The Iron Lady, film as a hit job

     I was reading an article about Margaret Thatcher by John O'Sullivan when I encountered his description of her visit to Poland in 1988. He writes that as she left the port of Gdansk in a small boat, Polish workers dipped seawards the huge shipyard cranes in her honour (link). Then I thought, what a scene for a film! Yet I remembered that there was no such scene in The Iron Lady, the 2011 film about Thatcher's life.

     When I first saw the film I said to myself 'That was a hit job'. Certainly, if Meryl Streep was to play the character of Margaret Thatcher and if the project had financial support from the British Film Council, it was very likely that the picture would not be favourable. On seeing it again I confirm my first impression but now I see how skillfully it has been done. Instead of the too obvious hatchet they used a thin dagger.

     Many found it odd that director Phyllida Lloyd chose to portray The Iron Lady at the time she was still living and suffering from dementia. Indeed, a doctor with no political sympathies to Margaret Thatcher wrote an article in a leading British newspaper (The Telegraph, link), saying that the film was 'despicable' and made the public 'voyeurs' of the mental decline of an old woman when she was still alive and ill. He wrote 'as a doctor, I have direct experience of the reality of dementia for the sufferer and their family....As I watched scene after scene showing this once all-powerful woman as old, bewildered and scared, my discomfort turned to rage'.

     Nevertheless, by choosing to portray Thatcher's dementia the director could show, not an Iron Lady but a woman who does not know what is real and what is not, someone isolated who rigidly repeats stale phrases and clings to the past. In short, we see Margaret Thatcher as their enemies like to see her.

     From Thatcher's old age and dementia the film makes flashbacks to her youth and time as a Prime Minister. We see young Margaret looking wistfully as three girls pass by and make fun of her. They go to the cinema while she is sweeping the pavement in front of the family store. She looks at the girl's jewels, nice shoes and stockings (minute 09.11). The scene is repeated later in the film when Margaret is already Prime Minister and overhears members of her cabinet murmuring about her. That makes her flash back to the scene that apparently still haunts her when girls derided her for not going to the cinema. 

     In fact anyone who has read Thatcher's memoirs knows that as a young woman she frecuently enjoyed going with friends to the cinema (The Path to Power ps. 14-15). She even mentions that she liked musicals by Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers as well as the films of Alexander Korda. She listed a number of other films and added that she liked actors Barbara Stanwyck, Ingrid Bergman, Leslie Howard, Merle Oberon, James Stewart, Robert Donat, and Charles Boyer. Thatcher's biographer Charles Moore cites many letters that she wrote in her youth that refer to films she saw with friends. In spite of all that those who made the The Iron Lady chose to show Thatcher as a woman marked by her early experience of seeing other girls go to the cinema while she swept the pavement.

     The thin dagger is put to work again in a scene where Thatcher preaches austerity to her cabinet ‒'we have to cut spending'‒ while some underling sews jewels to her magnificent dress. The camera comes and goes between the jewels and Thatcher's argument with her ministers. That is clever, the film does not tell you that Thatcher was hypocritical, you see that with your own eyes.

     That scene was duly prepared by another one taking place in Parliament where the leader of the opposition, Michael Foot, piles data and statistics about 'the biggest collapse of industrial production since 1921' and that Thatcher's 'free-market policy ensures that the rich get richer and the poor are irrelevant' (59.12). The camera shows the Primer Minister bored and unconcerned about all that. When cabinet members join the criticism privately and tell her that there is the perception that the government is 'out of touch with the country', that 'people can't pay their mortgages', 'industry is practically on its knees', and 'honest, hard-working people are losing their homes' (1.01.00). Thatcher's answer is that she knows the price of butter and margarine. All the while we see that Thatcher is having jewels sewn to her dress.

     Apart from hypocricy, the point is to portray Thatcher as a simple minded woman, not much different from a poorly educated housewife in her political notions, someone who thinks that she can dismiss statistics because she knows the price of margarine. Then we can forget that she had two degrees ‒chemistry and law‒ that she worked in both those fields, and read, among many others, the works of Lord Macaulay, Churchill, and Hayek ‒a trio that provides excellent instruction to any statesman. Moreover, Thatcher had the advice of brilliant men, among others Keith Joseph, to whom she dedicated her authobiographical book The Path to Power. It is also worth mentioning Shirley Robin Letwin, who worked for Thatcher and wrote a insightful book about The Anathomy of Thatcherism.

    However, it is when it comes to Thatcher's personal motives that the film turns really brutal. For the job they chose none other than her husband Denis. Again, that was clever as we must assume that nobody knew Margaret Thatcher's motives better than her husband. Although there is no evidence for it, Denis is shown as a cynical critic of his wife, dismissive of any higher purpose for her actions in cutting remarks sprinkled throughout the film.

     There is a scene in which Margaret announces she will enter the competition for leader of the opposition and says that she probably will lose but had to do it as a duty to force the party to reaffirm its principles. Denis interrups her and in anger says 'Don't call it duty. It's ambition that's gotten you this far' (40.00).

     A few seconds later in that scene, Thatcher's daughter Carol is added in support of the same sordid view. Carol was about to take her test for a driving licence ‒for which her mother has prepared her‒ and on hearing that she plans to run for the positon of leader of the opposition she storms away protesting that her mother is more concerned about her own political career than on her daughter's approaching test. In truth, Carol Thatcher has always been a self reliant woman ‒she is a journalist and a keen traveller but was not afraid of working as waitress. It is very unlikely that she made such a scene about her driver's licence test.

     Nor is it likely that Denis was so cynical about her wife's aims. In Carol Thatcher's autobiographical book A Swim-on Part in the Goldfish Bowl she writes that the only time she saw her father cry was when his wife resigned as Prime Minister. Both Carol and Denis carried on with their lives without carping about the failure of the head of government to minister to their personal needs. They were not such wimps.

     Unconcerned with truth, the creators of the film inserted scenes where Denis, already dead, appears as a ghost to chastise his wife. When she remembers the victory in the Falkland's war Denis mocks her jingoism (?) making clowinsh gestures and donning a paper hat with the Union Jack. Then he, or rather his ghost, blows a paper trumpet and tells her 'Gotcha! Well, that paid off, old girl! Your ratings have soared from the most hated Prime Minister of all time to the nation's darling!' (1.18.37). Did Denis think that the war was a stunt to increase her wife's popularity? For all we know, that was very unlikely. The film would have been more honest if such view had been put in the mouth of those who really thought that sending a task force to the Falklands was meant to “pay off” raising the image of the Prime Minister. There were some Britons, but not many, who held that opinion.

     In another scene Denis's spectre is made to visit Margaret to blame her for neglecting him. The spectre tells Margaret that she was so self-centered that probably had to ask their house maid to discover that Denis had travelled to South Africa to recover his health. He says 'Too busy climbing the greasy pole, MT' (40.29).

     Denis's death is covered in a scene in which, in Margaret's imagination, he abandons her. When she asks him not to leave ‒'I don't want to be on my own'‒, he retorts 'You will be fine on your own, you always have been.' (1.35.00). If her own husband reveals to the audience that she was pure ambition and no heart, we have to believe it don't we?

     Then there is the issue with tea cups. At the beginning of the film Margaret opens a letter and full of emotion tells her parents that she won a place at Oxford. Her mother does not congratulate her, refuses even to look at the letter, says that her hands are still damp, and returns to wash cups in the kitchen. One wonders whether that was true, and if so why there were no rags in the Roberts family home that could be used to dry one's hands.

     Certainly many of the scenes in the film are of a kind that make it impossible to ascertain how close or how far they are from the truth. According to a friend of the family (link), both Mark and Carol Thatcher thought that the film is an appalling left-wing fantasy but decided no to speak publicly for fear of giving it more publicity.

     Tea cups turn up again when Denis proposes marriage to Margaret (26.00). She happily accepts but warns him that she 'will never be one of those women...remote and alone in the kitchen doing the washing up...One's life must matter, Denis...I cannot die washing a tea cup'. Then in the last scene in the film, Margaret Thatcher is shown old, alone, washing a tea cup. The final defeat.

     I cannot fathom how some people reviewed the film and claimed that it showed sympathy for Margaret Thatcher. Certanly there is no open attack on her, apart from showing the images of protests, the diatribe by Michael Foot, the critical choir in her cabinet, and above all the cynical remarks that the film puts in Denis's mouth. But even that last stab, though cruel, is not so serious as it is less credible. It is with images and scenes that the film makes its most effective attacks. So they lead people to find 'their own' conclusions. Thatcher haunted by the memory of her humiliation by other girls ‒resentful woman‒, Thatcher repeating set phrases again and again ‒simpleton woman‒, Thatcher preaching austerity and having jewels sewn to her dress ‒hypocritical, detached from reality.

     Be it as it may, does the film still matter, or even Margaret Thatcher? I think they do matter. The fight between new Tory leaders and a party bureacracy bent on administering decay still rages on. Leaks to the press are still used as against Thatcher, and today perhaps even more effectively. Besides, the portrait made in a film reaches more people than books. And as the left as always understood, the way a country sees its past is never irrelevant.

China and Great Britain, two misleading comparisons

I have been following the instructive debates held under the name Intelligence squared, in which two teams of experts and academics argue for and against a proposition. The public votes both before and after the debate and the questions. A number of those debates have been dedicated to the advantages and disadvantages of democracy. There was one that questioned whether Democracy is India's Achille's heel. Another debate was, One size doesn't fit all: Democracy is not always the best form of government. Yet another one under the title Democracy, even the best ideas may fail. There was a very heated exchange when the issue was, Better elected Islamists than dictators.

In one way or another, all these debates were about democracy, and in particular, its pros and cons for developing countries. Unfortunately, in most of them the idea and the value of the rule of law have been neglected or confused with the advantages of having a democratic government. That was clear in a debate about whether Western liberal democracy would be wrong for China.

First misleading comparison: development in 19^th century Britain vs 21^st century China

Arguing against democracy for China, one of the panelists said that in our time China has far surpassed the speed (the annual rate) of the economic development achieved by Britain in the 19^th century. That was said by Martin Jacques, senior research fellow at the London School of Economics, former editor of the journal Marxism Today, and author of a book about (or rather against) Margaret Thatcher. More recently he has written a best-seller book which in its title gleefully announces The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order, a world ruled by China. Right from the beginning professor Jacques extolled China's spectacular growth, which he linked to the wise direction of the Communist Party. He has seconded in more moderate tones by Zhang Weiwei, a writer and a member of a Chinese think tank who, perhaps not very consistently, acknowledged that he prefers to live in Paris.

The point about the growth rate came in answer to another Chinese panelist (on the other team), Anson Chan, former Chief Secretary of Hong Kong and campaigner for democracy. She had said that, after all, China wasn't the only country that achieved fast economic development, and she mentioned the case of Great Britain in the 19^th century. Her argument was in turn answered by Martin Jacques -already mentioned against democracy- who corrected her and said that the rate of growth was different, much faster in the case of 21^st century China.

It is a pity that nobody pointed out to him that comparing rates without comparing times and circumstances is absolutely flawed.

People in Great Britain had to develop techniques, improve steam engines, experiment with turbines, design more efficient steel furnaces and mines. They had to apply new inventions to ships, making them bigger, faster, and safer. They have to design locomotives. They had to establish telegraph lines, build railways, and learn how to control electric power. Of course, there was trial and error, inventions that never worked, and wasted effort. In the background we have the miraculous development of science, the study that went from Chemistry to the movements of the stars.

In the late 20^th century and at the beginning of the 21^st century, China didn't have to go through the same process. They can always make use of the latest turbine, they don't have start with the steam engine. Then can make use of modern chips, they don't have start with Babbage's wheels. They don't need to create the mathematics and the physics that help to establish the best designs. They can transfer all that in one go. Moreover, they had at their disposal the the know-how, and sometimes even the capital of Western entrepreneurs. To say triumphantly that in those conditions their rate of growth was faster than that of those who had to create and try everything from zero shows a lack of historical perspective that is alarming, but perhaps not surprising, in a scholar from the London School of Economics. Certainly there has been remarkable economic growth in China in the last three decades, but even if it had been twice as fast it could not reasonably be compared to the industrial revolution.

Second misleading comparison: limited democracy in 19^th century Great Britain

Professor Jacques pointed out that not everyone could vote in 19^th century Great Britain. As with the rate of growth, that is true but very misleading. Apart from that fact that at least there were different parties contending for the vote, the argument leaves out the rule of law.

In Great Britain, long before the franchise was extended to everyone, there was habeas corpus, property was safe from expropriation, disputes were decided by independent judges according to non retroactive rules, and there was freedom of speech.
      The team against democracy argued that China would collapse under multiparty democracy (what is one-party democracy?). But what about the rule of law? Would China collapse without censorship? And if so, why?

It is very sad that so many debates focus on the vote, and mention the rule of law only as a complement that more or less comes together with democracy. Indeed, if one had to find a ground, a link to something that would explain the extraordinary improvements and creativity that flourished in 19^th century Britain, it would be the rule of law. Because of it, though not everyone could vote, the government could do very little damage, it could not thwart a man's attempt to improve his life and that of his family, and it had very limited means to direct what an entrepreneur would do.

Very often in these and other debates, the rule of law is conflated with democracy, thus making it true by definition that establishing the vote is a sure means to establishing the rule of law. Of course, it is not. Indeed, as Friedrick Hayek has pointed out, the modern idea that “the law” is whatever the majority passes as such, derives its convincing power from democracy and majority rule. By the way, constitutions make very little difference on this issue because they only require a qualified majority. Witness Latin America and its ever changing constitutions. Whenever the notion that majorities can make and remake laws and constitutions at their pleasure spreads, when it is held that right is only what a majority recognizes as such, then the rule of law is dead.

So perhaps a better argument for the panelists who argued against the assertion that “Western liberal democracy would be wrong for China”, would have been that apart from not establishing democracy (i.e. free elections), China has made very little progress towards the rule of law. That is a major difference with 19^th century Great Britain.

I would say that the question itself chosen for the debate was framed in a misleading way. It might imply that more than the vote was meant. But it also implies that “Western”democracy is merely one of the many varieties of democracy. It implies that there is some “Oriental” variety, with contours that are best kept vague. Such has been the claim of many enemies of democracy: Oh yes, we have democracy, except that we understand it differently. Such was the claim of the leaders of the “socialist democratic republics” of the former Eastern bloc and of many of their fellow travelers in the West. We shouldn't hear the same argument again without answering it.

The cultural argument

As an aside, it is interesting to mention that the British academic -who argued against democracy for China- played the argument of respect for a different culture, and said that we have to “think out the box”, that we don't understand Chinese history and attitudes, that we must not judge others from the point of view of “our Western jail”, etc. This kind of argument almost always wins among Western audiences, in which the call to suppress judgment about different cultures seems to activate a Pavlovian reflex. Nevertheless, in this debate the argument failed because there was actually a Chinese woman in the team arguing for democracy. Probably it seemed odd that a British academic would tell her that she doesn't understand Chinese attitudes.

Jane Austen and the Pirate's Queen

It is a pity that Jane Austen's legacy should be lost in the contemplation ―or in the criticism― of crinoline, bonnets, and old country houses. Those who think that they can sum up Northanger Abbey by saying that it is about a young woman's fancies should feel comfortable in saying that Crime and Punishment is about a young student's fancies. If Mansfield Park is a comment on the marrying schemes of the middle class, then King Lear is a reflection on the hereditary schemes of the upper class. Now, why is that anyone would blush after saying such nonsense about Dostoevsky and Shakespeare, but most feel confident that, in reducing Jane Austen to a painter of provincial manners, they have said something remarkable about her?

There is no harm in admiring bonnets and old country houses; and, if there is any harm in despising them, that doesn’t concern me now. We must realise, though, that we need Jane Austen for a different reason. I dare say she might even be important to contemporary politics. At the end of the day, wrote George Orwell, the most precious thing, whose presence stops hellish dictatorships in their tracks, and whose absence paves the way to them, is common decency. That is the quality one finds in Jane Austen.

It has been said, with partial truth, that people may be able to admire and understand art, such as excellent poetry and inspired music, without seeing anything objectionable in concentration camps, except perhaps the bad smell and the disagreeable noises. This was the case, as Richard Evans tells us in his book about The coming of the Third Reich, of many of those who eagerly supported the Nazi dictatorship. Hitler himself often made references to Goethe and Schiller, and Goering admired art even to the point of struggling to appropriate for himself da Vinci’s “Lady with an Ermine” –which had been stolen in Poland. Long before that, the Borgias had recompensed generously the skill of painters, but also that of murderers. In short, proper appreciation of the various arts is compatible with cruelty.

And yet, would that apply to anyone who truly understands the beauty that is to be found in Jane Austen's novels? Would anyone who has come to understand Emma's feelings after offending a poor old woman still remain insensible to the cruelties inflicted upon other defenceless victims? Certainly, one may follow Siegfried’s adventures without caring a straw about the sufferings of political dissidents. One may be inspired by a poem, and still remain the skilful manager of a concentration camp. But this is not possible with Jane Austen's novels ―unless, of course, one only sees old fashioned crinoline and bonnets in them.

It might be pointed out that one seldom finds questions of life and death in Jane Austen's novels. Certainly, the problems her heroines must face are more subtle than alarming. Neither Fanny Price nor Elinor Dashwood has to deal with dragons and pirates. But this is precisely one of the many qualities that make Jane Austen's stories so valuable to us. We don't have to deal with dragons and pirates either, but we too must face subtle moral questions, often made more difficult because they come to our attention only when they have become alarming.

Jane Austen still matters, and you can guess that when reading a headline in the London Times (2/17/2007) that tells us that British “Teachers fight for their right to keep Austen out of class” (unfortunately, The Times can be read only by subscription, anyway I include the links). Or when we find in the same newspaper (8/19/2010) that a journalist thinks it necessary to inform us that Austen knew nothing about proper punctuation, sneers at her novels, and warns Austen readers -who might have been deluded by her- that most men are not like the noble and honest Mr Darcy. Another writer in the London Times (3/22/2009) describes Austen’s success with words such as "cult" and "mania", and tells us that she conquered the world because of  "the belief that a liking for Austen is an infallible 'test' of your taste, intellect and general fitness for decent company was already well established in the 1880s, and is still potent today". Apart from being irrelevant for a deeper evaluation of her body of work, the very fact that so many judges of taste think it proper to attack Jane Austen proves that the pressure that a social test might put on people is no longer –if it ever was- the explanation of her popularity.

Insisting with the attack, in an article published in the London Times (3/12/2007), Celia Brayfield accused Jane Austen of building a gilded cage for the posterity of women writers. According to the article, Jane Austen limited her interests to the fancies of young women and paid no attention to the political and military struggles of her time; she never looked out of the window, she never read molecular theory, and she refused to join the philosophical fight to the death between reason and romanticism. Worst of all, it never entered into Jane Austen's mind that at the other end of the world, a woman called Chen I Sao could command thousands of pirates. A pirate’s queen would be a better character for a film, we are told, than any of the delicate creatures described by Jane Austen.

Brayfield’s criticism shows that the long struggle between sense and sensibility still goes on, and that sense is often defeated. For a start, it doesn’t seem fair to make a case against Jane Austen by mixing what she wrote and what film-makers have done with that material. It makes no sense to form our opinion about Jane Austen’s novels by blaming her for what, centuries later, film makers do. Besides, these are different genera and it may well be that some of the best that is to be found in novels cannot be put into films: this is just one of the many instances in which a few words say much more than a thousand images.

Moreover, there is no doubt that Jane Austen was interested in the struggle between sense and romanticism, and that she wrote about it in many of her books. So Brayfield's reproach, I guess, is rather that Jane Austen refused to enlist herself as another promoter of romanticism ―which on the whole was the winning party in the struggle.

While she looks Jane Austen’s novels with disdain, Celia Brayfield tells us that Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is a book that engages far more actively with its world and continues to express our anxieties about the advancement of science. Jane Austen, instead, would have felt that it was unwise to excite those anxieties, and would have thought that it was morally dubious to enjoy and to disdain ―at the same time― the advances of science. More advances in science, and not less, could have made Jane Austen's precious life longer than the 41 years she lived. And so it is for millions of men, women, and children. It may be true that Frankenstein became the keystone of the fantasy genre, but it also made a moral contradiction look comfortable, and even enlightened.

Now that Jane Austen has been described a thousand times as the painter of provincial manners, it is difficult to say why she was so highly esteemed by one of the most influential thinkers of the Victorian era, Lord Macaulay. To mention just another name (though Macaulay’s name should be enough) it is said that Disraeli read Pride and Prejudice 17 times. It would seem that they saw more than crinoline and bonnets in her novels.

But, who were the women Jane Austen presented to her readers? They were thinking persons who cultivated their sensibility without forgetting sense. Moreover, the readers were supposed to admire them precisely for that. This was a silent revolution that had started before Jane Austen, but one she advanced and perfected. Now turn to the women we see paraded by the mass media in our enlightened age. In numbers, bimbos prevail. And when we turn to those women who are supposed to be models of sense and sensibility, we realise that we know very little about them: almost nothing about their inner life, and very little about their doubts, their mistakes, and their personal victories.

Of course, I don’t mean that we lack women that unite sense and sensibility: there are millions of them. What I mean is that the media doesn’t seem to be interested in their lives. Jane Austen, instead, dedicated her novels to telling their stories, and made them popular. She wrote about the women she knew, who were neither extremely rich nor extremely poor. Besides, in her time, the idea that a rich man’s gain and a poor man’s ruin are just two sides of the same coin had not still reached the status of a dogma. While Jane Austen never laid down plans for the improvement of the condition of the poor, she may have improved the habits of the nation as a whole, which after all might turn out being compatible goals.

Jane Austen has led millions to love her heroines. But she understood, and still tells us through imaginary examples, that blindness isn’t a requisite for tenderness. Through her novels, we may understand why blind sensibility often leads to the worst of the various forms of cruelty: that which is hidden under the cover of fashionable words and lofty intentions ―a cruelty that ceases to be casual and becomes systematic, even a duty. Many would call it a romantic and highly inspired sort of cruelty. We still have to deal with it in many parts of the world.

A pirate's queen is a dashing character, and that is all that may matter to the writer of a romantic novel or to the director of a film. It is irrelevant whether pirates hacked people to death, sunk ships, and set fire to villages: that would be relegated to the dull territory of sense, and the mean interests of prudence. It is true that Jane Austen ignored pirate queens and gave preference to girls who lived regular lives among relatives and friends, most of them law-abiding people. But, again, this was the best material for novels intended for readers living in complex and highly civilized countries, people who no longer lived in fear that pirates would desolate their villages, but who had not yet forgotten what that fear was.

It may be true that Jane Austen neglected the study of molecular theory ―and I can’t say how much our contemporary novelists know about quantum mechanics. On the other hand, they do look out of the window, though it often means a virtual window on a computer screen. No doubt many contemporary novelists would write a book about a pirate's queen –though it is almost sure that today she would have been advised to call herself the leader of a people's liberation army. A contemporary writer would ask his or her agent to arrange a trip to the area in trouble, would take a plane, would enjoy being toured by the pirates PR staff, would see what he or she must see, take photos, would have a charming meeting with the leader, take a plane back home, have a look at the material his or her secretary has been collecting, and then write a book brimming with shocking realism. Jane Austen never did that ―there were no planes in her time. Besides, she was wise enough to write about matters and characters she really knew. But I think that there was a second motive for her choices, perhaps even more decisive than the advantages of true and intimate knowledge. Jane Austen knew that the silent battles won by her heroines were much more important for the happiness of any nation than the striking victories of a pirate's queen.

I have searched on the Web and found that, unlike Jane Austen, Cheng I Sao managed to live to an old age. After being driven out of the business by competing pirates, she got a pardon from the government, and settled as the manager of a brothel and a gambling house ―which wasn’t particularly romantic.

George Orwell and the Rule of Law: you don't shoot at a man who is running with his trousers down

Almost all countries claim to be democracies; some back up that claim with free elections, others with public parades in praise of the beloved leader of the nation. The rule of law, by contrast, is an advantage that only a few countries can even claim to enjoy. It is definitely a good in short supply. 

In a former article, I have tried to show that George Orwell is still the best in explaining why it is so. Any country can hire a number of law scholars and ask them to produce a good copy of the most advanced laws and constitutions they find in the world. In Argentina, we have tried American constitutional clauses, articles from the French civil code, Italian forms of trial, and German penal theories, but all this relates more to intellectual fashions than to people’s lives. The rule of law has nothing to do with those changing fashions; instead it requires a certain frame of mind in the whole population.

In his book 1984, Orwell described how hell on Earth might look like; unfortunately people forget that he also described the attitudes that would prevent it from becoming true. He did that in the articles he wrote about the people he knew best: the English people. One of the things English people lack is a world-view, Orwell said. Instead, they have (or had: being a foreigner, I am not sure) a code of behaviour. Respect for that code forms the only possible ground where the rule of law may survive and prosper.

As we read in 1984, there are no well-defined crimes against world-views, only actions that advance or hinder the final victory of the party and its leader; and that is why intentions do not count. This is no fiction: we can see that taking place today, for a natural result of this twisted way of reasoning is that a child may be objectively guilty, and so it may be right to plant a bomb in a school. All actions are seen as objectively good and objectively bad –‘objectivity’ meaning here: useful in order to win. 

For the same reason, there is no objective decency, no pride in generosity and uprightness, and you may well sneer at them. Comfortingly, this is called ‘realism’. ‘Its growth’ –wrote Orwell in Raffles and Miss Blandish– ‘has been the great feature of the intellectual history of our own age’. Against realism, most English people remained attached to their outmoded codes of behaviour. The crucial words, said Orwell, were ‘not done’: there are a number of things one will not do, some limits one will respect. And I may add that this was not based on any socio-economic-psychological-semiotic theory. One simply adhered to the rules because that was the right thing to do.

Orwell said that English people followed a moral code as if they were sleep-walking, and more by instinct than anything else. In The English People, he wrote, ‘The masses still more or less assume that “against the law” is a synonym for “wrong”. It is known that the criminal law is harsh and full of anomalies and that litigation is so expensive as always to favour the rich against the poor: but there is a general feeling that the law, such as it is, will be scrupulously administered...An Englishman does not believe in his bones, as a Spanish or Italian peasant does, that the law is simply a racket’. I am not sure what Spanish and Italian peasants would say today, but I know that most Argentines would think that an unfair legal system should not be scrupulously administered. Disloyalty to the existing law may mean loyalty to a new and better one that is yet to come. Certainly, the trouble with this lofty approach is that the better law is not actually a law, or a code of behaviour, but a world-view. Circumvention of existing laws is then justified, even made commendable, on the grounds of vague and contradictory wishes, which could never really become a new and better law.

In Raffles and Miss Blandish, Orwell contrasted Raffles, the old-fashioned thief, with the gangsters in J.H. Chase’s novel No Orchids for Miss Blandish. We see that Orwell prefers Raffles for his attachment to his country and his respect for a code of honour. Instead, the characters in J.H. Chase’s novel are all equally brutal, even sadistic. Both the gangsters and the police are there just for the money; no nonsense about patriotism and inviolable codes. Orwell remarks: ‘The Raffles stories, written from the angle of the criminal, are much less anti-social than many modern stories written from the angle of the detective’. I must add that, with a few exceptions, this has remained a characteristic of the genre ever since. Nevertheless, Orwell admits that the line Raffles draws ‘between good and evil is as senseless as a Polynesian taboo, but at least, like the taboo, it has the advantage that everyone accepts it.’ I would not go as far as Orwell, and would rather say that most of Raffles’s code makes sense. Not abusing hospitality, a rule that Orwell describes as part of Raffles’s code, does indeed make sense in Polynesia as well as in England.

Orwell’s remark, however, points to something important. It is always easy to spot incongruities in any existing code of behaviour. Every existing legal system owes much to history and even to chance. Moreover, anyone can easily imagine a situation -however unlikely- in which the most sensible of rules would seem unfair. Modern philosophers are very fond of doing it, and so they discuss –as professor Ronald Dworkin does- what sort of insurance one would try to get before one is born if insurance were available against the possibility of being born a reckless person, or clumsy, or stupid. When one gets used to those intellectual exercises, it is easy to feel that one can pass swift judgement on existing rules, as a saint would do while looking from the summit of Mount Everest to the world beneath. 

Many people in Argentina adopt that view and say: all codes of behaviour are equally wrong, all have flaws –the rest is vanity. Certainly, one loses a considerable part of that varnish of sainthood if one descends from high regions of hot air and goes into details, acknowledging that some codes are worse than others, and that most codes are better than none. 

Orwell provides us with an anecdote that shows how a code that is followed by instinct may seem absurd. In Looking back on the Spanish war he writes that one day he and another Republican soldier went to snipe at their enemies, who had their trenches at some distance from them. When they were close enough to fire, they saw that the enemy was being attacked by Republican planes. The enemy was in confusion, and suddenly Orwell saw a soldier running along the top of the parapet, half dressed and holding up his trousers with both hands. Orwell refrained from shooting at him. 

Both before and after describing the incident, he says that he thought that there was not much meaning in his scruples against shooting the man. Perhaps –I would add– he though that the rules he was instinctively following did not make more sense than a taboo. You will be ready to kill the man in the next battle, so why not shoot at him while he is running with his hands on his trousers? This sounds logical, but awful, and it is a line of argument that can be used against every moral scruple. This boy will be a soldier in a few years, and then you will be trying to kill him; so, why not kill him now? Scruples are always open to attack, and one often tends to deny that they make any difference –that is, till scruples are lost because then one sees the difference.

George Orwell and the Rule of Law: the power of illusions

George Orwell never wrote about legal technicalities, but he did something much more important: he described the attitudes once prevalent among English people that made it possible for them to be ruled by laws and not by men. For some reason, they chose to depend on laws –even bad laws– and not on the benevolence of clerks, the inspiration of judges, and the whims of party leaders. Orwell described the mental atmosphere that made that choice possible and made it work. If he helps us to understand it, his remarks might prove to be more valuable than a whole library of law books.

I was born and have lived all my life in Argentina, a country where law is feeble, where people seem to find it better to be swept from place to place by powerful men (or women) than to be ruled by fixed laws. We have good laws, or at least they are not worse than those of other countries. Our Constitution was largely copied from that of the US, as our founding fathers proudly admitted. But one cannot just copy rules, one must then abide to them, and that has proven to be the difficult part.

Many countries –perhaps most countries in the world– suffer the same problem. Nevertheless, apart from some self-ashamed mumbling about national traits, we know and say very little about the attitudes that make the difference. And we must not delude ourselves thinking that this is merely a matter of removing a corrupt upper class because the new one would be the same, or worse: the roots go down to ordinary people. We need to understand why law is respected in a few countries and neglected in most others. That might be more valuable for people’s happiness than the discovery of a new gold mine, even better than a hundred new oil wells.

Orwell had a gift and a passion for describing the habits of his own people: the English people. Unfortunately, Orwell is remembered mainly as the author of Animal Farm and 1984. Of course, these are fascinating books, but one is a fable and the other a novel about a possible future that never came true –at least not in England. This may lead people to forget that Orwell wrote much and well about his own time and about real events. Sprinkled here and there in his many essays and articles, we have Orwell's invaluable remarks about the attitudes that made England what it was in his time, and probably most of what it still is today. As Orwell himself, I have written ‘English attitudes’ and not ‘British attitudes’, but this is not essential to our issue.

English attitudes towards law

The rule of law has crept in many places, but it first bloomed in England. Even foreigners acknowledged it, among others Montesquieu and Voltaire –that was long before French intellectuals had been taught to sneer at bourgeois liberties. In his essay England your England, Orwell said that an all-important English trait was the respect for constitutionalism and legality, the belief in ‘the law’ as something above the State and above the individual, ‘something which is cruel and stupid, of course, but at any rate incorruptible’. In England, wrote Orwell, such concepts as justice, liberty, and objective truth are still believed in.

To this, many people –among them many English people– would object that those beliefs are silly and misguided, that English law is full of incongruities, and that those high words about liberty and justice are just a cover for prejudices. Some would add: at the end of the day English notions of justice are no better than those of the Nazis and terrorists. The only difference between Churchill and Hitler –so goes a common view– is that Churchill hid his power-grabbing strategy behind a mist of morality, while Hitler preferred ruthless sincerity. But Orwell answers: justice, and liberty, and objective truth ‘may be illusions, but they are very powerful illusions. The belief in them influences conduct, national life is different because of them’. Against those who remain sneering, Orwell did not try academic arguments; he said simply: ‘In proof of which, look about you. Where are the rubber truncheons, where is the castor oil?’ Justice was tougher in Orwell's time, but we can understand his argument: 'the hanging judge, that evil old man in scarlet robe and horsehair wig, whom nothing short of dynamite will ever teach what century he is living in, but who will at any rate interpret the law according to the books and will in no circumstances take a money bribe, is one of the symbolic figures of England'.

Now we come to a crucial remark: Orwell writes, ‘It is not that the English people imagine the law to be just. Everyone knows that there is one law for the rich and another for the poor. But no one accepts the implications of this…’. Most people in most countries will immediately follow the implications that the English refuse to accept: if we feel that law is unfair, if a rich man is acquitted when we feel that he should have been punished, then we do not owe obedience to law, and we may well disregard it. Those who reason in this way –a large number in my country and probably in most countries in the world– do not reject the possibility that some day in the future they might respect a new political arrangement, one that is flawless, one that makes mistakes impossible. But till that day comes, one is entitled to evade taxes, pay and take bribes, and bully those who look easy targets. If law is imperfect, it is no law at all.

The ratchet system

Half a loaf is no bread: this is a way of reasoning that Orwell never accepted, and with him, most English people. They accepted improvements and reforms that were far from perfect, and then tried to build something better on top of them, and then something even better, and so on. I would call it, the ratchet system: you advance but always keeping all that you already have of what is right and good. Edmund Burke compared it with an account that grows with new interest but always keeping the capital already gained. 
Comparing rights with an account and progress with capital, how shocking! That is why Hitler called the English “shopkeepers” as opposed to his German heros, always ready to kill and die for the good of the community. Even Orwell thought that Hitler had a point: he said that a planned economy on the lines of Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia was necessary in order to win the war (his article: Shopkeepers at war). However the shopkeepers were able, not only to build the Spitfire, but to defeat the Arian heroes.

Many people –perhaps most people– still reject the ratchet system. I once heard an Argentine man who refused to go and tell the truth in court, not out of fear, but because –as he explained– he thought that trials may end up being unfair anyway. He was afraid that by telling the truth he would look self-righteous –or worse, naïve. Unless a leader takes charge and roots out all the underlying causes of injustice, there is no point in doing right: it is mere illusion –or worse, hypocrisy. You might tell the truth in court (or a lie) as a special favour to a friend or a relative, maybe returning a similar favour you received or expect to receive, but not because of the simplistic notion that one must tell the truth. It is simplistic as well to criticise those who block wheelchair ramps with their cars –a familiar sight where I live. One must take into account that there must be scores of worse faults –even cases of corruption– that will never be exposed. It is simplistic, indeed hypocritical, to argue against a whole array of things: from petty corruption to politically motivated court rulings. This is the way in which people in hundreds of countries manage to accommodate a haughty moral posture together with absolute passivity towards injustice –sometimes mingled with obvious relish in it.

English people, at least in Orwell's time, lacked that gusto for convoluted justifications. They would not think that you have to pass judgement on the whole judicial system first, and then decide whether you will bother to tell the truth in court. English people, wrote Orwell, ‘have a horror of abstract thought, they feel no need for any philosophy or systematic “world-view”’. Instead, they are very capable of acting ‘upon a species of instinct, really a code of conduct which is understood by almost everyone, though never formulated’. Of course, we are bound to meet the old Marxist retort: this is a worldview just as any other. No it is not, and the difference is that law and moral codes are limited. Moral codes set limits; worldviews are boundless. We owe justice to our enemies –maybe stern justice–, but no rule commands us to be unfair. Incidentally, this does not mean that you must love the enemies of your country: this would be reverse-nationalism, as Orwell called it.

Nor are you required to pretend that a lie told by your party is better than a truth told by the opposite party. The historian Lord Macaulay was a Whig, but he must have felt that he was right in dedicating a poem to all that was noble –though misguided– in the Jacobites. World-views scorn all this as hypocritical; ruthless sincerity is better. Instead of the gentleman, the ruthless-man must be admired. The word ‘ruthless’ appears again and again in Hitler’s speeches and in his book Mein Kampf  –it must have been part of what people found attractive in him. In Argentina, General Perón’s motto ‘to the enemy, not even justice’ underpins all our recent history. More than that, I think it sums up all that was wrong in many countries in the past century. Today the names and the places have changed, but that dreadful notion remains as powerful as it was then.

Note: this is the first of a series of articles on George Orwell’s remarks concerning English attitudes and the rule of law. All of them will be published soon in this blog.