plus ça change ...

[Michael Grove]

  ... plus c'est la même chose.

 I first read Bernard Nossiter's epic book, shortly after it had been published

 in 1978, and I suppose the seed of my own concept of A NEW MODEL for, 

 by and of ALL the PEOPLES of Spaceship Earth • which established an

 empathic version of GLOBAL FUNCTIONALLY DEMOCRATIC GOVERNANCE •

 was sown by the reading of the final chapter entitled A Model of Sorts,

 which opened with the following paragraph ...

 "THE genuinely pathological features of British life - racism, violence,

  corruption, financial scandal - frequently burst on an unsuspecting 

  public with little warning and less examination. Despite a press that is

  often vigorous and a television that is the envy of the world, Britons tend

  to be shielded from what they need to know. In[DEED], the very refusal

  to examine real problems can make them worse.

  Dilip Hiro, whose Black British, White British, IS one of the more useful 

  studies of race, suggests that the absence of open discussion has deepened

  tensions. 'Appeals for frankness,' Hiro writes, 'do not seem to weaken the

  middle-class belief that talking about a problem creates one.' He cites a

  leading television executive, Jeremy Isaacs, who had acknowledged ...

 
  "Television current affairs deliberately underplayed the strength of

   racist feelings for years, out of the misguided but honourable feeling

   that inflammatory utterances could only do damage. But the way

   feelings erupted after Enoch Powell's speech this year [1968] was

   evidence to me that the feeling has been under-represented on

   television, and other media." 

  In much the same way, William Deedes, a former Tory minister and later

  editor of The Daily Telegraph, ruefully discovered 'the most damaging division'

  between a government sympathetic to the plight of immigrants and a hostile

  section of the governed. 'To talk of conspiracy of silence among national and

  local leaders is unjust,' Deedes wrote. 'More accurately there has been . . .

  a shyness, a nervousness about the subject which has inhibited frank

  discussion.' Deedes, a gentle man, is almost too kind. A strong elitist

  strain runs through the dominant layers of British life - the judiciary,

  high-ranking civil servants, government ministers, newspaper publishers,

  television executives, financial and business leaders. They see

  themselves as guardians of a society that cannot bear too much

  information, an overexposure to the truth. They do not believe many

  citizens are capable of understanding what top people claim to

  understand; therefore common people must not be burdened

  with it. This IS the adage that 'Nanny knows best'. Its guiding rule is,

  'Don't make a fuss'. 

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