Non Homo Insula Est

No man is an island. The famous words of John Donne, Dean of St Paul’s in London. Written in English, translated here into Latin.

Why Latin? A cloud of celebrities ranging from Joanna Lumley, a native of Kashmir, to Boris Johnson, former MP for Henley-on Thames, has recently been gathered in support of the proposition that Latin should again be taught in schools. Presumably in those areas that still have grammar schools it still is. For what good would be a grammar school that eschewed Latin grammar?

If Monty Python’s ‘Life of Brian’, complete with its laboured mis-labelling to the locative case, comes to mind most vividly for those who learnt Latin at their alma mater’s knee then a pause for thought is needed. From the traditional date of Rome’s foundation in 753 BC to the end of the western empire in 476 AD is 1,229 years. The post-Roman afterlife of Latin to the present is 1,534 years and it is not an uneventful tale. Textbooks are largely silent about what remained the international language of churchmen, scholars, scientists and diplomats until modern times. We know a 17th century Swedish king as Gustavus Adolphus because news of his actions travelled in Latin. So too did those of Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus, Columbus and Erasmus, Copernicus and Linnaeus. We know the Chinese sage K’ung-fu-tzu as Confucius and the emperors of India and Russia by the name of a Roman assassinated over two thousand years ago (and who probably spoke Greek when he really wanted to impress). Et tu, Brute? Kai su, teknon!

For a Europe that needed to communicate with itself, Latin long ago became the earliest Esperanto. French eventually displaced it as the language of diplomacy, German as the language of science, and English ultimately as the language of everything, but until nationalism made neutrality a nasty word, Latin reigned supreme. The Kingdom of Hungary, the multi-lingual melting-pot of the Carpathian basin, insisted that Parliamentary debates were conducted in Latin as late as 1847. Some thirty years ago, an attempt was made to use Latin on the floor of the European Parliament but the speaker was ruled out of order. The Parliament has 23 official languages but Latin is not one of them. Those who believe the EU to be more super-state than club of nation-states might reflect on that lack of a language that transcends borders.

No-one knew the value of Latin like King Alfred the Great. His biographer, the Welshman Asser, records that, although Alfred had visited Rome as a child, he did not learn the language until he was nearly 40. His motivation was to partake personally in the revival of learning that he launched after securing the kingdom against further attack. Today, among mainstream English nationalists, it is fashionable to argue the uniqueness of Englishness, to decry any hint of cultural impurity. Not so for Alfred, who looked to Mediterranean civilisation for his model and cultivated links with lands even further afield. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, begun in Alfred’s reign, is written in English, not in Latin. An early case of ‘up yours, Delors’? Far from it. The choice was imposed on Alfred by a dearth of Latin scholars in Wessex. In the terms of the time it was a sign not of cultural strength but of abject cultural weakness.

Wessex has been subject to many influences down the centuries, Celtic and Nordic, Latin and Greek, African and Asian. All lasting impressions deserve study because they aid understanding of who we are. Can our encounter with Latin provide us with pointers to the future, lessons about how we view our place in time and space and thought?

The first conclusion must be that the past is rarely as dead as current fashions dictate. A glance around Europe will identify nations and regions long suppressed and now firmly back in business, their languages spoken and written again, their flags flying from the citadels of the former dominant power. From Ypres to Warsaw, Berlin to Budapest, monuments and cities blasted to rubble have been painstakingly reconstructed just as they were. Catalans are ruled by their Generalitat, a name dredged up from early in the 18th century. Scotland’s Parliament was re-convened in 1999 with words that connected to its last sitting in 1707. On our own patch, those who feared we might never again hear the phrase ‘Bath, in Somerset’ have been proved wrong. For those who claim that nostalgia isn’t what it used to be, it’s worth noting that even Alfred, when he set about his revival of learning, was inspired to re-create the splendours of the later 7th century, when Wessex enjoyed its first Golden Age under the guidance of King Ine and St Aldhelm. Whether the history around us is cherished for the richness it gives to our lives, or wiped out as an affront to ‘progress’, is a matter of will. The belief of progressives, that policy must, like time, be ever advancing, is a belief that can admit neither to ignorance of superior knowledge from another era nor to the mistakes that result. At best the mistakes go uncorrected; at worst, history repeats itself in ways that are unexpected and unwelcome.

The second conclusion is that insularity cuts us off from part of ourselves. Nationalism, conceived of as a fortress, politically, culturally, economically, is not the way to go. In Shakespeare’s day, the moat defensive against the envy of less happier lands made sense. But it came at a cost, both in terms of autonomy denied within and fraternity denied without. Regionalism recognises that everywhere is a region of something else, in a world composed of communities within communities. Like fractal images, one nests within another, from the parish to the planet, and each has its place, its call upon our loyalty, as individuals and collectively, and in their defence we find meaning and solidarity.

The third conclusion is that the informed intellect can be a vital tool in carving out a new politics. Wessex must be vigilant in defence of its folk culture – including aspects of mass popular culture that stem from Wessex roots – but need not therefore reject high culture as foreign to its nature as a region. It must find a proper place too for those whose concerns are more material than cultural. For Alfred, society was composed of praying men, fighting men and working men. As a party, our equivalents are thinkers, activists and donors. All three are needed and we need more of all three.

The Meaning of No

Sir Desmond Glazebrook: ‘Surely a decision’s a decision?’
Sir Humphrey Appleby: ‘Only if it’s the decision you want. If not it’s just a temporary setback.’
‘Yes, Minister’, 1981

The rejection of the Treaty of Lisbon by Irish voters has been the subject of much triumphalist crowing by Eurosceptics, much dismissive arrogance by Europhiles and much fevered speculation by the pundits. It clearly is not the end of the line for the Europroject, nor is it just a democratic bump on the road to ever closer union. Those without entrenched positions have called for a debate on the future of Europe, for pause and reflection. Nice try. And good luck. Because it’s the right answer.

The debate is not illuminated by those sad folks for whom the European Union is a conspiracy. Whether it is meant to be Hitler’s legacy or Stalin’s is not always clear but for the sake of the argument it matters not a jot. The conspiracy could just as well be run by the Vatican, the CIA, Al Quaeda or the Elders of Zion. And occasionally the argument is precisely that it is. Europe deserves better than such tabloid tripe.

But that does not excuse what is done in the Union’s name. A truly great generation concluded that a repetition of the Second European Civil War was avoidable only if national rivalries were transcended for good. They have been let down badly by institutions awash with corruption and incompetence. They also failed to see how the hope enshrined in ‘ever closer union’ would become in later hands the seedcorn of a totalitarian super-state. (It is ‘ever looser union’ that will really cut the nation-states down to size.) Worst of all, we, in Wessex, have been let down by successive British governments who have simply signed everything the bureaucrats have put in front of them. And then blamed everyone but themselves for the consequences.

The Wessex Regionalist Party defends the interests of Wessex. That is our basic position. We have no automatic loyalty either to the United Kingdom or to the European Union: loyalty must be earned by actions. We do not accept that the interests of Wessex should be sacrificed to an alleged common good, whether English, British or European. We are not anti-European; nor do we uncritically accept all that is done in Brussels and Strasbourg.

Our aim is a decentralised Europe, a European confederation of small nations and historic regions that recognises our continent’s traditional cultural diversity as its greatest strength. We must limit the centralisation of powers both to Europe and to the current state capitals such as London and Paris. At the same time, we recognise that such a Europe, whose chief political units would be smaller than today’s nation-states, could not survive without common institutions to address the bigger economic, social and environmental problems we all face. Pollution, for example, is no respecter of frontiers. In a regionalised Europe, Wessex would be represented directly at European level; we would no longer have to rely on disinterested ministers from London to put our case for us.

Our aim is therefore to uphold the principle of subsidiarity, that nothing should be done at a wider level that can be done as effectively, or more effectively, at a narrower level. Transfers of power outwards should always be subject to a referendum of those affected and must always be reversible. This is not the case with the existing European treaties and we therefore insist that they be re-negotiated.

The European Union is remote, unaccountable and dominated by vested economic interests – but the same criticisms can be levelled with at least equal force at our own institutions. Its record on environmental protection and social welfare legislation has put successive British governments to shame. Nevertheless, it has presided over colossal failures – the Common Agricultural Policy foremost among them – and radical reform of structures and priorities alike is long overdue.

We reject the super-state model of the EU as over-centralised and conformist. The EU should address transnational ecological issues; regulate multinational companies; regionalise the European economy; balance needs and resources within Europe and with the rest of the world; resolve disputes between member states and promote understanding between their peoples. (And how about promoting knowledge of Latin as the neutral European language?) Other issues, including trade and economic policy, should be left to the regions to deal with. These should be free to co-operate on matters of shared concern with groups of like-minded regions, free either to reach agreement on issues of particular interest to them or to do their own thing without criticism from others. This is a multi-track Europe. It is not a multi-speed Europe, a phrase suggesting that the destination is pre-determined, with only the pace still to be set.

If a club enlarges its membership, the scope for disagreements automatically grows and new ways of working are needed. This ought to be treated as an opportunity, not as a threat. Yet all the reform talk is about increasing uniformity over an ever wider area, with less and less scope for national sovereignty. This is no way to enthuse people about Europe. Rather than scrapping vetoes we should be restoring them – and extending them to regional level so that Wessex, no less than Luxembourg, can safeguard its vital interests. The result will be a more diverse Europe, with policies better tuned to regional realities. We should have the courage and confidence to assert that it will not be a weaker solution if the European Union as a whole can agree on fewer things than it has in the past. Far from it. The Irish vote is not the beginning of the end. But, if taken as a constructive rebuke, it could yet be the end of the beginning.