A Conversation with Jeremy

On the 31st January 2020 I was at a loose end in the morning. As a result I decided to visit Parliament Square, on what was, for better or worse, an historic day. It was an impromptu decision. I went with no expectations or agenda, save to bear wit- ness for a moment.

I arrived around 12.30pm. It was early. Any drama would happen later in the day. The square for now belonged to three separate parties. The tourists, the interna- tional press and the activists. The press had taken the high ground. Cameras set up for takes of the reporter speaking to camera with a backdrop of Parliament, and a boarded up Big Ben. Efficient women in smart clothes with one or two blokes in tow. The blokes setting up tripods or carrying bulky TV cameras. The tourists were the same as they would be on almost any other day. Bemused parties from around the world, temporarily caught up in the theatre of a national identity crisis. It might have been me but it felt as though many of the tourists seemed to have the voyeur- istic awareness that goes with watching parents trying to control a fractious child. They could look on condescendingly, knowing that this really wasn’t their problem.

The third party was the activists. I call them activists because these were the ones who were clearly there to promote or support a cause. The cause being Brexit, either for or against. The majority were there to support Brexit. A handful were wav- ing EU flags on the western side of the square, whilst the Eastern side, towards Tra- falgar Square, had been taken over by a ragged bunch of Brexiters. Many of them draped in Union Jacks, almost as many draped in the Stars and Stripes. There were a fair few “characters” who seemed to be looking for their fifteen minutes of fame. A man in a MAGA hat and sunglasses standing on a homemade plinth. Pseudo “Paras” wearing purple berets. One man in a Brexit party wind cheater. Some older women wrapped in flags who looked like they were hoping for a knees-up.

I moseyed around for a quarter of an hour, stopped to take some notes, then de- cided there wasn’t much to see and started to make my way out of the square. It was a gunmetal grey day with no hint of sun. Sometimes you feel the need to bear witness and you encounter something extraordinary or revelatory, but today didn’t feel like that at all.

As I was leaving the square I saw that a group was putting up a home-made mani- festo, attached to a plyboard construction that had been rigged up beneath the statue of Churchill. I stopped to read the manifesto. It stated ten demands. “1. Restore our Freedom of Speech eroded by hate speech laws. 2. Restore our right of self-defence and to bear arms. 3. Restoration of Common Law, Magna Carta and Bill of Rights. 4. Restoration of Double Jeopardy, jury trial and access to Legal Aid. 5. End the Cultural Marxist agenda and destruction of the family in our education system, law and public institutions. 6. Comprehensive teaching of British History, Geography, Constitution, and Christian Faith in our school system. 7. The return of full control of British Fishing waters, 200 miles. 8. Veterans priorities for housing, benefits and services. 9. No E.U. flags on official buildings. 10. Full disclosure and prosecutions for those involved in crimes and responsible for cover up of grooming gangs”.

For the first time I a twinge of anger. It seemed invidious that this group was taking advantage of the occasion to polemicise. Quite apart from what is known as the dog-whistle racism. I suppose my irritation registered on my face. I took two photos, including one of the man who was helping to erect the large poster. He was a tall man, with glasses, an anorak, faint stubble. He muttered something at me. I muttered something back. “Disgrace” was the word I used. A very British reproach. The man then turned and said: “You with your face like a donkey’s arse.” I wasn’t sure if I’d heard him right, so I stepped towards him and asked him to repeat it. He said that I was “one of them”. I asked him what that meant. He said: “You didn’t get a mouth like that from sucking oranges.”

There was something absurd about this man and his insults. I think I registered a homophobic note, which in itself seemed curious. I hadn’t gone looking for trouble and perhaps at this moment the prudent thing would have been to walk away, but at the same time, I felt like, why should I permit this man to insult me and not stand up to him? So I asked him what he meant by ‘one of them’. He replied “You know” and backed away from me. I followed him. I said I didn’t know. I asked him to ex- plain. He backed away further, stepping behind the trestle table. There were people all around us, most of them, I presumed, his people, associates of this group with its manifesto. I asked him if he was scared of me. He said he wasn’t, so I asked him to repeat what he had said. He moved away again but by now I had no intention of letting him off the hook. I took out my phone to jot down his reply. “Some- thing about my face,” I prompted. He then repeated his phrase. I noted it down. Then I asked him what he thought his face looked like. This seemed to wrong-foot him. “I don’t know”, he said, “probably like my mother and father’s faces.” I asked what their faces looked like. He then told me that he didn’t know what his father’s face looked like because he’d never met him. His father had walked out on him be- fore he was born. Then he told me that he knew what I was like, and I asked him how he thought he could know anything about me if we’d only just met. “I know you voted three times for Tony Blair,” he said. How did he know that? “I’m a bit of a psychic,” he replied. “My father was a big follower of Aleister Crowley”.

Things were taking a turn for the surreal. Aleister Crowley, the notorious black ma- gician, one of those faintly mythological characters who claimed to have com- muned with the devil, who was part Svengali, part fraud. Somehow it made sense that this strange man, who told me his name was Jeremy, should have steered the conversation towards his absent father being a follower of the devil-worshipper, Crowley, here on this day in Parliament Square.

At this point, which was when I was thinking about leaving, that we were ap- proached by an Irishman who said he was a reporter for the Irish Times. He asked us what we’d been discussing. I said that Jeremy had been talking about Aleister Crowley. This provoked the Irishman’s curiosity. He asked Jeremy if he’d be happy to answer a few questions. By now it was clear that some kind of transformation had occurred. Jeremy seemed keen to talk. The abusive man welcomed the chance to get his opinions heard. Later, as Jeremy’s lonely story unfolded, it struck me that the abuse might actually have been a form of reaching out, of communicating. I also wondered if his chosen insult, ‘a face like a donkey’s arse’, might not have been one that had once upon a time been aimed at him, which he had then appropriated.

The Irishman, who I later learned is called Patrick Freyne, thankfully took over the interview. I listened and interjected from time to time. Patrick’s condensed account of the conversation can be found at the end of the report he later filed for his newspaper. (https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/uk/patrick-freyne-in-parliament- square-brexiteers-make-hay-at-final-fling-1.4158066?mode=amp). 

The more detailed version goes something like this. Jeremy’s father was/ is Dutch. Both his parents worked for airlines. He still has a soft spot for Heathrow. He spent his sixteenth birthday in Libya. Later he lived and worked in Malaysia for many years. He has a Malaysian daughter. (“And people call me racist.”) Patrick expressed surprise that, given his cosmopolitan background, Je- remy was so keen on pulling the drawbridge up. He denied that this is what Brexit is doing, saying London had always been a cosmopolitan port city. At which point I asked him if he’d be happy to see London continue to be a “cosmopolitan” city, something that seemed at odds with the manifesto he’d been putting up. Jeremy displayed a slightly awkward smile and commented that London had changed so much since he was a child growing up in Gloucester Road. I asked him what he meant by the word “change” and he said it used to be full of independent shops but now it was full of Prets.

Jeremy was quite good at side-stepping awkward questions. He’d tell us we need- ed to speak to Dan, a grey-haired man in a charcoal coat with a goatee who looked as though he might well have been a “cultural Marxist” in another life. Dan was set- ting up the stall and was evidently something of an authority figure. In his lapel was a silver pin of a sub-machine gun, which I took to be a Kalashnikov but Patrick’s article reveals was a Thompson. It caught my eye and I asked Jeremy why Dan was wearing this pin. Jeremy replied that it was because Dan and his followers were be- lievers in the second amendment. The Irish journalist expressed some surprise at this. He asked Jeremy what would happen if they didn’t get what they wanted out of Brexit, observing that everyone seemed to have a different idea of what it ought to mean. First off, Jeremy said that they’d infiltrate and take over the Tory party, “like the Marxists have done with the Labour party”. Then if that didn’t work, he said with his little smile again, a lot of people were talking about civil war. He said he didn’t necessarily agree with them, but.... “But you’ve won,” I said. “You’ve got your Brexit. You’re here to celebrate your victory. Who would you be fighting against?” “The leftists. The other side. It’s obvious that the leftists have won.” He looked even slightly mournful at this point. He wasn’t just saying this. He meant it. He felt as though he had lost. They’d won a battle but lost the war. The “cultural Marxists” had won.

By this point Jeremy had become quite affable. He had even gone so far as to apologise for his abusive language, when we discussed free speech and I said he had a right to say what he wanted but that didn’t mean he needed to be offensive. We talked briefly about whether it was right that they should have set up office be- neath the statue of Churchill and Jeremy commented that Churchill was another one who had been too leftist for his own good. When the conversation had started he had told Patrick that he was “to the right of Genghis Khan”, but now he back- tracked a little, complaining about how he had been insulted and called racist. It seemed obvious to me that, even though his organisation was espousing racist views, Jeremy didn’t believe he was racist and it upset him to be perceived in that way. The discrepancy between his stated aims and his personal idea of who he was didn’t seem to add up. He talked a lot about the need for a family-based society and the more he talked about it the more I found myself thinking about his absent, Crowley-following father.

In the background some of the beret-wearing pseudo military types were stamping on an EU flag and singing a bastardised anti-EU version of Auld Lang Syne. The conversation was winding up. All of a sudden Jeremy threw out a term that neither of us quite understood. He said that everyone had been black-pilled. The journalist picked him up on this. What did “black-pilled” mean? Jeremy explained that it was a term that came from The Matrix. Most people were black-pilled, which meant that they couldn’t see beyond the world that had been constructed for them by mod- ern media. But he and his people were “red-pilled”, which meant they could see through to the truth. There were also “white pills” which were the happy pills.

At which point the conversation became less happy. Jeremy told us he had had a business in Borneo, but his business partner had ripped him off. It wasn’t clear how long ago this was, but now he was back in London, living on the streets. He had only come along today to enjoy some time with his people.

His final words were the ones that most took me by surprise. He said that as soon as he could, he was going to go and live in Hungary. He’s a big fan of Orban and his “family values”. “But you won’t be able to go and live there now,” I said. “You’ve just made sure you’ve taken away your right to live there.” Jeremy wan’t convinced. He said he’d been to the embassy. Orban would welcome like-minded Christian- values people like him. He was sure of it.

A child in a crusader helmet and George Cross shirt was manning the desk that had been set up below Winston Churchill. A chunky fellow in a MAGA hat was flitting around. Jeremy faded back into the pack of his people. The journalist and I chatted for a while. He told me that Jeremy was far from the most extreme. Some of the people he had spoken to were genuinely scary.

There’s a great deal of discussion about the “leavers”; who they are and why they voted leave. The journalist, Patrick, was clear in that there is no coherent, unifying principle behind the leavers approach. Beyond the claims of “sovereignty” or “independence”, the aims are amorphous, shape-shifting, emotional. It’s about the gut rather than the intellect. An urge towards an idea of freedom which they cur- rently do not feel they possess. What that freedom might turn out to be is some- thing of a mystery to them, not to mention anyone looking in from the outside.

In truth, you could have seen an argument being made for the Leave campaign, at a certain point way back down the road. The EU has its flaws. Ask anyone from a country outside the EU who wants to come and work there. Ask anyone on a boat in the Mediterranean trying to enter it. Having said this, all political systems are flawed. The only place where the political system isn’t flawed is a totalitarian state. But fair enough, there was, once upon a time, an intellectual rationale for leaving the EU, whose greatest proponents, have either deserted (ie Roland Smith) or turned into barefaced liars (ie Daniel Hannan).

What seems apparent from the reporting of the the triumphant Leaver night of 31 January 2020, is that this is an emotional victory. It’s politics, economics and demo- cracy viewed through the lens of a football match. One nil to the England. It’s also a way in which people who have felt powerless, or disenfranchised, to feel a moment of power. Which for them is equatable to taking back control. For a moment. What was most terrifying speaking to Jeremy, is that this is nothing more than a moment.
The war, in Jeremy’s eyes (against “cultural Marxism” or “the other side”) is one that is still being lost. Brexit has been part of that war. It’s their Battle of Naseby. Brexit isn’t the end of anything for them. If anything, it’s the start.

When I left Parliament Square I walked along the Thames to meet a friend for lunch. It reminded me of a similar walk I took on the 7th July 2005. That was the day of multiple terrorist attacks in London. The attacks took place in the morning. At lunchtime I decided to go for a walk and get the pulse of the city. What seemed remarkable that day fifteen years ago was the sang-froid. People were going about their business like it was any other day. Some waved at police frogmen in front of Westminster. The city’s phlegmatic insistence on carrying on as normal had been heart-warming. The British keep their cool. They don’t get overly emotional, which is sometimes seen as a weakness but in this case was clearly a strength. On Brexit day, the streets outside Parliament Square were similar. There were joggers. A man walked by wearing EU trousers, but that was as political as it got. Only this time, it didn’t feel the same. It felt as though something had changed, irreversibly, but not for the better. The ones talking about using guns and imposing their views on the population weren’t radical Jihadists; they were malcontents who dressed their kids up in a George Cross outfit and a crusader helmet.

As far as Jeremy was concerned, I was the enemy. It isn’t hard to see how a violent use of language could presage the adoption of physical violence. This isn’t about Europe anymore. It was never about Europe. It’s about deeply held resentments that have never had the chance to be lanced. Resentments that brood and breed in splenetic corners of social media, in the drunken hours in pubs where time stands still, in the lost dream of a land which never was and never will be but survives in the imagination of a desperate man walking the streets of a city which has changed beyond recognition, failing to realise that the world has changed, that there’s no going back, that the future will only look like the past in theme parks he cannot afford to visit.

notes on robinson crusoe

chapter 1

Crusoe is the son of German immigrants. He’s second generation. His parents already stranded on an isle - only, as his father makes clear, happily so. His father urges Robinson to enter the “middle station” in life, which is where he has landed up, working in merchandise. His father stresses that it’s better to be neither in the upper nor the lower classes. Robinson, however, wants to see the world and ignores his father’s advice. He embarks on a ship. The year is 1651, not that long after Shakespeare’s Tempest. The shipwreck was already a key trope. Apart from the Tempest, there is also Pericles, and countless others. The shipwreck as the agency of destiny, precipitating change (likewise in the Odyssey). Of particular note to an island culture; Crusoe’s first journey is from Hull to London, although this too ends in a shipwreck, which is a forbearer of the shipwreck to come. 

chapter 2

Slavery. One imagines that Defoe is running the full gamut of contemporary paranoias. That of being on the other side of the slave trade must have been high in the contemporary consciousness. Perhaps what this shows is the awareness of the obscene nature of the condition of slavery. No doubt, many incorporated slaves into normality; but the phobia that “this could happen to me” suggests an awareness that slavery wasn’t an act of god; it was an institution which involved the oppression of fellow humans. Am trying to put my finger on a contemporary idea that exercises similar hold on the imagination, and the one that seems closest is that of the immigrant, from Africa or Asia or Central America. (Once again the trope of the shipwreck.)

chapter 3

So this chapter possibly lays waste to my reflections above. Crusoe escapes from slavery and makes his way to Brazil, where he settles down as a plantation owner and makes a lot of money, planting tobacco. There are two strands to this section of the story. Firstly he experiences loneliness as an immigrant. He feels himself to be on a desert island (did his parents feel the same way when they arrived?) and his wealth means little to him. The other is that he accepts a commission to go and buy slaves from the African coast, at the behest of his fellow plantation owners. Knowing that the plan is to exchange fripperies for humans. Defoe doesn’t seem to offer any kind of judgement on Crusoe for this action, which is taken more in a spirit of adventure than action. He cannot resist the lure of another voyage, after four sedentary years. The chapter closes with another shipwreck, this time one which will land him on the desert island, somewhere in the tropics. Is the shipwreck retribution for his slave trading? It doesn’t appear so. If this is what Defoe intends, the message is subliminal at best.

chapter 4

Arrival on the island. We enter a more technological chapter; albeit one which is driven by the resources Crusoe rescues from the ship. The process of recovering items from the ship takes up much of the chapter. Crusoe salvages all kind of tools, including weapons and gunpowder. In a sense, he is a colonialist, a Pizarro or a Cortes, only one with no apparent empires to conquer. He arrives on uncharted shores with slender but advanced resources, sufficient to offer him a degree of security. Technology is his saviour. There’s also an issue with the timeline; the second half of the chapter relates, briefly, the construction of his camp, which takes over a year and very few pages. Time has ceased to have much relevance. There’s surprisingly little about how he produces food: a few goats are killed and there were provisions from the boat, but as yet no detail regarding crops or diet. 

chapter 5

The first half of the chapter feels like filler. Defoe offers Crusoe’s diary, which merely repeats what has occurred in chapter 4, as though he was being paid by the page and needed to pad things out. Half way through the chapter, he more or less abandons the diary exercise, and returns to the first person narration. Here, the issue of food is addressed, with more details regarding his hunting expeditions as well as a segment on his discovery of agrarian agriculture, when the seeds from sacks he has thrown out germinate and grow months later. He has a minor religious episode which he then mocks; Crusoe’s ambivalence with regard to religion appears to chime with his belief in modernity. In a sense, Crusoe, the castaway, might be regarded as the exemplar of enlightenment man: a believer in technology above faith. He’s also a romantic, addicted to experience above comfort. An earthquake briefly disconcerts him, but then becomes the motivation to reconsider his living arrangements. There’s very little ‘dark night of the soul’: his restricted circumstances encourage his creativity and his belief in his ability to conquer nature and survive.

chapter 6

Then all of a sudden, as though Defoe is aware of all the potential criticism of Crusoe’s lack of faith, he gets religion! The chapter starts with a reversion to the diary format, which is then put on hold as Crusoe gets seriously ill (an illness he treats with tobacco and rum) and then goes on a long dissertation where any doubts about his christian leanings are supposedly put to bed. This extended confession feels slightly off-kilter, almost as though the writer is responding to voiced or unvoiced criticism of his protagonist’s lack of faith. It’s one of the least intriguing chapters, which holds no real surprises.

Chapter 7

A chapter largely dedicated to agriculture and exploration of the island. Crusoe’s religious enthusiasm seems to wane. There is a moment as he discovers the island’s variety and wealth when he sounds enamoured of it for the first time, taking on a colonial air, declaring that he could imagine himself the lord of this manor. 

Chapter 8

This chapter is effectively split into two parts. The diary structure is cast aside and Defoe offers a description of Crusoe’s explanation of the island. He goes to the other side (the west) from whence he can see what he assumes to be the mainland of the americas in the distance. He calculates this as being somewhere between Brazil and the Spanish speaking lands. He also identifies, somewhat surprisingly, penguins. All of which would put him at a far more southerly latitude than the tropics where one had assumed he was up to now. This side of the island is more fertile than his side, which leads to a reference to Leadenhall Market, something which lends a vertical link to London (not a city that Crusoe knew all that well, although Defoe would have done.) The second part of the chapter is given over to his crop of wheat and his struggle to learn how to make bread out of it. He notes in this chapter that he has now been three years on the island, time flying by rapidly in the narrative. 

Chapter 9 

This is the boat chapter. Crusoe’s dreams of escape suddenly take hold (after three years) and he seeks to resuscitate the old boat which is beached, with no success. He then goes on to make what he describes as a large canoe out of a vast tree, something that takes him months. However, the canoe is too heavy to move. He can’t get it to the sea, in spite of his best efforts, even though it’s only a hundred yards away. is this the first moment when we perhaps start to think that Crusoe doesn’t really want to leave the island, after all? For all his protestations that it’s impossible to get the boat to the shore, this is all down to his stupidity? It’s as though he’s enjoying the adventure rather more that he suggests. 

Chapter 10

Somehow the boat makes it to sea. In the opening two pages. Crusoe sets out to sea, with the intention of circumnavigating the island. Any idea of making it to the mainland is discounted. We are now eight years into the story, the timeline becoming harder and harder to follow. The circumnavigation almost leads to disaster as strong currents drive him out to sea. The dramatic need for obstacles is apparent. Crusoe overcomes the obstacle, (if he didn’t there would be no story), returns to shore where he is greeted by his parrot. The second half of the chapter deals with Crusoe’s goat management tactics. The history of humanity as an agricultural project once again. Milk and cheese and meat and hides. 

Chapter 11

Crusoe now states he has been on the island fifteen years. Finally he comes across the first trace of another human- a footstep on the beach. He has overcome every obstacle in his way and his narrative is crying out for a twist. Crusoe the hoarder of capital comes to the fore, as he does everything he can to protect his goods. He is consumed by paranoia that others will seek to pillage his store and kill him. As a result he spends the remainder of the chapter constructing more and more elaborate defences. The mere idea of the presence of another soul is something he sees primarily as a threat. 

Chapter 12

The other looms larger now. Crusoe discovers a beach littered with human skulls and signs of fire. He assumes that cannibal savages have been using the island as a kind of picnic venue. He starts to go a bit mad, entertaining fantasies of annihilating the ‘savages’ in all kinds of ways, roaming the island armed to the teeth, then hiding away, talking about living in the “constant snare of the fear of man”. Then he has regrets about his prejudices, comparing this to the actions of the Spanish: “that this would justify the conduct of the Spaniards in all their barbarities practised in America, where they destroyed millions of these people”. A strange side-note which gives an insight into contemporary attitudes towards the Spanish conquista, whilst at the same time revealing the contradictions and intellectual gymnastics which surrounded the whole process of colonisation. Finally in the chapter, Crusoe discovers a wondrous cave, which is the perfect safe space, eclipsing his years of work to construct fortified defences. The cave offers him great satisfaction; it is the safest place in the whole wide world. 

Chapter 13

Again a chapter divided between two separate incidents. In one, the cannibals return, provoking fresh paranoia in Crusoe. In the second part, a Spanish galleon founders on the rocks offshore. He hopes that there will be survivors, but there are none. He actually makes it to the ship and rescues a dog, along with large quantities of treasure. One thing that struck me, reading this chapter, was the way in which Friday has yet to appear. We’re 25 years in to his stay on the island and over two thirds of the way through the book. The trouble is that when Friday appears, the story takes a sharp twist. It will cease to be a survival story and become a buddy story or even a love story. Which doesn’t appear to be what Defoe wants to write, no matter how much Crusoe might protest that he longs for company. We start to think - of course the ship doesn’t have any survivors, and of course he never meets one of the ‘savages’ or rescue one of their victims. It would screw with the narrative. 

Chapter 14

As though reacting to the need to move his tale along, Friday finally appears. Two years pass between the previous chapter and this one, years marked by paranoia and fantasies of capturing the “cannibals” and converting them into his slaves. Finally, bizarrely, Crusoe starts to contemplate the notion that if the ‘savages’ are capable of crossing the sea from the mainland to the island, then perhaps he might be capable of doing the same, but this thought, (which we know won’t lead anywhere because we by now suspect that Crusoe has no intention of leaving the island if he can help it), is interrupted by the appearance of Friday, who he helps escape from said cannibals on one of their periodic feasting visits. His first thoughts regarding Friday are that he is not too ugly, with comments about skin tone and his nose, and that he would make a fine slave. The Edward Said Orientalism thesis has a variation: there is clearly a subtext running throughout the novel regarding the matrix of slavery. Crusoe is himself a slave at times, his eventual isolation comes as a result, (as he meditates upon in this chapter), of a failed slaving trip, and when a human finally appears his first thought is that this would make a fine slave. Without as yet seeking to draw any conclusions as to how Defoe finally comes down on this issue, one thing that seems clear is the centrality of the issue within the contemporary consciousness. Perhaps also worth noting that the slave trade itself was one of the prime movers of globalisation. The other side of this it seems to me is the way that Crusoe’s fate mirrors a capitalist drift towards atomisation within society. Crusoe is a prototype of Mersault or Joseph K; a determined outsider from the outset who struggles to square his individualistic instincts within a societal structure, only to find via the device of the shipwreck a convenient get-out-of-jail card (which is also a go-to-jail card). 

Chapter 15

Crusoe gets to know Friday. Which means, more than anything else that Crusoe gets to indoctrinate Friday into the ways of Christianity and enquire about how easy it might be to escape from the island. It’s finally defined more precisely where the island is: in the carribean, not far from the mouth of the Orinoco, only 40 miles offshore. Crusoe takes Friday to the high point of the island and when Friday sees the distant mainland, he identifies it as his territory. Crusoe explains that England, a country he can but have a distant, nostalgic memory of now, was part of Europe: “I described to him the country of Europe, particularly England, which I came from; how we lived, how we worshipped God, how we behaved to one another, and how we traded in ships to all parts of the world.” Within a chapter of Friday’s arrival, the end already feels in sight, with Crusoe showing him the boats he made so many years ago, and Friday suggesting that the bigger one might do for a journey to the mainland.

Chapter 16

So, Crusoe and Friday make a boat. But they don’t just leave. Instead, Crusoe prevaricates. He can’t leave until it’s the right season. He has to wait. He actually initially tells Friday he should go without him. He really doesn’t want to leave the island and he’d rather he was on his own again, but Friday refuses to leave without him. So Crusoe takes his time and makes ‘preparations’. Which are then interrupted by the arrival of another party of cannibals, come to feast on the island. Crusoe and Friday attack and overwhelm the cannibals, in the process freeing two prisoners, one a Spaniard, and the other who just happens to be Friday’s father. In true colonial style, Crusoe now declares he has three subjects, with three different religions. However, one wonders how this is going to tally with the protagonist’s Garbo complex, his need to be alone: four men on his island is not a sustainable situation. 

Chapter 17

Neither is 20. Crusoe’s push-me pull-you situation is repeated. After putting off departure from the island for another six months or more in order to grow crops, he gets rid of the Spaniard and Friday’s father, sending them back to the mainland. Travel between mainland and island now seems so regular it’s as if there is a shuttle service, but still Crusoe remains. When a boat appears on the horizon, it isn’t them coming to take Crusoe and Friday away; it’s a group of British mutineers. Crusoe and Friday liberate the mutineer’s three hostages and succeed in overwhelming the mutineers without too much trouble. However, Crusoe now has the problem of yet more people populating his island, his solitary idyll coming to a definitive end. 

Chapter 18

Crusoe would now appear to have multiple options for leaving the island. He doesn’t leave. Defoe spends the chapter giving a convoluted boy’s own account of the plot to overwhelm the mutineers and take back control of the ship. Friday is barely mentioned. The most interesting aspect of the chapter is that Crusoe insists that some of the worst mutineers are given the option of staying on the island, rather than going back to England and facing the gallows. He has no option but to leave, but he ensures that his legacy, his feverdream, will continue to be lived, vicariously, through the prisoners who will inherit his legacy.

Chapter 19

And then he finally is gone. After 28 years on the island, he returns to England on the boat. But he doesn’t stay long. Almost straight away he heads to Portugal to find out what happened to his Brazilian lands. The good news is he’s rich. He gives a long account of his finances, contemplates going back to Brazil but decides against it, and sets off on his travels again, looking to go back to England via land. 

Chapter 20

The final chapter is constructed around a long description of Friday fighting a bear. Was Defoe in any way conscious of the metaphor? The wily Carib out-thinking the lumbering giant. In the end we don’t learn anything about the fate of Friday. The closing pages describe Crusoe’s decision to travel again (after having married and had children?). This includes a return visit to “his” island, where he finds the Spaniards and the convicts have somehow muddled through, still alive. In addition some women have come to the island and there’s now some twenty children living there. A thoroughly modern representation of the colonised nation state in miniature. Defoe promises that there will be more adventures in the next instalment, the second volume. 

'will of the people' according to John Stuart Mill

“The will of the people, moreover, practically means the will of the most numerous or the most active part of the people; the majority, or those who succeed in making themselves accepted as the majority; type people, consequently, may desire to oppress a part of their number; and precautions are as much needed against this as against any other abuse of power.”

John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

the eclipse

It’s a Summer’s evening. The Eclipse is a Tudor fronted pub, black beams, white plaster. Inside it has a low ceiling and a tiny bar. Tables always at a premium. It has its regulars, who prop up the bar and have their own tankards. Although it looks like a village pub, this is a city, albeit one which froze in size around the time of the Crusades, and The Eclipse still has an edge to it, a place from where late at night drunkards will spill out onto the streets keeping the locals awake. Outside, there are twin benches either side of the door, set into to the fabric of the building.

That’s where we are. It’s around seven pm. We’re drinking lager, because aged 19, it’s what everyone drinks. There’s only the two of us, myself and a man called James, known at school as Muppet, who will go on in life to become a long-serving employee of the Bank of England, a reliable dad, a resident of Surrey. All these things are probably discernible in his frame and demeanour now, to the soothsayer, but at this point in our lives he still carries other possibilities around in his back pocket. We’re both negotiating our way out of childhood, on holiday from university, back from the growing-up wars. Our friendship runs deeper than any we have at university, but it’s also at its zenith. These are the last things we’ll truly share, after six years of school. For the next decade we’ll remain in each other’s lives, slowly drifting apart, the ties that bind, the common interests, eroded by time, geography and the atomization of the late twentieth century. Because really there’s no reason why James and I shouldn’t still be meeting and talking Economics until we’re old men, cozy in the complicity of the conversation game. But we won’t and we don’t and that’s just how it is.

This particular evening there’s an edginess around me and there’s a reason for it. My girlfriend, the one from University, is not with me. She’s gone back to her stomping ground, the wilds of Hertfordshire. Only, on this day, she’s meeting up with her ex-boyfriend. His name is Masa. He’s Japanese. He’s a multi-millionaire who was part of the Japanese Olympic skiing team. He lives in New York. A week after she met me, she took down the photo of him that lived on her wall. Destined to be together, until I appear. They are meeting in London. At his hotel. I don’t know where exactly. Somewhere on Park Lane.

I’m too self-absorbed to be really worried. She and I have been together a whole academic year, we’re about to move into a little house with a yard with roses in a place called Dunnington. We’re playing out some kind of fantasy of coupledom which we both need and which is already turning sour. Nothing will interrupt this sequence, I know, and even if something were to, I would recalibrate my horizon, suffer the crisis which will arrive sooner or later, the world would have shrunk, but then the world is expanding all the time anyway. 

Although the truth is I’m not even contemplating any of this. I’m just edgy. On adrenaline and lager. James, because he knows me, picks up on my edginess. I explain the context. Perhaps he asks if I’m worried or not. I don’t remember. James says something along the lines of: “It’s good {or unusual} to see someone so passionate about things.” His thesis doesn’t quite ring true. Later others arrive and the evening changes or becomes more drunken. For the next three years every time we’re back together in our hometown and we go out it feels like the end of an era.

I never learn what happened in Masa’s hotel room and I never force the issue. There are things you know in the heart which are more important than the things that are actually lived. As decreed we will spend the next two years of our lives together in a house with a blue door and a yard with roses. Sometimes he sends her envelopes stuffed with money. 

For two years we fight a lot then we split up. She goes to New York and marries Masa. James has a child called George. James and I drift apart. The Eclipse is still there. To the best of my knowledge.