Some responses to contributors

Read Peter Hitchens only in The Mail on Sunday

I will try to do this both more often and more thoroughly in future, but for the moment here are some answers to queries raised by some of you.

God in the schools

On the question of 'Faith Schools' I think the question is being confused by left-wing foes of religion in general. This is a Christian country by tradition and history, and the Roman Catholic and Church of England schools now existing are there because the churches set them up in the first place, before the state got interested in education.

Personally I think they do a lot of good, and only wish the Church of England put more effort into its schools, insisting on a more definitely Christian attitude. Richard Dawkins and his friends are completely mistaken when they sneer at religious teaching of children as indoctrination of helpless victims. Children are in fact interested in all the great theological questions and are constantly asking such questions, usually beginning "Why?" and "How?"

When they grow up, they are free to reject what they have been taught - as I did for many years myself, only returning to faith after much thought and experience had persuaded me that atheism offered nothing but silence and darkness. My return was by no means automatic. Others known to me who had exactly the same kind of religious upbringing have become in one case a militant atheist and in another an army chaplain.

But at least they will know what it is that they are rejecting, and are less likely to be indifferent to this most important subject, which matters hugely in forming any kind of view of the world. I much prefer Dawkins's anti-religious passion to the shrugs of those who don't care.

Jewish schools offer no great challenge to the generally Christian nature of our culture for two reasons. One, Jews do not seek to convert others, or claim that their faith supersedes others. They simply hope to perpetuate their faith and culture. No tolerant society has any difficulty with that. They also to some extent share a holy book with Christianity.

Islam is different. It most definitely does seek recruits. It has a separate set of scriptures which contradict several of the fundamental beliefs of Christianity and it believes that its message supersedes that of Christianity. The laws based on its scriptures - Sharia - are different from the laws of this country, which are largely based on Biblical ideas.

Some people compare this with the position of Roman Catholic schools in the days when Britain was a more profoundly Protestant country, and perhaps there is some truth in this. But only some. That was - as it turns out - a temporary conflict which has vanished in most parts of Britain since the softening of Christian boundaries in the 1960s. The differences between Islam and Christianity are likely to remain, and perhaps grow sharper, as Islam grows stronger in this country, which I think it will. It is much harder to work out a tolerant position on state-supported Islamic schools, and that - not the diluting of RC and C of E schools - is what politicians should be discussing.

I can't persuade you to vote 'None of the above'. So try this instead

When I first called for people to vote 'none of the above' I was assuming that others felt as I did about voting. Having lived in the USSR, spent much time in the Warsaw Pact countries, and heard about the nasty way in which people were compelled to 'vote' for one-party candidates to avoid trouble with the authorities, I have always valued the right not to vote. I've also had the useful but embittering experience of working for some years in the Houses of Parliament, which confirmed the old saying that "The two things you shouldn't watch being made - if you want to like them ever again - are sausages and politics" Presented with no choice, or a false choice, it seems to me to be a moral thing to do and a right worth having. But I now realise that, for those of you who haven't had close brushes with truly repressive societies, voting has a sort of religious significance it doesn't have for me. For me, voting is no more elevating than a trip to the city dump. So I give up. Don't abstain. Don't vote for 'None of the Above'. Just don't, please, whatever you do, vote Tory, ever. The future of the country depends on David Cameron's Blue Labour Party being crushed at the next election. I won't say who else you should vote for, if vote you must, since the liberal elite will win the next election whatever you do, but would just add, please don't vote for the BNP either. They are potentially very dangerous.

War Virgins and fighting the Viet Cong from a long way off

A charming gentleman from the United States chivalrously attempts to defend George W. Bush's Vietnam War record, or lack of it. I said he 'fought the Viet Cong from an airbase in Texas'. My correspondent writes of his father, who volunteered for the US Army in 1962 and just happened to be sent elsewhere during the Vietnam War. He asks if that makes him a 'War Virgin' like the President. I'd say not, for two reasons. One, this gentleman's father volunteered for the Army as such, and so could have been sent anywhere, including Vietnam. I believe Mr Bush joined the 'Air National Guard' , which at the time was generally seen as a good way of avoiding being drafted into combat units or sent to South-East Asia, and it certainly had that result for him. I believe his service at that time was not specially diligent, though I know there are arguments about the records. Secondly, it doesn't really matter what your war service record is like if you're just an honest citizen. But it most certainly does if you go off and start the most ill-conceived and self-damaging war the USA has got itself into in modern times, and order other men into battle. Also, if your supporters are constantly sneering at another head of state -Jacques Chirac - who has in fact been wounded in combat, you might expect that sooner or later your bravado might come back to haunt you. Mr Bush, or rather his ruthless political machine, is none too nice to those who get in his way (Ask Senator John McCain, a genuine Vietnam war hero who bravely withstood dreadful torture, how it was when he went up against the Bush organisation in the primaries, and ask Senator John Kerry who for all his faults did fight in Vietnam how it was when he challenged Mr Bush for the White House). People need to remember these things.

My programme

A reader asks when my Channel Four programme on the menace to liberty will air. It's been and gone, I'm afraid, long ago. The programme was shown on 27th February 2006. If you have the right computer equipment, you can watch it by going to the footnotes of the Wikipedia entry on Peter Hitchens, and clicking on the link there.

 

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Lesbians, blockages and the debate that needs to be had but nearly didn't happen

Read Peter Hitchens only in The Mail on Sunday

One of the most important subjects in British politics - and one of the most interesting - is the future of the Tory Party. Is it finished? Should it adopt the ideas of the liberal consensus? Should it continue to represent the views of conservative-minded voters even if this leads to it being derided and misrepresented in the liberal media?

Yet it is almost impossible to discuss these issues in many places. The near-universal assumption, among conventional commentators, is that David Cameron's changes are unquestionably good, that he is a breath of fresh air, and that the party is on the road to recovery.

You will very rarely hear any dissent from this view anywhere on British broadcasting or in much of the press either. The only doubt that is allowed to be expressed is the crass left-liberal belief that David Cameron and his supporters are really secret Thatcherites, concealing their tax-cutting teeth behind a false and painted smile.

And so, one effect of the Cameron change is that those who hold to conservative opinions on culture, morals, national independence and justice have been pushed even further towards the edge of the national table. I have long been used to getting the so-called 'Mussolini Seat' on TV and radio discussion programmes, where I sit on the far right of the platform (sometimes literally, sometimes metaphorically).

But thanks to the Tory Party's urgent move to the liberal left, I find that my opinions are now treated as being beyond the frontier of civilised discussion. Although I am a constitutionalist and a supporter of the rule of law, I get a sense that the BBC now increasingly feels free to corral me in the outer darkness with the bigots. Even when I get on the air there's often a certain amount of amateur psychoanalysis, about how 'angry' I am, which is not applied to any opponents I might have. We'll see how this develops.

The important point here is that if the 'official' political parties declare that the 'centre ground' (defined as the narrow area within which they are prepared to permit disagreement) has moved substantially to the left (the effect of the Tory revolution) then more and more people are excluded from the 'centre ground' and offered submission and silence as their only option inside the democratic process. I fear the consequences of this.

But back to the great debate which was held in London on the Tory Party last week. The excellent organisation 'Intelligence Squared' did need to be persuaded at the beginning that it was worth discussing - but once they had agreed they moved with their usual skill. A motion was selected: "The Tory Party is no longer conservative". Two fine speakers were found to oppose it, my old friends Charles Moore and Michael Gove, both proper old-fashioned broad-minded people who can disagree in a civilised fashion. The Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee, I suspect rather gleefully, agreed to chair this falling-out among her foes.

The distinguished journalist Andrew Alexander agreed to speak alongside me. Tickets went on sale, and sold out so that all 800 seats were filled and people were calling up asking for late cancellations till shortly before the event began. I don't think this came from a desire to listen to me, but from a desire to hear a proper discussion of a near-taboo subject.

Now, this wasn't a squabble in an upstairs room in a pub, and the speakers weren't obscure. Yet apart from a cogent item on BBC Radio 4's 'World Tonight' and a thoughtful mention in the 'Sunday Times' by Minette Marrin (of which more later), the mainstream media didn't give it so much as a diary paragraph. The only independent account of it available was written by Graeme Archer for the ever-fascinating website 'Conservative Home' (part of its entry for Wednesday October 25). Mr Archer is no friend of mine, but I strongly recommend you to read his description of the event. He and 'Conservative Home' are to be commended for making the effort, which has led to an interesting discussion there.

One or two other rather fascinating things need to be recorded here. Andrew Alexander withdrew just two weeks before the debate, leaving us to try to find a replacement. This was astonishingly difficult, and I wish I could tell you some of the names of those who were approached and - though they didn't disagree with the motion itself - wouldn't do it. Hywel Williams, who did agree, then fell ill at the last minute and the delightful Jeremy O'Grady, who is in fact one of the chiefs of 'Intelligence Squared' stepped in with much grace and spoke very well. But I think it fair to say that Jeremy, while witty and eloquent, did not and could not speak from the viewpoint of a conservative-minded person abandoned by his party.

My own point (which Graeme Archer's account largely leaves out) was that it was quite understandable that a conservative party should accept changes brought about by its rivals - elements of the welfare state, for instance, and some other actions of the 1945-51 and even the 1964-70 Labour governments - though the Wilson era was actually the first real outing of 'New' ideological Labour, even if much of its work was done through supposedly 'Private' Bills.

I don't personally regard nationalisation as a left-right issue ( Charles I nationalised the Post Office, Neville Chamberlain nationalised electricity generation and I personally would renationalise the railways tomorrow if I could). Nor can I see why a conservative movement should object to all elements of a welfare state. A country should look after its poor people. The difficulties arise when you try to decide who benefits and who doesn't. There's also the question of how best to organise it, and whether national or local institutions work better.

But if that conservative movement accepts more fundamental changes - the surrender of national sovereignty to a foreign power, the removal of the concept of personal responsibility from the justice system, the advance of a cultural and moral revolution which destroys the fortresses of privacy and weakens marriage, then it is digging its own grave. The things it claims to defend will be destroyed irrevocably by such reforms. It will be reduced to governing a country whose external and internal politics are hostile to everything it officially stands for. It will be in office, but not in power.

I was the first person that evening to make the point that conservatism is a disposition, not a dogma - but I went on to say that the Labour Party, which in its first half-century was broadly patriotic and socially conservative - was now highly dogmatic and in the grip of culturally revolutionary ideologues. Such people cannot be effectively opposed by those who don't understand what they're up to.

Now, I have no idea what Charles and Michael expected me to say. I'm never entirely sure that my Tory critics have any argument that goes much deeper than 'Sit down, you're rocking the boat'.

And Michael, most regrettably, was held up unavoidably at the Commons for an important vote and didn't hear my opening speech. But I felt they didn't respond to these points at all. I was portrayed as an inflexible reactionary unwilling to countenance any change since the 1950s, which is exactly and specifically what I hadn't said and don't believe.

Actually I'm always portrayed in this way, part of the slithering slag-heap of deadening abuse and misrepresentation which the Left shovel on to their critics. Now I note the same criticism coming from people who were once my allies against the Left.

I loathed much about that time, as should be clear to anyone from my chapter comparing the funerals of Winston Churchill and Diana Spencer in 'The Abolition of Britain' in which I describe the dreary, dirty, unpleasantly austere, inconvenient way of life of the period, drawn from my own memory. But I also mention the good things we lost at the same time. This is the essential choice the conservative needs to make, distinguishing between change for the better and change for the worse, rather than welcoming all change as good, with the simpering joy of the undiscriminating 'progressive'.

And Michael sought to portray me as a sort of fanatic, much more in the tradition of Cromwell's Puritans than of Prince Rupert's cavaliers. Well, there’s some truth in this. I suspect Rupert's boys were all too much like the Bullingdon lot at Oxford, all booze and horses, not my sort (and not Michael's either - I suspect, they'd have chucked him into the nearest duckpond for belonging to the wrong class). I'm pretty certain that my West Country nonconformist ancestors would have been among the Ironsides, singing Psalms as they clove righteously through the dissipated, hungover Royalist ranks. But actually, I've always been torn by the Civil War and have never, since I first encountered that astonishing story aged around nine, been able to make up my mind between the Wrong but Romantic Cavaliers and the Right but Repulsive Roundheads. Hence my enthusiasm for the Glorious Revolution, when Cavalier squire and Ironside veteran made common cause against continental-style despotism and the sale of the country to foreign interests.

I simply didn't think the other side answered the charge. Minette Marrin rather agreed with me, although she couldn't bring herself to mention my name and referred to me as 'the other side ' as in "there were a lot of awkward questions from the other side that were left unanswered". She also quoted Charles as having said "trust is much more important than precisely what you are saying". This I completely disagree with and I am surprised to see such a man saying it.

I think this country could do with a Party which said very clearly what it meant to do, explained why and then did it. All this personal trust in telegenic individuals is too presidential to me, and leads to sad (and damaging) disappointment when the individual involved turns out to have the usual clay feet. I also think that people are getting sick of it.

I should also mention the joke that seems to have upset Graeme Archer. Actually, it was an attempt to sum up the problem in a parable, which will seem leaden when written down, but was appreciated by some of the audience. I don't guarantee it's word for word. Imagine, I said, that you discovered that your drains were blocked, and rang up an organisation we'll call Dyno-Bod to avoid any complaining letters about misuse of trademarks.

Within minutes, a van screeches to a halt outside. It's got 'DYNO-BOD' written on the side as usual but you notice it's painted bright pink rather than the fierce orange you're expecting. Never mind. It's a perfectly nice pink and organisations change their images. Then a young woman gets out. She's a Lesbian. How do you know she's a Lesbian? Because she's wearing a T-shirt saying "I'm a Lesbian. Have you got a problem with that?"

You invite her in and start explaining about the blockage, and ask her how long she thinks it will take to get rid of it. She replies "Get rid of it? Whatever do you mean? We don't get rid of blockages any more. We help you come to terms with them".

This seemed to sum up the Tory Party's attitude towards the many problems which voters once looked to it to help them solve, which is, more or less,' Can't you shut up? Mass immigration and crime and penal taxation are so over as subjects these days. Can't you just move on?' And it also mocks that party's embracing of political correctness, especially the 'A-list' encouragement of candidates who are openly homosexual, which is presented as tolerance but is in fact the acceptance of a controversial, unconservative radical equality agenda.

Well, my side lost, though we were not crushed and - in a parallel internet vote - we won. Did we lose the argument? I don't think so. Will it be debated again soon? I hope so. It certainly will be after the Tories lose the next election, and with even more vigour if they lose it as badly as I hope they do.

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Away this week

Peter Hitchens is away this week. Next week he hopes to respond to many of the comments made on recent postings, which he continues to read with care.

More bonkers ideas become mainstream.

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Bit by bit, my Monster Raving Bonkers agenda is working its way into the National psyche (just as David Sutch's Monster Raving Loony manifesto of 1964 was eventually adopted by the mainstream parties - I'm not sure if he actually called for the virtual legalisation of dope, the mass release of prisoners, the arrest of householders for defending their property, the subsidising of fatherless families, the broadcasting of sexual intercourse on TV and the opening of the national borders, all of which are of course mad policies, but he certainly favoured votes at 18 , which was a pretty big mistake and was adopted by Harold Wilson).

Having for years insisted that sex was something you should do when you feel like it, and handing out contraceptives to people below the age of consent, on the 'if you can't be good, be careful' principle that has always been pretty much certain to stop people being good, the sex education industry are now hemming and hawing. Very coyly, they are now advising under-16s to 'leave it till later' and pointing out that most people don't have sex until they are 16.

I agree that it's not much, but it is a start - a very late start, given the repeated, total, crashing failure of sex education to do what it claimed it would do. Ever since it was introduced, sexual disease and under-age pregnancy have increased, when we were told that lurid instruction classes on condom use, and worse, at incredibly young ages, would curb these things.

Every measure it takes, including the morning after pill, has had the same predictably negative effect. Yet its supporters have up till now said that the only solution was more of it.

The official excuses for sex education are extraordinarily feeble. The real purpose of this mental poison and immoral preaching is to debauch children by smashing up the moral values they have received at home or in church. Its inventor, the Hungarian Bolshevik Georgy Lukacs admitted this. His followers do not admit it even to themselves - hence the ludicrousness of their official position.

In this effort to pollute young minds, it continues to be highly effective, and many of those misled by its immoral preaching do not find out until years later how wickedly they have been wronged. Parents should always check with their children's schools to see what their offspring are being taught. They may be in for quite a shock.

 

Niqabs and crucifixes

Read Peter Hitchens only in The Mail on Sunday

I wonder what British Airways will do if one of their stewardesses decides she wants to wear the full Niqab face-veil (a style which seems rather often to be accompanied by strikingly heavy applications of eye make-up, which I should have thought Islam would discourage). I rather hope this happens pretty soon, because it will make them look so silly if they say 'yes', as I think they would.

But BA's justification for banning a staff member from wearing a cross, while permitting hijabs and turbans, is so ridiculous that mockery and derision are probably the only things that will put the matter right. Hijabs and turbans are allowed, we're told, because they can't be concealed.

Wait a minute. Why should they be concealed? It's in the nature of these things that they are public declarations of a faith and an allegiance. They are worn for this purpose. They are also worn by choice, or more or less so. Plenty of Sikh men don't wear turbans, and plenty of Muslim women stay uncovered. I doubt if any Muslim air hostess could be compelled by any of her menfolk to don a scarf.

To permit them, while banning Nadia Eweida from wearing a small cross, is blatantly inconsistent and obviously the result of the instinctive anti-Christian bias inculcated into almost every Western adult by the education system and the media. Other faiths are entitled to their self-expression. Christianity - because it used to be ours and is therefore regarded as part of the wicked baggage of the Old World - isn't. I am told this ruling by BA is against the law. It is certainly very foolish and wrong. I suspect it will go the same way as the anti-British daubs and patterns which BA foolishly placed on its tailplanes a few years ago, laughed out of existence.

Broadcasting opportunities for monsters only

Read Peter Hitchens only in The Mail on Sunday

I have just taken a phone call from a radio station wanting to discuss Muslim veils. What did I think? You can guess. My views were rejected by the show's producer as being 'too reasonable’. Here's the rule. Moral, social and political conservatives can generally only get on the BBC if they can be cast as extremist monsters, perched on the extreme end of the panel and 'balanced' by a presenter who pretends to be neutral and isn't, and at least three other panelists who disagree with them. BBC bias? Whoever would say there was such a thing?

There's also an interesting contrast between what liberal conformists think I believe, and what I actually do believe. Generally, they think they know, but haven't taken the trouble to find out, so are often wrong. So I talk myself out of quite a lot of broadcasting by foolishly explaining my position, rather than waiting till I am in front of the microphone.

Salvation Army

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Nothing like enough attention has been paid to General Sir Richard Dannatt's other amazing statement. Almost as astonishing as his views on the Iraq war was his series of comments on Britain's moral vacuum.

Like a lot of people, I'm troubled by hearing strong, sound views, with which I mainly agree, from the head of the British Army. Why? Because I believe that the rule of law, and the constitution, are hugely important. It's no good saying we don't have an American-type constitution in Britain, and that therefore anyone can bend the rules.

For our constitution is most certainly written down - but in several different places. And it's not supposed to be evaded or twisted, especially by military men. There's Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights, the Parliament Act, the Great Reform Act and - regrettably - the European Communities Act that now subjects us to foreign law, and whose repeal has to be at the top of any serious pro-British government's list. But through Parliament, please.

Recently, while making a TV programme on the menace to liberty, I held in my hands the vellum originals of the Bill of Rights and the Habeas Corpus Act, and found myself - to my surprise - trembling slightly as I did so. These are priceless things, far more valuable than any Crown Jewels. They arose out of the passionate conflicts of the 17th century, in which it is often difficult to be sure which side was right.

To handle the documents actually written by the participants in those struggles is to feel a current of unbroken continuity between them, and their battles at Edge Hill and Naseby, and Sedgemoor, the extraordinary trial of the Seven Bishops - which finished James II because a courageous Jury wouldn't bend to his will - and the life we live now.

(You don't know about these passionate, dramatic events? No surprise there if you're a victim of modern history teaching. Macaulay's wonderful 'History of England' is actually on the web and there's no excuse for not reading it as soon as you can).

A peaceful, ordered society is a precious and rare thing anywhere on the planet. It did not come about by accident and it will not survive if we fail to maintain it carefully. It is very dangerous to imagine that you can treat it lightly.

And then it also brings to mind Oliver Cromwell, a great general, a devout man of God and in his personal dealings a good and just man, whose attempt to reform England and oppose Stuart despotism led to a ghastly military tyranny.

So I'll not abandon my misgivings about generals in politics, even though every word Sir Richard spoke was right. And I certainly don't support the ridiculous demands for him to be sacked or silenced. He spoke because he felt he had to, because other people were not doing their jobs.

Everyone with eyes to see and ears to hear has known for years that the Iraq adventure was a failure and that we would eventually have to leave, after finding some way of pretending we had succeeded. Old Bonkers here (yes, I know people call me that), mad as ever, had spotted it before it even began. That's how you get called Bonkers in modern Britain, by being right when it might have been some use to be right, instead of after the damage has been done and it would be obvious to a chicken that a mistake had been made.

But I digress. There wasn't even anything specially controversial about saying so, or about warning that much more of this rubbish would do serious damage to a fine army. The mystery here is that nobody on the front benches of the two major parties would say so. In fact, such talk is banned among professional politicians with any ambitions to hold or get office. Except that this is not a mystery either.

The supposed 'centre ground', on which Michael Portillo and Diane Abbott cuddle each other on their sofa, and where Anthony Blair and Dave Cameron giggle behind Gordon Brown's back, is actually not a safe place at all. It is a place where politicians can hide from big decisions, and stick to the conventional wisdom.

Mr Blair did not go to war in Iraq because he was brave. On the contrary. other people had to be brave on his behalf. He went to war because he was too scared to break with the conventional 'centre ground' wisdom that a British government must always support American policy. He knew the justifications for war were dubious, or why would he have needed the skills of Alastair Campbell to misrepresent them?

And then, when he realised that disaster was coming, he lacked the courage to jump clear, preferring to risk British (and Iraqi) lives than to risk his own political skin.

Generals have more guts than this. But what must have taken real courage was to say that Britain needs to reinforce and rediscover its Christian character if it is to see off the Islamist threat Now, over here at Old Bonkers's Almanac, this is accepted policy, though many of you have duly mocked it, having been fashionably brought up to despise the espousal of any religion except Buddhism, Jainism, Hinduism, Islam and, if you can spell it, Zoroastrianism.

I could almost have said what the General said, word for word. Here it is "In the Army we place a lot of store by the values we espouse. What I would hate is for the Army to be maintaining a set of values that were not reflected in our society at large - courage, loyalty, integrity, respect for others; these are critical things. I think it is important as an Army entrusted with using lethal force that we do maintain high values and that there is a moral dimension to that and a spiritual dimension.

"When I see the Islamist threat I hope it doesn't make undue progress because there is a moral and spiritual vacuum in this country. Our society has always been embedded in Christian values; once you have pulled the anchor up there is a danger that our society moves with the prevailing wind.

"There is an element of the moral compass spinning. I am responsible for the Army, to make sure that its moral compass is well aligned and that we live by what we believe in. It is said we live in a post-Christian society. I think that is a great shame. The Judaeo-Christian tradition has underpinned British society. It underpins the British Army."

The political implications of these words are far more explosive than those of the call to quit Iraq 'soon'. In the great echoing desert left by the moral collapse of politicians, and the still worse abdication of responsibility by the bishops, here is a clear call for the Christian remoralisation of the country.

It's no surprise to find that this brave soldier is a devout Christian. The armed forces are very old-fashioned organisations, which is why they still work so well. They require clear lines of authority, acceptance by lower ranks of the rights of their superiors to give orders and be obeyed. They also demand levels of sacrifice - and I mean real sacrifice, not a credit card donation to a Bob Geldof swear-fest charity show - up to and including risking or losing your life for another. Such things are easier to endure, and understand, if you have a belief in a purposeful universe in which some things are unquestionably right and others unquestionably wrong.

They also expose people to the extremes of human behaviour and to real, bowel-melting terror, experiences rare in the lives of the educated middle class. Until quite recently there were a fair amount of MPs who had served in the forces, interestingly including the invaluable Tam Dalyell and the inimitable Tony Benn, as well as more obviously martial figures. Now there are hardly any. It always makes me laugh to hear the neo-Cons jeering at Jacques Chirac, the French President as a 'worm' and a 'coward'. Well, I have no special admiration for M. le President, but he is the only current senior world leader to have been wounded in combat, whereas Anthony Blair and George W Bush (who fought the Viet Cong from a Texas airbase) are war virgins.

Mr Blair's rather noisy Christianity seems to have absolutely nothing in common with the General's, and is all to do with soppy social gospels and loving the Third World while encouraging single-parent families in your own country. He is the New Britain, Sir Richard Dannatt the Old Britain - except that they are pretty much the same age.

The General's intervention makes me wonder about what might have been, had his views and morals, rather than Mr Blair's been the dominant force in broadcasting, education and the Church over the past 40 years in this country. Would we be a better country or a worse one? And it also makes me wonder how common Sir Richard's beliefs still are in this country among people who are too nervous to express them publicly.

In any case, he offers a serious challenge to our country's current political elite, obsessed with their own safety and so certain to lead us into danger. He must not be left to do this alone. In fact, it would be highly dangerous if he spoke again in such a way, for people might begin to wonder if our democratic constitution was doing us all that much good.

The reform and recasting of our major political parties, so that they once again represent views such as Sir Richard's is the most urgent task. And yes, it can be achieved, but only if would-be Tory voters do not fall into the silly argument of 'we've got to get Labour out'. What would be the point of doing so if you only get the same government back in again, with a different smiley face at the front of it and the same wicked policies at the back of it? Refuse to vote for them at any election. When they fail, which you can help them do, the careerist liberals will drift off to the Lib Dems and the Labour Party where they really belong, and we can build something better out of the ruins. Refusing to vote Tory is in fact the most effective action you can take at the polls. Doing anything else merely keeps the 'centre ground' elite in power.

Prisons, what are they for?

Read Peter Hitchens only in The Mail on Sunday

Among the many frustrations of writing books is that you take years to write them, and the 'critics' who review them take a few minutes not to read them and a few more to dismiss them. So I am always annoyed that the work I did for my book 'A Brief History of Crime' (published in a revised edition in paperback as 'The Abolition of Liberty') has not had the wide audience I'd hoped for. While this is partly vanity - I want to be read as much as possible - it's also frustration that, having supplied useful knowledge for a debate, the argument continues along dreary, ignorant lines that get nobody anywhere.

I'm fairly certain that this book was not read through by my hostile critics since it contained a large and juicy morsel for them, clearly marked, which would have made a good diary story in any liberal newspaper, and none of them found it. I put it there deliberately for this purpose. To this day, it remains undiscovered.

My annoyance particularly applies to the supposed ‘debate’, which we have every few weeks about prisons. I did a large amount of research into the history of prisons during the late 19th and 20th centuries, and I also spent a day in Wormwood Scrubs experiencing, as far as is possible for anyone whose visit is expected in advance, the nature of life inside our modern jails.

Several things believed by liberals are simply untrue. We don't have a large prison population because we lock people up more readily than Continental countries. We have a large prison population because we have much more crime than our neighbours across the Channel. If we jailed criminals as rigorously as they do, our prisons would be much fuller.

Michael Howard was not a 'tough' Home Secretary. He uncomplainingly operated the 1991 Criminal Justice Act, which allowed the early release of prisoners, and introduced the fictional sentences we now have. Labour has since made even earlier releases possible, but that doesn't mean Mr Howard was tough, just that he was less soppy than them.

Prison does not make people better and never has. All attempts at rehabilitation have so far failed. There is no evidence of any criminal ever having been rehabilitated. And prison, by the way, is a liberal idea introduced and refined by enlightened reformers wanting to do away with harsh punishments and the diseased, squalid, promiscuous neglect, which existed before. It also does not make people worse. They are already pretty bad when they arrive, since it is now very difficult indeed to get sent there. If young people on a first or second offence were given short prison sentences, instead of being given ASBOs, cautions, probation and various other soft options, they might well be scared into giving up crime. But by the time they eventually arrive at reception, they are so hardened that they don't care.

And since authority inside prisons is weak and in retreat, these hardened types can cope with it very well. A gentle, humane person would hate prison. A savage, selfish and violent one would find it little different from the outside world. You might also wonder how it is that drugs are so easily available inside jails. As it happens, like TVs in cells, they help to keep the prisoners passive (when was there last a prison riot?). But that couldn't possibly be the intended result, since drugs are illegal and we all know how much the law disapproves of them, don't we?

So what are prisons for? Frankly, I despise the 'Prison works' mantra, which says that prison is useful because those locked up aren't free to commit more crimes. It's technically true, but it' s also an argument for locking up thieves and violent people for the rest of their lives, in preventive custody. No free society could do that, and long-term imprisonment undoubtedly makes people go mad. I'm always amazed when liberals claim that long prison sentences are more 'humane' than the death penalty. Long incarceration is horribly cruel. I've been into quite a lot of prisons round the world, and seen two executions, and I would much rather be executed than serve a lifelong (or even ten-years-plus) prison sentence.

Prison should have a long-term effect, if not on those who experience it, then on those who are considering crime, but are not sure if they need fear the consequences.

That is why prison ought to be for punishment, what the old Prison Commissioners called "the due punishment of responsible persons". They didn't think this would have all that much effect on many of the people who actually went to prison, though it might occasionally do so. Usually they just got too old for crime and gave up. . They were more concerned about its effect on those people who were thinking of committing crimes. They wanted it to be known that the result would be unpleasant, a deterrent.

To achieve this they made sure they, not the convicts, ran the prisons. They wanted an element of shame, of loss of self-regard, and of penitence. The prison buildings, deliberately solemn and grim, were placed in highly-visible city centre sites as a frowning warning of what awaited the wrongdoer.

They devised a regime of bare, basic living conditions, adequate but austere food, hard work and the possibility of earning comforts and remission by sustained good behaviour. Few wanted to undergo this, though by the standards of the USA or the continent it was not especially cruel. Despite its surprisingly short sentences it was highly effective in deterring crime, backed up as it was a by an alert and ever-present police force patrolling the streets on foot with a fraction of current manpower.

The current official view is that deprivation of liberty is punishment itself. The punitive elements of prison life have been discarded - largely due to a historical accident. Foolish Liberal and Tory governments imprisoned two groups of middle class people in the first 20 years of the century. First came the Suffragettes. then came the conscientious objectors to the Great War.

The accounts of the Pankhursts and others, of Bertrand Russell and Fenner Brockway, of prison life, shocked the liberal suburbs - as well they might. The harsh, silent gloom of these places had never been intended for them, but for burglars and men of violence. But their pamphlets and books unleashed demands for reform, which were duly implemented over the next 60 years.

So now we have prisons which would be just right for a gentle Cambridge philosopher or a sensitive feminist campaigner. Or rather, they would be if they were populated by such people. But actually they are full of drug addicts, rapists, violent robbers and a growing number of killers who can neither be executed nor released. And for much of the time, those prisons are run by their inmates. So we have places where Bertrand Russell might well be beaten up, and which neither punish nor deter crime.

It is only because of this 'reform' to the point where prisons have no moral purpose that anyone can ever have thought of the disgusting idea of 'privatised' prisons, run for profit. Locking people up, without a moral purpose, seems to me to be quite despicable. Doing it for gain, horrible.

They are, in short, pointless warehouses mainly designed to deceive the public into thinking we have a serious criminal justice system, neither punishing nor rehabilitating. I suspect they will become more and more squalid and terrible, unless and until we get a government with a moral purpose. I see little hope of that at present.

A brush with intolerance

Last week, as some readers of this blog noticed, I was more or less accused of racial bigotry by Diane Abbott MP on the BBC TV programme 'This Week'. She accused me, quite without foundation, of being 'tough on Blacks'. I made it plain that I objected to this but wasn't really given an opportunity to defend myself or to rebut the allegation. Several people wrote to me to say how much they disapproved of Ms Abbott's behaviour.

I have wondered since whether I should have walked off the set but I wasn't sufficiently annoyed at the time. Anyone who takes unfashionable positions on major issues gets all-too-used to being treated in this rude, dismissive way. My main feeling was surprise that Ms Abbott, whom I had previously regarded as one of the more intelligent MPs, should behave in this fashion.

This programme is supposed to be 'balanced' by the use of Ms Abbott, a serving Labour MP and Michael Portillo, a former Conservative MP and Minister, as its allegedly antagonistic panellists. It is also chaired by Andrew Neil, one of the few prominent broadcasters now on air who isn't a left-liberal.

But I reflected, as I sought to put across a socially, morally and politically conservative position in the short time allowed, that in fact this trio are all, more or less, liberals. Mr Portillo is distinguished for his campaign to 'modernise' the Tory Party, a campaign which has led directly to the recent putsch by David Cameron - who is not as bright or as fluent as Portillo, but shares his view that the unique status of heterosexual marriage isn't worth defending against the sexual revolution, and also believes that disquiet about immigration is a symptom of bigotry, best avoided.

In this, I doubt he'd differ much from Diane Abbott, and I doubt if there'd be much between him and Andrew Neil either. Mr Neil is a fierce market Thatcherite, and was a doughty foe of trade union stupidity in his days as a labour correspondent, but I don't get the impression that he's specially conservative about marriage, migration or the monarchy. Ms Abbott, meanwhile has an interesting education policy. She favours comprehensive sinks for the poor, but sent her own son to a £10,000 a year private school.

I'll say this for her. At least she's honest, and hasn't wangled her child into one of those elite schools that pretend to be comprehensives and aren't, thanks to religious, house-price or interview selection. Such schools are very popular with the Labour elite.

I'm not sure where that leaves her, but she's obviously not a straight-down-the-line doctrinaire socialist, any more than Mr Portillo or Mr Neil are roast-beef family-values conservatives. I think, in a way, that they rather illustrated my point, that a metropolitan elite has taken over all the parties (and the broadcast media. the most important fortress of power in a modern country) and the rest of us are outsiders.

I certainly felt like an outsider that night - despite the professional care which the programme makers had taken to ensure that I had a full two minutes to make my point on film, a rare opportunity for an uninterrupted conservative intervention on terrestrial TV.

As it happens, I have been in this business long enough to recognise that other points of view are legitimate. And as long as people argue with facts and reason, a little mockery is quite acceptable as part of the hurly burly. I seem to remember inviting Ms Abbott to abuse me if she wanted to, though I was quite taken aback with the form her response then took. I think the social liberals are mostly motivated by good intentions, and repeatedly made this point in my book 'the Abolition of Britain'.

I try only to mock those who are big and powerful enough to hit back. But I think it is quite illegitimate and wrong to seek to smear your opponents as a substitute for argument. And I think it is a sign of a closed mind to do so. And this is the problem of the liberal elite. In sad fact, most of its good intentions have come to nothing, or created worse messes than those they were designed to clear up. Wouldn't it be honest to face this?

As for Mr Portillo, there are already two perfectly good political parties for social liberals. If social liberalism is his chosen view, which i think it always has been, then why join the Tory Party? He may think all conservative-minded people are knuckle-dragging minceheads, which is his privilege. But even if he is right (which I dispute) don't they deserve a party to speak for them?

The Pennsylvania murders

 

Read Peter Hitchens only in The Mail on Sunday

After the hideous murders at the Amish school in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, we will no doubt hear the usual rubbish about the need for more gun control in America, from pious British liberals. This is futile drivel. Americans have always had guns. What has changed is that they now also have TV and drugs and family breakdown.

And Britain, with its supposedly 'tough' gun laws (wholly ineffectual, as all such laws are) has a rapidly increasing problem of gun crime. No doubt, shootings such as this must force all modern nations to examine their consciences and laws. But gun control is the stupid answer to a stupid question, and those who argue for it merely reveal their ignorance and their inability to deploy logic.