Peter Hitchens

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Peter Jonathan Hitchens (born 28 October 1951 in Sliema, Malta) is a British journalist, author and broadcaster. A reporter for the Daily Express for most of his career, he left the paper in 2001 and currently writes for the Mail on Sunday.

Contents 1 Career in journalism 2 Personal political history 3 Core beliefs 3.1 On liberty, security, and crime 3.2 On foreign policy 3.3 On morality, culture, and religion 3.4 On education 3.5 On evolution 3.6 On Tony Blair and the Labour Party 3.7 On the Conservative Party 4 Publications 5 Personal life 6 References 7 See also 8 External links

[edit] Career in journalism

Hitchens was a reporter on the Daily Express for 24 years, specialising first in education, then in industrial and labour affairs, before becoming deputy political editor. He then left Westminster to cover defence and diplomatic affairs, just as the Gorbachev era was beginning. He reported on the collapse of the Communist regimes in several Warsaw Pact countries. This led to him becoming the paper's Moscow Correspondent during the final upheavals of the Communist era in 1990 and 1991.

After an interval as a roving foreign reporter, he became the Express's Washington correspondent, returning to London in 1995 to become a commentator and, eventually, a regular columnist. He continued as a conservative voice in this role despite the paper's ideological switch in 1997 to enthusiastic support for Tony Blair's Labour party. But in 2001, after the Express was bought by Richard Desmond—a publisher of pornographic magazines—Hitchens left to join the Mail on Sunday, citing his strong anti-pornography views and the consequent conflict of interest as his reason for leaving^[1]. He currently writes a column for the Mail on Sunday as well as writing occasional reportage, including from Iraq, China, India, and the USA, for that paper.

He is occasionally featured in the British broadcast media, often debating with left-wingers, though he has recently presented authored documentary programmes on Channel 4 and BBC Four. He currently has no regular broadcasting slot of his own, although he did once co-present a show on Talk Radio with left-wingers including Derek Draper and Austin Mitchell. He says he was offered the chance to present the programme on his own by the station's boss, Kelvin MacKenzie, but preferred, and suggested, an adversarial programme with a left-wing co-presenter, believing that this was the best way to achieve broadcast fairness and balance.

[edit] Personal political history

Hitchens is a former Trotskyist who was for some years a member of the International Socialists, from 1969 to 1975, and later a member of the British Labour Party from 1979 to 1983. He studied politics at York University from 1970 to 1973. He dismisses as untrue a story that he arrived late at a lecture with the excuse that he had been "too busy starting the revolution", on the grounds that he seldom attended any lectures at all.

He joined the Conservative Party in 1997 in the belief that it was the democratic resistance to New Labour, but quickly concluded that the Party had no idea what it was facing and would never be able to oppose or defeat New Labour, and subsequently left in 2003. He now belongs to no party and believes that none of any value can be created until the Conservatives split and collapse.

He challenged Michael Portillo for the Conservative Party nomination in the Kensington and Chelsea seat in 1999. Some critics^{[attribution needed]} suggest that his failure to secure the nomination explains much of his antipathy towards the Conservative Party, a claim Hitchens rejects on the basis of his having had no serious expectation of being chosen, putting himself forward only to criticise Portillo and his plan to "modernise" the Party.

[edit] Core beliefs

Hitchens' political views are a combination of social, moral and cultural conservatism, and classic liberalism. They resemble the paleoconservative tradition in the United States.

Unlike others on the Right, Hitchens is critical of neoconservatism, and for this reason was opposed to the Kosovo and Iraq wars. He is also critical of unfettered Free-market liberalism, calling for railway nationalisation, and often criticising Thatcherism for having damaged British society.

Hitchens' classic liberal views are evident, for example, in his opposition to Identity Cards, and in his support for the right to jury trials.

In propounding his social conservative views, Hitchens frequently criticises political correctness, which he considers to be a manifestation of Cultural Marxism. He acknowledges, however, that the Left has been correct in regard to some moral issues, for example in its long opposition to racial bigotry, and for this reason describes "the n-word" as immoral and obscene. He argues, however, in opposition to the Left, that genuine good manners, tolerance and decency are impossible, in the long term, without the foundation of traditional morality and religious faith.

[edit] On liberty, security, and crime

Hitchens advocates a society governed by conscience and the rule of law, which he sees as the best guarantee of liberty. He warns that the decline of conscience and morality will inevitably lead to a strong state. He is especially concerned about the use of "security" as a pretext for diluting and eroding the liberties of the individual. He argues that increased "security" destroys freedom without necessarily increasing safety, and says that there is no contradiction between maintaining liberty and protecting the realm.

Hitchens is critical of moves towards authoritarian government and the erosion of civil liberties, whether they come from the Right or the Left of the political spectrum. Accordingly, he has been highly critical of the British government's desire for identity cards, its attempts to abolish jury trial, to centralise the police, and its creation of a national law enforcement body in the form of the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA). He describes these things as facets of governmental desire for permanent, irreversible constitutional revolution, and an "attack on English liberty" in general. In his newspaper columns, Hitchens referred to the then-Home Secretary, David Blunkett, as "Minister of the Interior", on the grounds that the title, reminiscent of police states, better reflected Blunkett's illiberal policies than the traditional British title of "Home Secretary".

Hitchens is opposed to the relaxation of laws against the possession of illegal recreational drugs. He argues that the law's active disapproval of drug taking is an essential counterweight to the "pro-drug propaganda" of popular culture. He considers attempts to combat drug use by restricting supply and persecuting dealers, futile, if possession and use are not punished as well. He answers claims that the "War on Drugs" has failed by suggesting that there has been no serious war on drugs for many years. Hitchens believes that the approach, known as "harm reduction", is defeatist and counter-productive. He was among the earliest commentators to argue that cannabis was a major mental health danger to some users.

[edit] On foreign policy

Hitchens opposed the Iraq War on the grounds that it was not in the interests of either Britain or of the United States, but he does not associate himself with anti-war campaigns, and he remains a strong supporter of the State of Israel. He is critical of neoconservatism, which he considers to be globalist, destructively interventionist and utopian, and adopts a view of foreign policy similar to the American paleoconservatism movement.

Hitchens condemned the 1998 Belfast Agreement as a surrender to the Provisional IRA and a violation of the rule of law. He believes that the best approach to solving Northern Ireland's problems would have been the full integration of Northern Ireland into the United Kingdom, arguing that creating Stormont was "an act of huge folly". He believes that the achievements of direct rule over Northern Ireland have been greatly underestimated. He maintains that Northern Ireland is now only a provisional part of the UK, which can be transferred to Irish sovereignty by a single irreversible referendum.

On Europe, Hitchens argues that the United Kingdom should negotiate an amicable departure from the European Union, whose laws and traditions he regards as incompatible with the laws and liberties of England and with the national independence of the United Kingdom as a whole. He also believes that the interests of the European Union are often different from—and in many cases hostile to—those of the United Kingdom. Hitchens also opposes devolution in Scotland and Wales, regarding these changes not as steps towards real independence, but as part of a European Union-inspired strategy to dissolve Great Britain into statelets and regions, a preliminary to its complete absorption in a European state. For the same reason, he opposes plans to divide England itself into regions.

[edit] On morality, culture, and religion

Hitchens believes in the value and importance of traditional morality, Western and British culture, and religious (particularly Christian) faith. He laments the decline in all three areas, and argues that they have been deliberately undermined and eroded by Cultural Marxists and Social Liberals since the 1960s, a theory he explores his book The Abolition of Britain.

In support of this thesis, Hitchens cites, among other things, what he describes as serial attacks on the institution of marriage by the State. He identifies these attacks as the introduction of no-fault divorce, the removal or redistribution of what were formerly the exclusive privileges of marriage, and its resultant loss of status and regard, the abolition of the Christian Sunday and the growing economic and cultural pressure on wives and mothers to go out to work. He believes that without faith and without strong families, the development of conscience is stunted, private life is diminished, and the power of the state increased.

He believes that many of the measures which created the "permissive society" were mistaken or excessive and need to be re-examined, and he believes that homosexual relationships should not be granted legal parity with heterosexual marriage. However, Hitchens maintains that he has nothing against homosexual individuals, and rejects the term "homophobia" in this context as an epithet which he feels is increasingly used to stifle legitimate debate on social policy.

Hitchens opposes the compulsory metrication of Britain's weights and measures, which he believes are both beautiful and practical, rooted in experience and an important part of the English language. He is an Anglican, and he defends the use of the Church of England's 1662 Book of Common Prayer and the Authorised or King James Version of the Bible, not only because he believes they are beautiful and memorable, but also because he feels that they are the indispensable foundations of Anglicanism's "powerful combination of scripture, tradition and reason". He is also sceptical of orthodox scientific opinion on global warming.

[edit] On education

Hitchens condemns comprehensive education, the Plowden reforms of primary schooling, and modern child-centred teaching methods, seeing them as egalitarian political projects with no educational justification and many educational disadvantages. Hitchens asserts that comprehensive education has brought about a general dilution of examination standards which threatens to leave Britain lagging behind emerging giants like China and India. As a means of improving standards in the UK, Hitchens supports a return to the grammar school system which has been gradually dismantled by successive British governments since the late 1960s.

As a supporter of orthodox Christian morality, Hitchens opposes sex education in schools. He points out that the general introduction of sex education in schools has been accompanied by an increase in sexual activity among the young, with a resultant rise in pregnancies, abortions and instances of sexually transmitted diseases, the very things that sex education is intended to discourage. He suggests that the two may be connected, and that in any case the argument that sex education protects the young against early pregnancy or disease is false.

[edit] On evolution

Hitchens sees evolution as a speculative and unfalsifiable theory which cannot be observed in progress. He reasons that if it took place in the past it did so before there were any human witnesses, and that if it is taking place now it is operating so slowly that our civilisation is likely to perish long before it has been able to record it in action. He maintains that enthusiasts for Darwinism often mistake adaptation of existing species for a far more ambitious process required for evolution. He therefore contends that the theory of evolution is wholly unlike other scientific theories with which it is often compared. He regularly likens belief in evolution to belief in a religion, on the basis that religious claims also cannot be tested and similarly have their origins not in certain knowledge but in the preferences of the believer.

Hitchens argues that neither he nor anyone else knows how life began or how the realm of nature assumed its present form. He says he is quite happy to accept the possibility that the evolutionists may be right, and asks that they will extend the same courtesy to theists. He agrees with evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins that a belief in the truth of evolutionary theory, properly understood, is incompatible with a theist position. He maintains that the question remains a matter of choice, and that intelligent people should be free to decide for themselves which explanation they prefer. He does not criticise evolutionary theory, believing it to be an ingenious possible explanation of the origins of species, but one which he himself does not accept.

[edit] On Tony Blair and the Labour Party

Hitchens has described Prime Minister Tony Blair's constitutional reforms as a "slow-motion coup d'état". He is critical of Labour for what he describes as "attacks on the constitution", and critical of the previous Conservative government for its perceived role in facilitating these changes through "rash and unconstitutional acts". The huge expansion of the role of "special advisers", which Hitchens describes as "political commissars" in the civil service, was based, in his view, on similar but smaller-scale appointments by the Conservatives.

Hitchens contends that the most profound changes brought about by the Labour Party have been designed to concentrate power in the hands of the executive, to debauch civil service neutrality, and to turn Parliament into a tool of Downing Street. In Hitchens' view, the most significant single action in this programme was the passing of Orders in Council allowing Alastair Campbell and Jonathan Powell, both political appointees, to give orders to civil servants. It signalled, in his view, a general attempt to politicise Whitehall which has continued ever since. He claims to have detected a parallel effort to appropriate some of the trappings of monarchy and to diminish the Crown's significance and standing, which he sees as embryonic presidentialism.

Hitchens has also often caricatured Blair as "Princess Tony". This is a reference to Blair's use of the expression "The People's Princess" to eulogise Diana, Princess of Wales, after her death. His general characterisation of Blair is that he is a charming nonentity, without knowledge or convictions, hired by the Labour Party to provide a reassuring face behind which it could pursue its radical agenda. He recently wrote that Blair's great talent was to be "all things to himself", able to appear to be sincere at all times because he is unaware of his own profound shallowness.

[edit] On the Conservative Party

Hitchens is dismissive of the modern British Conservative Party, frequently deriding its members as the "Useless Tories". He has often been at odds with fellow conservatives, and believes that the Conservative Party shows a consistent record of wrong policies that cannot be dismissed as accidents or mistakes. He cites as examples: the Iraq War; the privatisation of the UK's railways; the reorganisation of local government in 1974; the introduction of the GCSE exam; the Police and Criminal Evidence Act of 1984; the Criminal Justice Act of 1991; the severe reduction in defence spending at the end of the Cold War; the agreement to the Single European Act; and the signing of the Maastricht Treaty.

He is also critical of what he considers to be a continuing idolatry of Margaret Thatcher, who, in his view, weakened Britain's institutions and failed to address moral or cultural questions. Hitchens has expressed contempt for David Cameron, the current Conservative Party leader, regarding him as a member of the "liberal elite" with little conception of the challenges facing modern Britain. He wrote and presented a television program ("Toff at the Top") in which he argued this view. Hitchens views Cameron's social, educational, and foreign policies as being indistinguishable from those of Tony Blair. To further emphasize this point, he often refers to the two men in tandem as "Mr. Clair and Mr. Blameron". Cameron has responded by declining to be interviewed by Hitchens.

Hitchens has called for the establishment of a new political party in the UK, representing the traditionalist conservative strand of opinion that he espouses, and which would, in his own words, be "neither bigoted nor politically correct". He believes that such a movement cannot come into being until the Conservative Party collapses, arguing that many millions of Britons habitually vote for this and other political parties out of tribal loyalty, from which they cannot be detached by reasoned argument.

[edit] Publications

Hitchens is the author of The Abolition of Britain (1999, ISBN 0-7043-8140-0) and A Brief History of Crime (2003, ISBN 1-84354-148-3), both critical of changes in British society since the 1960s. A compendium of his Daily Express columns was published under the title Monday Morning Blues in 2000. An updated edition of A Brief History of Crime, re-titled The Abolition of Liberty (ISBN 1-84354-149-1) and featuring a new chapter on identity cards, was published in April 2004.

[edit] Personal life

Peter Hitchens was educated at The Leys School, Oxford College of Further Education, and the University of York. He married Eve Ross in 1983; they have three children. Although raised as an Anglican, Hitchens learned soon after his marriage that his mother, who had committed suicide when he was in his twenties, was of partly Jewish ancestry^[2]. Hitchens is a confirmed and communicant member of the Church of England.

Hitchens' older brother, Christopher Hitchens, is also a prominent journalist, author and critic. Christopher's views on most issues are to the left of Peter's. Christopher has said that "The real difference between Peter and myself is the belief in the supernatural. I'm a materialist and he attributes his presence here to a divine plan. I can't stand anyone who believes in God, who invokes the divinity or who is a person of faith."^[3]

The brothers were estranged for several years, following a 2001 article in The Spectator in which Peter alleged his brother had said he "didn't care if the Red Army watered its horses at Hendon", which Christopher said was used "in the reactionary press in the US" to imply that he was a "communist sympathiser".^[3] However, after the birth of Peter's third child, Christopher expressed a willingness to reconcile and to meet his new nephew. Shortly thereafter the brothers gave several interviews together in which they said their personal disagreements had been resolved, the most notable being their meeting at the Hay Festival in 2005^[3]. Christopher has recently clarified this in an interview in 2006 ' "There is no longer any official froideur," he says of their relationship. "But there's no official — what's the word? — chaleur, either." '^[4]

[edit] References

[edit] See also

• Christopher Hitchens
• Conservatism
• Paleoconservatism
• Pro-life
• Social conservatism

[edit] External links

Regular features

• Weekly column in Britain's Mail on Sunday newspaper
• Peter Hitchens Blog
• Extensive list of articles for other publications, primarily The Spectator

Articles produced

• "The Great Tory Hope" criticising David Cameron in the American Conservative magazine, 4 December 2006
• "Big Brother Watches Britain" in the American Conservative magazine, 8 May 2006
• "Uncritical Champion" reviewing the book Anti-Americanism by Jean-François Revel in the American Conservative magazine, 19 January 2004
• "Zionism: A Defense" in the American Conservative magazine, 6 October 2003

Referencing articles

• "Look forward in anger" Guardian Interview, 14 November 2005
• "Brothers at war over Britain" Article on a debate about Britain's future with brother Christopher Hitchens, 15 October 1999. Includes some short, selected audio clips from the event.
• "Cool Britannia" - 4 November 2002. Geoff Metcalf interviews Peter Hitchens on The Abolition of Britain.
• "Peter Hitchens on the European Union" - December 2002. Karl Zinsmeister interviews Peter Hitchens at his home in Oxford.
• "Raging Bulldog" - Guardian interview, 20 September 1999.

Book Reviews

• "The victims of liberalism" - 13 April 2003, sympathetic review of Hitchens' book A Brief History of Crime in The Sunday Telegraph by Theodore Dalrymple
• "An end to cant and defeatism", The Spectator, 26 April 2003 largely sympathetic article from the left by Neil Clark of A Brief History of Crime.
• "The case of the disappearing policeman" - 22 April 2003 partially sympathetic review of A Brief History of Crime in The Daily Telegraph, by Joshua Rozenberg
• "Goodbye to All That?" - 31 December 2000 largely sympathetic review of The Abolition of Britain by John O'Sullivan.
• "A Brief History of Crime" - 21 April 2003, critical review by Johann Hari in the The New Statesman.
• "Hanging's too good for 'em" - 13 April 2003, critical review of Hitchens' book A Brief History of Crime by David Rose in The Observer

TV Reviews

• [1] - Times review of "Toff at the Top", Hitchens' programme about David Cameron, 27 March 2007.

• "What's the big idea, Dave?" - Daily Telegraph review of "Toff at the Top", 27 March 2007

Audio

(You will need RealPlayer installed on your computer to listen to these recordings)

• Debating Tony Blair's Criminal Justice Stance - 7 October 2005 on BBC Radio 4's Law in Action
• Debate on The British Monarchy - 6 June 2002, on National Public Radio
• Criticizing the treatment of Guantanamo Detainees - 21 January 2002, in a short debate with Bruce Anderson on BBC radio.
• Debating the format of a potential Oath of Allegiance for the UK -with New Statesman columnist Ziauddin Sardar, 16 December 2001
• Debate on the British asylum system - 5 June 2000, arranged by The Observer Newspaper. (Approx. two-thirds down the page)
• Today Programme (Hitchens has made numerous appearances on BBC Radio 4's flagship morning news broadcast.)

• Should Britain Convert it's Road Signs to Metric? - 23 February 2006
• Is the Left Wing obsolete in British politics? - 8 February 2006
• Discussing an interview with England's first Children's Commissioner - 1 July 2005 (Context: The original interview)
• Were the Victorians as benign and civilised as we assume? - 26 May 2005
• What should people applying for British citizenship know about the UK? - 15 December 2004
• The Way We Talk about Islam - 18 August 2004
• Will ID Cards Mean an End to Our Liberty? - 26 April 2004
• The "Compensation Culture" - 25 August 2003

Video

• The Daily Politics

• Edition of 9 February 2007 Requires RealPlayer to watch. Hitchens discussed global warming, and law and order issues on the broadcast with Guardian columnist Zoe Williams

• Question Time - Broadcast 3 November 2006, Peter Hitchens was a panellist on the weekly public forum.

• Watch the entire broadcast streamed from the BBC website
• Download an edited version of the broadcast

• Cameron; Toff at the Top - Broadcast 26 March 2007 on Channel 4, Peter Hitchens wrote and presented this television documentary on the rise of Conservative Party leader David Cameron.

• Watch the broadcast directly from Google video, no special software needed
• Toff at the Top Description of the documentary on Channel 4's website

• Stealing Your Freedom - Broadcast 27 February 2006, Peter Hitchens wrote and presented this television documentary on the erosion of civil liberties in the UK for Britain's Channel 4.

• Watch the broadcast directly from Google video, no special software needed
• Stealing your Freedom Brief description of the documentary on Channel 4's website

• Booknotes: The Abolition of Britain - Broadcast 31 December 2000, Hitchens was interviewed for the Booknotes series on C-SPAN about his work 'The Abolition of Britain'.

• Watch the Interview Pop-up window with embedded RealPlayer plugin
• Booknotes: The Abolition of Britain Broadcast description and links

Misc

• Hitchens v Secretary of State for the Home Department - a court judgment on his request to access government records of his time in the International Socialist movement
• Peter Hitchens preaches a sermon at The Parish Church of St. Michael's Cornhill in the City of London, January 2005.