Текст книги "Glimpses of Britain. Reader"

Stunning victory routed French and Spanish and changed history

By John Keegan

The Daily Telegraph

Friday, October 21, 2005

October 21, Trafalgar Day, used to be marked by the hoisting on Nelson’s column in London of Nelson’s Trafalgar signal – England expects that every man will do his duty.

It made a brave display, the coloured bunting flapping against the grey stone column at Nelson’s feet, and it was popular with Londoners, but it isn’t to modern tastes.

Curiously, the signal nearly didn’t appear. Nelson’s first version was that “Nelson confides” but his flag lieutenant pointed out that those words were not in the code book and would have to be spelled out letter by letter, so he changed his mind. The signal provoked grumbles in the fleet from old salts who mumbled that they had always done their duty. Nelson, however, was on tenterhooks. He had been planning the encounter with the French – with whom the Spanish had recently become allied – for months. He was determined to win and to destroy the combined fleet in the process.

Only by a complete victory could he make England safe from Napoleon, who had filled every estuary and port on the Channel coast with invasion barges to carry his army, camped on the cliffs outside Boulogne, to England.

Little as he knew of naval warfare, Napoleon did recognise that he could not risk the Grand Army at sea while the Royal Navy was still intact and near at hand.

He had therefore charged his admiral Villeneuve to draw off the British squadrons which blockaded his fleet in its harbours. He rightly doubted that he could successfully challenge the British to action. The unfortunate Villeneuve found himself caught between two fires, the raging impatience of the Emperor and the massed guns of the Royal Navy.

He sought a middle way out. On March 30 he sailed from Toulon for the West Indies, hoping to draw the British Mediterranean fleet behind him, lose it somewhere across the Atlantic and get back into European waters, free to mount an offensive against whatever British ship remained to menace the invasion barges.

Villeneuve got to the West Indies but on arrival found Nelson attached as firmly to his tail as if he had been dragged behind. He could not break the attachment when he turned for home. Arriving in Spanish waters in August, he found Nelson still up with him, where he remained as summer turned to autumn. Villeneuve also found carping letters from Napoleon, accusing him of fearing to fight.

In the end Villeneuve decided to fight, but wrote to the French navy minister that he did not know what to do. Nelson knew exactly what to do. He had worked out a method of fighting a large scale naval battle and now fretted to put it into effect.

On leave at Merton, in what today is south London, he had his captains down to be instructed in the new tactics. He would brief them again when he saw them the day before the battle off Cadiz near Gibraltar.

Nelson’s plan was to solve the problem of sailing down on the enemy with the wind, which always left the opponent with the option of sailing off when defeat threatened. Nelson now planned not to lay his fleet alongside the enemy on the windward side but to sail through the enemy line and lay alongside to leeward, thus putting the enemy between their opponents and the wind and trapping them so that they could be beaten down by the gunnery.

By the morning of Oct 21, his captains knew exactly what they had to do. They were assured of victory, as long as the Combined Fleet left port to accept battle. Villeneuve decided to do so, though with a heavy heart; he feared defeat but he feared even more Napoleon’s disfavour if he did not fight.

The morning of Oct 21,1805, was calm with light winds scarcely strong enough to move the two columns of Nelson’s fleet at more than walking pace. Nelson led the left-hand column, Admiral Collingwood the right-hand. Their ships were severely punished in the approach, Victory’s foresails today on display at Portsmouth show 100 shot holes. The two columns bore on inexorably however and once through the enemy line turned to cut off its retreat. The gunnery battle then began in earnest.

British gunnery was greatly superior to the enemy’s and, as the British succeeded in surrounding several clusters of French ships, the execution done was frightful. Victory was joined by several ships around the French Redoubtable, commanded by the tiny captain Lucas, less than five feet tall.

Lucas however was a fire eater and had crowded his tops with musketeers. It was one of these men firing down on to Victory’s quarterdeck who shot Nelson. The bullet lodged in his spine and though the admiral survived long enough to learn that the Combined Fleet was beaten, died before the end of the battle.

The calm of the morning was succeeded by a violent storm, which drove many of the surviving enemy ships ashore, with terrible loss of life – 8,500 dead and wounded out of 50,000 present.

Only 16 of the 28 enemy ships survived. None of the 23 British ships was lost. Victory of course survives to this day. And if Britain has such a thing as a national shrine she is it. At Trafalgar under Nelson’s command, she and her sisters assured that Britain would not be invaded and that Napoleon would have to look elsewhere for a victory.

He kept on trying until 1815 when, at Waterloo, he was defeated on his own element, on land.

Ghost of Henry VIII casts shadow over summit

The Times

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

By Helen Rumbelow and Will Pavia

AS THE leaders of Europe are shown around Hampton Court tomorrow, they may wonder if the setting is some kind of joke.

European summits first occurred at the palace half a millennium ago, when Henry VIII entertained the French King in an attempt to bring peace to the two countries.

He succeeded in showing off so blatantly that the resulting series of treaties was doomed, and, the palace became a fraught setting for international summits over the next 500 years. President Chirac and others have made it plain that they do not wish to sleep with these ghosts and will, unusually, leave the palace on the day they arrive. Leaders will have no time to themselves in the famous maze in the Wilderness Garden, which has been compared with tortuous Brussels bureaucracy. But reminders of painful historic precedent, whose spirit lingers in tense Anglo-French relations to this day, are strewn around the building and will be evident as they meet for a “working lunch”.

Nobody could accuse Henry VIII of disliking Europe: he married several women from the Continent and liked to commission foreign artwork for the palace, inspiring awe and jealousy from the French.

In 1527 the French visited Hampton Court to ratify the peace Treaty of Hampton Court, and a feast with walls covered with silver plates meant, according to a witness, “that the Frenchmen were rapt into Paradise”.

The next round of negotiations with the French took place at Hampton Court in 1546. Henry VIII ordered opulent tapestries, which still hang in the Great Hall.

The set of “Abraham” tapestries from Belgium cost the same sum as a fully rigged battleship in Henry VIII’s navy, and were the backdrop for six days of banquets, masques and mummeries.

After Henry VIII died, diplomatic occasions improved, with James I booking William Shakespeare to entertain foreign ambassadors in his first court in 1603.

After James I a cosmopolitan series of monarchs transformed the palace into the embodiment of European cross-fertilisation.

The French have managed their own linguistic joke at Hampton’s expense. The summit, criticised for being so short, was advertised on the European Commission website as “Short Hampton”.

A Commission spokesman rapidly explained that this was not a gibe, but simply a mistake by a French translator who thought that “court” was the French word for short.

Blair sets record for rewarding party donors with life peerages

The Times

Monday, November 14, 2005

By Andrew Pierce

Almost one in ten of the life peers created by Tony Blair since he became Prime Minister is a Labour party donor. Between them, the donors have contributed close to Ј25 million.

An investigation by The Times shows that at least 25 of the 292 peers created by Mr Blair since 1996 have made donations ranging from Ј6,000 to Ј13 million. Two of the most generous are now ministers.

The investigation confirms that Mr Blair has been the biggest dispenser of political patronage in the Lords since life peerages were created in 1958. The 292 peers he has created in eight and a half years compare with 216 by Margaret Thatcher in her 11 years in Downing Street and John Major’s 171 in seven years. Labour is the largest party in the Lords for the first time.

Other benefactors such as Christopher Ondaatje, who gave Ј2 million, and Ronald Cohen, the venture capitalist (Ј350,000), have received knighthoods.

In 1996, when John Major was criticised by Labour for abusing the honours system by rewarding donors, Swarj Paul was made a Labour peer. He gave Ј109,000 that year and a furtner Ј200,000 later.

In 1997, when Mr Blair became Prime Minister, six donors were elevated. They included Michael Levy, a music industry tycoon, who raised Ј7 million to bankroll Mr Blair in opposition. He is now Mr Blair’s unofficial treasurer and unofficial ambassador to the Middle East.

Lord Sainsbury of Turville, who has given about Ј13 million since 1994, when Mr Blair became Labour leader, has been a minister since 1998. He gave Ј2 million this year.

Other donors made peers included Ruth Rendell, the crime writer (Ј15,000), David Puttnam, the Oscar-winning film director, (Ј25,000), and Michael Montague, a businessman who died in 1999 (Ј1 million).

Paul Drayson donated Ј100,000 in 2001 and his company won a Ј32 million smallpox vaccine contract from the Government the next year.

In 2004 he was made a peer. He handed over Ј1 million in the same year. In May this year Lord Drayson was made Defence Minister.

A peerage was given in 1998 to Paul Hamlyn, the publisher, who gave Ј600,000 before 1997. Lord Hamlyn, who died in 2001, left Labour Ј1 million in his will. Lord Haskins, the chairman of Northern Foods, donated Ј79,000. He was expelled from the party this year for giving Ј2,500 to a Liberal Democrat candidate. Waheed Alli, the multimillionaire founder of Planet 24 Television, made free party political films worth an estimated Ј100,000.

Peter Facey, director of the New Politics Network think-tank, which specialises in party political funding, said: “Every time new appointments to the Lords are announced public trust is eroded more. People have every right to be cynical about a system where major party donors are repeatedly elevated to a place in the legislature where they can directly influence the law.

In 1999 the list was led by the businessman Robert Gavron, 69, who gave Ј500,000 to Labour weeks after he was made a peer, having given Ј500,000 in 1996. Others included Melvyn Bragg, who helped to raise Ј79,000 for Mr Blair’s Labour leadership campaign. He has given Ј32,500. The barrister Peter Goldsmith made a donation in 1996. He became Attorney-General in 2001.

In 2001 the only Labour life peers were retiring MPs and there were no further appointments until 2004.

In the 2005 list, which was revealed in The Times last week, Sir David Garrard, a property developer, is the biggest surprise. He gave Ј70,000 to the Tories under William Hague. But in 2004 he changed sides and gave Ј200,000 to Labour. He invested Ј2.4 million in Mr Blair’s city academies’ project. Sir Gulan Noon, who made his fortune selling ready-cooked curries to supermarkets, donated Ј225,000. Chai Patel, the head of the Priory rehabilitation clinic, gave Ј10,000.

Lady Thatcher celebrated her 80th birthday last night with 650 guests
Andrew Pierce reports

The Times

Friday, October 14, 2005

Baroness Thatcher had the perfect excuse to be a little late last night for her 80th birthday party in the presence of the Queen, Tony Blair and some unlikely names from the show-business world.

She was delayed by an unexpected telephone call from President Bush wishing her a happy birthday. The ten-minute call from the White House was the latest in a series of tributes that poured in from around the world. It marked yet another highlight in the life of a woman who still casts a huge shadow over the Conservative Party.

The red carpet was rolled out for Lady Thatcher, who was dressed in a navy blue cocktail coat and silk chiffon dress designed by Camilla Milton.

Lady Thatcher, who looked frail, made no public comment as a crowd of wellwishers lined the streets to catch a glimpse of Britain’s first woman Prime Minister. The 650-strong guest list was a roll call of honour from the 1980s Thatcher heyday. Michael Portillo, who was once seen as her anointed heir, made a surprise appearance. He said: “She was influential in her day but not now.”

But the former Prime Minister also sprinkled the list with some surprise names from both sides of the political divide.

The Queen, in a shimmering silver dress, the Duke of Edinburgh, and the Prime Minister were the principal guests at the drinks party in the gold-embossed ballroom of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel Hyde Park, in Knightsbridge. The Queen and Lady Thatcher were said to have walked hand in hand to the party. One onlooker said: “It was a magical moment.” The sheer size of the guest list was an indication to some of the former Prime Minister’s associates that the party would be one of the last big public events that she would host.

Joan Collins, Dame Shirley Bassey, the actress June Whitfield and the crime writer P. D. James were present. Terry Wogan, Lord Lloyd-Webber, the composer, Sir Jimmy Young, who was one of her favourite interviewers, and the television presenter Jeremy Clarkson mingled with Princess Alexandra and President Cossiga of Italy.

Sir John Major, who for years was barely on speaking terms with Lady Thatcher, whom he accused of undermining his premiership, made a surprise appearance with his wife Norma. Sir John changed his travel plans at the last minute in a further sign that the feud between the two was at an end.

Angela Merkel, Germany’s new Chancellor, sent a handwritten letter paying warm tribute to a fellow woman leader and “her remarkable achievements”. There were also messages from Helmut Kohl, the former German Chancellor, John Howard, the Australian Prime Minister, and Silvio Berlusconi, his Italian counterpart.

The two-hour party reunited Sir Rex Hunt, who was Governor of the Falklands during the Argentine invasion in 1982, with Lord Carrington, 86, who resigned as Foreign Secretary before the recapture of the islands. Lord Carrington made the toast. Virtually all her Cabinet colleagues from the 1980s, with the pointed exceptions of Kenneth Clarke and Lord Heseltine, who ended her chances in the first leadership contest in 1990, were invited. Lord Wakeham, who was injured in the Brighton bomb and whose first wife was killed in the 1984 attack, was one of the first to arrive.

Lady Thatcher, who has been told by doctors not to make public speeches after suffering a series of minor strokes, was planning for once to obey orders. But none of her staff would swear to that. Lord McAlpine, who was her Treasurer, flew in from his home in Italy. Lord Bell of Belgravia, the advertising guru who masterminded her election victories, caught up with Lord Parkinson, who was party chairman in her second landslide victory, and Lord Tebbit, the third.

John Bolton, the hawkish US ambassador to the UN who is a close ally of President Bush, came in from New York.

David Davis and Liam Fox, two would-be Tory leaders, were present along with Michael Howard, the outgoing one, who said: “We all owe her an enormous debt.”

There were rare appearances from John Profumo who retreated from public life in 1963 after he resigned as War Secretary after lying to the Commons over his relationship with Christine Keeler, and Lord Archer of Weston-super-Mare, who was jailed for perjury.

Lady Archer said: “To the outside world, Lady Thatcher may appear to be the Iron Lady, but her friends saw a warm, kind and thoughtful person who does not desert you when you are not in vogue.”

The hatchet was also buried with Lord Howe of Aberavon, whose resignation speech triggered her downfall. He said: “Her real triumph was to have transformed not just one party but two, so that when Labour did eventually return, the great bulk of Thatcherism was accepted as irreversible.”

Other foes from the Thatcher era were reunited. Lord Lawson of Blaby, who resigned as chancellor in 1988, came face to face with Sir Alan Walters, the economics adviser whose presence in Downing Street forced his departure.

Lord Powell, who was foreign policy adviser to Lady Thatcher, and his brother Jonathan, who is chief of staff to Tony Blair, chatted to Frank Field, her favourite Labour MR.

The generation game is rigged

Today’s young will be crushed under the burden of paying for the retirement of wealthy babyboomers

The Times

Wednesday, November 30, 2005

by Alice Miles

The welfare state needs somebody to save it today. This morning, when Lord Turner of Ecchinswell publishes his mammoth tome on pensions, politicians must do something that they find very difficult – they must do nothing. Make no decision. Say nothing conclusive. Rule not a thing in or out. But, instead, read the report, think, debate it publicly. And then decide a course which, if chosen wrongly, could be the beginning of the end of the welfare state. I wonder whether Gordon Brown or David Cameron – for it will fall to the next leaders not the current ones to act – has it in him.

The pensions problem is actually very simple, and it is this: there are going to be too many old people in 20 years’ time, and not enough young ones to support them. In 1950 there were more than five people of working age for every pensioner. For the past 20 years, because the baby boomer bulge offset the effects of increased longevity, there have been four. But towards the end of this decade, the ratio will start to fall and by 2050 there will be just two people of working age for every pensioner.

Who will pay for all the pensioners? Should today’s 25-year-old be prepared to fund the retirement of today’s 50-year-old? In a brilliant speech on Monday, David Willetts, the Shadow Trade and Industry spokesman, set out why today’s 25-year-old will be significantly worse off in 25 years’ time than a 50-year-old is now. The decline in final salary pension schemes, the increasing difficulty of getting a toehold in a housing market that is still paying huge dividends to their parents, and the ending of free university education puts today’s 25-year-old at a number of disadvantages. They are far less likely to be home owners than they were 20 years ago. Because they cannot afford to buy a home, they will delay having families so will have children later and therefore have fewer of them, and so the cycle continues. In terms of opportunity and wealth, the postwar baby boomer generation has had and continues to have it all.

Baby boomers, concluded Mr Willetts, “have shaped an economic and social environment that works for them very well. A young person could be forgiven for believing that the way in which economic and social policy is now conducted is little less than a conspiracy by the middle-aged against the young.”

In many parts of the country, including West Sussex where I live, young families find it all but impossible to afford a home. Pretty much all the larger “family” properties are occupied by elderly empty-nesters, sometimes only using a single floor and closing off the rest of the house.

Yet these are the people, sitting on property worth hundreds of thousands of pounds, to whom the Government has just sent a Ј1.6 billion council tax refund. That is the cost of the Ј200 council tax refund promised as a bribe to elderly voters at the last election and paid this month to the eight million pensioners not in receipt of the pension credit guarantee and therefore not on the breadline.

Examine the logic: their council tax is high because they live in expensive homes larger than they need, thereby preventing young families from owning them. So instead of suggesting they move to smaller and lower-rated houses, the Government subsidises them. It is crazy.

This is the sort of problem that arises when governments feel they must pander to a section of the electorate which, because of its growing numbers, decides who wins and loses general elections. The same eight million people have also just received a Ј200 winter fuel payment (in fact that goes to 11 million pensioners, but 3 million are on pension credit guarantee so presumably need the extra money). That makes Ј3.2 billion in handouts this month to elderly people, many of whom do not need it: a penny on income tax taken off people who probably do need it and given to wealthy retirees. As one brave pensioner wrote to The Times yesterday: “I do not need this money, nor, I suspect, do a sizeable number of other recipients.”

Not all will be wealthy, of course, but the point is apt. Now imagine that situation getting worse as more and more older people with more and more electoral clout are given more and more sweeties by governments facing re-election.

It will take bold politicians to unravel all this and find the right solutions. Yet the debate is being conducted with the usual rat-a-tat between № 10 and № 11 preventing serious discussion, while parts of the media seemed more exercised last Sunday about a “nanny tax” increasing the already phenomenal cost of employing a child-minder – not a nice thought, sure, but hardly the most important issue Lord Turner will introduce today.

Looking to future taxpayers to fund an increased state pension for those with comparatively large reserves of wealth cannot be the answer. Today’s pensioners will receive more from the welfare state over their lifetime than they paid into it, a balance that is beginning to switch with the baby boomer generation and is heading firmly in the wrong direction for the generations following.

Already, taxpayers in two decades’ time, and fewer of them, will be funding the hugely increased costs of NHS care for an ageing population, with all the expensive new technology that will be available. There won’t be enough money. And mightn’t these taxpayers be justified in arguing that they would sooner invest their money, if it comes to a choice, in improving their children’s educational chances? Or the trains that fail to get them to work on time? And sod the costs of healthcare, they might think, we can pay for it ourselves and so must they.

Impose too many costs on this generation – which will not expect to see any state-funded pension provision for itself – and it will want to stop paying altogether. The whole of the welfare contract could break down if we get this one wrong.