"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers," declares Dick the Butcher in Shakespeare's Henry VI; and he speaks for the mob, of course. Populists always hate bankers and lawyers, almost as much they loathe learning and scholarship, so it is the easiest thing in the world to stir up anti-lawyer feeling, writes Kevin Myers.
And it's easy to see why.
Two lawyers who died last week exemplify the shameless manner in which so many are able to advance themselves. Take, firstly, Sir Graham Swanwick, who swapped his wig for a pair of wings aged 96. During the second World War, he served in the legal department of the Royal Air Force. Nothing wrong with that: air forces need lawyers just like the rest of us.
It would appear that his chambers - which were bombed while he was away, lawyering for the RAF - actually had a more perilous war than he did. Nonetheless, this lawyer was "mentioned in despatches" - in military circles, a much rated distinction which merits a place in campaign medals - was given a military BME, and rose to the rank of Wing Commander. All those men, unmarked and unrewarded, falling out of the skies over Germany would probably have been happy to get some of the recognition he got, beavering away at his lawyer's briefs.
But Wing Commander Swanwick MBE, M-in-D, was a slouch in the self-promotion business compared with the astonishing Strom Thurmond, the renowned segregationist from South Carolina who made it to over 100 before he was called to the great senate in the sky. Long before he turned up his toes, another part of his body had been almost perpetually upright. No woman seemed to be safe in his company: at the age of 93, he was accused of fondling Senator Patty Murray, half a century younger than him, in a lift. Some 73 years before that, he is said to have fathered a child by a black girl: his segregationism was not - apparently - of the pelvic variety.
He was a US army reservist before the war, and in 1943 was attached to the 82nd Airborne Division in a civil affairs role. He was 41 when he took part in the D-Day landings in Normandy, going in late on June 6th, in an area which had already been cleared of Germans. His glider crash-landed on impact, and he was slightly injured. He hid for a while in an apple orchard, before making his way to join the 713th Military police Battalion, without firing a single shot.
That was the total extent of his war action. Got into a glider; glider crashes; slightly injured; hides; is found; walks to safety. Thereafter, he served as an assistant G5, establishing military government in liberated areas of France. Nonetheless, he contrived to win the US Bronze Star, the Purple Heart, the French Legion of Merit with Oak Leaf Clusters, the French Croix de Guerre, and the Belgian Order of the Crown, which other men would have had to clear Paris single-handed to have won.
His shamelessness knew no bounds. He became a hate figure for liberals because of his tenacious opposition to integration: in 1957, he set a record of 24 hours and 18 minutes for a Senate speech during his attempt to filibuster a civil rights bill, surviving on hamburgers and malted milk tablets. During the entire half-century he was at the Senate, this was probably the longest period the women of Washington were safe from his approaches.
He once had sex with a woman on her way to the electric chair. He had appointed Sue Logue as a school superintendent, not on any proper grounds, but because of her "vaginal muscular dexterity". Grounds for appointment to any position, I should have thought. She was later sentenced to death for her part in a peculiarly bloody murder. Thurmond consoled her in the only way he knew how on her car journey from jail to death row. He may well have been a chancer in the medals business, and his segregationist politics were perfectly inexcusable, but you know, a man rather goes up in one's estimation when one hears that kind of thing about him: a suitable epilogue for Sue Logue.
The second time he married, his bride was 44 years younger than him. And just about the final act of his life was almost enough for us to have forgiven him his segregationist past. The National Organisation for Women condemned the pervasive "sexism" of his 100th birthday party earlier this year. Mind you, the girls had had it in for him for a while, ever since a party of feminists had appeared before his Senate committee, to be greeted with the words: "These are the prettiest looking witnesses we have had in a long time. I imagine you are all married. If not, you could be if you wanted to be."
History does not record whether Strom Thurmond gave a lift home to any of delegation afterwards. However, it does record that he once ran for US president. He makes our own presidential hopefuls seem a trifle uninteresting. Though several of them, like Thurmond, have been lawyers, I am unaware that any recent candidates for the Park having had sex with a murderess on her way to death row. Perhaps they all have, but being discreet, prudent creatures, have chosen not to speak about it. This is a shame.
Anyway, if we are going to ruled by lawyers, as seems to be the case, should we not insist on the more colourful kind?