The Eye In Your Lounge.

This week a political earthquake shook Parliament. No, I'm not talking about the humiliation of both the Tory and Labour parties in Thursday's local Council elections, when both parties had lost a considerable amount of seats: The Conservatives around 1,300 lost seats and Labour 82. That means had this been a General Election, the result would have been a hung Parliament with a tie, with 28% of the national vote for each of them. The remaining 44% of the national vote would have gone to other parties, such as the Liberal Democrats (19%) and minors such as the Green Party.*

No, I'm not writing about any of that.

Rather, it's about that other political earthquake, the one which has 200 Tory ministers jumping up and down with rage. It was the sacking of Defense Minister Gavin Williamson from the Cabinet by our current Prime Minister Theresa May. He was accused of leaking some Governmental secrets to the Daily Telegraph about the G5 intelligence concerning national security, with the possible permission for the Chinese electronics firm Huawei making inroads into the UK, against the advice of the USA and, I believe, also against the advice of the EU.

I can understand why our allies across the Pond can get so strung up about such a company sticking its oar in. What I have heard, it seems to fulfil, or at least partly fulfil, the dire prophecy of George Orwell's novel 1984, which was made into the most melancholic, and if it wasn't confined to the world of fiction, a potentially frightening movie to be shown on the big screen.

A group of us went to see the film at a local cinema. At the time the film was released in October 1984, we were all young unmarried Christian men who regularly attended churches of our choice. Here we were, watching the film, which was an adaption of Orwell's novel, which was published 35 years earlier in June 1949, as the manner of technology and forties-style commodities attest with that time of history, including those monochrome TV sets, each of them displaying a hexagonal screen.

A scene from the movie 1984, of George Orwell's novel.

Except that those TV sets were fixed onto the wall in every room of a typical London residential home, along with installations in every office, factory, hospitals, and the interior of every known building regardless of its purpose. But in the home was the most unsettling. Those TV sets cannot be switched off. Instead, they keep on broadcasting ongoing news bulletins. It was impossible to get away from. An endless stream of information kept on pouring into each room of the house.

Although not featured in the film but nevertheless implied, the need to defecate must have been so embarrassing when in desperate need for privacy, for there on the wall in front, another TV screen is fixed, spilling out one news item after another.

What makes this system so terrifying is that a camera is fixed to every TV set. Therefore every move you make, everything you say and do is transmitted through this camera to Central Intelligence.

This was aptly demonstrated when the star agent had his back to the screen while sifting through some files. Immediately the screen behind him flickered to show someone asking him directly what he was doing with his back turned. The agent then turned and held the empty file wallet to the camera. And all that took place in his own home.

So ominous was the movie that one of our members rose from his seat and walked out of the auditorium, only to sit and wait in the foyer outside for the rest of us to leave after the end of the film. Perhaps I shouldn't have been too surprised at his move. We know that the whole movie was set in London, as from time to time, a view of the derelict Battersea Power Station, a well-known landmark, kept on appearing on the screen between each scene. For him, it was too close to home.

Perhaps George Orwell was more accurate in his predictions than he himself could have imagined. Some years ago I was planning a train trip for the next day, and as I looked for relevant information, all of a sudden this young female in uniform approached me from apparent nowhere to ask what I was doing. There was a queue for the cashier, and either the guy behind the ticket counter, while serving those waiting in the queue, made contact with this staff member, or more likely, I was watched through one of those surveillance cameras. Indeed, I was accused of loitering, an apparent offence I wasn't aware of.

And talking about train travel, one rather iconic feature found attached to the inside of the roof of each modern coach is that characteristic inverted blue dome. Its dominance indicating that "beware, we are watching you" would have made our parents and grandparents feel uncomfortable or unsettled. But at least I'm used to it, for my own safety. I recall those 1960's compartmentalised carriages where I could have been trapped with a questionable or suspicious character who could have taken advantage of me, a vulnerable young teenager, knowing full well that the guard, unable to reach us while the train is moving, would never have known anything of it.

In the film 1984, Battersea Power Station sits derelict.

Or that time I was travelling home to Bracknell from London one late evening in the seventies. All was well until some youths boarded the train at Ascot and took seats on the other side of the same coach. That last part of the journey was tainted by sniggering and mocking as their eyes were fixed on me, a lonely long-haired young man, by a group of white youths with crew-cuts or shaven heads, and posing a level of threat. They remained on board as I alighted, with some relief, at my stop. I'm sure that the presence of the inverted blue dome of glass would have deterred them. But they weren't around during the seventies.

However, as trains go, with each carriage fitted with these surveillance cameras, I do wonder how the guard, or the conductor, cope with the multi-image on his monitor screen. These days the trains on our particular line are ten coaches long, and to watch all ten pictures on a screen, well, I think that would be rather overwhelming. A group of shaven youths harassing an innocent passenger could be easily missed. Then again, maybe not. In all honesty, I have not seen an actual guard's van on our modern trains. Instead, I have often seen him stand at the doors of any carriage, and when the train stops, he activates a mechanism which allows alighting passengers to open the sliding doors by push-button. But a TV or monitor, so far I have not seen one, and I travel by train quite frequently.

Maybe I am stuck in the past when the guard's van was normally seen on all trains. After all, it's what I've always expected to see. A thought has crossed my mind while writing this blog. Could it be that those surveillance cameras are fake? A psychological con trick to deter any potential mischief while on board? It's nothing new. For years, fake cameras have been erected along highways to deter speeding vehicle drivers. Many are still there to this day along with the functional ones. It's impossible for the passing driver to tell the fake from the functional. Could our trains have adopted the same principle?

The case with Gavin Williamson is something altogether different. I take it that he is against the idea of the Chinese company Huawei taking hold on British surveillance or security. I have heard rumours. Rumours of a brave new world akin to George Orwell's novel. However strenuously he denies any involvement of the leak, I am on his side, as with many Tory MPs. 

I once wrote to a friend on Facebook that after Brexit, Britain could be a sitting duck for a vassal state to the Chinese. A threat of this was already underway a couple of years ago in 2016 when a project for a nuclear power station sponsored by the Chinese Government was suddenly halted by our Government just as our Prime Minister Theresa May was about to sign the agreement. It is said that the electronics firm Huawei is a private company. This at first, I found hard to swallow considering that China is a Communist country, after its founder, Chairman Mao Zedong's reign during the latter half of the Twentieth Century, who had millions of his own people slaughtered in order to abolish all private enterprise under his administration. Apparently, things have changed since the death of Chairman Mao in 1976, allowing some private enterprise, but remaining closely under Government scrutiny.

Maybe, like the case with the guard's van, I'm behind the times. I'm aware of Soviet Communism giving up the ghost after the Glasnost and Perestroika movements occurring around 1990, and it does look as though China has taken the same route, allowing a limited form of capitalism to thrive. Hence the existence of such a private firm Huawei, which I believe may turn our Sovereign, post-Brexit nation into a vassal state for China, an opinion which I believe is shared with Gavin Williamson and others.   

The thought of a camera linking our lounge to a central Government intelligence via a TV set looks to me to be very ominous! But that what our links to China via Huawei could bring about. It is a blood-curdling thought.

Gavin Williamson - Do we share the same anxieties?

And yet I, as a Christian believer, am under surveillance all the time. But not just with what I say and do. But also with my thoughts, motives and emotions too. Absolutely nothing is kept private or secret from this Central Intelligence, which is a heavenly one. This is because God knows everything about me. And rather than posing a threat, this is a very good thing - to be under God's constant surveillance. And it's not because he wants to see how I will behave or to see whether I would stay faithful or walk away and fall into apostasy. Rather, it's to love me, to care for me, to bless me, and also to discipline me when necessary, not for him to seek revenge or seek retribution - Jesus Christ took all that upon himself on the Cross - but for me to partake in his holiness and to enjoy the richest of unity with him as the Holy Spirit dwells within.

Psalm 139 is all about this heavenly surveillance. It is a Psalm really worth reading through. To summerise:

He knows when I rise and when I go to bed.

He is able to discern all my thoughts.

He knows what I'm going to say before even saying it.

He hems me in in a way it's impossible to escape - no matter how far from home I travel.

I cannot be hidden from Him, no matter how thick the darkness.

I was intricately made by Him even while still in the womb.

He knows my frame thoroughly.

Every day of my life was ordained by Him before I was even born.

Knowing all these things brings comfort, joy and reassurance, not fear, embarrassment or guilt.

Indeed, human surveillance is a slight to my privacy, but God's loving surveillance is a wonder to all believers.

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*Daily Mail, Saturday, May 4, 2019.