Membrancing from the Lebar Gabala Erenn

I came across this remembrance in the Lebar Gabala Erenn. I thought it was inspirational, so I copied it and offer it up with a modern Gaelic version and the English translation.

Athair cāich, Coimsid Nime,
in Rī uasal ainglige,
ār Cuingid, ār Coimde, ār Cend,
cen tūs, cen crīch, cen forcend.

Athair de gach nì, Triath Nèimh,
an Rìgh uasal aingealach,
ar Curaidh, ar Tighearna, ar Ceann,
gun tùs, gun chrìoch, gun chrioslaich.

Father of all, Master of Heaven,
the noble angelic King,
our Champion, our Lord, our Head,
without beginning, end, or termination.

Why is the Conservative Party silent while our old liberties fall among thieves?

This letter from the Earl of Onslow to David Cameron appeared in The Guardian “Comment is Free” section in 2006. The questions he raises are more urgently demanding of an answer now than they were three years ago, as the General Election that must be held by June 2010 gets ever nearer.

An open letter to the Conservative leader

A leading Tory peer tells David Cameron that he should be restoring the party’s traditional values on liberties

Dear Mr Cameron,

You and I are Conservatives. It could even be said that we both had a traditional upbringing. I have always understood that we Conservatives have been at our best when we use conservative and traditional methods for constructive change. From our beginnings in the Restoration parliament as defenders of church and king, we have seen ancient liberties as the key to the advancement of our fellow citizens.

Throughout the centuries, that Conservative-Tory tradition has been used for the immense benefit of our people. Peel’s Tamworth Manifesto stated that so clearly in 1834. That is why we have been the most successful and long-lasting political party in history. From the Stuart kings to the modern, mass-political democracy, our great party has defended our constitution and benefited our country.

Something is missing from our rhetoric. We have a government by a party that reinvented itself by being ashamed of its roots and determinedly betrayed the traditions and ideas of its founders. They may well have been right so to do, but they cannot be trusted to hold dear the traditions of others.

In no order of awfulness, this government has emasculated the House of Commons by the permanent use of guillotines. On the whim of the Prime Minister, the Lord Chancellorship has been neutered, removing a voice of law from the cabinet.

Those instances are on the parliamentary front, but what the government has done to the liberty of the subject is far worse. Note that I say liberty of the subject, not the rights of the citizen. That is because liberties are boundless unless circumscribed by law and rights are, by their nature, circumscribed.

It has repealed the law on double jeopardy. With Asbos, it has sent to prison some of the young on hearsay evidence for things that are not even criminal. It has created a centralised register held by the government on all citizens and proposes to force them to have ID cards. It has formed a police force with unprecedented powers of arrest – the Serious Organised Crime Agency – over which the Home Secretary has authority no predecessor has previously enjoyed.

Through its control orders, it has introduced a system of deprivation of liberty without trial on the say-so of the executive. It has passed the Civil Contingencies Act that allows a minister to override any statute after the calling of a state of emergency and now there is the Regulatory Reform Bill, which has been described as ‘the abolition of parliament bill’ and against which our party did not even vote at second reading. This gives gauleiter-like powers to ministers which we are blandly told will not be used.

The government has allowed the retention by the police of DNA details of thousands of innocents and it has given us section 81 (6) of the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claims) Act 2004 which amends the Nationality, Immigration and Asylums Act 2002, creating a single-tier appeals procedure which Lord Steyn, in a recent lecture, described as, in effect, ousting the jurisdiction of ordinary courts. The government has introduced anti-terrorism stop-and-search powers that are constantly being misused, such as when the elderly Walter Wolfgang was ejected from the Labour conference.

This list is by no means comprehensive. What surprises, worries and depresses me is the apparent relative quietude on the part of the Conservative party on these issues. I repeat – it did not vote against the Regulatory Reform Bill on second reading. It has not remembered the great Edward Gibbon’s comment on Augustus Caesar’s Rome: ‘The principles of a free constitution are irrecoverably lost when the legislative power is nominated by the executive.’

It was dozy on the Civil Contingencies Act until the excellent Peta Buscombe in our house took it up; this from the party which, since the restoration of Charles II, has been so jealous of our constitution. Have we a guilty secret?

Remember Burke saying: ‘All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.’ Why are we not shouting from the hustings that we will return to the people their ancient liberties?

Why, Mr Cameron, is the Conservative party passing by on the other side while our old liberties fall among thieves?

Yours sincerely, Onslow

· The Earl of Onslow is one of the 92 hereditary peers and takes the Conservative whip.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2006/apr/23/comment.conservatives

Copyright, Credits, and Simple Courtesy

I keep coming across Muslims who claim that there is no copyright in Islam.

Actually, I’ve been coming across these people since the late 60s. I’ve sometimes asked, and often wondered, what the nusous for this claim are. So far I haven’t had a satisfactory answer. In my reading of the Quran and the Hadiths, to be facetious, I seem to have missed the bit where it says “laysa fi-l Islami-l haqqu-t ta’lif“.

This isn’t actually directed at anybody in particular; but if after reading this you feel that you might have been one of those who slipped up, could you please do the decent thing and enter an ex post facto credit or acknowledgement to me.

It goes against the grain somewhat, but I do have some sympathy with that O’Neill Roman Catholic St Columba (well, the O’Donnells were part of the Northern O’Neill) wishing to keep the copy of the prayer manual he had made – as long as he was willing to give credit where it was due and not pass it off as his own work.

Wikipedia (which in this case is correct) states:

“Tradition asserts that, sometime around 560, he became involved in a quarrel with Saint Finnian of Moville over a psalter. Columba copied the manuscript at the scriptorium under Saint Finnian, intending to keep the copy. Saint Finnian disputed his right to keep the copy. The dispute eventually led to the pitched Battle of Cúl Dreimhne in 561, during which many men were killed. A synod of clerics and scholars threatened to excommunicate him for these deaths, but St Brendan of Birr spoke on his behalf with the result that he was allowed to go into exile instead. Columba suggested that he would work as a missionary in Scotland to help convert as many people as had been killed in the battle.”

It’s thought by some that St Finnian was actually St Ninian (of Whitehorn, or Candida Casa), but it is difficult to give this too much credit as he died about 150 years before the incident of the psalter.

Perhaps having a battle over the matter was a bit extreme. Certainly dumping the Papist and his cronies on the Celtic Christian Dal Riadans was not merely annoying but the source of centuries of strife.

Nevertheless, on the other hand, what he cribbed was somebody else work and he should have credited it as such.

The immediate cause of this whinge of mine is that yet again I’ve come across some recension of the History of Islam in the British Isles done by me.

I suppose the source is either Mas’ud Khan’s website (http://www.masud.co.uk/), or the cached documents from the Association of British Muslims’ website. I don’t mind people using it, but I would like (a) a credit at least, and (b) for them to get it right.

My original write-up was essentially a précis of some research I and my daughter Isla’d done. I’m quite happy for people to cap this, but I would expect them to use – as I did, as far as was possible – primary sources. You cannot write reliable or usable history from secondary or tertiary material.

That means struggling through the Old Irish and Latin of the Annals – of Ulster, Tigernach, and the Four Masters – and the Middle Irish of the Lebor Gabala Erenn, various Latin and Old French documents such as Hector Boyce, volumes of the Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society looking for articles on contract coinage, and visiting the Deanery of Canterbury Cathedral to view the chasuble of St Thomas à Beckett.

And I would like an acknowledgment.

It is hard enough doing primary research without the cosy supportive environment of a sinecure or academic comfort zone (with their resources (and money) on tap) without the simple courtesy of some recognition. Money would have been nice, but a credit might have to do. I’ve given up waiting to be asked, certainly by Muslims but also sadly by non-Muslims, to give any academic papers on my various expertises.

All that being said, and all that effort having been put in, it is frustrating to say the least to find Muslims still trying to claim that Offa king of Mercia (and builder of the dyke I used to live half-a-mile away from) was a Muslim on the strength of a single coin almost certainly struck on contract in Andalusia.

They might just as well claim that St Thomas à Beckett (King Henry II’s “turbulent priest”) was a Muslim because of his chasuble, now kept in the Chapter House of Canterbury Cathedral.

© D Rosser-Owen 2009

Bad Hats and other Annoyances

The Duke of Wellington – the Iron Duke of Waterloo fame, that is – was not a great democrat in the modern sense, although he was willing to accept gradual change. He is said to have observed of the House of Commons after one of the early moves to Parliamentary reform that had allowed middle class people in that he had never seen so many bad hats in his life. In those days MPs and Peers of the Realm wore hats in the chamber – nice looking, expensive silk toppers if you could afford one. If not, something much cheaper that looked it.

I watched the Easter special edition of Dr Who. Towards the end of the episode, troops from UNIT turn up – and, with Arthur Wellesley, one could say that one had never seen so many bad hats in one’s life. Or rather badly worn berets.

I know that they’re actors; but surely the producer (or whoever) could have found a soldier – ex or still serving – to show them how to wear a beret properly. They looked like a right lot of (there’s a bad military word that would be used to describe them here: let’s just say that they looked like a proper bunch of civilians).

Which leads me to another lot of bad hats: parking wardens, meter attendants, and Blunkett’s Bobbies (or Fake Fuzz). That is to say, people who wear Forage Caps. If they’re going to wear the things, can someone please show them how to put them on properly.

If any of the offenders is reading this, the way that it is done is:

1. Place the peak bit square across your forehead, about 1 inch (approximately 25.4 mm) above your eyebrows, with the cap badge in the centre above your nose;

2. Hold it in place with the thumb and index finger of your left hand (right hand if you’re left-handed) spread across the front of the brim above the peak taking care not to smudge the capbadge;

3. With your right hand (or left hand) press the back of the hat down onto your head so that the whole thing sits square on your head with the back of the hat now sitting down.

4. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, take a trip to Horseguards and wait for one of the duty NCOs to appear and look at his hat. Let it burn itself on your consciousness. And don’t in future ponce around the streets looking like a proper wally (or civilian).

And then there are the prayer hats. Or rather lack of them. I’ve watched lots (and lots) of people turn up at our local mosque wearing some sort of hat – usually baseball caps in quite an impressive array of sponsorships – and then take them off to pray bareheaded.

They could have turned them around, baseball catcher style, and gained the sunnah of praying with the head covered that way.

I usually wear a bonnet; and get weird looks. I suppose some people, with the Duke of Wellington, are wondering what this fellow in the odd headgear is doing there. Ah, well…

© D Rosser-Owen 2009

‘S beag orm Gàidhlig, arsa Pàrlamaid na h-Alba

‘S beag orm Gàidhlig, arsa Pàrlamaid na h-Alba

I may be wrong, I hope I’m wrong, I really do, in fact I’m willing to be proved absolutely wrong. But it seems to me that the Scottish Parliament has no particular affection for Gaelic and the Gaelic Culture, and little serious interest in its survival.

I suppose this is simply a reflection of the general Scottish colonial cringe towards the English and other foreigners about Gaelic. What Scotland and the Scots need is an injection of Welsh assertiveness.

Nevertheless, it really ought to be the Scottish Parliament that, pace W. S. Gilbert’s Duke of Plaza Toro, should lead the regiment from the front and by example.

Apart from the public, touristy areas of the architectural monstrosity at the bottom of the Cannongate by Holyroodhouse Palace, there’s hardly a word of the ancient tongue to be seen – not even on a finger board pointing to the taighean beaga.

How are the mighty fallen? At the end of the Eighteenth Century, two generations after the vindictive genocide that followed the disastrous Blàr Chùil Lodair, or Battle of Culloden, in 1746, 80 percent of Scotland was Gaelic speaking.

Nowadays, fewer than 60,000 people speak it, and they’re mostly confined to the Hebrides. And even the Gaelic-speaking youth would prefer to speak English, because Gaelic isn’t “cool”.

How do you make it fionnar? Could it be – shock! horror! – by those in charge of its learning and revival actually taking the matter seriously? The Parliament could take an initiative and start requiring bilingualism in public documents – just as they do in Wales.

It could also give some proper support to efforts to teach the language, and popularise the fact that there is teaching of the language available. And it could make some serious efforts to provide facilities and properly designed courses for those wanting to learn it.

Does it realise, for example, that London – according to The Herald – is the third largest Scottish city, with some 350,000 Scots in it? And that the south-east of England has over a million?

Gaelic isn’t a vastly difficult language unlike, say, Arabic, Hebrew, or Mandarin – there are only 10 irregular verbs, for example. And the extremely successful Ulpan system for teaching Hebrew, which has been used as the base for teaching Welsh as Wlpan, has been converted for Gaelic as Ùlpan Gàidhlig. So why hasn’t its use and availability become more widespread?

Some subsidy from the Parliament would be advantageous, too. It is expensive to study, and many people don’t have too much spare cash at the moment. It is also time-consuming, and some incentivising – like reduced fees – would not go amiss.

But, I think, the best fillip learning the language could have would be well-designed short courses.

At the moment, what seems to be available is either long courses lasting a year or more and leading to a degree-level qualification, or very short courses of one to two weeks that don’t appear to lead anywhere other than introduce the student to Scottish country dancing and Gaelic songs.

This doesn’t strike me as being serious about turning around the decline in the language.

Quite a few years ago, when I was a shiny new second lieutenant, I found myself on a basic Malay language course at the Language Wing of the Far East Training Centre at Nee Soon Barracks in central Singapore.

The aim of the Army Colloquial Malay Course was to equip the student with basic grammar, a 500-word or so vocabulary, and the ability to increase this by his or her own devices. Each evening one was required to learn a vocabulary for next day’s testing of around 25 words – quite a tall order.

The course was designed to last between four and six weeks, five days a week, and involved mornings learning and using grammar and vocabulary and afternoons talking one-on-one with native speakers.

Our course was cut short because Internal Security duties obtruded; nevertheless, I was able to become fluent, even bilingual, in Malay.

It is well-known that the best, most comprehensive, shortest duration teaching of Arabic in the world is the Long Arabic Course at the Joint Services School of Education at Beaconsfield in Buckinghamshire which lasts 18 months.

What I find quite astonishing is that the Armed Services are able to put together these courses – one teaching one of the simplest languages and the other one of the most difficult – and yet civilian institutions of learning are unable to match this. And their typical students are not university grade, but ordinary people with a basic education.

Taking the model of that Malay course for teaching Gaelic and using the Ulpan method – which wasn’t available then – it should be a very simple matter to design and run several month-long courses in Scotland or elsewhere, say in London, Islay, Skye, or Benbecula – even, don’t be shocked, in Edinburgh – to turn the decline in the language around.

All it requires is some Welsh assertiveness, and a seriousness on the part of educators, bureaucrats, and politicians that appears to this layman to be in short supply. Time for a change in attitude; an abandonment of the colonial cringe of the colonised mind, perhaps?

Then there’ll be plenty of time for singing and dancing.

Gun tèid gu math leibh: may it go well with you.

© D Rosser-Owen 2009

Surah 109, Al Kafiroun

Here’s my attempt at translating Suratu-l Kafiroun (109). I haven’t simply translated the usual English semantics, but tried to give the meaning – or some of it – of the actual Arabic. Please indulge my poor versification.

Sir mi tèarmann le Allah Fhèin bho’n t-Sàtain clachte

An Ceudamh Buaileag thar an Naoi (109):

Na Luchd-ceiltinn*

An Ainm Allah an Nì Sàr-thruacanta ’s Sàr-thròcaireach

Abair: A Luchd-ceiltinn,
Cha dèan mi adhradh** a nì adhradh sibh
Agus cha dèan sibh adhradh a nì adhradh mi,
Agus cha dèan mi adhradh a rinn adhradh sibh,
Agus cha dèan sibh adhradh a nì adhradh mi.
Gum bitheadh ur n-iùl-aideachadh° dhuibh is m’ iùl-aideachadh fhèin dhomh

*    “The People who Conceal” – kafara means “to cover, conceal, hide”. Concealing the truth from oneself is a positive, conscious act. A kafir (pl kafiroun or kuffar) is not simply an infidel or unbeliever, but someone who will not face the truth and covers it over or conceals it so that his or her conscience doesn’t have to see it.

**   or aoradh

°    “path of professing faith” – din doesn’t mean “religion” (whether it is derived from religere or, with Cicero, from religare) but more “way of life” or “life transactions”.

Donnchadh Bàn Mac an t-Saoir

The cultural mix that makes up the British Isles extends beyond TV soap operas in English and music groups that a friend of mine described as “Destiny’s Clone”, alluding to the girl band “Destiny’s Child”. There is a rich heritage to be found outside the limited confines of the present-day English language in Scots and Irish Gaelic and Welsh, and which increasing numbers of UK Muslims are experiencing. One of the leaders of the “Save Gaelic” movement until his death in 2004 was Ali Abbasi (yarhamahu-Llah) who came to Glasgow from Pakistan and learnt Gaelic.

A couple of weeks ago it was the birthday of Donnchadh Bàn Mac an t-Saoir (Duncan Ban Macintyre), one of the great Gaelic poets – and I managed to miss making a posting to commemorate this event. He was born in Glenorchy in 1724 and died in Edinburgh in 1812; he’s buried in Greyfriars Kirkyard.

Among the poems he is famous for is the Ode to the Battle of Falkirk Muir (Òran Do Bhlàr Na h-Eaglaise Brice) in which he managed to lose the sword that belonged to his patron and in whose stead he was present at the battle. The Ode is well-known for its bitter wit.

Its metre reads remarkably like that long poem by Longfellow alluding to the Iroquois leader Hiawatha (“The Song of Hiawatha”). It would be interesting to speculate that the one borrowed from the other, but there’s no evidence that Longfellow had the Gaelic; although Gaelic was a common language in areas of British North America until relatively recently – the part of North Carolina near Grandfather Mountain was, for example, Gaelic-speaking at the eve of World War 1 – and had a dramatic effect on areas of American life.

Commenting on a discovery by Yale professor Willie Ruff an essay on The Kepler Label states,

“Several years ago, following up on a claim by his friend Dizzy Gillespe that some remote African American congregations in the Deep South sang hymns in Gaelic, Ruff made the startling discovery that an ancient call-and-response service still intoned in Gaelic in the highlands of Scotland was chanted by descendants of African slaves in the American South and by white congregations in remote churches of Appalachia.

“The Massachusetts Bay Colony Psalm Book from 1640, which Ruff found in Yale’s Beinecke Library, indicated that the unusual form, with one church member calling out the first line of a Psalm and the rest of the congregation continuing to chant the text in unison, had been a common worship service in Colonial America. While the advent of hymnals, musical instrumentation and organized choirs in 19th century Protestant churches for the most part superannuated the a cappella service, the dirge-like chanting of Psalms continued to be practiced in some remote churches. These included, among others, congregations of descendants of African slaves whose Scots owners had introduced them to the service, white descendants of Scots settlers in the Kentucky hills and Scottish Highlanders, who continue the tradition original to their forebears.”

Òran Do Bhlàr Na h-Eaglaise Brice

Latha dhuinn air Machair Alba
Na bha dh’armailt aig a’ Chuigse,
Thachair iad oirnne na reubail,
‘S bu neo-éibhinn leinn a’ chuideachd,
‘N uair a chuir iad an “ratreud” oirnn,
‘S iad ‘nar déidh a los ar murtadh,
Mur dèanamaid feum le’r casan:
Cha tug sinne srad le’r musgan.

A’ dol an coinneamh a’ Phrionnsa
Gum bu shunndach a bha sinne;
Shaoil sinn gum faigheamaid cùis deth,
‘S nach robh dhùinn ach dol g’a sireadh;
‘N uair a bhuail iad air a chéile
‘S àrd a leumamaid a’ tilleadh,
‘S ghabh sinn a mach air an abhainn,
A’ dol g’ar n-amhaich anns an linne.

‘N am do dhaoinibh dol ‘nan éideadh
Los na reubalaich a thilleadh,
Cha do shaoil sinn gus ‘n a ghéill sinn,
Gur sinn fhéin a bhite ‘g iomain;
Mar gun rachadh cù ri caoraibh,
‘S iad ‘nan ruith air aodainn glinne,
‘S ann mar sin a ghabh iad sgaoileadh
Air an taobh air an robh sinne.

Sin an uair thàinig càch ’s a dhearbh iad
Gum bu shearbh dhuinn dol ‘nan cuideachd,
‘S e ‘n trùp Gallda ‘g an robh chall sin,
Bha colainn gun cheann air cuid diubh;
‘N uair a thachair riù Clann Dòmhnaill
Chum iad còmhdhail air an uchdan;
Dh’fhàg iad creuchdan air an reubadh,
‘S cha leighiseadh léigh an cuislean.

Bha na h-eich gu crùidheach, srianach.
Girtach, iallach fiamhach trupach;
‘S bha na fir gu h-armach fòghlaimt’,
Air an sònrachadh gu murtadh;
‘N uair a dh’aom sinn bhàrr an t-sléibhe
‘S móran feum againn air furtachd,
Na bha beò bha cuid dhiubh leòinte,
‘S bha sinn brònach mu na thuit ann.

Dh’éirich fuathas anns an ruaig dhuinn
‘N uair a ghluais an sluagh le leathad;
Bha Prionns’ Tearlach le ‘chuid Frangach
‘S iad an geall air teachd ‘nar rathad;
Cha d’fhuair sinn focal comannd
A dh’iarraidh ar naimhdean a sgathadh,
Ach comas sgaoilidh feadh an t-saoghail,
‘S cuid againn gun fhaotainn fhathast.

Sin ‘n uair thàinig mise dhachaigh
Dh’ionnsaigh Ghill-easbuig o’n Chrannaich,
‘S ann a bha e ‘n sin cho fiadhta
Ri broc liath a bhiodh an garaidh;
Bha e duilich anns an am sin
Nach robh ball aige r’a tharraing,
‘S mór an dìobhail na bha dhìth air,
Claidheamh sinnsireachd a sheanar.

Móran iarainn air bheag faobhair,
Gum b’e sud aogas a’ chlaidhimh,
‘S e gu lùbach leumnach bearnach,
‘S bha car cam ann anns an amhaich;
Dh’fhàg e mo chruachan-sa brùite
Bhith ‘ga ghiùlan feadh an rathaid,
‘S e cho trom ri cabar feàrna,
‘S mairg a dh’fhàirdeadh an robh rath air.

‘N uair a chruinnich iad ‘nan ciadan
‘N latha sin air Sliabh na h-Eaglais’,
Bha “ratreud” air luchd na Beurla,
‘S ann daibh féin a b’éigin teicheadh;
Ged a chaill mi anns an am sin
Claidheamh ceannard Chloinn’ an Fhleisdeir,
Claidheamh beàrnach a’ mhì-fhortain,
‘S ann bu choslach e ri greidlein.

Am ball-teirmisg a bha meirgeach
Nach d’rinn seirbhis a bha dleasnach,
‘S beag an diùbhail leam r’a chunntadh,
Ged a dh’ionndraich mi mu fheasgar
‘N claidheamh dubh nach d’fhuair a sgùradh,
‘S neul an t-sùithe air a lethtaobh,
‘S beag a b’fhiù e, ’s e air lùbadh,
Gum b’e diùgha de bhuill-deis’ e.

‘N claidheamh braoisgeach bh’ aig na daoine
Nach d’rinn caonnag ’s nach tug buillean;
Cha robh aogas air an t-saoghal,
‘S mairg a shaothraich leis an cumasg;
‘N claidheamh dubh air an robh an t-aimhleas,
Gun chrios gun chrambaid gun duille,
Gun rinn gun fhaobhar gun cheannbheart –
Is mairg a tharladh leis an cunnart.

Thug mi leam an claidheamh beàrnach,
‘S b’olc an àsainn e ’sa’ chabhaig,
Bhith ‘ga ghiùlan air mo shliasaid –
‘S mairg mi riamh a thug on bhail’ e;
Cha toir e stobadh no sàthadh,
‘S cha robh e làidir gu gearradh;
Gum b’e diùgha de bhuill-airm e,
‘S e air meirgeadh air an fharadh.

Chruinnich uaislean Earra-Ghàidheal
Armailt làidir de mhilisi,
‘S chaidh iad mu choinneamh Phrionns’ Tearlach,
‘S dùil aca r’a champ a bhristeadh;
‘S iomadh fear a bh’ anns an àit’ ud
Nach robh sàbhailt mar bha mise,
A mheud ’s a dh’fhàg sinn anns an àraich
Latha Blar na h-Eaglais’ Brice.

The Purposes of Government

George Bernard Shaw is famously supposed to have described Britain and the USA as “two countries separated by a common language” except nobody can find the reference. However Oscar Wilde did say something similar. In The Canterville Ghost (1887), he wrote, ‘We have really everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, language’.

And this seems to be exacerbated by an almost complete ignoring of the Greats of American literature, such as Walt Whitman, Robert Frost, James Fenimore Cooper, or Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. And yet they are as much part of our literary heritage as Jane Austen, Sir Walter Scott, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Cowper Powys, W. H. Davies, or Dylan Thomas, for example, are of theirs.

And so it is with political theory, or political philosophy as people are happier calling it. The thinking that led to the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution didn’t appear out of the blue – the architects of these documents were steeped in British political culture and history. In many respects, the events that led to the American Revolution began some half a century before 1776.

The issues that had produced the British Civil War had, everybody thought, been sorted out and the Act of Settlement 1689 and the Act of Union 1707 more or less neatly tied it all off. Except in 1710 the Parliament in Westminster decided that it was more than simply “the High Court of Parliament” where the Common Law was declared and expanded, and began to enact new legislation outside the Common Law. This didn’t go down too well in the British Isles, let alone in British North America.

So, in treating of modern British politics and government it is sensible and germane to look at the products of the American Revolution and its contemporary Scottish Enlightenment, as well as the English theorists like Burke, Locke, and the Mills. Which is what I should have done, but didn’t, with the latest question that has been bugging me.

It is harder than you might think to discover what the Purposes of Government are.

You’d think that a quick recourse to an ‘A’ Level textbook of yesteryear, when students were actually asked the sort of questions that would stretch the faculties a bit, would throw up the answer in easily digested form.

No such luck. Nobody seems to know what they are, or are too shy to admit their ignorance. Well, I’ll make a start: I don’t know.

I’m working on something that requires some words on government – or rather on these purposes of government.

I’ve read through David Hume’s “Of the First Principles of Government” and “Of the Origin of Government”; Adam Ferguson’s Essay on the History of Civil Society – well, I skimmed through a lot of it that didn’t seem relevant; and John Millar on “The Powers of the Sovereign”.

I must admit that there’s a lot of information in these pillars of the Scottish Enlightenment, and the underlying Presbyterianism is actually notable. But it all seems to start by assuming the ‘why?’ that I want to know. So I went to the previous century.

I suppose I should have looked at the Great Montrose’s essay “On Sovereign Power” and Richard Hooker’s Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie – well, I will get round to them – but I actually headed for Thomas Hobbes and Leviathan.

Again, the problem I had was one of the author apparently assuming what I wanted to know.

It wasn’t until a friend suggested reading through the letters of Thomas Jefferson that I got the eye-opening steer that I needed.

The American Revolution was, in many respects, Round Three of the British Civil War and some of the intellectual and legal issues that had driven the Bishops’ War and the War between Parliament and the Crown were still very much alive – both in Great Britain and in British North America.

And these were part of the intellectual heritage of the signatories to the Declaration of Independence at the Second Continental Congress on 4 July, 1776, as they were of the “American Party” in London.

So, it’s hardly any wonder that Russell Kirk took Edmund Burke as the start-point for his opus The Conservative Mind from Burke to Eliot which is a very American take on conservatism. Burke is usually marked as the leader of the American Party that seems to have been made up, surprisingly, of Tories seeing as in American terms the word Tory is applied to the Loyalists who resisted the Revolution.

But those labels were remarkably slippery things in those days – it’s quite hard to fix a particular one on any political personalities of the time. Burke – and Pitt – are usually said to be Tories, but Burke was politically affiliated with the Rockingham Whigs. John Locke and the Mills were liberals, but there’s quite a tory angle to their views, too

Thomas Jefferson, the Adamses, George Washington, James Madison and others are claimed as Whigs, but their political philosophies would tend to place them with the Tories. At this distance in time, it’s hard to draw too fine a distinction between the political views of the Whigs and the Tories. But it exists, and is formative of our present governmental world.

So, as well as reading through the liberals of the American Revolution, I’ll be re-reading Richard Hooker and those who came after him like the English Romantics.

And there is another difference and that is between ideas of government that emerged from Scotland’s “Community of the Realm” as the fount of sovereignty (deriving ultimately from the Declaration of Arbroath 1320) and that of England’s “Crown in Parliament” that was the product of the Act of Settlement 1689. But, the political thinking of the American Revolution is a good place to start.

So, taking the famous opening words of that British political document, the Declaration, as my jumping off point, I’m now reading my way towards finding out the Purposes of Government:

“We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness — That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

Walk in the Old Paths

Walk in the Old Paths

Where are we going?

We say we want a new direction. But “new” can mean fresh as well as simply different or novel. Should we not in our new direction take a fresh look at our old way?

Behind us, and with us, stand great men and women.

In these ranks are Churchill, Salisbury, Disraeli, Palmerston (for a time), Pitt, Burke (eventually), Samuel Johnston, Clarendon, the Great Montrose, Archbishop Laud, Bishops John Jewel and Lancelot Andrewes, and even King Charles the Martyr, but especially Richard Hooker the famous Rector of Bishopsbourne.

Equally with them are George Grant, Eugene Forsey, Stephen Leacock, Donald Creighton, Milton Acorn, Mazo de la Roche, Sir John Alexander Macdonald, and Bishops John Strachan and Charles Inglis.

And we should not forget C. S. Lewis, Cardinal Newman, “Lewis Carroll”, G. K. Chesterton, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Truly “we stand on the shoulders of giants”. But can we honestly say that, looking back down those paths illumined by these Greats, we can now look forward with an equal assurance and certainty to a new, clear, Tory way, and boldly walk in it?

There used not to be a Tory unfamiliar with that verse from Jeremiah (6:16), “interrogate de semitis antiquis quae sit via bona et ambulate in ea” (ask after the old paths where is the good way and walk in it) that hints at Matthew 7:14: “Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it” (“quam angusta porta et arta via quae ducit ad vitam et pauci sunt qui inveniunt eam”).

The Tory Way – that began, as both Feiling and Hearnshaw said, with the wedding of King Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn – married the values of religion, the Common Law, and the “ancient customs and usages of the people”.

This was King Charles the Martyr’s phrase said at his show trial when he held that we must protect the people from the tyranny of Parliament: a trust that he, in effect, laid on us the heirs of his “Court Party”.

David Cameron has suggested that we need a new Bill of Rights.

The Bill of Rights 1689 was meant to preserve those gains of the Civil War that trammelled arbitrary rule by the Executive.

We have just lived through the most egregious decade of destruction of the “ancient customs and usages of the people” by revolutionists whose political philosophy is wholly alien to the British Way and which has been inspired by the misnamed “neoconservatism” of America. 

This is a political perspective that is neither new nor conservative.

It is a formulation by American ex-Trotskyites of their New Left’s “long march through the institutions”, and has nothing to offer to us.

Seduced by the rosy shine on these Apples of Sodom, this “neo-conservative” philosophy has been embraced by the Democratic and Republican Parties in the USA, and Mr Blair’s New Labour; and, surprisingly, by the Progressive Conservative Party in Canada. Do we really wish to repeat the destruction of the traditions of these parties, and embrace this alien philosophy? We reject the corrupt and demented teachings of Leo Strauss, and the perversities embraced by his erstwhile students.

And, anyway, American political concepts and traditions do not speak to us.

Their Whiggery derives from the French Enlightenment and the terrible Revolution that followed it, with their ideas that man and society can be improved and perfected by governments’ tinkering. Through Burke, Pitt, Carlisle, Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Southey we rejected those at the time. We stand for older and more enduring values.

We believe in religion, religious morality, and that without them civil society cannot survive.

We believe that man is imperfect, that our political environment has evolved organically over time to accommodate our nature and the unique qualities of our culture.

We used to believe that sovereignty belongs to God, which He expresses temporally through the Monarchy and the structure of society.

And we believed that society is a living thing, an organism of the Divine Creation, which can only be harmed by parasitic constructs.

We do, indeed, need a new Bill of Rights to restore what has been destroyed in the past nine years, and to protect our Constitution from further such razzias: Mr Cameron’s idea should be taken forward to fruition.

And further, we must restore Civil Liberties and the Common Law to what they were before 1997 – that is true conservatism. We must not connive in the abolition of those measures protecting the liberties of Britons that have been painfully achieved over 900 years of our forebears’ work and sacrifice, simply because the previous Administration did it – and so it can’t be undone. Who says so?

The first Writ of Habeas Corpus was served in 1305 – 701 years ago: by what arrogance are we allowed to dispense with it, when it was meant to protect against just the sort of arbitrary arrest and detention that finds its existence so inconvenient now? The Earl of Mansfield CJ used it in 1771 to procure the freedom of James Somersett, and his subsequent judgment in R v Knowles ex parte Somersett on 22 June 1772 effectively set in train the abolition of slavery through citing that serfdom had been abolished centuries before. Somersett’s counsel, Francis Hargrave, quoting a case from 1569, made the ringing statement “…that England was too pure an air for a slave to breathe in”. Will we now countenance the restoration of servitude in the name of a specious “War on Terrorism”? As the Monty Python star Terry Jones asked rhetorically of George Walker Bush, “How do you bomb an abstract noun?”.

Double Jeopardy was outlawed nearly 800 years ago (if it is now to be amended, why not with the established Scottish usage of “Not Proven”?).

Who gave us the right to tear up Magna Carta?

The use of Star Chamber courts and arbitrary arrest and detention in government oubliettes was abolished by the Civil War in the 17th Century and enshrined in the Bill of Rights. Who gave us the right to restore them?

Are we really at such a threat from putative and unproved “Islamic terrorism” that we must destroy our ancient liberties to ensure our safety?

There is no absolute safety. To believe so is an unbelief in the Divine Majesty and Power that our forebears never countenanced. They knew that there is no refuge from death: when your time comes, you go.

Is our social environment so much more dangerous now than in Jack the Ripper’s, or Dickens’, or Mayhew’s time; or in the days of Dick Turpin and the Highwaymen; or, more recently, during the 32 years of actual Irish terrorism, so that we need a raft of unusual and anti-liberal legislation to demonise communities of the Queen’s subjects on almost wholly specious grounds?

Have we lost the Faith our forbears held to, to replace it with the parvenu heresy of Dispensationalism?

We are getting ready to put behind us the disillusionment that led to the electoral defeats of 1997, 2001, and 2005. In these opening years of the 21st Century, is it not opportune to consider where the country should be going, and what the role of government is: and especially the next Tory Government?

What did we do with Disraeli’s “One Nation” that derives from his political novel, Sybil, or the Two Nations? Canada’s first Prime Minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, was deeply influenced by the ideals of the One Nation movement. In The Globe and Mail, on Saturday, 8 May 1982, George Grant stated that, “One cannot understand the Conservatism of Canada without thinking of Disraeli”. This is equally true of the United Kingdom.

In his 2000 Macmillan Lecture, Damian Green MP stated,

 “My answer to the question posed tonight, ‘Who needs One Nation Conservatism?’ is first the Conservative Party, and secondly the British people. The current public debate on this topic is most peculiar. Many of those who for years have led the forces of One Nation Conservatism are now excoriated as dinosaurs by certain commentators. At the same time the One Nation label has never been so much in demand…”.

Lady Thatcher once famously stated that the core of Conservative principles was to be found in two things: belief in God and upholding the sanctity of the family.

Certainly around these two elements of Conservatism, even if there were none other, Her Majesty’s Muslim subjects would be, potentially, Tories. And, in fact, until recent events happened many were gravitating to our Party after a long and largely fruitless infatuation with socialism – or, rather, with the Labour Party.

Anthony Charles Linton Blair, it would seem to me, has missed few opportunities to cast himself in a conservative light to the electorate.

Yet in recent years he has appeared to me to have been a most flagrant presenter of a public religiosity, a most aggressive destroyer of the family, a most active divider of the nation, a most avid embracer of foreign adventures for the benefit, not of Her Majesty’s realms and their interests, but those of alien powers (would not this constitute, prima facie, treason?), and a most assertive promoter of the notion that Her Majesty’s Muslim subjects are not to be trusted because they are would-be terrorists.

We Tories know this last to be an outrageous calumny. But are we to remain silent? Are we to endorse the perverse view that Islam, which helped form in a seminal and fundamental manner the Western Tradition from which the Tory Way sprang, is an inimical and alien civilization?

Many of Britain’s Muslims come from the former British India in the Indian sub-continent, from Cyprus, from Malaysia, and from South, East and West Africa.

Have we Tories forgotten the sacrifices their forebears made on behalf of the Empire at Dolgorodoc in the Keren; in Burma, and at Imphal and Kohima; in Malaya and Singapore; in Java; in Indo-China; in Mesopotamia; in north Africa; in Italy; in France?

They, too, are included in the fine lines written by Lt Col John McCrae of the CEF in May 1915, “to you from failing hands we throw the torch; be yours to hold it high”.

Corporal, 69th Punjab Regiment, France 1915 – sketched by LCpl Joseph Lee 1/4BW

Will we forswear this duty, will we break faith with them, and defile their memory now by spitting in the faces of their angry youth, who only seem to want what has been promised to all Britons, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, namely, to be heard by their democratic representatives and for them to speak up on their behalf in public forums? Remember the late the Right Hon J. Enoch Powell MBE held that the duty of the Member was to articulate in Parliament what his (or her) inarticulate constituents could not?

Traditionally we have believed that government is necessary for the furtherance of the Common Weal, to constrain and trammel overmighty barons, for the maintenance of the Queen’s Peace at home, and the defence of Her realms from foreign threats. It is a public service; it is a duty; it is a vocation; it is not a profession, nor a vehicle for personal aggrandisement and enrichment.

We Tories have always recognised, and continue to do so, that in the United Kingdom Allegiance is to the Queen in person and not to any transitory government-of-the-day, nor to the amour propre of politicians, nor to any ephemeral constructs of “what it means to be British”. Such an Allegiance cannot be divided, cannot be sold, cannot be prostituted to the interests of alien powers without ceasing to be. We cannot claim to owe Allegiance to the Queen and at the same time give loyalty to a foreign entity outside her realms. We must be British subjects of the Queen pure and simple. And we Tories have always believed that we will be called to account for this on a day when there will be no prevarication and no dissembling.

We have embraced ideas of the Welfare State as being a means to promote the common weal, and agreed to levels of taxation as a means to effect Churchill’s safety net designed to catch those who fall and his ladder back up. But we have always recognised that taxation is not to become an excuse for depredations into the pockets of the populace: the Exchequer has no lien on the property of the subject, and no justification for driving him or her into beggary. This was another matter corrected by the Civil War which socialist governments seem to believe can simply be brushed aside and ignored.

We had local police constabularies to administer the Common Law on our behalf and, eventually, the Law as a whole with our consent. But the Police is not to be a national Standing Army occupying the kingdom and at war with the Queen’s subjects. It is not an instrument of government repression. It is not the tool of ambitious politicians to cow a dissenting populace.

Magna Carta held that it was the right of the freeborn subject to go about his lawful occasions without let or hindrance. In what way is the United Kingdom in 2006 a more lawless and dangerous place than England in 1215?

And what of our foreign policy and the role of Her Majesty’s Armed Forces?

We finally divested ourselves of our Empire, which I’m proud to have served, by the end of the 1960s. It is an anachronism still to be following an imperial profile in our foreign and defence policies over forty years later, especially with the end of the threat in Europe from the Warsaw Treaty Organisation.

Lord Palmerston, once a Tory, when Foreign Secretary held that “England has no friends, only interests”. Her Majesty’s forces are for the defence of the Queen’s realms, and, by extension, British interests abroad where real British interests are really threatened. It has been accepted as a modern duty to add to this disaster and humanitarian relief.

But it is no business of ours to involve ourselves in others’ wars. And others’ illegal wars of aggression should be anathema to us. Although we were related by blood and history to France, Spain and Portugal, and Germany, we were never overawed by them nor considered it an imperative to throw in our lot with any of them if our real best interests were not served thereby. So it should be with the USA, with which we are also related by blood and history, and the European Union which is our neighbour and with which we trade.

We have very much more to share with our kinsmen and women in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand – and, if the truth be known and admitted – in the Republic of Ireland than with either of the above nascent empires.

We have nothing to share, nothing to gain, nothing to learn from the hagiographic idolisers of things American.

There is nothing for Tories, whether in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, or New Zealand, in the works and ambitions of the late Democratic Senator for Washington State (USA), Henry Martin ‘Scoop’ Jackson. Why should we flirt with his idolisers?

We have better and greater heroes of our own, whose works, speeches, and actions have more to teach us, more to inspire us, and that are of direct relevance to our own traditions and our own current circumstances. Why should any British Conservative or Tory wish to involve himself or herself with such alien personalities?

There is nothing for Muslim Tories in those inappropriately named Muslim organisations which appear to be yet another translocation of American neoconservatism to these shores. Why should we listen to them or give them house room? There is nothing that they can say to us that is of value that we have not already heard from our own, home-grown Muslim leaders and thinkers. And the rest of their agenda has no relevance to our environment.

As Tories in the United Kingdom there is a common crisis we share with the Tories in Canada that we should be addressing. There is an urgent imperative that we should be consulting closely with our contemporary Tory thinkers across the Atlantic – with, for example, Senator Hugh Segal, with Professor Ron Dart, with David Orchard, with Marjaleena Repo, with Archbishop Lazar Puhalo.

Let us, therefore, in the words of the famous Gaelic motto “cleave closely to the renown of our forebears” (lean gu dlùth ri cliù ar sìnnsirean), and draw inspiration from it.

Let us find once again the Good Way – the true Tory Way – “and walk therein”.

I wrote this just over two years ago as an Open Letter to MPs (not just Conservative ones) and some peers. I only got a couple of responses. It was essentially a write-up of the extended outline of a book that I’m working up jointly with Abdul Rasjid Skinner.

I’m posting it ‘as is’ hoping to pick up on some of the points I made, insha Allah, in the coming weeks.

The Rights Of Woman

Scotland’s national poet, Robert Burns, wrote a poem which he published in 1792 – the Year of The Terror in France.

It’s not really one of his better works, whether for scansion or metre, but it was certainly daring for its day. It appears to be something of a parody of the sloganising and pamphletting that was going on in Britain as well as Europe, concerning the “Rights of Man” (in Thomas Paine’s memorable phrase).

However, it might well be listed as perhaps the first blow for a recognition of women’s rights in the modern European world.

The year he published it, it should be noted was 19 years earlier than the publication date of the first novel (Sense and Sensibility) of that icon of true feminism, Jane Austen, in 1811.

As a gesture towards International Woman’s Day on 8 March (yesterday), I offer Rabbie Burns’s poem.

The Rights Of Woman
An Occasional Address. Spoken by Miss Fontenelle on her benefit night, November 26, 1792.

While Europe’s eye is fix’d on mighty things,
The fate of Empires and the fall of Kings;
While quacks of State must each produce his plan,
And even children lisp the Rights of Man;
Amid this mighty fuss just let me mention,
The Rights of Woman merit some attention.

First, in the Sexes’ intermix’d connection,
One sacred Right of Woman is, protection. –
The tender flower that lifts its head, elate,
Helpless, must fall before the blasts of Fate,
Sunk on the earth, defac’d its lovely form,
Unless your shelter ward th’ impending storm.

Our second Right-but needless here is caution,
To keep that right inviolate’s the fashion;
Each man of sense has it so full before him,
He’d die before he’d wrong it-’tis decorum. –
There was, indeed, in far less polish’d days,
A time, when rough rude man had naughty ways,
Would swagger, swear, get drunk, kick up a riot,
Nay even thus invade a Lady’s quiet.

Now, thank our stars! those Gothic times are fled;
Now, well-bred men-and you are all well-bred-
Most justly think (and we are much the gainers)
Such conduct neither spirit, wit, nor manners.

For Right the third, our last, our best, our dearest,
That right to fluttering female hearts the nearest;
Which even the Rights of Kings, in low prostration,
Most humbly own-’tis dear, dear admiration!
In that blest sphere alone we live and move;
There taste that life of life-immortal love.
Smiles, glances, sighs, tears, fits, flirtations, airs;
‘Gainst such an host what flinty savage dares,
When awful Beauty joins with all her charms-
Who is so rash as rise in rebel arms?

But truce with kings, and truce with constitutions,
With bloody armaments and revolutions;
Let Majesty your first attention summon,
Ah! ça ira! The Majesty Of Woman!