Nip terror in the bud
Sir: Correlli Barnett would have us believe Con Coughlin is suffering from paranoia and describes George Bush’s ‘war on terror’ as stale rhetoric (Letters, 2 February). One wonders what ailment Correlli Barnett suffers from — perhaps ‘paranoiac denial’ is a fair diagnosis. Could he inform us which countries, if any, with sizeable Muslim minorities are free of religious conflict? The Philippines, Indonesia, Malaya, Thailand, India, the Middle East, Western Europe, all are in turmoil to a greater or lesser degree. As he says, in Britain there have so far been only ‘occasional acts of terrorism’. This is thanks to the efficiency of our security services, certainly not to any shortage of numbers sympathetic to the slaughter of us infidels. Most sensible people would agree a potential contagion is best nipped in the bud, rooted out and ‘smashed’. Mr Barnett writes glibly about a sense of proportion. Would it be permissible to ask if he has ever experienced terrorism in the raw: the killing and maiming of relatives and friends?
Terrorism is now global, mostly Islamic in origin. It is interesting that during the 1970s, whatever one’s views about his internal politics, President Vorster of South Africa said something like this, ‘If the Western Powers persist in their policy of defending terrorism when it occurs in countries like South Africa and Rhodesia, but only condemn it when practised by the IRA in Britain or by Gadaffi of Libya when targeted at America and Europe, the time will come when international terrorism will engulf the world.’ That time has sadly now come to pass!
R.L. O’Shaughnessy
Hadleigh, Ipswich
In my own defence
Sir: In last week’s editorial (2 February) about Derek Conway and ‘sleaze’, you conjured up the demons of ‘cash for questions, the Neil Hamilton saga and brown paper envelopes.’ In the mid-1990s, under Frank Johnson, The Spectator was one of the few publications which allowed me to defend myself against these false allegations. True, the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner, Sir Gordon Downey, later concluded I did take cash from Mr Fayed. But the media widely derided his inquiry as botched and a denial of natural justice to me. Ann Widdecombe resigned from the Standards Committee in protest at my treatment.
After I robustly defended myself in a live televised appearance before the Standards Committee, the Labour-dominated committee refused to endorse Downey’s conclusion that I had received cash in brown envelopes. They were right. The Inland Revenue later investigated too, demanding income tax on any cash payments and threatening a criminal prosecution for tax fraud. The burden of proof was on me to refute the allegations. The Revenue’s elite fraud-busters, the Special Compliance Office, crawled over my financial affairs for the years 1987–97 with a microscope. After a two-year investigation, they dismissed the allegations and asked for not a single penny in extra tax.
How many of my detractors could be confident of emerging unscathed from such exhaustive scrutiny of so many tax years?
Neil Hamilton
Hullavington, Wiltshire
Persuasion not coercion
Sir: I enjoyed reading James MacMillan’s passionate and provocative article (Arts, 2 February). His disquiet seems to be based around two related areas: modern liberalism’s ‘planned dismantling of the family’ and its ‘hatred of Christianity’. Although I share his Catholic faith I am unconvinced by his case.
There is nothing stopping James and his family from living a Catholic life in 21st-century Britain, but only 50 years ago I, as a gay man, would have been in prison. I understand his discomfort at the trendy dinner parties where he has had to keep silent about certain issues, but it depends which dinner parties one attends. For a gay person to face honestly the question ‘Do you have a family?’ is far more painful around a hostile table than to share one’s beliefs about how families should function.
On the second point, it is an unquestionable fact that we are living in post-Christian times. Although the message of Christ is still fresh (and, if G.K. Chesterton is to be believed, as yet untried), the voices which have proclaimed it are seen as hoarse and spent. ‘Preach the gospel at all times, and occasionally use words’ was St Francis’s gentle admonition, and a strategy of persuasion not coercion is the only viable way for the present-day Church.
Genuine liberalism is not to expect others to think as we do — something which liberals need to learn too! Christ taught that His Father causes rain to fall on good and bad people alike. Whether we Catholics like it or not, such watering has meant that growth and flourishing has often occurred in the most unlikely places. This is something to celebrate and build upon — and to discuss at the next dinner party.
Stephen Hough
London NW8
Smoked out
Sir: In June 2006 the then public health minister, Caroline Flint, told the House of Lords economic affairs committee that ‘in relation to deaths from smoking and second-hand smoke, the most serious aspect is smoking in the home. Ninety-five per cent of deaths are related to smoking in the home’. If she was right, then banning smokers from pubs is not merely undemocratic (‘Still fuming about the ban’, Rod Liddle, 2 February) but irrational. Is it not better that nicotine-addicted adults blow their smoke into the faces of consenting friends and acquaintances in a pub, rather than into those of their kiddies — especially on winter nights, with the central heating going full blast and the windows shut tight?
Maritz Vandenberg
Roehampton
Funeral music
Sir: I agree with G.W. of Pewsey (‘Dear Mary’, 2 February) about variety in hymn selection at funerals. However, equal care must be taken in considering the relevance to the deceased: some years ago, at the funeral of a butcher, the family’s unfortunate choice was ‘Lambs May Safely Graze’.
Peter Fineman
Barrow Street, Wiltshire
Comments