Columnists From England

"What any elector who feels that this is fundamental has, therefore, to decide is whether he or she has sufficient confidence in our present rulers of all parties to resist the declared intention of those who, out of however sincere and high-minded motives, hope to make our continued membership of the European Economic Community a first and irreversible step in the creation of a supra-national political union in which our nationhood—the most important of all the political assets we inherit from the past—would be submerged for ever. If that were the sole issue of the Referendum—the sacrifice of a national society evolved over 1,500 years of Christian history—the answer would be undoubtedly No."

"Entry to the Common Market involves, for certain, an end to the untrammelled sovereignty of the Parliament of the day which for centuries has been the governing principle of our constitution and a main source of our political greatness and stability."

"It is admirably done, with warmth, vitality and colour. The familiar criticisms of "popular history," that it lags a generation behind scholarship, would misfire if levelled against this work. It stands fair and square on the results of modern research."

"Loving private liberty, yet finding that it could not exist without public order, the English devoted themselves to making the two compatible. Freedom within a framework of discipline became their ideal. They achieved it through the sovereignty of the law. "All our struggles for liberty," wrote Disraeli, "smack of law." And by law the English meant an enforceable compact between themselves and their rulers, deriving not from unilaterally imposed force, but from assent freely given. Both they and their American descendants constituted such law, rather than the Executive, their ultimate sovereign."

"Compromise, give-and-take, live-and-let-live, became a national habit. The freedom of the Press—a forebearance unnatural in any Government—was an English invention; so was the secret ballot which enabled a man to record an unpopular vote without danger to himself. The English, as self-opinionated as any people, mastered the lesson that they could only possess liberty by allowing it to others, enjoy the propagation of their own views by listening patiently to their neighbours'."

"In weaning pagan man from his primitive and bloodstained creeds of terror and human sacrifice the Church's supreme achievement was to domesticate and humanise the conception of Eternity. Everywhere he was confronted, in church and wayside shrine, with homely and familiar reminders of the Heaven he was enjoined to earn through the virtues of love, faith, compassion, humility, truthfulness, chastity, courtesy—virtues that came so hard and were so much needed by a passionate, hot-tempered, primitive people."

"He has the gift of making the record of past events continuously moving and exciting."

"Mr. Bryant has a wonderful tale to tell, he sees the whole picture and has the gift to make us see it."

"The Luddites, he thought, were right, and the Industrial Revolution "has so far harmed man even more than it has benefited him"."

"So how much of all his work remains? There was a good deal of honest research. His large work on Samuel Pepys certainly stands. His Regency trilogy offers an authentic picture of the age, both vigorous and sympathetic. But I best liked his essays, collected in such books as Historian's Holiday. He was a born writer, as few are, and he dedicted perhaps obsessively. His thinking was emotional, and that was of a piece with his gifts."

"Weapons change; it is the ability to command the sea that matters. The Battle of Britain, like the defeat of the Armada, was fought for command of the sea. The work of Bomber Command, like the invasion of Europe, was an exercise of offensive power from our inviolable sea-base."

"The ability to deny to the enemy the use of the sea for the movement of armies and supplies, while enjoying it for your own, would continue to be the most vital factor until the distant day when troops and supplies could be carried over its surface without interference. Like Napoleon, Hitler was thwarted by a few miles of salt water."

"The chairman of the Cromwell Association Maurice Ashley] asks why Charles II's escape from the Battle of Worcester 300 years ago deserves commemoration. It is because in the days that followed Cromwell's victory poor and humble men, in the face of overwhelming power and in extreme peril, out of their faith in God and their loyalty to the Crown dared everything to save their King. Whatever may be our opinions of the characters of Cromwell and Charles, most of us are agreed that the hereditary Crown was infinitely worth saving. The symbolic faith and courage of that little woodland community around Boscobel belong to the proud annals of our history as much as Cromwell's genius, and after the lapse of three centuries there is room in our pride and gratitude for both."

"The English were what they were because they had long wished to be. Their tradition derived from the Catholic past of Europe. Its purpose was to make Christian men—gentle, generous, humble, valiant and chivalrous. Its ideals were justice, mercy and charity."

"Without justice and charity there can be no England. That is the historic and eternal English vision."

"Even more striking than England's unity has been the freedom of individual choice on which it has been based. Because the Channel lay between her and the continent, her people were able to develop a form of government in which power, instead of being centralised in a few hands, was distributed in many. Not being threatened across a land frontier, they had no need to entrust their rulers with standing military forces or despotic rights over private liberties. Authority normally was exercised only after those subject to it had had an opportunity to make their views known. From the Saxon Witenagemot to the twentieth century Parliament, from the village hustings and manor court to the trade union lodge and parish council, there was nearly always some working machinery in England by which those in authority could test the opinion of those over whom authority had to be exercised. Government was conducted subject to the right of the governed to criticise and, within lawful limits, to oppose. "His Majesty's Opposition" is the most characteristic and certainly the most original of English contributions to politics."

"[T]here is one fundamental issue at stake in Thursday's Referendum. It is whether the British people of the future are to retain the age-long right through Parliament and parliamentary elections to decide their destiny without being bound by the authoritarian and dead hand of the past imposed by some rigid bureaucratic formula devised by continental constitutionists. What is at stake is the preservation of the great libertarian principle of popular "consultation and consent" which has run like a golden thread through our history. The essence of our unwritten constitution has always been that, while the elected Parliament of the day, interpreting the will of the existing electoral majority, can enact whatever it chooses, it cannot prevent future Parliaments and electorates from exercising the same elastic right."

"A fascinating volume. No brother historian but will envy the beauty and simplicity of the writing. You have achieved your avowed purpose more completely than any other book of its kind that I remember."

"I have read it with delight. Every page of it is alive with the sense of the reality of those times. To read it will hearten us all for the struggle in which we are now engaged. It will warm your heart and teach a lesson too."

"The key to a nation's future is in her past. A nation that loses it has no future. For men's deepest desires—the instrument by which a continuing society moulds its destiny—spring from their own inherited experience. We cannot recreate the past, but we cannot escape it. It is in our blood and bone. To understand the temperament of a people, a statesman has first to know its history."

"During the last four centuries, the most important things that had happened were the extension of the Anglo-Saxon race into every corner of the world and the growth of the American Republic and the view of life it stood for... That ideal was born four centuries ago when a few bold persons believed it would be possible to find on the other side of the Atlantic a land in which they could make for themselves a new home, with a freer and better life than they had hitherto enjoyed. Hence gradually developed the founding of small English colonies on the eastern seaboard of North America."

"[L]ike most of my countrymen I loathe injustice and cruelty, and unlike them I happen to have had some recent experience in Spain. And after reading the pages that follow, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the people of this country have been misled by those who form its public opinion into condoning, in the name of an abstract theory, cruelty and injustice of a particularly horrible kind. There doubtless have been many harsh acts committed by the Spanish Nationalists: men do not wage civil war with gloved hands. But they do not include the wholesale rape, murder, and mutilation of non-combatant women and children, such as the Communist leaders in Spain will have to answer for... Over here the intellectuals—our foolish wise—have mislead us into thinking of such men as democrats, and of the Spanish Civil War as a fight between a properly constituted Liberal-cum-Socialist government and a gang of Fascist saboteurs. But no university lecturer or anonymous BBC commentator has told the just and compassionate people of England about the women of San Martin de Valdeiglesias."

"I believe that the British unilateral guarantee of Poland's independence—though not necessarily, as you wisely point out, the integrity of her present Versailles frontiers in perpetuity—constitutes the first real chance for the Prime Minister's policy of appeasement to obtain the unanimous support of his countrymen. The latter are so constituted that they will never accede permanently to what is demanded of them by force. Something stubborn and undefeatable has always risen in the English consciousness at the sound of a threat. And the Germans, like ourselves a strong race, are so constituted that they can never respect arguments that seem based on fear or weakness. The Prime Minister has now placed our relationships on a new and realist footing. A realization in both countries of what will inevitability produce war, coupled with a readiness to seek an adjustment of existing differences by every other means, is now attainable. It offers a fresh possibility of an Anglo-German understanding—not now, perhaps, but in the future. It is worth trying, for the alternative is the almost certain destruction of our common civilization."

"Before the British regiment of the line is sacrificed to logistics—if sacrificed it is to be—I should like to put on record a historian's conviction that the greatness of our infantry soldier in the past, as in the present, has been due primarily to the fact that in the regiment, with its personal pride, loyalties, and traditions, the individualistic and liberty-loving qualities of the Briton have found their natural medium in war."

"It is hard to see how any assured peace can exist in Europe so long as Herr Hitler—that incalculable man of temperament—continues to direct the external policy of a nation as powerful as Germany, though it must not be forgotten that the advance of the Russian frontiers has already put a check to German capacity for future aggression. But we ought to make it plain that by "Hitlerism" we mean Hitler's fatal method of conducting foreign affairs, and not the right of the German people to choose their own governors."

"Mr. Strauss's subsequent statement in a supplementary question that my Fascist sympathies were "well known." They may be well known to Mr. Strauss, but they are certainly not known to me. It has, however, for some time been a practice of the Communist Party to attribute "Fascist" views to those of its opponents whom it regards as in any way dangerous to itself and whose reputation it is therefore desired to blacken. These would now appear to include any writer who has the temerity to express his support of Mr. Chamberlain's foreign policy."

"Sir Arthur is a patriotic historian. He shows the British in all their bloody-mindedness but argues that they are better than anyone else. He deals not merely with kings and high officials but with the common people, how they lived and thought, and how they began to force their freedom from their rulers... [I]t is a pleasurable way of absorbing history painlessly: a triumph for a historian aged 85 who takes in the broad sweep, without losing the road, in the manner of Gibbon or Macaulay."

"Peace—real and enduring peace—must always be our supreme and ultimate aim, for with our swollen industrial population we are dependent on trade with a peaceful world and a world, moreover, that can honour its debts and trade obligations. Our true war aim is an assured system of international law and cooperation that will alone make a real peace possible."

"The story is well known, but Sir Arthur's account makes us tingle again at the dangers, anxieties, and triumphs. He is excellent also on the Armada, making us share the heightening tension as the Spanish galleons sailed up the Channel and feel for their ultimate appalling fate... Sir Arthur has read widely, and generously acknowledged, the work of our finest Elizabethan historians. But it is his own intense imaginative commitment which makes The Elizabethan Deliverance so vividly and splendidly readable."

"The 2024 election is a landmark for representation, with record diversity in our parliament, closer than ever to that of the electorate. In the space of 40 years we have gone from zero to nearly one in seven MPs being from an ethnic minority background."

"Better representation doesn't guarantee better policies on inclusion. Our race debates can often feel as polarised as ever. But a stronger share of voice matters. When the new Commons raises issues of race, ethnic minority MPs will be there to bring their lived experience to the debate."

"The left's vice has always been self-righteousness, just as the right's is smugness. But when you add the sense of entitlement that is characteristic of so many of the younger middle-class people in Britain, you can end up with an impatience with compromise coupled to a belief that anything that is strongly felt must somehow be enacted."

"The grand-paternal Aaronovitches came to England as Jewish refugees — "aliens" as the 1906 anti-immigration legislation called them — fleeing the murderous Russian pogroms. They scraped in just before the door closed on their kind. Aaronovitch's paternal grandfather drifted into the east London rag trade. Buttonholes were the illiterate old needleman's speciality. David's paternal grandmother spoke Yiddish all her life. The book's central focus is on David's parents. They are not, for him, mum and dad. He uses their first names — Lavender and Sam — throughout. It is as if he is holding them up with forceps."

"When the discussion gets under way, a number of things become apparent. The first is that the people here are mostly very bright, very well-informed and anything but swivel-eyed saddos. The second is that sci-fi and fantasy are not, as I'd imagined, boys-only territories. Half the people attending are women, and mostly feminists at that. Perhaps because the creation of alternative worlds allows imaginary spaces in which sexism and male awfulness simply do not exist. (In the afternoon I was part of a small otherwise all-female audience for two women librarians discussing censorship in children's sci-fi. I learnt a lot.) More than anything these people — men and women — seemed to want to be writers. They had a detailed appreciation of plotting and characterisation, and seemed to seek advice about their own projects whenever they could."

"[On his mother] She was disapproving when I grew my hair long and even more disapproving when, a few years later, I cut it again. I had, in a sense, let my own hair down."

"[I]t has become customary in recent weeks to refer to [[Nigel Farage|Mr [Nigel] Farage]] as the most consequential politician since Margaret Thatcher. ... I knew Lady Thatcher, and to compare the two is to compare the Uffizi Gallery to a third-rate auction house."

"It was quite clearly satirising the Supreme Court decision. It therefore follows that those people who made the complaints on Twitter and in the newspapers and on GB News knew very well that Aaronovitch had not remotely 'suggested' that Biden should have Trump killed, but pretended that's what they thought because they disagree politically with the writer and wished to land him in hot water. In other words, they were lying. There is no other word for it. To deliberately misconstrue something is to lie, and that's what they did, thousands upon thousands of them."

"During the Anfal anti-Kurdish campaign in 1987 as many as 180,000 Kurds disappeared. At Halabja, in one incident alone, more people were killed than in the whole of this latest Gulf war. The most conservative death toll attached to the repression of the Shia uprising in 1991 was 30,000. One million died in the Iran-Iraq war started by Saddam. And this is reduced by Pilger to "hundreds every year"."

"But, [[John Pilger|[John] Pilger]] objected, "Amnesty produced a catalogue of Saddam's killings that amounted mostly to hundreds every year, not millions. It is an appaling record that does not require the exaggeration of state-inspired propaganda". In fact Pilger's own source said (unquoted by him) that, in addition to the number of known executions Amnesty had also collected information on around 17,000 cases of disappearances, over the last 20 years, and "the real figure may be much higher"."

"I did worry that last week's column, when I suggested that Rishi Sunak may be on the brink of making an extraordinary comeback, wasn't going to age particularly well. [...] Following Nigel Farage's resurgence and the Prime Minister's disastrous decision to leave the D-Day commemorations early, it’s fair to say that my column now looks about as prescient as David Icke."

"Rather than a Tory wipeout and Labour landslide, Starmer's floundering could lead us to another Theresa May 2017 situation, with himself as the emperor without clothes. Everyone laughed when Sunak first suggested a hung parliament. But the momentum building behind "no overall majority" shows the Tories are having a much better campaign than Labour."

"[[Rishi Sunak|[Rishi] Sunak]]'s decision to call a snap general election on July 4 is fast being vindicated as a rare example of sound strategic political thinking from the PM. Not only did it catch Reform off guard, but it has also caught Sir Keir Starmer with his socialist pants down."

"It is possible, though hard, to forge a United Kingdom made up of many ethnicities. Leaders like Mr Cameron are right to try to insist on common standards and better rules, rather than to despair. But whatever it is, and however well it turns out, it cannot be England. Perhaps when I am very old, my grandchildren will ask me what England was. It will be a hard question to answer, but I think I shall tell them that it seemed like a good idea while it lasted, and that it lasted for about 1,000 years."

"There should also be a presumption that the authorities should stop taking more power over people and should start handing power back. Why should trial by jury be curtailed, or the assets of people suspected of profiting from crime be seized, or the Customs and Excise have the power to enter your house? Why should the police be able to subject drivers to random breath tests, or to spy on the public through CCTV, or the Government keep information on you that it shares across departments, or tell you whom to employ, or intercept your electronic communications?"

"Looking forward, as one always must, I wonder if the law will eventually be changed to allow one to marry one's dog. Until now, this would have been considered disgusting, since marriage has been a law revolving around sexual behaviour, and sexual acts with animals are still, I believe, illegal."

"How much survives of the other peacetime prime ministers since the war? What were John Major and Harold Wilson and Anthony Eden for? Won't Tony Blair's manic grin end up as ruined as Ozymandias's "wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command"? Among the great might-have-been-prime ministers, most fall into one of two traps. On the one hand are the too greedily ambitious, the Denis Healeys who don't stand up to the enemy at the moment they should, and the Michael Heseltines, who are too impatient of the system that they seek to dominate. On the other are the prophets – the Bevans, Benns and Powells – who may be more original than their more conventional rivals, but cannot be called successful."

"The burden should not be on people to prove why they should be allowed to do something, but on the authorities to prove why they shouldn't. Thus, why shouldn't people be free to hunt, or smoke cannabis, or build an extension to their house, or travel without an identity card, or read pornography on the internet, or adopt children? There may be reasons to prevent any or all of these things, but the restrictors should be the ones who have to make their case."

"They make excellent life-partners. No doubt some old bigots will claim that marriage is a uniquely human institution, but it won't take long to find enlightened vicars who believe that human and canine dignity is in a very real sense enhanced by recognising inter-species unions."

"When Sir Keir rightly attacked anti-Semitism in his party, he did not analyse its nature clearly enough. It is not like the old Right-wing anti-Semitism which regarded Jews as creepy foreigners. Rather it a lethally political cocktail of two things – whites on the hard Left who hate anything white, Western or British, and Islamists who, for pseudo-religious reasons, see Jews as the eternal enemy and imagine Allah is telling them to take Palestine by slaughter."

"People are often silly in their attacks on these things. Elites are inevitable and have some good qualities. Any old society will and should have an establishment. Yet a mark of greatness in politics is a capacity to transcend these elites – witness Churchill, who was born into one, and Thatcher, who was not. Jenkins did not do this. Unlike his wife, says Campbell, he was "handicapped by the wish to please'". He most wished to please the grandees who fitted his rather definition of the word "civilised"."