TRIGGERnometry - Should We Be Ashamed of Our History? - Nigel Biggar

Episode Date: August 30, 2020

Nigel Biggar is Regius Professor of Moral & Pastoral Theology, University of Oxford. Support TRIGGERnometry: Paypal: https://bit.ly/2Tnz8yq https://www.subscribestar.com/triggernometry https://www.patreon.com/triggerpod Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people. Our brilliant and fantastic guest today is a Regis Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology. Nigel Bigger, welcome to Trigonometry. Thanks very much. It's so great to have you. We're here at Oxford University. It's a pleasure to be here and speaking with you, which is of course where you work. Before we get into a very interesting background and story, just tell everybody a little bit about who are you, how are you where you are, what has been your journey through life that leads you to this very strange place sitting in this chair on YouTube. Okay, well, I wasn't born in Oxford. I was born in Scotland, but my Scottish accent

got drained from me when I came south to school at age of 13, except when I'm, when I'm slightly drunk or when I'm in the pulpit, I can get quite Scottish, otherwise, otherwise not. So I've developed an academic career. I spent about seven years in Canada and the States. I collected my wife there, brought her back about 30 years ago, and have taught here in Oxford in Leeds in Dublin, and then for the last 11 years have taught back here in Oxford. And my field, I have this rather bizarre title, Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology. What's that? Basically, it's ethics, but it's ethics done from a religious Christian point of view. So I teach that and I've done research on,

I've written on things like the ethics of euthanasia, published a book on the ethics of war. I also do peace. I've done stuff on making peace and doing justice after civil conflict, Northern Ireland, South Africa. And just about to bring out a book, on rights. So it's fair to say in summary that you've had a

distinguished academic career, but I think people who will be aware of you, us included, first became aware of you in November 2017. When... That laugh is a... I remember that. I'm sure you do.

See it into the memory, no doubt. When you wrote a piece for the Times, which was entitled Don't Feel Guilty about our colonial past, which was a defense of your colleague Bruce Gilly, who'd written something about the empire and colonialism not being all bad. So tell us briefly about that and what happened and how that went.

Okay, so you've described the article, appeared in the Times in late November 2017. And by the way, as you'll know, when people write for newspapers, they don't have control over the title. What I said in my article was, we Brits, we have reason for pride as well as shame. over the Imperial past, so our Imperial past is mixed. There were awful things, and there were some great things.

All I was saying was both, which is a pretty, I thought was a pretty unobjectionable, moderate position that no one really could disagree with. More full me. So the title was a bit misrepresentative, but that was published in late November. And then about a week later, I got round after six, months delay publishing online a description of a research project that I had launched in July of 2017 called Ethics and Empire. And this brings together a group of ethicists and historians to survey empire from ancient China to the modern period and consider the ways in which contemporaries

thought about the empires they lived in in moral terms. I mean, how did they see things morally? But I finally got around to publishing a description of that online. And then a few days after that, second week of December, my wife and I were in the fancy lounge at Heathrow Airport. We were going off to celebrate our wedding anniversary in Nuremberg. Not everyone's choice. Trades doesn't help the end.

I know. I like history. She likes Christmas markets. And, you know, as you do, I just had to check my email one last time before getting in the plane. And there was an email from the public relations people here in Oxford informing me that a group of students calling themselves Common Ground had published an online denunciation of my Ethics and Empire project. So I've never experienced that before, but that was told me. And the good news was that the university said that it was entirely behind my right to run such a thing. So I didn't think any more of it. But that was on the Thursday. On the Sunday I got news from my main historical collaborator that he was resigning for the project.

And in the next four days, there were two more online denunciations, these last two bi-academics of this project that I was running. So all of that together in that week was a bit of a shock. And I'd really not been expecting it at all. Clearly, looking back, I was naive. Is this sort of thing, just to interrupt very briefly, Is this sort of thing standard practice in academia where people take exception to a particular topic of research and then there's a student campaign and then academics resign and withdraw from participation?

Is that normal or is this unusual? That's a good question. It wasn't normal. I mean, I'd never experienced it before. But I think it's become much more normal. Certainly we're all aware of cases in the last three or four years where that's happened to people. And of course social media enables that kind of thing. It enables an individual to write a protest and then send it round to all their mates all over the world.

And within a matter of hours, you may have collected several hundred signatures, which looks really powerful. I mean, in the months, in the weeks and months that I spent trying to come to term, with what was going on, I did come to the view that this was not an appropriate way for academic colleagues to behave because when I complained about these online denunciations from, in one case, 58 Oxford colleagues and in the third protest, I think about 200 academics worldwide, I mean, they said, oh, we were simply trying to stimulate a conversation. I said, well, you know, if you want a conversation, I mean, some of the people who signed these letters, two of them work across the road from me. They know what my door is.

In fact, two of them were in the same college as me, in this college. They know what my door is. They could have come and spoken to me. They didn't. And they haven't since. And so the notion this was a kind of invitation to conversation is complete baloney. I can only interpret it as, of course, it's an aggressive thing to do, but it was designed perhaps to intimidate me or also to persuade university authorities to act against me in some way.

pulling funding or some other kind of sanction. And why do you think this is happening more and more, that we have this emboldened minority? You feel that they have the right, not to criticise, because it is absolutely their right to criticise your work or your views or whatever else it may be, but they feel that they have the right to cancel something? That's a really good question,

and I continue to puzzle over it. I mean, people have always had strong political opinions and within universities, there have been people on the far left and the further right. It's always been the case. I can only speculate that the kind of people who think they have that right are people who have spent a long time talking to people of their own kind and so it really appears to them as if there is only one view of these things.

That's one possibility. The other possibility is that not only do they, are they convinced that a certain view of the world is right and they have it, but that the contrary view of the world is absolutely unacceptable. I mean, the word fascist is thrown out all over the place. If you utter a conservative, a right-wing opinion, you're fascist. So immediately you're pushed into the extreme. So it's not just, as it were, people operating in a kind of intellectual bubble where they never really hear a contradiction,

and they're constantly confirming what they and their mates think. It's also that there's a tendency to demonize the opposition in ways that quite how they come to that view. I just don't understand. But to be honest, I see a lot of it in the pages of the Guardian now. I mean, I... Surely not. Yeah, well, yeah, yeah. Well, it didn't used to be that way.

There was a time, I will confess, when I think in the 90s, the Guardian was the only paper I read. but it's become more and more fixated with identity politics and that kind of politics doesn't seem to it's not into compromise and it does tend to demonize the opposition

in ways that the left hasn't always done and I don't quite understand why that's the case. I mean, let's be clear, in the past, the far right has done that. We all know that from 20th century history, from real fascism in France and Germany and Italy. But it's not that that kind of othering and demonisation does at the moment seem to come from certain parts of the left. And it's very interesting that you say that. And, We were talking about academia, what happened to you.

Do you think there's a problem with free speech on campus? Yes, I do. The left will disagree. Again, if you read The Guardian, you'll find a number of people in recent years saying a concern about freedom of speech is really a fabrication by people like me, male, white, elderly, who are alarmed of having our accustomed authority drained away from us

so no one listens to us and so we're upset and so we complain about our freedom of speech being suppressed and that is just not true and I know it partly from my own direct experience and partly through recent

social scientific surveys one published a couple of weeks ago. But just in terms of my own experience, I mean, I'm coming toward the end of my career. I'm in a prestigious position. It's quite hard to get to me. At least that's clear now.

It wasn't clear to me in December 2017. But I'm secure. So did you think at the time that you were likely to lose your job? I'd no idea. But I lost night's sleep over it. Yeah, partly because Look, I spend a lot of time telling you what's wrong with the world, so let me tell you about something that's actually right.

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support. Go to avocado green mattress.com slash trigger to check out their mattress and furniture sale. That's avocado green mattress.com slash trigger. Avocado green mattress.com slash trigger. Avocado, greenmatress.com slash trigger. Yes, because at least initially, I felt alone. One of my oldest friends, who I still respect and love, actually told me to abandon my project straight away because he said it's just too toxic, toxic. And then the fact that my senior...

collaborator and the project resign within four days, giving an implausible explanation for his abrupt resignation. And then, yes, from colleagues here, on the whole, silence. So you do, you know, I did begin to wonder, am I crazy, am I daft? And although the university had indicated from the beginning that it would back me up. Yes, I guess I did feel quite vulnerable and not quite sure where this was going to go. Fortunately, you survived, let's say. But your concern is that you are in a prestigious position,

as you say, coming towards the end of your career. A younger colleague. Yeah, absolutely. So that's the concern. And I have plenty of experience of younger colleagues who are conservative in their views, who have said to me, you know, really pleased that you are saying what you're saying, Nigel, I just couldn't dare to say it myself.

And I've actually said to them, oh, in fact, they've said, you know, I feel guilty that I'm not saying the same thing. And I said to them, well, nor should you at this point, you need to wait until you get tenure. And then you can start to say what you're. think when you're secure. But right now, you need to play the long game. But there was one instance of a very junior academic, a junior research fellow who was an academic who hasn't got a permanent job yet. He's got the, he has PhD, he's got a kind of three-year research post, and then has to look for a permanent job. So it's quite insecure. And in May 2018,

You're talking about Noah Carl? No, not. No, no. This guy must remain nameless for reasons that will come clear. No, this was an historian. And you mentioned Bruce Gilley, who published this provocative, but in my view, intelligent article called The Case for Colonialism. I had Gilly come here in May 2018,

And we held in this room a small conference with some historians, Paul Collier, the development economist, Tutanko Roy, the historian of colonial economics in India and others, because I wanted to generate a kind of intelligent, reflective discussion about what Gilly was saying. about colonialism, but because I didn't want to invite heckling, and also because, frankly, small gatherings are much better in terms of conversation than large ones. And because only fit 30 people in this room, I didn't advertise it, I just invited people I thought would be good to have part of the conversation. And one of them was this young junior research fellow, whom I, we'd had a clandestine conversation

in a distant part of the university where he revealed that he actually liked what I had to say. I kid you not. We actually had to find a place where he didn't think he'd be recognized. And he said, yes, I'd love to come, but in two conditions. My name must not appear in the list of participants. And if you're taking photographs, my face must not appear. because he said,

I work in the same office as two senior colleagues, two of whom sign one of the letters against you. If they find out that I've been associated with you, I fear for my career. But Nigel, don't you find that rather ridiculous that somebody can have rights of centre opinions or even opinions on the right?

And all of a sudden their career that, you know, is curtailed, stunted, fired, all the rest of it. I mean, isn't, that's pathetic, isn't it? That's pathetic, and it's alarming. Because, you know, this is Oxford. Not Oxford bricks, we hasten to add, yes? Oxford.

I didn't, you're sorry, yes, I mean. But just to make that point, perhaps, for people who haven't been to Oxford, who haven't been in the, in this place, it is, you know, Francis lives in London, I live just outside, coming here, there is a sense of history to this place. There is a sense that this is one of the great places

of learning in human history. And as you walk around in these building, in these holes, that feeling that this is a place of learning is very strong here. And to hear that sort of attitude being spread in this place is alarming at a very different level

than if it was happening at Oxford Brooks. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, well, I don't want to say anything about Oxford Brooks. You said that, not me. But yes, I mean, Oxford and, Cambridge are, according to world rankings, regularly in the top ten in the world. So this is a serious research university. As you say, Constantine, it has a long history of serious,

perhaps not terribly exciting, but serious scholarship, careful for studious. Yeah, so the fact that a A colleague here fears for his career because he might be known to be associated with such as me is really alarming, actually. Now, let me be clear. I'm not saying that political censorship in Oxford is widespread. I have no idea. I'm sure that many colleagues don't censor, don't apply political criteria when they're making appointments or when they're writing references for junior scholars. I'm sure many don't do that. So it may only be a minority who are so politically convinced

of their own views that they will penalise a colleague, a junior colleague, a vulnerable junior colleague by writing them a poor reference because of his political views. But here's the thing. Even if it's only one in ten, or even one in twenty, if you know some people do that, the effect on the general... Once that becomes known, the effect on the general atmosphere is to make everyone look over their shoulders

and just wonder who's listening to me, what will the effect be? And that's really bad news. Really bad news. And Nigel, don't you think it's an abdication of responsibility on behalf of the universities? Because they should absolutely crack down on this type of behaviour and say that it is not acceptable. Yeah, I do. I do. So here's one point. In this university, our Vice-Chancellor Louis-Ritchison has been consistent in affirming free speech with the universities and its importance.

And that's really, that is important because the leader of an institution does set the tone. And that just reminds people that this is an important value. But what that doesn't do is change the behavior of my junior colleagues, senior colleagues in their office. It doesn't change the, as it were, undercover operation of political criteria. And so something doesn't need to be done about that. Now, what could universities do about that? Basically, I think the university has to recognize that it is a problem. And I've written about this in the press over the last three years.

There's an in-house magazine called the Oxf magazine. And I published an article on this point. in early 2018 and the article ended diversity is good political diversity is good too isn't it since then

certainly in response to that article and in general conversation I've heard no one talk about it some people know about it some people read about it no one talks about it but I think we do need to talk about Now, it's difficult to talk about, because we all have political views. And that's not the issue, of course.

The issue is being aware of when you are unfairly applying political criteria to appointments or admissions or whatever. So in the same way that we all now need to be careful, if we weren't careful before, to make sure that prejudice is about social class or race, don't influence unfairly the judgments we make. And that's entirely acceptable and important. We now need to do the same with political views. And at the moment, that's just not an issue that has risen up the agenda. And I think university leaders need to start doing that. I mean, maybe the government can prod them, maybe the office for students can start rattling their cages and saying,

folks, you need to take this seriously. And I think that may happen. But it'd be good to see universities take the initiative rather than being pushed by government. When we interviewed Douglas Murray for our first interview, he was of the opinion that if a university did not support free speech on campus, that they should be defunded, which is quite an extreme position, I think. Would you be in agreement with, you know, the government taking a stronger hand

and actually saying to universities, if you don't do your job in supporting different viewpoints, then there are going to be some sanctions put in place? Yes, I do. I do. I think government does need to remind universities of their commitment to academic freedom. Most universities have formal commitments to free speech, although there's a distinction here. It's one thing to guarantee free speech. Academic freedom is slightly different because it has to do with what professors can teach in their classes, what books they can assign to their students, what research they do.

And I think free speech is better protected than academic freedom. So academic freedom also needs to be protected. And I think government should communicate to university leaders that it regards this matters as a really serious one. If I can just... I want to come back to that point. might lose it, so bring me back in a moment. But just on that, I think there's a really important point to be made about what's at issue, what's at stake here. To some extent, what's at stake

is the right of minorities, in this case political minorities, and conservatives I reckon to be, I don't know, about 15% of the university professoriate, the right of political minorities to be able to speak freely without fear of sanction. And that's important. But what's to take is even more important is this. In universities, we are forming future citizens. We are our graduates, particularly in this university, with their prestigious university degree,

will go on to run companies, run the BBC, become journalists, become editors. And we are training them in ways of dealing with points of view they really don't like, how to handle a debate or a discussion or a controversy on matters that get people very excited. And we can train them well or badly. We can train them only to. to see one point of view we can train them to

instead of treating what an alternative point of view has to say and considering what reasons it might have you can train them instead to say well because he's a conservative because he's a capitalist

because he speaks up for empire it's only because he's trying to protect his own economic interests or his social status or whatever so don't take what he says seriously just to try and undermine the kind of the moral integrity of his position. Now, you can do that, but when those graduates go out into the professions, into institutions, into public, into the media, if they start behaving that way, the whole of public discourse

is going to be infected by polarization, aggression, a refusal to. hear and that's just one step away from bloodshed because when people are no longer trying to argue they're fighting and fierce verbal fighting is only a step away from the real stuff. So what's the stake really is not just the protection of minority opinions, it's really the public good of a citizenry who know how to restrain themselves when they hear things they don't like, feel obliged to do justice to what other people say. So when someone says something you don't like, you don't then distort it before you address it. You take it as it stands. And then to give credit where credit is due and then to come out with the reasons you think

this is bloody wrong. Now that's a responsible, rational way to conduct the many, many, many controversies over issues we all get excited about. And we need citizens and journalists and editors and institutional leaders who know how to do that and model it, because otherwise the whole public life is going to become much more fractious, polarized, as we see it has done in the USA. Well, and increasingly here, too. I think it's fair to say. And I think you make that point very well.

Nigel, but speaking about some of the issues on which is very difficult to have these conversations. Now, it's the one we started with, which is, of course, empire and colonialism. That is something that has become very heated. The conversation around that has become with a very particular worldview, let's say. Are people wrong to be so critical of our imperial history? I mean, some terrible things were done during imperial times, you know, whether it's the invention of concentration camps during the board, war by the British or many, many other atrocities on the Indian subcontinent and around the world. Should we not be ashamed of our history?

My view as someone who identifies himself strongly as British, I care about this country, I identify with its history, and my view is if you love something, you are therefore capable of shame. And looking back at my British history, yes, there are things I'm deeply ashamed about, and the classic case would be slavery, which we engaged in for 200 years. So, as I said at the beginning, pride is well ashamed, right? So certainly shame. But my view is that the British Empire, in that respect, containing moments of awfulness, as well as moments of greatness, is no different from any nation state, and no different for any other empire. any nation state that's been around for a long time, in the course of time, we'll get to do some awful things.

Well, the Mongols committed some seriously big microaggressions of the gangas can't, didn't they? But do you think perhaps Britain, no, someone, I'm not British, so while I feel, well, I say I'm not British, I think at this point I sort of am. No, you know. No, you know. But you know what I mean? I come from a different place, but I've integrated into this country. but I probably feel less of an affinity with British history than you would. Do you think that Britain is essentially being punished for its historical success?

Because if it had been less successful, if it had been a Sweden or a Norway or whatever, that engaged in some of these things on a much smaller scale or not at all, simply by virtue of not being a powerful player in the world stage, then we wouldn't be having this conversation. Now, you're exactly right. So you will have noticed that no one is interested in beating up the French Empire or the Russian or the Chinese or the Zulu or the Comanche Empire in the States. They're interested mainly in the British Empire. Why is that?

It's because the British Empire, even as it declined, it morphed into the American Empire, or at least it morphed into American global power. And the British Empire was supportive of a lot of the post-Second World War, post-1945 international institutions. So the kind of international order we have, the kind of international order against which China is presently chafing and Russia, that liberal international order owes it a lot to the British Empire and subsequent. American power. So you're absolutely right. The reason that the British Empire is getting beaten up on is not about the past at all. It's about the present. It's about hostility toward Anglo-American liberal capitalism.

And that's why my interest in British Empire is not primarily antiquarian. it's not really about the past except in so far as what we think about the past shapes how we think about ourselves now and it shapes the decision to we make in the future. So one of the things that stimulated me

to get stuck into British Empire is Scottish nationalism. Now I'm, as I said, I'm Scottish-born, my mother's English, an Anglo-Scott, I'm a Brit. I belong to a multi, a multi-national state. And I really value that. And so I'm strongly against Scottish separation.

But there's a story being told by some Scottish nationalists, which is, if I can distill it, Britain equals empire equals evil and therefore to break up Britain to separate Scotland from the rest of the UK is an active of national self-pureification. Now, if Britain, you know, if Britain equaled Nazism equal evil separation, I'm quite a good idea. But I happen to know enough about the British Empire to know it, it just wasn't of that kind at all. And I don't think that the British Empire was radically at its heart, at its root, racist. I don't think it was radically at its heart exploitative. It included moments of racism and moments of exploitation. but when you

we were talking earlier about about what school kids do and don't know about slavery and you were saying that in your experience as a teacher school kids do know about slavery I suspect they probably know less about the more than a century that the British spent suppressing slavery

the slave trade across the Atlantic the slave trade across the Indian Ocean in Africa, in India, in the Middle East, for about, well, from 1807 onwards until the end of the empire, one of the main preoccupations of the empire was the suppression of slavery. And I think that's wonderful. How many kids know about that? Francis, let me just follow up in one thing, if you don't mind. This is a really interesting point you made about that it's about the present, not about the past.

And if I'm understanding you correctly, what you're saying is there is an agenda to undermine the American liberal capitalism of the world that dominates the world. It's anti-West. Anti-West, agreed completely. Certainly, I see that. And the British Empire is like the founding cornerstone of that. So if you can pull that out, you can make the whole pyramid fall. Yeah, and so what you do is you undermine, by undermining the record, the historical record,

you undermine as it were, the moral authority of the whole thing. Yeah. Go ahead, Francis. And the question I wanted to ask was, we do learn about the British Empire. at schools, but we don't learn about other empires. So is it part of the problem, the fact they see British Empire, they see slavery, without realizing that essentially, if you wanted anything done in history, you needed slaves.

We're just going to clip that and put it out as the slogan of trigonometry. If you want anything done, you need an Anton. That's what you need. I think you want to say, in the past? Yes, in the past. You're not recommending this. I mean, well, you see, sir and I... Man, shut your goal.

Let me save yourself. That's absolutely right. So one of the really interesting things that we've discovered in this ethics and empire project, which, as I said, is looking at empires from into China to the modern period. So far we've got up to about 1600. And when I was asking around,

colleagues who know about, let's say, Arab empires or Islamic empires, saying, you know, can you find me a contemporary critic? And they said, well, no, not really. And it turns out that, and the same happened in the case of ancient Chinese Empire. And the conclusion I've drawn is that at those times in those places, empire was a fact of life. you might not like

particular emperors you may not like particular governments the way in which the empire was governed but empire as such was completely unremarkable and the fact is that most of the world has been ruled by empires

up until I mean even today China is a kind of empire certainly Tibetans would think so. Certainly Hong Kong feels that way right now. So it's still going on.

So empire is a kind of fact of life. And as for slavery, yeah, you're right. I mean, everyone was into slavery. Not all slavery was as nasty as what went on in the sugar plantation of the West Indies or the Southern American colonies. But some of it was quite nasty. I mean, some of those who were carted off the slaves who were sold by West African kings to European traders and taken off to the Caribbean, had they stayed, they might have had the fate of joining several hundred others upon the death of a king of being buried alive to join their master on his heavenly journey. There are reports of up to 1500 slaves being sacrificed by being buried alive

to mark the funerals of African princes in 1790. So, you know, slavery, long before African kings started selling their slaves. The slaves would have been prisoners of war captured from other tribes. Before they sold them to Europeans, they were selling to Arabs for centuries. So, yeah, I mean, this doesn't excuse the cruelty of a lot of slavery in the West Indies, which the British were involved in. But it does put it in context. So if we sinned, there were a lot of other sinners too, and many of them had black skins.

Well, that is a very controversial point. But it's absolutely true. And the thing that it seems to me is that what we have nowadays are narratives. Like you talked about, you know, the British being evil, being, you know, and then white supremacy would no doubt be thrown in as well. And if you contravene that narrative, even if you've got facts. And, you know, you can make a cogent argument. It doesn't matter. Yeah.

Yeah, that's really strange. But I've become more confident and more heartened. The more I've got stuck into these issues, because, you know, when it started, when I first suffered brief in December 2017, I'd only begun to work on making, moral sense of British Empire, and I've done a lot more reading since. And the thing I'm most struck about is how the people who behave in that way don't know what they're talking,

they really don't know what they're talking about. And there are some academics who behave that way, and they just don't know what they're talking about. And my sense is, well, it's my hope, but my sense is that the more this kind of behavior gets exposed, and contradicted, the great British public out there become more and more appalled. And that's my hope. And I also think, when I've certainly seen here how really self-persuaded, self-convinced, zealous minorities of students or even of professors can have, can acquire a kind of dominance over a more uncertain majority who don't particularly want to get involved in this fight.

So my sense is out there, even within universities, a majority of people are not very impressed by the kind of behaviour you described. And the more people who speak up and out against it, and all outrageous this behaviour becomes, I think there's reason to hope that the stronger reaction will be. So I'm not gloomy about this at all. It's a good point that you make, you know, that you're not gloomy about it, and there seems to be a strong reaction. I think things came to a head a great deal during the Black Live Matter demonstrations, rights, whatever you want to call them, the tearing down of the statues. Where do you stand on that? you have, you know, the famous example is Edward Colston, the slave trader, and then it got torn down.

Do you agree with that, or do you think that we actually should have those statues in a prominent place? I didn't agree with it being torn down that way. So first of all, there's an issue of process. Yes. And for a mob, however passionate they are, to take it upon themselves to pull stuff, public stuff down, is not acceptable. Because if the left can do that, the right can start doing it too, folks.

We don't want that. So that was just wrong. As for Colston himself... Choice Hotels get you more of what you value. Comfort in. It's calling your name. Save on the stay. Oh, and free waffles are yours to claim.

Book direct at storesotails.com. Ah. My view in statues is this. I mean, there are some people in history whose record is pretty irredeemable. To take the obvious examples, Adolf Hitler, Goebbels, Stalin, Paul Pott,

you name them, Genghis Khan, unless my reading of Genghis Khan is not different from most people's. I guess he wasn't a particularly pleasant guy. But if we've got used to those kind of people, you know, take them down because there's nothing really

positive to be said about them. The residents of Ulán Bhattah are not going to be happy. They've got a massive statue of Genghis Khan. Do they really? Oh yeah, absolutely. It's humongous. They're very proud. Can I just take Gengh's car off the list?

But then surely isn't the counterpoint to this, Nigel, what you've just said. So, for instance, Cromwell, we have in front of Parliament. Now, I have a few Irish friends and they would get very upset of the thought of Cromwell being celebrated. Okay, but no, so my point was, at the extremes, you've got these

these nasty guys, but most other people are a mixed bag. So, yeah, for the Irish, Cromwell means drocharder, it means disproportionate slaughter. But that's not why he's in front of Parliament. He's front of Parliament because he stood up to an absolutist king. And, I mean, Cromwell is a complicated character. but in the kind of liberal Figuish story he represents he's standing there because he represents

successful opposition to unaccountable absolutist monarchy right so we got rid of that so that's why he's there and there's another interesting point about British public statuary

apparently you've got Cromwell outside of the House of Commons. But somewhere else in the square, you've got some, I think who he is now, there's some Irish patriot or someone who stood up for Irish Home Rule in the same square,

and you've got Churchill, then you've got Gandhi, and you've got Lincoln. So, in sense, the public structure represents a kind of, it's eclectic, it's not a one particular point of view, it is plural, it's liberal,

it engenders a kind of, conversation and dialogue across the public square. I think that's really healthy because most people who did bad things have something good to be said for them. And most good people who did good things

have something bad to be said for them. And if we're going to have any statutory at all, we've got to put up with people whose record were mixed. And Cromwell was certainly one of those. I just don't think that Adolf's record was quite so mixed. It's rather heavier one side than the other.

You know, if you did get the trains for a long time, the problem was where the trains were going. Yes. Well put. But I think the point you're really making is the tapestry of an individual's history and our human history. It's never woven just from one fiber from one color. It's always multifaceted and multicolored. And to pretend otherwise is very naive. And I think we're going through a bit of a period where there's a sort of Puritanism about everything.

Yeah, there is. I find that, I mean, the phenomenon of this Puritanism really strange, the extremity of it. I mean, I'm a religious person, I'm a Christian, you know, so I do believe in good and evil, but part of my worldview is that good and evil, the dividing line isn't here, I'm good and you're bad, the dividing line is here. It's here. It's there. Right?

So, you know, knowing, knowing Constantine that you're, you know, you're, you may be wicked, but you're not that wicked, besides, I'm wicked too. It means that even if I dislike what you're saying, there's a certain kind of self-restraint.

I can't bin you or demonize you. And so I find the extremism of this it's almost I've said this before is as if the the social justice warriors the

the woke folk they've got the the ire of the biblical prophets who are railing against various forms of injustice what they don't have is the notion of the wickedness

that is within and requires forgiveness so it's kind of lopsided biblical religion and the certainty of it, the extremity of it, does give it a kind of religious, a kind of scary religious quality that deserves us a bit of analysis actually. But doesn't it also reflect the lack of humility? And the, you know, in the realisation that we're all flawed, we're all broken, none of us is perfect. And this desire to find faults with others and, you know, fling them up on the metaphorical pyre is...

Yeah. Oh, for sure. No, humility is lacking big time, and the notion is not just other people who have to ask for forgiveness. And quite how we got there, I do find, all the puzzling. Although, I mean, I've read a bit about, what is it? Is it, I forgot on the source now, but there is this attitude or this view that, I guess it's a Marxist view, that points of view, particularly points of view held by bourgeois people, these are not to be taking the face of value, these are just rationalizations for unjust interests.

And therefore, you don't take the idea seriously. What you do is you attack the person and the social standing. and that seems to be behind a lot of the attitudes of of these zealous uncompromising

new Puritans the problem is if you think about it if you take that view because it applies to yourself too it's not why is it just their view that is rooted in

illegitimate economic interests. How about your own views? Do you have interest, too, that you're rationalising, whatever? Actually, I think in the case of BLM, I think, yes, there are interests here. I mean, victimhood is a political tool now. It wins you power. So everyone who can has an interest in playing victim, big time, because, particularly because of the way in which well-meaning, sensitive, liberal people react,

which is normally to say, yes, we're guilty. It gives you a lot of power. So I think the kind of Marxist analysis can be turned back onto them to say, well, what are the interests that are driving you so that you simply can't listen? Why? And do you see that as a more prevalent attitude amongst the students that you see here? Well, none of my my students. They know who I am and they come to me for a reason.

But I have asked my students about their peers. And yes, the kind of puritan extreme uncompromising attitudes. Yes, it seemed to be quite prevalent among their peers. Nigel, there's one other topic I want to cover before we wrap up, but just on that point, are we not three crusty old men that are just reminiscing about the good? I mean, we're not quite old, but maybe, but crusty enough, who are lamenting the loss of our ease with which we could spew our white supremacist beliefs, unchecked, uncontrolled, unquestioned.

unquestioned, and now we're, as you pointed out earlier in the interview, we are very upset about the loss of this former tyrannical oppression and power over others. Are we not troubled by the fact that there's some brown faces at Oxford now? Isn't that really what this is all about? Yes, right, so that's what they say. That's what they say. So the answer is no, because I, first, speaking for myself, I guess others will have to judge this, but speaking for myself,

It's not criticism that bothers me. It's not contrary views that bothers me. It's not the presence of brown skins that bother me. It is the... Well, it's a refusal to engage rationally with what I say. It's the tendency instead to attack my person. And let's be clear here. You say it might be the case

I'm just bothered by the fact that there are more women and more people of non-white skin who habit these cloisters, these colleges, our universities, might be that. But here's the thing, not every brown person thinks as they do. A lot of people in long white skin who agree with me. So I'm not, I found out, I couldn't care less what skin color people have.

I really couldn't. All I care about is whether they can behave and argue in a civil fashion and a reasonable one in which we respect each other enough to take each other's reasons seriously. And by all means, show me where I'm wrong. You're talking about good faith conversation. I'm talking about good faith conversation. You should go on Twitter. I have.

It's not good for conversation, I've missed. Oddly enough. But Nigel, you brought up a point which I think is fundamental to the current cultural moment. It's something I've been thinking about for some time and it's been worrying me for some time. And what I'm talking about is the fact that all of these things, things that we are alluding to and talking about throughout this interview are fundamentally anti-West. It's about the tearing down of the liberal, the kind of the traditional world order, the capitalist liberal in our time American world order. Why do we feel this way about ourselves?

Why do we have to remove or think about removing rule Britannia from the last night of the problems. Why have we come to this point where a healthy self-criticism has turned into a sort of self-loathing? Another excellent question which needs a lot of thinking about. So here's one answer to that question. And it goes back to something I said earlier. A lot of those who feel instinctively embarrassed about Britain's past don't know very much about it, right? What they do know is, and they've learnt this from other people, they know that talking about empire, talking up empire, doesn't win you friends. So they've picked up the notion that to talk positively about,

empire about colonialism is as my very old friend said toxic and unless you want to fight unless you want to risk losing friends and colleagues you won't do it therefore the impression that empire equals evil becomes more and more embedded because no one contradicts it and everyone repeats it so it's kind of self-confirming and it kind of gains a momentum. So it becomes like common sense. And so when people like me start to say, well, no, not just shame, also pride, people are shocked. Because it's almost as if you said something really rude. So I think it's partly that over time, a common sense about empire and colonialism has grown up among us that is not all wrong.

but in significant parts it is wrong, it's just incorrect. It's not historically true. But I think, you know, we are seeing certainly over the prom's decision to take the words out of Land of Hope and Glory and Rule Britannia. We're seeing quite a strong popular reaction. I mean, that may have made sense to BBC people talking to musicians from people. Finland. It doesn't make so much sense to, well, I'm guessing here, but judging by the Times newspaper and the Telegraph, and I imagine the sun isn't terribly happy about it, to most British people, that this just doesn't make sense. So, you know, when you talk about how, how do we get

to this position? Well, who are we here? And I think we are talking about the elite. People who are run our institutions, people educated in universities in this place. But we are, you know, as with, as over Brexit, we're discovering that what the elite assumes and what the rest of the population thinks are not the same thing. So again, I'm quite hopeful that, you know, the BBC has suddenly discovered that not everyone is happy with this policy. And it's, it's offered some explanations that I think don't make much good sense, and I think it's true that the BBC caved in to the movement to decolonize and now it's having to think again because people have spoken up so so it's to be hoped that we in the elite I'm part of it having me

confronted with country views will start to think again and I'll certainly do my part to help that happen. Fantastic. We've got time for one last question as always. Yeah, and the question that we always end with is what is the one thing that we're not talking about, but we really should be. That's a very good question. I'm so glad

you warned me about it at the beginning, so I had time. Don't give away the secrets of the show, Nigel. You could have got so much more credit if you just pretend that your no doubt forthcoming brilliant answer came to you just in the market. Well, I said yes, you edit this with out. Fantastic, that's what we'll do. Okay, so...

We're all about authenticity here, yeah. Straight away, I would have said, and I will say, virtue is what we don't talk about. So we talk a lot about rights. We know all about rights, claiming my rights.

We don't talk about virtue, and I've talked about it in answer to your questions. Because I talked about the importance of universities forming students so that they can manage a discussion of controversial topics in a civil fashion

so they can do justice to what other people are saying. Doing justice is a virtue. It's a habit you do or you don't. I could have also said treating alien points of view with charity, meaning if you hear someone saying something you don't like, well, an easy thing to do is to caricature it and knock it down. a more courageous, generous, charitable thing to do is, okay, give it its best construction. Now, what's the best thing that could be said in favour of this ridiculous point of view?

Then take it down. That means two things. It means, first of all, you've been generous to the other side, and they might actually listen to what you've got to say because you've been generous. The other thing is that when you take it down, it's all the stronger, because you have taken its best construction and taken it apart. And there's, of course, a third possibility. which is you might by giving it that charitable interpretation, recognize the truth and some of it. Absolutely right. Good.

Back to my point. So the disposition to do justice and to be charitable, these are not technical skills, the virtues. And they're taught by, I think mainly by example. So professors and CEOs can teach their people. this is the way we behave but these are virtues we don't talk about virtues

we only talk about rights and we need to learn to talk about virtues do we have time can I give another example yes of course okay so here's an example of why virtue is important

and why we need to talk about it when was it was it five years ago when the Islamic terrorists burst into the offices of Shalee Hebdo and Paris and slaughtered

the people 2015 thereabouts it was in January I think and this is because Charlie Hebdo had published cartoons of Muhammad

and I think one of them had Muhammad with a turban and a bomb in it so you know Islam equals terrorism that kind of thing and the murders were terrible let me be clear, completely unjustified. And in the aftermath of that,

a lot of people were talking up, you know, freedom of speech. I mean, Charlie Hebdo should have been allowed to do whatever they done well, please. And if they want to publish stuff that Muslims find offensive, then let them do it. And my reaction was, well, yes, but my view is that it's never, it's never, It's never right to say something, you do something, just to be offensive. I mean, if there's a truth you want to speak, speak it.

If it happens to be offensive, too bad. But it's the speaking of the truth that's really what's important. You shouldn't, you know, getting people upset shouldn't be the point. And so my view is, you know, spitting in other people's sacred cows for the sake of seeing them get upset is not something we should do. what did Charlie Hebdo think it was going to achieve in publishing these cartoons? Now, Charlie Hebdo is read by people of the left who like iconogrammed, particularly if it's anti-religious,

so it would please their customers. But in terms of, you know, what's it going to achieve that's worthwhile? It wasn't clear to me there was anything to be achieved, particularly in the context where you know you're going to get Muslims upset. Now, even if you don't agree with anything on that, the point is this. Having the legal freedom to say something is one thing, and that's important. The question of whether you should use that freedom or not is another question.

And to use that freedom responsibly, you have to have certain qualities of self-restraint. You have to have certain qualities of intention. I mean, what am I doing? What am I trying to achieve? And we want citizens who are capable of restraining themselves from the temptation we all have just to push them the other person's sensitive spot because we'd like to hurt them and irritate them. We know. I enjoy that occasionally.

But, you know, it doesn't really help, folks. But we need citizens who are capable of self-restraint. And that's a matter of virtue, not a matter of rights. And we need training in that. We need institutions and hearings. and parents who train us in those virtues. So I'd say, in response to your question, we need to talk about virtue more.

Now, let me be clear, I think all the qualities I mentioned, I don't need to explain to them what they are or why they're good. You recognize them. So we all recognize these qualities are important, but we don't name them. They're not skills, they're virtues. And I think the fact we don't talk about them means we're not as self-conscious about cultivating them.

So it's not as if they're absent, but we're kind of tongue-tied, and we need to stop being tongue-tied about virtue, I think. So it sounds to me, Nigel, what you're really talking about there is morality, as is your job and you're wont to talk about. And essentially what I'm hearing is, for a healthy society,

it's not enough for us just to have laws and to prosecute our rights under those laws. We have to have a sense of what is the approach, thing to do as well as what is the legal thing to do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Notice that you use the word appropriate, not right. And again, that's something we tend to talk about things being appropriate rather or inappropriate rather than right or wrong.

So that's part of the symptom of our kind of nervousness about talking about moral things or virtues or duties. But just to get to your point. Yeah, the problem with depending more and more, on law to keep us in order. And I do think we're doing this more and more is partly that if the police are going to keep us in order,

then they have to become ever more intrusive. And that means that our failure to discipline ourselves, our need for the law to discipline us means an ever-growing state intrusiveness, which is not a good idea at all. So I do think that civil society fostering moral virtues of self-restraint, of justice, of charity, humility is enormously important. And the state can't do that. I mean, maybe it can through national curricula or whatever.

But in the end, these things are taught not by books or in classrooms. They're taught by examples. maybe they are taught in classrooms by the example of the teacher, but it's an example that is an honest, courageous, just charitable person is attractive, and kids and employees see that and I think respond to it. So we need to be doing that more deliberately, and in order to be more deliberate about it, we need to be willing to talk about it. But at the moment, whereas we talk very freely about rights, we find it very difficult to talk about virtues for reasons.

I think historically, we could find reasons for that. And as I may have said earlier, we think that because we're a plural society, we've got, you know, we've got conservatives and left-wingers. We've got Muslims and Jews and Christians. We've got atheists. Because we're a plural society, we can't agree on moral things. My view on that, you know, we may not agree about abortion or about going to war in Iraq. Lots of things we don't agree about. But there are many things we do agree about.

And we all recognize what's necessary for comfortable, peaceful, non-conflictual social life. And when I talk about these virtues to you, You don't need me to explain what they are or why they're valuable. So I think in fact we agree with a whole lot more. We just think we don't. So we just don't talk about it. And I think we do need to talk about it. So let's talk more about virtue.

Sounds great. Nigel, thank you so much for coming on the show. We'd really appreciate it. And I hope you've enjoyed it at home as well. And we'll see you very soon with another brilliant episode or a live stream, which are always at 7 p.m. UK time. Thank you very much. And see you soon, guys.