Sharon drove me and Oscar to Inverness station for a mid-morning train to Edinburgh. The weather is absurdly mild for January. Saying goodbye to Mum, giving her a quick kiss "Quickly now, darling. You know I hate stringing things out" So it was long ago, with even less said, when I was off to boarding school - first at 6 years old. That's always my taste of parting. No better, no worse than something more effusive. I've got food for Oscar on the journey; for myself a miniature of Malt Whisky, two prosciutto sandwiches on rye, a length of bratwurst and my novel, reading the climactic chapters of Robert Edric's Cradle Song. It's a procedural - an un-thrilling thriller. That felt right for the chilling horror of its theme - the pursuit of a paedophile ring. I found tears welling in my eyes near the end. I know, as anyone who reads of it, who knows professionals who try to deal with it. of the scope and depth of depravity humans can plumb. Edric's minimalist prose connects the grim weather and scenery of his plot with something similar inside his criminals; which grows too inside those who pursue them.
Edinburgh Waverley, my train south
Later on my train from Edinburgh to New Street I watched a DVD of a film directed by Max Faerberboeck (The trailer makes it out a war film, which is a true, yet untrue, but viewed, along with the change of title to The Downfall of Berlin, as necessary publicity) of the book I've just read, anonymously authored, titled A Woman in Berlin, translated, quite recently from German, though published - then withdrawn - not long after the events they describe. The film was exciting, by no means schmaltzy, at times electric, but - despite the rich setting of a devastated city, costumes, special effects, voices, fine acting, score by the great Zbigniew Preisner - without the impact and realism of the book, where those things defined by the choices of the film-maker, are defined by the reader's imagination in the hands of the writer; an anonymous author describing her's and her companion's experiences in the form of a diary.
Oscar slept most of the eight-hour journey in a pleasantly uncrowded train. Lin met us at New Street.
*** ***
Yesterday afternoon I had a shorter walk than usual - along the Farnack, now running quieter than for the last few days, back along the puddled lane to Brin Croft - the terriers, my satellites, never bored. In the evening my mother took Sharon and me out to theSnow Goosefor supper - a pub in a most unpromising setting next to the Inverness Retail Park with a good chef making superlative and well-served pub food - a juicy red steak, calamari, fried liver and bacon, plus some draft Deuchars Caledonian - a local beer which my mother also likes. We were especially sat by a lively log fire and a table to which mum could draw up her wheelchair. We finished with Irish Coffee which mum to her chagrin had trouble drinking until Sharon with her usual swift attentiveness found her a more convenient shaped glass.
*** ***
Mark has sent me an email from the village with photos of his and Sally's New Year trip to the mountains of Northern Greece:
Mark and Teal in Zagori
Hi Simon just a few teasing photos for you to ponder over before you get over here to eat wildboar suppers, hare stiffados, royal roasts with pate's made from the finest chickla. Just remind me when you are here so I can go out and gather all of these of course. Cheers Mark
I'd been told by a British friend, some years ago, in one of those generalisations filed under 'conjecture - revisit', that Corfiots were fiercely proud to be Greek but sustained a certain sense of superiority over other Greeks. Our dear young Hellene friend Nancy, from Patras, did mention, when we were happily debating politics at table this January, that some Corfiots (and presumably some inhabitants of the rest of the Septinsular) felt that in abandoning the Protectorate in 1864, the British had delivered what could have been an independent Ionian Republic into the hands of the Greek Monarchy, embroiling them in the machinations of Athens.
I suspect that it will necessary first to understand the machinations of Britain and her agents. I expect this to bring uncomfortable revelations about what went on in the Ionian Islands under our 'amical protection' - notwithstanding roads, education, cricket and sin tsinbirra(echoes of Life of Brian on "what have the Romans ever done for us?"). Original sources offer direct insight but, subliminally, they draw a student through time, so that one finds oneself wandering in another dimension. A reader invents the voices of fiction in their head. Film-makers pre-empt such imagining. I've travelled thus before when pursuing research. As ever it depends who writes the history and what interpretations most credibly explain the motives and actions of individuals.
From Warlike England as seen by herself (1915) by Ferdinand Tönnies - insight into British foreign rule from a great sociologist
I will ever revert to Anglo-Hellenic relations because my necessarily sober study of texts is driven by inchoate emotions. At times what I thought was Greece turns out to be my reflection in a foxed mirror. I'm neither detached nor disinterested. I'm mindful of Kevin Andrew's passion for Greece, in whose seas his life ended, undimmed by a rare fury at 'uncritical, unquestioning adherence to the revolting shame of lesser people’s stupidity, cynicism and cheapness' and Byron, his heart buried in the HieraPolis, writing, in a burst of vexation, that 'there never was such an incapacity for veracity shown since Eve lived in Paradise.'
In the National Archives reading room at Kew: British Colonial Office records for the Protectorate of the Ionian Islands
On only my second visit to the National Archives, last Thursday, I focused on the months between November 1858 and late Spring 1859, getting the hang of ordering documents on-line, remembering to put pens in my bag in the downstairs locker chained by my folded bicycle, requesting a desk, swiping my reader's card at security, collecting documents - one file at a time - from the glass-doored locker with the same number as my computer allocated desk space, collecting the polystyrene forms to support thick heavy volumes, donning white cotton gloves to turn pages...
Sir Thomas Wyse, author of Impressions of Greece, was British Minister (or ambassador) to Greece, sending reports on local affairs back from Athens to the Foreign Office in London since his posting in 1849. On 2 December 1858, in a dispatch to the Earl of Malmesbury, Foreign Secretary in the government of Lord Derby, Wyse describes how, on the evening of 24 November, he'd just left a party given by Ozeroff, the Russian Minister to Greece, when a young employee from the Hellenic Foreign Office called Typaldos arrived with the news 'that the Ionian Islands had been ceded to Greece'.
..the dance ceased…groups were to be seen in every direction congratulating each other, especially amongst the younger portion of the company on so unexpected and auspicious an event.
This news may have come attached to reports of William Gladstone's extraordinary mission to the islands (journeying from England by train through Dresden, Prague and Vienna to Trieste where he took the paddle steamer HMS Terrible down the Adriatic, arriving in Corfu on 24 November [see p.367 in this ref] reporting the magnificent Albanian landfall we've several times enjoyed - the Karaburan Peninsular then called the Acroceraunian mountains). The day after news broke of unification, people in Athens had started ...
... to hesitate as to the advantages of the change. The more sedate and experienced did not see that either party could gain much by the proposed union. Others went so far as to express apprehension of immediate danger to the monarchy and dynasty, from annexing their turbulent neighbour little used to the restrictions of genuine Hellenic liberty...(The Ionians) couple with the hope of such annexation, the means of establishing by their audacity or preponderance, a new state of things in Greece, involving in some of the theories, a radical alteration, not in the constitution only, but in the dynasty and Monarchy of the State...The time is not yet ripe, it is added, for so perilous an experiment. It would be not so much an annexation of the Ionian Islands to Greece, as of Greece to the Ionian Islands...(FO32/263 ~ p.165)
Letter from Sir Thomas Wyse to the Earl of Malmesbury ~ 2 Dec 1858
Background: The news that broke at Ozeroff's party was of course a rumour, since union with Greece did not actually occur for another five and a half years on 21 May 1864. Gladstone, over three months in late '58, early 59 had sought to convey to Ionians - in ways and for motives I'm trying to understand - that union with Greece was, for the time being, unrealistic. Inclined towards self-rule, he became convinced that a catalogue of complaints against the Protectorate could be attributed, in part, to the style of the previous Commissioner Sir John Young who had recommended an Ionian partition converting Corfu and Paxos to British colonies, ceding the remaining islands to Greece, in part to inbuilt flaws in the Maitland Constitution of 1817 that corrupted prospects of evolution towards self-government, making the Ionian Protectorate, a Colony in all but name, and unready for the 'home-rule' he perhaps hoped to seed (echoes of Gladstone's later preoccupation with Ireland) or union with Greece which he came to doubt was really what local people or the Greek government really desired. Having ensured the departure of Sir John Young, Gladstone sailed away from the islands on HMS Terrible, leaving a reform package for approval by the Ionian Senators that would strengthen Ionian conservatives, weakening radical pressure for enosis. But his successor Sir Henry Storks was left to face almost immediate rejection by the Ionian Assembly of Gladstone's proposals as well as continued demands and petitions for union with Greece. Thus we enter the last five years of the Protectorate.
Gladstone, during his twelve week Ionian mission had visited Athens to sound the Greek government and court on the idea of union. On 13 December 1858 he wrote to Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Secretary of State for the Colonies under Lord Derby, noting ‘divided sentiment’ about union in the Greek Kingdom - something ‘feared as well as desired’. It is exciting to see the signature and writing of Gladstone dotted about the records, but although it’s referred to in Holland and Markidesas being in CO136/165 I couldn’t find it. That file starts in January 1859 where I did find a letter marked 'most secret' from Sir Henry Storks to Bulwer-Lytton, a few months after Gladstone's departure for England on 19 February. Sir Henry matched Gladstone and Wyse in conveying Athenian ambivalence about extending the Hellenic Kingdom to the Ionian Islands:
Sir Henry Storks at the Palace, Corfu, to Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton
Downing Street, London ~ 9 April 1859
'No doubt the King of Greece would find the inhabitants of these islands very difficult to rule, and in many respects superior in attainments, and less docile than his own subjects, but still territorial aggrandizement, and the commanding strategical and maritime position of these islands, are objects of ambition which the Court of Athens is not likely to underrate...'
...adding a full measure of jaundice towards King Otto, Queen Amalia and their court.
'It is my duty to acquaint you that I have heard from sources in which I have confidence that little reliance is to be placed in anything the King or Queen of Greece, or the Ministers may say on the subject of the annexation of these States to the Kingdom of Greece. I believe there is an undercurrent of intrigue fanning the flame here, and that the chief movers are Greek agents. (CO136/165 ~ p.645-646)
***
Dropping in on the Scrutiny offices at Southwark Council in mid-afternoon I mentioned my visit to the National Archives. AsI left, Rachel one of Shelley's colleagues, explained how security at the NA had, through its focus on preventing documents being stolen, overlooked the possibility of them being introduced. Some rogue had sneaked in fake correspondence to prove that Himmler, rather than committing suicide, had been murdered by British agents. The fake letters intended as evidence(scroll down this URL to see) were printed on a 'high resolution laser printer', written by someone risibly incapable of imitating official circumspection, a bit like those ridiculous, but at least technically clever, Meegeren imitations of Vermeer. But then Trevor-Roper was initially deceived by The Hitler Diaries, to which Richard, knowing his le Carré, adds "unless it was double bluff."
* * * Email from Ayios Markos:
I forgot to comment on your learning Greek. It can be hard, or it can be fun, depending on the teacher and the teaching methods. I found it more fun and learned more when I taught myself. There are some advantages to having the teacher though, such as pronunciation and grammar. When I took classes I found it too frustrating. There were a couple of times I had to grab the teacher by the throat. She kept me sitting across the table so I wouldn't grab her. Ha! She is my very dear Greek friend here.
There was a rather comical incident up here in Agios Markos. They are working on the road, cutting a trench for water pipes. This, of course creates more problems for the already narrow street. Consequently, there was major frustration by the bus driver who was having a problem getting through. He called and complained to the mayor, who then called the police and they came up and wrote tickets on 30 cars! Each costing €80. Everyone was up in arms. They have been parking there for nearly 20 years without ever being told it wasn't legal. They all embarked on the police department in a rage. The mayor was red faced and admitted he might have made a mistake. Last I heard they were told not to worry about it, and today I noticed they were all, once again, back in their old parking places. Don't you love Corfu? The Greeks are as much fun as the italians. Love, X
* * * Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe(OSCE) meeting in Corfu under the auspices of Dora Bakoyannis near Gouvia.
Forwarded email: I see there’s a big summity event at the end of the month in Corfu. Everyone get ready to be hustled off the road by large cars with flags, and off the sidewalk by burly gentlemen with ear pieces. Here comes the cavalry...
Reply from H: Yes. I heard from the neighbor. Hillary Clinton is coming! [she cancelled] Actually, as much as I would love to see her, I would rather not be around with all the police lining the streets. I've experienced it before when a dignitary came to town. We've been amused at the things they've been doing to the main roads. You would not believe all the painted white lines! You will laugh when you see them. And also cats eyes, which are already popping off. Ha!
And a call via Indymedia to protest at the implication of Fortress Europe
* * * Back to the future ~ 16 June 2009 re the Iranian Election result: I think I and many others may, at last, take Twitter seriously seeing its use along with mobile phone photos to evade attempts to silence those challenging the poll. See this witty lass on YouTube where she speaks of things in Iran and of Twitter ' the so-called "death of attention span" medium (2.26).
See also Iran: Nation of Bloggersplus accompanying comments. It reminds me of the way the mobile phone circumvented attempts by leaders of the 1991 August Putsch in Russia to control the media and the telephone network.
Back to the immediate future - 23 June 09: I was informed on Facebook across the globe by my student Takanori Ogasawara in Aomori Prefecture: 'The movie of the moment of Neda's (ندا آقا سلطان) death are so shocked. We receive the full benefit of peace here in Japan. On the other hand, on the another side of the Earth, a lot of people are dying.' The face of a woman, Neda Agha-Soltan, a philosophy student shot by a Basij militia sniper, on 20 November, dying in the street, was sent by an attending doctor's mobile to a contact in the Netherlands who put it on
the web from where it was picked up and relayed on live-blogs, flickr, facebook, mainstream media, wikipedia to be printed on placards in Iran. I'm just hearing a BBC R4 report in our kitchen at 13.26 23 June 09.
...and one of the most informed of commentators Iason Athanasiadis who spends a lot of time in Iran in The Spectator on 17 June 09 - cautious.
...and from Eric Margolis a sage warning about the higher-politics: 'In viewing the Muslim world, Westerners keep listening to those who tell them what they want to hear, rather than the facts. We are at it again in Iran...President Obama sincerely wants to enter into talks with Iran over its nuclear program and try to convince Tehran to give up enrichment. But hardliners in his cabinet and Congress are urging Obama to seize the opportunity to further destabilize Iran. Bad idea. A stable Iran is essential to a stable Mideast....US and British efforts to subvert Iran’s government could yet blow up in our faces.
At last Virgin have equipped their coaches with WiFi and I can stop reading books and get on the internet as I travel. Is this good?
I've decided to immerse myself further in Protectorate records at the National Archives so cycled from home to New Street this morning at five - Birmingham streets to myself and a few street cleaning and refuse trucks - with a return ticket to Kew Bridge Lin has got me off the internet for just over £25. So we've bought into yield-management after my initial dislike of the service. From Euston, surrounding bus stops crowded as a result of a Tube strike, I cycled over the Thames to Waterloo Station and caught a train to Kew Bridge arriving at the National Archives by 0830 when the coffee shop opened.
Instead of continuing to scan through the 1862-64 papers relating to the end of the Protectorate, where I've been hoping to find clues to the 'petition' from Ano Korakiana against enosis, I'm going to have a look at the 1858-59 Colonial Office records covering William Gladstone's mission to the Ionian Islands and Athens, following, for the time being, in the prominent footsteps of Holland and Markides. It's not always a good idea to leaf through material without a more specific goal, but I shall allow myself that for the moment and see what turns up.
In the afternoon I shall head over to Southwark Town Hall to discuss Scrutiny with Shelley Burke who we've invited to do the final session on our 5-day Post-grad module on Oversight & Scrutiny (see p.15 in the PDF from CfPS May 2008 Newsletter.
* * *
Email from Ano Korakiana:
Yassou Simon and Linda. Just a quick note to let you know how the swallows are getting on...as you can see by the photo all 5 eggs hatched and all of the young are doing just fine. Both parents are as busy as busy can be fetching the young ones food. Managed to get mum feeding them on camera ( I know it's mum as she has a shorter tail than dad or was it the other way round?). Weather here has gotten hot as to be expected. Hope you are both well. Mark
The swallows over Mark and Sally's front door in Ano Korakiana
After midnight, Amy and Guy were waiting at Birmingham Airport to pick us up. Lin was annoyed. "You're both supposed to be at work really early". I was relieved and grateful, knowing we had missed the last bus when the taxi fare doubles to £40 - and we were not going to pay that to get back to Handsworth. The journey home had been on a calm sea via Igoumenitsa and Ancona from where we took a stopping train to Rome Termini, and another to Fiumicino for our flight home. I scanned a UK newspaper full of financial panic stories I'd already seen on the web while in Greece. Home was tidy, with a pile of mail, no unwelcome letters and a couple of £50 Premium Bond wins. The university server was down and is still down at 0915 this Wednesday morning. I shall get on my bicycle and go to campus.
* * *
Far off by Vido as the dusk gathers a liner departs. We can watch its progress north from the balcony until it passes up the straits behind Pantokrator.
* * *
At the top of the thirteen shallow steps on the short path that leads by 208 onto Democracy Street, Faiakon Council has - as in other places in the village where there’s a drop - put up a deep green railing, by which people chat in the street. It is one of the sounds here, along with the cars slowed by the narrows, negotiating with other cars various unmarked broadenings. Lads on scooters, unaffected, often speed by at over the marked 20kph limit. The road is at last open again but the new drains haven’t reached us yet, and we’re unsure whether we want to pay the service charge for connection when they do. Our cesspool seems to work fine – especially now that we, unlike the previous owners, are not putting bleach and other disinfectants down the sink or loo.
* * *
Down at the harbour we’ve had Summer Song’s mast down, replaced halliards, repaired the masthead lights, and the worn pulley wheel that had made it so tricky to raise and lower the jib. Between us, Dave’s wife Trish and I filmed him and Ben, their son, as they went through the tricky process of getting the mast down and back up. Until at least one halliard was safe, no-one was going to risk using the existing tackle to go up the mast and do repairs without this operation. Now if any more work needs doing someone can go up on a new rope. I feel the better for having seen what’s happening up there. It’s saved us money doing the job at her berth in the harbour, rather than going to a yard and paying for a crane.
Lin has painted a Greek phonetic version of Summer Song on an old tyre - ΣΑΜΕΡ (oops! she put an 'R' instead of a 'Ρ') ΣΟΝ - which I cut to shape. Dave screwed it to the end of our mended jetty. Τhe 'R' can be made a 'P' with some black paint, meantime pedants can enjoy pointing out the mistake.
Before we left I tidied the boat. For a minute or so an insufficiently tightened jubilee clip had meant a cooling water pipe coming loose. Starting the engine to turn the boat between lowering and raising her mast, I'd seen no water coming out of the exhaust - a routine check I mightn't have made a year ago. The only harm was having to pump and sponge a couple of buckets of seawater out of the bilges.
* * *
Dave has hand sewn the head of Summer Song's furling genoa where it ripped. It'll work, but there's another problem. From top to bottom - head to clew - along the leech of the sail - its' outer edge - there is meant to be a strip of light blue sail about a 9" wide which acts as a sun shield it when it's fully furled on its rollers. This 'sacrificial' strip has become very tattered. Dave suggests unpicking it entirely. The sail now goes up and down so easily that I might as well lower, detach and store it after each sail. That's an idea. Having the strip removed and replaced professionally could cost as much as a new sail; far more than a useable secondhand one. Just before we left, Mark, who came, with Sally and her brother, to supper at 208, kindly agreed to take the sail away and see what could be done about repairing it before we returned.
* * *
Blue recycling bins have appeared round about. Fran and Dave told us of one near them in the village and Dave mentioned a new recycling site nearing completion at Temploni. Pleasing. There are no blue bins yet on Democracy Street but we are sorting out plastic, tins, paper and bottles before getting rid of our rubbish in ones further away. How well the new bins are being used I'm unsure. They have separate holes on the top for different items which are get mixed together inside, with the lids often so loose, or just left open, that people are chucking in sacks of current recyclables still mixed up in plastic bags. Misuse of recycling bins seems to be the norm whenever they are first introduced. Their survival, and the spread of recycling habits, depends on councils or their contractors getting tougher and cleverer about preventing and educating, combining stick and carrot. Fix My Street is a good example in England.
* * *
I bumped into KostasApergis yesterday in the shop further down the street, while collecting our electric bill. Told him I’d visited St.Elias; that I would definitely search for the rumoured petition from the village elders to the High Commissioner in the 1860s asking the British not to abandon the Protectorate. There is a grumble at the moment among some local politicians, part fueled by post-Olympic resentment at money famine for local government across the country. Too much that needs repair is falling into disrepair. Too much foreign money spent in the island leaks out of the economy or never gets into it in the first place. It doesn't help that Athens has introduced a 10% income tax on the first €10,000 of Greek residents' earnings - previously exempt.
[Back to the future: January 09 - the government has withdrawn this tax]
Harry Tsoukalas speaks of candidates standing on an 'independence for Corfu' ticket at local elections in two year's time, seeking through bravura to renegotiate the balance of funding between centre and locality. A Greek rebuttal on YouTube includes the title 'British rubbish' - no doubt because Tsoukalas' views on the 'huge problems in this paradise' received serious attention from the BBC and The Guardian. There's history here.
The prospect of 'faction' sent shivers through the British polity in the aftermath of our civil war, invoking passionate charges and counter-charges of treason and sedition. It wasn't paranoia. it was terror at the prospect of a return to the 'heart of darkness' ("The horror! The horror!"). That was 360 years ago. Civil War in mainland Britain is off the public's radar. In Greece civil war is just 60 years old; in the memories of many still alive. Wounds are unhealed; the subject is only just entering Greece's history books for grown-ups. It's not safe yet for primary school texts. Volatile feelings, including many contrary interpretations of what went on between 1945 and 1950 and the 'stone years' - πέτρινα χρόνια - that followed, are lodged in the popular psyche. Talk of 'autonomy' or 'independence' can prompt visceral reaction, outside the appreciation of those for whom bloody civil strife is more remote.
Corfucius - British with inherited colonial sensibilities as erratic ('I love writing and I love hiding behind words.' 20/4/08) as mine (Sir Henry Maine on the Council for India and Master of Trinity Hall; Sidney Baddeley, military secretary to the Governor-General of Madras; another grandfather and father earning CMGs) - makes some choice comments on the silliness of the imputation that GB could have the slightest interest in - let alone the capacity - for such an initiative - and it wasn't mentioned by Tsoukalas who speaks sensibly in Greek and English.
In The British and the Hellenes: Struggles for Mastery in the Eastern Mediterranean 1850-1960, Robert Holland and Diana Markides wrote - between pages 13 and 80 [Chapter 2 - Gladstone and the Greeks: The Extraordinary Mission to the Ionian Islands, 1858-1859, and Chapter 3 - The Abandonment of the Ionian Protectorate, 1849-1864] about Gladstones' visit to Greece, especially Corfu, between 24 November 1858 and 19 February 1859. This consummate politician had the delicate task of finding a way to extricate Britain from a Protectorate that had become a costly entanglement - given Malta's availability as a strategic naval base - without making it look as if our departure was an abandonment of the responsibilities that had led us to take up the role of Ionian Protector, a betrayal of our allies on the island, or a retreat forced on us by those keen for union with independent Greece. Gladstone found himself utterly absorbed 'in the affairs of these little islands...The complexity of the case is inversely (so to speak) as the extent of the sphere.' (William Gladstone Diary, 31 Dec 1858)
Eleni Calligas is the current expert on this subject - much quoted in other academic studies of these events. Her 1994 doctoral thesis is titled The `Rizospastai' (Radical-Unionists): politics and nationalism in the British Protectorate of the Ionian Islands 1815-1964. [Calligas, E., 1994, A9m British Library ShelfmarkDX187456 Ph.D., London, London School of Economics, 44-9204]
ABSTRACT: When the Ionian Islands were placed under British Protection in 1815, they were granted the right to regulate their internal affairs, but in the resultant 1817 Constitution political power emanated from the High Commissioner and was exercised through an authoritarian system of government. Ionian opposition acquired salient nationalist connotations during the Greek War of Independence although in the 1830s it was mostly confined to demands for liberal constitutional reform expressed by the so-called Ionian liberali. As the British introduced a reform programme that met many of the liberals' demands during the 1840s, a more radical opposition group emerged in Cephalonia, the largest and poorest of the seven islands. These political activists, who became known as the `Rizospastai' (Radical-Unionists), challenged the legitimacy of British Protection and favoured major internal socio-political changes on the basis of the right of national self-determination and the principle of popular sovereignty. Although they were involved in various popular demonstrations of discontent, they remained parliamentarians rather than revolutionaries and promoted their ideology through the press, political clubs and parliament, which they first entered in 1850. The growing popularity of the Rizospastai led the moderate liberal majority to co-operate with the High Commissioner in an effort to eradicate radicalism and exclude its representatives from the islands' polity. Most energetically pursued in Cephalonia, this governmental policy temporarily silenced the old radical leadership. However, a new leadership emerged from Zakynthos and, in the altered circumstances of the late 1850s, it redefined radicalism on purely unionist lines and carried most of the popular base with it. The `old' radicals, still considered heroes by a rather bewildered popular following, were isolated during the last years of the Protectorate and adamantly opposed the terms on which the Ionian Islands were finally ceded to Greece in 1864.
Calligas, Markides and Holland remain intrigued by the history of these years, not least because the dynamic tensions between different groups within the Ionian and mainland polities which Gladstone and his successor Sir Henry Storks in Corfu, Sir Henry Elliott in Athens, Lords Palmerston and Russell in London tried to understand, navigate and exploit, exist but slightly transmuted to this day - they are in the Hellenic grain. I hope there's another book there. I like Calligas's reference to a 'rather bewildered popular following'. Holland and Markides suggest that the way the British government extracted themselves from Corfu served as a precedent for colonial departures to come. What this talented Greek-English authorial collaboration call the 'abandonment' of the Protectorate, was an early model for finessing imperial withdrawal - one that the British have been doing quite well for over a century, and which the English are now doing from Scotland and Wales, after grim practice in Ulster (my talk in Tokyo - "England: her own last colony").
Giving up power is no less fraught than taking it, but there's a more pervasive moral underlying these proposals and rebuttals, interpretations and counter-interpretations of what happened when Corfu and Britain separated - Holland's and Markides' theme being continuing relations between the British and the Hellenes. This is less dry - a matter of passionate inconsistency among all parties; an enduring affaire, full of rumour, misinterpreted motives, hidden agendas, exaggerated simplifications, curses, tearful embraces, forgiveness, anger, reproach, estrangement and reconciliation. Sounds like family.
Anyone seeking real political leverage; any possibility of access to the hi-politics of present Corfu in its relations with Athens, needs to have spent time networking in Brussels and Strasbourg, not to mention building links with other Ionian polities. Kefalonia played the rebel against the Protectorate in the 1860s (MirantaPaximapolou-StavrinouRebellions of Cephalonia in the years 1848 and 1849, Athens 1980). The British executed twenty one men there in 1849.
I respect those trying to make sense of the issues that surround the landfill at Lefkimmi, characterised by secrecy, confusion, miscommunication and now violence. (Lefkimmiblog.forum - in Greek and ditto Lefkimmiblog and ΧΥΤΑ ΛΕΥΚΙΜΜΗΣ and Lefkimmi Demos - the local council.)
Born in Corfu and growing up on the island before emigrating to Australia, Harry Tsoukalas returned to Corfu, enthusiastic from experience in Australia about what could be done in Corfu about 'going green'. He's a civil engineer, a successful businessman directing a Corfu estate agency specialising in selling old houses for renovation. He started the Corfu Heritage Preservation Foundation, using it to get attention from UNESCO to some of Corfu's oldest villages. With his brother, Lefteris, he advises incomers who've bought properties on how to renovate them in ways that respect Corfu's great architectural tradition. In last year's April edition of The Corfiot he announced the first of three recycling yards, charging €50 to receive rubble which, at 20 cubic metres per truckload, would normally cost ten times as much taken to a municipal site. I understand that one of the new recycling sites is near Kontokali on the inland inner road close to Danilia junction [info@petracon.biz 6947269112 or 6932606332]. I've not checked these details. My sources are, in many cases, from Tsoukalas himself, and from Hilary Paipeti, his partner and enthusiatic promoter, but Tsoukalas and his allies (in addition to island jealousies) face conservative inertia on care for the environment that is not special to Greece. Now he is challenging Athens. New ideas start small. Tsoukalas' capacity to cope with threats, ridicule, even contempt, will be a measure of the man and his growing political experience. I realise that we, as EU citizens, can vote in local elections in Corfu.
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26/9/08 Environment Commissioner on climate change BRUSSELS (ANA-MPA/M. Aroni): Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas, replying to a question by the press shortly after his meeting in Brussels with Polish Environment Minister Maciej Nowicki, expressed confidence that the European Union will not back down on the commitments it has undertaken to combat climatic changes as a result of the fiscal crisis. "…the crisis of climatic changes is permanent and it is threatening the planet. It is not permissible that targets should be changed because a crisis has broken out this month or because some other one will break out in the next." See his page on landfill and associated issues - Green Cities for Life - and his warning to Greece earlier in the year.
This book- The British and the Hellenes: Struggles for Mastery in the Eastern Mediterranean 1850-1960 by Robert Holland and Diana Markides [see Richard Clogg's review in The TLS 20/6/07]- has taken ages to come, but I'm delighted it's at last arrived, having awaited with the same eagerness as once, as a child, I anticipated the insertion through our letter box in Hampstead, weekly comics inside a roll of newspapers for grown-ups. In those days - the 1950s - I could smell the newspaper and especially the print - some of which came off on my hands. This book from Oxford University Press is well made, so even though the modern paper is outside my olfactory range I get a faint smell of the binding glue, at least that's Lin's diagnosis, after I'd passed the pristine book across the kitchen table for her to sniff. First sentence:
Greece, Lord Palmerston once remarked, was an 'emotional word'.
The chapters that especially interest me are those linked to the cover image of a troop of British soldiers emerging from the Old Fortress of Corfu, a watercolour, circa 1850, by George Savage MD. Between pages 13 and 80 are Chapter 2 - Gladstone and the Greeks: The Extraordinary Mission to the Ionian Islands, 1858-1859, and Chapter 3 - The Abandonment of the Ionian Protectorate, 1849-1864. At last I get to learn that Gladstones' journey from England to Corfu lasted from just over a fortnight from 8-24 November 1858 via Vienna relying on train, and steamer down the Adriatic (pp.22-24) and he left Corfu on 19 February 1859 on HMS Terrible for Trieste having toured the Ionian Islands and had talks in Athens during his twelve week visit to Greece. I like these kind of details because although I do not expect a reference in the book to the actual document I seek for Thanasis and Kostas I feel closer to the level of detail that I will need to dig around among primary sources at the Public Record Office at Kew.
I think I can get there on 12 March. I phoned this morning and chatted to a friendly librarian. Adrian, who did some swift searches through Colonial Office Records in the ranges suggested to me by Eleni Calligas in her e-mail of 14 January 08:
I would suggest that the best place to look is the High Commissioner's Correspondence at the Colonial Office archive of the Protection, housed in the Public Record Office, now re-named National Archives but still held at the Kew. I would look at the last couple of years, from 1862 onwards - probably starting from CO136/177 to /184. If such a petition does exist and is signed by inhabitants of the village, it would be interesting to identify the local figure of importance, as the initiative probably emanated from there.
He was finding the same things I'd found. The level was too high and I need papers from villages, as described by Thanasis and Kostas in their letter of 5 December '07.
Dear Simon, It is said that before the Union of the Ionian Islands with Greece (1864), inhabitants of Ano Korakiana signed a "paper" asking the British Government to keep the islands under Britain...We have been looking for this paper for years at the Greek archives without result. We wonder if you can help us by searching this paper in British archives (Parliament, Colonies archives, Foreign Office etc). We are sure that one of the names that signed the paper is Panos, Panayiotis or Panagiotis Metallinos (Μετταλινος). He was the 'leader'. A similar paper has been signed by inhabitants of Kinopiastes (another village in Corfu) and one village in Zakynthos island...
[Note from the Ano Korakiana website: The oldest families still existing in Korakiana are ... Savvanis (since 1473), Vradis, Mandilas, Ionas, Markos, Metallinos, Laskaris, kaloudis, Linosporis, Reggis, Balatsinos, and finally, Kendarchos and Kefallonitis during the first half of the 16th century.]
I need to turn up with ID and proof of residence and then I can do some searching there and even order copies of documents. I'm not sanguine about finding any of these papers at once. They are reported, orally, as having been delivered to Sir Henry Storks, who, as a career administrator, took over from Gladstone's Extraordinary posting to the role of Lord High Commissioner of the Ionian Islands, and stayed in that post until the Protectorate ended in 1863. I don't know if the so-called 'papers' or petitions are in English or Greek or both; in print or writing.
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I've been travelling, as usual, for work - London, Cardiff, Brighton, Stafford, Lowestoft, Norwich in the last few days. A glossy brochure (page 8) for my May workshop in Australia has arrived describing a session at the LGMA national conference at Gold Coast. I'm introducing a workshop called IT TAKES TWO TO TANGO: GETTING THE POLITICAL-MANAGEMENT LEADERSHIP ROLES RIGHT:
Executive leadership in local government requires a recognition of the ambiguity, confusion and tension that arises at the overlapping boundaries of political and managerial spheres of action. In this workshop designed for elected officials and senior managers, Simon will show video extracts from a small sample of chief executive and elected member conversations to explain how politicians and managers in the UK jointly create government - a perennial puzzle of increasing consequence for the sector.'
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Meantime several local concerns have arisen over Handsworth Park and Black Patch Park, at recent evening meetings of my neighbours. The community centre on the Black Patch has been closed down but ill-secured for over 18 months so that footballers have no changing room and there's no meeting space for local groups to meet. An e-mail from our secretary, Andrew:
Hi Simon. Sue contacted me this morning about the community centre and I've been down myself this afternoon to have a look. Someone has been inside and broken windows from the inside - also Sue reported evidence that someone has tried to set the building on fire. She has been in touch with Sandwell MBC and the Fire Service. I couldn't get in so the doors appear to be secure but entry via the roof might still be possible. Sue is wondering whether we ought to contact the press about this. Sandwell haven't made any attempt to repair the damage to the roof or taken adequate measures to secure the windows and doors. Our fears are that the damage to the building will become beyond repair! Best Wishes Andrew
While I've agreed, at a meeting of the Handsworth Park Association, last night, to try to get a local councillor to arrange a meeting with the developer and other interested parties over the extended delays in laying out seven acres of private green space to pass on to Birmingham City Council. Here's the basis for a draft letter to Cllr. Kim Brom:
Dear Cllr. Brom. I wonder if you can arrange, as a matter of urgency, a meeting with the developer of the housing on the Victoria Jubilee Allotment, our Community Planning Officer, the Chair of Handsworth Cricket Club, the member of the City's executive who has allotments and sport in their portfolio and the relevant Scrutiny Chair. Graham Winfield, current Chair of the Handsworth Park Association, phoned me in Corfu, saying how concerned he was at the delayed arrival of the very much needed extra sports facilities on the VJA site that were going to be handed over to the city on conclusion of the 106A. As it is a large area of valuable green space - grass seeded with some remaining hedgerows is just sitting there. I was well aware the implementation of the planning gain deal was delayed. The developer was claiming the agreement included a provision to delay laying out the allotments, playing fields and other elements of the agreed plan until they had disposed of 40 units of the 80 houses on the site. By last July they had sold 20 (their figures and these may not be accurate now). This provision was not confirmed by the Planning Department. The matter is complicated by the change of developer (under terms I don't know) from Westbury to Church Homes. I've raised this matter twice at Ward Area sub and other meetings. During 2007 we've had the continuing problem of the 'green pathway' that was agreed as being integral to the original plan but which cannot connect the site to the Park because there's a 'hostage strip' of private land between the fence and the park where that gate should be. It is the garden of one house garden designed in by the developer which effectively means we have a public gate to nowhere and therefore makes the path impossible - so that what we feared and spoke strongly against, is a separation between the Park and the VJA site's recreational resources, and indeed the link between the park and the new housing. I understand the city planning department is, for the moment, not budging on this and even Alan Orr is unhappy about it. What the committee make of it when it is presented to them I don't know and perhaps a 'fudge' has been privately agreed that we don't know about.
There's problem brewing here. The worst case involves the developer goes broke or selling to another developer who then lobbies to have more of the site to build cheaper homes so they can make what they view as a workable profit from the site. Meantime the community loses not only the land already built on, but yet more green space, and the planning gain deal is rejigged to provide fewer allotments and sports space and the project to bring new allotments and sports space into the area as part of Handsworth Park, is delayed for years...
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Just before I left the house where we'd had our meeting I saw a dark hard-wood bust of an African woman, along with other items that Dlci told me came from an artist friend in Kenya. As I examined the bust, she showed me privately taken colour photographs of people lying dead in their church in pools of dried blood following one of the violent episodes spreading across Kenya. The art is a from a Kenyan friend. The photos were sent by her to raise money and to show what has happened to her neighbours and relatives. I thought, in my safety, of Kevin Andrews' reference to murder driven by :...uncritical, unquestioning adherence to the revolting shame of lesser people’s stupidity, cynicism and cheapness.' (p.185 The Flight of Ikaros)
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One of my mentor texts came in useful the other day when I was arguing about what could and couldn't be taught about political awareness in government. I said I'd learned from the Meno about problems of teaching things no-one can satisfactorily define. "But" I said "you can demonstrate its existence" "I'll accept that" he said."Conversation helps" I said "and knowledge". The Meno patently indicates Socrates' courage; the vexation amounting to rage his words induced in some, and the danger he faced for being so persistently awkward. With Meno, the young man in the eponymous dialogue about the impossibility of teaching virtue, is sometimes uncomfortable, but there's respect even amid Meno's bewildered consternation, but, near its conclusion, the Democrat Antyus is drawn into the dialogue. Socrates had been arguing that even Thucydides for all his qualities could not teach his children to be good:
SOCRATES: Now, can there be a doubt that Thucydides, whose children were taught things for which he had to spend money, would have taught them to be good men, which would have cost him nothing, if virtue could have been taught. Will you reply that he was a mean man, and had not many friends among the Athenians and allies? Nay, but he was of a great family, and a man of influence at Athens and in all Hellas, and, if virtue could have been taught, he would have found out some Athenian or foreigner who would have made good men of his sons, if he could not himself spare the time from cares of state. Once more, I suspect, friend Anytus, that virtue is not a thing which can be taught.
ANYTUS: Socrates, I think that you are too ready to speak evil of men: and, if you will take my advice, I would recommend you to be careful. Perhaps there is no city in which it is not easier to do men harm than to do them good, and this is certainly the case at Athens, as I believe that you know.
SOCRATES: O Meno, think that Anytus is in a rage. And he may well be in a rage, for he thinks, in the first place, that I am defaming these gentlemen; and in the second place, he is of the opinion that he is one of them himself. But some day he will know what is the meaning of defamation, and if he ever does, he will forgive me. Meanwhile I will return to you, Meno..
At no point in this conversation has Socrates spoken evil, though Antyus had already reiterated contempt for Sophists - paid teachers of wisdom. How I loath sentences that include "if you take my advice", let alone the barely veiled threat "I would recommend you to be careful. Perhaps there is no city in which it is not easier to do men harm..."
[The images illustrating 'conversation' and 'knowledge' are from my research on the 'construction of trust' between politicians and administrators in government. They are in the public domain with permission from participants]
