Elsewhere

A review of my new book and a discussion of some themes in it have recently appeared on two Marxist blogs. I would also recommend these blogs to readers of this one: the Michael Roberts blog and Redline: Contemporary Marxist Analysis.

Tony Norfield, 1 March 2016

The Brexit Vote

The confusion of the left on the question of the European Union was shown by an event at my alma mater, the School of Oriental and African Studies, London University, on 16 February. It also revealed a more general absence of critical faculties among many of those who do not like the way the world works today. Tariq Ali was promoting his latest book, The Extreme centre: A Warning. He made the standard complaints about the lack of any political alternative to ‘neoliberal’ politics in most major countries, and he also tied this theme into the question of the vote on Britain’s membership of the EU (now set to be on 23 June 2016). I have not read his book, but based upon what he said in his presentation, I would make the following comments, ones that also set out how to understand the forthcoming UK vote on EU membership.

Firstly, as an old hand at these events, it was surprising that Tariq Ali did not reflect upon the lack of any widespread opposition to what he calls the ‘neoliberal extreme centre’. He did hope that the rise of Jeremy Corbyn to the lofty pinnacle of the British Labour Party leadership showed that the Labour Party was not actually dead, and he also cast a positive gloss on the popularity of the Scottish National Party as a sign of some popular opposition. My problem with this searching in the dustbin for a gem is that it does not understand that much UK public opinion is welfare-nationalist at best – ‘save our NHS’ – or that any materialist analysis would have to draw the conclusion that this opinion is because the mass of people see that this is where their immediate economic interests lie. A prime piece of evidence for my perspective is that half the British public voted for the Conservatives or UKIP in the 2015 general election, while the Labour Party had ‘controls on immigration’ as one of the policy demands carved into the infamous stone monolith of Ed Miliband, the former Labour leader. Instead, Tariq Ali gave credence to the implausible notion that the British media are responsible for right wing opinions.

Secondly, Tariq Ali made a telling point, almost as a confession. He had formerly been in favour of Britain’s membership of the EU, but now he had grave doubts. There seemed to be two connected reasons: what ‘EU policy’ had done to Greece, Spain and other countries was unacceptable, and the EU-driven policy was a machine for implementing the wider policies of financial capital, not those of the mass of people. Just consider what this position amounts to. It identifies a policy driven by the EU as the problem, not recognising that it results from capitalists in each country trying to restore their viability in the global market, still more that it is one that the richer countries are imposing on the poorer in order to get some of their money – bank loans, etc – back. So, it becomes a policy decision that progressive forces could change, not one that is inevitable unless the market logic of capitalism is overturned. It is not a question of ‘the EU’ demanding nasty policies; these are the consequence of the crisis that these economies face. The ECB, EU Commission, etc, are the messengers, and the message is that your economies are uncompetitive in the world market!

Thirdly, the political confusion of Tariq Ali, and many others, on the question of the EU is based on accepting the alternatives such a vote gives the electorate. There will be a ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ answer to leaving/staying in the European Union. But the terms of the debate are already set. Each side is based on what is best for Britain: whether to stay in a ‘reformed’ (on capitalist terms) EU, although the changes are minimal, and so keep the UK’s global bargaining power, or whether the UK should strike out on its own into what might be a more enticing, faster growing, wider world. The debate only reflects an anxiety of the British ruling class since at least 1945: what to do about a Europe in which the UK could only realistically play a manipulative, tactical role, when it is a minor country with much wider global interests. I have covered these issues previously on this blog (see, for example, here). There is no basis upon which the Stay or Leave vote could be construed as being in favour of something else, anti-capitalist, given the lack of any progressive alternative in the UK. For this reason, I will not be voting Yes/No on which is the best way to save British capitalism.[1]

Tariq Ali’s confusion also goes further. In the SOAS meeting he noted that there was a political problem of many of Europe’s right wing parties – for example, the Front National in France – being in favour of welfare spending. ‘And so are we!’ Well, the unacknowledged problem comes down to the fact that western welfare spending is based upon the privileges that rich countries have in the world, something that his kind of analysis is reluctant to recognise. The attack on welfare spending today results from the chronic stagnation of most economies, ones that are just about buoyed up by huge levels of debt, but which debt also calls time on the previous status quo. Rather than recognise this, Tariq Ali bemoaned the attacks on the welfare state and the ‘breach of the consensus’ that had previously been achieved. So much for the analysis of an anti-capitalist who sees unfavourable policies as a result of decisions that could be changed within capitalism. I heard nothing from him to suggest that what he called ‘neoliberal’ policies could not be changed by a more enlightened policy under capitalism.

The rich country welfare system represents part of a deal/consensus that is now being broken by many governments. Policies that are called ‘austerity’ have not been implemented much in the richer countries, though they will be in the next couple of years. However, the political reaction, especially in northern Europe, is often to bolster reactionary nationalists that want to restore the status quo ante against the ‘hordes’ of migrants and other unwelcome drains on the national wealth and welfare that rightfully ‘belongs’ to the ‘legitimate’ recipients. This is the basis of a reactionary trend in European politics today. While this is exacerbated by the flows of migrants into Europe from the destruction of the Middle East and North Africa, such events only harden the views of those in Europe (and the US) whose states have done so much to cause the damage. It is heartening to see the humanity of many people in Europe helping refugees, especially in Germany. But the problem remains that the overwhelming majority of the population in European countries takes a different view of the world and their economic interests in it.

Tony Norfield, 20 February 2016

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[1] For the record, I will probably turn up and scribble something on the ballot paper. Pointless, but amusing for me, at least.

Saving the Whale

In recent weeks, a couple of dozen sperm whales have ended up on beaches in the UK, Norway, France and Germany, when normally these huge animals spend their time in the deep ocean, not in the relatively shallow North Sea. Marine scientists are puzzled as to why this has occurred. Occasionally this happens, but very rarely on this scale, and this is possibly the biggest instance for a hundred years. As odd as it may seem, there might be a connection between the unusual beaching of whales in several countries and military submarine activity.

My speculation on what has happened is based upon a comment made by one scientist on a news programme that these whales might have ‘got lost’, or for some reason went the wrong way. These whales use echolocation for hunting and for communication, with signals sent at very low frequencies – for different purposes at 0.5, 5 and 15 kHz. I would guess that the most likely cause of the disorientation of the whales is due to an increase in military submarine activity!

Military submarines often use similar frequency communication (usually below 20 or 30kHz). These signals could have led to the directional mistakes made by the beached whales – they tend to travel in groups, so disorientating a few would lead to more getting lost. Assuming that it would take the whales a while to travel to the wrong location, this would suggest that over the past several months there has been a big increase in submarine activity, something that would turn a one-off blunder by a whale with squid indigestion into a major event affecting many.

No country will advertise its military surveillance operations, especially those that need not be acknowledged when below the waves. One recent NATO report argues that there has been an increase in Russian submarine activity, while questions about the value of the UK’s Trident programme, based in Scotland, could also have prompted the Royal Navy to increase theirs. So, if you really want to save the whale, you have to be an anti-militarist too!

Tony Norfield, 5 February 2016

Capitalism, Imperialism, Profit and Finance

The following notes are designed to assist anyone who has tried to analyse developments in global capitalism. Even if the reader has not, then the points made will highlight some issues that should be borne in mind when examining what is written or discussed on these topics.

1. Imperialism and world economy

Any attempt to understand things from the perspective of a national economy is bound to fail. Even the US, the world’s largest economy, can only be understood by looking at how it fits into the world economy. For example, the US dollar is world money, not just the national currency of the United States. Its importance and role depends upon the scope of US power versus other countries, both in economic and political terms. However, even the position of the dollar can be challenged by international developments. It is not an unchanging hegemony; nor has it been in place for all time. Signs that US power has limits are seen in the collapse of ‘The Project for the New American Century’ in 2006 and the political shambles of US policy in the Middle East and North Africa. However much destruction might be in US interests from a tactical perspective, it is hardly a recipe for continued hegemony.

Far less can the UK, France, Germany, China, Iran, Turkey, Brazil, etc, etc, be understood unless their positions in the world economy are taken into account. Their government and corporate policy choices are decided with this in mind. Nevertheless, a key point is that a small number of countries have a monopolistic position in the delivery of most key goods and services and, of the 200 or so countries in the world, there are only around 20 who count for anything in the hierarchy.

For this reason alone, Keynesian economic theory is useless for an analysis of the world economy (see here for a fuller discussion). Quite apart from its errors in understanding the profit-driven nature of capitalism, it focuses only on flows of income, rather the origin of that income and, at most, allows only for international trade balances. Almost always, a Keynesian approach is tied into a nationalist outlook, something that underpins so many apparently radical policies. ‘International’ Keynesianism might appear to be an exception to this, but it is a utopian technocrat’s toolbox. The OECD, or G7 meetings, might recommend changes in economic policy by different countries to benefit world economic growth, but everything still comes down to whatever is in the interests of the capitalist countries concerned.

2. Nationalism and imperialism

Attempting to ‘save’ the national economy to make things better for its inhabitants, for example, by calling for import controls or other forms of government regulation, is a reactionary policy. Firstly, it endorses the existing power of the national capitalist state to determine what will happen. Secondly, it raises national salvation above solidarity with people in other countries who are facing similar problems. This is particularly an issue for progressive people in the imperialist countries that have a dominant position in the world economy. If radicals make any concessions to those who are seeking to defend their privileges in a bankrupt system, rather than to show how the system is indeed bankrupt and must be overthrown, then they have only a short step from this to supporting imperialist aggression. The records of many wars stand in evidence.

I would possibly make one exception here. If, following a popular seizure of state power, that new government enacts policies to defend itself, then it could be seen as a legitimate, though temporary means of securing progressive gains. But if a radical in a rich country calls for such measures, while not mentioning the precondition of a popular seizure of state power before, then you know you have found an apologist for imperialism.

3. The ‘real economy’, finance and profit

There are different kinds of capitalist company and different ways in which they try to make a profit. All profit, rent or interest derives from the surplus labour performed by workers, but the process of capitalist market exchange hides this and makes it appear as if ‘making money’ in business is simply a result of special talent or, perhaps, luck, irrespective of the kind of business concerned. So, producing a good or service as a commodity in the market, buying and selling these commodities, being a real estate agent, lending money or dealing in foreign exchange, bonds and equities can all look, from a capitalist market perspective, as much the same kind of profit-making business. That view upsets common sense. So economists have come up with the notion of a ‘real economy’ of making things versus the rest of the economy, especially versus a ‘financial economy’. However, this distinction ignores both how capitalism is not bothered about making anything except profit and how all the major ‘real economy’ companies are heavily involved in the financial sphere, from stock market takeovers to financial dealings of all kinds.

The modern economy has a pervasively financial form, and the key signals for what is profitable, acceptable or viable to capitalism are transmitted through the financial markets – as reflected in a company’s share price, or a company’s or government’s ability to borrow money. This is basically a more developed form of the traditional ‘laws of supply and demand’ for the commodities a company might produce. It remains the case, nevertheless, that it is capitalist production that produces the profit that is shared, in various ways, among the different types of capitalist company.

Imperialism casts a new light on this process too. Access to funding, access to markets, the ability to use super-exploited labour, the ability to close off markets to competitors, or to use the legal system to protect property and patents, are all special privileges of the major countries, to which the weaker, poorer countries have far less recourse. This affects the profits appropriated by capitalist companies. If the analysis you read takes little or no account of it, you are reading the work of an ignoramus or, more likely, an apologist for the imperialist system.

4. Forms of profit and finance

In recent years, one area of my research was capitalist profitability, the rate of profit, etc. The more I looked into it, the trickier it got. Firstly, the available data do not necessarily measure what they claim to measure. For example, if a company registers a large profit, then that looks like what it has ‘made’, when the reality is that its profit is what its market position has enabled it to appropriate, perhaps by depending upon super-exploited labour from its suppliers, or from a monopolistic position in the world economy defended by patents and commercial laws. Secondly, even if these things were not a problem, then there is still the important question of the different ways in which different kinds of capitalist company generate their profits.

Marxist theory makes a big distinction between capitalist companies in the industrial and commercial sphere and those operating in finance. Ironically, government statistics do a similar thing, although legions of mainstream economists do not. This distinction is based upon the nature of the capitalist investment taking place. The investment by industrial and commercial capitalist (ICC) companies is different from financial investment.

ICC companies largely advance their own money, or at least do not borrow much. This is shown in their low borrowing ratios, with borrowing commonly well below the equity investment of the capitalist owners. However, advancing capital in the financial sector is a very different matter, one that has been poorly covered, or understood, by Marxist writers (except, perhaps, for Suzanne de Brunhoff in her Marx on Money, and one or two others).

Financial companies, such as insurance funds, pension funds, asset managers, hedge funds, banks, etc, advance money they are given by others. Banks also have an ability to create their own assets, via the banking system, as another way to ‘advance’ capital. All of this is a very different form of securing a profit than in the case of ICC companies, despite the fact that all of them rely upon the surplus labour performed by the working class.

For the financial companies, the revenues they gain are commonly in the form of interest on loans made or bonds purchased, or as dividends ‘earned’ from the equity securities they own, or as rents from their investments in property assets. For Marxist analysis, this is technically different from ICC profits earned – after paying interest, etc – from the advance of capital by the owners of such corporations.

The distinction is most simply seen by comparing the leverage of financial companies with ICC. Often, the borrowing ratios of the former are more than twenty times higher than the latter. As a result, with the same advance of the owners’ capital, the amount actually invested/lent, etc, by a financial company can be dramatically higher than for ICC investments. This is a practical expression of the fact that the rate of interest, or such ‘financial’ returns, is not the same as the rate of profit. They have very different roles in the capitalist system, as I argue in my new book.

Any notion of financial ‘investment’ gets even more complex with financial derivatives. Here, what is recorded in accounting practice as an ‘asset’ is simply a derivative with a positive market value. If the derivative market price changes so that it is a loss to the holder, then it becomes a liability.

What appear initially as clear concepts of investment, and the rate of profit on that investment, are complicated by the reality of modern finance. Just consider, for example, that corporations quoted on the major stock exchanges pay most attention to their ‘return on equity’ or their ‘earnings per share’, rather than to a rate of profit due on the invested capital. This is the case, even though the capitalist system’s underlying rate of profit ultimately drives the ‘return on equity’, etc.

5. Economic history

The subject of economic history has more or less disappeared from academic prospectuses. However, it is an indispensable for any understanding of the modern world. Luckily, there are books still being produced that delve into archives and bring to light hidden aspects of important past events, ones that usually contradict the standard mythology, whether on the funding of the welfare state in rich countries, the dealings between major powers or of the road to war and oppression. It may seem perverse that the most enlightening critiques of imperialism can come from what would appear to be mainstream or even conservative writers, at least the ones with their wits about them who do not blindly accept what ‘everybody knows’. By comparison, many radicals often just embellish the mythology with invented stories of ‘struggle’ and ignore inconvenient facts, notably the chauvinism of the masses in the major countries. Rather than a ‘struggle’ by the working class for reforms, a story that appears to be anti-capitalist, often the reality was instead that the ruling elites did a deal with the bureaucracy of trade unions and popular political parties to secure a national consensus that would support imperialism.

Tony Norfield, 1 February 2016

The City: London and the Global Power of Finance

My new book, The City: London and the Global Power of Finance, will be published by Verso Books on 12 April 2016. Below I note reviews that it has received so far and give a full list of the contents. Details for ordering the book, which will be available both in hardback (price £20 or less) and as an ebook (around £14), are available on the Verso website and on Amazon.

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“Tony Norfield has provided a strikingly original take on the international financial system by placing it systematically within the world imperialist structure of power. He rejects the currently fashionable path of interpreting the ascent of finance by looking at how the leading financial sector agents, operating by way of banks, hedge funds, private equity firms, and the like, manipulate the political-economic game to increase their own personal wealth, while downplaying any useful economic functions they might be fulfilling. He insists, on the contrary, that finance be understood as a form of power deriving from the economic-cum political capacity to compete at the highest levels of global capitalism, which simultaneously endows a limited group of countries and corporations disproportionate access to the world s resources and operates as the system's indispensable nerve center. Norfield's unusual clarity as both an analyst and expositor is reflected in his ability to lay out for his readers an easy-to-grasp introduction to how finance works today in the process of offering a detailed historically-rooted account of the multiple hierarchies and privileged relationships through which global economic domination is constructed and reproduced. The City is a tour de force, which will soon be recognized as a formidable challenge to conventional wisdom and an essential contribution in its own right.”

Robert Brenner, author of The Economics of Global Turbulence

“This book does the seemingly impossible: rendering finance's mysteries transparent to the average reader, and at the same time delivering a penetrating analysis of the global economic system that will enlighten even experts. Tony Norfield has written a truly exciting and important book.”

Paul Mattick, author of Business as Usual

"It is not every day you read a book about global finance by a banker who quotes Lenin approvingly on page two. Unlike many of those who produce Marxist critiques of financial capitalism, Norfield writes from a position of experience: he has worked in the belly of the beast, and the book is the better for it... Just after the financial crisis, Rolling Stone magazine called Goldman Sachs the “vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity”. In this book, Norfield extends the metaphor to call London the “vampire’s blood bank”. In The City, he has done the research and pulled together the financial statistics that explain how the bloodsucking works.”

Brooke Masters, Financial Times*

“The City is a valuable addition to the critical analysis of the financialisation of our world. And Tony Norfield is an experienced and radical guide to London's role in this process. This book should be required reading for both bankers and activists alike.”

Joris Luyendjik, author of Swimming with Sharks: My Journey into the World of the Bankers

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface

Chapter 1            Britain, Finance and the World Economy

World economic and financial power

Britain’s invisible empire

Understanding finance and imperialism

Insights, conspiracies and policy contingencies

The ‘End of History’ revisited

History wakes up

‘New Deal’ and no deal

The system

Chapter 2            The Anglo-American System

British or American finance?

Anglo-American financial relationships in transition

Building beyond the Empire

New York versus London

The Anglo-American euromarket

British capitalism, finance and official policy

Eurobonds and London’s international role

Historical logic

Chapter 3            Finance and the Major Powers

Regime change

British imperial strategy and the pound

State policy on financial markets from 1979

Finance and the major powers

Gravity and the global system

Chapter 4            Power and Parasitism

Money-capitalists and financial institutions

Interest-bearing capital

Banks

Brokers

Asset managers

Insurance companies

Pension funds

Bank credit creation

Financial securities and economic power

The flexible noose

Finance and the rule of capital

Financial parasitism

Global parasitism, investment, trade and finance

Who reaps the returns?

Finance as a normal part of the system

Chapter 5            The World Hierarchy

The premier league

Capitalism and the state

The state and finance

Monopoly and imperialism

Monopoly today

World projection of power

Chapter 6            Profit and Finance

Return on equity and leverage

Comparing profits

Financial assets and derivatives

Financial revenues, surplus value and securities

Trading revenues

The rate of profit and capital’s limits

Outcomes

Profits, financial and global developments

Moribund capitalism

Chapter 7            The Imperial Web

Currency, trade and seigniorage

‘Exorbitant privilege’

Running the world banking system: US dollar power

Financial services exports

Equity markets, financial power and control

Carving up the market

The daily grind

Chapter 8            Inside the Machine

Number crunching

The surplus from City dealing

Global capitalism’s financial broker

UK financial account: FDI, portfolio flows and bank funding

UK assets, liabilities and returns

The City’s global network, tax havens and global finance

Nice work, if you can get it

Chapter 9            Eternal Interests, Temporary Allies

‘Open for business’

Economics and domestic politics

Islamic finance and the City

China, BRICS and the Anglo-American system

Finance and the rule of capital

List of Tables

3.1       UK, Germany, France – patterns of trade, 1980 and 90 (% of total)

3.2       Financial market shares of major powers, 1980-2001 (% of total)

5.1       Corporate control by controlling company, 2007

6.1       UK monetary financial institutions’ financial balance sheet

7.1       Financial services export revenues, 2000-2013

7.2       Equity market capitalisation and turnover, 2013

8.1       UK current account balance and components, 1987-2014

8.2       External positions of banks, end-2014

8.3       Foreign exchange turnover, 1995-2013

8.4       OTC interest rate derivatives turnover, April 2013

8.5       UK financial account net annual flows, 1987-2014

8.6       Net external position of UK MFIs by location

List of Charts

5.1       The global pecking order, 2013-2014

6.1       Leverage ratios of major international banks, 2007–2011

6.2       Leverage ratios of major UK banks, 1960-2010

6.3       US corporate rate of profit, 1948-2013

6.4       US Federal Reserve financial support stays in place

8.1       Key components of the UK current account, 1987-2014

8.2       UK net foreign investment stock position, 1989-2014

8.3       Returns on UK foreign investment assets and liabilities, 1990-2014

Tony Norfield, 25 January 2016

* note of the FT review was added on 8 May 2016

Oil Prices, Equities and Debt

Equity markets have begun 2016 with the biggest falls on record, while the price of a barrel of oil dropped below $30. This is more than just a coincidence. The fall in oil prices results from, and also exacerbates, the continued malaise in the world economy

At first sight, lower oil prices should merely redistribute income from producers to consumers, via the lower of cost of energy, transport, etc. What is such a disaster about that, at least from the point of view of the world economy as a whole? One problem is the different concentration of the losses and gains: a small number of producers lose a lot, while many millions of consumers gain only a little. So news headlines report cancelled investment projects and job losses, rather than the motorist at the petrol station saving pennies on a litre of fuel. The negative impact on producers, especially on their investment, could well outweigh the demand that might result from consumers spending on other things. For example, many huge investments in shale production that looked viable when a barrel of oil was priced at $100 or above now look unprofitable – at least the loans given to these companies now look poorly backed by their prospects.

What is often overlooked, even by ‘Keynesian’ advocates of demand management, is that although consumer spending is bigger than investment in the economy, the swings in investment spending are much bigger than the percentage changes in consumption, and usually lead the up and down cycles of demand. Furthermore, what such analysts always overlook is that investment spending is basically driven by potential profitability. But this should not be a surprise in a capitalist economy!

More importantly, all this takes place in the context of continued, huge levels of debt compared to what the economy produces. There has been a sharp rise in debt levels versus GDP between 2007, ‘pre-crisis’, and 2014. This had occurred for almost all countries: poor countries such as China saw the sharpest rises in debt ratios; but rich countries saw a further increase from already elevated levels. This is the important context for the apparent reaction of equity markets to the fall in oil prices. The underlying problem is that debts cannot be paid back. It does not matter that the increase in debt in richer countries between 2007 and 2014 has largely been borne by the government, as the public sector took on private liabilities - all this means is that the pressure for austerity via cuts in government spending is all the greater. This casts doubt on the value of the full range of financial securities. Those securities linked to oil and gas prices now get hit directly because there is a clear focus of potential loss that is visible every second of the financial trading day. But the myriad of other equity securities issued by other financial, industrial and commercial companies get caught up in the downward vortex. This is not only because money capitalists work on the basis of what looks like giving the most attractive yield, so a fall in energy-related security prices has a knock on effect on other, non-energy-related securities too. More troubling is that there is clearly a broader problem affecting the whole economy.

This problem of debt and insufficient incentive to boost production overwhelms the otherwise mixed, plus and minus economic outcome (mainly plus) that follows from lower oil prices. In the oil market, refiners will be making more profit as the cost of their feedstock falls with lower crude oil prices faster than will their output prices of refined products. To some extent, this will insulate the integrated oil corporations from the downturn. Airline and other travel companies will also benefit from lower energy costs. So will China and Japan, major consumers of oil, although their energy companies will suffer. Nevertheless, governments, from Russia, Iran and Venezuela to Saudi Arabia, Norway and the UK will find their oil and gas tax revenues falling. This has already led Saudi Arabia to make very sharp cutbacks in its public spending to reduce a dramatically high deficit, while other countries have seen a drop in their currency exchange rates.

Table 1: Core Debt Levels of Non-Financial Sectors as a % of GDP, 2007 and 2014

Source: BIS, Quarterly Report, September 2015

All of this might simply be a series of local difficulties offset by positive developments elsewhere. But, in the absence of any momentum to support profitable capitalist investment elsewhere, it results in continued capitalist stagnation and the promise of yet more government measures to prevent a collapse of their system.

Tony Norfield, 22 January 2016

Jerusalem. No, the One in England

In another example of the English sense of humour, while the world is on fire, news has come that the British Parliament might debate whether England should be given its own national anthem. If so, it might displace at sporting and other local, national occasions, the nauseating, genuflecting dirge 'God Save the Queen'. A favoured  option is William Blake's 'Jerusalem', a short poem published in 1808, and now used as a fake-nostalgic, patriotic, Methodism-not-socialism hymn of the beleaguered British Labour 'movement' (quotation marks indicating no real movement at all). As such, its chances of success are not negligible.

The words, although some of you may already know these by heart, are:

And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England’s mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England’s pleasant pastures seen?
And did the countenance divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among those dark satanic mills?

Bring me my bow of burning gold!
Bring me my arrows of desire!
Bring me my spear: o clouds unfold!
Bring me my chariots of fire!
I will not cease from mental fight;
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England’s green and pleasant land.

I will make no comment on whether, in the two centuries since the poem was published, England remains a 'green and pleasant land'. Opinions differ, and there are relative, not absolute issues to consider for a full evaluation, as labour movement management consultants will attest. However, a German comedian, Henning Wehn, has noted that this is a song with four opening questions, the answer to each of which is 'No'.

Tony Norfield, 14 January 2016