Latest / Thinking Class / #056 - Prof. Robert Tombs - Why We Cannot Escape History: England's Past Will Define Its Future

Transcript

#056 - Prof. Robert Tombs - Why We Cannot Escape History: England's Past Will Define Its Future · Thinking Class

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, classmates, and welcome to Thinking Class.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm John Gillam and today I'm speaking with Professor Robert Toomes.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Robert is Professor Emeritus of French history at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of St.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: John's College, Cambridge.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: His first book, That Sweet Enemy, The French and the British From the Sun Came to the Present, co-written with his wife Isabel, was published in 2006.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: His second, The English and Their History, was published by Alan Lane in 2014.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: And his latest, The Sovereign Isle, Britain in and out of Europe, was a Sunday Times bestseller.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: In this episode, Robert and I think out loud about whether England and Britain are in decline, how England's national identity was formed, and the country's historical stability and contributions to culture, why we should beware of the rise of radical ideologies that seek to rewrite history, the importance of recognizing England's rich past and the current cultural and political landscape, the complexities of the British Constitution, and whether we need a written constitution to safeguard ancient liberties, the cultural kinship between the Anglosphere and France, and why we need to make a conscious effort to preserve cultural heritage and much, much more.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: I was delighted to get the opportunity to speak to Robert.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: His book, The English and Their History, bowled me over.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember thinking that this is quite the contribution to make to a nation's understanding of itself.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: I highly recommend it.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: And Robert is also someone who was, prior to me reading that book, the key influence on my own thinking about Brexit and Britain's relationship with Europe in the wake of the referendum in 2016.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: Robert is affable, gentlemanly, and as engaging in interview as he is in written word.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: As I've mentioned in previous episodes, this has become part of an unintentional mini-series within Thinking Class that explores the values, history, culture, and genetic background of the British peoples.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: So check out the other episodes and as always press follow, subscribe, share on whichever platform you watch or listen to the show on.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: Let's grow this show together.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: Enjoy the show, classmates.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: Professor Robert Toomes, welcome to Thinking Class.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for joining me.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: Pleasure to be here.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: Robert, it's an absolute honour of mine to have you here.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: You're a professor emeritus of French history at St.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: John's College, Cambridge, an Englishman infused with some Irish blood, and you've made a large contribution, in fact, many large contributions to understandings of history and culture.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: And specifically here to talk about your project, which resulted in the book of the English and their history.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to dive right into that and uh and and get a sense of how the nation came to be, uh, its people, its culture, what what it is, how it's changed, and what the future might hold for it.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: And let's dive right in with a quote from your book, which is by the standards of humanity as a whole, England over the centuries has been among the richest, safest, and best governed places on the earth, as periodical influxes of people testify.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: Living standards in the 14th century were higher than in much of the world in the 20th.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: And yet, Robert, I think it's safe to say we live in an age where you can't get moved for talk of decline, managed to decline, we're not what we were.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: We ought to accept our place in the world.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: You quote at one point John Maynard Keane saying that England is sticky with self-pity.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: Why do you think it is that we see ourselves in decline?
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: And do you believe that we are?
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's a very interesting question, which would require uh I'll try not to give it too long an answer.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and could I start with a kind of uh anecdote in a way?
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: I went to you, you always learn in history, you always you always got much more to learn because you know there's such a lot of it for one thing.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: But I went to a talk given by one of my colleagues on um medieval England, and he was talking about how well governed England was, what a remarkably participatory system of government it was.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: I think 40% of the adult population, at least of the male population, was in some way involved in government, which of course is much higher than now.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um it was it was a wealthy country, it was one in which the elites were not um constantly fighting each other and fighting the king, that they all had an interest in things working well, and on the whole, they did work well.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and uh the only thing that went seriously wrong was if you had a seriously bad king.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, you nowadays you might say that that could be a seriously bad politician elected to.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't think um so and I said to him at the end, why do we have such a different idea about the past?
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: I I sort of had an inkling of what he might say.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, when when the story is in many ways so good, why do we have such a pessimistic view of our history?
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, people talk about, oh, you know, it's medieval, or uh people often say, how can this still be happening in the 21st century, as if we've reached a you know a peak which no other no other generation history could possibly have have equaled.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and his answer was it's it really comes down to Whig history, which was the history of England and Britain, and indeed in some ways of the world, as told by the Whig Party from the 18th century onwards, which saw our history as one of struggle between people in Parliament, uh, which saw the Midl the Middle Ages as a time of darkness and squalor and violence, uh which was essentially a story of progress.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um there's a wonderful satire of this that you may know called 1066 and all that, which is um which is supposed it was written by a couple of school teachers, and it's about how school children were taught history in a sense, or what they picked up from it.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: And it was always about how things were getting better and better, until England became the top nation, and then history stopped.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you could say, well, that that version of weak history was was was exported to America, and after the fall of the Soviet Union, that's what they did think, that America was now the top nation and history had stopped, and we know that history never stops.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: But so what I was going to say is that our view of the past and the view, our view of our past, is very much a cons, of course, a constructed thing.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's constructed by historians to some extent, but it's often constructed by politicians and intellectuals of all sorts who were trying to tell a particular story.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: And in this case, it was the story of what we might call the left, though they didn't use that term then.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: But it was all about the triumph of the left and how the values of the left came to be the values of the nation.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it started going wrong, because the story is supposed to end in triumph, and it starts going wrong when triumph seems to be eluding us or things seem to be, for some reason, going wrong.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so my point first of all is we have had a pretty lucky history, but we often haven't told it that way because it was a political narrative that was talking about the terrible days of the past and the wonderful days of the present.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: When when the wonderful days of the present seem somehow to be not so wonderful, then you've got a kind of uh feeling of disappointment.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: You know, what's gone wrong?
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_01: And as you you raise the point of decline, why are we in decline?
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I would say to that, well, we're we the idea of decline is a very is a very dubious one.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: Decline from what, from when, to what?
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: Uh as we all know, we are now, uh, and in some ways this is progress.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: We're we are the we are richer than we've ever been.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: We live longer than we ever have.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: Uh in some in some ways things are better, in some ways not not better, in some ways not perhaps not so good.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: But in many ways you can't you can't talk about a downhill slope from some time in the past.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: There's no golden age.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and I think that therefore the the people who talk about decline and who who um who are constantly lamenting the the awful state of things, and I I do that myself sometimes, should at least keep a sense of proportion and think to themselves, was there ever a golden age in the past?
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: To which the answer is almost certainly not.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: And if we think there was, it's because we don't know enough about it.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: And also, are things really so bad now?
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: And are they really so bad here?
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it may be that the people who tend to be very declinist about Britain may be having second thoughts when they see what's happening across the Channel in France or across the Atlantic in America.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: But I think, you know, we we have to say, yes, there are lots of things which we should be doing better, and there are problems we have which are quite serious.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: But to think of us in the state of terminal decline is is really pretty silly and probably um damaging in the sense at least it creates like uh it saps the will, it creates a kind of cynicism.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and I think that that is something that we should be wary of.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: And uh if that's if that's not already too long an answer, I'd say that the idea of decline is often, and I think you you may have referred to this, is often people who say, well, once Britain was a superpower, and now we're just a medium-sized country.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: Well, um this is simply wrong from both ends of the of the argument.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: Britain was never a superpower.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it was always, and it's the people who ruled it always knew this.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: It was a relatively small country with a relatively small population.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: And for a time it had a very large empire, but then so did Portugal, so did Belgium, so did Holland.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: Didn't make them superpowers.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: And the British Empire was always a very ramshackle uh organization.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: As for now, I mean people say, oh, you know, we're only a medium-sized power.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I mean, medium-sized, I I look you you can look it up on the on lists of um GDP, or you can look it up on lists of uh global defense spending and so on.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: Medium-sized powers are countries like Algeria.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um, Britain is not a medium-sized power.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: Britain is, uh, and I've said this before, is what it has been for the past 300 years, one of the half-dozen or so most powerful states in the world.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I think if we realize that we are a powerful but small state, not a decline superpower, uh, but we are what we've always been, it might make us more able to see what our place in the world should really be, without either being too arrogant or too subservient.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: But, you know, if if people say, oh, well, you know, surely we're in decline, I'd say, well, when in when in your view is the time in which Britain was the superpower?
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I think if people ever answer that question, they tend to say, either, well, you know, in 1943 we were one of the big three and so on.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: Well, in 1943, we we were mobilizing, but I can't remember the figure, 60% of our GDP for the war effort.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: People uh the whole population was um was conscripted, including women, the only country who conscripted women.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: Well, um, yeah, uh we were making a huge effort then, but it wasn't an effort, it was an effort out of all proportion to our real size.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and all people say, well, you know, the Victorian age, Britain ruled the waves.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: Gladstone, Disraeli, Salisbury, all those people were very well aware of the vulnerability of Britain and the very limited nature of its of its power in the world.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: And um I sometimes think, well, we're now the leading, we're probably the leading military power in Western Europe, um, which we've never been in our peacetime history before.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: That's it's an odd measure of decline.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: And we are doing quite a bit to help Ukraine against Russia.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: Gladstone, Disraeli would, I doubt they would ever have thought that it was Britain's role or Britain's capacity would enable us to uh to be supporting a war on the frontiers of Russia.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: It would have been far outside what they thought of as our scope.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_01: So I think this idea of decline is just simply doesn't fit the facts.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: And it it's usually said by people who either have some sort of acts to grind or who really haven't got much of a sense of history.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: If that doesn't sound too arrogant.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: No, I think I think when you're a professor of emeritus of the history at Cambridge, I think I think you can say it from a position of authority, Robert.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's that can be accepted.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_01: Not everybody in Cambridge would agree.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: But I think you know, it one has to be willing to argue about these things and not just take them for granted.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: And and you know, history is about disagreement to a large extent, um, but it's they're disagreements that can usually be resolved by a careful look at the evidence and by by trying to argue the case out.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think um one of the things that's one of the things that's that's gone wrong with our historical discourse as a country is the belief that there's no truth in history, it's all just a lot of stories, and you can just choose the story you like.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um and that's that I think is very damaging too.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: Well, well, let's think about the story of of England and and how it began and and a little bit about how uh how how we understand our history now and what we might do with it once we know it.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: So you described England's formation, I think, to the opening pages of your book, The English in their history, uh, as England as an idea, and that then as a kingdom, then as a country, a people, and a culture.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: And later on in the book, when you're talking about a politician who uses the the notion of decline for their own ends, you were referring to Jeffrey Howe, the deputy prime minister for Margaret Thatcher, as he was resigning.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: He he you quoted him and said, It's essential not to cut ourselves off from the reality of power, not to retreat into a ghetto of sentimentality about our past.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: Thinking about England's formation and the things that make it unique and its national characteristics.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: How is it that you think we can fight for our history in an age of perhaps a lack of historical understanding without being blinded only by virtues and sentimentality?
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_01: England is an unusual country because of its antiquity and because of its a relative degree of uh of continuity in its institutions, its its boundaries, and so on.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: Uh even compared with our European neighbors, some of which are also old.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: Norway, but but then Norway was part of a confederation until the early 20th century.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: Uh French boundaries, French Francis frontiers were not fixed till after the Second World War.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the same is true of Germany and so on.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: Poland was shifted a large uh a long way uh west by the Russians.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: So we have been, partly because we're in Ireland, we've been pretty stable.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think we've tended to take a great deal for granted and and at times to be complacent.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_01: Perhaps that's a one of our national characteristics.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_01: You think nothing can ever really go wrong.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um but the origins are, as you said, an idea, and uh the idea principally came from the um a monk or Bede, the Venerable Bede, who wrote the first history of um of England or the English people, which didn't really exist then, in the sense that England itself was divided into a number of kingdoms.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: And uh but Bede thought that it was a spiritual unity.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_01: It was um the the origin of England was therefore, in Bede's view, the English church and the conversion of England to Christianity.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_01: And that was God's will, and and that was what made the English.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um so the idea existed before the reality, uh, and indeed that's true of very many nations.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: Uh distinguished uh historian of of of nation nationalism said it's it's nationalists that make nations, it's not nations that make nationalists.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so a lot of nations are in in some ways invented, or they're they're thought up by people, and England was in in that sense thought up by by Bede.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_01: But it was made a kingdom, as I guess we all know, many people have seen the television series about King Alfred.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it was it was largely King Alfred and his his immediate successors who made a kingdom of England, and um mainly through their their struggles with with invading Vikings.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: And the fact that England came into being in these very testing circumstances did leave, I think, a trace, which is that um, well, I said in the book slightly flippantly, one of the characteristics of being English is paying a lot of tax.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_01: But the the the English kingdom had to become efficient because otherwise it would not have survived.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: So this sort of Darwinian process of struggle made the king, the English kingdom, um, uh a very powerful one and and and a centralized one, and one which for centuries had a high degree of of popular participation, uh, because people realised that their security depended on the security of the kingdom.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: Uh is that that patriotism, they they wouldn't have called it that, but it was a sense of being somehow part of the same uh the same theme.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um and the fact uh partly of the the strength of the state and partly being on an island, um, which was not um was not quite a moat defensive, as Shakespeare put it, because seas are very easy to cross, but it was at least uh a certain a certain barrier to to mass invasion.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: And uh and so I think that for that reason, not not being invaded, or at least not invaded since not being properly invaded since 1066.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: There were lots of other invasions, some of them successful, but not since the Norman invasion was there a major cultural change.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_01: There was there was 1688, of course, the Glorious Revolution, which was also an invasion by the Dutch, but it was an invasion that people welcomed on the whole.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: Most people welcomed.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so it was, as it were, a voluntary invasion, uh, whereas the the Norman conquest was certainly not, and it was a hugely um you know culture-changing society-changing event.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_01: But apart from that, um England since 1066, England has been remarkably stable.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: And you might say, well, come on, you know, um, think of all the changes that have happened in almost every area of life, which is perfectly true.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but some things do remain.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: And in my book, I uh partly to help myself think about this, I I made an analogy with with with Cambridge University.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: You know, Cambridge University is also very old, but when it began, it was mainly studying uh theology uh and and some law, uh, and and and now it's doing entirely different things.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's also a highly global cosmopolitan institution.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: In what sense can it be said to be the same, apart from the fact that it's in the same place?
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I said it's it's partly a tradition of self-government, it's partly um it's partly wealth, it's partly reputation, it's partly um the survival of certain institutions like colleges, which give the university a particular character, as as in Oxford.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_01: And so although you can say, well, you know, so many things have changed, it can hardly be seen as the same, in some ways it is the same.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_01: And the the things that remain the same, they evolve, but they remain in some senses the same, they do um shape the present and the future.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_01: So Cambridge would not be the same place had it not inherited these historical and some in some senses not terribly rational institutions, but in which people have a stake in what in what happens, uh and in which the uh the the universe is divided into smaller communities, which give people a very different experience, but that you know that's well known.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I think England, you know, you could say it's the same.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_01: The parliament, the counties, the monarchy, uh as well as cultural uh inheritance, the language, obviously, um, religion.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: However much these things may change and even decline, they leave something which which which is still there, which helps to shape uh and will help to shape the future.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: I was speaking to a a colleague of yours very recently, uh also Professor Emeritus of anthropology this time, also at Cambridge, Alan Macfarlane, and we spoke about the unique characteristics of the English and then and then British culture society, and he he uh expounded on um the legal system, the uh our our literature, our humour.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: He talked about um the economic setup.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: And when I when I often think about um how it is that we fight, I suppose, for our history, all of it included, appreciate it's not all, as you say, both a golden age or an unalloyed good, is there's some other things that he said in that and which he's written about extensively, which is typical natural characteristics is value in liberty and also wealth and freedom.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: And at the beginning, he when we were talking about declinism to coin another ism, uh if there aren't enough already, he said that often people positate without comparing it to anything else.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's the thing that probably sticks in my core a little bit if we are dismissive of our history and the unique things that the country has organically come up with over time, is compared to other places, and back to that quote at the beginning, which is better living standards in the 14th and many places in the 20th.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: Surely there are reasons why we would want to at least maintain that continuity instead of thinking that there's nothing good in that and we ought to push on into a brave new world.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: Uh perhaps you see this yourself in your your academic life, perhaps you don't, but well, I do.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_01: I do very much.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I'm glad you brought that up because um the sort of things that I've been saying up until now, and that uh Alan McFarlane was has been saying, I think most people would probably have agreed until fairly recently.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, there were always dissidents, religious dissidents, political dissidents who were very critical of the country, its institutions, and so on.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_01: That's always been true.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um but I think most people would have accepted more or less what we've been saying until quite recently.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think there has been, and it's still going on, a huge attack on our history and hence on our institutions, because I think the two things are connected, which has been going on now for a generation, uh, and which is in some ways different from the you know the sort of um um critical opposition, usually from the left and occasionally from the right, that you've always had, which was often that of a minority, which was a sort of, you know, which who were there to um to try and ginger up the country in some ways, to provide it with something to you could even say something to aim at.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_01: Now we have um a very widespread attack on our history by people who are not a dissident minority, uh, but for the first time probably, people who have come to control many of the cultural institutions, the levers of power in our culture, and who seem to be doing their best to um to destroy the kind of consensus view of the past that you and I and uh and others have long have long taken for granted and long presented.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and I think you I'm sure you know what I mean.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: I'm talking about, you know, it's often called decolonization, it's often called a woke attitude to the past.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_01: But whereas in the there have been other such attacks, of which Marxism was an obvious one, um, but those were often argued based on some sort of philosophy, some sort of evidence.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_01: And in that sense, they often the people putting them forward were quite keen on debate.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_01: Now I think the people putting forward what you might call um, you know, there are lots of names for it, um uh progressive um radicalism, uh are not really keen to debate.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_01: They they're much keener to impose and impose dogmas and to to do so by means which are sometimes intimidatory, and you get that in universities too.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: So the universities that I think, you know, a generation ago we would all have said we were very proud of, are now I think in danger of uh losing their soul to some extent and being taken over by um activist minorities whose aim is quite difficult to discern, I think.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_01: But I would I if I had to try to discern it, I would say it's probably the view that if you if you can discredit our past and indeed our our present, because the two are so closely linked, and undermine many of our institutions, you will thereby create um uh a tabula rasa on which you can create something much more inclusive, um, much more progressive, much more international, cosmopolitan, uh than was there before.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think this is probably dangerous and wrong, but I think that's probably the um the idea.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and again, it's not a it's not a wholly new idea.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_01: Edmund Burke, uh, when he was writing critically about the French Revolution, said something like, um, you know, you it's it's extraordinary how some people can regard the history of their country as a blank sheet on which they can scribble anything they like.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I think there are many people who are keen to scribble anything they like on a history that they've tried to reduce to a white sheet or perhaps in a a black sheet.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_01: Nothing but but violence, oppression, exploitation.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_01: Slavery, of course, is the great has become the great issue, and everything's seen through this particular lens.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't know what we do about that.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_01: You can argue about it, and indeed uh many people do, but it as I say, these people are often not very willing to argue.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_01: They are simply willing to assert and use the power that they have to make those assertions.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the philosopher John Gray recently said um something like, What's truth nowadays?
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's what you and your friends believe and what you can force others to accept.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_00: Dear classmate, John here.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_00: This isn't an advert, so you don't need to reach for the skip button.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: If you're enjoying the show, then show your support by liking, subscribing, and sharing on whichever device or platform you are watching or listening to Thinking Class on.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_00: You can find me in the show on YouTube at Thinking Class.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_00: You can also subscribe to me on Substack, searching for the at Thinking Class handle, or by entering thinkingclass.substack.com in your browser, and you can receive reflections, blog series, and recommended reading to your inbox.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_00: You can also follow me on X at Thinking Classes.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening, thanks for sharing, thanks for showing your support.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: Enjoy the rest of the show, classmate.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_00: Excuse me for about to embark on what might seem like the leading question, but it is not, and uh I certainly don't know the answer to it.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: Following on from that thought process of the activism that leads to uh dismantling, and so so you can have a blank slate in which to build upon, having dismissed everything that's gone before.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_00: Having having mentioned Marxism, again picking up MacFarlane's work, where there's this understanding amongst people these days that um there was this pre-capitalist world, industrial revolution came along, changed everything considerably, and it's from that point that everyone got turned into capitalists and and used uh against their will.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: However, Macfarlane's work found that the English, long before the Industrial Revolution, were living like capitalists.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_00: You could find land transfer and property transfer going across all classes, all sexes, things passed on to women by male um uh benefactors.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_00: And this was going back as far as records could be found, the 1300s.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: And going back to that point of liberty and wealth being important to the English person, and I suppose later British, as foreign observers would say everyone was finely dressed and um cared about what it was that they they ate and drank, and we haven't seen people live like this.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_00: And there was this um there was this liberty in the air.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: And McFarlane goes on to say, people think Magna Carta was this new invention, but it wasn't.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: It was a codifying of what already existed, it was putting to paper so that it couldn't be taken for granted again.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm just thinking about this taboo rasa idea at the political level.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason why I said, excuse me if this is the lead-in question is um Tony Blair is someone from a party which obviously influenced by the ideals of Marx.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: And he himself, as you've quoted in the book, refers to himself as an iconoclast, and he's proud of that.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um and also talked a lot about a global borderless society, this cosmopolitan society.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I guess and maybe we can unpack just how big the constitutional changes might have been to England.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_00: But how how uh how much do you think we might actually need to codify an institution now, given that the British constitution is not codified, to be able to retain some of those things that are at risk from being swept away?
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_01: Well, yeah, another good question.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I'm I'm personally I'm not a great um I haven't got much faith in constitutions.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_01: Partly being from being a French historian, uh I think the French have had 16 or 17 constitutions since uh since the revolution.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_01: And uh the one that they have now, which has been in some ways quite successful, has got them into a terrific mess, an insoluble political mess.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_01: So I think the the problem with constitutions, and of course you see similar things with the American constitution, which has taken on a kind of quasi-religious status as a as holy writ.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_01: And yet it causes the Americans enormous problems and prevents them from doing quite sensible things we Brits might think, like controlling gun ownership, uh, because of some interpretation of a of an 18th century constitutional clause, uh, which we had a very similar one in the in the Bill of Rights, the right to bear arms, but this was seen as a political uh right, not a not a personal right.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um but you know, we we could be we could bear arms, people walked around with pistols and so on, until it was decided this was not a very good idea, and so it was stopped.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um But the Americans can't do that because of their constitution.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_01: The French can't get out of their present mess because their constitutions box them into a corner.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm uh and the thing about constitutions is A, is I would say A, they they always contain problems that no one foresees.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and B, um a lot depends on who's actually drawing them up.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I I would dread uh uh sort of Tony Blair being made uh president of a constitutional council charged with drafting a British constitution.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_01: And you can just imagine the sort of people who'd be who'd be on the committee and who'd be doing it.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so I feel that uh it's probably uh a dangerous thing to to do.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_01: It would it would it might well sweep away rather than preserve many of the things that you and I value.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the law, the common law was indeed, as you said earlier, um often thought of as the the thing that defined what Englishn meant, or one of the things that very much defined it.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_01: It was the property of everyone.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh okay, it was it was it was the king's law, but it was one that people wanted because it was with what gave them security and it was what gave them rights.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I think it's um, you know, you I'm gonna be sounding like a in every way a terrible reactionary to some people.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_01: But um I think it is worrying, and I and I think there are quite a few lawyers who think this too, that the that that there has been a trend for judges to in greatly increase their power in effectively in making law or interpreting law in a way that they think uh right.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_01: This is partly the influence of international institutions like the European Court of Justice and so on.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and partly the influence, I think, probably of European Roman law, in which, unlike the common law tradition, which is based on in a sense is based on common sense and an acceptance of change and the the search for remedies for practical problems, the Roman law is based on fairly abstract principles which judges then interpret.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_01: And rather than saying, what did parliament intend when it did this, which has been the common law way of dealing with statute law, uh, you say, What is the principle behind this law and how should we interpret it in this in this case?
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's one reason why human rights law has become such a problem.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's because whereas we're used to a law that is very precise in what it says and what it does and the powers it gives, um, the the Roman law traditions more or less says, well, what are the principles behind this law and how can we extend it and make it more uh more rule-embracing?
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's where we often find ourselves in collision with this attitude to the law.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I do think that the Supreme Court has, um, and I'm not a lawyer, has not has not been averse to this kind of judicial activism.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um yeah.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh when when was it that that change started to happen?
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, in in my eyes, when you read recent history, people talk about that sea change of that sea change of the constitution brought in by the the new Labour government in 1997.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_00: Was it then or was it was it before that point that we started to see perhaps a moving away of common law and more of an abstract, top-down approach to lawmaking?
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I suppose I'm I I might suspect it was when we joined the the the European uh economic community, so in the early 70s.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um but I think you know it's there's probably a and here I'm talking about a world that I know very little of, that there may be a kind of lawyer's culture.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_01: Lawyers are often, after all, a quite international breed.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and it may be that the the you know the influence of other um Anglophone common law traditions like the American, which is an odd one in a way, because it is obviously it has a written constitution, it has a Supreme Court, have had an effect on the way our lawyers think, as have the European um courts.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so I think there's probably been a shift of the way the way lawyers think about the law uh in a way that they didn't previously.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think the com as I understand it, the common law still retains a great deal of its um its specific character, which is why so many, especially in commercial law, why so many uh overseas companies want cases to be tried in in London.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um but uh nevertheless, I mean, I remember a distinguished judge once saying to me he thought that the the influence of European law was having a major effect on the common law.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_01: Well, maybe that will stop to some extent, or perhaps it's stopped already after after Brexit.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_01: But uh it certainly has been happening.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_00: Now you mentioned both the European well, Athmeric community then, but we'll we'll refer to them as the European Union now and the Anglophones.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I remember I grow in that I didn't really consider those in the the Anglosteer, like the Americans that also use the Kiries, the Canadians, as being cousins in a way.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_00: I I think I grew up obviously in that period which I think Peter Hitchens would refer to as in the Cultural Revolution, where that was where the blank suite stuff happens, and obviously it was quite a pro-EU environment where they were seen as far away distant lands.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_00: And it wasn't until I grew up and learned more about history that I recognized that clearly there's a kinship there.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_00: And our relationship, at least politically, of late, has changed with Europe.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_00: I suppose it's changed low many times through history, regardless of there being a European Union.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_00: But we have a long-running history of enmity and friendship with France and your position as Professor Emeritus of French history.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um what do you think the future holds with regards to political, cultural, legal kinship with both Anglosphere and say our French neighbors?
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know, what does history tell us about how that all comes about?
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_01: Uh well, I I think I'd probably say first that what history tells us is that we we can never know what the future will hold.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_01: And uh and historians who pronounce about the future, including me, uh almost can be sure that they will get it wrong.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because there's so you know, there are so many possible variables.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_01: We don't, you know, I might any predictions I might make about our relations with America or Australia or France indeed might be turned on their head next week if China invades Taiwan.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_01: You know, who on earth knows how these how these things will play out?
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um but I'm interested in what you've said, because there clearly is a generational difference here that people of your generation were brought up within um obviously a cultural context in which there's a great deal of focus on Europe on Europe and Europeanism.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and it's and you know, students voted overwhelmingly to remain in the in the EU.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and of course, there was a lot of talk at the time about how they'd had their their chances of uh of of Erasmus scholarships and uh working in Europe uh taken away from them, which I always thought was a bit odd because very few students actually went on Erasmus programs to Europe.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_01: They those who went on Erasmus programs largely went to Ireland, just getting the figures.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but far more people went to Anglosphere countries to study than went to um European countries to study.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_01: So I thought that I always thought that was a bit of a myth.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_01: But it may well be the case that those of us who were brought up in the, you know, in the generation following the Second World War had been very much aware of um you know the the the alliance between the Anglosphere countries.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_01: And also I expect at a time when uh there was still a lot of um migration from Britain to Australia, New Zealand, and so on.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_01: And so when many people had members of their families living living there.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, many people still do, it seems to me, but there was this much closer sense.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um I know that Australian friends of mine are very annoyed that they are no longer treated in the way that they were.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_01: That's where they see the change as happening.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um and for example, being being made to queue up uh at airports in sort of other passports, whereas there used to be, you know, I don't know, British subject passports or something like that.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that and I think many people in the Anglosphere saw our um attachment to the European Union as a rejection of um of our relations with other English-speaking countries.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that was a conscious choice that was made at the time, which may not now seem quite so precived as it did to Edward Heath and his generation uh in the 1970s.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but how how will things develop?
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I I I think politicians to some extent can influence that.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um I I believe we do have, don't we, uh a sort of scholarship scheme for uh which which takes in the rest of the world now.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I don't know how many students go and study in New Zealand or in uh or in India, but uh it's certainly something that I think can be done.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um I I think probably fewer students come from India and Africa than once did.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I think that's partly because of the cost of English universities and uh the I I I would suggest the failure of um British governments to provide considerable numbers of um of scholarships.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_01: Indeed, I was told by sorry, I'm I'm telling you too many things that other people have told me, but I was told by a British minister that um that they they decided to stop giving scholarships to um uh African um to Africans because they thought it was too elitist.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it seems to me that if that's true, it's a very it's a very short-sighted policy.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_01: And we have vast numbers of Chinese students, but not very many African students that I that I that I see around me.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's a great pity.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we could these are countries that we ought to have we ought to maintain ties with.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um you could do it quite cheaply, probably.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_00: You mentioned two things at the beginning of the response there, which was around migration, and then also a sense of betrayal uh amongst our uh the other country, uh our our kin in the other uh countries of the Anglosphere.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_00: And um this will probably get demonetized because I mentioned his name, but I remember seeing a clip of Enoch Powell speaking to a talk show host, I can't remember who it was, but it was back in the 70s, saying that he didn't consider Australians to be immigrants because of those close.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: Ties and the talkshow host was saying, Well, that's preposterous.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_00: They're a foreign country.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so he went on to talk about those those ties.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_00: I suppose in the context of the history at the time, uh, we I think that was probably summed around the time it was the accession to uh the European Ephonomic Community, and it was the no, these are our these are our close neighbours, and so that's the focused.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but but focusing on on migration a little bit now is we're in a a post-colonial world, and I think it's common to find people saying in response to critics of uh immigration, and we'll get on to massive migration a little bit later, that people say, well, the reason why others are here is because we were there, and perhaps there's some truth to that.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, makes sense that if if there is some kind of connection and there's an ability to go over there and whatever you're going to do it.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_00: But we can see that um in history, Britain used to have to expend an awful lot of money and uh resource to be able to um police uh not just waterways, but also uh the the um and mediate between the relations between different peoples and the areas that they were governing.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_00: We no longer have those, but now we have lots and lots of different peoples here on these islands.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I suppose the question I've got for you is there anything that that modern day Britain can learn from the response of Britain's previously colonised territories to colonial rule in an era where we now have large-scale diasporas that have grown within the country.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I mean you you mentioned Enoch Powell a minute ago, um, whose influence I think was very damaging.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I uh I read an article, a learned article by a a reputable historian about Powell's views.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_01: And Powell was not uh racist in any crude sense.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_01: Indeed, he'd spent formative years in India, which he he loved very much, but apparently what he feared was that um what migration, what immigration into Britain would do would be to create a a political culture in which people voted according to their religious or tribal allegiances.
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um and because he'd seen that in India, he'd seen that at the time of the partition, um, and and he thought that this that the import of sectarianism and of religious conflict into Britain was was undesirable.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you might say, well, uh uh that is something that that has happened to some extent.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and uh it's surprising that people didn't foresee it.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_01: Or perhaps they do.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's often said that Britain is a nation of immigrants, um, but certainly not on the scale that is um is happening now.
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, the the Norman conquest saw a process of forceful immigration on a quite small scale, but a big enough scale to be able to dominate the country.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um people always talk about the Huguenots who were also relatively few.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_01: Uh there's there's no there's no comparison in history to the the kind of the very large-scale immigration that we have had, and indeed that other uh developed countries have had in the last generation.
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't think anyone knows what the effect of this will be.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um I I'm a great admirer of um uh Catherine Burbel Singh's school in in Wembley, the Michaela School.
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I've been there a couple of times, and I've been in classes in which there was not a single white face, or at least I remember going into one class in which there was a single white face, but she was from Lithuania.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um and and yet um going to that if if that was how we in integrated children, um, which is what Catherine does, uh they are taught Shakespeare, they're taught our history, they are indeed, and they're taught, they're taught to learn, they learn poetry by heart, they they sing the national anthem in the morning, and the children clearly love it.
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um I if if that was how generally we were integrating people, and people are after all a very valuable resource, uh, then I don't think there would be a huge amount to worry about.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_01: But then clearly we're not doing that.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_01: And indeed it seems to me that we, when I say we, I mean the let's say the native-born elites, um, are encouraging often uh a resentment, um, a sense of alienation from British culture and British history, uh, by encouraging a view of the past which is entirely, or which is very largely negative.
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_01: You know, slavery, okay.
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um Britain was, so it said, is uh is not only a country that participated in the slave trade, which of course we've always known, but is a country which you know invented the slave trade, invented racism, um, it invented the idea of of inferior races in order to justify the slave trade, um, and therefore it is today a racist country.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, these things are simply untrue and are easily proved to be untrue, and yet they're repeated by people in positions of influence, people who make television programs, people who put on um uh exhibitions in museums to which school children are taken, uh, politicians and uh teachers, uh academics, say this sort of thing.
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_01: And i if this were true, well we'd have to sort of say, okay, it's true, we we've had a horrible history, and um we have to do what we can to to make up for it.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_01: But then much of this is not true.
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's a kind of slander, and and the the as I as we said earlier, the only thing the reason I can see for this, apart from the fact that some people make careers out of it, is this this desire to create a kind of tabula rasa in which you can say, right, we've destroyed our whole history, now we're going to make another one, uh, which will be more inclusive.
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_01: But I don't think that's going to work.
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and even if it did, I don't think it would be a very desirable thing to do, because by making it inclusive to some groups, you are deliberately excluding other groups.
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_00: On the United Powell, um, there is a quote which uh pulled up there as you were talking, um, and it's it's about the um the slander, I suppose, that you see out in the culture trying to create this this new England, I suppose, not in the American sense.
• 51:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and the quote is they tell us we must be prepared to contemplate, in fact, welcome the alteration and alienation of our towns and cities.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_00: They tell us there is no such thing as our own people and our country.
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_00: And for those who still find the Nitfowl a bit radioactive, focus on the message, not the messenger.
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_00: There was nearly a million people met coming to the country last year.
• 51:21
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I'll bring Roger Scruton up, a less objectionable person.
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_00: He wrote that if his grandchildren were to ask him, Grandad, what is England?
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_00: He said, I should think I would respond with it was an idea that lasted about a thousand years.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, depending on how people take this conversation, it might be that no, that's not true.
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_00: We're not going down the scrutonian route.
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_00: England will endure.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_00: And yet it does seem that hangs in the balance that unless we have St.
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_00: Catherine Burnbull Sings cloned and running our school system, and we don't have the pipes running our largest institutions and changing the culture.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_00: But do you think England will endure as we know it?
• 52:05
  SPEAKER_00: As we know as we know it.
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_00: That was the that was the problem making notes of it.
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_01: Again, that's a very good question because you know the England as we know it never endures.
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_01: The England, as Queen Victoria knew it, or as uh as um as Edmund Burt knew it, those Englands have gone.
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_01: Something of them remains, and and it may be that something very important remains, but nevertheless, those Englands have gone.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_01: And the England, our England will also inevitably go.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_01: The question is, I suppose, what can we and do we wish to preserve of it as as permanently as we can?
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and uh can we do it?
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and I and I think the answer is that we can do it if we want to do it.
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um but do we want to do it?
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_01: That I'm not so sure of.
• 52:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think that um I you know I don't I don't believe the country will though, as I said, if if China invades Taiwan, who knows what will happen.
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_01: But if I don't think the country, as it were, will will collapse or disappear, but it will certainly change.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_01: And the question is, to what extent can we can we can we control that change or maintain it within the framework of our of our history, um, which has been in many ways a very enviable one, which many people have envied.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh indeed that's one reason why so many people come here.
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but I think it need it does need um it does need an effort, and probably a conscious effort, uh, and certainly not an effort uh a willingness to say to people, the country that you've come to live in is a terrible place, um, which um you know which persecuted your ancestors and never did anything good in the world, uh, and now you're here, uh we don't really want you to integrate, we want you to to be part of uh of a minority or of a set of minorities.
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_01: Why should people want that?
• 53:59
  SPEAKER_01: Uh well uh some people make careers out of it, some people see political advantage in that, but I think it's uh it's it's a view of society that will certainly cause us uh uh pain.
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_01: And the the the the the possibility is, as we have seen in other countries, that it will lead to some sort of backlash of the sort that we would prefer not to have to have.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_00: Robert, it's been an absolute pleasure today, and I would ordinarily won't want to wrap up now, but I appreciate there are things going on in in our diaries in a few minutes' time.
• 54:38
  SPEAKER_00: So before I let it go, I'll ask you a question that I ask all of my guests, which is what have you changed your mind on in the course of your life that you previously thought was set in stone?
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's the way things are, and what was it that made you think differently?
• 54:55
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it politically, I I voted to stay in the European Community in Harold Wilson's referendum, and I voted to leave in uh in our referendum in 2016.
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh what made me change my mind?
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I hope it was circumstances.
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_01: Was it was it Keynes who said when circumstances change, I change my opinion.
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_01: What do you do, sir?
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it was that the the European, it seemed to me the European Union was changing in ways that that were were not anticipated and which would and which were potentially threatening.
• 55:29
  SPEAKER_01: So that's I've certainly changed my mind on that.
• 55:31
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's the most concise answer I've heard to that question.
• 55:35
  SPEAKER_00: So you you that was that was front of front and center of mine.
• 55:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um Robert, it's been an absolute pleasure today.
• 55:42
  SPEAKER_00: Uh if people want to know where they can find you, uh any upcoming projects that you're working on, what can you tell them?
• 55:49
  SPEAKER_01: Well, this is my plug then.
• 55:51
  SPEAKER_01: Well, at least a few years if if I'm spared, but I'm I've I'm working on a history of the union, England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales.
• 56:00
  SPEAKER_01: To to look at the way that the the different nations have interacted and influenced each other during the period of the union, and I hope to come up with a conclusion that uh the union is worth preserving.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and indeed, in some ways, it will I might be going to say that what even if you think you've got rid of it, it's still it's still really there.
• 56:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and that's going to be my next project.
• 56:25
  SPEAKER_00: That sounds like a wonderful project.
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, an Englishman who lives in Edinburgh and would would would would love to see it be preserved.
• 56:33
  SPEAKER_00: And uh perhaps even long before this book gets published, I would really welcome being able to speak about that topic with you.
• 56:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it sounds fascinating, and I think it's something that is desperately needed.
• 56:45
  SPEAKER_00: Robert, it's it's been an absolute pleasure and an honour today.
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_00: I hope we get to speak again with this YouTube.
• 56:51
  SPEAKER_00: And uh thank you for asking me.
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_00: You're very welcome.
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_00: I would welcome you back anytime.
• 56:56
  SPEAKER_00: Take your care.
• 56:57
  SPEAKER_00: You too.
• 57:03
  SPEAKER_00: To keep up to date with all that I am doing, please subscribe to the Thinking Class YouTube channel at Thinking Class and follow me on X at Thinking Classes.
• 57:13
  SPEAKER_00: Thinking Class seeks to understand the civilizational issues we face and why what our leaders do in response matters.
• 57:19
  SPEAKER_00: Here I seek to explore the ideas, values, and culture that made our civilization, those that are unmaking it, and how leaders at our public and private institutions should respond.
• 57:28
  SPEAKER_00: Engage with me on YouTube or X or write to me at thinkingclasspod at gmail.com to tell me who you want me to speak to and what topics are important to you.
• 57:37
  SPEAKER_00: I look forward to seeing you there and for joining me on this journey.