Karin Wieland - Dietrich & Riefenstahl: Hollywood, Berlin & a century in two lives

Marlene Dietrich was one of the great artists, actors and performers of the early twentieth century. Her life was shaped by the twists and turns of the German Weimar period, when poverty, capitalist crisis and radical politics shaped a generation. Whatever the particular nature of her beliefs, Dietrich was one who was unafraid to call out things she disagreed with. While she could be a problem to work with, and her casual dismissal of lovers and relationships left many shocked and confused, she was, no doubt on the right side of history.

Leni Riefensthal an admirer of Hitler, a calculating careerist who saw in the Nazi regime a chance to become close to power, to advance herself and to share in the wealth and adoration that went with it. At times this meant she literally used Gypsy prisoners from concentration camps as film extras, before returning them to their inevitable deaths. That she herself was playing a romanticised gypsy in the film being made only heightens the horror. 

Karin Wieland's double biography tries to tie these two individuals together. It is a difficult task. There is little or no physical overlap between the two, though a photo of them together is included. Instead what Wieland is trying to do is to tell the story of the 20th century through the lives of her two subjects. As such the book ends up falling between biography and history and getting neither particularly well. 

What the reader gets from this book will depend on their particular interests. I approached it hoping to learn more about Dietrich, who for me is the enigmatic singer and actor, who threw her lot in with Hollywood and left German as the Nazis rose. Her principled refusal to return to Germany and act in Nazi films, despite her perennial lack of money, was a genuine blow to the propaganda efforts of Hitler's regime. As a result of this, and her choice to become the entertainer of choice for the US military, sparing no effort or personal discomfort to sing, perform and cheer up the troops on the front lines, felt more like a powerful effort at anti-fascism. But Wieland also makes it clear that Dietrich also found a renewed love of applause and adoration. Here she was at her best - not the leading lady from Hollywood, but the Weimar era cabaret superstar who had a instinctive ability to speak to the crowds. 

On the other hand I had little interest in Riefenshtahl who, in my opinion had little talent, and whose close links to Nazism and Nazi leaders was carefully hidden through post-war manipulation. While she clearly had some talents as a director, it is also abundantly clear that these talents came through because of a close identification with the Nazi aesthetic cultivated by Hitler and Goebbels. 

I was, however, intrigued to see that Wieland pulls no punches in retelling Riefenshtahl's career. While there's less material that for Dietrich, she draws out the essential emptiness of Riefenshtahl's life. At the same time Wieland makes it very clear just how close to fascism and the Nazis the filmmaker was. Her post-war career is shaped by the same controlling, manipulative behaviour and a singular failure to atone for her sins. 

Unfortunately there is not enough of a parallel between the two figures to tell the story of the century. Indeed Dietrich isn't enough of a principled political thinker and Riefenshtahl's too limited an actor and performer to make the lives parallel. They just happened to live the same lives - with little or no overlap. At the end of her life Dietrich comes across as a sad, lonely and impoverished former great - someone who made some amazing films, with personal determination and principle. But she was at least a great performer and actor in her time. And after the war Dietrich was at least obsessed with trying to understand and atone for her native country's sins. Riefenshtahl comes across as a pig who got away with a host of crimes, and was accepted back by the establishment as soon as it could.

Readers wanting to learn more about either figure will find lots of material in this book of interest. But it failed too offer any insights into the period, or real connection between the two.

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Eamon Duffy - A People's Tragedy: Studies in Reformation

As one of the preeminent scholars of the English Reformation I have always found Eamon Duffy's work to be insightful and interesting. Despite his framework differing entirely from Marxism, his frequent focus on the lives of ordinary people, the impact of religious changes and the role of religion in day-to-day life, means that there is much to be gained from a study of his work. Two of his books remain unparalleled. The Stripping of the Altars is a fantastic account of the impact of the Reformation with a nationwide view, and The Voices of Morebath is a deeply touching close study of one community's encounter with the sweeping changes of the Reformation through a half century recorded by its vicar, Christopher Trychay.

What to make of A People's Tragedy, collection of Reformation themed essays by Duffy, which mostly explores how the Reformation has been understood by people in the centuries since? While several of the essays are interesting, they are most likely to be fully enjoyed by various experts. However there are some stand out chapters. Two of these demonstrate Duffy's excellence at exploring the ordinary experience of religion. The first, on the nature and experience, of pilgrimage before the Reformation gives, like Voices of Morebath, a real flavour of ordinary lives. Here are the ordinary pilgrims, "goggling" at the splendour around them, distracting them from the shrine. The second, which looks at the doomed, pro-Catholic, rebellion of 1569, again demonstrates what I argue is the essence of the Reformation for "history from below". In England it was experienced by most people as an assault on their culture and community, from above - and thus rebellions against it must be seen as resistance to attacks on ordinary people - rather than just a defence of Catholic practice.

Other essays look in detail at how different historians, religious figures and so on have discussed and understood the Reformation. Some of these are obscure to non-specialists. Others less so. There is a fascinating chapter that dissects Hilary Mantel's trilogy on Thomas Cromwell. Exploring how the author reverses the character and behaviours of two key figures - Cromwell and Thomas More, to the detriment, Duffy argues of popular understanding of the English Reformation. While the main thrust of the argument is understandable, Duffy's desire to protect the legacy of Thomas More seems more sectarian than historical. Another fascinating chapter looks at the development of the English Bible, and its impact today.

To be fair to Duffy, he is concerned not just with pushing a more pro-Catholic viewpoint on the Reformation than most readers will be used to, but in actually exploring the legacy of the schism itself. This, he argues, was quite negative. Regarding the end of the tradition of pilgrimage, Duffy concludes that with its end, "English imagination was the poorer for it". While it is certainly true that the infrastructure and fabric of churches suffered from the consequences, was collective "imagination" really that damaged? Me thinks the writer protests too much.

Part of the problem is that Duffy is concerned about religion per se. This is particularly notable in his chapter on the rise, fall and rise again of pilgrimage to the shrine of the Virgin Mary at Walsingham. Here, in his account of contemporary politics of the event, he is keen to stress the unity of the wings of the Church, over and above the nature of the pilgrimage itself. What does pilgrimage mean in the 21st century is not really a question that Duffy tries to answer. This, I think is important, because Duffy has disconnected his religion(s) from wider economic, political and dare I say it, historical processes. Sometimes this is obvious on a specific level - for instance in the account of 1569 (a revolt entirely neglected by contemporary left historians) Duffy writes:

Till relatively recently, historians have been inclined to explain the rebellion in essentially secular terms, as the last gasp of northern feudalism, an attempt by northern grandees, resentful of their own exclusion from the corridors of power and the domination of the Elizabethan court.

Duffy, instead, reminds us that people did (at all sorts of levels in society) enthusiastically embrace the opportunity to reassert their own religion and practice in the old way: Digging up altar stones, teaching choirboys to sing the old songs and so on. But what Duffy misses is that the revolt can be understood as both aspects. Indeed it is both the desire for northern power and the desire to worship in the old ways that provided the impetuous for revolt by elite rebels and the space for some of the masses to support them.

It is Duffy's ability to disconnect religion from context (while recognising its centrality to the lives of ordinary people) that makes the book a frustrating read. Duffy might be keen to build bridges between the different Christian Churches and to argue against viewpoints that sometimes place Protestantism and being automatically more progressive than Catholicism. But this is abstract religion - there's nothing really here about the role of religion in the modern world, or indeed how a unity of purpose for different Christians might impact on wider politics. Given the uses and abuses to which religion is being purposed in the modern world, particularly by the right and far-right, its a shame that Duffy's excellent historical analysis of the Reformation as a religious process cannot be deployed in ways that might illuminate contemporary politics.

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Austin Fisher - Radical Frontiers in the Spaghetti Western: Politics, Violence and Popular Italian Cinema

As an avid watcher of westerns, and a particular fan of the Spaghetti Western, I was drawn to Austin Fisher's book on radical politics and the genre. It is primarily an academic read, developed from Fisher's PHd thesis. Nonetheless it is readable, interesting and politically quite sharp. Fans looking for a history of the genre, or accounts of the making of particular films, will be disappointed. This is primarily a book about the politics and the political context of the development of the Spaghetti Western.

Some 500 such westerns were made at the height of the influence of Italian filmmaking, and Fisher notes a number of reasons for this. The Italian government was more liberal in its attititudes to violence on screen, costs were lower, there was also huge investment and involvement from US film companies that saw in Italian cinema an opportunity to make a lot of money. In addition US cinema was waning slightly under pressure from television, while in poorer Italy it was still massively popular. Fisher repeatedly warns however, that understanding Italian cinema in general, and the western's in particular, means placing them in their wider context. Discussing the 1969 film Sono Sartana, il vostro becchino (I Am Sartana, Your Angel of Death) Fisher describes it's "comic-book facade... a sinister film with assassins hiding in every shadow, working for a conspiracy run by society's guardians and using the law as cover."

However Fisher continues:

It is true that many of the films cited here... use this moral universe as a backdrop for eccentric action and physical comedy, and should not be mistaken for committed Marxist expositions. Nevertheless, narratives which unambigulously assert that the forces of law and order in an outwardly liberal society amount to an authoritarian conspiracy must, in the volatile political arena of the late 1960s, be appraised in their full historical context. This trend of Westerns spans the very period during which the international student movement and some of its attendant extra-parliamentary groupings emerged, flourished, and descended into armed insurgency.

There are several important issues that Fisher brings to the fore here, and in the book. The first is the wider context if radicalism of the late 1960s, the anti-Vietnam war movement, US imperialism, the Cold War and so on. The other is the limited politics of the Italian left which saw some groups descending into terrorist and violent actions. Another issue for Fisher is a key strategy of the Italian Communist Party to develop (and highlight) Italian culture as contrary to the spread of capitalist ideas and culture from the US and US cinema. As an aside I think Fisher under develops this interesting point, failing to see the Italian CP as tied to the Soviet Union, and thus part of a global strategy against the US.

The involvement of Marxists and revolutionaries in filmmaking and many (but by no means all) Spaghetti Westerns is striking. How successful was it in spreading radical ideas. It would seem that it was limited. Fisher argues:

Italian Westerns oer se were by no means received in mainstream circles - countercultural or otherwise - as films with a capacity for radicalism at all. The amoral nihilism of Leone (and of the majority of Spaghettis) most certainly resonated with the zeitgest at a time when Vietnam was dismantlying what Engelhardt dubs 'victory culture;' and a perceived social breakdown was devilling conceptions of the American Draeam. Such a representation of a broken society... was by no means one with appeal exlusively to the radical Left. Possible the single most visible influence from the filone in mainstream Hollywood cinema of the arly 1970s... advocated nopt a countercultural but a reactionary response.

Indeed it would seem that ahistorically, Westerns do not lend themselves to radical ideas of mass collective action, strikes, protests and anti-war action. Their heroes are usually individuals, their violent revenge is usually outside the law etc. Nonetheless at the time of My Lai, killings of students, the Civil Rights movement and Nixon, as Fisher points out, "films depicting corrupt corporations, sadistic military institutiosn and deceitful governments" were "inextricably tied to the parochial concerns of the Nixon era".

They were also, sometimes, overtly political and revolutionary. Two stand out for me: Bullet for the General and A Fistful of Dynamite. Both of which centre on the radical politics of the Mexican Revolution (the later also involving Irish liberation struggles). Others, such as Faccia a faccia (1967) chart how individuals politics change in the context of wider struggles. For Fisher's "pivotal" year of 1968, when insurrectionary resistance in the Global South, was combining with the explosive development of radical politics in the US and Western, these were powerful themes.

But perhaps the most important point that Fisher is making is that the political westerns he celebrates develop in three way tension with European left politics, the global political situation, and also a "fascination with US culture" and film. For every explicitly radical film such as A Fistful of Dynamite, there is also a highly political, but less obviously one such as, The Great Silence, and countless films that aren't political in an overt sense at all, even if they reflect wider contexts admirably. It is, as he says, viewers who "create 'meanings' through the artefacts of popular culture" and in the political Western, it is "one such audience" that engages with such a process of "negotiation, appropriation and reformulation".

Radical Frontiers is required reading for every left fan of the genre. I am sad I didn't get round to this earlier, though my to watch list is now three times its old length. Other films are getting a rewatch. 

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Margaret Mead – Coming of Age in Samoa

Margaret Mead’s Coming of Age in Samoa is one of the most well-known books of anthropology ever written. Mead was in her 20s when she took the audacious trip to Samoa, and then on to the smaller island of Taʻū to live with the Samoan community there. Her account of the lives of the people there, and her focus on the lives of young women was extremely unusual for the time. First published in 1930 the book carries with it some contemporary prejudices, though it must be said that at the same time the book is remarkably progressive for the time – simply taking issues such as female sexuality and gender issues seriously was radical.

The book was written explicitly as a popular work, and is devoid of the complex anthropological classifications and relationship diagrams that bedevil other, similar works. The book is also written as a polemic, aimed at a Western audience (primarily in the United States), about education and development of young people. As Mead writes in her original introduction,

this tale of another way of life is mainly concerned with education, with the process by which the baby, arrived cultureless upon the human scene, becomes a full-fledged adult member of his or her society. The strongest light will fall upon the ways in which Samoan education, in its broadest sense, differs from our own. And from this contrast we may be able to turn, made newly and vividly self-conscious and self-critical, to judge anew and perhaps fashion differently the education we give to our children.

The opening chapter describes daily life in Samoa, a mix of work, play and rest, centred on the production of food (through fishing and agriculture) and the various roles that people play. While Samoa is not a pre-class society, in fact it is heavily hierarchical on a regional and very local scale, it is a society where class differences matter much less than in capitalist society. Chiefs and heads of households have more of a role in terms of managing and organising, at least at the time that Mead visited, village life. The collection of a surplus allows more for the functioning of ceremonial, religious and celebratory life, than the maintenance of a position of power and wealth.

There are strict gender roles as well. However gendered labour is also shaped by differences related to age. Women, and girls, primarily focus on the home, though some girls and women also fish and collect food and some boys work in the home cooking. Age also plays a role in determining hierarchy in a way that is far more than just who is more important than others. For instance, children, including very small children often look after younger children. But all children understand that older people have authority to order them about. This means children are central to Samoan production, but they are also more collectively looked after and developed. They are also freer, at least as they become teenagers, to change households and move about. Meads explorations of the way age, class and gender inter-relate and sympathetic and detailed and make for real insights into a society very different from ours. Indeed this forms the very basis for her points about shining a light on our own education systems.

One important aspect to Samoan culture however was its close nature. Children were much more exposed to the realities of human life – death, birth and sex – than Westerners, especially in Mead’s era. As such children where not sheltered from sex, death and birth. Sex in particular is part of getting older. Children clearly experimented more in Samoan culture, and were prepared and protected. There is also a curious difference between the sexuality of young people before marriage and that after. Young people seemed to have frequently sexual encounters, both hetro and homosexual, and it seems that their first sex was usually with an older person. This latter part feels uncomfortable and it is not clear to me from Mead’s writing exactly how this works unless it is abusive. Some of the sexual realities of Samoan society are, however, much more progressive than our own. The acceptance of homosexuality as a natural part of life for younger people is very different, though again Mead does recount a case of “deviance”, to use her word, where an older male Samoan who might be considered transsexual and/or homosexual is treated with disdain by the community and, indeed the author. Despite Mead’s own possible bisexuality, her comments about homosexuality in Samoan society imply it is merely a childhood distraction, or “deviance”. with hindsight this seems either naïve, a mistake or perhaps Mead recognising that Western society would not accept a truthful account.

Mead also shows that rape, in a particular form, seems to have been relatively common. She writes:

Between the unmarried there are three forms of relationship: the clandestine encounter, “under the pam trees,” the published elopement, Avaga, and the ceremonious courtship in which a boy “sits before the girl”; and on the edge of these, the curious form of surreptitious rape, called moetotolo, sleep crawling, resorted to by youths who find favour in no maiden’s eyes.

These relationships and realities belay the idea that Samoan society in this period was a Utopia. While there were clearly more open and relaxed attitudes to sex, and young people did seem to enjoy and have freedom to explore their sexuality before marriage, it is also true that there were some violent and unpleasant traditions and beliefs. The focus, within the community on "deflowering" of young women and the moetotolo that is related to this, imply a structural problem within Samoan society's approach to women. It demonstrates that for all its positives in its approach to sexuality, Samoan culture had, at the time, an unequal setup between men and women, and consequent unequal power relations. 

Nonetheless Mead's work does remind us that societies can be organised very differently. For instance, Mead reports that her Samoan friends laughed at the story of Romeo and Juliet, believing the idea of lifelong romantic monogamy hilarious. This was not because marriage and love did not happen, or that lifelong love between partners did not occur, but because the idea of a couple only having sex with one another for their whole lives was impossible to understand.

Indeed adultery and consequent punishment did happen. But it punishment was usually about the offended party being paid a fine, such as some well-made mats.

Mead’s discussion of the economic life of Samoan people tells us much about different approaches to life. She tackles questions that remain extremely relevant – how does a differently organised society change approaches to things like Mental Distress, loneliness and love. One interesting point is that the role of the immediately family is much less significant to Samoan people. Mead says: 

It is interesting to note that a larger family community, in which there are several adult men and women, seems to ensure the child against the development of the crippling attitudes which have been labelled Oedipus complexes, Electra complexes and so on.

The Samoan picture shows that it is not necessary to channel so deeply the affection of a child for its parents and suggests that while we would reject that part of the Samoan scheme which holds no rewards for us, the segregation of the sexes before puberty, we may learn from a picture in which the home does not dominate and distort the life of the child.

These are interesting points. The central role of the “bourgeois” family in Western society is remarkably constraining. Leaving aside Mead’s dated psychiatric comments and her framing from her own, much more segregated society, the point that an extended family allows much wider child development still stands.

There are, of course, problems. Mead’s work is often shaped by her own times and as such some of the language and analysis absolutely jars. She also knows that she is seeing Samoan society in a period of rapid change, as US influence is changing things dramatically. She notes, for instance, that the recent compulsory attendance of children at school by the authorities is quickly destroying traditional society which relies heavily on child labour to care for the youngest children and prepare food. This would only be exacerbated in the decades after the period when Mead was writing.

It is also clear that Mead’s approach to certain key questions relies too heavily on a belief that adult behaviour develops just from conditioning in childhood. Yes the differences between Samoan and Western societies are important and the different approach to education is tremendously important. But the organisation of the “economic base” in Western society shapes these factors, rather than simply a desire to educate differently.

These problems aside this is a tremendously influential and significant work. The attacks on Mead’s work by later anthropologists seem, in no small part, to stem from a belief that young women were not, and could not, be the independent, sexual and confident people that Mead described. It is also likely that dismissal of Mead herself, due perhaps to her gender, lay at their root. Mead’s youth, sexuality and liberal politics, no doubt made her a more insightful scientist than many of her peers. The book she wrote reminds us that humans have constantly found new and varied ways to organise their lives. While we should not pretend that Samoan society in the 1920s was a perfect utopia for all, Mead's account should give those of us trying to change the world renewed confidence that things do not need to be like they are. 

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M.T. Anderson - Symphony for the City of the Dead

Dmitri Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony is one of the greatest pieces of music of the twentieth century. It was shaped by two great events. The Russian Revolution and the siege of Leningrad which took place during the Nazi's genocidal war against the Soviet Union. Listening to the piece today evokes many feelings, and it has been read in a number of ways. Its performances during the Second World War, coloured by the fact it was mostly penned by Shostakovich while in Leningrad under siege, made it a masterpiece for many listeners who might not normally have listened to Shostakovich's style.

M.T. Anderson's biographical account of the Seventh and Shostakovich frames the symphony just like this. He explores how Shostakovich's life and attachment to the city of Leningrad, as well as the wider context of Revolution and War meant that he was able to produce this masterpiece. But the problem is not Anderson's framing, but the story he tells.

The problem is that Anderson doesn't really understand the Russian Revolution. He appreciates it's mass nature, and the way it lead to a flourishing of art, culture and music. He writes of Petrograd "swarming" with new art movements, "cubofuturists and neo-primitivists, constructivists and Suprematists, Rayonists and Productivists". This is good because it is normally neglected in histories of the period, though it is a shame that Anderson doesn't explain any of these things. The problem is that the Revolution, for Anderson, is an expression of Bolshevik violence and greed, rather than an attempt at mass human liberation. Lenin, according to Anderson, "believed that the people themselves often did not understand what they truly needed". Anderson lacks any real subtle understanding or analysis of the dynamics of the Russian Revolution and the Civil War that follows. Nor does he display any real clarity on the nature of revolutionary politics. For Anderson there's nothing but continuity from Lenin to Stalin. There's no real sense of Stalin's counter-revolution drowning the hopes and dreams of the revolution itself in a "river of blood".

Anderson is at least on firmer ground when it comes to the music. He explores Shostakovich's works in their context, while defying attempts to simply place them in the straight jacket of that context. The reader and listener are invited to bring their own interpretations while Anderson's supplies a (sometimes flawed) context:

There are few composters whose music and whose own lives reflect so exactly the trials and triumphos of a nation. The music of his yo8uth was electric with the boldness and experimentaion of Leningrad's explosive revouitions. With his music of the 30s, he came to know the grotesque brutality of the Terror. As Stalin closed his fist around Leningrad and the arrests and disappearances began, Shostakovich was in the middle of it. His Fifth Symphony, composed in a time of mute fear, was an answer to the authorities - but, at the same time, it spoke other truths, out of the side of its mouth, to all who had suffered loos and could not speak... He gave a voice to the silenced. 

Is this fair? A more recent Shostakovich biography Simon Behrman has argued convincingly that Shostakovich carried with him an essence of revolution throughout his life:

In one masterpiece after another, he attempted to engage us in the fefining themses of our age: revolution, war, oppression; occasionally giving us hope, more often despair, but consistently reaching out to a mass audience at the highest artistic level. In this aspect of his life and work, he carried the spirit of the October revolution throughout his life, and has bequeathed it to us in his music.

This seems much fairer to Shostakovich and the essence of his mustic

Politics aside, I found myself constantly frustrated with Anderson's book. It patronises the reader, offering superficial banalities while describing the most shocking of events. He writes, for instance, "despite the fact that Hitler and Stalin both called thesmelves socialists, Hitler's Nazi Fascism and Stalin's Societ Communism, were, in many ways natural politicial enemies". There is little attempt here to actually understand what either of these appalling regimes were. Nor perhaps why people who were Communists across Europe fought fascism on the streets and into World War Two. This undermines the author's analysis of Shostakovich's music because he cannot really understand why the people of Russia, and Shostakovich himself, rallied to a regime that was so dispicable. 

So sadly, despite some interesting moments and some excellent illustrations, I must conclude that Symphony for the City of the Dead offers little to the serious reader of Russian and music history.

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William Morris - The Pilgrims of Hope

This little book is simultaneously a piece of art and a historical document. Of the 108 pages, just forty or so are given over to the piece of the title, William Morris' poem The Pilgrims of Hope. This, as Michael Rosen says in his introduction is a "fascinating piece of work" in which the author struggles to depict a contemporary class struggle through a long, descriptive poem. For someone like myself who struggles with poetry as a literary form, Rosen's introduction and the longer discussion of the context of Pilgrims of Hope's publication by Nicholas Salmon are extremely useful, both in understanding the poem and putting it in context.

The Pilgrims of Hope tells the story of Richard, a young man living in the country, who learns about the wider world and its struggles through an encounter with a refugee from France. This leads him to London where, among other things, he attends a socialist meeting - much like the ones that William Morris himself organised - and there gets involved in Communist ideas and struggles. When the Paris Commune breaks out, Richard, his wife and his French friend travel to Paris to take part in the struggle and defend it from the counter-revolution. There they form a classic love triangle and Richard's friend and lover die on the barricades, leaving the exact nature of their relationship unclear.

Its a short story, and surprisingly, it's not well told. I am greatful to Salmon's deep reading of the poem for understanding events. What is interesting is the way the poem rises and falls, climaxing on the barricades. Here I was tempted, as Salmon suggests, to see the love triangle as representing the intensity of emotion experienced by the participants in the Commune. Interestingly Morris tends to portray socialists politics in such an emotional way. His hero's discovery of socialism at a political meeting is described as a rebirth, "I was born once long ago: I am born again to-night." After this Richard becomes the "New Proletarian" imprisoned for his role in the fight for the right to protest.

But it is the trip to join the Commune that is the centre of the story - this Morris calls "A Glimpse of the Coming Day", implying that the Commune's democracy and freedom was a vision of a future socialist society. Richard had "never yet" been abroad and his arrival but arriving in Paris:

Yet here we beheld all joyous the folk they had made forlorn!
So at last from a gray stone building we saw a great flag flu,
One colour, red and solemn 'gainst the blue of the spring-tide sky,
and we stopped and turned to each other, and as each at each did we gaze,
The city's hope enwrapped us with joy and great amaze.

Morris doesn't dwell on the gains of the Commune. Indeed the editors include a piece by William Morris written for the 16th anniversary, but even this does not include much about what the Commune and the Communards did, or any real analysis of the importance. It is, however and important read, as it demonstrates both Morris' commitment to revolution and the fact that he acknowledged the Commune as an event. Some biographers, including EP Thompson suggest that Morris never discussed the event.

It is thus important that the editors also include two short pieces by Friedrich Engels written for the 20th anniversary that both describe and analysis the Paris Commune and place it in its revolutionary context. Together these short articles explain why Morris was moved to write a long poem about the Paris Commune, and take up precious space in his newspaper week after week.

As a poem I do think that The Pilgrims of Hope lacks something. Morris experiments with the style and material. In places its over romantic and the story feels thin and contrived. Nonetheless reads, as Salmon points out, would have been familiar with events and experiences - such as the socialist meetings.

All in all this is a interesting period piece with some excellent analysis by Michael Rosen and Nicholas Salmon. Perhaps not the best place to start your reading of the history of the Paris Commune, but one to add to the list.

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Angela Hui - Takeaway: Stories from a Childhood Behind the Counter

I have been looking forward to reading Takeaway ever since I read an extract in the Guardian when it was first published. My attraction was several-fold. Firstly Angela Hui's takeaway where she spent her childhood and teens, and the subject of this book, is in the small Welsh village of Beddau. Some of my family live in a smaller villager very nearby which until recently also had a Chinese takeaway. Secondly I was intrigued by the combination of food and memoir, the idea of food being intrinsic to our lives, but conditioned by society and circumstance is not new. But it is an important one and this book covers that a great deal - not least with the author's inclusion of key recipes. Finally, but less importantly, I used to love Chinese takeaway food though I am unable to have it these days - it felt like an excuse to enjoy the dinner by proxy.

Takeaway is a great book. But it is not a homely food and family tale as the Guardian's extract will show. Angela Hui writes about being "robbed" of her childhood by the needs of the business. From a young age she and her brothers had to work, and work long and hard hours in the takeaway. They experienced racism and abuse - and the difficulties of that life. She also describes the family tensions - and domestic abuse - that accompanied the life, driven by stress and difficult economic circumstances.

The book also highlights the difficulties that children like Hui experience, trapped between two identities - that of their immigrant parents and their heritage and the culture that they grow up in. Hui writes about not being part of either, and being a conduit between the two. Translating for her parents, living in a immigrant household, and being part of the Welsh school and village. The situation is not helped by the economic circumstances of the village itself - a former mining town with few jobs and little money. She and her family are victims of abuse occasionally for that - scapegoated and blamed. In some regards her parents are insulated from this as they don't have the language. But they feel the pain of broken glass and smashed up gardens and the spitting hatred of the racists. I did cheer though, when her father finally snapped and chased a racist vandal with his cleaver. There was racism, but there was also kindness too. The regulars with their unchanging dishes, and the villagers who teach the family to sing the national anthem. But one always gets the impression of distance between Hui's family and those around them - only really broken down by Hui's generation as they make friends and then move on.

Food provides an anchor. Her father is not one for loving embraces and kind words. But he can cook a favourite dish, and food becomes in part the way that the family and the wider Chinese community are able to bond and link. But what comes through mostly is the way that life for this family, and likely for many, many other families working in this environment is that the work dominates life. There are few days out for Hui, no evenings at friends houses watching TV or doing homework, because she has to work in the shop. A visit to the Chinese supermarket in Birmingham is a big highlight. In essence, though Hui doesn't draw this out explicitly, there is a class basis to this situation - the position of Middle Class families - trapped by the economic logic of the need to run the business, shop or takeaway. Workers' can, at least occasionally, organise collectively and leave at the end of the day. People in Hui's family's position are trapped by the need to constantly labour to make money. 

From a young age Hui and her brothers want out. They recognise that they are trapped, that there are better alternatives out there. It is only later that she comes to realise the sacrifices her parents have made. For them the takeaway is not a family business - it is a way to get the economic security so that their children can escape. As such, the background stories of Hui's parents life in China during the famine, are even more poignant. There too food is a factor, and some of the dishes relate to this period, not just the takeaway menu.

Takeaway is illuminating. It deserves to be widely read for in its subtle way it tells us alot about society, racism, food and family. It's not easy in places, and sadly the recipes are not ones that I will ever be able to make for myself, but other readers will. Enjoy.

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Duncan Stone - Different Class: The untold story of English cricket

Early this year, in June 2023, a long awaited, independent report into "Equity in Cricket" was published. The report was damning, saying that English cricket was not "for everyone", and prompted the chair of English cricket to say "This report makes clear that historic structures and systems have failed to prevent discrimination, and highlights the pain and exclusion this has caused." The report exploded like a bombshell during the Second Test of the summer's Ashes series. But by the end of the series it had all but disappeared from the headlines.

Anyone who has spent anytime following cricket in England will know that the sport is riddled with racism, misogyny and hostility to change. It has a strange obsession with its own history, and despite it being very much a sport liked, played and followed by thousands, there is a tendency for it only to be thought of in terms of test matches, national games and county cricket.

As a lifetime cricket fan and supporter of the "Anyone but England" position, I thought it time to delve deeper into the history of the game. Duncan Stone's Different Class seemed the ideal book to explore the real history of the game and try to understand how we have ended up with a national game that is so resistant to change. Stone shows how modern cricket evolved from a mass sport, that involved hundreds of thousands of players and supporters. 

Broadcasters, politicians and the people in charge of the contemporary game would have us believe its origins lie in gentile matches between village teams of vicars and blacksmiths, played purely for the love of the sport. In reality much of the mass participatory roots of the game lie in the huge profits to be made from gambling. It was precisely this mass appeal that meant the establishment saw in cricket something else. By the end of the nineteenth century,

Cricket's growing significance extended beyond what happened at the wicket. Thomas Martineau, the Mayor of Birmingham clarified this wider importance... in 1884: cricket, he argued, now formed "part of a larger question exercising the minds of many wise people in England... namely, the question of keeping up the strength of nation".

As Stone continues, it was

cricket, more than any other sport, that came to define the spiritual (or moral) health of the English. If the overwhelming mass of ordinary cricketers and administrators had done the most to make cricket the national game, the "spirit" of English cricket would be shaped by a mere handful of gentlemen amateurs who had, invariably, attended one of the nation's famous public schools.

A running theme through Stone's book, and indeed the history of English cricket, is the way that the administrators of the national game hated and disliked the cricket from below epitomised by countless different leagues and groups of teams. One cricket writer, Alec Waugh, worried in the Cricketer in 1922 that cricket "is no longer entertained for a few. It has become a part of the national life, and probably, if the Bolsheviks get their way with her, it will be nationalised with the cinema and the theatre and Association Football." Chance would be a fine thing.

Such ludicrous musings on the part of Waugh reflected a genuine fear of sport from below, and the idea that ordinary players and supporters could enjoy and manage their own game. Much of Stone's book explores how the various leagues evolved and existed, demonstrating an amazing life that is hidden from official histories that focus on specific matches, players and the national game.

The official focus on games for the sake of games demonstrated an "increasing rejection of competitive cricket" which was seen as working class, radical and unsporting. The country's industrial north was associated with competitive professional leagues and the south, alleged to be about sportsmanship and playing the game. Stone's detailed accounts shows that this was far from true, but the administrators in London were able to shape a narrative that writes out the working class, ordinary person's game from history. As Stone summaries:

While working-class cricketers in the Home Countries continued to play against their neighbours in local leagues, clubs dominated by the region's middle class coveted visits from elite metropolitan clubs. Regional and local rivalries did not strictly disappear, but one's social class or education rather than place or community, now defined sporting rivalries where the middle class dominated. Over time, this made it increasingly difficult to determine which clubs were the best in playing terms, as a club's status hinged upon their facilities, the social statues of its players and those it played against. 

Such was the position in the run up to the Second World War, and it is one that Stone argues came to be defended and extended after the interregnum caused by the conflict. It also continues to define the game today. Let's spell out Stone's argument. Essentially he says that class interests came to dominate the game, though their wealth and power. 

The warring factions in club cricket's cold war were split between those who wished to preserve a non-competitive form of the game where elite clubs got to choose who they mixed with, and those who wanted to see the introduction of meritocratic leagues that would encourage youth, raise standards and public interest.

Despite the continued love of the game, mass participation and dynamic leagues and local clubs, this situation essentially continues today. The purse strings repeatedly fail to open for working class communities, whose school children have lost their playing fields and rarely have access to the equipment needed to play cricket. Much vaunted attempts to get more non-white players, women and so on into the sport have repeatedly failed and the national game (of both men and women) remains dominated by individuals from middle and upper class backgrounds. The playing fields of Eton, and its like, continue to dominate the game.

The recent success of the English women's team demonstrates the appetite for the watching public for cricket. But it remains a game that is frequently out of the reach of ordinary people. Stone argues that the English Cricket Board continues to ensure that cricket was "run in the interests of a minority of subscribers". 

For those who enjoy cricket it is a depressing situation. Though, as Stone demonstrates, there is a lot of cricket out there, though not necessarily in the public view. Stone's book is a powerful polemic that ought to be widely read. It is a history that has very little anecdotes from extraordinary games, few tales of eccentric and talented players and very little of the "leather on willow" beloved of the usual cricket history. It won't be widely read in Lords or in the members' pavilion at Edgbaston where I spent a few depressing years. But it is all the better for that. While the reader may struggle with the detail of the ins and outs of various leagues, it is worth persevering. As Stone says, the future of the game as a sport with "broad appeal" will very much depend on it coming to "reflect the nation that is England today". 

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Chinua Achebe - An Image of Africa

This short book is actually a collection of two essays by China Achebe, the author of the superb novel Things Fall Apart - the classic exploration of the impact of colonialism on Africa. In this theme, the first essay is a brilliant study by Achebe of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Conrad's book is, as Achebe points out, frequently studied and offered as a study of liberalism and imperialism. It is supposed to highlight the reality of colonial rule on Africa, through the mindset of its narrator. As such Conrad is let off the hook, and allowed to be the voice of consciousness for the reader. This, argues, Achebe is nonsense, because Conrad is "a bloody racist" and Heart of Darkness is a book which

parades in the most vulgar fashion prejudices and insults from which a section of mankind has suffered untold agonies and atrocities in the past and continues to do so in many ways and places today. I am talking about a story in which the very humanity of black people is called in question.

Achebe continues to preempt those who argue that it is not Conrad's voice, but his characters, by pointing out:

But if Conrad's intention is to draw a cordon sanitaire between himself and the moral and psychological malaise of his narrator, his care seems to me totally wasted because he neglects to hint, clearly and adequately, at an alternative frame of reference by which we may judge the actions and opinions of his characters. It would not have been beyond Conrad's power to make that provision if he had thought it necessary.

Achebe points out that Conrad might have seen the consequences of imperialism, "but was strangely unaware of the racism on which it sharpened its iron tooth". This is, of course, because Conrad shared those beliefs and racist attitudes - the Image of Africa that Conrad uses, "did not originate" with him, it is the "dominant image of Africa in the Western imagination" and Conrad simply "brought the peculiar gifts of his own mind to bear on it". While liberal Europeans might decry this characterisation of Conrad's racism in Heart of Darkness, Achebe notes that "victims of racism" have no such problems identifying the racism at the heart of the novel.

The second essay, The Trouble with Nigeria, seems at first to be a lot less accessible to a reader in the 21st century as it deals with the political and economic issues of post-colonial Nigeria. Achebe illustrates this through discussions of corruption, waste, inefficiency and lack of democracy in Nigeria in the 1970s. He focuses on local questions such as Tribalism, as well as wider issues common to many countries such as inequality. It is brilliantly, and fluidly written - as witnessed by Achebe's specific use of the traffic problem in Nigeria as a metaphor, albeit a concrete one, for the country's problems. How can, Achebe asks, a country like Nigeria - with its wealth of natural resources, people and experience - become a global power? While the book is rooted in its time and place, the questions are eternal - at least under capitalism. And this, is one of the shortcomings of an otherwise interesting essay. Achebe highlights many problems, and notes particularly the immense inequality in Nigeria which has seen a new Black African ruling class become supremely wealthy. The starting point for Achebe seems to be a collective national interest - with the different class interests of its population - farmers, workers and capitalists - placed in second place. The force to change this, is one that has hitherto been silent and includes Achebe himself - Nigeria's intellectuals. 

While Achebe skewers the hypocrisy and dishonesty of the country's politicians, he is curiously naive when it comes to the origins of Nigeria's troubles. These he sees as caused by the mindsets left behind by colonialism, which thus requires intellectuals to drive change. He fails to see Nigeria's problems as originating in the nature of  capitalism - a system that cannot ever be democratic or just, even when run by a black ruling class. It will take a revolutionary change to fully break free of the chains of international and national capital that continue to hold Africa's development back. Deep down Achebe perhaps knows this, as with his celebration of the black, Muslim socialist radical Aminu Kano, at the end of the book. 

I found both these essays highly stimulating politically. But they also demonstrate a powerful polemical talent - these are books that challenge liberal politics and viewpoints, and show that the legacy of European colonialism goes much deeper than many would admit, which is why this short book deserves a read.

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Penelope Houston - Went the Day Well?

A recent viewing of the Ealing Studios film Went the Day Well? (1942) led me to Penelope Houston's short book. The film itself is a remarkable oddity. Set in the quiet English town of Bramley End during World War Two, it deals with an invasion by German paratroopers who, together with a local Nazi sympathisers, are trying to take over key infrastructure ahead of the main German invasion. The disguised Germans are eventually unmasked by the resourceful villagers who through a combination of skills, luck and sheer violence manage to hold them off until the regular army can relieve them. 

The films uniqueness is partly to do with the unusual subject. British World War Two films rarely dealt with invading Germans on British soil. Modern viewers who know Ealing more for its gentile comedy will be surprised by this, and also by the thing that stood out for me - the surprising and shocking levels of violence.

Penelope Houston's book looks at the film in context, and has plenty of detail about how and why it was made. She argues that it was not designed as a specifically propaganda film encouraged by the government, particularly as by 1942 the threat of invasion had receded dramatically. She also contrasts the film with the Graham Greene story that it is based upon, and comes to some interesting conclusions. There's plenty of material about how and when the film was made that will excite real film buffs and some interesting stuff on Alberto Cavalcanti, the Brazilian director who made it.

The film, Houston argues, is unusual partly because of the things that set it out. But also because it is "imagined history posing as real history, but also aware that the pretence takes in no one". But there are some key messages. One of these is about unity - the great theme of propaganda during times of crisis. We are all in it together. There is the cross-class unity of the village in the face of the enemy. Everyone, the rich, poor, land-girls and a sailor home from service, are herded by the Nazis into the church. Houston notes the one great humorous line uttered by two characters on being herded into the Church, "but we're chapel" - a line that serves to underline the main argument of the film: We're all in it together, but we are never going to stop being British.

The enemy are also utterly brutal. If irrational. As Houston points out, there is absolutely no way that the officer would have been allowed to bring his Vienna branded chocolate (though she fails to note that it is actually incorrectly spelt for German).  Houston focuses on the violence, as many reviewers do. But I was struck by what I saw as her misinterpretation in a couple of places. She notes the "unity" of the village. But she didn't seem to pick up on the emphasis that this unity was actually unequal. There's a scene at the manor when the wealthy villagers entertain the officers before they are unmasked as Nazis. In this the hostess apologises for the lack of choice at dinner (the contemporary viewer would absolutely understand this reference to rationing). But the viewer has also been allowed to see that this lack of choice is subjective - there have been several bottles of wine and courses and the meal was served in great elegance. All in it together, but some are more in it than others.

The other point I thought that Houston missed was the nature of the propaganda. Trying to understand Went the Day Well? in the context of an instruction manual on what to do during invasion, that "careless talk costs lives" or as a lesson in British unity is not enough. The real message is actually about England (and I mean England here) is. In this, she echoes Angus Calder's reading of much propaganda during the early years reflecting a "Deep England". This is designed to appeal to a deep-seated English patriotism that sees the country as a place of small villages of thatched cottages, with limited class conflict, comfort and plenty for all. This is the England under threat, and this is the England that has to be defended. 

Houston points out that the Greene story it is based on is set in a poverty stricken working class village. The difference the film makers put into the film seems to emphasise my point. This is subtle propaganda aimed at more than just giving confidence in the face of the enemy. It's a message about the type of England the rich and powerful wanted. 

This disagreement aside, Penelope Houston's book is certainly worth reading if you want to know more about this incredible film. And there's much here that gives wider context - not least the tragic story of the innkeeper who killed himself after the film crew drank the pub dry and the villagers were somewhat pissed off. Rationing was not the same for all...

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Chanda Prescod-Weinstein - The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime & Dreams Deferred

It is not uncommon, while looking at reviews of Chanda Prescod-Weinstein's The Disordered Cosmos, to see people describe it as a book of two halves, the first being the difficult science and the second the politics. But to read The Disordered Cosmos like this is to misunderstand a fundamental point about Prescod-Weinstein's powerful polemic. One of her key arguments is that science, and that includes the cosmology and particle physics that she researches, cannot be separated from politics. This is something that the author herself learnt, as she writes in to the introduction, "my new understanding that society would follow me into the world of physics was also something of a phase transition for me."

Prescod-Weinstein's research is complicated. That said, she has a gift for analogy and clear writing that makes the concepts she deals with as accessible as possible. Much of Prescod-Weinstein's work is related to "Dark Matter". This is the mysterious substance that dominates our universe yet is invisible to our detectors. We can infer its existence from experimental measurements and from the complex equations that Prescod-Weinstein loves (though she is careful to only include one of these in the book!). In her explanation of her own work, and the "disordered cosmos" we live in, she begins with the smallest particles and their components, building up and linking these to the enormous structures of galaxies and clusters of galaxies that dominate the galaxy we can see. It is fascinating and Prescod-Weinstein is a brilliant communicator and tackles some amazing science. 

But as she explains the science, Prescod-Weinstein also does two other things. She constructs useful metaphors that allow her to explain wider, political issues and tackles the way that capitalism shapes the very framework that scientists use to understand the world. Let's look at a good example of this. Prescod-Weinstein says:

Newton's conception of objects moving in space relied intensely on Euclidean geometry as an organising framework. I a sense, students are still introduced to calculus through this lens... Almost everything in my education about space eventually came back to Euclidean geometry, because it was supposedly intuitive.

But she continues,

The Palikur people of the Amazon see it rather differently. Their geometric system, which more accurately describes the movement of stars across the night sky than the Euclidean one, is what we would call 'curvilinear.' Understanding stars moving across the sky requires a king of intuition for curves - something that's hard to gain when you're always thinking in Euclidean terms. The Palikur system seems to train the mind to think in terms of curves from the very start.

This, is an important insight. The intellectual framework we have for understanding science arises out of a particular time and space - the European enlightenment. This was, as Prescod-Weinstein says, then imposed on the rest of the world through an ongoing process of imperialism and settler-colonialism. So our science is closely tied up with the interests of the capitalist system. 

Prescod-Weinstein points out that even a subject as seemingly scientifically "pure" as astronomy is tainted by its role in this process. She highlights the recent debates over a new telescope on Mauna Kea were administrators and scientists dismissed indigenous communities concerns. European astronomy expeditions needed the labour of slaves and indigenous people and their findings helped spread the capitalist system around the globe. Those astronomers and scientists who would dismiss the close links between astronomy and the interests of capital might like to note that the first thing a visitor sees when arriving at the Greenwich Observatory in London is not the brass meridian line, but a set of "Imperial Standards of Length" crucial to the organisation of global commerce. The meridian line itself carves up the world based on a line drawn through the capital of the British Empire. Time itself was transformed by capitalism, as EP Thompson famously wrote about in his article Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism. 

Our intellectual frameworks then arise out of the dominant economic and political interests of the system we live in - and this has shaped even the science that Prescod-Weinstein studies. The use of colour names as analogies in particles physics is problematic, and Quantum Chromodynamics was originally (and sometimes still is) called "colored physics". A name that would not have been used, as Precod-Weinstein points out, had Black people not been "excluded" from particle physics in the 1960s. The language of physics is "a hot mess".

Which brings me to one of the key points of this book - racism. Physics, Prescod-Weinstein points out, has a racism problem. Part of that is something that she calls "white empiricisms", this is 

a practice of ignoring information about the real world that isn't considered to be valuable or specifically important to the physics community at large, which is oriented toward valuing the ideas and data that are produced by white men... I developed this argument by using the specific example of how Black women are treated in the scientific workplace and juxtaposing it against a debate about whether actual observations and experiments are necessary to support theories of quantum gravity. Black women are constantly asked to provide hard evidence for our evaluations of our most common place experiences with discrimination, et white men are taken seriously when they suggest that more affirming data isn't necessary in order to test their theories of quantum gravity.

Physics is a subject that has been built upon racist structures and individual actions of racism and colonialism. As James Poskett has recently pointed out, Isaac Newton had enormous investments in the South Sea Company, which in turn made massive profits from the slave trade. Prescod-Weinstein shows how indigenous people, slaves and servants had their knowledge and labour stolen and used by white-male scientists who claimed it as their own. The scientific establishment has developed on a structural racism that has deep historic roots - both systemically in terms of the history of capitalism and institutionally in terms of the history of the science itself. 

The problems with structural racism, and misogyny that Prescod-Weinstein documents, mean that  physics is not a welcoming space for people who don't fit the white-male norm. Prescod-Weinstein gives us the unpleasant statistics. But she also tells us her experiences - the racism, the sexism, transphobia and homophobia and the difficulties that students who come from lower income backgrounds (something that is much more common for Black students) experience arriving in an academic environment that is shaped by the interests of better off white people. I suspect this is true of other sciences too, but Prescod-Weinstein argues it is particularly a problem in physics. She also highlights that trans and nonbinary people in physics are "particularly harmed by gender discrimination, including by advisers and colleagues who refuse to use people's correct pronouns". Too often the institutions say that its "too difficult" to learn how to do this. To which Prescod-Weinstein rages:

First-year college physics students are expected in just one semester to not only memorize Newton's laws of physics but also to learn how to apply them. If we can have the lofty expectations that our students will master the basics of gravity - a deeply mysterious force that pervades the entire universe - then surely they are owed mastery by their professors and classmates of a couple of letters that get their pronouns right.

So Prescod-Weinstein is under no illusions that more training in "microaggressions" or "antiracism" is enough to solve this problem. Nor is simply increasing the number of black or LGBT+ students. As she says, "My personal success will not end the structural racism that keeps so many Black people and refugees, especially single mothers, their children, and trans folks in poverty."

Instead what is needed is the destruction of a system that is based on oppression and exploitation. Prescod-Weinstein is very clear that the systemic and structural problems that she outlines are the consequence of centuries of colonial and imperialist rule, and are integral to capitalism. They distort science, and they distort scientists and they make it harder to practice science. As such the system needs to go.

Prescod-Weinstein's book is a powerful, beautifully written study of science and society. It is, at times, a difficult read, because the subject matter includes racism, sexism, transphobia, sexual abuse and rape. Towards the end of the book she writes that as a teenager she believed "that if we solved the fundamental equations of physics, the rest of the proper order of the universe could be derived". This chimed with my own experiences studying mathematics and physics at university. As a white, heterosexual male I certainly do not claim that I can share her experiences of oppression. But I did have a naïve belief in "pure science" that I thought would fix the world. Finding that this was not the case was one of the reasons I became a socialist activist. 

In reading The Disordered Cosmos I was reminded however that science, and education, do matter in and of themselves and that we want more people to enjoy them. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein's book is filled with her enthusiasm for the universe, as much as it is filled with a rage against a system that denies this to so many people. As she concludes, "We must demand liberation for all, including the right to know and understand the night sky, not as the context of desperate and generous searches for freedom, but as the beautiful place that holds the answers to how we came to exist at all."

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John Barton - A History of the Bible: The book and its faiths

Reviewing a history of the Bible might seem strange on a blog written by a Marxist, a historical materialist and thus an atheist. But John Barton's History of the Bible is a remarkable work. I was drawn to it because I am studying the Reformation and wanted to understand better how the Bible, as a work that is central to the Christian and Jewish faiths, came to be what it is. In particular I wanted to understand how figures like Martin Luther could spend so much time dissecting and constructing the Bible. 

Barton's book dwells on these subjects, but it does much more too. It places the Bible in its historical context, both in terms of the origins of different sections and the way it has been built through the centuries into the form(s) that it is known today. Barton writes in his introduction that the "Bible is... already the record of a dialogue among authors and transmitters of tradition, and contains commentary in many of its books on many others.

Barton says that his book is an attempt to "describe the present consensus [on the Bible] where there is one, to discuss reasonable options in areas of dispute, and to indicate those where we might try harder." But he cautions that the book

also makes an argument: that the Bible does not 'map' directly onto religious faith and practice, whether Jewish or Christian. I will propose that though the Bible - seen as a collection of religious texts - is irreplaceable for many reasons, Christianity is not in essence a scriptural religion, focused on a book seen as a single, holy work. Judaism, similarly, though it greatly reveres the Hebrew Bible, is also not so Bible-centred as is widely thought... [The Bible] is a mêlée of materials, few of which directly address the question of what is to be believed. The history of the Bible is thus the story of the interplay between the religion and the book  neither mapping exactly onto the other.

For a religious person like Barton (an Anglican Priest as well as an eminent biblical scholar) its a remarkably honest statement that challenges those who assert the Bible is a single work that contains everything required by the Christian religion.

Barton shows how the book originates in a particular time and place, he shows how it relates to the actual history of the areas covered by the early chapters of the Old Testament (not very accurately to be honest). He says, "where [the Bible] tells a historical story, it is not always accurate - partly because it contains legends, and partly because its account of history is governed by a commitments to various interests." Later he continues:

The [historical books] are important as a way of establishing the identity of the people of [ancient] Israel, rather than as archival material: they are national literature. The historical books often contribute to our understanding of the history of the nation through the insight they give into how events and social movements were understood in the time when they were written, rather than by providing reliable information about the history of the time they purport to describe.

Writing about the New Testament he shows how different sections have been added, changed and developed from each other and how the NT refers and relates to the OT. He discusses how the Bible has changed over time with different sections being emphasised, removed or added and why it is such a mix of poetry, history and biography. He also discusses how translation has changed and developed what we understand as the Bible today and where different interests have shaped what has been emphasised and discarded. For the believer it might be a difficult read - Barton is not afraid if highlighting inconsistencies. For the non-believer interested in history and culture it is fascinating.

In the hands of a less talented writer this could all be very dull, but Barton's style is engaging and his willingness to be honest about the contents of the Bible are refreshing. This is no polemic and nor is it an attempt at religious conversion. On the contrary, at times it feels like Barton is emphasising inconsistency to put the reader of religious interpretation. For instance he describes "textual variation", the existence of multiple differing versions of the same text in the oldest source materials. This, he says, shows is that the Bible cannot be a definitive source for religious argument, "What the existence of textual variation rules out, it seems to me, is appeal to the exact wording of biblical sayings as if they were legal rulings, since for that a precise text would be essential".

The use of the Bible has always been shaped by the interests of the time. The New Testament can only, according to Barton, "be seen through successive, and different lenses". The construction of the "rule of faith" meant selecting specific aspects of the story of Jesus (such as the bodily ascension of Jesus) and emphasising these, over other aspects of Jesus's story. Why did the ascension of Jesus, which is only mentioned twice in the New Testament, become considered more important than other aspects of Jesus' story that are referred to much more frequently in the gospels? Barton argues that it is because these were "issues for the second-century Church, which therefore read the New Testament in their light". So the NT "becomes an answer to questions that are not exactly those its authors originally raised".

For Barton the importance of the Reformation is that it was about individuals being "free to make anything they chose of the text". The Reformation, he argues, did not arise solely with Luther, but had its precursors in various earlier movements. But once it took place the Reformation 

introduced a new idea into the interpretation of the Bible: the possibility of criticizing the Church's teaching in the light of what the Bible appeared to be saying - and, in Luther's case, even of criticizing parts of the Bible itself in the light of what he took to be its overall drift. This was a revolutionary idea, which would feed into the premium on independent though that would come to characterize the European Enlightenment. For the first time it opened up a gap between the Bible and the faith which hermeneutical ingenuity could not bridge.

This is no doubt true and the final section of Barton's book extends this discussion into modern times, looking at how the Bible has faired in post-Enlightenment times.

It does, however, hint at what I felt was missing from the book. This takes the form of two related issues. Firstly Barton does not address what seems to me to be a key fundamental point - why do people believe? Perhaps more specifically, why did they chose to change their beliefs? What was happening two thousand years ago that meant people broke with the Jewish faith (and Roman religions) and developed Christianity. This also applies in later periods. Why did the Reformation happen when it did? What was it about society in Germany in the early 1500s that provided fertile ground for radical critiques of the Bible? This matters not just for the ideas in Luther's head, but to explain why these ideas were then taken up by tens of thousands of people.

Perhaps it is unfair to critique Barton for not placing his biblical history on materialist grounds. But it seems to me that you cannot fully explain the Bible without to the way that ideas change when material circumstances change. Developing political, social and economic contexts needed new ways of understanding the world - sometimes this meant the rise of new religious ideas and other times the  reformation of religion. Marx argued that religion was the "heart" in the "heartless world" and the "opium of the people". The "heart" was, for Marx, the ability of religion to explain the world and sometimes inspire people to change it. Approaching religion with this framework helps explain why much of what Barton details in his book, took place.

Nevertheless, John Barton's book is a remarkably interesting, accessible and fascinating book about the Bible which - however much us Marxists might be frustrated - remains incredibly important to millions of people. Surprisingly perhaps, I highly recommend it.

Related Reviews

Wilson - The People and the Book: The Revolutionary Impact of the English Bible 1380-1611
Duby - The Age of the Cathedrals: Art & Society 980-1420
Tawney - Religion and the Rise of Capitalism
Siegel - The Meek and the Militant

Corinne Fowler - Green Unpleasant Land

In July 2021 a coincidence of time and space meant that I was able to join a Stand Up to Racism protest outside the massive estate of Richard Drax. The estate was built with a fortune made from slavery. As Corinne Fowler points out in Green Unpleasant Land, the Drax family made vast amounts of cash from sugar plantations in Barbados and used it to transform the very landscape of Dorset. They built "England's longest wall" around their estate, a wall that remains - keeping out anyone who might want to enjoy the land, or peer at the consequences of such wealth. 

For her unflinching portrayal of the reality of the English countryside, Fowler has received plenty of criticism. In a hostile article the Daily Mail quoted the former, right-wing, Tory cabinet minister Peter Lilley as saying, "Arguably, it is she who has insulted her country by her book whose very title — Green Unpleasant Land — tells us what she thinks of her fellow citizens." Typically the Daily Mail headline claims that "gardening has its roots in racial injustice". It is a click-bait title designed to trigger the sort of apoplectic rage that the Mail's core readership excel in. It is also grossly unfair for Fowler's book is nuanced and detailed about the reality of the English countryside, gardening and its portrayal in literature. In fact Green Unpleasant Land is a remarkably interesting study of the English countryside, its history and the forces that shaped (and continue to shape) the landscape many of us, including Fowler, continue to enjoy. 

The Drax wall is a useful entry point to Fowler's argument. She notes that it "provides a fitting metaphor for the link between empire overseas and enclosure at home". Far from being a idyllic place, the countryside, Fowler argues, was (is) a space of intense struggle over ownership and access. She notes the various class struggles against enclosure or for economic improvements and points out that this continues today. But despite this history, the image of a beautiful pastoral idyll continues. She says:

Industrialised farming and escalating environmental destruction ought to have made naïve visions of the countryside hard to sustain. Yet they have been sustained, and a succession of social histories, personal memoirs and political manifestos have criticised the continuing pastoral view.

In contrast she points to a whole number of books and studies that have demonstrated the exact opposite (including, full disclosure, one of my own books). In particular she looks at the close links between colonialism, racism and the countryside - which manifest both through economic issues such as land ownership and exclusion, to more overt racism directed to Black visitors. She argues that there has been a "collective amnesia about the role of empire", highlighting, for example W.G.Hoskins' classic work The Making of the English Landscape, which "makes no mention of empire".

Fowler dismisses "common misapprehensions about rural England: firstly, that it has nothing to do with colonialism and, secondly, that Black British and Asian British authors are disconnected from English rurality." She systematically examines the way that writers who have written about the countryside, or set novels within it, consider questions of colonialism and racism. There are some fascinating examples. In Walter Scott's 1814 novel Waverley, the Highlands are seen as populated by people compared by Scott to "natives of Africa and America, India and the Orient". Charlotte Brontë repeatedly hints at the "colonial connotations of Wuthering Heights". Descriptions of the moors frequently link the dirty, poverty stricken people to black faced "savages". 

Yet the colonial linkage to the countryside is not just in fiction. Fowler shows how the nature of Empire shaped the countryside too. Drax's wall is one example. The profits from slavery allowed a new landowning bourgeoise to transform the landscape. The enclosures of land and the destruction of common rights, leading to the forcible destruction of the peasantry are part of a process where the primitive accumulation of wealth overseas helped kick start the evolution of capitalism back home. That's the economic context, but there were other examples. Slaves were brought back to England from overseas, sometimes to be black servants, a particularly appalling fashion. There were also black workers, traders, gardeners and escaped slaves in the countryside. The history opf the English countryside is far blacker than the Daily Mail would like.

The global transportation of plants as transformed gardens and farms in Europe. Fowler points out the role of slaves themselves in helping select and transport these plants for botanists, farmers and gardeners to enjoy. The knowledge and labour of enslaved black people and indigenous communities was essential to choosing the plants as well as providing the food to continue with slavery. Gardening may not have had its original roots in racial injustice as the Daily Mail claims Fowler says, but it was fundamentally shaped by slavery, colonialism and imperialism.

Fowler's book is subtitled Creative Responses to Rural England's Colonial Connections. These creative responses include the poetry, novels and essays of black writers whom Fowler examines in depth. The breadth of her coverage of these is remarkable and I found it impossible not to add to my list of books to read as a result. But Fowler also adds her own creativity to the discussion by responding to the themes and arguments in the book with a short story and some poetry of her own. I found these particularly insightful, and it the fact the book brings together the non-fiction and fictional form was both unusual and thought-provoking. I particularly enjoyed the poem about Kings Heath park in Birmingham which I know well. Her poem Green Unpleasant Land is about the response to Danny Boyle's London 2012 Olympic opening ceremony. In the opening chapter of the book Fowler examines the knee-jerk response to Boyle's placing of black people in the countryside and in the poem she has a raging commentator declare:

If you're still listening, here's my message:
to all you pc hand-wringers out there:
Jerusalem will never get built
if you corrupt our heritage

The erroneous belief that the English countryside is untainted by corruption, violence, racism, colonialism or class struggle is a deep-seated one. As Fowler points out, "they" have to keep reinventing it. Why? I think it serves two purposes. By removing the real history of the countryside, it becomes a continuous reservoir that the ruling class can draw upon to challenge progressive ideas. But it also offers something to individuals - escapism, hope, a challenge to the alienation of work and urban areas. We're sold a dream of Jerusalem outside the city, because without that dream, the reality is overcrowded housing, lack of jobs, poverty and polluted streets. Corinne Fowler's Green Unpleasant Land is a challenge to that narrative. It is readable, entertaining and honest, and deserves a wide readership if we are to really build Jerusalem.

Related Reviews

Howkins - The Death of Rural England
Groves - Sharpen the Sickle
Rackham - The History of the Countryside
Poskett - Horizons: A Global History of Science
Horn - Joseph Arch