Monday, 2 January 2012
Ghoulish Goulash
As Hungary reverts to the Arrow Cross, remember that, thanks to our continued membership of a military alliance which should have been wound up 20 years ago, we now run every risk of having to fight the wars of territorial expansion desired by Fidesz and Jobbik, parties that, thanks to our membership of the European Union, are already legislating for us.
Hackney Hope
The Labour poll lead until the very last weeks on 2011, and its fifth consecutive by-election victory after the polls had apparently turned due to the nonexistent Euro veto, indicate, inter alia, strong public support for a government including Diane Abbott. She has been prominent again today, questioning the corporate advertising masquerading as a healthy eating strategy. She was recently, denouncing the deleterious effects of the pornogrification of mainstream culture.
Abbott has her faults. She has been a lazy critic of Blue Labour, initially very much a Hackney phenomenon. John McDonnell had a broader and more interesting base of parliamentary support. But she was repeatedly cheered to echo by the Any Questions audience in leafy Worcester in November, not least when she denounced neoliberal economics in general and benefit cuts so that bankers could carry on paying themselves gargantuan bonuses in particular.
Well, of course they did. Any examination of the Mail and Telegraph newspapers confirms that the Coalition’s savage cuts in services and in spending power, the road to yet further economic ruin, are no more popular with Conservative supporters, Middle England, or what have you, than they are with anyone else. The Coalition of Resistance to them can and must include Conservative supporters, Middle England, the Mail and Telegraph newspapers, and what have you.
The Labour Leadership Election greatly heightened the profile of Diane Abbott. There has never been any Labour Party policy to abolish commercial schools, and Harold Wilson used them as a parent while he was Prime Minister. It is altogether another question whether or not they are any good, since they are merely adept at putting pupils through the examination system that they are the first to castigate as deficient and defective.
They are often also the most anti-family institutions imaginable, founded on the assumption that the relationship between parents and children is thoroughly distant and purely financial, organised towards the living out of adolescence in single-sex residential environments, and unsurprisingly producing politicians of the sort that voted through Thatcher’s Children Act and other such legislative attacks on family life. But there has never been any Labour Party policy to abolish them.
Abbott’s ordinary, rather than her campaign, website makes clear her sympathy for the 11-plus, for single-sex schools, for Oxbridge as academically elitist, for universities’ flexible approach to entry grades if they see potential in the applicant, for the prevention of social rather than academic elitism by improving the schools attended by the poor, for raising poor pupils’ aspirations so that they actually apply to the top universities, and for reinstating full grants so that they can afford to go.
She has also been consistent in her opposition to European federalism, in her role as a voice of her ethnic community on immigration by people who cannot speak English or who come from countries with no historic ties to Britain, in her support for action against such things as not giving up seats to elderly people on public transport, and in her opposition to the New Labour assault on civil liberties.
All in all, no wonder that she hated both Thatcherism and Blairism so much. And no wonder that the electorate is now keen on a government in which she would be one of the most recognisable figures.
Abbott has her faults. She has been a lazy critic of Blue Labour, initially very much a Hackney phenomenon. John McDonnell had a broader and more interesting base of parliamentary support. But she was repeatedly cheered to echo by the Any Questions audience in leafy Worcester in November, not least when she denounced neoliberal economics in general and benefit cuts so that bankers could carry on paying themselves gargantuan bonuses in particular.
Well, of course they did. Any examination of the Mail and Telegraph newspapers confirms that the Coalition’s savage cuts in services and in spending power, the road to yet further economic ruin, are no more popular with Conservative supporters, Middle England, or what have you, than they are with anyone else. The Coalition of Resistance to them can and must include Conservative supporters, Middle England, the Mail and Telegraph newspapers, and what have you.
The Labour Leadership Election greatly heightened the profile of Diane Abbott. There has never been any Labour Party policy to abolish commercial schools, and Harold Wilson used them as a parent while he was Prime Minister. It is altogether another question whether or not they are any good, since they are merely adept at putting pupils through the examination system that they are the first to castigate as deficient and defective.
They are often also the most anti-family institutions imaginable, founded on the assumption that the relationship between parents and children is thoroughly distant and purely financial, organised towards the living out of adolescence in single-sex residential environments, and unsurprisingly producing politicians of the sort that voted through Thatcher’s Children Act and other such legislative attacks on family life. But there has never been any Labour Party policy to abolish them.
Abbott’s ordinary, rather than her campaign, website makes clear her sympathy for the 11-plus, for single-sex schools, for Oxbridge as academically elitist, for universities’ flexible approach to entry grades if they see potential in the applicant, for the prevention of social rather than academic elitism by improving the schools attended by the poor, for raising poor pupils’ aspirations so that they actually apply to the top universities, and for reinstating full grants so that they can afford to go.
She has also been consistent in her opposition to European federalism, in her role as a voice of her ethnic community on immigration by people who cannot speak English or who come from countries with no historic ties to Britain, in her support for action against such things as not giving up seats to elderly people on public transport, and in her opposition to the New Labour assault on civil liberties.
All in all, no wonder that she hated both Thatcherism and Blairism so much. And no wonder that the electorate is now keen on a government in which she would be one of the most recognisable figures.
Sunday, 1 January 2012
Around The Houses
Most people probably assumed that subletting a council house was already a criminal offence. Even a lot of people who do it probably thought that until today.
But those MPs who are banging on about well-to-do people (although a lot poorer than Conservative MPs) living in council houses, where they might have lived for decades or even all their lives, have been expressing one of the most pernicious myths of our age, namely that public provision is only ever "a safety net for the poor". Once that point has been conceded, they do not intend to stop at housing. Therefore, we must not concede the point.
Some of them, including even the Housing Minister, Grant Shapps, have even made the ludicrous statement that council houses were only ever built for the destitute. They were not. They were built for the working class, an entirely different category. And even then, they were never supposed to be exclusive to one section of society. From time to time, one hears the eye-wateringly ridiculous statement, always uttered as if it were self-evident, that no one should be living in a council house if they have a job!
David Cameron bought a third house which he did not really need, but that is his business. It is not even our business that he took out a mortgage when he could perfectly easily have afforded to buy outright. But what is our business is that he charged that mortgage to us. When, say, his children leave home, or perhaps he becomes even richer than he already is, will there be any chance that he might be evicted, and his publicly funded house allocated to someone else? If not, then why should that be done to anyone else, either directly or, by means of forcing them to pay "market rent", by stealth?
But those MPs who are banging on about well-to-do people (although a lot poorer than Conservative MPs) living in council houses, where they might have lived for decades or even all their lives, have been expressing one of the most pernicious myths of our age, namely that public provision is only ever "a safety net for the poor". Once that point has been conceded, they do not intend to stop at housing. Therefore, we must not concede the point.
Some of them, including even the Housing Minister, Grant Shapps, have even made the ludicrous statement that council houses were only ever built for the destitute. They were not. They were built for the working class, an entirely different category. And even then, they were never supposed to be exclusive to one section of society. From time to time, one hears the eye-wateringly ridiculous statement, always uttered as if it were self-evident, that no one should be living in a council house if they have a job!
David Cameron bought a third house which he did not really need, but that is his business. It is not even our business that he took out a mortgage when he could perfectly easily have afforded to buy outright. But what is our business is that he charged that mortgage to us. When, say, his children leave home, or perhaps he becomes even richer than he already is, will there be any chance that he might be evicted, and his publicly funded house allocated to someone else? If not, then why should that be done to anyone else, either directly or, by means of forcing them to pay "market rent", by stealth?
Assisted Suicide "Safeguards"
Where have we heard that one before?
Capital punishment is one of the two ultimate expressions of statism as idolatry, the other being nuclear weapons. And assisted suicide, the legally authorised and even publicly funded killing of people falling into categories defined by the State, would be a form of capital punishment, which in the ordinary sense of the term was also always voluntary, in that judges never had to apply it, and did not always do so even in murder cases.
Even as things stand, Keir Starmer has never brought a prosecution for assisted suicide under the Suicide Act 1961. It could not be clearer that the Crown Prosecution Service should be abolished, and that all rulings of the new "Supreme Court" should be made subject to ratification by resolution of the House of Commons, without which such rulings would have no effect.
There is also a strong case for once again requiring its judges to sit in the House of Lords; as much as anything else, much good work was quietly done by their Peers, especially bishops, in having injustices called in for review.
The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom is nothing other than the High Court of Parliament. But instead, we now have Starmer and his mates on the Bench making up the law to suit themselves.
Capital punishment is one of the two ultimate expressions of statism as idolatry, the other being nuclear weapons. And assisted suicide, the legally authorised and even publicly funded killing of people falling into categories defined by the State, would be a form of capital punishment, which in the ordinary sense of the term was also always voluntary, in that judges never had to apply it, and did not always do so even in murder cases.
Even as things stand, Keir Starmer has never brought a prosecution for assisted suicide under the Suicide Act 1961. It could not be clearer that the Crown Prosecution Service should be abolished, and that all rulings of the new "Supreme Court" should be made subject to ratification by resolution of the House of Commons, without which such rulings would have no effect.
There is also a strong case for once again requiring its judges to sit in the House of Lords; as much as anything else, much good work was quietly done by their Peers, especially bishops, in having injustices called in for review.
The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom is nothing other than the High Court of Parliament. But instead, we now have Starmer and his mates on the Bench making up the law to suit themselves.
Cry, The Beloved Country
As it approaches its centenary this year, the African National Congress is under fire from Desmond Tutu and others for writing out of history other people's contributions to the liberation struggle.
Emphasis is on the PAC and on Black Consciousness among those being overlooked. But that is only to repeat and compound the fault.
While Nelson Mandela was locked up, the ANC's uncompromising support for its Soviet paymaster, right up to the bitter end, considerably extended the apartheid era by prolonging American support for that regime until the Cold War was safely over.
Whereas the truly effective opposition to apartheid came from the non-violent, non-Marxist, non-racial, pro-Commonwealth tradition of Alan Paton and Helen Suzman, figures who suffered far more than those who were no doubt painfully, but nevertheless comfortably, exiled in London, or Moscow, or wherever.
Emphasis is on the PAC and on Black Consciousness among those being overlooked. But that is only to repeat and compound the fault.
While Nelson Mandela was locked up, the ANC's uncompromising support for its Soviet paymaster, right up to the bitter end, considerably extended the apartheid era by prolonging American support for that regime until the Cold War was safely over.
Whereas the truly effective opposition to apartheid came from the non-violent, non-Marxist, non-racial, pro-Commonwealth tradition of Alan Paton and Helen Suzman, figures who suffered far more than those who were no doubt painfully, but nevertheless comfortably, exiled in London, or Moscow, or wherever.
The Catholic Left
Michael Merrick writes:
They do not flow quite so easily as they once used to, the words ’Catholic’ and ‘Left’. These terms used to fit snugly together, accurately describing the political inclinations of swathes of the Catholic community, but have been slowly rent apart: from cliché to contradiction within less than two decades.
The separation hardly came out of the blue. Following years of implicit and explicit attack endured during New Labour’s reign, one could naturally understand the Catholic commentariat snuggling up to the Conservatives, the latest swing of the pendulum toward whichever political party would ease the relentless pressure being placed upon the faithful. The foot needed taking from the throat and if the Conservatives brought with them the promise of breathing space, then all well and good.
Yet the fallout between the Catholic community and the left has taken on air of permanence of late, just as the bonds have taken root between the Catholic community and the political Right. For what has become increasingly obvious is that, for a good number of well-informed and genuinely astute individuals, being an orthodox Catholic and being on ‘the Left’ is largely incompatible.
It is the language that shapes the intellectual landscape which lets us see most clearly the direction of travel. For many, ‘the Left’ is a phrase emblematic of those habits of thought and action that stand aggressively against the truths upheld by the Catholic Church. Respected commentators with whom many a faithful Catholic would find common ground, including certain luminaries of this parish, are perfectly happy to attribute a host of ideological idiocies to this phenomenon. Everything from liturgical vandalism to hug-a-heretic liberalism is attributed to that dark and not-so-distant force known as ‘the Left’.
Apart from being untrue (in itself a fairly fatal flaw in the analysis) the impression is given that the promulgators of such myths prefer cartoon caricature to blood and guts reality, even at the cost of flinging mud at those they ought to be standing alongside.
The notion that Left-wing thought is inimical to orthodox Catholic thinking is simply not one that is shared by a great many of those sitting in the pews throughout the country. To engage with the legacies left to us by our forefathers in faith, indeed by the very weave of social history and our unique place in it, while proclaiming that ‘the Left’ is an enemy, in whatever sense, of the faith and the Catholic community: this tale, as much as any other, presents itself as a hermeneutic of rupture.
After all, the faith that inclines an individual to stand in defence of the family, of the unborn, of the truths and values of the faithful community, is precisely the same faith that similarly compels some to stand on the Left-wing of the political spectrum, arguing that all these things are relentlessly assaulted by the political orthodoxies of the Right. This was as true historically, with sophisticated Catholic critiques of capitalism, as it remains now, as more than a few in the Labour Party continue to demonstrate. To use ‘the Left’ as shorthand for dissent is to ignore this crucial aspect: for many, their political and economic critiques are manifestations of their fidelity, not obstacles to it.
This is not to embrace what the professional, political Left has too often become. One can readily admit that social liberalism has fractured our communities every bit as much as its market-based twin, and mourn the role of the Labour Party in pursuing that creed (though one could point out that this ideological oeuvre has always been a hobby of the already empowered, existent within all three political parties). Indeed, for the Left the story is not as uniform as its cultured despisers would have it. Peter Hitchens’s distinction between the social and moral conservatism of the Left’s working class, and the ‘let-it-all-hang-out liberals’ comprised largely of the Oxbridge elite, is apposite.
Yet, in confining discussion to the moral free-marketeers of the New Left, one tells only half a story. For while the Catholic view of the family and the unborn (for example) are rightly defended from upon the rock-solid walls of Church teaching, we must be careful not to forget that other teachings have equal call on our thought and action. Church teaching interlinks and interweaves, most compellingly when offered as a coherent, holistic vision. Its impact is neutered the moment it is balkanised for political expediency. To use the encyclicals most symbolic of the impulses of which we speak, Humanae Vitae presents itself most powerfully when read with Rerum Novarum, not in isolation from it.
This gets at the nub of it. The phenomenon alluded to by those who would wash their hands of ‘the Left’ is not a political party or tradition, to be pinned to one end of an increasingly redundant political spectrum. It is much more elusive than that, forever moving because ultimately loyal to nothing but itself. As John Milbank has argued, the feigned confrontation of Left and Right is nothing but shadow play: in truth they are allies, each pursuing only the liberalism that drives them.
This demands that we employ a little more nuance in interpreting the socio-political landscape. The truth is that that which the Church holds to be good and true can exist on the Left, has existed on the Left, and continues to exist among significant portions of the Left, as becomes obvious once one zooms out from the unrepresentative outpourings of media-savvy progressive activists and cosmopolitan liberals ill at ease with their own tradition. Indeed, there are few expressions of Church social and moral teaching not readily identifiable within the traditions of the Left, both historically and philosophically, a truth inexplicably forgotten though increasingly rediscovered.
As such, painting ‘the Left’ as the bogeyman that assaults a Catholic vision of the good life is not just simplistic but genuinely dangerous, since it feeds into that culture war narrative that is so pernicious to the wholeness of Church teaching precisely because its tidy-minded simplicity, while so very alluring, is also so very wrong.
Not that I try to claim Catholicism for the Left, or indeed the Left for Catholicism. To do so would be to contradict my whole purpose in writing this article.
But it is to offer a warning that those who would slip so cosily into the arms of the Conservatives as a reaction against ‘the Left’ ought to be careful: that which you run toward is much the same as that which you run from. The intellectual and political tides that swept away any influence among the professional Left (although not the cultural Left) are the same tides currently weaving their way through the professional Right.
In other words, the revolution of the New Left is the revolution of the New Right. And both need Truth spoken to them.
They do not flow quite so easily as they once used to, the words ’Catholic’ and ‘Left’. These terms used to fit snugly together, accurately describing the political inclinations of swathes of the Catholic community, but have been slowly rent apart: from cliché to contradiction within less than two decades.
The separation hardly came out of the blue. Following years of implicit and explicit attack endured during New Labour’s reign, one could naturally understand the Catholic commentariat snuggling up to the Conservatives, the latest swing of the pendulum toward whichever political party would ease the relentless pressure being placed upon the faithful. The foot needed taking from the throat and if the Conservatives brought with them the promise of breathing space, then all well and good.
Yet the fallout between the Catholic community and the left has taken on air of permanence of late, just as the bonds have taken root between the Catholic community and the political Right. For what has become increasingly obvious is that, for a good number of well-informed and genuinely astute individuals, being an orthodox Catholic and being on ‘the Left’ is largely incompatible.
It is the language that shapes the intellectual landscape which lets us see most clearly the direction of travel. For many, ‘the Left’ is a phrase emblematic of those habits of thought and action that stand aggressively against the truths upheld by the Catholic Church. Respected commentators with whom many a faithful Catholic would find common ground, including certain luminaries of this parish, are perfectly happy to attribute a host of ideological idiocies to this phenomenon. Everything from liturgical vandalism to hug-a-heretic liberalism is attributed to that dark and not-so-distant force known as ‘the Left’.
Apart from being untrue (in itself a fairly fatal flaw in the analysis) the impression is given that the promulgators of such myths prefer cartoon caricature to blood and guts reality, even at the cost of flinging mud at those they ought to be standing alongside.
The notion that Left-wing thought is inimical to orthodox Catholic thinking is simply not one that is shared by a great many of those sitting in the pews throughout the country. To engage with the legacies left to us by our forefathers in faith, indeed by the very weave of social history and our unique place in it, while proclaiming that ‘the Left’ is an enemy, in whatever sense, of the faith and the Catholic community: this tale, as much as any other, presents itself as a hermeneutic of rupture.
After all, the faith that inclines an individual to stand in defence of the family, of the unborn, of the truths and values of the faithful community, is precisely the same faith that similarly compels some to stand on the Left-wing of the political spectrum, arguing that all these things are relentlessly assaulted by the political orthodoxies of the Right. This was as true historically, with sophisticated Catholic critiques of capitalism, as it remains now, as more than a few in the Labour Party continue to demonstrate. To use ‘the Left’ as shorthand for dissent is to ignore this crucial aspect: for many, their political and economic critiques are manifestations of their fidelity, not obstacles to it.
This is not to embrace what the professional, political Left has too often become. One can readily admit that social liberalism has fractured our communities every bit as much as its market-based twin, and mourn the role of the Labour Party in pursuing that creed (though one could point out that this ideological oeuvre has always been a hobby of the already empowered, existent within all three political parties). Indeed, for the Left the story is not as uniform as its cultured despisers would have it. Peter Hitchens’s distinction between the social and moral conservatism of the Left’s working class, and the ‘let-it-all-hang-out liberals’ comprised largely of the Oxbridge elite, is apposite.
Yet, in confining discussion to the moral free-marketeers of the New Left, one tells only half a story. For while the Catholic view of the family and the unborn (for example) are rightly defended from upon the rock-solid walls of Church teaching, we must be careful not to forget that other teachings have equal call on our thought and action. Church teaching interlinks and interweaves, most compellingly when offered as a coherent, holistic vision. Its impact is neutered the moment it is balkanised for political expediency. To use the encyclicals most symbolic of the impulses of which we speak, Humanae Vitae presents itself most powerfully when read with Rerum Novarum, not in isolation from it.
This gets at the nub of it. The phenomenon alluded to by those who would wash their hands of ‘the Left’ is not a political party or tradition, to be pinned to one end of an increasingly redundant political spectrum. It is much more elusive than that, forever moving because ultimately loyal to nothing but itself. As John Milbank has argued, the feigned confrontation of Left and Right is nothing but shadow play: in truth they are allies, each pursuing only the liberalism that drives them.
This demands that we employ a little more nuance in interpreting the socio-political landscape. The truth is that that which the Church holds to be good and true can exist on the Left, has existed on the Left, and continues to exist among significant portions of the Left, as becomes obvious once one zooms out from the unrepresentative outpourings of media-savvy progressive activists and cosmopolitan liberals ill at ease with their own tradition. Indeed, there are few expressions of Church social and moral teaching not readily identifiable within the traditions of the Left, both historically and philosophically, a truth inexplicably forgotten though increasingly rediscovered.
As such, painting ‘the Left’ as the bogeyman that assaults a Catholic vision of the good life is not just simplistic but genuinely dangerous, since it feeds into that culture war narrative that is so pernicious to the wholeness of Church teaching precisely because its tidy-minded simplicity, while so very alluring, is also so very wrong.
Not that I try to claim Catholicism for the Left, or indeed the Left for Catholicism. To do so would be to contradict my whole purpose in writing this article.
But it is to offer a warning that those who would slip so cosily into the arms of the Conservatives as a reaction against ‘the Left’ ought to be careful: that which you run toward is much the same as that which you run from. The intellectual and political tides that swept away any influence among the professional Left (although not the cultural Left) are the same tides currently weaving their way through the professional Right.
In other words, the revolution of the New Left is the revolution of the New Right. And both need Truth spoken to them.
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