Urinating on Blair's wall

For all the attacks on Tony Blair's memoir, A Journey, reviewers have found it hard to identify many outright errors of the sort commonly found in instant history, too instantly written. Top of one paper's challenges mounted last week (I can't find the reference on-line) was the claim that Blair couldn't be right about his story on page 274 about being threatened in the late 1980s by a 'large knife' near his home on Stavordale Road, Highbury, when he challenged a 'bloke urinating against a wall'.

The story is told by Blair to show his early intolerance of anti-social behaviour and determination to find the new ways to stop it that became the notorious ASBOs.

"I walked on. I hated it. I hated the fact that he did it. I hated even more that fact that I didn't stop him. I hated the choice I was made to make: stop him and risk ending your life because someone urinated in the street - hardly the stuff of martyrdom - or walk on".

The story was challenged in the newspaper on the grounds that. Blair did not report the incident to the police at the time. Yet the danger of reporting to the police a man-with-a-knife, who knows where you live, for an offence near your home for which he would never be prosecuted, was precisely what propelled Blair into seeking other ways of public protection.

As the person who sold Blair that house on Stavordale Road around 1985, I can confirm that the incident itself is wholly credible. Urine and knives abounded.

I haven't posted a blog for a few days because reading A Journey was not a short trip. My TLS review is in the current edition.

Comments

[Oliver Nicholson]

I thought that this circular, received from the Countryside Alliance, might provide a little commentary on your observation that "reviewers have found it hard to identify many outright errors of the sort commonly found in instant history".

Blair and hunting - the truth

Tony Blair's reputation for not being wholly wedded to the truth has been supported by more important evidence than his behaviour over the Hunting Act, but that issue and his re-writing of history in his newly published memoir, 'A Journey,' typifies his delusion. In it he says that the hunting ban is "one of the domestic legislative measures I most regret," but claims he ensured that the Hunting Act was "a masterly British compromise" that left enough loopholes to allow hunting to continue "provided certain steps were taken to avoid cruelty when the fox is killed."

To anyone with the most limited understanding of the Parliamentary process that put the Act on the Statute Book this is complete and utter nonsense. Blair's Government, after a Government Inquiry and years of public and political debate, published a Hunting Bill in December 2002. That Bill did not seek to ban hunting. It would have allowed fox hunting and other activities to continue if they could persuade a tribunal they could meet twin tests based on 'utility' and 'cruelty'. The Bill would, however, have banned stag hunting and coursing outright. In defiance of all logic, but to no one's surprise, Labour MPs in the House of Commons rejected the Government's proposals for licensing and, led by Gerald Kaufman and the late Tony Banks, turned the bill into a complete ban on all hunting.

The House of Lords, however, was ready to compromise and instead of rejecting the ban entirely turned the Bill back into its original 'licensing' form. Although, after Defra Minister Alun Michael's claim that there was incontrovertible evidence that staghunting was cruel was condemned as 'scientifically illiterate' by the scientist who carried out the definitive study of staghunting, the Lords did amend the original licensing Bill to allow the tribunal to consider applications for a licence from all types of hunts. It also introduced a conservation element into the tests so that hunts could support license applications on the grounds of environmental benefits.

With only 20% of even Labour peers supporting it there was quite obviously no way that the House of Lords was ever going to support a total ban on hunting. Without the support of peers a ban could only be passed using the mighty constitutional hammer of the Parliament Acts (the very rarely used route by which Bills can become law without the assent of the House of Lords) which put Blair in a remarkably strong position to push through a classic New Labour 'middle way' resolution.

But by the summer of 2004 things were not going well for Blair in the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP). Iraq, Foundation Hospitals and any number of other unpopular policies were causing dissent in the ranks and at every PLP meeting one issue was at the top of backbenchers' agenda: they wanted the Hunting Act back in its banning form in a timescale that would engage the Parliament Act. Gerald Kaufman even wrote a comment piece in The Guardian stating that he would vote against the Government on Foundation Hospitals for the first time in his long, long parliamentary career if it did not give him a hunting ban. By July Chief Whip Hilary Armstrong and Leader of the House Peter Hain, never shy of trying to endear himself to his colleagues, went to Blair and told him that they could not hold the PLP unless he gave them their hunting ban, and he agreed in the full knowledge of exactly what he was doing.

For the first and only time in 13 years of Labour Government, Parliament was recalled in September. The Hunting Bill was brought back as a total ban and on September 15th 2004 it passed all stages in the Commons in one day despite massive demonstrations. Blair emerged from Downing Street to vote against the ban, but this act, like the denials in his book, was completely duplicitous. By bringing back the Bill and engaging the Parliament Act he had sabotaged a carefully crafted position which should have allowed the Government and parliament to agree a workable licensing regime.

The Daily Telegraph's Matt cartoon, November 2004

The law that was passed does not allow hunting to continue "provided certain steps were taken to avoid cruelty when the fox is killed". It bans nearly all hunting of nearly all species. This was not "a masterly British compromise," it was a craven retreat from evidence and logic for short term political ends. If there is any compromise it is in the enforcement of the law, and Blair can claim no credit for passing an Act which is both so illogical and so reviled by every single person it is meant to affect that the police take the view that they have better things to do than try and make it work.

Tony Blair's re-writing of history is not going to fool anyone. He, and he alone, was responsible for the rejection of the 'middle way' proposals for licensed hunting and the passing of a complete ban on all hunting. A compromise was on the table, but by bringing back the Hunting Bill as a complete ban in a timetable that allowed the Parliament Acts to be used he created one of the most illiberal, ineffective and wasteful laws of modern times. The fact that he knew what he was doing was wrong makes his actions more reprehensible, not less.

[peter stothard]

what i meant were errors confusing edinburgh and glasgow (which he does once) rather than deliberate spinning around of his record (which is one of the reasons for doing the book in the first place). . .

[Clayton Burns]

A man capable of confusing Edinburgh and Glasgow has got some talent--I thought they were already hopelessly confused.

This is a man ("Barn Owl" Blair) who--according to his own testimony--feasted on his wife as if she were a field mouse.

Is that leadership for you?

Sir Peter knows how to deliver the copy. I especially enjoyed the correlates--the looting metaphors, etc. (So as to be British, I didn't put the dot after etc, but unfortunately I had to snap it in there at the end of the sentence).

[Oliver Nicholson]

Point taken.

Bumper stickers seen in the Lowlands:
Glasgow 's miles better
Edinburgh 's slightly superior

[Shelley]

I'm not a big Blair fan, and the culture I write about is worlds away from England, but still--I liked this story. Men shouldn't have to feel embarrassed when they choose life over death. That's not chicken; it's smart.

[Candadai Tirumalai]

During the 21 years I lived in England, including two in London, I never saw anyone urinating in public, perhaps because of the public and pub urinals available there. I did see one or two students vomiting on a street in college-crowded Oxford, aided by their sympathetic friends. On the first day of a week-long stay in Rome in 1974, however, I saw an old man, undoubtedly with an urgent bladder, urinating against a wall. At first I wondered whether he was trying to decipher an ancient inscription but then I heard a group of Roman boys whistling at him in derision. The old man was hardly perturbed. I can't imagine Tony Blair being too crtical of him.

[Alan Beard]

OK in the 80s there might not have been any excuse to urinate against a wall, but now people don't have much choice due to the lack of public toilets. In my home town (I no longer live there) - Tewkesbury - every single public convenience has been closed down. What's a man (or a woman for that matter)with a full bladder and a mile or so to walk home after the pubs have shut to do? Perhaps not to do it so openly would be more polite, but nevertheless urinating in public is bound to increase with facilities closing down. What might been more community spirited of Blair was to campaign for more toilets to be opened in the area where he lived. I haven't read the book but I hope he does also comment about whether there were any toilets in the vicinity.

[C. R. Tate]

During a visit to London from the U.S. in the early 1980s, my mother and I chanced to witness a young man urinating in the bushes alongside St. Paul's. Although it was obvious what he was doing, he was being as discreet about it as possible under the circumstances. We attributed this to the good manners which we then believed to be inherent in the English. Oh, and we didn't remain at the scene long enough to notice whether or not he was carrying a destructive weapon of any type. This comment has nothing whatsoever to do with Mr. Blair, of whom I am not an admirer.

[C. R. Tate]

During a visit to London from the U.S. in the early 1980s, my mother and I chanced to witness a young man urinating in the bushes alongside St. Paul's. Although it was obvious what he was doing, he was being as discreet about it as possible under the circumstances. We attributed this to the good manners which we then believed to be inherent in the English. Oh, and we didn't remain at the scene long enough to notice whether or not he was carrying a destructive weapon of any type. This comment has nothing whatsoever to do with Mr. Blair, of whom I am not an admirer.

[Clayton Burns]

I suggest an edit in C. R. Tate's otherwise excellent post:

"Oh, and we didn't remain at the scene long enough to notice whether or not he was... Mr. Blair...".

Perhaps delicacy accounts for the double posting.

[paul raymond-camp]

Well done Peter Stothard! I think it's terribly important that intellectuals like yourself keep their readership up to speed on critical issues such as this; if we follow the trail of urine, we may find the killer. All we'll need is a little courage.

[adam]

What I enjoyed most about Blair/Bush was the way they caused the left-liberal intellectuals to froth at the mouth.

It is a sorry state of the world that no-one is currently filling this position.