The War to End a Gentler World

Much of the gentleness of Europe had been dissipated anyway, before the First World War.  Commercialisation, the era of the sophist, the economist and the calculator that Edmund Burke long ago identified had already come about.  It co-existed however with a continuing gentleness of Faith, Monarchy, rural life and homesteads.  Alongside the grime and misery of industrialisation, the older world still lingered – sustained because that was the natural way to live.  A portrait of that world was powerfully painted by Siegfried Sassoon in his book Memoir of a Foxhunting Man.

The Great War was the first industrial and first fully-mechanised war.  Men were no longer bands of brothers, but pawns to be sacrificed.  When the clouds of smoke cleared and the barren landscape remained, that gentler world could no longer survive.  The pressures were building, but the Great War ensured the victory of Modernity. 

The combatants indeed represented different worlds.  Austria-Hungary and Germany placed their faith in the new power of mechanised warfare.  The descendants of the Holy Roman Empire again turned on the remnants of Byzantium, supported by the Ottomans.  In its harassment of the small state of Serbia, Austria-Hungary was only following in the spirit of the Catholic Crusaders who sacked Christian Constantinople in 1204 for gain of its treasure.

The new nation of Germany allied with the Hapsburgs made war on an older Christian culture in its attack on Serbia, bringing Holy Russia into the conflict, in defence of its tiny Orthodox brother.  The mechanised horror of modern warfare the Germanic nations wrought on Russia, brought an end to the Orthodox Monarchy and saw the forces of materialism and modernity Dostoevsky foresaw taking control of Russia.  The Russia of greedy, crass oligarchs that we see today is the result of the triumph of those forces and the Holy Spiritual Russia is still battling to re-emerge.

In England things changed forever.  For many the painful losses of War at least meant the forces of Progress triumphed – women’s suffrage, class distinctions beginning to dissolve and a greater faith in science and the Machine (that force identified with all its dangers by that Anglophobe Anglican R S Thomas).

Yet with those many, many young men who died for us – to protect us from a German-dominated single State of Europe – did not something of England’s spirit die too?  For all our progress, didn’t something intangible yet profound die with our boys on Flanders Field?  Haven’t we been left with an uglier world all round – a world where money does the talking, faith is seen as blind not as vital for our existence and our beautiful countryside is disappearing, subject to the forces of greed and gain?

Edward Thomas died for the land of England more than anything else.  The England his poetry describes, however, seems more like a distant memory.

Yet I would not dare say they died in vain.  For by resisting Germany we did retain our freedom in the West despite all the ugliness of the modern world.  By keeping that freedom – unlike Russia’s fate as it fell under the control of the merciless Bolsheviks - we at least have the power to make the choice to rebuild that gentler world.  Much as consumerism and technology can separate us from trusting in older values, the young men who died protected our freedom to resist the erosion by the forces of modernity of our spiritual inheritance.

The Marketplace and High Toryism

How much of a conservative force is the market?  I have blogged on this for Conservative Home here: http://www.conservativehome.com/platform/2013/11/matthew-groves-is-globalisation-the-new-socialism.html

There is more to say on this though, because the market is undoubtedly an organic institution that has arisen naturally.  Its virtue is that it has not been centrally planned according to abstract theory.  It is rather the cumulative effect of individuals trading together, leading to a consequential price from demand and supply that regulates scarcity very efficiently. 

The market then must be defended and recognised as a part of the tried and tested human interactions that have created society.  It achieves what no central planner can in that it overcomes the partial and limited viewpoint of individuals.  Just as much as bureaucrats with fallible and limited knowledge cannot plan for a whole economy without disastrous results, so the market unconsciously regulates scarcity through prices set by no planner but through a natural process of reaching equilibrium.

Friedrich Hayek, that most liberal of philosophers, made the very Burkean point that in our historical origins civilization occurred when society began to rely on accumulated wisdom and knowledge that no individual comprehends or possesses.  So it is, he rightly argues, with the market.  The consequent result of lots of individuals transacting with each other is an unintentional regulation of scarcity.  This is why markets work and why, although Socialist governments in this country nationalised many industries, they would never have risked nationalising the provision of food.

The market is a valid and valuable institution that came about through historic evolution rather than the illegitimate process of political revolution.  The problem with politics today is not so much that it is pro or anti-market as that it regards the market as explaining everything about human interactions.

Rather like the more extreme enlightenment philosophers, particularly French empiricists, who regarded science as explaining everything about our race, this is a myopic outlook.  It ignores so many other important aspects of being human – religious faith, family love, romantic love, patriotism, appreciation of art and beauty, love of our countryside.  It is acceptance of that false Whig cliché that “every man has his price” first coined by our first prime minister, the corrupt Sir Robert Walpole. 

The market is an inadequate explanation for all aspects of human life.  To paraphrase G K Chesterton once you introduce to conversation with a Tory the Armed Forces and what motivates them, the Tory no longer talks of self interest and profit, but patriotism. 

That is exactly the point.  Surely conservatism is a rejection of the idea that human life can be explained in its entirety from one scientific or even one economic perspective.  It is my concern that the modern Conservative Party is in danger of acting as though the market explains all behaviour and is the most efficient way to get the best out of people in other aspects of life apart from trade and industry.  That is an ideological rather than a Tory perspective in the view of this blogger.  

In effect it is no different in its approach from the social Darwinist, the Socialist or any other ideologue who attempts to reduce the complicated nature of humanity to a materialist or pseudo-scientific theory. 

It is the argument here that just as patriotism drives the soldier, sailor or airman, so a notion of public service rather than self interest can drive the civil servant and indeed the politician.  The vicar is moved to his vocation by his faith not profit. Royalty serve us through the values of tradition and duty.  We must recognise that the market has its place, but to try and treat profit as the only motivator for human action will have a corrosive effect on society and if we succeed in reducing our world to one where it is the only motivation, we will be living in a degraded and cynical place. 

The Forces of Conservatism versus Relativism

Conservative is a misnomer for extremists

There is nothing more annoying than when commentators refer to radicals and militants as “conservative”.  By definition radicals are not conservative.  They throw away the lessons built up over centuries and go back to the root.  So the Islamic radical rejects the wisdom of ages in Muslim thinking, that has taken on board Aristotle, living amongst Christians and Jews and accommodated real human-nature.  In the same way the political radical, whether Bolshevist or Jacobin, rejects the institutions that have evolved over the centuries, in the hope of reverting to some ideal original state of nature.

Islamic extremism has been in the public eye recently with the trial of the two murderers of Drummer Rigby, in a brutal and barbarous attack.  It is the argument of this blog that what leads to extremist evil is a subjective approach to life that rejects the shared lessons of history.  In effect the radical attempts to shake off shared values accumulated over time and assert their own opinion in the place of common values.

Thus the young Islamist extremist living in Britain attempts to define himself against the more moderate and conservative Islam of his parents.  For the extremist the wisdom of the ancestors, the building up of knowledge and tradition, should be rejected in favour of the original, pure “truth”, which happens to be his own subjective view of the truth.  In Mali the Islamist extremists set about destroying traditional Islamic art and historical artefacts. 

Just because it's your opinion doesn’t mean you are right

The real danger to Western society is not dogmatism, but the rejection of shared dogma in favour of “my opinion”.  People talk about their opinions as though because they own them they somehow possess a special validity.  Actually it is only that person’s opinion and it cannot contain the experience of generations that exists in our traditions and inherited values.  It is inevitably a partial and limited view.

It also commands no intrinsic legitimacy.  For example, one of the late Drummer Rigby’s murderers claimed to be a soldier and justified his atrocious crime in this way. He did not really belong to an existing army it was just his own opinion that he was a soldier.  There is no existing army that I know of, with commissions, paid salaries and a duty to serve a head of state that gave him such an order.  I have not heard of such a State that would give this order, outside of the conventions of war, in violation of the Geneva Convention.  There was no call from the established institutions of the Islamic faith for a crusade; only some madman in a cave in Afghanistan had unilaterally created his own violent creed.  This so-called army has been set up without legitimacy and without authority.  The murderer’s view that he belonged to an army was nothing more than his subjective viewpoint – it was only his opinion, with no authority.  He is in fact a subject of Her Majesty protected by Her Majesty’s forces that he attacked and will now be detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure.  Whatever he thinks, that is what the case is in the real world.

Contrast this pretend “Islamist” soldier with Drummer Lee Rigby.  He belonged to a real army that serves an actual head of state and works to defend a physical nation state, with real boundaries and a rule of law and a Parliament.  This State is a signatory to international conventions on what its army will do and not do in war.  When individuals violate these rules, they are prosecuted by the State they serve.  Drummer Rigby’s real army is a vivid contrast to the imaginary army serving an imaginary nation that his murderer claimed to belong to.

The other extremists are just as subjective

This subjectivity and idolatry of one’s own opinion manifests itself in many other ways.  We see it in the animal-rights extremists, who have set up their own warped, subjective moral code and demand that others adhere to it – a code that justifies abuse of their fellow human beings in the name of their own idea of what rights animals possess.  We see it when traitors such as Edward Snowdon, who took the view that his own nation fell short in his own opinion and therefore acted in breach of the laws of his land to reveal secrets he was under a duty to keep.  A particularly dreadful example of this subjectivity and vainglorious philosophy is of course Julian Assange, who would rather see the West’s enemies benefit and her allies suffer than put aside his own ego.

Well, the common trap that ensnares all these people together is the sanctity to which they grant their own opinions, regardless of common values and shared traditions.  Whether in the name of religion, as with Drummer Rigby’s murderers or in pursuit of some skewed political ideology as with Juian Assange, these people share the same idolatry of their own opinions.

The danger of Liberalism leading to relativism

The danger is that the West, in attempting to remain true to its values of freedom and liberty is falling into the very same trap of accepting someone’s opinion is true simply because it is held – the danger of relativism and multiculturalism.  Tolerance is the sacred value of the West, which stems from its Christian heritage.  Tolerance means not persecuting that with which you disagree, it does not mean the values of society and our culture are neutral.  Replace tolerance with relativism and the moral authority is lost.

For example, how can you argue with the Islamic extremists without any grounding in faith yourself?  It is impossible to reject beliefs as false if you yourself do not believe in truth!  The greatest disrespect to all religions is to say that they are all equally valid, which means in effect they are all nonsense and invalid; rather the truly tolerant outlook is to remain true to our Christian values and to tolerate and speak to other faiths on that basis.  Not all beliefs are equally valid, many beliefs are wrong (as manifested on the Woolwich street)– but that cannot be said without we ourselves holding to a belief in something that is true.

Conservatism is the way to counter extremism

Conservatism is about accepting that our values are handed down to us and that we are shaped by that heritage.  We are not able to reinvent a whole set of universal values ourselves as we can only have a partial view.  Reject what is handed down to us and we lose the accumulated wisdom of our ancestors.

Now that does not mean accepting longstanding injustices, but continually comparing what is with what should be according to those inherited values.  Thus William Wilberforce in light of his Christian faith opposed slavery and Emily Hobhouse fought against Lord Kitchener’s camps for the Boers.  On the other hand, the Islamist extremist, the animal-rights extremist, the followers of Assange have all lost touch with their inherited values and turned their own, partial opinions into idols.  Only conservatism, by recognising civilization is based on shared, tried and tested values, can resist this subjective relativism and act as a force for moderation and piecemeal reform.     

A Pointless Divorce

After over three-hundred years of one Parliament, fighting as one State against Republican France, Imperialist and then Nazi Germany, Scotland is considering whether to break the Union with England, Wales and Northern Ireland.  It is worth remembering that the opinion polls consistently show a majority in Scotland wish to remain in the Union.  However, the SNP was never supposed to be able to win outright in Scottish Parliamentary elections, so Unionists recognise Salmond’s political ability and are right to be vigilant.

Perhaps what Scots find attractive about separation comes from their disillusionment with Westminster politics.  The irony is that they probably share that disillusionment with the rest of Great Britain.  The Nationalist politicians however are a more spiteful and negative crowd.  They are of the same ilk as the most sanctimonious of Liberal- Left English Guardianistas –preoccupied with minority issues and disconnected from the values and prejudices of ordinary people.

On Saint Andrew’s Day it seems right that this blog should focus on the elephant in the room, which is of course the possible end of Great Britain as a nation state.  When one actually thinks about it the decision of Scottish voters will be momentous for all of us, because if they vote for independence they will be changing all of our identities. 

We have grown up regarding the Union Jack, Scott of the Antarctic, Adam Smith, the writers Sir Walter Scott, John Buchan and Robert Louis Stevenson, the brave Highland Regiments, Scottish Royalty such as the late Queen Mother, Balmoral Castle, traditions such as the Edinburgh tattoo and Burns Night as belonging to all of us because we are British.  Scottish independence, whatever is said, will change how these things make up our identity.

Of course the factors that really held the Union together for many years were the benefits of Empire (wanderlust Scots generally being far more adventurous empire builders than the English) and a shared feeling of a common Protestant faith in the face of a hostile, absolutist and Roman Catholic Continent.  The Empire is now gone and with it the economic opportunities it brought for the Scottish.  Religion is much less of a factor in our British identity and the threat of being colonised by a Catholic hegemony no longer realistic (many might say the current threat is domination by a secular bureaucracy based in Brussels).

History might be important for the Nationalists, but it is important for the Unionists too.  The difference is that whereas Nationalists pick out specific and Medieaval examples of grievance, without looking at the whole narrative, Unionists recognise history is a story of gradual evolution.  Look at history as a whole and Bannockburn in 1314 can be put into perspective.  The Union is a history of a growing relationship and coming together.  From the joining of Monarchy when the Scottish king succeeded to the English Throne in 1603, to the Act of Union in 1707, which might count as the marriage following the century of engagement, then the ongoing and growing relationship in which Royalty and aristocracy intermarried becoming entirely British  As with a marriage, each partner showed  respect for difference, so that each nation kept its own legal system and own established church.  This is a more real interpretation of history.  In this context independence is a tragic breach of a relationship not a putting right of Mediaeval wrongs.

Scottish Nationalists are like the worst sort of Socialist who is more preoccupied with hurting the rich than helping the poor, for they dwell on ancient grievances and want to pull down the existing settlement to replace it with something ideological.  Indeed Scottish Nationalists are more Jacobin than Jacobite.

A word on Jacobitism - The last great breach between Scotland and the British establishment.  Jacobites however put their political descendants to shame.  For the Jacobites fought for Monarchy and Church – good Tory principles, against the Whig hegemony with its disregard for tradition.  Jacobites had allies in the Tory movement South of the border.  They were not simply nationalistic and resentful, they believed in the institutions this Island shares.

There is something narrow and resentful about the SNP and they just cannot seem to make the breakthrough in the polls with the Scottish public.  This is because the Scottish public are far more decent than their politicians.  A sort of spirit of Jacobitism remains in Scotland, with the novels of Walter Scott, the numbers of young men who serve the Queen in the armed forces and the respect in which the Monarchy is held – so that the Nationalists would not dare suggest a republic.  The blogger therefore believes that the Union will survive despite the politicians and because of the Scottish people.

Ring-fence Defence of the Realm

Of all areas of Government spending, defence is the one area that suffered during the years of Labour mismanagement.  Despite fighting two wars at once, in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Government continued on a peacetime budget, stretched our armed forces to breaking point and failed to honour the military covenant.  This disastrous approach led to the defeat in Basra and the British public’s dramatic change in its view of foreign intervention – whereas once most of the public saw Britain as a force for good when it intervened militarily abroad, after Blair’s foreign adventures, the public no longer seems to believe that we will intervene for the right reasons or make things better when we do intervene.

Whether this failure by the Exchequer to fund our forces in the frontline had anything to do with the Chancellor’s hostility to a prime minister so keen on exercising the Royal Prerogative to send our troops abroad and as a means of spiting his political rival cannot be proved.  In all other areas of public expenditure Gordon Brown was profligate in his spending of taxpayers’ money and government debt.

With the election of the Coalition Government we have seen drastic defence cuts as part of an overall policy of reducing the large deficit incurred by Labour.  Sadly, as defence saw serious under-funding during the Labour years this means that in effect the defence budget is being hit harder than other budgets, particularly the NHS, which saw lavish spending under Labour.

Of course with our aging population there is a strong case that the NHS should be exempt from spending cuts.  On the other hand, with recent scandals in the NHS it is also clear that spending large amounts of money on the health service does not necessarily ensure a better service for the patient.  Of course, it does expand the number of people working in the public sector, who thereby need government expenditure to remain high to keep them in work.

There is something slightly difficult in trying to justify why departments that did very well out of Labour should receive special treatment when defence is in real terms being hardest hit.  While defence expenditure is not a means of creating or protecting employment, it is very troubling to see those who have risked their lives for us being made redundant.  With regard to the impact of cuts on dockyards such as Portsmouth, while it cannot be argued that money should simply be spent to keep the workforce in work, it can be argued that it is not in the national interest to lose skills that may be necessary in the future.

Meanwhile, the undoubtedly politically-courageous policy of ring-fencing international aid has been zealously adhered to.  It is a courageous policy because it would clearly be very unpopular in a recession to spend taxpayers’ money on poverty abroad rather than at home.

Of course the British public are rightly generous when emergencies such as the recent disaster in the Philippines occur.  Indeed it is right that in such an exigent situation Government money is spent as a means of relieving the suffering of our fellow humans.  That is not the sort of international aid that the British public distrust.  They rather distrust regular payments of their tax money to countries with expanding economies and corrupt governments.  One would have to move in very rarefied circles indeed to believe that such a policy would be popular.

Ring-fencing international aid was therefore no election gimmick.  It is rather a clear foreign policy, which aims to influence by so-called soft power and to head off problems such as anti-Western terrorism by paying money to countries that dislike us.

The British public has less reservation about defence expenditure and the reason is perhaps that
defence of the realm is the first duty of the State.  It is a public good, which cannot be provided by private companies for profit.  It works as a result of an altruistic concept of patriotism. 

It is unlike other public services in that it is not about delivering a service to each of us as individuals, but all of us as a nation.  It cannot therefore benefit from an internal market, whereas other public services can often learn from some aspects of the market.

Defence expenditure is paying for an insurance policy against unforeseen threats.  While the Government no doubt identified important new threats through its strategic defence review, when threats become manifest they have often been unforeseen.  Would we have necessarily forecast the invasion of the Falklands as a threat, when we were more worried about a nuclear Soviet Union?  Would we have foreseen the threat of Islamism?  Judging by the State’s tolerance of Islamic extremists who fomented discontent, hatred and sedition in the 1990s, probably not.

So while it is regrettable to see such a drastic reduction in our professional armed forces (with the Army shrinking by 20,000 men) and a planned reliance on the amateur (in the best sense of the word) element of the TA, it is also worrying.  With Ship-building ceasing at Portsmouth, no aircraft carriers until 2030 and the cutting back of regiments such as the Royal Fusiliers, Britain seems to have embarked on a change in its historic role that has even worried the United States.  This could be as serious a turning point as our withdrawal from the East of the Suez Canal.

The Defence Secretary, Philip Hammond, is an honourable politician.  For example, unlike many politicians, he took a principled stand on the issue of same-sex marriage.  One of his greatest skills is his business acumen.  It is important that he remembers though, that the Armed Forces do not operate like a business, but according to older values.  Cost-cutting is necessary across departments, but defence is the department that should be cut least.  Changing Britain’s world role must be about our national interest and values, not just the bottom line.