Ethical Record Vol

The ISSN 0014-1690 Ethical Record Vol. 92 No. 1 JANUARY 1987

EDITORIAL other articles, what was quoted in the editorials of the last issue (page Read This Issue 23): LYNDA BIRKE'S view of the Carefully need for "human engagement with history". IN THE LAST NUMBERThe OF Ethical JASPER RIDLEY'S outline of JOHN Record there was only one main KNOX'S life and ideas supports his article but there were many smaller claim that Knox "was one of the contributions (particularly in View- most successful revolutionaries": points and Notes on the Way) While STEPHEN COLEMAN'S adVO- demonstrating the interest of cacy in support of the motion de- readers in a wide range of issues of bated at Conway Hall on October ethical importance. 12 last shows the attitude of a This month there is a reverse— present-day "revolutionary" to the pages in this issue are largely de- almost universally supposed need voted to those who have given for police, prisons and armies. Then lectures, though there are also one COLIN MILLS, in reviewing SISSELA or two important contributions BOK'S new book on The Ethics of from readers, Concealment and Revelation, The interesting thing is the way brings out factors behind decisions in which the diverse items interlink, we have to make in our attitudes both within this issue and stretch- to and actions about many contem- ing back into the last and other porary concerns — particularly in issues. HAROLD BLACKHAM'S plea, view of the present world:wide after his analysis of human ideals, attention on secrecy in government is that there is no alternative to (USA, Australia, Ireland, UK). being an activist* (even if that We recommend readers' close means "a dubious and- uncomfort- able reputation")—reflecting, as do Continued on page 3

CONTENTS Page Coming to Conway Hall: Christopher Brunel, David Murray, Stan Newens, Steven Rose, Margaret Scorer, Harry Stopes-Roe, Nicolas Walter and John White . . 2 The Age-Long Conflict of Human Ideals: Harold Blackham 3 "Society Would be More Secure Without Police, Prisons or Armies": A Debate: In Favour—Stephen Coleman . . 6 Jolzn Knox as a Revolutionary Leader: Jasper Ridley . . 9 The Power of Secrecy—The Conflict Between Confidence and Disclosure: Review of Sissela Bok's new book: Colin Mills 15 Review of David Wedgewood's "Elementary Ethics" . 19 Thomas Paine and other items: Sam Beer . 21

The views expressed in this journal are not necessarily those of the Society.

PUBLISHED BY THE SOUTH PLACE ETHICAL SOCIETY CONWAY HALL, RED LION SQUARE, LONDON WC1R 4RL SOUTH PLACE ETHICAL SOCIETY

Appointed Lecturers: H. J. Blackhain, Fenner Brockway, Richard Clements, OBE, T. F. Evans, Peter Heales, Richard Scorer, Barbara Smoker, Harry Stopes-Roe, Nicolas Walter Hall Manager: Geoffrey Austin (tel. 01-242 8032) Secretary: Anne Sieve (Wed-Fri, tel. 01-242 8033) Honorary Representative: Sam Beer Chairman General Committee: Barbara Smoker Deputy Chairman: Norman Bacrac Honorary Registrar: Bill Horsley Honorary Treasurer: Victor Rose Temporary Honorary Librarian: Edwina Palmer Editor, The Ethical Record : Peter Hunot Trustees: Harold Blackham, Christine Bondi, Louise Booker, John Brown, Anthony Chapman, Peter Heales, Peter Hunot, George Hutchinson, Ray Lovecy, Ian MacKillop, Victor Rose, Barbara Smoker, Harry Stopes-Roe

COMING TO CONWAY HALL Sunday Morning LECTURES at 11.00 am in the Library January 4. No meeting. January I I. MARGARET SCORER.Crime and the Police. January 18. HARRY STOPES-ROE.Humanism and Science. January 25. CHRISTOPHER BRUNEL.Thomas Paine. February I. STAN NEWENS, MEP.The European Parliament. February 8. NICOLAS WALTER. Subject to be announced.

Sunday Forums at 3.00 pm in the Library January 11. DAVID MURRAY.Why Darwin Matters. January 25. JOHN WHITE.Helping Our Children to be Good-42 years on from the 1944 Education Act. February 1. Speaker and Subject to be announced.

A Tuesday Debate January 27 at 7.30 pm (prompt) in the Library Is There A Human Nature? PROFESSOR STEVEN ROSE, BA, PhD, FIBiol, FRSA. Biology Department, the Open University. DR HARRY STOPES-ROE, recently retiredSenior Lecturer in Science Studies, Extra-Mural Department, University of Birmingham.

Sunday Social at 3.00 pm in the Library January 18. Travels in the Auvergne. TALK, with colour slides, by JACK BRIDLE and EDA COLLINS.Tea at 4.30 pm.

SPES New Year Party SLurday, January 10, 1987. 7.00 to 10.30 pm in the Library at Conway Hall. Food, Drink and Entertainment. Vegetarians and teetotallers will be catered for. Price: £2.50 (in advance); £3 at the door.

For Concerts: see separate programme leaflet. 2 Ethical Record, January 1987 The Age-Long Conflict of Human Ideals H. J. BLACKHAM

Summary of the Lecture on Sunday, November 9, 1986 FOR THIS SURVEY, I ASSIMILATE ALL HUMAN IDEALS TO TWO that are polar opposites, those that are earth-centred and those that are heaven-centred. There is much fudging and budging on the division: "all this and heaven too"; and the many (perhaps most) who hang on "perhaps". That won't do; I want to force the issue. They are mutually exclusive, and a choice has to be made, a choice to live by. Of course, in such global terms, these ideals are vast and vague. Heaven- centred : Nirvana or the Kingdom of God? At the highest level of generality, there is what has been called the Perennial Philosophy because it is re- current, the pole to which all "right thinking" returns. This prescribes "non- attachment", a turning away from the world and all temporal things to focus on and become identified with what is immortal and eternal. This is what "heaven-centred" essentially means: "Alienation". I remember a remark of a liberal theologian, that Christians should "sit loose to civilization". That is the general word for the earth-centred ideal, "Civiliza- tion", with which this lecture is primarily concerned. Civilization as an ideal begs the question. Babylon, one of the most advanced of its time, was the "Whore of Babylon" to the Children of Israel, a people of the desert. There is a distinction between a civilization and a culture : every community with a common way of life has a culture; a culture

Continued from page one attention to the many thought- Conway Memorial Lecture (the provoking ideas expressed in our 61st on May 23, 1985), he states: few pages this month. If some of them stimulate your response (in "Part of the complex make-up thoughts or actions) let us know of human personality is indeed this ability to stand apart in detachment soon and we can return to publish- from all that is there and from all ing more from readers again during that I have been. The question is the next few months. about the T that enjoys this ability. Meanwhile we shall limit our Either it is nominal, the mere own comment and contribution to awareness of existence, self-con- the thought: sciousness; or it is an active agent, We must, all of us, ensure an furnished with native abilities and alternation between thought and with what has been acquired during action. We should constantly a spell of life in a particular society of the time. In that case, it is the clarify our ideas, but never historically formed idiosyncratic neglect to act. CLARIFYING LEIF self, a temporal product, like all IDEAS is a function for us in the existents, not an independent visi- South Place Ethical Society. tant untainted by human experi- ACTION is for us to carry out in- ence. As self-consciousness, it is dividually (and/or in any organi- nothing else. There is no escape sations we may wish to associate route this way, or any way, from with). the temporality of the self". Copies of the text are available *On pages 14 and 15 of The Way from the Secretary, SPES at Con- I Think text of Harold Blackham's way Hall, price 50 pence a copy. Ethical Record, January 1987 3 may be advanced enough for its achievements to be recognized as a distinct civilization. Greece is singular in having claimed universality for its culture. The Greeks thought of civilization as the step by step cultural advance of the human race. Isocrates said of Athens: "So far has our city distanced the rest of mankind in thought and speech that her pupils have become the teachers of the rest of the world; and she has brought it about that the name 'Hellenes' is applied rather to those that share our culture than to those who share a common blood (Panegyricus)". This singular claim of a culture to universality, as distinct from a religion, was re-inforced by Rome at the time of Augustus, inspired by Virgii : Romanitas acknowledged and developed Hellas. I want to trace the historical development of this ideal of the civilization of the human race from this beginning in classical Greece, disentangled from confusion with religious assumptions and aspirations.

The Age-long Division Anticipated in Greek Culture Ancient Greece of course was not a nation-State. There were hundreds of fiercely independent city-states. So that there was ample room for the development of violent contrasts within Greece, such as Athens and Sparta as prototypes of an open society and a totalitarian State. In conceptions of the way things are, there developed the opposition between Materialism and Idealism. Although there was this range of difference, political and philosophical, there was a common culture mani- fested in the Greek language and in their rich inheritance of myths, and actively in the Panhellenic festivals, of which there were four, with the Olympic Games the most famous. These were festivals of the arts as well as of athletic games, whose victors were celebrated with songs and statues. Associated with the festivals were common religious practices, but there was no centralized priesthood and no theological doctrines. Nearest to a Greek orthodoxy were the inscriptions in the temple of Apollo at Delphi : "Know Yourself"; and "Nothing too much". These declarations of wisdom were primitive, and meant :—Know you are a man not a god and don't get above yourself, lest the gods get jealous and strike you down. From crude beginnings, the Greeks in most things went on to refinements and transformations. Socrates was used by Plato in the Dialogues to develop "Know yourself" into know that you know nothing, stripping a person of his opinions in order to provide access to innate ideas that were the clue to reality—a kind of Buddhist technique. In contrast with this, Democritus investigated material phenomena, and arrived at his atomic theory of an underlying structure of invisible particles which by differences in size and shape and arrangement produce all that we see. Aristotle, a pupil of Plato, thought of the world on the model of the artist and his material, and of the reason of things as found in their end or purpose. These opposed views took shape eventually in two popular philosophies that influenced educated minds in the Roman world for some six centuries: Stoicism, based on the assumption of a divine rational order; Epicureanism, on the assumption of a natural order, following Democritus, which human beings could adapt and to which they should adapt. This Epicurean view of the way things are, of which the great poem of Lucretius was the lasting memorial, was nevertheless driven out by the triumph of Idealism, in its Neoplatonic form interfused with Oriental religions from Syria, Egypt, and Persia that invaded Rome and established themselves from about 200 AD. Paganism in this form has been called a single religion with a distinct 4 Ethical Record, January 1987 theology, not far removed from Arian Christianity. The reign of Christian orthodoxy which lasted virtually till the Enlightenment at the end of the xvilith century began with Constantine's adoption of the faith as the Religion of Rome, which he followed by forcing the Church to formulate an enforceable doctrinal orthodoxy. God on Trial Modern science begins in the early xviith century with collaborative empirical investigations guided by hypotheses which could be tested. This new start discarded the metaphysics of Aristotle for the atomic theory of Democritus as the hypothetical clue. The rationale of the universe was nevertheless assumed to be in a divine purposive order. Kepler thought of himself in his investigations as "thinking the thoughts of God". These colleagues studied the Works of God, unlike the Reformers whose study of the Word of God had been bloody contention. Indeed, God was said to be on trial during a century and a half of piecing together his plan. The Enlightenment was the turning point, when it was •recognized philo- sophically that science had to be -free from metaphysical assumptions of a purposive order. With Darwin's theory of the biological evolution of species, it was seen that there could be other forms of order in nature. The Human Condition was not something given once for all; rather, it was a matter of human conditions in human hands. Civilization began to take over the Alienation. The Human Condition in Human Hands The Greeks thought of civilization as the humanization of man in society through education and the pursuit of excellence in all activities, athletic, aesthetic, political, ethical, cognitive—all Greek words. But they did not think of the conquest of nature nor of changing the world, in Bacon's sense of "the relief of man's estate" as the object of knowledge. However, they had been preoccupied with the idea of self-sufficiency, how to be equal to all occasions, independent of fortune. Stoicism and Epicureanism had been answers to that, drawn from opposed premises. With applied knowledge there comes in a new dimension of human capa- bility, opening a new perspective. Scientific collaboration in technology is followed in the Service State by social co-operation in institutions and policies to meet the needs of all. Scientific collaboration is already global through information technology and the facilities of worldwide communications. • Civilization demands a similar pattern of social co-operation—signalled in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Then national defence will have become international security. Then a middle class conscience will not carry the debt of the misery of millions. -Then wastefulness will not destroy irreplaceable resources. Then the natural. world will be preserved as the habitat of species, human and other. There are many nations and many, many cultures. The ideal of one global civilization does not threaten these. Rather, their fulfilment, indeed their continuance, depends on its inviolability. An ideal is not something to say yes to, something to be in favour of. It is something that has to be worked for in all the effective ways one can think of. To be an "activist" may be to have a dubious or an uncomfort- able reputation. But there is no alternative for anyone who is serious. El

Country Dancing (in conjunction with the Progressive League) on Saturday, January 17 from 3.00 pm to 6.00 pm in the Library. Beginners are very welcome, for whom Eda Collins (our tutor) gives tuition. Tea Interval at 4.30 pm. Ethical Record, January 1987 5 "Society Would be More Secure Without Police, Prisons or Armies"

The above motion was debated at Conway Hall at a Forum meeting on Sunday afternoon October 12, 1986. This month the Ethical Record publishes the mover's advocacy of the motion—DR. STEPHEN COLEMAN, who is a lecturer in the History of ideas. The opposer was CHRIS SMITH, who is M.P. for Islington South and Finsbury. His contribution should appear next month.

FOR MOST OF HUMAN HISTORY people lived in a condition of what historians in our age have described, with all of the arrogance and condescension of civilised snobbery, as "primitive backwardness". For something like 40,000 years of the earliest evolution of human society our ancestors were "primitives". And what did it mean to suffer this terrible primtive fate of not being born into civilised times such as ours? It meant that they lived co-operatively; what they had they used in common; what they gathered from nature they shared on the basis of free access; what rules for living they governed themselves by were not alien "laws" made by superior beings called legislators and enforced by feared bodies of bullies devoted to the organised judgment and repression of others. Primitive rules and customs reflected the consciousness of the community. Where people made such rules for themselves there was no call for primitive Judges to dress in bizarre costumes and pontificate in pompous tones about laws made by the few in order to regulate the conduct of the many. As for violence, the only weapons known to the earliest humans were those required for the conquest of the natural environment in the perpetual struggle for survival and comfort. Now we are no longer primitive. With the help of large supplies of gun- powder and sustained intakes of religious opiates the mass of humanity has "been civilised". Reagan and Gorbachev, with their fingers upon buttons which could annihilate the planet at a push, are civilised. The one in five scientists throughout the modern world whose wisdom has been bought by the military establishments are civilised. The Police Chief of Manchester, Mr. Anderton, who a few years ago instructed his officers to enter the clubs of Greater Manchester with a view to arresting people committing the crime of "licentious dancing", is civilised. The prison officers who beat up inmates in their cells and those who have murdered prisoners while in police or prison custody are civilised. The men who stand guard, like well-trained Nazis, on the untried inmates of the British-controlled concentration camp at Long Kesh are all being very civilised. The police who have employed the most brutal force against striking workers—not only in Poland and South Africa, but in Britain also —they will always tell you how civilised they are. We are all civilised now. It is part of the myopic complacency of those who imagine that the way we live now is the only way we could live to assert that we must have police and prisons and armies. It is natural that they should exist. And if you question what is natural you are a utopian. And if you are a utopian then you are indulging in a futile battle against immutable reality. I hope that my opponent will not commit the crass error of thinking that history is immutable and that institutions which some think are natural will in fact last forever. I am an opponent for civilisation I favour an uncivilised alternative to 6 Ethical Record, January 1987 the detestable "law and order" of the present social system. When they asked Ghandi what he thought of Western Civilisation he replied that it would be a good idea if they ever tried it. Civilisation is that period of history in which the tyranny of property has prevailed. To be civilised is to submit oneself to a structure of power based upon the ownership and control of property by a minority. Civilised morality is an ethic of reverence for those who possess. Civilised law and order prevails as long as property is safe. What are property relationships? They are essentially relationships of exclusion. The pen is mine—therefore it is not yours. You take this pen and I will call the police. It is no use pleading with them that the words of a brilliant new poem have just come into your head and you feel inspired to write them down at once. You may be a second Shelley—I may be illiterate; but if I possess twenty pens and you own none the police will not decide who .to arrest on the basis of a poetry competition. This factory is mine; therefore I own all that is produced in it. It does not matter that I may never visit my factory and would not be able to operate the machines if I did—I take what the producers in the factory make and if they take any they are criminals who must be reported to the police and dealt with. The same applies to dwellings: if I own a house you can only enter by paying me money or else you are a trespasser. The conflict between property and need was well illustrated in 1971 when some squatters occupied some empty houses owned by the London Borough of Southwark and the Council (which was Labour controlled) took the homeless people to court. Now, in addition to their misfortune of being homeless they also had the bad luck to have their case judged by Lord Denning—a man who,always strikes one as the unintelligent man's idea of what it is to be wise—and in his summing up on the case Denning said, If homelessness were once admitted as a defence to trespass, no one's house could be safe. Necessity would open a door which no man could shut. . . . The plea would be an excuse for all sorts of wrong-doing. So the courts must, for the sake of law and order, take a firm stand. They must refuse to admit the plea of necessity to the hungry and the homeless: and trust that their distress will be relieved by the charitable and the good.

Death from Starvation: Arms Protect "Private Property" So it is that, whilst according to UNESCO there are 40,000 children dying of starvation each day, armed police in India stand in the defence of grain warehouses which are "private property". Armies perform the same function. (The speaker then quoted from two military sources in order to demonstrate that Militarism is but an extension of commerce.) Naive people say that armies exist to make us secure. Is there anyone present who wakes up each morning and thinks of the Cruise Missiles at Greenham Common and the Exocets which tore the skins off young men in the South Atlantic and the plastic bullets which are now being used by the state terrorists in Belfast and will soon be used by the police here and the deranged officers being trained in the psychopathic arts at Sandhurst and thinks to themselves, "My word, I do feel safe. What a dangerous world this would be without skilled killers and sophisticated murder weaponry in order to make us secure". That is what the opponent of this motion must argue: that without armies we would be less secure. The case which I am putting rests upon the contention that police forces and prisons and armies are essentially in existence in order to secure the tyranny of property. The only serious alternative to that tyranny is socialism, by which I mean a social system based upon the common ownership, as opposed to private or state ownership, of social resources. The only way we will obtain a genuinely secure society to live in will be by Ethical Record, January 1987 7 transforming social relationships from those based on property and exclusion to those based upon common ownership and free access to the goods and services of the earth. In a society of common ownership there will, by definition, be no owners and non-owners, no bosses and bossed. There will be no heriditary entitle- ment to parasitical idleness and affluence. There will be no babies born to suffer the miserable inheritance of deprivation. People cannot steal what they own in common. That disposes of 90 per cent of "crimes" committed today. Home Office statistics confirm the fact that if you emptied the prisons of those convicted for crimes against property you would virtually empty the prisons. And what would armies, dedicated to the cause of mass destruction, have to do in a community of common ownership? There will be no more murderous trade wars for them to perform in. No Empires. No anachronistic nationalist disputes about which gang of thieves controls which territory. How could such a system of society ever consider wasting its energies and resources upon the perverse venture of an organised institution for killing people : an army? The insane violence which civilised fools call "healthy competition" would have no reason to occur in a society of common ownership. It, will be conceded by many people that it would be very pleasant if we could all share the planet as sisters and brothers and that, indeed, most crimes and wars are property-related. But there is "something there"— something in "human nature", that vague term which no scientist has yet seriously defined or located—and this "something" leads us to require all of these forces of coercion to protect us from ourselves. I reject emphatically the suggestion that there is "something natural" in human beings which needs to be repressed and restrained; I reject it because I regard it as being but a watered down version of the stale old religious dogma that we're all evil sinners at heart. To those who • speak of motiveless, inexplicable anti-social behaviour I respond that if we look hard enough at what society does to brutalise and desensitise and degrade human personalities you will find the motives. If you want to comprehend soccer violence, then talk to those who glorify nationalism in the classroom and urge children to take pride in imperial violence and plunder. If you want to comprehend the mind of the rapist, then talk .to the editor of The Sun. If you want to comprehend sense- less, gratuitous violence against defenceless victims, then study the bombing of Dresden when men were commanded to fly above their defenceless victims and to assault, molest and murder not just one innocent old lady or powerless little child, but many thousands of them. Before arriving at unhistorical conclusions about "human nature" one should remember that for most of human history there were no wars or muggings or banks to be broken into by armed men because there was no cause for these things. I predict that my opponent will tell me that even if he accepts all that I have said it is politically pragmatic for us to work to reform the system we have now. After all, people f eel that they need police and prisons and armies— they may not be justified in doing so, but that is how they have been con- ditioned to feel. I do not dispute that this is how most people feel.. But it is also the case that most people would feel safer if hanging was re-introduced. Most people feel that not only do they need the protection of an army, but they favour some kind of what is laughably called nuclear defence. But if those feelings are false—if my opponent cannot with sincerity and logic support those feelings—then he has an obligation to say to people, 8 Ethical Record, January 1987 "Well, that may be what you feel, but you are wrong. And this is why you are wrong." If one does not challenge such feelings, then what is to stop other pragmatists from riding to power on all kinds of other irrational feelings and prejudices? The motion in this debate concerns a fundamental matter of our political culture: What is power to be? Is it something above us, threatening us, bullying us—the Harvey Proctor conception of authority which humiliates the powerless and gives a deranged illusion of strength to the dominator? Or is power something which we shall enjoy as of right because we are conscious and creative human beings with immense capacities for development? When you perceive power in the latter sense (the socialist sense) you do not require uniformed thugs to protect humanity from its own potential. Society will be more secure when we establish a system which does not require police, prisons and armies—it will be more secure because once we have removed the power over us there is almost no limit to what we can do with power between us.

John Knox as a Revolutionary Leader JASPER RIDLEY

Lecture to South Place Ethical Society, Sunday, November 2, 1986 DIE USUAL MODERN IMAGE OF JOHN KNOX IS WRONG IN NEARLY EVERY WAY. He is remembered as grim and dour with no sense of humour, but in fact he had a wonderful sense of humour and is one of the most brilliant and amusing writers of the xvilth century. He is remembered as an enemy of the theatre and if anyone today performs a play in Edinburgh someone will probably write that John Knox would have been shocked, but there is no recorded case when Knox wrote anything against the theatre, and we know of at least one occasion when he went to see a play and greatly enjoyed it, and his son was an amateur actor at Cambridge, where he acted the part of Lord Hastings in Legg's Richard III. He is thought to have been against dancing, but in fact his only well- known objection to dancing was when Mary Queen of Scots gave a ball at Holyroodhouse to celebrate a victory of the Catholics over the Protestants in the French Civil War, and the massacre of the Protestant prisoners which followed. We are told that he objected to Mary's music and liked only dour hymns, but, except to the expert in Musica Antigua, the tunes of the hiains which Knox and his followers sang probably sounds more lively to people today than the music of the stately pavannes to which Mary and her courtiers danced. Some people in Scotland think of him as a kind of Scottish patriot, but at the time many Scots regarded him as a traitor and an English agent. He always wrote in English, not in the Scots language of the Lowland Scots, and this fact was used against him by his Catholic opponents. On at least two occasions he acted as an English spy. Once, when he was going on a preaching tour in Fife, he took the opportunity to observe the defences in the ports and send a report about them to the English ambassador. For nearly 300 years, historians and their readers even got the date of his birth, and his age, wrong, for it was stated in all the books that he was Ethical Record, January 1987 9 born in .1505,.and that he was 67 when he died in 1572. It was only in 'the xxth century that it was realised that this was based on a misprint in a book in 1644, and that in fact he was. 57, not 67, when he died, and was born about 1514. The traditional picture Of the aged Knox confronting the young Queen is not entirely wrong, as he was nearly 30 years older than she was, but on the last occasion when they met, she was 21 and he was 49. • And still today nearly everyone is mistaken about what he looked like. The statues of Knox which are to be found all over Scotland are based on the portrait, which is still included in most of the biographies of him, of a man with hooked nose and a very long beard, which is almost certainly a portrait not of Knox but of the Swiss theologian, Beza, whereas the portrait of a much more vigorous-looking man with a short beard, which is generally thought to be a portrait of William Tyndale, is almost certainly the real portrait of Knox. Most important of all, his great importance as a revolutionary leader, and especially as a revolutionary theoretician, has not been recognised, for he was much more important than Calvin in formulating the theory that it is justifiable for a people to revolt against their rulers. It is no coincidence that the man who put forward this theory was a Scotsman, for Scotland was a far more lawless country than England. The Scots, unlike the English, did not respect the rule of law. In Scotland men who committed crimes were usually "put to the horn-, ie proclaimed out- laws at the Market Cross in the county town, but then took refuge on the lands of some lord, where the government officers could not pursue them, staying there till they were pardoned some years later. Protestantism was brought to Scotland from the English Lollards and the Lutheran merchants from Germany and the Netherlands, and was strongest in the busy eastern port of Dundee and among the fishing com- munities of Kyle in Ayrshire in the south-west. It filled a void caused by the corruption of the Catholic Church in Scotland, which was far worse than in England or most of the other countries of Christendom. In most Scottish parishes there were no parish priests in residence, because the benefice had been given to a monastery whose Prior was probably the King's bastard son. When James IV invaded England before the battle of Flodden in 1513, 'and stayed at Ford Castle, he made love to the owner's wife while his twenty-two-year-old son, the Archbishop of St. Andrews, made love to her daughter. This was quite typical. After Henry VIII repudiated Papal supremacy in order to get a divorce from Catherine of Aragon, James V of Scotland declared war on England as champion of the Pope. So Henry VIII encouraged the Protestants in Scotland, though he was burning Protestants in England. Knox was ordained as a Catholic priest, but became influenced by the preaching of the Protestant, George Wishart, who had nearly been burned by Henry VIII when he was a refugee in England, but had returned to Scotland. Knox joined a band which escorted Wishart as he went round preaching in the villages of East Lothian within 15 miles of Edinburgh. This shows the state of Scotland, because in England it would have been quite impossible for a group of heretics to wander around within 15 miles of London unmolested by the authorities for several months. Knox carried a two-handed sword to protect Wishart.*

* It is very symbolic that Knox's first appearance in history should be not writing a book like Calvin, giving useful suggestions to help the King obtain a divorce like Cranmer, or even nailing a defiant manifesto to a church door like Luther, but carrying a two-handed sword. 10 Ethical Record, January 1987 At last Wishart was arrested, surrendering without resistance and ordering Knox not to use the two-handed sword in his defence. He was burned by order of Cardinal Beaton, the Chancellor of Scotland. A few months later, a group of young Protestant lairds broke into Beaton's castle of St. Andrews and murdered him in revenge for Wishart's death, and held the castle for the English. Knox did not take part in the murder, but approved of it,-and soon afterwards joined the murderers in the castle as their preacher. But though they hoped that the English army would come to help them, under the Duke of Somerset, who was the Regent for the young King Edward VI, the French sent a fleet to help their Scottish Catholic allies. The French ships beseiged St. Andrews Castle, which surrendered after, a month's seige. The defenders were taken as prisoners to France. The gentle- men were held in castles, but the low-class prisoners like Knox were forced to row as galley-slaves in the French galleys. After Knox had been a galley- slave for 19 monthX, the English government obtained his release in exchange for a French prisoner-of-war in England, and he came to England. He was appointed a preacher first at Newcastle and Berwick, and later at the court of Edward VI in London. Edward VI's regents, Somerset and the Duke of Northumberland who ousted him, made England more Protestant than in Hehry VIII's time. Knox supported this, but was shocked by the corruption and and greed of the Protestant nobles, and unlike Cranmer and the English Protestant bishops, he denounced it openly and fearlessly in his sermons, like Latimer did. The accepted political theory of ' the xvith century was the duty of obedience to "the Prince", ie the ruler of an independent sovereign state. This was particularly emphasized by the Protestants, because they wished to enlist the support of the Kings against the Pope and the clergy, and this was repeatedly stressed in England under Henry VIII and Edward VI. Knox accepted this when he was in England, and preached it in his sermons, but never stressed it to the same extent as most preachers. The theory was put forward in its strongest form by the Protestant Tyndale, who first translated the Bible into English in the xvith century. "God in all lands hath put Kings, Governors and rulers in His own stead to rule the world through them", wrote Tyndale, "Whosoever therefore resisteth them, resisteth God, for they are in the room of God; and they that resist shall receive the damnation.... Neither may the inferior person avenge himself upon the superior, or violently resist him, for whatsoever wrong it be. . Even if the King be the greatest tyrant in the world, yet is he a great benefit to God, and a thing wherefore thou oughtest to thank God highly; the King may at his lust do right and wrong, and shall give account but to God only". Tyndale had to face the question of what a subject should do if the King ordered him to commit a sin, that is to say, to become a Catholic and repu- diate Protestantism and persecute the Protestants. His answer was that in this case only, the subject was justified in refusing to obey the King; but even then he must not resist the King by force, 'and must submit' patiently to martyrdom or whatever fate the King decided to inflict on him. When 'Mary Tudor, the Catholic, became Queen of England at Edward VI's death, and reunited England to kome, restored Papal supremacy, and began burning Protestants on a far larger scale than had ever been seen in England, the Protestant theory of obedience to Princes piove'd inconvenient for the Protestants; but they adhered to it. Many Protestants supported Mary against Lady lane Grey and Wyatt's Protestant rebellion; and they submited without resistance to martyrdom. Knox left Englhnd a few months after Mary. became Queen, afid took with him Margery Bowes, the daughtet of a knight df Northumberland, Ethical Record, January 1987 11 Sir Richard Bowes, whom he married, and her mother went with them and became Knox's devoted adherent. Knox went to Geneva and Zurich, and asked Calvin and Bullinger, the leading Protestant theologians, if it was ever justified to resist a King who was a tyrant. Calvin said no. Bullinger hedged. So Knox went ahead on his own to develop his very startling theory. It is interesting to examine the slow steps by which he reached his ultimate position. Before the end of 1554 he had published a pamphlet, the Admonition to England, in which he not only attacked Gardiner, Bonner and the other persecuting Catholic bishops in England, like all the other Protestant writers in exile did, but also directly attacked Queen Mary herself, and wrote that the Emperor Charles V, who was persecuting Protestants in the Netherlands and elsewhere, was worse than Nero. Knox went to Frankfort-on-Main, and became the pastor of the English Protestant refugees there. He organised a system by which the members of the congregation elected their minister, and discussed matters at their meetings. Soon afterwards some more refugees arrived from England including Cox, who was a typical Anglican authoritarian in religion, and strongly dis- approved of the system of electing ministers and holding meetings of the congregation. He decided to use the system for his own advantage, and he and his supporters joined the congregation and out-voted Knox's supporters at the meetings. They passed a resolution that Knox should not be allowed to preach. Knox then appealed to the authorities in Frankfort, who at first ordered that Knox should resume preaching, but reluctantly changed their minds when Cox denounced Knox to them as a traitor to the Emperor, because he had written in the Admonition to England that Charles V was worse than Nero. Knox had to leave Frankfort and went to Geneva. It is only fair to Cox and his followers to say that they did not denounce Knox as a traitor merely to gain the advantage in their faction fights, but were sincerely shocked that he should have dared to criticise an Emperor. In 1555 Knox returned to Scotland, where Mary Queen of Scots' mother, Mary of Guise, was Regent for her during the infant Queen's absence in France. Under the protection of the Scottish Protestant lords, he organised a national church on a democratic basis, with the local ministers elected by the congregation and controlled by the elders of their church, and a General Assembly of elected delegates as the supreme authority in the Church. This was very different from the Catholic and Anglican systems, in which the Church was controlled by bishops who were appointed by the King. By organising these prayer meetings and Bible-reading classes all over the country, Knox built up a national organisation under the leadership of the nobles. When Mary of Guise and the bishops accused Knox of heresy, the Protestant lords threatened to come with him to Edinburgh for his trial to protect him. Mary of Guise became friehtened, and withdrew the prosecu- tion, and Knox and the lords entered Edinburgh in triumph and for a few days controlled the city. But the time for revolution had not come and Knox returned to Geneva. For the next two years he travelled between Geneva and Dieppe, where he established a base for contacts with England and Scotland. The situation in France led Calvin reluctantly to develop his theory that in exceptional circumstances Protestant nobles could resist a Catholic King. He said that they could act like the Ephors in ancient Sparta, who had authority to act on behalf of the State if the King was incapacitated from acting, and that if a Catholic King refused to act against the Catholics 12 Ethical Record, January 1987 and for the Protestants, a Protestant nobility could do so. Knox put forward this view in his Appellation.to the Nobility and Estates of Scotland, but went much further in another pamphlet which he published at the same time, his Letter to the Commonalty of Scotland, in which .he wrote that if the nobles of a realm refused to act against God's enemies, it was the duty of the common people to do so. He referred to the Bible, in which God sent plagues to trouble all the people of Egypt when Pharaoh refused to listen to Mose's demands, and drowned all Pharaoh's soldiers in the Red Sea. Knox asked why were all the people of Egypt punished, and all Pharaoh's soldiers drowned, and not merely the guilty Pharaoh himself. His answer was that the Egyptians were punished, not for Pharaoh's sins, but for their own sin of not making a revolution against Pharaoh. "Albeit God hath out and ordained distinction and difference betwixt the King and subjects, betwixt the rulers and the common people, in the regiment and administration of civil policies, yet in the hope of the lif e to come He hath made all equal. So constantly I affirm that to you it doth no less apper- tain than to your King or Princes to provide that Christ Jesus be truly preached amongst you. And this is the point wherein, I say, all man is equal". This was a sensational and unprecedented view to put forward in the xvith century, and Calvin never got anywhere near it. In this same year, 1558, Knox published his First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women, or to translate it into modern England, against the unnatural government of women. It has earned Knox the reputation of being a woman-hater, but in no earlier book had Knox ever written anything against woman; he had many women friends, he married twice; and had the highest regard for the women members of his congregation. But in 1558 most of the countries of Western Europe happened to be governed by women. In England Mary Tudor was Queen, in Scotland Mary of Guise was Regent for Mary Queen of Scots, and in the Netherlands Charles V's sister, Mary of Hungary, was his Regent. It was everywhere accepted that in all respects women were inferior to men, and were excluded from all forms of public life, except the throne, because it was held that the privilege of royalty was strong enough to over- come the normal inferior status of women. In attacking the idea of a woman ruler. Knox was attacking the privileges of monarchy, and pandering to popular prejudices which he did not really share. His book, along with his other writings, aroused great fear and indignation among the governments, and in England it was made an offence punishable by death to be found with a copy of the book, which everyone had to hand in immediately to the nearest JP. The book turned out to be a big tactical mistake, because a few months after it was published, Mary Tudor died and her sister Elizabeth became Queen of England, and the hope of the Protestant cause in Europe. Knox ought to have known that all the Protestants in England in Mary's reign were looking to Elizabeth as their hope in the future, but Knox merely knew that she had converted to Catholicism and betrayed the cause by going to Mass. It was perhaps the typical kind of mistake that refugees make. After Elizabeth became Queen, Knox tried to rectify the mistake by stating, as he had in fact mentioned in his book, that there were exceptions to the rule about women, and that in the Bible Deborah had led the people of Israel. But Elizabeth never forgave him for writing the book. Knox and several collaborators worked on a new translation of the Bible when he was in Geneva. It was published in 1560, and became known as the Ethical Record, January 1987 13 Geneva Bible. It has footnotes which were as long as the text of the Bible itself, in which Knox's doctrines were expounded. For example, in the First Book of Samuel, the text of the Bible describes how David did not kill Saul when he had him at his mercy, because he would not raise his hand against the Lord's annointed. Knox added a footnote: "But Jehu slew two Kings at God's appointment". When in the Second Book of Kings, Jehu slays Jezebel, Jezebel', according to the Bible text, said "Had Zimri peace who slew his master?" Knox added the footnote: "As though she would say, Can any traitor or any that riseth against his superior, have good success?" But Jehu killed her, and Knox commented: "This he did by the motion of the Spirit of God, that her blood should be shed, that had shed the blood of innocents, to be a spectacle and example of God's judgments to all tyrants". In 1559 Knox was told that Scotland was on the verge of revolution, and returned there. On Ascension Day he preached a sermon at Perth in which he attacked images. A boy in the crowd thereupon threw a stone at an image in the church, a priest boxed the boy's ears, and the crowd rioted and destroyed the monasteries in the town. This started a revolution which was supported by the nobles and by the members of Knox's Church throughout the Lowlands, and within seven weeks the Protestants had entered Edinburgh. The French sent troops to suppress the revolution. Knox realised that only English intervention could defeat the French, and played a leading part in arranging for the English navy and later the army to come. The French were driven out. and Scotland became a Protestant state. As minister of the congregation of Edinburgh, which was the only official position that he ever held. Knox was a very influential figure, and played a leading part in warning the people against the potential threat from a Catholic Queen in a Protestant state. He played only a secondary part in the second revolution which overthrew Mary Queen of Scots, but he supported it enthusiastically. The feuds and complications of the next few years led to civil war in Scotland, in which many of Knox's former colleagues fought against the pro-English party, chiefly because they resented English domination, though they were good Protestants. Knox denounced them bitterly as traitors, and called for their execution. He died before the final victory of the pro-English party, having a few weeks before his death preached his last sermon denouncing the Catholics for the Massacre of St. Bartholomew in Paris. In the last years of his life he wrote his magnificent History of the Refor- mation in Scotland, which is contemporary history at its best and most partisan, written with brilliant descriptive passages and very amusing sarcasm, reminiscent of Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution. He had always been as interested in events in England as in Scotland. and was in close touch with the Puritans in England. He was also a shrewd tactician (except when he wrote his First Blast of the Trumpet) and realised that the situation in England was very different from the situation in Scotland, and he advised the English Puritans to be careful not to provoke Elizabeth by going too far too fast. Knox's writings inspired the English regicides who beheaded Charles I in 1649. Milton quoted Knox in his defence of the execution of Charles I. After the Restoration. Knox's books, like Milton's, were publicly burned by the Anglicans at Oxford in 1681. Knox was one of the most successful revolutionaries. His regime which he established in Scotland lasted for centuries, and still today is partly res- ponsible for the fact that the Church of Scotland is so much more radical 14 Ethical Record, January 1987 -than the. Church of England, and even, perhaps, for the fact that Mrs. Thatcher is less popular in Scotland than in England, though Knox was referring to Mary Tudor, not to her, when he wrote "Flow abominable before God is the empire and rule of a wicked woman".

Two Book Reviews The Power of Secrecy—The Conflict Between Confidence and Disclosure

COLIN MILLS

S. Bok: Secrets—On the Ethics of Concealment and Revelation (Oxford University Press, 1986). £12.95 (h/b), £5.95 (p/b).

In this book, SISSELA BOK continues her exploration of moral issues begun in her previous book entitled Lying (see Ethical Record; October 1986, page 6). Both books have small and not easily readable type which dis- courages readers. The more suspicious might believe that academics want either ignorance or myopia. It is impossible to abstract adequately a book of this sort: the most a review can do is to raise the issues, hoping to encourage both debate and reading the book. ANTHONYARBLASTER, in his review' concentrated on the public aspects of secrecy. But it occurs in the personal as well as the public domain, so any consideration of secrecy and openness must deal with both. Bok seems to take the view that there are two quite different ethical codes for secrecy in private and public—including political—life, but embarks first on a lengthy discussion of various aspects of secrecy. Bok begins by describing how lying and secrecy are related, but differ in that lying always needs justification, but secrecy may not. Deception may take either form—secrccy as suppressio veri, lying as suggestio falsi. Bok seeks to study the actual context of secrecy—that is, to analyse a series of case studies involving secrecy. But secrecy is a morally ambivalent con- cept, and a neutral definition is essential; else the result of. such discussion is preempted. Bok defines secrecy as intentional concealment, without colouring it with privacy, deceit or shame. Bok first describes the role of childhood development in the experience of secrecy and openness, and goes on to analyse secrecy between individuals. Bok writes that secrecy is "as indispensable to human beings as fire, and as greatly feared"; both can be life-enhancing or life-destroying. To quote BAcoN2: "Knowledge itself is power". Conflicts over secrecy are conflicts over power, the power through control of knowledge. Bok analyses four claims to secrecy : to protect identity, plans, action, and property. Individuals need to exercise some control over secrecy and openness, not merely to exercise their autonomy, but to protect their sanity and survival. We feel that personal information and personal property are so closely linked to our identity, that to be deprived of them is a personal violation. In most societies, status is intimately connected with wealth and property, and both are sensitive issues. It is no accident that bank accounts are treated as confidential; in Switzerland, this becomes almost obsessional. Likewise, the ownership of land—real property—is in Britain a matter for the utmost secrecy, even though people who have no, intention of purchasing or leas- Ethical Record. January 1987 15 ing the property, like neighbours, have a legitimate interest. This secrecy tends to inhibit open discussion of environmental planning, and hide corruption. Each claim must be weighed against the dangers of secrecy—debilitating judgment, character and moral choice; like lying, tending to spread. Bok sets out two moral presumptions: first, the presumption of equality: whatever control over knowledge is legitimate for some, must be so for all, in the absence of special considerations. Second, the presumption of partial individual control over knowledge about personal matters. Bok devotes an entire chapter to "coming to experience secrecy and openness". Infants are at one with their surroundings, not self aware, neither keeping nor recognising secrets. From this early symbiosis, they increasingly experience, realise, sketch out identity; learn their effect on themselves and on others. All this is needed for a desire to conceal, a wonder about others' secrets, about mystery to arise. Children then have to face the great mysteries, closed to the young. The treatment of such areas as sexuality, religion and death varies from one society to another, but such taboos exist in all, though not all societies are equally secretive. Recent research tends to show that PtAwl' may have underestimated the ability of children to keep secrets, and overestimated their egocentricity. Bok writes: "As outsiders to secrets, children project their groping view of the unknown on (myths and fairy tales)". They gradually distinguish the secret from the unknown. As outsiders, we find a tension between curiosity on the one hand, and fear and awe on the other. Bok discusses the claim made by STEPHEN CAVELL3, often used by social researchers and the military, that any secret, however well concealed, can be disclosed, which she finds unlikely, even for particular secrets. As insiders to secrets we feel similar tensions between concealment and openness. Bok writes: ". . . the conflicts between insider and outsider about control over secrecy and openness arise in every form of human encounter, and within each perspective, the same tensions are felt...." She points out that maturity is in part to do with the tactful resolution of these conflicts. The parallels between experience of secrecy and moral choice, and discretion and moral judgment are not close, but they are enlightening. Secret societies are used as one case study. One study of this subject is by ARKON DARAUL4. TERRY LIDDLE discusses some such societies in a recent article5 and elsewhere. It is interesting that the freemasons, which have a very important and reactionary role in the British Establishment, have acted as a cloak for left- wing revolutionary activity in Europe since the xvitith century. It is this latter role, not the eccentric masonic ritual and excessive secrecy with its potential for irrationality and corruption, which is the true cause of papal fulminations against freemasonry, the notorious P2 lodge apparently being persona grata with the Vatican. CHARLES BRADLAUGH was an active member of the radical Grand Orient lodge, and resigned from the Grand Lodge of England when the Prince of Wales was made a freemason. Bok herself mentions the Italian Carbonari, and DIDEROT'S involvement with radical freemasonry. The Chinese Com- munity party decided in 1926 to co-act with the Red Spears secret society, the Communist International holding that though controlled by reaction- aries, the society was "objectively revolutionary" because of its mass character. Another case study is that of self-deception. Two attempts to resolve the implicit paradox are those of the FREUDIAN school, and the somewhat 16 Ethical Record, January 1987 implausible one of-SARTRE.One type of self-deception is the dualistic heresy, described by Mac WiLsot ra. "Since 1935, there has been a gradual process of tidying up history on the part of the Chinese communists, whose interest lies in portraying the Long March as a fully successful result of flawless decision making on the part of the present leadership. Those aspects of events on the Long March which put the leadership in anything other than a fully heroic light have been systematically omitted from the official histories and accounts. On the other hand, the materials collected by the nationalists . . . show exactly the opposite bias, tending to portray every communist as a brutal animal, and every nationalist as a saint." Similarly, double-think—what has been described as "the typical mixture of mendacity and self-deception"—was evident in the communist descrip- tion of the socialist and labour movement as "social fascist". Of course, self-deception was not universal among communists, nor was it restricted to them. To quote again from Wilson, "The word from Moscow in the 1920s was a harsh one for the Chinese comrades to accept. As KARL RADEKput it . . . in 1922: 'When our Chinese comrade told us here, "we have struck deep roots in China", I must tell him "Esteemed comrade, it is a good thing to feel confident of one's strength when one starts to work. Nevertheless, things have to be seen as they are". The comrades working at Canton and Shanghai have failed to associate themselves with the working masses...." ALBERTSPEER chose, on the advice of KARLHANKE, not to visit Auschwitz, though like many other war criminals he could not evade responsibility by claiming ignorance of the actual details. Bok, in discussing confessions, traces three clusters of moral distinctions; between openness and concealment—for example, ROUSSEAU', between freedom and coercion—for example, police intimidation and torture; and between revealing own secrets and others'—for example, gossip, betrayal and whistleblowing, which are discussed separately. RICHARD ENNALS' recent book on Star Wars has been withdrawn by its publishers. One suspects that the publishers did not withdraw it because it would not sell, but because it aired defence matters which the powers that be would rather see undiscussed. The furore which followed its with- drawal has, unluckily for the mandarins, had the opposite effect. Political gossip often concerns the sexual peccadilloes of public figures. The PROFUMOaffair filled the papers for weeks at the time, but the real point of the Profumo. PARKINSONand ARCHERaffairs had nothing to do with how randy they were; they all had to go because they had committed serious errors of judgment in their private life, which queried their public judgment. Nor can the mental or physical health of politicians be merely a private matter for them, on the same grounds. Leaks about the fascist links of royalty have nothing to do with visiting the sins of the fathers upon their daughters—yea, even unto the seventh generation; they are important because they undermine the belief that the upper classes deserve their position because they are better than the rest of us, have inherited good qualities from their ancestors. In fact, their ancestors were often people who should not have been trusted any further than you could spit a live toad. Bok discusses in another case study, the limits of confidentiality. Profes- sional discretion might appear to be absolutely justified. But often there are acute dilemmas—for instance, where the client is a threat to himself or others, or where a professional is known by his colleagues to be incompetence. A recent book on medical treatment entitled Indefensible Treatment, gives Ethical Record, January 1987 17 case histories of people whose health has been ruined, or who have died, in circumstances which strongly indicate medical incompetence or negligence. It has been withdrawn by the publishers and 2,000 copies pulped, without the consent of the author. One suspects that this is yet another case where the medical profession is evading responsibility or blame, and blocking all efforts to find answers. Similarly, it is notoriously difficult to get lawyers to accept responsibility for incompetence or negligence. Two other case studies are on trade and corporate secrecy, and on secrecy and competition in science. In these days of huge expenditure on research and development (R. & D.), these two areas are linked. To quote A. DOWNS8 : "Hence secrecy may be used simply to prevent knowledge of the decision from reaching persons who might want to be included in the deliberations if they knew the decision was being made. Furthermore, secrecy may enable more complex decisions to be made". Trade secrecy can be justified by the threat openness might imply for economic well-being, but as with professional confidence, it can be used to cover incompetence and malpractice. Modern scientists disavow the esoteric tradition, "the view that only the elect can penetrate to the mysteries of science". Bok states "both the pres- sure for exclusivity and the incentives for profiteering continue in modern science in new guises". Other pressures, derived from the growth of the military-industrial complex and government bureaucracy, have aided secretiveness against disinterest and the free debate of scientific information. Bok devotes an entire chapter to the tension between power and accountability—rightly so, in view of ROBERT MACNAMARA'S statement : "Vital decision making, particularly in policy matters, must remain at the top. That is partly, though not completely, what the top is for"°, 10 Bok uses undercover police operations as one of her case studies, citing as an example Operation ABSCAM where undercover work was justified to uncover corruption. One problem area arises with operations against internal or external enemies of the state. The political importance of secrecy is greater than is generally realised." Secrecy is justifiable in the detection of espionage and terrorism, but a very broad view is often taken of what constitutes subversion. Bacon's dictum explains why such effort is put into controlling knowledge, and marginalising dissent. To quote ROBERT LINDNER'2, "Authority has every reason to fear the sceptic, for authority can rarely survive in the face of doubt." A recent account" of deaths in British prisons draws attention to the 258 prisoners who died from unnatural causes or suicide between 1969 and 1980. Using seven cases, a picture of brutality and negligence emerged, compounded by the secrecy which surrounded them, which raises urgent questions about the aims and methods of the prison service. In the Pelican book The Technology of Political Control, much is made of the use of force by the State, reminiscent of MAO TSE TUNG'S maxim "power comes out of the barrel of a gun". But this is too simple, vide Bacon. JAMES MARGACH describes" the battle between Downing Street and the media from DAVID LLOYD GEORGE IG JAMES CALLAGHAN. He describes how in the Suez crisis of 1956, EDEN appointed as Press and Broadcasting Adviser WILLIAM CLARK of theObserver, who came to disagree profoundly with Eden's judgment and actions in this crisis, though loyally supporting Eden in public. Clark resigned after the cease-fire, and his later comments" focus the issues of secrecy, disclosure and open government which are vitally important in a democracy. The element of surprise was vital to the strategy, not against Egypt, but against public opinion. 18 Ethical Record, January 1987 "What was worse, Parliament, the public and the bureaucracy were not -only unconsulted, not only surprised, they were deceived. . . . Public opinion at home and particularly abroad was sufficiently. potent that it could not be ignored, but it had to be fooled. News management became news invention". The Suez episode illustrates not merely the problems of power and accountability, but also underlines the problems of investigative journalism and whistleblowing. While probing into the affairs of private individuals would normally be regarded as unethical, journalists would be tempted to use any available means to dig out stories about political figures. Bok gives examples of reporters using tactics which should have raised ethical doubts, but apparently did not. William Clark abided by the civil servant's code of loyalty to his Minister where CLIVE POSTING and SARAH TISDALL did not. The prosecutions of the latter owed more to political bile than to any appreciable damage to the public interest. Bok outlines how the Establishment can retaliate against whistleblowers. "Psychiatric referral] has become institutionalised in [American] government service", according to Bok, and outspoken civil servants are often made to undergo psychiatric examinations of their "fit- ness for duty". Once again, one gets a glimse of how similar western mono- poly capitalism and Eastern state capitalism really are. El References 1 Anthony Arblaster, The Guardian, March 22, 1984—Thedisease of secrecy. 2 Francis Bacon,Of Heresies, in Religious Meditations. 3 Stephen Cavell,The Claim of Reason (Oxford University Press, 1979). Arkon Daraul,Secret Societies (Tandem, 1965). 5 Terry Liddle, The Illutninati: Secret Societies in XVIllth Century Radical Politics (Journal of Radical History Volume1 No. 2, 1986, pp. 31-35). 6 Dick Wilson, Long March I935—The Epic of Chinese Communist Survival (Hamish Hamilton, 1971). 7 J. J. Rousseua, Confessions. 8 A. Downs, Decision making in bureaucracy (1967), reprinted in the Penguin book Decisions, Organisations and Society — I971 & 1976. To seek a 9 Quoted in Noam Chomsky's essayThe Crisis of Power, published in humane world, ed. H. B. Radest, Pemberton, 1971) 19 See also Kellner and Crowther Hunt's book The Civil Servants (Macdonald Futura, 1980), especially Chapter11—Civil Servants and Secrecy, and Edward Thompson's essayThe Secret State, in Writing by Candlelight (Merlin, 1980). 11 For instance, see Crispin Aubrey's Pelican book Who's watching you. 12 Robert Lindney, Education for Maturity in Must You Conform?, 1956. 13 Geoff Coggan and Martin Walker, Frightened for my Life, Fontana, 1982. 17 James Margach,The Abuse of Power (W. H. Allen, 1976). 15 William Clark,Secrecy (Oxford University Press).

A Review of David Wedgwood's "Elementary Ethics" A Bow-Wow Way With Arguments In his book Elementary Ethics,1 David Wedgwood claims to present a scientific analysis of the state of the present art of philosophY, seeking to establish that the present art of philosophy is materially decadent, depraved, corrupting, and degenerate, and will destroy civilization unless checked. He succeeds in misspelling "paradigm" as "parayne" on the first page, which is not a promising start. He defines philosophy as "the art (creating an illusion in the observer) of self glorification". In the same way as many definitions of religion have little to do with the religious experience of most religious people, this has

1 D. D. Wedgwood, 1984, c/o Alternative Bookshop. Ethical Record, January 1987 19 little if anything in common with philosophy as practised by philosophers; as Wedgwood says himself, ".a. . the efforts of most philosophers . .. have been directed towards restricting it". It is impossible to square this definition with the ones printed a couple of pages later (nor do they square with one another): "philosophy is thinking about thinking"; "philosophy is the study of truth beyond truth" (pure gobbledygook! ). Wedgwood is setting up Aunt Sallies. Straw Men, the more easily to knock them down. He breaks down ethics into freedom, justice, prosperity and charity, breaking each one down into various subsections. He defines freedom as "the maximisation of individual choice" and justice as "the protection of the individual", without appearing to be aware that they can have anything to do with interdependence or co-operation. His analysis of Darwinian Survival would benefit from a reading of Kropotkin's Mutual Aid and Ethics. He uses the phrase "a philosophy" to mean "an ideology", and says "even [those] well aware of scientific method, sometimes totally abandon [it] because of [an ideology]". An ideology is a system of ideas, with which we make sense of experience, and upon which we base action. A good, valid ideology is an analytical, self-modifying tool with which we do indeed make sense of our world, our experience, and make rational decisions for action; a bad, invalid ideology obstructs our search for sense in our experience, encourages ill-informed, irrational decisions, and is sometimes deliberately propagated. Scientific method is one type of ideology; we refer to "scientific method" rather than "the scientific method", since there is evidently more than one, and philosophers of science are certainly not finally agreed on what they are. "It is the nature of illusions that they are eliminated by rationality." (1:a:8). Wedgwood's canon of rationality is "Thatcherism": his illusion is that others cannot rationally disagree with him. This illusion is very difficult to eliminate by rational argument : the main value of contesting it is to enable others to avoid that illusion. His bow-wow way with arguments does not help; instead of attempting rational argument, he barks out asser- tions, and thinks he has proved something when he has run out of breath. He submitted a claim in 1978 to the Weights and Measures Department at Richmond on Thames, reprinted as an appendix, that the Socialist Party of Great Britain were liable under the Trades Descriptions Act. I gather this didn't succeed; I feel he was lucky not to be prosecuted himself for claiming to present rational, impeccable arguments in his book. They seem to have an air of unreality about them which is quite astonishing. I wonder whether hc realises that his prescriptions are to be applied to living, breathing human beings? Hc claims that "capitalism must be based on justice". Would that it could be! The socialist objection to capitalism is that political, social and economic oppression are inherent in it. The assertion made by Wedgwood that free contracts are possible under capitalism is nonsense; free contracts are only possible under an egalitarian society, which capitalism is not. The worker cannot make a free contract with an employer, if the employer has enough wealth to wait the longer, and enough influence to persuade the uninvolved that workers' demands and workers' self-organisation are wicked. Wedgewood supports the abolition of the right to strike—see 3:6: I. Russia and China are not socialist for similar reasons: Great Russian and Han chauvinism are still prevalent in both societies. The bureaucratic- military complexes in both blocks feel contempt for the workers, will not allow them autonomy, and have sufficient power to wait until they give in —if that doesn't work, they send in the tanks. Freedom and justice are possible, but not under individualistic capitalism or any other system which allows class divisions. COLIN D. J. MILLS,Amersham on the Hill, Bucks. 20 Ethical Record, January 1987 Thomas Paine born January 29, 1737 He was the son of a stay maker who was a Quaker at Thetford in Norfolk He was a schoolmaster and an exciseman and, having separated from his wife, went to America in 1774 where he published Common Sense in favour of American independence. He returned to England in 1787 and published Rights of Man in answer to BURKE'SReflections on the French Revolution (1,500,000 copies sold). In this he made the acid comment that "Burke pitied the plumage (MARIE ANTOINETTE) and forgot the dying bird (the French people)." He had to escape to France and was elected to the National Convention. He opposed the execution of Louis XVI and narrowly missed being executed himself. The Age of Reason appeared in 1795 and 1807. He returned to America in 1802 but was ostracised by the Government. This may have been partly for his religious views and partly for his views on slavery. He anticipated many modern ideas such as old age pensions and the League of Nations. A modern film-maker described him as "The Most Indispensable Englishman." Note: On January 29th Russia will celebrate 150 years after the death of PUSHKIN in a duel. SAM Bait

Polyglot London Museum guidebooks may be in four or five languages but though Britain has been "IN" Europe for 16 years it is notable that the only bilingual signs to be seen are those near ports and airports and in Regent's Park and Hampton Court. It is reported that Chinese signs have been put up in Manchester. Italian In No Time is the title of a book on sale in a Holborn bookshop. This is even better than the Instant Russian record sold (or unsold) a few years ago. One whole page of Chambers's Dictionary of the English Language under K contains not a single English word. It goes from KOULAN TO KRONE, KTHIBII (Hebrew) and KYRIELLE. Recent issues of the Times Educational Supplement have recorded the retreat of English in Hongkong. the advance of Irish and a school in Tottenham where one Sikh teacher speaks five languages but the school speaks 16.

The Perfect Diplomat A Worthing social worker tells us that a girl wrote to her parents "I have broken my arm. I have been sleeping with Joe and I'm pregnant. All this is lies. I've failed all my 'A' Levels". A crafty way to break the news!

Our Celtic Fringe We know the Ethical Record goes to the Scottish Humanist Council and we estimate we have about a dozen Celts in the Society. A magazine called Carn attempts to link the six Celtic nations in ALBA (England), BREMI (Brittany), CYMRU (Wales), EIRE (Ireland), KERNOW (Cornwall) and MANN (Isle of Man). The Summer 1986 number of Cam deals with the Irish in Scotland and the Militarisation of Cornwall. Militarisation is a Celtic grievance. We have heard of DAVID HUME (1711-76) but what other Celtic Freethinkers are there? JOSEPH RENAN (1923-92) was born in Brittany and wrote an unorthodox Life of Jesus. Ethical Record. January 1987 21 Man is Born Free But is Everywhere in Chains (J. J. Rousseau) The Anti-Slavery Society held its AGM on October 27th in the plush rooms of the Royal Society of Arts, opposite the Adephi. It was more like the meeting of a Learned Society and the members looked like civil servants. The membership is 1,100 and this includes five MPs and two MEPs and a number of foreign representatives-1_1v ULLMAN, SWANII AGNIVESH, SVEIN ALASKER, etc. ROBERT WILBERFORCE, WhO is 99, Was not present. By MOIRA STUART'S TV appeal the Society raised £86,000 but its financial situation has always been precarious, being dependent on philanthropists and firms like XEROX. The Society was exasperated by the sudden cancellation of the UN Com- mission on Human Rights, the Sub-commission on Minorities and two Working Groups on Slavery and Indigenous Peoples: they promoted a NGO (Non-government Organisations) Seminar in Geneva recently to replace them. The Society plans projects on child labour in Britain and Italy, on Indigenous Peoples and on Children's Rights. Two very good speakers were a Norwegian pastor who said the Norwegian Government was backing him arid an African lady who spoke of progress made against Female Circumcision. A questioner was reminded that it took WILLIAM WILBERFORCE 50 years from 1783 to 1833 to achieve the abolition of slavery in the British Empire. Quick results could not be expected. S.B.

Whetstone Park You probably imaginc that Whetstone Park is a North London Under- ground station. It is, in fact, a small alley near Lincoln's Inn about 200 yards from CONWAY HALL. It illustrates the inappropriate names we in England choose for places. LORD BYRON commented 169 years ago upon the many misnamed Paradise Streets. Until I checked with an A to Z I thought most London streets were called Victoria, Russell or Clarence, but in fact more are named after trees (Elm, Lime, Beech, etc.) than after people. Among birds the Raven enjoys a puzzling popularity : the only real ravens are in the Tower of London. In France (as STERNE used to say) they order things differently and use famous writers. Where some of these names came from is a mystery. There is a Salmons Road in Chessington which would make an archaeologist think there had been a salmon river: it is named after the builder's typist. Balham has two Bulgarian names : SHIPKA and SISTOVA. Wandsworth has ESPARTO Street. More irritating are the parkless PARKS—Clapham Park, Rayners Park, etc. Bromley has two Hayes Lanes within a mile of each other. Are the English particularly muddleheaded? In the 1930's the London County Council tried to clear up the muddle but gave up in despair. S.B.

Geoffrey Chaucer (1340-1400) Began the Canterbury Tales in 1386. Of his 30 Pilgrims, all the priests but one are rogues.

Cicero, 106-43 BC: You must look out in Britain that you are not cheated by the charioteers. 22 Ethical Record, January 1987 The Law is An Ass (Dickens) It is an astonishing fact that South Place Ethical Society never discusses English Law and I think one reason is that, after our painful financial experiences with it, we are terrified of it. It is all the more astonishing when you consider that Conway Hall is only half a mile from Lincoln's Inn. It is time some of our legalistic minds were turned on the law itself. English Law is a jungle and, what is worse, it is more like an ocean than a jungle. You can never be sure that any legal decision will hold up for more than two years. Hamlet complained of the law's delay and some of DICKEN'Sworst characters are lawyers. Yet in 1986 the law is still slow and expensive. In a recent TV programme on the Law it was admitted that no one knew how many offences there are under English law. The estimate was 50,000 and yet we all know that ignorance of the law is no defence in court. We thought blasphemy was a dead offence until Mrs. WHITEHOUSEdug it up. It is also freely admitted that the number of people in English jails exceeds that of any other European country and about 8,000 of these are only on remand. A suggestion that the judges should visit the jails was made by me on BBC Sunday many years ago and regarded as a joke in some quarters. I also made the suggestion of a change in the composition of the benches to admit women, Chinese, Greeks, Jamaicans, etc., but very little change has occurred. It is obvious why. The Law must be the biggest White vested interest in the land,•even stronger than the medical profession. It is also very much like Mediaeval Theology, a game educated people enjoy playing. We learnt at Hoddesdon that one police chief in Massachusetts, JEROME MILLER,had decided to close all his jails and hand the prisoners over to voluntary groups willing to look after them. There was no explosion. After all, in London now there must be twice as many "criminals" prowling the streets as are in jail. The figures for shop-lifting and burglary continue to increase. Lorin DENNINGsays juries are of no use for fraud cases but a fairer social system would wipe out most frauds—and the need for Lord Denning. He and LORDHAILSHAM complacently assume they can do nothing about it but an age-limit for judges might let in some fresh air. CODIFICATIONof the law they hate but it has yet to be proved that English law is more effective than the French. S.B.

Charlotte Smith 1749-1806 On October 5 •at Conway Hall NICOLASWALTER mentioned CHARLOTTE SMITHof Sussex as an unknown radical thinker. She composed 36 volumes of poems and novels, enough to support a large family, and in 1791 Wordsworth, waiting for a boat, called on her and admired some sonnets. Her first novel, Emmeline or the Orphan of the Castle, was an instant success but Desmond, attacking the English monarchy, was not. She led a wretched life, dodging creditors in Dieppe and then settling at Woolbeding House near Midhurst. She was working on a poem called Beachy Head when she died.

Margaret Halsey, 1938: When the Royal Family changed their name from SAXE-COBURG-GOTHASO WINDSOR in 1914 the Kaiser said he was looking . forward to the "Merry Wives of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha".

Copy—articles, letters, announcements, etc. for the March 1987 issue should be with the editor BEFORE Friday, January 30 please. Ethical Record, January 1987 23 South Place Ethical Society* FOUNDEDin 1793, the Society is a progressive movement whose aim is the study and dissemination of ethical principles based on humanism, and the cultivation of a rational way of life. We invite to membership all those who reject supernatural creeds and find themselves in sympathy with our views. At Conway Hall there are opportunities for participation in many kinds of cultural activities, including discussions, lectures, concerts, dances, rambles and socials. A cdmprehensive reference and lending library is available, and all Members and Associates receive the Society's journal, The Ethical Record, free. The Sunday Evening Chamber Music Concerts founded in 1887 have achieved international renown. Memorial and Funeral Services are available to members. Membership is by £1 enrolment fee and an annual Subscription. Minimum subscriptions are: Members, £4 p.a.; Life Members, £84 (Life membership is available only to members of at least one year's standing). It is of help to the Society's officers if members pay their subscriptions by Banker's Order, and it is of further financial benefit to the Society if Deeds of Covenant are entered into. Members are urged to pay more than the minimum subscription whenever possible, as the present amount is not sufficient to cover the cost of this journal. A suitable form of bequest for those wishing to benefit the Society by their wills is available from the office, as are Banker's Order and Deeds of Covenant Forms. *Registered Charity No. 251396

MEMBERSHIP APPLICATION FORM TO THE HONORARY REGISTRAR, SOUTH PLACE ETHICAL SOCIETY CONWAY HALL HUMANIST CENTRE RED LION SQUARE, LONDON WC1R 4RL The Society's objects (as interpreted by its General Committee in the light of a 1980 Court ruling) are the study and dissemination of ethical principles; and the cultivation of a rational and humane way of life; and the advancement of education in fields relevant to these objects* Being in sympathy with the above, I desire to become a Member. I will accept the rules of the Society and will pay the annual subscription of . . . (minimum £4 plus £1 enrolment). NAME (BLOCKLETTERS PLEASE) ADDRESS

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