Howard Jackson

In which speech did Margaret Thatcher say this?

‘The old days of grab and greed are on the way out.  We are beginning to think of what we owe the other fellow, not just what we are compelled to give him.  Time is coming when we shan’t be able to fill our bellies in comfort while other folk go hungry, or sleep in warm beds while others shiver in the cold, when one shan’t be able to kneel and thank God for blessings before our shiny altars while men everywhere are kneeling in either physical or spiritual subjection.’

Okay, you soon spotted the deceit.   Margaret Thatcher never did say that or anything like it.   The speech was uttered by Basil Rathbone at the end of the Universal movie ‘Sherlock Holmes Faces Death’.   No doubt many have heard the speech and dismissed it as no more than cheap Hollywood tripe.  The stirring music certainly makes it sound corny.   The movie, though, was made in 1943 which is why the speech is significant.  It captured well and accurately the mood that was emerging from the experience of a World War.

Around the same time that the old movie was beginning to appear on TV, the cinemas in Britain were showing ‘The Innocents’, the film version of ‘The Turn Of The Screw’, the classic novel by Henry James.   The movie was a sophisticated entertainment and it was impossible to watch it back then and not be conscious of the patriarchal civilisation that inspired the movie and had welcomed Henry James and Joseph Conrad.    There is a long standing cliché about the underbelly of the American and British left.   Americans of all political persuasions are patriotic and believe America is the ‘promised land’ and the British, even on the left and sometimes more so, are snobs who think that Britain represents a superior civilisation.

The post war consensus that supported social democracy in Britain is referred to as Butskellism.  Prior to Thatcher, both political parties believed the state and its elite had responsibilities to its citizens that included food in the belly, a warm bed and freedom to be different.   This consensus required not only post-war ambition and purpose but also a sense of decency, responsibility and patriarchal largesse.  We should not romanticise the past but between 1945 and 1973 there was little faith in neoliberal ideology.

For various reasons, social democracy did not unite Britain like it did other European countries.   Sweden has its own unique history and, if we exclude it from the comparisons, we realise that the countries that have been mostsuccessful at sustaining social democracy are those that were conquered or beaten in the Second World War.   They also had to avoid the Russians, of course.   In Britain, our version of social democracy created tensions and the sympathy for the working man soon became, as Joseph Cotton had famously predicted in the classic Orson Welles movie, ‘Citizen Kane’, resentment of organised labour.   Many yearned for the past and those that did voted for Thatcher.

This time her appearance has been quite brief and is of less consequence.    The movie, ‘The Iron Lady’ is, despite the performance by Meryl Streep, no more than tenth rate ‘King Lear’.   The film reveals how dementia and old age has confused Thatcher but the Iron Lady was always more blunt instinct and prejudice than reason.   She thought that a national ecnonomy could be managed like a shopping bill and argued that the Government could control inflation by restricting the supply of money, even though it only partially created that supply.   Thatcher did not need dementia to leave her looking addled.  In her prime, she may have intimidated the left but there were few who thought her intellectually superior.

The beguiled voted for Thatcher thinking she would make British industry competitive.   This was what she promised.   As today, the pain was supposed to be worthwhile.   Instead, British industry perished and Britain now survives on financial services and debt – public and private.   The manufacturing that remains is still as uncompetitive as before.  Productivity increases have shrunk since social democracy was dismantled.

The movie has been an odd phenomenon.  The cinemas in the South have been busy and audiences chortle with satisfaction as they recall her triumphs.  In the North, the cinema seats have remained largely empty.   Any Northerner who watches ‘The Iron Lady’ needs only to observe the empty seats and feel the silence to understand the anger and hatred that exists outside the cinemas.    ‘Go and see that film.   Not likely.  I had to live through it and the first time was bad enough.’   In London, the buses that advertise the film pass by frequently

But all this only describes the grievance of the Northern working class.  In the eighties, I was obliged to visit the industrial estates in and around Merseyside and observe the For Sale signs multiply and scar the region.  Although the pig headed persecution of ordinary people is the greatest of her crimes, the tragedy of Thatcher, or what followed her, is greater again.   I think of myself watching ‘The Innocents’.  I was a teenager on a council estate outside Liverpool.  It was not called a sink estate because then our estates were something different.  The fathers had jobs and their children were better educated than their parents and all received free health care.  Young Britons could watch ‘The Innocents’ and respond to its subtle messages about self-control and civilisation, feel as if they were being invited by their superiors to share their doubts and inadequacies.

Eventually, neo-liberalism arrived and everything was supposed to be resolved by the decision making of the market.    We soon understood it was a fancy name for survival of the fittest.   Once that became the creed, there was no civilisation to inspire pride in anyone.   Cheers have been replaced by jeers.  Today, Thatcher looks less important to neo-liberalism than the sixties that preceded it.  In that decade, the British too often confused mature restaint with repression.  The sixties did represent progress for previous casualties but neoliberalism would not have been possible without the self indulgence that many assumed to be freedom.    Neoliberalism gave what the worst of my generation wanted most of all.  It sanctioned their appetites.

All of which leads to the ultimate irony in Thatcher.   She would have hated modern Britain, its non-judgemental attitudes and devotion to gluttony.  Others have made the same point about Elvis, that he facilitated a generation whose behaviour shocked him.   There are more comparisons between Thatcher and Elvis to tempt us.  The argument about whether Elvis invented rock and roll is similar to the debate about Thatcher.  Was she no more than a mouthpiece and was it really sixties libertarianism and the receding memory of war that undermined social democracy?   But, the lady and her memory are wearisome.  I was obliged to write this Challenge because that is the nature of these Challenges but, of all of them, this is the one I resent the most.  Elvis had his faults but comparing Thatcher to him really sticks in my throat.   She offends not just the normal loyalty to class and birthplace but also any sense of what once made Britain half decent.   The advert will soon disappear from the the buses.   Soon is not soon enough.

Something like five years ago I sat with my elder daughter in the Oxford Union Bar at Oxford University.  I drank decent beer and relaxed on comfortable and tasteful chairs.  The place was only half full and the atmosphere evoked purpose and calm curiosity.  I

The Oxford Skyline

was seduced.   I finished my pint and my daughter asked me if I would like another.   I looked around the comfortable elegant bar and remembered how I had wasted my own days at University.

‘No,’ I said.   ‘These places are lethal for me.’

If I ever met David Cameron I would probably find him just as seductive.   His charm, attention and easy confidence would tempt me in the same way that the bar did five years ago.   This is why it is difficult to compare Cameron to Thomas Parker.   We should never underestimate how an English public school education benefits the rich.  They may be callous and have offensive views but the seductive elegance has a winning appeal.

Stanley Baldwin

The more obvious comparison with Cameron is, of course, Stanley Baldwin.   Both advertised themselves as one nation Tories but both have led governments that inflicted huge damage on the British working class.  Now the reputation of Baldwin is low.  He is considered to have been too tolerant of high unemployment and is condemned for beginning the tradition of appeasing Hitler.   Baldwin was undone by economics and Europe and more than one political commentator has predicted a similar fate for Cameron.

Much has happened in British politics since Baldwin but a key development of the last twenty years has been the emphasis on youth.  The leaders of the political parties have become attractive actors who are obliged to convince the electorate that they are ordinary just like them, the kind of men and women you would like to meet in your favourite bar.  Inevitably, this has weakened representative democracy.  The actor soon becomes a puppet and the establishment obtains a firmer grip of the strings it always pulls.  Representative democracy is now in crisis as it was 80 years ago.  Stanley Baldwin was not its saviour and it is unlikely the charm of David Cameron will rescue us this time either although like Baldwin he may prevail for longer than we would wish.

Philip Roth in ‘American Pastoral’ wrote that only two qualities were needed for success in the American corporate world.  These were a perpetual smile and relentless energy.  He was half right and it also applies to bureaucracies but Roth should have added an ability to operate under pressure and to survive close scrutiny.   Cameron has these abilities but, like his New Labour predecessor, they do not make him a leader, merely a highly talented lackey.   Those who find it difficult to imagine a Prime Minister as such should picture him as he was the night before the wedding of Charles and Diana.  He spent it camped on the pavement outside Buckingham Palace, loyal and faithful.   Believers in parallel universes can console themselves with the thought that somewhere Cameron will be obliged to exist as a working class female.  I picture him in a Northern working man’s club, impersonating Tammy Wynette and singing ‘Stand By Your Man’.

My views regarding Thomas Parker are also uncomplicated.  He was incompetent, misguided and to quote Dr Beecher Smith, a Presley Estate Memphis attorney, ‘There were villainous elements.’   The evidence against Parker is contained in the books of Alanna Nash and there is no need to repeat it here.  There is, though, a possibility that Parker was more of a lackey than his bravado and bullying manner indicated.  I suspect Parker had the same relationship with Hollywood that Cameron has with the establishment whose bidding he served in Brussels.

Parker and Elvis in Hollywood

Hollywood had massive economic power and was the priority for Parker.  The absence of Elvis from the stage between 1961 and 1969 and the sweetening of his music both in the movies and the recording studio reflected the wishes of powerful film studios.   They had a celluloid product that needed selling and wanted no competition from an alternative Elvis.  Parker picked sides and he was in favour of those whose ambition was only to make money.

The culture of ordinary people and their worth as human beings was not important.   For Parker and Cameron, ordinary people exist to help the rich become richer.  This was why Parker promoted junk at the expense of quality and why the government of Cameron was so intent on destroying the BBC.  Fortunately, the phone hacking scandal messed up the plans of the puppet masters for a private sector monopoly of broadcasting.   Of course, what undid Parker was a lack of a plan.  He was a promoter and a deal maker and more suited to being the number two in a management team.  Indeed, this was the original contract with Elvis.   Like Stalin, he leapt above others and, once in charge, he did his damage, signing Elvis to contracts that ensured development was virtually impossible.  Cameron also lacks a plan.   He is the corporate bureaucrat who when asked for a strategy merely dashes to others and asks them to tick boxes.   The responsibility of navigating the economy through a difficult recession he gave to his friend, George Osborne, whose main skill is as a political strategist and whose knowledge of economics is limited.  When asked to come up with something visionary David Cameron invented ‘The Big Society’.  This concept is so vacuous one wonders about the possible influence of hallucinogenic drugs.   The descriptions by Cameron of his ‘Big Society’ resemble a Tim Burton film without the horror although if his plans came to fruition the horror would be real enough – no guaranteed health care, no welfare safety net and employers able to drive down wages to below subsistence level.

Few of us anticipate a glorious future for Britain and many think Cameron is qualified to represent a nation that will become increasingly mediocre.   His survival skills are impressive and Cameron has vanquished his British opponents.  Despite the money and the glory nobody ever appeared to challenge Parker for the job of managing Elvis. 

There is also a bully in Cameron which has been revealed on more than one occasion in Parliament.  This has done him no harm and neither did the same trait in Parker.  A bully is not the same as a warrior but the two are easily confused by the British Press.

I visited Oxford University nine times in all.  Once a term I would spend the weekend with my daughter.  The charm of the University wore thin remarkably quickly.   Long before my final visit I noticed not just the elegance of remote privilege but its small minded smugness, the bubbles that insulate our myopic elite.  I said nothing to my daughter during my visits.  I was keen that she stayed motivated and obtained the glittering prize.   I revealed my misgivings to her much later, long after the prize was safely stored in her CV.   Even then, I was wary that my thoughts would be interpreted as inadequate parental pride.

‘I’m really proud of what you did,’ I said.  ‘I just went right off the place.’

‘Oh, don’t worry,’ she said.  ‘I really hated it in the end as well.’

I last saw The Fat Man at Preston Guild Hall in 1973.    Later, I purchased a Hi Fi and a double album collection of his hits and discovered that his appeal for me had waned more than I had realised.   By then, I was listening more to people like Amos Milburn and Willie Mabon whom I thought were grittier.   Perhaps I had become a snob.  His show in 1973 was not a success.  The mikes were wired up to loudspeakers that would have been fine with my new Hi Fi but as part of a PA system they were inadequate.  The audience soon became restless.

‘We can’t hear Fats,’ someone yelled.

‘I bet you get bloody better PA systems than this in New Orleans, Fats,’ shouted another.

One woman asserted herself forcefully.  She actually resembled Joanne Dru in the Western, ‘Red River’.  In one scene, Dru has to have an arrow removed from her shoulder.  Dru refused to cry and I doubt if she even gritted her teeth.   Those who watch the movie may find the scene fanciful but after witnessing the encounter with the woman who took on Fats and his band I am not so sure.  She walked up to Walter Lastie who was on drums and said, ‘You’re too damned loud.’

Walter looked at the lady and offered her the drumsticks.  I envied him his naivety, his belief that his sarcasm would have the last word with a woman from Lancashire.  The encounter did not last long.  The set continued and Walter played quietly as he was told.  After the show I had the opportunity to talk to Fats.  He was as benign and as likeable as his records.  We laughed about the irony, a man, who was famous for adding the back beat to rock and roll and the percussive impact of his piano, being obliged to play quietly and with drums you could hardly hear.

This particular evening is mentioned for two reasons.  What the experts think of as the technical breakthroughs often mean little to the people who are gripped by the music.  This half relates to Elvis hating stereo.  He did not want his audience sitting between speakers listening for instruments to appear out of a speaker.  He wanted it to land in one piece in the middle of the chest. Hemingway said of his short stories, ‘I want them to feel more than they understand’ and I believe Elvis felt the same.  The technical stuff was his responsibility.

But we cannot ignore the backbeat easily and this leads to the second reason the evening now dominates my memory.  The Rick Coleman biography of Fats Domino* claims that it was the introduction of the backbeat on his great single ‘The Fat Man’ that entitles Domino to be given the credit of creating rock and roll.   Coleman regards Fats Domino as the most important figure in rock and roll.   He was certainly successful and Elvis was a keen admirer.  In a gesture that never earned him any credit, and which I could have mentioned last week, Elvis appeared at his 1969 Vegas press conference with Domino at his side.  The Press were there to welcome Elvis back to the stage and to praise.  Elvis deflected some of that adoration and introduced Domino as the true King Of Rock And Roll.

I do not think Elvis is right but what do I know.  I lost Fats on the way as I did Little Richard, both of whom were childhood heroes of mine.  I found that their music became formulaic and what makes me an Elvis fan I suppose is my admiration of his diversity.  I will, though, concede that Fats was playing rock and roll before Elvis and if we are tempted to build a bridge between rockabilly and rhythm and blues then the bridge would have to begin in New Orleans.   I also found that if I listened to Domino while I read Coleman it was much easier to experience the pleasure that had once led me up the M6 motorway to listen to Fats struggle with an inadequate PA system.

My Spanish teacher was talking to me about England the other day.  ‘What is this desire to know the first of everything?  You see it everywhere, labels on buildings, everywhere.’

‘It must be in our culture,’ I said.

I did not mention Elvis to her and the obsession writers have with the beginning of rock and roll.  The CD collection ‘The First Rock And Roll Record’ on the Famous Flames label is a marvellous collection of music that goes as far back as 1916 but the determination to define the key moment of epiphany is misguided.   It is as if we believe that its location will give us the ultimate mythic clarity that we must possess.  I had the good fortune to listen to rock and roll when it arrived or when it arrived in the charts at least.  I do not remember thinking Elvis invented rock and roll but I did think he was different and that he had more appeal than the rest.  I was a child living in England and my ignorance meant that for a while I mistakenly believed Bill Haley was the creator of rock and roll.  Elvis, though, always had his own mythic clarity and it gripped me as it did so many.   But so did African American rock and roll and rhythm and blues.   The myths, though, were different.  Rhythm and blues reminded us of the talent of an oppressed race and it exposed the limitations of its oppressors.  Elvis was about the dreams of an individual although it was an individual who could connect to everything – class, race, gender, bohemia, hierarchy and all the rest.   Racial discrimination did hold back black talent and people like Fats Domino were not given credit for their innovations although in the case of Domino he sold a lot of records to white kids.  The tilted values of the time must have also affected me in how I assessed individuals.  There were so many talented African American talents I saw them as comparable.   But there was no white man who sang rock and roll like Elvis.  He was on his own amongst white people and he had crossed racial barriers.  He had the key ingredient of mythic clarity.  He appeared to be a hero.

So, he benefitted but the musical talent was considerable, as were his achievements.  Rockabilly was a distinct genre within rock and roll and he played a key part in its creation.  There were other examples, too.   He had his own epiphanies.   He was also a person who could sing it all well.   For some reason, this does not always impress others but I was easily convinced by Greil Marcus.   Only Elvis, he said, had a talent that could embrace the contradictions of American society.  That talent also meant he could express the complex yearnings within human nature.

Some years ago I climbed Baugh Fell in the Howgills, a range of uplands not that far north of where Fats struggled with an inadequate PA system.   The walk allows you to trace the River Rawthay to its source on top of the fells.  The first half of the walk accompanies the river. When it is in full flow, at the foot of the hills, the Rawthay dramatically forces a wide fast running sluice through a harsh landscape.  After a demanding climb I expected something unusual, a spout or a large pond.   Instead, the beginning was no more than damp grass and familiar English mud.  I stood on top of the fell and remembered the power of the river I had accompanied earlier.  I suspect that if we ever do find the first rock and roll record or the point where it actually began we may discover something a lot more modest and a lot further away than we imagine.

*Blue Monday Fats Domino And The Lost Dawn Of Rock and Roll, Rick Coleman Published by Da Capo Press.

Last week began with the murder of an Asian student by a white racist who preferred to be known as ‘Psycho’.  The only uplifting moment occurred on Tuesday with the conviction of two of the racist murderers of Stephen Lawrence.   The same day, Liverpool Football Club announced that they would not appeal the decision by the FA to suspend their footballer Luis Suarez for eight games.  Wednesday, the Daily Mail congratulated itself on its campaign to have the murderers of Stephen Lawrence convicted.  Twenty four hours later, the same Mail and other English papers were outraged because black politician, Dianne Abbott, had stated that white people had a history that implied poor behaviour.   Then came Friday, which was the first day Liverpool played at home after the decision not to contest the eight game ban, and a black player in the visiting team complained he was racially abused by a Liverpool fan.   Before the weekend was finished a white twenty year old man was charged with the offence.   This Monday the team manager atLiverpoolmade a long statement reiterating the commitment of Liverpool Football Club to fight racism.

The spat between Luis Suarez and Patrice Evra was not edifying.  Two overpaid and over-indulged young men swapping childish insults.   People outside Liverpool Football Club have asked how a club can stand opposed to racism, which I can verify it does, and support Luis Suarez.   There are three possible answers.  One, Liverpool Football Club believes Suarez is innocent and Evra did not tell the truth; this is what a lot of Liverpool fans think.  Two, the club simply fought to protect a valuable commodity; this is what other football fans think.  Three, the response was a combination of both; this is thought by those who usually wait until the end of the argument to say something.

I have been a Liverpool fan since – no I am not going to say, imagine me as youthful and ignore the photograph.  Like other Liverpool fans, I have no confidence in the decision making process of the FA.  But, whether Suarez used the word ‘negro’ once, as he claims, or seven times, as Evra claims, Suarez crossed a line.   The word ‘negro’ does mean ‘black’ in Spanish but the words ‘black’ and ‘white’ can be racially offensive if used in a certain context.  Suarez was not being complimentary.  He was, at the very least, being patronising.  Admittedly, in the context of the slayings of black youths, this is trivial but it will do no harm to build a Chinese wall where Suarez crossed the line.   Undoubtedly, Liverpool fans feel an eight game ban is harsh but it is not likely it will have a significant outcome on the fortunes of the team.   Suarez has already missed three games.   In one of those games, away to Manchester City, Liverpool would have probably been beaten with Suarez in the team and in the other two games Liverpool have managed their highest scores of this season.   If the ban costs Liverpool as many as three lost points I will be surprised.  This saga needs to be forgotten.

When I was in Brazil I sat at a bar and, shocked by what I had seen in certain parts of Brazil, tried to calculate how many black slaves had been created by white colonialism.   I knew from my knowledge of Brazil that four million had been imported into that country alone.   I remember staring at the bay in Salvadorand calculating crudely that the total figure across continents must

Slave trade routes

have reached ten millions or what could reasonably be described as a holocaust.   If this figure has been accurately determined it has never been shared with the British by their newspaper editors.  The figure is ignored as if it is history without relevance.  Nor have our Western societies been zealous in repairing the damage.   In Britain, black teenagers have appalling prospects – inferior education, shorter lives, more mental illness, higher unemployment and repeated harassment from the police.  Present day statistics do not compare to the previous holocaust but they damn us and I think they justify Dianne Abbott losing her cool on Twitter.  In view of what has happened to black people she should be given some slack.  I know.  I have double standards.  But this inconsistency does not make me a racist.   I am merely ashamed.

As always the rich and powerful dominate the argument.  Serious studies of the consequences on the dispossessed exist but they are not given serious attention by our media.  We would rather make ourselves indignant about what one overpaid footballer says to another or scream at Dianne Abbott for not being politically correct about white people.  My God, the woman spoke as if she had a racial grievance, screamed the Mail.  Hardly surprising, one is tempted to say.

In these circumstances it is predictable that Elvis and race have been debated in a less than thoughtful way.   People who have no real knowledge of Elvis will assert with real conviction that the man was a racist.  Elvis was born in a society that practised apartheid.   Inevitably, somebody started the rumour that Elvis said black people were only fit to shine his shoes.  This was denied by friends and relatives but the rumour has persisted.  Peter Guralnick and Alanna Nash have researched the life of Elvis more than anyone. Neither has found any evidence of racist attitudes.  Guralnick has asserted that the opposite applied, that Elvis had huge respect for black people and their culture and that he was a

Elvis with BB King, taken by Ernest C. Withers, photographer of civil rights movement

keen supporter of Civil Rights.   His heroes included Martin Luther King and Mohammed Ali.  This blog will in future weeks examine a biography of Fats Domino.  The author of the biography argues the importance of New Orleans to rock and roll and believes that Fats Domino recorded the first rock and roll record, The Fat Man in 1950.  The book is a polemic and partial but throughout the book the author uses the statements of Elvis to support his argument.  He does this because Elvis acknowledged the contribution of rhythm and blues musicians and the importance of black musicians as much as anyone.  In 1970, two Liverpool sisters attended several of Elvis’ Las Vegas concerts.  Afterwards, they produced a first hand account of their experience.  They remembered Diana Ross at one of the shows.  She went to the front of the stage and Elvis kissed her and hugged her enthusiastically.   ‘This girl is fabulous,’ he said as he kissed her.   ‘I love this girl.’   This was not the action of a racist.  It happened despite Elvis spending a large part of his life in a racist society. His behaviour to Diana Ross, his relations with the Sweet Inspirations and his visits to the WDIA concert in 1956 indicate that he rejected the racial values of his society.  I have said elsewhere that it can be easy to confuse the charisma of Elvis with heroism.  Elvis was not a hero.   But, how odd that he stands condemned in the one aspect of his life where he was prepared to demonstrate his principles.

When the BBC presented a programme on the Memphis Mafia it included an interview with Sonny West.   ‘Elvis loved black people,’ said Sonny.  He said this without prompting or without any need to defend Elvis.  It slipped out.  The statement by Sonny West could imply that Elvis perhaps had double standards.  Maybe he thought black people were ‘more cool’, they had superior musical talent (Albert Goldman quotes him as saying this) and that they had a likeable way.   Or maybe he felt like I have done for most of the last week, just a little ashamed, embarrassed by  our capacity to be self-righteous and simultaneously ignore the experience of the unfortunate and dispossessed.

This is number 13 and I am wary.  It is unforgiveable but I have an irrational trait.  I am superstitious.    I avoid walking under ladders and believe that the rituals I observe on certain days have an important impact on the fortunes of Liverpool Football Club.   I am also aware that Hitchens has died recently and has powerful friends who will not appreciate a serious man of such intellectual consequence being discussed in this context.   But a challenge is a challenge and I have my responsibilities.  Why the comparison makes me so nervous is odd because I had no such inhibitions about comparing Elvis to Isaac Newton in Treat Me Nice.  A book, though, allows for the use of plenty of caveats and Newton has been dead for nearly 400 years.   It makes a difference.

Not everybody needs a hero but plenty of us do have that requirement and I have belonged with them since I heard my first rock and roll record and watched ‘Stagecoach’ every Christmas on TV.  For a long while Christopher Hitchens was a hero of mine and he may still be although he has disappointed me and others.   Originally, I admired him because he had the ability, if I can quote Mark Cousins in his recent documentary series ‘The Story Of Film’, to ‘talk to power’.   He understood that the modulated langauge of the well-dressed powerful often concealed callous utilitarianism and that the motives they gave themselves usually denied ambition much more cynical.  Like Elvis at his best, Hitchens was not intimidated by the establishment and neither should he have been.  He understood them because he was created by the best of their institutions.  This permitted a withering tone that lacerated opponents.   He was also self-destructive or, this time to quote footballer Alan Shearer about the citizens of his native city, he enjoyed life.   So the similarities with Elvis do exist.  These are supreme talent, recklessness and a determination to prove that no one is better than him.   Oddly, when they are listed that way these traits do not appear contradictory.   So maybe neither man is the paradox that sympathetic observers have assumed.

Indeed, although some may baulk at comparing Elvis and Hitchens, if we add Orson Welles to the group we have three individuals who had similar capabilities.  All established themselves as unique contributors, they became as famous as anyone else in their field and each had that overpowering desire to put their hand too close to the fire.  They also had style and none were boring.   Many of his columns were written after heavy drinking sessions or while he was enduring hangovers so Hitchens like Elvis and Welles could be casual about the impact of compromises on his work.  These three are considered by many to have made serious mistakes and their biggest critics were often those who had been their champions at the beginning.  Orson Welles lost fans when they realised he could be wayward, Elvis alienated those who he had originally persuaded that rock and roll was so powerful it had to be supreme and Hitchens angered the left with his support for liberal military interventions.

The argument surrounding the latter has been bitter as any dispute in any rock and roll club over which aesthetic should remain supreme.  If this example is interpreted as trivial they obviously missed Rumfords in Liverpool in the early eighties.  Rumfords used to have a rock and roll night every Sunday.  The crowd was split between those who supported rockabilly, often members of the National Front, and those who believed in rhythm and blues, these usually belonged to the Militant Tendency in the Labour party.  Elvis, as always, straddled both.   The atmosphere, although rarely violent, was not pleasant.

Hitchens, like Elvis, remained unswayed by his critics and has always been consistent with his contempt.  He attacked not only those who insisted upon a world order to support their powerful nations but the tinpot dictators who bullied and tortured their people.  I am not a liberal interventionist, assuming one can be one without having an army with which you can intervene.   I understand the principles that support intervention in certain circumstances.  I have no choice because my daughter is an expert in this field so what always annoyed me about the tirades from Hitchens was how he assumed the principles were beyond those on the left who disagreed with him.  I wanted somone to say to him, ‘yes, intervention is a good idea but the main problem is finding the liberals to make the intervention.   The dictators are bad guys but the only ones able to intervene are those who maintain a world order arranged to suit the powerful; the order that often facilitates the rise to power of these appalling dicatators.   The same people you used to condemn.’

But he was a lot cleverer than the rest of us and I gave him the benefit of the doubt as I did Elvis when I first heard his live albums in the seventies.  I assumed that his weak vocals at Madison Square Garden were a consequence of him being recorded in large hall.  Later, I realised I was wrong.  Similarly, I assumed that Christopher Hitchens was nothing if not intellectually consistent.   But then he praised George Bush as a talented President and spoke of his admiration for the man.  This was the same President who at the time was happily diverting money from the poor to rich.  When the failure and horror of Iraq became all too obvious and two thirds of that group of mindless, trendy lefties known as the American people stated they were against the invasion he still argued he was right.  I became less charitable to him.  At the beginning, reading him, I felt he was on the side of the powerless and against the powerful.   Now, I am not so sure and I have my suspicion that his main concern he shares with his right wing brother, Peter.  What annoys them both is not the fate of the powerless but the standards and manners of the powerful.   This is not as awful as it sounds because it is still easy to admire the singularity of both men.  My sensibility just happens to be different to them.   And I think that is where the difference exists between Elvis, Orson Welles, Chritopher Hitchens and their fiercest detractors.   They appear to be on the same side as their critics but they do not share their sensibilities.   Perhaps it is no more than they were just poor at belonging to wider movements.    This is not intended to waive away their mistakes.  I have never forgiven Welles for the movie ‘Confidential Report’, was depressed by the visit of Elvis to Richard Nixon and believe that Hitchens was nowhere near squeamish enough about war and its consequences.  He argued for morality but my weak stomach tells me that moral war results in just as many burnt babies as the cynical ventures.

So, do these three men qualify as heroes?   In ‘Treat Me Nice’ I quoted what the film critic, David Thomson, said about Orson Welles.   ‘He inhaled legend and changed the way we breathed.’   I argued this applied to Elvis and I think Hitchens, for all my misgivings, belongs in this category.  All men had an irresponsibility that disappointed me but all embraced myth.   I envy them and, if I am honest, I probably still need them.

The symmetry is irresistible and consequential.   Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson were two major rock and roll figures and both were allowed to exceed their drug usage by indulgent doctors.  To others, the medical men appeared to be motivated only by greed, two undistinguished men who thought that emotionally confused millionaires represented the gravy train.   Dr Conrad Murray appeared a bankrupt figure in court.  This was a man who rather than heal had only a gift for compounding wreckage.  Murray has now been sentenced to prison for four years although the informed believe this term will never be served.  His white doppleganger, and in these two tales there is more than one doppleganger, was someone called Dr George Nichopoulos.  This doctor avoided prison but was reduced to going on tour showing the bag he used when he over-prescribed drugs for Elvis.  Both men are now famous and deserve to be because they proved the incompatibility of greed and competence in medicine.

For me, the significance of these sordid tales begins and ends in Liverpool.   After Elvis died but before the end of that decade, Liverpool playwright, Neville Smith, wrote for BBC television a play called ‘Long Distance Information.’   Smith was gifted and he is famous for his screenplay for the more than decent movie, ‘Gumshoe’.    He had enough status and talent to persuade the BBC to screen a sympathetic account of an alienated Elvis fan.  The fan is called Christian and the symbolism in the play is obvious.   The play begins with the fan searching Liverpool for a jacket that Elvis wore in one of his early movies.

The play resonated particularly in the final scene.  Elvis has just died and Christian, unable to sleep, wanders the city.   He meets a man who has been a soldier.  The music of Elvis does not have the same appeal for the soldier as it does for Christian but he has been affected by the death.  He regrets the passing of Elvis in the same way his father, a communist, regretted the death of Winston Churchill.   The soldier knows this is an important day.   We will now become something different to what we could have been, he thinks.

The scene has also stayed in my mind because of a detail in the dialogue.   Less affected by grief than Christian, the soldier understands the tragedy of death more clearly.   I do not remember the dialogue exactly but the soldier says something like.   ‘I know one thing.   I know that if he had lived here we would have taken better care of him.  We wouldn’t have let Elvis die like they did over there.’

The hard times in Britain today have been compared more than once recently to the years 1973-1983 and this play was written well before that supposedly grim decade had expired.    Remember also, that this was from a playwright who was in awe of American culture and what was best about the country.  This admiration is part of our diet in Liverpool.   And thirty years ago Britain was a wounded imperial beast whose people were beginning to suspect the wounds were fatal.  With so little economic power on hand and so much envy it is odd that the play was able to summon a patriotic pride, to still believe in what the country had achieved and could still offer.   But whatever our faults there was always The National Health Service.   Even in those dire economic circumstances nobody argued that the damn thing was not affordable.   This slight of hand only occurred later when economic thinking had been deliberately clouded by neo-conservatism, the arguments of the rich and powerful and their lackeys.

This Monday, two days ago, Laurie Penny, in The Guardian wrote about her experience in America after she had picked up a serious infection.   She came to the conclusion that the absence of public healthcare means more than a lack of free health treatment.  It enables the poor and the ordinary to be subjugated more easily.   And, maybe, that was what the final dialogue with the soldier in the play also implied.  Not only would Elvis have had a properly regulated health service he would have been surrounded by people too proud to let his premature death happen.  I did say the play was patriotic.

But all that was back then.  Last Friday, two days before the article by Laurie Penny appeared in The Guardian, I was drinking in a pub in Liverpool.   The White Star is a traditional haunt with good beer and if Neville Smith ever returns to his home town there will be more than one customer in there who will treat him to a pint.  The pub was packed with the early Christmas crowd.  There were groups from work having a drink before their premature celebrations.   I was squeezed against four workers from the NHS.  Two were actually employed by a care trust and involved in commissioning health treatment.   We talked about the one day public sector national strike that had happened two days earlier.

The woman next to me said, ‘They think it’s about pensions but it’s more than that.   We can see what they are doing.  They are carving up the NHS for the big companies.    The fight is that important I can’t explain why.  Do you understand?’

‘It’s about what we were and what we will become.’

She nodded.   ‘That’s right.   What’s going to happen to us?’

I shrugged my shoulders.  The NHS workers only stayed for one drink.   Elsewhere, food beckoned them away.

As they organised themselves to leave the woman who had spoken to me stood opposite and waited.   She looked at me without the usual farewell smile.   Her face was anxious as if she realised that, without wishing to be, she was now involved in a struggle that carried the profound burden of likely defeat.   I wanted to offer consolation, to tell her to be philosophical and understand that in most of the struggles between the powerless and the powerful it is the latter that usually prevail.  I could have said that even in defeat there is exaltation in endurance although such triumph invariably has a bitter taste.  These days, though, the alcohol affects me more quickly than it once did.  Instead, I was inarticulate.

‘The NHS may be flawed,’ I said, ‘But it’s still worth fighting for.’

The woman nodded grimly.   Her friends took her away.

Thanks to the determination of Aneurin Bevan, Britain has avoided Doctors Conrad Murray and George Nichopoulos.   Greed exists in Britain like

"The NHS will last as long as there are folk left with the faith to fight for it" Nye Bevan

everywhere else but since I was a child the Conrads and Georges have been regulated.  Bevan was aware of the appetites and choked their greed with consultancy fees.  But that was well before disenchanted left wing playwrights were able to conclude Britain had at least something to recommend to others.    Since the conversation in the pub I have brooded about health care and our responsibility to the damaged and vulnerable.   I have thought about ‘Long Distance Information’ and Elvis and Michael Jackson.   I am not the only one these days but I have remembered what we were and I have worried about what we might become.

The natives are restless in Britain and its Tory masters are anxious.  Not because the World Cup beckons and the humiliation of its national football team is being predicted.  That is normal.  What really worrries the patriotic Brit is the Eurozone and Europe.   To secure the Eurozone, more integration will be needed between member states.  If successful it would create a Europe so powerful it could insist on Britain joining the Euro.  Imagine the humiliation for David Cameron and George Osborne if they had to become subservient to the Germans and abandon the pound.  There would be no TV repeat of ‘The Great Escape’ that week.  But the alternative is almost as bad because if the Eurozone fails there will be an economic crisis as bad as the one that wrecked the first half of the twentieth century.

A Europe dominated by Germany with common welfare and fiscal policies would for many Brits be unbearable.   A few years back the England football team beat Germany 5-1 on German soil.  The result was so good and unexpected many football fans assumed immediately there would be a price to pay.  They imagined the team being played off the park in a future competition which, of course, happened but the idea of a super European state where Germany becomes the common language already has the Daily Mail foaming at the mouth.  This is serious enough for life long lefties to feel sorry for the Tories.   Most, though, are like me and enjoy the spectacle.

All of which, to quote the Guardian, ‘just about makes Angela Merkel the most important woman on the planet.’    Inevitably, the critics, as they did with Elvis, have insisted she is a pretender.  She has been compared to Thatcher and found lacking.   She supposedly lacks the charisma and the bold strategies of Thatcher.  There has been debate about how a politician who demonstrated supreme opportunism in her rise to power has subsequently been cautious and uninspired.  Some of the criticism has been sexist.  Even the article in the Guardian described her as irredeemably frumpy.    Their criterion for redemption was not explained.

I am not a fan of Merkel.   The survival skills of politicians do not impress people like me, probably because we do not have any.  Her right wing politics which she has insisted upon with a narrow conviction worthy of George Osborne have always appeared uninterested in the fate of those who have not been blessed with her opportunities.   Whatever the political system, whatever the country, East or West Germany, this is a woman who has spent most of her life pursuing solitary ambition whilst demonstrating a willingness to tell others how they should live.   But the comparison with Thatcher is unfair especially when it is made unflatteringly.  Thatcher was destructive while Merkel attempts to be concilliatory and constructive.   The two leaders are compared for one reason only.  They are both women and it speaks volumes about the attitudes of political commentators that they are tempted by such easy comparisons.   Merkel should be compared to Obama.  Their social conscience is perhaps shaped in different ways, Obama responds to what is happening to people while Merkel is keen to acknowledge theory, and their politics are different.  They are, though, similar figures with an almost identical cautious political approach.  Always, they both act like people who want to save their gunpowder.

Both these politicians, like Elvis, were obliged to disappoint.    To understand why, we have to distinguish between the characteristics that make people become successful and those that help them later be successful.  Merkel was at her best carving her political career.  She knew when to support and when to challenge.  She trod a careful line in East Germany but was active with propaganda for the local party when needed.  Her dramatic and career forming moment in West Germany was when she challenged Helmut Kohl with a letter that insisted on a complete break with the past.  This counter cultural moment was worthy of Mao but Merkel has been reluctant to acknowledge any influences.  Subsequently, as a leader she has been cautious and, so far, appears unwilling to shape history.   The same charge has been made against Obama.  Both characters, though, work in political systems that restrict them and so we will never know whether they have an appetite for defining the future.    They will fade from power and become elusive mysteries.

These factors shaped the career of Elvis Presley.   Like Merkel and Obama he was better at becoming successful.   At the critical moments, and the seventies decade can be described that way, the task of being successful and managing history appeared to be beyond him.   Fortunately, for Elvis he had four opportunities when he could use his skills for becoming successful.  These were his debut at Sun, his arrival at RCA, his return from the Army and his comeback in 1968.   In these periods, like Merkel and Obama in politics, his rivals were no match for him.

The same sense of elusive mystery that will be the legacy of Obama and Merkel is the same as that endured by Elvis fans.  Why could he not have been more successful when he became eminent and powerful?   What happened to the previous opportunism and flair?  I accept his nature had consequence but one clue exists in the word ‘powerful’.  This is why the legacy is a mystery.  Obama, Merkel and Elvis all operated in systems that had factions and each of the three was accountable to those factions.  Obama has Congress, the Senate, the media, the Executive and the Democratic Party.  Elvis had Parker, Bienstock and BMG, Hollywood and the demands of his fans for glamour.    Ian Hunter from Mott The Hoople once remarked that the problem with being a famous musician is that it soon becomes like work.  When you are only half successful you can turn up at the next club and simply play what makes you happy.   This is probably true but when you are in the very big league, the league of Merkel, Obama and Elvis it is much more complicated than that.   There is compensation of course and it consists of fame and comfort.  If you are positive you will appreciate the satisfaction of knowing that your legacy will exist to baffle the rest of us but if you are self-critical, like Elvis, you will destroy yourself.    Elvis had a responsibility to continually realise his talent for achieving the transcendental in his music.  This required stamina beyond him but his efforts in four key perfiods and in other instances are enough for me to stay loyal.

Merkel is not musical and has a very different responsibility.  She is obliged to save the world economy.  If she gets it wrong we will have something far more serious to fret about than ‘There’s No Room To Rhumba In A Sports Car.’

The most recent newspaper photograph of the man is evocative.  Berlusconi sits behind his tinted limousine window.  The smile on the ex-crooner is wide and the freshly enamelled teeth are clenched in masculine defiance.   The plastic skin is tighter than normal.  Two comparisons come to mind.  The most obvious is Thatcher leaving Downing Street when she exploited a scarcely used female identity and shed a tear.  The actress pretended that she was vulnerable and sensitive.  The self-pity disgusted and angered me as it must have done so many of her victims, the working class generation she was prepared to condemn to a scrap heap in order to realign power in favour of the rich whom she idolised.   If you think this is harsh you should visit the housing estates where the British house their poor.

Elvis was also caught behind the window of his limousine and it happened on more than one occasion.  The most famous shot is from the documentary, ‘Elvis On Tour’.  The film is edited to suggest that he is pondering his past, that he is a man whose life and circumstance will always be without proper explanation.  He has been selected by fate to be adored but the price is that he will end his life obliged to sit, stare and wonder.  I accept this edited version if only because it implies that of these three famous characters it was the least educated amongst them who was the most thoughtful. 

The last time I was in Rome I was with my two daughters.  In an anonymous but fine restaurant a guitar player serenaded our table.  We confirmed that we were all Elvis fans and the guitar player tortured us with his rendition of ‘It’s Now Or Never’.   The food was of a higher standard than the music.  The waitress was chatty and friendly.    I mentioned Berlusconi.  She shrugged her shoulders and smiled.   The inference was clear.  The man was flawed but some men you indulged.   Such men are everywhere and invariably they have adoptive sisters and mothers and protective mates.  It is in their nature.  Perhaps they are blessed by the devil.

Berlusconi would still be there if emotion had not been boycotted by the market accountants.   A democratically elected leader has been removed and we now understand.  If the choice has to be made capitalism will take priority over democracy.   But those of us who live outside Italy are baffled by the tolerance of the population for an overwheened narcissist and corrupt glutton even if much of the recent history of other Western democracies has also demonstrated willingness in its electorates to approve narcissistic smugness.  The difference between Blair and Berlusconi is not as great as people imagine, probably nothing more than the faith of an ex-patriate Catholic.   The two men are close friends.

People who are not Elvis fans are as bewildered as those who observe Italian politics from a distance.   How was it that Elvis fans could stay loyal to the man?  This was a performer who made 29 awful movies without protest and who was responsible for wildly inconsistent performances on stage and in the recording studio.   I think of the waitress in the Italian restaurant and the resigned smile.   Some men you indulge because without them life would not be quite so interesting.  Or perhaps it is more specific than that. Some men you indulge because whatever their faults their presence will redefine the elite that you have to endure.   They not only rock the boat, they undermine the pretensions that support the supposedly superior.  Their shortcomings become essential to our loyalty.

This is what I imagine the smile of the Italian waitress said.  ‘Who else is there?   At least he understands us.  He wants what the poor want, beautiful women and the good life.  Compared to him the other politicians are smaller men.  We know he is crooked.   We don’t have to trust him.’

Berlusconi was more sinister than that but we are talking about emotions and included are those that are the most dangerous of them all, indulgence and double standards.

The book ‘Treat Me Nice’ begins with a reference to the trumpet player, Louis Armstrong.  I selected him because I thought Louis and Elvis had much in common.  Both were extremely talented and original but they finished their lives as unfashionable characters.   Both had been undermined by the cerebral and talents that insisted they understood the modern world better.   Miles Davis did make music that was beyond the imagination of Louis Armstrong and there were rock musicians that made individual records superior to those of Elvis.  But Armstong and Elvis still left catalogues that compared favourably to their rivals even if they were very different to what followed.   Fortunately, their unfashionability has hardened into something that is beginning to earn respect.   This, of course, takes us back to that final shot of Berlusconi in the limousine.  The defiance within the clenched teeth which reminds us that he may have been corrupt but we will never be able to dismiss his shameless determination.

I think I know what kept me loyal to Elvis.   Other musicians may have staked different ground but once I heard his great records I was always aware of the limitations of others.  I could hear them working to register their achievements and whilst those efforts were appreciated there is nothing as seductive as what appears to be the effortlessly sublime.  I feel the same about Louis Armstrong.   It is more than likely that Armstrong has never made a record as irresistible as ‘I Can’t Get Started’ by Bunny Berrigan but as great as that record is I am always aware of the limitations of Berrigan when I hear his trumpet solo.   Why?  Because I can imagine how Armstrong would have played it perfectly.  That is what happens when I listen to the rivals of Elvis, great records but performers who are less than him.  And perhaps that was the appeal of Berlusconi to the Italian electorate.  He did not have to make as much effort as other politicians.  He could take more risks and was not obliged like them to pretend he was clean.

Or maybe we are just gullible, especially with men who have certain natures.

Over thirty years ago I was both obliged and fortunate enough to attend a week long seminar at Cambridge University on the future of the British Welfare State.  There for the first time I met a neoconservative professor.   Before then the right wing had yearned for the past.  They were neither theorist nor revolutionary.

The professor subsequently became famous and an influence on Margaret Thatcher but for the life of me I cannot remember the Christian name of this professor.  I can still picture his thin frame, dark hair and thick moustache and his surname Harris is ingrained in my brain.  But I have a mental block on his Christian name which is because my sub-conscious is determined to remember him as Frank.  Harris, the definite Frank, was famous, of course, for writing an erotic novel that he claimed remembered his own sexual experiences.  For many years this fantasy tormented young men whose sparse experience was actually much different.  Well, this young man, in particular.  It is not mere intellectual sloth on my part that links the two men, the pornographer and the architect of the social policy of Margaret Thatcher.   No prizes if you have guessed already what they had in common.  They were both fantasists. 

Who would have guessed that the economic dreams of the one nutty least impressive academic I met that week would come to pass.  We all know the results.  Productivity increases halved since 1979, the poor are now poorer and the worldwide economy is on the edge of collapse because the rich have so much money it prevents the rest from being circulated properly.  Our economy is as constipated as our inadequate materialist dreams.

But as we discovered when challenging Professor Harris over thirty five years ago statistics to the neoconservatives were of little consequence.    Statistics would only be considered acceptable when the free market had been established in its entirety which it never would be.  Marxists had used the same defence about Russian Communism.

Nobody in a 1000 word blog can define neoconservatism adequately and this is neither the place nor the time.    Neoconservatism is already being challenged by the future and the young and we still need room to consider Elvis.  So we can settle on the simplest of defintions – small state, low taxes and deregulated business.  This definition is mentioned only for those who are curious and because I feel I have to.   But within the key principles that neoconservatives believe justify ultimate faith in the market and hatred of government there are two that interest.  These are the belief that all decisions made by consumers are rational and that this is perfectly reflected in price and production and that the market will ultimately provide the best of all outcomes.

The notion that price is a sensible reflection of rational decisions always reminds me of when I first bought ‘From Elvis In Memphis’ in 1969.   The price at the time was thirty two shillings and six pence.   Did this price reflect what I and other Elvis fans were prepared to pay for the album?   No, because this was the first serious studio album made by Elvis since he had recorded ‘Elvis Is Back’ in 1960.  We were desperate and would have paid a lot more.  In fact, the market was clueless when it had to apply an accurate price to what was a creative work by a gifted talent.  Instead, the price was determined like most records at the time by companies calculating their unit costs and usual demand.  This calculation was inadequate because no one other than like minded Elvis obsessives could understand my dependency on the music of Elvis.  Such obsessions are beyond the price makers and it may explain why they are rich and I am not but it does not mean they can always determine accurate outcomes.

Neoconservatives may not like it but their beloved entrepreneurs only understand so much and that understanding inevitably means huge errors in the multitude of prices that their free market requires to operate efficiently.   A similar misunderstanding occurred in record company executives who pointed to the superior sales of the Elvis albums that contained only sentimental ballads.  The same executives argued for a while that the album ‘Elvis Is Back’ should be deleted.  This was because all they understood were isolated numbers.  What they failed to realise was that the classic albums created fans that would become obsessive and crawl around the Elvis catalogue buying even more Elvis records.   I may have purchased the same number of copies of ‘Indescribably Blue’ as I have of ‘Reconsider Baby’ but it was hearing the latter that led me to spending so much to support RCA.

The second principle of neoconservatism is that the market will always produce the best of outcomes.  Elvis is a chilling reminder of why this is false.  He was cursed with a manager who lived by the turnover and income aggregates in his accounts.  We all know what happened.  None of the accountants noticed that the only man with the capability of actually earning the money they so liked was bent on self-destruction.  There is a marvellous neoconservative irony in the seventies phase of the career of Elvis.  When he was at his most self-destructive he actually earned more money than when he was responsible and conscientous.    It is obvious now that what the career of Elvis needed was someone capable of making decisions that included data other than pure finance.   Someone like Jerry Wexler at Atlantic would have helped or, to paraphrase Jerry Leiber, somebody who wanted to make history and not just another buck.

The parallel may be pretentious but these blogs because of their nature sometimes leave you no alternative.  Maybe this is what today our neighbouring urban occupiers are saying to their elders.  We need information other than what is contained in the financial accounts of the remote and, above all, we need compassion.    Otherwise our growth curves will only ever relate to money and that means we will all ultimately become pigmies.   If that sounds unreasonable, think about why Elvis destroyed himself.

A final neoconservative irony needs to be mentioned.  Although he was born in the middle of a depression Elvis the performer was not the product of a neoconservative society.  He emerged ten years after social democracy had been successfully introduced into the western world.  His generation had a belief like mine that life, because we only have one, should be enjoyed and this meant having fun and recognising we needed to feel as well as do. Somewhere it was lost in excessive materialism.  Maybe Elvis like the rest of the rich would have welcomed neoconservatism but he paid his ninety per cent taxes and never complained.  This, of course leads to a final neoconservative irony, their belief that high taxes inhibit us from wanting to earn high amounts of money.  It never stopped Parker, more is the pity.

Before I began this I searched for the Christian name of Professor Harris on Google.  I could not find it.  I find this embarrassing but reassuring.   The leading reference to Margaret Thatcher is now a website that is causing a scandal because it is prematurely claiming she has died.   I would hate to be premature myself and I am no expert on the lyrics of Bob Dylan either but for those who remember the sixties it now feels awfully like what he said back then.   ‘The times are a changing.’

This challenge was received via Twitter.  It has leapt to the top of the list because of its topicality.

Occupy Wall Street and Elvis 

Most Europeans are wary of American politics and I am no different.   The excessive use of religion and patriotism by American politicians is usually viewed with distaste this side of the Atlantic.   The anti-authority working class right wing attitudes that have transformed once left-wing States like Oklohama into Republican strongholds only bewilder non-Americans.  And some Americans too,  in ‘A Mirror in the Roadway’ Morris Dickstein gives a surprising account of the popularity of left wing politics in ruralAmericaprior to the Second World War.

These days though it is different.  My Twitter account is becoming increasingly dominated by stern chaps who describe themselves as Christians, Conservatives and Patriots.  Notice it is always with capitals.   These photographs of gymnasium refugees with bullet heads and sunglasses communicate neither Christian compassion nor the democratic inclusiveness that was at the heart of Christianity.   Not that theoligical integrity interests them

One of the more unpleasant examples asks, ‘Do I scare you?’

The answer is no.   The rage is too obvious and ubiquitous for it to frighten.  These guys have been around for too long to scare anyone.

The general assumption is that Elvis was right wing.  Well, he was definitely a Christian and a patriot and, of course, there are the infamous photographs with Nixon.   If he had lived to witness the events on Wall Street it is more than possible he would have disapproved of Occupy Wall Street, especially if he had Parker trained Joe Esposito whispering in his ear that the protesters were anti-American.   But if Elvis was pro-American his attitude to the elite was always more suspicious than deferential.  Peter Guralnick in his biography of Sam Cooke quotes Larry Geller remembering Elvis believing that Cooke was a victim of an establishment conspiracy.  Elvis also sang the Joe South hit ‘Walk A Mile In My Shoes’ which could serve as a very decent anthem for the protests that are happening in Wall Street.  He not only performed the song but introduced it with a quote from the Hank Williams composition, ‘Men With Broken Hearts’.  Elvis may not have believed in socialism as an economic alternative to American capitalism and he may have been hostile to non-American ideas but his heart was with the underdog.   He was generous with his gifts and these were made mainly to friends but occasionally he included strangers.  These strangers were invariably poor.

The world has usually been run by the rich and the powerful for the benefit of themselves.   Every so often, though, a generation gets wise, when the young and the dubious say, ‘We don’t believe you.’  It requires uncertainty, a sudden spotlight on something that is impossible to defend and the elite whose excessive power and privilege has made them all too willing to brush aside reasonable concerns.  It is happening now, it happened in the sixties and it happened in a more subtle way in the fifties.  Now the young are asking why it is that these few people need so much and why are these gluttinous few willing to cause so much suffering to so many to grab wealth that most of us consider obscene.  We may not all want to occupy Wall Street but the decent amongst us know excessive reward and greed would only distort our lives.  In the sixties the young asked different questions.  They were less accusatory of the greed of the wealthy but more demanding for the neglected and the poor, especially the oppressed minorities.  The clash in the fifties was less political and economic.  Most people were settling down to the improved times that followed the Second World War.  Protest, though, still existed.  All three generations shared scorn for the self-serving who throughout raged that the poor should work hard and know their place.    For all his shortcomings, Elvis led the fifties reaction and his style and music delivered unanswerable contempt to those who told him he should be quiet and remember his race.

This leads us to the reaction of those who oppose the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators.  I can only share my perspective but it seems to me that none of the critics are interested in what the protestors are actually saying.  Admittedly, we have some who claim that the protestors have no opinions to articulate but this is not the main complaint.   No, what offends the critics of what has been a peaceful protest is the offence against order.  This offence is enough to condemn them.  Protest in itself is wrong.  The financial elite exist but are beyond criticism.  Well, here is a little.  There are individuals who can earn earn more in a minute than the average American is paid in a lifetime.  The present elite that share our world have not only brought the world economy to its knees but ignored the period of enlightenment that existed after 1945.  This they have done because it suited their bank accounts.   But we are told by these strange men in sunglasses who want to scare us that we must not protest.  Whatever suits the elite must, according to these characters, by definition be pro-American.  Our betters must be left to be unfettered by conscience and Christian charity.

No doubt I am romantic but I like to think that I would be able to persuade my rebellious fifties rock and roll heroes of this simple truth.

Lying down in deference to the elite simply because they have more money is not patriotic.

It is submissive and timid.  More important is what the macho supposedly Christian warriors fail to notice.  It is emasculating.  Only the faint hearted can assume that the status quo is always right and that this status quo somehow will always represent the interests of ordinary people.  It does not when the economic system is collapsing and money is being directed from the poor to the rich.

It is no surprise that these characters ask, ‘Do I scare you?’  Being scared is what they understand best of all because behind their sunglasses and scowls they are terrified.  This is what makes them constant.  Their terror has been around since 1950 and well before.  There were terrified of Elvis and his ‘nigra ways’ in 1956, terrified of social and sexual freedom in the sixties and they are now terrified of this latest challenge to hierarchy.   The world has moved on since Elvis and it is more than likely he would have been confused by the attitudes of Occupy Wall Street but he never shared the timidity and the deference of their critics.   He was not intimidated by order and his betters which was why he really was scary.  This is maybe why later he could afford to relax and let his music become concerned with the consequence of sensitivity.  These pumped up phonies who preach hatred merely rally around order.  They have no interest in the suffering.  Don’t expect a free Cadillac off any of them.