I do not generally hold with politicians preaching sermons, though since so many clerics preach politics there seems no room in this regard for restrictive practices. So from time to time I did return to this theme. Ten years later in May 1988 I addressed the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in similar vein. To the disquiet of some of those present, I emphasized that Christianity provided no special blessing for collectivism.
[We] must not profess Christianity and go to Church simply because we want social reforms and benefits or a better standard of living — but because we accept the sanctity of life, the responsibility that comes with freedom and the supreme sacrifice of Christ…
Near the end of my time as Prime Minister, I became increasingly conscious of and interested in the relationship between Christianity and economic and social policy. In Michael Alison, my former PPS, and Brian Griffiths, the head of my Policy Unit, I found two committed Christians as fascinated by these matters as I was. The discussions I had and the papers produced for them formed the basis of the book of essays Christianity and Conservatism to which I contributed an introduction and which appeared in 1990 shortly before I left Downing Street.
Not long ago it might have seemed unrealistic, to say the least, to envisage the return of an intellectual and moral climate conducive to the practice of the traditional virtues. Now, however, such matters are at the forefront of much serious debate about social problems.[97] Furthermore, at least some Church leaders, the people on whom much of the task of reshaping attitudes must depend, are having second thoughts about the beneficent effects of state provision and intervention. For example, Pope John Paul II in his Encyclical Centesimus Annus notes:
By intervening directly and depriving society of its responsibility, the Social Assistance State leads to a loss of human energies and an inordinate increase of public agencies, which are dominated more by bureaucratic ways of thinking than by concern for serving their clients, and which are accompanied by an enormous increase in spending. In fact, it would appear that needs are best understood and satisfied by people who are closest to them and who act as neighbours to those in need.
Rome never seemed so close to Grantham.
The outcome of today’s ‘culture wars’, as they have been called in the United States, is still in doubt. As with so many other developments, the conflict of ideas and attitudes, which shows no sign of abating on the other side of the Atlantic, is bound to spill over into Britain and Europe. And with good reason. For it is as necessary for conservatives to win the battle of ideas in social as in economic policy.
Without this the likelihood of even limited initiatives succeeding is remote. But there must be such initiatives in the other three areas of social action — crime, welfare dependency and family break-up — with which I began.
CUTTING CRIME
When we turn to our second area, crime, recognizing the scale of the problem is an essential start. But rejecting the counsel of despair that ‘nothing works’ is almost as important. Since 1979 there have been large increases in the resources available to combat crime, including 16,700 more police officers and twenty new prisons. Yet far too often, critics of conservative criminal justice policy are allowed to get away with the argument that since crime has continued to rise, in spite of large increases in police numbers and prison capacities, some other unspecified but more liberal approach should be tried. This is, of course, a non sequitur — unless the critics are seriously arguing (and hardly any even of them would go so far) that extra police numbers and more prison facilities either have no effect or actually result in increased numbers of criminal offences. It is far more likely that crime would have risen still higher if these extra resources had not been provided.
The limited evidence available, supported by common sense, suggests that most professional criminals make recognizably rational calculations, weighing the likelihood of being caught and the length and discomfort of the sentence on the one hand against the perceived benefits (material and psychological) of crime on the other.[98] It would have to be shown conclusively that this was not the case before the traditional penal approach and remedies were abandoned. Moreover, Ernest Van Den Haag, a criminological expert in the United States, has made the following persuasive and significant observation:
Whenever the risks of punishment fall, the crime rate rises. The rise in crime since the 1960s is a response to the decline in the risks criminals run, to the rise of their prospective net profit. Crime now pays for many more people than before. Between 1962 and 1979 the likelihood of a serious crime leading to arrest fell by nearly half. The likelihood of an arrest leading to conviction fell more. The likelihood of a serious crime leading to imprisonment fell altogether by 80 per cent… Per 1,000 serious crimes there were ninety people in prison in 1960, but only thirty in 1990.
As he concludes: ‘one may wonder why crime rates did not rise more’.[99]
I would not wish to suggest that more police, stiffer sentences and increased prison places are the whole of the answer to increased crime. There are certainly modest but real benefits to be derived from both more effective crime prevention and better-targeted policing. But the fact remains that the most direct way to act against crime is to make life as difficult as possible for the potential and actual criminal. This cannot be done cheaply. Increasing the number of police officers on patrol, providing the most up-to-date technology to assist detection, building and refurbishing prisons are bound to require continuing real increases in spending on law and order services.
Law and order is a social service. Crime and the fear which the threat of crime induces can paralyse whole communities, keep lonely and vulnerable elderly people shut up in their homes, scar young lives and raise to cult status the swaggering violent bully who achieves predatory control over the streets. I suspect that there would be more support and less criticism than today’s political leaders imagine for a large shift of resources from Social Security benefits to law and order — as long as rhetoric about getting tough on crime was matched by practice.
CURBING WELFARE DEPENDENCY
Third, as with formulating an effective conservative approach to crime, so with welfare dependency. We have both to combine forgotten traditional insights with modern techniques and up-to-date research. In an earlier chapter I have described the system inspired by the Beveridge Report and its merits.[100] Beveridge argued for a safety net of universal benefits largely based on and funded by social insurance, with means-tested benefits providing the remainder. The scale and complexity of Social Security nowadays means that a ‘return to Beveridge’ is hardly practical. We can, however, apply the perspective of Beveridge to our present difficulties. First, his Report made the assumption that if the state intervened too much it would reduce the willingness of individuals to provide for themselves — he was a great believer in thrift and the insurance principle. And enlarging the possibilities for individuals to insure themselves against sickness and old age is highly desirable today. Second, he was extremely conscious of the need to see the large extension of benefits he proposed soundly financed. Third, Beveridge described his objective as being the elimination of ‘five giants on the road of reconstruction’: ‘Want… Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness’. It is significant that his giants are moral, not just material; they reflect behaviour and not just circumstances. Reassuringly, we find that such an analysis fits in very well with the conclusions reached by American writers on welfare policy today.
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I am grateful to the contributors to a