If you tell me that Charles Dickens and Miranda Carter have nothing to teach us, I beg to differ. Charles Dickens, as I’m sure you know, was a mid-nineteenth century author who wrote, among other things, novels describing unfathomable social injustice. Miranda Carter is a 21st century historian who has also written three novels.
I had been fascinated by two of her extensively researched books when I embarked on a third, Infidel Stain, but was at once dismayed to find myself in Charles Dickens territory.
It’s not that I have had my fill of following protagonists through foul-smelling streets peopled with creatures so poor you can hardly bear to look at them. Dickens’s wrathful descriptions were invaluable social commentary. My problem is that since Dickens wished to satisfy his readers, he made sure to steer his destitute protagonists into the arms of wealthy but “noble-minded” grieving widowers (with or without a beautiful daughter) who of course saved the day. For the protagonist. Not for the rest of London’s starving and freezing multitude. His readers might have been satisfied with the denouements, but I was not.
Like Dickens, Carter leads us along the dark alleys of London in 1841, confronts us with insalubrious characters and teaches us some of their lingo. Unlike Dickens, however, she is interested in opposition – the tooth and nail sort of thing. She does not, I repeat not, trust Parliament to defend the “masses”, because no women and no non-propertied men had the right to vote back then, so they were not represented in Parliament. Those who were, had no wish to share, as it were, with those who weren’t. They were determined to keep them – the have-nots – out.
Infidel Stain is a who-done-it novel, not a political thesis. Nevertheless Carter’s cast discuss how to achieve improvement. Should they do so politely, with petitions? Or should they threaten to use force? In a historical epilogue to her book, Carter explains that the “Chartist” movement presented petitions. As it turned out, Parliament cared not one hoot about the 3.3 million men who signed the 1842 petition (in a country of 16 million of which half were women and many were children). After the 1839 massacre at the Newport rising, the have-nots had to wait until 1918 before non-propertied men and propertied women gained voting rights. That’s a long time!
Of course Carter writes about Victorian London with the hindsight of nearly 200 years. We all now agree that it was wrong to deny the vast majority of the country’s citizens the vote. We all now agree that child labour and inhumane working conditions were reprehensible. Indeed, living conditions have since improved immeasurably, not least after WWII. But why, I ask, why did they not improve much, much earlier?
Could it be that people born and bred at “country houses” like Blenheim Palace were loathe to part with their property? Winston Churchill is quoted as saying “a communist is like a crocodile: when it opens its mouth you cannot tell whether it is trying to smile or preparing to eat you up.” The Churchills still own Blenheim.
And why have living conditions in the West deteriorated so much since the 1970s? (Cf. Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, 2014.) Could it be that some people wanted to retrieve what they lost after the two great wars and that others have felt free to use financial and hence political power to amass wealth regardless of consequences for their fellow citizens and the rest of the world?
And have you noticed that the right to vote, so dearly won, is now nearly worthless?
What is the moral to be drawn by all this prattle? you ask.
Well, for one thing, I very much recommend Miranda Carter’s novel Infidel Stain, reviewed here. It’s a good read.
Moreover, as I see it, the novel stimulates us to consider the topic opposition. How is improvement achieved? Should we collect signatures and present petitions and try to gain support from influential persons? Should we, like the children of the Intifada, collect and throw rocks or, like the demonstrators against the Vietnam war, let ourselves be beaten by police officers on horseback?
Whatever the answer to that question, most of us have been bamboozled into believing we cannot beat the system. That assumption applies at least as much in these AI days as it did in London in 1848, when – according to Carter – the Chartist movement more or less disintegrated.
Does that mean that opposition is forever doomed?
***
Until 28 February 2026, Iran was polite. Very polite. Then the USA and Israel attacked. They attacked a country that definitely did not have nuclear weapons and that had never attacked them.
Did you know that they bombed that school in Minab at least twice? Accident? Ha! They had to be sure that all those little girls were well and truly dead, so they returned to bomb it a second and allegedly even a third time. The Israeli tail and its US dog are evidently rabid and should be put down. But who dares approach a rabid dog?
To everyone’s surprise, one country dares. For the first time in my life, the USA and its Israeli handler are being hit. It’s absolutely unbelievable.
Even more unbelievable: Iran is still on its feet!
There are those who clamour for negotiations. In the past, I would have done so too. But the Israelis have made sure that the mere word “negotiation” has become synonymous with “death trap”.
Long before I was born, Russia saved Europe from Hitler (Germany killed 20 million Russians.) The USA and its European allies then went on to dominate the world, crushing any attempt in all other continents to create any sort of welfare society.
Now Iranians are being killed by a Hitler-emulator and his neocon buddies in the US. The parallel is weird, to say the least.
And Iran is still on its feet.
I find myself holding my breath.