I’ve been reading a few of the legal blogs that have sprung up since the RFC affair occurred. It’s disappointing to note how blasé the Scottish media are, almost in their totality, in failing to indicate or predict outcomes and eventualities on a proactive basis. Instead they prefer to be reactive when, in actual fact, there is so much information in the public domain that can be utilised to get beyond the “Green says, D&P say, Regan says” level of coverage.
I was seemingly several days of ahead of all the media when I simply took a look at the Articles of the SFA and noted the relevant points about not reverting to courts and the various mentions of the CAS. Now, I’m not paid to keep abreast of matters legal but I’m damned sure that there are people at all the media outlets who have that in their job description. Why then is it that each twist in the legal tale is of a revelationary nature – a bomb chucked into the mix from goodness knows only where? This is just lazy journalism.
I’ll flag up another piece of lazy journalism. The much touted expulsion from the Scottish Cup sanction is almost certainly a red herring. Yes, the SFA can expel a club from the cup but, in principle, the competition needs to be underway before an expulsion can be made. Therefore to talk about this sanction in June is moot as the competition is not due to commence for several months. This was flagged in one of the blogs but has nobody else picked up on that yet? Mr. Green is very deliberately focussing all his attentions, and those of Rangers followers, on a penalty that is as valid as the transfer ban. It’s not going to happen and well he knows it! But why would the media be proactive and look down that avenue?
by Phil Lawrence 11/12/2001
There have been some wonderful quotes emanating from all angles following David Cameron’s veto of European Treaty reform. The UK media has been fairly congratulatory but Europe has been almost universally condemnatory.
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| Angela Dominatrix |
So what of the implications of this in the sphere of Scottish politics and the debate on independence? In The Independent Jane Merrick points out, “Some believe that Cameron’s isolation in Europe could make it even easier for Scotland’s First Minister, Alex Salmond, and the Scottish Nationalist Party to secure independence – and eventually, perhaps, to join the euro.” She then quotes a ‘senior’ LibDem as saying the following, “So Scotland walks away and joins the euro and leaves the Little Englanders having finally got their Little England. The Little Englanders think we will be like Switzerland, but with nuclear weapons. Actually, we’ll be like Norway, but without the oil.”
by Phil Lawrence 09/12/2011
A novelty double act
For many, if not most, politicians and political commentators south of the border Scotland has been more likely to feature as a source of annoyance than anything else. The most prevalent opinion has been that the Scots are at worst a bunch of scroungers or at best simply ungrateful for the largesse of the Union generally and England specifically. Now that Alex Salmond and the Scottish National Party have delivered the election result of a generation on our side of the border the chattering classes in the south seem to have woken up to the ideal way to put the kybosh on this whole referendum on independence thingummy — force that referendum as early as possible.
That sounds eminently sensible from the point of view of anyone determined to preserve the Union. The easiest way to torpedo an independence vote would be to prevent the Yes campaign from building any momentum by getting the plebiscite over and done with in the shortest timeframe possible.
Alex Salmond is acutely aware that we Scots need a bit of education on what our status is in the Union and what our status would be if we would go our own way. He is aware that we need education as to the benefits of freedom of choice in setting our own policy goals in an international context. He is aware that we need education as to the true potential of our industry and resources to be able to raise funds for the nation through taxation. He is aware that we need education in the opportunities afforded to small nations in the modern world.
However Alex dare not use this “E” word as that might very well come across as condescending. And if there is one thing we Scots cannot abide it is condescension! Instead he must lead us down a path where we witness by the evidence of our own eyes and ears the possibilities and certainties that many Scots cannot yet even imagine.
So why is education such a key aspect? Well firstly those very opinions of what Scots are permeating from England about us all being ungrateful scroungers may be dismissed with one hand but if this type of propaganda is repeated often enough it can leave a stain or even a scar on the psyche in terms of how we view ourselves. Secondly, this is reinforced by our local Unionist politicians telling us how essential it is to preserve the Union as we wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of lasting five minutes out there. Anyway, where would we go? The EU wouldn’t want us and nobody would want to bail us out when we fall flat on our faces. These slurs against the competence and self-respect of our very being need to be addressed, dissected and put to bed once and for all to be replaced by new positive reinforcements of who we are and what we are capable of.
Let’s look at the different aspects of our education in understanding ourselves. We need to be clear, regarding our status, that the vast majority of the population of the Union treats us as second-class citizens. The English are not intrinsically a bad bunch and I think that we all know that. However they are finding a nascent sense of Englishness with the Cross of St George and all that. They look at us with some sense of indulgence as one would for an errant young nephew who really just will not learn. As long as the SNP were in a minority at Holyrood this was all well and good. Now, all of a sudden, this errant young nephew has been left a rather large inheritance and everyone in the family wants to tell him how to invest it or, even better, become his trustee until he is old enough to understand how to spend it wisely. Let’s make no mistake here; we are nobody’s nephew. We are full partners in a Treaty of Union which is as valid today as it was 304 years when it was formalised. Under international law the treaty is a live instrument and the partners are at liberty to revise it as and when they see fit. We are not locked into this Union and we are at liberty to challenge our status without a trustee or guardian insisting upon our conduct.
Scotland is currently little more than a bit-part player in the world of international affairs. For better or for worse we are characterised as that bunch who let the Libyan bomber go free. How that affair is read depends upon where you are rooted. Hawks might say that we are a soft-touch whilst those with a more all-embracing nature might say that we are compassionate. Quite frankly this is an irrelevance. We are being judged on something that was decided from a point of law. There was no pay-off, there was no dividend, there was no back-scratching done. But as the government in Westminster was less than willing to be frank or in any way clear on the matter we had to stride the international stage as a government with no Foreign Ministry. Westminster made no attempt to assist in that and it was a perfect opportunity for London Labour to try to leave Edinburgh high and dry.
That we were able to get any message across at all was remarkable in itself. The SNP has a highly professional team of front bench talent in Holyrood and as we saw accusing fingers pointed at Kenny Macaskill and Alex Salmond from the hawks in the US and from within the Union a valiant and tidy rear-guard action was fought. Some were convinced that this issue might come back to bite the SNP in the 2011 poll but the results of last week are proof that this has become a non-issue for most Scots. Nonetheless we need to see for ourselves how the impressions and misrepresentations of others can affect our international persona. Our ability to present ourselves on the international stage is not helped by the status quo at Westminster but we need to demonstrate this for all to see on the domestic front.
We Scots have been some of the greatest innovators in science and commerce in the history of the modern world. This goes back to one key issue — education. We were the first country to offer universal education to everyone regardless of class or position. This great advantage was readily seized upon by the British Empire in its time as we were the most numerate society of the age, so the fact that the administrators and managers in the colonies were predominantly Scots was no coincidence. When the Industrial Revolution came along Scotland, as well as supplying many of the ideas and processes, embraced the new age with vigour and foresight. The great industries of the Central Belt were forged from Scottish iron and steel smelted on Scottish coal. Times have changed since the great days of the Industrial Revolution and the heavy industries have died or declined to a vestigial level compared to their pomp. But we tend to forget that New Lanark is still in the essential travel guide for Japanese tourist coming to the UK. We may have forgotten a great deal of our industrial background but they want to come and see where it all started from their point of view in the crucible of sustainable, compassionate industry.
But what of our current industry? Some would scoff about whisky, picture postcards and shortbread but let’s not get sidetracked. The whisky industry as it stands today is a massive contributor to the Exchequer. The taxes, duty and excise raised by Scotch whisky are the envy of many countries in Europe. This is a massive shot in the arm to Scotland’s input to London’s tax pot. Or is it? Well actually no, generally it is London itself that inputs the whisky numbers as the companies that own the distilleries are registered in London so therefore it is English whisky funds.
Oh well never mind, the oil and gas sector contributes billions and that does certainly come from Scotland doesn’t it? Well no, actually it doesn’t. The energy sector is also mostly London based. For all the endeavour that goes on in the North Sea and for all the roles that Aberdeen, Peterhead and Shetland play it is once more London’s input.
So that’s two of the major industries in the UK economy almost exclusively operating in Scotland but with their financial returns reflected as English. No wonder we would feel inadequate if we imagined that the best of our industries were being tallied in the big bean count as our own but we still came out so poorly. We need this financial obfuscation to be cleared up and complete transparency to reign.
“But Scotland is too wee and too poor to survive on its own.” If I had a pound for every time I have heard that in my lifetime I would be very well off thank you very much indeed. This is a lie peddled by those who have no coherent argument beyond the nonsense they are fed by the Unionists. For the past 18 years I have lived in Tallinn, Estonia which is a country of less than 1.5 million inhabitants. Now if that’s not a country that was too wee and poor to go it alone then I do not know what is. When I first visited Estonia in December 1992 I found a tatty little country lacking for most of the things that we take for granted but the one thing in no short supply was self-respect. The country had only shaken of Soviet rule 16 months earlier and was finding its way but the people were optimistic. The undercurrent of enthusiasm and the can-do attitude of people I met prompted me to settle in Tallinn for a short spell in March 1993 but that short spell has now become, as I say, 18 years. I am not going to try to convince anyone that Estonia is some kind of heaven on earth but what I will say in the clearest terms is that when I settled in Tallinn there were so many things that we simply accept as part and parcel of modern living that were unavailable. I recall having a dinner party in 1993 and I ended up having to visit eight different food shops before I had all the ingredients for a relatively simple menu. When I put fuel into my car I always had a nagging fear that there might be dirt in the petrol which could block the fuel system — it happened to me more than once and it happened to others frequently but we learned which pumps to avoid. These are two simple aspects of everyday living that we take for granted in that one will find food in the shops and one will be able to use the fuel that one buys without fear of breakdown. These are only exceedingly minor issues but this is just an illustration of what the population of Tallinn and other cities, towns and villages of Estonia had to put up with on a day-to-day basis for some considerable time.
But it wasn’t just Estonia. It was Latvia and Lithuania as well. It was Slovenia. It was Slovakia. These are all now full members of the EU and three of them are in the Eurozone as well. These countries had none of our advantages and yet they have all claimed their place in the New Europe with enthusiasm and pride. And lest we forget Croatia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Kosovo and the Czech Republic. All of these far less fortunate than Scotland but none too wee or too poor. OK, not all of these are perfect societies yet but they have chosen to be apart from something else that was no longer fit for purpose and to invest their effort in being what is their essence.
For us Scots to take on-board all of the above overnight is nigh on impossible. We need time to catch our breath and to make some form of understanding of what we have achieved so far and what that means for our future. This is where the education process starts. We need to know who we are, what we are, what we have as our right, where we are going, who we are going with and who we are going to meet. We need to know why we are going there and what we will receive in return. We need to know how we are going to get there. The question of when we can go needs to be carefully weighed up against all these whats, whys, wheres, whos and hows. At the juncture that we can understand the reasons then we will know when. That is the education that we need.
It is completely disingenuous for the supporters of the Union to insist that a referendum must be held at the very earliest moment. Did David Cameron put every campaign pledge into action in the first 90 days of his Prime Ministership? Of course not. Will Labour action every policy in Wales immediately? Don’t be daft.
Alex Salmond and the SNP clearly stated again and again ad infitum that the referendum would be called in the second half of the new Parliament. The pledge was clear and unambiguous.
It is no coincidence from my own point of view that I am coming home. I am moving back to Aberdeen this year and I will be opening a business using many of the things that I have learned in my time in Eastern Europe. I have confidence in Alex Salmond and the SNP; I know where we are going. I feel it is my duty to share with as many others as possible in finding that same route so that we might all know exactly why we are on it. And I am so looking forward to the thrill of the journey. A one-way family ticket please.
The media coverage of the popular revolts in the Middle East has been pretty in-depth up to now with all the major news outlets covering every aspect of the unravelling political landscape. Or have they?
I would contend that far from analysing the breaking stories they have instead favoured an approach akin to sports commentary where the correspondents report what they see with little thought given to analysis. The main culprits here have been TV and radio with some of the more serious newspapers taking a slightly more academic approach to their examination of the events.
Having been in the UK for much of the time I have been subjected to observing things through the prism of BBC News and Sky News with the occasional referral to CNN, Al-Jazeera and Russia Today among other sources. As for radio I have listened mostly to BBC Radio 4 and BBC World Service.
Let’s deal with the TV stations first and in reverse order. The first order of business is to be clear that Russia Today is not a news channel. It is a mouthpiece for sources close to the Kremlin to further Russian interests by points-scoring from any and every adversary. On one bulletin last week whilst highlighting the suppression of anti-government protesters in Libya the rolling ticker at the bottom of the screen was delivering the single message that the security services were using British made crowd control “machines” on the streets. This intrigued me until I eventually twigged that they were really talking about “vehicles” and obviously the copy had been translated directly from Russian language in which the word машина (mashyina) is commonly used. Anyway it was interesting to note how the Russians were spotlighting the possible lineage of the police vehicles but there was no mention of the MiG, Sukhoi and Mil aircraft raining death from the skies which all coincidentally share a common origin. Russia. Go figure.
Al-Jazeera was quite interesting as they have a rather no-holds-barred approach to their reporting. They tell it like it is, warts and all, but do tend to get a little ahead of themselves in reporting speculation and rumour with little or no verification. Having said that the quality of studio expert has been excellent with plenty of texture and context added to unfolding events. I would have watched more of Al-Jazeera but they do tend to focus on single events for a bit too long to the extent that if you are looking for a rolling news update you can sometimes be disappointed.
CNN has huffed and puffed and made out that its coverage is serious and highbrow but once we get beneath the skin we have a fairly safe and uncontentious package to deal with. In its defence CNN is pretty unlikely to announce a story until it is double-, treble-, quadruple-, and quintuple-checked. This is commendable in many ways but it also means that CNN is most often the network which is last out with the story.
Sky News has come a long, long way since it started out but it is still the TV equivalent of The Sun newspaper. It’s all about headlines and dramatic statements but once you get beyond that the content is flabby and superficial with a general lack of journalistic talent and a total lack of meaningful analysis. The studio experts are maybe experts at being studio experts but they add very little to the understanding of what has been unfolding.
BBC News has thrown an inordinate amount of journalistic power at the Middle East in the last weeks to such an extent that there have been complaints of overkill by some licence-fee payers. It was noted by one complainant that near the end of the demonstrations in Egypt there were no less than 14 TV and radio correspondents representing the BBC in that country at the same time. I would hold that this is no bad thing as, until the Libyan uprisings started, the anti-Mubarak phenomenon was certainly the biggest story of the year and if a news network does not have a duty to report the news comprehensively then what duty does it really have?
The BBC coverage has been light years ahead of CNN and Sky and whilst Al-Jazeera has made a good effort I must come down in favour of Auntie Beeb. As mentioned before Russia Today is not a news channel so it does not deserve a rating here at all.
But where all the networks have missed the boat is in the almost complete absence of contextualisation and analysis in the wider sense. There has been an almost complete lack of understanding of the role of Pan-Arabism and the assertion therein that the Arabs are one nation from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean.
The previous existence or attempts to exist of the United Arab Republic, the United Arab States, the Federation of Arab Republics, the Arab Islamic Republic and the United States of North Africa demonstrates a complete and utter lack of understanding of the historical common thread that runs through the Arab world. That so many attempts have been made or mooted to unite Arab states is a clear indication that there is a lot more to the idea of Pan-Arabism than merely the hangover from Nasser’s years in Egypt. Virtually every country in the Arab world has been involved in one or more of these schemes and it has been more the chauvinistic attitude of individual ruling cliques that has caused the lack of any success in this direction as opposed to any will of the people.
Leaders such as the late Hafez al-Assad of Syria embraced Pan-Arabism but profoundly on their own terms. The list of pragmatic Pan-Arabists is almost endless but chauvinism under the guise of protecting national interests always rules the day — or at least it has up till now. These events in the Middle East have been prompted and undertaken by the underclass in society to whom Pan-Arabism is a far more important component than it was to their erstwhile rulers. The Arab League has been one more international talk shop up to this point but that may change if we see some real people power in the region.
And what of the Ba’athists? It is as if they do not exist anymore. But they do. The regime in Syria which has ruled under Emergency Law since 1963 is led by “the leading party of society and state” — the Ba’ath Party. There are Ba’athists sprinkled throughout the region in different guises and strengths. I am not suggesting that this is a renaissance period for the Ba’athists (that would be ironic as “renaissance” is what Ba’ath means!) but they should be considered from the point of view of analysts, even if to be dismissed. But some would say that today’s Ba’athists are those best prepared to benefit from mayhem in the Arab world and much more so than Islamic extremists who have been caught entirely on the hop.
This is the stuff that the news networks should be researching and telling the viewing and listening public about. It is not at all as sexy as Ashley Cole shooting someone with an air rifle or who wore what at the Oscars ceremony but
could certainly have much more of an impact on all of our lives in the coming weeks, months and years as the 
oil price heads inexorably upwards with each new piece of uncontextualised drama reaching the airwaves from the Middle East.
We surely deserve better in what we are fed as news by the networks out there and in the UK we are not too badly off compared to some countries believe you me, but evidently in the words of the two tailors of 60s-70s sitcom fame, we should “never mind the quality, feel the width!”
I have been asked for my own perspectives about what I blogged on last time regarding Russia and the Russians. What follows is my own reading of the situation but it is based generally on first-hand experience with as little anecdotal input as possible.
In my own experience I think that there is something to be said for the concept that Russians are rather lost in the modern world. Russia has bossed an empire unquestioningly from the Kremlin for hundreds of years and it has been the norm to impose Russian values and culture on other nations.
Now the boot is on the other foot somewhat with Western, particularly American, values imposed on Russia as part and parcel of the process of democratization. The Soviet population saw the General Secretary of the Communist Party and the Party itself by extension as a simple continuation of a culture of blind obedience which originated with the concept of the “God Tsar” as an infallible guiding eminence in every facet of daily life.
Suddenly in 1991 the peoples of the former empire were forced to think for themselves. In most of the European non-Russian republics of the USSR the people had been thinking for themselves for many a year and had never bought into the Russian fantasies so the possibility to regain independence was a welcome salvation and deliverance from a tyrannical occupier. But for the Russians themselves there was a massive cultural vacuum to be filled.
The idea of the free market was an alien concept but in principle it sounded easy so many average Russians gave it a go. Within a short time there were many sole-traders all over Russia and the Former Soviet Union (FSU) with tables or rudimentary kiosks set up at garden gates and on street corners selling goodness knows what. These budding byiznyesmyen and women were shocked to find that the general population were not particularly interested to buy their wares and were in fact not beating a path to their doors.
What they had failed to grasp was that there is no point in selling off all your old bits and pieces to a market which already owns those very same bits and pieces, usually from the very same source by the same manufacturer – the Soviet model saw supply as being of moderate importance, NOT variety. These small traders were completely disappointed by this turn of events as they had not picked up on the idea that the market craves uniqueness. They themselves aspired to earn money to buy nice things but they could not comprehend that every other individual shared the same aspiration and was equally at a loss to fulfil that ambition.
It was the few as opposed to the many who saw what was required and made contacts in the West to bring cheap goods to the East that would make a quick profit for the speculator ready to take the risk. From the other side some Western businessmen saw the potential in the East and moved rapidly to fill the gap or even perceived gap.
I met many a sharp operator from Western Europe in the bars of Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius in the early 90s – these were chaotic and certainly interesting times. What do the citizens of the new countries of Eastern Europe need urgently? Why, it has to be casinos and Spanish time-share. I kid you not! Guys from London and Edinburgh and Leeds who saw the main chance and jumped in with both feet, took the money and skipped off at great speed to the next location in Montenegro or Romania or Albania or somewhere equally naïve and ready for the BS. This was the story from the Baltic Sea to Valdivostok.
Then there was the influx of exiled nationals who came back to their homelands. This was repeated all over the FSU but the general outcome was that the exile was only too willing to come back to the land of his birthright because he or she was not especially competent at home but his new kinsfolk would probably take some time to work that out. This especially reminded me of the old acronym as taught to me by a former member of the Royal Hong Kong Police Force who was fulfilling a valuable role for a shipping line. FILTH – Failed In London Try Hongkong!
This was a huge phenomenon and I saw it unravel in Estonia particularly to such an extent that ex-pat Canadian-Estonians were virtually universally shunned as dangerous dilettantes who would be guaranteed to screw things up! But this happened all across the FSU as foreign “experts” craved to give their input. The dividend of this today is that the locals who were “educated” by these fools are now equally dumb and mistaken in their beliefs so the dilettantish culture still pervades.
But enough of the FILTH and charlatans and onwards with locals.
There were of course sharp operators at a local level throughout the FSU and these boys quickly rose to the top of the market. The term “mafia” is bandied about very generously when referring to any form of criminality in Russia in particular and Eastern Europe in general but in my experience the word is grossly over-used. Yes, there were boisterous groups who would think nothing of drawing blood from their opposition but these were more small-time players than most Western observers would imagine. There certainly were turf wars but the big league criminals were not so concerned with the provinces and concentrated on making money out of such things as dismantling the Soviet military or gaining control of natural resources.
I have met a few local bandits in my time and on one occasion I was in a meeting with the head of a company which distributed Philip Morris cigarettes in Estonia. I had brought along two high-ups from an international consultancy firm who were looking for reasonable propositions in the Baltic States. The guy came right out and said that his boys had taken care of the opposition so there was no threat to his company’s position in the market. He then bemoaned the lack of choice in the local retail market for clothes and said how much he wished for a Marks and Spencer in Tallinn. He will have seen his wish granted now if he has lived this long. But his office was located above a boxing gym and to get upstairs to the modern suite we had to negotiate the gym and a small army of back-clad Russian crew-cut types wearing the archetypal 9mm suit – a black Italian double-breasted affair with the jacket baggy enough so that a shoulder holster could be worn unobtrusively. These were serious people but they saw things from the point of view of legitimate businessmen in a dangerous business. It may seem quite odd to someone sitting in Tamworth or Tallahassee but to the Tallinn mentality it was nothing abnormal.
Then there was the Afghan dairy owner who had made his money in Kabul after the Soviet invasion of his country and had then sought out the fleshpots of Minsk in preference to Afghan locales….. but I digress.
People like the cigarette vendor marked out their territory all the way across Eastern Europe and the FSU and from that point onwards regarded themselves as respectable and worthy of praise for a job well done. This was the modus operandi for the New Russians – elbow, claw and if necessary shoot your way to the top. Of course this is only a very tiny minority of people but they grabbed the majority of the wealth and their empires are still intact in most cases if they have not been already been sold off as going concerns to a genuine commercial operator.
So economic opportunities had revealed themselves to those who were prepared to seize them and that was all well and good for those who had done the seizing. But what of those who were not so motivated to use their elbows?
I can best illustrate this with a true story from the summer of 2003.
A business colleague of mine was visiting from Benelux and a female friend of his from Belarus was due to meet us in Tallinn for the Midsummer festivities. The girl arrived but my colleague and I had to attend an important bank meeting. She would be quite happy she said if we would drop her somewhere that she could do a bit of shopping, somewhere with decent boutiques. The bank’s head office was located just next to a fairly high-end Finnish department store so we ushered her in that direction before heading to our meeting.
Upon meeting our Belarusian friend again she complained that the Stockmann store was not quite what she had in mind. She had been looking for Ralph Lauren, Gucci, Christian Dior and other similar boutiques as she could shop in at home in Minsk. From this point of view she was sadly disappointed with Tallinn.
The following day we were heading to a Midsummer barbecue party at a friend’s house and we stopped at a newish supermarket to buy some beer, some wine and a couple of toys for the host’s kids. Now this place really took our Belarusian friend’s breath away. The idea of going shopping in a regular supermarket with all staple goods under one roof with self-service from the shelves and no requirement for queuing just blew her mind. “We have nothing like this in Minsk,” was her comment. I can hear her as clearly as if it was yesterday.
What is the point of this little tale? Well, the retail situation in Minsk was the same as many and any city across the FSU and Russia. Plenty of opportunities to buy overpriced designer nonsense but no chance of being able to go out and do the weekly shopping in one place. The population at large were entirely ignored at the expense of the new rich who needed their baubles on a regular basis. And where would they shop for the basics in life? They wouldn’t need to as somebody would do it for them if they couldn’t get across to Helsinki, Stockholm or London this week or next.
And that’s not an idle throwaway line. From the early 90s onwards the best shops in Helsinki and Stockholm would have Russian language signs in their windows and Knightsbridge followed only a short time afterwards.
The New Russians had everything and the Old Russians had nothing.
More to follow…
Part 1: Kim Il-sung up to the Sino-Soviet schism.
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Perhaps before examining what is to be done with North Korea it might be valuable to explore the characters who have shaped the Hermit Kingdom from its earliest days to the present and to appreciate their influences.
A quick question for all and sundry. Who is the President of the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea? Kim Jong-il? No, he is only the Supreme Leader. The post of President is reserved for his father, Kim Il-sung. There is nothing wrong with that as such until one realises that Kim Il-sung died in 1994! But by constitutional revision in 1998 Kim the elder was enshrined as Eternal President.
This one snippet from North Korea surely gives even the most casual of observers the basis to wonder what goes on in the corridors of power in Pyongyang.
To understand the DPRK it is first essential to understand the cult of personality that was built up so thoroughly around Kim Il-sung that it seemed more expedient after his death to let it perpetuate rather than transfer it wholesale onto someone else’s shoulders.
Kim Il-sung was born in 1912 and at a very early age his family moved to Manchuria. Whilst at school he developed an interest in Communism progressing from membership in a Marxist cell to joining an anti-Japanese guerrilla army led by the Communist Party of China (CPC). Kim was a political commissar and coincidentally ended up associating with a number of senior party members who were close to Mao.
Kim became leader of a division (only a few hundred men in reality) and he skirmished with the Japanese in North Eastern China and across the border into Korea until he was eventually forced to flee with his remaining men across the border into the Soviet Union in late 1940. At this point he was sent to a camp to be retrained by the Soviets along with other Korean Communist fighters and was awarded the rank of Captain in the Red Army. His political development was now in the hands of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU).
When the Soviet Union declared war on Japan in the summer of 1945 the Red Army’s progress to Pyongyang was surprisingly easy and the need for someone to head a puppet regime became acute. Stalin had Lavrenti Beria handle this task and it was Kim who Beria settled on. There were undoubtedly better qualified candidates but Kim had no connection with the indigenous Communist movement and that was ideal for Soviet needs. There is also much speculation that Kim was something of a blank canvas who was capable of being manipulated by his handlers.
Whatever the truth in this there is no escaping that Kim had spent only his very formative years in Korea and the eight years of formal education he had undergone were in China before receiving indoctrination in China and Siberia. He was described by one of his MVD handlers as essentially “created from zero” and furthermore his Korean language was poor. The MVD had to coach him through speeches and he was far from the ideal figurehead from this point of view but a very rosy picture of his anti-Japanese war record preceded him and for this reason he was popular with the population.
There are rumours and counter-rumours about who the real Kim was. Some Soviet sources later suggested that the Kim who reached Pyongyang was a replacement for the “real Kim” who had been killed in action earlier. Whatever the truth of that might be the reality is that the man we know as Kim Il-sung was installed as the head of the apparatus in the fledgling Soviet satellite by Stalin’s MVD and by September 1949 when the DPRK was proclaimed he was unassailable.
The Korean War came and went and Kim Il-sung survived to be the Great Leader of his people who had repelled an anti-communist attack from the south when in actual fact it was Kim who attacked the south but was then driven back right to the Chinese border before China saved his bacon by invading to drive back the UN forces as they feared invasion of their own territory. But why let a little thing like the truth get in the way of the cult of the personality?
This fraternal saving of Kim’s bacon gave him a new and endearing appreciation of China and the CPC. When Khrushchev denounced Stalin’s purges to the CPSU in 1956 several of the less mainstream and more idiosyncratic Communist regimes around the world felt less inclined towards the Soviet leader and saw Mao as a better role model. Kim was unimpressed by Khrushchev and turned increasingly towards China in much the same way as Enver Hoxha did in Albania. Curiously Kim only had contempt for Hoxha but the two men and their regimes were so much closer than either might have been willing to admit.
Caledonii Foris 