Political commentary

Recessional 1977?

John Grigg

hi the summer of Jubilee year 1897 Rudyard Kipling was living at North End House, Rottingdean. He was still a genuinely young man (nearly ten years younger than Peter Jay, for instance) and since his middle twenties had been one of the most famous writers in the Englishspeaking world. He had even refused the Poet Laureateship two years previously.

On 16 July he was working, or trying to work, in a room which also contained his wife, his aunt Lady Burne-Jones, and a daughter of Charles Eliot Norton of Harvard (an old friend of the Kiplings). Miss Norton, rummaging in the wastepaper basket, picked out a sheet of paper which he had just thrown there. On it was written a Jubilee poem with the heading 'After'. It seemed to her very good and she protested against his destroying it. After some discussion he agreed that Lady Burne-Jones should decide its fate, and she decided in its favour.

As she was returning to London that day she took a fair copy of it with her, and in the evening dispatched it by special messenger to The Times. Next morning it appeared on the paper's middle page, under the new title 'Recessional', and with a paragraph of approval in the accompanying leader. Few poems have made a greater immediate impact. The American minister in London, John Hay, wrote to Kipling: 'It has struck everybody — not merely the critical people — as the one utterance of the year worth while'. Even now it ranks among the dozen, or even half-dozen, most effective occasional poems ever written, along with Marvell's 'Horatian Ode', Tennyson's 'Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington' and a very few others.

One curious and significant feature of it is that it makes no reference at all to Queen Victoria, whose• Diamond Jubilee was ostensibly the occasion for it. The poem is entirely about the British people and their mission. Kipling evidently regarded the Jubilee as a celebration not of the Queen's reign as such, but of what the British had achieved over the past sixty years. And his object in writing was to warn them against complacency and hubris, emphasising his point in the refrain: Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forget — lest we forget!

One should not, however, exaggerate the humility of the poem, despite the bit about 'Thine ancient sacrifice, a humble and a contrite heart'. The assumption throughout is that the British are, for the time being at any rate, the Chosen People. The language and sentiments echo those of the Old Testament, and Kipling is like a prophet exhorting the People of the Lord to con

tinue to do his work and not to blaspheme or worship graven images.

The key stanza, and also the most controversial, is the fourth: If, drunk with sight of power, we loose Wild tongues that have not thee in awe, Such boastings as the Gentiles use, Or lesser breeds without the Law — Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forget — lest we forget!

The word 'Gentiles' sets the tone, and the phrase 'lesser breeds without the Law' implies racial as well as moral superiority. My father (who knew Kipling well) used to say that he had the Germans in mind, not the subject peoples of Asia or Africa, when he used that phrase. Never mind, the concept of a master-race is unmistakable, even though qualified by obedience to a moral code.

The first two lines of the stanza have attracted less notice, but are perhaps more interesting and revealing of Kipling's attitude. `If drunk with sight of power . : He has no objection to power itself; on the contrary, he sees it as a consequence of possessing, and an opportunity for practising, virtue. But he detests and despises those to whom the great business of Empire is no more than a spectator sport — a category which includes, in his view, most British politicians.

The vainglorious show of the Jubilee fills him with uneasiness: Lo, all our pomp of yesterday Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!

And he has no time for an Empire which is simply a manifestation of physical force: For heathen heart that puts her trust In reeking tube and iron shard, All valiant dust that builds on dust, And guarding, calls not Thee to guard . . .

('valiant dust', of course, a quotation from Shakespeare). It was this side of Kipling's message that appealed so powerfully to British imperialists, young and old, at the turn of the the century. They believed that guns and other apparatus of physical control were necessary, but only as means to the spreading of justice and civilisation.

How remote it all seems to us now, in this later and lesser Jubilee year! Not only has the Empire disappeared, but with it most of the self-confidence that Kipling expressed. Whatever else we may be drunk with this year, it is not the sight of power. We see only — indeed we tend slightly to exaggerate — our impotence. Our hearts may be heathen, but they do not put their trust in 'reeking tube or iron shard; defence is almost a taboo subject. As for 'dominion over palm and pine', there are only a few tropical or sub-tropical islands left to us, and even the Caledonian pine (largely destroyed, in anY case, by the Forestry Commission) may be lost to us before long.

It would be comforting to believe that our insularity, xenophobia and racial exclusiveness had perished along with our imperial pride and sense of destiny. But have they? Whether in our attitude towards new immigrants here in Britain, or towards our Continental partners in the EEC, the evi" dence is not wholly reassuring. But at least we have retained our attach' ment to the Monarchy. Indeed the institution is in danger of becoming a substitute for, rather than a symbol of, national greatness. Kipling could afford to take Queen Victoria for granted at the time 13f her Diamond Jubilee, but people today are talking as though the Royal Family were the only decent and good thing in the public life of the country — all we had left to be proud of. It is time for Sir John Betjeman or sorne inspired unofficial laureate to restore our morale and sense of balance with a 1977

equivalent of Kipling's 'Recessional'. ,

Kipling's task was to challenge the cruoe arrogance of his compatriots, and to shake them out of the feeling that their world power was invulnerable. In this Jubilee year, we could do with a renewal of faith in ourselves, and a renewed interegt in the reality of power. For a start, we need to shed our cynicisM, about democratic institutions, and 01-1' dangerously increased hostility to the Sta„te', apart from the monarchial aspect. course the State (including the MonarchY) should always be treated with vigilance a,s, well as reverence. Individuals in places, as well as in petty positions °t, authority, should be subject to constarl scrutiny. But they should also receive fr°M us the respect due to their offices; and t° devalue their offices is to damage the country and, ipso facto, ourselves. From this point of view, thp way MerlY„° Rees was treated at the Police Federatio; conference was truly appalling, and in s°111 f ways the most alarming symptom No nationalnational demoralisation since the war. "e group of citizens should treat the 1-1021„ Secretary like that, much less an assern°1/ of policemen. A ne No doubt our politicians have ■-•° rather a lot to undermine their own 13„re-a stige. Most of them have neither se` a particularly good example nor giVell he consistent lead. By their resistance to broadcasting of Parliament they have 11,1.11 vented the public from sharing to the drama and excitement of democracoYi while the drama and excitement ti monarchy have been amply apparent As result there is too much denigration °of` politicians and an' almost blind worshiP the Royal Family. A good Jubilee poem would bring a of home to us. But is anybody capable writing it?