國慶大災難撞船至少25死

【本報訊】南丫島海面發生近40年來最嚴重海事意外，港燈一艘遊艇昨晚戴有124名港燈員工和家屬往中環觀看煙花，途中與一艘載有50名乘客港九小輪「海 泰號」發生猛烈相撞，「煙花船」被撞散入水，猶如「鐵達尼號」般傾側下沉，船上人員全告墮海，拯救人員稍後救起101人，當中八人死亡；至今晨再於現場撈 起四具屍體。意外暫釀成12死、19人失蹤。記者：鄭大康、黎家駒、溫文學 

被撞沉的遊艇「南丫四號」，可乘坐230人，為港燈公司擁有。消息稱，類似遊艇港燈共有五艘，平日接載南丫島電 廠員工上班，船齡頗舊，有南丫島街坊形容「一撞就散」。有港燈員工透露，每年大時大節，港燈均會舉行海上聯歡活動，深受歡迎，因參加者人數太多需要抽簽決 定；而被選中今次觀看維港國慶煙花滙演，連同船上員工合共124人。

「南丫四號」倒插入海，消防蛙人通宵在船艙搜救。黎樹雄攝

怒海救人

傷重不治

迅速下沉僅露出船頭

消 息稱，船上124人在南丫島榕樹灣晚膳後，至晚上8時15分左右，登船赴中環觀看煙花，開出約五分鐘，至離岸1,000米近北角嘴對開時，突與載着50名 乘客的港九小輪「海泰號」相撞，船艙登時地動山搖，猛烈搖晃，大批乘客如滾地葫蘆東歪西倒，有人撼到硬物血流披面，痛苦呻吟。

遊艇左邊船身被攔腰撞穿大窿，迅速入水傾側，變得尾重頭輕，尾部倒插入海中，只露出船頭位置，乘客未及穿上救生衣，已紛紛墮進大海，其中兒童、長者及不諳 水性乘客自救困難，未幾即失去蹤影，有些拚命自行游上岸，坐在岸邊待援；有的尋找漂浮物救命，呼喊親友名字更響徹黑夜，場面混亂。

蛙人撈屍

消防搜救

政府展開海陸空搜救

鑑於傷者太多，政府跨部門展開海陸空搜救行動，水警輪用大光燈照亮漆黑海面，又在海怡半島碼頭成立臨時分流中心，分送葵涌瑪麗、灣仔律敦治、東區及伊利沙伯醫院，政府總部更成立緊急事故協調中心。

首批傷勢較重的17名獲救男女，由水警輪送往海怡半島，再由救護車送院，其後不斷有傷者入院，至凌晨共有八人傷重不治。

與此同時，搜救人員亦在沉船的船艙以及附近海面撈起四具屍體，死亡人數增至12人，仍有19人失蹤。

據了解，消防蛙人多次潛入船艙找尋失蹤者，而在船艙內發現的屍體，全部睜眼、嘴唇紫黑、嘴部微張，似死前極度驚慌，更有屍體浮上海面。據艇上港燈職員憶述，當時一聲巨響，船身大震，不少人頓失平衡仆落地上：「現場笠笠亂，聽到好多細路仔係咁喊。」

小輪疑船速過快肇禍

港燈營運董事阮水師表示，出事船隻有足夠救生衣及救生設備，維修跟足海事處要求，不存在維修問題。有指小輪撞船後不顧而去，亦有指當時小輪速度頗快，海事處初步懷疑出事小輪船速過快肇禍，惟意外原因仍待深入調查。

意外中的小輪「海泰號」，船頭損毀，船上亦有六人受傷，事後送院治療。

南丫島撞船時序
昨晚上7時

逾百名港燈員工及家屬，到南丫島電力廠參觀及晚飯。


8時15分
121人及3名船員乘公司的遊艇「南丫四號」，由榕樹灣出發睇煙花。

8時20分
遊艇在南丫島北角嘴對開海面，遭一艘港九小輪攔腰撞及，迅即入水下沉。

9時
傷者由附近船隻救上船，部份傷者自行游上岸。

9時45分
首批17名獲救傷者，送至鴨脷洲海怡半島碼頭上岸，轉送醫院。

11時45分
有101名傷者獲救，分送多間醫院。

今晨0時20分
多艇救援船在意外現場拯救，至凌晨1時30分在船艙及海面撈獲七具屍

生還者：好驚好黑好恐怖　船身呈90度個個滑落海

【本報訊】「撞船嗰刻，好似鐵達尼號。」在南丫島海面被撞沉的「南丫四號」遊艇，船上載着124人，當中包括不少一家老幼的家庭，發生意外那一刻，船上一批批人被拋落海，人叠人、人踩人、慘叫聲此起彼落，有數十人緊貼着船身、船邊，但一個個隨着翹起的船頭，滑落大海。
記者：關震海　李偉民 

「好似鐵達尼咁，人踩人，命懸一線！」船上其中一名乘客李先生是裝修工人，昨日與太太帶着3歲兒子，登船參觀電廠，其後準備去看煙花滙演，想不到差點一家三口葬身大海。

凌晨時分，消防員派出蛙人拯救被困在船中的乘客。黎樹雄攝

有傷者被救起時已全無反應。黎樹雄攝

有頭部受傷者被送到海怡半島碼頭。陳奕釗攝

海水從窗口湧入船艙

當 時開船才十多分鐘，李先生一家三口就坐在上層。突然一聲巨響，左邊船身被另一艘船撞到，「當時都唔覺有乜事㗎！」李先生憶述，船身稍為震動，搖晃了一下， 大家根本不以為意。「點知一分鐘後，隻船開始向左傾側。」李先生說，當時有人意識到不妥，立即打開窗，怎料海水從窗口湧入船艙。據悉，當時船長曾透過廣播 大叫乘客：「快啲着上救生衣！」

李先生慌忙拿走三件救生衣，千鈞一髮之間，為緊抱的兒子穿上，可是此時他才驚覺：「我太太已經唔喺身邊……」當時船上慘叫聲不斷，李親眼看見身旁的人一個 個跌倒，有人踩着倒在地上的人慌忙逃生，但船不斷傾斜，「啲人好似坐滑梯咁，跌晒落地！」不消5分鐘，大部份人已墮入水中，不斷掙扎。李眼見十數人爬出已 打開的窗外，他亦匆忙將兒子推出窗，自己緊隨着游出水面。

據現場消息透露，有附近船的乘客目擊，傾斜的船尾快速下沉。有人大叫：「沉喇、沉喇！」更有不少人跳海逃生，亦有人緊抓着船邊欄杆勉強支撐着，可是隨着船沉呈90度，整個人懸在半空，最終不支墮海。

船艙內亦一遍混亂，「好驚、好黑，從未試過咁恐怖！」生還者陳先生說。大部份人被海水沒頂，困在船艙無法逃生。

僥倖與兒子游出水面的李先生，等了約20分鐘後終獲救，但一直擔心太太的死活。幸而被送往灣仔律敦治醫院途中，傳來好消息，有朋友告知李太亦獲救，李先生才放下心舒了一口氣。

陳氏夫婦沉船後與子女失散，獲救上岸後情緒激動。鄭大康攝

「冲得好急似海嘯」

同樣獲救的陳小姐在律敦治醫院接受檢查後，憶述撞船經過仍猶有餘悸，她當時一家四口坐在船的下層，撞船一刻全無先兆，大量海水湧入船艙，「冲得好急、好急，好似海嘯咁」。

陳小姐指船艙內有木板塌下，壓着她丈夫和數名乘客，丈夫頭部遭擊傷，幸及時推開木板，她與丈夫立即帶同兩名孩子游出大海，獲港燈另一艘船救起才得以脫險。

「希望佢哋冇事。」陳小姐表示撞船後非常混亂，也不知道另外數名被木板壓傷的乘客能否脫險。此外，有傷者指，撞船後首一分鐘未見特別異樣，「個個坐喺度唔知點算」，但未幾船隻突然下沉得非常快，船艙內只有一、兩個窗戶可以打開。

一名小童送到海怡半島碼頭時已奄奄一息，救援人員正盡全力搶救。（鄧宗弘攝）

撞船慘劇後，中聯辦罕有地即時介入，中聯辦副主任李剛（中）在特首梁振英（左三）陪同下到瑪麗醫院探望傷者，表示正安排廣東省打撈船來港打撈沉船。（余俊亮攝）

港燈客船被港九小輪撞沉，只餘船頭露出海面，消防員要派蛙人潛入船艙搜索失蹤者。（李澤彤攝）

乘客李先生形容，事發時客船如鐵達尼沉船般迅速傾側下沉，幸有船員開窗令部分乘客可逃生。（衛永康攝）

港燈客船被港九小輪攔腰撞沉後，船上逾百人墮海，多艘消防輪趕到現場搶救，將傷者送往海怡半島港燈碼頭上岸，傷者逐一披上保暖氈等候救援。特首梁振英（中間穿白西裝者）亦有到場探望傷者。（鄧宗弘攝）

被港九小輪攔腰撞沉的港燈客船「南丫四」，編號A9153，上層後方為「開放式」，港燈強調船的狀良好，圖為客船出事前的圖片。（網上圖片）

跨部門應變　海陸空搜索　消防速趕到破船窗救人

【本報訊】南丫島榕樹灣對開海面昨晚發生嚴重撞船意外後，專門處理特大災難的政府緊急事故監察及支援中心隨即啟動，指揮各部門全力搶救墮海傷者與搜索失蹤 人士。警方、海事處、醫院管理局也各自啟動緊急應變機制。特首梁振英在意外發生後約兩個半小時趕抵現場了解情況。身在內地的海事處助理處長蘇平治也被急召 回港參與搜救工作。記者：黃偉駿、鄭啟源、張文傑、王家文、彭美芳 

特首梁振英今日凌晨到瑪麗醫院探望了數名輕傷者後表示，現時首要是搜索失蹤者及搶救傷者，又指會徹查事故原因。 他指今次海、空搜索範圍很大，蛙人要潛入船艙搜救。他表示國務院已委託他向失去親人的家屬送上慰問，又指國家承諾會盡一切能力支援搜索工作。他引述部份傷 者稱，今次救援行動迅速，消防員在船隻下沉期間，已趕到打爛船窗讓乘客逃生。

意外於昨晚約8時半發生，特首梁振英於大約晚上10時50分趕抵現場。他表示在意外發生後，政府緊急事故監察及支援中心隨即啟動工作，指揮警方、消防、海 事處及醫管局等各部門展開海、陸、空拯救行動，並與食物及衞生局局長高永文通電話了解最新情況。截至晚上10時45分，瑪麗醫院最少有9名傷者送到，至晚 上12時30分，約有18人送往瑪麗醫院。他表示，仍未清楚撞船具體原因，最重要工作是優先救人，說畢隨即乘坐專車離開，趕赴醫院探望傷者。

大批傷者送上岸獲發熱氈，等候送院。　陳奕釗攝

部份小孩被救上岸後由救傷隊送院醫治。

傷者由救護員攙扶送院。

水警出海拯救生還者。　黃永俊攝

協調小組指揮分流傷者

政府緊急事故監察及支援中心由高層官員組成，專門處理嚴重及規模龐大的意外事故，負責監察各應急服務單位工作，提供支援，同時向特首和政府高層人員報告事態發展，並發佈高層決策及意見。去年初日本發生地震核災後，該中心便曾啟動應急。

由於昨晚意外傷者人數眾多，據了解，醫管局在意外發生後，緊急協調小組馬上運作，指揮各醫院分流傷者，送抵碼頭的傷者被送往香港島的瑪麗醫院及律敦治醫院，部份則轉往九龍的伊利沙伯醫院；而經由直升機救獲的傷者，全部送到香港島的東區醫院救治。

原本身處內地的海事處助理處長蘇平治，在意外發生後隨即被急召返港參與拯救行動。他表示，海事處屬下的海上救援協調中心全日24小時運作，當發生海上事故後，中心會即時通知消防、水警以及飛行服務隊進行搜救，並負責協調各部門搜救工作。

大批救護員在海怡碼頭候命。

港燈營運董事阮水師（箭嘴示）到醫院探望傷者。

海事處出動所有巡邏艇

蘇 平治形容，今次事件有逾百人墮海，加上意外在晚間發生，增加搜救難度，屬本港近年最嚴重沉船意外，海事處已出動所有巡邏艇協助搜救工作。他印象中，對上一 次大型沉船意外要追溯到1971年的「佛山輪」事故。當年颱風露絲正吹襲本港，由香港開往澳門的客輪「佛山號」無法繼續行程，於昂船洲對開海面錨泊，其間 錨鏈被巨風扯斷，最後被吹翻沉沒，船上92人僅4人獲救，其餘88人罹難。

身兼海員工會副主席的立法會議員黃國健形容，今次意外非常罕見及嚴重，印象中本港並無發生過類似嚴重海事意外，加上入夜後海面非常黑暗，會令搜救墮海人士 的工作非常困難。他表示，需要先了解今次意外是否人為因素或海面風浪太大所致，也應探討是否與太多人乘坐船隻從海面觀賞煙花有關，但一般而言，內港的風力 不會太大。

大批傷者家屬意外後抵達瑪麗醫院。

死傷者最新情況（截至凌晨２時）
港燈觀光船人數：124人

送院：53人

死者：12人

失蹤：19人

 港九小輪人數：60人

送院：約6人

十‧一升旗禮穿黑衣禁出席　I♥HK被逐離場

【本報訊】看到五星紅旗飄揚，國民教育「教導」學生要有自豪感；有學民思潮學生及市民昨穿上「我愛香港」、「加油」黑衣觀看十．一升旗儀式，卻被民政署以 「不受歡迎」及「干擾儀式」為由，遭警員粗暴抬走及驅逐。觀看升旗不成，學生卻在五星旗下見證一國兩制下法律蕩然無存，質疑「香港仲有冇法律？」有律師認 為事件或已構成非法禁錮。記者：歐陽子瑩、馬志剛 

約8名身穿黑衣的市民、學民成員及義工，昨晨7時抵達金紫荊廣場，準備8時觀看升旗禮，他們甫進入公眾區，數名身穿西裝、自稱民政署人員的男女，即上前表示「呢度唔歡迎你哋」，並指他們身上有示威標語，作出驅趕。

學民思潮成員昨早擬步往金紫荊廣場睇升旗禮，並向梁振英示威，過馬路時卻被警方阻止前行。　謝榮耀攝

義工被捉雙手雙腳抬走

穿上「I♥HK」黑色T恤的中六生馮同學，對第一次看升旗便被驅逐感到氣憤，認為港人權利已失去保障，「點解我係香港市民都唔可以睇升旗禮？仲有冇法律？」

被抬走的學民思潮成員用手機拍低整個過程放上網，可見只有十多歲的義工，雙手雙腳被捉住抬起，不斷被拖行催促離開。有配備了手銬的疑似女警，對學民少女拉 扯，並無禮呼喝：「叫你自己行你又唔行」、「企好啦」、「行唔行呀」。據了解，其中一名帶頭清場，身穿紅呔、西裝戴眼鏡中年男子，正是灣仔警區刑事總督察 林紹華。

香港人權監察主席莊耀洸指出，除非警方有合理懷疑有關人等即將犯法，才能作出相應調查行動，否則警方昨日將學民思潮成員抬離會場，是屬於非法拘捕、非法禁錮。

五星紅旗飄起，會場卻容不下幾個少年，如此升旗禮，教學生怎愛國？　張志華攝

何秀蘭形容當局抬走同學的做法無法無天。「同學都冇要求入限制區，乜都冇做過，警方認得係學民思潮成員就拉人？當一個政府用認人嚟剝奪人身自由，仲有乜法治可言？」

另一邊廂學民思潮約50人，昨晨帶同五星紅摺凳由灣仔室內體動場遊行至金紫荊廣場，要求梁振英回應撤科的訴求，他們不滿警方兩度設立的示威區太遠，不斷轉 換示威點，其間學民在博覽道東和會議道交界過馬路時，被警員以人鏈阻止，引起混亂。在升旗一刻，示威者舉起交叉手勢，其間警方發出警告，表示有關集會未經 批准，保留刑事檢控權利。

穿上「I♥HK」（我愛香港）上衣的學民義工馮同學遭驅逐離場。　電視畫面

致辭12次提「經濟」　特首詭計　以錢溶港

【本報訊】上周還說有中港矛盾時會站在香港一邊的特首梁振英，昨日已經「反口」。他昨天在十．一酒會致辭時，在短短6分 鐘演辭內12次提及「經濟」一詞，強調香港經濟必須靠內地才有出路，要求港人接受中港融合的事實。工黨主席李卓人批評梁振英置香港利益於不顧，「佢企咗喺 大陸嗰邊」，斥他一心以內地經濟大水喉「溶咗香港」。

當港人慨嘆內地自由行來港數目多至不勝負荷時，梁振英於十．一酒會致辭時為自由行說盡好話，邊說平均每日經陸路進出深圳的港人多達37萬，是大陸居民進出 這些口岸的2.5倍，邊稱港人亦同時大舉到內地工作、探親、經商、定居，呼籲港人：「要認識到香港和內地共同發展嘅必然性同埋必要性」。

董建華（左起）、梁振英、曾蔭權三代小圈子特首昨日同場出席十．一酒會，董、梁二人高興握手，身後的曾蔭權則頭也不回。　易仰民攝

「佢企喺北京嗰邊」

整篇短短6分鐘的演辭，他12次提及「經濟」一詞，幾乎每半分鐘出現一次，無非說明香港經濟要靠內地才有出路，並力撐香港與內地融合既是事實、也是現實，力勸港人面對與內地融合的現實，指：「呢啲係我哋要認清楚嘅事實，同埋現實。」

在力撐中港融合之時，梁振英卻對加速中港融合下的社會問題，如港人要與內地人搶奶粉及搶醫院等問題隻字不提，只以「新情況」三個字輕輕帶過。

工黨主席李卓人批評梁振英整篇演辭只談金錢經濟，不談香港人現時生活、文化備受內地自由行所困擾，「佢好似怪責緊香港人竟然話內地人影響物價、影響香港設施」，怒斥：「佢係企喺北京嗰邊，做北京傀儡，唔係企喺我哋香港人呢邊」。

除梁振英外，前特首董建華及曾蔭權昨天亦罕有在酒會上同台。現場所見，梁振英與董建華席間言談甚歡，當梁振英舉杯後，隨即與董建華握手問好，梁的左手更搭 着董建華的右手，恍如叔姪般親密。相反，梁振英與曾蔭權握手時卻只屬蜻蜓點水，目無交流。泛民主派立法會議員則近乎絕迹會場。

揮港英旗抗議中共插手治港

【本報訊】在中共建政63周年，逾40名市民來到中聯辦外揮舞港英旗「贈興」。他們高喊「我係香港人，唔係中國人」，批評中共插手治港，蠶食自由、民主和法治等核心價值。有學者警告，若中聯辦繼續干預香港，必加劇港人的逆反心理。

「心情好矛盾，始終香港係俾英國侵略而要割讓」。80後馮先生昨首次拿起港英旗示威，他不滿由區議會選舉種票，到中聯辦插手干預特首選舉，以至強推國民教育，都是由中共在背後操控，一國兩制、港人治港已壽終正寢，所以不得不站出來。

大批市民趁十．一煙花滙演揮舞港英旗，抗議中聯辦干預香港。

繼續干預加劇反彈

遊 行發起人陳梓進表示，自由行湧港令物價飛升，新界東北發展會變成雙非富豪城，害港人「雞毛鴨血」，「香港人仲忍得到咩」。理工大學社會政策研究中心主任鍾 劍華認為，暫時只有少部份港人打正港英旗號示威，但中聯辦多次被指干預香港事務，部份中方官員的言論更激起港人加劇逆反心理，當局需認真檢討。

邊賞煙花　邊憂前景

昨晚有近25萬市民及旅客在維港兩岸欣賞煙花（圖），但璀璨花火盛況背後難掩巿民對中港融合的憂慮，有賞煙花的市民期望 中共能信守一國兩制承諾，避免香港「大陸化」。滙演重頭戲是以煙花彈，在半空呈現代表國旗的五顆星以及簡體字「中國」字樣圖案，但煙花效果欠佳，「中」變 成「一」，「國」不成「國」，未能贏得觀眾熱烈反應。

黎樹雄攝

西環集中營：　觸動中央神經的港英旗 - 季陶

一班手持港英旗的市民，昨天遊行至中聯辦外請願。別看小這幾支在風中飄揚的港英旗，季陶聽聞連同早前在各式遊行出現的龍獅旗，中央的神經已被觸動。近日曾經南下收風的中間人，便問及本港到底有多少人支持特區自治，以及是否普遍港人支持港獨。

梁營文章打擊自治言論

有政界中人向季陶報料，指內地近期最關心的，除了是國民教育引發的政治漩渦，也包括人心未回歸的問題。因此近期來自北京的收風人也問政界中人，這些不時在空中飄動的龍獅或港英旗，究竟代表着甚麼？是單純的懷念港英時代？抑或有一班人意圖令香港步台灣後塵，力爭獨立？

該名政界中人引述中間人指，港獨是北京「禁地」，擔心港人不自覺地「超越黃線」。阿爺所擔心的，梁振英難道不了解？由梁粉組成的智庫「香港營」，早前便由麥國華出手，發表名為《香港自治觸動法治底線》的文章，高調表明香港自治運動所爭取的自治，脫離了中國的政治體制，嚴重違反《基本法》，直指「所謂脫離中國政治體制的自治方式，既嚴重挑釁國家主權，亦觸動了香港人的底線」。

有政界中人稱，有關打擊港人爭取自治的言論勢必陸續有來，以配合中央欲將香港自治的概念於萌芽階段消滅。說到底，港人人心未回歸，還不是因為內地民主人權自由爛到透，中央是否應先作檢討？

台灣壹電視出售　裁504人

【本報訊】台灣壹電視將以14億台幣（約3.7億港元）售予當地年代電視，壹網樂即時影音服務則會終止，將裁減504名 員工。壹傳媒稱，開台三年來，既遭當局以冗長牌照審批程序延誤，又受業界既得利益者阻止在有線電視系統「上架」。壹電視累計虧蝕17億港元，主席黎智英 說：「電視失敗了，我無怨無悔，卻對同事深感歉疚。我無以為報了，只剩下一句對不起。」

壹傳媒集團行政總裁張嘉聲昨發內部「事業單位重組公告」，宣佈集團已與年代電視董事長練台生，簽訂出售壹傳媒電視的合作備忘錄，終止壹網樂即時影音服務（VOD）。

張向台灣《蘋果日報》稱，議定交易價為14億台幣，開台至今壹傳媒已投入逾100多億台幣（約26.5億港元）在壹電視及壹網樂。交易望於明年1月1日生效。練台生同是台灣有線電視系統台灣寬頻老闆，亦是錢櫃卡拉OK董事長。

公告解釋，壹傳媒過去三年來在台投資建立電視與即時影音平台，但部份計劃遭當地通訊傳播委員會以冗長的牌照審批程序延誤，又受業界既得利益者持續阻止壹電視在有線電視系統上架，令大部份觀眾不能收看。

發言人稱，VOD本月31日後全面停止服務，但壹電視在有線電視上的新聞台、電影台等年底前不受影響，會向員工提供優於法例規定的遣散安排。台灣勞工局稱，壹電視及壹多媒體分批裁減及遣散共504人。

黎智英昨向壹電視及壹多媒體員工發短訊，為賣盤致歉。　資料圖片

黎智英：對同事歉疚

黎智英昨向臨別員工表示對「電視失敗了」無怨無悔，但對並肩作戰的同事深感歉疚，因其錯失使他們荒廢三年寶貴青春。他接受本報電話訪問稱：「對於這個失敗，我會負全部責任；對員工，我要說對不起。」對台灣《蘋果日報》、台灣《爽報》及台灣《壹週刊合併本》出售情況無置評。

壹電視09年成立，當局拖至年多後才批電影台、體育台牌照，新聞台去年才獲批。收費台則需透過凱擘、中嘉及台灣寬頻三大有線電視系統上架播放，但旺中集團 蔡衍明拼購中嘉時已明言不讓壹電視上架。台灣《蘋果日報》工會籲壹傳媒對離職者給予最高尊重，新經營者應尊重員工新聞自主及權益。壹電視虧損令過去兩年度 壹傳媒轉盈為虧，康宏証券及資產管理董事黃敏碩指，出售對壹傳媒屬正面。

壹電視主播蕭彤雯昨報道集團將出售台灣壹電視業務消息。　壹電視畫面

黎智英告白

「電視失敗了，我無怨無悔，卻對三年多來在渺茫中仍奮力並肩作戰的同事深感歉疚。我的錯失使你們荒廢了三年寶貴的青春，我無以為報了，只剩下一句對不起，請你們原諒，並請珍重！」


黎智英鞠躬

日改組內閣　反華親華派同時入閣

日本首相野田佳彥在民望積弱下，一年內第三次改組內閣，昨（周一）共撤換十名閣員。在日中關係因釣魚台爭奪戰再起波瀾之際，親華派前外相田中真紀子和對華強硬派前外相前原誠司同時入閣，分析指野田既想修補中日關係，又想討好黨內鷹派。

要討好中國修補關係
野田昨重組內閣，外相玄葉光一郎和防衞大臣森本敏獲留任，財相由前國會對策委員長城島光力取代安住淳。城島曾力挺野田加銷售稅計劃，外界估計他將繼續與央行合作抗通縮和壓抑日圓過度升值政策。

當日中關係因釣魚台爭議跌至谷底，外界焦點都落在出任文部科學大臣的田中真紀子身上。田中真紀子是1972年推動中日邦交正常化的前首相田中角榮女兒，本身也是親華派，上周訪問北京表示擱置釣魚台問題是兩國老一輩領導人的重要共識，解決近日爭議的關鍵在日方。

野田否認委任田中真紀子入閣與釣魚台爭議有關，稱只是看上她在科技事務的經驗。早稻田大學國際政治教授山本成彥卻指，這一着明顯要討好中國，因為「中國認為她非常重要」，並指文部科學大臣負責監督中日文化交流，她可從這方面改善兩國關係。

但野田同時委任前原誠司擔當國家戰略大臣，顯示他無意在釣魚台問題上退讓。前原日前公開指摘中國歪曲和偽造歷史，又質疑內地海監船駛進釣魚島海域，是想誘日本海上自衞隊出動，觸發戰爭，被中國外交部批評說法非常錯誤、迴避歷史。

前原卻沒有收口，再指日本已實質控制釣魚台，不會主動將問題交給國際法院解決，野田昨也有同樣說法，聲稱日本「控制」着釣魚台，不存在主權問題，所以不打算尋求國際法院仲裁。山本成彥指野田委前原入閣，是為平衡田中真紀子入閣，免令黨內鷹派不滿。

在颱風「杰拉華」吹襲日本過後，兩岸官船昨再現釣魚台一帶，大陸四艘海監船先後進入釣魚台附近海域，台灣兩艘漁船亦在捕魚，由一艘海巡署艦艇護航。

法新社/中央社/新華社

8萬人觀升旗 迫爆天安門

【明報專訊】在北京天安門廣場，前日有8萬多民眾漏夜等候昨天清晨的升旗儀式。至上午10時，中共中央總書記、國家主席胡錦濤等9名政治局常委，連袂向人民英雄紀念碑獻上花籃，其餘在京的黨和國家領導人均有出席。

《北京晚報》報道，天安門廣場自昨日凌晨1時半開放，所有遊客需經安檢才能進入。至3時40分，廣場人數已經飽和，在天安門城樓旁的觀禮台也座無虛席，但人潮仍不斷向天安門廣場湧去。不少人佔據台階、花壇等高處，小朋友則多「騎膊馬」。6時剛過，36人的國旗護衛隊和60人的軍樂團步出金水橋，6時11分，五星紅旗準時在國歌聲中升起，之後放飛萬隻和平鴿，在場遊客發出歡呼聲，紛紛拿出相機拍照。

胡總等9常委 紀念碑獻花籃

上午10時，胡錦濤等國家領導人及3600名首都各界代表參加向人民英雄紀念碑獻花籃儀式。首次主持儀式的北京市委書記郭金龍似乎有些緊張，聲線顫抖。18名武警將9個花籃抬上人民英雄紀念碑的平台，胡錦濤上前整理緞帶。9名政治局常委及其他領導人依次瞻仰紀念碑後離去。從2008年起，國家領導人每年國慶日都會向人民英雄紀念碑獻花籃。

上海、天津也分別有升國旗及向革命先輩獻花籃儀式，上海市委書記俞正聲和天津市委書記張高麗分別出席。此外，上海世博園「中國館」從昨日起正式改名「中華藝術宮」並對外試運營，是亞洲最大規模的藝術博物館，但需要預約進入。

來自全國各地的8萬名群眾昨日聚集北京天安門廣場，觀看升國旗儀式。（新華社）

左翼史學大師Eric Hobsbawn病逝  經典作「年代四部曲」譽近代史入門必讀

【明報專訊】英國左翼史學大師霍布斯邦（Eric Hobsbawn）昨日病逝，享年95歲。其經典著作「年代四部曲」勾勒出由法國大革命至冷戰結束的西方歷史，被視為認識近代史的不二入門書籍。英國廣播公司為霍布斯邦撰寫訃聞，讚揚他是「英國首屈一指的歷史學家及過去五十年最重要的知識分子之一」。

霍布斯邦的女兒茱利亞（Juila）證實，父親昨日清晨辭世，並透露他生前患白血病已有一段時間，最終因肺炎病逝。霍布斯邦是猶太人，1917年出生於埃及阿歷山大港，父親為商人，母親則是作家，14歲成為孤兒，跟隨叔父在柏林定居，並在當地加入共產黨。他後來為逃避納粹而前往倫敦留學，考入劍橋大學讀歷史，畢業後在倫敦大學任教，1960年代起開始聲名鵲起。

史觀深受馬克思主義影響

他最享負盛名的作品是由《革命的年代》（1962）、《資本的年代》（1975）、《帝國的年代》（1987）和《極端的年代》（1994）組成的「年代四部曲」，以左翼史筆刻劃由法國大革命至冷戰結束的西方歷史，橫跨兩個世紀，被翻譯成近40種語言。

「年代四部曲」的史學取向深受馬克思主義影響，書中重點並非在國際舞台上呼風喚雨的政治領袖，而是潛藏於歷史中的經濟和社會力量，連被視為右翼的英國歷史學家弗格森（Niall Ferguson）也譽之為「任何人學習現代歷史的最佳入門」。

加入共產黨惹爭議

霍布斯邦直至1991年英國共產黨解散前夕都是該黨黨員。其共產黨背景曾為其著作帶來爭議，尤其是含大幅篇章描述冷戰歷史的《極端的年代》一書，受到保守派和自由派學者質疑，指他對前蘇聯統治的殘暴忽略不提，有美化共產主義之嫌。但他強調，自從1956年蘇聯入侵匈牙利後，他「實際上已不再是共產黨員」。

霍布斯邦生前與英國工黨關係密切，被視為工黨從1980年代暮氣中走出的幕後推手，他以個人學識協助工黨前黨魁金諾克（Neil Kinnock）推行改革，奠定貝理雅上台的基石，但他後來對後者在伊拉克戰爭追隨美國的做法公開表示失望和不滿。現任工黨黨魁文立彬（Ed Miliband）讚揚他是「超凡的歷史學家」，將歷史從象牙塔中帶出，深刻關注國家的政治路向。

BBC/法新社

《近代中國史綱上》郭廷以: 第十一章 辛亥革命（一九一一至一九一二）

第一節　革命軍的大起

　　一、湖北的軍中革命運動

　　聯絡會黨、俠士、綠林、防營，一向為革命黨人的主要活動，及新軍成立，爭取更力。新軍以北洋為大，袁世凱視為禁臠，不容異己插足，革命黨人不易滲入。其他各省督撫，不若袁用心之深，需要新的軍事人才正急，不得不多方培植羅致，對於留學日本者，不惜從優位置。中央陸軍部、軍諮府同事延攬，其中屬於革命黨及傾向革命的頗不乏人。

　　湖北為僅次於北洋的新軍重鎮，張之洞選派前往日本習兵的學生頗多【註：一八九八年有二十四人，以後續有派遣】。畢業士官學校的吳祿貞最有才氣與革命熱忱。一九〇三年返鄂，深受張的器重，委以將弁學堂總教習、護軍全軍教習、武昌普通中學堂會辦，因得乘機宣傳。一九〇四年六月，湖北最早的革命組織科學補習所成立，繼之為一九〇六年二月的日知會【註：日知會先已存在，主幹多科學補習所舊人】，加入者大都為鄂籍的士兵、學生，次為湘籍。科學補習所準備響應在長沙起事的華興會未成。日知會與同盟會互通聲息，準備響應起於湘贛之交的革命軍，亦歸失敗。約在同時或稍後，其他大小革命團體不下二十餘。

　　張之洞提倡新教育最力，湖北、湖南學堂日增，學生出路發生問題，從軍蔚為風尚，有的是為了糊口，有的是為了救國。救國必須革命，革命需要實力，投身營伍，運動軍隊轉為己用，實為最直接而有效的捷徑。一九〇八年三月，日知會舊人聯合湖北新軍中的革命分子，發起「湖北軍隊同盟會」，七月，正式成立於武昌。他們認為軍官多缺乏冒險精神，因專事招納士兵，會員約四百餘人。為避免官方疑忌，五個月後，改稱「群治學社」。一九一〇年四月，長沙饑民暴動，群治學社擬乘機起事，以防範綦嚴而不果，遭受頓挫。同年八月，重整旗鼓，嚴密組織，再易名為「振武學社」，社員二百餘人。不久風聲外洩，復遭官方壓迫，一九一一年一月，三次易名為「文學社」，以示無政治意義，蔣翊武為社長，漢口《大江報》為言論機關。兩個月內，社員至三千人，不僅在湖北新軍中的勢力突飛猛進，且益為統一。

　　另一重要團體為一九〇七年四月在東京組織的「共進會」，以「共拼死力，有進無退，取回中國，仍為漢人作主」為號召，會員十九為同盟會的種族主義者，主急進力行。文學社的社員以來自湖北、湖南者為多，共進會的會員亦以此兩省人士為重心，此外為四川、江西、安徽籍。一九〇八年，積極向鄂、湘活動，設總機關於漢口、長沙，主之者為鄂人劉公、孫武、湘人焦達峰，交結會黨及山澤豪帥。一九一一年初，有感於會黨品類不齊，囂悍不受羈勒，發難易，而成功難，新軍文化程度較高，對於革命主義認識較為正確，訓練、紀律、實力均非會黨所及，遂改向新軍活動，會員達二千人。共進會的領導人，有的曾參加過湖北各革命組織，有的與文學社社員相識，彼此目的相同，照理似應攜手，但互相競爭仍所不免。

　　一九〇六至一九一一年，革命黨舉兵十一次，起於長江流域的三次，即湘、贛之交的醴陵、瀏陽、萍鄉之役及兩次安徽安慶之役，其餘六次起於廣東，一次起於廣西邊境，一次起於雲南邊境。一九一〇年二月，廣州新軍舉事失敗，同盟會的湘、鄂領袖，主張今後應力事北圖，不應專力廣東，邀約十一省分會會長集議。宋教仁謂上策為中央革命，聯絡北方軍隊，以東三省為後援，一舉而佔有北京，然後號令全國。中策為在長江各省同時大舉，設立政府，然後北伐。下策為據有邊地，然後徐圖進取。結果採取中策，因為革命黨在長江流域有相當基礎。湖北居中國之中，宜先倡義，由湖南、四川響應，以固上游，為湖北後援；再由山西、陝西繼起，斷京漢路，阻清軍南北交通；長江下游並舉，控制長江，封閉海口，使敵方軍艦孤立。他建議同盟會組織中部總部，作為統籌機關。後來的發展大致一如他之所說。十月，宋與于右任在上海發刊《民立報》，對於長江各省的革命宣傳，收效甚偉。

　　一九一一年，同盟會準備再於廣州發難，俟得手後分道進向長江。命鄂人居正、湘人譚人鳳前往佈置，湖北革命黨至為興奮。是年五月，得知廣州起義復告失敗，共進會不為稍餒，照舊進行，計劃聯合文學社，以武昌方面為主力，由湖南響應。文學社在新軍中的勢力大於共進會，自視不免頗高，原則上雖允與共同行動，惟未定具體方案。同盟會亦以廣州失敗，益認長江革命的重要。七月，宋教仁、譚人鳳及浙江陳其美領導的「同盟會中部總部」在上海正式成立，決定於武昌發動，與共進會、文學社的經營相配合。同時發布宣言，指出過去革命黨之不能戰勝滿清，由於「有共同之宗旨，而無共同之計劃，有切實之人才，而無切實之組織。……所以屢起屢蹶」。此後須聽命總部，不輕易一發，培元氣，養實力，同心同德，共造時機。

　　爭路問題初起，宋教仁在《民立報》猛烈攻擊清政府假國有政策之名，以圖中央集權，暗中漁利，不惜舉湘、鄂路權付與外人，使為東三省之續，湘、鄂人必須自救。四川風潮擴大，宋又勗勉川人，勿規規於消極的爭路，應積極的為全國人民請命，將專制惡毒一掃而盡。湘、鄂、粵人當同聲相應，翻然而起。八月，同盟會中部總部命文學社與共進會實行聯合。黃興先已請孫中山早籌巨款，以謀響應川人。及知湖北運動新軍已有成效，弦滿待發，乘路潮洶湧，倚為主動，確有把握。一旦佔領漢陽，「兵工廠既歸我有，則彈藥不虞缺乏，武力自足與北部之兵力敵，長江下游馳檄可定。……今既有此實力，則以武昌為中樞，湘、粵為後勁，皖、陝、蜀同時響應以牽制之，大勢可不難一舉而定。急宜乘此機會，猛力精進，較之在粵發難者，事半功倍」。在革命黨看來，武漢舉事的有利條件具備，主要是從軍事上著眼。

　　二、武昌新軍起義

　　湖北新軍有第八鎮及第二十一混成協，約共一萬七千人，加入文學社、共進會及已有聯絡的約六千人。一九一一年八、九月之間，為鎮壓四川爭路風潮，新軍被調入川，及分防宜昌、襄陽、岳州的近九千人，留守武漢的約八千人，其中約有半數與革命黨保持關係，就比例上說，情勢反於革命黨有利。時全川有如鼎沸，武漢人心惶惶，風聲鶴唳，盛傳「八月十五（西曆十月六日）殺韃子」。革命黨盱衡全局，湖北舉事不宜再待。九月十六日，文學社、共進會集議，實行合作，派人赴香港、上海邀黃興、宋教仁、譚人鳳來鄂主持，推文學社蔣翊武為革命軍臨時總司令，共進會劉公、孫武分任軍政府總理、參謀長。二十二日，武昌一度兵變。二十四日，城外砲兵暴動，謠言愈熾，外國教士謂不久將有更大事故。同一天，革命黨決定於十月六日發動。北京密令湖廣總督瑞澂防範【註：瑞澂為鴉片戰爭時琦善之孫】，瑞澂亦得相同報告，下令戒嚴，兵艦游弋江面，新軍彈藥被收，革命黨不克如期行事。

　　十月九日共進會首要在漢口俄國租界裝製炸彈，失慎爆炸，機關被俄國巡捕破獲，名冊、文告、旗幟、印信悉被搜去。蔣翊武即日在武昌發布命令，定於夜十二時起義。同日，武昌文學社亦被破獲，捕去三十餘人，內中三人於次日遇害【註：三人為彭楚藩、劉復基、楊宏勝】，列名文學社、共進會的新軍士兵人人自危，不得不死中求生。當晚七時，第八鎮工程營在武昌城內發難【註：首先開槍者為熊秉坤】，先奪軍械庫，再迎砲兵入城，進攻總督衙門，參加者約二千人。瑞澂及第八鎮統制張彪相繼逃亡，一夜之間，武昌全城為革命軍佔領。時為一九一一年十月十日，即宣統三年歲次辛亥，八月十九日。

　　革命黨機關連遭破獲，領導人星散，參加起義的資望不足，成了群龍無首的局面，不得不另推戴一有資歷的湖北人出面主持。初屬意於諮議局議長湯化龍，但他素與革命無涉，湯亦自稱不諳軍事，應於軍人中擇一為眾所信仰者出任，方可抗拒南來清兵，易得他省響應。於是強第二十一混成協協統黎元洪（一八六四至一九二八）為鄂軍都督。黎出身天津水師學堂，參加過甲午中日海戰。其後追隨張之洞，改入陸軍，去日本考察過三次。他雖非革命黨人，但有其地位，復得軍心，具有相當的號召力。十一日，黎元洪以鄂軍都督府的名義，昭告此次起義，為對滿清的民族革命，以期永建共和政體。湯化龍聯合各界，以湖北諮議局、教育會、武昌商會的名義，呼籲各省奮起。兩天之內，光復漢陽、漢口，形勢大為穩固。

　　十月十二日，革命軍擴編為步兵四協（旋增至八協），另有馬、炮、工程輜重兵，省庫有現金四百餘萬元，財政頗稱充裕。同日，對外聲明，以往條約繼續有效，賠款、外債照舊擔承，各國人民財產與既得權利，一律保護，毫無排外之意。十月十七日，鄂軍都督府組織法與鄂州約法分別公佈，以都督府為軍政府，孫武長軍務，當權的多為革命黨人，湯化龍長政事，所用多為與立憲派有淵源的士紳。鄂州約法，規定人民自由權利與義務，行政、立法、司法分立，可視為民國憲法的先聲。

　　十月十六日，漢口革命軍進攻，十月十八日，各國總領事佈告中立。革命軍「雖無指揮，亦各自奮力突進，漢族同胞徒手助戰，毀拆鐵路者，指不勝屈，甚至有婦孺親送麵包茶水入陣」。十九日，敗南來清軍。黎元洪始知時機大有可為，乃「誓師宣言，矢志恢復漢土」。

　　三、十四省獨立

　　武昌革命是由新軍先發，諮議局附從，繼起各省，大致相同。新軍所恃的是實力，諮議局憑藉的是政治社會聲望。諮議局議員一向多屬立憲派，張謇領導的一支較為溫和，梁啟超領導的一支較為急進，聲勢較張謇為大。張謇與袁世凱為近，希望他東山再出，同時和皇族載澤通聲氣。梁與載濤為近，希望開放黨禁，由梁或康有為執政，為載澤及隆裕太后所壓制。三次國會請願不成，橫受摧殘，梁派遂萌推翻現政府之念，相繼與革命黨合作。

　　湖北、湖南的革命運動是不可分的。策動武昌起義的革命黨人不少為湘籍。十月二十二日，焦達峰與陳作新在長沙實行響應，驅逐湖南巡撫，分任正、副都督，諮議局議長譚延闓（一八八〇至一九三〇）為參議院院長。焦、陳少年氣盛，為士紳所不滿，譚沖和中正，久負時譽。十月三十一日，長沙兵變，焦、陳遇害。譚出任都督，與各方均稱相得，湘局漸趨穩定，武漢無後顧憂。

　　與湖南同日起義的為陝西，參加者有新軍，有陸軍學生，有會黨，有諮議局副議長，都督為新軍管帶張鳳翽。駐防旗人抵抗兩日，將軍以下數千人被殺。

　　江西九江於十月二十四日起事，新軍標統馬毓寶為都督，長江交通被阻。三十一日，南昌諮議局紳商及學界亦宣布獨立。巡撫出走，都督初為新軍協統吳介璋，巡防營、會黨不服，一再易人，最後為日本士官學校畢業生、歷任軍職的革命黨人李烈鈞所得。

　　山西太原於十月二十九日起事，巡撫被殺，諮議局推標統閻錫山（一八八三至一九六〇）為都督，亦為士官學校畢業的革命黨人。十二月，清軍攻入山西，閻北走綏遠，翌年重返太原，自是統治山西達三十餘年。

　　十月二十七日，雲南騰越獨立，三十日昆明省城繼起，領導人為新軍協統湘人蔡鍔（一八八二至一九一六）、標統羅佩金、前講武學堂總辦李根源，雲貴總督出走。蔡任都督，羅任軍政部長，李任參議院院長。蔡曾受業於梁啟超，但與革命黨頗近，羅、李隸同盟會，三人為日本士官學校同學。

　　貴州於十一月四日獨立，領導者為籍隸同盟會的「自治學社」社長張百麟，「憲政預備會」亦預聞其事。諮議局推新軍教練日本士官學校畢業生楊藎臣為都督，張百麟及憲政預備會首領為樞密院正副院長。立憲派與革命派水火，哥老會尤為囂張。蔡鍔派唐繼堯率滇軍前來，奪得了都督。據云，梁啟超曾命蔡鍔進取四川、貴州，蔡亦欲使滇軍向外發展，以安定內部。

　　江蘇的響應以上海為早，事在十一月三日。領導人為留學日本的革命黨人陳其美。革命軍有了上海，也有了餉源軍火。同月五日，江蘇巡撫程德全從立憲派之請，在蘇州獨立。他是第一個參加革命的滿清疆吏，張謇實有促成之力，目的在牽制革命黨。接踵而起的為鎮江等處，而以南京的關係為大。十一月八日，南京城外新軍第九鎮統制徐紹楨舉事，攻城不下，東退鎮江。得江、浙聯軍的協助，二次進攻，經過八天戰鬥，擊敗了江南提督張勳，十二月二日佔領南京，長江以南遂無清軍踪跡。時漢陽不守，武昌危殆，南京勝利使革命軍聲威重振，滬軍都督陳其美的策劃支援，為功最多。

　　浙江諮議局議長為立憲派，副議長為革命黨，原擬以和平手段促成獨立，巡撫與駐防將軍遲疑不決。十一月五日，新軍佔領杭州，推立憲派的湯壽潛為都督，革命黨人任總司令及政事部長。

　　廣西響應始於柳州，巡撫沈秉堃及諮議局因新軍迫脅，十一月七日，宣布獨立，沈為都督，布政使王芝祥副之。甫二日，巡防營兵變，沈、王以北伐為名離開桂林，都督為廣西提督陸榮廷所得，從此據有廣西十年。

　　安徽的響應始於壽州。諮議局擬防行江蘇之例，使政權轉移。議尚未定，安慶新軍已準備行動，乃於十一月八日宣布獨立。為了爭奪都督，擾攘月餘，後歸於留學日本的革命黨人孫毓筠。

　　武昌起事時，廣州戒備至嚴，革命黨人活動亦力。十月二十四日，廣州將軍鳳山遇炸而死，諮議局及士紳商議自保，兩廣總督張鳴岐先允而後悔，省城附近革命軍紛起，水師提督李準通款於革命黨。十一月九日，諮議局及各社團議決獨立，舉胡漢民為都督。

　　福建立憲派與革命黨頗稱融洽。十一月初，盛傳福州駐防旗軍將攻擊新軍，諮議局決定獨立，新軍協統許崇智發難，閩浙總督自盡，福州將軍被殺。十一月十日，全城大定，新軍統制孫道仁任都督，革命黨人任政務院長，立憲派的諮議局議長任民政部長。

　　山東巡撫因濟南各界聯合會及新軍要求，十一月十三日宣布獨立。時袁世凱已重握北京政權，山東新軍屬於北洋系，態度轉變，獨立取消，為時僅十二日，惟革命軍仍據有煙台。

　　辛亥革命實際是起於四川，九月八日，革命黨、哥老會的「同志軍」，進攻成都時，即可算是爆發。湖北、湖南、陝西、雲南、貴州獨立，四川已是四面楚歌。十一月二十二日，重慶獨立，川漢鐵路督辦端方為所統湖北新軍殺於資州。總督趙爾豐知不可為，釋放了為爭路問題被拘的諮議局議長蒲殿俊、羅綸等，雙方成立協議，蒲任都督。十一月二十七日，成都宣布獨立，准軍士自由十天，軍紀蕩然。十二月八日，巡防營譁變，蒲殿俊去職，陸軍小學總辦日本士官學校畢業生尹昌衡繼任總督，革命黨當權，立憲派失勢，但情況並不曾好轉【註：十一月二十二日，尹昌衡殺趙爾豐。一九一二年三月，重慶軍政府併入成都，都督仍為尹昌衡】。

　　除以上各省外，十月，奉天諮議局與新軍謀獨立，為總督趙爾巽及起自草澤的巡防營前路統領張作霖（一八七五至一九二八）壓制。十一月，改設國民保安會，趙爾巽任會長，仍擁護清廷，革命黨雖續在各地起事，而影響不大。吉林、黑龍江亦仿照奉天之例，各設保安會。十二月，河南革命黨人策動豫西綠林舉事，開封學界準備響應而未成。翌年一月，直隸灤州部分新軍獨立。為時僅八日。同月，新疆伊犁新軍獨立。

　　長江下游為清軍與革命軍的主要角逐場，海軍舉足輕重。清軍集中長江的艦隊由海軍提督薩鎮冰統率，黎元洪與薩是師生，湯化龍與海軍參謀湯薌銘是昆仲，分勸他們反正。海軍官兵知識較高，同情革命者不少。十一月中旬，各艦自武昌下駛九江，歸附革命軍。停泊上海、鎮江的海軍船艇則已先期輸誠，清軍無法飛渡而南。

Jeffrey D. Sachs: Finding the Keys to National Prosperity

NEW YORK – In many of history’s most successful economic reforms, clever countries have learned from the policy successes of others, adapting them to local conditions. In the long history of economic development, eighteenth-century Britain learned from Holland; early nineteenth-century Prussia learned from Britain and France; mid-nineteenth-century Meiji Japan learned from Germany; post-World War II Europe learned from the United States; and Deng Xiaoping’s China learned from Japan.

Through a process of institutional borrowing and creative adaptation, successful economic institutions and cutting-edge technologies spread around the world, and thereby boost global growth. Today, too, there are some great opportunities for this kind of “policy arbitrage,” if more countries would only take the time to learn from other countries’ successes.

For example, while many countries are facing a jobs crisis, one part of the capitalist world is doing just fine: northern Europe, including Germany, the Netherlands, and Scandinavia. Germany’s unemployment rate this past summer was around 5.5%, and its youth unemployment rate was around 8% – remarkably low compared with many other high-income economies.

How do northern Europeans do it? All of them use active labor market policies, including flex time, school-to-work apprenticeships (especially Germany), and extensive job training and matching. 

Likewise, in an age of chronic budget crises, Germany, Sweden, and Switzerland run near-balanced budgets. All three rely on budget rules that call for cyclically adjusted budget balance. And all three take a basic precaution to keep their entitlement spending under control: a retirement age of at least 65. This keeps costs much lower than in France, and Greece, for example, where the retirement age is 60 or below, and where pension outlays are soaring as a result.

In an age of rising health-care costs, most high-income countries – Canada, the European Union’s Western economies, and Japan – manage to keep their total health-care costs below 12% of GDP, with excellent health outcomes, while the US spends nearly 18% of GDP, yet with decidedly mediocre health outcomes. And, America’s is the only for-profit health system of the entire bunch. A new report by the US Institute of Medicine has found that America’s for-profit system squanders around $750 billion, or 5% of GDP, on waste, fraud, duplication, and bureaucracy.     

In an age of soaring oil costs, a few countries have made a real difference in energy efficiency. The OECD countries, on average, use 160 kilograms of oil-equivalent energy for every $1,000 of GDP (measured at purchasing power parity). But, in energy-efficient Switzerland, energy use is just 100 kg per $1,000 of GDP, and in Demark it is just 110 kg, compared with 190 kg in the US.

In an age of climate change, several countries are demonstrating how to move to a low-carbon economy. On average, the rich countries emit 2.3 kg of CO2 for every kg of oil-equivalent unit of energy. But France emits just 1.4 kg, owing to its enormous success in deploying safe, low-cost nuclear energy.

Sweden, with its hydropower, is even lower, at 0.9 kg. And, while Germany is abandoning domestic production of nuclear energy for political reasons, we can bet that it will nonetheless continue to import electricity from France’s nuclear plants.

In an age of intense technological competition, countries that combine public and private research and development (R&D) financing are outpacing the rest. The US continues to excel, with huge recent breakthroughs in Mars exploration and genomics, though it is now imperiling that excellence through budget cuts. Meanwhile, Sweden and South Korea are now excelling economically on the basis of R&D spending of around 3.5% of GDP, while Israel’s R&D outlays stand at a remarkable 4.7% of GDP.

In an age of rising inequality, at least some countries have narrowed their wealth and income gaps. Brazil is the recent pacesetter, markedly expanding public education and systematically attacking remaining pockets of poverty through targeted transfer programs. As a result, income inequality in Brazil is declining.

And, in an age of pervasive anxiety, Bhutan is asking deep questions about the meaning and nature of happiness itself. In search of a more balanced society that combines economic prosperity, social cohesion, and environmental sustainability, Bhutan famously pursues Gross National Happiness rather than Gross National Product. Many other countries – including the United Kingdom – are now following Bhutan’s lead in surveying their citizenry about life satisfaction.

The countries highest on the ladder of life satisfaction are Denmark, Finland, and Norway. Yet there is hope for those at lower latitudes as well. Tropical Costa Rica also ranks near the top of the happiness league. What we can say is that all of the happiest countries emphasize equality, solidarity, democratic accountability, environmental sustainability, and strong public institutions.

So here is one model economy: German labor-market policies, Swedish pensions, French low-carbon energy, Canadian health care, Swiss energy efficiency, American scientific curiosity, Brazilian anti-poverty programs, and Costa Rican tropical happiness.

Of course, back in the real world, most countries will not achieve such bliss anytime soon. But, by opening our eyes to policy successes abroad, we would surely speed the path to national improvement in countries around the world.

Jeffrey D. Sachs is a professor at Columbia University, Director of its Earth Institute, and a special adviser to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon. His work focuses on economic development and international aid, was he was Director of the UN Millennium Project from 2002 to 2006. His books include The End of Poverty and Common Wealth.

Stephen S. Roach: Macro Malpractice

NEW HAVEN – The wrong medicine is being applied to America’s economy. Having misdiagnosed the ailment, policymakers have prescribed untested experimental medicine with potentially grave side effects.

The patient is the American consumer – the world’s biggest by far, but now in the throes of the worst funk since the Great Depression. Recent data on consumer spending in the United States have been terrible. Growth in inflation-adjusted US personal consumption expenditures has just been revised down to 1.5% in the second quarter of 2012, and appears to be on track for a similarly anemic increase in the third quarter.

Worse, these numbers are just the latest in what has now been a four-and-a-half-year-old trend. From the first quarter of 2008 through the second quarter of 2012, annualized growth in real consumption spending has averaged a mere 0.7% – all the more extraordinary when compared with the pre-crisis trend of 3.6% in the decade ending in 2007.

The disease is a protracted balance-sheet recession that has turned a generation of America’s consumers into zombies – the economic walking dead. Think Japan, and its corporate zombies of the 1990’s. Just as they wrote the script for the first of Japan’s lost decades, their counterparts are now doing the same for the US economy.

Two bubbles – property and credit – enabled a decade of excessive consumption. Since their collapse in 2007, US households have understandably become fixated on repairing the damage. That means paying down debt and rebuilding savings, leaving consumer demand mired in protracted weakness.

Yet the treatment prescribed for this malady has compounded the problem. Steeped in denial, the Federal Reserve is treating the disease as a cyclical problem – deploying the full force of monetary accommodation to compensate for what it believes to be a temporary shortfall in aggregate demand.

The convoluted logic behind this strategy is quite disturbing – not only for the US, but also for the global economy. There is nothing cyclical about the lasting aftershocks of a balance-sheet recession that have now been evident for nearly five years. Indeed, balance-sheet repair has barely begun for US households. The personal-saving rate stood at just 3.7% in August 2012 – up from the 1.5% low of 2005, but half the 7.5% average recorded in the last three decades of the twentieth century.

Moreover, the debt overhang remains massive. The overall level of household indebtedness stood at 113% of disposable personal income in mid-2012 – down 21 percentage points from its pre-crisis peak of 134% in 2007, but still well above the 1970-1999 norm of around 75%. In other words, Americans have much farther to go on the road to balance-sheet repair – which hardly suggests a temporary, or cyclical, shortfall in consumer demand.

Moreover, the Fed’s approach is severely compromised by the so-called zero bound on interest rates. Having run out of basis points to cut from interest rates, the Fed has turned to the quantity dimension of the credit cycle – injecting massive doses of liquidity into the collapsed veins of zombie consumers.

To rationalize the efficacy of this approach, the Fed has rewritten the script on the transmission mechanism of discretionary monetary policy. Unlike the days of yore, when cutting the price of credit could boost borrowing, “quantitative easing” purportedly works by stimulating asset and credit markets. The wealth effects generated by frothy financial markets are then presumed to rejuvenate long-dormant “animal spirits” and get consumers spending again, irrespective of lingering balance-sheet strains.

There is more: Once the demand problem is cured, according to this argument, companies will start hiring again. And then, presto – an unconventional fix magically satisfies the Fed’s long-neglected mandate to fight unemployment.

But the Fed’s policy gambit has taken the US down the wrong road. Indeed, the Fed has doubled down on an approach aimed at recreating the madness of an asset- and credit-dependent consumption model – precisely the mistake that pushed the US economy toward the abyss in 2003-2006.

Just as two previous rounds of quantitative easing failed to accelerate US households’ balance-sheet repair, there is little reason to believe that “QE3” will do the trick. Quantitative easing is a blunt instrument, at best, and operates through highly circuitous – and thus dubious – channels. Significantly, it does next to nothing to alleviate the twin problems of excess leverage and inadequate saving. Policies aimed directly at debt forgiveness and enhanced saving incentives – contentious, to be sure – would at least address zombie consumers’ balance-sheet problems.
Moreover, the side effects of quantitative easing are significant. Many worry about an upsurge in inflation, though, given the outsize slack in the global economy – and the likelihood that it will persist for years to come – that is not high on my watch list.

Far more disconcerting is the willingness of major central banks – not just the Fed, but also the European Central Bank, the Bank of England, and the Bank of Japan – to inject massive amounts of excess liquidity into asset markets – excesses that cannot be absorbed by sluggish real economies. That puts central banks in the destabilizing position of abdicating control over financial markets. For a world beset by seemingly endemic financial instability, this could prove to be the most destructive development of all.

The developing world is up in arms over the major central banks’ reckless tactics. Emerging economies’ leaders fear spillover effects in commodity markets and distortions of exchange rates and capital flows that may compromise their own focus on financial stability. While it is difficult to track the cross-border flows fueled by quantitative easing in the so-called advanced world, these fears are far from groundless. Liquidity injections into a zero-interest-rate developed world send return-starved investors scrambling for growth opportunities elsewhere.

As the global economy has gone from crisis to crisis in recent years, the cure has become part of the disease. In an era of zero interest rates and quantitative easing, macroeconomic policy has become unhinged from a tough post-crisis reality. Untested medicine is being used to treat the wrong ailment – and the chronically ill patient continues to be neglected.


Stephen S. Roach was Chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia and the firm's Chief Economist, and currently is a senior fellow at Yale University’s Jackson Institute of Global Affairs and a senior lecturer at Yale’s School of Management. His most recent book is The Next Asia.

Naomi Wolf: The Vagina Chronicles

NEW YORK – Has there really been a sexual revolution? One of the themes that I explore in my new book, Vagina: A New Biography, is that the West’s supposedly sexually liberated societies, in which sexual images and content are available everywhere, have not really been all that liberating for women. Many of the reactions to my book tend to confirm that belief.

Many responses were positive: the book is Publishers Weekly’s top science book of the fall. But the tone of some of the criticism – from “mystic woo-woo about the froo froo” to “bad news for everybody who has one” – suggests that even a culture in which millions of women are devouring a novel about sadomasochism, Fifty Shades of Grey, still has problems discussing women’s sexuality in a positive, empowering way.

We need to have that conversation. Around the world, many women are targeted because of their sexuality: they are genitally mutilated, married off as children, raped with impunity, stoned for “fornication” and other sexual offenses, and told that their desire makes them sinful and worthy of abuse. Natasha Walter, who works with refugee women in London, reports that most of the persecution they are fleeing is sexual – and that the law does not validate the grounds for their asylum applications. Our societies do not take seriously women’s sexual integrity or crimes against it.

The modern history of female sexuality has been plagued with misinformation, embarrassment, and sexual frustration. When Shere Hite published The Hite Report: A Nationwide Study of Female Sexuality in 1976, about one-third of the US women surveyed reported that they did not have orgasms during sex when they wished to. Hite’s important assertion that there is more to female sexual response than penetration triggered a wave of information about female sexuality. Although The Hite Report initially spurred great controversy, in the end it was broadly accepted that women’s pleasure and sexual well-being mattered and deserved respectful inquiry.

But, in the past four decades, we have veered from informed discussion about women and their bodies into a raunchy culture of celebrity sex videos and zipless hookups in which women’s desire, arousal, and satisfaction – let alone their (or men’s) emotional needs – rarely play a part. Even in this “enlightened” age, many find it difficult to acknowledge new scientific data showing that female sexuality does not diminish or weaken women, but strengthens them in some ways – whoever they are, of whatever age or sexual orientation, whether alone or in relationships.

Some critics have been upset by my argument that the neurotransmitter dopamine, which is related to motivation, focus, and reward, is part of what can make sexual pleasure empowering for women. This argument is based on the latest science about dopamine’s role in arousal (as James Pfaus and his team at Concordia University in Montreal have documented), as well as on well-established summaries of the literature, such as David Linden’s The Compass of Pleasure.

This research indicates that positively experienced mind states are boosted when women are supported by the society in which they live and allow themselves to think about and anticipate rewarding sexual experience. (They are inhibited, of course, when women fear being stoned, mocked, shamed, raped or brutalized in response to their desire).

Similarly, a rich body of data, including many important studies by Alessandra Rellini and Cindy Meston, now links women’s arousal to their autonomic nervous systems (Rellini and Meston have even found that rape can affect women’s baseline ANS years after the assault). These and other studies link female arousal to women’s freedom from “bad stress” and support in relaxation – and in their having some sense of control over events affecting them. In other words, if you want a woman to wish enthusiastically to sleep with you for the rest of her life, you must act as a teammate on the issues that affect her stress levels. That is nothing if not a “feminist” validation of many women’s intuitive experiences and needs.

In fact, female and male sexual response differs in important ways: the length of response cycles, the role of “bad stress,” and the complexity of pelvic neural wiring (which in men is fairly standard, but in women is highly variegated and individualized). This finding should help women be less judgmental about the unique nature of their sexual responses.

Here is one statistic that says it all: The Association of Reproductive Health Professionals claims that 30% of women do not reach orgasm regularly when they wish to, a proportion that has not budged since The Hite Report. Moreover, while findings vary, some estimates put the prevalence rate of “hypoactive sexual desire disorder”– a loss of libido – at about one-third of American women.

The fact that science is finding connections between women’s sexual experience and their emotions and perception should not be cause for mockery, but for curiosity and respectful investigation of the facts. There are plenty of data on male sexuality and the male brain, and sound new science on the mind-body connection is transforming medical practice, from cardiology’s use of meditation to the use of talk therapies in treating breast cancer. If we respect both female sexuality and the female mind, surely we should not fear discussing the connections between the two that scientific research is uncovering.

It seems odd to me that one would have to make a case for this in 2012. But, as we should know by now, the next sexual revolution – the one that actually values women as leaders, intellectuals, and sexual beings – is long overdue.


Naomi Wolf played a leading role in so-called “third-wave” feminism and as an advocate of “power feminism,” which holds that women must assert themselves politically in order to achieve their goals. She advised the presidential campaigns of Bill Clinton and Al Gore. Her books include The Beauty Myth, The End of America and, most recently, Vagina: A Biography.

Eric Hobsbawm obituary - Historian in the Marxist tradition with a global reach

Eric Hobsbawm became Britain's most respected historian. Photograph: Karen Robinson

If Eric Hobsbawm had died 25 years ago, the obituaries would have described him as Britain's most distinguished Marxist historian and would have left it more or less there. Yet by the time of his death at the age of 95, Hobsbawm had a achieved a unique position in the country's intellectual life. In his later years Hobsbawm became arguably Britain's most respected historian of any kind, recognised if not endorsed on the right as well as the left, and one of a tiny handful of historians of any era to enjoy genuine national and world renown.

Unlike some others, Hobsbawm achieved this wider recognition without in any major way revolting against either Marxism or Marx. In his 94th year he published How to Change the World, a vigorous defence of Marx's continuing relevance in the aftermath of the banking collapse of 2008-10. What is more, he achieved his culminating reputation at a time when the socialist ideas and projects that animated so much of his writing for well over half a century were in historic disarray, and worse – as he himself was always unflinchingly aware.
In a profession notorious for microscopic preoccupations, few historians have ever commanded such a wide field in such detail or with such authority. To the last, Hobsbawm considered himself to be essentially a 19th-century historian, but his sense of that and other centuries was both unprecedentedly broad and unusually cosmopolitan.

The sheer scope of his interest in the past, and his exceptional command of what he knew, continued to humble those who talked to him and those who read him, most of all in the four-volume Age of... series in which he distilled the history of the capitalist world from 1789 to 1991. "Hobsbawm's capacity to store and retrieve detail has now reached a scale normally approached only by large archives with big staffs," wrote Neal Ascherson. Both in his knowledge of historic detail and in his extraordinary powers of synthesis, so well displayed in that four-volume project, he was unrivalled.

Hobsbawm was born in Alexandria, a good place for a historian of empire , in 1917, a good year for a communist. He was second-generation British, the grandson of a Polish Jew and cabinet-maker who came to London in the 1870s. Eight children, who included Leopold, Eric's father, were born in England and all took British citizenship at birth (Hobsbawm's Uncle Harry in due course became the first Labour mayor of Paddington).

But Eric was British of no ordinary background. Another uncle, Sidney, went to Egypt before the first world war and found a job there in a shipping office for Leopold. There, in 1914, Leopold Hobsbawm met Nelly Gruen, a young Viennese from a middle-class family who had been given a trip to Egypt as a prize for completing her school studies. The two got engaged, but war broke out and they were separated. The couple eventually married in Switzerland in 1916, returning to Egypt for the birth of Eric, their first child, in June 1917.
"Every historian has his or her lifetime, a private perch from which to survey the world," he said in his 1993 Creighton lecture, one of several occasions in his later years when he attempted to relate his own lifetime to his own writing. "My own perch is constructed, among other materials, of a childhood in the Vienna of the 1920s, the years of Hitler's rise in Berlin, which determined my politics and my interest in history, and the England, and especially the Cambridge of the 1930s, which confirmed both."

In 1919, the young family returned to settle in Vienna, where Eric went to elementary school, a period he later recalled in a 1995 television documentary which featured pictures of a recognisably skinny young Viennese Hobsbawm in shorts and knee socks. Politics made their impact around this time. Eric's first political memory was in Vienna in 1927, when workers burned down the Palace of Justice. The first political conversation that he could recall took place in an Alpine sanatorium in these years, too. Two motherly Jewish women were discussing Leon Trotsky. "Say what you like," said one to the other, "but he's a Jewish boy called Bronstein."

In 1929, his father died suddenly of a heart attack. Two years later his mother died of TB. Eric was 14, and his Uncle Sidney took charge once more, taking Eric and his sister Nancy to live in Berlin. As a teenager in Weimar Republic Berlin, Hobsbawm inescapably became politicised. He read Marx for the first time, and became a communist.

Hobsbawm could always remember the winter's day in January 1933 when, emerging from the Halensee S-Bahn station on his way home from his school, the celebrated Prinz Heinrich Gymnasium, he saw a newspaper headline announcing Hitler's election as chancellor. Around this time he joined the Socialist Schoolboys, which he described as "de facto part of the communist movement" and sold its publication, Schulkampf ("School Struggle"). He kept the organisation's duplicator under his bed and, if his later facility for writing was any guide, probably wrote most of the articles too. The family remained in Berlin until 1933, when Sidney Hobsbawm was posted by his employers to live in England.

The gangly teenage boy who settled with his sister in Edgware in 1934 described himself later as "completely continental and German speaking". School, though, was "not a problem" because the English education system was "way behind" the German. A cousin in Balham introduced him to jazz for the first time – the "unanswerable sound", he called it. The moment of conversion, he wrote some 60 years later, was when he first heard the Duke Ellington band "at its most imperial". Never satisfied to be anything less than the master of anything that absorbed him, Hobsbawm spent a period in the 1950s as jazz critic of the New Statesman, and published a Penguin Special, The Jazz Scene, on the subject in 1959 under the pen-name Francis Newton (many years later it was reissued with Hobsbawm identified as the author).

Learning to speak English properly for the first time, Eric became a pupil at Marylebone grammar school and in 1936 he won a scholarship to King's College, Cambridge, where at one point he had rooms on a staircase on which his only two neighbours were AE Housman and Ludwig Wittgenstein. It was at this time that a saying became common among his Cambridge communist friends: "Is there anything that Hobsbawm doesn't know?" He became a member of the legendary Cambridge Apostles. "All of us thought that the crisis of the 1930s was the final crisis of capitalism," he wrote 40 years later. But, he added, "It was not."
When war broke out, Hobsbawm volunteered, as many communists did, for intelligence work. But his politics, which were never a secret, led to rejection. Instead he became an improbable sapper in 560 Field Company, which he later described as "a very working-class unit trying to build some patently inadequate defences against invasion on the coasts of East Anglia". This, too, was a formative experience for the often aloof young intellectual prodigy. "There was something sublime about them and about Britain at that time" he wrote. "That wartime experience converted me to the British working class. They were not very clever, except for the Scots and Welsh, but they were very, very good people".

Hobsbawm married his first wife, Muriel Seaman, in 1943. After the war, returning to Cambridge, Hobsbawm made another choice, abandoning a planned doctorate on north African agrarian reform in favour of research on the Fabians. It was a move which opened the door to both a lifetime of study of the 19th century and an equally long-lasting preoccupation with the problems of the left. In 1947, he got his first tenured job, as a history lecturer at Birkbeck College, London, where he was to remain for much of his teaching life.
With the onset of the cold war, a very British academic McCarthyism meant that the Cambridge lectureship which Hobsbawm always coveted never materialised. He shuttled between Cambridge and London, one of the principal organisers and driving forces of the Communist Party Historians Group, a glittering radical academy which brought together some of the most prominent historians of the post-war era. Its members also included Christopher Hill, Rodney Hilton, AL Morton, EP Thompson, John Saville and, later, Raphael Samuel. Whatever else it achieved, the CP Historians Group, about which Hobsbawm wrote an authoritative essay in 1978, certainly provided a nucleus for many of his first steps as a major historical writer.

Hobsbawm's first book, an edited collection of documents from the Fabian era, Labour's Turning Point, published in 1948, belongs firmly to this CP-dominated era, as does his engagement in the once celebrated "standard of living" debate about the economic consequences of the early industrial revolution, in which he and RM Hartwell traded arguments in successive numbers of the Economic History Review. The foundation of the Past and Present journal – now the most lasting, if fully independent, legacy of the Historians Group – also belongs to this period.

Hobsbawm was never to leave the Communist party and always thought of himself as part of an international communist movement. For many, this remained the insuperable obstacle to an embrace of his writing. Yet he always remained very much a licensed free-thinker within the party's ranks. Over Hungary in 1956, an event which split the CP and drove many intellectuals out of the party, he was a voice of protest who nevertheless remained.
Yet, as with his contemporary, Christopher Hill, who left the CP at this time, the political trauma of 1956 and the start of a lastingly happy second marriage combined in some way to trigger a sustained and fruitful period of historical writing which was to establish fame and reputation. In 1959, he published his first major work, Primitive Rebels, a strikingly original account, particularly for those times, of southern European rural secret societies and millenarian cultures (he was still writing about the subject as recently as 2011). He returned to these themes again a decade later, in Captain Swing, a detailed study of rural protest in early 19th-century England co-authored with George Rude, and Bandits, a more wide-ranging attempt at synthesis. These works are reminders that Hobsbawm was both a bridge between European and British historiography and a forerunner of the notable rise of the study of social history in post-1968 Britain.

By this time, though, Hobsbawm had already published the first of the works on which both his popular and academic reputations still rest. A collection of some of his most important essays, Labouring Men, appeared in 1964 (a second collection, Worlds of Labour, was to follow 20 years later). But it was Industry and Empire (1968), a compelling summation of much of Hobsbawm's work on Britain and the industrial revolution, which achieved the highest esteem. For more than 30 years, it has rarely been out of print.

Even more influential in the long term was the "Age of" series, which he began with The Age of Revolution: 1789-1848, first published in 1962. This was followed in 1975 by The Age of Capital: 1848-1875 and in 1987 by The Age of Empire: 1875-1914. A fourth volume, The Age of Extremes: 1914-91, more quirky and speculative but in some respects the most remarkable and admirable of all, extended the sequence in 1994.

The four volumes embodied all of Hobsbawm's best qualities – the sweep combined with the telling anecdote and statistical grasp, the attention to the nuance and significance of events and words, and above all, perhaps, the unrivalled powers of synthesis (nowhere better displayed than in a classic summary of mid-19th century capitalism on the very first page of the second volume). The books were not conceived as a tetralogy, but as they appeared, they acquired individual and cumulative classic status. They were an example, Hobsbawm wrote, of "what the French call 'haute vulgarisation'" (he did not mean this self-deprecatingly), and they became, in the words of one reviewer, "part of the mental furniture of educated Englishmen".

Hobsbawm's first marriage had collapsed in 1951. During the 1950s, he had another relationship which resulted in the birth of his first son, Joss Benathan, but the boy's mother did not want to marry. In 1962, he married again, this time to Marlene Schwarz, of Austrian descent. They moved to Hampstead, and bought a small second home in Wales. They had two children, Andrew and Julia.

In the 1970s, Hobsbawm's widening fame as a historian was accompanied by a growing reputation as a writer about his own times. Though he had a historian's respect for the Communist party's centralist discipline, Hobsbawm's intellectual eminence gave him an independence which won the respect of communism's toughest critics, such as Isaiah Berlin. It also ensured him the considerable accolade that not one of Hobsbawm's books was ever published in the Soviet Union. Thus armed and protected, Hobsbawm ranged fearlessly across the condition of the left, mostly in the pages of the CP's monthly Marxism Today, the increasingly heterodox publication of which he became the house deity.

His conversations with the Italian communist – and now state president – Giorgio Napolitano date from these years, and were published as The Italian Road to Socialism. But his most influential political writings centred on his increasing certainty that the European labour movement had ceased to be capable of bearing the transformational role assigned to it by earlier Marxists. These uncompromisingly revisionist articles were collected under the general heading The Forward March of Labour Halted.

By 1983, when Neil Kinnock became the leader of the Labour party at the depth of its electoral fortunes, Hobsbawm's influence had begun to extend far beyond the CP and deep into Labour itself. Kinnock publicly acknowledged his debt to Hobsbawm and allowed himself to be interviewed by the man he described as as "my favourite Marxist". Though he strongly disapproved of much of what later took shape as "New Labour", which he saw, among other things, as historically cowardly, Hobsbawm was without question the single most influential intellectual forerunner of Labour's increasingly iconoclastic 1990s revisionism.

His status was underlined in 1998, when Tony Blair made him a Companion of Honour, a few months after Hobsbawm celebrated his 80th birthday. In its citation, Downing Street said Hobsbawm continued to publish works that "address problems in history and politics that have re-emerged to disturb the complacency of Europe".

In his later years, Hobsbawm enjoyed widespread reputation and respect. His 80th and 90th birthday celebrations were attended by a Who's Who of leftwing and liberal intellectual Britain. Throughout the late years, he continued to publish volumes of essays, including On History (1997) and Uncommon People (1998), works in which Dizzy Gillespie and Salvatore Giuliano sat naturally side by side in the index as testimony to the range of Hobsbawm's abiding curiosity. A highly successful autobiography, Interesting Times, followed in 2002, and Globalisation, Democracy and Terrorism in 2007.

More famous in his extreme old age than probably at any other period of his life, he broadcast regularly, lectured widely and was a regular performer at the Hay literary festival, of which he became president at the age of 93, following the death of Lord Bingham of Cornhill. A fall in late 2010 severely reduced his mobility, but his intellect and his willpower remained unvanquished, as did his social and cultural life, thanks to Marlene's efforts, love – and cooking.

That his writings continued to command such audiences at a time when his politics were in some ways so eclipsed was the kind of disjunction which exasperated rightwingers, but it was a paradox on which the subtle judgment of this least complacent of intellects feasted. In his later years, he liked to quote EM Forster that he was "always standing at a slight angle to the universe". Whether the remark says more about Hobsbawm or about the universe was something that he enjoyed disputing, confident in the knowledge that it was in some senses a lesson for them both.

He is survived by Marlene and his three children, seven grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

• Eric John Ernest Hobsbawm, historian, born 9 June 1917; died 1 October 2012

Eric Hobsbawm: a life in quotes

The influential historian on communism, capitalism, war, nations and the death of his parents

Eric Hobsbawm at his London home in 2007. Photograph: Anne Katrin Purkiss/Rex Features

On his academic career: "Every historian has his or her lifetime, a private perch from which to survey the world. My own perch is constructed, among other materials, of a childhood in the Vienna of the 1920s, the years of Hitler's rise in Berlin, which determined my politics and my interest in history, and the England, and especially the Cambridge, of the 1930s, which confirmed both." 1993 Creighton lecture

On history: "History is being invented in vast quantities … it's more important to have historians, especially sceptical historians, than ever before." 2002 Observer interview
On communism: "I was a loyal Communist party member for two decades before 1956 and therefore silent about a number of things about which it's reasonable not to be silent." 2002 interview

On socialism and capitalism: "Impotence therefore faces both those who believe in what amounts to a pure, stateless, market capitalism, a sort of international bourgeois anarchism, and those who believe in a planned socialism uncontaminated by private profit-seeking. Both are bankrupt. The future, like the present and the past, belongs to mixed economies in which public and private are braided together in one way or another. But how? That is the problem for everybody today, but especially for people on the left." 2009 Guardian article

On the death of his parents: "In the late evening of Friday 8 February 1929 my father returned from another of his increasingly desperate visits to town in search of money to earn or borrow, and collapsed outside the front door of our house. My mother heard his groans through the upstairs windows and, when she opened them on the freezing air of that spectacularly hard alpine winter, she heard him calling to her. Within a few minutes he was dead … In dying, he also condemned to death my mother … 'Something has broken inside me,' she wrote to her sister." Interesting Times, his 2002 memoir

On Tony Blair: "Labour prime ministers who glory in trying to be warlords – subordinate warlords particularly – certainly stick in my gullet." 2002 interview

On nations: "Nations exist not only as functions of a particular kind of territorial state or the aspiration to establish one … but also in the context of a particular stage of technological and economic development. Most students today will agree that standard national languages, spoken or written, cannot emerge as such before printing, mass literacy and hence, mass schooling. It has even been argued that popular spoken Italian as an idiom capable of expressing the full range of what a 20th-century language needs outside the domestic and face-to-face sphere of communication, is only being constructed today as a function of the needs of national television programming." Nations and Nationalism since 1780, published in 1990

On war in the 20th century: "I lived through the first world war, when 10 million to 20 million people were killed. At the time, the British, French and Germans believed it was necessary. We disagree. In the second world war, 50 million died. Was the sacrifice worthwhile? I frankly cannot face the idea that it was not. I can't say it would have been better if the world was run by Adolf Hitler." 2002 Guardian profile

On war in the 21st century: "A tentative forecast: war in the 21st century is not likely to be as murderous as it was in the 20th. But armed violence, creating disproportionate suffering and loss, will remain omnipresent and endemic – occasionally epidemic – in a large part of the world. The prospect of a century of peace is remote." 2002 Counterpunch article

On his writing room's bookshelves: "Most of them, however, are filled with the foreign editions of my books. Their numbers amaze and please me and they still keep coming as new titles are translated and some fresh vernacular markets – Hindi, Vietnamese – open up. As I can't read most of them, they serve no purpose other than as a bibliographic record and, in moments of discouragement, as a reminder that an old cosmopolitan has not entirely failed in 50 years of trying to communicate history to the world's readers." 2008 Guardian article

明報社評: 國慶日反思香港亂局 極左思維不利繁榮穩定

今年國慶日，適逢緊接覑周日的中秋節，對享有5天工作制的打工仔而言，有連續4日假期，際此秋高氣爽，享受幾日悠閒，是一大美事。不過，這幾個月來，政事蜩螗、社會躁動不安，趁此稍為寧謐日子，心境較為平和之際，權力當局梳理一下紛亂時局，重新認識一些事態或反思一些做法，或有助於香港局勢撥亂反正。

左派描繪「敵對勢力」  使人忐忑不安

梁振英政府執政3個月以來，事態一浪接一浪，政府窮於應付，感覺上使人覺得香港「很亂」。近期，左派陣營對這3個月來事態的認知，使人深感不安，他們上綱上線地認為是利益集團、港英餘孽、民主派等要搞亂香港，甚至說是對特區政府以至中央發動總攻擊云云；在反對德育及國民教育科運動和新界東北規劃爭議，他們都「製造」幕後黑手，認為是敵對勢力有預謀、有計劃、有組織地要癱瘓香港。不過，在香港生活，稍為關心政治社會事態的人，對左派陣營描繪的「敵對勢力」，有點丈八金剛，摸不覑頭腦，因為事態都很清晰淺顯，看不到有什麼陰謀詭計，我們認為，除非有證據，指證黑手的存在，若捕風捉影危言聳聽，這類陰謀論對港有害無益；同一準則，也適用於指控特區政府的人。

回顧過去幾個月，梁班子接連出事是證據確鑿的。特首梁振英寓所有僭建物，原任發展局長麥齊光20多年前與同事的租樓、賣樓安排涉嫌違法，現任發展局長陳茂波的妻子涉及經營ṃ房等，都是事實，傳媒循公開資料揭露情，是單純的新聞採訪，絕無什麼動機和不良目的。除了麥齊光涉嫌違法被廉政公署拘捕，梁振英和陳茂波涉及的情，只要他們開誠布公，向公泷如實交代，事情可能不太複雜，但是他們迄今仍然說不清楚，使個人誠信備受質疑，這是他們應對危機處理不當，與人無尤。

至於新界東北規劃爭議，政府在3次諮詢中，連採用傳統方式由政府收地發展，抑或公私結合發展，都未能清楚交代，而信息混亂，鄉郊土地究竟有多少供原居民興建丁屋，官員也說不清楚。另外，發展與保育矛盾是近年本港的新情，各方利益集團提出訴求和行動，是預期之內，政府若認為這種大型規劃不會起爭議，那是昧於情勢。

其實，只要細心分析，目前對新界東北規劃提出異議的人，大多數並未反對開發土地去應付市民長遠住屋需求，他們只是對土地使用有不同看法，或是受影響居民爭取利益而已，政府的工作和責任，就是要理順不同意見，在法律框架下照顧和分配好各方利益，如此而已。政府的政策若得民心，雖然仍會遇到一些阻力，但無人可以癱瘓香港。

反對國教科運動之極速發展和壯大，主要是教育局被揭發參與「洗腦」教育，市民警覺香港有被改造之虞，於是挺身而出，捍衛核心價值和一國兩制。數以萬計市民在政府總部集會，所展示波瀾壯闊場面，說明一國兩制在港成功落實，因為市民知道不強烈表態，香港就會逐步滑向「一國一制」。鄧小平締造一國兩制，若他泉下有知，對港人在反對國教科的表現，應該感到欣慰。

國教科爭議愈演愈烈，也與政府應對失措有關。首先，政府對問題認知有落差，誤判市民的意志和能量，使政府處境被動和尷尬。即使被認為反映政府意志的「開展德育及國民教育科委員會」，讓步到國教科課程指引「失效」，實際上等同撤回，不過，政府仍然未肯斷尾求生，讓國教科像腐肉的蛆蟲一樣，繼續腐蝕覑政府的肌體。梁振英政府若能審時度勢，果斷撤科，情勢當不至於如此惡劣。

關於國教科爭議，有一事特別值得討論。國教科目的為培養學生的愛國情操，不過，本港保釣人士駕「啟豐二號」，衝破重重險阻，登上釣魚島宣示主權，從事態發展看來，中國政府一改過去的軟弱態度，以強硬立場回擊日本，本港保釣人士的行動起了一定促進作用。無人會認為保釣人士不愛國，但是個別保釣人士迄今並無回鄉證，被當權者拒諸國門，這是莫大諷刺，不過，事態說明香港不搞「愛國主義」，港人仍有愛國情懷。

另外，全國掀起的反日浪潮，許多地方都發生打砸搶事件，有人譏諷中國人除了做順民，就是做暴民；在香港，同是中國人，港人反日行動井然有序，有理有節，這種文明理性，是成熟公民社會的表現，說明港人未經國民教育科或愛國教育洗禮，卻表現出泱泱大度的國民素質。港人愛國，並非「情感觸動」有功，而是歷來接觸中國歷史、中國文化和中國文學，潛移默化而來。若要港人認同國民身分，只要恢復中國歷史為必修科，設計更多中國文化和中國文學的課程內容，就可以確立港人認同「中國人」的身分。

公民社會必然現象  管治必須適應港情

我們今日討論梁班子的處境、新界東北規劃爭議和國教科3宗事態，只是想說明3點：

（1）市民在3件事的表現，是成熟公民社會的必然現象，並非什麼幕後黑手操縱，也不是對政府和中央進攻，若政府未能妥善處理，或是認識不足管治能力不強，或是本港的畸形政治體制，根本未能應對公民社會的訴求。

（2）我們看不到有所謂「敵對勢力」要搞亂香港，反而看到極左思維在港抬頭，從迄今所見狀，極左思維可能已經影響了中央的對港方針政策，稍為熟悉香港事務的人，都會知道這對香港的穩定繁榮，極其不利，我們期望「要警惕右，但主要防左」這兩句話，可以防止香港滑向歪路。

（3）我們認為毋須在港搞「統一戰線」這一套，因為香港並無敵我鬥爭，只有人民內部矛盾，所以毋須「聯合次要敵人，打擊主要敵人」，以免發生不必要鬥爭。若真正愛護香港，就讓特區政府自行治理，解決問題，而非以極左的一套拖覑特區政府的後腿。