Author Archives: Bernard Aris

This is a two-article set; the first looking at the real “Dunkirk” mentality in 1940-’45 up to 1954; the second at Dutch and British present-day politics.

My first point is: no-one can use opinion polls in proving that the “Dunkirk Spirit” about “surviving without flinching” structural shortages, even: rationing, of daily necessities like fresh “fruit and veg”, medicine, etcetera, was as widespread or as solid in 1940-’44 as the postwar legend has it. Opinion polls were a new thing; the first big Gallup polls in British politics and society only started being conducted from 1944-’45 onwards (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_poll ). Moreover, …

Even with Trump handling his twitter account each morning, there isn’t much happening in politics this summer. As usual, that makes appearances and utterances by politicians stand out more; and two of those in the Netherlands symbolize the contrast in western politics nowadays.

 I’m talking about what two blackhaired young Dutch politicians published recently. The flamboyant conservative-populist Thierry Baudet  published a remarkable photo on Instagram; while the Oxford-educated Churchill biographer and convinced European Felix Klos, presently speechwriter for D66 party leader Alexander Pechtold  emphatically launched his candidacy for D66 top candidate for the European Parliament.

 The Dutch public has grown accustomed to the Milo Yiannopoulos-like  stunts and utterances of Baudet, who led his rightwing populist “Forum voor Democracy”  with 2 out of 150 seats into Dutch parliament in 2017, but his summer surprise raised a few eyebrows, even in his rightwing populist clique and claque. From an unknown holiday resort, he put a photo of himself on Instagram  lying down stark naked near some water, one hand covering his private parts, with just the words “release and reload” as subtext. This unleashed a storm of parodies on twitter; someone inserted Baudet as the body (of an executed killer) in the painting “Anatomy lesson of Dr. Tulp” by Rembrandt.  But even the rightwing populist weblog “Dagelijkse Standaard” (dayly standard) commented that they hoped Baudet would stop publishing this sort of thing and return to real politics.

Dutchmen are often called blunt, uncouth because of their direct way of expressing themselves, so I don’t mind Paddy’s warning that as an ex-commando he “doesn’t do subtlety”.

As an activist since 1976 in a coalition politics country, I fully support his plea to work pragmatically with like-minded people of other parties (non-tribalism), and/or people who don’t want to affiliate permanently or at all. And having witnessed many local political deals by D66 with leftist Dutch parties (in their peak days, the 1970’s/’80’s), I also agree that a progressive, ameliorating, modernizing perspective/aim is key, not clubbing together for the sake of “being progressive”. Red, green or blue feathers don’t make a progressive political peacock more useful, or worth being, having.

But where Paddy compares our post-coalition revival with the rich programmatic harvest of “radical”, taboo-smashing ideas of the Liberals in the Grimond and Orpington days, he is being somewhat one-sided. Remember: Grimond became leader in 1956, but the avalanche of radical ideas only really started after the 1959 elections: the “New Directions” brochures of 1960-’67 (see: Arthur Cyr, Liberal Party Politics of Britain, Calder, London, 1977, p. 115-24,147-9; R. Ingham & D. Brack, Peace, Reform & Liberation, Biteback, London, 2011, p. 241-3, 245-’56). Grimond started by losing Carmarthen to Lloyd Georges deserting daughter, 1957; other high-profile Liberals defected; and we held our Bolton and Wade seats (40% of 5 seats) by deals with Tories.

But we were right on Suez (jitters about Boltons deal notwithstanding)and joining EEC; Grimond’s phrases were “polite yet devastating”, like Cable’s about Gordon Brown; and in the 1959 election, a trio of ITV television journalists (Robin Day, Ludovic Kennedy, Jeremy Thorpe) were among our candidates. Grimond himself proving to be better on TV than Macmillan and Gaitskell, made people start reading his articles, pamphlets and books. The Liberals were better TV-age pioneer politicians; Thorpe and our 1958 Torrington hero Mark Bonham Carter (at Collins publishing) were leading our publishing strategy, profiling; and Thorpe started targeting seats. But after Orpington, the Liberal surge petered out despite us continuing to put out radical ideas; so all that wasn’t enough to keep us surging.