From the Conservative Poster Archive, poster 1929-31, “Socialism would mean inspectors all round”.
Conservative Poster 1929-31
Too true, unfortunately: see Harry Snook’s Crossing the Threshold - 266 ways the State can enter your home from the Centre for Policy Studies (PDF) and my related question in debate.
As Londoners take to defending their own lives, property and communities, it seems the state is failing in its first duty: to defend life, liberty and property. A good number of my constituents have written — dismayed by the shameful, reckless behaviour they have seen on TV — demanding that tougher action be taken with rioters.
My understanding of the law (and I am not a lawyer) is that “A person may use such force as is reasonable in the circumstances in the prevention of crime, or in effecting or assisting in the lawful arrest of offenders or suspected offenders or of persons unlawfully at large.” I also understand that defendants at trial cannot determine if the force they used was reasonable, since of course they will always think it was.
That raises at least two important questions:
It seems little has been said about the former and that there is too much caution about the latter. To use high-pressure hoses and rubber bullets is a serious decision, but I am quite certain it is not one which requires the consent of rioters…
We are far from bringing back the Riot Act, but I hope tomorrow in Parliament we establish that the state’s duty is to protect the law-abiding and their property first and foremost and that the police do not require the consent of rioters before acting with reasonable force.
The Protection of Freedoms Bill is radical only in its moderation and extreme only in its conservatism. Nevertheless, it has been and remains a privilege to serve on the Bill Committee, for which you can find Hansard here.
I have made a number of contributions but I think I most enjoyed saying this:
Steve Baker: Following the exchange of interventions, which I very much enjoyed, and reflecting on the amendment, I am aware of a principle that comes out, which I think could be more deeply entrenched in the Bill. If we were to look for a principle and express it in one word, for me that word would be “property.” The amendment is quite insightful—although of course I will not be supporting it—by bringing together the questions of bailiffs and squatters. The hon. Member for Gedling has hit the nail on the head. The issue in talking about freedom is often property. However, we would struggle to be consistent about the application of property rights. Without wishing to stray out of order, Mr Caton, if we were to apply property rights to, for example, wheel clamping, we might have found ourselves obliged to continue allowing clamping on private property, which is not something that any of our constituents seem to want, unless they suffer from the problem of rogue drivers.
Returning to the amendment, I think the hon. Gentleman has proposed an insightful amendment. The principle that he is searching for, on which all freedom could be hung, is the concept of property, and I would invite the Government to consider that concept throughout the Bill.
I enjoyed slipping into using “commisars” too of course. The Bill Committee continues…
A fascinating article on Rousseau’s Form of Socialism, discovered today, which reproduces this quote:
The first man who, having enclosed a piece of land, took it into his head to say: “This belongs to me,” and found people simple enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society. What crimes, wars, murders, what miseries and horrors would have been spared the human race by him who, snatching out the stakes or filling in the ditch, should have cried to his fellows, “Beware of listening to this impostor; you are lost if you forget that the fruits belong to all and that the earth belongs to none.”
When a supposed intellectual has matters so very wrong, what is to be said? Read on…
Via BT ruling could open pension claim floodgates – Telegraph:
Taxpayers could be on the hook for tens of billions of pounds to cover a string of privatised companies’ pension schemes after the precedent set by BT’s landmark “crown guarantee” victory.
What next, I wonder?
Between the Institute of Economic Affairs, the Adam Smith Institute, The TaxPayers’ Alliance and The Cobden Centre, it is pretty clear that the British State owes trillions of pounds.
Yes, trillions of pounds. Somewhere between £4,800,000,000,000 and £7,900,000,000,000. That is, up to about £300,000 for every household in Britain.
Much of this comprises unfunded pension liabilities, so default or inflation would be particularly wicked.
Worse, even funded pension schemes hold government debt, meaning that private pension schemes also rely on the State. Vast swathes of the population are relying on someone else being taxed later.
The idea that the State can underwrite BT’s pension scheme is a denial of the facts. And yet, as Disraeli wrote, “Despair is the conclusion of fools.”
If we are to find a hopeful path between denial and despair, then, sooner or later, we must reinvent this country. We must stop lending to the State and start saving by investing in productive activity. Everyone who can is going to have to seek to live at their own expense. The State will have to get out of the way and let the entrepreneurs – and that is all of us – turn our fortunes around by searching creatively for opportunities to produce value for others.
No doubt we must rediscover virtue too, but the law cannot deliver that.
A forthcoming Channel 4 documentary will explain our situation and make the case for the reinvention of Britain. I contributed a substantial interview, although I do not know the extent to which it will be used. Its working title is Britain: The Horror Movie. It will be transmitted sometime this Autumn
In the meantime, I recommend Bastiat, who wrote:
The state is the great fiction by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else.
I first mentioned Understanding the Law by Geoffrey Rivlin after observing the proceedings of Wycombe Magistrates’ Court. At last, I have finished it.
The book is a tour de force covering the law and its importance, the courts, the constitution, Parliament, the police, the judiciary, human rights, discrimination, the legal profession, the work of the courts and various historical, practical and ancillary subjects. At 370 pages, it is a considerable read but a triumph of brevity and wit in view of its scope. I enjoyed it.
However, I find myself for the first time, though inevitably not the last, in some disagreement with a judge. On page 334, by prefacing his remarks with “There seems to be no limit to man’s greed”, Rivlin appears to criticise the application of property rights to natural resources: he seems to separate property rights and responsible stewardship. I believe this is a mistake: sensible people take care of what they own, so property rights promote stewardship. Perhaps this is merely a weary aside but neither “property” nor “private property” appear in the index.
Happily, the fundamental importance of the right to own and enjoy property is explained in the first few pages of the book, but I lament the absence of either a chapter or an index entry on the subject. The essential weakness of property rights in contemporary society is set out in some detail by Shaffer in Boundaries of Order, so I was disappointed if not surprised to find this weakness present in Rivlin’s book by omission. As Mises explained, if classical liberalism were to be condensed to a single word, it would be “property”: we should not be astonished to find in these statist days a lack of emphasis on this fundamental concept.
Nevertheless, Understanding the Law is an excellent introduction to the English legal system and its practice today. I recommend it but perhaps consider reading Shaffer too.
In response to my remarks on the illegitimacy of banning particular items of clothing, I have been criticised for asserting the concept of self-ownership: the idea that each of us has an inviolable property right in our own person. It turns out this is a difficult concept:
Property is the most fundamental and complex of social facts, and the most important of human interests; it is, therefore, the hardest to understand, the most delicate to meddle with, and the easiest to dogmatize about.
– William Graham Sumner, quoted in Boundaries of Order.
However:
The conflicts, disorder, and destructiveness that are so expressive of modern society arise from our confusion over the nature of property as a system of social order. So insensitive have we become to the role of property as the most important civilizing influence in our world, that we have even learned to regard the infliction of our wills upon the lives and property of others as expressions of “socially responsible” conduct.
– Boundaries of Order, Butler Shaffer, 2009.
Questions relating to society are rarely considered in terms of property, and yet it is the most fundamental of social facts. What is property, how is it to be controlled and by whom? What does “ownership” mean? These are some of the questions which Butler Shaffer sets out to answer in Boundaries of Order – Private Property as a Social System.
Shaffer shows that control is the defining factor in the ownership of property. Liberty is not an abstract philosophical principle, but a way of describing the autonomous nature of life in its myriad forms. Liberty and spontaneity express the essence of living systems. Shaffer’s book is about how and by whom authority is to be exercised over individual lives. He demonstrates that whether or not we choose to claim self-ownership goes to the heart of what it means to be a free person and that liberty and self-ownership are synonymous: “We are free only insofar as we insist upon the exclusive authority to direct our own energies and other resources.”
I shall leave the subject here. If you wish to explore the concept of self-ownership and property as the basis of a peaceful, cooperative society, then I recommend Shaffer, which may be bought or downloaded here.
In the meantime, in the words of Number 6:
I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.
From bella gerens, an excellent explanation and defence of libertarianism:
The truth is that advocates of freedom are found all over the political spectrum, but the only true libertarians are the ones who advocate it at all times in all circumstances, from the bedroom to the wallet – who believe that ‘freedom from’ is the only state of being consistent with the dignity and majesty of humankind.
‘Freedom from’ is the most important part of that ideology. Freedom from coercion. Freedom from interference. Freedom from oppression.
‘Freedom to’ is where the misunderstandings enter. People on the right think libertarians are advocating freedom to burgle, rob, rape, murder – because they read ‘freedom’ to mean ‘freedom to do whatever you please.’
People on the left think libertarians are advocating exploitation, pollution, callousness, and the primacy of making (and keeping) money above all else – because they read ‘freedom’ to mean ‘freedom to do whatever you please.’
And both sides think libertarians consider the laws we have prohibiting these activities to be a restriction on freedom.
When will they realise that they don’t understand?
It is now undeniable that a century or so of managerialism — of thinking the state knows best and is entitled to trespass on your private property for your own good and for that of your fellows — has succeeded in creating a segment of society within which anything goes and from which it is increasingly hard to escape: a segment populated by libertines who torment themselves and others despite a state which tries desperately to care for them at vast expense, an expense it forces on everyone, including those of meagre means.
Of course, the approach has now also succeeded in ruining us all, though not all have yet realised it, while delivering a state with tremendous power over our lives, and virtually every aspect of our lives too. Consider:
The state now looms far larger in many parts of Britain than it did in former Soviet satellite states such as Hungary and Slovakia as they emerged from communism in the 1990s, when state spending accounted for about 60% of their economies.
The question now is not how state power should be used to save us, but how state power can be gracefully dismantled so that we can save ourselves and one another from a system which plainly does not work.
What should now follow is a social system of mutual cooperation based on private property and the rule of law. Whether such a system comes to pass is up to us.
Predictably:
Millions of middle-class home owners living in desirable neighbourhoods are facing higher council tax bills after the next election following a secret Government exercise to assess the “niceness” of different areas.
