MrGareth’s Missives

As the dust settles on this week's Leadership insanity, people are starting to think about what is wrong with the system we have in this country, or in fact Democracy itself.  While we tut and sigh about the various bad behaviour tied up in all of this, and we ridicule the people we see exposed and undermined in the glare of the 24/7 media spotlight, we have to ask ourselves - "Who's fault is this?"

Three years' ago the nation applauded the savage removal of a man whom; three years before that Australians cheered to the electoral finish line as if a new messiah.  We cheered him towards the defeat of a man who's legacy is now seemingly revered as a Golden Era of Good Government.

Three years' ago Australians congratulated themselves on the election of the first woman to the highest office in the land, and delighted in the promise of a new female style of leadership. Three days ago some people sneered and air-punched when that same woman was knifed in the back - because she was a woman.  There's been all manor of disgust at the Machiavellian antics, and yet it is all we want to talk about.  We complain that the media only write about and ask questions about Leadership challenges but the journalists write about that stuff because they see the newspaper sales figures and web site traffic spikes every time they do.

Kevin Rudd always had a platform for an insurgence because his poll ratings were so high with marginal voters, and yet three years ago his colleagues assassinated him because his miserable polling so clearly showed he was a popularity liability.  Conversely the liability that has just been sacked came to power on a wave of consistently high polling.

Six years ago we sent a party into power demanding that they do something about climate change, shut the detention centres, fix the education and health system and ensure a fairer distribution of the resources boom bounty.  Now, six years later a government that has delivered a price on carbon, taxed the miners (albeit ineptly), dismantled offshore processing (before we asked them to put it back again), introduced billions of dollars of new funding for schools and arranged national insurance for those with disabilities - is being decried for having done those very things.  We demanded the best internet pipes in the world but we don't want to pay for them.  We decry the poor state of political debate and yet we refuse to listen to a woman taking time to explain complex education policy and instead listen to a man who monotonously repeats things like "great big tax" and "stop the boats".

This country clearly has the healthiest economy in the OECD (albeit off a very low base) yet all we do is complain about the economy.

Of course I know it is more complicated than this, and these things aren't all the same people.  But many are the same people.  ("We" after all, "are us".)  The polls and the media appetite is what drives all of this, and people who measure that stuff look at the average.  

We tore down a woman who said she wouldn't introduce a tax on carbon and then had to as a compromise to make a hung parliament - elected by the average of the people - work.  We tore her down for being inconsistent.  For not staying true to her principles and beliefs.  For saying one thing and doing another.  

They do say you get the government you deserve - and this is what we have because they are only doing what we tell them to.

But I do feel their service should be celebrated and rewarded more than it has.  Books should be written about their extraordinary experiment in pragmatic democracy and a new twist on a democratic model that has otherwise - but for them - seen its most shameful hour in the last three years.  While everyone talked about a new model for politics in September 2010 - these two gentlemen meant it.  And they delivered on it.  Amid all the miserable mud slinging that has characterised this parliament, they have always emerged as a quiet, subtle, diligent civilising element; ever restoring my faith in the process while others - most particularly the Opposition - have aggressively eroded it.

As human beings too, it has always been interesting to study.  It has been a fascinating, isolated Senior-Junior partnership. A micro-party in fact.  They have managed, I think, to rise above the murky melee but their commentary on it was always informative, intelligent and enlightening.  They have been extremely transparent in their workings - if only this was more common!  They have been very public about their deliberations on policy issues, and been up front about their decisions.  This was the case from the outset, the Seventeen minute speech perhaps an extreme version! 

That speech notwithstanding, the Oakeshott-Windsor duo has been a marvellous chapter in the Democratic story - globally as well as locally, and one that Classical Political Philosophers in the tradition of Plato and Socrates would delight in I feel.  They were individuals representing their electorate in the truest sense.  Typically, the only time an MP thinks of his or her constituents seems to be when that electorate becomes marginal (a brutal reality suddenly real and present for upwards of 30 Labor MPs).

Most backbenchers chart their course through a parliament based on the discipline of the party whip or Machiavellian tactics to suit their personal career objectives.  These two essentially Centrist, pragmatic policy wonks instead navigated their way through the 43rd parliament based on an apparently strong moral compass and an old fashioned sense of public service.  To some extent of course they operated based on what was good for their constituency - in the mould of a US Senator - but generally they seem to have kept their eye on the policy win for the general public.   

This zeal wouldn't survive in a majority House or Senate, it would be drowned out by partisan political machinations where the policy is only a football in a wider, cynical battle for power.  As the vultures once again gather around their leader, at once professing loyalty while sharpening daggers, this bizarre Shakespearean drama reaches its denouement. It occurs to me that while Mark Anthony spoke of Brutus and Cassius ironically as "Honourable Men"; were Oakeshott and Windsor Roman Senators in the day he could have held them up by way of contrast.  

Their kind won't be seen again - Parliament and Australia will be  poorer for their departure.  Kudos gentlemen, Valedico!

As you deliberate the Lions Test Team for the first Test against The Wallabies, can I be presumptuous enough to offer my two cents?

(I'm sure you won't read this, but if you do can I start by saying how much of a fan of your's I am?  The fact that you won a convincing Six Nations Grand Slam with Wales in your first year is amazing.  I know Wales had already won one recently in 2005, but in 2008 it was *convincing*.  Then you won another in 2012 and your management team won a Championship in 2013.  It has all made me very happy..thanks!)

In terms of my impudent advice for picking the test side, let's start with what we both know: Halfpenny as Full Back - that's a given (I was in the ground for the Waratahs game).  Also I think  Mike Philips for Scrum Half and Jonny Sexton for Fly Half are equally easy decisions.  The Wings are tough but I think whatever you chose between North, Cuthbert and Maitland I'd agree with you.  Cuthbert has been fortunate to score many tries against weak opposition on this tour, but probably the real talent is with North and Maitland.

So the Wings, Half Backs and Full back are done.  The Centres are tough, and depending on the injury situation at the moment it looks like Jonathan Davies and Brian O'Driscoll - unless you feel like the biggest gamble which is Cuthbert on the wing with Maitland and sticking North in the Centre with Davies?  You have dabbled with North in Centre, let's face it.  This could be genius or it could completely blow up in your face.  I guess this is why you're paid the big bucks?

With so many Welsh players available, and my obvious bias aside, I have to say the back line has to be all Welsh: Warburton, Tipuric and Faletau.  But I don't believe Sam should captain. Paul O'Connel, a given for Second Row with Alun Wyn Jones, should be Captain.  He not only has more experience, he has more presence.  Then for the Front Row I really don't know, but consensus seems to be that Hibbard would make a good Hooker and Adam Jones is a must. So there's another front row job I can't help you with.

But now I see your political problem.  You're a Welsh Coach, with an embarrassment of Welsh riches that you know well, and you have to pick a side representative of the British Isles.  Good luck with that, but what I've proposed is a good side I think.  Whatever you do will be sound though.

But can I just say, too many recent British and Irish Lions Tours have been ruined by squad politics and Manager favouritism - it is so refreshing to see a Tour that isn't - and the credit for that is your's.  So well done, good luck and here's to a first Series win for the Lions since 1997.

On the evening of the 6th June I naturally found myself watching "The Longest Day".  In fact I'm surprised only one channel was showing it.  Not even "Saving Private Ryan" but there's something about TLD that tells this amazing story so completely.

Anyway, I couldn't help thinking while watching it that, 69 years later, Would they do it today?  

Three million men sailing across a storm-torn English Channel and taking on the most insurmountable military force known to man - and keeping it a secret until they showed up on the French coast that chilly morning.  Can you imagine today's global leadership having that kind of back-bone to mount that kind of operation?  It makes the invasion of Iraq look like a cadet exercise.   As Rod Steiger says in it, "the biggest Armada the world's ever known." 

As we watch the Syrian Civil War turn into the most ghastly human rights catastrophe since the holocaust and the UN fail to do anything but posture, I struggle to imagine the global community galvanise into action in the way the Allies did in June 1944. 

I've walked most of the beaches along that front: Juno and Omaha and Sword.  The scale is quite something else when you get a sense of the size of the front they opened up.  I've also been to the Pegasus Bridge and seen how far in land that was - how far behind enemy lines - and how steep the cliffs at Pointe du Hoc.

(I've also been watching "Band of Brothers" lately and understood again what a huge struggle began on June 7th 1944 and what a long road to Berlin it was.)

Would today's leadership sue for peace?  Would they procrastinate for years until nothing could be done.  Would the Nazi reality just become something they could have "appeased" and placated?  

I hope not, but when you look at the inactivity taking place over Syria today - and equally over climate change for that matter - it is hard to have the kind of confidence in the modern world leadership that they would find steel in the way Roosevelt and Churchill did in 1944.

Well, whatever, all I can say is "John has a long moustache".

The ANZAC spirit is a powerful phenomenon that I've been strongly impacted by ever since I arrived in Australia, ever since my first (and so far only) attendance at the Sydney Dawn Service. While the dead from the two World Wars obviously tore apart so many communities and families in Britain, there is something strange and mystical about those people who took part from these distant and removed shores. This year, as I find myself researching the family tree, I have discovered I have personal connections to that legend.

I've experienced a new and uncomfortable sensation this week, beng ashamed of my home country.  Living abroad and watching some of the dancing-on-grave that's been taking place back in the UK has provoked many emotions but I think now that the primary one is shame.  That thousands of people would conspire to increase the misery of someone's grief by the promotion of a song meanly insulting their deceased loved one seems deeply shameful and ungracious I think.  The Ding Dong campaign for me is a dark hour in British protest history.

That is not to say that I stand with those who seek to white-wash Baroness Thatcher's memory.  Quite the opposite.  I've learnt a lot in the last week about my own childhood and the times in which I spent my formative years.  I think many intelligent people on the left have engaged in quite appropriately critical reflection on her legacy - such as Glenda Jackson, Polly Toynbee and the like - while many Tories have attempted to shut that kind of debate down (this article by Glenn Greenwald is very interesting for instance: Margaret Thatcher and misapplied death etiquette).  

Alongside the necessity of considering her legacy for the historical record, and dwelling on the direction Britain took, and has taken, since she came to power in 1979; I can see that it is also essentially relevant to the political debate of today in the UK.  As a new generation of Tories deliver a new tranche of fairly soulless, socially-callous cuts to public services and the infrastructure of the Welfare State, Thatcherism needs re-examining.  As a tax on spare rooms for benefit receivers looms, the debacle of the Poll Tax needs recollection.

However, beyond all of this very sensible and intellectually weighty debate, from where I am sitting 11,000 miles away, conspiring to ensure "Ding Dong the Witch is dead" is number 1 for a woman's funeral is wicked and gut-wrenchingly distasteful. Australian debate gets pretty personal and acidic at times but they would never actively celebrate a death and many here seemed quite disgusted by the spectacle. She has a family afteral and while Mark Thatcher is not someone who's sensitivities I would usually seek to protect, Carol Thatcher does not deserve this kind of persecution by her fellow Brits at a time of grief.  Most of those celebrating weren't even alive in the 80s.  Most of them didn't indulge this kind of vitriol for Saddam Hussein, Osama Bin Laden of Gaddafi - all of whom had so many heinous crimes to answer for.

But even for those that wish her ill, you could say she had paid her debt.  As Germaine Greer pointed out (at the end of this clip), she enjoyed no plush non-exec jobs on boards and was bound for the humiliating speaker circuit until her health prevented her even from that. Unlike the comfortable pasture years most elder statespeople serve after their time in power, she was for the last 15 years reduced to a mere miserable pensioner, a decade of it widowed, with ever creeping dementia. Anyone wishing her ill has already had their wish satiated I feel. Now is the time to reflect on her legacy and it's lessons; celebrate her strengths, consider her weaknesses and regret her mistakes but most of all lament the passing of the extraordinary in an era of really quite ordinary leadership.

It is a testament to the woman's relevance that news of her death was announced during a TV debate about Feminism.  In fact, comparison between her and Julia Gillard had been made only 5 minutes before Tony Jones broke with tradition and announced breaking news during his #qanda show.  She always had that ability to frame a debate.

I've let the news set in a little now and have reflected on what it means.  I am one of Thatcher's Children, I grew up in Thatcher's Britain and her career defined so much of my life I felt it important to jot a few words down.  Initially I thought it might bring homesickness, but pretty soon I realised that its the divisive class war that she created that contributed to my decision to leave the country.

Apparently it was her and Keith Joseph's intention to drag British politics so far to the right that even the left would have to repsond to their agenda, and in Tony Blair we see the evidence of that - he was probably the proof of her success in achieving that.   I heard Ed Miliband say that he, David Cameron and Nick Clegg were all products of the Thatcher years, and that too demonstrates how her legacy still defines British politics.  It wasn't called Thatcher's Britain for no reason - she owned those little islands for 11 years, and the people within them, and re-shaped them in her image.  Quite an achievement that demonstrates leadership I've not seen the like of since.

Unlike many of the vox pox and call-back radio phoners I've heard since she died, I've pretty mixed views on Thatch.  I grew up in a household sympathetic to the Thatcher message.  In fact my father was elected as a Tory Borough Councillor on her coat tails in 1979.  I lived in the Britain that benefited from her reforms and most of the people around me either quietly or vocally approved of what she did.  Attending private school in the south of England it was easy as a boy to understand the 80s in terms of much needed economic reform, tough love and no gain without pain.  I was too young - I was 9 when she was elected - to comprehend the economic realities of the early 80s and by the time I became aware of the economic fortunes the economy was buoyant.  The people who stood to gain from privatisation and market liberalism were the fathers of my friends in the most part.  It all seemed a good thing.  I didn't have much exposure to the families dependent on the coal industry, or the car industry.  I didn't know any single mothers.  I didn't know any Argentinians.

So when I arrived at University just in time for her demise in November 1990, I was confronted with quite a different perspective on The Thatcher years.  As my own politics drifted rapidly to the left - for many reasons - I got a new view.  Now I see someone who while obviously strong and courageous and emboldened by conviction; I feel should have done more to win the debate, bring the country with her and unite instead of divide.  I certainly feel now as a self-confessed pseudo-socialist that she was a class warrior who only seemed to govern for those that looked after themselves.  Government is about more than liberating the able, its about enabling the disadvantaged and she failed to do this.  Moreover, she  trod on the less fortunate on her way to what she wanted and she brushed aside those that were inconvenient to her life view.  In short, she was a tyrant.

However, lacking in almost any goodwill, her message was often received so negatively when she had a point.  Norman Tebbit's "get on your bike" comment for instance - that inspired so much anger and seemed to embody her political demeanour - is not so heartless.  I've been doing some family tree research and found that my great grand father left Wales when the Coal mines closed in the thirties and my grandfather left Lancashire when the Cotton Mills closed in the 50s.  They both moved to the south to look for work and made a better life for themselves.  But not everyone had her resourcefulness and she needed to be compassionate and inclusive.  Moreover she had a duty to govern for them also.

So on balance I must like everyone recognise her strength and courage of conviction and lament its rarity in today's politics.  Living in a country today ruled by a divisive female PM it occurs to me that it is difficult to be a strong female leader and be popular at the same time.  But when I heard someone on the radio say in reaction to her death, "she destroyed my home town and I'm glad she's dead" I must conclude that a great leader has failed when they've inspired such animosity and conflict.

But I think this recent TV dramatisation (far more than the Streep movie) of her struggle to battle the Boys' Club glass ceiling of the Conservative Party will be the aspect of her that I might try and dwell on - something everyone can agree on, that by her example achieved so much for gender equality and personal aspiration.  She showed that if you put your mind to something, you can achieve anything and that you shouldn't let others stand in your way.   

Seemingly accidentally I have become one of those genealogy nerds.  In no way deliberately, I started plotting a now 74-person family tree on Ancestry.com and the curious history student in me has taken over.  In no time at all I have documented all the immediately known relatives on my mother's side of the family and am now fascinated by the mystery of a disappearing relative: Samuel Langford.

Somewhat at a loss, I am hoping by throwing my questions onto the web, answers might follow in the comments box below.

The mystery began with a newspaper clipping my mother sent me about a Dan Foster who "with his handlebar moustache, was a real character," managed the Picture Palace Cinema on Radcliffe Road in Bolton until his death in 1937.  This led me on to his mother, Violet Ann Foster (nee Rowland) who I found in the 1901 Census living with Daniel, his wife and four children, until her death in 1908.  

What is interesting about Violet is her first husband.  In 1859 she married a Samuel Langford from Cheshire.  Samuel seems to have grown up in service, listed in the 1851 Census as working as a "Plough Lad" in domestic service in Thornton Le Moors in Cheshire as a 16 year old.  In the 1861 Census (above) he is living with his new wife, 22 year old Violet Ann.  Two years after their marriage, they do not have children.

Three years later in 1864 Violet has a son, also named Samuel Langford.  That same year, Violet Ann Rowland marries a chap called John Foster whose profession seems quite indiscernible from the couple of Census records I saw but I think it had something to do with Iron.

That same year Samuel Langford disappears   No death certificate and no further Census appearances.  His son, Samuel Langford, becomes variously Samuel Foster and later Samuel Langford Foster.  John and Violet have a further three children including my Great, Great Grandfather Daniel Butler "handlebar moustache" Foster.

Curiously, by the 1911 Census, the Foster family crop up in Little Bolton and living among them - three years after Violet Ann's death - is a 19-year old Samuel Langford Foster.  Of the six children born to electrical engineer Daniel Butler Foster and his wife Mary Ann - including my Great Grand Mother Violet - only Samuel has a middle name.  

What happened to Samuel Langford in 1864 when his son was born and his wife married another man?  Why did he and his 22 year old wife not have children until some five years after their marriage?  Why is his name preserved in two subsequent generations of Fosters?  Why is there no record of this man subsequent to the 1851 Census?  

(Until Posthaven get the comments function up and running, if you've any answers please email me at mrgareth2005 at gmail dot com or tweet me at @mrgareth)

It's been a long road back. In 1979 in Cardiff, following a 1978 Grand Slam, Wales retained the then Five Nations Championship with a 27-3 win over arch rivals England.  The following year, England won in Twickenham by a point on the way to a Grand Slam and the slow and horrible decline of Welsh Rugby began.  

As a friend said: "he still can't sing for toffee!"  It's true. Ian Brown never could sing and without the wonders achieved by the record studio, the live experience can be somewhat grating, were it not for the fact that he sings some of the most iconic tunes from the soundtrack of my life.  The fact that he is one of the more legendary frontmen of British Rock is all the more surprising given his tuneless vocals, and a tad inspiring too.  (We shouldn't let small things like lack of talent get in the way of our quest for greatness!)  With all the psychodelic guitar riffs, mesmeric drum beats and anthemic refrains - Ian Brown's true greatness stood out in the moment he simpy spoke the name of his band, in his accent laced with thick Manc angst: "The Stone Roses."  It is perhaps this moment I'll remember the most.