Conservative History Journal

It would be wrong to mention anniversaries and not refer to the assassination by car-bomb of Airey Neave MP on March 30 1979. Tory Historian well remembers the shock of hearing that his car blew up as he was driving it out of the Westminster Palace yard.

Neave was a wholly admirable man, a war hero, the first to make "a home run" from Colditz, who then served in Military Intelligence and took part in the Nuremeberg Trials, flawed though these were. Subsequently, he was a close adviser to Margaret Thatcher, concerned particularly with Northern Ireland and the security services.

Anything like that, inevitably, produces loony conspiracy theories and there were many people on the left and on the right who could not accept that Airey Neave was assassinated by the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA), a splinter group of the IRA. There were also conspiracy theories about Neave himself.

The Wikipedia entry gives a fascinating list of all those theories and their adherents. It is somewhat disconcerting to find that Tony Benn's reaction when presented with arguments that Neave wanted to have him assassinated were considerably saner than Enoch Powell's who maintained that the assassination had been organized by the Americans or by MI6. Perhaps both.

The biggest of all: on March 30, 1981 there was an attempt to assassinate President Reagan, which very nearly succeeded. The two pictures of the security services in action and Reagan being hustled off into a car, thence to a hospital, do not give the full story - he was far more seriously wounded than anyone, including him, realized at first.

There was a moment of high comedy when Secretary of State Alexander Haig announced that he was in charge until the Vice-President, George H. W. Bush could get back to Washington DC. In actual fact the Secretary of State comes below the Vice-President, the Speaker of the House (Tip O'Neill) and the President pro tempore of the Senate (J. Storm Thurmond). But details like that were not going to stop Haig. In any case, the Veep flew back and Reagan recovered remarkably quickly, given that his lung had been punctured.

There is a wonderful, though unsubstantiated story of Reagan being wheeled to the operating theatre and him saying with his usual impish grin to the surgeon: "I hope you are a Republican." The surgeon is supposed to have replied: "Mr President, today we are all Republicans." Si non e vero, e ben trovato.

One interesting aspect of that attempt, the first any American President had actually survived, is not generally discussed, and that is the effect it had on Tecumseh's Curse. Tory Historian remembers reading about that curse, supposedly put upon President William Harrison by the brother of the defeated Shawnee chief, Tecumseh, in an early edition of Ripley's Believe it or Not, which enumerated all the presidents elected in the year with 0 at the end (that is, every twenty years) who died in office starting with Harrison, elected in 1840 only to die in 1841. The book had been published in 1930 and the section on Tecumseh's Curse with the portentous: 1940 ????? As we know, the man elected in 1940, Franklin D. Roosevelt, did die in office, as did the man elected in 1960, John F. Kennedy. But not the man elected in 1980, who survived that assassination attempt or the man elected, in 2,000, George W. Bush. I think we can assume that by surviving Reagan broke the curse.

Having spent so long on the Reagan story Tory Historian feels that the other anniversaries, some bad like the assassination of Airey Neave MP, the death of the Queen Mother, some good like the ending of the Rosenberg trial with them being found guilty of espionage and some simply hilarious like John Major climbing on his famous soap box during the 1992 election campaign, deserve separate postings.

The death of Queen Elizabeth I on March 24, 1603 meant that James VI of Scotland succeeded to the English throne as James I of England. This brought about the de facto union of the two countries under the Crown.

Of course, the death of a lady who is 105, has lived a good life and died peacefully is not a tragic matter but this news saddened Tory Historian a little. Andree Peel, Agent Rose in the Resistance, who saved 100 or more Allied servicemen, survived Nazi concentration camps and escaped the firing squad, died earlier this month and is being buried today.

Tory Historian cannot help feeling that the manager of the care home where Mrs Peel had lived and died ought not to have been inteviewed if all she could come up with was a completely trite comment that makes one wonder if she actually remembers which one Mrs Peel was: "We are all a bit shell-shocked here. She was lovely - an amazing character with such a strong spirit."

Tory Historian was particularly impressed by the information that some time after her husband's death, Mrs Peel "found companionship with Brian Westaway, a fellow Lampton House resident".

One of the four patron saints of this country, St Patrick is, as far as anyone can establish, an interesting character. It did not surprise Tory Historian to find out that much of the mythology associated with St Paddy was either invented later or has more to do with other characters of the period.

It is, interestingly, enough his death that is celebrated on March 17, other dates being somewhat uncertain. The year, as that great history book 1066 And All That would put it, being completely unmemorable. As the detailed and cautious article on Wikipedia says:

Saint Patrick's Day (17 March) is celebrated both in and outside of Ireland, as both a liturgical and non-liturgical holiday. In the dioceses of Ireland it is a both a solemnity and a holy day of obligation and outside of Ireland, it can be a celebration of Ireland itself.

Tory Historian is immensely grateful to a sadly anonymous commenter on a previous posting on a clerical detective, who has pointed out that the excellent website, Clerical Detectives has moved. Here is the link. Very well worth browsing and following up on suggestions.

... to Thomas Arne, composer of many things, but especially of Rule Britannia, and one of the first people to fight over copyright:

In 1741 Arne filed a complaint in Chancery pertaining to a breach of musical copyright and claimed that some of his theatrical songs had been printed and sold by Henry Roberts and John Johnson, the London booksellers and music distributors. The matter was settled out of court. Arne was certainly one of the very first composers to have appealed to the law over copyright issues.

Two pictures from the Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule that broke out on March 10, 1959 and was suppressed swiftly and brutally. These two show a Chinese officer addressing Tibetans after the uprising had been put down and refugees leaving in large numbers. The Guardian has a whole selection of photographs.

Not a round date but Tory Historian likes to celebrate this one. March 5, 1953 was the day when the death of Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin, one of the greatest mass murderers of all times (probably Mao Tse-Tung was worse but who is counting) was announced. There is some mystery, according to various accounts, not least by his daughter Svetlana, as to whether he did die on that day or the day before. Had he simply had a stroke and his entourage was too scared to do anything about it, hoping that he would simply die and that would be that? Possible.

The picture of the funeral procession does not show the exact truth. As Moscow was filled with crowds who were ordered to process, the side streets were closed off by the police and the secret police. People who tried to get out because of the ever growing numbers found their way blocked and there was a huge crush with unknown numbers killed in it. As Stalin lived, so he died - in a sea of blood.

It is a long time since we linked to a new historical blog that would be of interest to our readers. So here is one, that seems full of goodies, mostly to do with seventeenth century history, which is appropriate, given its name, but also general discussions about the teaching of history in universities and suchlike matters.

US Marines raise the Stars and Stripes above Iwo Jima

The flag was raised four days after the US forces landed on the island and happened after fierce fighting. The photo taken by Joe Rosenthal, who died in August 2006 at the age of 94, won the Pulitzer Prize (deserved for once) and became one of the best known images of the Second World War.

Tory Historian is well aware that two photographs were taken as the flag in the first raising was deemed to be too small, but that does not mean that this was a fake. The marines had fought hard to gain the island and the photograph recorded their courage and determination.

Tory Historian found some exciting news about an archaeological find in the Holy Land, nowadays known as the Middle East or Israel. Well, East Jerusalem, to be quite precise. Setting aside the political implications, which have no place on this blog, it is fascinating to learn:

The excavations conducted by archeologist Eilat Mazar in the Ophel area revealed a section of an ancient city wall of Jerusalem. According to the press release from the Hebrew University, under whose auspices the project was carried out, the dig uncovered the wall as well as an inner gatehouse for entry into the royal quarter of the ancient city and an additional royal structure adjacent to the gatehouse as well as a corner tower. While ancient buildings are not uncommon in the city, the significance of this discovery is the fact that these edifices can be dated to the 10th century before the Common Era — the time of King Solomon, credited by the Bible for the construction of the ancient Temple in Jerusalem. Pottery found at the lowest levels of the dig is dated to this era.

Even more telling is the fact that bullae — seal impressions — with Hebrew names were found, as well as seal impressions on jar handles inscribed with the words “to the king,” which means they were employed by the Israelite state in that time. Inscriptions on the jars, which Mazar says are the largest ever found in Jerusalem, showed them to be the property of a royal official.

The significance of this extraordinary find is that it provides new proofof the existence and power of the Davidic monarchy, the Israelite state that it led, and the more than 3,000-year-old Jewish presence in Jerusalem. These new discoveries, along with those of a previous dig in a different area of the city of David, contradict contrary Palestinian claims that the Jews have no claim to the area. They also debunk the assertions of some Israeli archeologists who have sought to portray the kingdom of David and Solomon as an insignificant tribal group and not the regional empire that the Bible speaks about. Indeed, Mazar believes that the strength and the form of construction required to build these structures correlates with biblical passages that speak of Solomon’s building of a royal palace and of the Temple with the assistance of master builders from Phoenicia (modern-day Lebanon). Moreover, contrary to those who speak of the Jewish presence in the city as a passing phase in ancient times, the discovery of Jewish seals, which speak directly of an Israelite state, proves that what Mazar has found are not the remains of a Jebusite fort conquered by the Jews but rather of a great city built by David and his son Solomon.

The latest edition of the Conservative History Journal is definitely out. I have a copy in front of me as I type. It's full of goodies: clever and controversial ones. How can anyone resist an admiring article about Lord Liverpool and an iconoclastic one about Winston Churchill? So, you all want to know where and how one can get a copy (except those of you who are already members of the Conservative History Group and have therefore received it or will do so shortly).

The CHG address is: PO Box 279, tunbridge Wells, Kent TN2 4WJ. You can either join the Group at the price of £15 per annum or send £7.50 plus £1 p&p just for the Journal. Hurry, hurry. Stocks do not last for ever.

No, this is not one of those peculiar games people play in which one is supposed to put together the most unlikely concepts into one sentence but an account of Tory Historian’s jaunt to Leicester last week-end.

The pretext was an exhibition of what was billed, justifiably as it turned out, as the largest collection of German Expressionist art in the UK. In Leicester? Tory Historian was somewhat surprised but also fascinated by the tale behind the collection.

The exhibition was marking the beginning of that splendid collection: in 1944, a most unlikely moment in history, the then Director of the Museum, Trevor Thomas, put together an exhibition of German Expressionist art, having talked various German refugee collectors, whom the wise British Government of the day had interned, to lend the splendid works they had managed to bring out of their country.

The exhibition was, astonishingly, successful both with critics (the local newspapers were rather proud of having such an outstanding and imaginative art gallery director) and the public. The gallery collection was started by several painting purchased from the exhibition and continued to grow, becoming world famous, though not so very well known among British art visitors.

The most recent addition to it was a large and fascinating collection of German Expressionist works, particularly of prints, put together by a businessman who had been born in Leicester, Michael Brooks. Tory Historian is delighted to see that the old tradition of businessmen spending money on art or architecture to honour their own city is alive and well. One must tip one’s hat to Michael Brooks and the New Walk Museum and Art Gallery who appreciated the gift.

The rest of the day was taken up by walking round Leicester and seeing the Cathedral (a little disappointing) as well some superb churches, the most exciting of which was St Mary de Castro.

Possibly the most exciting part of that walk for Tory Historian was the discovery that the City and the good burghers of Leicester clearly never abandoned their loyalty to the one they call King of England, Richard III. He is supposed to have been buried somewhere in the City or, perhaps, thrown into the ditch just outside it in the charming way those Tudors behaved. The story is quite convoluted as this article explains and the truth remains unknown.

There are several memorials as well as streets and schools named after the last Plantagenet King. This statue shows him as a young (well, he was youngish though not for those days) and romantic hero with nary a sign of a hump. Eat your heart out, Will.

Near the remains of the castle there is a board, put up in 1985, at the 500th anniversary of the year when two kings visited Leicester. It is quite clear which one the city saw and still sees as the rightful one: Richard III is described as King of England who rode into Leicester some time before the fateful battle of Bosworth Field; Henry VII came to the city on the evening of August 22, after he had “vanquished” Richard and brought his body with him. One can imagine the sullen burghers of Leicester watching the arrogant invader as he rode in with the body of the rightful Kind in the baggage van.

The Conservative History Journal is actually at the printer. Phew, I hear people saying. Yes, it will be available very soon. In the meantime, the idea of a journal on line has taken a step forward. Jerome di Constanzo, writer, journalist and un vrai conservateur, has answered my call and sent me this article on the Gordon Riots, an important episode in English history but one that is, as he says, little known.
Except perhaps for a few Roman Catholics in Britain, the Gordon riots of 1780 are today almost forgotten by the majority of the British people. This was the last anti-Catholic uprising, which, during a short week gave London a vision of how it might be to live through the Terror.

On 2nd June, around 50, 000 people, led by the Protestant Association leader Lord George Gordon MP, marched on Parliament House under banners demanding “No Popery” and with a petition against the Papists Act of 1778, which had been introduced by Sir George Saville, and which sought to reintegrate Catholics into the army and to remove a number of legal disabilities. The demonstrators saw this Act as revoking the Popery Act of 1698 consequently being a reconsideration of the Glorious Revolution’s political settlement.

While Gordon was inside Parliament presenting the petition, the demonstrators started to attack the carriages and people trying to enter Westminster. Violence spread – that evening the Sardinian and Bavarian Embassies’ chapels were vandalised. Moorfields close to the City, with its strong but poor Irish Catholic population, became the theatre of a real anti-Catholic hunt with 100 houses burned down and destroyed. Like the Bastille less than ten years after, Newgate prison was largely destroyed as were the houses of the Lords Rockingham, Devonshire and Saville. The rioters, no doubt to give courage to their enterprises, also raided the gin distillery of Langdale in Holborn and after a free pint at the Spaniards Inn in Hampstead, went on to destroy Kenwood House, the home of the Lord Chief Justice, William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield.

On 7th June the army was given the order to fire on the groups who refused to disperse; martial law was imposed. The unruly mob was no longer solely against Catholics but also against authority in general. Once the violence had started other discontents came into play; those pro and anti war in America, as well as the victims of the poor economic situation helped to take this opportunity to destabilise Prime Minister North’s government. Tempted by this general radical movement, the Whig Charles James Fox declared that he would “much rather be governed by a mob than a standing army”.

When the Bank of England was attacked the following day, the army answered firmly. Around 285 people were killed and several hundred wounded. Many rioters were arrested; subsequently 25 were found guilty and executed. Lord George Gordon was arrested for high treason, but was found not guilty.

Later the same year the general election saw Charles James Fox win the prestigious Westminster seat with a large majority and given the title of “Man of the people”. The riots had been disastrous for British foreign relations with Catholic continental nations because of the destruction of various embassy chapels, and an important treaty of alliance with Austria failed.

Similarities could be found indirectly between the riots and the French Revolution. The rivalry between Fox and North, the extreme ambition of the first, his wish to discredit the second, and his preference for mob rule could have carried Britain’s political system to the same chaos as the French Revolution.
For Edmund Burke this time proved turbulent. He vividly remembered his house being guarded in case rioters targeted him because of his Catholic family background and because he was still suspected of being a latent Catholic. He lost his seat in Bristol later that year because of the anti-Catholic movement. Certainly he had during this period looked at evil straight in the eyes. In his Reflections, he referred to the Gordon riots when introducing the extreme and violent criticism made against the monarchy in France, just ten years after the mob devastations of London. He compared the revolutionaries in France with Gordon and how the British system dealt with this kind of extremist character. He ridiculed Gordon’s conversion to Judaism “the Protestant Rabbin”, who although being held “fast” in Newgate – the prison that his mutinous friends had destroyed – was given “a liberty, of which he did not render himself worthy by a virtuous use of it”. Burke concluded this part by proposing an exchange between Gordon and the Archbishop of Paris – not an innocent joke. In 1791, the year of the Reflections on the French Revolution, Parliament voted for the Catholic Relief Act following the new immigration of Catholic clergy escaping the Revolution in order to practise their faith freely.

All the questions discussed in the Reflections revolved around the Glorious Revolution. Were the death of absolutism and the achievements of parliamentary rule made manifest by the exclusion of Catholics? Interestingly this question is still relevant today for many progressivist thinkers – the modern take being without religion the world could be better.

On the other hand, Burke purposed to achieve the promises of 1688: the complete freedom to believe. The Reflections were an answer to Doctor Price and his pamphlet which celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Revolution of 1688. From this point of view, the Reflections weren’t just 1688 versus 1789, but about a certain perception of the Glorious Revolution: so in fact 1688 versus 1688.

One of this blog's most faithful readers called my attention to this article in the Guardian about Mrs Thatcher that takes a few snipes at the lady on the basis of what there is on the newly posted private papers. The truth is that even the Grauniad finds it hard not to be overawed by her.

Once we get past all that stuff about her diet (actually, it does not sound all that unabalanced though the lack of carbohydrate makes one wonder) we come to the Guardian's main complaint.

The papers also show that her 1987 "no such thing as society" remark, which for many critics defined the immoral truth of Thatcherism, was not off the cuff but was her view as early as 1979.

Morality is personal. There is no such thing as collective conscience, collective kindness, collective gentleness, collective freedom. To talk of social justice, social responsibility, a new world order, may be easy and make us feel good, but it does not absolve each of us from personal responsibility.

Tory Historian was browsing through YouTube (yes, technology has reached even TH), looking for films of historical content and importance. No sign of any excerpts from The Young Mr Pitt on which there was a posting before.

So, Laurence Olivier it has to be. There are many possibilities but here is one of Tory Historian's favourites: the St Crispin's Day speech. No, this is not the right day for it, but could anyone ever better Sir Larry in Shakespeare? He managed to make it sound like ordinary every-day speech.

Tory Historian has to plead ignorance of a rather curious coincidence: both Sir Winston Churchill and Lord Randolph Churchill, his father, died on January 24, seventy years apart. Lord Randolph died in 1895 at the age of 45. By this time his political career had turned to failure and his health steadily deteriorated, though whether it was tertiary syphilis that killed him, as it was believed for a long time, remains questionable.

There is little that needs to be said about Sir Winston Churchill, unless it is to debate his achievements or lack of them. TH believes there will be rather a controversial article in the still delayed Conservative History Journal.

The two pictures are not the usual ones. TH happens to be rather fond of that arrogant little seven-year old and of Lord Randolph as a spider.

Tory Historian is back from Mitteleuropa and has finished reading the recent biography of Arthur Ransome by Roland Chambers, entitled for a rather inadequate reason, The Last Englishman. The reference is to the period immediately after the Bolshevik coup when Ransome was writing somewhat misleading letters to his mother describing himself as the last Englishman left in Petrograd or Moscow. Actually, there were quite a few still and new ones, such as Robert Bruce-Lockhart arrived. The title is as misleading as the letters were.

The sub-title is The Double Life of Arthur Ransome. That is of greater interest. Ransome is known to most people as a superlative writer of children's adventure stories and books about sailing and fishing. A harmless old chap is the way somebody described him to TH.

He was not actually completely harmless. Far from it. In fact, the sub-heading ought to be The Triple Life of Arthur Ransome. Before Russia there was Ransome the Bohemian man of letters whose marriage was beginning to fray at the edges and who had become embroiled in an unfortunate court case with Lord Alfred Douglas. Then there was Russia whence he reported during the First World War and the 1917 Revolution, where he became very friendly with various Bolshevik leaders, particularly Karl Radek and where he, apparently, aided and abetted the Cheka in various ways. Finally, there was Ransome the writer of the Swallows and Amazons books, the countryman, the sailor and fisherman.

Which one was the real Ransome? As usual, the answer has to be all of them. Tory Historian had known about the triple strand before, in particular, about the friendship with the Bolsheviks and had often wondered how Ransome felt as his friends fell victim to Stalin. For he did not talk about it even if he did write a few obituaries of Old Bolsheviks who had died as "traitors".

This book, however, goes further and shows that Ransome had clearly helped the Cheka by trying to extract information, spreading propaganda and bringing out diamonds and money for various organizations in the West. There is some talk of him being recruited by MI5 as well but the evidence for him doing anything for them is scant to non-existent.

Questions remain. How did Ransome manage to miss or ignore the terrible cost that Lenin's great adventure as it appeared to him was imposing on the people of Russia en masse and individually? While many ignored what was happening in the cities and out in the countryside but paid attention to their friends' tribulations, Ransome did not even do that. When his great friends, the journalist Harold Williams and his Cadet politician wife Ariadne Tyrkova, were in danger Ransome seemed unaware of the fact or did not consider it important. Did he react the same way when, later on, his great friend Karl Radek abased himself at one of the show trials?

How did Ransome feel when he described the unfortunate shortages, blaming them on everything and everyone except the Bolsheviks, when he knew that the leaders had plenty of food and lived in luxury? Did he not think there might be something wrong about large sums of money (smuggled out first by him, later by his second wife) being sent abroad to set up Communist organizations when large parts of the country were starving?

Roland Chambers raises many of these questions but provides no answers because he can find none. For these reasons as much as Ransome's cantankerousness, he seems to end up disliking the subject of his biography with some intensity.

Well, that is all very well and possibly that is what happens to all biographers. But Tory Historian cannot help thinking about those wonderful children's books that have inspired and entertained generations. No matter what one knows about the author, they remain as good as ever.

Tory Historian is off for a few days to the old K und K, otherwise known as the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Two days in Vienna, three in Budapest, then back to Vienna and London on Saturday evening. In the meantime, it may not be possible to post. This is a good opportunity for readers to take a hand and suggest a few ideas for what ought to be covered by this blog and the secondary one, meant to be for longer pieces, in the next few weeks. Offers of articles are encouraged. TH looks forward to some very interesting ideas.