Why I am a conservative

I have always been a conservative, not by choice, but simply because I am. I knew this even, to a point, when I thought I was a Trotskyist. I have always known deep down that I prefer what is classic, traditional and tried over what is newfangled and ‘progressive’. I have an instinctual hatred of these things, and an instinctual, prejudicial desire to protect what is established and secure in human affections. This is the case for me not just in politics, but in aesthetics – in literature, in music, in clothing, in architecture. Perhaps this is a character defect, but it is one I am unwilling to change. I certainly cannot take anyone seriously who suggests I am evil for having said opinions and should be cancelled for them, and make no apology for the strength of my feelings when I say that I disdain many aspects of contemporary civilisation, particularly the revolutionary ideology of woke that threatens to disestablish so many cherished aspects of the Western heritage. I know that I could not be a leftist even if I tried to be.

Growing up, I was obsessed with history. It was my first great intellectual love. The people of the past loomed large in my consciousness. Their worlds were so quaint yet so intriguing, their ways so different yet so exciting. It was not the ordinary people of those times that were my primary interest, but the colourful and charismatic individuals that rose above the crowd and shaped the course of history. It was the wars and battles especially that I was enamoured with. The pursuit of military glory, the building of empires, the statesmen and their career-defining speeches that caught the imagination of their followers and turned events on their head – these were the things that fascinated me. Winston Churchill and Napoleon Bonaparte were boyhood heroes of mine, men who had led their countries in their moments of greatest peril and brought them victory, glory and renown. Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great, Oliver Cromwell and Lord Nelson were part of a pantheon of heroes that I built for myself during these heady years in which I soaked myself in the magic of the past. I understood that the civilisations of old honoured things like martial prowess, courage, eloquence, the desire for renown, heroic individualism – values which, in our complacent bourgeois and wokified society, we have turned away from. I never thought to myself ‘I am a black boy, the son of African immigrants, and these people are all white oppressors – racists, slave-drivers and imperialists – so why am I admiring them?’ I would have been incredulous at such an idiotic and superficial attitude. Even if they were these things, they were so much more, and I saw no reason why I should not be inspired by the great things they have achieved. I somehow managed to reconcile the pagan ethos that I had imbibed from my juvenile study of Ancient Greece and Rome with my profound Christian beliefs. I think cognitive dissonance of this kind is much easier to deal with when you are a kid. I think I am still that boy who marvelled over the campaigns of Napoleon and relived them in video games and films over the years, that boy who watched documentaries about the generals of WWII, who read books about Peter the Great and William Gladstone, and felt an awe over these individuals in history and what they had achieved. Marxist historiography tells us that great individuals are nothing – it is all the masses, it is all laws of history. I think this is nonsense, and even if it were true I certainly don’t intend to live my life as if this were the case, for like all human beings I like the idea that my acts do shape the world around me and make a difference to the lives of others.

I grew up with the music of the past as well. Old-school Christian hymns, military marches and folk songs of the past (English, German or Russian) as well as classical music were a staple of my musical diet. I had no interest in contemporary popular music and still don’t. Recently I have added to this an appreciation for the music of the Great American Songbook, and the American popular music of the 60s, as well as the country music emanting largely from Nashville, Tennessee at this time. I feel a strong sense (one that I admittedly can only attempt to justify intellectually) that this music is superior to anything we have now, and anything we may have for a very long time. It will be said that I am guilty of romanticising the past and filtering out the garbage that was played then, but that only proves that only the passage of time can show fully the worth of a thing to human civilisation. Communism came and went in a span of 70 years, and we look back on it with disgust. Beethoven and Sinatra are still with us. There is no contest here.

I like the architecture of old better, too. Just today I visited Westminster Abbey, a place that has stood and been a place of prayer for centuries. It is far superior to any of the architectural monstrosities visited upon the world by totalitarian regimes. Great buildings of the past are a monument to humanity, representing the pinnacle of human achievement and endeavour, and we are continually reminded every time we see one of these great structures of what we can achieve with a combination of good taste, genius and centuries of careful and tasteful construction. We are also reminded of the architectural garbage that litters the landscape of great cities like London in our contemporary era, something that Roger Scruton and other great conservative thinkers and writers have taken note of. There is a reason why, in the nineteenth century, France and other countries turned back to the great architectural traditions of Ancient Rome and Greece, and built beautiful structures like the Arc de Triomphe and the Palais Bourbon. My week-long sojourn in Paris was sufficient to convince me that Paris an an infinitely more beautiful city than London, ruined with eyesores like layer upon layer of hideous skyscrapers and the monstrosity that is the Millennium Dome.

I like old-fashioned clothing too. I have always been conservative in matters of clothing. I rebel against the revolution in favour of casuality in dress that has been going on for decades. The dogma of ‘Come as you are’ and ‘comfort over beauty’ has encouraged people to dress like slobs, and even mock those who dress well as egotistical show-offs who look down on the masses. It is why I have taken to wearing suits to work every day, and why I increasingly leave the house wearing a smart shirt and chinos. I do not dress like this all the time, and even I have my very casual moments, but I do try to make an effort. I do not think it is necessarily possible or desirable to return to the rigidity of past dress codes, but I certainly favour the spirit if not the letter of classic clothing style. I loved wearing suits to church every Sunday as a boy, and as a Socialist Appeal member I took some people aback when I increasingly turned up to events dressed in my old suits that I now never got to wear. Even Alan Woods was impressed. Apparently, back in the old days, Militant had insisted on smart dress as it as a working-class tradition to look your best when going to the pub and other such functions, and dressing like hippies was not going to win over the workers. Alas, standards have slipped in the present-day IMT, like elsewhere in society. I know at least one full-timer who I kindly ribbed during one of our paper sales for not ironing his shirt before presenting himself to the working-class outside Leytonstone tube station.

I hate contemporary literature. Much of it is utterly superficial woke nonsense. A popular trend now is ‘re-writing’ ancient myths and beloved classics in order to make them more feminist or LGBT-inclusive. Even when the prose is good, the story is often bland, boring, preachy and annoying. Endless re-tellings of Austen and Bronte are also irritiating, but they seem to be what the middle-brow, reading public is buying. I am proud to say that almost all the literature on my shelves is classic literature and it will stay that way. There is not a single writer in this era who comes even close to matching James Joyce, T.S. Eliot or Thomas Hardy. If I discover one, I will make this fact public knowledge. As an A-Level English Literature student I recall having to study this dreadful set of contemporary poems which were part of an anthology called Poems of the Decade. What a chore those poems were. I remember last year attending a poetry reading in Southbank Centre with very low expectations, given what passes for poetry nowadays. Indeed, much of the poetry was unabashedly woke drivel, and sounded more like declamatory, revolutionary prose (including one particularly virulent one denouncing Britain as the home of empire and calling for its destruction) than anything close to real poetry. And can you believe it – this was all part of the competition for a prize named for none other than, wait for it – the famously grouchy reactionary and quasi-fascist T.S. Eliot, who would be turning in his grave at all this. For all my distaste for many of Eliot’s ideas (especially on Jews), I cannot help but sympathise with what would undoubtedly be his disgust at what his estate is doing with its resources and his name.

Coming to modern art, please spare me the wonders of the Tate Modern. I will stick with the pre-Raphaelites and the realists and romantics of the nineteenth century and I am honestly not much bothered by any art beyond that. As for philosophy, nobody in this field is saying anything that seems to me of much value anymore. Roger Scruton, Leszek Kolakowski and a handful of others were worthy exceptions. I will stick with Nietzsche and Kant and Burke and Hegel, and work on mastering their great works, and spare myself the woke pseudo-philosophy and post-modernist silliness that passes for much of philosophy today. I should stop here before I end up sounding too much like Alan Woods.

I am not a massive film person, but even in the area of film, I can honestly say that my favourite film of all time is Sergei Bondarchuk’s 1970 film Waterloo, starring the brilliant Rod Steiger as a mercurial Napoleon in acute physical and psychological decline and the magnificent Christopher Plummer as the cold, calculating British aristocrat Wellington. What this brilliant Soviet director was able to achieve, without the wonders of today’s inflated budgets and special effects and what have you, was simply astounding. Thousands of Soviet soldiers were actually part of the actors that made up the armies for the battle scene. I still find it mesmerising to watch, even now.

I have no principled belief in equality – I rather like inequality and think it makes life more interesting. I think that some people have the right to rule by virtue of their superior intelligence and ability and others must obey. I like hierarchy and order. The reason I am not an anarchist like Max Stirner or William Godwin is that I do not have enough faith in the rationality of the individual human being and his or her ability to govern themselves, and because I think mob rule is the inevitable outcome when the state is removed. (Just look at Twitter if you aren’t convinced that man is at the root an ape-like conformist who is one expression of the ‘wrong’ opinion away from joining a lynch mob.) My pessimistic view of human nature is informed partly by my own bad experiences at the hands of others growing up. It tells me that Hobbes is more right than Rousseau and that civilisation is one step away from barbarism at all times.

I believe that inheritance should be seen neither as an imposition nor as injustice but as what makes civilisation possible. If every generation were to ‘begin again’ from a year zero and cut itself off from its roots – if we were to abolish the inheritance of property, culture, language, and ensure complete equality of the most primitive kind for all time – what reason would we have to work for anything beyond our own selfish pleasure within our lifetimes? I have come round to support the British monarchy partly for this reason, and partly because it is useful in preventing socialism.

My views are perhaps barmy, but they are mine. I see no reason to change them without good reason. Reason is overrated in any case. As Dostoevsky said in Notes from Underground, it is sometimes very satisfying to rebel against reason. Mere spite against the far-left is a good enough reason to maintain my views. I will likely maintain most of them for the rest of my life. Deep down, I have always known that I was a conservative, and it took events to remind me of this. I have always cherished Western civilisation and seen it as mostly good, even when I was a Marxist preaching world revolution. I have always cringed at those who condemn it as being about nothing but racism and oppression. I have always held close to my heart the art and the literature and the music and the history and claimed it as my own. I have never felt that I could not be a part of this wonderful world because of my skin colour, nor has anyone tried to make me feel this way apart from ethno-nationalists and chauvinists in my own family. The truth is that when I joined the IMT I had not experienced in my life anything that I can meaningfully describe as ‘oppression’ at the hands of the capitalist system. I did not have any true resentment of the West, of whites, or of Britain – in fact I rather liked being British and being a part of this great national community. I even looked upon it as a counterbalance to much I disdained about aspects of the immigrant heritage handed down to me. British liberal democracy had more obvious appeal to me than Ghanaian Pentecostalism as a belief system. I simply was not a convincing revolutionary. In the end, I couldn’t even convince myself.