Must'nt Grumble

I watched a lone tourist arrange himself for a photo against the backdrop of London’s Tower Bridge. Selfie-stick raised, he put on his best ‘chuffed-to-be-here’ expression, cocked his thumb in a gesture that said “A-OK” and pressed the button (or pulled the lever or whatever.) When done, his face crumpled into a vacant expression and he wandered off in search of the next photo-op. I imagined he was gathering evidence to convince the folks back home that he was having fun, bagging landmarks in a foreign land. However, from another perspective, there is no such thing as foreign land: it is the traveller only that is foreign. Certainly, when I am abroad, I am aware that the alien is me, not the host population, and I do my best to be respectful of cultural differences.

Such respect, however, is difficult to maintain when I consider the repressive systems of governance prevalent in so many countries. For example, I used to like going to Egypt but now avoid it because I don’t want to endorse or encourage the dictatorial regime by giving them any of my tourist money. The same applies to Turkey, only more so because the tyrant in charge there has actually been elected and that fact diminishes my respect for the people who elected him. For the same reason, I felt uneasy about my recent visit to America: although the President there is not yet a full-blown tyrant, his ardent followers would that he were. Tyrants and demagogues grab power whenever and wherever they can and, today, I have my fingers crossed for Zimbabweans in the hope that their sudden emancipation from Robert Mugabe is not about to be usurped by his understudy, Emmerson Mnangagwa.

Of course, I would like to be able to claim that Britain has an ideal system of governance. Unfortunately, however, I could only go so far as to say that on the scale of repression it scores low, though the personal freedoms Britons enjoy mask the fact that ultimate control of power and money is in the hands of a relatively small elite. Moreover, the pending act of self-imposed cultural isolation, economic penury and defensive degradation a.k.a. Brexit will probably reinforce the hold of that elite by restricting opportunities for the rest of us to break out of the mould. The idea of migrating to Canada has lately become an attractive one: if only I were twenty years younger...

Still, as we British like to say, “mustn’t grumble”: things could have been worse – for me and my ilk especially. We grew up with a rudimentary education, sanitary living conditions, comprehensive healthcare, a nourishing – if basic – diet, freedom from conscription into war and, crucially, the right to express opinions without let or hindrance. It is well to remember that we were – and are – the lucky few.

This musing has come about because, yesterday, I visited the exhibition Red Star Over Russia: A Revolution In Visual Culture, which is showing at the Tate Modern. The social revolution that transformed the Russian Empire into the USSR was marked by an upsurge of avant-garde thinking in art, architecture, music and graphic design, the latter, especially, being harnessed by the Communist Party, with spectacular results, for the dissemination of propaganda. Many of the images seen in the exhibition are familiar: so strong was their impact that they have endured way beyond their remit. But while artists of remarkable talent and vision were inspired by the ideals of revolution and communism, the leadership itself became corrupted and used their talents cynically. Stalin even murdered some of them when they were no longer useful to him.

Come to think of it, Putin does not have clean hands either, yet he remains popular with his people. Dictatorship, tyranny and repression are nasty, foreign practices – but they are never far from home.