MONTHLY BLOG 169, GREAT CLOCKS OF THE WORLD

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Image of Water Clock from Classical Greece

Fig.1 Image of Water Clock from Classical Greece –
in which the passing of Time is measured by a regulated flow of water.

My theme for 2025 is Time – the universal subject.1 So to kick-start the year, here are seven great clocks of the world – my personal selection out of the myriad of possible candidates.2 These are all on public display (there are countless more in museums) – and drawn from all quarters of the globe.

The first is located in the Republic of Honduras, Central America. It adorns the Cathedral of Comayagua; it is also known as the Arab clock, since it was designed by Moorish clock-smiths in c.1100; and presented, later in the seventeenth century, by the King of Spain to the city of Comayagua in New Spain (present-day Honduras); and in 1711 relocated once more onto the newly completed-Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, where it remains. It is reportedly the world’s oldest continually functioning gear-clock. Its face [Fig.2] has a beautiful simplicity, whilst its gearing retains a wondrous complexity.

The Arab Clock (built c. 1100AD in Moorish Spain)

Fig.2 The Arab Clock (built c. 1100AD in Moorish Spain),
now adorning Comayagua Cathedral in Honduras – said to be the world’s oldest continually operating gear clock.

The second one comes from North America. It was designed by Thomas Jefferson and built in 1792 for his mansion on his plantation at Monticello, Virginia.3 Known as the Great Clock, it has two faces, the exterior one is visible to the wider world, while the elegant indoor face [see Fig.3] presides over the Great Hall. The clock is powered by the regular movement of two sets of cannonball weights, which descend below the clock into the cellar. These sinking weights drive the clock’s ticking – and the striking of a large time-keeping gong on the roof. Once a week, the weights have to be rewound with a special crank key, fitting into the winding mechanisms on the interior clock face: a task requiring a strong grip – and good balance to scale a special ladder.

The Elegant Interior Face of Thomas Jefferson’s Great Clock on his Virginia estate at Monticello

Fig.3 The Elegant Interior Face of Thomas Jefferson’s Great Clock on his Virginia estate at Monticello:
the central dial shows the hours and minutes, while the small whirling dial marks the passing seconds.
Also visible are the two slots for the weekly rewinding of the cannonball weights,
whose steady and slow descent regulates the clock’s time-keeping.

Circling around the world onto the massive Eurasian continent, the third great clock is to be found in Moscow. It’s a majestic beacon, devised to be seen from afar. Accordingly, the Kremlin Clock (also known as the Kremlin Chimes) is huge, its four faces displayed on the Spasskaya Tower within Moscow’s fortified Kremlin complex [see Fig.4]. Clocks were located there in the sixteenth century; and many updatings have followed. The current Kremlin Clock was designed in 1851; repaired in 1917-18, when a giant gold-plated lead pendulum was installed; restored again in 1932, when the Clock’s hands and numerals were gilded; and majorly restored again in 1974. Historically, the Clock was associated with regular chimes, though there have been periods when the bells were silent. Currently, the bells chime before the quarters and hours are struck – and play a tune, every three hours, on the hour. Compelling!

The majestic Kremlin Clock, also known as the Kremlin Chimes, adorns the imposingly decorated Spasskaya Tower

Fig.4 The majestic Kremlin Clock, also known as the Kremlin Chimes, adorns the imposingly decorated Spasskaya Tower (first built in 1491; restored 2015)on the east wall of the Kremlin complex, overlooking Red Square in central Moscow. Not only can the Clock be seen from afar but the 23 bells in the uppermost belfry serenade the city with specified tunes every three hours.

Swooping southwards and slightly westwards after that, the fourth great timepiece has its home in Cape Town. It’s also a beacon clock, located on the waterfront. The Clock Tower was built in 1882, and used initially as the Port Captain’s Office. The Victorian-Gothic edifice had a tidal gauge on the ground floor; and it also included a reading room, where ships’ captains could gather to catch up with the latest maritime news. The Clock itself was built in Edinburgh and installed high on the Waterfront Tower [see Fig.5], which had begun to lean ominously to one side – but has recently been righted. Scintillating!

Cape Town’s  Waterfront Clock Tower was constructed in 1882

Fig.5: Cape Town’s  Waterfront Clock Tower was constructed in 1882, when its clock, built in Edinburgh,
was first installed. The Victorian- Gothic edifice (adopted as a National Monument in 1978)
was treated to a thorough restoration in the 1990s, when the outer walls were repainted in the original bright red.

The next move, to find my fifth great clock, travels significantly north-eastwards, across the Indian Ocean, to Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh, northern India. There stands the utterly imposing Husainabad Tower, which is India’s tallest clock tower [see Fig.6]. It was constructed in steel and stone in 1881, to a design by the visionary architect Richard Roskell Bayne 4 – his architectural style fusing both Victorian and Mughal features. The great Clock is regulated by a gigantic pendulum; it has a sweet chime; and its clock-face, with the usual numerals and hands pointing to the hours and minutes, also has a floral outer frame, which removes any severity from the timepiece. Enchanting!
The towering splendour of the Husainabad Clock Tower at Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India

Fig.6 The towering splendour of the Husainabad Clock Tower
at Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India – the superb night-time illuminations
showcasing the Tower’s eclectic architectural styling and its floral-framed Clock.

Journeying ever eastwards (and slightly northwards), the search then brings us to the sixth great clock – this time in the Chinese city of Tianjin, on the coast south-east of Beijing. This is the Century Clock (built 2000). It is situated in the centre of a traffic roundabout near to the central station. This clock also represents fusion – between standard global Time – and traditional astronomical Time. Around the clock face, are the carved representations of twelve signs of the Zodiac. At the top is set Aries, as it brings good luck according to historic Chinese convention. The sculpture is visually stunning, with two massive metal-frame arms flung akimbo – one holding the Sun, the other the Moon – with the giant clock in the middle, and a huge swinging pendulum below [see Fig.7]. Its impact is equally stunning in daylight and when floodlit at night, Wham!

The stunning Century Clock (built 2000) in Tianjin, northwest China.

Fig.7 The stunning Century Clock (built 2000) in Tianjin, northwest China,
showing the giant clock, with a standard clock face, encircled by carved signs of the Zodiac,
plus below the working machinery, and, out-stretched, two giant arms,
one holding the Sun, the other the Moon.

And finally, returning westwards, across the extended continental landmass of Eurasia, the journey ends in Berlin, Germany. My final choice is my personal favourite. It is not strictly out-of-doors. But it is located in a public space – not in a museum. It’s the Clock of Flowing Time (1982),5 standing three floors high, within the open atrium at Berlin’s Europa Center [see Fig.8]. As its name implies, it is a water clock; and its mechanisms are regulated by the circulating flow of brightly-coloured water within its spheres and tubes. There is no standard clock-face. But onlookers can learn to gauge the time according to the number of spheres filled at any given moment. The whole system operates on a twelve-hour cycle, the spheres all emptying together at noon and midnight, before the sequence resumes once more. Non-Stop, Ever-Flowing Time! Poetic!

So many ways to tell the time.

So universal the quest … More next month!

The Clock of Flowing Time in Berlin’s Europa Center

Fig.8 The Clock of Flowing Time in Berlin’s Europa Center –
hard to explain, hard to photograph effectively
but intensely evocative of the non-stop flow of Time.

ENDNOTES:

1 P.J. Corfield, Time-Space: We Are All in It Together (forthcoming February 2025).

2 C. Jagger, The Great Clocks and Watches of the World (London, 1977; and later edns).

3 For Monticello, now a UNESCO-listed World Heritage site, see S.R. Stein, The World of Thomas Jefferson at Monticello (New York, 1993); and, for sober context, L. Stanton, ‘Those Who Labor for my Happiness’: Slavery at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello (Charlottesville, VA., 2012).

4 R.R. Bayne (1836-1901), who was born in Warwickshire and died in British Columbia, had a prolific building career in India, designing not only workday railway stations but also numerous monumental buildings. A significant collection of his architectural designs and plans is held by the University of Victoria (B.C.) and this material may one day provide the basis for a good biography. See A Welch and others, ‘Building for the Raj: Richard Roskell Bayne’, RACAR, 34/2 (2009). pp. 74-86: https://www.racar-racar.com/uploads/5/7/7/4/57749791/_racar_34_2_06_welchseggerdecaro.pdf.

5 The clock was constructed to a design by the French physicist and artist, Bernard Gitton (b.1935), who has created numerous artistic and ingenious water-clocks. For context, see R. Lamb, ‘How Water-Powered Clocks Work’ (c.2009-10), in 2024 website: https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-tech/sustainable/water-powered-clock2.htm.

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168.1 DIAMOND RING

MONTHLY BLOG 168, ANTWERP DIAMONDS: THREE BEAUTIFUL ASPECTS OF ANTWERP – DIAMOND CAPITAL OF THE WORLD

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Fig.1 An Antwerp diamond ring –
symbol of the great City of Diamonds

Well, I didn’t get my diamond ring. But, better still, I became acquainted with a great and enchanting city- which I’d never visited before. (Even though it is quite near to my home-town of London – 196 miles (315km) as the crow flies – and readily accessible by the Eurostar train network).

The Conference that I attended in Antwerp on ‘Time and Prophecies’ was productive and stimulating (see BLOG/167 November 2024). And my partner Tony and I extended our stay in order to have some extra time to enjoy the city life. Here are my three personal diamonds.

Firstly, Antwerp has a number of superb art museums – commemorating the Flemish artistic tradition, which dates back to the sixteenth century. If you like any combination of the works of Rubens, Van Dyck, and the Pieter Breugels (Elder & Younger), plus many others, then Antwerp is the art-capital for you.

My personal favourite is the Printing-House Museum (Plantin-Moretus Museum) in the Friday Market.1 It is housed in the former residence-cum-printing establishment of two sixteenth-century printers. The exhibits take visitors through all the stages of printing, from setting the type, to printing the text, to viewing priceless historic books, and admiring handsome libraries with wooden shelves from floor to ceiling – crammed with yet more books. And all these exhibits are accompanied by the heavy creaking of the house’s original wooden floors. One cannot glide around this Museum in silence. Instead, all the visitors make and share the creaks and groans of the wooden flooring, as it has creaked and groaned since the sixteenth century.

Next, my second diamond must be the criss-crossing streets and squares in the centre of old Antwerp.2 These are surrounded by town houses of all eras, which co-exist harmoniously together in a veritable architectural historian’s delight. And, most importantly, city planning policy has ensured that the central residential area is dominated by town houses of five or six storeys – rather than by twentieth-century tower blocks. Churches and the impressive Cathedral thus rise above the dense town housing in an intimate, neighbourly way.

Added to that, many of the central streets are semi-pedestrianised. Consequently, they are chaotically crammed with a hotch-potch of walkers, cyclists, scooters. trams, buses, a few slow-moving cars, and a rare but highly artistic horse-drawn carriage.

Antwerp pedestrians therefore get a really good impression of what it must have been like to walk the streets of a sixteenth-century city centre. Admittedly, the transport technology has changed somewhat over the intervening years. Admittedly, too, there are no ubiquitous piles of horse manure as might have been expected in the days when transport was al horse-drawn. Nonetheless, the hustle and bustle of city life, on an intimate and accessible scale, is excellently well-conveyed by central Antwerp. Top spot in all this urban beauty? Walking round the busy GroenPlaats square, gazing up at the soaring Cathedral nearby, listening to the street buskers and their accordions, dodging the traffic, and patting the nose of a large, handsome and patient black horse, awaiting passengers seeking a ride in his antique carriage.

So what then is my third diamond? Reference might justly be made at this point to Antwerp’s shops and markets; to its huge variety of bars and restaurants; as well as its many monuments; and to its riverside walk (in process of upgrading) by the broad expanse of the River Scheldt.

But my third diamond is awarded to a rare gesture of social recognition. It is a sculpture in the heart of the city – located at the foot of Antwerp’s impressive Gothic Cathedral – close to its main entrance. That great building’s construction began in 1352; and since then, the church has undergone numerous repairs and reconstructions.3 And the unusual sculpture shows four men at work. The gesticulating figure is the architect; and the others represent the unsung builders who raised the immense edifice. Well done to the Belgian sculptor Jef Lambeaux! Very well done, to the Cathedral authorities who presumably commissioned the piece! And excellently well done to the entire building workforce! Respect! Diamonds all round!

Fig.2 Statue Commemorating Achievements of
Antwerp Cathedral Workforce (1935):
located at foot of Cathedral, close to Main Entrance –
photo © Tony Belton October 2024

ENDNOTES:

1 Since 2005, this Museum has been listed by UNESCO as a World-Heritage site. For its own website, see https://museumplantinmoretus.be/en; plus the survey in Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plantin%E2%80%93Moretus_Museum (viewed 30 Nov. 2024).

2 See e.g. C. Stahl (ed.), The Flaneur: Walking through Antwerp (2019) – multi-lingual edition.

3 See P. Rynck, The Cathedral of Our Lady in Antwerp (Ghent, 2005).

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MONTHLY BLOG 167, HICKORY DICKORY DOCK!

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Hickory Dickory Dock, the mouse ran up the clock

Hickory Dickory Dock/
The Mouse Ran Up the Clock
@https://www.indiaparenting.com/hickory-dickory-dock.html (2024)

While last month’s Conference in Norwich was evoked by the genially-smiling ‘Man in the Moon’, this month another meeting in Antwerp set me chanting ‘Hickory Dickory Dock’. The words are absurdly simple. The mouse ran up the clock! The clock struck the hour! And then the mouse ran down again!

But this basic rhyme records the perennial human fascination with telling the Time; and it illustrates, specifically, how adults sought to familiarise young children with the steady rhythms of a ticking clock. (The earliest recorded version of this rhyme dates from 1744, in a great era of British clock-building).1

And amusingly, today’s globally popular social media platform for sharing short videos (invented in China in 2016) is named … Tik Tok.2

Getting to grips with Time is the underlying theme of the Antwerp Conference to which I will be contributing. Specifically, it focuses upon the history of forecasting the future. Here there is endless scope.3 Optimists see unfolding glories. Pessimists, by contrast, forecast the inevitability of total gloom and doom. (It’s not so exciting to prophesy simply ‘More of the same’).

However, while full details of the future remain unknown, the scope is constantly being restricted by serious scientific calculations. Thus the expected lifespan of our local Sun (the focal source of all life on Planet Earth) is now put at some 5 billion years. Then it will run out of hydrogen, and turn into a ‘red giant’, getting steadily larger and cooler.4

Alternatively, when will the Milky Way (in which our solar system is located) collide with the Andromeda Galaxy, within the regular processes of slow cosmic transformation? No need to wait so long for some highly spectacular local excitement. This predicted collision will occur in approximately 4.5 billion years from now. Stars will be thrown into new and unpredictable orbits.5 Any humans still around to experience this cosmic collision will have to hold onto every seat-belt in sight.

Of course, soothsayers and prophets are not required to accept these cool, scientific calculations, either in whole or in part. They are free to predict the end of the world anytime – sooner or later. They often build their cases upon their readings of scriptural texts.6 And Doomsday cults not infrequently spring up around those prophets who thunder out their apocalyptic warnings with emphatic relish.7

The terrain for future predictions is, however, getting crowded. Secular reports of scientific explorations of Near and Deep Space now jostle with more rapturous and/or more terrifying formulations. And, while many of these predictions are projected safely far into the future, some are more immediate. Scientists today, for example, calculate that the regularly orbiting Halley’s Comet will return into view from Planet Earth in late spring/early summer 2061.8 Let all those of us, who currently can, wait and (literally) see …

Plenty of big themes therefore to keep the Prophecies Conference busy in Antwerp in mid-November 2024. It’s not hard to predict a lively and intellectually stimulating event. And, since the due-date is sufficiently near, the participants will be able to confirm Yes/No by late November. The clock is ticking, though currently I see no mouse in attendance …

ENDNOTES:

1 I. and P. Opie (eds), The Oxford Book of Nursery Rhymes (1997 edn.), pp. 185-6. See also for context, J. McKenna, Watch, Clock and Dial-Makers of Birmingham, 1547-1900 (1988); and Anon., A Complete History of English Clock and Watch Makers (2011).

2 For a full and not uncritical account see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TikTok (viewed 20 Oct. 2024).

3 For approaches to studying Time, see PJC, Time and the Shape of History (2007); and PJC, Time-Space: We Are All in It Together (forthcoming 2024/2025).

4 See P. McHurrin in https://askanearthspacescientist.asu.edu/top-question/sun-dying (viewed 20 Oct. 2024).

5 Consult https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andromeda%E2%80%93Milky_Way_collision (viewed 20 Oct. 2024).

6 See many examples in R. Abanes, End Time Visions (1998); and E. Weber, Apocalypses (1999).

7 R.L. Snow, Deadly Cults: The Crimes of True Believers (2003).

8 P. Lancaster-Brown, Halley and his Comet (1985); P. Moore and J. Mason, The Return of Halley’s Comet (1984); and, contextually, A.A. Siddiqi, Beyond Earth: A Chronicle of Deep Space Exploration (2018).

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MONTHLY BLOG 166, WHY DID THE MAN IN THE MOON – WHO CAME DOWN TOO SOON – ASK HIS WAY TO NORWICH?

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Man in the Moon

Man in the Moon © istock/ Getty Images 2024

The man in the moon,
Came down too soon,
And asked his way to Norwich;
He went by the south,
And burned his mouth
By eating cold plum porridge.

It’s a charming nursery rhyme, with many minor variants in the wording. This version is the one that I knew and loved as a child. Song historians like to point out hidden messages in such traditional verses, designed to amuse the adults who sang these songs to their unsuspecting offspring.

Yet, in this case, the experts conclude that the words of ‘The Man in the Moon’ probably do not convey any secret meaning. They are simply agreeable nonsense, in which the City of Norwich features primarily to rhyme with ‘porridge’. Children would enjoy the thought of the Man in the Moon actually coming down to visit Planet Earth. And they would laugh at the upside-down qualities of the lunar traveller whose mouth was burned by cold food. Suitably weird!

Only much later did I think more specifically about the role of Norwich, when I began my doctoral research on that city’s fascinating history.1 I quickly realised that, throughout many earlier eras in British history, it would not have seemed at all surprising that the Moon Man should want to visit the East Anglian capital.

For many centuries, after all, Norwich was one of Engand’s leading provincial capitals.2 It had famously lively inhabitants, who were known for their readiness to express radical views – whether by popular riots or by voting for radical candidates in eighteenth-century parliamentary elections. And the city lay at the heart of a major textile-producing area, making the famous ‘Norwich stuffs’ [light worsted cloths]. In other words, Norwich was an urban Manchester-equivalent, long before Manchester itself boomed in the nineteenth century to become a great Northern regional capital and the new ‘Cottonopolis’ of the world.3

All these thoughts came flooding into my mind as we approach October and I prepare to travel to Norwich to talk to a Conference – later in the month – on the city’s historic appeal. I hope that the Man in the Moon gets to join us. And I will take care not to dine on cold plum porridge, just in case …

ENDNOTES:

1 I.A. Opie (ed.), The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (1951); A. Jack, Pop Goes the Weasel: The Secret Meanings of Nursery Rhymes (2010); L.K. Alchin, The Secret History of Nursery Rhymes (2013).

2 P.J. Corfield, ‘Norwich on the Cusp: From Second City to Regional Capital’, in C. Rawcliffe and R.G. Wilson (eds), Norwich since 1550 (2004), pp. 139-66. Also published within PJC website: see https://www.penelopejcorfield.com/pdf26.

3 I. Beesley, Victorian Manchester and Salford (1988); S. Hylton, A History of Manchester (2003).

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MONTHLY BLOG 165, HOW DID BENJAMIN FRANKLIN DISCOVER THE POWER OF LIGHTNING?

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Lightning Flash © Clipart 2024

During the summer months, I’m getting through big task after big task. I’m feeling increasingly happy. But right now I don’t want to compose a long BLOG. After all, there are no rules that specify how long a BLOG must be. It’s an optional thing, done to salute the world and (hopefully) not to be too boring. So for September 2024, here is one of my favourite jokes:

          Q: How did Benjamin Franklin discover the power of lightning?

          A: It just struck him.

No loud laughter required. But a pleasant smile would be good.
PS: For website showing in real time where lightning is striking world-wide, see https://www.lightningmaps.org/.

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MONTHLY BLOG 164, COPING WITH MULTI-PRESSURES

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Head spinning

Head Spinning © Vector Art 2024

This BLOG records my super-busy time in May/June/July 2024 and my tactic for coping. Before departing for a mini-break in western Ireland, followed by the annual ISECS-EC meeting 1 – this year in Maynooth, near Dublin – every research task that I had ever placed in the ‘Futures’ pipeline came to fruition simultaneously and unexpectedly. My head span. I was psychologically upset.

By temperament, I am what is known as a ‘Taskie’ (‘Tasky’?), as opposed to a ‘Multi-tasker’. I really like to focus upon one job at a time. How then to cope with half a dozen large tasks, as well as lots of little ones, all of these being authentically urgent at the same time?

My first instinct was to take to my bed. I was exhausted in advance and wanted only to sleep. But every time I awoke, I felt even more agitated. The tasks still needed urgent attention … and the time for delivery had been shortened. I did not even try taking to the bottle, because I knew that recovering after a bout of heavy drinking would only make me feel much, much worse.

Well, there was only one thing for it. I had to compile a super-list, in which I ruthlessly prioritised all these tasks. I then sub-divided the list into groups, and dealt with one group at a time. The rule was then, whilst doing one group, not to think or worry about the others.2 And, within each group, then to complete the tasks in the specified order. Otherwise, there’s an ever-present risk that the easy things get done and the trickier ones get endlessly postponed.

Once one group of tasks is done, then a short breather is allowed – before getting into the next group. It’s like climbing a mountain range by looking constantly at the intermediate peaks – and not staring all the time at the summit of Mount Everest.

In a nutshell, it’s compartmentalise – concentrate – complete … and, dear readers, I managed to finish all my urgent tasks before taking a break in Ireland. The weather was not brilliant but the lifting of multi-pressures, plus the glorious Irish greenery and unbeatable Irish hospitality, certainly was!

Roll on the next work crisis, if the finale is as pleasant … Do I really mean that?? I thought that retirement was supposed to be a period of calm and relaxation. Nevertheless, I seem to get busier and busier day by day. Oh well! Let’s make a list, compartmentalise … and look forward to the next big breather.

ENDNOTES:

1 For the International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies/ Société Internationale, see https://oraprdnt.uqtr.uquebec.ca/portail/gscw031?owa_no_site=304.

2 Having written this BLOG, I then checked on the web, under the heading of too-many-things-to-do-all-at-once, and discover that this method of grouping tasks together is called ‘Chunking’. Glad to know that others are playing in the same ball-park. For a more elaborate version, see https://www.tonyrobbins.com/blog/power-of-chunking (viewed 30/7/2024). ‘Chunking’ is also used as a technique for improving human memory: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chunking (psychology) (viewed 30/7/2024).

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MONTHLY BLOG 163, DO PARTISAN IDENTITIES ADD A PLEASANT FLAVOUR TO DAILY LIVING – OR DO THEY REALLY CONSTITUTE A TRAP THAT UNDERMINES TRUE HUMAN SOLIDARITY?

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Fig.1: Shutterstock (2024) – Tug of War

This BLOG is copy of my review, published in The Political Quarterly, Vol. 95/2 (April-June 2024), pp. 376-77, under the title ‘Uniting the Human Race’.

The book under review = Yascha Mounk, The Identity Trap:A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time (Allen Lane, London, 2023), pp. 401. See link = http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-923X.13393.

Note: I was invited by the journal to contribute this review, since I have already written on the subject of ‘Identities’ in one of my most widely read and quoted BLOGs to date.1

The truth is that all individuals have more than one identity. They can be classified under many headings – whether by age, citizenship, class, education, ethnicity, gender, intelligence, language, region, religion, or sexuality … to name some commonly invoked criteria. If an identity is chosen voluntarily – for example as fan of a football club or pop group – it can be a delightful thing to own and to share with fellow fans. How much importance to attach to this identity then becomes a matter of choice.

Yet, if one special aspect of an individual’s existence is singled out and harshly attacked, then that one identity can quickly become all-preoccupying – whether in defiant pride or fearful resentment. Subjective emotions quickly overtake dispassionate analysis. Little wonder that political campaigners often appeal to simplified sectoral identities – and stoke the stereotypes, to keep the polemical fires burning. Human solidarity is undermined.

That danger is the core message of Yascha Mounk’s new book on The Identity Trap. He himself is of Polish parentage, born and reared in Germany, educated in Britain and the USA, and currently working in the USA. As a result, he lives with the complexities of identity. He has described himself, for example, as a native German-speaker who never felt at home in Germany. And in this book, he takes up his pen to warn the world against crude over-simplifications.

Mounk’s writing style is chatty and accessible. Each chapter ends with a useful list of key points. At the same time, his arguments are buttressed by ample documentation. His purpose is deadly serious.

An opening peroration explains both ‘the lure and the trap’ of identity politics (pp.1-21). The story gathers force by examining the American Civil Rights movement of the1960s. Insofar as the book has a (muted) hero, he is the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Junior. He sought to forge an ecumenical campaign, endorsed by people of all skin colours and backgrounds. In his famous speech ‘I have a Dream’ (August 1963), he expressed the hope that one day: ‘little black boys and girls will be holding hands with little white boys and girls’. A colour-blind universalism and egalitarianism will prevail.

However, some colleagues began to fear that King’s soaring idealism lacked hard-edged realism. They called instead for ‘Black Power’ to deliver a more immediate route to remedy injustices. And, over time, as progressive reforms came only slowly, others on the American political Left began to lose faith in universalist solutions to deep-rooted inequalities.

Accordingly, Part 1 of this book (pp. 23-81) examines the genesis of what Mounk calls the ‘identity synthesis’, whereby universalist/liberal values are exchanged for sectional ‘affinities’. After the Second World War – with the growing awareness of the Holocaust and the advent of the atomic bomb – faith in grand visions of the progressive unfolding of history began to falter. Thinkers like Michel Foucault (1926-84) argued that knowledge systems were nothing more (or less) than expressions of power. And Jean-François Lyotard (1924-98) proclaimed, equally firmly, that the era of ‘Modernity’ had ended. Instead, people were living in a new ‘Age of Postmodernity’, in which absolute values were yielding to relative ones.

Critics of universalism thus argued that legal systems were not benevolently impartial. They were instead ‘cloaks for privilege’. One radical maxim stated that ‘Neutrality is political’. Another declared that: ‘Racism is permanent’. Action to help society’s most disadvantaged groups (especially those defined by race, gender and sexuality) was urgently needed. Separate ‘identities’ were thus not to be denied. Instead, they were to be embraced – and each group should be helped separately, secure in the validity of its own ‘lived experience’. A ‘proud pessimism’ (pp. 69-71) had arrived.

After that, Mounk devotes Part 2 (pp. 83-126) to demonstrating how the ‘identity synthesis has swept through American Universities – and begun to influence corporate, philanthropic, and political life as well. The impact of social media simultaneously encourages the sharing of confessional narratives. In addition, Mounk notes the human capacity for ‘group think’, especially on emotive issues. Furthermore, the Presidency of Donald Trump fuelled a surge of frustration and anger amongst the American political Left. Radical zeal was channelled into immediate campaigns on the ‘identity’ frontier, where local successes could raise morale.

Having recognised the ‘lure’ of identity politics, Mounk turns in Part 3 (pp. 129-235) to refute its claims. Here he pulls no punches. The ‘identity synthesis’ has too many internal contradictions to constitute a coherent philosophy. For a start, disadvantaged people do not always agree among themselves. Then societies are not all perennially divided into mutually uncomprehending groups. There is much overlapping and sharing. Thus it is historically erroneous to think that each type of cultural output belongs exclusively to one specific group and cannot be adopted or adapted by others. Moreover, a ‘cancel’ culture that halts free discussion of such issues risks fuelling despotism rather righting injustices.

Building upon those criticisms, Mounk in Part 4 (pp. 239-90) ends with a rousing defence of liberal democratic values. With care and empathy, people can understand and help one another. Universalist programmes to provide good health care, housing, education, job opportunities, access to transport, peaceful neighbourhoods, and freedom from discrimination, can – given time and commitment – work wonders. ‘Progressive separatism’ is not actually progressive. Instead, it inculcates a negative pessimism.

These debates are likely to continue. But Mounk now detects a growing readiness among critics of the ‘identity synthesis’ to voice their objections – as he has decided to do in this admirably thoughtful book.

In that spirit, this reviewer wishes to add one further point that is not fully covered by Mounk. At one stage (p.100), he cites (disapprovingly) the case of an eminent American University where students are discouraged from stating that: ‘There is only one race, the human race’. Elsewhere, too, Mounk refers to racial classifications as ‘dubious’ (p. 262).

But let’s be franker. The attempt at establishing a so-called ‘scientific racism’ led into an intellectual blind alley. Experts could not even agree on the number of separate ‘races’. Today, geneticists confirm that all people carry variants of one biological template, known as the human genome.2 Hence individuals from all branches of the human family can inter-marry and breed fertile offspring – the fundamental test of one common species. Mounk does himself refer to the ever-growing number of so-called ‘mixed-race’ individuals (p.14), who do not fit into simple ‘racial’ classifications. But are they fully human? Of course, they are.

True, some people today maintain strongly racist attitudes. That’s an urgent problem for societies to address. Yet it’s not a good reason for endorsing the separatists. Humanity must avoid the ‘identity trap’ and walk with Martin Luther King. He sought to transform: ‘the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood’ [or: siblinghood!] King was brutally cut down in his prime. But his cause and his optimism are needed today more than ever. Can the human family get its global act together, at this time of climate crisis? That’s another huge and urgently-unfolding story … but anyone immediately seeking a measured faith in liberal human universalism should read Yascha Mounk.

ENDNOTES:

1 PJC, ‘Being Assessed as a Whole Person: A Critique of Identity Politics’, BLOG no.121 (Jan. 2021).

2 See esp. L. Cavalli-Sforza and F. Cavalli-Sforza, The Great Human Diasporas: The History of Diversity and Evolution (London, 1996).

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MONTHLY BLOG 162, HAPPY CANVASSING MEMORIES

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Fig.1: Satire of Charles James Fox
(kneeling centre),
canvassing the Westminster parliamentary electors in 1784:
detail from an anonymous print, entitled
‘A New Way to Secure a Majority: Or, No Dirty Work Comes Amiss’ (1784).
Original in British Museum Dept. of Prints & Drawings, no: 1868,0808.5288.

Happy canvassing memories indeed! I no longer go out knocking on doorsteps – been there, done that, for many years, from the age of fifteen onwards! But, in this month of busy electioneering, when many of my friends are still on the stump, I can’t keep the memories at bay …

Political activists have a very mixed reputation, as has the political process itself.1 Door-to-door canvassers are sometimes seen as pests. Or as cravenly kow-towing to the voters. The image of Charles James Fox, the Whig reform candidate in Westminster election in 1784 (shown in Fig.1) pulls absolutely no punches. He is shown as literally arse-licking the voters. The shopkeepers and tradesmen, meanwhile, are lining up to receive his grovelling submission. (Either way, it worked. Fox won the seat, despite intense campaigning against him from the government, headed by Fox’s great political rival, the Younger Pitt).2

Well, needless to say, the canvassing that I have undertaken was always more dignified. Generally, I enjoyed the process. Rarely encountered voters who were rude or personally unpleasant. Often, it was just a case of ‘Will you be voting Labour?’ …, and, after the reply: ‘Oh thank you’ … or not as the case may have been.

Meanwhile, there were, from time to time, real doorstep debates. We canvassers are not supposed to linger but instead are required to press on relentlessly. But I enjoyed the rare chances for real conversations. Once as a student, when canvassing close to my parental home in Sidcup, I remember an impromptu doorstep encounter – discussing the pros and cons of comprehensive education with a genuinely questing voter, who was keen to get my views – and to share his. It was a stimulating exchange.

Later, on another occasion, in 2004, after the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq in 2003, a voter said curtly to me, on the doorstep, that all supporters of the Labour Party were war-criminals. Well, I could not let that pass unchallenged; and, although the leader of our canvassing team was urging me to move onwards, I remained for a good half an hour. We talked, at first fairly heatedly. but then more calmly. I did not myself support the invasion; but I reviewed the case for ousting Saddam Hussein; and I also talked about the immediacy of politics – the need for snap decisions; and the non-stop debates within as well as between the political parties.

By the end, the voter thanked me. She had not changed her mind – nor had I tried to change it for her. But she understood why I remained in the Labour Party – and she was glad that I’d stayed to talk through the issues.

Such moments made the whole procedure worthwhile. Rational democracy in action! And there have been plenty of other doorstep debates, though usually less basic than rebutting accusations of war-criminality.

Yet … I also learned that politics is not always about considered deliberations. There is scope too for quick and pointed repartee. Once, when first canvassing with my father in Sidcup, a voter asked on the doorstep with real anger in his voice: ‘What about the Labour Government’s failed groundnut scheme?’ 3 I then knew nothing of the issue (and cannot claim much expertise now!) Fortunately, my father was at a nearby doorstep. Quickly, I asked the voter to wait and ran over to consult my canvassing mentor. He said: ‘Go back and ask in reply: “What about Suez?”’4  I promptly did so. The voter stopped ranting and muttered ‘Oh yes, you’ve got a point there!’ He confirmed that he’d vote Labour – and I learned the value of smart repartee.

So there we are! In the big political battles, doorstep canvassers are mere foot-soldiers in the trenches. They know that. And the voters know it too. Yet, as already noted, these doorstep consultations are usually conducted politely. Voters may not want to see you at the moment that you call. But they do like to know that the political parties are out-and-about in the neighbourhood, talking to voters and picking up on local issues and casework. If there is no canvassing, there are liable to be complaints of: ‘We never see you!’ But they do often see Labour canvassers in Battersea, where I now live. It’s good for the voters; and educational for the canvassers too! ‘What about the groundnut scheme?’ … ‘Well, what about Suez?’ Long live doorstep democracy!

ENDNOTES:

1 See e.g. R. Behr, Politics – A Survivor’s Guide: How to Stay Involved without Getting Enraged (London, 2024).

2 For Charles James Fox (1749-1806), see L.G. Mitchell, Charles James Fox (Oxford, 1992); and for context, consult the impressive website on ‘Eighteenth-Century Political Participation and Electoral Culture’: https://ecppec.ncl.ac.uk.

3 For the Labour government’s project in Tanganyika (now Tanzania) the mid-1940s, see A. Wood, The Groundnut Affair (London, 1950); and N. Westcott, Imperialism and Development: The East African Groundnut Scheme and its Legacy (Woodbridge, 2020).

4 For the Anglo-French 1956 invasion of Egypt, see H. Thomas, The Suez Affair (London, 1967); S. Lucas, Britain and Suez: The Lion’s Last Roar (Manchester, 1996); and K. Kyle, Suez: Britain’s End of Empire in the Middle East (London, 2003).

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MONTHLY BLOG 161, DO LOCAL PEOPLE CARE ABOUT THE DIRE STATE OF WANDSWORTH PRISON?

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Exterior View of HM Wandsworth Prison from Heathfield Road
Source: Wikipedia

Do local people care about the dire state of Wandsworth Prison, as currently reported by reliable sources? Yes, they do. Perhaps surprisingly, but certainly encouragingly, they do.

On Wednesday 10 April 2024, I attended an evening meeting at St Anne’s Church Wandsworth, called by a concerned group of local Quakers and others who were launching their Wandsworth Prison Improvement Campaign.1 The capacious venue was packed. We did not have an official register of attendance; but my own head-count made it at least 250 people. Mainly middle-aged; but with a scattering of youngsters too. All listening intently.

We heard testimonies from prison reform campaigners, the former prison chaplain, former inmates, and the relatives of people currently serving time within the Prison. It is one of the largest in the country. It was opened in 1851, initially as the Surrey House of Correction, designed to hold some 700 prisoners. In 2023 it was estimated to be holding double that – between 1,300 and 1,500 inmates, including a number of individuals who are only on remand. The guilty and the innocent alike are housed in cells that were built for one inmate and now serve two. Rats and other vermin are rife.

Moreover, because of current staff shortages, those within spend much of the time locked up in their small cells, without opportunities for exercise, recreation or socialising with anyone other than their cell-mate. Little wonder that drug abuse is reportedly rife.2 Little wonder too that incidents of violence, in the form of inmate attacks upon one another and upon staff, are reportedly rising.3 In addition, there are growing numbers of prisoners with mental health problems – and an escalating shortage of (poorly paid) staff.

The packed audience was clearly uncomfortable at some of the information provided. And also indignant. But what impressed me was the positive mood of determination, rather than a collective and hopeless despondency. People were all asking: what can we do? The answer is that we must all, in our different ways, try to shine a light onto the closed prison. It is part of our neighbourhood. It employs people who are our neighbours. A proportion of the inmates are no doubt our local neighbours too (though prisoners are also moved round the country depending upon the availability of cells to be filled). And prisoners, having served their time, also return to the communities in which we all live.

Many small acts of lobbying, writing to our MPs, attending protest meetings, spreading the word, etc. will add up to something rather more than the sum of lots of individual actions.

So overall, the evening was one that conveyed appalling and distressing information, but also one that inspired those present with civic determination to campaign for change. Great! The mood at the first anti-slavery rallies in the 1790s must have been rather similar.4 We need a national conversation about the role of prisons – and, importantly, about safe alternatives to prisons – and the vital need to rehabilitate rather than brutalise offenders, who are all fellow citizens.

Small pebbles thrown into a pond can make major waves! Good luck to the Wandsworth Prison Improvement Campaign! Its website gives helpful advice on how best to lobby MP and prison ministers. Feeling civic (as I am)? Throw a pebble and help to get urgently needed and seriously real reform.

ENDNOTES:

1 For details see https://www.wandsworthprisoncampaign.co.uk/.

2 Report on BBC News 7 Sept. 2023, ‘Wandsworth Prison Life: Decay, Drugs and Drudgery’.  For context, see too https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HM_Prison_Wandsworth.

3 An Independent Monitoring Board was reported in Evening Standard 11 Oct. 2023, as finding conditions in the prison ‘inhumane’ and the resulting environment ‘unsafe’ for both guards and prisoners: https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/wandsworth-prison-conditions-independent-monitoring-board-report-b1112696.html.

4 See e.g. Z. Gifford, Thomas Clarkson and the Campaign against Slavery (1996); C. Midgley, Women against Slavery: The British Campaigns, 1780-1870 (1992); and J.R. Oldfield, Popular Politics and British Anti-Slavery: The Mobilisation of Public Opinion against the Slave Trade, 1787-1807 (1998).

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Horse-Drawn Clapham Omnibus, running from Camberwell Green to Clapham (1880s), on display in London Bus Museum, Cobham Hall, Brooklands Rd, Weybridge, Surrey.

MONTHLY BLOG 160, WHO MADE THE CLAPHAM OMNIBUS SO FAMOUS?

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Fig. 1: Horse-Drawn Clapham Omnibus,
running from Camberwell Green to Clapham (1880s),
on display in London Bus Museum,
Cobham Hall, Brooklands Rd, Weybridge, Surrey.

In mid-March, I was delighted to give an illustrated talk to the Clapham Society. The packed audience kindly laughed at my jokes – and asked great questions. And the event was held in a venue, wittily named The Clapham Omnibus.1 Which set me wondering about the origins of naming ‘The Man on the Clapham Omnibus’ as the (fictional) embodiment of a ‘reasonable citizen’.

The phrase was first recorded in an English court of law in 1903; and, this formulation (with local variations) has remained current in the parlance of the Anglophone legal system. Its original wording was attributed to Charles Bowen, an erudite and witty Victorian judge.2

A person on the Clapham omnibus (these days we would include women as readily as men) would not be taken as a major leader of style and fashion. But, equally, such a person would not come ‘from the back of beyond’. The south London suburb of Clapham was manifestly not a key centre of either industry or international commerce. Yet it was no backwater. It was a hub of circulating news and information, being located on the Portsmouth Road (now classified as the A3 trunk road), running between the City of London and Portsmouth. And there were other main radial routs crossing through the parish, such as the Brighton Road (now the A24) – all taking goods and people into and out of town, along with news and information as a matter of course.

Would Charles Bowen have travelled on these south London routes? Undoubtedly yes. He made his legal career in London; but in 1872 he purchased a country residence named Colwood House – near to Cuckfield in the West Surrey hills – not far from the London to Brighton Road. Whether he actually rode on a Clapham omnibus (pictured above) remains unknown. But he must have traversed through Clapham many times.

And here’s a further thought. What had Clapham to do with the formation of public opinion? Nothing officially, of course. But in the early nineteenth century, the leading group of anti-slavery campaigners became renowned as the ‘Clapham Sect’ or (more sarcastically) as the ‘Clapham Saints’.3 Their media-savvy campaign was one major contributing factor (though not the only one) in changing British public opinion from indifference to support for anti-slavery.4  So the name of Clapham already had resonance. When Charles Bowen was coining a witty phrase to signify a reasonable citizen, aware of the issues of the day – even if not an expert – he could imagine that individual to be travelling on the Clapham omnibus with complete plausibility.

Amusingly enough, for a Battersea resident like myself, two leading figures in the ‘Clapham Sect’ actually lived in the neighbouring parish of Battersea. They were William Wilberforce, with a house on Broomwood Road,5 and his cousin, the banker Henry Thornton, resident on Battersea Rise.6 But the Battersea Society is not trying to rename these ardent campaigners as the ‘Battersea Sect’. They walked or drove a mile across Clapham Common to worship at the Holy Trinity Church, sited within the north-east corner of the Common, attracted by the evangelical preaching of its Anglican minister John Venn.7 Fittingly enough, therefore, the campaigners were, unofficially, named after the parish whose church acted as their initial focal point.

How much the resonance of that association influenced Charles Bowen remains unknown. Yet the result is that Clapham is famous both for the anti-slavery campaigners8 – and for the people on its omnibus. Good luck to them all!

ENDNOTES:

1 For the Omnibus Theatre, 1 Clapham Common Northside, SW4 0QW, see https://www.omnibus-clapham.org.

2 Charles Synge Christopher Bowen, Baron Bowen (1835-94) of Colwood (Sussex): see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Bowen,_Baron_Bowen (viewed 31 March 2024); and an admiringly affectionate memoir by H.S. Cunningham, Lord Bowen: A Biographical Sketch … (London, 1897).

3 See E.E.F. Smith, Clapham Saints and Sinners (Extract from Clapham Antiquarian Society, 1987); M. Bryant, The Clapham Sect (Clapham Society, 2003); S. Tomkins, The Clapham Sect: How Wilberforce’s Circle Changed Britain (Oxford, 2010).

4 See discussion in B. Hilton, The Age of Atonement: The Influence of Evangelicalism on Social and Economic Thought, 1795-1865 (Oxford, 1988).

5 A plaque (affixed in 1906) today adorns the side of 111 Broomwood Road, at the junction with Wroughton Road (SW11), where Broomwood House, quondam residence of William Wilberforce, stood until 1904. For an overview of Wilberforce (1759-1833) and his impact, see W. Hague, William Wilberforce: The Life of the Great Anti-Slave Trade Campaigner (London 2007).

6 Henry Thornton (1760-1815) lived in a grand residence named Battersea Rise House (demolished 1907), on Battersea Rise, SW11, and was buried in St Paul’s Church, Clapham, as recorded by a commemorative plaque. For his life and times, see S. Meacham, Henry Thornton of Clapham, 1760-1815 (Cambridge, Mass., 1964).

7 For John Venn (1759-1813), who was actually himself born in Clapham, see M.M. Hannell, John Venn and the Clapham Sect (London, 1958); re-issued, 2003).

8 The campaigns continue to this day, as there are still globally millions of people living in slavery or neo-slavery, despite official United Nations prohibitions: for details and membership, see https://www.antislavery.org.

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