Cumulative Disruption

Four and a half thousand miles from the White House, the mere whiff of Donald Trump has brought down a Prime Minister who had first held the office 19 years before Trump's first Inauguration. But Péter Magyar is going to disappoint someone, whether the voters who had thought that he was Viktor Orbán without the Orbán, or the international backers who had thought that was just an act, or both. 

Disappointment is normal. Ask María Corina Machado or Reza Pahlavi. All that Trump had wanted in Venezuela was to control where its oil went, and an even more hardline Chavista offered him that, so that was all the regime change that he wanted, needed, or would tolerate. And all that Trump has wanted in Iran has been to take a cut of the tolls that he would like to see levied on the Strait of Hormuz, plus any other available revenue, so if an even more hardline Khomeinist, the son of the previous Supreme Leader, offered him that, then that would be all the regime change that he wanted, needed, or would tolerate.

Venezuela remains a dictatorship, as will Iran. But the dictator in Caracas did not join Javier Milei and Kevin Roberts in crossing the Atlantic to address last February's Make Europe Great Again rally in Madrid, alongside Viktor Orbán, Marine Le Pen, Geert Wilders, Matteo Salvini, Andrej Babiš, Martin Helme, Krzysztof Bosak, and the host, Santiago Abascal. Nor will the dictator in Tehran reimpose the SAVAK in his capacity as an absolute monarch from a dynasty that existed to make even the Mountbatten-Windsors look blue-blooded. And nor will the Iranian dictator be one of the already forgotten old Islamo-Marxist terrorist allies of Saddam Hussein in the PMOI/MEK.

But if Orbán's Hungary was a dictatorship, then how have the voters just removed him? It was not in Hungary that MPs voted a few hours ago to empower the Police to ban recurring protests, the only kind that had ever achieved anything. As ever, a Labour Whip cast the proxy vote of Dan Norris despite his not having the Labour whip. Norris was himself a Whip with Ivor Caplin and with Phil Woolas, to whose canonisation it was a wonder that Norris and Caplin did not turn up. In the front row was the Director of Public Prosecutions who had decided, in March 2011, that Woolas's having been banned from elected office had constituted "sufficient punishment" for his breach of the criminal law, so that there would be no charge. That DPP is now the Prime Minister who was banning protests based purely on their frequency or persistence in a particular area. There is no such ban in Hungary.

As for issues of media freedom there, Lisa Nandy has just exercised her quasi-judicial role to approve the takeover of the Telegraph by Axel Springer, because that is the law in Britain. You need the Government's permission to acquire a newspaper. It is all very well to say that your titles were editorially independent when you appointed the editors. Occasional disagreements are one thing, but when did an editor last go rogue? When did the Telegraph or the Mail endorse Labour? Rupert Murdoch's papers turned Labour when he did, and they turned Conservative again likewise. It was not that Murdoch exerted pressure. He employed editors who shared his outlook. Of course he did.

Axel Springer's outlook is unbridled global capitalism, extreme social liberalism, the European Union, its military alliance with the United States, and uncritical support for the State of Israel. That is a coherent ideology, and if you think that it would not be a good fit for the Daily Telegraph, then you have possibly never read it, and certainly never met almost any of its writers. Exactly the same is true of The Guardian. In my direct experience, it is quite the game in certain parlours to present seasoned journalists from other English-speaking countries with comment pieces from The Times, the Daily Telegraph and The Guardian in blind tests, and to revel in their inability to tell which was which. The cues are essentially tribal, especially about class. If you do not pick up on those, then they could all be written by the same person.

Mandatory Reading

The Epstein Class was out in force today, to give lavish obsequies, in the presence of the Prime Minister and apparently on the public tab, to the race-baiter and Gurkha-hater, expenses cheat and electoral fraud, Phil Woolas. Andy Burnham promised to name the tramline from Oldham to Old Trafford "The Woolas Line" after this racist crook, and eulogists included the only British member of Donald Trump's Board of Peace, as well as John Mann, who was utterly and deservedly obscure until he made himself the foghorn of the theatrical outrage when, admittedly inelegantly, Ken Livingstone had dared to mention that of which, this very day in Israel, Ofer Aderet writes:

In May 1941, Eliyahu Golomb, founder and de facto commander of the Haganah, the pre-independence army of the Jews in then-British Mandatory Palestine, spoke in a small forum: "I have information… about suspicion regarding a group of Jews who have connections with the enemy," he said. At the time, during World War II, the enemy he referred to was the Germans. "According to the information, there is a man who contacted the Germans. This man is known; his name is S," he added.

"S" was Avraham "Yair" Stern, leader of Lehi, the pre-state underground militia also known as the Stern Gang. He had split from the Irgun because he believed the struggle against the British should continue even during the war.

"The police are already talking about a Jewish 'fifth column,'" Golomb added, referring to the British police.

Golomb's remarks were recorded in real time in a Haganah intelligence document filed under "Contacts with the Axis." The file was kept in the IDF archives and later transferred to the State Archives. About three years ago, Haaretz requested that it be declassified. It was recently scanned and uploaded.

Reviewing the file provides insight into material collected by the Haganah, and later by the Shin Bet and the IDF, regarding Lehi's attempts to establish ties with the Axis powers, Italy and Germany.

The idea of recruiting Nazi Germany to help liberate Palestine from British rule was conceived by Stern, who advocated uncompromising violent resistance to the British. His position contradicted that of most of the Jewish community, which had suspended its struggle against Britain in favor of fighting Germany.

Fighters of Haganah, the pre-independence army of the Jews in then-British Mandatory Palestine, during a patrol. "The police are already talking about a Jewish 'fifth column,'" said Eliyahu Golomb, founder and de facto commander of the Haganah, referring to the British police.

One document describes Stern's ideology as follows: "With the outbreak of World War II… Stern argued that there is no better time for a war of independence than during wartime. Britain's forces are tied down… and it would be possible to overcome them. The question of orientation seemed simple to him.

"The Jews are a party in the war and therefore cannot be neutral. Britain betrayed the Jewish people and will never allow the establishment of a Jewish state. On the other hand, Germany has no special interest in Palestine, and since the Nazis want to cleanse Europe of Jews, nothing is simpler than transferring them to their own state."

The document further states that Stern believed "it is possible to reach a practical agreement with the Germans… negotiations should be opened, and Jews of Europe should be recruited into a special army that would fight its way to Palestine and conquer it from the British. The Germans, he argued, would agree because it would rid them of the Jews while also removing the British from the Near East."

Another document notes that Stern believed there were two schools of thought in Nazi Germany regarding the Jewish community in Palestine. One advocated closeness with the Arabs and supported the leadership of the Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, because it viewed the Jewish community there as "more dangerous than any other Jewish community, since it was endowed with aggressive qualities and a desire for freedom."

The other school of thought, according to Stern, supported strengthening the Jewish settlement by bringing Jews from Europe, believing they would be grateful and would assist Germany.

The file tracking Lehi's contacts with the Axis powers also includes a document written in 1949. Its anonymous author claimed that he clarified with Stern, in real time, the "ideological foundation" of his position. According to the author, Stern said:

"We will manage somehow with the Germans after they conquer the land, just as the Soviets managed with them when necessary."

Additional documents state that Stern aspired "to seize control of all of Eretz Yisrael by force with the help of a foreign power," and that "it is clear he seriously considered becoming a 'Jewish Quisling,' with the aid of a foreign power." The reference is to the Norwegian prime minister who collaborated with the Nazis and whose name became synonymous with treason.

Lubenchik sought "to prove to Axis policymakers that it would be worthwhile to designate Eretz Yisrael as that place of concentration, thereby gaining the friendship of the Hebrew people, who would enlist for this purpose in the war against England."

These plans were not merely theoretical. Historical research documents several attempts by Lehi envoys to contact German officials. One resulted in a document proposing "active partnership" with Germany in the war, based on "shared interests between German policy and Jewish national aspirations." It also suggested that a Jewish state would form an alliance with the German Reich.

These contacts did not succeed, but the Haganah monitored them closely.

The file also records additional remarks by Golomb in 1941 in two closed forums: "There is no doubt there was an attempt to contact the Germans, and it is possible they promised something, perhaps an internal Jewish police force." He added that the British government had obtained material that could be used politically against the Jewish community. "Several Jews were arrested, suspected of connections or attempts to connect with Italians or Germans, most likely with the Germans."

Golomb also referred to an internal Lehi pamphlet explaining the ideology: "Britain is a traitor. Who decided the opposing side must necessarily be against the Jews? In any case, Jews must conduct independent politics and connect with whoever is worthwhile."

At the same meeting, Zalman Shazar, who would later become Minister of Education and President of the State, was also present.

"I spoke with someone who read that pamphlet, and he conveyed its contents to me," he reported. "The Nazis are indeed against the Jews, but their hatred is directed at the Jews of the diaspora. There is no opposition in the Nazi program to a Judenstaat (a Jewish state)."

The file also mentions Naftali Lubenchik, a Lehi member who was sent to meet with German representatives. A document written in 1951 states that he believed "the Axis does not seek the physical destruction of the Jewish people, but rather their expulsion from Europe and their concentration in one place…"

It further states that he sought "to prove to Axis policymakers that it would be worthwhile to designate Eretz Yisrael as that place of concentration, thereby gaining the friendship of the Hebrew people, who would enlist for this purpose in the war against England."

Lubenchik died in 1946 in Eritrea, where he had been exiled by the British. He is commemorated on the Yizkor memorial site as one of Israel's fallen. The site notes that his contacts with the Germans were intended "to save the Jews of Europe and concentrate them territorially in the Land of Israel."

The file also includes statements by two Lehi leaders supporting attempts to establish ties with the Nazis.

Natan Friedman, later known as Natan Yellin-Mor and a future member of the Knesset, wrote in 1943: "Germany has not yet been defeated and may still become our ally."

Israel Eldad who, according to the Lehi memorial website, was "a member of the Lehi central committee and its leading ideologue and public intellectual," was quoted in 1949 as saying: "Yair acted rightly, and he was justified in doing so in seeking an ally against Britain, just as the Soviet Union acted in its own interests when it allied with Nazi Germany in order not to be abandoned by Britain."

Lehi's contacts with the Nazis ultimately came to nothing. Stern himself was killed by the British in 1942, and in the end, as one of the documents in the file states, "nothing came of it."

On The Public Record

I am as critical as anyone of Zarah Sultana, but she has earned her keep this time:

The most draconian proposal being debated today—Lords amendment 312—would require the police to consider the “cumulative disruption” of repeated protests when deciding whether to impose restrictions. The “area” that the amendment refers to is undefined; it could mean a single street or the whole of central London. The cause is irrelevant; different groups and different issues can all be treated as one. And there is no time limit; what happened months ago could be used to shut down protests today.

The UN special rapporteur on freedom of assembly warned MPs that she has never encountered legislation like this anywhere in the world and that it could serve as a blueprint for authoritarian Governments globally. Let that sink in.

It is clear that the Palestine solidarity movement that has mobilised hundreds of thousands of people across this country is the Government’s principal target, but these far-reaching powers are an attack on trade unions too. Sustained picketing could be characterised as cumulative disruption, and the TUC has warned that these measures seriously endanger democracy. In Coventry, GMB Amazon workers staged over 30 days of industrial action—the first Amazon strike in British history—fighting for a living wage. In Birmingham, Unite bin workers have been on strike since January 2025 against a Labour council that is trying to cut their pay by £8,000. Under this amendment, that kind of sustained, repeated industrial action—the only leverage that workers actually have—would become grounds for restriction.

I say to every Labour Member who has taken trade union money and trade union votes, do your job and defend them. The Labour party is supposedly the party of workers. The truth is that it is Reform with a red rosette.

Let me describe the pattern of repression that this amendment joins. Palestine Action, a non-violent direct action group, was unlawfully proscribed by this Labour Government using counter-terrorism legislation. The High Court threw that out. What did this Labour Government do? They lodged an appeal and sent the police back on to the streets. Last week, over 500 people were arrested in London for holding placards that read, “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.” The Met has still not explained why it reversed its own policy after that ruling. Since last year, more than 3,000 people have been arrested for holding a placard—not a knife, not a weapon, but a placard.

Madam Deputy Speaker, I am going to exercise the privilege of this House to place something on the public record that the mainstream press has chosen to ignore. Six Palestine Action activists face retrial after being acquitted in February following a year in prison. If convicted, they and 18 others will be sentenced as terrorists, but the jury will not be told that. The jury could convict them on criminal damage charges with no idea that terrorism sentences will follow. Not a single terrorism charge has been brought forward. The proscription has been ruled unlawful, and the defendants themselves have been banned from telling the jury that they acted to stop genocide under threat of contempt charges. This is what a stitch-up looks like, and it is part of the same pattern: a Labour Government that will do whatever it takes to silence dissent, protect Israeli death factories and escape accountability.

To conclude, every advance in our history—whether it was votes for women, workers’ rights, LGBT rights, or racial justice—was won through sustained, repeated, disruptive protest. The logic of “cumulative disruption” would have crushed every one of those movements. I remind Labour Members opposite that their constituents sent them here to defend and strengthen their democratic rights, not erode them. Vote to disagree with Lord amendment 312 and vote against the roll-up motion.

Pius Fiction

Who would stop paying for The Times if it stopped publishing Melanie Phillips? You can tell that she is now just phoning it in when her predictable screed against the Pope on Iran winds up at Pius XII. 

Pius was a much worse liturgical philistine than any of his successors, and his Holy Week ceremonies could be preferred to the present ones only if one cared that the liturgy were in Latin but not what the specific content was or was not. Yet as someone once said, “Tell a lie big enough...” Pius was first called “Hitler’s Pope” by John Cornwell, in his 1999 book of that name, a thinly disguised liberal rant against Saint John Paul II with the ‘thesis’ that while a diplomat in Germany, the then Eugenio Pacelli could have rallied Catholic opposition and toppled Hitler. Pure fantasy, like the origin of the “Pope supported Hitler” craze: the 1963 play The Deputy by Rolf Hochhuth, who was later successfully prosecuted for suggesting that Churchill had arranged the 1944 air crash that had killed General Sikorsky.

Pius directly or indirectly saved between 8500 and 9600 Jews in Rome; 40,000 throughout Italy; 15,000 in the Netherlands; 65,000 in Belgium; 200,000 in France; 200,000 in Hungary; and 250,000 in Romania. That is not exhaustive, and the Dutch figure would have been higher had not the Dutch Bishops antagonised the Nazis by issuing the public denunciation that Pius is castigated for having failed to issue.

After the War, Pius was godfather when the Chief Rabbi of Rome became a Catholic, and was declared a Righteous Gentile by the State of Israel, whose future Prime Minister, Moshe Sharrett, told him that it was his, “duty to thank you, and through you the Catholic Church, for all they had done for the Jews.” When Pius died in 1958, then the tributes to him from Jewish organisations had to be printed over three days by The New York Times, and even then limited to the names of individuals and their organisations. All of this is contained in works of serious scholarship by Margherita Marchione, Ralph McInerny, Ronald J. Rychlak, Rabbi Professor David G. Dalin, and others.

There were Bavarian Catholics who were active in the early Nazi Party in Munich. Looking back to Döllinger, they defined themselves as Catholics in the sense of belonging to a community of faith across the world and throughout the ages, rather than in terms of perfect submission to the Petrine See as that See required. They strongly affirmed the purported autonomy of the German Church, including the control of Her affairs by the activist laity on the basis of the church tax system and by means of quasi-parliamentary institutions. And they were key to the emergence of Nazism until it was kicked out of Bavaria following the failure of the Beer Hall Putsch. After that, Nazism became a movement and a party with its base in staunchly Protestant areas of Germany and within the fiercely anticlerical Third Lager in Austria.

Colonel Claus Schenk, Count von Stauffenberg, later to be given the full Tom Cruise treatment, was a devout Catholic, with close dynastic connections to the Bavarian Royal House of Wittelsbach that Jacobites would have on the Thrones of England, Scotland and Ireland, and to the family of Saint Philip Howard, martyred Earl of Arundel. In Austria, Hitler ordered the murder of the Chancellor, Engelbert Dollfuss, who defended, on the borders of Italy and Germany, Catholic Social Teaching and what remained of the thoroughly multiethnic Habsburg imperial ethos. to this day, numerous German, Magyar and Slavic names are found throughout the former Austria-Hungary. In the same tradition was Blessed Franz Jägerstätter.

Examples of Catholic anti-Nazism could be multiplied practically without end. The more Catholic an area was, the less likely it was to vote Nazi, without any exception whatever. Not least, the future Pope Benedict XVI’s Mathematics teacher sent him to get the Hitler Youth form, and then just kept it on file for him. “Thus was I able to escape it.” So he was never in it. Have you got that? He was never in it.

Buy the book here.

Doctor Gratiae

The Holy Father was visibly moved when visiting Annaba, the ancient Hippo. Like the page on U and non-U English, Saint Augustine's Wikipedia pages in Portuguese and Slovene are significant sources of traffic to this site. His Rule has always been part of the Constitutions of the Order of Preachers, so that far from being the rupture with Augustinianism that is often asserted, the thought of Saint Thomas Aquinas is wholly within it, and indeed utterly incomprehensible apart from it. Other attempts to affirm the Augustinian vision of all knowledge as divine illumination are not necessarily in opposition to Thomism; rather, under the Magisterium, which is its own point of reference and correction, it provides their point of reference and correction. This applies to the entire rational and empirical systems, since, at least in the context of those who devised these systems in Early Modern Europe, the very belief in the possibility of true knowledge by rational or empirical means (indeed, of true knowledge at all) is Augustinian, and indeed Thomist.

Martin Luther belonged to an Augustinian monastic institution. Yet, tragically, he had never been exposed to that intellectual tradition, but only to the real rupture with it, Nominalism. Thus he knew little of Saint Augustine and his successors on grace and salvation, so that he was unable to identify the Nominalist character of the concept of sola scriptura, at which he arrived – and it is vitally important to understand that his thought developed in this order – because of his pre-existing views on saving grace. Those views are in any case contrary to Scripture. As he would have known, if the proper integration of prayer, study and labour had been observed in his religious house, as it was in that of Saint Thomas, and originally in that of and under Saint Augustine. The Protestant Schism was not the answer, but the Late Medieval Church was in serious trouble. A heavy dose of Augustinianism was very much required. As it is today, when we have been given an Augustinian Pope.

Victory Arch?

Even before the Epstein Files, a line about the Catholic Church and child abuse had become akin to a mother-in-law joke. Now, though, it is not even that. The staunchest atheists recognise the Papacy’s unique moral authority and convening power in the face of the Epstein Class’s failed war with Iran, ongoing ethnic cleansing of Lebanon, and global economic iniquity. The best that that Class can do is to spit something about the treasures of the Vatican, as if the Pope personally owned them. Will Donald Trump personally own his Victory Arch? His what?

Insofar as NATO still exists, then our membership subjects our military personnel to the command of officers who were ultimately answerable Trump, or to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, or to Viktor Orbán, to which last’s legislative will EU membership also subjected us, as it would again. But we are now being lined up for the only thing even worse than being back in the EU, namely being bound by its rules without having so much as the tiniest say over their content. We are to be a colony, a satrapy, a vassal state, back in the Customs Union and in Margaret Thatcher’s Single Market. If Switzerland is indeed to be the model, then we are even going to be joining the Schengen Area.

There will of course be no referendum. We are ruled by people to whom the vote is a nice thing to have, but who got their way by other means every day, so they did not really need it. If 60 per cent of the laws to which they were subject were made without the formal participation of their elected representatives, well, those were still going to be the laws that they themselves wanted, because that was how the world worked. We have been telling you this forever. And at least Orbán has been elected by anyone. The man telling Britain to resubmit to the Council of Ministers is Volodymyr Zelensky, whose term of office has expired.

Oh, well, the Pope is keeping up his predecessor’s practice of regularly calling the Church of the Holy Family in Gaza, and His Most Catholic Majesty The King of Spain, Protocanon of the Basilica of Saint Mary Major, will henceforth have an Embassy in Tehran but not in Tel Aviv. Now to repeal the wicked law that murdered Noelia Castillo, and to secure comparable moves on both issues, both from the First and Only Honorary Canon of Saint John Lateran, and from the Royal Confrater of Saint Paul Outside the Walls. Or what does any of it mean?

Why We Need To Go Back

Peter Hitchens writes:

Five people have been prosecuted for supplying drugs to Hollywood actor Matthew Perry. One of them, Jasveen Sangha, has just been locked up for 15 years. I begin to wish I had been tougher on the late Mr Perry the only time we met, in a debate on drugs in a BBC studio in 2013.

What if I had got through to him and he had broken away from all the flatterers and dealers who crowd around the rich and famous? He might be alive, and the futile, vengeful frenzy of the state against his suppliers might never have happened.

Is there anything more pointless than our obsession with ‘evil dealers’ – when those dealers would have no customers if we hadn’t given up prosecuting drug possession? Who finances the vast global drug disaster? Dealers?

No, their customers do it.

Mr Perry, who died of a drug overdose aged 54 in October 2023, was much loved by millions. They greatly enjoyed his portrayal of the character Chandler Bing in the TV series Friends.

I wasn’t one of them, when we met. I had not watched an episode of Friends in my life and I had never heard of him. I was astonished to find he had a presidential-size entourage so big it took up an entire green room at BBC HQ. I was much more worried about my other opponent, the formidable drug liberalisation campaigner Molly Meacher, who looks like a harmless nice old lady doing her knitting but who floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee.

But here was this Chandler Perry, or Perry Bing, or whoever he was, and he wanted a fight. That suited me. I rather liked him and much regret his passing. He was obviously an intelligent, charming man. My genuine sympathies go to his family.

I’d often hoped someone might arrange a return match. But it never happened, and if it had, the great majority of any audience, in the studio or at home, would have backed him against me.

For there are multitudes who live their lives on the same basis, that they can’t stop themselves hurting themselves because they enjoy the things that hurt them.

And the reason a lot of people supported him is this: people really don’t want to be told that they have free will. Where they do bad things, or things they are a bit ashamed of, it is reassuring to believe that they have some sort of disease and can’t control their desires.

Someone had persuaded Mr Perry this was so and he believed it. In fact, he believed that it was medically and scientifically proven – which I don’t think it is.

Since our clash, which was a bit sarcastic but by no means savage, I have become even more of a hate figure than I was already. Large numbers take Matthew Perry’s view that they are forced by addictions into harming themselves. They are furious with me for telling them they are mistaken.

Many, many personal tragedies have already resulted from this view. It has dominated the drug policies of the Western nations since the 1960s, changing medical and legal attitudes to drug abuse.

So many more tragedies are yet to come. We will not prevent them by locking up the dealers who take advantage of them. There will always be other dealers, taking bigger risks and charging higher prices.

But we might avoid some of them by ceasing to accept the excuse that ‘I can’t stop myself’. Yes, they can.

There cannot be a “free” market in general, but not in drugs, or prostitution, or pornography, or unrestricted alcohol, or unrestricted gambling. That is an important part of why there must not be a “free” market in general, which is a political choice, not a law of nature. Enacting and enforcing laws against drugs, prostitution and pornography, and regulating alcohol, tobacco and gambling, are clear examples of State intervention in, and regulation of, the economy. Radical change would be impossible if the workers, the youth and the poor were in a state of stupefaction, and that baleful situation, which has been contrived in the past, is being contrived again today.

We need a single category of illegal drug, including cannabis, with a crackdown on possession, including a mandatory sentence of two years for a first offence, three years for a second offence, four years for a third offence, and so on. I no longer believe in prison sentences that included the possibility of release in less than 12 months; in that case, then your crime was not bad enough to warrant imprisonment, which the possession of drugs is. We need to restore the specific criminal offence of allowing one’s premises to be used for illegal drug purposes. And Hitchens’s The War We Never Fought should be taught in schools. He also writes:

Back in May 1991, I watched the then Soviet Union shoot Britain’s Helen Sharman into space from its remarkably crude and simple launchpad in Kazakhstan. The real name of this mysterious place was Leninsk, not Baikonur, a town many miles away.

It was surrounded by a 10ft-wall and had a pleasant park, complete with Ferris wheel, next to the Syr Daria river.

This was risky, devil-may-care Soviet technology and the small number of spectators were allowed far closer to the launchpad than we would have been in the US. Given that 120 people had been burned to death there in a missile accident in 1960, this wasn’t reassuring. I won’t forget it quickly. The growling thunder and the shaking of the earth as the ancient, crude, triple rocket lifted off was like the end of the world.

I recall thinking that the giant effort needed to lift the tiny capsule into orbit showed how extraordinarily tough the earth’s atmosphere is, and suggested that perhaps we were not really meant to try to break through it.

Not long before, I had been to the museum in northern Moscow where they still keep the charred, scarred, sphere in which Yuri Gagarin came safely back to our planet after his 1961 single orbit.

I gulped, never having grasped until then just what a primitive and perilous thing it was to plunge back through this amazingly thin but terrifyingly tough defensive barrier.

The distances are startlingly short. The beginning of outer space is the Karman Line, about 62 miles up. Meteorites frizzle and evaporate on their way in, just below that level. So would returning spacecraft, if they did not have superb heat shields. Gagarin flew only 200 miles above the earth, but if anything had gone wrong it might as well have been a million miles.

Is all this risk worth it? The first landing on the Moon was thrilling and haunts me still, but why do we need to go back?

Well, it beats going to war. Ours is an improbably dominant species. Far from having been seen off by something much bigger, and endowed with fangs, or claws, or talons, or venom, or what have you, we alone have been to the Moon. Within two generations of that, though, we are afraid of words. Either we go to back to the Moon, and then to Mars and beyond, or we accept that we have entered our decline, the endpoint of which could only be extinction. Space is being both privatised and militarised, a very common combination but always a lethal one, and that by the country that does not recognise it as a common resource for all humanity. There needs to be a return to President Eisenhower’s proposal, in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly on 22 September 1960, for the principles of the Antarctic Treaty to be extended to Outer Space.

If God had not intended us to be a spacefaring species, then He would never have put anything up there for us to find. People who think that these missions impoverish anyone, even as an initial outlay, do not understand how the money supply works. As a sovereign state with its own free-floating, fiat currency, Britain has as much of that currency as it chooses to issue to itself, with readily available fiscal and monetary means of controlling any inflationary effect.

Why, though, spend that currency on this? Welcome to the Anthropocene, that is why. Life is the geological force that shapes the Earth, and the emergence of human cognition fundamentally transforms the biosphere, not least by the uniquely human phenomenon of economic growth, so that human mastery of nuclear processes is beginning to create resources through the transmutation of elements, enabling us, among other things, to explore space and to exploit the resources of the Solar System. Vladimir Vernadsky and Krafft Ehricke will yet have their day. They may be having it now.

“To increase the power of Man over Nature, and to abolish the power of Man over Man,” said Leon Trotsky. “Dominion,” says the God of the Bible. Dominion over the beasts, thus over the land, and thus over everything on and under the land. Dominion over the fish, thus over the waters, and thus over everything in and under the waters. And dominion over the birds, thus over the sky, and thus over everything in the sky, as far up as the sky goes, and the sky goes up a very long way.

That dominion is entrusted so that we might “be fruitful and multiply”. Entrusted as it is to the whole human race, its purpose is, “To increase the power of Man over Nature, and to abolish the power of Man over Man.” Celebrate the full compatibility between the highest view of human demographic, economic, intellectual and cultural expansion and development, and the most active concern for the conservation of the natural world and of the treasures bequeathed by such expansion and development in the past. That means growth, industry, what someone once nearly called “the white heat of technology”, and the equitable distribution of their fruits among and within the nations of the world, for everyone to enjoy at least the standard of living that we ourselves already enjoyed.