The Robert Burns Options

In the life story of Robert Burns there are "what if's" one being that the information that his poems were about to be published reached him when he was about to be off to Greenock to go to Jamaica as a Plantation Overseer. Also, did someone tell him what was involved?

There were other chances of life. To go to London would be difficult for a stray Scot, so what might have been better? Bengal was possible given who he knew and the connections could have offered a post in the East India Company. He may have been a Writer in accounts with an outside chance of becoming rich, or a soldier of fortune or might he have ridden with Skinner's Horse?

This history describes the Scots major role in the East India Company and the creation of The Raj. It begins in French but scrolling down to the English takes you to a long history and it is the section entitled "Scottish Commercialism In India And South East Asia" 1770-1833" that is relevant.

There is another "what if" and that is if he had survived and lived rather longer. At the end of the century there was trouble in Ireland, a rebellion in 1798-9 and among the regiments deployed there were the Fencibles, local militias from Scotland. The Argyllshire's went to Wicklow, where some stayed on when granted land.

But what if the call to arms might have been earlier? He would have made a brave and resolute officer of the 26th Regiment of Foot, The Cameronians, somehow or other having been able to buy his commission, and saving Canada from the rebels of America. But there was also the trick of buying a commission and going off strength on half pay. The problem there was the price of a commission.

On the other hand Scotland had a high proportion of people able to read reflected in the many good newspapers and journals on offer. What if an editor thought he might be a useful addition to the team as a critic or as a commentator on political matters?

Some Scottish Songs might give an insight to his thinking. There is poetry in the music and for Burns music in the poetry.

Painting And The Past

Jane, Jane and more Jane Austen, this time surprisingly in The Guardian who are usually not interested in the upper classes of the past.

This picture of a young girl is the subject and is said to be of a young Jane. There were probably many like this at the time so what matters is the actual history and provenance of the work.

I personally like to think that it might be if only because it is so different to the idea of Jane becoming common at the present time.

We forget that her father was criticised by many for taking the trouble to educate his daughters on the grounds that this might impede their marriage potential.

But what did impede them was his lack of wealth to provide the portions, that is the money, needed at that level of society.

Money did matter, so some things do not change.

Music For The Ears

Recently, a good deal of time has been spent not on what is happening at the present but on the longer past. Having access to the local press of previous centuries because of its nature and coverage is as good, if not better than the archives of certain major dailies of the present.

So, one begins to look for this or that, finds something but then has a look at other columns and pages. All sorts of information is there and raises many interesting questions. One striking feature of the past is the scope and nature of the music that people engaged with which leads to who was doing what?

One item found was the picture above from the Manchester Evening News, the first performance of what became the Halle Orchestra. It gives the full programme and it is at the Free Trade Hall in January 1858. But I wonder, who was there?

In 1974 I was at the Free Trade Hall, but all I had to listen to was the Secretary of State for Education singing for her supper. As it was a Mrs. Margaret Thatcher I have wondered since that was it her trips to the Free Trade Hall that inspired her economic policies?

Perhaps This Chorus at three minutes long was all it would need and it  would have been one of the selections of "Il Trovatore".

Because she did go banging on.

Tree Time

It is a commonplace that a lot of trouble is caused by managers making the wrong choices on the basis of inadequate or poor information. There is nothing new about this.

Below is an extract from the author Evelyn Waugh's papers relating to the Second World War when he trained with the Commando's.

It was not a happy period for him and even more unhappy for some of the commandos with him.

Quote:

Evelyn Waugh writes to his wife Laura, 31 May 1942;

No. 3 Commando was very anxious to be chums with Lord Glasgow, so they offered to blow up an old tree stump for him and he was very grateful and he said don't spoil the plantation of young trees near it because that is the apple of my eye and they said no of course not we can blow a tree down so it falls on a sixpence and Lord Glasgow said goodness how clever and he asked them all for luncheon for the great explosion.

So Col. Durnford-Slater DSO said to his subaltern, “have you put enough explosive in the tree”.

“Yes sir, 75lb.”

“Is that enough?” 

“Yes sir I worked it out by mathematics it is exactly right.” 

“Well better put a bit more.”

“Very good sir.”

And when Col. D Slater DSO had had his port he sent for the subaltern and said, “Subaltern better put a bit more explosive in that tree. I don't want to disappoint Lord Glasgow.”

“Very good sir.”

Then they all went out to see the explosion and Col. DS DSO said you will see that tree fall flat at just that angle where it will hurt no young trees and Lord Glasgow said goodness you are clever.

So soon they lit the fuse and waited for the explosion and presently the tree, instead of falling quietly sideways, rose 50 feet into the air taking with it 1/2 acre of soil and the whole of the young plantation.

And the subaltern said “Sir, I made a mistake, it should have been 7 1/2 lb, not 75.”

Lord Glasgow was so upset he walked in dead silence back to his castle and when they came to the turn of the drive in sight of his castle what should they find but that every pane of glass in the building was broken.

So Lord Glasgow gave a little cry and ran to hide his emotion in the lavatory and there when he pulled the plug the entire ceiling, loosened by the explosion, fell on his head.

Unquote.

Wikipedia has an article on the Lt. Colonel in question, John Durnford Slater. The picture above is of Kelburn Castle near Largs in Ayrshire, once family seat of the Earl's of Glasgow.

I knew some former commandos, and have often wondered whether they were there. It would have appealed to their sense of humour, I think, as well as mine.

Independence And Europe

This is a long one after a time of short posts. It is based on a 2009 one dealing not only with the Europe question, but putting it into the context of the wider history and implications. This means whether the UK can exist as it has done and our place in the world. Essentially, our politicians and leaders do not know what they are talking about and do not know where they are going.

What does “Independence” mean for the United Kingdom? One theory is that in 1941-1942 when the money ran out was the date it was lost. Also we had been brought to the brink of being unable to feed our population by war. It meant that as the City of London had arrogated itself to be the financial ruler of the world, when it began to falter and weaken, it then became its prisoner.

When Westminster ruled a fifth of the surface area of the world and claimed to rule the seas, the impossible task of maintaining firstly the fact, and then after 1918, the fiction, led the political elite into a series of submissions and obligations, culminating in the accession to the European Community and Brussels in 1973.

Westminster now has less control over many of the affairs of the UK than did the former County and County Borough Councils of long ago. How much real choice will the ordinary English people of today, who are not the same as those of the 18th Century, or even the early 20th Century, have in the matter? Will we soon have an English Parliament or a Parliament in which the procedures allow a specifically English sphere of influence and decision?

If the UK ends and it is free of Scotland, something I suspect desired by the great majority of ordinary English people, then the Six Counties of Ulster may well attach itself to its Scottish homeland. In England we forget that Antrim can be seen from Scotland. Wales may want to go its own way as well. What does the idea of “independence” entail across the key sectors of the economy and the polity of England?

Firstly, will England retain the pound sterling and manage its own monetary system according to its defined needs? If it adopts the Euro then it is not independent, nor is it if it takes on another currency. Also, it is not if the pound shadows or is obliged to be a dependent variable of another currency.

By definition, if it remains within the European Union, then whatever it might call itself, it is not “independent”, especially under the terms of the Lisbon Treaty. It might have a system of modified independence, but this depends on the volume and nature of the legislation and regulation emanating from Brussels. If there is a lot, and its impact is substantial, then England is only a province. Forget any claptrap about being at the heart of Europe. We will not and cannot be.

Would England be able to provide for the bulk of the food needed by its population, and indeed to survive any world wide food crisis? The more dependent it is on food imports, the more limited its effective independence is likely to be and reliant on those territories from where the food is supplied. What about fuel and power? Same again, these are basic utilities, the more under foreign supply or ownership the less any independence can be.

Could England revive and reinstate its own consumer goods industries, or will it be reliant on certain limited sources, e.g. China? Then there are all those international agencies and obligations that the modern world has created. The more we take on, the less room for manoeuvre we have.

In turn, this leads to how an English government can deal with the global mega-corporations that control so many markets in every sort of product or service. We have seen the UK government bow the knee to almost any and every mega-corporation that comes it way, promising jobs and investment, that is so long as this favour or subsidy or given, or that. They take the money, and run when they like.

The great problem for England will be what to do about London. There is the City of London, so long as its activities are of central importance and so long as it remains a largely unregulated participator in the global monetary arena, the less England can do to stay away from the problems. Not least is how far other parts of the Atlantic Isles, including the ancient counties of England, can shake off the grasping hand of The City.

London has become a foreign city as many incomers become the majority of its population. These are not a single body, but are disparate. There are the questions of lines of communication. Just how far can England exert any control over the air and sea around it, or on the global communications systems now in place? I seriously doubt that our navy at present can protect our shores from any determined enemy, criminal gangs, or slave masters.

The gangs are here already, active and politically influential arising from their easy access to UK operated tax havens. In a world where communications are all, if you cannot control your own, you cannot control much else.here is much detritus of the past, internal and external. The Crown dependencies of one kind and another scattered across the globe, many being tax havens, may not be wanted by an independent England wishing to be free of its past obligations, nor might they want to remain attached to it.

If we are being democratic, then they should be able to opt for either full independence or for which part of the former UK they regard as appropriate to their vision of their future. Given that one of the main planks of the recent movement for Scottish independence is Edinburgh as a major financial secrecy jurisdiction, with all that is entailed, it would be logical for the Scots to take them over.

One example of the internal rearrangements is those of surface links. At present the rail links to Wales are largely carried on costs that fall on England. Apart from the line to Cardiff and Swansea, the others could close. Also, inasmuch as the ferry links to Ireland largely benefit the Irish, any English subsidy could cease. As for Scotland, the projected multi billion high speed line, in English terms is a complete nonsense.

In defence policy, if England were to look to its own interests alone, then a great deal could go. There would certainly be a need for a navy, groupings of small, fast, vessels, located from Whitehaven and The Tyne to The Channel and the Western Approaches, packing a punch, and of a very different character, and the same applies to the air force.

The Army would lose some men, who would need replacing and would need to be reconfigured. If the past is any guide, if there are major differences in law, notably on drugs and alcohol, there would need to be effective military policing of the Border with high standards of control given the levels and nature of criminal activity already present in Scotland.

The Atlantic Isles once had a henge culture several thousand years ago. This was tribal in political organisation, but since became the playground of warring incomers and occasional invaders. Too many of these were violent exploitative slave societies, notably the Celts who supplied the Romans, and later others. Such parts might go their own ways according to the relatively recent boundary divisions.

The same considerations, inevitably, apply to them as well as to England. Here the so-called “independence” amounts to unshackling themselves from the remaining and residual corrupt and incompetent London power centre that is failing to deliver government or unity to anywhere in the Atlantic Isles. If members of the EU they will be no more “independent” than the Duchy of Luxembourg, and a lot less than Vermont in the USA.

What would it be like, an England defined in its own terms for the first time since the year 1015?

High Society

There are academic journals and academic journals.

For those who are obliged to follow them there could be the opinion are more than enough. But sometimes, the question is will this be useful and might it actually do some good?

Here is a new one  from LSE Press which might or might not on the issues arising from the role of certain states whose economies are outside the law for the most part.

The illicit economies, a nice way of describing it, are those where a high proportion of the money flows etc. arise from drug trading and associated activities considered criminal in most places. It could be argued that the LSE is but a short bus ride from the financial hub of one of them.

Here in the UK we have no need to worry. The impending collapse of the Conservative Government over Europe means we may well have a Labour government who will simply nationalise the drugs trade in the name of the nation.

Who could sniff at that?

Social Mobility And Immobility

On Sunday watching Everton v Bournemouth I was reminded that Everton was founded in 1878 when a new amusement, Association Football, was coming into fashion. By chance on the same day I was reading the Luton Times And Advertiser for 2nd May 1879 and the report of a society wedding attended by the great and good.

The bride, with a handsome portion, money that is, was the daughter of a local landowner, magistrate and Master of the Oakley Hunt. The first child of the marriage, a daughter, went on to marry a major landowner, magistrate, Master of the Brayton Hunt who became a Member of Parliament in the Conservative Party.

They were close to another of that kind, a William Middleton, nicknamed "Bay", Master of the Pytchley Hunt, who is famed with being close to Elizabeth, (Sisi), Empress of Austria, who turned up at the Grafton Hunt by Daventry with a dozen horses and hunted far and wide in England and Ireland. Bay was alleged to be the natural father of Clementine Hosier, later Churchill.

At that time a cousin of bride's was living close to the Everton ground, working as a watch maker, who died early leaving a penniless widow and child forced to return to her family of skilled workers and become more or less a household servant for the rest of her days. It is all about Social Mobility, as the sociologist said when he was knocked off his bike by a Rolls Royce.

It is fascinating that with a great deal of the local press of the past now available online instead of the weeks and months of travelling and searching, it is possible to see life in the provinces as it was seen to them and not just in the major London press or the prejudiced and limited sources of the academics and theorists of the past.

There are others matters, unmentioned in most history. One is the huge impact the invention and rapid application of wireless telegraph had in communications. I noted that the first indications in the UK that something had gone badly wrong in the British cavalry in the Crimea in late 1854 came from the Russian telegraphs and not from the government.

Quite suddenly there was an immediacy for contact and information sourcing which must have made a radical difference in many fields. One was that shipping intelligence was available saying where the ships had been, where they were and when and where they arrived.

What of the now? Could it be that with this vast store of information to be had on the click of a button we find out that much of what we are told about history and the theorizing of so many of our university and other historians has been based on flimsy and inadequate information and evidence?

It does make me wonder. We are said to have had a long depression in the agricultural industry in the late 19th and early 20th Century. Yet estimating the costs of all the Hunts and hunting and the extent when it was a "must" for the upper landowning classes could this must have impacted on the investment needed for the land. Especially, if you take the horse racing into account.

Instead of money going into improving the land and agricultural production we imported the added food we needed for a growing population while the land became a playground for the equestrian class.

In the media today the trade figures are not looking good and there is all the debate about austerity, budget balancing and the rest. While watching the football I learned that eleven players on the field for one team on Sunday had cost £252 million in fees let alone what they, and their agents were paid.