Open Road

Saturday Jan 30th 2010

From the Vaults

Rejected passage from Margaret Thatcher’s October 1979 party conference speech:
‘Morality is personal.  There is no such thing as collective conscience, collective gentleness, collective freedom.  To talk of social justice, social responsibility, a new world order, may make us feel good, but it does not absolve each of us from personal responsibility.
‘When we have succeeded with a nation of people who take personal responsibility then we shall have, and be entitled to have, The New Patriotism.’
An interesting series of thoughts.  While one may quibble about the rejection of the idea of collective freedom - surely a valid concept in some circumstances - Mrs T (or a member of her team) articulated an important truth which we have been reminded of repeatedly in the years of New Labour.
The state can give us money or housing, or treatment, but never care in the true sense of the term.  Help is constrained by processes, procedures, guidelines and rules.  What we get are the nice judgements of bureaucrats, not the full-hearted desire to help that can only come from the voluntary choice of generous souls.
Handing over care to the state always and inevitably that ends with the evaporation of a much more valuable commodity:  personal moral responsibility.  Or, in concrete terms, two community policemen standing by while a child drowns in a Wigan pond because ‘they hadn’t been trained in what to do.’ Mrs Thatcher had it right.