Conservative History Journal

Last week-end Tory Historian was wandering round Islington in London, carefully avoiding the very small trendy part of the old borough (there was, after all, a Fair Maid of Islington in the early eighteenth century and a Bailiff's Daughter of Islington mentioned in Percy's Reliques of 1765) and came across the statue of Sir Hugh Myddelton.

Although the man is clearly a hero in that part of the world, there was very little information about him on the pedestal. So, Tory Historian decided to investigate.

First stop was that old-fashioned piece of furniture, the bookshelf to consult a copy of the one volume Dictionary of National Biography, which said this about Sir Hugh Myddelton, first baronet (1560? - 1631):

Traded as a goldsmith, banker, and clothmaker; alderman of Denbigh 1597; M.P., Denbigh, 1603, 1614, 1620, 1623, 1625 and 1628; the London corporation having obtained a permission from Parliament to bring in a stream from Chadwell and Amwell, offered to execute the work. compelled by opposition and demands of the landlords to apply to James I for money, on which James paid half the cost on condition of receiving half the profits (the canal, which was about thirty-eight miles long, ten feet wide, and four feet deep, completed 1613); obtained large profits from some lead and silver mines in Cardiganshire, 1617; began reclaiming Brading harbour, 1620; created baronet, 1622.

The due supply of pure spring water to the metropolis, had often been canvassed by the corporation. At times it was inconveniently scanty; at all times it was scarcely adequate to the demand, which increased with London's increase. Many projects had been brought before the citizens to convey a stream toward London, but the expense and difficulty had deterred them from using the powers with which they had been invested by the legislature; when Myddelton declared himself ready to carry out the great work, and in May 1609 'the dauntless Welshman' began his work at Chadwell, near Ware.

The engineering difficulties of the work and its great expense were by no means the chief cares of Myddelton; he had scarcely began his most patriotic and useful labours, ere he was assailed by an outcry on all sides from land-owners, who declared that his river would cut up the country, bring water through arable land, that would consequently be overflowed in rainy weather, and converted into quagmires; that nothing short of ruin awaited land, cattle, and men, who mightbe in its course; and that the king's highway between London and Ware would be made impassable! All this mischief was to befall the country-folks of Hertfordshire and Middlesex for Mr. Myddelton's 'own private benefit,' as was boldly asserted, with a due disregard of its great public utility; and ultimately parliamentary opposition was strongly invoked.

There were present Sir John Swinnerton the lord mayor, Sir Henry Montague the recorder, and many of the aldermen and citizens; and a speech was written by Thomas Middleton the dramatist, who had before been employed by the citizens to design pageants and write speeches for their Lord Mayors' Shows, and other public celebrations. On this occasion, as we are told in the pamphlet descriptive of the day's proceedings, 'warlike music of drums and trumpets liberally beat the air' at the approach of the civic magnates; then 'a troop of labourers, to the number of threescore or up-wards, all in green caps alike, bearing in their hands the symbols of their several employments in so great a business, with drums before them, marching twice or thrice about the cistern, orderly present themselves before the mount, and after their obeisance, the speech is pronounced.'

Famously, Hayek maintained that he was not a conservative or a Conservative with a capital "c". He is, nevertheless, the man who has influenced a good deal of modern conservative thinking. Right now he is out of fashion with the Conservative Party but his time will come again.

Hayek saw himself as a Whig or an old-fashioned Liberal, political categories that have been subsumed in other parties, notably the Conservative one of yesteryear.

At the end of the "Constitution of Liberty", the book Margaret Thatcher was supposed to have shown to the Conservative Central Office policy wonks on her election as leader of the party, explaining that this was what she believed in, there is a chapter: "Why I am not a Conservative?".

In it Hayek sums up the benefits of a free political system in very practical terms:

The main merit of the individualism which Adam Smith and his contemporaries advocated is that it is a system under which bad men can do least harm. It is a social system which does not depend for its functioning on our finding good men for running it, or all men becoming better than they are, but which makes use of men in all their given variety and complexities, sometimes good, sometimes bad, sometimes intelligent, more often stupid.

Tory Historian was browsing through the Defense Visual Information Center's photographic archives - all freely available for use by the public - and came across this remarkable and moving picture.

This was taken on May 13, 1945. The war in Europe had finished but the war in the Far East was still raging.

The picture is that of the bombed out Coventry Cathedral where wounded US troops from nearby hospitals were attending a Mother's Day service.

Another dam' long screed, to misquote the Duke of Cumberland's comment to Edward Gibbon. Scribble, scribble.

To continue the saga of the propaganda war waged after the Reichstag fire.

The first aspect of the counter-offensive was “The Brown Book”, followed later on by “The Second Brown Book”. Münzenberg mobilized many of the West’s intellectuals whom he had already enmeshed in his network or the Münzenberg Trust as it was known, to support this endeavour. Names of others, such as Albert Einstein, who protested, were simply added.

“The Brown Book” was probably written largely by Willi’s henchman and probably NKVD agent, the Czech Communist Otto Katz, who may well have been involved later on in Masaryk’s “defenestration”. Subsequently, the grateful Communist government of Czechoslovakia put him on trial together with Rudolf Slánský in the great show trial of 1952. (Incidentally, the trials of the tortured and pressurized accused were filmed and shown. Their self-abasement was made public at the time and later.)

Katz, the ruthless manipulator and brilliant propaganda writer, was accused of Zionism and espionage, confessed to all his “crimes” and begged to be executed as he had no right to live. His masters obliged and he was hanged.

As Stephen Koch, author of “Double Lives” and Sean McMeekin, author of “The Red Millionaire”, Münzenberg’s biography, argued “The Brown Book” so highly praised at the time and so valued by various historians, was largely a pack of lies. In fact, the lies were not really substantiated and only self-imposed hypnosis could have made all those writers and reviewers swoon with praise at the time.

There were three parts to the book. The first one told inaccurately of the Nazi rise to power, blaming largely the Social-Democrats and, naturally enough, being rather reticent about the war the KPD waged on the SD and the Weimar democracy in general.

The second part dealt with Nazi oppression in general and was, as Sean McMeekin puts it, “intuitively correct”, though short on facts. “The Brown Book” emphasised oppression as it affected left-wing parties and individuals not those dreadful people, capitalists, under which rubric came anyone who did not support the KPD.

Nor was there anything about the growing persecution of Jews. Instead of giving examples, the book and its supposed author, merely quoted Lenin’s attack on rich and powerful Zionists, adding quite dishonestly, that rich German Jews had not felt any discomfort under the Nazis. In fact, there was a great deal of indignation that the Nazis accused various non-Jewish left-wing and, above all, Communist activists of being that.

How ironic that the real author of this document should have ended his life as a “Zionist spy”. Communist history is full of ironies of this kind.

The third part dealt with the Reichstag fire and produced the accusations that it was organized by the Nazis, specifically by Göring. To prove this there were fraudulent charts and “photographs” produced that showed a network of subterranean passages through which the Nazis could have entered while Van der Lubbe was torching the place, to give him a hand.

To top the accusations, there were clear innuendos that Van der Lubbe was the SA Chief Ernst Röhm’s catamite, possibly a sexual toy boy to the SA in general.

Even at the time this was thin and has since been disproved quite categorically by, among others, Fritz Tobias in his 1964 book, “The Reichstag Fire”. No other writer has produced any evidence to back the half-baked assertions of “The Brown Book” and “The Second Brown Book”. They have, nevertheless, penetrated into popular psyche to quite an astonishing degree.

Münzenberg’s other ploy was the London counter-trial, the template for many other subsequent “trials”. It was timed to open the day the Leipzig trial of Van der Lubbe, Dimitrov and the others was to start, September 21, 1933.

The counter-trial was chaired by D. N. Pritt KC, barrister and member of the Labour Party, who was also one of the leading fellow travellers. In subsequent years he would use his standing as a barrister and a “silk” to explain why the Soviet show trials were legally entirely correct and how the guilt of the accused had been proved beyond any reasonable doubt.

The other "judges" were Maìtre Pierre Vermeylen of Belgium, George Branting of Sweden, Maìtre Vincent de Moro-Giafferi and Maìtre Gaston Bergery of France, Betsy Bakker-Nort of the Netherlands, Vald Hvidt of Denmark, and Arthur Garfield Hays of the United States.

Here is an interesting question for all our readers? Who burnt down the Reichstag in 1933? Can you recall the name of Marinus Van der Lubbe, the somewhat crazed Dutchman, who actually set it on fire? And even if you can, do you not think that there was somebody behind it all? After all, it could not be just a lone lunatic?

It would be interesting to know how many of those who read the above paragraph nodded and said: “Of course, Hitler ordered and manipulated Van der Lubbe (assuming you can recall the name) and then used the fire to get rid of the opposition and to blame the Communists.”

I am willing to bet that nobody said: “Oh yes, it was the Communists and they managed to get away with it because Dimitrov’s trial was unsuccessful. Hitler merely took advantage of the event.”

That, ladies and gentlemen, is the difference between good and bad propaganda.

The truth is that Van der Lubbe [pictured here] did act on his own. This has been investigated and proved by a number of historians. No evidence has been found of anybody else’s involvement. (And, please, do not remind me of such things as Kirov’s murder, in December 1934. The evidence for Stalin’s involvement is everywhere.)

Further, Hitler did take advantage of the fire to do what he had always planned to do and destroy the remnants of German democratic parliament. All of that is true.

Now we come to the battle of the propagandists. Everyone, but everyone, quotes Dr Göbbels’s comment about the big lie and compares every would-be spin doctor with him. But who actually believed Göbbels? A large proportion of the German people for a time and some supporters in other countries who wanted to believe him.

As opposed to that, millions of people across the world repeat certain “truths” for which there is “full agreement” without once realizing that it is propaganda first started by that genius of spin doctoring and promoter of the Comintern, Willi Münzenberg [pictured above], without even knowing his name or comparing any tuppenny-ha’penny press officer to him. Now that is propaganda. Sheer genius.

Back to the Reichstag fire. It occurred on the night of February 27, 1933 and the perpetrator was not hard to find. Van der Lubbe, a supposed Communist and an unemployed bricklayer, clearly mentally retarded, was found inside the building.

The following day the recently elected Chancellor, Adolf Hitler, went to see the President, Hindenburg, who signed an order that closed down all non-Nazi parties and banned the Communist one.

A few days later the Gestapo arrested four Communists, intending to try them with Van der Lubbe. Ernst Togler was a senior member of the KPD (Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands, German Communist Party), one of those who had not managed to escape. An arrest warrant was issued for him immediately and he surrendered himself to the police, something the KPD would later hold against him.

The other three were Bulgarians: Georgi Dimitrov, Vasil Tanev and Blagoi Popov, members of the Comintern.

What the Gestapo had not realized that Dimitrov was the head of the West European section of the Comintern and, thus, a close adviser of Stalin’s, one of the few people the latter would make an effort for. Normally Communist parties and their members would be sacrificed without a blink of an eyelid.

In addition, the man who had been charged to promote the cause of the Soviet Union and the Communist International through apparently innocuous publications, Willi Münzenberg was reasonably anxious to become involved.

Münzenberg was a German Communist, one of the few from a working class background. He was a deputy in the Reichstag and the owner of two newspapers and a publishing firm. He was also the most skilled propagandist the Soviet Union and its cause ever had. He did not write propaganda, he organized it, setting up hundreds of committees, using front organizations to run other front organizations, inspiring intellectuals to become fellow travellers and to manipulate other, innocent and ignorant intellectuals. In other words, he was the man who created the atmosphere in which it is considered to be normal to be on the left of the spectrum and intensely moral to support some of the worst tyrants in the world, as long as they seem to be a left-wing cause.

As Stephen Koch, author of “Double Lives” wrote in the New Criterion:

He wanted to instill the feeling, like a truth of nature, that seriously to criticize or challenge Soviet policy was the unfailing mark of a bad, bigoted, and probably stupid person, while support was equally infallible proof of a forward-looking mind committed to all that was best for humanity and marked by an uplifting refinement of sensibility.

Tory Historian is a great admirer of Benjamin Disraeli, the presiding genius of political spin doctors, as the historian John Charmley once put it.

Tory Historian is also fond of the odd quotation or two. Therefore, it is with great pleasure that this blog publishes the following quote from Dizzy:

The wisdom of the wise and the experience of the ages are perpetuated by quotations.

Nothing like consulting great Tory thinkers. Tory Historian is back on line.

Tory Historian has been, unsurprisingly but only temporarily, flummoxed by modern technology, to wit, new blogger. Therefore, postings will be indirect, through Helen, while Tory Historian consults greater minds.

With the help of the Great Doctor, normal service, we hope, will be resumed as soon as possible. In the meanwhile, look upon Helen's postings as those emanating from Tory Historian.

Certainly one can argue as one reader did very forcefully and Tory Historian somewhat less so, that Lincoln was not in any real sense a conservative. There can be no such argument about the fortieth President of the United States, Ronald Reagan.

Tory Historian is fully aware that a couple of Reagan quotes went up on this blog very recently but this story is not a very well known one and is worth repeating.

It comes from a book already mentioned in a previous posting: John O’Sullivan’s “The President, the Pope and the Prime Minister” and describes an episode that took place in 1984, when Reagan was over in France for the 40th anniversary of the Normandy landings.

For some reason, hard to discern now, the American President who had been the first to be called a cowboy and a bully by the West Europeans who were sheltering under the NATO umbrella was temporarily quite popular with the French government and with President Mitterand.

Here is the story from O’Sullivan’s book. To understand it fully one must remember that Reagan had volunteered for the US Army six years before the outbreak of World War II but because of poor eyesight and deafness in one year was assigned to making films for the armed forces at the outbreak of hostilities (I suspect, that means 1941).

Later that day [of Reagan’s address to the veterans], Evan Galbraith, the U.S. ambassador to Paris, brought the president some heartwarming news. The French government had decided to award him a decoration. Galbraith had not been told exactly what decoration; he thought it might be the Croix de Guerre.

“The Croix de Guerre,” said Reagan, looking distinctly upset. “I couldn’t possibly accept that. That’s for bravery. All I did in the war was to fly a desk.” He asked Galbraith to find out if it were true and to solve the problem. Some time later the ambassador returned with the good news that the decoration was the Legion d’Honneur. But Reagan was still not quite satisfied. What was the citation? What were they giving him the honour for?

“For statesmanship,” replied Galbraith.

“Oh, statesmanship!” said Reagan and relaxed. “I can play that.”

One thing leads to another as I have had occasion to mention. Another article led me to quote Abraham Lincoln’s famous saying about not being able to fool all of the people all of the time – a saying that all politicians should repeat to themselves every day – and to find a few other rather good ones.

It is, of course, debatable whether Lincoln was a conservative. The conclusion one comes to is much like the conclusion one comes to on most politicians: depends on what you mean by conservative.

Freedom from slavery, all slavery, is an important part of conservative thinking now, though it was not necessarily so in the middle of the nineteenth century. Tory Historian has just acquired a copy of Jeremy Black’s latest work (how does the man do it?) on the slave trade and is looking forward to reading it and sharing opinions with readers of this blog.

At the launch Professor Black made the straightforward and obvious comment that slavery has been the norm throughout most of history. One might argue that it has never been completely abolished in some parts of the world either in the state or private form.

What is unusual, though Professor Black did not say it, is the assumption developed in parts of the western world in the middle of the eighteenth century that slavery in any shape and form was wrong.

Going back to Lincoln, though, his views on trade – he was a complete protectionist and believer in high tariff, which was one of the causes of the War Between the States – would have delighted some Tories and the odd Conservative now. Others run from the idea in great terror. When they stop running they point out that most Anglospheric countries have done extremely well under free trade arrangements.

Given his shenanigans with the Supreme Court, it is hard to take Lincoln’s solemn pronouncements about the sanctity of the Constitution too seriously but here is one quotation that Tory Historian is sure will appeal to lots of readers:

This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it.

The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty. Plainly, the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of liberty.