Peter Hitchens
Encyclopedia : P : PE : PET : Peter Hitchens
| The [Neutral point of view>neutrality] of this article is [NPOV disputedisputed]. Please see the discussion on the [ 
 Peter Jonathan Hitchens (born 28 October 1951 in Sliema, Malta) is a British journalist, author and broadcaster. He was educated at The Leys School Cambridge, Oxford College of Further Education and the University of York. He was a reporter on the Daily Express for 24 years, specialising first in education, then in industrial and labour affairs, before becoming deputy political editor. He then left Westminster to cover defence and diplomatic affairs, just as the Gorbachev era began. He reported on the collapse of the Communist regimes in several Warsaw Pact countries. This led to him becoming the paper's Moscow Correspondent during the final upheavals of the Communist era in 1990 and 1991. After an interval as a roving foreign reporter, he became the Express's Washington correspondent, returning to London in 1995 to become a commentator and - eventually - a regular columnist. He continued in this role despite the paper's transformation into a radical pro-Labour organ. But in 2001, after the Express was bought by Richard Desmond - a publisher of pornographic magazines - Hitchens left to join the Mail on Sunday, citing his strong anti-pornography views and the consequent conflict of interest as his reason for leaving. He currently writes a column for the Mail on Sunday as well as writing occasional reportage, including from Iraq, China, India and the USA, for that paper. Hitchens can be said to have a traditionalist conservative perspective on most issues, but has differed with other conservatives over such subjects as Identity Cards (which he opposed when official Tory policy was to support them) and the argument that liberty must be sacrificed for security (which he opposes), railway nationalisation (which he supports) and the Kosovo and Iraq war (both of which he opposed from the start). He has also argued that political correctness can only be defeated by those who recognise that it has some merits - in the shape of basic good manners. He says conservatives should oppose the use of abusive terms such as what he calls "the n-word" with just as much fervour as the left. They should not allow PC to have a monopoly of politeness in such matters. He is occasionally featured in the British broadcast media, almost invariably debating with left-wingers, though he has recently presented authored documentary programmes on Channel Four and BBC Four TV. He currently has no regular broadcasting slot of his own, although he did once co-present a show on Talk Radio with left-wingers including Derek Draper and Austin Mitchell. He says he was offered the chance to present the programme on his own by the station's boss, Kelvin MacKenzie, but preferred, and suggested, an adversarial programme with a left-wing co-presenter, believing this was the best way to achieve broadcast fairness and balance.
Contents
Political careerHitchens is a former Marxist who was for some years a member of the International Socialists and later a member of the British Labour Party. He studied politics at York University. He dismisses as untrue a story that he arrived late at a lecture saying he had been "too busy starting the revolution", on the grounds that he seldom attended any lectures at all.He joined the Conservative Party in 1997 in the belief that it was the democratic resistance to New Labour, but quickly concluded that the Party had no idea what it was facing and would never be able to oppose or defeat New Labour, and has since left. He now belongs to no party and believes that none of any value can be created until the Tories split and collapse. He challenged Michael Portillo for the Tory nomination in the Kensington and Chelsea seat in 1999. Some critics suggest that his failure to secure the nomination explains much of his [antipathy towards the Conservative Party], a claim Hitchens rejects on the basis of his having had no serious expectation of being chosen, putting himself forward only to criticise Mr. Portillo and his plan to "modernise" the Party. Hitchens' ideological beliefsOn liberty and securityHitchens advocates a society governed by conscience and the rule of law, which he sees as the best guarantee of liberty. He warns that the decline of conscience and morality will inevitably lead to a strong state.He is also specially concerned about the use of 'security' as a pretext for diluting and eroding the liberties of the individual, and is opposed to the introduction of identity cards. He argues that increased 'security' destroys freedom without necessarily increasing safety, and argues that there is no contradiction between maintaining liberty and protecting the realm. In his newspaper columns, Hitchens referred to the then Home Secretary David Blunkett as 'Minister of the Interior', on the grounds that the title, reminiscent of police states, better reflected Blunkett's illiberal policies than the traditional British title of 'Home Secretary'. On crime, he believes that the social democratic approach - that it is a disease caused by poverty and deprivation - is both mistaken and implicitly totalitarian. A free society punishes lawbreakers harshly, but leaves the law-abiding alone as far as possible. While he calls for the restoration of capital punishment, he stresses that it is only tolerable in a society with strong independent juries and an unrestricted press, and opposes it in all other circumstances. On foreign policyHitchens opposed the Iraq War on the grounds that it was not in the interests of either Britain or of the United States, but does not associate himself with the Left's campaign against the war, as he is a strong supporter of the State of Israel. He emphasises that he is not 'Anti-American', but is an admirer of the United States, and points out that many American conservatives share his opposition to the Iraq war and to what they see as an assault on liberty conducted under the banner of the 'War on Terror'.On Constitutional changeHe has described Prime Minister Tony Blair's constitutional reforms as a "slow-motion coup d'état". He argues that many of Labour's attacks on the constitution were made easier by rash and unconstitutional acts of the previous Tory government. The huge expansion of the role of 'special advisers', which he describes as 'political commissars' in the civil service, built, in his view, on similar but smaller-scale appointments by the Tories. The Tory decision to abolish the Greater London Council, simply because it was politically opposed to the government, provided a precedent for the New Labour attack on the hereditary peers. He contends that the most profound changes have been designed to concentrate power in the hands of the Executive, to debauch civil service neutrality and to turn Parliament into a tool of Downing Street. The most significant single action in this programme was the passing of Orders in Council allowing Alastair Campbell and Jonathan Powell, both political appointees, to give orders to civil servants. It signalled, in his view, a general attempt to politicise Whitehall, which has continued ever since. He claims to have detected a parallel effort, to appropriate some of the trappings of monarchy and to diminish the Crown's significance and standing, which he sees as embryonic Presidentialism. The assembly of Labour MPs in 1997, when they were informed that they were 'elected as New Labour and would govern as New Labour' was in his view a warning to MPs that their duties to Downing Street were paramount. He suggests that the removal of hereditary peers from the House of Lords, spuriously portrayed as an extension of democracy, was nothing of the kind. The hereditaries, many of them in no way beholden to the executive and so uncontrollable and independent, were replaced by politically appointed men and women, often known party loyalists, with far less independence. Hitchens also sees the government's attack on English liberty in general - its pursuit of identity cards and its dislike for jury trial, its attempt to centralise the police and its creation of a national law enforcement body in the shape of the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) - as being another facet of its desire for permanent, irreversible constitutional revolution. Hitchens also opposed devolution in Scotland and Wales, regarding these changes not as steps towards real independence but as part of an EU-inspired strategy to dissolve Great Britain into statelets and regions, a preliminary to its complete absorption in a European state. For the same reason he now opposes plans to divide England itself into regions, now well-advanced. On Europe, he argues that the United Kingdom should negotiate an amicable departure from the European Union, whose laws and traditions he regards as incompatible with the laws and liberties of England and with the national independence of the United Kingdom as a whole. He also believes the interests of the EU, foreign, domestic, military, legal and constitutional, economic and fiscal, are often different from - and in many cases hostile to - those of the UK. On Northern IrelandHe condemned the 1998 Belfast Agreement as a surrender to the Provisional IRA and a violation of the rule of law. He believes the best approach to Northern Ireland's problems would have been the full integration of Northern Ireland into the United Kingdom, arguing that creating Stormont was "an act of huge folly". He believes the achievements of direct rule over Northern Ireland have been greatly underestimated, but reluctantly accepts that Northern Ireland is now only a provisional part of the UK, which can be transferred to Irish sovereignty by a single irreversible referendum.He has been heavily criticised by some (often Irish nationalist) commentators who suggest that his hard-line against the IRA has never been matched by a similarly unequivocal stance against Loyalist terrorist organisations. For his part Hitchens has flatly rejected these claims, pointing out that he has made vitriolic denunciations of such groups in many of his articles, and that, just as he has declined to shake hands with Sinn Fein leaders such as Gerry Adams, he has also refused to shake hands with political figures associated with Loyalist paramilitary groupings like the UVF or UDA. On morality and cultureHitchens deplores the decline of religious faith and the serial 'attacks' on the institution of marriage by the state and by capitalism. He identifies these attacks as the introduction of no-fault divorce, the removal or redistribution of what were formerly the exclusive privileges of marriage, and its resultant loss of status and regard, the abolition of the Christian Sunday and the growing economic and cultural pressure on wives and mothers to go out to work, abandoning their children to day care centres. He believes that without faith and without strong families, the development of conscience is stunted, private life diminished and the power of the state increased.He believes that many of the measures which created the permissive society were mistaken or excessive and need to be re-examined, and he is most insistent that homosexual relationships should not be granted legal parity with heterosexual marriage. As a result, many homosexual rights supporters see Hitchens' writings on the subject as being some of the most homophobic in Britain today. Hitchens rejects this criticism, maintaining he has nothing against homosexual individuals and that the term "homophobia" is increasingly being used in this kind of context to stifle legitimate debate on social policy. Nor, Hitchens believes, should support for Christian morality be subject to persecution and censorship, as, he contends, is increasingly the case. He was one of the earliest critics of multiculturalism. He believes that pop music has been a powerfully harmful force, promoting drug abuse, elevating talentless nonentities to unearned eminence and so undermining the crucial link between effort and reward. He strongly dislikes what he sees as the pseudo-religious and quasi-patriotic cult surrounding football, which has similarly elevated louts and cheats to a wholly unmerited status. Hitchens has mocked evolution as the faith of "Darwinist Fundamentalists". He objects to being called a 'Creationist' because of the implied suggestion that he has dogmatic views about the origins of life, as he maintains 'Evolutionists' do. As for his own beliefs, he has stated that neither he nor anyone else has any idea how life originated, or how the realm of nature took its current shape. On the British Education SystemHitchens condemns comprehensive education, the Plowden reforms of primary schooling and modern child-centred teaching methods, seeing them as egalitarian or utopian political projects with no educational justification and many educational disadvantages.Hitchens warns that comprehensive education has brought about a general dilution of examination standards which threatens to leave Britain lagging behind emerging giants like China and India which place tremendous emphasis on educational advancement. As a means of improving standards in the UK, he supports a return to the Grammar School system which has been gradually dismantled by successive British governments since the late 1960s, so that there are only a few grammar schools left in a few parts of England, and they have been completely eliminated in Wales and Scotland. The system has until now survived in Northern Ireland, where educational standards remain significantly higher than in the rest of the United Kingdom, but is now about to be abolished there, for political rather than educational reasons and despite powerful protests from parents. He answers those who reject the reintroduction of selective schools as impractical by pointing out that, since the collapse of communism, Grammar Schools have been successfully re-introduced in the former East Germany, which had operated a comprehensive system. New Grammar Schools have been opened in many areas, in response to parental demand. West Germany had preserved Grammar Schools, despite attempts in some Socialist-controlled Laender to abolish them, again because of parental pressure. He is sceptical of the PISA European educational survey, often cited to suggest that German schools are inferior to British ones, urging those interested to look closely at the methodology of the study. A better indication, he suggests, is that private secondary schools are all but unknown in Germany, and their use is considered eccentric; whereas in Britain the private school sector is booming and opinion polls show that many more British parents would send their children to independent schools if they could afford to do so. He regrets the demise of school discipline, defined as the control of the school by teaching staff rather than by pupils, seeing the resultant disorder in many schools as symptomatic of a general decline in moral and behavioural standards in society. As a supporter of orthodox Christian morality he opposes sex education in schools. He points out that the general introduction of sex education in schools has been accompanied by an increase in sexual activity among the young, with a resultant rise in pregnancies, abortions and instances of sexually transmitted diseases - the very things, he points out, it is officially supposed to discourage. On drugsHe is opposed to the relaxation of laws against the possession of certain specific recreational drugs, those which are already illegal to possess. He argues that the law's active disapproval of drugtaking is an essential counterweight to the pro-drug propaganda of much modern popular culture. He thinks attempts to combat drugtaking by restricting supply and persecuting dealers are futile if possession and use are not punished. He answers liberal claims that the 'war on drugs' has failed by pointing out that there has been no serious war on drugs for many years, especially since the Wootton Report in the 1960s first argued for relaxation of the cannabis laws. Hitchens believes that the currently modish approach known as 'harm reduction' is defeatist and counter-productive. He was among the first commentators to warn that cannabis was a major mental health danger to some users.On the Conservative PartyHe is dismissive of the modern British Conservative Party - frequently deriding them as the 'Useless Tories' - he calls for their dissolution, and has spoken of his desire for a new conservative movement to take their place (see [next section]).He has often been at odds with fellow conservatives and believes the Conservative Party can show a consistent record of wrong policies which cannot be dismissed as accidents or mistakes, criticising - for example - the Iraq War, the privatisation of the UK's railways, the reorganisation of local government in 1974, the introduction of the GCSE exam, the Police and Criminal Evidence Act of 1984, the Criminal Justice Act of 1991, the severe reduction in defence spending at the end of the Cold War, the agreement to the Single European Act and the signing of the Maastricht Treaty. He is also critical of what he considers to be the continuing idolatry of Margaret Thatcher who he believes weakened Britain's institutions, failed to address moral or cultural questions and is highly over-rated by Conservative loyalists. Hitchens has expressed considerable contempt for David Cameron, the current Conservative Party leader, regarding him as a member of the "liberal elite" with little conception of the challenges facing modern Britain, and whose social, educational and foreign policies are indistinguishable from those of Tony Blair. To further emphasize this point, he often refers to the two men in tandem as "Mr Clair and Mr Blameron". Cameron has responded by declining to be interviewed by Peter Hitchens. On a New Political Movement in BritainHitchens calls for the establishment of a new political party in the UK, representing the traditionalist conservative strand of opinion which he espouses, and which would, in his own words, be "neither bigoted nor politically correct".He is adamant that such a movement cannot come into being until such time as the Conservative Party collapses, arguing that many millions of Britons habitually vote for this and other political parties out of tribal loyalty, from which they cannot be detached by reasoned argument. As a means of bringing about this collapse, he regularly encourages his readers to write "None of the above" on their ballot papers when voting in elections. He suggests that if enough voters do this, returning officers will eventually be forced to tally and declare the number of votes for "None of the above", thus exposing (and providing a means of measuring) what Hitchens maintains to be the huge and growing number of British voters who feel disenfranchised by the established political parties. This, he says, would then lead to those parties losing their legitimacy and their hold on parliament, and eventually to their division and collapse. Hitchens contends that these are the necessary conditions for the creation of new parties, although they would not be sufficient conditions. Individuals, including MPs and other public figures, would still have to unite behind coherent programmes and form practical and lasting alliances. Critics reject this plan as utterly impractical, arguing that new political movements have always started locally and on a small scale before expanding their base, just as the British socialist and labour movement did in the latter decades of the nineteenth century. Hitchens answers that the Labour Party began as a faction within the Liberal Party, with which it then co-operated. It did not become a serious independent political force until the catastrophic decline and division of the Liberal Party in the 1920s. Critics respond by pointing out that the demise of the Liberal Party was ultimately rooted in the enfranchisement of the British working classes, and that Hitchens' point thus has no relevance in terms of modern British politics. Hitchens retorts that it was his critics who have introduced the example of the labour movement into the debate, and they will just have to accept that the embryo of the Labour Party existed for many years in the womb of the Liberal Party, and was nurtured for long years after that by electoral truces. Whatever the reasons for the decline of the Liberal Party, and these are legion, Labour did not become a fully-developed movement until that decline was well-advanced. Which is precisely the point that Hitchens repeatedly makes. Critics express frustration with what they consider to be Hitchens' unwillingness to give proper consideration to small right-wing parties in the UK, most notably the UK Independence Party, which was established to urge for the UK's withdrawal from the European Union but has, they maintain, the potential to form a solid base for a new conservative movement. Hitchens responds that he has most certainly given full consideration to UKIP, which he dismisses as a 'Dad's Army' Party, lacking a coherent programme and held back by the poor quality and factionalism of its leading figures, who are given to crass public statements (notably about women cleaning behind the fridge) often delivered in braying voices apparently chosen to infuriate about half the population. He also points to UKIP's naive flirtation with Robert Kilroy Silk, an engagement in which UKIP believed they could use Mr Silk, but in fact demonstrated that they are not fitted for grown-up politics. Many of the aforementioned critics express amazement with the assertion that Hitchens has "most certainly given full consideration to UKIP", maintaining that between his Mail on Sunday column and Political Blog - both available online - and his Daily Express columns available in his book Monday Morning Blues, Hitchens has never produced a serious, detailed article in which he coherently outlines precisely why it is that the UKIP cannot form at least a basis for a new political movement. Hitchens replies by saying that he has given full consideration to many subjects and not written columns or articles about them because he doesn't consider them important enough. By contrast, he has written, highly disparagingly and in warning tones, about the BNP, because he regards it as a genuine menace. The conclusion of his full consideration of UKIP was that it was doomed to failure and best dealt with through dismissal or mockery. He reached this conclusion before the Kilroy fiasco and the 'behind the fridge' episode. Opponents state that calling the UK Independence Party a 'Dads Army' is hardly a substitute for such a detailed analysis. Hitchens replies that it seems to him to be an excellent and graphic summary of UKIP's most pressing faults - that it is amateur, incompetent, and anachronistic. These critics further suggest that "None of the above" amounts to nothing other than a spoilt ballot, proven time after time to achieve nothing in the way of political change. Hitchens retorts that, as far as he knows, mass positive abstention has never been attempted in this country and therefore cannot be said to be "proven time after time to achieve nothing". He adds that his critics on this score seem unable to engage with his complete argument - that current attitudes to the existing parties need to be changed to create the conditions for a reform of the two-party system. Rather than address the whole argument, and offer alternatives, he complains, they debate as though he is advocating abstention for its own sake, rather than as a means to an end. He states that he is happy to listen to any serious alternative to his proposal, but that UKIP is neither serious nor an alternative. His critics say that Hitchens appears to be short-sighted in what small and meagre criticisms he makes about the UKIP. They maintain that he fails to understand the crucial aspect of their suggestion - namely that he should consider the party as the basis of a new movement instead of concentrating on the shortcomings that will inevitably appear in small organizations, often poorly run. Such trifling concerns and difficulties could, they say, be easily dealt with and overcome as the movement grew and expanded to a wider base. Hitchens responds that UKIP's associations and image, and its membership base, are far too narrow to be the foundation of the sort of movement he hopes to see emerge. Those concerned about the viability of Hitchens' mass abstention plan seek to end the discussion by suggesting that Hitchens get involved - however briefly - in his local UKIP branch to observe (and if necessary attempt to reform) the organization from the inside. They believe that positive action is always preferable to, and more effective than, habitually negative sentiment. If nothing else, they say, such an exercise would provide Hitchens with some interesting material for his articles. Hitchens doubts it. He says has been to plenty of political meetings and they rarely provide enough interesting material to keep him awake. As for reforming organisations from inside, he asks if the critics of his plan have ever tried it. He has, notably the Hampstead Constituency Labour Party in the early 1980s. Abstention, critics conclude, is so attractive to some because of the trivial effort involved. Major political upheaval can only be - and has only ever been - brought about by concerted, unrelenting effort and much dedication. Hitchens repeats that abstention is, as he has stated elsewhere, a current means to a long-term end and that the destabilisation of the existing parties - especially the Tories - is supremely important. There will be time enough for effort when they collapse and split. He adds that he has spent much of his life in political factions or parties, the International Socialists in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Labour Party in the late 1970s and early 1980s and the Tory Party in the late 1990s. He made great efforts, some of them concerted, and was dedicated, and can see no evidence that this had the slightest effect on anything but his political education either at the time or later. Trotskyism failed and has become a pitiful rump making excuses for Islamic reaction. The right wing of the Labour Party died and was forgotten as if it had never been. The Conservative Party did not become the democratic resistance to Blairism. Being wholly immune to the views and feelings of its own supporters, it became a copy of New Labour. Upheaval comes because the conditions are right for it. As it happens, a careful reading of the opinion polls shows a surprisingly large amount of support for positive abstention, a tendency which could easily become politically significant and alter the climate. He says that long evenings with Captain Mainwaring and Private Pike do not, somehow, appeal to him. On Tony BlairHitchens notably refers to the current British Prime Minister as "Anthony Blair" because he views Blair's use of "Tony" as deliberately misleading, and the media's general acceptance of it as wrong. He also refers to him as "Princess Tony". Shortly before Mr Blair was selected for his Sedgefield Parliamentary seat in 1983, his wife, Cherie, was picked as Labour candidate for the constituency of North Thanet. In her election address, she referred to her husband not as "Tony" but as "The barrister Anthony Blair". Also, the name "Tony Blair" is sometimes used by the BBC without any qualification, as in "Tony Blair will today tell EU leaders that he insists on reform of the Common Agricultural Policy". Hitchens believes that they would never have used "Maggie" Thatcher or "Jim" Callaghan in the same way, and would invariably have accompanied their names with the title "Prime Minister". He sees this usage - of familiar name without a title - as creeping presidentialism.Hitchens has also often caricatured Mr Blair as "Princess Tony". This is a reference to Mr Blair's use of the expression (actually coined by his press secretary Alastair Campbell) "The People's Princess" to eulogise Diana, Princess of Wales, after her death. Hitchens believed that the use of the satirical title "Princess Tony" was a suitable way to mock Mr Blair for employing this phrase and seeking thereby to inherit some of Princess Diana's charisma. His general attitude towards Mr Blair is that he is a charming nonentity, without knowledge or convictions, hired by the Labour Party to provide a reassuring face behind which it could pursue its radical agenda. He recently wrote that Mr Blair's great talent was to be "all things to himself", able to appear to be sincere at all times because he is unaware of his own profound shallowness. On traditionHe opposes the compulsory metrication of Britain's weights and measures, which he believes are both beautiful and practical, rooted in experience and an important part of the English language. He is an Anglican, and he defends the use of the Church of England's 1662 Book of Common Prayer (in the USA, the 1928 Book of Common Prayer) and the Authorised, or King James, version of the Bible, not only because he believes they are beautiful and memorable but also because they are the indispensable foundations of Anglicanism's "powerful combination of scripture, tradition and reason".On DarwinismA contributor to this site says that Hitchens maintains that the theory of evolution is a "mad religion" concocted by people he describes as fanatics and "evolutionist Ayatollahs". Hitchens responds that he cannot recall using the expression "mad religion" and can find no trace of his having done so in published writings or private correspondence. Can this contributor provide a reference? His position on the theory of evolution is more accurately described in the section on religion. He maintains that the theory of evolution, unlike other scientific theories cannot be tested because it cannot be and has not been observed, and remains a theory about the distant past. Those who adhere to it are therefore embracing a faith, just as theists (whose beliefs also cannot be tested) are. His use of expressions such as 'fundamentalist' and 'ayatollah' to describe the intolerant, dogmatic advocates of evolution is mockery intended to provoke thought - applying to them the epithets they aim at others. He opposes dogmatism of any kind on this subject, pointing out that neither he nor anyone else has any idea how the realm of nature took its present shape, or how the universe began. Views on this, theist or atheist, remain a matter of free choice.PublicationsHitchens is the author of The Abolition of Britain (1999, ISBN 0704381400) and A Brief History of Crime (2003, ISBN 1843541483), both critical of changes in British society since the 1960s. A compendium of his Daily Express columns was published under the title Monday Morning Blues in 2000. An updated edition of A Brief History of Crime, re-titled The Abolition of Liberty (ISBN 1843541491) and featuring a new chapter on identity cards, was published in April 2004. He also is regularly involved in editing this entry on Wikipedia.FamilyPeter Hitchens is married with three children. Christopher Hitchens, also a journalist, author and critic, is his older brother. Christopher's views on most issues are to the left of Peter's.External linksRegular Features
Articles Produced
Referencing Articles
Audio
VideoStealing your FreedomBroadcast 27th February 2006, Peter Hitchens wrote and presented this television documentary on the erosion of civil liberties in the UK for Britain's Channel 4. You will need RealPlayer installed on your computer in order to watch this video.
Booknotes: The Abolition of BritainBroadcast 31st December 2000, Hitchens was interviewed for the Booknotes series on C-SPAN about his work 'The Abolition of Britain'.
Misc
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating. |