Article

America

Comment

24 November 2023

6 min read

The significance of legacy and what it can really stir

Concluding an American journey in the footsteps of his hero, Ian Hamlin ponders how legacy arises.

Ian Hamlin

Ian Hamlin has been the minister of a Baptist church since 1994. He previously worked in financial services.

Martin Luther King reaches from the pulpit of a church while he preaches.

MLK preaching at Riverside Church, New York.

The Gotham Center for New York History.

Travelling around recently, considering the impact of the US Civil Rights Movement as part of my sabbatical trip across four States, I’ve been struck by the immediacy of it. It really doesn’t seem very far away, or long ago. Part of that, of course, is its ongoing resonance, but there are also some personal factors. Martin Luther King was just four days younger than my mother, who’s still alive, and I was born in the week leading up to ‘Bloody Sunday’, and the Selma – Montgomery march. Although not strictly true, this feels like a history of my own time.

That sense has, I think, been amplified by some other recent significant dates. Earlier this summer was the sixtieth anniversary of the ‘I Have a Dream’ speech in Washington, the subway in Atlanta is still awash with anniversary posters. Beyond that, of course, just days later, we remembered a similar six decades since the Klu Klux Klan’s bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, which killed; Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley, three 14-year-olds, and one 11-year-old girl. A commemorative service was held in the church, just weeks ago.

History had changed, its arc had indeed bent towards justice. Yet such gestures, profound though they may be, rarely tell the whole story.

Less dramatically, yet still poignantly, 2nd November saw the 40th anniversary of Ronald Reagan signing the bill into law, which created Martin Luther King Day as a national holiday in America, on the 3rd Monday of January each year.

Now very much part of the fabric of national life, the holiday represents, as much as anything, the formal adoption of Dr King as a fully-fledged American hero, part of the great story of the Republic, and the ultimate acceptance of this black man by his country.

Symbols like that matter, such a legacy is significant indeed. It was on Martin Luther King Day 2013, that Barak Obama was inaugurated as President of the United States, for the second time, a black man, who spoke, that day, of a dream fulfilled, as he made his oath of office on King’s bible. History had changed, its arc had indeed bent towards justice. Yet such gestures, profound though they may be, rarely tell the whole story.

Should we be satisfied with the unity that comes from an altogether flatter story, even if it tends towards ‘Disneyfication’, or ought we insist upon messy truth... ?

The holiday wasn’t celebrated until January 1986, Reagan himself wasn’t particularly keen on it, it passed only after something of a battle in Congress where, famously, Senator Jesse Helms led a 16-day filibuster, where he claimed King was a subversive radical, dangerous traitor and communist agitator, And, it wasn’t until 2000 that it was acknowledged in all 50 states.

Such details, if known and remembered, serve to confuse the notion of legacy, to muddy the waters and call into question its real heart. Because the easiest histories are the most straightforward, travelling in a straight line from A to B, from problem to solution, tragedy to victory, despair to hope. They mould into the very fabric of the Nation that the key idea, that the good guys won in the end, like they always do, and the Republic sails inexorably on towards even brighter lights to come.

The question of legacy, when it comes to Dr King, as with many others, is vital for sure, but far more complex than that, and contested too. Should we be satisfied with the unity that comes from an altogether flatter story, even if it tends towards ‘Disneyfication’, or ought we insist upon messy truth, with its inherent conflict and challenge, recalled back then, and still present now?

Martin Luther King was far from a hero at the time of his death, quite the contrary, he was well on his way to becoming a pariah. No longer welcome in the Whitehouse, he had fallen foul of Lyndon Johnson over Vietnam, and his consistent enemies in the FBI now seemed to hold sway there. His relative ‘successes’ with the civil rights act of 1964 and the voting rights act of 1965, genuine and monumental as they were, had only served to demonstrate that a lot of the true causes of segregation, north and south, were less amenable to easy legislative removal, and were actually rooted in economics. As he turned his eye increasingly towards housing in particular and poverty in general, as well as what he called ‘the war question’, he largely lost his platform.

On 4th April 1967, at Riverside Church, New York, he gave what many consider to be his greatest and most eloquent speech ever, but few recall it. Distilling his Christian calling, his civil rights history and sense of present-day necessity, ‘the fierce urgency of now’ as he described it, he began by noting, “surely this is the first time in our nation's history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent …” He went on, after giving a detailed dissection of American history and policy in Asia, to declare that “The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit.” Before continuing to list out what he called ‘a true revolution of values.’ None of this was designed to win him an appreciative audience in an increasingly materialistic America, and it didn’t. King’s approval ratings, according to polls, were firmly in the negative, and falling. The idea then, that someday soon, the whole nation would come together annually to honour him, was laughable.

Just occasionally though, even in the killing, something is stirred that brings out a legacy more powerful than could ever have been imagined, even more so than national commemorative days.

Of course, death changes things, particularly, premature, violent death. It shocks and inevitably provokes both sympathy, and reassessment. It has us wonder, whether we should’ve listened more carefully, when we had the chance. On this site a few days ago, speaking of the current situation in the Middle East, Graham Tomlin longed for leaders of old who were prepared to break the cycle of violence in the name of peace. My mind turned, inevitably, to Martin Luther King, saying that ‘We will meet your physical force with soul force’. Adding, ‘Do what you will, threaten our children, and we will still love you …we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer, in winning the victory we will not only win our freedom, we will so appeal to your heart and your conscience, that we will win you in the process.”

Such talk rarely, gets you national holidays, named in your honour. It more often gets you killed. Just occasionally though, even in the killing, something is stirred that brings out a legacy more powerful than could ever have been imagined, even more so than national commemorative days.

Legacy speaks of the power of passing on, in the words of Jay Z, turned into a popular pin badge, ‘Rosa sat, so Martin could walk, so Barak could run, so we might fly …’ These cascading consequences of commitment, truthfully sketched out here, and which could’ve gone back further, at least to Maisie Till’s courage in sharing the death of her son, which was said to have inspired Rosa Parks. And, certainly they could also be projected forward. To a multitude of actions, large and small, destined to add to that ongoing legacy of justice. These are, in many instances', the continually ‘rolling waters’ of prophetic imagination that King loved to picture.

In his mind, there is no doubt they find their ultimate source and inspiration in a day set aside to remember, not his though, but Easter Day, when resurrection hope forever shook the world. If, on the 3rd Monday of January each year, some thought might be given to that truth, he could be forgiven a quiet, knowing smile.

Essay

Comment

Economics

Sustainability

18 November 2024

8 min read

Raiding the fields, lessons from history

A tax raid on farmers is raising more trouble than revenue.

Theodore Brun

Theodore is author of the historical fiction series The Wanderer Chronicles. He previously studied Dark Age archaeology at Cambridge, and afterwards worked in international law.

A soot stained burnt-out harvester sits in a recently harvested field.

A burnt-out harvester, Lonesome Farm, Oxfordshire.

Nick Jones.

“Better red than expert.”

That was one of the slogans touted through the national propaganda channels in the early days of the People’s Republic of China shortly after Chairman Mao came to power. In other words, professionalism should be subordinated to politics.

It seems a pretty accurate description of the current UK government’s own attitude to farming in the light of their controversial inheritance tax raid on the nation’s farmers. Prior to last month’s budget, Agricultural Property Relief meant that farmers could expect to hand all qualifying agricultural assets on to the next generation without lobbing their children the simultaneous hospital pass of a whopping great tax bill. It was this inheritance tax relief and this alone that allowed every typical asset-rich/cash-poor farming business to survive as a going concern from one generation to the next.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves, perhaps applying her “better red than expert” thinking, identified this as a tax loophole that needed to be closed. She says it is costing taxpayers £1billion a year - which, when you think about it, is like a man who’s just cornered you in a dark alley saying you are costing him and his mates £100 by keeping those two shiny fifty pound notes in your own pocket.

Farmers will now be expected to cough up 20 per cent of the value of their agricultural property into the national coffers with every passing generation. It doesn’t take an expert mathematician to realise such an erosion of capital needed to pay these bills will render many farming businesses untenable, particularly given that farming relies heavily on economies of scale. This represents a torpedo strike on the farming industry which will sink a very large number of people, not just so-called Barley Barons.

No matter that the uptick of increased annual tax take from this measure will barely be enough to cover a day and a half of the NHS spend. Nor that while the government claims that, with a threshold of £1million before inheritance tax applies, 72 per cent of “farms” will not be affected (their definition including small parcels of land, and so-called toy farms which make no pretence to be food-producing businesses), the National Farmers Union says the true figure is closer to the inverse of that.

John McTernan, a former aide to Tony Blair and supporter of current PM Keir Starmer, didn’t help cool tempers with his revealing comment that farming was an industry which the UK could do without. “Labour can do to farmers what Margaret Thatcher did to the miners,” he said. Starmer was quick to distance himself from these incendiary remarks.

But as farmers would no doubt appreciate, what looks and smells like horse manure, probably is horse manure. And these measures are what they look like: an outright attack on the farming community, and more widely the ancillary rural economy which farming supports. The average farmer would be forgiven for thinking this feels far more ideological than fiscal in its aims.

That is why this week will see the largest rural protest in Westminster since the Countryside Alliance march in 2002. Farmers will converge on the Houses of Parliament to ask the government to reconsider such a direct attack on the food security of this country.

Given this fraught situation, are there any lessons to be learned from the past?

You have to wonder whether arguably the most left-wing government this country has ever seen is taking ideological plays out of the history book. Such tax raids on farmers' fields are nothing new. From ancient biblical times even to the last one hundred years, the consequences effect much more than the economy, they reach even to the soul of nations.

If farmers as a community stand in the way, what is the objective that lies beyond them, which the new utopians hope to attain?

In 1920s Russia, the Bolsheviks specifically targeted a class of landed smallholders known as the Kulaks.

The Kulaks were relatively prosperous, independent farmers, who faced severe repression during the 1920s and 1930s under Stalin's Soviet government. Originally benefiting from land reforms after the Russian Revolution, they were seen by Stalin as a threat to his goal of collectivizing agriculture. By labelling the Kulaks as "class enemies" of the working class, Stalin launched a campaign to liquidate them as a class around 1929, aimed at confiscating their land and redistributing it to state-owned collective farms.

The Soviet government seized Kulak farms, livestock, and tools, often forcibly relocating families to remote regions or sending them to labour camps where many perished due to harsh conditions. This campaign fuelled widespread suffering, triggering famine, especially in Ukraine, where it contributed to the devastating Holodomor. By the early 1930s, the Kulak class was effectively destroyed, resulting in millions of deaths and lasting trauma across the Soviet countryside.

Or how about China?

During China’s Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), smallholders and farmers faced severe disruption as the government under Mao Zedong sought to enforce collectivization and reshape rural life. Although China had already implemented collectivization during the 1950s, the Cultural Revolution intensified the suppression of individual farming and private land ownership, pushing for even greater alignment with socialist ideology. Farmers were forced into collective communes where land, equipment, and resources were shared, and individual autonomy was abolished.

Many were publicly humiliated, re-educated, or sent to labor camps. In addition, the chaos of the period meant that agricultural expertise was disregarded, as revolutionary fervour prioritized political ideology over practical farming knowledge. The mismanagement of agriculture, paired with forced collectivization, led to poor yields and food shortages, further destabilizing rural areas and causing hardship for millions of farmers and their families.

None of this is very encouraging for farmers in twenty-first century Britain. Especially when one considers how ideologically-driven Keir Starmer truly is, if his contributions to back issues of the magazine “Socialist Alternatives” in the early 1990s are any indication.

But if the socialist goals of the twentieth century were collectivisation and the social engineering of class warfare, what could they be today? If farmers as a community stand in the way, what is the objective that lies beyond them, which the new utopians hope to attain?

Again, it doesn’t take an “expert” to hazard a guess. Ambitious government plans to iron-clad the countryside in solar panels and wind turbine farms in a drive towards net zero will be made considerably easier once the current landowners are forced to flood the market with cheap land in order to service a hefty inheritance tax bill. All to save us from imminent environmental Armageddon.

As they listen to what farmers have to say this week, Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves might do well to reflect on the fate of Jezebel and her king.

This is a narrative that some can at least imagine. But perhaps that is straying too far into what most would consider conspiracy theory at this point, so let’s back up a little.

All the same, when a wrong of this magnitude is done to a particular group of people - especially one made up of some of the most dependable, uncomplaining, and hard-working members of society, it seems reasonable to ask the question: Cui bono? Who benefits from this wrong?

For the answer to that, we shall have to wait and see how it unfolds.

But in the meantime, it is worth considering a perspective from even deeper in the past. A perspective on the “good” that comes from the ownership and stewardship of the land, especially land seen as a family or tribe or nation’s inheritance. With powerful stories set amid ancient fields the Bible has much to say on the matter.

In a sense the whole of the Old Testament is concerned with this question. God gives Adam and Eve land to steward and cultivate. And then expels them from it as a consequence of their sin. From Abraham until Israel’s exile, the story of God’s chosen people is profoundly linked to a promised land which is first placed in their hands as a blessing and means of sustenance and support - of life itself. An inheritance to be preciously held, stewarded, and passed on from generation to generation. And yet which is taken away again by the hand of God’s judgement when Israel turns away from its Lord and Sustainer.

But consider just one story for a moment: that of the humble farmer Naboth and his little vineyard, described in the first book of Kings. This provides an eerily close analogy to the UK government and its current land grab. It is both powerful and chilling.

One day the state, in the form of King Ahab, decides it would rather like Naboth’s vineyard for itself. Ahab offers Naboth money for it. Naboth refuses, saying, “The Lord forbid I should give you my inheritance.” Ahab - “vexed and sullen” - rages in frustration, until his wife Jezebel concocts a far more cunning scheme to get him that land, involving lies, slander and ultimately murder. There’s a twist in the tail, though. Once Ahab has what he wants, God sends his prophet Elijah to denounce his wrongdoing and warn him of his (rather grisly) coming fate.

For those with half an eye on the unseen as well as the seen in this country, the introduction of this family farm tax at this time may come as no surprise. Many in the church have perceived the “spirit of Jezebel” as ascendant on a number of cultural fronts at this moment in our history.

For Israel, the reign of Jezebel was a dark and uncertain time. And for farmers protesting on Tuesday, they may feel this is no less a dark and uncertain time.

As they listen to what farmers have to say this week, Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves might do well to reflect on the fate of Jezebel and her king.

And for their part, farmers might reflect on the blessing of the inheritance they have received; and what, like Israel before them, they may have done - or not done - in the eyes of God, to jeopardize their chance to pass it on.

After all, at this point in the story, it’s not too late for either side in these farm wars to turn back.