XVI 1st October 2000
We had a serious barley disaster, discovering that the grain loaded into silo 4 was coming to the boil - misled by a thermometer which was showing 24° instead of actual 46 in the store; it resulted from the fact that we overlooked a notice that the thermometer goes up to a maximum of 36° after which it commences to deduct for every degree, an electronic disposition or indisposition. We rushed to empty the silo, by spreading thin layers of grain to air on trailers and by pumping some to other silos while blowing the air through them. With these measures we saved the crop. Taking a sample to the brewery later we were surprised to learn that it was still acceptable. When after some weeks we delivered the grain to the brewery, it was rejected because of the damage, with an apology for error in testing on the previous occasion. This meant that the whole of the barley harvest after considerable additional costs was only suitable for animal food at a low price: one of a farmerʼs many uncertainties in his business resolved not to his advantage.
Farmers were one of the first groups in society to obtain liberty or privileges, which often enabled them to create an indigenous culture. The farmer is free if he is able to produce enough to feed his family and have surplus to sell. At times when outside interest, seigniorial, urban or commercial came between him and his land, social upheavals happened throughout Europe, Asia, and Americas, as witnessed for instance in Ireland or in Russia. The agriculture did not develop beyond an inefficient subsistence level until the beginning of Industrial Revolution and even today half of the people in the world earn their daily bread through the practice of very simple agriculture. The modern introduction of contracting of seed or sales in the name of globalisation can be recognised as the same creeping separation of farmer from his land, with justifications which are false, in advanced as well as in primitive areas. The result is that the farming is taken away from the producer and carried-on by hired operatives and firms whose objective is to produce money rather than bread, becoming an attack on natural democracy of the land. The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) has become a weapon to preserve these traditional freedoms, as well as assuring the feeding of the continent. It is a model to be extend- ed throughout the world, to enable this domain to continue, while reducing the effort, over time, as mechanisation improves. Today farmers in Europe like my friends in Canterbury are preparing their submissions to Brussels, for subsidy payments, which are part of the system, and which will one day reach us here. This money enables each farmer to continue his relationship with the land, rather than working a 10,000 hectare factory, doubtful in terms of efficiency and destructive of social values.
I left London this morning for Paris, to set up a working office in a left-bank studio. It feels right to leave Britain for a while, exactly 60 years, almost to the day, since landing on her shores. One felt accepted without conditions and welcomed generously, one was ready to make a good home and to become with time a glad citizen. I remember canvassing for the Labour Party during 1950 election in North Street of Hertford seeing - while the front door was closed - a hand behind a curtain, motioning me to the back, where the door was wide open - “we donʼt like neighbours to know, but here is tea, make yourself at home, we are on your side”. While playing football for Architectʼs department the boss Charles Aslin, then President of the RIBA come over and smiled at me saying “football is good, if we did not have football we would have had a revolution.” Over the sixty years one has become an Englishman of Polish nationality; if with primary allegiance to the country which has become my home, yet cheering Poland in a football match! Things will pass and return to an even keel, but it is not the same Labour Party and not the same country; and to love a country is to hate it as it is today. The young, knowing it, and without the means to make a change, take it out on a weekend binge; others like me look for time to reflect: but be sure, the solutions will come.
Reading in the world press about diplomatic decisions of United Kingdom, it becomes plain that Britain finds herself today in a situation similar to the one that France found herself in June 1940, with her total surrender to USA today. Her foreign policy is ordered from Washington, finding its expression in an enmity towards Europe, her commercial independence is manacled by letting American multinationals into key positions of ownership while copying an economic policy which takes her away from her manufacturing base, substituting for it financial speculation. We may therefore legitimately speak of an administration which while avowing interests of Britain is in fact expanding interests of another country.
There is no explanation why a country, having the most mixed society in Europe resulting from its imperial tradition, nonetheless locks its borders at the channel against the very citizens of the Union to which it belongs by rejecting Schengen agreement. Nor why is it retarding progress to join the monetary or metric systems, or why its postal addressing references are at variance with the rest of the continent. Above all why it does not realign its voting system to those proportional systems, like in Germany, to enable all shades of public opinion being expressed, rather than holding onto the despotic rule of two parties. The explanation that ʻours is bestʼ wears thin, for a strong nation, if she sees it frankly better elsewhere. Why align ourselves with a far away continent and not with our neighbours, whom people chose democratically to join thirty years ago; these steps express a policy which becomes - anti-legal, by operating beyond, or against the declared will of the nation.
America does not attack Serbia with her cruises, she kills Europeans in the heart of Europe and therefore attacks Europe. Whatever exaggerated reactions Serbs may have made to terrorism, they were not given time to make a correction, and while they offered conditional withdrawal of their forces, which after all had the right to be there, they were provoked into further resistance bringing about the clash. We are doing it: for democracy in Serbia and Kosovo, say Americans, laughing in their sleeve, as they walk away down the corridor, like Hitler did at Munich, with Europe agreeing the crime - then as now.
Even great nations need help. Often all they need is a little time to gather national will and for their leaders to find words to express the new resolution. Britain needs to find her own De Gaulle to make a clarion call to the country to resist, and to stop her from becoming a vanquished satellite. Europe has the duty to offer friendship to Britain, like Churchill did for France, to help her forget and ignore the gaggle in her Parliament and help her people to hear, as the French were able to listen to London, over the voices of Vichy, to a European anthem. There are many ways, but one is that the Franco-German leadership in Europe should see this policy.
