I read recently that young people have less and less pride in our country. The main thrust of their concern seems to be about Race. We, white Brits, were guilty of oppressing other races and our country was built on the basis of this, and specifically on slavery. Apparently, most young people between 18 and 24 years old believe that Britain was founded on racism, a view shared, interestingly, by no other age group.
We also read that, according to endless studies, Britain is today one of the least racialist, if not the very least racialist, country in the world. Maybe this is one of the reasons that people of non-white races are willing to risk their lives to come here. Perhaps unsurprisingly, non-white British people are more likely to be proud of the country than white people.
Why is this?
Slavery
Let’s first record and admit the truth. We were deeply involved in slavery and specifically the transatlantic slave trade. No one today excuses that. It was an appalling episode in our history. But is that really the basis of present day concerns? And if it is thought to be, why?
Plainly, it isn’t a concern of those immigrants struggling to come here. Slavery isn’t exactly a worry in today’s Britain. But the racist aspects of our past are apparently a concern of young, educated, predominantly white, British people. How has this happened - and why?
History
The answer to the first bit of the question must be that young people are taught it in schools and universities. They are taught a one-sided view of our past. I am going, perhaps boringly, to rehearse some facts on the subject of slavery - and to express my dismay at how rarely I see them stated. The facts allow an alternative view of our past, which can make us proud, rather than ashamed, of what our forebears managed to do.
Here are the facts.
Slavery has been a ghastly feature of most, if not all, human societies before the modern era. We were late-comers. We started to get involved in the 1600s, by which time the Spanish and the Portuguese had been at it for years. The important point is that, within about 100 years, our ancestors became horrified by it and a political movement got under way in England to abolish both the slave trade and slavery.
We were, essentially, the leaders and, because, I suppose, we were then the most powerful country in the world and the British Empire was so extensive, our efforts were massively important. We passed the laws against first the slave trade (in 1807) and then slavery (in 1833/4) and then - even more impressive - caused the British Navy to enforce abolition - against the reluctance of other countries. Over 1,000 men lost their lives in this action.
All this was brave. The French were dismayed. Those African countries, such as Dahomey, which had been slavers for centuries, were hostile. The Americans refused to join in. It was British action that was the main force behind the eventual abolition of the trade, even though it continued in areas that we didn’t control, for decades.
The question I ask is: are these facts taught in schools? If people are really concerned about the evils of slavery, they should be. And we should be proud of what our ancestors achieved. But quite obviously, the facts are not taught. Back to the second bit of my question. Why not?
Oikophobia
The late, great, philosopher Sir Roger Scruton described it as “Oikophobia”, from the Greek for home “Oikos”. He defined it - as he said “stretching the Greek a little” - as the “repudiation of inheritance and home”. And one of the points he makes is that it’s not new. It has been for most of the 20th century a characteristic of left-wing intellectual thought. He points to the way in which intellectuals in the 1930s were beguiled by Stalin’s communism, denying or excusing his appalling crimes. Today we see the same thing in the support for Palestinians (understandable and worthy), but also for Hamas (definitely not).
The Daily Sceptic
These thoughts have been developed in an article in the Daily Sceptic of 12 September 2024. (The Daily Sceptic is an on-line daily founded by Toby Young - regarded by me as required reading!). The article has a link to a short talk on this subject given by Sir Roger shortly before he died.
The worrying thing about Oikophobia is that it has tended to be a feature of successful, prosperous, perhaps complacent, societies that are in decline. It was a feature of the late Roman Empire. Perhaps it is what we are witnessing today.
Fight for History
The academic Frank Furedi, emeritus professor at the University of Kent, has written about this. His latest book, The War Against the Past: Why the West Must Fight for its History, chronicles, in the words of Jonathan Sumption, “more fully than any other work I know the gradual development of this rage against the past”.
But, according to Sumption, he is not so good at understanding the mentality of those responsible. That’s what interests me. Why our contemporaries - frankly - falsify our history by omitting, for example, the facts about the ending of the slave trade, in order to pursue a political agenda. Sir Roger Scruton says that it’s a case of Oikophobia. But it seems even more serious today than in the 1930s, the days of Lenin’s “useful idiots”.
What is the answer?
In searching for an answer to the “Why” question, I come up with various factors, some of which may be familiar to my more devoted followers. But I guess Roger Scruton’s oikophobia is a new one - new at least to me. He describes it as a stage through which the adolescent mind normally passes, which rings true to me and helps explain the fact that young people are particularly prone to it. Maybe it also does something to explain the way it spreads among schools and universities.
St George in retirement
But I also come back to something I first read about a while back, namely the vivid image of “St George in Retirement”, a concept explored by the late Australian political theorist, Kenneth Minogue. He noted the good work St George had been doing during the last few centuries in killing the various dragons that were around then: slavery being one. But the pursuit of liberty and democracy involved killing a few dragons. As did the advance of women’s rights. The list of his notional achievements is endless, but there’s a problem. What to do now? In his “retirement”. So many of the evils of society have been addressed. So, in the new situation, he finds himself identifying some pretty unlikely causes to pursue. I will refrain from listing them! But slavery and racism must have their appeal - even if it does involve adjustment or, frankly, falsification of the underlying facts.
Virtue signalling
St George is a metaphor for something we see around us in so many other contexts: the need people have to feel good about themselves. It is closely allied to the idea that we are better than our forebears. It follows that we must feel guilty about our history.
It has, to my mind, clear links to “virtue signalling” - the useful phrase coined by the journalist, James Bartholomew, in a Spectator article back in 2013 - to describe the political positions people take in order to look good and to seem virtuous, with little regard to any practical consequences, dire though they may be. Castigating our past is an example.
Frank Furedi and Roger Scruton are (or were) in no doubt that abusing our forbears and rewriting our history in the process does no good to our country. We must “fight for our history” in the words of Furedi.
Tony Herbert
26 September 2024
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