04. Republicanism - First Ideal of the New Political Philosophy (2 of 3)
Continued from 03. REPUBLICANISM - FIRST IDEAL OF THE NEW POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY. (1 of 3)
4. CIVIL SERVICES AND PUBLIC SERVICES (INCLUDING THE MILITARY. (BUREAUCRACY)
In Britain we distinguish between the civil services and public services
The civil service serves the government - collecting taxes, technically drafting laws, providing bureaucratic support for the operations of the executive, the Treasury, and so on. We often refer to this loosely as “Whitehall”.
The public services serve the public – first responders like police, fire services and ambulance service and welfare meaning healthcare, education, social care and pensions. The prison service is also a public service
Public services are provided for the benefit of the nation's people, organisations, businesses and natural resources, and also to some extent, great or small, with a regard to the benefit of those things elsewhere in the world
There have always also been Public Services in any mature society, such as road building, but they have assumed a more and more important role in modern times.
With the creation of Modern States, a great number of different kinds of public services have arisen and these have mushroomed in size.
The exchange between the civil and public services and society at large that is crucial to defining each estate here consists in the privileges that go with employment in these services, which can often means a high degree of protection of employment, which balance the obligations of public duty this employment entails.
This duty does not exist with employment in private companies which are, by definition, free agents, meaning free of such constitutional duties. They are not expected to put public interest before self interest although they may feel a moral compulsion to do so
CIVIL SERVICE
The British civil service benefits from a good reputation developed over the centuries of its existence. In the nineteenth century the only real recognised challenger for excellence was the Prussian civil service
The French civil service has long been one of the best in the world and this extends back at least to Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1619 –1683) Minister of State to Louis XIV, through the revolution and all the various permutations of republics and monarchies that followed it. A visit to France today immediately shows the quality of the public services putting Britain to shame
In addition the British civil service of the nineteenth century had, of course, to administer the colonies and other overseas possessions
The British civil service’s independence from the democratic machinery was jealously guarded, and here we are seeing the natural separation of the first and fourth estates.
Typical of this was that the civil service prior to every general election would have plans drawn up for enacting the policies of the two main political parties whichever won. This resulted in a smooth change of government, if change is what the voters determined. So the new government could take over the day after the election.
This can be contrasted with the US system where a major part of the civil service completely changes following a change of president. This takes months, involving hundreds of new appointments, and so there has to be an interim period between the election which always happens in November and the Inauguration which happens the following January
It is in the nature of the executive anywhere, but particularly in Britain, due to the lose constitutional arrangements, to seek to undermine the independence of the civil service and bring it under the executive control.
This tendency took a leap forward under Thatcher’s premiership in the 1980s. She attacked the independence of the civil service (just as she did that of the third estate, the civil society, while, by contrast, the second estate, the plutocracy, was granted more freedom).
In the terms of this political philosophy, her actions were trying to undermine the independence of the four estates which natural law dictates as necessary. It is fighting against the natural tendencies in society. The result is stress and injustice
Thatcher was a great fan of the 1980s comedy TV series “Yes, Minister” which caricatured the civil service as manipulative and duplicitous. Of course, there is probably an element of truth in this picture, but, however that attitude may have existed in some individuals, nothing justifies the extent of the takeover today of the civil service by the executive
If people do not value and understand the necessity of the independence of the civil service, then society will be gravely undermined
There are many aspects to this takeover by the executive but of particular note is the development of the so-called Cabinet Office. This provides a means by which the civil service becomes an extension of the executive and so works diametrically against the basic principle of separation of the estates. This is why the new constitution must use the political science of the four estates and embody it in the written constitution
A way to provide for and achieve the desired independence of the civil service is to develop professionalism more strongly in the service. This might suggest the establishment of a training Academy and a Chartered Institution.
This will encourage greater commitment to life as a public service and will go hand in hand with the “iron wall” between government and financial and multinational companies I describe elsewhere
To remind ourselves of our basic objection to modern constitutions, these embody only a limited number of institutions to be separated, and these mostly lie within what here we call the single estate of democracy. The new constitution recognising the natural law of the four estates insists that these should be separated.
This is the road to abolishing corporatism and the corruption that accompanies it. Corporatism is itself a major subject of concern here and it will be covered separately in detail
CIVIL SERVICE. SECRET SERVICES
The secret services, MI5 and MI6 are nominally included in the civil service so they are not a public service as, for instance, the police are.
But they are a very special part of the civil service as they do not enjoy the independence that the civil service traditionally has had and should have. They come directly under the authority of the prime minister
Such is the power of the prime minister that it is doubtful if the secret services can truly be considered part of the civil service
I am sure the Whitehall mandarins do not consider them to be so and resent their lack of control over them
The secret services tend to become a law unto themselves and this is especially true in the USA where the CIA runs amuck globally and procures its own non-state funding from criminal activities like drug running
Such procurement of independent financing was learnt from the MI5 and MI6 and the history of these agencies is a sorry one. We need to overhaul their powers radically.
One solution would be to integrate them with the armed forces so that they become truly a part of the civil service and no longer the executive’s plaything, used for engaging in nefarious, ill-judged, activities at home and around the globe
The Skripal affair is a typical example of this. It was clearly a botched, MI5, black operation, designed to discredit Russian and its President. The Skripal’s themselves, father and daughter, have disappeared from sight, while in government custody, while, incredibly, for a supposedly democratic state nobody asks any questions. This tells us that the secrets service must have been involved under direction of the executive, in this case, PM Theresa May. Their disappearance is proof that something is very wrong
This example highlights how deeply sick is the culture of the secret services and their overseers in No 10
GCHQ is a different matter for it is a not pro-active but mostly a large-scale listening-in operation. The nation needs to be kept abreast of what is happening in the world
However, it should be clearly stipulated that it must not interest itself in the activities of British citizens or purely British companies, unless they are proven to be acting in conjunction with foreign agents and globalists
CIVIL SERVICE. QUANGO’S
QUANGO means Quasi-Autonomous Non-Governmental Organisation. In reality both their autonomy and their non-governmental status are usually suspect
Their enormous growth in Britain under administrations of either complexion since WWII is legendary
They are seen as a fix for all manner of problems and gaps in control
What these terms “autonomous” and “non-governmental” are supposed to convey is that these organisations are free and independent of the civil service
Indeed, this is probably the case but what this means is that they come under the control of the democratic machine.
At best this means they are put in place by statute, at worst by arbitrary whim of the prime minister and the cabinet.
But as the UK parliament is so completely under the control of the prime minister (as I describe in detail elsewhere), there is not really a great deal of difference in the two methods of bringing a quango into being
There are very few quangos that should not come under the remit of the civil service. Many should have never been created in the first place
To cite an example dear to my own profession of architecture, as is normal for a profession, we have our own civil institution, the Royal Institute of British Architects created in 1846. Its only connection with government originally was its charter enacted under statute
But in 1932 the government effectively duplicated some of the functions of the RIBA by creating, out of thin air, a quango, now going under the name of the Architects Registration Council
This quango undermined the civil institution of the RIBA and does so more and more as time goes on
I have little doubt that the professional institution will at some point be replaced by the quango, ARB, completing the corporatisation of the job of the architect. It will no longer be a profession to the great detriment of society
I cite my own experience simply as an example of how quangos are used to make inroads, not only into the remit of the civil service, but also of the civil society
Understand this one key aspect of quangos. They are creatures of the executive.
They are a tool of extending control of the executive into all aspect of our society and are a very dangerous development
They are part of the corporatisation of the civil society and the civil and public services, in other words, the corporatisation of the whole of our society
PUBLIC SERVICES. PRINCIPLES OF RUNNING PUBLIC SERVICES
The question of how to run the extensive monopolistic Public Services in a Modern State is a fundamental one, and modern governments have not yet solved this question satisfactorily.
The evolution of a viable, fair and effective system of Public Services still lies ahead of us, but the following two basic principles must apply to a state-owned public service, of which they are still some left.
Firstly, there must be an automatic presumption that an industry should be privately owned and run (as a “free agent”) unless, and this is a crucial “unless”, that industry forms a natural monopoly.
First responders are natural monopolies. The idea, for instance, of two fire services competing to put out fires is absurd. The privatisation of the natural monopolies of water and railways in the UK has been a disaster and a huge waste of public money compared to previously publicly owned companies, which, let us not forget, delivered real profits to the Exchequer which could offset tax increases
In the provision of electricity, for instance, having a phoney competition between private companies to supply electricity, when it goes down the same cables whatever company charges for it, is a nonsense. The inefficiencies created by the so-called “competition” are enormous and ultimately are paid for by the consumer
Privatisation of natural monopolies is driven by ideology, pure and simple
Secondly, a state-owned Public Service must be constituted as a republican institution (I described above how these work in the previous post)
A public service cannot, by its nature, have accountability in the sense of accountability to market forces, or to private owners, as a private company does. Its accountability lies in accountability to the public and private industry that it serves
Tony Blair considered his greatest contribution as Prime Minister was in the field of public services. He attempted to introduce a “market-driven” element into them with the use of targets, league tables and endless armies of clip-board carriers, checking every move employees made
This is typical of how the executive will tend to attack and control institutions allowing no one any respect for their diligence and commitment in the process, so completely undermining morale
The new constitution must put in place safeguards to prevent this
One of the keys to running a Modern State lies in the organisation of the Public Services and this must be fully a part of the Constitution and so share the same degree of stability as all the elements of the Constitution.
The woes of not managing the Public Services well is something that particularly afflicts the United Kingdom, mainly because of the short-termism induced by over reliance on the leadership of an overbearing democratically elected Executive intent on manipulating the Public Services to gain electoral advantage.
I said that an industry should be run privately unless it is a natural monopoly, in which case that monopoly should be a state run monopoly. So what of education, healthcare and welfare – the latter meaning old-age pensions and benefits to ameliorate hardship?
These are not natural monopolies and so, under this political philosophy, there is no reason why they should be state run. Although the present state-run versions of these hold sentimental value in some quarters, the fact is that everyone recognises that they are in deep trouble and the services they provide are poor
There may be no reason why these should be entirely state run.
For education I would favour a system of vouchers which would be given to parents and then they could spend them in the private school of their choice. State schools are very prone to wokism and worse, whereas private schools have to reflect parents’ desire for their children to stay in business
For healthcare, there probably has to be a state component, but most of it could be provided by private hospitals in conjunction with individual “top up” insurance as in France.
There are two essential requirements of health insurance.
One is that the insurance companies must be mutual societies owned by the insured, and with this demutualisation must be illegal. The idea that insurance companies can be traded on the stock exchange leads to the absurdly expensive health insurance for which the United States is notorious.
The second requirement is that when taking on a new client the insurers cannot ask about previous health conditions. This happens with present day British health “insurance” and this means effectively they offer little insurance of any value
A crucial difference between private and public healthcare is that, in the case of the former, it is in the interest of the provider to have a live customer, whereas in the case of the latter a dead one benefits the system more.
What of pension provisions and provision of benefits in the case of hardship caused by unemployment and other factors? Without going into detail here, I think we should work towards a “self-help” system whereby citizens contribute to funds, which make these provisions
This is far from being a new idea. It is an old one and was operative throughout the nineteenth century through friendly societies and other mutual funds. This was displaced by the state provisions increasingly towards the end of the nineteenth century and I am convinced that this was for political reasons. By downgrading self-help the state could control the citizenry diminishing their freedom. And, in the process, state charity is humiliating and divisive
(This is what I term left wing corporatism at work, and, as I said, corporatism is a major subject I deal with separately.)
But we cannot just cast people out and leave them to their own devices. As with the voucher system for education, people should receive financial help but the individual should be able to decide how to spend it.
So instead of trying to match provision, individual by individual, family by family the state guarantees every person above a certain age a regular payment. I would term this “citizen’s revenue right”, CRR
This direct, un-means-tested, single payment for everyone over a certain age would save a fortune in government administrative costs. Relieved of this burden the state could concentrate on those elements that are natural to its remit. Taxes could be reduced.
The CRR would have to be enshrined in the constitution at a certain level to avoid it becoming a political football
Inevitably some individuals will be unable or unwilling to manage their own affairs properly and will get into difficulties. The state must not come in to bail them out or we will return to the present mess. In this case, private charity and philanthropy will step in and help out. This is not an unreasonable expectation as many people enjoy helping others and find it rewarding. This activity will do no harm to society but will bring about a greater sense of community and responsibility.
In the UK all the public services are used as a political football. This is democracy taking over in the face of the lack of republican structures
The Public Services of the UK do not bear comparison with many of those of our major European partners on the mainland, who generally have the advantages brought by Republican long-termism and stability – although it must be said that public services in Europe are now increasingly subject to the same sort of attack as in Britain, with the invasion of the neo-liberal ideology.
PUBLIC SERVICE. THE MILITARY
Public services include the military which, we should not forget, is there to serve and defend the people not the government.
In spite of this fact, technically the military in the UK, pledges to serve the King not the people. In the US they pledge to serve and defend the Constitution and, of course, the constitution in turn is there to serve the people
Ever since there have been civilisations of any kind there have been Military Services. Once a people has established something of value, it has to be defended. This is a minimum role for the Military, although usually is it has aimed at more.
For our purposes the military can be regarded as a Public Service for essentially it performs in the same way as any other Public Service.
PUBLIC SERVICES. PRIVATISATION AND MERCENARIES
There has been a tendency over the last half century to increasingly see Public Services as Private Enterprises or Private Corporations, or to at least run them as if they were, if they have not actually been sold off under privatisation.
"Privatisation" or "quasi-Privatisation" of the services is nothing new, for many attempts have been made by rulers in past, before the growth of other Public Services, to run the Military Service in this way. The word used to describe this kind of Military Service is "mercenary".
Mercenaries have understandably never enjoyed a good reputation. They suffer from the obvious problem of loyalty, for any person who puts up their services for sale in this way is almost certain to go to the highest bidder.
Worse, the lack of commitment to the hirer's interests or causes translates into a risk taking that is determined by the likelihood of easy booty, and the pleasure of pillaging prosperous communities, rather than the prospect of long-term service to the people and long-term returns.
The Roman Republic understood that the long-term interests of the nation could never be served by mercenaries and so the Legions were made up only of Citizens. In fact, Roman citizenship was fully bound up with service in the Military. This fact was, no doubt, essential to the success and longevity of the Roman Republic
Currently, the use of mercenaries by the United Kingdom's Military Services is not the norm (the Ghurkhas being the exception) but mercenaries have been fully co-opted into the non-Military Public Services.
The traditional doubts about mercenaries in the Military regarding "booty" and "pillaging” described above have proved applicable in the non-Military Public Services!
A further problem with mercenaries that was there from the start is that they can be bought by other states, who may not be friendly. This is happening increasingly with the privatised public services as they are being acquired by state owned services in foreign countries, notably China and France.
The irony of seeing state ownership of the services not being abolished by privatisation but being merely turned into foreign state ownership seems to be lost on the free marketeers who champion the sell-off policy.
The fix applied to these doubts and problems has usually been the creation of an Ombudsman to oversee the operations of the mercenary and to penalise lack of performance or profiteering from their position (usually a monopoly or virtual monopoly).
The cost and inefficiencies created by the Ombudsman is never accumulated into the cost of the service to provide a true comparison with a state-owned service.
5. REGIONAL/LOCAL GOVERNMENT CIVIL AND DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTIONS TO BALANCE THE CENTRE
All republican nations in history have had a degree of regional and/or local government. Of course, this does not apply to the old republican city states which were small enough to be able to be governed as a unity.
The US republic was the first to formalise this into a federation of states whereby the Constitution laid down the degree and type of independence that member states have from the central government.
Cities and towns also have their own local government apparatus in some form or another
In respect of this Fifth Means of the First Ideal, Central Government has long sought to undermine the Local Authorities by manipulating their spending and usurping their power.
For instance, recent governments have tended to seek to sideline elected planning committee members, emphasising the role of direct "consultation with the people”. In practice here the “people” means a hotchpotch of special interest groups who are well enough organised to be easily “consulted”
This is not to criticise such groups for the valuable work they often do, but they are, by definition, not representative of the general population
This is simply a way of leapfrogging the power of locally elected councillors, effectively assigning local power to the centre under cover of appealing to the “people” directly. This is blatant populism
As a further assault on the power of local planning committees, New Labour-created the quango, CABE, which is used to bully committee members into accepting an arbitrary "expert" opinion on planning proposals.
These are just some of the ploys the centre uses in all fields to gain more power over everything, in defiance of constitutional traditions and in defiance of the common sense need for a degree of local government independence
The new constitution must enshrine the local and regional components and lay down their powers and obligations so that the centre cannot interfere
FEDERATIONS
Turning to the US again, there was a further innovation that was made in the New World and this was in the creating of a Federation with substantial powers for the elements that made up the Federation, i.e. the States.
The necessity for a federation arose from the fact that the new "nation", if that what it was to be, had until that time not been governed as a unity by the colonial power of Great Britain but as separate territories.
Vital questions therefore presented themselves concerning how the existing states should be amalgamated together, the degree of central or "Federal" power and authority and the degree of State power and authority.
There was no precedent available to learn from and so a protracted debate amongst the founders ensued in order to decide if and how the matter was to be resolved in the Constitution.
This debate which is fully recorded is one of the foundation stones of Modern Republican thinking and is of a quality that, in the current unsophisticated intellectual climate, we can only marvel at.
We need not at this point go into the details of the Federal arrangements involved, (the immense subject of Federations will be considered separately) except to note that it was decided to found a Federation of States rather than a Confederation (the latter being a far less centralised arrangement).
What is more important is that a new Republic was founded where the principle of power being delegated away from the centre was fundamental.
And the powers invested in the States were not insignificant. Crucially they included tax raising powers that allow a State a degree of fiscal autonomy and this means very real autonomy.
And the Constitution provides that any matter it does not mention goes to the states for administration and decision making, not the centre.
The federal nature of the United States is being threatened at present due to the rank corruption by corporatism of the democratic system as well as the judiciary.
Many of the states won’t go along with the centre’s plans and so secession is rearing its head
Following the American example, the federal or regional model has been adopted by most Modern Republics, and so the twin innovations of the American Republic of the Protector of the Constitution and Regional Autonomy have passed into the general practice of Republics although the forms that these take vary in each case.
The degree of Regional Autonomy in the United Kingdom currently varies across its lands, and this reflects the requirements of expediency judged necessary by successive administrations to preserve the maximum of control in the centre with at the same time the minimum delegation of power.
The hotchpotch of devolutionary arrangements for the different parts of the Kingdom would be an embarrassment for any nation that was truly conscious of the needs of Modern (i.e. post Mediaeval) Constitutionalism.
The new United Republic of Great Britain must accordingly be a Federation with real powers dispersed to the Regions. As mentioned already, I discuss this in detail separately
THE SOVEREIGN REPUBLIC
The five ideals of our renewed sovereign nation are driven by passion
Republicanism is one
So why so much detail and so many aspects to something we instinctively and knowingly love?
The answer is that all the above is about one thing – the sovereign nation
The republic is the sovereign nation
There are the other four ideals that will inform the way we construct the sovereign nation but republicanism lays down the most fundamental basis for it
If republicanism were a single idea, with no depth, it would not mean much
It is indeed a single idea, but it carries within it a whole way of describing society and to fully understand it we must bring out all aspects of this society
This is the purpose of these posts on the subject of republicanism
It still requires further elaboration and the following post (03 of 03) will be part of this. This includes a section on “Republicanism vs, Democracy” and this is vital for we must be absolutely clear about what is republican and what is democratic
We need both. But we will only get both if we are clear about what each means separately
Above all, what republicanism embodies, that democracy decidedly does, not, is permanence. Democracy by its nature vacillates.
The republican nation is permanent, God-given, and everlasting
Crucially, the nation is a means by which our individual lives, with their limited time allotment, are extended into to something more durable than ourselves
I would never say that the nation is the only means by which this happens for our lives also, I believe, have a spiritual dimension that goes beyond our time on earth
Closer to home the family also amplifies our individual lives beyond their span
Nevertheless, the nation stands as a temporal means of achieving an extended meaning to our lives. This is why in history and today many people were and are prepared to die for their countries. Their individual lives may finish but they see themselves continuing through their nation
And we well understand that the relationship of individual to nation is struck by a balance between rights and obligations. It could not be otherwise
When we talk about the nation, we do not just mean a flag and a set of imposing government buildings. We mean a whole culture, history and people
All of these are constantly evolving
I talk a lot in this political philosophy about institutions and this is because institutions of all types are the vital building blocks of the nation and the most fundamental institution of them all is the family
The globalists and their corporatist allies within our midst seek to destroy all institutions and weld them into a single giant corporation
They attack the family with all manner of means at their disposal. The whole woke agenda serves this purpose
We do not want this corporate fascism on a national level and certainly not on a global level
The corporatisation that is happening right now, at full throttle in the UK, is a perversion of the nation and what it means
It is turning the nation into a vehicle for globalist ideology
PARTICULARITY OF THE NATION
And this brings us to one final and supremely important fact about the nation
It is not an abstraction - as an ideology is or as the corporate conception of the state is
It is not a generalised concept. You cannot turn Britain, France or Russia into “-ism”. That makes no sense
That is because a nation is singular, particular and peculiar to itself.
You can love a nation. But you cannot love an ideology
So, it is with all nations, and we admire, respect and even love them all for they are cast in this same mould
And with them we will rekindle civilisation – not through legalistic multinational organisations - but through just one heartfelt, intuitive reality - our common humanity