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9 Things You Need To Write A Novel

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Toby LittIf your new year’s resolution was to finally write that novel, Toby Litt, writer and senior lecturer in creative writing in Birkbeck’s Department of English and Humanities has some advice for you. This article was originally published on Toby’s personal blog.

9 things you need to write a novel

Time-more-time-and-even-more-timeThe first thing you need to write a novel is… Time.

The second thing you need to write a novel is… More Time.

And the third thing you need to write a novel is… Even More Time.

This perhaps seems a bit obvious. But let me explain.

Time, More Time and Even More Time are all necessary.

I’ve divided Time up into three because you need Time for different things.

The first lot of Time is, as I’m sure you’ve guessed, Time to write. Time to sit at the desk with words coming out of you.

The second lot of time, More Time, is… Time not to write. Time to do stuff which doesn’t seem to be writing but which, in the end, turns out to have been writing all along. To the uninitiated, this may appear to be window shopping or people-watching, taking a nice long nap, or tracking down YouTube clips of something you once saw on TV – but, actually, it is when the writing bit of the brain does its hardest work. Believe me.

The third lot of time, Even More Time, is Time to rewrite, and rewrite and rewrite. But we’re not going to worry about that now. That’s for later drafts. For the moment, we’re thinking about the first draft.

As I’m sure you know, Time is never a neutral, abstract thing. Nor merely a clock-ticking-on-the-mantlepiece thing. Time for writing your novel is time not for other occupations, not for other people. It’s time stolen from your loved ones; time they will probably resent you not devoting to them. Time is closing the door behind you and not answering when people knock – not unless they knock very hard, and shout words like ‘Fire’ and ‘Bastard’ and ‘I’m leaving – I really am’.

In a way, writing is saying to your loved ones, ‘Go away, because I want to talk to you’. I want to talk to you in a more articulate and truthful way than I ever could if you were there in front of me. ‘Go away, because I want to talk to you.’

All of which explains why you’ll need the fourth thing, which is…

Some Selfishness
Some-selfishnessI could try to make this sound nicer – I could call it self-belief or determination or following your dream – but that’s not how it’s likely to appear to your loved ones, the ones outside the door, knocking, pleading.

Self-belief without justification is always going to appear selfish, and until you write your novel there won’t be any justification. In lots of people’s eyes, until your novel is published by a publisher they have heard of, and appears in shops they frequent, and is reviewed in a newspaper they read, then it is unjustified. And in the eyes of a large minority, a book isn’t really justified until it has been made into a film starring an actor or actress they have heard of – thus saving them the trouble of having to read it.

However, writing rarely has a proper justification. Not in the strictest sense. Writing with justification is the UN Declaration of Human Rights.

There is a story about James Joyce, made up by Tom Stoppard and included in his play Travesties. Joyce is in the dock. The interrogator asks him, ‘What did you do during the Great War?’ To which Joyce replies, ‘I wrote Ulysses. What did you do?’

The only real justification for a piece of writing is that it is worth reading – or feeling guilty about not having read.

But Selfishness is, of course, not enough. You will also need…

Some Generosity

Because, without making it sound like geriatric nursing or tin-shaking for the NSPCC, writing is an act of generosity. A novel that isn’t essentially for other people to read isn’t worth writing. This is the ‘..I want to talk to you’ part, the part that comes after ‘Go away.’

Many writers claim they write only to please themselves. And I believe them – but only so far as to say this is what they need to tell themselves in order to write.

A well-formed sentence has a direction: towards the reader.

So far we have: Time, More Time, Even More Time, Some Selfishness and Some Generosity.

The next thing you need is a little more prosaic. It’s…

The Means

The-meansBy The Means I mean the physical necessities of writing – a pen or pencil and some paper, or a computer.

What you use is entirely your choice. If what works for you is to write in crayon on old cornflake packets or in chalk on the gashouse wall, it doesn’t really matter.

There are some drawbacks to the gashouse wall (though in these days of digital cameras, who knows?) I would have a few cautionary things to say about word-processing.

The first is that it makes things too easy. Although I am telling you the nine things you need to write a novel, the most important is probably contained in these five words: There are no short cuts.

The sheer physical labour of rewriting a novel, start to end, by hand would certainly make one consider the necessity of every single word; copy/paste does not do this.

Of the Evils of Word-Processing, copy/paste is Number 2. (Number 1 comes a little later. Read on.)

By Means I also mean a workplace. Ideally this would be, as Virginia Woolf put it, A Room of One’s Own. But if this isn’t, a library, café, train or park bench in spring or summer will do almost as well. Quiet, too, is probably recommended.

The next thing you need – there are only three more – is something much more abstract. It is…

A Discipline.

A Discipline. Not, I repeat, not a routine, though it might on the surface resemble one.

A routine is unhelpful because, when you miss it or mess it up, you are going to feel bad, and get disheartened, and stop writing.

I think the idea of a discipline is better than that of a routine, because it is more flexible.

A routine is ‘I need to be at my desk by nine o’clock and produce 400 words by lunchtime.’ A discipline is, ‘It would be nice if I could do about a page or so every day.’

Here are a couple of famous writers’ disciplines. They are American writers. I’m not sure why but American writers seem to be more open about the craft of what they do. Perhaps because they feel awkward when anyone emphasises the art aspect.

The first discipline is Ernest Hemingway’s:

“I always worked until I had something done and I always stopped when I knew what was going to happen next. That way I could be sure of going on the next day.”

This comes from his book A Moveable Feast – a memoir of Paris in the 1920s. It is perhaps the single most useful clue I have ever come across as to how novels get written.

The second discipline is from David Mamet’s A Whore’s Profession. Mamet is a notable dramatist, and also wrote the screenplay to Wag the Dog.

“As a writer, I’ve tried to train myself to go one achievable step at a time: to say, for example, ‘Today, I don’t have to be particularly inventive, all I have to be is careful, and make up an outline of the actual physical things the character does in Act One.’ And then, the following day to say, ‘Today I don’t have to be careful. I already have this careful, literal outline, and all I have to do is be a little bit inventive,’ et cetera, et cetera.”

American writers, particularly American male writers, can often go to extremes when they set their minds to a routine. Hemingway, later in his life, became very macho about things.

He wrote standing up, usually in his bedroom in his house in Cuba, using the top of a bookcase, on which room was cleared, to quote the Paris Review, “for a typewriter, a wooden reading board, five or six pencils, and a chunk of copper ore to weight down papers when the wind blows in from the east windows.” It gets better. Hemingway “stands in a pair of his oversized loafers on the worn skin of a Lesser Kudu – the typewriter and the reading board chest-high opposite him.” He told his interviewer, George Plimpton, that he began in pencil, then shifted to his typewriter when his writing was going extremely well or when he wrote dialogue. Each day he kept count of the words he produced: “from 450, 575, 462, 1250, back to 512, the higher figures on days Hemingway puts in extra work so he won’t feel guilty spending the following day fishing on the Gulf Stream.” Hemingway was a strange old man, as he himself might have put it, but, when it came to writing, no stranger than most.

Not to be outdone, here is John Steinbeck:

“He wrote eight hours a day, six days a week for forty years. He would sharpen twenty-four pencils each morning and write with them until each one was blunt. After many years of this regimen, he had to use his left hand to insert the pencil into the calluses on his writing hand because he was unable to pick up the writing utensil with his right hand. Every few months, he would sandpaper those calluses so he could continue to write.”

British writers are different. Ian McEwan, I heard, rewards himself with a Choco Leibnitz biscuit if he’s had a good morning.

I’m not asking you to sandpaper your calluses. But I might be able to give you a few hints about finding a good, productive discipline:

To start with, don’t count the hours (a person can easily achieve nothing in eight hours), but do have a set amount you must do before you finish: one page, two, more, of hand- or typewritten words.

Wordcount is an instrument of the Devil. Don’t use it more than once a week. Of the evils of Word-Processing, it is Number 1. Especially Live Wordcount.

If it’s a choice between writing badly and not writing at all, write badly. Your only responsibility is for the final draft.

Don’t try to make it perfect on the first draft. Roughness is a virtue at this stage, because roughness is easier to cut, to rewrite.

The penultimate thing you need is the one you’ll probably have thought of first…

A Yearning.

I’ve chosen this, rather than Idea. There’s nothing more likely to close you down than someone saying, ‘You have to have an idea. Now.’

But you need to have a strong sense that there’s something not quite there that should be.

A niggling sensation. A question. Okay, I give up – an Idea.

What does an Idea look/feel/smell/taste/sound like?

Well, you tell me.

But if it’s a really good one, it’s quite possible that, even if you told it me, I wouldn’t recognise it as an Idea – and certainly not as a really good one.

I would, incidentally, recommend that you don’t ever tell people your ideas. Unless they say, ‘That’s the greatest thing I’ve ever heard. Let me sell my house to finance you as you complete this great work,’ you are likely to be disappointed with their reaction. And this may put you off seeing the idea through to its end.

The problem of The Idea is the biggest one for writers just starting out. They return again and again to the question: What do I write? And this is, of course, the question I am least able to answer for you.

But the one thing I won’t repeat is the Great Wisdom of creative writing classes, i.e., Write What You Know.

This is likely to make you think not of what you Know but what you’reCompletely Bloody Sick to Death of.

Henry James, my favourite writer, had something neat to say about the relationship between writing and knowing, expression and experience, in his essay ‘The Art of Fiction’:

‘The power to guess the unseen from the seen, to trace the implication of things, to judge the whole piece by the pattern, the condition of feeling life in general so completely that you are well on your way to knowing any particular corner of it – this cluster of gifts may almost be said to constitute experience, and they occur in country and in town, and in the most differing stages of education. If experience consist of impressions, it may be said that impressions are experience, just as (have we not seen it?) they are the very air we breathe. Therefore, if I should certainly say to a novice, ‘Write from experience and experience only,’ I should feel that this was rather a tantalizing monition if I were not immediately to add, ‘Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost!’’

This is a much more difficult, and useful, thing to aim for. If you aspire to being one of those on whom nothing is lost, then ideas will come to you, I promise.

An idea can be an area of mess or confusion in your head, or a line of remembered real-life dialogue, or an enticing title, or an exquisite memory, or a feeling of dreadful foreboding. It’s something, in other words, that haunts you.

A Yearning.

The final thing you need is…

A Tone

For the first-time novelist, consistency of voice is one the hardest things to achieve. You probably won’t, to begin with, have anything approaching a style, but you will have to settle upon a tone. This can range from ‘Once upon a time…’ to ‘For a long time, my mother used to…’

Here, though, is the ultimate and very simple secret of writing a novel: If you write 1,000 words a day for 75 days, at the end of those 75 days you will have a novel-length-thing. This novel-length-thing may not be a great novel, or even a good novel, or even a novel, but it’s a lot closer to being all three than the nothing you had before.

Or as Gertrude Stein said, ‘The way to do it is to do it.’

So, to conclude, let us go through the 9 things you need to write a novel:

1. Time

2. More Time

3. Even More Time

4. Some Selfishness

5. Some Generosity

6. The Means

7. A Discipline

8. A Yearning

9. A Tone

You have no more excuses. If it’s in you, it can now come out.

Let it.

Find out more about creative writing courses at Birkbeck.

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ICC drops its Kenyatta case, leaving culture of impunity intact

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This article was contributed by Frederick Cowell of Birkbeck’s School of Law. It was originally published on The Conversation.

“One down, two to go,“ was how Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta reacted to the International Criminal Court’s decision to drop its case against him.

Kenyatta had faced charges of being an indirect co-perpetrator of crimes against humanity after post-election violence in Kenya. On 5 December, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Fatou Bensouda, announced that she was discontinuing the case against him.

The cases against Kenyatta’s two Kenyan co-accused, including Vice President William Ruto, have not yet been dropped – but as his reaction showed, they now have reason to be hopeful.

This is a major blow to the ICC’s credibility, and it’s likely to have implications for its ability to prosecute political leaders.

To the Hague

The ICC became involved in Kenya in 2009 after political parties failed to reach an agreement on the establishment of a special domestic tribunal to deal with the 2007-2008 post-election violence. An independent commission set up by the Kenyan government passed on the names of individuals suspected of being responsible for its orchestration to the ICC. The move seemed popular, with the Kenyan media pushing the slogan “don’t be vague, let’s go to The Hague.”

In January 2012, after an independent investigation by the prosecutor’s office, charges against six individuals for Crimes Against Humanity were confirmed. The Court ultimately proceeded with cases against four individuals accused of responsibility for the violence, which claimed over 1000 lives. The charges against Kenyatta included responsibility for orchestrating rape, sexual violence, and murder during attacks on the supporters of his political opponents.

This did not stop Kenyatta running in the 2013 presidential election. The Kenyan government and the African Union (AU) had been lobbying for the prosecution to be delayed. Under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, the UN Security Council has the power to defer prosecutions for up to a year, and it was argued that a deferral was necessary in order to allow the Kenyan government to co-ordinate the campaign against Al-Shabaab in Somalia. The UN Security Council refused, and the Kenyan government sided with the anti-ICC states at the AU who were denouncing the court as imperialist.

Hostility towards the court had being building in the AU since 2009 when the prosecutor issued a warrant for the arrest of Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir. While some AU members still support the ICC, there is a strong sentiment in favour of total non-co-operation with the ICC.

Finally, in September 2013, the Kenyan Parliament voted to withdraw from the ICC – and while this could not stop the case against Kenyatta, it made it very difficult for the prosecutor to proceed.

Dropping the Kenyatta charges

On 3 December, the Trial Chamber at the ICC rejected a request made by the prosecutor for a further adjournment of proceedings. Over the course of 2014, the prosecutor’s office held a series of conferences with the Kenyan government aimed at gathering evidence, such as records of phone conversations held before the outbreak of violence in 2007 and information held by the Kenyan security and intelligence services.

ICC Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda. EPA/Michael Koor

The process faced endless delays, and although the judges noted the government’s lack of co-operation they said that in the interests of justice, they could not grant the extension that the prosecutor’s office was requesting. This resulted in the decision to drop the charges.

Kenyatta expressed excitement at the result; his British lawyer, Steven Kay QC, said that the prosecutor’s office owed him an apology for bringing the proceedings and for “impugning his [Kenyatta’s] integrity.”

For her part, Bensouda reiterated that the Kenyan government’s steadfast refusal to co-operate had posed “severe challenges” to the case. She also criticised the “relentless stream of false media reports” and widespread attempts at witness intimidation, which she said had led to her being forced to dismiss the charges. Crucially, the Court held that she could bring new charges at a later date should new evidence arise.

Impunity forever

The decision to cease Kenyatta’s prosecution almost certainly sends a signal that repeated failure to cooperate with the ICC can reap rewards.

The ICC still has outstanding arrest warrants for Bashir and two other individuals in Sudan who are who are charged with committing Crimes Against Humanity and Genocide in Darfur. Bashir has long resisted any attempt to prosecute him, and this recent decision will almost certainly give the Sudanese accused political ammunition against the ICC.

And while some states have co-operated with the ICC to ensure prosecutions of military leaders responsible for War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity, most notably Uganda, the mission of the ICC was always meant to be much more ambitious. At the court’s creation, many optimistically hoped it would end the “culture of impunity” surrounding political leaders, bringing old tyrants to justice and deterring new ones from committing crimes.

Even though ICC is prosecuting the deposed former president of Côte d’Ivoire, Laurent Gbagbo, the Kenyatta case sends the message that if a political leader can hang onto power, de facto immunity is still theirs.

The Conversation

Read other blogs posts by Frederick Cowell:

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Why we should mine the moon

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IanCrawfordThis article was contributed by Professor Ian Crawford of Birkbeck’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences. It was originally published on The Conversation.

To date, all human economic activity has depended on the material and energy resources of a single planet; understandably, perhaps. It is conceivable though that future advances in space exploration could change this by opening our closed planetary economy to essentially unlimited external resources of energy and raw materials.

Look up at the Moon this evening, and you might be gazing at a solution. The Earth’s closest celestial neighbour seems likely to play a major role and already a number of private companies have been created to explore the possibilities.

It is important to stress that even now, 40 years after the Apollo missions, we still don’t have a complete picture of the Moon’s economic potential, and obtaining one will require a more rigorous programme of lunar exploration than has been undertaken to-date. In part, this is why proposed future lunar exploration missions (such as the recently announced Lunar Mission One) are so important.

Nevertheless, as a result of work over the past four decades, we do now know enough to make a first-order assessment of lunar resource potential. In doing so it is useful to distinguish between three possible future applications of such resources.

Digging deep

  1. We have the option of using lunar materials to facilitate continued exploration, and future economic development, of the Moon itself. The concept is usually referred to as In Situ Resource Utilisation, or ISRU.
  2. We could make use of lunar resources to facilitate scientific and economic activity in the vicinity of both Earth and Moon (so-called cis-lunar space) as well as future exploration deeper into the Solar System
  3. We can consider the importation of lunar resources to the Earth’s surface where they would contribute directly to the global economy.

Recent work – which I have summarised here – has shown that the Moon does possess materials suitable for ISRU. Most important in this respect is evidence for deposits of water ice and other volatiles trapped in cold (less than 100 Kelvin or minus 173 degrees Celsius) and permanently shadowed craters at the lunar poles. In addition to being required for human life support, water is also a ready source of oxygen (required for both life support and rocket fuel oxidiser) and hydrogen (a valuable rocket fuel).

In addition to possible ice deposits, it has been known since the early studies of the Apollo samples that the lunar soil contains volatiles, substances derived ultimately from the solar wind (e.g. hydrogen, helium, carbon, nitrogen, and at high latitudes, hydroxide and perhaps water), and these may also be exploitable for ISRU activities.

Although ISRU will undoubtedly benefit future scientific exploration, it is true that such activities will only make wider economic sense if further lunar exploration and development is able to yield net benefits to the global economy. It is here that the second of those three potential applications of lunar resources comes into play.

Sci-fi realities Mark Bult, CC BY-ND

Fuel’s gold

Our global civilisation is already highly dependent on Earth-orbiting satellites for communications, navigation, weather forecasting and resource management, and this reliance is likely to increase. The high costs of these activities are largely dictated by high launch costs, and by the fact that failed satellites cannot currently be repaired or replenished in orbit. The availability of resources obtained from the weaker gravity conditions of the Moon would help mitigate these obstacles to further economic development in Earth orbit. Near-term lunar exports to a cis-lunar infrastructure could include the supply of hydrogen and oxygen as rocket fuel/oxidiser.

In addition, lunar surface rocks and soils are rich in potentially useful but heavy (and thus expensive to launch from Earth) raw materials such as magnesium, aluminium, silicon, iron and titanium. Therefore, if a lunar industrial infrastructure is gradually built up, the Moon may be able to provide more sophisticated products to Earth-orbiting facilities. Examples might include titanium and aluminium alloys for structural components, and silicon-based photovoltaic cells for solar power. The key business case for sourcing these materials on the Moon is simple. It takes about 20 times less energy to launch a given mass from the surface of the Moon into Earth orbit compared to launching it from the Earth’s surface to Earth orbit.

Down to earth

This all seems pretty encouraging for any company or country considering drilling on the Moon, but opportunities for lunar resources to make a more direct contribution to the world economy by being imported to the Earth’s surface are limited. This is because the Earth already contains the same basic mix of chemical elements as does the Moon, many of them in higher localised concentrations (i.e. ores), and we have a well-developed infrastructure for extracting and refining terrestrial raw materials.

Helium 3’s potential may be over-inflated warrenski, CC BY

The light isotope of helium (helium-3), which is implanted into lunar soils by the solar wind is often cited as an exception because it is perceived by some to be a potential fuel for future nuclear fusion reactors on Earth. However, sustainable nuclear fusion using helium-3 has yet to be shown to be practical, and even if it is, the concentration of helium-3 in lunar soils is so low (about ten parts-per-billion by mass) that strip mining and processing hundreds of square kilometres of the lunar surface would be required each year in order to make a significant contribution to Earth’s future energy needs.

Other possible lunar materials which might conceivably be economically imported to the Earth include platinum group elements (currently valued at between $20,000 and $50,000 per kilo) extracted from iron meteorites that may have survived impact with the lunar surface, and materials (for example, economically valuable rare-earth elements which are known to be concentrated in some regions of the Moon) for which the environmental costs of terrestrial mining may one day make lunar sources more attractive.

Booster stages

When we pull together the evidence, it remains difficult to identify any single lunar resource that will be sufficiently valuable to drive a mining industry on its own. There is no simple solution. However, the Moon does possess abundant raw materials that are of potential economic interest.

We need to think of a hierarchy of future applications. This begins with the use of lunar materials to facilitate human activities on the Moon itself. We can then progress to the use of lunar resources to underpin a future industrial capability within the Earth-Moon system. In this way, gradually increasing access to lunar resources may help “bootstrap” a self-sustaining space-based economy from which the global economy will ultimately benefit.

This article is based on an invited review paper on lunar resources that will be published by the journal Progress in Physical Geography in the New Year. A preprint of that paper, which contains references to the primary literature on which this essay is based, can be found here

The Conversation

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Languages….what for?

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Renata ArchanjoThis post was contributed by Dr Renata Archanjo, an Associate Research Fellow in Birkbeck’s Department of Applied Linguistics and Communication and the Centre for Multilingual and Multicultural Research. In her research, she has worked on questions about multilingual education and language policies for the improvement of languages teaching and learning strategies. Dr Archanjo is also an Associate Professor of Foreign Language and Applied Linguistics at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN), Brazil.

If Brazil hopes to ensure the success of international educational exchange programmes and boost the internationalisation of economic, political, social, educational, and cultural initiatives, it needs to develop comprehensive programmes to promote multilingualism.

In Europe, the acquisition of one or more foreign languages makes a lot of sense, especially if one considers all of the countries in the European Union (EU), and others in the process of integration. According to EU policy, the promotion of language learning is an objective to be fulfilled. The inclusion of regional, minority and sign languages into society, the promotion of early language learning and bilingual education are some more specific linguistic policies. The aim is to ensure that European citizens will be empowered by those linguistic tools to move, learn, and work freely within the EU, contributing to the region’s development and the improvement of living standards. I regard this as a good strategy.

Interestingly enough, a similar policy to what happens in the EU has recently been adopted in my home country, Brazil. It is just a beginning, but more is expected to happen in the near future. In Brazil, having “one country, one language” is believed to be a mark of national identity. This is a Portuguese-speaking country, surrounded by Spanish-speaking neighbouring countries. The setting is that of a poor, third-world country. Perhaps for this reason, for several decades, public policy priorities were centred more on social and economic issues and, with less diversity, mobility and intercultural interactions than in the European context, little attention was given to language policies.

All of this has changed. Today, Brazil is the 7th major economy in the World, one of the BRICS countries, an emergent force in the G20, the leading political and economic group of world nations. The country tries to boost its development in and outwards with economic, political, social, educational, and cultural initiatives in several domains. In the education domain, particularly in the higher education sector, internationalisation is at the forefront. In line with successful initiatives in Europe such as the international mobility programmes like Erasmus, Brazil launched the Science without Borders Programme (SwB), in 2011, targeting the consolidation and expansion of science, technology and innovation. Brazilian students and researchers are awarded grants in order to go to centres of excellence all over the world for a year of exchange study. Accordingly, the programme also grants substantial resources to allow students and researchers from abroad to go to Brazil.

As expected, language competence is here of major importance. Just as European language policies promote multilingualism, Brazil needs to implement policies to ensure a multilingual education. In my current research about the linguistic competencies of Brazilian undergraduate students attending the SwB Program, the first results indicate that a high percentage of students are sent abroad with a low level of proficiency in foreign language. The results also show the improvement in language skills for the majority of students at the end of the mobility programme – which is something to be expected when one is immersed in a foreign language environment. However, language is a means – not the objective – in the SwB programme, and it should be expected that students have a good foundation and language skills beforehand. So far, Brazil is rated very low regarding linguistic capability as perceived and recognized by specialised rankings such as the EF English Proficiency Index. The country appears here in the 38th position, in the range of countries with low proficiency in English. This is something that policy-makers should worry about.

Reacting to that, a good governmental initiative has been recently announced: the Languages without Borders Programme. Developed under the auspices of the Brazilian Ministry of Education, its main goal is to encourage the learning of foreign languages by ensuring an extensive and structural change in the national foreign language teaching system in universities. Like other nations in the world, Brazil appears to understand that the teaching and learning of foreign languages are of major importance, not only for personal achievements, but for the national economic and scientific development. In a country championing social and economic equality, any initiative to improve education, especially in the public system, is to be welcomed. Much more has yet to be done and not only in higher education, as the gap in the domain of languages (both first and foreign languages) starts at an early age.

The answer to the question ‘Languages… What for?’ is not a simple one. A language helps to shape an identity. Through language we give sense to the world. Linguistic knowledge might bring development. At least, it is a condition that must be fulfilled for development to occur. In this case, a multilingual education should be provided. More importantly, extra linguistic knowledge will boost general discernment, the lenses to see the world in a more comprehensive way. Here, again, a multilingual education is critical.

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Business and Corporate Responsibility in Russia

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Book coverThis post was contributed by Bill Bowring, Professor of Law in Birkbeck’s School of Law; and a practising barrister at Field Court Chambers, Gray’s Inn. His latest book is Law, Rights and Ideology in Russia: Landmarks in the Destiny of a Great Power (Routledge, 2013). This article was originally published on Who’s Who Legal.

 

“Despite privatisation policies and programmes since 1991, the Russian state still owns two-thirds of the market capitalisation in the Russian stock market.”

 

On 22 August 2012, after 18 years of negotiations, Russia became the 156th member of the World Trade Organization. As a BBC report pointed out, Russia is the EU’s third biggest trading partner, with member countries exporting €108 billion euros of goods to Russia, including €7 billion worth of cars and €6 billion of medicines. Russia also exports enormous quantities of oil and gas around the world. Despite complications arising from Russia’s actions in Ukraine – including EU and US sanctions on Russian financial and other interests, and Russian sanctions on imports from the EU – the Russian economy and its governance are of great importance to the rest of the world.

Does this important step mean that the Russian economy can be compared with those of Western Europe or North America?

There is one particularly striking difference. Despite privatisation policies and programmes since 1991, the Russian state still owns two-thirds of the market capitalisation in the Russian stock market. The state’s ownership is concentrated in four strategic sectors: energy (oil, gas and electricity), banks, defence industries and transport. There is little state ownership in most other sectors in the Russian economy, including consumer goods, non-defence manufacturing, agriculture, insurance and services. But it is precisely in the two-thirds of the economy which has remained in state hands, or been seized by the state (as in the expropriation of Yukos, according to the Hague Court of International Arbitration, and the arrest and imprisonment from 2003 to 2013 of its owner Mikhail Khodorkovsky) that the most senior government officials are in control. This includes Igor Sechin, head of the state oil company, Rosneft, which took over the former assets of Yukos. Many of these officials have become incredibly rich.

Accession to the WTO was not the first marker of Russia’s participation in the global economic order, especially where corporate social responsibility was concerned. On 10 April 2008 the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon spoke at a Moscow meeting of more than 30 Russian business leaders, preparing to establish the Russian network of the UN’s Global Compact. Kofi Annan launched the Compact, which carries ten principles, on 26 July 2000. With over 12,000 corporate participants and other stakeholders from over 145 countries, it is the largest voluntary corporate responsibility initiative in the world. On 17 December 2008 the Russian network adopted its statutes.

In 2009 a Report on Corporate Social Responsibility Practices in Russia was published by, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), together with the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RSPP) and the UN Global Compact Network in Russia. It highlighted the corporate social responsibility commitments of some of the largest Russian enterprises: Viktor Vekselberg’s Renova Group of Companies, employing more than 100,000 people in Russia; Oleg Deripaska’s UC Rusal, the world’s largest aluminium manufacturer; and Vladimir Yevtushenkov’s Sistema investment group. Ironically, Sistema has recently lost its investment in the oil producer Bashneft through court proceedings that have been seen by many as part of the Russian state’s strategy to consolidate its dominance of oil production. Mr Yevtushenkov himself was arrested.

The RSPP is headed by Vladimir Shokhin, formerly Russia’s deputy prime minister and minister of economics. It was founded in 1991 following the collapse of the former USSR, and is based on the foundations of the Scientific and Industrial Union (which launched in 1990). It has a membership base of over 120 regional alliances and industry associations representing key industries, including the fuel and energy, machine-building, investment banking, military industrial, construction, chemical and food industries. It has more than 328,000 members representing industrial, scientific, financial and commercial organisations and individual members in all Russian regions.

The RSPP is itself responsible for a series of initiatives in the field of social responsibility, including the Global Compact. It has its own Charter of Corporate and Business Ethics, established in 2002, and a Social Charter of Russian Business, adopted at its Congress in 2004 and amended in 2008. It covers 254 businesses and NGOs, and more than 6 million workers. On 20 September 2012, in Sochi, the RSPP promulgated its Anti-Corruption Charter of Russian Business in the presence of the current prime minister Dmitry Medvedev.

Some highly influential Western companies promote corporate responsibility in Russia. For example, the Russian website of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) includes glossy report on the firm’s corporate responsibility programme. It is the market leader in professional services in Russia, with eight offices and over 2,000 staff. Its client base of 2,000 companies includes: every single on of the 10 largest financial services companies and banks; nine of the 10 largest oil and gas companies; seven of the 10 largest power industry companies; six of the 10 largest retail companies; five of the six largest telecommunications companies; four of the 10 largest mining companies; and five of the 10 largest ferrous metallurgy companies. The report states that PwC is a signatory to the UN Global Compact, and in 2009 signed the RSPP’s Social Charter of Russian Business: “a set of principles for businesses to follow that are the foundations of responsible business practices”.

PwC’s competitor Ernst & Young also publishes a report on corporate responsibility. It began work in Russia in 1989 and employs 3,000 staff in eight offices. Since 2012 it has had a corporate responsibility expert panel, which brings clients together with representatives of the educational and ecological sectors.

Baker & McKenzie was the first international law firm to open an office in Moscow in 1989, and employs more than 120 qualified lawyers in Moscow and St Petersburg combined, including 27 partners. This year it was voted Law Firm of the Year in Russia. Its report, “Doing Business in Russia (2014)”, describes the country’s legal and judicial systems in detail and presents a picture of a properly and normally functioning rule of law.

Yet a different perspective comes from Medvedev’s initiative, announced on 27 April 2012: the creation of a new business ombudsman. Mr Medvedev’s last day in office as Russia’s president was 7 May 2012 (he was sworn in as prime minister the following day). 7 May also marked the introduction by Vladimir Putin (who had just been elected president, after serving as prime minister for four years) of a national business ombudsman’s office by December 2012.

On 21 June 2012, in advance of the law, Putin appointed business lobby leader Boris Titov as the Ombudsman for Entrepreneurs’ Rights. According to a BBC report published in July 2012, Mr Titov claimed that in the last 10 years Russia has imprisoned nearly 3 million entrepreneurs, many unjustly. He added, “It is hard to find another social group persecuted on such a large scale.” How has this come about?

The answer is to be found in two of the most insidious problems of doing business in Russia. These are “criminal prosecutions to order” and “criminal corporate raiding”. In short, there have been complaints for many years that private and state businesses, and powerful individuals, have been able to frame commercial rivals by paying corrupt police officers and prosecutors to plant evidence and make arrests to order. The judicial system itself has been a willing participant in such activities.

Another reason for creation of the Ombudsman was the $84 billion in capital that left Russia in 2011: a record amount. Russians were investing overseas because they feared for the safety of their businesses at home. Indeed, many Russian entrepreneurs have fled the country for their own safety. London has even been dubbed “Londongrad” because of the many Russians who have taken up residence and carried out business in the city.

The author of this article, who first travelled to Russia in 1983 in the days of the USSR, has since 2003 been employed as an expert witness on Russian law and politics in several cases in the London and Cyprus courts. The cases fall into three categories.

First, there have been requests by the Russian Federation for the extradition of Russian citizens resident in the UK, on the basis of criminal charges. Many of these were activities connected with Yukos and Mr Khodorkovsky. In almost all of these cases the English judge found that the requests were politically motivated. In none of these cases has Russia been successful. Second, expert evidence has been given in appeals against refusal of refuge status. Third, there have been commercial disputes in which an important preliminary issue has been the potential for a fair trial in Russian courts, given the continued prevalence of “telephone justice” and the possibility of political interference or pressure from highly placed and wealthy individuals and interests.

In fact, prior to his arrest in late 2003 and the destruction of Yukos, Mr Khodorkovsky was the leading Russian exponent of good corporate governance and corporate social responsibility. After two trials and 10 years in prison (he was released in December 2013), he now leads a global campaign to transform Russia into a democracy with an independent judiciary, a viable opposition and free and fair elections.

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Language, identity and a political hot potato

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Penelope Gardner-ChlorosThis post was contributed by Professor Penelope Gardner-Chloros, of Birkbeck’s Department of Applied Linguistics and Communication. 

Blogs do not usually start with quotations from the Bible, but this one epitomizes the link between language, identity and danger that I want to discuss:

Gilead then cut Ephraim off from the fords of the Jordan, and whenever Ephraimite fugitives said, ‘Let me cross,’ the men of Gilead would ask, ‘Are you an Ephraimite?’ If he said, ‘No,’ they then said, ‘Very well, say “Shibboleth” (שבלת).’ If anyone said, “Sibboleth” (סבלת), because he could not pronounce it, then they would seize him and kill him by the fords of the Jordan. Forty-two thousand Ephraimites were killed on this occasion.

—Judges 12:5–6, NJB

Applied Linguistics, as distinct from more theoretical branches of the discipline, addresses real-life problems in which language plays an important role. As a linguist, I can attest that no day goes by without such an issue coming up in the press. I have several box files full of cuttings of articles which I use in my teaching, on topics ranging from the apparently inoffensive – e.g. the revival of ‘dead’ languages such as Manx or Cornish, to the highly political, such as the relationship between the use of minority languages, such as Catalan, and political separatism.

All of us are identified – and often judged – on the basis of our language, dialect or accent. The gruesome ‘beheading’ videos recently released by members of Isis were doubly chilling for Londoners, because the executioners in black hoods had unmistakable London accents, and sounded like the young people you hear on the bus on the way to work.

I want to talk about another recent example which has been in the news, and which shows how language interacts with some very practical issues with serious human consequences.

No-one in the UK needs to be told that the issue of immigration has been in the news on a daily basis for the last few weeks or months. Oddly, this is not because of any drastic change in the situation, but principally because the issue has become a populist rallying cry for politicians who, though they might not put it that way, wish to convince British people that they are going to ringfence the country’s wealth for those same British people – and prevent undefined side-effects like ‘overcrowding’ in the process. This ‘promise’ has proved so popular that politicians from all the main parties have jumped on the bandwagon. Despite clear evidence that immigrants in fact contribute positively to the economy, nothing wins votes like telling people they will get a bigger slice of the cake.

The detailed arguments, and the distinctions between different categories of immigrants, become obscured in this rhetorical assault. This is not the place to rehearse them, but there is one category of (potential) immigrants who deserve some special attention: asylum seekers, i.e. people who come to this country because they claim to be in direct danger, or subject to persecution, in their country of origin. Basic humanity dictates that such cases are dealt with quickly and fairly, and that such people are distinguished from, say, economic migrants, who come for a better life but who are not actually in fear of their life.

But how do we decide whether the asylum seeker is to be believed or not? An important aspect of the decision involves finding out where they actually come from. Do they come from South Somalia, for example, in which case it is beyond question that they should be granted protection, or North Somalia, in which case protection is not automatic? Since such people rarely have any documentation when they arrive, linguistic agencies  are employed by the Government to judge their region of origin on the basis of an analysis of their speech. So far, you may think, all well and good – this could be an effective method.

Unfortunately it has now emerged that these agencies employ people who are not qualified to take these specialized decisions, and who in some cases are totally bogus. Amongst other problems, they ignore Lesson 1 in Sociolinguistics, which is that national and regional frontiers rarely coincide neatly with languages; Lesson 2, that in circumstances where they are being judged, people will speak the way they think they are expected to speak, not the way they speak naturally – so in this case, they may try to use a standard or a national language instead of their own dialect; and Lesson 3, which is that each individual has more than one way of speaking, in fact a ‘repertoire’ which may include different registers, different dialects, and different forms of mixed or intermediate varieties. In such a delicate matter, with life or death consequences hanging on the decision, a very high degree of linguistic expertise is required to do this job properly, and several other factors need to be taken into account apart from the linguistic analysis. Imagine the outcry if we employed food inspectors with bogus or insufficient qualifications to vet the food which we import.

If you would like to read more about these issues, the links below may be of interest. And next time you yourself are in some way judged by the way you speak, think of those who are being sent back to war zones, or to face FGM or worse, because a bogus or under-qualified linguistic ‘expert’ decided they did not come from the region they claimed.

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Need for public enquiry into the death of Peter Connolly

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Professor Lynne SegalThis post was contributed by Professor Lynne Segal, Anniversary Professor of Psychology & Gender Studies in the Department of Psychosocial Studies.

I don’t like the money spent on public enquiries. However, having just watched the documentary on the untold story surrounding the appalling death of Peter Connolly (‘Baby P: The Untold Story’), the public needs to understand just how brutal and manipulative are the attempts to scapegoat social workers for our endemic social problems.

In this case there was an orchestrated campaign by The Sun (under Rebecca Brooke) to target the social workers and locum doctor involved in the case, all quickly themselves becoming the tragic victims of a contemporary witch-hunt. The evil resulting from this is that the strain on all the services involved escapes attention, as those with a huge burden of work in the front-line of patching up society’s ills are punished rather than supported.

The performance of David Cameron making political capital out of the tragedy (at the time briefed by his ‘political advisor’ Andy Coulson) was hugely significant in this modern tragedy, as were the panicked reactions of Ed Balls and the rushed report of Ofsted on the matter. After this disgraceful farce of wrongful blame (the spokespeople for the police and NHS happy to tolerate if not encourage the misleading targeting of the social workers), still, all the right questions are being ignored.

How better to support our front-line social workers is the issue. Even as the brave and compassionate Sharon Shoesmith kept trying to talk about what was needed to protect children (and damaged mothers) last evening on Newsnight, Evan Davis continued with the lazy routine of personal blame. Given that there was never even an inquest into Peter’s death (despite his father calling for one) a public enquiry might at least make more people aware the evils of these bullying diversions, perhaps as well highlighting how much more vulnerable professional women are to being scapegoated than men in similar positions of responsibility. There are so many social, political and ethical issues here, which a public enquiry might begin to flush out.

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If history repeats itself, it’s time for the battle stations

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TProfessor Jean-Marc Dewaelehis post was contributed by Professor Jean-Marc Dewaele of Birkbeck’s Department of Applied Linguistics and Communications.

Sebastian Haffner book cover

As an applied linguist, multilingualism, multiculturalism, immigration and acculturation are central aspects of my research. This is by nature always political. My mission as an applied linguist is to defend diversity and promote tolerance – through my teaching and in my research. There are things I can observe here in the UK through my “Belgian eyes” that might not seem as immediately obvious for fellow Brits.

Reading Sebastian Haffner’s moving autobiography on his childhood and young adulthood in Germany between 1914 and 1933, I was struck by some striking similarities with the present day. In fact, “striking” is not the right word – “chilling” is more accurate.

Adolf Hitler was perceived by most Germans as a clown in the 1920s, and dismissed with a wave of the hand.

Hitler’s favourite public places in that period were beer halls where he gave impassioned speeches against Jews and Marxists: perfect scapegoats.  He presented himself as a “good German” who wanted the best for his country, pretended to value peace, but insisted on more national assertiveness.

Hitler loved to brandish the weakness of German democracy and of his political opponents, who were being forced to accommodate each other, while his own message was clear and uncompromising.

While the National Socialists (NSDAP) did poorly in the elections in 1928 (gaining less than 3% of the vote), they grew steadily, gaining 18% of all votes in 1930.  More importantly, their political agenda strongly influenced the programme of the main democratic parties.

Leaders of democratic parties did not stand up to Hitler, did not organize mass demonstrations against the NSDAP but tried to placate Hitler by offering him prominent positions in the government, which he rejected. He came second in the presidential elections in 1932, with 35% of the vote. Hindenburg appointed him chancellor in 1933.  After the Reichstag fire, Hitler forced Hindenburg to suspend basic rights and allow detention without trial. At new elections in March 1933, the NSDAP obtained 44% of the vote. The boycott of the Jews started in April 1933. No mass protests happened in reaction to this measure.

Germany withdrew from the League of Nations in October 1933. When Hindenburg died in 1934, Hitler became head of state and head of government and the ‘Hitler myth’ grew.

Now, what was it that David Cameron called UKIP supporters again: “A bunch of fruitcakes and loonies and closet racists”? It does not seem to have done the UKIP any harm. What is Nigel Farage’s favourite posture? Holding a pint of beer in an English pub with a disarming smile, and claiming to represent true Britishness. His message?  Simplistic but unambiguous: no more compromising, more assertiveness, exit the European Union, and stop immigration into the UK. What is the reaction of the Conservatives and Labour? Hardening their stances on immigration and drifting towards more and more Europhobia. Add to that Conservative plans to withdraw from the European Convention of Human Rights (on the spurious argument that prisoners can’t be allowed to vote) and claiming that a vote for UKIP would benefit the other major party.

Now, just imagine a scenario where UKIP evolves as the NSDAP did in Germany in the 1930s. As they became more powerful, they could become more radical in their agenda – or simply disclose what might still be under wraps. Being outside the EU and outside the reach of the European court in Strasbourg, they could start forcing the other parties in government to implement a more radical anti-immigration policy, and declare a state of emergency (see Sampson’s Dominion for an idea of what this would look like in the streets of London). Having stopped the foreign influx, and gained the political upper hand, they would have to turn on the immigrants inside the UK, using the full force of the law, starting “gently” and turning on the screw: limit and cut their benefits, their salaries, their role in British society. At what point, I wonder, would the British realize that their cherished democracy was being transformed into a fascist state? Because this is the main point of Haffner: why did nobody stand up to the NSDAP? How could they force a whole nation to become complicit in a world war and a genocide?

You might think at this point, “this can’t happen to us, we’re a civilized people”, and this is the 21st century after all. Haffner points out that this was exactly what the Germans had been thinking of themselves in the 1920s, watching the rise of fascism with “calm, superior indifference”. And what happened to the majority who had not voted for the NSDAP in the 1933 elections? Once the Nazis had grabbed the power, it became nigh impossible to voice dissent without risking one’s life.

We cannot let history repeat itself. Urgent mobilization is needed against the gangrene that UKIP ideology represents. As Haffner says: “Decisions that influence the course of history arise out of individual experiences of thousands or millions of individuals”. We need to urge politicians from mainstream parties not be infected by UKIP’s isolationist and anti-immigration agenda. They need to stand up for our human rights, our European union, our democracy. It’s time for the battle stations – or at least the ballot box – to keep UKIP out of power. Nationalism leads to war, and we want peace!

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Transparency, what transparency?

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Justin SchlosbergThis post was written by Justin Schlosberg, Lecturer in journalism and media, in Birkbeck’s Department of Film, Media and Cultural Studies.

In 2011, as the phone-hacking scandal unfolded, Prime Minister David Cameron pledged a new era of transparency in the government’s dealings with the media. All meetings between senior government and media figures were to be recorded and published on a quarterly basis and a major public inquiry was launched – partly with a focus on the relationship between press and politicians.

The Leveson hearings that followed cast an unprecedented spotlight on the intimacy of these relations complete with gossip, threats, family get-togethers and texts signed off with ‘lots of love’ and kisses. It had very little to do with the day-to-day interactions between politicians and journalists – both on and off the record – which are an intrinsic part of the political newsgathering process. It revealed instead something over and above those interactions – an exclusive club at the heart of the establishment that seemed to undermine the very fabric of British democracy, and underline the growing public mistrust of both politicians and the media.

Within this dynamic, Leveson was pre-occupied with the flow of influence from media owners to politicians. The founding premise of his inquiry was that press power was out of control, undermining the integrity of government, parliament and the police, whilst severely infringing on the privacy rights of individual citizens. Leveson’s detractors, on the other hand, perceived the gravest threat to democracy as operating in the other direction. It was creeping state control of the press – supposedly heralded by his reform proposals – which threatened to fatally undermine the independence of the fourth estate. In the intense debate that followed, a fundamental truth was obscured: media and political elites are not rivals but partners in a relationship that works ultimately to promote the shared interests of power. This was vividly demonstrated when Rebecca Brooks – former editor of the News of the World – told Leveson that the Prime Minister had sent her a consoling text during the height of the scandal, apologising for not being able to be more ‘loyal’ to her in public.

And as the spotlight began to fade, business as usual resumed – behind closed doors – and the hollow rhetoric of transparency was laid bare. For a start, it soon became clear from published data that the government had no intention of divulging any meaningful details about its meetings with media bosses. Whilst the nature and purpose of other external meetings are often specified, when it comes to newspaper editors or execs, we rarely get anything beyond ‘general discussion’.

Of course, this spectacle of transparency is nothing new. After taking office in 2010, Cameron renewed the commitment to openness that is typical of incoming governments, promising to pour light into the darkest corners of policymaking. In a nutshell: ministers would be ‘transparent about what [they] do and how [they] do it’ and ‘above improper influence’.

Less than one year later, then culture secretary Jeremy Hunt was at pains to reiterate this commitment in respect of News Corp’s aborted take-over of BSkyB. He stressed the unprecedented openness of the bid process both before and after he waived it through (only to then be withdrawn by News Corp amidst the fall-out from the phone hacking scandal). But the folly of Hunt’s assurances was exposed after he told Parliament in 2012 that he had no unofficial contact with News Corp lobbyist Fred Michel during the bid process. A series of texts disclosed shortly afterward suggested otherwise, with cringe-inducing awkwardness.

Perhaps not surprisingly in the wake of phone hacking, the Prime Minister appears to be steadily curtailing his personal contact with senior media figures, based on data released by the government for 2011-13. Interestingly though, Cabinet Secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood is more than picking up the slack, with ten recorded meetings with the media in 2012 and fourteen in 2013. In contrast, Jeremy Heywood’s predecessor Gus O’Donnell had just two meetings with the media in 2011, one of which was a ‘reception’ hosted by the Financial Times.  This raises the possibility that some of the business of media management by the government (or vice versa) is increasingly being conducted through the civil service, perhaps in an effort to remain under the radar. In any case, given that Leveson’s focus was elsewhere, the spike in contact between the Cabinet Secretary and the media warrants scrutiny.

The first thing to note is that like his ministerial colleagues, the Cabinet Secretary’s contact with the media is overwhelmingly concentrated in the national press: of the twenty four meetings in 2012-13, just three were with broadcasters (BBC and ITN). This could be because of a received wisdom in government that the national press remain leaders of the wider news agenda. Or it could be because newspaper editors and proprietors are more active than broadcasters in lobbying the government for influence and/or ‘scoops’. Or it could also be because the government is conscious of the broadcasters’ regulated impartiality, whereas newspapers may be seen as more malleable targets in agenda building strategies.

In any case, the imbalance illustrates how much newspapers still matter to Whitehall, for all the talk of their demise. But it is not just newspaper bosses in general who occupy a disproportionate amount of the Cabinet Secretary’s time. Again, in line with ministerial colleagues, a significant majority of the meetings were with representatives of the right wing press. Of the ten meetings Jeremy Heywood had with the media in 2012, seven were with the Times, Telegraph, Mail and Spectator, all openly aligned with the Conservative party; two were with non-partisan outlets (the Economist and ITN) and one with the left-leaning Guardian newspaper.

This may simply reflect the market dominance of the right-wing press in Britain. It is perhaps understandable that if the Cabinet Secretary is going to meet regularly with the press, he would want to prioritise those titles that have the biggest audience reach, regardless of their political colours. But it doesn’t explain why most of his meetings are with the elite press – broadsheets and periodicals – with very limited exposure compared to the mid-market and tabloid titles. Again, there are a number of plausible explanations here. It could be that mid-market and tabloid editors and executives aren’t very interested in talking to government bureaucrats. It could be because the ‘serious’ news sector is particularly valued in Whitehall for its opinion-leading reputation and its elite audience capture. Or it could just be because these titles have the capacity to cover political issues with greater depth and complexity than their lower brow competitors.

Whatever the reason, the opacity of these meetings appeared to take something of a sinister turn in 2013. After the Guardian began publishing details of mass surveillance by the security services in June 2012, revealed by NSA whistleblower Ed Snowden, the Cabinet Secretary unusually held two meetings in short succession at the Guardian’s offices. A Freedom of Information request for details of these and other meetings with the senior newspaper figures has recently been refused and is currently under review by the Information Commissioner. According to Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger in an interview with the author, he was explicitly threatened with legal injunctions during his meetings with the Cabinet Secretary, unless he agreed to destroy hard drives of the leaked material. The only account we have from the government is the notes recorded in the meeting data. The first meeting was described simply as a ‘discussion about handling information’ whilst the follow-up apparently moved on to ‘discussion about international issues’.

In the end, the newspaper acceded to the government’s demands, confident that destruction of the hard drives would not curtail reporting. Copies of the material lodged with US publishing partners would apparently ensure the story’s endurance. Glen Greenwald, former lead journalist on the story for the Guardian and now with the Intercept, recently claimed that the biggest story relating to the leaks is yet to be published. But he made no mention of what or when, and we are left wondering whether the government’s actions had really been as futile as Rusbridger suggested.

Rusbridger himself opted initially not to make public the threatening nature of his meetings with the Cabinet Secretary, or indeed the unprecedented event that followed, with security service personnel entering the Guardian’s offices to oversee destruction of the offending hard drives. A month later the Guardian despatched David Miranda, Greenwald’s partner, to meet Laura Poitras (another Snowden confidante and co-architect of the story) in Germany, perhaps in an effort to get around the loss of direct access to the material.  According to Rusbridger, the rise in international travel was due to the necessity of face to face meetings as ‘we assumed everything was being at that point intercepted’.  But on his return to Brazil, Miranda was arrested and detained at Heathrow Airport under anti-terror laws, prompting Rusbridger to publicise the extraordinary lengths the government was going to in order to restrain the coverage.

But what about the other meetings that took place around the same time between the Cabinet Secretary and the national press? Apparently, the purpose, nature and outcome of these meetings are also exempt from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act, partly in order to protect policymaking. But the use of this exemption (under Section 35 of the Act) raises more questions than it answers, perhaps the most obvious of which is what policy exactly do these meetings concern? In apparently typical fashion, the Cabinet Office made no attempt to explain why exemptions under Section 35 were engaged, or provide any detail as to the public interest test that is required under law.

It is fundamental to a functioning democracy that the media are seen to be free from undue influence or interference by the state and, conversely, that government and policymaking is free from undue influence or interference by the media. Over the last two years, these twin and sometimes conflicting concerns have become matters of acute public interest, fuelled by Leveson and Snowden alike. But the government’s refusal to disclose information about these meetings speaks to a wider problem. It exposes the gap between transparency rhetoric and substance which ensures that the real workings of power remain off limits to public scrutiny. It is a gap now so wide that official talk of transparency in media policymaking is tantamount to double-speak.

You can find links to the correspondence between the author and FOI authorities in the following places:

http://www.lse.ac.uk//media@lse/documents/MPP/First-Reply-to-FOI-request-on-Cabinet-meetings-with-media.pdf

http://www.lse.ac.uk//media@lse/alumni/documents/Appeal-on-FOI-319677—request-for-internal-review.pdf

http://www.lse.ac.uk//media@lse/documents/MPP/Response-to-appeal-on-FOI319677-for-Cabinet-meetings-with-Media.pdf

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Patrick Modiano, winner of this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature, is a paradox

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Akane KawakamiThis post was contributed by Dr Akane Kawakami, Senior Lecturer in  20th and 21st-century French and francophone literature in Birkbeck’s Department of Cultures and Languages. It was originally published on The Washington Post. Dr Kawakami’s books include A Self-Conscious Art: Patrick Modiano’s Postmodern Fictions. 

Patrick Modiano, winner of this year’s Nobel Prize in literature, is a paradox. He writes bestsellers but shuns the media. His novels sound autobiographical, yet his declared subject is a historical period that ended just before he was born. His style is clear and simple, but it masks complex time frames, unreal scenarios and a narrator who often seems to know little about the story he is in charge of. He is a household name in France but almost unknown outside his own country. This is one reason why the recipient of this year’s literature prize may come as something of a surprise to the world at large, if not to his faithful and numerous Francophone readers.

Even for those of us who have been reading and loving his books for several decades, this honor establishing him as a “grand man of letters” seems somehow not to fit the media-shy author. Can it really be that this recluse — famously inarticulate on the French literary program “Apostrophes” and always reluctant to give interviews — has been dragged into the limelight to be given the greatest literary accolade of all?

Modiano himself has always played down his own achievements, as well as the status of his chosen medium, the novel. In 1975, after four successful novels, Modiano — in a rare interview — claimed that the novel was an “anachronistic” genre that had ”slipped away” from public view. His heroes are known for slipping away, too; they’re shadowy, furtive figures modeled on himself (they tend to be tall, dark, shy and not good at interviews). In story­lines that are reminiscent of classic detective novels, his heroes set off on their searches into the past, trying to solve mysteries rooted in the period of the Occupation, Modiano’s avowed obsession.

Modiano_Missing PersonThe Occupation of France by the Nazis during World War II — along with the collaboration of many French nationals and the murder of French Jews — is a dirty pocket of French history that was not much discussed following the Allied victory. After Charles de Gaulle inaugurated the Fifth Republic, the general tendency was to stop talking about les années noires. It was only authors of a later generation — such as Modiano, whose guilt was inherited rather than personal — who proved able to explore this painful period. His first novel, about an anti-Semitic Jew who leads a colorful and surreal existence during the war, was published in 1968. Missing Person, published in 1978, is another highlight, about an amnesiac detective who goes on a hunt for his own identity during the Occupation. Honeymoon (1990), the story of a young Jewish woman who disappears in 1942, is also a gripping read.

Modiano’s novels are usually built around several time frames. They might start off in the 1980s, go back to the 1960s to evoke his youth and then suddenly shelve down into the 1940s to reveal a crucial link between a friend of his deceased parents and the woman he is dating in the present. Or the link will not be crucial; it will simply be a case of what might have been, the possibility that one ephemeral life that was extinguished during the Occupation might have brushed past another who has happened to survive.

In Dora Bruder (1997), Modiano gave up fiction and tried to re-create the real life of the heroine of Honeymoon, relating the few facts he had recovered about her movements in 1941 to his own wanderings through the Parisian streets as an adolescent in the 1960s, and to his walks in the 1990s. Gaps in his knowledge evoke the poignancy of the subject, as, in the end, Modiano has to concede that he still knows almost nothing about the girl, except that she was eventually arrested by the Gestapo and ended her days in Auschwitz.

Modiano tells all this in a limpid, almost classical prose that belies the ugliness of the events and facts. His writing is extremely readable, which is perhaps the reason for both his popularity in France and his relative lack of academic recognition (his novels are taught more in English-speaking universities than in French ones). Yet his clear writing eases the reader through instances of formal experimentation that would not be out of place in a Paul Auster novel: bewildering shifts in time, multiple appearances of “Patrick,” who may or may not be the author, and apparently real settings transformed into strange, hallucinatory spaces.

Light is something Modiano is good at describing, and many of the scenes in his novels are almost cinematic in their visual impact. Modiano co-wrote the screenplay of Lacombe, Lucien (1974), directed by Louis Malle, and has carried on to make more films, such as The Son of Gascogne (Pascal Aubier, 1995) and Bon Voyage (Jean-Paul Rappeneau, 2003).

His prose also achieves a difficult feat, which is to get French readers to face, time and time again, the unspeakable acts of betrayal and cowardice perpetuated during the Occupation. The detective novel framework, the clear style, the diffident narrators — all this makes it deceptively simple for readers to occupy the narrator’s seat in Modiano’s novels. The narrator of Missing Person introduces himself saying, “I am nothing. Nothing but a pale shape, silhouetted that evening against the cafe terrace.”

The joy of reading a Modiano novel is to slip into that silhouette, to make the journey through the decades of French history and then — sometimes, suddenly — experience all the horror of the past at the same time as the immunity conferred by its distance.

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