Correcting a serious error

Professor Tony Gallagher of Queen's University has found an error in my essay on Selective Schools in this Civitas book. 

 

http://bit.ly/1BMmqZt

The error is of course my responsibility, and I have contacted Civitas to see that it is put right in the online version.

 

In short, my statement (more than once referred to here) that Northern Irish students from poor backgrounds do significantly better than those in other parts of the UK in University entrance is based on my misreading of a table published by the Higher Education Statistics Agency. The table in fact deals with students from the whole UK in Northern Irish universities and cannot be used for that purpose.  

 

There is in fact a difference,  but it is far smaller than the one I state in the Civitas article and therefore less significant than the one I describe.

 

I apologise for the error, and will of course not use this figure again in argument. Where the opportunity arises , I will acknowledge the mistake and correct it.  

 

 

 

 

The Charmed Life of Ruth Davidson MSP

I am fascinated by the charmed life, in image, media and political terms, of the Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson. For example :

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/22/ruth-davidson-star-wembley-nicola-sturgeon-kezia-dugdale

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a critical article about her in the press. Mysteriously, this Scottish politician who has never held a Cabinet Post or even sat at Westminster was the leading Tory pro-EU voice on the BBC’s bizarre Wembley EU debate on Tuesday evening, matched against the Exit campaign’s biggest artillery, Alexander ‘Boris’ Johnson. I haven’t been able to stomach the entire rather nasty event, but what I have seen was pretty banal.   She was praised for her part in the Scottish referendum campaign. Then she was praised for ‘pushing Labour into third place’ in the recent Scottish Parliamentary elections. In fact, Labour’s collapse, now an avalanche, and the similar collapse in the Scottish Liberal Democrats reshuffled the order and size of Scotland’s powerless and irrelevant minority parties, all of them hopelessly outvoted by the Scottish Nationalists. I doubt if Ms Davidson’s talents at being photographed with pints of beer had much to do with it.  I’ll return to the strange position of Scotland’s Tory Party later.

I might add that Labour’s collapse (now probably irreversible in Scotland) was actually caused by David Cameron’s handling of the post-referendum crisis, when he turned the ‘pledge’ of more devolved powers into an aggressive attempt (‘English Votes for English Laws’) to exclude Scottish MPs and voters from influencing national UK decisions. Scottish voters revenged themselves on Labour (which had been prominent in the pro-Union campaign). It provided many with the excuse which they had long needed to abandon the dying Labour Party and switch to the SNP.

But what does the Tory party in Scotland actually stand for? What, most interestingly of all, would happen to it if Scotland became fully independent from London ( as I think is inevitable) , and accepted formal direct submission to Brussels on its own account, rather than via London,  thus abolishing the formal, if forgotten, reason for the Scottish Tory Party’s very existence?

I think it would survive, as a political business, becoming perhaps a sort of Scottish Christian Democrat Party, sharing power from time to time with the SNP in a proportional Parliament, providing a safety valve for those Scots not wholly captivated by the SNP’s  increasingly unmistakable cultural, moral and political leftism. Indeed, maybe the SNP, its main purpose achieved, would split into leftish and rightish wings.

 In the last Scottish Tory leadership campaign, one candidate,  Murdo Fraser, said (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Conservative_Party_leadership_election,_2011 )

 ‘that if elected leader, he would disband the party in favour of setting up a new centre-right party that would be fully autonomous of the UK Conservative Party, but would take the Conservative whip at Westminster. Fraser states that this would be carried out in order to 'de-toxify' the party in Scotland, stating that it would have a distinct Scottish identity, represent Scottish values, support devolution and decentralisation, and fight to maintain Scotland's place within the United Kingdom.’ He also suggested the name ‘Conservative’ should be ditched. He lost, but his suggestions show the state to which the Tories have been reduced in Scotland, where (incredibly) they once held a majority of Parliamentary seats. In fact, in 1955 and 1959, the then Unionist Party wonn an outright majority of votes in Scotland.

The Unionist name was very important. The Scots were not voting for English Toryism, but for a specific form of Scottish Unionism, now quite dead. The closest comparison that can now be made is the various sorts of Unionist in Northern Ireland, many of whom would be Labour supporters in England, but who ally with the Tories at Westminster for national reasons.

Scottish Unionism was specifically opposed to Irish independence, rightly fearing that it would presage a break-up of Union and Empire. It was careful not to call itself ‘Conservative’ because of the strength of Liberalism among Scottish Protestant voters (whom it particularly sought to attract, in a country once nearly as religiously divided as Northern Ireland is now). But in 1965 the Unionists merged with the English and Welsh Tories. They were duly punished, especially in the Thatcher era (though in fact she was in many ways more Liberal than Tory, as was her father, the unforgettable Alderman Roberts). By 1997, they won no Scottish seats at all and were down to 17.5% of the vote. Since then, with many of their voters despairing of Unionism, abandoning the religion of their forebears  and switching to the SNP (which offers a new ‘union’ with the EU) ,  they have been searching for a role.

It is an extraordinary fact that the Daily Record, now seen as the Scottish equivalent of the Daily Mirror, supported the Unionists until 1964, when it switched to Labour (it is now suspected of flirtation with the SNP). There must be a lot of Scottish people who have, in their lives, voted Unionist, Labour and SNP.

Just as in England, the Tories appear to have shed any sort of political baggage to become a political party seeking office for the sake of it.

The FT’s account of the Scottish elections contained this interesting reflection on the nature of Ms Davidson’s party:  ‘One of the two Tory candidates elected on the Glasgow list was Adam Tomkins, a law professor and a one-time advocate of abolition of the monarchy. The other was Annie Wells, a food retail manager and single mother with a working-class accent who told one campaign rally how she had won over a sceptical voter who started their conversation with the comment: “Ah’m no a Tory, hen.”’

I think even a casual observer must be able to see that whatever is going on here is not conservatism as most of us understand it. Ms Davidson, after a BBC career where she was no doubt exposed to the strong ideology of that organisation, joined the Tory party in 2009 because she liked the look of David Cameron. Interestingly, she says that her decision to join the military (sadly frustrated by serious injury during training) was sparked off by the sight of British troops in the former Yugoslavia,  the anti-Sovereignty prototype for our later catastrophic intervention in Iraq. 

But one thing Ms Davidson certainly does believe in is continued British membership of the EU. This belief is actually very profound among most of those, especially the university-schooled professional elite,  brought up since 1960. It touches on the most fundamental creeds – internationalism, egalitarianism, the worship of modernity for its own sake and an active rejection of the past as a source of lessons for the present  -  of the new establishment uniting, whether they like it or not, Ms Davidson with Stephen Kinnock, and possibly Jeremy Corbyn, and David Cameron with my late brother. The great, deep switch from Protestantism, the 1688 settlement and a belief in national sovereignty , to secularism, disdain for sovereignty and a far greater affinity for France in 1789 to England in 1689, has more or less taken place. And enthusiasm for the EU is its badge and banner.  

PETER HITCHENS: This barmy 'blitz on toffs' will make us ALL poorer

This is Peter Hitchens's Mail On Sunday column

I still struggle to persuade many Tory loyalists that their party has now actually become a rather Left-wing version of New Labour. If only they’d listen, it might help them come round to recognising one of the most important facts about modern Britain.

Here’s some evidence. The Cabinet Office Minister, Matthew Hancock, has announced plans to grill job applicants to find out if they have been to independent schools.

He explains this inquisition by saying: ‘Social justice is at the heart of everything this one nation Government is trying to achieve. 

'Our goal is simple: to make sure everyone has the opportunity to succeed and make the most of their talents, whatever the circumstances of their birth.’

Social justice? This is, of course, top-grade tripe. What Mr Hancock wants is to destroy quality, in the name of equality.

There is a simple and proven way to make the best use of the nation’s talents: restore the 1,000 fine state grammar schools in England and Wales madly destroyed in an idiotic frenzy between 1965 and 1990, and their equivalents in Scotland. 

Then build more of them. And reopen the best independent schools to the children of poor homes by reintroducing the direct grant system, which gave a free, first-class education to thousands of talented children from state primaries, the late Alan Rickman being a good example.

Every time I hear politicians drivelling that the independent schools should do more to help the state sector, I long to shout in their ears: ‘But they did! And it worked! And you abolished it in 1975, and are so pig-ignorant you don’t even know about it!’

Even now those supposed towers of snobbish privilege which are the independent schools do what they can (often through the generosity of parents already paying stiff fees) to take in as many boys and girls from less well-off homes as they possibly can, free of charge.

Meanwhile, huge numbers of children at these alleged Snob Academies come from families where the fees are a giant strain on the family budget, willingly accepted. Many have tried the supposedly improved state education system and found it gravely wanting. They just think education is more important than holidays or new cars or restaurant meals.

They tend not to be rich enough to live in the catchment areas of the exclusive fake comprehensives where wealthy Leftists send their young, pretending to be apostles of equality when to all intents and purposes they have paid for their children to be privileged.

Mr Hancock’s scheme would waft these pampered Leftists into the best jobs, as they are already wafted into the top universities, which are ceaselessly pestered to make them discriminate against independent schools. And it would slam the door of opportunity in the faces of many who would make the most of it. Crazily, it would do this in the name of progress.

How insane this all is. None of these people knows what he is doing. The Left has not only taken over all the parties, but now proceeds to spit on the very people – the poor – it claims to be helping.

I will quote here what that great teacher, headmaster and university Vice Chancellor, Lord James of Rusholme, told the House of Lords in 1976 as he protested against the destruction of all these schools: ‘If I were a High Tory instead of a Fabian Socialist – a Tory of a type that now scarcely exists even in cartoons, one who really believes in privilege and keeping the lower orders down – one of the first things I should do would be to get rid of grammar schools and, above all, I should applaud what we are doing this afternoon, getting rid of the direct grant schools.’

I would like to point this out to Mr Matthew Parris, former Tory MP, BBC favourite and frequent apologist for David Cameron, who wrote last week: ‘The present public mood of sneering at public school toffs is healthy. 

'The brand must be trashed. People must be made to feel sheepish about going to Eton or Harrow. It was welcome news yesterday that the Cabinet Office Minister, Matt Hancock, is drawing up a list of questions that employers may ask job applicants about their socio-economic background.’

He added that he meant this to sound aggressive. Well, I mean my response to sound rude. Mr Parris and Mr Hancock have adopted opinions which are stupid, ill-informed and utterly wrong.

Finally...the great housewife myth is turning to dust 

The nastiest and most dishonest slogan of the ultra-feminists was that women who stayed at home to raise their children were ‘chained to the kitchen sink’.

This unpleasant expression scared many women away from doing the most important and responsible (and rewarding) task which most of us will ever have – raising the next generation to be worthy inheritors of a great free country, hand-reared individuals rather than battery children, the conformist products of TV and mass culture.

And it gulled them into undergoing a real enslavement: wage-slavery. How many really wanted to do this, and how many were cajoled and propagandised into it?

Well, last week Professor Maggie Andrews, of the University of Worcester, told the Hay Festival that the old assumption was that feminism was about escaping the domestic, getting out of the home, getting a job and being financially independent.

But ‘people are more sceptical about that now - they see a much more complex picture. They see the domestic space as one area of women’s power. 

Certain elements of the domestic have become much sexier, much more popular, an  escape from the horrors of society’. 

Well, that’s one way of putting it. I just think many women have discovered that wage-slavery was a false liberation, and that, if there are any chains in their lives, they are the chains of money that keep them from their children.

********

A sorry war with nothing but baddies 

News from the supposed liberal democratic paradise of Ukraine, so much nicer than Mr Putin’s nasty Russia. 

According to the United Nations, Ukrainian forces are rounding up and torturing suspected rebel sympathisers. 

One victim had his hand smashed with a hammer and was waterboarded while being kicked and punched in the genitals. 

The UN had to abandon an anti-torture inspection after being denied access to five secret detention centres. The Russian rebels are just as bad, but you knew that. So sorry, but there are no good guys in this conflict.

 

*******

If the true culprits of the Birmingham pub bombings were arrested, tried and convicted, how long would it be before they were released in the cause of the ‘peace process’? My guess is two years maximum – less than you can get for some driving offences.

If you want to comment on Peter Hitchens, click on Comments and scroll down

How Impartial Is The Queen?

How politically neutral is Her Majesty the Queen? In my view Royal neutrality is a bit of a myth. Her Majesty’s very public endorsement of the 1998 surrender to the IRA, well-publicised in the weeks between the instrument of surrender and the far-from-fair and far-from-frank referendum which endorsed the surrender, was a direct intervention in contentious politics. When I called the Palace at the time and asked them to explain, they told me to ‘consult a constitutional expert’. I asked them if they had a list of approved ones, and the line went quiet.

 

Of course it did. There is no court of appeal on such things.

 

Then, in her 2004 Christmas broadcast she proclaimed 'diversity is indeed a strength' - a Royal endorsement of the multiculturalism many oppose and dislike. I thought then, and think now, that this was a breach of impartiality too. And I was worried by her apparent intervention in the Scottish referendum. Was this proper?

 

 

What about the Monarch’s apparently warm attitude towards the EU, and her seeming endorsement of its disputed and dubious claim to be a force for peace and harmony,   which many believe was exposed in this Berlin speech on Thursday, delivered to an enthusiastically nodding Angela Merkel? Division in Europe dangerous?  Who says? The safest period of my life was the Cold War, far more peaceful than now, as the EU rampages around the Balkans and the Ukraine.

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3137519/When-Angela-met-Queen-Majesty-pays-respects-victims-war-dictatorship-watched-Chancellor-Merkel.html

 

 

Well, what is the monarch’s standing in the EU?  Buckingham Palace’s website makes an interesting statement on this, here

 

http://www.royal.gov.uk/MonarchUK/QueenandGovernment/Queenandvoting.aspx

 

What’s interesting is that under English or United Kingdom law and precedent, the Queen , being part of Parliament (‘The Queen in Parliament’ ) is simply not able to vote for members of another part of the legislature. This is part of the wiring of our ancient constitution, not a rule later invented, but a fact.

 

This is also, as far as I can work it out, why she cannot issue herself with a passport, which (although it is an EU document with a flatulent, vestigial rubric on it about an (unidentified, see below) Secretary of State ‘requesting and requiring’ Johnny Foreigner to do this or that, which these days he generally doesn’t) still  bears her insignia.

 

UK passports are still issued under Royal Prerogative, the simplest source of state authority, rather than under Parliamentary law. This may also be why Her Majesty does not have to have a licence plate on her car, though I’m happy to be corrected by anyone who understands this better. I think it’s also why she used not to pay any tax.

 

However, compare and contrast : ‘Under the Maastricht Treaty, The Queen and other members of the Royal Family would be entitled to vote for the European Parliament, or to stand for election to that Parliament.

‘However, The Queen would only exercise these rights on the advice of her Ministers. Their advice would invariably be that she should neither vote nor stand for an elected position so as not to compromise her neutrality.’

 

But , as she’s not part of the European Parliament, which actually has sovereignty over this country and legislates for it, under the guidance of the Commission , the European Council and the European Court of Justice, her abstention is a choice, not a constitutional fact.

 

This is quite interesting, if you like poking about in the hidden wiring of our constitution. For it turns out(and Buckingham Palace has confirmed this to me today) that the Queen, by virtue of being a British *national* (she is not a British *citizen*, and of course was not, in the days when the rest of us had that lost privilege,  a *subject* of herself) is a *citizen* of the European Union.

 

Though born in the then colony of Malta, I was by right of British parentage a British subject from 1951 to 1982. I did not notice that I had lost this historically rather moving and exceptional status until , trapped in some airport by delays,  I studied my passport more carefully than usual and found that I had at some point become a citizen, with the ‘right of abode’ in my own country.  This happened in 1982. At the same time the passport ceased to say what your occupation was, so anyone who claims that it ‘says in their passport’ that they are something or other ( as people often do) is making up it up. 

 

Not long afterwards, I’d guess 1984 or 1985, I was at a political lunch with the then Home Secretary Leon Brittan, recently deceased, who arrived late explaining that he had been at a ceremony in which the issuing of passports was transferred from the Foreign Office to the Home Office. This was presumably because the passport was about to become an EU document, issued on behalf of the EU by the Home Office, rather than by an independent country declaring that it recognised and protected its people when travelling abroad. The old rubric about ‘Her Britannic Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs’ requesting and requiring all those whom it might concern to afford the bearer all necessary whatsit, etc etc  was altered to ‘Her Majesty’s Secretary of State’, unspecified. For all anyone knew, it might be the Secretary of State for Wales, or Drains. I can remember Leon Brittan explaining that this would now mean him, as Home Secretary.  I think they left that out because it might alert people to the fact that they were now carrying an EU document. One side-effect of this was that the ancient system under which the SIS (MI6) officer in every embassy was officially the Passport officer had to be abandoned and they had to think of a new cover story.

 

In 1988 the old stiff blue passport began to be replaced by the Building Society passbook which we have had since, first bearing the words European Community and then , in 1997, ‘European Union’ (the lettering in which ‘European Union’ is stamped on the front cover grows marginally bigger as the years pass, though you need to be observant to notice this). My last proper blue passport, containing a lovely collection of Warsaw Pact visa stamps and my Moscow residence permit, was stolen from a jacket pocket in the old ‘Daily Express ‘ office soon after I returned from Russia in 1992.

 

Well, now that I and Her Majesty are both EU citizens, whether we want to be or not, What does EU citizenship entail? All is explained here:

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/atyourservice/en/displayFtu.html?ftuId=FTU_2.1.1.html

 

So, at the moment, it’s just a few not especially wonderful rights. But then there’s the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (This began life as the original Treaty of Rome but has been substantially revised over the years. It is the core of the EU’s constitution and can be studied in its ‘ consolidated version’ here

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:12012E/TXT&from=EN )

 

In its Part Two, you will find that Article 20, paragraph 2 reads (my emphasis):

 

1. Citizenship of the Union is hereby established. Every person holding the nationality of a Member State shall be a citizen of the Union. Citizenship of the Union shall be additional to and not replace national citizenship. 2. Citizens of the Union shall enjoy the rights and be subject to the duties provided for in the Treaties.

It adds that there are, as yet, no duties. But when they think of some, the Treaty already obliges us to be subject to them. All they have to do is devise them and ram them through the EU’s decision-making process.  So as far as I can see,  the Queen, technically, is a subject of the EU, which, as a Sovereign, she cannot be. A Palace spokesperson told me today that the Queen’s EU citizenship ‘ in no way affects her prerogatives, rights and responsibilities as the Sovereign and Head of State.’

 

But I’m really not sure that can be so. I’ll see if I can find a constitutional expert. 

Fear and Lothian in Westminster

For many years now it’s been thought clever to go on about the ‘West Lothian’ question when the issue of Scottish devolution is discussed. First asked by Enoch Powell and Tam Dalyell (both clever men, both dedicated troublemakers),  it boils down to:

 

‘How can Scottish MPs at Westminster vote on purely English issues when MPs from England have lost their powers to take decisions about parallel Scottish matters?’

 

I used to be entranced by this clever-clogs stuff, and I can still see some strength in it. But I have been forced into a rethink by David Cameron’s decision to pretend he is under pressure on this from his backbenchers (whom he royally ignores when it suits him, on every subject there is).

 

He’s plainly playing a little game of ‘never let a good crisis go to waste’. Having come within inches of saying goodbye to the Scottish contingent of Labour MPs, thanks to the near-success of the campaign for Scottish independence, he has taken a strong liking to the idea. And, despite the referendum result, he wants to find a way of getting rid of the Scots anyway.

 

For, as we all know, he has no chance of a Westminster majority as long as there is a Scottish contingent there.

 

So, let’s make a matter of party advantage into a matter of principle. But is it actually?  If it is, it’s funny that it’s been allowed to lie untended on the shelf for so many long decades.  And which principle is it? Let us turn to the wisdom of Edmund Burke, whose 1774 address to the voters of Bristol (read it here http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch13s7.html ) is thought by many to be the last word on the proper role of an MP.

 

His constituents wanted Burke to be a kind of delegate from Bristol, representing the interests of Bristol in the national Parliament. Burke, in my view quite rightly, thought them mistaken. He believed that he was above all a member of the national legislature, sent there from Bristol, to use his own judgement and good sense as long as he was their MP. He was bound to listen to them, but not to take their advice.  If they didn’t like the way he spoke and voted they could get rid of him, but he was not simply their mouthpiece.

 

The crucial passage runs thus : ‘Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests; which interests each must maintain, as an agent and advocate, against other agents and advocates; but parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole; where, not local purposes, not local prejudices, ought to guide, but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole. You choose a member indeed; but when you have chosen him, he is not member of Bristol, but he is a member of parliament. If the local constituent should have an interest, or should form an hasty opinion, evidently opposite to the real good of the rest of the community, the member for that place ought to be as far, as any other, from any endeavour to give it effect.’

 

So, for instance, say an MP from Scotland is ( for example) a distinguished historian of Russia, an economist with a reputation for wise prediction, a former Army staff officer, a sometime steelworker,  fisherman or train driver, or an experienced mother of children. Will he or she be excluded from any vote on English matters, because he or she is Scottish, even if his or her area of expertise and knowledge is under discussion and being voted upon? Will he or she be allowed to speak, but forbidden to vote? Will he or she be excluded from major ministerial office, because too many of that ministry’s decisions concern England alone?

 

If not, then where will the line be drawn? Any MP, wherever he or she is from, is fundamentally qualified by the fact that he or she has been chosen by electors to go to Parliament and be a member of it. He or she can surely listen with attention to debate, and have his or her mind changed? The real scandal here is not that Scottish MPs vote on English laws, but that the brute power of the whips often compels MPs of all parties and from all parts of the country to vote against their own personal desires and wisdom. That is something I would very gladly see reformed.

 

I might add, will the same rule be applied with equal rigour to MPs from Northern Ireland, which is pretty thoroughly devolved?

 

And what about the European ‘Parliament’?  Since the EU still devolves a few powers to us here in the UK, should Euro-MPs from the UK be debarred from voting on matters that affect any of the other EU member countries? And should they be debarred from voting on our business? And how would we define what was our business.

 

I’d be happy, in a  mischievous sort of way,  with anything that gummed up the works of that horrible body.

 

But it seems to me that if the rule is ‘You can’t vote on matters in other parts of the federation, if your part of the federation has substantial devolved powers’ , then it could turn out to be quite explosive.

 

Put simply, it means that we no longer have a UK Parliament, just a place where all the UK MPs have offices, and are entitled to be, but are increasingly excluded from having anything to do with anything outside their own provinces.

 

That looks to me like a dissolution of the Union, in everything but name. Perhaps that is what we want. For me, I’m content to let Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have significant amounts of self-government if it makes them happy. I have absolutely no desire for an ‘English Parliament’ mainly because we have had such a body since 1265 or so, and it still exists, only with additional members from other parts of the country.

 

The other reason for not wanting such a thing is much like my reason for not wanting a written constitution. Who will design it?

I don’t just mean that the building will be a ghastly modernistic shed in Milton Keynes,  designed by one of those New Labour architects who have done quite enough damage already. I mean that it will be elected according to some rigged system of proportional representation, probably based upon the infernal ‘regions’ which the EU is determined to impose upon us sooner or later.  

 

As for our existing form of government, Scotland and Wales are entitled to some special measure of self-rule because England utterly dominates the UK, in terms of population, tax-base and usable land. Weren’t you shocked by how few people voted in the Scottish referendum (I don’t mean the excellent high turnout, but the actual totals)? There are English counties with more people in them than voted for Scottish independence.

 

Northern Ireland, by contrast, oughtn’t to have such a body, as direct rule from London is the only way of overcoming sectarianism. Some other form of strengthened local power might be designed, but not one that allows either community to lord it over the other, or which allows terrorist gangs significant influence over government and law. Certainly it should be spared somehow from copying mainland Britain’s comprehensive school disaster, but I suppose for that to happen there’d have to be an official recognition that it is a disaster, which some people amazingly still refuse to admit.

 

But I digress. That point, that the outlying parts of the UK are so small in population by comparison with England, is crucial to understanding why  the West Lothian question is silly as well as clever. England dominates the others simply by existing, much as Germany dominates the continent.  It can afford to subsidize its neighbours, and give them a large measure of home rule,  and is wise to do so if it doesn’t want foreign powers meddling in our island, slipping in through an unguarded back door. It doesn’t need any special protection or privileges.

Could Alex Salmond Accidentally Liberate England?

Before setting out one or two possibly over-optimistic predictions, I thought I would look back at some of the things I’ve said recently about the Scottish issue. Back in April, I wrote : ‘Have we yet even begun to realise what a huge change may overtake us in September if Scotland votes for independence and Britain ceases to exist? Silly threats about the pound, the economy and defence simply don't work. I hope they wouldn't work on us either. They actually increase the pro-independence vote. So why do we keep making them? I for one am sure that the High Command of the Tory Party actively wants Scotland to leave. It is the only way the Conservatives, who like office above all things, will ever get a majority at Westminster again. You don't think they are that cynical? Why ever not?’

 

As far back as February

(you can read it here http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2014/02/we-ask-the-scots-to-be-loyal-but-were-the-ones-betraying-britain-.html )

    I had written : ‘I think we have lost Scotland. I felt it the other day, a disturbing sensation like that moment when the tow-rope parts, the strain too great for its rotten, decayed fibres to bear. The sulky, puzzled feebleness of the London politicians' arguments sounds desperate and defeated. Alex Salmond has already won the September referendum. Tell the Scots they can't keep the pound, and they'll just think quietly: 'Oh, yes, we will. Try and stop us.' And just imagine the reaction in a Scottish home when a friend or a relative phones from south of the border (as urged by David Cameron) to persuade them to vote against independence. Laughter would be the kindest response.

As for the Prime Minister's threat to take the whole Cabinet to Scotland, the actual sight of this squad of third-raters and phonies on the streets of Glasgow or Stirling should make a Nationalist victory certain. What has Scotland to fear by declaring independence from this unprincipled, mumbling shambles? As it happens, I am more grieved about this approaching divorce than most Englishmen will be. My earliest childhood memories are of the lovely coast of Fife, of Scottish voices and Scottish landscapes. I even like the sound of bagpipes.

And I grew up, in a Navy family, in that bleak but cosy era soon after the war, which had brought us all together in a warm Britishness that has now evaporated. I think we belong together, are stronger together and could defy the world together if we wanted.

But this does not stop me seeing what has happened. And I am amazed that so few have noticed the real problem. The leaders of the United Kingdom cannot argue for Scotland to stay in a country they themselves are working so hard to abolish.

Mr Cameron's allegiance to the European Union (which is total and unshakeable) automatically makes him the enemy of the Union of England and Scotland.

Let me explain. The EU's purpose is to abolish the remaining great nation states, carving them up into 'regions' that will increasingly deal direct with the EU's central government in Brussels.

Paris, London, Berlin, Madrid and Rome are allowed to retain the outward signs of power. But it is a gesture. All the real decisions are already taken elsewhere, from foreign policy and trade to the collection of rubbish and the management of rivers. Under this plan, England itself will cease to exist. The European Parliament gave the game away a few years ago by publishing a map of the EU in which all the regional boundaries were shown, but the word 'England' was not mentioned. Meanwhile, the smaller nations of Europe are indulged by the EU, because (unlike the big countries) they are no threat to it. They are happy to be allowed a flag, an anthem, a well-paid political class, a little pomp and circumstance - and no real power.

Like many of the EU's smaller members, Scotland is not big or rich enough to be truly independent. It can never hope to have its own free-floating currency, or its own armed forces capable of projecting power - the true indicators of sovereignty.

In truth, 'independence' will mean that Edinburgh becomes a cold vassal of Brussels, instead of a warm friend of London.

But since London itself has surrendered so much of its power and independence to the EU, this isn't the major change it would once have been. If Scotland is going to be run from Belgium anyway, why let the power and money flow through London, rather than direct to Edinburgh? Britain has given up its own national independence and sovereignty without a struggle. It is not a proper country any more. Having betrayed our own flag, we can hardly ask the Scots to be loyal to it.’

 

The key part of this prophecy , apart from the rather early prediction of a ‘Yes’ vote, was this: ‘The leaders of the United Kingdom cannot argue for Scotland to stay in a country they themselves are working so hard to abolish. Mr Cameron's allegiance to the European Union (which is total and unshakeable) automatically makes him the enemy of the Union of England and Scotland.’

 

I stick with that – though paradoxically the current last-minute melodrama of polls actually makes a ‘Yes’ vote slightly less likely than I thought it back on the 16^th  February. When I wrote that, the ‘No’ campaign were serenely confident and relaxed. Now they’re neither. I suppose it’s just possible that they may yet swing it with the argument that independence is irreversible. But then again, that may well be wishful thinking. We'll all know soon enough.

 

Anyway, let’s look at what happens if there actually is a ‘Yes’ vote. For a start, most of the scare stories will turn out to be just that. It’s the same with the scare stories we are fed about what would happen if Britain left the EU. Just as the EU would have no rational interest in fouling up a major market and close neighbour, England would have no interest in causing an economic and political crisis in Scotland.

 

So we would sort out some sort of currency union, make a reasonable agreement on the debt, and use what influence we have in the EU to ensure that Scotland isn’t forced on to the ramp that leads to the Euro, or into Schengen. Since there’s no precedent for a part of an existing EU member separating from that EU member, I expect compromises can and will be found.

 

These - the Euro and Schengen -  are in fact the major dangers, and ones we can do least about. They’ve featured only slightly because the ‘No’ campaign is full of pro-Brussels figures who don’t feel happy drawing attention to the ferocious demands the EU makes on new members. Those demands rather give away the truth about the EU’s real nature, that it is a political superstate which strangles the independence of its members, who have often been inveigled into it 'democratically' with empty and dishonest elite campaigns in which the truth ahs been carefully hidden and denied.

 

In fact, the whole debate about currency union has completely confirmed what I and other anti-Euro campaigners said, to hoots of derision and feigned incomprehension, back at the end of the last century. He who controls the currency controls the country. I suspect Alex Salmond is quite happy with the outward forms of independence for now, while he consolidates his position. As long as Europe remains reasonably peaceful and prosperous, a symbolic toy nation can look and feel exactly like the real thing. Scandinavia proves this all the time, its nations passing in and out of subjugation or domination by nearby powers, as circumstances change - and everyone being too polite to mention this. Even Swedish neutrality in World War Two turns out to have been  a bit dubious, with German troops actually allowed to cross Swedish territory. 

 

As with Ireland, Scotland's crucial point of separation will come much later when the issue of currency does arise – for I am quite sure that, whatever is agreed this year and next, Edinburgh will come under relentless pressure to join the Euro. If ( see below) England leaves the EU, that pressure will be huge. 

 

But that takes us into even more fascinating territory – the future of the former UK (acronym problems will force us to think of another name for what’s left) .

 

And that’s the start.  If Scotland goes, can Wales be far behind? And then what about Northern Ireland, whose principal Unionist connection with the UK has always been with Presbyterian Scotland, not with Anglican England?

 

We shall need to think in a wholly different way. What a good opportunity, by the way, to abandon plans to update the ludicrous and useless Trident ‘deterrent’ (whom does it deter, and from what?) . And to lay aside our delusions of grandeur in the Middle East and North Africa. What is lweft of 'democratic' Libya’s ‘parliament', I see, has now retreated to a Greek car ferry moored (for the moment) at Tobruk. This may soon be the last territory it controls. 

 

WARNING: May contain traces of SARCASM: David Cameron’s genius for nation-building in the Maghreb is, if anything, even greater than his genius for nation-maintenance here at home.

 

England, having rather notably failed to sort out its own internal problems, would for some years to come have a built-in excuse for standing back modestly from the problems of others, and that, to me at least, would be very welcome.  For many years now our pose as a major power has been absurd, even laughable. Might we lose our seat on the UN Security Council? I suspect that was bound to happen anyway. We might have to relearn, instead, the ancient art of alliances, based upon interests rather than airy principles we don’t actually believe in anyway. A tough and cynical foreign office, like those of the First Elizabeth and Queen Victoria, would flourish outside the airy platitudes of the UN.

 

 

I have to confess that, though I have attempted to defend ‘Britishness’ as an idea and a nationality for many years, and remain scornful of St George’s Day celebrations and calls for an ‘English Parliament’ (we have one already, though badly in need of reinvigoration),  a part of me thrills to the return of the word ‘England’ to its old force and power. Queen Elizabeth’s Tilbury speech before the Armada,  ending ‘but I have the heart and stomach of a King ….and of a King of England, too!’ always makes me want to leap to my feet and cheer. I used to know by heart John of Gaunt’s dying speech ‘…this earth, this realm, this England’, and I think I had better get round to learning it again. In recent years I’ve tended to emphasise the bits about ‘pelting farms and rotten parchment bonds’ and ‘shameful conquest of herself’ . It would be nice to have the silver sea back, serving us ‘in the office of a wall. Or as a moat defensive to a house, against the envy of less happier lands.’

 

For the really exciting possibility of all this is that a newly manoeuvrable, realistic and thoughtful England might just choose the opportunity to abandon the dead political parties which have brought it to this state, and to leave the European Union – not through empty promises of rigged referenda, but through proper debate and Parliamentary majority after an election in which the issue was properly tried between articulate and honest opponents. . This is, after all, the only way we can regain control of our borders, our territorial seas, our economy, our trade, our foreign policy and our law.

 

And if it works (as I think it very much would) it will be very interesting to see how the other former members of the ex-United Kingdom respond to our independence. They might want to come back.

 

Of course it’s much more likely that the dead, nationalized parties will survive, now supported by the EBC ( a set of initials we’ll all be learning, if Mr Salmond gets his ‘Yes’) and our political elite and their tame media will instead inveigle us into balkanizing ourselves into regions, and turning our backs on hope and freedom.

 

But one can sometimes dream.

Scandal, Panic and Anomalies

I did think there was something disturbing about some of the posts here demanding, sometimes rather peremptorily,  that I comment on current (unnamed) events. It was as if it was my duty , in the eyes of such people, to join in the creation of a climate of suspicion and assumed guilt.

 

For me, it was been actively unpleasant to listen to news bulletins and read the newspapers for the past few days. It seemed to me that my trade, which used to be trained to doubt what it was told and to question authority, had laid aside all caution and was helping to bring into being a dense miasma of general disquiet.

 

In such a smog, I fear, independent institutions will rot and liberty will quietly choke to death.  

 

As some contributors have rightly pointed out, scandal is often the weapon of those who would destroy an existing order, and put themselves in its place.  I sometimes wonder if the French Revolution would ever have taken place if it had not been for the (empty and meaningless) affair of Marie Antoinette and the diamond necklace. Even if the scandal had been true, what was it compared with the bloody harvest of the Guillotine and the horrors of the September massacres?

 

Rumours of obscene liaisons between Rasputin and members of the Imperial family did much to bring the Bolsheviks to power (and the Empress and her daughters were taunted with these lies by some of their guards in the final weeks before they were murdered). Much such things mattered once the Bolsheviks were in charge.  Be careful when you undermine the existing order with scandal. Scandal will be nothing compared with what you well get once that order has gone.

 

As for scares and security panics, when do they ever cease?

 

Acting on the ancient civil service motto of ‘never let a good crisis go to waste’, authority responds to these horrors, both real and imaginary, by acquiring new powers, powers which in my view do little to prevent future outrages and are out of all proportion to the threat.  

 

And it loves to use the word ‘emergency’, to give us all a thrill of enjoyable fear, and to make us huddle, bleating,  in the sheepfold as the grim-faced shepherd stands over us scanning the horizon for wolves, real or (more probably) imaginary, and the sheepdogs snarl and growl until we are properly, neatly, abjectly bunched together and under control.

 

I am still troubled by the bizarre, but minor things that happened to me on 7^th July 2005, as London went into severe state-sponsored panic (later misreported as phlegmatic calm) over the bombings. My mobile phone stopped working (as did most others) . It seemed to me to have nothing to do with the alleged network congestion which was later given as the official reason for this. There were no unobtainable tones or ‘network busy’ messages. The phone just did not work at all.

 

But *before* mobiles stopped working,  the BBC crew with which I was spending the morning received a call. (As I remember, we were filming my BBC4 documentary about Britain and the Common Market, ‘This Sceptic Isle’, and interviewing the refreshingly intelligent Lord (Nigel) Lawson,  just off Piccadilly). The call ,as far as I could make out from various muttered conversations,  instructed them to cease whatever they were doing and to return to TV centre immediately because of a ‘national emergency’.

  

I am sure I read reports in early editions of the London Evening Standard of troops (not ceremonial , but in battledress and with modern weapons)  being deployed in various central London locations. But they were not carried in later editions and I can now find no trace of them. Official accounts do say that important buildings, such as the Houses of Parliament were ‘sealed off’, but do not say who did the sealing, or how. I had the odd feeling that I had glimpsed the outlines of a much more severe response, half-unveiled and then withdrawn when the atrocities turned out to be less extensive than at first feared.

 

A few weeks later, all-party support was obtained for what would become the Terrorism Act, a measure which originally was intended to introduce 90-day detention, and which also created the unEnglish offence of ‘Glorifying Terrorism’ , which has always sounded to me like something out of the Soviet penal code of 1936. In the hands of a tyrant (and of course we will never have a tyrant here, so no need to worry) , the Act’s vague provisions are a severe blunt instrument. Take a look at them, and also at the terrifying Civil Contingencies Act of 2004, under which Parliamentary government and almost all the ancient constitutional protections in our law could be suspended in seconds.

 

How long before we’re back to 90-day detention (the end of Habeas Corpus) or Identity Cards? I don't think it will be that long. 

 

I’m not sure I’ve ever before seen scandal and nervous panic arrive simultaneously, as they did this week. It was distressing to see an outwardly educated person such as the Prime Minister mouth the words he spoke today as he justified what our forebears would have angrily rejected as a tyrannical interference with their privacy.  

 

The consequences of not acting are alleged to be ‘grave’ The need for new laws is ‘urgent’. But we cannot be told in detail why this is so, because of course,  that is a matter of ‘security’. This alone we can trust, the whispered word of some bureaucrat with a huge budget to defend and enormous expenses to justify.

 

Now, a few other responses. I am attacked for being silent on some unpleasant plans attributed to Yvette Cooper, as if this were some sort of deliberate silence. I am silent about them because I had not heard of them till now. I try to be as omniscient as possible, spending hours with the newspapers every day, but I still miss things. It is monstrously wrong to assume that any silence on my part means a reluctance to criticize.

 

I have indeed heard of the excellent book on the safety cult (‘In the Interests of Safety’ by my good friend Michael Hanlon and Tracey Brown) , and commend it to my readers. I have been meaning to write about it at some length.

 

I am also asked  ‘does he (that is, me) genuinely believe that his incessant intransigence and war-mongering over Northern Ireland is shared by anybody else?’

 

I had no idea I was war-mongering. I have long accepted that Britain has surrendered to the IRA and the ‘Loyalist’ murder gangs in Northern Ireland, and I see no possibility of that surrender being rescinded or the battle against lawless terror being resumed. I spoke out against the capitulation before the manipulated plebiscite which endorsed it, but that was the end of any small influence I might have had.

 

I have always regarded intransigence in the face of violent, lawless evil as a virtue, and cannot see how it could be anything other than incessant, if it were to be intransigent. I couldn’t care less if I am the last man living who thinks this. That would not be a reason for ceasing to think it, but rather an added reason to carry on doing so. Why do people so*want* to be in the majority? Truth is truth and right is right,  however few people support them. And indeed they remain right and true if no living human supports them.

 

But it does seem to me that the inflamed moralising of our government, and that of the USA, against the horrors of terrorism is rather undermined, in the eyes of any thinking person,  by their recent open surrender to the successful terrorists of the IRA, and (come to that) their negotiations and good relations with the equally successful terrorists of the PLO.  This is an anomaly, and anomalies are invariably the keys to proper understanding of what is really happening, as opposed to what we are told is happening. 

Some Recent Exchanges

I placed the following responses to readers on the ‘Steinbeck’ thread last night, but thought they deserved greater prominence. I have also added further responses to them.

 

1.

Michael Kenny writes :'Peter Hitchens seems to completely disregard the fact that a sizeable portion of the native people of Northern Ireland identify themselves as Irish and not British and want reunion with the south.' Twaddle. I have never 'disregarded' this in my life. It is blazingly obvious, and one would have to be a complete idiot not to be aware of it. The trouble is, and it has bedevilled the issue for more than a century, that it is equally obvious to all but idiots that a similarly large number do not agree. Thus one must either override one in favour of the other, which appears to be Mr Kenny's choice, or find a civilized compromise, which is mine. I am uninterested in which is technically the majority or the minority. I just think it a grave mistake to let either community dominate the other, as happened under Stormont (which I have many times said here I think should never have been set up), and as will, I fear, happen under Dublin. Hence my preference for non-sectarian direct rule from London, with no local government unit in the six counties greater than a city or county council, and no Parliament save at Westminster. Unlike Leinster House or Stormont, the Westminster Parliament can be (and was under direct rule) genuinely neutral between the two communities. Mr Kenny continues: 'What is more, the majority status of those who do regard themselves as British is increasingly slipping.' Once again, I am perfectly well aware of it, and have many times said so here. That is why this weblog has an archive and an index, so that people can look at what I have said, before telling me that I have, or have not, expressed certain opinions, or have or have not discussed certain issues. Mr Kenny asks : 'Does Peter seriously think that his proposed direct' London rule' is the answer to this?' No, as I have said here many times, I cannot 'seriously think' that, as it is now legally, militarily and diplomatically impossible. Britain's national defeat at the hands of the IRA, and under American pressure, ratified by two referenda (one of them in my view held under deeply unfair conditions) cannot and will not be undone. The 1998 surrender to the IRA ended all such hopes. I merely point out, when challenged (as people of Mr Kenny's general persuasion are always doing) to say what I would have done instead of surrendering to terrorist gangsters of both sorts, that this would have been a better option.

 

Mr Kenny has since posted a reply in which he seems to think that Northern Ireland (entirely unviable as a sovereign state) can somehow achieve an ‘autonomy’ with ‘connections and ties to both Dublin and London’.

 

Even assuming such a thing were possible, no such provision is contained in the 1998 Belfast Agreement, which permits either the status quo, ultimate British sovereignty, or a transfer to Irish sovereignty.

 

Nor could it be, in my opinion. Sovereignty is by its nature ultimate and absolute, and answers in all cases the question rightly posed by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, and central to any discussion of actual power,  ‘Who Whom?’.

 

Mr Kenny then asks ‘if Peter considers that direct rule from London is the antidote for resolving the differences between NI'S two principle native communities, then why not propose having the same sort of governance over the six counties emanating out of Dublin instead?’

 

Because this is a false equivalence. Despite its use of ‘British’ symbols (though it also uses Scottish ones) Ulster Unionism is far more exclusively Protestant, Scottish and indeed Calvinist than is Britain as a whole. British governments have not, for many decades been particularly sympathetic to this strand of religious or political opinion, and used the period of direct rule to dismantle many of the advantages Loyalists had taken for granted, though they also see no need to try to suppress or discourage it. (By the way, I must repeat here that I don't think direct rule has been a realistic possibility since the 1998 surrender. I am merely respondiong to squawks of 'what would you have done then?' from supportyers of the 1998 capitulation). 

 

Dublin, on the other hand entirely shares the strong Irish patriotism of the (perhaps) ‘minority’ in Northern Ireland. Roman Catholicism has suffered a major decline, but strong nationalist sentiment has not, and the cross-border strength of Sinn Fein illustrates this very well. Government from Dublin would not, could not, with the best will in the world (which cannot necessarily be expected from SF), be even-handed towards Unionists whose whole cause would be defeated and humiliated by the absorption of their home into a 32-county Republic.

 

In short, direct Dublin rule will place the whole force of the state behind one part of the population. Direct rule from London demonstrably did not, and would not.

 

He then says :’ And I wasn't surprised to see Peter (once again) spitting venom about the Provisional IRA... 'surrender' 'terrorist' etc etc. In that regard he is little different to dissident Irish Republicans who spout similar rhetoric about Sinn Fein.’

 

Don’t be silly. The 1998 agreement is clearly an instrument of surrender, as one side gives everything and the other side takes everything, and also because one side has stopped deploying force, and the other side (see below) continues with impunity to deploy – and use - force. The Provisional IRA was and is a terrorist organisation. To describe it as such is not ‘venom’. It is a statement of fact. The ‘venom’ emerges from the IRA’s explosives and bullets and its gangs of bully-boys who beat and maim.

 

If these ‘dissident’ Republicans are truly so at odds with their leadership then why has there been no instance of any of them being physically attacked or otherwise disciplined for their ‘dissent’? Why, even disputes about cigarette smuggling have led to lethal violence among ‘Republicans’, and IRA supporters have been accused of involvement in the apparently non-political murder of Robert McCartney.

The Republican movement, either in the days of Michael Collins or in the days of the conflict between different parts of the IRA, or INLA, has never been backward in using violence against ‘dissidents’ (an outrageous misuse of an honourable word, once applied to peaceful dissenters against Soviet power).  

 

These people are merely a deniable operation of the Provisional IRA, who have not actually disarmed, of whose alleged disarmament there has never been a shred of independently verifiable objective evidence, and whose ‘permanent cessation of hostilities’ deserves as much credence as Adolf Hitler’s statements about having 'no further territorial ambitions.’

 

The fiction of ‘dissidents’ is convenient both to the victors, who are thereby enable to nudge matters along whenever the vanquished drag their feet, and to the vanquished, who can pretend that these outrages are unconnected with the people to whom they have surrendered, in return for a false pledge of non-violence which they are too feeble and beaten to enforce.

 

Thus the whimpering repetition of the words ‘This must not be allowed to derail the peace process’, every time there is a terrorist attack . Why must it not be allowed to do so?  Generally, when people break the terms of a treaty with violence, the conflict resumes. It is because the surrender is irreversible, and our gvernment, which naturally does nto wish to appear as weak and carven as it actually is,  must pretend to the public that it is not a surrender.

 

He asks ‘Have the British government declared a permanent demilitarisation of the six counties?’

I don’t believe so, but actions speak louder than words. The British Army presence in Northern Ireland (you’d struggle to find any evidence they were there at all)  is almost entirely gone, and will of course cease, completely and demonstrably, once sovereignty is handed over in, perhaps, 2022.

 

He talks of meeting people halfway. Yes, I’m happy to meet *people* halfway, but I won’t meet gangsters, kidnappers and murderers halfway, for in doing so you become what you behold. It was because I believed in meeting people halfway that I favoured permanent direct rule.

 

2. Dealing with Mr Martin is like playing one of those fairground games you cannot win. Now he says he has 'an assumption that all journalism is to some extent biased'. No he doesn't. He should recall that he began this exchange by declaring that a Private Eye report on my argument with the BBC (which I have since demonstrated to be far from unbiased) was 'factual'. As for his wearisome cliche about how I supposedly 'see things in black and white', what does he mean? I defend Vladimir Putin, yet say he is a sinister tyrant.I defend UKIP against BBC attacks, yet criticize it as a 'Dad's Army' and attack its leader for his position on drugs. I am opposed to the Labour Party and all its works, but defend its leader against puerile attacks. I love the USA and like Americans, but am a stringent critic of American foreign policy. Come to that I am an incessant critic of the BBC, yet I defend the licence fee. I could go on. What is 'black and white' about any of this?

 

3. Terence Courtnadge said:

' if the State hadn't destroyed the State school system between 1965 and 1975'. And who was (Conservative) Secretary of State for Education from 1970 to 1974?

 

I answered : ‘Does Mr Courtnadge (who has been contributing here at least since 2011) really think I am a Thatcherite? Can anyone help him?’

 

And Mr Courtnadge then replied:’ You have made abundantly clear on more than one occasion that you are most certainly not what you seem to assume what I was suggesting. I wasn't ; I was dropping a hint that there was still abundant time and opportunity in those (almost) four years, to reverse the disastrous decline in education standards (including the scrapping of Grammar schools) started, as you say, in 1965. That opportunity was squandered. I was emphasising the irony that the Education Minister from 1970 to 1974 was of course the future Conservative Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher.’

 

To which I reply, in that case, what on earth is the point of saying this? All my articles on the grammar school issue (not to mention the chapter on the subject in ‘The Cameron Delusion’) are fiercely critical of the ‘Conservative’ Party for its failure to defend or reinstate academic selection. There is no ‘irony’ in this at all, unless you still suffer from the strange belief that the ‘Conservative’ party is in any way conservative.

Shakespeare, Steinbeck, Ireland - and the difference between open bias and concealed bias.

I’ll deal here with a number of queries from readers. Though I would first of all say that, like Geoffrey Warner, I think the state has no business deciding what schools should teach, and if the state hadn’t destroyed the state school system between 1965 and 1975, no such idea would ever have been proposed or adopted.

 

Next, I’ll reproduce in full a comment from Sue Sims, which seems to me to deal very well with the difference between what is on the official English Literature curriculum, and what is actually taught, and how its actually taught. It also disposes of complacent postings such as that by Mr ‘Wiseacre’, who amusingly believes that because something is on the syllabus, it is actually being taught to everyone.

 

 Many people don’t realise just how optional much of the curriculum is in practice (though the frequent use of the word ‘option’ might offer a clue), how much provision differs from school to school (though the poorer the area, the worse things will be) and how many schools simply don’t offer proper classes in subjects more old-fashioned readers might regard as vital.

 

Something similar operates in History, which is simply not taken as a subject by many older pupils.

 

But here is what Sue Sims says:

 

‘ I've been teaching English, mainly in the maintained sector [NB this means the state sector], since 1975, and see this all at first hand. First, the syllabuses set by the contemporary exam boards do indeed contain a reasonable number of ‘classics’. As ‘David Wiseacre’ noted, GCSE pupils following the most popular English Literature specification of the largest board, AQA, can study 'Great Expectations' if their teacher so desires; alternatively, they could read 'Pride and Prejudice', 'Wuthering Heights', 'Animal Farm' or 'The Withered Arm and other Wessex Tales' (short stories by Thomas Hardy).

 

‘The first thing to note, however, is that many comprehensive schools don't offer English Literature at all, or only to top bands. Hence the Government, years ago, introduced a compulsory literature element into the other main English GCSE(s), requiring the study of Shakespeare and a text from 'the English literary heritage', plus a text drawn from another culture (which includes the USA). So all's well? Not really.

 

‘Teachers faced with a hostile set of teenagers, many semi-literate and for whom reading is alien, will choose the easy options - not because we're lazy, PC or left-wing, but because we have to help our pupils get some sort of qualification. Shakespeare is compulsory, certainly, but it's assessed by 'controlled assessment' - an essay written over three or four hours in class time, where the title is set by the teacher (following general exam board themes). Thus it's not only possible but highly probable that a teacher with a low-ability class will teach, say, 'Macbeth' by showing them one of the film versions, reading and discussing two or three scenes relevant to the essay being set, and providing the class with a template for answering the question.

 

‘What's more, even when one's teaching English Literature to more motivated pupils, there's a temptation, succumbed to by a majority, to choose the shortest text going. Hence 'Of Mice and Men' - one can actually read the whole thing in class in three weeks, obviating the need for pupils to read it on their own (which many won't do). Ditto 'Animal Farm' (four and a half hours’ reading); and the Hardy short stories are a Godsend, as one can choose just two of the stories, set the controlled assessment on them, et voilà!

 

‘Gove (or his advisors) is trying to prevent this minimalist approach to GCSE English. Most English teachers are horrified by it, for a whole variety of reasons, ranging from a fear that the new syllabus will be unteachable to disaffected pupils (which it will, of course, though it's not just English which suffers from that problem) to annoyance that many easy options have been removed. I'm neutral now, no longer teaching GCSE, but can understand both Gove's determination and my colleagues' outrage. It will be interesting to see whether the new criteria make any difference to the undeniable ignorance and apathy of most young people towards our literary heritage. Personally, I doubt it.’

For instance,  it is (for instance) perfectly possible to ‘study’, and take an examination in a Shakespeare play without ever having read the full text, which was absolutely not the case when I was doing ‘O’ and ‘A’ levels.  GCSE papers recently seen by me include texts from Shakespeare, among several more modern authors, but do not appear to oblige those taking them to answer a Shakespeare question. For the reasons stated above, it would not be surprising if teachers decided to follow other, more simple texts.

 

 

Examinees are also in many cases allowed, even obliged,  to take texts in to the exam, a provision which makes people of my generation ( who already chuckle at the use of calculators in schools, often obligatory) emit hollow laughter. We had to read and memorise, if we wished to quote – and we were expected to do so if we wanted good grades.

 

I’ll stick by my point. You might still get a bit of Shakespeare or Dickens (though not much)  in the secretly selective ‘comprehensives’ to which the middle classes resort, and in some fee-paying schools. But I don’t think the children of the poor get taught much Shakespeare (or much history) in today’s Britain.

 

Mr Gribben asks me: ‘Do you really think that in our lifetime there will be a united Irish republic, ruled from Dublin (via Berlin, but that's a different matter)? I just feel that the imposition of Dublin rule on the north, the flying of the Tricolor from official buildings and inevitable triumphalism by IRA supporters, would lead to such a vast upsurge in bloodletting that people won't force it through. There will be efforts to dislocate NI from Britain of course, viz the flag issue, and to make it more of a European province than a British one. But actually to go the whole hog and try to impose Dublin rule on the Unionists? I doubt people have the stomach for the chaos that will ensue.’

 

I ‘feel’ much the same, and have a thousand times stated (though no left-wing person ever notices or pays any attention, automatically assuming that any opponent of the IRA is automatically a sympathizer with the UVF) that the problems of Northern Ireland would be better resolved by permanent direct rule from London, with neither community in the saddle. But ever since the overpraised John Hume inserted the so-called ‘Irish dimension’ into attempts to bring ’peace’ to Northern Ireland, some such outcome has been the official aim of the Dublin government, and was clearly adopted by the British and US governments too, or why did the 1998 Belfast Agreement, made under intense US pressure,  contain unambiguous procedures for the irreversible transfer of Northern Ireland to Dublin?  . The fact that something is clearly a mistake does not prevent politicians from seeking to do it. Nor does it prevent people from voting for it.

 

He’ll have noticed that United Kingdom national symbols are rapidly disappearing from Northern Ireland, especially the Crown (The Crown of St Edward is absent from the police badge, which has a pastiche non-official crown in a secondary position. There is no ‘Crown’ Prosecution Service, etc etc) and the Union Jack which can only be flown on official buildings on a small number of special occasions. And he’ll have noticed that the Tricolour already flies unmolested in much of the Province, and that the Irish language is increasingly common on street signs etc. A visit to Newry railway station is quite instructive in this matter. Even the Health Service doesn’t have its mainland logo.

 

Mr Williamson is surprised I think so little of ‘Of Mice and Men’. I can’t help it. I have never liked it, and that’s that. I’m sure it’s on the curriculum almost entirely because it’s so short. Steinbeck wasn’t particularly pleased with it, and when his red setter, Toby, ate the first draft, he forgave the dog (full story here http://www.pen.org/transcript/mighty-heart )

 

 

‘“Two months’ work to do over,” Steinbeck wrote. “There was no other draft. I was pretty mad, but the poor little fellow may have been acting critically. I didn't want to ruin a good dog for a manuscript I'm not sure is good at all.” Mice, as Steinbeck called it, was critically acclaimed, became a Book-of-the-Month, and a serious movie, but the suddenly famous Steinbeck still had his doubts. “I'm not sure,” he wrote, that “Toby didn't know what he was doing when he ate the first draft. I have promoted Toby-dog to be lieutenant-colonel in charge of literature.”’

 

‘East of Eden’ and ‘Grapes of Wrath’ are both, in my view, great books. ‘In Dubious Battle’, beloved by Barack Obama, is leaden agitprop. ‘The Moon is Down’ about the German occupation of Norway, is a good idea not very well done. I remember fondly but without much desire to return some of the Monterey stories in ‘Cannery Row’. I have never read ‘Cup of Gold’, which Steinbeck all but disowned, and ‘the Short Reign of Pippin IV’ should probably be buried at midnight at a crossroads with a stake through its heart.    ‘Travels with Charley’ (Yes, it is in my opinion Steinbeck's third great book) never fails to be moving, especially as the America it so well describes, modern and revolutionary at the time, has now become a lost continent. I think I saw the end of it.

 

I am grateful to Mr Oliver Dykes for admitting he was wrong to urge me to support the Tories back in 2006. It is, alas, too late to undo the damage done by Mr Dykes and many others who refused to see the nature of the Cameron project, when it was blazingly obvious. This ghastly party will survive into and beyond the next election, when it should have been dead in 2010.

 

‘Gwillimbury’ says (first quoting me) : ‘'The story and drama of my country is part of me, and so it should be, and so it was for all my ancestors going back who knows how far.' So Britishness is not just a culture, but also a blood. I recall you saying that the whiteness of the country does not matter, but here you seem to have some racial pride.’

 

I can see absolutely no connection between the words quoted, and the sentiments expressed, and this claim about ‘blood’ and ‘whiteness’. If my ancestors hadn’t been steeped in their Protestant, British culture, it wouldn’t have mattered what was in their blood or what colour they were.

 

Finally, I must respond to Mr David Martin’s response to my ‘How Journalism Works’:

 

‘I am grateful to Peter Hitchens for his tutorial - perhaps even masterclass - in the ways that tone, nuance and 'other little twists and tugs', if carefully examined, reveal bias. In mitigation, as 'Private Eye' finds its place in the market as a satirical magazine its writers tend to adopt a mordant and sardonic style. These days such is the case with most 'smart' writing. In the 'Daily Mail' examples include Craig Brown (who also has a regular column in 'Private Eye') and Quentin Letts (whose columns on Westminster politics have an uncannily similar tone to those contributed to 'Private Eye' by 'Gavel Basher'). And, having told us 'how journalism works', it might be asked whether such a consummate journalist as Mr Hitchens is immune from these tricks of the trade.’

 

Mr Martin has missed the point so spectacularly that I need to take a deep breath before replying.

 

No intelligent person, reading my column or other articles, should be in any doubt for more than a couple of seconds that I openly hold strong and firm positions on many issues. Such a reader will know that anything I write will be informed by these unconcealed positions, and will make allowances for them (if hostile, checking my facts or wondering how selectively they have been gathered) .

 

But the normal reader, confronted by supposed ‘news’, will not know the tricks and swerves by which an opinion can be presented and indeed urged on the reader (or listener, or viewer) without the reader (or listener, or viewer) being aware of it.

 

So I am axiomatically guiltless of his charge, and axiomatically immune from such tricks.

 

Small Earthquake in Ireland - Not Many (in Britain) Notice

I have barely seen any mention, in the last week, of the extraordinary and significant election results in both parts of Ireland last week. I can understand why we are preoccupied with our own, and I can see that the supposed growth in the ‘Far Right’ on the Continent is of interest(though I suspect this is largely because British liberals want to pretend that UKIP and the French Front National are part of the same movement, when they just aren’t).

 

But in Ireland we saw the arrival of Sinn Fein, the Provisional IRA’s apologists, as a front-rank party in the Republic of Ireland, as well as in Northern Ireland.

 

In terms of first preference votes (both parts of Ireland use transferable votes) , Sinn Fein was very close to the two traditional parties which have dominated the South since the 1930s,  Fianna Fail and Fine Gael.

 

Sinn Fein scored 323,300 first preferences, while Fine Gael achieved 369,120 and Fianna Fail won 369,545. None of the other parties, including the once-powerful Labour Party, got into six figures.

 

But there’s also the question of the direction in which things are moving. Fianna Fail, currently in opposition and so expecting to benefit from the unpopularity of the Fine-Gael –Labour coalition, actually suffered a 1.8% drop in Euro-votes compared with the previous Euro poll (it did better in local government polls).

 

Fine Gael dropped by almost seven per cent. Labour dropped by almost nine per cent.

 

Sinn Fein’s first-preference vote increased by more than eight per cent.  Gerry Adams’s party, which had previously had no Euro MPs in the south,  won three seats (more than a quarter of Ireland’s total Strasbourg delegation of 11, reduced from 12 since the accession of Croatia to the EU).

 

Given these results, which included a very high Sinn Fein poll in Dublin itself, it surely cannot be long before Sinn Fein is either the main opposition, or taking part in government in coalition. There are already reports of a split in Fianna Fail, the party Sinn Fein may one day replace as the major force in Irish politics. Some Fianna Fail politicians are beginning to talk of a possible coalition with Sinn Fein when Ireland next has a domestic general election in 2016.  

 

In Northern Ireland, Sinn Fein easily topped the poll in first preference votes, with 158,813 first preference votes to 131,163 for the Democratic Unionists. Its share was actually slightly down on 2009, but not significantly.

 

If you add up the first preferences for Sinn Fein and its constitutional rival, the SDLP, you get (I think) 241,407. If you add the DUP, the old UUP and Traditional Unionist Voice (who got a respectable 75,806, by the way) you get 290,407.  UKIP got 24,584, a far-from-derisory turnout . The Tories, who maintain a token presence in Northern Ireland, which Labour do not, scored a pathetic 4,144. Quite what votes like these would mean were there a referendum on transferring Northern Ireland to Dublin rule, it is very hard to say. But such a vote (which I used to think would take place in 2016, centenary of the Easter Rising) is, I think, now postponed till 2022, centenary of the Free State. The economy is still too bad in the South for Sinn Fein to be sure of winning, and the demographics may have some way to go, too.