Soviet Britain Theodore Dalrymple the Road to Real Education

The The quarterly magazine of conservative thought Soviet Britain Piracy Old and Modern Heresies Theodore Dalrymple New Brian Ridley Eric Grove The Road to Real Prince Charles India’s General Education and the Architects Election Charles Brickdale Jan Maciag S V Raju Autumn 2009 £4.99 Vol. 28 No 1 Contents 3 Editorial Articles 4 Soviet Britain 19 Crime as it is Spun Theodore Dalrymple Christie Davies 6 ‘Soviet Medicine’ 21 The Road to Real Education Charles Percival Charles Brickdale 8 Global Meltdown 22 Piracy Jonathan Story Eric Grove 11 Morality and the ‘Bottom Billion’ 25 Prince Charles and the Architects Kenneth Minogue Jan Maciag 14 Modern Heresies in Science 26 Hegel from the Right Brian Ridley Grant Havers 16 15th Indian General Election 28 Front National: an Autopsy S V Raju J L J di Costanzo Columns Arts & Books 38 Ian Crowther 30 Roy Kerridge on John Gray 31 Conservative Classic — 36 39 Sandra Clark Alone in Berlin, Hans Fallada on Milton 33 Reputations — 25 41 Anthony Daniels R G Collingwood on Cybertechnology 35 Future Perfect 42 Clifford Middleton Myles Harris on Secularism 37 Eternal Life 43 Grant Havers Peter Mullen on Nixon, Marcuse et al 44 John Jolliffe on the Quintons 36 Letters 45 Helen Szamuely on Spies 46 Tom Burkard on Truancy 47 Jeremy Worman on Novels 48 Dennis O’Keeffe on The Crash 50 Russell Lewis on Educating the Poor 51 Alistair Miller on Education Today 51 Film: Katharine Szamuely on Katyn 54 Art: Andrew Lambirth on American Art 55 Music: Nigel Jarrett on Vernon Handley 57 In Short The Third Marquis of Salisbury Managing Editor Merrie Cave Consulting Editors Roger Scruton Lord Charles Cecil Myles Harris Mark Baillie Christie Davies Literary Editor 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.co.uk he great curse of contemporary Britain is the perceptions of the causes of world poverty. The present obsessional pursuit of equality by New Labour economic crisis began through the over-regulation of Tpoliticians and their creatures in state or Quango banking which compelled lenders to give sub-prime employment. Under the dishonest name of social mortgages to paupers, so that everyone could aspire justice it is also favoured by ‘me-too’ Mr Cameron, to own a house, and to extend credit to those who who has a firmer grasp of liberal fashion than of reality. could never repay, so that everyone could feel affluent. Nowhere is this more evident than in education where Likewise Christie Davies shows the measurement vital reforms are blocked by the egalitarians. The keys and assessment of crime now depends not on the to a better education are to provide private alternatives damage done or the wickedness of the crime but on to the state system that even poor people can afford the respective social identity of perpetrator and victim. and within the state system to reintroduce selective Yet the egalitarians’ craziest demand is, as Kenneth schools based on ability. As Charles Brickdale points Minogue demonstrates, that the governments of the out the leftists in Berlin are bringing back selection economically successful nations should milk their own to improve the quality of that city’s education but in peoples to rescue the world’s impoverished ‘bottom Britain it will be prevented by the equality-obsessed billion’ in the Muslim world and in Africa. The latter’s educational establishment that sees schools not as problems clearly stem from overpopulation, something places for acquiring knowledge and understanding but that their politicians see as a source of power, as ideological instruments. and an engrained cultural inferiority that prevents James Tooley’s investigation of private schools in the development but to mention these is imperialism. As slums of Hyderabad and Russell Lewis’ assessment of usual a commitment to equality destroys truth, destroys schooling in mid-Victorian Britain before it became a sense and destroys morality. compulsory state-run system show that it is possible to It also demands communist levels of control, provide a better education for those with few resources regulation and manipulation, something Theodore than the state does. The Civitas New Model Schools Dalrymple discerns as already present in ‘Soviet Project is now providing real education with modest Britain’ with its high levels of surveillance, its incessant fees but how long will it be before the educationalists propaganda and the power of its new nomenklatura. thwart it because it is exposing just how bad the state Yet ironically, as Dalrymple forcefully points out, a system has become? large part of the controls was introduced by that great It is refreshing too to read accounts of truancy from centraliser Mrs Thatcher, who wanted to destroy the these awful schools that do not treat the truants as independence of the professions by placing a new class delinquents but recognize that they are making a rational of managers and supervisors over them. She should choice to avoid institutions in which nothing is learned and have known that all power is corruptible for other bullying is endemic and unchecked. For an intelligent and political ends. A further irony is that surveillance is eager to read lad like Sean Gabb trapped in a bad school, justified by its supposed role in combating terrorism days of truancy spent in the public library were a better and crime. But why do we need to have equal education than going to a pointless and violent school. surveillance? Why not leave the peaceable majority Yet now they want to conscript everyone until the age of to enjoy their traditional privacy and freedom and 18, as usual in the name of equality. concentrate it all on Muslim radicals or those with The pursuit of equality has likewise undermined criminal records? But there is no common sense, no our economy, our attempts to deal with crime and our moderation and no fairness in an egalitarian society. The Salisbury Review — Autumn 2009 3 Soviet Britain Theodore Dalrymple Every car journey or telephone call you make, or e mail consider recording all telephone calls and monitoring you write, is now recorded by the authorities. Go for a the use of the Internet by all citizens? Who would walk and a surveillance camera will follow you. Each have thought that it would even dare propose that time you go abroad a computer examines your personal a centralised dossier on each and every child in the files to see if you are wanted by the authorities. Soon country should be kept? Who would have thought we will all have to carry ID cards. Theodore Dalrymple that it would likewise propose an identity card system explains why, since the rule of Margaret Thatcher, we that enabled the recording of untold information about have surrendered our freedom, and why an incoming each and every person, and what is more propose to Conservative government will not return it. charge the citizen for the privilege of being thus spied Myles Harris upon? Who would have thought it would have run advertising campaigns to ask citizens to denounce t is surprising how often one another if they thought victory turns out not to they were cheating on social Ibring with it the advantages security, thus introducing into expected and hoped for, or to Britain what might be called the have an ambiguous and even Pavlik Morozov conception of harmful effect upon the victors. truth-telling? Who would have thought, for Of course, justifications of example, that within a few years all this spying, monitoring and of the conclusion of the Cold War denunciation could be, and are, Britain would have undergone given. It is true that the social so much creeping Sovietisation? security system is defrauded of No doubt a Soviet military large sums, at the expense of the conquest would have brought tax-payer; but the whole system about a swifter and much more itself is an open invitation complete Sovietisation than to fraud, besides which it is did the crumbling of the Soviet an elementary principle of Union; but there is no doubt that therapeutics that no cure should in the realm of practical reason be worse than the disease. the Soviet Union won the Cold It is true that there is a danger War hands down, at least in of terrorism in Britain, but it is Britain. difficult to see how unselective Who would have guessed that, intelligence-gathering (it would within fewer than twenty years, the British would be better to call it unintelligence-gathering) could be more comprehensively surveyed as they went possibly reduce that danger, unlike the patient about their daily business than the poor Soviets ever investigation of self-confessed extremist groups. Nor were? That, once they stepped outside the confines is there any evidence that such continual surveillance of their house, almost all that they did would be deters or reduces crime: why should it, when the photographically recorded? Attending murder trials convicted have so little to fear from the courts? The as I do from time to time as an expert witness, I am conclusion is inescapable: that the surveillance is astonished by how many of the movements of the intended not to protect or deter, but to intimidate. accused (and of other witnesses) are recorded on video We now have a nomenclatura of highly-placed cameras, for production if necessary at some time in officials, who wield great and irresponsible power, the future. We now live our public lives entirely on whose life is increasingly distant from that of the great camera; every person in the country has his Boswell majority of citizens.

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