The Light's on at Signpost (18 page)

The restoration of corporal punishment is also long overdue. If there is a deterrent to match the rope, it is the cat, as many old lags will testify. The birch should also be reintroduced for juvenile offenders. While we had it in the Isle of Man, this was a safe place; my teenage daughter and her friends could hitchhike home from dances in the middle of the night without fear; it was common to leave doors, and certainly cars, unlocked.

Then, under pressure from Westminster, birching was abolished, and girls no longer hitchhike home. The police, whose arrival at the scene of rowdyism used to send the offenders fleeing, now find the hooligans waiting for them. Violence has increased, assault is not uncommon, and murders have taken place in an island where unlawful killing used to be something that had happened in the distant past.

What a triumph for enlightened thought. What a vindication of the noble lord who contended that the permissive society is a civilised society. It probably seems so in the agreeable surroundings of High Table, or the Lords’ dining room, with the civilised ones comfortably insulated by port and brandy and the certainty that no criminals are likely to break in and assault them. The view from the pavement, where the pensioner is having his face stamped on, is rather different.

It is worth mentioning that in the years I lived on Man before we were forced to abandon the birch, there was only one instance of an actual birching taking place, on a young thug who had used a broken glass on someone’s face. Years later, when he committed another offence, a leading liberal newspaper in Britain crowed triumphantly that his birching had proved no deterrent. What they omitted to report, with typical dishonesty, was that the new offence had not been committed in the Isle of Man. Indeed, the culprit had taken care never to visit the island again.

Noose, cat, birch—horrible things, indeed, but less horrible than the murders, maimings, rapes, tortures, and uncountable lesser
offences they would undoubtedly prevent. But that cannot be admitted; indeed, the very thought must be suppressed, and in this the government and its enlightened supporters are ably abetted by much of the media, especially the BBC. I do not for a moment believe that the grieving parents of a murdered child, on whom television intrudes with such ghoulish delight, have never expressed a wish to see the death penalty restored—and yet,
mirabile dictu
, their wish has never been reported in any news bulletin that I have seen. And we need not ask how long a senior policeman would last in his job if he had the temerity to call for capital punishment.

Suppression of opinion in the name of political correctness is, of course, absolutely necessary; censor a widely held view, and people will think it is not widely held at all. It is a lesson that Dr Goebbels and the Soviet commissars knew by heart, and how they would have admired the technique of the BBC anchorman who, on encountering a death penalty advocate, cut him off abruptly with the words: “Oh, we don’t want to hear from
you
!”

No, indeed. Muzzle the majority and the majority will begin to doubt that it is a majority.

It will be argued, naturally, that the opinion of the majority is irrelevant. It may not be stated quite so bluntly, except by people like the politician quoted earlier, who believe, in his felicitous phrase, that grass-roots opinion is “a negation of political leadership”. So there.

I am straying, sensibly you will agree, from my main thesis on the death penalty, but it is so patently right, and so widely supported, that I can leave it and touch for a moment on our penal system. It is my belief, borne of experience, that the best correctional policy is to make prisons unpleasant places to which criminals will be in no haste to return. I remember the military jails of my youth and, recalling the salutary effect they had on their unfortunate inmates, cannot suppress the thought that their discipline might with advantage be imposed on criminals today. They wouldn’t know
what had hit them, and they wouldn’t like it. This is the psychological approach, you understand. Even less would they like the restoration of hard labour, prison uniform, and spartan living, with only limited recreation for those who had earned it.

Those foolish enough to break their way on to the roof and demonstrate by hurling down slates…no, I am not going to advocate shooting them down, but simply that for every day they spend on the roof voluntarily, they should spend one compulsorily, without benefit of nourishment. It’s a splendid, simple, politically incorrect old rule: behave, and do as you’re told, or you don’t eat. Now that does work, believe me.

Alas, none of these fine things will happen. The crime wave will continue to swell, the innocent will die and suffer, and our alleged leaders will wring their hands and talk about “addressing the problem” and monitoring everything in sight and tackling “root causes” such as poverty and disadvantage and lack of opportunity and social injustice and sunspots—everything, in fact, except human wickedness, greed, and cruelty, which are the most common causes, far and away.

The great and good, especially those who by their progressive policies have brought about the ruin of our education system, will probably not care to admit that a major root cause of crime is the breakdown of discipline in schools. Political correctness cannot face the glaring truth that a child who has no sanctions to fear, and therefore no restraints on his behaviour, is far more likely to grow into a man who respects no law, than the child who is properly disciplined—which means, on occasion, punished. But even mention of punishment will draw squeals of liberal indignation about “child abuse”—a truly weasel attempt to confuse disciplining a naughty child with paedophile activity. But what am I saying? Horror of horrors, I have used the word “naughty”, which has been banned in case it upsets some little darling whose record of street crime and classroom assaults would scarify Al Capone.

We are told, repeatedly, that violence is no answer to the problem. This is nonsense. With children who attack teachers, bully and rob and enjoy using violence on their fellows, violence is the only answer. But rather than face the truth, government and our education pundits insist on suspensions, and expulsions, and special classes for disruptive pupils, with social workers and psychiatrists speculating aimlessly on the
reasons
for playground mayhem and vandalism and the culture of disobedience.

Well, we know what their conclusions will be, and no doubt poverty and broken homes and single-parent upbringing and child abuse can have something to do with it. Certainly the permissive society culture which promotes easy divorce and pays lip-service to family values while undermining them, makes for the kind of home which is a breeding-ground for juvenile delinquency. Government ministers have the impudence to prate about the need for proper behaviour to be instilled in the home, and go out of their way to make it impossible by prosecuting parents if they punish their children.

This rank hypocrisy extends to the schools, where the full rigour of the law is employed against a teacher who is alleged to have slapped a child threatening her with assault. Having denied the teacher the means of imposing discipline, government can only make pious noises when asked, what is the teacher to do? Punishment aside, is she not entitled to self-defence? Not in Cool Britannia, she isn’t.

So we have suspension and expulsion, and the denial to children of a decent education. Even the worst behaved are still entitled to schooling, but the present banning of discipline (for that is what it is) ensures that most of them will leave school semi-literate and ripe for mischief and, eventually, crime. They have been taught that society is a soft mark, and that however they misbehave or offend there will be no real penalty.

The most effective penalty is corporal punishment, and before
the p.c. brigade start accusing me of advocating the torture chamber for errant toddlers, let me say that as child and parent corporal punishment played little part in my life. My bottom was painfully smacked in infancy by my father, but I loved and respected him no whit the less; I was caned once (in England, two cuts, for reading the
Wizard
during a French lesson), and belted three or four times, usually for throwing knives (in Scotland, where the tawse was the instrument of punishment).

I will not claim blimpishly that it did me good or made a man of me. It didn’t; it wasn’t meant to. But my father’s smacks discouraged bad behaviour, I was never detected reading the
Wizard
in class again, and I learned to practise my knife artistry outside school. The beatings were not severe; they were rather a reminder of the disciplinary machine that lay behind, a deterrent that exists no longer. Admittedly, sheer moral force was the main disciplinary instrument of society between the wars (a phenomenon impossible to explain today), but fear of physical punishment went hand in hand with it, and together they worked remarkably.

My own children seldom needed more than a withering look from their mother or me, but they knew that the possibility of sterner measures existed—and that is the key to controlling all human behaviour. If I seem to repeat myself it is because one tends to when an obvious, patent truth is being denied or ignored by fools. For example, bullying in schools seems to have reached epidemic proportions, yet nothing is easier to stop. Simply empower teachers to inflict corporal punishment; if the bully knows he is going to have his backside painfully thrashed, he will desist from bullying.

And how, scoffs the liberal, is a frail female teacher to chastise a hulking thug? She isn’t; she is going to report him to the headmaster or mistress who will instruct a burly assistant janitor, paid out of the small fortune that will be saved from the abolition of
special classes for disruptive pupils, to inflict the punishment. And any parent who comes round to the school seeking revenge will be liable, after due process, to a fine or worse. If a parent wishes to have a child’s punishment investigated, that too must be properly carried out.

It’s easy…and the bully doesn’t have to be expelled or denied schooling, his victims will not suffer from his cruelty or, provided school discipline is properly organised and supervised, have to demean themselves by complaining to higher authority—the only remedy that “educationalists” seem able to think of. We have come to this, that what used to be looked on as the most contemptible thing a child could do, namely, telling tales, sneaking, clyping, grassing, ratting, peaching, narking, turning stool-pigeon (you can tell the odium in which it was held by the rich variety of synonyms) is now recommended behaviour. That is the depth to which children are being advised to sink, simply because our rulers are too spineless and stupid to tackle the evil head-on.
*

How cruel they are to children; how they fail them by their neglect, not only the well-behaved pupil but the disruptive lout or young virago. They are being denied the good, untroubled education that is their birthright—one might say their human right, to use a phrase which should strike a chord in liberal minds. And all because the enlightened sneer at such folk wisdom as “Spare the rod and spoil the child”, and never have the wit, apparently, to wonder how the saying came to be proverbial.

There still exists, of course, among such thinkers, the belief that a child is naturally good, and only some aberration of circumstance or upbringing causes bad behaviour. Believe that and you’ll believe anything. It was my wife who pointed out to me, after careful observation of our own children and their playmates at the toddler stage, that you will see in the nursery every crime in the book except sexual assault: GBH, attempted murder, theft, blackmail, extortion, lying, fraud, false pretence, menacing, putting in fear, robbery with violence, conspiracy, mayhem—the whole Newgate Calendar is on show, and if sex and high treason are exceptions it is only because the little blighters haven’t got round to them yet.

I have rambled somewhat, yet I hope I have at least illustrated the old truth that as the twig is bent so grows the tree. I hope, too, to have demonstrated that I and the majority who share most of my views—they tend to live in Crewe and Arbroath and Truro and Larne and Llandudno and similar places, rather than in Islington, Hampstead, the Palace of Westminster or Broadcasting House—are not really cruel or unfeeling or vindictive folk. We want crime prevented and properly punished, and our children and grandchildren safely and humanely schooled. That is all, and we are tired of those selfish and hard-hearted bigots who refuse to let us have these things, and will not face the obvious truth, that capital and corporal punishment should never have been abolished.

They won’t be restored in my time. For one thing, we have the paradox that while a national majority favour the death penalty, p.c. has already had such an effect that juries would be reluctant to send even a proved serial murderer to the gallows. And the fury that would erupt if a non-white were hanged is not to be contemplated. If, or more probably when, so-called democracy fails, and totalitarianism triumphs, they will be re-imposed with a vengeance, either by communist or fascist dictators.

Meanwhile we must all suffer from the weakness of bad governments and the folly of permissive policies. And every time I hear of some defenceless old woman beaten to death by thugs, or a little child raped and strangled by a paedophile, I shall have to bite back the words: “Well done, congratulations, all you abolitionists and
enlightened liberals and champions of the permissive society! That’s another family who have a lot to thank you for.”

A shameful thing to say? No, a shameful thing to
have
to say. At least I’m still capable of shame, even if the liberal establishment is not.

A
T THE MUCH-ADMIRED
opening ceremony of the Sydney Olympics in 2000 (which I thought rather vulgar), great emphasis was laid on the Aborigines, but there was virtually no acknowledgement that it was Britain that made modern Australia; a Captain Cook figure made a brief appearance, and that was it. A stranger, noting the amount of attention paid to Stone Age barbarians and to the arrival of the non-British immigrants in modern times, would never have guessed that Australia and its people are more British than anything else. Many of them may wish to cut the tie, but that’s beside the point.

This deliberate down-playing of the British contribution is, of course, just another manifestation of the politically correct tendency to denigrate Britain (and especially England) and the Empire at every opportunity. Regrettably, there is no shortage of detractors in Britain itself. Many are sincere, half-educated liberals, or New Labour zealots who seem to detest British history (a prejudice which led them to neglect a heaven-sent opportunity for a patriotic celebration of the Millennium, and make themselves a laughing-stock with their ridiculous Dome), while others are simply dishonest, deliberately distorting history by selecting every item they can find to Britain’s discredit, and carefully avoiding its virtues.

This happens on even the most trivial level, as witness such cinematic drivel as
Pocahontas, Braveheart
and
The Patriot
, all of
which shamelessly presented a false picture of their subjects, with the apparent intention of vilifying the English as the ultimate archvillains. Which wouldn’t matter a hoot if it didn’t damage the education of our children, as I’m afraid does much of the all-too-slanted history they are taught at school. The trouble with the big lie is that it works unless it is refuted, and I don’t kid myself that my voice is big enough to stem the tide of revisionist propaganda. But I can state the truth as I know it, from study and observation, just for the record, and that at least will be something.

I write as a convinced Imperialist—which means that I believe that the case for the British Empire as one of the best things that ever happened to an undeserving world is proved, open and shut. Of course it had its faults, grievous ones; there are bad blots on our record—and what country since time began is blameless? We know that history is one long catalogue of theft, slaughter, and conquest, and no one can deny that Britain was better at these things than anyone else. We were, and still are at heart, a nation of pirates, and as a fine historian once said, let the world not reproach us with it, but be thankful.

Why? Because with all the greed and lust of dominion and buccaneering zeal that drove our ancestors, the wondrous paradox is that they left the world better than they found it. If no other country was so rapacious and acquisitive and successful at doing down its competitors, no other country did half as much to spread freedom, law, good government and democratic principle around the globe; as a civilising force Britain and its Empire were unique, and if proof is required one need only compare the state of imperial lands when they were under the Union flag, with their present condition. At best, as in India and many smaller, usually insular, territories where British influence lingers most strongly, the peoples are no better governed than they were, to say the least; at worst, independence (laughably called freedom) has been a ghastly tragedy, as in those African countries which have been transformed from prosperous,
law-abiding colonies into bankrupt bloody dictatorships under the tyranny of evil thugs like Mugabe and Amin and the butchers of Biafra.

It is liberal dogma that responsibility for the African horrors rests with the Imperialists who allegedly did not prepare the colonies for independence—conveniently overlooking the fact that it was the indecent haste of Attlee’s Labour government in getting out of India that led to a carnage in which two million died.

The Empire had to end, but those who hurried its demise (including the United States, which short-sightedly lost no opportunity of twisting the lion’s tail, and now wonders why places like the Middle East are in endless turmoil; it would make you weep) bear a heavy share of guilt for the ills which so often accompanied independence. I shan’t forget a symbolic little notice pinned to the wall of a bungalow, far up a river in Borneo, which had once been a British resident’s headquarters, recording the programme of inoculation against malaria: it stopped abruptly on the date of British withdrawal.

Ah, well, if you want to incur everlasting hostility, do someone a favour: they’ll never forgive you. Perhaps that explains the anti-British feeling. Or perhaps we’re just not very likeable. Who cares? We did what we did, and it was worth doing, and no one could have done it better—or half as well.