The Centre For Social Cohesion

In his essay on Bentham and Coleridge, Mill summarises a number of original insights that he claims Coleridge had that Bentham was denied because of his lack of historical sense.

Among these insights of Coleridge's, claims Mill, was an understanding of ‘the essential requisites of civil society’. By this term, Mill meant the conditions needed for political stability and order ‘among a brave and warlike race’ such as he took his fellow Britons and other Europeans to be.

Mill claimed that Coleridge had rightly identified three such conditions.

The first of the three conditions was the presence of ‘a system of education… of which ... one main and incessant ingredient was restraining discipline’.

Mill claimed that Coleridge had rightly seen the need for the early inculcation and maintenance of such a habit of restraint in society’s members to prevent any lapse into the natural state of anarchical disorder that he thought would otherwise be bound to occur when the habit was widely relaxed.

The recent upsurge in knife-crime, bullying and general ‘chavdom’ suggests just how right Coleridge was.

The second condition was ‘the existence ... of the feeling of allegiance, or loyalty’. Mill observed that ‘this feeling may vary in its objects’, but he adds that:

‘Its essence is always the same: viz that there be in the constitution of the State something which is settled, something permanent, and not to be called into question, something which, by general agreement, has a right to be where it is, and to be secure against disturbance, whatever else may change.’

The object to which the feeling may attach itself can vary. It can be certain persons or social classes, certain institutions such as, for example, ancient liberties, or certain social ideals.

Mill predicts that, from his day onwards, it will only be to the ideals of liberty and social and political equality that the British and other Europeans will feel attachment. He thereby implied that, since these ideals were not in his day anywhere fully embodied in Europe, an epoch of instability and political turmoil there could be predicted.

If the current political elites of Europe, including our own government, continue to drag its people further down the path of enslavement to Brussels, serious political unrest in Britain, if not elsewhere in Europe, can surely be expected at some point in the future, provided enough genuine Britons and other Europeans still remain there.

The third condition for social stability, of which Mill claimed that Coleridge rightly saw the need, is that of ‘a strong and active principle of cohesion among the members of the same community or state.’

Mill explained exactly what he meant by such cohesion as follows:

‘We mean a principle of sympathy [among societal members], not of hostility; of union, not of separation. We mean a feeling of common interests among those who live under the same government, and are contained within the same … boundaries. We mean, that one part of the community do not consider themselves as foreigners with regard to another part; that they set a value on their connexion; feel that they are one people, that their lot is cast together, that any evil to any of their fellow-countrymen is evil to themselves….’

I was put in mind of Mill observations about Coleridge by reading recent newspaper reports that draw attention to just how diverse Britain’s population has recently become as a result of the present government’s immigration policies.

In 2006, one in five babies born in Britain last year was to a woman born overseas. In that same year, English is not the first language for the majority of pupils in over 1300 schools in England and Wales.

The geographical concentration and size of the immigrant communities, especially within London, makes for some truly amazing statistics.

In 2006, according to ONS statistics, the top ten local authorities for percentages of live births to mothers born outside the UK were as follows:

Newham: 74%
Brent: 71%
Westminster: 70%
Tower Hamlets: 69%
Kensington and /Chelsea: 68%
Ealing: 63%
Camden: 62%
Harrow: 61%
Haringey: 61%
Waltham Forest: 57%

In that same year, according to official statistics, the top ten authorities with the highest percentage of pupils whose first language is not English were as follows:

Tower Hamlets: 75%
Newham: 71%
Westminster: 69%
City of London: 65%
Brent: 58%
Camden: 58%
Hackney: 54%
Ealing: 54%
Haringey: 53%
Kensington and Chelsea: 52%

[Source of statistics: Estimating the scale and impact of migration at the local level, An Institute of Community Cohesion Report commissioned by the Local Government Association, published November 2007]

Just how feasible any real social cohesion is in conditions of such diversity, I wonder.

There is one other statistic reported in yesterday’s newspapers that, I think, may well also be related to the recent scale of immigration. Apparently, and quite unexpectedly, there has been a steep and significant recent return of churchgoing at Christmas-time among Britain’s populace.

According to a report in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph, the number of those attending churches on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day in Britain rose in 2005 by 7.5% by comparison with 2004. Since the millennium, the figure has risen by 37 per cent.

Since this rise in church attendance has occurred across the country, it seems unlikely that it can be wholly explained by immigrants attending church at this time, for they tend to be highly geographically concentrated.

Church leaders reportedly attribute the rise in church attendance at Christmas to ‘an increasing number of Britons seeking to recapture the sense of mystery and spirituality of the festival that has been stifled by growing commercialisation in society.’

I conjecture that the rise in church attendance at Christmas by Britons is just as likely to have has been born from an increasing desire on their part to recapture a sense of what the country felt like when it possessed the kind of social cohesion of which Coleridge and Mill spoke so highly and which the present government has done so much to undermine.

Whatever its cause, the increase in church attendance at this time cannot be unwelcome. Britons need all the solace and uplift that is on offer.

Merry Christmas and a Happy 2008.