Britannia Radio

09 April 2011 10:45 PM

From draper’s son to judge . . . THAT was social mobility

This is Peter Hitchens's Mail on Sunday column

The phrase ‘social mobility’ has been twisted round by the elite to mean the opposite of what it once did. In their mouths it signifies ‘crude discrimination against those who seek to advance themselves or their children through effort and talent’.

This is a wicked perversion. Here is what it really means: when this was still a free country, you could climb thanks to your talent and hard work. My favourite example is that of Lord Denning, one of six children of a Hampshire draper who became the greatest judge of our time.

One of his brothers, Reginald, helped plan the D-Day landings and became a general. Another, Norman, became an admiral, and Director of Naval Intelligence. The boys’ mother, Clara, must have been quite a person, but Whitchurch National School and Andover Grammar School should take a little credit too.

In their austere, disciplined, orderly classrooms, children from poor homes could learn real knowledge, and gain the habits of work and diligence that might take them to the very summit of our once-open society. If they had talent, it would be nurtured and encouraged.

If they were studious, they would not be bullied for it, but rewarded.

Faced with ferocious exams, which it was possible to fail, they learned that real life wasn’t easy and had to be tackled with application and determination. That’s how a proper middle class, confident, strong and open to talent, is made.

But those who now shape and direct our society long ago destroyed these places. Believing it was kinder, they scrapped the discipline, the order and the rigour, and turned the exams into feeble jokes.

When the truth became clear, they refused to change their minds but carried on as before. The three Denning brothers would rapidly have had their hopes crushed by today’s state school system.

If three such boys – or girls – now exist, we will never hear of them, except perhaps in the courts, because the corruption of the best is the worst of all, and a bright and energetic mind, when all the doors of ambition and hope are slammed in its face, can easily turn to wrongdoing.

I cannot express on paper just how angry this makes me, or how angry it ought to make you. The nearest I can come to it is this – to say to Nicholas Clegg, David Cameron and Edward Miliband that they are all three of them cruel, contemptible and stupid, enemies of promise, enemies of their country, and enemies of the poor.

And in each case the crime is especially serious because of their own immense personal privilege. I hope all their political careers end in abject, howling failure, preferably with them being laughed out of office, the only punishment they are likely to understand.

Because all three of them, and their wretched parties, have set their faces against the honest self-improvement that is the mark of a free society. Instead, they gargle the discredited slogans of equality – an equality they don’t even believe in for themselves or their children.

You will have to ask yourselves why the leaders of supposedly democratic parties in a supposedly free society have endorsed a policy that is more or less identical to that of the Eastern European communists of the Forties.

More importantly, you will have to ask yourselves why on earth you have continued to vote for them, knowing what they are and what they stand for.

Were the varnished toes a hit, Baroness?

The sight of a barefoot Baroness Warsi, in full hijab, accompanying Mr Cameron (in his socks) to a mosque in Islamabad prompted a number of irreverent questions to which I do not know the answers.

They go (in no particular order): Would the mullahs have approved of the Baroness’s daring choice of toenail polish? Why doesn’t she wear a headscarf on public occasions in Britain?

Was Mr Cameron trying to buy votes among British Pakistanis when he announced a huge £650 million dollop of aid to the Islamic Republic? Do Pakistani leaders visit Westminster Abbey when they come to London?

Since then, I have been consumed with curiosity about those other pictures of Mr and Mrs Cameron on their cheapo Ryanair holiday to Spain.

Does the Prime Minister really need to go to cashpoints? And when will the real holiday be?

Daft Dave’s ‘leasehold’ Empire

The Prime Minister was right when he pointed out that most of the major crises in the world have their roots in the British Empire. It’s unquestionably true. Afghanistan’s stupid border? Our fault.

The endless Indo-Pakistan tension? Our fault. The mess in the Middle East? Our fault. The destruction of democracy in Iran? Our fault.

I am myself a child of Empire, born in what was then Malta GC when the mighty Mediterranean Fleet still filled the Grand Harbour at Valletta. And, having seen one or two other empires in action, I still say ours was the best.

What’s more, it seems to me that in this cruel world you either have an empire or become part of somebody else’s, and I know which I prefer.

The problems I list above were mostly not caused by the Empire itself. They followed its sudden, rapid collapse after the disastrous surrender of Singapore in 1942, one of the worst of the many failures and retreats that took place under the over-praised leadership of Winston Churchill.

People keep saying that we made a good job of withdrawing from Empire.

It’s just not true. The scuttles from India and Palestine were needlessly bloody and crude. They left grave, unsolved problems.

If you take over someone else’s country, you have to stay there for good, and commit yourself absolutely.

The current fashion for leasehold colonialism, where you barge in with bombs and soldiers and then clear off, is guaranteed to cause more difficulties than it solves.

That said, I have never seen such an adventure crumble into chaos and failure as quickly as Mr Cameron’s ill-considered Libyan affair. Bombing our own side?

Well, I never. But how on earth do we get out now we’re in? So much for the brilliance of Etonians, eh?

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I don't think the Tory leadership really want us to vote NO in the AV referendum, do you? They’re not trying. All the more reason to vote NO, then.

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Almost every year, the presentation of the winners’ prize on the final of University Challenge is ruined by some celeb, or Jeremy Paxman himself, saying that the show proves there’s no ‘dumbing down’ in British education. This year, it was the turn of the ever-so-slightly over-praised historian Antony Beevor.

Actually the programme is gripping evidence that education is going down the plughole, as undergraduates goggle blankly when asked to identify easy quotations from major classics of English literature. It’s not just that they don’t know the answers.

It’s that they don’t know they don’t know. Meanwhile, the supposedly all-knowing Mr Paxman still can’t cope with German words or place names. Halle doesn’t rhyme with ballet.

04 April 2011 11:21 AM

Rebel Rabble, or A Punchline in the Guts

Regular readers here will know of my high opinion of Patrick Cockburn, one of the great foreign correspondents of our time. I don't know anything like as much as he does, but I know enough, and have seen enough for myself at first hand, to recognise that his reporting is first class. Anyone trying to understand the puzzle of the Arab world and theMiddle East may turn with confidence to Patrick - who is also, I should add, by no means on the same political wavelength as I am.

But so what? he doesn't let his opinions get in the way of the truth.

And I should particularly like to draw the attention of readers to an article of his in the Independent on Sunday of 3rd April, entitled 'The shady men backed by the West to displace Gaddafi'. It should be very easy to find on the web.

There is much in it that is quietly very funny, notably his explanation of how Colonel Gadaffi caused him to read the works of Jane Austen.

But even those who lack the time to turn to the article itself can learn much from the following passages :

'It must have become obvious to the rebel leaders in Benghazi that television pictures of their forces – essentially untrained gunmen in their pick-ups looking like extras from a Mad Max film – were damaging the credibility of the rebel cause in Europe and the US.'

'...The Libyan militiamen look like a rabble even by the lowly standards of militias in Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan.'

Then there is this: 'The new military leadership, which Britain, France and to a decreasing extent the US, will be supporting, inspires even less confidence than their men. The careers of several make them sound like characters out of the more sinister Graham Greene novels. They include men such as Colonel Khalifa Haftar, former commander of the Libyan army in Chad who was captured and changed sides in 1988, setting up the anti-Gaddafi Libyan National Army reportedly with CIA and Saudi backing. For the last 20 years, he has been living quietly in Virginia before returning to Benghazi to lead the fight against Gaddafi. '

Not enough to worry you? Then try this gentleman:

'Even shadier is the background of Abdul Hakeen al-Hassadi, a Libyan who fought against the US in Afghanistan, was arrested in Pakistan, imprisoned probably at Bagram, Afghanistan, and then mysteriously released. The US Deputy Secretary of State, James Steinberg, told Congressmen he would speak of Mr Hassadi's career only in a closed session.'

And then the hard punchline, a punchline in the guts for British foreign policy:

'It is these characters, and others like them, whom Britain is now fighting to install in Tripoli to replace Col Gaddafi.'

Why are we doing that?

By the way, in answer to the contributor who seems to think I have it in for Islam, is he saying that the Benghazi rebels are not Muslims?Or denying that keen Islamist sympathies lie behind some of their actions? Or that Gadaffi has on occasion been the enemy of the Salafist Islamist factions in the Muslim world? I think this is a reasonable thin g to say, and contrast it with the British government's slightly hysterical view of Islamist sympathies everywhere else ( a view I don't particularly share).

General Debate

On the question of the homicide rate in this country, I have mentioned before that many crimes which would once unhesitatingly been classified as murder are now listed, and prosecuted, as 'manslaughter', largely to save time and resources for the CPS and the courts. Comparisons with the past are also made difficult by the huge improvements in trauma surgery since the 1960s, which enable doctors to save many people who would undoubtedly have died of their wounds and injuries 45 years ago. The heedless, cruel violence which leads to such injuries ( and which in my view is at least partly a consequence of the abandonment of deterrent hanging) has increased far more than the number of death resulting from it. This increase was until recently reflected in the figures for attempted murder and of 'wounding to endanger life' (this quadrupled from 155 per year to 634 between 1976 and 1996) but I strongly suspect that the CPS are no longer bothering to charge at this level, in their constant effort to ease pressure on the prisons.

The death penalty plainly does not restrain all murder. But there is a strong case to suggest that it deters murders done for calculated reasons (the removal of a witness to another crime, rape or robbery) . And there is evidence from the two suspensions of the death penalty, in 1948 and 1957, that the use of firearms by criminals increased during this suspensions, and began its long, unremitting increase to the levels of today after final abolition.

All this can be found in the relevant chapter 'Cruel and Unusual' of my 2002 book 'A Brief History of Crime', still available through libraries to the determined.

A contributor states that: ' To have had any chance of preventing the shooting of this little girl would mean having armed police on every street corner.'

I don't see how this follows from what I said, and can only follow from a prejudiced misreading or part-reading of what i said. My prescription is threefold. A restoration of the death penalty for murder, combined with a resolute justice system backed by austere prisons controlled by the authorities. And to rally the law-abiding and discourage the lawless, a constant presence of police constables patrolling the streets on foot.

These things are all possible (they existed in living memory) and not specially expensive. I believe they would have widespread support if proposed, and if introduced. What annoys me is that such ideas are absolutely excluded from mainstream political debate, and subjected to silly abuse when aired. I've yet to encounter a reasoned objection to them, only yells of execration.This of course encourages me to persist.

As for defence of the police from within the service, persons who say they have never heard police officers refer to the public as 'civilians' strain my credulity. I have heard it, and read it, countless times. Others seem to think that arrests and convictions are a measure of police success. This is to compound the misunderstanding. An arrest is a failure. A conviction is a bigger failure. Why? Because the crimes that led to them should never have taken place. The purpose of the police, above all things, is to *prevent* crime in the first place. If you are injured, burgled, or bereaved by crime, how much consolation can the prosecution of the culprit provide for you?

And much of the crime they prevent will be officially classified as *petty", the low-level disorder and menace hard to record in statistics, but exactly the sort of thing people most want stopped, above all else. What's more, according to the 'broken window' theory, it is precisely when this low-level disorder goes unchecked that more serious crimes become more common.

British police officers are not civil servants. They are sworn constables, whose oath obliges them to uphold the *Law* and entitles them to refuse a direct order if they believe it to be unlawful. I can see no barrier to a movement among police officers for the reinstatement of preventive beat policing, provided it is conducted within the rules of discipline. And when I see such a campaign, I shall commend and encourage it. But as long as it fails to begin, I shall be uninterested in airy claims that large numbers of officers really want to return to proper policing.

I am fascinated by Mr Sepulveda's statement that "I think lots of people, like Harriet Harman, support the idea of targeting drug users as criminal and leaving the dealers as the victims."

Really? When and where did Harriet Harman say this? Or anyone else?

By the way, I am shocked and rather appalled by the complete failure of anyone, at the time of writing, to comment on the terrible story of the 10-year-old boy who took his own life while on a dose of Ritalin and 'antidepressants'. What's wrong with you all? Posts on religion can attract hundreds of comments. The death penalty gets people going like anything. But this enormous scandal of the drugging of children, which needs only a little outrage to be checked, doesn't seem to move anyone but me and its terrifying, dogmatic advocates. Why is that?

Oh, and some twit suggests that GPs should be allowed to prescribe heroin. Wouldn't that be a breach of the bitt of the Hippocratic Oath about doing no harm? And presumably, apart from in England, and possibly there too under some rule, it would mean *free* prescriptions. Paid for by whom?

As it happens, through the Methadone programme, the British state supposedly 'prevents' crime by robbing the taxpayer through HMRC, spending his hard-earned money on stupefying drugs for criminal parasites, and giving them these drugs. Thus the crime is nationalised. It does not cease. It is done instead by the state. If I object to the spending of my money on this purpose, and refuse to pay taxes for it, I will go to prison. Unlike the heroin user, who openly breaks the law against possession of heroin, but is treated as a victim. I fail to see the moral difference between being mugged for my money by the state, so that some deadbeat can stupefy himself, and being mugged direct by the deadbeat.

The institutionalised wickedness which follows the acceptance of drug-taking among us is almost limitless.

Bunker mentality Part Two - Mr 'Bunker' contradicts himself

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, and waste its sweetness on the desert air. But I wouldn't want this response of mine to Mr 'Bunker' to be confined only to the intrepid few who struggled all the way to the top of the last 'Bunker Mentality' thread, way above the tree line, into the high, parched zone where the oxygen is thin and altitude sickness strikes at the unwary.

So here it is again. I might subtitle it 'When 'Can't' means 'Won't':

'I think the best witness against Mr 'Bunker' is in fact himself. He makes my point so well, that I will here give him the opportunity to do so, in a selection of quotations from his earlier posts:

On Saturday (2nd April) he said:

'I have a position of absolute unbelief in gods. Absolutely.'

Three days before, he wrote :

'The truth is:- I am agnostic by your own definition - "one who acknowledges the possibility of God's existence" '.

The day before that: 'I do acknowledge that it is possible that God exists. I do acknowledge that it is possible that God exists. I do acknowledge that it is possible that God exists. I have never said that his non-existence can be proved. Why? Because it can't. It is logically impossible.'

Three days before that:

'I'm at a loss as to why you introduce the compatibility of science and religion into the discussion. As far as I remember, I haven't mentioned science. (Actually he has. On 12th March he said: ' Through the reading of popular scientific books I soon reached the conviction that much in the stories of the bible could not be true.') And I'm certainly not someone who thinks that science has all the answers. Far from it. '

He then hilariously states (first quoting me): ' Mr 'Bunker' ... denies any personal involvement in his own choice of belief." What? My "choice"? I thought we'd sorted that out long ago. You may have "chosen" a belief, a religious faith. I didn't. I couldn't. Because I found religion impossible to believe in.'

Why was that? We do not know. We cannot tell. And nor can Mr 'Bunker' seem to accept that 'impossible' is a word that permits of only one meaning, and it is not compatible with 'unlikely', 'improbable' or even 'incredible'. Yet he uses it as though it is. If he 'found it impossible' to believe, what was his reasoning for this finding? And if there wasn't any reasoning (and there is no evidence of any so far) my hypothesis, that it was his personal choice, comes lumbering over the horizon again.

But does he really deny the influence of personal preference over publicly stated opinions? Let us delve deeper onto the archive. We find (six days ago) Mr 'Bunker' acknowledging that motive and desire play some part in belief: 'What a very odd business this "belief in God" (or gods) is. I ask myself - just what is the reason why obviously intelligent people go in for it. And actually believe it. Or - as I think may often be the case - say the[y] believe simply for opportunistic reasons. Why do some people believe - and others don't? '

A good question.

(Yet on 17th March the same Mr 'Bunker' (who now acknowledges that people may have reasons for their beliefs) had said :' I cannot CHOOSE to believe[r]. What an odd notion - choosing (!) to believe.')

A week ago, Mr Bunker was saying :' there were two positions open to me. I agree. But - as you will agree - I reached a considered opinion. To have opted for the other position was an impossibility for me in the light of my assessment of the evidence and probability. You perhaps call that "choosing". I call it being "forced" to adopt the only position left open to me. '

This confirms my stated point, that Mr Bunker is using terms appropriate to proof and truth for a decision which can only be based upon evidence and probability, and introducing possibility and impossibility into a question where they cannot be established. He also uses the term 'forced'. which means either that it was against his will or that facts and logic offered no alternative. Yet he has repeatedly accepted, during this discussion, that facts and logic alone cannot close the question.( I quote the precise words of Mr 'Bunker' :'I have never said that his non-existence can be proved. Why? Because it can't. It is logically impossible.')

On 21st March he was saying:' ...(If I remember rightly I said atheism was forced upon me. I didn't choose it.) Well I'm afraid you've got it wrong - once more. You shouldn't be asking "who", but "what" forced me ... And the answer is quite simple. Circumstances forced me. Intellectual honesty with myself. The inability to believe something which I found impossible to believe. -- Is that clear now? - Yes? '

Well, no, not to me it isn't. How can someone be 'unable' to believe in the existence of something whose non-existence he himself says cannot be logically established (see 'Bunker' above, passim)?

On 19th March he had said: 'I have not chosen unbelief. If I may say sloppily, unbelief has been forced upon me.'

This was shortly after he had proclaimed: ' If we continue this discussion on religion/belief/atheism on the basis of logical and rational argument, I shall win. For the simple reason that I have logic and reason on my side.' and ' I, an atheist, am not illogical.'

Not long before this, he had said :' When I say I believe there is no God, I am stating my considered opinion, a very firm conviction admittedly. But not absolute certainty.'

This would appear to me to be a direct contradiction of his recent statement that :''I have a position of absolute unbelief in gods. Absolutely.' '

I would add here that , since I posted this comment, Mr 'Bunker' has been whizzing around like a dying bluebottle on a windowsill, in smaller and smaller, and more and more erratic loops, to which my only response is to smile indulgently. While his ally, Mr Wooderson has been amusing us with the distinction between actual impossibility ( ie real impossibility, which is actually impossible) and something he terms 'psychological' impossibility, ie not impossibility at all, but a groundless conviction of impossibility lodged in the Atheist mind, resting on the prejudices, desires, wishes and fears of the individual.