The Director of The Iona Institute was a guest speaker at the annual conference of the Progressive Democrats last Saturday. He urged the PDs to develop closer ties to the Churches, and also to develop a family policy that favoured marriage, while also assisting all families in need.

Talk to the National Conference of the Progressive Democrats – 17.2.2007

By David Quinn, Director of The Iona Institute

We know what the big issues will be in the coming election. Crime and health will be at or near the top of the list. So, it now appears, will taxation. So will pensions. What about social issues? It appears not, although crime touches on a host of social issues, among them social deprivation.

I approach social issues as that very rare breed, a self-confessed conservative. Conservatism as a political brand has been enormous damaged over the last few decades which goes a long way towards explaining why so few people wish to be described as conservatives, even when that is patently what they are.

It is damaged because of its association, often justified it has to be admitted, with moral judgementalism, and with a sometimes iron-willed resistance to social changes whose time had clearly come.

One of the great struggles that took place in Ireland through the 1970s, 80s and 90s, a struggle that found particular expression in the various referendum campaigns, was at bottom a debate about the importance of personal freedom as a social good. In this debate, the PDs, or those who were later to join the PDs, were on the side of personal freedom.

Old Ireland, to give it that name, didn’t set much store by personal freedom. It had a particular vision of the common good that led to a high degree of social cohesion but which treated very harshly those who seemed to threaten that cohesion.

The Catholic Church was the arbiter of the old morality and sometimes ruled with a rod of iron. The accepted, indeed the compulsory form of family practically speaking, was the family based on marriage. The privileges and prerogatives of marriage, including and especially its monopoly on sex, were often ruthlessly policed.

This ruthless policing of the old moral rules is probably the biggest reason why the Church is resented by many people, even long after blackthorn wielding priests and bishops have faded from the scene.

Today, the range of personal freedoms available to people is vast compared with what it once was. Politicians and others are much more likely to use words like pluralism or diversity than more old-fashioned terms like the common good, although that still is heard from time to time.

The great over-riding purpose behind this expansion in personal freedom was to allow people to pursue happiness in their own way. Very few people want to roll back those freedoms. Wishing to go back to the ban on divorce, for example, is about as hopeless an ambition as wishing to nationalise the banks.

But if there was a downside to the old morality with its emphasis on a particular kind of social cohesion and a particular vision of the common good, there is also a downside to the new morality. The downside to the old morality was repression. The downside to the new morality is a lack of social cohesion. Personal freedom is often pursued in ways that are decidedly anti-social.

We are witnessing the effects of this. For one thing there is the surge in crime. Headlines crimes have gone up tenfold since the 1950s. This is obviously linked to social deprivation, but we have always had social deprivation and we have not always had this level of crime.

There is far more suicide, even allowing for the fact that many suicides in the past were not reported. There is far more drug abuse and alcohol abuse. There is far more family breakdown. In 1986 there were 37,000 separated people in Ireland according to the Census of that year. By 2002, the year of the last published Census, this figure had soared to 134,000. Who knows what Census 2006 will reveal. What is certain is that we are already at half the British rate of marital breakdown and this figure is climbing fast. We were told this would never happen, but it has happened, and is happening.

Now, here is a term we might very usefully add to our political lexicon: ordered liberty. Ordered liberty means liberty exercised within a moral framework that takes proper account of our responsibilities to the wider society. It means that we exercise our freedom, our liberty, in an ordered, responsible manner.

But the ability to exercise our freedom in such a manner needs to be taught. It does not come from nowhere. It needs to be passed on to us, it needs to be transmitted to us.

What are these moral transmitters? One is social convention. Conventions are society’s way of telling us that certain forms of behaviour are unacceptable. The conventions of the past were often too rigid, but on any given Friday or Saturday night we can see the result in our town centres of having no conventions at all. Anti-social behaviour of an often extreme kind is there for all to see.

Another moral transmitter is the church, the synagogue, the mosque and the temple. Religion passes on to us a moral code. In the past that code was virtually compulsory and we must not return to that because personal freedom is worth having. But religious morality of the right kind teaches us, among other things, how to be responsible citizens.

At this point a quick word about religious schools is in order. Should the State support them? Certainly, if that is what enough people want. The State is the servant of the people we must remember, not the other way around, and if enough people want the State to fund religious schools then the State should, indeed must, do that.

In any case, the PDs are generally against State monopolies, so why should they want the State to have complete control over most of our schools?

A third moral transmitter is obviously the family. The old familiar cliché says that the family is the basic unit of society, but the truth of this cliché is easy to demonstrate by this simple thought experiment. Imagine what would happen if today all the mothers and all the fathers in Ireland were simply to walk out on their families. Imagine the massive job the State would have left on its hands to take over the normal tasks of family life, especially those connected with child-rearing. The task, in fact, would be far beyond the capacities of the State and the damage to society would be vast beyond measure. That’s how important the family is, and one of the many functions it performs, when it is functioning properly, is that it socialises children. It passes on to them a moral code that helps to reduce social problems like crime, drug abuse, alcohol abuse etc.

And if I can go a step further. While the State should support all families, there are still compelling reasons for it to continue supporting the family based on marriage above all because of the social benefits that flow in particular from the family based on marriage.

The Progressive Democrats as a party believe in limited government. This is an impeccably liberal position in the classical sense. But you can only have limited Government when you have ordered liberty, and you cannot have ordered liberty unless the moral transmitters of society are working properly.

I would suggest that today the moral transmitters of society, the Church included, are badly damaged and are in need of repair. This is a task that should concern everyone, including our political leadership.

What does it mean for the PDs? One thing it means, I think, is that your party must have a very carefully worked out family policy and this should be fully aware of the fact that there are still very good, very rational reasons, for supporting marriage above all while not neglecting any family in need.

Secondly, it means a new attitude towards the Church, a word I use in the broadest sense possible. I see no necessary clash between this ambition, and Progressive Democrat ideology.

The PDs should certainly strive to develop a better relationship with the Church. Perhaps even, in the immortal words of Emily O’Reilly, it needs to “tip-toe” back to Church. Or would that be going too far? I’ll leave it to you to decide.