The Spectator Notes
CHARLES MOORE The Anglican Communion, trying to hold itself together in Dar-esSalaam, is like the Commonwealth. Indeed, it exists for the same reason — the inheritance of the British Empire Like the Commonwealth, it began as a whitedominated organisation, and has gradually ceased to be so. The Episcopal Church of the United States stands in relation to the Communion as white South Africa stood to the Commonwealth 50 years ago. Its insistence on pursuing its own obsessive doctrine — in this case, the ordination and marriage of practising homosexuals, in South Africa's case, apartheid — isolates it from its fellows, particularly its black fellows. In the middle, in both cases, stands England, home of residual authority, trying to provide a focus of unity, but lacking decisive power. The result, in South Africa's case, was that it had to leave the Commonwealth, and returned when it finally accommodated itself to the demands of the black majority. Will the American Episcopalians follow a similar path? Apartheid was given a pseudo-religious justification (by the Dutch Reformed Church), but was eventually recognised as unscriptural. The same thing will happen to the doctrines of extreme sexual liberation.
As Lent begins, I realise that every single sermon I have heard on the subject tries to turn it into something positive. We shouldn't think in terms of giving things up, says this homily, but think instead of something we could take up that would help our neighbour, make the world a better place, etc. 'There's no need to look miserable!' the preacher will usually add. Is there any Biblical or traditional support for this view? Of course it is always right to help our neighbour, but there is surely nothing positive about the season of Lent. Because Jesus endured 40 days of fasting and temptation in the wilderness, so should Christians. 'Shall not we thy sorrows share,' asks the hymn, And from earthly joys abstain?' An obvious, if inadequate way to do this is to give up something you enjoy — usually alcohol in my case. When you resume that pleasure at Easter, it is the keener for the abstention, and because the resumption is as much a religious duty as was the giving up. As in the hymn quoted above, the tune changes to mark the move from fast to feast (Holier gladness ours shall be'). Being told one mustn't be miserable makes me feel exceptionally gloomy.
To mark the second anniversary of the 1 hunting ban this week, the press published the news that David Cameron had just caused a letter to be written to all Tory MPs clarifying the party's position on the subject. Actually, this is not the case. The letter in question was sent out several months ago, by David Maclean, the former Chief Whip, on the assumption that it would be leaked. Oddly, it wasn't. So now the Tories have decided to send it out again. It answers the rising anxiety among hunting people that a Tory government might not bring in repeal. It goes for simplicity: rather than introducing a legal framework of regulation on the one hand, or letting the law stand on the grounds that it does not work and is being ignored on the other, the Maclean letter promises a straightforward, single vote on repeal. This would be in government time but unwhipped. It has been glossed as offering all this in the first session of Parliament, but does not do so (though it should). All supporters of hunting should make sure that any Conservative candidate chosen backs this policy, and will vote for repeal. But public opinion will only be persuaded if it can be shown that selfregulation will work. One reason the ban is so wrong is that it makes self-regulation much weaker than in the past: if your sport is theoretically illegal, you have little sanction left against those within it who behave badly. The result has been, I suspect, that there is more freelance cruelty than there used to be. The bodies that run hunting are now working on a new disciplinary code.
There are more people, apart from anything else, to be disciplined. All the publicity that the ban ensured has won so many new recruits that in some places the fields have got too big. In particular, lots of hunts, including our own, are awash with young people keen to know more. I hope that repeal won't reduce the glamour, and drive them away.
By pure chance, I found myself at the launch of Al Gore's first unsuccessful bid for the US presidency in Washington in 1987. It struck me then that Mr Gore was clearly not a human being, but a rather unconvincing replica, manufactured by scientists who had studied American politics but knew little about the human race. I could tell this by the unique boringness of his utterances and his strange physical stiffness. In 2000 Mr Gore won the Democratic nomination and, but for the Supreme Court decision, would have been President. I was surprised that no one noticed then that he was not human. Although the US Constitution does not specifically state that the President must be a human being; it does say that he must be born in the United States, and it is my case that Mr Gore was never born in any ordinary sense, and is therefore ineligible. Since then, the boffins have done further work on Mr Gore, and made him world-famous on the subject of climate change. But anyone who saw the recent photograph of him with Sir Richard Branson launching something environmental will have noticed that no successful remedial work has been done on Mr Gore. In fact, he has swollen somewhat, and is therefore no longer to scale. His perfect lack of expression makes him look more like a waxwork than ever, and his boringness has, if that is possible, grown. He is a robot. Why has no one else noticed this inconvenient truth?
Afew months ago, Eliza ManninghamBuller, the head of MI5, broke cover to say how we faced more terrorist plots than ever before. There is every reason to believe her, and that more intelligence is urgently needed to prevent them. Isn't it strange, then, that, despite knowing of her planned departure this year since September, the government has still not chosen her successor? Al-Qa'eda doesn't have interregnums.
We live in an age that prides itself on its frankness about sex, four-letter words and body parts, yet I notice a euphemism growing stronger all the time. The word for a male hen, in teaching materials, newspapers, television news reports and so on, has now become 'rooster'. This may just be because of Americanisation, but have you ever met anyone in England who, in conversation, actually says 'rooster'? Is the usual word really so embarrassing? Poppy-rooster!
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