St Ives, Cornwall
Emailing a friend in Boston, I reported that winter had been so benign in southern England this year that it was bound to snow in Cornwall at Easter. Not so. I write just after dawn as a fishing boat chugs across the tranquil bay in bright sunshine. The week’s weather promises to be as near perfect as any since my siblings and I first started our annual family reunion in rented cottages here in 1983. Wonderful. And the Sloop Inn (‘circa 1305’) has now installed a wireless connection for the laptop.
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Not all is calm. This region is steeped in military history, but its media seems almost as indignant as Fleet St about the Iran hostage incident. The Western Morning News calls the detainees ‘15 West Country-based sailors and marines’ just as 2nd Lt. Joanna Dyer, killed by a roadside bomb in Basra, is a ‘West Girl’. Missing as usual from the debate is the media’s own thespian role. Tehran’s government knows the Western media (Western Morning News included) will over-react; that armchair generals of Right and Left will denounce a supine/bellicose Blair government; that Brigadier Max Hastings will take yet another poke at the navy. And who buys the ‘hostages’ harrowing stories’? Why, the same media which denounces their sale to rivals. I thought the Tehran 15 conducted themselves well enough during a brief but unpleasant ordeal and that the nation’s moral fibre remains intact. It usually does, despite the seasonal bleating of the bishops. But remember: lifeboatmen risk their lives for free.
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Of course there should be a proper Labour leadership contest. In theory. My objection to one in practice is that being Anyone But Gordon is an insufficient qualification to run and lose to the most influential Chancellor since Geoffrey Howe. Why? Because it would be so personal. The Venerable Alan Watkins argues that Labour’s distinguished 1976 contest was not divisive, though the Healey–Benn re-run was in 1981. But surely the better comparison is the Bevan–Gaitskell feud, founded on mutual loathing: that poison still lingers. Gordon Brown is Labour’s destiny, whether for better or worse, we will only be sure when it happens.
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The socialite and historian Andrew Roberts has set a new benchmark for name-dropping in this column. I cannot compete. When people hear I come from Cornwall they sometimes ask, ‘Do you know the Bolithos?’ or some other old county family. Er, no. The height of my social achievement hereabouts was to sleep with William Shawcross — on the Paddington–Penzance sleeper. I caught a mere glimpse of expensive boxer shorts as the Robertsian polymath took the top bunk. It was only in the buffet car next morning that we discovered we were both heading to the degree ceremony at Falmouth College of Arts, now University College. Its wily principal, Alan Livingston, is a driving force behind Cornwall finally getting its own university. Despite the presence of well-to-do second-homers and retirees, England’s poorest county needs all available help. It now gets some from worldly Eddie George, late of the Bank, who has retired to St Tudy. I don’t know him either.
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One of the good things about working among younger people, as you tend to do at 61, is that they keep you informed. Last week I learnt of my debut on YouTube, the video-sharing website. Someone had posted Newsnight exchanges between me and Paul Staines, libertarian author of the popular Guido Fawkes blog. Guido attacks wicked politicians and mainstream media (MSM) hacks like me and Paxo. But he undermined his case for openness by insisting on appearing in silhouette, the pre-ministerial IRA look. We shared nearly 2,000 YouTube hits. Not much by new media standards, but a start.
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At a party to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary, my wife, who had just kissed Barry Humphries, asked our hosts why they were holding one. ‘Because we’re still alive,’ came the reply. ‘Because people our age usually meet only at funerals.’ Pat was so impressed by this answer that she promptly set about organising a family party this week. Held in the Western Hotel, one of the six ‘old St Ives’ pubs where our seafaring father used to drink, it was a success, albeit in a sub-Roberts way. We snubbed the county families and George W. Bush, inviting only the 33 kinsfolk and close friends attending the reunion from as far away as Toronto and Auckland. Our coup was getting our step-cousin, Thomas Major, who has farmed above St Ives most of his 65 years. He came a mile down the hill in a rare visit to what locals increasingly regard as alien, tourist territory, mostly owned by outsiders. An American Major once traced the family line in St Ives back to the 16th century. As my aunt, Gertie Major, used to say, ‘Good enough.’
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Having failed elsewhere to provoke hostility to the bronze ‘Women of World War II’ memorial just north of the Cenotaph in Whitehall since 2005, can I try again? It is both ugly and presumes to invite comparison with Lutyens’s masterpiece. Women made gallant contributions in both wars and Leading Seaman Turney showed her mettle in Tehran. But it is not quite like mass slaughter in the trenches.
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Michael White is assistant editor (politics) of the Guardian.
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