The 'iron curtain' descended from Russia via Goebbels to Churchill

In an interesting post on 'What PowerPoint can't show you' yesterday, Martin Shovel poses the excellent question of whether it would have improved the famous metaphor used by Winston Churchill in his speech at Fulton, Missouri in 1946, in which he said “.. an iron curtain has descended across the continent”:

‘Time pressure would have forced him to abandon his strikingly original idea in favour of something more literal, mundane and attainable, like a brick wall, or a barbed-wire fence.’

Although 'iron curtain' was a perfect metaphor for summing up the Cold War division of Europe, this ‘strikingly original idea’ wasn't Churchill's. Goebbels and other Nazi propagandists had used it before him, as too had others in England and Russia before that.

The most succinct summary of the metaphor's history that I’ve come across is on About.com:

‘Churchill had previously used the term in two telegrams to Truman. However, the term, which dates back to the nineteenth century, was probably first used in regard to Russia by Vassily Rozanov in 1918 when he wrote "an iron curtain is descending on Russian history". It was also used by Ethel Snowden in 1920 in a book called 'Through Bolshevik Russia' and during WW2 by Joseph Goebbels and German politician Lutz Schwerin von Krosigk, both in propaganda.’

None of which is to belittle the power of the metaphor or Churchill’s success in making it part of the language of the Cold War – which is why I still use the video clip below when teaching about the importance of imagery.

BUT WHAT MAKES A SPEECH MEMORABLE?
This is a question I blogged about back in March and is something that will no doubt continue to fascinate me until I shuffle off this mortal coil. The 'iron curtain' speech arguably fits with where I've got to so far from looking at some of the speeches that people mentioned most frequently as 'memorable' :

'The best I’ve been able to come up with is that, in each case, the speaker managed to hit the jackpot by saying something that struck just the right chord with just the right audience in just the right place at just the right moment in history – which means that it’s more or less impossible to predict ‘memorability’ with any certainty in advance of any particular speech...'

You can see the list of 'memorable' speeches and comments on the discussion HERE. And, if you feel like continuing the discussion, please feel free to do so.

at 1 comment:

Just who does Lord Adonis think he is?

Only a few hours after posting my latest grumbles about the House of Lords, I was flabbergasted to be greeted by the appearance on the BBC website the following staggering piece of presumptuousness from our unelected Transport Secretary, Lord Adonis - to which all I can say is:

How dare such a person have the cheek to demand the right to speak the chamber of the elected House of Commons?

For me, the presence of Adonis in the House of Lords at all, let alone his recent elevation to the cabinet, sums up everything that's wrong with our second chamber.

After all, here is someone whose political career has included avoiding elections (see HERE) and changing sides (he was a LibDem advisor to Paddy Ashdown before defecting to Labour) when it suited him - and who is presumably only in the cabinet now because Gordon Brown had run out elected MPs considered 'reliable' enough for such high office.

I've never posted a whole web page from another site before, but it will at least save you from looking it up and, perhaps also explain why, on this occasion, long words fail me:


Peers 'should appear in Commons'

Transport Secretary Lord Adonis has said he wants to be able to answer MPs' questions in the House of Commons.

Current rules say peers who serve as ministers can face direct inquiries only in the House of Lords.

But Lord Adonis told BBC One's Politics Show he and Business Secretary Lord Mandelson would be "delighted" to face MPs in the Commons chamber.

He has written to the Speaker to suggest this, but said the Commons was not the "fastest-moving" institution.

The promotion of peers to cabinet rank means some of the leading figures in government cannot face questions from their own and opposition MPs in the Commons itself.

Scrutiny concerns

More junior ministers deputise for their bosses at the despatch box.

So, for instance, Lord Mandelson and his Conservative shadow, Ken Clarke, never sit opposite each other in Parliament.

Critics say this reduces the effective scrutiny of government.

Lord Adonis said that, as he had to appear before Commons select committees, there was some direct questioning of him by MPs.

But he said he and Lord Mandelson "would be delighted to answer questions" in the main Commons chamber.

Lord Adonis said he had written to Speaker John Bercow, but added: "I don't think the Commons, when it comes to reforming itself, is the fastest-moving of institutions."

The peer, who was an adviser to former Prime Minister Tony Blair, reiterated that he would not serve under David Cameron if the Conservatives won the next general election.
He said he had "no interest" in such an arrangement.
at 1 comment:

Noble noses in the trough

All the main political parties seem quite happy to have their nominees sitting and working in the House of Lords as if they represented someone and/or as if there's a rational basis for any of them to have a seat there at all. So it's a subject that I don't regard as a 'no-go area' for a 'non-aligned' blog.

Anyone interested can read a selection of my 'non-aligned' posts on the subject below. And anyone really interested is recommended to inspect the expenses claims of our 'nobility' for the year ended 31 March 2008 HERE.

I first got wind of the fact that there might be something dubious about Hose of Lords expenses claims a few years ago, when I heard of a special branch protection officer with reservations about the behaviour of a peer he was protecting - whose day would start by being driven to the House of Lords, signing in to claim his daily tax-free allowance and then being driven off again to do whatever else he'd got planned for the day.

Only one example, perhaps, but many more questions spring to mind from looking at the expenses list referred to above, and you may be as surprised as I was at how much is being claimed by so many for so few days of effort.

Some peers, like Lord Rees Mogg, appear to be claiming allowances for office expenses associated with doing paid work for someone else - e.g. how much of the £8,923 claimed for his 'office' in the year 2007-80 was actually subsidising him to write articles for The Times and Mail on Sunday?

As I've said before, I don't have the staff, resources or inclination to research the matter as closely as the Daily Telegraph investigated the expenses of our elected representatives.

But I do wish someone would do more of it, if only to remind people that the new improved House of Lords is as far removed from anything approximating democracy as it ever was - and perhaps even get the debate about it going again.

Other posts on the House of Lords include:
at No comments:

Contrasting reactions to Cameron's 'poverty moment'

I’ve just caught up with BBC’s Question Time that was broadcast on the day of David Cameron’s leader’s speech at the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester.

Given what I’d said last week about the high spot being the sequence on poverty in which he 'surfed' applause (HERE and HERE), I wasn’t at all surprised to see two of QT guests singling it out for comment.

But I was surprised and intrigued by the very different audience reactions to their attacks on that particular part of the speech.

Asked whether David Cameron is ready to become prime minister, Ian Hislop only got a slight titter of laughter for his reason for saying “yes”:


It may well have been his failure to get a bigger laugh that prompted him to carry on at greater length. But his overt attempt get a reaction by pouring scorn on Cameron’s ‘poverty moment’ got another rather lukewarm response - and his final sentence was greeted by a deathly and quite lengthy silence before Dimbleby called for the next speaker:


By contrast, Labour cabinet minister Yvette Cooper’s characterisation of the same sequence as ‘synthetic indignation’ and her quote of Cameron’s line in the speech about ‘being straight’ with people got a fulsome round of applause:


For members of the Tory communications team, this positive response to Ms Cooper must have been as discouraging as the lack of response to Mr Hislop had been encouraging.

But there was one evaluation of the speech as a whole from a member of the audience that must have been music to their ears - and worth at least one bottle of champagne (to be drunk, of course, out of sight of any roving TV cameras):

at 1 comment:

Claptrap 8: Sparks in the background


This is the eighth in a series of posts marking the 25th anniversary of the publication of Our Masters' Voices and the televising of Claptrap by Granada Television.

In the summer of 1984, the miners’ strike was still dragging on as a daily reminder of the woeful state of industrial relations in the Britain at the time.

Of the many ways in which those of us who worked in universities were privileged, one was that we had little or no first hand experience of the irritating frustrations that so many industries were up against – especially, I soon learnt, in the world of the media.

When the Granada Television crew came to film in my study at home, I remember being amazed at just how many of them there were – and quite shocked by how little there was for some of them to do.

How many electricians does it take to check a plug?
There was an electrician, for example, who spent about a minute poking a gadget into one of the electrical sockets on my study wall before giving the crew the ‘all clear’ to set up the camera and lighting. It was a warm sunny day, so he went to the village shop, bought a newspaper and spent the rest of the time reading in the garden.

How many electricians does it take to light a theatre?
I’d also got wind of rumblings between Granada and the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford upon Avon, where more filming was scheduled for later that day.

Granada needed to know exactly how many RSC electricians would be doing the stage lighting. If there were three, there would have to be three from Granada, if four then four from Granada, and so on. It wasn’t that there would be anything for them to do, or even that they would have been allowed to do anything by the local electricians, but the rule was that same number would have to be there (and paid) for the same number of hours as the theatre’s own electricians.

How many production assistants does it take to carry a film to Manchester?
Meanwhile, Granada was also constrained by some fairly bizarre demarcation issues among its own staff. After filming at the TUC in Brighton, Don Jordan, the researcher in daily charge of the production, had arranged a business meeting in London the next day. World in Action was filmed on 16mm film that had to be developed before editing could begin, so he asked a production assistant to do him a favour that would let him get straight on to London: could she take today’s film back to Manchester and drop it off at the labs for him.

“No”, she replied, “that’s not part of my job.”

Don knew the union rules well enough to know that he had no choice but to cancel his meeting in London and go back to Manchester - sitting next to the same woman on the same flight from Gatwick – for the sole purpose of carrying the film from the airport to the laboratories (which she had to go past on her way home).

How many films were never made?
Ann Brennan's standing ovation may have been a major victory for Granada. But so too was the fact that they ever managed to make any television programmes at all.
at 2 comments:

Claptrap 7: On location


This is the seventh in a series of posts marking the 25th anniversary of the publication of Our Masters' Voices and the televising of Claptrap by Granada Television.

The two most common questions I’ve been asked since the Claptrap programme was first shown are (with answers in brief):

1. How long did it actually take to coach Ann Brennan to make her speech?

Ans: A few hours on five separate days.

2. Which parts of the process played the biggest part in her success?

Ans: They were never filmed or shown.

FIVE DAYS ON LOCATION

  1. Voice coaching at the Royal Shakespeare Company’s London rehearsal rooms.
  2. Oxford & Stratford upon Avon: John Heritage and I showing Ann the main rhetorical techniques; Cicely Berry coaching her on stage at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre (by far the busiest single day).
  3. Ann & I watching Arthur Scargill in action at the TUC in Brighton
  4. Ann’s encounter with Joe Haynes, Harold Wilson’s former speechwriter.
  5. Filming the speech in Buxton (plus Scargill speech analysis that had had to be deferredfor reasons explained HERE).

The most important parts of the process that were never shown were the actual writing of the speech (as opposed to the sequence in which Joe Haynes, former speechwriter for Harold Wilson, came up with some brilliant lines) and Cicely Berry’s work with Ann rehearsing the speech the night before she gave it.

THE SCENE THAT NEARLY WASN'T

Before the meeting with Joe Haynes, he’d been sent a copy of Our Masters’ Voices and asked to write a speech using the main rhetorical techniques described in it.

As the camera was being set up, Ann was asked to read through the draft. Her initial reaction was to that Haynes was trying to put Labour words into her mouth – to which he retaliated by accusing her of being a ‘closet Tory’, and it began to look as though there might not be anything to film that day.

So we asked her to go through it again and mark anything that she liked or might feel comfortable saying.

If only the camera had been ready by then! Because if it had been, it could have have shown a close up her hand marking particular lines with comments like “I like this bit” and “Yes, that’s exactly the kind of thing I want to say”. Viewers would have been able to see the same fascinating sight that we saw – it was as if the contrasts, puzzles and three-part lists that were later to have such an impact on the audience in Buxton were already jumping off the page and having an impact on her.

And that’s how the lines recommended by Joe Haynes on the film were selected for when the camera started to roll.

THE TWO MISSING LINKS

The final text of the speech took a whole day to write at a meeting attended by Gus Maconald, Ann and me at the Macdonald’s home in Islington with no cameras present. We were careful to weave in some of the lines from Joe Haynes, and very careful to make sure that Ann felt comfortable with every word we wrote.

In other words, contrary to what some critics later tried to make out, we merely translated the messages she wanted to get across into rhetorically effective words, and were determined throughout not to put any of our own views into her mouth.

Apart from the script, the other most crucial part of the exercise took place in a hotel room in Buxton on the night before Ann gave the speech. Present were Cicely Berry, then head of Voice at the Royal Shakespeare Company, Gus Macdonald and I - and it was in that hour or two and I learnt almost everything I know(and still teach) about the importance of rehearsing speeches.

Not present, unfortunately, were any cameramen. Otherwise that particular part of Cicely’s genius could have been made available to an audience of millions. And that’s why I think that the omission of the rehearsal was the film’s biggest weakness.

at No comments:

UK Speechwriters' Guild annual conference video

Brian Jenner of the UK Speechwriters' Guild has just posted a video on YouTube of the first annual conference in Bournemouth last month.

It was filmed and produced by Tim Clague, who as Brian rightly says 'has communicated brilliantly what we all stand for.'

You can also watch it and read a more detailed report on the conference by Martin Shovel HERE.

at No comments:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)