the beast.
In the case of Mark Duggan we may well soon see this tendency exemplified: it is likely that we are about to see a purely personal judgement turned into a political argument. The intensity of the anger with which Duggan’s family reacted to the verdict of ‘lawful killing’ is only to be expected given the strength of family bonds. But the situation does make one suspect that their campaign is driven less by an impartial concern for justice per se than an emotionally-driven desire to see a loved one exonerated. It may be that an appeal hearing in which the family’s concerns about the IPCC’s incompetence are comprehensively examined could satisfy his supporters of its legitimacy, whatever its verdict turned out to be, but I doubt it. Clearly there are legitimate concerns to be raised about the way the police and the IPCC behaved during the investigations, and it may well be that the inquest failed to adequately consider them. The claim that Duggan was a victim of a sinister, ritualistic, ‘execution’, however, is, though understandable, sufficiently bizarre to suggest that no judgement place the moral burden for Mark’s death on the shoulders of the police and the state will ever satisfy her or the rest of the campaigners.
If leave to appeal is not granted, therefore, we can expect the campaign to change its tone—rather than argue that Duggan’s killing was unlawful, they will have to claim it was unjust. We can anticipate a passionate debate about justice the laws governing police killings.
As it happens, there is nothing wrong with these laws. Homicide by the police is governed by the same laws as homicide by everyone else: the defence of self-defence is available only when someone has a genuine belief that their own or someone else’s life is in danger from an assailant, and applies only reasonable force to try to dispel the danger. This requirement is as rigorous as we could reasonably wish it to be; force is ‘reasonable’ only if a so-called ‘reasonably minded person’ would agree, and the courts take this person to be extremely cautious. We might take issue with the fact that there is no requirement for the belief itself to be reasonable; but it is hardly possible to expect perfect rationality of judgement in circumstances of extreme stress. Just notions of when and to what extent to use force can be pretty strongly embedded in people’s psyches; but actually judging when the conditions are met is inevitably a much more subjective affair. We can hardly wish the police to be afraid to defend themselves because of the small probability that they’re too scared to be completely rational.
This analysis is borne out empirically. We Brits are not a trigger-happy nation, and our police are no exception. Police forces use firearms in over ten thousand operations each year; in 2011-12 they only actually fired their guns in fiveof them. Hardly a fact consistent with the narrative of a force that systematically undervalues the lives of young black men. Presumably we want the police to feel safe confronting armed criminals, and the occasional terrible tragedy is a price that we simply have to accept.
Plenty of reasonable people will no doubt disagree with my opinion on police homicides. But is it not slightly disturbing that, due solely to the emotional potency of the issue, their views will be magnified out of all proportion to the strength of their evidence? A debate about police killings initiated by the Mark Duggan campaign has absolutely no hope of being in any measure balanced, and its outcome no hope of being the right one. It is highly likely that our democracy is about be shaken by another thoroughly badly-conducted discussion.
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The Power of Technocrats
Over the last year or so, British political debate has been shaped to an unprecedented extent by the pressure of a fundamentally anti-establishment party. The impact of the meteoric rise of UKIP has, for better or for worse, been undeniable, with all three major parties now forced into discussing policies that only a few years ago they would have considered unthinkable. The UKIP phenomenon, however, should be seen in its wider European context. Across Europe there is a deep sense of malaise and dissatisfaction with the way established parties are conducting politics, and much of it is linked to a perception that politics is too technocratic. When, at the height of the Eurozone’s economic woes, the financial crisis in the propelled technocratic and ostensibly non-ideological governments to power across the region, commentators took note.
Sadly, it is equally true that few commentators provided any kind of coherent critique of this phenomenon except insofar as it related to the sovereign debt crisis. This, one suspects, is because few commentators doubted it was a good thing. Many technocratic governments have since left office, but the appointment of Plamen Oresharski in Bulgaria last summer shows that the phenomenon is dying but not dead, and with the EU’s economic future still looking distinctly uncertain, it could easily revive itself again. Now, therefore, is a good time to take stock and subject it to some much needed political critique.
Technocratic government, the prevailing view goes, is nothing to be feared. Indeed, by cooling partisan rivalry and breaking deadlock it can breathe life into politics and enable governments to cure themselves of their financial ills without doing any long-term damage to our political or social institutions. Certainly, when Mario Monti is compared to Silvio Berlusconi, this seems an extremely plausible idea. But it rests on fundamentally mistaken assumptions about the nature of politics.
Chief among these is the notion that politics can somehow be made a value-neutral business. Technocrats seem to believe themselves to be carrying out a task that requires no deep moral or ideological convictions. Seeking efficiency and stability in the economy is an end almost universally agreed upon as desirable. It does not require any particular ideological leaning to accept that security, prosperity, and growth are on the whole good things whilst bankruptcy, poverty, and falling living standards are generally to be avoided.
The means by which these ends are promoted, however, are inescapably ideological. No economic policy can avoid touching the social, cultural, and political spheres; and these are areas in which precise scientific knowledge is impossible. Whatever the pretences of sociologists and political scientists, no laws of human behaviour are known to exist at this level; nor is it even possible to formulate crude probabilistic generalisations with the degree of certainty characteristic of economics. The variables affecting human behaviour are often too numerous and complex even to be measured, let alone controlled.
Where knowledge fails us, then, ideology must fill the gap. Hence, in broad terms, the left tells that the crisis can be solved by solidarity and collective action via the state; the right, by personal and institutional responsibility and the freeing up of individual ambition from governmental restraint. Even if we could negate the influence of political malincentives and the power of vested interests, it would be naive to suppose, for example, that Cameron and Milliband would agree on an appropriate response to the UK’s economic problems were they locked in a room with reams of figures and given enough time to talk over every aspect of the issue. No social theory is immune from the influence of ideology, and no sensible technocrat can act without social theory.
Indeed, even the ends pursued by technocrats have a moral dimension. In the UK in particular, moderate politicians generally avoid making explicit any moral principles underpinning their policies; but nobody can doubt that it is impossible to justify any political aim except in moral terms. If technocrats accept that it is right to pursue growth and promote prosperity, they cannot avoid making a moral assertion.
Neither of these issues would be problematic were technocrats honest about this fact; instead, however, the pretence to be in some sense value-neutral, to be able to reduce politics to a series of technical problems, allows technocratic politicians to smuggle their own moral and ideological preconceptions into public life without them being subjected to debate and discussion.
All too often, it seems that the morality of technocrats is a particularly callous, cold, and calculating brand of utilitarianism: the greatest disposable income for the greatest number of consumers and everything else an irrelevant distraction. Traditions, cultures, ancient institutions and practices are all obstacles on the road to economic utopia. Protectionism cannot be tolerated because it impedes the exploitation of comparative advantage and leads to an inefficient allocation of resources; nationalism is wrong because it creates unnecessary conflict on the basis of arbitrary group identities; traditionalist sentiment can under no circumstances be allowed to prevent far-reaching, revolutionary reform of political institutions to ensure their total output is maximised and overheads kept to a minimum. Nobody but an economist would wish to live in an economist’s utopia, yet it seems that this is precisely what technocratic governments aim to bring about.
To an extent, this tendency is a result more of respect for democracy than of a conscious plan to revolutionise society. Technocratic administrations, lacking a democratic mandate, feel the need to avoid any areas of contention and focus single-mindedly on economic stability simply because it is one of the few things almost all voters agree on the need for. But whilst this may make their actions understandable, it does not make them any less dangerous.
It would be wrong to speculate too much on the long-term influence of this style of governance, but it is not entirely beyond the realm of fantasy to imagine that before long we could find ourselves sleepwalking into a dismal Brave New World in which everything we hold dear has been sacrificed at the altar of economic efficiency. But if Europeans realise the ugly truth about technocratic government this fate can yet be avoided.
