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Feb. 3rd, 2020 05:03 pm Some odd thoughts just floating around as a result of reading various references to Roy Jenkins in Anthony Powell's Journals. Apparently Jenkins served in a Hertfordshire yeomanry regiment converted to artillery in WW2. One of the predecessors of the Hertfordshire Yeomanry was the Hertfordshire Volunteer Light Horse who had barracks at Silver Leys, Bishop's Stortford; the home turf of Bishop's Stortford RFC and the Silver Leys Polo Club. When I was last there in the late 1970s what remained of the once elegant barracks had long been converted to pig sties. I played my first club rugby at Silver Leys ending up on early occasion in the Casualty Dept of the Herts and Essex Hospital (once a USAAF establishment) with my team captain Bev Clarke; father of England and British Lions flanker Ben Clarke. A former 1st team full back, he was doing that thing you do... captaining one of the lower teams (fourths as I recall) as one's powers wane. To a 17 year old he seemed unbelievably ancient. Oddly 20+ years later I would find myself in the same position captaining the Toronto Nomads 3rds. On more than one occasion the callow seventeen year old would be the Shakespearian actor André Sills.
Reflecting on Jenkins' politics and particularly on his role as Home Secretary in the Wilson government I find myself asking whether there has since been a UK Home Secretary of even remotely comparable liberal views (small l). As best as I can tell just about every Home Secretary since would fit in handily in any randomly authoritarian or worse regime and they seem to get more Fascist with each decade. Is it a diagnostic indication of a society in its cultural death throes that it insists on government protecting it from the "other"? However nebulous or even non existent the "other" is. I find it curious that the British government combines immigration, citizenship, police and prisons in a single ministry. A far cry from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada which describes its mission thusly... "facilitates the arrival of immigrants, provides protection to refugees, and offers programming to help newcomers settle in Canada".
Reflecting on Jenkins' politics and particularly on his role as Home Secretary in the Wilson government I find myself asking whether there has since been a UK Home Secretary of even remotely comparable liberal views (small l). As best as I can tell just about every Home Secretary since would fit in handily in any randomly authoritarian or worse regime and they seem to get more Fascist with each decade. Is it a diagnostic indication of a society in its cultural death throes that it insists on government protecting it from the "other"? However nebulous or even non existent the "other" is. I find it curious that the British government combines immigration, citizenship, police and prisons in a single ministry. A far cry from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada which describes its mission thusly... "facilitates the arrival of immigrants, provides protection to refugees, and offers programming to help newcomers settle in Canada".
