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| David hare |
Mick Hall with a piece on British ruling class myopia. It initially featured in Organized Rage on 24 February 2014.
The wilful blindness of members of the British ruling class never cease
to amaze and disappoint me. Take David Hare, one of the UK's more
progressive playwrights and screenwriters, who was interviewed by Decca Aitkenhead in last Saturday's Guardian, having just completed a trilogy of films
to be broadcast shortly on BBC TV about a 'renegade' member of the
British security services who is forced to flee the country.
At the beginning of her interview Aitkenhead points out to Hare:
Only hours before she arrived to do the interview, the high court ruled that David Miranda's detention last year had been perfectly lawful. To many, the judgement seemed inexplicable – how could the security services rightfully detain a journalist's partner under legislation designed to combat terrorism? – but the playwright could not look less surprised.
David Hare replies:
Well, they're running the country, aren't they? I mean, the reason I'm writing about the security services is that there is no democratic control of them whatsoever. And now it seems the judiciary is joining in.
Well, as Ian Dury used to sing, you could knock me down with a feather, Trevor. When did democratic oversight of the British security services ever pass muster, along with the judiciary they have always been a law unto themselves and the class interests they represent. By suggesting this is something new, Hare is either being wilfully blind or is denying a fact he has always known to be true.
He either thought Aitkenhead was a gullible fool, or given her prominent position was part of the establishment he serves so well, for he then tells her, presumably with a straight face:
He had assumed John le Carré's depiction of our intelligence service was wildly out of date. I thought they're not really called Foxy and Percy any more, they don't really talk in ridiculous accents and all go to clubs. But actually, when I went in in 2000, they had toffee accents, accents from years ago, and John le Carré was entirely accurate about how public school, white, posh and archaic it all was. It was empire – it still had the feeling of empire.
Hare understands better than most the senior positions within the British institutions which can act in the most punitive way, the armed forces, the judiciary, and the secret state, are overwhelmingly filled by public school and Oxbridge educated upper middle class people of the type le Carré portrays so well.
Why would these people have voluntarily relinquished control of the punitive institutions of the British State which they have held sway over for centuries, when they are what ringfences their own power and privileges and enables them at the expense of the majority population to pass them on to future generations of public school and Oxbridge educated clones?
It was not by a mere oversight that the armed forces, judiciary, police and security services swear allegiance to the Queen, and not the people as happens in normal democracies, it was written into the hard drive of the United Kingdom and David Hare understands this full well.
The most perceptive question Aitkenhead asked Hare was how on earth did he get spies to talk to him? "Well, actually," he says, beginning to chuckle, "they asked me in."
And why wouldn't they for in David Hare they recognise one of their own. They understand perfectly like many people in his position, the esteemed playwright compartmentalises his life, it's what enables him to be on the side of the downtrodden one day, and biting Betsy's Windsors carpet the next, having sworn absolute allegiance to his queen and her heirs.
If there is one thing the spooks are certain of it's when push comes to shove Sir David Hare, public school (Lancing College) and Oxford educated, will be in the same trench as their masters, as that is, and has always been the way the English class system works. It is what makes it such a powerful, destructive, and homogeneous vehicle against progressive societal change.
The fact people from within the establishment also criticise it is why people who really should know better see it as a benign force, when in reality it is a collection of individuals who have the moral values of the dungheap. As Leon Trotsky once wrote, there are their morals and ours.
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| Lancing College, Sir David Hare's old school |
The wilful blindness of members of the British ruling class never cease to disappoint, take playwright David Hare?
Mick Hall with a piece on British ruling class myopia. It initially featured in Organized Rage on 24 February 2014.
The wilful blindness of members of the British ruling class never cease
to amaze and disappoint me. Take David Hare, one of the UK's more
progressive playwrights and screenwriters, who was interviewed by Decca Aitkenhead in last Saturday's Guardian, having just completed a trilogy of films
to be broadcast shortly on BBC TV about a 'renegade' member of the
British security services who is forced to flee the country.
|
| David hare |
At the beginning of her interview Aitkenhead points out to Hare:
Only hours before she arrived to do the interview, the high court ruled that David Miranda's detention last year had been perfectly lawful. To many, the judgement seemed inexplicable – how could the security services rightfully detain a journalist's partner under legislation designed to combat terrorism? – but the playwright could not look less surprised.
David Hare replies:
Well, they're running the country, aren't they? I mean, the reason I'm writing about the security services is that there is no democratic control of them whatsoever. And now it seems the judiciary is joining in.
Well, as Ian Dury used to sing, you could knock me down with a feather, Trevor. When did democratic oversight of the British security services ever pass muster, along with the judiciary they have always been a law unto themselves and the class interests they represent. By suggesting this is something new, Hare is either being wilfully blind or is denying a fact he has always known to be true.
He either thought Aitkenhead was a gullible fool, or given her prominent position was part of the establishment he serves so well, for he then tells her, presumably with a straight face:
He had assumed John le Carré's depiction of our intelligence service was wildly out of date. I thought they're not really called Foxy and Percy any more, they don't really talk in ridiculous accents and all go to clubs. But actually, when I went in in 2000, they had toffee accents, accents from years ago, and John le Carré was entirely accurate about how public school, white, posh and archaic it all was. It was empire – it still had the feeling of empire.
Hare understands better than most the senior positions within the British institutions which can act in the most punitive way, the armed forces, the judiciary, and the secret state, are overwhelmingly filled by public school and Oxbridge educated upper middle class people of the type le Carré portrays so well.
Why would these people have voluntarily relinquished control of the punitive institutions of the British State which they have held sway over for centuries, when they are what ringfences their own power and privileges and enables them at the expense of the majority population to pass them on to future generations of public school and Oxbridge educated clones?
It was not by a mere oversight that the armed forces, judiciary, police and security services swear allegiance to the Queen, and not the people as happens in normal democracies, it was written into the hard drive of the United Kingdom and David Hare understands this full well.
The most perceptive question Aitkenhead asked Hare was how on earth did he get spies to talk to him? "Well, actually," he says, beginning to chuckle, "they asked me in."
And why wouldn't they for in David Hare they recognise one of their own. They understand perfectly like many people in his position, the esteemed playwright compartmentalises his life, it's what enables him to be on the side of the downtrodden one day, and biting Betsy's Windsors carpet the next, having sworn absolute allegiance to his queen and her heirs.
If there is one thing the spooks are certain of it's when push comes to shove Sir David Hare, public school (Lancing College) and Oxford educated, will be in the same trench as their masters, as that is, and has always been the way the English class system works. It is what makes it such a powerful, destructive, and homogeneous vehicle against progressive societal change.
The fact people from within the establishment also criticise it is why people who really should know better see it as a benign force, when in reality it is a collection of individuals who have the moral values of the dungheap. As Leon Trotsky once wrote, there are their morals and ours.
|
| Lancing College, Sir David Hare's old school |
Mick,
ReplyDeletethanks for allowing TPQ to feature your material.
You sketch the scene of Toff Central very well. Too add to what you have said I think it would not matter if the establishment was populated by working class people with regional accents. The structural properties of the state rather than the class position of its membership is what makes it function as it does. This was so central to the NLR Marxist debate between Poulantzas and Millliband back in the late 60s.
Mick-
ReplyDelete" There is no democratic control of them "-
Governments come and go but Mi6 / 5 remain to run the big bucks rule-
Sir Antony Blunt was allowed to remain the Queens Art Adviser for years after she knew that blunt had betrayed her and England - but he was a old chap with the right connections-the Queen and Queen mother did not care about a red in the bed as long as he knew how to pour the gin-