Peter Hitchens's Blog, page 319

Keeping Out the Oiks, and other spurious arguments against Grammar Schools

Comment of the week comes from Christopher Charles, who wrote (first quoting me):  'A non-selective school system is as absurd an idea as a swimming pool without water, or an aeroplane with no wings." Was the school [attended by]PH and his brother 'selective'? Not making a dig here, but the only criterion for getting in was one's ability to pay, wasn't it? I went to a Grammar School. For all the talk of meritocracy, it was an almost exclusively middle class place. The working class kids went to the Sec Mod down the road. There's an awful lot of tripe said and written about selective education. What its defenders are saying [if they're honest and they seldom are] it's about keeping out the oiks.'

I'll come on to 'keeping out the oiks' in a minute.  First, of course, I wrote of the absurdity of a non-selective school *system*. Such a system might well contain schools which at least appear to be non-selective themselves, but are part of such a system even so. Once again, I should point out that my most concentrated explanation of the grammar school/comprehensive problem is to be found in a long and closely researched chapter,  'The Fall of the Meritocracy' in my book 'The Cameron Delusion' (originally published as 'the Broken Compass') . I recommend it to anyone interested in the subject.

The private schools which I attended were selective in various ways. Of course, they were able to select through parental income, the principal mode of selection in British schooling today. By charging fees they also created a contract between parents and school which meant that there was a far stronger parent-teacher alliance than in schools where there are no fees.

The preparatory schools I attended (I don't think the USA has any equivalent of these fascinating and often bizarre establishments, where the minds of so many of the British elite  are formed) did have entrance tests of a sort. I seem to remember a general knowledge quiz, and a short essay, plus an interview with the Headmaster. And I suspect that the point of this was to provide an excuse (if one were needed) for refusing a child they didn't like the look of.

But the minor public school I and my brother went on to (where he stuck it to the end and I lasted only two years) was definitely academically selective. That is, it relied on the Common Entrance examination, in those days a pretty rigorous set of papers on major subjects,  tougher in many ways than modern 'A' levels. Your score in this decided whether you got in at all, and which stream you were placed in, though in fact it was closer to what is now called 'setting' than to streaming, since I was in the 'C' stream, for maths and 'sciences' and the 'A' stream for everything else. 

The entire public school system (US, private school system) was and is in itself graded and selective, with schools varying between the grandeur of Eton and Harrow and the workful obscurity of establishments like my own. In my time, arriving in 1965, the minor public schools were pretty dingy academically, having been outdistanced by the post-1944 grammar schools. Also their ancient and often Edwardian or Victorian traditions of discipline and austerity were pretty much incompatible with the 'Never Had it So Good' world outside, let alone with the moral and cultural revolution.  Reading Hugh Walpole's 'Jeremy at Crale' recently, I was struck by how recognisable this late-Victorian fictional public school was to me, born in 1951 – and how completely baffling it would be to anyone born in the past 40 years.

Anyway, what were we going to need those stiff upper lips for? The empire was gone, and the next war would just be mass incineration in which individual acts of bravery would be futile and unnoticed.

My own view is that many of the minor public schools would have vanished by now if the grammar schools had not been killed off.

Which is where we come to Mr Charles and to the BBC4 TV programmes in the 'Secret History' series, which for the past two weeks have examined the grammar schools.

I had a particular interest in these programmes,  for a specific reason. A few years ago I was contacted by a very senior BBC executive, who invited me first to dinner and then to lunch, to say first how much that person thought I should be making programmes, and next, how much that person wanted me to make a programme for BBC4 about …grammar schools.
The executive's own experience with comprehensive schools had not been a good one. My strong pro-grammar school views  - and knowledge of the subject – seemed to mean that I was an ideal person to present such a programme.

I had got as far as proposing a production company, known to me, to handle the actual filming when suddenly the BBC executive ceased to be friendly,  strange and absurd excuses began to be offered for abandoning the project, and as far as I was concerned, it was dead.

I suspect that it was similar to other experiences I've had at the Corporation, where politically naïve persons interested only in programme-making have put me forward for panels or presenting roles in programmes,  because they thought I might be good at it, and have eventually come up against the hissing, white-hot loathing of people such as me which exists in the higher echelons of the Corporation, and which was so beautifully demonstrated by the unembarrassed transmission of a show-trial of me (in my absence) by Radio 4's Feedback programme a little while ago, documented here and elsewhere (see index) . I'll never know, though the missed opportunity has grieved me ever since. In the weeks when I thought I was going to make that programme, I floated several inches above the ground, full of the anticipated joy of having a chance to make a really good job of a really good case before a new audience.

So I looked with a keen and critical eye at the programmes that were made. They were good in a way, in that they showed that for so many people, 'oiks' included, the grammar schools were a liberation. Whatever Mr Charles says, I'm more inclined to believe the testimony of Roy Strong, who recalled his grammar school teachers  (themselves far from rich) slipping money into the pockets of some of their poorer pupils to help them in their penurious lives, and in their studies.

Sir Roy's testimony (which involved, as in several other cases, his breaking down in tears at the memory of the teacher  who had changed his life for the better) was moving, well beyond my power to describe, and everyone should find it, if they can, on the i-player (it is in the second of the two programmes).  There were many other affecting scenes of this kind, and others detailing the joy and self-sacrifice of grammar-school parents,  which must have made clear to anyone that the grammar schools did a great deal of good, and are a terrible loss to our educational system

But in the commentary, delivered by an unidentified voice, and written by I don't know who, there were lots of little statements unsupported so far as I can see by any facts, about how by 1965 experimental comprehensives had been proved to work, and how many parents didn't like selection, and about how awful the Secondary Moderns were. Then there was the usual stuff about the desolation of failing the eleven-plus, and some incoherent twaddle apparently suggesting that grammar schools were incompatible with the age of the Beatles.

And we had three politicians, Michael Portillo, Paul Boateng and Neil Kinnock, giving what seemed to me to be unequivocal testimony that in their lives, grammar school had been a bounty and a boon. Mr Portillo was pretty specific about how much he deplored the end of selection. Well, perhaps I haven't spotted it, but I have seen no sign of any of these three lending their names to campaigns to restore the lost grammar schools, for children from homes which aren't rich, but who happen to be alive today rather than 50 years ago. Perhaps I've missed it. Maybe it is yet to come.

By contrast, the admirable Robert McCartney, a Northern Irish politician whom I know and for whom  have great respect, hymned his grammar education on the programme, and campaigns for them now with all his might, bless him.



In the meantime, let us deal with the 'arguments' which are paraded against grammar schools over and over again, and which go unchallenged anywhere but here.

1.Yes, failure to get into a good school is hard to take. But is it any worse to be told that you have failed to get into a good school because you have failed an examination than it is to be barred from such a school because your parents are too poor and nobody cares if you would have passed the exam or not? And not even to know until later in life that you were cheated?
2. Yes, the 11-plus may well have been too rigid. So why not do as the Germans do, and select by assessment, allowing appeals and reconsideration within reason?

3.Yes, there were many areas with very poor grammar school provision. So why not open new grammar schools in those areas?

I could say much, much more about this. But my basic point is this – that all the valid criticisms of grammar schools have force. But none of them are answered by shutting most of  them down, and replacing them with a system that selects entirely on postcode and wealth.

(WARNING. The duff argument about the inaccessibility of the few surviving grammar schools, wholly distorted by the fact that they are restricted to small areas, often in commuter range of London, has been dealt with at length. Anyone intending to make this dead point is urged to consult 'grammar schools' in the index here, thoroughly, before boring us all with it again. This problem does not exist in Northern Ireland, which still has a completely selective system despite the efforts of Sinn Fein to shut it down).

Kickboxing and Scotland – some responses

I had meant to deal with Scotland and other matters in my previous post, and in just a second I shall do so but the grammar school issue ran away with me because it still seems to me to be astonishing that no major political party favours the return of these excellent schools.

By the way, on the issue of streaming and setting, and why a top stream in a  comprehensive school can't replicate the effects of a grammar school – it can replicate some of them.

But the institutional force of an entire school devoted to excellence, the traditions, honours-boards, esprit de corps of a school, rather than the functional effects of some selection inside a school which cannot provide these things, seem to me to be very important.

And perhaps Mr Charles will thinks this is about what he calls 'oiks', but many comprehensives are burdened by large numbers of boys and girls who are having to endure a (rather bad) academic education they do not want, when they would prefer vocational education, or to be out in the world, working. If such people are in your class, they can sabotage your whole education.

But even if they are in the same school, they can undermine many of the things a good school needs, particularly a united sense of purpose, plus peace and safety. This is especially important if your home life is chaotic or hostile to learning. 

It's also my view that comprehensives, if they are to have big enough sixth forms to be practical, will themselves be far too big for anyone to control properly. This problem doesn't arise in a grammar school, where everyone is destined for the sixth, so a decent-sized sixth form can be maintained in a relatively small school. Oh, and for many people, a return to Secondary Moderns, spoken of in tones of horror,  would probably mean a better education than they get in their current comprehensive, and almost certainly not a worse one.

Back to Scotland. I'm asked by Mr Wooderson :  'What lesbians and kickboxing have to do with this. Is it supposed to be self-evident? Are Ruth Davidson's admittedly unusual (but not greatly so) lifestyle and choice of hobby somehow symbolic of the Scottish Tories' removal from the mainstream? Would it be different if she were a heterosexual tennis player? I've no idea." Somebody else describes this reference as an 'unpleasant personal remark'.

I have no interest in the sexual choices of the leader of the Scottish Conservatives. Has anyone who contributes to this site ever, ever asked anyone what his or her sexuality is? I wouldn't dream of doing so. I think it a private matter. But Miss Davidson has publicly declared this choice.  It is the facts *that she thinks that it matters, and that she has chosen to make it public*  that interest me. This is a political position as well as a lifestyle choice.

I suppose I must admit that I might have been unfair to mention her kickboxing (which seems to me to be a bit of a marginal activity, verging on the laughable for a politician. Here I should confess that I have been known to do Pilates Yoga myself, so who am I to talk?) . But there's a certain euphony about the phrase 'Lesbian Kickboxer', and who knows what sort of comments I would have attracted had I used the word 'Lesbian' on its own?  I think kickboxing is a more marginal sport than tennis, and that it conjures up an image that is more marginal. The two together are about as far as it is possible to get from the granite image possessed by Scottish Unionism when it was a major, dominant party.

But it is surely a reflection of the fact that the Scottish Tories are now so small and irrelevant that they are led by someone who chooses to go public about what many people regard as a private choice.

Political parties which are close to power generally seek to be, or appear, as mainstream in their appearance and way of life as they can. Their public spokesmen and women dress more conservatively, speak more cautiously, live more cautiously. Sometimes they even get married.  In the case of New Labour, they pretended to the point of agony to be fascinated by Association Football, in the belief that it was the mainstream sport of the voters.  The Tories would do this too, but they know nobody would believe them. Whether they should or should not do so is irrelevant to this discussion. They do, and judge it wise to do so.

Parties which have little or no hope of office indulge themselves, speak more openly and are less cautious about such things as radical and unconventional lifestyle choices. Once again, this is a fact (see Hugh McDiarmid, referred to below)  whether anyone likes it or not.

The fact that she worked for the BBC for seven years may in fact be more telling. But it doesn't bear on the marginal nature of the Scottish Tories who (let us face it) are not well-represented at either Westminster or Holyrood, but who used to be a major Scottish party.

Anyway, if and when the  UK Tory Party (or the SNP, or the US Democratic party, or the German Social Democrats) chooses as its leader an ex-BBC lesbian kickboxer, we'll see if this status has any relation to being marginal.

Quite how it's 'unfair' or 'insulting' I'm not sure. Lesbianism, whatever your opinions may be about it, simply is not a majority lifestyle choice.  I was contrasting the days when Scottish nationalism was represented by the (to me)  marginal figure of Hugh McDiarmid (real name Christopher Murray Grieve),  hairy-faced Communist and alleged poet, and the days when Scottish Toryism is represented, and led, by a person who wants us to know that she is a lesbian. Would this be the case if the Scottish Tories were a mainstream party? Would the SNP now welcome Grieve as a major spokesman?

I certainly didn't pick up my knowledge about Miss Davidson from a story in another paper. I met (well, shared a TV studio with) Miss Davidson in Glasgow last year and so became aware of her and her opinions (for this is really about opinions) before most English journalists knew of her. I was unsurprised to find soon afterwards that she was apparently David Cameron's   favoured candidate for the Scottish Tory leadership. Her rival wanted to wind the whole thing up and start again. 

I am grieved that a contributor here has stupidly and wrongly posted a comment under my name. I have removed the comment, though I have left in place a number of reactions to it. This is simply not acceptable behaviour. It should not be repeated. The person involved will be written to.

William Dove asks a penetrating question: 'I'm willing to accept that Mr Cameron will do almost anything to stay in office and so would secretly like Scotland to leave (taking Labour MPs with it) and so give him a majority. But have you not also in the past said that Mr Cameron likes NOT having a majority so that he govern more easily as a Liberal with the Lib Dems. Is there any contradiction between these two views or are you assuming (perhaps reasonably) that Cameron will not have the Lib Dems to fall back on next time round. Forgive me if I've misunderstood or misremembered your views on the subject. '

Yes, I am assuming that , if not next time then fairly soon, that even with Lib Dem support (which he would prefer to rely on) Mr Cameron may lose his majority to Labour unless Scotland is removed from the United Kingdom Parliament. Also, his leadership is a process. He is increasingly filling his Parliamentary Party with people like himself. And the 'Tory Right', spineless and absurdly loyal, is shrivelling before our very eyes, especially after absurdly taking Mr Cameron's 'non-existent 'Brussels veto' at face value,  so he may not need 'the Lib Dems made me do it' excuse forever to get his way. In fact it is quite possible that he will in effect merge the Lib Dems with the Tories at the next election, when the Lib Dems are certain to undergo a Parliamentary collapse. It's also quite possible that the Lib Dems (who I predict will split from the coalition at least a year before the 2015 election) will ally with Labour after that election if it suits them to do so.)

Why is old age so much more merciless to men than to women? I don't know. But it certainly is.

I think Mr Hodson may well be on to something.  Teaching seems to me to be increasingly conformist and bureaucratic. What then will happen to the often-eccentric and awkward men and women who are often the best teachers?

I think there is no doubt that Scotland is subsidised. But most civilised countries subsidise their less-prosperous and more sparsely-populated regions, and I don't see why the United Kingdom should be any different.

As for a Scottish Parliament, for good or ill the two countries did not, at Union in 1707, merge their legal systems. Nor did they merge their national churches.  That is because they were and remain deeply different. These differences are profound, but can I think be sustained within a United Kingdom, and we will all be better off if they are. Two parliaments, one Crown, seems quite workable to me, with good will, and without the machinations of the EU.

I was interested (but disappointed) that nobody spotted the remarks about the weird constitutional position of London.

A free Scotland? No, it's being fed into the Euro-blender

If David Cameron wants to hurry Scotland out of the United Kingdom, he is going the right way about it. The more he says he loves the Union, the more I fear for it.
For all his bluster, he must know that the SNP has a moral mandate to hold a referendum on independence when it wants to do so. Placing legal obstacles in its way will rightly anger reasonable Scots.

I have seldom seen a clearer example of someone setting out to achieve the opposite of what he claims to want. Mr Cameron would guillotine the Queen in Trafalgar Square if he thought it would keep him in office. So breaking up the country for the sake of a parliamentary majority would not be much of a strain for him. And getting the Scots out of Westminster is his best hope of such a majority.

How on earth do we find ourselves in this mess? Only 40 years ago, Scottish Nationalism was a weird fad, preached in garbled tones by hairy communist poets and funny old ladies. Tory Unionists held dozens of Westminster seats. Now Nationalism is a mighty force, led by an astute man, close to attaining its goal. Unionism is dead and the Scottish Tories are a laughable remnant of eccentric bystanders led by a lesbian kickboxer.

But it is not Alex Salmond's cunning that has brought this about. It is the European Union, which needs to turn this country into manageable chunks before it can feed it into the Euro-blender and destroy it for ever.

Notice how any part of the UK can have a referendum on reducing the powers of London (and Northern Ireland can vote to leave the Union altogether, any time it wants to).
But nobody can have a vote of any kind on reducing the powers of  Brussels, let alone on leaving the  EU. The truth is obvious, but nobody observes it.

Brussels rejoices to see Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland becoming ever more separate from England. It would like to see England itself Balkanised into 'regions' – and the new multicultural republic of London under President Boris is a major step towards that.

As it happens, I love Scotland. I value its huge contributions to our joint history in thought, war, invention, industry and literature. I think it should make its own laws. I think it is quite right that England, far bigger and richer, should subsidise it. But I do not think it can be truly independent. It is too small, and not rich enough.

And before anyone mentions Scandinavia, they should look at the troubled history of that region, its tiny nations repeatedly occupied or menaced into subjection by more powerful neighbours. All an independent Scotland could hope for, until the EU came along, was a grim, pinched future on the fringe of Europe.

Now, it can either be a part of a United Kingdom, sharing a long and mostly happy history, a love of liberty, an astonishing inventiveness and industry and remarkable valour in war; or it can be a province of the Brussels empire, granted all the toys and trappings of nationhood but actually far less free and autonomous than it is now.

Brussels would be happy to let Scotland (like Ireland) have a flag and an anthem. There would be Scottish EU passports, token Scottish armed forces, a Scottish international dialling code and internet  code, Scottish postage stamps and a Scottish Broadcasting Corporation.

The political classes of Edinburgh and Glasgow would be able to feast on Brussels money. But every important decision would be taken by the EU. You can see why this appeals to professional politicians. But it is hard to see how it would help normal men and women. Yet, unless we all fight our  way out of the EU, our country will be broken up and our flag made meaningless.

Old age shows no mercy to women. Nor does this film

The makers of the incredibly nasty new film about Lady Thatcher seem to have been mainly worried that the feminist sisterhood might attack it. I expect that is why they invited my anti-sexist, right-on opposite number, Suzanne Moore, to a private dinner with the film's star, Meryl Streep.

Ms Streep cooked her own-recipe apple pie for Suzanne and several other notable media women. By contrast, they didn't even ask sexist, reactionary little me to a preview, though their PR firm ceaselessly invites me to free advance showings of other, less interesting films.
Well, never mind. I can afford my own ticket and saw it on the night it was released, so you don't have to.

After much thought, I have decided that it is one of the most cynical, unpleasant and cruel films I have ever seen. It will be  a pity if it makes anyone rich. I am certainly not a Thatcher-worshipper. But nor am I a Thatcher-hater. And I think you would have to hate her quite a lot to approve of this film.

Many of us – even if we do not now know it – will sink into the dementia which she has suffered. Why, the people responsible for this film may themselves end their days as tragic husks of what they are now.

Will they, their friends or their families think it proper to make a public spectacle of this decline while they are still alive? It wasn't necessary. It was wrong. And because old age is so much more merciless to women than it is to men, I think the right-on feminists should join me in protesting.

We need low-speed rail... and lots of it

The campaign against the new high-speed rail line through the Chilterns is overdone. Railways don't do nearly as much damage as motorways, and I can't remember anyone fussing much about the hideous, irreparable scar made in the Chilterns by the M40, visible 20 miles away.

But if there's money to spare for building railways, what we need is low and medium-speed lines that go where we want to go, not bullet trains between big cities. Our island is  so small that a 125mph maximum is quite  high enough.

The lunatic mistake of the Beeching cuts, which left dozens of medium-size towns without a station, needs to be reversed. And perhaps above all, England needs a decent East-West link for both passengers and goods.

Here we Gove again...

I wondered how long it would be before Michael Gove said he would make it easier to 'sack bad teachers'. Every Education Secretary in living memory is eventually reduced to saying this. Nothing changes, and it won't until they bring back grammar schools.

 

Does Immigration cause Unemployment? And other matters

Discovering the causes of things is one of the most difficult tasks we face. The obvious answer is often wrong –the whole basis of the Sherlock Holmes stories is based on this simple truth. So is the history of science, and indeed much of the history of everything.

Simple answers and single causes are usually wrong, because the world is more complicated than that. So I would never claim, for instance, that the huge amount of immigration into this country in recent years had 'caused' the high levels of youth unemployment. Apart from anything else, I believe ( and believe even more confidently, following the Andrew Neather revelations often discussed here - see index udner 'Neather, Andrew') that the Blair government encouraged mass immigration as part of its project to transform Britain into somewhere else. If this was its purpose, it was very successful, especially in London, which is now a multicultural global city, not an English or a British one.

In fact the development of London into a distinct fifth province of the UK ( as mentioned in my previous posting) is one of the most startling changes we have undergone.

Obviously no government deliberately sets out to create youth unemployment. On the contrary, huge efforts are made either to reduce it or to mask it by shoving the jobless young into various educational or training courses which mean that they are off the books. So if the mass immigration has had this effect, it is a) a secondary effect, and b) unintentional.

Why unintentional? Largely, I think, because of the left-wing elite's enormous blindness about education. For five decades now, the left has been using the state education system as an engine of egalitarianism. Schooling has been a secondary purpose. But it has never admitted publicly that this is the case. It has pretended that in some way this scheme is designed to improve education – or that it is compatible with efforts to improve schooling.

Both these claims are simply untrue. Education is unequal in its very bones. Not everyone is equally clever. Not everyone can be above average. And knowledge cannot be taught without authority discipline, selection, effort and competition between pupils for the top prizes. A non-selective school system is as absurd an idea as a swimming pool without water, or an aeroplane with no wings.

So during these 50 years of egalitarianism, those responsible have had the choice between admitting that they were wrong, or in demonstrating the truth of Einstein's maxim that doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different result, is a sign of madness.

Aggressive inspection, superheads, exhortation, national curricula, literacy hours, grant maintained schools, academies, more exhortation, crackdowns on bad teachers, the gimmicks and schemes, come and go, and the standards continue to fall. The schools, for the most part, fail to teach academically-inclined children properly, and also fail to teach vocationally-inclined children properly.

Meanwhile the 'Abolition of Fatherhood Act, 1968' ( a reasonable name for the raft of anti-marriage legislation, the series of case law judgements destroying the rights of husbands and fathers after divorce, and the decision to subsidise fatherless families, all dating from around that year) , continues to be implemented vigorously everywhere, so that more and more children come from chaotic or undisciplined homes, where there is no example of hard and regular work, constancy or reliability.

And at the same time a ludicrous welfare state, which actually (for instance) treats the criminal users of illegal drugs as objects of charity, and which subsidises all manner of idleness at the expense of the diligent, makes low-paid work hopelessly unattractive to the young.

So when hundreds of thousands of work-hungry young men and women poor into the country from Eastern Europe )and not from Southern Europe too) , competently-educated, firmly brought up, uncoddled by welfare, it is no surprise when the low-paid jobs – which were once the first steps on the employment ladder for everyone – are snaffled by the new arrivals. Apart from anything else, employers will prefer them to the poor befuddled victims of bog-standard comprehensive education.

So immigration hasn't *caused* youth unemployment, though I think it has probably caused some unemployment among older British workers, particularly in the building and allied trades, who have been undercut by migrants, But it has contributed to its growth, and to the growth of a very special kind of youth unemployment, unique in our history, which would be impossible without the welfare state, and which would be politically and economically unsustainable if it were not for the presence of hundreds of thousands of migrants. Actually, it is unsustainable as it is, but only in the long term, when it will become clear that no country can long survive such incompetent government as we have to endure. The only mystery is precisely what form our national bankruptcy will take, and exactly when it will arrive.

Reflections on the Rule of Law, on Scotland and on an astonishingly cruel portrayal of Lady Thatcher

I am grateful to the many readers who wrote to endorse my plea for the rule of law, following the Lawrence murder trial. I am also grateful to those who disagreed, for taking the trouble to recognise that this is an important issue that civilised states must discuss and decide.

The principle that law triumphs over power has always seemed to me to be one of the most important results of the Christian foundation of our civilisation.

Behind it lies the belief that the law itself stems from an idea of ultimate good and justice, which is beyond our power to alter and which exists for all time and which overrides our emotions and desires, as well as trumping mere temporal power. It is the existence of such a rule of law, not the largely phoney trumpery of universal suffrage 'democracy', which distinguishes free and civilised nations from despotic slums.  If those who sought to reform Russia after the collapse of the Soviet regime had concentrated on the rule of law, rather than on the forms of democracy, they might have achieved something important. As it is, they have what they have.

Of course, this is a choice. It is often tempting to override the rule of law. Everyone must feel this temptation from time to time. I certainly have. But it is precisely when it seems most attractive to ignore it or push it aside, that it is most important to defend it. I've been a little shocked that so few voices have been raised in its defence this past week.

 

Bannockburn Refought

After meeting him one evening long ago, in a rather agreeable castle,  for a TV discussion programme, I formed the idea that Alex Salmond was a very clever man indeed. If he went into a revolving door behind you, he would probably come out in front. (Though I could have done without him correcting my frenchified pronunciation of 'Mary of Guise' . I'm English. We don't talk about her as much as the Scots do. )  He's a loss to Britain as a whole. If only he regarded himself as British, I have a feeling he would be keen on regaining our independence from the EU, and be very smart at achieving that objective.

But sadly for us all, he was born in these dismal times. Let me say here first of all that I don't do silly anti-Scottish jeering. My earliest memories are of Scotland, of Scottish landscapes and Scottish voices, so I continue to love the place. In general, I have a high opinion of that small country, which has produced many great men  and much important thought. Its contribution to our joint history has been huge and mainly beneficial. We're lucky to be neighbours (that goes both ways).

I also see that there is a problem with the way Scotland is governed.  From the 1707 Act of Union until devolution, Scotland had a legal system without a parliament. What is more it had for centuries had a parliament of its own.  Some sort of fairly powerful legislative body had to be created, and the United Kingdom ought to have been strong enough to survive the arrangement    I wouldn't have said this ten years ago, but I have since changed my mind. I am much less sure that Wales either wants or needs its own assembly, and I am completely against any sort of parliament for Northern Ireland which – if it is to have justice and law – would be much better off ruled directly from London. I think such a solution would also have been better by far for the Irish Republic, which is going to face many difficulties when it eventually absorbs Northern Ireland as a very anomalous and troublesome special autonomous zone.

I am also against the recent creation of a fifth province of the United Kingdom, Livingstonia, or 'Greater London'. This sizeable Republic (for its elected head of state is really a mini-President, though he is called a mayor)  subverts the whole shape of the British constitution, and creates a needless new power in the country. What London needs is small,  efficient, truly local  borough councils, not some grandiose and gargantuan Thing.

But all of these would be minor troubles if it were not for the real reason behind the break-up of what was until very recently a genuinely United Kingdom.

This is the growth in the power and wealth of the European Union. The EU is deeply prejudiced against nation states, and exerts itself to break them up. It has a particular dislike of Federal multi-ethnic  states such as Yugoslavia (which the EU has helped break up by aggressive diplomacy and force) or the United Kingdom (which the EU seeks to break up by subtlety).  It wants allegiance, and subsidy,  to flow as directly as possible from Brussels to the provinces or 'regions'. Indeed, it cannot really ever be complete until this is the arrangement, with the life sucked out of the official capitals as far as possible.

Countries without regions (such as Portugal) are more or less compelled to have them.  Even federal mono-ethnic states are under pressure to regionalise, not that Germany needs much encouragement to do so, as it was before 1870 made up of many small states, and still has fierce and genuine regional loyalties and differences.

I have always remembered entering the EU from the east, before Poland joined. When you reached the Polish-German border, there was a huge sign, bearing the yellow stars of Brussels, saying (in German) 'Welcome to the European Union'. A short way after that was a prominent  sign saying 'Welcome to Brandenburg' (the German state which borders Poland at that point). Some distance after that, almost hidden in the snowy grass, was a small and rather diffident sign saying 'Welcome to Germany'.

A this time I still possessed an official map of Europe published by the European Parliament (this has since been revised, after being much criticised in the British media). It showed the British Isles divided into Euro-regions (an idea that is not dead, but sleepeth). There were two very interesting aspects of this. One was that while Scotland and Wales were each regions in their own right, and were named on the map, England was broken up into such exciting areas as 'South East' . And the word 'England' was absent from the map.

The other was that Ireland had two competing sets of frontiers – one the international border between Northern Ireland and the Republic, the other the regional borders of Leinster, Ulster,  Munster and Connacht.  It looked – and I think was designed to look –temporary.

It's my view that Scotland, for all its energy and history, simply isn't big enough to function as a fully independent country comparable to Britain. I doubt it has enough oil and gas left to be as independent as Norway. I certainly doubt that it could sustain its own currency, or any armed forces beyond a coastguard and a small army with no possibility of power projection. Nor do I think it could afford a full-scale diplomatic service.

But it could certainly take on many of the superficial characteristics of a nation, within the EU but separate from England, with the lines of power and money running between Edinburgh and Brussels/Frankfurt.  There could be a Scottish EU passport, a Scottish flag flying alongside the others in Brussels, a Scottish anthem, a Scottish broadcasting corporation, a Scottish version of the EU border, Scottish postage stamps. Scottish law and policing would quite possibly be brought more into line with continental practice.  If the single currency weren't in such a mess, then Scotland might also consider joining the Euro – it was, after all, Ireland's decision to abolish its Punt that finally made the division real and hard. Then there's Schengen. Like Ireland, I would guess that a Scottish government would like to implement the EU's open borders scheme – but couldn't do so while the rest of the UK stayed outside. A Scottish departure from the UK could make it harder for England and Wales alone to keep up our resistance against the opening of our borders to passport-free travel from the rest of the EU. Paradoxically, Scotland might bring Berlin time to England – by negotiating its own Scottish time zone north of the border.

This is all speculation, but well within the bounds of possibility if the EU continues in being. Without the EU, in my view,  it would be fanciful.   

As to what David Cameron is playing at, I know that if I were him ( i.e. a cynical office–seeker who doesn't know what a principle is),  I would pretend noisily to be in favour of the Union, while quietly doing all I could to help break it up. (Why? Because removing the Scottish MPs provides the only chance of the Tory party ever again winning a majority at Westminster.)  The current attempts to boss Scotland around, and tell it what sort of referendum it can hold, seem likely to me to achieve this perfectly. No red-blooded Scot will be pleased to be told that he can't decide his own future, and so support for Mr Salmond will increase. But  in England, Mr Cameron's Olympically dim hero-worshippers will praise him for his toughness. I am told that the UK civil service increasingly behaves as if Scotland is en route to independence.  Why and how is that happening?

 

Harsh and Cruel

I aim to say more about this soon, but I was amazed at how personally harsh and cruel the new film about Lady Thatcher is.  It is just possible that the opening device of an old and bemused woman wandering into a corner shop is justified dramatically as the starting point for a review of her life, just as George Bailey's attempted suicide is justified in 'It's a Wonderful Life'.

But the film is not content with that. The actress Meryl Streep spends a huge part of the film in heavy ageing make-up, stooped and mumbling, hallucinating and in conversation with a (very badly caricatured) phantasm of her late husband Denis.  This fancy, which I think is based on some (perhaps unwise) revelations by her daughter Carol, is ceaselessly employed to link up the otherwise disjointed scenes and more or-less politically illiterate account of Margaret Thatcher's rise to office and her period in power.

I confess to having enjoyed quite a lot of it. I didn't see it at a preview but in a normal cinema in my left-wing home town, where the theatre was packed but where audience reaction was quite muted. I think I enjoyed it  because it awoke (even if by its inaccuracy) quite a lot of memories of an interesting part of my life. Also, I am not and never have been a Thatcher partisan, let alone one of her friends or intimates. But I would think anyone who has suffered the awful experience of a parent or grandparent with dementia will find the film distressing and cruel. And in any case, I had to wonder, what was the aim of the makers? No doubt they are hoping for big audiences in the USA ( where Lady Thatcher is still much admired) as well as here ( where feelings are rather more mixed). I'm not quite sure why, in that case, they should dwell so much on the distressing mental decline of an elderly woman, a terrible affliction all too common in modern Britain and America, and by no means confined to controversial ex-premiers. I could hazard a few guesses, though.

A brave, noble campaign. But I still don't believe a man should stand trial twice for the same crime

This is Peter Hitchens' Mail on Sunday column

I can't rejoice over the conviction of David Norris and Gary Dobson for  the murder of Stephen Lawrence.  I wish I could.

I am sure that both these men have done bad things. It may be that they are guilty of this awful murder, but I fear that their guilt is not proven beyond reasonable doubt. And I am revolted by the fact that the authorities were so shamefully negligent that Norris was severely beaten up by other prisoners while on remand.

If we set out to achieve justice – and I will come back to that – then we must be sure that justice is what we actually get. A show trial in which justice seems to have been done, and hasn't been, actually makes all our lives worse. If these are the wrong culprits, locked up to make us feel good about ourselves, then we have responded to evil with evil.

Much worse for me, a British patriot intensely proud of our centuries-long struggle for freedom under the law, this whole prosecution is a violation of our heritage. The rule against trying anyone twice for the same crime is essential for liberty. And it is absolute. It must apply even when it makes us weep or vomit to obey it. The rule of law is only any use if it stops us doing things we would really, really like to do. If laws can  be overridden by convenience, desire or because of effective campaigning, they are not laws.

Remember Thomas More's great defence of law in Robert Bolt's wonderful drama A Man For All Seasons. More's accuser says he would 'cut down every law in England' to go after the devil. More retorts: 'Oh, and when the last law was down, and the devil turned on you, where would you hide, all the laws being flat? This country is planted thick with laws from coast to coast, man's laws not God's, and if you cut them down – and you're just the man to do it – do you really think that you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?'

Then he says quietly: 'Yes, I'd give the devil the benefit of the law, for my own safety's sake.'

We too must give the devil – and the devil's friends, Norris and Dobson – the benefit of law, for our own safety's sake.

I am sure of this because I have been to many of the worst places in the world, and the thing they all have in common is that there is no rule of law. They may pretend to have democracy (easy to do; our own democracy is increasingly a pretence). They may claim to have 'human rights'. But with no rule of law, nobody is safe, ever.

Now, the campaign  to get justice for Stephen Lawrence and his bereaved, dignified family has been a noble one. When our sister newspaper, the Daily Mail, bravely accused a group of low-life crooks of being his murderers on its front page and dared them to sue, I rejoiced.

This was a good and courageous use of the power of a free press, one that my trade can always be proud of.

It also blew into fragments a smug slander, ceaselessly directed at conservative popular newspapers by ignorant  and malicious media Leftists. They sneered from their state-subsidised desks that we were 'fascists' – racial bigots who believed in repression of free debate.

After that front page, this libel simply could not be advanced any more by any thinking or informed person. Better still, it was clear that what really motivated conservative popular journalism was a thirst for justice. But at that stage, thanks to the 1996 failed private prosecution of several of the alleged killers, that was as far as it went. The courts had failed. The guilty must therefore be marked as what they were and shamed.

Others, with quite different aims, then sought to use the case for their own ends. They wanted a politically correct inquisition into the police, already weakened by Left- liberal attacks in the Eighties but still a deeply conservative institution.

And the Blair Government, which despised British liberties, saw an opportunity to smash the ancient double jeopardy rule.

The Macpherson report, a bizarre document that few of its fans have ever read, never found any actual evidence of racial bigotry in the police. That is why it had to dredge up the old Sixties revolutionary slogan of 'institutional racism'. This is a presumption of guilt that has been used ever afterwards to enforce political correctness in the police force.

Thanks to this case, and what followed, have racial killings ceased? On the contrary, they are more common. Are murders and other crimes investigated more thoroughly? Hardly.
This country contains many families, as deeply wounded as the Lawrences, whose losses have also gone unavenged by justice, and who have no hope.

Sickening case of identity theft for Sherlock

If the BBC had not stolen the name of the great fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, and used it to publicise its soft-porn guns-and-giggles drama series, would fashionable critics have fallen over themselves to praise  this slurry?

Perhaps they would. Fashionable critics will praise almost anything. But surely the identity theft is the only thing that holds this crude melodrama together?
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's wonderful creation has found a place in the imaginations of countless millions of  people. Until very recently, broadcasters and film-makers were content to stay true  to the great storyteller's original. Doyle himself would have enjoyed Jeremy Brett's faithful and thoughtful  version of Holmes.

What changed? Why must Holmes now suddenly be portrayed as a cruel, spiteful figure who is needlessly nasty to small children and unfortunate people? Why must the central character in a  90-minute drama be an unusually depraved prostitute? Why must Professor Moriarty be transformed into something rather like the Joker in a Batman movie?

Well, it's obvious, isn't it? There's no sex in the original stories and remarkably little violence. Instead people think, and have conversations. So chuck them in the bin, steal Holmes's name and Doyle's idea, and twist them for cheap laughs and perverted thrills.

When British broadcasters come to a turn in the path, and they see one arrow saying 'down' and another one saying 'up', they can be guaranteed to choose the one marked 'down', on and on until they reach the bottom. And then down again.

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Wait for It

I'm waiting until I write my Mail on Sunday column to deal with a number of current subjects, so you'll have to wait too. In the meantime, a few more general remarks, as the country gradually returns to its normal course and speed after Heathmas (my rude name for the spurious, pointless New Year holiday, introduced into England by that worst of all modern prime ministers).

Our religious obsessives, meanwhile, might be amused by a small controversy on a weblog site called 'Big Think' , or perhaps 'Daylight Atheism' , or perhaps both. This began after a Mr Adam Lee criticised something I wrote in my book 'The Rage Against God'. I have now said all I wish to say there, having been reminded once again of the teeth-grindingly frustrating nature of such discussion. But I will pause for a moment to mention that Mr 'Bunker' in an unusually obtuse contribution, misunderstands the importance of the argument about the precision engineering of the universe.

This doesn't, of course, prove anything. But  I have heard otherwise confident unbelievers, asked what their biggest worry is about their own point of view, cite the extraordinarily fine tolerances ( so fine that tiny deviations either way would render the whole thing unworkable)  necessary for so many of the functions of the universe as rather disturbing. Of course, we all know that nothing would shake or disturb the certainties of Mr 'Bunker', who – if I recall rightly – underwent some kind of mystical (or anti-mystical) experience which he won't discuss,  which convinced him that it was 'impossible' to believe in God.  This sort of stuff tends to impress engineers more than it impresses other people.  Then again, I have a high regard for engineers.

Now, I thought I'd like to discuss a book I have just finished , 'The World of Yesterday' by Stefan Zweig. Zweig, once one of the most famous authors in the world, has now almost entirely vanished from view. He was never very popular in Britain  but was for many years enormously successful in continental Europe, South and North America. His disappearance, once again, shows how current fame can dissolve into obscurity in no time at all.

His novel 'Beware of Pity' was recently dramatized on BBC radio, and there is a mild revival of his works under way. But the point of ' The World of Yesterday' is its detailed description of life in pre-1914 Europe, mainly Zweig's own home city of Vienna.

Zweig, whose political and social sympathies were very much of the Left,  is anxious to portray this world as stuffy and stifling, sexually repressed and hypocritical. He describes his own education as mechanical and dull.  No doubt much of this is true, though his dull education equipped him to make his living as a writer,. And seems to have started him on the way to becoming a great linguist, able to speak most major European languages, and to translate works of literature.

But in doing so he also manages to describe the calmness, general honesty and integrity, the extraordinary freedom of travel and the untroubled privacy of that time. When it all falls to pieces, thanks to the First world War, it is clear even to the radical Zweig that something irreplaceable has gone. His description of the departure from Austria of the deposed Emperor Karl, which he witnessed, is filled with a sense of loss, close to bereavement. And who would now say that the old Austro-Hungarian Empire was not a far better master than those who succeeded it?

If I could travel in time, it is pre-1914 Europe I should most wish to see.  It is the difference in the actual human condition that would be just as interesting as the lost buildings and works of art, the majestic railways and the almost total absence of horrible motor cars.


People were, I think, calmer, more self-possessed, more easily shocked.  The First World War ended that and left us as we are now, far more frantic and intemperate than we used to be.  Zweig makes much of his view that the sexual repression of the era caused large-scale prostitution and stimulated smutty pornography. I think there is some truth in part of this. A society which is prudish and which insists on lifelong marriage is likely to have a secret underside where these rules are transgressed.

But what then happened –the obscenity of war in which all modesty and restraint were thrown aside, and then the Babylon of inflation which debauched the lives of millions especially  in the German lands (his description of the moral corruption of Berlin thanks to the great inflation is startling) – did not in fact end prostitution or pornography. On the contrary, bot continue to boom despite the virtual abolition of all forms of 'repression' and sexual hypocrisy, and the licensing of of almost all types of pornography, with one notable exception.

And would the various reform movements of the pre-1914 era, for healthier lives, more exercise, less constricting, not have continued towards their goals without a war, perhaps attaining them without anything like as much collateral damage being done?

I think one of the most interesting might-have-beens in history is the fate of Europe if the 1914 war had never taken place. It's fashionable now to say that Britain, at least was on the brink of revolution anyway, thanks to Ireland and the labour unrest. But I'm not convinced. Could any resolution of the Irish conflict have been worse than the Easter Rising of 1916 (impossible without the war) and what followed? Couldn't Britain have reformed herself in many important ways without war, and done it better because the national wealth wasn't squandered on war?

And what about all the people – the talented, the dutiful, the best-educated, the healthiest, who went off to die between 1914 and 1916 in the original volunteer army? Don't we still miss them?

It's clear from Zweig's book that continental civilisation before 1914 had, in many ways, reached a level that it has yet to regain nearly a century later. The approved version these days is that war brought huge technological and social advance (the then French Ambassador to London, Paul Cambon, said after 1918 that Britain had undergone an actual revolution during the war, and this was certainly just as true in the 1939-45 war). But aren't we inclined to see the 'liberation' of women from 'domestic drudgery' 9and their transfer to industrial and commercial drudgery)) as an unalloyed good, just as we tend to view universal suffrage as automatically wonderful, and the much-increased level of state intervention in daily life as broadly beneficial.

But were they? Did we take the right turning? Few blessings are unmixed, most come with curses. And the price we paid, in lives and health, for these revolutions, was colossal. Was it worth it?

Small Expectations, and our conversation resumed

As I suspected, my criticisms of the BBC's 'Great Expectations' drew more comment than anything else I said on Sunday. 

Given that the prosperous world trembles on the lip of a great precipice, with a real prospect of permanent and irreversible economic decline, is this reasonable?

Actually, yes.  Books such as 'Great Expectations' were part of the great moral revolution which made this country prosperous, ordered and civilised.  They are crucial to our civilisation.  Like all great moral books, it makes the reader envy the good characters their goodness, and want to emulate them . It made us recognise the good and the bad in ourselves  - in fact Dickens ceaselessly did this,  probably because he was himself struggling all the time against his own cruelty and selfishness, and loathed these things in others. I can never make up my mind as to whether 'Great Expectations' or 'David Copperfield' is Dickens's finest book. Literary types have always rather despised Dickens because he was 'sentimental' , which of course he was. But so are most of us.

A good modern example of the influence of books for good is  Patrick O'Brian's fine series of historical novels set in the Napoleonic Wars. Having read them, almost any thoughtful person will be a better human being, thanks to his or her encounter with Captain Jack Aubrey and his friend Stephen Maturin. Both men have great virtues (both also have terrible weaknesses, Aubrey – a genius at sea or in battle - becomes a hopeless fool on land and in time of peace).   Like Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson, the two together make one first-rate human being, a little like a marriage but without the sexual element. The reader, consciously or unconsciously, longs to meet with their approval.

I am just about to embark on reading 'Great Expectations' again because, while furiously checking the text to see if there is any justification for the BBC travesty, I realised how much of the book I had forgotten since I last read it, and how much the David Lean film now overlays the text in my mind.  Lean, for instance, completely omits the nasty character of Dolge Orlick, while making much of the wise and delightful Biddy.

Lean is, I think, truer to the spirit of the book than the BBC, who played up Orlick (He's a much more 21st-century type, whereas there are not many Biddys around today. But it's not as if there are not plenty of other horrible people in the book) and, as far as I could see, completely got rid of Biddy. 

But both versions are unwilling to reach Dickens's original bleak conclusion, in which there is no hope of Pip and Estella marrying. Public reaction persuaded Dickens to write a second, alternative ending in which the reader can, if he wishes, believe that the two will eventually wed. The closing words are plangent and haunting 'the evening mists were rising now, and in all the broad expanse of tranquil  light they showed to me, I saw no shadow of another parting from her'.  But they are directly preceded by Estella's flat declaration that the two 'will continue friends apart'.  I think there's no avoiding the fact that Dickens saw the story as a tragedy with no comforting ending, in which people destroy themselves through vengeance, snobbery and dishonesty.

And yes, why on earth did the BBC change a perfectly good pork pie, which makes sense in the plot, and is lovingly described before its disappearance is noticed, into a mutton pie, an entirely different comestible? I can't imagine that Mrs Joe would have served a mutton pie cold (ugh) and one gropes for any reason for meddling. You might think it is meant to show that the writers were cleverer than Dickens. But as they aren't, it doesn't. 

For instance, the opening of the book, in the churchyard cannot really be altered, because much of the dialogue between Pip and Magwitch doesn't make sense anywhere else. So why shift the encounter to a bridge over a stream, where the gravestones cannot be seen?

As for the character of Joe Gargery, the whole point about Joe is that he is full of humour, forgiveness and gentleness . Everyone should read his description of his own awful childhood, crammed as it is with deep, gentle forgiveness of his own appalling father,  combined with a determination not to repeat the evil done to him, which explains his otherwise inexplicable tolerance of his wife's shrewish behaviour. Then (this is very early in the book) there is the description of the game he and Pip make over eating the meagre bread-and-butter ration allowed them by the ever-furious Mrs Joe. It is just the way a patient and light-hearted person would deal with such a difficulty, and it is very funny. 

And the day when Joe comes to London to find Pip transformed into a an awful little snob is as a result one of mingled pain and hilarity – not the rather boring and obvious scene of sullen reproach portrayed in the BBC version. As I asked so often in my complaints about the new version of 'Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy', why take so much trouble to change things of this kind, when it would have been easier to leave them alone?

Increasingly, I think it is a justified fear on the part of the writers that, as they cannot do better than the previous version, and may well do worse, they will alter the story so that they are never actually put to the test, and cannot be directly measured against those who have gone before.

But look at what is lost here – perhaps one of the best, most sympathetic yet devastating denunciations of foolish class division that has ever been written or (in the Lean film) performed.

In fact it is really the evisceration and transformation of Joe Gargery which is much the worst thing about the new version, especially if you combine it with the crude agitprop alteration of Herbert Pocket into a Marxist-Leninist's idea of a snob, so much less subtle, and so much easier to ignore, and so much less interesting, than Dickens's  funny, clever approach to the same subject . In the end, the messing about with Miss Havisham  is, by comparison, trivial. You might have expected them to get the accents wrong, to get Jaggers wholly wrong (though what a loss that is) , to make Wemmick far grimmer than he is, to introduce a non-existent brothel and who knows what other silly changes.

I suppose that really such people don't like Dickens because he isn't an ideologue and he won't be dull. For many years the literary critics simply ruled him out of their 'Great Tradition'.  It has recently been fashionable to make much of 'Bleak House', not in my view an especially fine novel, though the opening is a joy, because it is as close as Dickens got to writing a 'literary' novel, that is to say one which it is a bit of an effort to read, and in which not very much happens for quite a lot of the time. I speak as someone who has repeatedly tried, under ideal conditions, to get past page 20 of 'Pride and Prejudice' and has found himself completely unable to do so. My eye starts wandering round the room, reading the conditions of carriage on the railway ticket I'm using as a bookmark, or the corner of the sports page of an old newspaper on a nearby armchair – yet I never read the sports page.

In fact, one of my last conversations with my brother involved him urging me to try 'Pride and Prejudice' again, (and also to make another attempt on 'Middlemarch', another of my failures, though oddly enough I stormed enthusiastically through  'Silas Marner' after finding it in a fading but beautifully-printed old edition in a secondhand bookshop in Norwich one winter afternoon).

Anyway, I suppose it's more or less true to say , while the pre-1914 generation who shaped this country's customs, morals and attitudes until very recently were formed by Dickens, (with the Bible and by John Bunyan's now-forgotten 'Pilgrim's Progress' in the backs of their minds) , modern Britain is formed by TV and soap opera. Apparently the New Britain cannot tolerate the continued existence of the old one, and , since it cannot wholly forget Dickens, has resolved to remake him to suit the world of Big Brother and the gap yah. 

This is greatly important. The furniture of your mind, especially the stories and poems that are there, makes you incapable of some actions and thoughts, and capable of others.  I think anyone who has *read* 'Great Expectations', and has allowed its characters to come to life in his mind, will be kinder, more forbearing and less vengeful – as well as less inclined to classify people by their external appearance – than anyone who hasn't.

I also think that characters encountered  in print live much more fully in our minds than characters who have been largely created for us by TV or films. Also, the more we get used to having the work done for us, the less we are prepared to do for ourselves. I don't think anyone in this generation, that is, born since colour TV invaded children's bedrooms, let alone since the arrival of computer games, is likely to make the effort needed to read their way into old-fashioned children's books such as the Conan Doyle historical romances that I have always loved so much.

As to why the older Pip could not have looked like a 21st-century male model , there are several answers. One, the TV version of the older Pip bore not the faintest resemblance to the younger one and seems to me to have been chosen by the casting executives precisely because of his extraordinary physical beauty, even though this was  in defiance of any justification for this in the text or in the younger Pip's appearance. This sort of thing, extreme and rather chilly physical beauty,  seems to be good for audience figures, as in the recent bizarre and excruciatingly dull film of 'Alice' ( also little to do with the original books)  which appears to have been a box-office success.   But the face of this actor also seems to me to be quite unmarked by the earthy experience that would have given shape and mobility to the face of a man who had worked for years in a village forge. I know nothing of the actor involved, but I would be surprised if his personal background turns out to contradict my belief.

Welcome to 2042 - the year when Britain is no more than a memory

This is Peter Hitchens' Mail on Sunday column

The New Year has always seemed to me to be a time for enjoying a bit of gloom.

So in the spirit of hearty pessimism, I'd like to take you forward 30 years, for an imaginary peep into the pages of the 'China Daily' of January 1, 2042. You can judge for yourselves how imaginary it really is.

'Cabinet papers issued today by the state archives of the People's Republic cast an interesting light on the final years of the country formerly known as Great Britain. Younger readers should know that, 30 years ago, this once-important nation (now dissolved) occupied the vacation islands, famous for their mild climate and their picturesque historical theme parks, which lie off our far western coast.

'A memo from Prime Minister David Cameron to his deputy, Nicholas Clegg, runs in part "...and thanks so much, Nick, for your continuing self-sacrifice in our joint cause. I'm so sorry you have to put up with those moronic cartoons portraying you as the junior partner when – as we both well know - this is a liberal government in which I am happy to let you get your way.

'"I am especially grateful for your recent performance, a fine piece of acting. The dim old buffers who still vote for my party, however many times we let them down, were genuinely taken in, and thought a) that I had struck a blow for Britain in Brussels and b) that you were angry about it."

'There are also memos to the Interior Minister of the time, Theresa May, congratulating her for "sounding as if you really mean to do something about crime and immigration" and a ruder one to the Justice Minister, Kenneth Clarke, chiding him for "letting the cat out of the bag: it won't do, old boy! Can't you just be satisfied with getting your way? There's no need to gloat in public."

'A letter from Mr Cameron to Alex Salmond, leader of the Scottish government, is strangely friendly, given Mr Cameron's frequent public assertions that he was against Scottish independence. Experts from the University of Shanghai have concluded that Mr Cameron secretly wanted a Scottish breakaway as the only chance of his party ever again winning an Election on its own.'

The China Daily continues: 'No trace can be found of any serious plans to reform the country's disastrous state schools, nor to curb its out-of-control welfare system, known to be widely abused by criminals and to encourage parasitical sloth.

'As for the economy, the archives contain only a plaintive note from the Finance Minister to the Premier, bearing the words, "There's no money!"

'The documents make it plain that the governing class of the country formerly known as Great Britain had no idea how to cope with the problems they faced and were mainly obsessed with public relations. In the light of this, the events of the next 20 years should have come as no surprise.'

I don't recall Dickens writing an Estuary English soap opera

Charles Dickens's Great Expectations is one of the best books ever written. David Lean's 1946 realisation of it is one of the best films ever made - not least because so much of its dialogue is taken direct from the original.

So why is the BBC's new adaptation so astonishingly, disappointingly, ridiculously bad?

It is because the BBC is so full of people who simply refuse to admit that they have anything to learn from the past. In their world, all drama must be either Doctor Who or EastEnders (or in this case a combination of the two).
Pip Pirrip, raised in a blacksmith's cottage, could not possibly have grown up to look like a male model. Herbert Pocket was never a vicious snob. Miss Havisham was a yellow-skinned, deranged hag, not a self-harming young woman.

Estella was an unattainable beauty - not a stroppy person with the adenoidal voice and the scowling visage of an affronted North London social worker.

Perhaps above all, Joe Gargery was a man of almost saintly goodness and humour, rather than the glum and self-righteous person in this TV travesty, who always looks as if he's just off to a Chartist meeting.

I reread the opening chapters of the book to reassure myself about this and was repeatedly convulsed with laughter and moved close to tears. The TV version produced no emotion at all and resorted to incessant loud music to tell us how we should have been feeling.

The vandals behind it also managed to insert a scene in a brothel - perhaps they can tell me where this occurs in the book. Dickens, being a proper writer, managed to envelop the foul figure of Bentley Drummle in a cloud of evil without any such crudities.

And the script was full of modern soap opera language, often in Estuary English quite unlike the speech of the time – 'con man', 'close the deal', 'he owes me'.

Yes, of course you need to make changes when you adapt an immense book into three hours of drama. But you need to stay close to the truth of the original, or you are destroying it. Something similar is now happening to Sherlock Holmes thanks to the half-witted cinema versions. In an age when few read any more, this third-rate stuff is in danger of replacing greatness with cut-price hogwash.

* * *

A Canadian judge has ruled that a teenager was under the influence of an 'antidepressant' when he knifed a close friend to death.

Judge Robert Heinrichs was told in his Winnipeg court that the killer (also a user of cannabis and cocaine) grew more irrational once prescribed the 'antidepressant'.

'He had become irritable, restless, agitated, aggressive and unclear in his thinking,' the judge said.

'In that state he overreacted in an impulsive, explosive and violent way'.

Now off the drug, he was 'simply not the same in behaviour or character'.

It is a painful case, but it underlines the urgent need for  a proper inquiry into these widely used pills.

We're making North Korea worse

Small politicians try to look big by exaggerating the size and the danger of their foes. The West's ridiculous attitude to North Korea is an example of this.

I have been there, and can report that this bankrupt, starving statelet is so poor it cannot even warm its own government buildings and must have used up much of its petrol reserves to stage the funeral of its deceased leader.

Its rulers are trapped in their palace. If they show weakness, they will be torn to pieces by their hungry, disillusioned subjects. Above all, they need a way out. If we do not help provide one they will, in the end, have to collapse into the arms of China.

Why should we want that? Yet we continue to portray this sad survival as a major power and adopt a high moral tone in our dealings with it. Yes, it can still do harm – but it is much more likely to do so if we maintain our current policy.

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Pyongyang Revisited – or, still no chance of a Flat White in North Korea

It does not feel as if four years have passed since I finally managed to visit North Korea. The experience feels as if it were yesterday.  Those who have not read my account of that visit, or who would like to read it again, may find it here.

I am glad that it took me so long to make the journey. Long years before, in May 1986,  I was one of the reporters accompanying Margaret Thatcher on a visit to Seoul. Don't be too impressed. We were crammed in the back of a very old VC-10, a long way from her unless she decided to stun us with a monologue, which from time to time she did.  So I had been taken, tagging on the tail of her party,  to the strange and perplexing border between the two Koreas at Panmunjom.  Just yards away, with no physical barrier in the way, was the entrance to the Looking-Glass World of Communism which in those days stretched all the way to Germany.

Around the small enclave in the Demilitarised Zone were dense woods full of wildlife. Strange music played from a 'village' of concrete blocks, plainly uninhabited, which the North Koreans had built  for propaganda purposes. Tantalising mystery lay beyond the weird pavilion from which North Korean soldiers and their visitors gazed at us.  How simple it all seemed then – evil over there, good on our side. I really, really wanted to see the evil half of the world, perhaps so that I might be better at recognising good when I saw it later, and used many methods to try to go there. But as a journalist I was forbidden. Tour firms refused to take me. The North Korean embassy in Moscow, which I pestered with requests, coldly ignored me.

I suppose I more or less accepted that the North-South division was an oriental version of the German problem, and then went on to accept the idea that Pyongyang was some sort of heart of darkness, headquarters of evil, etc etc, until the lies of the Kosovo War, and then the Iraq war, corroded my credulity and compelled me to examine these things for myself.

When at last, via a Russian academic in Australia and another link in China that I will not mention here in case I need to use it again, I found a way in, I was determined not to write the standard account that I had seen so many times.  Nor did it seem likely to me that this small, isolated, desperately poor place could be a threat to the world, as so many people were writing.

As I say, you can tread here what I wrote then.  When we left, I and the others in our very mixed party made a half-serious promise to try to meet again for an event which still seems highly possible in my lifetime – the opening of the first Pyongyang Starbucks. This (though also probable as an actual fact) is a sort of metaphor for the transformation I have seen in so many other ex-Communist countries. It is one I hope for, and expect.

But only if we can control our rather childish readiness to believe in the North Korean bogeyman. North Korea is not a giant, but a dwarf. Those soldiers marching in those enormous parades are ill-fed and on average many inches shorter than men and women of the same age in the South. Their uniforms are made of cheap poor-quality cloth. Their weapons ( I have seen them up close) are obsolete and decrepit. I wonder how much real ammunition they have for them? Or how much fuel they needed to hoard and gather to keep the vehicles moving during the funeral of Kim Jong Il ?

I wonder ( and this is my own individual theory based upon observation) how many North Koreans , at all levels of society are either too hungry (if the rural poor) or too drunk (if the urban poor) to do their jobs properly. I have no doubt they could still do quite a lot of damage to South Korea if they wanted to. But I doubt if they could win any kind of war against a modern well-trained, well-equipped army made up of strong, well-fed young men.

I saw little of the countryside and what I did see was carefully pre-arranged, but even so failed to hide the absence of modern farm machinery or modern agricultural techniques, plus the fact that a supposedly electrified rail system was being operated, where it worked at all, by diesel locomotives. It was quite clear that even in the privileged elite city of Pyongyang, which is closed to most citizens, electric power was in very short supply (our hotel's power was switched off as soon as we left each morning, and probably not switched on again until soon before we returned in the evening)  .  But I do know that the surveillance and stage-management broke down on two important occasions during my visit. Once was when we arrived at our designated restaurant to fund a man, dead drunk, prone upon the grass in front of the entrance. When members of our party tried to take pictures of this, our furious and embarrassed escorts  summoned loyal citizens to form a human wall around the drunkard until he could be removed.

On another occasion, I managed to get left alone with one of our escorts, the less confident or the two, and to persuade him to let me to roam a little along the bizarre street in which we found ourselves. It contained several absurd shops, with no staff and no customers, supposedly selling such nonsensical combinations of goods as motorbikes and cornflakes. The only busy spot was a small shop front with opaque doors, outside which a few men squatted.  When I asked my escort what it was, he said it was a bar. I suggested we visit it. In a state close to panic, he emphatically refused and steered me as far away from it as possible. Readers must understand that these escorts are human beings, who must be presumed to have wives and children, and that I for one thought it wrong to push them too hard into awkward positions.

Put these two experiences together with a third, when I opened my hotel room window,  high up over central Pyongyang, quite late one evening. the city was almost wholly silent (there was very little traffic, mechanical or human). But from far, far away I could clearly hear a voice singing. My guess is that Pyongyang is fuelled by rice wine, much as Hogarth's London was fuelled by gin, and that the regime, within limits, is happy to numb its population in this way.

I describe elsewhere the boundless privation and misery which I am sure exist in the parts of the country that foreigners never see.  I am, not in any way trying to defend, justify or understate the sheer nastiness of such a state.

But I am trying to point out that it is a dead end. Without the Soviet subsidies, and the Chinese ones, which kept it going in Cold War days, North Korea is simply bankrupt. A small elite live in the strange, curtained luxury enjoyed by the privileged classes of officially egalitarian states , though much of it is exaggerated by myth and rumour, and their lives would probably seem cramped and limited to a well-off western family. The larger privileged class who are allowed to dwell in the capital live reasonably well by their own standards, but may by now be aware of how poor they are by comparison with their cousins in Seoul.

It is genuinely unclear just how much most North Koreans know of life outside, and if I eventually return this will be one of the questions I will be most anxious to answer.  Far more than they used to, I think, thanks to the many who have slipped across the surprisingly ill-patrolled border with China, some of whom have returned  or got messages about their lives to their relatives still stuck in Kim's dark, decaying paradise.

The real problem for the country's rulers (who of course know perfectly well how backward their country is, and how poor) is how to get out alive. They cannot risk a sudden collapse, as happened to East Germany. They would probably be torn to pieces, if the populace ever thought that the security apparatus had lost its will to kill. South Korea does not want this either. It greatly fears millions of refugees sweeping south, uncontrollable in their hunger and disillusionment, and then the enormous economic burden of reconstructing the blighted North from scratch. It was bad enough in Germany. It would be far, far worse in Korea.

There are far too many Western politicians who enjoy having North Korea to use as a bogeyman, for their various reasons. There are also that nasty new breed of foreign policy moralists, whose aim is to feel good about themselves rather than do actual good unto others, and who like to lecture the rest of the world about evil dictators, and long to put all such dictators on trial. It seems to have escaped them that this is why modern despots are so reluctant to stand down and increasingly fight to the death. If young Kim, the 'Great Successor' could be guaranteed a nice quiet exit and a chance to spend more time with his foreign bank accounts,  my guess is that he and his entourage would be only too happy to go.

But we won't let them. We mistake their noisy self-aggrandisement for genuine aggression when I suspect they are just trying to say that they want Western Europe and the USA to come to their rescue  (how they long for a high-level American visit). They greatly fear that they will simply become a colony of China,  which will probably happen sooner or later if the 'West' doesn't take advantage of the few months of opportunity that I think will follow the change of leadership.  These people need help, and above all a way out. They are , as I have written elsewhere, a stagnant remnant of the great flood which global communism caused. If we are genuinely concerned, we should realise that. I suspect there are people starving in North Korea now, who might well be saved from starvation if only we were to adopt a more imaginative and thoughtful policy, instead of pretending that this tiny, impoverished statelet is a menace to the planet.