On Sunday I fisked Peter Hitchens' regular Mail on Sunday article. Peter requested a right to reply and I publish his full reply below.
"May I respond to some of the criticisms of my views levelled by Tim
and by contributors to this site? I'll try to be concise, but many
important subjects arise here.
First, there's the question of 'true conservatism'. One of the problems with the Tory Party is that it was proud, for many years, of being "a disposition, not a dogma". This was a good thing when it did not have dogmatic opponents. But, confronted with the dogmas of Fabianism, egalitarianism and now Gramscian/Marcusian cultural revolution, it is a grave weakness.
If conservatives cannot be bothered to understand, analyse or oppose these forces, then they will be overwhelmed by them. This is the reason for the famous 'ratchet', under which Tory governments never reverse any substantial part of Labour's changes, and instead learn to live in an increasingly left-wing state until there is nothing let to conserve. It is also the reason why so many Tory governments have been 'in office, but not in power'.
I would describe the evidence of 'true conservatism' provided by Tim Montgomerie as little more than a series of catch-penny gimmicks. The fundamental problem of the police and the criminal justice system is that they have been robbed of their punitive and deterrent purpose by the imposition of Fabian social democratic ideas on them (see my book 'The Abolition of Liberty').
The fundamental problem of the state schools is that they cannot simultaneously be tools of egalitarianism and good schools. Steering round the edge of this problem with voucher schemes and special schools for the children of pushy parents (which is basically what the Gove scheme is) will not deal with the difficulty. Nor will a necessarily small number of academies (whose alleged wondrousness is so far unmeasured by serious research).
As for bringing spending 'under control', we all want to do this in theory. But unless we are prepared to dismantle the immense, social democratic state created since the war, we will be borne onwards into ever-greater spending whether we like it or not.
The difference between Mr Cameron's position and that of proper conservatism is not (as some of my critics like to claim) a matter of degree. It's not that I'm a maximalist who will only be satisfied with a whole loaf and so refuses half a loaf. It's that the two approaches are wholly different.
On the question of drugs, linked to that of criminal justice, Mr Cameron's own silence about his 'private past', along with his performance on the Home Affairs Committee before he was famous, tell me much of what I wish to know. Under the circumstances, I can see that it would be hard for him to adopt a policy of exemplary punishment for people caught in possession of illegal drugs, even though this is (technically) the law of the land, and is the only policy that would actually work. Harm reduction and harm prevention are both based on the idea that taking illegal drugs is an unhappy involuntary affliction rather than ( as it is) a conscious crime and a deliberate immoral act.
Mr Cameron's talk of 'getting' the modern world is strikingly reminiscent of the Anthony Blair declaration in Stevenage, designed to send the same signal to more or less the same people back in April 1997 : "I am a modern man. I am part of the rock and roll generation – the Beatles, colour TV, that's the generation I come from". To that list Mr Cameron adds 'The Smiths', and various other popular musical combos, and several other fashionable affiliations and modes. And it fits with his earlier remark that he likes Britain as it is. What use is that to those of us (a large number, likely to grow larger as the implications of the market slump become clearer) who simultaneously understand the modern world and don't much like it, and who dislike Britain as it is?
Now we come to Miss Bagshawe, who I noticed is unhappy about my suggestion that she's not very interested in politics. Let me clarify. She's clearly interested in politics as a game to be played, and as a profession to be followed. Most political journalists have the same sort of interest, though their eyes glaze over if you start discussing the future of the nation with them.
But is she actually interested in the hard things (furiously opposed by the media elite) you'd need to do to save this country from becoming first , an immoral, disorderly and bankrupt dump, and then a subject province in someone else's empire (the chief dangers facing us) ? I see little sign of it. I see someone who appears to have a set of received opinions common to most people of her generation, politically correct without seeming to grasp the origins or implications of these positions, and careful to avoid the hard questions of national independence, the unashamed punishment of wickedness, the granting of exclusive privileges to marriage and to no other relationship, and the general questions arising from the nature and origin of morality. And I think her ability to roam vaguely between New Labour and Cameroon Tory is both fascinating and highly explanatory. I also think she can take it. She calls her own books 'trashy' (Observer, 30th September 2001). And can anyone really claim that the Terrence Higgins Trust is a conservative organisation, in any sense of the word? Or that the wearing of an AIDS awareness ribbon is a conservative gesture?
A small digression here. I am chided for having once been a Trotskyist, by people who think my change of mind since my revolutionary days is comparable with Miss Bagshawe's ramble along the ill-defined border between Blairism and Cameroonism.
Well, first, I resigned my membership of the International Socialists in 1975, when I was 24, which I guess is before quite a lot of my critics were born. Let us see where you all are, 33 years hence. Second, I joined the IS because I was a revolutionary Marxist, and it was a revolutionary Marxist organisation. I didn't think it was more or less the same as the Tories and then discover I was mistaken only after listening to a Paul Foot harangue. I knew what I was doing, and now acknowledge it as a grave mistake. I left it because I changed my mind, fundamentally and utterly, and have continued to move away from leftist positions (via the Labour Party and the Tory Party) ever since, as anyone who reads my books and articles must know.
And almost everyone who knows I used to be a Trotskyist knows this only because I have made sure that they know (unlike the phalanx of New Labour characters who keep their left-wing pasts a secret) . My attackers tend to skip my later membership of Labour and the Tories, because they want to depict my change of mind as a Pauline visitation, rather than as the reasoned progression that it was. But in one way, my journey from the left gives me a huge advantage over most conservatives. I know exactly what the other side think and say in private, and what it is that they want.
As for "Happy Eid", I think it raises this important point. Do conservatives wish Britain to remain a Christian country? Or do they wish to distribute its privileges to other religions? This is not tolerance, or good manners, but active multiculturalism. New Labour has gone a long way down the path of giving Islam semi-official status in Britain, with receptions to mark Eid-al-Fitr in government offices etc. The making of religious greetings from the conference platform of a party which seeks to be a government has significance in this argument. I also suspect that it was part of a constant effort by the governing elite of the Tory Party to let the members know that a revolution has taken place, in which the traditional members and supporters are the powerless and the dispossessed. I wonder, by the way, how many of the Tory Shadow Cabinet, or members of the Cameroon praetorian guard, could name the major Christian feast-day which coincided with the opening of the Tory conference. I'm all for good manners. I see Muslims as allies in many important battles, and get on with them well – but I find we get on even better if we're frank about our differences. I've never yet known one to be offended when I've argued the Christian case with him. On the contrary, the Muslims I know regret the de-Christianisation of this country, and disapprove of it.
On serious Christianity, I seem to remember a fairly clear, and very serious instruction about not taking the name of the Lord thy God in vain. In the spoken version of the speech (some of them don't feature on the text that I have seen) there were uses of the word 'God' which must have given a jolt or two to quite a lot of people in that hall. On the Thatcher/Callaghan point, I do think it ridiculous to imagine that the Lord God of Hosts votes or takes sides in British general elections, or to claim divine endorsement for Thatcherism. Don't you?
On marriage, as I say above, it can only be defended by reserving its privileges exclusively to marriage and to no other relationship. Any qualification of support for marriage ( and the Tory position is crawling with qualifications) is a failure to confront this central issue, cosmetic and guaranteed to be ineffectual
Did Mr Cameron merely 'go the extra mile' to get a good education for his daughter? Why was it so important for him to send her to a state school? What political message does it send, and is it a conservative one? Also, he can easily afford a better, or equivalent private school. The state school involved is greatly over-subscribed , and every rich person who wins a place there for his child, may well be taking that place away from a poor person who cannot afford fees, and has no other route to obtaining a place in a good primary school.
In the section on the EU, I also note that Tim simply fails to deal with my point about the two Tory Euro-MPs who mysteriously failed to appear at the Bruges Group meeting. In my view, the word 'Eurosceptic' means " a person who adopts anti-EU rhetoric in opposition, and then surrenders to the EU in government" . This is inevitable. You cannot be in the EU and not run by it, any more than you can be a little bit pregnant. If you don't like being run by it, you must leave, as all serious students of the subject long ago realised. I don't think there's any serious dispute about which side of this fence Mr Cameron is on.
Two final points. First, I believe a serious conservative programme, on national independence, crime, disorder, immigration, genuine welfare reform and education would sweep the country, despite the rage and fury of the left-wing media elite whose prejudices the current Tory leadership mistakes for public opinion.
Second, being me involves being personally abused quite a lot. I have to take it because I dish it out, though generally I do this to people who can hit back. As a result, I've been insulted by experts, especially when I first took on New Labour (when, as now with the Cameroons, almost everyone was agreed that it was a wondrous thing). I don't always enjoy being pelted with slime, though I've come to see it as necessary and sometimes even illuminating, and an important part of the adversarial politics I believe to be essential for proper debate.
But may I say a word to those who seek to discover a personal motive in my attacks on Mr Cameron or the Tory Party? Consider for a moment that I have no such motive. I haven't, as it happens, though I know some of you will never believe this and are baselessly convinced that I am still sulking, biter and twisted over my rejection nine years ago by the Kensington and Chelsea Tories. How absurd. I applied only as a stunt to annoy Michael Portillo and warn the Tory Party against him. I would have had a heart attack if they'd selected me.
Consider the possibility that I say these things because I believe them to be important, and accept that the abuse and dislike that I receive in return are a necessary price. Consider how much easier it would be for me to carry on kicking the political corpse of Gordon Brown, and so winning your easy applause. But I prefer my opponents to be alive and capable of hitting back, which is why I was attacking Mr Brown and Mr Blair when others wouldn't, and was for years banned from asking questions at Labour press conferences, and loathed by New Labour exactly as I am now loathed by Blue Labour.
I may indeed be a very bad person. But that's not the question. The question is "Am I right?""
