The Notion Of 'Apology' In (British) History

"Never explain: never apologise." The sentiment is attributed to Benjamin Disraeli, and, though it may run counter to the Biblical adage,"a soft answer turneth away wrath", is usually good advice for politicians. At least it was till recently. Now, in the age of Oprah, apologies are thought to be in order. Say"sorry" and all is forgiven. So, in Brighton on Tuesday, Tony Blair seemed for a moment to have apologised for taking us to war against Iraq on a false prospectus. Well, sort of apologised, anyway.

It's worth looking however at the word"apology" itself. It can of course mean simply saying"sorry". As Frankie Laine used to sing,"If I ever done you wrong, dear, I apologise". But"apology" is also brother to"apologetics" - which the dictionary defines as"the defensive argument or method", and"apology" itself has the meanings"a defence, justification, apologia", which last, as in Cardinal Newman's Apologia pro vita sua, means a written defence or vindication.

This was what Blair offered the Labour faithful and faithless alike: an apologia. Though he can do the quivering lip and moist eye stuff as well as anyone since Madelaine Bassett last stared at Bertie Wooster"in a sad sort of way, like the Mona Lisa on one of the mornings when the sorrows of the world had been coming over the plate a bit too fast for her", this wasn't the occasion for that sort of stuff. Sure, the evidence for Saddam's possession of the celebrated WMD had proved to be wrong, and he could apologise for that, or rather for believing it and passing on the information to us, but, beyond that,"nuts to you". He wasn't going to apologise for having helped put Saddam in prison. The world was a better place for him being there, and not in power. As apologies, in the common sense of saying"sorry", go, this stopped a long way short of sackcloth and ashes.

It led instead straight to the apologia, the vindication. There were two views of the world since 11 September: that the attacks were like previous acts of terrorism, and that we were dealing with a"wholly new phenomenon". Our Tony is too much of a New Man to say outright that the former is a girly view, and that take Real Men like George W and himself take the second, sterner, line, but that's what he meant. So"the only path to take is to confront this terrorism, remove it root and branch and at all costs stop them acquiring the weapons to kill on a massive scale, because these terrorists would not hesitate to use them."

Those who had been led to believe by leaks through the usual channels that the Prime Minister was going to say"sorry about the war, chaps" had been well and truly fooled. Mr Blair may regret having lost the trust of a good many in his party, but he hadn't come to Brighton to beg their forgiveness. He wasn't throwing himself on the mercy of the British people. Far from it: in quiet conversational fashion, he was insisting that he was right - even while admitting that he was quite capable, of being"fallible, like any other human being, of being wrong".

Of course, if some of the delegates, and some of the TV audience, thought he had said sorry, that was fine. But he hadn't, not really. He had offered the other sort of apology, an apologia.

In private life an apology is often desirable, the right thing to offer. Erich Segal's"love means never having to say you're sorry" is one of the silliest lines in modern literature."Sorry" is a necessary word in marriage and friendship, unless you happen to be a saint, which is a rare condition."Sorry" is balm to wounds, and breaks cold silences. It's often the prelude to kissing and making up. It may be painful to say"sorry". It means you have to swallow your pride. But such apologies have to be spontaneous to be worth anything. An apology extracted is a humiliation that satisfies only the pride of the recipient. It heals no wounds, may even breed resentment in the person forced to say"sorry".

When we demand apologies from others, what we are really doing is seeking to humiliate them."I beseech ye, in the bowels of Christ," Oliver Cromwell said to the Scots Presbyterian ministers,"think ye that ye may be mistaken." They were unwilling to do so, unwilling to submit to the humiliation of confessing error, and so implicitly at least apologising for it. Cromwell himself was a"never explain: never apologise" man.

After"Black Wednesday" and Britain's ignominious fall out of the ERM, there were many who demanded that John Major and Norman Lamont should apologise for the failure of their policy, and the hardship it had brought and the damage it had caused. Mr Major remained unrepentant, privately and publicly. Mr Lamont said:"je ne regrette rien", and even declared that he had sung in his bath. That was foolish, but would an apology in reality have made matters better? Wouldn't it have been seized on as a sign of weakness? At best, apologies are political gambles.

The most famous apology for a crime or blunder in English history was Henry II's after the murder of Thomas a Becket. He went even further than we would demand of a modern politician, allowing himself to be scourged by the monks of Canterbury. His act of contrition may have saved his immortal soul (as he perhaps himself believed); but his authority never fully recovered.

Politicians do of course quite often apologise. It is, as I say, a modern fashion. But they tend to reserve their apologies for things for which they were not themselves responsible.