CONSERVATIVE

was an individualist, who saw the nation as a partnership
of free people, each of whom should take responsibility
for his life and happiness. But the individual cannot
achieve freedom alone; it is only through the protection
afforded by shared institutions that freedom arises. That
is why she so greatly admired the British inheritance
of law, parliamentary democracy, and monarchical
sovereignty. It all fitted together in her mind as the ideal
reconciliation of freedom and order. It was the translation
into institutional form of the social contract as envisaged
by Burke: the contract between the living, the dead, and
those who are yet to be born. But of course, with that
vision she had to confront two great questions—and
they are the same questions that face Italy today: the
questions of mass migration and socialist resentment.
Socialist resentment
Her vision of a healthy nation—defending its place
in the world, composed of free citizens proud of their
heritage, and acknowledging their responsibilities—was
founded on the idea of success. She was a self-made
middle-class person for whom failure had no appeal. She
wanted people to get on in life, and she wanted the same
for her nation and for herself. Many people shared those
desires and saw in her leadership an example that should
be followed.
The accumulation of socialist resentment makes it
difficult to revive a country when its economy collapses.
This we have seen in Greece, a country in which the
majority depend on the state for their benefits and
pensions, in which the trade unions and the statecontrolled
industries have negotiated privileges that
cannot be paid for, and in which the few active people
are burdened with taxes that remove the incentive
to work. Of course, it was never as bad as that in the
rest of Europe—and it wouldn’t have been as bad in
Greece if the euro had not existed. But by using this
currency, Greece was able to borrow against the German
economy—a convenient way of living without earning.
But it is not only in the economic sphere that the
resentment against success establishes itself. There
is a culture of resentment that offers strange but real
compensation to those who adopt it. This was the major
obstacle that Thatcher encountered, not only in the leftwing
opposition to her policies but also in the elite of
her own Party. She was widely seen as someone who
was indifferent to suffering and failure. And though she
spoke often of the ‘enterprise culture’ that she wished to
promote, for this she was dismissed by the intellectual
class as a philistine. She did not sufficiently take account
of the fact that, in the half century since World War II,
the educational system had been taken over by socialists
for whom social equality, rather than the transmission
of knowledge, was the goal. And she clung to national
pride and the legitimacy of distinction at a time when
the surrounding culture was devoted to the exaltation of
shabbiness and the chimera of ‘social justice’.
This difficulty was not peculiar to Britain. On the
contrary, all across Europe since the 1960s we have seen
the spread of a culture of resentment, in which equality
has been promoted over liberty, and failure over success.
The Italian education system has been subverted in
the name of equality, just like our education system in
Britain. And those who argue for a reduction of national
debt, for control over welfare spending, for rates of
taxation that provide an incentive to entrepreneurs are
accused of a lack of compassion. The purpose of the
state, according to the socialist vision, is to take charge
of the economy, and redistribute the product. The
goal is equality and the motive compassion. But this
compassion—which involves no personal sacrifice in
the one who promotes it, and which is exercised without
regard for the rights and deserts of the successful—is
another name for resentment. True compassion involves
giving what is yours, not taking what has been earned by
another. But the purpose of the culture of resentment is
to disguise such moral truths and to spread the myth of
an ideal ‘social justice’—which is the true goal of politics.
Mass migration
This brings me to the other, and far greater, obstacle
to Thatcher’s vision for the future—one that has now
hit Italy full in her innocent face: the obstacle posed by
mass migration. Migration to Britain from the former
Empire began in earnest after World War II, and was at
first welcomed on account of a shortage of indigenous
labour, and because the new arrivals were mostly
Christians from the Caribbean, who shared the family
values and loyalty to the Crown of their indigenous
neighbours. Sikhs and Hindus from the Indian subcontinent
were also accepted, when it was discovered
that they too fit in to the secular culture of our country.
But things rapidly changed with the arrival of
Muslims from rural Pakistan. Quite suddenly Britain
was confronted with a rival culture: a culture that was
religious rather than secular, and which did not accept
the principle of national loyalty. Of course, there were
educated Pakistanis who fully understood and endorsed
the British heritage. But they were a minority and
throughout the period of Thatcher’s government the
northern cities of our country were steadily colonised by
people who regarded their surroundings as in a certain
measure alien. Although for the most part law-abiding,
they did not accept the principles of secular education
that govern our schools and insisted on sending their
boys to the Madrasah at the start of each day for the
obligatory recital of the Koran. They did not accept that
girls should be educated in the same way as boys and did
not allow their daughters a free choice when it came to
marriage. Although for the most part monogamous, the
Muslim communities have never accepted the English
law that makes bigamy a crime. ‘Honour killing’ has been
widespread, and Muslims from Africa have also inflicted
genital mutilation on their daughters.
The effort to integrate these immigrants was hampered
by the adoption of a policy of multiculturalism—in
effect the ghettoization of the Muslim communities.
This policy was promoted by leftists in the educational
system and it arose from the same culture of resentment.
By ‘multiculturalism’ the left understood the habit of
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Winter/Spring 2016