It’s not often that a visit to the library encourages reflection on matters of political philosophy – unless, I suppose, one happens to have strayed across a stray volume of Hegel in amongst the Stephen Gerrard biographies and romance novels about billionaire vampires. But a conversation with a librarian in the children’s section at my local library this morning gave me the opportunity to think through the shameful events at Parliament this week and their wider import.
I had come to return some books my eldest child had borrowed some six months ago and which I had failed to remind her to bring back, and I had my tail between my legs as a result. Growing up as a bookish kid in the 80s and 90s with no money, I practically lived in my local library, and still retain great respect for the social importance of these institutions. So I was fully prepared to drop to my knees and offer to commit seppeku right there on the carpet for my terrible crime – or, at least, cough up a considerable amount of money in fines.
But I was astonished to learn from the nice lady behind the counter that the library in fact hasn’t been charging fines since the first lockdown of March 2020, and has no intention of reintroducing them. ‘We’re honestly just glad to get the books back at all,’ she said. ‘We really don’t want to stress people out with fines. Not at a time like this when there are so many other things to worry about.’
‘Are you sure?’ I said. ‘Aren’t fines a good incentive to get people to bring books back on time?’
‘Maybe,’ she conceded, but she stuck to her guns: ‘We really just don’t want to stress people out.’
I didn’t press the point, because she was obviously a perfectly decent person, so I just smiled and sidled away. But I was struck by the strange meekness with which I had been treated. When I was a kid, library fines were taken seriously (I still distinctly remember the figure – 6p per book per day – that I would have to pay for a late return). And this sent a message: ‘Yes, we might “just” be a library, but we still don’t expect you to take the proverbial. In some small way, what we are doing here matters. So treat us with respect.’ So we did.
I had my youngest child with me, and I commented to her as we left the building that times had really changed. Being two years old, she pointed at the sky and said, ‘Blue!’ But I think she understood what I meant. In the course of my lifetime, the values of public institutions have quite radically shifted. In 1994, they stuck up for themselves. If you returned a book late to the library, you had to pay a fine and you were made to feel ashamed. In 2024, libraries worry about whether the mere act of requiring you to return something you have borrowed is ‘stressing you out’. And what is true of libraries seems true more widely. Schools, universities, local councils, the Home Office – they all seem to be infected with the same malaise. Standards? Rules? They just stress us all out; better for us all to simply relax and coast along until retirement.
There are many explanations that could be offered for this transformation, but I think a central factor is a basic lack of confidence in the value of the institution itself. I thought it remarkable, for example, that the librarian I encountered prefaced our exchange by saying that the library were just glad if books were returned at all. It spoke of quiet desperation: libraries are almost everywhere under threat of closure, and the very practice of reading books itself sometimes appears to be dying out. So it seems that libraries need footfall so badly that they’re prepared to tolerate almost any level of abuse so long as somebody is reading something.
But it also speaks to a loss of vocation. If what libraries do is important, then it should be treated as such. If people are allowed to get away with behaving as if it is not important – by flouting the rules and returning books whenever they feel like it, if at all – then what does that say about the faith that people who run libraries have in the entire enterprise? It rather suggests they think the whole thing is basically a sham and that they are just going through the motions.
During the lockdowns, the extent to which this mentality – the toxic mixture of loss of confidence and vocation – had permeated our institutions was revealed in shocking starkness. And it was particularly noticeable in three fields: education, religion, and politics. I was stunned in March 2020 at the rapidity with which schools, churches and Parliament closed, and at the timidity with which the people who staff those institutions retreated, mouse-like, into their little burrows. It spoke of fear and panic, yes, but it also spoke of a total lack of faith in what they were doing in the first place. Does education really matter when the chips are down? Nah. Is your God bigger or smaller than a virus? Smaller. Is representative democracy more or less important than the threat of a disease? Less. In the end, those who were supposed to believe the most in the overarching values of the institutions they represented were revealed to have an interest chiefly in avoiding the rocking of boats. What – protest about lockdown? Suggest that the futures of our children or our dearly held religious beliefs might be even more important than stopping the spread of a virus? Mention that proper Parliamentary debate and scrutiny might be worth taking a few fairly low-level risks? Stop stressing us out!
And this brings us of course to the latest nail that has been driven into the coffin of our public life: the farrago surrounding the Speaker’s behaviour at opposition day debate last Wednesday.
Let us first be fair: the threat of political violence, and particularly the threat of political violence against MPs’ families, is obviously not to be discussed in the same breath as library fines. But we see, at root, a similar pervasive malaise here as I encountered in my local library. In the parliament of a representative democracy that had faith in itself, in the importance of its work, and in the meaning behind its procedures, the response to the bullying tactics of extremists and protestors would have been obvious. First and foremost, it would have been not to back down. And second, it would have been to take immediate and urgent steps to robustly protect its parliamentarians, in coordination with the police and security services. The position would have been, and should have been, plain: what happens in Parliament matters, and the outside world is going to respect it. And this would have derived from the basic self-respect of the people with custody of the institution itself – a sense of faith in its overarching purpose and importance.
But we don’t really live in a representative democracy that has faith in itself, as anyone with eyes can see, and the depth and extent of the rot is now becoming evident. In recent years, the House of Commons has been reduced to something little better than a talking shop. On the one hand, its constitutional role is turning into a kind of rubber-stamping exercise for government, with the practice of legislating being reduced to the passing of wide-ranging ‘enabling acts’ which simply delegate actual regulatory power to government ministers and quangos like the Financial Conduct Authority. And on the other, MPs seem increasingly to see their main function as being to virtue-signal to their respective tribes so as to secure more likes on their social media posts (and possibly lay the foundations for a lucrative career in punditry, lobbying or consultancy after their time as an MP is over). Is it any wonder then that when the chips are down and something real is at stake the response is to meekly follow the path of least resistance – so as to avoid getting too ‘stressed out’?
The comparison with the Brexit era throws all of this into particularly stark relief. British readers will remember the wailing and gnashing of teeth among MPs when Boris Johnson prorogued Parliament in the summer of 2019. A gaggle of opposition MPs even staged an asinine, sixth-form style protest in the Commons, claiming that the future of British democracy itself was at stake. That they were prepared to do that for the cameras when there were absolutely no consequences for doing so, but are unprepared now to tackle the current crisis because it would all be a bit too difficult and confrontational, speaks volumes. When virtue-signalling is cost free, they’re all for it. When there are genuine risks associated with it, they’re nowhere to be seen.
How will we get out of this mire? Milton Friedman was fond of saying that when it comes to politics and the economy, the one argument that you are not allowed to make is that we just need better people. ‘We need better people’ is the last resort of somebody who has run out of ideas. In many circumstances, Friedman’s observation was accurate. But we find ourselves I think in a situation in which a rare exception can be made: we actually do need better people in charge of our institutions. When the current crop don’t have faith in what they are doing, don’t think it particularly matters, and don’t think it is worth sticking up for, then the only solution is for people who actually do care to step up and take the reins. This is true of libraries and it is true of Parliament, and in every other arena of our public life. Serious people who love the country and its institutions are going to have to step up and be counted if we’re going to reverse the journey of decline on which we have embarked – and they’re going to have to do it soon.
Dr. David McGrogan is an Associate Professor of Law at Northumbria Law School. You can subscribe to his Substack – News From Uncibal – here.
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