I shall be travelling for the next few days and won’t be posting anything except my Mail on Sunday column. One final point. I am taken to task for not putting footnotes in my books. I decided this would be pretentious, trying to pass off what is essentially extended journalism as some sort of academic tome. What I do instead is state clearly where my information comes from, in the text. My latest two also have indexes, written by me, which are I hope an entertaining guide to the contents. If anyone wishes to challenge or pursue any quotation or other reference in any book I have written, I suggest they get in touch with me. I haven't kept all my notes, but I should be able to help without too much difficulty. Please, if you're genuinely interested, read the book. If not, then do us all a favour, and admit that you aren't actually interested in listening to facts or reason, and will trot out the same arguments whatever happens, in which case why should we listen to you? And why do you bother? On the finest hour. People are now popping up in this discussion who seem not to have read the earlier threads on the same subject. I suggest they do so, especially one 'J.R.Hartley' (fine book on fishing, JR) before rehearsing questions that have already been quite thoroughly answered. Is there such a case? I should like to hear it. I doubt if anyone in Europe in 1945 (especially in those countries such as France and Italy where Soviet-backed Communists sought to take over) believed that the USSR's ambitions were limited to the conquests they had made by 1945, and which were ratified at Yalta. If you want to comment on Peter Hitchens, click on Comments and scroll down. This is Peter Hitchens' Mail on Sunday column I agree completely with that awful old wet liberal Ken Clarke. Talking about politicians and crime, he says ‘the failure of the past has been to use tough rhetoric and to avoid taking tough decisions that might prove unpopular’. Quite. I would much rather have an honest, straightforward mugger-hugger like Ken in charge, weeping and snuffling about rehabilitation and similar rubbish, than a false friend of the people like that phoney hard man and closet liberal Michael Howard, all mouth and no truncheon. That way, we all know from the start that we can expect no help from the State against the misery of modern Britain, and that – if we want such help – we will have to build a new political party which understands the problem and wants to put it right. This remains the most urgent task in this country. What unites Michael Howard and Ken Clarke (and the Labour Party, and the Liberals) is that they wilfully don’t have a clue about crime or disorder. They wilfully know nothing about policing. They wilfully don’t understand what happens in prisons. They know that the truth is very Right-wing indeed, so they hide from it. Deliberate ignorance is the essential qualification for all politicians, academics and ‘home affairs correspondents’, and civil servants in the Ministry of Injustice which Mr Clarke now heads. All the information is readily available to anyone who wants it. But it leads to conclusions which our elite can’t bear, mainly the need to rough up, punish and frighten the wicked. So they pretend it doesn’t exist. You can tell how ill-informed politicians and media types are by a series of easy tests. Here are some. Do they refer to ‘bobbies on the beat’? This is a clear sign of a dunce on the subject. The modern generation of uniformed social workers, loaded down with stab-vests, retract able batons, handcuffs, frying pans, helmet videos, SatNavs, pepper sprays, homophobia detection devices and sociology books, cannot possibly be called ‘bobbies’ by anyone who understands the English language. As for ‘the beat’, don’t these people know that there has been no such thing for 40 years? The regular foot patrolling of the streets of this country by uniformed const ables was ordered to cease by the Home Office Police Advisory Board on December 7, 1966. Since then, foot patrols have only been sent out as an occasional special concession, or in some lucky city centres – when the police are not too busy driving their cars or filling in forms. The next sign of criminological ineptitude is the wearisome claim that prison doesn’t work. The idea is spread that because so many ex-prisoners reoffend, this means jail isn’t a deterrent. But this leaves out the truth, which is that it is far harder to get into prison in modern Britain than it is to get into university. You have to try and try, and will be fobbed off for years with meaningless ‘cautions’, fines you don’t have to pay and ‘community service’ you can laugh at. Only hardened criminals (plus middle-class council tax rebels and people who defend their homes) ever actually get locked up. No wonder they reoffend. If a second offence got law-breakers confined in austere gaols with exhausting hard labour, hard beds and sparse, tasteless food, without in-cell TVs or pool tables or phones (or drugs), and run by grim-jawed warders who took no nonsense, the reoffending rate would drop to near-zero in a week. What’s more, thousands of potential criminals would be scared into behaving themselves. That’s all the ‘rehabilitation’ this country needs, and the only kind that works. But I’m sorry to say that this sort of unfashionable approach, while it hugely improved the lives of millions, would be deeply unpopular at the BBC, which is the only unpopularity Mr Clarke and his boss David Cameron really care about. I don’t suppose Sir Sidney Camm, Sir Stanley Hooker or Ralph Hooper ever regarded themselves as artists. But this trio, who designed the wonderful plane which became famous as the Harrier (and in which I once flew for a glorious, if queasy, 45 minutes), created a thing of great beauty. Aeroplanes have to be beautiful or they wouldn’t fly, but I’ll leave it to you to work out why that might be. I would be interested to know how the self-styled ‘artist’ Fiona Banner can claim any real credit for the retired Sea Harrier hung by its tail from the ceiling of what I think in future must be called the Tat Gallery in London. Did she hoist it up there herself? Could she, sat alone in a room with a pencil and a sheet of paper, make a decent drawing of a Boeing 747 from memory? Yet this woman, hitherto famous for displaying a long-written description of a pornographic film on a wall, and calling that ‘art’, now receives sighs of praise from our cultural elite. With fake profundity, Ms Banner asks how an object designed as a ‘killing machine’ can evoke such enthusiasm. Well, apart from the fact that it was designed above all to fly, it rather depends on whom it was meant to kill, and under what conditions. Maybe defending peaceful islanders against an illegal invasion doesn’t make Ms Banner enthusiastic, but I think it’s a pretty good use of human skill. What is your child’s school saying about drugs? The chances are that teachers will be using material preaching the dangerous message of ‘harm reduction’, which encourages drug use by pretending it’s inevitable. If you want an alternative, which tells the truth about the dangers, ask your school to get hold of an excellent booklet on this subject by Mary Brett, an experienced science teacher who ran a successful anti-drugs programme for years. It is called ‘Drug Prevention Education’ and you – or your child’s school – can order it on the web by visiting www.cannabisskunksupport.com. Those who doubt the deep-frozen totalitarian nature of the new China should note the creepy public confession made last week by a Tibetan monk recanting his protest after ‘patriotic re-education’, and being paraded before Western journalists in Lhasa. ‘I wasn’t beaten or tortured,’ said Norgye. ‘Through education about the law I realised that what we had done in the past was wrong.’ Stalin’s last statue may have been torn down last week, but his spirit still walks. PH. Once again a bitter, sarcastic parody of what I actually say. Where do I recommend that we 'hate ourselves' or long for our empire (that is actually what many sentimentalists and 'Finest Hour' adherents do? I do not. I know only too well that the empire is gone for good). One thing we might not do, if we faced the truth, is try to continue to behave as if we were a great power, when we are not, or to have a vast and bloated welfare state we can't afford, or to insist, year by year, on maintaining a standard of living we cannot afford, as if we still were what we long ago ceased to be. We might also recognise the urgent need to salvage our national independence, which, in a fog of Churchillian fake grandeur, we have given away to the EU.
10 July 2010 5:59 PM
Where was the Robocop army when 'Mister' Moat was busy selling drugs?
When Raoul Moat was roaming the North East dealing drugs and smashing people's windows, with his wild weapon dogs straining and slobbering on the end of their ropes, do you think his neighbours could have got our criminal justice system to help them against him?
You know the answer. The system was too busy, or too feeble.
But once the police had ignored a warning from Durham Prison that a dangerous man was loose, and he had killed and maimed his victims, what do we find?
Helicopters chatter in the sky. RAF jets are scrambled. Armoured cars are requisitioned from Ulster. On go the pseudo-military outfits.
A miniature Wehrmacht turns out to have been waiting in reserve, ready to fan out across Northumberland in coal scuttle helmets and draped in enough weaponry to take on the Taliban.
So that's why they were busy, I suppose. On manoeuvres.
And they couldn't keep off the TV, being as much in love with celebrity as any contestant on Britain's Got Talent.
At Press conference after Press conference, they psycho-babbled like any professor of sociology. They inadvertently used the expression 'nutter' and had to say sorry, lest they had offended the nutter community.
A convicted child-beater and self-proclaimed bloody murderer was addressed obsequiously as 'Mister' Moat, and assumed to care about the offspring he liked to thump so hard that their teachers spotted the bruises.
That is the only reason Moat was in prison at all. He could have frightened adults all his life and nothing would have happened.
Like all callous societies, we over-compensate by being extra-sentimental about children.
But even for this, he received only a pathetic nine-week jail term (fraudulently stated to be 18 weeks).
He was told (inaccurately) that 'You have a future'. When at last the police stumbled across him, he was spoken to nicely by 'negotiators', who tossed him water and sandwiches as gently as possible, in case he thought they were throwing them at him.
There are a lot of reasons for this event. Moat himself made one good point when he mentioned in his last self-pitying hours that – like countless troubled young men in our land – he had no father in his life.
Our state continues to encourage this demonstrably bad arrangement with large subsidies.
And it is perilous to criticise it, as you will be told you are being horrid to single mothers.
Who knows what violent filth was put into his mind at an early age by TV, Hollywood and computer games? Who knows how early he began to fry his brain with the illegal drugs he sold with impunity?
Who taught him to blame everyone but himself for his actions – so that he went to his maker believing that the woman he shot was responsible for her own wounds?
We do know, because his acquaintances have told us, that he was taking steroids.
We also know that he had recently been taking anti-depressants, which is the case with most rampage killers of this kind, yet is something nobody in authority seems to want to know about.
In fact, nobody in authority seems to want to know about anything that matters. They might have to change their silly minds, if they did.
Asher is rich, lucky and spouting drivel
Why do so many of this country's luckiest and richest people seem so anxious to destroy the peaceful society that has given them so much?
Jane Asher, a beneficiary of a cultured home and a gentle education, blurts out that all drugs ought to be legalised. She says this is 'the only hope'.
This logic-free, fact-free drivel is conventional wisdom among London's liberal elite.
Why? They say that drug crime is caused by anti-drug laws. Well, so it is, in the sense that all crimes are caused by the laws against them.
If we had no laws against theft, or assault, or burglary, or murder, or fraud, the police would be 'freed up' to concentrate on other things, like homophobia.
But what if drug-taking is actually wrong and dangerous, often ruining the lives of those who do it and of all who love them? Well, it is.
The problem is not that our laws have failed, but that – thanks to prominent idiots like Miss Asher – those laws are not enforced.
The Queen didn't dump us in this shocking mess
Here we go again, spitting on our luck. All the usual dim and nasty people are calling for the Monarchy to share in the frenzy of cutting which we are all supposed to be so keen on.
I'm far from sure that this weird hybrid Government knows what it is doing when it comes to economics, but – even assuming it is right – this is a stupid and trivial target, of the sort only unscrupulous, small-minded people would pick on.
As it happens, the Monarchy runs at a profit. In a 1760 deal, the Crown handed over its lands to the nation in return for an annual payment.
The Crown Estates last year made a surplus of nearly £230 million. This is nearly six times the combined cost (just under £40 million) of the Civil List, Royal travel and building maintenance.
Set beside the gigantic welfare payments handed out by politicians to bribe voters with their own money, or just to make themselves feel good about their generosity, the cost of the Crown is pocket money, and very productive pocket money at that.
It supports the only part of our Constitution that isn't a pig-trough for careerists.
These sorts of symbolic cuts would spoil and destroy good things for ever, for the sake of cheap and easy popularity.
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Should we let small children cycle to school alone?
Not in modern Britain, with its heedless drivers, heads clamped lawlessly to their mobile phones, safe from any danger to themselves thanks to seatbelts, airbags and ABS brakes.
Cycling deaths have gone down only because all the vulnerable people have been scared off the roads. It's bad enough for adults.
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The mass betrayal of several generations by our education system continues unabated.
The ridiculous expansion of the universities has simply devalued degrees to the point of meaninglessness.
Promises of improved job chances turn out to mean 70 applications for every vacancy and graduates being urged to flip burgers.
The worst part of this is that all these defrauded young people are now starting their lives with a large and demoralising debt, having in effect mortgaged their futures to postpone their arrival in the dole queue by three years.
Meanwhile, another great Government education gimmick, the vaunted Academy Schools, has been shown to be a false dawn.
Only half of the supposed 'five good passes' obtained at GCSE by pupils at Academy Schools are actually in proper subjects.
The rest are made up of more devalued currency, coursework certificates in 'information technology' or sport.
Most British education is a lie, churning out barrowloads of worthless non-qualifications like Zimbabwean ten-million-dollar notes. That is what Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, should be apologising forTravelling
Mr 'J.R.Hartley' has actually raised one new question in the otherwise exhausted subject of our supposed Finest Hour. Mr 'Hartley' writes: ’Britain could have stayed out of the war in 1914 saving something like 1 million lives but we were obliged to uphold the sovereignty of Belgium, wasn't the Entente Cordiale still in place in 1939 & didn't the UK have alliances on the continent at this time?’
I don't want to start an argument about 1914 just now. But as far as I know our guarantee to maintain Belgian neutrality (Article VII, 1839 Treaty of London, does anyone have a text?) did not explicitly oblige us to go to war when Belgium was invaded. The main purpose of the clause was to prevent Belgium joining any alliance on her own account, which wasn't really an issue when the German Army came marching through on their way to Paris. If the Asquith Cabinet had known in 1914 that betraying plucky little Belgium would have saved a million lives and also preserved Britain's pre-eminent position, would they have declared war? I don't think so. But hardly anyone realised what the cost would or could be. I had always thought that an (as it happened, misplaced) fear of Germany's naval and colonial ambitions were the real reasons for Britain's decision to join in this war.
Back, though, to 1939. Now of course it's true that if Britain (followed by France under British influence) hadn't made the worthless Polish guarantee in the spring of 1939, there would have been no particular reason for France to ask for our (rather limited) help, or indeed for any other continental obligation to arise. At that stage of the war, and possibly much later, Hitler (whose lack of interest in Alsace-Lorraine has been dealt with in earlier threads) had no obvious reason to risk a war on two fronts by invading Europe's greatest military power and almost certainly involving himself in war with Europe's greatest naval power. But that is established to the satisfaction of all but the most obdurate here.
The real problem with the case proffered by Mr 'Hartley' is that the 'Entente Cordiale' was never an explicit military alliance, and its text mainly concerns forgotten Anglo-French disputes about Egypt and North Africa. It did open the way for staff talks between the British and French military and naval commanders before 1914, but that's it. There were agreements after the war began about the supreme command, but I don't know of any treaty of military alliance comparable to (say) the North Atlantic Treaty.
The 1914 arrangement seems to have been more or less repeated in 1939, though Gort wisely broke away from French Supreme Command when he decided to head for the coast. I don't think Britain had any other continental obligations in 1939, and would be grateful if anyone could confirm this, or put me right. The Netherlands were I believe officially neutral (having successfully stayed out of the 1914-18 combat). And in 1936, Belgium had abandoned an alliance with France (which I suppose was a breach of the 1839 London Treaty). I believe this is partly because Belgium, having seen the failure of France or anyone else to act over the direct breach of Versailles when Germany reoccupied the Rhineland, assumed it was now safer to be neutral than to be an ally of France. I believe there was a strong pro-German faction at the Belgian court which hoped to keep Belgium out of trouble by being as friendly as possible towards Hitler. Certainly many attributed the rapid collapse of the Belgian resistance to invasion (and her sudden surrender without consultation with her then allies) to something of the kind.
So no, I know of no alliances (apart from the Polish guarantee and some ancient, meaningless treaty with Portugal) which Britain had at that time on the continent, unless you count the Anglo-German Naval Agreement, which wasn't an alliance but an 'arms control' deal, and which in any case Germany renounced after the Polish guarantee. Again, does anyone else? By the way, can we please curb this nasty habit of referring to Britain as a set of initials? 'UK' is PC. Nobody called it that at the time.
Mr 'Hartley' also writes: ’You seem to be implying that it was OK to compromise with Hitler in 1939 but not with Stalin in 1945.’
I don't 'seem' to be doing anything of the kind. 'Seem' in this case being a sneaky way of accusing me of saying something I obviously haven't said or done. I'm drawing attention to the fact that the 'Finest Hour' merchants have a double standard, claiming that the war was honourable because it was fought against the evil 'Narzies', but refusing to accept that in that case it was equally dishonourable because it was fought with (and for) the evil Bolshies. I'm really interested in trying to work out which was the worse mass murderer, Hitler or Stalin. I think that by the standards of 1939 Britain, both were hideous empires of barbarism. Yet we ended up as the ally (and cringing servant) of one of them, a role emphasised by the appalling hand-over of Cossacks and others to death and slavery at Soviet hands, and (in a lesser crime, but still a disgrace) by the shameful exclusion of the Poles from the great London Victory Parade of 1946.
In my (consistent) view, war is fought for national interests, taking what allies you can get when you can get them. And if there's no national interest, which there usually isn't, don't fight it. Just stay well-armed and alert (America's sensible view in 1940).
Mr Hartley gives us some clue as to the origin of his thinking (perhaps he used to read the old 'Morning Star') with the following statement: ’Whatever their shortcomings they were allied to us at this time and 4 out of 5 German soldiers killed in WW2 fell to the Red Army.’
What is the logic of this statement? It is that, if someone is your ally in war, you are permitted to forget that he maintains concentration camps and a secret police force, and is a racialist megalomaniac who murders his opponents and engages in mass persecution of ethnic groups he doesn't like. Well, if that's so, aren't you permitted to forget the same things about a country with which you are not currently at war, and don't at present need to be at war? If the filthiness of a regime is not a reason for despising an alliance, why is it a reason for going to war?
'Bob, Son of Bob' asks: ’So what do you think is the probability that we could have stayed out of the war completely and let Hitler and Stalin slog it out until they were exhausted, and using our influence to help the Jews? Was this a possible scenario?’
This has been partly answered in previous posts. I think this would have depended upon the outcome of the inevitable war between Germany and the USSR, which might have taken place two years earlier, or a year earlier, had there been no war over Poland. And I just don't know. Without the 1939 non-aggression pact, would the Red Army and Air Force (actually quite modern and well-equipped) have been so hopelessly unprepared for such a war as they were in June 1941? Would Stalin have been so paralysed by shock and self-delusion? Would the German Army have performed better or worse without the experience gained in Poland and France? Would Britain, France or the USA have supplied the USSR with aid? Had Hitler won, would the task of holding down his vast new territories have kept him from conflict in the West, or emboldened him? Would the Wannsee Conference, and the 'Final Solution' have taken place if Germany had achieved a swift victory in the East? These are all imponderables. None of them necessarily argues that Britain would have been worse off by staying out in 1939, any more than the USA was worse off by staying out in 1939 and 1940 and most of 1941.
Mr 'Un' increasingly reminds me of Mr Dick in 'David Copperfield', who could not keep King Charles's head out of anything he said or wrote. Mr 'Un' cannot keep the atheist-Christian controversy out of anything, probably even a debate about cookery. He writes: ’It would be quite consistent of you to apply this ‘truth-seeking’ side of you to Christianity, which you advocate for Britain more than anything else, as well as calling for it to be taught as *truth* in schools. I don't expect the consistency of course, given your previous refusal to discuss what Christianity actually teaches (imagine your reaction if a Churchill cultist refused to discuss the details of WW2!)’
My position is perfectly simple, and many times stated. I believe because I choose to believe. One of the many reasons for my choice is that a society governed by Christian morals is immeasurably superior to one not so governed. So I urge the teaching of Christianity to children. When I say 'as truth' I say so to distinguish such teaching from the Dawkinsite idea, under which religion is taught as an anthropological peculiarity. Anyone who believes (as I do) that Christianity is true could not teach it as anything else. But I readily concede that I *believe* it to be true.
If I claimed to *know* it to be true, then it would indeed be subject to the same tests to which historical claims about the recorded recent past must be subjected. As it is, I don't. And so it isn't. And if Mr 'Un' would only read my book instead of pestering me with his silly-clever questions, he'd realise that. Though of course the events in and around Galilee and Jerusalem in the first century BC are not one tenth so well-documented as the 'Finest Hour', on which a vast secular religion has been erected by people who strongly dislike cold examination of that documentation.
If we had the minutes of the Sanhedrin, and the guest list of the Last Supper, or witness statements from the Supper at Emmaus, or the diaries of Pontius Pilate, or the court martial records of the men set to guard the Tomb, or the memoirs of Barabbas, or the letters of Judas Iscariot, (and if only we did) no doubt we could argue about these two events in a similar way. But we do not. So we cannot. All we have to go on is that an enormous and devastating moral and philosophical revolution spread across the known world from Jerusalem in the centuries that followed.
Mr 'Un' asks more sensibly: ’What things would you like to see taught differently in schools, publicly spoken by politicians, when it comes to the Churchill cult? I understand where you come from with your points, I just want to know in practice how this new, logical way of looking at WW2 would pan out throughout the country.
The main thing I would like to see is the abandonment of false parallels. Saddam should not have been compared with Hitler. Those who opposed the war should not have been called 'appeasers' (nor should those who, like me, urged a more thoughtful treatment of Russia after Mikhail Gorbachev's acts of generosity and wisdom). Those who started the Iraq war shouldn't have preened themselves as heroes, and given each other busts of Churchill. School history should reflect the doubts that I have raised, and certainly make a better effort to explain that the Polish guarantee was given more to save Chamberlain's silly face than to save Poland. The actual fate of Poland should be explored in more detail, as should the diplomatic defeat of this country at the Teheran and Yalta conferences. The actual history of the Holocaust should be better taught. An educated person should know that Hitler did not begin extermination until after the invasion of the USSR, and that the civilised nations of the world largely refused to take in German Jews when they could have done. These are examples. I should have thought it was fairly easy to work out the general, disillusioning, realistic trend, preparing the population for the more realistic, unillusioned times which lie ahead.
In general, 20th century history should make more of the Anglo-American rivalry and its effects, the end of Britain's naval supremacy, the forcible dissolution of the Japanese alliance, the pressure on post-1945 Britain to dismantle her empire and enter a European Superstate.
I am slightly baffled that Mr 'Bob' thinks that Britain's government had at that time any major interest in saving Jews from German persecution. We took in very few, and those mainly children cruelly separated from their parents whom they had to leave behind - the parents knowing they would never see their children again, the children not understanding this till much later (this is the real, rending story of the sentimentalised 'Kindertransport', whose operations were of course halted forever by the outbreak of war in 1939). The Foreign Office dismissed early authentic reports of the Holocaust, obtained at terrifying cost in courage, as the complaints of 'Wailing Jews', and long after the truth was known, no effort was made to bomb the railway lines to Auschwitz-Birkenau.
The person calling herself 'Iconoclast' may be female, as she now states, but metaphorically she is still as I described her, a lapel-grabbing, finger-pointing, pipe-sucking wiseacre. I really had hoped that, here at least, banalities such as 'hindsight's a wonderful thing' might be considered as worthless as they are. Of course it is a wonderful thing. That is why we use it, and so turn the dross of our mistakes into the beaten silver of experience. But a) that does not mean that it is not instructive about the present and b) it does not excuse our forebears from their avoidable mistakes. If anyone's prepared to say that, without hindsight, it would have been impossible to see any disadvantages in Chamberlain's Polish guarantee when it was given, then there might be a purpose to this statement. But I am sure there were those who did see it at the time - and were ignored. Just as those who opposed the Iraq war were ignored.
On the subject of crime, I must for the most part urge my critics to read the book, obtainable from any decent library at minimal cost. But I have selected, for a specific reply, Mr Jason Storke, who kindly reminds me of my name (I have not yet forgotten it, Mr Storke). I shall respond to his contribution by interleaving my replies.
Mr Storke writes : ’I was wondering if, in light of the growing debate over prison reforms, you had any response to Johann Hari's new piece on prisons “Lock Them Up and Throw Away The Key: And Watch Crime Soar, You Fool”.
‘He interestingly responds to the right-wing analysis of prisons by providing a number of illuminating facts, 82% of all prisoners cannot read or write to the standard of an eleven-year-old. Over 70% are completely illiterate. 11% of prisoners have serious mental illnesses, but are locked up in prison, without proper treatment.’
My reply: Yes, I have read Mr Hari's rather facile article, which contains most of the wilful faults of determined, unshakeable left-wing misunderstanding of the issue that I list in my column. What does Mr Storke think is the significance of the fact that these prisoners are illiterate? Does he wonder how it happened? Does he think I don't care? On the contrary, I have frequently campaigned for proper education in reading in our schools, though the tried and reliable method of synthetic phonics, and through abandoning the idiotic fantasy of 'dyslexia'. (NB, I have not said, and do not think, that people claiming to be 'dyslexic' are 'stupid'. On the contrary, many of them are very bright. They just can't read because they were badly taught. It is now necessary to append this statement to anything I write about 'dyslexia, or any mention of the word.) I don't recall finding Mr Hari on my side.
But then again, does he think they turned to crime because they cannot read or write? My experience is that most British people under 30 have grave difficulties with these tasks (hence the need to reclassify illiteracy as 'dyslexia'). (NB, I have not said, and do not think, that people claiming to be 'dyslexic' are 'stupid'. On the contrary, many of them are very bright. They just can't read because they were badly taught.) Not many of them are criminals. They're just more or less unlettered.
I hate to think what Mr Storke would say if I dared make such a crude connection myself. This is a dangerous and uninstructive correlation. I suspect that huge numbers of people who are not in prison, but are in the same age group, cannot read or write either, but since the authorities have no present interest in discovering this, or don't care, it is not mentioned. By all means teach them to read and write, though I am not sure whether there is enough authority in our prisons to permit the sort of disciplined classes in which this could be done. Would they then cease to commit crimes? I wonder. Most prison education seems to be aimed at turning convicts into expert sociologists, capable of writing letters to the newspapers explaining why they ought to be released. And I've no doubt there are 'experts' available to state that they are really suffering from 'dyslexia.' (NB, I have not said, and do not think, that people claiming to be 'dyslexic' are 'stupid'. On the contrary, many of them are very bright. They just can't read because they were badly taught.)
On the question of mental illness, Mr Hari is absolutely right. The prisons now house tragic numbers of mentally ill people (many, of course, the victims of the drugs the left want to be legalised) who ought to be in mental hospitals. But thanks to 'care in the community' these hospitals have almost all been closed, because they were 'barbaric' (like our old, effective prisons) and turned into expensive flats. I am aware of it and advocate two courses of action - strong penalties for drug possession, and the rebuilding of the mental hospitals - to deal with it. What does Mr Hari recommend, I wonder?
Mr Storke: ‘Most women prisoners are in jail for shoplifting.’
My reply: Yes, and your point is what? Isn't shoplifting (ie theft) a crime? Is it less a crime because it has been committed by a female person? How many offences do you think such people have committed before they go to prison?
Mr Storke quotes from Mr Hari: ‘Offences for which people have been locked away include fathers attempting to speak to their own children, having been denied contact by bitter ex-wives, people selling lost eggs, and shouting abuse at people with suntans.’
My reply: No doubt. But, as Mr Hari knows, such cases (like those of the council tax rebels and the poor teacher who shot an empty air-pistol at the ground near two youths who were making her life a misery) are anomalies and not typical of our general prison population, which consists of habitual criminals who have committed so many offences that the courts are no longer prepared to rely on non-custodial sentences.
Mr Storke again: ’Johann Hari says research shows mentally-ill people and addicts respond much better to treatment, and community service orders where they must work, and the money they earn goes to their victims, than to prison sentences.’
My reply: I doubt very much whether the mentally-ill people I (and Mr Hari) saw in Wormwood Scrubs would 'respond' to anything. They just need looking after with as much kindness as possible. They are not to be confused with the wholly separate category of 'addicts', people who claim falsely they are not responsible for their criminal drug-habits, and pretend they cannot stop taking illegal drugs. They could, if they were made to. I am not sure what 'research' Mr Hari is referring to here, but I doubt if any valid research would confuse two such separate categories of person, or suggest that they would respond identically to the same 'treatment'. I'm certainly in favour of prisoners working, very hard indeed, to pay for their keep, for restitution for their victims, and to save up for their release. But I don't think they will do so unless they are made to, while in custody.
Mr Storke: ’Hari says many of Britain's prisons are so overcrowded that Wormwood Scrubs has begun locking prisoners in toilets.’
My response: The overcrowding problem is a consequence of the weakness of our system, especially in deterrent terms. A punitive and austere prison system, reinforced by the death penalty for heinous murder, would swiftly reduce the prison population which has risen so high, so fast since Mr Hari's liberal ideas were widely adopted. For the moment, prison-building should obviously be increased, but the real key to reducing the prison population is deterrence, which does not mean long sentences, just grim, austere ones, as described in my column, to which no rational person would wish to return once released, and which no criminally inclined person, hesitating over the commission of a crime, would consciously risk.
Mr Storke says: ’This is an interesting, and radically different take on what is wrong with our prison system.’
My response: It is not specially interesting, and is certainly in no wise radically different from the attitude long taken by the British state, HM inspector of Prisons and the media and academic elite. It is in fact the view they have espoused, and implemented, with notable lack of success, for half a century.
Mr Storke inquires: ’Would Peter Hitchens care to read this article, enlighten himself on Mr Hari's refreshing insight into Britain's prisons, and let us know what he thinks?’
My response: I have read it. I am unimpressed. What's so brilliant and new about it? I used to believe this sort of thing myself, before I knew anything about the world. I commend Mr Storke, if he wishes to be enlightened rather than to be fed the conventional wisdom which he weirdly imagines to be original, should (as urged) read my book 'A Brief History of Crime'. I am flummoxed that he should think Mr Hari's standard-issue left-wing writing 'refreshing' or an 'insight'.
Mr Storke: ‘Or will he remain stuck in his silly view that the shocking level of illiteracy and mental illness among prisoners, and the overcrowded, squalid nature of prisons has no bearing on his argument that we ought to jail more, not less people?’
Mr Storke's summary of my view (which he is not qualified to call 'silly' so far as I can see, by any superior knowledge or experience, nor even by any conclusive evidence that he has actually read, let alone understood, what I have written) is misleading and probably mistaken. I once again urge him to read my book.05 July 2010 12:00 PM
Pride and Prejudice
Many years ago I decided that I was puzzled by a number of things that were going on around me, that nobody was doing anything about. Why did our society seem to have become so coarse and inconsiderate? Why had the police disappeared from the streets? Why did I no longer feel that they were my allies? What was crime? Why did the prison population keep on going up and up, while the number of offences committed rose at the same time? Why were the schools so bad? Why did we seem, as a people, to be so gullible and easily misled by the crudest propaganda?
I began to worry about these things most strongly when I came back, in 1995, from five years spent almost entirely abroad, first in Moscow and then in Washington DC. There'd been a brief interlude between, but I'd spent most of that travelling and hadn't really settled back into my own country.
I'd looked into the cultural and social background of the changes in my book 'The Abolition of Britain', and had found that the writing of a book was a powerful education. Other authors have told me that they too experienced what I did.
You feel, when you've completed and published a book, that you are now at last qualified to write that book, which began in your head as a nebulous idea and has now been hardened by research and thought into the thing you hold in your hands, slightly amazed that it exists at all.
But of course you won't go back and do it again. On the other hand, you have saved everyone else the trouble you have had, the hours, stretching to days, stretching to weeks in the library chasing from reference to reference, ordering one book from the bowels of the building or a depository in Lincolnshire, finding in it the thing that you want, which in a footnote leads you on to the next, chasing through old official documents, forgotten pamphlets, ancient newspaper reports and parliamentary debates all of whose participants are now dead, with that marvellous feeling of excitement that you're on the trail of an actual explanation, not a slogan or an excuse.
At the end of that, I cannot begin to tell you how much you want people to read the book you have written. If only they would do so, the national debate could be conducted at a level about a mile higher. Official spokesmen and party hacks wouldn't be able to get away with the stupid banalities they repeat. The reports in the newspapers and on the radio and TV would have to be written differently.
This is what I seek, when I urge people to get hold of my books. Some moron will always claim that I am doing it for money. Not so. I do get some money from books, but authors like me (unlike, say, thriller writers) don't benefit much from sales. There'll be an advance (not all that big), and if I'm lucky a newspaper serialisation deal. But these are independent of sales. Royalties tend to be small and rare (and the Public Lending Right payments from libraries smaller still), and unless I became some sort of cult, will always remain so. But I'm well paid already, and these payments, though pleasant to receive and a just reward for work, aren't the point. The point is, I know these immensely important facts and why they are important, and everyone in the country would benefit from the knowledge. How can I get them to read what I have written?
So I regard this weblog partly as a chance to promote my books. And the article at the weekend about Kenneth Clarke's speech is entirely based on one such book one originally published as 'A Brief History of Crime' and then reissued in paperback (with two of the original chapters removed, and one new chapter) as 'The Abolition of Liberty'.
I removed the missing chapters for the same reason stated above. I wanted the book to be read more widely. And the chapters involved, one on capital punishment and the other on gun control, were - though factually impeccable and logically flawless - too much for most conventionally wise people to take in all at once.
However, I can say with confidence that if any of the critical posters on the 'Mugger Hugger' thread had read my book, they would be unable to say the things that they say. Yes, I have visited prisons. Yes, I have been 'out on patrol' with the police. Yes, I do know that police foot patrols did not automatically cease in December 1966, but the pressure to end them was relentless from then on, and I explain why and how that pressure was exerted. Etc etc etc.A Final Word
I am grateful for the words of Michael Williamson, valuable not least because he is among my more stringent and unforgiving critics here.
‘I am at a loss to understand why the very simple argument put forward by Mr Hitchens is causing so many such problems. Our guarantee to Poland was worthless, we could not honour it and we did not honour it. Assuming we had not given it, other scenarios become probable or, at least, possible though, of course, nobody can say with any certainty what would have happened.’
And I am puzzled by the emergence of a crude fantasy, that 'appeasement' was promoted by, and was the consequence of the actions of Nazi sympathisers among the British aristocracy. There were Nazi sympathisers in the British aristocracy, for the most part obscure and without influence, and in general mainly enthused by Hitler's apparent regeneration of Germany (many of these people faded, embarrassed, into the background after the persecution of the German Jews became apparent). I have never seen any evidence that their views had the slightest influence on the conduct of British foreign policy, which was in the hands of mainstream Conservatives throughout, and had no ideological content apart from a vague hope that Hitler (an upstart) would turn against Stalin (an upstart and a Bolshie) at some point (not pursued with any great consistency or vigour).
I always suspect this subject is dragged up by Communist sympathisers, who hope that we will forget that they were opposed to the British war effort during the Battle of Britain (during which time Communists in the factories actually fomented strikes, and spread defeatist propaganda in the blitzed areas of London, while their French comrades were making friendly overtures to the German occupation authorities in Paris) because Stalin was then in an alliance with Hitler, and the defence of Britain against the Third Reich was classified as 'an imperialist war'. The fuel for the 1940 Blitzkrieg in summer 1940 came from the USSR.
I have dealt with the comments on 'hindsight' from 'Iconoclast', a pipe-sucking, lapel-grabbing wiseacre of the worst type, who plainly thinks he or she has got hold of a really good and original point by saying that we know more about the past than we know about the present or the future. Gosh. I'd never thought of that. I note that this person simply repeats his or her fatuous whine, without any attempt to respond to my reply.
Neil Craig says: ‘I don't think that the Soviet occupation of Poland is comparable to the German one. The Soviet objective was a Poland which was obedient. The German objective was a Poland which was non-existent, whose population had been exterminated to create Lebensraum. There is no comparison.’
I'd say there was a comparison, not least in the parts of Poland absorbed by the USSR in September 1939, which to this day remain parts of Ukraine and Belarus (I think this is the only part of the Stalin-Hitler Pact which remains in force). The mass deportation of unwanted Poles, the systematic arrest and murder of politically unreliable persons, culminating with the Katyn 'Classocide' of the Polish officer corps, are entirely comparable with Nazi methods in 1940, and in fact the two dictators exchanged prisoners, Gestapo to NKVD, at the bridge over the River Bug at Brest-Litovsk, where the Red Army and the Wehrmacht also staged a touching joint victory parade, which really oughtn't ever to be forgotten.
The USSR simply abolished and ate those parts of Poland which were inconvenient to it (just as the Germans did, though in the 'General Gouvernement' they retained a sort of rump Poland, which I believe they would have run with Polish collaborators if they had been able to find any). After the war, the USSR found a reconstituted Poland moved many miles westwards and absorbing large chunks of Germany, a useful piece of defence in depth territory in the Cold War.
Mr Craig adds: ’There is a very good case that, had America & Britain not threatened the USSR with the Atom Bomb & later with restoring a united & anti-Soviet Germany the Soviets would not have felt the need to keep an army facing western Europe as a counter balance & would thus have felt no need to keep occupying Poland. The fact that they pushed the eastern border of Poland as far as they did does rather suggest Stalin's original intent was to exit Poland, since keeping a Belarussian minority within its borders would have made it easier to control.’This mugger-hugger knows the truth, just like the ‘all mouth and no truncheon’ phoney
A beautiful achievement reduced to tat
Finally, our children get an honest drugs guide
********************************
Anthony Blair claimed he could not understand his law chief’s clear advice that an invasion of Iraq would be illegal. In the same way, today’s Cabinet seem unable to understand that our invasion of Afghanistan is pointless, and has been defeated. People will not see what they do not want to see. Well then, we must make them see it. They must be incessantly reminded that they are ordering the deaths and maimings of their fellow countrymen because they are too cowardly to admit that the intervention was a mistake. Which major figure in Parliament will win honour by being the first to tell them so?
********************************02 July 2010 5:18 PM
Let Me Explain...
...A little more about the point of the 'Finest Hour' argument, first taken up by 'Stan', and now by 'HM'. The posting by 'HM' suggests that my main purpose is still eluding some readers, who seek to give me motives and opinions I don't have rather than recognise what is at issue here.
I reproduce below what 'HM' wrote (1st July, 9.16 pm, on the 'Demetriou Conundrum' thread), interleaving my comments in rebuttal and explanation:
'HM' ‘Yes, the point is clear now. If it had not been for the Polish guarantee Britain could have continued its successful policy of appeasement, and we would all have been much better off.’
PH: This is just crude. 'HM' makes it plain that he has not paid much attention, and is prevented from giving my argument fair consideration by prejudice and dogma. I have nowhere argued that the policy of 'appeasement', such as it was, was 'successful'. On the contrary, I have mocked Neville Chamberlain for his delusions about Munich.
The thing that 'HM’ cannot cope with, because it shakes his moral universe (as it shakes that of 'Stan') is the idea that Britain had no substantial interest in maintaining the Versailles-imposed borders of Eastern Europe. Those borders, by the way, have now been wholly abolished under the Schengen agreement and Versailles has been wholly undone, without any protest from Britain, or any special loss on our part. Even at the time, British inter-war diplomacy was at least flexible on these matters, and British public opinion increasingly grew to believe that Versailles had been a foolish treaty.
In fact, we had no such interest. The French did, or thought they did, and we were in a sort of alliance with France, but for what purpose? The heart of this argument is that Britain's interests were global and imperial, and that we gained nothing and lost much by intervening in continental matters at this stage.
As for 'we would have been much better off', this is also a crude caricature. All I am saying is that, had we not gone uselessly to war in September 1939, we might have saved our empire and much else. We might not. But it is certain that the September 1939 declaration of war (caused directly by the May guarantee to Poland) led to our catastrophic national decline, and very nearly got us invaded and subjugated for the first time since 1066.
What is interesting, once again, is the scornful sarcasm contained in this misunderstanding by 'HM'. He cannot see the subject straight. The Churchill legend is too precious to him. Anyone who questions it must be some sort of Hitlerite apologist. Not so.
'HM' (quoting me) ’...”we must look elsewhere for the decisive moment ... I think a persuasive case has been made for the Polish guarantee.”
Persuasive indeed, if it had not been made and kept to, then no one would ever have taken us seriously again, and we could have given up on war for good.’
PH: But it was made, and it was not kept to. We did nothing to help Poland (and the French only undertook a symbolic and swift advance into the Saarland). We did not engage with the Germans on land until Churchill's disastrous and incompetent foray into Norway, months after Poland had been ploughed under by the USSR and the Third Reich. We did not engage with the Germans properly until they came down through Belgium, outflanked us and drove us into the sea. Who exactly did we want to take us seriously? Fiji? The only people whose opinion counted at the moment were the major European powers, Germany and the USSR. They treated us with contempt before the guarantee, after the guarantee, and again after we had failed to enforce it.
And why would giving a guarantee we couldn't enforce to a country we didn't in fact help make anyone take us seriously? This is diplomacy as melodrama, or soap opera. The conduct of Foreign Policy is not a job interview or a character test. By the way, who exactly has taken us seriously as a major power since then? Apart from Argentina, hardly a major power, what country have we been able to challenge and defeat on our own? We never again operated as an offensive military force after Dunkirk (leaving aside various imperial incursions in Iraq and Iran) except as an ally (and a dependent, bankrupt ally) of the USA.
The fact is that nobody would have taken Neville Chamberlain seriously again if he had done nothing after Hitler marched into Prague. And thanks to his wounded pride, vanity and weak political position, our country was hitched irrevocably to Poland's cart.
'HM' (quoting me) ‘ “But if this is the pivotal moment, then we went to war by mistake, for a cause already lost, rather than to save the world.”
Exactly. That we did actually save the world does nothing to excuse this, since it only happened by accident.‘
PH: In what way did 'we' 'save' 'the world'? Without the USA and the USSR, our accidental and far from sentimental allies of necessity, we would have had to make terms with the Germans in the end anyway. Without their military alliances, Germany would not have been defeated. And how 'saved' were Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Hungary and Bulgaria after the war was over? How saved, for that matter, were the people of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, or the peoples of the Soviet Empire in general, set to endure decades of show trials, death camps and despotism lasting for almost half a century after our world-saving victory? Did it make their lives better or worse that we went to war in 1939 and promptly bankrupted ourselves and lost our empire? I don't see how. It is no good 'HM' trying to wriggle out of facing this by what appears to me to be sarcasm.
'HM' (quoting me): ’ “The Churchill myth has arisen for several reasons. One, it is comforting ... Two, it fosters the weird belief that the Second World War was primarily a conflict over goodness between free, democratic Britain and wicked Nazi Germany...”
Precisely. Though Britain was free and democratic, and Nazi Germany was wicked, this was not the reason we went to war, so it’s something we can justifiably ignore.‘
PH: I am not sure what 'HM' is trying to say here. Is he admitting that we didn't go to war with Germany because of its regime (We didn't. Though it is hard to believe this in the light of the 'Finest Hour' interpretation of history)? If he is, then he must begin to ask why in that case *did* Britain go to war with Germany *when we did*. And here I must point out yet again that my case is not that we should never have gone to war with Hitler. It would probably have been necessary. It is that we shouldn't have done so in September 1939. And it is this uncomfortable question ‘Why, and why then?’ that I now refuse to shy away from.
HM (quoting me) ‘ “And if we were so keen on making war on wickedness, then why did we have wicked Stalin as our principal ally on land?”
Why indeed? Being forced to is no defence.’
PH. On the contrary, it is a perfectly good defence. There is none better. As Mr Churchill rightly said, 'If Hitler invaded Hell, I would at least make a favourable remark about the Devil in the House of Commons'. Countries often have to make unwelcome alliances of necessity to serve their own interests, among which are survival and independence. It would be foolish not to do so. But it is absurd to pretend, if you make such alliances, that you are also fighting a great war of principle. In which case, and here comes the really awkward part of the argument, the Soviet alliance is justified if it was necessary for our own interests. But in that case what were our interests in fighting Hitler in 1939, which then compelled us to seek this unwelcome ally? How did going to war in September 1939 make our continued independence and survival more likely than staying out? Why did we start a war in 1939, when we didn't need to? If it was all right for the USA to stay out of the war until 1941 (and most 'Finest Hour' adherents think it was, since they are convinced that the USA is our bestest friend) then why wasn't it all right for us to stay out for just as long?
'HM' (once again quoting me): ‘ “Likewise, if we were so much against appeasement in 1939, why did we appease Stalin at Yalta...”
We can have no excuse, even if we were exhausted, and out of money, and simply relieved to be at peace again.’
PH: Well, actually, we were not at peace yet during the Yalta conference, but let that go. If 'HM' accepts that Yalta was as bad a piece of appeasement as Munich (as it was) then why would it have been so wicked to push Poland into giving up Danzig and the corridor in 1939, or simply let Hitler take them? Why does HM not apply to Churchill at Yalta the strictures he applies to Chamberlain in May 1939? What 'HM' said about that was that ‘If [the Polish Guarantee] had not been made and kept to, then no one would ever have taken us seriously again, and we could have given up on war for good.’
So, having gone to war, mortgaged ourselves for generations, supposedly for the freedom of Poland, and expended untold lives, we then hand over Poland to Stalin, and 'HM' is quite happy and content, or at least willing to accept the cruel necessities of life. Or is he? Or is he, as it seems to me, trying to avoid the point? Does his moral hauteur apply only in 1939, when Hitler is involved, and fade mysteriously into real-politik in 1945, when we are dealing with Stalin?
HM (quoting me) ‘ “So the question still arises. Why did we go to war with Germany when we did?”
Why indeed? If only we’d waited a better opportunity would have been sure to arise. Or we could simply have left it too late, after which it would all have been out of our hands.’
PH. It is true that a better opportunity might have arisen, though of course he can only acknowledge that truth sarcastically (in fact, sarcasm seems to be his main way of acknowledging the truth of my position). But what does he mean by 'leaving it too late'? Too late for what? Since from June 1941 onwards it was all out of our hands anyway (and we were already broke, and committed to a war from which we could only depart either by final victory as a client ally, on American and Soviet terms, or through a humiliating peace with Hitler), what does he envisage by the term 'out of our hands'?
The next set of quotes from me arranged by 'HM' is as follows: ‘ “We would have done far better to do as the USA did, and calculate our intervention to suit our own needs. Who knows what that might have led to?”
No one.
“But it would be unlikely to have been worse than what we in fact faced...”
Sorry. No one except Peter Hitchens.
“...the loss of our empire and our power, plus a narrow escape from subjugation.”
Only the loss of our empire and our power, and a failure to escape subjugation would have been worse. And that couldn’t possible have happened, could it?’
PH: The level of wilful incomprehension here, mingled with the sarcastic bitterness of a man whose dreams have been trodden upon, is astonishing.
It might have happened. But 'HM' needs to explain the circumstances under which he thinks it would have happened. We know - because it did happen - that going to war over Poland in September 1939 cost us our empire and our standing as a major power. We know it nearly led to our subjugation. Why would staying out of the war, keeping our army intact and continuing to build up our forces have made it likely that the outcome would be worse? Does 'HM' think that if Hitler had truly wished to conquer this country he couldn't have done so in 1941, had he chosen to strike West instead of East? Yet he didn't, any more than he ever seriously intended to attack the USA. What does this (apart from all his published thoughts and writings) suggest about his actual priorities?
HM (quoting me): ‘ “We might also re-examine our own decayed, debauched national culture and realistically examine our standing with clear eyes, casting aside all sentimentality and self-delusion...”
Quite so. If only we could abandon any lingering pride over WWII and focus on hating ourselves and longing for our empire we would be much happier as a nation, and so much less deluded.’
Sunday, 11 July 2010
This is Peter Hitchens' Mail on Sunday column
08 July 2010 4:26 PM
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