PERSONAL COLUMN

A reply to Roy Jenkins

PEREGRINE WORSTHORNE

Liberals like Roy Jenkins believe that nothing should be imposed except liberal- ism; that no beliefs are sacred except their own. They are the only influential author- itarians left in Britain today. They have a religion which they know to be true, and do not hesitate to have the state impose its tenets.

Who else but he would have the nerve to claim to be promoting . .. CIVILISATION. I That is not Tory language; nor even social- ist language. Tories do not pretend that what they are doing is somehow part of Sir Kenneth Clark's television series. They do not see themselves as latter-day Leon- ardos or twentieth century Shakespeares. Nor do socialists. If they can help the working class, that is enough for them to be getting on with.

No, of all the politicians at work today, only the frightening Mr Jenkins throws words like `civilisation' around, to the frenzied acclaim of the liberal faithful. It is a forbidding trait. Democracy soon goes by the board when politicians start con- vincing themselves and others that they are promoting civilisation. Civilisation, after all, cannot be left to the verdict of the masses. It must be imposed from above, by the liberal hierarchy.

That, of course, is precisely what Mr Jen- kins was boasting had happened. His voice was redolent with self-righteous pride. Thanks, he claimed, to his efforts the liberal minority had won their way with divorce reform, abortion reform, abolition of capital punishment, race relations legis- lation, new obscenity laws and so on. No pretence, on his part, that these changes were actually wanted by the majority of his fellow-countrymen. Why bother about such details when civilisation is involved?

I am not concerned, for the moment, with the rights and wrongs of these measures— some of which I agree with—but with the lordly language used to defend them by the liberal High Priest. All awkward questions are begged; no attempt is made to defend them rationally. The language is the langu- age of faith, of religious certainty, almost of revelation. Because they are liberal measures, according to the doctrine of John Stuart Mill, it is simply assumed that the faithful will applaud. As for the unfaithful, what do they matter, since they by defin- ition are uncivilised?

I hate and fear this liberal arrogance. Where else today can one find such self- righteous certitude? No longer from the Churches who have long since learned humility (even Hu►nanae vitae was shroud- ed in apologies); no longer from the scientists, who nowadays lean over back- wards to appear tentative. It is difficult to imagine the Pope or the President of the Royal Society claiming to define civilisation with such certitude. Only liberals today seem to find the language of infallibility to their taste; to wrap themselves up in the mantle of divine right as if they thought it really fitted.

Yet surely never has such offensive confi- dence been so absurdly, provocatively out of place as it is today. It may be. on balance, desirable to abolish capital punish- ment. But, who but an ideologue with his mind closed by neo-religious (liberal) faith

would claim that abolition was necessarily a mark of civilisation? Surely it all depends on the resulting crime figures which are as yet uncertain. If more innocent victims are found to have died as a result of abolishing the gallows will this be civilisation? If more blue films get treated as art, because of changes in the obscenity laws, will this be civilisation? if Mr Tynan is allowed to put on Oh! Cal- Cutta! on Shaftesbury Avenue, will this be civilisation? If more buggers feel free to bugger, will this be civilisation? If more marriages are broken up, more babies aborted, will this be civilisation?

These are not rhetorical questions. I genuinely do not know the answers. All I do know is that any public figure who gets up on a public platform and solemnly declares, ex cathedra, that they are, is a fanatic, a crazy enthusiast, an irrational mystic. Such a claim is not part of sober discourse. It is religious ranting, the pro- duct of blind faith.

Surely, then the intellectual journals, the Freddy Ayers. the academic community should react to Mr Jenkins with contempt- uous scepticism, as they would to a com- parable farrago of unsubstantiated re- actionary nonsense from, say, Sir Cyril Black. Not at all. They roll on their backs with pleasure. The Guardian cannot con- ceal its adulation. No congregation of bog- Irish bigots swallowing the silliest super- stitions of some illiterate priest could dis- play such a total lack of intellectual sceptic- ism; such determined, shocking, fawning credulity.

The truth, of course, is that the per- missive society has nothing essentially to do with civilisation. It could be civilised. but only on one all-important condition, which Mr Jenkins failed even to mention. Only if the withdrawal of repressive social legis- lation goes hand in hand with an advance in individual self-discipline is it possible to say that civilisation has been promoted. Is this the case in Britain today? It may be, but the evidence is certainly far from con- clusive, to say the least. My own guess is that abandonment of social repression is coinciding with a comparable and simul- taneous abandonment of individual self- control. In other words, civilisation, far from being promoted by these measures, is more likely to be threatened, since if neither the state nor the individual exerts control the result is bound to be licence rather than freedom.

This is so obvious that it should not need saying. But it does need saying because liberalism exercises a strange hold over minds of the intellectual elite who dominate the tone of public discussion. It is a faith that educated people accept without think- ing. They go on repeating the most absurd phrases—even the most intelligent of them —without considering their meaning. liber- alism today is the opiate of the thinking classes. A liberal public figure expressing a liberal sentiment simply gets accepted out of deference to a reigning tradition, with- out challenge of scrutiny. Not even the mediaeval schoolmen exercised such an effortless ascendancy, an authority so little challenged.

So a fortnight has passed with scarcely a single voice raised to tell Mr Jenkins that he is talking mischievous nonsense. No one (not even the brave Mr Jeremy Bray) has pointed out that a permissive society that is to say, one in which the state does not seek to dictate morals--if it is to be civilised, must either be strongly influenced by religious faith or controlled by a convention of mannerly behaviour. Even Voltaire realised this. The 'enlight- ened' of the eighteenth century hated moral dictation by church and state quite as much as Mr Jenkins does. But at least they recognised the authority of taste and manners. What they wanted to see was a society where excess was eschewed, not becatise Pope or King forbade it, but be- cause no gentleman would have been seen dead behaving publicly in a vulgar manner. Education, cultivation, breeding, taste, and above all manners-- these were to be the sources of social regulation.

Implicit in the eighteenth century ideal of a permissive society was a social struc- ture wherein the educated, cultivated, well- bred. mannerly minority imposed their own standards on the majority by force of ex- ample. Does Mr Jenkins believe that such a society exists here today? Does he really believe that the present unholy alliance be- tween the forces of vulgar commercial exploitation and the forces of intellectual

protest and alienation - so appallingly combined and symbolised in the person of Mr Tynan- constitute a suitable context for a genuinely civilised permissive society?

The real liberal folly today consists of a refusal to recognise that the present com- promise amalgam of capitalism and social- ism renders contemporary society peculiar- ly unsuited to enjoy the benefits of permissive legislation. The profit motive guarantees the maximisation of corrupting temptations and the commitment to egal- itarianism guarantees the minimum of resistance to these temptations. The search for profits whips up the forces of vulgarity and depravity and the search for equality makes sure that there is no class bulwark to withstand them. For Mr Jenkins to laud the ideal of permissiveness in these circum- stances is a triumph of faith over reason. of prejudice over commonsense.

All but the liberal cognoscenti realise this in their bones. They sense with fear- ful foreboding the drift of events if Mr Jenkins has his way. But such is the weight of liberal influence. so overwhelming the impact of their bland assumptions of omniscience, that we all fall silent when the High Priest speaks. To answer back is to risk the one excommunication, the only anathema that can still strike terror into the human heart.