Peter Hitchens’s ‘The Abolition of Liberty’: A review
The wicked, the selfish, the loud and the oafish are all freer to behave as they wish than at any time in the last 150 years.
The following article featured in Bournbrook’s second print issue, but the topics it discusses, in reviewing Peter Hitchens’s The Abolition of Liberty, have been made all the more relevant by the government’s lockdown.
May I commence with these words from the 2006 preface to Night by Elie Wiesel:
‘The people have faith in their rulers, which is childish. They have trust in their rulers, which is vein. They live under the illusion their rulers know best, this is dangerous.’
The Abolition of Liberty is a splendid but profoundly disturbing work. The author explains in great detail the deceit and manipulation employed by the governing class to gradually destroy a time tested and well proven system of law, order, justice and policing. Their misguided actions motivated by both liberal ideology and a desire to increase the power of the state now directly threaten the personal freedoms of the peaceable majority and have totally failed to reduce crime. Their changes have instead gravely damaged the liberty of law abiding citizens.
The wicked, the selfish, the loud and the oafish are all freer to behave as they wish than at any time in the last 150 years. The corroborating facts are made readily available by the author throughout this work. The ruling classes decided that criminality could be contained by greater consideration and increased care towards offenders together with a reduction in penalties. This new distorted thinking sought to claim that the victim of a crime may be to blame if he owns more than he ought to or fails to protect his possessions strongly enough. The result has been that offenders treat the law, the courts, trials and even prisons with ever increasing contempt.
Peter Hitchens sets out the development of our police force to explain the disaster caused by changes from the 1960s onward. Policeman once patrolled the streets to deter and prevent crime before it happened. Now retitled ‘Crime Prevention Officers’, they arrive after the crime has been committed to give a crime number and advice on additional locks, bolts and alarms. Theirs has become a largely sedentary occupation with little contact with the people.
The constable, from a uniformed citizen who kept the peace by persuasion, example and tact has now become the servant of the elite state. He has become a parliamentary social worker all but powerless because of the regulations imposed upon him by the state. The bond of sympathy that close contact had created between the constable and the respectable law abiding public has been shattered. This bond which commenced in 1829 under the ‘Peel’ system remained largely unchanged until brought to an end in the mid 1960s.
The original force embodied morally conservative notions of right and wrong, thereby offending the new liberal religion of benevolent government and human rights. The new elite sensed the 1829 ethos was an obstacle to what they stood for and wanted. The ‘Bobby on the beat’ had to go. Lead by a radical Home Secretary and a group of determined social reformers they got rid of him and the new style of policing came into existence, neither debated nor voted upon. Thus a time tested and proven system of policing came to an end. The retreat of the police from our streets has caused sheer misery for many, misery that can darken your life permanently or even shorten it with worry and fear.
On drugs the author sets out a convincing case that the war on drugs, if it ever was fought, was lost in the late 1960s when the authorities stopped disapproving of them. Neither the liberal elite nor the ruling class has tried with any conviction to discourage an activity that perhaps they do not really think is wrong. The author sees this leading to more crime, selfishness, indolence all working to destroy sobriety and the work ethic. This will escalate until a functioning civilisation descends into confusion and squalor.
Remember this was written in 2004 when the author doubts the prison system serves any positive service and undoubtedly facilitates drug taking.
The Scarman report into the 1981 Brixton riot showed that self discipline, school discipline and family authority had been weakened by the liberal reforms of the permissive society in the sixties and seventies. The ambiguous official attitude towards narcotics had encouraged the widespread misuse of illegal drugs allowing criminal gangs to take advantage of racial tension and social disorder to create areas where they could work undisturbed. The sad result of misguided political involvement is that England’s black people now sadly suffer more than most from the crime and disorder of our society.
The author examines the Macpherson report (1997-9) into the murder of Stephen Lawrence and the claim that the police are institutionally racist. The report’s findings required the police to deliver a service which ‘recognises the different experiences, perceptions and needs of a diverse society’. Enlightened people had for the previous forty years been striving against such beliefs by a policy of absorbing new citizens into British culture. Neither report would seem to have done anything positive for racial harmony.
The author now comes to changes made to the English jury system making it significantly weaker than at the start of the 1960s. Trial by jury states that no free man should be deprived of his life, liberty or property save by the judgment of his equals and by the law of the land. The equals being the jury acting between the liberties of the people and the prerogative of the crown. Since 1670 the law of England has forbidden the punishment of jurors. Jury trial has therefore been seen by government as a grave nuisance because of the state’s instinctive impulse to take absolute power. The state thereby acted to diminish the standing of the jury. This they achieved by changes, firstly to the property and then to the age qualifications for jurors. Subsequently majority verdicts were introduced. These changes have weakened jury independance and gravely reduced its ancient power to stand in the way of the state.
Peter Hitchens sums up by describing how under the new policing system the police have permanently withdrawn from the streets and are unable to detect or prosecute most criminals.
We the law abiding citizen have no reliable right of self defence whilst criminals are aware of the feebleness of the police and the unwillingness of the authorities to punish them should they by any chance be convicted.
Whilst the old system remained, criminals feared the law and both property and lives were safer than they are now. The growing influence of social liberal thought and actions in the sixties and seventies destroyed the independence of action the police once enjoyed.
One chief constable described the new system as follows: ‘Trials used to be about who did it. Now the trial is about whether somebody broke the rules in trying to find out who did it.’
To quote the author:
‘The catastrophe has been gradual, for if all these changes had happened at once there would have been outrage. That our rulers have failed in their most basic duty is one of the true scandals of modern England. Freedom is our most precious possession but our liberty is under ever wider attack from an elite state certain that its benevolence and goodness are beyond dispute. There is now a real threat to liberty of thought and speech which cannot be lightly dismissed by any observant or alert citizen. I hope this warning will for once be heeded.’
Whilst reviewing this brilliantly argued and thought provoking work I have been constantly aware of the research under-taken by Peter Hitchens to provide the reader with such a clear understanding of the failure of the current system of order, justice and liberty. This work is surely even more relevant today sixteen years after its publication and a very worthy successor this his earlier work The Abolition of Britain (1999, recently republished with a new afterword).
My review commenced with an extract from Elie Wiesel and to conclude may I offer these words from his 1986 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech:
‘I have tried to keep memory alive. I have tried to fight those who would forget. Because if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices. I swore never to be silent. We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.’