It was a slow day on Beech Road yesterday, and with little interest in sitting in the garden or watching yet another box set I took to reading a collection of historic speeches.*
Now, if you want to get out of a low mood, brought on by a combination of the virus, and the political scene, a couple of hours with Dr King, J.F. Kennedy, Betty Friedman, Abraham Lincoln, and Dolores Ibarruri Gomez, [La Pasionaria] and countless others, is guaranteed to set you up.
Of course, you have to be aware of the context in which the speeches were made, and if I am honest I gravitated at first to those whose politics I shared, and remember watching.
Added to which some of those speeches were made by people who whose political record on certain issues might at times be a little flawed.
And finally, I take the possible criticism that sitting reading a speech is just armchair politics and the real test is going out and making a difference.
But at 70 with a lifetime of political activity which began when I was 16, I think I might be allowed to take the armchair.
What surprised me were the speeches by politicians who I have always regarded as pariahs, like Enoch Powell who made that infamous “rivers of blood” speech made in Birmingham in 1968, but nine years earlier had condemned the treatment of Mau Mau detainees in the Kenyan detention camp at Hola, insisting that prisoners wherever they were held under British jurisdiction were entitled to the same rights of treatment.
The beatings of many of the prisoners and the deaths of ten of the men he argued was the responsibility of the Secretary of State, brushing aside the alleged crimes and their place of confinement as not relevant to justice, concluding “We cannot, we dare not, in Africa of all places fall below our own highest standards in the acceptance of responsibility”.
That said, the speeches which I enjoyed rereading were those of Lincoln, Kennedy and Dr King, and staring with Colonel Rainsborough who in 1647, uttered, the powerful, statement of democratic principle “I think that the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live, as the greatest he; and therefore truly, Sir, I think it's clear, that every man that is to live under a government ought first by his own consent to put himself under that government; and I do think that the poorest man in England is not bound in a strict sense to that government that he hath not had a voice to put himself under”.
His was a contribution to the Putney Debates when the victorious Parliamentarian army sat down to discuss the future.
And while that democratic statement was defeated by the Army Grandees and the forces of the establishment it still rings out.
As does the speech of Gideon Hausner, the Attorney General of the State of Israel at the trial Adolf Eichmann, responsible for the management of the Final Solution.
In a speech which lasted ten hours Mr. Hausner, opened by saying, “When I stand before you O Judges of Israel, to lead the prosecution of Adolf Eichmann, I do not stand alone.
With me here are six million accusers. But they cannot rise too their feet and point their finger at the man in the dock with the cry of ‘J’ Accuse on their lips. For they are only ashes- ashes piled high on the hills of Auschwitz, and the fields of Treblinka and strewn in the forests of Poland. Their graves are scattered throughout Europe. Their blood cries out but their voice is stilled. Therefore, will I be their spokesman”.
What marks out many of these speeches is the power of the rhetoric, which makes us remember, the memorable lines, like those from J.F. Kennedy’s “The torch has passed to a new generation of Americans", “ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man”. “Ich bin ein Berliner”.
But sleek phrases are themselves not enough, they must arise from a very real need for change which Betty Friedman encapsulated in a speech on women’s rights in 1969 at the first national conference for repeal of abortion rules, when she talked about women being invisible and having to have “a full say in the decisions of their lives and their society”.
And of all the countless ones I read yesterday, and which still sit with me, it must be Dr King’s address on the centenary of Abraham’s Lincoln’s emancipation proclamation, made at a gathering of 210, 000 people at the Lincoln Memorial.
It is a powerfully written speech drawing on the language of the bible, shot through with the injustices of Black Americans and calling for action.
I tried to pick out key sections, but in truth the whole speech is a mastery of rhetoric, leaving me to fall back on the oft quoted lines,
"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.
This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with".
Pictures from the collection of Andrew Simpson, 1981-87
*The Penguin Book of Twentieth Century Speeches. Edited by Brian MacArthur, 1992, & The Penguin Book of Historic Speeches, edited by Brian MacArthur, 1996
 |
| Liverpool, 1980 |
Of course, you have to be aware of the context in which the speeches were made, and if I am honest I gravitated at first to those whose politics I shared, and remember watching.
Added to which some of those speeches were made by people who whose political record on certain issues might at times be a little flawed.
And finally, I take the possible criticism that sitting reading a speech is just armchair politics and the real test is going out and making a difference.
But at 70 with a lifetime of political activity which began when I was 16, I think I might be allowed to take the armchair.
What surprised me were the speeches by politicians who I have always regarded as pariahs, like Enoch Powell who made that infamous “rivers of blood” speech made in Birmingham in 1968, but nine years earlier had condemned the treatment of Mau Mau detainees in the Kenyan detention camp at Hola, insisting that prisoners wherever they were held under British jurisdiction were entitled to the same rights of treatment.
 |
| Birmingham, 1983 |
That said, the speeches which I enjoyed rereading were those of Lincoln, Kennedy and Dr King, and staring with Colonel Rainsborough who in 1647, uttered, the powerful, statement of democratic principle “I think that the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live, as the greatest he; and therefore truly, Sir, I think it's clear, that every man that is to live under a government ought first by his own consent to put himself under that government; and I do think that the poorest man in England is not bound in a strict sense to that government that he hath not had a voice to put himself under”.
His was a contribution to the Putney Debates when the victorious Parliamentarian army sat down to discuss the future.
 |
| Manchester, 1984 |
As does the speech of Gideon Hausner, the Attorney General of the State of Israel at the trial Adolf Eichmann, responsible for the management of the Final Solution.
In a speech which lasted ten hours Mr. Hausner, opened by saying, “When I stand before you O Judges of Israel, to lead the prosecution of Adolf Eichmann, I do not stand alone.
With me here are six million accusers. But they cannot rise too their feet and point their finger at the man in the dock with the cry of ‘J’ Accuse on their lips. For they are only ashes- ashes piled high on the hills of Auschwitz, and the fields of Treblinka and strewn in the forests of Poland. Their graves are scattered throughout Europe. Their blood cries out but their voice is stilled. Therefore, will I be their spokesman”.
What marks out many of these speeches is the power of the rhetoric, which makes us remember, the memorable lines, like those from J.F. Kennedy’s “The torch has passed to a new generation of Americans", “ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man”. “Ich bin ein Berliner”.
 |
| Birmingham, 1983 |
And of all the countless ones I read yesterday, and which still sit with me, it must be Dr King’s address on the centenary of Abraham’s Lincoln’s emancipation proclamation, made at a gathering of 210, 000 people at the Lincoln Memorial.
It is a powerfully written speech drawing on the language of the bible, shot through with the injustices of Black Americans and calling for action.
I tried to pick out key sections, but in truth the whole speech is a mastery of rhetoric, leaving me to fall back on the oft quoted lines,
"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today!
 |
| Birmingham, 1983 |
I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.
This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with".
Pictures from the collection of Andrew Simpson, 1981-87
*The Penguin Book of Twentieth Century Speeches. Edited by Brian MacArthur, 1992, & The Penguin Book of Historic Speeches, edited by Brian MacArthur, 1996
It is like watching a nation busily engaged in heaping up its own funeral pyre....
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