Sunday Review: The Abolition of Britain

An Image of Britain Unlikely to Return

(Hitchens, P. 2008. The Abolition of Britain: From Winston Churchill to Princess Diana. London: Continuum.)

Chapter fourteen opens with the words “smoking and buggery can both kill you.” Chapter eight, which discusses single parent families, is called “A real bastard.” And in Chapter fifteen, he accuses those who supported then and continue to support now the abolition of the death penalty of being “prepared to accept the death of innocent people… rather than allow something they believed to be a morally repulsive punishment to continue.” On the face of it, these are the tell-tale signs of over-dramatized language being used to attract attention through controversy. This is the big frustration of reading ‘The Abolition of Britain’; Peter Hitchens has his sights set on controversy at the expense of rational argument so that you have to fight through the over-inflated language and the poorly conceived arguments to get at what is a valuable contribution to the political debate. On this basis, this book could be written off as drivel but deep inside are some valuable points to make us stop, think and reflect upon the changes in British society in the past forty years.

For example, many of us care deeply about whether or not there ought to be a core body of knowledge at the centre of the history specification in secondary schools. The plight of single parent mothers in this country, who inevitably suffer worse economic conditions on average than a married couple, is something that really ought to be highlighted more – and many legitimately believe that the best way to ameliorate their situation is to encourage marriage. Others regret the demise of Christianity in Britain, some the perceived sexual promiscuity of the modern nation and many the decline in a sense of pride about being British. Whilst you may not agree with all of these points, there is certainly room in contemporary British political debate for them and plurality demands that their case is persuasively made. Yet Peter Hitchens, perhaps the most prominent flag-bearer for such views, is doing such very great harm to these very views he wishes to encourage.

The most blatant demonstration of this is the book’s relentless idealising of the past whilst demonizing the present. Peter Hitchens always denies that this is what he is doing. However, when he says so he is lying to himself and to his readers. In chapter one  Hitchens describes a girl from 1997 being transported to 1965, who would, he suggests, “feel entirely safe as she travelled late at night on the London Underground” and would wonder “what has happened to taste and education in the lost years between [1965 and 1997?]” Later, he even goes on to say that these changes, which nobody really asked for, “brought about misery, decadence and ignorance” from “one of the happiest, fairest and kindest societies which has ever existed…” Demonstrably, Hitchens is idealising the past and demonizing the future to a hyperbolic degree and few people are ever willing to believe that they are living in such a bankrupt age as he describes.

To believe that the past is better than today is not necessarily a bad thing. Indeed, many who oppose the individualism and consumerism of the 1980s and long for a return to stable working-class mining communities (as Owen Jones did in last week’s Sunday Review) may be inclined to sympathise. However, this view is problematised when a moral element, claiming eternality and universality, is added to such considerations. Peter Hitchens take this conceptualisation of Britain at an idealised time and implies than the prominence of Christianity, the lack of contraception and the social and legal disapproval of homosexuality were moral issues and virtuous positions. However, the way in which he does this shows minimal care for the moral principle itself. For example, Hitchens speaks in great detail of the beauty and majesty of the King James Version of the Holy Bible. One would be hard pushed to deny that this seminal book in the development of Western Christianity was of central importance and is written in way that the more sentimental, at least, would call beautiful. However, what Hitchens fails to comprehend is that for Christians the Bible is about the word of God being shared and understood. Therefore, why cherish a version which is an inaccurate translation of the word of God when more accurate, not to mention more readable, translations are available? The answer is very clear; Hitchens is not concerned with the principle at hand - the position of Christianity in the UK - so much as clinging on to the remnants of an age we have moved beyond.

Out of this fixation with the past comes a series of what many of us (no doubt labelled the “liberal elite” by Hitchens) would consider bigotries. For example, Hitchens cleverly veils controversial statements by quoting people who said them at the time the debate was taking place, usually the 1960s. However, at no stage does Hitchens criticise those who, for example, opposed the legalisation of homosexuality in the 1960s. Of Hitchens rare personal comments in this section, he only takes time to praise them for the accuracy of their prophecies about what it would do to society. On the basis of pseudo-morality Hitchens is encouraging the prejudices of old where in reality many, including evangelical Christians, are now unwilling to hypocritically criticise their fellow “miserable sinners” in such terms.

Together these culminate in Hitchens’ conceptualisation of “Britain,” although to define such an old nation in such historically narrow terms is beyond absurd. However, if we indulge Hitchens for a period and accept his definition of Britain, it certainly could be said that the Britain of old, the one that he pines for, has been abolished. Indeed, we are no longer homophobic as we were, tolerance is now a normative term (the idea, for example, of D.H. Lawrence’s ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ being freely published no longer causes horror) and Britain is no longer a country that speaks proudly of having conquered a quarter of the world – at times brutally. This is not the abolition of a nation – it is the evolving of a nation and, by many accounts, the ameliorating of it. The Britain of old has been abolished – but with any dynamic nation that goes without saying – and a Britain more at ease with itself and its citizens has taken its place. On Hitchens’s terms, we ought to be glad “Britain” has been abolished – at least if you value tolerance of minorities and freedom of speech.

Peter Hitchens speaks of a new liberal elite, detached from the public, who imposed all of these cultural changes upon people. There is something worth exploring in this analysis of the masses relationship with their political elite – but the new elite is not as hegemonic or authoritarian as he implies in this book. After all, if they were authoritarian (as much as those Peter seems to support when they tried to prevent ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ being published in 1960) they would never have allowed this book to be published. I, for one, am glad that is was. However, those who share a number of Peter Hitchens’ views ought to regret its publication. Its author and its style does their case no credit and if they ever want to succeed and reclaim some of the Britain that was once theirs, they need to find a new advocate.

You can purchase ‘The Abolition of Britain’ here.