Happy St Crispian's Day, and a few retorts and comments

If I hadn't been travelling last week I would have marked Trafalgar Day, which fell on 21st October, on this site. As it was, I toasted the immortal memory of Horatio, Viscount Nelson, victor of Trafalgar, Copenhagen and the Nile, in fizzy beer in a foreign bar, with a select group of companions. But having missed Trafalgar, let's recall instead another great English anniversary, now fading into obscurity and myth, that of Agincourt - as portrayed by Shakespeare in 'Henry V' - and particularly King Harry's great speech before battle - Laurence Olivier's 1944 rendering of this can be found on YouTube.

'This day is called the feast of Crispian: He that outlives this day, and comes safe home, Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named, And rouse him at the name of Crispian. He that shall live this day, and see old age, will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours, And say "To-morrow is Saint Crispian". Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars. And say "These wounds I had on Crispin's day..."

'...This story shall the good man teach his son; And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by, from this day to the ending of the world, But we in it shall be remembered; We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.'

Let's prove King Harry right, by remembering it today.

As we forget these things, we forget who we are and cease to be what we used to be. In my view, this makes us worse, not better, than we were before.

Now, to your comments. There is alas a vast backlog, some not even here but in other places on the web which I have found during late night sessions in wonky internet cafes, far, far away.

Alleged Cruelty to, and Intolerance of, Unwed Mothers

Going back two weeks, I recall the sad misunderstanding by some ultra-feminists - who think themselves so righteous that they do not need to consider their positions at all - of my suggestion that we should give nine months' notice of a cessation of benefits for unmarried mothers. Somehow or other, this far from anti-female position is classified as being such, and so dismissed without thought.

Few seemed to get the significance of the nine months. So I will explain it. It's my view that the current state subsidies for unwed motherhood - especially the housing - are an incentive for unmarried pregnancy. Given the current state of British manhood, and the fairly wretched standard of living available to the unskilled worker trying to support a family, it is perfectly reasonable for a young woman to get herself with child and, in effect, become a bride of the state.

The state won't come home drunk and beat her up. The state won't abandon her when her pregnancy first starts to show. The state won't two-time her and dump her. The state will come up with regular, if fairly basic, payments and will provide a roof over her head more or less indefinitely.

So, far from condemning these young women, I am saying that their actions are rational under the laws and conditions created by the state. The female instinct for motherhood is powerful, strong and good. It is the state which has, by destroying the marriage pact and substituting the current arrangements, created a way of life which is, by all statistical measures, likely to be worse for the children who are born into and raised in one-parent households.

If the benefits were withdrawn, and if society once again began to disapprove of women embarking on motherhood without a husband, I believe most (obviously not all) of these young women would not take this course. Those who did would have to take responsibility for themselves, or get their families to do so, or get married. And the long struggle to re-establish marriage, that great cornerstone of liberty and civilisation, could begin.

This raises plenty of other questions. For a start, would I approve if they continued to be promiscuous, and aborted the resulting children? No. I am against abortion, regarding it as the murder of an innocent person, and cannot myself think of any circumstances where adoption would not be better. I am open to argument about cases where the mother's life is threatened by the pregnancy, but I believe such instances are in fact extremely rare in the days of modern medicine (we also get into complex moral questions about intention here, which simply do not arise in the case of the great majority of abortions. In general, the issue is raised to throw dust in the eyes of the gullible).

Apart from my general moral objection, I am also against readily-available abortion because of its propaganda effect. I think its widespread acceptance as backstop contraception (as pioneered in the USSR, where abortions came to outnumber live births), along with the general encouragement of reliance on contraceptives, actually encourages promiscuity. Certainly its availability in recent years has not led to its becoming 'safe, legal and rare', the goal its proponents claim to seek. Rather, it is possibly safe (I think there are doubts about its long-term effects), legal and increasingly common, and in many cases is resorted to many times by the same person.

What about rape victims? Contrary to various lies and misrepresentations spread about me by people who prefer smear to truth, I believe that rapists should be severely punished (though only after fair and unprejudiced jury trials with an effective presumption of innocence). But I do not see why a child conceived in such an act should be condemned to death for an act in which he or she had no possible part.

Yes, I genuinely, truly believe that sexual intercourse should take place only within lifelong marriage. But no, I don't imagine for a moment that a society which enforces this moral view through disapproval of other relationships, and by refusing to subsidise those who breach this code, will be entirely chaste. Of course it won't. Chastity in one's past life is not a requirement for marriage, though a lot of anti-religious people seem to think it is. What is required is fidelity after marriage ('forsaking all other', as the 1662 book requires).

But people will, if they choose another course, have to live with the consequences of their actions and certainly won't get the active encouragement by the state, using other people's money extorted by that state under threat of jail, as they can now. Will such a society be cruel? In some ways, undoubtedly, though generally the cruelty will not in my view be the fault of the laws or the morality, but it will be the fault of those who acted selfishly and in defiance of the moral rule that children should be raised within stable marriages, and that fidelity, constancy and mutual support are superior to promiscuity, serial relationships and the casual abandonment of children.

But it would be nothing like as cruel as what we have now, where the desires and pleasures of adults always trump the needs of children - that great voiceless multitude of victims who suffer from the divorce and promiscuity culture more than anyone, and who revenge themselves on our callous society when they reach adulthood, and are in many cases unable to perform the duties of a civilised human being.

A blogger called 'JDA', in an interesting and largely generous comment on my chapter on this issue in 'The Abolition of Britain', still manages to accuse me of 'intolerance' towards unwed mothers, because I conclude that the stigma against this style of life is necessary. I disagree. My chapter is thoroughly sympathetic to the charities which used to seek better treatment for unmarried mothers and especially for their innocent children. It says that it is quite unfair that illegitimacy should be seen as a fault in the child who is illegitimate. What control did he or she have in this? But there has to be some responsibility somewhere, and surely it lies with the parents of the illegitimate child. And I mean both parents. Parishes used to pursue the fathers of such children quite hotly until we urbanised in the 19th century. DNA now enables us to do the same, if we wish. I believe the great majority of pregnancies are the result of conscious, rational decision. I think it wrong to decide deliberately to raise a child without a father. All studies and statistics show that - in general - children in such households will have poorer life chances than those raised in stable marriages. Heroic individual efforts may overcome this, just as married couples may through negligence or other wickedness destroy the futures of their children. But the dice are heavily loaded against a good outcome in a fatherless home (especially for boys) and it seems plain wrong to me to risk this deliberately.

I am not sure how it adds up to 'intolerance' to be ready to state this publicly. I am not proposing criminal penalties, or the sort of persecution now often visited (for instance) on the disabled by cruel mobs. I am just saying that society must distinguish, if it is to survive, and that is bound to mean that those who choose to raise children outside wedlock suffer some disadvantages in law and status. The fact that I am prepared to say this does not help my case, and I know it. But I think anyone involved in social policy must be ready to accept all the consequences of what he proposes. It is precisely because the Left refuse to do this that they are so blind to the damage that they do. Intolerance is, as far as I know, an unwillingness to tolerate things you do not like. I recognise that in a society based upon lifelong marriage there will be people who will not or cannot conform. I think they should be tolerated and where necessary protected from those who would do them harm. But I do not think they should be encouraged or subsidised, or that children should be taught that these distinctions do not matter. They do.

Defenders of easy divorce often fail to think about what they are saying. Here's an example. Christopher Charles posted: 'Peter Hitchens's desire to keep everyone married forever is just odd.

'I was married for 24 years. Towards the end of that time we grew apart, separated and divorced. I don't look back at that as a failure. [Fact is, in an earlier age, one of shorter life expectancy, chances are one of us would have died by then and the marriage would indeed have been 'life long'.] For the most part it was a success.

'We separated without too much rancour. Within a shortish time we forgave one another and now have cordial relations. Rule number one was never to use the kids [who were both under the age of ten when we separated] as pawns and we haven't. They've grown up healthy, emotionally intelligent and well adjusted. Quite what purpose would have been served by forcing their mother and me to stay together completely baffles me. Perhaps Mr Hitchens could explain?'

Well, here's an attempt. As another contributor has pointed out, Mr Charles is not necessarily typical in having 'never used the kids as pawns'. In fact he is highly untypical. And, though I know nothing of his circumstances and wouldn't dream of commenting upon them, I'd make a couple of cautionary comments. It would presumably be in his interests to believe that his children have grown up 'healthy, emotionally-intelligent and well-adjusted' despite their parents' split. But would everyone else involved agree? Is Mr Charles capable of objectivity on the matter? Or Mrs Charles? And how would the outcome have differed had there been no divorce?

As for 'forcing him and his wife to stay together', lifelong marriage cannot actually do that, and does not. What it does is alter the rules under which people live, promoting unselfishness and strengthening the family and private life at the expense of the state and of greedy commerce.

Even in the days before divorce existed, the Church permitted separation, and so should the state. Anyone can leave if they want to. What was not permitted was remarriage. You made your marriage work, as promised, or you didn't. But there was no remarriage of divorced persons with a living spouse (this is still the official doctrine of the C of E, though it is widely breached). In a society where marriage, and marriage alone, has legal and moral privileges, this matters quite a lot. In our current sexual anarchy, it doesn't really matter at all. Which is why men increasingly avoid marriage as a potential booby-trap in which they can lose everything in return for nothing much, and why women (knowing that men will not commit themselves to lifelong relationships any more) increasingly fear old age, and seek through such things as Botox and cosmetic surgery to hide or postpone it, as their value on the market falls.

If marriage is once and for life, people think harder before getting married. They think harder before getting pregnant. They don't reach for a divorce lawyer as soon as they encounter a bumpy patch, or when they get tired of each other. And women have a huge power over men, which they lose in a promiscuous society. Where sex outside marriage is frowned on and hard to find, men can only get what they want by giving something substantial in return. A serious feminist, concerned with the well-being of women rather than with a revolutionary campaign against the Christian ethic, would see this.

By the way, life expectancy hasn't altered all that much, as any study of old gravestones will tell you. Many people have lived into their 80s for centuries, and stayed married while doing so. Two of my grandparents lived to be nearly 100 years old. I suspect that the current young generation - especially the young women who smoke and drink far more than their grandmothers would ever have thought of doing - will die younger than my lot. The huge reduction in infant mortality thanks to better housing conditions, clean water and medical advances has, however, greatly increased the average lifespan. I am amazed that this silly suggestion, that our forebears didn't live very long, is repeated so often.

I don't expect most of my critics to pay any attention to any of this, except to mine it for quotes which they can misunderstand and misrepresent in ways that suit them. But I felt it necessary to state it anyway.

If you want to comment on Peter Hitchens, click on Comments and scroll down.