Article
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General Election 24
Politics
4 min read

Democracy and dairy don't mix

Let's remember the principles of political engagement.
A woman throws a milkshake at a politician, the milk is mid-flight in a curved shape.
Political engagement?
Twitter

Nigel Farage is best known for dividing opinion. It is for a politician like Mr Farage that we adapted ‘Marmite’ from a noun to an adjective - people either love or hate him. I’d like to think of myself as an elevated individual, floating above the fray of yeast-based debate with grace and equanimity. I find Mr Farage funny, because he is. I dislike much of what he stands for, because it is unlikable. It all balances out. I neither love nor hate him. I see him as a, somewhat amusing and somewhat problematic, bit of topography on the political map. I can’t really bring myself to have any feelings towards him which are stronger than a chuckling-wincing-indifference.  

Others, it would seem, have more passion. On Tuesday,  Mr Farage was doused in milkshake; ‘vanilla’, intrepid journalists reported. The response was immediate. Howls of laughter from those who find Mr Farage odious. Fulmination from those who support him. Claims of a ‘false flag operation’ from some. Shouts about ‘political violence’ and a ‘slippery slope’ from others. Much like the man, the milkshake roused the commentariat into absolute histrionics. Who on earth is right? 

The latter group. 

Obviously! 

Shock often elicits a laugh - a way of softening the tension one finds themselves inhabiting. It doesn’t mean the joke is funny. The milkshake wasn’t funny, however much some forcibly bray with laughter. It was an unkind, juvenile, contradictory act of foolishness from someone who seems to believe that true political engagement is dairy-based. It was also an attempt to set a precedent which no civilised person can accept. Those shouting about the ‘slippery slope’ are correct, for the ‘slippery slope’ is simply a phrase which is synonymous with the concept of ‘precedent’. 

I do not mean that we must treat our political class with kid gloves. We must interrogate their platforms, positions, and policies with rigour.

Precedents’ are fundamentally progressive. You set a precedent for something, and soon people wish to argue for a precedent which goes further. Be under no illusion, milkshake can very quickly become a much nastier and more dangerous liquid in the minds of many. The principle that those who are standing for elected office must be treated with absolute respect is one which is either absolute or non-existent. There is no in-between. 

I do not mean that we must treat our political class with kid gloves. We must interrogate their platforms, positions, and policies with rigour. If they propose an idea which we find deficient or problematic (or even odious!) then we must hold them to account and demand an explanation. This is the right (perhaps even the duty?) of all engaged in the democratic process. We can never, however, allow our passion and consternation to devolve into the physical. Language and action are inextricably linked, yet there is an obvious and distinct gulf between them which we must preserve at all costs. 

The milkshake incident might elicit a laugh at first, but I hope anyone laughing ends up frowning.

On the day the election was announced, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York issued a plea: put “…good grace and a commitment to truth and integrity…” at the heart of the campaign. We ought to demand this of our political class; but we can’t expect it of those standing for election if we do not practice it ourselves.  

Our elected representatives feel embattled like never before. The number of MPs standing down at this election is remarkable. The number who are calling for mandatory police protection of MPs is depressing. The number who have experienced threats and/or/of violence is unconscionable. The number who have been murdered in the last thirty years - two - is horrific and shameful.  

We will never get the best out of our MPs if we do not give them OUR best! 

If the Archbishops are not enough to convince you, perhaps Jesus will be. Jesus was faced with regular attack, both verbal and physical. He responded with love (‘turn the other cheek), verbal wit (render unto Ceasar that which is Ceasar’s), and, ultimately, loving sacrifice (the Cross). He also regularly reminds us that our actions inform who we are and will become: “Listen and understand: it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles.” 

The milkshake incident might elicit a laugh at first, but I hope anyone laughing ends up frowning. Firstly, because it was vulgar, callous, and rude: it was everything a civilised democratic process ought to reject. Secondly, and most importantly, because it demeans and degrades us all as a culture. Every such incident which is tolerated at all sets a precedent which we cannot accept. 

Our political processes, flawed and hypocritical as they might sometime be, are intended to engender the fundamental principles of respect, integrity, and love of neighbour. If we see the meeting of Mr Farage and a milkshake as anything but disgusting, we are not worthy of such principles. 

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Trauma
War & peace
2 min read

Hospitals are home to the truth of war

Remembering what war really is.
A black and white photo shows solider patients and nurses in a hospital.
Christmas in a German military hospital, Word War One.
Aussie~mobs, public domain, via Wikimedia.

I’ve been re-reading Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front in the run-up to Remembrance Day. Remarque, born in Westphalia in 1898, uses his own experiences of the horrors of the Western Front to paint a gut-wrenching portrait of its futility and suffering, seen through the eyes of 20-year-old Paul Baum. 

It had been towards the end of this First World War that Hiram Johnson, Republican Senator of California, observed that ‘the first casualty when war comes is truth.’ This is precisely Paul’s experience. 

The newspapers delivered to the soldiers at the Front are hopelessly, naively, offensively optimistic. They present a painfully, laughably discordant tissue of lies that deny the most basic truths of daily experience. When Paul goes home on leave, truth is even harder to find. His remote father only wants to hear tales of glory and courage and well-fed soldiers. His blabbering former teachers - the very ones who had cajoled his whole class to sign up - are patronising, ignorant and opinionated on the best route to victory. They literally have no idea, and worse, they don’t want to know.  

It’s only when he’s taken to a Catholic Hospital after an injury that Paul stumbles on an agonising truth -  

‘A hospital alone shows what war is.’ 

Paul’s vivid description of life on the wards backs this up. He witnesses the unceasing production line of shattered bodies tumbling into every available space. He’s warned against ‘The Dying Room’ which is conveniently, practically, located next to the mortuary. He catalogues the surrounding wards - ‘abdominal and spinal cases, head wounds, double amputations, jaw wounds, gas cases, nose, ear and neck wounds … the blind … lung wounds, pelvis wounds, wounds in the testicles …’ He’s grateful for the gentle, joyful kindness of Sister Libertine, ‘who spreads good cheer through the whole wing.’ 

This hospital is more eloquent on the theme of the futility of the fighting than any newspaper article or speech, censored or otherwise. 

For much of my adult life grainy videos of precision-guided bombs and leaders pounding their fist in defiant rhetoric have been the go-to guides to tell us the truth about modern warfare. I trust these sources less than ever, as I recall my instinctive respect for the ambulance drivers, nurses and doctors on the front-line - wherever it may be - marvelling at their courage and truth-telling and even-handed humanity. 

Their voices are shamefully drowned out in the world’s conflict zones, dwarfed by propaganda as insulting and truth-lite as the newspapers that doubled as toilet paper for both sides on the Western Front. And I cringe at the thought of what Paul and his young comrades would’ve made of hospitals - those oases of truth - becoming the targets of today’s bombs, missiles and drone strikes. 

We, rightly, remember the First World War as the very epitome of futility - Paul and his generation saw this truth far more clearly than we do. But let’s not congratulate ourselves, as we prepare for Acts of Remembrance in 2024, on having made any real progress in the last 100 years - hospitals across the globe’s conflict zones still tell us what war really is, if only we could hear, if only we would listen.