The gate to a private garden in Drummond Place, Edinburgh.
The gate to a private garden in Drummond Place, Edinburgh. During the Second World War, many iron railings like these were melted down to be used in the fight against Nazi Germany’s war machine — though the policy may have been as much symbolic at practical. For Sayers, the symbolism was well-justified. European harmonisation, which Sayers linked to the Gleichschaltung (standardisation, a bringing-into-line) pursued by Adolf Hitler between 1933 and 1937, may or may not have conferred practical benefits on the British citizen; but she believed that the citizen understood that it also exposed him to a subsequent Government overreach which he would not be able to control.
Part 1 of 2
FOR anyone of English blood there is no more agreeable pastime than to watch the people of cosmopolitan mind trying to induce the British people to toe the line of simplification and standardisation. They are always so naive, earnest and plausible, and they invariably use all the wrong arguments. At one time it was the Channel Tunnel, which would make it so much easier for foreigners to get to England.* At another time it is a proposal to establish casinos in all the South Coast towns so as to attract foreign money. Periodically it is suggested that we should abolish an old-fashioned coinage* and a chaotic system of weights and measures,* so that foreigners need no longer waste time and energy and qualify for the madhouse by attempting to work out half-crowns in terms of centimes, or reduce square yards (by bundles of 30¼) to perches, roods and square miles and thence to square kilometres.* And from time to time persons with much feeling for business facilities and none for literary history, implore us to get rid of our English spelling in favour of something which it would be easier for foreigners to understand and remember.*
* In the 1880s, when the idea of a Channel Tunnel was being seriously considered in Parliament, senior cabinet ministers warned of the dangers of encouraging a French invasion. John Bright, who as President of the Board of Trade had been strongly in favour of the project, made no attempt to conceal his scorn: see Brigands and Imbeciles. Sayers was, of course, not so foolish as to be anxious about an invasion of armies or even civilians, but she did worry about an invasion of meddlesome regulations.
* The British currency of twelve pence to the shilling and twenty shillings to the pound was decimalised in 1971, simplifying all those shillings and crowns out of existence, and setting 100 pence to the pound. In 1990, the UK joined the Continent’s European Monetary System, but was forced to leave in 1992 during a currency crisis caused by the toils of membership. So far, the UK has not adopted the Euro as its national currency.
* The UK Government began to adopt metric weights and measures in 1965. For some tasks metric measures are vastly superior; for others, ounces and inches are much more comfortable. The hybrid of metric and imperial now found throughout the UK is one of those cases in which ease of use has actually worked against ideological integration. Even Napoleon thought that the authorities needed to be sensible about this: see Measured Government.
* The square perch (which is what Sayers is talking about here) and the rood are both measures of area, like the acre. A rood is a quarter of an acre. There are 40 square perches in each rood; each square perch measures 1 perch (or rod) by 1 perch, or 16½ft by 16½ft. These measures are not much use unless you are measuring land in acres, when they suddenly become indispensable because of the way they multiply up to make acres, and fit with other measures such as miles, furlongs and chains.
* This is one of the few areas mentioned by Sayers where the British have refused to change their ways to make life easier for their neighbours. At one level it might be convenient. But had Sayers been writing this two years later, she would surely have pointed to George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1948), and the dangers of a slide from the New Spelling into New Speak.
Précis
Just after the end of the Second World War, novelist Dorothy L. Sayers warned that men of ‘cosmopolitan mind’ sought to align Britain’s political and social institutions, from coinage to weights and measures, with those of the Continent. They assured us that they made life easier for everyone, but the British were not tempted, and watched on with amusement. (59 / 60 words)
Part Two
Scrolling on a smart phone.
Smart phones are a modern example of what Sayers was talking about. They are convenient, they make life easier; but they may be used by Government and its partners to track and profile us, and to shape what we see and hear — an ‘invasion of privacy’ of the kind which at one time, according to Sayers, the British instinctively resisted. The defeat of Nazi Germany had not put an end to the policy of political and social ‘bringing into line’ among European states; as if to prove Sayers right, in 1947 (a year after this passage was published) Sir Oswald Mosley, who had founded the British Union of Fascists in 1932, formed the Union Movement, dedicated to the UK’s integration into Continental Europe.
The British listen politely to all the arguments and do nothing about anything, and the cosmopolitan cries out in despair against their lack of logic. To no purpose. The British are not so illogical as all that. They understand perfectly that these reforms would make things easier all round. But they do not want things made easier; they want, instinctively and passionately and inarticulately want, everything to be kept difficult. Behind the barrier of the rod, pole, or perch, and the barbed entanglement of the letters ough* they retire as into a fortress. To make things too easy is to ask for an invasion, even if it is only an invasion of privacy. It is useless to tell the Briton that if the serried ranks of iron railings were removed, his house and grounds, to say nothing of his public parks, would look nicer and be more get-at-able; the very idea of being “got at” makes him uncomfortable. The only thing that will inspire him to tear up his railings is the conviction that they are needed to defend his moat against a still more serious invasion.
* A combination of letters found in several words with a bewildering variety of pronunciations: ought rhymes with sort, through rhymes with too, bough rhymes with now, dough rhymes with go, and tough rhymes with stuff. Place-names are just as inconsistent. In the name Oughtibridge, the letters ough are pronounced as they are in through, but in the name Slough they rhyme with bough. And in the case of Middlesbrough and many other towns with the same ending, the letters are barely sounded at all (like brush without the -sh).
Précis
Sayers did not deny that some of these changes might make life easier; but she cautioned that the British would suspect that they were being manipulated. They would cling to the eccentricities and inconveniences of English society all the more — unless briefly giving some up seemed a sacrifice worth making to keep a firm hold on the rest. (59 / 60 words)
