We fuss over mothers... then tell them to dump their children in baby farms and go back to work

This is Peter Hitchens' Mail on Sunday column

The more fuss we make about mothers, what with all those soppy cards and special Mothering Sunday lunches in restaurants, the less we seem to want them to bring up their own children.

The view seems to be that it’s just about all right for women to give birth, but after that can we please separate them from their young as soon as possible, for the sake of the economy?

New Labour was frank about it, with that terrifying commissar Patricia Hewitt describing the dwindling numbers of full-time mothers as a ‘problem’.

The Lib Dems’ chief feminist, Lynne Featherstone, says with her usual simple-minded bluntness that having a baby is a ‘bit of a setback’, adding that: ‘One of the main barriers to full equality in the UK is the fact women still have babies.’

The Coalition wants 40 per cent of two-year-olds in day care by next year. The shiny Modern Tory Liz Truss (I can’t call her a conservative) hires a costly nanny for her own children but wants the less wealthy to stuff their progeny into baby farms with industrial staff-to-toddler ratios.

Even the Leftist Polly Toynbee, who has nothing in principle against nationalising childcare, describes the Truss plan as ‘warehousing’.

Nobody ever questions the claim that it is automatically good for mothers to go out and be wage-slaves. Once, this idea was widely hated, and every self-respecting man worked as hard as he could to free his wife from the workbench.

Then the feminist revolutionaries began to argue that the home was a prison and marriage was penal servitude, chained to a sink. Most people thought that was nuts – until big business realised that women were cheaper than men, more reliable than men and much less likely to go on strike or be hungover than men.

What’s more, all the really beefy men-only jobs – mining coal, rolling steel, stoking furnaces – had been abolished.

So suddenly the wildest anti-male ravings of the ultras became the standard view of the CBI, the political parties and the agony aunts. And off the women trooped, to their call centres, their offices and their assembly plants, choking back tears as they crammed their toddlers into subsidised nurseries.

They got tax-breaks. Fatherless households got welfare subsidies. So as far as the State was concerned, the one arrangement that was discriminated against – and hard – was the one where one parent went out to work and the other stayed at home.

A selfish upper crust of female lawyers, professional politicians, bankers and journalists imagined that all women enjoyed work as much as they did – when the truth is that most do it to pay the bills.

But this self-satisfied clique was and is very influential. Who, in Parliament, law, business or the media, speaks for full-time mothers? Certainly not the steely, suited superwomen who have done very well out of the sex war.

Does all this matter? Well, I suspect it does. Children need parents, and small children badly need the devoted, unstinting personal attention that only a mother can give. Without it, they will grow physically but they will not flourish as fully developed humans.

If you wonder where those feral teenagers came from, or why so many primary school children can barely talk and are not potty-trained, ask yourself if it might not be connected with the abolition of motherhood.

But surely Scandinavia, the home of mass day care, is a  paradise? Well, not if you believe Swedish sociologist Jonas  Himmelstrand, who last week warned psychological disorders have tripled among children in Sweden since the child-rearing revolution there in the Eighties.

Culture can’t be transferred from one generation to the next when children are left to bring each other up. He says of mass day care: ‘It is at the root of bullying, teenage gangs, promiscuity and the flat-lining of culture.’

As usual, we have been warned. As usual, we will not take any notice until it is far  too late. For no political party stands up for private life or the independent family.

 *******

Every few years a sort of blue mist blurs the vision of the dwindling battalions of Tory loyalists. They persuade themselves that some more or less fraudulent person is the new hope of the future.

Facts are ignored. Blind faith is deployed. From this came the wild and comically wrong belief that David Cameron was a secret patriot, who would rip off his green, liberal garments when he assumed office.

Well, we know how that worked out. But, learning nothing from the experience, the poor old Tory Tribe are now looking for a new delusion to cling to.

Some are beguiled by Alexander (alias ‘Boris’) Johnson. They don’t even know his real name, and have also failed to notice that he is politically correct, pro-EU and, while he is cleverer than his schoolmate and fellow Bullingdon hearty, Mr Slippery, he is the same sort of thing.

But dafter even than that is the cult of Theresa May, now being hawked about as the New Iron Lady.

Oh, come on. Theresa May is the Marshmallow Lady. She U-turned over militant feminism, switching without explanation from opposing all-women shortlists for parliamentary candidates to supporting them.

She worked happily with Harriet Harman over the passage of the horrible Equality Act.

And as for her non-pledge to put withdrawal from the Human Rights Convention ‘on the table’ if the Tories win the next Election, what’s that worth?

‘On the table’ doesn’t mean she will do it. And the Tories will lose the next Election anyway. As a statement of intent, it is like that fine old music-hall chorus: ‘If we had some ham, we could have some ham and eggs, if we had some eggs.’

 

The awful Huhne case shows how driving cars brings out the worst in all of us.

Perfectly pleasant people, once in control of a ton of steel and glass, become irrational, arrogant, impatient speed-maniacs muttering ‘get out of my way’ and buying personalised number plates.

How much time did Chris Huhne save by his speeding? What did he do with it? He has plenty now.

As I ride my bicycle, I notice the steady worsening of manners on the roads, more hooting, more violent swerving, more red lights jumped, more mad texting while driving.

The people involved are probably saints at home or at work, but become fiends and morons once at the wheel.

 

It's started. The Coalition is breaking up, as I predicted here in September 2011.

Get ready for a noisy Tory minority government, all mouth and no trousers, designed to fool you into thinking they’ve rediscovered their principles.

 

I gather that the wrongly imprisoned police officer April Casburn, convicted on some of the flimsiest evidence I’ve ever seen, will not be appealing.

What a pity. I should have thought the Police Federation would be anxious to  protect its members from the danger of such prosecutions, and would want to press the  matter even if Mrs Casburn is reluctant.

 

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Could I Push the Hangman's Lever? What about Finland? And other questions

A few brief and necessarily hurried responses. Scandinavian countries are often advanced, by left-wingers, as models of how to do things, etc. I have myself noted Norway’s successful existence outside the EU, for different reasons (Norway, like us, has oil and gas. Unlike us, it made wise use of them).

But these countries are really city states. They do not suffer many of the problems which blight us.  I believe Finland’s current population is 5.4 million. Its cities are spacious and its countryside sparsely populated ( I have visited it once, briefly). It is generally prosperous and stable, and has been since the end of the  Second World War left it as a neutral state. Its main internal problems used to be, as far as I know, connected with lingering hostility towards Swedes, seen as colonial oppressors.

What it does not have is the thing that curses this country – a powerful class system, probably originating in the Norman conquest, reinforced by a brutal 19th century industrialisation and now made worse by a 21st century de-industrialisation.

Britain’s class problems, often death to talent and hope if you are born on the wrong side of the divide, are the curse of our state education system. That is why enlightened socialists such as R.H.Tawney were very keen on the grammar school system which – first with scholarships and later through local authority free places – opened up good education to the children of the poor.

Of course, they did not totally succeed. There weren’t enough grammar schools in many areas, and the primary schools which fed them were often inadequate. Many, many things could have been done to widen the road upwards. But they did a lot of good, and now that road is completely closed.

There is also the powerful secondary point that not all bright children are *academically* bright, or want an intensive academic education of the kind grammar schools provide.  Many would benefit much more from a predominantly technical education, though this should also be coupled with the teaching of culture, history and language so as to permit the maximum enjoyment of life. I believe it is the case in several continental countries that the plumber or the electrician who comes to fix your pipes or wiring will be quite able to discuss literature and classical music, because his teachers never assumed that working with your hands meant that you could let your brain atrophy.

Each country has different problems. Ours were better solved by an admission that class barriers exist and need to be broken by schools. The comprehensive system fixed the class borders where they were, and let them there. It also (as I explained in the article) lowered the standards of all our schools, because its inventors could never admit openly that it was a huge experiment in social engineering. Nor could they, nor can they,  admit that it has failed.

I shall leave the discussion of cannabis for a bit, except to note how interesting it si that first-person accounts of the sad fates of cannabis users provoke so much rage and fury among the dope community. If they are so sure there’s no connection, why would they worry so? They are angry because deep down they fear that I am right.

 I intend to spend some time over the weekend grading Mr Wooderson’s more recent postings on the subject. 

I am once again accused of nostalgia, by someone who obviously doesn’t actually read what I write. I once again deny it. The past is gone. It is the future that concerns me, and the fact that we insist on choosing the wrong future. Nor were the 1950s any kind of paradise.

Luckett Bell asks if those who favour the death penalty should be prepared to carry it out. Not necessarily. We pay soldiers, sailors and airmen to deter (by being prepared and trained to kill) or actually to kill our external enemies. I don’t see why I should pay a hangman to deter (by being prepared to and trained to kill)  or kill our internal enemies . I think the parallel is exact. Some US states have elaborate systems under which the prison officer who throws the switch for an execution is one of several and does not know if he is the one responsible. I have no special objection to this, if it comforts those involved (like the supposed blank bullet in one of the rifles given to a firing squad) . But a hangman (whose action is essentially the physical exercise of the will of justice) is a skilled person, and has to be personally involved, and I can’t see how this could be anonymised. As I think hanging the most effective and humane method of execution, this makes such a device impossible. I’m sure Albert Pierrepoint was affected by his actions, but if I am right he did a great deal of good, by keeping this country much less violent than it was after he was retired. I do know, by the way, that he later came to view capital punishment as vengeance, and to oppose it. While this is quite understandable (many soldiers become pacifists for similar reasons),  I think he was wrong. On the other hand, this story hardly suggests that he was corrupted or turned into an unfeeling monster, by his duties. I certainly wouldn't volunteer for the job. I would find it very difficult. But I find many responsibilities hard to face, and that doesn't mean that, if it came to it, I wouldn't face them.

Oh,  ‘Legal Highs’. Some people seem to think there is some sort of clincher here.  I can’t see why. Apart from the fact that, to all intents and purposes cannabis is now a ‘legal high’, since the laws against it aren’t enforced,   it is much like the conversion of alcohol (since the 1980s) from something generally drunk in moderation in company, into a mind-obliterating drug consumed by hundreds of thousands of people with the sole purpose of getting drunk. Self-stupefaction is morally wrong. Our society has abandoned that belief, in law, morals and custom, and the abandonment of the alcohol licensing laws, accompanied the hollowing out of the drug laws, have created a society of debauchery and licence in which self-stupefaction is regarded as normal and desirable.  Just look at the pitiful, tragic ‘ Freshers’ Weeks’ at our ‘universities’ where the young, liberated from the restraints of home, are inducted en masse into drunkenness, sexual licence and drugs.

This is ultimately a moral question, and a question of morals being reinforced by law. If we still had morals, and still used the law to reinforce them, there would be a lot less demand for self-stupefaction. There would also be a lot more discontent with the squalid, incompetent , corrupt nature of our society and civilisation. But, in a permanent haze of legal and illegal ‘highs’, we passively accept our third world lot, which will end in the miserable enslavement of our descendants, the fate which always waits for civilisations which commit suicide.  

 

 

 

 

 

A free Scotland? No, it's being fed into the Euro-blender

If David Cameron wants to hurry Scotland out of the United Kingdom, he is going the right way about it. The more he says he loves the Union, the more I fear for it.
For all his bluster, he must know that the SNP has a moral mandate to hold a referendum on independence when it wants to do so. Placing legal obstacles in its way will rightly anger reasonable Scots.

I have seldom seen a clearer example of someone setting out to achieve the opposite of what he claims to want. Mr Cameron would guillotine the Queen in Trafalgar Square if he thought it would keep him in office. So breaking up the country for the sake of a parliamentary majority would not be much of a strain for him. And getting the Scots out of Westminster is his best hope of such a majority.

How on earth do we find ourselves in this mess? Only 40 years ago, Scottish Nationalism was a weird fad, preached in garbled tones by hairy communist poets and funny old ladies. Tory Unionists held dozens of Westminster seats. Now Nationalism is a mighty force, led by an astute man, close to attaining its goal. Unionism is dead and the Scottish Tories are a laughable remnant of eccentric bystanders led by a lesbian kickboxer.

But it is not Alex Salmond’s cunning that has brought this about. It is the European Union, which needs to turn this country into manageable chunks before it can feed it into the Euro-blender and destroy it for ever.

Notice how any part of the UK can have a referendum on reducing the powers of London (and Northern Ireland can vote to leave the Union altogether, any time it wants to).
But nobody can have a vote of any kind on reducing the powers of  Brussels, let alone on leaving the  EU. The truth is obvious, but nobody observes it.

Brussels rejoices to see Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland becoming ever more separate from England. It would like to see England itself Balkanised into ‘regions’ – and the new multicultural republic of London under President Boris is a major step towards that.

As it happens, I love Scotland. I value its huge contributions to our joint history in thought, war, invention, industry and literature. I think it should make its own laws. I think it is quite right that England, far bigger and richer, should subsidise it. But I do not think it can be truly independent. It is too small, and not rich enough.

And before anyone mentions Scandinavia, they should look at the troubled history of that region, its tiny nations repeatedly occupied or menaced into subjection by more powerful neighbours. All an independent Scotland could hope for, until the EU came along, was a grim, pinched future on the fringe of Europe.

Now, it can either be a part of a United Kingdom, sharing a long and mostly happy history, a love of liberty, an astonishing inventiveness and industry and remarkable valour in war; or it can be a province of the Brussels empire, granted all the toys and trappings of nationhood but actually far less free and autonomous than it is now.

Brussels would be happy to let Scotland (like Ireland) have a flag and an anthem. There would be Scottish EU passports, token Scottish armed forces, a Scottish international dialling code and internet  code, Scottish postage stamps and a Scottish Broadcasting Corporation.

The political classes of Edinburgh and Glasgow would be able to feast on Brussels money. But every important decision would be taken by the EU. You can see why this appeals to professional politicians. But it is hard to see how it would help normal men and women. Yet, unless we all fight our  way out of the EU, our country will be broken up and our flag made meaningless.

Old age shows no mercy to women. Nor does this film

The makers of the incredibly nasty new film about Lady Thatcher seem to have been mainly worried that the feminist sisterhood might attack it. I expect that is why they invited my anti-sexist, right-on opposite number, Suzanne Moore, to a private dinner with the film’s star, Meryl Streep.

Ms Streep cooked her own-recipe apple pie for Suzanne and several other notable media women. By contrast, they didn’t even ask sexist, reactionary little me to a preview, though their PR firm ceaselessly invites me to free advance showings of other, less interesting films.
Well, never mind. I can afford my own ticket and saw it on the night it was released, so you don’t have to.

After much thought, I have decided that it is one of the most cynical, unpleasant and cruel films I have ever seen. It will be  a pity if it makes anyone rich. I am certainly not a Thatcher-worshipper. But nor am I a Thatcher-hater. And I think you would have to hate her quite a lot to approve of this film.

Many of us – even if we do not now know it – will sink into the dementia which she has suffered. Why, the people responsible for this film may themselves end their days as tragic husks of what they are now.

Will they, their friends or their families think it proper to make a public spectacle of this decline while they are still alive? It wasn’t necessary. It was wrong. And because old age is so much more merciless to women than it is to men, I think the right-on feminists should join me in protesting.

We need low-speed rail... and lots of it

The campaign against the new high-speed rail line through the Chilterns is overdone. Railways don’t do nearly as much damage as motorways, and I can’t remember anyone fussing much about the hideous, irreparable scar made in the Chilterns by the M40, visible 20 miles away.

But if there’s money to spare for building railways, what we need is low and medium-speed lines that go where we want to go, not bullet trains between big cities. Our island is  so small that a 125mph maximum is quite  high enough.

The lunatic mistake of the Beeching cuts, which left dozens of medium-size towns without a station, needs to be reversed. And perhaps above all, England needs a decent East-West link for both passengers and goods.

Here we Gove again...

I wondered how long it would be before Michael Gove said he would make it easier to ‘sack bad teachers’. Every Education Secretary in living memory is eventually reduced to saying this. Nothing changes, and it won’t until they bring back grammar schools.

 

Credit where it is due - but is this enough?

Read Peter Hitchens only in The Mail on Sunday

Like Anthony Blair, David Cameron is wonderfully careful with words. The sentences whizz by and you think something significant and different has been said. Then you rewind and look at the detail and it's not quite so. On Monday I wrote the essay on David Cameron and drugs which appears next to this item. On Tuesday morning I read accounts of Mr Cameron's visit to Sweden and - at first glance - I thought he might have made a swerve in the right direction.

Asked what advice he would give to a 15-year-old today, offered cannabis, he said: "I would advise strongly against it. It's against the law. It's wrong.

"I have seen what has happened to contemporaries and constituents who have gone off the rails. Doing drugs is a bad idea and there is a real epidemic in our country and we need to do things about that.

"I have been very clear about this. When they are young, lots of people do things they shouldn't and I was one of them. I regret those things but people should judge me now based on the policies I put forward."

Mr Cameron added: "I still don't think we are getting drugs education right in Britain. On some occasions in some schools we are almost too informative and are almost encouraging people to experiment."

He went on to explain that he chose his words carefully, had a responsibility to talk about such things in a serious way, and - as a parent - was keen to ensure that his actions encouraged people to make the right decision.

"Preaching doesn't work, but good sense does."

At first sight this looks quite creditable. But look at what Mr Cameron does not do. First, he does not say the words "What I did was wrong" or "I should not have done it". He depersonalises it by saying that 'lots of people' do 'things they shouldn't'. He says that he 'regrets' his action, as well he might, since if it had come out earlier it might have cost him the leadership of the Tory party. And contrary to the conventional wisdom of a media aristocracy which is itself heavily penetrated by drug-taking, it still has the power to do the Tory leader harm at the next election.

Those of us who endure the endless fake apologies of railway companies know how to distinguish between the counterfeit and the real thing. Anyone can express regret, truthfully, for a failure. But regret isn't penitence. An unnamed person may offer an apology, or a computerised voice claim to be 'very sorry' for any 'inconvenience that may have been caused' but what is missing is a personal admission of wrongdoing, the words "We're sorry we failed you today. It was our fault. We will try not to do it again" uttered by an actual person with some responsibility. In the same way, Mr Cameron nowhere says "I did something wrong". Nor, while backing away from his original irresponsible support for reclassifying cannabis, does he say he was wrong to have done so in the first place.

I'm also interested to know exactly why Mr Cameron thinks it is wrong to take drugs. I am glad that he does think this. But what are his objections, actually? Are they moral, or do they consist of 'if you get caught, it'll cause career problems' . If a colleague of his were found taking drugs, would he condemn him or her? If he knew that a colleague was taking drugs, would he treat that colleague as a wrongdoer, to be dismissed and prosecuted, or as a victim, to be helped? I could ask him this myself, if only he'd be interviewed by me, but he prefers to be interviewed by people who are generally sympathetic, so this won't happen. I assume this is because he knows that his sympathisers won't ask such questions.

He also refers to an 'epidemic'. It is easy to use lazy language like this. I'm sure I've done it myself. But the truth is that you don't catch drug taking as you catch an infectious disease, and wake up one morning as a drug-taker. You do it because you want to, or - in many cases - because you lack the courage to say you don't want to. The conditions in which drugs spread are created by the public attitudes of influential people, such as Mr Cameron.

He's nearly right about drugs education, which pathetically assumes that young people will take drugs, and seeks to advise them on how to take them 'safely'. There is no such safety available. In a substantial minority of unlucky cases, drug abuse will lead to disaster. But hang on a second. This education is undoubtedly 'preaching', that is the use of the public pulpit to spread a certain moral idea. And it has an effect on people's attitudes. In fact, the more of it there is, the more drug taking there is. Is it possible that if the 'harm reduction' people stopped preaching, there would be less drug abuse?

Mr Cameron is said to have been heavily influenced by his godfather, the ultra-liberal Tory MP Tim Rathbone, for whom he once worked as an assistant and who strongly favoured 'harm reduction'.

This 'philosophy' as it is grandly called, has only ever been applied in areas where a strong moral stance would be difficult and require personal courage and an ability to stand up against mockery and abuse - promiscuous sex, where contraception and safe sex' are preached, and illegal drug abuse, where advice is given on how to avoid the worst effects, but moral condemnation and prohibition are never employed, and advocates of these positions are refused state and lottery funding. It's interesting, isn't it, that in its campaign against smoking tobacco, the government has never advocated 'safe' levels of smoking, or published information on how to use cigarettes safely, since so many people are bound to smoke them anyway. Why not? The logic's the same.

And its successful campaigns against drunken driving and for the wearing of seat belts contained a strong moral element, and a fair amount of very effective preaching (as do the campaigns against smoking). Why is preaching right in some cases, and wrong in others? Why is 'harm reduction' good for dealing with teenage sex and drugs (where, incidentally, it has utterly failed) but not in dealing with cigarettes?

Also, what's Mr Cameron doing in Sweden? He already knows a lot about it, which he has chosen to brush aside. When he sat on the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee on drugs, officials from Sweden explained to that committee how they had implemented a policy of zero tolerance against drugs, and treated cannabis as a serious narcotic, not as the minor recreational drug his committee thought it was. Mr Cameron and most of his fellow MPs ignored what the Swedes said, choosing instead to listen to the 'harm reduction' lobby. Is his trip to Stockholm a sign of penitence? Or is it just another bit of triangulation, an apparent swerve towards a conservative position, to prevent a large slice of his support slipping away?

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