HeIen Lewis Life before the NHS The young StaIin Are your friends A 91-year-old RAF Lucy Hughes-Hallett Will we ever be making you fat? hero remembers able to unravel the mind of the tyrant? Science says yes the bad old days Free thinking since 1913 31 October – 6 November 2014/£3.95 “By the time you receive this Ietter, I will already have crossed the border into Syria” Shiraz Maher talks to British jihadis fighting for Isis in the Middle East Mehdi Hassan, a privately educated 20-year-old from Portsmouth. Killed fighting in Kobane, Syria, in October 2014 Farringdon Place Contents 20 Farringdon Road London EC1M 3HE Free thinking since 1913 Tel 020 7936 6400 Fax 020 7305 7304 Subscription inquiries: Stephen Brasher sbrasher@ newstatesman.co.uk 0800 731 8496 Editor Jason Cowley Deputy Editor Helen Lewis Features Editor Xan Rice Culture Editor Tom Gatti Political Editor George Eaton Associate Editor Jemima Khan Arts Editor Kate Mossman Assistant Editors Sophie McBain New dawn: the fall of the Berlin Wall, 25 years on 46 Margaret Atwood on sex, death and old age 34 Michael Prodger Contributing Editor Laurie Penny Chief Sub-Editor Up Front Observations Articles Nana Yaa Mensah Sub-Editor Yo Zushi 7 Leader 14 In the Picture 22 George Eaton dissects the Production Editor 12 Correspondence 15 About Town: David Icke infighting in Scottish Labour Jill Chisholm Dorian Lynskey meets the people 24 Harry Lambert crunches the Acting Creative Editor Gerry Brakus who worship the “freethinker” numbers on the SNP’s rise Picture Editor Columns 16 Ebola: Desmond Cohen 26 Cover Story Shiraz Maher Rebecca McClelland How the west made things worse talks to the young men who left Design/Graphics 9 Peter Wilby on the real cost 18 Festivals: Melanie McDonagh Britain to fight in Syria Dan Murrell of Afghanistan, Tony Benn’s will The commercial hijack of the 34 Erica Wagner meets Newstatesman.com and Robert Harris’s vicarage secular calender the writer Margaret Atwood Caroline Crampton 11 Helen Lewis on the way our 18 Science: Michael Brooks 38 Harry Leslie Smith Philip Maughan friends’ friends affect our lives Will we ever have a working remembers life before the NHS Ian Steadman Anoosh Chakelian nuclear fusion reactor? Chief Sub, Digital 18 In the Frame: Thomas Calvocoressi Tom Humberstone Our satirical comic strip Contributing Writers John Gray 19 Kevin Maguire: Rowan Williams Commons Confidential Mehdi Hasan Your weekly dose of Ed Smith Westminster gossip John Bew “I found myself in Leo Robson 20 Encounter: Caroline Lucas the woods with Erica Wagner Tim Wigmore meets the Green Party’s only MP people of, shall we Commercial Director Peter Coombs say, mixed abilities” 020 3096 2267 Suzanne Moore, page 65 Director of Brand and Communications Fiona Allen Head of Partnerships Eleanor Slinger Design and Advertising Production Leon Parks 020 7936 6461 Online Production Cameron Sharpe 020 7936 6776 The paper in this magazine originates from timber that is sourced from sustainable forests, responsibly managed to strict environmental, social and economic standards. The manufacturing mills have both FSC and PEFC certification and also ISO9001 and ISO14001 accreditation. 4 | NEW STATESMAN | 31 OCTOBER – 6 NOVEMBER 2014 Cover art direction Erica Weathers Cover image Facebook A holy war? Shiraz Maher talks to British jihadis 26 Losing ground: the crisis of Scottish Labour? 22 The Critics: Books The Critics: Arts Back Pages 42 Lucy Hughes-Hallett is 54 Craig Raine delights in the 56 Subscription Offer gripped by the bravura first nudes of Egon Schiele – but finds 61 Drink Nina Caplan volume of a new life of Stalin fault with their hands 62 Down and Out 45 Margaret Willes on the 57 Radio: Antonia Quirke hears Nicholas Lezard political history of allotments the arguments for rehabilitating 63 Health Matters 46 Peter Millar revisits the the swastika Dr Phil Whitaker fall of the Berlin Wall through 58 Film: Ryan Gilbey feels the 64 The Fan Hunter Davies three new books fear in The Babadook, Annabelle 65 Telling Tales Suzanne Moore 49 Toby Litt argues that David and other Hallowe’en movies 66 Competition, Crossword, Cronenberg’s debut novel is so 59 Television: Rachel Cooke Subscriber of the Week, The good, he should ditch his day job is frustrated by the ambitious but Returning Officer, NS Puzzle 51 Olivia Laing reviews cheesy drama The Missing 70 On Location Will Self Zia Haider Rahman’s In the 60 Critic’s Notes: Mark Lawson Light of What We Know finds traces of Hancock in 53 George Szirtes relishes Neville’s Island and Citizen Khan Clive James’s inimitable voice Artwork in his Poetry Notebook Cartoons, photographs and illustrations by Huw Aaron, Nick Hayes, Becky Barnicoat and Kate Peters The next issue will NEW STATESMAN SUBSCRIPTION OFFER Take up this special offer and claim your free case of wine, worth £61.94, OR a free book by go on sale Anthony King and Ivor Crewe. Turn to page 56 for more about the offer or go to: subscribe.newstatesman.com/link/owin Just £92 for the year (UK) – and even cheaper for students! on Friday 7 November 31 OCTOBER – 6 NOVEMBER 2014 | NEW STATESMAN | 5 The unofficial opposition Join the Badgers’ Resistance to the cull of 100,000 of their kith and kin. “It is better to die on your feet than live on your knees”. The words of La Pasionaria, an iconic figure of the Spanish Civil War. Brecht’s manifesto for cultural activism “Art is not a mirror to reflect reality, 1984/85 Did you dig deep for the miners? but a hammer with which to shape it.” JUST Shirts for dissenters, perfect for a seasonal oppositional gift Order from www.philosophyfootball.com or by phone from 01255 552412 £19.99 plus p&p philosophyfootballGcom sporting outfitters of intellectual distinction Established 1913 Lessons of the Kindertransport hen a senior minister speaks of our towns at preventing migrants from drowning in the Mediterranean and cities being “swamped” by immi- Sea, Nicholas Winton (pictured below), who is 105, was hon- grants you know two things: that the oured at a ceremony in Prague. As a young man, Sir Nicholas government is rattled and that an ill wind had arranged for hundreds of Jewish children from Czecho- is blowing through the land. Nations turn slovakia to escape Nazi terror and find safety with foster inwards when people feel unhappy and families in the UK. Some of those whose lives were saved and Winsecure. The outsider, welcomed in good times, is perceived who travelled to Britain on the Kindertransport were at the as a threat, an agent of change, even of chaos. Prague ceremony. The remark made by Michael Fallon, the Defence Secre- Today’s refugees, whether they are fleeing war in Syria tary, has since been withdrawn. Apparently, he did not mean and Iraq, the torment of life in Gaza or the poverty of the what he said. Mr Fallon is not a bad man but he has the buf- sub-Saharan African interior, want no less than what anyone foonish manner of a small-town alderman who doubles up would want for their families: security and stability. So for- as captain of the local golf club. And he is meant to be one of lorn are most of those seeking to make the perilous journey David Cameron’s more sensible and reliable lieutenants. from North Africa to southern Europe that they are com- What is clear is that our politics is becoming ever more pelled to submit to the demands of nefarious traffickers and fragmented, with no one party able to command the kind of risk their lives on the high sea. support that would guarantee a strong majority government The challenges of immigration in next May’s general election. This fragmentation is testa- and the mass movement of peoples ment to the collapsing authority of the political class and to will not be solved by Britain seek- the havoc being wrought by the forces of globalisation: the ing to leave the EU or by nations free flow of capital and people, open markets, the dominance closing their borders to refugees of a deracinated plutocracy, instantaneous digital commu- from failed or crumbling states. nication. Ed Miliband used to say, in the depths of the Great Nor will the pledge by the EU to Recession, that the latest crisis of capitalism had provided limit search-and-rescue missions a “social-democratic moment”. It had created the space in deter the desperate. The people will which to build a new society and political economy and he come or attempt to come. would lead that change. The world’s population is seven That was then. Today, with Labour’s poll ratings so poor, Mr billion; it is forecast to reach 11 bil- Miliband is fighting insurgencies on several fronts – against lion by 2100, by which time the the Greens and the UK Independence Party in England, and pressures of overpopulation and resource scarcity will be the Scottish National Party and an assortment of leftist pro- even greater. In an interview with the NS in 2009, David independence groupings in Scotland. The age of two-party Miliband, then foreign secretary, said: “Foreign policy is politics is over and that, at least, should be welcomed. inseparable from domestic policy now.” The interconnect- Mr Miliband is also reported to have instructed his MPs to edness of the world today means that analysis was broadly address the issue of immigration and engage candidly with correct – and, consequently, we must not retreat into fearful voters about their anxieties. But we would caution him and nationalism and protectionism, but engage with the world his party against making a right turn and of indulging the in and through multilateral organisations.