A welcome renewal of friendships in the Gulf

Last Saturday marked the start of construction of HMS Juffair in Bahrain. This is a remarkable and welcome reversal of policy. Britain closed down its bases “East of Suez” in 1971. It turned out to be just the wrong moment. In the ensuing oil crises and political turbulence, we sorely missed our long-standing links with the Gulf. But last year, thanks in large part to the personal efforts of a senior British officer, Lieutenant-General Sir Simon Mayall, the King of Bahrain decided to offer to build a British naval base in his country, strongly backed by other friendly countries in the Gulf.

Armed with this commitment, Gen Mayall was able to convince the British government to seize the chance. To the ministerial objection: “But we’ve been there for 40 years,” his reply was: “Not for 40 years, but for one year 40 times,” meaning that we had failed to develop a permanent presence. The base will eventually be able to take frigates and destroyers, accommodate a marine or army battalion, and make stays in the Gulf a routine part of the work of senior officers.

It ought also to help project power from the Middle East to the Far East and reverse the extraordinary failure to train up Arabic-speaking British officers. In jargon, this is “tactical activity that gives strategic effect”. In plainer English, it is reinforcing historic friendships. This particularly matters when – under Barack Obama – our traditionally strongest friends, the United States, seem to be neglecting theirs.

***

If it is true, as a report by KPMG suggests, that six million people in Britain are paid less than the National Living Wage, this surely goes to show how dangerous it will be for employment when the Living Wage becomes compulsory next year and reaches, as the Government promises, more than £9 per week by 2020.

For too long, employers have hidden behind government tax credits to keep wages low, but the fact remains that an increase of about 40 per cent over four years, in an era of non-existent inflation, is a huge new cost. Small businesses, the best generators of new wealth, often begin with hardly any money. Besides, cheap labour can be the way for new workers to get a foot on the ladder.

The problem with uniformly high wages resembles the problem with uniformly high house prices – these things are nice for the people who have them, but exclude those who have yet to break into the market at all.

***

As public spending cuts bite, there is talk of the British Museum finding a way – perhaps through billing tour companies – of charging for entry. At present, our state museums are prevented from directly charging visitors. The ban damages the museums themselves. If you cannot raise money directly from visitors, two things happen. Your independence reduces because you rely much more heavily on the government. And your need for sponsors drives you to take money from sometimes unsavoury regimes that wish to buy cultural propaganda. Something happens to your visitors too: the vast crowds of people coming in for nothing, many of whom barely look at what they see, reduce the pleasure for those who positively want to be there.

With seven million visitors a year, the British Museum is simultaneously overrun and poverty-stricken. This is an unnecessary position for a great institution. The Church of England, despite its mission to the poor, has no such scruples: you can (rightly) pray free in Westminster Abbey, but if you want to admire the cultural heritage it will cost you £20.

***

Nearly two out of five people in this country do not know that Jesus was a real person who actually lived; and 25 per cent of young people (aged 18-35) positively believe he was not. So says a survey conducted by the Evangelical Alliance. This state of ignorance makes it all but impossible for that percentage to be in a position to believe that Jesus is, to use evangelical terminology, alive today. It is a perplexing feature of the era of universal secondary education that millions of people know very little about anything. I bet that, before the Butler Education Act of 1944, a far higher proportion knew the basic, historical facts of Jesus’s life (as well as the essential claims made for his divinity) than do so today.

When the government takes over something, it undermines the voluntary principle that drives the desire to impart learning. Before compulsory education, more than 80 per cent of children in Britain were educated – usually free – by the Churches, which had the motive and the knowledge. Little motive, little knowledge.

***

I revealed in this column last week that Hallowe’en was my birthday. On Saturday night, my 59th birthday, I sat down with my family to a delicious dinner cooked by my wife, fell asleep by the fire and then went to bed. No doubt the silent majority of my readers did something similar. So I was shocked to wake up yesterday to news that crowds of yobs in Lambeth, south London, had arrived for a rave called Scumoween and started chucking things at the police who tried to stop them. I would like to dissociate this column and its followers from such events. We are a peaceful community, and have never been known to riot even under the severe provocations of modern life, such as the grocer’s apostrophe or the TV appearances of Tom Watson MP.