The Blairs of Britain

The Blairs of Britain

The three Blairs of Britain -- Tony, Ian and Eric -- are curiously connected over time to the contemporary so-called "War Against Terrorism," the seemingly endless battle against a ubiquitous enemy driven political ideology and fear of the unknown.

The first of the troika of Blairs, Tony, the current but outgoing Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, appeared punctually at noon on Wednesday, May 17, at Parliament in the House of Commons, where I watched him stand for 30 minutes to answer questions from various party members [some friends, many foes] including Labour, Tory and Liberal Democrats among others [US translation: Big Labor Democrats, Ronald Reagan Republicans and Jesse Jackson Democrats]. Blair, who has served nine years as the UK's PM but who has fallen out of favor due to his lap dog alliance with Bush in prosecuting military action against Saddam in Iraq instead of Osama where ever he is, started his remarks by honoring the names of two Brits killed in Iraq last week.

Sitting on the oak benches covered with hunter green ribbed leather -- the same as I sat upon from Stranger's Gallery, where I could peer down upon the proceedings from the stadium-like configuration of the House of Commons -- Blair, looking fit and sounding well-versed for the weekly challenge he endures when Parliament is in session, responded with vigor to the very pointed questions shot at him from across a small table by the opposition party lead by David Cameron, the Tory leader.

Compared to the demeanor of the Ohio Senate and House, where emotional rhetoric is shut down quickly by either The President or The Speaker, the exchanges between Blair and others verged on the point of shouting at each other. The questions zinged at him by his critics were aimed to kill, or at least fatally embarrass him.

The top topics of the day that made the news by reporters, who like myself in the Ohio Statehouse were given special seating assignments, were about the deportation of foreign prisoners, the resurgence of the UK's nuclear energy program and when British soldiers will return from Iraq.

On the first topic, deportation of foreign nationals who are suspected of anti-social behavior or who have been convicted of a crime and have served time in prison, Cameron said Blair's flip flopping on the issue [mimicking the strategy used by the Swift Boat Bush-backers in the last presidential election in 2004 to fatally wound the Democrat's John Kerry to the point he could not regain his political health] had resulted in him being "rattled" by the controversy. Cameron said Blairs changing declarations on the topic was a further sign his administration was "in paralysis," as was confirmed in a report the following day by The Guardian, a newspaper published in London and Manchester, that reported on PMQT.

Cameron tightened the noose further on Blair by noting to his face that his own senior civil servant in charge of removals, Dave Roberts, "did not know how many illegal immigrants were in Britain," an observation Blair blasted over, declaring that "there will be an automatic presumption to deport...Irrespective of any claim that they have that the country to which they are going back may not be safe," a statement I witnessed that was confirmed again by the Guardian.

Blair also has angered Green and other environmental supporters by declaring he will support the resurgence of nuclear energy facilities across the country. Curiously, as oil skyrockets in price -- BTW, here in the UK the price of petrol [gasoline as we American's know it] is approaching $10 USD a imperial gallon, about 10% more than a US gallon -- the UK and the European Union are also rushing towards producing more energy from renewable sources, especially wind. According to a recent BBC report, the UK is also working on over 20 wind-energy farms. For any one who has visited the UK or Ireland, as I did in 2003, the wind is always blowing, sometimes dramatically. Since arriving three days ago, the weather here has been blustery, to say the least. As I understand the EU's strategy to become greener over time, the move toward and the investment in renewable wind energy power is clearly blowing in the wind.

It was exciting to see Cameron badger Blair to his face, something political junkies can only dream of happening in the US. Could you imagine such a thing happening in the Ohio General Assembly or the US Congress? Even though the theory of evolution is under attack, pigs will take flight before any such confrontation will happen in the world's greatest democracy.

When asked when UK troops will leave Iraq, Blair like Bush said they will stay there as long as needed or until Iraqi forces are able to do the job themselves. According to my friends here in East Dulwich, Blair is nearly out the door now due to his close alliance to Bush's War in Iraq and the longer he is the PM, his Labour Party, which genuinely saved the nation from the stringent policies of former Tory PM's Margaret Thatcher and John Major, will continue to fail at the polls, as they have in the past two national elections.

Housing in the UK is expensive according to American standards. My friends' small home would sell for about $700,000 USD. Today, as we returned from a fundraiser at their children's school, we passed by a relatively small house they called "derelict" that is selling for about $500,000 USD. One of Blair's great boasts at PMQT was the introduction of the 60,000 British Pound house. One of my hosts asked, "I'd like to know what he's talking about and where they are." This was another pejorative comment made by my friends who once were supportive of what he had done to turn the country in a different direction from where it was headed under Thatcher and Major but who have now turned away from him.

Lafayette Park in Washington DC is used as protest area because it is within view of the White House. Outside Parliament yesterday, next to St. Margaret's Church, which is located next to Westminster Abbey, war protestors displayed big, colorful banners and flags that caught many an eye, including mine.

But inside the famous chamber, which was reconstructed following German bomb attacks in WWII, the atmosphere was solemn and dignified. Those of us with tickets to the proceedings, mingled in the stately corridors leading to the House of Commons that were lined with statutes of the rich and famous of English history and replete with wall murals that told colorful stories of the once proud and world-dominating British Empire.

In the minutes before the event started, British Bobbies dressed in their finest and wearing their signature hats with an eight-pointed badge on them, asked all of us to stand behind an imaginary line so The Speaker's procession could come through the hallway and make it's way into the chamber [Jon Husted, eat your heart out]. The procession was lead by black shiny shoed servants wearing small wigs who marched single-file through the corridors that echoed with the clap of their shoes hitting the marble floor. Preceding The Speaker was his gold colored sceptre, which was about four feet in length and that was laid to rest on the table in front of his ornate covered chair and over which Blair and Cameron went at it like ferrel cats in suits, hissing and clawing at each other from across the table.

The second Blair of Britain is Ian, the head of London's police force. He came to prominence when suicide bombers detonated themselves in a London underground subway station on July 7, 2005. As we know 9-11 in the US, Brits refer to this date as 7-7. He oversees the public camera surveillance system in place throughout London. The system of cameras mounted on buildings and poles surveying everyone walking the streets was able to lead to the identification of the bombers by the police who reviewed tapes and spotted the bombers scoping out their route before they committed their act of violence. In his comments at PMQT, PM Blair said he would like such a system to be more wide spread throughout the country.

This leads me to the final Blair of Britain, Eric Arthur. Although you may not know him by his given name, you do know him by his more famous pen name, George Orwell. Among his many writings, the two everyone should read or re-read are Animal Farm and 1984, the prescient work about a never-ending war of fear in a society built on obedience through public surveillance, which to me seems closer to reality than many care to admit.

Having stumbled onto 1984 last year through happenstance, I read it with a new sense of understanding I didn't have in 1964 when it was a reading assignment in high school. 1984, written in 1948, was Orwell's foretelling of an English society where the leader, Big Brother, was a friend to all and not to be doubted or challenged [sound familiar America?] and where production was always better than before and language was the ultimate controler of thoughts.

Language was controlled by constantly shrinking it. One of the characters in the book was most proud when the new dictionary was smaller than previous ones. One of the key concepts in 1984 was that "whom ever controls the present controls the past; and whom ever controls the past controls the future."

Winston Smith, who tells the story of 1984 from his viewpoint as a writer for the state and whose job it to rewrite information so that it would agree with the present regardless of what was forecasted in the past, knows his thoughts are not as blindly faithful as they should be. He pays the price for his doubts by being tortured to the point where he believes what the state wants him to believe only to finally be assassinated because even though he was rehabilitated, he could no longer be trusted to implicitly follow without questioning the party line.

I see many aspects of 1984 in play today: From the White House's declaration that everything is better than it was before, notwithstanding facts to the contrary, to the War on Terror which is being used to both eavesdrop on Americans and to withhold information from them, to the slippage in America's understanding of the value of their own civil rights and its lethargy in objecting to it, to Bush's unilateral and unchallenged use of executive privilege to the point where he says that in a self-declared state of war he can do anything he wants without fear of any one doing anything to stop him, and no one is stopping him. 1984 is blooming 20 years late, but it is here nonetheless.

It's late in the evening here in London and I've been summed by my wife to come down stairs and stop my anti-social writing routine.

Buckeyes in Europe hops to Amsterdam tomorrow, Monday.

Monday, we're off to Amsterdam, where the Buckeyes in Europe will continue.