Hobsbawm, Churchill and the power of sentiment .. and prejudice

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

a personal note really so please indulge such an odd pairing

BBC4 has shown two progs recently that have been personally stimulating and enlightening

The Soft Underbelly an excellent account of the war in the med and Egypt

and a rerun of the interview with Eric Hobsbawm by Michael Ignatieff

David Reynolds brought to the fore Churchill's determined and cunning persistence to preserve the Empire ... he failed but won the war with some help from the Russians and Americans, both of whom regarded the British Empire as a highly undesirable and toxic entity [which i think it was ] ...what struck me was Churchill's determination, based on what? ..a certain sentiment, nostalgia; loyalty to personal roots ... he was an Empire man

Ignatieff brought out EH's loyalty to the communist cause in an altogether excellent interview [something of a pity he went home and entered politics, Brit tv lost a most able voice] .. to my shame i had forgotten that i saw this programme when first transmitted, and more had simply not got the gist of Hobsbawm talking about his continuing attachment to the CPGB after Hungary in 1956 .... he talked movingly of coming to politics on Berlin in the early 30s, of losing his contemporaries and friends in the type of politics that went on at that time ...many were killed .... he could not betray their cause nor their memory ... he clearly regarded the USSR as an horrendous entity but in his scheme of things that did not matter ... it was a personal roots thing for him ... i vow not to criticise him for this again, he made perfect emotional sense to me ... he was a Party man

neither Empire nor Party mean any such thing to us post 45 babes eh ....

the rest of the Hobsbawm is an absolute must see, his prescience in 1994 about capitalism and barbarism is astonishing and severe in its rigour and conclusions ... and he warns of the extreme peril then facing us of adapting to that which we can and will only find intolerable upon reflection ... we will accept the devastation of unbridled capitalism as the frog boils ... pretty goof for 94

as for Churchill he saw the awful totalitarian terror that Hobsbawm for his own reasons was silent about ...

[aeolium]

Thanks for this calum. I missed the Reynolds programme on Saturday as I was listening to R3's broadcast of Julius Caesar from ENO. I have found some of his other programmes very interesting, e.g. the one on Stalingrad, even though he does have a tendency towards self-dramatisation. I've long admired Hobsbawm's work, have seen several interviews with him and I'll look forward to this one (even if it turns out I have already seen it). To be fair to Hobsbawm he did not in his book on the C20, The Age of Extremes, downplay the horror and waste of Stalin's Soviet Union. He was by no means the only one to remain faithful to Communism though - there were the surviving Cambridge spies and a number of other artists like Pablo Neruda (and I think Picasso). I think you're right that things looked differently to the generation that lived through the Great Depression and the rise of European fascism (though Orwell of course took a different intellectual path).

[Serial_Apologist]

Oh yes, prescient he certainly was, EH.

I have a cassette of a prog from 1991 called "The End of the Socialist Dream" - 1 of a series titled "What't the Big Idea?" - led off in a tone of hideous smugness by Bryan Magee. This one he interviewed Stuart Hall, Lord Donoughue, David Marquand and, Eric Hobsbawm. I remember at the time being outraged that no one to the left of these was included.

I'd have to get it out of its box, and it'd need me to type up the salent passage as dictated, but from what i remember Hobsbawm made the salient point, from today's perspective, that once you remove a big idea such as socialism in terms of still possible political alternatives from the agenda you leave a huge gap, into which would pour all manner of nationalisms ansd fundamentalisms. Spot on there...

[Mandryka]

Oh yes, prescient he certainly was, EH.

I have a cassette of a prog from 1991 called "The End of the Socialist Dream" - 1 of a series titled "What't the Big Idea?" - led off in a tone of hideous smugness by Bryan Magee. This one he interviewed Stuart Hall, Lord Donoughue, David Marquand and, Eric Hobsbawm. I remember at the time being outraged that no one to the left of these was included.

I'd have to get it out of its box, and it'd need me to type up the salent passage as dictated, but from what i remember Hobsbawm made the salient point, from today's perspective, that once you remove a big idea such as socialism in terms of still possible political alternatives from the agenda you leave a huge gap, into which would pour all manner of nationalisms ansd fundamentalisms. Spot on there...

I'd forgotten that I remembered that programme! :) I can remember enjoying it: actually, I thought Magee's presentation was good and I don't recall noticing any smugness on his part. It must be quite devastating to realise one day in late middle age that you have dedicated most of your life to a cause that you no longer believe in.

I am starting to read Hobsbawm's Age Of Capital, a book I managed to avoid reading at university. Must say I have been put off by the horribly egregious 'puff' on the back cover by some anonymous Guardian hack with an all too obvious axe to grind (bet it was Martin Kettle....).

[amateur51]

I'd forgotten that I remembered that programme! :) I can remember enjoying it: actually, I thought Magee's presentation was good and I don't recall noticing any smugness on his part. It must be quite devastating to realise one day in late middle age that you have dedicated most of your life to a cause that you no longer believe in.

I am starting to read Hobsbawm's Age Of Capital, a book I managed to avoid reading at university. Must say I have been put off by the horribly egregious 'puff' on the back cover by some anonymous Guardian hack with an all too obvious axe to grind (bet it was Martin Kettle....).

Have you ever written for the Guardian, Mandy?

[Mandryka]

Have you ever written for the Guardian, Mandy?

No. I don't think I could ever manage to replicate the twitchy, effeminate, passively aggressive but despairing tone that you need to write for that particular organ. Besides which, they don't pay enough! :)

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

No. I don't think I could ever manage to replicate the twitchy, effeminate, passively aggressive but despairing tone that you need to write for that particular organ. Besides which, they don't pay enough! :)

not exactly a description of Monbiot say ... but i'd grant you Milne ...

[handsomefortune]

looking forward to 'the soft underbelly', thanks for the tip calum da jazbo!

the hobsbawm interview is full of unique insights....about the subject of history in particular, as well as being communist i enjoyed it more than the recent r4 radio interview with simon hosting ....i found his approach a distraction. i wonder if he'll go into politics next?