England is not little - it is the greatest place on earth

Take of English earth as much
As either hand may rightly clutch.
In the taking of it breathe Prayer for all who lie beneath.
Not the great nor well-bespoke, But the mere uncounted folk
Of whose life and death is none Report or lamentation.
Lay that earth upon thy heart, And thy sickness shall depart!

Others may wish to argue otherwise but there's a case - a strong case - to describe England as the greatest nation the world has ever seen. There is no other country with borders unchanged for over 1000 years. There is no other land with a bigger contribution to science, to literature, to mankind's thought.

But it's not the great and good that make England great. It's the uncounted folk that Kipling invokes in his charm - ordinary people who did things. When you marvel at the green splendour of England, you're encouraged to think of nature, to dream a bucolic dream. But stop a minute. Who planted those hedgerows, built those stone walls, coppiced those woods, drained those fens? It wasn't nature, it wasn't the great and good, it was the ordinary men and women of England.

And think again when some tour guide talks about the great figures who laid out our city street, the bishops who ordered the building of cathedrals, the bearded Victorians who instructed that town halls and art galleries were constructed. Think about the unremembered artisans who carved the stones, the sturdy blokes who dug the drains and laid the footings of our towns. Consider the women who baked the bread, made the pies and served the ale.

This is England. Not some half-remembered chronology of famous men. Not an artificial thing drawn up by some ancient lords. And not a little place.

England is huge. It's not just the fifty million people. Nor is it the wealth and power of our industry and commerce. It isn't the guns, bombs, ships and tanks of the World's best armed forces. It's not even the best universities and finest schools on the planet. Or the traditions of art, theatre, music and song. England is huge because of what its ordinary men and women will do tomorrow - innovative, creative, inspiring, adventurous, challenging and spirited. Anyone who calls England 'little' has given up on those men and women - the old ones long gone in Kipling's charm, the ones here now doing great things in a small way, and the ones still to come who will take England's greatness even further.

To say that my country is small, to use that sneering put down 'Little Englander', is to deny our history. It shows a disrespect of those people - ordinary men and women - who built the finest place on earth for us to enjoy. Worse, it insults the English and the idea of England - an idea that is made by the people who call this place home:

For sure, England is about tradition, heritage, old ale and new cider. Absolutely, England is about the towns and the roads, the shared history pounded into those places by our ancestors. Of course England is about achievements, things built and seas sailed. But England is more than that, it is our place of comfort, our familiar, our home. It is not Britain -that is for monarchs, prime ministers, it is a thing of empires or governments and a grand thing too. England is where our boots mark the soil, it is the thing that makes our hearts sing. It is home.

Perhaps I should embrace the insult and proudly say I'm a 'Little Englander'. Except I'm not, I'm a Big Englander, a Great Englander, a Brave Englander, a Strong Englander because England is all those things and more - big, great, brave, strong, beautiful, magical, charming...a thousand adjectives that can tell of what the English have achieved, what we're creating today, and what we'll achieve tomorrow. England is not little, it is the greatest place on earth. It is my country. And my home.

Shall I dog his morning progress o'er the track-betraying dew ?
Demand his dinner-basket into which my pheasant flew ?
Confiscate his evening faggot under which my conies ran,
And summons him to judgment ? I would sooner summons Pan.

His dead are in the churchyard—thirty generations laid.
Their names were old in history when Domesday Book was made;
And the passion and the piety and prowess of his line
Have seeded, rooted, fruited in some land the Law calls mine.

....

The NHS is not meeting its commitment to the military

For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Chuck him out, the brute!"
But it's "Saviour of 'is country" when the guns begin to shoot;

So it was when Kipling wrote those words. So it had been for centuries before. And so it is today. For all our talk of respecting the military, of the Military Covenant and of remembrance, too many still see the soldier as a brute, as something other than a reliable trustworthy human. And too many of those fearful folk are working in our public services:

Aircraft engineer Mark Prendeville was relocated twice by hospital staff who said his uniform “might upset people” because “we have all kinds of different cultures coming in”.

Sgt Prendeville was taken to the Accident and Emergency unit of Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother Hospital in Margate, Kent after chemicals from a fire extinguisher got in to his eyes during a training exercise at RAF Manston.

According to his father, the 38-year-old, who has served in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Bosnia, was “dumbfounded” to be told on two different occasions to stand out of the view of other patients. He was wearing a camouflage combat uniform.

I don't know what possessed the hospital in question but there is no doubt at all that its behaviour - not just the behaviour of a particular member of staff - was utterly wrong. This is a public service and that service is covered by the Military Covenant which says:





There's not much room for discussion here and it's not enough for an anonymous spokesperson to be wheeled out giving a massaged set of weasel words:

"This employee was acting in good faith because previously, there had been an altercation between a member of the public and a different member of the armed forces in uniform."

The hospital trust is "absolutely clear that members of Her Majesty's armed forces, whether in uniform or not, should not be treated any differently to any other person,” the spokesman added. 

This is the sort of formulaic, boilerplate response used by the NHS and other public bodies when their anti-servicemen tendencies are revealed. It's not just that the hospital was disrespectful but that it ignored its commitment as a public body, a commitment set out in those words above. A commitment meant to stop those words of Kipling being true.


....

Independence? And why not!

****

They tell o' lands wi' brighter skies,
Where freedom's voices ne're rang;
Gie me the hills where Ossian lies,
And Coila's minstrel sang,
That ken na to be free.
Then Scotland's right, and Scotland's might,
And Scotland's hills for me;"
I'll drink a cup to Scotland yet,
Wi' a' the honours three!

In one respect Scotland voting on independence is none of my business. I'm not Scottish. I don't live in Scotland. And I rather dislike the whining politics of the Scottish National Party.

But I am however fascinated by the idea of independence and self-determination. And what exactly defines a nation. I believe that the debate is important since it's about identity and origin as much as it's about government, currency and economics.

Some Scottish people who - mostly for economic reasons - have left to live and work elsewhere have complained that they are somehow excluded from this great event, from the chance to decide whether that place they left should be independent.

This is one view of nation, the idea that it is defined by ethnicity, that even though you go to the other side of the world, you remain part of the Scottish nation. This is the nationalism that plays to the gallery of ethnicity, that hates the English merely for being English and that celebrates hatred or bitterness. If this is the reason for independence, it is a frightening message and one that should be rejected. If the USA proves anything by its existence then it is that ethnicity isn't the definition of nation.

I've heard Scottish people complain that they are somehow victims - oppressed by the English (or "London" as many Nats put it). Here the argument is that, had Scotland not been wedded to its larger southern neighbour, life would have been so much better. Sometimes this is about oil but often it harks back to a more distant past with echoes of absentee landlords, crofters thrown from their homes and posh voiced masters. All then seen through a weird prism of 1970s factory and pit closures to create a position that demands independence to free Scotland from its English oppressors.

As with the ethnic definition of nation, the idea of independence being justified on the basis of victimhood is a false argument. Is Scotland uniquely oppressed - compared to other places, to Cornwall, to the North East or even Essex? To justify independence on these grounds is to believe that Scotland was oppressed because it is Scotland - this, even if you accept the fact of oppression (which I don't really), is manifestly untrue. More importantly this defines Scottishness - the reason for independence - on the basis of what it isn't not what it is.

The third argument we hear is one of economics. The Scottish government published a vast work describing the economic case for independence. That government - led by the advocates of independence - had to make this case because it knows that a fair proportion of Scots really aren't fussed one way or the other. But they will vote in their own self-interest - if independence makes me richer then I'm off to vote for it and pronto!

Again this is a pretty weak argument and not just because many of the assertions made (about economic growth, about banking and currency and about the role of government) are open to challenge. The real thing with economics is that, quite frankly, we haven't a clue one way or the other. And, since we can't construct a controlled experiment, we'll never know the truth or otherwise of that economic argument.

These three arguments -  I see them as central to the case being made by the SNP - are all wrong. Playing the ethnic card is quite simply racist. Crying victim is to make out that Scots are uniquely hard done by, which is something of an insult to all those successful Scots in every walk of life. And relying on economics for your case simply leads to games of fruitless statistical tennis and policy snooker.

But there's another argument. The real argument. It's emotional, instinctive - visceral even. It's the idea of belonging to something, looking out the window at those hills, smiling and thinking "this is Scotland". It's not the anti-Englishness that gives us "Flower of Scotland" but a deeper, truer attachment to the place - whether it's the East End of Glasgow or the heather covered hills of Sutherland.

It's the idea of Scotland in that quote from Henry Scott Riddell's 'Scotland Yet' - not about some idea of superiority, certainly no hatred or dislike, just a message of pride, joy and love for the place. And the nation - that thing we try to define with grand words - is all those who share those emotions, that association.

When Kipling wrote about men having small hearts it was about these feelings - we cannot love everywhere and we cannot expect everyone to love the place we love. But we can share that love with those who do and that is nationhood. No government, no kings, no lords, no oil, no First Minister. Just people placing their boots in the soil and saying "this is my country and I'll work with you to make it better".

If you want independence for reason of blood, for reason of hatred or for reason of greed then you deserve to lose. But if you want independence for pride, joy and love of the place that is Scotland then - for what it's worth - you have my blessing and I wish you well.

....

The immigration question - or how to spot a libertarian

****

Lots of people lay claim to being 'libertarian'. This credo is quite popular these days as people rant and rail against "statism" and "big government". Calls are made for more free speech, for the dismantling of the nanny state, for the troops to be brought home post haste, for fewer regulations and less government interference. Gay (or rather an ever lengthening string of letters - I think we're up to LGBT now but more may have been added while I wasn't watching) rights are extolled and encouraged and religions are condemned for their outmoded attitudes to all sorts of things - but mostly sex.

And then we get to immigration. At this point I watch as strange contortions go on while people explain how they really are libertarian but that this doesn't mean we can't have a ban on "permanent" immigration. Accompanying this almost Cardhousian contortion is a commitment to the nation state - to Britain or England.

Let me explain - firstly by quoting a pretty good liberal (in the days when liberal meant what we now mean by libertarian):

“The world is my country,
all mankind are my brethren,
and to do good is my religion.” 

Pretty good, eh! But it is a philosophy without boundaries - it's not just trade, speech and enterprise that should be free but movement. To call for tighter restrictions - even bans - on immigration is to reject the essence of this freedom. And that means you aren't a libertarian.

Nor can you hide behind statements about "level playing fields" or misconceptions about immigrants and benefits. These are no different from arguments for protectionism and managed trade - they block our goods so we block theirs, they protect their farmers so we protect ours.

You see folks, you're not libertarians at all really - what you are is conservatives. You like small government, you're a fan of voluntarism, you think business is important and you place great store in the old liberties of England - all that Magna Carta and killing the king stuff. But just as importantly you think place is important - nation, county, town, Your place, my place - a sense of belonging to somewhere that really matters.

A bit like Kipling - who certainly wasn't a libertarian:

 GOD gave all men all earth to love,
    But since our hearts are small,
Ordained for each one spot should prove
    Belovèd over all;
That, as He watched Creation’s birth,
    So we, in godlike mood,
May of our love create our earth
    And see that it is good.
So one shall Baltic pines content,
    As one some Surrey glade,
Or one the palm-grove’s droned lament
    Before Levuka’s Trade.
Each to his choice, and I rejoice
    The lot has fallen to me
In a fair ground—in a fair ground—
    Yea, Sussex by the sea! 

So, my friends, if you are a conservative, have the good grace to admit to it rather than pretend you're a sexy, trendy, Rothbard-quoting libertarian.

....

On being English...

I stopped being British - except in the formal sense of Britain being my country - the day someone decided that a twee little song written by Roy Williamson in the 1960s was the Scottish 'anthem'. It's not that I have anything against 'Flower of Scotland' as a song but that the sentiment it displays to me as an Englishman is "not welcome here".

We've been here a long time us English - the basis of the laws, language and culture came here with the Saxons. In my county of Kent we still remember this, marking the place of the Saxon - English - cathedral beneath the grander Norman cathedral in Rochester. And despite the best efforts of subsequent know-alls, the essence of English common-sense remains. The idea that law is enforced, adjudicated and administered by our peers not those who claim superiority still clings on - the magistrate, the jury and the common law remain at the heart of our legal system. The place is ours not theirs - although sometimes they forget.

There still seems a reluctance among our betters - judges, civil servants, broadcasters, writers - to accept the idea of England. To allow us to claim it as our heritage and birthright. And their weapon of anti-English choice is racism. We must not lay claim to Englishness since it excludes the children of immigrants - as if Englishness was ever a thing of blood. Such people suggest that, since half of London's population is now non-white (whatever that may actually mean), it is no longer an English city.

But when I meet a fellow Englishman, I do not ask for a genealogy - for proof of his Englishness. All I ask is that he is from here - and that being "from here" matters to him. I don't care whether he was born in a Punjabi village or a Turkish slum, I care only that he cares about England. And that he will make his contribution to our history.

That history isn't one of kings and prime ministers, nobles and castles, bishops and judges but one of people - farmers, millers, brewers, travellers, singers, writers. Of craftsmen and creators. It is a story of the men who built the cathedral not the bishop who commanded it built. It isn't that we know the names of these Englishmen. It's true their names are in the graveyards, we can read the generations there, but it matters more that their work carved England - the stories, the songs, the myths. And that these Englishmen still carve that story - not in words or paintings but in all our lives, in the culture that envelops us and cares for us.

And those who think being English is about race do all us English people an injustice - whether it's some ghastly snob of a Guardian writer or some badly tattooed thug from the EDL. And not just today's generation but a hundred generations whose love of this place made it so wonderful. Those people who laid out the fields, built the roads, dredged the rivers, constructed the harbours - who shaped our place and who still shape that place today. And who remember - for whatever reason, the people who helped, not in an off-hand way but prominently and significantly:

Maybe, most of the time, we walk past this remembering - not giving it heed or attention. But sometimes, either because we're asked or because we've taken that moment to stand and stare, we notice. A little chink of our ordinary past shows itself. And we smile, perhaps get a tear or breathe deeply in our remembering. But we are shown again what it is to be English - why the place matters.

And - as Cloke says to George in "An Habitation Enforced" - it all takes time and care:

"All I say is that you can put up larch and make a temp'ry job of it; and by the time the young master's married it'll have to be done again. Now, I've brought down a couple of as sweet six-by-eight oak timbers as we've ever drawed. You put 'em in an' it's off your mind or good an' all. T'other way--I don't say it ain't right, I'm only just sayin' what I think--but t'other way, he'll no sooner be married than we'll lave it all to do again. You've no call to regard my words, but you can't get out of that."

I suppose that being English is a state of mind, a feeling that the place fits like an old coat. One where you know its history - how the green stain got there, where you caught the sleeve on the thorn bush, how you lost your purse in the lining. And when you put it on, it just feels right. You don't need twenty generations in the village to feel like this -oh, it helps - just English mud on your boots and a moment to look around you.

....

So do you care?

A long while ago I recall – in a slightly vague and woolly way – my mum talking about recruiting volunteers. People to do simple things like drive mini-buses, serve teas and coffee, deliver meals-on-wheels, run a housebound library service and many other little tasks.  The gist of my mum’s grumble was that people weren’t prepared to help out. Not because they were too busy or helping somewhere else but because they had off-loaded “caring” onto the government.

“That’s the Council’s job,” they’d say adding a comment about how they pay their rates before turning back into the house. And, as the volunteer leadership crumbled away it was replaced by paid workers (as was my mum when she finally retired as Secretary of Penge & Anerley Age Concern) – professionals whose job it was to do the “caring”.

I’m sure all this is a bit of an exaggeration but the essence is true. As state social services professionalised and expanded into areas previously the world of the local voluntary group, the idea of ‘caring’ was lost. The word wasn’t. It became a stick to beat those who believed – and still believe – that private action in our local community cannot be replaced by state social services. Conservatives – those who believe in private social action – were told that, for holding to this belief, we didn’t ‘care’.

I also recall listening to an earnest, green socialist (who as it happens cares deeply, but that’s a different story) saying that volunteers shouldn’t be used to do tasks that a paid person could do. So much, I thought, for the community litter pick, the hospital car service and the Working Men’s Club old people’s Christmas party. Volunteers were to be reduced to the margins – ‘caring’ had been nationalised. Our only act of care was to be the paying of taxes to employ the carers.

And it got expensive. Back in Penge, when mum retired, the cost of running that day centre rose because where once in was run by volunteers now it is run by professionals. All provided for through a grant from the Council. This change took place everywhere as social action in local communities run by volunteers was replaced by services delivered by paid staff.  Most of us got this – rather than have any social pressure to be charitable, we could go about our lives secure in the knowledge that our taxes were going to provide all the ‘caring’ the community might need.

The problem is that, for all the sense of vocation in the “third sector”, people working there are not merely ciphers for all the ‘caring’ that the rest of us used to do but don’t any more. And neither does the enormous social services bureaucracy or the vast behemoth that is NHS non-clinical services serve this ‘caring’ purpose. It may be right for taxes to fund these services but that does not make the taxpayer ‘caring’.

Nor does ‘delivering’ (how the public sector loves that word – perhaps they all had a secret wish to be postmen) social services make us ‘caring’. These are just jobs – useful, worthwhile, valued (we hope) jobs. But not ‘caring’. Government does not ‘care’ only people, by themselves or with others of like mind, can ‘care’.

Most of us care about our nearest and dearest – children, parents. More than we think, people care about their neighbours, about the neighbourhood where they live and about giving other folk the space to succeed. None of this caring requires government, taxation or the employment of ‘workers’. It just requires us to care.

It may be a failing of government that there are children going hungry. It seems very likely that it is surely a failure of parenting as well. But the debate about this issue is not a debate about whether or not people offering differing solutions “care” and to couch it in those terms is to debase the idea of caring, to make it meaningless.

If there is one area in which our political debate is ill-served it is in this use of “caring” and “non-caring” as terms of political positioning. This was made possible by what we can call the nationalisation of care. This isn’t to say that people stopped caring – that would be impossible – but to say that the scope for us to care beyond the narrow confines of family and neighbours has been taken away from us by the dominance and control of state social services. And by the way in which the voluntary and community sector – the remnants of Burke’s little battalions – came to rely on the taxpayer rather than on the idea of charity.

I had hoped this was changing, that social action – local, communal and caring – would replace that childishly futile debate about who does or doesn’t care. But no, writers in left-leaning papers still routinely press the “Tories don’t care” button that they know their readers will love. And their counterparts respond by becoming ghastly caricatures of John Galt in their celebration of designedly uncaring language.

The other day I read something by a left-wing economist sort that reminded me why I’m a Conservative:

But there is another strand of conservatism which is wholly consistent with the idea that we owe our fortune to the past. Edmund Burke famously said that society is "a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born."

Which raises a paradox. Whilst economic research now supports Burke's view, much of the right no longer does so, preferring ahistorical inidividualist tosh...

In its way this was the idea that Cameron tried to rediscover with the “Big Society”. The idea of stewardship, that ownership isn’t everything and that we all – rich, poor, young, old – have something to contribute. Not to the state. Not just in the form of money – let alone taxes. But in whatever way we can, in the place we call home.

We built this place. And each of us should care for it and for our neighbours who live in it. And, you know, the truth is that we do care.

Take of English flowers these --
Spring's full-vaced primroses,
Summer's wild wide-hearted rose,
Autumn's wall-flower of the close,
And, thy darkness to illume,
Winter's bee-thronged ivy-bloom.
Seek and serve them where they bide
From Candlemas to Christmas-tide,
For these simples, used aright,
Can restore a failing sight.

These shall cleanse and purify
Webbed and inward-turning eye;
These shall show thee treasure hid,
Thy familiar fields amid;
And reveal (which is thy need)
Every man a King indeed!

....

An anthem for England?

I'm a proud Englishman, proud enough to believe that we might, on occasion, need an anthem that speaks of that Englishness. It would be wonderful if some musical genius had put a tune to this:

Take of English earth as much
As either hand may rightly clutch.
In the taking of it breathe
Prayer for all who lie beneath.
Not the great nor well-bespoke,
But the mere uncounted folk
Of whose life and death is none
Report or lamentation.
Lay that earth upon thy heart,
And thy sickness shall depart!

It shall sweeten and make whole
Fevered breath and festered soul.
It shall mightily restrain
Over-busied hand and brain.
It shall ease thy mortal strife
'Gainst the immortal woe of life,
Till thyself, restored, shall prove
By what grace the Heavens do move.

But since that isn't so we are told we should have Jerusalem, stirring but holding no magic of England and hi-jacked by the Church or "I vow to thee my country", a hymn filled with god and lifted from Holst's wonderful Planet Suite but not an anthem. Some point us to "Land of Hope and Glory" that stalwart of the Proms but is this no too tied with jingoism and wrapped more in the National flag than in an idea of England?


An anthem should be something people will sing, that will uplift and words that speak of town and country,of tradition and achievement. A song that is proud:

There'll always be an England,
And England shall be free
If England means as much to you
As England means to me.

Above all, a song that works:


I can picture football crowds singing this as easily as blazered grandees or dinner jacketed guests.

....

Home: the idea of England

The Leeds-Liverpool Canal, Bingley

What is the answer to the question that Channel 4 put to Ed Miliband - "in what way are you English?"

Like Ed Miliband, I can give the answer that I was born in England and have lived here all my life. But that doesn't really answer the question - as Ed Miliband discovered! Nor does the talk of vague 'values' cut the mustard - Ed Miliband talked of stoicism and the term "mustn't grumble" but that is no more a definition of Englishness than saying that the Irish like a song. It's true but not sufficiently distinguishing.

The problem is that, if you have to try and explain what it means to be English - especially as a politician being interviewed - you fall into the trap that it has any rational explanation. There is not set of characteristics, values or features that define Englishness - as a moments thought would tell you. The grizzled ex-miner from Sunderland has little in common with the shiny-faced public school boy from Winchester except that both will likely tell you they're proud to be English. The farmer's wife from Devon shares little with the girl of the tube but both will say they're English.

It is in here that we might find the tricksy definition that Ed Miliband was seeking - England and Englishness is defined by its importance to us, we the English make England. Just as the neighbourhood in which we live - village, suburb, street - is important to us, just as the place we're from is important, the nation is important. We are comfortable with the idea of England and it needs no explanation. It's the sense that a little charm can make your throat tighten and your eyes moisten - not a jingoistic pride but a feeling of rightness, comfort, of being at home:

Take of English earth as much
As either hand may rightly clutch.
In the taking of it breathe
Prayer for all who lie beneath.
Not the great nor well-bespoke,
But the mere uncounted folk
Of whose life and death is none
Report or lamentation.
Lay that earth upon thy heart,
And thy sickness shall depart!

For sure, England is about tradition, heritage, old ale and new cider. Absolutely, England is about the towns and the roads, the shared history pounded into those places by our ancestors. Of course England is about achievements, things built and seas sailed. But England is more than that, it is our place of comfort, our familiar, our home. It is not Britain -that is for monarchs, prime ministers, it is a thing of empires or governments and a grand thing too. England is where our boots mark the soil, it is the thing that makes our hearts sing. It is home.

....

My place - the essence of conservatism

Cullingworth

The other day I tried to explain my understanding – obviously vicarious – of David Cameron’s conservatism. At the heart of this was the idea of ‘putting something back’ – noblesse oblige – and the importance that we place on administration by the established institutions of society (and do note that it is society’s institutions we are concerned with not merely the institutions that are of the state). In doing this I pointed out that David Cameron’s conservatism was not my conservatism, that my idea of being a conservative was:

...founded on the idea of place, the principle of responsibility and the imperative of freedom

So I felt obliged and slightly urged to describe that conservatism a little further. So here goes – starting with the idea of ‘place’. I see an understanding of rootedness, of belonging, as the crucial distinction between liberalism and conservatism – liberalism’s essence is captured best for me in the words of Thomas Paine:

The World is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.

These are noble sentiments – my heart rejoices that men believe in the goodness of mankind and that all are equal. But the World is not my country. England is my country and this I cannot change however much other men may pretend differently, however boundaries are drawn. And more that this, the glorious South Pennines is where I live and love – Bradford is my place. I am not a Yorkshireman but I still feel the place – some while ago I wrote:

I look across Yorkshire’s green hills, listen to the birds singing and look at those things seeming timeless – the beer, the food, the walls and trees, the rounded vowels and, above all, that view that this land is ours to cherish. To understand what it means to be conservative, you have to grasp that this is everyone’s.

You will have your place – it may be some corner of a great city, it is perhaps a hill above the woods or even an old mining town fallen on hard times. But it is your place, where your life is lived, where your love is played out. Or rather you will have that place if you are a conservative. As ever, Kipling – the greatest of conservative poets – captured this in speaking of his place, Sussex:

God gave all men all earth to love,
    But since our hearts are small,
Ordained for each one spot should prove
    Belovèd over all;
That, as He watched Creation’s birth,
    So we, in godlike mood,
May of our love create our earth
    And see that it is good.
So one shall Baltic pines content,
    As one some Surrey glade,
Or one the palm-grove’s droned lament
    Before Levuka’s Trade.
Each to his choice, and I rejoice
    The lot has fallen to me
In a fair ground—in a fair ground—
    Yea, Sussex by the sea!

So find your place, live there, care for it, love and cherish it. Leave it as you would wish another to find it – not unchanged but better. Better for being your place. That is the essence of my conservatism.

....

A defence of magic...

As the sun shines down on the fields, the air is filled with flies and moths – flitting here and there chased, as if for that purpose made, by the swallows that must gorge themselves ready for the long flight to the plains of Africa. A flight just a few weeks hence, a flight that some of those swallows have never made but that nature has programmed them to undertake.

This, my friends is the magic of life. Yet there remain some who are terrified of that magic – scared that to invoke such an idea if to bring evil spirits into the world. Such a narrow perspective,  such a misunderstanding of magic is found too often in those preaching an essentialist view of Christian teachings:

In the real world we know that evil spirits are able to bring about effects which cannot be brought about by any other created causes, and this preternatural activity could, if called upon, explain all that needs to be explained in the phenomena of the occult, spiritism and the like which is left unexplained by fraud. The discussion of magic in the Bible certainly suggests that the real-world necromancers, magicians, and mediums encountered in its pages are dependent upon evil spirits for whatever effective powers they may possess.

Do we know this? Or do we see the sins and evils of man ascribed to demons because it is convenient for us – an excuse, if you will. This is to misunderstand magic – indeed, it is to misrepresent magic. To suggest that it is a comprehensible, directed thing designed by devils to draw us from the path of righteousness.

Magic is as magic does – the magician does not draw on dark forces for his art but uses that which already is, the magic that is around us. Thus the wonders of nature serve us – and that is magic if we would only notice. Magic isn’t about casting spell or curses nor is it about power or control – magic is about amazement.

When the candles are lit, the incense wafts through the air and the choir gently sings there is magic present. Some would call it the ‘Holy Spirit’ but, regardless of the source we ascribe, it is magical. We are lifted, we feel able to get a deeper understanding and our hearts are lifted to the heavens. This is magic.

But that same magic is there when we stand looking out across England’s landscape – watching it grow and change. That magic is not evil spirit but the gods of the land reborn, telling us of what was before and what will be tomorrow. And man has used that magic, has shaped the land to his purpose and, in doing so, has revealed a greater wonder. A deeper magic.

The only evil is in men’s hearts – there are no demons. And magic breaks that evil by revealing the world’s beauty. And the magic works – not is the way of the book but in ways we only fathom as we look back.

Take of English earth as much
As either hand may rightly clutch.
In the taking of it breathe
Prayer for all who lie beneath.
Not the great nor well-bespoke,
But the mere uncounted folk
Of whose life and death is none
Report or lamentation.
Lay that earth upon thy heart,
And thy sickness shall depart!

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Magic, dirty boots and being a conservative

Yesterday, Kathryn and I went on a meandering route in the glorious spring sunshine to Newby Hall near Ripon in North Yorkshire. Now those of you who know this part of the world will be aware of its wonderful scenery, its sense of being kempt, of being cared for. It's not just the great houses and gardens - Studley Royal, Harewood, Newby, Ripley - that are looked after but the whole countryside. And although that countryside has changed over the decades, those changes are subtle, human and accepted. The changes work with the grain and allow us to keep looking at the rolling hills, to glimpse rougher moorland at Ilkley and Blubberhouses and to enjoy the spring sunshine bouncing off the old red brick and softer millstone walls.

The freedoms and liberties in such a place are not the frantic rush of the market or the screeching of rights but a deeper, older freedom. The freedom of Old Hob:

"His dead are in the churchyard - thirty generations laid.
Their names were old in history when Domesday Book was made;
And the passion and the piety and prowess of his line
Have seeded, rooted, fruited in some land the Law calls mine"*

Being a conservative isn't about ideas, policies or philosophies. Being a conservative is about understanding the magic of place. Of looking out onto something loved, cared for and cherished knowing that this generation and the coming generation will continue to love, care for and cherish that place. It should be second nature for conservatives to care about the environment - not from some abstract, scientists' fear of the future but because of Old Hob - and tomorrow's Old Hob's too. Woodie Guthrie was wrong - this land isn't our land, at least not forever.

And being a conservative isn't about government - large or small - either. Indeed, Old Hob's story tells us that the masters change from year to year, decade to decade, generation to generation. But Old Hob and his wife, his brother and his children remain. What the conservative says is that government doesn't know better than Old Hob. Indeed, when it comes to that loved, cared for and cherished place, Old Hob knows a damn sight better what's right than any politician, planner or bureacrat.

The magic lies all around us - in the myths of history as well as its truths, in folklore, in song and in half-remembered tales. As Puck concluded:

"Trackway and camp and city lost,
Salt Marsh where now is corn -
Old Wars, Old Peace, Old Arts that cease
And so was England born!

She is not any common earth,
Water or wood or air,
But Merlin's Isle of Gramarye,
Where you and I will fare!"**

We can rant about government, cry foul as our freedoms erode, bemoan the passing of politeness and the singing of songs. But in the end our boots are dirty, planted firmly in the soil of some fine place. So slow down again. Witness the magic of where you live and love. And feel what it's like to be a conservative.

*From "The Land" by Rudyard Kipling
**From "Puck's Song" by Rudyard Kipling

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Wednesday Whimsy: Your Place, My Town, The Land

Beckenham Road (a long time a go)


Listening to the poignant evocation of Cornwall, “Cousin Jack”, I had something of an epiphany – recognition of why the spirit of place is so important to us. And why its emotion so often trumps rationality. I’m not from Cornwall, have no Cornish heritage and no Cornish connection of note – but the emotion of the song gets to me just as do the feelings in Springsteen’s “My Hometown” or even Billy Bragg’s take on Essex in “A13”.

If you write, speak or sing with passion about your town, your country, your hills or even your street, you will bring out those emotions – the associations with place, with roots, with where we belong. These are some of the most powerful ties and we never lose them even when thousands of miles from that place. The ties that make tough old New York cops stream with tears at “Kathleen” or “Danny Boy”. The ties that make me stop, catch my breath and think a little about the things that really matter.

For me Kipling is the great poet of this feeling and in “The Land” he summed it up about his native Sussex. Here are the last couple of stanzas:

“His dead are in the churchyard--thirty generations laid.
Their names went down in Domesday Book when Domesday Book was made.
And the passion and the piety and prowess of his line
Have seeded, rooted, fruited in some land the Law calls mine.

Not for any beast that burrows, not for any bird that flies,
Would I lose his large sound council, miss his keen amending eyes.
He is bailiff, woodman, wheelwright, field-surveyor, engineer,
And if flagrantly a poacher--'tain't for me to interfere.

'Hob, what about that River-bit?' I turn to him again
With Fabricius and Ogier and William of Warenne.
'Hev it jest as you've a mind to, _but_'--and so he takes command.
For whoever pays the taxes old Mus' Hobden owns the land.”


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