You Don't Get To Do This Every Day

Seizing the Mace

There is something magisterial about the passing of time.  Traditions imbedded over hundreds and, in some cases, thousands of years cannot lightly be laid aside.

Here is one of the latest examples from the UK:

The gold ceremonial mace which is carried into the House of Common’s debating chamber each day was wielded in the chamber Monday evening, as tempers frayed over Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union.  The Member of Parliament for Brighton, one of the United Kingdom’s most clearly left-progressive cities, Lloyd Russell-Moyle marched up the centre of the chamber and took the golden mace from the table, before holding it aloft and walking towards the exit.

Speaker of the House John Bercow, who is responsible for the proceedings of the chamber and has the power to punish members for unruly conduct, was seemingly taken aback by the move by Russell-Moyle.  Bercow repeated the word “no” until the mace was taken off Russell-Moyle by a uniformed usher, who ceremoniously returned the item back to the chamber.  Bercow then ordered Russell-Moyle out of the chamber, barring him from the rest of the day’s sitting — which was already close to completion.

Charlie Proctor

✔@MonarchyUK

BREAKING: Utterly extraordinary scenes as Lloyd Russell-Moyle MP is expelled from the House of Commons after grabbing the Mace. #BrexitVote #BrexitShambles

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4:01 PM - Dec 10, 2018

Here is the chaser:

The mace is a gold-gilded silver symbol of the monarch’s authority in Parliament, and without it, the house cannot sit.  The mace has been seized on a handful of occasions in history, including during the English Civil War, and more recently by Michael Hesseltine in 1976. 

Such drama!  Such theatre! Such fun!

Radio NZ and Peter HItchens

Kim Hill talks to Peter Hitchens about Brexit

. . . And lots of other matters

https://adamsmith.wordpress.com/2018/02/17/rnz-saturday-kim-hill-talks-to-peter-hitchens-about-brexit/


A fascinating and entertaining discussion. 

JT

Truth and Hypocrisy in Victorian England

The Lord Christ Vs Bentham and Darwin

There are few things more distasteful than the pseudo-Christianity which predominated amongst the Victorian elites.  Many practised the appearance of faith, whilst privately despising it.  This was not always the case: the Great Awakening took hold amongst the gentry and elites and many were truly converted.  They devoted themselves to working for the poor and the downtrodden.  

Anthony Ashley-Cooper was the 7th Earl of Shaftesbury.  He remains a wonderful exemplar of an aristocrat committed to Christ.  He spent his adult life seeking to bring the Christian faith to the most needy.  He was a staunch campaigner against slavery.  He started an organization called Ragged Schools.  According to historian, A.N. Wilson

Ashley's entire motive for establishing Ragged Schools, rescuing women and children from their servitude in mines and factories, was based on the premise that God Himself had chosen to come to Earth as a poor person of no reputation, thereby not merely redeeming the human race from sin, but teaching it that every child born into the world is made in God's image and likeness, every child has dignity and worth, and rights.  Remove the truth of Christianity and, for a Christian of Ashley's generation, you have destroyed the very reason for believing in virtue itself.  The Benthamite jungle has triumphed.  [A. N. Wilson, The Victorians (London: Arrow/Random House, 2002),    p.167f]

But so many of the English aristocracy regarded themselves as "smarter than the average bear."  Unbelief was the preserve of sophisticated, educated, and superior people.

Thatcher's "Place" in English History

An Early Assessment

We well remember the outpouring of disgust and incandescent hatred, yet also sadness, respect, and public honour that accompanied the death of Margaret Thatcher.  It seemed that her passing was significant to so many for the exact opposite reasons.

We recall that a local radio station played Maggie, the lament by Foster and Allen, to mark her death.



But what was her significance, really?  It's probably still too early for historians to write a balanced perspective that captures the genuinely historic aspects of her Prime Ministership.  Robert Tombs, at the end of his magisterial volume, The English and Their History makes an attempt.

We think our readers will appreciate his "take" on a most remarkable leader, seen in the light of England's longer, wider, deeper past.

Seventy-Five Years On

The War in England

We have been taking the opportunity recently to post pieces about World War II--most of them about the struggle as faced and experienced by the United Kingdom.  These events took place 75 years ago: the next general remembrance and anniversary will doubtless be in twenty-five years time.

Here are a few more observations, gleaned from historian, Robert Tombs.

Firstly, the rapid socialisation and centralization of the UK economy.  The free market could not sustain the war.

Millions of acres of grassland, heath and fen went under the plough, some for the first time since the Black Death.  Golf courses and ancient lawns and meadows were sacrificed.  Windsor Great Park became the largest cornfield in England.  The number of allotments nearly doubled as people "dug for victory."  Clubs were set up to keep pigs.  Diets had to change, requiring control of food supplies.  Inflation had to be checked. . . .

Many older people, including at least a million women, volunteered for a range of tasks.  Nearly three-quarters of teenagers between fourteen and seventeen were engaged in some kind of war work.  This was a great social and psychological upheaval--there were 60 million changes of address during the war.  But at the time the disturbances were seen as temporary.  [Robert Tombs, The English and Their History (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2015), p.716f.]

Secondly, the critical contribution of Ernest Bevin.  Here is someone whose name is rarely mentioned. yet in terms of the war effort, Bevin was the glue which kept the nation together.

Victorian Clergy

The Perfect Occupation, or Not

Historian A. N. Wilson tells us what his dream job would have been, had he lived in the Victorian period.  Wilson is an historian of Marxist stripe.  He is not a Believer.  Nevertheless he writes:

It is difficult to conceive of any more agreeable way of life than that of the Victorian country parson.  If I had to choose my ideal span of life, I should choose to have been born in the 1830's, the son of a parson with the genetic inheritance of strong teeth. (Improvements in dentistry are surely among the few unambiguous benefits brought to the human race by the twentieth century.)

I should avoid a public school education through being 'delicate', and arrive at Balliol with a good knowledge of Greek to be taught by Benjamin Jowett. . . . After a short spell-say, five years-teaching undergraduates at the Varsity, one of them would introduce me to his pretty, bookish sister, and we should be married.  I should resign my fellowship and be presented with a college living, preferably a medieval church, a large draughty Georgian rectory and glebe enough to provide the family with 'subsistence'.  By now it would be, let us say, the 1860's, and I should remain here for the next forty years, a faithful friend to generations of villagers to whom I would act as teacher, amateur doctor and social worker, as well as priest.

Only Fools and Horses.

Why Marxist Teleology Failed in England

Karl Marx believed he had profound insight when it came to predicting what would happen throughout the West (and, indeed, the world).  Drawing from Hegel, Marx and colleagues developed the theory that human history would progress by means of a "dialectic" of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis.

Marx argued that the West would develop according to this pattern.  The property owners and employers (the "capitalists") would eventually be overthrown by means of a violent revolution of the oppressed and exploited "working class".  Then the synthesis would emerge: peace like a river would flow over all.  Marx, living in England, had high hopes that it would lead the way.  After all, England was the leading economic power in the nineteenth century; the capitalists were clearly exploiting the working classes.  The prospects for violent overthrow of the wealthy classes were excellent.

Except, Marx's theories failed to emerge in reality.  One wonders why the dialectic of capital versus labour failed to deliver, not only a violent revolution  in England, but the eternal synthesis of Communism.  Doubtless there were many reasons.  One, however, is striking.  The poor in England did not hate the rich.  In other words, the "dialectic" of capital versus labour failed to materialise.   Historian A. N. Wilson--a self-professed Marxist--gives an insight into why Marxism failed to take hold in England:

Understanding The Times

Timing is Everything--They Say

Here is an excellent summary of a key aspect of English constitutional development.  

We like to think that liberty is fought for.  Judging by occasional comments in the media and by politicians, a widespread belief is that liberty was won during the [English] Civil War.  The reality is different: the war almost destroyed liberty.  Only when the country rejected fighting, and zealots had to abandon their visions of a compulsory New Jerusalem, was liberty possible.

To the Whigs we owe the principle--Magna Carta restated in modern form--that rulers must obey the law and that legitimate authority requires the consent of the people.  From the Tories came the principle--fundamental to any political order--that people have no right to rebel against a government because they disagree with it.  

Combining these seemingly conflicting principles produced characteristics of English political culture:
suspicion of Utopias and zealots; trust in common sense and experience; respect for tradition; preference for gradual change; and the view that "compromise" is victory, not betrayal.

A Golden Age

What Christianised England "Looked" Like

We live in a secularist society.  It is atheistic, humanistic, statist . . . the adjectives go on.  Consequently, it is difficult for us to imagine a society which is (or was) thoroughly Christian.  We do not imply by that adjective that it is or was completely Christian.  Rather we mean that society was influenced and steered by the Christian faith.  In other words, we refer to a place and time where the Christian faith dominated individual, family and public life.

Has ever such a time existed in the past?  Yes.  It has.  Historian Robert Tombs describes England in the seventeenth century.  In particular, he describes parish life.  Prepare to enter an alien world--that is, a world profoundly different from our own.

The truly serious issue, as it had been for a century, was religion, now the focus of cultural, social, personal and political life to an unparalleled extent.  In the wake of the Reformation and the impact of the English Bible, most people felt more intensely about religion than all but the most fervent minority today.  [Robert Tombs, The English and Their History (New York: Alfred Knopf, 2015), p.214. Emphasis, ours.]

We acknowledge that being fervent Christians (that is, true believers) we indeed are a small minority in our own countries today.  This is pretty much consistent throughout the West.  But we would make a grave error if we believed that it has always been this way.

A Merciless and Unpredictable Tyrant

The Fragile Thinness of Civilization

English history--like most histories--is replete with tyrants and tyrannies.  Henry VIII was one of the worst.  We acknowledge that he was a creature of his times.  The administration of capital justice was so often based upon witnesses whose testimony, in turn, was based upon confessions extracted under torture.

Our times have seen plenty of this kind of evil malice.  Stalin, for example, wanted in some strange way to dress up his infamy and cruelty with show trials.  Testimonies extracted under torture, or the threat thereof, formed a large part of these trials.  Stalin knew all these confessions were garbage, but the formalities had to be adhered to.  Appearances needed to  be maintained.  Why Stalin persisted in such bizarre arrangements is hard to fathom.  Surely he could not have been trying to convince himself.  Was he trying to keep alive the myth of the New Model Man in the minds of the peasantry?

In Henry's case one driver was the need for a legitimate (male) heir; he had a hard time finding the right queen who would produce the goods.  His second queen, Anne was eventually convicted of multiple adulteries and executed.  Was Anne an adulteress?  It seems not.  The testimony against her was probably extracted under torture.

Perspectives

Merrie England

We are accustomed to think of our present and recent centuries as the biggest and the brightest and the best of human civilization.  It behoves the dominant evolutionary world view so to assume and delve for corroboration at every turn.

Robert Tombs, however, produces a picture which would be at substantial variance to this established modern narrative. He writes that in England in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries (post Black Plague) was a time of substantial economic growth.  The picture he paints is intriguing, if for no other reason than indirectly to recast our own times as somewhat less singular or exceptional.

Here is the general picture of economic and social progress in England, post Plague, painted by Tombs:

Not To Be Taken For Granted

A Foundation of Fundamental Rights

Most of the older generation will be familiar with the name Magna Carta.  Modern youth probably far less so.  It was, of course, a charter agreed to by King John of England.  It was signed by the Crown at Runnymede, near Windsor, on the 15th June, 1215.

Robert Tombs provides a summary of the content and significance of Magna Carta.

Magna Carta has been called the first written national constitution in European history, though charters between rulers and rules were not uncommon at the time . . . . In important ways Magna Carta was unique, however.  Its restraints upon the Crown (though later claimed to be the "gode olde lawe" of the Anglo-Saxons) were unprecedented and profound.

It took the form of a contract between the monarch and the "community of the realm"--"everyone in our kingdom"--and ascribed permanent rights and powers to that community, even its humblest members.  It made clear that the king was under the law, and it planned a system (a council of twenty-five barons) to force him to obey it, with the whole community being bound by oath to help them.

Consent by "the common council of our realm" was required for taxation.  Magna Carta was not, of course, egalitarian, but it was inclusive, granted to "all free men," and also giving every man and woman without distinction the right to justice, protection from arbitrary demands for money, goods or labour, and protection against forced marriage.  It was permanent, applying "in all things and places for ever."  [Robert Thomas, The English and Their History (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2015),  p. 74f.]

Forced marriage was verboten.  That in and of itself indicates a respect for the rights and protections of women.  So, it seems that Lizzie Bennett was standing firmly upon her rights under Magna Carta when she protested (in the movie version) against her mother's insistence upon a forced marriage to Mr Collins: "You cannot make me!" she declared, although "may not make" would have been more appropriate.

Alternative Multiverses

Theresa May's Inheritance

It seems like yesterday.  Prime Minister Maggie Thatcher, Churchill redivivus, leading Britain to victory in the Falklands War.  Yet, at the same time for many, it has faded in memory.  What was it all about, again?

It turns out that a major sea change had taken place in British society: in 1979 a Gallup poll had shown the British to be the most pessimistic of thirty-one countries surveyed; in 1983 [just four years later] they were the eighth most optimistic.  If you were going to pick one event, or sequence of events, which turned the tide in popular sentiment it would have been the Falklands War.

Robert Tombs, towards the end of his magisterial, The English and Their History [New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2015] reflects upon the aftermath of the Falklands War and its impact upon the British people.

The first impact was that it did not unite all.  Most significantly it drove the Left and Thatchers critics into the grounds of extremist sentiment, where many now dwell, ideologically separated from the the bulk of British people.  This group has continued, and are now living in a parallel universe--at least for the present.  Who knows what the end game for them will be.

Tombs describes this parallel universe as it was developing in the eighties in Britain.

1066 And All That

Creatures of the Past, For Good or Ill

Myths and legends shape contemporary cultures.  It seems that it is inevitable.  Most countries and ethnic groups seem to have them.  The most enduring myths have to do with triumphs of right over wrong, good over evil, and order over chaos.  Legends are more or less grounded in historical fact.  Whilst they all need to be taken with a grain of salt, they are not worthless.  On the contrary they can be effective platforms for conveying truth and principle.  They can also (less helpfully) be misused to become slogans to rally the troops or justify ideological war.

In his chapter on the Norman Conquest of England, under William the Conqueror, Robert Tombs gives a brief recitation on enduring myths from the Conquest which have influenced England down through the centuries:

Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos

An Essential Heritage And Sacred Trust

Over recent months we have been gradually working through The English and Their History, by Robert Tombs.  [New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2015.]  It is proving to be an excellent read.

While modern representative government, underpinned by the constitution of Great Britain, has taken centuries to develop, Tombs argues that from very early on the nation of England was synonymous with representative bodies meeting and advising the king.  It turns out that government via representatives of the people is not a novelty at all.

In the two hundred years following Alfred the Great (roughly 900 to 1100AD) a precursor to modern representative government was practised.  According to Tombs,

There was a regular system of participation in government.

A Bloody Prelate Makes a Comeback

An Ancient Curse Shows Signs of Life

We have seen a growing number of cases in the United Kingdom where Christians are being silenced for proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and His holy Word in public.  We are seeing the first signs of a recrudescence of the Star Chamber.

For those not aware of the Star Chamber, it is clothed with infamy.  An historical summary of that English court is as follows:

The importance of the Star Chamber increased during the reigns of James I (1603–25) and Charles I (1625–49). Under Archbishop William Laud, the court became a tool of royal oppression, seeking out and punishing religious and political dissidents. In the 1630s Laud used the Star Chamber to persecute a group of Puritan leaders, most of whom came from the gentry, subjecting them to the pillory and Corporal Punishment. Though the Star Chamber could not mete out Capital Punishment, it inflicted everything short of death upon those found guilty. During this time the court met in secret, extracting evidence by torturing witnesses and handing out punishments that included mutilation, life imprisonment, and enormous fines. It turned equity's traditionally broad discretion into a complete disregard for the law.  [Legal Dictionary]

Not for a moment do we mean to suggest that the UK has embarked on torturing witnesses and mutilating those judged to be guilty.  Rather, the link back to the Star Chamber comes with the increasing public and official persecution of Christians in the UK.

In Memoriam

John Wyclif 1320--1384

In his book on the history of England, Robert Tombs provides the following pen portrait of  the significance of John Wyclif.  

Wyclif was, among other things, a critic of Church corruption, which meant mainly its wealth.  His advocacy of Church disendowment won approval in elite political circles and support in Oxford.  His other ideas were even more far-reaching, including attacks in the 1370's on papal authority and on transubstantiation, the doctrine that the sacramental bread and wine really became the body and blood of Christ.  This caused horror among the orthodox and denunciation of Wyclif as "the great heresiarch," the first major English heretic and the most subversive thinker of the later Middle Ages, who influenced the Bohemian Hussite movement and indirectly Martin Luther.  Wyclif's writings were repeatedly condemned by the Pope, but he was sufficiently protected by his patrons to be allowed to retire unmolested to his benefice at Lutterworth, where he died in 1384.  In 1428 his remains were exhumed and burned on papal orders.  [Robert Tombs, The English and Their History (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2015), p.133.]

Wyclif's person and work were protected by his court connection with John of Gaunt.  It is interesting with the benefit of hindsight to see that so many of the issues upon which he wrote and for which he advocated, preceded Martin Luther and the Reformation by 150 years.  Clearly he was a prophet born out of due time.
Consequently, it is not surprising that the Roman Catholic Church responded to the Reformation in much the same way that it responded to John Wyclif a century and a half before. But one of the most significant aspects of Wyclif's work was to translate the Bible into the common English language of the day.

Longer Term Perspectives

Great Famines, Black Deaths, and Other Catastrophes

Below is an interesting note in a volume entitled, The English and Their History.  

. . . in the second half of the thirteenth century a disastrous fall in global temperature began, whether due to a series of volcanic eruptions or changing solar activity.  It caused extreme weather fluctuations and poorer harvests round the globe.  There was a succession of storms, frosts, droughts, and floods.  In 1250 wine production in England almost ceased for over 700 years.  A "great storm" in 1289 ruined the harvest.  In 1309-10 the Thames froze.  Catastrophe came in 1315-1316 when two years of continual rain and low temperatures ravaged successive harvests.

This became the "Great European Famine": seven years of suffering during which virulent sheep and cattle disease also appeared, destroying food sources and decimating the draught animals that made cultivation and transport possible.  It took twenty-five years to rebuild the herds.  The plight of the north of England was seriously aggravated by several years of destructive Scottish raids following their victory at Bannockburn in 1314.  These years saw by far the worst economic disaster in England's history: some half a million people died of hunger and associated diseases.  Law and order temporarily collapsed as people struggled for food, and resisted the taxation to pay for war on three fronts.  Yet despite being ruled by one of its most inept kings, Edward II (finally deposed in 1327), England survived.

A generation later, in 1349 came an even worse disaster: the "great pestilence," which later generations called the "Black Death," humanities greatest recorded catastrophe.  In a few months almost half the people of England were dead.  The plague attacked four times in thirty years and then became endemic for over three centuries.  [Robert Tombs, The English and Their History (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2014), p. 104.]

Some observations and questions:

It took 700 years for the climate to warm sufficiently for wine to be produced again in England.

The Call of Philosemitism

Following Apostolic Teaching

We have just finished reading an interesting volume on the Jewish Question--about the place and position of Jewish people upon the earth.  In the West, anti-semitism is making a "comeback" it would seem.  This is taking place, in part because of the influence of Islam in general and the attitudes and activities of  some Islamic refugees in Europe, on the one hand, and because of the recent tendency of the Left sympathetically to embrace Islam, and Islam's prejudices.  Anti-semitism is one such.

How refreshing it has been, then, to read Gertrude Himmelfarb's The People of the Book: Philosemitism in England, From Cromwell to Churchill (London: Encounter Books, 2011). The historical, gradual re-acceptance of Jewish people into the United Kingdom is fascinating in part because of the cast of actors involved over a three hundred year period, from Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans onward.  This cast begins with Cromwell, of course, who was staunchly philosemitic (that is, a lover of the Jewish people).  The Jews had been expelled from England: Cromwell began the reversal of that position.  But it also includes luminaries such as philosopher, John Locke, scientist, Isaac Newton, and notables such as Edmund Burke, William Macaulay, author and politician, Benjamin Disraeli, Gladstone and Winston Churchill, as well as literary figures such as Walter Scott, George Eliot and Charles Dickens.

This political and literary tradition, coupled with the attempt by Hitler to exorcise the Jewish people from the human race and the reaction that was part of World War II has left the English speaking world largely philosemitic--at least up to our generation, when things have begun to change.

Himmelfarb documents the connection between a love of the Old Testament amongst Christians--one of the great consequences of the Reformation--and a sense of kinship and respect for the Jewish people that was one of its fruits, particularly in England.  Puritan scholarship with respect to the Old Testament, to the Hebrew language, and to traditional rabbinic teaching was legendary.  Out of it came an abiding theme of philosemitism that flowed through to the wider culture of learning, the arts, and politics.  It did not win Jewish people full civil and political rights immediately--but the leaven was at work, and in the end the "revolution" was bloodless and a consequence of the "natural acceptance" of higher and deeper truths.  It represents a particular high water mark of Christian civilisation.

With the attenuation and decline of the Christian faith in the English speaking world--already well under way by the end of the nineteenth century, and gathering pace throughout the twentieth, it was inevitable that the Jewish Question would arise again.  And so it has come to pass.