Ed West

From The Catholic Herald

It is only October and already the newspapers are publishing round-ups of the first decade of the 21st century, an era that we’ve never satisfactorily found a name for – I for one could never bring myself to say “Noughties” without smiling inanely, for some reason.

So unless aliens invade between now and New Year’s Eve, it’s safe to say that the decade will best be remembered for the events of September 11 2001, and the subsequent “War on Terror”.

Aside from Islamism, the major change has been the continuing revolution in communications technology, which has transformed our lives beyond recognition.

So it has been a paradoxical century so far: one where ideas and information can be spread across the world in seconds, but which has been dominated by the growth of a medievalist, reactionary religious cult. And the greatest paradox, of course, is that the new medievalism is spread by the new technology.

Speaking of paradoxes, if I have to make one prediction for the following decade (the “Teens”?) it is that we will see a great revival in Chestertonian social and economic theory.

At the forefront is the philosopher Phillip Blond, a former theology lecturer whose article earlier this year in Prospect magazine, “The Rise of the Red Tory”, attracted the attention of Conservative leader David Cameron. 

Blond, a 43-year-old Liverpudlian, argues that leaving things to the free market destroys everything of value to conservatives: tradition, family life and society. On the other hand, the welfare state, that great untouchable sacred cow of socialism, has totally destroyed working-class communities, taking away people’s mutual dependency, causing atomisation and destroying aspiration. Blond’s views are causing a great stir in the political world, but Catholics with any knowledge of Distributism will see where his influences lie: in Christianity.

Indeed, Blond’s faith may be a worry for Cameron, obsessed as he is by not alienating any key voters. But he shouldn’t worry: it is only those in the media-political complex in London who “do not do God”; most British people are not especially religious, but neither are they anti-religious. 

In a Sunday Times profile last weekend the journalist interviewing Blond described his opposition to abortion and fatherlessness as “incendiary”, as if these views – the norm not so long ago – were comparable with denying the Holocaust or supporting apartheid. 

Yet I would suggest that to most people outside of the triangle between Notting Hill, Westminster and Islington, such ideas are not incendiary at all, but basic values. 

Speaking of not doing God, a friend is getting married next week at a register office and has been told she cannot have readings of her favourite poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins and William Butler Yeats.

Yeats’s “Aedh wishes for the Cloths of Heaven” fails on account of the word “heaven” in the title, while Hopkins’s “The Wedding March” has the offending line: “God with honour hang your head.”

State marriage ceremonies used to be very perfunctory affairs, but as more people have turned against even token observance of religion the state has attempted to jazz them up by apeing the traditional church wedding. Yet it does so with a total lack of either tolerance or humour.

In fact, whenever the state tries to imitate religious ceremonies the results are inevitably disappointing, like alcohol-free beer in comparison to the finest Bavarian lager. Best to leave it to the professionals, chaps.