Cork Irish

Religion and politics do not mix, they say. However, there was a time when Christianity—specifically, Anglicanism—was at the very heart of what it meant to be a Tory. It is arguably the case that multiculturalism, and our ongoing expropriation as a nation, could never have taken root in our country without the collapse of belief in religion, especially organised religion, which in the form of the Church of England is or was essentially the English nation at prayer. Even so, many members of our nation, cannot bring themselves to regret the passing of what they see as superstition and self-righteousness. I would like to explain to them why atheists, agnostics and Christians should support the restoration of our national faith and the traditions that surround it to their rightful position at the heart of English—and British—culture. Religion and politics must mix if there is to be a political defence of our culture.

I am afraid that the age of pre-critical belief has gone. It is appropriate therefore for me from the outset to tell the stark truth about our religion without any pretence of the real faith that our ancestors would once have exhibited. I feel curiously disloyal in saying so, but the Christian religion itself rests on a tissue of falsehoods. The Bible is not an inspired unerring book. I would be outraged if a clergyman said so from the pulpit, but, between you and me, Jesus was not the son of God, and certainly did not rise from the dead on the third day. I first realised this as a child when leafing through the very first chapter of the New Testament, Matthew 1, which claims that Jesus’ ancestry can be split into three sections of 14 generations apiece. But any child can ascertain that 40, not 42, generations are enumerated. Similarly, Matthew 2 quotes an Old Testament prophecy to the effect that Bethlehem is “not the least among the princes of Juda”, whereas the actual prophecy, in Micah 5, describes the town in diametrically opposite terms as “little among the thousands of Judah”. No one can claim today to have the uncritical belief of our ancestors, and yet to take part in theological disputes within the Church of England, one has to pose as a “believer”. One example is the false debate around homosexuality, where liberals have devised novel interpretations of Bible passages that contradict their political views. It would be more honest for them to state that they do not believe in the Christian religion than to try to read their modern political views into the ancient texts.

The 19th century elaboration of scientific theories disproving the creationist claims of the book of Genesis pulled the rug from under the feet of religious belief. A. N. Wilson’s book, God’s Funeral, gives a highly readable account of the 19th century debate around religion; I sympathise most with John Ruskin, who hoped that the sentiment of religion could be preserved without its real kernel of faith. The funny thing is that, long after Darwinian theories had become universal knowledge, religiosity remained a feature of English culture. Right up until 1960, the majority of English children went to Sunday school. The more recent abandonment of the Christian church reflects no great movement within society from the bottom up, rejecting our traditional culture. It is the ecclesiastical establishment itself that found itself cringing in embarrassment at traditional belief. Classical Anglicanism, rooted in the history of this country, lost its legitimacy in the eyes of our haughty bishops, who have cast round for sources of legitimacy less tied to our national history and culture. The King James Bible—our church’s greatest contribution to the English-speaking world—has had to go. Apparently, recently discovered manuscripts in the Sinai desert have shown a series of minor discrepancies with the Textus Receptus that the Authorised Version was based on: why this is relevant, when none of us believes in the inspiration of the Bible, escapes me. Our Book of Common Prayer has had to be updated, with church services moving towards the informality said to be common in the primitive church, the new source of “authenticity”.

Why does it matter if the church hierarchy wants to reform the worship and doctrine of the Church of England? Surely, if it is admitted that religion is based on false factual premises, it matters not a whit if things are updated? However, the Christian religion is a fundamental part of our culture. But just as Bagehot warned in the case of the monarchy, not to let daylight in on magic, so the health of our spiritual culture depends on our preserving the spell woven by the liturgy, the music, the architecture, the dress and the style of worship that was passed down to us by our ancestors. From the time of the Deists of the early 1700s doubts were expressed about the veracity of the Bible story, but, as John Ruskin showed above, our ecclesiastical heritage continued to be valued. Ordinary people were aware of the scientific arguments that surrounded the creation story, but continued nonetheless to draw comfort from their church, until the reformers destroyed the church that they knew. So fully has daylight been allowed in on the former magic of the church, that would-be worshippers are more likely to find in their church a female “priest” promoting homosexuality, justifying criminality and calling for more tolerance of Islamic extremism, than an opportunity for solemn worship that could call the nation to morality and repentance.

Religion contains a series of cultural images or motifs that have moved the nation down through the centuries and have moulded our cultural values. To this extent it is irrelevant whether the facts of the Bible are true or not. Pondering the message of the Bible, we have been made into Englishmen. The motifs of the Bible story form part of our culture: the Nativity, the Crucifixion, the parables, the attitude of Christ to children, to the poor, to sinners, all form part of our culture. These motifs do not only form part of our culture; they are the root of our culture. Muscular Christian virtues were inculcated in the British elite through the public education system by educationalists such as Thomas Arnold, and we were once able to boast of high public standards among civil servants and imperial administrators; this has all gone by-the-by in the post-Christian period that has now produced a highly politicised civil service and judiciary. However, even today, Englishmen, particularly in small town and countryside areas, are noted for kindly and considerate behaviour to neighbours and others. Our inherited values have stood us in good stead for many centuries, and to read the Gospels, to sing our wonderful hymns and to contemplate our ecclesiastical architecture can only be upbuilding. Finally, no appreciation of Western Civilisation over 2000 years is possible without an understanding of Christianity. Milton’s Paradise Lost becomes an odd work, only comprehensible as the creation of a 17th century poet mired in superstition, as the images he paints leave us cold today. We might enjoy listening to some of the settings of the Mass by classical composers, but without any connection to our past, the question will always be on our lips, “why did all these composers choose to compose music for this particular text?”

“Why take ye thought for raiment?”, Christ asked. But, you will never hear this in the Church of England today. “Why are you anxious about clothing?” is the dumbed-down version preferred by the T-shirt-wearing social workers who pose as members of the clergy. The hymns of Charles Wesley, expressing complex theological concepts to the accompaniment of a church organ, have been replaced by pop songs and the strumming of a guitar. As for the Cathedrals that are our heritage, we can view them only after payment of a tourist fee, impertinently demanded by the moneychangers that occupy the Temple today. Worse than all these enormities, is the current passion of the Anglican church leaders for the Islamicisation of Great Britain, a cause that seems likely to render superfluous the church itself. Our traditional interpretation of Christianity—it is irrelevant to me whether it conflicts with the Christianity of the primitive church or not—was a martial, warlike one, symbolised by St George, and best represented by Richard the Lionheart and his participation in the Crusades. Now it is constantly inferred that somehow the Crusades were ill-conceived, or even downright evil, whereas the Islamic conquest and conversion of the Middle East and North Africa by the sword are given Canterbury’s silent seal of approval. And yet the irony is that the very crusading zeal of multiculturalism and our attempts to remake countries overseas in our image reflect, however distorted, the martial interpretation of Christianity we inherited from our forbears.

The enthusiastic adoption of heretical causes by the Church of England has robbed English men and women of the sanctuary they have the right to expect of their local church. Whatever happened to this nation, the Church should always be there, providing comfort to the people of this nation—“feed my lambs”, as Christ said to St Peter. If we were conquered by an invading force, all would not be lost, as we would be right to expect our Church to be there, providing consolation. If our nation were stricken by a famine, as in days of old, it would be the duty of the Church to declare days of penitence and beseech God for his mercy, and to organise relief through the parishes. No calamity could be too severe to nullify the role of the Church in our society, ministering to the powerful and the powerless alike.

Yet, we have lived to see the Church withdraw its support from our nation. Multiculturalism and mass immigration are now championed by the Church, which cares not a jot about the impact of these developments on its own flock. Those who are victims of growing lawlessness cannot look to the Church for love and support; the Church leaders are too busy condemning any attempt to bring ethnic criminals to book to give a damn about the victims. The sacred words, the sacred hymns, are now gone, bread replaced by a stone. And yet in every mosque, every Hindu temple, up and down the land, the ethnic minorities can attend their services, safe in the knowledge that their own religious leaders will not try to palm off on them politically inspired innovations in place of their religious traditions. No Muslim imam will preach homosexuality and abortion in the mosque; no mosque will attempt to update the traditional Arabic prayers; no Hindu temple will fail to support the Indian community, through thick and thin. These newcomers are cocooned in communities whose leaders value their cultures and traditions. The contrast provided by our Church, which has turned its back on our people, could not be greater.

In these circumstances, I do not believe the Church of England can reform itself from within. The physical and financial resources of our Church are being abused by people who have wormed their way into an organisation whose traditional values they have never espoused. The reformation of the Church, therefore, must become a political issue. The General Synod must be closed down; the heretical bishops, the openly immoral priests and the female “priests” must be defrocked; the King James Bible and the Book of Common Prayer, together with an authorised collection of solemn and patriotic hymns, must be reimposed on the church. The loss of so many heretical clergymen would leave many a parish without a minister, but any male member of the congregation can lead a service of Choral Matins, a traditional service that has regrettably faded away in the modern Church. The pretence of a religious faith to oppose these changes should be greeted with contempt. We may not believe in the literal truth of the Bible, but English patriots do believe in the holiness of the culture that Christianity created in this country; we need to restore that and start providing succour to our people in every parish once again.

I would like to reform the education system in a way that allows for higher standards without empowering new bureaucracies to monitor all schools. In one of Chris Woodhead’s books, he speaks of how inspections are carried out in triplicate. The inspectors come, and then the inspectors of the inspectors, and the inspectors of the inspectors of the inspectors—as there is more than one body involved with monitoring schools. I believe parents should buy the school education they need for their children, and have the right to sue the school if the school does not teach well. For example, if the school does not use the “phonics” method of teaching reading, a good case to sue the school is created. By putting power in the hands of the consumers, the fact that the teachers are in the main left-wing extremists can be circumvented. To sue a failing school is a very different approach to the regulatory regimes in place now: the quality of education should be a question between the school and the parents, without regulatory bodies involved.

I have some detailed policy prescriptions. I would close down all the LEAs tomorrow and enter the names of all their employees on a Bureaucratic Parasites’ Register (BPR)- and cancel their pensions for lack of interest. People on the BPR would be subject to a lifetime ban on working in the public sector. The BPR wouldn’t be a quango, but simply an Internet list of all those so banned. There would be no secret register to pay to search: the information would be permanently in the public domain on a website.

The whole education system should be privatised or handed over to existing management and the state should get out of the sector. Basically, vouchers should replace school funding, but the vouchers should be set at a level that requires every parent to pay something. Clearly the poorest would get a voucher covering 90% of the cost, but they ought to pay at least something in order to take interest in what goes on in the school. Teachers’ salaries are determined on a school-by-school basis. Schools that underperform simply have no choose other than to cut salaries.

Beyond that, every school would be selective, and there should be no national curriculum, and school inspectorates should be closed down (and their employees entered on the BPR). The state should confine itself to monitoring exam syllabuses and marking schedules. As long as the exams are tough, presumably the schools have to raise their game. By ensuring that real content is on the exam papers, ideally set to be similar to those of the 1950s, schools simply have to teach better in order to have their little charges pass the exams.

I would introduce a baccalaureate of 1000 points. Maximum 10 subjects of 100 points each. Pupils only entered for 5 subjects can only get 500 points and so are missing out on 50% of the marks to start with. This is so that those bright students who can do 10 exams get a higher overall mark. No one scoring under 700 goes on to A level and university. The Bacc would be as follows:

1. Latin 100 marks (to include Caesar, Vergilius etc)
2. Modern language 100 marks (to include an oral)
3. English language 100 (to include tough requirements on grammar). Children who can’t spell or use the subjunctive score very badly here.
4. English literature 100 (purely consisting of Shakespeare and the Greats – basically the syllabus would require knowledge of so many Classic works, there would be no time to teach PC works.)
5. RE – knowledge of the Prayerbook and one of the Gospels of the Authorised Version of the Bible required. No Islamic or alternative option available.
6.History or Geography – knowledge of facts required to pass. Geography is about geography and not about social exclusion. History requires much more than knowledge of slavery and the Holocaust. Exam questions like “imagine you are a slave; write down your feelings” are simply deleted from exam papers: the study of slavery has a place, but this sort of “exam question” is a nonsense.
7.At least one science. There is no such thing as “double science”. Biology, physics and chemistry are separate options.
8.Mathematics – at least as rigorous as the 1950s O level.
9 and 10 – a choice of additional languages, humanities and sciences, music etc.

Schools that did not teach Latin would see their children unable to score more than 900. Schools that didn’t teach any language, Latin or modern, would see their children unable to score more than 800. Schools that taught PC books would see their children fail the English literature component. Schools that taught Islam in the RE component would see their children fail on knowledge of the Christian tradition.

But it makes no sense to monitor what happens in each class. Set the exam syllabuses and marking schedules so hard that the only way of passing is to teach a traditional curriculum – but let the schools do what they like. The Baccalaureate league table would lead to parental pressure. Parents would have the legal right to sue the schools if they felt they were not teaching the good stuff. The idea would be to make it very hard for anyone not in the top 2% of pupils to score more than 900 under this baccalaureate. A criminal investigation of the exam boards would ensue whenever more than 2% of pupils scored more than 900. As I said, no one scoring under 700 goes on to A levels. The wheat is sorted from the chaff.

Let me add that the number of people with qualifications is too high in the UK. The certificates they have are often meaningless. We have seen graduates required for jobs that previously were done by those with A levels and now for jobs previously done by those with O levels. We saw recently how a girl with GCSEs and A levels committed suicide because she was unable to find a job. It is simply wrong to create a system where degrees are required for jobs that technically do not demand anything other than good English and arithmetic. Why is a degree required to work in a travel agents’ office? Indeed, why are A levels required? The job technically does not require any qualifications at all.

We need to substantially reduce the numbers with A levels and degrees, not in order to take opportunity away from people, but in order to restore it. Most of these degrees are nothing more than a detailed grilling in left-wing propaganda anyway. The teacher training colleges should be closed down (and their employees entered on the BPR) and schools required to conduct their own training.

* Compulsory education abolished. Home schooling and no schooling become fully acceptable—and no supervision of home-schooled children is carried out.
* All coursework for exams abolished. Everything is on the final exam with no appeal allowed. Pupils can sit the entire year again and then take the exams the following year – no public funding for repeating a year would be available; parents would have to pay the full tuition fee.
* Corporal punishment – 6 of the best – introduced in all schools. Parents are not permitted to object.
* Schools required to keep order and prevent bullying – the headmaster subject to criminal charges (abetting violence among pupils in his care) if he doesn’t. Parents can also sue the schools if the headmaster fails to keep order in the school.
* School league tables remain in existence: schools are judged on the exam results of all children in their care, including those entered for no exams, so the current bureaucratic fraud of labelling children dyslexic, attention-deficit and dyscalculic, comes to an end
* Hectoring the children on multiculturalism becomes a criminal offence. The Crown Prosecution Service plays no role in such prosecutions. Parents initiate prosecutions themselves on a “no win, no fee” basis.
* Hectoring the children on support for “gay” sexuality becomes a criminal offence (=Section 28 restored).
* Sex education criminalised.
* The child measurement programme is cancelled – measuring children’s weight at schools is defined as a human rights abuse.
* Normal food reintroduced in school canteens.
* Christian assemblies required in all schools, required of demographic composition.
* School uniform standards enforced. Parents of schools where girls are no longer required to wear skirts can sue the schools.
* The Criminal Records Bureau checks are ended. Schools are required to be open to the general public. Padlocking children behind locked doors out of a misplaced security panic is defined as false imprisonment—a criminal offence.

I am a convinced supporter of Dr Sean Gabb’s Libertarian Alliance, and will remain so. But I am not sure he is right to argue that libertarians should reposition themselves as opponents of capitalism, in particular, opposing limited liability companies, and the preferential advantages the limited company format gives to big business. It strikes me as a wheeze, an attempt to strike a left-wing pose, or what would be seen as one, in a context where many libertarian views are seen as either right-wing, or a cover for those who are right-wing.

Firstly, the UK in particular does well out of large companies. BP would have been a good example a while ago, but appears likely to fall foul of the US administration’s interpretation of US laws in such a way that BP, a limited liability company, is unable to pay what had appeared to be the maximum of US$75m in liability for oil companies beset by an oil spill. The City of London and large pharmaceutical, financial services and defence companies form the mainstay of British Big Business–to a large extent, we are still living off our former imperial glory (sadly one with Nineveh and Tyre these days), and the advent of an era of cottage industry small businesses would be profoundly negative for the medium-term outlook of the UK economy. Second, I would react with alarm to the idea that I should be held personally responsible for losses of a company I held shares in–another related point that Dr Gabb has encouraged discussion on. The joint-stock company format has allowed millions of small private investors to piggyback on the growth of the larger companies and make provision for their futures, and I think libertarians should see that as positive. The alternative is dependence on state pensions financed out of taxation.

Part of what Sean Gabb seems to be getting at is that the joint-stock corporation means that bourgeois capitalism is no longer with us. This fact complicates a lot of arguments that libertarians make: for example, where libertarians support freedom of association and therefore the right of a business to refuse the custom of anyone, for any reason (including race, sexual orientation, etc), what if the managers of the business do not personally own the business? What right is it of them to pursue these kinds of agenda when they do not even own the business concerned? If we supported freedom of association only where a business was owner-managed, as with a corner shop or a bed-and-breakfast guesthouse, we could end up supporting freedom only in certain circumstances, only at the margins of society.

I was impressed by the arguments of the late Sam Francis in the US, that a new managerial elite had effectively replaced the former bourgeoisie. In a development not anticipated by Karl Marx, the progression from feudalism to capitalism has been succeeded, not by a progression from capitalism to communism, but from capitalism to managerialism, obviating much of the Marxian doctrines. As corporations grew larger, owner management became rarer, and in fact impossible. Even where a business remains in the hands of the original family founders, they require personnel directors and many other similar managers to run the business for them. The joint-stock company further diluted the control of the original entrepreneurs, who in most cases sold up, to the extent that individual entrepreneurs no longer control significant parts of the economy today. There are no capitalists left.

With ownership so diffuse, managers control the economy today. This answers the essential question that Lenin asked of political economy, “Who, Whom?” The key point of political analysis is to work out who the elite is and who the governed are. The capitalist-style analyses of the socialist left are simply wrong, in that they give the wrong answer to “Who, Whom?” as there are no capitalists. What there are are managers in a technocratic economy-state. Sam Francis pointed out that all institutions are run by the same people today. A civil servant can leave for the private sector and take up a managerial job, and then move on to a managerial job in the church, and then move on to a similar job in the defence industry, and then into politics. The public sector, the private sector, the churches, the charities–these are run by a mobile elite flitting between them. Church finance directors are not deeply religious people who do the job out of faith, but rather finance directors who have had a number of posts elsewhere and demand six-figure salaries for running the finances of a church. Personnel directors of charities are not people who are seeking to work with the disadvantaged, but personnel directors who have worked elsewhere and demand large salaries and pensions, to be paid directly from sums raised ostensibly for charitable deeds. The same type of people are doing everything.

The bureaucratisation of the economy is aided by causes such as “anti-racism”, “multi-culturalism”, “health and safety” and “the environment”. These causes are the justification for the employment of technocrats. Even private companies have to employ large phalanxes of people whose jobs are essentially political. (In fact, abolishing limited liability would simply diminish risk-taking, and lead to the development of more technocratic jobs in the area of risk management. Whole departments of functionaries handling risk would be born in every private enterprise.) It seems that a large proportion of the private sector is directly dependent on government policy (not just companies that benefit from government contracts, but the semi-quangoized charities that depend on public handouts, and many other niche technocratic roles–think of the people who produce the Energy Performance Certificates for houses being sold or the people whose jobs depend on the exorbitant fees charged to check the criminal records of teachers and nursery nurses: their roles have been invented as an act of public policy, although to no useful purpose).

It is worth asking what we can do about the managerial elite. Opposing limited liability seems to position libertarians as anti-capitalists, without addressing the argument that a new public-private managerial elite has replaced those capitalists. There are big businesses around today, but the problem is not that they are big, or even particularly predatory in behaviour, but that they have been captured by functionaries, technocrats who staff layers of middle and upper management that are strictly unnecessary. Big business needs to survive, because otherwise we would not be able to invest in these companies, and the average person would remain dependent on the state to provide for his long-term future. We need instead to think of anti-technocratic policies to cut down on the bureaucratic behaviour of functionaries in both public and private sectors.

I would like to severely cut down on the numbers going to university, as the universities have largely been remade as factories producing pro-managerial wannabe technocrats. The promotion of cultural agendas such as anti-racism and multi-culturalism should be criminalised–in the private sector as well as the public sector. It should simply be a criminal offence for companies to spend any money on political propaganda on cultural issues to their workers. There should be no public financial support for charities. There should be a clear distinction between the public and private sectors: I would argue that anyone whose livelihood depends on the public purse should not have the right to vote or stand for Parliament. This would severely cut down the pro-managerial electorate, and clarify that people who work in the public sector are our servants, and not the other way round. All consultancy work for the public sector should be banned, as should advertising by public-sector bodies. All public-sector workers should be limited to maximum salary of £50K. While consultants in the NHS and others should earn more–this should be facilitated by the privatisation of the health sector. If headteachers of failing schools hope to earn six-figure salaries, they should do so in the private sector, where they would have to work to attract pupils. We could reintroduce annual parliaments (the norm in the Middle Ages) and ban political parties from funding candidates’ election campaigns. All policies should be designed with an eye on preventing control by the managerial elite.

The easy part is cutting down the public sector. The difficulty comes with the private sector: once the owner-managers of the bourgeois era have gone, are we condemned to technocratic management for ever? I would argue that many of the technocratic posts in the private sector have been created by government regulation, and by eliminating the regulation and reducing the availability of graduates, we could reverse the quangoization of the private sector. Countries like Japan and China have big businesses and limited liability, but have not seen the cultural trends of the Western countries, such as multi-culturalism, simply because there has been no attempt to delegitimize national identity in those countries–and if we economically disarm ourselves by opposing big business, we will find that the Far Eastern countries end up becoming our new masters. However, given that we have the cultural problem of self-righteousness among the middle class, and the Far Eastern countries do not, something has to be done to try to counteract it. Could we introduce compulsory John Lewis-style workers’ democracy into joint-stock companies, seeing as their managers do not actually own the companies? Maybe managers adopting a technocratic style could be “recalled” by their staff members? Ultimately, a society’s culture is not just a function of the size of its businesses or something like limited liability, but a product of political discussion, the broadcast media, the schools and the churches. It is these that are driving trends in the private business sector today and not the other way round, and so the restoration of our culture can only begin by sorting out the political parties, the media, schools and churches.