How often do we hear some Mother addressing an infant saying "What would you like for lunch today darling?" or, more frequently, "Don't do that, please" whereupon the child does as it pleases without further reproof which is its natural inclination.

These attitudes I suggest are the cause of many of our social ills. In particular the misbehaviour of young people in town and city centres stems from this early abdication from authority. Both of the remarks quoted have in them an abandonment of essential authority.
 
In the one case the child should learn from an early age what it is good to eat which may often conflict with what the child considers nice to eat. There should be no alternative. Likewise in the second case there are many things in a civilised society which it is necessary to learn not to do, and in the case of children there should be no alternative. The answer to the question ‘Why‘, should it arise, is "Because I say so. " The reasons why can and should be elaborated at a more opportune moment.
 
In my view obedience is the beginning of self control which is essential for harmonious living in a community. My mind goes back to the training of army officers. It was a dictum that before you can learn to command you must first learn to obey. That is why the military regime endured by such trainees was far more rigorous than that to which the private soldier is subjected.
 
The public image of the bullying sergeant stems from the training period when civilians have to be taught to obey without question. The trained soldier has learned what is required of him and how to stay out of trouble. The sergeant's authority is not questioned and soldiers automatically go along with the system; what is more, to a large extent they are trusted to do so.

In the Marxist society which began to be created in 1945 discipline was equated with serfdom. In the Age of the Common Man there were to be fewer restraints. Children, it was asserted, must be allowed to do their own thing.

This philosophy invaded the schools. One consequence has been that the essential basis of reading writing and arithmetic which was instilled in the young as far back as the village dame school is no longer acquired by a disgustingly large percentage of children.

The argument put forward by the Marxists was that the old way produced a cowed, subservient, forelock tugging proletariat which was, conveniently for the established authorities, respectful of authority.

It does not have to be that way. A child is legally in the care of its parents until the age of 18 which is a long time. That responsibility is shared to some extent with a school. A child brought up in a controlled environment can be given increasing degrees of autonomy as it shows itself capable of shouldering responsibility. Finally, when it is fully adult, it becomes responsible for its own actions. That is a recipe for self confidence not for serfdom.

However it is not only in the home that things have gone awry. That same Marxist movement which attacked the nuclear family also embarked upon an ambitious programme of social engineering. The schools were heavily involved with the politicians and the media in this effort. Through education, particularly in the universities, all these agencies came to be increasingly of the same Marxist mindset. Recent desires to get 50% of the population into universities regardless of ability had the same intention.

Characteristic of the society which they have sought to fashion is a belief that anything goes. Anything that can be done may be done. It is in this context that homosexuality has come to be portrayed not as the biological dead end, which it is, but as normal, even praiseworthy, activity which aggressively claims for itself a status which, to my knowledge, it has never had in western civilisation. Even in ancient Greece where the society of pretty boys was commonly sought as a diversion it never had such status.

So far has this gone that we now have Bishops who are of this persuasion and the Roman Catholic Church, in which celibacy for priests is the rule, is plagued by paedophilia.

At the same time what was promoted by early Socialists as ‘free love' has developed into a state of affairs in which it is alleged that elements of the population engage in what is called ‘recreational sex ‘ which has no more meaning than the gratification of the moment.

As a by product of all this activity we have schoolgirls giving birth to children which neither they nor the fathers have the slightest capacity to support. The state is required to adopt the role of provider which further undermines the role of the nuclear family. This I fear is not an unintended consequence.

Parallel with this we have the new phenomenon of widespread drug and alcohol abuse. The latter has always been with us. Hogarth depicts the degradation and squalor which accompanied the era of cheap gin. For some of the better off opium was a constant temptation in the cities. The peddling of narcotics to virtual children is something new.

These children and their abettors will no doubt claim the right to do as they like, and in the spirit of the times their elders will find it difficult to deny that right though they will deplore the consequences. Thou shalt not has gone out of fashion.

At the same time women have claimed emancipation from their biological role as mothers and home-makers. What began as a demand by moderately well to do Ladies  (Suffragettes) developed into a feminist movement with a beguiling demand for equality. It has not resulted in freedom for women but in transforming them into wage slaves like their husbands or partners making it difficult, if not impossible, to oversee the development of their children as they and society need.

Another consequence of the Marxist mindset has been the mixing of populations. Their prevailing philosophy proclaims that people are the same the world over and that transposing them from one place to another involves nothing more than tolerance and some minor adjustments.

London is the most striking example of the consequences. Reference has been made to one school in which 70 languages are present. How can anything remotely resembling education take place in an institution where intercommunication is the major concern.

I am prepared to accept that one effect was not foreseen though it should have been. Religious conflict, which was eliminated from Britain in 1688, has been restored. Not only do the British have to contend with aggressive moves by the Roman Catholic Church to recover the dominant position which it held until repudiated by King Henry VIII, but another pre- mediaeval religion with millions of adherents has been introduced in the form of militant Islam. In religious terms we are back to the 16^th and 17^th centuries.

Furthermore the freedoms of which politicians prate are a delusion, a deliberate deception. Certainly individuals are free to indulge their appetites but in more important respects they have lost their freedom.

It used to be the case that a British citizen was free to do anything which was not forbidden by law. Those things were relatively few and easy to comprehend. Thanks to our Marxist masters that has changed. He is now free to do those things which the law allows. He is constrained by tens of thousands of regulations of which he knows nothing although he is bound by them and can be punished for infringement. Not only that but those regulations come from an authority over which he has no control. He has been robbed of the government in London over which he had a modicum of control and thought he had more. The governing power has been moved away from Westminster out of reach onto the Continent.

I seem to have strayed some way from my starting point that self control is vital to a civilised society because it enables people to refrain from activities which are personally harmful or seen as unwanted in the society as a whole. Self control and self government are however related.

A person who is in control of himself is well qualified to decide the rules by which he will live. It is inappropriate that those rules should be outside of his control and possiblyframed in the best interests of somebody else.

It has been the purpose of our Marxist masters to destroy the homogeneous society that was Britain, to destroy its education system rendering the population susceptible to suggestion and mis-information and to discredit the Institutions developed over centuries which, for all their faults and inadequacies, kept it stable. It has been their purpose to replace that society with one of their own devising in which the individual counts for nothing and theIdeologue reigns supreme. It is a tragedy that, as in the case of Hitler, they were voted into Office. They are still about their business which is not quite finished.