A Monumental Error, and Other Themes

A number of readers chided me for what I said about the sentence given to Charlie Gilmour. I have responded privately to his father. But in general I stand by what I said. I don't rejoice at the sentence (given my reservations about our prison system, it is hard for me to do this, ever), nor have I gloated over it. But I think those who say it was excessive are mistaken in many ways. The main point is that the general outrage against his actions had to be reflected by the justice system. All justice systems area form of street theatre, to discourage the bad and encourage the good. They pick on particular individuals to make examples of them. It is wise not to become one of those they pick on.

By the way, one reader seems to think that I claim to have been at the Garden House riots in Cambridge. I did not intend to give that impression. I was not. My demonstrations were elsewhere, and one of them, against the presence of Enoch Powell in Oxford Town Hall, is described in my book 'the Cameron Delusion'. And I wrote, on the fortieth anniversary of the event, my recollections of the nasty ruckus in Grosvenor Square in March 1968, where one of my fellow demonstrators (no doubt peaceful) was a future head of Mi6.

I would say that on all my demonstrations however rough they got, my mind was not clouded by drugs or drink. In fact, a lot of Trotskyists were a pretty puritan lot (though there was a boozy minority). I think we would have regarded any sort of attack on the Cenotaph, or on a Royal car, as self-defeating and very bad propaganda.

One or two other points:

'Bob H' wrote: 'it was somewhat of a politician's answer. I originally asked you why consuming cannabis was morally wrong or wicked and why consuming alcohol was morally ok. You replied that it was because alcohol is legal. You have failed to address at all the main point I made that the morality and legality of something are separate. According to your logic I could do the same thing in 2 different places and be wicked and selfish in one (where cannabis was illegal) and not in the other (where cannabis were legal) And I simply don't accept that because something always has been it always will be. Our lifestyle and culture has changed beyond recognition in the last 200 years. Who's to say that with similar tactics to the ones used to reduce smoking, alcohol use couldn't be driven to a fraction of what it is now? '

I don't think this is true at all. ( He began in fact with this question, rather different form the one he now professes to have asked: Let's imagine we are both in a room. I am consuming cannabis. You are consuming alcohol. I know that almost certainly someone else has suffered horribly due to cannabis. You know that someone has suffered horribly due to alcohol. Why am I selfish and wicked but you are not?). My answers to Mr 'H' have not been at all evasive. I never said that consuming alcohol was morally OK 'because it was legal'. I made an entirely different point.  Morality and legality are indeed different things.

But I cannot believe anything will ever happen to make it morally right to seek freedom to pursue a pleasure which, if legalised, will undoubtedly damage others. I think it wrong to sacrifice the health  of others for my own pleasure. Mr 'H' , as far as I can see, is ready to do this. That is immoral, in fact it is selfish and wicked, as I have said.

I repeat my answers to him here :

First
'1. Alcohol is legal and cannabis is not. 2. I campaign consistently for *more* restrictions on the sale of alcohol, and would, if I thought it practicable, support its prohibition and give up its use. I don't think it practicable, hence my support instead for tight restrictions on its sale and heavy penalties for crimes committed under its influence. ( I do think effective laws prohibiting the possession of cannabis, and punishing those who allow it to be used on their premises, would be practicable and effective. So do the dope campaigners, which is why they are so alarmed that I call for this measure). 3. He doesn't say if he is in favour of relaxing the laws against cannabis. If he isn't, then his illegal action is a blow against those laws anyway, and the breach of laws in a free society is an immoral act in itself. If he does favour relaxation of those laws, he is happy to see the dangers of cannabis inflicted on other people for the sake of his own pleasure. His position is therefore more or less the opposite of mine. That is the main difference.

Second
' I explained the grave differences between our positions whether or not cannabis was legal. He now says: 'But I want strong controls on cannabis as well, so again how are we different?' Because I want stronger controls on alcohol than there are now ( and stronger controls on cannabis than there are now, notably serious imprisonment for possession and the restoration of the absolute offence of permitting remises to be used for its consumption) Whereas, unless I misunderstand him, he wants weaker controls on cannabis than there are now. This seems to me to be a pretty fundamental difference. Alcohol has been in our culture for thousands of years, mass cigarette smoking for only about a century. The two are not really comparable.'

'Carl' asks: '' Oh Peter, did you really have to use this as an opportunity to talk about the supposed slipping of standards in History? Of course the lad knew it was Cenotaph, he's pulling (y)our leg(s). '

I think it entirely apposite to mention this problem. I suspect that many people of his generation, including those with university degrees, have the vaguest idea of what and where the Cenotaph is, and of what it represents. Many older people have no idea of how utterly cut off this generation is from the past. It is time they realised.

'Wesley Crosland' states: 'Peter Hitchens and his conservative creed would have been happy to look away from the pornographic National Socialist regime'.

This as an interesting jibe, which qualifies as a slur. To say I would have been 'happy' is simply false. It is a grim fact of life that we have limited influence over human evil, and can only exercise it close to home, which means we are often aware of terrible wrongs about which we can do little or nothing. To recognise this sad fact is not to be 'happy' about it. Most informed people knew from the early 1920s onwards that the USSR was a hideous prison house and torture chamber in which whole categories of people were murdered, often by starvation. Yet we all lived alongside it till it collapsed through its own internal contradiction, and the 'democratic' powers spent four long years in close alliance with it and permitted it to spread its rule over even greater areas of the world. Were they, too 'happy to look away from the pornographic Stalin regime'.

This sort of language has no pace in grown-up discussion.

In fact the whole world, including the USA and the USSR, were, if not happy, then willing to look away from the National Socialist regime from its inception in 1933 till they went to war with it, never less than six years after it came to power, and often rather more. The International Olympic Committee was happy to allow it to stage the Olympics in Berlin, though its repressive, lawless, murderous and racialist character was already quite clear by then. Hardly any of the countries of the civilised world would take in refugees from Germany in any numbers, especially Jewish refugees. The famous Kindertransporten of Jewish children from Central Europe were halted forever the day war broke out. The British government signed treaties (notably a Naval Treaty) with Germany during this period. The USSR was actually Germany's ally.

Dislike of the Hitler government played no part in any major country's decision to go to war with Germany, at any stage. And the worst atrocities of that government took place after the European war had begun and – quite possibly because of the fog of war allowed such crimes to be committed, which couldn't have been committed in peace time.

It is simply false to pretend that the Second World War was fought out of idealism. This falsehood is spread by people who want to start wars for idealistic reasons now.