Between the Lines: Late night horrors (1986)

The Between the Lines column from the June 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Late night horrors

I have just finished watching the all-night local election results coverage (BBC1/ITV, 8-9 May) A depressing experience:

Dimbleby: Well, we've just heard that Labour has held Hackney, the Conservatives hold Harrow. Waltham Forest could be close. What do you think about Waltham Forest. Peter?

Snow: Well. David, if the computer is right it looks like Waltham Forest could be picked up by Labour (Picked up? Isn't that an expression used by hookers? SC)

Dimbleby: Interesting. And the Alliance has given the Conservatives a good run in Kingston on Thames. (A run into the Thames would be the preferred route! SC) What does the panel have to say about Waltham Forest. Robin?

Sir Robin Day, looking very much like he is enjoying the facilities of Broadcasting House which is not affected by the licensing laws, grins at a panel of faces one half recognises.

Baker: What one has to realise. Robin, is that midterm blues is not surprising.

Cunningham: This is a great night for Labour. (Being paid a few hundred quid for sitting in a studio mouthing platitudes would be a great night for any con-man. SC)

Steel: And it's a terrific night for the Alliance - to some extent.

Baker: Labour is in the grip of a bunch of commie queers. (Or words to that effect).

Cunningham: Hard luck, Baker: it's our turn to screw the wage slaves now.

Steel: But we'd like to help as much as we can please.

Dimbleby: And we've just heard that the capitalists have picked up the means of wealth production and distribution. Any news on the computer Peter? 

Snow: This could definitely have implications for Waltham Forest, David.

Dimbleby: And over to Islington Town Hall now; it seems that all the councillors are in the subsidised bar thinking about the poor. . . Let's just go over to Rydale — yes, it looks as if there might be a slight swing against the feudal system there . . . And the working class has voted to abolish the wages system in Waltham Forest.

Snow: Stop playing Star Wars on my computer. 

Robin: I'm trying to give viewers the impression that they've been doing something meaningful in the polling stations.

Next time round, use your vote for socialism: vote for yourself for a change. In addition to all the other good reasons for doing s, it will take this contemptible, ridiculous mockery of democracy from our screens.

Ealing culture

If asked to define the main characteristics of post-war English culture it would be hard not to mention the names of Michael Balcon and T. E. B. Clarke. Balcon owned and very much controlled the Ealing film studios, the subject of an Omnibus documentary (BBC2, 5 May). Balcon, an immigrant who came to Birmingham and was obsessed by the culture of small-village Englishness. was a man whose mission was to transmit the smugness and the amusing peculiarities of life in England. When he asked a group of film critics to bear in mind the studio's virtues when they condemned its vices, one critic responded wittily that he could willingly forgive Ealing's vices, but not its virtues. The studio was the home of imperial cinema — war glorified. English characters seen as possessing unique strengths, the contradictions of life neatly written out. Clarke was the main writer at Ealing and his film scripts tell more about what English conservative ideology is all about than many a lofty treatise could do. An ex-policeman, Clarke's conception of cosy English life had no time for the class struggle, but only for decent bobbies (usually including Jack Warner) fighting to defend civilisation as it is experienced in the home counties against any characters who have not accepted the rules of the system.

Materialism and consciousness

Nicholas Humphrey, a Cambridge zoologist, has presented a very worthwhile series of programmes called The Inner Eye (C4, Mondays. 10pm) in which he has attempted to show how humans are uniquely conscious and how this consciousness is a material product. His references have been educative and his arguments presented convincingly. Humphrey upset animal liberationists by denying that any other species possesses consciousness like that of human beings. Someone went into the videobox on Right To Reply (C4, Friday 30 April) to say that Humphrey obviously didn't know her dog which is quite as conscious as she is, and a foolish young philosopher from Balliol College. Oxford had a studio debate with Humphrey in which the former's case for animal intelligence rested on the fact that dogs bark when you kick them. Humphrey stated that he is a materialist and pointed out that reacting to being kicked is one thing, working out how not to be kicked again is quite another. For some reason I kept thinking about that remark as I watched the election results.

Steve Coleman