Singing Away The War

From What? Are the Taliban laying siege to Buckingham Palace? Are Predator drones taking out shoppers in Slough? The carefully manufactured song Wherever You Are reaching No. 1 in the British pop charts represents not only a propaganda triumph for the UK's Department of Defence, but is also a sobering commentary on the British people's ability to look through the war crimes committed in their name.

WHEREVER YOU ARE, by Military Wives, is No. 1 on the UK pop-charts. And somewhere in the UK Department of Defence (DOD) the Champagne corks are popping. Why not? The song and its accompanying video, released on 19 December, represent the triumph of a truly masterful PR campaign in support of the United Kingdom’s participation in the Afghan War.

The most effective aspect of the campaign was to have it fronted by the wives of soldiers on active duty in Afghanistan. These women are not only a potent reservoir of patriotic emotion, but they also constitute an unchallengeable rhetorical vector for DOD propaganda. Who’s going to contradict the testimony of 100 military wives?

The story that ended this week with Wherever You Are at No. 1 began several months ago when the DOD convinced BBC-2 to take a hand-picked group of military wives as the raw material for the third season of the public network’s high-rating series Choir – hosted by Britain’s “inspirational” choirmaster, Gareth Malone.

As a propaganda force, this alliance between the DOD and the BBC proved formidable. Through its sponsors The Choir: Military Wives was able to secure the musical talents of celebrated Welsh composer, Paul Mealor, whose Ubi Caritas et Amor formed part of the ceremony at Prince William’s and Kate Middleton’s nuptials.

The lyrics to Mr Mealor’s appealing melody were stitched together out of hundreds of letters sent by the Military Wives’ choir to their husbands in Afghanistan. With such phrases as “my wondrous star” and “my prince of peace” prominently featured in Wherever You Are, it is pretty clear that the quest for the No. 1 Christmas slot was something more than fortuitous.

The finale of The Choir: Military Wives series was recorded at The Royal Albert Hall on 12 November as part of the Royal British Legion’s (the UK’s equivalent of the RSA) Remembrance Parade, with the Queen in Attendance. Wherever You Are was thus able to make its debut before a television audience estimated at 2.6 million viewers.

Like all hit recordings, Wherever You Are comes with its own “official” video. Images of the choir engaged in recording the song are interspersed with footage of the wives and their children preparing “Welcome Home” banners for their returning heroes, along with heart-wrenching scenes of family reunions. Throughout, the women are shown wearing black T-shirts bearing the words “My husband protects Queen and Country.”

From whom? One is moved to enquire. Have Afghan tanks rolled through the streets of London? Have Afghan attack helicopters strafed defenceless villages in the Home Counties? Do Afghan soldiers patrol the strategic passes of the Pennines? Is the Metropolitan Police Force being re-trained by advisors from Pakistan and Egypt?

Were all these things true, and if the Royal Army was engaged in a heroic defence of the United Kingdom against a foreign army of occupation, then those T-shirts might make some sense. But they are not true. The truth is that it is these women’s husbands who are driving the tanks, flying the attack helicopters, patrolling the mountain passes and training a Quisling government’s army and police.

And for every one of the “wondrous stars” and “princes of peace” who fall in battle, we must count ten, twenty, thirty Afghan resistance fighters and civilians. The “official” video does not show us these families. We do not hear the wailing of Afghan women, or the sobs of Afghan children, for Afghan husbands and fathers who never came home.

The brutal reality of the Afghan War is deliberately hidden in Wherever You Are. Indeed, the very name of the song, by denying the combatants’ theatre of action its true name, and its unique location on the globe, is itself an act of sanitation. It allows the “sexy, sexy supermen” of the Royal Army and Marines to “protect Queen and Country” in an anonymous country called “Wherever” without scrutiny or accountability.

Should the military wives be blamed for participating in this superbly executed propaganda exercise? After all, it wasn’t on their orders that their menfolk were unleashed upon the tragedy that is Afghanistan.

No, it wasn’t, and it’s not for that I condemn them.

What I condemn is their lack of empathy and imagination; their utter incapacity to acknowledge the all-too-real victims of their husbands’ “heroism”.

The men, women and children of Afghanistan.

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times, The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 30 December 2011.

Turning A Page?

Labour Turns A Page: But which way? A parsing of David Shearer's Address-in-Reply speech suggests that the party is about to revert to the economic and social priorities of the Clark-Cullen Government of 1999-2008.

THE ADDRESS IN REPLY to the Speech from the Throne presents the Leader of the Opposition with a great opportunity. The newly elected government has placed its words in the mouth of the Governor General, and now it’s time for the alternative government to have its say. The Address-in-Reply debate is a time for grand themes and memorable lines; a time for inducing “buyer’s remorse” among the governing party’s supporters; a time – in short – for the man or woman who would be prime minister to really shine.

Did David Shearer shine? In delivering his first Address-in-Reply speech, did he rise to the occasion? And what (if any) grand and memorable lines did he deliver? Let’s find out.

Mr Shearer began with an acknowledgement that, on 26 November, the electorate rejected what Labour had to offer:

Just over three weeks ago the National Government and the Labour Opposition put our ideas in front of the people of New Zealand, and our side didn’t win.

And therefore Labour will be different in these coming three years.

We will turn a page.

To “turn the page”, in common English usage, means “to stop thinking about and dealing with something”. As in: “Your divorce came through over a year ago, it’s time to turn the page”.

So what is Mr Shearer so keen to stop thinking about? What’s he so tired of dealing with? Is it Helen Clark’s Labour Party? The Labour Party that Phil Goff inherited but couldn’t, or wouldn’t, change? Turning a page on that would make a huge difference.

It would also be extremely difficult. Helen Clark dominated Labour for 15 years – longer than any other Labour Leader. There are those in Camp Shearer who insist that, even now, from a distance of 15,000 kilometres, she is still trying to call the shots. That in the just-concluded leadership contest, Ms Clark actively lobbied for Mr Shearer’s opponent, David Cunliffe.

A party leader reveals a great deal about his character and intentions through the people he chooses to sit alongside him, and those he relegates to the back-benches. If Mr Shearer really is determined to stop thinking about and dealing with Helen Clark, his ‘Shadow Cabinet’ ought to show it.

What it actually discloses, however, is that the Shearer-led Labour Party is more about continuity than change. Mr Shearer’s two big winners, Grant Robertson and Jacinda Ardern, though certainly younger than Ms Clark’s generation of politicians, have yet to demonstrate the slightest ideological deviance from her “social-democratic” prescriptions.

Some of Mr Shearer’s other picks: David Parker, Clayton Cosgrove, Shane Jones, Nanaia Mahuta, Su’a William Sio, Trevor Mallard, Phil Goff, Annette King and Damien O’Connor; suggest a greater willingness to acknowledge the ideals and aspirations of his more conservative caucus colleagues. This could presage a turning away from the social-liberalism that cost Labour so dearly in Ms Clark’s final term. But, the inclusion of David Cunliffe, Phil Twyford, Charles Chauvel, Lianne Dalziel, Chris Hipkins, Darien Fenton and Clare Curran in the Shadow Cabinet points to the more mundane conclusion that, rather than any burning desire to turn over a new leaf, Mr Shearer’s choices reflect Labour's need for “rejuvenation” and a balancing of caucus factions.

But Mr Shearer was not about to let his page-turning metaphor go. A little later in his speech he declared:

The Labour Party is turning a page.

This Labour Party will put growing the pie for all New Zealanders at the front of our agenda.

We cannot be content dividing an ever shrinking pie.

But, “growing the pie” is simply a way of expressing the deeply conservative idea that how one’s country’s national income is distributed matters less than its constant expansion. Ms Clark was fond of quoting John F. Kennedy’s observation that: “A rising tide lifts all boats.” But, as JFK undoubtedly knew (because he used to sail them) and Ms Clark surely appreciates, there’s a world of difference between struggling along in a row-boat, and sailing in a luxury yacht.

In pledging to “grow the pie”, Mr Shearer is speaking in code to New Zealand’s wealthiest men and women. He is telling them that they need not fear a future Labour Government. Wages will continue to be subsidized by Working For Families, and the government will pour millions into scientific research and development. Mr Shearer will use the additional revenue flowing into the state’s coffers from innovative new business ventures to boost spending on education and health. The new jobs created by these business will reduce the government’s welfare obligations, allowing it to repay debt and rebuild surpluses.

If you’re asking yourself: “Weren’t these the economic and social policies of Ms Clark and Dr Michael Cullen?” The answer is: “Yes, they were.”

Mr Shearer and the Labour Party aren’t turning the page forward – they’re turning it back.

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 27 December 2011.

Gaudete!

And they came with haste, and found Mary and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger - Luke 2:16

A Merry Christmas to all Bowalley Road Readers.

May the joy of this day be yours through all the year to come.

This posting is exclusive to the Bowalley Road blogsite.

Kia Kaha, Christchurch. New Zealand Stands With You.

Our hearts and hands go out to all the citizens of Christchurch, as once again the shaking earth tests their resilience and steadfastness.

Know that in the days ahead the thoughts and the prayers of your fellow New Zealanders are with you, Cantabrians.

Stay strong.

This posting is exclusive to the Bowalley Road blogsite.

The Forty-First Day (A Christmas Story)

Immanuel - God Is With Us: Tiny, yet huge. Helpless, yet more powerful that all of Caesar’s armies. Simeon and Anna greet the infant Jesus at the Temple in Jerusalem. (Painting by Arent de Gelder)

IT IS FORTY-ONE DAYS since the star cast its light over Bethlehem, and still we wait. Anna and I, in the shade of the cloisters, as the people come and go, and the smoke of the sacrifices rises. As much a part of the temple as the great gilt doors and the smooth marble pillars. Sitting. Waiting.

Anna is old by any man’s reckoning. Fourscore years and four, they say. She remembers the Second Temple before King Herod arrayed it in cold marble and bright gold.

‘The Temple is Israel’s heart’, Anna says, ‘it’s Holy of Holies. But it does not hold its soul.’ Anna never wavers from this. ‘Not even marble and gold’, she says, ‘can house a person’s soul.’

And so we argued, back and forth. Blind Simeon and Ancient Anna. As the world swirled around us and the years piled up like broken sandals. Fixtures of the Temple Court: constant as the money-changers; harmless as the sacrificial doves.

Until the dreams.

A light, growing in the darkness of our slumbers. Every night it shone more brightly – resolving itself, at length, into the image of a great star, drawing ever nearer.

And then we heard the voice. At first, no more than a whisper. Moving through our minds as the wind moves through the Temple Veil, breathing out the sacred consonants. The words were hard to catch – but I recognised them. For had I not made myself blind reading the holy books? Pouring over them by lamplight until the characters swam away into mist and darkness?

“But as for you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, Too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you one will go forth for me to be ruler in Israel. His goings forth are from long ago, from the days of eternity.”

The words of the prophet, Micah. But what could they mean?

Anna dreamt too. In hers a voice spoke clearly from the very heart of the star.

“Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.”

Immanuel. God is with us.

And then the dream came true. Low in the western sky it shone, night after night, just after the going down of the sun. A star where no star had been before. And every evening it grew brighter, until the night – forty-one days ago it was – when it seemed to hover, lower than ever in the night sky, over Bethlehem.

And the next morning the shepherds came. With wide eyes and stammering tongues they told us of what they had seen: the heavenly host; the stable; the woman; the child. One of the shepherds, eyes wider than all the rest, took me by the arm.

“Death draws near, Blind Simeon. But not before your eyes behold the saviour: God’s true son, here, in the Temple, on the forty-first day.”

And so we wait, Anna and I. Here, in the shade of the cloisters. On the forty-first day.

Anna saw them first. The little family. Rustic and awestruck amid Herod’s splendour. She grabbed me by the sleeve and led me to them.

“Here, at last,” she said, “is one fit to hold men’s souls. Good Lady will you let Blind Simeon, the Rabbi, bless your son?”

I took the babe in my arms. And like a curtain drawn aside, light flooded into my waking mind, and I saw him. Tiny, yet huge. Helpless, yet more powerful that all of Caesar’s armies. I lifted him high above my head, so all could see, and cried out in a voice that echoed off the Temple walls:

“Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word: for mine eyes have seen thy salvation, which thou hast prepared before the face of all people; a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel.”

Above our heads, a dove flapped wildly, and was gone.

This short story was originally published in The Dominion Post, The Otago Daily Times, The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 23 December 2011.

Tony Blair No Guide For Shearer's Labour

First and Second of the Third Way: Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson felt obliged to destroy the British Labour Party in order to save it. This is precisely NOT what David Shearer and his team should do.

TONY BLAIR transformed the British Labour Party by means of root-and-branch reform. His priorities were as clear as they were ruthless. Disable the party. Re-write its rule-book. And, most importantly, make sure Labour’s MPs were accountable to nobody but themselves.

Blair’s reforms were driven by the strategic thinking of his chief henchman, Peter Mandelson. In essence, Mandelson’s strategy boiled down to just three, fundamental, political insights:

One. Since the British working-class has no serious political alternative to Labour, the party can safely ignore its interests.

Two. Since no party can be elected without the support of the British middle-classes, and since these have multiple electoral options, Labour must not, under any circumstances, advance policies that might upset middle-class voters.

Three. To retain the support of middle-class voters, Labour must never allow its political rivals to out-bid it on matters relating to “sound” economic and social policy.

Blair’s and Mandelson’s strategy made a brutal kind of sense in the light of the British Labour Party’s recent history, and within the wider context of British electoral politics.

The party had endured years of bitter factional strife, with those who regarded Labour as the last bastion of working-class resistance to Thatcherism fighting a desperate rear-guard action against the bleak electoral logic of the “modernisers” analysis.

That logic was, of course, underpinned by the First-Past-the-Post electoral system, which allowed the Conservative Party to win large parliamentary majorities in spite of attracting considerably less than half of the popular vote.

Labour’s “modernisers” also had to factor-in the impact of globalisation on the size of Britain’s industrial working-class (the core of both the traditional Labour vote and the more militant trade unions) and the more recent ideological triumph of capitalism over its Soviet rival.

IN 2011, the strategic choices confronting the New Zealand Labour Party’s new leader, David Shearer, are very different to those which taxed Tony Blair in the mid-1990s.

Rather than a fractious, activist and openly antagonistic party organisation, Mr Shearer inherits a party in which rank-and-file members have sunk to the level of what one wit describes as “MP fan clubs”. At its upper levels, the party is caught in the grip of a sclerotic, self-selecting oligarchy based in Labour’s insular and largely unaccountable sector-groups. In effect, Mr Shearer’s Labour Party is rapidly disabling itself. His first and most urgent priority is to kick it back into life.

To do this he must, like Blair, re-write Labour’s rule-book. Not to marginalise the party and insulate the caucus from its influence, but to do exactly the opposite. Mr Shearer needs to grow his party. At 6,000 members, Labour is only slightly bigger than the Greens. If it is to re-claim the Treasury Benches it must once again become a mass party, with a membership measured in the tens-of-thousands. And that cannot happen unless those members are equipped with real powers. These include the power to determine (and not merely “contribute” to the making of) party policy. The power to choose and rank the people on Labour’s Party List – as the Green Party members do. And, lastly, the power to choose their party’s leader. (Either directly, by a postal ballot of the whole membership, or, as the British do, through an electoral college composed of the rank-and-file, affiliated organisations, and the Parliamentary Caucus.)

Unless Mr Shearer moves swiftly to force rule-changes along these lines, all of his rhetoric about wanting to “listen” to New Zealanders will ring hollow. The most effective way to “hear” what ordinary Kiwis have to say about their country’s future, is to encourage them to join your political party by promising to translate their ideas into policy. Mr Shearer needs to convince the tens-of-thousands of Labour members who have walked away from the party that he’s committed to a future in which rank-and-file votes not only shape what Labour stands for, but who stands for Labour.

The fate of Damien O’Connor points the way. Rejecting the influence of Labour’s oligarchs over the content and ranking of the Party List, Mr O’Connor staked his future on an all-or-nothing bid for the West Coast-Tasman seat. The Coasters were only too happy to reward his courage. On 26 November, alone of all Labour’s candidates, it was Mr O’Connor who took a seat off the National Party – and by a handsome majority.

Mr Shearer has another great advantage over Tony Blair. He’s assumed Labour’s leadership in a world embittered and angry at neoliberalism’s botched ideological recipes. In 1998 Peter Mandelson infamously remarked that Labour was “intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich”. In 2011, far too many people are drowning in the rich’s filth for any sensible Labour leader to utter such dangerous apostasy.

To win in 2014, David Shearer need only steer Labour in precisely the opposite direction to that of Tony Blair.

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 20 December 2011.

A Fresh Face - For A Fresh Start

Authenticity: David Shearer feels real. And it's that quality, more than any other, that Labour needs if it is to recover from its worst defeat in 80 years and win the 2014 election.

THE BLUE SEDAN had been following their car for some time. The driver kept glancing in the rear-view mirror, saying nothing, but watching, with growing apprehension, as the distance between the two vehicles narrowed. He was pretty sure he’d seen the occupants’ faces before. They’d been part of the angry crowd of Israeli settlers who’d gathered to hurl stones and abuse at the West-Bank border checkpoint.

The Palestinian villagers who were the focus of the settlers’ rage just shrugged. This was their life now. What could they say? For a couple of hours the little delegation had stayed and listened, and then driven away with the details of yet another incursion; yet another seizure of Arab land. But, as their driver now plainly saw, they had not left alone.

The narrow streets of Old Jerusalem prevented any sort of fast getaway, and corner by corner, intersection by intersection, the blue sedan edged closer. The driver was certain now: these were the men he’d seen at the check-point, the ones who had eye-balled him directly and drawn their fingers across their throats in the universal gesture of murderous intent. Still the driver said nothing to his companions, but around the steering-wheel his knuckles visibly whitened.

And then, thanks-be-to-God, another checkpoint loomed ahead. Israeli soldiers moved towards the two now motionless vehicles seeking identification. The driver presented his United Nations ID and his three Kiwi companions offered up their New Zealand passports. While a weary-looking officer checked them out, the driver clearly overheard one of the occupants of the blue sedan tell the young conscript holding his papers: “Hurry-up and let us through little brother, we’ve come to kill that sonofabitch from the UN!”

As the soldiers patiently instructed the settler assassins to turn their car around, David Shearer and his friends drove on to safety.

"Let us through little brother, we've come to kill that sonofabitch from the UN!"

IT’S STORIES LIKE THAT that made David Shearer Labour’s leader, and may, in three years’ time, make him New Zealand’s next prime minister. Not because he is New Zealand’s most eloquent politician. Not because his grasp of detail is second-to-none. Not because he has a face and a manner perfectly suited to the small screen. If those were the qualities the Labour Caucus had been seeking they would have chosen David Cunliffe – who has them in abundance.

Labour’s Caucus, which the New Zealand electorate, just three weeks ago, saw fit to pare down from forty-three to thirty-four Members of Parliament, knows better than anyone that their party’s been judged and found wanting. Its deficiency was not one of intellect, or feeling, or capability. What Labour was deemed to lack was authenticity. More bluntly: it didn’t seem real. And unless and until it becomes real, Labour will remain in opposition.

And that is David Shearer’s great advantage. In spite of (or is it because of) his “lived-in” face and his hesitant speech Labour’s new leader feels genuine; feels true.

At the media conference that followed his election, David Shearer talked about bringing a “fresh face” to a “fresh start”, and of wanting to build a “clean, green and clever” economy “open to all New Zealanders”. Most importantly, Labour’s new leader wants to “reconnect” his party with the people whose support it has lost.

These are not the factory workers of yesteryear, they’re the independent contractors and self-employed workers of today. Workers who, for better or for worse, have only themselves and their families to rely on. Workers who, though unprotected by unions, and unsupported by the State, are nevertheless proud of what they have made out of the skills they have acquired and the opportunities they have seized.

Like the farmers of Palestine and the herdsmen of Somalia, all these New Zealanders want is a chance to get on with their lives in peace and without undue interference. An olive grove, a herd of cattle, or a little franchise business mowing lawns, altering clothes or splicing cables: the difference in the end is pretty negligible. These are “little guys” in a large and too-often-uncaring world. And all they’re looking for is someone and something to stand in their corner; a person and a party to watch their back.

And that, for his whole adult life, is precisely what David Shearer has been doing.

And the men in the blue sedan haven’t been able to stop him yet.

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times, The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 16 December 2011.