"Revealed:
The scandal of loving families whose children are being forcibly taken
away to meet adoption targets. 'The Child Stealers',
by James Chapman and Fiona Barton.
http://www.ivorcatt.com/586.htm
Lynette Burrows
- Front page, Daily Mail, sat 20th Aug 05
THE
CHILD STEALERS
Social workers
were accused last night of tearing children away from loving families
to meet 'performance targets' for adoption. "Now Chesterton thought
that this natural authority of women would be exercised quite differently
if it were translated into political power. The instinctive despotism
would translate itself into two effects of which - I think we have ample
evidence today. One was that they would treat everybody as if they were
children - and create a 'nanny state'. ' They would turn society itself
into a great nursery' , Chesterton actually said." - Lynette, below.
Lecture given at 'Mankind' conference [chaired by Ivor Catt]. Friends
Meeting House. Euston. 28.10.00.
Ladies
& Gentlemen
On the subject
of grandiose titles, we have a book on my shelves at home called 'The
Last Two Million Years'. I've often mused about that title, why the
author was so ambitious ;and whether he thought the people buying it
would be stupid enough to think he might actually zap through the aons
in a couple of hundred pages plus photos. Well I was, and I must say
it is a useful reference book. So, when I was casting around in my mind
for a title to focus my talk today, I decided to go for the broad, offensively
simplistic title and I've called this talk, 'What is wrong with women'.
This title is
rather pleasingly ambiguous in that it can be either a simple question
ie 'what is wrong with women?' Or it could be a foreshortened statement,
'what is wrong with women' is the following….. and that is indeed
what I'm going to talk about.
I pick up the
thread of my argument from something GK.Chesterton said way back at
the beginning of the last century. He was a very prophetic writer though
often considered frivolous because of his brimming good humour. Both
Bernard Shaw and HG Wells were considered more serious writers than
GK in their day although almost everything they said turned out to be
wrong and most of what Chesterton said was right.
I was researching
his novels 'The Napoleon of Notting Hill' and 'The Man who was Thursday',
and I came across 'The Flying Inn', which is about the last pub in England.
All the rest have been banned by law in order to conform to the Islamic
beliefs of the people who govern us. How did he work that out in 1913/
or was it just a shot in the dark? No it wasn't. As an opponent of imperialism,
and a believer in the strong impulse of people to live according to
their own culture, he saw that it was inevitable that sooner or later
we should be told to pack up and go home from the colonies. He also
knew that the largely commercial interests which were the driving force
of imperialism would not abandon the effort to harness cheap labour
in the interest of trade simply because they had been thrown out of
the colonies. They would take steps to attract those they could no longer
rule in their own countries to come and settle where they might be similarly
employed to maintain profit margins on the world market.
The destiny
of Empire in the eyes of the governing class, says the hero, Dalroy,
is in four Acts. Victory over barbarians. Employment of barbarians.
Alliance with barbarians. Conquest by barbarians. The story of the Flying
Inn takes place at the point at which the fourth Act is about to be
undertaken. By this time, the British have been stripped of almost every
sign of their traditions and their national identity. Everything Eastern
is praised and accommodated and everything the British believe, is trashed.
Divorce has been mad very easy, the better to accommodate polygamy.
Sexual morality has been declared completely irrelevant, the better
to lose the citizen in a welter of 'new ways of living'. The army has
been all but abolished, but a foreign army is on stand-by in case it
is needed; the police wear fezzes to demonstrate our admiration of all
things foreign.
Into this scenario
fits the question of votes for women. Chesterton was scathing about
the franchise in any case. Only men who could fulfil a property requirement
had it anyway and it was almost entirely, a sham. The reality was that
laws were made at the behest of powerful people, without the slightest
consideration of what the mass of people wanted. It was obvious in 1914
that women would be given the vote sooner or later and this showy gesture
was considered much more pressing than that all men should receive it.
However, as Chesterton said, the franchise was always widened when the
governing class were up to no good or were in trouble. It was because
they knew it gave people no power that they gave them a vote. As a character
says, 'for whom would you cast your vote if you are against the changing
of Britain into something else?'
Very prescient,
if one considers that the last time they widened the franchise - to
18 was at precisely the time they were laying furtive plans to absorb
us into a federal Europe.
Incidentally,
another little snippet I found whilst doing my research, that brought
a smile to my normally granite features, was Chesterton being asked,
at a lecture in Oxford, 'What would you do if you were made Prime Minister?'
'I would do
what all Prime Ministers do', said Chesterton, 'I would telephone round
all the millionaires of my acquaintance and ask them what they wanted
me to do'.
But this was
only one aspect of why Chesterton was against women having the vote.
The other reason is more important and I am laying it out - not because
I think women should not have the vote today - what is done is done!
But because I think it throws some light on a lot of things we do not
like.
Chesterton's
main objection to women having the vote was the entirely complimentary
one, that he thought women's instincts were despotic.
He thought the
natural despotism of women manifested itself chiefly in the home - where
the woman was invariably the boss, whatever the social position of the
man of the house. It also manifested itself in the control and education
of children - which had been managed throughout time without benefit
of laws or regulations saying how it should be done. They had kept the
family going, along recognisably similar lines, fulfilling the needs
of husband and family, come hell or high water; in war, pestilence and
famine. The had been the rock and guide of what was arguably the most
important, and certainly the oldest, institution on earth and they had
protected its autonomy and their right to rule it, by instinct, common
sense and strength of character.
Beyond the home,
women also controlled social behaviour and had not needed the blundering
interference of 'sexual harassment' laws to ensure that men treated
them with positively exaggerated deference, nor took liberties with
them in public.
This they did
by possessing an authority that they cultivated, and which was all the
stronger for being real rather than the feeble fiction of power that
the vote gave them. It was, quintessentially their means of getting
what they wanted.
It goes without
saying, at this juncture, ladies and gentlemen, that I reject as a foolish
insult, the idea that women were oppressed by the men they bore, reared,
and married, until the second half of the 20th century. If that were
indeed true, then there is no way that anyone could argue for equality
between the sexes. At the very best, women would be late starters! The
truth, however, is that men and women with power have always oppressed
men and women without power
Women were the
biggest employers of labour until the first world War, because they
employed servants, and they showed themselves, throughout time, to be
just as capable as the meanest man, of oppressing their workers. Indeed,
domestic service still carries a seemingly inerradicable aura of servitude
and humiliation, as a monument to the many women who treated their servants
- both men and women, abysmally.
Now Chesterton
thought that this natural authority of women would be exercised quite
differently if it were translated into political power. The instinctive
despotism would translate itself into two effects of which - I think
we have ample evidence today. One was that they would treat everybody
as if they were children - and create a 'nanny state'. ' They would
turn society itself into a great nursery' , Chesterton actually said.
The second effect
would be that essentially tyrannical laws would be enacted to uphold
this re-creation of 'mother knows best'! Hence, despite the vision of
restraint and gentleness conjured up by devotees of female power in
the early days, the chief effect of women's influence on social policy
is laws that oppress parental authority. Parents no longer have the
right to discipline children as they think fit, nor to require other
people such as teachers and policemen, to give them the discipline they
need to reach adult life without a criminal record.
Moral education
is undertaken by the State and children can be introduced to gross sexual
provocation in the classroom and then supplied with the means to be
promiscuous without their parents even being told. The results of this
have been howlingly counter-productive in terms of achieving the expressed
goals; lower illegitimacy, fewer abortions, less disease. But, never
mind, 'mother is always right' if she works for the Family Planning
Association or Brooks clinics and nothing will deflect them from their
purpose.
Nor is it coincidence
that bullying authoritarianism has made social workers almost uniquely
feared and loathed amongst the common people.
Chesterton thought
that the big battalions of government, commerce and bureaucracies would
welcome this natural prescriptive tendency of women in public policy,
the better to further their own manipulative ends, whilst seeming to
be
impeccably 'pro-women'.
And, indeed, it is remarkable how many 'dirty jobs' are given to women
in making public policy; the latest being Lady Gavron's plans to turn
us into a 'community of communities' rather than a nation. The 'cover'
is that women are being 'empowered' by such jobs. The truth, I suspect,
is that they are the fall guys.
Finally, an
effect that Chesterton forsaw but not to its full extent, the rest of
society would lose its bottle at the same time as women outside the
closed ranks of the sisterhood lost their confidence. Men and women
are in an inseperable union because they both come from families and
go on to make families themselves. But the translocation of a feminine
way of doing things outside the family and community has narrowed, and
therefore concentrated their effect into more tyrannical government
and a diminution of liberty for everyone.
They cannot
get decent housing unless both of them work because of the pressure
on housing produced by the government maintaining its cheap labour force
by importing millions of new households into the country. Criticism
of such a policy is silenced by the new commandment that it is 'racism'
to say that people have a right to be consulted about who is settled
in their country.
They are silenced
over such things because the very idea of traditional right and wrong
has been dispensed with by the new morality of liberalism. We have a
unique and shameless collection of perverts, ratters on their marriage
vows, and takers of money from the highest bidder - and the media turns
a more or less blind eye because they too are afraid to break ranks.
Well, it's a
mess I'll grant you. But, if it's any comfort, I'll tell you how it
was solved in 'The Flying Inn'. The clever plan to turn Britain into
something else failed because, clever as it was, it had in it the seeds
of its own destruction. If 'liberalism' means that people have lost
the ability to put a case for what is right and wrong - they have no
choice but to resort to other means. When endurance becomes worse than
danger, the hero says, then people will get not just what they want;
but everything they want.
The collapse
of communism is the perfect model for what Chesterton was talking about.
Because the most organised opposition to communism came from Poland,
it came via the Christian church - which has a concrete dogma that the
individual personality has a sanctity, dignity and responsibility beyond
anything politics or economics can demand. They won the argument so,
in the end, they didn't need to fight.
We must, ladies
and gentlemen, learn to be more brave and to articulate arguments for
what we believe without fear of condemnation. We must not allow ourselves
to be silenced by the pipsqueaks of power. Another aphorism of Chesterton
with which I shall end, is that when a people have lost their courage,
they cannot rely on keeping any other virtue.
Thank you, ladies
and gents. Thank you.
Lynette Burrows.
"Stolen
by the State", by Fiona Barton, Daily Mail, 20aug05, p16/17
