First the confession. I have never read a single le Carre novel before this, his latest offering. The best I can boast is having seen the remake of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, and probably the original if I care to remember that far back. I’ve also watched the Constant Gardener a few years back without being aware it was based on a John le Carre novel. That’s probably quite a surprising admission given the near ubiquitous nature of John le Carre novels in English popular literature. I have tended to steer clear fearing that Le Carre was profitably buying into all the usual Cold War cliches without offering much of a serious critique. Based on his latest novel, I might well have done the man an injustice. I intend to correct that injustice in the near future but for now here are a few thoughts on A Delicate Truth.

The story is a jolly enough romp through the murky world of illegal rendition, collateral damage, government denial and corporate involvement. The characters, dialogue and plot are all perhaps a touch comic book, but the underlying theme of war being sourced out to the corporate sector couldn’t be more relevant. Millions will no doubt read this novel over the coming years and if only a fraction of those become concerned and angry at the direction that western governments are taking their citizens then it is job well done. But is the corporatisation of western imperialism really such a new phenomenon? I think not. Just think back to the original British East India Company in India. There could not be a clearer example of government and business working hand in hand to further the interests of UKPlc. We might shudder at the explicit cooperation between the US government and private defence companies in Iraq and Afghanistan but really, when we more closely examine western imperialism, this cooperation is the norm rather than the exception. Oliver Stone in his recent book, The Untold History of the United States, quotes a Major Butler whose own book, War is a Racket neatly encapsulates the obvious truth of war as big business. Here is Butler in his own words:

I spent thirty three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country’s agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from second Lieutenant to Major General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street, and for the Bankers.IN short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism P xxxii Untold History of the United States, Oliver Stone.

Le Carre is at pains to underline this corrupting connection between big business and government policy. And by employing his significant life-long literary reputation to hammer home the point is very much to the man’s credit. Now in his eighties, he could very easily sit back and churn out some more cold war thrillers or better still, sit back and admire the roses. But Le Carre it seems still has fire in his belly and the directness of his politics puts most of his aging contemporaries to shame. Here, as le Carre describes the shady background of an American company that has been given the contract by the British Foreign Office to carry out a spot of extraordinary rendition down in GIbralter,is a fine example of an octogenarian writer who still has all his wits about him;

The parent company of Ethical Outcomes is Spencer Hardy Holdings, a multinational corporation whose interests include oil, wheat, timber, beef, property development and not-for-profit initiatives. The same parent company also endows evangelical foundations, faith schools and Bible missions. P11

Those three seemingly innocuous lines successfully explode any notions of the British State being neutral and that government, business and religion are somehow separate entities. Not a bit of it. Le Carre’s novel does more than most commentators, politicians and academics to show precisely how business, government and cultural institutions have become totally entwined. The Murdoch media empire, which embraces so much of our everyday lives, is a real-life classic example of a corporation turning feral and dragging in governments and supposed independent institutions in its wake.

Le Carre does not allow the matter to rest there. In a passage between two of the main protagonists, both members of Britain’s Foreign Office we learn a little more of our Orwellian sounding Ethical Outcomes:

Mr Cultural Attach Hester is not quite the amiable clown you appear determined to take him for. He’s a discredited freelance intelligence pedlar of the far right persuasion, born again, not to his advantage, and grafted onto the Agency’s station in London at the behest of a caucus of wealthy American conservative evangelicals convinced that the Central Intelligence Agency is overrun with red-toothed Islamic sympathisers and liberal faggots, a view your nice new master is disposed to share. He is notionally employed by the United States government, but in practise by a fly-by-night trading company under the name of Ethical Outcomes Incorporated, of Texas and elsewhere. P87

Needless to say, there was nothing remotely ethical about this company. Le Carre hammers away at this theme throughout the novel and takes a few decent swipes at Blair and New Labour along the way. The more I read of Le Carre the more I get to like him. Here are a few lines to put war criminal Blair firmly in the dock.

The only problem is that the further Toby is admitted into the inner councils, the greater the abhorrence of the war about to happen. He rates it illegal immoral and doomed. His discomfort is compounded by the knowledge that even the most supine of his school friends are out on the street protesting their outrage. So are his parents who, in their Christian socialist decency, believe that the purpose of diplomacy should be to prevent war rather than promote it. His mother emails him in despair: Tony Blair once her idol has betrayed us all. His father, adding his stern Methodist voice, accuses both Bush and Blair jointly of the sin of pride and intends to compose a parable about a pair of peacocks who, bewitched by their own reflections, turn into vultures. P50

Vultures indeed. So too is the global military-industrial complex that manipulates politicians like so many puppets on a string. Having read my first John le Carre novel, I’m fairly convinced that Mr le Carre is more than aware of this not so delicate truth. There was nothing in this novel that made me think my original preconception of Le Carre was correct. He may not be a Marxist firebrand but he is clearly a force for good. And while Toby Bell and Sir Christopher Probyn may both be a little too good to be true, Le Carre’s anti-corporatist themes are sound and he should be heartily applauded for that.