Tokyo, Gaza, London: justice, human rights and the international rules-based order

In the 1990s I was invited to a reception to mark the opening of an exhibition from the Museum of Modern Art in New York. After a lowish member of the imperial family had made her entrance and taken a seat in a roped off area of the room from where she presided in absolute silence, drank not a drop, and ate not a morsel while the guests quaffed champagne and tucked into the food, an oldish Japanese man gave a welcoming speech. A Japanese employee of the British Council whispered in my ear: “He’s a war criminal.” I forget his name, but he had served as a young officer in China during the war and had rehabilitated himself as a prominent figure in the art world.

 

I was reminded of my closest encounter with a war criminal when I read Gary J Bass’ monumental book Judgement at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia. The book is, as its title suggests, much more than just an account of the Tokyo war crimes trial, but its scrutiny of the trial’s contribution to the emergence of post-war international law is extraordinarily relevant in these turbulent times.

 

The tribunal that met in a devastated firebombed Tokyo had eleven judges:

 

Henri Bernard (France), on the tribunal because of the Japanese occupation of French Indochina, then under the rule of Pétain’s Vichy French regime.

Delfin Jaranilla (the Philippines), present because of Japanese crimes during the occupation of the islands. The Philippines had been in effect a US colony since the American defeat of Spain in 1898 and the Philippine-American war of 1899-1902. The Philippines had become independent of American rule in 1946.

E Stuart McDougal (Canada). Canada was a supporter of British imperial interests in the trial.

Major General Myron Cramer (USA). The USA had its own interests in the trial. Firstly, the US was really interested only in punishment for Pearl Harbor. Britain’s interest in restoring its empire, China’s search for justice for the Nanjing Massacre and other outrages, for example, were tiresome and caused the trial to last much longer than the US felt was necessary. Secondly, the trial was part of a broader plan to make a Japan rising from wartime ruins a key ally to advance US interests in East Asia.

Erima Harvey Northcroft (New Zealand). Like Canada, New Zealand helped to advance British interests,

Radhabinod Pal (India), who had served as a judge in British colonial India, but after independence in 1947 was a representative of an anti-colonial India. Pal wrote a long dissent arguing that all the indicted should be acquitted because the crimes of which they were accused did not exist, war being a prerogative of nation states. His document has become a favourite of Japanese revisionists who reject the convictions of the Tokyo tribunal. Alone among the judges, Pal has a statue In his honour at the Yasukuni Shrine, Japan’s memorial to its war dead.

Lord William Patrick (Great Britain), who answered to the imperially minded Labour foreign secretary Ernest Bevin. Britain’s interest in the trial was not only to punish Japanese crimes, but to consolidate Britain’s hold on imperial possessions forcibly occupied by Japan.

Bert Röling (Holland), present because of Japan’s occupation of the Netherlands East Indies (Indonesia). Röling wrote a more limited dissent from the final judgement than Pal.

Mei Ruao (China), appointed by the Nationalist government of Chiang Kai-Shek, which during the course of the trial was losing ground to Mao Zedong’s Communists. Mei was concerned primarily with justice for Japanese atrocities in China, most notably the Nanjing Massacre.

Sir William Webb (Australia), the irascible president of the trial, and like the New Zealand and Canadian judges present because of cruelties inflicted by the Japanese on Australian, Canadian and New Zealand POWs, but also as representatives of the Commonwealth and the British Empire.

Major General Ivan Zaryanov (Soviet Union) representing the political interests of Joseph Stalin, most notably concerning military encounters with the Japanese in northern China. Zaryanov approached the tribunal much as he might have a show trial in Moscow and was frequently frustrated by the legal approaches of the other judges, and especially by the determined work of the American and Japanese defence attorneys.

 

The chief prosecutor was an American Joseph Keenan, a personal appointment of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was absent at times because of ill health, and given to frequent drunkenness. When Keenan was absent or incapacitated, the British prosecutor Arthur Comyns Carr assumed control of the prosecution, mindful of British imperial interests. Both pursued the interests of their governments: Keenan to avoid prosecuting Emperor Hirohito and Comyns Carr the restoration and protection of the Empire.

 

The other key player was no judge, but General Douglas MacArthur, the supreme commander in Japan who had his own interests in shaping post-war Japan. MacArthur’s personal interest in the trial was to punish the Japanese for the cruelties of the Bataan death march in the Philippines. He shared the US government’s determination that Emperor Hirohito should under no circumstances be prosecuted. MacArthur had a very personal vision of a democratic Japan, in which the Emperor would be the guarantor of democracy. Indeed, the first post-war election returned to the National Diet, much to the alarm of the US government, some communists and numerous socialists. MacArthur’s Quixotic overweening democracy project was soon derailed by the rise of Communism in East Asia, particularly in China. In this context, from the point of view of the US government the trial was a lengthy and dangerous distraction from building Japan into an anti-communist bulwark. Those accused of war crimes scheduled to be judged in a second and subsequent trials were released, and indeed some became significant figures in post-war Japan. For example, Kishi Nobusuke, accused on crimes in China, and grandfather of future Prime Minister Abe Shinzō, was Prime Minister from 1957-1960.  The rightward shift reflected in the election of Kishi was no accident. The USA alarmed by the Communist victory over the Nationalists in China and the ever-present Soviet threat had decided that there must be limits to democracy in Japan. The CIA accordingly assisted Kishi in forming a conservative bloc whose heirs have ruled Japan to this day.

 

The judges had considerable difficulty in agreeing whether the court had jurisdiction to pursue the proposed charges, and also whether some charges were crimes at all. One of the charges against Japan was the crime of international aggression: the violation of national sovereignty and the acquisition of territory by force. There was a considerable irony here. Several of the nations represented by judges and prosecutors had been guilty of acquiring colonies by exactly the same method: Holland in the Netherlands East Indies, France in French Indochina, the US in the Philippines, and Britain in India, Burma, Hong Kong, Singapore. One charge that was rigorously avoided (much to the annoyance of judge Mei) was the murder of civilians by intensive bombing of cities in China, since the victorious nations had been guilty of exactly the same crime in their carpet bombing of Japanese cities, and nuclear bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki. None of the war’s victors wanted their own conduct to be scrutinized. In other words, the prosecution of charges was highly political and several of the prosecuting nations were as guilty of some war crimes as Japan. A curious irony here was that the Japanese had been particularly sensitive about the racist treatment of Japanese populations in the USA and Australia and had proposed that the founding charter of the League of Nations should prohibit racism. The USA suppressed this proposal at the behest of the British for fear that, if racism were banned, it would be impossible to maintain the British Empire.

 

Western nations have accused Russia of aggressive war in Ukraine, the charge levelled against Japan in Tokyo. There is also talk of crimes against civilians (rape and murder), for which Japan was also prosecuted. And western nations have supported the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) indictment of Vladimir Putin for the crime of abducting Ukrainian children. Even those nations that have not subscribed to the jurisdiction of the court, such as the USA, have applauded this charge. However, the same nations have been reluctant to contemplate the possibility that Israel has committed crimes against civilians in its (legally sanctioned) pursuit of and defence against Hamas. And some have wilfully mischaracterised the indictments sought against Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant for war crimes in Gaza by the prosecutor of the ICC as implying “equivalence” between the crimes of Hamas and the actions of Israel. This is nonsense, as those nations surely know: the commission of a crime by one party does not excuse another from the requirements of international law. Nor do the indictments prove ipso facto, as Israel alleges, that the charges and the prosecutor are antisemitic. Complicated and awful as events in Gaza, Israel (and we must not forget the West Bank) are, they do not exempt any party from its obligations under international law.

 

The political interests so clearly exposed in Bass’ book, are deployed today against the interests of international justice, much as they were in Tokyo. In the case of my own country, the hypocrisy of the world’s greatest practitioner of aggressive colonial war prosecuting Japan for just that crime, is equally alive today. Our government calls for the principled application of international law against Russia and Hamas, while the Conservative Party argues repeatedly that the “will of Parliament” and the “will of the people” relieve us of our obligations to human rights and international law when it is convenient to do so. The Prime Minister himself has proposed withdrawing from the European Convention on Human Rights if it prevents the application of UK laws to deny asylum seekers international protection. Recent legislation has restricted the rights of trade unions to strike (rights already much reduced by a number of laws since the government of Mrs Thatcher). Earlier this month the High Court ruled that a law that prohibited protests that cause more than a “minor nuisance” is unlawful. A judge recently dismissed charges of contempt of court brought by the government to punish a woman who held a placard outside a court stating the simple truth that a jury may rely on its conscience to acquit a defendant, a right first established in 1610 to acquit two Quaker preachers. The government, nothing daunted, has announced its intention to appeal. Fortunately, the forthcoming election may remove the government from office before it can do so.

 

Not only has Israel deployed the specious argument that rulings against it equate a democratic nation with a terrorist Hamas. In a BBC radio interview recently an Israeli MP of Prime Minister’s Likud party, dismissed a ruling of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that Israel desist from attacking Rafah where large numbers of Palestinian civilians have sought refuge, on the grounds that the president of the ICJ is Lebanese. This neatly ignored that fact that the order was endorsed by a majority of 13-2. The fifteen judges of the ICJ are from many countries: Australia, Belgium, Brazil, China, France Germany, India, Japan, Mexico, Romania, Slovakia, Somalia, South Africa, Uganda, USA.

 

Since this blog is titled Mexico and other matters, as I wrote this I came across an article by Jorge Castañeda, a former Secretary of International Relations of Mexico, about the recognition of the state of Palestine by Ireland, Norway and Spain. Castañeda speculated whether the government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) might recognize Palestine. Castañeda’s guess is that AMLO might wish to do so in what remains of his term of office, but that pressure from the USA and from groups in the USA who support Israel might dissuade AMLO from doing so. In the 1970s President Luis Echeverría supported a UN resolution that equated Zionism with racism. The resulting tourism boycott cost Mexico dear. Castañeda also notes that one of the judges who will decide whether to grant the request of the prosecutor of the ICC to charge Netanyahu and Gallant is Mexican. Judge Socorro Flores Liera has had a distinguished career in Mexico’s foreign service and the UN, and was a member of the Mexican delegation that was involved in setting up the ICC. Castañeda speculates that Mexican government, under pressure from the USA, might attempt to influence judge Flores Liera’s decision in the case of Netanyahu and Gallant.

 

Israel’s occupation of Palestine and the misery that flows from it are now decades old. The accumulated distrust and hatred did not begin on 7 October and will not be resolved by an Israeli “victory” in Gaza. It seems that for the USA and other western allies that an “ironclad” commitment to supporting Israel is more important than the application of international law.  For them the rules-based international order is a matter of selective convenience, rather than of principle.

 

Wheelchairs on Eurostar: a small victory

 

The blog of 9 April told the sorry tale of our friend Cedric Álvarez and the lack of support for wheelchair users on Eurostar services at St Pancras Station. Thanks to the journalism and determination of the redoubtable Anna Tims of the Observer, Eurostar has taken steps to improve its support of wheelchair users. The old-fashioned printed newspaper still has some power to encourage change.

 

Anna recently received this statement from Eurostar:

 

“Thank you for bringing this to our attention as well as other discussions we've had over the last month or so. The experience of this customer and your outreach has prompted us to take a very close look at accessibility, which is a top priority for Eurostar. We understand the challenges faced by customers with mobility needs, and we are committed to providing a safe and inclusive travel experience for all.

 

I'm pleased to inform you that, effective May 8th, Eurostar has updated its processes regarding accessibility assistance at St Pancras. Customers will now be assisted in their own wheelchairs, provided their equipment passes a Health Check (visual attached of this process) This measure is aimed at ensuring the safety of our customers and staff while accommodating individual mobility needs and providing a much better experience, bringing SPI into line with other stations for a more consistent service for customers.

 

To support this initiative, we have already trained over 60 staff members, and this training will be conducted every 12 months, with regular refresher courses as needed. Our Customer Assistance Team Members have been briefed on these changes, and our partners at the European Business and Service Centre (EBSC) are updating their information accordingly. Pre-travel communications will also be amended to explain the elements we will be checking.

 

The new guidelines have been developed in partnership with our Safety and Legal teams, and we will continue to work closely with Office of Rail and Road (ORR), ensuring compliance with industry standards.

 

We understand the importance of transparency and would be delighted to welcome you and a some of the customers to visit us and observe the training sessions firsthand. This would provide an opportunity for you to see the measures we are implementing to prioritise the well-being and needs of our accessibility customers.

 

Please feel free to reach out with any further questions or concerns. 

 

We value your feedback and are committed to continuously improving our services.”

 

Cedric and his mother Chantal will visit London at the end of June with tickets provided by Eurostar by way of apologies and we will celebrate our small triumph with a lunch and an afternoon at the theatre. And other wheelchair users will receive improved service.

 

How to make people poor

 

I was born in a house in Swinburne Road, on Whitton council estate, newly built on the northern edges of Ipswich, in 1952. Whitton’s new houses, on roads named after poets and literary figures (Byron, Chaucer, Defoe, Shakespeare, Spenser and so on), were intended for the families of men recently returned from service in the war. My father, Douglas (Doug) Jacobs, had been absent for much of the war in France until the great retreat of Dunkirk, Palestine, and France and Belgium after D-Day. When my eldest brother was born in 1945 Doug was overseas. My sister was born in 1946. Doug was happy to be a council tenant, but his wife, Alice was determined that our family would own its home, and had saved his army pay to accumulate a deposit. She achieved her ambition five years after my birth. My family. Was not well-to-do, but my mother’s careful management of the family’s income kept us well-fed and clothed (Doug was good with numbers but not with money). But if my mother had not been so thrifty my parents could have lived securely in Swinburne Road until their deaths. My first school, a modest walk from the newly-built home in Ely Road that Alice and Doug purchased, was set in another large area of council housing, so many of my schoolfriends lived in council houses. These families, no doubt, were not especially prosperous kike the Jacobs family, but they lived in secure housing at affordable rents.

 

In 2024 Britain things have changed. The prosperous can still live in decent homes, mostly privately owned, but for the poorer members of our society employment, incomes and housing are precarious, the long-term publicly-provided home is a vanished relic of a very different past. Destitution, child poverty and homelessness are increasingly common and accepted as regrettable facts of economic life. The minister responsible for housing, an unctuous, pervasive character called Michael Gove, has stated that he feels regret when he sees the (steadily increasing) statistics of homeless children, but his only answer is to boast of the number of ‘affordable’ homes for purchase to enable families to ‘get on the housing ladder’. This evades the most pressing housing problem for the homeless and poor: the complete and deliberate lack of publicly-provided homes at rents that people can afford.

 

Things began to change in 1980 when the government of Margaret Thatcher introduced the “right to buy” policy which has systematically destroyed the provision of rented public housing. Tenants could buy their homes at a discount of 33%-70%. Councils, which were obliged to sell, also provided loans to finance the sale. The council received only half the discounted purchase price, and rather than use the proceeds to build replacement public rented housing, were obliged to use the revenues to reduce debt. Moreover, tenants’ legal right to buy their homes at subsidized prices, was an insuperable disincentive for local governments to build public housing since the Thatcher reforms made this a loss-making investment.

 

The provision of public rented housing reduced rapidly and many right to buy homes, after a qualifying period, were sold, frequently to private landlords. The minister responsible for this policy, Michael Heseltine, stated that "no single piece of legislation has enabled the transfer of so much capital wealth from the state to the people." The long-term result of the policy has been to create a large (almost 20% of the population) of private landlords, who charge the market rent, not the affordable rent charged by councils. And the quantity of publicly-owned housing has been radically reduced. In effect the transfer of wealth that Mr Heseltine considered to be a roaring success was not to ‘the people’ but to the property-owning class.

 

The contribution of this policy to the manufacture of poverty can be outlined as follows:

·      An increasing proportion of people who cannot afford to buy a home in a society whose economy is founded on an ever-increasing value of housing as a ratio to income.

·      Landlords who control the rental market can, and have, driven up the real cost of renting as a proportion of income. Moreover, rentals are extremely short-term and insecure and tenants’ rights effectively minimal because such rights as they have are very difficult to enforce in a market in which the landlords have enormous power.

·      The state, which Mr Heseltine rejoiced has transferred capital to “the people” has, in fact transferred it to private investors. Moreover, the state continues to do so because the many people who cannot afford private rents receive (if they are lucky) rental support from the government. In short, the government subsidizes the inflation of rents. As rents inflate, a greater proportion of the population is unable to afford them, so they become insecure tenants, seeking less expensive places to live when the landlord increases the rent. Or landlords evict tenants who cannot pay inflated rents in order to charge more.

·      However, the government has not increased the rental subsidy to accord with the levels of rent charged, so rent consumes more and more of the income of even the poorest.

·      Those who cannot afford the rents, or who simply cannot find a landlord who will rent to them (for example, because they receive government housing benefit) become homeless. The very councils, which have been obliged to sell and reduce their public housing stock, are then obliged to provide housing for homeless individuals and families. So they pay inflated rents to private landlords or the owners of hotels and bed and breakfasts. This housing is often of poor quality and in many cases simply not decent or safe.

·      This emergency rented accommodation is frequently insecure, and may be long distances from family, friends, school and work, sometimes in another city.

Thus, the Conservative Party has engineered the largest transfer of wealth from the state to the people, and then to a class of private landlords, and in the process has systematically immiserated a substantial proportion of the population.

 

Another of Mrs Thatcher’s contribution to creating poverty was the political and fiscal consequences of the Community Charge, commonly known as the poll tax, implemented in Scotland in 1989 and in England and Wales in 1990. It replaced a tax commonly known as “the rates,” a property tax, which was based on the notional rental value of a property. This tax had become unpopular but nevertheless to some extent was proportionate to the asset value of the property. The new tax was a flat per capita tax to pay for local government: the rich and the poor paid the same tax. The poor were taxed more and the rich less (as a gleeful member of the House of Lords told me at the time). The political opposition to the tax effectively ended Mrs Thatcher’s career in 1990, and the tax was replaced in 1993 by a curiously hybrid tax, the Council Tax. The tax is personal to an extent, since the residents of a home occupied by two or more adults pays the full tax, while a property occupied by one person pays a reduced rate. However, the rate at which the tax is charged is based on the property’s 1991 value classified into bands A-H, H representing a value of £320,000. Since the valuations have not been updated, and since high value homes are now worth vastly more than £320,000, the tax on the wealthy is very low, while residents of low value properties pay much more as a proportion of the value of their home, and generally of their income.

 

Housing and taxes are not the only tools used by the Conservative Party to manufacture poverty. When the party returned to power in 2010, it adopted rhetoric and policies hostile to recipients of state benefits, in order to label its opponents as supporters of the feckless, lazy poor. The rhetoric was of “skivers” staying in bed while their employed “striver” neighbours went to work. New doctrines of fairness were created. It’s not fair for recipients of benefits to receive child support in proportion to their number of children, so support is provided only for the first two: the result has been increasing child poverty. A tenant who rents public housing may only have the number of rooms dictated by law – it’s not fair for the poor to have ‘too many’ rooms. Thus, a couple whose children have left home, and as a result has one or more bedrooms deemed to be no longer required, must pay extra rent or leave. Moreover, in order to fund tax cuts benefits have not increased at the same rate as inflation because the government’s policy is to force the supposedly workshy into work. Anti-trade union laws, employment laws that hav promoted highly insecure jobs and other government policies have further contributed to increased inequality and poverty.

 

The result is a society in which the number of people dependent on food banks has steadily increased. Moreover, many families can no longer simply not afford food, they cannot afford the energy required to cook a meal, to buy beds or bedding, new clothes, and other essentials of life. Poor families increasingly live in cold, damp, mouldy, rat and cockroach infested insecure and temporary homes. And, of course, Mr Gove regrets that there are many homeless children. I am sure that many social and economic problems worried the residents of the Whitton Estate in the 1950s, but at least families like mine had access to a decent and secure rented home.

 

As I was writing this, I received an email from a Latin American listserve that I belong to entitled “Poverty increases in Peru due to corruption and bad governance.” It seems that Peruvian government statistics record that 29% of Peruvians live in poverty (according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation the figure for the UK is 22%, although I suspect that Peruvian poverty is more severe than that of the UK). The author of the email (Enver Machel Figueroa Bazán, an economist at Syracuse University) writes: “The symbiotic association between the most discredited political groups linked to drug trafficking and illegal mining and the most incompetent and corrupted operators within the public administration has produced some of the wrongest [sic] and most damaging public policies, aimed only to keep big groups of people in a situation of vulnerability, with the intention of capturing their votes for the coming general election of 2026 by giving them direct cash transfers.”

Moe than one million Peruvians (Peru’s population is 34 million) live without access to potable water, sewage, employment, education, health care and banking services. Perhaps the groups that achieved control of the Peruvian Congress in 2021, who Figueroa Bazán blames for increased poverty in Peru learned a few lessons from Mrs Thatcher and her fellow Conservatives.

Más allá de le Esperanza – Eurostar and wheelchair users

 

A few years ago, I was asked to read the script for a new play, entitled Más allá de la esperanza. The literal translation of the title is Beyond Hope, which in English implies that there is no hope, a connotation that is not shared by the Spanish title, which can imply that something positive lies beyond mere hope. The play’s principal character is a disabled young man who, despite suffering from discrimination, is determined to show what he can achieve, and to prove that his life is capable of more than empty hopes. The writer was a young Mexican actor and playwright, and the play was part of his graduation requirements.

 

A poster for a production of Más allá de la esperanza in Guadalajara

As I read the script, I was reminded of a young man Jan and I met when we walked to the bakery near our apartment in Zamora in 2018. We would often meet him sitting in his wheelchair on the pavement outside his family home, sometimes eating one of the sweet rolls made in great quantities at the bakery. I suspect that, if we were to return to Zamora, we might find him still sitting there, for Mexican society offers very little beyond empty hope to wheelchair users unless they are born into wealthy families. They can’t use public transport with ease because buses are not accessible. Jobs are hard to find because most workplaces are not adapted for them. Even if they are able to propel their wheelchair, or if it is motorized, they can’t go independently for a stroll because the pavements are too steep and irregular, and in some case simply absent.

 

A poster for an adaptation of Alice in Wonderland, written and performed jointly by Cedric and a friend

Our friend Cedric, who wrote Más allá de la Esperanza, was the first disabled student to be admitted to the theatre department of the Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara (UAG). The department is in a rather splendid colonial building, and is therefore thoroughly inaccessible to wheelchair users. Worse still, the faculty were even more forbidding when they realized that their new student uses a wheelchair, and can walk a short distance only with some difficulty. They did all they could to persuade Cedric to abandon his ambition to make a life in theatre – his final performance was given a bad grade because his teachers considered it too upsetting to see a disabled person walk on stage.

 

Cedric in one of his more flamboyant roles

But the scepticism and hostility of his teachers never diminished Cedric’s determination and self-belief. He is now studying for a postgraduate theatre degree in Paris. A few weeks ago we met him London: he had travelled on Eurostar to see two plays, Stranger Things: The First Shadow and Little Big Things. The latter is the work of a disabled writer, is performed by disabled actors and was produced in the only theatre in London that is fully accessible in front of house and behind the scenes. This was the first time that Cedric had travelled independently – relying on the ‘accessibility’ service provided by Eurostar to get him from a Paris taxi to the train, and at St Pancras in London to take him from the train to a taxi and on to his hotel.

 

As we settled into an ample Iraqi breakfast at the Samad Al Iraqi on Kensington High Street (before visiting the Leighton House museum, around the corner on Holland Park Road, and fully accessible since its refurbishment), an excited Cedric told us that Little Big Things had changed his life. For he had seen what is possible for disabled actors – including a performer in a wheelchair flying across the stage. This play proved to him that a professional career could indeed lie beyond the realms of mere hope.

 

Then he told us a curious story. He had booked ‘assistance’ on Eurostar. In Paris he had been pushed in his wheelchair to the train together with his suitcase and helped onto the train. When he arrived in London, staff helped him off the train and he sat in his wheelchair, expecting to be pushed to a taxi which would take him to his hotel. However, the Eurostar London staff explained to him that, because of a new policy, they were not allowed to push his wheelchair. Cedric would have to propel it himself, but he explained that he could not do that. After some discussion, the Eurostar ‘assistance’ people asked if Cedric would mind their taking photos of him for their boss and then they pushed him to his taxi.

 

We decided that it would be wise for us to accompany Cedric to the ‘Assistance’ check in at St Pancras in case of any difficulties on his return. After he had handed over his ticket, the man at the ‘Assistance’ desk asked if I was Cedric’s companion. I told him that Cedric was travelling alone. He then explained that Eurostar staff could no longer push the wheelchair. We showed him the confirmation of ‘assistance’ that Cedric had received, and explained that his wheelchair had been pushed in Paris. The ‘assistance’ man replied that in Paris agency staff who were trained to deal with wheelchairs were used, but not in London. However, after making a phone call, he announced that if Cedric would catch an earlier train he could be pushed in his wheelchair.

 

Jan and I were incensed by Eurostar’s treatment of a passenger who needed support. Had the London staff not relented, Cedric would in effect have been stranded in London because the same company had different policies at different stations, but neglected to inform its passengers – indeed Eurostar had promised him in writing a service that it had no intention of providing. Moreover, having been inspired by Little Big Things, Eurostar put Cedric firmly in his place as a disabled person who could not travel independently: the message was that Más allá de la esperanza there is, after all, nothing. So, I wrote to the consumer problems column of the Observer.

 

I received a reply the next day from the redoubtable Anna Tims, who investigates problems and writes the column. Eurostar wrote to Cedric to say that “the team in Paris is not directly employed by Eurostar and an external company is used to offer assistance for our customers. This company is licensed to assist customers with reduced mobility and the staff are trained on [sic] how to manage wheelchairs safely without risk of injury towards [sic] the passengers or the members of staff. Unfortunately, this is not the case in London, and as such staff are not able to offer customers to push their wheelchairs.” In other words, Eurostar London intentionally offers its passengers who require assistance an inferior level of service than it offers in Paris. In practice, this renders the assistance service in Paris useless, since, when the passenger arrives in London, no help at all is provided. (Anna's article is at: https://www.theguardian.com/money/2024/apr/08/left-stranded-and-humiliated-by-eurostars-new-wheelchair-policy?CMP=share_btn_url)

Anna pointed out to Eurostar the difference in service offered in London and Paris, but the company declined to comment. She also pointed out that Cedric’s experience seems to be a breach of contract since the information he was given about Eurostar’s ‘assistance’ makes no mention of the restrictions in London. Furthermore, the company drew her attention to its accessibility policy, which similarly makes no mention of the restrictions. She reported Eurostar to the Office of Rail and Road, “which requires licensed operating companies to publish and abide by equitable access travel policies”, and to London TravelWatch, which campaigns for the rights of passengers. I hope that Ana’s efforts will persuade Eurostar to change its policy, but meanwhile the company has offered Cedric and a companion free return tickets to London. So we will see him again at the end of June, together with his mother. Nevertheless, he will no longer be able to travel independently on Eurostar.

 

Cedric rarely brings up the subject of disability in our conversations, but we had discussed the topic over breakfast before he told us of his experience at St Pancras. I asked him for his opinion of a recent controversy concerning a production of Richard III at the Globe in London. The decision to assign the part to an able-bodied woman was criticized by some on the grounds that only a disabled actor can express authentically the experience of being disabled. Others disagreed, arguing that the very definition of acting implies conveying characters and experiences that are not those of the actor. Some noted the casting of a woman in a traditionally male role, an increasingly common practice in contemporary theatre, as evidence that actors portray that which they are not. Cedric’s view was far more practical: theatre offers very few specifically disabled roles, so if a disabled role is given to an able-bodied actor, the employment prospects of disabled actors (already very limited) are still further reduced.

 

Our friendship with Cedric has taught me that it is very difficult to truly understand the life experiences of a disabled person, although it is not difficult to understand the need for ramps, kneeling buses, accessible toilets, braille signs in lifts, hearing loops and so on. On the other hand, the management of Eurostar either lack the imagination and wit to provide to a truly accessible service, or they simply don’t care.

Cedric with fellow students in Paris March 2024: the group has been organizing a series of conferences

 

Cambridge Ancient, Old and New

 

In September 1970 my aunt Dorothy drove my mother and me to Cambridge, where I was to begin my studies for a degree in Modern and Medieval Languages (MML) at Downing College. A vestige of the Medieval monastic origins of the university was a requirement that all applicants should have an ‘O’ Level in Latin, no matter the subject they would study. [CORRECTION: Judy Allfrey tells me that Cambridge and Oxford abandoned the Latin requirement in 1960. Perhaps my memory is faulty, or perhpas the MML faculty required it.] This was, in fact, useful for me (studying Spanish and French), but less so for my school friend Jon Crosby whose subject was materials sciences. One curiosity of the MML tripos was the requirement that the ability of students to actually speak the two languages that they were about to study should be tested one week before the course began, and never again examined. Thus, I found myself in a Downing College where the only students were other MML initiates, and made my first new friends, including my future best man, Robert Wilson.

 

In the 1970s access to university education in the UK was severely rationed, as a matter of policy, to a very small proportion of those who left school education. Access to the universities of Cambridge and Oxford was possible for a still smaller, carefully selected,  proportion of the population. For women the rationing was still more severe: only three of the colleges were for women, the rest, like Downing, were all male. Funding, however, in my case at least was generous. My local authority (in Ipswich) paid my tuition fees directly to the university and its colleges, and, because my parents’ income was very modest, I was given a very adequate term-time grant, and my parents were given a grant to maintain me during the vacations (my mother shred this grant with me). The tuition of student friends from wealthier families was paid in full, but their maintenance grant was reduced to reflect their parent’s income. If their parents did not top up their grant, they were less financially secure than I was. My final exam results gave me a legal right to three years of graduate research funded by the Department of Education in London, including travel and additional funding for the time I spent in Mexico.

 

The gender divide between colleges, in addition to being unjust as far as female applicants were concerned, was already socially outmoded. And on occasion it had absurd and sometimes hilarious consequences. For example, guests (meaning principally female guests) were required to leave the college by 11pm when the porters would lock the gates. I imagine that few students regretted a female guest being obliged to stay the night because the gates were locked. And Downing students who did not return to their rooms by 11pm had a convenient alternative to the locked gates. At one end of the college’s grounds was the Downing Street science site, separated by a fence of iron railings, one of which was always missing (and when it was replaced another was removed) so that students could get back to college through the gap in the railings.

 

Rather more ridiculous was the dining tradition attached to the lectures of the Maitland Historical Society, founded in 1920.  The lecture had always been given by a male speaker, but, while I was at Downing, for the first time a woman was invited to lecture, and as was traditional on a Wednesday. This caused a serious problem since the college statutes (which could be amended only with the agreement of the monarch) stipulated that women could dine on the college Fellows’ High Table only on a Saturday (and only at the invitation of a Fellow who was not the husband of the female guest in question). So, the question arose: what to do about dining the female lecturer? The distinguished Fellows met to consider the problem and debated three options: 1. Not to give the lady dinner; 2. To declare the lady to be a gentleman; 3. To declare the Wednesday to be a Saturday. The combined superior intellects of the Fellowship decided, after much discussion, to declare Wednesday to be a Saturday. This was also a college which called its students “gentlemen”, but termed its staff, who included “bedders” who cleaned the rooms and made the beds of the gentlemen, those who cooked or served their meals and so on, “college servants.”

 

A few days ago I returned to Cambridge to attend the memorial service for Dr Geoffrey Walker who taught me English to Spanish Translation, the Conquest of Mexico, and Latin American History from 1970-1973. Geoff and his wife Ana had been friends ever since. Geoff began his academic career with a PhD (completed in 1963 and published in 1979 as Spanish Politics and Imperial Trade, 1700-1789, by Macmillan, for whom I was working at the time) about the trade between Spain and the Americas in the 18^th century. Geoff met a charming young Catalan woman, Ana. They fell in love and were married at the monastery of Montserrat in Cataluña. While studying in Madrid in 1958-1959 it seems that Geoff met Juan Carlos, the King of Spain, as I learned at the memorial, in a nightclub. Geoff became a founding Fellow of a new (all male) college, Fitzwilliam College, in 1966.

 

He switched the focus of his academic studies to Catalan language, literature and culture, and became an important figure in the development of Catalan studies in the UK. For his role in promoting Catalan culture he was awarded the Cross of Sant Jordi. He also received the Order of Isabel la Católica after organizing the visit of King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofía to Cambridge in 1988. Geoff, as a tribute at his memorial noted, was of the generation of university teachers, for whom teaching was more important than research (although his output of publications was considerable and wide-ranging) before the UK government’s Research Excellence Framework emphasized research at the expense of teaching. He also smoked his pipe during interviews with applicants to Fitzwilliam and served sherry in student meetings. This marks him out as having his feet firmly planted in a Cambridge that no longer exists, although he enthusiastically supported the admission of women to Fitzwilliam in 1978 (Downing did not get round to this until 1980). He once told me that an argument deployed by those who opposed the admission of women was that this was simply impossible because none of the college rooms had full-length mirrors. Today, the toilets in the college are labelled “all genders”, so things have certainly changed, with the notable exception of those reserved for Fellows, which are still labelled “Ladies” and Gentlemen”.  I don’t know what arguments were made in Downing’s case, but I recall being told by the college Chaplain, with a note of surprise in his voice, at a dinner in the 1980s that the women even manged some of the college societies.

 

The morning after the memorial, I rode the U1 bus through a district of Cambridge that was entirely new to me. For the university is no longer the rather stuffy pipe-smoking, sherry-serving, mostly men-only Cambridge of my days. Cambridge is now a centre for scientific and technological research that has attracted international investors. The Cambridge of 99,000 people in 1970 has become a city of 146,000, and of global significance, in 2021. Housing and infrastructure have not matched this population growth, which has become a problem for the university, especially the cost (and scarcity) of housing. One response to the population pressures is the new suburb of Eddington, built by the university, to provide houses for the wealthy and apartments (for a three-year period) for students and university staff, complete with a Hyatt hotel, and fashionable cafés and restaurants. And between Eddington and the old city centre, are large new buildings that resemble corporate headquarters, but that house the science and technology departments of the university, all moved out from the buildings in the centre that they occupied when I was a student. The investments must be staggeringly large.

 

Chatting to the bursar of Fitzwilliam during the day of the memorial, I realized that much has changed in the nature and balance of power in the university. For example, humanities (such as my department of MML) are now much downgraded in importance, funding and student numbers, while money and student numbers pour above all into science and technology, and on a smaller scale career-oriented subjects such as law and economics. The funding has also changed. The college receives tuition a payment of £4,600 from the central government (the university receives the same amount. This figure that has not increased for years, since it is passed onto the students as a loan, so it is politically unpalatable to do so. The amount is insufficient, so the college tops this up by some £3,500 from its endowment. Students receive a loan for their maintenance costs, which has increased by only 2% a year (inadequate to cover costs but also added to the student loan). So, the student has become a consumer and the college a supplier. And inadequate funding means that some students suffer financial hardship and need support from the college and the university. Students are permitted to work a small number of hours during term-time to supplement meagre funding, something that was unheard of in the 1970s.

 

Another change is a considerable change in student dining. When I was a student, I paid a fee every term to cover the cost of lunch and dinner. Since the food was paid for, students almost always ate communally in the college hall, unless something truly awful (“chicken Stanley”, named after the college Steward drove many of us to a local Indian restaurant). Now lunch is served only in the final (exam) term of the year. Student meals are subsidized, those of the Fellows are priced at cost, and the college makes its margin from meals served to conference delegates, or students from other colleges. Fitzwilliam has enjoyed a mini-boom recently: neighbouring Churchill College has ceased to serve meat, so its carnivores eat in Fitzwilliam.

 

Despite its astonishing growth, Cambridge’s ancient past lives on in a number of ways. John Latham, who picked me up from the new Cambridge North rail station and drove me to the events of the day, told me that he had just become chair of the trustees of Hobson’s Conduit. I must confess that I had no idea what he was referring to until he asked me whether I remember the deep gutters that run along both sides of Trumpington Road as it reaches the city centre. The Conduit was first proposed in 1574 to solve the sanitation problems caused by the King’s Ditch. The Ditch was dug in the 13^th century on the orders of Henry II to defend the southern and eastern boundaries of Cambridge, but the stagnant water due to a lack of drainage was a source of health hazards. Moreover, Cambridge needed a supply of clean water. So, between 1610 and 1614 a watercourse was constructed from springs at Nine Wells, near Great Shelford, to bring water to the city’s marketplace (via the Trumpington Road gutters), and to drain the Ditch. Thomas Hobson endowed the Hobson Conduit Trust to manage the waterway, and (so John Latham tells me) the Lords of the Manor gave the trust a 1,000-year lease. The trust has ancient legal powers that require. It to approve any developments along the Conduit that could adversely affect it. In 21^st-century boomtown Cambridge this is a substantial power and an onerous duty.

 

Hobson, by the way is famous as the origin of the phrase ‘Hobson’s choice.’ He owned a livery stable whose horses delivered mail between London and Cambridge. The horses were also rented to students and academic staff. To ensure that no horse was overworked, Hobson instituted a rota so that each horse had a period of rest. Thus, when a customer rented a horse, he was obliged to take the next horse on the rota. The alternative was not to rent a horse at all – hence Hobson’s choice.

 

As I shared memories of Geoff Walker and ana with others at the memorial, I remembered Geoff telling why he decided to retire. In his translation class, he had always assigned an extract from The Mill on the Floss (as I well remember). He decided that his Cambridge had changed just too much when a student complained that the translation exercise was “weird” and told Geoff that she would complain to her Director of Studies.

Justice, Human Rights, International Law and Individual Liberties

 

I have been reading Gary J Bass’ recent book (a birthday gift from Jan), Judgement at Tokyo, a study of the Tokyo war crimes trials and how they reflected the political climate in which modern Asia was made. During the phase which dealt with Japanese war crimes in China, a defense lawyer argued that the atrocities that Japanese forces committed in Nanjing were no worse than the  rape and plunder of which Chinese troops had also been guilty. Sir William Webb, president of the eleven judges, “sharply added that the rape and murder of civilian women could never be legitimate reprisals, no matter what Chinese troops might have done elsewhere.

 

Nanjing, Bass notes, was “the most notorious case,” but “All across China, villages had been devastated by aerial bombings or artillery bombardment, set on fire, with civilians shot dead.” However, although the trial exposed appalling Japanese crimes, “a whole category of evidence would never be appraised: aerial bombardment. Japanese bombers had pounded cities and towns across China … Yet because such aerial bombardment was not then clearly forbidden by international law – and also because the Allies did not wish to invite discussions about their own bombing campaigns – this evidence would never feature in the Tokyo trial’s judgement.” [my emphasis]

 

In other words, one crime does not justify another, and what is considered a crime and what is weighed in judgement is not a simple act of impartial justice, but also a highly political judgement.

 

This set me thinking about Israel and Gaza, especially in the context of the weekly enormous demonstrations in London and the use which politicians have made of the protests for their own ends. Unsurprisingly, many Israelis are consumed with the appalling crimes of Hamas on 7 October 2023 and the pursuit of those responsible. However, one wonders what Sir William would have said about the ferocity of Israel’s assault on Gaza, the withholding as a matter of government policy of food, water and electricity from the civilians of Gaza, reports of the targeting of civilians by ground forces, allegations of inhumane treatment of detainees, increasing numbers of deaths in the West Bank (not only in Gaza), murders and harassment of Palestinians by “settlers” (surely a euphemism for violent thugs at best).

 

The demonstrations, especially in London, against the devastation and deaths in Gaza have been eagerly seized upon by the Conservative Party to accentuate an attack on dissent and rights to protest, initiated in recent legislation which has already infringed rights of free speech and protest.

 

Once case would be laughable, if it were not indicative of the casual persecution of individuals which Conservative politicians seem to think is justified in the fight against “extremism”. This case involved a young student who participated in an episode of University Challenge (for my non-British friends, this is a long-running TV quiz show). A team of four students (two male, two female, one of whom covered her hair) chose as their mascot a toy octopus. The student who covered her hair, also wore a jacket, the colours of which some considered to be “similar” to the colours of the Palestinian flag. This female student sat slightly to one side of the octopus, while a male student with curly red hair sat at the same distance on the other side. Lady Jacqueline Foster, a Conservative member of the House of Lords, wrote on X a demand that the female student be expelled and arrested [my emphasis]. Her reasoning was that the octopus was an antisemitic symbol (apparently, the tentacles of an octopus are used as a metaphor of the way that antisemites consider that Jews control the media, business etc.) As far as I can tell from the press coverage, the only reason that Lady Foster concluded that the female student was responsible was that she was sitting close to the soft toy and that her appearance suggested that she is a Muslim. However, the red-haired young man who sat equally close to the octopus was not suspected of antisemitism, and the other two members of the team were not under suspicion because they were seated further away from the toy. Lady Foster’s facile and deeply prejudiced judgement (if she can be credited with possessing that quality) is characteristic of the current government and its legislators. As it turned out, the four members of the team jointly chose the octopus, and the episode was recorded before the October acctaks.

 

At about the same time as Lady Foster advocated immediate retribution without any evidence, the government minister responsible for science and technology wrote to Research England, a committee that advises the government’s science funding body on matters of equality, diversity and inclusion. The minister, Michelle Donelan, demanded that two scientists recently appointed to Research England be investigated on the grounds that they had “shared some extremist views on social media”. It would seem that Ms Donelan’s rush to judgement demonstrates that judgement may be a quality which she lacks, like Lady Foster. For, not content with writing to Research England, she posted her letter on X. Had she been content to simply send her letter and wait for the results of an investigation, which would have exonerated the two scientists, no more would have been heard of the matter. However, she posted the letter on X, was threatened with legal action and the government has been obliged to pay damages to one of the scientists.

 

It is worth bearing in mind these two incidents, at once nasty and fatuous, when we consider the Prime Mister’s recent speech (unusual because he spoke outside 10 Downing Street) which claimed that “extremist groups are trying to tear us apart.” Lady Foster and Ms Donelan would seem to be doing their bit to “tear us apart”. They are ably assisted by the former Home Secretary Suella Braverman who has decided that demonstrations calling for the ending of the slaughter of civilians in Gaza are “hate marches” and has derided those who eat tofu or read The Guardian (as Jan and I do: read The Guardian, not eat tofu). A former deputy chairman of the Conservative Party has likewise done his bit by telling us that Islamists have taken control of the Mayor of London. The Mayor’s last name happens to be Khan, which surely labels him as an unreliable type just like the student wearing a headscarf while being in proximity to an octopus.

 

The government’s Prevent Programme is intended to “prevent vulnerable people from being drawn into terrorism”. Citizens generally, but in particular, public officials and others such as school or university teachers, are encouraged to report those whom they judge to exhibit behaviours that might indicate that they may be drawn into terrorism. The consequences of being referred may seem fairly innocuous, such as being referred to a mentor to receive support, but individuals may also be subject to police or anti-terrorism investigation, and possibly prosecution. You might assume, therefore, that careful judgement would be made before referring someone to Prevent. However, a school in London recently held a Children in Need Day and invited children to come to school dressed as a child in need. The parents of children who came dressed in the colours of the Palestinian flag were sent letters telling them that if they persisted in expressing political opinions, they would be reported to the Prevent Programme. Three years ago an 11 year old boy was referred to Prevent by his teacher because he had advocated giving “alms to the oppressed” (the teacher interpreted alms as arms).

 

Meanwhile the Communities Secretary, Michael Gove, is preparing to implement a new definition of extremism: apparently, this might include socialism, communism, advocating animal rights, anti-abortion and anti-fascist opinions, Islamism, extreme right-wing views. Given recent government rhetoric, I suspect that advocates of decisive action to mitigate climate change will be included. The government would, it seems, refuse to deal with anyone who holds such views, and presumably individuals who hold such views may be “referred” to Prevent. I asked a friend in the USA who was a judge what a US judge would say about the expression of such opinions. He replied: “All of those expressions are protected speech the government cannot prohibit or punish.” The US has its own problems with free speech, mostly from politically inspired measures to prohibit “woke” ideas and suppression of people who don’t conform to gender stereotypes, but our government is going much further.

 

In a world that has become much more dangerous and in which rule by violence, intolerance and corruption seems ever more prevalent, it is unpardonable that our government has decided to use divisions and hatred as desperate tools to restore its fortunes – fortunes undermined by the government’s own stupid and unprincipled behaviour.

 

Which brings me back to the Tokyo trials and Gaza. After hearing evidence of Japanese crimes in China, the Tokyo tribunal turned its attention to Pearl Harbor. There followed the examination of evidence of atrocities in Singapore, Hong Kong, Burma, Vietnam, the Philippines and the Netherlands East Indies (Indonesia). These charges were brought by prosecutors not from the (future) independent nations) but by prosecutors from the countries’ colonial occupiers. The author highlights the irony of prosecutions brought by colonial powers which claimed that their sovereignty had been violated: sovereignty acquired through the violent conquest of the previously independent nations and the killing and exploitation of their peoples. The irony was particularly acute in Vietnam where the French forces whose human rights were violated by the Japanese were Vichy French, allied to the Nazis and the Italian fascists.

 

Right and wrong, justice and vengeance, then are not simple black and white givens, especially in our 21^st century.

Teltow’s Turnips and the History of Berlin

 

At the end of January, Jan, David and I accompanied John to Berlin, where on his birthday on 2 February, he was to undergo the defense of his PhD dissertation at the Free University of Berlin. More of that later.

 

While John prepared in his hotel room, Jan, David and I did a little sightseeing. Because the university is in Dahlem, part of the old American zone, we stayed at our usual hotel in the suburb of Lichterfelde Ost, which was convenient for transport links and restaurants and shops. Transport was rather more tricky than usual because of strikes and the closure of a large part of the S Bahn line through the centre of Berlin, so David suggested a short ride south to the station at Lichterfelde Sud and a walk to Teltow at the end of the S Bahn line. As we crossed the boundary of Lichterfelde, the southern extent of Berlin, we entered Teltow in the municipal district of Potsdam.

 

Teltow's avenue of cherry trees

Four decades earlier, we could not have strolled into Teltow, for this was the dividing line between the GDR and West Berlin. Today the line of the wall is marked by an avenue of cherry trees planted in 1990 by the Japanese broadcaster TV-Asahi. We followed the long rows of trees to the Teltowkanal and a pleasant canal-side path through the woods that line the waterway – 40 years ago the area was stripped of vegetation and lined by fencing and watchtowers, since the other side of the canal was Lichterfelde and West Berlin.

 

After walking for a while, we came across two commemorative markers with information about some of those who died trying to cross the canal to the western side. One rather sad case was that of Roland Hoff, who had fled to the East to escape a drunk-driving charge, and then found himself confined there by the newly erected barriers. He protested about the closure of the border and was dismissed from his work for ‘absenteeism’ and charged with ‘inciting slander against the state.’ Roland decided not to attend court for his hearing, but rather packed his belongings (they must have been very few) and sent them by mail to his mother in Hanover. Then he mingled unobserved with workers carrying out maintenance on the canal. He jumped into the water and began swimming to the West Berlin side, but four border guards shot him. His mother was not told of his death. To guard against attempts like Roland’s to escape across the canal, the East German authorities took some care to ensure only trusty types were allowed to live in Teltow. They slipped up in Roland’s case.

 

Breite Strasse, Teltow

Teltow was was first mentioned in a deed dated 1265, but it must have been founded earlier because its church of St Andrew dates to the 12^th century (although the present church was built in 1812). Lyonel Feininger depicted the church in Teltow II, painted in 1918. Almost all the other buildings in central Teltow were demolished in the 1960s and the town ‘redeveloped’. Still, there’s a reasonably pleasant central, mostly traffic-free, area which conveys some flavour (I imagine) of the old Teltow, much better than do the 1960s apartment blocks and shopping area beyond where the traffic roars constantly by. Nevertheless, the town hall has a tourist office. I think we were probably the only tourists to visit it that day, probably all week.  There we discovered that the culinary delicacy of Teltow and its region is a prized variety of turnip. Perhaps poor Roland Hoff was able to enjoy some before border guards brought his life to a premature end.

 

The church of St Andrew, Teltow

Our other visit during this trip was to the Berlinische Galerie Museum für Moderne Kunst, a modern art gallery in a converted industrial building. The permanent collection surveys the art scene in Berlin from the late 19^th-century on. The art simultaneously tells the story of the rise of Berlin from sleepy provincial town to national capital.

 

Max Liebermann's villa at Wansee

The first works in the gallery are showy, traditional pieces designed to please a regional potentate. One of the first pieces to signal a new era of experimentation is a self-portrait by Max Liebermann (1847-1935). At the turn of the century Liebermann was the leading figure in the Berlin Secession, inspired by avant garde experimentation elsewhere in Europe, especially the French Impressionists. One of Jan’s favourite visits during our trips to Berlin has been the Liebermann Villa, on the shores of Lake Wansee to the south of the city. Liebermann and Alfed Lichtwark, director of the Hamburger Kunsthalle, designed the villa’s garden, which Liebermann lovingly portrayed in many paintings. The villa, much changed after it was seized by the Nazis, has been restored to something close to its condition in Liebermann’s days, as has the garden.

 

Liebermann's self-portrait

As one browses the collection, one is reminded that the current borders of Europe, which politicians encourage us to consider inalienable and immutable, and to be used to keep others firmly out, are really no such thing. Theo von Brockhusen (1882-1919), a fellow member of the Berlin Secession, was, we are told, born in German Marggrabowa, now Olecko in Poland. Von Brockhusen’s Beach with Bathing Machines, 1909, clearly documents the influence of French Impressionism, and particularly, I think, of Van Gogh.

 

Von Brockhusen, Beach with Bathing Machines

Eugen Spiro (1874-1972) reflected another new European style, Art Nouveau, in his work. The model in his portrait The Dancer Baladine Klossowska (Merline), 1901 is Spiro’s sister, herself a painter of the Berlin avant garde, who married the painter and art historian Erich Klosskowski. Spiro’s life again reminds us of the vagaries and tragedies of European history. He was born in Breslau, in Silesia, now Polish Wrocław, a town which has ‘belonged’ to Poland, Bohemia, Hungary, Austria, Prussia and Germany at various times. Like many a Jewish artist of the first half of the 20^th century, Spiro ended his life in New York.

 

Spiro's portrait of his sister Baladine

Hannah Höch (1889-1978) was a Dadaist, whose work was much concerned with gender identity, and who liked to poke fun at conservative Weimar society. Roma, 1925, shows us a playful, yet acerbic, personality who enjoyed provoking those she disagreed with. Her art was a natural target for censorship under Nazi rule as Entartete Kunst (‘degenerate art’). Although other members of the Berlin Dada group left Germany, Höch stayed, living quietly in a remote Berlin suburb where she continued working until her death.

 

Hannah Höch, Roma

Otto Dix  (1891-1969) was another member of the Berlin Secession, famous particularly for his fiercely anti-war images based on his experiences in the German army (he volunteered for service and was awarded the Iron Cross second class). Like Hoch’s Dada works, Dix’s depictions of war were exhibited by the Nazis in Munich in 1937 as Entartete Kunst. Dix, however, was also a portraitist and The Poet Iwar von Lücken, 1926, is one of several portraits of this avant garde poet who lived in severely straitened circumstances. Dix depicts him as a lanky, undernourished man living in a garret that would have served well as a stage design for La Bohème. Oskar Kokoschka also painted several portraits of von Lücken (1874-1935), but the audience for his work was tiny and, apparently he published only one edition of poems (in 1928), of which only two copies remain.

 

Dix's portrait of Iwar von Lücken

Georg Schrimpf (1889-1938) was a self-taught artist and, like Dix, a member of the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) movement. His Two Girls at a Window, 1928, is a charming image sandwiched between the horrors of two world wars. Schrimpf, who was born in Munich, became a professor at the Royal School of Art in Berlin but was fired in 1937 for having been a member of a socialist organization, and public exhibitions of his work were prohibited.

Schrimpf, Two Girls at a Window

 

One of the ironies of the avant garde, of course, is that sooner or later it becomes a rear guard, as Felix Nussbaum’s The Folly Square, 1931, suggests. Nussbaum (1904–1944), a surrealist, depicts a group of art students rebelling against the strictures of their elders and betters who, once innovators now uphold out-of-date traditions. Max Liebermann himself is shown on the roof of his house near the Brandenburg Gate painting a self-portrait held by Victoria, goddess of victory (from the victory column to the right). Felix and his wife, as well as his parents and several other family members were murdered at Auschwitz.

 

Nussbaum The Folly Square

Berlin’s history is, of course, ever present wherever you go in the city. As a visual overview the Berlinische Galerie is a s good an overview as you can get, and unlike most of the landmarks and tourist sites, it is a testament to human creativity, dissent, a refusal to conform and the questioning of what others tell us is the norm and good for us. The visitor also notices that many of the German artists on show were born in places that are no longer in Germany, and many died elsewhere, driven by Nazi dictatorship to take refuge in other countries, while others less fortunate or who for some reason did not flee died for their art or beliefs.

 A panoramic photo of Potsdamer Platz after the enf of the war converys powerfully the enormous damage the city endured, yet still people are seen going about their lives.

Potsdamer Platz (detail)

To return to John’s exam on the afternoon of Friday 2 February, he gave a 30-minute presentation of his dissertation to five professors who then grilled him (grilled is the word) for almost an hour. We were then asked to leave the room so that the professors could confer. When we were asked back in, we discovered that our son now has a PhD and were all poured a glass of sparkling wine to relieve the tension.