Editorial

Citation

Coleman, J. (2000), "Editorial", European Business Review, Vol. 12 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/ebr.2000.05412fab.001

Editorial

Edited byJohn Coleman

Deputy EditorAidan Rankin

Editorial

In the last issue of the journal, we included a quotation from T.E. Hulme's notebook, which the author of the article in which it appeared, Professor Roy Niblett, considered one of the most important insights of the twentieth century. It was that, in order to understand an epoch in history, we need not so much to be acquainted with the more defined opinions of the period but with the prevailing doctrines that are thought of not so much as doctrines but as facts. These point clearly to the self-deceptions on which every age almost of necessity bases its own version of civilisation. The idea of "inevitable progress" characterises the outlook of the modern world from the Enlightenment onwards.

In the nineteenth century, Disraeli, whom Carlyle finally came to realise shared his views on "progress", once said that the essence of political judgement consisted in knowing how to distinguish between a principle and the abuse of a principle – for the embodiment of principles are like flowers that blossom and flourish and in due course wither and perish, and constantly have to be rediscovered and re-embodied. As humans we tend not to grasp this. We reject principles because they are being abused and fail to separate the principle from the abuse: we lurch from one unsatisfactory position to its opposite without ever understanding the essential truth in both positions.

Sadly this lurching seems to characterise the whole evolution of modern political thinking in which falsehood is usually reckoned to be the best way of catching the public's votes in preference to a little honesty. But electorates are not so stupid and their disillusionment is clear evidence that the truth of the situation is dawning on them rather rapidly. This is where analysis of the kind Aidan Rankin is offering can help greatly. He considers the process very perceptively both in relation to the conservative situation briefly and in relation to the corruption of liberal ideals in considerable depth. In the long run, of course, it is not true that what a person does in private does not affect his neighbour. Everything that is done has an effect on everything else that happens. However, both the Christian and the English traditions have the principle of tolerance embedded in them. There are levels at which law applies and levels at which custom and precedent provide appropriate restraint. Truth cannot be very effectively imposed from the outside but has to be discovered and related to the individual persons, despite the frequent wish of minority groups, or those whose power depends on manipulating them, to impose their will on the majority. The political correctness it spawns, of course, is nothing new. It has probably been with us since the dawn of history. It certainly crept in powerfully through aspects of both the Hebrew religion and Christianity. It was undoubtedly this that provoked Christ's answer to the scribes and Pharisees that the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. The scribes had developed their own pernicious form of political correctness for the same kind of reasons that lie behind it today.

The next article, by Leolin Price, is a fine exposition of English democracy. Democracy is not in itself a safeguard of truth but it surely is – though perhaps not the only soil – in which truth can flourish. Britain's unwritten constitution guarantees a flexibility that practically no other system offers and it goes without saying that such flexibility is the only foundation on which the enlarged new Europe can be based if it is going to bring peace and wellbeing to the whole continent. The new Italian Ambassador recently indicated in an interview with George Bull his high regard for the British version of democracy. "Yours is a fantastic society, a fantastic democracy", he said, although he was a little less sure about our weather. Regarding democracy, it may be safely assumed that he is reflecting the views of the Rome government also. In this connection, Lord Salisbury's comparison of the British and Continental systems of government which has been mentioned before in this journal is worth repeating:

What is important in constructing the new Europe is that both Britain and her continental partners should adopt and appropriately adapt each other's good ideas and weave them into the structures of their own tradition … that people in the localities should govern themselves – and that attempting to imitate Continental plans by drawing all authority from central power, though it might produce a more scientific, a more exact and furthermore a more effective administration, yet it was destitute of these two essentials of all good government. It did not produce a government that was suited to the facts and idiosyncracies of the particular community for whom it was designed, and it did not teach people to take an interest in their own government.

The final piece in this issue brings us to a more immediate matter, because it is likely to be the subject of a referendum: the Euro and the question of central banks. What is being said and thought in one of the countries at the head of the list for enlargement must be of considerable significance to all the members of the European Union. It comes in the form of an interview conducted by Thomas Ország-Land with the president of the Bank of Hungary. Ország-Land seems to articulate the doubts of some Hungarians about the EU "project". The president of the bank expresses a financially optimistic view and, like the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, believes in the independence of the Central Bank. In fact his precise words are: "The independence of the Central Bank is a key pillar of a modern democracy". Leolin Price has argued that taking away financial decisions from elected representatives is an odd quirk of modern democracy!

At any rate, the whole question of money and banking in the present electronic age is explored in such works as Michael Rowbotham's Grip of Death (which the author claims is a direct translation of the word mortgage) and James Robertson's Creating New Money: A Monetary Reform for the Information Age, which are on New European's review list of books and must inform the whole debate on the Euro if it is not to be based on yesterday's financial system.