Transcriber: Denise RQ Reviewer: Miloš Milosavljević
Ladies and gentlemen,
scientists and anthropologists tell us,
that what saved we, humans, from extinction in the savannah country
on the northern rim of what is now Kenya, a million or so years ago,
when the climate moved against us,
was two things: first of all, brains.
Our abnormally large brains,
three times the size of our closest relations, the chimpanzee,
gave us unusual abilities to think and to integrate knowledge.
Secondly, chat.
Our ability to communicate that knowledge with the degree of precision
that enabled us to pool what we knew:
"Wouldn't go that way... no water for days," that sort of thing.
And in so doing, it enabled us to get out
what it could have been a terminal scrape for we, humans,
and instead, we found our way to this banqueting hall this afternoon.
Ideas and the capacity to transmit and share them,
are our trump cards as a species.
Those trump cards have mattered, ladies and gentlemen,
every minute, every hour, from that day to this.
Not least, to the sustenance of our ability to govern ourselves,
without, we hope, excessive rancour,
that is through politics, debate and discussion,
instead of violence, war and destruction.
Viewed like this, chat plus politics
is a precious and all too fragile combination,
so the question of politics and language is, or should be,
a vital one for every generation,
for everyone, everywhere,
whatever the political system in which they live and breathe.
Every generation should worry about it.
I certainly do.
And there is, I think, plenty to be worried about.
Not that I am a golden-ager,
that the past was a better place. Far from it.
Have a listen, with me,
to that great 19th century British political novelist Anthony Trollope,
writing in 1855-56. This is what he said:
"It is the trade of the opponent to attack,
it is the trade of the newspaper to be indignant,
it is the trade of the Minister to defend,
and the world looks on, believing none of them."
Sounds familiar.
Pure Leveson country,
to bring it back to our domestic affairs of today.
And Trollope's Britain remember, was a country of political titans,
Peel, Gladstone, Disraeli.
We can and should go back, even further,
for deep wisdom on this theme,
to the Chinese philosopher Confucius and his Analects, in the 5th century B.C.
Confucius was asked, what he would do
if he was invited to run his country.
And here's what he said:
"Correct the language.
If language is not correct, then what is said, is not what is meant,
and what ought to be done, remains undone.
Morals, the arts, will deteriorate. Justice will go astray.
And the people would stand around in helpless confusion."
The nearest I've come to finding a British Confucius writing on this theme
is the incomparable political writer, social observer and novelist,
George Orwell, an austere hero of mine,
who died far too young in 1950.
In April 1946, just under a year before I was born,
Orwell published a classic essay, which has given me my title for today,
"Poltics and the English language."
In the latest Penguin paperback edition, it's only a dozen or so pages long.
Orwell, who loathed totalitarianism and tirany in all their forms,
was still reeling
from the violent hijacking of political language
by the recently defeated fascist parties of World War II.
And he hated the way stilted language
was used by Stalin's Soviet Union as a weapon of propaganda and deceit.
He was almost as hard on Western governments and authors
for their slovenly and jargon-laden use of language.
And Orwell's thesis was thoroughly Confucian.
Here's Orwell in full flow:
"Now it is clear that the decline of a language
must ultimately have political and economic causes.
It is not done simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer,
but in effect can become a cause,
reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect
in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely."
Orwell went on: "A man may take to drink
because he feels himself to be a failure,
and then fail all the more completely, because he drinks.
It is rather the same thing that's happening to the English language.
It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish,
but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us
to have foolish thoughts."
Every political generation, ladies and gentlemen,
is blighted by a version of this.
In our own time, it's a peculiar mixture of the evangelical --
the language of the mission tent --
and business jargon, the curse of management consultees.
Have you noticed that everyone, but everyone in politics, business,
or even in my beloved university world,
is expected to have a vision?
When I was a young boy, growing up as a Catholic in North London in the 1950s
we left visions to mystics
which is where they belong. (Laughter)
The straplines that go with these visions and mission statements
often take the form of prefabricated one-liners,
stale and worn with repetition and overfamiliarity.
"People are our greatest resource,"
"change is our ally,"
"quality in the pursuit of excellence is our aim,"
bollocks on stilts, all of it.
(Laughter)
And have you noticed that the word 'solution'
has spread everywhere like a rash?
You see a lorry on the motorway: "Transport Solutions."
Unbearable. (Laughter)
Political programmes are always rolled out as if they were so much pastry.
A generation back,
it was the grocery trade which was the linguistic pacemaker.
We were forever on the receiving end from our governments
of packages of measures.
Top executives receive compensation packages
or, in our language, yours and mine, pay and perks.
Now, endless initiatives are rolled out going forward.
(Laughter)
Even our dear monarch has to endure this, when she reads out the Queen's Speech
at the beginning of each session of Parliament.
I don't know how she does it. Unendurable.
I am not sure that she thinks that, I certainly wouldn't know,
but I couldn't manage it,
-- one of the many reasons you'll be relieved to hear
why I do not aspire to be your constitutional monarch.
(Laughter)
Other Confucian and Orwellian questions,
even more acute in the early part of the 21st century,
-- and in one sense they are, and why is this?
Because the perpetually intrusion of round-the-clock media
and the constant presence of cameras in the age of electronic news gathering,
in the vicinity of political figures,
-- all the time, pretty well, if they are senior --
means that they dare not think aloud,
they cannont resist spontaneity.
They resort, therefore,
to carefully prepared and highly spun one-liners,
or to staccato paragraphs,
tailor-made for their endless news bulletins.
The best you can hope for from them, these days,
are, what are known in the trade as well-rehearsed spontaneities.
I think, ladies and gentlemen,
great prizes await for the first top politician or politicians,
who rationale their appearances, refuse to succumb to the temptation
of perpetual self-assertions of insight, foresight and purpose,
and break with their instinct for instant rebuttal
of those political opponents who hurl accusations at them.
It would take nerve to do this, and a very high degree of self-confidence,
but it would pay dividends amongst people in the deeply sound-bitten society,
[and] it was Trollope who said all those years ago:
"Remain undeceived."
Yet, for all my anxieties, I am an utter romantic about Parliament,
paraliamentary traditions,
and the indispensability of genuine government-by discussion.
For example, I never fail to be moved by Winston Churchill's words
at a very grim moment during the First World War.
Imagine the scene -- just down the road
-- it's March 1917, late one night
Churchill is leaving the House of Commons
with MacCallum Scott, a fellow Liberal MP,
who recorded what happened in his diary:
"As we were leaving the House that night,
he called me into the Chamber to take a last look round;
all was darkness,
except a ring of faint light, all around under the gallery.
We could dimly see the table, but walls and roof were invisible.
'Look at it,' he said, 'Look at it!'
This little place is what makes the difference between us and Germany.
It is in virtue of this that we shall muddle through to success,
and for lack of this, Germany's briliant efficiency
leads her to final destruction.
This little room is the shrine of the world's liberties."
Wonderful, incomparable stuff.
I'm one of those parliamentarians
for whom the walls of the Palace of Westminster talk.
I hear the sounds of those who have gone before,
and I sense the presence of those on whose shoulders we seek to stand
when we try to debate and legislate as wisely as we can.
And for me, in parliamentary terms,
that liberty of which Churchill spoke
is bound with hoops of gold
to the careful use of language as the key medium of political exchange.
I am not a pessimist,
though that's how I may sound to some of you today.
George Orwell wasn't a pessimist either, back in 1946.
"The point," he wrote, "is that the process is reversable.
Bad habits which spread by imitation can be avoided," he declared,
"if only people would take the trouble."
Orwell rounded off his classic essay with six rules,
which, if I had my way, would be placed on a card
and presented to each new member of the House of Commons,
and the House of Lords,
and hung on the walls of every party political press office, media newsroom,
and that penumbra of politically charged think tanks and pressure groups,
which between them seek to influence Government,
and sway Parliament.
Here's Orwell sextet:
"One: Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech
which you are used to seeing in print.
Two: Never use a long word where a short one will do.
Three: If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
Four: Never use the passive where you can use the active.
Five: Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word
if you can think of an everyday English equivalent."
And finally, a sixth rule, which is very, very Orwell:
"Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous."
Today I'm sure, and some of you will have noticed,
I've broken several of the Orwell's rules,
in what I've said, now I've said it,
but the 'Orwell's Six' are our gold standard.
The decencies and effectiveness of our politics and our democracy,
and therefore our liberty,
depend upon us aspiring to them with humility and determination,
and suffering remorse, when we fall short.
Thank you so much for having me with you this afternoon.
(Applause)