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The Abolition of Britain: From Winston Churchill to Princess Diana

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An Anglophile American reading this articulate, comprehensive, chilling, manifesto is bound to have two reactions. The first will be, 'I didn't realize it was as bad as this.' The second, dawning more slowly, will be 'How long before it gets this bad *here* too?'

Peter Hitchens argues that during the last decades, broadly speaking the era between Sir Winston Churchill's funeral in 1965 and Diana, Princess of Wales's in 1997, Britain was abolished. Not the land mass itself, obviously, but instead everything -- everything -- that once defined what it meant to be British. In chapter after relentless chapter, Hitchens shows the march of 'modern' PC orthodoxy through the Anglican Church, the marriage and divorce laws, the television and radio, the education system. History, the political system, the language, ancient ideas of loyalty and patriotism, virtue and service, even the very shape of the land itself ... all have within living memory been reshaped into something new, different -- and completely divorced from the past.

Many people have noted these changes. Hitchens' contribution lies in showing that the changes were not coincidental, but instead were deliberate, orchestrated even, and that many of the same activists were behind the various facets of the assaults.

Again and again, Hitchens produces evidence showing the arrogance and self-righteousness of the self-anointed 'reformers.' Again and again, they say, 'We recognize that the British people love the old ways, and that there is no popular clamour for change. Nevertheless, change we must.' Hitchens argues that what the 'reformers' have never been able adequately to answer is, 'Why?' And more to the point, 'Why was it necessary to destroy the old way, and make the new way mandatory?'

Why, indeed? Why, for example, is Britain now jailing farmers and shopkeepers for using Imperial measurements instead of metric ones? Why is the government trying to abolish trial by jury and the right to self-defense?

Sad to say, this book, while insightful and spirited, is almost unrelievedly depressing. It is literally only in the last few paragraphs of the final chapter that Hitchens offers any sort of hopeful outlook ... and even then, it is only to suggest ways to keep the future from becoming yet bleaker. What has been destroyed has been destroyed forever.

Indeed, it's sad to note that in the year or so since this book came out, things in Britain have in fact gotten worse. Tony Blair has taken yet more steps toward a presidential style of government, shoving aside still further both the monarchy and the House of Commons. I'm sure Hitchens finds no joy in being a prophet, but he seems to be, unfortunately, on the right track.

For anyone who loves Britain -- and especially for Americans whose idea of Britain is shaped by 'Masterpiece Theatre' and other PBS offerings -- this sad, wonderful book serves as the gravestone of an idealized vision, and a warning to our own country.

I think, with the lack of reviews from actual British people resident in Britain under customer comments upon this book, it behoves me to put across the viewpoint that other reviewers seem to have been asking for.

The cover of Peter Hitchens' book shows the Union Jack, the flag of Great Britain, flown at half-mast. The image comes from the days after Princess Diana died and part of a nation mourned. Notably, however, another part of it clearly did not. Hitchens takes this fact and runs with it, and he is not wrong to do so. He points out that, as part of Britain poured out its emotion in a tremendous fashion, another part looked on aghast at the nakedness of sentiment being displayed. I am a mere 20 years of age, but as a passionate Brit I do not find it hard to sympathise with the point he is making here.

Most of the time we in Britain look around and things seem okay. Occasionally we wonder whether things aren't just a little bit wrong. In the aftermath of Princess Diana's death, some of us felt like strangers in our own land. The author is right to state that people are asking now and may continue to ask in ever greater numbers: exactly what happened to the country they thought they grew up in? The point is as true for all the other English-speaking nations in the world as it is for Britain.

Certainly, as some reviewers have pointed out, it would have to be conceded that Hitchens on occasion puts on rose-tinted spectacles when examining a British past often characterised by impoverishment and occasionally meaningless sacrifice. But he is no fool, and if he sometimes lapses into sentiment then we ought to forgive him if only for the many other highly relevant and prescient points he makes in this work. Further to that, he may look at Britain and see only England, but to all Americans who might not be aware of this fact (including, apparently, some reviewers here), England is absolutely the dominant constituent part of the United Kingdom and in fact houses 85% of the inhabitants - this much has not changed drastically for a century, so if England is all he sees, he isn't missing too much.

Foremost in Hitchens' firing line is what essentially boils down to the new liberal orthodoxy. To any Americans who have read or might read this book, unless you are a passionate Democrat you might well recognise the point Hitchens is making here. In all its forms, be it in its control of state-run schools, its management of state healthcare, its changes to the justice system, and many others, the politicians who have sought to change things for the better have actually changed things for the worse. In Britain, state education has noticeably collapsed in the quality of its output since the left-wing destruction of selective schools in favour of comprehensives. The National Health Service in Britain has been a monument to folly almost since it started but has become so much the religion of Britain that not even right-wingers would think of challenging its inherent absurdity - that being the misguided that health is a right, and thus free healthcare ought to be a tax-supported provision. In the liberalisation of the justice system following the calamitous abolition of the death penalty, people with good intentions have plainly shown they are willing to sacrifice ever-increasing numbers of innocent lives to criminal whims for their high moral stances. Admirable though this idealism may be, it has caused inestimable downturns in levels of popular intelligence, hopeless health provision and ever-rising levels of crime.

Particularly relevant also is Hitchens' attack upon the denigration of a proud history. Liberals of the modern age have been quick to change the teaching of history in state-run schools, to propagate notions that what the British did in the past was wrong, or that cultural and social history such as how the peasants lived is more important. That is palpably not history, and an essential problem with all well-meaning liberals in Britain today, with their pro-Europe sentiments and socialist inclinations, is they have no sense of history. History is a cycle, and it repeats itself. Attempts to deny a culture, past or present, and to deny the greatness of what it achieved in favour of a lame modern day apologeticism is a recipe for disaster.

The above are simply a few of the arenas upon which Hitchens has decided to wax literal, but throughout on many separate topics his arguments are both coherent and potent. This is a remarkable book from a remarkable mind, and its points about the inherent dangers of the modern orthodoxy and its brutal refusal to accept points of view contrary to its own are exceedingly pertinent to Great Britain and the British people. Britain is a country whose culture has been effectively torn asunder, but not under the arm of foreign invaders or occupiers but paradoxically and almost incomprehensibly by its own natives. The same is true in America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. It's a terrible shame, and it is good that we have people such as Peter Hitchens to give voice to an opposition that has been too silent until now.

As a historian I have often seen the argument made that the world of June 1914 was arguably a more peaceful, prosperous and gentle place than the present. Hitchens explains a great deal to lead us to answer George Orwell's question from 1984 - "I understand HOW, but not WHY.", and points out that Churchill's Britain had many virtues that are lost on members of my generation and even my parent's generation. Many other reviewers of this book have made their snippy little phrases about "Hitchens appealing to innate American right-wing attitudes", but I don't see his position as necessarily of the left or the right, though it is certainly idealogical. I think his indictment of modern British society would certainly apply to America as well, in that a generation that claimed to reject materialism in favor of a more spiritual approach has turned out to be less godly and more money grubbing than its parents ever were. I do not cling to the illusion that everyone of the "Greatest Generation" was a saint, but Hitchens is a breath of fresh air in countering the historical chauvinism of our times - that we, by virtue of our wealth and multicultural feminist beliefs are somehow morally superior to our ancestors who fought against Hitler and refused to apologize for evil Communist regimes around the world. Anyone enjoying the fruits of these triumphs of liberty ought to seriously examine Hitchens argument. It is a paean to all that was good about Britain, and suggests that patriotism in Britain (and indeed, Germany and the rest of Europe) should not left to drunken football hooligans.

30 years ago I lived up-country, deep in the African bush. Every evening I twiddled the dials and adjusted the antenna on my short-wave radio. I was tuning into the World Service of the BBC and its radio serial "the Archers - an everyday story of country folk". This serial was the epitome of Englishness - robust, honest and worthy farming families leading their lives steeped in the rich cultural heritage of England. It was a world immensely civilized and comforting - it reinforced my identity - a universe woven through with integrity, self reliance, generosity, self restraint and common sense. Its institutions, parishes, policemen drew their strength, legitimacy and harmony from a centuries-long process of growth and adaptation.
Peter Hitchens describes how this world was subverted and finally chain-sawed into oblivion by an unholy coterie of jealous and doctrinaire do-gooders, misfits, intellectuals and an evermore influential leftwing media.

We now live in a geographic entity called Britain where state schools are obliterating our extraordinary achievements with a Stalinist airbrushing of history; where policemen operate like an occupying army; where the media indoctrinate the population with trash culture and scandalously biased `news' and opinion.

Now I know why I became out of sorts with the Archers. Those stolid farmers had become uncertain, self-critical, simpering, lap-dogs to masterful, bossy, manipulative and crusading wives. They were eating quiche for tea and measuring their manure in "kilos". In the novel `1984' George Orwell invoked a creepy feeling of alienness in the reader by having his hero go into an English pub and order a "litre" of beer. Well, pints are still in English pubs - just, but the new Archers' Britain invoked exactly the same feeling of alienness in me. And Peter Hitchens has explained why.

That Archers' England has been captured by scriptwriters, politicians and activists who have a clear agenda - to mock, denigrate and finally wipe out all that they could find of beauty and strength and worth - and replace it with a gender neutral, guilt-ridden, multicultural nightmare. Meanwhile the general population is sedated into apathy by consumer prosperity and brain rotting, social conditioning TV. It is an England that "would have lost at Trafalgar and Waterloo, and given up on the attempt to colonize America, because of the absence of safety nets, sexual equality and proper child care."

This same coterie hypocritically sends their children to élite schools to avoid them being turned into "mannerless, uncultured ignoramuses" by the state cooperative.

Peter Hitchens' work challenges head-on the new taboos and shibboleths erected by this coterie. Of course they spit and fume in frustration when he mercilessly dissects the cancerous, illogical and spiteful nature of their doctrines. Some of them have written sulphurous reviews on this page. Pay no attention to them - they are the Little Folk. Low self-esteem, the worm in the wood, the taint in the blood. They might change masters but they will be forever slaves.

As Anatole Kaletsky wrote, "a nation that loses its self awareness will lose its self-respect" and "Many people have become embarrassed, even afraid of being British". On those nosey, multi-racial official forms I am reduced to writing `Native English' in the `Other' box...

Is there any hope? Peter Hitchens book is a magnificent call to arms. It is required reading for the British people to confront the dry-rot that is eating the heart out of their cultural identity.

I couldn't help but think of Nietzsche's fabled mad man who thought all the churches had become tombs because modern man had rendered God dead. What was therein prophecied has come to pass--and more. If Mr. Hitchens is not engaging in hyperbole, then Nietzsche's mad man is sane in comparison to us; a whole culture has been rendered dead.

Mr. Hitchens is clearly a traditionalist conservative. He also decries the wanton destruction of venerable British institutions such as schools, the church, and even parliament and the monarchy. This passionate expose of the left does allow some room for equivocation. In a rather picturesque account of a modern Briton going back to Churchill's funeral in 1965 he shows changes that we can all mourn as a loss: the disappearance of courtesy and the huge rise in crime. There have also clearly been changes for the better: the great decrease in the number of people smoking and the terrible pollution problems.

More than anything else, this book makes the American reader think of how similar issues and problems are shared, and where the United States may be heading in the very near future. These questions include those about education: Why have schools who once applied the dictum of moderation in all things to just things like math, science, English, and history? Why did the mainstream church (which is nothing but a set of beliefs) abandon those beliefs, thereby essentially self-destructing?

This book confuses many people as he does not spare Margaret Thatcher or the Tories in his indictments. He disapproves of what he feels is indifference, or animus, exhibited by Tories to cultural matters. Their only concerns have been economic, what Peter Gress calls the bourgeois pathology in his book From Plato to Nato. Mr. Hitchens is correct on this account. American conservatives suffer from the same malady.

This book really does not offer much in the way of prescriptions beyond resisting full integration into the EU. He does offer many observations with parallels in this country. Unless we Americans wish to follow suit, we'd best answer why a people who have gone from the administrators of the world's greatest empire have in a short hundred years diminished themselves to the point where their government does not trust the populace with sharp objects (they have knife as well as gun control now).

Read this book and be disturbed.

This is a great book for people who care about our future in this world. For millions of Americans and people all over this world Britain is our forgotten motherland. It is a nation that should be very proud of its history and culture. The modern trends of relativism and multiculturalism are killing Britain and doing what Hitler, Napoleon, and the Kaiser could never have dreamed of doing. Mr. Hitchens illistrates how every traditional aspect of Britain is under attack: The Church, the schools, and the very virtue of the young British who feel marriage is not nessary to begin a family. The Left is making Britain very un-British. It is a very sad book and it is a call to people to not stand idle while their own country is given away and handed to chaos. Americans should read this book because it is all happening here and we should not sit by and let it happen anymore. It was very informative and shocking. I would read anything Mr. Hitchens has written after reading "The Abolition of Britain". It is a brillant assault on apathy.

The book is really quite absorbing and while I didn't agree with everything in it, I did find it quite compelling. I highly recommend it for those interested in an intelligent and insightful perspective of Britain's decline from manners and morals to football hooligans and pornography.

The chapter comparing the funerals of Winston Churchill and Princess Diana, besides being quite elegant and eloquent in its detail and nostalgia and shocking in its contrast, says something really quite important about the nature of social change.

Besides the book's sociological value, it is also wonderfully well written. Politically, it is a goldmine. For those interested in Edmund Burke-type conservatism, the book is probably a God-send.

There is a reason this book was a best-seller in the UK market.

Mr. Hitchens appropriately opens his expose by comparing a British hero and heroine and their followers from two very different epochs; separated not only by the chasm of time-but more importantly by character, outlook, pragmatism, patriotism, and education. One is an imperial, patriarchal military genius who's service to his country along with loyalty to the King, was crucial to saving Britain from tyranny; the other is aptly presented as a cosmopolitan, hallucinating, anti-establishment, feminist carrying what her followers see as a torch lighting the way for new Britain. A new Britain where such vulgarities as homosexuality, feminism, and socialism would flourish, free to trample upon anything regarded as sacred or traditional. Ironically, the latter would not have existed were it not for the sacrifice, character, loyalty, and steadfastness of the former: Sir Winston Spenser Churchill.

The contrast is extraordinarily apropos, marking the glaring divide between two distinctly different peoples. The former ascending upward toward imperial world rule and greatness, through patriotism, loyalty, and self-sacrifice; while the latter searches inwardly for substance while redefining virtue, looks backwards only to apologize and disparage the endeavors and accomplishments of far greater generations going before, and forward to graciously capitulate and retreat. This is a contrast applied to the entire British race: a contrast of courage vs. cowardice, of sacrifice vs. self-indulgence, of patriarchy and monarchy vs. confusion, and unfortunately ascendance vs. decline. It is an unabashed indictment of a generation of materialistic, Godless, unrestrained, culturally devoid hedonists who have turned the liberty secured by those that went before them into vile licentiousness.

After this artful presentation of contrasts, Mr. Hitchens proceeds to explain in some detail the changes that insidiously began to tear at the fabric of British culture and empire decades ago. Many of these changes originated in Victorian 19th century Great Britain, authored by malcontents who were not properly dispatched as traitors.

From the conversion of Britain's educational institutions to propaganda dissemination and "socialization" factories, to the demise of the traditions of the Anglican Church, Britain's upside down culture is prepared for that which inevitably thrusts itself upon degenerating civilizations-the yoke of slavery. As Mr. Hitchens elucidates, the German led European Community will soon be Britain's new taskmasters.

Today's doltish and sloppy generation is so blinded by their own delusive "enlightenment", that most are unable to understand what Mr. Hitchens is trying to convey. The social degeneration described in this book applies not only to Britain, but to the United States as well, for the symptoms noted are all evident in America. The English speaking peoples of the world are presently being interred while their enemies pay homage with obsequies, like a Mafioso to his victim.

Those that seek truth, even when veracity is hard and cold will voraciously devour this books' content. Those that have the propensity to suspend reality will flee from the observations, and vehemently criticize the author.

I think this book is very misunderstood. As I read it I do not feel that Mr. Hitchens is calling for a turning back of the clock or to bring back any "bad old days" for anyone. What he is arguing for, I believe, is for us to think about and to fully realize that change comes at a cost. Sometimes the change is good, but sometimes it comes at the cost of losing something else that was good.

Our progressive age (the past century and a half) has certainly accomplished some things that were worthwhile. But at times the progressive urge has overtaken any sense of reason or restraint and there was change for the sake of change. Worse, change for the sake of fantasy. Hitchens, in this wonderful book, presents us with some views of what he thinks we have lost. I say we, even though he is speaking of Britain, much of what he talks about has at least an oblique corollary in the US.

We have to get over this notion that all change equals progress and that progress is universally salutary in consequence or that our age is the most enlightened and humane that has emerged from a recently benighted past. If the Whig interpretation of history is the view that all of the past was building up to the realization of the glorious present there is also a Progressive interpretation of history. It is that the present could be a golden age of happiness for all humanity if only they would realize how awful the past really was and how miserable their lives truly are and awaken from this false consciousness to the Progressive view of things.

As Hitchens points out so masterfully over and over again, no amount of evidence can overcome invincible ignorance. However, I think by reading this book and at least thinking about what he has to say rather than simply rejecting it as reactionary blathering there is a lot to be gained. It certainly can help us understand more about how the present go this way and why some traditional things still linger on when the Progressive view says that such things should simply evaporate in the mists like a bad dream. Well, my friends, there is much more to history than any one view of things can account for. And Hitchens has done us a service by helping us see clearly what we have too easily consigned to the dustbin of history and what it has cost us.

Peter Hitchens writes a devastatingly effective portrait of the loss that Britain has sustained primarily at the hands of the cultural and political Left. There are many impressive things about this book, but, for me, Hitchens' pellucid explanation of the process of moral inversion is priceless.

One example, perhaps one of the most important is the transformation of government policy on the issue of illegitimacy. Initally the British government defined illegimat births as a problem and something to be discouraged. First under the banner of "compassion" the social penalties associated with illegitimacy were removed and out-of-wedlock births were treated as normal and nothing to worry about. Lest you acuse Hitchens' of cruelty, he points out that removing penalties suffered by the child were proper, but, that the government led society far further to the complete abandonment of the position that children deserve to be born into a home with a married mother and father. The phrase "single-parent families became the standard description demonstrating a complete lack of moral disapproval of illegimitacy. In the end, those who wished to discourage illegitimacy were condemned themselves with the standard description of "judgmentalism." Society could not exist without adults exercising judgment and distinguishing between wise and moral conduct and careless, damaging and immoral conduct. The moral inversion was now complete, the only immoral act was to criticize illegitimacy.

Again, Hitches' gives on of the best explanations of why it is important to maintain the special place of marriage in society. Traditional Britain reserved sex as a privilege enjoyed by those who TOOK ON THE LIFELONG RESPONSIBLITY for their spouse and any children that the marriage might produce.

Women are just beginning to realize the damage that they have done to themselves by the near destruction of traditional marriage. Men have little incentive to marry and potentially subject themselves to the gristmill of divorce in modern times. Women have lost the benefit of a true, life-long spouse, a benefit provided by society and supported by all of its institutions. Now, as Hitchens' points out women must constantly compete for their men's attention and devotion because "relationships" can be ended at any time for any reason with little or no consequence. As long as women are young, beautiful and/or well-to-do they will win the competition, how will they fare in their later years? No one dare ask. Our grandmother's generation endured much that was difficult but few faced the prospect of a lonely old age without a companion. Today's feminists have one a very stark prospect at the end of their lives, along and with no children to ensure their proper care. Not pretty.

Culturally a society that abandons its own children to television cannot compete with a more disciplined society. Family cohesiveness is necessary to develop disciplined and focused individuals that can truly lead a society. Computer game obsessed, semi-literates will not be able to compete in the world economy and their country will end up dominated by others.

Hitchens' notes that the very culture that birthed the stable and prosperous democracies of Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and India has nearly been destroyed without proper remembrance: music, literature, poetry, architecture, military tradition, true parliamentary democracy, nearly all gone or distorted in despicable ways. The loss of Britain is
truly a blow to the world and to the hopes for the survival of freedom on this planet.

Let us pray that the brilliant Mr. Hitchens is wrong and that the leadership exists to bring Britain back from the brink.

Most importantly for Americans, all the forces described by Hitchens' are at work in America and they have made substantial inroads. Our universities are almost totally corrupt, politicized propaganda mills for cultural Marxism and we, the general public, have been helpless so far to re-assert control even over our public institutions.