¶1Hi, welcome to Premier Unbelievable. [music] I'm Luke Martin and today my guest is Peter Hitchens. Peter Hitchens is a well-known and award-winning journalist, author, and [music] broadcaster. We spoke about the state of Britain and the West more generally. We spoke about his relationship with his brother, Christopher Hitchens, and the importance of the family.
¶2It's a really engaging conversation. I hope you enjoy it. Peter Hitchens, welcome to the show. >> Well, so far it's joy. >> Several decades ago, you wrote a book called The Abolition of Britain.
¶3Why did you write that book? And how do you think Britain is doing 20 or so years on? >> I wrote it for a lot of reasons. I wrote it because it's uh it seemed to me that you couldn't really achieve anything by simply writing articles for newspapers over and over again. At least I felt that I couldn't.
¶4I wrote it because I thought I probably would could never get any real voice in the national debate unless I had a book under my belt. I wrote it to prove to myself that I could write a book. Then I discovered that I couldn't get it published. And it took months. One of the best agents in the country, then a wonderful man called David Miller, now no longer with us, said, "Oh, I'll get it published for you." And then came back to me a few months later and said, "I have never in my life had such difficulty getting anything published." as you know it's still in print.
¶5It's sold many many thousands of copies because of because because of me uh because I am the person who is generally considered to be bad and also because of many of the arguments in it. >> So So what were your arguments? Well, it wasn't I was describing uh really more than anything else. I set out to describe several things which had happened which seemed to me to have not resulted in the good effects which they had been intended by their inventors to have whether it be the contraceptive pill or the reform of education or the revolution in the treatment of marriage and those those are three which come to me immediately. There's several other things in it.
¶6A lot of people don't still to this day attack it. They don't know what sort of book it is. They that it is that kind of book which describes how these things took place rather than some kind of enraged um diet tribe. Uh which is what they think it is. And I felt that at that stage in our national life, the Blair government had just come in.
¶7Things were pretty bad. But on the other hand, it was only it was only a government. It had a parliament. But on the other hand, I did have a slight suspicion about Blairism. I knew from friends of mine who'd been part of the project that it was it was a much bigger and deeper project than they like to let on.
¶8And I was afraid that we might be in engaging on something permanent, a really major cultural revolution. Of course, that is what took place. And by the time the Blair Brown government was over, everything had been revolutionized, including the Conservative Party, which had accepted almost all the things which the Blair government had done. and indeed all the things which I was complaining about in 1999. So basically since then I made one intervention what I believe was one intervention in British politics which was in the years before 2010 saying the Cameron takeover of the conservative party must fail for there to be any future for conservatism in Britain.
¶9If the Tory party wins on a Blairite program then that's it. uh you will basically have destroyed any hope of any sort of conservative formation ever growing to maturity in this country. And I still think that's the case. And I couldn't get anywhere. I I turned to many people.
¶10I remember during that election going to other supposedly conservative columnists on newspapers saying, "Will you join me in this?" And they'd laughed at me and would have anything to do with it. Many of them were the same people who now say, "Oh, aren't the tourists terrible and why are they so useless?" But the time when it would have been of some use to say so they wouldn't come out. >> So what's the state of Britain in your opinion in 2026 then? >> Postrevolutionary catastrophic and we live on uh we live basically in a sort of conditional ticket of leave state. As soon as people realize both at home and abroad that our economy is as catastrophic as it is, then we've had it.
¶11And you you then feed into that a criminal justice system on the point of collapse. A police force so useless that we'd probably be better off if it was abolished now. An education system which is the shame of the civilized world. A transport system which is which is comical. uh and national defenses which are a joke and all those things together as I say with an economy which is so disastrously managed that we're currently borrowing money to pay interest on our debts.
¶12So, all it needs is for the thing to come. I It struggles along like an ancient train uh on creaking bridges and and rattling rails, but it only really needs for it to fall off the rails once and it will go over and over and over and there's no coming back. We've had it. >> So, a lot of our viewers and listeners are from North America. Do you think they're in a better state to >> They have their own problems.
¶13I mean, I care above all about my own country. The United States has its problems. It has more resources with which it might overcome them, but it it's not it's not some utopia for sure. >> So So you've talked a bit about what's caused this. You've talked about um Blairism.
¶14>> It helps to have a reserve currency for a start to say. >> Mhm. And to what extent has um sort of increasing this increasing secularization of Britain led to the problems that you think there are today? >> I don't know how much it's [sighs] it it will lead to problems. And for instance, I was asked several years ago what did I think I would miss uh 50 years hence.
¶15And I said having glass in the windows of my house instead of corrugated iron. uh because I saw then as I see now such a total breakdown in the restraint uh among the lawless and such a total feebleness in the the enforcement of the law that it would just become impossible to do that. The if you look at the the end of the middle ages, one of the things which happens to architecture in this country is that houses begin to have windows instead of slits. A long slow process in which we became confident that if we put glass in our windows, uh, no one would come along and break it and climb in. And I'm not even sure that that's going to be true for very much longer.
¶16So >> look at the shop the shoplifting epidemic is basically bad but rather stupid people realizing that actually nothing will happen to them if they break the law and nothing. >> And and that that realization as it spreads there were those supposed riots in London a few years ago. They were they were called they were not riots it was just an outbreak of disorder and again people realized in very large numbers in London that they were free to loot and free to smash and nothing would happen. the ones who were caught. I remember going, my newspaper asked me to go to the trials of some of the ones who had been caught.
¶17And they were pathetic stragglers, even thicker than the rest, who'd turned up late and hadn't had the sense to run away when the police eventually arrived from wherever it was they'd been. The the the main people, the people who' done all the really bad stuff had uh had got away. And there was an amazing vignette in the middle of it was quite a a fancy restaurant in in West London. I can't remember the name of it. And what happened the night of the disorders was that people burst into the restaurant and began threatening and stealing wallets and handbags from the diners who being the English middle class totally unused to this kind of thing and scared stiff handed over the session.
¶18Not so the kitchen staff. They realized if this went ahead then there everything the whole the place was ruined. There'd be no future for them. They came out of the kitchen with meat cleavers and chased the thieves away. >> But the English middle class is simply not equipped >> to stand up against what it faces.
¶19>> These are the riots of 2011 and in >> I think that was the year just after your book come out. >> But it could have happened any time. You see, >> so you're drawing a link uh a quite a strong link between the decline of religiosity. No, it's it's what the if you if you don't nurture conscience from a very early age and people cease to have it or be troubled by it, then law enforcement will ultimately become nothing more than a strong state where you club people into submission or you don't. If you do, they'll behave for a bit.
¶20But you won't get the general high levels of trust, freedom, and order which we are used to in this country in which we continue to live as if they're permanent and will always exist. We get these warnings, the 2011 so-called riots, the current epidemic of shoplifting. They're telling you people don't care anymore. Now, there've been times before in the London, the London of the 18th century was was a was was an immoral chaos of danger and theft. But along came John Wesley and the other great preachers of the of the 18th century, and they began to remmoralize the country.
¶21And that this was then followed through by the Victorian churches and Sunday schools. And by the time we got to about 19 10, the country was pretty thoroughly moralized and we spent the rest of the rest of the 20th century and all of the 21st undoing that. >> Yes. Well, it raises an interesting question of whether it's the job of politicians or the job of of preachers and everyday Christians to try and bring about this revitalization. It's all very well bringing about a revitalization.
¶22But the current group of politicians would probably have arrested Wesley for the things he was saying. >> They're subversive of what they believe. The the real the really tough aspects of the Christian religion are the ones which in in many cases the Christian religion would have much to do with >> judgment. Old chap. No, don't be silly.
¶23Everyone's forgiven. Nothing to worry about. Let's sing another song. I it it really isn't very um isn't very challenging to the spirit of the age, is it? >> Yes.
¶24But what would you if you were if there were young people who are wanting to try and make a difference in in the country, would you be encouraged? >> Don't ask me. I have no I have no objections at all. I I gave that up. I I I really really wounded myself by throwing myself into into an actual political commitment in the years before 2010.
¶25I I was completely committed heart and soul to trying to persuade the intelligent people of this country to act in a way which might save it. And nobody gave a flying fig and since then I've laughed at everything. I don't have anything to do with manifestos, with policies, with anything. Nothing can be done. It's all over.
¶26It's just a question of when. >> Get out while you can. >> That is my policy. I have no other. >> If I were younger, I would do it myself, but I'm not.
¶27I'm too old to leave. I can't. I I believe you can't go to other people's countries uh without being prepared to support yourself and I can't do that. So therefore I can't go. >> But anybody who can they should go.
¶28This is this is I've never seen a more finished country. >> There's a lot to unpack. >> There was a chance to save it but no one was interested. So I I' I've done with that. Don't ask me for any policies.
¶29I don't have any. >> You'd mentioned Wesley's preaching. Would you encourage Christians to engage? >> You're asking me for policy again. Of course, I encourage people the Christian religion is is is the greatest thing in human thought.
¶30The the most spectacular event ever to come over the horizon of man. Not to take it seriously and not to not to propagate it is is would be a disgrace. But I don't think this is a policy. I think that's just a moral duty for anyone who who understands what it is. So that the the message you gave would be your message to to young people.
¶31>> I don't have a message. >> I don't have a message. I have no message. I am I am I am a person who has discovered that there is nothing that I can do beyond my own immediate life to affect what happens to me and therefore I don't have a message. >> I just the point about leaving leaving the country.
¶32>> Well that's so get out while you can and for that I I get laughed at. >> Mhm. Well, wait and see is what I say. >> What do your critics say? Those who are on the other side for the sake of for of hearing both sides.
¶33>> I have critics. I have ignorers. Everything I've ever said has been ignored. Hardly very few of the people who who think that they like what I say have ever listened to it. And hardly any of the people who think they hate what I say uh have ever listened to it.
¶34There's a small number of people I get this on social media. They they read an article that I've written. for some reason it's been drawn to their attention by a friend and therefore they've read it and they say well I I really disagree with about everything else or this is really quite uh this is something I can agree with and I write back and saying no you've just never had any idea what I thought before and you've suddenly found out and you like it but the people's minds are closed >> it is the the the I once thought of writing a book called how to change your mind I abandoned the project because I realized that nobody wants to change his mind >> so there's a lack of good faith interlocators. >> This is the lack of anybody and I just people just are not interested. They don't it's part of it is because hardly anybody has had a proper Marxist learnist training.
¶35They don't know how to think and they don't know how to make a critical approach to society and they they take things at face. The number of times people believe pretexts and think their reasons. Oh, we're attacking Iran because we don't like the regime. Oh, come on. The world is covered with horrible regimes to which we suck up and with which we trade.
¶36It's nothing to do with the regime. It has some other purpose. Pretext is is accepted as reason in almost every argument you hear. You you have to be so fantastically ignorant and willfully ignorant about the world to to to function in political and journalistic debate in this country. Nobody knows anything.
¶37>> I believe you said to me before that you you encourage people to put their hope in in the eternal. >> Well, that's where it is. That's where justice is. It plainly isn't here. And when the anarchists used to march through the streets in the 60s chanting there is no justice, they were right.
¶38There isn't any. It's and it's one of my principal reasons for believing. We have within us quite plainly an immense desire and drive for justice. We hate injustice with a burning fire. But yet it doesn't exist in the world in which we live.
¶39So it must exist somewhere else or the equation wouldn't come out. How could we be given this this very very strong desire for something we cannot have? >> So you you give the example of the work of the Wesley's turning things around and bracing. >> Well, it is it just it's it's demonstrabably so. There was a long period of remmoralization followed by a long period of demoralization largely caused by war.
¶40>> And why could that not happen again? >> I didn't say it couldn't. I I I can only say that I can't do it and I can't see how anybody else could do it. But I'd be very happy if somebody else does. I just don't see any chance of it at the moment.
¶41>> There's >> I can't I just don't see where where and how it could happen in a society which is the the language in which Wesley preached was at least understood by people. They knew what it was he was talking about. >> There's a lack of >> Wesley preached now people would know what he was talking about because apart from anything else the the the the language of the Bible and the prayer book was instilled in millions of people. They knew it. >> Mhm.
¶42So when he referred to it this if if you have a imagine yourself in in say after after a nuclear war when all radio transmission has ceased and you have a radio it's the most useless object in the world because there's nothing for it to receive. >> Yes, we have the internet now. We do and that transmits um slurry. >> It it brings all sorts of problems. >> Pumps slurry into the home even more than television does.
¶43>> Uh I'd like I'd like to argue that this here isn't slurry. >> I would like to argue that too, but I mean let's let's just take a look at the audience figures, shall we? Um, yes. Although there are some very uh high-profile platforms or or or figures that are having Christians on. So true.
¶44They're they're getting millions of views. >> General broadcasting and the internet which a lot of the one of the main successes of the internet as far as I know has been caused by pornography. It's slurry. >> Yeah. >> And the fact that there is some non slurry.
¶45I mean, if you had a tap in your bathroom and out of it slurry came for 23 hours and 49 minutes a day, for the other 11 minutes water came, you wouldn't be very satisfied with the arrangement, would you? >> But that's pretty much the arrangement we have in our houses. We have a slurry tap. >> Yeah. >> Out of which occasionally good things come.
¶46I I do sometimes watch television programs. I listen a bit to the radio, but an awful lot of it as soon as I hear it click. I just it just strikes me that through even you know the alternative media the podcast platforms the the Christian message could be >> preached and um there there's talk I know that the Bible project >> pinpoint of light in the darkness but that's what it is. Yeah, there's talk of this sort of what revival amongst youngs young men. I know the Bible project got >> there's a tiny uh there's a there's there's a tiny but the main the main thing and this is would be Wesley's problem now.
¶47The main thing that that people feel towards uh the Christian religion particularly in this country is indifference. They don't know. They go past a church. They don't know what it is. And if anything is going on in it, they don't know what it could conceivably be.
¶48And they wouldn't dream of trying to find out. It's a bafflement to them. It's not that they're angry against it. The the actually the great wave of new atheists, which my late brother was such an important part. They did the church a favor.
¶49They made people interested in it who previously couldn't have cared less. We should be grateful to them. Do you think Christians in this country could face persecution in the near to medium future? >> Persecution as Christians. No.
¶50But what they face is a is a constant pressure to self censor. Not merely what they say but what they think. >> If you're serious about it, there's lots of things. But the particular thing which is just about still possible to say uh but you can't go any further than this. the the idea of of lifelong marriage between a man or woman which is completely at the heart of the Christian religion in my view is still expressable but only in a sort of defensible way [snorts] >> if you're very polite about how you >> polite about it and you say well I I believe it I wouldn't of course dream of suggesting any anybody else would do such a thing but I quite like it myself >> and go away with that.
¶51>> Uhhuh. >> That's an example. Yes. And so you think in the f you know 10 20 years down the line there could be a a lot more push back for holding those sort of >> No, I think as long you can you can a sensible uh a sensible repressive society is a marshmallow uh dictatorship. It it doesn't it doesn't cruy punish or imprison or kill those who don't fit in.
¶52It just ignores them and keeps them away from any kind of power particularly in education or the media. stop there and for long possibly go live on a mountaintop. Um, breed goats and uh continue observing what Christian principles you can under the circumstances until somebody comes and burns your place down. But that'll be about it. >> Become a monk, become a hermit.
¶53>> Well, possibly. Don't appeal to me, but there you are. >> You mentioned the new atheism that Christopher, your late brother, was a part of. Now, you wrote >> bless him. >> Well, we'll we'll chat about him in a bit if you're happy to.
¶54You wrote The Rage Against God: How Atheism Led Me to Faith. And that was just after the new atheist. >> I I never like the subtitle. Publishers always push subtitles. >> My Atheism led me to Faith.
¶55Yeah, it doesn't really sound like you. [laughter] >> Not really true, but they wanted something. So, the the publishers really wanted a a an anti- Christopher book. >> Okay, >> that's what they wanted. And I said, "Oh, come on." and they came again and again and again until eventually I caved in and lost it.
¶56It's the hardest book I've ever written. I really had to struggle with it. My my eldest eldest son Daniel had to step in and rescue it at one stage because I was so sick of the sight of it. >> Right. >> It's only thanks to him that it was published.
¶57>> So the question I wrote down is obviously how did atheism lead you to faith? But so you would want that. So tell us what >> I was an atheist and I stopped being one. >> Yeah. Okay.
¶58Well tell us about that. And you >> it's not very interesting and it's it's it's simultaneously not very interesting and private. >> Okay. >> I I had a number of experiences which many many people have had and they caused me to change my mind. >> Mhm.
¶59I think our listeners and viewers would be would be interested. you feel it be interesting but I it's none of your business say these are these are these are private >> experiences in my life which involve other people whose whose involvement in them I don't >> wish to drag into the public view so I just that's my answer is always the same it's it's boring and it's private >> imagine >> if I said it's terribly exciting and it's private you'd be more allured but it isn't so it's such a series of cliches but it's it's the experiences themselves are private to me and the other people who were involved in them. >> So then how >> you can anybody who thinks about it can work out for themselves very easily what sort of experiences they were. >> Okay. So then how are you seeking to push back against the new atheism?
¶60>> I it's not I didn't particularly want to push back against it. It was it wasn't very good. I the what I in all the debates I I became involved in I realized a very simple thing >> uh that what you believe is a choice. No one can you can't have a debate in which the atheist beats the Christian or the Christian beats the atheist because neither of you can establish as a fact what you believe. And what has always been much more interesting to me and continues to be is why people choose what they choose.
¶61I just explained to you a few minutes ago why the one of the my main reasons for believing is the is the desire for justice and it's its absence. Mhm. >> There are many other reasons why one might believe simply look I I don't know about you but you know around the the rougher parts of Oxford there quite a lot of front gardens in which people have left old fridges or mattresses but you don't find many functioning universes operating to find tolerances lying just lying about the place. It's a rare thing and I find it quite persuasive that such a thing exists. How did that happen?
¶62What do you it doesn't but if if I do if I if I if I wanted there to be no consequences for my actions if I wanted to believe that my conscience was merely a side effect of my spleen uh if I wanted to be free to behave exactly as I wished and and and and not not to worry about that then it wouldn't be that hard for me to believe >> that the universe was a great big cosmic car crash and an accident which is the which is the alternative That's why people believe it. Ask them why they believe it and they will always it's a it's it's a subject atheists almost invariably with the exception of the great Thomas Nagel they want to avoid. They they they say oh I lack belief which is a ridiculous thing to say. Nobody uh no conscious human above the age of I don't know 12 has not looked at the cosmos and wondered how it came to be. No one.
¶63Cowpads lack belief. Uh, welks possibly like belief, but no, no human lacks belief, but they dodge it. They or they say, "I I can't believe." Well, why can't? Well, it's it's not belief is not some kind of trance. It's you say this I believe these propositions.
¶64>> They seem to me to to to be a sensible explanation of the universe. That's all you're saying. You're not you're not claiming as a fact. You're believing propositions. No one can not do that if you if all you have to do is want to.
¶65So it's desires you might you might the Christian might say sinful almost sinful desires >> that that that motivate people >> and that it's those sort of desires that motivate people not to to take an interest in in faith. >> Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. >> But uh that's I find that rather unsatisfactory.
¶66Someone who's not by any means lived a a perfect life. I mean the great the great distinction is the atheist uh the atheist um fears god and hopes he doesn't exist. The believer fears god and hopes he does exist. >> Can you see part of you that would that would you see the appeal of that sort of godless universe not I used to hold to it. Yeah, >> it was very handy.
¶67But it just I just I just thought you'd need to be quite trivial- minded to carry on believing that something so blatantly self- serving. >> It really is quite a struggle. I the more we know about the universe to to to believe that it is an accident. >> You have to fight hard to think that. >> Yes.
¶68Well, I know they can think it. There is no proof that it isn't an accident, but the the full of circumstantial evidence the other way [snorts] >> and the idea >> plus the re plus the re revelation of of Christ himself which again is is the most astounding thing. >> But why not put that to people? So your claim is that there's no point uh having debates or anything because people just choose. >> I didn't say there's no point.
¶69I mean it's quite enjoyable and some people may learn from it. I'm just saying what what what you cannot do is say that after a football match or a cricket game someone's won. But in a debate, you cannot say that somebody's won on anything other than technique. >> We're going to take a quick break. We'll be back in a few minutes.
¶70>> We need to take a short break. Make sure you're following us on social media. That's @ unbelievable fee onx and premier unbelievable on Instagram, Facebook and on YouTube if you're watching rather than just listening. And if you're enjoying this new show, do leave us a rating on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. We'll be back after a short break.
¶71We are launching a brand new course which helps us to consider the evidence and questions [music] around the birth of Jesus. It's called Did It Really Happen the Birth of Jesus? Why not sign up for the course or gift it to a friend? Find out [music] more at premierunbelievable.com. Speaking of uh debating technique, your brother Christopher was known to be a formidable debater.
¶72Um >> he could be he could be quite good from touch [laughter] >> just like yourself. People would uh Christians would would would sometimes feel intimidated at the thought of being on a stage uh with him. John Lennox who we had on recently famously debated him. So, so tell us about your relationship with him. >> Oh, well I you brothers I some people are lucky with their siblings and they get on with them and some people not so and I was one of the ones who didn't get on.
¶73We didn't get on let's say brothers are probably less likely to get on with each other than brothers and sisters or sisters and sisters also. We were two and a half years apart. So we weren't far enough apart to live completely separate lives. we weren't close enough together to be as it were in the same >> same frank groups. Yeah.
¶74>> So um and he has quite frankly written and said that he very much enjoyed being the only child and was quite cheesed off when I arrived and I think that's pretty much sums it up. So we fought >> throughout your teenage years when I say when I say fought I mean fought >> wrestling. Yeah. [laughter] And I got until I got to the stage when I was so big that it wasn't worth his while to bring it about anymore. >> So at that point he learned stop >> and >> but the relationship was not we were not friends.
¶75Uh we knew each other quite well. We could finish each other's sentences. We had a certain amount of private language which we could use uh which referred us back to longdistance things. and until he died, he was the only person who shared a certain set of memories with me. >> So, he was important to me and uh and I loved him dearly, but uh we didn't really particularly like each other or seek each other's company out and we're very different people.
¶76M >> I mean he is so well I I think he is um I say he is because he continues to exist very much in my mind he is a henist and I am a Puritan that's the most fundamental and obvious to me >> and there you have it your honor [sighs] >> and you noticed that from an an early age. >> Yeah. >> Mhm. Mhm. >> I think there was it was it became more not as the years went by.
¶77I mean, there's not much opportunity for hedonism in English prep schools in the 1950s and60s, but it becomes more available as the years go by. Yeah. >> Does that tie into the point you made about >> completely >> resisting belief >> completely? Yeah. He he he from very early on I think probably both of us had a um as many I I think reasonably intelligent children do have a questioning experience but God round about the age of 11 12 and so forth but he carried on with that whereas I gave it up I gave it up when I was in my early 30s I think what were dinner table conversations like were they didn't we weren't we were seldom at the same They all >> okay even in the holidays and >> oh well yeah but we are I think most children I certainly was one of them think that their their family life is more or less normal and I was blissfully happy throughout most of my childhood.
¶78I didn't I never particularly liked the first couple of days of term at boarding school. I got used to it and there were many things to be said for it. And at home we were we pretty much left to our own devices. My father went off to work in the morning, came back quite late. And my mother also is quite rare in in that era went went out to work as well.
¶79So we were just left say to our own devices much the time. So we'd either go out and run wild or he'd go off and stay with school friends far away or um we'd go off on long bicycle rides together. There wasn't much conversation in it, I don't think. And we weren't um either a particularly politically or religiously um interested household as when we were children. That only [clears throat] came later.
¶80He this this is old stuff but it's it's maybe useful to discussion. Uh he being ahead of me went off to a boarding school in Cambridge which I would later attend for a bit. And when he went off, he was quite normal uh English school boy with normal fairly sort of conservative attitudes and everybody else had apart I think from the skepticism about God which he he'd got about 11 or 12 and he came back from the first few terms more or less the same and then in the end of 64 he got in very much involved in parties. school held in October 64 a school election in which he was the Labour candidate and from then on he began to develop a very very strong political interest >> and politics came into our house in a way that hadn't been before >> and did you some he he infused me greatly in it too yeah I was he it seemed to me to be >> possibly I didn't realize just at the time but for someone in the obscurer corners of the English middle pass and a lot of people realize this now but didn't then. A political activity is a ladder up into a world of excitement nearly as good as show business.
¶81As has been wisely said, politics is show business for ugly people. And you could see it. It was it was fascinating, gripping. It had the the thrill of the unpredictable. So like a day at the races, it had personality.
¶82It had excitement. It had uh the glowing lights of television studios. There it all was like for you and it also enlivened I was always interested in history. It enlivened history to see it being performed in front of you. >> So I love politics very quickly.
¶83But he he definitely introduced it into our house. >> So you're known in some ways in some ways as as opposites at least in terms of your religious faith. Was there any areas that you really agreed on? I think we could if we we would always have agreed that independence of mind was an extremely important thing that should was was to be supported. >> Uh oddly enough, we agreed on abortion being a very dubious thing.
¶84That came quite late and I think probably we would probably have had quite a few tastes in common in terms of >> I don't discuss architectural music with him but I I suspect that he would have had quite similar tastes to me in that matter. Um he was also he has there's a very amusing interview which he does with some Australian television presenter in which he infuriates her because she thinks he's a thirdwave feminist and he isn't. And he starts saying to her, "No, I I don't I don't want my girls to go out to work." And she says, "Christopher, you can't mean that." He do. >> You can you can find it on the internet. It's very funny.
¶85I think his attitudes towards that subject was possibly not nothing like us. Um and again he sent once he realized how terrible the other provision was he sent his children to fee charging school as well. >> Mhm. >> So um >> so on things like that it's quite remarkable how what else >> do you say he's pro life? >> There are other things >> just on the abortion point did you say he was >> he was very skeptical about abortion.
¶86Yeah. >> Right. >> Look it up. >> Uhhuh. I mean he completely agreed with the fact that the the um the the embryo is is a human life.
¶87>> Mhm. >> It's incontrovertible in logic which it is. There was um his name escapes. There was there was a very good American conservative libertarian uh who took a similar view. It's not it's not um leftwing libertarian who took a similar view.
¶88It's not at all impossible for left-wing people to be uh against abortion. It's it in fact it would be more consistent. Many leftwing people are not really consistent with their own creeds >> particularly when they support war which was his the big thing that that we really became divided on in later life. >> So we're talking politics. You had a period where you were uh you were I guess on the left yourself.
¶89>> I was an active revolutionary Marxist. >> Yes. So tell us a bit about that and why you >> It's great fun. I mean we if you believe I I had had the the standard conservative Christian beliefs of the English middle-class uh privately educated boy and then I realized and in the particularly in the final years of my preparatory school education I probably learned most of what I know uh between the ages of 11 and 13 at that school. It's fantastically good school much better than any other I ever attended.
¶90uh and in in in rather nice surroundings. But what was very noticeable was so this is this is 63 64 65 this is the perfumemer affair uh I also had in I'd been very conscious that something had gone wrong at sewers I can just remember the sewers crisis I can remember it being on the radio the brown baker radio that used to be wired up rather precariously in the bathroom while my father shaved listening to listening to the the BBC which wasn't there in the today program and I remember sewers and I particularly remember sewers because one morning there was no petrol and he had to go we lived in a village on the edge of Dartmore and he had to go into work in Devport and he couldn't go by car so there was a great palava of him getting this ancient bicycle out of the shed and in the garden and pumping up the tires and oiling the chain and bicycling off down to the station since closed by Dr. beaching, of course, by which he got to work in his uniform. You're not supposed to ride a bicycle as in in a Royal Navy commander's uniform with all the gold lace on it. You're not supposed to do it, but he had to do it.
¶91I remember su from that something had plainly gone wrong. And not long after that, of course, the Navy contracted heavily and got rid of him. So, that changed our life. Not they didn't I never was made to feel that we were materially worse off, but obviously something had gone wrong. So, there was that.
¶92There was seiz feeling that something had gone wrong with the country. And then there was this ridiculous perfume affair. What exactly it was, I didn't know. But it was obvious that they were making fools of themselves. And I didn't know.
¶93I didn't know what a cool girl was, but it obviously wasn't a good thing for senior members of society to be consulting with them. And I also I didn't really know what a nightclub was. The the phrase gives me a headache. I I don't want to go to one, but I knew that you didn't really want the people who were running your society to be spending their evenings in them. And it just all felt wrong.
¶94It was very noticeable that there were there were teachers who who could not be stood up to. They were a dying breed and there were teachers who could be they could be beguiled out of doing their jobs by by getting them into conversations or they could just be subverted and stood up to. And I began to notice that the spirit had gone out of it. The the people in my life who were supposed to have authority didn't have it anymore. >> And so I was looking for something else.
¶95And I found it very much in Narcissism. It was a it was a an unapologetic uh creed believing very much in its own rightness and that it's it the consequences of its actions would be good. It was intellectually serious and literate and Trosky himself is a brilliant journalist and writer and many many other writers of the left are extremely pleasing and enlightening to read and also it gave me something to do and a cause in which to be involved which required certain amount of personal and political courage which are always good things to be tested and so I had a great time. How long did that last? >> From about 1968 to 1975.
¶96>> Okay. >> You might say reasonably short-lived. >> It's quite a long time at that age. These days breakfast seems to come around every 10 minutes. But then uh then seven years was long.
¶97>> Uhhuh. And so what what took you out of it? >> Oh, I stopped believing in it. It didn't be it. I was living uh in the bubble of uh of uh university life and for I began when I was living in Oxford.
¶98I was studying at a at a rather finest called the Oxford College of Further Education which had nothing to do with university where I did my A levels. It's fantastic. I could get an education. There were girls there. I didn't have to do compulsory sport and there were no dormatories I had to sleep in.
¶99All that was over. I could just get an education. And the the the atmosphere of of the country in 1968 and was probably for most people quite ordinary. But in a town like Oxford where the stirrings of the new left were beginning to be rather obvious and the university sustained them. It was a kind of dream time.
¶100>> Uh Vietnam was raging. You was almost you almost hear it over the horizon. There were lots of causes uh and lots of things to be taken on, lots of meetings to go to and demonstrations to go on and it was a as I say it was a dream world. And then I went to university in York where the the campus appeared to have been lured from space into the surrounding countryside. It was a wholly separate place of concrete and glass >> in which we lived this other life.
¶101I did we did go out. I mean I used to go be docks in Ghoul one day or Collier down towards Kellingly another day or I I actually sustained a group of um of supporters of the organization in a coach works in Scarra. I used to go up to Scarbor every weekend and uh and talk to them about Marxist doctrine and discuss expanding the course. Uh so I was seeing people all the time who were not like me uh who were not students. So I got out of it.
¶102But on the other hand, it was we was convinced at that stage and Ted Heath and his slightly mad attacks on trade unions made this easier. We believed at that stage that we were moving towards a point at which uh what we thought was the motive force of modern history, namely the industrial working class would actually engage in political rebellion against government. So it all that seemed believable then, but very soon after I left York and went to work on a small evening newspaper in Swindon and had to live in an ordinary town where none of those there was no dreaming going on in Swindon in 1973. I promise you absolutely none. Uh I had to come into direct contact with normal life and or people who were not revolutionaries and it very quickly didn't make sense.
¶103I was also beginning to read quite a lot of Arthur Kersler who went through the similar experience of breaking with the revolutionary movement and and walking across the bridge to social democracy and his a lot of what he wrote made it easier for me to do the same. >> I believe you've said that you what you learned during those years has been useful to you in later years because you're able to understand how say the the hard left operates and >> not so much how the hard left operate. I mean how that's not very difficult in the hard the hard left will will paracetize in organizations which oddly enough our group didn't do but much modern politics is due to the fact that the quite small troskist organizations particularly the international Marxist group dissolved themselves into the Labour party in the middle 70s and more or less took it over. Why do you think there were so many um supposedly extroists including Blair himself in the Blair government? Where do you think they came from?
¶104How did they get there? They got there from that. But that that's easy. No, what the what the Marxist training teaches you to do is to penetrate the disguises in which history advances itself. You look at history in a particularly critical way.
¶105And you're not fooled by pretext. We discussed that earlier. You you look for the actual the actual motive. And I I I do think a good Marxist learning training is important in doing. Most people haven't had it.
¶106I took it quite seriously. I I I you know I I read the works of quite a lot of the works of Lenin and Trosky and uh and I even struggled with dialectical materialism. I I don't it was an interesting exercise and it's left marks on me which I don't I'm not as you can tell I'm not a revolutionary Marxist anymore but I am still influenced by the education I got then. Mhm. >> Also learned a lot about Britain because I was seeing people in circumstances I I don't I I met miners and dockers and coach workers and glass factory workers and railwaymen and later on when I became an industrial correspondent for a national newspaper, these people I met then were entirely familiar to me.
¶107>> Yeah, they were they were there. Yeah. In a very well-known conversation with John Lennox, your brother warned about um losing freedom of speech in Britain due to the rise of of Islam. Um we've had a few different thinkers on recently. We had Andy Bannister, we had u Oz Guinness uh both raising concerns around this.
¶108was more radical Islam for Andy Bannister was more just core core Islam. Did you share concern? >> I've said some similar things. What worries me at the moment though is that a lot of the uh and I the people who say this may or may not be aware of it. A lot of the um Islamoskeepic um movement which has grown up on the political right in Britain may conceivably be sending coded messages that don't have less to do with the religion and more to do with something else to their intended audience.
¶109>> Okay. >> I don't want to elaborate. you can work out from that what I might be saying and you're welcome to do so but I intend to leave it as convoluted as that just now that's what I suspect there are many threats to freedom of speech uh in this country and no doubt that uh that Islam could be one of them but is by no means the only one >> is it high up the list in your view >> I how what's high up the list is that we we live in a post-revolutionary society in which former thought is becoming increasingly hard to express and as it becomes hard to express becomes harder to think and so the Orwell points where the the most brilliant bit in 1984 which when the um the Orwell Prize had a reading out loud of the whole book I chose this passage the amazing scene in the pub where Winston Smith goes into a pub and starts trying to get an old geyser uh to tell him what the world used to be like and realizes in total desperation after He he must have somebody wanted to lean forward and shake the old guy. He couldn't tell him anything about the past was of any use at all. The he realizes that in fact the past has been totally suppressed.
¶110It was impossible to know whether the claims of the party were true or not. >> And that's what we're heading towards. And you don't even you don't need the apparatus of uh of the Ministry of Truth. You don't need to burn all the old stuff. If it if it happened before about 2001, the records though it requires so much effort to find that most people will never find them, let alone look for them.
¶111So it the past is so rapidly disappearing, people know nothing about it. It's quite funny. If you do know anything about the past, it's it it's it's it makes me uh I get accused of being an intellectual. I'm not intellectual. I'm a jogging scribbler.
¶112I because I was educated before the revolution. I appear to know so much that it astounds people. Where does it go? And still he spoke and still the wonder grew that one small head could carry all he knew. It's only it's only by virtue of being as old as I am.
¶113It's not a there's no there's no talent or even effort involved in it. If you were educated before the revolution, you just know more than other people. [snorts] >> So then yeah. So concerns about a clash between Islamic values and western values isn't >> Well, there is a clash between but what but what are western values? I always remember um I I I thought it was George W.
¶114Bush. I h George W. Bush I checked it. It was Blair who's who was complaining about I don't know the the Taliban say they hate our way of life. He said on the television and I shouted back at the television so do I hate our way of life.
¶115What sign am I supposed to be on? I mean I I of course they hate our way of life. there's an awful lot of it is honistic and unpleasant and uh and so there was always I think on first encounter conservatives and Islam a lot of conservatives thought maybe these guys are our allies but I don't think that they are because the more serious you are about Christianity the harder it is to find a point of I mean I've been I' I've had many conversations with Muslims which I've greatly enjoyed and they if if you take them on an argument they like it too there's no there's not there's no desire to shut you up. Uh, and I've um I've prayed side by side with with Muslims in rather odd all the circumstances as well, which I was very glad to be able to do and it was sincere. In many ways, they are our friends, but in some other ways they're not, and particularly their attitude towards women is something I can't really cope with.
¶116>> But as I say, there are many, many other problems for freedom of speech and thought in this country apart from Islam. >> To simplify it for um those quite simple and and listening. So I mean what because there's people people of faith, people who are not of faith, maybe seekers, there's people of different political persuasions. Um what if you really try and encapsulate what you see as as the as driving these problems with freedom of speech and just the problems in 2026 Britain, how how would you how would you do that? The great battle and this is what I discovered when I went to live in the Soviet Union.
¶117The great battle is between uh the state and the family and when I say the family I mean the uh the lasting married family and the Soviet state. I mean I knew when I went there I knew a lot about the Soviet Union before I ever set foot in it. But I knew about the the class war and I knew about the Leninism more than most people. I knew about the KGB and I knew about the economic uh incompetence and waste of this of the communist system as adopted. What I hadn't realized was the uh the hostility I mean active hostility towards family life and I came across in a park in a part of Moscow called Kasna Nyenska Red Presnia a statue.
¶118Now, normally you saw a statue in a Soviet park or square, it was Lenin. Almost always it was Lenin. It had once been Stalin, but in 1953, 45, they'd taken down and melted about a million statues of Stalin and replaced them with Lenins because they had have something there. But this wasn't. This was a statue of a child with a flag.
¶119And he was called Pavle Moros, Paulie Paul Morosov. He probably didn't exist, but the official story was that he'd been um he denounced his parents to the secret police. I whether it was for hoarding grain or for saying the wrong thing, I'm not sure, but he was made an object of worship for the Soviet youth movement. And I had a a very good, wonderful um translator and fixer provided for me briefly by the KGB. We both knew it but neither of us bothered to dwell on it.
¶120Uh and she even she because by this time Gorch off had more or less dismantled the system. She said I shudder to remember uh the meetings of which we were urged to reveal this little horror. But we were and it was when the the the push of August 1991 happened and the Soviet regime completely collapsed and almost all statues of Lenin and of Felix Tjinsky, the founder of the KGB were torn down. Uh most of them were dumped in a park. People would go and kick them and spit on them and do things to them, but they were they were left lying and some of them have crept back since I think is now back on his pl.
¶121But the Morozov statue has never ever reappeared. No one knows where it is. I've tried to find out what happened to it. Nobody knows. >> It's something they they now in Russia really want to suppress.
¶122And yet the idea that the that the child owes more to the state than to his parents is actually increasingly in force in our society. And that also remember that's a great another great feature of the brilliance of 1984. the the youth organization, the spies, they spy on their parents and they denounce them and and they they cut it off and the children know perfectly this is what's going to happen. So if you don't like your parents you it's like calling child line and you with knobs [music] on you take your parents away the mystery of love. We're going to take another quick break.
¶123We'll be back in a few minutes. The mind and brain are connected, but the scientific data doesn't enable you to establish the nature of that connection or the relationship. Just because science can't demonstrate that physical processes and mental processes are the same thing, that in and of itself doesn't give you any evidence that that's not the case either. >> Some people talk about seeing deceased relatives and communicating with them. M this idea of floating up out of your body and watching things happen and being able to describe it afterwards that could be formed in your imaginative mind.
¶124>> Conscious experience and brain processes are two fundamentally different things. >> I wonder if we're talking about >> You like me to go out for a bit? You guys seem really [laughter] happy. [music] So, you're concerned about the family, the state of the family. What's I mean, you've said a bit already, but what do you think's really going wrong here in Britain in that regard?
¶125And um what what would you like to see? I know you're not suggesting that. Okay. Okay. But but like Okay.
¶126You're right. Just tell us what's going wrong. >> Answer that because I I have no clue. >> Okay, that just >> no manifesto. There isn't one.
¶127[snorts] >> Just the first question. What what's what's going wrong? So, you've told us about the child in uh the Soviet Union giving up their parents to the state. What does that look like? >> They were they were encouraged to denounce them.
¶128And also marriage itself has weakened to the point where it was more or less dissolvable as it is here now uh by a few exchanges of pieces of paper. And there used to be in Kief a large palace of weddings, a state palace because people couldn't marry in church of course. Uh and it it was it was shaped like a large piece of cheese um therefore triangular and it was known colloially in the city as the Bermuda Triangle because all the marriages which took place there shortly after was disappeared. uh marriage is an incredibly weak b bond uh whereas the allegiance which everybody had to the state and the party was incredibly strong. That's the difference.
¶129Now anybody can say to me well terrible things happen in marriages and sometimes parents treat their children in disgraceful and appalling ways and this is absolutely true and it would be probably beyond the wit of anybody to devise society in which you could wholly avoid any of these things from happening. But I think the state is a much worse master than the family and the family private life can flourish. I quoted in the abolition of Britain. I quoted an essay by DH Lawrence called app propo lady chatly in which he makes this point that the the the strong married family is an absolute island of of liberty which stands against the power of government and he he said in his in his essay he was amazed the church didn't fight harder to protect it. It's worth reading >> and I thought it's he of all people should know >> having done [laughter] much to mess it up.
¶130But but he he did it's it's a very interesting intelligent essay and I think it's true. I think private life, the passing on of law and language, uh the teaching of manners, uh and uh and of customs, the the basically turning us from being [sighs] sort of huxleyite um decanted clone babies into human beings is must largely take place inside of a home with a strong family. And if the the home becomes unstable and the family becomes weak then the task is handed over to the state and people are brought up by the state. >> Mhm. which increasingly they are and therefore they become one of the reasons why you get so little descent in modern society is that is that everybody gets the same they have the same sense of humor from the same TV stations or the same whatever it is they they look out on their phones and the the subservience of people now as well to anything anybody says is quite extraordinary and the the when they we had our national panic about co the willing as people to obey.
¶131If if if they told them to wear uh 4 foot long pink plastic false noses over their real ones, people would have done it. >> So that's >> make it safer, you see. >> So that's what we've lost. >> I don't know how much we ever had it, but we certainly haven't got it now. And you don't you just don't you see it reflected.
¶132in parliament 30 years ago there was particularly there was a man called Tamiel uh very very interesting member of parl he questioned what the government told him now to some tiny extent I'm not I'm not denigrating him here because because he used to be a front bench account minister and therefore is is restrained in ways which tam deal was not to some extent David Davis has a go now but there really isn't anybody in parliament who does that and also if really mad ideas like like uh like going to war are put before parliament in modern times by and large there's no opposition to them. Nobody stands up and says no. There's no there's no Tony Ben anymore. There's no there's nobody there to say it and nobody there to listen if he does. You're and if I say for this this infuriating thing, I I I suffer from knowing a bit about Russia.
¶133And if I am at all skeptical about the general view of Slavo Ukraine and uh and and Russia is about to invade southern England, uh then immediately people say, "Oh, you're just repeating Kremlin talking points. You're you're Lord Haw. You're an agent of the Kremlin." Uh that's the only answer they have. They never actually respond to the points they're making because they can't. But if they if they call me a traitor, the old secret police trick, uh, almost everybody joins and said, "Yeah, yeah, look at him.
¶134Traitor him." It's like, "Do you ever see a film called Invasion of the Body Snatchers?" Towards the end of it, everybody is is is taken over and there was one last person who hasn't been and they find him and they all point at him. >> It's very good, >> right? >> There are two versions of it. Oddly enough, the probably the remake is better. So I guess what yeah what's coming through is that the the education of our young that that you you think the we need this sort of lifelong union between man and woman in marriage committed through >> through through tough times and then and they raise the next generation >> example a man I mean it doesn't matter to me whether it's a man or woman you generally used to be a man a man who goes out to work and provides for his family is an example [clears throat] >> a woman who keeps a home.
¶135It doesn't have to be a woman, but it usually was. A woman who keeps a home is an example. [snorts] >> Mhm. Yes. Young people.
¶136So many boys have no fathers now. >> Yes. And no good role models. >> Well, that no I the term role. They have no the word is example.
¶137They have no examples. And so this is this is why the gangs have such power because they're masculine >> and they they have strong people in it but strong bad people also miniature Cromwells roaming the streets. >> I'm just aware though you you said you boarded a prep school. >> I did. >> So you left the home at quite a young age and you were educated by by by a school.
¶138That's right. >> In your view, would you would you sort of push for children staying in the home at >> Absolutely. I mean, I there were many reasons why why why children of my of my class and background boarded in those days, but they don't they they wouldn't apply now. And I mean, I did it because I knew everybody else was doing it. And I didn't I didn't particularly like it, but I thought I'd be left out if I didn't do it.
¶139>> But I gave it up at 15. I'd had enough of it. And uh and and I I stopped. >> I can actually say truthfully I left school at 15. >> Yeah.
¶140And you went to this college for education. There were a lot of very good teachers there actually. >> Yeah. Uhhuh. >> Uh and and a different attitude towards a lot of a lot of things that I previously been taught.
¶141It was very it was a very useful experience. I'm glad. >> Uhhuh. Well, this has been a very interesting conversation. What?
¶142So, what are you doing now? How are you filling your your days? >> Well, I've just finished a manuscript of a book called The Madness of Cars, uh, which is about the crazy way in which modern society has embraced the privatelyowned motor car as the main means of transporting people about uh, which doesn't work for many reasons, but is also it's it's technologically crazy. And do you know what rolling resistance is? It's more or less the friction between wheel and and road.
¶143>> Okay. >> So, the rolling resistance of a car on a tarmac road is something in the region of 20 to 30 times as much as the rolling resistance of a steel wheel on a steel rail. >> Mhm. >> This is a nonsensical way of moving either people or goods about because it wastes so much energy. It's also dangerous.
¶144You can't have a national system of motorways without an annual carnage. You can't have cars on the road, sharing them with pedestrians and cyclists without cars. It's not possible. Whereas railways are incredibly safe. Uh the railways and trams are immensely energy efficient.
¶145People can people can do travel if they're allowed to. What we spent the past century really doing is ripping up a [snorts] very advanced transport system, the one which we inherited from the Edwardians, and replacing it with a backward one. seems to me to be really ridiculous and somebody needs to criticize it. There are many other aspects of it. I can't bad for people.
¶146They are the ultimate illustration of Lord Actton's maxim that the power tends to corrupt. You put any the most power the most power most people get is behind the wheel of car >> and you must have seen perfectly nice, gentle, quiet, polite people transformed into steaming maniacs by 20 minutes behind the wheel of driving. >> It's true. It's very very bad for people. It's in in in several ways.
¶147>> When's the book going? >> Well, that's writing books is one thing. >> Um getting them actually printed published is another. I don't exactly know. As I say, I've delivered the manuscript.
¶148I'm hoping for sometime next year. It takes it always takes longer than you think. And I also have another project which is the >> combining of all my uh books of war and pessimism into one single volume called the obituary of Britain. uh which again is due out sometime next year. >> Very good.
¶149Very good. >> There's a whole lot great big sort of breeze block of of pessimism. And pessimism is the thing. Pessimism is what keeps me cheerful. >> I I don't think you're going to give us anything but a parting word.
¶150Um what what what do you say to people these days? I mean, is it just what you you told us earlier that things are very bad? >> I say that leave if you can. I say that there's a simple simple principle uh that's very easily remembered that's to be found in the book of the prophet Micah. What do the Lord require of thee but to do justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God.
¶151And I have to say one of the bits of that which is very important to me is to love mercy. There's a lot of mercilessness in modern society because wickedness is not punished enough. people become terribly merciless to those people who are apprehended even if on some occasions they're not guilty. >> So a lot of my a lot of my activity at the moment is is is engaging in a couple of cases where I think people have been the victims of severe injustice. >> So you're pessimistic about where things are going, but you're trying to to live the life that your Christian faith >> Well, who doesn't?
¶152But I mean and of course failing but [music] if you if you didn't have uh anything to live for then you then what would [music] you do? Life would just be a series of uh of incoherent experiences. >> Be back to hedonism. >> Well, yeah. Back to the car crash basically.
¶153>> Peter Hitchens, thank you so much for taking time to join us today. >> It's been my pleasure. I person bored YouTube. >> And to our viewers and listeners, we'll be back in two weeks time. Take care.