Passive Complicity has taken some interest in our new Government’s indigenous policies.  Prime minister Abbott has appointed three prominent indigenous people, Warren Mundine, Noel Pearson and Marcia Langton, to his Indigenous Advisory Council.  Indigenous people suggest these three are assimilationist and unrepresentative of the indigenous population.  In “White Sheep of the Family” Gary Foley wrote of Warren Mundine.  Gary Foley wrote of Noel Pearson in a piece first published back in May, in the indigenous magazine Tracker.

THE CONTRARIAN: Liberation through acquisition
BY GARY FOLEY, MAY 6, 2013

NATIONAL: Melbourne was recently privileged to receive a visit from Queensland’s most famous Lutheran since peanut farming Premier Joh Bjelke-Peterson.

I refer, of course, to the corpulent and verbose Aboriginal Man of the Moment- Mr Noel Pearson.

Whilst Mr Pearson is apparently unkindly referred to by many in Aboriginal communities around Australia as the ‘Cape York Cane Cane Toad’, he nevertheless is a popular man among the strange and disparate collection of his white acolytes in Melbourne.

And they turned out in droves on this recent visit to Melbourne. Well, when I say ‘droves’, I mean about 70 of them turned up to hear his launch of the book version of Marcia Langton’s controversial Boyer Lecture Series.

It is always an instructive exercise when Mr Pearson visits this fair city in the south because one gets to observe just who constitutes his admirers and followers down this way.

His launch of Prof Langton’s Boyer Lectures book was held at University of Melbourne so one would not have expected many Aboriginal people to be in attendance because of the location alone. But even if it had been held at the Aborigines Advancement League I doubt whether the attendance of blackfellas would have been much higher than the three or four who turned up at Melbourne uni (and of those 4 who were at the book launch two of them were Marcia and Noel).

This is interesting because it is a vivid illustration of the fact that the followers of Australia’s best known Aboriginal political figure are almost exclusively upper middle-class white people. But as I said before, whilst they are almost all Anglo-Australians, they are a strangely disparate bunch.

Pearson’s admirers and followers in Melbourne range from Murdoch media attack dog Andrew Bolt, through wealthy corporate boardrooms and influential legal circles and include just about every right-winger in Melbourne. But given Noel’s hard line assimilationist ideas it is not surprising that he should be so admired among the political Right.

What is surprising is that also among his ardent following are “progressive” people who should know better, but who seem dazzled by his articulate and pompous declarations and his interminably long speeches.

And let’s face it, Pearson is a gifted orator in style and technique. However the problem for me is not in his style and technique but rather in the substance of the message he promotes.

Over the past two decades Noel has become the dominant voice in Aboriginal Australia. Or, to be more precise, has been avidly promoted by all sections of the Australian media as the voice to be heard. His political dominance is primarily due to the extensive coverage of his ideas in influential media outlets owned by Rupert Murdoch.

But Pearson has also been for years provided with acres of space in the Australian newspaper to push his political agenda, and after Prime Minister John Howard’s remake of the ABC in 2003 when he installed the likes of Keith Windshuttle, Janet Albrechtsen, and Ron Brunton onto the Board, the ABC has since become a compliant advocate for Pearson’s agenda as well.

Furthermore, if one also includes the supposedly “progressive” Monthly magazine among those providing a significant forum for Pearson, then one begins to realise that Pearson’s views monopolise almost the full spectrum of available outlets.
Pearson’s voice and ideas are being promoted and heard to the exclusion of all others voices from Aboriginal Australia.

Therein is the major reason for his being the dominant voice.

It also provides an understanding of why Premiers and Federal Ministers for Aboriginal Affairs jump whenever Mr Pearson has a hissy fit (such as QLD Premier Campbell Newman backflipping recently when Noel objected to a policy decision).

It is clear that Pearson is happy to use his political dominance to get his own way, but the question is whether Pearson’s way is a good way for Aboriginal people to go.

Noel’s speech launching Prof. Langton’s Boyer book was in part a reiteration of his assertions about what is the way forward for Aboriginal people. The familiar Pearson themes of the importance of individual home ownership and entrepreneurialism were there, as well as the tiresome chastising of those who don’t support these contentions as being ones who are tolerant of domestic violence and child abuse.

This latter accusation is particularly disingenuous because it implies the solitary way one can combat social dysfunction is through the path of individualism, materialism and free-enterprise entrepreneurialism. If that is the case, then it is clear that what Pearson’s ideas are ultimately about is pure and simple assimilationism.

Assimilation, both as an idea and government policy, was discredited and dispensed with almost fifty years ago along with the equally discredited “White Australia Policy”. Yet we see today a resurgence of these old assimilation ideas, largely through the pronouncements of the dominant Aboriginal political personality.

It should come as no real surprise that Noel Pearson is an advocate of ideas designed to recreate Aboriginal people as brown, middle class Australians. In his speech launching Prof. Langton’s book, he solemnly declared, “…I myself am bourgeois..”.

This is not news, though interesting in the sense that my dictionary defines Bourgeois as, “a person whose political, economic, and social opinions are believed to be determined mainly by concern for property values and conventional respectability.”

His own self-description then places him at odds with the ideas and values of most Aboriginal Australians, yet he is avidly promoted by his powerful friends in the media as the most admirable Aboriginal spokesperson around.

I have no problem with Pearson aspiring to middle-class ideals. It should come as no surprise given his upbringing in a Lutheran family on Joh Bjelke-Peterson’s favoured Lutheran-run mission in QLD, and his continued indoctrination when he became a boarder at a private school, namely St Peters Lutheran College in Brisbane. He later studied Law and History at University of Sydney.

Thus it is understandable that Noel should be steeped in the values and ideas of the white middle-class establishment. And like I said, I have no problem with Pearson holding ideas that seem to be the antithesis of an Aboriginal outlook on life. He is entitled to his ideas and he is no doubt eloquent in his expression of them.

The problem occurs when Pearson’s ideas become the dominant narrative in the interpretation, development and implementation of Government Aboriginal affairs policies.

On a personal level, I have only ever met Pearson once in passing, and found him to be a pleasant enough chap, and I do have a small level of admiration of his oratorical skills.

But I would seriously contest his interpretation of history that underpins the ideas and policies he promotes these days. Those ideas have already been imposed on numerous Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory in the form of the so-called NT Intervention.

Ideas of income management for people on welfare have already been extended to welfare recipients in certain mainstream communities and thus now impact on the broader community.

The punitive nature of these Pearsonesque ideas of social engineering are happily embraced by both ends of the limited Australian political spectrum, from right-wing racists to small “l” leftish earnest white social workers who in their own do-gooderness can’t understand why the black underclass don’t harbour the same white middle-class aspirational notions as their beloved Noel.

I am assuming at this point that readers are at least slightly familiar with the political and life trajectory of Noel Pearson, so I am not conducting an examination of that.

Instead I want to focus on the general historical assertions that form the foundations of his current political position. I would argue that if the basic assumptions that underpin Pearson’s analysis of dysfunction in Aboriginal communities today are wrong, then we need to re-think the current policies that emerge from that analysis.

Central to the argument of Pearson and his followers is the bland assertion that the ideas of what they call the “Self-Determination Movement” of the 1970s were a failure.

They further assert that these policies of “Self-Determination” were instrumental in creating what Pearson calls the “passive welfare mentality” that leads to most of the dysfunction in Aboriginal communities that is alcohol and drug related. These ideas have obvious appeal to those in the white community who would prefer to blame the victims of colonialism rather than the colonialism itself.

Hence an Australia that is still today fundamentally ignorant of its own history is happy to embrace the ideas of a black prophet who suddenly appears talking their own language of denialism.

Warren Mundine: The white sheep of the family?
By Gary Foley, September 9, 2013

It would seem at the present time that the former National President of the ALP, Mr Warren Mundine, has momentarily eclipsed the Cape York Crusader Noel Pearson as the Aboriginal Man of the Moment.

Whilst Mr Mundine may lack the intellectual firepower of Noel Pearson, he has nevertheless elbowed his way to the front of the pack with his dazzling late-life conversion to the cause of all things Tony Abbott.

Mundine’s strategic realignment to become best buddies with Abbott at the beginning of the 2013 federal election campaign may have been a surprise to some, but only those who have not been taking notice of Mundine’s mundane comments on Aboriginal matters over the past few decades.

It is therefore instructive to recall Warren’s political trajectory over the long term if we are to begin to try and make sense of the political stance he has arrived at today.

We must do this if we are to ascertain when Warren is driven by pure political opportunism alone, or whether there is some internal logic and rationale to his strange political path over the years.

After all, here is a man who emerged from a respected Aboriginal family on the north coast of NSW; a family who collectively over many decades have been honourably involved in the struggle for justice for our people.

At his stage I should declare my interests and advise the reader that Warren is a distant relative of mine, and that this has tempered this article to the extent that I am treading cautiously in an attempt to not offend too many members of my extended family.

At the same time I believe that it is important for Aboriginal people to subject Aboriginal leaders in positions of power and influence to a level of scrutiny that a biased and ignorant mainstream media often fails to, so readers need to be aware of the tightrope I walk as I write this article.  Having stated that disclaimer, I would also point out that I have long referred to Warren as the “white sheep of our family” without seeming to upset too many relatives.

Warren was born to a devout Catholic branch of my family and was the ninth of eleven brothers and sisters.

His parents, Roy and Dolly were a strong and formidable couple who were clearly very influential on the young Warren.

From his father Warren says he acquired a strong belief in the importance of home ownership as well as a commitment to trade unionism.

He has said: “That was an important part of the bond between my father and I, that we were both union men…It would never have occurred to me not to join.”

From his mother he derived a strong attachment to Catholicism which he has said, “very much shapes” his political views.

“To me it’s a very important spirituality thing. I don’t think it’s all I’m about, but my faith has had a great influence on my life and got me through a lot of tough times.”

In 1963 his family moved from their home in South Grafton to Sydney suburb of Auburn. Later Warren would begin his working life as a factory fitter and machinist, and later working for the Sydney Water Board. He went to a TAFE college at night and earned the Higher School Certificate, which enabled him to move up to a white-collar job as a clerk in the Taxation Office in Martin Place.

He also briefly studied in Adelaide, where he attended the former South Australian institute of technology and earned a community development diploma, but this limited level of education has not inhibited Warren’s spectacular rise to prominence in Australian politics.

His political career probably began around 1982 when he can be seen waving the Koori flag and making a couple of radical speeches at the major demonstrations against the Commonwealth Games in Brisbane.

In Madeline McGrady’s film “We Fight”, on several occasions Warren can be seen lurking behind me as I am making a radical speech condemning policies of the Bjelke-Peterson government of QLD.

Again during 1987 in the lead-up to the major Aboriginal demonstration against the Australian Bi-Centennial, Warren is to be seen making a radical speech on a national televised forum on ABC-TV. Thus in the beginning Warren appeared to be politically Left of centre, but that superficial impression would not last for long.

In 1995, he began his journey to the Right of politics when he successfully stood as an independent candidate for Dubbo City Council in central-west NSW, later becoming deputy mayor, a position he held until 2004.

But his real rise to prominence came when the ALP decided to reform its rules and allow the rank and file to choose three national presidents for the next three years.

This led to the election of Carmen Lawrence as a token female President for 2004, to be followed by the grand old man of the ALP, Barry Jones for 2005 and a token Aborigine, Warren Mundine for 2006.

At the time there were not a lot of Aboriginal people who were members of the ALP after the great Land Rights sell-out of the Hawke Government, so Warren had a relatively clear run to be the token Aboriginal President.

It should also be remembered that Warren was sponsored in the push for Party President by members of the NSW Right faction of the ALP, including Mark Arbib, Karl Bitar and the now notorious Eddie Obeid.

But even before he would take up the Presidency, Warren managed to embroil himself in controversy by accepting an offer from the Howard Liberal government to become part of a new appointed Aboriginal advisory body to replace the Hawke government’s failed elected body ATSIC.

When Mundine was attacked for hypocrisy by NSW Labor Minister Linda Burney as well as the New South Wales Aboriginal Land Council, he was supported by Mark Arbib who asserted the nonsensical proposition that there was no inherent conflict between Mr Mundine’s membership of the NIC and his role as incoming national president of the ALP.

These should have been clear signals to both the ALP and the Aboriginal community that Mundine was on a path to the Right of politics.

Warren’s subsequent alignment with Twiggy Forrest’s dodgy organisation “GenerationOne” as well as his oft expressed admiration for the right-wing ideas of Noel Pearson and Marcia Langton were also clear indications of his drift to the right.

That drift was no doubt expedited when the ALP showed no inclination to giving him a safe seat and a ticket to parliament that a former Party President might be entitled to expect. Mundine had discovered what a lot of us already knew; that the ALP was such a fundamentally racist organisation that they had never in their 100 year history ever enabled an Aboriginal party member to be pre-selected to a safe seat.

This was probably a major factor, along with a serious heart scare in October 2012, that resulted in his finally allowing his membership of the ALP to lapse last year.

Since then two major events appear to have sealed Warren’s arrival as the new Aboriginal darling of Australian Right-wing politics.

The first was his marriage to Elizabeth Henderson, who is the daughter of Gerard Henderson, conservative political commentator and a former chief-of-staff to John Howard, and the second is his new political marriage to Tony Abbott’s new Indigenous advisory body.

Warren met Elizabeth three years ago at a function at the right-wing think tank, the Sydney Institute.

At the time both were married to other people.

Of the end of his second marriage, the devout Catholic Warren has said, “I never thought of myself as a bloke who was attractive to women but after I became president [of the ALP] it was like I became sexy to some people…I don’t really get it.  But I was getting offers.  And the ego got the better of me and I took one of those offers, and I got what I deserved, which was a divorce.”

In February this year 450 close personal friends turned up at Luna Park in Sydney (an appropriately Monty Pythonesque venue) for the wedding of Warren and Elizabeth. Sadly I have to report to readers that my invitation appears to have been lost in the mail, but I am told that among those who were in attendance were Tony Abbott, Twiggy Forrest, Jenny Macklin and Marcia Langton along with a large contingent of other right-wing luminaries and their acolytes.

The mere thought of the business and networking opportunities on that day just boggles the mind…

However it is Mundine’s arrival at the political door of Tony Abbott that appears to have surprised many pundits, even though one didn’t need to be a clairvoyant to predict that this might happen.

Abbott has declared that he and Warren are “Kindred spirits” and so we can now expect the “bromance” between these two staunch Catholic boys to develop and grow.

However, it remains to be seen whether this convenient relationship (or relationship of convenience) will ultimately be to the benefit of many Aboriginal people.

From Indymedia
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

A Lode of Real Action
By Kado Muir, Mitch and Peter Watts, originally published in Koori Mail

As the dust starts to settle and Australia reflects on the outcomes of the recent federal election, many Aboriginal people have growing concerns over Tony Abbott’s new Indigenous Advisory Council (IAC) and the agenda behind its plans for real action for Indigenous Australians.

The Council appears to be on the road from idea to institution, with scant consultation or consent from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.  In the style that has marked so much of successive governments’ approaches to our issues, the proposed council is top down and unrepresentative, with Tony Abbott and Nigel Scullion being joined at the table by Warren Mundine, Noel Pearson and Marcia Langton.

There may be more Aboriginal leaders involved, but who knows? – and that is the whole point.  Unlike ATSIC or the newly elected National Congress – with all their limitations and flaws, the IAC is hand-picked by the politicians, not promoted by our people.  This is not to say that these three individuals do not have things to offer and positive contributions to make.  But they do not have a mandate to represent all our views and they hold views about Aboriginal ‘development’ that are far removed from the lived experience of many Aboriginal people, particularly in relation to the role of the state and of the resource sector.

In 2012 Marcia Langton outlined her views though the Boyer lecture series ‘The Quiet Revolution: Indigenous People and the Resources Boom’. Her view that mining is helping to pull Aboriginal people out of poverty was widely promoted through the media. Less promoted was her connection to the resource sector through the Rio Tinto group and her involvement with the Australian Uranium Association’s Indigenous Dialogue Group.

Conflicting Views
Warren Mundine is not only the co convenor of the Uranium Association’s Indigenous Dialogue Group but also is a Director of the Australian Uranium Association. His views on the nuclear industry are in conflict with those of many Aboriginal Australians living with the legacy of nuclear testing or actively resisting uranium mining and radioactive waste dumping on their country.

We all want to make things better for our people, but there is a real danger in talking about the interests of mining and the need for change in Aboriginal Australia as though they are the same thing.  They are not.  It doesn’t have to be one or the other. We three do not believe that mining is always in the best interest of our families, the long term health of the country, or will stop the suicides, alcohol, abuse, violence, or raise the level of education or health services.

If mining meant these things, then the Aboriginal communities of the Pilbara would have a very different set of social indicators than the current ones.

The resource sector does have a role and a responsibility to improve outcomes in areas where it operates, but government must meet their responsibility to provide the roads, schools, health services and other infrastructure that people in cities take for granted.

Basic citizenship entitlements hard won by our predecessors following the historic 1967 referendum – should never be tied to or traded around proximity and access to a mineral deposit

Mining is neither a new development nor a new answer to old problems.  Mining has been around for hundreds of years.  Look at Aboriginal life in Australia’s mining regions around Roebourne, Port Hedland and Port Augusta. Spend a couple of days out at Laverton, go talk to the folks at the missions in Kalgoorlie, and tell us that mining is pulling Aboriginal people out of poverty.

Even in 2013 community development is at the front end of mining, particularly during approvals and heritage clearance.  But as soon as the commodity price drops or costs increase, it is the community development budget that is cut.

The establishment of the IAC, two thirds of which is directly aligned with the uranium industry, does not bode well for advancing a mature conversation around and action on the problems of Aboriginal disadvantage.  
At the very least there should be a diversity of communities and a diversity of views represented.

(NOTE: Passive Complicity will post articles on both Warren Mundine and Noel Pearson courtesy Creative Commons in the next few days.)

About the Authors
Kado Muir is a Tjarurru man, a member of the Ngalia tribe who are desert people from the Goldfields region in Western Australia. He is passionate about his Aboriginal heritage, history, language and culture. He teaches its values to all Australians through his writings, cultural awareness courses and artworks.

Mitch is from Alice Springs and has a proud history of working for Aboriginal rights.

Peter Watts is a member of the Arabunna people, one of several Aboriginal groups living in South Australia, has spoken at global conferences in Japan and Europe, on Aboriginal rights and environmental protection.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

STOP PRESS Tonight (Monday 7 Oct.) only Paddy 0′Cearmada
in a robust discussion on Art + Censorship, following the banning of artist Paul Yore’s work at last week’s Sydney Contemporary – with Orwell on the theme. FREE ADMISSION. 730 for 8pm. Evening Star, corner York and Cecil Streets, South Melbourne (Beautiful meals and drinks at fair prices)
________________________________________________________________

Not Errol this week but Mark Twain
“Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society”

THIS PAST WEEK in Passive Complicity

Corridors of Power by Sir Bertram Postule continues this week.

Who else but Ira Maine would write “‘This day thou shalt be with me in Paradise’, she had whispered as Bodium Flint passed her coquettish window”? See what this is all about in the ongoing saga that is Endette Hall

Tarquin O’Flaherty brought us two further instalments of ‘Man as Machine’. – here and here  In the first he concluded that enclosure “not only controlled the movement of animals; it also controlled and guided people.  Principally, it guided them into slums, poverty, disease and destitution.  William Cobbett didn’t like it at all.” He discusses this in more detail in the second part.

Cecil Poole wrote  “It seems as though multiculturalism is alive in so many communities (in the US), yet there is concurrently a form of taboo that prevents discussion of it.  Maybe it is the lack of discussion and analysis that allows this form of mulitculturalism the freedom to work so well.”  In a piece titled Persian Food – a couple of recipes included

Saturday’s MDFF, has a number of facets seminal to Passive Complicity’s reason for being.  Government secrecy, profit making from refugees – not just “people smugglers”, and the ways ‘do-gooders’ can exacerbate the problems they are addressing among others.  By Antony Loewenstein,  first published in The Guardian Wednesday 2 October 2013

Our poetry editor, Ira Maine said, “I FEEL THE INCLUSION OF A MODICUM OF VULGARITY TO BE ESSENTIAL.”  His choice for Poetry Sunday reflected that feeling.

And, dear reader, please feel free to add comments about this and any of our postings.

Regards
Cecil Poole

Ambush at Stringybark Creek
By Quentin Cockburn and Paddy 0′Cearmada

Finding it isn’t hard.  11ks along a logging road past an orchard or two and a young pine plantation into a regrowth bush.  The signage is very clear, artfully incorporating the Nolan cliche in rusted steel.  Planned to be easy the bus park and car park has a neat little public toilet and the paths are carefully raked.  One sign leads to the Kelly Tree, a tall eucalylpt probably only 60 years of growth, left behind after the last clear-felling and surrounded by overgrown saplings.  One of the signs reassured the visitor that dangerous trees have been removed.

The Kelly Tree is the third of its species.  The first was so designated because of a bullet scar in the bark – it fell into decay and a second was later cut down.  The third has set into a split in the bark a metal relief of Kelly’s helmet – cliche again.

Back to the picnic ground – tables neatly arranged and we followed the path to the camp site.  We arrive to a reverential dead- end with a kind of podium from which you can read a summary of the tale and view some artfully primitive depictions of what was alleged to occur.

The overwhelming sense is of history sanitised and made easy.  Any connection to the desparate events that occurred quite possibly near the alleged site has been interpreted to such a degree that imagination is not required.  And truth is nowhere to be seen.

Four police, none trained in the use of firearms were sent in pursuit of what they thought were a pair of brothers on the run from a warrant for arrest on a largely trumped up charge of attempted murder.  They struck camp and with their horses, cutting of tent poles and fire lighting even the most unobservant would know they were there.  Two, Seargant Kennedy and Trooper Scanlon set off to shoot some dinner, while McIntyre and Lonergan settled in.

Not far away Ned Kelly, his violent younger brother Dan, Dan’s friend Steve Hart and Ned’s friend Joe Byrne were hiding.  Undetected they could have melted into the bush.  They chose instead to attack.

Lonergan reached for his gun, Ned shot him dead.  McIntyre surrendered and was held captive – bait in a trap.  On their return Kennedy and Scanlon were attacked and returned fire, Dan was wounded, Scanlon killed.  McIntyre in the confusion made a dash for it on Kennedy’s horse, Kennedy ran with him until wounded by Kelly he fell before being summarily executed.  It was cold blooded murder.

That of course is in dispute.  Those who want the myth to be reality don’t want the events to be murder because it denies the justice (awful as it is) of Ned at the Gallows.

Many years ago I met a wonderful man called John Ireland.  Descended from the lawyer who defended Lalor and the rebels of Eureka he had once been the Headmaster of the High School in Mansfield.  He told me how at School Assemblies he would look out across the pupils to the Wombat Ranges where the murders took place.  In front of him were the descendants of the Kellys the Kennedys, the Byrnes, the Scanlons, the Harts, the Lonergans.  All catholics of one kind or another.  Ireland, an Anglican had tried to encourage Ecumenism without success.  He said building the Catholic Church in Mansfield, a huge pile, had absorbed all the energy of the catholic community drawn together in unspeakable grief.  No-one spoke of the events, it wasn’t a topic of conversation.  And the monument in the centre of the town to the police was always called the Kelly memorial.

How many consultants and how much money has been absorbed in the interpretation of Stringybark creek is anyone’s guess, for all their efforts we are none the wiser.

IRA MAINE, POETRY EDITOR

Persian Food
By Cecil Poole

Eighteen of us sat down for dinner.  Organised by the indefatigable Daughter in Law (The d.i.l.).   There was the woman whose son Vaughan had the party at the “Transplanting Cultures” farm, where the 31 Burmese Karen families grow their vegetables, flowers and medicinal plants.   The fellow who last year took me 90 minutes south of Chapel Hill (NC) to the innovative creative incubator at the old Star NC cotton mill where he practiced glass blowing.  There was a professional fund raiser for the University of North Carolina, a couple of lawyers, one of whom practiced mediation in divorce settlements.  Also there were the couple who organised my canoe trip in Minnesota’s Boundary Waters, and some men keeping a very close eye on their wives (not without reason).  Three or four of those present had at one time or another been president of the Board of the best Child Care in Chapel Hill.  All in all it was a pretty typical dinner party crowd.

The kids had been fed – all ten of them, and then put in front of a large screen to watch educational films – or at least films that would keep them quiet while the adults ate.

As I said, eighteen of us sat down for dinner, at the d.i.l’s home.  She didn’t cook the meal.  No, we had chefs come in and cook for us.  Three of them.  Plus a co-ordinator.  They brought along a number of semi prepared dishes and made a few from scratch in situ.

Mint yogurt, rice with copious quantities of chopped dill and faba beans, halim bademjam – an eggplant dish, lots of lamb “calf” they called it, shank is what I’d say it was.
Lots of cumin, cardamon, saffron, tumeric, nuts, lentils, mint again, honey, couscous and coucou sabzi – a herb frittata,  and finished off with home made halva.  Each dish was brought to the table by the three chefs and then one of them would describe the making of it, and its cultural significance.

Yes, this was Persian food, cooked by Iranian refugees.  These chefs had been in the united States less than six months.  Each had good English, each was assured in his cooking – the three chefs were male.  They exuded confidence and pride.  They seemed especially proud that ordinary Americans would take them and their food seriously.

I’ve returned to Australia a little perplexed.  America, the United States, seems to me in so many ways a place of stratification, of delineation based on income, on ‘class’, on skin colour, ethnicity, political belief or religion, yet in so many other ways there seems to be an embracing of difference, an exploration of the new and unusual, a delight in the finding new and rich things.  It seems as though multiculturalism is alive in so many communities there, yet there is concurrently a form of taboo that prevents discussion of it.  Maybe it is the lack of discussion and analysis that allows this form of mulitculturalism the freedom to work so well.

Recipes
Halim Bademjami
Coucou Sabzi

Man as Machine XI
by Tarquin O’Flaherty.

It wasn’t just Tull, not by a long shot.  Charles ‘Turnip’ Townshend, (1674-1738) Viscount Townshend, Secretary of State to George the First, member of the Royal Society etc, spent a lot of his political life in the Low Countries.  From there he took back to his Norfolk estates the turnip and the four crop rotation.  Turnips feed sheep in the winter, and ‘rotation’ of crops from field to field, year after year cuts down substantially the possibility of disease build-up.  This is the best possible way to both maintain the health of your soil and keep diseases at bay.

It rains a lot in Europe.  Before enclosure, cattle could wander freely.  Enclose these same animals and they very quickly turn wet ground into a swamp.  The new system of farming solved this problem by keeping animals off the land in winter.  To do this, farm ‘improvers’ created cowsheds and yards where animals were housed and hand fed through the worst and wettest part of the year.  Straw bedding was provided and constantly replenished, until, by Springtime, the stacked up straw, enriched with urine and animal manure, was quietly steaming, breaking down into a rich compost, ready to be spread on the land.  In Spring the animals were allowed back on the lush new grass.

‘Turnip’ Townshend was barely dead when Coke of Norfolk was born.  Thomas William Coke, (1752-1842) First Earl of Leicester, was MP for Norfolk for 50 years.  In his lifetime he, together with his contemporary, Robert Bakewell of Leicester (1725-1795) revolutionized the art of sheep and cattle breeding, increasing both the cut of wool and the meat per animal by astonishing amounts.

In the meantime the British Empire was at war with both America and Napoleon.  This meant that the war machine needed wheat.  Enclosure, which had been proceeding in fits and starts, now desperately needed to throw off the restrictions of the old feudal system, and get down to the serious business of ‘improved’ production.  Wheat prices were soaring and ‘improving’ farmers were beginning to make huge profits.  To cut a long story short, a succession of Enclosure Acts passed rapidly through Parliament which provided improvers with thousands of acres of new land.  If the peasantry were to remain, the new Acts demanded of them that they drain and fence the land they occupied.  Hardly a soul could afford to have this work done so they were either unceremoniously dispossessed or pitifully compensated.  People like Arthur Young, who wrote and toiled endlessly on behalf of the agricultural labourer, demanded, unsuccessfully that every Enclosure Act contain a clause guaranteeing suitable compensation to those disadvantaged by it.  Young’s demands were almost universally ignored.  The price of wheat skyrocketed, wages doubled and vast fortunes were made.  The value of improved farms went through the roof and people got rich.

In 1815 the Duke of Wellington (an Irishman, naturally) defeated Napoleon by a hairsbreadth.  According to the Duke it was ‘…the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life…’

When peace was fully restored in 1815, (the American war had finished in 1812) though wages fell like a stone, prices did not follow.  Jobs, already scarce, became scarcer.  The people of the little towns and villages flocked to the factories, to Blake’s ‘…dark, satanic mills…’ to work for Wedgewood, or Abraham Darby, the shipyards, the mines, the linen or cotton factories, anywhere there was heat, backbreaking work and 16 hour days.  There was so much competition for jobs, exploitation became an art form.  Starvation wages were paid to children as young as eight and people worked themselves to death because they had little alternative.

And it wasn’t the aristocracy who were to blame, not this time; this time we were doing it to ourselves.

Man As Machine.
by TARQUIN O’FLAHERTY

The old system we understand as ‘Feudalism’ employed almost exactly the same hierarchical system as an army might today.  At the top, (at least in England) only the monarch, (Commander-in-Chief) had absolute ownership of the land.

In return for formal pledges of loyalty, military service and the payment of tithes the king might offer say 25,000 acres to one of his nobles, who then became the king’s ‘vassal’.

The word ‘vassal’ has its origins in the Celtic/Breton languages and means;
‘One holding land under a superior lord by feudal tenure.’

The noble would then ‘hold’ this land from the monarch, either for a fixed term or an indeterminate one.  Depending on the circumstances it might even be passed on to the next generation.  The beneficiary of this largesse would then break the land up into smaller lots, and offer these lots to lesser nobles.  In turn, the land would be sub-divided again and again,  each step creating prestige and power for the baron or earl involved.  The conditions of loyalty, military service and tithes applied absolutely at every level, from the lowest peasant all the way back up to the king.  Essentially, it was a system designed to provide a monarch with, not just an income, but a substantial army whenever the need arose.  This ‘loyalty’ worked both ways, and the land ‘holder’, be he earl or baron, owed equal loyalty, and took proper responsibility for, those in his charge.

The foregoing is a very rough outline of how the old system of ‘vassalage’ maintained itself and is by no means comprehensive or definitive.  Incidentally, the word ‘feudal’ is of recent origin and would have been unknown back in 1066.

Feudalism was still alive and kicking in 18^th century England, but things had changed substantially.  The wool economy had boomed, and ‘enclosure’ had begun to revolutionise agriculture.

Jethro Tull (1674-1741), the son of a Berkshire farmer, was called to the bar in 1699, and qualified as a barrister.  He was born into the Age of the Enlightenment, and, due to a pulmonary disorder, found it necessary to go abroad for his health.  There he was so inspired by what he saw, the techniques employed in viticulture etc, that on his arrival home he set about ‘improving’ the family farm.  The traditional habit of broadcasting seed by hand he replaced with the first ever seeding machine, a machine entirely of his own devising.  This was a simple wheeled box, steered by a man and pulled by a horse, which made a trench, dropped the seed, then covered the seed over, all in one action.  It also marked where the next line of seeds was to be sown!  This was faster and much more economic than the broadcast method, and is exactly how seed is sown today.  Because of his revolutionary straight line planting, straight line hand hoeing was now possible, but Tull, very much in the spirit of the time, was still dissatisfied.  Ever inventive, Tull, within a short period of time, had invented the horse drawn hoe, entirely from scratch, and had made such huge improvements to the traditional plough that the farmer wound up now with a finely pulverised ‘tilth’ instead of an obstacle course which traditionally had taken days, or even the whole winter, to break down.

But this was just the beginning.  An agricultural revolution was in progress, a revolution made possible only by intelligent, controlled use of fencing.  This fencing not only controlled the movement of animals; it also controlled and guided people.  Principally, it guided them into slums, poverty, disease and destitution.  William Cobbett didn’t like it at all.

TO BE CONTINUED.