[Part 3/5] Debate: Peter Hitchens argues 'Great' Britain is a fantasy

so after depressive foist will we've had emotional foible --is-- kate and now we're going to go on to Peter Hitchens member of the International Socialists until 1975 columnist for The Mail I'm so he thought you were extremely a Trotskyite colonists for do walk up as I'm talking on the mail on Sunday occasional broadcaster and author of several books most recently the phony victory and attracted to both parties but now belongs to none at all Peter Hitchens lifts our spirits yeah good evening I'm here actually dissuade you the virtues of gloom this this this Kate's optimism is Suze optimism is a is a terrible code for living and one's will always end in unhappiness it's being pessimistic that keeps me so cheerful I want to I wonder first of all that explain to you exactly why these you should adopt gloom by saying this brief story about a welder working late at night in one of the old shipyards we used to have in Clydebank and no longer do working so late that he was probably the last person in the dock working or a brother precarious piece of scaffolding on the side of perhaps an ocean liner and as he prepared to leave suddenly the scaffolding gave way beneath him and he fell many many feet until eventually he grabbed onto the side of the dock and below him perhaps 200 feet of concrete and then a puddle of oily water and nobody to be seen so he called out is there anybody up there and a vast sepulcro voice came from very very far about saying I am here my son and he said what shall I do and the voice said let go he said is there anybody else up there I am the supporter of voice I am Telling You let go let go of your illusions let go of the ridiculous fantasy that we have that we are a rich powerful important country and many years ago Denis Healey said that we should probably get used to being an island Austria I wish that we can now look forward to anything as stable and prosperous as that but even so it might be wise if we began to understand just how precipitous our fall has been I grew up at the very end of the Empire I was born in the Empire I was a subject of His Majesty King George 2-6 when I was born in Malta then the headquarters of the now non-existent Mediterranean fleet of the Royal Navy and I saw it concentrate slightly in the next few minutes on two things one of them railways and the other of the Navy because they dominated so much as my childhood the Britain of those days was full of wheezing clanking panting steam engines with names like 601 squadron and Sir Winston Churchill and I saw of much of my life great grey warships gliding in and out of naval bases so I was moved by these things that I would just tell a couple of brief stories here about how these things have changed in not in my lifetime but in what you might call the recent lifetime of the country in 1906 the greatest advance in military technology of the era the construction of HMS dreadnought the first really heavily armoured heavily gun battleship which completely changed the naval arms race and the balance of power in the world was completed in one year and one day in portsmouth dockyard from the laying of the keel to the finishing and launching of the ship it took 14 months before she was actually steaming in that 19 in 2007 the then Labor government ordered the construction of HMS Queen Elizabeth the new aircraft carrier looking very much like a multi-story car park afloat which will be obsolete by the time sometime next year 14 years after it's the announcement through its construction by the time it actually obtains any aircraft well that's one example in 1836 the bill or rather the Act authorizing the construction of the Great Western Railway from London to Bristol was passed by Parliament after a long stroll immediately without any aid of JCB's or any kind of modern technology or electronics eisenberg Kingdom Brunel coop commenced to construct what was then the most advanced and in some ways still is the most advanced piece of railway line from London to Bristol it took him five years by contrast what is known to travelers like me on that line as first late Western began to electrify it so many years ago that I'd forgotten how long ago it was ran over budget to a colossal extent and never finished it these seems to me to sum up in many ways the contrast between the Britain that was and the Britain which they were still fondly imagine we still are and the Britain that is one which was competent effective capable and efficient and one which is now sloppy incapable of competing or indeed devising anything worth doing this extends into so many things and kate's spoke of our freedom I know why is she spoke of it in such in such as I put it a few systems I I took some time studying this apart from Michael house assault on the rights of silence and William Hague's and Antony blares assaults on the laws against double jeopardy and prosecution we have in my lifetime pretty much dismantled jury trial majority verdict means that the independent jury is really no longer in existence and make ceaseless attacks on civil liberty on every conceivable occasion on the weakest possible excuse I was amused the other day you have to take a moment to think about this when I saw a headline prisons to introduce Airport style security this means that people who've been convicted with quite serious crimes murder theft armed robbery that kind of thing Oh finally now on arrival in prison going to be subjected to what you innocent persons have to undergo when you are fly to Paris is this the right way around on the contrary it's an indication I mean when you when you fly anyway which I try not to do and you have to have your testicles scanned by a revolving machine and your luggage search and be treated as if you're a guilty person this is a country in which the presumption of guilt is now pretty much universal and that is where we live and the idea that we're still a beacon of freedom seems to me to be fanciful beacon of freedom when I was at school it was generally stated that a set of English a levels were equivalent to an an American University degree and this is one of the reasons why there was anything called the brain drain where the United States spent an awful lot of money scooping up the products largely of our extremely effective and excellent state grammar schools to go and work there so what did we do we abolished in our schools and and created in the name of equality probably the worst state education system in the advanced world whose certificates are multiple and many people have large piles of them which are in relation to the to the education available in this country fifty years ago much as a ten billion mark note was in relation to a golden sovereigns they are spectacular but worthless and our education system is a national disgrace in is one of the reasons for many of the deep problems which you have which which we have been unable to face and have attempted to overcome with amongst other things mass immigration most of the other vainglorious statistics about our being that what is it the sixth or seventh largest economy are actually based on on more fantasies our actual position in GDP per capita is around about twenty sixth in the world alright current account deficit is pulling our levels of public and private debt are pretty much unprecedented in peacetime and are simply unrepairable to imagine for a moment that this can possibly end well is to be self living and the ultimate symbol of this hubris is ridiculous pretense of being a great power we a country which could not defeat a collection of gangsters and protection racketeers and surrendered to them in 1998 in northern ireland still pretend to be a world power and maintained and proposed to extend and renew the Trident nuclear weapon a gigantic Cold War superpower weapon totally useless to us which we cannot afford this is the symbol of all the hubris which we possess it is absolutely everything that is wrong with this country the fantasy that we are more important than we are the fantasy that we are richer than we are the fantasy that we stand for anything much anymore all things which will never ladies and gentlemen never under any circumstances be put right as long as we entertain these delusions and that is why it is so important to say the things that I'm saying I'm not just saying them because because I've been invited to say them I am saying that because I believe them to be true I'm saying that because if there is to be any future for this country which I've frankly seriously doubt then it has to be achieved by recognition of reality I love every field and hedgerow of this country I was brought up to believe that it was a beacon of all kinds of wonderful things which I see rotting away I was brought up pretty much to know by heart John of Gaunt's dying speech but what do I see that this country which was wont to conquer others have now made shameful conquest of itself and it is because we need to recognize this reality that I urge you so very much to vote for this motion thank you you

Channel: Intelligence Squared

Views: 88,352

Keywords: peter hitchens, boris johnson, jeremy corbyn, united kingdom explained, united kingdom history, british empire, intelligence squared debates, intelligence squared, british history, great britain, britain debate, fantasy

Id: JAXnpZlcGp0

Length: 10min 54sec (654 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 05 2020