My mother seemed to have a song for every occasion, and it is quite possible that my children think I have most scenarios covered by a quotation, for at this stage my mind resembles nothing so much as a layer-cake of texts. At present the top layer concerns the weighty matters of power and liberty, for it is only a week since dramatic and scarcely credible events were unfolding in Russia, with Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner group of mercenaries, advancing up the road to Moscow with his troops.
As he was doing so, my family and I were at the local polling station, casting our votes in the second round of the Greek parliamentary election, with my eldest grandson voting for the first time. The week also happened to be the 197th anniversary of the days-long Battle of Verga: in 1826 two thousand fighters from the Mani area in the south of the Peloponnese defeated the seven thousand Ottoman troops led by the Egyptian Ibrahim Pasha. Every year the citizens of Kalamata remember this decisive battle, and lay wreaths at a local memorial. They are right to be proud, for the Maniotes drove the would-be invaders back from the protective walls (which are still there) eight times.
I have long been interested in the versatile person who was John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton, a product of the nineteenth century, an English Catholic historian, politician and writer, and a very quotable one. He also had Continental connections and married a German countess, so had an outlook that was far from narrow, although he could never have been described as a radical. He sagely commented that ‘great men are nearly always bad men,’ but is best known for his idea that ‘power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.’ Surely both these ideas are applicable to both Prigozhin and Putin?
In the meantime, the persecuted and quite heroic Alexei Navalny is an exemplar of another of Acton’s ideas, namely that ‘liberty is not the power of doing what we like, but the right of being able to do what we ought.’ (I have felt for some time that anti-vaxxers should give this idea some consideration.) In opposing Putin and in being severely punished for this opposition, Navalny cannot be doing what he likes, but is rather doing what he feels to be his duty.
The other person whose ideas have been taking up space in my head this week is Irish lawyer John Philpot Curran, who lived from 1750 until 1817. There was a believer in human rights and liberty if ever there was one. He was an Irish-speaking Protestant, but famously defended an elderly Catholic priest who had been horse-whipped by an Anglo-Irish aristocrat because the former, while in the pulpit, had named certain adulterous individuals. Curran compelled the lord to pay the priest thirty guineas in compensation. On another occasion he defended a Jamaican slave. He also supported the cause of Catholic emancipation and defended United Irishmen members who were facing charges of sedition and treason; he failed to secure acquittals, however, and though he had to endure threats to his own life and safety he seemed never afraid to challenge the ruling power.
'The late Simon Crean could see that Australia’s decision to join the UK and the USA in the invasion of Iraq was illegal and would have dire consequences. In the wake of his recent death Crean’s criticisms of then Prime Minister John Howard’s actions have been widely quoted.'
One of Curran’s ideas can be used as an argument in favour of compulsory voting, and teaches a lesson, for example, to those of the British who did not bother to vote in the Brexit referendum. ‘It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active.’ Boris Johnson and his supporters were very active, and now look! But the most salutary quotation from Curran should make everybody ponder the matter of liberty and how it should be guarded at all costs. ‘The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance.’ Some 200 years later, Albert Camus wrote that ‘the good man, the man who infects hardly anyone, is the man who has the fewest lapses of attention.’
The Greek War of Independence started in 1821 and did not end officially until 1832. The leaders seem to have been as vigilant as they could be given the limitations of communication at that time, and the warrior Maniotes were both vigilant and determined. So has Navalny been, and there seems no sign of his efforts declining, despite his undoubted suffering. Closer to home, the late Simon Crean could see that Australia’s decision to join the UK and the USA in the invasion of Iraq was illegal and would have dire consequences. In the wake of his recent death Crean’s criticisms of then Prime Minister John Howard’s actions have been widely quoted.
Now to my grandson. He is only 17, the voting age having been recently lowered. I don’t know how he voted and cannot foretell his future political persuasion, so I just have to hope that he will not be indolent. And that when it comes to safeguarding democracy, he will always be vigilant.
Gillian Bouras is an expatriate Australian writer who has written several books, stories and articles, many of them dealing with her experiences as an Australian woman in Greece.
Main image: Protest. (Depositphotos).