1: Britain from a Waiting Room
HAVING SIGNED A CONTRACT to write this volume for Canongate Books in 2012, I almost at once saw it a duty I postponed tackling. I hate duties, especially those I impose on myself. I therefore avoided keeping up to date with the political state of Scotland and Britain by only reading The Times Literary Supplement and magazines in my doctor’s waiting room. I had an ailment which kept me visiting it steadily for two or three months.
I am fascinated by waiting-room reading matter. The doctor’s surgery of my childhood had bound volumes of Punch cartoons, none later than World War I, though there were hints of it coming. A cartoon showed an officers’ mess where a colonel asked a junior, “What, Captain so-and-so, do you see as the role of cavalry in modern warfare?” and was told, “I suppose, Sir, it will add tone to what would otherwise be a mere vulgar brawl.” In another officers discussed an un-named foreign country. One said, “Yes, we’ll have to fight them sooner or later. I only hope it isn’t in the grouse shooting and salmon fishing season.” In the aftermath of two world wars these amused and surprised me.
Later my favourite waiting-room reading became the American National Geographic, whose articles and pictures were always factual and entertaining. Yesterday in my doctor’s surgery the only magazines with that name were very small, and seemed intended for children with a mental age of five. Other reading was mostly glossy fashion or style magazines, lavishly illustrated but cheap because mainly subsidized by adverts. Their many photographs of glamorous women attracted me more than I liked, because a married man of my age should have outgrown pornography. So I picked up Focus, a magazine for those interested in science and technology, and published by the BBC.
Like many who grew up before television I used to think the BBC a friendly institution. As well as the Radio Times it published The Listener, which printed radio broadcasts on literary, historical and scientific matters. In the 1950s it told me about discoveries of the Big Bang and continental drift. It had hardly any pictures, so in 1964 I was thrilled to see in it a reproduction of my best painting, which illustrated Anthony Burgess’s review of a TV documentary about my art. Focus, unlike the long defunct Listener, has on every page bright photographs, computer visualizations and headlines that reduce the factual text to a series of sound bites. It is obviously for young folk interested in the future, not for specialists or older folk. It explains that Neuroimmunology reveals how our own body can attack the brain, and about a New British project set to renew the search for an alien civilization then asks Could rising CO2 levels see Earth returned to the kind of climate not seen since the prehistoric era? Suddenly a full-page advert caught my eye.
Central was a photograph of an aircraft that technically minded youths would know was one of the Unidentified Flying Objects developed by the USA. Radar could not detect them, so they were used to spy on the USSR when international agreements made that illegal. For decades the American air force fooled some observers into thinking they came from outer space. They are now called Stealth Bombers. Britain has them, for the Ministry of Defence placed this photograph under the slogan We have the technology. Beneath it I read: The UK requires modern, battle-winning forces to defend its interests and to contribute to strengthening international peace and security. These forces increasingly depend on scientific and technological advances to maintain their ability to operate effectively: this means the provision of technologies of tremendous speed, power and capacity to deliver a decisive operational edge.
We are The Ministry of Defence, Defence
Engineering and Science Group.
Organization Description: Government Department.
The DESG is the team of thousands of engineers and
scientists within the MoD.
DESG offers you many benefits including . . .
Here follows a description of secure, well-paid careers for smart young science graduates.
There was much food for thought in this. These graduates were not being invited to help defend Britain from invasion, but to defend British interests abroad – in other words, financial interests. The government of Britain once acquired an empire by doing that, and since then has not stopped fighting battles on the soil of poorer nations. That BBC advert was announcing that the UK government is still busy with the kind of arms race which led to two world wars. Yet it claims that the Ministry of Defence will contribute to strengthening international peace and security. That is how Big Brother now tells smart youngsters: “WAR IS PEACE! JOIN US! THE MONEY IS GOOD.” Many will join. Compared with Welfare State students of pre-Thatcher days, the modern ones are a docile lot. Those without wealthy parents are heavily in debt when they graduate, so need well-paid jobs.
I picked up a journal called All About History which said on the cover, “Wellington won the war. Did Napoleon win history?” There was a final article about Edison and electrification. The rest were about warfare with the main article headed: CONQUEST – EMPIRES GAINED BY THE SWORD. Subjugation and acquisition by force have been common since tribal times. We present a guide to conquests both ancient and modern. The only women shown in it are a phalanx of black-robed Syrian women with their faces exposed and carrying machine guns. Thomas Carlyle had a cruel streak which made him approve of slavery for black people, but I agree with his saying that what is usually called history is interruption of life maintained by the cultivation of food and the other arts of peace. I forget whether this magazine or Focus advertised an improvement on war and crime video games such as Call of Duty, the game most played by actual soldiers, and only second to Grand Theft Auto (produced by a Scottish firm). The improvement would allow several friends to enjoy the same visual reality while behaving differently from each other in a combat situation. Good training for the young?
A friend who saw video footage recording US soldiers killing Iraqi civilians from aircraft tells me their conversation about this exciting and perfectly safe business was exactly like people playing combat games. I believe this is partly because such games will be part of the soldiers’ training. Since World War I, psychologists investigating British and American troops in battle had found that only eight out of ten deliberately shot to kill. Usually they just fired their weapons in the general direction of the enemy. This means that, despite the greater number of murders in countries where big business stops governments banning the free sale of firearms, the majority of folk have an instinctive distaste for killing others. I am also told that heads of our armed forces are now deliberately training their troops to overcome that distaste. Combat games must be part of that training. No wonder Julian Assange is being driven from one country to another for publicizing facts which our governments do not want us to know. I am glad a Norwegian MP nominated him for a Nobel Peace Prize, sorry it has not been awarded to him. I am glad Scottish students chose Edward Snowden as Rector of Glasgow University, though the USA government would like him extradited to one of their jails for questioning, for he too publicized facts that the bosses of the belligerent Western democracies want to keep secret.
I took refuge in the magazines with pictures of women illustrating adverts and articles about clothes, jewellery, cosmetics and food. They mildly excited me by constantly suggesting women want sexual fun. Under a picture of an excitingly dressed blonde Style magazine announced:
NAUGHTY!
THE OUTFITS, THE GLITTER, THE GAMES,
THE BOOZE:
