I don’t approve of murder, but I am prepared to make exceptions. This will scandalise those further up this august page – whatever the month – populated by the high-minded, intellectual challenges, and me. But there are moments when one must call it as it is, when plain truth has to be told, despite worthy aspiration.
And not least on this November 5th, celebrated next door as Guy Fawkes Day, after that damnable Catholic who tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament in London 415 years ago. He would find no such need today as the Tories have long since perfected the art of blowing up so many respected traditions of the Mother of Parliaments.
My defence of murder is prompted by two matters: the Christian injunction to turn the other cheek; and the war in Europe.
Coming from a family which included four brothers, I learned quickly that turning the other cheek just meant receiving equal and apposite blows to both. It’s a wonderful ideal but hardly matters if you wake up dead, so to speak.
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As for its relevance to the war in Europe? I saw that film The Hunt for Red October recently for the first time. Despite a strong cast, it was a disappointment, formulaic, predictable, but with one inspiring scene.
Released in 1990, it is a Cold War movie about an attempt by Russian submarine Sean Connery and crew to defect from the big bad Soviet Union to the Promised Land that is the good old US of A.
You know from the beginning how it will end – the good Rooskies ending up in the home of the brave, the land of the free. All so very, very, so, so…
But it was worth it for that one scene. A suspicious Soviet political adviser was there to keep the submarine crew in line with the one, true faith of communist ideology. This adviser, played by Peter Firth, threatened to be a spanner in the plans of Sean Connery and crew.
He was growing deeply suspicious and there were fears he might soon squeal to Moscow. So, Sean Connery did the necessary. He strangled him there with his bare hands, and I cheered.
The political adviser’s name was Putin. If only!
Murder, from Middle English mordre, Old English morðor; for “unlawful killing of another person”.
