History Politics

The non-religious Settlement

April 13, 2006 – 11:35 am

Interesting comment piece in the Guardian this morning, which suggests that the post-Civil War settlement between the Church of England and the government and society involve a tacit agreement:

Safe though he was, the nice country vicar in effect inoculated vast swaths of the English against Christianity. A religion of hospital visiting and flower arranging, with a side offering of heritage conservation, replaced the risk-all faith of a man who asked his adherents to take up their cross and follow him. The nice country vicar represented a very English modus vivendi between the sacred and the secular, with the sacred, in swallowing many of its convictions, paying by far the heaviest price for the deal.
In exchange for a walk-on part during major family occasions and the opportunity to be custodian of the country’s most impressive collection of buildings, the vicar promised discretion in all things pertaining to faith: he agreed to treat God as a private matter. In a country exhausted by wars about religion, the creation of the nonreligious priest was a masterstroke of English inventiveness. And once the priest had been cut off from the source of his fire and reassigned to judge marrows at the village fete, his transformation from figure of fear to figure of fun was complete.

I tend to broadly agree with that, although not with his next step – he wants to restore the fiery religion, I’d like to take this historical progression to its logical conclusion – get rid of the religion altogether, run the church as a community centre and choose a community worker to do the visiting, tea drinker and marrow-judging.

While I’m talking history, if you’re a history blogger, watch out. The UK glorification of terrorism act comes into effect today. Be careful what you write about those Vandals….

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Miscellaneous

You know you are getting old when …

April 13, 2006 – 2:02 am

… after spending a whole day pulling together the paperwork for your tax return, you think: “Next year I will organise this better”, then a second later think “who am I kidding? Of course I’ll continue to file the papers in a heap on the floor for months at a time. I always have.”

Still, I rewarded myself by going to see the RSC’s The Crucible (brilliant – report later today) and strolled home through the West End enjoying the emergence of the rituals of the spring mating season (even if the weather still isn’t co-operating). The provincial flocks in their best new denims were pouring out of Les Mis on to the tour buses that had entirely blocked Shaftesbury Avenue, while outside the nightclub near Oxford Circus Tube, a chorus of pavement T-shirt-sellers had set up a melodious version of “Skinny, Hoodie, Skinny, Hoodie” for a band whose name I couldn’t quite read upside down.

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Carnival of Feminists

Call for nominations: Carnival of Feminists …

April 13, 2006 – 1:45 am

The next carnival is sweeping up fast, and with a lot of the world celebrating Easter soon, make sure you don’t miss out!

The second call for nominations is up – the suggested (although not compulsory topic) is “Feminism and Challenges – physical, mental, emotional and spiritual.” Possible topics including: self-determination in health and mental health care, disability issues, transgender issues, issues of aging, integration of religion and feminist beliefs, economic issues, etc.

They can be sent to ISeeInvisiblePeople AT gmail.com, or submitted via the nomination form.

Please help to spread the word!

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Feminism

‘Licence to batter’

April 12, 2006 – 10:40 am

Imagine the case: a bloke is down the pub, has a drink or two too many, loses his temper with a man at the next table who is, he thinks, “looking at me funny” and beats the hell out of him. Duly hauled before a magistrate, he says: “Sorry. Really sorry. Didn’t mean any harm. Won’t do it again.” The magistrate says: “That’s all right then. Here’s a slap on the wrist.”

No, I can’t imagine it either. But that is what is proposed, at least for cases of domestic violence, in new draft guidelines.

MEN and women who attack their partners should have the chance to avoid being sent to jail if they appear genuinely sorry for their violence, according to sentencing proposals published yesterday.
Instead, wife-beaters could receive a suspended prison sentence or community order. The proposals also recommend that perpetrators of domestic violence attend courses to tackle their offending, even though it is too early to know if they are effective in curbing violence.
The head of the leading domestic violence charity attacked the draft guidelines. Sandra Horley, chief executive of Refuge, said: “It would be a travesty if the Sentencing Guidelines Council proposals on domestic violence come into effect. In short they give men a licence to batter women as long as they are able to put on a remorseful act in front of a judge.”

That fits nicely with an excellent interview with Catharine McKinnon, whose latest book, Are Women Human? has just been published.

She writes: “[T]he fact that the law of rape protects rapists and is written from their point of view to guarantee impunity for most rapes is officially regarded as a violation of the law of sex equality, national or international, by virtually nobody.”
Are you suggesting that rape law enshrines rapists’ points of view, I ask MacKinnon? “Yes, in a couple of senses. The most obvious sense is that most rapists are men and most legislators are men and most judges are men and the law of rape was created when women weren’t even allowed to vote. So that means not that all the people who wrote it were rapists, but that they are a member of the group who do [rape] and who do for reasons that they share in common even with those who don’t, namely masculinity and their identification with masculine norms and in particular being the people who initiate sex and being the people who socially experience themselves as being affirmed by aggressive initiation of sexual interaction.”

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Environmental politics

Coverage of the Green Party local election launch

April 12, 2006 – 9:32 am

The BBC goes very straight:

The Green Party hopes to have more than 100 councillors after the local elections in England on 4 May.
The party is calling for good local services within walking distance and protection for local businesses.
The Greens already have 70 council seats including six in Oxford, where they hold the balance of power.
The party’s Caroline Lucas told the BBC they did not expect to win overall control in any council but were hopeful of boosting numbers of councillors….

The politics wonks’ site, ePolitix.com, is into the numbers:

Launching its poll push on Tuesday, the party said it was fielding a total of 1,294 candidates.
There will be a particular focus on London, where 567 of the candidates are standing.
Camden, Hackney, Islington, Lambeth, Lewisham and Merton are among the London boroughs where the party is hoping to make gains…

The Guardian, meanwhile, takes the anti-Conservative, national politics line:

The Greens are grateful to David Cameron for pushing environmental issues up the political agenda, the MEP Caroline Lucas said yesterday as the party began its local election campaign.
But Ms Lucas, who represents south-east England in the European parliament, added that the Tories had no policies to back up their claims to care for the environment. She believed their leader’s promise to lead a green revolution was a case of “the emperor’s new clothes”, which was bound to backfire.
At the Greens’ press conference in London, Ms Lucas said every time Mr Cameron was asked “to deliver on a specific policy proposal, you see him ducking and diving, slipping and sliding”.
She added: “When people see the lack of substance behind his rhetoric, that can only do us good.”…

I went out for a short canvassing session on the council estate on which I live last night (when the rain stopped). And I was surprised anew at the highly positive response I got. The Labour Party really is in the stink with its traditional supporters.
***
I was also pleased to see this morning that Jean Lambert, the other English Green MEP, has taken up the case of the murdered Thai human rights lawyer Somchai Neelaphaijit.

MEPs Jean Lambert, from Britain, and Frithjof Schmidt, from Germany, also asked the Council if it had communicated to the Thai government its concern over security threats to Somchai’s wife, Angkhana.
Angkhana has been threatened on several occasions and warned not to pursue her husband’s disappearance, most recently last month.
The issue of allegations of torture by members of the Thai security forces and its effect on Thai-EU relations was also raised by the MEPs.

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Early modern history Women's history

Aphra Behn’s tomb…

April 11, 2006 – 3:54 pm

An interesting query from Holly, who’s been contributing to the “really dead women authors meme” about the location of Aphra Behn’s tomb in Westminister Abbey, and why she isn’t in “Poets’ Corner”.

I happen to have sitting beside my bed in my “to read” pile Maureen Duffy’s biography. It says:

“Thrysis [Thomas Sprat, “Birmingham’s old chaplain, who was Dean of Westminster], I believe, was responsible for her burial in Westminster Abbey on April 20th, no doubt backed by Burnet and by those of sufficient wit and position not to mind the odium or satire that accure to them from such an act. She lies in the cloister and not among the ‘trading poets’ in poets’ corner, but with the Bettertons and Anne Bracegirdle.” (p. 294)

So it sounds like she was classed as “theatre” rather than “literature”.

There’s an image of the tomb here.

Can anyone add to this?

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