Peter Hitchens's Blog, page 183
November 6, 2015
George Bell - a new development
I am delighted to see that The Times has today (Friday 6th November 2015) published a letter from several men, now in their 60s and 70s, who were choirboys at Chichester during the latter years of the Bishopric of the late George Bell. I cannot reproduce it in full because it is behind a paywall, but a few quotations will suffice:
"All of us recall him as a loved, respected and saintly figure., a bishop whom we perhaps knew better than choristers would today because back then we spent so many more weeks of the year singing services than cathedral boys do now..."
They say the revelation that compensation has been paid and that the Church has accepted that George Bell was a paedophile is 'not only shocking, but incredible to us'.
'For the accused to speak in their own defence is fundamental justice. we are among the very few who actually remember him when alive. George Bell was a shy person who stammered - an upright, entirely moral and devout figure who meant a great deal to us as children. We fear he has been smeared to suit a public relations need.'
I urge you to obtain and read the whole thing, especially the long list of names at the end. Perhaps it is a sign that this issue is not as closed as some seem to want it to be.
George Bell : T.S. Eliot Speaks
For another independent opinion on Bishop George Bell, anonymously accused of sexual offences many years after his death, I am grateful to 'Haffers' who has commented on my article on the Spectator site, for this recollection of George Bell by T.S.Eliot. I think this might be seen as the words of a character witness, and to underline that this was an actual person we are talking about, not a shadowy and forgotten figure in some elevated pulpit:
On 30 Dec. 1958 T S Eliot recorded a contribution for the programme ���The Way of Life��� (broadcast on the Home Service, 18 Jan. 1959): ���In my memories of Bishop Bell, four
meetings stand out. The first memory is of a weekend, which must have been in 1930 or 1931 [actually Dec. 1930, when TSE had recited Ash Wednesday to a party which was at
once impressed and bewildered], when I was a guest at the Palace in Chichester. Mr Martin Browne had been appointed by the Bishop [in 1930] his Adviser on Religious Drama for
the diocese, and Mr and Mrs Browne dined with us: out of that meeting came the invitation in 1933 to write the Church Pageant which became ���The Rock���. I remember also that Dr
Bell travelled up to London with me on the following Monday; not having consorted much with bishops in those days, I found it strange to be journeying with a bishop in a third-class
railway carriage. On that journey, the Bishop spoke to me about Dr J. H. Oldham and his work for the Church and the World: and so that weekend brought about my acquaintance with two men, Mr Browne and Dr Oldham, with whom I was later to be closely associated in quite different activities.
The second of those four meetings which are clearest in my
memory was also to have important consequences for me: it was on a summer afternoon in 1934 walking in the garden of the Palace that Bishop Bell proposed that I should write a play
for the Canterbury Festival, the Festival which he had originated when Dean of Canterbury and in which he retained a warm interest. The result was ���Murder in the Cathedral���. A third
meeting was in Stockholm in 1942: the Bishop arrived on the day on which I was to leave. We all know now, what I did not know then, why Dr Bell had come to Sweden: it was no
fault of his that the conversations he had there led to nothing. [While lecturing in Sweden for the Ministry of Information, Bell had been made privy to a German plot to assassinate
Hitler: when he conveyed this information to the Foreign Office no credence was given to his report ��� but it turned out two years later that the names he had vouchsafed to the British
authorities turned out to be those of officers executed by Hitler after the attempt on his life.] And the fourth meeting was at a conference which he had assembled in Chichester, I
think also during the War, to discuss the place of the Arts in the life of the Church: among others present, I remember Mr Henry Moore, Sir Edward Maude, and Miss Dorothy Sayers.
���These four meetings, chosen by my memory from among others, illustrate the varied interests and activities of the Bishop, outside of the regular duties of a diocesan which he
carried out so faithfully: his interest in the service which Art could perform for the Church,and no less in the inspiration and employment which the Church could give the artist; his
interest in the Oecumenical Movement, of which there is ample documentary evidence; his interest in foreign affairs and his sense of the international responsibility of the Church and
of churchmen. He and another of my friends, Duncan-Jones the late Dean of Chichester,were men of very different type, but in two respects in which they were both outstanding,
they had much in common. The Dean made the Cathedral the musical centre of the diocese; the Bishop, by his patronage and encouragement of drama and of the plastic arts, made his
diocese an exemplar for all England. And both Bishop and Dean, during the 1930s, were tirelessly outspoken in their protests against the religious and racial persecution taking place
in Germany.
���My first impulse, in speaking of the impression which George Bell has left upon me, is to say that he was a ���loveable man���. On reflection, I find that in applying this adjective, I am making it a compendium of all the qualities for which I loved and admired him. These include a dauntless integrity: no ambition could ever have deflected him from whatever course he felt to be right, no fear of the consequences to himself could ever have prevented him from speaking the truth as he saw it. With this went modesty and simplicity of manner, the outward signs, I believe, of inward humility. A friendly man, and a man of genuine piety ��� in short, a good man and an honest man.���
November 5, 2015
George Bell and the Presumption of Innocence
Many readers here will be familiar with my interest in the late George Bell, the controversial Bishop of Chichester who( among other things) opposed Winston Churchill's deliberate bombing of German civilians in the war.
Long after his death, the Bishop has been accused of child abuse. I believe that he, like any accused person, is entitled to the presumption of innocence and has not been allowed it.
This article in this week's 'Spectator' gives my position
http://new.spectator.co.uk/2015/11/the-church-of-englands-shameful-betrayal-of-bishop-george-bell/
The Church of England statement on the matter is here:
And two of the three newspaper accounts of the matter are here
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/22/church-of-england-bishop-george-bell-abused-young-child
The swift renaming of a building once named after him is described here
http://www.chichestercathedral.org.uk/visiting/_folder1/
And the BBC's radio 4 'Great Lives', in which I made the case for his greatness, can be listened to here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01rl8n8
November 4, 2015
Killing Your Own People - A Brief Guide to When It's Acceptable
In a recent broadcast debate about intervening in Syria, I heard some pro-intervention blowhard (a poppy-bedecked Tory MP) saying it again. ���Assad��� (no honorific of course) was ���killing his own people���.
This was said with such force that you might think that it was a) original and b)trumped all argument. Why is this? All governments kill their ���own people��� from time to time (in the course of keeping order or at least claiming to and not least by conscripting them into wars in which they die by thousands, in the course of killing somebody else���s people, which is perhaps all right, though not always). In Britain we have tended to avoid domestic killings of our own people on a large scale since Bloody Sunday in Londonderry in 1972 ( I am not defending this stupid blunder. I protested against it at the time and have never regretted doing so. In fact the more I have learned about it the more I have been glad that I did protest, see
Nowadays we stick to the occasional police shooting of suspects, not always fully justified.
No doubt the Assad state is pretty filthy (I wrote at length about the Hama massacre of 1982 when most people had never heard of it and were only interested in the deaths of Arabs when Israel was responsible) and the attitude of the West towards it has varied, on occasion sending people to be horribly mistreated in its appalling torture chambers ( see the astonishing case of Maher Arar described herehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maher_Arar) , at other times moralising about them.
But in the last few weeks, this country, has happily hosted (and fiercely suppressed peaceful protest against) the Chinese regime which undertook the Tiananmen Square massacre, killing its own people on a grander scale than any other modern state, is not in any way apologetic about it, and which still maintains an appalling record for the suppression of dissent, including the punishment of lawyers who dare to defend dissidents.
Britain has sent a senior envoy to the appalling despotism of Saudi Arabia, where peaceful protestors are imprisoned and publicly flogged. It has opened a naval base in Bahrain, where the regime tortures opponents and has killed at last 80 of its own people in recent years.
We are now hosting visits by the Egyptian soldier Abdel Fatah el-Sisi, who came to power in a military putsch, cramming opponents into (often secret) jails, and killed hundreds of his own people in raids on protest camps in Cairo in August 2013; and by the Kazakh despot Nursultan Nazarbayev ( see here for details of this unlovely ruler http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2010/11/the-dictator-with-a-royal-warrant-why-has-prince-andrew-been-to-kazakhstan-six-times-in-seven-years.html
He also ���kills his own people���. In fact he shoots them in the back, most notably at Zhanaozen in December 2011, when armed police opened fire on unarmed strikers as they fled. At least 16 died.
Now, look, I am not saying we should have nothing to do with these grisly regimes. Oil is oil and trade is trade, and strategy is strategy. All I am asking for is grown-up discourse. If we must behave in a friendly fashion to such people we simply cannot claim that the butchery and cruelty of President Assad is the reason for our intervention there. This is babyish propaganda, designed for backward children, and we should be ashamed to transmit or accept it.
In which case, what is the actual reason? And if we knew it, would we support the destabilisation and ruin of Syria, or our continued support for the overthrow of Mr Assad? I suspect not, and I suspect it is shame at the real reasons for our behaviour that makes Mr Cameron and his colleagues reach for this infantile propaganda. Why do educated, adult journalists connive at this rubbish?
November 2, 2015
Do We Have to Wear Poppies?
Sometimes I feel tempted not to wear a Remembrance Day Poppy because I don���t like the way people are pressed to wear them. This has nothing to do with what I do or don���t contribute to the British Legion, which is nobody���s business but my own. I mistrust publicised charity and would rather people think I was a mean cheapskate than that I was a noisy Charidee supporter.
The words of Christ in the Sermon on the Mount (Gospel according to St Matthew, sixth chapter, verses two and three) seem quite straightforward:
���Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth: That thine alms may be in secret.���
The argument for wearing a Poppy is not to make a declaration of virtue, but to encourage others to do the same, so increasing the amount of charity given to those devastated by war. You probably shouldn���t do this if you haven���t made a contribution yourself. And you are under no obligation to do it. It is a voluntary act of love and respect, not an attempt to win points through apparent goodness. And the practice of party whips thrusting poppies at MPs before Question Time, or broadcasting organisations equipping guests with poppies before going on air (I have heard of both things happening) seems ( at least) dubious to me.
If you don���t want to wear one, don���t. If you want to wear a White Poppy, then you should be free to do so. Pacifism (with which I disagree) is a legitimate opinion which should be openly expressed and debated, and implies no disrespect to the dead of war (many of whom were far from enthusiastic about the wars into which they were conscripted, or disillusioned by wars for which they originally volunteered).
I used to be a bit of a militant poppy-wearer myself, and now recall with a bitter-sweet mixture of amusement and sadness a dinner celebrating my birthday, to which my late father invited me and my late brother, in a rather good North Oxford restaurant, a surprising number of years ago. I���d guess it was the very late 1970s, perhaps pre-Thatcher, certainly in the depths of the Cold War. In those days I had a NATO sticker on my car, to annoy all my CND neighbours with their stupid ���No cruise missiles��� posters or car-stickers.
My birthday falls in late October, and my brother upbraided me for wearing a Poppy so long before Remembrance Sunday, though I had the strong impression he was telling me off for wearing it at all. I seem to recall an era when he wouldn���t wear one because the little plastic black disc in the middle, when poppies came on bits of wire, bore the words ���Haig Fund���, and he , not unreasonably, didn���t want to help commemorate Earl Haig. I think that had vanished by then. In those days he was definitely not a Cold Warrior. The reluctant sympathy for Mrs Thatcher which he recounts in his memoir ���Hitch-22��� was likewise extremely well-hidden. Those interested in his precise opinions on national defence in those days should look up the words ���I don���t care if the Red Army waters its horses in Hendon��� and see what they find. My father, who never enjoyed our fraternal quarrels and who preferred Trafalgar Day to any other warlike commemoration, was bemused.
Many years later, I found myself visiting Washington DC in late October or early November and called on my brother, who was ostentatiously wearing a Canadian Remembrance Poppy (which looks a lot more like the actual flower than the English one, with its absurd leaf). I laughed inwardly at the transformation, and later strolled round to the British Embassy in Massachusetts Avenue, to obtain an English one.
But, having lived through long years when many fashionable people in politics and the media disdained the Poppy altogether, I am puzzled by the conformism that now seems to apply to it, and which began in the New Labour era. It reminds me of the odd transformation,of the Labour Party, hostile to the Polaris and Trident nuclear deterrent when it was actually some use, militantly in favour of it long after its purpose has gone. The position is so incoherent and and so fervent that I can't help wondering what they really think.
A few weeks ago, on October 16th, I noticed a TV news reporter already wearing a Poppy and thought it absurd so long before the actual Day of Remembrance. Now I see that the actress Sienna Miller, about whose life and opinions I know and care absolutely nothing, has been upbraided on Twitter and by some MP for not wearing a Poppy on a television chat show which I did not watch.
According to Mr Rupert Murdoch���s ���Sun��� newspaper: ���SIENNA Miller has been blasted for failing to wear a poppy on Graham Norton's BBC chat show. The actress, 33, was a guest with Burnt co-star Bradley Cooper who did display the red flower of remembrance.
Norton, Dame Maggie Smith and Alex Jennings also paid respects on their lapels. Twitter fans slammed Miller and the Beeb over Friday's show. TheShowOff85 said: "Why is Sienna Miller not wearing a Poppy? Has she refused? If yes why is she allowed on the show? Disrespectful cow." Kcthelegend asked: "Why was she allowed on without one" and CJLeader68 wrote: "Shame Sienna couldn't be a role model & wear a poppy.
" Tory former defence minister Sir Gerald Howarth stormed: "There should be no excuse for not wearing one so we can honour the war dead." The BBC said guests decide whether to wear one.
A source close to Sienna said: "She was wearing the poppy pin but it was taken off as she went on air as it was pulling on the clothes."
Well, I find the remarks: ���Why is she allowed on the show?��� and ���There should be no excuse for not wearing one���, dispiriting and sad.
I am now and always will be moved by Remembrance Day. As each year passes I think more of the pain and the loss, and less of the splendour and ceremony. I describe, in my book ���The Rage Against God���, the impossibly gloomy, soaking services I used to attend as a schoolboy, when almost everyone present around the granite cross in the freezing drizzle had personally seen the snarling face of war, and many had recently lost people dear to them.
But I am also aware of the spirit in which the men went to those wars, and the spirit in which those who survived returned, and it was not a spirit of bombastic super-patriotism, nor of intolerance.
I think they would say and think ���If you don���t want to, you don���t have to. It was the other lot, the ones we were fighting, who insisted on compulsory contributions to the boxes they rattled, and demanded an outward show of support for political conformity���.
In the end, what else was it they were fighting for, other than the freedom not to be pushed around and told what to wear and what to think? If people are going to be bullied into wearing poppies, then the time may come when people of conscience may prefer not to wear them. What memory, exactly, do we seek to honour? That of the noisy politicians, who made those wars, and the noisy newspapers that supported the policies that led to them, or that of the men who, as is inscribed on several moving memorials (does anyone know who wrote them?) all over what used to be the Empire ���left all that was dear to them, endured hardness, faced danger and finally passed out of the sight of men, by the path of duty and self-sacrifice, giving up their own lives that others might live in freedom. Let those who come after see to it that their names be not forgotten���.
As I read these words I see a lighted doorway in a small terraced house on an autumn evening, and a slight man in his twenties, in army uniform, embracing his wife and small children as he sets out on a journey from which he will not return. It does not seem to me to be an occasion for telling other people what they should feel, think or wear.
November 1, 2015
Democracy? That just means being ruled by secret cliques
It is grimly funny to listen to leaders and supporters of a supposedly ���Conservative��� party using the word ���unelected��� as a form of abuse. I know the Chancellor is peeved that he failed in his dismally planned and badly executed attempt to make a lot of poorly paid people worse off. But I think that he and his media toadies speak from the heart when they rage against the House of Lords.
I suspect that David Cameron and George Osborne are thoughtless and fashionable republicans, who can think of no good reason to keep the Queen ��� though at the moment they dare not admit this. It���s not that they actively want to set up a guillotine in Trafalgar Square. It���s just that they wouldn���t waste any tears if the Crown were abolished. Knowing little and caring little about the past, they see no merit in it.
Real conservatives are in favour of all kinds of unelected power and authority.
As well as the Monarchy, there���s the Church, the judges, not to mention the chiefs of the Armed Forces, parents, privately owned media companies, the BBC, school heads ��� and the thousands of strivers who have won the freedom to hire and fire through hard work and business success.
Democracy plays little part in these things, and a good thing too. To say that you are an elected politician in modern Britain isn���t much of a boast.
It means mainly that you have been picked by a narrow selection committee of politically active careerists and fixers to stand in a safe seat. Backstairs-crawlers, flatterers and obedient conformists naturally do well in this process.
These days it also means that you have been approved by some secretive group of whisperers clustered round the party leadership, who can also remove you if you show any signs of independence.
And we see the results in the Commons every Wednesday, when the backbenchers of both main parties show all the wit and independence of football hooligans, braying mindless applause for their own leaders, and equally mindless abuse for the other side. And then they humiliate themselves by asking tame, planted questions handed to them by the whips.
These whips have power over them because they, not the voters, are their real employers. They can give them well-paid jobs if they are obedient and get them deselected if they cause too much trouble.
That is why the House of Commons was so useless over the tax-credit row, and why the Lords, for all their faults, spoke for the people. Any proper conservative would have known that all along.
No blood, no gore... but truly terrifying
So often I want to watch a film or a TV series, and hesitate to do so because of the violence. I expect I will eventually go to see the new Bond movie, though I shall hide behind something during the eyeball-squeezing bit. And I���m not sure I can face the new Jekyll And Hyde.
Above: Deborah Kerr in the 1961 film 'The Innocents'
I suspect there are millions like me, who���d watch more willingly if we were spared grisly scenes. I enjoy being frightened by films, but not by explicit gore.
The most terrifying thing I ever saw in a cinema, thanks to the carefully built-up drama, was in the ancient black-and-white film The Innocents, based on Henry James���s The Turn Of The Screw. My skin actually crawled with horror. But it was just a woman in black, her pale face filled with despair and grief, glimpsed across a lake in broad daylight.
Fighting to get into my own country
As our population climbs towards 70 million thanks to unrestricted immigration, it gets steadily harder and nastier to get back into my own country. I sometimes think the ���Border Force��� work on the principle that if normal British people want strict frontier controls, then they can jolly well have them, hot and strong, and serve them right.
While alleged Syrians (whose passports have somehow vanished) leap unhindered from the backs of lorries all over the Home Counties, and vanish promptly into the low-wage workforce, actual documented British citizens must queue for ages to pass through poorly manned passport control.
There, we have no more right to enter the country than a Lithuanian retired secret policeman. And we are treated with unjustified suspicion. On Thursday a ���Border Force��� person wearing pseudo-military shoulder insignia glowered at my wholly valid passport before asking me where I had come from, which is my business, not theirs.
Above, migrants moving north in Denmark
I have a Chinese friend who bravely resists his own country���s arrogant authorities by challenging such officiousness. And in tribute to him, I replied politely that I was not obliged to answer such questions.
My decision to behave like a free Englishman rather than a potential suspect caused a startling amount of shock, tooth-sucking and frowning, and led to the appearance of a supervisor who told me I should learn the law (as it happens, I have done, and the question was not justified). I said he could detain me if he liked, but he didn���t.
I wonder how many illegal migrants fanned out across the country while I and others were subjected to the stone-faced, suspicious inefficiency of the Border Force? Should I take my holidays by lorry in future, if I want to be treated with respect and courtesy by officials whose salaries are paid by my taxes and yours?
At last, the clocks of Britain are telling the truth again. Noon is at noon, dusk falls at the proper time and I can see my garden in daylight before I leave for work. Enjoy it while it lasts. The Eurofanatics still want us on Berlin Time all year round.
The Chief Constable of Gloucestershire, Suzette Davenport, says she wouldn���t ride a bicycle in London because the roads are too dangerous
Police put us on the road to ruin
The Chief Constable of Gloucestershire, Suzette Davenport, says she wouldn���t ride a bicycle in London because the roads are too dangerous.
Ms Davenport is the National Police Chiefs��� Council spokesman on roads. I ride a bike in London (and in many other places, too) so I feel justified in assuring her the danger to cyclists is real, and largely the fault of the police.
My readers will know that the police long ago abandoned foot patrols (despite repeatedly claiming that this non-existent ���beat��� is threatened by cuts). But my observations as a cyclist all over the country suggest to me that they have also stopped patrolling the roads by car. Since cameras became common, police patrols have become a rarity. The result is plain to see ��� much more risky driving, many more lights jumped, zebra crossings ignored, blatant speeding on suburban roads, far more generally rude and inconsiderate behaviour, and a return of the drink-driving that had been greatly reduced by the breathalyser.
It���s all made even worse by the growing number of drivers who have taken illegal drugs, whose possession Ms Davenport and her colleagues do so little to discourage.
If she and her fellow officers did their job, it would be safe for her ��� and millions of others ��� to ride a bike. And this healthy, clean and quiet form of transport would become normal, as it is in Holland, rather than the choice of eccentrics like me, or of self-righteous, lawless fanatics in Lycra.
October 25, 2015
Who needs a nuclear fleet? We surrendered to China long ago
This is Peter Hitchens's Mail on Sunday column
How comical that the Government plans to spend ��20billion on a new superpower nuclear missile fleet when it has already sold this country to the Chinese police state.
Who will be frightened by this unusable, overblown Cold War weapon?
Not China, for sure. They already know we are led by gutless worms who won���t defend our independence or our way of life. Last week, in return for some dubious and overstated investments, we handed over the heart of our capital to Peking���s security goons, some of whom allegedly intimidated and photographed British protesters.
They also marshalled a disturbing rentacrowd of Chinese students. These citizens of the People���s Republic wisely obeyed their vigilant embassy���s orders, and held up pro-Peking banners (quite possibly made in prison camps) flown in by the Chinese embassy.
They blocked protesters from view and drowned them out with arrogant drumbeats and blaring loudspeakers ��� a blatant breach of the regulations of the Royal Parks, where this was going on. The police did nothing at all.
They were busy elsewhere. While Parliament, Premier and Palace prostrated themselves before this despot, a brave few objected to his presence. An alarming but little-shown piece of TV film shows what happened to one of them.
He stood alone, close to the path of the Chinese leader���s procession. In each hand he held up a small placard (making a nonsense of excuses that he might have been hiding a weapon or a bomb). One said: ���End autocracy.��� The other read: ���Democracy now.���
The man���s name is Shao Jiang. He witnessed the massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators in Peking���s Tiananmen Square in 1989 so he knows in detail what modern China is really like, as most of us don���t.
Suddenly he was barged by a police officer in a crash helmet, quickly joined by two colleagues, who pushed him backwards at the double, as he feebly protested. I have watched the film at least 50 times and can see no justification for the level of force used. But I can explain it. It looks as if the police were ordered at all costs to ensure that China���s leader did not see or hear any protests.
(Here, at just after 4 minutes 20 seconds (no whingeing, please, about the exact time), is film of what happened to Shao Jiang:
Two Tibetan women, who did no more than try to wave the flag of their stolen country, were also arrested.
All three were held overnight, on suspicion of offences which expert lawyers think are quite absurd, and which look to me as if they were devised to keep them off the streets until the Chinese leader had gone home.
They must wait until Christmas to find out if they will be prosecuted. Worse still, their homes were raided and searched, and some personal possessions removed, just as they would have been in Peking. This, for holding up a couple of placards and a flag? Where are we, exactly?
It looks to me as if David Cameron and President Xi did indeed discuss freedom, law and civil rights in their private meetings. And that China���s despot persuaded Mr Cameron that the Chinese way of dealing with opposition was better than ours.
If I weren���t so ashamed of my sold and submissive country, once so free and so proud of being free, I���d burst out laughing.
At last... Brand admits he's a loser
People who take part in debates (as I often do) tend to claim victory. There���s no scoreboard, so if you have enough nerve, you can usually carry this off whether it���s true or not.
But there���s always one sure sign that you have lost. It���s when you can���t bear to watch a recording of the encounter.
So my thanks to alleged comedian Russell Brand, against whom I recently argued about illegal drugs on BBC���s Newsnight programme.
Mr Brand has tried (and failed) to keep footage of our encounter out of a new film about him, proof as far as I am concerned that he was the loser.
Shameful slur on a Christian hero
The Church of England hasn���t often produced great men in modern times. But I have long believed that George Bell, Bishop of Chichester from 1929 to 1958, was such a man.
Not only was he among the first to see the menace of Hitler, and to aid the Christian opponents of German National Socialism. He also protested against the stupid treatment of German anti-Nazi refugees, rounded up by dimwits in the early months of the Second World War.
He gave up his beautiful palace for the use of others during that war.
Above all, he voiced the Christian conscience of the nation by criticising Churchill���s deliberate bombing of German civilians when it was deeply unpopular to do so. I happen to think he was right, but right or wrong he was acting as he believed Christ, his true Lord and master, would have acted. If he���d kept his mouth shut he would almost certainly have become Archbishop of Canterbury. He died in 1958, leaving no children but a great memory.
So I was aghast to read in several newspapers (two of them supposedly conservative journals of record) that George Bell ���was��� a child abuser. Not ���allegedly��� but ���was���. The Church was also said to have ���admitted��� or ���acknowledged��� the dead Bishop���s guilt.
Well, nothing is impossible. But the alleged offence took place more than 60 years ago, and wasn���t alleged until 1995 (when he had been dead for 37 years). One report complained it hadn���t been referred to the police at the time. What were they supposed to do? Exhume him and question his bones?
As usual, we may not know the name or sex of the accuser, though money has been paid to him or her in compensation.
But there has been nothing resembling a trial. No evidence has been tested. No defence has been offered. No witness has been cross-examined. No jury has given a verdict. Yet this allegation is being treated as if it was a conviction. Once again I see the England I grew up in disappearing. What happened to the presumption of innocence and the right to a fair trial before a jury of your peers?
I know the C of E has had real problems with child abuse in recent years, and has a lot of apologising to do. No doubt. But was it wise or right to sacrifice the reputation of George Bell, to try to save its own? Who defended the dead man, in this secret process?
As the prophet Isaiah once remarked: ���Judgment is turned away backward, and justice standeth afar off: for truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter.���
This is why I continue to believe there is one court of justice where no lies can be told and all secrets are revealed. I���ll leave the final appeal to a higher authority than Lambeth Palace.
We have lots of coal, but won���t use it because fanatics claim it hurts the planet. We demolish expensively built and efficient coal-fired power stations.
Meanwhile, we destroy our steel industry by forcing it to pay huge green taxes also meant to discourage the use of wicked coal. The result of this? More steel is made in China, which is building coal-fired power stations even faster than we are blowing them up.
Oh, and having destroyed our own superb nuclear industry by dogmatically privatising it, we���re paying foreign state enterprises to build nuclear power stations, which will make electricity at prices nobody can afford. And I���m supposed to believe our Government is competent.
October 22, 2015
Please watch the events shown at 4 minutes 20 seconds into this film
Please view the events shown at four minutes and 20 seconds into this C4 News item
I make no comment on them at present, as I am still trying to ascertain the full facts about these events.
But I think they should be widely known about.
What Happened the last Time a Chinese President Came to Britain
Some of you may recall the last time a Chinese President visited this country, during the Blair Dynasty of the New Labour Era. The issue of the police treatment of protestors was much discussed.
I looked out these cuttings from the 1999 visit.
This, from ���The Scotsman��� of 1st November 1999���, is especially interesting now that the Cameron Dynasty has taken over, but we are still clearly in the New Labour Era:
���THE Tories last night seized on new evidence suggesting Foreign Office collaboration with Chinese security services to orchestrate the crackdown on human rights demonstrators during the visit of Jiang Zemin.
John Maples, the shadow Foreign Secretary, is to table a series of questions in the Commons asking how closely the Foreign Office worked with the Chinese and the police on deciding tactics to deal with protesters during last month's visit by the Chinese president.
Mr Maples said he believed that Robin Cook, the Foreign Secretary, could have approved plans for the police to adopt a tough line on human rights and pro-Tibetan demonstrators.
He said the leading Chinese dissident, Wei Jingsheng, detained by police during demonstrations close to Buckingham Palace, had alleged that plainclothes Chinese security police had pointed out to British police various Chinese protesters in the crowd.
Yesterday, Foreign Office sources also confirmed that its security adviser in the protocol department, Barry Strevens, a former police Special Branch officer, had worked closely with the Chinese on policing arrangements during the visit.
That included Mr Strevens asking Cambridgeshire police, during President Jiang's visit to the university city, to block off a road with police vans after the Chinese complained that the agreed counter-demonstration plan was not being followed.
"There was very close planning here," Mr Maples said. "It looked to me very organised and very heavy-handed. I can't believe that the Foreign Office did this without ministers' encouragement." The Foreign Office confirmed in a written answer last Thursday that Chinese embassy officials took part in some meetings with the Foreign Office, the police and Buckingham Palace officials to plan for the visit. John Battle, the Foreign Office minister, told Ann Clwyd, the Labour MP for Cynon Valley, these liaison meetings were standard practice before state visits to enable all sides involved to discuss preparations.
But Mr Battle also said the Chinese had been told to expect public demonstrations and that the police would be given a free hand by the Government to decide on the most appropriate policies towards the protests. Foreign Office sources insisted last night that this cooperation was not out of the ordinary, and said that officials were obliged to inform the police of Chinese attitudes towards demonstrators.
"There would have been an outcry if something dreadful had happened and Foreign Office hadn't bothered to liaise with the police. These state visits don't organise themselves," one source said.
"But we also made clear to the Chinese that protests were inevitable and that the policing was a matter for the police. We told the Chinese they would have to put up with whatever happened, although it wasn't put as crudely as that." The senior official denied that Mr Strevens had been directly involved in policing the protests. His role in Cambridge was to provide "practical liaison on the arrangements" already agreed between the police and the Chinese delegation.
But the opposition remains convinced police attitudes were influenced by the clear message that the Chinese hated protests, and that the visit was of great political and economic importance to the Government.
Mr Maples said these suspicions were heightened by the admissions last week by Sir Paul Condon, the Metropolitan police commissioner, that his force's tactics may have been mistaken.
Mr Maples said he now would ask the Foreign Secretary to disclose how many similar meetings took place, and who attended them, to plan a similar state visit by the Hungarian premier recently.
He will also ask whether Chinese police acted as "spotters" for the Metropolitan police���
The ���Guardian��� of 23rd November 199, noted:
���During Mr Jiang's last engagement in Cambridge, local police - seen consulting Chinese security officials - moved three vans to block the sight of jeering, placard-waving pro-Tibet demonstrators who greeted him as he arrived outside the university library. But they made no attempt to block the larger number of pro-China supporters.���
The police then looked into the matter, and on 5th March 2000, the Daily Telegraph reported :
���ROBIN COOK will come under fire this week as a Scotland Yard report blames the Foreign Office for ordering police to crack down on protesters during last autumn's state visit to Britain by the Chinese president.
The report on the affair, which follows protests from Scotland Yard about the Foreign Office's "political interference", will propose strict guidelines on how future state visits should be policed.
Senior officers have confirmed that the Foreign Secretary's officials leaned on the police to provide a heavy presence and specifically asked for demonstrators to be held back from President Jiang Zemin's convoy.
The motive, say senior Home Office insiders, was not to safeguard Mr Jiang's security, but to spare him being embarrassed by Britons protesting peacefully against his country's record on human rights, democracy and Tibet.
The report, which will be handed to Jack Straw, the Home Secretary this week, will call for future discussions between Mr Cook's officials and the police to be recorded in detailed minutes. It will also propose that guidelines on policing state visits should be openly published.
Public anger flared last October at the way the Metropolitan Police and the Cambridgeshire force acted to prevent demonstrators from being visible to Mr Jiang during his tour.
In London, police confiscated Tibetan flags, while permitting Chinese flags. Later, in Cambridge, police were accused of parking vans in front of demonstrators to hide China's critics.
At the time, Scotland Yard admitted having discussed security beforehand with the Foreign Office. But John Battle, the Foreign Office minister, denied that the police had been given "special instructions".
Later, after questions in Parliament, Mr Battle said that police had met Foreign Office and Chinese officials eight times before the visit when "the concern of the Chinese authorities about the possible impact of demonstrations was discussed".
Scotland Yard even suspected that the demands being relayed to them had originally been dictated by Beijing. During the visit, a Chinese official gave warning that any anti-Jiang demonstrations would "undermine" Sino-British relations. One Home Office insider said yesterday: "The police have insisted that they are never put into this position again. The report reflects their concerns." Although the report will not confirm that the Foreign Office exerted improper pressure on the police, the recommendation that future discussions should be minuted will be seen as confirmation that the "official version" of events was not accepted by the police. Alison Reynolds, director of the Free Tibet Campaign, said she had been shocked by the handling of the visit. "People even had their bags searched for Tibetan flags. It was more reminiscent of China than of Britain." The Free Tibet Campaign is suing the Metropolitan Police. If the action goes ahead as planned, on May 3, Government officials may be questioned in court.
A Foreign Office official denied political interference. He said: "The discussions were no different to the planning meetings held before any state visit." The talks, he said, had been to decide logistics, such as routes and timing, and to ensure security and public safety. The official said Britain was obliged under diplomatic convention to protect "the dignity" of state visitors.���
On 4th May 2000, the ���Independent��� reported :
���SCOTLAND YARD admitted yesterday that its officers unlawfully removed banners and flags from demonstrators protesting against last year's state visit by the Chinese President.
The Metropolitan Police also agreed that it would be against the law to use their vans to screen President Jiang Zemin from the protesters, but argued that the tactic had been used to maintain public safety.
The two declarations were made by police in the High Court yesterday after legal action by the Free Tibet Campaign. The organisation claimed the Met had adopted a policy of removing flags from demonstrators lining The Mall, in central London, and of using police vans to block protesters.
An inquiry was carried out into the policing of the visit after widespread complaints that Scotland Yard and Cambridgeshire police had used heavy- handed tactics.
An internal Met investigation found that although the Foreign Office had pressed the police to prevent protesters from disrupting the President's five-day visit the Government had not used improper influence.
In an agreed statement the Met said at the High Court yesterday that "it was unlawful for individual officers to remove banners and flags from people solely on the basis that they were protesting against the Chinese regime on The Mall on 19 October 1999".
A carefully worded additional declaration stated that "it would be unlawful to position police vans in front of protesters if the reason for doing so was to suppress free speech".
But the Met denied vans were used to "mask" demonstrators outside Buckingham Palace and the Chinese embassy. The police contend that the presence of the vehicles was necessary to prevent "a breach of public order".
The police statements were made after the Free Tibet Campaign agreed not to seek permission to launch a judicial review against the Met for its actions. But Alison Reynolds, the campaign's director, insisted yesterday that the Met had followed a policy of removing anti-Chinese material.
Ms Reynolds pointed to the Met's internal review that acknowledged that the police had been told to search spectators for flags and banners "because of the threat to public order and the dignity of Jiang Zemin".
She said: "We took this court case because we believed the police action during the state visit was unacceptable and unlawful. The police have now admitted their methods of policing were illegal. This is a victory for the democratic right to peaceful protest in this country - something sadly lacking in Chinese-occupied Tibet." Assistant Commissioner Ian Johnston said the visit was "a tricky area for our colleagues to deal with and we didn't get it entirely right. We accept absolutely the blame for that." The internal Met report left officers in no doubt that the visit was sensitive. Michael Messenger, overall operational commander, told his officers: "It would be very embarrassing to the Royal Household, HM Government and particularly the MPS [Metropolitan Police Service] if any demonstrator is allowed to confront the Chinese visitors or throw anything towards the visiting party."���
Compare and contrast this story from the ���Daily Mail��� of 13th November 2003:
���SCOTLAND Yard has laid down the law to the Americans over the security arrangements for the state visit of George Bush next week.
Senior officers say they will not go out of their way to spare the President ' embarrassment' from antiwar protesters during his three-day trip.
Armed members of the U.S. secret service, who will be accompanying Mr Bush, have been told to adhere to strict rules of engagement on when they can open fire - or risk being prosecuted.
Metropolitan Police chiefs say they will not be intimidated into bringing London to a standstill with unnecessary exclusion zones to protect Mr Bush and insist they, not the Americans, are in charge of security.
During a press briefing at New Scotland Yard yesterday, one of the Met's most senior officers went to extraordinary lengths to insist they had not come under any American pressure.
However, the Daily Mail has learned that there have been disagreements between senior British police and American officials over the level of restrictions on protesters and the number of agents in the President's secret service who are being allowed to carry guns.
Senior police sources describe Mr Bush's trip as 'a nightmare' and said the Americans wanted to turn London into a 'little Washington' by closing roads for miles around, hours before the motorcade passes.
But Deputy Assistant Commissioner Andy Trotter played down suggestions of a row, saying: 'There has been no pressure from anyone else about exclusion zones.
'Our main concern is to make sure that the visit is secure. 'As appropriate we will close roads to facilitate movement of the President's convoy. But we will keep this to a minimum.' Protesters will be barred from walking down Whitehall and into Parliament Square as police enforce the ' Sessional Orders' exclusion zone around Westminster which prohibits marches when Parliament is sitting.
The main demonstration, ending in Trafalgar Square, is due to take place next Thursday after Mr Bush has laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior in Westminster Abbey and held talks with Tony Blair in Downing Street.
It is planned that an effigy of the President will be dragged to the ground in Trafalgar Square in a 'rerun' of the toppling of Saddam Hussein's statue in Baghdad near the end of the Iraq war.
Mr Trotter said 5,000 police officers will be involved in the security operation for Mr Bush's visit.
The cost is expected to run into millions.
Police say they will not be heavy-handed with demonstrators so long as they are peaceful and officers have no plans to remove banners as they did during the state visit of the Chinese President Jiang Zemin four years ago.
Mr Trotter said protesters would be allowed to get close to Mr Bush. 'There will be no intention from us to spare anyone's embarrassment and we have come under no pressure from anyone to do this,' he said.
London Mayor Ken Livingstone, an ardent critic of the war, insists that the demonstrators be given as much freedom as possible.���
October 19, 2015
To my critics on the subject of drugs - I was Right and You Were Wrong
Beneath a strangely changeable headline (I shall return to that), the Guardian has today confirmed what I have long said. Cannabis possession is no longer treated as a crime in this country, in all but a few exceptional cases.
The article, as published in the paper, is now available on the web only in this form:
http://www.pressreader.com/uk/the-guardian/20151019/281496455129010/TextView
with the headline : Cuts force police to give up targeting cannabis use���
This is also the headline on the version on page one of the actual printed version of the newspaper.
But it was originally published (the previous afternoon, the Guardian generally does this) with a different (and in my view much more accurate) headline
���Steep fall in cannabis offences points to silent relaxation of drugs policy���
The introductory paragraphs are also significantly different.
The later version, in the paper but no longer on the website says :'Shrinking police budgets have led to a creeping unofficial decriminalisation of cannabis possession as official figures suggest forces are prioritising more serious crimes��� .
The earlier version, on the website but not in the paper
says: ���The number of cannabis possession offences in England and Wales has plummeted since 2011 as forces divert shrinking budgets into tackling more serious crime and officers rein in stop and search.���
For my money, the first headline suits the second story better, and vice versa. And the strange gulps and ���all perfectly normal��� noises I got when I rang the ���Guardian��� gave me the strong impression that something had gone wrong.
It���s interesting anyway. I tend to think the ���unofficial decriminalisation��� is the better explanation���. And claims of ���prioritising other crime��� or ���manpower shortages��� or ���shrinking budgets��� are so much bunkum, which wouldn't be swallowed by anyone who knew any history (a small and shrinking number, but there).
I���ll explain why. The main reason, of course, is that the Police of England and Wales, by comparison with 50 years ago, have far more officers, both in raw numbers and per head of the population. They have been freed of the statutory duty to secure commercial premises (done by private security now), no longer have to enforce parking laws(done by councils) , no longer have to organise prosecutions (the CPS took that over years ago) and they (still) have thousands of non-uniformed back-up staff, obtained in recent years, to cope with a lot of the paperwork which they didn���t have 50 years ago. It seems to me they have also more or less given up the old-fashioned road and motorway patrols, handing this function over to speed cameras, which of course don���t deter drunken, drugged or plain bad driving the way those patrols used to do.
When they don���t do something, it���s because they don���t want to.
If the police want to do something (and I���m sure my more observant readers will have noticed this) then huge resources are available for it, plus noisy processions of high-visibility vehicles, and the police���s private air force of helicopters.
As for why they don���t want to do things, anyone can understand why plodding the streets in the cold and the rain on your own isn���t attractive, compared with a nice warm car or an even warmer desk. Plenty of excuses for that (I���ve heard them all, don���t bother).
In the case of drugs, I suspect the reason is a mixture of two things ��� the growing number of funky ���progressive��� police officers and police chiefs, who don���t actually disapprove of drugtaking or believe in the law; and the tiny penalties imposed for cannabis possession when it is prosecuted. Why plunge yourself into months of paperwork and witness duties for a ��50 fine that probably won���t get paid? Especially when confiscating an illegal substance is itself a complicated and difficult job, laying officers open to all kinds of risks if they don���t follow the rules to the letter. But deep down, the main reason is that the police have realised the government and the courts (which are heavily influenced by the government through ���guidelines���; and ���training���) don���t care about cannabis possession, and don���t want to see offenders brought before them. So they don���t.
A couple of years ago I was more or less howled off the stage for suggesting that the ���war on drugs���, of which we hear so much, had never actually existed in this country, and that England had covertly and quietly decriminalised cannabis, the main technically illegal drug.
The Guardian���s story is just the next stage in this 45-year saga.
Why was this simple and accurate factual history of real events so unwelcome?
Because bogus claims of a mythical and draconian ���war on drugs��� were essential to the powerful, influential and wealthy campaign for full drug legalisation, now nearing success in many Western countries. The next step (for them) is the cancellation of the international treaties which still forbid the open commercial sale of cannabis, heroin and cocaine.
These treaties are barely enforced ��� the US Federal Government does nothing to suppress the open defiance of them by several states in the USA, and the covert defiance of them by this country, which simply doesn���t enforce its own laws, and hasn���t for decades. But for full effect, they want the treaties, and the resulting laws, wholly gone.
Imagine the vast profits to be made in such a legal trade, aided by advertising and the internet.
Imagine the huge taxes which could be raised by increasingly debt-plagued national treasuries. No need to imagine those, see
Essential to this bogus case was the claim that there had been a serious attempt to suppress drug abuse through legal sanctions which was to blame for the mess in which we now find ourselves.
Also essential was the equally bogus claim that this phantasmal ���war��� had a) failed and b) was ruining the lives of thousands with its brutal penalties.
Although the main source of my facts was a man called Steve Abrams (now alas no longer with us), perhaps the single most effective campaigner for the relaxation of cannabis laws who has ever lived, my book and my attempts to defend it were met with a hailstorm of invective, personal attacks and a sort of verbal spume designed to draw attention away from what I had actually said. None of these attacks questioned my facts, which I thought interesting.
Decriminalisation began in 1969 with the Wootton Report, the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act which followed most of that report���s recommendations - and was hugely empowered by Lord Hailsham���s 1973 instruction to magistrates to cease jailing offenders for cannabis possession. But it took even clearer shape after the Runciman report, commissioned in 1997 but not delivered until 2000.
Dame Ruth Runciman (like everyone invited by the government to report on this subject, a reliable social liberal) admitted that the supposed penalties against cannabis possession were rarely if ever imposed, though noted that there was too little consistency about this and sought to achieve *more*consistency. Crucially, she also pointed out that, within international conventions, *the Government has great room for manoeuvre in how it applies the law*.
Almost all Western governments, some more slowly than others, have grasped that they can fulfil their obligations by maintaining official illegality, but not in practice enforcing it. On paper, Britain���s regime looks draconian, as drug propagandists are quick to point out. But the maximum penalties prescribed are virtually never applied, or even approached, and most of those who break the law are not even arrested, let alone proceeded against. The one exception among modern law-governed advanced societies is Japan, which still applies a strict law and has much lower cannabis usage. A recent Home Office report suggested these facts were not really connected, and that Japan���s lower drug use resulted from ���cultural��� factors. Maybe so, but weak laws undermine cultures. Strong laws preserve them. Britain's culture was pretty anti-drug before the long decriminalisation began.
Soon after the publication of the Runciman Report, the Association of Chief Police Officers(ACPO), without consulting Parliament, altered the law of England and began adopting the ���cannabis warning��� as the preferred response to an arrest for possession. ACPO is now defunct and has been replaced by the National Police Chiefs��� Council, whose spokesman told the ���Guardian��� ���Cannabis possession has never been treated as a top priority���.
Let me just repeat that with my emphasis on a single word : ���Cannabis possession has never been treated as a top priority���. Quite - and after the ���warning��� has let everyone know the police���s real attitude, the next stage is plainly just to do nothing at all, so it drops out of the statistics altogether, like so many other things that used to be crimes and aren���t (car-theft, bike theft, burglary, vandalism, shoplifting etc) even if we���re still fool enough to think they are.
Well, that���s the truth, and no mistake, and the blethers about concentrating resources on wicked dealers , ���hard��� drugs ( as if cannabis weren���t hard as nails) etc are ( as I show in my book) just that, blethers. The numbers prosecuted for these offences vary little from year to year, and the penalties are pretty feeble. Users of supposedly more wicked heroin and cocaine get off just as lightly as cannabis users.
It���s nothing to do with cost or manpower. It���s because they don���t want to pursue the matter, because they know the government (while it pretends to be firm and ���tough��� in public) privately doesn���t want them to. Cannabis, as a former head of the Flying Squad, John O���Connor, said in February 1994 ��� has been a decriminalised drug for some time now���. Why wouldn���t he have known?
Now, to all those who smeared and mocked my book, how about an apology? I was right. You were wrong. It couldn���t be clearer. But I know you won't say sorry, and I know why not, too.
Peter Hitchens's Blog
- Peter Hitchens's profile
- 299 followers
