Don't Publish & Be Damned Robert Salisbury Burmese Daze Christie

The The quarterly magazine of conservative thought Don’t Publish Gove’s Special The Stafford & Be Damned Needs Whistleblower Robert Salisbury Alistair Miller Jane Kelly Burmese Daze Letter from America Information Everest Christie Davies Matthew Walther Theodore Dalrymple Summer 2013 Vol 31 No 4 £4.99 Contents 3 Editorial 17 Does Michael have Special Needs? Alistair Miller 19 A Century of IQ Richard Lynn Articles 21 Cooling off on Gay Marriage Paul Gottfried 4 Don’t Publish and be Damned 24 Keeping the Lights On Robert Salisbury Will Emkes 6 How Julie Bailey tried to cure the NHS 25 Christ on Malibu Beach Jane Kelly Jackson Adams 8 Mountains of Information 27 The Pursuit of Happiness Theodore Dalrymple John Phelan 10 Councils of Despair 28 Doctor Johnson’s Irish Quintet Bill Hartley Peter Coady 12 Letter from America 30 The Culture Cult Matthew Walther Daryl McCann 13 Burmese Daze 32 The Pryce of Marriage Christie Davies Sarah Searle 16 A Short History of Exploding Fertilizers 33 The Swiss Robin Cave John Laylor Columns Arts & Books 41 Robert Crowcroft 35 Conservative Classic — 51 on Leviathan Eugène Ionesco’s Le Roi se meurt 42 Jonathan Story 37 Reputations — 40 on Chinese Whispers Kierkegaard at 200 43 Nigel Jones 39 Roy Kerridge on the Profumo Affair 40 Eternal Life 44 James Bryson Peter Mullen on the Church of England 45 John Jolliffe on World War II 46 Celia Haddon on Primates 48 Keith Hopkins on Dictatorship Subscriptions should be sent to 49 Christie Davies 5 Turnpike Court, Woburn Sands, on IQ Bucks, MK17 8UA 50 Alistair Miller on Introverts Changes of address or other enquiries 51 Lindsay Jenkins should be sent to the same address or on Leaving the EU by phone to 52 Mark Wegierski 01908 281601 on Leo Strauss and Conservatism Credit card payments by phone 0207 54 FILM: Ralph Berry 226 7791 on Lincoln or 55 MUSIC: Robert Hugill 01908 281601 on Singing 56 THEATRE: Ralph Berry on Criticism 58 In Short Editor: Myles Harris Managing Editor: Merrie Cave Consulting Editors: Roger Scruton Lord Charles Cecil, Jane Kelly, Christie Davies, Ian Crowther 33 Canonbury Park South, London N1 2JW Tel: 020 7226 7791 Fax: 020 7354 0383 E-mail: [email protected] Web site: http://www.salisburyreview.com he cheers as Margaret Thatcher’s cortège passed Milk Snatcher – but it is unlikely that a politician of her seemed uncertain against a background of booing mettle would have been so weak. She knew the country Tfrom leftists scattered among the crowd. Since was bankrupt and without money we were sunk. She the Iron Lady left politics, self-reliance, profit, family, concentrated on the country’s enemies plain in view: the country are words best kept to yourself. It is no longer unions, state run industries and confiscatory taxes. She respectable to make a public demonstration of one’s believed that as people reaped the benefits of capitalism conservatism. Community, integration, globalism, a prosperous Britain would engender its own social multiculturalism and diversity are the new coin. To trade reforms. She was wrong. While Britain grew more in anything else is thought crime. If she were alive she prosperous, our schools and universities were under would ask, ‘Should the state govern our thoughts as well relentless assault by out of office Marxists. They knew as our words?’ that a people who can barely read or write, have no grasp Thanks to two decades of an education system devoted to of the fundamentals of modern science, who are ignorant social control, people are no longer sure. An entire generation of their own history, cannot govern themselves. An élite has been brought up to believe not only in censorship of the must then do it for them. They were that élite. By 2010 spoken word but of our innermost thoughts. You can hear the work had been done. Our schools had been turned into that control in the conversation of the young. They wince at holding pens where nothing was taught, while further up forbidden words such as ‘black’, ‘queer’, ‘nation’, ‘straight the system an entire generation of semi-illiterates, many marriage’ or ‘flooding with immigrants’. No need for a brandishing degrees, had been created. British Stalin. We are as terrified of speaking out as anybody It is therefore surprising that Labour has not directed on the Moscow Underground in 1937. more of its firepower at the Gove education reforms. It was why, following the Tory party’s defeat at the Perhaps, confident of sweeping victory in 2015, they are last election, David Cameron was forced to create a non- sure they can reverse them, or that the collective change lethal political Vichy. He could not say Tory things, so he of mind they have engineered in the young is irreversible signed a pact with the Liberal Democrats. They would and, with the coming of press censorship following murmur the political orthodoxies while he got on with Leveson, any remaining dissent can be stamped out. dismantling Labour’s inheritance. However like Vichy, It is why education would be the priority of Mrs Cameron is merely housekeeping for a foreign power. Thatcher today. Her reforms would be sweeping and Labour, even out of office, still rules. Labour’s political mostly reverse the changes she made in the eighties as machine, tuned to an education system of their creation, Heath’s inexperienced Minister of Education. We would decides what can be said or not said, whose cause is to see tax relief for private schooling, the restoration of the be advanced, whose to be destroyed. 11 plus, the return of grammar schools, the reduction of Rising welfare payments, unlimited immigration, press fake universities to polytechnics and the return of the old censorship, secret tribunals, anonymous denunciations, apprenticeship system. dawn arrests of journalists, white male stereotyping, Without the self knowledge a robust education system the undermining of the family, all continue. Labour has brings, the nation will fall apart, not just into England, converted their absurdly misconceived political policies Scotland, Northern Ireland, but into tribalism, corrupt into unchallengeable moral positions. Today arrest awaits and fragmented government, even street fighting among anybody who publicly condemns many nostrums of the left. religious fanatics. Then all we will be able to comfort Like Petain in 1943, David Cameron is helpless. ourselves with are the words of the Empress Theodora Thatcher came to power in 1979. It is said she was of Byzantium, who when urged to flee the coming horde, reluctant to tackle the education system because of her but insisting she remained, remarked, ‘For my part I like experience as Minister of Education – Thatcher the the old saying – the Empire is a fine winding sheet.’ back to contents page The Salisbury Review — Summer 2013 3 Don’t Publish and be Damned Robert Salisbury Tory believes in the nation. He therefore also It all sounds curiously reminiscent of today’s believes in the nation’s institutions and nurtures proposed Royal Charter. A both jealously. The future of his polity depends Things did not improve at the Restoration as the upon it. Of course, as a Tory he recognizes that, as the Clarendon government under Charles II established tight world changes, so national institutions must evolve; controls over the press, giving only one individual the but, equally, he knows that revolutionary change right to publish an official newspaper and investing him deracinates. Like Montesquieu, he understands that in with the duty to act as censor for official publications. old polities institutions mould men, rather than men It was only when the Licensing Order lapsed in 1694, institutions. Successful institutions provide stability. as a result of the Declaration of Rights of 1689, that The Leveson report triggered a government surrender press publication exploded. Swift, Addison, The Tatler to the combined power of celebrity and the left of and Spectator mesmerised this country and a similar centre establishment that should alarm any Tory. It is avalanche of free comment and debate launched itself not just because that David Cameron sent Mr Letwin in the thirteen American colonies. to surrender to the enemies of press freedom in their The results were profound. In America the new own railway carriage that should worry us. It is rather press freedom facilitated the colonists’ efforts to share that the Prime Minister thought that losing one vote in their profound attachment to Liberty. In this country, the House of Commons would do him more damage freedom of debate and freedom to attack political than sacrificing an essential liberty which keeps the opponents and national institutions, often unfairly, nation’s institutions clean. unleashed movements over the following century that Readers of this magazine will know how long the made the abolition of slavery, parliamentary reform and battle for freedom of the press was. The invention of scientific development impossible to resist. printing made it almost impossible for governments to The law, too, was forced to catch up with what press control information. This did not mean that governments freedom had unleashed. Parliament, for instance, did not try. As early as the reign of Henry VII, the passed the first copyright act in 1710 and, by 1774, crown appointed a printer (1504) which it hoped would the courts had held that copyright was not permanent enable it to control the new technology by embracing and therefore could be limited in duration. it. Printing privileges were granted sometimes verbally, What is interesting about all this is that established but more often under the Great or Privy Seals. institutions, especially governments, resisted press The Sixteenth Century is littered with proclamations, freedom.

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