Fortress America and beloved symbols of Britain
news.bbc.co.uk
One of the most touching and generally unreported
incidents of the month was the decision of the
Norwegian government to invite Israeli and
Palestinian leaders to Oslo for a memorial service in
honour of Mr Rabin, the assassinated Israeli prime
minister.
It was, I think, an inspired idea to use this service as
an overture to a meeting that might walk an inch or
two nearer the dishearteningly receding goal of a
Middle Eastern peace.
The memorial service set a tone of gravity and the
place was a guarantee of neutrality - something very
difficult to promise when these two sides get
together in the Middle East or in the United States.
And then the president of the United States had an
idea. Acting on an impulse he decided it might help
things along if he went too. He signified, probably a
fast e-mail - "Dear Prexy, I'm coming too."
Mr Clinton had in mind his own bit of diplomacy.
He heard that the Russian prime minister was visiting
Oslo and Mr Clinton thought it might offer a useful
opportunity to beg Mr Yeltsin's man to stop the war
in Chechnya.
As it turned out Mr Clinton's impulse, his decision,
effectively gagged any hope of agreement or even
useful negotiations between the two principal actors,
who, like minor characters opening an opera, were
scuttled into the wings while the footlights soared,
the trumpets sounded and the star - the ruler of the
universe - took centre stage.
That, I hope, is a vivid image but it was literally true.
The overwhelming of a sub-plot - peace talks
between Prime Minister Barak and Yasser Arafat -
by the appearance of the big hero who was not
supposed to be there. A promising diplomatic
meeting was hustled out of sight with the arrival of a
suddenly-alerted press circus accompanying the
president of the United States.
Before coming to the main point I'd better say that
Mr Barak and Mr Arafat were in no mood to
conduct serious discussions and retired into their
prepared positions.
But the truly disheartening story about Mr Clinton's
visit to Norway is the effect of the presidential
entourage on the Norwegian establishment and the
Norwegian people. Only one reporter I've come
across, one Alex Vardamis, put the thing in its social
context - the effect on the ordinary Norwegians.
And to appreciate the kind of shock that they
suffered you have to understand the social tone of
their own monarchy and here Mr Vardamis put it
with praiseworthy if gruesome simplicity - "Norway
is a country in which the king skis on public trails
and the prime minister rides the bus to work.
Citizens pride themselves on an unpretentious
lifestyle."
What shocked the Norwegians was the imperial
nature of the American delegation. The president
arrived with an official entourage of - guess what? -
in Roosevelt's time it might be 15 - 20 say at the
most. The president arrived with an official
entourage of more than 700. Seven hundred
courtiers and sundry retainers, who appropriated an
entire hotel in down town Oslo. Six hundred and
seventy four rooms were set aside as "fortress
America".
Mr Clinton was assigned three bedrooms, each with
cheerful fireplace and three baths, jacuzzis, gold
fixings. The Norwegians plainly realised that other
heads of democratic states do not choose to boast
about their unpretentious lifestyle.
I do not believe there was extensive or perhaps any
coverage of this imperial take-over on American
television, in fact what shocked the Norwegians is
something that probably never crosses the mind of
Americans who know one thing for sure - that they
belong to the greatest, most democratic democracy
on earth.
I used to notice, when I went around colleges and
universities and sat in on history classes, I don't ever
remember any classes comparing the American
system with other democratic systems.
I've always wished that one faculty could be
established in every American university - better one
weekly class in every high school - that should
study, what you might call, comparative democracy.
Every country on earth with strong pretensions to
democracy, including the United States, could learn
something from discovering where, in some things,
other countries are more democratic than the United
States, in other things less so.
The Norwegian trip was alarmingly notable for other
expressions of Norwegian sentiment, which, to put it
mildly, did not monopolise the evening news tele
coverage.
I think we'd better not go into the appalling
emergency the Oslo government and the police
were thrown into by Mr Clinton's sudden impulse.
Oslo is a quiet, easily disciplined capital, suddenly -
suddenly, imagine, they had to fetch in hundreds of
concrete barriers against terrorist car bombs.
Highways were barricaded, commercial traffic
suspended, every manhole sealed along the route of
the 700 royal - I mean presidential - arrivals. Better
not report it at all are the fortunes lost by the shops,
cafes, restaurants and so on.
But much of the frantic security precautions were
well taken. There, at least, half a dozen large and
powerful groups of protesters - all anti-American for
one cause or another - from people condemning the
existence in America of the death penalty to Arab
groups who know every terrorist agent kept in an
American jail.
Think of any anti-American slogan and there were
angry people there to chant it. But they did more
than chant.
A great mob descended on the hotel housing the
American delegation. There were cars smashed. It
took police with tear gas and dogs - mounted
police, shielded police, a two-hour battle, many
wounded, over 80 arrests, before the mob broke up
and stormed or sulked off. And Oslo returned to
mime again its reputation as the most orderly city in
Europe.
President Clinton in Oslo will be remembered by the
Scandinavian countries long after some more lurid
and riotous world events are long forgotten.
Well while all this was shattering the general quiet
and the Scandinavian picture of America there was
a dispatch from London that, both in the papers and
on the tele, received, on the contrary, ample and
marvelling coverage.
It was the daring act of Mr Tony Blair in banishing
all the hereditary peers from the House of Lords -
all except 92.
"Why 92?" an inquisitive youngster asked me. I saw
much trouble ahead.
"Offhand," I said, "I can't tell you."
Explaining the 92 to an American audience, in fact,
whether in print or over the tube proved impossible
- even for the understanding of people who cared.
"What's it mean," the youngster piped up again,
"666 hereditaries have to go but 92 allowed to stay
were elected by their peers - I thought they were all
unelected."
Well it was explained in the New York Times that -
"For most of the century the House of Lords has
held little real political power."
("I thought it had none," squeaked my complainer.)
Little real political power except as a delaying,
modifying influence.
("Why delaying? How modifying?")
The reporter's explanation wasn't helped by a
quotation from Lord Strathclyde - the Tory leader in
the Lords - "There are already some very
substantive powers in the Lords."
("No powers? Substantive powers?")
I believe that this historic move to dispossess the
possessors of great lands, as somebody put it -
("But it says here they keep their lands.")
"Oh please would you be quiet."
I suppose that this purge is simply the most
grandiose, the most daring item in Mr Blair's long
announced programme to remove the thatched
cottages, the parading guardees, the pomp and
circumstance - all the tourists' beloved symbols of
Britain - from the legacy of Britain.
We talked about this when Mr Blair first announced
he was going to de-thatch Britain's picture in the
eyes of the world and substitute for it a picture of
the present day true Britain.
Forget those stuffy old magnificent cathedrals and
let's have buildings like the French or the new tennis
stadium in New York - lots of visible indoor
plumbing only partially covered with broken, as if
bombed, red brick.
How about a power station twice the height of the
Blackpool Tower? Not historic, mellow, graceful or
quaint England but new, vibrant, inventive, modern,
post-post modern, contemporary England.
Well I've said it before and I will say it again -
people - tourists - are no different from everybody
else in living by stereotypes and every minute
television re-impresses them on us. Tourists feel at
home when they get to Paris and see the Eiffel
Tower and sit in a caf‚ where an old man is playing
a piano accordion.
When they have scones and thick cream sitting in a
garden alongside a thatched cottage and see a boy
slip an envelope into a scarlet, round-bellied mail
box they know they're in England and they love it.
As for Mr Blair's act of daring in firing most of the
hereditaries - he would have done more to please
Republican prejudices if he'd gone the whole hog
and followed the lead of the politician who, in the
year of my birth, campaigned up and down the land
to get rid of the whole lot - to abolish the House of
Lords.
"This second chamber, as it is, irresponsible,
hereditary, absentee."
This reformer who dared - 91 years ago - to be a
good deal more radical than Mr Blair was the Right
Honourable Winston S Churchill. He didn't make it.
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