Thinking Class
Thinking Class is a weekly long-form interview podcast exploring the cultural, historical, and civilisational forces shaping England, Britain, and the Western world.
Hosted by John Gillam, the show brings together historians, philosophers, theologians, economists, and public intellectuals for conversations that go beyond the news cycle by examining the deep roots of the West's present predicament and asking what genuine recovery might require.
Guests have included David Starkey, Lord Jonathan Sumption, Lord Nigel Biggar, Robert Tombs, Peter Hitchens, Lionel Shriver, Roy Baumeister, Kathleen Stock, Carl Trueman, and many others.
If you value serious conversation about Britain, the West, and the forces shaping our future, then this is the show for you.
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Thinking Class
#042 - Peter Hitchens - How Britain Witnessed A Moral And Cultural Revolution
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Peter Hitchens is a columnist for the Mail on Sunday and a contributor to many other publications. He has published several books, mainly on aspects of what he regards as a cultural revolution which has transformed Britain for the worse in the last half century, and these include The Abolition of Britain and The Rage Against God. Peter has been a journalist for nearly 50 years, has reported from 57 countries, and was a resident correspondent in Moscow and Washington. Peter is a former revolutionary Marxist, who now describes himself as a socially conservative social democrat.
In this episode, Peter and I talk about why being right and searching for the truth is not one in many friends, how British people are becoming less proud of their nation, why the First World War set in train a moral revolution in the British Isles, the rise of what Peter calls selfism, Why we are left guessing about how our leaders measure right and wrong now that the Christian faith is no longer our guiding ideal, how Britain courts economic catastrophe, and why the moral and political issues facing the country suggest a bleak future. We also talk about the need to be precise in our language so as not to inadvertently inflate an issue. And much, much more.
Enjoy the show class mates.
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Hello, classmates, and welcome to Thinking Class. I'm John Gillam, and today I'm speaking with Peter Hitchens. Peter is a columnist for The Mail on Sunday and a contributor to many other publications. He has published several books, mainly on aspects of what he regards as a cultural revolution, which has transformed Britain for the worse in the last half century, and these include The Abolition of Britain and The Rage Against God. Peter has been a journalist for nearly 50 years, has reported from 57 countries, and was a resident correspondent in Moscow and Washington. Peter is a former revolutionary Marxist who now describes himself as a socially conservative social democrat. In this episode, Peter and I talk about why being right and searching for the truth has not won him many friends, how British people are becoming less proud of their nation, why the First World War set in train a moral revolution in the British Isles, the rise of what Peter calls selfism, why we are left guessing about how our leaders measure right and wrong now that the Christian faith is no longer our guiding ideal, how Britain courts economic catastrophe, and why the moral and political issues facing the country suggest a bleak future. We also talk about the need to be precise in our language so as not to inadvertently inflate an issue, and much, much more. Peter needs no introduction for many in Britain. Some love him, some begrudgingly concede he is right, and for many who occupy a different political landscape, he is not their cup of tea to put it mildly. In my opinion, Peter is unfairly maligned. He's pleasant, polite, well read, well travelled, very experienced, and highly articulate from a lifetime of deep reading and writing, and he frequently shows that there are very good uses of pessimism. Before we dive in, you'd be really helping me out if you click subscribe on whatever platform you are listening to or watching the show on. The more subscribers we have, the more guests we can attract, and the faster Thinking Class grows. Enjoy the show, classmates. Peter Hitchens, welcome to Thinking Class. Thanks so much for joining me. So far, it's so good. Yes, we we've had some tech issues, but that's fine. I would much rather speak to you in an audio version than not at all. It's a real pleasure to welcome you onto the show. You're one of Britain's most renowned journalists after decades of writing about uh making cases, I suppose, for a reasoned, impassioned defense of tradition and what you think we've lost uh as a as a nation in Britain. Um, and also doing a pretty good job of um skewing popular trains of thought as they as they hit the mainstream and predicting uh their their um their inevitable failure. And I suppose looking back on your body of work, you you appear to possess a prophetic-like quality, and and I think that hasn't, it's fair to say, hasn't exactly won you many friends over the years, but I don't suspect that you care about that.
SPEAKER_01You seem to be able to Well, I do care about it. Um it's it's the curse of Cassandra, always to be right, never to be believed. It's immensely frustrating. And the thing is that nobody uh learns anything from it. I get derided and then I turn out to be right, and then it it there's another controversy in which I'm again derided and again turn out to be right. And it nobody learns anything from the previous occasion. It might just be worthwhile listening to me the first time round. Generally, anything I say which is derided will become current between three and ten years after I first said it. And just as things that I do become fashionable, riding bicycles, which uh uh when I began doing it in in London in the 1970s was a ludicrous activity regarded as one step short of the of the actual mental hospital, uh, is now immensely fashionable, but it certainly wasn't then. I can think of some others, but I'll leave you I'll leave you with that for the moment.
SPEAKER_00Well, Peter, I'm sure we'll get perhaps some of your next prophecies throughout the course of the conversation. Uh um uh however I think it'd be uh good to stick in your body of work, which is focused a lot on Britain, its sense of decline, and um and its it the the pace of cultural change. And um let's begin with something topical. Uh I I read a spectator article just today by Patrick West, who was commenting on the recent British Social Attitude Survey. So he said, according to the British Social Attitude Survey 2023, just 64% of the public said they were proud or very proud of Britain's history, down from 86% in 2013, and the lowest this has been since the question was first asked in 1995. So some commentators peters say that we're living in a war on the past, and I suppose unconnected with the survey, I've heard David Starke recently say that this isn't so much the death of England, but the attempted murder. Do you agree that there has been a war on the past and this might be contributing to a lack of faith in the country?
SPEAKER_01Oh, I don't doubt it. Uh in my first book, which is now a quarter of a century old, The Abolition of Britain, I devoted part of the book to an examination of the way in which history teaching had changed, and that the the the whole attitude towards our past, which had previously been common, normal university taught, had been abandoned and replaced with one which was much more critical. And I'm not actually against being critical of the past. Many things happened in the past which were very bad, and some of the things that we're taught about in the past uh probably need to be revised. I and I I think it's a basic what is jeered at as drum and trumpet history has its faults, so I'm not completely against people saying let's teach it in some ways differently and and reflect on some of the some of the things in the past that we previously not mentioned. The problem is it hasn't been done for that reason. It hasn't been done to give people a fuller, uh richer and and more balanced picture of the past. It's been used to try to validate the present by making the past look worse than it was. And this is always the technique of revolutionary governments, revolutionary states, revolutionary movements. Uh, it's actually uh at the heart of George Orwell's 1984, the obliteration of any true information about the past, which makes it possible for the ruling party to suggest to everybody that the world they live in, horrible as it is, is far, far better than it was under the old regime. And I think that's that has been happening. I'm almost surprised at the figures that that that is the that 64% still do feel a pride in the British past after the belaboring that this uh idea has been receiving in in schools and universities and indeed on the BBC for so long. But I think it's uh it's plain that they have succeeded to some extent, particularly among those who are too young to have had any other experience. And the other thing, of course, which was accelerated since I wrote my book, though it had certainly begun when I did so, is the dissolution, disintegration of the old-fashioned tight-knit family, in which the law of the past was carried from one generation to another, and the schools didn't play so much of a part in it, and media didn't play so much of a part in it, and social media didn't play so much of a part in it. So things that I grew up believing, thinking I knew, uh, whether they were literary or or historical or cultural, uh, were passed on to me by my parents and uh uh and my uncles and my aunts and my grandfather. Nowadays I think an awful lot of children simply don't have that source. All they get is the public sources, and all the public sources are devoted to suggesting that the past was a time of of cruelty, scarcity, misery, uh, abuse of various kinds, and oppression. And it's not surprising that they come to believe that. But the the key, the real reason for all these attacks on the past is undoubtedly to make people more content with the with the very unsatisfactory present.
SPEAKER_00How did that change occur? So it sounds to me as though you're describing a world in which both uh a governing class and even people uh in the the everyday had this um concept of stewardship where they weren't the owners of something, they felt they had to pass something on, they had to keep it going, and yet we've now moved into a world of, I suppose, to use corporate speech, change makers. Everyone wants to be revolutionary in some way, and we tend to live in the present and don't really have a link to the past or think about ancestral stuff. What how you it sounds like you felt that change begin to occur. What was behind that?
SPEAKER_01I mean, in when I first looked into it, I thought, well, maybe there is some, because I myself as a former Marxist-Leninist would tend to assume that some things which looked as if they were uh they they had just occurred naturally might conceivably have been achieved by by action, by propagandists. And I've no doubt that in some in some professions and in some areas of the media there have been groups of people working uh with purpose to try and change this, quite, in some cases, quite openly. I think there were societies among teachers, for instance, who wanted to change the teaching of history and change the teaching of uh of English and succeeded in doing so. Uh but they th they such groups of people have existed, I should think, probably for at least a century and probably longer in this country. The thing is that during the 1960s, particularly and afterwards, they became much more successful than they'd been before. I think this was because the that was the point at which the old authorities, the authorities in in religion, authorities in in knowledge, authorities in in morals, whatever they might be, had all begun to disintegrate. And particularly they disintegrated because uh what you might call Christendom had been dealt a completely fatal blow during the 1914-18 war. And that uh really began to have its most profound effects in the 1960s as the last generation of those who'd been brought up before the change began to disappear, and a new generation came into being. Fascinating to remember, I'm so old. In 1964, the BBC made a tremendous series on the First World War, a television series of one of the best things it's ever done. And one of the most gripping things about it was the number of people they were able to interview who were still, although old, were still healthy and and and compost mentors enough to give direct eyewitness personal accounts of the years before and during the First World War. And those people were still around. And in the years afterwards, they disappeared quite rapidly, as such people do as they as they grew old and died, and ceased to be influential in in society. So I think that shows you that the the general moral and educational catastrophe caused by the First World War finally began to have its deepest effect in the 1960s and afterwards, which is also the era when the British education system was more or less destroyed by the destruction of the state grammar schools and the vast expansion of the universities, which hasn't stopped since. And also the time, of course, when television became a very conformist force and largely under the control of people with with Bloomsbury ideas and Bloomsbury morals from then on, uh began to become a really dominant force, even more so when colour television was introduced later in the decade.
SPEAKER_00The the the the confidence I suppose in Christendom. I I find it remarkable actually that um that it was those ideals ultimately that drove those men to war. So I was reading I was reading Robert Toomb's The English and their history recently, and I think I keep on bringing this up in podcasts, but it's such a a great book, and uh he talks about how history started to twist how the men of that time were viewed, and that they were uh thrown thrown to slaughter by people. But actually, many felt throughout the country that they were genuinely fighting against something bad and that it was their duty to do so.
SPEAKER_01Well, there you have me because because I I have no doubt at all uh that they were hurled into a futile slaughter for no good reason at all. And I think that until this recognition becomes general, most people will still not be able to look back on modern history with a clear eye. But it it's I I I tried and tried, I have to tell you, I tried to believe that Earl Haig and Lloyd George were actually men of of of good will and conscience who were fighting for a good cause, but I'm afraid it simply doesn't stand up to examination. The thing was a catastrophe and a grave mistake and a national disaster. And the the the thing was that all the great moral, educational, and social forces of the country lined up behind it, so that the churches and the universities and everybody else said, yes, we must fight this war, and everybody would and anybody who who voiced any doubts about it was driven into corners and presented with white feathers and called a coward. And it it was total, and it it was it led to a revolution in our society as well, because the as a result of this, the government, previously a very minor force in most people's lives, became immensely powerful. And the the old AJ AJP Taylor statement that before the First World War, the only contact the average Englishman had with the state was the occasional view of a policeman uh walking down the street and the postman delivering his letters in the morning. Apart from that, the the state wasn't there after the first world war. It was present in everything regulating and observing and recording and intervening. And uh Paul Cambon, who was French ambassador in London throughout the First World War and before and after it, said, I think in in 1920, that he believed that Britain had undergone a revolution during the First World War as profound as the one that France underwent in the in the years after 1789. I think he was right. I think it was the Norse, but it was not called the British Revolution. People don't realise, but it is it's a complete, it's a complete chasm, uh an almost visible chasm if you look at the architecture, literature, newspapers, uh plays, all the all the other things which could take the temperature temperature of society and even the way people dress before 1914 and after 1918, they're two different countries. But the the the the most profound change, the moral change, took a bit longer to have its full effect. But I believe that was it. And it's not a it wasn't a group of people, as Gramscian cultural revolutionaries working to change the country, though no doubt there were such people, but it was a failure. It was a it was a collapse of the old, and in the collapse of the old was a vacuum, and there were other things which happened during my own uh childhood, particularly memorable the Suez Crisis and the Profumo Affair, in which the the ruling orders of this country looked uh both ludicrous and foolish and inept, and lost their authority, and that authority extended down. So after after Anton Eden had bungled Suez, and after the the the cabinet had been made to look a laughing stock over the perfumer affair, everybody, from the the vicar to the policeman to the teacher in your school, to your parents lost significant authority, and so all kinds of other ideas could then rush in to the vacuum left by the this this failing authority, and they did.
SPEAKER_00So this loss of this loss of faith brought about uh uh not necessarily even just in the Christian God and and everything our society uh was was keered around through the institutions, but all of the institutions themselves. Yes. Uh is there well is is there anything that can save save that if because the crisis of confidence.
SPEAKER_01Well, you're asking me to be to to to engage in political and social activism. I I am an observer. I don't uh when you see, as I feel I have done through the the work that I've done over the past twenty-five years writing about this, when you see the extent and depth and height and breadth of this thing, the idea that any individual or any group of individuals working to try and prevent it could have any effect on it is is comical. It's it's gigantic. It's it's like a tsunami and a a child standing on a beach with a with a with a sand castle uh is more what what anybody who tries to oppose it is like, you will be overwhelmed. It's it's enormous. One of the problems with it is that people like it. It has liberated people uh from an awful lot of uh of restraints which they when they'd cast them off uh they decided they had never had any point in the first place and they were unwelcome. And there's this extraordinary thing. If you if you switch off a an electric device, then it stops working instantly. If you engage in a moral revolution, then there is a long, long period of afterglow during which things continue as they were before, or appear to do, though they are they're gradually fading. And by the time you realize that you have lost something forever, it's far too late to go back on the actions which caused it to disappear. You can destroy a taboo or custom which has been in existence for centuries in an afternoon. But you cannot then replace it again. You can't say, well, that was a mistake, we must put it back. Once it's gone, it's gone. And people as I say, the the the the great the the great banner it uh of the uh of the new age is not atheism, it's not Marxism-Leninism, it's what I call selfism, it's uh it's what its own supporters call personal autonomy, the freedom to do as you wish, uh which is which uh i has it doesn't have any for for most people, it doesn't have any philosophical or political basis. It's just why can't I do what I like with my own body, put whatever drugs into I into it I wish, have whatever relations with other people I wish to have. That's uh let's just order everything on the basis of the harm principle and let me decide what I do that is harmful and what I do that isn't harmful and and and nobody else. And that is the society we've created. And in such societies, more or less selfless attitudes such as serious patriotism, not to mention Christianity, are unsustainable. People are not they're not even interested in them anymore.
SPEAKER_00So would you subscribe to and I don't know when he said this, that uh the Churchill quotation when he said, Nothing can save England if she will not save herself, if we lose faith in ourselves in our capacity to guide and govern, if we lose our will to live, then indeed our story is told. It's a political statement.
SPEAKER_01There's no evidence that he was. Uh he had it's a political statement about rallying people to a to a temporal cause. When he was in in office, certainly to begin with, the country was in mortal danger, and therefore he had a very strong uh a very strong loudspeaker through through which to communicate with the nations. If either listen, you listen to me or we're done for. That's not the case now, is it? And there is still no that from from peril comes power. Uh and and we're not in the sort of peril which would enable anyone to to accumulate or draw to themselves the sort of power which Churchill got even to influence people's minds. So no, I don't it's not it's not to be mistaken for a political problem. The political problems were long ago, and most of the time they were going on, people didn't have any idea that they were going on or what they meant, as they generally don't. The world goes on around most people, especially those who have no Marxist Lenin's training, it just goes on around them, and they have no idea what's happening. And by the time they find out what has happened, it's far too late to do anything about it.
SPEAKER_00Well, you've touched a lot and you've written a lot about England, Britain, the hard-won liberty on these isles, the country's cultural achievements and legacy, and their subsequent loss. Uh what was the high watermark of the country's culture and and and and what are its lows and and why why ought we lament it?
SPEAKER_01Oh that's that's nostalgia, I'd which I don't express. There are many highs and many lows. It doesn't it doesn't come in a in in in a in a sort of incremental, slowly constructed uh way. Uh there have been a number of things which have gone well, and a number of things which has then gone badly. So that the the development of those laws protecting the freedom of speech, for instance, is is is quite shaky in law and has almost entirely collapsed in recent years under various assaults uh both the um the speech codes of the new of the new of the new dominant class. Which are hostile to free speech, and the uh the willingness of governments to classify certain opinions as extremist or far this or far that, which makes them harder to express. So things which technically still exist don't operate. The w one of our greatest documents of of actual liberty and limited government, the Bill of Rights, is so forgotten that we recently had a Prime Minister who didn't know it existed. And it doesn't operate if you it it it pr prevents governments, for instance, from f uh from uh punishing people uh without trying them. But uh our governments do this all the time. And the Bill of Rights is you can you can shout about it if you like, but nobody will pay any attention. The courts pretty much decided it doesn't apply anymore. But technically it's still a a sort of entrenched statute uh written on vellum and stored away in the archives, but it doesn't apply because we simply haven't, as a people, uh got the spirit anymore to defend it. So uh things can still be in the letter of the law which don't operate because of the spirit. So up and down it goes, and it it there's been no particular sort of paradise time when it was when it was better than at any other nor peak. Life isn't like that. There are a number of moments at which things have gone particularly well for for liberty as they did during the glorious revolution of 1688, and other times when they went very badly subsequent to that, the the awful repressions of the of the Napoleonic or governments uh which were after that. So, no, I'd I'm not uh I don't clutch at some ideal point when things were at their best, because it never existed, it never will. This is this is human society. It's uh again, if you read through the the the Old Testament, the the constant downfall of the children of Israel as they've as they turn away yet again from what they've been told to do by the Almighty. They just they they they say, yes, we'll do it, and everything's fine, and then they stop doing it, and before they know where they are, they're being carted off to Babylon again.
SPEAKER_00It strikes me of a Tolkien-esque um uh quality to what you're saying, this this idea of history being a long defeat, and there are just flashes of victory along the way, but otherwise it it translate.
SPEAKER_01I don't think I don't think it's it's i it it it it it's none of those things. It's it is but it it it does contain lessons. You can tell very easily when when what you're doing is going to have bad results, but getting people to learn those lessons and act upon them is more or less impossible. If it doesn't suit people to learn lessons, then they don't learn them.
SPEAKER_00And this is because, or at least partly contributed to, or maybe wholly contributed to, by this moral revolution you you talked about taking place with the the the wish for personal autonomy above all else, you know, you're not going to make me do anything that's gonna feel like a sacrifice. It's a perfectly reasonable wish, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01Um but the thing is you draw it up for yourself, and it then you might become shocked later on when somebody else you believe the same thing who's stronger than you uh tells you that uh as it happens, the harm principle doesn't prevent them from doing something terrible to you. And this is the problem with it. Uh I've always said it's my if you want to be an atheist, it's it's it's very handy to be rich and to to live in in nice secluded areas where most people probably aren't atheists. It's it's it it's you don't they don't people who are atheists don't want the all the many people who work for them to steal from them, for instance. Um but if actually if if they if if the whole world became atheists, which may not be far off in this country, then why shouldn't they steal from them? There's no fundamental reason why they shouldn't do. There is no the the morality without religion has no has has no absolute basis at all. You can concoct whatever morality you like for yourself.
SPEAKER_00Dear classmate John here, this isn't an advert, so you don't need to reach for the skip button. If you're enjoying the show, then show your support by liking, subscribing, and sharing on whichever device or platform you are watching or listening to Thinking Class on. You can find me in the show on YouTube at Thinking Class. You can also subscribe to me on Substack, searching for the at Thinking Class handle, or by entering thinkingclass.substack.com in your browser, and you can receive reflections, blog series, and recommended reading to your inbox. You can also follow me on X at Thinking Classes. Thanks for listening, thanks for sharing, thanks for showing your support. Enjoy the rest of the show, classmate. Yes. Well, that seems that seems quite clear that the there's quite a lot of those elements going on uh in the modern culture, as well as people who refuse to admit that even the things that they care about most, like tolerance and compassion and all of those other Christian aligned ideals which were institutionalized and embedded throughout the cultures, uh, that that's where they came from. People like to say, nope, they they came from the Enlightenment time, that's the the Big Bang, if they even know that far back at all. Um the the the the bits the the the points you were making around the speech codes in which we're now we've seen develop in recent years over Britain, and we have seen since Labour Party's come to power an increasingly progressive authoritarian governance actually take hold. And do you think you look around Would you call it would you call it that? I don't I don't think I recognise that. Okay. What would you call it? What would you say that w that has been going on? Maybe it's a a miss a misnomer.
SPEAKER_01And I have to keep referring to these things because it's these were major efforts of research and thought on my part, and I treasure them. I wrote a book called The Abolition of Liberty uh now 21 years ago, in which I said that a society in which uh it was it in which we were we were relativistic about crime and other misbehavior uh would become a society in which we had to be less free. You can't operate the proper presumption of innocence, you can't operate a police force which is uh which is a a people's police force rather than the state police in a society with so much disorder that that people uh become ready to accept uh much heavy m uh a much stronger state, much heavier-handed policing methods than they previously were. Uh I I said this was happening and would continue to happen, and and uh and nobody paid the slightest attention. And I've uh so one of the very few absolute pleasures I I have in life is saying that I told you so. And on this occasion, I can absolutely say I predicted this and it has happened. We have, as we have become more disorderly, if we've refused to accept that crime is the fruit of uh of wickedness and greed, and continue to make excuses for it, and constructed a criminal justice and police system on the basis that crime is a is a response to bad social conditions, uh, we have created a society which is of necessity less free uh because it has had to become more heavy-handed. The Blair government is a particular example of this, but authoritarian, I'm not sure. We're not exactly talking Augusta Pinochet here, are we? Well, true. True. Uh be careful, not there's quite enough inflation in the world without without sensible informed people indulging in language inflation. And things can be things can be bad without necessarily being the worst. You can have a society which is more narrow and and and more unpleasantly governed than the one you had before without it being the same as Vladimir Putin's Russia.
SPEAKER_00Well, suppose we we we talked a little bit about your prophetic qualities earlier, and uh look looking at the trajectory then, Peter, if we're not at that um authoritarian state, uh what does the trajectory look like based on how you've seen the many moves that's led us here where liberties have eroded and we are less free in many ways, whether it's through expression or even just in our ability to walk through the world because of everything we've talked about, whether it's the relativism or the changing in policing. Where where where where are we headed on current trajectory? What kind of a society?
SPEAKER_01Nothing good, but the thing is that uh I think Lenin said that sometimes nothing uh can happen for years, and on other occasions decades can happen in weeks, and two things are profoundly influential and on in changing society. One is war, and the other is economic catastrophe. Uh I think this country is in a state of very severe economic instability. Uh, I currently can't state our general indebtedness, both public and private, is colossal and worrying. Our ability to regenerate uh any kind of industrial base looks to me to be pretty much finished. Uh we have one of the worst education systems in the advanced world. We have a growing amount of crime and disorder and incompetent government and waste on an extraordinary scale. Uh I can't see how this can end well. Uh but i uh it would it would just carry on gradually getting more and more ragged at the edges. We've all had the experience. You can't get anything to happen, can you? Nothing works properly. Trying to contact anybody for help with anything is extraordinarily difficult. Uh the the price of everything, partly thanks to the COVID panic, uh, is now sometimes almost unbelievably high compared with what it was only four or five years ago. All these things impinge on our lives, and many of us know that our children's education is extremely substantial, and yet they have to pay an enormous amount uh to to to go to universities which are not particularly good. Transport, housing, you name it. It's it's it's it's it it's coming beyond the reach of so many people, and uh the savings which people have accumulated to protect themselves against the worst of being eroded. So all these things push towards uh severe political trouble and the the the extraordinary desire of our government, which is uh astoundingly to me, actually popular with many people, to find someone to go to war with and to fight it, even though we don't really have any armed forces to speak of left, is uh is equally risky. I mean it it it is perfectly possible that we could within the next five years be sucked into an actual land war in Europe. And the effects of that, who knows what they could be? How long would it go on for? How how badly would it affect us? So many things are working towards uh decay and uh disruption and destabilization and uh uh and worse, that I I can't I I can't be optimistic about it. But on the other hand, uh to make a detailed prediction and say within three years such and such will happen, I don't do that because I don't know. Anyone could make general predictions of the future, actually. It's not at all difficult. The difficulty is in getting the the timescale right. And that I can't tell you when these things will get really so bad that they will they will look like a crisis even to the stupid, but I think that the crisis is definitely coming.
SPEAKER_00Yes, uh, and you've touched on a point which um uh I uh others have tried to make, which is and this is with you saying trying to do anything to turn this around is futile, you know, you you effectively the only way out is through.
SPEAKER_01I'd be happy to be proved wrong about that. Uh if anybody can do so, then I'll be pleased. But I I can't, looking at what I see, see any reason to believe that it will happen.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00Well, let's let's do a bit of a gear shift uh to uh things that have hit the news recently. Uh I suppose we've seen riots in Britain. Some have said this lesson.
SPEAKER_01No, there haven't been riots. Okay. Uh the there have been outbreaks of disorder, but riots are a completely different thing. Uh and I think it's been quite um it's an interesting thing which happens when somebody has a political agenda which they wish to pursue and there is some sort of disorder in the streets, then that there's a great tendency on their part to call it a riot so that they can use it as a weapon to get what they wanted in the first place. And one of the m m major episodes of this in recent history was the so-called Brixton riots, so I think 81 or 82, followed by the Skarman Report, an astounding document which I analyze in the abolition of Luty. Uh basically what were some very fishy disorders in in in parts of South Ireland were used by those who wanted to revolutionise the police force uh to do so. And the characterizing that, and the there was some there were some outbreaks in in Liverpool as well, in Toxed, and I think at Hansworth Embow, characterizing those events as riots made it possible for them to do so. I don't I'm afraid I don't think that um the sort of stupid violent destructive disorders we recently witnessed had any true political purpose or reason within them. I think that you shouldn't offer a political explanation for them. They were they were basically people who the sort of people who any sensible person dreads having as neighbours uh misbehaving because they thought they got away with it. The most a much better example were the was it 2011, the the great disorders in London when when the police just seemed to have lost control and people were out loosing in large parts of the city. There was no conceivable political explanation for, justification for, or indeed um, conclusion to be drawn from those events, except that uh if the police aren't there, then people will behave worse than if they if they are. But that they are also called riots, but they weren't riots. I mean if if if that they they were largely loosing operations.
SPEAKER_00What what do you think is the political agenda of those people using the word riots?
SPEAKER_01I haven't had one. They would they they probably couldn't spell either word. I don't think it's uh I I think it's absurd looking at these pathetic figures charging the police with wheelie bins and then falling flat on their faces, and the rest of them giving them the dignity of political actors is uh is both foolish and um and misguided. I suppose of course it's not it involves a complete absence of thought. They aren't. I mean there have been in the history of the world times when I think particularly in France you you would get large numbers of people actually going on the streets for a unified political purpose. But this is nothing like that.
SPEAKER_00I suppose those people calling them riots, though, are the political class and the media. Uh what do you think that if they weren't riots, what what what do you think the political agenda of those people calling them are? Because I don't even necessarily think it would be those people.
SPEAKER_01But most people don't think most of the time you get used to that.
SPEAKER_00Um on on the topic then of people agitating, whether it's politically motivated or not, that it has become popular to say we live in the age of a an omni cause. People are pushing whatever it is that they're interested in, or they're agitating against institutions or the establishment. And I I see constant demands for social justice within the corporate world, and and many leaders end up caving into those demands somehow and work those into a strategies, and perhaps that's part of status preservation, perhaps it's out of compassion. Um, what would you what would you um say about leaders who tend to accede to those demands from activists where revolutionary activity, even at a small scale, seems to be uh almost treated and engaged in as a as a sport and something to keep you occupied these days?
SPEAKER_01These things are the opium of the people. I mean, to to paraphrase and reverse Karl Marx, uh in the absence of uh of the Christian religion, people need something to provide the heart of a heartless world and the soul of soulless conditions. They they long to believe that a that a better world can come into existence. And I can only sympathize with that. I just happen to know that they're mistaken in thinking that that the things which they campaign for will bring that about. But it's once the the idea of a uh of eternal justice has faded from the faded from the the national mind, then the idea of what you refer to as social justice, which I think is probably an oxymoron, uh is is a popular replacement in people's minds. And it's it it's it's a it's a good impulse, but it it it it chases along futile and and and dangerous and often destructive channels which don't achieve what it seeks to achieve, in my view. But I I can quite understand why people adopt causes. The same thing goes for the for the the Green Movement. It's it's obviously it has almost all the characteristics of religion.
SPEAKER_00Religiosity, that was once at the heart of of England, of Britain. Can England ever be England without its long history of religiosity as the as the country becomes Isn't religiosity a pejorative word?
SPEAKER_01Um I don't know. Um perhaps so. Not for me to say what what the future may bring, but I think that so much of this the society of civilization which we have uh which which we had achieved by 1914 was dependent upon the Christian religion and indeed of widespread knowledge and acceptance of it in in the public mind, uh, that once those things go, then the the civilization can't be sustained. It's interesting, looking at the the buildings, the great buildings of justice in London, both the law courts in the Strand and the Old Bailey, you'll find they're full of Christian imagery. The same goes also for the Houses of Parliament. Uh, most people don't realise, for instance, that the chimes of Big Ben are based upon the air in Handel's Messiah. I know that my redeemer liveth. The whole uh and the whole Gothic structure of the building, and the picked murals of saints and all the rest is and the fact that it is uh at the bottom of it, there is still a chapel beneath St. Stephen's, it it it's it emphasizes the Christian nature of our national foundation, which I suppose you could say in some ways goes back to King Alfred. And if that is gone, then what is our society founded upon exactly? What is it that we believe is what is our what is our measure of of right and wrong? Without that, we don't have one in my opinion. And what is the source of authority? By what power uh do our leaders rule? Well they say they rule by by the uh by the authority of the of the ballot box, but uh the polls get lower and lower, the parties become less and less representative and and and weaker and weaker, the elections are more and more lifeless and dishonest with less and less of what the future government is going to do, actually, even discussed. How much legitimacy do they actually have, and can the ballot box continue to provide it? And if if people cease to believe in the in the legitimacy of the ballot box, where do they turn instead?
SPEAKER_00The point you made about what we cohere our our culture around what used to be widespread acceptance of the Christian story being at the heart of our civilization. I suppose it's fair to say that we've been living under uh an attempt to institute multiculturalism, and people who complain about multiculturalism not being very good can often be told uh to be retrograde grid, that they're trying to protect something for their own interests. But what I've noticed that is quite interesting in the social commentary of um more prominent British ethnic minorities like Rakib Essan, for example, who is a social cohesion researcher, he's Muslim and he said that he would much prefer to live in a Britain that championed its cultural, sorry, its Christian heritage than one that tried to be all things to all people. And that would be something he could get around.
SPEAKER_01I I speak to Muslims from time to time who say the same thing. They would they would rather this was a more Christian country than it is, uh than a less Christian country. And and that is the case. And I I I quite understand that. I mean, I have lots of disagreements with uh with Islam, uh, but I find also it's it's it's more possible often to discuss the more profound things in life with uh with with faithful serious Muslims than it is with secular. Because they have considered the the great deep uh subjects of uh of of how the the world is and what its uh purpose is that are generally left unconsidered in a in a secular selfist world. But yeah, the the less the less Christianity there is, the I I I think the the the the less um the less welcoming the the environment is for members of other religions as well.
SPEAKER_00Well, staying on Christianity, and I I might have got the link all wrong here, but a few years ago I saw an interview with you and you said this is paraphrasing, and I know you'll put me right if I get it wrong, but you said yes, you said that there was nothing good in this temporal world. What what did you mean by that?
SPEAKER_01Well I think I can I've said nothing good. I said I I uh you you have to point me to the actual passage. Um what what I I what I do think is that there is no there's no temporal hope. Because there isn't what do you think is entirely in eternity, there's nothing to hope for in the temporal world. Um it it will it will let you down. It's full of despair. Uh and without the without the eternal, then we'll lost every where everybody knows who has any experience of it, for instance, that there is no justice even in societies which which claim to have advanced and civilized judicial systems and proper courts and all the rest of it. Justice is incredibly elusive in in actual human life. Yet we have within us, in my view, along with conscience, such a ferocious desire for justice that I I will always say that's one of the main reasons for believing uh in the eternal and in uh uh and in God is that if if if if you want justice, you're not gonna find it in the temporal world. You're only going to find it in the eternal world. Therefore, there must be eternity for this to be justice. But I think there are lots of good. There's a lot of good done in the temporal world. There are good there are good things uh to to be done, good things to be seen and experienced, but they're I I that's not quite the same as saying there is hope. The novels of Dickens are are in many cases uh almost uh astoundingly superb, but then Dickens' own personal life was so appalling uh that you you have to wonder how a man who treated his own wife so badly could have written so beautifully, and yet it is so.
SPEAKER_00Yes, this seems to be I don't know how much of a common theme it is, but when you get into the biographies of great writers or or artists like Caravaggio or writers like Dostoevsky, that you find there are skeletons in their closet, and I suppose some people look back at them and say it's because of the depths to which they've gone that they're able to understand human nature and look it unblinkingly in the eye.
SPEAKER_01I I don't think any of us would want our biographies written by somebody else after we were dead. I mean it it's just it it's it doesn't tend to work out well. I very few of us have lived lives of of of blameless beauty. Um I say very few out of caution.
SPEAKER_00I think the word none might be better. Oh well, this is true, yes. I I I know, but I mean I mean us uh solely human persons.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well, anyway, so but that that I I th that was what I meant. And if you can find the the quotation of what I actually said, I'm I might be able to to explain it better, but that's what I meant.
SPEAKER_00Okay, okay. Peter, we we started quite late, um, and I don't want to abuse your time anymore because you've been very patient. Uh I would like to ask you what the most consequential thing you've changed your mind on during the course of your life and and how that came to pass suddenly, gradually.
SPEAKER_01Not for me to say, really. Um how do we know the consequences of our own actions or judge them? Um the the central, the absolutely central axis of all my change of mind since I abandoned revolutionary socialism has to be Christian belief. Because without it uh d I have no other means of of understanding the the world nor any other source of of hope or guidance. So I suppose it would necessarily be that. Um the the old C. S. Lewis uh remark that he he believes in Christianity uh n as he believes in the sun rising, not just because he sees it doing so, but because the whole of the rest of the world is illuminated by it as well.
SPEAKER_00Your your your work, I think, uh as you've talked about, has focused on particular points on which we've lost something, whether it's Britain, whether it's Liberty. Are you are you working on anything else that we can expect to see from you?
SPEAKER_01I'm hoping to, yes. If I can find a publisher, which is a every time I write a book, it's a stroll uh to actually get anybody to publish it. But currently I I want to write about the great tragedy uh in which Western civilization and all the rest of the the world followed, uh decided that the privately owned motor car was the best way of transporting people about, which people see as normal and therefore inevitable, but in fact it wasn't inevitable, and we could have done otherwise, and it's been a tremendous source of uglyness, danger, and misery in human civilization and waste, which we could have avoided. Working tight on the madness of cars.
SPEAKER_00Okay, well, I I have come to agree with that. I find it particularly soul destroying, and um, having seen some of the things that have been smashed up uh to make way for roads, my um it's so much uglier than it was before. Yeah, yeah. My my my grandfathers were archaeologists uh on the Hadrian's Wall, and I grew up in in Hexham close by, and to make way for a new dual carriageway, they ended up bulldozing through um some Roman baths with some of the best preserved mosaics that were were still there, um, amongst other things. Uh, but that was that was one of them.
SPEAKER_01And I seemed it's it's it it could have been even worse. John Betriman once wrote a television play called Pity About the Abbey, uh, which was about a plan to demolish Westminster Abbey to make way for an urban motorway. Which in the 1960s, when it was screened, was perfectly thinkable, I can tell you. It's amazing what we have what we have destroyed for the for the for the for the great god car.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I agree. I agree. Um, Peter, where where can people find you? I suppose most people watching or listening to this will already know where to find you because you're you're very well known, but but what where do you reside on the dark corners of the internet?
SPEAKER_01One of the bizarre things about minor celebrity is that you can't use your own name on an awful lot of social media because someone else has already bagged it. Um Does that explain your Twitter handle being a bigger one? My Twitter handle is completely baffling, but because not merely is it not my own name, it's not even anybody else's, it's it's somebody else's name backwards. Uh it's Micah, it's Clark with the C-L-A-R-K-E, Micah M-I-C-A-H. Now, Micah is of course the name of the great prophet uh who who gave the great instruction, what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God. But Micah Clark, which is my Twitter handle backwards, is the name of one of Colonel Doyle's great historical novels about the Battle of Segemore, which is one of my favourite books. Uh, but if you want to find me on Twitter, Clark Micah is the way to do it. And if you're baffled by this, there is genuinely uh on the internet a blog posting called Peter Hitchens FAQs, which both tells you where to find me and explains all these oddities.
SPEAKER_00Okay, and did you write that yourself or did did a fan write that?
SPEAKER_01Yes, I I didn't think it would be a good idea to wait for somebody else to, because it'd been all night.
SPEAKER_00Okay, Peter, well, it's been it's been a pleasure. Thank you for uh putting me right where I frequently went wrong, and and thank you for no, I mean this is why this is why I got you on. Uh I knew it would be it would be an interesting conversation, it would avail me of any delusions and ignorance, uh, which I I knew I would venture. Um good good luck. I I I personally think you uh we are beginning to win some friends. I know you have said at the beginning that you you hadn't done, but I I've noticed you popping up on things like unheard and in and other places, and I feel as though there is there is a a wind of change, particularly amongst those who would have previously dismissed anyone who was coming along saying things aren't good, where people are pointing on the internet going, he's bloody right again, isn't he?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, but the thing is during this period I've also been completely excluded from the BBC, to which I used to have quite a lot of access. So there's a whole world of access to people's minds, which is close to me because I am unacceptable. Um why? Well you'll have to work it out for yourself. Nobody sends you a letter telling you. You just find that the gigs, the gigs disappear. The things you used to be invited onto, you're not invited onto anymore. Uh and that's and that's it, basically. There's nothing you can do about it. There isn't there's there's no there's no no one you can appeal to. It just happens, and and when it happens you realise there is something going on. I don't doubt it for a moment.
SPEAKER_00Okay, well, in that case, here's to the growth of unheard and other new media and have you keep out there. But thank you very much, Peter. Take good care, and hopefully next time we'll be able to get uh a camera working, or we'll do it in person.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, that'd be better, but it won't necessarily be any great advances for anybody else. Okay, thanks a lot. Thanks, Peter. Take care. Bye. Bye.
SPEAKER_00To keep up to date with all that I am doing, please subscribe to the Thinking Class YouTube channel at Thinking Class and follow me on X at Thinking Classes. Thinking Class seeks to understand the civilizational issues we face and why what our leaders do in response matters. Here I seek to explore the ideas, values, and culture that made our civilization, those that are unmaking it, and how leaders at our public and private institutions should respond. Engage with me on YouTube or X, or write to me at thinkingclasspod at gmail.com to tell me who you want me to speak to and what topics are important to you. I look forward to seeing you there and for joining me on this journey.
