The Great Eternal Now

Everything really is stupidly simple

And yet all around is utter confusion  

Fairy tales written may help you to see it  

Do you understand about Lewis's Alice? 

We fit all our lives into regular patterns 

All that we really know is that we're really living

Moreover, to be conservative is not merely to be averse from change (which may be an idiosyncrasy); it is also a manner of accommodating ourselves to changes, an activity imposed upon all men. For, change is a threat to identity, and every change is an emblem of extinction. But a man’s identity (or that of a community) is nothing more than an unbroken rehearsal of contingencies, each at the mercy of circumstance and each significant in proportion to its familiarity. It is not a fortress into which we may retire, and the only means we have of defending it (that is, ourselves) against the hostile forces of change is in the open field of our experience; by throwing our weight upon the foot which for the time being is most firmly placed, by cleaving to whatever familiarities are not immediately threatened and thus assimilating what is new without it becoming unrecognizable to ourselves. The Masai, when they were moved from their old country to the present Masaid reserve in Kenya, took with them the names of their hill s and plains and rivers and gave them to the hills and plains and rivers of the new country. And it is by some such subterfuge of conservatism that every man or people compelled to suffer a notable change avoids the shame of extinction.

It is commonly believed that this conservative disposition is pretty deeply rooted in what is called “human nature.” Change is tiring, innovation calls for effort, and human beings (it is said) are more apt to be lazy than energetic. If they have found a not unsatisfactory way of getting along in the world, they are not disposed to go looking for trouble. They are naturally apprehensive of the unknown and prefer safety to danger. They are reluctant innovators, and they accept change not because they like it but (as Rochefoucald says they accept death) because it is inescapable. Change generates sadness rather than exhilaration: heaven is the dream of a changeless no less than a perfect world. Of course, those who read “human nature” in this way agree that this disposition does not stand alone; they merely contend that it is an exceedingly strong, perhaps the strongest, of human propensities. And, so far as it goes, there is something to be said for this belief: human circumstances would be very different from what they are if there were not a large ingredient of conservatism in human preferences. Primitive peoples are said to cling to what is familiar and to be averse from change; ancient myth is full of warnings against innovation; our folklore and proverbial wisdom about the conduct of life abounds in conservative precepts; and how many tears are shed by children in their unwilling accommodation to change. Indeed, wherever a firm identity has been achieved, and wherever identity is felt to be precariously balanced, a conservative disposition is likely to prevail. On the other hand, the disposition of adolescence is often predominantly adventurous and experimental: when we are young, nothing seems more desirable than to take a chance; pas de risque, pas de plaisir. And while some peoples, over long stretches of time, appear successfully to have avoided change, the history of others displays periods of intense and intrepid innovation. There is, indeed, not much profit to be had from general speculation about “human nature,” which is no steadier than anything else in our acquaintance. What is more to the point is to consider current human nature, to consider ourselves. 

Michael Oakeshott, On Being Conservative

The need to make music without having to worry about the neighbors propelled him to buy this ancient manor house nestled among the mist-capped hills of the British Midlands. "Here, we could get home after a gig and jam all night or all day if we wanted," he recalls. "That made living in the country pure, selfish bliss."

 

Roots & Culture

Felix Dexter puts it in a nutshell:

Spanked proles.

Unlikely as it may seem, the end of 1971’s deeply unpopular “Carry on at your convenience”, (a film which took years to recoup its budget instead of the typical weeks or months in which the popular series usually went into profit), contains one of the cardinal images of the early Seventies, a superb foreshadowing of Thatcherism.

The films central villain is Vic Spanner, a shop steward resented by all the employees of W.C. Boggs, especially the workers themselves who, recognizing that "we’re all in it together” are keen to get on with making Britain great by toiling away at the production line and whose patriotic, proletarian zeal Spanner scuppers with his excessive, though finally hypocritical and self-serving militancy. The strike he calls is eventually broken by the workers themselves who, after a works' booze-up, recognize that their own interests are identical to those of the bosses'. In the climax Spanner’s mother, a tough, no-nonsense, middle-aged blonde with social aspirations puts her fully grown shop-steward son over her knee and spanks some common sense into him.

This is the Tory fantasy that must be made flesh, the suburban blonde dominatrix disciplining the uppity worker, publicly humiliating him before an approving audience drawn from all classes

How to Get It

Before wholly becoming leery seaside crassness as in 'On the Buses', permissive populism could be found early back in what was lauded as Britian's first radical film wave, the Postwar British Noir. A major component of Postwar British Noir was the 'angry young man' film, ranging from straightforward bleak drama (A Kind of Loving, 1962), to bleak fantasy (Billy Liar, 1962), to bleak bleak bleak (The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, 1962). However when looked at more closely and considered with permissive populism, the content can be much more retrograde than first appears.

Take A Kind of Loving, which appears to fit the idea very well. Alan Bates' Vic is a young working class draughtsman, who falls in love, or believes himself to, with June Ritchie's Ingrid, a typist at the same factory. Vic's only concern is to sleep with Ingrid, and over the course of the film he pressures and coerces her until she finally does so, with long term disastrous consequences. What appears to be a clear motivator for Vic is the image rather than substance of Ingrid: he tunes out when she talks to him, ignores her, generally acts callously. A cheap and nasty pornographic mag reappears through the film, Vic coveting the flat images within. The theme echoes a scene in 'Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner' in which the family is instantly consumed with the adverts on their newly plugged in television set, image replacing reality. The film is ambivalent towards permissive populism; casual sex is the destruction of Vic and Ingrid, leaving them both permanently damaged. The film, earning it's angry credentials, also identifies the traditionalism of Vic's working class family as poisonous, pressuring him to maintain a loveless and destructive relationship. There is also an interesting strand with Ingrid's mother, Thora Hird's Mrs Rothwell, a proto-Thatcher, who puts the blame for society's ills squarely on miners and other workers asking for and receiving too high wages.

The angry young man genre had a brief life, though echoes could be found until the late 1960s. The transition of social realism to sexploitation is really marked by a small film set in Stevenage, big at the time but forgotten now: Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush (1967). Listed to compete at Canne, a soundtrack by the Spencer Davies Group and Traffic, and an opening night attended by literally everybody in Swinging London, it was a true zeitgeist experience. Here the angry young man transitions into the randy young lad, a sort of Jay from the Inbetweeners a few decades ahead of time. The film's a curious clash of psychadelic Sixtiesploitation (the screen goes a funny colour and the camera wobbles), vaguely recognisable social commentary (Barry Evans' Jamie McGregor and family are working class, there's some rich people, his mum reads big books, there's some striking shots of concrete modernist Stevenage that make it look interesting and European), and not-even-really softcore sex.

The film carries over trace elements of the angry young men genre, Jamie's long monologues about his grievances are very much of the type. Permissive populism is invoked here as Jamie's grievances are mostly that women aren't having sex with him. Jamie's gaze wanders over shop assistants, housewives, church volunteers, strangers in gambling dens (yes, in Stevenage), hippy types holding a happening in a furniture shop (yes, yes, in Stevenage). The whole film is very reminiscent of the softcore British films on the horizon. “I'm capable, I'm capable anywhere!” croaks future Bond girl Angelar Scoular. Not only is Jamie not having sex, everybody else he meets is (Denholm Elliot, of a sex-crazy upper class family, pursuing a yodelling Swedish au pair, comes to mind). It is only once within hippy permissiveness that Jamie can find any satisfaction.

The appeal is for those who can't partake in swinging London or sixties-style swinging due to geographical and class circumstances. The idealistic view of the film is of a coming utopia where sex is completely casual, prevented from developing into anything more sinister by the peace/love elements that seem to keep the worst tendencies here in check. As would become apparent however over the years, the permissive culture would become another item on Mrs Rothwell's list of ailments bringing the country down from greatness. The sourness and sexism that partly animates Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush would become a full dystopia by the time of the mid 1970s.

The Living Unity

'We seek the good of the whole nation, not that of one section or one faction. We believe in the living unity of the British people, which transcends class or party differences. It was this living unity which enabled us to stand like a rock against Germany when she over-ran Europe. Upon our power to retain unity, the future of this country and of the whole world largely depends.'

1945 Conservative Party Manifesto

'Socialism has imposed a crushing burden of taxation amounting to eight shillings of every pound earned in this country. Enterprise and extra effort have been stifled. Success has been penalised. Thrift and savings have been discouraged. A vote for Socialism is a vote to continue the policy which has endangered our economic and present independence both as a nation and as men and women'

1950 Conservative Party Manifesto

'The Nation now has the chance of rebuilding its life at home and of strengthening its position abroad. We must free ourselves from our impediments. Of all impediments the class war is the worst. At the time when a growing measure of national unity is more than ever necessary, the Socialist Party hope to gain another lease of power by fomenting class hatred and appealing to moods of greed and envy.'

1951 Conservative Party Manifesto

Old Time Religion

'This was an assumption very much at variance with the British historical experience, as represented both by the first public representatives of Wicca and the magicians from whom they had drawn their ideas. Mathers had been fascinated by militarism and aristocracy. Yeat's right-wing tendencies developed into a flirtation with fascism. Crowley was a lifelong high Tory, and all Dion Fortune's expressed political and social attitudes point in the same direction. Gardner, as said, was certainly a conservative, and while Alex Sanders disclaimed an associations with specific parties, he consistently expressed admiration for hierarchy and monarchy. A writer who interviewed several Wiccan groups in the 1960s noted that most of their members were politically right-wing.'

'There was no paradox in this; for most of these people their interest in paganism and magic was part of a wider rejection of modernity, a phenomena in which for many people in the early and mid-twentieth century, industrialization, urbanization, and high technology all formed parts of a package with socialism. Their spiritual aspects matched closely with three different emotional aspects of right-wing idealogy: nostalgia for a better past, elitism and suspicion of the masses, and a free market, in magic and sex as in economics.'

Ronald Huntford, The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft

The Hill

Jacko King: “Somebody got to have the guts to cancel some of them wrong orders.”

Roberts: “There’d be no bloody army left if we didn’t obey orders!”
 

1

The Hill opens with an elaborately extended tracking shot floating away from a soldier collapsing on the summit of the hill and being carried off to the infirmary. The shot takes in the entirety of the fort and the surrounding area, a vast, flat plane of which the hill is the centre.

The most immediate precursor to the image of the prisoner watching the sand drain out of his bag and then collapse is Camus’ use of the Myth of Sisyphus.

As a punishment for having imprisoned Death Sisyphus is condemned to roll a rock up a hill only to have it roll back down again and come to rest exactly where it started. For Camus this is the central absurdity of existence: endless, fruitless labour.

The hill is the means by which Connery’s “broken” Sgt. Major Roberts is to be reshaped. In his refusal to send his men to certain death and his deeper inability to make sense of the current situation, the rules of war and the overhang of Victorian institutions and ideologies into the mid twentieth century Roberts is an Absurdist hero of a sort, the man who follows one of Camus injunctions, to revolt. Roberts certainly complies with the archetype of the rebel, terse, ironic, intransigent, individualistic.

But The Hill, which on one level appears to be a critique of militarism and British institutions such as the Army and the Empire, is less indebted to Camus and The Absurd than first appears. The Hill’s messages is deeply ambiguous, and the ambiguity surrounds the contestation among the characters with regard to the hill itself. What’s certain is that the hill is central to everything that occurs in the film and is at the forefront of all the character’s minds, as a threat, a tool or a promise. In a sense the central character of The Hill is the hill itself, and in a film replete with point of view shots the hill also has one, watching silently as the latest set of prisoners are drilled around its base by Staff Sgt Williams.

This is, if you like, a hill with two sides, representing discipline and punishment, but also organisation and collaboration: death but also transformation. Imperious and immutable, the hill is man himself in his purest expression, the symbol of the basic rejection necessary for any kind of conscious or collective existence to come into being. This is the real conceived not as a void at the core of things, or as a cut, but as an expression of the will. In The Hill, man, both individually and collectively evolves through the rigour of reshaping himself. Existence is predicated on labour, the question is how and why the labour is performed.

The British psychoanalyst Darian Leader has identified the message that the child receives from the parent as it begins to falteringly achieve motor skills, reaching out its hand to grasp at an object, trying to take its first steps. The message, he claims is : “live!” Live could be usefully replaced by a host of other commands, to varying degrees: “Strive” “Grow” “Develop” “Overcome”. But living is unthinkinable, unattainable without this basic call. Whether this call is/should be more in the nature of a command or an appeal may be the basic modality of the passage through from the explicit paternalism of pre-war society to the increasingly liberal post war world. And this modality is the core of the argument in The Hill, the ways the different interest groups and power relations compete around and are shaped by their relationship to the hill.

It’s easy to imagine a contempory Hollywood remake in which Sgt Major Roberts blows the hill up in a liberal, feelgood spectacle, to whoops from the liberated prisoners, bonded together now, having overcome their mutual suspicion and animosity, enriched by each others’ difference. Ding-dong, the hill is dead. But the hill cannot die .

The tagline for the film is “They went up it as men! They came down it as animals!” Yet the reverse is true. Primal, implacable, indestructible, the Hill is the thing without which man would still be wallowing in the slime. A hill is what each man must construct in order to free himself from his animality, the corollary of the voice of the other calling out “live!”

Between the parent crouched in expectation and the child struggling to reach them stands the hill.

2

Connery may be the star of the Hill and the character with whom the audience is supposed to empathise, but the film is comprehensively stolen from him by a trio of superb British character actors, Ian Bannen (who also steals the film from Connery again when they next meet in The Offence) Ian Hendry and Harry Andrews.

Andrews plays R.S.M Wilson the de facto ruler of the Glasshouse (the Commandant is a bloated upper-class sybarite who spends his time whoring and having the wool pulled over his eyes.) It’s one of the greatest performances ever committed to celluloid. Wilson represents the Empire, the pre Second World War world of hierarchy and discipline, the belief in Queen and Country and Duty, the man whose job it is to iron out deviations in the smooth daily running of the British war machine by running insubordinate or treasonous soldiers over The Hill. In a sense Wilson is The Hill, monolithic in his certainty and his unerring attachment to the rules, physically and mentally almost superhumanly robust. In a superb two-shot sequence after a suicidal drinking competition in the Officers’ mess we see Wilson and Stevens in separate showers. Wilson is scrubbing himself vigorously, whistling, brimming over with vim and gusto. Stevens stands wretched, head down and hung over, the water drumming on his back. Wilson, like the Hill can not be defeated or beaten down, he is of a different order, he has the right stuff, the mettle.

The attacks on Wilson, on the Empire, on the State, come from all sides, from within, through the ambitious Stevens, the liberal Harris, the weak and uncertain Medical Officer and without, through Roberts, the man who has lost faith in the pre-War world and has set out to destroy it and his cellmates, an array of those post-War figures who will begin to chip away at the old confidence and the sense of a natural order, the proles, the spivs, the queers, the uppity “darkies” who think they have the same rights as true-born Englishman. In these respects the Hill is really a film about the Sixties rather than a portrayal of the 1940s, a period in which the aristocratic old-order, The Establishment, was being eaten away by the democratic popular forces and meritocratic upsurges of a modern age it simply could not understand.

In one of The Hill's key sequences the prisoners begin a revolt over the death of their fellow inmate, Stevens, spilling out of their cells and standing chanting his name on the gangways, poised on edge of revolt, of a riot.

Lumet is often criticized (with much justice) for his over casual approach to mise-en-scene but here, as in the rest of The Hill, the camerawork and framings, the use of extreme low and high angles that alternately turn Wilson from a towering figure, a colossus around whose base the camera slowly rotates, to the implacable centre of the crowded, geometric intricacy of the deep focus crane shots keep his domination of the frame, and the Glasshouse itself intact (and align him even more fully with the hill, he is both the base and apex of an invisible hill, the hill of his absolute authority, standing there in the Glasshouse itself.)

Wilson goes about quelling the incipient riot with an exemplary combination of common-sense, humour, camaraderie, bribery, paternalism, quiet menace, enormous charm. At one point he threatens to round up the ring-leaders if the men won’t go back to their cells.

“Who are the ringleaders?” A voice calls down cockily, sure that Wilson doesn’t know and is merely bluffing.

The camera cuts in close and low on Wilson’s face as he somehow simultaneously barks and drawls his response, his head filling the screen.

“Every fifth man!”

Here is power in a flash, nakedly arbitrary, breaking up the fragile solidarity, exposing your fear that the mob cannot hide you, that you may be the one to suffer the full penalty, unfairly. You weren’t a ringleader yet you might be punished as such. Here is power, necessarily revealing itself, to disrupt and discompose before the reasonable discourse is brought in again to soothe and cajole.

“Every fifth man!”

A ripple runs through the crowd, the sound of something cohesive breaking up, of a focused energy dispersing, the shift from the collective to the particular. The wind goes out of the prisoner’s sails, the spirit, the spell, has been broken.

This is how they do it, this is how they’ve always done it.

First it’s “every fifth man!” Then it’s extra rations for tea if you all go quietly back to your cells.