Peter Hitchens's The Broken Compass finally arrived yesterday. I didn't get to bed until 2am - I couldn't put it down.
At last, someone else who has noticed ... well, all sorts of things. The singing at the funerals of Donald Dewar and Robin Cook, not of The Red Flag, but of The Internationale, with all that that entails. That Tony Blair's Oxford mentor was a member of the International Marxist Group. That the reporting of opinion polls is basically a lie, with the truth only accessible from the polling companies' own websites, and even then not terribly reliable these days. That no one from a comprehensive school has ever become Prime Minister (or, I might add, ever will if Cameron wins next year).
That last is the point on which I think that we most need to focus, out of all the excellent things in this book. I already knew that Ellen Wilkinson (yes, "Red Ellen" of the Jarrow Crusade) vigorously defended the grammar schools when she was Education Minister in the Attlee years, that her successor George Tomlinson took the same view, that they thus stood in the tradition that also included Sidney Webb and R H Tawney, that the Gymnesien were brought back by popular demand as soon as the Wall came down in what remains the staunchly left-wing former East Germany (where even the persecuted dissidents had been Socialists such as Robert Havemann), and that a similar campaign by the public at large saved them in solidly Social Democratic North Rhine-Westphalia.
It is very high time that everyone knew these things.
As it is that everyone were confronted with Hitchens's insight in the immediately subsequent chapter, that the Tories' car-loving hatred of railways is no more conservative than Labour's infatuation with comprehensive schools is good for the poor.
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yes how funny! You, who get all your information from Peter Hitchens, are amazed when his book echoes what are now your thoughts on various issues!
ReplyDeleteYou really, really don't get this concept of people outside the Westminster bubble, do you? But we exist. We even have votes.
ReplyDeleteAnd we've been saying these things for ever. Finally, though, someone in Fleet Street, with the time and the access, has written them up as a book.
As with his column and his blog, I certainly don't agree with everything in this book (or in his previous ones). But - as in his column, as on his blog, and as in his previous books - he is far more right than wrong. Old Labourites who buy the Mail on Sunday specifically in order to read him are an important part of why it sells so well.
Go on, admit it. You have never heard of Ellen Wilkinson, you have never heard of George Tomlinson, you have certainly never heard of Robert Havemann, and you don't know what a 'Gymnasium' is. No Wiki-ing, now. I can tell.
I don't think David gets his economic views from Peter Hitchens, Ink!
ReplyDeleteNo, indeed.
ReplyDeleteBut as I recently wrote both on here and in a comment on his blog, if something economic is, was, or realistically would have been acceptable to Gaullists, Christian Democrats, the Australian followers of B A Santamaria, conservative Democrats, that rural and Western half of the Republican Party which supported the New Deal, the League of Polish Families, much (historically, most) of Ulster Unionism, the whole of the DUP, the SDLP (whose relationship with Irish Nationalism is now even more ambivalent than ever), and so on, then what could possibly be the problem with it?
These are people who are or were patriotic, morally and socially conservative, or both, such as Hitchens can only dream of while the Tories still exist.
Much of his readership wouldn't agree, still being Thatcherites, which (as he sets out in this book) he never was, and supporters of global capitalism, which he certainly isn't. But he himself would, more or less.
That's right Ink. People only know or think these things because Peter Hitchens has told them.
ReplyDeleteWell, of course, Tim. How else could they? By being politically active in the real world? By reading serious matter? By living a bit? By living a lot? Perish the thought!
ReplyDeleteHe has repeatedly modified his views in later blog posts in response to David. Most recently on French Canadians and the monarchy.
ReplyDeleteHe is very responsive to his readers. Yes, the general, provincial, middle-middle-class public! Imagine it, Ink. Just imagine it...
ReplyDelete"He is very responsive to his readers. Yes, the general, provincial, middle-middle-class public! Imagine it, Ink. Just imagine it..."
ReplyDeleteyes David - what would a blogger or columnist who is responsive to his readers be like, eh?
Harry is hardly "the general, provincial, middle-middle-class public"
ReplyDeleteNo, I really wouldn't have thought so.
ReplyDelete