Otherwise, the tensions between Islam on the one hand and modern, Western liberalism on the other will ultimately have to be worked out by Muslims themselves. The West, for its part, must respect the values, traditions and beliefs of Islam — while insisting that basic human rights should be honoured and aggressive policies forsworn.
I have set out what I consider the tenets of a conservative foreign policy should be. But there is really no substitute for commonsense. In my years as Prime Minister I was always convinced that aggression must not be allowed to pay. If it did, automatically the threat to our peace and security would increase. I also reckoned that would-be aggressors are a great deal more rational than most people imagine. They ask themselves whether those of us likely to oppose them have the weapons to do so, the means of deploying those weapons sufficiently quickly, and above all the resolve. So we must make our resolve plain.
And finally, there was what I came to call Thatcher’s law: ‘No matter how well prepared you are, the unexpected happens.’ How you cope then remains, of course, the real test.
CHAPTER XV
Virtue’s Rewards
Policies to strengthen the family, curb welfare dependency and reduce crime
A CONTINUING DEBATE
Social issues usually loom larger in political debate when economic problems, particularly the problem of inflation, are less of a worry. Low inflation and rapid economic growth were the background to the preoccupation with the environment, urban renewal and the Health Service which dominated politics after the 1987 general election. Low inflation and resumed economic growth in 1994 have had the same effect.
There are, however, three differences between the two periods. First, whatever the economic future holds, it seems unlikely that the arguments about social policy (which have opened up on both sides of the Atlantic) will peter out inconclusively, because too many raw nerves have already been struck. Secondly, in contrast to the years 1987 to 1989, these debates are now taking place on the traditional conservative territory of law and order, welfare dependency and the family. Thirdly, there is a new understanding of the economic consequences of crime, unchecked expenditure on welfare benefits and family breakdown. Company executives are unwilling to move to areas of high crime and delinquent schools. The explosion of spending on one-parent families forces Social Security budgets — and ultimately taxes — inexorably upwards. Above all, there are fears that the growing welfare dependency will demotivate and demoralize young men and women on whose contributions in the workforce industrial expansion and advance depend. Even hard-nosed men of the world, more interested in growth rates than crime rates, are having to take social policy seriously.
It is, therefore, the more surprising that with a few notable exceptions, political leaders have been reluctant to frame policies based on the remarkably similar analyses of academics and commentators; partly, perhaps, because those who have tentatively sought to do so have incurred instant vilification on both sides of the Atlantic. Vice-President Quayle and Peter Lilley were similarly pilloried for saying things which are now generally agreed to be commonsense: namely that the growth of single parenthood is bad for the children growing up without a father, and imposes heavy costs on society. Yet as long ago as 1987, for example, Michael Novak and several other distinguished scholars of different viewpoints agreed a number of challenging conclusions in a publication called The New Consensus on Family and Welfare. Among these were: ‘money alone will not cure poverty; internalized values are also needed’ and ‘the national ethos must encourage self-reliance and responsibility’.
Talking honestly and intelligently about such matters has been obstructed — in slightly different ways — on both sides of the Atlantic by a combination of prejudice and vested interest.
Most senior politicians and professionals in the areas of penology and social work rightly feel some measure of responsibility for the liberal policies pursued since the 1960s, and are understandably reluctant to confess their failure. Or if they do make such an admission it is generally qualified by the suggestion that although present approaches may not work, nothing else will work better. This is, of course, a strange justification for a hugely costly and vastly complex system operated at the taxpayer’s expense. Secondly, there is an understandable human reluctance on the part of comfortably-placed politicians to adopt a social analysis that places some of the responsibility for their condition upon the poor themselves — in the jargon, ‘blaming the victim’. This reluctance is especially marked, again understandably, when the poor in question are drawn disproportionately from racial minorities. Paradoxically, however, policies which shrink from placing the responsibility where it belongs help to create more victims.
If this is not always recognized, it is because the forces of ‘political correctness’ also muddy the waters, particularly in America, but covertly and increasingly in Europe. If, for instance, a disproportionately large number of black people are in prison, that is automatically taken as proof of racism in the criminal justice system, and policies that require more incarceration become suspect. If the traditional nuclear family is seen as an institution which enslaves women, policies discouraging single parenthood are unlikely to find favour. Only two conditions can allow such powerful obstructions to be overcome. The first, which is increasingly evident, is the refusal of the general public to tolerate the personal, social and financial cost of continuing as we are. The second is to gain wider understanding of what has been happening and why.
CRIME HAS RISEN
The starting-point for all such discussion must be the rise in crime. For many years Home Office orthodoxy was to deny or at least to minimize it. Attention was, instead, focused on the ‘fear of crime’ which, on the basis of the incidence of recorded offences, was shown to be exaggerated, particularly among such victim groups as the elderly. The unspoken implication was that if commentators talked less about crime, unnecessary fears would subside and the public would feel safer on the streets and in their homes. Within the constraints on government applied by a free society, systematic propaganda of this sort is largely impossible and so rather less is now heard of this patronizing argument. Rightly so, for the only way to diminish fear of crime is to diminish the threat of crime. Where the threat is real — and where the potential victim is frail — fear is a rational and prudent response.
A second and more substantial point which has been made is that the figures for recorded crime suggest a larger increase than has in fact occurred. At first glance, the Home Office British Crime Surveys (BCS) carried out in 1982, 1984, 1988 and most recently 1992, lend some substance to this. The BCS asks 10,000 people directly about their experience as victims of crime, whereas the official crime figures depend upon the number of crimes reported to the police. The recorded crime figures nearly doubled between 1981 and 1991; but the BCS suggests a lower rise of about 50 per cent. The inference is that the willingness to report crime to the police has increased. Particularly in the case of crimes like sexual assault, where police treatment of victims has become much more sympathetic, this is easily explainable. It also suggests a degree of confidence in the police to which the latter’s critics rarely draw attention.