It is my recollection that even as a schoolboy in the privileged cloisters of Eton I was disturbed by news of the Peterloo massacre in Manchester; later in life I considered it a special honour to speak in the Free Trade Hall in remembrance of those much-maligned agitators for democracy.
Indeed a poet coined these words:
Shades, that soft Sedition woo,
Around the haunts of Peterloo!
That hover o'er the meeting-halls,
Where many a voice stentorian bawls!
Still flit the sacred choir around,
With "Freedom" let the garrets ring,
And vengeance soon in thunder sound
On Church, and constable, and king.
I confess - there were my own juvenile scribblings. Later in life I rose to condemn an equally appalling massacre in Ireland.
My recollections are stirred as fresh news seeps into the British consciousness daily of the G20 horror, to which I referred briefly previously, - it cannot thankfully be termed a massacre - in London, a disgraceful attempt to suppress the liberties of the people, even as America's new young liberal president visited our nation for the first time. President Obama cannot but have thought the British soul has not moved on from the dying days of imperialism had he heard of these events.
It is gratifying to see that my successor Mr Nick Clegg continues to uphold the banner of liberty and has even now been commended by conservative writers for his foresight.
Indeed just as I write I hear that the victim of the G20 horror died not from failure of his heart but from injuries caused by assault. The matter becomes more serious by the day.
Sadly it cannot be hoped that the Queen's ghillie will in any way seek to restore liberties to this nation. Whether tainted solely by power or by the collectivist spirit of socialism, he appears to operate in the shadows, deploying, with increasing ineffectiveness, his forces to suppress the people and malign his opponents.
President Obama in contrast is to be complimented for exposing the corrupted advice that led to his country's agents indulging in torture of suspects. It is to be hoped that in his desire to lay the past to rest he does not allow the guilty to escape free.
WEG
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1 comment:
Sadly, my dear Gladstone, it would seem that is exactly what he is going to do.
Part of the reason, I suspect stems from a certain sense of restraint. During the very early months of the first Bush Administration, many critics noticed that it bent over backwards being the anti-Clinton Administration. Without comment, study, or forethought, they simply reversed course across the board on any number of Clinton Administration policies. I believe that, while many in the US would prefer it, Obama is being quite deliberate in pursuit of changing course in certain details. This has resulted, for example, in the Obama Justice Department continuing legal arguments begun in the Bush Administration regarding state secrets. Like the announcement that there won't be rigorous pursuit of those who either defended torture, or created the phony legal framework within which it existed, this has caused a whole lot of consternation - to say the least - among many of the President's more vocal supporters.
Including me.
While I understand what is going on, that doesn't mean I have to like it.
As for what is occurring in Britain, all I can say is your Mr. Brown is suffering a bit from lack-of-popularity syndrome, no?
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