Theodore Dalrymple is a pseudonym used by British psychiatric doctor-cum-commentator, Anthony Daniels. A man with a tangibly Burkean Conservative mind, he wades hip-deep through the detritus of inner-city Britain, surveying a wasteland that stretches as far as his eyes can see.
Not surprisingly he has a rather jaundiced view of this country. Indeed, so relentlessly pessimistic are his columns and books that one wonders whether a majority of readers end up by being his patients.
However, being gloomy does not necessarily mean the same as being wrong. While other talking heads, both of the left and of the right, mount their various hobbyhorses and gallop off furiously to nowhere in particular, Dalrymple has hit the big nail resolutely on the head with a dire warning about the Nazification of Britain:
“I grew up believing that it couldn’t happen here; that the intrinsic decency, good sense and ironical detachment of the British would have precluded Nazism or anything like it from taking root in our sceptred isle. Now I am not so sure. Utter vileness does not need a numerical majority to become predominant in a society. The Nazis never had an electoral majority in Germany, yet Germany offered very little resistance to their barbarism. Of course, it is highly unlikely that history would repeat itself in anything approximating the same form; but evil, unlike good, is infinitely multiform. We can invent our own totalitarian evil. There is little doubt that we have prepared the ground very well for evil’s triumph.”
Just as the Germans had prepared the ground by the construction of the top-down Bismarckian state. Both citizens and civil servants obeyed the orders of their political masters without question because that is what they had become used to doing. The nature of the orders, or the consequences of their execution, were not subject to any meaningful moral analysis or challenge.
“Whenever I have dealings with British bureaucrats, an insistent question is at the back of my mind: is there any order you would refuse to obey? From my observations of their conduct, my guess is that, in general, there isn’t; that they would prefer mass slaughter to the loss of their jobs and that, in the event of a post facto trial, all of them would fall back on the old excuse, I was only obeying orders.”
From my own career as a practising lawyer, I can only concur. No regulation is too ridiculous or damaging not to be zealously enforced or robotically obeyed. In this. much of Britain’s professional class collaborate. It is simply too dangerous and career-damaging not too. The consequences of dissent are financial ruin, so there is no dissent.
“Recently, I received a circular headed New Ethnic Categories that began with the words, ‘As you may know, we are required to monitor the ethnic origins of our staff.’ Who was this ‘we’ of whom the circular spoke: no names, only ‘The Human Resources Unit’ (Orwell could have done no better). And no decent reason for this fascistic practice was given; the ‘we are required’ being the final and irrefutable argument in its favour. Again it is a fair bet that not a single peep of protest was uttered in the office of the ‘Human Resources Unit’ when this circular was sent round.”
