In the church of St Lawrence Jewry, in London in March 1978, an invited guest set out the following analysis -
"Freedom will destroy itself if it is not exercised within some sort of moral framework, some body of shared beliefs.....It appears to me that there are two very general and seemingly conflicting ideas about society which come down to us from the New Testament. There is that great Christian doctrine that we are all members one of another, .....from this we learn our inter-dependence, and the great truth that we do not achieve happiness or salvation in isolation from each other but as members of society, That is one of the great Christian truths which has influenced our political thinking; but there is also another, that we are all responsible moral beings with a choice between good and evil, .......You might almost say that the whole of political wisdom consists in getting these two ideas in the right relationship to each other."
The speaker was Margaret Thatcher. Why then is this passage ignored, and why have her critics seized on another of her observations, when she wrote that Society " is made up of individuals and communities. If individuals were discouraged and communities disorientated by the state stepping in to take decisions which should properly be made by people, families and neighbourhoods then society's problems would grow not diminish" - a passage which resulted in the accusation that she believed that there was no such thing as Society. And after all, only individuals can take decisions, even when the decisions are concerned with the interests of Society
One reason for ignoring her other observations on society is that her critics have no knowledge of it. But more fundamentally they do not like the fact that she was moving the political balance away from the first of her two apparently conflicting ideas and towards the second, to release individual responsibility and encourage initiative. There is no doubt that the post war consensus had cramped the freedom of the individual to create, and to act freely, and that she was right to correct the balance.
In the document "Who is my neighbour" issued by the House of Bishops for the General Election of 2015, paragraph 59 remarks that " We are most human when we know ourselves to be dependent on others. That is something we first learn in families ....[and] they flourish best when there are networks of friendship, neighbourliness and mutual support around them." Mrs Thatcher's views almost exactly. But the paragraph continues " Our society celebrates the autonomy of individuals but does too little to acknowledge that dependency on others is what makes human beings social creatures" - This may be the case, but one sees here and in other paragraphs in the document that distrust of the second of Mrs Thatcher's ideas. There is no distinction between restoring individual responsibility and selfishness. . " Everything is what it is" said the philosopher Bishop Butler " and not another thing."
Note. The lack of understanding in the House of Bishops is also demonstrated by the statement in paragraph 36, that Mrs Thatcher believed in unregulated markets. In fact the regulation of the activities of financial institutions was vastly increased over her period as Prime Minister. It is this sort of uninformed and simply incorrect superficiality that makes one despair of any kind of moral leadership from the Church. Do the Bishops ever read anything to do with the subjects on which they so freely comment?
"Freedom will destroy itself if it is not exercised within some sort of moral framework, some body of shared beliefs.....It appears to me that there are two very general and seemingly conflicting ideas about society which come down to us from the New Testament. There is that great Christian doctrine that we are all members one of another, .....from this we learn our inter-dependence, and the great truth that we do not achieve happiness or salvation in isolation from each other but as members of society, That is one of the great Christian truths which has influenced our political thinking; but there is also another, that we are all responsible moral beings with a choice between good and evil, .......You might almost say that the whole of political wisdom consists in getting these two ideas in the right relationship to each other."
The speaker was Margaret Thatcher. Why then is this passage ignored, and why have her critics seized on another of her observations, when she wrote that Society " is made up of individuals and communities. If individuals were discouraged and communities disorientated by the state stepping in to take decisions which should properly be made by people, families and neighbourhoods then society's problems would grow not diminish" - a passage which resulted in the accusation that she believed that there was no such thing as Society. And after all, only individuals can take decisions, even when the decisions are concerned with the interests of Society
One reason for ignoring her other observations on society is that her critics have no knowledge of it. But more fundamentally they do not like the fact that she was moving the political balance away from the first of her two apparently conflicting ideas and towards the second, to release individual responsibility and encourage initiative. There is no doubt that the post war consensus had cramped the freedom of the individual to create, and to act freely, and that she was right to correct the balance.
In the document "Who is my neighbour" issued by the House of Bishops for the General Election of 2015, paragraph 59 remarks that " We are most human when we know ourselves to be dependent on others. That is something we first learn in families ....[and] they flourish best when there are networks of friendship, neighbourliness and mutual support around them." Mrs Thatcher's views almost exactly. But the paragraph continues " Our society celebrates the autonomy of individuals but does too little to acknowledge that dependency on others is what makes human beings social creatures" - This may be the case, but one sees here and in other paragraphs in the document that distrust of the second of Mrs Thatcher's ideas. There is no distinction between restoring individual responsibility and selfishness. . " Everything is what it is" said the philosopher Bishop Butler " and not another thing."
Note. The lack of understanding in the House of Bishops is also demonstrated by the statement in paragraph 36, that Mrs Thatcher believed in unregulated markets. In fact the regulation of the activities of financial institutions was vastly increased over her period as Prime Minister. It is this sort of uninformed and simply incorrect superficiality that makes one despair of any kind of moral leadership from the Church. Do the Bishops ever read anything to do with the subjects on which they so freely comment?
So often good words end up in bad deeds; I'm also conscious of the notion that all power corrupts - it seems to have done so in a peculiar way with Tony Blair - however fine the intentions and the actions at the start of a term of office.
ReplyDeleteYour statement about Tony Blair and power is well expressed ( "peculiar way")
ReplyDelete