A Taxi Driver writes...

Neil Clark (Cab 66, but believed to be an alias of Stephen Byers) comments:

Brown's greatest mistake was to underestimate just how leftwards public opinion had shifted on economic matters during the financial crisis. In 2008-9, people didn't just want speeches denouncing bankers' bonuses, they wanted to see bankers hanging from lamp-posts.

Reader, knowing Clark I think he means it. Saying something threatening half-seriously on twitter resulted in one Paul Chambers (not the long deceased jazz bassist) receiving a punitive fine. Just the kind of behaviour Clark occasionally objects to.

But there is more. In my edits of the Wikipedia article on Clark I was menaced by an editor, soon banned, going under the moniker of 'Citylightsgirl', who thought I was Oliver Kamm or a "close associate" of his. Alas the rest of this demented material has gone from the web, as has the article on Clark from Wikipedia itself, though a late version is preserved elsewhere.

Clark puts up the pretense of being a 'democratic socialist', but much of his writing, and all of the pieces by his wife Zsuzsanna Clark, suggest this is a sham. His comments on the election provided an irresistible opportunity to satirise their politics. Naturally I was rumbled, I had 'forgotten' to log out of Google, but Clark still appears to think Philip Cross is a pseudonym for a prominent person who is out for him. The truth is very prosaic. Clark may assume deceit if I claim never to have been a customer of Tiscali, the internet service provider. But it is a fact, though I know of a public figure who has.

Zsuzsanna Clark keeps digging

It is a rare occurrence for an article in the Mail on Sunday, discussed here, to inspire a subsequent piece in the Morning Star.

In Hungary apparently:

Kadar won public support with his liberalising reforms and his likeable [sic], modest manner.

How do we know?

The critics usually claim that their opposition was due to "human rights," but I believe a large part of their anti-communism can be explained by a single word. Snobbery.

That is a novel argument, the most credible reason is the absence of democracy in the former Soviet bloc and the other communist countries. The scare quote is not reassuring.

But for the snobs, the wrong class of people was in charge.

This is supposed to be a defence of a socialist country! Mrs Clark asserts the Chess Grandmaster

[Lajos] Portisch believes that had Kadar not had to leave school and take up an apprenticeship at an early age, he too could have become a chess grand master.

So his own loss was the workers' gain? When the Queen Mother died in 2002, A.N. Wilson came up with a similar argument about how she could have been a significant cultural figure under different circumstances. The word for this kind of approach is hagiography:

I regarded Kadar as a relative, like a favourite uncle or grandfather. I liked the way he talked - he was never pompous or condescending and never arrogant.

Almost a saint then.

As the respected British historian Eric Hobsbawm has stated, Kadar was "the most successful ruler of Hungary in the 20th century."

Hobsbawm is hardly a neutral observer. He was on the 'other' side in the Morning Star-CPB/Marxism Today-CPGB split more than twenty years ago. Which leads me to think describing him as "respected", for this readership, might have been a mistake. If so, what a shame.

Just Fancy That (2)

Last July Oliver Kamm found Neil Clark indulging in plagiarism. Zsuzsanna Clark, Neil's wife, has now done the same in an encomium for her native Hungary during the Soviet period. When the internet makes this practice easier to detect, it is really very, very foolish.

From an article dated 2 November 2002 in The Guardian:

When people ask me what it was like growing up in Hungary in the 1970s and 80s, most expect to hear tales of secret police, bread queues and other nasty manifestations of life in a one-party state. They are invariably disappointed when I tell them that the reality was quite different and that communist Hungary, far from being hell on earth, was in fact rather a good place to live.

From a Mail on Sunday article published today:

When people ask me what it was like growing up behind the Iron Curtain in Hungary in the Seventies and Eighties, most expect to hear tales of secret police, bread queues and other nasty manifestations of life in a one-party state.

They are invariably disappointed when I explain that the reality was quite different, and communist Hungary, far from being hell on earth, was in fact, rather a fun place to live.

Clark's still forthcoming book on growing up in Hungary has been in preparation for at least seven years, but she seems unable to check the limited amount she has published on the subject. Very silly. As yet, the book is unlisted on any publisher's website.

In the article itself she manages to imply János Kádár government was the result of the 1956 Revolution rather than a Soviet imposition after the tanks rolled in. Clark almost managed to get this point right in a 2006 First Post article, so why not now? Presumably Mail on Sunday readers can be more easily misled. The most telling omission of her writings is that during détente, Zsuzsanna Clark was born in 1968, the Kádár government was propped up by loans from western banks. The system was unable to sustain itself.

Clark's outline of television in Hungary also has a familiar ring to it. From a New Statesman article of 21 July 2003:

Saturday night when I was growing up meant a Jules Verne adventure, a variety show and a Chekhov drama. Foreign imports included The Forsyte Saga and David Attenborough documentaries. One of the most popular and talked-about programmes of the entire period was Poetry for Everyone, in which, each night, a famous actor or actress would recite a different poem.

Back to the Mail on Sunday:

When I was a teenager, Saturday night primetime viewing typically meant a Jules Verne adventure, a poetry recital, a variety show, a live theatre performance, or an easy Bud Spencer film.

Much of Hungarian television was home-produced, but quality programmes were imported, not just from other Eastern Bloc countries but from the West, too.

Hungarians in the early Seventies followed the trials and tribulations of Soames Forsyte in The Forsyte Saga just as avidly as British viewers had done a few years earlier. The Onedin Line was another popular BBC series I enjoyed watching, along with David Attenborough documentaries.

Admittedly an improvement, but we might assume western imports were restricted to just two series, plus the work of a zoologist? Was 'quality' material from the United States like Ellery Queen, to pick a series at random, never shown?

Just one more comparison from the writings of Zsuzsanna Clark. In a Guardian article from February 26 2007 on the Hungarian Pioneer movement, we find the following:

Our motto as Pioneers was Together for Each Other. It was not an empty slogan: it was how we were encouraged to think.

Back to the Mail on Sunday piece once again:

'Together for each other' was our slogan, and that was how we were encouraged to think.

Oh dear!

Update: Oliver Kamm also finds her account feeble.