The Broken Compass: How British Politics Lost its Way
Encyclopedia
The Broken Compass: How British Politics Lost its Way (reissued as The Cameron Delusion in March 2010) is the fourth book from English
traditionalist conservative
writer Peter Hitchens
. The book, which is partly autobiographical
, proposes that the British political right and left
no longer hold firm, adversarial
belief
s but vie for position in the centre, while at the same time overseeing a general decline
in British society. The right
in particular is depicted as being a spent political
force that is confused, nonsensical and subsumed by the centre-left
, which is itself a product of Fabian
social democracy
. Hitchens concludes that, since the compass
is broken, the time has come in British politics for the reestablishment of a proper adversarial system and for principle
s to be rediscovered.
s are actually a device for influencing public opinion
and not a means of measuring it. Political parties
and newspaper
s are usually responsible for this manipulation
, whose purpose is to "bring about the thing it claims is already happening". Hitchens states that the men who conspire to bring this about "wear well-tailored suits, sit in modish, well-lit London restaurants and carry Blackberries
, not daggers [as did Guy Fawkes]".
Hitchens cites the contemporary examples of the media attacking Gordon Brown
and the apparent recovery and expected win of the Conservative Party
at the 2010 general election, and concludes that, from a political standpoint, the latter is a vacuous exercise, since the Conservatives are "just as committed as New Labour to a fiercely egalitarian economic and social policy".
Hitchens begins the second chapter, The Power of Lunch, with the statement "it is time that the important truth about political news coverage in this country was stated". He then goes on to declare that, based on his time as a political reporter at Westminster, political journalists:
The third chapter, Time for a Change, describes in detail how a media reporting bias
is attempting to facilitate a Tory general election win. Hitchens writes that "After ten years in which the Tory party was treated as a laughable outcast, it is particularly startling to see how things have altered", and states that one of his motivations in writing the book was to "frustrate the exercise" of the media machine attempting to create a Tory revival, which is itself an odd exercise, since [such media machine] "desires a different government, not because it will bring about change, but because it will not".
In the fourth chapter, Fear of Finding Something Worse, Hitchens claims in a long and detailed account that Labour has reached "the most significant moment in its history – the complete acceptance of its programme by the Conservatives". He also asserts that the Conservative Party is "an organisation whose main purpose is to obtain office for its leading figures at almost any cost". As a result, a new, and permanent, political centre
is established. Hitchens invokes the famous closing image of George Orwell
's Animal Farm
to illustrate how extremely close, if not indistinguishable, the two parties have now become.
Chapter five, The Great Landslide, deals with how a number of prominent left-wing commentators, journalists and newspapers have begun making sympathetic noises about the Conservatives, and how this had become possible, since helping the Tories no longer constituted "a form of treason".
countries before the collapse of the Soviet Union
, and how his experience of these countries, together with the behaviour of left-wing organisations in the UK, led to his becoming disillusioned with the British Left.
He also carries out a lengthy critique of the Western Left's apologist
stance towards Soviet Communism, including:
Hitchens states that "the fault of the Western Left was that they willingly made excuses for repression
when they were free not to make those excuses, and that they stayed silent about abuses when they were free to attack them".
In the seventh chapter, A Fire Burning Under Water, Hitchens continues his autobiographical musings, and describes the final stage in his becoming disenchanted with the British Left.
When working as an industrial correspondent on Fleet Street
, he became horrified at the British Trades Union Congress
's (TUC) failure to support the Gdansk shipyard workers' challenging
their communist government: "Trade Unionists, in a foreign country, peacefully facing an almighty employer with nothing but fraternity and the strike weapon. Surely the TUC would support these brothers?" Nevertheless, the TUC, in Hitchens's words, "took the side of Communist despotism against their own apparent allies". Hitchens subsequently went to Gdansk and met Lech Wałęsa
. As a result of the meeting, during which he understood that Wałęsa was "far more than anyone I had ever met in England, comparable with the Tolpuddle martyrs
and the early fighters of the right to strike" (people the TUC ostensibly revered), Hitchens realised that he could no longer be a socialist of any kind.
's "Rivers of Blood" speech
. Hitchens alleges that the term "racialist" (which referred to a person who believed in the superiority of some racial groups over others) "was too exact for its new and very different use", and that the new concept of "anti-racism" "does not make sense on its own terms, is hostile to thought and debate, helps no oppressed person
, and is not an organic continuation of the just and laudable campaigns for integration
and equality
which convulsed the Western world four decades ago". An additional consequence of this, in Hitchens's view, is that the process of constructing a fair and workable policy on immigration
is impeded.
Hitchens also asserts in this chapter that the sexual revolution
represents "seeking the existing order's permission to pursue pleasure at all costs
", and that the idea that sex is connected with reproduction and parenthood has become repulsive – this directly undermines Christian
principles, and has its roots in the spirit of 1968 – the "great engine of this change".
Hitchens begins chapter nine, Sexism is Rational, by stating that, although he concurs entirely with the messages contained in Virginia Woolf
's A Room of One's Own
, "because I resist some other, wholly different, ideas, many of my opponents assume automatically that I believe in the subjection of women
as domestic chattels". He goes on to explore how the Left has taken up feminist
causes since the 1960s, and how in some cases this has led to damage to women (for example, business exploits women "on a scale not seen since Victorian times",) as well as a decline in marriage
. Hitchens claims that this process is part of revolutionaries' seeking to "destroy and expunge the restraints placed on human selfishness by the Christian religion. The permanent married family is the greatest single obstacle to this project. The opportunity to persuade women to become brides of the state, or brides of capital, is the greatest chance these campaigners have ever had". He ends the chapter by asserting that in Britain there is an emerging citizenry "prepared for enslavement
, ignorant of its origins, past, rights, traditions, and duties" and that "only in a wholly broken political system could there be such a need for reform, and no reformers ready to address it".
In chapter ten, Equality or Tolerance, Hitchens again explores the theme of how the Left have taken up a cause, this time of equal rights for homosexuals, that it had no especial affiliation for in the 1960s. He believes that the Left "have made a shocking leap of logic from one wholly reasonable and just position to another much more contentious one" and that supporters of Leo Abse
's 1967 law reform on homosexuality are now accused of intolerance if they do not support homosexual civil partnerships or discrimination on the grounds of homosexuality
. Hitchens cites Matthew Parris
's view that "impressionable young people may be influenced into making lifelong sexual choices which might not be inevitable". Hitchens concludes that "the new order is based upon the idea that there is no moral distinction between homosexual and heterosexual acts" and that this is "a revolutionary, not a tolerant or liberal position". He ends the chapter by alleging that the "atrophy
of religion
and patriotism
in the Labour party, like the atrophy of the same things in the Tory Party, is the deep problem beneath all others".
Chapter eleven, The Fall of the Meritocracy
, is a lengthy exposition of the decline in British standards of education. Hitchens cites as one of the main reasons for this the abolition of grammar schools, and that this also, according to a 2005 report by the London School of Economics
, has resulted in a decline in social mobility
. Hitchens claims that egalitarians
deny these consequences, and that their experiment, comprehensive education, has failed. He also quotes John Marks in The Betrayed Generation—Standards in British Schools 1950–2000, Centre for Policy Studies
, 2001, that "the general lowering of standards and rigour
since the end of selection
is one of the main reasons behind the current drive to devalue examinations". Instead, Hitchens maintains, selection is based on the ability to pay, and not merit, and poor children are worse off as a result. He ends the chapter by writing "the question which arises is why the educated, conscious servants of the state should seek to pretend that educational standards are rising when the opposite is true. The answer is that they have put equality before education, wish to continue to do so, and therefore seek to hide from themselves as well as others the terrible collateral damage
caused by their war against privilege
".
Chapter twelve, 'The age of the train', outlines how the British Conservative Party presided over the dismantling of much of Britain's rail network, and how the Labour party did little to undo this policy, which was the brainchild of Richard Beeching
. Hitchens asserts that this is evidence that the "Tory Party does not love Britain, any more than the Labour Party loves the poor".
The final chapter, A Comfortable Hotel on the Road to Damascus, discusses the phenomenon since the 2001 September 11 attacks and the 2003 Invasion of Iraq
, of certain members of the Left realigning themselves with an American Neoconservative
political position. However, according to Hitchens, this does not involve "real adversarial conflict with conventional wisdom. It delivers him to another portion of the 'centre ground', one where foreign policy is the only thing worth discussing, and where former conservatives and former Leftists can mingle in happy communion", and which allows "political conservatism to soothe its tribal base by appearing strong overseas, while failing to be anything of the kind at home".
In the Conclusion: The Broken Compass, Hitchens paints a bleak picture of political mismanagement, facilitated by an abandonment of the old adversarial system
of 'True Left' and 'True Right', which has resulted in a serious decline
across the entire spectrum of British society. He identifies the "end of the Cold War
, which made many of the old political positions meaningless overnight" as being one cause of this, but also sees the roots of the problem in Fabian social democracy
, compounded by the ideology of the 1960s
. Hitchens concludes that the electorate's discontent on a number of issues, which is no longer seriously addressed by the mainstream political parties, may steer it towards "less benevolent" affiliations.
, The Observer
and the New Statesman
, was the occasion of two interviews with Hitchens with Hannah Pool in The Guardian, and a discussion with the author on BBC Radio 4
.
The reviews in the left-wing press were generally unfavourable; Peter Wilby's review in The Observer was dismissive towards much of the book's contents. Wilby wrote "As Hitchens sees it, 'the broken compass' is chiefly the Conservatives' fault. Even under Thatcher, they accepted too many of Labour's social democratic and liberal reforms. So we have a permanent government of the centre and one of Labour's main aims is to stop a genuinely Conservative party emerging that may attract working-class votes on such issues as "immigration and disorder" and getting Britain out of Europe. 'It was greatly in Labour's interest, once the Tory party had accepted so much of Labour's programme as unalterable, that the Tory party should be preserved against the danger of dissolution,' Hitchens writes. There is a grain of truth in all this, but on the left most would reverse the argument. The postwar consensus was destroyed in the Thatcher years and Labour failed to restore it, accepting, at least until the credit crunch, unrestrained neoliberal capitalism. New Labour's appeal to business and the City was that it closed off, perhaps forever, the possibility of a genuinely socialist alternative".
Writing in the New Statesman, Anthony Howard
saw the book as "a hotchpotch of separate essays" and that, though Hitchens mounts a spirited defence of his beliefs, he nevertheless resembles "some faintly out-of-date figure searching the kitchen for any pot or pan he can hurl against the spirit of the age".
In a review in The Guardian
, Steven Poole
described Hitchens as being "in general exhilaratingly good when attacking the hypocrisies and stupidities of specific individuals", and wrote that the "best parts" of the book describe "scenes of foreign reporting, such as an alarming visit to Vilnius
in 1991, where Soviet forces massacred Lithuanian nationalists". However, Poole also added that the book resorted too much to cultural generalisation.
Conservative newspapers and magazines, which had consistently reviewed Hitchens's previous books, largely ignored The Broken Compass. The author bemoaned this in one of his columns, and explored the possible reasons behind it in an article in Standpoint
magazine.
An exception to the trend was the Shadow Education Secretary Michael Gove
referring at length to the book in his column in The Times
, where he wrote that it "has some passages of quite brilliant writing and it is at its best when Peter reflects on his own life and his disillusionment with the left-wing ideology of his youth" and that the book "makes some telling points, which are discomfiting reading for conservatives who value grace and civility in our national life".
in the magazine Private Eye
. The 'joke' is aimed at one of the figures critically discussed by Hitchens in The Broken Compass.
English people
The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens...
traditionalist conservative
Traditionalist Conservatism
Traditionalist conservatism, also known as "traditional conservatism," "traditionalism," "Burkean conservatism", "classical conservatism" and , "Toryism", describes a political philosophy emphasizing the need for the principles of natural law and transcendent moral order, tradition, hierarchy and...
writer Peter Hitchens
Peter Hitchens
Peter Jonathan Hitchens is an award-winning British columnist and author, noted for his traditionalist conservative stance. He has published five books, including The Abolition of Britain, A Brief History of Crime, The Broken Compass and most recently The Rage Against God. Hitchens writes for...
. The book, which is partly autobiographical
Autobiography
An autobiography is a book about the life of a person, written by that person.-Origin of the term:...
, proposes that the British political right and left
Left-wing politics
In politics, Left, left-wing and leftist generally refer to support for social change to create a more egalitarian society...
no longer hold firm, adversarial
Adversarial system
The adversarial system is a legal system where two advocates represent their parties' positions before an impartial person or group of people, usually a jury or judge, who attempt to determine the truth of the case...
belief
Belief
Belief is the psychological state in which an individual holds a proposition or premise to be true.-Belief, knowledge and epistemology:The terms belief and knowledge are used differently in philosophy....
s but vie for position in the centre, while at the same time overseeing a general decline
Decline
Decline is a change over time from previously efficient to inefficient organizational functioning, from previously rational to non-rational organizational and individual decision-making, from previously law-abiding to law violating organizational and individual behavior, from previously virtuous to...
in British society. The right
Right-wing politics
In politics, Right, right-wing and rightist generally refer to support for a hierarchical society justified on the basis of an appeal to natural law or tradition. To varying degrees, the Right rejects the egalitarian objectives of left-wing politics, claiming that the imposition of equality is...
in particular is depicted as being a spent political
Politics
Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the...
force that is confused, nonsensical and subsumed by the centre-left
Centre-left
Centre-left is a political term that describes individuals, political parties or organisations such as think tanks whose ideology lies between the centre and the left on the left-right spectrum...
, which is itself a product of Fabian
Fabian Society
The Fabian Society is a British socialist movement, whose purpose is to advance the principles of democratic socialism via gradualist and reformist, rather than revolutionary, means. It is best known for its initial ground-breaking work beginning late in the 19th century and continuing up to World...
social democracy
Social democracy
Social democracy is a political ideology of the center-left on the political spectrum. Social democracy is officially a form of evolutionary reformist socialism. It supports class collaboration as the course to achieve socialism...
. Hitchens concludes that, since the compass
Compass
A compass is a navigational instrument that shows directions in a frame of reference that is stationary relative to the surface of the earth. The frame of reference defines the four cardinal directions – north, south, east, and west. Intermediate directions are also defined...
is broken, the time has come in British politics for the reestablishment of a proper adversarial system and for principle
Principle
A principle is a law or rule that has to be, or usually is to be followed, or can be desirably followed, or is an inevitable consequence of something, such as the laws observed in nature or the way that a system is constructed...
s to be rediscovered.
Background
Hitchens sets out his stall in the preface by stating: "conventional wisdom is almost always wrong. By the time it has become conventional, it has ceased to be wisdom and become cant. Its smug cousin, received opinion, is just as bad. The aim of this book is to defy these two enemies of thought and reason", and "conventional wisdom's biggest single mistake is its thought-free, obsolete idea of Left and Right". Before the book's publication, Hitchens also explored the themes it contains in one of his columns, where he wrote "The cold, miserable truth is that both our major political parties are corpses, their original purposes long forgotten, their loyal members driven away or sidelined, and their traditional voters taken for granted".Part I: The New Permanent Government of Britain
In the first chapter, Guy Fawkes Gets a Blackberry, Hitchens asserts that opinion pollOpinion poll
An opinion poll, sometimes simply referred to as a poll is a survey of public opinion from a particular sample. Opinion polls are usually designed to represent the opinions of a population by conducting a series of questions and then extrapolating generalities in ratio or within confidence...
s are actually a device for influencing public opinion
Public opinion
Public opinion is the aggregate of individual attitudes or beliefs held by the adult population. Public opinion can also be defined as the complex collection of opinions of many different people and the sum of all their views....
and not a means of measuring it. Political parties
Political party
A political party is a political organization that typically seeks to influence government policy, usually by nominating their own candidates and trying to seat them in political office. Parties participate in electoral campaigns, educational outreach or protest actions...
and newspaper
Newspaper
A newspaper is a scheduled publication containing news of current events, informative articles, diverse features and advertising. It usually is printed on relatively inexpensive, low-grade paper such as newsprint. By 2007, there were 6580 daily newspapers in the world selling 395 million copies a...
s are usually responsible for this manipulation
Misuse of statistics
A misuse of statistics occurs when a statistical argument asserts a falsehood. In some cases, the misuse may be accidental. In others, it is purposeful and for the gain of the perpetrator. When the statistical reason involved is false or misapplied, this constitutes a statistical fallacy.The false...
, whose purpose is to "bring about the thing it claims is already happening". Hitchens states that the men who conspire to bring this about "wear well-tailored suits, sit in modish, well-lit London restaurants and carry Blackberries
BlackBerry
BlackBerry is a line of mobile email and smartphone devices developed and designed by Canadian company Research In Motion since 1999.BlackBerry devices are smartphones, designed to function as personal digital assistants, portable media players, internet browsers, gaming devices, and much more...
, not daggers [as did Guy Fawkes]".
Gordon Brown
James Gordon Brown is a British Labour Party politician who was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Labour Party from 2007 until 2010. He previously served as Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Labour Government from 1997 to 2007...
and the apparent recovery and expected win of the Conservative Party
Conservative Party (UK)
The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...
at the 2010 general election, and concludes that, from a political standpoint, the latter is a vacuous exercise, since the Conservatives are "just as committed as New Labour to a fiercely egalitarian economic and social policy".
Hitchens begins the second chapter, The Power of Lunch, with the statement "it is time that the important truth about political news coverage in this country was stated". He then goes on to declare that, based on his time as a political reporter at Westminster, political journalists:
- are entirely uninterested in politics;
- generally propagate the received centre-leftCentre-leftCentre-left is a political term that describes individuals, political parties or organisations such as think tanks whose ideology lies between the centre and the left on the left-right spectrum...
standpoint on issues; - are more interested in factionPolitical factionA political faction is a grouping of individuals, such as a political party, a trade union, or other group with a political purpose. A faction or political party may include fragmented sub-factions, “parties within a party," which may be referred to as power blocs, or voting blocs. The individuals...
fights and scandals than new policyPublic policyPublic policy as government action is generally the principled guide to action taken by the administrative or executive branches of the state with regard to a class of issues in a manner consistent with law and institutional customs. In general, the foundation is the pertinent national and...
and legislationPrimary legislationPrimary legislation is law made by the legislative branch of government. This contrasts with secondary legislation, which is usually made by the executive branch...
; - consult with each other before agreeing what the 'line' on a story will be. He cites as examples the near universally positive media coverage afforded David CameronDavid CameronDavid William Donald Cameron is the current Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, First Lord of the Treasury, Minister for the Civil Service and Leader of the Conservative Party. Cameron represents Witney as its Member of Parliament ....
's 2006 Conservative Party Conference speech and the concerted, coordinated media attacks on Gordon Brown after he refused to hold a general electionGeneral electionIn a parliamentary political system, a general election is an election in which all or most members of a given political body are chosen. The term is usually used to refer to elections held for a nation's primary legislative body, as distinguished from by-elections and local elections.The term...
in 2008; - advance their careers by colluding with politicians – such collusion is referred to by the innuendo "lunch".
The third chapter, Time for a Change, describes in detail how a media reporting bias
Media bias
Media bias refers to the bias of journalists and news producers within the mass media in the selection of events and stories that are reported and how they are covered. The term "media bias" implies a pervasive or widespread bias contravening the standards of journalism, rather than the...
is attempting to facilitate a Tory general election win. Hitchens writes that "After ten years in which the Tory party was treated as a laughable outcast, it is particularly startling to see how things have altered", and states that one of his motivations in writing the book was to "frustrate the exercise" of the media machine attempting to create a Tory revival, which is itself an odd exercise, since [such media machine] "desires a different government, not because it will bring about change, but because it will not".
In the fourth chapter, Fear of Finding Something Worse, Hitchens claims in a long and detailed account that Labour has reached "the most significant moment in its history – the complete acceptance of its programme by the Conservatives". He also asserts that the Conservative Party is "an organisation whose main purpose is to obtain office for its leading figures at almost any cost". As a result, a new, and permanent, political centre
Centrism
In politics, centrism is the ideal or the practice of promoting policies that lie different from the standard political left and political right. Most commonly, this is visualized as part of the one-dimensional political spectrum of left-right politics, with centrism landing in the middle between...
is established. Hitchens invokes the famous closing image of George Orwell
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
's Animal Farm
Animal Farm
Animal Farm is an allegorical novella by George Orwell published in England on 17 August 1945. According to Orwell, the book reflects events leading up to and during the Stalin era before World War II...
to illustrate how extremely close, if not indistinguishable, the two parties have now become.
Chapter five, The Great Landslide, deals with how a number of prominent left-wing commentators, journalists and newspapers have begun making sympathetic noises about the Conservatives, and how this had become possible, since helping the Tories no longer constituted "a form of treason".
Part II: The Left Escapes to the West
In Chapter 6, Riding the Prague Tram, Hitchens reminisces about his travels to Communist BlocEastern bloc
The term Eastern Bloc or Communist Bloc refers to the former communist states of Eastern and Central Europe, generally the Soviet Union and the countries of the Warsaw Pact...
countries before the collapse of the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
, and how his experience of these countries, together with the behaviour of left-wing organisations in the UK, led to his becoming disillusioned with the British Left.
He also carries out a lengthy critique of the Western Left's apologist
Apologetics
Apologetics is the discipline of defending a position through the systematic use of reason. Early Christian writers Apologetics (from Greek ἀπολογία, "speaking in defense") is the discipline of defending a position (often religious) through the systematic use of reason. Early Christian writers...
stance towards Soviet Communism, including:
- Malcolm MuggeridgeMalcolm MuggeridgeThomas Malcolm Muggeridge was an English journalist, author, media personality, and satirist. During World War II, he was a soldier and a spy...
's experience of dealing with the Fabian SocietyFabian SocietyThe Fabian Society is a British socialist movement, whose purpose is to advance the principles of democratic socialism via gradualist and reformist, rather than revolutionary, means. It is best known for its initial ground-breaking work beginning late in the 19th century and continuing up to World...
, and in particular its members BeatriceBeatrice WebbMartha Beatrice Webb, Lady Passfield was an English sociologist, economist, socialist and social reformer. Although her husband became Baron Passfield in 1929, she refused to be known as Lady Passfield...
and Sidney Webb's full support of even the most egregious elements of Stalinist Russia; - the attempt to exonerate and romanticise LeninVladimir LeninVladimir Ilyich Lenin was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and communist politician who led the October Revolution of 1917. As leader of the Bolsheviks, he headed the Soviet state during its initial years , as it fought to establish control of Russia in the Russian Civil War and worked to create a...
and TrotskyLeon TrotskyLeon Trotsky , born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and theorist, Soviet politician, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army....
, despite the historical evidence pointing to their being the natural forerunners of StalinJoseph StalinJoseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
; - intellectual resistance to the works of Solzhenitsyn and Robert ConquestRobert ConquestGeorge Robert Ackworth Conquest CMG is a British historian who became a well-known writer and researcher on the Soviet Union with the publication in 1968 of The Great Terror, an account of Stalin's purges of the 1930s...
; - the US Communist PartyCommunist Party USAThe Communist Party USA is a Marxist political party in the United States, established in 1919. It has a long, complex history that is closely related to the histories of similar communist parties worldwide and the U.S. labor movement....
defending or denying Stalin's crimes.
Hitchens states that "the fault of the Western Left was that they willingly made excuses for repression
Political repression
Political repression is the persecution of an individual or group for political reasons, particularly for the purpose of restricting or preventing their ability to take political life of society....
when they were free not to make those excuses, and that they stayed silent about abuses when they were free to attack them".
In the seventh chapter, A Fire Burning Under Water, Hitchens continues his autobiographical musings, and describes the final stage in his becoming disenchanted with the British Left.
Fleet Street
Fleet Street is a street in central London, United Kingdom, named after the River Fleet, a stream that now flows underground. It was the home of the British press until the 1980s...
, he became horrified at the British Trades Union Congress
Trades Union Congress
The Trades Union Congress is a national trade union centre, a federation of trade unions in the United Kingdom, representing the majority of trade unions...
's (TUC) failure to support the Gdansk shipyard workers' challenging
History of Solidarity
The history of Solidarity , a Polish non-governmental trade union, begins in August 1980, at the Lenin Shipyards at its founding by Lech Wałęsa and others. In the early 1980s, it became the first independent labor union in a Soviet-bloc country...
their communist government: "Trade Unionists, in a foreign country, peacefully facing an almighty employer with nothing but fraternity and the strike weapon. Surely the TUC would support these brothers?" Nevertheless, the TUC, in Hitchens's words, "took the side of Communist despotism against their own apparent allies". Hitchens subsequently went to Gdansk and met Lech Wałęsa
Lech Wałęsa
Lech Wałęsa is a Polish politician, trade-union organizer, and human-rights activist. A charismatic leader, he co-founded Solidarity , the Soviet bloc's first independent trade union, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983, and served as President of Poland between 1990 and 95.Wałęsa was an electrician...
. As a result of the meeting, during which he understood that Wałęsa was "far more than anyone I had ever met in England, comparable with the Tolpuddle martyrs
Tolpuddle Martyrs
The Tolpuddle Martyrs were a group of 19th century Dorset agricultural labourers who were arrested for and convicted of swearing a secret oath as members of the Friendly Society of Agricultural Labourers. The rules of the society show it was clearly structured as a friendly society and operated as...
and the early fighters of the right to strike" (people the TUC ostensibly revered), Hitchens realised that he could no longer be a socialist of any kind.
Part III: Britain through the Looking Glass
In chapter eight, Racism, Sexism and Homophobia, Hitchens examines how the modern ideology of race, and the term racist, differ to the concept of "racialism" that Hitchens espoused in the late 1960s as a vociferous opponent of Enoch PowellEnoch Powell
John Enoch Powell, MBE was a British politician, classical scholar, poet, writer, and soldier. He served as a Conservative Party MP and Minister of Health . He attained most prominence in 1968, when he made the controversial Rivers of Blood speech in opposition to mass immigration from...
's "Rivers of Blood" speech
Rivers of Blood speech
The "Rivers of Blood" speech was a speech criticising Commonwealth immigration, as well as proposed anti-discrimination legislation in the United Kingdom made on 20 April 1968 by Enoch Powell , the Conservative Member of Parliament for Wolverhampton South West...
. Hitchens alleges that the term "racialist" (which referred to a person who believed in the superiority of some racial groups over others) "was too exact for its new and very different use", and that the new concept of "anti-racism" "does not make sense on its own terms, is hostile to thought and debate, helps no oppressed person
Oppression
Oppression is the exercise of authority or power in a burdensome, cruel, or unjust manner. It can also be defined as an act or instance of oppressing, the state of being oppressed, and the feeling of being heavily burdened, mentally or physically, by troubles, adverse conditions, and...
, and is not an organic continuation of the just and laudable campaigns for integration
Racial integration
Racial integration, or simply integration includes desegregation . In addition to desegregation, integration includes goals such as leveling barriers to association, creating equal opportunity regardless of race, and the development of a culture that draws on diverse traditions, rather than merely...
and equality
Racial equality
Racial equality means different things in different contexts. It mostly deals with an equal regard to all races.It can refer to a belief in biological equality of all human races....
which convulsed the Western world four decades ago". An additional consequence of this, in Hitchens's view, is that the process of constructing a fair and workable policy on immigration
Immigration policy
An immigration policy is any policy of a state that deals with the transit of persons across its borders into the country, but especially those that intend to work and to remain in the country. Immigration policies can range from allowing no migration at all to allowing most types of migration,...
is impeded.
Hitchens also asserts in this chapter that the sexual revolution
Sexual revolution
The sexual revolution was a social movement that challenged traditional codes of behavior related to sexuality and interpersonal relationships throughout the Western world from the 1960s into the 1980s...
represents "seeking the existing order's permission to pursue pleasure at all costs
Hedonism
Hedonism is a school of thought which argues that pleasure is the only intrinsic good. In very simple terms, a hedonist strives to maximize net pleasure .-Etymology:The name derives from the Greek word for "delight" ....
", and that the idea that sex is connected with reproduction and parenthood has become repulsive – this directly undermines Christian
Christian
A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...
principles, and has its roots in the spirit of 1968 – the "great engine of this change".
Hitchens begins chapter nine, Sexism is Rational, by stating that, although he concurs entirely with the messages contained in Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century....
's A Room of One's Own
A Room of One's Own
A Room of One's Own is an extended essay by Virginia Woolf. First published on 24 October 1929, the essay was based on a series of lectures she delivered at Newnham College and Girton College, two women's colleges at Cambridge University in October 1928...
, "because I resist some other, wholly different, ideas, many of my opponents assume automatically that I believe in the subjection of women
The Subjection of Women
The Subjection of Women is the title of an essay written by John Stuart Mill in 1869, possibly jointly with his wife Harriet Taylor Mill, stating an argument in favour of equality between the sexes...
as domestic chattels". He goes on to explore how the Left has taken up feminist
Feminism
Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...
causes since the 1960s, and how in some cases this has led to damage to women (for example, business exploits women "on a scale not seen since Victorian times",) as well as a decline in marriage
Marriage
Marriage is a social union or legal contract between people that creates kinship. It is an institution in which interpersonal relationships, usually intimate and sexual, are acknowledged in a variety of ways, depending on the culture or subculture in which it is found...
. Hitchens claims that this process is part of revolutionaries' seeking to "destroy and expunge the restraints placed on human selfishness by the Christian religion. The permanent married family is the greatest single obstacle to this project. The opportunity to persuade women to become brides of the state, or brides of capital, is the greatest chance these campaigners have ever had". He ends the chapter by asserting that in Britain there is an emerging citizenry "prepared for enslavement
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
, ignorant of its origins, past, rights, traditions, and duties" and that "only in a wholly broken political system could there be such a need for reform, and no reformers ready to address it".
In chapter ten, Equality or Tolerance, Hitchens again explores the theme of how the Left have taken up a cause, this time of equal rights for homosexuals, that it had no especial affiliation for in the 1960s. He believes that the Left "have made a shocking leap of logic from one wholly reasonable and just position to another much more contentious one" and that supporters of Leo Abse
Leo Abse
Leopold Abse was a Welsh lawyer, politician and gay rights campaigner. He was a Welsh Labour Member of Parliament for nearly 30 years, and was noted for promoting private member's bills to decriminalise male homosexual relations and liberalise the divorce laws...
's 1967 law reform on homosexuality are now accused of intolerance if they do not support homosexual civil partnerships or discrimination on the grounds of homosexuality
Homophobia
Homophobia is a term used to refer to a range of negative attitudes and feelings towards lesbian, gay and in some cases bisexual, transgender people and behavior, although these are usually covered under other terms such as biphobia and transphobia. Definitions refer to irrational fear, with the...
. Hitchens cites Matthew Parris
Matthew Parris
Matthew Francis Parris is a UK-based journalist and former Conservative politician.-Early life and family:...
's view that "impressionable young people may be influenced into making lifelong sexual choices which might not be inevitable". Hitchens concludes that "the new order is based upon the idea that there is no moral distinction between homosexual and heterosexual acts" and that this is "a revolutionary, not a tolerant or liberal position". He ends the chapter by alleging that the "atrophy
Atrophy
Atrophy is the partial or complete wasting away of a part of the body. Causes of atrophy include mutations , poor nourishment, poor circulation, loss of hormonal support, loss of nerve supply to the target organ, disuse or lack of exercise or disease intrinsic to the tissue itself...
of religion
Religion
Religion is a collection of cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews that establishes symbols that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values. Many religions have narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories that are intended to give meaning to life or to...
and patriotism
Patriotism
Patriotism is a devotion to one's country, excluding differences caused by the dependencies of the term's meaning upon context, geography and philosophy...
in the Labour party, like the atrophy of the same things in the Tory Party, is the deep problem beneath all others".
Chapter eleven, The Fall of the Meritocracy
Meritocracy
Meritocracy, in the first, most administrative sense, is a system of government or other administration wherein appointments and responsibilities are objectively assigned to individuals based upon their "merits", namely intelligence, credentials, and education, determined through evaluations or...
, is a lengthy exposition of the decline in British standards of education. Hitchens cites as one of the main reasons for this the abolition of grammar schools, and that this also, according to a 2005 report by the London School of Economics
London School of Economics
The London School of Economics and Political Science is a public research university specialised in the social sciences located in London, United Kingdom, and a constituent college of the federal University of London...
, has resulted in a decline in social mobility
Social mobility
Social mobility refers to the movement of people in a population from one social class or economic level to another. It typically refers to vertical mobility -- movement of individuals or groups up from one socio-economic level to another, often by changing jobs or marrying; but can also refer to...
. Hitchens claims that egalitarians
Egalitarianism
Egalitarianism is a trend of thought that favors equality of some sort among moral agents, whether persons or animals. Emphasis is placed upon the fact that equality contains the idea of equity of quality...
deny these consequences, and that their experiment, comprehensive education, has failed. He also quotes John Marks in The Betrayed Generation—Standards in British Schools 1950–2000, Centre for Policy Studies
Centre for Policy Studies
The Centre for Policy Studies is a British right wing policy think tank whose goal is to promote coherent and practical public policy, to roll back the state, reform public services, support communities, and challenge threats to Britain’s independence...
, 2001, that "the general lowering of standards and rigour
Rigour
Rigour or rigor has a number of meanings in relation to intellectual life and discourse. These are separate from public and political applications with their suggestion of laws enforced to the letter, or political absolutism...
since the end of selection
Selective school
A selective school is a school that admits students on the basis of some sort of selection criteria, usually academic. The term may have different connotations in different systems....
is one of the main reasons behind the current drive to devalue examinations". Instead, Hitchens maintains, selection is based on the ability to pay, and not merit, and poor children are worse off as a result. He ends the chapter by writing "the question which arises is why the educated, conscious servants of the state should seek to pretend that educational standards are rising when the opposite is true. The answer is that they have put equality before education, wish to continue to do so, and therefore seek to hide from themselves as well as others the terrible collateral damage
Collateral damage
Collateral damage is damage to people or property that is unintended or incidental to the intended outcome. The phrase is prevalently used as an euphemism for civilian casualties of a military action.-Etymology:...
caused by their war against privilege
Privilege
A privilege is a special entitlement to immunity granted by the state or another authority to a restricted group, either by birth or on a conditional basis. It can be revoked in certain circumstances. In modern democratic states, a privilege is conditional and granted only after birth...
".
Chapter twelve, 'The age of the train', outlines how the British Conservative Party presided over the dismantling of much of Britain's rail network, and how the Labour party did little to undo this policy, which was the brainchild of Richard Beeching
Beeching Axe
The Beeching Axe or the Beeching Cuts are informal names for the British Government's attempt in the 1960s to reduce the cost of running British Railways, the nationalised railway system in the United Kingdom. The name is that of the main author of The Reshaping of British Railways, Dr Richard...
. Hitchens asserts that this is evidence that the "Tory Party does not love Britain, any more than the Labour Party loves the poor".
The final chapter, A Comfortable Hotel on the Road to Damascus, discusses the phenomenon since the 2001 September 11 attacks and the 2003 Invasion of Iraq
2003 invasion of Iraq
The 2003 invasion of Iraq , was the start of the conflict known as the Iraq War, or Operation Iraqi Freedom, in which a combined force of troops from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Poland invaded Iraq and toppled the regime of Saddam Hussein in 21 days of major combat operations...
, of certain members of the Left realigning themselves with an American Neoconservative
Neoconservatism
Neoconservatism in the United States is a branch of American conservatism. Since 2001, neoconservatism has been associated with democracy promotion, that is with assisting movements for democracy, in some cases by economic sanctions or military action....
political position. However, according to Hitchens, this does not involve "real adversarial conflict with conventional wisdom. It delivers him to another portion of the 'centre ground', one where foreign policy is the only thing worth discussing, and where former conservatives and former Leftists can mingle in happy communion", and which allows "political conservatism to soothe its tribal base by appearing strong overseas, while failing to be anything of the kind at home".
In the Conclusion: The Broken Compass, Hitchens paints a bleak picture of political mismanagement, facilitated by an abandonment of the old adversarial system
Adversarial system
The adversarial system is a legal system where two advocates represent their parties' positions before an impartial person or group of people, usually a jury or judge, who attempt to determine the truth of the case...
of 'True Left' and 'True Right', which has resulted in a serious decline
Decline
Decline is a change over time from previously efficient to inefficient organizational functioning, from previously rational to non-rational organizational and individual decision-making, from previously law-abiding to law violating organizational and individual behavior, from previously virtuous to...
across the entire spectrum of British society. He identifies the "end of the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
, which made many of the old political positions meaningless overnight" as being one cause of this, but also sees the roots of the problem in Fabian social democracy
Fabian Society
The Fabian Society is a British socialist movement, whose purpose is to advance the principles of democratic socialism via gradualist and reformist, rather than revolutionary, means. It is best known for its initial ground-breaking work beginning late in the 19th century and continuing up to World...
, compounded by the ideology of the 1960s
Counterculture of the 1960s
The counterculture of the 1960s refers to a cultural movement that mainly developed in the United States and spread throughout much of the western world between 1960 and 1973. The movement gained momentum during the U.S. government's extensive military intervention in Vietnam...
. Hitchens concludes that the electorate's discontent on a number of issues, which is no longer seriously addressed by the mainstream political parties, may steer it towards "less benevolent" affiliations.
Reception
On its publication, the book was reviewed in The GuardianThe Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
, The Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
and the New Statesman
New Statesman
New Statesman is a British centre-left political and cultural magazine published weekly in London. Founded in 1913, and connected with leading members of the Fabian Society, the magazine reached a circulation peak in the late 1960s....
, was the occasion of two interviews with Hitchens with Hannah Pool in The Guardian, and a discussion with the author on BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station, operated and owned by the BBC, that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. The station controller is currently Gwyneth Williams, and the...
.
The reviews in the left-wing press were generally unfavourable; Peter Wilby's review in The Observer was dismissive towards much of the book's contents. Wilby wrote "As Hitchens sees it, 'the broken compass' is chiefly the Conservatives' fault. Even under Thatcher, they accepted too many of Labour's social democratic and liberal reforms. So we have a permanent government of the centre and one of Labour's main aims is to stop a genuinely Conservative party emerging that may attract working-class votes on such issues as "immigration and disorder" and getting Britain out of Europe. 'It was greatly in Labour's interest, once the Tory party had accepted so much of Labour's programme as unalterable, that the Tory party should be preserved against the danger of dissolution,' Hitchens writes. There is a grain of truth in all this, but on the left most would reverse the argument. The postwar consensus was destroyed in the Thatcher years and Labour failed to restore it, accepting, at least until the credit crunch, unrestrained neoliberal capitalism. New Labour's appeal to business and the City was that it closed off, perhaps forever, the possibility of a genuinely socialist alternative".
Writing in the New Statesman, Anthony Howard
Anthony Howard (journalist)
Anthony Michell Howard, CBE was a prominent British journalist, broadcaster and writer. He was the editor of the New Statesman, The Listener and the deputy editor of The Observer...
saw the book as "a hotchpotch of separate essays" and that, though Hitchens mounts a spirited defence of his beliefs, he nevertheless resembles "some faintly out-of-date figure searching the kitchen for any pot or pan he can hurl against the spirit of the age".
In a review in The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
, Steven Poole
Steven Poole
-Biography:Poole studied English at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and has subsequently written for publications including The Independent, The Guardian, The Times Literary Supplement, The Sunday Times, and the New Statesman...
described Hitchens as being "in general exhilaratingly good when attacking the hypocrisies and stupidities of specific individuals", and wrote that the "best parts" of the book describe "scenes of foreign reporting, such as an alarming visit to Vilnius
Vilnius
Vilnius is the capital of Lithuania, and its largest city, with a population of 560,190 as of 2010. It is the seat of the Vilnius city municipality and of the Vilnius district municipality. It is also the capital of Vilnius County...
in 1991, where Soviet forces massacred Lithuanian nationalists". However, Poole also added that the book resorted too much to cultural generalisation.
Conservative newspapers and magazines, which had consistently reviewed Hitchens's previous books, largely ignored The Broken Compass. The author bemoaned this in one of his columns, and explored the possible reasons behind it in an article in Standpoint
Standpoint (magazine)
Standpoint is a monthly British cultural and political magazine. Its premier issue was published at the end of May 2008 – the first launch of a major current affairs publication in the UK in more than a decade....
magazine.
An exception to the trend was the Shadow Education Secretary Michael Gove
Michael Gove
Michael Andrew Gove, MP is a British politician, who currently serves as the Secretary of State for Education and as the Conservative Party Member of Parliament for the Surrey Heath constituency. He is also a published author and former journalist.Born in Edinburgh, Gove was raised in Aberdeen...
referring at length to the book in his column in The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
, where he wrote that it "has some passages of quite brilliant writing and it is at its best when Peter reflects on his own life and his disillusionment with the left-wing ideology of his youth" and that the book "makes some telling points, which are discomfiting reading for conservatives who value grace and civility in our national life".
Release details
The book was first published in the UK on 11 May 2009 by Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd., and in the US on 20 June 2009 by Continuum, with the altered subtitle How Left and Right Lost Their Meaning. In anticipation of the 2010 General Election, a revised paperback edition with the new title The Cameron Delusion was released in the UK on 17 March 2010.The book's index
The book's index contains an embedded joke that was noted by Poole in his Guardian review and which was turned into a full page parody by Craig BrownCraig Brown (satirist)
Craig Edward Moncrieff Brown is a British critic and satirist from England, probably best known for his work in Private Eye.-Biography:...
in the magazine Private Eye
Private Eye
Private Eye is a fortnightly British satirical and current affairs magazine, edited by Ian Hislop.Since its first publication in 1961, Private Eye has been a prominent critic and lampooner of public figures and entities that it deemed guilty of any of the sins of incompetence, inefficiency,...
. The 'joke' is aimed at one of the figures critically discussed by Hitchens in The Broken Compass.
Further reading
- The Triumph of the Political Class by Peter ObornePeter ObornePeter Oborne is a British journalist and political commentator. He was educated at Sherborne School and The University of Cambridge. He is a Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph columnist, author of The Rise of Political Lying and The Triumph of the Political Class, and, with Frances Weaver, the...
, a similarly polemical work analysing the contemporary 21st-century political class in Britain
External links
- Review of The Broken Compass in The Catholic Herald, 31 July 2009