Scotland
in the
heat
John Cameron
I was still serving in the Royal Naval Reserve when the behemoth cruise liners emerged and it was pointed out their safety standards were designed for vessels half their size.
Ironically in the centenary year of the Titanic, drills and evacuation procedures are still a major cause of concern and lifeboat design has barely moved on since 1912.
Boats are still lowered on wires and if the vessel is listing badly half are unusable yet oil rigs use rapidly-launched enclosed pods that drop into the water from a sloping ramp. In addition the same fears have been heard about ships officers too reliant on electronic navigation aids as have been heard about air crews in their fly-by-wire cockpits.
At present there are at least three conflicting theories as to how the Costa Concordia, one of the largest passenger ships in the world, came to capsize within yards of the shore. The first is the captain’s claim that it hit an uncharted rock and, as he steered into the safer, shallow waters off the island of Giglio it hit more rocks and rolled on to its side.
The second is that there was a massive electrical and/or computer failure which sent the navigation systems haywire causing it to sail too close to shore where it hit the rocks.
A third theory is that it was old-fashioned human error or macho recklessness – still the main cause of 80% of shipping accidents – or a combination of all three.
The investigation will take months to look into every decision, order and event but it is already clear that there was an earlier explosion and that the ship’s lights failed. A bank of diesel engines generates electricity to power these ships and an engine-room explosion will cause the lights to fail and the engines and steering to shut down. A similar failure hit the Queen Mary in 2010 as it approached Barcelona but there were no hazards nearby so the crew had time – 30 minutes – to restart the engines.
It is certainly possible the captain hit an uncharted rock because in 2007 another cruise ship struck a reef incorrectly shown on official maps in the waters off Greece.
Whatever the cause, the accident highlights the fact that the behemoths are hard to steer and evacuate, vulnerable to side wind, and list badly if they take in water.
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Who is to lead the
resistance when Salmond
sets up the referendum?
R D Kernohan
This preliminary examination paper is short and the marking won’t take long.
Now that your head has cleared, report the gist of the New Year messages from our political party leaders and the high priests, national or supranational, of any religion you choose. Extra marks will be awarded for epigrams extracted. Identifying original ideas will attract a further bonus. A minimum pass will be awarded to those able to name more than one person professing to be a party leader in Scotland.
But most countries which practise democracy, aspire to it, or merely render it lip-service have problems with the quality or the character of leadership. Only in North Korea is there a smooth succession of great leaders. Those who sought or were widely awarded heroic status tend to lose it or fail to hand it on. Obama was a great symbol but is a rather ordinary president who could also be a vulnerable one if the Republicans get their act together and sort out their cast. Putin’s second coming looks a chastened affair. Mandela’s successors are a grubby lot. Havel’s is no shining light. Gorbachev and Lech Walesa live on but belong to times past. The aged Castro Junior looks a timid reformer. China’s rulers block the emergence both of new democratic leaders and of another Mao-style ‘Great Helmsman’.
Europe thinks itself more mature but offers no opportunities for leadership in the style of de Gaulle, Adenauer, or even Margaret Thatcher. The good news is that its financial and immigration problems, rich soil for discontents, have not sprouted demagogues sufficiently able to exploit them. Germany has no Hitler and we haven’t even a Mosley. The ancient Le Pen has remained the best exhibit in that show. The bad news is that modern Europe is conditioned to a managerial rather than inspirational approach to politics in general and leadership in particular. This is a tendency aggravated by the way the European Commission has translated the original (and properly ill-defined) idea of ‘ever-closer union’ into ever-increasing interference. Some of the commission and other EU people would like to be leaders but, even if they had more flair than a Van Rompuy, Barroso, or Catherine Ashton, their curious condition, a cross between politicians and mandarins, gives them little opportunity.
But now similar styles are coming into fashion even in national politics, or being imposed on them. Belgium got by for 18 months with an administration rather than a government. Fresh-faced leaders at Westminster and Holyrood modestly profess their need to ‘listen and learn’. Angela Merkel, so sound but so dull, has become the most powerful politician in Europe, though her future looks hazardous. Even France shows signs of wanting a manager rather then a Flash Harry as its president, though it has lost the chance to have the two styles combined in Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Italy has followed Greece into administration.
I have no admiration for Berlusconi’s personality or Papandreou’s politics, but they both had some style and success as political leaders. They have been replaced, under external pressure, by people of boardroom ability whose freedom from obvious or traditional styles of political conviction and commitment is considered a merit. Even in the Vatican a Pope whose adherents found him charismatic and inspirational has been succeeded by a managing theologian; and, like George MacLeod, Billy Graham has had no real successor.
Perhaps the truth is that leadership, and the popular response which encourages and develops it, is most needed in emergencies – only an emergency allowed Churchill to become a party leader, never mind a national one – more acute than anything threatening Europe. In more normal conditions it can do best when linked to powerful aspirations and significant innovations. That may be why much of the world, and not only the tired Western world, has found its leaders and heroes in a Bill Gates or Steve Jobs – or why in Britain Richard Branson had made a greater public impact than several recent party leaders.
The ideal CV should offer a moderator, conciliator, accelerator, debater,
and facilitator, with the judgement to know when to lead and when to let others appear to share the lead.
Two very different Scottish examples of leadership emphasise the point about aspiration and innovation. Alex Salmond is smarter than the average Scotnat and radiates a bonhomie that passes for charisma. But his advantage over the leaders, national and local, of the ‘unionist’ parties is that he mobilises aspirations crying out for leadership – and has had more help from circumstances than Winnie, or Margo, or even Jim Sillars. Those of us who think these SNP aspirations narrow-minded or misdirected must still recognise their power.
A couple of generations earlier John Reith led the BBC and influenced British broadcasting as no-one has done since because he applied extraordinary personality to an extraordinary opportunity for innovation. No-one has matched him since, even after a series of revolutions in television coverage, because radio was the real revolution and TV is only the wireless with pictures.
To emphasise these roles of aspiration and innovation in creating opportunities for leadership isn’t to disparage those who struggle to lead and appear effective leaders – the two are not always the same – in less propitious conditions. Churchill for long seemed a loner, not a leader. Attlee looked a plodder and stopgap. Edward Heath seemed to make no impact on a complacent Harold Wilson. Even Margaret Thatcher was a slow starter. More was expected of David Cameron after he talked himself into the Tory leadership than he could reasonably deliver. A succession of Liberals more impressive than Nick Clegg came and went before he fastened his seat-belt for the bumpy flight.
In leadership timing counts for a lot – both good judgement in timing and good luck. Tony Blair had the luck to face an exhausted government and a mood for change. John Smith, had he been spared, and even Gordon Brown had he not given way, would have had the same success. That is why we shouldn’t yet write off Miliband in the way some of the old New Labour team seem to do.
In Scotland success in leadership is made more difficult by the pretence that the Labour, Tory, and Liberal leaders at Holyrood have become in any real sense the leaders of their parties here. They aren’t, shouldn’t be, and if we remain a United Kingdom cannot be. But the difficulties of providing leadership in a mature but fractious democracy are even more apparent in the embarrassing perplexity about who is to lead the resistance movement to Salmond when he sets up his referendum.
The ideal CV should offer a moderator, conciliator, accelerator, debater, and facilitator, with the judgement to know when to lead and when to let others appear to share the lead. It’s easiest to list those who aren’t quite right, even if (as is most unlikely) they coveted the role: Gordon Brown, Alistair Darling, Menzies Campbell, Malcolm Rifkind, and the past or present ‘unionist’ party leaders at Holyrood. But try to define the role and draw up a short list and the tests and trials of all democratic leadership become only too clear: the best name I can come up with is George Robertson, though ideally it would be someone with political flair but even more removed from past party politics.
The referendum problem is a special case but it helps illustrate how limited the power and glory of political leadership has become. Maybe that’s an inevitable situation in a more-or-less educated democracy where deference for all institutions is out of fashion and a well or ill-judged Twitter message seems more important than a good speech on a Second Reading. Obama’s first campaign (even McCain’s spirited fight against the odds) seemed to show that Western democracy had more vigour in it than cynics and pessimists allow. Things don’t look so promising in the year he seeks re-election.
R D Kernohan is a writer and broadcaster
