Burke versus Gramsci – the Great British Institution and the Conservative Dilemma

 Conservatives look to Edmund Burke as their great founding father.  Central to Burkean thought is the institution with its historical memory as a repository of the wisdom of the ancestors.  In terms of modern philosophy and the Burkean tradition one might also look to Alasdair MacIntyre in his account of institutions and nations acquiring a tradition of virtue and as a Burkean opponent of Burke’s dreaded sophists, economists and calculators .

If conservatism depends for its philosophy upon manmade institutions there is always the risk such institutions will prove fatally fallible and corruptible.  Such could well be the problem in today’s United Kingdom.  Unlike the United States with its revolutionary origins, there has not been such a strong suspicion of Government and institutions within the British Right, sometimes quite the opposite.  The Crown and the Church as Margaret Thatcher once outlined are of far greater import to a Tory than the economy.  This perspective, it should be remembered, was held by the Conservative Prime Minister now looked to as an exemplar by today’s sophists, calculators and economists – the libertarian and neoliberal Right.

Margaret Thatcher though experienced the problem of the dilemma I intend to outline at first-hand.  All the British institutions, the Church of England, the BBC and even the hierarchy of the Conservative Party were opposed to her.  This tension has only grown more stretched and extreme.  While the Conservative Party has moved culturally to the Left, it is still faced by a hostile hard Left in control of the institutions that it should naturally be at home with.

The Church of England is no longer the Conservative Party at prayer, as the saying had it.  The BBC is faced with calls to be defenestrated by conservatives not radicals, because of its cultural Marxism.  Even the Conservative Party itself, at least its high command, is now a proponent of the hard-left cultural agenda in terms of same-sex marriage, “diversity” and equality of outcome.

It seems as though the Gramsci agenda of the “long march through the institutions” as extreme Leftist German-activist Rudi Dutschke put it, has been emphatically achieved in Great Britain.  The universities, including Oxford and Cambridge, the BBC, the Church are all advocates of a hard-line cultural Marxist agenda dressed up in palatable phrases such as “diversity”, “equality”, “openness”.

So what does a Burkean conservative do when the institutions its whole philosophy seeks to conserve and be guided by have fallen into the hands of the Marxists?  One answer is the populist response, looking to the American Right as an example.  Here characters like Nigel Farage and Aaron Banks are notable champions for such an agenda.  Indeed, despite being placed upon the Right, their populist agenda sometimes puts them on the Left.  For example, whereas an earlier Eurosceptic like Enoch Powell was a keen defender of the House of Lords, as well as the Crown and the established Church, Farage and Banks are radical constitutional-reformers.

The other response is the classically liberal agenda, advocated by the sophists, calculators and economists that conservatives should instinctively distrust.  From this free-marketeer liberal perspective privatisation rather than conservation is the answer to the BBC’s political subversion.  The free market is not really a conservative response to dealing with preservation of the institution.  We are not talking about a nationalised industry, but a British institution which is a custodian of many great British traditions.  Would commercialisation and advertising culture really be a conservative answer?

One might contrast arch-liberal free-marketeer George Osborne with populist Nigel Farage as two contrasting answers to the Gramscian victory within British institutions from Oxbridge to the BBC.  To abolish our institutions though is surely not a conservative solution, whether it be BBC privatisation or Church disestablishment. 

The populism of Brexit might have unleashed patriotic forces against the Gramsci institutions, but populist nationalism is not inherently conservative, as any cursory knowledge of Nineteenth Century nationalism will tell us.

It is undoubtedly the case that while the Right and conservatism look to be in the ascendancy, the whole movement is riven by internal contradictions.  This new populism rightly unleashed against the EU has now turned on British institutions like the House of Lords (admittedly corrupted into a culturally Marxist institution by the likes of Blair, Cameron and Clegg).  It could just as easily turn upon the Monarchy and nationalism again would have reverted to its radical-Leftist Nineteenth-Century roots.

It has to be admitted that when the Marxists own and control what you are trying to defend it is difficult to know how to proceed.  The only answer I believe is not one for people looking for instant solutions.  Only a gradual return to the values of Tradition will rescue our institutions and our culture.  And this might have to be carried out in a radical and unconventional way, outside of the apparatus of British institutions.  It might mean home schooling of our children, to teach them traditional values outside of the Marxist-run education system.  It might mean leaving the Church of England as a Church of Laodicea for a more traditionalist denomination that might feel foreign at first, such as Eastern Orthodoxy.  It might mean stepping back from the rat-race of the neoliberal economy with more self-sufficiency and less consumption.  In short it might mean letting the light of conservative tradition shine before men as an example, rather than trying to fight for it and impose it through democratic elections and the party system.  From the small acorn and with Providential nurture we might see a large oak of conservative counter-culture grow that provides a genuine alternative to the anomie of cultural Marxism and its insipid shadow, neoliberalism.  Only with a cultural change, rather than election victories will conservatives see their institutions restored and again linked back to the Burkean wisdom of ancestors. 

If Mr Cameron’s Easter message was divisive then he has struck the right tone!

There has been some criticism of David Cameron’s assertion that this nation, Christian for over a millennium, remains Christian and that this is a heritage that is to be valued.  Apparently a number of self-appointed intellectuals regard this assertion as divisive.  First and foremost it seems difficult to argue with Mr Cameron in terms of the facts.  We have an established church, our national holidays, such as the recent Easter break, celebrate Christian festivals, not Islamic or Hindu festivals, the largest religious group in the nation remains Christian.  It is true that this current generation is making a hash of handing on this Christian heritage to the next, but that does not mean this inheritance is non-existent.  Perhaps this generation will fail to honour the trust it owes its descendants, but the inheritance will no doubt be rediscovered. 

Just as the monks during the Dark Ages, safeguarded this nation’s Christian culture, for it to be rediscovered by the converted Anglo-Saxon invaders much later, so a small number may keep this inheritance safe through the current tide of secularism, for it to be rediscovered in the future.  The inheritance exists, even if Polly Toynbee and Terry Pratchett are selfishly trying to deprive future generations of their right to it.

The criticism that actually needs to be addressed is not the absurd and laughable suggestion that this is not a Christian country, but the further assertion made by the pseudo-intellectual letter-writers to the Telegraph that it is bad for this nation to be Christian because it is divisive and impedes the progress of the ideology of relativist multi-culturalism.

Well just because something is divisive does not mean it is bad.  I am sure Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a divisive figure for Germans living under the Third Reich.  He, in following his Master, did not balk from divisiveness in his pursuit of what was Right.  Whereas multiculturalism may not seem as monumentally evil as Nazism, it is a sort of insidious nihilism, which eats away at our values.

Evil under multiculturalism is not organised by a tyrannical State, but it is permitted and never condemned, for fear of judging non-indigenous cultural values.  Let us remember that Christianity is supposed to be divisive.  Christ said he did not come to bring peace, but division.  He described Himself as coming into the world as a sword, to set people against one another, even within families.  Well the reaction of the letter writers is evidence that Christianity is divisive.  It is divisive because like a sword it sunders the gold from the dross, the good from the evil.  If Christianity were not true it could be compromised within a mishmash of other cultures in a grey and relativist nihilism.  It is precisely because Christianity is so clear that it is the only way that it will always divide people.  If we as a nation wish to aspire to truth and moral values, then we will inevitably find that some will disagree with us even violently.  That is not to say we have got everything right by any means as a country, but if we hold true to our inheritance of values then we will rightly be called divisive – and that is something to take to our credit.

Bishops against Tories

 A hundred years ago it would have seemed an absurd political division.  The Church of England was the Conservative Party at prayer.  In recent times there are constant clashes between the Bishops and leading Conservatives.  Currently the news is not only focused on the letter from the Anglican Bishops to the Government on welfare policy, but criticism from that even more conservative institution, the Roman Catholic Church, in the form of comments in a newspaper interview by the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster.  Why has Conservatism, the guardian of our institutions, fallen out so badly so often with our culturally most important institution over the last millennium, the Church?

This is not an irrelevant matter.  Anyone who believes in a Burkean form of Conservatism or gives some credence to the idea of the Big Society, must surely recognise the Church as part of our social fabric, independent of the bureaucratic state.  The criticism of Government policy on welfare has not so much come from an ideological standpoint, based upon obscure theological doctrine, as from an empirical reaction to the facts on the ground, in the parishes.

Anglicanism is often dismissed by those on the Liberal Right as a sort of soft-Socialism led by pink Bishops.  When the blogger worked at Church House however he discovered a far more sincere conservatism on issues like Lords reform and same-sex marriage than that put forward by some ostensibly Right wing politicians.

It is the contention of this blog that since Durkheim, the Left has annexed the concept of organic society from the Right and twisted it to forward its own ends.  The Right has meekly accepted this annexation and has been left on the paltry soil of the reductionist doctrine of liberal individualism.  And yet it is very difficult to articulate a conservative position from a liberal individualist perspective.  So we end up in the absurd position of a Conservative Prime Minister leading an attack on marriage to further a concept of individualism and freedom of choice through same-sex marriage legislation.

Of course the idea of a conservative and organic society that emphasises the importance of the church, the monarchy and the family can be traced back to the French conservative thinker Louis Gabriele Ambroise, Vicomte de Bonald.  For de Bonald liberal individualism was the error behind the French Revolution.  Our social institutions are of divine origin and precede the individual.  It was his outlook that Durkheim relied on for his own Left wing agenda.  Surely the Right needs to start emphasising again the importance of institutions and abandon some of its socially Darwinist attitudes.  In that way, we can answer the Left’s accusations of heartlessness towards the poor in a way that gives a greater role to the institution and not the bureaucratic approach of targets and means testing.  When our spiritual leaders are speaking out against our morally-driven policies then there needs to be reflection. Surely respect for the wisdom of an institution should come naturally to the Right. 

The Devil is in the detail

 Surely it is deeply troubling and unsettling to people of faith, whether they be zealous in conviction or just vaguely assenting to the faith of their forefathers, that at baptism the established Church will offer the option not to refer to sin.  This may well blend in with our choice-based, consumerist society, but is it not surely profoundly contradictory to ignore sin and the Devil at the very moment he and his ways are to be renounced?  Of all the services at which to ignore the Devil, surely the sacrament of Baptism is the last at which this should be done.

It may be argued that this is merely a trial, evil is still mentioned, it is only an alternative and no definite decision has been made.  It is my concern that a trial alone and its being targeted at the least religiously-aware congregations suggest the Church does not recognise the gravity of what it is doing.  It just should not have gone down this road in the first place.

In my blogs I have often praised the Church of England as an important force for good and I passionately believe in the need for an established Church, but when such a vital piece of doctrine as the existence of a personified force of evil is denied, one can only assume that the established Church has been corrupted at least by the society it is meant to evangelise and at worst corrupted by the very force it is attempting to sweep under the carpet.

C S Lewis pointed out in his Screwtape Letters that the Devil is at his most powerful when he is thought of as an unbelievable caricature.  It seems as though modern Anglican theology does not spend much time on the personification of Evil.  One does not have to be a Manichean to recognise a malevolent and fallen force that deceives and leads astray; one simply needs to read Scripture clearly rather than through the prism of over-intellectualised theology.

In England it must be the case that for the maintenance of a Christian society the established Church is a significant and indeed vital factor.  Disestablishment would seem to be a renunciation of the whole of society’s Christian heritage and the reduction of Christianity to a disconnected sect.  It is however possible to believe in establishment and yet be very troubled by the direction that the established Church is taking.

In many ways, through its rootedness in communities, through its links with Royalty, through school education, through its sanctifying of national celebration or mourning and indeed family occasions for the irregular attendee, through weddings, funerals and of course christenings, the Church of England ensures Christ remains at least a small part of all our lives and that everyone is part of a parish.  Such a role requires a different tone from the free churches or the Church of Rome, in that these other parts of the Universal Church are completely separated from the State.  However, as T S Eliot argued in his essay on the Christian Society, the purpose of an established Church must be to Christianise our society; it most certainly is not to live-and-let-live. 

It is also pointed out by Eliot that an established Church can be corrupted and is particularly at risk through its connexion with the State. For this reason its hierarchy may from time to time need to come under attack from the community of Christians.  In the case of ignoring the Devil, has not the Church been corrupted to please the existing, liberal, multiculturalist establishment, which advocates free choice and non-condemnation as its values or rather non-values?

Is the Church not also failing in its pastoral responsibilities to those who are least familiar with their forefathers’ faith?  If a personified, fallen deceiver is kept secret and hidden and moral dilemmas are simply portrayed as a matter of autonomous choosing rather than a matter of the risk of being led astray, are we not joining the predominant idolatry of choice and subjectivity that the Church should be crusading against?  How much more difficult it is to make the right choice, when your religious leaders tell you that there is no fallen angel attempting to tempt you and lead you astray!  It is all very well to say evil is within man just as good is within man, although this sounds more Quaker than Anglican, but an awareness of the Devil brings vigilance against sin.  Truly this secrecy about sin and the Devil at baptism is a dereliction of duty on the part of the established Church.

A Tale of Two Revolutions

In January 1649 the House of Commons’ High Court of Justice convicted the nation’s King, Charles I of High Treason and sentenced him to death.  Around forty years later Charles’ son, James II was chased out of Britain and replaced by a new King, Willliam of Orange.  These two different revolutions speak volumes about what works in terms of political reform and what makes matters worse.

The excesses of Charles I were to be supplanted by the far-worse sanctimonious-oppression that was the Commonwealth.  A judgemental, puritanical view had been taken of the real world and found it wanting.  Its solution was to tear down institutions and attempt to replace them.  The experiment did not work because it failed to follow the grain of human nature and relied on ideology.

This nation’s second revolution four decades later was pragmatic and worked with the grain of human nature.  It maintained the institutions of state, but reformed them and rearranged them to be more in balance with each other.  In the first revolution of Oliver Cromwell, Parliament and the New Model Army, Monarchy and House of Lords were abolished.  Anglicans and Baptists persecuted.  Folk traditions were stamped out.  Rather than recognise that all human institutions are maintained by flawed humans, the Roundheads seemed to believe abolition of institutions would mean human flaws could be overcome.

Parliament had learnt the second time around in 1688 that the flaws lay with the men who held these institutions on trust, not the institutions themselves.  They therefore kept the monarchy but constrained the power of the individual who filled the office. 

The argument of this blog is that the institutions themselves are natural, right and indeed Providential.  The blogger argues further that all institutions of Western, Christian Europe that are prescriptive and longstanding are legitimate in their own right.  Monarchy, Parliament, Church, nation and family are gifts handed down to us.  If we attempt to straighten out Kant’s crooked timber of humanity by stripping away these institutions we will cause that timber to splinter and shatter.  Because of the crookedness of the timber the answer is piecemeal not radical reform.  That is the lesson of our nation’s two revolutions.

This principle can be applied to the local and the domestic too.  Many families have their problems undoubtedly, but the family itself is a valuable gift to be treasured.  It is completely mad to say that because some individuals are bad and ruin family life that this means family life is itself bad.  No, it is our own flawed nature that can prevent us from living family life to the full.

Because some men are bad husbands to their wives or are unfaithful, it does not follow that the tradition of Man and Wife should be abolished, as some radical feminists might argue.  The problems are specific to the individuals and do not lie in the institution of family itself.

The answer from government and law should be to protect the wife from being disadvantaged, but not to downgrade marriage itself.  The specific mischief should be addressed not the institution attacked.  In the same way our longstanding institutions such as the Monarchy should be valued not abolished.  Our current constitutional set up means no individual could now abuse the office for the purposes of arbitrary government as James II did.

This is the lesson of our history:  When we attempted to abolish the institutions in an attempt to create a utopia we were confronted with a dystopia, where the institutions that bind us together were no longer there to hold our society together.  When we instead reformed specific parts of the mechanism of government in the Glorious Revolution we created a lasting settlement centred on the continuing institutions of constitutional monarchy and the established church.  That is the tale of our two revolutions and it is unfortunate that the French copied and took to its extreme of terror our first revolution rather than our second revolution. 

  

Nostalgia is good - Progressives might not like it, but there was a lost golden age

The current political class is dominated by the ethics of vanity identified by Jesse Norman MP in his book on Edmund Burke MP as liberal individualism.  This liberal individualism permeates the thinking of the metropolitan class that has the time and money to govern the rest of us.  It is the nadir of a gradual decline in Western thinking that puts the material before the spiritual, the modern and novel before tradition, the atomised individual before society and science before religion.

On the Left we see this reductionist outlook represented in its disparaging of institutions that make up the fabric of our society, sneering at valuable institutions from monarchy to marriage.  If we are all individuals the Left says we should not be oppressed by conjugal vows or subject to a Queen.

Meanwhile the Right has forgotten its duty to conserve our institutions and has turned a legitimate institution, the market, into an idol. It regards market economics rather than values and norms of behaviour as explaining human actions.  Patriotism and faith are replaced by rational choice theory.

Things really seemed to go wrong after the wonderful scientific discoveries of men of faith such as Isaac Newton.  This great deepening of our understanding of the material world, which began as a wonder at Creation was turned into idolatry of science, where science was claimed as the explanation of all things and our institutions and traditions were only seen as valuable if they could be justified by scientific tests.

Not only was this so-called Enlightenment anti-religious it was also in a sense anti- human.  The one man who did most to pervert our new scientific understanding was that serpent in the garden of philosophy, Jean-Jacques Rousseau.  At university the blogger undertook a whole module on this leading thinker of the Enlightenment and discovered a misanthrope.  He seemed to regard human interaction as leading to a destructive amour propre.  For him the human institutions that bind generations together with their accumulated wisdom were forces of oppression.  He therefore detested the society Man had built up in the light of religious faith. 

The French revolution with its belief that Rationalism independent of tradition could explain everything followed, with Rousseau as its hero.  Since then this rationalist and materialistic outlook has continued to attack tradition and faith.  It has chipped away at our social bonds, questioned the norms of behaviour that make living together possible and indeed life enhancing.

Much is attributed to the Enlightenment from individual freedom to parliamentary democracy.  England gives the lie to this.  Much of what people give the Enlightenment credit for was already underway in these Islands before Rousseau and the others put pen to paper.  Religious pluralism came about following the new settlement of the Glorious Revolution (one hundred years before France committed regicide), but this was only implementing ideas that were gradually developing following the Restoration in 1660.  Charles II’s reign might have seen reversals in the journey towards religious pluralism, but a compromise was being worked out.  It was finally achieved with the accession of William III, but not by reverting to the narrow Puritanism of Cromwell and the Regicides.

A middle of the road solution was reached without reference to abstract theory.  In good Anglo-Saxon fashion a compromise was cobbled together that allowed people to worship God true to their own interpretation of the Bible, Parliament was given freedom from Royal Prerogative and the Whigs therefore got what they wanted.  It was a compromise that worked however because it realised men live by tradition and affections not rationalist theory.  So the settlement preserved the monarchy and indeed the pageantry of monarchy.  It preserved the House of Lords and it continued with the Church of England as an established church – so the Tory affection for tradition was acknowledged too.  It recognised that while we must be free we are also social creatures who need institutions and traditions.

 Over the Channel, when abstract principles were followed rather than the lessons from history, the Terror and the guillotine resulted.  That is not to say that only the French make such a mistake.   While atheism and materialism took power by force in 1789, in the United Kingdom its growing strength has been more insidious and by stealth.  “Clever” people no longer respect our traditions.  They act as though our institutions survive by some strange accident, some oversight when we were embarked on dismantling the structure of oppression while on the road to liberty.  What they do not realise is that true liberty depends on these institutions rather than the false freedom of liberal individualism which is to be lonely and weighed down by the material world.

So people are right when they look back nostalgically to better times, because as these abstract, rationalist ideas have gradually permeated our nation more and more we are constantly losing what is life enriching. 

As we approach Christmas however the whole country returns home, casting off abstract rationalism.  Family, tradition and the Christ Child are seen again for how central they really are to our lives.  It is a return to the Merry England of carolling and wassailing, Christmas pudding (banned by the Puritans), Father Christmas, hunting (banned by New Labour), hawking and feasting.

So our resistance to the liberal individualists with their economic theories and their scientific explanations of religion begins when we wish each other “Merry Christmas”.  Certainly if we start to wish each other “happy holidays” instead, we have given up the fight. 

In Memoriam

At this time of year, as the evenings draw in and nature goes into its annual decay, we spend time remembering.  The leaves are falling and the migrant birds have flown. In terms of festivals the Christian Feast of All Saints or All Hallows is preceded by Hallowe’en and succeeded by All Souls.  All Saints being a time when we remember the elect who went before and are now in Heaven, on Hallowe’en we traditionally try to ward off the evil spirits and on All Souls we remember the departed.  The veil between this world and the next seems at its most thin.

It is also a time of year when we remember the survival of our institutions of Monarch in Parliament on Guy Fawkes’ Night and in burning the eponymous effigy, we attempt the re-enactment of extirpation of menace from the Kingdom. We are exhorted to remember the fifth of November.  We remember again on Remembrance Sunday and Armistice Day those who have fallen in defence of these Islands.  With the centenary of the Great War next year, there will be much remembering of the young men who died for us in the trenches.

It is a time of year when elderly relatives who are unwell or frail often sadly pass, as the weather turns colder.  For many then there is a personal remembering of departed loved ones.

So at this time of year we are most conscious of the past and the eternal.  We remember the cloud of witnesses that surround us in Heaven.  We remember those we miss too.

At such a time, when those who went before feel so close, we sometimes realise that the past is not another country to misquote Harold Pinter, but the same country.  People lived on the land where our houses now sit.  People before us looked at the same hills on the horizon.  For many of us our own relatives lived in the vicinity or the same country for centuries before now.

As Housman wrote:

“Then, ‘twas before my time, the Roman

At yonder heaving hill would stare:

The blood that warms an English yeoman

The thoughts that hurt him, they were there.”

There has been a constant stream of events linking us all the way back.  Ancient Briton, Roman, Anglo-Saxon, Norman and Viking and later migrations all were gradually absorbed.  We are all therefore connected to the past and while it does not define us, there is no breach between us and our forebears, but a continuous stream of people and events.  That is why traditions and institutions that bind one generation to the next are important for a nation.  If we lose the sense that we are linked with those who went before, thinking only the novel and new matters we become shallow and lose touch with who we are.  

Following traditions mean we acknowledge our link with our ancestors.  We celebrate the same feasts, are subject to the same Crown, are married and committed to the next world in the same ancient churches, live in the same land.  So at this time of year we can be especially conscious of our belonging to the country and the past.  By remembering the past we remember who we are, forget it and we break the bonds that hold us together.

Marriage and Motherhood - Chief Rabbi Sachs has criticised David Cameron's government

The outgoing Chief Rabbi has criticised David Cameron for not supporting marriage.  Marriage is indeed under pressure; as the Centre for Social Justice has demonstrated that for those who are in financial difficulties, the tax advantages of cohabiting discourage the commitment to marriage.

If a government were to support marriage it would need to have a clear idea of what marriage actually means.  To the secularist liberal it is reduced to a mere contract between two consenting adults to remain faithful to one another.  To the Church of England it is about the three virtues of mutuality, fidelity and complementarity.  The third of these is particularly relevant to understanding marriage when one also looks at the etymological origins of the word “marriage”.

It is always helpful to go back to the actual meaning of the word as a means of seeing clearly through the obfuscation of politicians.  Marriage as many will be aware comes from the Latin maritare and matrimony from the Latin matrimonium, which are linked with the Latin word marita for married lady.  All these words can be linked etymologically with mater, which of course means “mother”. Therefore marriage in its meaning is intrinsically linked with the idea of motherhood.

It is not a major leap from this to argue that to support marriage governments should be supporting motherhood.  That is why Chief Rabbi Lord Sachs is right to express his concern that the Government seems to have prioritised women in the workplace over the stay-at-home mother.  To be in favour of the stay-at-home mother does not mean that women should not be allowed in the workplace, just as being in favour of marriage does not mean other forms of commitment are invalid. 

The Conservative Party itself has made the argument that to be in favour of marriage is not to condemn other forms of relationship.  Marriage, as the empirical evidence and our Christian heritage demonstrate, is simply the optimal form of relationship for family life.  In the same way being brought up by a stay-at-home mother is the optimal way to be brought up, but that does not mean that other ways of being brought up are bad.

So if the Government can support marriage by supporting motherhood, how is it doing?  There has been a repeated pledge to amend the tax system to support those who make the commitment of marriage, yet this policy has still not been implemented.  Meanwhile the Government has attempted to change the very definition of marriage from its intrinsic link with motherhood by asserting that marriage now encompasses same-sex union.

The latest controversy has been the exclusion of stay-at-home mothers from tax-free child-care costs.  So once again, whatever the rhetoric, the government simply does not seem to believe that supporting marriage is about supporting motherhood.  By all means give the support to mothers who have to work; but, surely the stay-at-home mother, who has made such a socially positive commitment, should be included in this tax-free scheme? 

When it is not necessary to change it is necessary not to change (originally published on Conservative Home on 31st January 2013)

Conservatism is more of an attitude than a political dogma.  While there are many in the modern Conservative Party who adhere to political creeds such as libertarianism or liberal conservatism, surely a desire to conserve and a scepticism about sudden change is more about values and attachment to the tried-and-tested than ideology or political theory.  And that is a good thing.  I still believe that while the majority of the British public are not necessarily overly enamoured with the concept of the invisible hand of the market or shrinking the state, they do possess an innate conservatism.  It is that commonsense sceptism about political theories that kept the ancient institutions of state, the monarchy, the established church and the House of Lords intact in the turbulence of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries and saw the Conservative Party flourish in the era of universal suffrage in the last Century.  Lose touch with that conservative attitude and the Party loses the foundations of its support.

That is why it is deeply worrying that the Conservative Party seems to have developed an enthusiasm to be seen to be doing and changing.  My suspicion is that most people would prefer it if politicians did less not more.  The trouble with politics is that it can attract the sort of person who wants to make their name and usually a name is gained by changing something, whether or not the change is good – Edward Heath taking Britain into the Commonmarket or Nick Clegg’s abortive attempt to destroy the House of Lords spring to mind.  The Conservative Party should be the natural foil to this – it represents the attitude so pithily summed up by the second Viscount Falkland:  “When it is not necessary to change it is necessary not to change.”

It seems that many of the areas of policy where the Conservative Party has been perceived as vulnerable in recent times are where they have been more radical.  It is people’s natural conservatism that leads them to resent the growth of the supermarket at the expense of the local high street and it is again conservatism that leads people to resist development in their backyard; indeed the whole urge to protect the environment is a sort of conservatism – the conservation movement.

I believe Mr Cameron got it right when he realised that much of the alleged toxification of the Conservative brand could be cured while remaining true to Conservative values.  It is right that we are now a party of conservation and a party of localism.  Localism, despite its being given a name like a dogma is fundamentally conservative - as Edmund Burke pointed out patriotism springs from people’s membership of the little platoons rather than loyalty to a large, overweening state.  The Big Society is truly conservative – it is about voluntary organisations holding society together rather than that same overweening state the Socialists look to.

Unfortunately, the Coalition I believe obscures the clarity of who the Conservatives are.  What could be more un-conservative than attempting to unravel the constitution by abolishing the House of Lords or attacking marriage by changing its definition to include same-sex partnerships?  It is very worrying to many voters with a conservative outlook to see the Party that should represent them allowing the Liberal Democrats to run away with policies that attack institutions far more important to a conservative outlook than deregulation of the market.

What is also disconcerting is when MPs seem to rush headlong enthusiastically into reform.  Those reforms may well be justified, but if conservatism is more of an attitude of scepticism than political dogma, much as elected police commissioners may fit in with Localism, should we not have approached the policy with more of a sceptical try-it-and- see, piecemeal approach?  Instead there seems to be something almost zealous about the Party’s approach to change.

A case in point is the reform of the laws of succession, being rushed through Parliament in one day.  To a Liberal Democrat such as Nick Clegg the longstanding nature of primogeniture is a reason to overthrow it.  Surely to conservatives the approach is one of not rushing, but thinking through the implications.  Of course, it probably will be better for the survival of the monarchy if primogeniture is abolished, but there will be unforeseen implications and that is exactly why the conservative response should be to carry out this reform in a slower and more considered way.

One is reminded of the Church of England being disconcerted by the enthusiasm of Methodism.  The Anglican Church reacted in a conservative way; it exhibited an attitude of scepticism about the enthusiastic hymn-singing and evangelism.  Now in the long run it was probably a good idea for the congregation to sing hymns, but the conservative attitude is to take these things step-by-step and not to rush people who might be uncomfortable about change.  So please let’s have a little less enthusiasm and a bit more English reserve!

http://conservativehome.blogs.com/platform/2013/01/matthew-groves.html

A Guide to the Reform of the House of Lords (originally published on Respublica's Disraeli Room on 16th January 2012)

The composition of the upper house of Parliament has been under question for some time and yet still the question has not been answered.  There have been piecemeal reforms, such as the passing of the two Parliament Acts, the introduction of Life Peers and the removal of the vast majority of hereditary peers, but still the questions are asked.  The Coalition Government has now published a draft House of Lords Reform Bill.

Current Composition

The vast majority of peers are now life peers.  The total number of members of the House of Lords is 788 active members.  This number is divided into 26 Lords Spiritual (Bishops of the Church of England) and the remaining 762 are Lords Temporal.  Of the Lords Temporal there are 92 hereditary peers who have inherited their seats to the Lords and the remainder are life peers, whose seats are removed at their death.

There has been a dramatic increase in the number of life peers under the current Coalition Government.  Since May 2010 there have been 117 peerages created.

There is a mechanism for replacing hereditaries when they pass away.  A by-election is held among the hereditaries (both those sitting and those who have lost their automatic right to sit voting).  The winner replaces his deceased colleague.

History

The House of Lords is the upper house of Parliament and originally was only composed of Lords Spiritual (the bishops) and the Lords Temporal (senior aristocrats).  It emerged in a recognisable form during the Fourteenth Century.  Historically it was more powerful than the Commons, whose members represented the interests of the shires and boroughs.

Under the Commonwealth of Oliver Cromwell, along with the Monarchy the House of Lords was abolished.  With the Restoration of Monarchy and Lords a more gradual evolution took place, which saw the diminishing of the power of the Lords and the growth in the power of the Commons.

In the early Twentieth Century the Commons cemented its supremacy with the passing of the 1911 Parliament Act.  This legislation was in response to the landed interest represented in the Lords resisting the Liberal Government’s Budget, which included a heavy tax on the landed interest.  Under the threat of the Lords being flooded with new Liberal peers, the Lords gave way and accepted the Parliament Act.

Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949

Money bills to become law automatically if not passed by the Lords within one month.

Other bills can be forced through the Lords if rejected three times (provided two years had passed since the Second reading).

This time was to be shortened to two sessions by the Parliament Act 1949.

Further reforms have also affected the Lords.  Life peers were created by the Life Peerages Act 1958.  The House of Lords Act 1999 took away the right of most hereditaries to sit in the house, with only 92 allowed to remain until an obscure second stage of reform took place.

The Law Lords lost their place in the Lords and the Lord Chancellor his role as speaker of the House as a result of the Constitutional Reform Act 2005.  As a result the House of Lords is no longer the highest court in the land.  Many of these changes were criticised for having no overall purpose and unpicking the constitutional settlement.

Role of the Lords

The role of the Lords, like that of many British institutions, has evolved rather than been planned.  It has not had its role determined by experts sitting down and working out what it should be; rather it has filled the necessary gaps and provided the function of a revising chamber filled with experts, senior politicians and spiritual and legal leaders.

It sees its purpose as enabling the Commons to think again.  It has no right to override the supremacy of the Commons, but it generally achieves its purpose of considering issues away from the heat of partisan debate with more independence of thought and expertise.  The question therefore left begging is why change it?

Current Proposals

To an extent the argument for reform is that the need has arisen almost by accident.  A system that worked well has been unpicked almost in a fit of absence of mind as New Labour tinkered with the constitution to suit its short-term political needs.

Therefore the scenario presents itself as to what should this second stage of reform be?  The Government itself in its draft bill has left many options open.

It is proposed to have either an 80% elected or a 100% elected Upper Chamber.  Peers would be elected for fifteen year terms and be unable to stand again.  If the 80% option is chosen twelve of the current 26 Lords Spiritual would remain.  With the 100% option they would all be lost.

The case for reform is that Great Britain’s bicameral system is unusual in that it is unelected.  It is also argued that an elected Lords would have more legitimacy and therefore be better able to hold the Commons to account.

The dangers of reform are that the House becomes more partisan, loses its expert and spiritual elements, is made up of politicians who could not make it into the Commons and that it challenges the supremacy of the Commons (the flipside of the argument for an elected chamber).

When embarking upon constitutional reform it is vital that debate is considered and informed.  As the Commons makes up its mind on the 80% or 100% option it must ask the question: What is the purpose of the Lords?  We do not have a written constitution and rather like the Monarchy, the role of the Lords has evolved.  Therefore MPs must look at the current situation to see what the Lords actually does and then ask themselves will current reforms enhance that role or diminish it.  In essence, through evolution, the Lords has become a revising expert chamber, with a strong spiritual and legal input.  Will 80% or 100% elected peers further this equilibrium or hinder it?

- See more at: http://www.respublica.org.uk/item/A-Guide-to-the-Reform-of-the-House-of-Lords

The Point of the Lords Spiritual (originally published on Respublica's Disraeli Room on 29th March 2012)

The bishops in the Lords have in recent years become far more active, the intention being to demonstrate that they do have a vital role in the constitution. Government proposals involve two options, one to retain twelve of the twenty-six bishops and the other to expel them altogether.

Writing for ResPublica’s essay collection on Lords Reform “Our House: Reflections on Representation and Reform in the House of Lords”, the Bishop of Leicester, the Convenor of the Lords Spiritual, has argued that they are representative of the regions, with church parishes across the nation. In a Parliament that is very focused on London, they bring a regional and localist perspective that should be welcomed; surely this is an example of localism embedded into the constitution. The bishops are more representative of the whole of Britain than MPs and peers. The argument made by some, such as Theos, that more specialised, political Lords Spiritual, less focused on the diocese, would diminish that “rootedness” in the regions.

Furthermore the interests that they represent are those of the voluntary sector so vital to civil society. If British society is to be reinvigorated by turning more to the little platoons that make up the Big Society, the leaders of the faith groups, which make up such a strong part of that Big Society, must have a place. So why remove them from the role in the legislature that our history has given them?

Reform Proposals and the Dangers of a Reductive Policy of Equality

The presence of Church of England Bishops is often criticised as discriminating against other faiths and humanists. But the Church of England itself is on record as not opposing in principle other denominations or faith groups having appointees on the Bishops’ Bench. Just as for historic reasons Church of England Bishops sit in the Lords, so for historic reasons representatives of the established Church of Scotland never sat in the Upper House. History has presented us with the House of Lords as it is and has given us the Lords Spiritual who fulfill a useful role.

Furthermore, while there are no rabbis and no imams in the Lords ex officio (it must be remembered that the mechanism of creating a life peerage remains for luminaries of other religious traditions), it would seem to be cutting one’s nose off to spite one’s face to expel bishops simply in adherence to an abstract theory of equality. No one would gain, but all denominations and faiths would be the losers. Other faith groups generally welcome the contribution the bishops make (as can be seen by the contributions of faith leaders to the Joint Committee). It is not straightforward practically to select representatives of other faiths acceptable to all strands of those faiths, but, there are very specific and strong reasons why the Anglican leaders should have a place in the Lords – they represent the established church, they have been there historically and they can bring a spiritual dimension to debate that is welcomed by other faith groups.

But aren’t they out of touch?

In a study for its report “Coming off the Bench”, Theos found that the bishops had been voting and attending debates more often in recent days, but that they rarely voted en bloc and seemed to see their role as one of witness rather than to alter the course of legislation. For example on welfare reform, the bishops have been more willing to speak out and vote. This has been welcomed by some, but strongly criticized by those who feel popular government policies are being delayed.

However, whether one agrees with the bishops on the specifics of a particular issue, their role in the House of Lords cannot be to follow the short-term opinion polls. They are not elected and must therefore be there to come at matters from another angle than the current fashion of opinion. If the role of the Upper House overall is to give the Commons the opportunity to think again, the role of the Lords Spiritual is surely to enable that reflection to take place informed by a spiritual and Christian angle.

Not only Leaders of the Established Church

Our stable and evolved constitution has provided us with an Upper House made up of bishops in addition to peers. Is it right that the bishops should have a say because they lead the national Christian church? As the established Church, the Church of England is there for everyone, not just those who can recite the Nicean Creed. According to the Church of England, three out of ten people in England regard themselves as being Anglican and six out of ten regard themselves as Christian.

But there is much more to their role than this: The bishops do not just speak for the Church of England and are there by right as Lords Spiritual not Church of England delegates. Not only do the Lords Spiritual keep Christianity in the public square, they represent the concerns of other faith groups and even non-faith groups. The Bishops represent a great diversity of groups, in particular civic society and the local regions; they are not simply speaking for the established church. They ensure more than a short-termist, secularist or populist view dominates debate. This is to the benefit of the nation, whether we always agree with what they say or not.

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- See more at: http://www.respublica.org.uk/item/The-Point-of-the-Lords-Spiritual

The New Archbishop: A Counter-Cultural First Among Equals (Originally published on Respublica's Disraeli Room on 16 November 2012

With the decision that Justin Welby is to be enthroned as the next Archbishop of Canterbury, it is worth reassessing the value of the role. This is one of the most historic offices of the land, along with that of Monarch and Lord Chancellor. The Archbishop precedes the Lord Chancellor and Prime Minister in order of precedence, but is this merely a historical anomaly? Does the Archbishop as the primus inter pares of the established church still have relevance in twenty-first century Britain?

This article argues that the office of Archbishop could not be more relevant today.  It may help first to set out what the role of the Archbishop is, how he exercises his authority and thereby correct some misapprehensions to assess the utility of this ancient office

The Archbishop has a multi-faceted role.  He is President of the worldwide Anglican Communion, first among the Bishops of the established Church of England as Primate of All England, Metropolitan Bishop of the Province of Canterbury (thirty dioceses) and diocesan Bishop of Canterbury. He sits by right as a Lord Spiritual in the legislature along with York, London, Durham and Winchester; the other twenty-one are there on the basis of seniority.  The current Convenor of the Lords Spiritual is not however the Archbishop, but the Bishop of Leicester.

The authority the Archbishop exercises in these roles is not that of a chief executive – he is not a Prime Minister exercising the Royal Prerogative or a Pope with papal infallibility.  The only two roles in which the Archbishop can exercise executive power are in the See of Canterbury, when he is acting as a diocesan bishop and as Metropolitan Bishop of the Province of Canterbury. In every other aspect of his office his authority rests on intangibles and concepts that are, it must be conceded, somewhat out of fashion.

As the lead bishop of the Anglican Church he is primus inter pares – first among equals.  Rather like the old concept of cabinet government, he exercises his authority through the respect in which his office is held.  The bishops therefore operate in a very different way from the world of business or politics. It is the contention of this article that this is no bad thing, but it does lead to misunderstandings as to why the Archbishop does not seem to set a clear public position for the Church. 

He is not of course the head of the church, that is Christ; but, neither is he the Supreme Governor, for that role falls to the Queen. This is of course a complicated picture, but the reason it works is because it depends upon values and ways of behaviour different from the unambiguous accountability of the world of elected politicians (which when choosing the government of the nation is of course the fundamental principle upon which legitimacy must rest). The Archbishop is not fulfilling the same role as an elected government and his authority does not derive from a bottom-up election so much, as accountability to God.

A close analogy can here be drawn with the role of the Monarchy. The Queen looks for legitimacy to history and a coronation ceremony that emphasised her accountability to God.  If the legitimacy of the Monarchy simply rested on accountability in the same way as elected governments then we would hold elections for the Head of State.  While this is the process elsewhere, there is broad agreement that for reasons of history and emotional attachment, that is not how the British Head of State is chosen. Precisely because the Monarch is not chosen in that way, she is part of the social glue that holds society together.

The Archbishop can only command authority by relying on similar claims of legitimacy.  He cannot claim to have won an election via universal suffrage. No, he relies on what are now counter-cultural concepts of deference, tradition and answerability to the Almighty.  Indeed both Monarch and Archbishop derive legitimacy from the ultimate top-down authority and are very unfashionably not based on the bottom-up approach.  And that is a good thing, because it ensures the persistence of important values that an individualistic analysis does not comprehend.  Duty, faithfulness, selflessness, patriotism are all values not recognised in a world-view that sees life as the individual achieving his own satisfaction.

The political class now looks only to different interpretations of individualism making the Monarch and Archbishop’s roles difficult concepts to grasp. The public, however, as demonstrated by the recent Jubilee celebrations does intuitively get it! Politicians meanwhile seem preoccupied with people having a right to do what they want regardless of the impact on institutions – the arguments for gay marriage are a case in point, where an individual wanting to have something trumps the damage to the institution of marriage, despite marriage being part of that social glue so vital to civil society. The nature and role of the Archbishop means by definition he asserts values contrary to the entitlement agenda of left-wing equalities and rights ideology.

On the right commentary seems to have narrowed conservative thinking to being little more than pro-market ideology. Once Conservatism was about so much more and certainly involved the conserving of those institutions that hold the nation together.  When looking through such a narrow prism of the market being the answer to everything it is no longer possible to articulate arguments in favour of Monarchy, Church and nation.  

The Archbishop therefore has an important role in national life, to act as a custodian and advocate for older and more selfless values. This is not a left or right wing position. It challenges politicians across the spectrum to take into account that there is much more to our nation’s values than the narrow ideological critiques that either look to the market or entitlement to equality at the expense of the social fabric. In the current climate of secularist individualism this is quite simply counter-cultural.

- See more at: http://www.respublica.org.uk/item/The-New-Archbishop-A-counter-cultural-first-among-equals