A Point of View by Clive James

Author:Clive James [James, Clive]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781447204169
Publisher: Pan Macmillan UK

Postscript

In the communist world, lip service to elections first became conspicuous after World War II, when the Party apparatus in the satellite countries of Eastern Europe had developed the means to ensure the same 100 per cent results that prevailed in the Soviet Union. In the early days of each satellite country, it was customary for the Communist Party to make a show of tolerating other parties, claiming for itself only the Ministry of the Interior. But the Ministry of the Interior controlled the police, and in the brief course of time the police controlled public opinion. My fleeting mention of Iraq’s new status as a democracy still passed for provocative boldness at the time. Although the likelihood of civil war had begun to retreat early in 2007, almost two years later much of the supposedly progressive media in the West would still have preferred it if Iraq had torn itself apart. Until at least a year too late in the day, the Independent had the headline IRAQ SLIDES INTO CIVIL WAR set up and ready for use. Whatever you had thought of the legitimacy or otherwise of going to war with Saddam’s regime, it seemed a daunting aberration for Western intellectuals to be either claiming that Iraq had not become more free or else, if they conceded that it had, wishing that it had not.

Later on, in 2009, the admirable Noel Pearson published a little book called Radical Hope, a treatise written in his characteristically transparent, rhythmic and evocative prose which goes to the heart of the argument about the position of Aborigines in the country that once was all theirs. For reasons that defy logical analysis, but can only be ascribed to a collective obtuseness on the part of the editorial board, all writings by Pearson were left out of the gargantuan anthology The Literature of Australia (2009), whereas every uninspired polemic by any other Aborigine at all was put in. Political advance can take a long time to work its way through a culture. The advance of liberal opinion on civil rights from Truman through Kennedy and Johnson to the measure of equality that America knows today was a slow process, but at least it happened. Had there been no democracy, there would have been no advance. It should be obvious. Unfortunately it isn’t. An American resident in the UK wrote in to remind me, correctly, that Johnson was no cracker: he was a good ol’ boy. I have left the mistake in the text to remind myself that one should always be careful of American idioms, just as American writers should always check to be reminded that the Albert Hall is the place, whereas Albert Hall is just a chap.

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