For two years, from 2008 to 2010, this blog followed and explained each step of the Simon Singh libel case, where a misconceived and illiberal claim was brought by the now discredited British Chiropractic Association.
On the back of that case, and because of wider well-grounded concerns, a libel reform campaign was launched which secured all-party support and the commitment to legislate by the Ministry Of Justice.
Then a Bill appeared, an event which had seemed unlikely. You can see on this site how far it has gone though parliament. It is almost there, and the Defamation Bill is about to become a Defamation Act.
But.
There is a real risk that it will now not happen, and this is for no good reason.
Supporters of further press regulation in the Lords have put forward amendments, following the Leveson Inquiry. If those amendments are not withdrawn or defeated later today, then there appears to be a genuine risk that the Bill will fail – see Nick Cohen here.
I am not an anti-Leveson person. I appeared at the Inquiry as a witness, and I believe the Inquiry process was a important exercise in that it allowed a wide range of issues and facts to get into the public domain which otherwise would not have got into the public domain. I am highly sceptical that any new regulations can work in practice, especially in an age of internet publication; but, on the whole, I think the Leveson Inquiry was a Good Thing.
Many against these Lords amendments are against Leveson in principle; I am not. But those promoting these amendments should now stand back. Any legislation required to implement the Leveson recommendations should be in a discrete Bill and properly debated. This “back gate” way is not appropriate and may mean, after five years of effort of many good people, will be wasted.
Lord Puttnam and his noble colleagues should drop the amendments.
COMMENTS MODERATION
And so it came to pass, that a debate about the role of juries came out of nowhere.
Whatever we were expecting from the Huhne and Pryce trial (he pleaded guilty, she faces a retrial), it was not a discussion about the composition and function of juries. Points about reporting restrictions (the case has had many and some are still in force) perhaps, or about the scope of the curious “marital coercion” defence. But not about juries; that was a shock.
However, the Pryce jury’s questions prompted many responses outside of the courtroom.
The most detailed and fascinating of these responses was by Richard Moorhead, which should be read in full. The legal blogger Obiter J has set out a number of other links. My own contribution (the chief merit of which was the punning title) was at the New Statesman (and I also debate juries with Joshua Rozenberg, who did a misconceived and illiberal piece on juries, in the Observer tomorrow).
I am actually no great fan of juries. But they are better than the alternative, and their questions – however daft – should always be encouraged and not ridiculed.
For me, what was most interesting about the Pryce jury questions was how a combination of in-court tweeting and outside-court blogging led to an immediate and interesting public debate about juries in general.
For, in a week when it emerged that the Guardian law page is to become a zombie, automated site without dedicated editorial staff, the speedy, varied and relatively informed response to the Pryce jury questions shows that legal tweeting and blogging is now, in effect, the standard form of legal commentary on developments in the news. This is just as well, as soon there will be no full-time legal or court correspondents on any national paper.
But is legal blogging and tweeting really any adequate replacement for full-time legal journalism? On that the jury is still out…
COMMENTS MODERATION
R
-v-
VASILIKI PRYCE
JURY QUESTIONS
QUESTION 1
You have defined the defence of marital coercion at page 5 and also explained what does not fall within the definition by way of examples.
Please expand upon the definition (specifically “will was overborne”), provide examples of what may fall within the defence, and does this defence require violence or physical threats.
QUESTION 2
In the scenario where the defendant may be guilty but there is not enough evidence provided by the prosecution at the material time of when she signed the NIP (between 3rd and 7th May 2003) to feel sure beyond reasonable doubt what should the verdict be = not guilty or unable/unsafe to provide a verdict?
QUESTION 3
If there is debatable evidence supporting the prosecution’s case, can inferences be drawn to arrive at a verdict? If so, inferences/speculation on the full evidence or only where you have directed us to do so (eg circumstantial evidence, lies, failure by VP to mention facts to the police).
QUESTION 4
Can you define what is reasonable doubt?
QUESTION 5
Can a juror come to a verdict based on a reason that was not presented in court and has no facts or evidence to support it, either from the prosecution or defence?
QUESTION 6
Can we infer anything from the fact that the defence didn’t bring witnesses from the time of the offence, such as au pair, neighbours?
QUESTION 7
Does the defendant have an obligation to present a defence?
QUESTION 8
Can we speculate about the events at the time VP signed the form or what was in her mind at that time?
QUESTION 9
Your Honour, The jury is considering the facts provided but have continued to ask the questions raised by the police. Given the case has come to court without answers to the police’s questions, please advise on which facts in the bundle the jury shall consider to determine a not guilty or guilty verdict.
QUESTION 10
Would religious conviction be a good enough reason for a wife feeling that she had no choice i.e. she promised to obey her husband in her wedding vows and he had ordered her to do something and she felt she had to obey?
(Spoilers below for Django Unchained.)
I remember the buzz about Reservoir Dogs going around college.
It would have been during the final year of my degree; and suddenly it seemed everyone was discussing it, forming an opinion on its merits and its violence, and just quoting and alluding to it whenever they could. Then came Pulp Fiction, and we were all in awe.
So a generation was formed of Tarantino fans, and our fate became to look forward to each of his films hoping to re-capture that high of 1992 to 1994.
And so dutifully I went to see Django Unchained. The generally positive advance publicity suggested it would not just be another Four Rooms or Death Proof, thank god.
Would it be a sequence of showy fight scenes, like Kill Bill? Or an attempt at a story telling relying on great acting, like Jackie Brown? Or would it simply make no sense at all, like Inglourious Basterds? At least there would not be Mexican vampires.
Would the film get a supportive nod, or a wince at self-indulgence, before thinking back to the wonder of Tarantino’s first two major releases?
What I did not expect was what interesting me most about the film – the way Tarantino explored and represented legal issues.
Here the crucial question is that posed by the plantation owner Calvin Candie:
I’ve been surrounded my entire life by black faces. I only have one question: Why don’t they just rise up and kill the whites?
The film suggests that part of why there was no slave rebellion in the southern states was because of how the law was used.
At the film’s very start, Dr Schultz makes sure he gets a bill of sale for Django. It seems like a theatrical affectation, but it becomes clear its importance is very practical. Later on it appears Django rules out a simple snatch of Broomhilda as he would need a bill of sale for her, and at the end of the film he makes sure he has that bill of sale before riding off with her, and leaving the burning manor house behind.
Furthermore, the film sets this pedantic regard for legality into a wider context of the rule of law. On two occasions Dr Schultz gets away with what otherwise would be murder because of a piece of paper and the announcement he is an officer of the court. And Candie himself boasts that his property rights are his to exercise as he wants.
How realistic is all this?
Well, one cannot help thinking that waving bills of sale and warrants for capturing dead or alive would not have got two protagonists like Schultz and Django very far in the Dixieland of 1858. One suspects they would have both been shot the first time they tried it.
But Tarantino perhaps has a point: why do the repressed not rise up when they are many when those repressing them are few? In terms of simple numbers, the “elite” would not have a chance.
One reason is that, absent a general revolution, the same legal system will always be there when the dust of revolt settles. The rebels’ claims to the property of the overthrown will not be respected by the civil law; and the criminal law will protect from sanction those killing and arresting the rebels. Being an outlaw may well be a nice pose; but the reality means that your rights to life and property no longer exist.
There are, of course, other reasons for a lack of revolt – the inequality of arms, the routine use of sheer force, the use of spies and informers, the rewards given for collaboration, and the promotion of ideologies that promote deference.
But the question of Calvin Candie is a good one, and it is not easily answered.
I was just not expecting a Tarantino film to be so thought-provoking in this way.
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This post is republished from my old Jack of kent site.
Why did George Orwell call his last novel Nineteen Eighty-Four?
The usual explanation for the choice of title of Nineteen Eighty-Four is that it was a play on the last two digits of 1948, the year the manuscript was finished.
This has never convinced me. I think there may be a better explanation, which comes from George Orwell’s intellectual hostility to the Catholic writer G. K. Chesterton.
This post sets out this alternative explanation as to why Orwell did give his novel the title Nineteen Eighty-Four. It is culled from work I did some time ago when I was considering a higher degree. Although the coincidence on which it is based has been noticed before, I am not aware of any other attempt to assess the alternative explanation that I offer.
A choice of title
In autumn 1948, Orwell is uncertain as to the title of his new novel. He has two titles in mind, and he asks at least two people for their view. In a letter dated 22 October 1948, Orwell explains the dilemma to his literary agent:
“…I have not definitely decided on the title. I am inclined to call it either NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR or THE LAST MAN IN EUROPE, but I might just possibly think of something else in the next week or two.”
On the same day he also writes to his new publisher and makes the same unsure admission:
“…I haven’t definitely fixed on the title but I am hesitating between NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR and THE LAST MAN IN EUROPE.”
However, within a month, the first of these two titles appears to have stuck. At least other people had taken it up. In December 1948, the publisher had compiled a report on the novel, calling it “1984”, as did one of the professional readers.
By 17 January 1949, Orwell himself has clearly made his choice of title and was now discussing whether it should be entitled “1984” or “Nineteen Eighty-Four”.
The book was published later that year.
The conventional explanation
The conventional account is now almost an urban myth. Everybody knows it, so to speak.
This 1948 explanation, although widely adopted, is actually not that well attested. For example, I have not found it stated anywhere by Orwell or by anyone with whom he conversed.
So far, I have only been able to trace the 1948 explanation to an American publisher called Robert Giroux, who saw Nineteen Eighty-Four through the press for the US edition.
However, Orwell was not particularly close to Giroux, and there is no reason to believe that Giroux was privy to any special information about Nineteen Eighty-Four. Although there is some correspondence between Orwell and Giroux, I have not seen any mention in that correspondence of why the book had this title.
In passing, I note that Orwell complained that he did not like what Giroux was doing to the book in the US edition. Nor did he appreciate the unsolicited requests for writing blurbs.
An alternative explanation?
If the 1948 theory is possibly not correct, why did Orwell choose to set his dystopia in the year 1984? My alternative explanation brings us to G.K. Chesterton, an earlier and very different writer to Orwell.
Chesterton was, of course, the writer of the Father Brown stories, as well as a prolific poet and journalist. But it is one of his two famous novels (the other being The Man Who Was Thursday) with which I am concerned here: The Napoleon of Notting Hill.
The Napoleon of Notting Hill is a fantasy set in a future London. (As a fantasy writer, Chesterton has the deserved admiration of modern fantasy writers such as Neil Gaiman.) The hero is Auberon Quin, a well-meaning eccentric who suddenly becomes King. The political context for all this is set out when the story begins:
VERY few words are needed to explain why London, a hundred years hence, will be very like it is now, or rather, since I must slip into a prophetic past, why London, when my story opens, was very like it was in those enviable days when I was still alive.
The reason can be stated in one sentence. The people had absolutely lost faith in revolutions. All revolutions are doctrinal…such as the French one, or the one that introduced Christianity.
For it stands to common sense that you cannot upset all existing things, customs, and compromises, unless you believe in something outside them, something positive and divine. Now, England, during this century, lost all belief in this. It believed in a thing called Evolution. And it said, “All theoretic changes have ended in blood and ennui. If we change, we must change slowly and safely, as the animals do. Nature’s revolutions are the only successful ones. There has been no conservative reaction in favour of tails.”
And some things did change. Things that were not much thought of dropped out of sight. Things that had not often happened did not happen at all. Thus, for instance, the actual physical force ruling the country, the soldiers and police, grew smaller and smaller, and at last vanished almost to a point. The people combined could have swept the few policemen away in ten minutes: they did not,because they did not believe it would do them the least good. They had lost faith in revolutions.
Democracy was dead; for no one minded the governing class governing. England was now practically a despotism, but not an hereditary one. Some one in the official class was made King. No one cared how; no one cared who. He was merely an universal secretary.
In this manner it happened that everything in London was very quiet. That vague and somewhat depressed reliance upon things happening as they have always happened, which is with all Londoners a mood, had become an assumed condition. There was really no reason for any man doing anything but the thing he had done the day before.
The Napoleon of Notting Hill is, however, now more famous for its preface, entitled Introductory Remarks on the Art of Prophecy. Only a few hundred words long, it is a much-quoted source of Chestertonian wit. (It begins wonderfully with “THE human race, to which so many of my readers belong…”.)
The preface is not used to introduce the story but to undermine both modernist pretensions and radical predictions. Chesterton ridicules in turn H. G. Wells, Edward Carpenter (the early environmentalist), Leo Tolstoy, Cecil Rhodes, Benjamin Kidd ( a sociologist), W. T. Stead (a campaigning journalist), and Sidney Webb. In each instance their views are stated and then juxtaposed with an absurdly exaggerated view of an invented eccentric.
For example:
There was Mr. Sidney Webb, also, who said that the future would see a continuously increasing order and neatness in the life of the people, and his poor friend Fipps, who went mad and ran about the country with an axe, hacking branches off the trees whenever there were not the same number on both sides.
And so on. Chesterton then concludes the preface with a provocative challenge to every other forecaster or prophet. They would err as every such pundit had erred:
All these clever men were prophesying with every variety of ingenuity what would happen soon, and they all did it in the same way, by taking something they saw ‘going strong’, as the saying is, and carrying it as far as ever their imagination could stretch.
So:
When the curtain goes up on this story, eighty years after the present date, London is almost exactly like what it is now.
The Napoleon of Notting Hill was published in 1904; the curtain therefore goes up in 1984.
Orwell and Chesterton
Orwell intellectually loathed GK Chesterton and other Catholic conservative writers.
If this aspect of Orwell’s thought is less appreciated today, it is perhaps because the debates changed. However, Orwell’s criticism of the intellectual and moral dishonesty of Catholic conservatives was a common theme in Orwell’s journalism and other published writing, and he often bracketed Catholic conservatism and his other bugbear, Stalinism.
Indeed, one can often swap his comments on Stalinism and Catholic conservatism. They are almost invariably interchangeable.
Orwell wrote only one major political essay in 1945 (the year he started Nineteen Eighty-Four. This was Notes on Nationalism. This influential essay sets out how certain ideologies (or “nationalisms”) can undermine clear political and moral thinking. And only one writer or politician is examined in this context: Chesterton.
In the essay, Orwell introduces both Chesterton and his long held attitudes towards him:
Ten or twenty years ago, the form of nationalism most corresponding to Communism today was political Catholicism. Its most outstanding exponent – though he was perhaps an extreme case rather than a typical one – was G. K. Chesterton.
Orwell characterises Chesterton:
Chesterton was a master of considerable talent who chose to suppress both his sensibilities and his intellectual honesty in the cause of Roman Catholic propaganda.
And Chesterton’s method:
Every book that he wrote, every paragraph, every sentence, every incident in every story, every scrap of dialogue, had to demonstrate beyond possibility of mistake the superiority of the Catholic over the Protestant or the Pagan.
In a Tribune column in February 1944, Orwell specifically attacked Chesterton’s assertions about change over time:
It is not very difficult to see that this idea is rooted in the fear of progress. If there is nothing new under the sun, if the past in some shape or another always returns, then the future when it comes will be something familiar.
Orwell continues by contrasting Chesterton’s Catholic conservatism with his own democratic socialism:
At any rate what will never come – since it has never come before – is that hated, dreaded thing, a world of free and equal human beings.
Orwell and Catholic conservatism
Orwell’s hostility to Chesterton has to be seen in the context of his disdain for other Catholic conservative writers. In a book review as early as 1932, Orwell is dissing Catholic writers:
Our English Catholic apologists are unrivalled masters of debate, but they are on their guard against saying anything genuinely informative.
Later, a central theme of Orwell’s hostility towards ‘political Catholicism’ was its close relationship with Fascism. In 1944, he notes almost in passing,
Outside its own ranks, the Catholic Church is almost universally regarded as pro-Fascist, both objectively and subjectively.
And in a Tribune column of 1945,
The Catholics who said ‘Don’t offend Franco because it helps Hitler’ had more or less consciously helping Hitler for years beforehand.
Animosity towards ‘Catholic conservatism’ was perhaps most obvious in his weekly Tribune column. For example, two favourite straw-dollies were the right-wing, Roman Catholic journalists ‘Timothy Shy’ and ‘Beachcomber’. In 1944, Orwell warned readers that,
their general ‘line’ will be familiar to anyone who has read Chesterton and kindred writers. Its essential note is denigration of England and of Protestant countries generally.
And therefore,
It is a mistake to regard these two as comics pure and simple. Every word they write is intended as Catholic propaganda.
In a Tribune column in October 1944, Orwell discussed the writing and broadcasting of C.S. Lewis :
[I was] reading, a week or two ago, Mr C. S. Lewis’s recently-published book, Beyond Personality…The idea, of course, is to persuade the suspicious reader, or listener, that one can be a Christian and a ‘jolly good chap’ at the same time. I don’t imagine that the attempt would have much success…but Mr. Lewis’s vogue at this moment, the time allowed to him on the air and the exaggerated praise he has received, are bad symptoms and worth noticing…
A kind of book that has been endemic in England for quite sixty years is the silly-clever religious book, which goes on the principle not of threatening the unbeliever with Hell, but of showing him up as an illogical ass, incapable of clear thought and unaware that everything he says has been says has been refuted before. This school of literature started with W. H. Mallock’s New Republic, which must have been written about 1880, and it has a long line of practitioners – R. H. Benson, Chesterton, Father Knox, ‘Beachcomber’ and others, most of them Catholics, but some, like Dr Cyril Allington and (I suspect) Mr Lewis himself, Anglicans.
The line of attack is always the same. Every heresy has been uttered before (with the implication that it has been refuted before); and theology is only understood by theologians (with the implication that you should leave your thinking to the priests)…
One reason for the extravagant boosting that these people get in the press is that their political affiliations are invariably reactionary. Some of them were frank admirers of Fascism as long as it was safe to be so. That is why I draw attention to Mr C. S. Lewis and his chummy little wireless talks, of which no doubt there will be more. They are not really so unpolitical as they are meant to look
Most relevant for the purpose of connecting Orwell to The Napoleon of Notting Hill is his 1946 book review of The Democrat at the Supper Table, where Orwell forcefully attacks the author’s conservative politics and the sophistry of the novel’s central character:
Without actually imitating Chesterton, Mr. Brogan has obviously been influenced by him, and his central character has a Father Brown-like capacity for getting the better of an argument, and also for surrounding himself with fools and scoundrels whose function is to lead up to his wisecracks.
When a clergyman wrote to complain about the tone of Orwell’s review, the reply elaborated on the initial attack:
Ever since W. H. Mallock’s ‘New Republic’ there has been a continuous stream of what one might call ‘clever Conservative’ books, opposing the current trend without being able to offer any viable programme in its place.
Orwell continued, appearing to have in mind the Preface to The Napoleon of Notting Hilll
If you look back twenty years, you will find people like Ronald Knox, Cyril Alington, Chesterton himself and his many followers, talking as though such things as Socialism, Industrialism, the theory of evolution, psycho-therapy, universal compulsory education, radio, aeroplanes and what-not could be simply laughed out of existence.
So did Orwell take the year 1984 from The Napoleon of Notting Hill?
Taking the stories as a whole it is not too much of a strain to see Nineteen Eighty-Four as a riposte to The Napoleon of Notting Hill. There are many points of comparison. Both books show that a belief in revolution that appears to have gone wrong, and both focus on the frustrations of a sympathetic central character as he attempts to challenge the prevailing system. Both are utopian/dystopian visions, containing prophecies extrapolated from current trends.
There are also many telling contrasts. The Napoleon of Notting Hill is written from the point of view of a Catholic populist and Nineteen Eighty-Four is by an almost secular social democrat.
It is, in many ways, a plausible explanation.
However, this alternative explanation has gaps.
For example, even though Orwell has a clear disdain for Chesterton and is antipathetic to the prophetic pretensions of Chesterton and other religious conservative writers, there is actually no direct evidence that Orwell either had read or even possessed The Napoleon of Notting Hill.
One feels he “must have done” as it is one of Chesteron’s three best-known works and probably his most quoted, but one cannot invent convenient evidence. The best I can say is that it difficult to imagine Orwell committing his attacks in Notes on Nationalism without being aware of Chesterton’s clearest and best known statement against “progress”.
Subject to further research, the final position on the question must be inconclusive though fascinating.
However, the possibility that the title of Nineteen Eighty-Four was derived from The Napoleon of Notting Hill does allows us to explore an often overlooked part of Orwell’s political outlook: the deep hostility of a decent and progressive liberal to the intellectual and moral dishonesty of religious conservatives.
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The story of the nativity of Jesus of Nazareth is so familiar that it is difficult to look at it afresh. However, Luke’s version may be worth looking at closely.
It begins with these familiar verses, which locate the story and place and time:
1 And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed.
2 (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.)
3 And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city.
4 And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David:)
5 To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child.
6 And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered.
(King James Version)
And a twentieth century translation goes as follows:
1 In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered.
2 This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria.
3 All went to their own towns to be registered.
4 Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David.
5 He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child.
6 While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child.
(New Revised Standard Version)
There are a number of perhaps interesting points about these verses.
First, there was no such decree from Emperor Augustus. The Roman imperial bureaucracy left detailed records, and if a decree had been made we would know about it. There is no evidence for such an event whatsoever.
Even if there had been such a decree, Quirinius (Cyrenius) did not become governor of Syria until 6AD, a date which would perhaps be too late for the correct birth of Jesus.
And this in turn is significant, for until 6AD Galilee (and hence Nazareth) was not part of the Roman Empire, and so would not have been subject to such a decree.
Furthermore, the principles of Roman taxation (and of the taking of censuses) would have meant Joseph would have been registered for his property in Nazareth, and not on the basis of where a distant ancestor came from. There also would have been absolutely no need for Mary to travel with him.
The nativity account of Luke is simply incorrect or incredible in every historical detail.
But so what?
None of the above information about Luke’s account is new or even particularly controversial among Biblical scholars and first century historians.
Other than a few literalists, the scholarly consensus is that the nativity account of Luke and the separate account of Matthew (with the similarly unhistorical murder of the innocents) are probably later additions to the gospel accounts. Both narratives explain (contrive) how someone known to be from Nazareth also was born (according to prophecy) in the town of David: Luke has the non-existent census, whilst Matthew has Joseph and Mary as being in Bethlehem to begin with.
And the nativity of Jesus was not especially important to early Christians. Nowhere else in the New Testament is there mention of either nativity story. Mark and John both start with Jesus’s adult ministry; and neither Luke nor Matthew mention the nativity story again. Paul (probably writing before the gospel accounts) does not mention the nativity stories in any of his letters.
For early Christians, it would appear the stories of Jesus’s ministry (with the accounts of miracles and exorcisms) and of his crucifixion and resurrection were more than enough. They had no need of the virgin birth and the star of Bethlehem.
So a critique of the nativity stories is not (and should not be taken to be) an attack on Christianity. Indeed, the very early Christians – the one who actually got the faith up and running – managed without the nativity stories.
However, later generations placed immense doctrinal and theological weight on the nativity stories. The problem with having done this is that once the historical foundation is shown to be wanting, the superstructure placed upon it can be seen as compromised.
But again, this does not mean that Christianity is false; but it does mean that human beings – even fathers of the early church – are fallible. The problem here is certainty, not Christianity.
And nor does it take away from the literary beauty of the stories (and of the artistic and musical works inspired by the stories).
Twenty years ago, reading of the works Robin Lane Fox and Geza Vermes allowed me to understand that it was possible to have an entirely secular understanding of Jesus of Nazareth and the development of the early church. This realisation – combined with reading Hume on miracles and Darwin on natural selection – in turn became part of the reason I became an atheist.
Twenty years later, I am less certain. Disproving the historical details of the nativity story of Luke (or any part of the New Testament) may well undermine a certain approach to Christianity, but it does not mean in and by itself that Christianity is wrong. It takes one so far, but not all the way.
All because it is easy to discredit the misplaced certainty of some Christians, this does not lead to the certainty of some atheists being any better founded.
The interim guidelines on prosecuting cases involving communications sent via social media, issued today by the Director of Public Prosecutions, are at legal blogger and barrister Adam Wagner’s site.
This morning, Fleet Street’s editors met to discuss the Leveson Report over breakfast. Here is what was said, as scripted by Quentin Tarantino…
MR. DACRE
Let me tell you what the Leveson Report is about. It’s all about a judge who digs us a hole beacuse is he is a big dick.
MR. RUSBRIDGER
No, it ain’t. It’s about an industry which is very vulnerable. We’ve fucked up a few times, and then we have a Lord Justice who’s very sensitive.
MR. MORAN
Whoa! whoa…time out Gruaniad. Tell that fucking bullshit to the Tories.
MR. DACRE
The Leveson is not about some sensitive lawyer who writes a nice report. That’s what Calcutt was about. Granted, no argument about that.
MR. HARDING
Which one’s Calcutt?
NICE GUY MACKENZIE
You ain’t heard of Calcutt? It was a big ass hit for our predecessors. I don’t even follow that privacy law shit, and even I’ve heard of Calcutt.
MR. HARDING
Yeah, so – I ain’t saying I ain’t heard of it. You know; all I asked is how did it go. Excuse me for not being the world’s biggest privacy law fan.
MR. DACRE
You guys are like making me lose my train of thought here. I was saying something. What the fuck was I talking about?
MR. MORAN
You said Calcutt was about a sensitive lawyer who meets a nice industy, but Lord Justice Leveson was a big dick.
MR. DACRE
Ok. Let me tell you what Leveson’s about. It’s all about this Inquiry which is a regular fuck the press machine. I’m talking morning, day, night, afternoon– dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick.
MR. HARDING
How many dicks is that?
MR. MORAN
A lot.
MR. DACRE
Then one day Leveson meets this Daily Mail motherfucker, and it’s like, whoa, baby…
(With apologies.)
(Adapted and republished from my old Jack of Kent site, May 2010.)
Let me introduce you to Ida Mabel Limouzin.
You will like her.
She was born in 1875 and grew up in Burma in the port of Moulmein, where her French family had conducted business since the British annexation in 1826.
The Limouzins were a well-regarded family with wide commercial interests; they even had a street named after them. One family member remembered that the head of the family “lived like a prince”.
She was attractive – slender with striking eyes and thick wavy hair – and highly independent.
According to one author, Ms. Limouzin was certainly a “more lively, unconventional, widely-read and in every way a more interesting person” than the dullard she ended up marrying.
She insisted on a separate bedroom to the dullard. When seen together she seemed to others to be faintly dismissive of him. The evidence suggests she only married him on the rebound.
When she brought her young family to England – the dullard was sent off to work in India for years and so played no real part in his children’s upbringing – she mixed with Suffragettes and attended public meetings. She often took her children with her: she was remembered by her daughter as being a mother “for outings”.
The house was full of fanciful objects, and she had a passion for art and photography.
In essence, Ms. Limouzin was a bohemian at the turn of the twentieth century, but one devoted to her young children.
As such, she was one of many; but the reason we know so much about her is because her son happened to grow up to be famous.
You can see him as the baby in the photograph above.
Her son was called Eric, but he became better known as “George Orwell”.
And when one looks at George Orwell from his mother’s perspective, a great deal seems to make sense.
One is no longer trying to explain why the Eton schoolboy decided not to go to university but went to Burma and then Paris instead.
After all, from his mother’s side Orwell was Franco-Burmese in the first place.
One can also perhaps see where his independence of mind and unreadiness to conform came from.
(Indeed even at Eton he was distinctive. He was known as “the college atheist” and he read books which surprised his teachers and friends. Regarding Orwell just as a typical Etonian is misconceived.)
But the British obsession with class, and the sexist assumption that the paternal side is more significant, tend to dominate Orwell scholarship and almost all his biographies.
For example, one biography of Orwell which spends six pages lovingly detailing the family and class background of Orwell’s father, including mentioning distant and titled relatives of whom Orwell was probably unaware.
The biography then deals with Orwell’s mother in a couple of sentences.
One rather thinks it should be the other way round.
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Today came the news that Lord McAlpine has accepted damages of £185,000 from the BBC in respect of the Newsnight fiasco.
The excellent media law blog INFORRM has said that this seems a generous payment in the circumstances, and for the reasons they give, I think they must be right.
But at the end of the INFORRM post there is a fascinating reference to a rarely used statutory provisionwhich may become relevant if Lord McAlpine proceeds to threaten libel claims against tweeters who expressly or implicitly connected him with the Newsnight allegations.
Section 12 of the Defamation Act 1952 provides:
Evidence of other damages recovered by plaintiff.
In any action for libel or slander the defendant may give evidence in mitigation of damages that the plaintiff has recovered damages, or has brought actions for damages, for libel or slander in respect of the publication of words to the same effect as the words on which the action is founded, or has received or agreed to receive compensation in respect of any such publication.
What this means in plain English is that a claimant who has already recovered substantial damages from one defendant for a libel will not find it straightforward to recover damages from another defendant for the same libel.
This is not a defence to liability to libel: section 12 assumes either the libel has been admitted or proven in court. It instead goes to the amount of damages. However, if the BBC payment is, as INFORRM suggests, a high amount in the circumstances, then it may well be open to other defendants to use the BBC payment as mitigation for the damages which otherwise could be awarded.
There are “ifs” here; and it may well be that no tweeter defendant can successfully invoke section 12. But the INFORRM reminder of this provision is interesting for tweeters to note at this stage of the threatened litigation.
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