Counterfactual
John Lanchester, in the LRB:
There is one fascinating counterfactual to emerge from Prezza. It concerns the incident when he punched an egg-throwing protester in Wales during the 2001 general election. He includes a photo of the punch, a solid left jab right on the man’s chin. There was a furore, which Prescott survived because the public (not the papers, not at first) were largely on his side. But Prescott was an amateur boxer in his youth, and on page 118-19 there is a photo of him landing what looks like a knockout punch on an opponent. He is right-handed, and the knockout punch was a right. Here is the counter-factual: if 16-stone Prescott had hit the egg-thrower with his right, he would have knocked him out, and quite likely have broken his jaw. If either of those things had happened – if the man had ended up in hospital – Prescott would have had to resign. Whoever Blair appointed as his new deputy prime minister would have had much less pull with the party, because no one had as much pull with the party as Prescott. So when the crucial vote on the Iraq war came, Blair wouldn’t have had a deputy able to bring the party onside in the way that Prescott did. Instead of 139 Labour MPs voting against the war, a majority of them would have voted against, Blair would (as he said in private) have had to resign, and we wouldn’t have gone to war. And all because, for once, a New Labour figure didn’t lean to the right.
Bah. Someone else would have done the bag-carrying for Blair. All that counterfactual history stuff is so the province of rightwing, history as series of Great (White) Men hackery. What matters is the structures.
↓ Quote | Posted 13 July, 2008, 12:31 pmWhat matters in the long run is the structures, but politics doesn’t happen in the long run. I don’t at all accept the idea that counterfactual history is inherently Carlylean – what’s interesting is to see whether one want-of-a-nail contingency actually can push the whole machine off its tracks, and how long it takes to get back on. Conversely, some counterfactuals end up (in a rather Man in the High Castle way) seeming more plausible than what we actually got, precisely on ‘structural’ grounds ; I remember a whole series of posts on soc.history.what-if about Un-Fascist Britain which were quite frighteningly plausible.
↓ Quote | Posted 13 July, 2008, 12:59 pmIf my auntie had balls.
↓ Quote | Posted 13 July, 2008, 2:37 pmI think my point is that she’d be structurally your uncle.
↓ Quote | Posted 13 July, 2008, 5:51 pmAm I still banned from her?
Counterfactual shite.
See here:
http://www.gentheoryrubbish.com/2008/06/if_the_mongols_remained.html
↓ Quote | Posted 15 July, 2008, 12:55 amWell i’m not going to get het-up and serious about counterfactual histoy – i think this piece is fantastic. Perhaps if some commentors relaxed a little they’d see that this is actually quite a witty piece…
↓ Quote | Posted 16 July, 2008, 2:00 amYes, the piece seems to be more of a left jab at counterfactual history than a vindication of it.
↓ Quote | Posted 16 July, 2008, 9:14 am