Could I Push the Hangman's Lever? What about Finland? And other questions

A few brief and necessarily hurried responses. Scandinavian countries are often advanced, by left-wingers, as models of how to do things, etc. I have myself noted Norway’s successful existence outside the EU, for different reasons (Norway, like us, has oil and gas. Unlike us, it made wise use of them).

But these countries are really city states. They do not suffer many of the problems which blight us.  I believe Finland’s current population is 5.4 million. Its cities are spacious and its countryside sparsely populated ( I have visited it once, briefly). It is generally prosperous and stable, and has been since the end of the  Second World War left it as a neutral state. Its main internal problems used to be, as far as I know, connected with lingering hostility towards Swedes, seen as colonial oppressors.

What it does not have is the thing that curses this country – a powerful class system, probably originating in the Norman conquest, reinforced by a brutal 19th century industrialisation and now made worse by a 21st century de-industrialisation.

Britain’s class problems, often death to talent and hope if you are born on the wrong side of the divide, are the curse of our state education system. That is why enlightened socialists such as R.H.Tawney were very keen on the grammar school system which – first with scholarships and later through local authority free places – opened up good education to the children of the poor.

Of course, they did not totally succeed. There weren’t enough grammar schools in many areas, and the primary schools which fed them were often inadequate. Many, many things could have been done to widen the road upwards. But they did a lot of good, and now that road is completely closed.

There is also the powerful secondary point that not all bright children are *academically* bright, or want an intensive academic education of the kind grammar schools provide.  Many would benefit much more from a predominantly technical education, though this should also be coupled with the teaching of culture, history and language so as to permit the maximum enjoyment of life. I believe it is the case in several continental countries that the plumber or the electrician who comes to fix your pipes or wiring will be quite able to discuss literature and classical music, because his teachers never assumed that working with your hands meant that you could let your brain atrophy.

Each country has different problems. Ours were better solved by an admission that class barriers exist and need to be broken by schools. The comprehensive system fixed the class borders where they were, and let them there. It also (as I explained in the article) lowered the standards of all our schools, because its inventors could never admit openly that it was a huge experiment in social engineering. Nor could they, nor can they,  admit that it has failed.

I shall leave the discussion of cannabis for a bit, except to note how interesting it si that first-person accounts of the sad fates of cannabis users provoke so much rage and fury among the dope community. If they are so sure there’s no connection, why would they worry so? They are angry because deep down they fear that I am right.

 I intend to spend some time over the weekend grading Mr Wooderson’s more recent postings on the subject. 

I am once again accused of nostalgia, by someone who obviously doesn’t actually read what I write. I once again deny it. The past is gone. It is the future that concerns me, and the fact that we insist on choosing the wrong future. Nor were the 1950s any kind of paradise.

Luckett Bell asks if those who favour the death penalty should be prepared to carry it out. Not necessarily. We pay soldiers, sailors and airmen to deter (by being prepared and trained to kill) or actually to kill our external enemies. I don’t see why I should pay a hangman to deter (by being prepared to and trained to kill)  or kill our internal enemies . I think the parallel is exact. Some US states have elaborate systems under which the prison officer who throws the switch for an execution is one of several and does not know if he is the one responsible. I have no special objection to this, if it comforts those involved (like the supposed blank bullet in one of the rifles given to a firing squad) . But a hangman (whose action is essentially the physical exercise of the will of justice) is a skilled person, and has to be personally involved, and I can’t see how this could be anonymised. As I think hanging the most effective and humane method of execution, this makes such a device impossible. I’m sure Albert Pierrepoint was affected by his actions, but if I am right he did a great deal of good, by keeping this country much less violent than it was after he was retired. I do know, by the way, that he later came to view capital punishment as vengeance, and to oppose it. While this is quite understandable (many soldiers become pacifists for similar reasons),  I think he was wrong. On the other hand, this story hardly suggests that he was corrupted or turned into an unfeeling monster, by his duties. I certainly wouldn't volunteer for the job. I would find it very difficult. But I find many responsibilities hard to face, and that doesn't mean that, if it came to it, I wouldn't face them.

Oh,  ‘Legal Highs’. Some people seem to think there is some sort of clincher here.  I can’t see why. Apart from the fact that, to all intents and purposes cannabis is now a ‘legal high’, since the laws against it aren’t enforced,   it is much like the conversion of alcohol (since the 1980s) from something generally drunk in moderation in company, into a mind-obliterating drug consumed by hundreds of thousands of people with the sole purpose of getting drunk. Self-stupefaction is morally wrong. Our society has abandoned that belief, in law, morals and custom, and the abandonment of the alcohol licensing laws, accompanied the hollowing out of the drug laws, have created a society of debauchery and licence in which self-stupefaction is regarded as normal and desirable.  Just look at the pitiful, tragic ‘ Freshers’ Weeks’ at our ‘universities’ where the young, liberated from the restraints of home, are inducted en masse into drunkenness, sexual licence and drugs.

This is ultimately a moral question, and a question of morals being reinforced by law. If we still had morals, and still used the law to reinforce them, there would be a lot less demand for self-stupefaction. There would also be a lot more discontent with the squalid, incompetent , corrupt nature of our society and civilisation. But, in a permanent haze of legal and illegal ‘highs’, we passively accept our third world lot, which will end in the miserable enslavement of our descendants, the fate which always waits for civilisations which commit suicide.