Prorogation and humble addresses

The former Black Rod with his rod

In the early hours of this morning (10 September) an official read to the leader of the House of Lords the following words: “My Lords, it not being convenient for Her Majesty personally to be present here this day, she has been pleased to cause a Commission under the Great Seal to be prepared for proroguing this present Parliament.” 

The current Black Rod

An official called Black Rod is then despatched to summon the members of the House of Commons to the House of Lords. There, representatives of the Lords greet the members of the House by doffing their caps (or in the case of female Lords, nodding). A list of bills that are to receive the Royal Assent before Parliament is prorogued is read out, and after each bill the Clerk of Parliament declares in Norman French “La Reyne le veult”. (Remember that the Normans invaded us in 1066).

 

Lords doffing

Many opposition MPs remained in the House of Commons singing The Red Flag and other songs. A small group of MPs tried to prevent the Speaker of the House leaving to go to the House of Lords, but were unsuccessful.

Yesterday was a busy day. The House passed a bill that requires the Prime Minister to request an extension of EU membership if he is unable to negotiate an exit agreement by 19 October. This is designed to prevent a “no deal” Brexit, in preparation for which the government has spent billions of pounds, and almost all its time in recent weeks. The Prime Minister has declared that he will not request an extension. There are apparently 20 or more ways that he could achieve this. The most obvious, is to reach an agreement with the EU. Another proposed plan is to threaten to disrupt EU business so severely that the EU cannot tolerate our membership any longer. A drastic alternative would be to resign, in which case the opposition might form a government and be blamed (or congratulated, depending on your view) for not leaving the EU on 31 October. A radical alternative would be to send two letters to the EU on 19 October: one requesting an extension and one declaring that the government does not really want one. This is probably illegal. A still more radical procedure would be simply to ignore the law. It is possible that the EU will refuse an extension on the grounds that the UK is a thorough nuisance. The French President is known to have lost patience with us. I cannot criticize him for feeling so. In sum, nobody knows what will happen.

There were two humble addresses. These are non-government motions, formally structured as a request to the monarch, used by the opposition to propose motions without government approval. The Speaker has to allow such addresses. Speaker Bercow did just this and also announced his resignation by 31 October, timed to ensure that the current Parliament elects his successor. Given the Parliamentary arithmetic, this means that the Conservative Party cannot choose its favoured candidate for Speaker. The Conservative Party loathes the current Speaker because he has made several important rulings that the government does not like.

Dominic Grieve, MP (left), giving the first humble address

The first humble address, requires the government to deliver to the Commons all communications made by a list of named government advisers concerning prorogation and planning for a “no deal” Brexit. In addition, it requires the government to disclose its assessment (a document known as Yellowhammer) of the effects of a “no deal” Brexit. This motion was passed.

The second, moved by the leader of the opposition, prohibits the government from ignoring an Act of Parliament (in particular the bill concerning extension of EU membership mentioned above). The motion passed.

Before the end of business yesterday the government made one final attempt to call an election on 14 October. However, the motion failed to receive the necessary majority.

Parliament is now prorogued from 10 September until 14 October. Except for the option of reaching an agreement with the EU, the government’s room for manoeuvre appears to be severely limited, unless somebody has a very cunning plan indeed. It is now too late to hold an election before the end of October. The big question for the moment, therefore, is whether or not the government reaches an agreement with the EU, and if not whether it agrees to request an extension of membership.

NOTE: because I did not post them on my blog previously, I am copying below two notes I sent earlier this month concerning the current political embroglio.

WRITTEN 5 September 2019:

First of all, the basic facts. The House of Commons passed both the first reading and the second reading of a bill that obliges the Prime Minister to seek a delay of Brexit in order to avoid a non-deal exit. The combined opposition had a majority of 28 out of 627 MPs who voted. As these things go that is a large margin by which to lose. The second reading means that the bill now goes to the House of Lords.

The government then moved a motion to call a general election under the Fixed Term Parliaments Act. This was lost by 298 for to 56 against (the Labour Party abstained). The government needed 424 votes to carry the motion. You can do the math.

In theory, therefore, the government is legally obliged to do something it has vowed not to do (delay Brexit beyond 31 October) and cannot call a general election, which is the usual way the government would escape from this trap, because it cannot get enough votes to call one. The government has these remaining options:

·      To instruct its peers in the House of Lords to filibuster the bill obliging the government to seek a delay. At 01:30 this morning the government decided not to do this. Thus, the bill will pass. There must have been an undeclared motive for failing to obstruct the bill’s progress.

·      Pass a new bill designed solely to call a general election. This would override the Fixed Term Parliament Act and would require a majority of one vote. The government now has fewer MPs than it did on Monday because of defections and withdrawing the whip from 21 Conservatives who voted against the government, and one defection. Thus, the Conservatives have 289 MPs. They can count on 10 DUP MPs from Northern Ireland: total 299. If my maths are right, the Labour Party plus other parties absolutely opposed to the government have 273 votes. If the MPs expelled from the Conservative Party vote with the opposition, the total would be 294. Leaving aside a few odds and ends (Sinn Fein who do not attend the House of Commons and a few others). This means that the Scottish National Party has the votes to decide the matter: 289 Conservatives + 35 SNP = 324, a majority of perhaps 25. The government may now try to split the SNP from the rest of the opposition.

·      Resign, in which case the Labour Party might try to form a coalition government. This would end Mr Johnson’s career

·      Act on the instructions of the bill currently before Parliament and seek an extension to Brexit. This would wreak great damage on the Conservative Party and would likewise probably end Mr Johnson’s career.

I have been considering whether Mr Johnson has miscalculated, or whether all of these events are going to plan. His behaviour indicates that from the beginning his plan was to have a general election, in which Brexit would be the key issue so that he could portray his opponents as surrendering to Brussels. Conservatives now include the work “surrender” in every utterance. He prorogued Parliament in order to reduce the time available to Parliament to challenge his plans. He then deployed a mixture of aggression (threats to end the careers of opponents in his own party) and cajoling (trying to persuade pliable MPs to wait until 17 October to debate a new arrangement that he claims he can negotiate). If he had succeeded in achieving Brexit on 31 October he could have campaigned in an election as the hero who rescued us from Brussels. If he were to be frustrated by the opposition, he could call an election and campaign to save us from the “chickens”, or “great girls’ blouses”, who passed the “Brussels surrender bill” (all these insults have been used in the last day or two).

The Prime minister’s problem is that his own actions have deprived him of a majority in Parliament. His other problem, is that Mr Corbyn, the Labour Leader has not been goaded into an election until he is ready (i.e. until a no-deal Brexit has been prevented and possibly until after 31 October). To call an election by passing a new law through Parliament he needs the support of a party big enough to give him a majority. The only option is the SNP. Now, the SNP oppose Brexit entirely and loathe Mr Johnson. However, the party exists to call a referendum on Scottish Independence, and its leaders may calculate that Mr Johnson is so unpopular in Scotland, that in an early election they can win more seats in parliament and achieve their referendum.

Finally, the Prime Minister’s behaviour has appalled a large element of his party and there have been protests about his handling of the government’s business this week. Indeed, Jo Johnson, the Prime Minister’s brother and a cabinet minister, has resigned from the government and will not stand for election again because he disapproves of Mr Johnson’s behaviour. He will have to work very hard to avoid more defections.

WRITTEN 4 September 2019:

Parliament returned from its summer recess yesterday at 2:30pm. A lot happened that afternoon.

As you will recall, the Prime Minister had already asked for the Queen’s consent to prorogue Parliament at the end of this week, so time for those opposed to his Brexit plans was very short indeed.

In order to get his way, Mr Johnson did the following before Parliament resumed:

·      He claimed that negotiations with the EU are progressing well and that to vote against him would undermine those negotiations and make a no-deal Brexit more likely. MPs should therefore do nothing to obstruct his negotiations, and in any case would be able to debate the results of negotiations after the meeting of EU heads of government on 17 October. The problems with this line of argument were:

o   His opponents do not believe that Mr Johnson is negotiating at all and is preparing for a no-deal Brexit while pretending the opposite. In sum, their argument is that he cannot be trusted. There is plenty in Mr Johnson’s past to support that judgement of his character and veracity.

o   The EU is not aware that Mr Johnson is negotiating with them and has said so publicly.

o   A debate on 17 October is too late to take an effective action.

·      The government “whips” (who instruct MPs how to vote) told Conservative MPs opposed to the Prime Minister’s strategy that if they vote against the government they would have the “whip withdrawn” (i.e. be expelled from the party) and be “deselected” (not chosen as a candidate) at the next election. In effect, this is a threat to end the political career of the rebels, including those who a few weeks ago were government ministers and Winston Churchill’s grandson, Nicholas Soames.

·      He met many of the “rebels” for an hour yesterday morning to press them to vote for him. The meeting was by all accounts rancorous and a failure.

·      Declared that a vote against him would be considered  a vote of no confidence and that he would move a motion to dissolve Parliament and call a general election. However, under the Fixed Term Parliament Act two thirds of MPs must vote to call an election. The question is whether the other parties will decide to fight an election on a date and on terms decided by Mr Johnson.

In short, the Prime Minister used all the tools at his disposal to prevent defeat in Parliament.

The government lost the vote 328-301. During the debate one Conservative MP theatrically crossed the chamber to join the Liberal Democrat Party as Mr Johnson was speaking. A further 21 voted against him. Mr Johnson then declared his intention to call an election. The leader of the opposition, Jeremy Corbyn, who alone has enough MPs to provide the necessary majority, stated that he would not agree to an election until legislation is passed to rule out a no-deal Brexit and instruct the government to seek further time to negotiate with the EU.

Parliament will debate a bill to prevent a no-deal Brexit today.

I suspect that Mr Johnson began the day thinking he had all, or almost all, of the cards in his hand. This morning he has few cards left unless the opposition gives him an electoral card. He does have one card left. The legislation must pass the House of Lords. In theory, Conservative peers could filibuster to talk the bill out of time, but I understand that the leader of the Lords intends to try to prevent this.

Is AMLO’s bite worse than his bark?

If you were to translate for a Mexican friend the phrase “his bark is worse than his bite”, your friend might interpret it quite differently than you do. In Mexico the bite (la mordida) is a bribe. Now, although Mexico has a deserved reputation for corruption, other nations are also plagued by public dishonesty. When I lived in Washington, D.C., in the late 1970s the governor of Maryland was

Senator Huey Long

convicted of taking bribes and sentenced to jail. When he and his wife left the governor’s mansion they took with them some of the official furniture. A Mexican who reads Robert Penn Warren’s brilliant book All the King’s Men, about Huey Long, governor of Louisiana from 1928-1932 and a US Senator until his assassination in 1935, would instantly recognize Long’s style of politics. In the UK, a publishing company that employed me for 27 years was found to have bribed an African politician to win a World Bank contract. And it is generally accepted that the City of London's lawyers, banks and financial advisers help to process transactions on behalf of individuals whose sources of wealth may not be entirely honest.

We often take holidays in Sagunto, in the

The Trama Gürtel spread across Spain

province of Valencia, Spain. For many years, I followed in my holiday newspapers the gradual unfolding of a nationwide corruption scandal known as the trama Gürtel (“Gürtel conspiracy”). Valencia was the heart of the racket. The President of the province of Valencia was found to have received a considerable number of very expensive suits from a tailor in Madrid. He had no credit card receipts, he explained, because he had paid in cash. The mayor of Valencia acquired large numbers of designer handbags which she was fond of carrying at her public appearances. The nonchalant sense of entitlement reminded me of stories of corrupt Mexican politicians. The scandal and the associated investigations spread and carried on for years, eventually reaching the highest levels of government and forcing the resignation of the Presidente de Gobierno (Prime Minister) of Spain.

However, although Mexico is not uniquely familiar with corruption, bribery is uncomfortably common, and high level corruption is generally practiced with impunity unless it becomes too brazen. I once met at a party the wife of the police officer in charge of the Mexico City car pound. He had just been jailed for systematic theft of car parts, which had been exposed in a newspaper. His wife was indignant: he had done nothing wrong! Arturo “EL Negro” Durazo, chief of Mexico City police 1976-1982 was found to own several expensive homes, including one in Los Angeles. When asked how he could afford these homes on his modest salary he replied “I am thrifty”. All was well until his patron, president José López Portillo, left office. In 1984 Arturo was arrested in Puerto Rico, extradited to Mexico, tried and jailed and his properties confiscated.

 

Arturo "El Negro" Durazo, centre

Retribution does sometimes reach even those at the highest levels of power. The brother of former

President Luis Echeverría Álvarez in the 1970s

president Carlos Salinas de Gortari was jailed (but not until after his brother left office) for arranging the murder of a politician and money laundering, possibly linked to drug cartels. The hand of Mexican justice even once threatened to put a former president on trial. Luis Echeverría Álvarez, was president from 1970-1976. In the previous administration, Luis had been Secretario de Gobernación, in charge of public order. He is generally suspected to have ordered the massacre of students in Tlatelolco in 1968, and the killing of more students, known as the Corpus Christi massacre, during his presidential term. In 2006 a court ordered his arrest and imprisonment on charges of murder, but he was freed by a federal court before he suffered the indignity of imprisonment.

Echeverría’s near-arrest caused a sensation because tradition dictates that no president allows the prosecution of a predecessor. That tradition may be about to change under AMLO. The administration of his direct predecessor, Enrique Peña Nieto (known as EPN), is reputed to have been notoriously corrupt. Indeed, accusations of personal corruption were made quite early in his presidency (this in itself is very unusual). It was discovered that one of his homes (known as the White House) was built by a contractor to whom he had given contracts while he was governor of the State of Mexico. EPN appointed an official to investigate. The conclusion was that the cost of $6 million was paid entirely by EPN’s wife, a wealthy soap opera actress, from her earnings. Now, it is true that soap operas are a huge business in Mexico, but $6 million is an awful lot of Mexican pesos.

 

EPN and his wife (they are now separated)

In the first year or so of AMLO’s administration, several high-ranking officials of EPN’s government have been arrested and accused of corruption. Some of those charged have claimed that EPN knew all about their activities. One example, of corruption under EPN’s administration is the Estafa Maestra (“Education Racket”). The estafa involved the award of contracts to assorted universities to carry out work on behalf of the federal government. The universities then set up companies to carry out the work but none was carried out. Nobody quite knows where the money paid for work not done ended up. The question now is whether AMLO allows, or at least fails to prevent, EPN being called to testify. If he does, he will have created an important precedent. Indeed, the precedent could be applied to him by his successor should he stray from the straight and narrow.

AMLO at his daily press conference known as la manañera (morning event)

AMLO was elected with a landslide because he promised to reduce violent crime (so far it has increased), to do more for the poor (he has put more money into social programmes) and to end corruption. Whether EPN is to some degree called to account will be a key test of the last promise.

AMLO (left) and Manuel Bartlett (right)

Like many political promises, AMLO's commitment to end corruption is not as simple or clear cut as it seems at first sight. Mexican democracy is relatively new: the first freely elected president (Vicente Fox) took office only in 2000. A large number of senior political figures began their careers under the old system of "managed democracy". Indeed, AMLO himself began his career in the official party, the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party), in his home state of Tabasco. He first campaigned to be elected president in 2006. One of his supporters was Manuel Bartlett Díaz, former Secretario de Gobernación (1982-1988), one of the most powerful cabinet posts, under PRI president Miguel de la Madrid. AMLO appointed his old political friend Manuel as CEO of the Federal Electricity Commission. According to a recent newspaper opinion piece, Mr Bartlett has 23 houses in desirable locations in Mexico worth "nearly 8 million pesos" (some £33 million). In February he accused former officials of the Commission of signing contratos leoninos ("unfair contracts") and proposed international arbitration to examine them. One of the contracts was signed by a company owned by Carlos Slim Helú, Mexico's wealthiest, and immensely powerful, man. A row ensued. AMLO then intervened to reach an agreement and Mr Slim appeared at the president's morning press conference. 

Men and women with skeletons in their closets abound in Mexican politics, and it is almost certain that some member of AMLO's administration have pasts that they would prefer not to be examined closely.

Reading recommendation: those intrigued by Huey Long are recommended to read Robert Penn Warren's book, which brilliantly captures the political flavour of Louisiana at the time.

“Super Mac’s” finger on the UK’s nuclear button

I have just read a review of Peter Hennessy’s latest book, Winds of Change: Britain in the Early Sixties. Hennessy is perhaps the most acute historian of modern Britain of our times. During the period in which his book is set the Prime Minister was Harold Macmillan. The title of his book is taken from a phrase used in Macmillan’s speech in South Africa in 1960, in which “Super Mac” acknowledged that Britain would have to allow its colonies in Africa to become independent states.

I worked with Macmillan in 1980. I was a Vice President of a tiny publishing company, Grove’s Dictionaries of Music, Inc, incorporated in Delaware, with its headquarters in Washington, D.C. “Headquarters” is a rather grandiose term: we were four people in a room on the 12^th floor of the National Press Building at 14^th and F streets. Maryse Rhein, a Swiss national, had worked with me since 1977. Rose Ann Nichols joined us later. She had a military background: her husband Bob was a US army colonel, a psychiatrist by trade. Linda Kraynak was our young office assistant, possessed of a charming southern accent which charmed our male customers.

Pinchas Zuckerman

Macmillan came to the USA in November 1980 to launch The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians at a glamorous event in the Starlight Ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria. Our guests heard Pinchas Zuckerman play and listened to speeches by the composers Virgil Thomson and Leonard Bernstein. And, of course, Super Mac.

Macmillan with JFK at the White House

When he was Prime Minister, Macmillan was responsible for ordering a nuclear attack in the event of war. In 1962, civil servants had to decide how the Prime Minister could issue the order to launch if he were in his official car when the four minute warning was issued. This was, of course, long before mobile phones. It was decided to give Macmillan’s diver the kind of radio used by the Automobile Association to contact its motorbike mechanics. The driver was then to find the closest public phone box:

Perhaps the kind of phone box the Prime Minister would have used

one of the famous red boxes seen in many tourist photos. Super Mac was then to call his office and give instructions. The civil servants spotted a flaw in this plan: what if neither the driver nor the Prime Minister had the correct change to pay for a call? The solution was to instruct Mr Macmillan to reverse the charges. One suspects that the time taken to radio the driver, for the driver to find the phone box and  for the Prime Minister to reverse the charges might have taken more than the allotted four minutes of warning.

An AA motorbike mechanic in action

By the time I met him, Macmillan’s eyesight was failing and eventually he became almost blind. My friend and colleague, Richard Garnett, who was Macmillan’s editor, told a story of visiting Macmillan at his country estate during the shooting season. He found the former Prime Minister alone with his driver pointing his gun skyward. Richard asked the driver how Super Mac knew when to pull the trigger. The driver explained that he had learned to judge the exact moment to pull the trigger. As the driver told Richard, “I shout fire, he shoots and hits the bugger”.

Slightly mad as the story about the phone box and reversing the charges might seem, I recall paying a visit to an expert in civil defence at Georgetown University’s Center for Strategic and International Studies. He told me that the first thing that would happen after a nuclear strike on the USA would be that the Mexicans would loot the country. I left our meeting with an image of vast numbers of Mexicans waiting at the border with their running shoes on ready to start looting.

Suffolk Pirates and a Raid on the Manila Galleon

During a recent walk along the River Alde, at Snape in my native Suffolk, a sailing barge passed by. Such barges were once a common sight on the coast and rivers of Suffolk. My grandfather Harry Lucas captained a barge called the Raybel and his son Arthur sailed on the Thalatta. In the bookshop at Snape Maltings I picked up a book (Robert Malster, Maritime Suffolk), which, to my surprise, includes a few pages about a piratical escapade off the coast of Baja California, Mexico, in 1587.

 

A sailing barge on the River Alde

It might seem a rather long leap to go from the contemporary backwaters of Suffolk to the Pacific, but in the 16^th-century the east coast ports were among the most important in England. Dunwich, most of which was long ago swallowed by the North Sea, supplied a large part of the fleet that defeated the Armada of Felipe II, king of Spain. While his compatriots battled the Spanish, Thomas Cavendish, a gentleman adventurer from Trimley, Suffolk, set out to raid the Spanish empire in the Americas for profit with a privately-financed fleet of three ships. A number of other Suffolk men were on board, among them Francis Petty of Eye, who chronicled the voyage, the Ipswich merchant Thomas Eldred, and Thomas Fuller also of Ipswich. Eldred was famous enough to have a pub named after him in Ipswich.

 

Left to right: Drake, Cavendish, Hawkins, British School 17th century

Navigation was a dangerous business in those days. In early 1587, the fleet spent seven weeks passing through the Straits of Magellan at the foot of South America. The smallest of the ships, the Hugh Gallant, was so damaged that it nearly sank. The other two, Desire and Content, had rounded the Cape earlier and put ashore to look for water, only to be attacked by Indians, who mistook the English sailors for Spaniards. Schoolboys of my generation learned of famous sailors such as Cavendish, Drake and Hawkins as English heroes. To the Spanish, they were, of course, murderous pirates. Cavendish was certainly piratical as he made his way up the coast of South America, engaging in occasional combat with Spanish forces and burning settlements. By the time the ships reached the coast of Ecuador, the complement of men was so reduced that Cavendish decided to sink the Hugh Gallant and distribute its crew among the remaining two ships.

Off the coast of Mexico Cavendish seized a large Spanish ship. A captured Frenchman had enticing news: the merchants of Mexico were expecting a galleon from Manila with a rich cargo. Cavendish sailed north to the coast of Baja California until he sighted the Santa Ana. The Spanish galleon was much larger than the English ships, but it was heavily laden and had no cannon. Its only defences were Spanish soldiers armed with pikes and arquebuses. The smaller but more manoeuvrable Desire and Content’s cannon bombarded the Santa Ana until the crew were forced to surrender. Cavendish loaded gold and precious textiles on to his ships, set the Spanish crew ashore and set light to the Santa Ana. Then he continued his voyage across the Pacific, around the Cape of Good Hope, and returned home with a handsome profit and the fame of circumnavigating the globe.

 

A map of Cavendish's circumnavigation

The journey from Acapulco to Manila was a perilous and unpleasant undertaking, especially the return from the Philippines, which could take from three to six months. Space on board was limited, so much so that in 1620 the King issued an order limiting passengers to one slave per person to conserve supplies. Rats, cockroaches and other bugs were endemic, food rotted and became worm-ridden, water could become foul or simply run out. Scurvy, bubonic plague, typhoid and dysentery were common. The risk of death was such that all passengers were obliged to confess and take communion at Manila before leaving for Acapulco. A royal decree ordered that there should be two pilots on each galleon, since pilots frequently died en route.

 

Model of a Manila galleon

A Japanese fall front cabinet, 16th or 17th century

In June 1624 a Catalan scribe by the name of Gaspar Pagés de Moncada boarded a galleon in Manila. Gaspar took some precautions against the privations of the voyage. He took on board a barrel of chocolate, known to keep when other foods had rotted, and four amphorae of wine, so that he did not have to depend on the ship’s limited water supply. He also took with him a range of exotic Asian silk and cotton fabrics, items made of marble, a Japanese writing desk, two Chinese porcelain plates (broken) and a salt cellar. The fabrics included two pairs of Chinese silk stockings (one silver coloured, the other white).  Gaspar planned to sell his modest treasure of Asian goods in Mexico to make a quick profit. He hoped to return to the two houses and the vineyards he had left behind in Cataluña, but he would never see them again. He fell ill on the journey and was set ashore in January 1625. His final resting place was historic, since he was buried in February in the church of the town of Colima, now the cathedral, built 1525-1540, less than 20 years after the Conquest of Mexico.

 

Colima cathedral

Just as Gaspar would never again see his native Cataluña, Thomas Cavendish would eventually die far from the estuaries and marshes of Suffolk. The Content disappeared from view soon after the looting the Santa Ana, and Cavendish set out alone in the Desire across the Pacific to complete his circumnavigation of the globe. He sank his profits from the Santa Ana in a fleet of five new ships and in 1591 set out once again to raid the Pacific coast of the Americas. This expedition was an utter disaster and Cavendish died in May or June 1592, probably near Ascension Island in the south Atlantic.

These connections between far-flung places, are a reminder to those of us who now travel with ease from Europe to the Americas and to Asia, that our global world has its roots in events some five centuries ago. Gaspar and Thomas were, no doubt, driven by dreams of riches, but they also had a capacity to tolerate privations and death in ways that we would hardly imagine if historical documents did not reveal them to us.

Offering love to a young Malaysia lady

Yesterday, Saturday 14 August, I did something rather unprecedented. I offered love to a young Malaysian lady in the presence of my wife. More of this shortly.

Malaysia Hall, London

We spent the afternoon at Malaysia Hall in Bayswater to support a friend at a book signing. Jan’s friend and former library colleague, Nooraini Mydin, decided to mark her 60^th birthday by travelling by train from London to Kuala Lumpur. She recently published (in Malaysia, so not currently available in the UK or USA, excep from the author) Aini’s Railway Odyssey: An exile’s 18,200 km journey home from London to Kuala Lumpur. I collected the money while Nooraini signed books, and her friend Farida charmed diners into buying a copy: well, nine diners at least.

Malaysia Hall is a hall of residence for Malaysian students in London and a place where expatriate or travelling Malaysians meet and enjoy excellent Malaysian cuisine. In addition to the canteen, there is a prayer room and ablution rooms for men and women to wash before praying. We ate early in order to get ready for the book signing. This is where the young Malaysian lady comes into the story. She served us our lunch and Noraini taught me to say “thank you” to her. The Malaysian phrase is tarima kasi (which apparently translates as “I offer you love”, a rather more effusive phrase than the restrained English expression of gratitude). The young lady replied sama sama (“same, same” or “you too”).

Lunch in the canteen

The canteen offers a wide array of dishes: I had a fish curry, Jan spinach, aubergine and rice. There was also a lamb curry, clams a curry sauce, salted eggs (delicious: we tried one), red snapper in a sweet and sour sauce, tiny fried fish. During the afternoon, new dishes emerged from the kitchen to replace those sold out. I asked about a dish of grilled chicken with bright blue rice: the rice is coloured with a flower which adds the blue colour and a distinctive flavour. Puddings are not recommended for those watching their weight or diabetics. They seem to be mostly fritters of various kinds or sweetened with palm sugar. We had a sweet of sago an

Sweets

d coconut, coloured bright purplish-red. Diners eat with a spoon and fork or with their hands.

Over the next four hours or so we watched the dining hall fill with students, family groups, and the odd non-Malay guest (non-Malays are allowed only as guests of a Malaysian citizen). We chatted to Farida, a lawyer by training who coordinates support for people with learning difficulties in a London borough. She also plied us with her home-made brownies, sardine rolls, and a sort of steamed banana and coconut pudding.

The dining hall

Nooraini teaches English to adults in London. One of her colleagues came to the signing, a Malaysian lady who came to London some 40 years ago. She had run a beauty salon in Virginia Water, not far from our home, but now lives somewhere near Winchester. She speaks impeccable British English.

We also met Sarah, a Chinese businesswoman, and student of Nooraini, who had been in London for four weeks to improve her English. We managed to expand her vocabulary, including a few idiomatic phrases which we urged her to use with caution. She and her husband established a trading company in Shanghai two years ago. They sell surfactants produced by German and American manufacturers. Sarah occasionally struggled to understand us, but speaks English with a rather charming British accent.

We also met a Malaysian businessman who was in London at the end of a long business trip (including Latvia and Sweden). He is a Bitcoin agent and also produces an energy drink made with two Malaysian plant-based ingredients. He gave us some samples.

The signing session ended with more food: a light flatbread to dip in a vegetable curry.

As we travelled home (Southwestern had cancelled the train we had expected to catch so our journey was longer than expected), Jan and I chuckled over a notice we had seen (respectively) in the ladies’ and men’s toilets. A notice in Malay and English requesting users not to squat on the toilet seats is accompanied by a diagram depicting the prohibited manoeuvre. We decided that two pensioners are not capable of the contortions required to squat in such a small space: indeed, we doubted that any of the diners that day had the required agility.

Myths, Heroes and Transformations: Churchill, Martin Luther King and AMLO

During the contest to become leader of the Conservative Party, Boris (real name Alexander) Johnson was asked whether he had ever put public service above his own interests. His reply was that he had had to postpone a lucrative book about Shakespeare that the public was desperate to read. A few

Boris Johnson as Churchill

years ago, he published a biography of Winston Churchill. Now, I have not read his book, but there is no shortage of books about Churchill. Rather than a desire to contribute something new to our understanding of our war time leader, I suspect that Johnson’s objective was to associate himself with Churchill. Most Conservative politicians like to portray themselves as a modern Churchill, and preferably as the heir to Margaret Thatcher as well. They tend to gloss over Churchill’s failures in order to conjure up the myth of plucky little Britain left alone to defeat the Nazis and defend the free world. The Soviet Union’s participation in the same war is rarely mentioned. Recently, John McDonnell, the Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, was asked to reply in one word whether Churchill was a hero or a villain. His reply, “Villain”, apparently with reference to the suppression of a coal miner’s strike in 1910, brought immediate opprobrium. Whatever one’s evaluation of Churchill, it was not he who brought about a Transformation of the UK that introduced the NHS and Social Insurance, but the post-war Labour Prime Minister Clement Attlee and the Liberal reformer William Beveridge.

 

William Beveridge

We Brits are not alone in loving our myths. A few years ago, I visited the National Civil Rights

The National Civil Rights Museum, Memphis, TN

Museum in Memphis, Tennessee. The museum is attached to the motel where Dr Martin Luther King was assassinated: one can visit the balcony on which he stood and, rather creepily, the exact position of the gunman in a building across the street. The museum shows a splendid film, which documents King’s campaign for Civil Rights, but also his absolute opposition to the Vietnam War and his unflinching support for workers’ rights, including a garbage worker’s strike in Memphis. One image in the film shows a striking African American man carrying a cardboard sign that reads “I too am a man”. There can be few contemporary politicians who would not associate themselves with Dr

LBJ and Dr King at the signing of the Civil Rights Bill

King  as a champion of Civil Rights, but most prefer the one-dimensional hero of civil rights, and conveniently omit his other campaigns. Nevertheless, The Civil Rights Bill, advocated by Dr King and implemented by President Johnson was certainly a Transformation.

The current president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), relies on Mexicans’ love for their heroes when he refers to his Cuarta Transformación (“Fourth Transformation”). The other transformations to which he refers are the struggle for independence from Spain (1810-1821), the Liberal Reform of the 1860s, and the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1920. All three are replete with heroes — and villains — who give the Fourth Transformation all the right resonances.

Independence began with the Grito de Dolores (“the shout – or call to action – of Dolores”), father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla’s declaration of Independence from the steps of his church in the small town of Dolores. Hidalgo led an assault on the nearby Guanajuato, important for its silver mining.

El Pípila

Another hero gave the rebels victory: a young boy, known as Pípila, who worked in the mines, died laying an explosive charge at the doors of the granary where the Spanish troops had taken shelter. The Spaniards were massacred and their heads displayed on the walls of the building. Hidalgo died in March 1811. Another priest, José María Morelos y Pavón succeeded as the heroic leader of the struggle. Morelos convened the first Mexican congress in 1813, before dying for the struggle like Hidalgo.

Now, it is hard to argue that independence was a bad thing, but the results of the First Transformation were not entirely positive. For four decades opposing factions (crudely Centralists with a monarchist and pro-church bent, versus Federalists opposed to monarchy and the church) battled for power. Pronunciamientos (rebel proclamations) and the toppling of presidents were frequent. Upon independence, the indigenous peoples of Mexico were declared to be equal citizens with rights and obligations identical to those of non-indigenous citizens. Who could complain? But there were catches, which the newly equal Indians did not like at all. Firstly, they lost the special protections that they and their communities had been granted by the Spanish Crown. Independence eroded their self-government and, in many cases, villages’ communal lands. Individual liberty obliged the he Indians to pay new and very unpopular taxes.

The standard history includes a good number of 19^th century villains. Agustín de Iturbide, independent Mexico’s first ruler (as Emperor Agustín I) gets a bad press, as do the Catholic bishops. Antonio López de Santa Anna gets the blame for numerous pronunciamientos, the loss of Texas, and much of the responsibility for the later loss of California, Arizona and New Mexico. The arch-villain is Emperor Maximilian, the Austrian prince installed by Napoleon III and the Mexican monarchists, in 1862. This was when the Second Transformation occurred. The President at the time was a Liberal, Benito Juárez, an Indian from Oaxaca. Juárez packed the Mexican government into his carriage and wandered around northern Mexico to keep independent government alive and to escape capture. Juárez is AMLO’s ultimate national hero, triumphing in adversity. Eventually, Napoleon, tiring of the enterprise, withdrew his troops. Defeat at Querétaro cost Emperor Maximilian his life in 1867.

 

Juárez in a mural by José Clemente Orozco, National Museum of History, Mexico City

The Liberals were now free to implement their Laws of Reform. One of the most important results of the Reform was the expropriation of all church property. The church owned vast amounts of agricultural land, as well as churches, monasteries and convents. The law prohibited the right of any corporate body to own property. This included indigenous communities, many of which cultivated communal land to meet their expenses. Thus, the Reform laws were a direct attack on one of the fundamental elements of indigenous society. Curiously enough, that villain of history, Maximilian, had proposed laws to protect community land.

Porfirio Díaz

Despite their victory over Napoleon and Maximilian, Juárez’s Liberals. In 1876 they were replaced by a Liberal general, Porfirio Díaz (also an Indian from Oaxaca). Díaz remained in office as a dictator until 1911. His policy of pan y palo (bread and stick), suppressing rebellions and strikes and keeping opponents under his thumb. He also invited foreign capital to build railways and invest in agriculture, mining and petroleum. Landowners were given a free hand to expropriate community land, legally or illegally.

Zapata (centre left) and Villa (centre right)

By 1910, when he was due to be “re-elected” again, Díaz was opposed by political enemies, by a growing and ambitious middle class, and by oppressed peasants and rural workers. The Third Transformation was about to burst on the scene. This was the Mexican Revolution, a ten-year civil war littered with heroes and villains. Hero number one was “the Apostle of Democracy”, Francisco Indalecio Madero, a wealthy landowner and spiritualist from the northern state of Coahuila. His revolutionary slogan was Sufragio efectivo y no reelección (“A free vote and no re-election”). In the north Pancho Villa, a teetotaller and ardent lover of numerous women, led cowboys and other rural workers in revolt. In the southern state of Morelos Emiliano Zapata (played by Marlon Brando in the film Viva Zapata, screenplay by John Steinbeck) led rural villages in revolt under the banner of Tierra y Libertad (“Land and Liberty”) and the Virgin of Guadalupe. Madero, Villa and Zapata are heroes in Mexican school textbooks. The victorious Madero was elected, but turned out not to be a wily enough politician for his enemies in the army. The arch villain General Victoriano de la Huerta deposed and murdered Madero and his Vice President. De la Huerta was in turn deposed by revolutionary armies assailing him from north and south.

 

Pino Suárez (left) and Madero (right) lie dead outside Lecumberri prison

The victorious Constitutionalists led by President Venustiano Carranza and General Álvaro Obregón, a chickpea magnate by trade, wrote the current Mexican Constitution in 1917.  The Constitution set out the basic tenets of the political regime that ruled Mexico rarely challenged until the beginnings of this century: restitution of communal land to the villages, distribution of land from large estates to landless peasants, a degree of workers’ rights, and no re-election to any office in the nation. The

Zapata assassinated

heroes all came to a sticky end. Zapata was ambushed by a colonel in the federal army in 1919. Pancho Villa was given a large estate by the government and retired there but was ambushed in his car in 1923. Carranza died at the hands of federal troops while fleeing the capital and Obregón was assassinated by a fervent Catholic as he ate lunch.

To a degree the regime of managed democracy established by the Revolution brought benefits to peasants and workers, and stimulated industry and tourism. On the other hand, revolutionary leaders enriched themselves and their supporters and those who protested or opposed them could be dealt with very harshly. By the time the rule of the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party) came to an end in 2000, the system was groaning under the weight of corruption, waste and a young population unable to find employment. The violence created by drug cartels, with whom politicians were complicit, had reached alarming levels. Unfortunately, the new democratically elected governments failed to address profound social inequality, corruption, unemployment and violence. AMLO has promised that his Fourth Transformation will solve these enormous problems.

 

Jeremy Corbyn and AMLO in Tabasco

The United Kingdom is itself in the throes of a process that AMLO might well define as a Transformation: the ineluctable Brexit, in which myths and heroes are very much to the fore. One candidate for the leadership of the Conservative Party, Esther McVey launched her campaign with a framed photo of Margaret Thatcher by her side, much as any devout Mexican might display an

The winning run out in the World Cup

image of the Virgin of Guadalupe. The England cricket team recently won the cricket World Championship in an exceedingly close and tense final match against New Zealand. A fervent Brexiteer, Jacob Rees Mogg, MP, declared that this was proof that we do not need the EU. Rees Mogg’s subtext was the myth of plucky Britain standing alone without the support of the cowardly Europeans who capitulated to the Nazis. We were not bowed by the Blitz and we can take whatever hardships might result from leaving  the EU. Let’s hope that in the case of both the Mexican and British Transformations good judgement and sense prevail over myth.