A plague on the new Puritans
From Lawrence James
Sir: Tories beware! Roundheads are infiltrating the party of the Cavaliers. The six new MPs (Letters, 13 August) who issued a tirade against contemporary decadence claim to be ‘unencumbered by the political baggage of the past’. They are not, for they sing an old song. Their proposed new moral order is full of the dire warnings and prohibitions dear to the heart of Cromwell and his Puritans. Nothing less than a return to the bleak years of the ‘Rule of the Saints’ is proposed.
New moral gendarmeries succeeded the Puritans, all self-appointed moral elites who assumed the right to tell others what to do, read and think. The Society for the Suppression of Vice sniffed out licentiousness in Regency Britain, and Thomas Bowdler purged Shakespeare of anything that might bring a blush to a maiden’s cheek. Victorian purity campaigners patrolled the music halls, bishops predicted that a decadent Britain would go the way of Rome, and local councillors censored ‘naughty’ postcards and deplored diminishing swimwear.
Now the killjoy sextet has embraced the tradition of meddling with and curtailing the pleasures of others. They should be ignored. Rather, the Tories should revive their cavalier spirit and offer themselves to voters as the party that will leave them alone to enjoy themselves in whatever ways they choose. It will have better fortunes as the party of Squire Weston than that of Mrs Grundy.
Lawrence James Balmerino, Fife
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