War is on multiple levels and multiple fronts

Dear ,

We still have a few spaces left for our lunch with Wing Commander (rtd) Peter Layton PhD talking about “Australian Grand Strategies in a Time of Real or Imagined Wars”. It is this coming Tuesday, at the Brisbane Club at 12:00 for 12:30.

If you haven’t already booked or want to book for an additional person click here.

I'm currently in Europe, and I've been doing some thinking about war - cultural and physical.

I came to the UK for the inaugural ARC Conference, and now I'm in France.

The Alliance for Responsible Citizenship has been characterised as wanting to “replace Davos Man with Conservative Man”.

There is no doubt that it is in conscious opposition to the World Economic Forum, the globalist conference held annually in Davos, and which counts amongst its Young Global Leaders alumni such “luminaries” as Vladimir Putin, Emmanuel Macron, Angela Merkel, Justin Trudeau, and Jacinda Ardern.

But the ARC is not necessarily conservative in nature. Indeed, one of the centrepiece events in history that it celebrated was the ending of slavery by the British Parliament in 1833 – something originally backed by the liberals of the day (although ultimately enlisting almost universal support).

Three of the Australian Institute for Progress’s directors attended – Campbell Newman, Dan Ryan and me - and one of the organisers was former director Amanda Stoker.

The four of us will be reporting on what was intended, and what we saw, heard, and brought back with us.

This will be on Wednesday 22nd November, with wine and antipasto. To book click here.

One of the themes of the conference was opposition to “declinism”, the idea that we are not just past our  best, but this is inevitable.

I came across a powerful example of this mind-set when I attended evensong at Westminster Abbey the Sunday we arrived.

We stayed at the Reform Club because it has reciprocal rights with the Brisbane Club, but also because it was the club formed to support those campaigning for an extension of the franchise after 1823. It symbolically matched with the three days of conference discussing how to return sovereignty to the people. Symbolism is important.

Westminster Abbey is a comfortable 15 minutes walk down Pall Mall and Downing Street from the Reform Club.

There is a bust of Gladstone in the club. There is a larger-than-life statue of Gladstone standing in Westminster Abbey, which was just beside the pew we sat in.

Westminster Abbey appears to have more statues of statesmen and other secular figures than it does saints. The fusion of church and state is right at the heart of British culture, and nowhere was it more obvious.

The Dean preached about a thirteen years-old African girl, Manche Masemola, who was martyred in the Northern Transvaal by her parents because she had converted to Christianity – she is an Anglican martyr and a statue of her is one of 10 martyrs who stand over the west door of the abbey.

The sermon was historically inaccurate and peppered by gratuitous half apologies for the role of the British Empire and missionaries in the Northern Transvaal.

So here, at the heart of the organisation which is itself the cultural heart of the UK, declinism is gnawing away at the legitimacy of the state and the culture.

As we left the cathedral the irony became even more acute when we walked over a plaque in the aisle. It was black, and the largest I could see, and it covered the body of David Livingstone (but not his heart which was buried in Africa by his African friends).

Livingstone was an explorer, missionary and doctor whose letters home galvanised the British public to oppose slavery in Africa and who was also in some ways the “spear head” of British colonialism in Africa. You might know him by the quip, "Dr Livingstone, I presume".

The cultural embarrassment and confusion in the Dean’s sermon is at the heart of our decline, and culture was at the heart of the conference, because reclaiming the culture is the only way to arrest that decline.

That’s just a taste of my experience, and I’m sure the others will have completely different takes.

For me the best thing about the conference was that someone (thank you Amanda amongst others) has done something to bring together a huge gathering of activists and thinkers on the centre and the right to start a conversation about how we advance.

Defeat is not an option. We face war on many levels, and many fronts. Some, like Manche, may even die - in a spiritual or a temporal cause. Others will have a physical victory.

To book, click here.

Regards,
GRAHAM YOUNG
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

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