From Free Life No 18, May, 1993

Sir,

Steve Clarke's article "Try Naming Three Libertarians" (Free Life 17) is well done. But he falls into the usual error of regarding the teaching of Jesus as essential to Christianity. As I tried to show in a recent Libertarian Alliance paper, it is rather the act of Jesus involved in the crucifixion (as P.T. Forsyth said, "the essential cruciality of the cross") that provides moral authority, and moral austerity. "You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free" (John, 8:32).

Is there a better libertarian statement than that?

Yours sincerely,

John Hibbs OBE,
Birmingham

Sir,

I have just read your second Editorial Jotting (Free Life 17), regarding the legality of gun ownership in the former Czech and Slovak Republic. I am happy to report that your observations are substantially true.

I cannot comment on the situation in Slovakia, but please allow me to supply your readers with the following statistics for the Czech Republic:

Between the 30th June 1991 and the 30th June 1992, the number of firearms licences issued to Czech citizens rose from 77,350 to 88,385. As of that date, Czech citizens legally owned 13,341 hand guns, 78,350 rifles, and 17,332 other small calibre firearms.

These statistics were released to me in a written answer to a question that I put in March 1993 to the Czech Ministry of the Interior.

Following the adoption of a revised law of weapons ownership on the 1st January 1993, the numbers of all weapons legally owned is expected to rise dramatically. A citizen now need only be aged 18 or above and be apparently of good character to obtain a licence.

I must, however, inform your readers that there is an illegal trade in weapons bought and sold in large quantities. In the north Moravian town of Ostrava, for example, more than a thousand military rifles were confiscated by the Police in a single raid last 19th February. While the legality of this particular raid may be questioned before the courts, there is no doubt that the unlicensed trade in weapons is subject to strict control by the authorities.

Having said this, though, I must add that these raids are taking place not because the Czech Government distrusts the judgment of its own citizens - as appears to be the case in England - but to comply with the international ban on the supply of weapons to any of the sides in the Yugoslav civil war.

Please do print this letter, as I regard being able openly to receive and read Free Life as one of the best fruits of the 1989 Revolution in my country.

Yours sincerely,

Antonín Sládek,
Prague.

Sir,

In his article "Socialism and the Right to Smoke" (Free Life 17) Stuart Pemberton says: "Socialism is about freedom or it is nothing".

Quite obviously, socialism is not about freedom. It is, however, rather more than nothing. It is theft and murder - and on the biggest scale in history. Everywhere that socialism has been tried, it has failed miserably. It has reduced some countries to a state bordering on stone age barbarism. In others, it has perceptibly slowed the rate of economic and social progress.

I have no doubt that Mr Pemberton sincerely believes that he can reconcile a belief in some freedom with his filthy ideology - but do we, at this late stage in the socialist decomposition, have to read his flatulent utterances?

Yours sincerely,

Aaron Q. Krelburger,
Florida

The Editor replies: I share to the full Mr Krelburger's evident loathing of socialism, and agree that Mr Pemberton's views on its compatibility with any degree of freedom are at least unclear. Nevertheless, libertarianism is not yet so well established that we can pick and choose our allies.

Most of us have worked with conservatives who have shared only the most negative of our beliefs, this being an objection to socialism - and never mind on what grounds they objected or what they wanted to put in its place.

Equally, I am happy to publish Mr Pemberton while he has something to contribute to the liberal side of the debate on the right to smoke and on other issues. As with the conservatives, I will go with him so far, and argue only about where we part company.

Sir,

I greatly enjoyed your Cobdenite Editorial (Free Life 17). You are right. This country has no interests in Yugoslavia that need to be served by armed intervention. As such, what intervention is currently made or projected is highly immoral in domestic terms - and still more immoral considering, as you do, how ineffective our efforts there are likely to be.

Your Editorial was defective, however, in not recognising that there will be armed intervention - in Yugoslavia, in Iraq, in whatever place our Government can find reasonable excuse to open fire on the locals.

The defence estimates for the present financial year amount to £24 billion. This gigantic sum has been set aside regardless of the yawning budget deficit - and, more importantly, of our utter lack of actual or potential enemies in the world. It will be spent - as, with a few exceptions, it always has been - to maintain the comfort and status of several thousand members of the establishment.

There are the admirals and generals, of the former whom we now have as many as we have battleships. There are the directors and leading shareholders in the armaments companies. There are the Conservative Members of Parliament in whose constituencies the arms factories are situated, or who receive bribes - aka "consultancy fees" - from the companies. Finally, there is the Conservative Party itself, desperately short of cash, and therefore unwilling to lose its annual contributions from Marconi, GEC and all the others.

Against these interests, neither the taxpayer nor even international peace counts for a backward glance. We gave over conduct of our foreign policy in the 1950s and 1960s to the US State Department, though our resulting policy usually served the exact opposite of British interests. We helped continue the Cold War through the 1970s and 1980s, despite the increasingly obvious fact that the Soviets had neither means nor enthusiasm to keep it going on their side.

The public downfall of Communism came as a disaster. For a few terrible months, it looked as if all those contracts and salaries would have to end. Then, of course, the State Department - for these interests are duplicated, and on a vaster scale, in the United States - provoked Saddam Husain to invade Kuwait. If we ignore the casualties and taxpayers - and who of importance does care about them? - the resulting war was good news for everyone concerned.

Now we have the war in Yugoslavia. Intervention there makes perfect sense according to the above analysis. Am I paranoid to say that the feebleness with which our Government has fought the protection lobby over trade with Central and Eastern Europe is inspired by hopes of a similar collapse, and opportunity for "peace-keeping"?

We are, Sir, under the absolute sway of a clique which has a vested interest in high military spending and in any war that can be used to justify it. Against this clique your words are a meaningless effusion, bearing in mind your support for the Government with is the clique's puppet.

If you really believe in international peace, the first task is to get the Conservatives out of Government. I know that the Labour Party is full of socialists who will at least duplicate Conservative incompetence in economic management, and will add malevolence to incompetence. Even so, the Party does contain a large and uncorruptible neutralist wing. It has never yet prevailed during the term of a Labour Government, but that was during the Cold War. It might prevail next time. There is no corresponding wing within the Conservative Party.

The first step to international peace will not be cheap, but must even so be taken.

Yours sincerely,

Jeremy Guscott,
Leeds.