"Social discipline—that surely is a more fruitful and warding theme for contemporary conservatism than individual freedom. Libertarian arguments forged at a time when there were still slaves and serfs to be freed from monarchical despotism, peasants from domineering landlords, or proletarians from brutal bosses, simply do not apply plausibly to the kind of social problems facing Britain in the last quarter of the twentieth century. Britain is not the Soviet Union, and when Mrs Thatcher bends her knee to Solzenytsin, she is worshipping at the wrong shrine and going wrong where George Orwell went so wrong with his nightmare predictions of 1984. The spectre haunting most ordinary people in Britain is neither of a totalitarian State nor of Big Brother, but of other ordinary people being allowed to run wild. What they are worried about is crime, violence, disorder in the schools, promiscuity, idleness, pornography, football hooliganism, vandalism and urban terrorism. The film Clockwork Orange, with its terrible portrait of a gang of juvenile thugs bereft of all moral restraint, terrorising the old and the weak without mercy, is what most people fear today."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
People from LondonConservatives from the United KingdomJournalists from EnglandEditors from EnglandColumnists from England
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
p. 150
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Peregrine_Worsthorne
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Peregrine Worsthorne
Sir Peregrine Gerard Worsthorne (22 December 1923 – 4 October 2020) was a British journalist, writer, and broadcaster. He spent the largest part of his career at the Telegraph newspaper titles, eventually the editor of The Sunday Telegraph from 1986 to 1989. He left the newspaper in 1997.
31 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Peregrine Worsthorne →
Related Quotes
"All right, a military dictatorship is ugly and repressive. But if a minority British Socialist Government ever sought…"
"Second only to peace in Northern Ireland, the most desirable political development which I should like to see in the …"
"Nobody should suppose that the slightly ridiculous picture painted of the Wilson kitchen cabinet by Mr. Haines or his…"
"Perhaps this is special pleading, an anticipatory apologia for what may have to be done in this country if the far le…"
"Powellism is now part of the English intellectual and moral tradition; part of the nation's mythology. The man, too, …"
"[T]he State, which the Labour Party is seeking to exalt...has seldom meant less to ordinary people. Its natural autho…"
"[T]he only way for a Labour Government to bring about economic growth was through socialism, since only socialism cou…"
"Imagine what would have happened to the Labour Party in 1964 or 1966 if it had appealed to the country in these terms…"
"The liberal-progressive view, so beloved of the intellectual community, is that the most crucial battle in the world …"
"These brown British citizens are in danger. Kenya is still a largely savage country, led by a man who a few years ago…"