I'm not sure why but in preparation for a very long drive - about a 1,000 Km - it seemed like a good idea to, amid the hype, download the audiobook of Tony Blair's Memoirs. I wasn't actually prepared for the fact that he was actually reading them, but that's another issue.
It seems funny that all of the 'coalition of the willing' have issued their memoirs within weeks of each other. Not a coincidence I am sure. Of all of them Mr Blair's is probably the one I was most interested in. In retrospect - and steeped in irony as I'm surprised he can remember anything at all - of the three it might be that Mr Bush's might be the most valuable.
Anyway, I digress. Of the several hours of what I must admit is fairly tedious self-serving excuse-making I did listen to, one passage lept out at me as profound. He spends some time talking about Neville Chamberlain. It's an innocent reference, picking up on the fact that Mr Chamberlian's diaries - I sensed hand-written diaries - are still an important relic preserved in Chequers, the British PM's country residence somewhere in Buckinghamshire (I say 'somewhere', I went to school very close to it briefly, but can't remember where that was either!)
Now the reference to Chamberlain was subtle, but obviously his sympathy, and subsequent attempt at apology for him is loaded with unstated significance. He begins by making the comment that a comparison to Chamberlains' Premiership is about as bad a political insult as one can wear. I wonder that in time he is worried that that will be superseded by reference to his own legacy?
Mr Blair goes on to make sound and convincing apologies and explanations for poor old Neville. These are points that all resounded with me because I always had sympathy for him. These emanate from the fact that I always had a lot of time for his father (Joseph Chamberlain) also - an equally misunderstood individual I thought. Indeed I spent a good deal of both my History A Level and Degree apologizing for his father and would have happily done so for Neville also. In my mind, he was the principle conscientious objector. There's a famous yarn about him, the original afraid-of-flying poster-child, flying to Munich to meet Her Hitler and looking out of the window as he flew over London and imagining Guernica happening there. He arrived at the 'peace conference' determined to avoid war at all costs.
Blair makes the point that - contrary not only to popular belief, but also what I was in fact taught during my history A Level - Chamberlain was not at all duped by Hitler and he saw him quite clearly as the "madman" we all now understand him to have been. It was for this reason in fact that he was even more determined to contain him as much as possible. No one can blame him for not seeing what was down the road, but I am sure if we think about it - given my point about Guernica and given the still horribly raw memory of WW1 - we can understand his aversion to more conflict.
Blair reminds us of how - on his return from Munich - with that famous piece of paper in his hand, Chamberlain was hailed as a hero, and not only was he greeted with rock-star acclaim on his arrival home, but was also besieged in No 10 for hours before he made another speech. It was seen as THE great diplomacy coup.
But he was wrong.
Blair was wrong too. But his wrongness cannot be weighed in the same terms as Chamberlain's and I'm upset that he insinuated his mistake is comparable. It is not. Chamberlain's was expensive, sure. But it was made with the best of selfless, fatherly, protective intentions. Blair's was egotistical and weak at the same time. None of his explanations have made sense since and they never will. I was a strong Blair supporter until I thought this through, despite everything. But this attempt to assuage his guilt has tipped me over the edge.
I hope Chamberlain went to the grave resigned to what he did, he deserved to - it was honorable idiocy. Blair's was not. In the future, in the dictionary, when talk about pride coming before the fall, they might talk of it as Blairness.